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.

—————-
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!

—————-
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.

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

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a second to say happy birthday to one of my favorite dudes today, Edgar Allan Poe. Mary Rajotte has a piece up at Examiner.com about the various celebrations going on here and there, and a poll for your favorite story. (Come on, Cask of Amontillado!) A more emo write-up over at The Writer’s Almanac, too

He’s one of those writers that after I finish a story, I both despair of ever writing anything powerful, and really, really want to get started trying. As in, right that second. Anyhow, here’s a page out of a cool graphic novelization I have of The Fall of the House of Usher, adapted by P. Craig Russell and Jay Geldhoff, just because it’s awesome:

—————-
Now playing: Ocean Colour Scene – Go to Sea
via FoxyTunes

Aaron Polson had a blog entry last week about genre, and hit a lot of the points I think most writers spend a lot of time considering. Not the big guns who can genre hop without thinking twice, of course, but the ones struggling for name recognition in whatever sphere. It’s the rule you hear all the time: pick a genre and stick to it.

I’m sure future me will be very annoyed with current me for not listening to this, but current me doesn’t feel at all like a hopper. I definitely think I write fantasy, just in a lot of different incarnations (I said on his blog: dark, historical, urban, epic, clockpunk, steampunk, whatever). But it always ends up being creepy, and in my weird little brain, that should really count. I mean, this is why people call it dark fiction, right? It covers all the bases.

There’s a reason for my interest in this subject matter, of course– no, not because I’m creepy! Well, I might be, but we’ll leave that to one side for now. It’s because when I was a kid I always liked scary stories the best. I read everything that got in my way, but the books that stick with me from my childhood are either classics (I won’t even tell you how many times I read Little Women) or YA horror. We had the Book Fair in my middle school, which Scholastic still does now, and I would save up my allowance for it– and usually get a little extra because, come on, they’re books! I remember buying weird shit like the Bunnicula series by James Howe– in particular I remember liking Howliday Inn– and The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright. I have this very distinct memory of being 10 or 11 and reading the latter by my night light, and getting so scared I threw it across the room. I think I read it 20 times that year. And then there were those Scary Stories books put together by Alvin Schwartz. Wow.

Right about then people started feeding me Poe, Blackwood, but also people like Dickens, who has some pretty creepy goings on. It snowballs once people figure out the morbid holds your interest, really, because there’s just so much out there. By the time I was introduced to Lovecraft in college it was all very, “Where the hell have you been all my life– you fit right in!”

But I think WD Prescott nailed it in his recent Choate Road Pulpit piece about what horror is. (Sending good vibes, man.) When you say you write horror, people definitely picture the book version of Saw– my mother, for example, really shies away from that sort of thing. But she read Grants Pass cover to cover, and really loved it. Does it get more horrific than facing down the decimation of everything you ever knew– family, friends, society, sanity? Probably not, but I think horror is great because it’s about facing it and coming out the other side. Even in fantasy novels, which really lend themselves to horror, the parts that stick with me emotionally are the creepy ones, the most notable being Tolkien. I could write a whole essay on that alone, but to keep it short: Mirkwood in The Hobbit, The Paths of the Dead and Mordor in The Lord of the Rings.

So sometimes it’s just horrific how f@%ked up humanity is, and sometimes it’s more fantasy/supernatural darkness, but it’s all good and creepy and not afraid to be honest about the things we don’t like to feel. I think that appealed even as a kid, looking back. And I think it has a lot to do with my inability to stick to a friggin genre instead of flitting between the two. Or that’s my excuse, anyhow.

I really need to find my old copy of The Dollhouse Murders. I found this awesome review and it made me miss it pretty hard. Anyone else have one from back in the day that sticks with them like this?

—————-
Now playing: Kasabian – Ladies and Gentlemen (Roll the Dice)
via FoxyTunes