{ It's a wicked, wicked world }

I saw Laura Jansen on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (my beloved guilty pleasure) and I really liked the song. It's fun and wickedly catchy. How happy was I to find a fun and wickedly funny video to go along with it? Who doesn't like the idea of fairy tale (Disney) characters sleezing it up in a bar?

Though the song is a couple of years old, it's just one of many little things revolving around the fairy tale trend that's been subtly going on. While it's nowhere as hardcore as the whole vampire/werewolf thing, the trend seems to be coming to a sort of climax with the dueling fairy tale TV shows (see: Once Upon a Time and Grimm, or don't see them, I don't care...) and the two Snow White movie adaptations, called Snow White and the Hunter and Snow White and Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen (that's quite a mouthful, isn't it?). This after movies based on Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast. I think the trend was started by the likes of Enchanted and Gregory Maguire's books. And then there was all that Scary Johnny Depp in Wonderland hoopla and Syfy's Alice... There really are more things than I thought now that I think about it... The Looking Glass Wars...etc.

Out of the recent stuff, I've only seen the first episode of Once Upon a Time and it was...eh, all right, I guess. I wanted it to be more whimsical and to not have such a sourpuss of a lead, but Robert Carlyle and the chick playing the evil queen (almost) make up for it. I'm excited to watch Grimm later this week and I'll probably end up seeing both Snow Whites (in about two years once they come along on my Netflix queue...).

I've even fallen victim to the whole fairy tale trend myself, though it was probably something like six years ago. I once toyed with a story based on the classic Thousand Furs tale (which falls under the Cinderella tale type, according to my folklore professor). I remembered watching a little cartoon of it when I was a kid and I loved the story. My version was called Allerleirauh (after the original German name of the Grimm version) and I of course added a few tweaks of my own. Instead of having the girl wear a cloak of a thousand furs, I just made her furry, kind of like the Beast. The prince was a complete tool bag (vain and egotistical, etc). This just led to a funny kind of tension between them, because she was by no means a simpering princess. I still might revisit that story one day. Who knows?

So, what's your favorite fairy tale?

{ My second-favorite French word }

Normally I don't have much trouble writing endings, but the ending of Ghosts of Fallen Leaves has always stumped me. In past drafts, I've always spent so much of my time making my characters hate each other, that I found it very difficult for them to get past the events of the climax of the book...and yet I desperately needed them to. 

The ending of the story is all a matter of forgiveness and where things stood, whenever I sat down and really thought about how my characters would react, I knew that forgiveness was next to impossible. And yet, if there wasn't forgiveness, then there wouldn't be a story. And that would suck. 

In order to mitigate this problem, I've changed some of the things that are revealed during the climax, as well as changed the characters themselves so that they react to these situations in a better, more cooperative way. No longer are the secrets revealed completely earth-shattering. 

The problem I'm having now is keeping the denouement to a reasonable length so that's satisfying, informative and engaging enough to make the reader want to read the next installment in the series, while also keeping it from being too sappy. 

I'm a sucker for happy endings, so that's the way my writing naturally inclines. I'm also a sucker for neat endings. The more that gets wrapped up, the better. Since GOFL is the first book in a series, it wouldn't make sense to have this sort of ending. I can't answer all of the questions and I came to terms with that a long time ago. 

I also love me a good twisty cliffhanger, as anyone who's read the current draft up on Inkpop knows. I think this is something that good, gripping television writing accomplishes in every episode. Finish up a decent chunk of the day's story, but always end the episode with a teaser of a cliffhanger that leads into the next episode. Lost was good at it, as well as shows as different as 24, Fringe, Burn Notice and Teen Wolf. (Yes, I watched Teen Wolf. Don't judge me. :P) 

GOFL no longer ends at that particular cliffhanger, but it will end on one nonetheless. There's no doubt about that. Cliffhangers are just too juicy to resist. 

What I'm having trouble with is where to leave off the main characters' relationship at the end. So many things happen by the end of the story, that's its been very difficult wrapping everything up neatly with a bow. It's very frustrating, not having things turn out the way you want them to. 

