90,187

The product of the past 46 days of 'work'. I use the half quotes because I could barely call it that. It was some of the most productive entertainment I ever indulged in. I have always enjoyed writing in some form, but I've never written anything that would remotely be considered publishable. This may seem like bullcrap, but it's true. The stuff I had written before includes:

-A custom D&D campaign world. I don't really consider this publishable because it's not different from the default setting. I was mostly too cheap to buy a setting book, so I made up some workably generic land. While over time I've given this land a shitload of flavor over time, it lacks any ridiculous gimmick - such as Eberron's magic trains or Forgotten Realm's 8000 gods and Drizz't - that would sell it as a setting. I really don't consider settings my strong point. I'm more of a people person when it comes to writing, as my other avenue shows.
-E-Fed RPs. I count this as unpublishable because no one is going to buy anything about a fictional wrestler, no matter how far I go in making him a deep, complex character that evolves. It's just not going to happen. Hell of good practice for dialogue writing though.

But I decided I was going to write something publishable. So I dived right into deep end head first barely even knowing how to swim. Hell of a way to start, but it can't really hurt.

My 90,187 word fantasy novel is tentatively titled "Fall of Allbridge." I'm probably going to change it, because that's just not very catchy. It's hard to follow normal fantasy novel naming conventions by naming after some island of doom or the magical relic of great arcane power, because neither of those are in the book. There is an occurance of the latter, but it's merely part of a subplot and has little to do with the overall story.

I'm not blowing smoke up your ass when I say I don't view it as a traditional fantasy novel. There are no dragons. No elves. No dwarves, even though I love dwarves and think they're kick ass despite being cliche. Drunkards with battle axes going around splitting heads. There's nothing to not like. I view it as highly character driven, with the setting secondary. Ironically, I've kept it fantasy mainly so I can just make up the setting as I feel fit. Stuff like reality gets in my way and is annoying. It's much easier when you make up the rules to reality for yourself. Plus it opens avenues for more options when people get violent. Not strictly gun, knife, and unarmed combat. There's also the fun of having weird shit happen and just being able to say "A wizard did it" in so many words.

The purpose of this blog is for more writing experience, get my name out there, and all that good stuff. It'll track my progress and my road to trying to become professional writer. And I'll consider that job done when I can walk into a bookstore and buy a novel that I have written. I'm a long way off from that, but being intimidated by it isn't going to do a damn thing for me.