I bought Plottr, which is a really excellent plotting device, with assorted templates. This was one of them, and when I picked up the book, I realized that it was more than just how to write a romance. It’s how to write a story in general. Definitely worth the Kindle price.
Number 2:
Kindle
Although this came out a while ago, I read it in advance of an interview I did with her at the beginning of the year. This was surprisingly good. (Surprise because I was also reading slush.) Vanessa takes the alien point of view and changes it a little, but still makes it applicable to our time. She also wrote “The Smugglers” and another favorite of mine, “Coke Machine.” Go here for more.
What a fun book, but what a stupid character. The author follows the formula for a cozy–more or less–and the culture reminds me of what I was brought up in. Food is what we gather around. Aunties (Tia’s) would say “Eat more of this.” Then in the next breath, “You should lose some weight.” The end was sudden and a right hook.
Number 6:
Kindle
“Danelaw.” The Vikings ruled northern England and much of Scotland in the 400’s and on. They were pagan early on, but got Christian by the 800’s. These lost 600 years are wrapped in a pretty bow–but there’s so much missing. I’m not even going to bother with the Normans. See the Netflix series, The Last Kingdom for more information.
I’ll do three today, three tomorrow, and three Monday.
Kindle
This is an excellent primer on more than just dealing with mammillary glands. The culture of how females act and react to fighting, what happens before, during and after a fight. How a girl can go from zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds. This book, combined with SCA fighter training, helps.
Kindle and Physical Book
I read this after Four Lost Cities and found this one more interesting. I was planning on writing a novel taking place in the Levant, among the Chaldeans. As usual, I got two lines of dialogue and then nothing. But the research was fun. I got the hardcover because I plan on using this for a lot more research.
I read this over six months, attempting to do the solitary practitioner route. Once I got to “ambulating” and reading way too much of Israel Regardie’s stuff, I got oversaturated with ritual magic and finally put it away. Technically I didn’t finish it.
In March 1989, I wrote a poem called “revenge”. Basically, it was a fantasy of blowing someone’s head off.
I also wrote another poem called “Abandonment,” and a chapter from a novel “Blood And Roses” during my senior year of college. I presented these poems and stories to my English 300 class.
If you read this in 1989, you’d just think I’m a Stephen King fan or like horror. Reading it now, I don’t know now anyone can miss that I was just barely on the edge of sanity. They’d bring me to the Dean’s office lickety-split and I’d end up in the psych ward at the local hospital.
Instead, someone (I think the professor) scrawled across the bottom of the “revenge” poem, “BURN THIS.”
Obviously, I didn’t, as I carried that fury on with me to Hunter’s Realm/The Taurin epic fantasy I wrote. It’s chock full of hate and anger, and a Mary Sue character that makes me wince whenever she pronounces from on high. I kept the fury in the background in everything I wrote. Nothing I wrote was happy.
At the risk of turning off everyone from this blog or my writing, I’m going to be honest here. When I heard about Columbine, I will never forget my feelings while they gathered all the information on the two kids.
What a great idea.
By then, I was out of college and doing medical billing for a psych hospital (how ironic). I didn’t realize I had a “hit list”, a “plan”, and plenty of “opportunity.” As the years went by, I realize now that my obsession with mass shootings was because “Why didn’t I think of that?”
It wasn’t until 2019 when I got good therapy and the right meds. So after the last mass shooting, the one one at WalMart in Virginia, I felt sad. Not for the shooter, but for everyone else. I read his “manifesto” and my heart broke. Dude. I know what you were going through.
How can I reach these potential killers and tell them, “Hey, you’re not alone. I was like you. Then I got better. Here’s how.”
I still have to go through this box. This box that will uncover my dark side that no one understood. The dark side that I can look at now and realize what I was.
The Dark Box
And after that comes the diaries in my hope chest. How far back did this go?
I’ve given up on my own podcast. Dark Mystic Quill is officially on hiatus, but I’m not doing anymore. It’s been a year, so I think I’ll pack it in now. I’m doing Small Publishing in a Big Universe, and I think that’s enough times you hear my voice.
I plan on updating this blog at least once a week. Maybe Fridays.
I have a vision of my Muse (Calliope) as Christie Brinkley in National Lampoon’s Vacation. She drives by saying, “You should write, honey!” I pull out a fresh notebook and write maybe two pages of introduction, and then…she’s gone. I tried using the computer, too, and that didn’t work–I got a scene out before she took off.
I tried editing my huge epic fantasy opus that I wrote in college (or was it right after college at my first receptionist job?) but got disgusted with how much work I was going to have to do to fix the wreck that it was. After three months, I finally put it aside this week and decided to try new things.
See paragraph above.
NanoWrimo went to hell after I got in the hospital on the first day of November, and was in for five days. Then Rhode Island Comic Con the weekend after I got out of the hospital, where I sold a few copies of my book, but I was concentrating on selling everyone else’s. I did a good job with that. I met John Barrowman! At the autograph table, I had a script prepared to tell him all about Grimaulkin. What did we talk about?
Pain meds.
See, he had thrown out his back and I had just gotten out of the hospital after going in with chest pain. So I knew about pain meds–all hail MORPHINE. He said that he had “hospital grade” meds but they made him loopy. His handler suggested he use them for the panel or the cosplay photo op he had coming up. I did have him sign the picture I brought (Torchwood) and he called me “lovely.” I blushed a million shades and said I’d see him tomorrow for a photo op.
My son, John Barrowman, and me.
