The Hall of the Mountain Queen

Yesterday, Friday, was a lazy day.  I wasn’t exactly busy, but at the same time I wasn’t eager to do anything.  Like writing–

I work on this blog every day.  I’ve had people tell me that this isn’t real writing, but then again, if it’s not, what is it?  I’m of the opinion that if you write, it doesn’t matter what you write, it’s still writing.  I forget who said it–may have been Stephen King–but he said something along the lines of, “If you don’t have ideas coming to you, or you’re finding it difficult to write about anything, start typing out things.  Songs you like, your grocery list, names of places you want to visit.  Keep typing, and eventually you’ll find get through your block and write.”

That’s why I blog.  If I keep writing, every day, then when it comes time to do something I need to write–like a story–then it’s not a problem:  I’ll sit right down and get to writing.  You’re working on the skill, developing it further, and it will eventually show in your other work.

That’s the hope.  As another writer said–the name escapes me at the moment–if after a year or two, your writing hasn’t improved, you haven’t started to take chances with your work, then you’re not growing.  You’re not trying to improve, you’re just sort of marking time.

This is my little mountain hall, my blog.  I have another, but I’ve been really lazy about going there, and I should do something about that.  But this one, the one I’ve stuck with for a little over two years, is my fortress.  I have my followers, and you’re all very good to me.  A few of you even know me beyond this blog, which is both strange and crazy when I think about it.

I try to think of how I look, sitting in my mountain hall, upon my throne, waiting for my subjects to appear.  I could say I’m like the Lady Death of Blogging, but that could be a bit scary, don’t you think?  Or am I sitting here in my Witchblade armor, pretty much naked, my body all bent and twisted like I’m constructed out of Rob Liefeld’s best imagination?  Maybe I’m more Jean Grey-like, ready to eat a planet on a moment’s notice.  Naw, not that:  she’s been dead for eight years, though she’ll probably come back to life one of these days–again.

Whatever it is, I’m here, in control of my works and words, and doing both as much as is possible.

I had a couple of people tell me that I’m an inspiration, because I work at this craft every day, and I never seem to give up.  It’s not easy–the working part, not the inspiration.  I do this because I want to do this, and I want to do it every day for the rest of my life.  It’s my dream, you know?  But I find it easy to want to give up.  I find it easy to walk away, sometimes forever.  Quitting is easy–

Writing is hard.

This is post seven hundred and fifty, and in another eight or nine months I’ll have a cool thousand to my name.  Sometime in early 2014 I’ll sit down and come up with a cool name for post number one thousand, and recollect.  Maybe I’ll even have some good news to tell you about a novel I’ve just published.

Until then, feel free to hang about the fortress.

The Mountain Queen is always in.

 

Mindmelding Elements

Made it through a good day yesterday, one of the better I’ve had in a while, and today–well, that’s another story.  I’ll get through all the “The Forth Be With You” crap and probably remind more than a few people that my 4^th of May involved hearing about four college students being shot to death.  Yeah, Yoda can bite my ass.

Where to go now, dear Cassidy?  How is your new project coming along?  Glad you asked–

Yesterday also dealt with the upcoming story, because I was talking a few ideas to some people, and though I’ve joked about how I’m going to just “write smut” so I can make a quick buck or two, I still want this to be a good story.  I can’t help it:  even my erotica has to be about more than just fucking.  I’m strange that way.

For example, when I’m talking about the cabin where my story will take place, I bring up a cabin.  What does my cabin look like?  Gander to the right, if you will . . .  I was speaking with Annie (yes, she was around!) and we discussed how sometimes you have to see something in order to describe it.  I’ll admit, I never used to be that way, but when it comes to buildings and apartments and the like, there are times when I need to know how everything is laid out.

I created the interior using Sweet Home 3D, which is a fantastic open source modeling program (check them out, download, and drop them a few bucks for the effort).  I only needed a few simple templates to show me how everything is suppose to look, and with the split screen I can design and get a 3D look at everything in real time.  (One of the great things I liked was as I moved objects onto the design screen, I’d see them moving around in the 3D screen, and if I adjusted then in modeling, they’d adjust in 3D.  It’s like moving furniture in your house, only you’re doing it on a computer with a lot less back strain.)

