Category Archives: Kabobbles on Writing

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If I Was an Artist with Something Besides Words

If I was an artist with something besides words, then I would already have beautiful cover art finished and ready. I’d have my little scene dividers ready made and inserted.

I’d illustrate my own children’s book. I already wrote it. It’s there, finished but for the art.

Alas, I know my strength is with words, and if I do have any real artistic talent, it lies with my ability to tell a story, an entertaining and amusing one that diverts a person for a short time. I like to share stories, let people see the world and the fascinating characters that I’ve met along the way.

Since I am not an artist with pictures, I trust that to the other half of Kabobbles. Third, I suppose, since the cat is the ringleader, after all. Anyway, at the end of the day, I managed to accomplish… finally getting the right size and format for the scene divider for In the Family, multiple editing programs (Paint.NET, Gimp, Inkspace, Open Office Draw, and a couple from her Mac) later, many saved files (either of the document with the divider in it or the divider itself), many tests converted with Calibre, and a bunch of frustration (it’s too big! now it’s too small! it’s not transparent! it’s fuzzy! it’s in pieces!)
my brain hurts and I don’t understand half of the programs I played with, but I finally have it where it works.

I think. My brain hurt too much to be sure, so I’ll look again tomorrow.

The cover art for The Not-So-Super Superhero is coming along, and I edited a good part of The Monster in My Garden Shed and finished The Memory Collector. I even got my hair cut.

I was hoping to finish Variety Store today, too, but perhaps I was a little too ambitious.

I’ve still got a bit of time left before the end of the day and month, though, so… Here goes nothing. I know what’s supposed to happen. It’s just a matter of getting it on paper…

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Sometimes a Story Creates a New Story…

Having finished Matched Set, which took me about a week, a fact that I’m still stunned and amazed by, I turned my attention back to my other projects.

I have many, many incomplete stories and projects lying around. Some of them aren’t really worth salvaging, and some of them deserve a hell of a lot better than this.

It was starting to look like The Monster in My Garden Shed was heading toward this inglorious fate, and I refused to let that happen. Not only have I been talking about it in a public forum, which makes the idea of abandoning it less than appealing for the fact of everyone knowing my defeat, the story is too good and the characters too deserving of having their story concluded to let that happen.

I’d edited the story before I put it aside three weeks ago, all the while unable to decide how to keep going.

The problem was wanting to tell two stories. The Monster in My Garden Shed is, in my opinion, a story with considerable depth and complexity and layers, a challenging world that continually draws me in (and thwarts me at every opportunity) and characters that I love spending time with. In the middle, though, the idea of a subplot entered the narrative, and that subplot was not something that helped the story reach a conclusion. It would have derailed the rest of it, to be perfectly honest.

I thought I’d given up on it back in chapter twenty-five, but in thirty-one, it was rearing its ugly head again. I wrote a couple of scenes that almost took it down that route, and the reader I torture with all my new fic told me they were over the top.

I admit, this put me in a bit of a funk. I couldn’t quite let go of that idea or those scenes, so even though I knew that wasn’t where The Monster in My Garden Shed should go.

After finishing The Memory Collector and Variety Store, I’d wanted to get The Monster in My Garden Shed back up to the top of the list. I couldn’t. Five and Ten was coming along, and The Not-So-Super Superhero faltered for a couple days but came back again, but instead of the garden shed, I went into Matched Set.

I don’t regret that. Wichita and Reece have a great story, and I love the explanation of the reason the killer does what he does.

After playing around with a few fun things, toying with the idea of another new story since Net almost stole the show in Matched Set like Spider did in Any Other Reality, and finishing my edits to hopefully release In the Family soon I finally figured out what I needed to do for The Monster in My Garden Shed.

I had to take that plotline out completely and give it to someone else, someone who shared enough traits with Ren to make the situation work, but one who didn’t have to worry about saving the world, either.

Now I get to keep the scenes I wrote (not exactly as they were, that didn’t work, but bits and pieces of them) and yet they’ll get cut from The Monster in My Garden Shed.

Verina Harvey now has that story, and it’s hard and painful, but it’s her story to tell, not Ren’s.

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Just When I Thought It Was Done

So I had thought that The Memory Collector would end up the next book that ended up published. I thought it was done and just needed a few edits.

I was wrong. I can admit that.

