Far Seeing Fairy Tales

Interview with a Character: Link 4 in the AW W1S1 Blog Chain

2012-01-18T01:40:00.000-08:00

Interview with the Vampire... Baron

Me: Oh, I was so nervous about this...

The Baron: *with raised eyebrow* But why?

Me: Well, I've never interviewed a character before, much less had a vampire in my apartment! And you know, the cat litter. I understand you have a superhuman sense of smell...

The Baron: Well, I'm flattered to have been invited. And cat litter, well, even in Anguria, excrement happens.

*We both laugh, well, he politely titters, and I giggle like a Girl Scout who just sold a truckload of thin mints. It's true what they say about being in their presence. I'm all a flutter. Of course, this one is incredibly good looking! Oh gosh... I forgot they can skim what's in the front of your mind... oh I'm starting to ramble! And his eyes are starting to glaze over...*

Me: We're the fourth in the blog chain for the Write One Sub One Novel Challenge. People have high expectations at this point! Ria Rees had the previous post. And then Hunter Emkay is up next. (The complete list is available here.)

The Baron: *lifting his tea cup* Then let's make this a good one!

Me: *slightly goofy* All right! So - tell me something about vampires. What does popular culture have right? What do they get wrong?

The Baron: I hate to speak for all of my kin, but most vampires understand that we represent an almost primordial, primitive fear to non-vampires. Much of it is a holdover from superstitions in the dark ages; a truly primitive people trying to understand a race that lives on blood, is stronger and faster, able to see in the dark, and seemingly to read your minds, *here, he looks away from me and I try not to think how cute he is* Of course they thought us monsters, that we wanted to steal their children, we wanted to "make" more vampires, or worse, slaves. All that's nonsense of course. There are always those who are attracted to us, and they want to come to us to be "turned", as it were. If you want to be a vampire, you have to be born one, I'm afraid. If we take a human wife, or in some cases other donors, they could come to share some of our traits, such as a longer life or slower aging, but only after long contact. Drinking another's blood is all about sharing the baser means of life. It is life. It's only right we share some of our gifts with those who give us life, but they don't come to require blood themselves. The modern idea, or literary device, that we are somehow infectious or the result of disease I find a little insulting, but again, we have to give allowances. Or perhaps it's better than the belief that we are re-animated corpses, the result of suicide or the son of the devil. I'm glad those beliefs have fallen by the wayside.

Me: And your eyes are freaky!

The Baron, laughing: Yes, and our eyes are different. We've hardly any color to them. I think it's a matter of natural selection. We can see in the dark, we can see in ultraviolet, in other words, we don't need eye contact to see one another. But I'm no scientist. I could be wrong.

Me: Are our eyes freaky to you?

The Baron: Well...

Me: Oh, you're too polite to answer that, aren't you? Let's carry on! Do vampires believe in God?

The Baron: *pursing his lips slightly, as if surprised at the question. Did the temperature just plummet, or is that me?* I would say we are much like humans in this regard. Some do, some don't. Some of us believe in alternative deities. Spirituality is hardly governed by race.

Me: True, true! So tell me, is it rude to ask a vampire his age?

The Baron: Perhaps it is of the ladies, *he smiles... I nearly faint* but I do not mind the question. At the time of your story, I am about 150 years old. I was just coming up to my middle years.

Me: And yet you aren't married.

The Baron: Gentlemen vampires tend to marry later in life. Probably because it is rare for us to have more than one child. We believe in keeping our numbers low, we always have, so we marry late. It's a survival mechanism.

Me: While we're on the subject of marriage and love and whatnot, what do you look for in a woman, one you might eventually marry?

The Baron: She must have an independent mind, and not be caught up in the changing whims of fashion. I loathe social climbing in all its forms. An education is important, and not just parlor accomplishments, like singing and dancing. I don't plan on keeping my wife in the parlor, at least, not all the time. *laughs*

Me: You were surprised at Ophelia's lack of language skill. (I am referring to his leading lady, who he teases for having no French or German.)

The Baron: *smiling* I manage to overlook it, though.

Me: *relieved the temperature has come back up* So you are willing to compromise?

The Baron: The heart will override the intellect. And she has the intelligence, of course, she simply hasn't had the tutelage.

Me: Fair enough! What about beauty? How important is that?

The Baron: Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. Don't groan! Some of the old cliches are true. Beauty is found in love. When you care for someone, their physical appearance hardly matters. Ophelia they say is fetching, or pretty, but only because they compare her to her mother's beauty. If they saw her as I do, they wouldn't compare her to anyone.

Me: Ok. You just made a bunch of ladies go da'aawwww.....

The Baron: Is that a good thing?

Me: Oh yes! Now, before you go, I guess the "character interview" question I'm supposed to ask is, "What do you want?"

The Baron:*laughing* Oh, but that's such a broad question! I want world peace. I want better road surfaces in the upper mountain regions, so they don't turn to bloody rivers in the springtime. What do you want? What did you want this morning? Is it different from what you want now? Can you narrow it down for me?

Me: *sighing* And this people, is why the book is 126k at the first draft. *Aside to the vampire* You have to be difficult, don't you?

Fin

2012-01-16T22:32:00.000-08:00

The first draft of The Vampire Baron is done! It's a whopping 126k of rambling gothic romance. Oh yes. There will be edits. There will be blood. I can already think of three scenes that need adding, and many more that need a serious weeding and hoeing to get them into shape. That will wait though, as I am going straight into edits on Darklight, my urban fantasy, starting tomorrow.

But that's tomorrow. Tonight, we watch English period drama and dream our beautiful dreams.

A Confession: A Post

2012-01-13T11:30:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. Can't believe I haven't done a real-for-true blog post for 2012. I began le Grand Experiment and got tripped up by the short story exercise... First: because short stories are the bane of my existence. I can read them. I don't write them. And, too-also, I've been writing up a damn storm! So I think it's no tragedy that le Grand Experiment went belly up, because the whole point was to try and kick start the writing again.

To that end: I was getting so caught up in the whole: publish, publish, publish noise that I was feeling very down. Well, that and the fact I have three unedited novels that I haven't even begun to get in query shape. I've been avoiding a lot of blog reading. Instead, amidst the storm of writing, I've been like... reading. Trying to find the love of the craft again. I know that a writer has to be informed in regards to the publishing industry. However. I think the advice of publishers and agents, with their lists of what you should do, what they want, what is "selling" (as well informed and knowledgeable as it is) can be soul crushing to the muse. I hate to come to my writing sessions with some sort of agenda. I just want to write the story the way it wants to be written. I forgot that the first draft is for me. If I can polish and hone it, and make it marketable, well, that should come after the fact.

Depending on how you look at it, I'm either way over or on track for my intended word count for The Vampire Baron. If only I could keep track of what word count I had intended! I'm a little over 106,00. I feared, due to the length of the outline, it could be as much as 140k. Then I got that under control and feared it would be 120k, but I would do a lot of editing, and shave that down. Then I thought I was on track for 100k. But that didn't happen. Right now, I just think it'll be done when it's done. Which I really hope will be this weekend. I need to get editing on my Urban Fantasy! It's gonna be a good long weekend.

Books Read 2011

2011-12-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a moment from le Grand Experiment. For the first time, I'm going to list all the books I read and re-read in 2011. This is probably the longest list I've had in quite a few years. I do apologize if there are misspellings, etc. I did try to check names before putting them in here, but some errors may have escaped me. Much of these are library books, so sorry, please don't ask to borrow.

Some things I learned:
Patrick Rothfuss doesn't write fast enough for me.
Neither does Brandon Sanderson.
Sometimes, the movie is better.
Some "first novels" of famous authors are read merely for the experience
Some oldies but goodies are called that for a reason.
The Count of Monte Cristo is so much better than anyone ever told me.
Some oldies but goodies aren't so good the second time around.
Some books I hated as a kid, I still hate as an adult.
I may have learned how to put down a book I don't like. Maybe. But I haven't learned how to stop hoarding them.

Venitia - Georgette Heyer
A Convenient Marriage - Georgette Heyer
Sylvester - Georgetter Heyer
The Gathering Storm - Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
All the Windwracked Stars - Elizabeth Bear
The Devil You Know - Mike Carey
Blindsight - Peter Watt
101 Dalmations (the full-on novel, not some Disney Goldenbook) Dodi Smith
Where Angels Fear to Tread - E.M. Forster
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Professor - Charlotte Bronte
Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Towers of Midnight - Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
A Reaper's Tale - Adam Slade
Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
Star Wars Death Star - Michael Reaves & Steve Perry
Ventus - Karl Schroeder
Rosemary & Rue - Seanan McGuire
Anna Kerenina - Leo Tolstoy
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Cecilia - Francis Burney
The Forest of Hands and Teeth - Carrie Ryan
The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
Blood and Iron - Elizabeth Bear
Jacob's Room - Virginia Woolfe
The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Grey Lady and other stories - Elizabeth Gaskell
The Good Fairies of New York - Martin Millar
At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft
The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
The Great Hunt - Robert Jordan
The Dragon Reborn - Robert Jordan
Uncle Silas - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Arabella - Georgette Heyer
Almuric - Robert E Howard
Hospital Sketches - Louisa May Alcott
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Little Men - Louisa May Alcott
An Old Fashioned Girl - Louisa May Alcott
Eight Cousins - Louisa May Alcott
A Rose in Bloom - Louisa May Alcott
Behind a Mask - Louisa May Alcott
1984 - George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Lady in White - Wilkie Collins
Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier
Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kelsey
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Castle of Wolfenbach - Eliza Parsons
Miss Perigrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Began but did not finish: Notre Dame de Paris
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
Unholy Ghosts - Stacia Kane
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Out of Time - Monique Martin
The Old Man and the Wasteland - Nick Cole
True Grit - Charles Portis
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Peter Pan - J.M. Barry
Port Eternity - C.J. Cherryh
Voyager in the Night - C.J. Cherryh
Death by Scandal - Marguerite Butler
Rosemary & Rue - yes , I read it twice in the same year, shoot me
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
Graceling - Kristin Cashore
Summer Crossing - Truman Capote
A Sicilian Romance - Ann Radcliffe
Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
Haunted Hotel - Wilkie Collins
Into the Forest - Jean Hegland
Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier

Shorter Works
Susan - Harlan Ellison
Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft
The Choice - Edith Wharton
The Enormous Room - Horace Leonard Gold
The Mysterious Key & What it Opened - Louisa May Alcott
Going into Society - Charles Dickens
Bunner Sisters - Edith Wharton
Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
Bride of Death - Celina Summers

Exercise Seven: Dear Self

2011-12-26T18:21:00.000-08:00

Welcome back from Christmas everyone. I spent four days with my sister, mostly reading. Thinking about reading. Thinking about writing. I decided to post this exercise with no comment :)

Dear Self:

I would like to speak to you about the next six months. I hope they will be more productive and consistent than the last six. To that end, here are a few things we ought to work on.

Well, consistency is one area we need to work on.

It might be good if you occasionally pealed your ass out of this chair and took a walk or something. There might be more room in the chair, and you might see and/or get some sort of inspiration for those novels you write and don't edit.

About those novels you don't edit... you need to edit. As a matter of fact, I see a whole hell of a lot of editing in your future for the next six months. As a matter of fact, all six months. Until at least 3 of the 4 novels you have ready in the new year are ready to submit. As for that other story that keeps popping up out of nowhere, I think you can outline it, you just can't write any of it - not until you've edited.

A better reading schedule. You always say you want to read the genre you're writing or editing at the time, but you don't always do that. I think you should do that.

More time doing everything. You seriously need to work on limiting internet fuckery. Cats make great videos... but you don't have to watch every one. And don't think I don't mean limiting AW, too....

I think that's a good start. Things you should continue: kindness to animals, drinking coffee, witty and or snarky barbs. Those are things you do real good. Don't change any of that. I love those things about you. About me. About us.

Uh... next Dear Self letter: watch it on the voices in the head.

Exercise Six: 1st, Last Line story

2011-12-22T07:22:00.000-08:00

Greetings! This one has taken a few days to get together. However, I am sure I will regret this. I've only read it about 20 times, and I'm sure there are tons of mistakes. Please remember - this is just a writing exercise. It's ain't upposed to be perfec.

This is part of le Grand Experiment, where I publicly perform the 12 simple writing exercises put forth by Writer's Digest. (Click link for list). This one is to grab a book and select two chapters. Take the first line from one chapter, the last line from the second chapter you chose, and write a 1000 word short story. I chose The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. And so follows what I loosely refer to as a "story" - your mileage may vary. There is adult situations and language.

Exercise 6
eta: Oh, I read it again and I really, really wanna edit this....

They were in bed when Sheb kicked the door open and came in with the knife. Jack’s first thought: “I can’t believe I left that fucking thing unguarded.” The second: he couldn’t believe Sheb had the balls to touch it.

He vaulted from under the covers, tossing them over Annie, just in case the piano player went for her instead. She gave out a squawk of protest and started to wrestle with the blankets, calling him everything but Jack. Sheb’s entire focus was on the naked gunslinger. That was fine. That was how Jack preferred it.

Sheb lunged at him with an inarticulate cry, something between a scream and a grunt, holding the knife awkwardly in front of him. Jack waited until the last minute and spun to the side, coming back around to smash his elbow down, hard, in the middle of Sheb’s back. The piano player went down, screaming. Jack leapt nimbly over the body and brought his heel down on the hand holding the knife. It squirted out of Sheb’s fingers and scooted under the bed. Great.

“Annie! Get up!” Jack shouted.

Sheb twisted around onto his back, crying now, for his broken hand as much as for his loss of Annie, weakly striking out with the other hand. Jack grabbed Sheb’s wrist and pulled, hauling him like a sack of potatoes across the floor and out into the hall, shouting “Annie! Get up!” over his shoulder.

“I’m naked!” she yelled back.

Jack’s voice was thunder in the small room. “Get out of that bed, Annie!” Once Sheb’s body crossed the threshold, Jack jumped over it, darted back into the room and slammed the door shut.

Annie was too busy gathering up the sheet and looking sexy to be quick. She must not have heard or realized what the tearing sound from under the bed meant. He ran around the bed and lifted her, bedclothes and all, and dumped her on the floor. He was barely in time.

The spot where her round bum had been sitting started to move. Then to jig, then a green point erupted, sharp as broken glass, the impossible edge of the knife sawing at the mattress. Annie was still shouting in protest, but now she pointed at the bed and screamed.

He lifted the mattress with both hands and threw it over. The large rolltop desk kept it from falling flat. The path of the knife was obvious, a gaping tear in the bottom of the mattress. He tore at it, spreading it wider, his hands slipping on the fibrous material. The mattress was tufted and the interior strings tore at his hand when he plunged it in. His fingers brushed the frenetic wriggling blade and it redoubled its efforts. Wrestling with the heavy mattress, he twisted his hand in the small space, scraping the knuckles on the fibrous filling, the pads of his fingers seeking a hold on the handle. Now the entire blade was free, only the width of the handle kept it from falling out of the mattress. He had one last chance. He thrust his arm forward, almost pushing the knife out, but at the last moment, his fingers tightened around it. Wrenching it free, he shouted in triumph. The green knife, carved entirely from a single piece of jade, was grasped in his bleeding hand.

“What the hell is that, Jack?” Annie shouted, finally forming words with her shrieks.

He laughed, dry and bitter. He’d yet to figure out how to explain that one. The knife continued to jitter and vibrate, seeking freedom from his hand. It had been engaged in combat. It wouldn’t stop until it found blood. Carefully changing hands, he smeared what little had welled from his scrapes on the blade. It quieted. “Soon,” he promised it. It vibrated in answer. He glanced down at the blond beauty sprawled on the ground. Now her face was blotchy, there were bags under her eyes. He tucked the knife into his belt and patted it. “Payment for a debt,” he said grimly.

“Whatever. Put the mattress back,” she snapped, tottering to her feet, now wrapped in the sheet. “What’s a gunslinger doing taking a knife as payment for a debt?”

He sighed. “Not payment for a debt. It’s a reminder of a debt I have to pay.” Sorry he’d begun, he mumbled, “It’s not easy to explain.”

“Whatever. I’m up. I’m gonna go open the bar.”

“It’s Sunday,” he said.

“And they’ll need something to wash down the preacher’s bullshit with after. You know fire and brimstone clogs the throat.”

He could see she wanted him to go, uncomfortable with his strange, otherworldy magics now that the sun was up. Retrieving his britches and guns, the only thing he’d had on when she asked him to join her for a drink, and then a little more than a drink, he slipped them on and went down the hall to his own room. There was no sign of the piano player. After pulling on the cleanest shirt he had and washing his face, he went downstairs.

