So, let’s first call writer’s block what it really is. The term writer’s block suggests some mental affliction that prevents you from putting words on the page. I find it curious that people who claim to be suffering writer’s block are able to put words to social media rather easily, or speak to another living human being who happens to share their meatspace, but they can’t compose. While I have heard of people becoming mentally fatigued and wanting to be alone, that’s usually something that happens after some sort of emotional distress, or when tired, or after an introvert has been subjected to a large social gathering (that last one describes my experience at cons, which might be a reason I don’t attend many of them). No, writer’s block is something else entirely: creative laziness and self doubt.

Creative laziness happens when you sit down, intent on creating something, and the words just don’t come. Some people write slowly because they just don’t feel inspired, or they’re tired, or they just don’t feel brilliant enough to write today. Every writer has days like that because that’s part of the human condition, and then that leads to procrastination. If you allow yourself to get bogged down for a day, you might find that a week has snuck by without any progress on your manuscript. Suddenly, writer’s block has set in, and with it eventually comes a feeling of detachment from the work, and ultimately resignation. The work gets filed away in a drawer and you either pull it back out later, or you don’t. Odds are that if it’s the followup to a book you’ve already published, you will pull it back out, because deadlines don’t care whether you’re in the mood for them or not.

The other issue is doubt. There’s often a feeling in academia that you cannot write until you’ve read everything that there is on a subject – only then are you qualified to enter into a conversation. Obviously I’m talking about creative works, but I think that both come down to the same problem – you don’t feel confident enough in your abilities, either about the subject, or even your own writing. As a professional writer, I’ve spoken to many others with far more experience than I have, including authors and college professors who teach writing, I can say with confidence that this happens to everyone, no matter what stage they’re at in their career or how successful they happen to be. One of my professors once told me that some days even he sits down to get some work done and feels like an incompetent idiot. As it turns out, he’s the farthest thing from it, but you get the idea.

Alright, so writer’s block is a real thing, sort of, but if you’re a professional, you can’t let it slow you down. You have books and articles that people are going to pay you for, so you have to produce what you’ve already agreed to produce. How do about that? Keep in mind that I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve found the following things to work:

Not every part of your written creation is going to excite you all the time, yet it does need to be written. Think of it as work to be done, like a chore. Suppose you need the floor swept. Granted, there are times when sweeping the floor is fun. Maybe there are times when you actually enjoy sweeping the floor, probably because you have an excess amount of energy you need to burn off, but more often than not, it’s just a thing you need to do in order to make your house presentable and keep harmful bacteria from growing and poisoning your cat. When you need to sweep, you grab the broom and dustpan, and start working in one corner of the room and then work your way out. Think of writing in much the same way. You can’t start sweeping without your broom, and the writer’s broom is the keyboard. I guarantee you that if you aren’t sitting at a keyboard, you won’t get any writing done. Next, it helps to break your writing down into chunks. Do you know what’s going to happen in your story? Some writers don’t outline. Personally, not only do I, but I revisit my outline often during the process and update it with any changes I’ve decided to make.

Straying from your outline is fine, so long as you have good reasons to do so and those changes add to the overall value rather than detract from it. If you find that you just don’t know what to say, then odds are that you haven’t done enough planning, and you might want to at least figure out what’s supposed to happen every five hundred words or so*. In my case, when I’m working on a novel, I usually try to make each chapter at least ten novel-length pages long, so we’re talking about three thousand words. I also try to write a chapter a day, which is why my daily goal is three thousand words! That should give you an idea of how much outlining you should do before you write. What you do then, like sweeping from the corner and working your way out, is start writing, a sentence at a time, until you’ve covered the material in the section you’re working on. Sometimes it feels like drudgery, but if you take that approach, you will look at what you’ve accomplished by the end of the night and see that progress has been made – usually thousands of words worth.

*Note: I don’t always plan to this extent before writing.

*Note two: some people outline a lot more than I do. I’ve heard of authors having a 10,000 word outline for a 100,000 word novel. Think about that – the road map to the destination is ten percent of the size of the destination.

Another very useful trick I’ve picked up to overcome writer’s is to do some pre-writing. The brain is much like a muscle; if you exercise it, it will perform with greater ability over time, but if you let it go too long without a workout, it will atrophy. People often wonder why others they know can be so easily fooled by a politician or salesman, and without getting into politics, I’ll say that this happens because a ridiculous number of people have forgotten the skill of critical thinking, or they never learned it in the first place. This happens when they let other people do the thinking for them. Creativity is much like this, so it helps to start using your brain to produce words that aren’t directly relate to the piece you’re trying to write. This could include a bit of social media, though remember that Facebook and Twitter tend to be huge time sinks if you allow them to be. You might also write a blog on a given subject. For example, you might consider doing a blog about writer’s block to remind yourself how to get over it. Honestly, you could be writing about childhood memories, places you’ve traveled, things you’ve done, or just write a description of something – anything. The point here is simply to write, because once you’ve loosened up your brain muscles, you’re better equipped for a mental sprint.

