An Alien Signal

 Posted by at 7:46 am  Life, Miscellaneous, Writing
Apr 152013
 

Crow and Tree - Heaven and Earth in Winter Just before dawn it was clear, but as I’ve been at the computer, mist has risen from the earth, hanging in the trees. It’s a nice way to begin, and I have the short story slated for today. I’m either going to finish it, or get it to a place where it can be finished soon.

I don’t know what it is about short stories–each time, I have an idea that will work, I pursue it, and then I have to throw it out and come at it sideways, and I end up with a completely different story that is unrelated in a specific way to the original one. The original one, half-born, waits around until it becomes a second attempt at a completely different short story. Unlike my novel process, the short story process doesn’t change with each one. But still, I would rather write novel or novella-length than short story. I find shorts difficult, temperamental, nerve-wracking. It’s good practice, but like many other good-practice things, it’s uncomfortable and I’m always glad when it’s done.

My dreams have been odd of late, even for me. Coherent stories, but…odd. Escaping from Soviet Russia, cakes with hard, bittersweet chocolate shells, bonfires of paint. It’s not even a mental housecleaning, it’s like a very particular frequency of static, a burst right before one starts receiving an alien signal. Added to this, the crows on my morning run have begun greeting me, and we play little games, which Miss B doesn’t like. She hates chasing things that can fly, their taunting disturbs her but she’s helpless to stop.

I know you guys are waiting for the second half of Napoleon’s interrupte. I’ll write it when I’m ready, thank you.

And now, back to the short story. Either it or I will perish today. *buckles in*

photo by: h.koppdelaney

Hunter’s Instinct

 Posted by at 7:11 am  Life, Miscellaneous, Pennyworth Advice, Writing
Mar 272013
 

Happy EasterWhat is it with reclusive rich people and constant house renovations? My sister once visited the Winchester House; she said it was fascinating but only mildly creepy. As a Shirley Jackson fan, I expect more from my old freakishly-renovated mansions.

Good morning! Dawn is rising as I write this. Having to get up at six to get the kids to school is…interesting. For a night owl, having to keep an early schedule means I’m trying to wind down just as my body is wanting to wake up and move, and I’m waking up just when my body wants to be in deep slumber. I feel halfway awake most days.

This morning the Selkie and I are dissecting a recent read for our teensy little book club. As usual, I went and beat a metaphor to death:

He has no hunter’s instinct, which a writer has to have–you have to hunt down the plot bunny, flay it, see how it works internally, put it back to together, resurrect it, and then kill it again and hang the trophy. Or keep killing it and resurrecting it a little more perfectly each time. (From email.)

A hunter’s instinct is necessary if you’re going to tell a story the way it wants to be told. You must also be willing to have your characters suffer consequences. This becomes a million times harder if one of them is an authorial self-insertion. A certain measure of brutality is necessary, and it hurts, because it must be balanced by absolute compassion for your characters. Even the ugly, nasty, foul ones. Or the ones who possess your own character flaws. This balance–bleeding heart and brutality–is incredibly difficult.

Nobody ever said this job was easy.

Over and out.

photo by: AlicePopkorn

Dawn

 Posted by at 6:55 am  Book Update, Life, Miscellaneous
Mar 072013
 

Cave Silhouette Slowly absorbing my coffee this morning while glancing out the office window. Tree branches silhouetted against the slowly-lightening sky, strengthening daylight picking out details in bark and moss.

The current book is bubbling under the surface of my brain. I can tell that soon the mad lunge for the end will begin, but first I need to arrange everything beforehand correctly. Which means going back and unpicking certain strands, knotting them differently. Getting it to hang right over the underlying structure. And not so incidentally, swearing under my breath at the Muse for shoehorning in a scene that rather changes EVERYTHING. I think it’s her idea of a joke, but I’m missing the humor at the moment.

If I hit wordcount goal today, I may reward myself with finishing Lust, Caution. The movie has started me on an Eileen Chang kick, which has been fascinating.

Soon I have to tell you guys about how Odd Trundles tried to save Napoleon!Squirrel from his ladylove Josephine. Who kind of isn’t so much of a lady, when it comes to Napoleon. But for right now, there’s coffee, and another story, and getting a sorceress kidnapped. (That’s going to be no end of fun.)

Over and out.

