Finished National Novel Writing Month!

Hello from Morocco! I'm down here for one of my regular writing retreats and making a rare appearance online. I mostly ignore the existence of the Internet when I'm here. Anyway, I just wanted to announce that I made it through another National Novel Writing Month, a movement of mass craziness every November when people around the world write 50,000 words in 30 days.

Actually it's not as hard as it sounds. Like any other skill, writing becomes easier with practice. The more you write, the more you can write. It helps that in Morocco I don't have any distractions to lower my word count!

Mostly I've been working on the fourth of my Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic novels, Emergency Transmission, which sees the reappearance of the mysterious freighter`and the reappearance of a certain crazed cult that wasn't fully done away with in the first book. I also did some ghostwriting. I've been getting a lot of that sort of work lately.

I'll be in Morocco for another couple of weeks. I'll post some pictures when I can!

Doing National Novel Writing Month Again This Year!

It's that time of year again, when writers all around the world brew an extra post of coffee and pound their keyboards until their fingers bleed. That's right, it's National Novel Writing Month, when we go for the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month.

This year is a bit different for me because I'm in the middle of a bunch of things, so instead of writing a whole novel in a month, I'm finishing one ghostwriting novel, starting another, and continuing work on Emergency Transmission, the fourth in my Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic novels. I guess that means I'm doing National Partially Write Three Novels Month. Whatever, as long as I make 50,000 words!

If you're doing NaNo and want to hook up online, you find me at my participant page.

Editing 150,000 words in a week

. . .and not getting much else done!

This week has been an editing week. Not only did I do a penultimate copyedit for The River of Desperation, the sequel to A Fine Likeness, but I also had to check the page proofs for the second edition of Outlaw Tales of Missouri.

Those two books totaled 150,000 words so needless to say, I didn't get much new writing done this week. It happens.

This morning I cheered myself up by writing 1,100 words of Refugees from the Righteous Horde, the next Toxic World book after Radio Hope. It's good to get back into that book and I hope to do plenty more before heading to Tangier on Friday for a long weekend away from everything.

Oh, and I've added a sidebar to this blog so you can keep track of my various projects. The word counter I had during National Novel Writing Month really motivated me, so I figured I'd make a habit out of it.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Radio Hope is done!

Done! My post-apocalyptic novel Radio Hope came out to 71,161 words, 315 pages, and took 28 days!

Tomorrow: editing!

If you want to check out the first 51,000 words, Radio Hope is a free ebook on Smashwords. Anyone who sends me feedback will get a free copy of the ebook once it comes out in February.

Whew! Now that that's over I can get back to more blogging.

I met the National Novel Writing Challenge, so have a book on me!

My post-apocalyptic novel Radio Hope made it past the 50,000 word mark yesterday, meaning I beat the National Novel Writing Month challenge in 20 days. As I write this the word count stands at just over 51,000. I think I have about 10,000 more words to go, certainly no more than 15,000. Barring a real apocalypse, I'll be done at the end of the month.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've posted this work-in-progress as a free ebook on Smashwords, available in all formats. I've now updated it, uploading an edited version with several more chapters added. The reason I’m posting this for free is so that you, the reader, can have input in the creation of this novel. What do you like about it? What do you think needs work? What characters would you like to hear more about in later Toxic World books?

Alerting me to any typos would be much appreciated too. :-)

Drop me a line at seansontheweb (at) yahoo (dot) com with your feedback and I’ll make sure you get a free electronic copy of the final book when it’s released on February 1. And keep an eye on this blog for regular updates!

Please repost and share!


Oh, and here's the blurb-in-progress:

An aging citizen of civilization's last community finds leadership thrust upon him. . .
A female gunslinger yearns to find a place to raise her son away from the chaos of the wildlands. . .
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to a village mired in toxic waste. . .
And with the Righteous Horde descending on New City to convert and conquer, all three will have to rely on each other to survive.




Graphic courtesy flickr user Sarah G.

Help me destroy the world, one page at a time!

I'm now 39,000 words into my National Novel writing Month challenge. My dystopian novel Radio Hope is going well. It's sort of Firefly mixed with Mad Max with a bit of pirate radio thrown in.

I've posted this work-in-progress as a free ebook on Smashwords, available in all formats. The reason I’m posting this for free is so that you, the reader, can have input in the creation of this novel. What do you like about it? What do you think needs work? What characters would you like to hear more about in later Toxic World books?

Alerting me to any typos would be much appreciated too. :-)

Drop me a line at seansontheweb (at) yahoo (dot) com with your feedback and I’ll make sure you get a free electronic copy of the final book when it’s released on February 1. And keep an eye on this blog for regular updates!

Please repost and share!

This photo of the Namibian ghost town Kolmanskop is courtesy Harald Süpfle via Wikimedia Commons. To learn more about this eerie ghost town and to see more photos, check out an article I did on Kolmanskop.

Read a free excerpt of Radio Hope online!

As you know, I'm busy with National Novel Writing Month. The current word count for my dystopian novel Radio Hope stands at 24,137. I've posted the first three chapters on my NaNoWriMo homepage and I'd love to get your feedback. Hit the link to read it!


