D.M. Woon's Blog

No. Nope. I refuse to believe I didn’t update this page for an entire year.

I came here to post wishes for the new year, and discovered that I didn’t even post wishes for 2018! Better late than never, right? …

2018 still saw its ups on the writing front, despite edits for Every Moving Thing That Lives coming to standstill. The most notable up was the release of Tingles, a story I had had knocking about since 2016. Back then, I claimed it would be my Halloween piece for the year, a claim I wou...

In my defence, a lot has happened since the last update…

With regards to writing, there have been a number of shorter projects, most of which are currently languishing in some sort of literary limbo as I try to focus my attention on the novel at the front of my mind. This hasn’t always been easy, and one or two of these so-called ‘shorter projects’ have easily developed into something much bigger… However, two short stories have been polished and moved to the FINISHED folder, one of which is...

Oh dear… It seems I let the cobwebs gather on this page again…

It’s been a busy few months on the writing front! Shorter projects have been put on the back burner while I focused my attention on editing the second novel whenever I had the chance, and I’m glad to say that we’re now at the second draft stage, which is the point where I send it out to a few people to cast fresh eyes on the piece and provide a detailed critique. There’s a little way to go until I can put this one in the ‘finished...

Today is a good day to write a post.

Partly because I promised myself that I’d post on the first of every month, but also partly because today I finished a complete first draft of my second novel.

I won’t lie, the ending as currently written doesn’t give me that overwhelming sense of satisfaction that Tales… did. Obviously, there are going to be rewrites, as there was with Tales… But the ending you read in that book is the ending I wrote in the first draft. It just felt so right, and when my...

“Mari, you’re talking to the woman who ate nothing but greens for a month after the priest lectured us all on greed. Turned out that one of the Whitmans up the road was dipping their hand into the collection plate. I tell you, I ate the fattest slice of cake that night.”

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Things have been very busy on the writing front.

Work continues on my latest novella, and my previous goal of having it at least first-draft finished by the end of the year seems likely to be surpassed. While I’m workin...

It was dusty within, an ominous mist hung in the air and Adeline coughed violently, watched specks of saliva dance to the silent sonata.

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Oh dear. It seems like I’ve allowed the dust to gather on this website once again…

Since my last post, I haven’t devoted as much time to my latest novella, though I’m still quietly confident that I’ll have it at least first draft finished this year. The structure is there for what remains to be written, and now that I’ve cleared another short story fro...

“Men are a necessary evil, Marianne. You’ll learn that for yourself one day, and as I have done today, you will lose your faith in mankind.”

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I’m a little surprised that this is my first post of 2016, as I’ve actually managed to write quite a lot this year already! My next novel has made it to the halfway stage, with five completed (1st-draft) chapters, a huge chunk of the ending, and the meaty middle section well under way. I’m hoping to have a complete version by the end of June, and a...

“In 2016, a monumental catastrophe renders all currencies worthless, and war has broken out between indebted countries; Robert Bruce, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, states that blood will suffice as payment as his country joins the fight. Five years pass, and Elliot Ridge has been a member of the army for too long, missing out on his daughter’s childhood. The only thing that gets him through combat each day is a photograph of Emily, but when he loses the image that he carries close...

“Don’t mistake my harsh words for eternal contempt; rather, consider this as initial hostility towards an ignorant stranger. When you’re willing to accept your fate, I will welcome you with open arms, One Nine Zero Eight.”

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Sometimes, a change of scenery works wonders for this writer, and after a welcome break from work in sunny Liguria, a beautiful coastal region in the North of Italy, I returned home with around 2,000 words for works in progress. One afternoon by the sea in Loano prove...

“I’ve worked here for eleven years now. Sure, there have been days when I wish I could’ve been somewhere else, largely due to my former colleagues and the attitude they shared with our friend Andrew here. But I otherwise enjoy what I do, and when you enjoy what you do, you excel at what you do, and that brings rewards. Rewards make us happy, don’t they?”

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For a lifetime now, it seems, everything even remotely related to writing has been about ‘Tales of The Bastard Drunk'; and I’ve enjoye...