Critique: Beginning of an idea.

Daz- melting computer still working (just, it's my only link to the net)

KatG - Least I am not going to drop the whole thing on you just after your holiday.

First scene in chapter 23 is written, roughly 1500 words. Two more scenes, same character POV to be written out.

I have finally managed to sort out the "hand over" from this chapter and character to the next, and the next chapter/character to the last. I was worrying that I would have too much over lap, but it seems I am going to have very little.

I hope to complete chapter 23 this week, but it is a busy one in real life as well as checking over the first three chapters of Hat Man before sending them to the agent that has requested them.... (fingers crossed they request more, but then Hat Man is written with a very British tongue in cheek humour, it might not jell, though the submission's editor at Hodder headline liked it enough to give personal comments on the rejection. lol)
 
Finally working on this again. Total computer melt down. (managed to save most of the contents of my hard drive, I had been burning discs like no tomorrow.)

Have lost my list of favourites, all my emails, and my contact email addresses (though the other half is looking into rescuing them off the drive)

Now having to deal with a machine running Vista!! (already hating it lol.)

To be honest so much has happened in real life the last couple of weeks I have lost touch with the story, so I am re-reading it, as the new machine spell checks the beast. (even that was failing on the old machine throwing up errors and saying it could not check sections of the work) I am just glad most of my writing is safe.

As to Hand of Glory. Final section of chapter 23 to do and the interlocking chapters 24, 25. Timing is my main problem. I need each chapter to match, as each is from a different POV, each taking the story through various nexus points, linking to the others, and coming finally to one show down.

Hopefully by tomorrow I will be dragging it forward towards the end.
 
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Let me know when your email is back up and running, Holbrook.
 
KatG said:
Let me know when your email is back up and running, Holbrook.
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Just got it going again, linking the new windows mail to it, sadly it can't import my contact addresses like outlook express did when I changed machines before.
 
Congrats on getting a new comp. Luck on retrieving all your contacts.

Hope you can work out the timing on the 'Hand'.
 
Dazzlinkat said:
Congrats on getting a new comp. Luck on retrieving all your contacts.

Hope you can work out the timing on the 'Hand'.
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Thank s Daz. I am getting there. nearly 92,000 words Chapter 23 is 99% done, not sure whether to add a bit more so I have left it for now, it is first draft so a lot could be added. Chapter 24 is nearly a 1000 words. I suspect it will be a 4000 word chapter. It is just fitting all the action together over these three chapters and actually writing a "modern" chase scene, which I have never done before.

I have a 1920's Rover coupe, two old austin police cars, and various characters on foot. The chase/action goes through an old abandoned rural sawmill, into a uneven, rutted field and ending up in a "Moss" (There is one two miles from me a protected nature area) which is a type of floating bog. The peat of which is a layer on a very deep lake. The thickness varys from a few inches to a few feet, so people, vehicles even planes (one crashed in the moss a couple of years ago) have gone through, sucked down. All this takes place around dawn on a cold frosty November morning in 1922!!! I can see the action in my mind, it is just getting it down on the machine lol....

The one good thing is for the first time I am writing about places I know well. I can pop down the road and look at them, see my characters in them (even the old sawmill) Though they are not in the positions I have them in the story lol....

Anyway, I am going to spend most of the morning on this. Or at least trying...
 
Sounds like fun looking at the scenery of your scenes. Sucked into the Moss ... now that sounds spooky.
 
Woot!!!! Just reached 94,000 plus words. Starting last chapter when I have made a cup of tea.

I have spent most of the morning finishing off the draft of chapter 24. I have the whole afternoon to work on the last chapter.

Once this is done then the editing can begin, I know there are a lot of rough spots and the continuity wobbles in places , but nothing that can't be fixed. I just want the bare bones of this story down from start to finish, hopefully it will be today!!!!

Edit;
14.57 BST. Breaking for lunch. Final scene in the moss to finish and the very last scene. Aprrox 2,000 words I would say not much more.

