September Update – All of the Things

Howdy, folks! It’s uh… it’s been a while.

I did kind of expect to get lost in pre-production for a few things last year at this time, but I didn’t expect to fall off the face of the planet quite as thoroughly as I did. So you may be wondering…

What Happened?

So, September of last year we accidentally adopted a cat. His name is Cannoli, he’s (now) a little sweetheart with very sharp toes and a big voice, but when my brother brought him home a year ago it was because nobody expected him to last the night and he wanted to give the little bean a chance. That little cat said, “stomach surgery WHOMST?!” and proceeded to become… my problem. 😀 He’s a good problem to have. A lot of the last year has been taken up caring for the wee lad and trying to introduce him to the other – far more senior – felids of the house. With… mixed results, so far. It’s an ongoing project.

In November, I wrote my half of Iron (title WIP) – the next book in the Barbarians series. It will be a series, don’t worry, it’s just that Life Happened in the meantime. I think my dad was writing – or trying to write – the Wizard’s Cat at the same time? I don’t really remember.

In December, I finally got to the conclusion of the Dawnbreakers’ Saga, took about a month off to recover from that, and then started on my new Skyrim series – Grifters. It has a slightly different tone, and is a lot more simple to produce, this time. Which turned out to be a very good thing because…

Just after I started Grifters, Life Happened. Those of you who are more familiar with my dad’s works/blogs than I am already know that he was diagnosed with cancer. Since then, I’ve been focusing on the YouTube uploads while also doing my best to step up and do some of the things that dad usually does/did around the house. (Right at the moment his biggest priority is recovering – a priority I fully support.) I haven’t really had the brain space available to sit down and write something (that wasn’t scripts for Grifters, anyway) for a while, but I’ve been noodling away on things anyway. Trying to find stories to write.

It’s a weird thing, life happening. A lot has changed in a year and I’m not sure what kinds of stories I want to write, anymore. I know where I want to write them, but not what the stories are or should be. I’ve basically put Omnia and its stories in the, “It was a good first try,” box, but I’m ready to move on to another world. More on that below.

What Am I Working On?

Grifters – Obviously. I need to update my Music page and a bunch of this website in general to make it easier to find the new things, but that’s a project all on its own. I’m actually quite proud of the music I made for Grifters – it’s definitely some of my best yet, and I think Atlug’s character theme might appeal to Solar Clipper folks even if the rest of her doesn’t. 😀 Yes, she does sing sea shanties. She’s fun. They’re all fun.

Uthir – Uthir has become… far more than Urien, who may or may not end up getting renamed at some point. It’s become a full-on worldbuilding project, which has kept me more or less sane between all of the things. Uthir is now a planet in a solar system with a couple hundred million years of evolutionary history, a few thousand of cultural history, seven language groups sprouting out of the ether, and a bone-colored moon. It’s all still kind of nebulous at the moment, but there is magic, there are dragons, and I’m hoping I find good stories to tell in the course of building the bare bones of this world. Uthir is becoming my love letter to geology and paleontology, which is something I’ve never really tried to explore in a fantasy setting before in spite of it being something that Really Interests Me, and has for as long as I’ve been alive, as far as I can tell. The roots of the world go deep, and they are fascinating.

Iron – I have half a draft sitting around waiting to be looked at again. At some point, I’ll come back and see how I left Sukhetai and company. It may not be until next year at the rate I’m going. Maybe until November. We’ll see.

And with that… I return to my anvil. I have a lot of words to build so that I can name things and people properly. Keep on keeping on, folks.

September Check-In – I Forgot August!

Howdy, folks!

See, I made the last check-in early so I wouldn’t forget at the end of July, but apparently I forgot about August instead. So I’ll make this one now and possibly switch my updates to the beginning of the month so it’s easier to remember. Squirrel Brain got me good!

What am I working on?

The Dawnbreakers’ Saga – I took a few days to outline the whole rest of this story, and it looks like it’s going to be another year before we see the end of this thing. I am, admittedly, getting a little tired of this story, but I’m determined to finish it. The end of August was the story’s three year anniversary, so I did basically a week full of recaps so that people don’t have to go back through three years’ worth of videos to catch up. Since I took kind of a personal hiatus in July and August, I don’t have nearly as much of a buffer as I should, so finishing card art and building that back up again should be my top priority right now. (Note to self.)

Secret Lizard Things – Also known as Beyond Skyrim: Black Marsh. I’m on the 2D art team for this mod project! I was going to post about this in August when the Dev Diary came out but alas – I am squirrel.

