Save the date

I've finally settled on a publication date! However, it is liable to change, depending on the evolution of the global situation. 

I'm soon going to do a cover release, so watch this space!

Mr. Summerhaye's Horse

Yes, Mr. Summerhaye's Horse will be the title of the novella about Summer, Dennys's horse in As Winter Came and Went. 

I have finished the first draft of this novella, which is at the moment 40,000 words (so it's a long novella, since a story is considered a novel when it's over 50,000 words). It still needs a lot of editing, but I'm hoping to self-publish it this year. 

If you are new to this blog, or have missed some previous posts and have not read As Winter Came and Went, Summer is a Barb (an ancient North African breed) horse who was imported from Morocco to England to become a racehorse. The novella will span the years 1815 to 1820, ending when we first meet Summer in As Winter Came and Went. 

I'm planning to illustrate the novella, so I'll have to work on several drawings. Pictured above is a preparatory sketch for one of the illustrations. 

This is a project I'm really excited about and I'll probably make more posts about it, my progress and the story and research that went into it! 

Writing goals

First of all, happy new year to all of you! How 2019 has flown... I hope it was a good year for you and that 2020 will be even better. 

One year ago, I made a post about my writing resolutions for 2019. I have just looked back at it, to see if I had actually kept them. 

My first resolution was about finishing the first draft of the sequel of As Winter Came and Went, before the summer. Though I did finish it, it was in the autumn. 

My second resolution was about my novel in progress called Cinnamon: I wanted to write at least half of the first draft. Though I still intend to complete Cinnamon one day, I am not working on it for now, because I have decided to focus on other manuscripts. 

My third resolution related to two non-fiction projects. One of them was the book of cartoons, which is done and published. The other has been abandoned for the moment. 

My fourth resolution was to engage more with the Internet writing community, but I’ve been rather lazy about that. 

My fifth resolution was to write short stories and publish them here. I have written one short story and am still wondering what I’m going to do with it. 

A good part of those resolutions were not kept. But that doesn’t matter. Sometimes, the most interesting, the most exciting projects are those that were not planned. I think that my best writing achievement for 2019 was my spur of the moment NaNoWriMo participation which allowed me to write, from scratch, the first draft of The Orchid Collector. In a handful of weeks, a vague idea I had in the backburner was turned into a completed (if not very good) first draft. 

Another unplanned project was the novella about Summerhaye, Dennys’s horse in As Winter Came and Went. I’m currently writing chapter 6 out of 7, so I’m hoping to self-publish it in 2020. 

This is my first writing resolution for 2020: to finish, illustrate and publish this novella. 

My second is to thoroughly edit The Orchid Collector and find an agent to represent it. 

The third is to finish editing the sequel of As Winter Came and Went and get it as close to publication as I can. 

The fourth is to learn about marketing and try to sell more copies of As Winter Came and Went. 

The fifth is to write short stories. 

The sixth is to unearth one of my unfinished manuscripts (maybe Cinnamon, maybe another) and actually complete it. 

The seventh is to read more fiction, and maybe to post reviews on this blog. 

And I’ll end this post like I did last year’s… 

The end of the year is like the end of a book. There is no way of knowing what will happen next. But you can write parts of the story, of the story that comes next, the one you want to read, the one you want to live.

After NaNoWriMo

That’s it, NaNoWriMo is over. My wordcount on the 30th of November was 71,434 words (I estimate that the completed first draft will be around 85,000 words) and I only have three chapters left to write. 

I am both elated and exhausted and eager to write the final words of The Orchid Collector. NaNoWriMo has allowed me to do in one month what took me YEARS for my debut novel. 

When I was writing the first draft of As Winter Came and Went, I only picked up my pen when inspiration struck. I could go for weeks, months even without writing a single word. I didn’t even know if I would actually finish it one day or just give up, like I gave up on so many projects. Well, I didn’t give up but there were about five years between writing the first words and publishing the book. 

