Category Archives: Impossible Takes a Little Longer

Cats! Insomnia! The car! But the work got done

First the good news: Snowdrop is coming in early mornings and sitting on the couch. He’s come up on the couch before, when Wisp was settled on her pillow, but he’s always been wary. Not any more.

Yep, he’s now cool with me giving him belly scritches, though sometimes I have to sit on the floor to preserve his personal space. I think this is a big advance in our relationship.

The bad news? He still freaks out if we close the door on him. That’s not so good when the temperature’s in the low thirties. I tolerate it as long as I can — an hour or so this morning — but eventually no. However he’s not panicking quite as fast as he did so just possibly we’re making progress there too.

The other bad news is that dealing with cats in the morning really throws my schedule off. As I’ve mentioned before, early morning’s the best time for exercise, a little reading over a cup of tea, and some yoga or stretching. The more fussing I do over the cats, the less time I have for any of that. I’ll always let them in — they are our cats now — so I don’t know there’s any solution beyond “suck it up.”My sleep-maintenance insomnia plays a role in this too. I had a couple of nights where I woke up around midnight. Normally I’d get up for a bit and go back to sleep or failing that, write and then nap during the day. Both nights, however, Snowdrop and Wisp detected someone was up and sat on the deck waiting … so I let them in and got much less done than normal.

And then this morning the battery failed when TYG went off on an errand. We called AAA, they came out, found the battery was fine, but the dashboard computer warned us something else was off. I made an appointment to deal with it next week, but the whole experience sucked up much more time than I wanted and threw me off my game the rest of the day.

Despite which, the week was really productive. I finished another draft of Paying the Ferryman; I still don’t have the problem part nailed down but I can feel I’m getting closer. I reread Love That Moves the Sun, an older short story, and it needs much less work than I thought to fix it. I also reread Oh the Places You’ll Go! with feedback from the last editor I sent it to in mind and I don’t think I agree with their diagnosis (no disrespect intended).

I read Bleeding Blue to the writer’s group and the feedback was much more positive than I expected. They did point out several problems and I rewrote and improved the story yesterday, based on their suggestions. The big action scene at the climax still needs the most work, though — it’s better, but still doesn’t work.

I got several thousand words done on The Impossible Takes a Little Longer, much of it by refitting some of the last draft into a new position in the book. It worked there, too. It’s now up to 54,000 words though I suspect it may come in a little short compared to what novels run these days.

Oh, and my Con-Tinual panel on favorite Christmas Carol versions is now live. It’ll be up on the Con-Tinual YouTube channel in a few days.

So yeah, pleased with my week. Have a great weekend everyone.

#SFWApro. Please credit me if you use my photos.

 

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Let No Man Put Asunder: Finding the Sweet Spot

So last month I finished the first chapter of my rewrite of my second novel, Let No Man Put Asunder. I rewrote it once some 15-20 years back; I’d have rewritten it again by now except most of the manuscript is gone. I did get a couple of chapters beyond the cutoff, but somehow every attempt to progress further hit a mental dead end.

This version though is a radical break. My protagonists, Adrienne and Neil, were mostly in good shape when the bad guys kidnap them into another dimension. To their surprise, it turns out that a weekend of death and danger (the story moved pretty fast) also gave them things that were missing in their life. Fresh adventures would have lain in wait …

New protagonists Paul and Amanda aren’t in such great shape. Mandy has been de facto mother for her five siblings and caregiver for her terminally ill dad since she was fifteen — as we learn in the first chapter, Mom decided terminal illness wasn’t something she wanted to deal with and walked out. However it’s been twelve years and Mandy’s recovered from Mom’s betrayal (but has not forgiven her at all).

Paul is in much worse shape as his big blow came less than two years ago. His academically prominent parents pushed him to excel from elementary on. He’s had no social life, has no idea who he’d be if he didn’t have his nose buried in books all the time, so finally he told them, right before senior year, he was taking a year off after college. When he arrived back at school Paul discovered his folks hadn’t paid his tuition, had broken the lease on his apartment and drained the joint bank account they used to provide him with ready cash. But no problem, just take back your foolish decision, son, and everything gets back to normal!

