One More Night

Only one more night of thinking before I begin writing The Banker's Bride.  I've taken some notes on the cast but I'll be winging large portions of the story.  I've given myself a large enough cast to work with that I have plenty of double crosses and complications I can throw in to make it to 50k and beyond.

Other news:

1. My tree is finally getting disposed of tonight.  Finally!
2. I'm taking Friday off to take care of some things around the house.
3. I've been on Society6 almost three months at this point.  I've sold precisely two things.  It's weird watching which photos get a lot of likes and which don't. 

A Quick Update

1. Still doing The Banker's Bride for Camp NaNoWriMo.  My prep work is not complete, however, but I have two more days for that.  Two, right?  I'm sure I'll come up with even more double crosses between now and the finish line.  I've got high hopes for this one.
2. There's a big goddamn piece of a tree leaning on my house after a freak storm on Friday.  The tree guy is on his way to take a look at it.
3. Moving sucks.  Helping a friend move automatically entitles you to three wishes.
4. Moving sucks.  I know I just mentioned this but it sucks so much I thought I'd mention it again.
5. Since they stopped calculating the top 50 reviewers on Goodreads, I'm less motivated to read.  I still have like 50-ish books to read and am only motivated to read about five of them.

How does this sound?

I thought of this on the way to work this morning.  Shut up, I know.  It's getting late in the game to still not know what I'm writing for sure.


The Banker's Bride:
A banker up to his eyes in debt wants to make a big score before he marries his young bride to be.  When a safe deposit box full of diamonds falls into his lap, he recruits a group of small town thugs to rob his own bank and get the diamonds.  Only the bride has plans of her own...

6 more days

Last night, while driving home from work, I thought about the backstory of the world where The Limbless Wizard's Geas will be set and stumbled upon a story I'd much rather tell.

In a land oppressed by cruel giants, a secret society of magicians manufactured a prophecy and spent the next thousand years breeding people with traces of the blood of titans in their veins in an effort to produce a legendary hero.  Too bad the resulting man wasn't what they were expecting...

The core concept is that if someone like Hercules was born to ordinary people, he'd probably wind up being kind of a jerk.  How motivated would you be to tend the sheep or work in the fields if you could lift a boulder with one hand?

I figure I'll tell the story in five 15-20k junks.  My hero will be whipped into shape during the first part, retrieve artifacts he'll need to lead the fight against the giants in the next three, and then all hell will break loose in the final part. 

This will all dovetail nicely into several other book ideas I have. 

So, that's what I'm going with for now.  I could easily change my mind a couple more times in the next six days.

So Much for That Weekend

One of goals for the weekend was to nail down an idea for the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo.  Here's what I did instead:

1. Went to a dinner party on Friday.  Thought maybe I'd take a stab at writing a super hero novel.  Got home in the wee hours of Saturday morning.
2. Went to a going away party for a cousin on Saturday.  Too busy gorging myself to think about writing, though the super hero novel idea was still stuck in my head.  Got home shortly before midnight.
3. Tired from all the socialization and staying out much later than usual, I slept late, read and reviewed six graphic novels, took a nap, and went to bed at my normal time.  Not completely sold on the super hero novel idea.

To recap, I now have eight days left until kickoff and have next to nothing to work with.  Maybe after I get home I'll dig into the post-it drawer of mystery and dig around tonight for inspiration.

In reading news, the series of Gotham Central graphic novels are the alligator's Adam's apple as far as I'm concerned.  What's not to love about a bunch of Gotham City detectives that both resent and respect Batman while solving crimes?

Meh

Ever been really hungry but nothing in the pantry sounds good?

Eleven days until the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo kicks off and I'm very much in the nothing appetizing in the pantry situation.  All the ideas in the pantry are mine but none of them seem like anything I want to work on.

All is not lost, however.  I am attending a party tonight at a writer friend's house and plan on bouncing ideas off of him, as is normally my pre-NaNoWriMo custom.

In other news, I'm officially tired of the heat wave we've been having.  Winter never sounded better.

Possible August Project Regarding Time Travel

I've had a time travel story floating around in my head for over a decade.  It stems from a workplace conversation that went something like this:
Young beardless Dan - God, I hate that woman.  Everything she does gets on my nerves.
Co-worker - What would you do if you got drunk and woke up in bed with her the next morning?
Young beardless Dan - Invent a fucking time machine.

