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GabrielCaldwell

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  1. GabrielCaldwell
    Next month—November—is the annual National Novel Writing Month. People are signing up, or pledging—or just thinking about—writing a novel in one month. I’ve thought about doing it before, but never actually managed to make the target (which is to write 50,000 words in a month.)
    Do you want to write a book that’s only 50,000 words? Do you think you can write that much in one month? All good questions, and personally, I’m not going to take part because I want to end up with a completed novel in one month. But  I’m pretty sure I can meet that goal (it’s 1,600 words a day) and I feel like it could be a fun exercise. And if it takes more than a month to finish, that’s okay too.
    Anyone else thinking of taking part?
    Even if you aren’t, you might want to check out the website for NaNoWriMo. It has some interesting resources for writers covering plot and characters. Things that are important whether you are writing a 50,000 word novel, or something more or less ambitious.
     
    https://nanowrimo.org
  2. GabrielCaldwell
    Even I can’t believe it, but here it is mid-2020, and I’ve been incommunicado for over six months.
    I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but four months of that was taken up with an illness (mine), a family death, a move, and then for the last couple of months, I’ve just been recovering from all that.
    And after all that, whenever I went looking for things, they often proved illusive; “Three moves are as bad as a fire’—Benjamin Franklin.
    In many respects, I should be surprised that I ever got back at all. But here I am, and I’m hoping to get into the rhythm of writing in the next few months.
    Not Your Mentor has been on hold, but the next chapter is complete, and I’m doing the final edit. I’m planning on posting that chapter in a couple of weeks. (Sooner actually, but I’ve been wrong before!)
    My apologies to the readers for the long delay. I hope you understand.
    I would promise that it won’t happen again, but I now realize that there are many things in life that you really can’t control. You might think that you are in control, but unexpected events will overturn your apple cart. I don’t think I’m alone in that experience over the last few months.
    Gabriel
  3. GabrielCaldwell
    To celebrate the release of my book “They're Watching You," and the July 4th holiday, I'm holding a book giveaway. Send me an email (or you can send me a message through the Messages system here) before Monday July 8th, and I will randomly pick one winner of a copy of the book.
    The book is a gay romance/thriller.
    To enter, just send a message through the message system or an email to gabrielcaldwell@gmail.com, Subject: Book Giveaway.
    Have a great weekend everyone!
  4. GabrielCaldwell
    A new chapter of Not Your Mentor, Chapter 4, is up.
    It’s always interesting where ideas for stories come from. Even I don’t always understand—or remember—where an idea for a story came from.
    Often, an idea will come to me, and I start writing, and half an hour later, I can’t remember exactly what the original idea was. It’s already changed dramatically from the original concept.
    Some stories are based on people I see, and I try to imagine a back story for them. Other stories are based on situational ideas that come to me after reading something.
    Not Your Mentor was partly inspired by reading about mentoring programs that some companies offered. Not exactly exciting, but that’s where it started, and I thought it would be interesting to have two people thrown together through that. The final story isn’t exactly about that, but that’s not unusual.
    Sometimes a story comes to you pretty whole, and sometimes it comes in parts. You have an initial idea, you write it, but then you need more. And more. And you slog away at it.
    And sometimes you get really lucky, and you encounter something that fits perfectly into your story.
    I'm currently working on a story about a guy that falls in love with a footballer. (English football.) I’ve already written a few thousand words of the story, but at the moment it is really more of a sketch. It needs a lot more to turn it into something more than just a boy meets boy, argues, then eventually falls in love story.
    And then, this past week, the universe stepped in!
    A rookie player on the New England Patriots football team tweeted a Shakespeare quote, on Instagram. Then the (older/grizzled) Patriots quarterback replied that he should be reading his playbook (rather than reading Shakespeare!)
    Awesome! Suddenly I had an interesting conflict idea to add to my story!
    Thanks, Tom Brady!
     
    Boston Globe: Chase Winovich quoted Shakespeare on Instagram. Tom Brady told him to ‘study your playbook.’
  5. GabrielCaldwell
    The second chapter to Not Your Mentor is now up. For those wondering, the story currently runs about 14 chapters, though some of those are only in outline form, so the final number may be plus or minus one or two.
    It's been pointed out I put Las Vegas in one subtitle in place of New Orleans. I blame the fact that I referred to the "What happens in Vegas" motto at one point, and confused myself!
    In other news, my first book is now available on Amazon. Its called They're Watching You, and it's a gay romance, though there's also a thriller/mystery element to it.
     
  6. GabrielCaldwell
    I've posted the first part of my fanfiction conclusion to With Trust, a story originally written and posted by DomLuka.
    I think With Trust is one of my favorite pieces of gay fiction; I've read it several times, and I was disappointed that it was never concluded. Not that I blame the author for not doing so - I have stories that I've not completed, I know what that's like.
    But I still wondered what happened to Nelson and Milo.
    The idea of running away to the boat at the end of the last chapter was tantalizing. But what kind of boat was it? A sail boat or a motor boat? For a long time I imagined that it was a sail boat, and they attempted to sail it away, maybe down to Florida; though in truth, I could never even work out where Heywell was; Google Maps hasn't heard of it.
    I began writing the story for my own amusement, and I started with the sail boat, and then things just fell into place as I wrote it. 
    With Trust - A Conclusion is in two parts. The second part should be posted in about a week.
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