michaeljasper.net
"Another Wrecked Web Site"
April 14, 2002
It's all a Blur...
Now Reading:
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Datlow & Windling
Now Playing:
"So Much for the Afterglow," Everclear
Man, revising and adding new stuff takes FOREVER! I've been adding new details to the novel and the novellette featuring the priest who first meets the aliens, and while it's been great stuff, it's been slow -- I'm up to 41 pages on the novellette, and it keeps getting longer. Oh well. It's improving the story, and that's all that matters.
I may have more time tonight to do more fine-tuning, which would be great.
Right now the novel's up to 56,300 words, and I just hit page 200. Wahoo!
Today's quote:
As the pickup slid around another turn, Joshua’s hand slipped from where he’d been clinging to the seat and hit his thigh. Through his pants he felt the oval capsule of Blur in his pocket that he’d missed yesterday morning. Slipping his hand into his pocket he pulled out the pink capsule, palming it so Kathy wouldn’t see. He was sick of feeling so tired. He kept thinking of the words of the young Blur dealer Sunday night, shivering from the cold and detoxification: “We all act like we’re going to live forever, so we take the drugs and we sell the drugs, but all it boils down to is not hurting any more, and not dying.”
“Could I possibly get a sip of your drink?” Joshua asked Kathy as the pickup began slowing. “I’ve got to take my, ah, heart medication.”
April 13, 2002
Isn't it Romantic???
So I finished my first round of assignments, reading the May Asimov's and the four romance novellas, plus the excerpt to another romance story by Jo Beverly. Whew. I liked almost all the stories in Asimov's, though the Tom Purdom story was dull, and I'm still trying to get through the Ian MacLeod novella, it's so slow.
But I wanted to talk about what I've learned about Romances. Whille Lizzie worked on her homework on the back deck, I got to lounge in one of our chairs and finish the Once Upon a Rose antho.
A lot of people pooh-pooh the Romance genre, and there are many reasons why that's justified. First and foremost, every story is a formula, one I'm sure you know, and they alway end happily for the guy and girl. Usually in marriage, with them in bed after consummation. Major eye-rolling there for this non-sentimental dude.
But in the good romances, of which I haven't read many, the story is all about the struggle. That's the key -- how will Princess Ariana find True Love (TM) with the scoundrellish and unshaven Lord Dukakis? The more challenges the better, always a good thing to remember in crafting fiction. If it's too easy it's boring. You need the events of the plot to always get worse.
The most intriguing story was the snippet of the Jo Beverly story, which started off with a soldier just about to kill himself as he's lost everything, only to have the princess find him and con him into acting like his fiance for 6 weeks. Nice situations, lots of potential for conflict, and strong female characters. I also liked the "The Roses of Glenross" by Ruth Langan, because it had more than one plotline going on -- it had a ghost, a mute and damaged girl, a healing soldier, and interesting minor characters. Yeah, the guy gets the girl, everyone's happy, but that's expected.
What I didn't like about the stories were the way they lacked subtlety, and every emotion was explained in bold letters. It also really bugged me that the point of view jumped around so much, from the girl to the guy to the jester to the royal dog. Well, maybe not the dog, but you get the picture -- everyone gets to share their thoughts, and there's never any doubt of where a character stands in these stories.
So while the experience was a bit frustrating, I'm glad I had to read them, and I may try and write one someday, just for kicks. But my sex scenes will be much better than that stuff in those stories! Us guys want details, not this "heat grew inside her" blah blah. :)
Now I'm on to the Fantasy and Horror anthology. Fun times ahead! Later.
April 12, 2002
Now and at the hour...
Hey there. Just got a little editing done at the end of the day, just enough to get me going for the weekend. This Hour Dare has been really good for me in that respect -- it's forced me to write when otherwise I'd just say "fuhgeddaboudit."
But now it's late Friday afternoon and I'm ready to get out and enjoy what's left of the lovely weather. Here's a nice depressing quote from my novella to rain on your parade... read at your own risk... Later!
Today's Quote:
“They’ve already started turning us against ourselves,” he whispered, even as Joshua stepped closer. The man’s trembling hands were red with blood, the gun slick with it. “The end times are begun,” the big man said in his calm voice.
Joshua felt all the prayers he knew run through his head in a massive outburst. He tried to speak, but his voice died in his throat. He saw what the man was getting ready to do, and he reached for the man. Joshua’s last sensation was the touch of the hot, bloody metal of the gun slipping from his grasp as the man – a complete stranger Joshua had never seen inside his church before – turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger.
April 11, 2002
Yippee Skippee...
Hiya all! Just finishing up for the day, after my hour or so of revising. It's going well, but a bit slow, as revising usually goes. But I feel really good about the story, and can't wait to fit it back into the novel.
Elizabeth and I went out to the best Chinese place in Raleigh tonight, Red Dragon, for some awesome food, just because. We've both been going full-tilt, and I must say, Lizzie's been working harder than me. She hasn't had a free moment since, oh, about February. That tends to wear a person out.