(all excited like a big kid)
 
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Dazzlinkat said:
Yayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!
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Thanks, Dazz. It has been interesting bouncing ideas round on this thread. Helped me a lot. Though I have found it has taken me longer to write this than both Oracle and The Hat Man. I think that was partly due to a lot going on at home/work and the fact for the last four months I have been struggling with a worn out machine!


Anyway, today is another day and I need to think on editing it. I also want to tidy up my first novel, Llafn Meistr. I tore it a part, cutting whole scenes about 6 months ago ready for editing and have done nothing since.

I suppose I should be thinking of the next project as well.
 
Can't wait to read the entire book, champing at the bits really, but my printer is down and I've had to order parts. Soon as I can I'm printing this out.
 
BrianC said:
Can't wait to read the entire book, champing at the bits really, but my printer is down and I've had to order parts. Soon as I can I'm printing this out.
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Hope you like, I am still worrying over the ending. I feel the last three chapters need expanding, especially chapter 23. I moved the villian on pretty fast in that one, leaving out two half drafted scenes because that would have have made it way too long for one chapter. I would have to have had two (I am aiming to keep each chapter to roughly the same length) I feel, and two chapters from the villian's POV at that point felt like overkill
 
Finished the edit. I am very pleased with it. Awaiting the feedback from my beta readers now.

I have the full four page outline/synopsis to finish, then I need to condense it down to a one page. I already have a good hook for my query letter (This was one I submitted to "the hook feast" the agent Rachel Vater ran on her blog, and it came out with some good comments.)

I want to put a small section from a poem at the beginning of the novel. Now I was going to use part of a poem written by the writer Hal Duncan. I even have his permission to do so. But as this poem is about one of the main characters in his superb works Vellum and Ink, I am reluctant to do so. Hand of Glory is nothing like Vellum or Ink, nor am I as talented as Hal Duncan. (Each time I meet him I am stunned by the intellect and charm of the man) So I am toying with putting in a small section from a poem by Edmund Blunden called Third Ypres, perhaps using a poet of the time is better.

Now dulls the day and chills; comes there no word
From those who swept through our new lines to flood
The lines beyond? but little comes, and so
Sure as the runner time himself's accosted
And the slow moments shake their heavy heads,
And croak, "They're done, they'll none of them get through
They're done, they've all died on the entanglements.
The wire stood up like an unleashed hedge and thorned
With giant spikes - and there they've paid the bill."
 
Midway through Chapter 19, it dawned on me that I must travel through time to say about 2025C.E. to Oxford Uni where the topic for discussion for today is the naming of characters in Holbrook's work. First, they analyze with Freud's methodology, then with Jung's, then with Disney's, and finally with the Old Guy in the Desert's. Realizing the names in the Hat Man bear a strong resemblance to the names in the HOG, the clear and certain conclusion is that both works were written by a woman of circumstance and talent abiding somewhere in the Shire in a world not as clearly understood as one would like. The OGitD comes away unhappy that the guy in the Hat Man could conceivably have the flaws of the guy in the HOG causing him to remark: "Jes' ain't right, ya know?"
 
Holbrook said:
(...) So I am toying with putting in a small section from a poem by Edmund Blunden called Third Ypres, perhaps using a poet of the time is better.

Now dulls the day and chills; (...)
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When was it published? I'll check to see if there's a copyright issue.

Nevermind. Third Ypres apparently written in November 1917, published in Undertones of War in 1928. Copyright for literary works under UK law, however, expires 70 years after the death of the author. Mr. Blunden was a long-lived man, shuffling off the mortal coil only in 1974. His estate, therefore, holds the copyright to Third Ypres until 2044. You'll have to get the permission of his estate, or whomever currently holds the copyright, to use the poem. Check this website: http://roundyourway.com/e/edmundblunden/index.php?pageid=92 for a possible contact for Mr. Blunden's estate.
 
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BrianC said:
When was it published? I'll check to see if there's a copyright issue.
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I am not sure I suspect 1930, though it has been reprinted in The Pengiun book of First World War poetry the last edition of that is dated 1996

I am also using a few chunks of The Nurse's Story by Richard Harris Barham 1788-1845) As Hardy reads a section of it....

I am not that worried as if I do get this work taken up it will be something for my agent/publkisher to deal with ;)
 
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