If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
A nod to an old friend & 20k words
In this one: an old friend from way back, 20k words of progress, and a new reel from Thaumatropic Fractures.Last newsletter I asked for some accountability help. A few people reached out. One was someone I think of as an old friend from high school. But I've got to tell a little story about him. Way back before high school, in 5th grade, I transferred into a new school roughly mid-year. In one of my classes, the teacher insisted I do a placement test. But the placement test was this set of cards that you worked through, apparently until you missed so many in one set. This stretched on for days, to the point where other kids were asking why I didn't have to do the homework or participate in classwork, and just sat doing the cards every day. The teacher said something like, "Well, because right now he's worked up into the ninth grade cards, and I want to see how far he'll go." Embarrassed, I purposefully missed the rest of the answers to end the situation. As you might imagine, I didn't earn any friends from that. Sometime later that week, there was some situation where the class was mocking me, but this one kid... big kid... by every right could have been a school bully... says, "It must be so cool to be that smart." And he meant it. And it halted the mockery. I doubt my buddy remembers doing that for me. We didn't become friends until High School, so years later. He went on to become an Airborne Ranger, then went to West Point, and after serving our country became a teacher. He's now working on a dissertation while teaching, and he told me he'd check in on my writing and asked me to poke him about his research. So here's a big public poke along with a thank-you for so many different things since 5th grade. That said, I HAVE gotten more writing done on my next book. I hit a bit of a tough phase where I was about 20k words in and realized I needed to do some global shifts that affect everything. I've slogged through those changes, which is slower than cranking out next chapters. In the past, I would have just made a list, marched forward, and done the changes later. But these were too significant, and they would have affected the rest of the story, so I'll decided to spend time on it. I intend to get those 20k words out to my early reader (for those that don't know, that's still my mother... she cranks through books like crazy, and always pretends to want to read my stuff). In the meantime, here's a teaser from the world while you wait--more like it coming on social: All books by Steven J. Morris Previous Newsletters
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Steven J Morris
If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
I promise I’ve made progress on Father of Stones (FoS). Here's a screenshot to prove it: click the photo to get to the live data showing progress But... I have put a little time elsewhere. I want to invite you to try this web-game I’ve been building out. It was meant to be a role-playing game around Thaumatropic Fractures, but ended up being focused on Thaumatropic Roots. https://tfrpg.sjmorriswrites.com https://tfrpg.sjmorriswrites.com The game will ask you to use your email to associate...
I built a tracking page for Father of Stones (FoS) this week. I did not, notably, write very much of said book this week. There's a joke in there about creative avoidance and I'm not going to pretend I don't see it. Anyway — here's what I made instead. Word Count Over Time A live chart of Father of Stones' progress since late June. I'm not smoothing over the slow weeks. There's a very flat stretch from June 'til August where I worked on the Eigenthrope story, then another flat stretch through...
Yesterday I needed to remember exactly how a character destroyed a dragon artifact three books ago. I didn't dig through my own novels to find it—I asked an AI I built to search them for me. It's called the Grimoire: a mini-AI system I put together with Pinecone that I can ask questions about my own books—hair color in a different epoch, a side character I want to bring back, a detail I'd otherwise lose momentum digging for. It keeps me writing instead of hunting. That's the quiet way AI has...