The Rising Idea

This has started off as a very strange week, and after today I have to say that can’t imagine it getting any stranger–unless someone picked up a contract for my book.  Then my day would be made.  Maybe tomorrow it’ll happen.  One can only hope.

I’ve been working on my story, but it’s been sort of give and take.  Not that I’m not getting in any writing, but as I told someone today my mind seems to be in a strange place when I write.  When I’m working, the words come, they flow like mad.  I can get scenes and conversations down quickly, and there doesn’t seem to be any hesitation at all in getting things worked out.

It’s just getting into the story . . . because it seems like my mind is cluttered with distractions galore.  My mind is wandering like mad, and I can’t seem to get focused on the work in progress because of–well, therein lies a good question.  After all the work I spent getting Suggestive Amusements finished, and Her Demonic Majesty edited and published, my mind is once again wondering, “Is this all worth it?  Am I doing something that, in the end, will pay off?  Or am I just fooling myself?”

I go through this every few months.  You bust your ass to do these things, to move into a realm where you would love to be working, and it seems a constant struggle to get anywhere.  I’ve had friends tell me to take it easy and keep doing what I’m doing, because I’m on the right track.

At the same time, I want to move faster.  I want to get where I’m going now.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of “I’m just not good enough.”  If you know anything about Dunning-Kruger effect, you know it’s not unusual for those who have the talent think everything they do isn’t worth a damn, while the Ed Woods of the world think they are the god’s all might shit when it comes to being the best.  It would be nice if the overtly incompetent would just once say, “I totally suck, and I should let someone else do this.”  But, no:  that almost never happens.  They continue churning out shit, and the rest of us bang our heads against the wall wondering what it is we’re doing wrong.

I have ideas coming to me all the time.  I’m working out a story on my computer, and a world in my head, and at the same time I’m having images of a story coming to me as I go through the day–a story that I sort of mentioned in passing as a strange dream I had a few days back.  It’s how it goes:  these things happen to us to prod us onward to sit before the computer, or your writing medium of choice, and get this stuff out of our heads.

Once you’ve been bitten by this affliction, you can’t lose it.  It will never let you go.  One could give up writing tomorrow, and the ideas will continue to rise, reminding you that something wants your attention–

And it won’t stop until you give it due diligence.

Extended Tea Time

I am suffering from a rather dramatic drug hangover today.  I took some sleep aids to knock me out and give me a good night’s rest, and what time do I wake up?  The normal time, what else?  I swear, I’d give just about anything to sleep to about eight AM, and not crawl out of bed before six.

So the drugs are lingering with me, and it’s not a good feeling.  I sort of feel dizzy all the time, and if you’ve ever had vertigo, it’s not a pleasant feeling.  The mind feels like it should shut down and rest a while, but the body is like, “No, dude; we got things to do.”

And I’m stuck in the middle with these clowns.  This is where I wish I could download my mind into another body and just get on with the day.  Screw flying cars:  give me the Black Widow clone body, stat!

I only managed to get in seven hundred words on Fantasies in Harmonie last night, due in part to discussing matters of an article with someone last night.  By the time they vacated the Internet it was past nine my time, and I was starting to have a sleepy.  Still seven hundred words was pretty good, especially when I spent about fifteen minutes considering how I was going to get my lady writers together for a week in the woods.

The thing that’s coming out from this is that I’m getting wordy again.  I’m already twenty-two hundred words into the first part, and I’ve not even gotten to the magic.  Most of the stories like this have people stripping to their knickers at this point, and I’m rambling on about month-long writing camps and word counts.  This is why I’m not as good at erotica as, say, someone doing werewolf porn:  I gotta do the set up and make my characters look like read people in unreal situations.  The people writing the werewolf porn have psudo-wolves banging away by the fifteen hundredth word.

This is how I want to do it, though–it’s how I have to do it.  I try to do more than write characters who vanish when they turn sideways.  I’m sure I could write porn and, as one of my friends says, have them “bang at a thousand (words),” but if I did that, then one would never feel a connection to the girl who feels herself changing all over . . .

