My Novel's Journey: Speed Bumps 2

I managed 850 words on Neeta Lyffe: Zombie Exterminator this week. They've come up against a zombie in the park--but wait! It's just a geeky fanboy. Neeta is not pleased. This weekend, if I get time, she's going to show him just how displeased she is.

Part of my slowdown is that the location wasn't working, but I think I got that worked around. Roscoe, my sensitive, high maintenance character, doesn't want to go in the thick underbrush, and after some consideration, Neeta decided it looked like a nice place to get ambushed. So they gas the area. Writing moral for the week: If you come across a snag in your story, it helps sometimes to just write anyway and see if your characters can figure it out for you.

Anyway, the rest of the week has been spent with sick kids, putting in the suggestions for Why God Matters and going through the final edits on Infinite Space, Infinite God II. Yay! I was starting to sweat getting that in time for the projected launch date. I still think it will be later in April, which is a bummer, because it messes up my chance for a launch party at Godspace. Maybe I can do it in late May or early June.

I also managed to get my DragonEye, PI newsletter done. Someone reminded me the March issue hadn't come out yet. You can read it at http://www.myebook.com/ebook_viewer.php?ebookId=31006 or if you're registered on my website, you can download it in PDF. This time, Grace talks about meeting Vern for the first time. He didn't make a good first impression.

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!

My Novel's Journey: the Little ReWrite That Grew

2009 has been a flurry of conferences, outside opportunities (i.e. non-writing work), sick family members and things I keep forgetting. I find myself dreaming of an author's getaway. A little hotel room. No internet, no kids, nothing but me and my current WIP. Unfortunately, neither my finances nor my life are suited for such luxuries.

I sure could us it, though. Discovery is giving me fits. I have made one important discovery with it: re-writing a NaNoWriMo draft is not as easy as it looks.

I loved this story when I wrote it in the flurry of a November. I still love the idea, and some of the scenes are terrific. However, I'm finding that there's waaaay too much talking, explaining, rehashing... A couple of the characters have told me their motivations, but like bad actors, appear cardboard in the text.

So the process has literally been write a great scene, rip out a bad one. In four months, I've only progressed 10,000 words. (Consider my usual modus operandi is to write a complete novel in 6 weeks.) I approach the document with dread and moan or snarl as I read the stuff I thought was so clever only three years ago.

So why am I bothering? Why put off my DragonEye novels (GapMan, and Damsels and Knights) to do this? Because there's a story in there--a great story. A story about finding love that transcends romance and living a good life that does more than follow the rules. Sister Rita and James, Chris and Andy, Sister Ann and Sister Tommie are wonderful characters. I want to tell their story.

Wish I could get them all alone in a hotel for a week so we could hammer it out. But it looks like I'll just have to take it one scene at a time.

Magic, Mensa and Mayhem update: Got the colored in cover art. Vern is the wrong color, so I sent a picture of the shades I imagined.

My Novel's Journey: Reactions and Writing Group Reactions

You're on an asteroid mining team has just been hired for a secret mission. Your supervisor will only tell you that it's the most amazing thing you'll ever do and that it'll pay a wonderfully obscene amount of money plus a percentage of what you recover.

Your team boards a ship heading to the edge of the solar system. You find it populated with a minimal crew and a bunch of scientists who lord it over you like you're some kind of ditch digger from Earth. No one will tell you anything until the mission commander (an astronomy professor who's enjoying his time as King of the Hill) decides to brief the entire team.

The time comes--and you learn you're about to excavate the first-ever discovered alien spacecraft.

How do you react?

This is the question I was struggling with for Discovery. My group of miners were on the ship Edwina Thomas heading to the Kuiper Belt for a week before the Rescue Sisters could join them, and only then would Dr. Thoren agree to brief everyone. In the first draft, he had already briefed everyone but the sisters, but I thought it'd show his controlling nature to make them all wait. Besides, it'd be fun to write the reactions.

I wanted a range of reactions, so I asked some of my favorite groups. I got surprisingly similar answers. As one friend summed it, "Fear or excitement. that's about it."

But is it? There's denial, stunned silence, awe, even greed for what they might find and sell. (In this future, which has become highly commercialized in the academic circles, that's actually the prevailing motivation: how can this turn a profit and improve my stature?) Then there're those like Sister Thomas, who simply look at it from a practical standpoint; or Sister Ann, who immediately empathizes with the aliens who have died and starts praying a rosary for them.

And of course, humor, because I don't write anything without a little bit of fun.

It's always interesting to ask questions like this and see what ideas you get, but when it comes to writing, you have to know your characters' personalities to get their reactions. No one can dictate those for you.

Fave Phrase: Here's how the scene panned out. I don't see Thorem saying "all right!" so I need some more pompous exclamation for him.

"Ladies and gentlemen--"

He put a hologram of the alien ship.

Sleek and dark against the gray of the asteroid, the ship rested. Six arms, like crescent moons arched away then back toward a roughly ball-shaped center, then ends of one settling on the join of the next, except for one that was half-buried under rubble from the crash. Even after months of studying it, Kris never tired of admiring the design, or what it meant for humankind:

"--we are not alone."

There was a moment of silence, then.

"Oh, vac! How long are you going to yank our chain?"

"He's serious, Harper," Hayden said.

"You're kidding right? Why wouldn't we have seen it by now?" Fred Harper griped.

"No one's looked!" Kris said. He almost yelled; the answer seemed so blindingly obvious. He pulled up another hologram--this one of the solar system and the route taken by the Seeker probe. While he tried to explain about the probe and how he'd happened upon this discovery, the miners started talking amongst themselves. Some were hooting with joy, others shaking their heads, but a few were snarling. Did they think he was still lying? He kept talking, but cast an uneasy glance at Dr. Thoren.

Hayden snapped, "All right, people, focus. You can gripe about the bet later."

"--on the far side of the asteroid when it crashed-- Wait a minute. You had a bet?"

"Sure. On what we were digging up."

"And I won," Dale Michaels said smugly.

"Right and I don't believe for a minute you--"

"Mr. David!" Sister Ann spoke up. "Your ship didn't crash. Did it, Tommie?"