Urien: The Dragon of Norwood – WIP title for the project formerly known as The Dragon King’s Council. I’ve learned a lot about comics, time, and scripting in the last month or so, and decided to get a lot more organized and condensed. I actually plotted the darn thing out so I don’t waste time getting lost in the weeds, took out some unnecessary side roads, and then actually sat down and calculated how much time it’ll take, how many pages it’s likely to be. The answer is roughly 600 pages, which is a lot but not as bad as I was expecting for the amount of subplots. The original was probably going to be closer to 5,000 if I kept noodling the way I was. 600, I can deal with. I’m on my second pass of the script and managed to condense everything down such that we’re actually getting places and I’m not even 200 pages in yet. 😀 I’m mostly working on this to give my hands a break between art, though I have made a rough design sheet for the main protagonist. (And several Pinterest boards because I am squirrel.) I’ve still got a lot of work to do; I plan to have design sheets for all of the main characters, some of the supporting cast, and a few locations done before I even think about getting into the main phase of production. I would feel more like I’m procrastinating starting the thing except I’m 90% sure I’ll want reference sheets down the line to keep myself sane and the style consistent. This is, I guess… pre-production? What are industry terms? I don’t know – I’m indie.

Salt(?) – The artist formerly known as Hostage has been with beta readers for a little while now and we’ve gotten some feedback. Mostly it’s stuff on my end, which I did expect. Sukhetai was a difficult character for me to write and it took a while for me to figure him out, so the beginning of the story is a little… meh? I’ve got some rewriting to do on that and then I’ve got to finish up the cover, however working on Urien has taught me a lot about story that I didn’t know I didn’t know (which is, appropriately, a theme in this book) so I’m happy to have a chance to apply that here.

That’s all from me this month! I’ll see ya’ll around – with any luck I’ll post another one of these either at the end of September or the beginning of October. Stay safe out there.

March Check-In – The Ides of March

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!

February Check-In – Clunking Right Along

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!

Slowly but Surely (Don’t Call Me Shirley)

Howdy, folks!

Been a while – again – but this time it was primarily because my day job is in retail and 2019 was the first holiday season I’ve had to deal with in a Big Store rather than a little one. Boy howdy did it ever beat my stamina to a pulp and leave it for undead. All kinds of things fell by the wayside – art, writing, social media presence, heck even Dawnbreakers had to go on hiatus for about a month. The plus side is that in trying to get my feet back under me I’ve been able to suss out some things that I Really Want To Do, some things that I Really Don’t, and a few test-strategies to get things going and/or situated.

CoSine 2020 was an awesome time, and I learned a lot there that I didn’t know but should have. You’d think someone whose dad has a doctorate in social media would know how it actually works but Nope! So I’m adjusting due to new information and fresh motivation: This year I was actually on panels for the first time ever and it was so much fun! I stepped out from behind my dad’s shadow a little bit, so now I’m not as scared about sticking a flag down on the internet. It wasn’t even something I was really aware of, but now that I am, I can deal with it.

Plans:

With any luck I’ll be doing a “Story So Far” recap for the Dawnbreakers’ Saga at the end of the month, and from there out do shorter “what happened this month” recaps. I plan for mid-month “what am I working on that isn’t Skyrim” updates so that we’re all on the same page, and both of those will be cross-posted to my new Facebook Group! (Which is one of the things I learned at CoSine – I had a Page but they don’t work they way I think they do.) And hey! Since it’s slightly after the middle of the month…

What Am I Doing?

Barbarian, Book One: Hostage – Cowriting this one. I’m in charge of the steppe nomads, and the other writer has been waiting on my half of the story since the middle of November. I’m at 41k for word count on the first draft and my “protagonist” is fighting me. (He’s not exactly a Good Person.) With any luck I’ll have the first draft done before the end of the month.

All’s Well in Asgard – First draft done! My plan was to sit on it and let the words fade while I work on Hostage, and then do a first pass while it was with my cowriter’s editor. Obviously that has taken a lot longer than I expected, so the Gray Horse crew will just have to be patient. (Loki is getting antsy, I can feel it.)

The Raven-Friend’s SagaGate Strider got stuck while I finished All’s Well, and Blackbird is in a similar situation. They’re still on the list, and I suspect I’ll pick Gate Strider back up when I’m done with Hostage. It’ll be a long while before we get back to Esper’s story but we will get there eventually. At a stretch, I think I’ll end up alternating Esper’s books with other things, depending on how said other things go. No promises.

