The Foundations Upon the New

Lets get this out of the way right now:  Her Demonic Majesty is finished.  I received the finished edited manuscript yesterday afternoon, and I had it ported into Scrivener, and chapters updated, by five-thirty in the afternoon.  (Or as my friends in the rest of the world would say, 17:30.  Audrey and Cytheria would say that, too, just because.)  Today I write the dedication page and start getting the Table of Contents in place, and all that remains is the upload and publication.

So this part of my writing life is almost over.  Though, really, it’ll never be over,  because this will become my first published novel, and that’s something you sort of look at with a bit of nostalgia   ”Remember when you published Demonic Majesty back in ’13?”  ”Oh, yeah:  that thing was a bitch to finish.  Pass me some caviar. . .”  Just kidding:  I don’t care for caviar.  I’d probably be drinking some European beer instead.

I’ve already had someone ask when I’m going to have the book up on Kindle.  My reply was, “Soon”.  I want my accounts in order, I need to run it through the Smashwords meat grinder–there are still a few steps remaining, but it’s going to be soon.  Before the end of the month, I think.  If not next weekend, then maybe Memorial Day weekend.  But soon.

Which means, I’m already on to the next thing . . .

I’ve not started writing yet, but I’m doing a lot of thinking, and not a bit of world building.  I have my erotic cabin story to start setting up–yes, I’m still doing that–and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this new world I’m creating, one with all the strange things that really happen in the world, but no one knows about.  Scoff and say it’s been done already, but I don’t care, it’s a world for a couple of my favorite characters, and I’m going there.

I began looking at the layout of the interior of Cape Ann, and under satellite it doesn’t look too bad, but when you switch over to a terrain map–geez, oh, is it rough!  It’s not a simple expanse of level ground; it’s rocky and hilly, and a perfect place for people with unusual skills to have built a place of higher learning.

Now I’m getting into the things I like, because making maps of places is something I dearly love, and once I begin getting ideas about how the Institute should appear, I’ll come up with some very interesting things.  At least I hope they’re interesting:  I’d hate to put a lot of work into this stuff, then have it ignored–

Ah, who cares?  It’s what I want to do.  World building is something every writer should do now and then, and have a blast throughout the creation.  And if you manage to root it a bit of reality, then it becomes an even greater world, because you’re interfacing the possible with the maybe-impossible, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

So much to do, so little time to get it done.  You’d swear I do this for a living.

From the Mountain to the Island

It’s warm outside, the sun is out, work has slowed down a bit, and my novel is back from proofing.  All is good in Cassieville.

Her Demonic Majesty came back yesterday afternoon, and the woman who proofed it had a few comments that we discussed online.  I was a little worried, mind you, because I thought a slam was coming, but she set me to ease, and went into her topics.

First, she loved the story.  That was the one that surprised me the most, because this novel was way outside what she normally reads, and for her to tell me it was a “page turner”, that left me in a good mood.

Second, she asked me if I knew I’d left the novel open for more stories.  I told her, yes, I knew, and I’d already thought of other stories.  She told me that she wanted to know more about the characters, in particular Jeannette, and I let her know that there may be more to come.

Third, she didn’t like the first chapter.  She thought it was slow and plodding, and there was too much exposition.  She suggested I cut it by half, and get readers into the action as quickly as possible.

And I agreed with her . . .

The first chapter of Her Demonic Majesty has always bothered me because I felt I was taking too much time getting to, as my friend told me, the action.  But I didn’t want to mess around with it, because then I’m getting into the area of second guessing, and you can ruin yourself with that stuff.  She told me what I needed to hear, and it didn’t upset me in the least.

Oh, and she said she now understood the title of the book, and it was a good thing I didn’t change it.  I knew you’d see it my way eventually . . .

With all that behind me, I made all the corrections she noted, and started rewriting chapter one:  just created another text card in Scrivener that was a duplicate of the first chapter, then added another fresh card to it, and began cutting and pasting what I wanted to keep, and adding what I needed to say to make it sensible.

By tonight I should have the chapter together, and I can begin editing it into shape.  By tomorrow–maybe I’ll have it ready.

By this weekend I’ll have a novel that’s ready to publish.

This is how it should feel, that you have something worthwhile, and it looks good, it’s got great covers, it isn’t full of typos:  it’s what a novel should be.  Now I need to get the table of contents ready, do my dedication page–there will be one–and decide if I want to upload it over Memorial Day weekend, or wait until the first weekend in June?

