Alan Morgan

Alan Morgan March 16th, 2007

Did some 414 words this morning on Providence, kicking off Chapter 15. I’m not sure exactly what I want to do with this chapter; I know the first half of it, but I can keep it just to Shiobhan and Robert, or have Glenn come back and get involved in the conversation. Really not sure just yet. Cleaned up the outline the other day, but haven’t really planned out the next set of chapters yet. Need to do that soon– before I can finish 15, I think.

Also, I’ve decided to finally give Providence a tentative title: “Blood of the Goddess”. There’s two meanings to this, which won’t be clear until the end of the book, but I think it fits. I was going to try to use a theme for the whole series, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen. Guess I’ll take it as they come, one step at a time.

(Disclaimer: rant ahead.) And can we pretty please get rid of the fucking snow and freezing temperatures already? I want my damn spring already, my arthritis is sick and tired of winter, thank you very much.

• Blood of the Goddess , Progress
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Alan Morgan March 7th, 2007

Just finished up chapter 14… 1890 words. Yay!

I’ve been out of commission since January due to the osteoarthritis. Just when the weather started to warm up, I caught a nasty cold (probably bronchitis) which I had for two weeks. I’m finally getting over that– still somewhat congested, but otherwise back to my normal self.

Oh, and the weather has gone back to single-digit and teen temperatures again. Some days I really do hate living in New England.

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Alan Morgan January 30th, 2007

It’s been a long time since I updated. I’ve finished chapter 13 and am currently working on chapter 14 now. I had intended to get a story into Forbidden Publications for their Valentine’s Day theme, but didn’t manage to get it done in time. Life’s been pretty hectic, dealing with the stress of financial and health issues. There’s more info on that on my personal LiveJournal, if you’re so inclined.

Since it’s been a while, here’s a snippet from chapter 13:

Taking another drink of coffee, he said, “Vincent called around to some of the other Packs, to see if it was a Pack war he hadn’t been told about. Turns out that some of the other Packs have run into similar situations. We usually leave a few folks behind when we hunt to keep the den safe, but that’s over now. Word is, someone’s hunting us—and that’s pretty bad news. What’s worse is we haven’t found any of the missing, not a trace. Just vanished as if they never existed. Don’t even turn up any bodies afterwards.”

“That’s horrible,” Shiobhan said. “Any ideas what’s going on?”

“Jordan has a theory. He thinks some humans have figured out about us and have declared war. He’s a paranoid bastard, but I’m not sure he’s wrong. Whomever is doing it is good—not a trace left behind, and we have very good tracking senses, let me tell you. Possibly military or one of the government agencies with initials for names.” Sighing, he said, “Problem is, Jordan isn’t for waiting to catch the bastards responsible. He’s about ready to take the Pack on the offensive and start bringing the fight to humans.” Looking up, he met her eyes squarely and said, “And he doesn’t really care about getting innocents involved.”

Speechless, Shiobhan just stared at him while her brain tried to process what he’d just said. “You mean…”

“I mean he’s about to take the Pack and start hunting humans.”

• Blood of the Goddess , Progress , Snippets
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Alan Morgan November 5th, 2006

I just realized that I haven’t updated this in some time. I took the last part of October off as I got sick with a nasty bug, but I did finish up chapter 6 in October and just finished chapter 7 today. Hurray for progress

A quick snippet:

She reached into her purse and pulled out a vial, checking the label and nodding in satisfaction. Opening it, she dabbed a few drops on her fingers and moved to the side of his bed. Leaning forward, she placed her fingers on each of his temples and gently began rubbing the oil in. He breathed deep, smelling something crisp and clean, as the coolness of the liquid and the gentleness of her touch seemed to pull the pain back. Realizing that he had instinctively closed his eyes in pleasure, he reopened them to realize he was staring down her shirt at a delightful expanse of soft skin, and closed them again.

He opened his eyes again when she was finished, and looked around in amazement as his vision seemed sharper and clearer. Shaking his head, he felt no remnants of pain or tension, the fog that had been clouding his mind gone. “I have no clue what was in that, but that certainly worked miracles.”

Smiling, she handed him the small bottle. “Here, keep this. Hopefully, you won’t need it, but if you do, you’ll have it handy.”