He didn’t take it back.

The Adrienne/Neil version had a first chapter set here on Earth, then we were off into other, wilder dimensions. I’m not sure that’s the way I want to go. The town of Blue Ivy, where Mandy and Paul meet in 1976, feels like a good setting. It’s a grimy industrial town but it also has several colleges, with the usual college/townie conflicts. It seems a shame to just forget about it and go elsewhere, particularly in America’s bicentennial year (I don’t know if I’ll keep using that year but if I do, I should be able to make something of it).

The trouble is, I don’t want to go the urban fantasy route. I enjoy reading books where the normal world is just a shell hiding a reality full of magic but I don’t seem inclined to write them. Southern Discomfort is closer to intrusion fantasy: the normal world works much as we see it but something magical has intruded in, disrupting things. In Questionable Minds there’s no hiding: the world is full of psychic powers but they’re being wielded in plain sight.  In Atoms for Peace the mad science that’s made the world so different from our 1950s is also commonly known. In Impossible Takes a Little Longer, super-powers are the same way.

If I set Asunder on Earth, I want it feel like magic is an intruder, not a regular resident. That was doable in Southern Discomfort because the magic almost all stems from the elves Olwen, Aubric and Gwalchmai and it’s limited to one small town in Georgia. Asunder has a lot more magical people running around with much flashier powers. And the different characters — Mountebank, Grainge, Cordelia Winters and Hypatia, to name four — don’t fit into the same magical mythos. They didn’t have to in the original version and I see no need to change that. But it would, again, make an odd urban fantasy

So do I go urban fantasy anyway and find some way to make it work? Go back to dimensional jumping and kiss Blue Ivy goodbye? Maybe make Blue Ivy some kind of Hellmouth where, like Sunnydale, things are weirder than the rest of the world?

There’s also the practical point that I’d like my protagonists isolated, at least for the first few chapters. That’s harder to do in a setting where they know everyone.

Normally I’d plunge ahead and pants these questions as I go but the first chapter ends with Mandy and Paul falling through a magical gate of some kind. I need to know where they land.

Wish me luck!

#SFWApro. Cover by Samantha Collins, rights to the image are mine.

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Metrics aren’t everything, but they help

So I wrapped up November with somewhere under 50 percent of my goals completed … I think.

One of the errors I keep making is that when things get hectic I stop tracking my progress. I don’t record how many hours I’ve spent on writing projects or whether I remembered to wipe the kitchen counters every day. So I don’t know if I achieved them or not. So I’m working to consistently report metrics at the end of the day, before walking the dog (afterwards I’m usually off the computer for too long). We’ll see how I do.

This week was uneven but overall productive. A large part of the unevenness is that my insomnia the past couple of months has been exceptionally consistent. Some of that may be the warm weather — even in a heated house, winter usually makes a difference — and some of it’s definitely psychological. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I psych myself out about “Well, if I try to get to sleep and don’t succeed I’ll have to take naps during the day so I should definitely get up and write because then I won’t need the time but then again I really need sleep …” That kind of chatter makes it impossible to get to sleep.So Wednesday became a waste. I was tired plus I had my second checkup of the year. Overall good, and a couple of things I was worried might be serious are just me getting older. My doctor is way more reliable than the Crime Surgeon on Bob Kane’s cover above.

Today was productive but choppy. I was sitting with the dogs most of the day and they were often barky, plus Wisp came in which meant having to keep three pets happy. I can write and pet Wisp in my lap but if Trixie gets on the couch too, she demands petting too and then I have no hands left to type. And yesterday I walked to a nearby dispensary to pick up Plushie’s meds. It’s close to a mile further away than I anticipated so that was more time lost. The exercise was good, however.

So what got done?

First, I finished a rewrite of Bleeding Blue on Monday. It’s much improved. This may be the next piece I read to my writers’ group as menstruation is important in the story and I need women’s feedback.

