Horned Devil Special, with picture

Here are the ingredients

in 17 to 20 oz glass
chunk of pineapple (or 2.  fresh cut is better than canned)
1-2 cherries
add ice
1 oz kraken (without this shot, the overall drink is significantly less potent.  drop this on subsequent drinks)
1 oz cherry UV
1/2 oz amaretto
1 oz lime twisted gin
1 oz torched cherry Bacardi

2-3 oz pineapple juice (If you like pineapple juice and it doesn't hurt your stomach, 3 oz.  Otherwise 2)
generous splash of grenadine
fill with squirt (i use diet, but don't really matter)

The result is a very tasty beverage, but best drank in moderation.  (If planning on drinking more than 1, i recommend leaving the kraken out of subsequent drinks. Kraken is what makes the drink dangerous, because you don't feel anything and then BOOM!  hit by a freight train...  enjoy )

update

Drafting is going well.  i'm able to pick up and go, and the previous post's recipe for the Horned Devil special has contributed to some very productive butt in chair fingers at keyboard.  i've tweaked and edited the opening chapter, and i'm almost through the 2nd.  If i keep at the current pace, the draft could come in way larger than my expected 90k words.  maybe over a third more.

what i'm most pleased with is that this time my narrator is coming off much more like i envision.  Time will tell, as well as revisions, but i'm fairly pleased with the dialog that has come up during the second chapter.  i'm hoping that i've crested a hill in the writing learning curve, but i'm sure another hill comes over the horizon eventually.

(On a personal note, for the first time in the ten years i've worked on this project, my wife liked my draft...  progress, as she is a voracious reader.  My youngest son takes after her, and he liked it too)

SotF progress & a treat: the Horned Devil special

i've gotten the first chapter (out of 13) drafted to the point i'm happy.  i've always felt i was an adequate storyteller, but my writing skills were not up to par.  With this, i feel that i've done my best work to date, and tonight feels good.  The rest is plotted out and some drafted.  i'm ready to move forward and think i've found the angle i was working for.

It has been 10 years since i first started working on this project, and it has been a brutal but enlightening learning curve.   writing is one of the very rare pursuits where the blood, sweat, and tears is all validated in an instant when you revise the rough draft and realize that you need some polish and clarity, but the essence of what you envision is there.

For the first time my wife was excited when reading, and i was not overly criticized (one of her suggestions, on the first sentence i might add, did have to take place and made the opening much stronger...  prodigious readers anyway...)

and for the treat after my rambling...

The Horned Devil Special has been minted, tested, and approved.  For those who may be interested in the recipe, here it is.

in a 17 or 20 oz glass filled with ice
add
1 oz Kraken spiced rum
1 oz Torched cherry baccardi rum (substitute clear rum)
1 oz Cherry UV vodke (any vodka)
1 oz Seagrams lime twisted gin (substitute regular gin)
1/2 oz ameretto

3 oz pineapple juice
2-4 pineapple chunks
2-4 cherries
splash of grenadine
top off with diet squirt (that is what i use, but regular squirt, 7 up, sprite should all work.  limeade is a tasty option imo as well...)

stir well.

Inspired by the Long Island Iced Tea, this is a better tasting, and more potent alternative (Kraken is 94 proof, and is the addition to the rum, vodka, gin core of the long island, amaretto for triple sec is win to me).

enjoy!  From the happy staff at the Horned Devil, to you!
Feel free to use the recipe, just be respectful enough to give credit please.  Thanks!

My love of Scrivener for Windows

Normally i don't gush about software, as i find most of it adequate for its purposes, but with this app i'm not even touching the surface of it yet and i'm finding it left open on my workstation at all times.  i need to take some time to watch the tutorials so that i can use the app to its fullest potential, but just playing around with it in my world-building project it is going to make such a more effective way of making the encyclopedia it just staggers me.

i've had a 3 ring binder for about 12 years that contains all the notes and such i've already made.  much of them are now obsolete, but i always find gems of things i'd never thought about and there are rough notes of storylines and populations in these areas.  with the binder area of scrivener, i can set up folders with large headings, and then have subfolders that go into detail.  i should also be able to add images and maps once they are scanned in and completed in the case of my digital ones.

anyway, for any writer, whatever the type, look into this program because it is worth every penny.

progress update 1 - SotF

i'm about 250 words away from 50,000.  i'm almost through the 3rd act (attack) having five and a half scenes to finish in it.  i'll need to rework the second and third quarters during my rewrite, but i really like the last few scenes that i did.

As i think i've mentioned before on this blog, i got Scrivener for Windows and have been using it for this project.  One of the things that i'm most interested in using it for is an encyclopedia of the world that i can do with it.  i'm doing some basic brainstorming on how i can best organize it.  Most useful right now would be an encyclopedia for the city of Karat-Si'Zan, and to a lesser extent Tillia (particularly Tolzar, which i might end up writing a Trilogy about the murder of the king and the subsequent struggle for power that ensues among the 4 wardens underneath the king because the surviving heir is in Karat-Si'Zan when the revolution takes place).  Anyway, an encyclopedia would make it much easier for other people to play their fantasy RPG of choice in the world, and i think that would be pretty cool.

Looking forward to finishing up the drafting phase of this novel and getting into the revising stage.  i'm planning on splitting my time at that point between revising this novel (half my time) and rewriting SotA (half my time).  There will be quite a few changes to SotA, but certain scenes will come over verbatim.  i'll expand on the end explorations in the pit, and add a layer of battling in the hollows with thugs that are threatening his boss.  that will lead to him finding out that the #2 house in K-S is behind the problems in the hollows and sets out to take them down in the third book.

i'm getting flashes of scenes from those books, and it should be fun working towards getting the whole story out.

Day 29 & 30

well, i made it to half my goal, and not quite enough to "win" at Nano.  got to 45,258.

i did much better than a few years ago when i tried Nano, and above everything it got me to the point where i just put words to the page.  I'm getting a solid skeleton, and will have to flesh it out a bunch to where i can take it somewhere (the entire prologue is going to be redone, but i think that i need the non-first person perspective to introduce the character and world).

Dialog is going to be another aspect i have to rework.  just need to make sure that all the other characters sound like them, and not Tzal.

Hoping to keep making progress like i did the last two weeks, but have a bunch more world building to do in order to make the next section flow like the first quarter did.  also need to plot out the flashback sequence i skipped.

Days 27 & 28

i'm up to 41,500 words.  will have to match what i've been writing each day to reach 50,000, but i'm optimistic that i can do that for the last 2 days.  i'd like to finish my word count tomorrow, but i don't see that happening at the current rate i'm drafting.

have so much work to do on this novel.  need to flesh out characters more and make them each their own voice instead of it all sounding like my main character.  funny how i thought i was so ready to write this and as i draft i come up with all these things that should have been taken care of during my brainstorming phase.  i guess i slacked on that a bit more than i thought.  live and learn i guess.

going to have to finish off my map of the city so that i can figure out all the paths Tzal takes through the city so that i could adjust how the scenes where he's walking through the city turn out.  right now the city is still flat, and i think that spicing up those journeys will help to bring the city to life more than it currently is.

i'm glad that i participated in this to learn what a massive word count deadline is like, but it has been hard.  i've learned a bit about myself and my writing habits by doing this though, and i think that will help me become the writer i want to be.