“Thank you,” he said with sincerity. “I was thinking of heading there tomorrow around nine, I figure it’ll be dark by then and I’ll have a better chance of remembering if it’s as close to the other night as possible.”

“We’ll see you there, then, Mr. Chase– Glenn.”

“Count on it.” He watched the two leave, part of his mind wondering what their deal was, another part concerned that they were right and her sister being kidnapped was the reason he’d been attacked. Neither part objected to watching Shiobhan walk away… only that she disappeared from sight far too quickly.

Hope you all had a happy Samhain / Halloween! And good luck to everyone participating in NaNoWriMo. You’ll need it!

• Blood of the Goddess , Progress , Snippets
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Alan Morgan October 15th, 2006

Finished up chapter 5 yesterday, which fulfilled my goal of 3 chapters in September & October for Evolution’s Novel Mission. Yay I’ve gotten too used to not meeting any goal that I set for the longest time, it really feels nice to actually hit one for once.

Did some brainstorming in chat, as I was in a bit of an indecisive quandry about where the story was going next. I mean, I know the overall plot and the story end (or at least parts of the end), but it’s the journey that I’m somewhat clueless on. But after thinking about the way it’s been going and what’s going on right now, and the larger conflicts in play, I managed to piece together a string of the next few chapters (through to chapter 8). This is a good thing, because nothing stops me colder in my tracks than wondering, “So what happens next, again?”

So, now I have a map and a plan, time to get back to it.

• Blood of the Goddess , Progress
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Alan Morgan October 7th, 2006

Managed to finish up Chapter 4 after working on it today at work and yesterday before work, coming in at 1595 words. Have another snippet:

She made her way to East Andrews Hall without further incident and found Room 110. Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door before she lost her nerve and chickened out.

The door cracked open and a girl with purple spiked hair answered. “Yeah?”

“Hi, I’m Shiobhan McGowan. I was looking to see if my sister was home?”

“Jennifer,” the girl said, holding out her hand as she opened the door the rest of the way. “You must be the ‘devil worshipping freak’ my roommate’s talked about. Speaking as one freak to another freak, glad to meet you.”

Shiobhan shook hands with Jennifer and stepped into the room, smiling as she felt the cool embrace of the wards around the room welcoming her. “Indeed. Merry meet, and nicely done,” she said, hands indicating the shields.

“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her– the opposite, in fact– and I have to live here, too. But, no, Sarah’s not here now.” A frown crossed her face as she stopped to think. “Actually, I didn’t see her come home last night. I was a little out of it, coming home from a campus GBLT meeting, and was too tired to think anything of it. But it’s not like her.”

“Any idea where she might be?” Shiobhan asked, the uneasy feeling settling in her stomach with an increasing weight. “My father asked me to check in on her, and I’m a bit worried.”

“Not really,” Jennifer admitted. “We don’t exactly run in the same social circle, I’m sure you can imagine.”

For any readers interested in following the whole story as I write it, I’ve set up a mailing list via Gmail to send chapters out to folks. This seems to be working fairly well for some fellow writers of mine so I figured I’d hop on the bandwagon. Anyways, just drop me a line with your email address and I’ll catch you up and add you to the list for further chapters.

Also got some rampaging plotbunnies that gave me some more details about the end of the book and the sequel to come. Not everything is what it appears to be… *cackle*

• Blood of the Goddess , In Progress , Progress , Snippets
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Alan Morgan October 3rd, 2006

Finished up chapter 3 of Providence Paranormal for a total count of 1460 words.

Chapter 4 shifts back to Shiobhan’s POV, which– right now– is where the action is at. Glenn’s next chapter should have more, but right now he’s still trying to figure out what happened to put him into the hospital. And, more importantly, why.

Have another snippet

Just another mushroom, fed bullshit and kept in the dark, he thought grimly. If something bigger was going on, the way his gut told him it was, then last night was no accident. The cops might not be inclined to follow up on one more random act of violence, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t. He promised himself that he’d look into things as his head started pounding and he gagged with sudden nausea. Bright lights appeared from out of nowhere, swirling and strobing with a painful intensity.

Staggering, he made it back to the bed– barely– and hit the call button before the darkness surrounded him. His vision faded from him, first grey, then black, deepening until a pindrop of red exploded within and he felt no more.