I reread Paying the Ferryman and I was dismayed how much the energy and tension drop once we move from New York to a fairy-tale setting. I spent most of my writing time today working to fix that but between naps and pets I didn’t get finished. It’s already improved, though, and shorter.

I wrote 4,000 words on Impossible Takes a Little Longer. The book’s definitely improving, though I still wonder about length.

And I started to think about what I want to do next year.

All totaled, I made my hours for the week.Over at Atomic Junkshop I looked at the time Iron Man deliberately killed his opponent, a drastic thing in the Silver Age. You can see in Gene Colan’s (under his Adam Austin synonym) panels above that Iron Man’s throwing the Black Knight (not the one from Eternals) off his flying horse to his death.

Over at ConTinual I participated in a panel on worldbuilding in small towns and one discussing my two new releases. They’re on FB but they’ll be on ConTinual’s YouTube channel soon.

And speaking of my new books, I sold some copies of Questionable Minds this week! That feels very cool.

And needless to say, our Christmas tree is up.#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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Trends go in, trends go out, they turn you into sauerkraut

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have no great skill at writing for the market — stuff that fits current trends and styles (see here for some discussion of that topic). The few times I think I’ve hit the sweet spot the editorial response is either “everyone’s doing that now” or “no, that’s not quite right for the genre.” It’s a topic I thought about recently in relation to Questionable Minds and The Impossible Takes a Little Longer. Both of them were a little more novel when I completed the early drafts, less so now. They’re still good (at least, Impossible should be when it’s done) but their relationship to the market has changed.When I finished Questionable Minds some twenty-plus years ago, steampunk was still in its infancy as a genre. Had it sold to anyone it would have stood out because being steampunk stood out, plus a psi-based steampunk book wasn’t something I’d seen done. It still isn’t, though I might be wrong about that (there’s so much steampunk available now I know I haven’t seen a fraction of it).

The point is, the reaction to a steampunk novel in 2022 is going to be different from if it came out in 2002. I’ve seen reviewers who are sick and tired of books all being set in London, for instance. Genre conventions and tropes have become more standardized; will not having dirigibles or more advanced technology be a turnoff for some readers? Is my novel more gaslamp fantasy than steampunk science fiction, and if so, will readers be annoyed I mislabeled it? I’m not agonizing over these questions — it really is a good book, after all — but they do make me curious.

Or consider my superhero urban fantasy, The Impossible Takes a Little Longer. When I finished the original novel back in the late 1990s, superhero novels were few and far between, particularly if you eliminate Marvel and DC tie-in novels. There’s a lot more of them now which means being a superhero story, by itself, won’t stand out. On the other hand nobody’s going to roll their eyes at the idea of a specfic novel about superheroes.

My treatment of superpowers is different in multiple ways (here’s one) from most of the superhero novels I read. But different, by itself, isn’t magic: it’s possible to be different, original, or unique and still suck. What ultimately matters is that the book’s good, not where it fits in the market. Because I can’t control the market, or predict what it’ll be like when Impossible is finally done. I have to think about marketing  — Questionable Minds was my first real attempt to do so — but my top priority is having something worthwhile to sell.

I have a feeling this post was a little rambling, which may reflect that analyzing the market, let alone fitting it, isn’t my strong suit.

#SFWApro. Cover by Samantha Collins, all rights remain with current  holder.

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The third axe man almost did me in

Not for the first time, I find this cover by Billy Graham embodies the way I can think I have everything handled, then discover otherwise. This week everything was going great, then Thursday and Friday rose up to bushwhack me.

Normally when Plushie has his eye checkup, TYG takes him. Wednesday she said that as she’d have to take a business call in the middle of his Friday afternoon appointment, I’d need to come along and deal with the eye-vet. As it’s some distance, that guaranteed the loss of Friday afternoon for any productive work.

That may have contributed to the stress that made me wake up a little before midnight Wednesday, I had a cup of tea, then headed back to bed, only to have Trixie wake up and insist on leaving the bedroom to join me. That, plus Wisp coming in later, killed my sleep and left me a little glazed over Thursday. I had a couple of errands, including visiting an opthalmologist to check out their eyeglass selection, but I was in no shape to drive. Friday, the schedule didn’t work out either; I can get some of the work done tomorrow but the spectacles-shopping will have to wait until next week.