Sr. Thomas mashed her lips together a moment, then said, "No. It's not a great landing, but it's not a crash. An uncontrolled collision and that ship would have blasted that rock apart. Instead..." She got up and walked to the display. By setting her hands on the section she wanted, she was able to rotate it toward the miners and enlarge. She pointed to one area. Kris walked around so he could see as well.

"Instead, you have this one spoke that's dug into the side of the asteroid. They had to have been going pretty slow at this point, or they'd have sheared off that part of the rock. More of an angle, and they might have caught and flipped. Of course this is all looking at it like a human pilot."

"What if it's an anchor, like the screw on a MiGR?" Sr. Rita asked.

Sr. Thomas was looking over the ship carefully, causing the miners to holler for her to move away so they could see. "I don't see much damage at all. Are we sure it's a ship and not a station?"

"Uh, we're really not sure of anything," Kris answered. From the corner of his eye, he saw Andy grinning. Did she wink at him? He looked hear way, but she'd turned to the youngest nun.

Sr. Thomas grunted. "Hope for a ship. Easier to move."

"I'm all for easy!" one of the miners called out and promptly received a number of derogatory comments from his peers. Side conversations started as the miners, now accepting that these people at least believed they'd found an alien ship and weren't pulling some kind of sick practical joke, speculated on what they'd find, how they'd extract it...

The noise rose, but Kris didn't care. Interspersed among the mundane discussions of equipment and procedures, he heard comments like "I hope it's a station; we'll see how they lived," "What do you think they looked like?" and "Can you imagine if we find..."

Some people were almost shouting in their excitement, but under it was the whisper Kris had longed to hear: kindred spirits...

George Powers, a loudmouth even in the best of circumstances, stood and hollered, "I cannot believe we are going to be the first to encounter aliens! Actual Goddamn, fuckin' aliens!"

Sr. Ann stood and turned on the miner. "Shame on you! We don't know what God's plan is for those poor souls."

"Or how they reproduce," Galen added dryly, causing the room to erupt with laughter and a speculation of a different kind.

"All right!" Thoren called out. "Let's get back on topic, shall we?"

My Novel's Journey: Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite

Discovery is going far more slowly than I'd anticipated. There's something daunting about taking a two-year-old manuscript and re-writing it. On the one hand, you'd think it'd be easy, since I'm 55,000 words ahead and have the plot all lined out. However, the rehashing of scenes, the decision to keep this, scrap that, move the other is more mentally taxing than just sitting and writing afresh. Must be because I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer and not a big outliner. (LOL--I wrote "poutliner" at first--you can see my mindset.)

At any rate, with all the cutting, I've probably written 10,000 words and only have 3,000 to show for it. That's OK--they're better words. Right now, I'm re-writing a scene for the second time. It's a rather comic scene, where I illustrate some of the problems Sisters Thomas, Rita and Ann will have to deal with as far as the attitudes of the research team and the asteroid miners. The first time, I had a walk-and-talk as Andy tells them the problems. This time, I have Sister Rita have to deal with them--miners grumbling about cleaning up the messes the researchers are leaving, researchers pouting about having to keep the place so hyper-neat, researchers scattered all over the ship as they pick whatever room they feel like, and one adventurous professor who thinks handling a exoskeleton should be easy. That scene is fun--in the first write, I just mentioned that he pulled his shoulder trying to use the mechsuit. This time, I have him losing his balance, falling on his back like a turtle and putting dents in the walls as he struggles to get up, calling the whole time, "I'm OK! I can do this! I--ow!"

Second writing was from Kris David's POV. Kris is a grad student at Luna Technological Institue (yes, he's a LunaTech). He discovered the alien ship that they're going to explore. His supervisor is the leader, and a bit of a pompous jerk, so Kris is going to get slowly pushed into a leadership role. This is his first "push." I did it as a flashback, but that didn't work, so I did it again as he experienced it. However, that's not working out--there's too much him reacting to what Sister Rita does. So, I'm going to re-write it with Sister Rita in the limelight and have her observing him floundering. Then at the end, I may have his overall reaction when Andy comes over to talk to him.

In the meantime, I have my Christmas story up on the DragonEye, PI website. "Christmas Spirits: From the Case Files of DragonEye, PI" is available for download for $1.50.

Fave Phrase: Since I'm re-writing the mech suit scene, here's Sister Rita's, Sister Ann's and Sister Thomas' first view of the Edwina Thomas, the interplanetary cruise ship ColeCorp bought to carry the research team to the alien ship:

The Edwina Thomas, so named for the actress who starred in a successful series of holographic games called Lola Quintain and the Star of Vengeance, was a bullet-shaped behemoth with a shiny metallic finish and red piping along the three fins that flared over the "bottom" third of the ship.

"It's almost as big as the convent," Rita whispered, then laughed. "I can't get over the stabilizer fins, though! 'Pre-millennial motif,' indeed!"

"It gets better--look!" Tommie focused the forward screens on the stories-high painting splashed over the nose cone: A buxom woman with skin the color of expensive coffee dressed in a hardshell spacesuit posing in front of the words Edwina Thomas.
"Well, that's certainly..." She tried to think of an appropriate word and ended up snorting through her nose and falling into giggles.

"And this is what ColeCorp bought to explore an alien ship?" Tommie asked. She tried--and failed--to sound stern.

"I guess the secret's safe!" Rita managed to gasp out. The magnitude of their mission and the lack of sleep from the preparation had left her feeling punchy. She'd taken a nap, but it had been short and full of weird dreams she only half-remembered. At least the only time she had thought of James was when she prayed, and then only to notice that she hadn't thought of him. Still, laughter brought welcome release.

My Novel's Journey: Off to the Publisher

Live and Let Fly went to the publisher at 10:30 CST last night!

I want to thank those who took the time to proof and critique the manuscript, especially my friend Ann Lewis. Ann's mother died last month, so she only got through the first chapter before her life went topsy-turvy. However, she pegged me on my main weakness--the early data dump--and called me on it. As I looked it over, I decided I liked the narrative, and didn't see a way to weave it into the action of the first chapter, so I made it the prologue, which is a much nicer fit for the information, anyway. Then I needed a title for that, and Ann came through again.