The Wetnap was the only house that sold spirits in Digo Town. It had been a house, but when the original owner removed all the walls in an effort to enlarge the common room, the upstairs threatened to come downstairs. To shore it up, a series of pillars had been placed haphazardly through the space. Over the years, they’d become totem poles. Some carved with shapes or love notes, some covered in graffiti. Marriages written on one pole. Divorces on another. The dead scored in black on a square white pillar. Annie said they were a good thing. They slowed down fights, in the way big rocks thrown in a feed bin will slow down a dog that eats too fast.

When he reached the last step that spilled him out into the main room, he paused. To his surprise, the man that laid down the fire and brimstone that clogged the throats of the populace was already there, drinking something from a steaming mug. Jack’s kind and brimstone didn’t mix, but there was no going back upstairs now. Jack hitched up his pants and approached the bar.

“Jack,” the preacher’s voice was low and pleasant, but his gaze focused on the wall behind the bar, just a wide plank of wood laid on sawhorses.

“Preacher.”

The Indian that tended bar for Annie brought Jack his usual: hot tea with lemon.

“Gonna storm later.”

Jack made a noncommittal sound.

“All sinners should get thee hence,” the preacher continued, rolling his cup between his hands, still not looking at Jack. “Gonna be a bad storm. Digo Town is a bad place for strangers to be stuck in a storm. People get desperate. Get ideas in their head about God and the Devil. Sin. And magic. Do things under cover of wind and rain they wouldn’t dream of doing on a clear day.”

A tremor from the knife at his belt. Warning. Danger.

The preacher shoved his now empty cup toward the other side of the bar, stood and walked out. The indian behind the bar looked at Jack from big black eyes and said nothing. With glacial slowness, he pulled a lumpy, many patched sack from behind the bar; the gunslinger’s own, as familiar to him as the back of his own hand. It looked fuller than when he’d brought it in. When Jack just stared back at him, the Indian pushed the sack toward him then gestured at the door. The face was stoic, but nothing in the Indian’s quiet face suggested threat. The tremor of the knife at his side seemed to agree. Jack placed his hand on the handle and again promised, “Soon.” An almost glasslike sound rang from the knife. Soon might be never if they didn’t get out of here. Now. He glanced over at the staircase. He’d swore he heard a light step from that direction, but there was no sign of Annie. Maybe she’d hoped he would be gone by the time she came down. He threw back the rest of his tea, tipped the cup in the Indian’s direction and stood up.

The gunslinger shouldered his tote sack and moved on with it.

Exercise 5: Poem

2011-12-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

It's time for day 5! Day 5 of what? It's not the fifth day of Christmas. It's not the fifth day of the everpresent White Sale is it? No. It's the day for the 5th exercise in Le Grand Experiment - all about doing the Writer's Digest 12 days of simple writing exercises. You can find the info in the link.

Today's exercise is to write a 20 line poem about a memorable moment in my life. I chose the very wise decision I once made to climb over the "Trail Closed" sign at Jade Cove and fell down a cliff. Yeah. Not such a fan of heights anymore. I think I cheated, since I titled it, and you clearly need to read the title along with the poem. Oh well. Here goes.

This looks like a good idea!

Fump

Thump

Whump.

Or maybe not.

Is that the sky,

Or did I die?

Move shoulders.

Move toes.

I think I’m good.

Yes, please, take pictures.

I'll want to remember this,

And yes, I am that pale.

Was that 40 or 50 or 60 feet?

By the time I am 20

It may as well be 100

and I’ll almost have forgotten.

Until I see a movie or commercial

With anything higher than 10, 15, 20 feet off the ground.

I don’t climb cliffs or get on airplanes.

I never did learn how to fly.

Exercise Four: Letter to Agent

2011-12-14T00:12:00.000-08:00

So today it is the 4th day! Of what, you ask? "That time" of the month? The 4th day stuck on the side of a mountain in a snow storm with no peanut butter? No. It is the 4th exercise as detailed in the Writer's Digest 12 days of simple writing exercises. I have all of them listed in this blog post: Le Grande Experiment. It's time to tell an agent how great I am.

Dear Fabulous Agent:

I'm sure all agents sit and wait for that "tell all" letter, where the crazy writer goes on about themselves instead of their manuscript. Well, Writer's Digest told me to do this, and I'm sure they had their reasons.

I was greatly inspired by Stephen King's On Writing. He says (and I'm paraphrasing from memory) there are competent writers, good writers and genius writers. He says that a competent writer can become good with a lot of hard work and practice, but that genius is something you are born with. And no matter how many days of simple writing exercises you attempt, it will ever elude you. I do not fool with genius. I'm not worried about it. I will not attain it. What I am, in my humble opinion, is a competent writer, probably on the road, or perhaps even now, threatening to achieve almost-greatness. What I think are great are my worlds. I make them out of nothing. Goat hair floating on the wind and a pile of ash on my sister's carpet and I can come up with a magic system, a landscape, populate that landscape with heroes and heroines, victims and villains and throw them all in a story. I think I'm honest as a writer. I'm hard on myself. I don't let 'em off easy is what I'm saying. I don't bring down Gods to save folks, unless the Gods are carefully written in and promise to play by the rules. Or if they break the rules, everything goes all to crap and it would have been better if they'd just left well enough alone. I think I'm original. I make a very good turkey sandwich. I like to twist genres and tropes. If I went to Hogwarts, I'd probably get put in Hufflepuff for being such a loyal friend. And as the ponies tell us, friendship is magic.

Exercise three: Setting

2011-12-12T17:50:00.000-08:00

I am ready for Day 3! Day 3 of what? Kindygarden? That weeklong time limit many action movies set for the destruction of the world? No. It’s day three of the 12 days of simple writing exercises. Today’s exercise is supposed to be a setting, based on the most beautiful places I’ve seen.

This gets you thinking. What is the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen? The Redwood forests of northern California where I grew up is probably at the top of the list. The boles of the trees go up and up forever before the branches spread. You don’t see the canopy without looking up, and it doesn’t allow for much undergrowth, so the forest looks like this landscape of enormous red toothpicks. We spent a lot of time out there in the wilderness. My folks scuba’d back in the 80’s and we went camping near the ocean for much of the summer.

I spent most of my time in Oklahoma as a child. There is still something to be said for standing in a place where you can see the horizon line to the east and the west, and you’re standing on flat ground. Especially near sunset, that weird time when the stars are out and the sun lays on the horizon, painting the sky in streaks of sherbet. Darkness spreads above you, but the light still lingers near the horizon. It’s weird.

I think the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen isn’t real, and I’m looking at it right now. It came from someone else’s mind, but they may as well have split mine open and made it for me. I’m sure it’s digital, with probably painted images from other artists dropped in. You see, it’s my background picture I use for Scrivener - a fantasy wallpaper I found on the internet.

I guess this isn’t fair, but I’m going to tell you about it as my exercise. The grass is like a carpet. I mean, literally, it looks like a carpet. Well, a very cushy carpet, with fibers going every which way, interrupted with smatterings of wildflowers. And it’s almost European green. That green that you only see in helicopter shots of Ireland and Italy. The background is a series of low, stepped waterfalls; you know the kind, that churns the water into blue green foam, with spray catching the sun and shimmering over everything, so every photo looks like it was taken through a filter. The star of the image, or the place, if we’re pretending it’s real, is the tree. It would take at least two people to circle it with their arms, and the trunk is old and gnarled. Ivy clings to it like strands of green pearls.

Now that I look at it, this could an Elven ampitheatre. The steps of the waterfalls are large enough that you could use them like a stage, your audience sitting on the grass under the tree. You’d have to pitch your voice just right to be heard above the water, but Elven voices aren’t like ours, after all. I imagine if some fool hunter, or princess on the run from royal duties came stumbling into the glen, the Elves could just fade into the trees rimming the edge of the clearing or step beneath the highest water fall at the very back. Or just stand stock still. Humans aren’t exactly perceptive.

Exercise Two: Character

2011-12-10T00:06:00.001-08:00

Hello, Fearless Readers. First, let's take a moment to thank the Goddamn Batman for that public service announcement. Today is day two. Day two of what, you ask? Treatments? The second day of the three the kidnappers gave you? What is this day two business? Let me explain. I am conducting le Grande Experiment: the 12 days of simple writing exercises detailed in that there link. The exercise is: Create a character with personality traits of someone you love, but the physical characteristics of someone you don’t care for.

This is tricky. I could have reached into my past for the 'someone I don't care for', since this is going out into the stratosphere. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Or get my ass kicked. But instead, I chose a celebrity I don't like. And one I think I could take.

Suzanne is around thirty, and to look at her, you'd expect to find her draped in furs and jewels, sipping champagne on someone's yacht. From long black hair that floats down to her waist, the popular bee-stung lips the perfect shade of red that the Hollywood set pays for, and almond shaped blue eyes fringed in black lashes. Everyone who knew and loved her would say it all goes to waste. The ebony hair is usually wound up under a hoodie, and the hour glass figure is swaddled under loose sweat pants. She doesn't have any furs or jewels, and if she did, they wouldn't be much use while cutting down trees, making them into firewood (the only thing she has to heat her home) or feeding them into the chipper. And it's usually beer on Friday nights, not champagne. Those women in the magazines are paid to be sickly and sexy, and Suzanne wouldn't fit in with that, either. She likes to cook, to eat what she cooks; she likes to laugh and she likes to make other people laugh. Sometimes, that laughter hides a lot of pain. And despite the laughter, she sometimes has trouble looking on the bright side of things. In the better times, the glass is half full, but in the dark times, the glass is half empty, and she's only too aware of the frailty of what remains in the glass.

Exercise One: 10 Novels

2011-12-08T21:24:00.001-08:00

Ok: Day one! Day one of what you ask? The Apocalypse? Have you seen the infected begin to stagger? The bird flu superdisaster? No. It's day one of le Grand Experiment wherein I perform the 12 simple writing exercises put forth by Writer's Digest, and I do it in public. (See link for complete list) Today is the first exercise: name of 10 books I want to write. Some of these are books I may have mentioned wanting and/or planning to write before, some are names I just came up with for the barest of bare plot bunnies. One of them scares me... it has a name now. It might come to life.

Here we go.

1. Race Across Doomed Flats
2. Last Left
3. Road Dogs
4. Of Later Elves and Dragons
5. The Doubletake
6. The Last War
7. Behold the Dragon
8. Bargain in Buttonwillow
9. Fairies of a Fallen Land
10. Gates of Eden

Hmm. That was kind of fun. Want to list me yours in the comments? Or maybe on your blog?

I'm not sure if I will post the 2nd tomorrow or the day after. We shall see how it goes. Until then, carry on, Fearless Readers.

Le Grande Experiment

2011-12-08T20:37:00.001-08:00

Greetings, Fearless Readers. I'm in a spiral. I seem to have spiraled right out of my forward motion. I've lost all belief in my story and all faith in myself.

So. I'm going to put myself out here. I got a Writer's Digest newsletter with "The 12-Day Plan of Simple Writing Exercises" by Brian A. Klems. If you would like to see the article, here it is: article

Below I've pasted the list of exercises.

The 12-Day Plan of Simple Writing Exercises

Day 1:
Write 10 potential book titles of books you’d like to write.

Day 2:
Create a character with personality traits of someone you love, but the physical characteristics of someone you don’t care for.

Day 3:
Write a setting based on the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen.

Day 4:
Write a letter to an agent telling her how wonderful you are.

Day 5:
Write a 20-line poem about a memorable moment in your life.

Day 6:
Select a book on your shelf and pick two chapters at random. Take the first line of one chapter and the last line of the other chapter and write a short story (no more than 1000 words) using those as bookends to your story.

Day 7:
Write a letter to yourself telling you what you need to improve in the coming 6 months.

Day 8:
Rewrite a fairy tale from the bad guy’s point of view.

Day 9:
Turn on your TV. Write down the first line that you hear and write a story based on it.

Day 10:
Go sit in a public place and eavesdrop on a conversation. Turn what you hear into a short love story (no matter how much you have to twist what they say).

Day 11:
Write the acknowledgments page that will be placed in your first (next?) published book, thanking all the people who have helped you along the way.

Day 12:
Gather everything you’ve written over the previous 11 days. Pick your favorite. Edit it, polish it and either try to get it published or post it on the Web to share with the world. Be proud of yourself and your work.

I'm going to try and post one of these every other day. And I'm going to try and get my mojo back. Hmm.... I wonder if someone from the future came back and stole it, like the 2nd Austen Powers flick? If only I had a Delorean.....

Anyone want to join me in my public humiliation? Not that I'm calling anyone out or anything... and not that I want any of my genius friends to prove once and for all they are the more talented writer... but you know. It could be fun. Or horrifying. You know.

NaNoWriMo Reminisces

2011-12-03T12:58:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been a wild and wooly month. On the NaNoWriMo site, there's a video about taking in this next weekend, sleeping and relaxing and reveling in your Post-NaNo afterglow. I, however, have no time to glow. I won, achieving a glorious total of 59,467 in the month of November, but I'm only halfway there.

As always, NaNo was a challenge, a joy, a misery, a time to push myself. I went forth with one of the most detailed outlines I've ever had (which has proven to be painfully bloated) and the goal of 3k a day or bust. I made it most of the time. Below are some points and thoughts I had along the way.

Omg! Pep talk by Brandon* Sanderson!! Yeah. TL;DR. Keep it short and to the point next time, Brian. I have a novel to write this month. Oh. And where the hell is the last Wheel of Time novel?

Thanksgiving: you suck. I mean, everything about you except the times with my family and my mom and sister's amazing cooking. But every year, you take me out of my novel (due to travel time). I come home bloated, swollen and suffering the lingering after-effects of altitude sickness. I also lose my steam and my word counts drop below half of what they were before. I move we change Thanksgiving to October.

3000 words takes longer to write than you think it does. I know that now.

Coffee is, always has been, and ever shall be, my friend and enabler.

The folks at the Office of Letters and Light make wonderful videos. I enjoyed them, looked forward to each new one, and found them inspiring. And amusing. And found myself wishing I worked there. But I don't. I work for a plumbing company.

Scrivener. Is. The. Bomb.

I! Love! Exclamation points!

The internet is not your friend. Yes, it's awesome and all my friends are in the tubes, amongst the cats and the memes, but the internet is not your friend. Or if it is, it's that douchebag that comes over to your house and eats all your chips, clogs the toilet and lets the cat out.

So. That's my take on it. I go forth into December hoping to finish this baby before Christmas. Because once again, the time with family, the wonderful cooking, the swelling, etc. How was your NaNo experience?

eta *Originally called Brandon Sanderson Brain, which I think I meant to put "Brian". But it is Brandon. So double fuckery there. Sorry, Brandon. Now wtf is the last Wheel of Time book?! *stern face*

I have been validated!

2011-11-27T12:30:00.001-08:00

Well, for NaNoWriMo I have been Validated.

(the above thanks to Stacey Graham)

I have validated at 56,132, even though I don't think that's even half of the novel. Yes, I am a little front heavy! And I've written shit since I had to clean my apartment and go away for Thanksgiving, not to mention the resulting altitude sickness. (It's a real thing. I can hardly move or do anything when I'm up in the mountains and even when I come home it takes a day or two to recover.) I had forsaken all housekeeping due to NaNo, and if on picking me up and dropping me off my relations had seen its state, I would have been put in a facility for those not capable of taking care of themselves. And then this novel would never get done. However, I now have a clean apartment in which to write!

There are four days left in November, and I hope to get 12k more added before November 30th. That means my target will be 68,116 if I make my daily word count. Only 21,884 off my goal of 90k. I'm not ready to sum up my NaNo experience yet, but I do think I would have kil't it if not for turkey day.

How about you? Are you validated?

50K in 19 Days - NaNo Win!

2011-11-20T14:14:00.001-08:00

It would seem that I am a winner.

Yay me. :) Looks like I've won NaNo! I had a great day yesterday. Well, I did, my characters, not so much. I almost feel bad for my poor lovers. They haven't even started down the primrose path yet, and I've thrown a big ol' bugaboo in the way! But that's the way of it, I'm afraid. I got over the 50k. I guess I'm around halfway there. If that. I'm afraid I'm looking at a lot more than 100k, here but I know my beginning is a little overstuffed.

This week poses a challenge. Namely, Thanksgiving. I'm only going to be gone a couple of days, but it has been a killer for me in previous years. I spend more than a day or two away from the words, and they sort of shrivel up. I feel bad about bailing on my sister by getting a ride home with my folks on Friday, but actually it keeps her from having to make the long drive for no reason other than to drive me home.

How are you planning to approach the holiday?

Friday Followup: NaNo Checkin

2011-11-18T22:58:00.001-08:00

Hello from Friday! I'm up to 48,858 on the NaNo! So very very close to the win, I can taste it.

