Still alive ... and writing!

Hey guys, sorry for the absence, but there wasn't much to say about my writing projects. Which doesn't mean I stopped writing, but most of it had nothing to do with the my Jack de Nileth pen name. And while I'm trying to get back in the grove, the last year wasn't easy. And there are still days when I don't feel motivated to write anything. The summer heat doesn't help in that regard. Really wish I had some window shades...

But hey, I finally got rid of my student loan some weeks ago! Takes a bit of pressure off. Which doesn't mean I can focus 100% on my projects, as I have others running that need to be finished. The Way of Darkness should be one of them, but I don't feel like focusing on a serial for now. Which is why I started adapting another of my games: Grim Memoria. And man, the dialogue was awful. The written version should hopefully be an improvement. I'm about 20K words in but have no idea how much is left. Maybe another 20K, but I know my writing can get a bit excessive.

Afterwards, I'll finish some other projects and maybe then I can focus on getting the first Mortaevum book released. And then I'll see about the second half. Can't make any promises, though. I just hope my motivation doesn't take a nosedive again. Being depressed sucks.

I also made a cover for Grim Memoria, by the way. An artwork made specifically for the story would have been nicer, but this one has to do for now, even though it doesn't totally fit the character it's meant to portray.

Distractions and stupid payment changes

Hello guys! After remodeling my blog and not posting anything for months, an update surely couldn't hurt. So here's one! Unfortunately, I cannot claim to have finished the revision of A Decaying World. Why? Because I haven't touched it in a month. Instead, I decided to work on other projects instead, some of which you can see in the sidebar now. All of these (except for Spam Up your Life) can be found on Kindle Unlimited ... which might not be worth it anymore. It's certainly better than selling nothing, but if the payment actually turns out to be $0.005/page, then it's simply a joke.

Sure, it means long form writers can potentially earn more (while everyone else gets peanuts), but that's assuming readers get through enough of the book. If they don't, you're also going to lose out. Having to get through 10% was a lot better in that regard. The payments might not have been sustainable, but Amazon should have come up with a better system. Like paying a flat rate for every borrow and then adding bonuses for a certain amount of pages or whatever. Would certainly be better than the stupid system they've got now.

Despite all that, I'll keep my serials exclusive to Amazon right now. Death Zone of Dheygar still needs a lot of stories before I can even think of creating a bundle anyway. The Way of Darkness might be easier in that regard, especially since I've changed my rhythm to allow for 3000-4000 words a day. No idea how long the second volume is going to be, though.

Sadly, I've already forgotten where the idea for Death Zones of Dheygar came from. Shouldn't have waited so long to post something about it. The Way of Darkness, on the other hand, has been inspired by a game I've played some time ago. It didn't have much in terms of plot, so all I took was the basic premise—a world consumed by darkness.

Since someone will surely claim I stole the protagonist's weapons from Wolverine: nope. Sure, they're almost identical, but I didn't even think of that. All I wanted was an unsual weapon, especially since most of my characters use swords.

So if you're interested in horror, why not check out Death Zones of Dheygar? And if you want more fantasy instead, The Way of Darkness will hopefully deliver! I'll try to focus on the latter now, with occasional glances at A Decaying World. So it might still take a while for the first book in the Mortaevum series to be released. But hey, it's my first actual book. One where I had to change a lot during the last two revisions. So having the release pushed back might not be such a bad thing.

The state of A Decaying World's revision

How long has it been since my last update? Two and a half months? Oh well. No point in writing any posts when I don't have much to say. You can get more updates on twitter, but still not all that many.

Anyway, what I have achieved since my last update? I've finished revising everything up to chapter 9, which means I got rid of a lot of useless exposition and hopefully tightened up the prose. It might have led to a few sudden scene transitions, but I'll see about that later on. Really need to get the revision done first.

If everything goes well, I could finish the remaining 44K words in the latter half of May. I don't expect that to happen, though. Why? Because of all the fighting going on at the end. Chapter 9 has been quite an ordeal in that regard, as it took me almost a week to get the ending done. I really wasn't happy with how the original turned out, so I had to rewrite basically the entire finale.