Bird by Bird

 Posted by at 10:00 am  Event, Life, Miscellaneous, Pennyworth Advice, Writing
Feb 132013
 

Eastern Bluebird with aquatic insect #3 The Evil for Crestline auction is still going strong, with over $3000 in pledges. Among the things you can bid on are signed hardback copies of my upcoming YA book Nameless–the one that won’t be out until April. There’s critiques, drinks and meetups at conventions, signed copies galore (the Deadline Dames put together an AMAZING prize pack), mentorship from published authors, and so much more. All proceeds go to benefit Crestline Elementary, the Little Prince’s school, which burned to the ground ten days ago. And when I say burned to the ground I mean it literally. Everything, even the gym, is gone. I ran through the park behind the school yesterday and drove past the front while on errands, both views are equally bleak. The bricks are scorched, there are just piles of twisted charred wreckage. We still haven’t heard what the cause of the fire was.

*sigh* At least the Little Prince is adjusting, and his class, grade, and teachers were all kept together. Small mercies. The kids are bouncing back faster than the parents.

The 10K training program continues apace. The hardest thing about this, I can already tell, is going to be the rest days. I don’t want to rest, I want to run. So on rest days I’ll be doing yoga and keeping up with Gorilla workouts. I need some core strength and flexibility, this will be a good way to get it. I signed up for Fitocracy, too, thinking that the game bit of it will keep me interested in Things That Aren’t Running. Maybe I’ll even start cycling again. (Don’t bet on it, though.)

In other news, I’m in the wilds of revision for Wayfarer, my retelling of Cinderella. Slow careful work, unpicking sentences, examining each word, incorporating editor suggestions. (Repeating to myself “the editor is your FRIEND, the editor wants your book to be the best book ever, the editor is your FRIEND…) It’s not as painful as copyedits, but some days I wish this career only included the fun part of pure creation.

Don’t we all.

In that vein, Chuck Wendig wrote today about the hardest writerly truth of them all. It reminds me of that time I said “write every day, writers WRITE,” and got a huge pile of crap-flak for it. (Some of that convinced me to stop taking comments on LJ. *shrug*) Even ten minutes of writing daily is better than weekend or month-end warrior-ing it, because you’re building the discipline that will carry you through those times when the writing (or life itself) just ain’t fun enough to keep you coming back for the dopamine hit. Plus, every daily ten-minute session can give you that jolt of accomplishment that can wire your neurons into a habit of writing. I’ll take discipline and habit over the amorphous thing called “talent” any day.

Anyway. Back to the salt mines, back into the wild. Hacking through my own sentences, slogging through the places where I said oh yeah I’ll fix it in revision. *wishes for a belt of Scotch*

*gets back to work*

*kaffhackSNORTkaff*

 Posted by at 10:28 am  Life, Miscellaneous
Jan 232013
 

Take me to the zombies So the Little Prince and I both have the same deep chest cough and general meh. It did not stop me from going out and doing a short (just a couple miles, I swear!) run today, though by the end of the second mile I was awful glad that all I had to do was walk home. I’ve just now amped up my training schedule, I can’t afford to lose a day. I’m going to drink a tonne of tea and water, and make chicken soup tonight, and generally baby both myself and the little ones. (It’s Finals Week for the Princess, which probably means she needs the babying more than she’ll ever admit.)

I had mad thoughts of taking Miss B and Odd to the dog park, but have decided against it. It’s cold, the forecast calls for rain (FINALLY!), and every time Odd goes to the dog park he gets so excited he comes home, staggers to his bed, promptly has a seizure, and throws up. He literally excites himself into passing out and puking. I can’t decide if he’s just at frat-boy age for a dog, or if he’s the Little Prince’s (remember, his other name is Sir Pewksalot) spirit animal.

So yeah, gallons of hot tea. Moving verreh slowly. I have to get a sorceress involved with a fight against a mad semi-ghost coachman, and also get the trailer-park fae hero to the tavern where he and the heroine will begin their mutual dance of distrust and recrimination. That’s the thing about working from home, there’s sometimes just not a good reason to take a day off, even when you’re coughing up chunks of lung.

Yeah, you’re welcome for that mental image.

Over and out.

photo by: Esparta

The Deadly Slog

 Posted by at 3:26 pm  Book Release, Life, Miscellaneous
Jan 222013
 

IMG_8003 So yeah, today I hit 40K on The Ripper Affair. Which means the deadly slog of the Middle of the Book is nigh, and I’m not sure I can outlast this mofo. This is the point during every book where I completely doubt my ability to endure long enough that the goddamn book gets tired and finishes first.

*clears throat, delicately* Ahem. So to speak.

