Friends

Originally published at jennreese.com. You can comment here or there.

Before I describe the new pushup torture I witnessed in class tonight, let me first say that I did none of them.*

Level 1: Pushup position, but with your feet flat against a wall. Move your feet about one foot up the wall, and do the pushups from that position.

Level 2: Body folded in at a 90-degree angle, feet against the wall, legs parallel to the ground. Torso and arms are parallel to the wall. Pushups are straight up and down.

Level 3: Body straight and leaning at a slight angle against the wall. Almost a fully vertical (and upside down) position.

It was amazing to see our instructors explain these pushups and then effortlessly pump them out. I felt as if I were watching an old-school kung fu movie. Most of the rest of us played the part of the bumbling class.

Fun, fun, fun!

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* I still can’t do pushups because my rotator cuff has been jacked since December. I’m doing exercises, icing it regularly, etc., but it’s still jacked. Although it hurts regularly and still wakes me up at night, at least I’m getting used to it. Some people say it will never heal, and I’m trying to get used to that idea.

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/funny-pictures-cat-shoes-kill-human.jpg


Someone evidently wanted to hear the pitter-patter of little feet.

Just as an offshoot of something mentioned elsewhere.

I'm curious. What do you who are on my buddy list believe is the real difference between being fanatical and being passionate passionate about a cause? Is it just a matter of degree? Is it just a matter of focus? Is it just a matter of particular choices? Is it just a matter of personality type? Is it "just" anything?

Thoughts, please. I may not agree with you, but neither of us will know that unless we talk about it.

Today I cracked open a WiP that I set aside back in, gosh, must have been November. We'll call it Shadow for the time being.

Late last year, I wasn't sure exactly where Shadow was going, and rather than just flail around, write crappily, and feel guilty about not writing enough, I set it firmly on the backburner to simmer. It was a really vivid and complex and exciting idea--I just wasn't particularly stoked about writing it at the time, and (as it tends to) other stuff came up.

Now though, as the current editing phase of my current WiP is nearing completion, I felt like giving editing a break and looking at something old. I've got basically 24k words of it already completed, though it needs a substantial revision to bleed in other directions I'm taking a couple of the characters.

So how is it?

I was pleased to discover that the piece is actually quite engaging, with a few minor tweaks. Some passages made me go:

*Damn!* Did I write that? :)

And, well, other passages made me go:

*Damn.* Did I write that? :(

These latter passages, obviously, are the ones getting the most editing love from ye olde red-pen (which means track changes on my PC).

The world is one of my own making, and I've really gone extensive in my documentation of the history and violence surrounding the various kingdoms (yes, it is a medievalesque fantasy world, and yes, there are airships. Whoo-hoo!). Think Song of Ice and Fire with more high fantasy, not at all skimping on the depth of the treachery and intrigues.

I really, really like this story--I find it romantic and action-packed and riveting. It's all just a matter of *writing it* that way.

So I think I have my next WiP lined up. I expect that at the end of my editing process (have until August) will come a time when I go "blah!" and play video games all day to recharge my creative muscles, but for the time being, I'm stoked and writing. :)

Cheers

Originally published at jennreese.com. You can comment here or there.

I’d never heard of Irena Sendler until I saw this article:
Heroine Who Saved 2,500 Children during Holocaust Dies at 98

From the article:

During the war, Sendler was a social worker and used her position to go into the ghetto and smuggle out children. Because the Nazis feared disease, she went into the ghetto under the pretext of trying to contain an outbreak of typhoid. According to the New York Times she and her team of volunteers, most of whom were women, rescued children through underground corridors, by smuggling them in coffins or under the floorboards in ambulances, or by paper forgeries in the Catholic church near the ghetto.

She was a real-life Scarlet Pimpernel. But, you know, even better.

So, I'm going to be at Wiscon next week!


I am not on any official panels, and will thus spend the weekend wandering around like a loon. I will, however, be singlehandedly moderating an ongoing panel called "The Asshole Beside Me," where I chill you to the bone with stories of my college writing workshops. Bonus: you can find out what the hell my writing group is named after.