I think, for writers, the key word to keep in mind for any ending is 'satisfying'. An ending doesn't have to be happy to be satisfying. Some endings to stories just make sense, even though they're not necessarily what you would have wanted. 

True, it is possible to write an unsatisfying ending. Some might say this route is 'daring' or 'edgy', but it's not for me. I've read a few unsatisfying endings and they ruin the whole story in my opinion. I don't want people to say that about my stories. You know, "It was amazing...until the end. Then it sucked." 

And just to challenge myself, I'm going to end this on an unsatisfying note and not tell you what my favorite French word is. Denouement is only second-favorite. You have no idea how much it pains me to do this. 

{ A lesson on history }

Photo of the Piazzetta and the Doge's Palace near the mouth of the Grand Canal. 

Like other dorks out there, I like history. In fact, I would go so far as to say I love history. Mostly European, mostly pre-1900, but if it's historical, I'm all over it. I was one of those kids who wanted to go to Williamsburg, VA, not because she had an American Girl doll, but because she freaking loved the historical setting of the doll's stories. 

British period dramas, antique shopping, historical fiction, old fashions, black and white photos, Ancient Egypt, Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett AND Robert Downey Jr.), old school History Channel (you know, before all those reality competitions)--you name it. If it represented the past, I loved it. I even attempted to major in history in college before I realized the professor for European history was Portuguese and I couldn't understand a word she said. And she wanted me to do work. What was up with that? 

So while I've always been drawn to the past, I usually steered clear of it when it came to my writing. I mostly did this because the idea of doing all that research just seemed too daunting. As much as I know Pride and Prejudice inside and out, I'm well aware that that doesn't mean I know everything there is to know about the Regency Era. Before I could even think up a single plot point, I would have to do hours and hours of research in order to write a historical novel. 

And the whole notion of doing 'homework' for a story was off-putting enough that I never seriously attempted to do it. 

Cut to a few years later. 

I can't remember what inspired me to write The Antiquarian way back in the early months of 2008. To boil down the plot for you, it's a mixture of Sherlock Holmes, Indiana Jones and the Da Vinci Code--adventure, mystery and history all rolled into one. 'The Antiquarian' is a treasure hunter and the story centered around his quest for the Ultimate Artifact. There were sidekicks, witty banter and paranormal elements. The Antiquarian had an arch nemesis in the form of one Dr. Septimus Harcourt (best name I never came up with), also known as The Collector. Weaponized walking sticks, old Chinese books and the Crystal Palace also made an appearance. 

It was grand old fun and even three years later, I still enjoy reading it.  It only exists in script format (hypothetically written for a graphic novel) and it doesn't contain a single shred of historical accuracy. The story never left my mind, however, and recently I found myself thinking about it again. It managed to distract me for a few weeks in the end. The blame must be placed entirely with Gail Carriger and her amazing Parasol Protectorate series. I have no affinity for steampunk, but I freaking love her books. The writing and the characters are all top notch. Anyway, I always thought The Antiquarian would make for an entertaining story and therefore had the potential to do mildly well in the market. Since I'd been letting GOFL stew between drafts at the time, I decided to take a crack at doing some research and possibly writing a prose version of the story.

Images include: a map of Venice, the Bridge of Sighs, a gondola, buildings on a canal, Lieutenant in the First West India Regiment, 1881 poster for the second premier of Aida in Venice, interior illustration of La Fenice opera house, Baedeker's travel guide to Northern Italy

To start off my epic search through history, I re-watched Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes and then hopped on over to Gail's blog where I read her post on writing about the Victorian Era. I knew The Antiquarian story began in Venice in 1881, so I used this date as a starting off point and dove in from there.

With Google holding my hand almost the entire way, I was astounded by the amount of information I was able to find. I found everything from old photos and maps of Venice, to travel guides written for English tourists, detailing the city and its many landmarks. With a place like Venice, a city that hasn't changed all that much in the past 130 years, Google Earth even helped me get a 3D view of the canals and Piazza de San Marco. Using all this collected information, I was able to pinpoint the hotel where my characters stayed, the places they visited and even which opera they saw at La Fenice opera house. Borrowed CDs allowed me to sample some Aida by Giuseppe Verdi. That's right folks, I listened to OPERA. Hell, for the one character, I was able to decide on everything from his regiment in the army and where they were based to what kind of cigarettes he smoked. 

