I'm working on the editing changes and adjustments for LEW and preparing to venture into the next opus. This one will be in the science fiction-ish/science opera vein. I'm not a scientist, so I'm not able to write "hard" science fiction, but I can manage the level of balonium required for Star Trek. There will be some scientific justification for the silliness that ensues, but for the most part, just like in all of my writing, I need the reader to accept certain premises and just go with it. Meet me half way, and I promise you I'll spin you a fun yarn.

In the meantime, what I'm really working on is getting over the flu. Hence the time stamp on this thing. I need to go to work tomorrow, but first I need to get my body to cooperate with me. I've seen more of my bathroom in the past few days than I ever wanted to see. It's really not that scenic.

Well, if I don't reach out to you before then, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and Blessed Yule to all of my beloved Crickets!

ETA: I do not like the new updated and borkified Blogger interface. Two thumbs WAY down.

The Light at the End of the World is done.

It's twenty-four chapters of surprises, unruly characters, and not a single happy ending. I didn't expect things to end quite the way they did. I'm not certain how I feel about it, either.

I've got so much character blood on my hands tonight that I feel like a serial killer. Yeesh.

I almost forgot

Something marvelous came in the mail yesterday (which was also my birthday). It was a royalty check. My FIRST royalty check. Between the check and finishing NaNo, coupled with some real-life work success, I think I've just had one of my most rewarding Novembers ever. As Mickey Redmond would say, time for a ginger ale!

Hip hooray and hallelujah!

For the first time ever, I successfully completed the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated) challenge. In the month of November, I wrote 50,000 words that more or less pertained to the same topic. ;) Just kidding! I actually added 12 chapters to LEW (The Light at the End of the World) and will be finishing the entire book tomorrow, if not tonight, provided that none of my characters stages an eleventh-hour jailbreak.

I'm feeling very accomplished and very pleased with myself, and while the book certainly could use some editing love (all books do, but especially those written at ludicrous speed), I think it's turning out pretty well.

Yes, Crickets, I said I'm happy with my writing. That's what you call a red-letter day. Make a note of it - I don't know when this feeling will be coming again. I just know that I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

If I don't chirp at you before then, I hope that your respective cricketdoms have a beautiful holiday season!

So, yeah... I signed up for NaNoWriMo. I'm going to be working on LEW. They say that you have to start from scratch, but I think that LEW will still count if I add the required 50,000 words to the stuff I've already written. I'm nowhere near to finished with this little opus, so I'm certain 50,000 words will be welcome.

I will therefore attempt to write a little every day, a habit that I should have been resurrecting anyway. They say that to reach the 50,000-words-by-midnight-November-30 goal, you need to write 1,999 words a day (or something like that). Let's just say 2000. That's not so bad... that's only a few pages. I can do that.

I will keep you apprised of my progress, my dear Crickets, as things move forward. Wish me luck! Hopefully I'll reach the goal and finish the book, and we'll all live happily after until the next project.

Writer's block

I am in desperate need of something to break my writer's block. I have too many projects to do, and honestly, one of them is no longer holding any interest for me. Naturally that's the one project that I promised to someone else. It might even be that the promise is the reason the interest has faded. I can be very contrary that way.

When I think about writer's block, I see it as a physical thing, a literal block of marble blocking the path I'm trying to follow. It's white and square and taller than I am, and it's waiting for Michelangelo to come and create a new David, or for Auguste Rodin to make a man who's finished thinking and is ready to act. My problem is that I have no hammer, no chisel, and no talent for making something out of a blank hunk of solid nothing. The only nothing that I can create is made of air and breath and scattered thought, and the marble in my path makes the air jetties swirl away, carrying the fragments of words and atoms of plot to places that I can't reach.

I can write about not being able to write, it seems; it's too bad that isn't what I'm supposed to be writing.

It might be time to take all of those projects and introduce them to the shelf for a while, to noodle away at something completely unrelated until the juices start to flow and I'm ready to take on my tasks again.

__________

I've been very involved with Resonance of late. I was unable to find any actors who were willing to participate, so I've extremely reluctantly cast myself in the role of Alisha Williams, the central character in the Detroit Resonance story. I'm limited in more ways than one, but I'm going to give it a go anyhow. The video portions of this offering will take the form of a video diary, I think, filmed through my digital camera. We'll see how this works out.