Switching from the mental to the physical, go for a walk. I’m sure you’ve heard of runner’s high, which occurs because of a rush of endorphins to the brain. You get a similar effect when you walk, and often, the act of doing this aids creativity. A few years ago I wrote a military scifi roleplaying game setting called Reign of Discordia (incidentally, I’ve been considering doing some fiction set in this universe, and since I own the IP, I don’t have to ask for anyone’s permission to do it). As I was writing it, I’d often go for a three mile walk, which included some steep hills. It gave me time to think about what I was going to write, and it got the blood pumping, and I usually felt far more creative and inspired by the time I got back and sat down at my chair than I had before.

Another trick I’ve heard and found to work is knowing what your first sentence will be before you sit down to write. This gets you past the empty page and you can then let your mind wander from topic to topic until you’ve moved your story in the direction you want.

Finally, some writers suggest putting the work down and coming back to it later. Have a number of projects going at one time so you can switch back and forth between them when you don’t feel like working on one at a given time. Personally, I don’t often do this because I find it too easy to put down a work and never pick it back up. Also, I have enough things scheduled that I don’t have the luxury to simply put something away and work on it later. Right now, I’m working on Heroes of Gracia episode 4, which I’ll release just as soon as it’s written and edited. After that, I have a five-thousand word piece for an anthology that I’ve been invited to contribute to. Then, I need to go back and edit the manuscript I finished in July, and that will be going out to a game publisher as a piece of tie-in fiction. After that, I need to get back to The Pearls of Atlantis, which is the sequel to Echoes of Olympus. Obviously, these are being carried by a publisher, so I need to get the manuscript for the next one written sooner than later. Once I’ve accomplished all that, we’re probably looking at October or November, I have some other projects that are tentatively lined up. The point to all this is that right now, I don’t have the freedom to simply put something down unless I want to completely reshuffle my schedule around and take the change that something won’t work out as planned.

The bottom line is this: getting past writer’s block is something you need to do in order to get the work done. If you think of writing in exactly the same way as getting up to go to an ordinary job in the morning, every single day except weekends and vacations, then you understand that it’s part determination, part planning for the day, and part a series of mental gymnastics that are unique to every individual which help you get past the fact that you’re trading hours of your life for something – whether that something is money or a completed manuscript (which will hopefully lead to money).  Writer’s block – creative laziness – is something that can easily be overcome, so long as you possess the skills to do so, and hopefully, this blog will have helped give you (or remind you of) those skills.

It was just a little over a year ago that I founded the group, along with two or three others, and my reason for it was simply that I saw what was going on with traditional publishing and I felt that there was an opportunity there. Let me explain. I’m sure that if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you’re aware that I’m an author. There’s a very real question of whether I’d be considered a traditional author or an indie author because I’ve been writing professionally for over a decade (twelve years as of this writing, in fact). I’ve written gaming books for Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Super Genius Games, and a whole host of others. I was also employed for nearly two years as a staff writer for 38 Studios, the video game company that brought you R.A. Salvatore’s Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. In fact, I haven’t earned a dime by doing anything other than writing for at least five years. On the other hand, I haven’t published a single novel through a traditional publisher. That isn’t to say that I don’t work with publishers. My first novel to see publication, Echoes of Olympus, will be released soon from Dark Quest Books. I have another novel that I recently finished writing that will be published by a roleplaying game company (and there will be more information on that particular work soon). In addition to that, I’m in talks with a number of other game companies to do novels for them as well (and as long as we’re talking about me for a moment, I should mention Heroes of Gracia, a series of episodic fantasy that I’m self publishing to the Kindle). Despite this history of publication across a number of publishers and disciplines, I’m technically considered an indie, at least when talking about fiction. That isn’t to say that I wouldn’t be able to land a publishing contract with one of the big six publishers, but if you’ve read this article in Forbes, you understand that in all likelihood, if I did so, I’d become a mid-lister, which is someone who is probably an excellent writer, but doesn’t really get the full support of the publishing houses and therefore has a very hard time making a living at it. In all honesty, signing on with one of the major publishing houses never sounded all that appealing to me since I’d be doing much of the same stuff I’m already doing, but getting paid a smaller percentage over the long run. I also like to write to skip around to different genres, and try experimental things that just wouldn’t fly with a traditional publisher.

On the other hand, being an indie isn’t exactly the most appealing thing either due to the sheer quantity of them. Let’s be honest, how many of us have spent money on an indie book that looked promising, got it home (or on our e-reader) started reading, and realized that the writer just isn’t very good? Odds are that if you’ve read an e-book, it’s happened to you. And there’s a ton of these books. Yes, many are good, but how do you know whether it’s good or not without throwing your money away? It’s best to stick with the traditional publishers unless someone recommends it, right?

