With a New Story Done, I Continue

The latest story I finished, In Queue, was posted last week on Monday. The amount of view it has received was phenomenal! As well as the amount of positive feedback has received was jaw-dropping for me. Such feedback just keeps fueling motivation to continue writing. I think I found my place in this world: Creative Writing. I may have gotten my Bachelor's in Game and Simulation Programming, and I do enjoy what I do for a living. However, it has become just another job for me. Working the Unity Game Engine has been giving me good experience that I could use to get another job in the near future working with indie game companies. In the end though, I'm a creative writer, I am absolutely in love with writing. I create these worlds, characters, and scenes that people enjoy reading.

Now that I have finished In Queue, I have moved onto my next story which is nearing completion by the end of tonight. Proofreading and editing will commence tomorrow afternoon during my lunch break. This brings me to my next topic: My grammar sucks. It is absolutely horrible. How am I bettering myself as a writer? I am taking a grammar class at USF to amend my grammatical mistakes. I never liked editing my own work because I am one of those stubborn people who feels when I finish writing that I'm done. This is why I love my last story because In Queue opened a door I kept lock. For the first time I sat down to proofread and edit my work. For nearly a decade and a half when I wrote papers for school I would never ever edit it. I blame my stubbornness for the grammatical mistakes of now. I want to better myself as a writer to garner more fan base among people.

Now that I am proofreading and editing my own work, I decided to go back to read my first real venture into writing. I read The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter which is my work of genius in my opinion. That is what I thought until I sat down to read it, and I could not get passed the first page. It was so horrible! I kept stumbling through sentences, running out of breath with run-ons, and noticed common splices. The first page alone was riddled with grammatical errors! No wonder people I knew did not want to read it. For those who pushed themselves to read it from beginning to end; I thank and apologize for doing so! For almost a year now I been trying to get someone to proofread and edit it for me. But The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter is quite honestly beyond editing. When I was editing In Queue, I was able to edit 20 pages within a few days. The Departing Tale... is a little over 70 pages, so there is no excuse for me to sit down and edit it myself. Honestly, I'm not going to bother editing, I'm going to sit down and rewrite the entire novella. Logically it makes more sense because of all the grammatical errors is just too much.

I'm going to end this blog with thanking you all for stopping by and reading my endeavors in writing. I implore anyone out there to go after what they are passionate about. Peace and Love.

PS Just one more thing to mention: two people have messaged me saying I have inspired them to start their own writing projects. Hearing that just made me feel all kinds confident because to inspire people to go after something is an amazing feeling!

My Continuing Endeavors

I am working as hard as ever to make something myself both career and hobby wise. In a previous post I had mentioned that I would follow the example of acclaimed author Stephen King. He read four hours a day and wrote in the other fours of the day, he easily wrote 3,000 words on average. Following that, I would read chapters/passages of a book after work and then write to meet a quota of a 1,000 words before going to bed. There have been days I meet the goal, some days I got beyond 1,000 words, some days were I am shy of a 1,000 words, and there some days I do not write at all. And that is okay because this is a new venture in my life I am now focusing on. Over time I will get better and better as I continue this focus on my serious hobby.

It's a Constant Inspiration

Exactly what it states, I have a constant inspiration to write now because I read so much now. Let me put it to you this way: my PlayStation 3 was recently fixed back in early July, and I have only turned on average about 3 hours during a work week and 8 hours on the weekend. What does that mean? It means I have no distraction nor a desire to play video games as much as I used to. I would rather read a book than play video games. Do not get me wrong I will turn the PS3 and play some downloaded games or 3D Dot Game Heroes but in the end I do more reading. When I do this leisure reading it helps give me an idea how I would write my own stories. At this very moment I am a little over 8,000 words in my new short story. I should be working on it now, but I want to update my blog because this is basically where my writing began.

Recent Reads

Under the suggestions of my good friend David J. Sushil, to read the books The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and On writing by Stephen King. Strunk's book I have thumbed through to get ideas of how I should word my sentences, paragraphs, etc. However, with Stephen King's book I cannot for the life of me put it down. I bought it on Friday (July 29, 2011) after I finished the book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, which I finished around Monday or Tuesday (July 25 - 26, 2011). With this book On Writing by King is hands down a great read. I am only over a quarter way close to half way now through the book and I had started yesterday (July 30, 2011).

