Troubles

In the words of the Bard, when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions. My sister has suffered greatly these past few months, and it's getting worse. Websites and writing are so unimportant when the people you love are in pain.

Words are useless at times like this. Useless.

I'm back!

Wow, has it really been two months since my last post? Time flies when you're not having fun, or something like that. Real-real has been occupying me for the last several weeks, but now I'm back to the final editing pass on Sacrifice and preparing to perpetrate more on Catherine's Wheel. My designer has finished making cover art for all seven books in the Clans series, and they're beautiful. I'm waiting for the US Copyright Office to finish registering the copyright on Sacrifice and on my collections of short stories and poetry. Once that's done - currently estimated to be in June 2010 - the website can open for business. In the meantime, it's back to combing through the writing I've done and preparing for the writing I'll do.

I just have one thing to say about my imaginary people: Tobyn thinks he's so smart, and he's just so, so wrong! He's forever scheming, and it's forever blowing up in his face. You'd think he'd learn...

Is it hot in here?

I just wrote the most sexual non-sex scene I think I've ever written. Tobyn really knows how to put the moves on a girl!

eBook update

It's getting closer! My web designer and all-around IT go-to girl has shown me the rough draft for the eBook version of Sacrifice. It looks wonderful to me, and I'm so excited! The good news was perfectly timed, too...today was one of those low biorhythm/random depression days, and this was just the lift my spirits needed.

Just a few clicks of the mouse and a 3 1/2 month waiting period for a copyright certificate are all that stand between me and an actual live, functioning website. I'm so thrilled!

Website progress

I'm very pleased with the how the website is coming along. My sister is a very talented web designer, and I would have asked her to do the site even if we weren't related. Nepotism is still a beautiful thing, n'est-ce pas?

I'm going to be on vacation in Canada over the weekend, but I'm taking my laptop with me so I can write in the hotel if time permits. It probably won't, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Besides, why else do people have laptops? They're meant to be carted around!

Rolling rolling rolling

Catherine's Wheel is rolling along nicely, and it's clicking into place with The Belly of the Beast, which is the next installment. I can see how they're going to just flow together, and it might also reach into the next book, The Methods of Madness. There's certainly a solid narrative flow to the story. I'm very happy with how things are going, and Tobyn is being nicely talkative.

Outside of the Clans universe, I woke up this morning from an elaborate murder-mystery story that was playing out in my dreams. I lost most of the details, but I can remember enough to put together a skeleton of the plot. Some of my best work has come out of dreams. I really should keep a notebook at my bedside so that I can record these things.

Bio page

In other news, the website now has a bio page on it and a photo that will suffice for an author's photo. I'm pleased to say that it is not a picture of me, so nobody will have a heart attack from the fright. ;)

Every step is a step forward. I keep telling myself that.

Problem solved

At long last, I have deciphered my Frau Schulmann problem, and Catherine's Wheel is back on track. Thank goodness... I was starting to worry!

Cyrus

Last night I delivered a copy of Nightchild to Cyrus, my favorite server at my local Big Boy restaurant here in my home town. He was so excited to receive it, it really made me happy. I hope he's still excited after he reads it. ;)

Cyrus is an extraordinarily personable young man, with charisma to spare, and he's said that his ambition is to be the next Ryan Seacrest. I believe that he can do it. Wind to his wings.

Buried Treasure

I was cleaning today and found a secret cache of about eight unfinished short stories, along with two completed (and very bad) ones. This spate of random personal archaeology has mixed results. On the positive side, I cleared out some much-needed storage space, eliminated clutter, and found two partial pieces of writing that I'd been looking for. On the negative side, though, is the emotional aftermath of reading some of these things. Based on the dates and contents of the rest of the box, I'd say these papers haven't seen the light of day since 1995. The writing has, to say the least, poor. Thank God I've improved in the last 14 years.

new old characters

I think I've finally figured out where this new character works into the Wheel, and it dovetails with a short story I wrote and lost ages ago about Tristan of Carmaugh called Toujours et Toujours. I was going through a phase of using foreign language titles for a while. Should be interesting.

I'm boring myself

The trouble with writing ghost stories is that it's so difficult to set up the slow build-up of the paranormal event without boring myself to death.

Catherine's Wheel has taken a bit of a hiatus while I deal with some health issues and try to figure out this new character who just appeared in a Berlin doorway in Chapter Two. Otherwise, I have a few short stories in the works; hence the comment, above.