Despite all that, I managed to put in a full week’s worth of work and it was good work. Impossible Takes a Little Longer is progressing slowly but the latest revisions really add a lot of oomph. Likewise Bleeding Blue looks better after another draft; Don’t Pay the Ferryman does too but the changes once again have me wondering what the right ending is. But it’s there, I just have to write and rewrite until I find it.

I also started work on a new/old story of sorts. A while back I was playing around in my head and came up with a couple of characters I liked. As an experiment I’m plugging them into an old novel I’ve been meaning to rewrite for years, Let No Man Put Asunder. It’s an odd choice as a)I really love the original leads in that book and b)the storyline started changing in other ways. Not because of the new leads, but it’s inching towards an urban fantasy/Neverwhere feel where all the magical action is going on below the surface of the seemingly placid city of Blue Ivy in 1976. I’m not sure if that’s the way I want to go, but I’ll play with it when I have more spare time and see what develops.

And, of course, Questionable Minds is now out! Not only that, but three or four people promptly bought a copy, plus a few other friends who’ve said they intend to soon. I am, of course, delighted. Thanks to all y’all, including MA Kropp.

I signed up for a blog tour through Otherworld Ink. While I have no way to measure yet whether that turns into more sales, I got extra promotion on FB and some blog tour posts done:

It feels very good. And on that note, have a great weekend.

#SFWApro. Questionable Minds cover by Samantha Collins. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Impossible Takes a Little Longer, Short Stories, Story Problems, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

That is a little more like it

Which is to say the week went much better than most of October did. Relatively few interruptions and most of those went well. We took the dogs for a checkup at the physical rehab place and the stiffness and pains they were experiencing a month ago (nothing horrifying, but still there) have faded. We can ease up a little on their painkillers and some of the at-home therapy. More importantly, it’s always good news to hear they’re okay. Below is Plushie with his new teddy bearish cut.I met with yet another gutter-repair professional but this one, recommended by a neighbor, was a vast improvement. No sales pitch and the price for a gutter repair plus some upgrades was only slightly higher than the straight gutter repair job we’d gotten from one of the other bidders. So yay!

As to writing, I think that well. I rewrote my short story Bleeding Blue and switched the protagonist from a rookie cop to someone drafted for temporary duty (this makes sense in the setting). This really helped the character and simplified a number of story choices. It still needs a lot of work but there is a story there now.

My work on Obalus was less satisfying, but I did make progress. I have a clearer direction for the story, which may stretch out to novella length; if not, it’s going to be a long short story (then again, I may cut much of what I’ve written in later drafts). But I still don’t know exactly what Eleanor’s going to face in the Tower Without Doors or how she’s getting a prisoner out. Hopefully by the time I resume writing, my subconscious will have dredged something up.

I completed another chapter of Impossible Takes a Little Longer but I realized at the end that the shocking twist I’d developed to pull the action forward didn’t work. Now I have to think of some way to keep the tension going until the next big hook.

I also submitted three short stories — one of them came back the next day but such is life.

Wisp has started coming in at night, though not consistently. She also came in a couple of mornings and took a nap on her pillow. The cats do throw off my morning routine, but they’re worth it.#SFWApro.

 

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I’m afraid the ducks won this round

I’d looked forward to this week as one where I could do some concentrated fiction with only minimal distraction. That’s not how it played out. It was in, short, one of those weeks where I was nibbled to death by ducks.

Monday went okay but Tuesday I had to work around some contractors doing a job upstairs. I’d also contacted a couple of companies for a small gutter-repair job and dear lord, it seems that’s one cut-throat industry around here. I received multiple calls and text from various companies besides the couple I’d actually contacted; as I was working on a stretch of Impossible Takes a Little Longer that required deep thought, the repeated distractions killed my momentum. I ended up canceling plans to go to writer’s group that night so I could relax, then  make up for lost time.