Naw, not gonna tell you.  You just have to wait for the story to show up on Amazon.

This made me think about the dream I wrote about yesterday.  After one friend read the post they said, “Sounds like a story there.”  Oh, does it now?  Actually, I’d sort of thought of the same thing, that maybe there’s a story in them there REM waves.  A sexy story?  Sure.  A kinky story?  You betcha.

The question becomes, do I write it?  And what is it about besides latex clad women with multiple limbs getting their freak on?

Wait–do I really need more than that?

All Hail the Spider Queen

Well, isn’t this an interesting start to the week?  Actually that happened last night when I was working on Fantasies in Harmonie, and I started working things out in the initial scene . . . then again, maybe it started with the dreams last night, which were very bizarre.

Lets get this in order, shall we?

First off, I didn’t think I was going to write a lot last night.  I thought, “Yeah, did five hundred words last night, maybe do the same tonight.”  Right.  So I started writing after I got some information out of my ideas file and put into the current project.  I looked at the layout of the cabin, and started in with a question asked and answered.

I had no real idea about what was going to be in the scene, what was going to happen, and yet, the moment I started writing I didn’t feel as if I was going to need to search for words.  I knew what would happen, and I didn’t need to go into a lot of discussions about the why of being in the cabin–that’s probably left for tonight–but rather I wanted to show the ladies together as a group.  It doesn’t get simpler than that.

So I have the set up, the witty banter, the insinuation that one of the women is into My Little Pony fan porn (we’ll call it “Fifty Shades of Flutershy”), the unsaid feeling that something isn’t right with one of the characters–it’s all there.  It’s getting things set up for the big bangs to come–no pun intended.

I know tonight the words might not come out as easily as they did last night, but it felt good to be creating again.  It’s a silly little story, but so what?  It’s my story, and I feel for my characters.  Maybe you’ll feel them, too, when you read this.

As for the dream–hey, lets spend some time with this madness now . . .

Of late my dreams haven’t been that important.  They’ve been there, but nothing that has stood out, nothing that made me wake up and think, “What the hell was that all about?”  That doesn’t mean I haven’t had my semi-waking moments, but it’s been nothing like the dreams I had last year.

This time, though–let me tell you.  First I was out shopping, and no big deal there.  I was in a modest skirt, sandals, tee shirt, the sort of thing one wears on a warm, sunny day.

That somehow transitioned to ending up in an adult clothing store, and I was trying on this black latex mini dress and boots combo, and the girl who was waiting on me was pretty much drooling as she watched me in the mirror.  She kept calling me “Spider Queen” for no reason that was then apparent–

Then I was back home, and I was with someone I know, and she was having trouble containing herself.  At one point she says, “Take me, Spider Queen,” and before you can say “Metebelis III,” I’ve got six arms and I’m doing some rather strange and kinky things to my friend, who is more or less mumbling “I love you” between moments of ecstasy.

I mean, what the hell?  Me, the latex clad Spider Queen?

Maybe there’s a story in there–

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.

Cake or History

When you have little to do, your nights get a lot longer.  I ran into that last night, while I looked for something to occupy my time while I had . . . nothing to . . . write.  *sigh*

There was some good news, however:  the woman looking at the full manuscript for Her Demonic Majesty told me she found one typo per page for the first few pages, then didn’t see anything for like a full chapter.  After all the freaking out about how I was a total failure at getting my editing done, this made me feel a hell of a lot better.  At this point I just wait for her to finish her reading, and her markings, and do what is needed when the manuscript comes back.

So I played around.  One half of my mind was trying to figure out how to import images into Scrivener, and the other was working on an idea for a story.  It helped that I was in my Story Ideas project, where I jot down ideas when they come to me, and try to flesh them out little by little when the mood strikes.  So I was in the right place to mull over two ideas . . .

One of the ideas has to do with a . . . lets call it “fantasy smut” story I wanted to write for Camp NaNo July.  It all came about during a discussion with another writer, where we were making fun of some of the stories that show up on Smashwords–you know, stories about incestuous stepkids, werewolf breeding, and horny unicorns looking for wimmin.  It was during one of those discussions that I went, “Screw these losers:  I can write something like this, only it’ll be Better!” and then my mind started working.