• Blood of the Goddess , In Progress , Progress , Snippets
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Alan Morgan October 2nd, 2006

September wasn’t too bad to me, ignoring financial issues. Managed to get 2623 words for the month– not a lot to some of you, but that’s slightly higher than my yearly average. If I was managing to write every day it would be a lot higher, but my biggest problem with writing is that I don’t do it consistantly enough. Partly due to work and partly due to discipline.

Anyways. I figure I’m about halfway through the 3rd chapter of Providence. Here’s a snippet for you folks:

“Okay, hon. Rest up and I’ll send the doctor in in a moment.” He caught himself staring at her shapely ass as she walked out the door and reminded himself, You’re engaged now… stop checking out every chick you see.

Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen, his more rebellious side argued, and he sighed. He took stock of the room, standard hospital issue, white walls, uncomfortable chairs, TV tuned to some morning talk-show. Politics… not something he really cared to listen to anymore. He picked up the remote and flipped through the channels, finding nothing but more of the same old early morning crap he never bothered watching. Can’t they get a bloody TiVo in here or something? Christ.

Chapter 3 is going a bit slow because there isn’t a lot of action/conflict involved yet. I have some ideas that I’ve been thinking about to spice it up a bit, but they really belong in another chapter or two later. He still has to talk to the cop about his assault, and then in chapter 4, Shiobhan goes looking for her sister and meets her sister’s roommate.

• Blood of the Goddess , In Progress , Progress , Snippets
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Alan Morgan September 20th, 2006

For the past year, I’ve been keeping track of my word counts via Evolution’s WIP Manager and Progress Meters.Today I decided to futz around with Excel and graph my productivity:

Now if I can only start hitting those high points on a monthly basis, and avoid the low points (ouch @ July…), I’ll be a happy camper. Part of that is buckling down, and part of that is also settling on a project and working on it regularly to completion.

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Alan Morgan June 17th, 2006

Done:

Revised A&B Homework #3 - Character Biography for Zarin - 320 words
Completed A&B Homework #4 - Motivations exercise for Zarin - 194 words

To do:

A&B Homework #3 - Character Biography for Marten
A&B Homework #4 - Motivations exercise for Thaltron
Chapter 3 of Providence Paranormal (start it, at least)

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Alan Morgan May 16th, 2006

Productive morning today… did work on catching up a bit on the Above & Beyond homework and finished up Chapter 2 of the paranormal. It’s coming along nicely.

Snippet from “the call”:

Shiobhan took the phone from Taz and headed through the back room, sitting down in the chair before speaking. “Hi, dad.”

“Joan? Is that you?” he asked.

“It’s Shiobhan, dad, not Joan.”

“We named you Joan. That’s what it says on the birth certificate. It’s a fine Christian name… I still don’t understand why you felt you needed to change it to your nickname.”

“We’ve had that argument too many times before for me to want to have it again right now.” She mentally counted to one hundred, trying to keep calm. For some reason, he always manages to push just the right buttons to piss me off faster than almost anybody else. “Why are you calling? Is Sorcha all right?”

He sighed, and she realized with the sound that he was getting old. It wasn’t a sigh of frustration or anger, but the sigh of a man past his prime, faced with something he didn’t know how to handle. “Yes and no. It’s hard to explain. I’m not even where to start.” Pausing for a moment, he added, “Or if I even should. Look, there have been some things I kept from you when we’ve talked lately… not that we’ve talked much at all, lately.”

“I know.” Silence stretched across the phone, growing more awkward by the moment. “I live my life the way I believe, and you don’t approve. You’ve made that clear on virtually every occasion that you’ve had the opportunity to do so since Mom died. It’s hard to talk to you when your first reaction is to criticize who I am and what I do.” Tears sprung back up in her eyes, tracing down her cheeks again as she reached for a tissue on the receiving table.

1490 words today… been a while since I’ve written that much in basically one sitting.

• Blood of the Goddess , Progress , Snippets
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Alan Morgan May 14th, 2006

Started chapter 2 of the paranormal today. Chapter 1 needs some revision, but I decided to set it aside for now and move onward. I need to add more description to the first scene to foreshadow events later on, but really… that’s not important right now. The important part is the conflict that’s brewing in the second chapter. I spent more time in the setup than I thought I would, but I think it’s good.

