Let it be known that on this day, 12/12/12, I am back in the novel selling business! Wild Children is out, published by Curiosity Quills, and for those who want a copy here is their web page with links to order, or the US Amazon page if you want to skip straight to that. The process has been one disaster after another as my cursed luck tried to stop me from being published, but victory is mine at last. I want to thank my publisher Curiosity Quills, in fact. They soldiered on despite multiple hospitalizations, real life threatening stuff. Right now only the ereader version is out, but they do paper copies so that should be on the way. Heck, I've seen the interior .pdfs and this book is SO GORGEOUS.
Oh, and they set up a Facebook author page for me! It will be a mix of theirs and mine. We're getting me linked up as one of its administrators right now.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Saturday, December 8, 2012
A New Doll House Story
So, I've been hard at work doing Authory Stuff, which is basically writing. I just finished another Doll House story, Doll House: Amethyst, which I will link to below this paragraph! As far as I know, Curiosity Quills only wants my books, but I'll run it past them before publishing it online. A short story gave me a nice break between books, clearing my head enough that I will likely do the major edits on Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain next. My 'ol buddy Albert Berg said he thinks the later fights need to be more tense, and he's right, so I gotta fix that. You can't be good at something if you're not willing to do it right.
For your enjoyment: The draft version of Doll House: Amethyst.
On a side note, I finally changed my blog photo. If current publishing dates hold, I may soon be selling enough books to matter. While I was absolutely a nobody, random internet art was fine. I can't use art I don't own if it's even kinda helping make money. It might be illegal, and it's for damn sure rude. Fortunately, I have old cover art that I legally own to take samples from!
For your enjoyment: The draft version of Doll House: Amethyst.
On a side note, I finally changed my blog photo. If current publishing dates hold, I may soon be selling enough books to matter. While I was absolutely a nobody, random internet art was fine. I can't use art I don't own if it's even kinda helping make money. It might be illegal, and it's for damn sure rude. Fortunately, I have old cover art that I legally own to take samples from!
Monday, October 29, 2012
And That's #4!
Ladies and gentlemen and mysterious future beings who will read this blog to learn what an unsavory person their favorite author is, I finished the book! Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain is written! I just shopped the manuscript around to a bunch of friends of various levels of friendliness. What they do and don't like will be very instructive, here. I'm far less confident that this book is any good than I have been with others. I wanted to write a light-hearted, gentle book, and this is as pleasant as I can get. The problem is, I don't know if I have the skills to write a gripping narrative that doesn't involve misery and death!
Soon, I shall know if the book is any good. After that, once my head is clear I'll need to do a proofreading run on my own - tying up loose ends, making sure references from the end of the book match the beginning, tightening language, correcting typos, all that sort of jazz. Then, unless I've learned it's an utter failure, I offer it to my publisher and see if they're interested!
Presumably I'll be writing other things some time in the interim. I'd like to do some short stories, but I'll have to see how fast Metal, Candy, Flesh takes over my brain. I'm still reeling and it hasn't entirely penetrated this book is finished, so I can't predict.
Oh, and I wrote the last twelve thousand words in one day. THAT was CRAZY.
Soon, I shall know if the book is any good. After that, once my head is clear I'll need to do a proofreading run on my own - tying up loose ends, making sure references from the end of the book match the beginning, tightening language, correcting typos, all that sort of jazz. Then, unless I've learned it's an utter failure, I offer it to my publisher and see if they're interested!
Presumably I'll be writing other things some time in the interim. I'd like to do some short stories, but I'll have to see how fast Metal, Candy, Flesh takes over my brain. I'm still reeling and it hasn't entirely penetrated this book is finished, so I can't predict.
Oh, and I wrote the last twelve thousand words in one day. THAT was CRAZY.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
So Close
Moments ago I finished writing the second to last chapter of Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain. One left. It will be a big chapter and may be broken up into multiples later, but structurally it makes sense to write it as one.
I hope my sanity holds up. I get very obsessive and impatient this close to the end. That resulted in the last chapter of Quite Contrary being very sub-par and needing to be rewritten entirely. I do not intend for that to happen again.
Soon, book four will be complete, and I'll shop around copies to my writer friends to find out if it's any good.
I hope my sanity holds up. I get very obsessive and impatient this close to the end. That resulted in the last chapter of Quite Contrary being very sub-par and needing to be rewritten entirely. I do not intend for that to happen again.
Soon, book four will be complete, and I'll shop around copies to my writer friends to find out if it's any good.