Editing is a painful process, no denying that. It’s hard to get oneself to go back and look it over, though it can be helpful to get back into a story that’s been set down for a while. That part I do actually enjoy, getting back the feel of the world and the characters. Sometimes I see what I missed putting down before. Or sometimes I have to cut things that I liked. Rare, but it happens, as it did with the stuff I dealt with in The Monster in My Garden Shed today. I started back at the beginning, really enjoying the journey with Ren as she found her way through the world of the Ascanati and seeing her relationship with Kyran in the new flashbacks, but then I got to the end with what I needed to change because it didn’t fit, the part that became Verina’s story. It was hard to cut… But I eventually did it.

Now, I have new scenes for that story at last. This is good. It makes me happy. I even have plans for a side story from their universe later.

However, the really painful part was my discovery regarding The Memory Collector. It’s not done. Not by a long shot. I need to pull all the quotes and make them a coherent narrative and add more from the Collector’s childhood and more from when he’s in the memories in general. And more with Sanity, too.

So, with that in mind, The Memory Collector will not be the next book published. It’s now my hope to make that Nickel and Dime instead. It would be good to launch the series, and the third novel in it is coming along again now that Verina’s story (still unnamed) is done.

And, of course, I have a lot of edits to do to fix what I found wrong with The Memory Collector.

Did I mention I wanted to start a new story? When am I ever going to have time for all this?

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So, in writing the historical fiction that I have done lately, I came back to what seems to be nearly a brick wall.

 

No, I’m not talking about research or the difficulty involved in doing it. No, I am speaking of the traditional roles of men and women and even children in those historical times.

 

It seems, and I know this is a generalization, but if you don’t have a strong female character, if she’s not liberated and challenging all the boundaries and roles of the times and even modern times, you’ve written a poor character.

 

Actually, no. I disagree. You’ve written a realistic character of the time. If you have a liberated woman of today there, you’ve just created a huge anachronism and have failed at the very idea of historical fiction.

 

Sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it? I’m not going to say that women back then weren’t strong, didn’t have minds of their own. They did. But there’s a reason for the saying “well behaved women rarely make history.”

 

While today we have debunked and rejected “the cult of true womanhood” as I have heard it described, that does not mean that it didn’t prevail in the days that many historical fictions are set in. Moral standards were more “strict.” Reputations meant everything. No one wanted scandals. Repression, of people and of opinions, was the norm.

 

Today we’re liberated, or at least, we think we are. (I’m now thinking of Working Class Hero by John Lennon, though I put a different song in the Sing Along section.) Back then, though, such liberation would have made you an outcast and not fit for normal society.

 

One of my more recent characters, Mena, she had no idea that there was anything outside the life she’d been raised to, one of near complete obedience. Her husband, Merritt, ended up opening her eyes a bit, and she took that much further, but she’s still aware of her limits.

 

Another character, Tillie, knew that she was “unnatural” and considered wrong for her times as well. She bit back her opinions and observations and was cross about it the entire time, even if she thought she was fooling people. Her life changed with a rural teaching assignment that gave her freedom and introduced her to people willing to acknowledge and even accept the way she was, but she and everyone around her know that they are not the norm as well. Their understanding is rare and forces them to build a community of their own after the town they were a part of more or less casts them out.

 

Lady Nichols, in some sense, had more freedom, living twenty years after Mena who was twenty years after Tillie. She also doesn’t. Even with the roaring twenties gaining steam, Lady Nichols walks a fine line between the changing times, the realizations she’s made of her position and role in society, but also propriety. She’s a chaperone in her first story, a role model and someone held to a higher standard. She tries, she fails, and she acknowledges that her actions are not what a woman of her class and age should be doing.

 

I doubt my balance between liberation and the time period is perfect, but my biggest pet peeve about historical fictions is when they fail to at least acknowledge the fact that the character is acting against the social standards of the times. You want a strong female character? That’s great. I support it.

 

Just remember: the people around her wouldn’t.

 

In Merritt’s case, he grew up watching his mother suffer after his father’s death, and he didn’t want his wife to do the same. Makade has, for the most part, rejected society after the way he and his family were treated. And Forsythe is just… abnormal himself. He prides himself on being a “black sheep.” There are others besides the men in the women’s life who see the value of some liberation, but it’s not something everyone appreciates.

