pink

I’ve not looked at Sleight of Hand in several weeks. I seem to have lost my way with it. The completed draft rests on the top shelf of my desk, gathering dust. I have not forgotten about it yet I’m not inclined to pick it up and continue revising it. Today was absolutely gorgeous, a golden day, hot and sunny, the kind of day that attracts people to California. I managed to get a little sunshine, but mostly spent the day inside working on the vampire essay and I gave an hour to the start of a new beat sheet for the Gaius and Annasara story. I’ve decided to pull it out of A Lamentation of Swans and write it as a separate story, but I don’t want to get caught up in it yet so an hour is all the time I gave it, and I probably won’t look at it again this week.

I’ve got pages of notes for the vampire essay, but my thoughts on it remain unorganized right now. I finally came up with a working title for the vampire romance, Romancing the Night, finished the beat sheet and even created a cover for it, although I think I’ll get a professional cover artist for when it’s finally done and ready to be published.

Camp Nano starts April 1. I may sign up for it for Romancing the Night.

tizzy

 

Astarte, book cover by Thomas Canty

Thomas Canty is one of my favorite fantasy artists. I love the book covers he does. I find them evocative and inspiring, and his technique of capturing texture and fabric blows my mind. Whole worlds are contained in a single cover illustration by Canty.

I’m in a tizzy about  A Fall of Diamonds, the new fantasy historical mystery romance I’m planning. Just looking at “fantasy historical mystery romance” is enough of an indication. Maybe drop “historical” and go with “fantasy mystery romance.” That gives the genre and cross-genre, and it seems less a mess. There is an intriguing mystery and a strong romance, but the romance isn’t the focus so maybe I shouldn’t say “romance.” That leaves “fantasy mystery.” Much cleaner. Well…we’ll see.

I’ve got it partly outlined. I need an outline for this novel because I want to know what I’m going to write, and with a mystery storyline and a romance storyline and the two of them crossing and intersecting, my head needs to be clear, the brain can’t be in a blither.

Right now I’m in the planning stage, and I don’t want to start writing until I feel the story coming together. When I hear the characters’ voices and have keyed into their thoughts, I’m close to ready. But not yet.

So my brain is spinning. Will spend today in planning hell–you know coming up with ideas and developing them into a compelling story is the hard part. All that thinking makes my head hurt and puts me in a tizzy.

face to face

December is the face to face month, the month when I look myself in the eye and ask “What have you done for me lately?” meaning how did the writing go this year? I’m in the middle of preparing my assessment for the end of year accountability. My writing progress is much like the weather–cloudy with a little sunshine one day; overcast with occasional rainfall on another day; hot and sunny on some days. Each year I aim for hot and sunny.

La Muse is drifting about with her hands in her pockets, pretending like she doesn’t care if she gets credit for the successes, casting sneaky looks my way. Honestly. What does she expect me to do?

There are a few sparkles: finishing Shadow Walk (again), and then shelving it, and completing Broken for NANO. And returning to work on A Lamentation of Swans, I’ve made considerable progress on Sleight of Hand, which is now at 10,360 words. I probably shouldn’t tot up the failures, but can’t help doing that. Besides, the unfinished fictions are not really failures (not really dead), just in the first stages of growth–seed and bud, no leaves or flowers just yet, and their day in the sun will come.

It’s been a discombobulated year and I hope I have it more together–writing-wise–in 2014.

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving was wonderful, went to my sister’s. My nieces are a kick–all three of them are witty with a great sense of humor. I spent a lot of time laughing in between happily stuffing myself on my sister’s mouthwatering turkey, eggplant stuffing, potatoes and gravy, cheesy biscuits, and I contributed a favorite–cranberry-tangerine relish, which my sister expects at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And then there was pie–pumpkin and pecan, earthquake cake, and ice cream. I confined myself to pie.

We usually go to the movies after dinner, but this year we stayed in and watched a double feature from my sister’s dvd collection: The Wolverine and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. Enjoyed both, particularly liked The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. It made me want to buy the books. Friday I joined a friend for sushi lunch and another movie: Philomena. Very good. Recommended. Dame Judy Dench is a marvel.

