And then they came for...

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Merry Christmas, Skynet

"Hey, Chloe. You mind if I borrow your dogs?"

"What? Sam, it's Christmas Eve. What do you need the dogs for? You're not going to try to hitch them up to a sled again, are you?"

"Well...not my sled..." 

"Ho ho ho. Is this the young lady?"

"Yeeps! Sam, what the hell, you brought home a mall Santa?"

"I can explain. Santa, you want to explain?"

"You're the naughty one here, Sammy. This is all on you."

"Oh shit. Okay. You know how I like hunting?"

"You like big guns that make bigger noises, that's what you like."

"Okay, I'll give you that. So I went out this morning, and y'know I haven't had any luck all season, but on my way back I saw this big ol' herd just standing there..."

"Oh God. Tell me you didn't--"

"He most certainly did. He shot three of my reindeer before I could stop him. Now the sleigh won't lift off. I need more pulling power."

"Then I remembered you've got the three huskies. I mean, they're sled dogs, right? So if we could just borrow 'em overnight..."

"Hold on a moment. What's with this 'we,' Sammy? I wouldn't be in this fix if you weren't so gun happy. Where'd you even get a gun? I certainly never brought you one. And he asked, you know. Repeatedly."

"Tell me about it. Look, I'd like to help, but--I know they're sled dogs and all, but they're not magical. They can't fly."

"You leave that to me. If you're worried about them, you're welcome to come along. I'm short an elf, too."

"Oh my God, Sam, you didn't--"

"Ho ho! It's all good, my dear. Rollo caught a bug. He's home in bed."

"In that case--oh hell yeah! Let me get my coat and a water bottle. I'll be right back with the dogs."

"Hey, don't I get anything?"

"You get to stay behind. Enjoy the lump of coal in your stocking. Ho ho ho."

Week 2 - Sick Days and Unpaid Holidays

Short update this week, due to issues beyond my control, and me taking a day off to celebrate. The week started off fine, with progress made on both projects. Then came Wednesday. Wednesday was my birthday, and I’d planned to take the day off and do a road trip. Except the weather didn’t cooperate. Neither did my car. I elected to spend Wednesday wrapping up a paid assignment (due Friday) and take my trip on Thursday, when the weather was supposed to be better. Good thing—later that afternoon I got in the car to pick up some groceries and the damn thing wouldn’t start. Again. It’s been having battery issues for the last three months, but I thought it was fixed. Guess again. It was too late in the day to contact the garage, so I went back in the house and fumed and got the assignment done. That was also the first time in two weeks I had insomnia overnight, and I’m sure it’s because I looked at the clock. I haven’t looked at the clock since, and I haven’t had insomnia since. So that trick’s working. Hope it can help somebody.

Thursday turned out far better. The weather was indeed much nicer, just right for an extended road trip. Now if only I could get the car to cooperate. The mechanic from AAA who gave the battery a jump said I had a bad battery. Trouble was, it was a new battery, roughly a year old. We’d been focusing on the connections and hadn’t considered the battery itself was the problem. The garage put a new battery in, which I got for free because the bad one was under warranty. I considered that my birthday present. Maybe my luck is finally changing for the better, after the expensive hell that was 2023.

So Thursday ended up being my birthday, with a long, satisfying drive around Philadelphia’s outskirts followed by a pizza dinner. I’d sent the assignment back that morning, so I was able to do all this with no obligations or stress.

You’d think this recharge would have upped my writing production. You’d think wrong. For the next three days I couldn’t write a thing. I had to resort to flash. This is strange, because I’m mostly typing longhand on both projects. The problem is, it’s been a while since I wrote the original versions, and now new, better ideas are banging around in my brain and I basically end up rewriting the whole thing. Not to mention all the distractions offered by the internet. I finally got myself back together and advanced the new project (the romance) and figured I was back on track.

And then I got sick.

Nothing too serious. It was either food poisoning or a 24-hour virus. But dang, those little buggers are powerful. This one gave me stomach pains and kept me in bed for almost 12 hours. I may have had a fever too, and chills, which is why I’m leaning toward a bug. I seem to be okay now, but I’m going to stick to bland foods in small portions for a day or two, just to make sure.

The moral of the story is: you can make all the plans and schedules and resolutions you want, but sometimes life is going to throw you a curve ball. You can power through some of them; had I chosen, I could have taken a notebook along and written longhand while I was waiting at the garage. Others, like fever and fatigue, are going to knock you off your feet and there’s nothing you can do about it, other than take care of yourself first so you can take care of the work. Downtime is just as important as work time. All work and no play makes Jack grab an axe and chase his family through the Overlook Hotel. Yes, I know Stephen King kept writing while he was recovering from getting hit by a van. Some people are wired that way. Or just plain obsessed. Since I’m neither, I have to find what works best for me. That’s what this year is all about.