Was it Elmore Leonard who said he didn't write the boring parts? I really need to take that advice. Or is it "leave out the parts readers tend to skip." I'm afraid I'm writing a lot of boring parts. It's the transitions that are the trouble. You know, skipping over the areas where everyone arrives at the party before the good stuff starts to happen. I'm drawing out that boring arrival part.

The fun part, however, is all the secrets I don't know. I get this feeling as I write in some of the characters that they have secrets of their own, secrets that are going to come flying out of the closet later. That's a great feeling, but I've also gone a little overboard on that before. I tend to start these dangling threads that way only to have to go back and take them out. Hopefully all the character's secrets are along the same line so more plot points don't start jumping out at me!

I think I'm going to win tomorrow! Whoo hoo! Where are you at in your novel?

Day 15: Halfway Point

2011-11-15T21:15:00.001-08:00

So, it was easy coming up with a blog post idea on day 15 of NaNoWriMo. It's Halfway Day! I have achieved a startling 42,572 words in that short period of time. I don't mean to sound like a bragasaurus, but I am really proud of myself. Considering the shit work ethic I've had over the last year and a half or so, I feel like I'm pretty much on top of the world right now. I hope you will realize this is just my natural enthusiasm and childlike delight. It will soon slough away and leave me in a trench of despair, so I tend to ride these "I'm awesome" highs for as long as I can.

I'm getting worried about length. I'm not anywhere near half-way through my ponderous outline. It didn't seem ponderous at the time, but now I think... this is getting ponderous. There's only been one moment between my girl and her eventual love interest. Things do get romantical later on, but it begins as a straight up gothic tale.

I'm not exactly where I want to be on word count. I hoped to be at 45k by now and I'm a little short. Also, getting 3k a day is taking a really long time. About 3 to 3-1/2 hours. I know I can write faster than that, but for some reason, I'm not. At least it doesn't feel like a chore. I have to admit that my writing sessions have usually been short - maybe 2 hours, 1 hr 45 minutes sometimes and I strive for 2k. I tend to have a short attention span, I guess.

Well - NaNo Onward! How are you doing? Where are you at in your own NaNo journey?

Day 13 of NaNoWriMo

2011-11-13T17:22:00.001-08:00

How are you doin', WriMo's?! I'm super, thanks for asking!

I'm way past the halfway point to winning NaNo, and more than 1/3 of the way through where I plan to be for the month. I'm at 37,406 words, aiming for 90k for the month. But... this baby is getting wordy. We may be at more of 100k or even 120k. I've read too many of the real gothic romances of the 18th and 19th century, I'm afraid. I won't be getting away with Wilkie Collins or Mrs. Radcliffe type word counts!

I'm finding my outline to be a lifesaver. I think that's why I'm going along so well. I've added quite a bit as I've gone along and the Scrivener "note card" system is really helping. Adding my notes as I go along is a breeze. I've also added all my character cards from real life into the ones in the computer. There's a handy function where you can do a split screen and view your cards above or beside your word processing page. It's a great little refresher, as the plot is about to open up and I'm going to need all those imaginary people. So far, it's just been my girl in the spooky ol' house with the spooky ol' guardian and the crackpot team of servants.

Where are you at? How is it going? We're not even at the halfway point - if you're lagging, I hope you give yourself a little room to get caught up as we go along. Best of luck, WriMo's!

Met My Male Main Character!

2011-11-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

Finally! Vampire Baron is in the house! Literally. He just showed up. He wasn't supposed to be here for a day or so, at dinner. Instead, he decided he would stand in my female main character's open doorway as she read off some prose ... dramatically. She might even have said something about bosoms. They had a laugh. Sparks flew. Witticisms were bouncing off the stone walls. It was great. He just appeared like that, and he was fully formed. I didn't know he would be so funny.

This feels like a break, in a way, because I was sweating my heroine. I wasn't sure if I had a fully fledged character or something in a dress that just reacted to what happened. Then I looked at one line on her character card and I knew where to go with her. It said "She's the girl who goes to find the source of a noise!" That says a lot about her. You must understand. To quote Scream, she's not "some big-breasted girl ... running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door." The reason that big breasted girl goes up the stairs is because if she doesn't, you don't have a horror movie. I mean, are those big breasted girls ever very brave? No. Not until they get half their clothes off and hear a noise. All of a sudden, they're Lara Croft.

The reason my girl goes to find that noise is because she's not superstitious. She doesn't believe in the ghost. She knows that darn maid has it in for her. In other words, she has many reasons to inspect that sound or that white cloth that flipped around the corner, or to approach the window that sounds like it's being scratched. That white thing out there could be many things besides a ghost and she wants to know, she wants to stop the superstitious tittle tattle. It makes her smart and brave. And smart, brave people are always interesting.

Going a Little NaNo Crazy!

2011-11-09T16:43:00.000-08:00

Greetings, all! My mad blog pace has slowed down a little, but not for want of blog ideas. I've been a writing demon! Much to the detriment of my house work, especially in the kitchen area.

I was going to get off the internet and start some reading today. I have two library books and maybe a week and a half left to get them read. Normally, this would be no problem, as I devour paperbacks like a panda does bamboo. However, I've got a number of distractions. NaNo being the biggest one. I just had to go check the NaNoWriMo site before I closed down the old web browser, and found a new video. This got me so fired up, I decided to come and get started writing before reading. Heck. The book's gonna be there later. This inspiration might not.

I also have a new writing program, thanks to NaNo. They have a page with freebies and special offers, and the use of Scrivener free during NaNo and a HALF-OFF discount for winners! I am so gonna be a winner.

Anyway, I downloaded the software - very easy instructions. BY THE BYE: THIS IS NOT A PAID ENDORSEMENT - THIS IS MY OWN TRUTHFUL OPINIONS ON MY EXPERIENCE. I tried to watch the 10- minute quickie video but I think with all the WriMos flooding the joint I had trouble and decided to just do the tutorial that comes with the software. The tutorial (which said would take an hour) took me three. I don't know if that's because I was very tired after work, or what, but I did find it well laid out and educational. There was only one WTF? moment, but I have lost what it was in a fog, something about tags and labels, I think... Anyway, you don't have to use what you don't understand. I had already written 17k, so I spent another 45 minutes uploading it and then splitting it into chapters. I fussed about with how I would enter the outline on the little card created to go with each document (you don't have to use the cards - I go back and forth between the cards and the outline feature.) My only complaint is being able to make the outline a seperate document all on it's own. I guess I can just cut and paste, but I like to tinker with my outline in spare moments. I also feel I've lost a little portability by containing all my info in a program that's at home. The export feature is good, but cut and paste is your only option.

Even so, considering I'm going to be able to get this baby for REALS when I WIN for half price (and it's already a very affordable program - $45 for a Mac version and $40 for Windows at full price), and my incredible brokeness, I am so going to get this. It's great. The "compose" feature alone has made writing a much more pleasant experience. You hit the "compose" button and it either blacks out the rest of your screen, or you can use your own background photo - which I have done.

Idn't she purty? Of course, all I see is the sides. It's great.

Ok, that's enough of me. I gotta go write now. Carry on WriMo's! Fearlessly!

NaNo and Inspiration

2011-11-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Fearless Readers! I write to you from the depths of the first week of NaNoWriMo! I'm doin' awesome - meeting my goal of 3k a day - I've actually written a little over that and I'm ahead of my goal at 13,547 after only 4 days of writing! (Haven't written yet today.) I've had only one day of sitting and staring at the ceiling, wondering, where the hell am I going?!

I'll tell you what helps me in those situations. Visual cues. Specifically:

Woodchester Mansion, my inspiration for the crumbling setting in my story, called The Wood Hall. This beauty nestles in the valleys of Cotswold, England, and was, in fact, left unfinished. I'm only using the outside, and my mansion is in a very bad state of repair, whereas the real thing is being lovingly restored.

I'll tell you why I used it. That amazing front, with all those windows! What a statement it makes! And then... you're like... where's the door? And to be honest, I find the actual entrance of the house to be a bit of a let down, and a little... architecturally uneven.

See that side on the right, with no windows? I thought that was weird, considering the rest of the house. I made up a story for that blank expanse, and the story is where The Wood Hall gets its name. I thought it would make an amazing arrival for my heroine.

As a condition of guardianship, Lord Colburn is required required to purchase a carriage and horses for Ophelia's use. Being a master of passive-aggression, he purchases a used one. So, my girl arrives in her shabby, secondhand carriage at twilight, rolling down what looks like a new gravel path (he's already making use of the stipend he gets for her guardianship, and of course, he's spending it on himself...) The winding drive brings her to an unlit house of bluff construction, the roof a forest of angles and chimneys. The house blends into a wild tangle of trees towards the back and the lawn is untended and wild. She hopes, she prays, this can't be the house? Then the road curves around and exposes that gorgeous row of double and triple windows, stretching from side to side and ground to attic - what light must stream in on a sunny day! But there's no light now. No welcome. And where is the door? The carriage doesn't stop, but continues on past the silent black squares. A final turn, and here she sees the first glimmer of light. The entrance, of course, she finds a little underwhelming. The door is almost an after thought under a pointed arch, and set on a confusing edifice that staggers in and out with a mismatched array of windows. A single candle burns in one corner of a window. And why are there no windows on the right side of the door?

So there you have it. A beast of a building, its majesty now crumbling, and stories on every side. Just wait until she gets inside.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt that the real place is haunted as hell!

Woodchester Mansion Most Haunted

Nan-nitty NaNo!

2011-11-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the other side of the first day of NaNoWriMo! How did you do? I got 3337! Thank goodness for Outlines! Of course, as I was driving to work this morning, I realized I hadn't spent too much time thinking about what the first scene would actually be. I mean, I knew what was going to happen: sick aunt, hint of suspense re the future guardian, I even managed to put in the bit about the son that's going to be a problem later.

I hope I'm not makin' my girl too sweetsie. I mean it is a Regency Romance type deal, and she's gotta be a well mannered, nice girl. Right? Please tell me I'm right. I mean, she's not perfect. I know she can't be perfect. Ok. I'll obsess about that later. I think it went well. I didn't do too much staring at the wall or mumbling to myself, and I got the 3337 words in about 2-1/2 hours. That's a little longer than I thought it would take. I hope to cut that down. And I didn't do any editing, because I also did about 1300 words on another story with someone else. And I'm running out of words for this here blog....

On an aside from the blog and NaNo-ness, did you see the rash of posts and tweets about the WFC2011 creeper? PAX Valkyrie (<--that is a link) has an "Omnibus Post Of Posts" on her Tumblr linking to other bloggers experiences. It seems some Warlock Gone Wrong was inflicting himself on the unsuspecting women of World Fantasy Con and kept at it... and at it... and at it, despite being removed from parties, asked to leave, and asked, politely and repeatedly by the women he was inflicting himself on TO FUCK OFF. I guess it took a couple of large dudes escorting him to the door to get him to leave the women the hell alone. There's very little that is good about this, except that it has brought up the question of safety and sexual harassment policies at cons. Apparently, a committee has been put into place to look into it. Also, people are sharing their stories. That's the sort of thing women need to do in situations like these. There may have been one or two who thought... oh, he didn't mean to grab my breast. Or, he was just drunk! I was imagining it. It was a misunderstanding. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Etc. Etc. I think it's clear from the responses to the blogs and the tweets that these were not isolated instances. It wasn't their imagination. And I don't care how fucking drunk he was. A real warlock would know better.

NaNoWriMo Eve & Halloween

2011-10-31T18:52:00.000-07:00

I luv me sum Halloween. And I luv me sum NaNoWriMo.

*Throws hands in the air, just don't care*

No. Really. I don't. Not about much else. Writing is about all I have right now, and I am so glad to have something to funnel my energy into. Things are sucking a bit at the moment. Trying to scrape up enough money to pay rent and eat at the same time just seems to get harder and harder each month. It's seven months before I can seriously think of getting out of here and into a place with waaaaay less rent. It's also a drain on me emotionally to know if I were somewhere else, things wouldn't be so fucking hard.

Don't mean to be a ungrateful or a whiner. But it's good to have something to focus on. It's also putting my nervous and somewhat obsessive energy into something positive. NaNoWriMo is wrapped up in a warm blanket of good feeling. There's the NaNoWriMo website, the peptalks, the AW Write 1 Sub 1, of which many folks are participating in NaNo, the NaNo forums on AW... just all kinds of places to throw yourself down on the floor and roll in the warm effluvia of writing and creating love. I've also found photos of my heroine and the places she'll be inhabiting as inspiration. I've got them set as screen savers and background art on my computer.

But there is still tonight to go. One more scene to write in Dreadight before I go back to editing. One more LIVE ghost hunt on SyFy to go! GHOSTHUNTERS! Ah. My delights. They are small and insignificant, but they are mine.

The Blog! She are different!

2011-10-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

I felt it was time for a change! As I couldn't find a template I liked (or, let's be honest, figure out how to put up a new one!) I figgled about with the settings, found a damask pattern I liked and away she went! All new and pretty! Since it looks like I won't be changing my physical location any time soon... I changed the one thing I could.

I've given up the idea of finishing edits on Dreadlight before November 1st. And I am bound and determined to challenge myself and write 3k a day on The Vampire Baron (opes... did I just let the title of my NaNoWriMo project slip? I think I did) so, looks like I'll be editing... and writing 3k a day. I don't know when I'm going to blog or feed the cat. Not to mention have my house look decent when my sister comes to get me on Thanksgibbing.

So it's Halloween eve... sort of All Hallows Eve...eve.... :) I'm going to go watch The Ring and eat Snickers. Then tomorrow, same thing.

Write 1 Sub 1 Novel Style!

2011-10-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

Are you familiar with a little website called "Absolute Write"? Are you also familiar with a little project called Write 1 Sub 1, wherein participants write a short and sub a short, within a specified time period? (I'm not too familiar with it, I don't write short stories, they are the bane of my existence.) Well, now there is one for novels!!!

Write One Sub One Novel Challenge

The challenge differs by person, so do not think that you are required to "Write 1 and Sub 1" within someone else's time period - you choose how long you will take to write and sub a novel and/or novels. Izz, your Rejectioneer and AW Moderator is watching over us like little chicks. There will be check in threads, advice I'm sure, and since it's AW, lots of encouragement and support.

But don't take my word for it. Click that link above and go check it out. Looks like the official "start" date is November 1st. But remember, you set your own time frame. And after all, it is NaNo. It's not like a bunch of writers don't want to start something on November 1st. Are you telling me you're taking the silly NaNo approach "Ahm jus' writin' a dummas novel that ain't gonna go no whar!" *said with flailing arms and a little drool for emphasis*. Come on! Write that novel! Polish that novel! Sub that novel! Hmm... cheers like that are probably why writers don't have cheerleaders....

It hasn't quite been a week....

2011-10-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

Good evening! I am writing to you from Friday night, after a day of mostly editing. I say mostly editing because I had to write a new scene. Something was missing, I needed some oomph. A little worldbuilding, a little sexy time for the characters and little injection of sinister foreboding. All good things. I really want to finish this first round of edits. I'm not sure if I should send it off to betas when I'm done, or if I should let it simmer and do another pass before sending it off to betas. Decisions, decisions.

It is also Halloween weekend! Very exciting! I have to remember to pick up something for our potluck at work on Monday. I may even have to buy some candy... you know... for the kids. Or for myself. To eat when no kids come by. Who am I kidding? I'm going to buy candy and put a sign on my door that says, "Sorry, no candy", then I'm gonna sit and eat the candy and watch The Ghost Hunters Live, just like I do every year. Bwah hahahahaha!

And it's also just before NaNo! The clock, it are a tickin'. I'm getting very excited. I keep tinkering with my summary, which I feel really, really stinks. I'm terrible at narrowing things down. And then I feel bad, because if I'm a writer, I should be able to summarize my story, or give you the beat down, the logline, the query, the remix, the fashizzle, all in one go. And I've never been able to. I can write you a story, but don't ask me to tell it to you.

I really need to work on my fashizzle.

It's been a week

2011-10-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Fearless Readers. I apologize for the blog's quietness. It's been almost a week since I blogged.

I am really glad to be trying to become a writer. There are times when it feels like it's all I've got. Today was a horrible, horrible day, and instead of going home and wandering around the apartment, inflicting unwanted love upon my cat, eating and sobbing, I am going to go home, open the current file containing my great work, and edit. And please understand, I use the word "great" as in meaning this thing has taken up a huge chunk of my time over the last year, it's become my Everest. It's huge and it's there. And I am not using a lesser adjective for it anymore. It will be a "great" day when I am finished. It will be a "great" book when I am done editing it. It will be a "great" accomplishment to get something beta and/or sub worthy when it as polished and perfect as I can get it.

