Rewriting the Remembrance, from 7 November.

Okay, stop. This is all dialogue. They’re makin’ with the talky-talky. There’s no action, well, very little action, and most of this chapter has been and will be exposition. We need more action.

I like the conversation as-is, though and I don’t want to cut it (yet). I need to have the conversation interrupted by the arrival of the man who will become the Squirrel King. The Green will insist that Diane let go of her hold on the roots, so that they can do their job. She’ll take to the air in an effort to locate him, and Tim will search him out on the ground.

Tim will confront him, knock him to the ground, and start grilling him about why he’s been following him and his caravan since they came into the city.

“That flicker out of the corner of my eye that disappeared as soon as I noticed it, that was you! You distracted Devion when we were coming up on the grasses, too! Admit it!”

Diane’s going to get worried as Tim loses his cool. Then they’ll both get buffeted back by the wings of a green dragon who grabs the would-be Squirrel King in its claws and carries him off into the forest, but not before granting the caravans’ safe passage through her realm on their way east.

She should send along a message to Detroit. Something like “Come and find me, I’ll be waiting for you.” That will set up his later return, and traumatic discovery.

Also, the Green bringing the soon-to-be Squirrel King into the heart of the forest will be the mistake that allows him to wrest control of it away from her. If she wouldn’t have done that, he would have never gotten past the roots. Also, any punishment she enacts will be seen as justification for his later treatment of her. He won’t have done these things just for kicks any more, but to hurt her as she hurt him.

If it’s this easy to write about what I want to write, why is it such a pain in the ass to actually get it down? Why does the writing feel so forced when the stuff behind it feels solid, reasoned, and worked out?

Nikki said she could tell that Diane’s scenes in the beginning of Chapter 2 were hard for me to write. No doubt the same will be evident here. That means I’ll need to do an editing sweep after I add the new material in, to improve the flow and massage out that hard-to-write feeling, assuming that I can properly identify it.

Is having Nikki edit with a limited number of passes increasing the pressure to get it right the first time, and removing the permission I’ve given myself to write crap? I don’t think so, but even if it was, giving it a pass myself before I hand it off to her will mitigate that.

Ruminations on story ideas from 17 October.

Follow your dreams, don’t let them go.

Can I use dreams to connect my urban fantasy project scenes? A twenty-something woman questioning everything about herself – ideals, sexuality, gender identification, spirituality, whether or not she wants to live. She dreams herself into other bodies, often during intimate (emotionally and/or physically) moments. The tattoos appear on the person’s body at the height of the encounter, and are never the same twice. That’s neat, but what’s the conflict?

The protagonist desperately wants to be able to label herself. She is convinced that there is a word out there for who and what she is, but nothing feels right. Like many searchers, this quest becomes all-consuming for her, and she is convinced that the key lies in her strange, sort-of-recurring dreams. Unfortunately, every person that she dreams of is wildly different.

She stumbles upon someone she’s dreamed of, and the woman’s tattoos appear as the main character approaches. Answers! The woman is spooked and a chase ensues.

While the main character isn’t a Chosen One, she is one of the chosen few. These dreamers are networked, naturally mentally interlinked.

• Need to explain the interlinking.
• Need to explain the tattoos.
• Need to explain the relationship between the interlinked and the tattooed.
• Need to come up with some rules, some limits, some drawbacks, and some REALLY COOL SHIT.

Maybe the two groups were forbidden to co-exist because the tattooed group (mages?) manipulated the dreamers, and used them as gateways between the real world and the dreaming world to gain immense power. The dreamers were lost to time as a way of safeguarding against this. So, there are mages that want the status quo to continue, mages who want to find the storied dreamers to increase their power (bad guys), and mages who are searching out the dreamers to safeguard them and teach them to safeguard themselves.

The first group wants to prevent the main character from getting what she wants. The second group wants to subvert her will and turn her into a tool, rendering what she wants moot. The third group may or may not have an answer for her. Or an agenda. Or a leader (charismatic, borderline cult, maybe? Good intentions, meaning well, going about it all the wrong way?). Don’t let this character’s path of discovery mirror Caroline’s too closely. I don’t want to write the same book in two different settings.

