Still Not Yet Finished

I thought I'd finish up the short story yesterday, but alas and alack, such was not the case. I did manage to move the story along some more, though, so all wasn't lost. ;-)

I see now that I'm going to have to prune quite a bit, but I'd rather have too much to chop off; usually for me, it's the other way around, as in, "What the hell am I going to add here to make this work?" I have an idea what I'm going to chop out (and add in), but I'm sticking to finishing the draft first, to get the unabridged story out of my mind.

~Nancy Beck
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Finishing the Short Story

I'll be finishing the short story at lunch today, which means it'll probably take me another week or so to get it into shape. :-) I have an idea as to how I'm going to end it (with the MC, Bella's, son Marcus and daughter, finding out something about the witch they're visiting...), but who knows? The characters could take me in a different direction, lol.

Hope everyone's (in the U.S., anyway) Memorial Day weekend was a safe and relaxing one. Went to a couple of parties over the weekend, to my one brother-in-law, another with good friends from the local bar. Good food and hilarious conversations (although there were some touchy moments on Saturday, at the brother-in-law's house; everything ended well, though).

I started another book just recently, Karavans, by Jennifer Roberson. This is a new author for me, but this is her latest. I'm up to Chapter 8 already (daggnabbit, left it at home!). It's about a bunch of people who are trying to latch onto a karavan after leaving their home behind. It's been conquered by another country, and they're trying to get to the woman's relations' home. However, that'll take them by a forest called Alisanos, which moves. (Shades of Lord of the Rings, there; huorns, I think those, um, trees/whatever were called.)

What I find interesting so far is all the religious stuff. Everyone believes in spells and charms and amulets and diviners. All kinds of cool/weird stuff. There are a couple of aliens, who can be killed, but they only completely die after the 6th time they've been killed. (They just won't let any humans know how many times they've been killed.) Anyway, so far, so good. I think it's a series ::sigh:: which seems to plague the fantasy genre more than other genres; yes, I know mysteries, like the Stephanie Plum series, are multi-book stories, but the particular mystery in the particular book is solved by the end of that book. Not so with a lot of fantasy series (World of Time, anyone?).

I'm not sure if Karavans will turn out to be the usual leave-us-hanging-until-the-next-book, um, book, or if it'll wrap up the main problem in this first volume. I have a feeling it's the former, but I'll have to wait and see.

~Nancy
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Short Story and Other Things

I'm more than halfway done with the first pass on my short story; it's taken a slight detour, but it actually makes sense (takes care of one plot point as to why Bella, my MC, hesitated to get her family to safety earlier...). Besides, I'm of the opinion to write straight through the first time around and revise later. (There'll be plenty of that, you can be sure.)

What else? Hmm. Just finished the second book in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series, Living Dead in Dallas. Icky in parts, but fun. The MC, Sookie Stackhouse, cracks me up. (It's in first person, BTW.) And I love the little in-jokes Ms. Harris throws into the mix. For instance, Sookie's vampire, Bill, is shipped in his coffin by Anubis Air (as vampires are now part of the mainstream in U.S. society) to Dallas. Anubis was the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead. I know, eyeball rolling time; but I thought it was a good choice by Ms. Harris. And the only reason I got it is because I'm taking an audio course from The Teaching Company on Ancient Egypt. Really fascinating stuff. Try to pick it up whenever it's on sale.

One last thing: The demise of Miss Snark's blog. Boo hoo! No, really, boo hoo! I hadn't looked over there for a little while due to personal stuff, but I start reading it again (without posting) and, all of a sudden, she has post where I can't leave any comments! WTF? So I scrolled down a bit...and that's when I found the post saying she couldn't do the blog anymore. She was putting a lotta work into it, helping those of us who want to be legitimately published, but doing it with her brand of snark (which I really liked).

So, farewell, Miss Snark's blog. It won't be the same without your snarkiness.

~Nancy Beck
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Back to the Land of the Living...Writers

It's been a month to the day since I last wrote anything in this blog, and it's been a bit of a depressing time in those four weeks.

But after downloading a free, short e-book on short story writing, I decided tonight I'd plunge back in.

It was so nice to sit down and not worry about court cases, lawyers, or insurance. I actually have the guts to a short story written now. Well, about halfway written, more or less. I was so happy, I actually cried a bit. For once in the past couple of months, they were tears of joy. I felt so good about it, I just had to blog, just had to let go. Even as I write, I feel the tears welling up. I can't stop thinking about how good, how right it felt to get a story down with pen and paper.

No title as yet, but it's about a woman hesitating about making decisions (something I've had to struggle with lately): Getting her and her family out of harm's way (roaming bands of thugs have taken over the countryside where she lives) and changing her daughter back into a human. (Of course, there has to be a fantasy twist to my stories; that's where my brain always seems to go. ;-)) The thing is, she's got two things tugging at her that's making her hesitate, and her son doesn't waste anytime pointing out to her that 1) the thugs aren't that far away, and 2) she promised to take them to the witch who lives by this one stream to get his sister back.

Or something like that. For me, the hardest thing is to talk to people on the phone; those I talk with all the time are no problem. But talking to doctors or insurance people or whomever...that's another matter. I can't tell you how many times I've put off and put off and put off talking on the phone. But these had to be dealt with sooner rather than later, so I usually dove in.

I've survived, somehow. And in this story, this woman will survive, too. But she and her kids are going to learn a few things along the way, just as I have.

It feels good to be back. I hope I stay writing for a long time to come.

Take care, one and all.