It doesn’t help that it hasn’t rained in days. Where’s my gray, dreary PNW winter? WHERE IS IT? I DEMAND IT! Or, you know, this being the West Coast, I just sort of ask politely and hold up my hands to show my nonaggression, and say please, if you would, I really miss the rain.

We’re pretty polite out here. Except over the mountains, where they’re not so polite at all. And oh my God, I should tell you all about the time I went to Forks. Yes, that Forks. Hint: it was way before the Cullens ever knew that place existed. Another hint: it did not end well.

Last but not least, the Jill Kismet omnibus is out! You can find it at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and also at indie stores. I am amazed and gratified. I got a copy in the mail just today and hugged it and told it how pretty it was.

*clears throat again* I am not sorry, but I am slightly ashamed.

Who am I kidding? I’m not ashamed at all.

Anyway, off to go reward myself by writing some more trailer-park fae…

photo by: aveoree

Turnabout

 Posted by at 6:31 pm  Rant Rant Rave, Writing
Sep 192012
 

I always laugh when anyone tells me how glamourous it must be to be a writer.

The sight of me, unwashed and furious, staring at a glowing screen for hours while the people inside my head refuse to make sense, occasionally taking a break to pace furiously up and down the hall while the dogs trot behind me inquisitively, running into me when I stop and change direction, me throwing myself on the floor in the living room and snarling “BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE” and Miss B gamely trying to make it make sense by licking my face…you know, “glamour” is not the word that comes to mind. “Hysterically funny to watch Lili suffer” is what comes to mind.

My dears, I have a confession to make.

I’ve written through every other move and upheaval in my life. And by that, I mean I wrote in the hospital after C-sections (don’t ask), I wrote when the electricity got shut off because someone hadn’t paid the bill (roommates, oh, I could write a book about them sucking), I’ve written through two divorces, the death of a soulmate, and various other Fun and UnFun Events. Write during a move? Sure, no problem. Make my deadlines while buying a house? Pshaw, I’ve eaten better stress than this for breakfast.

I was wrong.

I did not understand (I was warned, though, I really was) about the level of stress involved in the legal albeit temporary possession (because really, the bank owns everything, and what the bank doesn’t own eminent domain can be invoked to make the state own) of a wooden structure on a lot that one pours money into. I did not understand that stress would play merry hob with deadlines, and I did not understand that the move would drain my emotional energy so badly I can barely force myself out of bed in the morning.

Hyperbole? Only a little.

Never before has the discipline of forcing myself to sit and chip words out of the folds of my cerebellum been so critical. Never before have I sat and looked at the screen and at my hands, and thought I know how to do this, I know what happens next, I just cannot find the goddamn words. For someone who has built her life on the power and magic of the written word, it’s a wee bit, oh, what’s the term, hmmm…

…terrifying? Yes, that applies.

As Julia Cameron often pointed out, it takes fuel to burn hard enough to create art. I’m scraping the bottom of my cupboard, and for the first time, the words are not just under the surface. The little bastards are cowering in deep caves, delighting in my agonized screams as I claw them out one by one and throw them onto the page, where I must nail them in and listen to them shriek as they writhe.

*clears throat*

Well. Now that I have that out of my system…

…okay, I have dished out hard advice here before. Now, dear chickadees, dear Readers, dish me some. I know I’m going to keep writing–after all, I have no choice–but turnabout’s fair play. Lay it on me. Zadie Smith’s ten rules can only take me so far. Be cruel to be kind, dear Readers. You’ll likely never get another chance.

And now, excuse me while I go grubbing for more screaming little word-bastards. I will read every piece of advice you give me, dear ones. Tomorrow.

photo by: Alex E. Proimos

Serial Madness

 Posted by at 7:30 am  Contests, Writing
Jun 202012
 
Justice Legg of America
JD Hancock / Foter

So…I am having thoughts of writing serial fiction over at the Deadline Dames site.

And so, I thought I would invite you, darling readers, into the process.

Here’s what I want: something you’d like to see me write in serial fiction. Don’t pitch me your novel. Do please understand that whatever I write, I retain all rights to. (You want to take the idea in another direction, do it, spend the work on it, and submit it. ‘Nuff said.) Do understand that I reserve the right to write what I please. Do please understand that I will take everything you’ve said and go in my own direction. And don’t tell me what a hack I am to even be contemplating this.

With those codicils in place, the floor is open. Let’s do some serial wonder, my dears. Give me your suggestions…

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