Welcome to my new and updated site. It’s a lot prettier than the old version. It’s not quite done yet — I intend to transfer over my assorted grab bag of links, among other things — but it’s close enough. Enjoy.
No wombats were harmed in the making of this site. However, a great many potatoes were consumed during its creation.
Alright. Perhaps not so great and wondrous.
However, I am pleased to announce that as of today, the rough draft of Faerie Spring is complete.
The bad news is I was working in longhand to combat writer’s block, and now have 50+ pages to type up. Ugh.
Still! Book! I’m halfway through the series!
I did not intend to do Nanowrimo this year. I have tried it unsuccessfully two or three times and had come to the conclusion I just didn’t have this focus.
However, by sheer coincidence, another concept for a novel I had been playing with suddenly blossomed…on November 1st. After a couple of days of working on my new novel, I yielded and signed up for Nanowrimo. Now I am comfortably ahead of completion pace, and feel very strongly that I may, for the first time ever, finish Nanowrimo…if I ever come up with an ending for this novel. On the other hand, I am now so ahead in the Word Challenge, I have been threatened with being kicked off the island. My best friends wouldn’t do that to me, right? Right?
The new novel? It is entitled Hollins Hill, and is sort of Jane Austen meets generic romance novel meets Stephen King (well, not really, it’s more a gentle paranormal rather than actually scary, but I couldn’t think of a good comparison) meets my twisted mind. I’ll give it its new page here in a few. And, no, I haven’t abandoned my other series — I’m just taking a bit of a breather from it.
The Word Challenge page has been updated to include our new rule re: world building. We’ve just concluded our fourth week, and seem to expand on what you can earn points for almost every week.
*insert various exclamations of excitement*
Days = 33
Words = 79,324
Completed first draft = priceless
I did it.
Okay, so I finished NaNoWrimo’s 50k words back on the 24th of November. I would not rest, however, until the book was finished. I finished it on the 3rd of December, about 15 minutes before midnight. It’s a little shy (as you can see above) of 80,000 words, which Rachel assures me is the benchwork of length for a novel, but I’m sure it’ll actually grow in revision. The characters of this novel talked to me a lot, but unfortunately they liked to keep deep character stuff for the last quarter of the novel, when I started screaming at them about not having room for it.
I’m not sure what the market is for this novel — but I’ll figure it out. Most of all, I had tremendous fun writing it. I’ve had a mixed relationship toward writing for the last year or so, going so far as to consider giving it up completely at one point, but this really reminded me of why I love writing. Maybe it’s just a sign to me to try to stop hammering myself into mainstream fantasy and write quirky little historical romances if that’s what I love!
Rachel has created a new blog for creative-stuff, Through My Eyes. And poor misguided soul has given me a login. Oh, the damage I can do…
It’s February (egad! Where does time go?) and here’s my latest creative update. Well. Update on the state of my creativity. Not necessarily an update that is creative in and of itself.
So…
*pokes brain experimentally*
I think my creativity is green. And squishy.
Anyway. After a short break, things are ongoing again. I still have not added a page for Hollins Hill, but intend to in the near future. At the moment I’m letting it be — I want to edit it when there’s more distance between the writing and the editing. I am, however, almost to that point. Although no one yet has the rough draft all the way through (yes, Jen and Rachel, I am death-glaring at you), initial reviews for the three people who have started reading it are pleasingly positive. I had a ball writing it.
That said, I did start on a sequel to it, and got about three chapters in before I put it aside for a bit. It’s going to be a bigger book than the original, and needs some work setting up a framework to hang the story on. Instead, in the last two weeks I got bowled over by an idea for a Victorian dark fantasy, and am now more than 25k words in. It’s not coming as smoothly as Hollins Hill did, but I really love the concept, and we’ll see how it goes. If I can write two complete (if very rough) novels in less than six months, I’m going to…I don’t know. Eat a mountain of chocolate to celebrate or something.
Also, this year I am planning to apply to Clarion West. If I can manage to write a bio that isn’t incredibly flippant and/or claim that I am a tuber or marsupial.
As a concluding note, if there is anyone out there who wants to read the (very rough) first draft of Hollins Hill, has an account on GoogleDocs, and can give constructive big picture criticism (and isn’t planning to steal my book or anything), feel free to drop me a line. I’m looking for feedback, since my BEST FRIENDS are too busy to finish reading it. (Hint, hint.)
The current projects page has been updated to reflect what I’m currently working on.
Enjoy.
Or cringe. Whatever puts marzipan in your pie pan.
I have declared a goal to finish two novels (we’re talking rough, rough drafts here) in six months. (Knowing me, editing them will then take three years.) One, my Nanowrimo novel, is already done. That gives me until the end of April to finish the second, by my calculations.
My friends have been glowering at me for my productivity, but, really, it’s renewed productivity after three or so years of being too burnt out to write. I’m enjoying writing again, and that’s a good thing.