Everyone who read the manuscript and got me back comments made a difference. When you read it, know that you have them to thank.

Of course, another great help to a manuscript is to read it after not having laid eyes on it for a few weeks. As I went through it for the last time this weekend, I found even more repeated words (that's becoming my pet peeve!) and a few places where I missed a detail or felt, now that I saw the action with new eyes, that I hadn't explained enough. No matter how much you tweak a manuscript, there's always something more you can do.

However, there's also a point where you say, "Good enough!" and send it off. That time was late last night. I feel really good about Live and Let Fly.

What's next? Christmas decorating, editing Infinite Space, Infinite God II, and finishing my sci-fi novel, Discovery. I had planned to make Discovery hard sci-fi, but given the publisher I hope to send it to, I'm going to soften it up by putting more of the tech behind-the-scenes. It's less pressure on me, too. Stay tuned Thursday evenings or Friday mornings for my next Novel's Journey as we explore writing Catholic sci-fi.

Picking Book Covers!

One of the joys of working with independent presses is that they often give the author a say in their book covers.

Book covers are very important. You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but an attractive cover that reflects the theme of the book will draw readers. In the bookstore, that will get a book off the shelf and into someone's hands--and from there, you the author can sell the story. Now, this is my educated opinion, but it's been corroborated by authors with more experience than me and some case studies. Here's a series of articles on book covers by Laura Resnick, and an abstract asserting that the reputation of the author (in the case of technical books), reputation of the publisher and the attractiveness of the cover influence readers.

Rob and I have been fortunate that we have worked with publishers who listen to us. the eye-catching cover of Infinite Space, Infinite God was a last-minute decision when the more complex cover just didn't work out. (It would have made a gorgeous print, but didn't work as a cover.) Leaps of Faith started out with a ship entering a space station. Unfortunately, the station looked like a giant PacMan brain to me and I had visions of Monty Python for some reason. I let Cynthia know, and she made some simple changes--using a planet instead of a station--and the cover is very eye-catching.

Dindy at Swimming Kangaroo is letting me take an even closer hand with the cover of Magic, Mensa and Mayhem. She has given me a list of four very talented illustrators to choose from. they are all terrific; so much so that none stood out and screamed "I'm Vern's illustrator!" I spent most of the weekend poring over their art, looking at their websites, consulting with my artist daughter and with Rob. I narrowed it down to two and sheepishly sent Dindy a note with my thoughts. I concluded with the wish that the two I chose would Vern in the style we were thinking of. I really didn't expect that she'd then take that request to them, but later that day, she asked me to send her a description of Vern for the two authors to try out.

So the exciting process continues!

Magic, Mensa and Mayhem comes out March 1, BTW. I can hardly wait!

BTW--here are the finalists I chose:

Brian England
http://www.eiotech.com/html/color/portfolio1.html

Megan Stringfellow
http://stringfellowart.net/wordpress/

My Novel's Journey: "Second" Edit Done

This week, I finished reading Live and Let Fly to the kids. That ends what I usually call my "second edit." We had a 2-hour marathon read toward the end; I was anxious to be done, and the kids were anxious to get to the "Loki chunks" line. Like "Run Away!" from Monty Python's Holy Grail, I think that's one phrase that will be heard in our family for a long time.

My oldest son has a new saying, "That never gets old." He sometimes repeats a punch line or gag to himself, then chuckles, "That never gets old." Usually, it's about something slapstick or puerile, but funny nonetheless. He's now quoting Live and Let Fly. How could I not agree with him?

One thing I discovered this time is that I'm using phrases and in-jokes that are at a more mature level than I'd expected. Many times I had to stop to define a word, explain a situation or joke, or remind them of how something earlier in the book applied to the current situation. I enjoyed it--and I found it encouraged my younger boys to ask me about words they didn't understand in other situations as well. (Liam has asked me several times in Church to define a word from the Scripture reading.) We still read to the younger two at night, but usually the stories they want to hear, so I enjoyed expanding their horizons with my story.

I did find the epilogue needed a restructure, but it was a simple enough change. Now I wait for the critiquers.

Fave Phrase: Here's one of Steven's "never gets old" and has Monty Python elements, too.

Sister Michaela Joan hopped onto my back, strapped and bucked herself on and declared herself ready to rope an errant demigod.

The command crew gathered outside to watch us.

The lieutenant said, "You know, when we got called to duty yesterday, I never expected to see something like this."

I reared up dramatically and Sister Michaela Joan, an experienced rider, held her balance.

I said, "No one expects--"

"The Spanish Inquisition!" my caballera nun finished with me.

I flapped my wings, applied my magic, and we flew off amid applause and calls of "Oorah!"

"Someday, you must tell me why that is so funny," Sister Michaela said to me as we gained altitude.

My Novel's Journey: Third Stage Edit Brings Embarassing Results

This week, I started the third stage edits of Live and Let Fly.

Second stage is read aloud, which I'm still doing. (Reading aloud lets you hear your book: its cadence, phrase choice, joke set-up and execution. You engage a different part of your brain, and it judges your manuscript differently.) Since my kids love Vern stories, it's become our nightly routine. However, that takes awhile when going one chapter a night, so I also started the third edit, which is read it backward.

That's right, backward. Starting at the bottom of page 192 and working to the top of page 1, one sentence at a time. Some people like to read backward one word at a time, but I prefer to do it one sentence at a time, so I can check punctuation and meaning as well as phrasing.

Why read backward? When we read forward, especially when reading fiction, we tend to get caught up in the story. As a result, our minds overlook errors, fill in blanks and "forgive" clumsy phrasing in order to continue the story. When you read backward, you separate the sentence from the context, and you mind can focus on it alone. As a result, you can catch more errors, especially in grammar and word usage.