And even if my day sucked, I have something "great" to go home to. I have a purpose. I have an Everest to climb.

*puts on lamp and affixes spikes to shoes* <-- this probably looks hysterical at 3:25 on a Monday, but the people here think I'm weird anyway.

Sorry Kitteh, Mama Can't Play

2011-10-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

This is how things were in my head on the drive home.

Sorry, Kitteh, Mama can't play with you.

Why?

Chorus: Because we're going to EDIT!

And why are we going to EDIT?

Because we have a JOB to do!

And then I started to refer to myself as "The Editor in Charge" or, the TEIC.

TEIC: And what are we going to do when we get home?

Chorus: Sit in the office chair and EDIT!

TEIC: And what are we going to eat for dinner?

Chorus: Potatoes, and maybe some cereal.

TEIC: And why are we going to do it?

Chorus: Because it's cheap and it's what we have. And we have to EDIT!

TEIC: And why else?

Chrous: Because we're going to EDIT, and potatoes and cereal take hardly any attention! And we have to EDIT!

TEIC: And what are going to do when the kitteh comes up to us crying?

Chorus: We're going to make sure there is kibble and water, and maybe steal a little pet, and then we are gonna say, "Sorry, kitteh, Mama can't play with you. She has to EDIT!

TEIC: And what are we gonna do when the internet paws us for attention?

Chorus: We're gonna shut that bitch down and turn up the itunes, cuz we have to EDIT!

So goodnight, most of my internet friends. I may be posting my accomplishments or coming up for air on Twitter, but I gotta go! Cuz I gotta EDIT!

TEIC & Chorus OUT.

Storytelling: The Lost Weekend pt II

2011-10-15T22:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the lost weekend part two. The weekend of madness and editing. Well, I've been struggling with my edits of Darklight - which has had another name change, by the way. I'm going with "Dreadlight." I like it.

The trouble has been editing the crap I wrote before. I'm moving sentences around, moving phrases and clauses and throwing pencils. Then I had this great idea. What about saying "screw it" to the crap you wrote and just telling the damn story? I have this technique I use when having trouble writing something. I close my eyes and visualize the scene. Then I write it down. However, this requires throwing out the stilted paragraph or whatever garbage I've blurted out that isn't working, which I hate doing. It isn't that I have "golden word syndrome" - I know it's crap, but I have terrible short term memory. If I say a sentence aloud, I forget it as soon as it's out. I have to type it in order to remember it. If it's typed, I can remember it and fix it. If I delete it, it's gone forever, which is probably a good thing.

I don't know why I have this memory problem. And no, I'm not like Drew Barrymore in that stupid movie with all the dates. I function. I have a job and I home I can find. But for instance, at work, when I answer the phone, I may as well not even be listening if I don't have a pen in my hand or it isn't someone I know. They can say who they are and who they're with, but if it isn't written down, I'll forget by the time they're done saying what size thingy they need.

I'm also adding the sexy, which is fun, and hard. I'm adding in the love interest I wanted from the beginning but just, uh, sort of forgot to write. My female MC is thrown together with an old lover, one who has a weird effect on her. And of course, stuff starts happening. Gushy, luvy stuff.

And feel free to leave me shit in the comments if I used effect wrong. Which I don't think I did, according to this little book on my desk.

The Lost Weekend

2011-10-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Fearless Readers. Today is Friday, and I am off work. That means I have a three day weekend. An excellent thing for someone with lots of edits to do. That's what I plan on doing. Gotta take this baby by the throat if I want to meet my deadline and have it in somewhat decent shape for betas at the end of the month.

I've only gotten 20 pages edited - in a week. That's beyond pathetic. I've been letting myself get sidetracked by the internet, the tv, the movies on the tv, the ghost shows on the tv... etc. That's a bad thing. I think when I move, I won't be taking a cable tv subscription with me. The shows I just gotta watch are on the internet anyway, and I have enough movies to choke a .... moviewatcher with a very wide throat orifice. As for man-stalking, all the good stuff on tv ends up on youtube anyway.

Please don't think that this tv watching is all I've been doing. I've read a great book and a kinda lousy book over the last two weeks, so it's not like I'm not getting my reading in. But - I've rededicated myself to editing for the weekend. I hope that means it goes well, and you won't see me come limping into the AW - and - or - Twitter-sphere looking to nurse my wounds!

2nd Attempt: I can't stand the rain

2011-10-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

I wrote another post but I deleted it in shame. It was a little too boo hoo, and believe me, I know there are people who have it way worse than me and I have no business complaining about my lot. So let's move on.

It's raining tonight, pattering away as I edit. I'm sort of behind on my word count. But I'm obsessing about possibly, maybe, moving at some point in the near to distant future to an apartment that may or may not have a bedroom or may have a dishwasher. Well, it better have a dishwasher if I'm going to all this trouble. I don't like change. But I would love a new apartment. I would love the extra cash I would have moving out of this damn expensive city, but all the fuss of moving is a nightmare.

I think I'm just OCD. I get a thought in my head and I can't let it go. Like if I'm going to a concert on Friday (not that I ever go to anything, anywhere) I wouldn't be able to sit down and do anything else. I just sit there and think about Friday. I'm like that with apartments at the moment. And I'm not going anywhere.

Edits and Hera Book Club

2011-10-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

Greetings, fearless readers. I have finished the first scan-through of Darklight and written up all my notes. The hand did not like it, but the magic fiction machine is feelin' really good about where I go from here. (The magic fiction machine would be that which is my brain. I gave it a nickname in case I ever get duplicated and we get separated, it'll know who I am.) I've also figured out I have to edit 3116 words a day to finish this in October. I can handle that.

All this running around the city and airplanes and parking garages (fictionally speaking) has left me in serious need of some costume drama, so I may have a Jane Austen movie-thon this weekend, playing gently in the background whilst I edit.

In other news, I'm sure you've heard about Musa Publishing, rising from the grit and dust of Aspen Mountain and taking over the airwaves. But have you heard of the Hera Bookclub? Well now you have. I'm kind of excited, because I haven't read a lot of more modern Regency or Paranormal romance and Musa boasts a lot of them, not to mention already decent prices. If you join the book club, you get to buy the book at a discount! Which seriously removes the guilt of buying books when I'm so poor I can hardly buy toilet paper. Seriously. I'm intrigued at Marguerite Butler's book, Death by Scandal, chosen for this month. I'm probably going to buy the book about a second before the discussion begins, but it's payday that controls me, not the other way around.

I believe in Fairies, but not in Hags

2011-10-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

I hadn't planned on posting again until I finished the first sweep of story edits. Unfortunately, it's taking longer than I expected. That's ok, though, as it's going really well. I hope to finish today.

I've mentioned my battles with insomnia before. With it comes a host of other bugaboos, and buggiest of all bugaboos has to be sleep paralysis. I had an episode this morning, and thought I'd take the blog off the writer tracks today and discuss it. Err... bitch about it. Same thing. Sleep paralysis is a mighty mother-effer of a bitch. You do not want to go there. Here is the wiki explanation if you are unfamiliar.

WIKI

Basically, you're dreaming, but you would bet your last nickel you're awake. Every time I hear a paranormal experience that starts, "I was asleep and then something was choking me, holding me down, sitting on my chest," I discount it immediately. I love a ghost story, I believe in the paranormal, but don't judge me because I also believe in science. I've had so many experiences and felt such a wide range of things are happening to me that I understand, when this happens to someone out of the blue, they think they're having a visitation from the old hag or aliens are keeping them paralyzed.

The truth is, you are paralyzed, because you are dreaming. In sleep paralysis I've had the following experiences:

I've felt like something was sitting on me - it's usually something evil

I've been dragged off the bed (just like Paranormal Activity, only to wake and find myself in bed)

Once I thought my brother was sitting on me and trying to kill me

I've been on a train or a plane or a rocket going so fast it's pushing me back in my seat

Falling so fast that I'm unable to breathe

The most common experience for me is listening to someone breaking into my apartment and being paralyzed with fear. I wake up and still can't move, believing they are in the apartment. Last night's experience was horrible, and for a moment, I threw aside the rationale of "sleep paralysis"... until I woke up and rationale returned. I thought a woman was on top of me pushing me down. At the same time, I believed I was on my parent's old couch and someone had covered me head to toe with a blanket and sat on me. I woke up, still unable to move, thinking of the old hag of the stories. I lay there, gasping, still scared, because it always feels like there's someone in the room. I slowly became aware of my surroundings and the fear eased up. I found the pressure on my chest was my own hand. Seriously. The weight of my own hand resting on my chest felt like a thousand pounds. The numbness of my legs was from my muscles being held stiff for so long and my bum knee, which I twisted the other day, locked in place. I sat up in bed, when I could, and announced "I do believe in fairies. I don't believe in hags."

I like to think that somewhere, a fairy spread its wings and an old crone lost the last of her teeth.

First Read of the First Pass of the First Revision

2011-10-01T11:13:00.001-07:00

That's a long title.

With all that is wrong with my current work, I am really surprised at the ease of the fixes. I'm starting the edits and rewrites on Darklight. It has many problems, most notably a vague threat from nameless folk rather than a defined antagonist. The other problem is the non-existent lovin' due to the non-existent lover. These are of course, problems, but the fixes are surprisingly easy.

It reminds me of Stephen King's theory of stories being "found" things. I've always believed in this theory. The story is there in the ground, or deep in the ocean, you just need to excavate it. Hopefully, without knocking off too many pieces or killing any squid. Or whatever is in the ocean to be damaged by the full scale removal of a story. For instance, my main character is on the hunt for someone with magical powers in the very first scene and is attacked by dark magic. This is a hint of the major conflict in the story. However, whoever she was after is never defined and never really seen again. Well, now I know my bad guy needs to show up earlier, and he gets plugged into that scene. She spends most of her time with Gomez, an Agent with magical abilities. But I also want a love story. Her love interest was a former lover that is now a boss in her organization. Somehow, he never got enough face time. So now, instead of Gomez, she hangs out with Mr. Lovey guy, and instead of her boss, he's an Agent. Also, it's better that he isn't her boss, but her equal. It's like I had all the parts, I just hadn't put them in the right places. As if I'd excavated a house and put some of the walls in the wrong places.

Of course, I'm saying this only 45 pages in to the first pass, which is only skimming through and finding the plot problems. Fingers crossed I don't find any roof rot in my "found" story house.

Darklight is Finished

2011-09-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

As the title says, my current WIP, Darklight, is finished. Well. Sort of!

Greetings, Fearless Readers. A dreadful night of zero sleep plus a day off from work ended up victorious - as I gave up trying to get any sleep last night, got out of bed and FINISHED MAH NOVEL! Well. Sort of. Back to where I began.

I'm torn, as it's been soooo long since I finished a novel, I feel I deserve to celebrate. However. This book has so many problems. It was written it over such a long period of time, it can't help but sound disjointed. It has too many characters just standing around in scenes, not doing anything. The romance I wanted never developed, because the love interest wasn't in enough scenes. It doesn't have a real antagonist. Luckily, the little brain has been percolating as I've gone along, and I believe I have all my fixes, it's just a matter of going back and writing them in. *deep sigh*

No! No dithering. No sighing over what must be. The first draft is done. As it's been so long in the making, I'm not going to let this one sit and fester, I'm going right back in with rewrites. Most of it is foreign to me since it's been so long, anyway. Then to beta. Then to polish and sub.

How are you in your WIPS, Fearless Readers? Finishing? Beginning? Dithering? Sighing? I'm going to relax for a day, and then seize this mutha by the horns and get back to work.

For the Calendar Tells Me So....

2011-09-26T21:54:00.000-07:00

Monday was teh awesome. I made some goals and I actually kept them.

I'm making use of Google Docs, including the calendar function. I made mention that I didn't keep a writing calendar this year and I really think it affected my productivity. For my regular journal, I like a dated, day by day calendar. For my writing, I used a month by month calendar and just jotted down my daily word count. I thought about using the Google docs calendar for that, but I noticed it has an hourly timeline on it. That's the problem with most online or electronic calendars - it's all about appointments. Then I thought... what about making appointments for the stuff I want to get done?

First, I admit, I went through and jotted in my "must see tv." Ok. I like a little tv. I have really really cut down my watching over the last few years. I have niche interests. I don't usually watch what everyone else is watching. I have only 4 or 5 must watch shows at a time, spread over the week. Then I went in and blocked out time to blog, just a half hour, then an hour for writing and an hour for editing. And I did all three of those things. Yay, Calendar! Yay, productivity!

Do not interfere with the will of the calendar!

Productivity and Organization

2011-09-26T17:28:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Fearless Readers. I have yet to come to the end of Darklight. I really thought I'd be done before this. I was derailed by insomnia last week, which left me a stumbling, drooling automaton whose desire to write was el zilcho. I did do some outlining for my NaNo, though. The end of the year is coming, and November! I did a shit job of keeping a journal or track of my writing output this year, and I think my productivity suffered. I think it always suffers when I'm not organized. As we head toward the new year (the last quarter of this one will be done before you know it!) I'm all caught up in getting organized.

I don't think anything is more basic organization for a writer than an outline. The first outline I ever did was NaNo '09 and it was very fast and loose - maybe a page and a half of single line paragraphs with plot points. (I entitled it: What I know - Just like Oprah!) I wanted to write write write, with no looking at the wall and contemplating my greatness, just production of words. I wanted to know where I was going, or what I was aiming for that day. It helped a lot. I wish like hell I had done it with Darklight. I would up writing myself into wandering pathways that don't want to connect. I am now doing the outline with the thing almost done, and foreseeing lots of rewrites. The NaNo novel I plan on doing is currently a very detailed outline, lots of paragraphs and structure - I've even got it figured out by "books" or parts, - you know: Book I, Book II, very old school novel structure.

My other thing is with calendars. I didn't have one to keep track of my writing output this year - a mistake. I've kept one for the last five years, but not this year. A testament to how broke I've been! I had one for my "journal" - not a Moleskine like usual, but one of those Border's specials, a daily calendar sandwiched between two plastic flaps with a girly-Ed Hardy-esque pattern on it. I've already picked one out for next year, dammit. It has a calendar page for each day AND a section that has the whole month on one page so I can list word count. I'm also using the Google Calendar - I found it on the Google Docs page. I'm scheduling writing time, blogging time, editing time. I hope being more organized will affect my productivity, and get me in the groove for NaNo!

How about you? Do you organize your writing time? Do your organize your goals? Do you organize your plots? Do you know what you're doing for NaNo? Tell me in the comments. I'm dying to know.

The Headache

2011-09-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Well, my weekend was blown. My nice 3 day weekend, with Monday off and everything, and all my plans to write and edit and post and make use of social networking completely screwed. And I apologize. This is one of the worst posts I've written. But, oh, do read on. If only to see how the universe has mocked me.

I woke up with a little headache on Sunday that soon emerged into a full-blown brain-matter munching migraine, the likes of which I have never experienced before. I am loathe to say I have migraines - I believe they are usually sinus headaches with pain, a little pressure on the face, the slightest aversion to light, and over soon. This one: Migraine with a capital M! It felt like someone had reached inside my cranium and put their hand on my brain and was pushing down on it. For no other reason than to cause me pain. Even moving my head made it throb. My glasses, the ones that fly off my face at the slightest provocation, were too heavy for my face. My dark cave of an apartment was too bright, even with all the lights off and the shades drawn and my eyes closed. The rag I wet and draped over the top of my head was not sufficient: it was WHITE and didn't block the ferocious sunlight that made it past my blinds and the 3 layers of sheet covering my two windows! Why are there two windows in my apartment, and why are they SO BIG!? These are not questions I normally ask.

And what medication did I use, you ask? The bone thrown to the mongrel of my pain?

One Tylenol.

That was all I had. I am so broke, I only had ONE Tylenol left in the farking bottle. The dogs that were my pain were not satisfied with such a small token to their ferociousness and redoubled their efforts.

We're not going to talk about how I opened the medicine cabinet this morning, all vestige of headache finally gone and the bottle of Aleve that fell out. For one moment, everything went over red and my eyeballs started to quiver in my head. Of course, we can talk about how I opened it in disgust and horror.

Only one tablet remained in the bottom of the bottle.

I wonder if the tablets of Tylenol and Aleve paired up and ran off, like the dish that ran off with the spoon. I did pause for a moment to listen to the laughter of the universe before I started screaming. I mean, it's not like there's anything else I could have done. Well, there are things I could have done, but I would have wound up in the looney bin or the pokey, and I would like to get some writing done this week.

Here's to better days ahead. And full bottles of pain medication in the cabinet.

