Relaunch 2025 - Adventures in Writing, Music and Art

New Year. New Start

Intro:

Dear Readers,

Confession, I have been in a creative funk for some time now, and I hate it!

There are reasons of course, but I don’t want to bore you with them. I don’t want to bore myself with them either. I have been trying to write this latest entry for months, and all I have managed to achieve is create a grandiose table of contents…. I made it impossible for myself and sucked all the fun of the whole process.

So I have decided to make a change for 2025 - create something leaner, punchy - A relaunch - Writing, Music and Art, in all its forms and permutations, traditional, modern, the future. I’m excited, and I hope will be excited to follow me on this adventure.

Writing:

I have just started writing a new novel - A Sword and Sorcery Novel - Currently titled “His Mental Blade”- I have spent the last week constantly creating the world, starting with the hero, and branching out from there. There is so much to work out, so many moving parts, kingdoms, plots , magic systems, etc etc. I think I am up to about 35 A4 pages of notes at this point. Although I usually use Google Docs to write, as per the theme of this substack, I've decided to try something different this time. I am going to write this novel in yWriter, which is a free word processer designed for novel writing, by the author of the really funny Sci-Fi Hal Spacejock series, Simon Haynes.

What is yWriter?

yWriter is a powerful novel-writing program which is free to download and use. It's designed for Windows 7 and later, but there are versions for Mac, IOS and Android Devices.

yWriter is a word processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes, helping you keep track of your work while leaving your mind free to create. It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind.

Simon Haynes - yWriter may look simple, but as the author of almost thirty novels written with this tool I guarantee it has everything needed to get a first draft together. Without yWriter, I would never have become a published author.

What's so special about yWriter?

As a programmer I'm used to dealing with projects broken into source files and modules, and I never lose track of my code. I decided to apply the same working method to my novels ... and yWriter was the result. Your work is broken down into chapters and scenes, and you can drag and drop them around to reorganise your novel.

I realise Word, OpenOffice and other modern word processors have outlining features, but they don't have snapshot backups to sequential files like yWriter does. Roll back scenes to where they were half an hour ago, or re-read a version from four months ago - yWriter stores them all, automatically.

Download yWriter here

Visit Simon Haynes author website here

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HAL SPACEJOCK 1

A pair of misfits accept an impossible cargo job. Can they beat the odds and deliver?

Buckle up for mayhem, mischief and payback as a creaky old robot and a down-on-his-luck space pilot turn the tables on the bad guys... and each other.

"Brilliantly quirky, wildly absurd"

"The perfect blend of adventure, conflict and laughable moments"

https://www.spacejock.com.au/Hal1.html

Art:

This piece, which I jokingly called, ‘Sentient AI Robot Reads a Magazine While Human Mechanic does the Work’ was done in a 3D program called Daz3d. I am still fairly new to DAZ, and this is my 2nd fully composed picture (meaning it wasn't something where a lot of the work had been already done by someone else and I just had to drop a character into it....I had to create it from scratch.

I think the inspiration for the image is clearly Star Wars, although I wasn’t aiming for that in particular. I had the Trident aircraft model, and some Daz3d pose files for a spaceship mechanic, so that is what I used and built everything else around it. It is a fairly long process because you have to place and pose everything in a 3d space, plus position all the lights off camera… after that, the Daz program adeptly handles shadows, reflections and renders the image.

For those interested I used the follow products: Trident Sci-fi Aircraft. Aura for Gen 8. Daz Dog 8 - Bulldog. Daz Dog Space Suit. Toolbox and small flying robot from Blenderkit and then imported into Daz, Fabrice 9 wearing interstellar uniform (although it could be any character really) Royalty-Free Space Background.

Find more about Daz3d here

Music:

Work is progressing on my first full length new age / relaxation album.

I hope to have a new track to share with you soon.

Here is the link to my first two tracks that I created earlier this year.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPwdmyeCEiTaBqHPj5Saq4a1WNsKjgj8G&si=b03H5RSbea71CLpx

Further Reading:

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End

Dear reader. Wishing you all the best for 2025, especially good health, and I hope you get time to read, write, draw, craft, and enjoy all your hobbies and creative endeavors.

Thank you for reading.

Adam