I was taking a quick stroll of the interwebs during a break from writing and found this picture.  I wanted to post it here, because it's a perfect image of what I described in Nightchild and Sacrifice, when the Kris vampires' eyes turn silver when they're "vamping out".  This is a screen cap that someone took of Rufus Sewell in the movie Dark City.  When I saw this, I was very happy, because I could finally point to an image  and say, "There! That's what they look like!"

Also worth posting because Mr. Sewell is a beautiful man.    Just sayin'.  ;)

Behold the creepifying plot bunny!  http://www.aliencrossing.com/black-eyed-kids/

I need a new author photo, one that's less than a hundred years old.  First, though, I need a new face.

Ugh.  Why can't I be invisible?

I'm still here, Crickets.  You may have thought you'd lost me in the silence, but believe me, the inside of my cranium is anything but still.  The racket from the accumulated voices of dozens of characters talking at once has been the mental equivalent of a jack hammer in the middle of the night - startlingly loud and unbearably distracting.

Welcome to summer, my friends, and to the ongoing heap of things in Real!Life that need to be done.  I'll be flitting to a new hiding hole in early July, and will hopefully set up an actual office where actual writing can happen once the boxes and detritus of the move have been cleared away.   With any luck, my cast of thousands will have agreed among themselves and will have formed an orderly line so that I can write their stories one at a time.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!

Hoo, that was a good one!  ::wipes eyes::  ANYway....

I wonder if other authors have to contend with this sort of thing.  Am I the only novelist who perpetually lives one banana peel away from pure schizophrenia?  Is this actually some form of borderline personality disorder? It's hard to say.  I do know that my "people" seem extremely real, which has different effects depending on which person we're discussing.  Tobyn is amusing and aggravating and entertaining and frustrating all at once, and it's a miracle that nobody has killed him yet, in the permanently-dead sense.  Saul is comforting and reasonable and a soothing presence in my head.  Marvin was... well, let's just say that I'm glad I finished that story and got him evicted ("Head Hunter" in my Collected Stories, for those playing along at home).  Rick is far more complicated than I expected him to be, and Tsung Li still watches too many movies.  

I'm not crazy, honestly.  It just seems that way sometimes.

For those of you who've read my books or have otherwise become acquainted with my main character, Tobyn Reyes: I've found something, a little blast from the past, that I wanted to share.

Back in the day, when I was living on the campus of Michigan State University in beautiful (haunted) Mayo Hall, I was looking at a magazine and saw this picture of Adam Ant:

For whatever reason, my brain said, "Hmm. He looks like he could be a vampire." (I don't see now why I'd think that, but I did.) I started poking in my cranium, sort of rummaging through the toy box of misplaced people, and found Tobyn. 

On a different page of that same magazine, I saw a picture of Alannah Myles (not this picture, but a different one):

My brain said, "Hmm. They could be twins." Seconds later, Araminah Reyes was born.

As they say, the rest is history...

Fan fiction

So, I've been thinking about this item from the LJ home page:  http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/68332629.html.

As a published author, I thought I should get my thoughts in order on the subject of fan fiction in the unlikely event that someone might want to write some based on my books.

I would be annoyed if other people started making money using my worlds/characters/various types of copyrighted intellectual property.  Dude, I can't even make money with my writing - you think I'm going to be happy if Fanny Fan makes a buck on my work?  No.

That being said, I would be flattered if my work became a subject for fan fiction.  Tobyn from the Clans books would be a perfect fan fic target, if only because he's such a slutty attention whore.

I started in fandom.  One of the first things I tried to write way back in 1978 when I was just a kid was a (truly execrable) Star Wars story (sorry, Darth George), and I was known to turn my hand to some fan fic back in my college days.  It would be the height of hypocrisy if I turned around now and demanded that no fan fic about my characters could be made anyone who had the inclination to do so.

I never made a dime on my fan fic, though.  That, I think, is the dividing line.

(I do think that it's sad to see talented writers not working on their own worlds and characters, but that's a conversation for another day.)

Success!

The Light at the End of the World has been published! It's currently on Amazon.com in both printed and Kindle forms, and it's selling surprisingly well. It may be that with all of the building hysteria over the Mayan calendar and 12/21/12, something with "end of the world" in the title is a natural fit with the cultural zeitgeist. It may be a fluke. Whatever the reason, I'll take it! I am very pleased by the apparent level of sales. Someone is actually reading my work! That's catnip for writers.

I just hope that those unnamed readers are enjoying the book.

I've started working on Catherine's Wheel again, and I'm about four chapters in. It's got a fairly complicated plot, but that makes it fun. Hopefully I'll be able to put it down in words the way it is in my head. I'm always concerned that what I have in my head will always be a hundred times better than what comes out through the keyboard. It's like my visual arts - I can envision the most amazing paintings, but when I'm done, the finished work always has more in common with grade school renderings than with Rembrandt.