Well, I thought I'd done a pretty good job with my first edit, but when I started the third, I was mortified at the errors! Using the same word twice within a line of each other. ("...bring them in," he said. The doors opened, and they brought in..., for example.) I also found misspellings and grammar that Word didn't catch. (Never trust Word alone.) I had phrases that added nothing and some sections that didn't make full sense without a little more explanation. I found things I brought up in the end that I didn't set up earlier on. I also found (partly through read aloud, partly from thinking back) that I didn’t tie up all my loose ends in the last chapter. I had to add several pages.

Here are a couple of pages with edits. I used red for one edit and black for another. (They get mixed up in the middle, so don't ask which is which.)





In all, the manuscript was such an embarrassing mess that I wrote my critique crew and begged them not to look at it until I'd sent a better copy. It took about five days to read it backward and will take three to put in all the changes. It's worth every minute.

My Novel's Journey: Musical Minions

I'm in the read-aloud edit right now, which is slow since I'm reading it as a bedtime story to the boys. (Steven, 15, has joined his little brothers and Amber occasionally joins in.)

Tuesday night, we came to one of my favorite scenes, when a badly outnumbered Vern evens the odds by picking off minions in a variety of unusual and comical ways. We'd made it through the laughs and were gearing up for the big crisis when Alex noted, "Mom, you've got too many minions."

He was right--this was a fast-writing scene with nine minions to start, and I'd lost track of who Vern had picked off when. I even had two minions still going after Vern after they'd left the room! Oops.

Lessons here:
1. Read your stuff out loud, to someone else if you can. You catch so much!
2. Sometimes drawing out a scene graphically works better than trying to make a list or keep track in your head.

So Wednesday, I sat down with a pen and paper, made a list of McThing's McMinions and drew a map of the evil overlord lair.



Then, as I re-read the scene slowly, I made notes of who moved where, who left, who replaced whom, all on the drawing.



When I finished, I realized I'd still written about twice as many minions as Vern really had to deal with. Guess he was seeing double. It also made for an interesting conundrum. Vern can take three guys, even in his weakened state. Why didn't he? Fortunately, I had a ready-made excuse: Heather, who refused to be much more than a damsel in distress. Vern and Charlie could never count on when she'd show her plucky side.

So, it's taken some re-writing, but that's what the editing process is all about--finding the mistakes before the editor--or worse, the reader.


Editing progress: Through page 86, but loving hearing my kids laugh. Lots of boy humor. Of course, my husband just about spit out his Diet Coke when he heard me describe the Top Secret briefing room. After years of working in that world, we both know how true it is.

My Novel's Journey: the Bleeding Manuscript

Finishing the draft is only the first part of writing a novel.

I write pretty clean copy, meaning that I don't generally have to rip the entire thing apart bit by bit and rearrange the whole thing, but I always have a lot of work to do when the last word gets set on the paper. Live and Let Fly, being a thriller/mystery, has some interesting challenges, too, since I need to make sure clues are set and loose ends tied up--at least the ones I want tied up. (Which reminds me, I need to make a note. Excuse me!)

Back.

My method of editing is to read it three times: Once for content, once for readability, once backward for detail in grammar and wording of individual sentences. This week, I did the content proof.


First, I print it up, because I catch more errors when I see it on paper. (Incidentally, this is after the minimal spell and grammar check on Word. Never trust Word alone!)



Then, I read it through once. I'm looking for flow, characterization, obvious mistakes and holes in the content. For DragonEye, I also highlight or circle any important items I need to include in my glossary and DragonEye Canon. That way, I can keep my facts straight from story to story. Also, I read it just to enjoy the finished work. Usually, 70 percent of the pages look something like this:



I put in those changes, then print it up again. If I have time, I do the next two edits, then send it to my critiquer friends. This time, however, I'm on a tighter deadline, so I sent it after the first run.

Next week, I'll tell you about the second and third edits.

My Novel's Journey It's Done!

Tuesday, I wrote the concluding sentence of Live and Let Fly! Woooooo!

Now, of course the real work begins--editing--which I'll address this week. However, I'm thick in that process trying to get the first polish done so I can send out critique copies to trusted readers by Monday. My apologies to folks to whom I'd said "Friday." There's more to change than I'd thought.

So what does one do when she finishes a 92,000-word novel?

1. Cry a few happy tears
2. Jump around the house shouting, "Woooo!"
3. Call some friends and shout "Woooo! It's done!" into their phone machines.
4. BACK UP THE COMPUTER!
5. Clean desk while printing manuscript.
6. Review all the lists of things you've been putting off and try to make a manageable master list.
7. Look in the mirror and vow to go to the gym (BICHOK [Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard] is NOT a good exercise program.)
8. Yell "Wooooo!" some more. Resist urge to run down the block shouting and waving the printed manuscript around.

So my adventures writing Live and Let Fly are done, but my novel's journey continues. Stay tuned for discussions as I edit, get critiqued, and move on.

Word Count: 92,017, which is a great number, as it gives me play room.

Fave Phrase: I have a lot of fun scenes, but don't want to introduce spoilers, so here's a description of the evil lair.

I opened my eyes, expecting to see Helheim. I found myself disappointed and confused while my eyes took in the room and my head narrated like an announcer for Lairs by Larry:

The underground chamber sported a cement and steel decor--and evil overlord classic. Broad stripes in "Danger Red" add panache, as do the automatic sliding doors of the same color--and what door would be complete without its own guard? Italian submachine guns and black fatigues--and honestly, is there really any color for Kevlar besides black? It's just so right. You'll notice our villainess has gone with the theme with her own tailored flak jacket under a "Summer uniform," but given it her own personal flare. No one can wear hot pants like Hel. Naturally, no base headquarters would be complete without a raised platform from which to gloat at your victims--and Hel's gone all out with a wall-sized high-definition screen from which to illustrate her maniacal schemes. Forget the steel railings--so '70s--Hel has pulled materials from the volcano where she's made her home. Don’t the stalagmites and carved lava rock add just the right touch of sinister? Be still, my fearful heart!

I think Hel and McThing used the same decorator. I also think I've been watching too much TV.

