Just a little bit excited today as I hit the agreed word target by end of 2015 that I’d been aiming for. The 100 thousandth word was the very exciting ‘and’.

The only trouble is, the novel isn’t near finished. It’s looking like another 25-30 thousand words before I have a complete draft. I have no doubt a decent editor will trim it back to well under 100K but that’s all part of the fun process called writing.

So I hope to be at re-drafting / editing stage by May or June everything going well. A huge thanks to those who have offered to be on the initial team of ‘ideal readers’ to provide feedback on the second draft. If you like gaming / sci-fi and could devote some time to reading an unpublished manuscript in the second half of 2016, send me a message and I’ll let you know what’s involved.

I hope 2015 was as good as it could be for you, and that 2016 is even better. Thanks for all your support so far with this writing journey.

Approaching 65,000 words, an area that I’ve heard is littered with the bodies of those who gave up or fell down plot holes they couldn’t extricate themselves from. I’m please to report neither seem to be on the horizon, though I’ve had to step around some plot potholes that I’ll need to fill in later on.

Still on track for completion this year, which I’m just a little bit excited about.

A briefer update this time. The magical (at least to me) milestone of 50-thousand words was reached a couple of weeks before Christmas.

As of now I’m steaming towards 55 thousand words and still having a ball. Most interesting piece of research trivia over the past month: Australia produced its own car from 1919 called the Australian Six.

Nothing like time travel to bring vintage vehicles into the mix, albeit briefly.

Here’s to a great 2015 to anyone reading this, and to a completed novel by the end of it.

[Pic courtesy of here]

Apologies for the lack of updates, but I’m thrilled to report that the novel continues to progress nicely. I’d set a target of 50 thousand words by year’s end and am on track to exceed that by a little bit.

Naively, I’d estimated that the story would come in as a fairly short one at 60-70 thousand words. It’s become apparent this is more a 100-120 thousand word piece of work, so I’m doubtful 2015 will see a release taking into account revisions. No-one will be happier than I to be wrong on that count.

Another small snippet from the novel. It alludes to some big societal changes that occur between the two time periods (2016 and 2036) that the novel is primarily set in:

The Switch Off period played out over years, and such timeframes tend to benefit those trying to conserve the status quo. As much as there had been a backlash against technology, those who had created it weren’t about to destroy their work unless it couldn’t be avoided. Engineers, scientists, software developers, academics and a not insignificant cohort of the world’s general population could see the potential for a range of initiatives would be dramatically affected by a reduction in technology use. Medical research, improving agricultural processes and environmental monitoring were three obvious examples where a fundamental shift in attitude to technology could actually cost thousands or even million of lives.

Those working for government-funded research institutions had the longest lead time to save critical information, as the grinding inefficiency of decision-making meant detailed secretion efforts could be undertaken. Some were collaborative, others individual and unfortunately none were comprehensive outside of very specialised areas of expertise. In the corporate sector it was more difficult to make altruistic gains in data secretion, as intellectual property protection had become as rigorous as biological warfare safeguards. This obsession with protecting intellectual property did create a benefit in that it made it significantly harder for key information to be destroyed, and provided greater barriers to confiscation when Governments started their control measures.

A short list of unexpected things I’ve needed to research for this novel:

• Dental prosthetics
• 1970s refrigerators
• The history of the TV show A Country Practice
• Shearing shed skylights

I’d expected to be doing plenty of gaming research to confirm my own knowledge, but the broader stuff has been a bundle of fun. Have rolled past a quarter way through the novel and going strong.

The League of Old Gamers came into being in December 2013, and my daily work on it commenced on New Years Day 2014. After years of starting novels and falling by the wayside, I’m rapt to have found a method of writing that both keeps me going every single day, but also makes it fun. For me the secret has been a very realistic word count target per day, a pretty rigid time of day to write (11pm at night) and a story idea I can see working well over the longer form.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that the novel is going well and that I’m confident of having the first draft by the end of this year.

In the meantime, a short paragraph from a little way into the story:

Like a lot of ideas, The League of Old Gamers came to life after a solid night of drinking. These ideas are usually either forgotten or written off the next  morning as piss-induced delusions. Not so for this one – the four of them had been drinking enough to range between wild giggles and teary sentimentality, but not enough to guarantee overnight amnesia. Karen had decided to fire up one of her game consoles. It was the newly purchased Xbox’s turn tonight, though they tended to spend a lot of evenings on Karen’s faithful PS2 playing Silent Hill 2, with Scott being bagged mercilessly by the other three for being the one most likely to squeal. There wouldn’t be any of that during this session – it was one of those special nights when there was a brand new game to play. It sat there on the coffee table in front of them, its shrink wrap reflecting the fluorescent light above the lounge Karen and Joel were sitting on.

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