For all of those professional history buffs out there who are cringing at my reliance on the internet for my research, I would like to point out that the vast majority of my sources were primary ones in the form of free ebooks found via the Google E-bookstore. I did also buy a photo book on Venice, as well as What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool, a basic guide to Nineteenth Century England. 

At the end of the day, I've always known The Antiquarian is a paranormal-historical story, so I have a little leeway with the historical accuracy. But once I dove into all that research, the thrill of discovering all these little details about bygone days just pulled me deeper and deeper into the world. 

Do I still have a lot more to learn before I can accurately write about an Englishman in 1880s Venice? Yes. 

Did I have way too much doing research for something I wasn't even being graded on? Hell yes. 

Je suis perdu

kelsey_lovesfusionphoto | Flickr

I feel a little lost again, writing-wise. I was kind of excited by all of the support Loch Raven generated. I even sat down and hammered out an outline for the rest of the book, and managed to finish the last chapter I wrote. I've got tons and tons of lovely little scenes waiting to be written, images in my mind that need to be put into words.

But still I can't get Ghosts of Fallen Leaves out of my head. It might have something to do with the fact that it has dominated my creative mind for the past two/three years. If my fingers were on the keyboard, they were undoubtedly working on Ghosts. I must have made a billion ebooks of the thing just so I could review the story on my Nook. Countless hours were spent scouring the internet looking for something to use as a cover. Money was spent, for Christ's sake. 

And when I go to bed at night, it's the story that pops into my head. I mull it over and over again, imagine scenes and refine dialog, all while I should be falling asleep. 

I'm still obsessed. The plot for book two is taunting me and last night was the first time in a few weeks that I really really wanted to start working on it. I might still work on it. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Or tonight? Or the next minute, for that matter?

I'm not confident enough in myself to work on two stories at the same time. I worry that the voices will meld and part of the reason why Loch Raven exists is because it was supposed to be the anti-Ghosts (to a point, anyway). The last thing I need is for Willa to start sounding like Becca. They're different people. (Who probably wouldn't get along, now that I think about it... They have absolutely nothing in common.) 

I guess I'll just have to ruminate. And stop writing blog posts just for the heck of it. In the meantime, here's something French(Canadian) for you. The song was inspired by The Little Prince, a book I hated. The song is catchy as hell, though. I love singing it in my butchered French. The sheep crack me up.

Painting a story through speech

Shandi-lee Cox | Flickr

After doing a few critiques on Inkpop, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to tell a story--or more importantly what it means to me to tell a story. Everyone has their own way of storytelling, different styles of writing and breathing life into characters and their lives. Here are just a few thoughts I have on the subject.

Let's Talk

Personally, my favorite way to move a story along is through dialog. I love having my characters talk. Talk to each other. Talk to themselves. (I write mostly in first person, so this sounds a little less crazy in that context). During my planning stages, I think a lot about dialog. Sometimes, before I start working on a scene, I actually write out all the dialog ahead of time, leaving in only vital stage directions. This way I am able to concentrate on the characters and their words and actions and use them to shape the story. 

Ever since my first writing class in high school, I've heard people squawking the age old adage: SHOW DON'T TELL. I think there are many ways interpret this, but for me I've taken it to mean that dialog is a major factor in any story. It helps to move the plot along, as well as allows characters to reveal themselves. Instead of INFO DUMPS, a few lines of dialog between characters can convey just as much information to a reader as paragraphs and paragraphs of description. 

Let's Not Talk

But, there are times when a lack of dialog is the perfect thing for a story. Sometimes it is less what people do say, than what they don't say. Tension can be built through scenes by a stark lack of communication. People do it all the time in real life. We all have gone through conversations that danced awkwardly around important subjects or simply ignored things that probably should be said. 

Personally, I love using a lack of dialog to convey plot elements. Anything that adds a layer of realism to my stories is a plus for me, since I tend to write about paranormal things. That's another reason why authentic dialog is a must for my writing. 

In other news...

