Stories of the Week for September 25, 2013

Well, streaks were made to be broken, I guess.  My 5 pages a day writing goal crashed and burned shortly after last week's SOTW.  It was only a matter of time, really, as it had been getting more and more difficult the closer I came to the end of the book.  I'd liked the climax I'd written, but I also thought it could be improved.  So I ended up rewriting the entire penultimate chapter.  I then started work on the final chapter, and it took me many, many attempts before I found a scene that felt right, both in tone and in pacing.

Even with as difficult as this last section has been, though, this particular book has been an absolute delight to write.  It combines horror elements with a sense of adventure and fun that I don't often see combined.

Of course, I'm already dreading the submission process (writing a query or a synopsis is not exactly my idea of a good time), but I really can't wait to start sendin' this puppy out.

Still can't say much about the actual story yet, but here's one of the research topics I checked out this week:

http://www.rexophone.com/?p=1175

It's all about how people lit their homes in olden times.  I'm not sure how interesting it'll be to other people, but I enjoyed reading about it. 


And the return of Movie of the Week, in honor of Iron Man 3's release on Blu Ray and DVD yesterday:

I loved this movie.  In many ways, it felt like Marvel's take on the Dark Knight.  Tony Stark has no superpowers himself, but he has a ton of gadgets, can think on the fly, his mansion gets attacked (similarly to Batman Begins), and he's a billionaire who's haunted by his past.  He even puts on his detective cap to investigate a crime scene or two. 

There were some laugh out loud moments for me, as well.  Typically, I find scenes with child actors to be a bit painful to watch, but they played it perfectly here. 

And hats off to Marvel for giving the filmmakers free reign to take a fresh spin on the Mandarin character.  I won't say anything about it to avoid spoilers (I love that I went in to this movie without knowing), but Ben Kingsley was excellent, and it seemed like a role that only he could play. 

Arbitrary Star Rating: 5 Stars.  Highly Recommended.  It also might be my new favorite Christmas movie. 

Stories of the Week for September 18, 2013

 I've added a new link to my page o' links.  It's the brand new blog by author Angelika Rust.  If you like fun fantasy books about criminal underworlds, then I'd highly recommend checking out her debut novel, Ratpaths.

Here's the book description:

The city state of Istonnia is suffering, its people cowering under the thumb of a despotic ruler.

Nivvo is a young thief, not interested in anything except keeping himself and his sister alive. That changes when he accidentally overhears a conversation.

Now Nivvo finds himself up to his neck in trouble. He has only one night to find the rightful heir. He has to smuggle him out of the city before the tyrant and his black-clad soldiers kill them both. And he has to avoid the crime lord's watchful eyes, for if Vicco Cambrosi catches them, they might be better off dead...

As for myself, I'm still plugging along on my Middle Grade novel.  My 5 pages a day writing streak is still intact, though I almost lost it on Saturday.  It was a combination of rampant procrastination, having to rewrite a tricky scene of dialogue, and generally being unsure how the protagonist was going to get out of her current predicament.

For some reason, I keep writing seemingly impossible scenarios for my characters, and then have to rack my brain trying to come up with a way out.  Preferably one that actually makes a bit of sense thematically, and doesn't come completely out of the blue, deus ex machina style.

Areas of research for the week include:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_cookie – I wanted to see when fortune cookies were first invented.  I ended up not using them as a reference in the book, as they seem like more of an American invention than anything else, and they don't really seem to exist in China.  According to the “In popular culture” section, is says this was mentioned in Iron Man 3 by the Mandarin character.  Twice.  So I'm probably not saying anything most people don't already know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog - More food related fun.  I had a scene that included a hot dog cart, but I wanted to make sure that hog dogs existed back in the time my story takes place. Frankfurters date back to the 13th century, apparently, where hot-dog-like pork sausages were made in Frankfurt, Germany.  Instances of the word “hot dog” seemed to have been published as early as the 1890s.

I may have also researched pretzels, while I was at it.  Now I know why research makes me hungry...

Stories of the Week

After last week's visit with Claire C. Riley—wasn't she delightful?—I'm flying solo in the blog studios again to bring you another edition of SOTW (which, if you're curious, is properly pronounced as “Sot-wuh”).

I was a guest on Claire's own blog recently, as she featured an excerpt from Try Not to Burn, and shared a quick “Getting to know the Author” Q&A session with me.  I dropped 5 facts about myself (like why my lucky number is actually 13, and how I almost died when I was a small child, from a popular Christmas-themed treat). I also mention 5 things that people may not know about my books.  Such as how I originally had a completely different prologue, why one of the characters is named Clarence (can you guess the movie reference?), and what the story began as before it became a full-fledged novel.

This week's writing news:
My 5 pages a day writing goal is still going strong, I'm very happy to say.  I've had a few near-misses, as some days were more difficult than others, but I've managed to stay on track.  As I'm writing this post, I'm currently on page 158, at over 39,000 words.  Since it's a Middle Grade novel, I'm shooting for around 50,000 words total, so the finish line is within sight.

The outline has evolved a bit since I initially wrote it out, but it's still been quite helpful in guiding me through the story, and keeping me to the important story beats.  Without a good outline, there's a danger in focusing on aspects that don't ultimately end up mattering.

And to provide another clue for what I've been working on, here's a couple of the topics I've been researching for the book this week:

http://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/place/427179-natural-history-museum

http://sites.google.com/site/bluewhaleproject/Home/fun-facts-about-the-project

The research wasn't quite as fun as it was last week (in fact, it was downright depressing at times, as there aren't a ton of blue whales left in the world), but I did read about some very interesting exhibits, and the whales are fascinating creatures.