Hurry Up, Technology!

I've made this complaint before, but we need those dream records they have in "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." I had a sequel/continuation to a previous dream. Both of them were awesome. Both of them vanished from my brain the moment I woke up. I have little broken pieces, images mostly, floating around in my brain. But it was SUCH a good story. It focuses on a young adult and given how dark YA has been skewing lately, I think could be fit in that genre. The protagonist is a young girl, maybe 14 or so? New Zealander I think, or somewhere around there. She's put in a facility for problem children and...something.

This story blew my mind. It was so heart wrenching and poignant. I don't think I could ever just take these few scraps and craft the story that I saw. Sometimes it feels like I'm not even dreaming, that I'm watching someone else's life. That if I could just record it, I'd have a story more true to form and detailed than anything I could craft with my imagination.

But it's in a dream! It's trapped there, and I can't get to it!!!!

Little pig, little pig, let me in!!!!!<sup>1


1</sup> Not by the hair on my chinny chin...frontal lobe.

Find the Fun in the Boring

I wrote chapter 2 for 7Sac today. This is a big deal because it's the first fully original chapter of this version. Pieces of chapter 1 got held over from my first attempt and much more of it came from the wind sprint I wrote. Chapter 2 was wholly fresh. I actually tried to write a little at the party last night, but how lame was that? And I got stuck on a naming convention (which I figured out either late last night or this morning, I can't actually remember). This morning, though, I knocked out the whole chapter and I am quite enthused.

I am enthused because so much of the chapter was unexpected. I started in a tricky spot with one of the main characters at a gate to a city. Oh how many D&D adventures annoy you with guards who are all flippant and bossy. But at the same time, there isn't a lot of use starting an early chapter with crossing a gate unless it's going to build character or somehow affect the plot. In this case, I quickly recognized the boring that was starting to spread. Cliche and unoriginality threatened to ruin my attempt, and I don't think the story is strong enough to survive a failed chapter this early on. I needed to rescue it. How do you resolve a character vs. gate guard situation without one of them acting a dick or both of them being polite and the scene becoming completely irrelevant?

Introduce another character! Hence Knight General Merchel arrived and saved the day for March Lord Albrecht. We got to skip past the guards and learn a little of both characters. More importantly, they stopped for coffee at a shop and I got to describe people and culture from the Waodian Republic. This is something I had never done in the previous draft and had no thought of doing in this draft. It's awesome that it happened, though, because one of the characters that gets introduced later is Waodian. Woo hoo! Laying the foundation baby!

Mostly, I love writing a chapter where all of a sudden a new and awesome facet of the setting comes into play totally without any planning. And it's rich and involved and I just love it and am so pleased and it gets me all excited.

So...um, yeah. Happy new year.

Beginning Anew

I revised the wind sprint I wrote a few weeks ago into a MUCH better first chapter. There's a little too much there, but I'll pare that down during revision. The tone and the action are so much better. Less description of action and more action. I am incredibly pleased.

The thing is, today is the first day I've written in a week. Granted, it has been an incredibly stressful week at work, but not writing has exacerbated it. Once upon a time, I was able to go a few weeks without writing. Now it seems I can't go more than a day or two.

This is awesome in that I feel I've moved up a level in my abilities as a writer. But it's terrifying because it is having a genuine impact on my daily life. I wrote today over lunch and when I went back to the office, I was whistling a jaunty tune. I was in SUCH a great mood. A better mood than what was appropriate for having such a difficult work and eating lunch alone.

Writing is my heroine. And like a junkie, I think that's awesome.

Keeping Up Appearances

Having moved around a lot, I have a lot of friends online. And really, I was a quick adopter of the internet back in the '90s and have a tendency to express myself online much the same as I do in real life. Especially when it comes to blowing off steam. Since I work with computers all day, a quick tweet or status update resolves the need to rant without requiring that I leave my desk to go find someone to talk to (especially since the people that know me best live half-way across the country).

This has led to a number of awkward situations in the past, as you can imagine.

