About

 

 

About Nones

Nones is my personal little self-improvement project. It's intended to help me develop my skills as a writer and an artist. It's also intended to help me commit to one project in the background over a long period of time. Something I've not had much luck with so far. *gulp*

One thing I've learned since 2005 that I'm not as good at digital painting as I thought. : ) This is why Nones' illustrations have fallen off over time. I found that focusing on chapter covers was a lot more fun. Though I still love it when my painting comes together, I'm a writer at heart and I serve Nones best by remembering that, I think. When I finish Nones, I'd like to go over and edit it with the benefit of the experience I've gained since, but for now it needs to stand as it is.

I've also fallen into a much more erratic update schedule. While it's not an excuse, writing as a career skims a lot of your creativity off. Though Nones is a story I still want to tell, I must confess that after a long day at work, the prospect of writing more in my off-hours isn't as thrilling as it once was. : )

But. Those characters are still there, and that story's still there. For better or worse, it's still something I'd like to share, and thank you to everyone who takes the time to read it.

PLEASE NOTE !

Nones isn't a fluffy story. It has fight scenes, blood, guns, monsters, and the occasional naughty word. If you're offended by any of these things, Nones may not be for you.

Also-reads:

After I'd been working on Nones for a while I realised just how much the story owes to Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. Then again, considering I started reading these when I was about eight and they had a huge effect on me, I could say that for most of my writing. But to appease my conscience - go and read them, they're excellent. However, Nones is going to evolve in a very different direction.

The other big influence on Nones was C S Lewis' The Magician's Nephew. The ruined city of Charn has always held a special charm for me.

Finally, Nones is, in essence, a sequel to a short novel I wrote called The Immortal Undone. It builds on a lot of the same ideas.

Technical stuff

Nones is written in a program called Scrivener. I've just about stopped using Word altogether except at work. Apart from scripts, Scrivener is home to all my writing these days and I would never have got my MA novel edited as fast as I did without it. It's perfectly suited to my writing style, and since Nones started getting so long, I shudder to think how I'd manage it in a Word document.

If you're a Mac user and a writer, you owe it to yourself to at least try Scrivener's (free) demo. The full licence is not expensive and is extremely good value for money compared to other word processors. Windows-using writers should check out the Literature and Latte links page. (/shameless plug)

I keep track of Nones' information and characters in VoodooPad, because I love writing wiki articles.