I've Been Hit!

Oh, wait, maybe I’ve just been tagged…

That’s right, the lovely Sarah Ahiers tagged me as part of the Liebster Blog Award Blog. Go say Hi and or thank her for tagging me (or you know, if this bores you, you can shake your fist in her general direction for giving me an opportunity to yammer on about my WIP). I have a ton of WIPs (hint, they’re “In Progress” until they’re published), but I’m going to go with ACTION FOUR

What is your WIP About?

ACTION FOUR, NEWS YOU CAN COUNT ON, is about an action reporter, an on the scene reporter known for bringing the news live from location. She is reporting from a near future Earth where super powers have started manifesting, but linked to the psychopath gene – so there are supers, but only of the villain variety. When my MC gets scooped, she loses her job, and she starts faking super villain activity to get her job back.

How long have you been working your WIP?

Well, this is embarrassing. I started writing this novel last year for NaNo. I picked it up again for NaNo again this year, but… well, I had other writing obligations. So I’ve been working on this book forever.

Who is your MC?

Alicia Rodriguez is my action reporter. She’s the brains behind the master plan. She also suffers from cultural whip lash as her mother is from a strictly Italian family, and her father is from a traditional Mexican family. She introduces herself to people as a mexitalian.

What are some of the themes you’re exploring?

Do explosions count as themes?

Nah, I’m kidding. One of the things I always come back to is the idea of heroism. Some people have it, some people are cowards. And some people, despite being cowardly are willing to stand up even when their legs shake. There are people willing to sacrifice themselves for things greater than themselves, and I’m always exploring who these people are. I’m curious about them because people always talk about so and so is a hero, but when interviewed the rescuer says stuff like “just in a day’s work” or “anyone would have done it.” I find that fascinating. Are people all heroes underneath, or is there some magic juju? Or more fascinating, is the possibility to be a hero within all of us, and only some people choose to be heroes.

What song would represent your story or MC?

Umm, I don’t know. This story has so little music in it. Maybe the theme from Mask of Zorro (the one with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Antonio Banderas).

If you were casting your story as a movie, who would play your main character?

Man, I just don’t know, I haven’t been following actresses lately, someone good who really looks the ethnicity. I shouldn’t be hung up on stuff like that, but I see the whitewashing of visual media. Whitewashing really damages people and the way they view themselves. I grew up with a poor body image partly because girls are always petite in movies, and I’m tall, broad and strong. They don’t make movies with women like me, but they have the same hair color and eye color as me. I remember how distant movie stars felt when I was growing up, and I don’t think it’s fair that people feel even more distant because there aren’t nearly as many people of the same color in those roles (also, did I mention I'm still a little cheesed that of all the people of Earth, the only people with courage enough to be GLs are male? Lame).

What is your favorite line in your WIP so far?

Biggest joke of the century―God gave us supers, just none of them of the hero variety.

If your MC were to have a pet, what would it be?

A chinchilla named Chupacabra.

When do you think your WIP will be done?

A cold mountain shy of never seems to be my standard opinion. It isn’t that I don’t get done with projects, but this one just seems to be going at me, one slow chapter at a time. I’ll dive back in, but so far, it’s been interrupted by three other projects, and that’s pretty unlike me. So we’ll see.

Who is your favorite side character in your WIP and why?

Jerhome because that man knows how to make a drenched rat look fabulous. He could turn any liability into a commodity in a heartbeat. When life is full of lemons he’s like “Oh hell no, it is time for tequila. You give me those lemons, and I’ll use them in cookies or something. It is time for a Margarita.”

What’s your MC’s favorite food?

Alicia loves tamales, but she loves meat balls and marinara. And to be fair, she sometimes mixes the masa from the tamales into the marinara sauce. She would, of course, never fess up to it, but she dreams of making meatball tamales, but she knows she’ll have to wait for her Nana to pass before she could get away with profaning the holy trinity (celery, carrots, and onions sautéed in virgin olive oil before being added to tomatoes) with masa.

I’m tagging:

Tara Tyler

Annalisa Crawford

Elizabeth Poole

Elizabeth Seckman

I’ve gone lazy with the holidays, so I’m going to steal Sarah’s questions.

The Joy of The End... for now at least

Ah, there is no more wonderful feeling than typing The End. Even when I know that this silly book is going to continue to cause me pain and suffering (and sweet potatoes, this one caused episodes of abject whining and moaning already) it’s still nice to put the damned thing away for a little while.

I haven’t shared the title of this little gem, but since I’m about to toss it into the revision stew to let it simmer for a while, I thought I’d give it a touch of love as I start to practice pitching (seriously though, it’s a rough draft, so it’s just not ready for anything).

Title: TO SING DOWN THE SKY

Comparison: If you took Captain Jack Sparrow and put him into a blender with Avatar: The Last Airbender and hit frappe, you’d get this story.