There’s another truism I need to keep in mind: if you want to be a writer, at some point you have to write. If you don’t you won’t have anything to send out and those royalty checks won’t be coming in. There’s a lot more to it than that, like marketing and all that boring business stuff, but it all begins with the product. I have half a month left to finish one of my current WIPs. If I apply myself, I can do this. Unless I get sick. Or the car doesn’t start. Life is a never-ending adventure. See you next week. 

Here's Where the Fun Begins

 

I might as well admit it now: the series has officially gone on the back burner. It’s not dead, it’s just resting. The side project is now the main project. I’ve been typing up the longhand in between paid assignments, doing spot research as I go along. Eventually I’ll reach the point where I’ll need to go to Philadelphia to scout locations. Sure, I could do that through Google Maps and websites, but where’s the fun in that? I deliberately chose Philly as my location because it’s within driving distance. Any excuse to get out of the house and not work.

Currently I’ve hit a bit of a snag. I read over the longhand before I type it up, in case I need to fix, add, subtract or otherwise change something. Well, Chapter 5 is going to need to be entirely rewritten. It introduces a main cast member, who I didn’t know when I created her. I discovered who she was as I went along. Now that I’m on the second draft, I need to make her match up with what I learned about her in the first draft. For instance, I’d originally intended for her and the PI main character to hook up. That isn’t how it turned out. She ended up hooking up with the caveman and the PI found love elsewhere, with a character I hadn’t even conceived of when I started writing. Hence the need for a new Chapter 5.

Because that’s both the joy and the bane of being a pantser: there’s no road map. You sit down and you find out what happens. You may not even have a plot when you begin; I didn’t with this book. I started with two characters and a premise: a caveman, claiming to be a fictional character, hires a private investigator to track down his author and find out why he’s been pulled into the real world. Plot, characters, incidents, ending and themes all popped up as I went along. When I was done I had a contradictory mess, but at least it had a linear plot and a satisfactory ending. And both my protags found true love. Who could ask for anything more?

That was the first draft. Now I’m on the second draft, where I have to make it all make sense. The second draft is for actual writing. Here’s where the fun begins.

For example: the woman in Chapter 5. She’s another fictional character, a ripoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (The publisher specialized in pulp-style knockoff series.) She was pretty generic when I started writing her. Then a chapter or so later, out of nowhere, she started speaking with a New England accent, surprising both me and my PI protag. Not a problem; far from it, in fact. It helped me develop her background. She’s a descendant of Puritans, trained to hunt and destroy supernatural monsters that threaten humanity. As the story went along, I discovered she’s also part demon and can talk to ghosts. For her intro, all I needed was to establish the accent, and show a flash of demon red in her eyes to convince the PI that a) she wasn’t just into cosplay, and b) there might just be something to the caveman’s outrageous story after all. She clinches it with another bit I’d originally introduced later on: she has a magic wad of cash that never runs out, so she can handle expenses when she’s on a case. Proof she’s not from around here. It also explains how fictional characters eat and have homes when they never appear to work at paying jobs. It helps the PI accept the Twilight Zone episode he’s now living in, and he allows her to join their hunt for the missing writer. And now we’re on our way.

Sounds like a pain in the ass, doesn’t it? Yeah, it can be at times. It can also be a lot of fun. Because this is primarily a mystery story, it allows me to play with the readers. The search for the missing writer is just the surface plot. One of the characters isn’t who he appears to be. This leads to a major twist at the climax, which I need to set up so readers won’t throw the book across the room. That means sprinkling in the kinds of clues that don’t look like clues but make sense when you get to the end. A great one hit me out of nowhere as I was nearing the end of the book. I decided to leave that aspect in, and have started laying the groundwork all the way back in Chapter 1. It also ties in to a side note I included that came from the original flash scene, where the caveman complains about retcons—how his writer gave him a sister and killed her off all in the space of a page, and he’s left to deal with memories and emotions for a person who never existed until that moment. That’s a clue now. Wonder if M. Night Shyamalan had as much fun writing The Sixth Sense as I am with this?

That picture up top is a clue too. It’s the scene in Star Wars where Han Solo says, “Here’s where the fun begins.” Mr. Ford never personally appears in my story, but his influence is felt. Indirectly, he’s the reason the writer ends up living where the characters finally find him. Personally, I’m more in the Indiana Jones camp, wandering around a jungle of words looking for hidden treasures. Not to mention my favorite Indy line: “I’m making this up as I go.” If that’s not a pantser, I don’t know what is. For you other pantsers out there, have a blast!