Once I have that, I can start thinking about my other ideas–like my erotic camping in the cabin story, or the idea I’ve been considering about a couple of older characters, moving them to a new world where they can learn to be all they can be–in a magical and super sort of sense, that is.  I’ve already figured out where their center of higher education will be located, and I’ve taken Annie and Kerry and moved them from the mountain of Maine to the islands of Massachusetts–no, really, you have to wait and see, because I’ve got it down so nicely.

I’m in a great mood–

Which is why I’m waiting until tomorrow to school someone . . .

Backwards to the Summit

A year ago, something strange happened.  I wrote this post.

I didn’t there was anything out of the ordinary about that post.  In fact, I dashed it off early in the morning before heading off to The Hole That Was My Job, located at The Undisclosed Location.  I was up early because I was having trouble sleeping, probably because of the cold that was developing that day, and would remain with me the entire month of May and well into June.

I popped it off, went to work, then went to dinner.  When I returned home and fired up the computer, I checked my stats–

The post had seen over two hundred views, and that day ended up becoming the most on-site views I’ve ever received.

I’ve tried hard to figure out what it was that drew all those people to my website.  I don’t think it was the tags, or how it appeared on Google, or even the subject.  The reason for the popularity is puzzling, because I’ve written far better posts than that, and they’ve had to go begging for hits like an out of work bicycle messenger who hocked his single-gear speed buggy for meth and is now hovering above the rocky bottom.

It’s strange how things like that happen.  You can bust your butt over something that you think is going to set the world on fire, and the collective sighs of a tiny group of readers can be overwhelming.  At the opposite end of the spectrum are those things you dash out almost as an afterthought, and your fans lose their shit in rapture-like ecstasy.

Stories are like that.  You put your heart into something that seems to speak to you in special ways, and it seems the indifference is suffocating–then you have some fun with a story that’s not meant to be taken too seriously, and you watch the money roll in.  Now, I don’t think that’s going to happen with my next story, but the way things work in my life, who knows?

I started putting my next story together last night.  Right now the title is about as original as it gets:  Cabin Fever.  As in, “I gotta fever, and the only prescription is hot women having sex!”  It’s the sort of simple title that can catch an eye, though it seems as if there are way too many cabins with fevers on Smashwords, so I’m going to need to rethink my approach.

I have the names of my characters, and a short outline of their lives.  It was while I was playing with this that I discovered something about the Scrivener Name Generator:  once you have your selected names in the “short list” box, you can transfer that list to an existing card or folder, and then play with the contents as you see fit–or even append the name at the end of a line currently being written.  That’s a function that I’d not played with, and now that I know it exists, when I need a quick name, and I throw it in and create a character card for that person at the same time.

This is how I go about getting a story ready:  I develop, I do my research, I lay things out.

And then, when I’m ready . . .

I see to things really get laid.

Preparation Great

Oh, my my my, was Sunday a fun day for a writing day.  Got my blogging, got my article, got my editing, got my ideas–

What’s that?  Ideas?  What are you talking about?

As I said, I had writing to do.  I knocked off an eighteen hundred word article on the wonders of powered armor, which is probably being edited as I write this–or not, who knows, because I know it’ll get done and get posted, and I’ll be allowed to work on what is pretty much part two of the same article.

Then there was some editing for Replacements, which involved a lot of cutting of words so issues wouldn’t arise between what I’d once written, and what had been newly written.  It was therefore necessary to do some cutting and adding, to rearrange words and make sentences whole, where once that didn’t exist.  I’d worried that I would somehow screw things up, but some thirteen hundred words later–no problems.  Handled it the way it was meant to be handled:  like a pro.  Or, semi-pro, if we want to get technical.

I thought I was finished for the night, but it was eight-thirty, and I didn’t feel as if I needed to laze about doing nothing, so I looked at the next chapter, thought, “I can do this,” and jumped in.  It wasn’t difficult, it wasn’t trying, and with the focus I still had, I was able to find some obvious mistakes and rewrite some clumsy sentences.  It’s all part of the editing game, where you learn to read your material, and find the stuff that either doesn’t make sense, or is flat-out wrong.

But what’s this about ideas, hum?  Not a problem:  sit down and let me tell ya . . .

