Here We Go Again

Isn't that a great picture? I took it last fall on my way to Chichen Itza.  Those are ceramic wall plaques on the most fantastic orange wall. I loved the contrasting colors and repetition.  It reminds me of all the colorful bits and pieces you need when readying something for a submission to a publisher.  Writing the story is one thing, making it fit for an editor to read is quite another.

Look at that, it’s been a  week since I posted.  There’s a reason for that; I’ve been hard at work on my new MS for the April Camp NaNo and revising another manuscript in the hopes of being able to submit it.  I had a pitch with an editor yesterday and she asked to see the whole thing so hopefully all those hours of editing, re-writing, blank stares, sore back, and despair are worth it. And if she isn’t interested, I do understand.  My book isn’t easy to categorize.  It’s a small town sci-fi romance with no space battles or aliens.  My heroine works as a trash recycler. It’s not dystopian or shiny perfect future. People on my world work and get dirty and don’t have many places to shop because the settlement exists to grow food and ship it away to more populated worlds. Definitely not something I could pitch as fitting very neatly into one of their lines. But I’m grateful she’ll at least take a look at it.

So I spent my writing time today doing a massive re-write of the ending (always the most difficult part for me to write), running that spell check AGAIN, and fixing everything on my knock list. Once I did that, I did a little happy dance around the room, drank a cup of tea, and returned to the computer to write up the dreaded synopsis.  Once I completed that, I started in on this blog post because I am done done done until I hit send tomorrow morning.  Or heck, maybe I’ll send it out tonight with a glad heart and return to my current WIP with a clear conscience.  And speaking of quirky Sci-Fi, the story I am writing now takes place on a world made of peat moss, animal-like trees, and a special epiphyte that makes the human brain VERY happy. I love it there and can’t wait to return to it.

From the Caribbean to Deep Space

So that’s a picture of a fan palm.  At least I think it’s a fan palm.  I took that picture last fall on a trip in the Caribbean because I love palms of all sorts. But this palm inspired a biological plot twist in my April Camp NaNoWriMo novel.  For those confused by the acronym, NaNoWriMo refers to National Novel Writing Month which is November.  But for those of us insane enough to want a novel in a month more than once a year, there are mini-celebrations in April and July.  I wrote a pretty decent novel last November that just needs some polishing so I decided to take the plunge again this month.

Because I’ve been doing so much ‘business’ over the last few months (editing, promoting, blogging, etc.), I was starved for something purely creative.  As the germs of my work in progress started to grow in my head and I began to make notes in a composition book which is what I do for every novel I’ve written.  I outline the story, make character studies, and diagram scenes in there.  Sometimes I’ll even write dialogue longhand to get a feel for the characters.  My last contemporary/paranormal buzzed to a halt because both of my main characters were just too, well, repressed, so I decided to indulge myself with a sci-fi effort.

When I write sci-fi, I am able to let go of so much that realism that I think is important when you write contemporary.  With sci-fi I can make up names and places and plants and devices to my heart’s content.  Plus I don’t have to abide by current societal norms.  Just an example of how wild my imagination can get; I am creating a world filled with symbiotic trees that have all sorts of epiphytes living on them.  Intrepid scientists have recently discovered that one of these epiphytes produces a compound that does something magical to human blood chemistry (one guess what that is) and now the race is on for people looking to get rich quick.  It’s sort of like the California gold rush except on a soggy planet very far away.

And this fan palm was the inspiration for the organism that hosts the epiphyte in question.  The waving of the fronds is an important part of the life cycle of the epiphyte.  The sad thing is that I have written pages of notes about the biology of these creatures and I know that hardly any of it will appear in the book.  But it’s my world and it’s safe in my imagination.

Ben Hurry

that's his formal whip

My son calls this movie Ben Hurry.  I love the 1959 Charlton Heston version and it is an Easter weekend tradition for me to watch at least a little of it. I have ever since I was a small child.  Now I own a copy of it and can pop it in for a viewing whenever I might have a few hours with control of the television. But I rarely have control of the television or about three hours of time with nothing else requiring my attention, so Ben Hur is unwatched.  Except at Easter.