And now, after thirty days, I am 15,000 words away from the end of my manuscript. And this is so exciting! Of course, this first draft is awful. Parts are incoherent. It will need months of editing. It may need a total rewrite. The style is sloppy in part. Most of the secondary characters are just cardboard. And to be honest, I am a bit fed up with it. But you know what? Once it is finished, making this first draft into a proper novel will be the fun part: I like editing, refining, working with words, trying to create the perfect sentence. 

And even if this manuscript isn’t very good, by taking part in NaNoWriMo, I have proved to myself that I could write every day. That I could take this writing thing seriously. That I could churn out chapter after chapter. And more importantly, I have learnt to not wait for inspiration: I produced about 2,000 words a day, even if I did not feel like it. Because that is what this challenge is about: pushing your limits, and getting the writing done. 

Could I do it the whole year round? No. But I will try to use the momentum this challenge gave me to finish The Orchid Collector and maybe another project. I will try to write the last chapters in the next couple of weeks, and then I will let the manuscript rest for a while. I have already made a list of details, scenes and characters I want to change, but I will wait, to look at it all from a distance. I also have more research to do, historical and otherwise, in order to flesh out the manuscript and make the story more realistic. So yes, lots of work ahead. 

But now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got three more chapters to write!

NaNoWriMo preparations

November is drawing nearer, nearer, and so is the beginning of NaNoWriMo. I’m more and more excited about it and about my new project, The Orchid Collector. I don’t know if I’ll have a finished manuscript by the end of November, but hopefully, I’ll be 50,000 words in and more than half-way through. 

I want to give myself every chance of achieving this, and that means actually preparing this crazy writing marathon. 

I do not usually do a lot of planning when it comes to my novel. I do a rough outline and time line that gives me an idea of where I’m going. Sometimes I do not actually follow this outline, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just a guideline. Like a rough map of my writing journey, that will not stop me from making detours. 

However, I decided to make a much more detailed outline for The Orchid Collector. I’ve divided the story in parts, and chapters, and wrote small paragraphs listing different scenes and plot points within those chapters (12 of them). This does not mean I will precisely follow this outline, but it will probably save me time, as I won’t have to invent scenes as I write them. Thanks to this outline, I know precisely which scene will end the novel, I’ve even made a summary of it. 

I’m using Microsoft OneNote to work on the outlining and planning of my project. I like the fact that the virtual notebooks can be synchronised on different devices. I think it’s an interesting tool to organise ideas. 

Because a novel is nothing without its characters, I’ve also worked on fleshing out the main ones. Rough physical and temperamental characteristics, but also bits and pieces of backstory. There will be two main characters. A third character will gain much importance in the second half of the story, but he does not appear before them. I’m also in the process of making a list of secondary characters with names, ages, motivations, fate in the novel, etc. 

I still have to do some research, especially on Cochinchina in the 18th century. Because setting and atmosphere will be important, I will have the pleasing task of going through photos taken on a trip to Vietnam a couple of years ago, to remember my impressions and the sense of place. 

On the whole, I’m really enjoying all this preparation, and I hope that the actual writing in November will be as pleasant and that I will reach my goal!

NaNoWriMo

I’ve decided that this year I would try to take part in NaNoWriMo. What is NaNoWriMo? This stands for National Novel Writing Month. It starts on the 1st of November and the goal is to write a 50,000 word long novel from scratch in one month. That means an average of 1,667 words per day. 

I’ve been wanting to do it for some time, because it sounds like an exciting challenge. So this year, I’m taking the plunge. 

To play by the rules, the novel you write for NaNoWriMo has to be one on which you have not started yet. You can research, plan and outline it beforehand, but you must not have started to write it before the 1st of November. So that means that, by the end of November, I could find myself with yet another unfinished first draft to add to my collection. 

I was tempted to do this challenge with one of my works in progress. However, I remembered a story idea I’d had some time ago and thought it would be a good opportunity to see what I could make out of it. 

What is this story? Well, it will be set in the 18th century, in the 1770s probably. Part of it will be in England, and another part in Cochinchina. Working title: The Orchid Collector. I still have a lot of research to make. I know who the main characters (two of them) will be, but I still have to work on secondary characters. And several historical points will have to be elucidated. I’m working on the outline now, chapter by chapter, in order to make the actual writing, when it starts, easier. 