(Please note that, if you were in my writing workshops senior year of college, "The Asshole Beside Me" panel might turn on a dime and become uncomfortable.)

For those who have no idea what I look like, this is it. I can practically guarantee that I will be making this face, since I make this face 90% of my life.

The other 10% of my life I'm doing a crazy Viking laugh with my head thrown back, so if all you can see is tonsils, that's probably me, too.

(Also, I look like I have a glass eye in this picture. That's not the case, though a glass eye would probably be just as useful as the 20/500 eyeball that's in there now.)

No, we're not starting a BotM club, but Joseph Mallozzi has and he's chosen Jennifer Pelland's collection Unwelcome Bodies as a July pick.

Here's the pertinent blog post.

Joseph is an executive producer for the SF series Stargate: Atlantis and runs a popular blog. Some of his previous picks have been folks like Jeffrey Ford, John Scalzi, and John Shirley. He also posts lots of backstage photos from the show, so fans of SG:A will dig his site as well.

Upon hearing about Joseph's choice for his BotM, Jennifer clapped her hands with glee and said in a rather menacing tone: "Oprah, you're next."

I take a great deal of pride in having created a character in Erevis Cale whose story arc will ultimately reach across more than ten novels, five short stories, and some hundred and fifty years of "in-setting" time. That's a very cool thing as far as I'm concerned. But writing a recurring character has both pros and cons, some obvious, some (perhaps) not.

Some Pros:

1. Writer and reader get familiar with the characters. I know these characters like they're best friends. Some of you know them like close drinking buddies. That kind of understanding makes writing them easy and enriches the reading experience.

2. I can develop longer, more elaborate story arcs. Some story elements reach beyond the books and trilogies of which they're a part and create a longer, multi-series arc. There's an entire thread regarding Cale's god that readers can trace from Shadow's Witness to Shadowrealm, and perhaps even a bit into the next trilogy. That is rewarding for both writer and readers, I think.

3. New readers figure there's enough material about the character to justify taking a chance on the stories. After all, if he/she likes what she reads, there are many more books and stories to read.

Those are some obvious high points. I'm sure you can think of others.

Some Cons:

1. That selfsame familiarity. It can breed complacency in a writer and boredom in a reader. I've tried very, very hard to avoid this in the Cale stories, keeping constant growth/evolution of the character(s) foremost in my mind.

2. Simple fatigue. Writers and readers just want something new. Doritos are good, but I wants me some Buffalo-Ranch Super Doritos, and I want them now. I don't feel this fatigue about the Cale stories right now, so that's a good thing.

3. The abundance of novels featuring the characters can, contrary to the third pro above, dissuade readers from getting involved out of concern that they must invest too much time and effort to learn what the heck is going on. This is another way of restating an entry-point problem. Where can a new reader start and not feel lost? If it's only at the beginning (think Wheel of Time), some readers may pass. If it's anywhere, because the books are standalone (think Dresden Files), the novels may lose the nuanced connections that make reading a long series rewarding. I've tried to take a middle ground, where I think I've got a few decent entry points to the novels (in the form of either
Shadow's Witness, Twilight Falling, or Shadowbred).

4. The writer gets better (that's bad? :-)) and the early books aren't as strong as the later books. In this case, the writer is more stuck than usual with his/her early work, and if that early work is the only good entry point for readers, the problem is compounded. This is what happened to me with Eye of the World, from The Wheel of Time. I thought that novel was bad for a whole host of reasons and never continued on with the series, though I understand from friends that the subsequent books were much better.

Again, those are some Cons that jump out to me. Thoughts? Additions to the list?

So I joined Critters. I really want to get some new eyes looking at Winter so I can pick it up a little later on...like when summer comes. hyperbard look for me over their...I'm using my real name and all that over there, but you can easily find me by title: Winter's Discord.

I've decided this is going to be a big writing summer...between diaper changes that is! Last summer was a pretty good writing summer, but I think I can do better. I'd really, really like to get moving on the third book, but I've stepped away from writing in the world of Seasons of Destiny for a while. I've switched gears to something else that I've been toying with...and I've started it.

