C. W. March

Magic Notebook - The Free Use Fucktoy

Continuing the new take on Sophia. I like the direction the story is heading better than the last one. Current heading gives me a good excuse to explore several types of characters, as well as the possibility of a big happy ending at the end.

Off-topic, I'm out of town visiting my family for a week starting tomorrow. I'm hoping to get a little time to write while I'm there, but that's may...

Augur: Blood and Bargains

I've finished the latest round of revisions from my editor. Most of it focuses on the first couple of chapters, which- fair enough. A lot of that hadn't been edited much past my first draft, and I think my writing skills have gotten a lot stronger since then. Giving it to the editor for another pass, but I'm close to the point of being happy enough with it to publish.

Uploading it here, a...

Master of One - Chapters 7 and 8

As I've been writing, I've been making some adjustments to some characters based on how they work out in any given scene. The result is that I'm going to have to go back and update some dialogue in past chapters to make things fit the new characterization (and in some cases, class and appearance) of those characters. Rather than doing that now, I'm pushing ahead to try to get a base framework l...

Dark Path Chapter 1

Following on the new prologue, this is intended to give a slightly tighter and more action-filled narrative. I like this version of Abigail better - dumb Abby didn't give me anything to play off of. Abby-turned-Azalea as an intelligent but inexperienced girl is a lot more fun.

Dark Path - Prologue

I had an idea for a slight reframing of the story to add some more depth. This is the first step I'll need to take in turning it into something worth writing, but I like the way it's shaping up better already.

The prologue is more or less done (for this draft, at least), but this is only the start of the 1st chapter. I'm still working through some of the details for how I want to get into...

Magic Notebook - The Aftermath

This is mostly a bridge chapter, showing how Dan is reacting to things, as well as taking us towards the next arc.

Master of One - Chapters 5 and 6

I think I may have missed a chapter upload because of the way Scrivener is labeling them. It's treating the prologue as chapter 1, so the later chapters are all one number off.

I'm updating the MoO current status, but also uploading Chapters 5 and 6 both here in case.

Quick Blog Post

Just posting so I don't go too long without uploading anything. I've come up with a new storyline I want to weave into MoO that's going to require a little planning. I'm probably going to put the very beginning of it at the end of chapter 5, so while I have uploaded a version of Ch.5 here, it's probably not the full complete version.

I'm also about 2.4k words into a new Magic Notebook cha...

Master of One - Chapter 4

Doing a little more to introduce some of the characters and relationships. The goal here is to establish:

• That monsters are a thing

• That the Siulori are competent adventurers

• That adventurers are a thing

• Tif as a character

• Morrie as a character

Magic Notebook - The Spirit

So, I already posted one 'The Spirit', but after getting through my first draft of the next chapter, I feel like the title fits this one better. I renamed the old 'The Spirit' Chapter to 'Escalation', for now. I've uploaded both even though I haven't changed the older one, in case in case someone hasn't read the last chapter and is seeing this post first. Text is the same.

More about our ...

Master of One - Chapter 3

Same idea as before - rewriting the same basic events with slightly different pacing and perspective as I try to find the right balance.

Master of One - Prologue, 1, 2

As I'm moving through different drafts of the story, I'm experimenting with different approaches to conveying the information, thoughts, and world building that I want to get across. The first version of the story was in first person, which is great for showing how a character thinks and feels about what's going on, but makes it harder to convey information to the reader. If it's something the ...

Master of One - Prologue

I've been messing around with some different additions and pacing for introducing some of the concepts I want to go over. I haven't been particularly happy with any of them, so I spent a few days thinking and talking things over with my editor. This is an attempt at a new take on style and introduction to the world. I'm going to try rewriting the first couple chapters in the same style to see i...

Magic Notebook - Chapter 4(b)

You can consider this a different branch of the Magic Notebook story. Chronologically it takes place a while after Dan's encounter with Jennifer and Song, and it represents a departure from the original story as outlined in the versions of chapters 4-6 I uploaded a while back.

Magic Notebook was not - as you might guess from its title - originally intended to be a serious story. The versi...

Master of One - Chapter 11

I may wind up needing to re-write Talo's portion of this pretty heavily. It's a little info-dump-y right now, but at the same time, there's a ton of stuff going on in the world that Logan - which may not wind up being the final name of our MC, but I like it better than Daniel - needs to know. The information that's interesting to someone who is actively living in a world isn't always the same i...