I used to write strange, fetishy fiction, so coming up with something that would involve sex and fantasy shouldn’t be a problem.  I have the characters in my mind–borrowing liberally from friends I know, and who have already been told they’ll be in a story–I have the location set, I have the sex ready to roll.  I do need a title, though, and a set up, which is what I was thinking about last night.  And a little bit this morning when birds woke me at four AM.

I’m considering just “doing it” and writing the story the month of May.  It shouldn’t take much to do, and shouldn’t be that long.  Actually, I’m going to keep it short, or as short as possible.  It’s going to be all about Teh Sexy, so character development is out.  Okay, maybe a little development, because I don’t write smut.

The other thing I was working on was a time line for another story idea.  I posted it on my Facebook wall last night, because I do things like that.  What I was plotting out was a “What If?” sort of alternate history of space from the 1960′s through the 1970′s.  I didn’t include everything in the time line; I was mostly adding missions that never flew but could have, so that I could establish a different history for those who grew up in that time–namely, the characters in my possible story.

I love doing alternate history, and while it might not be something that a few people would consider realistic–hey, it’s my universe!  Get your own alternate space history!

Don’t you just love having an imagination?

Golden Week

The weekend is over, the week begins anew.  And this is a very particular week for me, because there is so much going on . . .

First off, today is the Second Anniversary of this blog.  Yes, it is true, I created my first point on 13 April, 2011, but that didn’t really count.  Two years ago today I scribbled some nonsense, and I was . . . well, sort of creeping along, because I had no idea what the hell I should do with this space.  You want to know something?  I’m still not sure.  But I keep coming back because it keeps getting funnier every time I’m here!  Not to mention, you’re talkin’ to a . . .

Sorry.  I must have mispronounced a star’s name three times.

Then we have 1 May, and that’s a time of celebration.  It’s May Day, it’s International Workers Day–something we in the U. S. used to celebrate until we got pissed off at the Commies and said we were taking our holiday and going home–and it’s Beltane.  Anyway you look at it, it’s the traditional start of summer, and time to enjoy the coming warmness.  It’s also the start of Golden Week in Japan, which is suppose to be the one week when people get time off from their jobs–about they only time they get a holiday, actually.  Golden Week is also the period where Japan sees its greatest number of suicides, and they put additional people on hotlines to handle the surge, so to speak.  Why does this happen?  Is it because the down time gives workers reason to reflect on their lives, and realize how their jobs turn it into a huge crap sack of nothingness?  Probably one of the reasons they don’t do something like that here . . .

And then we get to the end of the week, and it’s 3 May, and we all know what that means?  Yeah, Iron Man 3 opens.  I, for one, do so want to see Pepper Potts in the suit; just something about a woman in powered armor brings out the nasty in me.  Though I probably won’t see it right away, ’cause . . . aliens.

The mini-meltdown is over.  Saturday happened, I sulked, I recovered.  I finished up Her Demonic Majesty yesterday, compiled it, and sent it off for a look-see.  I’m hopeful that I don’t get a lot of, “This totally sucks,” and if I do, screw it:  it’s my novel.  I’ll publish it anyway.  I want it correct, but if they don’t care for it, so be it.  It’s ready:  I just don’t need typos to mess me up.

And I wrote an article.  One about mecha, one that involved me having to put out the math skills.  It was actually sort of fun to do, and I hope it is enjoyed.  It’s always a crap shoot when you send out something like that, but it’s just another way to keep the writing going–

Which reminds me:  I have nothing to do tonight.  Nothing.  It’s sort of sit and think time, I guess.

Or I can sit and do . . .

What a choice for Golden Week.

The Consequences of Truth

Well-made plans have a way of crashing around you when it’s least expected.  We’ve all had things we planed on doing, only to have life come up and smack us straight on in the face, leaving one a semi-bloody mess.

The measure of your personality is how you deal with the situation.

I didn’t deal with mine very well.

Allow me to explain.

