Once Upon a Time… | Aspect of the Hare

…Pike wrote a book.

I’ve mentioned it here offhandedly, and annoyed the heck out of my Twitter followers no doubt, but after four solid weeks of writing I have finished National Novel Writing Month. Not bad for someone who wasn’t planning on participating until basically the day before it started, and who was working from little more than a skeleton plot.

The novel itself isn’t finished– I’m not at the end yet, and once I’ve got it all edited up it’s gonna be longer than 50k words (I’m sorta aiming for 75k give or take, as a personal goal), but I just have to say that participating in this all of November, even to the point of hardly touching WoW and pretty much putting raiding on hiatus, and sorely neglecting the blog as a consequence… has been a truly amazing experience. On this blog, I write stories about a world that I love, but with this book I was able to write a story about a world that I love that I created. I like to say that I’m more of a storycrafter than a theorycrafter, and this little adventure nailed that home for me.

Anyways, I’m still trying to figure out where to go from here. As I said, the book isn’t finished, and finishing it as soon as I can and moving into editing is a major goal, although I already feel lost without the little word count chart. I would like to get back into WoW again but I’ll be frank, playing WoW right now– particularly because it’s basically just the same raid over and over at this point– really doesn’t feel quite nearly as heroic as guiding my novel’s characters through a quest to save their city. >.>

Some of you have expressed interest in reading my book, which is extremely flattering and is something I’d like to have happen at some point.* Currently I plan on finishing and editing the thing, then letting some friends and family read it and offer their suggestions, then I’ll go through and polish it up and maybe self-publish or something. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Primarily this is my official “zomg I wrote a book” exhilaration post, which will be followed by ordering a celebratory pizza and listening to Men Without Hats on repeat. (Wait, I do that last part all the time anyway. Crap.)

Thanks for putting up with it being so quiet around these parts lately. <3 -- * You know you want to read it; it has airships and giant robots and dragons in it.

22 thoughts on “Once Upon a Time…”

Huge grats Pike!

Put me on the waiting list to buy a copy from your first print run.

Once again, grats Pike! And I totally know where you are coming from, I decided I will participate in NaNo on October 30th >.>

I will totally be interested in reading your book. Dragons?! Gimme!

Giant robots and dragons? Sign me up! ^.^

Robots. Why am I not surprised, lol.
Grats though!

Congratulations! I am in awe, though not surprised that you did it. Go go Pike!

….But does it have cybernetically enhanced dragons fighting airships with giant lazer-edged swords?

@ Donovitch – No, but it does have bio-engineered (of sorts) dragon mutants fighting airships

Wow WELL DONE YOU! 🙂
I just wouldn’t know where to start, I’m jealous!

Oh I SO want to read it! Airships and giant robots AND dragons?? I’m there! I’d love to grab a copy off the first print run. (First? Of course, there’ll be many!!) xD

Airships and giant robots and dragons? Sounds like steampunk fantasy to me!

@ Pike- Sounds yummy 😀

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@ Zhire – that sounds remarkably accurate! Except it’s about 95% steampunk and 5% fantasy.

Grats! Add me to the list, I’d like to read it too.

I would have loved to participate in NaNoWriMo too, but I didn’t even know about it til after it started. And also all the info on the world I was creating was on my old PC when it died. 🙁

Maybe next time.

Are any of these dragons femme-gnomes normally? >_>;

Congratulations on your achievement! -gives 50 achievement points-

I understand your fascination with writing completely, it’s a wonderful creative output. I’ve tried to write a book before, but I’ve found that I’m more of a shortstory writer.

Anyway, I hope we’ll get to read you book, preferably for free? -hopeful tone-

WoW or Book? The answer is easy, but can only be answered by you. Five years from now, which will you look back on more favorably. Stopping the momentum you had writing a book in order to play in a virtual world that won’t exist in 2 years. Or stopping your time in a virtual world in order to finish writing your own piece of crafted work? Answer is pretty obvious.

There are several self-publishing companies that will print your book on a per order basis. That way you can list it on Amazon.com, thereby creating a ordering source for anyone interested. You can also file a copy with the Library of Congress to have it immortalized forever. Unfortunately, it may get filed in a box in a warehouse right next to the Ark of the Covenant. But still, immortalized.