Excuses, Whines and a Bit of Positivity

 

WHINE ALERT: This opening segment lists my excuses for not (re)starting the series yet. If you’d like to skip it, drop down to the line break below; that’s where the “positivity” in the title begins. Just because I like to suffer doesn’t mean everybody has to.

So here we are. A little over two weeks into the challenge and I’ve barely done a thing on Book #1. I’ve been reading over what I typed—at least a year ago, if not longer—and I’ve done some editing and gotten some new ideas. Mostly, however, I sit down at the laptop and either watch videos or play games. I tried unplugging the WiFi only to discover that didn’t work. The urge to log on was too strong. I tried logging on and getting my Internet business out of the way first, then getting to work. Those were the days I never got to work. What did work was going onto a music site and running background music while I worked. That did the trick. I’ve got a chase scene coming up with my heroes being attacked by vampires, and I know just the cut from the Aliens soundtrack I’m going to run in the background. Assuming I ever get there. I’ve got over a decade of bad habits that have become firmly entrenched, and when I try to fight or replace them they just dig in and get worse. I’ll keep experimenting and let you know how it turns out.

On the upside, the side project is still going great guns. But then, that’s longhand. No Internet distractions. Once I go to type the second draft into the system, bet these problems will pop up again. Unless I figure out a way to defeat or at least deflect them. The series and I are both works in progress, and it’s far too early to give up on either. Next week I’m getting a new paid assignment, so the pressure will be on for that as well. Stay tuned.

****

Now for the positive stuff. Since the side project’s doing well, I’m going to talk about that. Today’s topic will be the lesson: “No writing ever goes to waste.”

I try to write something every day. I haven’t missed a day in fifteen years, not even when I was in the hospital for the hernia operation. It’s not always much, and it’s not always part of a work in progress. Even a sentence is better than nothing. Don’t let the blank page win!

On the days when I don’t have a WIP, or I didn’t work on the WIP (see whines, above), I write flash scenes. Dialogue mostly, but sometimes a vignette or a snippet or random words of something that may or may not ever develop into a story or book. I’ve had tossed-off flash scenes mutate into stories and sometimes into entire novels. Case in point: my current side project. Here’s its origin story.

This first scene was written in July of 2021. It was inspired by the news Gold Eagle Books was closing up shop. They published pulp stuff, men’s adventure, in spite of being a subsidiary of Harlequin, the romance publisher, of all people. Remember The Executioner, or those Death Lands books on the shelves at Kmart? That was them. I needed to write something and I needed a topic, so this is what came out:

$$$

So…it’s gone. A&A Books. That’s Action and Adventure, to those not in the know. It wasn’t a biggie, like Random House or whoever’s publishing Stephen King these days. It was just some little mom and pop publisher that put out cheap paperbacks, like the kind you can sometimes find on racks in a drug store or at a truck stop. They handled all the pulpy tropes: jungle heroes, cowboys, one man armies against the mob, plucky survivors wandering post-apocalyptic landscapes. It was all in good fun, and you could while away a rainy afternoon with an easy read about macho heroes, evil villains, and half-naked women in chainmail bikinis. You didn’t even need to worry about grammar, or proper punctuation. They were the kind of books where more thought went into the weapons and landscape descriptions than the characters or the plot.

But all good things do come to an end. So do bad and indifferent things. Readers had gotten pretty indifferent to A&A Publishing, especially with the rise of video games. If you had an XBox, you could be a barbarian or a zombie fighter or a lone ex-Marine mowing down Mafia baddies. In full color, with realistic graphics. No more struggling with syntax and picturing the action in your head. Xbox must have been a godsend to dyslexic kids.

So A&A rode off into the sunset, sailed off the edge of the world, packed up the assault rifle, found the radiation-free Eden, etc., etc. I reread my collection for a time, until I realized how repetitive the plots were, and the fact the heroes remained unchanged for over twenty years. Physically and psychologically. The characters couldn’t grow or change; it would screw with the formula. Then there was Elder Breen, the zombie hunter, still out there a-shootin’ and a-knifin’ away, with kids nearing 40 and him still 52. Yeah, time to pack it in.

Eventually I loaded my collection of A&A books into a box and dropped them off at the library’s  donation bin. Maybe some kid would find them, and enjoy them as much as I used to before puberty set in. I didn’t even shed a tear as I walked away. I was done with those characters, those worlds.