Paperbacks – I’ve currently got a proof copy of Redgate: Old World waiting to be covered in red ink. (I kid, mostly.) I’m going to paper those ones before the Tales from Liserna, because they need significant work, and if I remember correctly, the Redgate Chronicles are pretty clean. I can even keep the covers!

So there’s an example of what’s on the way in the future. My next step is to set up an e-mail list (like, a real one this time) and actually finish my half of Hostage so that we can whip that one into shape. I may also see about getting my genre looked at – I met a guy at CoSine who was doing really well promoting his books as YA despite being a little more mature. I know the guy who pushed him in that direction, and that may be worthwhile for at very least the Redgate Chronicles and All’s Well in Asgard, should I ever get that one out. Just thinking out loud here.

Alright, shocker, I made a long-winded post. See ya’ll next time!

Unlimited!

Hello, my friends!

I’m typing this in the middle of a rather severe thunderstorm but I’m very pleased to announce that all of my books are now available to read for free on Kindle Unlimited! The Tales from Liserna trilogy has been updated, finally, which means all of the dialogue tags and bugs have been fixed (the ones I had knowledge of anyway) and I can get on to other things.  Namely, finishing the second Redgate book.

I’ll let you all know when next I have stuff.  Slowly whittling down the pile of projects. Slowly.

See you when I see you,
-Ej

Slow Updates and Anniversaries

Hello my friends, long time no talk.

Seeing as my last update was in December and I haven’t spoken since I figured I should probably fill you all in on what my wee brain has been up to. Namely, too many things. So many things.

First of all I’m happy to announce that I’m in the process of scanning through the Tales of Esper Ravenwood and the Tales of Liserna, fixing typos and dialogue tags, and adjusting some personal and plot bugs that make me wince every time I think about them (like the end of Lightbringer). The Tales of Esper Ravenwood (Revenant, Scourgemarked, and Lightbringer) are all complete and have been updated in the Amazon Kindle store, as well as had a bit of a price drop. They and the first Redgate Chronicles book are also enrolled in Kindle Unlimited now, so you don’t have to pay for them in order to read them, if you’re a member. The Tales from Liserna (Runesong, Heartnet, and Winterdream) are still in progress but are next on the list. I’m also thinking about revamping the covers, but that’s on the back-burner.

Current projects in the works include finishing up the second Redgate book, New World, as well as a third(and maybe fourth) in planning, tentatively titled Other World. Esper Ravenwood is also bugging me about the tales from his “youth,” including how he met Veraggo, the beautiful Efreet fire dancer, and the rest of the band of bards he used to call family. His prequel series has a working title so far of The Adventures of Esper Ravenwood, or possibly The Bard Chronicles, I haven’t decided yet. Legion might be getting a prequel as well, currently titled “Gatewalker,” but I do believe that title is taken, so it will likely change. “A Long, Cold Road,” featuring Tiberius Winters and a shade named Erron Rook, is in a weird writing/planning limbo at the moment, while I try to figure out what goes where, and more importantly who. Blood of Hyperion is currently cryogenically frozen because the plot got so tangled that I might need a minor miracle in order to pick it up again. Last but not least, The Mythology of Omnia is a project that currently consists of a bunch of ideas for vignettes and short stores, Prose Edda style, about the First Gods, the Old Gods, and pantheonic shenanigans. My plan is to write the little vignettes in between doing other things, since they’ll all be in the same book, hopefully. I have dreams of short story collections, but short stories are very hard to write.

I’ve got a bunch of art projects going on behind the scenes, mostly for other people, but I did finally figure out what I wanted to do with the conglomeration of stories formerly known as both Charge and All’s Well in Asgard. I’ve never been good at sequential art, but I’ve decided to try vignette comics. We’ll see. I’ve got two pages done out of the first seven, so far.

It’s also April. This time last year – in a few days anyway – my best friend was in an auto accident and didn’t make it. First anniversaries are tricky at best. I’m dealing by way of having a list of projects the size of Mt. Evans. Obviously. Don’t worry, I have priorities. Just wanted to mention this as an explanation, if I’m a little bit more quiet than usual around the various tubes in the next few weeks.

See you when I see you, my friends.

ps. It apparently took me the better part of four years to figure out that having an undead main character definitely constitutes Dark Fantasy. WHOOPS.

NaNo Update – Final Word Count

Wooooooooo!!!!

Hello, my friends!