I know, usually I sit here and thump my chest and brag about the new project I'm working on but my first two days of writing weren't too shabby. The project is very, very YA perhaps even MG, but we'll see! I might post some of it later. Inspired by Suzanne Collins Underland Chronicles, DJ MacHale's Pendragon books and James A Owen's (coppervale) The Chronicles of the Imaginarium GeographicaI, the new project has me very excited and I'm envisioning it being a very short, sweet and simple project to get my mind out of the Seasons of Destiny obsession I've been in for the past few months. BTW, the project does not have a title yet. I'm basing the word count on just shy of 3k per chapter...that'll change.

Untitled MG Project

2,469 / 70,000 (3.5%)

First, the good news. I e-mailed "Red's Tale," my counterstory for the CatsCurious Faery Taile Project, to the editor over the weekend. Last night I got an e-mail back from her. She may have a few comments for me, but described the story as "brilliant," so I think I'm okay. At 9000 words, I think this is the longest story I've written that isn't a novel. Looking forward to seeing what the artist comes up with for the covers. (That's right, this little project gets two covers: one for me, and one for ckastens).

That's the good news, and pretty much clears my writing desk of everything except getting The Mermaid's Madness done by my August 1 deadline.

This is where we start the swearing. I realized a little while back that the rewrite of this book still had serious problems. So I stepped back and did yet another outline. I've eliminated one character, completely changed a second, and given a third an actual role in the book. (Before, she stayed off the page twiddling her thumbs for 95% of the story.) Two of these changes should go a long way toward adding a sense of fun, which is something the book desperately needed.

I've also added more explosions* to the ending, changed the sequence of events in several places, and ... well, let's just say there are a lot of scribbles and scrawls on my original outline.

So now I have a choice. I can either rewrite the damn thing a third time, incorporating all of these new changes and elements, or I can finish the 75% completed rewrite I've already got, then go back and try to fix things up. I want to finish this rewrite, but I also know I'll do a much better job of cleaning up the first 3/4 of the book if I start from scratch. Again.

Sometimes I hate my process.

Looking at the calendar, if I do 1250 words every single day, including weekends, I should be able to completely rewrite the whole book by the deadline (79 days). Assuming no more plotbunny ambushes. Scary? A little bit. On the other hand, some parts I can almost copy and paste from the current draft. I'm not changing every single detail, after all. I can also ask my family to give me a few writing days -- my current record is 10,000 words in one day, when I was writing Goblin Quest. I know I can do this.

But I'm still stressing about it, and I'm still a bit scared. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get the story right on the very first attempt?

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*Figuratively speaking ... sort of.

The Plague has the plague. Actually, both boys are home from school today, which is . . . not what I had planned.

Yesterday I sent the Plague into the bathroom to wash his hands. The water ran for a very long time--long enough to penetrate the story fog and make me nervous.

Me: [Plague]? What are you doing in there?
Plague: [appears in doorway of office] Uh, Mom? I screwed up. I broke the sink. It's all [handwavy motions] off on the side.

As it turned out, he'd only found out that half the faucet handle unscrews. No permanent damage, no water spraying over the bathroom. But I'm still looking forward to the day when I send him to wash his hands and he just, you know, washes his hands.

Getting ready to go to the Renaissance Fair this coming Saturday. Should be lots of fun. I'll make sure to take pictures...'cause everyone knows how much I love to have pictures taken of me. I was thinking about shaving my head. Completely. I probably won't, but it's a thought.

On a police procedural kick right now. Reading the Jefferson Bass novel Carved in Bone, which is billed as "A Body Farm Novel," so you know it got my attention really quick.

Not sure if I posted this, but I turned in my first draft of SSP #2. Should be getting redlines back on SSP #1 soon. Will get to work formulating my outline for SSP #3 in the coming days. Also working on PP #1 a bit, so that's a good thing.

Now, I am getting sleepy, so I think I'm gonna finish up Carved in Bone, take a shower and call it a night. It's been a mostly good day.

American Idol is on....and I've got one comment....