What I didn’t realize at the time was, they weren’t done with me. Or with any of us.

$$$

Exactly one week later, I wrote this scene:

$$$

 “So…are you human or aren’t you?”

“Uhhh…it’s complicated.”

“In simple terms, please.”

“My mother was a character in a Bigfoot porn novel.”

“Excuse me?”

“You wanted simple terms. That’s a simple as I can make it.”

“How can your mother be a character in a book? How could she have—” The Inquisitor poked him in the arm. “Produced solid, living offspring?”

“Beats me. You’ll have to ask her that. I was just a kid.”

“Where is she now?”

“She went into hiding when you Puritan pussies came to power. Try the Nancy Drew series. Or Lord of the Rings. She always had a weakness for elves.”

The Inquisitor hissed. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

“You betcha. Also a dick, a douche, a motherfucking tinpot dictator, and a—”

“Do you honestly think I’d be foolish enough to believe your mother was an actual fictional character?”

“Don’t take my word for it. Check with the author.”

“This ‘author’s’ name?”

“M. T. Condom. I think it’s a pseudonym.”

“I’m sure. Where were you born?”

“In book six of the Babs and Bigfoot Chronicles, Sequoia Fever. Page 27. Only two paragraphs. It was a difficult pregnancy, so M. T. had to summarize. The good news is, I was 10 years old by the end of the chapter. Transitions are the greatest thing ever.”

“Such nonsense. I’ll not stand for—”

“You know what sucks? Retcons. Or when the writer gets ‘inspired’ and starts adding background. I’ll be at work, or on the can, or with a chick, and all of a sudden I get hit with memories I never had before because my ‘creator’ decided to give me a childhood. Or a broken heart. Or siblings. I had a sister who was born and killed off in the space of a page and then I had to deal with it. Really, what the hell? What’s even the point?”

“That’s enough,” the Inquisitor said. “Enough of this farce. You will tell me the truth. Who are you?”

“My name is Itrigo. My father was Bigfoot and my mother was a grad student named Babs Moorecock. I was born in an erotic romance novel. My parents were fictional characters.”

The Inquisitor slapped him across the face, drawing blood from his lip. “My time is not unlimited, and I don’t appreciate wasting it. You will—” He stared at his fingers, and the dark, sticky liquid smeared on them. “What is this?”

Itrigo chuckled. Darkness seeped from his lip. “It’s ink. What else did you expect?”

$$$

And there you go. Two unrelated flash scenes written a week apart. Yes, Bigfoot porn is a thing. You can find it on Amazon, but only if you’re 18 or older. Amazon’s got all kinds of fun stuff, but only if you know which keywords to type into Search. Happy hunting, fetish freaks.

Anyway. Like I said, two unrelated flash scenes. Unless, of course, you’re a writer. Writers’ brains like to play mashup, which is what mine did. I wasn’t writing anything in particular at the time, so Brain chose to toss me a bone. One night I sat down to write flash, and what poured out of my pen was the tale of a private investigator who’s hired by a cavemannish person to find his “creator.” The caveman (not Bigfoot; I wanted to keep this story clean) claimed to be a fictional character created for a publisher’s book series, and he wanted to find his author. Trouble is, the books were written under a house name, so the author could have been one person or several, with a name different from the title on the cover. Hence the need for professional aid. To prove his story, the caveman uses the PI’s letter opener and cuts into his arm. Black ink wells to the surface. See how it all ties together?

I didn’t have a plot at that point, but that wasn’t an issue. I’m a pantser; lack of a plot doesn’t stop us. You just forge ahead and see what happens. Plus the name “Elder Breen,” tossed off in the flash scene, intrigued me. He became one of the story’s bad guys. Heroes, bad guys, mystery. I was off and running.

This is why writers are always taking notes and jotting everything down. A lot of it ends up being trash, but sometimes you strike gold. Plus it makes an easily-justifiable excuse not to work on your stated project while still legitimately claiming you did write today. We artsy types are such weasels. Enjoy your day!

 

 

You Snooze, You Lose

 

I’m a slow writer. I admit it. Procrastination’s only part of the problem. Even when I’m hot on something, can’t wait to get to the keyboard, I still have problems getting the words down, even when I’m on a streak. I’ll have a good day or two, then go blank for weeks at a stretch. I’m currently writing an eight-book series all at once because it’s the only way I can guarantee the books will come out on a regular schedule. I’m not even going to market the first one until I’ve got at least the first five completed in draft form. Even that may not be good enough. My subconscious has a nasty habit of throwing blocks in my way at the worst possible time. Better go back to the original plan and draft all eight of them first.