I keep hoping that I'll develop more patience over time, but it hasn't happened yet. Patience with the writing, patience with myself... these are things that I desperately need, and can't seem to master. It's actually become something of a private joke. Every tarot reading I've ever gotten on the subject of my writing has coaxed me to be patient. I'm trying.

Research

I enjoy doing research for the places and times where my stories are set. The only down side is that I almost invariably get all bound up with being historically correct with facts and/or factoids. I want to give the flavor of the pieces a good dose of verisimilitude, but I almost always go too far with trying to "get it right". It's so stupid. How am I supposed to make fiction completely historically accurate? By definition, it's inaccurate, because it never really happened.

I need to just settle down, take the facts, absorb them so that I understand the feeling of the place and time, and then just let the words roll. Who really cares what colors and designs the Mohegan really used for the decorations on their breechclouts? It's not like I'm going to devote paragraphs to describing what my characters are wearing. It's not that important. So what do I do? I spend two hours researching the contact-era clothing and society of the Mohegan, download a glossary, make notes on their religion and spirit figures, and pore over the sorry history of English contact with the tribe, including the exact timing of small pox outbreaks and population numbers. And for what? So I can write a short story about a supernatural happening in a forest inhabited with people I'm making up? I drive myself crazy sometimes.

Sometimes I think my schooling as a historian has been more hindrance than help.

Egad!

I'm having a thought that flies in the face of all that I believe. It violates all of my ethics, but I'm thinking it's something I might have to pursue.

I have to...

...shudder...

... have a picture taken for the website.

Egad.

There's a button for "bio", and most authors have photographs on their bio pages, and I really should have one, too.

The very thought makes my skin crawl. I've successfully avoided cameras to the point that I'm mostly bereft of any photographic evidence of my horrid appearance, but now I'm going to have to put something up. I'll also have to come up with a bio, which I dread. I mean, really, who cares? If any one comes to the site, it'll be for the writing, not for me...right? (I'm assuming that anyone is going to the site.)

:: listens to the crickets ::

Sigh.

Well, if I do end up having pictures taken and posted, at least I can rest easy in the knowledge that nobody will ever see them. ;)

Left turn at Albuquerque

He's done it to me again.

Just when I think I know exactly how the plot of Catherine's Wheel is going to go, and how Tobyn is going to be moving through his world to tell the story, the little bastard takes a left turn and totally discombobulates me. I just added two pages to the book where I just have to shake my head and type what he "tells" me, because I have no earthly clue where this is going. I know what he's supposed to be doing, but as always, Tobyn has his own ideas.

Sometimes I really believe that my characters develop lives of their own, almost independent of me, as a result of all of the energy that I put into them. Some of them are very cooperative, others are complete pains. Tobyn, naturally, falls into the latter category. He's such a jerk sometimes...but I guess that's why I love him. His unpredictability makes him interesting to write, and, I hope, interesting to read.

And still I have no idea where he's going or who this Frau Schulmann is who just blundered into the book, but I have the sinking suspicion that she's not what she seems. (Really, who in the Clans universe ever is?)

Eureka

I realized what tripped me up on Knight of Sorrows. I was trying to be too historically accurate and yet true to the original Arthurian story, which was an anachronism when it was first recorded in the 1400’s. I just have to tell the story as it’s in my head and stop worrying about what historians and Arthurian purists are going to say. Once I finish Catherine’s Wheel, I’m going back to Tristan.

And so it begins...

Catherine's Wheel is beginning very well. I have my map of Europe carefully marked out and the plot has clicked into place in my head. The first chapter is finished, and I'm on a roll. I have a very good feeling about this one. Just judging from the first chapter, the writing is much better than what I perpetrated ten years ago in Sacrifical Lamb, the pre-editing incarnation of Sacrifice.

Refocusing

I was rampaging through my notes and scribbles for the Clans universe and found the prologue and four chapters that I'd already written for Catherine's Wheel. They're infected by the same off-balance focus that I had to correct in Sacrifice, so they will definitely not be used. I'm almost thinking that there's nothing in the 1870 Berlin era that's important enough to be a whole book, so I might just skip ahead to one of the next books, either Le Club Madrid or The Belly of the Beast. I don't know. I have a lot of material about intervening years and secondary characters that would probably make good short stories or novella-length works, but I'll have to be choosy about what gets to be a book. I don't want to take a slender plot and stretch it to illogical lengths.