I started out in a good mood.  I was writing, I was blogging, I was looking forward to the end of my novel.  I was looking forward to having a good time today, to maybe finishing an article and getting that out.  The path was clear, the way ahead was sunny.

I posted an excerpt from Chapter Six of Her Demonic Majesty, and was getting into my editing.  It was going to be a wonderful day–

Then Trusty Editor^tm came along.

They were reading the excerpt, going through it with the trained eye they have.  And just like that, I’m getting PMs on Facebook.  ”You have this wrong . . . this should be . . . I think you meant–”.  It wasn’t much, and my Trusty Editor^tm was only helping me as they have done in the past.

But it killed me, because this was what I feared all along:  that no matter how much work I put into getting my manuscript clean, it would never be clean enough.

I lost it.  I logged off from Facebook and just shook for a few minutes.  I cried.  I doubted my own abilities to do anything right.  I’ve spent so much time on this story that it really felt like a kick in the gut, and with everything that has happened to me this week, I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore.

I actually reached the point where I was ready to say, “Fuck it, I can’t take this anymore,” and just wander away from the scene for . . .well, who knows?  I feel alone, I feel that I get very little support, I feel like I’m working in a constant vacuum located inside a singularity of indifference.

So I stepped away from the story for most of the day, simply because I couldn’t stand to look at the manuscript any more.

I finally finished editing the chapter I was on when I had my meltdown, then I headed out for the night, something I haven’t done in over a month and a half.  I wasn’t in much of a mood to talk, though, but I manged to get though the night without being too much of a Debbie Downer.

It was only while I was driving home with the late night light drizzle falling around me that I found my center.  See, long ago, Trusty Editor^tm was going over another manuscript that was my then Work in Progress.  And they had issues with a few things in the first couple of paragraphs.  I freaked out, because I thought what I’d written was pretty good.

Their comment to me, after I’d expressed my fears, was, “You need to get your ego in check.  Do you want this to be good?  Or do you want this to be the best?”

That’s an easy one:

I’ve never wanted to put out shit.  I can’t stand the idea that I’ll put out a story that’s crappy, with things that will give haters reason to go, “Yo, you used an and not a, loozer! ”  If I can’t put it out right, I’m not going to bother putting it out, period.

After buying a pretty cover I don’t have the means of paying someone to edit a couple of hundred pages, but I did have a friend offer to look over the manuscript for errors.  I have a bit of fear here, because they told me they didn’t like the title, but beyond that I think they’ll find errors and not much else.  I hope.  And if all goes well I’ll be back on the original path I’d set, which is to have Her Demonic Majesty published at the end of May.

It’s okay to freak out.  It’s okay to think you are worthless, that you are alone, that you even suck.  It’s happen to the best writers, sometimes to the point where they decided to end it all because they were told their novel sucked.

But you need to listen to people and know when they are helping.

Because it’s never okay to kill your dream.

Never.

The Outside Looking In

I am a fan of Zen Pencils.

I’d never heard of it before last September, just as I was in the final stages of preparing for NaNo 2012.  I don’t remember who posted this strip, the first that I saw, but I remembered it vividly, so much so that I went back to read it many times.

Why did it touch me?  It may have had something to do with NaNo, with some of the people revolving around NaNo, or some of the people revolving around my life.  I was posting excerpts from my project, showing my chapter layouts and my time lines, and there were more than a few snipping remarks about how I was doing NaNo “wrong”, that I needed to “just write”, and that all this prep meant I was incapable of writing anything “imaginative”.  There were a couple of people who objected to the title of my work, and, of course, a few who were like, “Why are you even bothering?”

The “Why are you even bothering?” crowd are always easy to figure out, by the way:  they’re the ones who feel since you’re never going to make big money off your work, why don’t you do something else–you know, like clean the house, or pay the bills, or something?  These are usually the sort whose most imaginative thought of the day is wondering if they should change their underwear, and if so, what should they wear.

In other words, they got no idea what makes a person like me tick.

Since that first encounter with The Zen, I’ve not only visited the site often, but I’ve showed it to others.  Some have ignored it, some have loved it.

