I've Been Tagged!

From time to time, the internet winds blow my way and I end up getting tagged. I generally don't do anything about it, but this time I figured I would, as it gives me a chance to talk about myself. Yay!

This one came from PT Dilloway, whose novel, A Hero's Journey was released this week, much to his surprise.

Anyway, I'll get right to it.

Ten Questions for the Next Big Thing

1. What is the title of your Work in Progress?

Total Depravity

The cover I'll probably end up using

2. Where did the idea for the book come from? 

Where they all come from, the ether.

3. What genre does your book fall under? 

Science Fiction, well, is historical Science Fiction a real genre? If it is, then that's what this is.

4. Which actors would you chose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

Phht, I have no idea. If they make the movie I'll worry about it then. Although, I must say that one character is disturbingly large. 

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book? 

A colonial era Bostonite is tasked with hunting down an escaped slave that is rumored to be a demon.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

The intent from the very beginning was for this story to be self-published.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft? 

About a month.

8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre? 

Well, I have no idea. I don't think I'm especially original, but nothing really comes to mind.

9. Who, or what, inspired you to write this novel? 

I love the idea of secret histories, and on a more philosophical level, of how much difficulty humans have interpreting events that fall outside of their cultural or intellectual framework. Like when the Spaniards first began arriving in their giant ships to to explore the Americas, there are stories that natives didn't recognize the ships offshore as... well... as anything. They made up their own stories about what they were or dismissed them altogether. Interpreting the visitors as gods or prophets. I think it says a lot about how the human mind works.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? 

Well, the bottom line about any book is whether or not it's good. My hope is that this is better than anything I've done before. I know I'm excited about it.

That should about cover it all. I'm supposed to pass this along, but I'm not going to. If you want to consider yourself tagged then please, by all means, you were.

Sigh Time

LOTS OF STUFF on the plate for this week so I may be scarce around the interwebs.

I DID FIND this amazing youtube channel with all these concept painting tutorials... it's one of the greatest things I've ever stumbled across. I watched a ton of them.


THERE WAS A NEW review for A Dead God's Wrath over the weekend. It's funny, as I've done no promotion whatsoever and despite all that almost no one has read it. Wait, that's not very funny, is it?

Still, the review was somewhat mixed, they commented that the plot was predictable and my prose was tedious  - while still being riddled with errors. But I really, really appreciate the review as it was. It was someone that wasn't worried about hurting my feelings and wasn't being mean spirited - they just found the story less than exceptional. They pointed out why they didn't think the story worked and I really appreciate them taking the time to read and be honest. I hope the next story I release will be better.

And I do plan on putting something else out within the month. I hope that this story is more compelling than the last. I'll post more about that soon though.

Also, someone on Goodreads rated A Dead God's Wrath over the weekend as well, except they didn't give it a review.

It was one of those dreaded one-star ratings everyone dreads. Sigh. I suppose I'd rather not read what they had to say about it. At least so far they haven't put that rating up anywhere else besides Goodreads, so I appreciate them not flaunting their dislike publicly.

ANDREW LEON has made the second installment of his serialized novel available today. You can get it for free if you hurry up. It's an Amazon exclusive. Hurry up and get it by clicking.... HERE

FINALLY, MY FANTASY FOOTBALL draft was this weekend. It's pretty sad when halfway through the second round of the draft I realized I'd made a horrible mistake and my season is ruined. But I'll enjoy being the underdog in almost every game.

I'll get 'em next year.

Happy Monday people.

I'm Still Me, But Then Again...

JUST A QUICK word of thanks to everyone that chimed in from my previous post regarding pen names. I made some edits to A Dead God's Wrath that I've been meaning get to for the last 11 months and finally took care of some typos and grammatical oopsies that have been nagging at me. While I was at it I went ahead and changed the name on the cover. I'm now Rusty Carl.

Of course, that meant I had to go to the other outlets, B&N and Smashwords specifically, and change those too. I have not been able to change my author page on Amazon though, not sure how to go about that. I'll figure it out at some point. Count me as an author is transition.

