T.M. Shannon

I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land I’m on, the Cabrogal people of the Darug nation, and all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, and I pay my respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.

Australia is a land with tens of thousands of years of history, and I support all efforts for reconciliation and correcting the wrongs of colonisation.

Hi everyone,

March did some marching, and I did very little posting about the blog, call it an ADHD keep forgetting/not bothering thing. Speaking of which, I missed some prompt posts and author updates, but, y’know, I have slow weeks.

On the plus side, we’re now in Holy Week, that all-important Easter Triduum hitting on the weekend, a story of betrayal, abandonment, and outright bloody violence depending on which Passion you watch, but ultimately rebirth and renewal.

I’ve been through similar before, and have had another after I found God during a manic episode, so it resonates on a very personal level, plus there’s Easter eggs, and chocolate’s good (hello Lindt bunny, you look tasty).

But while my writing time is limited and that hit of gastro and migraine Friday prevented a stint on the book, I’ve finished the first two acts and am tackling the final, let’s see if reverse outlining saves things.

So I thought I’d get a bit more authorly for this post. How about you get snacked up for the read?

A Dose of Decreasing Word Count

Recognising that my third act was dragging out (I had twenty chapters in mind), Cole has made the same dumb mistake three times (gotta make it one), and there were some plot holes and I didn’t keep something up when it needed that, I embarked on a reverse outline.

This has been such a game-changer and direly perfect given this is a pantsed novel, and I’m certainly using it on the next project even though I’m going full outline.

Plus I’ve been tweaking as I go—yes, I love efficiency and there was some tightening to go, but I’ve whittled things down to 385 pages and 108k words, so I’m confident I’ll hit around 330 pages/100k words once I cut the remaining third act chapters down to 18.

All this coming out of a 200k mess of a first draft is quite an achievement, and with the current pacing, it should be a cracking read with more happening in less space.

Of course, not everybody will like all of it, and I’m bound for lukewarm sentiments depending on feels, the fact it’s an effective debut novel, or the reviewer is more of a first person POV kinda person. But I might get some pointers for the next project to enrich those bits.

From bitter experience and astute education, I don’t plan on replying to any reviews—only responding to the good stuff or feeding the trolls—just sticking the 5 stars on the promo page and first page to hook readers.

And while I definitely don’t want to wade into the bad ones, “I’m tough on the other side of the internet” contrarians claiming AI because em-dashes—wanna see the 1000 in my first draft?—there’s two things I’m hoping to frame: one-star DNFs for swearing or for queer content.

A Dose of Why Would You Do That?

Honestly, I regret not printing and framing that proper Nigerian Princess scam email I got way back when—there were pictures and all—but my ex talked me out of it, and I probably would’ve been hit with a virus if I pressed print.

But there’s something about the call of a “Your characters swore, DNF, stop talking out of the gutter,” and especially, “Your character is queer and has queer sex, DNF, you need the Fear of the Lord™,” that screams getting my Aussie and Queer author credibility.

I’m not ashamed made proper Aussie blokes who swear freely and often—Jimmy, you foul-mouthe. I’m not afraid there’s a man who never swears until one moment, or that a woman swears in the heat of an argument. We’re Aussies, we swear, even as a compliment.

In fact, I’m pretty sure if my Aussie characters didn’t swear, I’d get far more complaints than DNFs. Art imitating life and Oi, Oi, Oi for the win.

But besides ensuring my queers aren’t killed—got a plan to kill off a token cishet character so the queer main can go all Capt. Gay T. Kirk over a redshirt, and you straights can see how it feels—getting DNF’d for queer content, especially by religious types, would be the S.H.I.T.

And since I won’t be responding to reviews, as I can’t be a baby author either, been there and done that, a personal repository of, “You’ll go to hell for this,” and my habit of turning my darling partner’s deserved insults into high praise, my ADHD will certainly celebrate the audacity.

But that being said, negative feedback has downsides in hate mail, and death threats, particularly from the crowd who are offended by queer content, no matter how much I’d take as winning points will scare the hell out of me, the urge to put haters in their place incredibly high.

And the point of these online ad-hominem attacks is to rile you up and get you saying something that you’ll regret, and they’ll use to get you blocked from Bluesky, which has happened a number of times to Trans people especially, never mind the hateful, pile-on bullying.

It boggles the mind, but seriously, that’s how weak these people are.

Thankfully, my release is quite far away—starving artist, be a while before I can get an editor—so there’s plenty of time to come to my senses and prepare to gather info to pass on to mods and Police, because I won’t stand that sort of thing, even from my political side.

In fact, I’ve come to my senses already. But I promise to love the, “Why can’t they speak American?” comments, guaranteed I could convince those folx they can go on kangaroo rides next time they’re over here.

A Dose of the Journey Ahead

As mentioned, I’d found my prose bogging down in its third act—and yes, it’s the third act, I’ve been agonising over calling it that—and there were things I’d missed that would serve the story. But as the rite of passage bit, it’s time to get Cole to change and correct his mistakes, which is the entire concept.

Yep, I’d given him whiplash, which turned an alpha reader off when the love interest had whiplash early on, that brutal feedback testament to how bad the first draft was.

Now that I’m done trimming and reverse outlining the first part, I’m hoping it reminds me of the pacing and keeps me going on that tangent, plus tie up loose ends and bend the mistake back to its true purpose.

All in all, I know I can put out a great, well-paced third act and climax, then probably find a way to tweak it and be considerably ready for beta readers at least. But what I’m looking forward to is the developmental edit.

As good as I’ve been on this draft’s first half there’s always room for improvement, and guaranteed there’s things, punctuation, and missing words that need fixing—ADHD that types a word in my brain but not on my keyboard.

But I need to ensure my voice is intact and train it for the next project, the one after that, and the one after that.

My grand plan is finding an editor to work with long term and giving them the time they need to provide what I need, same as with a cover designer and beta readers. Besides, I have questions and things I need to focus on, so if I split that between a few betas, I’ll turn out a great novel, not a good one.

Of course, going indie means I’m up against AI and self-pubbed dross, and yeah, I expect some contrarianism because I use em dashes, never mind AI went nuts on em dashes because we fed it em dashes. Contrarianism is so easy, and that screen on the other side of the internet is so empowering,

But that’s a discussion for another time, as is the book I’ll read when I’ve put the last full stop on this draft, as well as Skeletor outlining the next project, and I have my meme idea for my desktop background:

Remember, you have to flesh this out to a full outline, fully outline to write the chapters, then write the chapters to finish the book.

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN!

And you know what? I’m looking forward to giving Skeletor the finger.

A Dose of Au Revoir

Well that was fun to write on the 29^th, up and down in one afternoon for me, plus I had a pale ale while I was doing so, so that’s worth something.

In the meantime, I won’t be punching out my Q2 short story in one day to get it ready for the April 1st, so expect a Sunday 5th upload to the Short Stories page.

Plus, I’ve gotten back into Sacred Gold and have my build calculator done—with automatic attributes increase for each level and all, I’m the Excel master! But my ultimate tech-nerd move? Transplanting a laptop’s hard drive to my gaming PC because my son spilt water on it…

But apart from that and work, Bluesky time, quiet time with the darling partner, and religious time this weekend, I’ll try and be on the WIP.

Whoever, whatever, however, and wherever you are, I hope you have a good month or are able to make it.

Cheers,
T. M.