Greetings, Fearless Readers

2011-09-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

I am terribly sorry not to have been around. I've experienced a lot of ennui lately. I hope I'm using that word right.

But seriously. I lost my focus and wasn't writing, and I didn't feel like coming back and blogging like a writer until I had done some writing. And I have. I'm very close to finishing Darklight, an Urban Fantasy about a government agent (not our government, you understand) who looks for people with magical abilities. As you may imagine, that can get dicey.

I'm on Twitter now. Not that I use it very much - but I occasionally throw up a witty, profanity laced tirade you might enjoy. Twitter.

I've also written and subbed a short story for an Anthology. Miracle of miracles. I am not a short story specialist but I managed to get in there under the 10k limit, so, hallelujah!

Aaaand... more good news! For some mad reason, I went to check on my official "author" email that I use only for subbing. It's sat fallow for much longer than this blog - ever since last summer when I was sending out Jale of Dragonfael to agents. I found an email!! zoinks! No, it wasn't a request - but it was an incredibly positive response. The agent said the story wasn't for her, but my writing had potential! Did you read that?! I haz a potential! She urged me to re-submit to her in the future.

Two words. Wow. Za.

Also: (yes, I'm not done - I been up to a lot!) I've got my NaNo outlined. I even have the ending. First time that I've ever outlined a whole work. There's a little fuzz in the 2nd part of the story, but I have ideas for it. It's a gothic paranormal .... well, maybe I shouldn't say anything. But I really like it. I've got the plot. I need to do a little more character work. I'd like to know my main characters a little better before I get into it. I'm really excited.

And later tonight, I might make some cupcakes! Yes! Bakery goods! On top of writing and all that other stuff! I'm going to try and light up the social network scene this week - actually blogging and twittering and facebooking and everything. It's terrifying. I hope I survive.

Thank you for your patience, and I hope you'll be reading me again, soon.

Author Interview with Marialyss McKinley

2011-07-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

*Dons smoking jacket* *Lights pipe* *Coughs*

We're here... *blows artful smoke, not quite like Gandalf, but reminiscent* with Marialyss McKinley, author of the Regency Historical from Aspen Mountain Press titled "Heart's Desire." Having beta'd the first half of the novel (I totally blew it on reading the rest... not having bothered to finish it until it was no good to anyone... but, but, we're not here to talk about my crappy beta job) (and don't give me any guff, the thing got published, after all! Let's move on!) *coughs* I wanted to talk about the process of publication, writing, editing, etcetera, with its author. Some of you may know her as the firebending mod, regdog on Absolute Write. She was kind enough to answer my questions, and I am passing them on to you, in my first ever Author Interview, here on Far Seeing fairy Tales. *Crosses pajama'd leg*

*Adjusts smoking jacket, makes note of Marialyss's soft calico print summer dress... wishes smoking jacket wasn't quite so heavy*

Marialyss... you've written different genres, from mid-grade to this romance that has just come out on Aspen Mountain Press, Aurora Regency, "Heart's Desire" (Click link for to go to page) Do you ever struggle with voice when going back and forth between different genres?

Yes, mainly when I write children’s. I have to be careful I keep the tone and expressions correct for the age range. Sometimes I find myself writing in a more adult voice and I have to remind myself, "children’s book". It doesn’t mean I dumb it down, I just have to tell the story the way kids act, talk and respond to things.

And, now that you are pub'd, one of the great goals of most writers, you had to begin the editing process. It seemed like you were editing really close to release. How close was it, and was there any freakout pressure as it got closer?

I was. My editing came within days of the release date. My editor and I were working hard to have everything perfect, especially the historic details. Celina, the editor-in-chief of the Aurora Regency division is a living encyclopedia of historical facts. The last thing Aspen Mountain want is book riddled with historical inaccuracies. Every fact is checked and double checked to make sure the best possible book is published.

So, you subbed Aspen Mountain Press directly - how did they approach you about buying your book -was it an email? Will you tell us a little of what the back and forth was like? And how much chocolate did you eat in celebration?

I submitted per their query instructions in the beginning of December and received a request for a submission a few days later. It took a couple of weeks and then I received the acceptance. I read the e-mail saying they were accepting it at least three times before it sunk in. I still have that e-mail in my inbox.

Any writer knows the feeling right before you click the return e-mail open. It’s a mix of hope and dread. One part says, “this is going to be a yes” and the other part is stuck in the “oh great, let’s see today’s rejection” To see, “Yes, we are accepting this” is one of the greatest feelings.

A cheeseburger and many French fries gave their all for my acceptance celebration.

The road to publication always goes through the editor - I think about going forward into publication all the time and I wonder if I will be nervous or intimidated by this person. How was it working with an editor for the first time?

I loved the editing process because I wanted to learn all I could to be the best writer I can. I wanted to know what technical mistakes I was making so I could correct those and not repeat them. My editor, Peg, was great to work with and gave a lot of helpful feedback and took my thoughts about edits in consideration. She let me know this was my book and her job was to me make it the best it could be, not take it over and make it her book.

Are you involved in any of the marketing for your book?

Yes, I am very involved in the marketing of my book, so is Aspen Mountain. I have a blog http://pointlessponderables.wordpress.com/ where I’ve talked about editing, and how anxious I was for my book to be released. I loved being able to post it’s release on my blog. I’m having a website made as well. I’ve had promotional cards made with the cover on one side, log line and ordering information on the other.

Aspen Mountain set up several writers chats on Yahoo Groups, Love Romance Café http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LoveRomancesCafe/?prop=eupdate to help promote their writers’ works.

I was also asked by my favorite fairy is she could interview me for her blog. Of course I said yes.

*Preens* :) Now that you have sold, do you approach your writing any differently? Are your goals different?

I still write the stories I want to. Now, however, I have a fantastically edited book to use as my guide. I can use it to reference grammar questions I have or how to best tell the story.

My goals are still the same. I want to continue to write books that will be published and I would love to acquire a literary agent and see my middle grade historical fiction book published.

What are you writing, right this moment?

At the moment I’m writing the second story in an ongoing children’s book series. I’m also editing a historical romance to submit to Aspen Mountain.

/interview!

Ok, that's a wrap. I would like to thank Marialyss for answering my deep and probing questions... but not for dressing better than me. I think she could have thought about that a little before she showed up here all dolled up... but you know. You gotta be polite to your guests. And that means linking to her author page as often as possible. I really enjoyed this book (even tho I took forever to read it cuz I am lazy and get dry eye... DON'T JUDGE ME!). Good heroine. Good plot. Good pace. Good characterization. These are things you need in a book. And I wouldn't pimp her book if it wasn't good. I won't foist crap books on people, no matter how much I like the author. And I do like her. Despite her tendency to overdress. *Readjusts smoking jacket.*

Not Dead, but Not Really Writing

2011-07-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

Yes. I live. I have not been trapped under something heavy, it just feels that way. I want you to know, I have very high hopes for this weekend. This long weekend. (Happy 4th, by the way, my Fellow Americans!)

I haven't been up to much, hence the lack of blog posts. I do have some plans, tho. I have what I think is my first author interview with Marilyss McKinley, the author of Heart's Desire. That will be hitting your airwaves tomorrow. (Proof-reading people. Do it or suffer the consequences.)

I have no excuse. Just in a huge funk. Not writing. Wasn't even journalling - which is a terrible sign. I've forced myself to journal for the last 4 days in a row, so that's something. And I have a new shiny. An idea. The problem? The four unfinished novels I've started in the last 6 months. Yeah. Teh shame.

Hope you are all doing well, my friends. I'm going to try and get my head right.

Heaven Help Bay City

2011-05-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

You know I don't do this very often. Abner Sinires is a buddy of mine on Absolute Write. His book came out yesterday, Kat and Mouse. I think the blurb speaks for itself. Enjoy.

2042. Bay City, California Free State.

Kat and Mouse are ronin--street mercenaries--who like cake runs. Simple jobs with quick and large payouts.

That's what these were supposed to be. Cake runs.

But when the Duo sign on, they suddenly find themselves targeted by a biker gang, a team of corporate commandos, a cybernetically-enhanced special ops agent, a stalker, a band of kidnappers, and a Japanese crime syndicate.

And they all want the Duo out of the way. Permanently.

Now these sassy sisters-in-arms must survive the onslaught and still get the jobs done. Because in the Biz, it's get paid or get dead.

As usual, Kat and Mouse are going to do things their way.

Heaven help Bay City.

I will pimp the hell out of a book with a blurb like that. And if you wanna sweet, sweet, little taste, you can check out his blog http://www.katandmouseserial.com/ There is a little linky for new readers to click on, so you know where to start. Pulp is not dead.

Another link to the book:
http://www.abnersenires.com/katandmousebook

Bookity booksbooksbooks!

2011-04-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Fearless Readers! I know it’s been awhile. I reorganized the studio (apartment) this weekend. I used to always call it that - “the studio (apartment)” but I’ve fallen into calling it “the apartment”. Boring. I like calling it the studio… as it is a studio, a single room of shame, the bastion of the barely employed…

The online dictionary gave me “atelier” as a synonym for studio. I looked that up and got this:

atelier

artist's studio: a studio or workshop where an artist works

There has been way too little “atelier-ing” in this L shaped space. I haven’t completed a novel in too long – but I’ve started three. *Groan* I don’t want to be one of those. You know, those people who call themselves writers but who never finish a book. The one good thing: I know what is “wrong “ with the current one, but as I can’t seem to go in and fix it (not knowing where to start) I’ve decided to lump it and start over in the best place. At the beginning.

For some reason, that led to getting rid of some other obstacles. Namely: the clutter and mess choking the studio (apartment). And to do that, I got it in my head that it was time for a change all the way around. I moved everything! That meant going through the monster entertainment center, the one so filled to bursting with books that it creaks and pops at night. I got about three boxes worth in the closet now – and found many many delights. At some point, The Han Solo Adventures had fallen back behind the tv! And of course, there’s the novelization of all three Star Wars movies, in one handy volume, that I haven’t read in at least ten or fifteen years. I also had some Mercedes Lackey from my days in the SF&F bookclub. Other lost gems: The Firebringer Trilogy!! The Last Unicorn. Lost among the clutter. I really pared it down to just my favorites or unread books that are out and visible. There is actually ROOM left on every shelf, and if I went looking for a book, I think I could find it! Miracle of miracles!

I also put everything loosely together by author and/or genre. Stephen King takes up the huge shelf on the bottom, and I had to put the Dark Tower Series on the shelf above. All my most favorite, die-before-I-let-them-leave-my-grip books are nestled on one shelf (excluding King and Rowling – who are down below) This includes The Lord of the Rings books, Watership Down and Tales From Watership Down. Other Voices, Other Rooms and The Grass Harp by Capote. To Kill a Mockingbird. A slim poetry volume of Sylvia Plath’s – Across the Water, I think. Xenogenesis by Octavia Butler. Bleak House by Dickens. A couple books from my youth like The Littlest Witch, Bunnicula and Sad Day, Glad Day, which I've had since I was about 5 years old. There are no Austen books, as I never bought them, but I did download them for free from Gutenburg, along with everything Dickens, Woolf, Alcott, Bronte (all of them!) and Lovecraft. They are only on the shelf, metaphorically, along with many more, of course. It did get me thinking about what is on the shelf and what is not. I don’t regret the lack of physical volumes, because if I had every book I have ever loved, I would need a bigger apartment. I always had the feeling that all that ancient stuff would always be there, whenever I wanted it.

Of course, what it comes down to is this: if I want my own books up on a bookshelf someday, I need to start writing again… now….

1108 written today - for a grand total of ... 1108. Ah. Starting fresh!

The Casting Couch of the Mind

2011-03-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Fearless Readers. I have a lot to do in this blog post - so let’s get to it. First off, I have another blog. Yes. Another blog to keep up with. Yay. It’s about Urban Fantasy, but it’s not your average review blog. Check it out if you have a minute. Flights of Urban Fantasy.

Second: I’ve had a revelation! I realize I need to restructure Darklight. Sigh. I need to get my kid sidekick in a lot earlier, shake things up and bump up the tension. I knew something was wrong with the story and kept futtering about, not doing anything. Now I know what’s wrong, and I’m gonna try and fix it.

Thirdly: Let’s talk about dream casting. One of the best things about writing your own stories is casting the movie in your head. Imagine: the A list, the B list, all at your disposal! I only do this on occasion. I usually pick random, regular human faces, but when I started Darklight, I knew I wanted to give Richard Armitage a job.

Yes, he is/has been my current crush, but he’s a cutie, and I like him in the cop role. Wilkins is my main character's love interest. He is and isn’t the type of cop Richard has played before. The typical cop profile: a go-getter, in charge, alpha male, leader type, “brilliant” as the Brits say, in terms of doing his job. Wilkins is different in that he’s more sensitive than your typical cop guy who stands around and looks tough with a great jawline. I wanted a strong guy with a good heart. Wilkins never takes a cheap shot in an argument, he sees the truth of a situation… and he doesn’t mind passing on that truth, even if our love-challenged leading lady doesn’t want to hear it. Oh, and he dresses really well. Wilkins does, I mean. I don’t care what Richard Armitage wears

Now for the main female character, I imagine Miranda Raison from Spooks, one of Richard’s co-stars.

In an ironic twist, in Darklight she would be more like Richard’s character in Spooks than like Jo, the one she actually played. I cast her for the cute pixie haircut and the big blue eyes. I don’t know if she would be willing to revisit it again if this was actually, by some miracle as yet unseen, made into a movie in real life and offered to her. Not to mention, she’d have to dye her hair brown.That is what is so fun about the casting couch of the mind.

A whole lotta links goin' on, or Dithering 101

2011-02-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

Before we begin our regularly scheduled program, I just want to mention: I was interviewed by Dan Straka and it is currently up on his blog. He has some great posts about writing, so despite my numerous attractions , I hope you will check out his other musings! Thank you, Dan, for letting me ramble on.

Richard Armitage on a laptop is my screen saver.

Your argument is invalid.

These are some of the undisciplined thoughts that ramble through my head when I sit down without a serious focus for the night. Let me explain. No, no time to explain, let me sum up.

Good nights: Enter apartment, pet cat, remove coat, put down purse and keys. Warm up barely edible sustenance and consume. Make black substance in coffee pot, sans caffeine. Get cup of black substance with fancy creamer. Sit down. Turn on computer and write two thousand words. Done by 7:30 at the latest. Shazam.

The last few nights: Enter apt, chase cat, finally throw coat over cat and inflict love on said feline for many minutes longer than is necessary. At some point I’ve lost my purse and keys. Shamble to fridge. Open fridge and then freezer numerous times, talking about how there is nothing to eat. Finally decide I’m hungry enough to consume the food that is there, instead of ignoring it and hoping the money fairy is going to leave me some cash for take out. No money fairy. Throw together whatever remains edible into some sort of recognizable, glop. Perform various gyrations, singing “I can bring home the bacon... dunn nun nun nuh... fry it up in the pan...” Consume glop. Make pyramid of dirty dishes in sink. Make pot of coffee... oh fuck. Wrong can. Now I’m gonna be up all night. Might as well check out the Fail Blog. Ohh kitteh! I Can Has Cheezburger. Suddenly decide to run after my own kitteh some more and inflict more luv upon her, which I tell myself she really likes, amidst screams and complaints to the contrary. Return to desk, bleeding and swearing with cup of cold black substance with creamer. Open pages document. Go to AW and complain about treatment said cat inflicts upon me. Stare at screen. Check Richard Armitage blog. OOOH! Link! Spend twenty minutes clicking to Lord of the Rings merchandise sights. Go to AW. Is Orlando married or just a dad now? Wonder what AW would think of me not being sure of Orlando Bloom’s marital/parental status. Go back to Richard Armitage blog. Go back to Cheezburger. Go to M thru F blog and realize I wanna kill myself because my life is just like that blog. Sans the great Star Wars References. Go back to AW and tell SF&F Cantina I wanna kill myself cuz my life is like a Cheezburger blog. Derail. Have virtual candy in Susie’s House of Fun. Facebook. Get mad at Facebook ads. Think about writing a blog post. Open pages document. Stare at screen. Decide to write everything I just wasted my time doing. Looks at clock. Fucking 7:15. Glances over at still open manuscript. Feels deep abiding sense of shame.... shakes head incredulously and wonders what cat is doing....

Ok. I’m going to funnel my shame into writing now.

Writing Exercises

2011-02-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

You know ‘em. You love ‘em. Some of them are suggested by your friends or favorite authors, fellow writers or teachers. Some of them just pop up... because you can’t fuckin’ take it anymore.

