Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Writing Prompt 56

Commander Arral clapped Bast on the shoulder. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“You nervous, son?”

Bast looked back at his revival pod getting ready for him. “You’ll oversee the revival, right?”

“I wouldn’t let anyone else go near your pod.”

Bast nodded and smiled. “I’m ready.”

“Good boy,” Commander Arral said. “Now go die and save us all. Attaboy!”

Bast let out a cry and charged the advancing enemy.

“Are you actually planning to revive him, sir?” Captain Brega asked and followed Arral to the pod.

“Are you out of your mind, Captain?” Arral yanked all the cables out of the pod. “His pod malfunctioned.”

 

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Writing Prompt 55

“Oh, for the love of Holy Morhan, will you please stop thinking that there’s always something wrong?”
Jonas stuck his hands in his pockets, kicked a pebble, and lowered his head. “Something is wrong, though,” he muttered under his breath.
Pela rolled her eyes, sighed, and slapped her hands on her thighs. “You’re impossible. You know for once, just once, I’d like to hear something positive from you.”
They reached the edge of the forest at the top of the hill. Jonas stopped.
“Were your parents really cruel?” Pela asked and carried on walking on her own down the path. “Was it a hex one of the enchanters put on you, huh?”
“Pela?”
“Did you pee on one as an infant?” Pela continued without paying attention to her surroundings.
“Pela?” Jonas insisted, still frozen in place.
“Did you accidentally fall into one of their cauldrons perhaps?”
“Pela!”
“What?” She stopped and looked around her for Jonas. “What are you doing back there?”
Jonas jerked his chin at the hanging-upside-down citadel. “Is that wrong enough for you?”

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 3 Comments

Next steps, and plans

I hate making new years’ resolutions. In my mind, it’s ridiculous to think one can plan for something so far ahead, because life throws curved balls at us and changes everything. What we plan at the beginning of the year, is planned based on the info and difficulties we are aware of at that moment. The next moment, the Sun may implode and we end up rotating around a red dwarf. One hell of a sight to see, but it’s going to put a little dent on those plans. I believe I’ve said it before: when mortals make plans, gods laugh. Especially if those plans rely on the completion of a whole bunch of other things happening before the resolution comes to fruition. I’m talking about resolutions like, “I want to travel the world from east to west and north to south in a canoe before the end of this year.” A lot of things need to happen before one achieves that. Like learning what a canoe is, and how to navigate in the sea without electronic equipment. So I never, ever do them.

I don’t mind setting small goals, physically and mentally possible. Like, “this year I’m going to learn to count from one to ten in Cantonese.” It’s manageable and doable, even if life throws at me its worse.

All exaggerations aside, I’m more of a person who likes to set goals (see, I’m making a distinction here between goals and resolutions) over which I have control, things that I know for a fact I can make them happen in the immediate future (“this Saturday, I’m going over to Steve’s to reconcile with him after our last week’s argument”). So it’s more like a plan than anything else.

Well, this year, I broke my own rule. I set a goal for me, only it’s actually a resolution.

I will publish my first novel in 2018, I said. It shocked me a couple of weeks after I said it, but my mind insisted on it. 2018 will be the year the world will read my first novel.

A lot of things need to happen between now and 31 December 2018.

1. Have a completed manuscript ready (edited by me at least 20 times, read by betas, and re-edited after their suggestions 5 more times) –> CHECK
2. Have a basic knowledge of how one gets to publish a book –> CHECK
3. Have a list of potential readers who might be interested in reading said book –> CHECK (I have a newsletter, and some of the readers there show genuine interest in talking to me. That’s a start, right?)
4. Have a basic understanding of how a writer can promote their work –> CHECK (though I’m still learning)
5. Have an editor ready to edit the book –> X
6. Have a cover designer ready to craft a cover for it –> X

So now I’m at the point where I’m looking into editors. Line editors, to be exact. Apparently, not many of them go around. Or if there are, a great deal of them bundle copy editing and line editing into one (two different kinds of editing, but I’ll get back to that at a later post). Also, money is an issue. Editor needs to be affordable. Hmm, let me rephrase that: cheaper than what most writers would consider affordable. Take into account the different earnings between Greece and your countries. So, in other words, the editor has to be dirt cheap. Perhaps a line editor who is just starting up their self-employed editing career, and want to attract clients and referrers than anything else.

I’m sure there’s someone like that out there. I’ve already got my eye on a few. I’m waiting for them to reply to my queries and get quotes. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the mean time, TL;DR (too long; didn’t read): 2018 will be the year I will publish my first novel.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Writing Prompt 52

Everyone around me panicked and ran and trampled each other to get out, go someplace safe. Fools. What difference would it make?
I noticed a woman at the other end of the bar eyeing me, calm as a meditating monk. I threaded my way to her. “Not running for your life?” I asked.
“Nope,” she replied.
“How come?”
“You know how.”
Could she be…? My surprise must have shown, ’cause she hid a chuckle behind a sip from her drink.
“Still,” I said, “the end of the world and all. This is my fifth end of the world and I’m still enjoying it.”
“Oh, you’re a child. How sweet.” Another sip of her drink. “I got bored after the twentieth. That was millions of years ago. These primates are no longer entertaining. However, this end comes too early. Your doing?”

 

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

The journey goes on

2017 is ancient history! Well, maybe not ancient, but history nonetheless. Who would have thought, huh? It seems so long and far ahead to go from January to December, right?

When a new year starts, we usually groan about how far ahead the next Christmas period is, and we take things slowly when it comes to goals and things to do, because, hey, we’ve got a whole year ahead of us; pff! Plenty of time. But come December, we groan about how fast time went by, and darn it, another wasted year where we didn’t do any of the things we wanted to do. Does that sound familiar?

I never make any new year’s resolutions, mainly because I’ve come to accept that no matter how much I plan things out, life will always find a way to mess things up for me so much, that I might as well have been transported to a parallel universe, where nothing seems to work the way it should. There’s a saying here in Greece, which loosely translates to: when men make plans for the future, gods laugh.

Personally, I much prefer to look back and take note of all the important things that I managed to do. A lot of the times I do that for more than just the previous year. It gives me a better perspective. For me, 2017 was the year that I officially embarked on The Journey, as the title of this blog suggests. It took me four years to prepare things, but I did it in the end.

And now I’m getting ready for the next part of The Journey. There’s a vast ocean ahead of me, with few landmarks ahead to guide me, but something tells me I’ll make it to the next destination. I hope it takes me less time to get there, though I’m certain I will arrive at exactly the right time.