Tag: barbarian

Howdy folks! The spring equinox is almost upon us and I am bracing for impact.

Because it’s allergy season. [dramatic music]

Actually, I’m bracing for impact for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which being that I work in retail as a day job. With everything going on right now in the world I’ve just kinda made my peace with the fact that I’ll probably be sick sometime in the next month or so. I’ve been trying to get as much voice-based stuff done as possible so that I don’t fall behind as badly. As such I haven’t done a whole lot of writing in the past month or so, as most of my efforts have been concentrated on The Dawnbreaker’s Saga.

What Am I Working On?

Hostage: I have the whole story! It melded together better than I expected it would, and I’m excited to see where the story takes them if we continue it. (We’re Lowells – we can’t not write trilogies.) I’ve got the full manuscript now and have been slowly plucking away at my own mistakes whilst also trying to find places with extraneous wordage on both ends. It’s a BIG book. With any luck I’ll have that back to the other Lowell by the end of March. (Along with, perhaps, a cover sketch. I have a few ideas.)

Charge: Hit a wall with this one wherein I realized just how much work it was going to be to catch up with my writing in the form of artwork to go along with it. I still think I can do it, but since I’ve got Hostage to work on, it’s on pause. When I hit the last “okay, now what?” section my wordcount for the manuscript was at 29k – and having planned the first chapter out in comic form… it’s going to be a while before I catch up with myself.

Scripting: Most of what I’ve been writing lately have been scripts for the Dawnbreakers’ Saga. The plots are starting to converge in a big way so I’ve had to get my ducks in a row as far as first meetings are concerned. I have a few big production episodes coming up, but I also have some ideas for silly things to do in the meantime if I do fall behind and end up unable to record for some length of time. 😀

The Asgard Series: I have been told in no uncertain terms that Raylene and Dublin need a sequel. I’ll be honest, I expected this to be a one-off and then I’d go back to the Five Realms, but I’ve honestly had more fun writing Loki alone than most of what I was working on before. So, a sequel is in the veeerry early, babiest planning stages. What I like to call, “percolation time.” Hopefully it doesn’t take me as long to come up with a decent conflict as it did for the first one – seriously, Utgard took me a year and a half. All I know about the next installment is that I want more Loki, more of the kids (obviously), and possibly more Heimdall shenanigans – he did, after all, come up with the, “Let’s dress Thor as Freya to get his hammer back,” idea.

That’s about it for this month! With any luck, April will be a little more peaceful. See you again soon!

Howdy, Folks! And happy Lupercalia to all the werewolves out there. (Whut?)

I’m actually getting into the habit of this monthly post thing – although next time I’ll mark my calendar so I don’t almost forget. Habits are hard to form, but I’ll get there!

Many thanks are in order this month, some to say goodbye, some to say hello. First, I want to express my deepest gratitude to Stu King (aka CouchwarriorTV and fearless leader of the Character Crusade) for seven years of amazing storytelling, voice acting, and audio-visual production over on YouTube. He recently announced that he was moving on to other things, but he was the reason I started the Dawnbreakers’ Saga in the first place, which gave me the confidence to do things like speak at panels and keep writing novels. Stu is, if anyone is, my voice acting and character building sensei, and to him I give a hearty thanks, raise a mug (of coffee), and wish the very best on his upcoming adventures! Skål!

Second, a big thank you to my dad – Nathan Lowell, the man, the myth, the Captain of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper – for boosting All’s Well in Asgard. He didn’t have to, but he did. And because he did, I feel like I have even more reason to be present. So, hello! All you Asgard fans who crossed over from the Deep Dark now know why I keep calling Pip “Space Loki.” 😀

What Am I Doing?

Hostage: The full draft is currently with the other Lowell. He’s working on meshing the two stories together and getting the manuscript formatted so that we can scrape it into shape a bit more. I haven’t seen the other half of the story yet – aside from the very end of it – so I’m quite interested to see what they look like side by side.

Charge: Surprise Project! I intended to pick Gate Strider back up when I was done with Hostage but I had so much fun writing Loki for All’s Well that I had to dip my toe back into Norse Mythology land for a while… and fell all the way in, as one does. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with Charge – it’s a story set mostly in Vanaheim but dips into 9th century Norway for a little while. It’s been coming together in bits and chunks for the last like eight years or so, but may not lend itself well to novelization. It’s a very visual story, and significantly more adult than All’s Well, so I may be producing it as a comic or graphic novel. Which would be a Challenge, since I’ve never been able to keep focused on the same thing long enough to make a go of sequential art. (Though, I do have a couple of unfinished animations under my belt now. Shhh, secrets.) I’m about 13k words into a rough draft if 4theWords is correct, which I will likely be using as a base for comic scripts later on. Character design is underway, and I’m enjoying the process a great deal!

That’s about all for this month! With any luck I’ll be seeing you again soon!