Silk & Shadows

Currently working on: Unearthing the revised Book 3 from the rotting corpse of Book 3 — phoenix, arise!
Mood: Frankenstein-esque

It’s Valentine’s week.  If you haven’t signed up for the Silk And Shadows newsletter (look to the left side of the page) today’s the day.  Our next newsletter goes out soon and there are Valentine’s giveaways to be won.

And speaking of Valentine’s…  Will I be drummed out of the romance lovers’ league if I say aloud that I think Valentine’s Day is a crock?  In college, some women in my dorm donned black armbands on Valentine’s Day, and I wore one in solidarity.  One of my roommates (who, yes, had a boyfriend with whom she had a lovely relationship judging from the late-night noises coming from the bunk across the very tiny room) accused me of being bitter and jealous nerd.  I said, Duh.

But it seems to me that many of the traditions of Valentine’s don’t feel like any romance I’d want to have.  Roses wither in a disturbingly short period of time.  The milk chocolate bon-bons pushed on us are a poor, cheap substitute for the real deal.  At least there’re sparkly diamonds… Except now we’re told diamonds are just the blood-soaked refuse of terrible Third World conflict.

What’s a girl to do? 

Besides read a romance novel, I mean.

 What I learned from romance novels that Valentine’s Day got wrong:

1. Love is not a one-day affair.
Indeed not.  Love is at least a week-long affair with a Sicilian billionaire.  Or maybe an eternity with a vampire prince.  But definitely not a mere 24 hours in February.

2. Love means having to say… lots.
Words are the measure of the man.  Backed up with action, of course.  Lots and lots of hot action.  But I want more words than fit on 5×7 cardstock even if it has a glittered butterfly and embossed heart.  Somewhere between 200-400 pages of words should just about do it.

3. Love is sacrifice.
This one Valentine’s Day got right.  According to the story, Valentine was a saint who martyred himself for lovers.  Romance novels are all about the sacrifice the lovers make to be together.  They give up their loneliness, their distrust, their prejudices, even though sometimes giving up their lives would’ve felt easier.  And at the end, they don’t always get flowers and chocolate and sparkly jewelry, the love is a given.

Do you have a Valentine’s tradition that you adore?  Feel free to create one.  We write our own stories here.

At the beginning of each book, I’m always sure I have a very clear plan for what’s going to happen in my story. After all, I always write up a 14 - 15 page synopsis for my editor. I don’t know if she wants them that long, but that just seems to be my normal synopsis length.

But once I start writing, the story inevitably takes on a life of its own. Sometimes I write a few chapters and read back over them and think, “Where in the heck did that come from? That’s not at all what I was thinking!” But suddenly, THAT becomes the story, and I can’t imagine it unfolding any other way.

There is a lot of creativity lurking in the subconscious, and I think if we let loose and let it come out in whatever art or form of expression we pursue, we can expect some great surprises.

As for description — I love writing description. If you read my books, you can probably tell that right from the get go. Description can add dimension and mood like nothing else. I also imagine my stories cinematically, as a movie unfolding in my mind.

But unlike movies, it’s interesting to realize that if ten people read a single book, there will be ten very different mental interpretations of what they “see” as they read. Authors paint a certain picture with words, but in many ways it is the reader’s imagination that completes the process.

I see that SHUTTER ISLAND comes out this month. The movie is based on Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name. I really enjoyed the novel. I’m interested to see if the screen version matches up to the story I “saw” in my mind.

What new books or movies are you just dying to get your eyeballs on?

Getting stories from my head onto the page is a bit like sitting on the couch trying to describe a movie as it runs on TV. That’s how I see books: as a film. I can start and stop and re-direct parts, but it’s always a case of trying to capture live action on the page.

The goal is always to try and crawl into that movie and participate: To feel what the characters feel, to use all the senses, and to never, ever skip over part of the scene just for convenience. Trimming can come later. It’s all about faithful recording. The better recorder I am, the better book I write.

This has its drawbacks. For one, I may not feel like getting gnoshed on by a vampire that day. Or crawling in slime. Or losing the love of my life to a demon-driven pestilence. It’s exhausting. It’s also part of being a writer, so Plucky Author just has to suck it up and feel the pain—‘cause if the author doesn’t, neither will readers.

