Memes and awards abound, and somehow I even got me some!

You Are My Sunshine!
The adorable, but still scary (or is that scarily adorable?) Cate Gardner said that I am her sunshine. I’ve never had that said to me except with a very heavy dose of irony, but I’m going to pretend she meant it. This is one that you give to people who stop by your net home and encourage you through your dark times– oh, and the good ones.

If I’m giving that out, man– I could go on for hours. I think I’ll give it to Mike Stone, because he’s a class act. Always there with an encouraging word. But anyone who’s ever commented deserves it, truly. We’re all isolated on one side of the computer screen, pecking it out word by word. Company is divine.

Honest Scrap!
And this beauty comes from Alan Davidson, who gave us some excellent awards night entertainment, and Natalie Sin, who gives us entertainment in the form of half-naked Korean boy bands. Which is, of course, awesome.

So I am an honest scrapper! Or they think I ought to be. The jury’s out. With this award comes the need for 10 honest things. If I were clever I would make things up (Cate did, and it was awesome), but I think I’m blowing what little clever I have on this book right now. So here are actually honest things:

1. I have four tattoos. That includes a tramp stamp– possibly the nerdiest tramp stamp in existence, since it’s in Quenya. (Yeah. Elvish. Just when you think I can’t get nerdier.)

2. I like True Blood because it’s about blood and sex, of course, but I also like it because I change my mind with every episode as to whether Sookie or Bill is hotter. (The answer: Eric!)

3. If I could only take five movies to a desert island, they would be A Clockwork Orange, This is Spinal Tap, Amadeus, Pride and Prejudice, and The Return of the King. (Have I mentioned yet that I love Tolkien? Right.) I bring this up because my husband paused the movie the other night to ask me, so it’s on the brain just now.

4. I was a competitive swimmer from the ages of 7-17, but I wasn’t any good until I was 16. That’s why I made my MC in Scripped a swimmer, though. My sport!

5. I know all of two phrases in my husband’s native Tamil, and my accent muddles them hopelessly. These phrases are: “Why are you like this?”– which is sort of like saying “What the hell is wrong with you?”– and “What happened?”– which is equivalent to “What’s the matter?” Useful shit.

6. My favorite drink is a Bombay Sapphire and tonic. I will drink it all night, and well into the morning, given the chance.

7. I have a “when I’m finally good enough” project. I will someday write a sort of epic fantasy version of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, or die trying. Sounds like I’m trying to be funny, doesn’t it? No, I’m serious. It’s one of my favorite books ever, and I think Parzival and Gawain two of the best characters ever. It’d be more funny than dark, but I’m okay with that.

8. I’ve played MMORPGs for almost a decade now. Killing orcs is therapeutic.

9. I get excited when I see people on TV/in Real Life who look like I imagine my characters would. Like I was watching reruns of The Office the other day and decided that Cami from the current project looks like Rashida Jones. Weird but true.

10. My first concert without parental supervision was Kula Shaker at the Metropol (which I think is called something else now) in Pittsburgh in 1996. That’s why I love this panel from Gillon and McKelvie’s Phonogram:

Had enough of me yet? Okay, how about if I give the award over to Corinne Duyvis. This is a woman who writes about mad fae in Amsterdam. Imagine what weird honesty we can get from her.

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Now playing: MGMT – Electric Feel
via FoxyTunes

Well it’s that time again. But first I want to say thanks to people who voted for Boudha, my little contribution to Grants Pass, in the P&E polls. After the final tally it ended up in 5th Place, which is, er, staggering honestly. I’m even more excited that it’s right next to Pete Kempshall’s Rites of Passage, though. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to admit to this, but that’s what I voted for. I just saw that Grants Pass is on the preliminary Stoker ballot too, which is mind-boggling in its coolness, and I think a testament to the work (and love) Jenn and Manda put into the whole thing. Two talented women, let me tell you.

A hand-drawn coat of arms for a family that doesn't exist except in my head.

So right, WiP. More progress made on Plaguebringer, as I’m now at around 37k. This novel is going to be two novels, which I knew from the off really, but does make it less likely I’ll finish by the end of the month as I hoped. Then again, I’ve been known to puke up 80k in a month, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. (It will suck, but you know. It’ll be out. I’ve compared it before to being 16 and getting really staggeringly drunk for the first time– just puke and you’ll feel better.)

The difference between this and my other projects is the intense amount of worldbuilding I’ve done for the last year and a half. Luckily I have my friend John to help me, who is an expert at this kind of thing, so it doesn’t just look like some morbid and half-baked D&D campaign. Someone who asks the right questions is a treasure, man. In that sense this is a straight fantasy novel, but there are no elves and no magic in the strictest sense– just weird clockwork madness and drugs.

But I did get to make maps. I hand drew the big version, then scanned it in and colored it. I blew it up to do the little country maps, hand-drawing in the little borders there, then scanning again and coloring in Photoshop. So I get things like this:

Big Map of a world that doesn't exist except in my head.

Leading to things like this:

Detail of a country that doesn't exist-- oh you get my point.

Pretty sure the map obsession owes a lot to my brother, who is the most inventive DM ever. Again, with the Nerd Family. I’ll spare you the in-depth description of the pages and pages of notes I have for each little area. It’s more than enough to know they’re there, I’m sure.