But enough about my schedule, let’s get back to Ben Hur and why I love it. It’s a really great dramatic story with all sorts of characters and themes and overt tie-ins to Christianity. There is slavery and betrayal and redemption.  The costuming and set decorations are simply wonderful (I think they are the reason I collect Fontanini nativity scene pieces). Plus a wonderful Roman naval battle and the epic chariot race sequence.  What more does a movie need?

They make a cute couple

Judah Ben Hur is complicated; a decent man who makes mistakes and comes out transformed by tragedy and the goodness of others. He’s the hero and rightly so.  But I have a sneaking admiration for the evil Messala.  First off, Stephen Boyd plays him perfectly; handsome, smart, and very clearly making a choice between being decent and being ambitious.  He’s wonderful to watch and whenever the two handsome leading men share scenes it’s hard not imagine some sexual sparks between them. Ah-hem. Messala has the best death scene.  I always fall for a great death scene.  My husband jokes that I only really like a movie when the hero dies.  Which isn’t very HEA. The story is still incredibly romantic and I sigh a lot when I watch it, even on what is surely the fifty-plus viewing.

blame Stephen Boyd for my slight addiction to be-toga'ed men

So, anyway.  Despite the floggings and leprosy and ships in flames with galley slaves still chained in the holds, Ben Hur is romantic to me.

Mark Rothko has Themes and so do I

Yesterday we went to see the Mark Rothko exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art.  It was a very interesting retrospective of his work.  I ended up appreciating his later, more famous pieces after I was able to view his earlier work which the curators hung to allow the viewer see the evolution of some of his trademark themes.

It made me feel better about the themes I keep returning to in my writing.  I thought I was in a rut, but I realize that just like Rothko’s use of horizontal bands, floating backgrounds, and division of an image into parts, my elements of protagonists searching for something missing, men willing to speak their feelings first, and characters having jobs that interfere with their social lives are components of who I am as a writer.  Those are my building blocks and I shouldnt' be afraid to use them to build new tales every chance I get. Now what those themes say about me and my subconscious is anyone’s guess.  Also anyone’s guess is why in every story I’ve written, my female protagonist gets physically hurt.  It’s another common theme for me. Maybe it's just me working through some of my accident-prone anxiety.

In any case, if you are in Columbus, Ohio go see it.

http://www.columbusmuseum.org/blog/exhibition/mark-rothko-the-decisive-decade-1940-1950/

Tri Cars and My Lack of Imagination

Here is some writing/research trivia for you:

Campanga Motors T-Rex Tricar-I don't own copyright for this image but it is cool anyway. I want one. A T-Rex tricar, not a copyrighted image.

So here's the situation.  I am working on re-writes for the second in my series of (so far) three Sci Fi romances.  There is a fourth one but it's not done and I don't like where I've gone after about 60,000 words so I am ignoring its existence right now.  And I'm already planning another Sci Fi romance for my April NaNo book.  The thing is I don't have a contract on any of these books so I want to polish this one very brightly indeed and pitch it to an editor next month.  More on that whole thing later.  Right now I'm talking about research. Ah-hem!

So in my fictional future on my agricultural planet of Sayre, the inhabitants drive tricars. I had a vision of these things before I knew they already existed here on Earth.  In my story they are called carts and I came up with a neato spring-loaded propulsion system for them too.  Not that the propulsion system has factored in any of the stories I have written.  It's just there in the back of my head where the whole planet and everyone and everything on it exists.  My cranium is pretty crowded at this point.  So for inspiration's sake I have managed to find a few that fit the picture in my head.  Like the one above.

