Soapboxes and Submissions

I feel like I've spent an inordinate amount of time up on my soapbox lately. Mostly this has been due to social and mainstream media being a split between support for France, Lebanon and the Syrian refugees and the frothing-at-the-mouth sectarian bigotry being spouted by the likes of Donald "I Get Closer to Hitler Every Day" Trump. I hate to cite that comparison, but there's a growing reason we're seeing it everywhere. No-one took Hitler all that seriously at first either. I'm just hoping all this pre-genocide type talk thrusts him even further down in the polls as opposed to lifting him up. You know, the way rounding all the illegal Mexicans up and tossing them unceremoniously over his wall at the border seemed to do.

But, occasionally, I have taken the time to step down off of it and away from social media and the TV. Well, actually, my only real contact with the TV is when I pass it on my way to the bathroom or the kitchen. I rarely watch TV on my own (Netflix and YouTube are where I get the bulk of my "Television" and I only call it that because that is the name of the device through which it is being projected at me), and even then it's usually something like HGTV and not anything to do with current events. Sometimes I even get some writing done...you know, when I'm not glued so tightly to Fallout 4 that I spend three straight nights dreaming I'm in dark, dirty rooms and broken buildings trying to determine the best means to slow time or target better and maybe score a headshot (or a sweet grenade hit, as seen in that video).

I have actually made a great deal of progress in a short period of time. Not to say I didn't drag my feet (or ass, or however my reluctance is best described) getting there. When asked what my first novel was about the other day, I only just then figured out how to best describe it in a succinct and direct manner without being too esoteric or going uh and errm a lot. Only just then.

I completed this novel in a period of seven months, spending another year or so editing it. I am currently going over it again just to be sure it is really ready this time to be submitted to agents. Using the query letter I only just wrote this week. This week, during which I've also been working on the sequel that I started right after I finished the first one...two years ago.

So...yeah. I am as legendarily slow a writer as I am a reader. And I don't even have a day job to blame this time. But I'm getting my mojo back...I think. At least, it's beginning to feel much more like when I first embarked on this quest to become an author. Now there's a game I'd very much like to get an achievement in. Hang with me and I might just give the notification when it's popped.

Long time, no...well, anything

Hello, hello, hello again from the brink of oblivion. I don't want anyone to think, due to the veritable shutdown of this blog and the corresponding Twitter, that I haven't been working with our Fair Weather Friends because I have, albeit in tiny pieces. Truth is, between some employment changes and the decision to try my hand at pumping out erotica (pun may or may not be intended, I haven't exactly decided), I just haven't been able to invest as much writing time in my favorite fantasy gang.

But they're coming back. Not just because I borrowed a few for said 18+ works, but in the actual medium where they belong. I imagine Reinbert is getting rather frustrated with me regardless, though his Facebook has been rather quiet. It's got to be hard to get those updates across from Oru when his main line has been all but broken. Also kind of hard to move around when you're consistently left in a sort of stasis by your creator.

At any rate, new novel is happening among the smut. And smut is happening, too, a handful of recognizable characters from the series appearing in a couple erotic shorts. The one in progress at the time of this entry I can only recommend reading if you're not bothered by spoilers. As much as this is not exactly the place to peddle this stuff, its predecessor can be found here, as well as a rather shocking appearance by Reinbert's main squeeze in this one. Just a reminder it is 18+ (or whatever the age of majority is in your country) and not for the faint of heart!

Friction

Kinda sorta considering compiling a few shorter pieces focusing on characters other than Astra. Not sure Amazon would exactly let me give it away for free so...maybe here or something as 'free fiction'? Sh*t, I almost typed 'friction'.  I think I may need to go to bed...

Creating A Dialogue

"Well, Reinbert, we made a little progress on the new novel."

"Progress is progress."

"So you've said before. Would have liked a little more-"

"We'd all like a little more, but this is what we've got."

"Right you are, little man."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. Say, this bagel sandwich is really good."

"Does it have bacon?"

"Well, there are bacon bits in the dressing-"

"Great. Fix me one and put on another House. This man's misanthropy fascinates me."

"Pfff, you and millions of other viewers. Startin to think I liked it better when it wasn't available on Netflix."

