The Third Heaven Series Boxed Set: Books (1-3)

by Donovan Neal

  Let me write here the ideas I had for Lucifer’s war. Hmmm…maybe that could be a title.

  Ok key points

  To succeed to dethrone god Lucifer needs the following things.

  1. Speed

  2. The Elohim survival is tied to the success of the army as a whole

  3. Michael’s army will trade space (geography) for time. They will attempt to outlast Lucifer’s forces until el ceases his rest.

  4. Lucifer will blitzkrieg heaven

  5. Have heavens forces divided some of them are on earth looking for Lucifer.

  6. Make it so that Lucifer’s minions prevent access for heavens forces to return.

  Ok here’s what I wrote for what Lucifer left out when speaking to Apollyon.

  “Resist the taunts of thy brethren. For I have sent Lucifer as comforter for thee. Abide with him for as I liveth if thou leaveth him. Know that ruin lieth not far behind, and my comforter shall be thy king”

  Dec 19 2007.

  No real adding of words yesterday. I did some revision. I sent the first draft off to sis Froby. But as of right now I’m at 38112. I mostly made sure the first chapter was consistent in the 3rd person POV and in the past tense.

  I discovered an interesting link yesterday let me see if I can add it here.

  Humph. Well turns out I didn’t save the link. But I found another great website while searching. And from it 2 other publishing websites.

  http://booksbylyncote.com/LC1/?page_id=3

  Ok so now I’m going to get started working here. Ttyl. 40202

  Ok im stuck a lil bit. Just trying to figure out where to go now. I hit the 40k word mark today. I put my book at double space just to see what it would be. Came out to 162 pages. WOW. So basically it looks like I can take whatever number of pages I’ve written and double it and that’s how many pages I really got in terms of an actual novel. And I’m thinking this thing will hit 80k at least. So that will be like 320 pages maybe. God. Well as of right now I just got to figure how to get to the next link in the chain. I guess even as I’m writing that I need to determine what the next scene will be. Maybe that’s the real issue. Yeah that’s it. My map needs adjustment. Well its 11:28 and I’m at 40212 so I’ve written 2100 words today. Not bad...not bad... Think I’ve got two tasks tonight before I go to bed.

  Reread this journal

  update and review my scene editor so I know what to write next

  Email a copy of all this to myself.

  Oh on the furniture bit regarding Lucifer’s taste look up a design book you have a home and styles that are there. Then extrapolate.

  Maybe you showed that Raphael knew too much. Maybe just stick with the original idea of Lucifer not sharing the whole word and leave it at that.

  Dec 20, 2007

  Its 11am. I’m at 40,259.

  Ok I’m still kind of stuck. I still need to address which scene to write next. I’ll try to tackle that today. Was doing some research on J.k. Rowling. Seems she sent her manuscript to 12 publishers and they all said no. Then finally after a year someone was willing to look at it. Amazing how things come about. I don’t pretend that I am going to be the next J. K. Rowling. But I must admit I wouldn’t mind!

  In any event I found a job at TSA I can do, and am going to apply for that. Gonna do some trolling through the Fed government website this afternoon and see what I can dig up. That’s if my family doesn’t try to load me with stuff. We’ll see.

  Ok gonna try to get started here. Ttyl…

  Ok Sariel and talus could get into it after the dinner. They think that maybe one was going to betray the other. Lucifer uses the contention later to incite chaos.

  Go to the library and browse through books on food and gardening. Authors of these books describe smells, tastes, touches, and even sounds in precise detail. When writing, always mention scents and tactile sensations. Good description observes all the senses.

  Great advice!

  I wrote Lucifer’s speech. It just came out…flowed very well. I was so excited that I had to share it with a family member immediately. Their response…”Wow”. I hope others who read it will have the same impact. I’m about to go to bed. I’m happy I finally got some test written. I’ve been struggling on this chapter some. It’s finally coming together. Bit by bit. Word count for the day. 41,867 172 pages baby! It’s definitely coming together.

  Dec 21, 2007

  Ok I just started to do some writing. I think I write better at night. Between like 7pm -12am.

  Lucifer to Raphael.

  Do not follow me Raphael. For where I go you cannot follow. You do so at thine own peril.

  42636

  Dec 22 2007

  No writing today. Mainly Christmas shopping and stuff. I’ll try tomorrow.

  Dec 23 2007

  42745 are the words that I begin my writing today. I’ve wondered if my pacing is good enough? I suppose I can rewrite when I finish. Of course that’s the main thing to do write now is to finish. Get the thoughts down on paper, and then go from there. I want to get down some of the thoughts I learned or enjoyed from my readings.

  Robert Frost said to be truly happy is to wed your vocation to your avocation, to figure out how to make your pastime pay.

  Well here goes ttyl.