It's even more difficult now while I pursue publication. The people I have to blow off steam about the most are at work and I work in publishing! I can rant about how dumb editors are, and those who aren't paying attention might think I'm speaking as an author rather than a production worker at a publishing company. In order, the three most frustrating people to deal with are editors, marketers, and salespeople. Each comes chock full of excuses to get their way instead, all of which I have become quite versed in over the years. Knowing they're using a drab and overdone excuse not because it has any bearing on the product your making but only because they don't know what they're doing and they need things to go their way to maintain an appearance of competence can be--as you would imagine--extremely frustrating.

Now all these people actually do know things. ...well, most of them do. But publishing doesn't offer a lot of interdepartmental training and the production-side of publishing is generally ignored both internally and externally by any that don't have to deal with it directly. You'll never see an author acknowledge the hard work of his book's project manager even though it was that person who had the thing typeset and sent to press in 1/4 the time (s)he should have received after everyone else missed their deadlines.

You know how they say shit rolls downhill? Yeah, our cubes are at the bottom of the hill.

This time of year is busiest for the department I'm in right now and tensions are running high. While it might be best if I said nothing at all, if I did that, I'd hurt myself from hitting my head against my desk so hard. So, anything you see me saying, please keep in mind it's not reflective of any editors I might be working with as an author--and in fact, has nothing to do with trade publishing at all since I work on the education side.

Just tooting my whistle before the built up steam causes it to burst.

Afternoon Showers on the Frontal Lobe

I did some brainstorming with Elizabeth Poole today, which was incredibly helpful. I was wavering on 7Sac, as the scope was too large and the story too small. There wasn't enough steak and potatoes. It was mostly pre-dinner rolls. The story was at risk of falling into too many cliches, specifically the "build a team" story where the majority of the story is building the team and not actually dealing with the threat at hand. Plenty of good books have followed this route, but plenty bad books have too and frankly it's a trope I'm incredibly bored with.

So rather than assemble the team, I'm going to chase the team.

Here's the quick breakdown. The book begins with the main character, Cheshire. Cheshire meets Albrecht who offers the inciting action. Cheshire and Albrecht meet Ananta the Magician and his two slaves.

That was the mistake. Having Ananta and his slaves all appear at once put too much weight on forward action without explaining why these three people have shown up or why they become necessary for the group. I kept focusing on Ananta. The slaves were window dressing even though both of them are necessary for the plot's advancement.

So, the obvious track is to introduce them individually. But that's where the "build a team" thing comes in. Now Ananta doesn't have slaves. They've become Grant Black and Coeas, demon hunters in their own right. Saying something like "we need to find these men" when Cheshire has been hunting demons for 42 years is totally stupid. The man has killed more demons than the rest of them put together, so to suggest he needs to build a team to accomplish what he's been doing for decades rings incredibly false.

BUT! The same inciting action that applies to Cheshire applies to Grant and Coeas as well...IF they're not being recruited but being stopped. All the demons have to be killed within a 24 hour period, hence the demons Cheshire has killed reincarnating every seven years. If Grant and Coeas found and killed their demons as well, the cycle repeats itself and they'd have to wait another seven years (and Cheshire is already old as dirt).

Sure it's still a team in the end, but the task isn't to go find and recruit people, but to find them and stop them from screwing everything up. That pleases me.

I'm also juggling on POV chapters for people who are possessed by the demons. I have a few ideas for these, some of them safer than the others. I think I'll just have to give it a try and see what happens.

Regardless, in this case, I have enough where this is officially a novel to work on. I'm going to take my computer with me to work tomorrow. Huzzah!

Thanks Liz!

We have the tools! We have the talent!

My wife got me what could be the greatest stocking stuffer of all time.



Yes, that is the greatest utensil ever made, the spork. But it's not just any spork. It's a titanium spork.

That's right. Titanium.