On Writing is such a page turner because it is part memoir depicting King's experience in writing and how his experiences influenced his writing. Then it is part a guide of how authors should write. Sushil is just like my father when it comes to Stephen King. They are huge fans of his work, and I, for one, never read his work until recently. My father had a large number of King's books and I remember growing up I would thumb through them, but I lacked the attention span to ever read them. Recalling my earliest memories to relate to my father, Louis Dieppa, I would watch movies based on Stephen King's work and I have always enjoyed them. The same day I started On Writing, I decided to call my father and talk to him about this book. As soon as I told my father I was reading a King book he went off talking about how much he enjoyed his work. The other week I asked my father to send me some of his Stephen King books, specifically The Dark Tower Series which I do not know is a good place to start, but I want to read them.

Reading the Stephen King book, I am noticing how much he and I relate as authors/writers. On Writing just really resonates with me in the way how King draws from his experiences with people and life in general that influences his writing style. Some of his habits I can relate to as well. I never had a drinking problem or a drug addiction, but there was a point I was addicted to playing video games for a while. Especially became addicted to playing an MMORPG by the name of Final Fantasy XI. I never wrote as a kid as King did, but I did have a very active imagination and I used to improvise stories when I was at school. Stephen King's book has really resonated with me and I am taking everything he says to heart. Love him or hate him, Stephen King knows how to write a book and capture a reader's attention.

Opinion Time

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I recently finished a book titled Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. This was quite an interesting book and for the simple fact I purchased on a whim after reading the description of the book on Barnes and Noble's website. I bought it and downloaded it onto my Nook (loving that piece of technology). The book has a sense of quirkiness and eeriness surrounding its text. The book recently came out over a month ago and it is the author's first attempt at writing a novel. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Have to say the whole thing like A Tribe Called Quest) really captured my attention from the get go. It describes a boy named Jacob who heard these stories from his Grandfather about this home back in Wales of this children that were peculiar. One child had bees living in him, a girl that can levitate, a brother and sister that can lift more than their own weight, a girl who can create fire, and a boy who is invisible. These children were watched by a little bird who kept them safe from people that would not understand them.

Here comes criticism time, the book has a solid plot, but its story was pretty predictable. I pretty much knew the ending less than half way through the book. However, I really enjoyed the main character's interactions with the other characters such as his father, his psychologist, his mother, his grandfather, Miss Peregrine and the peculiar children. All of that was very solid writing. The characters were not mundane, but full of color (or life). Another place where I felt like faltered but I ended up forgiving it was when the main character fell in love with the female protagonist rather quickly. Like I said, I forgave it because the main character is 15 years old, and I remember falling in love too quickly with girls when I was his age (Holy shit that was 10 years ago....smh). Overall, if you have time and looking for an odd book to read, then I suggest you pick up Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

As always thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Peace and love! Be Good!

Best of Orlando Weekly

Recently I have received the honor of placing 3rd as Best Local Author in Best of Orlando 2011. For the past weekend I have been very much in disbelief, but I'm pretty damn elated as well as proud of myself. Even though it is 3rd I feel pretty damn proud of myself. At this moment, I want to go ahead and thank everyone who voted to get me to that place! THANK YOU EVERYONE! The two people that bested me were Jana Waring in 1st place and Bob Morris in 2nd place. I want to extend my congratulations to them. Interesting fact is this is the first time Orlando Weekly has done Best Local Author. Furthermore, the two people that best me were also published authors. As seeing I am an unpublished makes this an even more of an accomplishment to me. The feeling that I have garnered a pretty good fan base of people who want to read what the stories I write is simply fantastic.

What's next for Dieppa

I have taken my writing of fiction pretty serious, but after receiving this honor I am really going to take it more seriously. I am going to do a condensed version of how Stephen King does it, which means when I get home after a workout I will read passages from what I am currently and afterwords I will write. The daily goal to write about a 1,000 words at the end of the day. Still going to keep working on main career because that is logical to me, but writing is serious hobby for me at this point.

My readers have told me many times that I write such great and colorful characters as well as paint a picture with the narrative. What is the only problem? My grammar is pretty horrible. Something I have difficulty with and past editors have given up on trying to fix it up. Then again I been finding people I associate myself with to kind of fall through. I need to find an editor who can edit my novella The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter. There is a lot of potential in that novel to be a fair success when it is released.

Little Opinion Here

I have recently purchased the Nook and I have to say it is hands down a fantastic purchase. I am getting a lot of reading done and it is such a convenience to have it around. First book I finished was John Dies at the End which was recommended to me by my Professor Sushil. The new book I am reading I will talk about later when I am further into it.


As always I want to thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Hopefully get more fiction out soon. OH! Thanks for reminding me you can read my works now at http://andrewcdieppa.pandamian.com/ And once again thank you all for your votes it was real confidence builder for me.