It was wonderful to take a break from writing, and reconnect with the energy of just plain living.

interesting…

25,025 NANO YA. A tad bit worn out this week, but hanging in. Was two days ahead in my daily word count, but the mundanities intruded so now I’m right on target and just have to maintain the flow.

Reading Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary and came across the interesting tidbit that she shared house expenses with her husband and in 1935, she didn’t make enough money from her writing for her share and she had to dip into her savings of 770 pounds, she called it her “hoard,” for the 70 pounds she needed to make up her deficit. Virginia Woolf was a brilliant writer who, plagued with terrible headaches and haunted by clinical depression, struggled nearly every day of her life to write. Some days she just couldn’t do it. Reading her diary both fascinates and saddens me because I’m reading toward the tragic end of her life before her time. Driven by depression, she drowns herself in the Ouse in March, 1941. Such a loss.

shiny bits and word stuffing

13,348 words. NANO YA. The morning has the look of tarnished silver. Yesterday was a long day of writing. I really pushed myself and caught up with the word count target, writing 4, 342 words. Today…more of the same. I’m writing in scenes, no chapter breaks, no imposition of any kind of structure, and I’ve been writing mostly by hand and typing-in the draft.

It’s been a long time since I steadily wrote by hand–ink pen and yellow tablet. Writing by hand eases my mind, the words fall out of my head and loop themselves across the page, line after line. It’s refreshing and energizing; keeps my anxiety at bay. Seeing a stack of lined yellow tablets and all those virgin pages makes my heart flutter. What I’m writing is crazy, nonsensical, exploratory at best, and pretty much what Ernest Hemingway said about first drafts. But buried in the nonsense are gems of discovery, shiny bits, the stuff of the second draft when its time comes.

My mind is never at rest, and even in the midst of writing the YA, I received one of those gifts of inspiration that Henry James called a donnee, a creative idea, not for the YA, but for, lo and behold, A Lamentation of Swans. The manuscript in its many permutations has a permanent place on my dining table, reminding me not to forget about it. I had an issue, a worry that’s been poking the back of my mind for a long time and I couldn’t figure out how to solve it. The answer came from an unexpected source: a documentary on sumo wrestlers which mentioned the two principles of sumo culture–tatemae and honni. Tatemae is facade; honni is hidden truth. These two principles illuminated my problem of how to thematically show the secret dichotomy in Raevani culture. Really, I think a light flickered on at the underside of my brain. I made a note and it’ll keep until I’m ready to work on A Lamentation of Swans again.

I’ve got to prepare for today’s writing. Forward!

Oh…two interesting articles on e-book publishing: analytics and followed another link in the article to: amazon.

On the road

7,148 words. That’s progress on the YA horror novel I’m writing this month for National Novel Writing Month. I customarily place a “NANO Participant” counter widget on the blog, but for some reason I can’t get it to work this year. Shoot! So I’ll keep track in the posts.

T-minus Z-plus

National Novel Writing Month is T-minus 8 days away and I’m fretting. I know I shouldn’t do that. This year  for NANO I’m writing a YA zombie novel–yep, you read that right. Zombie-phobic me is going to give it a go. Not that I’ve suddenly become a zombie fanatic; I decided I ought to move outside of my comfort zone. And my zombies will definitely be the disgusting decaying dead, shuffling, driven, and ravenous. I don’t know what my sister and brother, orphaned in an apocalyptic world, are going to do.

And I won’t be writing alone. The Cohort will be with me. Still…it’ll be just me and Isis-Athena (my MacBook Pro), and oh yeah La Muse who will probably be sunning herself on a remote island and not thinking about poor me at all.

NANO does allow some prep work. I’ve got notes and a rough index card outline. I know a little of what’s going to happen. So I should focus on the fun part of prepping for NANO–muffins and chocolate and Cheetos! Ritz crackers! Coffee and tea! A bottle of wine–not for celebrating, just to get me through the pages! 50,000 words…sigh.