I have finally, finally, after much heartache, distraction, and struggle, finished book one of the Redgate Chronicles. I say finally because shortly after the halfway point I had a couple of days where I only managed to write a couple hundred words because of a family vacation of sorts(totally worth it, btw) and a few days in the mix where I didn’t write anything because, *alien hands* life. Not sure what I’m complaining about. I’ve managed to outrun my dad, the man who inspired “The Lowell” as a unit of measurement for productivity(which, if you’re curious, is 10k words in a day. I can write a half-Lowell.) which is a feat in and of itself.

The final, verified word count came in at a whopping 60,998 words, which, for me, is absurd for a first draft. Old World is going to be a long book, as far as my writing goes, and I am so excited to read back through it in a month or so(maybe less if I work on something between then and now) and relive all of the hilarity, heartache, and Huge Monstrous Mistakes again. And edit, of course. That too. Also cry. I suspect there will be a lot of crying involved. *curses at Marcus*

So, what comes next? Several ideas. My current projects include updating the Tales from Liserna covers to match the style of the Tales of Esper Ravenwood ones, more stories for the Lazarus Anthology, actual art for the cover of the book I just wrote because that’s a good idea, and a read-through of All’s Well in Asgard.

Actually, I might do something different with that last one. The “reality” parts of All’s Well in Asgard are really boring, and not really the story I want to be telling. The fantasy bits, on the other hand, are basically what I tried to do with another project, that has long since bit the big one, but in a way that actually works, and feels like a complete story, even though it’s only 26k or thereabouts. I may end up renaming the project to Charge, which was the title for the bit-dust project, and make it into a graphic novel/comic. It’s a story that would work quite well with the medium, and put a challenge on me that I might actually be able to complete this time.

As for non-book projects, I’m working on, of all things, developing a tabletop game with some friends of mine for the Three of Wands RPG Company. I’m currently the one spearheading the project, as it were, and thus far have the only testable prototype. I work smart. I’ll probably be running that into the ground for a while, which should sufficiently take my mind off of the Chronicles. Should be a good time!

So that’s where I’m at. Tomorrow, I will be a very confused hermit because I won’t be writing a book. Oh…wait. I’ve still got New World to plan. *evil hand wringing*

See you soon!
-E.J. Lowell

NaNo Update – Halfway There

Hello, friends!

I’ve never written a story this fast before. It’s terrifying. I just hit 30,000 words and am on Chapter 7 now. Those of you who’ve read my other books know that I tend to write long chapters. My average is 11 per book, with my longest so far(in terms of numbers of chapters) being WinterdreamOld World will end up being 12 chapters long, and possibly something like 60,000 words by the end of everything, which would make it my longest book yet, other than Revenant.

And I’m only on day nine. How am I doing this?

Whatever. Keep rolling, Ej! And the rest of you, too. We’ve got worlds to explore!

NaNo Week 1 Update

Hello, friends!

So far so good! I’m a week in and already almost to 25,000 words(which is a higher word count than my dad has right at the moment. Didn’t expect this at all). I probably won’t end up with that by the end of the day, but maybe tomorrow. I’ve got a distraction today that I really wish I didn’t, but do I wish that because it’s not worth it, or because it’s dragging me out of my house while I’d rather be home writing and drawing? Remains to be seen.

Old World is writing itself in a blaze of creative glory, much like Revenant did. It’s rather refreshing, actually. It’s all planned out and is following the path in a gently meandering way…right up until the wall smacked everyone in the face. I’ve just gotten past the first earth-shattering ka-boom and it was awesome. If draining.

I’m learning a lot about this world and the characters in it that I didn’t realize in planning. They keep writing in little bits about themselves, like Kisuke spontaneously becoming a lore-nerd, and Marcus swearing in Abyssal. Evaline is still a little bit of a mystery, but she’s one of those characters that I know is going to bloom majestically when she gets into serious trouble. Ivan Valenshine is a bit of a surprise, though. He’s much more involved and sarcastic than he was when I first “met” him, and he and Evaline get along weirdly well. Surprisingly, the hardest character to write so far is Queen Elenora. She was much more vivid in my mind, but perhaps that’s because the only chapters in which we get to see her so far are through Kisuke’s point of view.  I didn’t expect her to be the problem child, but, hey. There’s always one. Except for Winterdream. That entire team worked together like a well-oiled machine.

Here’s to the next week, and the next couple of chapters. Marcus is about to meet one of my favorite characters from the planning stage, and the world is about to be thrown into utter chaos. *evil cackling*

Catch you later. Keep going strong, fellow WriMos!
-E.J. Lowell