An Inspiration Passes

Been feeling meloncholy the last two days.  Tears choking my throat, it's been a long time since i puked tears and i could now...

It's surprising.  I mean in the way that i wouldn't have expected puking tears from this, i wouldn't have expected to react to this particular death in such a heavy hearted, choking way.  maybe it's because i would have never expected this death.  maybe it's because we had unfinished business, he and i, only he never knew it.

He is the reason Third Bed exists in the way it does.  Before he walked past me that night, i had only bare-bones on a post-it.  Then he passed, on his supervisory rounds and all the pieces fell into place.  i knew the story i wanted to tell, i knew the characters and i knew their love.

and i never got the courage to show him what i made from that little bit of nothing that he did for me... I never got to thank him, and in the end i never really got to know him...

For Chuck:

" She was a sexual creature; she’d known that from early on and her life had progressed along a line she felt was true. Still, she had been astonished by her own primal reaction toward him that first time she’d seen him. No, ‘saw’ was not the right word; reaction to the sight of him hadn’t been what lit her up and made her take such immediate notice of him. She had breathed in the scent of him and known that she was lost.

She remembered the opulent, glittering ball, where they’d been introduced. She could hardly recall the face of the diplomat who’d purchased her services for a journey to the city by the sea. She had been out of her own element, beyond the lines of her comfort zone among the high-class wives who would have snubbed her in her own city. But her borders had never before broken from a little strain. She let herself be consumed by a persona she would normally only wear for a night. She’d lived it and breathed it for weeks without pause.

She had noticed him first while in conversation with one wife or another; he was nearby, speaking with her diplomat escort. Though they shared a brief glance, they were not introduced. Not out of rudeness, but due to no available opportunity before he was off to meet another guest. He passed quite close behind her as he moved away, putting a gentle hand to her elbow to warn her to not turn about suddenly. The touch was only one of a thousand jostles and embraces in the night. It meant little, but the air he’d stirred up around her was a different story. She was struck by the scent of him that lingered after he’d gone.

She followed him with her eyes as he crossed the room, unable to tear her attention away as the smell filled her, finding a home in her belly and roaring to be noticed. It was a roar she recognized from her long life of promiscuity, but she had never known it to be so astoundingly strong; so deafening, so undeniably true. She learned later it was no special soap or cologne, only the smell of his skin and hair and breath. It was him.

Eventually, he asked her to dance. She accepted him and they shared two dances that night. She didn’t know how she’d managed the steps, how she’d remembered to smile and laugh and seem pleasant while engulfed by his irresistible odor. She hadn’t even been sure if he understood how he was affecting her. But then when he left her for good that first night he’d whispered five words in her ear that both terrified and thrilled her.

“I know who you are.” "

Don't Forget to Title Your Post

I feel like i start my blogs with the same sentence sometimes.  here's one of those times.

i don't know what the fuck i was worried about.  i'm just being stupid.  i've got this under control.

I forget how i'm working at this, slow and steady.  i forget that i've fixed things, i've figured things out already.

And i etched out another little specificity that irked me by its absence.  I feel that i have finally found the whole of the insane rationalization of my "bad guy"

Because so much of what happens hinges so much on a series of events that happened long before my characters were born.  But i have to keep it neat and clean and short, yet still show what's up with the bad guy and the character who is basically me.  She's in all 5 stories, even after she's dead.  She does pretty much my job... twists events to fit her fancy.

that's not true.  that's treating her worse than she deserves.  she gets a bad rap.  no one really appreciates her.  poor dear.

Anyway.  i'm working on the first two at the same time right now.  editing 1 at home and rewriting 2 at work.

And I'm still waiting to hear about Third.  Coffee Companion took a long time to come back but i feel like this is mayblonger.  maybe cuz they're giving prizes in this one?  maybe cuz i totally rocked it and i'm getting one?

that'd be awesome.

Distressed and Rambling

It's not even the lack of time that i use as my excuse.  It's my doubtfullness.

