'ight so I'd like to first off apologize for my lack of updates despite it being after February now but my main project, Ravenlight, took a lot of care to get it to where it is. Even at this point my journey with the novel isn't done. Gradually over the next few weeks I'll be getting back into the swing of things while preparing to query. At this point I'm still allowing for people to jump on as beta readers if they'd like. But enough about that.
Let's get to the meat of this post. Today I'll be sharing my journey as a writer, where I started, the cycles I did, the history behind it, that sort of thing.
Well to start off with, I first picked up the pencil of course in Pre-school. It wasn't until the 5th grade that I actually drafted my first story. Some would call that young, others a tad old. For me, it was right where I wanted to be.
As I recall it was going on Spring and one of our final projects was to create a short story for the class to read. Now at first I wasn't into it, especially since I was somewhat a recluse by nature. Time ticked down more and more and I was running short on time. About a week out I decided to finally give in and create something 'worthless' as I thought of it at the time.
Well, at the time I had also been huge into Warriors by Erin Hunter so I used that as the basis for what I was going to write. I wrote a book about a war between cats, something about a cat wanting to join a club though being shamed away. It wasn't touched upon but I did this because I felt myself an outcast and wanted to put that into a character and share it as an experience. Eventually it lead to a war with Water Guns and that sort of thing.
So I wrote it right? Well next thing I know is that we're swapping stories and people actually liked it. Not sure if it was just "Yeah I'm going to say I like it because I don't wanna get in trouble for saying you're shit, lol" but yeah. So really at that moment it kinda spun in my head that it was kinda fun to write what I did write, to see that an experience actually entertained people and that it generated discussion.
So what do I decide to do? I decided to keep writing. Throughout 5th and 6th grade I worked on a collection of small stories called the Cool Cats Club (I was into cats) and it wasn't half bad. At the time I was just getting into Anime, mainly Naruto, so add that to my interest in Warriors and I'm sure you can imagine what came about.525Please respect copyright.PENANAYbeTHg0sk8
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7th grade is where it all changed. I ended up at a different school as my old one only went up to 6th Grade. With that I decided to try something new-ish. I cut a lot of the stuff like cat people being a thing and turned it into a Warriors knock off called Fighters. Really though, that's where my roots really began as I started to come up with my own ideas. My brain really went into overdrive at that point.
That could be said as the result of me gaming more, watching more anime, and doing D&D sessions online though so eh... who knows.525Please respect copyright.PENANABkZ8CGdINa
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Fighters atm is available on my Wattpad but to summarize it was a girl cat with a destiny to stop evil and the undead from ruling the forest or something. Anime-like powers and cats, what could go wrong? That was my story up until 2011, I kept on making Fighters and trying my own works. I experimented with other things of course and really it was great. People were entertained by my stories. Of course I would continue.
At that point though I set my sights on something a little broader. Naturally I felt limited by the world of cats as my creativity had grown vast. I had experienced a lot of anime and I had already reached the peak of Fighters. I craved more.525Please respect copyright.PENANAAajsRTVGV0
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2011... enter Midnight.
It took me over 100 different visions to craft Midnight before at last settling on a concept I had been exploring since 2008. Isn't that something? To those of you who have read it or Ravenlight I'm sure you can imagine what the process was. People loved it (possibly because I took beta-concepts of some RL people and made characters around traits based off those people).
At that point people were fueling my ego telling me to try publishing. I figured why not. I loved writing by that point and the idea of expanding the story and making a little something off of it seemed great. Mind you I was still young and knew nothing so......... I did it.... with a vendor press.
2013 I made an agreement with a Vendor to publish Midnight. I was overjoyed, truly. I got a book published, something most people couldn't say I thought at the time. Sales were happening and life was good... UNTIL someone dropped false reviews.
