My Novel's Journey: Neeta Lyffe II: Marcel Chelemas

For me, the real fun of a book is the characters. So, today, I'd like to introduce you to Marcel...!


Isn't he a hottie? He thinks so, too. His good looks, cajun charm and street smarts almost make up for his narcissism and shallowness. He's probably the guy you want to date once--and frankly, that suits him jes' fine, himself. Just like his gold tooth shining from among his perfect pearly whites, he's aware of his character flaw and knows how to work it. Like he says, he's got signature style.

Marcel wins Zombie Death Extreme-Bayou, but rather than putting his million into an extermination business, he puts it into producing and marketing a self-help video, You CAN Survive the Zombie Apocalypse! Of course, he says he was inspired by one of the episodes of Neeta's season of ZDE, but how can you turn down the chance to do good and get rich without having to deal with the undead except perhaps in simulation?

Marcel grew up in the back streets of the French Quarter. Papa was an alcoholic; Mama dabbled in the "arts." The streets raised him, and he raised Cain--actually, Kane, his little brother. Little brother, however, grew up like Papa until the day he disappeared and came back two weeks later as the shambling undead. That was Marcel's first re-kill, at the tender age of twenty. (When he says it, the girls sigh, honest.) The good thing about it was Pa sobered up, but it was too little, too late as far as Marcel was concerned. He knew who he could depend on: his own dam' self. He was going to make the world his oyster, swallow that down, and find a new world to make his.

Now, he's in the new world of celebrities, thanks to ZDE, and he's got his goals. Top of the list is wooing a certain Anaheim exterminator away from her goofy boyfriend.



I got this photo from sxc.hu. It was taken by stylesr1.

My Novel's Journey: Rediscovering Discovery: Assigning Jobs

This week has been a series of starts and stops in rewriting Discovery. I'm not just killing off entire chapters and watching new ones rise from the ashes, but I'm having to rethink events and even characters.

This week's challenge came with Chapter Three: I'd decided that Thoren trying to keep the mission secret even from the participants until they were all on the ship was just silly and pointless. So James gets to meet the rest of the research team on the moon. I hadn't really introduced them formally in the previous versions, and thus didn't really mention all their jobs or special skills. Now I needed to.

I'd thought before about what kind of people would be on the team, but lost the notes and had to think about it all over again. This time, I made a comment online and before anyone saw my answer, they chimed in their own ideas. I won't go over them all, except to say that, while some didn't work for the situation in my novel, they did make me think. As a result I changed several positions. Here, then, is the research crew:

Dr William Thoren--Mission Leader

Chris David--astronomer who discovered the ship

Casey Ostrand--vidoegrapher--injured shoulder using exoskeleton

Merl Pritchard—environmental engineer

Keli Riggens—zoologist

Jason Larache--systems engineer.

Ian Hu--drive systems specialist, warp drive theorist

Gordon Radell-cryptography

Zabrina Muha--microbiologist

Mikah Kowalski—linguist

Unfortunately, changing Merl's job also changed his ability to be the inadvertent bad guy. However, that worked in my favor. You know the saying that if you're going to use a gun in Chapter 15, put it in Chapter Two? The corollary is don't make a point of the gun in Chapter Two unless you're going to use it in Chapter 15. Well, in both versions of Discovery, I had a "gun," a character named Cay who panics and accidentally hurts Ann. He's never seen or heard from again. Now, he's going to be part of the recovery crew, trying to prove himself, and as such will get involved in a series of events that will lead to his trying to destroy the alien ship. And Merl will still have a hand in that, but as the inadvertent influence that pushed Cay off the edge.

To get to this point, Merl gets to do some ol'-fashioned-down-home-come-to-Jesus preachin'! I had some fun with this, because Sister Ann goes to sit in, and in typical Ann fashion, seems to get the point while appearing completely flighty. (Merl says in his sermon that God's love is sufficient.)

Ann: I enjoyed listening to you. It made me think Plato.
Merl: my sermon made you think of a pagan philosopher?
Ann: necessary and sufficient conditions. Is God's love sufficient or merely necessary?
Merl: Merely?
Ann: As opposed to necessary and sufficient. Certainly accepting His love is merely necessary. It's in Corinthians… ( Get the quote about faith and deeds)
Merl: But He who liveth and believeth in me shall have everlasting life
Ann: Yes, exactly! Necessary and sufficient! So would you like to join me in Adoration?
Merl blanches: I think not.
Ann: Oh. Well, it's neither necessary nor sufficient, but it is loving!

