Bradley P. Beaulieu » Tears http://quillings.com The blog of the epic fantasy author of The Winds of Khalakovo. Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:02:24 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 ABNA 2009 http://quillings.com/2009/02/02/abna-2009/ http://quillings.com/2009/02/02/abna-2009/#comments Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:12:14 +0000 Brad http://quillings.com/2009/02/02/abna-2009/ Last year, I joined the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. I made it past two rounds, as I recall, but didn’t make the quarterfinals. It was a good experience, though I’ll admit I got too wrapped up in trying to get people to review the thing. My belief is that user reviews made very little difference in who made subsequent cuts, so although I entered this year, and although I’ll be posting updates here and there, I’m not going to obsess over anyone actually reviewing my entry. Not that I’m discouraging it, mind you, just that I don’t particularly feel like using up small favors for something that, in the end, will probably not make a difference.

I entered my last novel, The Tears of Tendali. It’s a much more polished book than was Captured by Crystal, last year’s entry, and hopefully it’ll make a splash. We’ll see…

Oh, and for those of you that have a novel that you’d like to enter, they opened submissions this morning and will be accepting them through 2/8/2009. There’s a 10,000 entry limit as well, so if you’re thinking about entering, do it sooner rather than later.

]]> http://quillings.com/2009/02/02/abna-2009/feed/ 0 Writing a novel is such a slog http://quillings.com/2007/12/27/writing-a-novel-is-such-a-slog/ http://quillings.com/2007/12/27/writing-a-novel-is-such-a-slog/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2007 22:50:21 +0000 Brad http://quillings.com/?p=94 I’ve been plugging away on the Russian Windship novel. It hasn’t been slow, per se. I’m up to 45k words, and I’ve done a number of other writing related projects over the past few months. So the progress is actually not too bad. The trouble is that I poke around the internet and I see all these sales of short stories and awards and inclusions in Best Of anthos (and more power to them!) and I feel like I’m stuck in mud. Like no matter how fast I go I’ll never be done with this novel. Ever.

Then again, there are positives. I’m happy to be working on a new novel. I’m happy it’s approaching its midway point. I’m happy that it’s going so well, because it’s really starting to come into shape. The tone, pacing, and milieu I was shooting for I think I’ve almost nailed. And I think the story itself is really solid.

My last novel is still making the rounds. But even so I’ve been working on revisions based on my own feelings about it, my increased skill level after Clarion, and feedback from my agent. It’s been a long time since I wrote a new novel. The first draft of Tears was done in the middle of 2004. Over three friggin years already! Ugh. I want a new novel. So in this respect I’m very happy to be tackling another large project. The revisions on Tears and the diversion to short stories were very helpful, but on the whole I’m glad I have another mountain to climb instead of a single, challenging cliff face.

Almost halfway up. A little more than halfway to go.

Cheer me on!

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