Speaking of fearful... the lower level serves multiple purpose, but right now, we see it in victim intimidation mode, with harsh spotlights and dark shadows and the roof reflecting the interior pool, populated of course by--
"Why do you have sharks?" I know. We've failed in our mission. We're in mortal danger. And I'm asking about the Nefarious Koi Pond. Like I've said before, denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

Apparently, that amused Hel. "Do you like my pets? Fascinating creatures. They live for the kill--"

I did a double-take. "They have frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!"

Hel shrugged. "I saw it in a movie."

My Novel's Journey: My Main Man, My Main Muse

Last week, I blogged about some of my Yahoo! muses. Today, I want to tell you about my main Muse, the one I turn to first and again, and who has never let me down with his wit or fabulous ideas.

My husband, Rob.

Rob has this incredible mind. You can give him a bunch of disjointed ideas and facts and he can focus in on the key issue. He's like that at work, too, but that's for another blog. Add to the fact that he's got a terrific if sometimes quirky sense of humor and is well read in my genres, and you have the perfect mate for a writer!

He's been invaluable in this book, too, as in all my writing. Everywhere, you'll find his stamp: a key area of plot, an unusual but logical solution to a problem, a phrase that cracks you up. When I needed an evil overlord for Live and Let Fly, all I had were some general ideas: demigod, probably work good with businessmen, master plotter who would be smart enough to avoid the usual Evil Overlord mistakes but who would have one fatal flaw Vern could exploit. Rob didn't have to think two minutes before he suggested Loki. (Of course, things have changed, but you'll love what I do with him!) Yesterday, I needed a new booby-trap for Vern and Company to deal with; his answer is both devious and elegant and fits perfectly with an earlier scene. Then, when I woke up from a dream of a totally different ending, I presented him with the holes, and he plugged them up in a way that set me laughing--and I think it'll make you smile, too.

No, I'm not telling. That'd be too much of a spoiler! Let's just say even I didn't expect this, but I'm soooo glad I came up with it!

Magic, Mensa and Mayhem is dedicated to Rob, but no matter what book or story you read of mine, you're also getting a peek into the mind of Rob Fabian. And that just makes the stories all the better.

Word count: 75,700. I thought I was in the final stretch until yesterday's dream. Looks like 20,000 more to go!

Fave Phrase: I can't share it. It'd be a major spoiler (Though some friends have seen it. I almost didn’t write the scene, but I'm glad I did.) So here's the scene where they are about to go sabotage the nuclear reactor until the cavalry can arrive and stop Hel (aka Loki?) for good.

He paused and looked each one of us in the eyes, slowly. "It's crunch time. We're behind enemy lines. I know everyone will do their best but understand: In operations like these, someone usually gets killed."

I raised my eyebrows. "Don't look at me."

Heather clutched Charlie's arm. "I've got too much to live for!"

Charlie shrugged. "I volunteer you, mate."

Grace just rolled her eyes. "I think this is one cliché we can dispense with."

Rak huffed to himself like we were all lunatics, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. I think he actually resisted the temptation for some kind of team handshake, however.

My Novel's Journey: Yahoo! Muses

A lot of times, e-mail, the Internet and especially Yahoo IM can distract me from writing. However, when I am stuck, there's nothing better than bouncing an idea off a friend, and e-mail, Yahoo groups or IM is the best way for me to do it. With the stuff I write, that means that the "lucky" writing friend will share a conversation like this with me:

Karina Fabian: Need a metaphor to finish this sentence: I strolled out, head held high, reminding myself that I was the top of the food chain even if I did feel like the bottom of
shayk1951: the outhouse?
Karina Fabian: want a food/animal thing to keep the theme
shayk1951: Oh, okay
Karina Fabian: I thought "of the dumpster I ended up ralphing in."
shayk1951: that sounds good.
Karina Fabian: a dung beetle's breakfast plate?
shayk1951: Ooooh, yeah! I like that one better
Karina Fabian: nice way to say sh*&
shayk1951: yep, it is

Fortunately, I have a few very understanding friends.

I can depend on Ann Lewis, my best friend (who I've only met once in person, incidentally) to give me great advice. She can narrow in on a problem, suggest just the right word or find things on the Internet in record time. This week, I needed to describe a nice modest but fancy ball gown for Grace to wear while undercover at a party, and she found me a place that named the different kinds of necklines. I never even thought of necklines as having classifications!

Sharolyn Wells is great for encouragement, hugs and (as you can see above) bouncing ideas off of.

With Rebecca Butcher, I indulge the wilder side, more profane of my imagination (which I tone down for the book.) She's got a quirky sense of humor, too. This week, we brainstormed titles for Rhoda Dakota's finale song for the dance scene. Vern had just as an unfortunate but funny experience, and I wanted a song to fit the irony. Together, we came up with "Undercover Lover, Do You Know Who You Are?" It still makes me grin.

These are my three IM "regulars," but there are several others who get the unexpected message from me: "Need a word..." "What do you think of..." "Got a minute? I'm working on..."

For those who put aside their projects for those few minutes. Thanks.
Writing does not have to be a lonely biz.


Word Count: 66,513. I took yesterday off to play with the boys.

Fave Phrase: Vern (in his human guise) and Grace are working undercover in separate teams and pretending not to know each other, but need to pass information. In this scene, they are at a dance, and during a waltz, Grace passes him a mini memory disk. While the details of the dance were fun to write, I like this paragraph best because Vern really told me how much he loves Grace.

When the song ended, she let go of me quickly and headed back to the table. I didn't mind. With eternity to live, one thing dragons treasure above everything else is a good memory. I'd just danced as a human with my best friend. That was about as precious a treasure as I'd ever get.

My Novel's Journey: Location, Location

What's a super-spy thriller without exotic locations?

I knew for Live and Let Fly, that Vern and Grace had to travel to some unusual places. After all, what self-respecting Evil Overlord puts his base of operations in, say Pueblo, Colorado? (My home town, so I can make comments, thank you.)

I have two EOs--one who does things evil and well and the other who's, well, a six-sigma flake with delusions of TQM Grandeur.

