The truth behind Trust pt 1

Blame Scott Free for this one (and those to follow, this is going to take a few posts).

When did Trust go from being Delyn's story to Vayen's story? Well, that's kind of in the last third of the evolution process.

Yes, Trust evolved. Every other novel I've written comes out of an idea and flows onto the page--through various degrees of agonizing birth, but never the same way (thankfully) that Trust did.

It's a story that's grown with me, through the teen years, dating, marriage, divorce, dating, marriage, and two children. It's always been with me, and it wasn't until I forced myself to put it down and write other things that I was finally able to detach myself from the immense world of characters who were as real to me as anyone else I talked to on a regular basis and finally write the story it was meant to be. I could finally see it for a novel and not a hobby that I slunk off to when I wanted to be alone.

It grew up. I was ready to cut the apron strings and kick it out of the house.

Might as well bare it all, while I'm at it, I suppose.

The story that began around 1983 as "The adventures of Dan & Dana", was about two kids who crashed their space ship after things went wrong at the children's rocket festival. They end up on another planet ruled by the evil Prince Barstone. It was, well, awkward. Really, really awkward. The most memorable lines were:

"Remember that Dana?"

"Yeah, I remember, I remember all those days in the cramped ship, and the frightened faces as we left the atmosphere, and I remember when we lost contacct on the cb, and I remember when we ran out of fuel and crashed here just last night!"

There are so many things wrong there that I'm just shaking my head and hanging my head in shame. CB's in space? Really? Oh my. The part that makes this the most memorable is that I had spelled remember wrong. Yes, every time in that long repeating sentence.

Once on the planet, they meet up with two boys named Matt and Jason. Together, they proceed to defeat the prince and his nefarious plans and escape the planet to go on a new adventure. At this point, the story consisted of 6 legal sheets of yellow paper with handwriting much neater than what mine is now. The pages were tucked away until a few years later when current events brought them to mind again.

In 1986 the Challenger space shuttle exploded. This was a traumatic event for most kids in school as we were all avidly watching the launch during class. Oh hey, I had a story somewhere about kids in space and a space ship festival! Now, in high school, Dana became Alexandria (cue Ms. Wildstar). Mostly because I'd found a new favorite name.

I figured if I was going to dive into this writer thing, I'd better have the right tools. So I saved up my money and bought a typewriter (and a lot of white out). It was really noisy and my parents banished me to the farthest room in the basement with it.

By the time I was in tenth grade, I had a hundred fifty page story and made my creative writing teacher read it. I'm pretty sure she skimmed it or she clawed her eyes out and then got replacements over the weekend.

It was full of teen angst, giggling girls oogling the mysterious cute and troubled new boy on the bus, and no way, they got stuck in space after their space shuttle replica misfired during the shuttle tribute! Guess what? They end up on a planet (cue the Barthromians) and have an adventure. I know, you didn't see that coming.

After some encouraging and not so encouraging comments from my creative writing teacher, I tucked the story away and got involved in real life teen angst, along with plunking away on my typewriter with a couple sequels in which Matt and Jason also got to hook up with space chicks (cue Delilah).

Over the next few years I went on a sci-fi reading binge and grew up a little.

To be continued...

Novel in a Blender 4

It's been awhile since I've pondered my overflowing bookshelf.

Before I jump into today's influential selection, I must share the news that I've just pre-ordered Jacqueline Carey's latest book, Naamah's Curse. Though my life has been insanely busy the past few weeks, I am anxiously awaiting its delivery and will put everything on hold while I shove my nose between the pages and refuse to come out until I reach the last word. There are a lot of books in my to-be-read pile but this one will leap to the top without a second thought. Unless, of course, George R.R. Martin's long awaited A Dance With Dragons happens to magically appear on bookshelves before then. I'm not holding my breath. Good thing, or I'd have been dead several years ago.

Deep cleansing breath. There, that's better. I'll have to wait for HBO to air the "Game of Thrones". That will appease me. Hopefully. My expectations are set pretty high.


Back to my bookshelf and back to when Trust was something else and told through a female pov. I was reading books like Emily Devenport's Shade. The tale a girl on the streets doing what she has to in order to survive. Good gritty stuff. It was about this point where I started to get the idea that Ms. Wildstar needed to go and Ms. MC needed a rough and tough outer shell that then slowly evolved into the emotionally damaged, angry and paranoid woman that is Delyn.

There are two other books, Scorpianne and Larissa, but while a fun read, they weren't as good as the first one. The word formulaic comes to mind. But if you're looking for female sci-fi main characters, they might be worth a quick read through.

Painting and musing

Due to a dark and wet day, I've had to shift to plan B for my long holiday weekend tasks. That means I'm back to painting walls.

As I'm painting away, my mind wanders--which it likes to do when I'm in the midst of mindless tasks. It wanders to Anne Mini's blog posts of this past week regarding the perils of the Frankenstein manuscript. You know, that masterpiece you've revised twenty times in various stages over weeks/months/years.