I've been obsessing over a few things recently. First, this song:

Second, Slings and Arrows, a Canadian black comedy about a troop of Shakespearean actors. I'm a fan of the Bard and Paul Gross, so this show is just awesome and highly recommended. Plus it's streaming on Netflix!

Construction

Laineys Repetoire on Flickr

Well, piece by piece I'm working on a new design for this blog. So far I've added a new header at the top and mixed in some CSS to make things look neater and prettier. The photo in the header was taken by me with my old camera. It's a shot of the trees at Loch Raven, so yeah. Fonts are Garamond and Scriptina, two of my favorites.

Where credit is due

The background comes from Shabby Blogs, which has a lot of cute stuff. Unfortunately most of it is too cute for this blog, but it's still a highly recommended site! I also need to give a shout out to two other sites. I recently found Blog Bulk and it helped me put the divider lines in the sidebar. It looks like I'm going to be using a lot of the tutorials there. Pugly Pixel is an awesomely cute design site and it's currently one of my new favorite blogs. I used her navbar tutorials for creating the links under the header. Thanks a bunch to both of these sites!

In other construction news...

I finished with the outline for Loch Raven. Structured outlining is somewhat new to me. I used to just 'wing it' a lot when I wrote. I'd come up with an idea, jump right into chapter one and just plow on from there. 

The thing is, this usually results in one of two things happening. The most popular result is that I write an awesome beginning, flail about the middle and eventually give up. I have so many false starts under my belt, it's amazing. I've probably written War and Peace six times over with all of the abandoned projects I have lying around. One of these days I should get around to totaling up a word count of all the stories I've 'wasted' time writing. I'm sure it's a ridiculous amount. 

The other result of the 'full steam ahead' method is that the story can end up very disjointed. That's what happened with the first draft of Ghosts of Fallen Leaves. I would start to reference or set up story elements that would later be dropped, ignored or completely reversed by the end of the book. The various drafts since then have partly been motivated by a desire to make the beginning, middle and end of that book feel more connected. 

This whole sense of detachment is the main reason why I stopped writing Loch Raven in the first place. It wasn't that I couldn't come up with an ending. I just couldn't reconcile the darkness of the paranormal elements with the light, summery beginning that I'd written. The paranormal elements in the beginning are practically nonexistent, so I was having a great deal of trouble figuring out how to drop them in without it shattering the story beyond all believability. 

To outline, or not to outline? That is the question, folks.

I've since become a believer in outlines. Of course every writer has their own method and it's not like I refuse to write anything without having an outline first. While working on the rewrites of Ghosts, I actually got in the habit of doing outlines without even realizing it. I would make notes, either on my computer or during down time at work. Sometimes I'd write little bits of dialog, but mostly it was just rambling descriptions of chapters and scenes. 

It eventually occurred to me that this was actually a form of outlining. It helped me to keep track of the things that I needed to have happen whenever I sat down to write. Before starting this final rough draft though, I did outline the entire story so I had a mapped out version of the plot. It helped me keep the separate plot elements organized as well as focus on the 'beats' of the story, the little story arcs within the overall story arc. 

When book two became a foreseeable reality, I jumped right into writing  an outline before even starting a single word of chapter one. I actually have all of book two planned out, which is very strange for me. We'll see how well I stick to it, but it's nice starting a story with some sense of the beginning, middle and end for once. 

And now it's the same situation with Loch Raven. After looking over what I'd already written and brainstorming a new ending, I hammered out an outline over the past few days and now I'm ready to start  working on the story again. I'm very excited about where it's heading and I can't wait to share it with everyone!

I feel so lost.

BookCountry.com

bookcountry.com

Let me start at the beginning. About four/five days ago, ShelfAwareness sent out another one of their awesome newsletters. This one featured an article on the launch of BookCountry.com. It's a website run by a subsidiary of Penguin Group, as in the publisher. It's main goal is to be a writer's community, where people post their writing so it can be read and commented on. The goal is to have a bunch of writers interacting with each other, reading and critiquing each other's work. It's a great idea, so of course I signed up. 