Pitch (this is super rough, so feel free to comment):

Tashira grew up in a world where singing is punishable by death. The only people who sing are the sea priests, ancient descendants from the guardians of the seas, and tasked with keeping the world safe from the Kryannians, monsters who live in the depths of the oceans. When the priests arrest Caven, a young man serving on a cargo ship, Tashira begins to doubt the sea priests’ propaganda. When the sea priests burn down her home and send giant mud crabs to kill her, Tashira knows something is wrong with the priests. To get her answers, she defies the priests and sings. When her song calls down a storm, Tashira knows that the sea priests are lying and she’s something the world hasn’t seen in generations: a storm singer.

Now the only problem is staying alive long enough to uncover the other lies the sea priests have raised her on, and the biggest is waiting at the bottom of the sea.

Yeah, like I said, that’s really rough. It needs a lot of work, but so does the draft.

Stats (because I love numbers)

Date started: 4/1/2013

Date ended: 7/13/2013

Time off (for good behavior): 21 days (you know, to start a new job, and interview, and work on another project… normal stuff).

Number of days writing: 84 (commonly known as 12 weeks, no really, it’s uncanny).

Average number of words per day: 881

Number of times I whined about how much it sucked: Yeah, I can’t count that high, I’m busy toasting the end of a rough draft here.

Number of Shiny New Ideas that tried to tempt me away: 2

Number of words I plan to cut when I get back to this draft sometime in December? All the words.

So there you have it folks. Start to finish, one rough draft. How do I feel? Well, it always feels great to pound out the words “The End,” but I can honestly say that this was one of the hardest books to write ever (I say that every time because This Is the Hard Part). The whole time I could see my failings as a writer while I was writing it. It was strange to see it as such a terrible, flawed thing. Usually, when I write a rough draft, it’s a fast and easy love. All I want to do is work on it. This one saw me questioning everything about it: Is this good enough? Was Act I long enough? Did I include enough description? Too much? Is the dialogue good enough? Does my non-native speaker sound to much like he’s from India? Does he sound british now? Oh god, shoot me before my pirates start saying “shiver me timbers.” 

Okay, it might not have gotten that bad at the end, but I would definitely call that draft an over glorified outline. It’s going to gain about 20K in new material alone. Then I’m going to rewrite the whole thing. Yeah, I talk about efficiency because I have none. ::shakes fist at sky:: Process, why are you so lugubrious?!

And there you have it, Too Much Information. How about you, do your first drafts feel like they’re written with Umbridge’s pen, using your blood as the ink and scribing the words on your soul? Or are you a happy go lucky writer for whom first drafts are all kittens and rainbows? I used to be kittens and rainbows writer, but not anymore.  

Conversations with Baby Jaguar

I have a young kid, and as you might have guessed, she’s up the phase where she is making up stories. She takes her toys around the house and they talk to each other. It’s absolutely adorable. That being said, there’s a recent trend in her games that I’ve also noticed from time to time in writing.

Of course, the young child’s version is really obvious what shouldn’t happen, but it crops up more subtly in other writing (including my own!).

Example:

“Hello, I’m Horsey!”

“Hi! I’m Horsey too!”

“But you’re Baby Jaguar!”

“Oh, you’re right. I am Baby Jaguar.”

If I were to name this trope it would be Identity Crisis Solved Because I Said So! Or Once Spoken It’s True. In my fiction it tends to crop up when I’ve lost track of how I’m giving information and I decide someone needs to know something. So I have someone tell the MC (hold out on this for the biggest drama: “Luke, I am your…” You get the hint). The problem is that when I’m drafting, sometimes *I* didn’t know that’s what they were until I had a character say it. That means that everything that’s been said or done so far has to be retooled to account for this new piece of information.

More specifically, the character who had the information should act like they know the information. For instance—I know this is pretty old school, but stick with me—in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Christian Slater’s character is a real twit. And when he divulges the information that *Spoiler alert* he is Robin’s brother, it makes sense that he was a complete twit up until that point.

Now, having said all that, I’d put this as a revising tip. First drafts are almost impossible, so just write the story, fill it with Once Spoken It’s True, but then go back through and make sure that people are acting like they have this information all along. It’s not as hard as you think, but it’ll help. I promise. No really, it’ll help.

So what about you? Are you a Once Spoken It’s True writer? I am. I’m terrible that way (my first drafts are comparable to a hot mess with a personality disorder).

A James Bond Villain

Let’s not mince words. Anyone who has a cat knows what I mean: I am owned by cats. 

Proof:

There might as well be a little speech bubble that says “mine.”

I’ve been owned by many cats over the years, but I’ve only ever had one James Bond Villain cat. She’s a lovely Russian Blue, but the word that describes her: feline. She is the epitome of all things cat. Tigers, lions cheetahs, they have nothing on my cat Puck. 

This is probably the best picture of her:

Pathetic, I know. See, she’s careful of cameras lest they give away her true identity, but I’ve grown cunning, and managed to snap a few good pictures of her (even one of her letting my 2-year old ride her, but don’t let the Evil League of Evil know that, I’m sure they’re processing her application as I type).

Whenever Puck sits next to me on the couch I’m one monocle away from being a James Bond Villain—well, minus the money and the great evil plot to destroy the world—and somehow, Puck knows when I’m working on the bad guys in my stories. I’ve been plotting away all afternoon thinking about my villain, and who came to sit next to me: Villain Cat. 

And now I'm feeling properly evil...