It's been a while

It's definitely been a minute since I last did a blog update.  

February 2025 and where am I at?

Well my Bazza work in progess is still.... progressing if not a bit slowly. I'm at about 50,000 words. My aim was to have it completed by the end of this month so it could be my pitch submission for GenreCon in Brisbane (more on that soon). I didn't quite get as much done as I wanted to but I'm slowly getting through it and the more I work on it the more the overall picture of the story is forming.

I did get to a point around Christmas where I was struggling to keep tabs on characters, settings and just general thoughts on the progress of the story and what I wanted to plan out for each chapter (not as much of a pantser as I thought I was).

With some pocket money I got for Christmas I invested in Scrivener and for me it's been a game changer once I got all my information into it. I have a clearer direction for the story and I can 100% keep a better track of my characters and even settings in the book. I didn't expect to do much world building at the outset but as I flesh out the book more I realised I needed to build out the Kingdom more so it's been great for that and I'll always have the reference to go back to which is handy.

Back to GenreCon, With the wife's permission I'll be attending this year. It's a bit overwhelming truth be told not only leaving the family but also the various workshops and most of all maybe meeting some new people in the industry.

My other WIP,  currently has a working title of 'Mark's Big Book of Shitty Little Stories' is also showing some progress. I had a stash of short stories that I've written over the last couple of years for various submissions that I wanted to share. I had 12 horror stories and 1 personal story. The personal story didn't really fit with the overall theme of the book so I've decided that with Rare Disease day is coming up at the end of February I would just publish the story to my website.

Anyone that knows me personally will know that our son Henry has Dup15q, a rare genetic condition so in recognition of Rare Disease Day I'll be releasing my short story 'Henry's Hope' which I submitted to the Hope Prize last year. The hope prize is a great initiative which shares stories of courage, hope and resilience (which Henry has in spades).

And always in the background is always a couple of other ideas stirring around.