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Archive for April, 2009

Troll

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

I was asked to write another short story, this time for The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance. The only question I had was does the time travel (TT) have to be to the past? If the answer was yes, then I would have turned it down because I have no interest at all in writing anything historical. But the reply was that I could write a TT to the future. Now we’re talking!

When the offer came, I was deep into Kel’s story (Light Warriors #4) and had no ideas about what or who to write, but I knew who I was hoping would show up. Troll.

Troll is a member of Wyatt’s team (Eternal Nights) and he’s intrigued me from the beginning. He got tagged with “Troll” because he’s drop-dead gorgeous and his family tree could be its own United Nations. He’s multi-multi-multi-multi-racial. I’d be hard pressed to come up with an ethnicity that he doesn’t have in his background. Maybe Inuit, but that would be about it.

The other interesting thing about him is that he’s a player. One of the scenes I wrote for Flare’s story (which is one of only three scenes that I got down) mentioned that Troll couldn’t tap his girlfriend at the infirmary on Jarved Nine for information because she’d discovered his other girlfriend and was ready to go after him with a scalpel. He’s also a damn fine Spec Ops soldier and someone the team relies on without question. That’s the intriguing part–the dichotomy. How can he be so careless in his personal life, but so trusted in his career?

Of course, I won’t be able to explore that to any great degree, not in a short story. I’ll have less than 50 pages to work with and it just isn’t enough, but Troll did arrive and he is giving me information, so it’s his romance I’ll be unfolding.

For the record, Troll’s real name is Chris and the story is set in the future of the J9 world–after Flare, Digger, and the Z Man are married. Flare and Digger were mentioned in EN, but I don’t think Z was named. Anyway, with the time span, it gives Troll time to grow up and be ready to settle down–and if I ever do go back and write the three stories I have for his other teammates, I’ll have the gap to do it in. And maybe in the future, I can expand Troll’s story to a full-length book and explore some of the facets of his personality that I find intriguing.

His heroine is still an enigma. I know she’s the one who travels to the future, but beyond that? I have nothing. Very frustrating, but I’m wondering if it’s because I’m mentally fragmented between two worlds? I’m also working on a proposal for a new paranormal world and trying to get information on that at the same time. Maybe I just need to focus on one and put all my energy into it until I have what I need.

Tags: Misc
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Inching Along With the WIP

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

I’m trying a new blogging interface today rather than typing right on the site. Let’s see how this goes and if it was worth the time to download, setup, and figure out. I am going to check to make sure everything looks okay, but if I miss something that looks strange, this would be why.

With that out of the way, I’m excited to tell y’all that In Twilight’s Shadow is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the Write Touch Readers Choice Awards! This is always cool to hear.

The last time I talked about the story that I’m working on (WIP), I mentioned that my heroine drove a convertible and nothing I found was right. I had some suggestions, and after checking them out, I discovered that her car is a Mazda Miata in blue. The hard top convertible, BTW. Yes, my characters really do get that picky, but it’s nice to have her vehicle out of the way. And yes, I have all kinds of pictures saved of the vehicle even though I don’t know if even one scene will take place inside of it yet. It’s not always easy to be detailed oriented.

Right now, instead of focusing on the characters, I’m trying to figure out the big picture stuff. Like the plot. What’s happening? Why? What started things in motion? What’s going to keep them in motion for the other two books? (It’s a 3 book series–the hero and his friends. At first I thought it was just going to be a one-shot deal, but then Mick and Royce showed up and I knew they had stories. I don’t know what those stories are and have no clue who their heroines are, but they’re coming in far too strongly to not have books.)

So I did some brainstorming at lunch and came up with 3 titles to submit the stories with and 2 are actually good ones! Or at least I think they’re good. One is so-so, but it fits the story plan for the third book. I have kind of a tag line for the series as well as a possible backstory and villain to carry over all three stories, but there’s still so much I don’t know yet. Frustrating.

I tell you, it’s so much easier for me to write a book when I know what the basic story is and have lived with the hero and heroine for a while. Starting a new one without that intimacy is hard. I keep thinking about how much easier it all was with the last book, but I’m sure getting started was the same type of struggle. Sigh.

Tags: Misc
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Adventures With Wildlife

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I left my office (I was cleaning it out with a bulldozer) and saw a wild turkey walking in my backyard. I turned, grabbed the camera, and took a couple of pictures before the flash spooked him and he took off running for the neighbor’s yard. I was all excited about this because this is only the second sighting I’ve had in my yard. I see them walking along the road or along the freeway all the time.

So it’s later on that evening, still light out, but heading toward evening and I’m sitting on the couch checking email on the laptop. There’s a loud thump on my deck and my heart started to pound. My first thought was that someone had come up the stairs, but a split second later I decided that it must be another nail popping. That happens when it gets cold and every other time I’ve freaked about a noise like that, it’s always been a nail pop. Then I caught motion out of the corner of my eye.