So yeah, I might be done in May, but more likely in June. But that's when I really need to finish this, as I also need to look over it once more (especially since I tend to omit words way too often) and hopefully get some input from beta readers. The first revision wasn't exactly fruitful in that regard. I don't think anyone read more than the first few chapters, with most never even giving any feedback.

And that's about it for now. Haven't really managed to write much else, as I'm also busy writing a lot of reviews. But I'll get to that when the revision is done. There's no need to finish the second half of the book just yet. Would be nice, of course, especially for anyone that hates cliffhangers. But I really want to get more stuff out there. Most likely on Kindle Unlimited, as it might be a better platform for short stories and novellas.

A Decaying World Update

In case anyone was wondering: no, I'm not dead and I haven't dropped my writing projects. But I'm mostly posting my activites on twitter, sometimes on facebook. There's just not enough to write regular postings about.

So, what did I do since my last posting? Well, I've written four more short stories...or maybe it's three. I'm not entirely sure if one of those had already been written back then. I've also revised the entire horror collection—it contains 30k words now—and sent it to a couple of betareaders.

I've also finished a 10K romance novelette. Still need betareaders for that, though. Only have one person who might be interested in reading it and I have to wait until the weekend to get any feedback on that. So if anyone's interested: just send me a message.

These sideprojects did slow the editing of A Decaying World down, but half of the books is already done and I've now finished 5K of the 8th chapter.
And if you're interested in what my revision has entailed until now:

• Improved a lot of sentences and cut unnecessary ones.
• Added better descriptions.
• Fixed continuity errors.
• Added some additonal foreshadowing.
• Wrote an entirely new scene in chapter 2.
• Split chapter 4 into two - "Remnants of the Marble City" and "Towards A Different Future"
• Renamed the old 5th chapter into "Shadow Of A Bygone Era"
• Merged the old 6th and 7th chapter, renamed it into "Signs Of Decay" and rewrote parts of it.

There might have been more. I'm not entirely sure. But one thing that I can say is that the story has only gotten longer, by about 10k words to be exact. Editing normally seems to involve cutting a lot, but I just don't see the need to cut so much. I'd rather improve upon my often lackluster descriptions.

I still need the feedback of betareaders in the end, but it's too early to look for some, since I have no idea when I will be done. You can still send me a message, but I'd rather send you a completely revised version than an unpolished one.

So yeah, that's about it for now. Maybe I'll publish a new short story in the future. But it's better if I don't post all of my shorter work for free.

Status of Mortaevum Chapter 11

Hello guys, girls and whoever might read this!
I just wanted to give you a little status update on the newest chapter of Mortaevum, since I barely post anything else on here. But I'm also busy writing reviews on my german blog, so that does get in the way of any meaningful updates. I do post these on Twitter quite often, though. I switch from German to English all the time, but it's mostly English now.
So if you're interested in these updates it would be good to follow me on Twitter.

Anyway, since chapter 11, which is titled "Defying the Prophecy", is the finale of the current story arc I want to make it the best I can, although there will certainly be changes when I get around to rewriting the draft. The chapter is a bit over 10K words now and since the final battle is still not in progress it might turn out to be the longest chapter yet. Nothing wrong with that, of course, especially for the finale.

The one after that will be shorter, though, although I'm not sure if it will be very short or just normal. Depends on how much I want to set up the next story arc. But I'm already looking forward to the reactions for these final chapters, although there won't be many of those yet.

That's it, for now. The next posting will most likely be the chapter itself.

Don't Play with Slenderman - Ending finished

Just a short update: I've written the ending of Don't Play With Slenderman now so there's only the epilogue as well as editing left. That means I will not publish the rest of the story on this blog because what would be the point of buying it if you could read the nearly finalized version for free?

I still have to create a cover later on but it shouldn't be too hard as I have a little bit of experience after having worked with graphic programs for years while working on my rpg-maker games.

So yeah, that means the next time I post will be when I've uploaded the finished story. After that I'll begin to upload the first drafts of my real novel which is based ony my games and has a much deeper story. I hope you're looking forward to it...although seeing as the blog is very new there aren't that many visitors but that takes time.