Such is the case in my one woman diatribe against The Facebook. I heard that in the commercial for Social Network - not that I give half a rat hair to see the movie, but ever since, I been callin’ it The Facebook and callin’ it good. I mean, The Facebook is clearly not good, it is an evil overlord that someday will rise up and crush us all, but until then, I can share my witty repartee with the world. What I will no longer abide, however, are these frickin’ obnoxious and stupid ads that run along one side of my wall!!!

They were innocuous at first. A pile of delicious donuts, with the offer of coupons for goods and services in the San Francisco Bay Area. A link to websites selling fairy gear. An offer to “Like” The One Ring Dot Net. Notices when Stevie Nicks would be playing in my area, all this culled from my profile. But then.... offers to enlarge my breasts. Ads promising the services of hunky cowboys in chaps. Suggestions that perhaps my teenage daughter had an eating disorder. At first, I threw up my hands shouting omgwtfbbq! These can’t be aimed at ME! Then, I noticed the little X near the ad. You can click it to remove the ad... and they ask you why this ad was inappropriate for you.

Ask and you shall receive, Facebook. Thus was my current writing exercise born.

Well, The Facebook, my boobs are just fine. I mean, they could be a little higher, but I just turned 40, and thank you for reminding me of that. And no, I’m not looking for a cowboy. I’m a little more the suburban, studious, well-groomed type. And yes, I may be alone, but who are you to suggest that somehow my life is lacking? Or that I am so desperate as to turn to the ads on The Facebook to find me my studious, well-groomed reader of Poe and Tolkien? And as for my daughter??? I don’t have a daughter,Facebook! What the hell? It’s like you don’t know me at all! You don’t listen! You don’t pay attention! It’s like we’re not even in a relationship at all! All you do is take and take and take, despite the fact my profile is right there for you to cull from. And cull from it you have.

And this is what you come up with. Boob doctors, cowboys and anorexic emos.

Well, fuck you, Facebook, and your little ads, too!

I admit that I was hoping this might cause a bit of a stir with The Facebook, or improve the quality of the ads. I have not been banned, and now they want to send me to Guatamala to meet hot singles. Meh. At least it gives me something to do. And it’s the only writing I’ve done in the last month, besides this witty blog post.

You’re welcome.

Down, Maybe, but not out!

2011-01-25T12:01:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been knocked down by a mighty foe.

Insomnia. It sucks.

I haven't written hardly anything in almost a week, I'm just been dragging myself back and forth to work, trying to stay awake until its time to go to bed, then going to bed and staring up at the cieling, trying to remember ever having been tired. Last night I got a few hundred clumsy words, but not enough to mention. I really need to do a read through - something I had tried to avoid while writing, going a hundred miles a minute, only looking forward, not back. However, I've lost momentum and fallen out of the story, not to mention my poor fiction machine being set in "zombie" mode. The main problem is, that I don't know what happens next. So I'm going to go back and try and get caught up again. I'm not at all despondent about the story, only this damn zombie mode I'm in. Which is a very good thing, or at least, I assume it is, throught this fog of incomprehension. I just gotta hold on till the weekend and get caught up on the zzzz's. *crosses fingers*

Day Three: No Outline Yet

2011-01-16T12:17:00.000-08:00

I guess I'm not out of story yet. Yesterday, I had no idea what needed to happen next, but then I didn't realize I hadn't finished writing what I started. I have a tendency to write... up to a certain point. It's weird, and probably not a good habit, but I prefer to only write one big happening a day. And I like to jump right into it when I start for the day. I don't know how that works... as I require a certain number of words be written a day. How is it that that 2k will stop before the big shootout, or the hole to the other side being ripped open? I don't know. Sometimes, I feel like a tourist in my own head.

Of course, I strongly hold to the Stephen King Theory, which is that stories are found things. They are all there, in the earth, and like a plodding archeologist, you have to chip away and dig it out, being careful not to destroy anything.

And where did the gypsies come from?! When I was in tenth grade, I lived way out in the boonies and had to take the bus to school. For a few months, we drove by this caravan type wagon parked on the side of the road. There was a family there, and I thought they were wearing costumes. Very early nineteenth century pioneer type clothes. It was all cow pasture out there and not a house in sight. I thought it was a strange place for a roadside attraction. Then one day, they were gone, and someone said "The gypsies have moved on." I was like... whu? And somehow, BLAM! Just driving down the street, they show up in my urban fantasy when it goes rural. Found things indeed... who knows what else is buried down there.

Day Two: Probably Time To Outline

2011-01-15T11:41:00.000-08:00

Greetings, fearless readers. It is day two of the four days of madness, and after arising, at a much more decent hour than yesterday, I have indeed gotten my first two thousand words of the day. I did have two writing sessions yesterday, but the second one only garnered me about 1300 words. S'al'ight.

I think I've come to that point. The story has been moving along on its own, in the direction I had planned, but now we've come to that murky 100 page plateau. There are goings on in Mexico, out in the Midwest, the fae are abandoning this plane, and Sara has found a cryptic message left in her most recent acquisition's apartment. What appears to be a home movie, left on a piece of paper than can work as a projector. Yes. It's magic, folks. They have to find the location of the home movie.... or so they assume.

And I don't know what happens next. Considering that I want to try and write a little more tonight, I think I better figure that out! Time to start jotting things down in an outline.

Wish me luck.

Four Crazy Days: Day One

2011-01-14T14:53:00.001-08:00

Due to some strange, ethereal scheduling complications, involving a co-workers wisdom tooth extraction and a Friday off already being procured, it just so happens... I have a four day weekend. I have wasted much of one of them sleeping. :( Sad face. But, I have had a 2000 word writing session already.

I'm going to try and make the most of these four days. The goal is four days of writing and blogging madness! Yes. A blog post each day, to report the day of writing. So hold onto your seats, people! The next three posts may be as inane as this one.

So, day one. I rose at the embarrassing hour of 12 noon. Seriously. That's just embarrassing for someone at my age. In my defense, I went to bed at one am, woke at five am and listened to the cat yowl for about three hours before dropping off again. And I suffered for it, because when I got up, I felt like I'd been beaten about the head and shoulders with a blunt object. Coffee, tylenol, and I was off to the races.

I'm hoping to maybe, sort of, tentatively, suggest that I might have two writing sessions a day. That would be good, right? But I've sworn to go easy on myself this time. I get very caught up in missed opportunities and beating myself about the head and shoulders with blunt objects when I miss a goal, or perform less than spectacularly, and then I stop enjoying the process. It becomes a slog. No slogging this time. Just slow, steady progress, and the blog thereof.

What about you? Plans? Dreams? Goals? Discuss.

Slippage

2011-01-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

Who doesn't know about slippage? Ah, the feeling of your goals and dreams giving way to reruns of Friends and Ghost Hunters...

No slippage for you!! Or me, rather. I didn't write Saturday due to NO sleep Friday, and I mean ZERO SLEEPAGE in the night hours. I slept from 7 am to 11:45 am. That's the wrong side of the clock to do your sleeping on. I wrote on Sunday, but then, Monday... I was hungry when I came home from work. The dinner-getting process was a long one, and I said the magic words. The ones that bring about the phenomena of slippage. Sort of like summoning Bloody Mary in the bathroom with the lights off.

"Fuck it."

And it was all over. I sat in mah chair and watched Spooks episodes. (I have shiny new DVD's, you see.) And no writing was done that day.

Well, not tonight. Tonight, no slippage!! Right back in the saddle with 3308 words, bringing the WIP up to 19,306. Boo yah! Take that, slippage!

Never as Pretty as in my Head....

2011-01-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

Update: 1644 words today for a total of 15,998

Sigh. I'm taking the advice to write crap to heart. It sucks being out of practice. My prose isn't as good as what I hear in my head. Of course, the stuff I have in my head is terrifying. Who can blame those poor sentences? It's a miracle they get out alive.

I am having a pretty good time, though. The world is fun, I wrote a great scene with a fae, and my main MC and her trusty sidekick have a great report! I'm struggling to show that report, but that is the point of the blog post, isn't it? Writing is like a muscle, if you don't use it, it goes all flabby. And my vocabulary is so rusty. When I run into difficulty, I hold my hand up, opening and closing it like a sockpuppet gasping for air, only I'm gasping for words; ones I knew as well as I know that opening and closing hand. It's like a mist has grown up between us. I've always struggled to find the perfect word, but I blame my lack of writing for the appearance of the mist.

I've thought about adjusting my goals because I'm so out of practice. I'm not sure if I should keep editing Endways of the Gods, or just read it. Or leave it alone until I've gotten more rust off the magic fiction machine. Right now, they're just the stilted words of another first draft; they have flashes of brilliance, but much of it is flat and "was-y". Plus, pronouns are a difficulty, as my characters in that book have titles. Sigh. Again.

To this end, I've pulled out a few books of poetry, always a rich depository of words. And I know I need to read more. I've asked mah pals at AW to suggest current (and good) urban fantasy and I've got a list, I'm checkin' it twice.... hello Library!

Who Doesn't Want to Talk About Genre?

2011-01-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

Why exactly am I writing Urban Fantasy, you might ask, if you were one of the creatures living in my head. (There are many, and they are varied. Some are fanged.) I might have asked myself that as well. It might be that I am a little insecure, and don’t think I can write a good enough epic to get published, not in this bat time and this bat station. It might be that I read too many blogs and see too many posts on Absolute Write from people that don’t want to read about elves anymore. Not to mention the aforementioned notes from all the agents that don’t represent what they call (with a shudder, I imagine) “regular” fantasy. (I shudder too, to tell you the truth. I don’t think of it as regular. Wait, I said ‘not to mention’ and mentioned it anyway. Mah bad!) This perception might be wrong, culled from naysayers and nogooders. Now – that said. The idea of writing an Urban Fantasy seemed quite daunting to me. I am not a creature of the cities. I’ve lived in the suburbs all my life, and longed for the country. I prefer horses to cars. I love a wide open meadow as opposed to a grungy little coffee shop nudged in between a grocery and some import/export depot. I’m not a fan of garage fronts and find fire escapes interfere with the flow of a building.

However.

I came up with what I think is a really good idea for Urban Fantasy. Well, two, actually. The first one I failed at for NaNo, but I have no doubt it will be the next book I write, as soon as I hammer out some plot points. Someone jokingly called this other idea (the one I am working on now) a cross between Chuck and the Dresden Files. I like that. It seems like a good idea makes working on a setting and a person to go in that setting a lot easier. I didn’t think I could build in a city. You know – world build? I look out across a prairie and plop in a castle, a thatched village, a magical ethereal city, or a few outlying farms and call it a day. I didn’t imagine I could do the same thing with a concrete jungle. But holy cow. I’ve already had a battle in a parking garage and followed a Dark Spark down into a subterranean basement laundry, places I know and work with as easily as a fenny marsh or an underground set of lost caves. I guess just because you don’t live in the big bad city, it doesn’t mean you can’t move around in one, using the theatre of one’s mind. And after all, I’ve watched a lot of Friends and Law and Order, SVU. I’m also venting my feelings about modern architecture, which I HATE. And guess what? My MC hates it, too. Take that, post-modern functionality!!

My other problem with a modern setting is my image of a heroine. I like long princess dresses and red hair. Ha! I know. Cliché. Surprisingly, this girl who jumped into my mind has a little pixie haircut (most likely nabbed from Jo on Spooks – a British tv show I am currently obsessed with.) I didn’t want a cliché club girl, either, with big blue eyes and blond hair. She’s short, has brown hair and eyes, a little curvy, and she wears a brown leather jacket. She wears her piece, it’s always her piece, never her gun, in a shoulder holster. (I’m not about to admit I practiced what it was like to pull a gun from a shoulder holster in the mirror. Nope. Not at all.)

So. I have a setting, I have a character. Both fit into a modern, urban fantasy-type setting and story. Said story is chugging along to the tune of 11k. Feels fine. *Looks up at posters of fantasy-type settings.* ...Maybe after the Hobbit gets released….

All Hail Neo!

2011-01-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

Thank Gawd for Neo! I’m not talking about Keanu Reeves… that’s another kind of appreciation, altogether!

(You’re welcome!) I’m talking about this jobby:

I can get right to work, no internet pawing at me for attention. No smexiful Richard Armitage wall paper to give me the googly eyes.

(You’re welcome!) I just put my head down, put my fingers on the keys and WRITE! I’m getting two thousand words… in about an hour and five minutes!! GASP! Shock! AWE! I can’t believe it either! It’s amazing what can happen when you actually write instead of staring at the wall, pondering the ramifications your golden coated words will have on the establishment and the age of (genre) literature… once you get an agent and get published, that is. (details, details!) I used the Neo in November 2009 for NaNoWriMo, and it ushered in a new period of productivity. Then I got all lazy, and thought I could go back to using my computer… I’m a dedicated genius writer now… but nooooo…. At some point, the old habits came back and 2k became a hill to climb. For now, they are erupting in a cavalcade! I’m not asking why, I’m just trying to enjoy the ride. So far, my Urban Fantasy has witch doctor’s, a white queen, demon protectors, and a sexy Latin sidekick. Tonight, the Dark Sparks and The Brotherhood come out to battle the CIA spotters. Of course, the Brotherhood want to defeat the CIA and nab the Dark Sparks, and the Dark Sparks want to destroy The Brotherhood and get revenge on the CIA. The CIA want to protect the Dark Sparks from The Brotherhood… there's a lot of history here. It’s gonna be a hell of a fight.

Not the Blog Post about Genre

2011-01-02T12:58:00.001-08:00

I'm not ready to tackle genre yet... but I will tell you the last two days has gone pretty well. What I will talk about is oil. Man, am I rusty. (Cue the Tin Man. "Oil caaaan....") Yes. The tools have rusted up. Lots of sentences with 'She' capitalized. 'There were' and 'It was' all over the damn place. Oh well - I have permission to write crap. It says so right on this faded, coffee stained note I have up on the wall!

I've stuck to the goals both days, and I'm so shocked. I'm getting over 2 k... in less than an hour and a half. Yeah. Thank God for the Neo. I'm usin' that little sucker, and not staring at the wall thinking about the depth of my words, I'm just putting my fingers on the keys and typing. Even though I know a lot of it is info dumping. I don't care. I'm writing it for myself, right? RIGHT?!

I've also enjoyed the editing. I spend a solid hour editing Endways of the Gods after I've gotten my 2k in wordage on the new book. I'm really diggin' it. I know this go round might be a waste, as all my writing tools are working at half mast, if even that. I'm fixing miss-spelled word, reading my stilted prose and just sort of getting the groove of the story and seeing what needs to be fixed for now. Even so, I'm reading something I wrote and enjoying it. I have no idea how to query it, and its genre is all over the damn place, but it's not total crap.

That is all for now, fearless readers. Just sort of checking in. How goes it for you and your projects in the new years? Tell fairy all about it....

Hoping the New Year brings back the Old Fairy!

2010-12-31T20:12:00.000-08:00

Hey Fearless Readers! Well. **coughs, sending up swirls of dust, brushes away cobwebs** Man. Have I been away for a long time or what? All the cheese is moldy in the fridge and all the fish are dead. It would seem two and a half years of constant writing is all I'm good for, because about the middle to end of writing The Last Unicorn Hunter in July of 2010, my mojo got up and went. I got excited about NaNoWriMo... for about three days, and then... pffft! I don't know exactly what happened, but my sewing box suddenly had more appeal than my Mac and my office chair. I've been cross stitching fairies and mermaids for the past four months.

Actually, that might not be true - the part about not knowing what happened to the el mojo. But be prepared: there is a lot of bitching ahead. Stick with me till the last paragraph, though, I'm going to try and redeem myself.

I've got some serious self-esteem problems and an almost strangling fear of looking like an ass. I sent out about 50 queries... and had not one single bite. Nothing. Nada. No one wanted to look at pages. I know that being a writer takes a lot of work and a lot of persistence. I know that on paper, at least. But the silence in the inbox... not just the silence, but the sucking sound of the wind filling the empty place the requests could have been, whistled through my ears. The wind started to sing to me, and all the songs were about how much I suck. How hopeless it is. How unprepared I am for publication, for an agent, for anything. You may know some of those songs yourself. So, like a kid who has just burned themselves on a hot stove, I pulled all my fingers back and put them in my pocket.

The other little thing that sort of turned me away from my usual activities was a question of genre. Silly thing, I know, but... no one wants to read about dragons and forests and treks anymore. Many of the agents (all carefully vetted, I assure you) said they didn't represent traditional fantasy. ??? yeah. They all represented at least one author that wrote traditional fantasy, and listed fantasy in their preferences... but...I'm not about to start sounding like the Rejection Queen. I queried agents I admire and want, and I still admire them, whether they want me or not. What's worse: I don't really think Jale of Dragonfael is very traditional fantasy (that's an obvious fail on my query there) but this was just another thing that sent my mojo into freefall and jammed my fingers farther into my pockets. I'll blog a little more about the Urban Fantasy question later on.