ALSO. CINDY AT Dreamer's Perch is having her great summer giveaway today. You can visit, comment, and possibly come away with a free book. Sounds like a no miss win for everyone.

WRITING UPDATE: After a year's worth of fits and starts. I counted my very long novella as finished... er, well, you might say I just gave up on trying to fix it. Either way, I sent it off for editorial feedback over the weekend. It's a good feeling to have that part done at least.

AND FINALLY, ANDREW Leon has e-released Shadow Spinner part 1 on the Kindle. He's serializing the story, much like he did on his blog, and releasing them as Kindle reads. It's listed as free today, but it won't be that way for long, so rush out and pick up your copy.

I also did the cover for it. Learn more about the release and his request from you, the reader, for some additional help on his post from today.

Otherwise, happy Monday.

I Don't Have Time to Talk About Time

I’ve got this idea about how my perception of time changes. When I was a kid, around 5, and I had to wait 6 months until Christmas, it seemed like torture. 6 months is so far in the future that it might as well never come.

Considering that folks generally don’t start developing lasting memories until they are close to 4 years old*, that means that waiting 6 months is, more or less, the equivalent to waiting a quarter of my entire living memory for Santa to visit next.

So, in my scenario, a five year old waiting six months for next Christmas in equal to me, today, waiting 10 years for something.

That’s how I figure it anyway. Which is why if I don’t pay close attention, I’ll not notice entire seasons go by. That’s seasons like Spring or Summer, by the way, not seasons in a more generic sense of the term.

And that’s true, I’ve walked outside and wondered why it was so damned cold, only to realize after a few moment’s thought that it was December and I’d missed the Fall. Leaves still change color in the fall, right?

So, I find also, that projects that I’ll start have a tendency to drag out longer than I intended. I’ll often think that if I have a month to do something then that’s about as much time as I’ll ever need to do anything, I suppose that’s because my perception of how long a month is was set when I was 5 years old, and a month was a significant portion of my life up to that point.

I just finished a rewrite of a novella I started on more than a year ago… A YEAR AGO! For that to take longer than a month is ridiculous. The bad part is that I’ve not finished the project, just the draft. I don’t intend to radically change the story at this point, just add a thing here or there, take away something in a spot or two, that sort of thing.

My feeling after I finished this draft is that it’s an okay story. I like anyway, that’s all I can ask for, although, if the feedback I’ve been getting from the pro markets I've been submitting short stories to lately are an indicator, other folks aren’t quite as thrilled with my stories as I am.

I have taken a break from my Fantasy novel for a while so I can go back to my outline and rework it a bit. I’ll be working on that with some more focus in the coming months.

Just FYI.

*I made that up. But it could be true.

DRAGON SLAYER LIVES!!!!

Writing is a way of life, really. I don’t like writing, it’s painful, frustrating, it takes me away from family, it makes me angry when it isn’t going well, it’s awful really. But once I’m done with something I feel like I have to jump in and do it again. I like the pain I suppose. As it stands, I’ve got a half drafted fantasy novel that I’m considering abandoning – this year’s nano – if I can’t re-outline it into something I like better. Right now it’s a bunch of people wondering around and saying, “Hey, this whole world is really weird,” and “Man, we can totally do magic! That doesn’t make any sense.”

Yep, that’s hard core storytelling right there. Especially since these people aren’t visiting this fantasy world, but actually supposed to be living on that world. Ugh.

Easy mistake to make, happens all the time. But that isn't the Invincible Sword of Leboria - that's Glagnar's toothpick.

Part of it must have something to do with world building, or a lack thereof, I started thinking about my teeny little village that was cut off from the larger world and everyone carrying weapons. Well, that means they had to have a forge, and ore, and something to keep the fires burning hot (lots of trees, maybe coal). Ooh, then I thought of a guy with poor eyesight, then that led to optics, and glass blowing, oh, and don’t get me started about clothing, do they have wool? No, I decided, only cows and pigs… so they wear lots of leather. But then I started thinking of home construction, if they are iron poor (which they are), then they don’t have lots of nails, and if they don’t have nails, do they also have iron hinges (yes, I decided, they will). Is that significant? I have no idea. But I spent too much time figuring that stuff out as I wrote. What do I mean, figuring it out as I wrote? Let me explain by using some (made up) example.

