J.T. Evans - Author's Web Site

It's been a while since I've given anyone an update on the status of WARMAIDEN. The book is coming along nicely. At the end of NaNoWriMo in November, I was up to 60,000 words. Since that time I've crept up to 80,000 words, and I hope to be done around the 110,000 word mark. That's probably at least two months away.

Once I'm all done with the writing, then comes time to go back through the book with a fine-toothed comb -- and my critiques from the Colorado Springs Fiction Writer's Group -- and fix any glaring mistakes or problems with the manuscript. In a way, I'm looking forward to the edits. The main reason I'm looking forward to that part of the process is that it means that I've written a book. Finally.

I'm not naive enough to think that just because the book is written that it's done and finished. Even once I'm done with the first round of edits, I'm not done with the book. I still have to land an agent, go through their editorial process (if any), get the book in front of a publisher, and go through their many rounds of edits, and finally get it printed and on a shelf. Until I see it sitting on a shelf on my local bookstore, I'm not considering the project completed.

Yeah... I've got a long ways to go.

NaNoWriMo 2009 rolled to a close last night, and I was writing right up until midnight in an attempt to squeeze out a few more words. I did get a few thousand more of them put into WARMAIDEN, but the NaNoWriMo site cut me off. I went there at two minutes to midnight (there's my shout out to Iron Maiden fans), but the site had already locked down and claimed that NaNoWriMo 2009 had ended. I couldn't put in my final tally of 44,435 words for the month.

If you recall, I had set an original goal of 10,000 words for the month of November. I hit that on the third day of the month and was ecstatic with my accomplishment. I knew I couldn't keep up the pace of 3,333 words per day, so I set a new goal of 25,000 words. I managed to hit that on November 17th, but I didn't stop just because I had reached my word count. I have a book to finish!

By the time the end of the month rolled around, I had reached my end total of 44,435 and I'm extremely happy with my accomplishment. I know. I know. I didn't reach the magical 50,000th word for the month, so I can't claim to be an official winner of the challenge. In my eyes, I've accomplished a great deal.

I'm up to 60,435 words in my novel, which puts me at around 60% complete with the first draft. I know that once I pump out the remaining 40,000-ish words in the book, that the real work of editing will begin. I've already put chapters 4-6 in front my critique groups, but I'll have to wait and see what they say come the end of December. I'm hoping to have the entire book in front of them by February, so I can receive the feedback at the end of March. This will allow me the first part of April to revise as quickly as I can in time to present WARMAIDEN to agents at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference.

Wish me luck! It's a tight schedule.

Last night, thanks to the PPW's Chris Mandeville and her great organizational skills, I was able to throw a few more words out at the screen. My grand total for the month thus far is 25,726 words. That means I hit my personal goal of 25,000 words. Will I make the 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo this month? It's doubtful, but I think I'll get really close. I'm very happy with the prose that I've generated so far this month, and I think it will stand the test of time and my critique groups in the CSFWG.

This puts me at a total of 41,726 words for my book, and I'm envisioning it to be around 90,000 to 110,00 words when I'm done. It's a bit long for a first novel, so I may have to cull out some of my more wordy passages, but we'll see how things go. I'm almost half way done with the book! Yay!

I'm eleven days into NaNoWriMo, and I've managed to crank out 20,000 words. That puts me at a grand total of 36,000 for the book. Having reached this milestone is a great one for me. I'm one-third the way through my word count, and an equal distance through my plotline and page counts. I managed to reach page 101 with the 36,000th word, and I was expecting to write about 300 pages on the book. This makes me very happy as it feels like everything is falling right into place according to my plan.

I can't wait to get the manuscript (in 50 pages increments) in front of my CSFWG critique groups to see what they think of the first draft that I have done so far. I'm sure they'll come up with all sorts of great ideas and improvements. They always do.

