Category: confusion

Coming Back to Life

I’ve never had much use for “the Holidays.”  I am asocial and dislike the dark of winter.  Even as an orthodox Catholic, Christmas is just a matter of “meh” for me.  And this year, things preyed on my mind.

  1. Would it be ready for Ohayocon?  “It?”  Wait & see, below the fold.
  2. With our family finances in tatters, I can neither afford a line-editor nor a book cover for Defiant.
  3. My wife silently badgers me to make my next writing project about her father’s oral history.  I want to do that; I’m committed to it.   But it’s not fun!  That’s work!  I want to SEE more of my friends and family in Machine Civilization!
  4. Day-job is becoming more and more oppressive, leading to my reaxion of coming home and immediately climbing into the bottle.  Very bad form.
  5. All combining into the past six weeks:  not writing a tanjed thing.  And, borderline psychotic as a result of it.  Hell, today, at day-job, I had to use scissors to cut out some QR barcodes.  My right hand shook badly enough that Friend Tracy asked if something was wrong….

Yes.  Yes there is:  in abandoning writing, I’ve abandoned myself.  I’m dying; at a rather astonishing rate.  I do not want this:  I’ve glimpses:  Gary & Henge, older, trying to talk out where and what to do with their love for one another.  Nichole5 stands with Togame atop the New Tokyo Tower, with its Reactionless Thruster crown, talking about off-world colonies.  Editing Pirate Twins into a light-novel-with-pictures or a graphic novel…

I’ve so much to do, and I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.  Lent and lighter evenings are upon me; I’m not one to “give up” as I’ve so little.  Instead, I shall take on:  my father-in-law’s history, Machine Civilization’s new stories, things I cannot imagine.

Clear the decks:  I’m engaging my enemy!

…

Apropos of this, below the fold is the utterly astounding artwork of Matt Michallow of StarArtWorks.  He, through me, the guy wearing his art, owned Ohayocon, the largest animecon of central Ohio, two weeks ago.  Over 350 pictures taken!

Continue reading “Coming Back to Life” →

Feed.Back

From a few in-person, including my wife, but mostly via email.  Why almost no one ever leaves comments here, I don’t know.

There was much unhappiness how I wrapped up Defiant Act 2.5:  at the pool with Joe’s diagnosis.  If I were to distill is all down, I guess “casually tossing out a main character!” would be the flak I caught.

Yeah.  I did.  Because this was never meant to be a coherent novel, but a nine-month long writing exercise, the break from Acts 2 and 3 was huge.  2.5 was meant to be a bridge; but, it seems that like the Lewis & Clarke, it was a bridge too far.  The anchor issue is that Joe MUST have cancer and go to Japan for treatment:  he’s on the boat back to Portland with Maya in “Cursed Hearts.”

Is it the hyper-sexualized environment of the pool, and the emotional whiplash after, when Nichole5 realizes her First Friend is sick?  A human girl would have no idea about his illness and banged him then and there.  Nichole5 chose to shatter the moment for everyone in face of what she sees as a medical emergency.

Perhaps I went too far, too fast.  I’ll give some thought as to how I might re-write this.  Suggestions welcome, as I see nothing, right now.

AM or PM?

“Meet me at eight!”

Who hasn’t been there at some moment of their life?  In this case, Nichole and Joe go back to Portland, a diversion to Zom’s, some other characters show up… for dinner…

Oh my God, they leave the battlezone at dawn!  That has them back into the City around 0800!  What the hell am I supposed to do for the next nine to ten hours?!

Continue reading “AM or PM?” →

Peace is Our Profession

As Churchill noted, jaw-jaw is better than war-war.  But, there are some people that just need killin.’  Cannibals, for instance.  I know way back in Defiant Act I, wrote that how they were dressed and cut their heads, “it was hard to tell the men from women.”  So, I could be really edgy and call them tranny-cannies; that should trigger a few thousand hate-hits to my little blog.

Meh.  I’m just here to tell the stories they show me; as Nichole discovers, sitting across from Mayor Johnson, in his study, politics is work.

Continue reading “Peace is Our Profession” →

Where away?

For Act 2.5 of Defiant, I’ve dealt a little with Mackenzie and now with Teresa.  They both have more to say, and I was planning on wrapping everything up about (two, three?) months hence with Joe’s diagnosis, say, two months before Nichole & Gil play out Act 3.

But… it seems too episodic:  here’s side character #1, here’s side character #2….  That may work in a seasonal show, but not so much in a novel.