The reason I founded the Monumental Works Group was to address exactly this issue. I’m sure that if you read my second paragraph, you’d agree that the I am in fact a professional, and as a professional, you can expect my material to be on par with other traditionally published books. Now, the fact is that there are a number of other authors who are in exactly the same position I am – people who make their living as writers in a variety of fields, but nevertheless aren’t signed with the big publishers, for a variety of reasons. These are people who choose to publish themselves, or follow a non-traditional approach. For example, we have Scott Fitzgerald Gray, who has worked on Hollywood screenplays, Dungeons and Dragons books, and has written a number of original novels that you can buy on Amazon, including his most recent one, We Can Be Heroes. Then there’s Colin McComb, who worked for TSR and Interplay, and wrote a number of D&D products. He worked on, Fallout 2, and did I mention he’s currently writing for Wasteland 2? He also successfully funded his own Kickstarter for his first Oathbreaker book, and his most recent release is Oathbreaker 2: The Magus’s Tale. And then there’s Daniel Rider, who taught writing at a major university and left it all behind to become a novelist. He recently released his first book, Indian Summer. I could go on through our entire member list (in fact, I apologize that I’m neglecting to mention a number of others, whose qualifications and works are equally impressive, such as Clinton Boomer, Torah Cottrill, Ty Johnston, Darren Pearce, Candy Crum, and others), but there’s something in all this that I’m trying to convey: If you see a book released by a member of the Monumental Works Group, you can be assured that it’s going to be of professional quality. We even have a logo that some of us use. I can’t guarantee that you’ll like the book, but I can say that it will be well edited, it will have been peer reviewed, and it will be polished. I have absolute faith in every book released by each of the members of our group because we’re all professionals. We all know what makes a good story, and we actually work together quite a bit to help lift each other’s material up to an even higher standard than we’d be able to achieve on our own.

This is important, because with a market that’s dominated by a small number of companies and flooded with books you can’t trust, where do you turn? We’re one place. Another group that releases excellent material because it’s made up of similar individuals is Evolved Publishing, and I have some friends in there too, such as Daniel Conklin. Then there’s Moses Siregar, who may not be the first to do it, but has definitely made a success of his independently published book, The Black God’s War. You can trust that if you pick up one of their books, it’s also going to be good.

I think I’ve hammered home my point, but I’d like to mention two more things. The first is that if you want a sample of the work by Monumental Works Group, we released an anthology called Dreams in Shadow, and it contains both original work that we did for the anthology as well as excerpts from some of the novels mentioned above. The second is that we as a group are hard at work on our second anthology. I can’t talk about it yet. I can say that most of the people who were involved with Dreams in Shadow will also be involved. I can also say that Phil Athans will be aboard as well. Further, I can say that we’ll all be working in the same genre, and it will be one that should surprise some people because it’s not exactly mainstream, even if it is quite familiar to probably just about everyone who enjoys fiction. Finally, in addition to Phil, we’ll be joined by a featured New York Times Bestselling Author – someone I have a huge amount of respect and appreciation for, and who I’ll be happy to reveal at some point later.

For now, it’s enough to acknowledge the group’s first year anniversary, to publicly thank everyone who has made it a great first year, and to look ahead to a bright future doing what we love – writing!

So what’s the story? (pun intended)

When I was five years old, I went to the theater and saw Star Wars for the first time, and that changed my life. That was the moment that I went from your average small town kid to a geek. That was the first time that my mind was opened up to the idea that a fictional reality could be so utterly different and fantastic compared to our own. I don’t think I was alone in this since just about everyone I knew was suddenly wearing Star Wars shirts, shooting each other with blaster’s they’d made out of wood, and playing with the action figures. One of my good friends had the Death Star Playset, and as much as I wanted one of those, I never did get one (the other day, I saw an incomplete one at a hobby shop for over $100), but I did have a Tie-Fighters, and Luke’s Landspeeder. I also managed to pop the head off my Luke Skywalker action figure, and lose two Darth Vaders, and a Tusken Raider (OK, actually, I learned years later that the Tusken Raider was kyped by my cousin). I believe that my fascination with Star Wars laid the groundwork for two very different passions in my life: story, and imagining alternate realities.

When I was older, I moved on from Star Wars to G. I. Joe, but an important thing happened to me when I was eleven years old. It was 1984. The friend I spoke of earlier who had the Death Star playset had moved out of town years earlier, but he came and visited for a couple of weeks. During that time, we were inseparable as ever, but it was then that he introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. Like Star Wars before, this introduction was a really big thing. I went very quickly from player to DM, and of course I had to have all the first edition AD&D books, modules, miniatures, dice, etc. It would be years before I found a stable group to game with, but I think that remembering that group is a completely different blog post.

What these two events from my youth have to do with this, other than that they’re not particularly uncommon among people my age, is that they introduced me to a love of two vitally important things that shape me as a writer: story and imagination. Story was what happens, how it happens, and what the world is like. The imagination portion is a little harder to quantify, but I first learned the game of let’s pretend with action figures and pretending to be Luke Skywalker with my friends in the neighborhood, and then I learned let’s pretend with codified rules with Dungeons and Dragons.

Somewhere in there, I also picked up Tolkien for the first time and learned to love other science fiction and fantasy stories through books.