This last one brought back way too many memories.

I have written many times throughout my life.  I’ve tried a lot of things, actually:  I’ve always loved art, loved reading, loved music, loved writing.  I was never content to do things that were–shall we say, easy?  I was never a good artist, but on a couple of occasions I let my imagination go, and the end result was to get some intense praise from the instructor.  I didn’t just read, I was off into advanced stories and concepts long before high school.  I didn’t just listen to music:  I found things that made me think and wonder, and devoured the sources.  And my writing?  I was doing nutty stuff even in the mid-1970′s.

However . . .

There were always people around me who thought my art was “strange”.  By the very fact I read I was considered a “weirdo”, and I even had one person who’d been a friend for years stop talking to me because he thought I was “nuts”.  I was always being told I listened to “freak music”, and that I should stick to stuff more popular.

And no one gave a shit about my writing.

I finally took up writing in a serious way in the late 1980′s, and kept at it for a while.  I once brought my spouse to a writer’s group I was in–more a collection of friends than anything else–and I read what I was working on at the time.  On the way home I asked my spouse what they thought, and they comment was, “It was crap.  I hate when you write stuff like that.  The only good story you ever wrote was your first.”

My first story that they knew was a quick, fast, first person horror story that was filled with so many clichés that H. P. Lovecraft would have killed it with fire.  But, to my spouse, it was the best thing I ever wrote, and they were of the opinion that I should go back to writing stuff like that.

Between a life time of hearing stuff like that, and having to deal with my other problems, I gave up on writing for a long time.  You start believing that everything you do is crap, that you’re never getting ahead.

You become a willing participant in killing your dreams.

These days, I write in a vacuum most of the time.  I know there are few people around me who care about this work, but screw them:  I do this for me.  I have a daughter who wants to be an artist.  I encourage her to draw, and to draw as much as she can.  She posts some of her work on her Tumblr, and has gotten great feedback.

I don’t have to tell her to do anything differently than is being told here.

When I am down, when I feel I am wasting my time, when I feel that all that I do will be for naught, I think about what has come before, and what could be next.

And then I use my time.

Paloma Dreamtime

It seems the yesterday’s post touched more than a few people in ways I hadn’t suspected.  About a year ago I had someone start following the blog, only to send me the following comment two days later:  ”This isn’t just about writing, is it?”  He stopped following me the next day because, yes, I don’t always talk about writing, and this upset him greatly.  Probably had something to do with him being a nutso control freak, which manifested in a couple of online writer groups I was in, but that’s another story.

While I write about writing, I also write about how I feel about writing, and how it makes me feel.  It’s not always good, and it’s not always pleasant  but it’s usually honest.  As a writer we have to be honest with ourselves, at least that’s what I think.  You can spend all your time writing stories that involve having sex with your step-kids, but at some point you have to be honest and say, “This is really sort of crappy.”  If you aren’t saying that, well . . . you’re not me.  Which probably isn’t that bad a thing, come to think of it.

I try to pay attention on everything these days.  As Johnny Cash said, ”You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”  That’s me these days:  I look ahead, but remember what has already come before.  Because I do know what it’s like to be pinned down by your past, and how it can gnaw at you until you can’t move forward any longer.  It sucks hard, and I don’t need that negative energy in my life these days.

So what is this about Paloma, you say?  A dream, I say.  After editing two chapters last night–editing and formatting, I should say–it was off to bed, because it’s not like anything else is happening in my life.  It was raining lightly last night, and I love to hear soft rains, so I was off to sleep pretty fast . . .

That’s when the strange stuff happened.

Whatever I was dreaming, I was in world burning mode last night.  It seemed as if things were really crappy, that things weren’t nearly as good as they are today, and yet, it wasn’t entirely a crapsack world.  Tre Funky, yes.  But I still had a car and internet, so it wasn’t a total hole.

For some reason I was trying to move a bunch of kids from my part of the country to a new job in . . . Paloma, California.  For some reason I thought this was a great idea, because I’d have a fantastic job and I’d be able to take care of everyone, and so forth and on.  It stuck with me so much that after I got onto the computer this morning I did a quick map look for Paloma, California . . .

