If you can visualize this guy with grey skin, you’ll have a pretty good image of how I see my character Ivan. You don’t actually see a good head shot until 1:08, but I like the song, so I linked this instead of a still.
I saw this guy a while back and he reminded me of Ivan, but seemed too young. This is more the look I have in mind. I expect when I Google him again in a few years he’ll fit even better.
Three days left to get everything done. Here’s how the math works out:
- That’s over 100 pages/day plus three fresh scenes a day. No play time here.
I’ve stopped worrying about word-count, and I think it’s helped.
I also was able to cut my Inn chapters from four, to two. Which makes me feel better. I’ve never been comfortable with how long that series of exchanges takes.
Have addressed two main questions already:
Very reasonable progress.
The constant feedback I’ve gotten so far (narrow selection but identical comments is significant to me), is variations on We want more information.
The comments have been mostly positive (they’re my friends, after all), but, in one person’s words, “I feel like I’m outside an ‘in’ joke. That there’s something to know that I don’t know.”
This week I am working to do my final clean-up, and I’ve decided to make it one book after all.
Jay pointed out that if it’s too long for a first-timer to be picked up, I can at least have it done and ready to be my second book published.
Lots of work I expect to get done this week. (Prayers welcome.)
I have been following this family for months (if not years– I’m not good at keeping track of time on the internet), and have prayed with them for this moment.
God is so. good.
I’ve never understood why that truth makes me cry.
I have now distributed 7 paper copies (with one more to deliver this week) and 2.5 digital manuscripts for review.
This morning I got a phone call from my lone 16-year-old beta, and it was *everything* a hungrily waiting author could want to hear.
She adored the story, “couldn’t put it down.” She could tell me the exact page where she fell in love with my hero. And a couple things that confused her.
So, as I continue to wait for thoughts from my other readers, I have some decisions to make. Primarily, how clear do I want to make certain people.
Tanith and Rickard (for those of you who’ve already read the story) are morally ambiguous characters. They do some really bad stuff. And they do stuff that’s the opposite. Because most of their character-revealing stuff happens in the part of the story I’m saving for later, I have to decide whether this story is still solid with such confusing characters so close to the center.
Lord-willing I’ll have a complete manuscript by the end of the week.
Any applicants for a 87,000-word folktale-based fantasy?
I will expect to know you before I release it, but I’m keen for input on this version, as this is the one I expect to query before the end of summer.
If you’re new to this project, here’s my best-effort to fill you in:
The story is about a teenage mother who decides a dragon would be easier to live with than her stepmother, and ends up disenchanting a prince only his parents knew was missing.
Unlike most YA novels the main characters are married (part of the disenchantment).
I’m still working on a coherent “blurb” (a challenge for most writers), but here’s what I have so far:
When Linnea faces the grey-skinned man unearthing her father’s coffin, she has no idea it is about a knife. When Tykone uses that knife to attack a dragon-like snake, the lindorm, he has no idea he’s wounding a missing prince. And the perfect Prince Torbjorn, who believes he is to inherit the throne, has no idea when he dutifully goes off to wed his arranged bride that she might have to train Linnea to be queen in her place. The grey-skinned stranger guesses, only he has come North to leave behind the world of magic in the hot lands.
But evil magic has followed him—and under the unsetting sun of summer it will seek new entertainment.
If you have any questions feel free to ask them here, or e-mail me. I’m especially interested in readers 14-17 years old, since that (in theory) is my target audience. If you can share this info with friends that will be a help. Thanks!
As long as it takes to get me rooted in a story (to no fault of the books!), I keep wondering if this fiction thing is really for me.
But then I feel so fed when I finally get the chance to finish something.
Today’s accomplishment was Waking Rose, the third of three Fairytale Novels I first mentioned back in February.
And yes, I will attempt to post reviews of these last two books. Here’s my review of the first: The Shadow of the Bear.
I have already put the fourth book by Regina Doman in my Amazon cart. Looking forward to purchasing it.
This lady has done what it is my heart’s cry to do: write about pure love, honor, relationships in the context of engaging action and even humor (!), through a lens/worldview that allows God his rightful place at the core of reality.
Should it please God (such a sweet phrase, and I’m sure it does), this is my ultimate goal in all my writing.