Now, as for writing, I had written a number of stories when I was younger. In fact, I distinctly remember writing a fairly long one in fifth grade when we had computer lab with the Apple II Cs for about an hour a day for a week. During that time, most of the other kids managed to pound out something fairly basic that was about two or three pages long. If I remember right, my story was fifteen pages long. In fact, one of my friends accused me of not really writing it myself. He didn’t see how it was conceivable that I had written so much more than the others in my class given the same amount of time.

I remember the moment that I decided I was going to be a writer. I was sixteen and a Junior in highschool, and it just felt right. In a single moment in English class, I decided that’s what I was going to do, and I’ve followed that decision ever since. And strangely enough, while most people go through a period where their friends and family try to talk them out of pursuing their dream of becoming a writer, mine never did. As a senior, I took a creative writing class while most everyone else was taking World Lit. At WSU, not only did I take the few creative writing classes that were available (one of them without credit since I’d already taken it), but I also started up a student writer’s group. During this time I learned not just how to vomit massive quantities of words up onto the page, but how to structure them into coherent stories. I learned about plotting, pacing, characterization, and all the other tools that professional fiction writers need to know.

I had planned to focus on fiction in my career, but then something kind of unexpected happened. While I was plodding away as the struggling author (often not producing any material for months and sometimes years at a time), the company I worked for went under. At the time, I’d been selling mattresses for a small chain of stores in the Seattle region. Unsure of what to do next, but definitely still passionate about writing and gaming, I found out that there was a back door into Wizards of the Coast called temporary employment. I took that back door and spent the next four years in various mundane customer service positions. The cool think about working in a place like WotC is that you don’t just do your job, you also become immersed in the games. You meet people and talk to them, and you find out how much you have in common with the people who are writing the games, and somewhere along the lines, you realize that there’s absolutely no reason why they can do it but you can’t. So I started freelancing, and that freelancing led to work on The Book of Exalted Deeds, to the Forgotten Realms, D20 Modern, Oathbound, and to a fairly large body of work in this field that spanned a number of companies, products, and IPs. Being hired as a writer to work on the Kingdoms of Amalur was the pinnacle of achievement in the field (so far).

That said, as much as I always enjoyed my work on games and building game worlds, my heart was always in fiction. My favorite authors remain R.A. Salvatore, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, Weis and Hickman, Peter David, Elain Cunningham, and Douglas Niles. In recent years, you can add David Mack, Paul Kemp, and David Farland (you’ll notice that many of these are tie-in fiction authors, and I don’t think that’s coincidental) to that list. More to the point, I started to feel like I had said everything I really wanted to say in RPGs. With the changing of editions, I was starting to find that the work I was doing on the new games was very much like the work I had done on the old games. I wrote the 3rd edition Death Knight, and then I came back and improved upon it with the Pathfinder Graveknight. And rather than just contribute to product churn, rehashing the same ideas, or creating my very own megadungeon, I decided that it was time to be true to my primary passion: writing fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I can still find work on RPGs without a problem. In fact, I spent the last two years at 38 Studios turning down freelance gaming projects. It wasn’t that 38 Studios had a problem with me doing them, but rather, I was simply content working on fiction in my off hours.

So now I’m between day jobs, but instead of resuming where I left off with RPGs, I’ve decided that it’s time to finally move forward with fiction.

It’s a bit like starting over. The gaming audience isn’t always (or even necessarily usually) a reading audience. That said, I am absolutely interested in writing tie-in fiction for gaming publishers. In fact, I am. The novel I’ve been working on ties in to a game I worked on. And then I have some strong leads on other tie-in novels from various other publishers. And all the while, I’m also continuing with the Heroes of Gracia series, which I’m self publishing for electronic distribution, and I’m pondering a novel (or a series of them) for the Reign of Discordia universe. On top of that, my first novel Echoes of Olympus, will be released in the near future from Dark Quest Books. The key these days is to stand above all the other writers who have discovered that anyone can be an author, thanks to Kindle Publishing, and to that end, I helped found the Monumental Works Group about a year ago.

So, after all these years of being an RPG designer, let me reintroduce myself. Hello, I’m Darrin Drader, author of speculative fiction and fantasy. I have many stories to tell, and I hope you enjoy them.

My serialized fiction, Heroes of Gracia is going well. I’m enjoying crafting the stories, as well as getting involved in the other aspects of publishing that I’ve never really dealt with before, like getting cover art, and worrying about promotion. I also can’t complain about sales. For a first attempt, this is actually going better than expected.

That said, when I got into this, I said that there might be some interruptions when things come up. Well, something has come up.

I recently mentioned on Facebook that I’ve landed a novel deal on a piece of tie-in fiction. This is something I’m excited about, but more importantly, in order for it to be relevant, the timing has to be right. I do feel that it needs to be written immediately because there are some other opportunities on the horizon.

This is a great thing! I’m excited about the book, as well as the property it’s attached to. I wish I could talk a little more about it right now, but for the time being, it’s going to have to be kept under wraps (those who think they have some clues, feel free to speculate, but I’m not spilling the beans until I’ve been officially given permission to talk).