My Novel's Journey: Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator: Unexpected Heroes

Sometimes, characters just have to take center stage whether you planned it or not. The past couple of weeks, I had two characters do just that.

For those that have come to the blog late, I'm writing about a zombie exterminator, Neeta Lyffe, who is training other exterminators as part of a reality TV show. Two of Neeta's apprentices from the show, LaCenta and Spud, were on 9-1-1 patrol with other exterminators as part of the show. At the time I was writing this, they were going to hang out in the vans and not have much happen. The chapter was about Neeta and two other apprentices getting called away from a concert in order to chase a zombie in the park.

However, once I finished, the chapter felt very incomplete. I decided I needed to at least touch on what the other teams had done that night. At first, I was going to have LaCenta get invited to the rest of the concert, as one of the singers wanted to dedicate a song to the zombie exterminators of the world. However, she had other plans. She and her team ended up re-killing a zombie who was on the rampage after his murderer. I also discovered that LaCenta speaks GhettoWoW, which is interesting as I'd never heard of GhettoWow until she brought it up. I had to consult with my husband on that one.

So that took care of LaCenta, and to a lesser extent, Nasir, another apprentice. That left poor Spud. Spud has been kind of an underdog in the show--skilled, but quiet and methodical. Director Dave calls him "the potatoes" of the show and has been hard pressed to pair him up with something as the meat. Well, Spud ended up being quite the hero when his team takes him to zombie central to actually catch some live zombies for research. The plan goes wrong and he saves the girl. Director Dave is having paroxysms of joy.

I'm working on a segue scene, then Neeta gets approached by a diet drink company that wants her to advertise for them. Then we get to the finale! I figure 20,000 more words to go. It's slowed for now because I have a contract for school planners due late May, but I'm hoping to finish before we move in June.

On Writing and Digging Out of Holes

(Note: This is not me.)
There comes a point in every novel (at least for me) when the momentum slows, and the characters seem to have retreated to their trailers to watch the TV shows I hate, and the internal editor wants to go back and rip apart the past 38,000 of 40,000 words. About that time, my mouth and stomach fight about whether I'm really hungry, and my hands try to convince my brain that they are better employed holding a mop or re-arranging furniture. Of course, my Muse if tempting me with the next story, while "Mom brain" is running a list of things I should do instead.

Ever get like that? Like I said. it might just be me.

I'm sure it's because I'm a pantster. By the time I get to the middle of a manuscript, I'm deep into the plot and characters, and have the subplots. I've been deep in a hole. digging away happily until I suddenly realize that that's a *deep* hole I'm standing in, and if I gave any thought about getting out, it was probably to have an arrow pointing to a rope. That rope--my vague idea of how it all ends--looks pretty wimpy and un-secure right then.

By now, I know better than to panic. My characters know how the story ends. They always have a way out: a nice set of instructions for turning the rope into a ladder or, on occasion, a secret underground road. However, I have to keep digging and forming the hole in order to find it. It's just that by now, we're both tired of me digging.

So what do I do? Depends. I may ask for a map (a.k.a. an outline) or a hint (brainstorming). I may look for help by asking my husband or friend or reading. No matter what I do, however, I keep digging.

I'm at 40,000 words. LaCenta, one of Neeta's apprentices, has not only re-killed her first zombie, but captured its murderer. Totally unexpected!

Character- and world- building interdependent

When it comes down to it, I'm more of a character writer than an idea, plot, or world writer; however, in a world like my DragonEye, PI, world, the two are very interdependent. The characters build the world, yet the world defines the characters, and the plot and ideas tell me what characters need to make an appearance.

For example, in Magic, Mensa and Mayhem, I needed someone to do some discreet searching--and if they could botch the job in a funny way, all the better. We all know the legend of the brownies--the Shoemaker and the Elves, the brownies who are supposed to clean your house for milk, there are plenty of legends, stories, even filk songs. I decided it'd be fun to have the brownies search and, as long as they were in the area, do what comes natural and clean, fix and finish things. Sometimes, that's a big help; sometimes, it's an annoyance, like when they re-arrange things to their logic, not yours. (Kind of like when your mother offers to do your dishes and puts things away according to where she'd put them.) Sometimes, it's a pain, like when they finish your crossword puzzle book. Sometimes, as artiste Melchoir Rawlings discovered, they decide for you your work isn't finished. ("My art! My beautiful art. Oh, it's too much to process! Deep breaths, deep breaths!")

