77800

April 18, 2025 bbmillenellimdd Uncategorized Comment

Well that’s a start!

It seems like an eternity has passed since I started, but the reality is I wrote nearly 50k words in under 2 weeks. Perhaps it was in spite of NaNoWriMo calling it quits? Who knows. But Draft 1 is done.

I am now in the precarious position deciding between continuing, or refining… Or perhaps both?

I’m in the process of working with a few beta readers to go through it from a fan perspective, as well as talking with a few editors to make sure it’s not crap on paper.

However, on my commute in, I found it hard to not fire up the speech to text tool and dive right into the start of book two. I guess it’s not bad to keep up the momentum, but I need to not lose sight of the goals of TRUE completion of the first book.

I should say, I’m also in communication with a handful of great professionals at reedsey.com to discuss editing options. That’s the tough part; Dev edit? Line edit? It’s such a wide open space. I hope to be at a point where the dev process I’ve done already is enough to create a solid first draft. But only time will tell.

For now, I’ll just revel in the fact that the first one is done.

 

Process

April 14, 2025 bbmillenellimdd About, From BB Comment

Debut Novel​

Yup. I’m on my way toward the completion of my first book; The Exceptional Trunk. This one is the first in a 5 book series entitled The Legacy of Leithu. Currently I’m at around 50k words of the anticipated 75-78k for this first novel. It has been a story about 17+ years in the making and for the first time, the creative waters are flowing faster than ever.

The first 8-10k words appeared around 2007-2008 as a short story. It slowly grew from a quick idea to something worth a little extra effort. Over the next few years or so I developed it into 12-15k words. Then as quickly as it appeared, it slowly lost attention from me and my ever expanding reality of life as a father and a husband.

Somewhere along my path an adventure in education occurred. I attended school for an MFA, and though I never fully completed the education (I earned 85 of 90 credits; one thesis away), I had a very valuable nugget hidden within that school work. I had written an 80 page game design document for one of my classes. This document created a world, the quests, and the antagonists that the original story from years ago was missing.

However, this too sat in a folder on my computer for a dozen years. And then, the inspiration finally hit: What if I placed the characters from ‘trunk’ into the world of ‘D’?

The inspiration bolt struck down in late February of 2025. After thinking about the concept, and how to accomplish the blend, I felt I was ready to dive in. In late March I had the initial 17k words of a fledgling story I had already restarted 3-4 times  with no path forward. I could never really break free from the circles of self doubt and revision edits.

I finally sat down in April with a goal of blending and rewriting. I worked elements together as best as I could and fleshed out an outline of the full story. I approached the new writing process in from a different angle. I started dictating into a speech to text program on my phone on my daily commute. I would then come home in the evening and edit/refine those 4-7k word chunks. The hose was open and within the first week I had grown to 30k words.

The process has continued very successfully and though story is not “written” the outline, ideas and core arcs are there for a potential completion of the full draft by May 1 2025.

Making the world

April 13, 2025 bbmillenellimdd Book 1, Leithu Comment

It’s hard to come up with a world…

Making the world like Leithu can be a struggle. Sure, there are full dumps of content and ideas flow out and hit with a rhythm that is just on point and they sometimes seem to come from another place altogether. But those dumps of info are just streams of consciousness and ideas that are in raw form. In order to create something tangible and believable, they have to interconnect on some level. That’s where the real work comes in.

Creatures, biomes, townships, human minor characters, back story, history, politics, lore… That’s all the boring stuff that helps create the believable universe. Critical thinking and planning are absolutely needed to tie everything together. I have found what helps me, is to go back to my D&D days from the 80’s and 90’s and seeking out some of the content development tools I used then to help me flesh out ideas. A lot of tools exist online like town generators, and NPC generators. I sometimes use them as inspiration, but it’s more to fuel the framework with which I design my own world.

All I know is that when I seem to be ‘on’ it’s hard to turn it off. And if I’m ‘off’, the inspiration to turn it back on is only a video game, book, or movie away. Inspiration and motivation come from a wide range of places. Being open to the ideas and allowing them to develop organically is the key to my own success. Hopefully this helps understand some of my thought process.

Time Flies

March 29, 2025 bbmillenellimdd From BB, Thoughts

Time Flies…

Wholly crap. It’s been 8 years since I’ve thought about this site. I’m surprised it’s not riddled with spam or junk. Small miracles I s’pose.

So 8 years ago I started this page, then abandoned it. But I’m back. now I have a new passion and focus on a book series I’ve been working on for nearly 15 years. Thankfully, it’s still relevant.

Stay on the look out for new posts, content, thoughts and ideas …