During a lull in all the thing that were going on, I decided to take a look at my ideas file.  I have my ideas set up in Scrivener  so when I need something, I made a new folder, give it the meta idea name (like “Orion Story”, which tells me the basic idea), and then set up a text file with a little more information as needed.  For a few of my ideas I already had notes written, so I copied them into the various folders where they can set until I need them.

One idea that I’ve worked on in the past has to do with my Indonesian horror tales.  Kuntilanak is the first, and during NaNo 2012 I wrote Kolor Ijo, the second.  When I was close to finishing Kolor Ijo, I started wondering if there were more stories that could be writing about the horror that is supernatural Indonesia.  The answer was, “Hell yeah”.

I already had some idea about these other stories, and some idea about where they would take place, so . . . all that remained would be to give them a title and some time frame, no?

So I copied out some cards, added titles, gave a time frame, and there I was with four more stories . . . really, four more novels, perhaps three hundred thousand words to work on–

No problem, right?

This is what I get when I say I don’t have ideas.  They come after me until I write them down.

It’s when they make me want to do something more that I get into trouble . . .

The Sofa By the Hearth

With everything that’s happened this week, I can at least say that writing continues, and another chapter bit the dust last night.  After four hundred and twenty additional words, Chapter Thirteen of Suggestive Amusements came to an end, and was put to bed with a glass of warm milk and a biscuit to keep its tummy filled.  It was time to stop The Tale of Izzy and Elektra, and time to start on The Continuing Adventures of Keith and Elektra, and see if Keith is going to freak over what comes next.

What am I saying?  Sure, I know what he’ll do.  You just have to wait.

As I was heading off to bed last night, I looked outside to check the weather, because this week has seen the weather get very strange.  It’s been a little warm, then cold, then rainy, then snowy, then . . . well, the drive into Chicago was a bit like ice skating off and on this morning, so go figure.  But the weather made me think of times gone back, of stories from the past . . .

Of Annie and Kerry.

Yesterday I though of their story quite a bit for some reason.  Maybe it was the weather and the cold and snow I’ve seen the last week.  Maybe it’s the idea that they could end up in the same universe as Her Demonic Majesty, and with the rejection of that story, I thought of two of my favorite characters . . .

Maybe I just miss the hell out of them.

The thing with role playing character, rather than just write about them, is that you throw your emotions more fully into them that you might a literary character.  You crate the mindset that you’re occupying the character, and that some of what is in you goes into them.  That happened with both Kerry and Annie; we fell into those characters to the extent that they became an extension of me and my role playing partner, and the more we played, the more we understood who are characters were, and what they wanted–besides each other, that is.

There was an interesting thought I’d had with them once.  At their school, Salem, they had something called “The Midnight Madness” every Friday and Saturday evenings.  It was a chance for the student to get in their pajamas, head over to the Great Hall at nine-thirty PM, and hang out and chat until midnight and a little beyond.  I saw it as something that an old institution would do to lighten up the rules and make the kids feel as if they are at home, when home may be a thousand or more miles away.

One of the things I imagined for Kerry and Annie is that, for some reason, the sofa they pick to camp out on during the first Midnight Madness sort of becomes “their” sofa.  It’s up towards the front of the hall, close to the majestic hearth, and no matter what time they showed, or how many people were in the hall, their sofa was always there, waiting for them to arrive.

Why did I do that?  I think I was trying to show a connection between them and the school, that their presence there was something important to . . . who knows?  The spirit that watched over the place is the best bet, but I’ll only know for sure if and when I ever write their story.  The idea that they will always have their little home away from home intrigues me, though, and also haunts me–

Oh, you don’t know what I mean?

Just ask Jeannette.  She knows.

Ghost of the Writing Past

Today has been one of those that work well with my adage that writing is work, and if you want to get things right, you gotta do your leg work.  Or, as Chuck Wendig says in his piece on NaNoWriMo, October should be named “National Story Planning Month.”  Sit down and begin getting your shit together about what you’re going to dump upon the page for all of November.

Assuming you want to do it right, that is.

My NaNo 2012 novel is a follow up to my story Kuntilanak.  As that was a horror story that took place in Indonesia–specifically, the island of Bali–my new novel is a horror story that also takes place in Indonesia, this time in the city of Makassar, on the island of Sulawesi.  I’m moving around the archipelago a bit, sampling the local flavor, and I’d decided a while back that if I was going to do another story with my Fearless Indonesian Ghost Hunters, I would stage it in an urban setting.