“But Ragon can’t be the town’s only Smith, what if he were injured? Or he died?”

“I know,” Platt said, “but it’s true. We can’t support another Smith, the apprenticeship takes too long, and we need all the able bodied men to help with the harvest.”

Julie frowned. “But the harvest isn’t all year round, surely someone could apprentice for much of the year, and then help in harvest time. It doesn’t make any sense to go without.”

It was Platt’s turn to frown now. He hadn’t seen the poor logic before then. “You’re right.  There is no reason for Ragon to be toiling away without an apprentice. He must be hiding something, making up lies in order to continue working in secret.”

Oh, I can’t write anymore. It’s awful. Now imagine approximately 200 pages of what I’m now calling “plotting through dialog,” which is what happens when I chuck my outline, or even follow it, but miss a major plot hole, which gets discovered during my extended character interactions. I’ll just write it out and move on, and come back later to fix. But when more and more of the time spent writing is really just me plotting, or figuring out the world building, then I know I have a problem, I’ve not thought my story out well enough.

So, that’s where I’m at with that. I do think I’m going to give the novella I wrote late in the summer another editing pass. It’s that one I’ve complained about intermittently that starts as an epistolary tale before sliding into a traditional first person narrative. The problem I’ve been having is I like both methods of storytelling in general, and in particular, I think both serve to help me tell the story I want to… but something about putting the two together, unintentionally, bothers me. I don’t know, maybe it’s like the discovery of penicillin, or a peanut butter and chocolate thing… serendipity that leads to greatness.

All Done

Fini. Done. Complete.

Yep, my short story novelette novella is now complete. Not the one I released to the wider world last month, but instead one I’ve been working on, believe it or not, for the better part of the summer.

Now, when I say finished, I, of course, really mean I finished the first draft. Although the first draft of this is probably closer to what a second draft would have been on most of my works, since I actually plotted this one out in pretty good detail first. But it will probably require some heavy editing before it’s ready for… well, whatever I intend to do with it. I’m not sure if there are many professional markets for 25 thousand word stories, but I’ll at least look.

If I have a structural issue with it, it would be that I wanted to write an epistolary story. It started out that way and I loved it. But telling a story that way (fyi – for those who might not know, epistolary stories are those that are told solely through correspondence, i.e., letters or… epistles) can be tough, real tough.

I have a great fondness for that type of novel, I must have written a half dozen stories that centered on someone finding a notebook, or letter, or artifact, and slowly piecing together how it’s relevant for whatever predicament the characters find themselves embroiled. So I thought I would forego the framing element and just let the letters tell the tale.

Big mistake.

Don’t get me wrong, I like it. It feels like the kind of thing I would enjoy reading. But at the same time it’s limiting. I write in first person sometimes, and that form for storytelling can be constricting too - especially if things are happening off stage that your viewpoint character doesn’t have knowledge of. But those are limitations I’ve been dealing with for a long time. I might not be a master, but I’m comfortable enough that I can usually get enough out through dialog that I don’t worry too much about those limits. Well, telling a story through correspondence is difficult because it not only magnifies the problems inherent in any first person story, but also makes the whole ‘rising tension’ thing a bit more difficult to pull off.  I mean, you generally don’t read a letter where the person writing is saying, “There is a guy right behind me with a knife.” Although the mental image of someone running for their life and penning a letter at the same time is pretty funny, it’s not great for that feel of imminent doom I wanted.

About halfway through the story I just switched over to standard first person and carried on.

So, I have one story, half told through correspondence, the other told through typical first person narrative. Yep, it may need a bit of work to make that consistent. I like both parts, and will need to do a bit of work to smooth all that out.

Other than that, I’ll need to do a pass to fix the numerous smaller problems, baby sized plot holes, reeling the info dumps back a bit, making the narrator’s voice consistent throughout. Grammar, typos - all sorts of stuff like that - It should keep me busy for a while.