Happy writing!

the hours like birds on the wing

 

Yesterday and the day before was devoted to research for Princess of Rosenstein. Today I’m thinking Sleight of Hand needs attention. I’m stuck in the worst way and don’t know what to do about it. The story remains unfinished and I’m wondering if I’ll ever finish it. Getting stuck always makes me question my ideas.

The sunny days of October are sliding by, the hours like birds on the wing, and I sit wrestling with words, worrying about not finishing my story. I took an hour-long walk with my neighbor which left my arthritic knees unhappy for nearly three days, but the walk was good for my heart.

Bones last night was delightful, but incredibly, I dozed off during a commercial break and missed the resolution of the crime–woke up just in time for Brennan’s and Booth’s wedding–thank goodness! Best TV nuptials ever! Still, I want to know what happened to the poor victim. 

Took advantage of a free month from Redbox in partnership with Verizon, and the trial membership also comes with four movie credits so not only do I get to watch movies for free for a month, but I get four additional movies for free too. This week I watched After Earth and Oblivion. After Earth was disappointing, but Oblivion was surprising–it was good. A complex science fiction story, nicely executed. 

What bothered me about After Earth was the acting–not very good. Will Smith usually does so much better. The story was a father/son tale, but I dunno, I was expecting more. I still have two free credits to use. Guess I’ll get Ironman 3, or Now You See Me or World War Z tonight. Hmm–my abhorrence of zombie films seems to be weakening, but I still have no intention of watching The Walking Dead.

Time to get back in the ring with Sleight of Hand. Writers write.

a slow rush

Of all my favorite literary characters, I think Jay Gatsby is the most tragic. A man who believed he could relive the past, and ended dead in the swimming pool of his magnificent, over-wrought mansion, shot fatally over a death he didn’t commit. The Great Gatsby has always been a favorite novel of mine. The movies have disappointed me, except I enjoyed the most recent–finding Cary Mulligan’s performance as Daisy the first non-vapid characterization I’ve seen. She brought Daisy to life like none before her. At least this version, with its near-manic kaleidoscope of music, dance, and wild partying, held my interest. I’ve read the novel four times over the years. It’s final sentence, one of my favorites: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back seamlessly into the past.”

Last night, the predawn hours really, the wind blew fiercely, a loud hiss rushing through the trees, bending them as if they were made of rubber. It scrubbed the sky clean, revealing rarely seen tiny points of light glimmering in the dark reaches high above. This morning the wind caresses–trees sway gently back and forth like lovers wrapped in a slow dance.

Today is Writing Saturday with Michelle. I’m preparing a lunch of broiled lobster with clarified butter and lemon; Mediterranean lentil salad; and roasted squash. She’s bringing bread and dessert. I may work on Sleight of Hand or do NANO prep for this year’s November novel.  By the way, Michelle interviewed me for the October post of First Friday Breakfast with an Author, michelleknowldenwrites. It was nice of her to ask and fun for me to do. My publications, Grave Shadows, an anthology of disturbing dark fantasy stories, and my latest, The Ghost Jewel, a sword and sorcery tale, are featured. It’s a good day for spooky and fantastical reading. Thanks, Michelle!

 

where have the words gone?

Outside it’s a lovely, sun-bright day. Perfectly summer. I’m greatly tempted to take a walk, but I’m only two pages in on today’s writing, and I promised myself four. Yesterday was productive–1,748 words on Chapter 3 of Trail of Shadows. Nothing new on the Jerob Deal story or Jealous Wine, except I decided to dispense with a particular plot point in JW and simplify the storyline.

I always hit a point where all the words, all the story I’m thinking about, disappears, and I don’t know what to do. It’s frustrating. Yesterday I looked at the story from the villain’s point of view. That was very helpful and set things in motion again. Today it’s monkey mind. I think I’ll make a list of everything I know I need to write for the next two chapters. That ought to jog some words loose.