So it’s a project that requires more than just writing, and the freakish little images here are just a part of that. A little overambitious, yeah. But hey, if I’m going to re-read Tolkien 18931 times, I might as well take something from him, right?

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Now playing: Gruff Rhys – The Court Of King Arthur
via FoxyTunes

In the past three  weeks I’ve had more rejections than I’ve had in maybe a year previous. That’s mostly because I did two short story subs all  last year, and the stories I wrote in 2009 are finally ready to be sent out, of course, but whatever. My point is that life is hopping up and down on my ego.

Franz Liszt is a rockstar.

But it’s not. I feel weirdly impervious to any and all batting down  because, my friends, I am a fucking rockstar right now. Like that guy over there, yeah. (That guy being Franz Liszt. Or Dorian Gray, depending on which edition of the book you own– but the principle is the same.)

No, I’m not. Obviously I’m not. I’m a chick sitting at a little desk in the corner coughing up random sentences that may or may not someday form a proper story. But the honeymoon is so good with this book I’m working on. It’s not that I think what I’m writing is worthwhile; I know it’s a complete mess. Of the 30k and change I have right now, probably 10k will survive, and suspect that not even that is very good.

But oh my god, I’m having so much fun I don’t care. And so, I feel like a rockstar. This is why I keep coming back, even after a round of queries that makes me want to throw my computer out the window. Because seeing it come to life is a serious addiction.

As you all doubtless know, this period lasts about a week or two after the initial onset, so I am going to revel in it as much as I can before the “Oh god, how will I ever fix this crappy novel?” phase sets in. I thought I’d share in the meantime, since I know I’m not the only one.

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Now playing: Julian Plenti – Only If You Run
via FoxyTunes

Plaguebringer nears the 20k mark– just a few hundred off, and I expect that to be managed tonight. Got a big important scene coming up! I’m getting slightly better at getting everything going quickly nowadays, which is great. But when we’re doing epic fantasy levels of plot threads, it won’t do to drop them all at once, I guess. (Again, this is not proper epic fantasy, it’s, er, clockpunk dark fantasy. Right.)

This time I’m not writing it completely in order, either. There are two main locations for the first part, so I’m writing the first location up to the point where it intersects with the plot from the second (which isn’t all that far, in the grand scheme), and then going back and filling in the second so I can adjust for pace and the like.

Never done it like this before. Wonder how it’ll work. Any experiences?

Okay enough boring nuts and bolts crap. I was trying to find a bit that actually says something about the plot, but I’m a silly mood today– the kind that calls for stupid bits that will probably be hacked from the final draft anyhow. So here’s Rufus, the knife-happy guy from the last bit, and Cami, the angree lieutenant from the first one. Rufus just got done talking to a little girl who stopped him to ask about his ears. (Because it’s cute when kids do it. Not grown-ups.)

“Cute,” Cami said. “That supposed to impress me?”

Rufus pretended to sigh. “Why are beautiful women always so self-centered?”

She snorted. “Why are beautiful men?”

“All right, you win that one. But I’ll have you know that I love children.”

“I doubt you love anything.”

“Assassins are people too. Just like Valdonians.”

She shot him a dirty look, but didn’t take the bait; she contented herself with fuming internally for the rest of the way to the smithy. That, and wondering which of her tattoos she wasn’t covering properly, or if she’d slipped into her native accent.

Smart-assed Senecan pretty-boy. She could already tell she was going to hate him.

Aww, don’t be ashamed, Cami. You can’t help being from a swampy gangland. Like I said, nothing groundbreaking, but progress is progress!

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Now playing: Arcade Fire – Black Mirror
via FoxyTunes

I spent a large chunk of today justifying things to myself. I mention it here because I feel sure everyone else who writes must do this regularly. My friends will already be sick of it, as I did a large, self-involved, vacillating post on my personal journal. But it’s so consuming when these sorts of things are up in the air, I can’t get it out of my head, and my misery desires company.

Lucky, lucky you. :/

So I had that awesome moment with The Resurrectionists– which for those not playing along at home is the last book I wrote– where I realized that I’m ready for a second draft. The problems with the first have been sorted, or at least lessened, so I know exactly what I want to do with it, and I have an appropriate amount of distance from the text. And really, I miss it.

But I started writing Plaguebringer, albeit lazily, a few weeks back. I’m about 15k in not counting scripted stuff, and I’ve been sitting on this story (which includes several characters I’ve had forever, piles of maps and worldbuilding nonsense, and a lot of sex and violence, even for me) for well over a year– I’m so ready to write it.

Now, the responsible thing to do would be the edit. Which aspiring writer doesn’t feel lax if they don’t have a novel out on submission? Let’s ignore the round of queries I did for Wolfton two months ago, and that I have two different fulls out with publishers right now– I still feel like a lazy f@#k because when they all come back to me, for better or for worse, I don’t have the next thing ready to go.

But do you ever worry you’ll lose the perfect movie in your head before you get to spit it out onto the page, if you wait? It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I haven’t given it the chance, and I really don’t want to.

In the end, of course I decided to keep writing the new thing, which will start going much faster as of next week, when I finish up a (rather fun, but they usually are) beta read for a pal. I’ve already started it, and I don’t want to lose it. But I still feel guilty and irresponsible.

I can’t be the only one, though. That helps.

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Now playing: Antonio Vivaldi – Concerto In B Minor for 4 Violins, Op. 3 No. 10, RV 580: III. Allegro
via FoxyTunes