So we goofed off a bit tonight, and it was needed. I didn't get the reading done tonight I was planning on -- I still have 1/2 of a romance/fantasy novella to read, and 2 1/2 others before I'm caught up on that genre. Maybe I'll read some more while riding the bike at the gym tomorrow morning... after I tear the cover off the book, for my own masculinity's sake!
A good writing night, though, I'm happy to report. I've gotten almost all my nitty-gritty editing done, thanks to the excellent comments of fellow writers Jay, Scott, Greg, Tim, and Derek (whose comments were right on time!). So this weekend I plan on getting some good revising done, and maybe even finishing up some of the other 2 novellettes I have waiting for me... Later!
April 10, 2002
[Insert pithy comment here]
Now Reading:
Once Upon a Rose, Nora Roberts and her Romance posse
Now Playing:
"Seattle," Pearl Jam
Hello. How's it going? I'm just wrapping up an hour or so of hard revising to my novella about the priest who walks into the ship full of aliens. No, that's not the setup for a bad joke. It's my art, man!
Sorry, it's been one of those days.
I'm slowly working my way through this story, getting everything in order. Drafting is easy compared to revising like this. But I did my time, and now it's time to read some trashy romance/high fantasy. ;)
Today's Quote:
The tent was bigger than any other tent Joshua had ever been inside, and he nearly fell backwards looking up at the broken black ship that filled the central area of the tent. He’d watched countless Netstream reports about Stealth fighters and the latest classified information of ships too new to be photographed or recorded. This ship was more impressive than any of those ships, even in its current state of near destruction. Black, oozing metal covered the outer hull that rose thirty feet into the air at angles that made Joshua’s eyes hurt. The crumpled metal was surrounded with grayish impact foam clustered around its many rents and tears, while power leads and other instrumentation of human design wrapped around the rectangular exterior of the ship like unnatural spiderwebs. A scaffolding ran the perimeter of the ship, around three pointy projections at the front of the ship and sprouting from either side. Men and women in dark green clothing walked across the scaffolding, balancing tools and handheld equipment. Their shouts died when they saw the private and Father Joshua.
April 9, 2002
Here we are now, entertain us...
Okay, time to prioritize. I've been feeling stressed out about all the reading I need to do for my workshop in May, and as a result I haven't been enjoying the stories I've been reading. And, even worse, I haven't been writing, at all. I was on a nice roll there, writing every day and making good progress, so I can't stop now. I just need to figure out to fit everything in.
And I also need to decide what will get read and what won't. Right now my reading includes 3 of the massive Year's Best -- the Fantasy and Horror antho by Datlow and Windling, the Science Fiction antho by Dozois, and a Mystery antho by Ed Gorman. I'll start with the Fantasy antho, as that's my preferred genre. I should've read this one when I bought it, a year ago!
Oh well. I've read 5-6 of them, including Jonathan Carroll's odd, mostly enjoyable "Heidelberg Cylinder" (I'd have like some of the elements of the story to be less random, personally, but it had a great intro and a nice ending).
I figure that book will take me two weeks or so, if I can read 1-2 stories a night during the week, and 7-8 on the weekend. If I run across one that doesn't really grab me by page 3, I'll move on.
Next is the Dozois book (2 weeks) and then the Mystery book (2 weeks). I'm hoping to finish the romance/fantasy novellas this week, maybe today. What's left are the two "smaller" anthos Dozois also edited, Supermen and Worldbuilders. The second is about terraforming, so I'll probably start with that one, as I have a story idea already in that sub-genre. And the "posthuman" antho will probably be airplane reading...
Sorry, I know that was probably REALLY boring, but sometimes I need to think out line, or online in the case of this journal.
Thanks to some nudging by former Clarion classmate Dave, I plan on getting back to the Wannoshay novel today. I was gonna put that on the back burner, but after reading his note on the Dare webpage, he convinced me I need to stick to my guns and bang out that novel draft. I was thinking about trying to do some stories before May 25th, but I'll have time to do that while I'm in Lincoln City at the workshop, and afterwards. How nice would it be to have another novel done by that time instead???
So that's what's been on my mind lately. Yeah, I know, I need to relax more and have fun, I know. But there's only so much time in the day, y'know??? Later.
From later:
Back in the saddle again, and boy does it feel good! I'm reworking chapter 1 yet again, this time as the first half of a novella featuring one of my main characters, Father Joshua.
I'm slowly working my way through the various edits and comments some of my writing friends gave me in the past few weeks. I have such cool friends. Lots of excellent feedback and help. Who said writing was a solitary activity?
And on top of it all, after I read one of my fantasy/romance novellas for my workshop (oh my, was it fun -- mostly predictable, with some embarassing sexual escapades -- I think the word "throbbing" was used, or was it "thrusting?"), I got a very nice email from my buddy Tim. He works at Locus (and as a result he gets to see galleys of books before they go to print), and he wrote to let me know that my story "Crossing the Camp" from Strange Horizons got an honorable mention in Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction for 2001!!! Nothing's official yet, but it's still groovy news.
I needed that bit of news to get me through this hectic time. And it really motivates me to work like mad on this novel, of which "Crossing the Camp" is but one chapter. Yeah, baby. Bring the good news! Later.