A writing update from P.Z.

P.Z. Walker writing

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Or month. Or some other, less fixed period of time.

I have a writing update. Lots of things are happening and going on, even unfolding! Did that get your attention? Good.

Nude in Space 2

Yes. Believe it or not. There will be a follow-up novel to Nude in Space, which technically is book 1 now.

Nude in Space 2, web cover

And this is the cover for the new book. I hope the fans of the first story will enjoy this second one at least as much. Seeing that people actually buy and read the first one made me decide there has to be a number 2, and who knows, maybe there will even be a number 3. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I’m currently editing the second story – which is going well – and I might even be able to have the e-book in the online bookstores around Christmas. I’m going to try, trust me.

Naked Crow 11.

Yes. There is an 11th book for Sheila, Jeremy and several others. Some characters will be old, some new, and at least one of them is going to be scary.

NC11-teaser

The story will involve something Arabic-ish. Hence this odd symbol which I will incorporate into the cover for the new Naked Crow book.

I’m not going to give away much about it, because once I start talking, I might give away the plot. Suffice to say that Jeremy will be painting and Sheila will have lots of interesting encounters. This story is in the stage of needing a reread to fix the worst blunders, before I dare to take this any further.

Superheroes

Yes. I’m writing a proper story about nude superheroes. I once wrote one but that was not good. It was… wrong. Some would not agree, but I didn’t deem it fit for publication, and I hid it somewhere deep in the directories on my computer. Some stories just need to function as a terrifying example of how not to do this.

The new, real Superheroes story is going well. It’s over 50.000 words and it needs to grow. The working title of it is “NSH”. This stands for Naked Super Heroes.

Emma Nelson. Book 3.

The art of stealing
Emma Nelson book 2

Seriously, this list won’t end.

Believe it or not, but there is a third Emma Nelson book. I wrote ‘the end’ in it a few days ago, and now it’s cooling down.

As I had promised, I would focus on this story during my vacation, and that seriously paid off.

This one, nor Naked Crow 11, will make it to the stores around Christmas, I can promise you that. There’s still too much work to be done about them.

I hope you enjoyed this update.

Stay safe, everyone!

Naked Crow International

Over at MeWe, someone suggested to have the Naked Crow books translated into German.

Naked Crow Cover - Fantasy
Naked Crow 1

Germany is a big country with lots of naturists, so there should be quite a market.

I had a look at translation services. Right, that was out of the window quite soon. Having one book professionally translated would cost between €5000 and €12000.

Making that worth the while, I’d have to sell between 8000 and 15000 copies of the translated book. (Worth the while as in breaking even.) Seeing how many copies of Naked Crow 1 have been sold in English, which is an even larger market, it’s unlikely that route will happen.

I can handle some German, so I started translating it myself. That taught me that writing a story in German is quite something else. Translating from English into German, while not being a native speaker of either language, is hard work. I plowed through almost 2 pages and asked a good German friend to see how good or bad it was.

She made 98 changes. In almost 2 pages. Naked Crow 1 is much longer than 2 pages.

Sorry, dear German readers. It’s not going to happen anytime soon.

A writing update for a change.

One of the categories for this post is Nanowrimo. If you know what that is, glory to you. If you don’t: forget about it. It’s a bout of madness for people who like to write.

Most of you know this cover.

Yes, I’m working on book two of the Emma Nelson fantasy mysteries. I think it is going well, be it as slow as with the first book. Mysteries are hard to write for me because a lot of mysterious things happen (duh) and they have to fit and work on all sides. The next book will shine some more light on where Emma’s ability comes from (if I can make that work) and also Jo-Anne’s absence gets more attention (if I can make that work.)

I’m also still working on Naked Crow 9. Two big things for Sheila and Jeremy are: Canada and Vacation. And somehow these two are combined I’ll leave it to your mastermind to figure out how that can happen, I’m sure you can do this. Otherwise follow this link… And then there is something with a big rock and someone disappearing, but that’s just minor stuff.