For Heroes of Gracia, this means a short pause. If you’re one of my readers, bear in mind that more is to come in the not too distant future, and I’m looking forward to jumping back in.

Obviously this is a bit of an experiment. People are willing to tune in week after week for television shows, but are they willing to read regularly released fiction? Is this something closer to a magazine? Should it be subscription based? I don’t have all the answers just yet. Like I said, this is an experiment.

So, why should you be interested in my experiment? What reasons do you have for wanting to spend your time helping me prove this out? Here are my answers:

1. Faster releases. If this works for me, it might catch on. This is a way that your favorite authors could get parts of their stories out to you faster. Imagine if, rather than handing you a densely packed literary brick every five years, George R. R. Martin gave you the next logical chunk of the book he’s working on as it’s completed.

2. Written by a professional. Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve been a professional writer for the past twelve years. I’ve written books for Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, and I worked on a triple-A rated video game as a staff writer for two years.  People have been paying to read my game material for years. Now try some of my fiction!

3. Endlands! The story takes place in The Endlands, which was created by Scott Fitzgerald Gray. What’s the Endlands, and who is Scott Fitzgerald Gray? The Endlands is a shared world that is open for use to everyone belonging to the Monumental Works Group. Scott Fitzgerald Gray is a professional screenwriter, fiction author, and game writer. He’s also a heck of a nice guy for sharing his world like this. And that brings us to…

4. Established world. There is already other fiction set in the Endlands. Maybe you’ve heard of A Prayer for Dead Kings, Clearwater Dawn, or a half dozen other books that are currently available.

5. A planned story. Many times you start watching a show and eventually you realize that the writers really didn’t plan too far in advance. You start noticing dropped plot threads, fundamental contradictions, and by the end, you’re left with more questions than answers. Yeah, I’m looking at you, LOST and X-Files. I love you both, but in the end, you didn’t have your story together from the beginning, and we can tell. Heroes of Gracia poses many similar questions, and while you may not get every answer it poses, I won’t be posing questions without a purpose. I’ve already come up with the beginning, middle, and end of this story, so there won’t be any major gaping holes like that. Despite what I’ve said, if there are, I’m easy to contact, and you can berate me until your heart’s content. No death threats please.

6. No super characters. While there are political entities who are important to the world, you won’t find that the storytelling is curtailed because of all-powerful individuals keeping the place from falling apart. That’s the job of the heroes in the stories. In other words, no Elminster or Circle of Eight. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those other settings, in fact, I’ve been enjoying them for most of my life, but I am saying that with The Endlands, we decided to do things differently.

7. A unique world. While the Endlands shares many similarities with some fantasy worlds you might already know, it’s also unique in a number of ways. Unfortunately I can’t go into all of those ways without giving up all of its secrets, but I can say that many of the standard conceits of traditional fantasy worlds don’t hold true here.

8. Adventure! While there is intrigue and deep questions that are asked in the Heroes of Gracia, the heart of the series is adventure. In the first part, The Vacant Forge, the heroes take on a necromancer with an unexpected past. The second part, Thunder at Aridas, is a romp through an orc-filled ruin, while being pursued by a villain with infernal blood who will stop at nothing to accomplish his goals. The third part, The Season of Storms, delves into the back story of the party rogue, Nalgaar, and explains why he is hunted.

9. Self published. You read that right, I’m putting this in the positive column. Why? How many times have you heard an author say that they had planned this or that for their characters, but then were told to do something different by their publisher? Trust me, it happens, and I hear stories from other writers on a regular basis. Maybe the publisher thought their one was too dark, or they changed something in the world that shouldn’t have been changed, or the *gasp* let the bad guys win! In this case, because I’m responsible for every piece of this, I can tell the story I want to tell. True, my material has to be consistent with the existing Endlands material, but fortunately, the continuity is something that is already known and doesn’t affect the story being told.

10. Traditional Fantasy: Despite the differences mentioned before, this is fiction with an old school feel. What does that mean? Characters are Humans, Elves, Dwarves, or Halflings. Monsters are there to be killed, they don’t join the party, and the characters don’t get all emo about killing them. The setting has baseline technology consistent with Medieval Europe, so it isn’t Steampunk, nor is it modern. Undead do not sparkle.

So that’s ten reasons to give this a try. After you’ve read it, talk back! Tell me what you think!

That said, what’s that awesome quote from Star Trek VI? “Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we *can* do a thing, it does not necessarily follow that we *must*.

In this case, the question is why mustn’t this be done? Frankly the answer is feedback. So far, other than readers reassuring me that they’re enjoying it, the main piece of feedback I’ve had regarding the series is that people still haven’t finished reading the first one. Or they have finished up the first one but they haven’t had time for the second yet.

Point taken! My releases are coming too fast for my readers!

So, first, a bit of news. Heroes of Gracia Episode 3 is called THE SEASON OF STORMS, and is available for sale at Amazon now. I’d like to encourage you to go buy it.

Second bit of news: This release will be the last of the weeklies.

So far the stories break down as follows:

THE VACANT FORGE served as an introduction to the larger series and briefly introduced the main characters.