Master of One - Chapter 10

Starting to build out the world a little more. I had a basic map of the continent in mind, I'm starting to fill it out a little more in wonderdraft so I have an accurate gauge for where things are in relation to each other. It's not super detailed, and there's a ton of points of interest I still need to add, but it's a start.

Master of One - Incarnation - Current Status

This post will be kept relatively up to date with the latest version of Master of One - Incarnation, for easy reading.

Master of One - Chapter 9

The next couple chapters will probably flip back and forth a bit between Daniel and Tif. I've decided to slow down the plot a little at the beginning compared to previous iterations, to give me a chance to develop some personalities, reveal a little more backstory of some characters, and build up the world some more.

I'm also going to do the same thing I did with Augur Book 2 and create a...

Master of One - Chapters 7 and 8

I'm trying something new this time around - some of the chapters and sections are going to follow other characters. I don't think I could do that for Augur - most of the characters viewpoints are more alien, so Sara or maybe Zarina would be the only other characters to follow around Jack - but the characters in MoO are just people. Different species and with weird magical abilities, but just pe...

Master of One Chapter 6

Next MoO chapter done, and I've got a bunch more in the works. I'm trying to mix up the introductions of characters, their stories, world history and setting info without going too heavily in one direction or another.

The other good news about the current take on the story is that I'm pretty sure Tif's going to wind up in bed much sooner than on the first run through, and I think that'll ...

Master of One Chapter 5

It sounds obvious when I say it this way, but: it's turning out to be very helpful to have introduced one of the fundamental conflicts more openly and obviously.

The 'secrecy vs openness' theme was present in the first drafts of the story - Yuuna telling the MC not to tell anyone about how powerful he was, for example - but having both sides laid out openly gives me more to work with.

Master of One Chapter 4

I'm enjoying how this story is starting to shape up. I feel like introducing one of the longer-term conflicts immediately is the right call here, because it acts as a good way to give a kind of thesis statement about the themes.

Which sounds incredibly pretentious, when I say it, but I'm just going to stick with it for now.

I like this version of Yuuna a lot better. She felt a littl...

Master of One - Chapter 3

Caught something when my girlfriend's parents were here. It's hard to write a good sex scene when you're sneezing nonstop, so the Magic Notebook chapter is still in progress.

I'm still working on Master of One, but have decided to introduce some elements earlier than I originally had planned. I've finished a new version of chapter 3, but the next section requires that I do a little more w...

Master of One - Chapters 1 and 2

Revision d now, I think.

Chapter 1 mostly unchanged, except different stats on the stat sheet.

The bandit fight has some big differences, I'm testing out writing his initial physical power level as lower, but giving him more enhanced 'slow time' effect and seeing how I like it. This feels a little more grimdark and less cartoony - more Joe Abercrombie, less He Who Fights With Monste...

Master of One - Chapters 1 and 2

Just a quick update: Girlfriend's parents have been in town the last couple days, so not a ton of writing accomplished. I took a stab at re-doing MoO in 3rd person, trying to be slightly less granular and get into the LitRPG aspect more immediately. I think I like that better, so I'll likely continue in that vein.

The first chapter had 3 differently formatted versions of the charac...

Revised Augur B2 Chapter 18 and Epilogue

I have completed my most recent pass through editing Augur, and am ready to hand it off to my editor. I'm hoping there aren't a ton of revisions to come out of that-mostly language updates and such- but I need to let her take a pass through to make sure I didn't use the same word four times in a row, or something.

That said, I am quite excited to have finished this part of the process- in...

Quick Update

Thanksgiving Holiday, so a little less writing than usual, but I'm getting back on track. I've been doing revisions of the final two chapters and I think I'm going to wind up rewriting them both completely. I'm halfway through redoing the first chapter, and I like the way it's shaping up a little better. I feel like I have a better handle on the threads I want to tie together compared to befor...

Revised Augur B2 Chapter 17

More of this was rough draft than I remembered, but there still aren't enormous changes. Mostly updating tone and tightening language again to keep things nice and descriptive.

Only two and a half more to go.

Revised Augur B2 Chapter 16

Only big changes are at the end - Zarina's scene was a very rough draft, so that's been mostly rewritten, but the rest is just tightened up a bit.

Revised Augur B2 Chapter 15

Updated chapter 15. Slightly more changes than I thought, but nothing big - mostly it just required some tightening up here and there to make everything flow better.