The other difficulty is, no matter how good one is at slinging adjectives, translating what one sees on the mental screen is never seamless. The perfect, ideal book I imagine is always more fabulous than the reality of the book I write. So how do I combat this?

Experience generates knowledge, so I look for appropriate tactile adventures. Perhaps I should say adventure equivalents, since I don’t actually know many werewolves and slime demons. So, I bumble about studying the viscous qualities of household cleaning products, considering whether toilet bowl cleaner would drip the same way as ectoplasm. Ditto with half-melted jello, cake batter, and the stuff that goes into the car radiator. Anything is fair game when researching something that doesn’t actually exist.

As far as demon-driven pestilence goes, I’ve always imagined flu season combined with a really bad hangover. Zombification might be equivalent to an all-day policy development meeting. I know I’m ready to eat brains by five o’clock.

All that being said, it’s gratifying when a scene finally comes out really, really close to the mental movie. When I’ve got the atmosphere, the emotion, and the sense of urgency just right. That’s when I do a happy dance and thank the Word Gods for their inspiration.

Written language is a medium, to translate the movie from my head into yours. The better job I do, the more information you have to recreate it. Of course, your experience will influence the translation on your end. No two people experience a book exactly the same way. That’s part of what makes the process so interesting.

When you read, do you see it as a movie, or do you experience the story some other way?

The path from my head to the written page is more like a wild animal trail through the jungle than an actual path. Sometimes it’s so indistinct that I get lost and miss the watering hole by a continent. Other times, my verbal machete is sharp and I cut through the wandering prose vines with a purpose that makes my imagination sigh with contentment.

Unfortunately, my sense of direction sucks. I’m not one of those writers who can dive into the jungle, follow only gut instinct, and miraculously end up at the long lost city of Eldorado. Nope, when I’m writing I need a guide post. Sometimes I can get by with just a compass in hand and an end point. Most times, though, I need a map. A rough sketch of the major landmarks (or plot points) and roughly how far I must travel.

So, I create a basic plot outline.

Once I have my map, I feel comfortable wandering into the mysterious world of my imagination. I know I won’t stray too far from my ultimate goal and end up writing myself into a place I can’t get out of. And yet, I don’t feel I need to stay on the defined path either. As long as I don’t lose track of my landmarks, I’m free to take whatever new trail comes along.

I don’t find my outline stifles my imagination.

When I create my map, it’s from 30,000 feet and the details aren’t clear. The map is mostly about direction. When I’m writing, the jungle is right there in my face. I can smell it, taste it, feel it—and the sensory detail changes everything about the story. The pacing changes, the characters change, and the conflict changes. And I go with it. The map didn’t show me that big black jaguar crouched in that kapok tree, so I couldn’t possibly have planned for an attack. I didn’t know my main character would be forced to drag himself to Eldorado with an injured leg. But I do now.

I find the outline keeps my second and third draft edits to a manageable size. Yes, the plot sometimes needs to be modified to suit the conflict and character changes. But the big pieces tend to remain the same, which keeps me on target. I may take the long way to Eldorado, but at least I get there.

So, let’s get a show of hands. Who likes to travel wild and free with just an airplane ticket and a knapsack? Who prefers to book a tour? Who falls somewhere in between—with an airplane ticket, a hotel reservation, and a guidebook?

Currently working on: Judging RITA books, the Romance Writers of America award of excellence in romance fiction
Mood: Awed by some great talent

There’s a lot going on in a writer’s head, I swear, even though a lot of time it looks like I’m staring off into space.  While I’m staring, I’m plotting, testing out lines of dialogue, thinking about whom to kill.

And more often than I’d wish, I’m just afraid to start.

See, while the stories in my head are endlessly entertaining to me (hence the long periods of blank-eyed staring) getting what’s in my head onto the page can be a maddening proposition.  In fact, I often feel like my writing sessions are a bit like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, where too many conflicting (and crazy) voices have been invited to the table.