Wednesday, I had two appointments with gutter salesmen and sat through long description of why their Total Gutter Remodel (no mere repairs for me, nope!) was the best ever. Sales pitches automatically get my back up; one of them kept texting me repeatedly later to emphasize the Low, Low Options for financing or discounting the price, which didn’t put me in a better mood. Plus we had a contractor uproot and sand the stump of a holly bush out front — I thought we’d stump-sanded it when we had it chopped down a few years back, but apparently not. And we have plans for that spot.

These and similar little chores ate up the week and disrupted my ability to sit and think. I do have almost all of my promotional stuff for Questionable Minds done and Draft2Digital helped solve the formatting problems plaguing the text. However I didn’t have time to make all the adjustments; I’ll get that done Monday.

I did a big rewrite of one chapter of Impossible Takes a Little Longer and it definitely added to the tension. I’m not sure how some of the changes will play out but I’ll trust my gut on this one.

I also worked some on Obalus and made very slight progress. I know the broad outline of what Eleanor Holt has to do to redeem herself but I’m drawing a blank on the details still. In a better week I might have made more headway.

Overall, I fell well short of my goals for them month too. But November begins next week. A fresh month, a fresh chance to get it right.

#SFWApro. Covers by Frank Brunner (t) and Samantha Collins, all rights remain with current holders.

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Surrounded by pets, but missing my angel

So last Sunday, TYG headed out of town for a business trip, leaving me as a single doggy parent until she returned this morning. Quite aside from missing her, it was a weird adjustment.

Our dogs aren’t the independent type: when we’re home, they expect to be with us. Snuggled in the lap is, of course, the ideal. Or being in the kitchen hoping for a delicious treat.We usually adjust to their wishes. So I’d wake up, go down and make tea, come back up and drink it in bed while I read. Then I’d do some work for a couple of hours. Then we go down and begin the morning dog routines and walkies.

At least that was the theory. The practice proved erratic. Tuesday morning Plushie wanted very badly to go downstairs. Thursday and Friday I made sure to give him extra snuggles in the bed — he doesn’t always come and ask the way Trixie does — and he liked it so much he squirmed into my lap in a position where I couldn’t write (I’d have had to rest the lap desk right on him). I did not, of course, remove him.

As we walk the dogs separately that meant twice as much time devoted to walkies. Fortunately it’s beautiful out this week, chilly-to-cold but I can live with that. And as I didn’t exercise other than walkies or do my yoga — dogs take it as body language for Snuggle With Me — I guess the time balanced out.

Things did get more complicated when Wisp or Snowdrop showed up and I had more pets to deal with. Still it’s great to see Wisp coming in more and even napping on the back of the couch again.

Snowdrop began meowing plaintively when she met up with me and the dogs in the yard. I think he missed TYG — we’ll see how he reacts now that she’s back.

As TYG went off with a lot of her ingredients unused I postponed my own cooking plans and worked on using up the leftovers: rice and veggie bowl, frittatta, apple tart, roasted grapes with rosemary. Good stuff.

Oh, work? The week started off well but bogged down. When I take care of the dogs for this long, there’s something about the constant lack of space that sands down my ability to think. Thursday I was working slow; today I got nothing but the bare minimum done, even after TYG came back.

I completed almost all my promotional work for Questionable Minds. I’ll wrap up the rest Monday.

I got another chapter done for Impossible Takes a Little Longer … and promptly decided to revise it. It’s a slow, character-centric chapter which would be fine except it’s following another one. So once again, I’m moving up catastrophes originally scheduled for later chapters. I’ll get onto that next week.

I also had an insight how several disconnected ideas might work together to create one novel. But that’s for later … well, maybe.

And I got another accounting article done. While I fell several hours short of my hourly goal for the week but under the circumstances I think that’s acceptable. Hopefully the multiple appointments we have next week won’t derail me further.

Oh, plus I got paid for the upcoming reprint of Happiest Place on Earth, plus one book sales of Undead Sexist Cliches, plus someone checked out Atlas Shagged on Hoopla (a library service that pays a little per checkout). Whoever my two readers are, I hope you liked the books and I thank you for investing the time on my work.

