Jeanie Writes Genre

Because I'm in a sharing mood.

***
Claire drove. She didn't listen to the radio. She didn't sing along with her mp3 player or make phone calls or dictate notes to herself or any of the other things she usually did in her car. She just drove. If somebody asked her, she couldn't tell them where she went. Sometime after dark, she ended up in her own driveway. She didn't know how long she'd been driving.

On autopilot, she went inside, went to her kitchen and made a sandwich. Then she left it on the counter and went to take a shower. Standing under the spray, she had a vague, dreamlike recollection of showering with Michael. Or had it been Not Michael? The dragons from her dream flashed through her memory, and she shivered. She shut off the water and went to get dressed.

Back in the kitchen, she took a bite of her sandwich, then spit it out. Her appetite was gone. She wrapped the remains and put them in the fridge. There, she spotted an open can of tuna, and took it out. She stared at it, wondering if she should toss it. She was about to when she heard a meow.

Startled, she spun to see Sam running up to her. Still meowing, he stood on his hind legs to get a better whiff of the tuna. Claire bent down and scooped him up. His collar jingled and he yowled in protest as she held him up by his armpits and stared into his eyes. Blank, hungry, aloof and annoyed cat eyes started back. Brown-green eyes, not yellow. This wasn't Sam.

He'd replaced the cat. That's how she had seen them both together.

This strange new cat let out a low, warning growl. Claire let him drop to the floor, then she turned around and dry heaved into the sink. She hadn't just lost a lover. She'd lost a pet, too. She'd lost the last week of her life to a lie. Absently, she uncovered the tuna and set it down for the hungry cat. Then she grabbed her keys, returned to her car, and pointed it at Timmy's. She needed a drink.

She needed a lot of drinks.

The bar was fairly crowded for a weeknight. Sickness returned to the pit of her stomach as she walked through the door, remembering the last time she'd been there with Michael. Not Michael. The other Michael.

That was crazy. But it sure explained a hell of a lot about that night.

With a shudder, she swallowed and found a seat at the bar. She grabbed a handful of boiled peanuts and chewed on them to settle her stomach while she waited for the bartender to take her order. By the time he came over, wiping out a pint glass with a towel, she had eaten them all. She opened her mouth to order a gin and diet tonic, double on the gin, but the bartender cut her off. "'Bout time you got here," he said, and jerked his chin in the direction of a table behind her. "That guy's a reporter for the Inquirer."

Not looking back, Claire sighed with impatience. "So?"

"So, I thought you'd want to get your guy outta here before he ends up front page in all the supermarkets."

This time, when he did that chin-jerk thing again in another direction, Claire turned to look. Michael--or somebody who looked exactly like him--sat alone in the back corner, obviously hammered. She watched in horror as he sang along with the jukebox at the top of his lungs, annoying his neighbors and sloshing beer all over himself, the table, the floor and some of said neighbors as he swung his stein back and forth to the music.

A bouncer near the door also saw him. The huge, burly man started his way, passing right by the reporter. Claire knew that that wasn't Michael. She also knew that everyone else would believe it was Michael. She knew she had to do something. She wanted to down a few shots of tequila first, but she knew there wasn't time; so she hopped down from the bench and intercepted the bouncer. "Please," she said, laying a hand gently on the guy's enormous arm, and he stopped. "Let me handle him."

The guy looked back and forth between her and... the other one, and shook his head skeptically. "I don't know, lady. He looks like a handful."

Claire fished her emergency cash out of her back pocket and pressed it into his palm. "Please? I'll get him out of here. Just make sure that guy doesn't see him."

The bouncer looked back at the tabloid reporter, then at Claire, then at the money in his hand. Finally, he nodded. "Five minutes, then I'm taking over."

"Thank you," she said. As he moved back in the direction of the reporter, Claire took a deep breath and went to the back corner table.

©2007-2008 by JM Bauhaus

Labels: excerpts, Hero+Factor

I managed to cram a couple of word sprints into my day, and as such wrote over fifteen hundred words of novel. THF now stands at over 50,000 words, which I think is a little over half way finished. I hit the big emotional climax of Act 2, and now I'm transitioning into Act 3, which will be lots and lots of action mixed with angst. The angsty parts I should fly through; the action will plod a little more slowly. I know it sounds like that should be the other way around, but I have to see a fight or a battle scene clearly in my brain before I can write it, and it always takes me a while to mentally stage and choreograph it and get a clear picture. It's going to be a pretty epic battle, too. It's daunting. I am daunted.