So now I have a good idea what things sort of look like, so when the action gets hot and heavy, and I need to knock things over because of way too much Sexy happening, I’ll know where the knockage occurs, and how it’s going to break.

It’s not only the look of the story I want right, but I started wondering, late last night, if my mental flow is going the right direction.  So I brought up FreeMind and began mapping out my ideas into something logical.  This is another open source program I use from time to time, when I need to “think” about how I want a scene–or, in this case, a story–to flow.  It’s another great tool if you feel yourself stuck on something and you want to shake your mind loose . . .

I have my thoughts and ideas collected here, as you can see.  I know how to read the flow of the picture to the right, and there are arrows to show me where I need to go from one set of ideas to another.  I’m not finished laying it out all–after all, I was working on this until about eleven-thirty last night, and the eyes were starting to burn a little–but I’ll have it all worked out and into Scrivener by this afternoon.

There was a point last night when two questions came to mind:  one, am I spending way too much time developing a story that’s suppose to be a short (for me), quick, tale of fantasy screwing?  Finally, two:  is there enough hot sex going down?  I mean, yeah, I do erotica, but I also write about characters, and knowing why you wanna get laid is just as important to me as getting there.

Ah, well, perhaps I’m over-thinking this story.  Then again, it is my story–

I can do that if I want to, you know.

Desert Rising

It’s a lazy Saturday, with the weather gray and rainy.  Perfect sort of day for staying in and writing . . . which was my plan anyway, but at least the weather is cooperating.

I surprised myself last night.  I didn’t get into working on Suggestive Amusements until about nine-thirty, and when I did begin writing I was tired as hell.  But I began Chapter Fifteen, and it was as if a second wind of creativity hit me.  There were thing on Google Maps I needed to look up, and I needed to work through a couple of ideas that were swirling about my mind, but it didn’t slow me up that much.

By the time I finally hauled myself off to bed, with my eyes threatening to close at any moment, the novel was eight hundred words closer to the finale.  I didn’t feel like I had to push myself to get the words written–if anything, I wanted to keep going.  I knew I wouldn’t get a thousand in, but I knew I’d get close.

There’s a thing about using Google Maps to look around where I’m writing scenes, and that I look at the places where my characters are going, and I can see what they look like, I can feel the environment around them.  I’m writing about the desert, a region with which I’ve had limited experience, because I don’t call visiting Las Vegas in 1992 and driving out to Hoover Dam the best way of gaining experience with being in the middle of hot, dry nowhere.

Still, even though the whole time I was in Vegas it was close to one hundred and twenty with about twenty percent humidity every day, I loved it.  It was the first time my sinuses cleared since about forever, and there was something pure and clean about being in the heat.  Not the humidity:  the hell with that.  It’s one of the reasons I stay inside during the Chicago summers, because there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re walking in steam room every time you go out to check on the mail.

Two of my main characters in Suggestive Amusements are from the desert:  Keith from Las Vegas and Elektra from Alamogordo  New Mexico, and given that Erin’s first conscious moments took place in the middle of ancient Iraq, I guess we can put her in the desert dweller column as well.  All of this means hitting the maps, doing my research–and looking up stuff on things happening in Mesopotamia eight thousand years ago is fun!–and imagining what those places look like is a creative exercise everyone should try at least once.

But I’ll soon leave the desert behind and move back to an alternate Chicago, and deal with the rainy humidity in that story, and probably not go on desert walkabout for a while.  Maybe the mountains after this, or another country.  Then again, I hear the waters on Mars are great this time of year.

All I gotta do is terraform the planet and it’s all good, right?

 

The Need For Make Believe

It may not look like it, but that’s Iceland and Hatsune Miku in the picture to the right.  Oh, sure, it looks like a couple of girls in funny, costumes, but trust me on who they are.  I know, because I spend the day with them, and I’m familiar with their back story.