I set my personal goal for NaNoWriMo this year at 10,000 words. Thanks to the Pikes Peak Writers and Chris Mandeville for setting up the NaNoTRYMo this year. I spent 3 hours writing at the PPW Write-in and cranked out over 6,000 words in that 3 hours. It's amazing what you can do when surrounded by creative energy, general silence and the desire to put words down. Combine those 6,000 words with the 3,000-some-odd I already had down, and my new total is 10,039!

I crushed my goal already and it's only three days into November!

Now that I've already accomplished my goal in just 3 days, I'm setting a new goal: 25,000 words by the end of the month. I think I can reach that one as well. Who knows? Maybe in 3-4 days I'll be posting that I crushed that goal as well. If so, I'll set a new goal and keep going until the month is out.

Oh. Since I pumped 10,000 words into OpenOffice what is the quality of writing, you might ask? It's great, I think. It's very high quality, first draft work. Yes, that means that I'll need to go back, polish, edit, clean up and improve upon the work. I don't know of a single person that gets it all right on the first go around. I'm certainly not one of them. It usually takes me four drafts of a short story before I feel confident in submitting it for publication. I hope I don't have to do four drafts of my novel before submitting it, but if I have to go down that road, so be it.

Wish me luck on hitting my new goal!

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year, and I hope to do better this year than I did last year. Last year, I cranked out a little over 9,000 words. I'm setting my personal goal at 10,000 words for this year. I'm two days in and have a little under 4,000 words in the bank. If you're looking for me on the site, find 'jtevans' and befriend me.

The project that I'm working on this month is my fantasy novel by the title of WARMAIDEN. We'll see how it goes with me cranking on the keyboard. I may beat my personal goal, and get closer to the 50,000 words than I think I might!

It's with great pleasure that I'm announcing my first publication. So you don't have to wait, here is the link: WHISPERING THROUGH THE VEIL on Static Movement.

I'm so very happy right now. I finally get to see my name up in "bright lights" and I can't wait to see what happens next with my writing career. Things are looking up, and it's going to be a very exciting ride.

Many thanks to all of the fine members of the Colorado Springs Fiction Writer's Group that have helped push my skills into the state where the publisher of Static Movement thought my story was good enough to grace their pages.

I just received an acceptance email for publication of WHISPERING THROUGH THE VEIL from Static Movement. This is the first for me. I feel fortunate that it only took four rejection letters to get my first acceptance.

Static Movement (located at http://www.staticmovement.com/) is a web-based e-zine which publishes work from a variety of genres, including my specialty of Fantasy.

I can't wait to see my name "in print" in the July issue of Static Movement.

When the story gets posted, I'll make sure and link to it for the world to see!

Here are some pics of my office. This is where I live and breathe when I'm working on my writing. Yes, I do escape from time-to-time to a local coffee shop to get out of the house, but I feel guilty buying a $2 coffee and sitting there for hours. I tend to order two drinks while I'm at the coffee shop just to try and keep them in business. They're a small hole-in-the-wall kind of place, and I hope they stay around. It's a much better environment for writing than the more popular spots in town.

The first picture is how my office looks from the door. You can see my two laptops, my third monitor, my printers and some of the cruft lying about my desk. The papers on the wall above the left-most laptop are my various degrees, certifications and certificates for my current career: computer scientist. That handsome boy on the left-most screen is my son when he was 12 months old.

The second picture is what I see on my left as I sit at my desk. Typical whiteboard and corkboard with too much stuff on the corkboard and not enough on the whiteboard.

The third picture is the top portions of two of my bookshelves. These are laden with fantasy novels and role playing books.

The fourth and final picture is the top two-thirds of my other two shelves. You can see a variety of games at the top, lots of technical books on the right, and a whole slew of writing books on the left. The left-hand side holds part of my science fiction collection mixed in with some fantasy. The hockey stick you see next to the light switch is my game-used stick signed by Peter Forsberg of Colorado Avalanche fame. It's one of my prized possessions and the only non-book item I have with a signature on it.

There you go. My life in a nutshell.

I've added a new section to my site (see the menu bar across the top) entitled Freebies. It's where I'll drop some flash fiction, notes about stories/novels, character ideas and the like. It's for things that will never be published directly, but may still be of interest to the public.