AHA!

I had an AHA! moment yesterday, and not the pop/rock group a-ha kind of moment either. It hit me out of the blue and while I was sitting there at work I literally said 'AHA!' got out of my chair, because I was excited and made my way to the break room so I could celebrate with a soda. My co-workers looked at me like I'd just lost it and I didn't quite want to explain why I was so excited so I said... "I have to go potty." Seeing as how I'm the clown of the office, they thought I was just being silly, which I was, and dismissed my odd behavior as nothing new.

So, what was the AHA about anyway?

I'm glad you asked.

I had a breakthrough on the direction of my WIP. I've been stuck with a character and what exactly she is doing. I know where I want her, but I didn't know how to get her there and I finally figured it out. I broke through the "writer's block" so to speak and now I know where to go. I have to backtrack for a bit of a re-write and drop a good 4,000 words or so, but since I'm so new into the novel anyway, I don't mind. At least I have a solid path now. Then again this morning, I had a total plot twist slap me in the face after I woke up.

How about you? Any AHA! moments?

100th

Well, here it is! My 100th post!

I jumped back into the blogger game about 11-17-2009 and since then so much has happened.

It's been 149 days. Since then there's been 100 posts, 66 new followers, 1 new marriage, 4 new step-kids, very few death threats, even fewer cute stalkers and a new health care bill. I've also had the privilege of watching a handful of you get picked up by agents/publishers and even seen some of you get published!

In celebration of all these things, I've decided to quit my job, go on welfare and abuse the system as long as possible while I finish my novels. Oh wait... that's my backup plan if I get fired.

Hmmm...How else to celebrate? Whatcha thinkz?

Oh, I do remember how lonesome it was in the beginning. Any of you out there that like wine, beer, spirits or liquor, please feel free to check out my wife's new blog. She is a former wine teacher and bartender, so she's blogging about the educational aspect of alcohol. Go check it out.

My W.I.P.

(no that's not me lol)

So, I thought it was a bit unfair that I always ask where you guys are at with your WIPs and never fully detail what I'm up to, so here's your chance to catch up on my WIP.

As some of you know, I'd been working on a novel called Trueborn, off and on for the last 2 or so years. Since I have such a busy schedule, it's been tough to sit down and knock out large chunks of writing, but I'd manage to get a page or two done every to often. After a review and some major changes, I was brought back down to about 40,000 word count. Unfortunately, for me anyway, the big vampire boom hit the shelves (thanks to Twilight) and many authors jumped on board the success-train by writing TONS of vampire novels. Since I started this blog, I found that editors and publishers were getting soooooo sick and tired of seeing vampire novels and the market just seemed overrun with them. I decided to put that novel on hold, since it had a vampire element and I was stuck in a re-write plot rut.

Since setting aside Trueborn, I took up another novel as my current WIP, that I'm tentatively calling "The Watchers: Awakening." It falls under the YA Paranormal genre, which I know is already saturated anyway, but at least it's not vampire or werewolf themed. (for the record, I LOVE vamps and were-creatures, but I do agree that it is getting ridiculous)

I'm just about 10,000 words in and have some pretty solid characters I'm working with. The theme is a set in the spirit world, revolving around spirits who deal in prevention and facilitation of death in the human world. The main character is a teenage boy who questions the system as he is forced to make the hardest decision of his spirit-life. In his trail of choices, he not only struggles with the morality of his role, but also struggles with his spirit enemies, called drifters, who forcefully intervene in his situation and struggles.

The novel has such a fun element to it and really hits home with me on the 'entertainment of reading' factor. Whether or not it ends up being publishable material is yet to be seen, but in the end, I'm learning as a writer and enjoying the ride.

I Blame the Editor/Critique Group/Beta Readers

Many of you already know that I recently finished a novel by Neil Gaiman called Neverwhere, which I felt was incredible. As mentioned in my own review of the book, I stated that I was so impressed with Gaiman's writing that I was compelled to pickup another book by him, SOLELY on the fact that I felt his writing was good enough to impress me, no matter what the story was about. My choice: American Gods.

Let me first start out by saying that the characters in this story are great. The writing style is still nothing shy of awesome and the main plot line was intriguing. Here's where I have beef though, I never actually finished the book. I got about 400 pages into the nearly 600 page novel and felt like I was reading WAY too much unnecessary stuff. While it was still very well written, it was still unnecessary. I found myself skipping parts saying to myself, "does this really matter?" I skipped so many little sections, hoping to get back to the main plot and story, that I felt like it was distracting from my enjoyment of the book. Eventually, I closed it and decided I wouldn't finish it.

I blame the editors. In my opinion, an author has to tell a story. They use every skill possible and every trick to give us as best a picture of the story as we can imagine. Many times though, in our pursuit to tell the story, we give more information that really doesn't HAVE to be there. That's where the beta readers, critique groups and ultimately editor(s) come in. It's their job to find that unnecessary stuff and shave it until the best story is told without wasting any one's time. I feel like the editor banked on the fact that Gaiman's previous success was enough and that his story needed to be there in its entirety to achieve success.

