Oh, dear.

I have been threatened.

My loving sister/webmistress/editor and all-around good egg just threatened me with a spear-shaking if I don't get to work on Catherine's Wheel.


I am nothing if not obedient.  ;)  Whatzit was sort of stalling, anyway. ;)

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.

Long time no see

Hi! I'm still alive, and neither space aliens nor men in white coats have collected me. I've been having more fun than the human heart can withstand lately, and it's been keeping me incommunicado. Mea culpa.

I've almost finished reworking Nightchild for the revised e-book edition, and that's good, because I'm getting really tired of the damned thing. It'll be a race to see what comes first: the completion of the typing or the match light set to the manuscript. I'm going to bet on the typing, because I have people who will slap me for playing with matches.

Once Nightchild is safely behind me once again, I can get back to Catherine's Wheel and see if I can rescue that from the shadows. I might even write something in a completely different universe, though, because right now I'm tired of Tobyn and company. Familiarity breeds contempt with imaginary people, too.

Irish Horse Productions needs a new bank account, since the old one was closed once the maintenance fees outstripped the balance. Writing is such a lucrative career. I'll be doing that while I'm on my lunch break from my day job today.

The first book, in its original bound version with the original cover art, will be available for sale at the Origins convention in Columbus, Ohio later this month. My good friends at Thenodrin Presents, who publish role-playing games and are fine people in general, will be handling the schlep-and-retail while I recover from last week's surgery. (Like I said, I've been having too much fun.)

Well, that's all the news that's unfit to print, gentle readers, and I'll be back with more once I've gotten past this little revising hurdle...

Wow, that last post was really depressing, wasn't it? Gotta love mood swings... It's all better now. Better living through pharmaceuticals. ;)

Sacrifice is now available as an ebook through Lulu.com and on Amazon.com, which is exciting. We have a little ad that pops up on internet searches (primarily through bing.com) about vampire books. It's all going slowly in the right direction.

If only I had massive amounts of free money sitting about, just waiting to be used for marketing... then I could afford a Facebook ad and a limited print run. Since I have yet to hit the lottery, though, that will all have to wait until later.

I'm back to retyping Nightchild, which I'm not totally hating. That's a good sign. I'm getting itchy to get back to Catherine's Wheel, but all in due time.

Exposition and a second look

I've been re-typing the first book, Nightchild, because the original text files are so ancient that they're totally incompatible with all of the computer hardware and software that I have now. It's giving me a chance to correct a couple of things that I wish I'd worded differently the first time, and to correct a little error of detail that ends up being important in Catherine's Wheel (and in Sacrifice, actually).

I'm finding as I go back over the old words that I don't really hate them. I'm also finding a curious sense of sympathy for some of the side characters who came and went in that book, primarily Nikolas, Ara's husband. He got a bad deal, and he started out being someone who really had the best of intentions and the purest motives. He just wanted to marry the woman he loved, and he wanted to have a normal life. It makes me a little sad to look at it from that point of view while I'm going through the book. (Of course, this only applies to Nikolas before he got cozy with Antonio, but anyway...I digress...)

Should I have said, "Spoiler alert"? I think if anyone is reading this blog, they've already read the book.

I've also been thinking about exposition. One of the few cardinal "rules" of writing that I've always tried to keep in mind is "show it, don't tell it". It's better to unfold the plot through action rather than through dialogue or narrative. That being said, sometimes exposition is absolutely essential to driving the story onward. At the point I've reached in Catherine's Wheel, as I think I mentioned earlier, Tristan is playing the part of the Exposition Fairy, and it's vital. Tobyn needs to know what he's getting into, and sometimes a person really does need to be schooled by someone older and more informed. I'm glad that the talking didn't run very long, though, and that the learning that Tobyn is doing is going into a more active mode.

Exposition is a funny thing. It's necessary to a point, but it's so important not to get carried away with it. It can kill a work in progress, especially if that work is meant to be shorter in length. A novel can certainly bear more exposition than a short story. I think we've all seen examples, whether in print or on television or in films, where the exposition is heavy-handed and drags down the pace. It's a fine line. I hope I'm walking it well.

Success!

After a lot of re-thinking and mental squirming, I have finally gotten Catherine's Wheel back on track. I'm back up in the middle of chapter three, and about to really kick this puppy into high gear.

I'm going to take a break for some food and to take care of some business, then it's back to Berlin...

Augh.

Catherine's Wheel is shaping up to be one of those bothersome projects, which is appropriate enough. I may have been borrowing trouble when I named this book after a medieval torture device. I got up to the end of chapter three after multiple missteps and false starts, and it stalled. I mean it stalled like a 30-year-old truck in subzero weather. There was just no starting it again...so, I trashed it. I'm starting over.

Again.

Some more.

::headdesk::

back chat

I worked on Catherine's Wheel last night, more or less finishing chapter 3. I chose to quit just before receiving a visit from the Exposition Fairy disguised as an 1800-year old RomanoCeltic vampire. There'll be time enough tomorrow (or the next day) to get to Teh Storee.

I've got the Wheel itself mapped out, and all of the dramatis personae are more or less in place. Now I just have to push the button and run the movie in my head.

I used to do this thing that is essentially a synopsis of the work, which I used to call "back chat". I found the back chat that I originally wrote for this book WAAAAY back when, and basically, it has no bearing on the story I'm actually writing... and believe me, that's a good thing. That edition of back chat has been relegated to the trash bin where it belongs.

I've got glimpses of the threads of this story and how they'll play out over several books to come. I just hope I have the time and the stamina to get all of it written.

the Wheel

I'm re-writing parts of chapter two of Catherine's Wheel and scrapping chapter three entirely. I almost wrote myself into a bad spot with a minor character, but I think I can safely avoid that pitfall now.

While I'm thinking about it, I really have to sit down with my map and completely delineate this wheel thingamajig. My little tiny pieces of Post-It on the aged map of Europe I have taped on the wall over my desk just aren't doing the job!

Jerk.

It's very hard to get enthused about writing when your "hero" is acting like a total tool.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!