And was duly unimpressed.

It’s a small collection of buildings in the middle of nowhere east of Stockton.  There’s a church, some roads going elsewhere, and that’s it.  A couple of nice houses, but no business that would make me willing to pack up a bunch of kids and haul them a few thousand miles.

Why did this happen?  Maybe there’s a story there.  Maybe not.

I’ll keep my eyes open, though–just in case.

The Doubt Killer

Yesterday was one of those days where I seemed to be busy from the moment I work up, right until I was ready to fall asleep.  It makes for a long time staying busy, and busy I was, yes indeed.

I’ve spent a bit of time the during last week where I’ve been discussion writing with a couple of writers, and there is one question that always comes up:  why do some people sell, and others don’t?  Or, better yet, why do some writers seem to attract an audience when others don’t?

It’s a puzzle.  You find yourself wondering how someone can come up with an idea that equates to Hillbillies Aliens + Excessive Racism + Locked in a Spaceship = Their Next Great Novel, and people going, “That’s fantastic!”, and when someone points out that the concept of having a multi-billion dollar colonization effort hinging on a bunch of dimwitted thugs who want to kill each is a Really Bad Idea, they’re told they’re being “too hyper-realistic”, you grow a little upset because you know this is something you wouldn’t write, and you think that by not writing this, by concentrating on your character-driven stories, people are just gonna pass you by and concentrate on the story of The Hatfield and McCoy Feud in Space.

Then you look at your sales, and you can’t help but think, “What am I doing wrong?  Why aren’t people buying me?”  Or, as I said yesterday to my friend, “Where is my Stephen King moment?”  Is the novel I’m working on the one that will get me noticed?  Or do I have to fall back on unicorn porn?

I will admit that after editing and formatting two chapters from Her Demonic Majesty last night, I felt as if I were on the verge of tears.  As much as I want this effort to work, there’s a part of me that’s been like a small voice that keeps whispering over and over, “You’re a born loser, so why bother?  It’s not going to sell, and all this time and effort and money are going to waste.  No one believes in you, just pay the bills like everyone else does.”  It really was that sort of ending, and it’s a wonder I didn’t head off to bed and sob my ass off.

But I didn’t, because the reality is I couldn’t.  I couldn’t because before I went to bed I thought things out . . .

The whole publishing game is an ass.  Do you think Fifty Shades of Grey was bought because it’s great writing?  No.  It was bought because some dink at Vintage Books decided this soft core rapey porn (which if you know anything about BDSM, this is) was going to bring the middle aged Twihard ladies to the Kindle Store, ’cause even though the names have been changed to protect copyrights and prevent lawsuits, everyone knows this is Edward and Bella a-boning, and that’s going to separate a certain segment of the population from their money.

Am I doing that?  No.  I’m trying to write something original, something that’s a bit different, something that lets me connect with my characters and, I hope, pass that connection along to my readers.  I want to tell stories, and that’s a lot of work–

It’s not the easy road to follow.  It’s a bitch.  It will make you hurt.

But when you do make it through . . . you’re gonna feel a lot better.

All I want to do is tell stories for people to enjoy.  That’s it.  If I can make enough money so that I don’t have to haul my ass into Chicago every day, then so much the better.  Until then, I’ll kept at what I’m doing, and try to keep the tears back.

Every day you think you suck more than Carlton Mellick, the doubt wins.

Hot Chocolate and Mountain Stars

One project ends, another begins; it’s how you do it, really.  Suggestive Amusements is in the can–or on the hard drive, as this case may be–and my information for a book cover for Her Demonic Majesty is off to a friend for her appraisal.  What is left to do?

Edit, what else?

Replacements is under the literary knife again.  I’m giving it another polish in, preparing it for it’s own publication date.  That will mean getting a cover for it as well, and prepping the manuscript for ebooks, but that’s easy.  Well, the formatting is:  not sure on the cover yet.  But it’s all coming together.  If anything, as I edit, I can format.  I did Chapter One last night; I’ll likely edit Chapter Two tonight, then start doing a format on Chapter One–which is a small chapters–to get back into the swing of getting an ebook ready.