Monday, September 10, 2012
And Then It Did
Good news! Verity is out of the hospital and on track for a full recovery. We finished up the editing on Wild Children. I am now officially done with my responsibilities for all three books, and publishing can move ahead! I can also clear my head of those books and focus on writing new ones.
Apropos of nothing, here are three quotes I really like:
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway
"When you stand before me and look at me, what do you know of the pain in me, and what I do I know of yours? And if I threw myself to the ground before you and cried and told you, what would you know more of me than of hell, if somebody told you that it is hot and terrible? For that reason alone we humans should should face each other so reverent, so thoughtful, so loving as if facing the gates of hell." - Franz Kafka
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. - C. S. Lewis
Apropos of nothing, here are three quotes I really like:
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway
"When you stand before me and look at me, what do you know of the pain in me, and what I do I know of yours? And if I threw myself to the ground before you and cried and told you, what would you know more of me than of hell, if somebody told you that it is hot and terrible? For that reason alone we humans should should face each other so reverent, so thoughtful, so loving as if facing the gates of hell." - Franz Kafka
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. - C. S. Lewis
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Well, That Didn't Happen
TOPIC #1
Okay, so I've been engaging in one of mankind's most predictable stupidities, holding off on anything else until the great project in front of me is over. That was book editing, and the editing of Wild Children dragged on and on, and I am only free now because it has been semi-sorta-canceled. My editor is in the hospital again, and this time it's serious and I am crossing my fingers for her, even the evil fingers. I hope everyone else will, too.
TOPIC #2
Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain has actually continued apace during this entire process. I think I just finished chapter 14? The problem there is that I can't post the WHOLE book online if I intend to get it published. I've reached the point where I reluctantly decided I should stop putting chapters on my blog.
TOPIC #3
I think I need a nap.
Okay, so I've been engaging in one of mankind's most predictable stupidities, holding off on anything else until the great project in front of me is over. That was book editing, and the editing of Wild Children dragged on and on, and I am only free now because it has been semi-sorta-canceled. My editor is in the hospital again, and this time it's serious and I am crossing my fingers for her, even the evil fingers. I hope everyone else will, too.
TOPIC #2
Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain has actually continued apace during this entire process. I think I just finished chapter 14? The problem there is that I can't post the WHOLE book online if I intend to get it published. I've reached the point where I reluctantly decided I should stop putting chapters on my blog.
TOPIC #3
I think I need a nap.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Snow White And The Betrayed Writer
I have just returned from seeing Snow White And The Huntsman at the movie theater, and I felt compelled, even obligated by duty to blog about it. Not because movie reviews are in any way my job, but because I have an opinion on this movie specifically as a writer.
First, I didn't like the movie. I hated the movie. It angered me. I still liked seeing it once for the thinking it provoked. I was struck very early on while watching it by a disconnect. I was idly evaluating the writing, because even in a bad movie there are lessons to be learned. What I noticed was that the dialog and events did not seem to belong to the actual movie I watched. As the movie went on, my opinion crystalized. Snow White And The Huntsman is a well written movie directed horribly. The story is a classic fairy tale, padded with lots of new fairy tale stuff to make it movie length. It has monsters and birds that lead the innocent girl to a snowy white horse, and a dark forest, and a wicked enchantress. The story is grand and fantastic, as in 'a fantasy', wholly unrealistic and aiming at dramatic and archtypal instead.
The movie is directed like Braveheart. Actually, the director seems to have seen a number of movies he liked, and scenes that as written could be depicted any number of ways became eerily reminiscent of LOTR, the Narnia movies, and a very blatant rip from Mononoke Hime. But mostly he arranged costumes, music, makeup, and directed the acting to be gritty and realistic. Lots of dirty, tangled hair, very little background music, stuttering performances where people stop to have moments of weakness. This does not combine well with a fairy tale story. The most fantastic and magical moments, with the troll and the White Hart, and the fairies, and so on, and a fair amount more so on, look utterly ridiculous and out of place. Similarly, you can't get interested in or process the human drama of the actors' portrayals, because every once in awhile someone will give a ridiculously hokey speech, or do something as unlikely and stylized as finding a white horse waiting for her outside the castle.
In some cases the directing and writing didn't just clash, the director didn't seem to know what he was reading. When a dwarf dies, he's all gasping and panicking. A single tear falls from Snow White's cheek onto his, and he calms down. He still dies, but he dies bravely and at peace. Except the director didn't get the memo, and while it happened, I had to be looking for it. I was looking for it, because they'd just had a scene where the originally surly and almost evil dwarfs warm up to Snow White around a campfire. The scene as written was one where Snow White's beauty and purity compelled them to love her, as it does everyone in the movie. It came off as a random and squalid dwarf party, made worse by one dwarf being really stalkery and pressing his face to her breasts. And how do I know what it was supposed to be like? Because, after sitting there noticing all this, a couple of scenes later the blind prophet dwarf explains specifically that Snow White has this effect on people. It had been going on all through the movie, it was just hard to see because the director either didn't figure it out, or his determination to make the actors behave like vulnerable and realistic human beings obscured it.