In other areas of my writing, I'm still wrestling with Light at the End of the World and thinking thinky-thoughts about Knight of Sorrows and Catherine's Wheel. I'm also playing with the idea of writing a screenplay that may or may not be based loosely on one of my short stories. We shall see.

In the meantime, keep cool, Crickets. It's been hot out there.

random philosophizing on immortality

Clive Cussler is 80 years old today. I heard it on NPR. I'm not a particular fan of Mr. Cussler, but it did surprise me, although it probably shouldn't have, that he has so many years under his belt.

I thought about all of the authors who have been published, and realized how many of them - the majority, really - are no longer among the living. It just goes to show that writing really is the key to immortality. The trick is to make sure that what survives is what you want the world to see, because it will ultimately be the only thing for which a writer is remembered.

This is especially true of me. I am unable to have children, so there will be no little pockets of my DNA racing around in the world at large. The Crickets can rest easy on that point... Once I'm gone, there will be no "junior" to rear his or her ugly head and continue to perpetrate scribblings in my image. Nothing will physically remain of me once I have slipped away.

My work, though, will remain. My poems, my short stories, my songs, my blogs, my words. My vampires really do have the potential to live forever. It's a strange thing to ponder.

My mind won't let me get too far down the path of immortality, though, without reminding me in a paraphrase of Abraham Lincoln that the world will little note nor long remember anything I do or anything I am/was. For a writer to become truly immortal, people have to read what that writer created. That is where literary immortality arises.

In that respect, I'm safe, because in terms of people reading what I write, I'm dead already. I can't even get a chirp back from a Cricket on this blog! It's pretty quiet here in this mausoleum built of words.

Maybe immortality comes to those who write. Maybe it never comes at all. One thing is certain: living with your eyes on tomorrow will make you lose sight of today. Today is all we really have.

What if....
What if....

What if I wrote a screen play?

I think I want to try.

Hello, Crickets! Despite all indications to the contrary, I am in fact among the living, and I'm even moderately functional.

I've started working on a project that may be glorified fan fiction, or it may be a response to a call from the creators of a prospective TV series to help universe-build. Whatever the case, I'm having a fine time with it. For more information, please check out www.willyouhelp.co.uk. It's a fascinating story, and even if it "comes to nothing" in a professional sense, it's a good time, and a good way to reconnect with a good friend.

Elsewhere, my migraine issues seem to be in hand, and I'm once again able to concentrate for more than five minutes at a stretch. Concentration and focus are very important and useful skills for a writer.

I hope that any of you who are reading this blog are doing well, and that your various Cricketdoms are enjoying the summer. Take it easy. I'll be back before you know it.

Bugger.

What part of "I have to finish LEW and KOS" sounds like "Please, new characters, come and start telling me a new story"? Idiot cast of thousands, they never let me get anything done around here....

Reminding you I exist

Hello, Crickets! I haven't forgotten you, and I hope you haven't forgotten me. Real-real has been a challenge of late, but I hope to be able to return to my putative writing career soon. The Light at the End of the World is still crawling forward, and I actually got some assistance on Knight of Sorrows that I wasn't anticipating. Sometimes it pays to talk about your work with people who aren't so close to the project - there can be moments of surprising insight. I have a new handle on Tristan's character and personality that will give me a foothold going forward.

Happy Memorial Day to the Americans in the swarm, and a hearty thank you to the veterans who have served so that people like me can have the liberty to come on line and whine to our hearts' content.

Think of me sometimes, dear Crickets. I think of you.

Oh, Crickets.

There's nothing like tax returns to remind you how far you haven't come.

Hello, Crickets. It's been a long time. I'd like to say that I've been absent because I've been busily cranking out chapters in The Light at the End of the World, but that just isn't true. I've been writing for a photography and poetry project that I'm sharing with my sister, who not only is my talented web mistress but also a staggeringly good photographer. I need to confirm when the project will be finished and finalized, but I'm pleased with my meager contribution to the finished piece.

In the meantime, apart from working on those poems, I've been suffering a daunting relapse into neurochemical hell that left me seriously contemplating suicide for the first time in literally years. I'm recovering now, and though I still have some way to go before I can say I'm all right without lying, I hope to be able to return to my prose work soon. My muse is a capricious little bitch, I have to say, and she (probably quite rightly) runs away when the house of my head is in disarray. I now have to tempt her back with chocolate ice cream and pictures of pretty men... but I digress.

I hope you all are doing well in your personal Cricketdoms, and I will be back when I have something more interesting to say. ;)