{"id":6583,"date":"2015-05-23T18:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T18:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2015\/05\/23\/augustwritesabook-thank-the-gods-its-an\/"},"modified":"2017-06-30T15:43:41","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T15:43:41","slug":"augustwritesabook-thank-the-gods-its-an","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2015\/05\/23\/augustwritesabook-thank-the-gods-its-an\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-6583 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\/23\/augustwritesabook-thank-the-gods-its-an\/attachment\/6584\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/tumblr_norw5yJPsc1rsbe2bo1_1280-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/tumblr_norw5yJPsc1rsbe2bo1_1280-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/tumblr_norw5yJPsc1rsbe2bo1_1280-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/augustwritesabook.com\/post\/119633259917\/thank-the-gods-its-an-update-meet-pitney\">augustwritesabook<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\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\u2019s 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\u2026now 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>\u2014-<\/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 of 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<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>augustwritesabook: 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\u2019s fiercely introverted, and he\u2019s really excited to be retiring to his &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2015\/05\/23\/augustwritesabook-thank-the-gods-its-an\/\" 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":[1002,3866,1917,3865,3864,939],"class_list":["post-6583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daugment","tag-for-anyone-who-doesnt-follow-my-author-blog-which-is-not-as-active-as-it-shooould-be","tag-long-posts","tag-summaries-and-things","tag-updates","tag-writerlife","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583","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=6583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6585,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions\/6585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}