I worry that, in the end, the conflict of the second story, The Prophet, is weak.  And without that story, there is nothing else.  The first one's only there to set it up.  The third one is only there to set up the fifth but cannot exist without the second...

I guess it's what i've been tryign to work on, since i am rewriting it all over again.  The other four grew out of what it was supposed to be, not what it was.  i fear my foundation is shaky...that there are plot holes i can't seem to fill.

Maybe, though, i can blame the time.  because when do i really have any time to sit down and thnk about it?

i have beautifully terrifying outlines and post-it notes everwhere.  i need a sabbatical.  but captioning assistants don't get those.

and i know that's why i've been so focused on Eillim and Enna lately in their little stories.  because they entwine with but are not dependant upon the main, treacherous bodies.  Chapter Eleven of the The Pilot revolve around them but with a little editing i could pull it right out and the twins could exist free entirely of the insanity of the Ankaverse.

...and now that i've said that, i wonder... could i pull it out in such a way as to still leave it in (god, i hate myself) the same span of time, from their point of view...

i just don't like the gap of information between Shade and Shadow and Letters, some of which exists in Chapter Eleven.  i'd like to put them Smashwords.  still waiting to hear back from glimmer train on whether or not i continue with the process for Third Bed...

in other news, i watched The Avengers again tonight.  i still think that it is better than the sum of it's parts.  i loved it more than i loved Ironman and I. Love. Ironman.  i have a very meh feeling about all the rest of them (you know, except for that hot thing.  i am still a girl)... i always expect Captian America to yell "Flame on!"  one guy really shouldn't be two superheroes...

but when they all come together and they each have their own seperate personality and joss whedon is fabulous... yeah.  i love the avengers.

The Things I Love While Visiting With the In-laws

wedding party and first birthday party this weekend back in the husband's hometown.  all his brothers and sister were there, and that makes a lot of us.

Some of my favorite things about going back to that overpopulated, psychotic, loud family:

The door to the laundry room, and subsequently the downstairs bathroom, should be a pocket door.  They’ve said so many times.  It’s a squeeze to get between the door and the dryer and it is strictly a one way street.

There’s always someone moving about, even in the dark of night.  Dad’s getting ready for work at three.  Someone fell asleep on the couch and is up at six to trade places with the early riser with the toddler.  We’ve all heard the infant going about his business throughout the night. In the same respect during the day there’s always someone napping (the moms) or still sleeping (the brothers).

The Christmas houses are always on the tops of the cupboard, no matter the time of the year, and they have their own switch of the roughly three dozen in the kitchen alone.

Ugly afghans everywhere.  I made one of them, not even the coolest one.

Update 10/18:

Holidays.  The chocolate pie.  thanksgiving and christmas.  there is always a battle in the kitchen on HOW to make it.  often, it doesn't turn out.  Every year.  twice a year.  for seven years now and probably before i showed up, i'm sure.

Vacation's Over

I never did finish my week of babyless posts.  that's okay.  nothing special happened, really.  i cleaned the house and got the Guide all put together the way it's supposed to.  now to finish it.

Today i finished Sense and Sensibility and i had nothing to read afterwards (or i didn't wanna go back to Uncle Tom's Cabin) so i pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote down one of those things that's been rattling around in my head lately.  it relates to the Pilot.  and it sort of opens up a new avenue for me to go down to make that a better story.  it needs to be better.

it's just a short conversation between Nesris and her owner/brother/prince Nasinair.  I only  mentioned it once and only in retrospect the fact that even though Nesris was a slave Nasinair treated  her well, almost as a confidant.  i think going back and revealing more of her life as how it used to be will add to the story...  give Nesris and Dartia a little bit more time in the beginning...  And i also have a new idea about why and how she escapes.  the first one was clunky.  this one is better.

So i'm gonna dig out that binder and take it to work tomorrow.

now i have to go do my at home job.  a file from hell. i just want to finish it but i don't want to work on it.