THUNDER AT ARIDAS focused on the party healer, Tanryn, and the questions of faith that she must face. It also introduced a recurring villain, a tiefling mercenary who is out to collect the bounty on the rogue.

THE SEASON OF STORMS focuses on the party’s reluctantly honorable rogue, Nalgaar, and also answers some questions that were posed in parts one and two of the series. There’s also a pretty good chance that the plot threads introduced here will lead to some interesting things later.

Next up, there will be one more story of the same length, to be released in two or three weeks (I have a freelance project I need to take care of before I can write this one). It will focus on the party’s warrior and former blacksmith’s apprentice, Antilos, and delve deeper into the larger story.

After that, I’m charting a new course. First, I should say that I’m committed to this experiment of producing episodic content on a regular release schedule. I’m just not as committed to releasing them every week. Instead, starting with episode 5, I’m going to transition to longer pieces (roughly 100 novel-length pages each), which will be released on a monthly schedule. That means that if you’ve followed this far, you’ll be getting more material less often, and at a lower cost per word. The down-side (if this is in-fact a down-side) is that Drivethru pricing and Amazon pricing will be synced. But that also means that you can look forward to more story with your story.

So yes, I’m insane, but I’d like to think that it’s in a good way, and that I’ve accomplished what I initially set out to do. I intend to continue with my goal, just in a different way that doesn’t overwhelm my readers.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who has followed this effort so far, and I look forward to sharing the rest of the story as it unfolds.

I know that might come as a surprise to some people, given the enormity of the task I’ve chosen to take on. After all, I’m endeavoring to produce a series of long stories/short novellas (the first of which can be purchased here: http://www.amazon.com/Vacant-Forge-Heroes-Gracia-ebook/dp/B008A9RHTA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340089559&sr=1-1&keywords=vacant+forge) at a rate of one per week and then put them up for sale. I’ve already had a couple of writers I know ask me if I really know what it is that I’m trying to do. They ask me if I understand the creative burnout I’m likely to face, and the disappointment from my readers if I should fail to produce what I’ve said I will in the time that I ‘ve indicated. And how do I justify the price, by the way?

I’ll start with the pricing issue, because it’s the easiest one to address. A lot of e-books, full-length novels, are up for sale online for very cheap or even free. The vast majority of these are from first-time authors who are “just trying to get the word out” about their work. Usually when I read the reviews of these books, I see a number of comments about poor editing, uninspired plots, and bad characterization. I’m not saying they’re all like that, but the harsh truth is that if an author feels the need to give their work away for free then they probably believe that their material isn’t up to standards, and they’re probably right.

So how can I justify $2.99 for a story? Well, to start with, I’m a professional. I’ve been bringing in a paycheck writing various things for twelve years now. My last writing gig was a two-year stint working as a staff writer for a triple-A rated video game. And this isn’t ego talking. If you knew me in person, you’d think I was a humble quiet guy who usually keeps to myself, gets my work done, and doesn’t bug people too much about it. The second point related to price is that I’ve written tabletop RPG products for other publishers that have less than half the wordcount of the stories I’m producing, but get priced a dollar or more higher… and they sell!

Now, on to the creative burnout issue… As I mentioned before, my last writing gig was a full-time job, and my responsibilities included writing dialogue and other documentation, not to mention that I also helped maintain consistency within the IP for the portions of the game I was working on, and I helped the Content designers script gameplay. What does this mean in terms of output? The stories I’m writing are averaging about 10,000 words each, and I’m releasing them on a weekly schedule, so I’m actually writing less material than I was before. But then again, I’m making up for some of that since I’m also acting as art director, promoter, and copy-writer. I’m taking on job responsibilities that I haven’t had previously, and I think that makes up for the difference between the amount I’m writing now and what I was writing as a staff writer.

Alright, so we’ve established that I’m a professional, and that the output of 40,000 words a month (the size of a short novel in itself) is reasonable, but what about the format? Why not just write twelve novels a yes (like another writer I know and respect is doing). The answer to that is that I’ve always been interested in episodic storytelling. A novel is one long story that’s broken into a lot of smaller parts (chapters). Typically, the storytelling structure of a novel doesn’t work like the other popular episodic media, namely television series and comic books. A novel follows the typical storytelling structure over its entire course of hundreds of pages.

Episodic storytelling works more like a collection of short stories, each one self-contained, but fitting together as a whole over time. In some cases, all of the episodes of a series are one-offs. They’re self-contained, and once they’re over, you don’t run into the minor characters again, or if you do, the links to the original stories they appeared in are quickly explained and easily forgotten. In other cases, the episodes all fit together to tell one much larger story. Each story makes sense on its own, but it really helps to have watched the previous episodes in order to understand the significance of what’s happening now. An example of the former would be the show (one of my favorites, actually), Star Trek the Next Generation, while an example of the latter would be what’s probably my favorite television show of all time, Babylon 5.