I have one of those. I've been over it countless times since the final major overhaul. I've read from beginning to end. Critique partners have been over it from beginning to end. I've read it outloud. I've done a find/replace hunt on all my character's names that have changed spellings to make sure they are consistant. I've double checked all my spacings, my punctuation, use of italics, and formatting. Everything should be perfect, right?

I've painted my wall. I wiped it down, filled the holes, mixed the paint, put down my dropcloth, cut in all the edges with perfectly straight lines, and applied the rest with a roller ever so carefully. It should be perfect right?

Yet, why is it that when company comes over, I notice the spots I missed? That line I cut in at the ceiling wavers all over the place! How did I manage to paint over a long hair and embed it in my wall (and by the way, pulling the hair out only makes the mess far more obvious.) And I swear I used the same roller and the same paint, but the color from the beginning of the wall to the other side is uneven!

The heart of the analogy is:
A. Don't invite company over.
B. Don't paint your novel.
C. Pay attention to what you're painting instead of mulling over blog posts and your wall might turn out better.
D. Your novel will never be perfectly perfect, but make sure the color is even and the lines are straight before inviting company to look at it.

(For the record, I'm finally happy with my novel and fairly secure that I've got all my bases covered with this particular frankenstein. Not to say I don't have niggling doubts. Which is where this musing analogy stems from.)

Fortunes and Flogging

Sometimes you open a fortune cookie and roll your eyes or get a good laugh. Sometimes they aren't even 'fortunes' but general sayings. This one was so appropriate I had to wonder if someone slipped it to me on purpose, so I thought I'd share.

I apologize, my cell phone camera apparently wasn't up to the job. For those who can't read blurrese, it says: The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

In other news...

Upon visiting one of my favorite procrastination sites this morning, I see that Ray at Flogging the Quill is running low on first page submissions to flog. If you'd like an editor's opinion and faithful readers to comment, follow the instructions at the end of any flogging post. I've run a mine through a couple times and received some very helpful comments.

In light of the upcoming long Memorial Day weekend, and all I need to get done before it, I'll keep this post short today. I plan to spend my weekend hopefully finishing up my flowerbed renovation project. Anyone else have productive plans?

Tag redux

The tag strikes back from a new opponent, Stella Telleria .This time I am charged with sharing the seven most fascinating characters I've come up with.

Oh, so many to choose from.

1. Leoric of Swan Queen - The timid son of an ambitious duke who goes from being known as the Mouse to the Hawk in the mind of the princess on the run. Why he's fascinating: Leoric was meant to be a throw away character, an experiment with writing someone dimwitted for a purpose within the story, however, he grew on me, became a major character, bringing about one of the most emotional scenes I've ever written.

2. Samarah of Samarah’s Sunset – Alone and far from home, Samarah prays to the goddess for help, only to learn that even the gods charge for their services… and they don’t take coin. Why she's fascinating: I set out with the intent to write something quite different from Trust: a female MC in a fantasy world. Samarah’s situation opened the door to adding an element of romance into the mix with both men and women.

3. Joshua of A Broken Race – A simple-minded man born into a life of hard labor who brings about the healing of what is left of humanity when he stops being a cog and becomes his own wheel. Why he's fascinating: After good things happened with Leoric, I thought I’d see where the simple-minded character would lead me in a dystopian setting. Playing with both sides of the sweet, well-intentioned, yet unwittingly violent young man proved to be an interesting challenge.

4. Watcher of To Exist – A robotic being learns religion from humanity and prays the knowledge will save its priceless research. Why it's fascinating: Writing an it that felt no emotion and had no expression wasn’t easy!

5. Dragon of Not Another Bard’s Tale – All he wanted was his jewel back but the knight who made the deal to find it was taking his sweet time and the townsfolk looked awfully tasty. Why he's fascinating: Dragon is the only central character in the story to not have a pov scene, yet he is the glue that holds the entire story together. Plus, writing a ticked off, hungry dragon was just fun.

6. Kenric of Swan Queen – Is he an evil duke as many say, or a proactive man moving to secure the countries borders and expand his people’s wealth with new resources and land? Why he’s fascinating: Kenric has been a good lesson in writing the bad guy who thinks he’s a good guy in his own mind, and sometimes it’s just liberating to be in the bad guy’s head for a while. Is that scary to admit? Probably a little.

7. Yanis of Samarah’s Sunset - Captain Yanis serves as gruff protector to Samarah, the lone woman in a band of starving, desperate men until he meets his end during a skirmish as they make their way home through enemy infested borders. Why he’s fascinating: Yanis was an angry man, bad-tempered and stern, yet his death turned out to be quite touching and a major turning point for Samarah.

What, no Trust characters? Many of you know them by heart by now so I thought I’d pull out some that are lesser known. Of course, Vayen, Delyn and the gang are fascinating in their own right.

Now, since I’ve already tagged others on my first time around, I’ll call my duty done and sign off. Thank you, Stella, for giving me a reason to revisit some of my attention-starved WIPs.