Good News to Open 2022

It's nice to open a new year with news of getting published.

The Strangely Funny anthology accepted another humor horror short this week, a 21st Century take on vampires called "The Brides of WiFi."  It's in a different vein than the other vampire stories - "I Must Be Your First," "Minette Dances with the Golem of Albany," "How a Vampire Gets a Tan" - I've done for them, but that's allowed because there's so many different rules for how vampires work that you can change their behaviors and weaknesses from story to story and still find the logic to make it fit.

It's just, okay, there's no effing way that vampires sparkle. They don't. They never will.

I think the publication date is scheduled for some time in August, we'll see as the year progresses.

Gets me in the mood to see about other publications for short stories I can submit to. Yasssss queen.

Happy New Year, fellow writers!

NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 30

This is the last day to reach the 50,000 word count to earn all the prizes and discounts at the end of this month-long train ride.

So, just to note that last night I hit 50,000 words - 51,000 words actually, as the damn word validator can't translate OpenOffice documents cleanly so I over-wrote to make sure I cleared the hurdle - for about the fourth time attempting NaNo since 2006.

Yay.

The trick, of course, is to keep working on the novel past all this. After all, this has been a rough-draft stage of writing, and not everything fits well or is even finished.

The novel project - Subway Night - has a few gaps in the early parts and is really only finished up to the halfway point: one of the two major characters is running for her life and the other main character - the sexy vampire - has been taken off the stage by a major threat. I've still got to them back together to continue the story, and have them uncover the MacGuffin Artifact of Doom before it gets used by The Wrong People.

I also got to get a better book cover. Which means a trip up to New York... hiring models... getting permission from the New York Transit office to take photos in the station... money money money... I might have to start a fund-raiser page on Kickstarter or something.

But, again: novel first. Flirt with potential sexy vampire models later.

How did YOUR NaNo writing go?

One Of The Traps Of Writing Dialog: Exposition

I'm at that point in my NaNoWriMo story where the main characters are sitting down and talking. I've essentially given over this moment to my sexy vampire character to establish this 'Verse rules regarding vampires as a breed, and the supernatural elements that exist within this urban fantasy.

This can get tricky. While it helps to get the details out about how and why things work in your created world of this novel, you don't want to bog down into details and going off on tangents.

You're supposed to Show Not Tell. Unfortunately, there are times when there is no way to show, when talking about past events for example or establishing the motivations of a character to do what she does.

Given the rough draft nature of this novel - that I am pretty much writing by the seat of my pants - I am going to pretty much put it all out there in the dialog, and I am just going to have to use the follow-up editing process to clean this scene up, make it more active.

Anyway. KEEP WRITING!

NaNoWriMo 2015 Day Seven: No Sleep Til Brooklyn

Actually, so far in my urban fantasy plotline, my sexy vampire heroine never makes it to Brooklyn.

I may yet send her to the Bronx to deal with a recalcitrant gargoyle, but the narrative is still too fluid.

I am, yes, flying by the seat of my pants on this.

I tried flying with someone else's pants, but I tore a hole in the buttocks.

Ow, stop hitting me.

I'll let you know how my word count goes today.

Update: thanks to sharing in two different Write-Ins today, I got over 3,000 words done and am up to 14,300 words total by this seventh day.

Labor Day Weekend 2015 Accountability

(cross-posted with my political blog)

Did I spell accountability correctly...?  I never do...

Anyway, this weekend I'm gonna use the Three-Day-Novel time period (I did not apply for it, 'cause I need to save up the $50 fee for Star Wars toys!) to pound out a trashy urban fantasy novel.

It should be easy.  Like so:

1) Urban setting AKA The City: New York City by default.  Nearly EVERY city in a U.S. fantasy story is based on New York City.  Los Angeles only if sunlight, surf, or film-making is part of the narrative.  San Francisco if you want quirky hippie Wiccans.  Washington DC if you want everything blown up to serve your political ideology.  If you use Atlanta or St. Louis or Houston or Tampa, what is your problem?  And the capitol of the state of Montana does not count as an urban setting, sorry residents of the state of Montana...

2) Protagonist(s): Sexy vampire.  There's ALWAYS a sexy vampire.  His/her morality will be just off by enough to make him/her excitingly dangerous, yet human enough to enjoy having great sex with.

3) Narrator: A third-person or first-person tale-teller who gets wrapped up in the crazy event who stands in as the Everyman naive newcomer to the Masquerade (aka the Magic World hidden from the Mundane World).  Kinky make-out session with the Sexy Vampire is mandatory: it all depends on if you open with it or draw the story out for UST fuel to the end of the novel.

4) Sword: There should at least be one sword, so it can be wielded by the Sexy Vampire for the book cover.

5) Monsters: Dumb ones.  Easy to kill, and inhuman to allow for a massacre of them without any moral quandaries.  Mooks with swords instead of plasma rifles.

6) Quirky Secondary Characters: they're not as sexy as the vampire but by their wacky habits allows the writer to diversify and show off character-building skills, and these characters can appeal to the readers and turn into spin-off lead figures for later works.

7) MacGuffin: A reason or object the sexy vampire is set against a particular villain.  It needs to be satisfyingly unique to stand out as a doom-worthy artifact or deadly secret that could end the sexy vampire's lifestyle/friendship with his/her equals.

8) Potential victims: the innocent crowds of people in a packed city who ARE NOT AWARE OF THE MASQUERADE and thus need protecting "from themselves!"  This includes the local law enforcement, who would usually have the manpower and firepower to handle most situations in the first place if properly informed.

9) Dead Friend Walking: an ally of the Sexy Vampire or narrator who's a firm friend indeed, and is thus doomed to die in order to make the conflict "personal" and to highlight just how serious the crisis is.

10) A Betrayer: Sometimes it's the Dead Friend Walking who either willingly or by magic force turns against the Sexy Vampire/Narrator.  If it's a complete stranger, it has to be someone directly tied to the MacGuffin to make it meaningful.

11) A Fancy Nightclub That's Way Too Exotic With The Interior Design: Think how Hollywood movies spend a sh-tload of money on cool-looking sets, creating a night club full of lights, chrome handlebars, plush leather sofas, stocked bars, mirrors everywhere (even for vampires - they can use the mirrors to spot Normals), incredibly cute Normals dancing the night away, and a spot where Sexy Vampire and Narrator can make out in public and still not get caught doing it.

12) Overpowered Villain With One Obvious Weakness: His (sometimes Her) Pride.  And that the Artifact-As-MacGuffin can be turned into a stabby weapon shoved into his head for maximum gory deathiness.

13) A Catch Phrase: "Bite me" is too obvious, but what the hell.

I plan on having 18,000 words done by Monday. :)

Update Monday: I got about 7000 words.  I bit off more than I could chew thinking I could get 18,000 words done.  :/  On the other hand, I'm going through a solid revision of the last project "Body Armor Blues" and am lining up a cover artist to self-publish by the end of the month...