I need a theme for this arc, and I’ve got nothing. I thought it might be family & loss (suggestive of a book title) what with Mac’s dead brother and Teresa’s missing, presumed dead, mother (and I know some of Nichole’s siblings were ‘failures’).  I might even find out more about Gil and Joe.  I did have one of them say or think, “everyone has lost someone in the Breakup.”

Episodic’s fine for blog posts; not a coherent novel.  I guess this is one of those retro times when I wish I had a traditional editor to tell me to get my shit together!  I am not writing one more word until I understand what they want me to say.

***

Suggestions welcome.

Walkies

It always make my dogs feel better.  Me, too.

A long, dry spell of not-writing.  Day Job has blown and several family issues.  Getting back on track.  This was a productive weekend, even if I’m another US$3000 in the hole.

“Defiant” – VERY likely under another name, my free webnovel, shall be published by Christmas.  Read about how I’m completing it, below the fold.

Continue reading “Walkies” →

Pirate Twins, 8

Learning to stop myself when I know the next dialog sequence between the characters.  That allows me 24 hours to play with the beginning of the next section.  Thus:  I saw the first ten lines between Logres and Libby yesterday.  I know what they talk about when the cross the Channel tonight.  As to what happens next, I’ll know before I sit back down to write in 23 hours.

Sneaky, old, clever, and lazy works for me.

Continue reading “Pirate Twins, 8” →

Wandering into the Future

Editing and cover for ‘Cursed Hearts’ complete and the hardcopy proof will be in my hands Thursday or Friday.  I’m sure there’s a half dozen more surprises lurking in there for me.  So for now, I can sit back and relax…!

[Wanders around the house.  Vacuums upstairs.  Looks at interwebs.  Glances at watch:  noon]

Bored!

I’d a notion last night this would happen, but was far too drunk to worry about it.  In the few quiet moments at Mass this morning, I did.  If I don’t start writing something, I’ll go crazy.  So, I paged through some notes and pondered.

At first, I thought about striking out in a completely different direction:  going back to the script I wrote for the Steampunk Reilly graphic novels; it has a good series of stories held together by a coherent overall arc and a brace of interesting characters.  It also has nothing to do with Machine Civilization.

About a week ago on A Writer’s Path (a super resource), I read an article about why a writer should, basically, “stay on message;” if you do SF, do SF.  If you write romance, write romance.  Given that I’ve written SF, religion, magic, romance, horror, friendship all through visual novels, traditional novels, websites, and picture books, I considered that to be a crock of shit.  In fact, I’ve very deliberately chosen to change genres, just to see what I can do.

However, there might be a useful nugget there still:  while I have used different characters and settings to tell different stories, they’ve – so far – all been in my future history, Machine Civilization.  Mulling on that – and that I think steampunk is much better suited for a visual medium – I put the Reilly story away.  Again.  So, what to do?  There on the sidebar (or in the Menu, depending on how you’re viewing this) is my free novel/writing experiment, “Defiant.”  It’s just possible that I could edit Acts 1-3 into Part 1 of 2 of another novel (and that would be a lot of editing!  It was never designed to be a free-standing story!).  It has some romantic elements that I could turn up or down, as well as a strong military theme.  Some politics, but not so much that my head starts spinning by page five (as it did with ‘Crosses & Doublecrosses).

Then again, having just come off of a novel, do I want to undertake something big again?  Would maybe two or three short stories be better both to keep me writing and the creative process engaged?  Short stories can also be scaled up, witness, ‘It’s Just Business’ (that was the original title) turning into ‘Cursed Hearts.’

Sighing into my computer screen, I imagine Ai’s family, Nichole’s family, and anyone left alive at Neuroi Corporation, sighing back at me, wondering when Stupid Writer will tell more of their stories.  Apologies, friends:  I’m trying.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent Cover?!”

Apologies to Henry II Plantagenet.  I’ve eleven days to decide a book cover between my two finalist.  I’ve been stumped for two days and want to be done by this weekend to get published, soonest!  A link to where you can take a look and vote is below.  Opinions welcome.

They’re both so tanjed good!  How to decide…?

https://99designs.com/contests/poll/2nc3oq

 

Train. Wreck.

After a busy fifteen days of Ohayocon prep, staunching the constant bloody nose of Dog #1, and writing a script for a 24-minute animated short, I’m finally back to Cursed Hearts.

[re-reads the last couple of paragraphs; scratches head]

[re-reads the last few pages; wonders who are these people?]

Oh…kay.  Looks as if I’m going to need to ‘re-familiarize’ myself with just what the Hell is going on in my own story.  Wonderful.