Snippet from chapter 1:

As she and Kelly finished bringing in the last of the plants, Taz looked up from one of his books and said, “Oh, someone called for you, Shiobhan… at least, I think it was for you. Said he was looking for the owner, but he said her name was Joan. Didn’t leave a message.”

Goosebumps ran over her skin, and she nearly dropped the pot she was holding. “Shiobhan is the Gaelic version of Joan. Did he leave a name?”

“James, I think,” Taz said. “Hung up before I could say much other than you weren’t here. Seemed like a bit of an asshole, to be honest. Really snotty.” He shrugged and went back to studying his calculus book.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Shiobhan muttered.

Kelly looked over at Shiobhan with concern, never having seen her so rattled before. “Who is he? Some stalker ex of yours or something?”

“No,” she said. “Worse than that. Much worse than that. He’s my father.”

I’ve written 4 days so far this month. That’s good and bad… hurray for progress, but that’s small considering how far into the month we are. I dropped my David and Goliath goal down to 100 because I don’t see myself hitting 7500 words this month. I am, however, over halfway to 3000 words.

• Blood of the Goddess , Progress , Snippets
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Alan Morgan May 8th, 2006

Haven’t updated for a bit, but that’s not to say that I haven’t been productive

Revised some of the bios for A&B and posted them up. Still have more to work on– both writing and revising. Going to focus on the ones for Upon Wings of Hope first and try to catch up to the current coursework, then work on Luzon as I have time.

Did some 1000 words so far this month on Providence Paranormal. Started at the wrong spot, but the scene that wasn’t really flowing for me in the beginning turned out to be the second scene, where it fits a lot better. I’m sure that I’ll have to revise it later, but that’s par for the course.

Settling in with the new medication and that is helping a bit. Unfortunately with the recent heat, my back has been hurting more. I should be up to a full dose of the new medication as of today (started me out at a 1/2 pill for the first two weeks), so we’ll see how well that works. Definite decrease on the migraine front, which is also quite good. And the next few days are supposed to be a bit cooler, which should help.

How’s everyone else doing?

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Alan Morgan March 17th, 2006

Did some 544 words today on Adrian’s character bio. It’s a little jumbled, because I was writing with a headache (probably a migraine) and my back was acting up. He went more into backstory of the setting that personal life, which is something I’m not going to let him keep avoiding. I appreciate him giving me a history lesson, but the bio is, well, about him.

Will try to work on it more later, because I want to get his done before I move on to Alexa’s or Stefanos’. And I want to get them done before I jump back into the first Savage Lands short.

Current progress for the month:

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Alan Morgan March 15th, 2006

Doing ok, not as much as I wanted to be at by now, but given all the server problems I’ve been dealing with over at Evo, that’s not a surprise. Just finished up a character biography for Slip, one of my characters in the Thantil setting. (Leave a comment with your LiveJournal username if you want access to any of this, it’s on my writing filter there.)

Also started an erotica short that is currently untitled, which I have posted on my erotica filter over at Sacred Passion.

More bios to work on… only 1 down, with at least 9 more to go to finish my Mission Goal for March and April…

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Alan Morgan February 14th, 2006

Did some pre-writing work for Shadows Into Twilight…

2006 Progress: February
3207 / 10000 (32.07%)

The sad thing is, it’s February and I’ve already written about 40% of what I did total for 2005. And I haven’t even really written that much this year, either.

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Alan Morgan December 14th, 2005

Did make some progress on A&B character bios… total for the month:

Progress: December 2005
2510 / 7750 (32.39%)

Lowered my goal for the year:

Progress: Year of 2005
19156 / 25000 (76.62%)

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Alan Morgan November 23rd, 2005

I’ve been stalled on this WIP for a while, mainly because I had to come to terms with it changing genres on me. But:

Upon Wings of Hope (Outline)
44 / 44 (100%)

All is good now.

( Read more... )

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Alan Morgan October 4th, 2005

Checked and realized that I’ve done more this year than I thought… retallied:

So that makes it:

2005 Progress
11526 / 40000 (28.82%)

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Alan Morgan September 25th, 2005

2005 Progress
6093 / 40000 (15.23%)

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