 

That’s the part to remember: those old roles were not the ones we have now. People’s opinions were different. They were biased, they were sexist, and they were racist. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking today’s political correctness makes for believable historical fiction.

 

Our past is not always something we should be proud of.

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Plans. No, Not Plans

I have to admit: I don’t like making plans.

 

In my experience, plans never seem to go the way they should.

 

Therefore, when I considered the idea of scheduling releases and all that would go with that, I didn’t think it would work.

 

We’ll go with what I’d like to do, then.

 

What I’d like to do this month is simple, I hope. I want to launch the Nickel and Dime series by publishing the first one in that series, Nickel and Dime.

 

Next month, I’d like to get All the Men in My Life out there. Hopefully by then I will have a concept for the cover that I am actually happy with. It seems like every time I come up with something, I shortly afterward start to hate it. I would release the next Nickel and Dime novel, Variety Store, in a few months (haven’t quite figured out if it should be two months between them or three or if I need more since I haven’t actually completed the fourth one yet. I might also put out one of the other possible series starts before the second N & D.)

 

I would also like to get one of the books for another name out there. I divided them up according to genres, so I have one for the science fiction, one for the contemporary mysteries, one for historical mysteries, one for more humor/satire type stories, one for contemporary romance, and one for fantasy.  I’m leaving it open to create more if necessary, but those are my categories so far.

 

It had been my hope to do something for the science fiction one, to publish The Memory Collector, but I decided that it needed major rewrites first. That process has been started, but I’m still working on it. I don’t have any of the historical mysteries completed, and so that would leave something from either contemporary romance (Unexpected Gifts) or satire/humor (Any Other Reality or The Not-So-Super Superhero) but I’d need to get someone else to go over them besides me and my initial readers. That hasn’t happened yet.

 

Also, now that I have completed The Not-So-Super Superhero, I would like to have another daily story going (this time I think it would be on the new site, not a blog), but I cannot decide what is best to use for that. Something from one of the other pen names, probably, but I am having trouble deciding on what. I’d also like to have a cover or some kind of art first, but the artist/tech side of Kabobbles has been very busy with moving houses, so that would also have to wait.

 

In the meantime, of course, there is always more writing to be done. I have some new stuff, my edits, and I have ressurrected another older fic that I did not finish typing before, but now I’m actually getting it closer to completion (it is mostly done by hand, a few bits missing here and there, I just hadn’t fixed the major plot hole or had the patience to type it all.) It marks the second older story that has gained new life, The Consultant and the Cat being the first one, and I do hope this trend can continue with several more completed stories at the end of it. I think I know the one that I would pull up next, though I will probably resume my serial work with Nickel and Dime and The Consultant and the Cat after the stories I have now are complete.

 

Near the end of the month, I will hopefully be participating in a training course for living history at my local museum, and that will be useful research. I need to call them again because they didn’t call me back when I tried to RSVP. Maybe they don’t want a crazy writer there.

 

Anyway, that’s the “plan” for now.

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Have I Mentioned Lately How Much I Hate Summaries?

So, in an effort to work with the “plan,” I’ve been working on some of the pieces that I need to get another book out there.

 

Mostly… I’ve been trying to come up with a summary for Nickel and Dime.

 

So far, my attempts have been:

 

Effie Lincoln owns a secondhand store and has a weakness for vintage clothes. Business hasn’t been great, and her habit of taking the best of the clothes for herself doesn’t help.

Her real problem has nothing to do with the store or her addiction to getting more clothes.

It’s her name.

She’s always hated it, but she never expected it to get her killed, either.

 

Which was a bit disconnected and everything, so I tried again with this:

 

Effie Lincoln has always hated her name, but she never expected it to get her killed.

Now, though, a case of mistaken identity has forced her from her home and beloved secondhand store. On the run for her life, her only protection a man who’s more dead than alive, what Effie would really like to know is why.

Who was this other Euphemia Lincoln, and what did she do that’s going to get Effie killed?

 

So now, feel free to give an opinion on either summary, and if you’d like to see more of the story, keep reading.

 

Pain didn’t lead to answers. They should have known that by now, but someone clearly hadn’t gotten the message. It would have been simpler if they had. It would have been nicer if they had. It wasn’t drugs. It wasn’t pain. None of that was going to get them the answer that they wanted—nothing would. He was sure of that. He could hold out beyond this. They were fools to think he wouldn’t. He had training. He had a high pain tolerance.