To be Single and Childless, Day One

it was perfectly ridiculous to find myself so aimless and out of sorts this morning when there was no baby and no husband.  it's not like i see them before i go to work anyway.  we have just changed the daughter's schedule so that it's the same every day, not different the days i don't leave for the real job.

and then, of course, the day took forever.  I've been working on reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and i really like it, but it's moving slow.  yesterday i had an irresistable urge to read Pride and Prejudice.  I decided to just run across to the book store and get a new copy since my old version is a tiny paperback that at one point set out to see what it was like to be two paperbacks.  i could use a shiny new copy.

There's nothing that gives me a bigger book boner than a brand new, shiny trade paperback.  some people want the hardcovers, let 'em have it.  i love my trades.

So today i read P&P and this time around i'm picking up even more.  Mr Bennett cracks me the fuck up. i love that dude. 

I'm looking forward to tomorrow when i will have to go into work for a short time to make up hours, but then i'll be in the coffee shop working on putting The Guide in the correct order.  can't wait.

Beauty Is a Whore

I like money better.*

it's been about books more often lately than writing.  today, a little of both.

I am nearly done with the Sherlock adventure.  There's less than a quarter of the book left... i actually knew the answer to the one i read today.  The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.  as soon as Lestrade said that two had been broken.  i was like "something's inside them!"  win.

I started The Hours, the third book of the Meryl Streepathon (*which is where this quote comes from).  This is the second, for sure, and possibly third book that also mentions her within the book.  i will be keeping count of that too.  i find it interesting that she is so very knit into the very fiber of the world.  because Meryl Streep is fabulous.  denying this would be like blasphemy.

I am unable to go with the husband and the baby to the family trip intended on taking with them.  But this leaves me 10 days free of... everything, it seems.  Sure, i have two jobs still but those eight to ten hours of being at home after, five of those days totally free of the real job.  i felt i had to make a to-do list to make sure i had something to do every day and i wouldn't go mad, so used to being busy i am...

but i filled it up beyond what i can probably do.  I miss so much the things i got to do when the husband and i were alone.

On all of my off days i will be spending a few hours at the coffee shop with my laptop and my headphones, a glass of iced coffee and probably a peanut butter cookie.  and i will take the chopped up hunks of The Guide and i will put it back together the way it belongs.  that's four days, maybe five.  how much can i get done?  half of it, at least, i hope.  how many cigarettes will i smoke (because come on, i'll be alone for a week.  yeah, i'm gonna buy a pack of cigarettes) a lot, i forsee.

I should be working

but everything seems to be against me a little bit.  the audio sucks, the program's not working, i'm cranky, i don't care.

the baby climbed up on one of the tables today.  that made me laugh.

today i made a plan... how i want to go about converting my crazy, crazy binder back into sensible digital form.

Color coding with the new post-it flags i got.  i used up my last package of these and when i went to get more they were on CLEARANCE. so i bought two packs.  blue is revisions, green is write new, yellow is transitions and pink is new stuff that's written and typed already... probably stored on Scrivener.

This is my outline. i sometimes feel like crying when i look at it.  and that's only the front half of it...

There's all kinds of these kajabers... pages torn apart and put together in a new order.  color coded highlighting that i hardly know the meaning of... arrows... so many arrows.
Also, this picture is upside down.

I think this is a true compulsive personality tick.  every post-it i have ever written in regards to this story (since it's been in this binder... which is years, but not all of them) is stuck to the back cover once i've done the thing the post-it told me to do.

Well, that was fun.  the color coding was fun today and it'll be helpful for the almightly plan.  the plan to use the multiple-sections-combined-into-one-document function.  now it's all in the order it's supposed to be in and all i have to do is chop up the digital copy and put it back in the right order.  transitioning and polishing as i go.

and when will i have time for that?  oh, on the week i was supposed to go on vacation that i've been looking forward to for like a year.  stupid real job.  stupid pto and full-time and hours requirement bullshit.  no vacay for me.

Coulda Warned Me...

Someone could've told me how addicted i was going to become to Sherlock Holmes.  seriously.  now, not only is there the stories every day, but there's a tv show that i could watch over and over again... and a second show coming out in the fall that i seriously can't wait for.