The White Rabbit of Overwhelm
He’s the one always chanting “I’m late, I’m late” in my head (because, really, aren’t we always late for something?) which doesn’t much get things off to a convivial start.  Trust me, if you go chasing rabbits, you know you’re going to fall.

The Mad Hatter Muse
Yes, even when not played by Johnny “I’m too sexy to <fill in the blank>” Depp, everybody swoons for the Muse, so he must be invited to the party even though he’s — you know — psychotic, encouraging everyone to run amok and constantly asking silly questions like “How is a raven like a writing desk?” when everybody knows we needn’t answer that question until Chapter 23.

The March Hare Moment
He’s best friends with the Mad Muse… and equally crackers.  He comes around holding out inspiration like a big cup of tea… Only to jerk it away at the last moment.  Emphasis on jerk.  At best, I’ll be left with a little spill of inspiration that I try to mop up and ring out over my pages.

The Queen of (Broken) Hearts Internal Editor
Everybody has to tip toe around her for fear of coming under her gimlet eye.  She’s always deflating the mood with her muttered “Off with her adverbs!”  Heads and hearts are constantly at risk around her, and yet she has a chair of her own because somebody has to be in charge of cutting words and killing our darlings.

The dormouse
He’s already asleep, curled up at the keyboard with his head on ZZZZZZZZ, even though we still have a thousand words to go.

And there, at the far end of the table — she’s lucky she even got a seat — is poor Alice, who just wants a story that makes sense.

Well, forget it, Alice.

It’s impossible to get all those voices to speak one at a time, much less use their napkins instead of their sleeves.  So I’ll take what they spew out and try to capture it for you in all its mad glory.

Maybe a raven is like a writing desk because, with the wind under their wings, they can both take flight.

Anybody else looking forward to Tim Burton’s vision of Alice In Wonderland?  He’s one of my heroes, because if he doesn’t get everything that’s on his head down on paper, I can’t even imagine what else is in there!

Late January is supposed to be the time of year when folks are the most depressed. There are a lot of potential reasons—everything from post-Christmas credit card bills to the fact that snow lost its novelty value about five inches ago. Those who can afford it start looking around for vacation escapes.

The weather rarely bothers me that way – Victoria already has bulbs blooming. Throw in a bit of sun and it’s pretty spring-like. What I find more of a drag is the slog to the Easter holiday. It’s like we pay our dues for the first three months of the year, showing up to work every day, eating healthy and saving our money. I start to feel boring, boring, boring. Blah!!

And that’s nothing compared to the dark and fallow season that blights every writer’s life: the post book blues. You’ve squeezed all the emotional energy possible onto the page, offered up your dreams for sacrifice, and bared every vulnerable nerve. There’s nothing left to give.

After I’ve put a book to bed, I feel like the Spanish Inquisition has ground me up for meat loaf and taken mocking photos. And then I check my calendar and see there’s another book to write. Fast. Oh, goody.
Okay, don’t get me wrong. For an author, this is a good problem—it means you’ve still got a contract—but there is a moment of doubt. For an author, doubt is a killer.

If you’ve given everything you’ve got, what more is there to pull out of your soul? Can you make another book? Do you have the emotional strength? Part of you is eager. Part of you is appalled. This is the dark hour before the dawn, when it all seems frankly impossible.

The secret, I’ve found, is to wait. If I barrel into my imaginary world with guns blazing and demand a story, anything resembling good, true inspiration will run screaming from the scene. If I do catch an idea at this point, it’s the lame one at the back of the herd and the resulting story will limp along like road kill. The secret is patience and trust. You have to trust that good book is in you.

That’s the tough part. Waiting for the fresh, green shoots of imagination to appear when everything inside your head looks like Sauron’s army just trundled through. Despite what schedules and deadlines would have us believe, writing is an organic process. Nature has to take its course, and we have to believe it can and will bloom again. It simply has to.

And knowing that doesn’t make the waiting one bit easier.

This morning was a classic example of what winter does to me: my alarm went off, I hit the OFF button, then snuggled into the covers and went back to sleep. Winter brings out my inner bear. I just want to hibernate.

In some ways, that urge to nest is good for my writing. After all, the computer is in the house where it’s nice and warm. There are fewer activities vying for my attention this time of year. Heck, if it weren’t for my dog needing daily walks, I probably wouldn’t even leave the house.