I had a minorly epic showdown for the climax of This Old Haunt, and I got through that by listening to the battle music from "Chosen" over and over on a loop. It might serve me well to watch that again, to get a refresher course on pacing and fight choreography. But I need to be in the mood to have a good cry first. So far I've only been able to watch that episode once since it originally aired, and it didn't hurt me any less. But this isn't a Buffy blog, so... moving on.

At any rate, it feels a bit like I'm heading into the home stretch. It's a long home stretch, but it's been a long marathon. I'm getting my wind back, and that'll see me through.

Labels: Hero+Factor, progress+reports, writing life

The other night I dreamed I was browsing in a Barnes & Noble when I overheard a shopper behind me outing another shopper as Miss Snark, with said outtee copping to the accusation. I turned around to see who made the confession. It was Stacey London from What Not to Wear and Fashionably Late. She was dressed in a black power suit and red stilletos, with a white poodle tucked under her arm. "OF COURSE Miss Snark is Stacey," I thought. It made perfect sense in my dream. It still does. They both dole out advice that I don't always agree with but that I always trust enough to consider, and I always pictured MS looking like SL anyway.

Moving on...

I came across a couple of contests on my Live Journal friends list this morning (both posted at Nanoljers) that I'm thinking about entering. I don't often do contests--actually, I think I've entered exactly one short story contest, so make that "virtually never"--but it's probably time that I start, if for no other reason than to practice my short story skills. They certainly need the practice.

Byzarium is holding a contest to write a flash fiction piece based on this picture, and the first lines are already floating through my head. I should probably catch them and pin them down before they get away.

Miniwords is a contest to write a complete narrative in 50 words or less. Yikes, talk about a challenge! The prize is 250 pounds (it's a UK contest, but it's open to everybody), and that ain't too shabby. At the current exchange rate, that translates to roughly $488. For fifty words. And you can enter three times in each category (there are also categories for verse and haiku forms). Sign me up.

I'm going to try my best to get active at Ficlets again this week, but my novel needs to take precedence, so that will just depend on how busy and/or stuck I am.

And that's the writerly goings-on in Jeanie's little world this week.

Labels: contests, dreams, ficlets

I haven't written as consistently as I would have liked this week (unless you count the mad blogging I've been doing), but I have at least written a little over a thousand words on my novel. That averages out to about 250 words a day, so I guess I'm still making my quota.

I've been too busy getting my new blog online and established this week to participate at Ficlets. I'm kind of bummed about that, but I'm sure I'll get back to it next week.

This is going to be a hellishly busy weekend. I've got shopping, cooking and baking to do tomorrow for my sister's baby shower, then Saturday is the shower, followed by clean-up, and Sunday we might (hopefully) go out to see Cloverfield (whee!). Also, somewhere in there I need to fit in finishing the baby blanket I'm making for my sister. Somehow I'm going to try to fit in some quality time with the novel. Thank God for my Alphasmart.

Labels: excuses, Hero+Factor, writing life

I'm finally starting to recover from NaNo and get back into a writing groove, albeit not nearly so frenetic or productive a groove as Nano. And that's fine by me. I made excellent progress this weekend on finishing up the scene that's been giving me fits for the last few weeks (by the way, regarding the epiphany I thought I had about the story that was hanging me up, I've decided to ignore it; my muse and I have agreed to disagree on the matter), and at the moment I'm pretty happy with it. I have no idea what my weekend word count was--I wrote it on my Alphasmart, and I forgot to bring the connector cable to work, so I can't upload it, and I'm not curious enough to bother counting words manually.

I'm going back to my 250 word daily goal. It won't get my novel finished in a month, but it will keep me plugging along, and if I keep doing that I've got to get to the end sometime. And that's all that really matters.

Labels: Hero+Factor, progress+reports, writing life

I'm starting to think about alternative routes to publication. That's... a lot to think about, actually. Naturally, my dreams have always centered around agent agreements, contracts with major publishing houses, respectable advances, best-seller lists, prominent display at Borders, et cetera and so forth. But also naturally, like many, many aspiring writers both before and after me, I'm frustrated with a process that means working your butt off for a year or more--often more-- to write, perfect and market a manuscript just to the gatekeepers, the people who decide whether it even gets shown to the people who actually have any say in whether it gets published... man, just typing that sentence was exhausting.