So I’ll go back and work on the obvious stuff, then put it away for a bit. I mentioned last week that I don’t think I can accurately gauge where I’m at with its quality, but during the writing I went from thinking ‘this is interesting’ to, ‘this is awful’, to ‘this is awesome’. I’ll look forward to reading it again in a few weeks and see what my opinion of it is then.

What is it? Well, another historical sci fi adventure I suppose. This one set firmly in the 1730’s – a man sent to track down and execute an escaped slave that caused a revolt finds someone much different than what he expected when their paths finally cross – and learns that this escaped slave might be the world’s only hope for survival.  Plus zombies!

Or something like that, I need to work on my elevator pitch.

So while that one stews on the pot a bit, I’ll pick up on the sequel to my still unpublished novel that I complained about yesterday. I don’t care if the whole lot is unsellable and unwanted. I started that sequel back in, yikes, I think it was 2006. Might be about time to start wrapping that one up too.

Once finished, I’ll start trying to plot for NanoWriMo. Wow. I’ve pretty much got my year all booked, go figure. Maybe I can shoehorn a real short story in there somewhere. I still haven’t managed to write one of those since 2009.

Wednesday Wobblers

Sorry about that title, I’m a huge fan of alliteration.

To take a break about all the ‘me’ stuff this so far this week I thought I would take a minute to talk about …er… universal truths. No, wait. I mean I want to talk about me some more.

I was thinking about how blind I can be to the quality of my own writing and then it hit me - today is my birthday. I forgot all about it and there it is. I just got a whole bunch older today. 

 Where was I? Oh yes, I believe self doubt is something common among writers, I’m at a point now in my current work in progress where I’m thinking I might have a toxic dump on my hands - and I can’t tell. I worry that I may be telling a story with too complicated a background to parcel out over the course of a single novella.

How detailed is it? I have this timeline that I started a long time ago. It goes from the moment of creation all the way into the deep future. I have these cool little points to indicate major events that happen, who they happened to, and so on. The thing is, it’s all backstory. I don’t have any real intention of having that timeline ever make its way into my created universe. So far, I’ve written a draft of a novel, the self-published novelette I’ve been pimping for the past two and a half weeks, my current novella, and another short story, all within this larger tapestry I’ve created.

So I wonder, when is it a Tolkeinesque thing of beautiful worldbuilding and when is it a giant mess? Stephen King has said previously that all his books (or maybe it was most of them) are all related through the Dark Tower novels, Larry Niven had all those Known Space novels, which included his Ringworld novels and his Man Kzin wars, so there was tons to explore. Scott Sigler tells all his stories in a single shared universe, his is very impressive to me because the tone and subject matter of his novels can be so different – he has modern day techno horror books and far future YA football stories, and they all share a common history.

I think it’s great, I love that I can read a novel, enjoy it, then pick up another story, set centuries apart in time, separated by vast distances, and have characters that are often unaware of one another each tell their self-contained tales, all while unveiling something much larger.

Oh, I guess Star Wars may count too – but with the number of writers and properties involved I’m not sure that’s good for my example… they just aren’t the creations of a single individual anymore.

So, that’s what I want to create, that larger universe that feels so real, that has its own history, so many things happening off stage that the reader just knows the author (me) has it all worked out – and it will prove to be amazing once the whole thing is made known.

You can't read that can you? Because this is the entire content of my brain

Big dreams, too ambitious perhaps. So there I am, writing happily away on my novella and it hits me, how much of this backstory is necessary for the reader to understand enough to enjoy it. Then a second revelation hits me. Are the characters and conflict even interesting enough in their own right to carry this story anyway? I mean, I’d hate to figure out that my 20,000 word story contains an 18,000 word long infodump with people staring into the distance and eating rabbit stew. Hmmm… I need perspective.

So, I think I’ll take the advice of many a writer, including Stephen King, and put this one in a drawer for a while after I finish. See how it feels when I read it again later.

I got some other stuff I need to be doing anyway.