"You could always go back to Diablo."

"Shut yo mouth."

"Hey, nothing wrong with enjoying the fictional works of others."

"I suppose you're right. Hey, where's Astra?"

"Enh, probably off banging his pretty new wife."

"Where's Vivien?"

"Probably out enjoying what little sun the season's afforded her."

"Why aren't you with her?"

"Are you kidding me? Don't let our adventures fool you. I was always more of an indoor boy."

"Right. Another House it is."

Meat and Bones

I think I figured out what my problem is writing-wise right now: I'm worried about the meat when there is no skeleton.

Sounds ominous, no? Well, allow me to explain, and this has nothing to do with my love of horror fiction.

My whole process is built generally around the idea that what I'll do first is build a skeleton, then I'll worry about fleshing out the meat. This generally goes for any idea, scene, chapter, what have you. What I've been doing is worrying about the meat before there is even a skeleton. Too much known of what I want to tell, too many ideas and scenes *planned* where I should be allowing the story to flow and move freely.

If there is anything I learned from editing the first novel, it is that one of the kindest things you can do to a story is cut it. You really cannot be married to any sentence, to a certain wording, because inevitably the perfect words have not yet been found. I'm not saying this for every sentence--my, one would go mad! But there are things one will think they can never part with, until they realize the reader will get the gist of it and, frankly, that's all they'll need. The same has to go for ideas, I'm sure, where I'm also well acquainted with the fact that the characters often grow a will of their own and the story will mold with their motivations and how they react to the circumstances presented them. I have to give them the opportunity to do that. I have to be willing to bend. There has to be some compromise, and I'm being far too rigid in my treatment of this, especially in these early stages where just getting things going is hardest.

A few chapters in, however shaky they may be to start, I'll have a good flow, and there will be days I can't get sat in front of the computer soon enough and that I will have to practically be pried away from it. And, yes, it's frustrating now but forcing it isn't working. I just have to relax and keep telling myself, 'soon'. Soon, I will reach that easier, more pleasant stage. Soon, scenes will come with ease and Reinbert can have us all laughing again. :)

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

As a little reward for being nearly finished reading The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All I went ahead and bought North American Lake Monsters. I couldn't figure out for a while why I kept seeing it among my recommended reading from Amazon, but more than a passing glance revealed it was a collection of short stories to do with all manner of horrors, at their root mostly human. That is the tie that binds all those stories into a collection, or so some of the reviews boast. Either way, it appeals to me.

I wasn't so sure when I first cracked open Laird Barron's $13 Kindle book that my money had been well spent. The first story was slow to start but managed to grip me a few pages in. Still, not a promising start, especially where it seemed much of the second story fell flat. I realized this is not necessarily due to his story-telling but his golly-gee-whiz characterization of most of the female protagonists. When he's writing from a man's perspective, there is a fluidity I never question. The moment he jumps into a woman's head and starts driving or gets a gaggle of them together, it feels far too contrived and stilted. It gets better, though.

About midway through, the book's impressions of evil and the dark take a turn from the menace of what might lurk beneath in our traditional sense of the devil and hell to the cosmic Lovecraftian horror the human mind can barely conceive of. Barron gives it form and movement and more than enough reason to leave a little light on at night. Not that that would save you.

I actually still have another book I meant to dig into before I even purchased Lake Monsters, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies. I believe it was also recommended to me based on the purchase I had made of another Lovecraft collection. I swear my brain will be mush unfit for Cthulhu by the time I am done. ^_^

Hrrrmm...

I read a blog recently that said if you don't get your work professionally edited, you're practically insulting your readers with the low quality and [lack of] attention to detail in your work. This goes for self-publishing, by the way, where you'd have to hire someone yourself. I hope none of you feel that I may have supplied you with a sub-par draft. I promise I worked very hard to get it where it is, and honestly it never felt like hiring an editor was an option. There are still places I look at a bit sideways and kinda wish I had someone's professional eye, but it's a little late now. For the Kindle edition, anyway. Print editions, even through CreateSpace, are gonna cost me a little money anyway, I think, so...

In the meantime, I did lower the price to a reasonable enough $0.99. ^_^