The basic plot is a guy goes back in time to stop himself from meeting his wife.  She finds out about it and travels back in time to stop him.

It never gets much beyond the planning stages because time travel really messes with my head and takes a lot more advance planning than I normally like to do.  I want to incorporate the following

1. Some sort of time police
2. multiple versions of the main characters in the same place at the same time
3. A rogue time traveler
4. alternate timelines
5. Some sort of grotesque monster that gets unleashed when the time line becomes too fragmented

#2 and #4 seem the most problematic.

Right now, I'm still sticking with The Limbless Wizard's Geas for August.  Probably.

Meanderings

Not a whole lot I feel compelled to share at the moment.  Since finishing the first draft of Between Hell and a Hard Place, I'm wondering what I used to use all the brain power I devoted to the novel for prior to starting it.

Still uncertain as to what I'll be writing in August.  Right now, I'm leaning toward a light hearted pulp fantasy tale called The Limbless Wizard's Geas that I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned.  I'm also kicking some other ideas around, though.

I took a picture of a Common Buckeye Butterfly last night but I'll wait until I have a few more pictures before I share them.

My favorite reggae band, The Aggrolites, is playing at the ampitheater across the street later today.  I just went for a stroll around the parking lot and heard them play a couple songs during the sound check.  I'm sure going to a concert is less fun that working the afternoon away in my cube.

800th Blog Post Spectacular

First draft of Between Hell and a Hard Place is finished at 75k.  I'm not thrilled with the ending but it's as done as it's getting until the editing starts.

I'm feeling a bit drained at the moment.  I think I'm going to spend the rest of the day reading and lounging around.

Okay, so it's not that spectacular of a post.  Still, 800 posts.  Wow.

Almost there...

Unless I miss my guess, I'm right around 70k at the moment.  I've got 2-4 chapters left so it's a good bet I'll finish this weekend.  The funeral I have to write is the only part I'm really worried about writing.  The other parts are all a long time coming.

I'd given myself until the 15th to finish and it looks like I could get done a week earlier than that.  I'm feeling pretty good about things, even though I know this one is going to take a bit of buffing and polishing once I let it simmer for a couple months.

Still not sure about August.  I'll start worrying about that once I finish.

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is upon us. How am I celebrating?

Well, so far I'm celebrating by writing my ass off.  I've written 5300 words since I rose this morning and want to write more if my brain cooperates.  I'm at 65k and the shit storm of violence and sadness is speeding my way.  I've got something in the 4-8 chapter range left.

While I have no business thinking of such things while June's novel is still being written, I have a pretty good idea of what I'm writing in August.  It's a light-hearted fantasy tale staring Jhalen and Tolek, my Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser-inspired duo from NaNoWriMo 2009.  I still need a title for it, though. Basically, my two rogues get forced into tracking down a demon that stole a wizard's arms and legs when a pact when wrong.  It seems like it will be fun to write if I have time to develop it a bit before August gets here.

3 Days Later

I'm still plugging away at Between Hell and a Hard Place.  Whitlock just got tased by some Russian drug dealers, had a restraining order slapped on him, and finally found the pervert file on Amber Brissette's computer.  Still 6-10 chapters to go.

Today's writing is slated to be Whitlock running into the woman in the mysterious yellow car and get into a fight with a bouncer.  Everything I set up is falling into place, including the big reveal at the end I was having trouble with. 

Since I'm off tomorrow, I'm planning on holing up and writing two chapters, though if I receive word of a BBQ, the BBQ shall take priority.

Post Camp Progress

I'm still plugging away at Between Hell and a Hard Place.  As of this writing, I'm at 54k.  Jack and Natalie are on the outs, Mantis is back in town, and Jack just got tazered by persons unknown.  It was a good way to end a chapter.

It occurs to me that I'm at the point where I should outline the rest of the tale.  I've got a lot of things that need to happen in a specific order and I'm still not quite sure how Jack figures out who the killer is.  A lot of bad things are going to happen to my detective and his loved ones in the next few days.  Poor bastard.

In other news, I did an interview with Paul Melko over at my book blog.  It's one of my favorites but I think I say that about all of them.