I first had this story idea when I was visiting historical greenhouses in Paris and reading the historical facts about the explorers and botanists who travelled all over the world to bring back rare and precious plants. I thought it would be fun to write a piece of fiction about one of those explorers, about this quest for the beauty of the natural world. All the more so since I love orchids (but I’m very, very bad at cultivating them. I’ve got a few sad looking Phalaenopsis that have not flowered in years and struggle to survive). 

I’m quite excited about this challenge. Maybe I’ll even manage to complete this novel!

A new project

September, the start of the school year, of the university year. The ideal time to make new projects for the coming months. 

During the summer holidays, I made much progress on the first draft of the sequel of As Winter Came and Went. I have actually started to write what will be the last chapter. Once this is finished, it will be time for the first round of edits, the most important one: some scenes will have to be cut, others lengthened. Because the manuscript was written over a period of months (years? I’ll have to calculate), some aspects of the stories evolved and parts of the first chapter will have to be changed accordingly. 

My goal is to finish this first draft by December 2019, and edit, proofread and make ready for publication over 2020. However, it is not my only project. There’s Cinnamon, as you already know, but I haven’t made any progress on it during the summer. For now it’s at a standby. I’ll finish it, eventually, but for now I’m concentrating on other projects. 

One is completely new. Well, it stems from an idea I had some time ago. One of the characters from As Winter Came and Went is Summer, a Barb horse imported from Morocco. I love this character. I love writing about him. And readers seem to love him too. So I decided he deserved to be the hero of his own story, a story spanning from his birth, around 1815, to his first appearance in As Winter Came and Went. A prequel of sorts. 

It will not be very long, only a novella. I’ve made an outline, and it will have six, probably relatively short, chapters. It will be possible to read it independently from As Winter Came and Went, but it will give readers of my novel the opportunity to learn more about Summer. I also intend to lavishly illustrate this novella (which will be self-published as well). 

I’m really excited about this project and am, at the moment I’m writing this, a bit over 1000 words into the first chapter. It’s not a lot, but it’s a beginning. Who knows, maybe it will be published sooner than I expect!

What's up?

I’m afraid I’ve very much neglected this blog and that it suffered a similar fate to many blogs held by would-be bloggers… Started with enthusiasm… Posts twice a week… Dwindling to one image a week… Then a repost of an old image a week… Then nothing. The problem is that at first, I had a schedule and I stuck to it. But the moment I decided that after all, it would be ok to not post something, just for this week, next week will go back to normal… Well… The rhythm’s broken and... you know the rest. 

Anyway, today’s a good time as any to create a new post and let you know how I’m doing with my writing (because I’m hoping that you are reading this because you have read my novel and loved it and wish to know when the sequel will be released). The writing’s going well. I probably should write more than I’m doing at the moment (good excuses and sheer laziness being so many obstacles) but I’m making slow progress on the sequel of As Winter Came and Went. 

I’ve also made some progress on Cinnamon which is my second main fiction writing project (still not sure though if it will end up being a novella or a novel). I’m also considering taking up an abandoned project, the half-written first draft of a short novel set in 19th century Dartmoor. It would probably need lots of reworking. Maybe a total rewrite. But I’ve been thinking about this project lately and I think that the main characters have some potential. I’d abandoned it because the storyline was becoming rather (very) silly. But perhaps, reworking it, and shortening it to a novella format, might make it more palatable. 

My main project remains the sequel. I’m reaching the last chapters of the first draft and I’m hoping to finish that by the end of 2019. I would like to say, by the end of Summer 2019, but that’s probably too ambitious. 

If all goes to plan (but we all know it never does, right), the sequel could be available in 2020. That gives you time to read As Winter Came and Went if you have not already. It got a few nice reviews on amazon (amazon.fr and amazon.co.uk) so, if you have nothing to do this summer, and enjoy literary fiction in a historical setting, you could always give it a try! 

https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Came-Went-May-Bermont-ebook/dp/B07K618J3M/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=as+winter+came+and+went+may+bermont&qid=1563440828&s=gateway&sr=8-1