And then there is a story I once started and never thought would get any traction or serious word counts. Well, how wrong can you be. Said story is over 42,000 words (think 120 pages of text) already and suddenly it is growing and going into a direction I hadn’t expected to happen. If you know anyone called John, pay attention. There might be more to John than you think. Of course most Johns are not like this one, but still…

This particular story will be bought by Marvel as it is about superheroes. Four of them. Marvel will make it a huge hit and that will make me disgustingly rich and adorably famous. Well, that is the plan, at least.

I’ll let you know whether or not the plan worked out.

Until it does, I’ll keep writing. Have a great week, everyone!

P.Z.

A writing-update

It’s been a while since the writer in me spoke out to update you on the world of stories and the likes.

P.Z. Walker writing

I’m working on far too many stories.

This is a true and a false statement in one, of course. False because there can never be enough stories. As I once read, the world needs more story-tellers and dreamers. In that respect I am doing my best to add my words.

In the true sense this means that, though there is progress in every story, it seems to take forever to get something done and finished. That’s something I have been thinking about. Would it be better to focus on one story, get that done, and then focus on the next? Some may say yes, some may say no. For now I am in the no-camp…

So what’s going on?

Naked Crow 9 is beginning to take shape. I’m at chapter 3 as I write this post (which is in the past hahaha, I love how you can manipulate time online). It took a lot of researching for me to find something that I hope will be interesting. For me to write it definitely worth the while.

Unsworth part 3. I already know the title for it, which I won’t tell you now as that might change. My way of writing allows for such flexibility. 😉 So far the story ambles along nicely. My trusted word-advisor Mr Bun says so as well, which should be enough of a quality certificate.

Murphys in Space part 2. That is going slowly. I have a lot to think about regarding that one, but it is growing. The thinking comes from the space parts in it. I don’t want it to be the thirteenth-in-a-dozen kind of space thing where you already see what’s happening before even seeing the cover image of the book. Bear and bare with me, it will come.

Emma Nelson 1 - See-Through

Emma Nelson part 2 is also slowly taking shape. I am only 2 chapters in with that story because this is mystery sleuth stuff and I am not very good (at least not experienced) with that. It will take place partly in Dallas, Texas (just adding that for good measure, maybe there is another Dallas somewhere), and the story will shed some light on Jo-Anne’s absence in book 1.

And then there is something which for now is called Crazy Pictures. It’s a superhero fantasy story that somehow popped up in my head and so I had to start writing that.

So there you have it. 5 naturist volumes are on the roll at the moment so plenty to look out for in due time.

Be well, happy and as naked as you can!

Paul

Emma Nelson

Yes. That. Who is Emma Nelson, you may wonder?

Emma Nelson is the main character in a new book. It’s an urban fantasy mixed with crime and police work.

It took me a long time to write this because I’m not a crime expert and I wanted this to work. It was definitely an interesting experience to go through. The main writing is done and my good friend Will Forest is kind enough to look it over and provide input on typos and stupidities. (Mine, not his!)

Today I have started to go over his suggestions and pointers where commas should be periods and uppercase things and all that. It’s vital to have someone else look at a story because as a writer you’re bound to miss the most obvious mistakes.

Well, onward and let’s hunt down some more weird mistakes!

P.Z. Walker writing

Until the next time!

Paul

Announcing: a new website!

Yup. It happened.

P.Z. Walker now has his own author website. You can find it, surprisingly enough, at http://www.pzwalker.com.

selection_003

This means that all links to my books that live here will point to the new site. Don’t worry, nothing you need to do, it’s all being taken care of. 🙂

It was about time that this happened. I’ve written so many books by now that a site dedicated to that is a must. Happy perusing!

Bookish update

Hi there.

With July on the way out which means that most of 2016 is already behind us, I thought I’d give you a little update on what’s going on here book-wise.

Mirror Earth 2

Mirror EarthThe end of that book is in sight. I’m working on getting the last chapter in order and shape, which should not take too long now. After that I will let the entire book cool off a while and start reworking it to get the worst blunders out of it.

