Andrew Q. Gordon

Author: Andrew

  • Book Two Of – ‘Champion of the The Gods- – Is Done

    Kinda. Sorta. Maybe. Hopefully?

    So After many months of start and stop, of rewriting while trying to keep the story intact, I’ve finished the rough draft of Book 2 – The Eye And The Arm. Those who’ve followed my blog know I struggled with this. Not because I didn’t have the story set, but because I had to make the story fit within a word limit. I’m having second thoughts now.  Overall, I feel the Champions series is good – dare I say very good, though I know the hubris of saying that.  My issue is I wanted it to be a bit more epic.

    Nendor has three main continents – Ardus, Laudria & Erd.  My goal was to make each book a journey that took the reader to each continent and back and than in Book 4 I’d wrap things up.  The 100-120K word limit left me two choices: abandon the 4 book model in favor of more books or abandon the original series and try to create a new, scaled down story that would fit in the 4 book model.

    Originally I decided to go with the former – preserve the overall story by breaking things into more, but shorter books.  That sound great in theory, but the issue has been conflict, tension and keeping the readers attention. My original book 2 would have been about four times longer than the current book. With revisions and eliminating things that aren’t essential, The Eye And The Arm would probably be about three times longer  – give or take 20-30 words.  The first third set up the rest. Cutting it down to the first third didn’t make sense because it was all set up and no conflict/tension – or not enough to justify a book.

    Re-writing the story required a major rewrite, I might as well have written a whole new book. That has been the labor of the last ten months.  (Of course I also published Purpose, finished NaNoWriMo, wrote a couple other things when I needed a break, joined the Wednesday Brief Flashers group – oh yeah, and I got married and helped raise our daughter.)

    The next step is to do a quick self-edit and send it to a few people who’ve agreed to read it and give me their honest opinion.  Once I get that back, I’ll know where to go next.

    In the meantime, I plan to work on another of the many projects I’ve been wanting to write. Stay tuned – details to follow. 🙂

    -AQG

  • ‘Guesting’ and blog tours.

    So I’m finally digging out from the avalanche that was my holiday. One of the things I’ve developed as a result of this year is yet more new found respect for my parents. It looked so easy to do lights, shop, cooked, a tree – not to mention my dad used to set up a Lionel Train set every holiday for us. But holy moly, trying to do most of those – and travel – really took the wind out of me.

    But I’ve had some time to recover and I’m regrouping for 2014. So with that, I’m looking to start booking guest posts and blog tours for the coming months.  I’m open to all types of posts – be they promos for new releases, interviews, giveaways and/or just stopping by to say hello and keep your name out there.

    Anyone who is interested, shoot me an email – [email protected].

    -AQG

  • Our Christmas In Pictures. ’13

    I wrote quite a bit about the lead up to Christmas ’13, but one thing I didn’t post was that we did a bit a of traveling for the holiday. [No sense advertising our house was empty for a few days, so I keep that info until I get back.] With a family all over, we had to make time for different celebrations.

    We started with Christmas Eve at our house. As a kid, Christmas Eve was spent at Grandma’s house.  The last two years we did that, but this year we had to switch things up.

    The next morning – we had to leave at 8:00 am to get a flight to visit my parents. She looked so cute in her Christmas Dress, tights and black shoes – if I do say so myself.

    But with travel, dinner, family, we opened gifts with my parents the next day.

    We stayed a few days, but due to travel, Christmas stretched a few extra days.  We still needed to take ‘lil q to see her other grandparents – oh and we needed to let ‘lil q open her gifts from Santa and her many friends.

    Then it was off to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Her ‘other’ Christmas dress was pretty cute too.

  • A New Year.

    I resisted the urge to post a first of the year, state of my authorship, replete with goals and resolutions. My goals and resolutions haven’t changed since the end of last year, the turning of the page to a new year didn’t do anything to make them any more devout.  I still want to eat better, lose some weight, exercise more, do more writing, etc.  But 2013 was quite a year for me, personally and professionally and it will be hard to find resolutions and goals to top last year.  So I’ll refrain from such things.

    That said, I reached a turning point with Purpose. I’d finished the story arc I started and needed to pick a new direction. When I started Purpose – A New Beginning, I expected to go back to Second Shot – The Senior Year. But this being a new year, I decided to start something totally new.

    Tomorrow I’m going to start a new story during the free Wednesday Briefs Flash fiction – that I’ve titled – My Guardian Angel Is A Cockblocker. As will all things, I never know how far I’ll take it, but I have a rough idea for the story so we’ll see. I ‘beta tested’ the title and from the reaction I figure if the story gets half as good a response it will be worth the effort.  So with that – here’s to the new year, whatever it may bring.