Working on the The Guide and The Prophet at the same time.  moved some stuff around.

I want a Kindle, but only if you can edit documents on it... then i can modify my digital work at work.  because there's not much left to do besides work on the computer with it, but i don't have the time.

It's Summer

You can tell because my patio looks like a jungle.  what parking lot?  i've got a jungle outside my apartment, bitches.

And also because all the epiphanies are blooming.  smack dab in the middle of my walk jamming out to... gosh i don't even remember... was it Jimmy Eat World?  i know i started out the walk with Supertramp.  a good way to start out a walk.

Bam, it hits me.  one of those obnoxious "road under construction" signs is pulled aside and i'm finally allowed to travel down new road.  it hadn't been a full-on writer's block.  just a writer's construction sign...

I've been reading and between writing stories lately.  that's been nice but i think we're on our way back.  To The Guide once again.

i need to get paid to do this so i can focus on doing this.

A Short Stretch of Freedom

Because the husband's grandfather died plus the wedding we were going to this weekend i have taken the entire week off work.  10 days total.  i'm on day 3 and already i feel it's going too fast.

i'm not doing much story work, though i have all this time.  I don't have the vacation from the real job to cover all the hours i'm missing, so i have to make it up with the at home job.  but, as always, i am not angry about this.

I did actually spend some time working on the Pilot the other day.  more like scribbling in margins and whatnot.  i really am still very disappointed by the awfulness of the story.  every time i would open my locker at work and see the binder it's in i would tell it so.  So Disappointed!

ah well.

the title of my last post: Letters From the Desert, i realized later that's probably gonna be the title of the Shade/shadow sequel.  i'm a little worried about it... not only is it coming out of me slowly but the story itself is moving slowly.  with the first one moving so fast i thought i'd want the second one to match.  but they're both older now... much older.  so maybe it's the right thing to go slow.

6 days!!

maybe i should quit writing for a while...

i come to the coffee shop and can barely edit a page, though i think i should actually take the draft to work again and reedit it because i haven't enacted anything that i've written down. i'm basically just rewriting. its getting better, yes, but its tedious as well.

saw this quote on scribophile:

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. ~James Michener

made me smile. i totally get it.

but even at work i have a hard time writing. It took me days to write the last apocolypse story and it's only like 8 pages long. the new one, about the windmills coming out of the fog - well, i drew a map of what the windmill farm looks like.

maybe i'm worn out. maybe i need a break. vegas trip will be a break, except my grandma told me about this writing contest for a short story. 600 words. not too big. it's due the day after i get back so i could totally do it while i'm there. how cool would that be to write a story with a bein'-in-vegas-flair??

again i wish there was a button on my belly that i could push and it would all just spill out of the printer (i wish i had) in my head. easy peasy...

i think my slump stems from The Third Bed. I wrote it and i liked it so much. its like when i read the Robin Hobb series, or Marjorie Morningstar and i didn't want to read anything ever again. i'll get over it. i always do.

oops

today i started writing the story i'm not supposed to be thinking about. i really tried so hard, sure i did! this blog wasn't around last year when i had the wonderous idea for the spaceship story and i thought 'yeah i'll save that for nanowrimo'. i tried to save that one too, oh the desperation in my attempt... it started to fester behind its door so i had to write it out as fast as possible.

well this story wasn't exactly festering, but i had been peeking in on it just occasionally when my mind would wander on a call at work and i wouldnt realize that i was being drawn by the chimes. what i saw happening though, was not a full on developed story with a plot or anything, just these two people in this dark room making conversation. it was about the people and the story was not developing to involve the lives they lived outside this room. saving it until nano might have been a good idea, but i think i would prefer to hope another door appears in my mind in the next month or so that has 50 thousand words behind it just ripe for the taking.