Most of all, though, he didn’t know the answer.

“Give us the location, and we will let you go.”

“I told you; I don’t have it.” It didn’t matter what he said. They weren’t going to believe him. He could tell them the truth; he could make up any of a dozen lies, but they weren’t going to accept that. He would still get hurt. They’d still think they could make him tell them more than he had. They were going to try and force that last bit of information from his dying breath, and what good would it do anyone? He couldn’t change their mind—and he was not going to last long enough for any of it to matter.

He was just a delaying tactic—he’d known that from the moment he got the assignment. He’d never really be in charge of this thing, but they wanted people to think he was. He was, simply put, expendable. He could make it all go away if he held out long enough for them to think that what he finally gave them was the truth, and then they’d chase after wild geese, right off into the sunset. He liked that idea, liked it a lot.

“You could make this pain stop.”

“It tickles, actually.”

“You do not impress me with your false bravado, Agent. It has come time for the truth. Only that location will allow you to live. If you do not give it to me, I will kill you.”

He knew that. He was fully expecting to die when this was all said and done. It was a waste, but if he was going to believe in a greater cause, in the greater good, he would have to believe that what he was doing was worth his life. The sacrifice was not that great. He would be okay with it. He wasn’t that great of a resource in the first place—lousy agent, lousy human being. “Sorry, I’ll pass.”

The interrogator grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back. “You cannot hold out forever. You will see the need to end your suffering, and when you have, you will give me the answer I seek.”

“Yeah, sure. And I’ll tell you I gave it to my girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Real piece of work. Kind of crazy. Touched in the head, I think. Makes for an interesting relationship,” he said, laughing. He didn’t have a girlfriend, but they were clearly desperate enough to hold onto anything he might say as a possibility. They’d go looking for a woman in his life, and they’d find only the old woman next door with all the cats.

“Give me her name.”

“Come on. I don’t have a girlfriend. I can’t believe you fell for that. Who has time to date in our business? Hmm? Or do you have a wife and kids back home?”

The blow that followed that remark almost knocked him out of the chair he was strapped to. They’d started with the drugs, but when that didn’t work, they’d gone for pain. It wasn’t working, either. He’d had worse, though they probably didn’t know that.

The man stepped on his fingers, and he heard them snap as he looked up. Nice. Well, he’d be dead soon enough, so fingers weren’t that important. “I still don’t know where it is. Can we just get this over with already?”

“Give us the name of the woman.”

“Weren’t you listening? There is no woman.”

They unstrapped him from the chair, took him to the middle of the room and chained his hands above his head. He stared at the bindings, aware that he was probably going to get very familiar with a horse whip soon. Lovely.

He lost count of the blows against his back, but they only barely outnumbered the amount of times that he was asked the same questions over and over again. He still couldn’t tell them where it was. He couldn’t give them a name. The woman didn’t exist. He really didn’t have a girlfriend. He should never have made that joke, clearly.

“You still refuse to cooperate?”

“You could get to the merciful part already and kill me. That would be fine. I keep telling you—I don’t know where it is. I don’t have it. And there is no woman.”

“Give me a name, and I will give you the mercy of a quick death.”

“Oh?” he considered for a moment. That had some appeal; he had to admit. He thought about it for a minute. “Okay. I can give you a name.”

“You will?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I will. And it’s a good one. Really.”

“Tell us.”

“Effie Lincoln,” he answered, giving them the name of a scandalous and long dead actress with a laugh. The blackness came almost before the next blow.

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Working Titles

I was preparing a little entry for the Kabobbles Sing Along section about the song that inspired my choice for the working title for The Lady in Black’s sequel. Working titles are what I call the story while I’m writing it. Not all of them come with the right title instantly. Some do. Others refuse to be pinned down right away.

 

Some titles were easy. In the Family was always In the Family from the moment it was begun on my phone. Any Other Reality was that from the beginning as well. I don’t know what else The Monster in My Garden Shed or The Memory Collector could be. The same goes for The Not-So-Super Superhero. He is that. His story could be told under no other name. As soon as I started typing it, I had the title for The Consultant and the Cat. The Lady in Black had a working title years ago that was abandoned before typing began.