Fortunately for me, I have a few connections with people from Indonesia.  Which means, for about three hours today, I sat in a Panera’s and talked about the city of Makassar with someone from there.  Picked up some information on conditions, locals, greetings, names . . . and learn a few about ghosts and weapons.  Yeah, weapons: because sometimes you just gotta rip up something magical with something sharp.

The last couple of days have seen a lot of work on the next novel.  While thinking about ghosts, I’m feeling the ghost of something I had a year ago . . . something that feels like what I had going a year ago.  I’m excited; I’m pumped.  I’m ready to jump into this work, and maybe I’ll make Indonesian ghosts famous at last.

I finished the time line yesterday about 6 PM.  I looked at it for a while, and in looking at it, I came up with ideas about the story, and even managed to dream up a detail that comes up as a major point.  At the same time, I figured out the motivation behind what’s happening . . . yeah, I’m like that.  Get the basic idea, beat it for hours on end, and eventually, you work it out.  One way or another.

So, what has come along?  Well, for one, the timeline has turned into this:

Yes, that’s twenty-four chapters and a Coda.  When you add the prologue into the mix, I’m looking at a total of twenty-six chapters.  If I do two thousand words a chapter, that’s fifty-two thousand words.  I expect I’ll write more than two thousand a chapter:  in fact, I’ve already set the Project Total in Scrivener to sixty thousand words.

And since I’m starting to move everything on the above timeline to Scrivener, here’s what that looks like:

That’s Part One of my timeline set up on Scrivener chapter cards.  This is how I work; this is how I write.  It might seem like a lot of work, but for me, it makes me comfortable.  It gives me the direction I need so I can perform “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!”  Because with where I’m going with this story, if I simply jumped in and started slinging crap about the word processor, I’d end up with a manuscript that looks like hammered shit.

Not for this writer.

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing, and where I’m headed.  It feels like old times again.

It feels like writing.

Angel Behind Me, Witch At My Side

Busy, busy day, though not as busy as I might have been.  Editing, shopping, lunch, more editing, TV, and finally getting my Halloween story set up in Scrivener.  Up at 6:30, down at 11:15.

Not a bad stretch.

TV consisted of sitting in the dark and watching the last Doctor Who episode until Christmas.  We sat in the dark because the Internet said we were suppose to do this, probably to make The Weeping Angels that much more frightening than they already are.

It was a good departure episode, for it was time for the Ponds to leave and make way for a new Companion.  As I like to say, Moffat is Evil–I should make a meme out of that, but I’m too lazy–and he teases you, yes he does.  He loves to play with time, as well, but then, what would you expect from the man who invented Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Whimey Stuff?

After the show, then it was up to get my Halloween story ready.  I’ve through of a basic concept, and my daughter gave me some ideas that I may, or may not, use–some of which I’d love to use–so all I needed was a title, which was driving me nuts.  I finally hit on something, which brought about the response, “No one can pronounce that!”  Not my problamo, dig?  I’m just the writer.  Besides, I know what it says, so I’m not worried.

When dream time came, I was pretty much ready.  I took a nap during the day, so it was probably closer to midnight when I finally fell asleep, but then came the dreams . . . oh, my.  Talk about not so much out there while being out there.

There was a company, and a lot of dancing in a huge space where we were building something.  One of my friends was a female humantaur (looking like a human with four legs; think of a centaur without the horse body) dressed pretty much as I imagine one of the characters in my story will be dressed–and she even had a pointy hat.  There was driving around and visiting towns with friends.  There was my trying to pick out a tie for the owner of the company.  There was a lot of coffee–like, we’re talking, twenty gallon vats.

Oh, and there was a Weeping Angel going around trying to zap people into the past.  I know because I saw it a few times as it followed me around.  I think it was avoiding me, though, because I was with a witch friend, and I was in my witch dress and hat–yeah, I was.

I’m a cute witch, too.  You gotta trust me on this.

After the depressing dreams of the night before, last night was much better, even for all its strangeness.  I don’t know, but there was a frivolity that said, “Don’t take this seriously, just go with the flow.”  I wonder if this has something to do with my Halloween story, which is going to be, well, light and fun.  Not with all the death and revenge and murder I had in my last story.

Naw.  This’ll be fun.  You know it’ll be fun when the first line is, “Hey, Witchbaby!  Come here!”