i didn't actually get very far because it has been insanely busy at work lately. my bet is the heat. its keeping all the old folks inside so they don't just fall over dead in the streets. in all honesty, i wouldn't much mind. it has been so busy that i have trouble not FREAKING THE FUCK OUT every other call. it is so busy that we are not getting time between calls to chill and to chill is to stay focused at craptel.

for the next 4 weeks i told the boyfriend i would not be coming home early in order to have 2 big checks right before the vegas trip. but i came home early today and he yelled at me and said 'i knew you weren't going to make it'

but i clarified that that starts tomorrow (but did not point out that the last hour of my shift i took off today is technically tomorrow). he bet me i couldnt make it (giving me a period day if i need it) i took the bet. the reward is sexual favors or a home cooked dinner. you can ponder over who gets what amongst yourselves.

i know i'm totally going to win because when he bets me i don't lose. like that time he bet me everything in his wallet i couldn't beat him at bowling. the score sheet is still on the fridge.

you know what's coming up?

National Novel Writing Month. i know that its really 3 months away but i'm going on vacation in a little over one month and by the time i get back it will be nearly october and october, with all of its cool weather and pretty colors goes by so quickly. and then it will be november and then i will be expected to write 50 thousand words even though i haven't yet finished any of the novely things i have begun.

but if i won 2 years in a row, why oh why would i not try again for a third year?

so i've been pondering on it, but only a bit. i knew i should probably write something NOT AT ALL connected to the crazy storyness i have going on right now. it will make my life easier and saner. if i want to connect it later, so be it, but for now it will not occur in my existing universe.

and today i sort of came up with 2 scenes that will be my seedlings of story. i built a door in my brain and behind it the story will grow but hopefully not so quickly that i have to start writing it before nano - or that i have too much of it figured out before november arrives and i feel i can't legitimately use it.

its one scene that leads to the next. One is not nearly as interesting or fun as the Next, but they're both important. Next was inspired i think by the scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Sundance sits in the shadows and tells Etta to get undressed which totally turned me on, even when i was a kid... or maybe it was just robert redford. or maybe those two things are interchangeable.

so i'm excited to write these little glimpses and to find out where else they will take me come november. but i'm not going to think about it any more until then. and you shouldn't either. ready, set, stop thinking!!

i heart coffee

today i didn't really edit so much as watch videos on youtube while at the coffee shop. in the end i did get about 4 pages of thickly edited stuff done. i think it was actually pretty productive work since most of the edits i applied i made up on the spot rather than going by what i had put in the pages. This has been happening more and more frequently since the whole beginning part is different and i have to modify everything to compensate. le sigh.

i have also been typing, in the mornings while watching gilmore girls and full house, the rest of the spaceship story. when i organized i went into my word document to see if i had ever finished the dastardly chore of typing up my handwritten shit and it turned out i hadnt. im doing it cuz i have to, but the thought and writing process has continued to develop and i'm typing stuff that isn't exactly true anymore. sometimes i change things, but mostlly i 'm not even reading what i'm typing. just 'staying on the clip' as they call it at craptel.

but i have been pretty consistant with all of my work, working when i should - even if i have to force myself to do it instead of the fun stuff like cleaning my apartment. that's what i'm doing today. joy oh joy. but at least i get out of my walk and the laundry. cleaning will be enough exercise and i'll be doing the laundry tomorrow. so i'll clean in between playing video games today...

Meandering Thoughts

The other night I was laying in bed waiting to fall asleep and thinking about the great Stories because they are never far from thought, no matter where i am. I was thinking about how much yet needs to be done and going over and over the things i want to change not only in the prequel, my main focus right now, but on EVERYTHING. I thought to myself, 'maybe i should just scrap the whole thing. yeah, that sounds good.'

i then fell promptly and completely asleep.

that, of course, was a psychotic half asleep decision and i of course am not going to scrap the whole thing. but i could. oh i could. instead I have been attempting to become more organized. I added tags to my posts, though i haven't gotten through all of the old ones yet. I want to be able to find easily all the posts for each story. I am also going to sort through the piles of first and second drafts and filled notebooks and label and put in envelopes and box up what i don't exactly need, but cant exactly throw away. Of course i have to clean the craft room first. damn my lazyness...