When Snow White rises from the dead after being poisoned, the blind dwarf turns to look before she walks out the door of the church. Except the director already had background people moving around, and the process goes so fast it looks like she's already left the building. Then she gives a grand and symbolic speech that's wildly out of character that everyone acts like is totally wise and moving even though it's glaringly weird. She mentions in passing in the speech that when the evil enchantress killed her she learned all about her magic and destiny and stuff, but it disappears in this speech that seems awkward because Snow White delivers it in a mud-colored courtyard, in the rain, surrounded by filthy and haggard people, in a cracking voice. If the director had so much as added a white glow or cleaned her up to her white dress, it would have been delivered wisdom from beyond the grave.
To sum up: A well written movie ruined by an incompetent director who seemed to want to make a different movie. Actually, several different specific movies. As a writer, this interested me, so I am sharing my reaction.
First, I didn't like the movie. I hated the movie. It angered me. I still liked seeing it once for the thinking it provoked. I was struck very early on while watching it by a disconnect. I was idly evaluating the writing, because even in a bad movie there are lessons to be learned. What I noticed was that the dialog and events did not seem to belong to the actual movie I watched. As the movie went on, my opinion crystalized. Snow White And The Huntsman is a well written movie directed horribly. The story is a classic fairy tale, padded with lots of new fairy tale stuff to make it movie length. It has monsters and birds that lead the innocent girl to a snowy white horse, and a dark forest, and a wicked enchantress. The story is grand and fantastic, as in 'a fantasy', wholly unrealistic and aiming at dramatic and archtypal instead.
The movie is directed like Braveheart. Actually, the director seems to have seen a number of movies he liked, and scenes that as written could be depicted any number of ways became eerily reminiscent of LOTR, the Narnia movies, and a very blatant rip from Mononoke Hime. But mostly he arranged costumes, music, makeup, and directed the acting to be gritty and realistic. Lots of dirty, tangled hair, very little background music, stuttering performances where people stop to have moments of weakness. This does not combine well with a fairy tale story. The most fantastic and magical moments, with the troll and the White Hart, and the fairies, and so on, and a fair amount more so on, look utterly ridiculous and out of place. Similarly, you can't get interested in or process the human drama of the actors' portrayals, because every once in awhile someone will give a ridiculously hokey speech, or do something as unlikely and stylized as finding a white horse waiting for her outside the castle.
In some cases the directing and writing didn't just clash, the director didn't seem to know what he was reading. When a dwarf dies, he's all gasping and panicking. A single tear falls from Snow White's cheek onto his, and he calms down. He still dies, but he dies bravely and at peace. Except the director didn't get the memo, and while it happened, I had to be looking for it. I was looking for it, because they'd just had a scene where the originally surly and almost evil dwarfs warm up to Snow White around a campfire. The scene as written was one where Snow White's beauty and purity compelled them to love her, as it does everyone in the movie. It came off as a random and squalid dwarf party, made worse by one dwarf being really stalkery and pressing his face to her breasts. And how do I know what it was supposed to be like? Because, after sitting there noticing all this, a couple of scenes later the blind prophet dwarf explains specifically that Snow White has this effect on people. It had been going on all through the movie, it was just hard to see because the director either didn't figure it out, or his determination to make the actors behave like vulnerable and realistic human beings obscured it.
When Snow White rises from the dead after being poisoned, the blind dwarf turns to look before she walks out the door of the church. Except the director already had background people moving around, and the process goes so fast it looks like she's already left the building. Then she gives a grand and symbolic speech that's wildly out of character that everyone acts like is totally wise and moving even though it's glaringly weird. She mentions in passing in the speech that when the evil enchantress killed her she learned all about her magic and destiny and stuff, but it disappears in this speech that seems awkward because Snow White delivers it in a mud-colored courtyard, in the rain, surrounded by filthy and haggard people, in a cracking voice. If the director had so much as added a white glow or cleaned her up to her white dress, it would have been delivered wisdom from beyond the grave.
To sum up: A well written movie ruined by an incompetent director who seemed to want to make a different movie. Actually, several different specific movies. As a writer, this interested me, so I am sharing my reaction.
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