My male protagonist, Lazlo Casta, works in Security so he has to drive a patrol model.  The image of that one exists in my head but I am unwilling to spend much time scouring the internet to locate a picture that suits me, so here's a picture of what Lazlo would RATHER be driving:

I don't own the copyright for this one either but it's a pretty lovely looking machine as well.

Lazlo is a big guy, so I'm not sure how he'd fit in there, but I know he'd love to try as long as Del Browen, his love interest is along for the ride.

Now Del is a different sort of person.  She works as a recycler on Sayre and when she can get away, she likes to prospect for interesting minerals in the unsettled areas.  Lazlo has to hire her as a guide and that's how they meet and fall in luuurve.  He's nice, she's grumpy, he's tall, she's short, opposites and all that. So sweet. Anyway, research. Ah-Hem!

So Del can't drive such a super-cool looking cart.  Where would she put the bins of compost and bags of rocks?  So she needs something a little more functional.  Like this;

This isn't my image yet again, so if anyone anywhere objects to me using these, I will of course remove them.

My point is this; even though I think up all sorts of amazing stuff, most of the time someone else has already thought of something quite similar.  My job is to put together all sorts of ideas and themes and images in new ways. And that's hopefully what I've done well enough with these stories that someone else will want to ready them.



The Hobbit or Where Has Thorin Been Hiding and How Can I Get There?

(I don't have the copyright to this photo and if anyone objects to it I will of course remove it with some sadness)

I finally saw it.  When you are a stay at home mom to a five year old, the free time to go and see a ‘grown-up’ movie is usually nil.  I’d wanted to see the Hobbit since I’d read that Peter Jackson had signed on to make it, so it’s been a long wait indeed for me.

So after picking up my son at pre-school, we went to a big box store that shall remain unnamed because I hate to shop there.  Truthfully, I would be willing to bet money that I have visited this or the other big box store no more than three times in the past couple of years. But my aversion to these stores is not really the topic for this post.  The Hobbit is the reason for this post. Ah-Hem!

And speaking of Ah-hem, where had Richard Armitage been for the last few years and why was I not looking there?  A real failure on my part to have only noticed him today.  Again, I have been missing out. I even indulged in a little fantasy involving hiking in New Zealand while wearing lots of leather and carrying a sword.  I’m sure that upon further viewing of the film I will develop this into a very vivid narrative.

Back to the movie.  Good.  Not sure that I like the deviations from the book which I just finished reading to my son in December.  It took about a month of bedtime reading to get through it, but it was worth it.  But having just re-read it, I was taken out of the film whenever they diverted from the ‘classic’ storyline.  I’m not saying the deviations were bad, it’s just that I noticed them.  But I was all for seeing lovely Frodo again. Martin Freeman did a great job and I was even further convinced that I was an elf in another life because; salads!

Oh, and for anyone who is wondering how I watched this movie with my five year old, the answer is called a fast forward button. I am like a Wild West gunslinger with that thing.

Busy Again!

At the beginning of the week I set some goals; continue editing my sci-fi romance, try to track down a local printer for my swag, finish up some promo stuff, plan my story for next month's NaNo.
Silly me to make plans!
Yesterday I received an email from the head editor at Musa  Publishing assigning the editor for my book and now I need to go through the whole manuscript and insert all the Musa house style rules that I can and get it to my editor.  And as I'm doing this I'm also fixing all sorts of little mistakes. Me being the overachiever that I am promised to have this done and turned in by the weekend.  I don't have to wonder at my mental stability, I am well aware that it rests upon the shifting sand of unreality.
Arg, so I now have so much work to do over the next three days and have exactly NO time in my schedule where I am not taking care of my son on my own.  Other than the few hours I have on Saturday to attend my local RWA chapter meeting (hey Central Ohio Fiction Writers!) thanks to my parents coming to babysit. But it would be rude to edit my book while attending a talk on time management.  I'd be a terrible example of taking on way more than a reasonable person should.
But I have to wonder, who finishes editing one book on February 23 and starts editing the next one on March 13?  Of the same year? Oh, right, me, that's who.