I like to describe my Nanowrimo novel, Hollins Hill, as what Jane Austen might have written if she had been dropped on her head (repeatedly) as a small child and also came to recognize ghosts and sex. However, that might still be giving myself too much credit. It is, broadly speaking, a ‘historical paranormal romance.’ Set in 1802, in an estate called (surprise!) Hollins Hill, in the north of England, it is about the estate’s residents, the Hackham family. In his push to have a son, Sir George Hackham managed to sire fourteen daughters (by four different wives). Luckily for the readers (and the writer), only the eldest five are really characters in their own right. In the remoteness of Hollins Hill, an estate where the house is haunted benevolently by a spirit known affectionately as Dorothy, the wood is haunted rather more malevolently by nameless spirits, and the ruins of an ancient abbey on the estate may or may not contain a magical relic with the power of healing. But when a young (and rather married) poet arrives in search of said relic and falls hopelessly in love with one of the sisters, he brings the outside world crashing in on Hollins Hill with all sorts of complications and tragedies ensuing.
I’m still not sure if Hollins Hill is any good. I printed it off recently to have a hard copy to edit, and reread snippets of it, which were better than I remembered but also often read rather more frivolously than I intended. I also know sections of it have some major structural issues that will take a while to fix. That said, I do know it was an absolute blast to write. It helped me recover my love of writing, which had wandered off somewhere in the last few years and gotten lost. I was also astonished by the fact that although I have always found male character more difficult to write (and to RP, for that matter), the voice of Roger — the irresponsible, impulsive, scattered and occasionally lecherous aforementioned poet — came so naturally to me it was almost disturbing.
After I finished the first draft of Hollins Hill, in early December, I spent some time playing around with a proposed sequel for it, New World. The characters were still so alive in my head I wanted to continue their story. However, I put it away for a bit because it wasn’t yet clear enough to me. Writing Hollins Hill in a ‘I’ll write and see what happens’ approach worked, because I had to tie all storylines into the location. New World, given the Hackham girls were expelled from Hollins Hill and were now all over the place, was going to be an absolute mess if I tackled it that way. So now it’s percolating at the back of my mind, waiting to be revisited when I have a better idea of how to structure it.
In late January, desperately in need of an ongoing project to hold my own in the Word Challenge, I started a novel tentatively entitled When The Bough Breaks. It was almost deserted in the early days, especially after I initially wrote the first chapter in third person, and then went back and re-wrote it in first. (First person won out). Now, however, I’m past the halfway mark and cannot see myself not finishing it.
WTBB is both a little more fantasy-oriented and a little more character-oriented than Hollins Hill. It has more a firm foot in the supernatural (in this case, faeries), and because it’s intended to be about the same length as Hollins Hill, but with far fewer characters, the characters are more rounded. In theory. If Hollins Hill is a really mangled re-imagining of Pride & Prejudice, WTBB is what happens when you do a similar hack-job to Jane Eyre. It is about Dora, a young woman who has lived a sheltered and reclusive life, but when her father dies, is forced to go out into the world as a governess, traveling to Scotland to teach a baron’s younger sister. However, she discovers her pupil has a tail, which is only the first sign of weirdness. The gate to Faerie, she learns, was shut and it can be unlocked only by the death of the young girl she teaches. Everyone in the household seems to have a different agenda and, alone and confused, she has no idea who to trust or how to save her pupil.
WTBB is set in a later era (1869) than Hollins Hill, but the two books are actually connected, albeit in a way that is so far only in my head. I suppose, thematically, they have similarities as well. They are both about growing up, leaving your safe place behind, and learning to deal with life. They play with the tension between what is real and practical, and what is intangible and ideal. To an extent, too, they’re both about family, but in different ways. The Hackham girls, even as they’re expelled from their family home, will always have each other, and thus will probably turn out fine. Even though they might disagree with each other’s actions, they will always be there to catch one who falls. Dora, however, is completely alone and lost in an uncertain world, brushing up against others in the same situation, who don’t know whether to shun strangers or grab hold of them. She reflects, early on, if she disappeared, no one would miss her. As at least three characters have asked in that book so far, when asked why they remain in this situation, “Where else would I go?”
That is, I suppose, why I keep thinking of WTBB as a very dark book, and Hollins Hill more as a comedy-drama.
Finished the first draft of When The Bough Breaks last night just before midnight. For some reason I did not have the sense of elation I normally do when finishing a first draft. I think it was largely because usually I have a last sentence in mind and have been writing up to it for some time. This time I didn’t, and I’m not happy with the very last chapter at all. Still, it’s easily fixable, and I deserve some chocolate. Two in six!
Next is my Clarion application. Then some Firan chargen. And then serious editing on Hollins Hill.
And maybe I can return to the real world for a bit.