So. There is all my stupid whinging; my reasons for not writing and editing and so on and so forth, and I know how lame they all are. I know - it's pathetic. I know traditional fantasy is still being published. The Hobbit and Game of Thrones are being filmed or are in preproduction, for Heaven's sake! I know that a good book sells regardless of genre or fad. I know that if my query sucks, I have to keep at it until it doesn't suck anymore. I know that I am not a brilliant genius who deserves special treatment. But I'm being truthful here- and the point of this blog was a writer's journey. I'm sorry to say that some of that journey is spent acting like an ass and/or arguing at the ceiling. So, what I'm saying is *deep breath* I am done with my little fit and my little break. I am trying to get over myself, and get back at the books. I've got so many stories to write. No one else is going to write them. They may not get published... but I'd prefer they weren't left to chew their way out of my forehead noggin either!

So - /bitch. Below is how last year's goals shook out. I'm still deciding what to do for 2011. I have an awesome new idea I have called "Dark Spark" to write January and February, as well as spending one hour a day editing The Endways of the Gods, but the rest of the year is TBD.

Jan and Feb
Write The Endways of the Gods: a multidimensional fantasy/sci fi mix done Feb 10!
March
NaNoEdMo: edit The Spiritcaster done!
April
Finish the The Horses of Valdor FAIL! (sadly, this story just didn't work. No soup for you!)
Also: hoping to have Spiritcaster out to betas done!
May
Work on edits to Jale of Dragonfael, synopsis and query done!
June and July
Write The Last Unicorn Hunter - a fantasy done!
August
Edit Endways of the Gods FAIL!
September and October
Write Of Later Elves and Dragons - Urban Fantasy FAIL!
Nov and December
Write Road Dogs - a fantasy western of redemption and horror FAIL!

So. Here is to the New Year, and hopefully, the Old Fairy. The one that wrote every day and had most things in perspective. How is your perspective in the new year? (Or are you already calling me an idiot in the comments?! Don't do that!! I don't like it!! :) tee hee.....

The End of an Era. The Breaking of a Heart.

2010-07-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

I feel like a piece of me died today. Seriously. I clicked this link and read it.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=7546764&rss=rss-wabc-article-7546764

To my horror, I learned of not only the end of the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans museum, but that Roy's beloved Trigger... is for sale. For money. Someone can slap down some cash and haul away Trigger. Put him in their garage. Hang bras and panties off him. String him with lights for Christmas. It makes me want to vomit. God only knows what's become of Trigger, Jr. who was also ..ahem.... mounted. (Yes, taxidermy is gross, I get that. Pipe down. I'm bearing my heart, here.)

I know that what Roy and his ilk represented was mostly about consumerism. Lunchboxes, tv shows, comic books, bedsheets, shower curtains. All these were churned out by the Hollywood machine - no different than the cheap toy you can get in your Happy Meal today when Michael Bay cranks out some fodder for the waiting sheep that we are, lining up to buy it. I know that the image of a cowboy in a shiny shirt that always kept his hat on while racing after the bad guy is nowhere near the real down and dirty cowboys of the old west who lived short brutal lives, or long, plodding, boring ones, tending cattle on the range far from towns or banks to rob. The singing cowboy was a nostalgic view, an emersion in things done the old way, when times were simpler. And of course, who doesn’t love to watch that 8 team stage coach go roaring around a curving mountain road, beset on all sides by outlaws and being chased by guys in white hats?

How did this happen? How did the museum of an American Legend go under? Yes. I used capitals for that. I believe it to be true. And in Branson! Missouri! The home of good ol’ country lovin’, church goin’, flannel wearin’ America. Is the West dying out? Is the love and the passion America had for its past, so much so that we invented imaginary cowboys, Indians and outlaws to worship long after the real ones had gotten jobs in the suburbs gone? Dying? Dead? Has the gloss and shine of the Mall of America cast its pall over the last shreds of the old west? The western novel is almost dead. There have been rumbles of a revival. But if the excellent novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford didn’t bring it back, I don’t know if it ever can. And now Roy Roger’s museum is gone and the items are being tossed out to the ravening crowds to bid on. It makes me kinda sick. There ought to be some sort of clause. When you buy a piece of American History...even if it is only a representation of the way America wants to remember its history, you should have to promise to maintain its dignity. Especially if it is a stuffed horse. Hasn’t Trigger suffered enough?

I can’t help but wonder what Roy would say.

Inspired by Kara

2010-07-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

Here's the post that got me to blog again. :)

Sorry the blog has gone all dusty and whatnot. To be honest, I was flailing there for a period of two weeks. I did not make 50K last month, for the first time since I have found my new writing philosophy (ie: no excuses, 2k a day, time's a wastin' philosophy born NaNoWriMo of 2009). But I've pushed the count up to 53,696 for the Unicorn Hunter. I'm on track to finish this month. I have yet to do any more subbing, something I really need to do! I've come this far....

Right now, I am writing a story with unicorns. I won't say its about unicorns, but they are there and an important part of the story. My first novel was heavy, heavy on the unicorns and the pegasusususes. I love them. I can't get enough of them. Same with castles and princesseseses (I enjoy the buttkicking variety) and elves and prophesy and the dark space under the trees where danger lurks, and the long trek across the countryside from danger into darker danger, the wisdom of old men, the apple-red cheek of a country girl, the sword of limitless power, the crone that foretells destiny, the castle that isn't what it appears to be, the warlord that has an epiphany, the girl that does what she shouldn't despite the danger to her reputation, the mage that risks burning themselves out to develop their power, the knight that fights for his lady, the king that sacrifices himself for his kingdom, the queen that risks the kingdom itself to vanquish evil.

I have yet to get enough of any of it. Some people had imaginary friends growing up. I had a cast of thousands. Guess it was only a precursor for my love of epic fantasy.

2010-06-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

I have two awards! Go figure!! The first is rather straightforward and has no strings attached.

It was given me by the loverly Aubrie http://authoraubrie.blogspot.com/ , and I think it very snazzy, indeed!!

Now the second has rules .

The “rules” for the award are:

Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award. That would be Claire Gillian, or Auburn Assassin at http://clairegillian.wordpress.com/
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (No particular order…)
4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.

7 things about me:

1. I love old houses/ buildings.

2. I watch a LOT of movies.

3. My girl crush is Jennifer Aniston

4. I used to have several fish tanks.

5. I have a sparkly fairy Barbie.

6. I also have a Halloween Barbie, witch costume and all.

7. I masquerade as a grown woman.

Now, the 15 new recipients. I’ll be honest, everytime I give someone an award they don’t usually accept it. I think finding 15 is a bit much... but here we go.

A sense of humor can go a long way - or not

2010-06-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the cheshire grin, folks. I have finally done it. I have sent out nine queries today. One was rejectified with lightening speed: It came smelling of fried neutrons it was so fast. I wonder if the amusing bio I put at the bottom had anything to do with it:

At the moment, I have no publishing credentials, but I am one of the few people living in the San Francisco Bay Area that was born here. I am already a statistical anomaly. Currently, I answer phones and perform feats of customer service and graphic artistry for a plumbing company. Believe it or not, this was never my childhood dream. I am willing to leave this all behind, or at least do it only part time, if I should ever have the luck to become a full time writer.

Yes. That was the bio I sent. And I'm not ashamed. Not even a little bit. I can't help it. I'm one of those people that spews out something (according to me) amusing whenever I get the chance. I reined it in most of the day, but I got a little loopy there at the end. Believe me, I kept it straight and narrow to all the agents who said things like: "We don't like it when you try and be cute, Shakespeare! Just get to the point!" But it was tough. I've got fingernail marks on my office chair. I'll let you know the horrific details as they become available.

How Goes It

2010-06-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Greetings! I'm writing you from June!! Yes. It's been too long since I blogged. First of all, I am on VACATION! The first one in many, many years. And I am spending it, not in some glorious locale, but in front of my computer. Where I usually am. Sigh. But this time, I'm using that computer time to gather intel on agents... and write the ever painful query. **shudders** I've yet to send any, but they are written. I like to think they are "simmering." I'll let you know.

I'm also deep into my new Work In Progress! After so many months of editing, it's hard to remember to write crap. I want to stop and make it perfect, and now is not the time for that. Now is the time to get the story down.

I finally went to the library and updated my card. My local library NEVER has what I want, but I can go online and order, then wait for an email to pick them up. A most awesome service! I really need to read more. I've found a bunch of free classics online as ebooks (which is sort of dumb, since I don't have an e-reader - and that means more time sitting in my office chair reading), but it's so important to read your genre. And I cannot afford new books, so the library it is. I'm glad it's there.

What about you? Do you buy new, used, library? Trade books with friends? Rob wayward B&N trucks? You can tell me....

Bringin' Ya'll Up To Date

2010-05-31T22:14:00.000-07:00

First, The Rejectionist fucking rocks. I'm not ashamed to say it. Click those links. Click. Them.! I want The Rejectionist to be my best girlfriend, but I'm not cool enough to hang out with her, so just click the links and be done with it. Plus, she'd just think I wanted an "in" with her boss, and let's face it, I would.

Well. Let's see. The yearly list of goals to the far right of the blog. The job for May: to edit The Spiritcaster: now named Jale of Dragonfael (badass, huh? I wasn't even thinking about the title, it just came out of a clear blue sky. That's where The Hobbit came from, you know) and ready for sub. I've got a query (that my friend Wayne is messing with - go Wayne!) a 3 page synopsis (yeah, I aimed for two, but it's EPIC fantasy, people) and an 88,000 word manuscript that has been edited about five times. I also have a list of 13 agents to query (so far - tomorrow is hardcore agent search times - I foresee two pots of coffee being made). So - it looks like I get to cross that off! As to the actual querying.... deep breath... gimme a few days or weeks. :) **shudder** I will relate my successes and failures in agonizing detail, so fear not.

Now, for June! The Last Unicorn Hunter. It has both Elves and Unicorns - the death knell that some would ring against fantasy. It also has both urban and woodland settings and is, I hope, not a typical depiction of any of that. The main characters however, (think they are) human. :) There is fear in the night, a mystery, baddies from another dimension and an unexpected birth. Oh. And unicorns. Don't forget the unicorns.

Happy Blog-A-Versary!

2010-05-21T18:46:00.000-07:00

This is like one of those Mattress Discount places - where I have the anniversary, and you get the gifts! :) Yes. In honor of my One Year Blog-A-Versary (and having just finished baking my very first quiche!) I bring you some fiction. This is one of my earlier attempts at a story. I was a little dismayed to find it... well, better than I thought it should be. But fiction is a matter of perspective, and to say mine is skewed is being very kind.

This is a little bit racy - what with language and adult situations. It's also like my other work: tries to be funny at first and turns into something else by the end. I give you....

DEVIL IN A GUYS GARDEN

Bettie Lee Turner

I’m not sure how the devil gained possession of my garden. I went out to grab a tomato, and there he was.

“Who are you?” I asked. It was the best response I could come up with when faced with something cloven hoofed and pointy tailed in my backyard.

“I’m a garden gnome. Go away.”

“You’re not a garden gnome, and what are you doing to my cat?” The cat, Mitzy, was squashed under one tiny hoof. (I should tell you the devil’s a lot smaller than we were led to believe.)

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, kicking loose mulch and leaves over her prone body, staring off into the sky. I can see why he masquerades as a garden gnome, he’s green.

“Stop that!” I said. “You’ve killed my cat!” Mitzy had to be dead. No way her hyperactive thyroid would let her remain in the dirt under anybody’s hoof. I tore open the garden gate, and the devil backed off, leaving my wretched cat in the trough between the lettuces and carrots. He stood with his hands behind his back, tail swishing.

I stood over her color ravaged body: grays, oranges, tiger stripes, she was a riot of patterns and hues. And definitely dead. The fall wind rattled the trees and their husky leaves. Multi-faceted golds, coppers, and reds dipped and swayed in a memorial dance. The setting would be idyllic - if there wasn’t an evil gnome standing over the carcass of my cat.

“You bring her back to life!” I said, pointing down at her remains.

He put his blackened hands to his little demon waist, and bent forward, furrowing all his facial features, trying to threaten me.

“It don’t work like that, buddy,” he said, tottering on hoofed feet. He looked like a little girl in mother’s high heels, and swished his tail constantly to keep his balance. I don’t think I can convey what a foolish figure the Prince of Darkness makes.

“Look you freak midget, I didn’t summon you - you probably want the Simmons’s kid down the block...” The devil crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, indicating his disinterest in my neighbor's spawn. “You bring my cat back and then get the hell out of my garden!”

“Look, we can make a deal,” he said, holding his arms towards me, palms up, “Let’s just call this a sacrifice.”

Now, I’m usually the most diplomatic of men. I don’t shoot bb’s at my neighbor’s dogs when they bark too much (and too often - chihuahuas. The dog rat!), but there must be something about dealing with denizens of the nether world that puts my hackles up. If he were a neighbor, hell, if he were a door-to-door salesman, I’d talk to him reasonably until we came to a compromise. Instead, I bent down, grabbed his slimy little neck, and started hauling him toward the gate.

He barely put up a protest. You’d think he’d summon lightening or at the very least fire and brimstone. He started to blather and plead, like a car salesman trying to keep his latest mark on the floor.

“Hey, buddy, what about your cat? You wanna leave it in that condition? I mean, you know, what would she think?” Now he was starting to sweat, a smell somewhere between wet dog and barbecued pork loin.

“And what are you gonna about that?” I asked, giving him a shake. He put his hands up and I could see the long, brittle fingernails. The flesh was not black, as I thought, but a viscous green. Darker even than the forest green in the crayon box. It lived in all the creases of his face, the dimples smattering his rotund belly and the folds of his neck.

“We can do something about it, I just need a little favor...”

“No favors!”

“Ok, ok!” he said. “I need your...help?”

“Ok, help,” I conceded.

“I need something to replace the cat.”

“Are you trying to trick me? I swear, I am a God-fearing man, but so help me...”

“Oh, don’t mention that guy, I hate that guy!”

“Listen, Lucy-fur,” I said, hoping to ruffle the little freak's feathers, “you try and trick me and we’re going have a problem of biblical proportions on our hands. Do you understand?”

“No trick, no trick,” he said, waving his hands as if swatting away bugs. “But it’s nature, you know? Taking a life - eh,” he accentuated this with the universal indicator of breaking a stick, or someone’s neck. “But taking from death without putting something in it’s place can leave a huge hole, a cosmic tunnel, an ectoplasmic vortex, the whole works. You don’t want that in you back yard.”

There were a lot of things I didn't want in my back yard. A portal to the underworld is high on the list of things I don't want in my back yard. I’d have to get what he needed.

“Ok, so bring me something to take the place of the cat.” The devil must have read my mind and cut me off. “No, not a bug or a spider, you wuss, I need something I can work with, a dog or a cat. Preferably a cat.”

If it was a cat he wanted, I was definitely getting a dog.

He said I shouldn’t move Mitzy. I hated leaving her; half covered in dirt, mouth agape, belly up like a fish. I thought he could be putting me on, torturing me for his own amusement, but I decided to err on the side of caution. I left the demon and went back into my cottage. I had a plan, but I had to wait until nightfall.

Around midnight I dressed in a black jogging suit an aunt had given me for a birthday. I was halfway to my destination before I realized my error. As the silence grew around me (meaning that once the trip hammer of my heart dulled enough for me to hear anything else) the high tech, shiny material I had wrapped myself in was whiffing away like a buzzsaw. Think corduroy on a nuclear level. I imagined shaking the caterpillars from their leaves as I sauntered down the block; that at any minute white, distrusting ovals of faces would part curtains of quaint dwellings. People would storm their front yards, pull pickets from their fences or bunches of thorny roses from their beds and attack me in the street. Surely I carried my evil deed above my head in a cartoon bubble.

I glanced down and found another folly. The two white stripes running down the sides of the pants and sleeves were bright enough to attract moths. I could get a second job landing planes if I wanted. I was too far in, though, and the suit was my alibi. I teach drama to high school students, I’m thirty and not married, so anyone in this saccharine burg who doesn’t think I’m a little weird thinks I’m homosexual. Either excuse would do for my neighbors. If anyone looked out their window, they would think the bachelor teacher is out for a midnight constitutional. I’d just have to crunch and glare my way along.