It’s become a good story I think, but in the end I’m not the one to say so. That’s up to you, the readers. I do what I can, you do what you can, and so we make a good team

Please don’t expect this book to hit the shelves in a month or so, reworking and editing takes time and attention. I just wanted to give you this good news. 🙂

Naked Crow

I’m thinking about part 6. I have a basic idea for it, but there has to be more than just that. If you have ideas about naturist issues, problems or bits of interest you would like to see in book 6 please let me know. I can’t promise it will be used but it is a great asset for me to know what you would like to read about.

NakedCrow5_320

Historical naturist fiction

Vintage nudistsIt’s still in view but so much has been going on these days (like publishing Naked Crow 5) that this story has moved to the background a little. I hope I will have some time to return to this story soon. It’s coming along quite well but there is some research on history I need to do. Everything in this story has to be correct and make some kind of sense, as opposed to real life. 😉

Be happy, well, and naked, as much as you can!

Historical fiction.

historical fiction

Historical fiction

You may wonder why I bring up historical fiction. If you did then you didn’t see this post in which I explain this a bit.

I’ve taken it upon myself to write a historical fiction story with naturist elements. It’s finally moving towards something. At the start of this I had not thought it would be so difficult to write…

Moving through genres

Compared to Naked Crow (which isn’t very easy either since I want to keep things credible), the historical naturist fiction piece proves to be one of the tougher writing jobs I ever put onto myself.

Whether or not you, the readers, will like the story or not, I’m glad that I picked this up. And why? For the challenge. For the moving beyond boundaries. We all need to grow. When you and I first dropped our clothes and found we enjoyed it, that was a step in our development. Growth. Nudity became our norm.

Beyond boundaries

I’ve been writing since several years, and when I first had the idea of writing naturist fiction (I’d been a naturist since a long time then already) that was pushing against a boundary. After several naturist books, like the four Naked Crow books and certainly Mirror Earth, I feel good about pushing against another boundary. Going back in time, picking an era and write about that. I’m not going to tell you what era it is nor how I put naturism into it, but the fact that it’s working makes me feel good. It tells me that I can do this. Perhaps I don’t yet do it well, but time and readers will be the judge of that.

Naked Crow 5

Since I’m talking about writing (well, writing about writing actually!) I’ll grab the opportunity that Naked Crow 5 is currently looked over by a fellow author. After he’s done with it I can start making corrections and the book will come out quite soon after that. (Did I hear sighs of relief there? 😉 )

Until that happens I wish you many happy, naked moments!
Paul

In case you missed it:

for some mysterious reason Twitter removed my @zjuzdme account (they never replied to my inquiry why they did it).

I’m on Twitter as @Paul_Z_W now.

Flu and the crazy ideas it gives me

Flu. It’s not funny.

A few weeks ago I was in the dumps because of our friend the flu. Felt horrible, awful, and didn’t get up for 5 days.

Of course I need to add here that I did not get a flu shot. I only got those twice and each time I got violently ill. Blaming the shots for that was a bad idea apparently, because this time I got seriously ill with the vicinity of a shot.

Crazy ideas.

Apparently my brain was in turmoil for a while during those first 5 days of badness. At some point – I don’t exactly recall when but that doesn’t matter – I almost woke up from an avalanche of images that had been churning through my head and that sort of gave me an idea for a new naturist story. I grabbed my notepad (always have one next to the bed) and scribbled down what I could remember of the idea. Then I collapsed into the void of the flu once again.

crazy ideas

Historical fiction.

So far the books I wrote and am writing are in the fantasy and science fiction realm. I love those two genres and I think I can do them pretty well.

historical fiction

This new idea is in the Historical Fiction genre. For those who aren’t aware of what that it, historical fiction describes things from history (obviously). Usually it involves well known places or people. Think for instance of books about King Arthur, Jeanne d’Arc, a war, or perhaps even the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The story doesn’t have to deal with that actual event but the event can take place during the course of the story. It’s that easy to write historical fiction, but it also makes it difficult because you have to get the facts right. Anyone can believe a bug-eyed, yellow monster coming from Pluto to devour our clothes, but for instance claiming that Marilyn Monroe always appeared naked on the set of her films… most people know that’s not true.