Six-Sigma, aka Ronald McThing, needed someplace fun, someplace unexpected, someplace...in Idaho! Yeah! Idaho! But not just anywhere in Idaho, oh, no! Somewhere small, out of the way and with a fun name. I searched the World's Atlas and came up with Arco. I loved it: the Evil Overlord from...Arco!

Arco turned out to be a great choice, for it not only offered some nice buttes where McThing could make his insidious complex and toy museum, but it's also the site of America's first nuclear reactor. Hey! Guess what you need to make your own Gap? A nuclear accident! And why waste good funding and spend all that time on paperwork for building something new when you can buy out the old one, hold secret experiments and "oopsie!"? (Please don’t e-mail me all the holes in that plan. It's McThing's strategy, not mine. He's also pathologically afraid of Smurfs.)

As it turned out, I didn't get to do as much in Arco as I'd intended. Everyone got far more violent than I expected and Vern was in no shape for sight-seeing. However, I did get to mention the Arco Airport. McThing will fly out of there in his corporate jet. Of course, it was such a small airport, I didn't know if it could handle a corporate jet, and the FAA stats are just so much numbers to someone who doesn't even know how much her luggage weighs, much less a small jet. So I called the first number on the FAA site for Arco and got the chamber of commerce. When I explained the situation, the lady gave me the number...

...for the drug store!

"Talk to Steve. He's on the board and he can answer your questions," the lady assured me. He did, too, even setting me on the right track to find a jet. I settled on the gulfstream 550 because it has the better range to take McThing to his boss, the Evil Overlord Frank Li in...

The Exotic Island of Bandar Baru!

If you go to your handy atlas, you will not find Bandar Baru in the index. I've made it up to avoid any international incidents. So how do you make up your own island?

Determine needs: I wanted a small island nation, homogeneous population, with a volcano and subsequent religion of volcano god worship, which makes it ripe for a Faerie demigod to come in and set up religious housekeeping. It also had to be a playground for the rich.

Determine location: If you pull up a map of the currents in the Indian Ocean, you'll see a nice dead zone along the Tropic of Capricorn. I thought that would help it stay off the main trade routes. I wanted to minimize the Western influence until very recently (air travel).

Determine history: I gave them a disaster, so the US and other nations could come help them and they'd then turn their economy into tourism, only have that ruined by a volcano that can't decide when to erupt. This, of course, revived the old religion of Apikema, the volcano god.

Determine details: Since I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer, I'll figure a lot of these out as I go, but I have found a couple of things useful: the Indonesian/English dictionary online lets me create a reasonable-sounding foreign language by playing with the actual words. (Bandar Baru means "new port," which will have significance.) I'll probably get names from the same source or go to the handy White Pages for Sumatra and Madagascar. I get a lot of names that by looking in foreign phone books, incidentally. For the rest, I'll pull up some travel brochures of similar islands in the area, and rely on my own experience as a fabulous jet-setter.

Give me a minute while I stop laughing.

Word Count: 54,700. I finally managed to get through the plodding part. (Write. Write. Write) and had a fun scene where Grace turns Vern human so he can go with them to Bandar Baru.

Fave Scene: Which has nothing to do with this post, but it's fun. Vern turns human. (BTW: Tap out the sequence and see if you recognize the song.)

Eight...two sixteenths, eighth, quarter eighth, eighth, eighth. Eight...two sixteenths, eighth, quarter eighth, eighth, eighth. Eight...two sixteenths, eighth, quarter eighth, eighth, eighth...

"I don't think it's working." I didn't know if I was disappointed or relieved.

"Keep going. Don't break rhythm. This is an unusual spell. You have to let it get into you."

Eight...two sixteenths, eighth, quarter eighth, eighth, eighth. I started tapping with claws on all four limbs.

"You know, I don't really like that idea."

"You don't have to go."

"No. I'm fine. But I don't think it's--ergh!"

Suddenly, my whole body heated up and got all...gooey. Then I felt like I was being forced into a trash compactor, or maybe a mold that was too small.

"Vern?"

I got heavy, boulder heavy, and fell to the ground. I didn't understand how I could make such crashing sounds when I was so much flubber. Then I started feeling a little more solid, but lighter, which panicked me--or would have if I weren't so distracted by being gelatinous.

My Novel's Journey--Writing with kids

I was at my computer, but my mind was in a secret lair in a butte in Idaho. The scene was tense the words were flying...

Vern's been captured. He's injured, bound and muzzled, poisoned and surrounded by seven minions armed with machine guns. Even more, he's separated from Grace, from help, even from any trace of magic itself. He thinks he's going to die--not just be seriously inconvenienced for a few centuries while some part of him revives, but permanently no-way-back-dead.

Then he sees it. A dragon stone. The one thing dragons lust for. The one thing that could save him.

He's caught in its beauty--

"Hey, Mom, when will Dad be home?"

"uh... let me e-mail him, k?"

Vern's injured, bound and muzzled, poisoned and surrounded by seven minions armed with machine guns. Even more, he's separated from Grace, from help, even from any trace of magic itself. He thinks he's going to die--not just be seriously inconvenienced for a few centuries while some part of him revives, but permanently no-way-back-dead.

Then he sees it. A dragon stone. The one thing dragons lust for. The one thing that could save him.

He's caught in its beauty--

"Mom? Did you e-mail Dad?"

"Yes, I did, and I'm trying to write!"

Vern's separated from Grace, from help, even from any trace of magic itself. He thinks he's going to die--not just be seriously inconvenienced for a few centuries while some part of him revives, but permanently no-way-back-dead. Then he sees it. A dragon stone. The one thing dragons lust for. The one thing that could save him.

He's caught in its beauty--

"What's Liam doing outside, Mom?"

"I don't know! I'm writing. Go look out the window--the other window."

Vern thinks he's going to die--not just be seriously inconvenienced for a few centuries while some part of him revives, but permanently no-way-back-dead.Then he sees it. A dragon stone. The one thing dragons lust for. The one thing that could save him. He's caught in its beauty--

"Say, Mom? Can I borrow your mike to record something?"

"Yes! Fine!"

He thinks he's going to die--

"What's the program I need?"

"Audacity! And if it's not downloaded, you have to wait!"

Then he sees--

"Hey, Mom?"