After the ComicCon, I tried to write. Again, Calliope took off after tossing me a bone or two. I tried a Tamerlane story and got as far as Tamerlane meeting his next patron, and but no reason for her to meet him.
I looked up stuff in Submission Grinder, just to see if there was anything I could contribute to. I saw an entry for “Lost Atlantis” by Flame Tree Press. They were looking for stories of lost civilizations. I had read Four Lost Cities and Forgotten Civilizations of the Ancient World this year. Heck, Brothers of the Zodiac is set in Mesopotamia.
I started a new Word doc, thinking that might force the story out. Nope. I got an introductory scene with the main character out and that was it.
I need to stop reading non-fiction and watching murder mystery shows (Longmire, Columbo) because that’s all I’ve got in mind. Reading fiction is harder work. I have to hold the story in my head after I put it down for the night. If I put it down for the night. I can hold three, maybe four, storylines in my head at once.
I have decided that on December 1 I’m going to try and coerce, bribe, or beg Calliope to give me more than bones. I will prepare a place for her to come by and visit, and tell me a story.
I have been writing, but I can only do about 500 words a day. I have tangled up tendons in my left thumb and arthritis in the joint. Not to mention carpal tunnel in both hands and tendonitis in the right arm.
The only thing I can do without pain is read.
My work in progress is entitled Don’t Believe in Miracles. It takes Tamerlane (a little bit of an asshole magician) into a world that he’s been trying to hide from most of his life. It might be a series. If I can get past the second chapter. I’ve plotted four chapters, trying not to overplot and kill the muse’s excitement.
I’ll put in reviews of books that I’ve read so far this year in another post.
I’ve been so busy with journaling that I haven’t had a chance to keep up online. I’ve been doing some work for the publisher, as well, and that’s been keeping me busy, between podcasts and being a publishing minion.
I joined up with a virtual tarot group, and they do daily tarot/weekly meetings. Writual Society is by tarot readers, for tarot enthusiasts (I’m not the only one with 50 decks). I’ll discuss this group more in my other “Explorations of Spirit” blog.
Writing wise, I tried to write Aries II. But I overplotted and the fun was ripped right out of it. I plotted the whole thing out, and the story was told; so it was done.
I had an event for four hours in a farmers’ market, and realized that most of the people like cozy mysteries. I could write that. So I started a cozy, taking place on the Cape, at a family-owned auto detailing and repair shop. Sounds like a weird place for a mystery, but trust me, it can happen.
Game wise, I’ve been playing off and on because my left thumb hurts if I play too much. I mouse and select with my left hand because I trained myself to do that after surgery on my right hand, oh, about 20 years ago. I can’t write much, either, because that aggravates the right tennis elbow.
Dialysis still exists, and I’ve lost another 10 lbs. There’s a new diabetes drug that would cause me to lose an average of 50 lbs in a year. I’m all for that! But insurance won’t pay for it yet because it’s so new. However, if I “fail” the drug I’m on, they may be able to prove that this new drug will work better.
“Seven of Swords” is part of The Storyteller’s Tarot series. I kind of copied a scene from Grim’s last book, Grimaulkin Redeemed, rewrote it, introduced a new (old) character named Tamerlane who is a bit of a jerk. Just a little bit.
I have no excuse for February, other than putting together the podcast “Small Publishing in a Big Universe”.
March, though, I helped out my publisher who put out a submissions call for the Dragon Gems program of short stories. So many people replied (175 or so) that he needed help weeding out the good stuff from the chaff.
At first, I concentrated on the “art” of the story. Did the author tell a good story? Eventually, though, I got irritated by all the different version of “formatting” that people did. Not Comic Sans, but some were pretty dang close (single-spaced, 10 point, .rtf default). We put on our website exactly what submission guidelines were. Oh, and by the way, Scrivener can automatically do that for you in Compile. So with the second batch and from then on, the author got a letter grade taken off for bad formatting.
Some people’s writing was truly atrocious. I finally understood the whole “you tell, not show” error in a manuscript. Then I read some stuff that blew my mind and I wanted to pass it along right away to the judges with a screaming neon post-it saying “THIS ONE!”
That took me all the way through March, between reading and replying to people. Just over 50 of the 175 are in the judging phase. They went past me because either they’re great, or I was on the fence on it. Like horror and hard sci-fi ain’t my thing, but as long as the author didn’t mess up the formatting, the spelling and word choices were good, and the story kept my attention without me scrolling through, then it moved onto judging. Some of them brought a different dimension to magic that made me stop and think.
Basically, I loved being a gatekeeper (ahem, “curator”). I’d do it again in a second.
Meanwhile, what else is going on, you might wonder? Have I written anything? Not in the last two months. I attended a webinar that was “write to market” and found out that the hottest sellers are in the Romance category. Romance-anything. So I was thinking of pulling Max out of retirement and do another Brothers of the Zodiac series–this time, much longer, taking place during world history instead of American history, and explore the world a little more. Bring in the Sumerian gods? Explain what it means to be immortal in Ishtar’s service? Explore the sign itself a little more. What really happens to the immortal if he falls in love with someone?
For a fleeting fifteen seconds, I thought of a typical heterosexual romance. Then I decided I can’t do that. I know the heroines are supposed to be kickass these days, but I still like the difficulties (challenges – drink!) that M/M romance has with it.
Brothers of the Zodiac, the Next Generation. I’m starting with Aries. I’m giving myself until June 1 to get it done.