I need to review the timeline and pertinent events that I mapped out all those years ago and really decide what goes in and what gets left for side-line projects. I know that I need to keep focus on the triangle (Tobyn/Ara/Dumas) and where that leads. Some of the books that I had synopsized in my notes have nothing to do with any of them, and will be left for later.

I have a lot of work ahead of me. The Clans universe is the monster that ate my brain!

Accomplishment, but ever onward

At long last, I'm pleased to say that I finished the re-write on Sacrifice. I celebrated with dinner out, then came home to start researching for the next book, Catherine's Wheel. It's set in Berlin in 1870, and I confess, I don't know much about the Kingdom of Prussia or the North German Federation (which became the German Empire in 1871). I'm taking copious notes and need to obtain a map so I can get a handle on the geography of the place. I try not to bog my writing down with too many historical or geographical details, but it helps me to have a sense of place and time. I'll be doing a lot of reading and probably spending some quality library time.

Research is so much a part of writing, even if your work isn't technically a historical piece. I think it's important to try to ground even the most fantastical work in some breath of reality. Even if you're creating a new world, it should bear at least enough of a passing similarity to the real world to be understandable to the reader. Besides, history is filled with fascinating nooks and crannies where the seeds of many stories can be planted and eventually bear fruit.

So, until further notice, my brain will be living in a city I've never seen, in a country I've never visited, in a time long past. It will be vivid and alive when I return .

I love this part of the process.

Title change

The original title of the second book in the Clans series was Sacrificial Lamb, but when I began to re-write it to be truer to the main character, I decided to re-name it Sacrifice. There are people in this novel who are sacrificing themselves to their ambitions, to their pride, to their fear, to their self-delusion, and ultimately they sacrifice everything they love the most. Like a lot of second acts, it's rather sad.

I'm almost finished with the re-write, and happy for it. I think the new version is better than the old, and it fits better with Nightchild. The first draft was hijacked by a secondary character, and I lost track of the fact that this story is essentially a triangle: Tobyn, Dumas, and Ara. Everyone else is just ancillary, or sometimes just window dressing, and even if their impacts are occasionally profound, they serve mostly to trigger an action or a reaction in one of the three main actors.

Now comes the hard part, when the triangle has been blown apart. We'll see how this works out.

Awake too late

Once again, I've stayed up far too late at night working on Sacrifice. It's a little funny, really, how my normally diurnal self turns markedly nocturnal when I'm writing my vampires. I guess I need to be in the night to really feel them, as if the grainy quality of electric light vainly holding off encroaching shadows helps infuse the writing with a sense of darkness.

The ending, I think, will be strong, and it certainly sets up for the third book (working title for book 3 is Catherine's Wheel, by the way). I'm still uncertain about the rest of the book, but once I've finished the re-write and given myself a few days of mental quiet (characters permitting), I'll have a look and see what I think. It's very difficult to be truly objective about your own work, but I'm the only editor I have right now.

the shadow of a doubt

I think I'll be finishing the re-write on Sacrifice today. I'll then be in a position to get at least the poetry and this novel copyrighted and available on the website. Hopefully there will be some sort of a response to the website going live, and hopefully I won't drop off the face of the earth into a self-indulgent wasteland. I'm certain that I'll open the website for business with a big, "Ta-da!" only to be greeted by the sound of crickets chirping. I want this writing thing to succeed, and I have no idea if I'm making a huge mistake by going this route. I'm at least doing something with the writing, and hoping for the best. Maybe if I beg some people, or more likely pay them, they'll be willing to download a chapter or two.

I'm feeling very blue today, and by rights, getting so close to the finish on Sacrifice, I should be happy. I don't know why I'm not.

music and lyrics

I've found a good deal of enjoyment in going through my music library and making mixes and playlists of songs that could be about my characters, or that illustrate their situations and/or points of view. It's amazing how just listening to the right congretation of songs can inspire me to keep writing on a discouraging day, and how the rhythm spurs my typing onward. I should be nervous, I suppose, that lyrical turns of phrase might work their way into what I'm writing, but it's never been the case. I take such inspiration from music, and I always have.

