Month: May 2009

Death by Drowning, re-titled Point River has been sent off to Abyss and Apex.

Yup, flash fiction. Who knew? But that’s what it wanted to be.

Dinner. Novel. Book Group. Little Dorrit?

Catherine

It’s Monday, and what that usually means is true this Monday: vampires versus belle dames at Las Habladoras’ Blood is Thicker than Water!

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It’s Monday, and what that usually doesn’t mean is an announcement about my novella, but here’s one anyway:

Needles and Bones comes out as early as Thursday. This means that it’ll be out when I’m at Wiscon. Hoot!

There’s a Drollerie Chat 10 pm EST on Thursday night. Barring weirdness, I’ll be there to answer any questions you might have about Sister Night, Sister Moon and, you know, writing. To chat, simply click to The Drollerie Page, scroll down to the bottom, and hit the magical “chat at the bottom of the left most column. It’s that easy!

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Oh, Wiscon, how much we love thee! Don’t be afraid to say hello if you’re there.

My events are:

Saturday: Your Friend Academia from 2:30-3:45 in the Wisconsin Room. Hear learned people talk about the cool ways academia supports fans and fannish studies.

Sunday: Nightmares in Pleasant Dreams from 1:00-2:15 in Conference 2. Catherine Cheek! Shira Lipkin! Ellise Heiskell! Your humble self… All reading. I’ll be reading Sister Night, Sister Moon (part of) to celebrate its debutante ball.

Now…we pace the floor waiting for my new Baba Yaga shirt (mailed today) and my promo cards (mailed Thursday last).

Back to work!

Catherine

At this point in The Winter the Troll Danced with Old Nick, there are a lot of characters with a lot of motivations. A lot of things are going on. I’ve decided to get organized.

I’m pulling each character’s story out linearly. After I’ve followed the line of action of each character through the first series of events, and written the story lines from their viewpoints, I’ll mix it up and keep a few surprises.

This seems to be working pretty well. Recently, for example, I found myself losing track of Nick, who is one of the title characters, and therefore should be kept track of. It turns out that he’ll be responsible for the introduction of our main elf bad guy.

Word count has been mightily hefted. For the overall novel, however, ultimately word count will be mightily trimmed in the long run, as things will change. After MayNo, I suppose.

40041 / 90000 words. 44% done!

26580 / 50000 words. 53% done!

571 words behind or 1674 words for 14 days.

I hope the words are flowing off your fingertips.

Catherine

It’s been a while in coming. I’ve updated my To Do list.

Clearly, I’m not alternating with the Monte Cristo novel. I’m focusing on The Winter the Troll Danced with Old Nick and making some progress. The Monte Cristo novel will come once the Troll story is circulating.

I am kicking out the short story currently called Death by Drowning, with the intention of shooting it off to Abyss and Apex before the month is out. This thing is tight, full of exact vocabulary, and may turn into a piece of flash fiction. I think I’m channeling the spirit of Hemingway when he wrote A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. This worries me.

Frankie, okay, I’ll write it. That thing we talked about in your journal. I’ll post it in my awelkin journal. I won’t do it until Death by Drowning is done and submitted, but yeah, I have an idea.

My final plan is to take a look at several short pieces I wrote from 2002-2004, and see if I can suborn them to other purposes.

Finally, for Aric’s new venture, I have to do some character sketching.

Off to help a friend clean out a storage locker. Later, fellow keyboarders. I’ll be back.

Catherine

I wussed out, I must admit. I was having some trouble focusing on the early part one of the story, so I went and wrote some of the particularly vivid scenes from part 2 that have been floating around in my mind. This means that tomorrow I get to finish a Magdalene and Grant sword fight

One of the things that’s hard to do as I amass word count is to turn off my inner editor. I so long to sweep back over the first part and get things organized and move forward again. That will come. There are some advantages to this approach, like the discovery of surprises. And of course, coarse notes of inspiration as you go. Also, sarcastic comments on the more stupid bits to take them out!

Verbage?

34290 / 90000 words. 38% done!

MayNo:

20829 / 50000 words. 42% done!

3366 words behind or 1823 words for 16 days.

Catherine

This is about reading. An important aspect of writing is reading for a variety of reasons. I’ve been thinking about my reading lately, and the choices available to me. Here are the extremes.

1. X is hot. Let’s publish everything we can about X, because readers will buy it.

X in this equation equals vampires, tough urban fantasy chicks with tramp stamps, faeries, supernatural chick lit, and, increasingly, zombies. Good books exist in all of the X categories. It’s that there are usually so many of these published that some of them are cliches of their genre. This reader tires of things that try to be the same, and hopes for the inevitable implosion sooner rather than later.

And unfortunately, it closes me off from reading maybe some good books, because I’m tired of same-i-ness.

