The truth behind Trust pt 2

That which eventually became Trust would have died a quiet death in a cheap ream of typed, white-out-encrusted paper if, years later, a co-worker hadn't mention wanting some practice drawing comic book characters. He knew I toyed around with writing and asked if I wouldn't mind whipping up a bio for him to work from. Oh heck, why not.


And Delyn was born.
(I particularly like her legs. I want her legs. Let's just pretend they're mine. Ok?)

Though the majority of what I wrote for him no longer applies--and so I won't post it here to aggravate those of you who have read Trust--here is a taste of what he had to work with.

---
I noticed you were staring at my blade here. You should be more careful, I felt you all the way across the room. Lucky I’m in a good mood isn’t it? What’s that? Buy me drink? Well I suppose that could be interesting. You mind if we go back over to my table? I prefer my dark corner, if you know what I mean. I see by your smile that you do.

So what do you need... or is it want? What ever do I mean? Are you serious or not because I do have better things to do than sit around and talk to shady characters in the middle of the night. 100 credits for me? It’s a good start to a friendship. So who are you? A writer? You want to do something on me? Well I can’t say I’m not flattered but why me? You’ve heard of me?

Another 100? Must be then. So what do you want to know?

Where to start... at the beginning? No, that’s what everyone does. First of all, I’m not like everyone else, not like anyone else actually. I do things my way. I pick my own partners. I follow no ones rules but my own and they tend to change frequently.
---

As sweet and awkward as teen Ms. Wildstar was, Delyn was anything but. She was dark, cold, snarky, and apparently, sleazy too. She could do no wrong--invincible, all-powerful and able to find an out to every situation. I didn't want to see her knocked from her pedestal of kick-ass awesomeness. Let me tell you, when she was applied to the story, it made for a really annoying read (once I stepped back and really read it).

Which is why...
to be continued

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?