Now all I have to do is write.

Quintessential

First there was my 100^th post, then my 200^th, then came the 300^th . . . what happened to post four hundred?  Does anyone really give a shit?

Here we are, five hundred posts down, and I’m writing this at 10:02 PM, on a Friday night, after a long day of editing.  Really:  about ten thousand words were read and changed, removed, or add, and three chapters to Her Demonic Majesty look far better than how they started.  I also blogged this morning about my crazy dreams, and edited a blog post for a friend.

Sounds like something a writer would do, doesn’t it?

In my 200^th post–which came on the last day of 2011–I said there were a lot of things I wanted.  I started with a lot of hope, and not a few life changes.  By the beginning April, when post three hundred was written, I was waxing semi-poetically about what I’d done, what were I felt I was in my life, and where I thought I hoped I would go.

I’d have probably been better of waxing my car, because the summer of 2012 was one for the Book of Strangeness.

I was sick for two months.  I had a mental breakdown that really threatened to turn serious–probably not as serious as it might have seemed to some, but trust me:  there were a few moment when I came damn close to checking myself into a “facility” for a few weeks because I didn’t know what I might do.

Through all that I wrote.  I submitted work.  I still have one work hanging in limbo, and another that was outright rejected–the rejection coming right at the start of my breakdown.

I was also in the middle of a story that, as much as I wanted to get it written, was depressing me.  Maybe it was the material, maybe it was my state of mind–maybe it was both.  No matter:  I finished it, another short novel under my belt waiting for the Editing Fairy to come along and kick my butt.

But something has changed in the last six weeks.  Call it another outlook on life; call it finally starting to change things around; call it whatever the hell you’d like.  But I feel different.  There was a moment, probably right at the end of July, beginning of August, where I was about to say screw it and do what every other “burgeoning writer” does–stop.

Just freakin’ stop.

I was going to shut down the blog, shut down writing, kicked it all to the curb–kill my dream, as Jim Butcher called it.  Crawl into a hole and let things be.

I didn’t.  Really, I couldn’t.

There was a drive, a long drive back to The Undisclosed Location, where I knew that if I killed my dream, there wasn’t much of a point of going on with anything.  I didn’t though.  Despite the depression and the suicidal thoughts that seem to hang around like angry flies buzzing around some roadkill festering in the summer sun, I couldn’t do this last thing.

I couldn’t do it, because it wasn’t right.  And because my Muse would have haunted my ass, even in whatever passes for an afterlife.

I changed.  Work sucks, but so what?  I’m dealing.  Writing is hard:  tell me something new.  Finding time to do all this shit–I’ve already given my views on that, and I’m sticking to it.

I’m back writing–well, editing my butt off, actually.  I’m going to submit Her Demonic Majesty and not look back.  If it’s accepted, fantastic.  If not, I’ll look again.  And again.

And write more, and send it out.  Because that really is my dream, and killing the dream is the same as killing myself, and damned if I’m ready for that.

There’s too much happening to me these days.  Some is good, some is bad, and some goes right back to when I said 2012 was going to be a year of change.  Yeah, baby, change is coming.  New feeling, new attitudes, maybe even a new life.

Regardless, the dream continues.  I’ve spent most of my life hiding, worried, scared, and unable to do what I wanted to do.  I’m moving on; the hell with the old.  I ain’t got time to be sad, and though I might get depressed, I know I’ll come back out–eventually.

I have to.

I’ve got another five hundred posts to write, don’t you know?

See you when that happens.

Scaling the Walls of the Chocolate Factory

I thought last night was going to be a complete bust for writing.  I thought I was going to crash and burn, or at the least sink into my comfy chair and doze off.

How wrong was I.

Maybe it was the pot of coffee I had at lunch that finally woke me up, but I had a light dinner, one where I had to hydrate before eating, and after an hour, I fired up Scrivener, pulled up Her Demonic Majesty, and got to work.

I read the first chapter, really read it this time.  It was good, but I found an error right off the bat.  And then another.  And a few more.  It wasn’t that it was bad, but when I found a few errors, I wondered if that was why the story was rejected.  Come off looking like an idiot in the first couple of paragraphs, you don’t give the editor a reason to go on.

