Grumpy Bulldog vs. 2011: A Look Back

I'm doing my year-end review really early.  Why?  I figure no one will probably give a shit the next couple of weeks with all the holiday stuff going on. So this is the last real post of 2011.  Up through Christmas I'm just going to post more random music videos.  No one really liked that the first two times, so naturally I'm going to keep doing it.  Anyway...

My stories of 2011

In terms of writing, things didn't start off real well.  I was pretty much stuck in neutral until about July.  I stumbled my way through this Awakenings, Birth of Magic story, which I had to restart after the first draft kind of fizzled.  It was even harder to get through A New Beginning, Chronicles of Batpooh State Vol 1 (and only).

Things picked up a little around July when I started writing A Night's Legacy, which was a reboot of a story I wrote last year.  I wrote it in about a month, though I kind of stubbed my toe on it because I really don't like all the action/superhero parts of it.  Which is not a good thing when that's supposed to be the main part of the plot.

I tried writing a re-reboot of the Awakenings story, but didn't really like the direction it was going.  So on a lark I started this crazy story idea I came up with about a tough guy cop who gets injected with some mysterious drug and becomes a woman.  The first six chapters of Back to Life I really didn't like because the action scenes were done really, really poorly.  So poorly I had to go back and rewrite them later.  Eventually I reached some point of critical mass where I actually started to like the story.  (My only beta reader so far liked it too, except for a few things I need to change.)

I liked that story enough that I came up with a sequel idea, The Ascent of Stephanie.  The plot on the story was really thin.  Stephanie (formerly Steve) gets captured by this Chinese scientist who's trying to replicate the formula that turned Steve into Stephanie.  Somehow, though, the story kept going and going until it reached something like 160,000 words.  I still don't know how the fuck that happened.

Then as I was finishing that I had an idea to make this into a trilogy!  So in Elegy for Stephanie, Stephanie is finally getting used to the idea of being a woman.  She's even getting married.  So of course something awful has to happen--she starts turning back into a man!  On top of that, a serial killer she put away 25 years ago when she was Steve gets loose and goes on the rampage again.

I thought that story would go on for 160,000 words too, but I found a few shortcuts in the plot.  Plus as time wore on, especially after Thanksgiving, I started to wear down.  That made it kind of a struggle to finish.  Which makes me think I need to take a writing vacation for a month or two.

So that's the story on the stories in 2011.  If you want to read those or stories from previous years (as far back as 1994!), you can go to Grumpy Bulldog's Archives. 

As for the blogging, I started the year with a different blog and really only two occasional followers.  Then I joined that writing Crusade thing in February and got more followers like Michael and Rusty.  I forget exactly when Briane came on board.  Was it before or after that?  Anyway, the highlight of the year was picking a fight with a "book reviewer" over Slaughterhouse V.  Then in October I decided to move to this blog and that's where we're at right now.  What does the future hold for Grumpy Bulldog?  I have no idea.  As far as writing goes there's an idea my Amazon friend Ethan Cooper brought up that I want to look into, maybe even (gasp!) do some research on it.  I would like to do something more "serious" the next year because when I try to sell out it just doesn't seem to happen and I'm getting a little bored with that.

Now's when I get all sappy and say Happy Holidays!