My Stuff - A New Series

Yes, I've been writing and writing and writing the first book of a new series, although it's been tough to keep it going. The reason for that is all sorts of personal crap going on in my life, including losing out on a perm position that should have been mine.

No whining here. I've already moved on.

I'm now in a temp-to-perm position that I'm crossing my fingers will become permanent soon. So far, so good.

And now to the series description.

The series is tentatively titled Werewolf on Broadway because a) the main character is a werewolf and b) she has aspirations to gain a leading role on Broadway. (You probably figured that out, but I like to have fun with myself in more ways than one. ;-)) Anyway, it takes place during the Depression, although it starts in this first book in 1929, a few months before the Stock Market tanked - and Variety came up with its famous "Wall St. Lays an Egg" headline. I may move that up to October rather than March 1929, but we'll see.

The idea here is that those creatures in fairy tales aren't just fiction - they're for real - and they came over in droves to the U.S. after Lindbergh flew over the Atlantic in 1927. The main character, Karolina's, werewolf clan has been in the States for quite some time, but they feel the brunt of the violence some Normals have exacted against the Abnormals. (Normals are akin to Muggles; that is, they're normal, every day people who aren't fantastical or magical by any stretch of the imagination.) Karolina escapes from her parents' house to live in New York...striving to get onto the Broadway boards, where she'll then hide in plain site by simply using a stage name.

She has no idea if it's going to work, but she's going to give it a try. There's a murder that might not be a murder, an addle-brained old dude who is more than he seems, and some New York sports figures might be involved with the magical, fantastical goings on.

I have no idea how many books will be in this series - I just have to get this first one finished and out there, and that's going to take a small while (since I'm just now figuring out where this is going to go).

Never thought I'd write by the seat of my pants, but that's what I'm doing. And I'm okay with it. :-)

Word Count - First in a New Series and Super Secret Genre

So how's your writing going?

I've managed 500 words since January 2 - for a total of 4,000 words so far this year. (I figured out last year that I wrote about 100K words, the most I've ever written in a year.)

I've split the current word count between a novelette in a Super Secret Genre (actually, it's a sub-genre) under a pen name, and an historical fantasy novel, the first in a series (what else? :-)).

The historical fantasy is set in 1929 in New York City, where the mythical creatures people read about in fairy tales are real, having hitched a ride with Charles Lindbergh (mostly on board the ship he took back to the States)...and they've set up digs in NYC. They're the Abnormals, while those who aren't shapeshifters or whatever are the Normals.

I have a fascination with that period of time, and with the 1930s and 1940s. Major upheavals, first with the Great Depression, and then with World War II. Lots of people displaced, certain moralities were in question, a lot of the films (and even the plays/musicals on Broadway) were great...

Oh, how I can go on! :-) And I found a cool site if you're into sheet music collections or old-time songs (we're talking before the flood, nothing recent, lol!); some of this sheet music is quite lovely and the snippets I've heard from this site's CDs sound neat.

Gads, I'm such a geek/nut!

I now return you to your current site/channel/food/beverage.

ETA: And I just finished the Super Secret Genre novelette. Rounds out to close to 11,000 words.

Some Fun, Some News From the Homefront

First, the Fun

I've been surfing the web in between working on the 2nd book in the series (in between working on the cover of the first book). I Googled a certain phrase and found a couple of fun blogs on crappy SF and fantasy covers.


A couple of the covers weren't that bad.

But most were horrific. One had 5 different fonts on the cover. One had a squid in among a bunch of other crap. (I kid you not.) A few had naked warrior-type (I think) men with strategically placed...stickers, sparkly things, and who-knows-what-else. (I kid you not.) There was even one mostly-naked woman whose groin area was (wait for it)...dark. I mean, darkness as in black-hole-in-space darkness.

Wow.

Here's the first one: The Joys of Awful Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Covers. Appears to be U.S.-based (but what do I know, lol?) The June 20th entry starts off with a truly bad Ray Bradbury cover. Didn't he deserve something better? (I think so.)

The second one is U.K. based: Good Show Sir - Only the worst Sci-Fi/Fantasy book covers. This one has one book per blog post. Read the comments; they're as hilarious as the deadpan captions under the crappy covers.