"Please! I'm trying to write! This is a tense scene and Vern is very caught up in his feelings. He's drooling and everything. Just give me ten minutes to drool with Vern!"

"Oooo-kay."

Vern's been captured. He's injured, bound and muzzled, poisoned and surrounded by seven minions armed with machine guns. Even more, he's separated from Grace, from help, even from any trace of magic itself. He thinks he's going to die--not just be seriously inconvenienced for a few centuries while some part of him revives, but permanently no-way-back-dead.
Then he sees it. A dragon stone.

The one thing dragons lust for. The one thing that could save him.

He's caught in its beauty--

"Mom, can you help me with this one thing? Please?"

OK Deep breaths. These are your children. They're more important than any old story. Just walk away from the computer, help your daughter--

"Never mind! I got it."

"aaargh!!!"

Word Count: 41, 832. I need to stop for a couple of days and write some articles and a story I want to submit to an anthology that's filling fast.

Fave Phrase: There were so many this time! However, here's how the scene I was trying to write finally played out:

There's a difference between letting your enemy think you're weak and helpless and actually being so. Picking these guys off one by one or driving them to distraction and getting Charlie and Heather to run for it wasn't going to work. Plan. I needed a new plan. I couldn't think; couldn't focus. Stupid henchmen with their stupid stars and stupid beards and stupid iron bullets...

McThing finished his McBreathing. "Why don't we start again? I think we're losing our focus." He spread his hands placatingly.

I saw it. On his pinkie.

"That's an interesting ring." My voice was hoarse, and I swallowed hard.

"Do you like it? A present from my superior. With this, we will power our plans and rule both worlds."

"Some present. It's hardly a pebble. Any idea how big the ones in my treasure pile back home are?" I forced myself to sound disdainful. I tried not to follow it with my eyes, or one eye; I had to twist my head to keep McThing in my site.

A dragonstone. The most treasured gemstone in my universe. Forged from the beginning of time, so beautiful, bearing the kiss of magic.

I wanted that kiss like I'd never wanted anything in my life. I shivered with need.

My Novel's Journey: The Name Game

Dick and Jane. Mary Sue. Moe, Larry and Curly--how do you come up with names?
Sometimes, a name just comes to me. Vern d'Wyvern. Yes, it's awful, but it stuck. Thus, I had to come up with a back-story for this truly lame name. (After his encounter with St. George, he was presented to the Pope of the time, who, while a very holy man, didn't have a sophisticated sense of humor. He thought "Vern d'Wyvern" rather droll.)

Other times, I have to hunt for names. Charlie Wilmot, I found by looking at phone directories in England. (I love Google!) For the duchy he serves, I went to a map of England, found the general area and looked for the silliest combination of places I could. I'd remembered some of their towns are city-on-river, and so I came up with Peebles on Tweed. (I'd misremembered Shakespeare's birthplace as "Stratford on Avon" rather than "Stratford upon Avon," so when I combined the names I used "on.") I love the sound of the name.

Sometimes, especially when I'm looking for something specific and it doesn't come to me, I turn to friends for brainstorming. That happened twice this week. Earlier this month, Vern, Grace and Charlie discover the dead body of a professor. I wanted this professor, who was also a mage, to have a fun name to lighten the scene a bit. I couldn't think of one, so whenever I referred to him, I wrote (funname). (That way, when I come up with a name, I can do a global replace.) Then on Wednesday, I asked the folks who gathered for the online chat at The Writers Chatroom for help. After some fun brainstorming based on the fact that my victim was a mage specializing in portals and the Gap, Audrey Shaffer came up with Bill Gates. I loved the idea of a Faerie sharing a famous name, especially in a college atmosphere. You'll see what I did with it below.

Sometimes, though, I know a name is going to be important to future scenes--and in this case, jokes--so I can't move until I have it. This happened when I decided I needed a secret spy organization instead of just the standard FBI, CIA, ETC. At first, I had DICE--Department of Interdimensional Criminal Enforcement. Great potential for jokes. Then it occurred to me that we don’t enforce criminals; we enforce laws.

I was banging my head against the desk when my best e-buddy Ann Lewis showed up on IM. After a few minutes of tossing around acronyms and jokes, we came up with the Bureau for Interdimensional Law Enforcement. BILE. Naturally, I'll have to write in the evil sister organization, Villains for Interdimensional Lawlessness Enhancement, VILE.

Names are such fun!

Word Count: Only 23,400, but I had to dig myself out of a to-do list that was 90 tasks long.

Fave scene: Found on the door of Professor Bill Gates.

Professor William Gates, MT, PhD, GMM. Below that, a computer-generated sign in a page protector read: Pronounced Gay-TEZ. No relation to that Mundane computer fellow, thank you. However, if you are a Mundane and want to learn magic, I suggest computer science." And a map leading to computer science. Below the map read: "Mundanes: You are not genetically suited to handle magic. I cannot change that. I will not change your major. So very sorry."

My Characters Have Trashed my Outline!

Last week, I talked about outlining the plot. So naturally, this week, my characters tossed the plot progression to the winds. In this case, instead of reading about a murder in the newspaper, they discovered the body themselves, and instead of having a starlette-style hissy fit and becoming the spunky sidekick, Heather got herself kidnapped and ended up the damsel in distress! In all, a 10,000-word re-direct at least and some plot complications, not to mention a lot of un-funny prose. So today, I'll talk about going with the flow.

"Seat of the pants" is my natural writing style. I start with an idea or a character that grabs me. If I only have a character, I try to imagine their life--usually some interesting episode--you, know, one that physically or psychologically tortures them, bwa-ha-ha-ha. Often times, I'll have the middle--aka, the height of suffering--pretty firmly in mind, but I try to have the beginning and ending.

This is how I came up with Vern. DragonMoon Press had opened submissions for the anthology Firestorm of Dragons, and I was looking for something that hadn't been done: a cynical dragon PI on the wrong side of the Interdimensional Gap working off a geas by the Faerie Mage, St. George. (I'll tell you more some other time.) From there, I just needed a clichéd simple case gone wrong for him to solve. (DragonEye, PI is out in Firestorm of Dragons.)