  Trying to determine if I should leave this in or take it out.

  El stood and Raphael kneeled silently waiting on any command from his Lord, and El spoke.

  “Come Raphael. There is much to do, the seventh day approaches and I must take rest from all my labor.

  43619

  Dec 24, 2007

  44, 338

  OK I made that underlined text work by making some changes. It does a better job of hooking the reader now. It reads as follow.

  Whoohoo I’m on chapter six. The tension is building now!

  Dec 25, 2007

  Merry Christmas!

  NO writing today spent the day with family and friends. I decided to try to work on the synopsis today.

  I’m thinking that Act 3 is where Lucifer openly rebels against God.

  Act Two:Apollyon snaps

  What had to happen to bring Lucifer to this point?

  - Apollyon’s imprisonment

  - Man’s creation

  - Apollyon’s “crime”

  - The kiln is closed

  Act One

  -

  Michael while walking at the brim of the lake of fire observes Lucifer and laments the losses of the war that has just been concluded. He thinks back on how it all began.

  Michael along with Lucifer and 5 other Princes were the royal council which

  Apollyon an assigned as archangel or “Archon” of Sol determines that he will assist God in bringing life to a planet. His actions causes the sun he controls to flare placing earth at risk. Another angel protects the earth from destruction but this causes his accidental death.

  Other angels castigate Apollyon aggravating his grief to the point that he purposely murders

  God creates Hell as a place of judgment for him

  Lucifer disagrees with the decision to imprison him and feels guilty over his failure to curtail Apollyon’s behavior

  God creates man and closes the kiln the birth place of all angels

  This behavior of Gods causes Lucifer to question Gods goodness and to lead a revolt for their freedom from serving man.

  Lucifer frees Apollyon from Hell and uses him as chief general in his army to overthrow God and heaven.

  Apollyon and his army lay waste to heaven

  Lucifer moves through hell to the kiln (the birthplace of all Elohim) to take possession of it and create more angels solely devoted to him.

  Dec 26, 2007

  44771

  Not much writing today. Found a great website. http://www.wherethemapends.com/main.htm

  It definitely gave me a reality check on what I could expect when I try to get published. But I suppose that’s a good thing. It’s about 10pm right about now. I’m just gonna sit here an
d read and do some writing until I’m tired and can’t write. I don’t have to be up at any certain time and I’m just going over to my grandmas probably tomorrow. So nothing I really have to do. So wish me luck.

  45302

  Dec 29, 2007

  Well it’s almost the New Year and I’m sitting here in the sanctuary of church on a 3 day fast and shut in. We haven’t had one in quite some time. But other than being sleepy from staying up and messing with my sleep pattern I’m doing ok.

  Wrote some today over 500 words. Hoping to get some good writing done maybe tomorrow but especially Monday we’ll see.

  As far as things are with the book. I printed off chapter two so I could read it, revise and edit it before I send it off to my writing group.

  I also ordered another book that will help me with the revision process that was recommend by two sources. Hoping to get it next week sometime we’ll see. But I’m feeling the work of this novel now. Realizing that I’m halfway through its still fun on one hand but I can see where it’s definitely taking more discipline to work through this middle. But I’ll get there.

  In fiction, nodding means yes. Shaking the head means no.

  I learned something new today. Didn’t know the above. Read it in the website.

  Hmm learned something else now too.

  But if you feel you must break the paragraph without inserting a beat, then a strange punctuation rule applies.

  You don't include an end quotation mark at the end of the first paragraph but you do include an opening quotation mark at the head of the new one. Example:

  "Our dear friend, Jimmy, loved long paragraphs of dialogue... [Blah, blah, blah]...and it finally ended his life.

  "The beauty of a life lived in that manner is that...? [blah, blah, blah]..."

  See that after "his life" there was no close quotation mark? It looks wrong, but it's right if it's the same speaker speaking in the next paragraph.

  Dec 31, 2007

  Well I’ve done a bit of writing this morning. It’s almost 5:30am. Did prayer from 3-4 and been sitting here in the nursery of the church writing, doing some light revising.

  Current word count is 46749

  Steps to successful publishing

  * Do radio and TV interviews for book

  * Launch book and e-mail your database of fans

  * Edit galleys for book

  * Work with publicist on campaign for book

  * Revise novel after receiving editor's comments

  * Begin building your marketing platform

  * Send "polished draft" to your editor

  * Revise your novel

  * Receive phone call from editor buying your book

  * Your agent submits book to publishers

  * Get an agent

  * Meet agents at writing conference or by mail/email

  * Write a stellar proposal

  * Polish first three chapters

  * Finish first draft of novel

  * Start writing first draft of novel

  * Design your novel before writing it

  * Get brilliant idea for a novel that "can't miss"