The story in my head

The naked veil
The naked veil

The story I came up with in my flu-ridden dream doesn’t deal with any of those subjects. So far it doesn’t feel like a difficult or complicated story, more something light and easy; something short.

I am definitely going to develop that idea  and see where it leads me (and you). So far the future of the story is still in veils, as is the naked lady on the right. She’s from the right era of my story, I think, so for a while I’ll keep her as the mascot for the new book.

I’ve never thought that I would ever find a way to write something in the historical fiction genre concerning nudism/naturism. No matter how this story will end up, I’m thrilled that something actually appeared for it.

The writerI hope you’re having a great day. I’ll be writing.

Naked.

Paul.

Naked authors

Naked writing

naked writing

Yes. I’m coming back to writing. I enjoy writing. The list of books I’ve written so far might have given that away. I like writing in the nude most of all because that allows for uninhibited writing. I am convinced that other naked writers agree with me. It might not surprise you that more writers like (or liked, because some of them aren’t among us any more) to be naked while acting out their imagination and committing that to people.

The famous ones

(and there might be a few surprises in here for you).

Victor Hugo. The famous author of great works like Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. At one point he ran into writer’s block and came up with the brilliant scheme to have his clothes taken away so he had nothing else to focus on than his writing. No clothes to fidget with. All he had to do was sit. And write. Naked.

 

Ernest Hemingway.

The author of Farewell to Arms also bid a farewell to his clothing. I haven’t found any proper confirmation of this but it’s rumoured that he wrote naked, standing up.  Nudism ran in the Hemingway family. Ernest’s cousin Edward opened England’s oldest nudist resort (then still called colony.)

 

D.H. Lawrence.

Remember him? He wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Apparently he liked to climb trees in the nude and ponder what he was going to write about, before coming down and do his actual writing. I like that approach and would love to try it. Might be difficult to find trees away from people, but who knows…

 

James Whitcomb Riley.

James Whitcomb made his friends lock him up in a room, alone and naked, so he would write instead of popping down to the bar for a drink. Always good when you can count on your friends. I guess they had his drinks for him. 😉

 

Edmond Rostand, from France.

He was constantly interrupted by his friends and he was annoyed by that. Because of that he took up working naked in his bathtub. It might be hard to believe but his greatest work, Cyrano de Bergerac, was indeed written in a bathtub…

 

Now here might be a familiar face and a surprise to many: Benjamin Franklin. He too liked to write, and he too often retreated to his bathtub for that.

But not only did he write in his bathtub. He also liked to sit naked in a cold room where he would write without being disturbed.

 

And here’s the last famous naked author. Agatha Christy, the woman whose work has only been outsold by William Shakespeare. She too liked writing in the bathtub.

Who would have thought that Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple perhaps began their life in a bath?

The less famous ones

The writerYou probably know this one. Author of the Naked Crow series, Mirror Earth and so forth.

Writing in the nude is the best, freeing thing possible for me. I would live my life nude if I could – there’s just this every day life bit that gets in the way of it.

Let me be nude and I’m happy. Let me write in the nude and I’m ecstatic!

 

co-ed naked philosophyWill Forest. Another not yet very famous author who writes in the nude. If you have not heard of him before then you have now. To the right you see the cover of his book Co-ed Naked Philosophy which I have read and enjoyed tremendously.

Will is very engaged in the naturist way of life. Not only does he write in the nude about naked people, he also maintains a weblog. I don’t know if he writes in the bathtub.

 

Wallace GreensageWallace Greensage might be an author you have not heard of yet. This could be entirely true as he released his first naturist novel, “Who is this naked lady? (And what have they done with my wife?” only a short time ago.

I haven’t finished this book yet but I can say that it is a very promising start to what I can hope is a good writing career!

That’s the list for now

This list isn’t complete and I didn’t mean to make it an extensive one. Let me end this long post by wishing you lots of reading pleasure. If you know of other naked writers, please let me know. Maybe this can be compiled into an impressive list and tool for naturist readers who are looking for more books in our specific genre.

Paul