Year End Wrap Up

Goodness, where did the year go?

Figured I'd kick December off with a year-end wrap-up. 

November 23rd, one of our ducks laid their first egg and we're very proud of them. They're all grown up now and it's been quite an experience raising them from little ducklings to full-grown ducks. 

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I spent part of it working on The Agency. Thanks to a lovely writer whose Discord group I joined (shout-out to Liz Bloom!) who shared the website Neural Blender, I now have a cover that I am rather fond of. 

Regarding The Agency, the current word count is sitting somewhere around 83 thousand and I'll be sharing a couple more entries in January. I'm also going to begin working either finding a publisher or getting things together to self-publish.

Now, I didn't win NaNoWriMo and didn't spend the entire month writing. That is because I spent the latter half of the month working on creating a map and timeline of a fictional world because I got it into my head that I wanted to write an alternate history (which, being fair, some of the stories from The Agency could be seen as that) after November. That led to me realizing I don't actually have enough knowledge of history to be able to write an alternate version of it which led to me going, "Well, fine, I'll just write a fantasy setting involving technology on par with World War I and throw in magic because I can." 

Well, that led to me needing to know which countries are involved, where they are, what was invented when, what wars happened when, and other important events. Soon enough, I had so many index cards scattered around me and color-coded that it looked like I was studying for a history exam except I was the one making the history. 

That also meant that I made a map. At first, I did the "cheating from Earth" method listed in The Magical World Builder's Guide that I've shared before. Well, I wanted to see the full continent so that led to me taking pieces of the coastlines and mashing them together. It worked pretty well, in my opinion. Of course, then I started thinking about where the countries were in relation to each other. I still don't have one of the main countries listed on the map quite yet. I'm going to be doing a fair bit of work on the map still. Mostly making several versions of it to show the geographic features and things expected to be seen on maps, roads, railways, the extent of the empire, the country borders, and a variety of other features. 

I've just finished the timeline with a whopping 53 index cards. 

It still needs dates, but at least the important events are listed. I was having difficulty visualizing my timeline until I used the index cards that I had saved up from my college days. (I tend to hoard office supplies, a bit like a dragon hoarding gold.)

I've been working on this for half of November and will continue working on it until other ideas call to me. This wasn't even supposed to be as big a project as it was. I wanted to write a simple war story (though what war story is ever simple?) and that led to wanting to write an alternate history and that led to this whole project. I'm having a fair amount of fun with it and trying to blend magic and technology. I'd like to think I'm doing a good job. 

I'll be sharing more of this throughout December.