It seems that all art forms dovetail into one long stream, draining into an ocean of human expression. Visual arts, theatre, cinema, poetry, prose, music...they all swirl together like the colors in the petroleum film on rain puddles in parking lots. They don't make the water muddy, though, their individual colors staying discrete and true while making all of the colors around them more beautiful. It's all part of the same artistic, creative impulse that first drove Cro Magnon to decorate the caves in Lascaux.

I wonder when and why we started thinking it was such a good idea to put things into pigeon holes. Life is never so neatly categorized; why should we expect that the expression of life should be any different?

I'm back!

After a long enforced hiatus, I am now once again voluntarily ensnared in the interwebs. I'm hoping to finally get moving forward again, if my day job would condescend to allow it.

Work proceeds

I've finished retyping the first volume of poetry for the site, collectively entitled Songs Nobody Wants to Sing. It's the first of three sets, with 41 poems in all. Each poem will be available individually, or the whole volume can be bought at once (for a huge savings, I might add). The next two volumes, Kikilian Moon (poems from the POV of one of my characters - it's not as cheesy as it sounds) and A Trick of the Mist will be added next. Once I get them copyrighted, I'll send them over to my webmistress to be pagemaker'ed and prettified for sale. At long last, we might actually have some content on the site!

Sacrifice is still on hold for a little while longer while I deal with finishing the poetry retyping and coping with the Stupid Day Job. I'll be back to Tobyn and his mischief soon, though, and hopefully I'll get my mojo back in order to continue on to the sequels.

I still have to get the short stories compiled, copyrighted, and beautified for print, too. Busy, busy, busy...

At last!

At long last, and with great thanks to my truly fabulous sister, I am once again among the cyber-enabled. I'm so excited to be able to return to work on Sacrifice and A Trick of the Mist, a collection of poetry culled from volumes I've filled over the years. Yesterday was the first day of spring, and I feel truly renewed. Even better, the snow is melted, the robins are hopping in the yard in their search for worms, and I saw a pair of swans performing a beautiful pas de deux on my pond. It's a time for new beginnings, and not a moment too soon.

Frustration

My back-up PC is misbehaving, and my laptop is now well and truly among the departed. I'm sitting in the public library, surrounded by over a dozen chatty denizens of the greater South Lyon metropolitan area, trying not to pity myself for my lack of cyberability. All things change in time, I know.

I got derailed in the middle of chapter 12 of Sacrifice, with 12 more chapters to go. I hate this, because it's like I got interrupted in the middle of a thought, and I'm afraid to start another sentence for fear of losing the one I was in. I only have so many mental fingers to mark the virtual pages in my head, and most of those are currently consigned to my "day job", the curse of every aspiring writer.

I have vivid dreams and wake full of inspiration, but my stupid superstitions and my fear of losing the Sacrifice thread keep me from starting anything new. I don't know why my mind is so broken.

the creative soul's plague

I'm convinced that everyone with a creative soul is also plagued by insecurity. I don't mean the garden-variety self-doubt that couches questions like, "Do these pants make my butt look big?" I mean the nagging, heart-aching, chewing-on-your-will-like-an-evil-rodent insecurity that makes the creative soul want to wither up in the darkness and throw in the towel. I've spent more than my share of time in that darkness, and it's something that I'll always struggle against. Now, as I'm trying to get Irish Horse Productions up and running in the face of technical difficulties and financial restrictions, the light is dimming. I hope I come out of this with my will to write more or less intact.

See you on the other side...

Superstition and the written word

I've had the opening line for another Clans book running in my head, but I'm afraid to start it until I have Sacrifice finished. My writing is a fragile thing, or perhaps I'm simply superstitious. I'm nervous to start something new in the middle of working on something else, for fear that the original project never gets completed. I've made a mental note about this opening line, but I can't bring myself to even put it on a page for fear of upsetting my muse's internal balance.

I used to describe the stories as I was preparing to write them, but that was disastrous. Once the words left my lips, they left my head, and I was never able to get them back. Now I have to hoard my words like a miser, keeping them a deep, dark secret until I'm able to reveal them in a finished work. I'm even hesitant to tell acquaintances the title of the work in progress. It's ridiculous, and I'm far too precious about it, but I've been so disappointed in the past...perhaps I'm going to absurd lengths to stave off more sorrow.

I wonder if other writers have superstitions about their work. I have more than my share. I'm convinced that if I take a break from writing a new book before it reaches page 15, I'll never finish. I'm equally convinced that if I can just finish three chapters, I'll finish the whole. That's not always the case, though (Knight of Sorrows comes to mind, and I still tell myself I'll finish that). Still, despite the lack of probitive evidence, I persist in these tics and foibles until I drive myself nearly insane.

