Good Morning/Afternoon/ Evening Folks!

I’m making an effort at being more active online this year, both here on the blog and on social media in general. I figured an easy way to start this might be giving a monthly roundup of what’s going on with Tales Under A Broken Sky, and what other random writing stuff I am getting up to outside of the podcast.

Tales Under A Broken Sky

So first up, the podcast. I was…ahem…a tad late posting Episode 05 this month, to the tune of about two weeks or so. This kind of irked me a bit because that is pretty much the time I want between episodes. It was unavoidable in a way. Christmas was a very busy period for me in work, and with the school holidays as well, it was extremely hard for me to find any free/quiet time to record.

I only manged to get a recording I was happy with for the episode about the week before the release. I also had a bit more fun than expected compsing the backing music for the episode as well. It’s still on the simplistic side, largely because I’ve been experimenting with synths and pads, so I’m trying not to go too overboard until I figure it out. That said I also wasted a day looking for samples for the background sfx, although this was more of an impact for the trailer at the end than the main body of the episode.

That being said…etc…etc…I’ve managed to cobble together the time over the past few weeks to get in some extra recording time, and I’m three episodes ahead with recordings, if not the actual production. So hopefully I’ve staved off delays and stress for a while.

I’ve done a fair bit of background work over the last few days on the podcast as well. I’ve got a roadmap sketched out through Episode 20, and it actually looks attainable, even if there is a ton of new (currently undrafted content in there). I’ve also moved the podcast hosting, I initially started on Soundcloud, as I was familiar with the platform from poetry recordings, but I was finding that it lacked in some of the features I wanted to work with, also I was about to reach the limit on my account, and I didn’t want to hold two different subscriptions on the service.

I’ve also released the podcast on Youtube, it’s another place to distribute, but it will also allow me to add in captioning, for increased accessibility, on top of the transcripts I make available on the site. I’m working on syncing things up at the moment, so I hope to have this completely up and running in the next week.

I’m working on dropping some extra teasers and trailers for episodes going forward as well, especially as I have managed to catch up and get ahead of myself with recordings, and I’m looking forward to being a little more interactive, rather than just uploading episodes every 2 weeks or so.

Other Writing

One of the main reasosn I’ve been so quiet on social media for the past few months, is that I’ve been doing a lot of editing on my first novel (not the first novel-length manuscript I have completed) but the first that I have managed to get to a stage where I am feeling happy to start thinking about publication.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on plot continuity and trying to iron out some of the wrinkles in the plot. I’ve been slipping this in between working on podcast material, so I’ve been ignoring social media in an effort to reduce distractions.

It’s been a long process, and with the way I tend to write longer form pieces, the first 2/3 of the piece is much more polished than that last 1/3. I can definitely say that I can see how everything pieces together now, and I see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s been a large undertaking, about four years of on/off work while I’ve been working on other projects. I’m hoping to have a workable final/next to final draft in the next six months, and then who knows. Probably another long road after that. But we’ll see. I have no idea when any of this will see the light of day, so that’s pretty much it on that subject for now.

I have been working on another poetry collection, although this is very much a background project for now. I have a bunch of stuff drafted for it, which amounts to probably about 10% of the whole. This one is a bit different from Finding Home, which was a very organic process. There is a theme behind it, and it’s taking a bit more time to produce the material. But I’ll be plodding away on it until it’s done.

On a side note, I’ve been taking a few writing courses though the Irish Writer’s Centre, and it has really been keeping the motivation and productivity high. Setting aside a few hours a week purely for writing, without distraction and removing procrastination has been really helpful. It’s also been good for keeping the motivation to create rolling, especially since there are fees. Financial incentives to do some work are useful for motivation sometimes. But talking to other writers in similar situations/stages of work is also pretty cool. It makes the process a bit less isolating.

I think I’ve rambled on enough for now. January was a pretty good month for getting stuff done and playing catch up on a few things writing related. I’m looking forward to continuing the momentum into February, and putting some fun more content out there.

Until Next Time!