Back in the ancient days of BI (Before Internet) this never used to be a problem. People expected writers to take a year, even two, between books. The audience was willing to wait. No longer. The Internet has spoiled us. A couple of clicks and you’ve got books, movies, information, porn, anything you could ask for right in front of you, instantly. We’re not willing to wait any more. We want what we want when we want it, and we want it right freakin’ NOW. And if you can’t produce fast enough to supply that impatient demand, your audience will desert you, maybe never to return. There are plenty of other books in the electronic sea, from writers willing and able to churn out a story a month. Or more.

I am in awe of those writers, because I’ll probably never be among their number. I’m just not fast enough for current market conditions. Even giving up on housework didn’t increase my production. I’ve often wondered who does the laundry and cooks the meals in those writers’ households. Or, for those writing erotic romance, when they find time to do “research.”

The moral of the story is, not being fast can cost you your customers. And sometimes even more than that, as I was reminded recently.

Years upon years ago, maybe the ‘90s, maybe early 2000s, I toyed with the idea of writing horror novels. Stephen King wasn’t writing the type of books that had made him famous any more. If someone could slip into that vacated niche, they might do pretty well. I had a couple of plots in mind, including one inspired by the King himself. Back in the day he wrote two related novels, published almost back to back, Desperation and The Regulators. Different stories, but the same cast…sort of. The characters’ names were the same, but the roles they played varied from one book to the other. A bad guy in one was a good guy in the other, a child had become an adult, things like that. Like a couple of parallel universes. And what, I thought, might happen if the universes intersected, and those characters, the same only different, ran into each other?

Having grown up as a science fiction fan, I had no problems with the concept of infinite “what if” worlds. Or of characters meeting their counterparts. Remember the “Mirror, Mirror” episode of Star Trek? Spock with the beard? Oh yeah. Ahem. I came up with a plot about a parallel universe that opened up into ours, allowing characters to pass back and forth, and the hijinks that ensued.

It came out pretty good, in my humble opinion. The main character, a cop, was alive in our world but had committed suicide in the other. There was a woman who had no counterpart in any other universe. There was a bad guy—oh, the bad guy. He was male in the other world, but female in ours. The two of them met. And hooked up. Yes, exactly how you’re thinking.

I thought that was one hell of a daring concept, for its time. They’re the same person, just different bodies. Different genders. Is it love? Incest? Masturbation? Or the ultimate in narcissism? I couldn’t recall ever reading anything like that before, not even in science fiction. Maybe it happened in Star Trek fanfic. I have no doubt Captain Kirk would have gleefully banged his female other self, and vice versa. Kirk was always something of a slut.

It’s all hypothetical, because while I started the book, I never finished it. I suspect my subconscious knew it was beyond my then-skills. Plus I started having trouble recalling which versions of the characters had done what where and when. This was a book for a plotter to writer, and I’m an irredeemable pantser. Probably the reason I abandon a lot of ideas. Too much trouble figuring out what happens next.

So the book never got written, and I let the concept sit. It probably wouldn’t have gotten published anyway, not back then. Maybe not now. Depends on the execution, and the author. I am not now, have never been, and never will be Stephen King.

Skip ahead to earlier this year. Disney starts a streaming service and creates programs featuring its Marvel Comics properties. One of these shows is Loki, from the Thor franchise. Due to events in Avengers: Endgame, Loki has effed up the time stream. He’s now charged with setting things right. Over the course of the show he meets parallel universe versions of himself. One of them is a woman. They hook up.

Those sounds you hear are me screaming “Oh shit!” and kicking myself in the ass. Because I didn’t write that book, and now I never can. Because anybody reading it will immediately think, “She ripped that off from the Marvel show.” No, I didn’t. I had that idea decades ago, but I never wrote or published it, so there’s no way I can prove it. That’s the price a writer pays for not striking while the iron is hot. Now somebody else gets to be praised for being daring and original, and I’m relegated to an also-ran’s parallel universe.

Somewhere out there, some Trekkie fanfic writer may also be screaming and kicking herself. I hear you, honey. Loud and clear.

The lesson I’m taking from this is to speed up my production, pronto. I have what I feel is a marketable concept for my series, with characters, story twists and ideas I believe in. Now I just have to get it done and out there. Because somewhere in the multiverse some other writer could have those same ideas. Someone who’s never heard of me and has no clue I even exist, but who’s faster at writing than I am.

Thank you, Disney. You just gave me the kick I needed. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have a lot of writing to do.