Now you may ask yourself, why would anyone need a titanium spork? And I would say to you, don't be so short sighted! What happens if a madman initiates an armageddon clock right in the middle of a meal time. You need something to jam into the gears to stop them from turning. Will your pathetic stainless steel spoon/fork combination work? No. Plasticwear? Not at all! You need something strong enough to cause those gears to stop turning and collapse the entire diabolical machine.

And what would that be?

Titanium baby. Titanium¹. My spork will save the world someday.


¹ While I was not always on the titanium bandwagon, when I had trouble finding a wedding band, the jeweler suggested I try a titanium ring and it was perfect. I have since seen the majesty² of titanium. I am prepared for our clockwork doom and will rise to the occasion when it occurs!

² By majesty, I mean that should the ring ever be crushed in a horrible traffic accident, the EMTs will have to cut off my finger because they do not have the tools to cut through a titanium ring. If that isn't awesome, I don't know what is.

A MAP!

I love maps almost as much as I like titles. If only I had the artistic talent necessary to draw maps. But I knew what I wanted to use as a map (also why I changed the name of the acreages). So after a little tweaking in photofiltre, I have a rough map that I will use for THE 7TH SACRIFICE.

I present to you...the Kingdom!

Plontsing the Sac

I've been on holiday! It is becoming a tradition that each Christmas my wife and I go up into the White Mountains for a few days. Though New Hampshire is a small state, the North country and the South Country are pretty different (as we're often reminded by those that live in the North). You can cut the state in half and vary the temperature by 10 degrees. Life is different there, including living in the lower elevations of the northern Appalachian Mountains. It's a great time, though this year absent snow. We are expecting a blizzard to hit tonight, so that should make up for it. Of course, it was supposed to start snowing 2 1/2 hours ago, so who knows if that will actually materialize.

If you're ever in North Conway, consider staying at the Wyatt House Bed & Breakfast. They were great to us. The food was delicious. And it's ideally situated.

While I was there, Jen too copious amounts of naps, more than usual, which gave me the writing time I needed to wrap up JH and send it off to beta readers. That number is down to two, now, which is disappointing. But people have lives and it's the holidays, so I understand.

I had thought to maybe spend a few weeks reading. I'm going to put attention to finishing Tad Williams' SHADOWHEART. I finished MOCKINGJAY yesterday. It was good, but I don't think it was worth the hype that it got. The ending averted being a disaster and ended up being just okay. The whole trilogy almost seems like it was written just to show which boy the character will choose, which is interesting for all of five pages, not three books.

As for me, spending time reading is turning into prep work for writing THE 7TH SACRIFICE (I've officially changed its name to be 7TH instead of SEVENTH).

For starters, I'm no longer calling the counties the counties. I originally conceived this story between writing WANTED: CHOSEN ONE and THE TRIAD SOCIETY. The former puts a lot of focus on duchies and a king. The latter puts more focus on counties. For 7Sac, I had wanted to use counties as a regional boundary because so often people focus on duchies or kingdoms and I like that county is still a word we use today. When I abandoned my first attempt at 7Sac, that bled over to TTS. The problem is, now TTS is a finished novel and the possible first in a trilogy, so using counties again seems like beating a dead horse.

I went horseback riding on my vacation. The farm was 77 acres of an original 1000 acreage granted to the owner's family in 1771 by King George III. Yup, I went horseback riding on a 239-year-old farm. New England is awesome. This made me tweak things a bit.

Basic breakdown. "The Kingdom" is where this takes place. The Kingdom is broken into four areas, originally called counties. Each of these counts claimed the thrown after the king died under mysterious circumstances. That's getting modified. The counties are acreages. Acreage is a little cumbersome to say. I was watching "Valhalla Rising" yesterday (disembowelment on Christmas!) and they calls Mads a terror from the southerlands. Well isn't that nifty. You always hear highlands or lowlands or East and West or what have you. Hell, I even used Southerland in TTS as Soderland (German), but this feels different. The acreages are delineated by compass.