Syesha Mercado is SMOKIN'. I missed it somewhere along the line, but she just looked STUNNING tonight! I've acquired a real appreciation for women of color in the last few years.

It still contains pictures from a vacation a year ago.  And way too many dog photos.  And almost as many shots of my sister, as well as a startling number of garden pics.  I did not know I was that obsessed (with the flowers, not my sister).

I remember walking down the hallways at MLC when I was a freshman, marveling at all the seniors who looked so professional waiting to present their 4-year portfolio.

I also remember walking down those hallways at MLC thinking that my own protfolio review was SO FAR AWAY. I wouldn't have to worry about it for quite some time.

And now, it's here...almost two hours away. Ugh.

I doubt that any freshman will walk down the hallways, marveling at how professional I am...

...but it's time! My portfolio review is all I have left, then it's time to graduate.

I rock. In a professional sort of way...

Wish me luck.
Or God's Blessings.
Whichever is your bag.

Good Lord... I just had a sudden revelation about Speed Racer.

I like the darned thing so much because it's a PERFECT metaphor for writing!

The driving, the race cars... reaching for perfection...

I must go meditate on this epiphany.

One of the books I picked up at Ad Astra was Dangerous Dames [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] by John Zakour & Lawrence Ganem. This is a two-in-one that combines the first two Zachary Nixon Johnson books, The Plutonium Blonde and The Doomsday Brunette.

I'll admit that the first few chapters worried me. I really wanted to enjoy these books, having heard good things about them. (Not to mention the fact that I've met one of the authors.) But the first few chapters felt like they were trying too hard to be funny, giving backstory and shooting off jokes without really starting the story.

Thankfully, those chapters were short, and the book picked up once things started happening.

The Zack Johnson books have been described as part parody, part homage to the old pulp detective novels. It's fifty years in the future. Zach Johnson is the last licensed P.I. on Earth. He's a bit of a celebrity, which means he gets some interesting cases. In book one, Zack and his partner HARV (supercomputer extraordinaire) must track down a homocidal plutonium-powered android superbabe. Book two sets Zach and HARV out to learn who murdered a genetically enhanced superbabe. (There's a theme* to these books...)

After those initial few chapters, the books were a lot of fun. Some jokes worked better than others -- I couldn't quite buy everyone swearing by "Gates" and "DOS" -- but then, that's going to be the case whenever you write humor. The story is good enough to draw you along, which means the humor is a bonus.

I thought the second story was stronger than the first, and I've been told the series continues to improve. The silliness sometimes threatens to cross the line, but it never felt over-the-top enough to throw me out of the story. Not even the attack toaster or the pixie/nymphs.

Will you like the books? That depends a lot on your taste and sense of humor. I wish I could find a sample chapter to link to. The silliness quotient is higher than in my goblin books, if that gives you a basis for comparison.

They're fun. Not terribly deep, but who am I to complain about that? If you're looking for a fun, light read, I'd give them a try.

---
*The "superbabe" theme could very easily have gone in a direction to make me throw these books away. Particularly the first book, wherein we have an android duplicate of a former exotic dancer. From a feminist perspective, there are aspects of the stories and characters that annoy me, but no more so than most books out there. The women are actually pretty well-developed characters. But while I enjoyed the stories, I will say it's a little tiresome to read about yet another male hero either fighting or saving a world of exclusively superbeautiful, supersexy women.

As you can probably tell from the cover, Beyond Magic is a paranormal romance anthology.  As such, it's quite a departure for me.  I've written two urban fantasy books--the Changeling Detective books--but they were not romances by any stretch of the genre.  But this one qualifies;  the relationship is an integral part of the story, and yes, there's a steamy scene or two.  

You might expect a fantasy writer to lean heavily toward fantasy elements, but my story, "Beyond Dreams," has no vampires, werewolves, or other supernatural creatures.  In tone and topic, it falls a lot closer to Kay Hooper's psi mysteries than to, say, Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series.  If you like the TV show "Medium," you may also enjoy Cassie O'Malley's story. 

I hope you'll consider giving it a look.