Unfortunately, my brain seems to fall into a hibernation pattern, too.

I feel less daring, less creative. I doubt myself more, and find more excuses not to write. This, in turn, makes it harder to drag myself out of those comfy flannel bed sheets and into the chair in front of the computer.

Which is why winter is the season of self discipline.

See, I know that if I just sit down and write, if I just get past the dreariness and doubt, I’ll find my groove. It may not happen with the first draft of a scene, but it will show up. Eventually. And if I write, if I get any words on paper at all, I’ll feel better. Better feeds more words, more words feed more confidence, and before you know it, Spring is here.

But it all starts with that moment when I choose whether to get out of bed.

This morning, I gave myself permission to sleep 15 minutes longer. I reset the alarm and went back to sleep. When it buzzed for the second time, I groaned, rubbed my face, and seriously considered resetting it again. But I didn’t. I rolled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee. Stories don’t write themselves (darn it!), and I know I’ll feel really good about myself if I get a couple of pages written before my daughter wakes up.

Yup, winter is the season of self discipline. And double-strength coffee.

To satisfy my slothful inclinations, I let myself hibernate in the evenings. My favorite hibernation activity is watching Criminal Minds while buried deep in a snowflake-patterned throw. What’s yours?

Currently working on: Brooding
Mood: Broody

Last year, the grapes tried to come in the house.

XY bought me a couple gorgeous Interlachen grapes for my birthday three years ago, and last year, they really took off.  They ran up into the birch tree and across the porch.  They tangled in the yuccas and wrapped around the sun shades.  When they started scratching eerily at the front door on windy nights, we knew they had to move.

So this weekend, while they’re dormant for the winter, XY whacked them back and transplanted them to brand new holes on their very own trellis, where they can run this way ‘n’ that way without opposition.  XY also moved the fruit trees to accommodate the new grapes trellis.  One of the roses, a lilac, and a bunch of perennials had to go to make room for the fruit trees.  It was cold, wet, muddy work, and the front yard looks like a cemetery with its piles of dark earth and skeletal plants. 

Tonight, when we took Monster Girl the dog for her walk, we paused in the 5 o’clock, low cloud darkness to stare at the wreckage, and it was hard to believe spring will ever come.

 At some point in my writing, I always feel like that.

There always comes a time in my writing when the story is out of control.  Tendrils are choking the life out of anything nearby.  Too scraggly and unwieldy and ugly, my writing begins to creep me out.  The darkness descends.  The winter of our discontent, indeed.

This is my fallow season.  Since the cycles of my writing echo the seasons in my garden, I’ve learned to apply a few rules to both.

1. Just cut back the dead wood already.
I have roses that bloom through November.  At Thanksgiving, they still have buds forming.  But invariably, sometime in December we finally get a hard frost which kills the last blossoms.  The buds blacken and slump on their stems.  The surviving leaves give me (false) hope that I’ll get another glimpse of pink.  But no.  Really, there’s nothing to do but get out the clippers and whack everything back to sturdy greenery.  That first cut is the sharpest, but the harsher I am, the more lush and vigorous the blooms are the following year. 

2. Lay the ground work and run the guide wires now.
I read a garden book once that said you should always put your 50-cent peat pot in a five-dollar hole.  I get impatient (and cheap) and am sometimes tempted to skip ahead.  But there’s no rushing the prep work.  So now I start by honing the spade and invest time in reading craft books and taking workshops that can make me a sharper writer.  I dig a deep and rock-free hole of prewriting.  I string my story arc wire on securely concreted plotting posts.  And I turn my well-aged compost into a hot and steaming muck.

3. Nurture the seedling.
Good God, but a seedling is so small and pathetic.  With only two baby leaves, I can’t even tell the peppers from the potato, the carrots from the kohlrabi.  And knowing how long it will take before harvest, sometimes it seems so pointless.  But I have faith that if I put a tiny toilet paper roll anti-slug collar around them, if I spread the compost thick, and thin the weeds, if I water them regularly with my blood, sweat and tears (minus the cliche), in the end — The End — I will hold the fruits of my labor.