 

On the other hand, other titles have not come so readily. Some don’t even feel right now. That would be the case with The Geek and the Fed and Unexpected Gifts. Each of them took on a new name from their working title, “Geek” and “Obligation” respectively, but they haven’t entirely settled on them. Criss-Crossed Paths started out using its first chapter title, and then it became “Tempest and Lonely Hearts” after the nicknames of two of the characters. The new title is still being debated.

 

Other titles come along as the story progress.

 

Just a Whim, believe it or not, started out as “The Crankening,” owing to the other half of Kabobbles Publishing’s daughter, who was extremely cranky when I began the story. Matched Set started out as “Favor,” but once the figurine set started to feature so heavily in it, the matched set made perfect sense.

 

All the Men in My Life began as “Old Love Best Unseen” which completely doesn’t fit it. The new title owes from a line that Franklin says to Mira, “All the men in your life piss me off.” She responds with, “Franklin, you’re one of the men in my life.”

 

The series that starts with Nickel and Dime each had their own working title. Nickel and Dime was “Change Your Identity.” Until the end of it, Variety Store was just “Nickel and Dime the Second.” The third one, however, was Five and Ten from the beginning. The secondhand store owned by Effie Lincoln could be called a “nickel and dime” or “five and ten” or even “variety store,” so all the stories have that theme to their titles.

 

Last night, I named a story “Lollipop.” Funny how names go, right?

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December Loses to November

So, I didn’t manage quite as much writing in December as I did in November. Partially because of edits, partially because of life’s unpredictable drama, and the rest because of illness. I completed one novel, not three. In November, I had Nanowrimo to work on, needing at least 50,000 words for a novel to complete that challenge, so that was a big part of the difference. I did, however, have my own personal challenge of posting a section a day to a story. That’s the Not-So-Super Superhero, and I am proud to say I only missed one day there, and there were circumstances which excuse that.

So… a look at the word count totals as they stood after midnight last night:

The Monster in Garden Shed: 62,156

First Nickel and Dime: 59,932

Second (and currently untitled) Nickel and Dime: 14,365

The Not-So-Super Superhero: 33,393

Misc other: 34,580

This Month’s Total: 190, 061

So, close to 200,000 again. Not a bad total.

If I had been consistent around that 200,000 (and I wasn’t), I’d have a yearly total somewhere around 2,400,000.

My goal this next year will be to track it and see what I come up with for a full year. It’s a bit hard for me to track where I was when 2011 started, unfortunately.

Right now, though, since I have tracked it the past couple months, I think I know where I am, and I can use that to continue keeping track of things in order to have a yearly total. I gave some consideration to looking at day-to-day totals, but not only am I not the type to be that organized, I frequently am up past midnight writing, and… oh, yeah, if people knew how much writing I did daily, I’d be in a lot of trouble. I have other responsibilities that I neglect to do as much writing as I do.

It’s so much more interesting to write than clean a house. Admit it.

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We Have a Summary

We have… a summary.

Yes, we have put together a summary that we agree on for The Not-So-Super Superhero, and now all that remains is the edits.

Behold, the summary!

Every superhero has a story, a tale of how they discovered their ability and became a hero.

Some superheroes have tales of glory and some of woe. Some overcome great odds and personal trials. Some, on the other hand, just whine about it.

Clayton’s story is more of a cautionary tale, a long, often painful but sometimes hilarious journey towards that elusive goal of being a hero.

Just start with a lame superpower, add in an aversion to spandex, and everything else will follow.

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Projects for This Year

I know I have plenty of things to be doing.

I have more than enough to keep me busy every day. I have my blog story to update, the various sections of my website, and stories to write and edit, cover art to make, houses to clean, kids to watch…

I know I’ve got projects that I still haven’t done, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts about what I might do to improve my website/blogs and writing over the next year.

I’m going to keep running monthly word count totals, tracking them for a full year, and I’ll continue the section a day blog story The Not-So-Super Superhero, but I thought it might be interesting to work in other challenges.

I am toying with a personal challenge of hats or different hairstyles each day, to make things more interesting for me in my day-to-day life, and I signed up for the winter reading program at our local library, but writing is my focus and my love, so anything to help that or to make me try something different would be good. Plus, it helps to know what people are interested in seeing.

Any suggestions? Thoughts? Pass them along. Use the contact form here or comment on the blog or on the facebook page, any way you like.