Writing and Sleep (or the lack thereof...)

It has long since been my intention to continue blogging about my writing, as well as my efforts to get Days of Reckoning published. Long has it been since I’ve had the chance to provide any input to the blog, let alone do anything resembling writing. The reason for it is simple, yet not an excuse.

Upon returning from vacation in August, I found myself facing a few research related problems concerning the follow-up to Days of Reckoning. After a short trip to Chapters and the local library, I gathered two books to further in delve me into the samurai culture and how to adapt it to my fictional setting. Voila the two books I took to with veracity.






From both, I learned a great deal about Japanese culture, as well as certain pitfalls about this chosen slant to my epic fantasy. Names can get muddled around pretty quickly, and there was a litany of politics in the background. For the first, I’ve made painstaking efforts to address the proper and family names in a manner least confusing to the reader. Of course, when I look at George R.R. Martin’s epic ‘A Song of Ice and Fire,’ which uses a relatively Anglosaxon base for naming characters, even some of his books could get confusing.

The other issue I discovered was the immense and intense politics. This made me go back and pull the book from active agent seeking simply to re-work this aspect, which I know is lacking. An agent is surely to pick up the same thing. When I looked back, I was astounded to see several political arcs naturally formed through at least a half-dozen exchanges, each of which really should be addressed. Now the challenge is to get them in there without the word count ballooning.

The true reason for this hiatus is the birth of my second daughter. Cute as a button and the apple in her older sister’s eye, sleep deprivation makes thinking about writing fiction about as useless an exercise as trying to jump to the moon. For now, this all now frustratingly pauses all efforts for publication until I am comfortable in the final product, as well as spending the requisite family time. Oh yeah, and keeping my day job too.