The dog I had in mind was a Lhasa Apso named Sparky that had lost his spark. When he walked, it was with a limp. Usually, he dragged himself around, evident by the wads of matted fur running along his sides, clutching clumps of leaves, weeds and other yard paraphernalia. He belonged to a perfectly charming alcoholic around the corner from me. She waited tables at my favorite breakfast spot and tended (and took advantage of) the bar at the tavern. I figured I was doing them both a favor.

I approached Marcia Heatherfield’s house and surveyed the scene. The block was empty, barely a porch light twinkled on the street. The house was small and charming, as the housing association insisted, and sat at the end of a path. There was a raised porch running along the front lost in the gloom of two oaks trees. It had a gothic feel I'd never noticed in the daytime. The porch looked deeper, the windows could have hid malignant creatures behind heavy drapes, and the gate was slightly ajar, as if beckoning me to my death. I took a deep breath and stepped in the yard.

Sparky was laying inside a lean-to beside the porch. I approached him and he began to swim with joy in the mud and leaves that covered the floor.

“There, there, fella, it’s ok,” I said, bending down to pat his crusty head. His tongue lapped at the air, his body writhing in ecstasy. I put my hands inside and gingerly lifted him. Noxious doggy fumes blossomed around us. I gagged and coughed, choking as I tried to be quiet. I was trying to remember how long a person could safely hold their breathas I turned to leave. I almost dropped the dog.

Marcia stood in the gloom of the porch.

My heart started banging against my ribs. I thought I should speak first. I didn’t know what I meant to say, but I was sure it would sound calm and rational once I figured it out. All I got out was a gargle.

“Oh Paul, I knew you’d come,” she said, gesturing at me with the beer bottle in her hand. She stepped out of the shadows and the moonlight spilled across her. I was surprised at what greeted me. Her heart shaped face was swollen to an oval, bruised flesh lay under her eyes. She wore a pair of cutoffs that cut into her belly, a small roll hanging over the top button. She wasn’t fat, just generous. She wore a tight, white tee shirt, the neck cut in a deep V and the bottom tied beneath her breasts, which were also generous and in danger of losing their grip on the front of the shirt.

“Marcia...I...”

“I’m surprised you were able to stay away so long,” she said, her voice slurred, her eyes far away. Her head tilted back and she ran the bottle sensuously along the side of her neck. When sober, Marcia was lovely and breezy. When drunk, her charm was blunted and boorish and aroused only my pity. But the beer...I saw the condensation weeping down the side, and gulped. The walk had been short, but the suit and the errand had covered me with a light film of sweat. The bottle made its way to the curve of a breast and the knot gave way, her breasts fell and bounced, taking up a much lower position on her chest.

“Aww...shit...” she said. The look in her eye was gone, replaced by the familiar ‘where am I again?’ look, common in a drunk faced with anything unexpected. She fixed her eyes on me again and recovered, readjusting to the come hither stance and began a slow descent of the steps, sashaying like a real southern belle. Of course, if the saunter was intended, or it was just the alcohol, it didn’t matter. Either way, it was a bad time for the rotting handrail to give way.

She did an armless cartwheel, winding up dazed and shaken at the foot of the steps. With the fragile dog in my arms, all I could do was watch. She held the beer bottle till the last, letting go just in time for it to roll past me, it’s amber stream glugging over my tennis shoes. Sparky whimpered and looked down at his mistress, then craned around and looked into the vastness of my soul. That look would keep anybody honest. I admit it, before I locked eyes with those limpid pools, I wanted to beat it the hell out of there, take the devil his due and get this nightmare over with. I considered doing the right thing by her to be Sparky’s last request.

I set him down and went to her. I helped her up and tried to inspect her in the dim light. She was covered with leaves, there was a dark smear on her leg that may have been a scrape, but nothing seemed broken. Her head swiveled on its loose axis, and caught me looking her up and down. She leaned heavily onto my chest and exhaled. I think it was meant to be a cool sensual sigh, but the breath that coated my face was dense with beer and cigarettes.

“Come on, Marcia, let’s get you to bed,” I said, and as the words left my lips I found myself wishing I could grab them from the air and stuff them back down my throat.

“Kind of in a hurry, aren’tcha?” she asked. I ignored the innuendo and bore most of her weight as she tried to play the helpless belle up the steps. She wiggled against me and clutched at my chest. I looked back at Sparky, but got no sympathy.

Inside the house, the scent of beer hung in a mist. There were no lights on. I didn’t know if I woke her, or had she been drinking in the dark? The light from outside filtered through the sheers on the windows, surprisingly bright and silver. I have to admit I was surprised by the interior. I had expected late century trailer trash, but the furnishings were stylish and the house was neat.

She continued through the living room, leading me to the bedroom, still leaning against me and giggling. I tried to keep her from bumping into things while I looked around, and encouraged her with words carefully chosen.

We crossed the threshold of her bedroom and she laughed. Her bed was tall, guarded by brass head and foot boards. The moonlight, or maybe the street lamps, spread rectangular blocks across the comforter. She lurched forward, hauling me behind her and began to run, a gangly sort of thing that would have been sexy and playful if she were sober. If I didn’t pull up, we would both wind up on the bed, a piece of furniture I had no business even looking at with her in this condition. I pulled back, but she continued on and smacked into the side of the bed. In slow motion, I saw the last of her fingers slip from my own, and she crumpled to her knees, then toppled over. She didn’t have time or wasn’t able to use her hands to stop her fall and her head hit the floor with a crunch. The sound from behind the veil of hair could have been a laugh or a cry.

I bent down and brushed the curls back from her face. It parted like a curtain, and I was greeted by two silver streaks making their way down her cheeks. She looked up at me then, and it was the day to day Marcia I knew. The one that served me coffee. The one that pretended she had a headache from sinuses or allergies, and that was also what puffed her face up and made the end of her nose red. The fall had knocked her back from whatever numb place she had been hiding in. She was so open then, so hopeless. Her tears and the darkness made her pupils large and endless, her lips fighting to stay shut as she gasped for breath between sobs. She stared up at me and I think she caught her own reflection in my eyes. I think she saw what I saw, and it scared her.

I helped her to her feet and under the covers, thin and vulnerable as a piece of paper near a flame. She didn’t lay her head on the pillow, but resigned it there. I was straightening the covers over her, and she put her hand on my forearm. I can’t explain it, it was a simple gesture, something a woman does a thousand times when trying to get a man’s attention, trying to be flirtatious, or the way she will communicate with you when you are so intimate you read each other’s minds by touch. I knew what it meant - “Stop. You can stop now.”

The humiliation of the night was seeping out of her pores. I tried to smile as gently as possible. She didn’t return it, but her eyes were wide, and grateful.

Before I got to the threshold of the bedroom, before I got to the front door, before I got to the bottom of the steps and found Sparky’s cold, dead body, I knew I wouldn’t be taking Marcia Heatherfield’s dog to his doom. God got there first. I readjusted the tilted handrail and left Sparky there, heading for my own garden gate.

I didn’t know what I’d tell the devil. I felt like I had left my cottage two thousand miles away instead of just two blocks. On the walk back, I contemplated. Do I leave Mitzy to the devil? I mean, she’s already gone. Sparky is gone, that loss would be more profound for Marcia than the on-again-off-again thing I had with my cat.

I wanted to go straight to bed, but I went down the driveway to the garden. I was going to tell the devil to do what he would - I had been through enough this night. What’s a few unholy acts perpetrated in your garden, what with all the turmoil in the world? Didn’t the devil have lots of places to go? He couldn’t be there all the time, maybe we could negotiate weekends.

I didn’t have to worry. The green monster was waiting for me at the gate, and Mitzy was cleaning herself along the top of the fence. He had a stick cocked over his shoulder with a hobo-bag made out of a bandana hanging off the end. He was dabbing his eyes with a large handkerchief.

“Oh whore of babylon,” he blubbered, “If I’d have known what a sentimental sorry sack of shit you were, I never would have come here.” He came through the gate and let it bang shut behind him. “I mean, Christ-on-a-crutch, have your damn cat back. All that freakin’ trouble, I mean, TITS out to here!” He gestured with his hands, cupping two large melons in front of his chest, the hobo sack almost sliding out of his grip, “and he puts her back untouched!” I got the idea he was no longer talking to me. I reached out for Mitzy and stroked her as she cleaned the underside of a leg.

The demon headed down the driveway. Mitzy and I watched as he went, wailing and crying all the way. He turned to gesture back at us with the handkerchief, “You didn’t even get a boner!” and something else, but his voice was so wracked by sobs I couldn’t understand it. He took a left at the end of the driveway, and I haven't seen hoof nor tail of him since.

THE END

Never Again

2010-05-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

Never. Never again will I write a novel without first writing the query. 007, you know: Bond, James Bond, taught me to Never Say Never at a young age, but James was a character, not a writer, and I think this Absolute is one I can get behind.

Seriously. I wrote a 500 page novel and don't know what it's about. Or I do, but I feel the bits I've attempted leaves out all that makes my novel different. There's hardly a word about the dragons, except that everything that happens is of most concern to them (ie: if my heroine/hero don't succeed, they will be wiped from the sky!) My characters each have a journey, but I feel like that is separate from the plot. All of these sound like terrible things. Like my novel is a series of unrelated events, and it's not. It's a fantasy that reads like a detective novel. And who doesn't think that's awesome? But how do I get it all in, in the space of just a couple of paragraphs? I seem to be failing utterly.

So, never again. Next time I'm writing the query first.

I would also like to do some pimpage. Adam Slade has a novella coming out on Monday! In case it's not obvious enough: it is meant for you to click the link and buy the thing. He has a teaser up on his blog. As you can see, Adam mixes in the funneh with his fantasy. Don't fear the reaper. Read his story!! :)

The Weekend: It Is Here!!

2010-05-14T23:06:00.001-07:00

What? Oh, Tom says Hi.

The weekend. Praise God, Baby Jebus and Isis, the Great Lady of the Wheat and The Great Lord and his Bloody Sword (Fahr Caladonian religious references). WEEKEND! The week itself has been made of utter fail. I am ready to stop wallowing and dive headfirst into my work! My true work! The only thing that keeps me going. And I am not exaggerating. The cat's not talking to me. The carafe of my new coffee pot broke, and I can't afford another one. So I make coffee and put my coffee cup underneath to catch the brew and hope I remember to switch cups before it runneth over. I came home yesterday and thought the smoke alarm was going off. There was no fire, so clearly I was going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning, but no. It was the microwave. Keypad fail. I unplugged and replugged, and I hope it's fixed... for now. But - my book! Yeees! My bastion of dreams, the framework for my castles in the air.

Oh wait... I wasn't going to wallow. Sorry. The above was an attempt at humor, not a wallow. You aren't wallowing when you're looking forward to bustin' out some awesome edits and **gulp** attempting to write another paragraph for your query.

Come on weekend warriors. **Fist bump!**

Is Story Too Much To Ask For?

2010-05-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sigh. Where is the week going? I haven't opened the WIP (Work In Progress - some people that read this blog wonder if I have some sort of fetish they don't know about, so I'm going to try and be more 'spific when I use my anagraminals) in two days. I have, however, seen Avatar.

I wonder if I'm getting jaded in some fashion. I mean...we were just watching that for the effects, right? So much of the story didn't hold weight when you look at it, not to mention: stereotypes, anyone?! Did that Colonel guy not look exactly like one of the soldiers in one of those movies where the toys go crazy? Can Sigourney Weaver pick a single stereotype? She starts out as uber-bitch scientist until she jumps into the blue creature and all of a sudden she's everyone's buddy and mentor.

I found a lot of it uneven and unsatisfying. The most disturbing thing of all: if Earth is so dead, how is it they have the resources for all the technotoys? Like in the Matrix when all the clothing is torn and unravelling at the seems, but they have these massive war robots. You can build a megaton robot but you can't grow enough fiber to clothe your people?

So the Earth is dead and dying and they send crews out on 6 year journeys to get this "Unobtanium"? (If that's even how you spell it. Sounds like a first draft name if I've ever heard one. I once named a disease Impossiblitis. In. The. First. Draft.) Then it's six years to get the material back. Why not just colonize, take the planet over and have done with it?! Not that I want to destroy Pandora. I'd have been there with the Discovery film makers using the network of television to bring their plight to the people. But if I wrote the story, the science people would have had a reason to be there. Does this cutthroat company seem like they would want to send botonists... BOTONISTS?! out there to discover the wonder and magic that is Pandora, when all they want to tear it up and get the goodies underneath? And why is this company the only company there?

See what I mean? I think the editing is getting to me. I'm tearing apart good quality entertainment. Infecting the interwebs with my malaise. Is it too much to ask for a story that makes sense? Or should I just let my mind wander and my eyes feast? Can't I do both?!

You tell me.

Pretty Boy and Goals

2010-05-08T22:36:00.001-07:00

What? Only Sparklepeaches and TT42 can put pretty boys on their blogs?! I don't think so. I had an awesome day and me and Tom are celebrating. Do you know Tom? Tom Hardy? You should. He's handsome. Wuthering Heights. The 2009 Masterpiece Theatre depiction. Watch it. **whispers** It's streaming on Netflix.

Anyhoo... the goal today was to take a step toward query preparation. And edit. A lot. I did all that: two hours of research and study and clicking links on blogs (found a few potential agents too, oh yeah, uh huh!) Found all sorts of query examples and advice and such. Then I had two two-hour editing sessions, getting through 76 pages.

Thus, the mancandy on the blog and a movie on the tv. Fair eventide, Fearless Readers. Enjoy.

Has It Been Since Sunday?

2010-05-08T01:44:00.000-07:00

Huh. I would have sworn I did a blog post like two days ago. How time flies.

I'm going full steam editing on Spiritcaster - getting it ready for sub. It's going so well. I think my friend Julia Knight has cured me of my evils. Sentences beginning with "It was" and "There were". Look for them and cull them. Mightily. Seriously. Go through and take that crap out. Simplest advice I've ever gotten, and it changed the landscape of my writing. You know how you read and read and read until you aren't reading it anymore, you're reciting in your head what you think you're saying? Well, I started looking for It was and There were and all of a sudden I saw through the familiarity to the garbage that I had written.

I had about 100 pages of utter crap where I was rewriting every other sentence for filtering or passive voice, and then all of a sudden it stopped sucking so bad. That got me nervous. It's like.. where did all the crap go? Have I lost the "sight" or did it just stop sucking? That's the rub, isn't it? I don't know about you, but I fall into these traps, where I lose train or track or voice, or something! and everything goes all passive and filtery. **shudders**

What about you? Any tricks or simple things you look for on the edit to clean things up? I'm all ears....

Ugh.

2010-05-02T17:00:00.001-07:00

Well. I have admitted it. In the yearly goals list, I have my first fail. I did not finish The Horses of Valdor. Frankly, my dears (by my dears I mean you, Fearless Readers!) I got bored. Bored to death. Not a good sign. So, I coasted the last few days and did... very little. For now, the Horses of Valdor is in the trunk. I don't know why it no longer works. I don't know if I broke it, or it was broke before I began. Regardless, the real project, the one I know has a future, is Spiritcaster.

I've heard back from my wonderful betas, and I'm going through their responses one at a time. I found plenty of other things to fix along the way. All of a sudden filtering and unnecessarily clunky phrases are just jumping out at me. And fantasy speak. Oh, the source of all that is purple! Begone lilac! Speak like a human, not a character in a bad Tolkien rip off!

The next phase, and the one that frightens me the most, is the query portion of our program. **shudders** I'm going to try and do it in small bites. This week, I'm going to get the "elevator pitch" down. Like most writers, it is very hard for me to boil my story down to its base chemicals. I just don't know what to include and how to get all the good stuff in without a bunch of run-on sentences or sounding like a fool. I swear, I'm never going to write another book without having the elevator pitch done FIRST.

Another Sporadic Update on the Blog

2010-04-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

I shan't bore you, Fearless Readers, with the particulars, but this weekend was made of suck. And now it's over. Which sucks slightly more. Oh well... I am up over 50K on the edits. I started with about 285 pages, only had chapter breaks for the first four chapters, and I've cut it down to 270 or so pages. Lots and lots of cuts. A lot of cuts, considering I'm at about 17 chapters now. I was really hoping to have been done by now, but this last week or so hasn't been so great, and my work ethic has really fallen off. I'm determined to get back on my roll.

The good news is, the betas are rolling in, and no one has said that my mother is a hamster and my father smells of elderberries. In other words, I don't seem to suck. Which is a very nice thing to know.

I've also been scouring the back pages of the Netflix streaming movie pages, watching the most horrible gothic trash and romance. Thank God for the BBC, or I might have climbed up on a clock tower at some point. (No - that is not an ominous foreboding. Should something happen to me, AVENGE MY DEATH!!)

^^ (The above was me invoking gallows humor! Not a plea for help. Seriously!! You know me!)