It brings me to the question: am I in it for the money and prestige, or am I in it for the enjoyment of making up stories for myself and others? The answer is, of course, BOTH, but seeing as how SFF is my chosen genre, I'm obviously not really THAT into it for money and/or prestige, two things which are pretty hard to come by in this genre. So do I want to bust my rear trying to get past the gatekeepers for a lotter winner's chance of getting someone to buy my work of three years for maybe a year's worth of minimum wage salary, if I'm lucky? Or do I just want to spend that time making my story the best it can be and then release it into the wild, wild web and see what happens?

The latter is increasingly becoming an attractive option, for a couple of reasons. For one, in this genre at least, self-publishing is becoming a more respectable means of getting both your story and your name out there. I'm thinking mainly of names such as Corey Doctorow, Mur Lafferty and Wil Wheaton (okay, not a SFF writer so much and already a name in his own write, but still, a geek/writer with some pretty respectable self-publishing cred), all of whom have had success with self-publishing. There's Scalzi, too, who got "discovered" by posting his first novel on the web, but of course he's quick to point out that he's an exception to the rule--except that he appears to be becoming less so, at least to my lame powers of casual observation.

The other is, obviously, the lure of having a direct line to your readers without any middlemen gumming up the works. Immediate feedback, baby. It's the crack that kept me writing fanfic for too many years, and its siren song is hard to ignore.

Of course, chances are very, very good that in an entire career of self-publishing I wouldn't make nearly as much money as I would if I won the traditional-publishing lottery and lucked into a best- or even moderate-seller. But as time wears on and rejections pile up*, the chances of having a career seem more likely if I self-publish than if I keep pursuing the traditional route.

Most likely, I'll start out somewhere in the middle by copying all the cool kids and podcasting my novel after it's done--provided I can either get over my fear and hatred of my own voice or afford someone with a better voice to narrate it for me--while still shopping the print rights via more traditional means, and see what happens**.

Of course, before I make any kind of decision about any of the above, I have to--say it with me now--Finish the Damn Novel, or else all is moot.

Back to work, then.

*"pile up" doesn't really apply yet in my case, since I haven't actually been all that prolific or active in submitting my writing; I have to actually, y'know, write and submit something before I can get a rejection letter for it, and considering I've only done that once for one novel and a very few times for a very few short stories, I realize I don't really get to whine about how hard it is and give up just yet. But that doesn't negate any of the arguments stated above.

**"See what happens" is my new mantra, apparently. I like it. It's kinda zen.

Labels: publishing, writing life

Hopes: I will finish The Hero Factor. Dammit.

Dreams: I will finish The Hero Factor and get both it AND This Old Haunt all rewritten, cleaned up and presentable and will sell them both for enough to obliterate my student loans, hopefully before it's time to also start paying off my husband's student loans. Yes, dream big, children. Dream big.

Plans: Write daily, and see what happens.

Goals: Finish THF, obviously. Try to get an agent. See what happens.

Etc.: My first goal-and consequently the second-is frustrated by the fact that I think I have to change something pretty major in my story; which is just frustrating all the way around, actually. But I'm coming to believe that the story will be much stronger for the change. Stupid contrary imagination, waiting until I've written an entire plot thread/character arc to figure out a better way to do it. Harumph, I say. Ha-rumph.

Labels: Hero+Factor, writing life

I've decided to challenge myself to write a ficlet a day, in addition to working on the novel, just to exercise my imagination muscles and build my short story skills (which are lacking. I can do drabbles & flash fics, and I can do novels and novellas, but I can't seem to do anything in between. Or at least do them well).

Today's ficlet was inspired by this picture. If it happens to inspire YOU, dear reader, you can write a prequel or sequel to it here. You can also find my tiny handful of '07 ficlets here.

And here's today's ficlet:

Fairytale Ending


They arrived at sunset. It was beautiful-breathtaking, really-like something out of a fairytale. The Disney versions, even. But Jensen knew that this story was closer to the ones handed down before the Grimm brothers got hold of them and gave them a good polish.

Her grandfather had made sure she knew those version. He’d wanted her to be tough, not under any illusions.

She thought of the girls who had been brought here, one at a time, and wondered what illusions had filled their imaginations as they first laid eyes on this place, with its Happily Ever After facade. They must have thought they were entering a romance novel. Horror and True Crime was surely the farthest things from their minds.

At least until their boats docked.

As the boat pulled closer, Jensen flashed her badge at the uniform on the pier and donned her scuba mask. Time to bring up the bodies.

©2007-2008 by JM Bauhaus

Labels: ficlets, short fiction