Well, I’m not working on a TV show or a comic book series, but I’ve always wanted to play with that format, because I feel like it really has the potential to make for powerful storytelling. I like how sometimes you see a character in one episode, and you don’t think much of them, but half a year later they turn out to be important. Or you think you understand how the world works in that universe, but then something happens later on that proves to be a total game changer. Minor characters appear, disappear, and come back with frequency, and some of those characters end up being fan-favorites (Bester, for instance, in Babylon 5). Speaking of Babylon 5, one guy, Joe Michael Straczynski, wrote the majority of the scripts for the entire show. Think about that – he was the creative mind, the show-runner, and the chief writer, for five years’ worth of television. This. Can. Be. Accomplished.

Alright, so what about the threat of cancellation? Television shows and comic books get canceled regularly. Sadly, this project isn’t immune to such a fate. The fact is that I’m doing this because I’m between jobs. Now, there are three things that can happen from here: The first possibility is that I land another job. The second is that I do this and it doesn’t sell. The third is that I do this, it sells, and I’m able to start supporting myself off of its sales. Realistically, number three would be awesome, and I might just get there, but it’s going to take time. Number two is a possibility, but I’d like to think that if I stick with it long enough, it’ll pay off. Number one will result in cancellation. After all, if this is a full-time effort then adding another full-time effort wouldn’t be sustainable. I believe that I would crash and burn if I tried to pull that off. If the second possibility happens then I keep it up. After all, at least I’ll be able to point to what I’ve been doing between jobs and show that I haven’t been slacking. If possibility one happens then I’ll definitely bring the series to a close.

The final question I’ve gotten is regarding my second novel, The Pearls of Atlantis. Am I still working on that? The answer to that is that yes, I will be returning to work on it soon enough. At some point, I will put this project on a temporary seasonal hiatus during which I’ll get back to my other projects.

In future blog posts, I’ll talk in more detail about some of the themes I’m working with, as well as thoughts on the creative direction I’m going with the series.

Part 1 – The Vacant Forge: http://www.amazon.com/Vacant-Forge-Heroes-Gracia-ebook/dp/B008A9RHTA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340072749&sr=1-1&keywords=Darrin+Drader

Part 2 – Thunder at Aridas: http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Aridas-Heroes-Gracia-ebook/dp/B008CM52G0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340126184&sr=1-1&keywords=thunder+at+aridas

Although The Vacant Forge is a self-contained story, it’s the first part of a larger story arc called The Heroes of Gracia. I currently plan to release one of these each week (excepting weeks where I need to fly out for job interviews, or produce material for other freelance projects). Think of these as a series of dime novels, or better, the literary equivalent of an episodic television series. There is a larger story that I intend to tell through small, bite-sized chunks, each of which will be fairly self-contained.

I’m sure some of you are wondering why I’m not doing this as a Kickstarter, and honestly, the thought did cross my mind. After all, there are so many things that need attention here – writing, editing, covers, and promotion – wouldn’t it be better to have a little money to back this up with? So far I’ve done the lion’s share of the work, with just a little bit of help from my co-Monumental Works Group member, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, who did the typesetting on the cover, as well as one round of proof-reading. I also have a very economic way of getting my cover art. There’s a bigger reason that I’m not doing a Kickstarter though, which is that if I’m on the hook for creative output of this nature, that could actually disqualify me from being hired. Game companies tend to be very picky about what kind of creative work you’re doing outside of your job, and rightfully so, after all, they need you to be able to focus as much of your energy on the massive undertaking they’re paying you for. I support this and I’m more than happy to abide by it.

I know what you’re thinking: Sounds good, Mr. Drader, but what’s to keep us from buying in now and then getting left dangling when that next job comes along? 

The answer to that is that after a job offer is made, there are still a few weeks inbetween to pack up and move. During that time, I’ll wind down the series and bring an end to it. Or, if not an end, at least an end to this phase of it. I still might end up using these characters and this setting to tell more stories down the line, but the story arc I intend to tell through episodic content will be complete.

You can find The Vacant Forge for sale here http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/103023/The-Vacant-Forge and here: http://www.amazon.com/Vacant-Forge-Heroes-Gracia-ebook/dp/B008A9RHTA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339370767&sr=8-1

And yes, Amazon does cost a little more thanks to their pricing policies. On the up-side, if you do buy it there, it will be delivered wirelessly to your reading device, saving you the hassle of having to plug it into your computer and transfer the file yourself. Call it a convenience fee. Or, you have my complete blessing to spend a dollar less and buy it from Drivethru Fiction.

This should be an exciting adventure, and I hope to have many of you along for the ride.

My understanding is that most people had a pretty crap 2011. The economy is still hurting, people are out of work, students are gradutating and can’t find jobs. It’s a tough time. I was lucky. I found a job in 2010 and so far it’s been the most positive work situation of my life. I am, of course talking about my employment at 38 Studios, the video game studio started up by former Boston Redsox pitcher, Curt Schilling, which features the creative talents of R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarland. The fruits of my labor there won’t be seen for some time, and I don’t feel comfortable discussing them publicly at this time, but I will say that it’s awesome and I’m looking forward to the veil being lifted in the future. In the mean time, I’m very much looking forward to playing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which will be released in a couple months.