Image courtesy New York Zoological Society.

Military History Photo Friday: Crystal Radio in the Trenches

I'm hard at work on my National Novel Writing Project--Radio Hope, a post-apocalyptic tale. I'm proud to say that I've passed the 20,000 word mark in just a week. December will be National Typo Correcting Month!

My story revolves around the residents of New City, the only large settlement in a toxic wasteland filled with bandits, scavengers, insane chemical sniffers, and bloodthirsty cultists. One of the few sources of information is Radio Hope, a mysterious station broadcasting programs about medicine, agriculture, food gathering, and other survival tips.

No one knows where this station transmits from or who's behind it. Since you need electricity to operate a radio, only a lucky few can receive its transmissions, until a mysterious trader emerges from the wildlands with a supply of crystal radios.

Crystal radios were the first popular radios. They rely on a crystal detector to pick up radio signals. The crystal uses the energy from the radio waves themselves to power the radio, so no electricity supply is necessary. In the 1920s store-bought radios were expensive and many rural homes still lacked electricity. It was cheap and simple to build a crystal set, though, and soon most homes had one, leading to the boom in radio.

In this image you can see a French soldier in the trenches during World War One listening to a handmade set. I wonder what he was listening to? An opera from back in Paris?

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

A weekend of writing and art in Madrid

Last weekend was a long weekend here in Spain, so we left Santander and headed down to our old stomping grounds of Madrid to see family and soak up some culture.

One big event was hooking up with my old writer's group. They'd organized a write-a-thon for the first day of National Novel Writing Month. We took over the back room of one of my favorite cafes and wrote like mad! It was very cool to sit with a room full of people all writing novels.

My wife and I also got to see some art exhibitions, something that's sadly lacking in Santander. Many of the best shows are at private galleries owned by banks. The Fundación Mapfre has two exhibitions on currently. One is called MACCHIAIOLI: Impressionistic Realism in Italy. This was a mid-nineteenth century movement that broke away from the strictures of Classical painting and paved the way for Impressionism. Here's a bunch of them enjoying themselves in true Italian style.

They were against the snobbery of the establishment and to prove their point often painted their work on the backs of cigar boxes and other found objects, like this nice landscape.

All I want for NaNo is to pick up the pace!

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, and I'm hard at work on my post-apocalyptic novel Radio Hope.

It's also the day for the All I Want for NaNo bloghop! I and a bunch of other Nano crazies are sharing our NaNo dreams and doing a big shout out for The Spirit of Christmas Anthology. This anthology brings together a bumper crop of writers and NaNo veterans who have shared their Christmas stories for the benefit of the NaNo fund. It's a great organization that's helping out thousands of writers achieve their dreams.

So what's my NaNo dream? Why would a professional writer with more than a dozen books under his belt be doing something like this?

Because I need to pick up the pace. The financial crisis is finally beginning to bite my business. Nonfiction freelance gigs are harder to get than ever, while sales numbers of my fiction are beginning to creep upwards. So I'm going to be focusing much more on fiction from now on. My next Civil War horror novel is with beta readers, I have a post-apocalyptic book planned for NaNo, and more projects after November!

One thing I want NaNo to do is kick me in the pants and up my productivity. There's nothing wrong with being a prolific fiction writer, in fact most of the successful authors are, and I want to be one of them, so NaNo here I come!

UPDATE: I managed 5,314 words on Radio Hope today. I'm totally burnt out but I managed to do a quick copy edit. It looks good but damn there were a lot of typos!

Photo Friday: Union troops participate in National Novel Writing Month!

Well, it's here. I and thousands of other writers around the world are hunched over our computers or notebooks writing the first chapters of our books. We need to get through 50,000 words to be a National Novel Writing Month winner. I'm planning on winning.

The Library of Congress says these are men from the Army of the Potomac writing letters to friends and family. Actually this is the only known image of the first National Novel Writing Month, which took place in 1861. The war stopped for the entire month of November while men on both sides sharpened their pencils and wrote novels for the folks back home. You can see them all hard at work here, except for the fellow in front who is sewing his shirt. He had been writing so hard the sleeve wore out!

. . .or not. :-)

All I'm going to do today is focus on my novel and write, write, write! I wrote this blog post on Wednesday just to clear the decks. :-)

Helping out with National Novel Writing Month

I've started a thread on the National Novel Writing Month website for writing a Civil War novel during NaNoWriMo.

If you're writing about the American Civil War, I'll be happy to answer your questions if I can. I've written two books about the Civil War for Osprey Publishing and numerous magazine articles for magazines such as Missouri Life and America's Civil War. I also have a novel set in Civil War Missouri titled A Fine Likeness.

My research focus is on the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Theater and guerrilla warfare. I'll try to answer any questions posed to me, however. I've already had a couple of good ones. Please don't ask questions that can easily be researched online, though. I'm going to be a wee bit busy this month!


Image of bombardment of Fort Sumter courtesy Wikimedia Commons.