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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.