Sunday, August 3, 2014

Mortaevum

I've finally finished the first revision of A Decaying World, and although there's certainly more that could be changed (as I've seen by doing a second revision of the first three chapters) I don't see any point in going through all of it again without some input.

So I need some betareaders!
The book is 134k words long (spread over 13 chapters and some interludes) and includes graphic descriptions of violence and even torture. If that's not your cup of tea, then you'd better refrain from writing me. The book does contain humor and other light-hearted moments, though.

The book does not tell the entire story of A Decaying World, however, as it has grown much longer than expected. It does have a grand finale, though. As well as a cliffhanger that I could omit, but that'd be kinda boring.

~I am the Harbinger of Destruction and it is my fault that all of creation has perished~

A Decaying World tells the story of Drake, a young man who gets pulled into a cosmic game against his will. And it seems that he has already failed.
But the forces that have set everything into motion give him one more chance, and so the Wheel of Fate begins to turn once more.

Follow Drake on the first part of his journey through the realm of humans, through a vast desert, through ruins of an ancient civilization, until he will ultimately be confronted with a harrowing truth.

If you're interested, comment below or send me a message through the contact form.
I can send you the story in a word, pdf, or mobi file.

Thursday, July 17, 2014


After I spent a few more days on revising my horror stories (and creating a new cover for Carcerus, which some might have already noticed) I've finally gotten back to A Decaying World. Only took me two more days to finish Chapter 11, although I'm still going to do another pass with the text-to-speech feature of yWriter, since it can be really helpful in determining if the text actually sounds good.

When I'm done with that, I'll have about 24k words left to go through. It might be fast, might be slow, depends on how much I get stuck on the combat. That's what I really hated about chapter 11. So wish me luck!

I really want to get the novel to betareaders, so that I can determine if there are any big flaws that still need to be taken care of, which is also why I might begin writting another novella while it's being looked at.

Saturday, July 12, 2014


Since I'm still short on cash I decided to take a free proofreading offer a few days ago. Madeleine Faye offered her services to gather experience and took on my entire horror collection, even though she didn't need to do more than a single story.

I'm mostly content with what she did, as she showed me a lot of mistakes, gave me suggestions on how to improve certain passages, and also mentioned when the tone didn't seem to fit the story, like in a scene where I talked about kids even though children might have been more appropriate.

There's just a single problem: she overlooked quite a bit of obvious mistakes.
One sentence talked about interruption even though it should have been interrupting, another used a instead of an, one passage repeated the same word in three consecutive sentences, one sentence talked about while week instead of whole week and I even misspelled the name of a character in a passage that was bold and much bigger than the rest of the text.

She's still human and allowed to make mistakes, of course, but I would have been a bit disappointed if I had to pay for a proofreader who didn't get rid of most mistakes. It should have been obvious, though, since she went through the entire collection (30k words) in a single day.

So there's only one thing left to say: Madeleine, your feedback is good, but please take your time to get rid of as much errors as possible.


Thursday, June 19, 2014


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.

A Decaying World

Wednesday, May 14, 2014


Hello guys, girls and whoever else has found their way onto my blog. I've finished another short story today (although it's more of a ritual than a story) but I will not post here. The same applies to all remaining short stories that will be included in my horror anthology. And yes, I know that the actual term would be collection, but I think anthology sounds better.

Anyway, with that done I will start editing A Decaying World tomorrow. I'm sure other writers would have advised me to let it rest for a month or so, but I simply can't wait that long. And I'm such a perfectionist that I will go over it multiple times anyway. Just have to find some beta-readers before the editing is done.
I did find someone for my short stories, though, and I'll have to read some other stories in exchange. But that won't take much of my time.

So yeah, I hope that I can release the book in the near future. I don't want to start the second part before the first is released. If anything I will write more short stories or begin working on the adaptation of my scifi-"movie" Loop.