Yesterday was a day spent at a local anime con, and while I wasn’t all that much in a hurry to go–mostly because I had a lot of editing to do, and being there was going to take away from that time–I went, mostly because my daughter wanted me to go.

While I walked around a bit, and mingled with the otaku crowds–and even spoke with a few old friends that I hadn’t seen in a few years–I mostly found a place to sit, plug in my computer, and chat a bit while I snapped pictures with my phone and uploaded said pictures to my Facebook page.  And I wasn’t being a creeper; the one time I snapped a picture of someone else, I asked if I could take her picture.  There is a certain decorum one should maintain when you are at a con, and people–particularly woman–are in costume.

Otherwise you should stay home and leave the people having fun alone.

There was a time when I had my own anime fandom.  I like to tell my daughter I’m “Old School,” which is a way of saying, “None of the stuff I watch has been around for decades.”  But I’ve worn by share of crazy tee shirts, and sat through my share of films that, back in the day–aka, twenty years ago–were subtitled by fans because that was the only way you could see that stuff that, at the time, wasn’t suppose to be seen outside of Japan.

The only time I’ve every gotten into costume goes back even farther:  1984, to be precise.  It was at a Doctor Who convention in Chicago, and I decided to dress up at the Forth Doctor, complete with a twenty-one foot scarf.  It’s unfortunate that no pictures of this event exist any longer–the ex-wife has them all, I believe–but somewhere there is a picture of me mugging to the camera while I stand next to a Dalek a couple of guys made in there high school auto shop.  Good times, let me tell you.

Since I don’t have that picture, I’ll have to give you something else, which is likely to be a bit frightening.  So here you go:  me as Hatsune Miku.  Kawaii!  You’re welcome.

I wish my earrings had been longer . . .

There is nothing wrong with getting up in costume–or, as the kids called it, cosplay–and having a good time.  Make believe is what I do for a part-time living, remember?  Maybe I’m not getting into a costume every time I write, but I am getting into there heads.  In a way, I have to be my characters so I can deal with them, deal with how they are suppose to be feeling, and help them figure out where they’re headed within the context of the story.

You have to get inside their skin, put on their clothes, and walk in their shoes.  When I read a story, I can tell when someone has gotten into the mind of their character, and when they are just “writing them out.”  And I’m not talking about Mary Sueing someone; I mean when you have sat and thought about what the character is suppose to do, how they are suppose to feel, knowing their dreams and aspirations, their fears and flaws.  Particularly those last two, because what is a real character if they have no fears, no flaws?  I’ll tell you who they are:  someone named Mary Sue.  Please, you may love the ground I walk upon.

Getting in touch with an inner child is important when you write.  Neil Gaiman said it best:  ”Growing up is highly
overrated.  Just be an author.”  Think about how much fun it was pretending you were someone else, and channel that feeling into something that brings a feeling of wonder to some place inside yourself that hasn’t been touched in a while.  Sometimes you gotta break out the imagination.  Some times you gotta remember what it was like trying to wear mom’s high heels.  As a famous doctor once said, “There’s no point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes.“

As for getting the mind limber and going to different places . . . Miku-chan (not me, the one at the very top) had reddish hair under that wig, and she said she wanted people to call her Pepper Potts–who, as we know, is the only thing that allows that drunk Tony Stark to do the things a normal person does–though I’m sure a fifth of Crown Royal helps.  Thinking ahead, I told her she should keep her hair color, and come to the con next year as Rescue, wearing her own powered armor suit.

If you look at the picture to the right, you can see just how fetching an Iron Pepper would look.  Who cares if it’s gonna be a lot of work to put it together, because if you show up at a con looking like that, you’re going to rock.

So let that cosplay flag fly.  Use it in your daily life, because we don’t have as much fun as we should, and if you aren’t having fun day-to-day, then what’s the point.  And let it come out and play when you feel the need to create something that’s going to entertain others–even if that “other” is only you.