You're welcome. :-)

From the Homefront

So, yes, I'm working and working on the cover for Changing Faces, the first in the Haven New Jersey series. They're short novels/novellas, all contemporary fantasy. Plenty of humor; the MC, Tessa, doesn't take herself seriously at all. (First person, BTW.) I'll probably post a couple of excerpts at some point.

Word Count

Altho I didn't do any of my own writing today - a day at home & lost pay (I'm doing a long-term temp thing) makes me a bit irritable & very lazy - I have written since I last posted.

Number of words: about 8,700.

I recently said I was going to do a chapter or two from the antagonist's viewpoint.  And I did.  Now I'm not so sure I want to go that way.  Not because I can't, but because I came up with a great idea for the first big event to happen (that first door that James Scott Bell talks about in his fantastic how-to, Plot & Structure).  This will propel the story into the middle, usually the land of muck and mire and much that is swampy (read: boring).

I'm hoping that doesn't happen, and I don't think it will.

You'll notice under the Writing Helps section that I've listed Godchecker.com; what a find that was!  It's given me more ideas to further shape the antagonist, and, no, I'm not going to make him all evil, all the time (mwahaha!).  That would be boring.

Onward and forward!

Word Count

Chapter 5 is going to be in another person's POV (that of Kathleen's brother).  I feel it's necessary because I want readers to understand where he's coming from, that he's not all bad.

Wrote 750 words today.  Yay!

Query Letter Help

I decided, as a way to get me back to writing my WIP, to write a query letter.  Or at least the barebones of a query.

If you want an agent, as many wannabe writers know, you have to write a query.  (In the U.K., I think it's referred to as the cover letter.  Same idea, though.)  So, how do you distill the essence of your 80K novel into three paragraphs?

Answer: not easily.

This thread at the Absolute Write boards helps by giving you 3 questions to answer:

1. What does your protagonist want?
2. What does s/he have to do to get it?
3. What happens if s/he fails to get what she wants? (the stakes)

Pretty good way to take those first tentative steps, hmm?  :-)  I thought so, too, but I was having trouble using that with my current WIP.  It takes place in 1942 Los Angeles.  The main character is Viv Cambridge, a woman who has "run away" from her blueblood mother.  (There's bad blood between them.  That was a joke, son, as Foghorn Leghorn would say.  Well, anyway...)  She's an editor at a crappy small publisher, lives in a house with a starlet who thinks nothing of bringing home "strays," women who've been kicked out of their homes, and is a witch-in-training, to boot.

That last, the witch-in-training bit, is a way for Viv to get back at her mother.  But I'm not going to say how in this post.

Back to topic.

Those initial 3 questions just weren't working for me, because I start off with Viv saying she's pissed off at her mother for various reasons.  What the hell agent is going to want to read pages if I say something like, "Viv wants to live a normal life," or "Viv ran away from her blueblood mother at the tender age of 26"?  (Well, the last one is true, but it won't draw in agents.  I mean, did it draw you in, dear reader?  No, I didn't think so.)

But then the OP of the thread qualified those questions: go for the bigger goal.  This works for me, dear reader.

The answers to the questions are:

What does Viv want?  To save Kathleen

She's the latest stray (magical).  Viv needs to save her from her brother, who's trying to kill her (yes, he's magical, too).

What does Viv have to do to get it?  Spirit Kathleen away from the starlet's house

What happens if Viv fails? (the stakes)  Viv, the starlet, and Kathleen will die

and who knows who else?

Viv's big problem is that she has a hatred against Japanese Americans (due to something that happened in her past), and after she accidentally gets rid of Kathleen's glamour (she's erected a veil to disguise the characteristics of her face), Viv has to deal with the fact that Kathleen is...a Japanese American.

How does deal with that to get to the point where she's helping Kathleen?  I have a few twists up my sleeve.  ::cue wicked laughter::

Is writing a query easy?  For most people, no.  But the answers to these questions - including the qualified ones, which are talked about in this post of the thread mentioned above - may help you cut through all the flotsam and jetsam that are your twists and subplots.

And that's what you have to do: Get it down to the essentials and build up (somewhat) from there.