So now I have good-intentioned, havoc-wrecking, independent-minded brownies loose with people who'd love to capture, hire or exterminate them. I have to keep them safe!

Here's where the worldbuilding comes in. I started with an idea I got from someone's terrific effort of explaining Santa Claus's Christmas deliveries: Santa operates in a state of quantum flux that allows him to be in constant motion. The reason you can't see him on Christmas Eve, is the idea that you can either know his position or his motion; so, if you see him, you know where he is; he can no longer be in motion and the whole quantum flux things ends with you getting coal in your stocking.
That's a pretty bad explanation of something I read several years ago, but it was enough to apply to the brownies: They operate in our dimension in a state of flux, so you can only know the things they've done. You can't observe what they are doing directly. Further, if you know you are seeing a brownie in action, that belief plays into it, too. Based on that, I set up the rules of the brownie world.

And then the story demanded that I find a way around them. So I decided to play heavily on the uncertainty principle and the idea that you can observe the effects as long as you don't observe them. And I came up with Schrödinger the Cat purse. Shro' is a play off a Japanese legend that the souls of cats can come back as other things--in this case, a purse that a Mundane Japanese woman purchased of the Interdimensional Internet. Which meant hammering out the idea of Interdimensional trade (the details of which are still fuzzy, mind you), plus the whole InterDimNet, which brings up some fun in the next novel...

So, plot breeds character, character breeds world, world influences plot, while at the same time develops the characters.

Welcome to the inner workings of my mind!

BTW, I've posted the chat transcripts for last night's worldbuilding seminar and the launch party at www.fabianspace.com. Check out the news section on the homepage for the links.

My Novel's Journey: MM&M--Creating Vern

They say there are no new stories--just new ways of telling the same story. I found this irritatingly true when I was trying to come up with a new dragon story for an anthology called Firestorm of Dragons.

I don't know why, but I felt determined to get into this anthology from DragonMoon, so one afternoon, I cornered my husband and demanded he brainstorm with me. Rob has a brilliant mind; plus, as a cadet, he read every science fiction and fantasy novel in the Air Force Academy library and had been struggling to keep up ever since. If someone had popularized a particular take on dragons, I trusted him to know it.

He did, too. No matter what idea I came up with--from the dragon as a victim to dragon in human form, he remembered someone who'd done it before. After a frustrating half hour of "How about...?" and "Been done," we called a break to go watch TV with the kids.

Our favorite show at the time was Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, a comedy improve, where comedians do skits. Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles have a noir schtick that pokes fun at those movies of hard-boiled PIs of the 40s and 50s. As we sat on the couch laughing, I realized I could write comedy noir--with a dragon! Rob hadn't heard of one, so from there, I started mining the cliché's.

Wrong side of the tracks: Let's put him on the wrong side of the Interdimensional Gap.

Disrespected by authority, unable/unwilling to get an "honest" job: The Gap recently happened, and the two universes don't trust each other. People in the mundane universe especially don't trust a real dragons. One thing's for sure--the US isnt' giving him a Green Card.

Chip on his shoulder: What better for a dragon than a bad run-in with St. George. Of course, our St. George killed dragons, so I decided to twist that. Faerie dragons, I decided, can't die, so George would have to find some other way to inconvenience/incapacitate him. I decided to make Holy Mages, and George put a spell on Vern: he took away all his dragon glory--size, strength, flight, magic, fire--then told him he could earn it back by serving sentient beings under the direction of the Church. (I had no idea then how important this idea would be to the DragonEye, PI, universe.)

From there, I added a damsel in distress, a romantic lead, a diabolical plot, and got "Dragon Eye, PI."

"Dragon Eye, PI" appeared in Firestorm of Dragons--much to my joy!--and I had the opportunity to see how others treated the theme of "dragons." I was floored by the imagination of my fellow contributors.



And I'm so very grateful to editors Michelle Acker and Kirk Dougal, and Gwen Gades, publisher of DragonMoon. I could not have done it without you!