You know what I learned in a meeting at work?? Apparently there was a study done that showed that the color purple is the color that is least offensive to people receiving critiques. Green is the second least offensive. Purple is more expensive to produce, and my work doesn't care about us THAT much, so all of the supervisors, leads, and captioning coaches (me!) got a green pen to do such critiques with.

When i pulled the green pen out to go do some coaching yesterday i noticed that there are none of my favoite opaque white bics in my bag. Those are my writing pens. I have editing pens and doodling pens in my bag, but no writing pens. And i've wondered why I haven't felt like writing at work lately. So yesterday i did write at work.

the monstroscity has been big on my mind for a long time and the one main part that has always bothered me, even when i had considered the thing "finished", was the reunion between Anka and Edonith. My first vision of that had been filled with an angry mood. I felt like they should come back together in a fight. that's how the first and second drafts came out, but even then i didn't like it.

in my editing i had noted to myself that it wasn't quite right. that i needed it to be more 'magical' was the word i used. So i re did it. and i liked it, but it wasn't yet right.

i have realized since writing the prequel that my problem was in the fact that i didn't truly understand why they had seperated. now i know and i can bring them back together in the exact way i wanted. Neither of them has given an inch in the feelings they had when they parted, but they had missed each other completely while they were seperated.

and writing my new perfect vision of this one scene has anchored me once again to the fact that i can't just scrap the whole thing. that would be absurd. i only wish i had a printer on my head and a button on my belly. i could push the button and out would come the whole story, complete and perfect, because editing sucks!!

and finally, speaking of editing, i finished chapter 6. i made sense of the crazy tri color highlighting fiasco and wrote a post it about how i need to rewrite that section. rewrites are not what the coffee shop is for so that will come later when i go through after i'm done editing and start to tackle those big spots of red text i have highlighted throughout all the chapters.

see what i mean? so much to do.

I'm behind

totally behind. instead of getting up at 10ish like i planned and getting stuff done quick before heading out to the coffee shop to edit, i slept until 11:15. i got those magnets listed on etsy and sold and shipped and ended up here at the coffee place at nearly 1, which is when i usually leave. its just after 2 now and i'm headed out shortly.

i worked on chapter 5. i decided, being behind and sort of cranky, to only do the first three pages of chapter 5. They were also covered in corrections to the point that i felt a bit overwhelmed. but then when i got to the end of those three pages i was like 'eh, i can finish them'

so i did. rock on. chapter 6 is either wednesday or next monday depending on how my week off goes. we shall see.

The Full View

This post is specifically for any new readers coming from Author's Den. I will be posting a link back here from the last chapter of Shade and Shadow, but in a way I would really like to put a lot of this stuff down too. Rehash it for myself because it always clears out cobwebs, new epiphany sprouts in the idea garden and the like...


Shall we go chronologically? since that is the way we like it best AND it starts with Shade and Shadow which is where new readers are coming from and future me will be promising information!!


A Study of Shade and Shadow


Enna and Eillim are old characters and not so much characters as Alter Egos. If my mother had won my name would have been Millie, and my aunt always wanted to be Anne. One night names were written backwards and suddenly we were different people that we masqueraded as on a writing site where i'm sure everyone who knew us, knew it WAS us, but it was just so fun.

E&E faded into the background for a long time, until i watched Gray Gardens and also probably saw Practical Magic in the same span of time. I am a fan of sci-fi, and that is what i write so i turned these practical real world crazy women based loosely on my aunt and myself with thick influence from all the ladies in the movies mentioned above into witches. I wrote E&E into a story which you will read about later - The Spaceship Story - and they were fabulous. i loved them so much that i edited that one first draft chapter over and over until it was top quality while the rest of it hasn't even been typed up into my cpu yet.