  * Finish "Junior year" of learning the craft

  * Finish "Sophomore year" of learning the craft

  * Finish "Freshman year" of learning the craft

  * Decide that you want to be a novelist

  Listen to your instincts when you read over a scene or

  chapter, an exchange of dialogue, whatever. Does it

  feel to you that something's missing/lacking? But let's

  go a little deeper. That may be exactly the way you

  want the reader to feel after reading the scene, which

  gets us to the question many writers fail to ask

  themselves: How do I want this scene to affect the

  reader? Many writers put all this great energy into

  working on a scene and no energy whatsoever into how

  the scene is going to work on the reader. If you want

  the reader to be, say, convinced that a wife is a lot

  smarter than her husband, reading over the scene in

  which we meet the couple with that in mind will let you

  know if you need to add anything to help the reader

  make such a deduction.

  Randy added: When I'm editing, I add text under the

  following conditions:

  * The scene does not have a Goal, a Conflict, and a

  Disaster (if it's a Scene) or it does not have a

  Reaction, Dilemma, and Decision (if it's a Sequel). To

  see a discussion of Scenes and Sequels, see my article

  on Writing the Perfect Scene.

  http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com/art/scene.php

  * Parts of the scene are unclear and can be clarified

  by adding text.

  * The pacing is too fast to support the action and

  needs more text to slow it down.

  * I can't tell who's talking.

  * The scene is not delivering a Powerful Emotional

  Experience because I am giving short shrift to the

  emotive aspects.

  * The scene lacks visual elements (or other sensory

  elements).

  Something I learned about physic distance and writing in the passive voice.

  As writers we're charged with the responsibility of drawing the reader in, making him care about the character and identify with the characters. To do that, we must create and maintain the fictional dream. There's an article on that on the website in the Writers' Aids section, but let me say here that it is through the fictional dream that a reader is transported from reading words on a page to living the events of the novel.

  The reader is an armchair adventurer, but through the fictional dream, s/he becomes an active participant in the story--through the characters' senses. Now if the author intrudes and places herself between the reader and character, then the reader isn't experiencing the story firsthand. She is being told a story.

  To close that psychic distance gap and plant the reader inside the character's head, you have to go through your work and ditch the filters that create the distance.

  Some watchwords are: thought, wondered, considered, hoped, realized.

  Do your best to delete all of them. The rule of thumb is to ditch them. If you sacrifice clarity by ditching them, then let them stay in the book. They've earned their space. Otherwise, they're out of there.

  Example: She realized she'd reached the point of no return. She had to kill him.

  She realized is a filter. The author telling the reader what the character is thinking. See the psychic distance? How what is occurring in the novel is filtered from the character, through the writer, and then to the reader?

  Revise it, and let the character think for herself.

  The point of no return. Breached. She had to kill him.

  A good website I picked up that talks about the big things editors are looking at when they review a manuscript.

  http://www.editorialdepartment.com/content/view/545/453/

  Here’s a great punctuation tidbit I learned.

  When you're reading and you come to a comma, you pause. At a semicolon, you pause a tad longer. A colon, little longer. At a dash, you prepare for an interrupted thought. At a period, you stop.

  An ellipsis carries a SERIES of PERIODS--three or four depending on the sentence and publisher's preference. (Technically, a complete sentence gets four; an incomplete one gets three, but some publishers use three regardless.) A series of periods is a lot of stopping. It's also visually disruptive to the reader.

  Lots of stops and visual interruptions "awaken" the reader from the fictional dream. That's counterproductive to the writer's goal, which is to establish and maintain that fictional dream from the beginning to the end of the book. Offer the reader too many opportunities to stop or too many interruptions and s/he puts the book down and doesn't pick it back up.

  These are the "techni
cal" reasons most frequently leading to rejection cited by the editors and agents:

  Jan 1 2008 Happy New Year!!

  God this has been a bad year. I won’t go into it but I’m glad for a fresh start. Lord help me to forget those things which are behind and to count them as dung, and press on towards what you have arrested me for.

  48,005 words!

  Ok haven’t done any writing so far today…maybe tonight. Watched the U of M game.

  My first question was: "What's the most important thing

  I as an author can do to help promote my book?"

  I remember her answer verbatim because it was short and

  very clear: "Get your e-mail database as large as

  possible."

  Which was an excellent answer. It is, I believe, the

  best answer she could have given me. The only trouble

  was that neither she nor I knew exactly how to do that.

  Jan 3, 2008

  Ok two days ago I stayed up till 5am making movie trailers for this book to help promote it when the times comes. Oh my God they turned out to be so sweet. So I kind of got a plan to market it some. Gonna create a Myspace page which posts the trailer, which will be posted on all the you-tube/god tube web sites. I got an idea of what I’d like to do based on the series fallen from ABC in terms of what I can do with my space.