by kurtdemanche | Mar 18, 2017 | Uncategorized
Hitting the one-third point on …With justice. I find that sometimes my best ideas happen when I least expect them, like when I’m running and suddenly realize that there is a much better ending than what I planned.
I don’t want to give anything away, but it looks like the Organization will be through a few more twists before they manage to keep the world safe.
Also pretty excited because it’s looking like this little project–originally intended to be a single book– will end up being a trilogy. When I finished the first one there were some big unanswered questions. For Liberty… left us asking who was behind the curtain pulling the strings, and I got a lot of feedback that people wanted more of the agents and their stories. …With Justice was going to be the unraveling of those strings as we learn about the shadow organization, but I think there is one more big story to tell and I even have a name picked out for the final installment…
Not With A Bang…
More to come on why I picked the unusual titles, and why each uses an ellipsis.
-kurt
by kurtdemanche | Mar 4, 2017 | Uncategorized
Well the second book in the For Liberty… Saga is my newest project. I’m excited to say I’m about 6 chapters into the first draft, and it’s flowing nicely.
I originally only planned for there to be one book in this story, but I realized there was more to tell. No promises at this moment if this is it or if there will be more, but it really is a fun world to spend time in.
I’m out of the country for a bit, so progress may be pretty slow on this one, but it is happening!
-kurt
by kurtdemanche | Feb 22, 2017 | Uncategorized
There is always a next project…
In fact there are usually 2 or 3 that I am working at some stage. I like to have a long-term project, my epic so to speak that I’m working on in my mind and adding bits and pieces to make it a rich vibrant world one day. Then there is usually the practical project. That’s the book closest to actually going out the door to a publisher, and then there is the hot new idea that I want to write.
That’s the “Next”. The next is what encourages me to keep going, and often what motivates me to push through the uncomfortable editing phase of a project. I can’t very well devote my attention to the next until I have a project finished.
Today I’m thinking a lot about the Next project and I’m thinking it will be the sequel to For Liberty… I have never planned to make that project a series, but there is a second story, a partial continuation that is begging to be told. I want to follow up some of the loose ends, and weave the human story about the price our country pays for it’s Liberty a little deeper. This has been a backburner project for a few years now, and I think it’s going to move up to the forefront for a while. With Hakomi complete, and with the edits nearing completion of For Liberty… it seems like the perfect time to rough that project in.
More to come.
-k
by kurtdemanche | Feb 20, 2017 | Uncategorized
Wanted to take a moment to talk about one… my very first project. It has had a few different names over the years, and it has morphed from a simple idea to a whole series of books, some already written and some only in my head.
I started the idea back in college (2008) and one of the big goals was to see if I could actually apply myself to my hobby (Writing) and finish a book. 124k words later I proved to myself that in fact I could write an entire book. That being said It was my first time ever writing anything longer than a kids book, or an essay. I won’t say it sucked because there are some true literary jewels buried in those pages. I learned some of the tricks of the tradecraft that I am still using to make my work unique and interesting today. It is however a far cry from the standard of writing I expect from myself now days. It was slower paced, longer chapters with a ton of world building. All good things, but I had not yet learned the great lesson, ‘don’t say in 6000 words what you can say in 600’.
So what is The 7th Age?
To start with it’s the idea that there is/could be a 7th age of mankind, and the event that might trigger it would be contact with another form of life. This is certainly no new story to be told, but The 7th Age took it a different way. That contact event didn’t go as expected. The language barrier between species was never crossed and with no explanation the alien life forms suddenly unexplainably died. Their ships plummeted to Earth, and wrecked devastation across the globe.
The story really isn’t about that though… The story is about the family/company that tried to put the world back together. A tech company that was beginning to understand a little of the alien tech. They hold the fragile world together and do their best to build a better world from the devastation. That family however is flawed, subject to making mistakes, and hiding a huge secret of their own.
Ultimately it becomes a classic story of the gulf between those who believe in progress at the expense of freedom, and those that believe religion and freedom are the opposite of progress. It becomes a human story about a few people who are trying to hold the world together on their shoulders, and at the same time to really discover who they themselves are.
Will The 7th Age ever actually come out?
I hope so. I have five books planned… I have two and a half written, and the two need to be revised/rewritten with 10 years more experienced me finding a better way to tell the story. I want them to be read one day though. They have been a labor of love, and there is more of myself poured into those novels than any of my other projects.
One day the 7th Age will dawn.
-kurt
by kurtdemanche | Feb 16, 2017 | Uncategorized
Whenever I’m asked to sign a book I struggle to find the words I want to say. A funny thing for an author to struggle with… As an author I know words have meaning, and I don’t want to throw something casually out there and either miss the opportunity to inspire, or to fail to communicate clearly. I think I have finally come up with the perfect catch phrase so to speak for me.
Whoever you are, whatever you do, and wherever you go… go boldly.
To me that captures the core. We are from all walks of life, circumstances, races, and genders, and the list goes on of the things that make each person’s journey unique. On top of that what we do with our lives impacts us just as much as who we are. Add your geography on top of that and all I may share with you is that we both connect over the written word and the meaning it coveys. We all want to escape into the pages and characters of a book.
On top of that one of my favorite literary tools is the Ellipsis, more commonly know as…
It can convey a missing word, hidden meaning, inflection, an unspoken, or my favorite a continued thought that isn’t vocalized. To me it fits perfectly because “wherever you go…” leaves a tremendous amount of room for all of those things. There is room there to go no where. Maybe reading is how to you ‘go’. To me the ellipsis is an invitation to open the imagination and go. Just as I settled on titling my book For Liberty… with an ellipsis on the end I will shorten my phrase using one in reverse. It’s a way for me to say I appreciate what came before, and I understand it’s your story, but my wish for you is to.
…go boldly.
-kurt
by kurtdemanche | Feb 14, 2017 | Uncategorized
In the grand plan of writing I like to physically scout the places I write about. I try to draw from life experience and use the actually sight/smells/feel to make it crystal clear for the reader. Life, budget, and work make it impossible to always visit the places I write about though. So sometimes I have to draw purely from research and then try to create a realistic experience from pictures, accounts, maps, and other peoples’ words.
In my latest round of editing I am getting the chance to rewrite portions of a book that were drawn purely from research. Now I have the life experience to actually put myself there as I go through the scenes and get the details right. ultimately I know only a few readers will ever appreciate the little things, but for those few that have been there they will know what it’s really like and connect. To me that makes the experience well worth the extra effort to get it right.
-kurt