The main reason I expect my music to make sense is because it has so many times helped me make sense of my world.
As a result there are times I get really disappointed (or maybe just annoyed) by those songs that don’t *match*.
For example, sometimes I trip over a song where content and emphasis don’t line up, or one that’s come to represent something that is actually not present in the song.
And then there are the poorly-done fantasies of the the music world, where I would have been willing to suspend disbelief for a good “story” (sound) but the internal logic is inconsistent.
Here’s what I mean.
I Will Always Love You is played at weddings, even though it’s about a relationship ending.
If I should stay
I would only be in your waygood-bye, please don’t cry
Cause we both know that I’m not
What you need
I Need a Hero presents as an anthem about a dearth of (or desire for) good men, but if you’re listening to the lyrics it’s really about the impatience and demands of a woman.
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
A good clue was when I started flipping the lyrics around and realized there was no clean way to put this in a male POV— a song about what a good man is waiting for/wishing to find— without changing the character of the singer (Which I sort of did, and may share later).
Then there’s I Stand by Idina Menzel. An earnest, heartfelt song about, well, high ideals, I guess. I haven’t quite figured it out.
When you ask me, who I am:
What is my vision? And do I have a plan?
Where is my strength? Have I nothing to say?
I hear the words in my head, but I push them away.I stand for the power to change,
I live for the perfect day.
I love till it hurts like crazy,
I hope for a hero to save me.
I stand for the strange and lonely,
I believe there’s a better place.
I don’t know if the sky is heaven,
But I pray anyway.
This isn’t nearly as iconic as the first two, but I include it because it’s a perfect example of something that affects me emotionally while offending my reason. (I use offense in a very mild way here.)
It is basically the theme song for my main character in the Lindorm Novel, which ties my feeling about the song and the character perhaps too closely together (I couldn’t find Linnea’s motivation for the longest time, either. Sometimes I still wonder).
The “offense” grows from recognizing the sincerity of the piece while feeling that sullied by its emptiness. It’s an anthem of our “believe enough and you can be sure its true” type of faith in the modern world. It is something I want to believe in, and am disappointed not to be able to embrace. It all sounds so good, but there’s no real hope, and anyone looking for clearer answers is told, I don’t know— I’m still waiting too!
What songs don’t make sense to you?
So I’ve been looking for a shorthand/formula for m-o-n-t-h-s now, and finally sat down and created one out of the tales I constantly return to. And it works! Made it very clear which elements do and don’t belong in *this* novel.
I started by analyzing favorite Beauty and the Beast and Iron John variants, then compiled a structure/format that also fit other tales
This covers pretty much all the complex tales I am drawn to, showing relationship development (usually in a nutshell), and allowing both the man and the woman to think and affect their “destinies.”
I like how this formula isn’t as complex as Campbell’s Journey of the Hero, and provided me with a structure to look at individual story lines for each major character.
I’ve not much liked how many steps there were to keep up with in the Hero’s journey, and how some authors feel it’s so central/clever that they’ll over-work a story to fit it.
And it always seemed a waste of time to “reject the call.”
Yeah, behind the curve. Moving on.
This was my first (thorough) introduction to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, and I adored it. And moved on with my life.
Last week I saw the DVD on my library’s shelf and watched it last night for the first time. Then went back and read the summary again. Still love it– the summary, not the story.
A few favorite bits:
- BELLA: We’re gonna be all right, pet cactus. We’re gonna be all right.
- The Lunchroom of Destiny
- EDWARD: I had to… go. Somewhere. For reasons totally unrelated to wanting to kill you.BELLA: Did you get contacts while you were somewhere? Last week your eyes were black, and this week they are golden melted topaz butterscotch.
- EDWARD: Do you honestly think I’m sorry I saved you from the Death Van? How could you think such a thing? NO YOU CAN’T SIT WITH US!
- CARLISLE: Bella, I’m so sorry… your father’s weird friend was killed by a feral plot point.
- The Part Where the Plot Shows Up (I’m laugh-coughing here!)
- EDWARD: So… waiting on Bella. With her dad. Who thinks I’m the reason she ran away from home. Awkward.
What I love about this writer is she says (basically) everything I wanted said (so I don’t have to write it!) and she even let me believe she enjoyed the book (I mean, why else would you re-read a book before you moved on in a series?).