Of course, once I have characters I love, they tend to start living out their lives in the dark recesses of my mind. Throughout the day and night, they tell me a little about their lives or share a joke or comment with me. Vern does this a lot because, as you know from his blog, he has a very unique and sarcastic but funny way of looking at things. So when I'm ready to write a story, I come up with an idea or crisis, stick them in it and let them tell me how they get out of it. This works very well with Vern and Grace, because I can pull from old mysteries and legends, mix them up and let them tell me how to solve the case. Essentially, they live it out, and I just transcribe.

In the case of Live and Let Fly, the idea came to me first--a very general idea of pitting Vern against the clichés of superspydom and evil overlordisms. As you know (or would if you'd read last Thursday's post), I thought it very important to plot this one out to make sure I got the clues and clichés in place. Part of that was for Vern and Grace to read about the murder of Professor William Gates (Gay-TEZ, no relation to the Mundane computer entrepreneur). Heather, Charlie's assistant, insisted on accompanying Charlie, where she would use her computer skills to break into the evil overlord's computers for valuable clues. Nice, neat, plenty of room for jokes.

But Vern and Grace are not used to dancing to my tune. Even worse, I hadn't banked on Heather not being as plucky (and amenable to espionage) as I'd expected. So it was with some surprise that Vern and Grace decided to go visit Professor Gates and discover his dead body. Then Heather, in a cliché out of the storybooks, gets kidnapped.

But it gets worse! One of the things playing in the back of my mind has been Faerie's past. Since their universe parallels ours, I imagined they'd had a Great War sometime in the early 20th century; however, since Faerie is a much more religious world, I knew it would be a Satan vs. the Church, of which Vern and Grace were agents of the Inquisition. Now and then, they give me tidbits of that time, which you'll read in the stories. I've also had this vague plan that something bigger than what we see in the books is going on behind the scenes.

What this has led to is that Gates (no relation) has been assassinated with crucis iugolis--the butcher's cross--a favorite killing method of Satan's minions during the Great War.

I didn't plan this. It just came out of my fingers, seriously.

So the characters have shanghaied the plot, and I've spent the last week (about 12,000 words since it was a busy week) trying to figure my way out of it. That means scrapping some jokes, plunging into Charlie's dark side, revisiting Grace's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and dealing with new questions of jurisdiction.

Why do I put up with this? Because it's much more interesting when my characters tell me what happens than when I make them dance to my tune. The book will have more depth and if not as funny, it's more interesting. However, they've promised me a few fun, new scenes if I can just plug away at the serious stuff a few more thousand words.

Word Count to date: 20, 557, some of which are notes of things to fix.

Fave Phrase: Duke Galen's Herald, Charlie, talks to Heather's kidnappers. I like it because he showed me a side of himself different from the usual happy-go-lucky popinjay stuck making the best of inheriting the family job he doesn’t much like.

"I want to speak to Heather!"

A brief shuffling, then "Charlie! Charlie, I'm in a--" Her sentence ended in a shriek.

"If you harm one hair on her head, you bloody bastard--"

"Sticks and stones--"

"If that's what it takes."

"Tsk, tsk, Herald Wilmot. How very unbecoming of someone of your stature. But to be honest, I have no intention of hurting your beloved. I'm a big fan, actually. I do hope I can coax her out of an autograph. In the meantime, you have information I want."

"No, I don't," Charlie replied, and he didn't have to fake the desperation in his voice. "I'm just the courier. I didn't even know I was carrying anything--"

Laughter. "Quite droll, Mr. Wilmot. As a matter of a fact, I believe you. Your duke's twisted humor is well known even here. I also know he fancies your pretty little girlfriend. You have two hours--"

"Two?" Charlie burst out. "To convince Galen of anything? Better make it twenty-four if you want this precious information of yours."

"You'd bargain with your true love's life?"

"If it means having a real chance of succeeding, bloody hell, yes! Otherwise, just tell me where you are, so I can go die with her."

Organizing the plot

Today, we begin with organizing the plot.

Normally, I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer. I have a good idea of t he beginning and the end and some ideas for getting from one to the other; but otherwise, I let my characters lead me. I have a lot of fun and a lot of surprised this way. However, it doesn't work as well for a novel-length thriller/mystery. Despite the jokes and fantasy setting, that's what I'm trying to do, and I didn't want someone to come back disappointed that I'd dropped a clue or left something hanging.

I have a terrific program, Anthemion Storylines. It simulates index cards on a cork board--great for organizing, making notes, storing ideas until I can use them... I've written entire stories off of it, and use it to keep track of my Magic, Mensa and Mayhem serial. Great program--but it failed me this time. For some reason, my head needed a new method to identify holes, figure out links, etc.

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, who writes amazing stuff, told us during a workshop chat at the Catholic Writers Conference Online that when she is stuck, she uses Post-It Notes on a white board. So, I spent a couple of hours writing out blue stickies, re-arranging, consulting my husband, and thinking. And it worked! Something about the tactile process loosened my brain--or maybe it was because I felt very silly--the eccentric writer. I can get into that.


(Note--this is a recreation. I can't find the actual photo, but when I do, I'll replace it.)

Word Count: 11,500. About 2000 behind my goal, but we meetings and yard work took priority.

Fave Scene:

Setup: Vern, Grace and some agents are discussing how demigods get their power. (The old cliché that they feed off worship, human sacrifice, etc...) I found a reference that the cult of Adonis consisted of planting fast-growing plants, then mourning when they wilt. (Yep! How do I resist that?) I'd also just finished scrubbing out my son's dead Chia pet. Here's what that gave me:

(Vern said) "...Different demigods have different preferences, however. Sekhmet, death; Coyote, practical jokes and general mischief--"
"Adonis?" Rak asked with a cocked eyebrow.
Grace cocked her brow in return. "Crying over dead plants, actually. He has a special fondness for women with black thumbs, but he's not powerful enough for a portal. He's really a very sweet soul. Plus, other than finding Chia pets™ amusing, he's not especially interested in the Mundane world."