Chapter One was about 3,300 words, and I probably re-edited a dozen lines, removed words that made no sense, and felt pretty good when I got to the end.  But it was only 8:30, and to quit now would be the same as saying, “I don’t really care.”  I have twenty-four chapters to edit, some small, some big, some very big.  The plan is to finish by the 26 September, then put my package together, and have it ready to submit Monday morning, 1 October.

It’s my plan, and it’s a good one.  Tonight I’ll get Chapters Two and Three out of the way, then worry about Five, Six, and Seven tomorrow.  Scrivener gives me the ability to jump around chapters, so maybe Thursday I’ll get a few of the smaller ones–the ones that are less than two thousand words–out of the way, so Saturday and Sunday I can work on a few of the bigger ones.

It’s a plan, and it’s going to be a very fast moving.  I might not finish until next Saturday, but I’ll get this sucker polished and looking very pretty.  And get my package together . . . and hope for the best.

I’ve already stated that this is a very big deal.  There are more than a few writers scrambling their butts off to dust off an old manuscript, start marking the hell out of it, writing up new material, and basically working their butts off to get something they feel is going to give them a chance at a golden ticket to the Publishing Factory–where, we hope, some crazy guy isn’t going to take us on a boat ride consisting of nightmare fuel.

It’s sort of like Mini NaNoWriMo, with lots and lots of words getting written, only this time there’s an eye on polish and keeping things coherent.  Not a lot of time to write, edit, look again, polish . . . at best, you have a month before the gates slam shut for another decade.

Me . . . I’m good with my plan.  I’m gonna be busy, but I’m in a doable window.  It will happen.  I can get over the wall, and be one of the first to fling their story at Harper Voyager.

Then I wait.  And write.

And keep looking for that golden ticket.

Taming the Whirlwind

Well, now, this is a late in the day post, isn’t it?  I have been one busy writing-type person, let me tell you–though only a little of it has had anything to do with writing.  I’ve actually been–gasp!–writing computer code!  Oh, what is this world coming to?  Get the fainting couch!

I got into a grove today and couldn’t get out.  I also had some tasty tunes coming in over the earbuds, and that helped keep me entertained while I slung code like a mofo.  And, over lunch, I chatting with a friend in New York City.  Yes, I am cosmopolitan, are I not?

(Something I’ve been listening to on YouTube a lot these last few days is the album Trilogy, by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.  This has always been one of my favorite recordings, and another of those, “Nothing On It Sucks!” albums I’ve mentioned from time to time.  Give it a listen; it’s progressive rock at its finest.)

When I wasn’t coding, I was thinking about writing.  I’ve helped with a solution on the Storytime blog that will allow people to have an easier time reading through our stories.  I’ve been asked to join a Facebook group so I can review erotica:  apparently someone there thinks I know something about that genre.  And I’ve been put in contact with an illustrator who may do a cover for me.

You may ask, “Why do you need a cover?  Are you publishing something?”  I’m giving the notion a bit of serious thought.  I’ve had a couple of friends–women on both coasts, if you must know–who are telling me that I should self-publish my NaNo novel, rather than find some house to do the work for me.  A few months back I was hesitant to go that route:  I’ve done the self-publishing thing, and seen little success.

I am eager to publish my NaNo novel, and with the first anniversary of the publishing of Kuntilanak coming, the notion of going the self-publishing route feels enticing.  So, I’m beginning discussions with an illustrator for the cover of a book that may, in the next few weeks, may be ready for people to buy and read–and, I do so hope, enjoy.

All the ideas that have been running wild in my head for a couple of weeks, I’m starting to get a handle on them.  There is work ahead of me, writing work, and some reading work, and it’s going to keep me very busy for the rest of the year, it would seem.  I’m managing time, and in order to do that, I need to get my arms around these ideas so that I know what they are, what they mean, and how I can write them.  Maybe even go so far as to set up a Scrivener file with the ideas, some notes, maybe a time line or two.

I know writers are always the most organized people in the world, but if you have ideas coming fast, and you don’t want your Muse showing up at your door wearing the thigh high boots with the five inch heels, with plans of kicking your ass, you better tame that whirlwind.

Then again, maybe my Muse in stiletto thigh high boots isn’t that bad a thing . . .

Sunset Drive

It is a thing of joy to find one self zipping down the highway at night, feeling like there isn’t a care in the world.  I’ve been there many times, back in the days when I’d find myself behind the wheel of my 1965 Mustang convertible, flying down back roads with the top down.

