Okay, kids, bring the popcorn and gather around. It's time for Sam to tell a story. Fortunately I think this story has quite a good ending: the unveiling of the Sekrit Project. :)
Four years ago, I moved to Austin to look for work after grad school. I wasn't having much luck, and I was living with my parents and basically confined to the house all day. After about four months of this I realised that if I didn't do something to validate my existence I was going to do something I'd regret, so I decided to write a novel. Starting in September, I wrote almost every night -- from ten to midnight, usually, or sometimes a little longer. I averaged about 900 words a day and gave myself Saturday nights off. That went on for four months.
I didn't talk about it because I was hoping to shop it around when it was done. I did finish it, edit it, and shop it, though none of the eighty-odd agents I sent it to took me up on it. I moved to Chicago, got some work, forgot about the book. A couple of weeks ago, while I was migrating hard drives, I took a look at it for the first time in two years and realised why it never sold: it was
terrible.
So I rewrote it, using what I'd learned in the process of writing The Dead Isle. I cut about ten thousand words, added about thirty thousand, and included several subplots and characters that had been absent the first time around.
Where it gets interesting for most of you, especially those of you who were around for the first run of Cartographer's Craft, is the plot. I had no idea what I wanted to write about, and very few stories I wanted to tell, so I consulted Ellis Graveworthy: I went to Cartographer's Craft and looked up
the plots of the novels he'd written.
Wizard Bird was too close to HP -- it was always meant to be a satire of it -- and Two Kneazles was as well, plus
hello whole boatloads of historical research. Shop Gods was possible, but would have also required a lot more research than I was willing to put into what was essentially a survival mechanism at the time.
I wrote Animagus Winter.
I changed the location, shook up the plot until it wasn't dependent on the HP-verse anymore, and called it
Nameless. It's a sort of magical-reality ode to small towns, with a little bit of mask theory and agrarian earth witchery thrown in for good measure. It had to settle for a few years before I was ready to really own it, but I am now.
I'd like to know what all of you think of it, before I give it one more rewrite and start looking at publishing again. I didn't want to post it all in a whack, because that's a bit overwhelming, so instead I'll be posting it in chapters. It'll be just like most of the fics I post, except that it's complete so I can schedule regular postings (like I did for Two Centres). New chapters will be going up three times a week: Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Given that there are thirteen chapters, it'll be about a month's worth of new fiction, which seems like the right length of time. Sort of a Cafe Book Club.
So, without further fuss, I'd like to introduce you to Christopher Dusk, our narrator and the proprietor of Dusk Books in the small midwestern town of Low Ferry, Illinois. He'll take it from here. We both hope you enjoy it. :)
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