My aunt texted. She said that she had run across the phrase "Analysis of Shade and Shadow" and thought it should be a title for a story i could write since i am notoriously unable to title a damn thing. It instantly inspired me to write a short story... i knew exactly what about. Starting with a title, which i modified so it wouldn't seem so scientific, (btw i love bloggers autosave as i just accidentally closed my window!!) i ended up creating a very specific plot layout, with an entire EFFECT in mind. It was really interesting to build something that way, when i usually just let it flow and see where it takes me.

there's all sorts of fun little anecdotes about the story i could tell you but i just don't have the space, but you can probably find them spread throughout other posts, if you care to read on. But i really did like creating a religon and faith based mostly on cataclysmic events in the land the people lived on.

The Prequel

"Named" as such because i am writing it second, after the Nameless Monstroscity, which comes next. I am currently working through revisions on this story that tells the story of Anka and Loki in their early life, their meeting and Anka's struggles to leave her old scary life behind. it explores all of her early relationships and introduces my oldest favoritest characters to each other. I had originally included much of this story in the Monstroscity but it became exactly what i called it. It got too heavy and i decided to go back in time and tell it in 2 parts instead.

This one is interesting to write because i already have an end point in sight. I have to keep in mind main plot points from the second story so that key things link up, and I also have to keep track of all the things i have decided to change in the future to fit better. Interesting and frustrating. and daunting. I love this story very much because i love meeting younger versions of my characters, as i have just reexperienced with E&E.

The Nameless Monstrocity

which is little by little getting smaller and better. Though i haven't worked much on it except to write countless post-its with ideas of changes and additions and removals.

This story introduces Daniel Mccaffrey who is my show stealer. every time i introduce him into a story he takes it over as his own. i believe he is the reason the monstroscity got so large and i found it so difficult to include Anka's back story. I was too busy with the forward story. The forward story of what actually happened in Anka's past and also setting the stage for Daniel's future. Like Shade and Shadow i think it deals a lot with religion and god and in a lot of ways it is how i view higher powers. I didn't plan it that way when i was writing it, but when i finished it i saw that there WAS something i was actually saying - rather than just making up a story.

The Spaceship Story

cuz it spends much of it's time on space ships. i'm a star trek freak. i love firefly and the bbc show red dwarf and there's a little bit of each of them in my characters - as well as influence from a million other places in other ways. This i started as a short story with the intention of only introducing the crew of the Orbiter so that i could use them later with something i wanted to do with Daniel as he searches for his sister - which is his main goal throughout even the first story.

But then i actually introduced everyone to daniel and suddenly there was more story. Daniel stole the show and I did, in time, realize that this was a good breaking point between the ending of the Monstroscity and the beginning of The Sequel. though he doesnt really need it - egomaniac that he is - it develops his character further and makes him more mature for those later events.

I got stuck halfway through this one - totally didn't know what to do. So i started The Connector for Nanowrimo and the ending for this story developed at the same time. The 'foe' of the two stories are the same and writing the connecter enabled me to figure out how to finish the Spaceship story.

The Connector

Chronologically this one actually begins sometime during the prequel - and it is sort of a stand alone story - taking place in a different part of my universe, under a different government and everything. It involves the story of Carrie Mccaffrey, Daniel's sister, who disappeared when she was 16. she is now going by her middle name - Jo - and has been a captive of the same individuals who appear in the spaceship story as i just mentioned.

In a way i had an end point in this story in mind as well. I had already had little epiphany images of Daniel and Jo's first reunion, as well as some of the things that would happen as he went through his search... but other than that i had no idea what was going to happen. Thought it was a Nanowrimo story i nearly stopped halfway through when i saw where my antagonist was going and i didn't want to finish it. i liked all my characters too much to want to do the things to them that i was about to. It was sort of the hardest story to write, but in the same way Turinax, my bad guy, may be my favorite bad guy of all time. Though that's a tough call. I really love Jubal Early.

The Sequel

i have been planning out this one since i finished the 3rd draft but as you can tell, the sequel is no longer the second story. I can't call it anything else until i name it for real because then i won't know what i'm talking about. This story takes place about 4 years after the monstroscity, perhaps about a year after the spaceship story. It brings Anka and Daniel together for his search for Carrie and this is really the last story i have a solid plan for.

