Author: Catherine Schaff-Stump

Catherine Schaff-Stump writes fiction for children and young adults. Her most recent book, The Vessel of Ra, is the first book in the Klaereon Scroll series. She is currently working on its sequel, as well as penning the middle grade adventures of Abigail Rath, monster hunter.

Outtakes!

The Amanda outtakes will not die!

The end is in sight, but there’s a lot to write there.

I hope some of this stuff is useable later. It’s pretty cruel, but it’s not poorly written, and could be adapted under miserable circumstances (for the characters!),

Cath

Chapter 4 Outline and Isolde

I am about to work on the Amanda scenes a bit more, but before I do that, I wanted to report that I have puzzled out the structure of chapter 4. At the Christmas party, the following must happen:

Moira, Milo, Amanda, and Errol must royally torque Ma’at off, so that he decides they will be the 4 corners.

Stephanus and Shari’s relationship must be established.

We get a good look at the Klarion Scroll chamber (we didn’t get that yet in the other version, did we? 🙂 )

And I will begin the custody fight over Stephanus and Eurydice.

Isolde will be introduced in this chapter, or at the beginning of the next one. She’s my main antagonist, so I spent some time this evening constructively taking notes about the nature of her character and her background, as she’s mostly an unexplored character.

I need to explore some questions about British law and child custody. Namely

1. In a custody battle, is a natural parent preferred for a child’s welfare?
2. What is the role of counselling in the reinstatement of a child to an alcoholic, abusive parent?
3. How does the British legal system look at deviant behavior (deviant religious behavior, for example) in regard to child custody?

I’ll do a little research, but if any of you have any good references, please let me know! Thankees!

Catherine

A couple of days without writing

Took a day off Monday. Seemed like by the time I finished work and exercise, the umph wasn’t there. Today, I teach all day, so this one will be a no go as well.

I will have a great deal of time to write tomorrow, as Bryon has parent teacher conferences, and I will write. I have been making good progress on the Amanda scenes, and I’ll get that Errol advice scene down. Then I will return to chapter 4. If I could get all the way through chapter 4’s outline tomorrow, that would make me feel as though I had returned to where I wanted to be.

Catherine

Saturday and Sunday

Spent yesterday and will spend today working on outtake scenes from previous incarnation of story for fans of that version. It’s a lot of Amanda stuff. I wouldn’t mind getting to an Errol scene that’s on tap too, but we’ll see.

The Amanda stuff was pretty adrenaline laden when I first conceived of it, and now my brain is with my original material, so it’s not coming off as well as it would have. Moral of the story? Perhaps it IS a good idea to write these things down when you are first inspired to write them, sometimes, rather than holding them out as writing carrots.

Well, gotta get back to it. See you all tomorrow.

Catherine

Editing Complete

Have integrated all the changes from the past three months into Substance of Shadows the first two chapters, and into Gossamer and Viridian the first three chapters.

Now we wait on some feedback to chapter 3 of SoS. I have an outtake to write, and then we move on to plotting chapter 4.

Catherine

Chapter 3 Done!

Chapter 3 of Substance of Shadows is done, and will be posted at the fiction workshop tomorrow. I think I’ll post the Shari Pitch meets Errol Klarion scene for folks as well.

Tomorrow I will spend making suggested changes to chapters 1 and 2 of Substance of Shadows and fixing up a few suggestions for Gossamer and Viridian, so don’t expect any glowing news here. Just glowing scenes. 😛

Catherine

References on writers and agents

Lisa pointed out that Neil Gaiman had a huge article in his blog today on writers and agenting, and that he sited Teresa Nielsen Hadyn’s advice. I wanted to copy all that information in here for myself so, when the time is right, I can read up on this.

I so wanted to be able to handle all this writer stuff off to someone else, so I could just write. Feh.

Anyway…
Continue reading “References on writers and agents”