Up on the railing of the deck is that great big wild turkey!

I think the thump I heard was his landing on the rail and I think it’s the same one I saw earlier. I’ll add another guess–I think he wanted to check out what had caused the flash of light when he was here and I was taking pictures.

I was afraid to move because he was looking around, but I really wanted to grab the camera and get a shot of this. I’ve never had a turkey on my deck before and I might never have another one. Staying as still as possible, I watched him check out the area for a few minutes. Then, deciding nothing was worth hanging around for, he jumped off the rail to the ground below. By the time I got to the door with the camera, he was in my neighbor’s yard again.

My plan was to post a picture of my turkey, but I’m having issues on the computer that the camera is hooked up to. I also realized that I’ve lost a bunch of pictures that I hadn’t backed up or uploaded and I’m hugely sad because they’re all gone. The worst part is that it was my error. I was in a hurry and not paying close enough attention to what I was doing. Ah, well. Lesson learned. Always backup.

Tags: adventures, turkey, wildlife
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Why Do They Do This To Me?

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

My characters always seem to spring stuff on me that I know nothing about. Take my latest story. My heroine in the proposal I’m working on told me she drives a convertible. Makes sense. She’s originally from California and is living in Florida right now, so she can have one. The only convertible I can think of is the Sebring, and given the condition Chrysler is in, I figured maybe I should take a look at cars and see what else is out there. There weren’t as many choices as I thought there would be.

There’s a BMW, but she told me no, she doesn’t drive a luxury car. That took care of the Lexus, too. I spotted a Mini Cooper convertible, but that wasn’t her either. I kept looking. I found another car that was cool–a nice metallic blue and it had a shape that worked for her, but it was only being sold in Europe. There went another possibility. I had high hopes when I spotted the Nissan, but that had extremely limited distribution in the US. I ruled that one out, too. Finally, after forwarding through a few pages of search hits, there was a Ford Mustang convertible. That might work although she wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it. Or I might have to go with the Sebring after all. She liked that one.

I like learning new things, but this story is really pushing me into uncharted territory. Both the hero and heroine’s jobs are going to require research and now I’ve got the heroine’s car to add to that list, too. But when I think about complaining, I remember what other authors have mentioned that they need to research. Makes my topics look much better.

It would sure be easier, though, if I knew someone who had one of their jobs.

This happens in every book, though. Characters who do or know something that I don’t and it feels like I’m constantly researching something. I enjoy learning new things–really, I do!–but sometimes I’d like to have topics that are easy to find information on and not have to figure out a way to discover what the dressing rooms at Walt Disney World look like. :-/ It never seems to be easy.

Tags: characters, research
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Where the Heck Is That?

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Yesterday, I had a Twitter conversation about organization when it comes to writing–specifically organization of world building information. This is when I sadly confessed that my organizational skills leave something to be desired. I try, but well, this is what my system currently looks like:

1. A folder inside my email for any notes I email to myself or to my writing buddies about my stories. I store them for future reference, but never seem to remember I have them and so almost never look.

2. A folder inside my word processing program’s folder. This is for any notes from Instant Messenger or stuff I type up in WordPerfect or Word or WordPad or any other handy program. I sometimes remember to look at the IM conversations.

3. A folder inside the My Pictures folder in Windows. This is for pictures of my characters, their houses, clothes, cars, and any websites that I save. I frequently have this folder open, and when I’m on a stretch run, I’ll click over to look at it. I even have the character pictures up on a personal website so that I can open it up when I’m away from home if I have Internet access.

4. Bookmarks of websites for research. Some are on del.icio.us, some are on my computer, some are on Google Bookmarks because that’s the only one I have on the toolbar of my desktop computer. I usually remember that I have bookmarks on my computer, but remembering that I saved something elsewhere is hit or miss.

5. A notebook or notepad filled with writing. When I first start a book, I get out my notepad and brainstorm. The information is in a free flow kind of form and it’s difficult to find what I’m looking for sometimes. I hate to take the time to rewrite and organize the notes because it feels like a waste, but probably that would save more time than it takes to keep paging through to find a piece of info.

6. A file folder (a real paper one) carefully labeled with the names of the characters. I even bought a label maker so that I have really pretty looking folders. Most of them are pretty empty until I get stuff back from the copy editors who type up these beautiful lists of information in alphabetical order by category. I HEART my copy editors. I wish I had my own personal copy editor to organize me while I was writing.

I have actually tried about a half a dozen programs to organize all my information in one place, but I never take the time to learn how to use them and most aren’t intuitive enough to learn by doing. I suppose if I kept at it, I could pick it up, but when I’m writing on deadline, I don’t want to take the time so it’s back to my old data in 6 locations method. My memory might be lousy when it comes to life stuff, but so far it’s pretty good when it comes to my books–at least the recent ones. :-O

Tags: organization, writing
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