With carrie comes Spencer and i think he may have been what i was working towards all along, which would be coincidental if i could only tell you the story!! for a long time i thought it was Ronan, Anka's son, but i don't think so anymore. Stuff like that happens sometimes. I once wrote a whole piece where Anka dies at the end... it turned out it wasn't anka's scene - i just hadn't met the right character yet...

Artemis & Buddy

Buddy the coffee maker from Coffee Companion es-245 and Artemis from a yet unnamed and unposted story exist in the same post apocalyptic world, though i don't have everything worked out yet about what i want to do with it. I believe i want to write a bunch of disconnected short stories that in the end introduces spencer into the world that he'll save... or not... we'll see

The Spencer Story

All i know is i think i want to tell it in first person - whereas everything else is in 3rd. I've got little idea nuggets but gosh i've got so much to do i should just stop thinking about it.

I should also stop typing cuz this post is crazy long and no one is ever gonna read it anyhow. but if you have gone through my entire epic layout and are still interested - holy crap. also, look around some more, and for god's sake encourage me. I think i'm a bit bogged down!!!

8 days

in 3 days i will be 26. in 5 more i will be sitting at a craft fair hopefully selling everything i have made and brought with me. I will eat a whole bag of pretzels and probably drink my body weight in diet coke and have a full day of girlie fun with my two favorite girls in the world.

I finally got my first comment on Shade and Shadow on Author's Den. I have been watching the stats closely to see how many hits it gets every day but I can never be sure if people are reading - or just clicking through. I click through, but not before attempting to read what I'm looking at. There are a lot of people on Authors Den who don't give a shit about formatting or editing. If you give me a block of text or too many passive verbs in the first paragraph I move on.

but a comment means it was read. And she said she was excited for the next one. The next one was meant to be posted on this coming monday which is my birthday day and i will be headed back home to hang out with mi familia. so i went to the coffee shop today to edit chapter 3 so i can post it first thing in the morning monday before i head home.

back to the stats - because i had more to say on that subject... chapter one of the story was the most popular in the fantasy catagory for a while, and that totally rocked. I think it must update weekly, or maybe bi-weekly, but as of yesterday chapter 2 was the number one and chapter 1 was number 5. I noticed that after chapter two was posted the stats on 1 started to go up even faster. Chapter 1 has been up longer so it has more hits, but chapter 2 is slowly creeping up behind it in hit totals.

i wish i would have been making a graph, cuz that would have been cool to look at. but i hardly have time to shower and breathe with all the crafting and craft fair preperation i've been working on. I haven't done much writing at all, though my mind is always working through kinks in one story or another. I am regretting that weekend 3 weeks ago where i spent most of the time playing video games. I'm such a fucking slacker sometimes!!

strange things that are happening...

this is probably going to be entirely un writing related...

1. i have been dating everything 2007. i cannot come up with a logical explanation for this behavior. '09 would make the barest amount of sense but what the hell is with 07? i can't even remember '07 due to the monotony of the years since 05 when i met the boyfriend. hardy har...

2. i am totally in love with Wil from the gas station. he works the 3rd shift spot and i go get a soda from him after work and today we talked about star trek. now that i think of it, its not really all that weird. i'm always in love with the boys who work 3rd shift and supply my coke... diet coke, i swear.

3. i have been singing the lyric 'Jennifer, Jennifer, you asked me to be true, what can i say? i found someone new. dobedobedo...' for days. it is from the movie boys and girls which is full of all sorts of fun quotes, but the only thing that has stuck since my last viewing has been the breakup song. this is the boyfriend's area that i am encroaching on - splurting out lyric of some random song at odd times of the day...

4. i've had meloncholy eeyore face for 2 days.

that is all. the boyfriend has finished his golf video game and we're to watch the rest of Defying Gravity which is one of those awesome shows that shouldn't have gotten cancelled - especially since they kept flash forward on the air...