Who knows... Maybe his original was 800 pages and the editor did cut it down, but if you ask me, I feel like the same story could have been told by cutting out 200 pages or so and it would have been so much more than what it is.

In the end, Gaiman's success as a writer cannot be denied. He has multiple novels and stories published, some of which have great literary awards attached, and I have nothing but respect for the guy. He definitely inspires me. If I could write half as well as him and sell even half as many novels, I'd consider myself a huge success, but I cannot give American Gods the recommendation that I gave Neverwhere. I blame those people involved in not catching Gaiman's over use of the human language! :P

I'm Blank

My brain is blank today. I'm sure my fellow writers out there have felt this way from time to time. I had a bit of a rough night.

Have a great day today...... That's about all I can think of haha

Inspiration

After a failed attempt at painting the Hellsing portrait, I decided to fall back on my drawing to boost my confidence back up. I realize that I'm still just a beginning in painting, but I am very hard on myself, due to my perfectionist nature.

Anyhow, I decided to draw a portrait of Aphrodite IX, a MC in the same named comic series. The original picture of this was drawn by comic artist David Finch. I did my best to draw it only by looking at a picture. This is what I came up with. Draw time was approximately 1 hour. It's way easier to draw a picture than to write a novel lol. You authors have my deepest respect!!



P.S. The circle on her cheek is a tattoo.

Capturing the Evil

We all know that we want our characters to be memorable. It takes skill, effort and practice to really get it right and when the pen hits the paper we want our characters to truly come alive.

Last night I worked on a new painting, based on the popular anime OVA's called Hellsing, and in it, I painted a portrait of Alucard (that's Dracula backwards, for those of you who don't realize or know) and I failed to capture his "evil." In the series, he is not necessarily evil himself, but there is a certain evil quality that surrounds him. I did not capture it in the painting and as I look at it I can't help but think about how well I'd do capturing it in writing.

What do you do to, as a writer, to capture a bad guy's "evil?" Have you done it well, or do you still need to work on it.

P.S. I AM RE-Painting the right side and there is a strong possibility that Alucard will not be there in the next version.

Green Blogger

I'm not a huge "GO GREEN" kinda guy, nor am I against it. I believe we should take care of what we have, but not let the tree hugging mentality dictate everything we do. As good ol' grandma used to say, "everything in moderation."

Anyway, I just saw this on Summer's blog and wanted to be a part of it. I think planting a tree for me is kinda cool. So, here's the deal:

How Green is Your Blog?

According to a study by Harvard University, an average website causes about 0.02g (0,0008oz.) of carbon dioxide for each visit. Assuming an average blog gets 15,000 visits a month, it has yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 3,6kg (8lb.).

How much CO2 can a tree absorb? The answer varies, but the assumed values vary between 10 and 30kg (20 and 70lb.) for a tree each year.

One tree neutralises the carbon dioxide emissions of your blog.

Here’s how you can participate!

Just write a short blog post about our program “My blog is carbon neutral” and include one of the buttons on your site (ideally in the sidebar). Send the link to your blog to CO2-neutral@kaufda.de and we plant a tree for you, neutralising the carbon dioxide emissions of your blog. The trees will be planted in the spring of 2010 by the Arbor Day Foundation.

Update

Time for me to catch up with you all. In my hunt for riches and glory, via blogger'dom, I've gathered quite a few followers since I began and also followed a bunch of you. Some people are more regular than others about visiting and some of you are lurkers.... gasp, shock, awe....

Ultimately, there are some of you that I haven't seen in a while, because I have failed to add you to my regularly visited links section. Please let me know if you are still around so I can follow up with you on your blog.

All I'm looking for here is a comment with a link to your current blog, so I can pop by and see what's going on. I have a regular crew of people that I check their blogs often, but some of you I've failed to keep up with and can't even find the blogs without hiring an Italian private investigator with ties to organizations that need not be named.

Oh and don't worry if you haven't dropped by or commented in a while, I still love ya. Heaven knows I haven't been able to keep up with everyone.

Literary Line Up

Superman, Hulk, Spiderman, Wonder woman, Captain America, Wolverine, Batman... The list goes on and on. The list of unique characters that dominate the comic book scene. Some are good, some are evil, but all of them are unique and impressive in some way or another. The above picture is a climactic point of interest for pretty much all comic junkies, because it draws on speculative fiction and fan fiction and slams them into a series of action packed throw downs that every comic fan wanted to see.


As literary junkies, I wonder what kind of epic tale would YOU weave, if you were to take some of the most amazing or unique literary MC's and pool them together with a bit of plot. What mix of MC's would you like to see breaking their way through one grand novel of an adventure/story?


I.E. Huck Finn and Bilbo Baggins go on a journey which brings them to meet Bella & Edward. I'm not saying Bella or Edward are amazing MC's, nor am I saying they aren't.... Remember everyone has their own opinion. The point it, if you want to bring a cast of various literary MC's together, who would you want in your story?