The other major thing that happened in 2011 is that I finished my novel Echoes of Olympus, and have brought it to a state of completion. Echoes was originally going to be released through Monumental Works Publishing when I first conceived the idea of starting up an e-publishing company. Then my research led me to believe that a publishing company for e-books was kind of a pointless endeavor since authors could bring their own works to the public fairly easily through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other outlets. I also found that I lacked the time to be both an author and an editor of other people’s works, so I scrapped that idea. In 2010, when I landed my job with 38 Studios, I definitely lacked the time to devote to it, so Monumental Works Publishing was officially dead. The novel was not, however.

Right now, most people who know me associate my name with publishing in the roleplaying game field. To be brutally honest, while I’ve always been a huge roleplaying game fan, my first love always has been fiction. I more or less fell into roleplaying game design, and the longer I did it, the more frustrated I became with the fact that I was spending so much time writing games and not enough time telling stories. I always had intended to get going on a novel, but it was nearly impossible to do so when I was constantly trying to keep up with my RPG deadlines. The solution was simple: I had to put RPGs on hold in order to focus on fiction, and in 2011, RPGs were mostly on hold.

Despite this, I wasn’t completely out of the game in 2011. My IP, Reign of Discordia was being developed for the Savage Worlds system through Gun Metal Games. Unfortunately, David Jarvis has suffered serious some health problems this year, and Reign of Discordia was one of the casualties of his new situation. That really didn’t affect me a great deal since my role in the project was mainly to supervise the creation of the new edition. With Gun Metal Games out, the rights to the IP reverted back to me. Despite this setback, another publisher (currently unannounced) pounced on the property. It’s back in development, and I’m excited to see what the final book will look like. I can say that they have a full product line planned, and it includes the development of several things that I had planned on from the beginning of the IP.

But back to my novel. Yes, it is a big deal for me. Yes, I am excited about it. Yes, it has a publisher that isn’t me. Again, I can’t talk about the details until I have a contract in hand (and maybe not even then), but a smaller publisher has expressed interest in it, and after hearing about their level of sales on their current titles, their marketing efforts, and the specifics of the publishing agreement itself, I decided to go with them. At this time, the book has been completely edited by Daniel Rider, the front cover art was done by Jason Walton, and the cover design is by Zoë Brookes. If I were releasing it myself, it could go at any time.

I’m also starting my second novel in the series, Pearls of Atlantis. There isn’t much I can say about it right now because I’m about to lay down the first chapter. In the mean time, I can say that the Prelude is a self contained story called Servants of the Titan, which can already be found in the collection of short stories called Dreams in Shadow, which is up for sale on Amazon.com.

You might notice that the name of the publisher is Monumental Works Group, which bears a striking similarity to Monumental Works Publishing. This is no coincidence. One of the other things I did in 2011 was start a writer’s group called Monumental Works Group. It’s not a publishing house (OK, I guess it is somewhat since we do have an anthology now, and it’s up for sale, but that isn’t really the underlying intent). Instead, it’s a collection of talented writers who are working on carving out a niche for themselves in the publishing business, whether that be in traditional publishing or non-traditional publishing. I can say with confidence that every single person involved is talented and produces top-quality work, and I’m proud that each and every one of them has decided to get involved in this group.

There were a few things about the year that were not so great. I started out the year with pneumonia. Fortunately, having had it in 2009, I knew what the symptoms were and I was able to get it treated before it progressed to the point where it was life-threatening. Also, in December, we lost my 17 year-old cat, Tabitha, just a couple weeks before Christmas. We miss her a great deal, but she did have a nice long life for a cat, and she was loved by the entire family. We would have liked some warning that she was about to go so that we could say goodbye to her properly, but that wasn’t how she wanted it. In the end, she walked out of the house one night and most likely found a quiet and peaceful place to expire.

That unpleasantness aside, I also made it back to Washington State twice this year. The first time was to go hang out with my good friend Shayne. This is turning into a yearly thing for us, and I’m hoping to make it back again this year. The second time was for my twenty year high school reunion. It was really wonderful being able to reconnect with all of those people who I’d lost touch with over the years. I was, overall, impressed with the level of success that my old class has found. The Pullman Washington school district was once rates as one of the top 100 in the nation, and judging by the people it produced, I’d have to say that the ranking is well-deserved.

So what can we look forward to for 2012? I’m confident that we will not see the end of the world this year. Call it a hunch. Or, as it turns out that the Mayan calendar has actually ended twelve time already. We will finally see the full release of Echoes of Olympus (when will be up to the publisher). I anticipate a challenging and rewarding year with 38 Studios. And I would also like to make it back to Washington at least once, if not twice. I also intend to not only finish my sequel book Pearls of Atlantis as well as the final book in the trilogy sometime this year. With luck, we’ll be seeing one or both of those released in late 2012.

So Happy New Year! I hope this year turns out to be more positive for people than 2011 was. I guess we’ll see how it goes for me in my year-end-retrospective twelve months from now.