I actually had my parental ready to take legal action because sales literally died the moment the false reviews came out. It was someone I knew trying to f*** with me. And it worked. Sadly I never recovered at that point after sinking 6000 into publishing and in 2015 after feeling stuck, not wanting to pay any more to do any ads or anything, I pulled the plug. From 2015-2018 I then tried to recover with Midnight Books 1-7.
Self publishing sucked. For 3 years while going through college I still thought highly of my dead project I kept on life support. It went nowhere, no matter what I did or where I posted. Really it wasn't until July-August of 2018 that I reached the next level and learned what I had done all those years was wrong.
The whole time I knew I was screwed. I couldn't self publish, I couldn't pay a vendor again, writing seemed dead to me... at least, until July when I found out about traditional publishing. To not have to pay, to simply hook an agent and go from there? Sounded awesome to me!
Like the inflated idiot I was, I nearly queried an agent blindly by name of Kelly. THANK THE STARS I DIDN'T (at that time)!!!
Through her and other sources I found that most aren't going to be interested in self-published projects unless they had enough success. That sucked. It really sucked to me at the time. So what did I do? I spent August-September working on revising Midnight to improve it and make it different.
My god did that suck. I flat out hated my story by the end because of all the mistakes I made when I was what, 14-15? Midnight was trash originally. Even after I fixed it up I was iffy. Finally Midnight Revised was ready and I felt ready to query. Again though, I didn't.
During that entire process I had been researching the industry, gathering knowledge. I was smarter now, not a trigger happy kid like I had been. Needless to say, I decided to put the final nail in Midnight's coffin.525Please respect copyright.PENANAg2JFXDlrHf
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It was a failed work I only revised, a work with limited imagination compared to what I had then (we're talking a 5-year gap practically so of course I'd improve). My ego was slashed, I knew I had to let it go. And so, obviously, I did.
October came around and I had begun to research the industry more, checking out multiple more agents, researching. etc. I learned about Pitmad, I learned about how to query, I learned about terms like Young Adult or New Adult or Adult or Middle Grade, all that. I learned that using characters openly inspired by RL people was a crap idea.
And so it began, my greatest mission of all. I dissected Midnight and took from the corpse what I wanted, the original concepts I valued like the Tribe, The Hive, all that noise from my D&D years, and cut the rest. From there I went on to craft the story, to invent a better female lead, to create a more colourful cast, to create a better magic system, more mystery, more everything.
Now I won't go into all the details because I've not yet begun to query Ravenlight or even sign off on it being done. Basically I crafted a story from things I had researched, from trial and error, from feedback, from a lot of brain breaking work.
My thoughts now after having just finished it? I think I created a truly original story, a true fictional universe. Beta-readers have loved the story, the dialogue, the characters, the magic. A novel that has applied over a decade's worth of knowledge into a single concoction, over a decade's worth of trial and error remastering the story I want to tell. Over a decade of taking pieces and building my masterpiece. I feel that she is finally ready.
Will she be good enough? Who knows. To me Ravenlight is my peak storywise. I can't improve the storyline much more than I already had.
A girl who faces oppression from a clan of dragon people with few friends, later trying to prove herself, to being betrayed, to being found by another, to gathering new friends, to gaining true power, to returning to the treachery and putting things right while contending with an approaching evil of an ancient lore-filled past?
Yeah, I think it's good and ready. Once the last of the beta-readers sign off, it's query time.
And that, everyone, is a quick summary of my journey as a writer thus far. I know I blew through things rather quick and didn't cover too much of Fighters or Midnight, but that's because you can still view both. Fighters is currently available over on Wattpad (coming to Penana soon because I'm so done with Wattpad) and Midnight is available via Amazon or Avalon (I won't be promoting a dead project... also I can't remove it).
What comes next is a mystery. It is an adventure I am eager to face, an adventure I shall face with all of you who are reading this now. While you might not experience my ventures, I can at the very least share them and tell a good story right?
Well, I've rambled enough. This is Alexander Frost signing off. And with that everyone, have a good one~
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