Cumberland Acreage, the Westerlands
Arostook Acreage, the Northerlands
Somerset Acreage, the Easterlands
Kennebec Acreage, the Southerlands

Now, instead of counts, each of the Acreages is rules by a prince or princess, with Cumberland being home to the Crown Prince and rightful heir. The rest claim he assassinated their father and thus forfeited the throne. Each of them now call himself/herself King/Queen, but most just refer to them as the Pretenders (a term I made the first time around that was used much less).

I also used Tinkers in JEHOVAH'S HITLIST, so it wouldn't do to include them again in 7Sac. But I love the tinkers I've created, so really I'm just changing the name since the two types of tinkers were completely different. Now they'll be called Peddlers.

One thing that's getting dropped all together is the varying naming structures. Each county represented a different European culture in terms of naming. I think I'll just stick with Brittany this time as I so often move into other areas of Europe for inspiration. Main character's name is Cheshire, after all, and don't want to change that. So it wouldn't make sense if everyone else had a Russian name.

The visuals in "Valhalla Rising" were pretty amazing, enough to make up for the fact the story (there was a story?) made no sense whatsoever. Quite inspirational. Gave me a lot of ideas on description for the Four Corners, where the four acreages meet and where the abandoned royal palace still stands. I had thought to write the description here, but I'm not in the mood any more, so I'll save that for next time.

Hope you all had an enjoyable week while I was away. Time to get back to work. :)

(Oooo, and I got a Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock t-shirt in my stocking! Woo hoo!)

(And a titanium spork!!!!)

The Easiest Way to Give

So you lost your job and you haven't had an interview in months but you still splurged on presents for the kids because you can't stand to think of them crying in front of the tree. You think to yourself, I don't have any money to give to a charity.

Well, Nathan Bransford is holding the easiest flipping charity known to man. Post on his blog and he'll donate a dollar for each post up to $1000.

Go say thank you, earn a dollar for Heifer International, a rocking charity that me and my wife also give to, and keep other kids from crying on Christmas too.

Go. Now.

Telegraphing the Play

Writing a novel is like writing a sports play, it may look familiar, but you don't want the reader to know the play that's coming. I know some people read for the experience, but some people (like me) read for the surprise. That's why I hate spoilers so much. If the surprise is ruined for me (like the end of CRYOBURN), it really lessens the experience.

So here I am editing my own work and I get to chapter 15. A lot has been happening. The pacing is pretty fast and yet another event happens. It's starting to feel like Jurassic Park 3 where one chase scene ends and another begins. They never overlap, mind you, but the characters never really stop running. You could see the plays coming. "Chase A is over, cue Chase B!"

I'm reading chapter 15 and it says to me "the author thinks things are moving too quickly. Let's slow this down."

A, it's bad that it reads that way. B, it's worse because it's EXACTLY what I was thinking at the time. The chapter has nothing to do with properly advancing the plot and everything to do with throwing a speedbump in the character's way so that he doesn't reach the first name on his list too quickly. (And reading the previous chapters in succession, it's not too quickly. It's just right given the other events.)

So chapter 15 is getting ripped apart. I don't even know if there will be enough left to warrant a chapter when I'm done. We'll see.

The Transition Story

Empire Strikes Back is my least favorite of the Star Wars trilogy¹. This is heresy among accepted Star Wars fandom, but it is the way it is. You can rattle off the various elements of the movie that make it better than the others, a richer universe, more defined characters, a darker/grittier edge to it, and you'd be right. It has the basic fundamentals to be all the things the other movies aren't but is missing one thing: a story.

Oh, it has story. It has plot and adventure and action, but as an arc of introduction to conclusion goes, it's incredibly wanting. Now I had to suffer through a novel in college that showed how you can craft a story that doesn't have that kind of arc. But I don't participate in media to suffer. I want an inciting action. I want a climax. I want resolution. Empire Strikes Back is a bridge from Star Wars to Return of the Jedi. You couldn't reach the third story without the second movie, but they didn't offer any sense of accomplishment on its own.