#SFWApro.

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Filed under Atlas Shagged, Impossible Takes a Little Longer, Nonfiction, The Dog Ate My Homework, Undead Sexist Cliches: The Book, Writing

Timey-wimey stuff

When I first started freelancing up here, I worked a 40-hour week. After we adopted Trixie and Plushie, it eventually dropped to seven hours a day and that was still a strain. 

About three years ago IIRC I cut back to 5.5 hours a day, excluding blogging. That made it easier to spend time on the dogs (look at them. Aren’t they worth it?) and I’d also read that when working longer than four or five hours, productivity drops. However working on proofing The Aliens Are Here showed I could do more when I pushed so in September I started shooting for six hours a day/30 a week. Given the obligations with dogs, trips to their rehab and various household stuff I take care of (my boss is a lot more understanding about me taking time off from work for such things than TYG’s), I haven’t made 30 hours except maybe once. This week I came close … but not quite. However I am putting in more work than I would if set a slightly lower goal, so I’ll stick with it.

As to what got done, I finished around 18,000 words of the Impossible Takes a Little Longer rewrite. That’s not as impressive as it sounds: the opening chapters needed very little work and as soon as I got to the major rewrites, things started to slow. However the results are good so revealing KC’s identity as the Champion was clearly the right move. I’m doing a blog tour for Questionable Minds, arranged through One World Ink and this week I sent in the four blog posts they wanted for the tour. Only the number was really five, so I’m working on the fifth. Fortunately it’s about writing with pets, so it almost writes itself. I submitted to John Scalzi’s Big Idea blog posts but they’re filled for the next two months. However Cora Buhlert, whom I know through comments at Camestros Felapton’s blog, is interviewing me at her blog about Aliens Are Here, so that’s cool. I’ll update y’all whenever of the blog posts or interviews goes live.

And today I finished one of those accounting articles that help pay my bills.

Next week will be interesting as TYG is away on business so I’ll be handling the pups full-time. We’ll see how this affects work.

#SFWApro. All rights to cover images remain with current holders; Questionable Minds cover by Samantha Collins.

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That is a little more like it!

This week went a lot better than September, as witness I made my hours for this week. And they were productive hours too.

It helped that I wasn’t nibbled to death by ducks like I was so much of September. I had a dental appointment (teeth are great!) Wednesday, deposit a state and federal tax refund, then went to lunch … which did waste some extra time as the appointment was for today (I’ve no idea how I made that mistake). The state refund was one we originally received during the pandemic, then never cashed so I had to go through a lot of hoops to get a replacement check (which is cool, for something like that NC Department of Revenue should have hoops).

Using my revised outline, I rewrote the first five chapters of Impossible Takes a Little Longer. It’s the part of the book that’s most together so it didn’t require huge amounts of rewriting. Nevertheless there’s no question the changes — letting the evil fake angel escape, outing KC as the superhero Champion — improved things. Hopefully I’ll build on them for the next section.

I had less success working on my short story Obalus. I have a clear sense of my protagonist, Evelyn Holt’s arc and who her adversary is, but the details? Crickets. Evelyn’s opposing the bad guy but I have no idea what she has to do to beat him or what obstacles he has to throw in her way. I tried doodling and coming up with ideas, sitting and thinking … nothing’s worked so far.

I got some Leaf articles done and most of the promotional material for Questionable Minds. Plus I have two Atomic Junkshop blog posts out, one on the Justice Society of America’s almost-revival in 1965, the other on the stereotype of Silver Age adventures as innocuous and harmless.

Oh, and last weekend I bought a new printer to replace our deceased one. I lucked out at Office Depot and was able to order the exact one I wanted; today I got it plugged in and set up … only it can’t hook up to the Wi-Fi yet. I will leave that to TYG who has the expertise to understand router and firewall stuff.

Despite that, a good week: let’s hope all month is this awesome!

#SFWApro. Covers by Jim Mooney and Mike Sekowsky.

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