2. You like X. You like Y. You like Z. Let’s put them all together into a book.

Let X be Jane Austen. Let Y be zombies. Let Z be supernatural monster hunters. Should all of these be in a book together? Let X be vampires. Let Y be werewolves. Let Z be glitter. Should all of these be in a book together? Here, you’re likely to get something of genius, but often it’s like a child’s experiment in a kitchen, a potful of chocolate chips and catsup.

The tightrope most publishers walk for readers is between two extremes. Some authors and readers think there is a conspiracy theory for keeping the freshest things from coming through. Is there? Well, no more so than the rest of the history of publishing.

Add to this mix for me, personally, that my tastes are quirky. There’s no one type of book I’m going to read. A good example of a book I love is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Another? Sorcery and Celia. Another? Lest you begin to stereotype me, Happy Hour of the Damned.

I also love books that turn expectation on its ear. Jim Hines does it in his Jig the Goblin books. Just flips the expected.

And, of course, I’m a sucker for poetic craft. This year, Gregory Frost gets my imagery pat on the back, with Peter Beagle coming in second. Enjoy, Greg. Beagle is my favorite author across time, space, and dimension. That he came in second this year says a lot about Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet.

Yes, my tastes are eclectic. I find myself shrugging my shoulders at the usual book shelf offerings, and I rely on you to tell me what I should look for. That works sometimes.

I wish that more of what I liked, and less of what I don’t were published now, but publishers really need to sell to people other than English teachers with Dickensian tendencies. When I feel a lack, I find succor in an old, dead author. It’s all good.

I am convinced that original things escape by accident in publishing, a risky application of my second equation that works. And then, their themes are gang piled until we reach the first equation. That is where I am discomfited. I can’t see that literary books do any better than genre either. Risk is not the nature of publishing. Until it is.

Good luck, little books. Come find me. I am waiting for you to stretch my aesthetic appreciation.

Catherine

This is my ONE day of vacation between the spring and the summer semester, so I’m trying to squeeze a lot of life out it. I’m with the Iowa City writers group in the Java House Coffee shop, trying to get warmed up again. It’s slow going. I started writing two scenes that pretty much were dull, boring and pointless.

I think I’m onto something now.

By the way, I managed to make it to the Prineas and Butler reading last night, and enjoyed myself. Sarah was also reading at the aforementioned coffee house on the radio today. So, groovy.

I think I need another cup of coffee, and then I get to look into the depths of our main troll’s soul.

Well, that scene’s written, and I think it’s lunch now, so let’s do some stats and come back later.

31138 / 90000 words. 35% done!

17707 / 50000 words. 35% done!

6488 words behind or 2018 words per day. Obviously, I need to do more later!

And here I am in the language lab, ready to schmooze. This will be the last post of the day. Tonight I’m off to Sarah’s reading and signing. In about an hour and half. I’m grateful for a chance to get caught up some.

Here’s my favorite line bit of dialogue from the godmother debate.

“You need to come into the twenty-first century,” said Bergitte. “It’s not all magic wands, not anymore. There’s personal computing devices and we’ve got to be more ethnically diverse.”

“If tradition was good enough for our foremothers…” Jenny said stubbornly.

“You try to find a pumpkin outside of the Fareway in October,” mused Carolina. “All of them are shriveled up now.”

***

The last word counts for the day:

30393 / 90000 words. 34% done!

MayNo:

16932 / 50000 words. 34% done!

5650 words behind or 1946 for 17 days.

Another 45 minutes, and we get some more words. What I’m learning today is interesting. Maybe the reason the Hercules novel was easy to write wasn’t the structure. Maybe it was the ability to write all day. Once I was warmed up this morning, I managed to get in some hefty word count, and when I returned to writing after lunch, I had that old feeling of channeling once again.

It’s kind of hard to do more than warm up when you write in the evening after a demanding day of work, and you have about an hour to write. Revision becomes even more important in this kind of arena.

I’m pretty captivated with Sigurda at the moment. I suppose as I go through my work day, this too will pass.

Total Troll:

29127 / 90000 words. 32% done!

MayNo:

15666 / 50000 words. 31% done!

6916 words behind or 2020 words for 17 days.

Maybe this is doable after all…

I dunno…maybe I should write a journal entry as a sort of warm up to my novel writing more regularly. I have lots of good progress today that I think I can use.

Started my day with an interpersonal scene between Quartz and Siegfried, which was…complex. This led me to think of some solid Quartz plot wrinkles, so I took some notes there.

Then, I discovered the new way in which Feldspar has offed Pettigrew, and come out smelling like a rose, and it was cool.
Started the town meeting and got through some of it, but after writing for an hour and a half, I pooped out. So, I’m taking a break, and we’ll come back a little later if all’s well.

Verbage:

28368 / 90000 words. 32% done!

MayNo:

14907 / 50000 words. 30% done!

7675 words behind or 2064 a day for 17 days. To be continued…