The Two Towers? That's a movie that bridges Fellowship of the Ring to Return of the King but also stands as its own movie. Dislike the absence of the Rangers or the increase in self-depricating Gimli jokes or Legolas surfing down stairs on a shield, the movie begins, there is a big ass fight at Helm's Deep, and the movie resolves pointing to the third movie.

CATCHING FIRE is not a bad book. It's certainly not as good as THE HUNGER GAMES and by the end I'm more annoyed with Katniss as a character than the author probably wants me to be, but it's not a good book either. It's a bridge. Sure the climax and resolution exist. A climax and resolution technically exist in Empire Strikes Back as well. But they are of a degree that I don't think warrants a story of their own².

I don't read a book just to get me to the next book. If a book exists only to propel me to the next book, it's not worth reading. It should have its own merit, it's own story, it's own essence. The entirety of CATCHING FIRE was a transition from the events of the first book to the events of the third book. The events of the second book only occur in two chapters. Really, at that point, you're looking at an epilogue of the first book and a prologue of the third book and bam, you have everything that's happened in the second.

Transition stories feel like the author has enough peanut butter for one sandwich but has four slices of bread, so (s)he just spreads it on as thinly has (s)he can. And when you pay full price for a book, you want all the peanut butter.


¹ Yes, there is only a trilogy. That is all. Nothing else. Han shot first only.

² The problem being, they were necessary to craft a trilogy, so the genuine failure is that they just weren't big enoug.

Silver Lining

I usually don't speak on my relationship with my mother except in the context of my upbringing and its impact on greater topics like racism or religion. This is for a few reasons: it implies I dwell on the matter, which I don't. When hearing we haven't seen each other in 7 years, someone inevitably makes the stupid comment that she's my mother and deserves another chance. And really, it's just a downer. It's one of those awkward moments where no one (other than the asshole above) knows what to say.

I am struck this morning, reading Jennifer Hillier's blog, doing a Nelson laugh (from the Simpsons if you don't get that reference). My father is dead and my mother could be for all the contact we have with one another. So when I write, when I kill, pillage, rape, murder, suck, fuck, and fondle characters of every age, gender, and religion, I never have to worry about explaining why I write what I write to my mother.

*points* Ha ha.

A Matter of Style

Mentioned previously, I'm reading CATCHING FIRE, by Suzanne Collins. It's the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy. With the exception of this morning's dumb decision on the part of the main character, the book maintains the style of the first book I enjoyed so much. There doesn't seem to be a lot going on, though. Well, there's enough, but nothing that says "THIS IS THE CHALLENGE THE PROTAGONIST MUST FACE!" It's just a continuation of a theme with no real plot point propelling the story forward. There is one, I guess (President Snow, I will say without spoilers), but it is treated in such a way that I don't find myself genuinely concerned with the main character.

And I think it's because of how THE HUNGER GAMES ended. It was a fair ending. I did not feel cheated. I did not roll my eyes or swear or throw my nook across the room. But if I had been writing the story, there would have been one significant change.

SPOILERS FOLLOW THE CUT


At the end of THE HUNGER GAMES, the gamemaster predictably reverses the rule that says there can be two victors, forcing Peeta and Katniss to face off. But they have poisoned berries, so they start the game of chicken. If the capital expects them to kill one another, they'll refuse and kill themselves instead. They pop the berries in their mouths, the capital caves at the last minute, they spit the berries out and stand triumphant.

That's how it happened in the book. In my book, the capital caves, announces them as the winners, and then they both fall down dead.

At the point, everything that's happened in the first 100 pages of CATCHING FIRE could have been summarized in a single epilogue. And I think because I'm effectively reading a continuation of a story that I would have condensed into a single chapter, I'm finding it kind of hard to sign onto the premise of the story like I did with the first one.

I'm not done with CATCHING FIRE. As long as it is average, I will read MOCKINGJAY. I'm curious whether either/both characters survive the story. Since it's a YA trilogy, I will assume they do. I would have been more satisfied if THE HUNGER GAMES had been a single book and they had died at the end.