Even with all this, there are always things going on in my mind.  Are those story ideas you’re talking about, Cassie?  Why, yes:  yes, they are.

There is a set of stories that I’ve developed of a particular set of characters.  As of this moment I have three stories written about them that amount to three long novels, one short novel, and a novella.  I’m so tied into these characters, in fact, that I have a time line of their lives figured out, and that the stories that revolve around those lives.

Last week I was thinking about one of those stories, one that takes place further along in their lives, and it’s an event that, as they say in the business, changes them forever.  It really does, because it’s needed for later in their lives, and for the stories that follow.  As I want to do, I thought out things from a meta standpoint, with the intention of figuring out things later.  As for the meta, it goes into a file, or my head, both of which are pretty good for that sort of thing.

Here is the kicker, though:  the night before, I had a dream that revolved around what I’d been thinking about, as well as some of the research I’d done, because I’m all about the research . . .

I know it was about a place I’d researched for this story, because I just did.  It was in the mountains; it was night and the air was crisp, with fall approaching.  I was sitting alongside someone, both of us wearing thick sweaters against the mountain chill.  There was wine, just a small glass each, because you want to enjoy the alcohol-infused warmth that comes from sitting a sweet white wine.

Then, after the lateness of the hour became apparent, inside we go to sit before a fire, stretching out upon an overstuffed sofa–

Which is where my dream ended.  But the writer in me–ah, I see thing going beyond that.  Because the overstuffed sofa reminds me of two people in a very different place, with their own sofa, their over comforters, their own fire . . . and plenty of pumpkin juice, hot chocolate, and cheese banitsas.  All the things meant to keep a couple warm . . .

All the things they’d need to remind them of their love.

Options of Light and Darkness

The end is approaching.  Not that we should be sad about that, because the end I mention is the end of my current work in progress.  The penultimate chapter has started, and people are talking about what had happened up to this point.

This is the chapter I’ve been thinking about for a while, so it came easy to setting up the meeting between Erin and–lets call her one of her bosses, a member of the upper Goddess echelon that has come to sit with Erin and find out just what in the hell is going on.  I’ve imagined the conversation for some times, and when I was writing last night the idea was coming out on to the page well.

We’ll see where it goes tonight when I continue Goddess Chat.

There was something else going on while I was writing, however, because if nothing else, I multitask like mad.  I was chatting with someone I know, someone who I’ve written things for in the past, and whom has enjoyed my writing.  As I was working through my chapter I was also working through a discussion of some articles I’d written some time back, and the comments that came my way were sort of like, “Hey, you ever going to write any more of these?”

There was a time when I was writing a lot of different things.  For a while I was doing game reviews on another website, and writing a few articles for another site, all of which occurred while I was blogging and working on my first completed novel.  It was a lot of fun, and it helped me develop my talent as a writing, and even more as a researcher and editor.

But all good things come to an end, as it is said.  I was doing all this writing when I was “between jobs”, as the saying goes, and I had a lot of time to put pen to computer.  Then I found a job, I had to move, I had to find time to write while I had spare time, and with spare time at a premium, I found that if I wanted to work on my stuff, I had to cut other things out of my life.

Ergo, no more articles.

But there is another saying:  nothing that dies ever stays dead.  True, they might only say that in the Marvel Universes, but there is some precedence for that in the real world as well.  When I started thinking about the stuff I’d written once, it made me realize that, hey, that stuff was pretty good, and it was a lot of fun to write.  And I was reminded that, at one time, I did tell this person that I’d write them another article . . .

Today I pulled out something I’d written nearly two years ago, a game review that I’d put up and sort of left.  I read it, edited it, and sent it off to the person I was speaking with last night, ’cause I told him that reviewing Science Fiction type role playing games is a good thing to do–and there are probably people out there who’ll want to read them.

Does this mean I’m back into doing articles and reviews for other people?  Hard to say.  After all, Jean Grey hasn’t popped up from the dead again–

Yet.