One of the catches to making your own work viewable to the public is that you must review three other user's work first. Of course I totally get the impetus behind this requirement. If everyone just dumped their stuff off so other's could read it, where would the motivation be for anyone to review anything? Since the site is new, however, I did have a problem finding content that I actually wanted to read. I think I'll keep checking back, but for now, I've put my Book Country account on hold. 

Inkpop.com

In the meantime I found a similar site for writers, called Inkpop.com. This site is run by HarperCollins, more specifically tied into its HarperTeen division, since Inkpop is decidedly for teens and teen writing. From what I've been able to tell, the majority of its users are teenagers (there's no actual age limit, so that's why a dinosaur like yours truly is trolling around) and they post everything from fiction and its myriad of subcategories, to poetry and nonfiction. Inkpop allows users to pick five books as their Top Picks. From what I understand, rankings based on a ratio of Top Picks vs. Top Pickers or Trendsetters, dictates the ranking of a book. The kicker is--and this is how Inkpop greatly differs from Book Country--the homepage keeps track of the top five ranked books and at the end of the month, editors from HarperCollins read these top five, entire MS or the first 10,000 words, whichever comes first. 

inkpop.com

What HarperCollins is doing, of course, is using the Inkpop community to separate the wheat from the chaff for them. This is a smart move. Everyday publishers receive piles of manuscripts for review, and these are mostly from agented writers. They'd be drowning in paper if they all accepted unsolicited manuscripts. With a community at Inkpop at their disposal, the teen branch of the publishing house has a whole fleet of volunteer assistants (who happen to be their cheif consumers to boot) reading manuscripts and either giving them their seal of approval or not. All with the aim of getting reviewed by an editor at the end of the month, with possible publishing contracts to follow. 

It's a great idea. One Penguin decided not to do. They expressly say they cannot guarantee anyone of any significance will ever read anything on the site. Of course, that might change, but who knows? The one thing I absolutely loved about Inkpop was the wealth of choices available. The site has been around for a year or so and it is heavily active, so there are tons of projects to choose from for your reading pleasure. I've already poked around at few things and I can't wait to dive in a bit deeper.

This is when things started to go south...

read

Four days ago, I posted the first four chapters of GHOSTS OF FALLEN LEAVES on Inkpop. Literally within minutes I received a short, positive review. A day later, another, more detailed review showed up. For not having done anything to promote it, I was pretty proud of myself. My ranking hovered somewhere around 1040, and one of the sites Top Trendsetters actually picked my book, so it even lingered on the homepage for a day or so. 

Fame is, of course, fleeting, or in this case, non-existent, so I didn't really expect much to come out of this without promotion. In the past four days, the book's ranking has risen to 914, which is awesome. It's currently on seven watch lists and ten waiting lists. No new reviews, but oh well. I feel pretty good about it, since I didn't actively try to promote it or anything. My goal wasn't to make it to the top five and have my MS read by an editor. If that happened, YAY! but that wasn't my goal. I still felt good about preparing this book for publishing later next month.

read

The issue began, however, when I decided to submit another bit of writing. A few years ago, after working on the first draft of GHOSTS, I started a story called LOCH RAVEN. The setting was loosely based on a reservoir lake near my home with the same name. After writing something dark like GHOSTS, I decided to embark on something light, though still paranormal. LOCH RAVEN turned out to be a summery story with lovely characters I loved writing about. It was so unlike GHOSTS, which is why I think I like working on it so much. It got some fond reviews from my friends, but I never finished it because, firstly, I had to pick a project and it lost, and secondly, I had written myself into a hole. By the time I got around to working on a rough draft, I realized it would require some decent amount of re-writing and so I dropped the project. 

I'd always envisioned LOCH RAVEN as the next project I'd go back to, once I'd gotten GHOSTS firmly off the ground. And so I submitted it to Inkpop, since I figured someone might read it and enjoy it. The problem is...

People are enjoying it.

In less than 24 hours, LOCH RAVEN has done better and gotten more attention than GHOSTS has done in four days. 26 pick lists, 5 individual comments, 4 related messages and an overall ranking of 628. IN LESS THAN A DAY. 

*insert barrage of expletives here*

EPIC FAIL.

My problem, and ultimately my question for you...

Am I concentrating on the wrong project for my debut?

