As I sat down to begin this post I realised I hadn’t reported on the progress I made on my Writing goals for November, and that’s pretty relevant to this blog, so let’s start there, shall we?

My goals were:

• At least 50,000 words toward a first draft of my novel ‘Richter’. (I’m calling it a paranormal mystery for lack of a better genre. At least until it’s been written )
• 30 poems, one a day, based on prompts from the November Poem-a-Day challenge. All with zombie themes in order to give me the last pieces I need to put together a zombie poetry chapbook
• Work with Danica on a poetry project. I’m not putting a specific poem goal here because the challenge in this will be learning to work together and have fun with it, not on the finished project.

Well, of those three goals I accomplished the first one LoL. In fact I finished the first draft of the story formerly called ‘Richter’ and currently sporting the title ‘Twixt’ (we’ll see how long that lasts LoL). I think it’s a pretty strong first draft, and I’ve got some fairly good revision notes for when that time comes. For right now, however, it’s resting while I reset my brain and re-charge mentally from finishing the draft.

Writing that draft in long hand and trying to keep the NaNoWriMo pace meant that I didn’t have time to do the Poem-a-day thing in November, and Dani and I both were’nt feeling our poetry project after the first day. I plan to use the PAD prompts soon to work on some zombie poems still, and Dani and I will be going back to our project in the new year.

So I reached 1/3 goals, but I’m oddly okay with that and optimistic for future completion of the other two goals.

Speaking of goals…

I bet you recognise this cover 🙂

Dragonlance novels, and specifically the Dragonlance Chronicles series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are what hooked me on fantasy novels. I love them. LOVE them. I still have every Dragonlance novel I’ve ever bought (including multiple copies of some because they were re-released with new covers) and I can’t imagine parting with them. I named my daughter (in part) after a character in The Cleric Quintet by R. A. Salvatore and I can sooner imagine parting with those books than my Dragonlance ones. When I was in grade nine I created a complete gaming/RP system based on Dragonlance stuff called ‘From the Stories of Children’. Are you feeling the love I have for them? Yeah.

When I created Aphanasia, and with each story I’ve written set in it, I’ve been strongly influenced by the feeling of the Dragonlance books. The incredible world with its diverse races, deep history and potential for amazing stories. I wanted to create that too. To have a world where I could hop from character to character, story to story and culture to culture.

Recently Red Haircrow reviewed Lost and Found and said, in part:

If I had to compare to other works of fantasy, it was be books in the Dragonlance series by Magaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and others. “Lost and Found” has excellent potential and I would certainly be interested in reading further installments.

Talk about making my day 🙂 If you want to read the full review it’s right here. There’s a tiny bit of a spoiler in there, but it relates to something in the middle of the story, not the end, if you’re the kind of person that makes a difference to.

I am one happy bunny today 🙂