New Direction

It has been a while since I last posted any content on my blog, but I been really busy with work and finding a new place to move to for the last few months. I am now settled in Tampa, closer to where I work, so I have a lot of free time on my hands. Work at Technology Transfer Services (TTS) has been work. Developing in OpenSim is not an ideal development environment for someone that learned how to do game/simulation programming. On the lighter side we are slowly but surely migrating to something better; Unity Game Engine. Hopefully, things will get progressively better working at TTS.

Web Fiction

It has been made clear I enjoy writing a lot as seen through out my previous post. I especially enjoy writing fiction; as last year I wrote a novella for the National Novel Writing Month. I really want to participate in that event again this year. My one problem with the novella I wrote is the grammar and I want to get it edit, but I don't think I am the one for th job. I'm looking for someone to edit it on their free time for me while I can work on some other projects. One project I have in mind is posting fiction online. Recently I stumbled onto a website that gives people advice on being an author, but specifically on the web. In this one website called NovelR pointed me to another website called Pandamian which is meant to work as a blog but for online fiction. Via Pandamian a web author is able to have a place to post their written work as one whole web address and publish it to Amazon as well as other ebook stores. I would be stupid not to look into this and attempt to take full advantage of it. I have began posting on the website with a collection of short stories that come to my head and I dubbed the collected works as The Macabre Vaudeville of Franz K. Dieppa.

I have also taken it upon myself to set up an Author Page on Facebook to promote the website as well as me. This is the direction that I am being pointed in, and that is to be a fictional writer. I enjoy making up stories and telling them to people. The only thing to do is now focus my energy into making it happen

As always, thanks for reading and for following my blog. Enjoy yourself! Love and peace

My Novel Is Finished

NaNoWriMo

As of November 28, 2010 at exactly 3:08 AM I have finished writing my novel for National Novel Writing Month. It was a grueling 28 days of solid writing. Well, technically It was 24 days because there were days I did not write anything at all. However, that is neither here nor there. What matters is I have officially finished writing the rough draft of The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter. There were times I did not feel like writing, and there were times I could not stop writing. All in all I am satisfied with the book and I cannot wait to post online for everyone to read it. That is it everyone that follows my Blog I want to thank you for reading.

Thank Yous

Before I end this I want to go ahead and thank some people who supported me in my efforts to write this book. I want to thank all my friends Jevon Alexander, Tiffani Franco, Pierre Borges, Roderick Hossack, Gil Barrett, Kimberly Sushil, Lara Savage-Bukens, Katie and Robert, Ron Marrs, and May Marrs. Honestly, David gets a special thanks for being the one to tell me "fucking do it man." Honestly, thank you all for supporting me and you all have my love :D

Looking for a Job; 4 Projects; NaNoWriMo

Up to Speed

It has been a while since I have done a blog post on here. Lately, I have been busy with a few projects and looking for a job as a software developer. There are four projects that I am currently working on at the moment which include two fictional writing projects and two game development projects. One of the writing projects involves a friend/colleague of mine by the name Jordan A. Card whom we teamed up to finally making one of our many comic book ideas into a reality. The other writing project is for a novel I am up with a few weeks ago in early October.

National Novel Writing Month

The book is about a little boy who journeys through the afterlife to see his departed mother. I decided to write the book during National Novel Writing Month in November. I already finished writing the first 1,700/50,000 words of the book. I am thoroughly excited to write the book, and I am encouraging my friends to pester me to make sure I am on top of writing it. I remember the day I came up with it was during the mist of writing some game design ideas for Sushil and my game we are working (Another section). I ran the idea through Sushil and he said I should go for it. Also, I have received numerous encouragement from other friends to write it.

A Game Project with Sushil

One day I get an e-mail from Sushil while I was at work about he had this game idea that sound similar to my idea. When Sushil ask me that both game ideas were too similar that if he should back off. Proceeding to giving him the go ahead to develop the game on the condition we both team up to develop the game. As of now my responsibilities are to find an artist to work on game assets and to do cut scenes. My other job is to program the menu and the world map of the game.

Well, readers that is it for now. I will come back soon for another update halfway through month of November. I will not leave you hanging because I am going to leave an excerpt from The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter.

Prologue

Where does this story begin: once upon a time, or a dark and stormy night? How about if this story ask the question: what would you do if you had one more chance to see a past loved one? Would you go through great lengths such as sleeping in the bathtub with a toaster; make a deal with the devil; conduct a seance; pray to God?

Well, there was one little boy who wanted to see his mother again, and went through one perilous journey to see her. The little boy was only ten years of age, and only knew very little of the world around. However, he would go through the spiritual world known as the Hereafter to his beloved mother. This little boy was not aware of the risk, but he would endure everything for just a few moments with her. The little boy I speak of is Christopher Lamont, and this is tale of journey through the Hereafter.