coffee ink

Knave of Hearts, Maxwell Parrish

Short time for me at work this week! Vacation–going to the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, so looking forward to that. It’s been many years since I last went to one. Three more days and I’m winging my way to San Jose. Michelle’s coming with. It’s going to be fun celebrating Edgar Allan Poe’s 200th birthday!

Yesterday, on a visit to Office Depot, found a dvd of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, and watched it last night for the 3rd or 4th time. It’s got one of the best horror movie endings in the history of horror movie endings. Definitely tops my list of favorite horror films. That movie makes me tense no matter that I’ve viewed it at least 3 times before. Its mood, setting, the savage vampires, the heroic sheriff of the snowbound Alaska town caged in night for 30 days, and the nihilistic crucible in which the people are trapped waiting for the sun to rise again makes it impossible to watch without a chill in the gut.

Let’s see, what are my favorite horror films, in no particular order:

30 DAYS OF NIGHT

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

ALIEN

ALIENS

THE SIXTH SENSE

STIR OF ECHOES

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

And that’s it so far. Oh yeah–I hate zombie films and will not watch them. Don’t read zombie books either. I’m fond of the undead, not the walking dead.

Met with Janet yesterday for our monthly lunch, brainstormed a short story that she’s trying to write about one of her book characters. Her latest novel is out from Whiskey Creek Press–Wanted: True Love, a humorous tale about a young witch searching for true love with no luck thanks to an amorous, dastardly warlock who placed a curse on her.

I’ve got my NaNo novel idea sketched in story notes. Created a journal for it yesterday–I like to give all my novels their own journal–and I always pick a particular artist or artistic movement to use to ornament the entries. For Castle in the Air, I’m using Maxwell Parrish’s paintings. While I wait for November, I’m back at work on A Lamentation of Swans. Sweet Taboo is in a holding pattern somewhere in the creative ether. I’m so close to the end, but can’t find the words to get me there.

Judging by the luminous fall of light through the window, looks like it’s going to be a beautifully sunny day, but don’t know if I’ll make it outside at all today. I’m weeding my overgrown garden of manuscripts and story files stuffed in copy paper boxes. I really wish I’d stop creating duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate versions of everything!

baby on the doorstep

The Afterglow in Egypt, William Holman Hunt

Can’t bring myself to look at Loose Daddy. That poor novel has been languishing for months–completed, final, done, and still I can’t do the final read-through so I can compose the synopsis. I’m afraid of my own words. I’m afraid I’ll only see the flaws, i.e., the flaws I create, discreditng all my effort.

Too much to do writing-wise in this final quarter of the year so Loose Daddy will have to wait until 2010.

Meanwhile, I’m preparing for NANO. Castle in the Air is the working title for this year’s November Novel.

labyrinth

I’m remembering a cartoon…a little creature walks into a wall, backs up a step, walks into it again, backs up, walks into it again, as if walking into that wall over and over would eventually cause it to disappear…that sort of resembles me and Sweet Taboo. But I’m smarter than that little creature, I figured out to get the story engine running again, I need to write more about Deidre and Randall’s relationship (mortal + ghost) and balance it against Deidre and Demario’s friendship. Must focus on points of contention between Deidre and Randall and points of sympatico between Deidre and Demario. Must back away from the wall, turn and take another path in the story labyrinth.

The weather is gradually turning cooler–while summer wrestles with winter, punching the old man with warming trend after warming trend, but wind is evening the score, blowing rough and cold through the day.

I’m all signed up for NANO, and October is story notes and outline month for this year’s November Novel, tentatively titled, Castle in the Air. I hope to be ready come November 1st!

thin ice, heavy skates

The Storm Spirits, Evelyn Pickering De Morgan

October 1st, started working on the outline for this year’s NANO novel, temporarily setting Sweet Taboo aside. I’m stuck at a certain point anyway, although I like to think that I’m not. I’ve made my 50,000 word rewrite goal, and the story has expanded some so I’ve reset the manuscript to 60,000 and I’m word by wording my way to that final scene, already in place.

Meanwhile, I’m working on two short stories, one science fiction and one steampunkish. I also submitted another short story to market and have one more ready to go–that gives me five submissions this year–two which were published. A record year for me. Usually, I’m doing good to get one out the door.

So it’s October, Time’s scythe has sliced into the last quarter of the year. November is going to pass in a haze of pages, but still, hoping to complete ST.

50,000 plus!