It was all about enjoying the wind in my (then) long hair, the radio cranked up, and the night sky forever your friend.

These days something like that isn’t as easy, though, in some parts of Indiana, there are plenty of back roads still to fly down without a care in the world.  Not that I was on any of them last night, no.  I was hoofing it down the interstate, realm of drivers who don’t know how to pass, and slow semis.

Still, it wasn’t that bad a night.

Yesterday was a good day.  It was a day for thinking, for ideas.  There wasn’t a need to sit and figure out what I was going to do yesterday, because it was already finished.  Diners at the Memory’s End was done, and the only thing I was looking at was a drive back to The Undisclosed Location.

When I drive, I like to think things out—when I’m not screaming at drivers to get the hell out of the way.  One of the things I spent about an hour on was some light plotting for my upcoming NaNo Novel, 2012.  I went over some character interaction, why they would be together at the location I’ve selected, and how they discover what thing is there.  Very simple stuff, really.

I was able to work out some of the things I needed to set up the story.  I didn’t plot it all out, no, but getting my characters from Kuntilanak together again is no small task.  I also know what the big bad is, and I also know how one character I wanted to bring into the story—for just a very small scene—fits into this story.

The only things I’m lacking is the ultimate motivation of Mr. Big Bad—though I have a good idea—the ultimate end of the story, and a title.  Yes, this is known as “planning”, which is something you’re told you’re not supposed to do during NaNo.  You’re also told you’re not supposed to do something called “editing”, but I don’t listen to “Them!”, because they are not worth listening to—and they are also giant ants.  Who wants to listen to giant ants?  They just go, “Screee, Screee, Screee!” all the time . . .

I’m getting a good feeling for NaNo again.  A month ago I was full of crazy stress.  Now, with a lot of things behind me, I’m feeling far more confident of the task ahead.  I have my goals set out, and I won’t allow myself to get crazy in the weeks to come.  That way, I can save the crazy for the story—

If I do it right, there’s going to be plenty of that to go around.

It Was Only Last Year . . .

This weekend was such a busy one that I missed a date.  It might not seem like a lot, least not to you, but it means a great deal to me.

But rather than me tell you about it, please read the post from 26 July, 2011.

In case you didn’t read the post–and I think some of you will cheat and pass that link, even though I can see who is reading and who isn’t–that was an important post for me.

That was the post that said I’d finally had enough, and I was writing a story.  That story eventually became Kuntilanak, my self-published story that is just waiting for you to rush over and buy it.

Those were crazy days.  I started writing every day, getting my music set up for the morning before getting into the story.  Then I’d write and anally keep track of my word counts, and my words per hour production.  I’d blog about what I’d done.  Then, in the afternoon, Trusty Editor^tm would show up, and we’d go over the manuscript, looking for errors.

After a month I had a twenty-five thousand word story, a small horror story set on the island of Bali, with two protagonist who are not your everyday ghost busters.  I mean, the woman isn’t even seen taking a shower.  What kind of horror story is that?

Something more important happened then, however.  After I published the story in September, I decided to do something insane.  Not only was I getting ready for NaNoWriMo, but I started writing an erotic story that was later sold as Captivate and Control.  And I kept writing.  I’ve edited, I’ve written, and edited, and written . . .

I’ve even submitted a couple of things.  One rejected, one still in limbo, but they were/are out there.

I’m doing it.  I’m writing.

It’s been an interesting year.  All sorts of things have changed since that day last July.  Trusty Editor^tm isn’t around as much as they used to be, because things are always changing, but I still see them from time to time.

I’m working, and it’s keeping me very busy–and a little crazy.  There’s been a lot of ups and downs, but I’m still moving forward.

Mostly, I’m writing.  I’ve written nearly every day since, be it new material, or editing.  Take last night:  worked on Diners at the Memory’s End, and knocked off nine hundred fifty words, finished Part Fourteen, drove the story up over forty-three thousand words . . . all nice and neat, the way I like things.  Only four more parts to write, maybe ten thousand words, and this story is over.

It’s been a long story, and a long write.  Longer than I expected it to go, probably because this has been The Summer of Change, and when you talk about something putting a spin on your head, this has been the summer.

I still have a month to go, too.

I’ve got my priorities set up.  I’ve got things to do.  Maybe a year from now, I’ll write about something else . . . like being a near-famous writer.

One can only work towards the dream.