Breaking Ground

The first 1,000 words, or so, of The Centennial Horror are down. Check it out here. The new software--Liquid Story Binder--is holding up nicely, though I find myself going out to OpenOffice or Word to do the heavy editing. Nice thing, though, is that LSB seems to anticipate that you'll do this. Its file structure is pretty easy, and all of the files are in RTF.

A bit about my process, here. I have a long commute to the day job, so have gotten in the habit of dictating into an Olympus Something or Other digital recorder. This is a nice little machine, has withstood a lot of punishment, and only cost about $50 when I got it. (Though it's got this proprietary driver and won't work in Linux.)

I'd finished Toothless, and was spending time catching up on other podcasts. Mail Order Zombie, Dread Media, H. P. Podcraft, Don't Look in the Podcast, and others.

I was getting itchy. This past week, for the first time since finishing Toothless, I picked up my recorder.

The batteries were dead.

I fished out my old iTalk, which had never worked, and was happy to discover that, on that morning, for those 20 minutes, it was cooperative. Clunky and not nearly as convenient as my Olympus Thing, but at least it worked.

Why that morning? Stanley was ready. He'd been rummaging around in the back of my head, getting himself together for his debut. And he was ready. That's all there is to it.

From here, I'll probably take about a week or two to get my bearings, flesh out details, and flex Liquid Story Binder's muscles. As usual, I've got a lot of questions for myself. I've set the stage for some themes and ideas, and my head will need some time to simmer them all together. Once everything's gelled, it'll start to come at a good pace.

And research. Got to read up for this one. That's where Liquid Story Binder is really shining, for me. Lots of places to put all of that good stuff I find.

More coming soon!