{"id":41481,"date":"2015-05-22T22:37:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T22:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2015\/05\/22\/thank-the-gods-its-an-update-meet-pitney\/"},"modified":"2017-07-02T02:12:14","modified_gmt":"2017-07-02T02:12:14","slug":"thank-the-gods-its-an-update-meet-pitney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2015\/05\/22\/thank-the-gods-its-an-update-meet-pitney\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-41481 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2015\/05\/22\/thank-the-gods-its-an-update-meet-pitney\/attachment\/41482\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/tumblr_norw5yJPsc1rsbe2bo1_1280-1-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/tumblr_norw5yJPsc1rsbe2bo1_1280-1-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/tumblr_norw5yJPsc1rsbe2bo1_1280-1-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>Thank the gods, it\u2019s an update!<\/p>\n<p>Meet Pitney Scolan. Pit, for short. He\u2019s a decorated general, a venerated leader of the human race sprawling across the galaxy. He\u2019s protected his species from hostile alien life, vicious native populations, and insidious marketing campaigns. He&rsquo;s fiercely introverted, and he\u2019s <i>really <\/i>excited to be retiring to his personal planet in the very near future.<\/p>\n<p>Only&hellip;now he\u2019s a dog.<\/p>\n<p>A daugment, actually. A cybernetically enhanced canine, previously the doting pet of Pit\u2019s biggest rival, General Tristan. And now it\u2019s the only way to escape certain assassination.<\/p>\n<p>Pit grudgingly allies himself with a pair of well-meaning scoundrels and sets sail for seedier space in hopes of escaping Tristan\u2019s clutches. What he finds instead is a galactic conspiracy to force him to make friends.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash;-<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the short version of <i>Daugment<\/i>, my latest science fiction novel! It\u2019s based <i>exceedingly <\/i>loosely on the Irish legends of Bran and Sceolang, the hounds of folk hero Fionn mac Cumhaill. (You can read about them <a href=\"http:\/\/aahhtt.com\/?p=139\">here<\/a>.) As I often do, I read material outside of the realm of science fiction and found myself asking, <i>What if I set this story in space?!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Daugment <\/i>is what resulted from jotting that idea down in one of my myriad notes files. Last November, I haphazardly threw together a one-page outline a week before NaNoWriMo started, telling myself this was a throw-away idea. I had incredibly low expectations for the story when I started; in fact, I\u2019d chosen it because I thought it would end up being an easy write and hopefully an easy read. A bargain e-book.<\/p>\n<p>It may still be that, but I did the typical author thing and fell in love with my characters.<\/p>\n<p>Not until February or March of this year (2015), though. I was a little distant from Pitney and Ravenna, especially, up until I\u2019d set the book aside for a couple of months and was forcing myself to come back. Five hundred words a day. A task of an hour, if I really dragged it out. A reasonable amount of time to devote to my craft in the midst of a busy season at my day job.<\/p>\n<p>At one point, I had Rave and Pit bantering about their favorite writer of introversion philosophy, and I realized who those two pups were based on. A couple of my friends had apparently decided they were going to make a starring appearance in my throw-away book, and suddenly I knew exactly how it was all going to go down.<\/p>\n<p>I like these canine versions of my friends. (I like the real ones, too.) I liked seeing how they played out their story. And I\u2019m pretty happy with this figment of my weirdo imagination.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s work left to do, integration of my notes and a few other rewriting tasks. Of course. That\u2019s the thing I forgot about as a kid, as a wannabe novelist lifer: the editing phase kinda sucks. But when I really look at it, <i>Daugment <\/i>make<i>s perfect <\/i>sense as my first book. Talking animals in space?<\/p>\n<p>Talk about the <i>exact <\/i>book 12-year-old me <i>needed<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>The image above was commissioned on Fiverr.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thank the gods, it\u2019s an update! Meet Pitney Scolan. Pit, for short. He\u2019s a decorated general, a venerated leader of the human race sprawling across the galaxy. He\u2019s protected his species from hostile alien life, vicious native populations, and insidious marketing campaigns. He&rsquo;s fiercely introverted, and he\u2019s really excited to be retiring to his personal &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2015\/05\/22\/thank-the-gods-its-an-update-meet-pitney\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1002,3864,939],"class_list":["post-41481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daugment","tag-updates","tag-writerlife","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41483,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41481\/revisions\/41483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}