Both wizards and dreamers should be sterile. Instead of an easy out for pregnancy, this should be presented as a choice taken away, and that lack of agency should be painful. This also raises the question of how new mages and dreamers are born.

Are there other kinds of odd people out there? Yes! But they greatly distrust the tattooed mages because of slights and atrocities generations old. Shape-shifters/lycanthropes, clockwork immortals, races and monsters of all kinds, marooned on this world after being pulled through their own through the dream world.

Is travel to these places possible? Yes, but not advisable. It’s dangerous, requires sacrifice, and the people there might just hate your guts, through no fault of your own. But, seriously, there’s enough to worry about on our fucked-up little mudball. If you want to return some poor schmuck to its home world, that might be a different story.

Or sequel. Goddamnit.

Rewriting the Remembrance, from 5 October.

Grand River and squirrels, she says.

How many people should get caught up in the roots at the edge of the Forest? The whole caravan? Drive a mile and a half just to have a vehicle crunched, and maybe lose/injure one or two people? That seems like a waste, and a blundering move, after all of the lessons learned through wacky hijinks and hardship.

It’s more likely that they’d send a scouting party to make sure the way was clear out of the city while everyone began packing and loading up. Who to send? From a story standpoint, I could send five or so schmoes, but then they’d end up ballooning into full-blown, three-dimensional characters that the reader would want to see again. I already have WAY too many of those. I could send in the three main characters with a couple of redshirts, or I could send in just the three main characters.

Nikki recommends that Tim and Diane go in with a couple of redshirts, because Sebastian  is still feeling ill. She says that this will give her an opportunity to see what Sebastian will become, and then she can wrestle with whether or not to tell her husband.

That could allow Sebastian to “rest” as he directs the reloading and packing of the two caravans. This could be a good setup for Sebastian’s later suggestion of rotating the protective forces. If he’d worked on the earliest stages of integrating the two caravans, he’d have experience from which to draw for giving suggestions.

One redshirt from each caravan, then? Four people, on foot from the ruins of 127 down E. Michigan Ave. to where it joins Grand River. So, where will the forest cross the road? It would have needed room to expand, so it cannot be directly next to a forested part of campus. It’d probably be by Brody (Michigan and Harrison), with the forest having taken the intersection.

When Herod and Sebastian return, the borders will have expanded.

Rewriting the Remembrance, from 21 September.

Why is it just the trees that explode with growth around the Green when she shifts for the first time? Why not the bushes and the grasses and every other green thing?

The vines sort of grow, but the focus is definitely on the trees. I know that I did that on purpose, but I don’t for the life of me remember why. So, I need to either come up with a new reason, or rewrite the intro.

I think it was because trees were the final stage in the forest growth cycle. Grasses, shrubs, sparse trees, thick forest. I just kipped all the intermediary steps. I did that a lot in this novel. So, I was having the natural process fast-forward through decades of growth, but I did it wrong. There should be tall grasses, shrubs, and all sizes of trees. All the stages of growth in quick succession, without the die-off when the taller plants block out sunlight to those below.

And then there’s the bit Nikki wants me to add on the way out of Lansing, going through the forest…

• Answer the question about what happened to Lansing’s Locusts.
• Foreshadow the Squirrel King.
• Should they run into the Green? It would be an opportunity to introduce her earlier, and give her character a touch more depth. Seeing her in a state that isn’t a victim might be a Good Thing.
• Yet another way that will can be focused to defeat the Locusts.

I’d be hard pressed to argue against this improving the overall story. AND THEN there’s the re-working of the Homeland’s progression to include in this chapter. And the way that Schuler reacts to the caravan’s arrival. And the conversation between Diane and Schuler where she realizes that he’s changed reality by not letting it change.

I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Rewriting the Remembrance, from 9 August.

Editor’s note from Chapter 1, in the asylum: Wouldn’t they hear the battle raging outside? Maybe have Herod keep calm by not reacting. Jason calls him out on it, too.

Writer’s witty retort: God DAMN it.