Sure, it’s a dream.  But it’s always easier to dream in the dark.

Do you have rituals for the dark and fallow months?  Or do you vegetate?

Oh, yes, my first million! SCORE!

I don’t have to think twice. If I had a million buckaroos, I would quit my job. I might work for a few more weeks, just to enjoy the secret knowledge that I could quit at any time, but yes, the job would go. It’s stressful, time consuming, just pays “okay” and all my hard work seems to benefit the higher ups, not me. I’m not bitter, it’s just the way things are. I say all this as I drink my coffee, and spend a couple of hours with my awesome family. It’s Sunday morning. Because of pending deadlines, I worked all week, including late nights. I worked all day yesterday and have to go in again this morning. You might say I am feeling a bit frazzled.

After I was blessed with my first million, I might take a few weeks off just to exist in pajamas, lay on the sofa and roll in the grass–WHEEE!–but then I’d focus on my writing, and opening my own business. I’ve always wanted to be my own boss, and I think one day I will be. But until I got my first million (oh, wait, we’re still just dreaming, right?) I haven’t had the cajones to take such a gamble. I’d also get back to volunteering, which in recent years has fallen by the wayside. What’s my interest? The elderly. I’d volunteer for Meals on Wheels or get certified to be an Elder Advocate.

I like to work, and stay busy. But I would rather do something more meaningful to me. The Million would allow me to do that!

What about you - if you haven’t already shared this week, what would be your dream-related-to-a-million$$.

And WELCOME to Joss Ware!

For those who might be curious about the Lou Waxnicki videos we’ve posted over the last while, here’s the scoop! Joss Ware has not only been good enough to write a blog about her new series, but she’s also doing a giveaway. We’d asked her to put a few zombies up for grabs, but apparently shipping is a problem (once assembled, there’s no putting them back together) and most delivery companies refuse to deal with parcels that persist in devouring the courier’s brains. So, we moved on to plan B.

Joss will send a free, signed copy of Beyond the Night to one lucky reader randomly selected from all who provide a written comment about what sort of building they’d want to live in if they had to “rebuild” after the world as we know it went through an apocalyptic change.

My new series is a paranormal romance set in a post-apocalyptic world, about fifty years after the major catastrophic events that destroyed most of the human race and the bulk of its infrastructure.

So many people have asked me how I got the idea, and why I went from writing historical vampire hunter novels (The Gardella Vampire Chronicles) to writing a post-apocalyptic romance series. Well…

I’ve read so many thriller novels (Clive Cussler anyone?) and seen tons of movies where the safety of the world is at stake, where the villains are power-hungry people bent on destroying the human race as we know it. In the end, the good guys and gals always get there in time to foil their plans…but, I thought one day, what if, one time, they didn’t?

That’s where I got the idea to write a series set in a world in which the bad guys actually succeeded with their plan…and now the good guys have to not only find a way to survive in this new world, but also to destroy the villains.

Unlike the world of Mad Max and his Thunderdome, the world of Envy (which is the largest city in this post-cataclysmic environ) is one of lush overgrowth and Mother Nature flexing her muscles, showing Man that she is, after all, The Boss. Now that man is not there to maintain his buildings, she’s taken over with a vengeance.

There are zombies, some villainous immortal beings who wear crystals and keep the humans repressed, and lots of wild animals on the loose. And, of course, some sexy heroes that appear on the scene to save what’s left of mankind from the immortal Strangers.

Fifty years after the Change, these five men emerge from a mysterious cave to find their world has been destroyed. Nothing is left.

While in the cave, these heroes have each acquired their own paranormal ability, and now must learn to live with the blessing—and curse—the new abilities offer. In the meantime, they join the fight of the Resistance against those who would repress the human race and find the women meant to be by their sides.

Action and adventure, romance and mystery abound in what I think of as a gritty, edgy world.

The first book, Beyond the Night, features Elliott Drake and the woman who helps him find a “home” in this new world. Her name is Jade, and she has her own baggage and secrets as well.

The second book, Embrace the Night Eternal, will be released in February, followed in March by Abandon the Night.