  

Progress? A Writer's Rant

Look at that mess...

I've been staring down the final chapters of my book for quite a while now. I've got it all outlined (for the most part) and I know exactly what I need to write. 

But I can't bring myself to write anything. 

I think I'm worrying about the fact that the denouement is somewhat long, which can be a complete turn-off for some readers. I love that word, by the way. Denouement. I took French for six years, so I tend to like saying the French loan words with my crappy French accent. It makes me laugh. 

All in all, I've taken way too long to edit this book. I wrote the first (horrible) draft over the span of six months, and that was with easily two months' worth of breaks thrown in the mix. Since then, I've been editing it for two years. TWO YEARS. Granted, during those two years I've completely rewritten the darn thing, so I guess that counts as much as writing a whole new book. 

This final rewrite has been difficult and miraculously easy all at the same time. About a month or two ago I had an eureka moment. By adding a new character and a certain background story, I had somehow managed to make all of those awkward edges smooth out and work perfectly. It was as if that little plot point had existed in the story all along, but I had just forgotten to write it in. Once I worked it into the existing manuscript, everything started flowing very nicely. It made me grin from ear to ear, it truly did. 

I've also done the very naughty thing of taking time out to outline the next book in the series. So there it is now, sitting on my hard drive and in my brain, trying to distract me from finishing the first book. I need to start thinking of it as the carrot on the end of the stick. "Now, now, half-witted author. You can start writing book two once you've finished book one."

I'm starting to feel myself drowning in doubt again, which does me no good. Every time I write a new draft, I start off thinking it's a billion times better than the last one, but then I slowly grow numb to its wonders and I begin to doubt the quality all over again. Will it catch the reader's interest? Is this scene thrilling? Are my characters likable? Blah blah blah. 

Oh, and another little seemingly insignificant thing that is bothering me? It's so short. Like, holy cow that might just be a novella short. This bothers me to no end because no one could ever accuse me of brevity when it comes to my writing. The reason why it is short is because I've made the decision to break the original novel up into three parts because the original was too long. Like, 200,000 words worth of too long. But here I have part one probably clocking in under 70k. What the heck...?

cover design © h.m.resch

I know I just need pick myself up by my bootstraps and soldier on and whatnot. If I plow through and just finish the darn thing, then I can make it pretty during the final editing stage. 

Either way, come hell or high water, this book will be published sometime in June. In the mean time I've pretty much figured out the cover. This is still a work in progress, but I don't expect it to change too much before the release. 

Sorry for the ranting. I don't have very many people I can talk to about my writing so sometimes it just spews out and I can't stop it. I hope to have a chapter or two up for perusal sometime soon. Keep checking back and thanks if you actually read this far! <3

Just a Drive



flickr



       It was a rusty tank. It rattled slightly as it veered onto the beltway exit and I worried if it would be able to speed up fast enough to merge with traffic.

Not for the first time I wondered, What the hell was I doing in Nathaniel Strange’s car?

“You look like I’ve kidnapped you,” he laughed, glancing at me from the driver’s seat.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” I ordered. “Do the brakes in this thing even work?”

His smile faded. “The brakes work just fine, Becca. The car’s in pretty good condition for being twenty-five years old.”

I gripped the dashboard in fear. “Twenty-five?!”

He smiled proudly and pet the steering wheel as if it were a prize-winning barnyard animal. “Yep. Nineteen Eighty-three Buick Century. I bought it from an old woman who only drove it to the shops and back for twenty years.”

I sat back in the seat, transferring my iron grip to my seatbelt. “Twenty-five years…” I glanced around the car with eyes wide in horror, just waiting for it to fall to pieces. My money was on the rearview mirror. Those always fall off first.

“Relax, Becca. Rusty is made of solid steel. Even if we did crash, I’d be more afraid for the other car. Modern cars are made of aluminium. It’d be like hitting a row boat with an aircraft carrier.”

“Rusty?”

“That’s his name.”

“It’s a he?”

-------------------


Here we have some dead text from my book. The scene became completely irrelevant a few drafts back, but it's still one of my favorites. I'm going to miss this scene the most.

text © me, of course.