And you know what?  I look good in a wig.  I don’t know about the blue hair, though.  Maybe something in a red, then I can say, “I wear ginger now . . . gingers are cool.”

Catchy line.  I should use that more often.

The Predominance of Imagination

Ah, the strangeness that is a Friday night.

First off, and you can all just hold back your excitement, I sent off my first query letter.  Yes, just like I said I was going to do, I hit the bricks last night, spent an hour getting my submission package together, and by 10 PM or so, I had my query for Couples Dance off to Hazardous Press.  As this is Memorial Day weekend, I don’t expect to hear anything right away, but keeping the fingers crossed.  Though, to be honest, I expect this one to be the big rejection.  Can’t be loved all the time, right?

It’s out there, though.  And if I get a rejection, I have a few other places to send the novel.  And I will.  Keep it moving, keep it out there until someone buys the damn thing.  Yes, it hurts to get rejected, but you can’t have rejection without throwing yourself out there for all to see.

Now, for new insanity . . .

Yesterday I threw out a challenge to fellow blogger Wendy Siefken.  Sort of a challenge, because I was pretty much being silly.  Somewhere along the line of a thread on Facebook, I told her I was really a girl at heart, and she said that brought to mind some images she’d rather not see.  As I like to point out, once you’re seen them, you can never unsee them, so told her she should blog about it.  And she took up the challenge, posting her ideas here.

Now, to further blow Wendy’s mind–’cause I know she’ll read this post–I have been in a dress.  One Halloween, 1985, I believe, I went to a dance dressed as Holly Hobbie.  Now, we’re talking old school Holly here, not the sem-hip tween she is now, so I had it all:  dress, bonnet, and some Mary Janes that actually fit.  I have to say, it wasn’t that bad of an experience, because–well, how many guys can show up at a bar for a dance, in a dress, and not have people instantly wanting to spit on them?  As Captain Tightpants once pointed out, there was a very nice air flow thing going on under there, but because I hadn’t yet built a time machine, I was unable to deliver the immortal line, “I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you.”  Can’t have it all, I suppose.

Oh, and I also shaved my legs, because you expect Holly to go out in public all hairy?  Hell, no.

I should point out that this all happened right before I got back into writing in the 1980′s.  My imagination was flying about in nine hundred different directions in those days, and I didn’t know it, but I was about to create my three–well, four–favorite characters.  It was the sort of imagination that said, “Yeah, you know, I think I can rock a Holly Hobbie outfit for Halloween,” and did it.

For us writer types, imagination is everything.  Even if you’re doing just a “slice of life” type story, you have to get your head about the idea that you’re going to build characters, put them into a situation, have them do things, and then, after you’ve thrown all that stuff in a big pot, you gotta show all that stuff to your readers.

Not only all that, but there is so much more going on that the reader may never see, but you, the writer, does.  Oh, yeah:  you see it all.  You see what they’re wearing.  You see the house.  You see the furniture.  You can tell if the bookcase needs dusting.  It’s there, all of it; your entire world.  It’s in your head, and you keep building on it each time you go back to your story, or stories.

You have to, because it’s where you live.

It’s like before I wrote Her Demonic Majesty.  I needed my main character, Jeannette, to have something to wear for her new role of “Ass Kicking Sorceress”, but I didn’t want her to dress like some troppy “Stripper in Combat” woman.  So I started thinking about the kind of outfits women in my new universe would wear, and then how I could adapt that to the sort of things Jeannette would wear, and I designed an outfit for her that fit into that world, and, I’m pretty sure, works.  And now, when I see her, I see her dressed like that.  Or in something very close to it.  After all, as her vampire friend Diana says, “You clean up very nicely.”

That’s what we do, folks.  We live in our own worlds, with the characters who may or may not be our friends.  We are consumed with our imagination, and often prefer those worlds to the thin reality that exists around us.

Each of your should feel lucky–

It’s not everyone who gets to take a holiday in my mind.