Gulnare, Arabian Nights, Maxfield Parrish

50,025, Sweet Taboo. Alrighty then! Now we’re moving into the final sequence. I’m at Chapter 14. Happy dance!

working the agenda

Bacchante, William Bouguereau

48,664, Sweet Taboo. Just finished reading Caitlin Kiernan’s The Red Tree, her latest novel. Enjoyed it, was fascinated by it, the strong, beautiful writing and the story of obsession and haunting based on New England folklore. I was a wee bit unsatisfied by the ending, but I already knew from the beginning the fate of the main character, Sarah Crowe. The story is neatly framed and told in journal form, Sarah’s journal, drawn from another journal–that of a parapsychologist obsessed with New England folklore. Much of Caitlin Kiernan is in this book and that adds to my fascination. Daughter of Hounds and The Five of  Cups remain my top favorites of her books. Low Red Moon drew me into her fiction; I’ve yet to read Silk.

Today is the first day of a 3-day weekend. Monday is Yom Kippur and the office is closed. I’ve a writing agenda:

• Read through Loose Daddy
• Continue plotting the end of Sweet Taboo, and switch placement of the 1st and 2nd scenes, and also find the  second Nathaniel scene
• Find a market for my short story, Lost and Found
• Continue story notes for the vampire novel that involves a romantic triangle

I didn’t add the Simon story to the list, but I’d like to spend some time with it as well. Don’t know if I will though–the plate is already full, especially with reading Loose Daddy, though that isn’t something I can do at one sitting.

Now that I’ve finished The Red Tree, I’m going to read Neuromancer, which is on my 100 books, 5-year reading list.

Bright and sunny outside, going to be another scorching September day.

stringing beads

The Pink House, William DeGouve de Nuncques

48,022, Sweet Taboo. Spent some time scene-searching through the story, looking for those unwritten scenes that’ll add to the plot and move the story along, found a few, got started on one of them today.  One more bead…

the dead and ?

Oh, What’s that in the Hollow?, Edward Robert Hughes

As I compose my essay on vampires, a running argument is going on between Dayya 1 and Dayya 2.

What’s this fascination with vampires?  complains Dayya 1. They’re dead for goodness sake! Dead, I tell you!

 Dayya 2 retorts, Not really dead; just not alive in the same way we are.

They don’t breathe; have no heartbeat; are corpse-cold; and the only thing that keeps them from being one step away from zombiehood is they talk, think, and don’t eat brains, says Dayya 1.

They breathe, only they’ve got a choice about it, says Dayya 2. And they aren’t always cold, especially after they’ve fed.

On human blood!

Doesn’t have to be human.

Oh please, says Dayya 1. They’re killers!

Not all of them kill. There’s a technique to it, you know.

No I don’t know! replies Dayya 1.  What’re are you anyway? A latent necrophiliac?

Now you’re getting nasty!

Me: sigh.

all of a piece

Les Diaboliques, Felicien Rops

Watching TRUE BLOOD last night showed me how to write an “in-between” scene, one of those scenes that help develop the plot between its major turns. I’m always at a loss about what happens between the major plot points. Even when I have the whole plot in mind, there’s still those great white spaces waiting to swallow me. Soon enough I’m back at my m.o., the caterpillar wailing and flailing on the tip of the grass stalk until I flounder onto the next grass stalk.

It’s easy for me to write the scenes that comprise the actual plot–the opening, getting the conflict established, establishing the setting, introducing this or that character, getting to the first plot point–but how to develop it, how to make it richer, coherent, all of a piece?

The scene I watched Monday night was between Sookie and Sam over coffee and pie after the gathering at the church to hear Bill talk about fighting in the Civil War. It was a small scene that progressed to a strong, plot-point scene (and added a new detail about Sam) and seeing how this was done fascinated me, and gave me a clue about how to write Ally’s first date with Carl in SHADOW WALK.

What I learned was focus these scenes on other aspects of the story that contribute to the major plot, or the story’s arc, which means figuring out what those things are and working them into the story. Duh! “In-between” scenes must do the same thing major plot scenes do:

Have conflict; Present new information; Deepen character; and move the plot a step forward. Simple!

bumper sticker

 

Boreas and Oreithyia, Evelyn De Morgan

Driving into work this morning,  405 rolling along smoothly like a good freeway ought to,  found myself behind a big four-wheel drive truck, the kind that eats Porches and little bitty cars for lunch. It sported a number of bumper stickers–one of which made me laugh: “Socialism–great idea; until you run out of other people’s money.”

Went to bed last night troubled by the difficulty I was having with a new SHADOW WALK scene, woke up this morning still troubled, started getting that abyss of despair feeling about the whole manuscript–until a little voice in the back piped up with: quit with the fretting and write it first; then you’ll have something to shoot at. That worked. Now have a halfway decent scene. Must listen to that little voice more often.

Watched three more episodes of TRUE BLOOD over the weekend. An unexpected plot twist took away one of my favorite characters–didn’t like that–but I could see the advantage of the action and how it tied into motivating the heroine to make a certain decision. Still. Hate when that happens. I’ve grown very fond of Bill–he’s full of surprises, and he’s the most vulnerable vampire I’ve ever seen on screen. I’m almost done with the first season, have two more Netflix dvd’s to view and then I’ll be grumpily waiting for the second season to become available.