Maybe I don't want to stop the madness. Madness is, after all, the mother of some really awesome stories...

Success at last

My computer booted up this morning and I was actually able to save the files for Sacrifice to a CD. Hopefully I'll be able to get my other writing saved, as well.

Computer! Argh!

Thank God for internet access at my "day job". Writing is so difficult when your computer dies in the middle of a chapter. Thankfully, I saved the first eleven chapters of the Sacrifice re-write, so I only lost chapter twelve. It was enough.



My laptop, which is the only computer I have with enough brain power to be internet-friendly, started making a sound like a meat grinder filled with gravel, then everything just...stopped. To say that I'm alarmed is a drastic understatement. It's a terrible pity that my writing has become so dependent upon digitized monsters. I wrote the first book in long hand, filling up two college-ruled, five-subject notebooks that I carted with me literally everywhere. Now it seems I've forgotten how to write without a keyboard. Based upon the self-mastication of my laptop and my currently woeful finances, I think I'm going to have to relearn.

Tobyn

It occurs to me that characters, when sufficient amounts of energy and time are spent with them, become as real and as unpredictable as the flesh-and-blood people around me. Case in point: Tobyn Reyes Gemini, the "hero" of my Clans series. He's mercurial to a fault, spectacularly incapable of fidelity, and slavishly devoted to his schemes of revenge. He's also occasionally sweet and gentle, with a (well buried) spiritual side and a surprising capacity for love. I can tell you what he looks like, what he sounds like, even what he smells like. I can tell you his favorite color, and his favorite food. I can tell you his hopes, his fears, his desires, his plans, and his pet peeves. The one thing I can' t tell you is what he's going to do next.

I have paragraph-length synopses, really more like reminders, describing the large-stroke plot events for each book in the series. Somehow, despite Tobyn's very singular way of moving through the world in erratic zigzags, he manages to hit his marks when the time comes. I still don't know how it happens.

This is one of those moments where it's best not to think too hard about it. I'll just quote Geoffry Rush from Shakespeare in Love and leave it at that: "Who knows? It's a miracle."

Is this an opening volley or a warning shot?

Now that I've returned to my writing on a serious basis, I thought I would establish this blog to let any interested parties keep track of my progress.

I've been writing since I was four years old, and while I certainly wouldn't vouch for the quality of that early wordsmithing, the enthusiasm was undeniable. My writing carried me through an adolescence and young adulthood shadowed by illness and clinical depression, among other vissicitudes of life, and it was my lifeline until 1999, when I finally achieved a life-long dream and saw my novel, Nightchild: A Clans Novel (available on Amazon.com), emerge as a printed work.

That was when the wheels came off.

The book itself was a joy, and I still love it, but the business end of publishing was brutal. After unfair expectations and crashing disappointments, I was heartbroken and demoralized. I turned my back on my writing and embarked on the darkest, most spiritually parched period of my life.

Rescue came in a most unexpected guise. In September and October 2008, I had a very serious illness and nearly died. I came out of the darkness with a determination not to waste my second chance, and from that determination was born Irish Horse Productions, a company through which I can finally let my writing see the light of day again. With the encouragement and assistance of a very talented web designer at Time Scribe Designs, I now have a webpage under construction that will hopefully allow me to release my stories, poems, and more importantly, my sequels, in my own way and under my own control.

Me, a control freak? Whyever would you think such a thing?

Yes, this is sort of an exercise in control-freakery, but it's more than that. It's an attempt to reclaim my writing and thereby myself through authentically attempting to share my work without (much) regard for business or any illusions about success. My books are the only children I'll ever give birth, and I want to see them take their first steps. That's the real impetus here. I was given a second chance to let my "children" live. I want to take on the challenge.

I hope I'm equal to the task.

The first step is refining and finalizing the second Clans book, Sacrifice, which is over halfway finished. Once that's done, and once I have the registered copyright in hand (can't be too careful), I'll do the same with my short stories and whatever poetry I've written as of this date that's worth inflicting upon ... er, showing... other people.

One step at a time, but ever onward toward the horizon. As Tolkien wrote, the road goes ever on and on. At least this time I'm on the road and not sitting in the ditch and watching the traffic go by.