    -AQG

  • Christmas ’13 Part 4 – Christmas Cookies

    As many of you have guessed from the Holiday Event I had on my blog this season, I love the different aspects of Christmas. I also want to create memories for ‘lil q like my parents and grandparents did for me.

    On Deanna Wadsworth’s blog I wrote about how Christmas is for kids, even the little kid inside us all:

    Christmas Is For Kids:

    And onBrita Adams’ Advent Calendar, I wrote about Christmas lights and how ‘lil q and I went out driving to look for them.

    Christmas Lights: (more…)

  • Holiday Blog Event: Becky Condit – Christmas Pajama’s

    Christmas Pajamas

    When my children were small we fell into rather than decided on certain traditions. On Christmas Eve the children were each allowed to open one gift when we got home from Christmas Eve church services. I pretended to make a difficult choice, then handed each of them the one package they were allowed to open. Somehow they never caught on that it was always the one from their Granny and it always contained some really cool pajamas or a princess-worthy nightgown, which they were allowed to put on right away. My thirty-something daughters still talk about the year they received harem-style pajamas. Bicycles and dolls have been forgotten over the years but those pajamas linger as one of their all-time favorite Christmas memories. Sleepy heads snuggled in while Daddy read The Night Before Christmas, and then off to bed. The result was they always looked nice in the pictures taken the next morning as they opened Santa’s and other gifts. Cute kid pictures on Christmas morning: mission accomplished! This is a tradition that has been retained in our family as my grandchildren now open one gift on Christmas Eve, and it’s always from me and it’s always some really special pajamas or nightgown. They haven’t caught on to the trick yet either, but boy, do they look cute in their Christmas morning pictures. (more…)

  • Christmas ’13 Part 3 – ‘lil q’s Christmas Tree

    Every year Mike and I have this debate with ourselves, should we get a tree or shouldn’t we? By the time we get around to buying one, half the Christmas season is over and we ask ourselves, do we really want to spend the time and money on a tree. Every year we come to the same conclusion – yes, we need a tree. This year, ‘lil q understands that ‘she’ has a Christmas tree – and it has lights. Sunday we decorated the tree.

    We waited until she took her nap to begin. With two of us we just managed to get it done before she woke up.  When she saw her tree she was beaming. Made it so worth it just to see her smile. [I did say I was one of those parents.] (more…)

  • Christmas ’13 Part 2 – Christmas Shopping With ‘lil q

    Trying to shop with a toddler is like trying to herd goats – it sounds hard, but it ends up even harder. But with the Thanksgiving to Christmas time at under 4 weeks, we had to ‘multitask’. One of the tasks I didn’t let fall by the wayside was our weekend daughter/daddy breakfast. Every weekend – usually Sunday – I take her out to eat while Mike walks the dog. I get so little time to see her during the week – she’s still sleeping when I leave and at most she’s up for 2 hours after I get home and that includes, dinner and bath time – that I wanted a time for just us. When asked where she wanted to go for breakfast – she said ‘pancake house.’ [Okay, I gave her choices and that was one of them, but she did pick it.] (more…)

  • Christmas ’13 Part 1 – Our First Holiday ‘Concert’

    ‘lil q had her first holiday concert on Friday. Yes, I’m one of those parents who took off work early to be there and to film it. She walked in with her class, looked around but couldn’t see us.  I snapped a few pictures: (more…)

  • Holiday Blog Event: Rick R. Reed – A Favorite Christmas Memory

    One of My Favorite Christmas Memories

    One of the greatest joys of my life is my son, Nicholas. He’s far away now, living with his husband, Tarik, in Montreal, but I miss him every day. Around the holidays, I think a little more about Nick and the many happy Christmases we shared when we were all living much, much closer together in Chicago.

    Rick and Nick at Mt RainierOne Christmas, though, stands out. Because Nick’s mother and I divorced when he was six years old, we had to share him on the holidays. Usually, I got Nick on Christmas Eve and his mom would take him Christmas Day. One year when Nick was in high school, all the forces aligned to make it a very special Christmas Eve for just the two of us.

    It’s seldom we can have the luxury of not sharing our children with others, especially on special occasions like Christmas. But this time, this Christmas Eve, it was just Nick and myself. I will always hold this memory close and dear to my heart, not only because it was just us two, but because of the magic of what we experienced. (more…)