Is the lack of mention of the sound – any sound – coming in from the outside world enough of a problem to worry about? This is an asylum in downtown Detroit – wouldn’t it be soundproofed? Not just the patient rooms, but the whole place – common room, cafeteria, hallways? Yes, it would have to be, windows and all.

How much would the impacts and aftershocks damage the soundproofing? At least trivially, probably seriously.

I think I can solve this at the very end of the first chapter. Very, very end.

Rewriting the Remembrance from 26 May

Note from the editor: Um… they aren’t reaching Lansing that day, and Diane is out of commission two days after the unicorn attack. Timeline seems messed up. Why didn’t they continue after that night burial? Why did they wait for night when there was still daylight to bury the guy?

Later note from the editor: Again why didn’t they do this during the day, so they could continue to travel? Waiting until night seems odd.

I’m having a hard time arguing this, though I’m certain there was a good reason for it when I wrote it.

Heh. Unicorn attack.

How long did it take to deal with Sophia’s injuries, and the minor injuries sustained by the others in the caravan? There are enough people traveling that we can assume that the minor injuries are being addressed while Sophia is being attended to, instead of taking additional time. Sophia’s shoulder was dislocated, and her arm was shattered near the joint. So, they’d have to relocate the shoulder, set what bones they could (oh gods, I hope she was passed out for all of this), and wrap her arm to her torso. They would absolutely have to do this before the caravan got moving again – it would be impossible to do it reliably in a moving vehicle with the skill levels involved. So, several hours, probably 3 or 4.

There would also be a hesitation to move Diane. Head and neck trauma would be a concern after a unicorn POURED back into one’s skull, I’m sure. Not to mention the fall directly afterward.

What time of day did the radio broadcast take place in? If I remember correctly, it was late morning. That would put them in unicorn territory in the early afternoon. The interaction would only take a few moments, then they’d be all kinds of hurting. Which puts Sophia being taken care of by early evening. So, with dusk coming within an hour – wait, what season is this? Late spring, early summer (May-ish), so it would be two or three mour hours until sunset.

Editor’s interrupt: Do not ignore the sense of urgency. It is the apocalypse, and they are fleeing it. They’ll split off a team to bury Steve while Sophia is being tended to.

Writer’s witty retort: Goddamnit.

They’d be ready to leave around 5 pm then, and the only problem would be Diane being out cold. Sebastian would likely check her neck for obvious problems (sight and touch) and then move her (with help) into their vehicle. That means that she’d wake up en route. I need to move the scene from the pavement where she’d dropped to back in the passenger seat, and add in the disorientation that Diane would feel from waking up in a different place, as well as a moving vehicle.

Would that muck up the further timeline? Instead of traveling during the day, they’d be stopping for dinner, and then getting to Hastings as the sun was getting low in the sky. So, as I edit and rewrite the chapter, I need to update the timeline. It will wash out at Hastings.

Today is Lansing’s Pagan Pride Day! If you’re of that persuasion, or are interested in the community of people that are, head on out to Valhalla Park in Holt to check out flaming sword fighting, DJs, awesome vendors, and great food! Full disclosure – my wife had a large hand in planning and making it happen, so I’m completely biased. You’re crazy if you don’t try out her apple or banana breads at the bake sale.

Two Vampires is up on the iTunes book store! If you have an iDevice that can support iBooks, you can grab a DRM-free EPUB for $0.99! The process was easy, so future releases should be available through this store at the same time as the others.

I got stuff done! I’m so excited about it, I’m going to tell you!

• Todd’s Story is now available as an EPUB. It’s just as free as the PDF!
• Two Vampires has been submitted to the iBooks store!
• The Remembrance rewrite Chapter 1 FINAL READTHROUGH is complete!
• The Glass Crown is two and a half chapters away from a completed first draft! Yay second novel!
• Exclamation points!
• I have officially retired the publish runs of The Remembrance (hardcover, trade paperback, and eBook)!
• It’s apple cider season! My favorite places to get it are Quality Dairy, Uncle John’s Cider Mill, and Biggby’s!