Author: Erin Klitzke

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Sometimes a scene just won’t let go…

This scene came to me late last night after I got back from the hockey game (Red Wings topped the Canucks 2-0; we had seats behind the visitor’s goal at Joe Louis, so all in all, pretty awesome stuff), but I didn’t write it down until this morning.  I figured I’d post it, just in case it never actually develops into anything more (or much more), though I suspect it might.

She grabbed his sleeve, wouldn’t let him leave as her fingers tangled in the fabric.  She jerked him back, spinning him toward her chest.  “Just because I left doesn’t mean I didn’t care about him, because I did.”

He jerked his arm away and stepped back.  “You could have fooled the rest of us.  You abandoned us when we could have used your help, Beck, and you show up now?  It’s way past the eleventh hour.  It’s over—too damn late and too damn bad.”

He went to the window and stared out at the city across the water, the dim glow of faraway New York.  His fingers curled tightly around the sill, jaw set into a line.  He looked older now, but it had been almost fifteen years since she’d seen him last—of course he looked older.

More than that, though, he looked tired and broken, and that was enough to make her cold, still heart crack in half.

“Elijah.”

He shook his head, not looking at her.  “It’s too late, Beck.  He’s gone and I’m soon to follow and there is no one left to avenge him.”

“Wrong.”  She came up behind him, unbuttoning one sleeve at the wrist.

“What do you mean, wrong?”  Elijah turned, then, dark eyes angry and accusing as he met her gaze.

“Yes, he’s gone, but you don’t have to follow him to the grave,” she said softly.  She didn’t touch him, not yet, even though she wanted to.  “And there’s someone left who cares enough to avenge him.”

His angry stare hardened into a glare.  “I can’t avenge him, Beck.  They’d destroy me inside of fifteen seconds.”

“They won’t destroy me,” she said softly.  “They’ll never see me coming.”

He went rigid, staring at her as if he’d just seen her for the first time.

She smiled briefly and cupped his jaw with one hand before she brought her wrist to her mouth, biting down hard enough to expose the vein.  She offered it to him, nodding to the blood.  “Go on.  Once isn’t going to hurt and it’ll buy you another six months to decide what you want to do.”

Elijah just kept staring at her for a few long moments.  His jaw quivered and then he looked away.  When he took her arm and lifted her wrist to his mouth, he cradled it like something fragile, precious.

She’d been neither for twenty years.

Beckett smiled sadly and watched him, forcing her free hand to be still at her side.  She wanted to touch him again, to feel how soft his hair was, to know what the muscles of his back felt like under her hands.

He wasn’t ready for that, though, and she knew it.

It was a few minutes before he finished, fingers tightening on her hand briefly before he let go, straightening and turning away.  She swallowed and took an unnecessary breath, willing the healing to start.

“You can stay here as long as you’d like,” she said softly.

“Thank you,” he whispered, staring out the window.

She lifted her hand to touch his shoulder, thought better of it, and let her hand drop.  She left him standing there without another word, the click of a door closing marking the end to their conversation with too many things still left unsaid.

Copyright 2011, Erin M. Klitzke

In part, I can blame longtime friend and fellow gamer/GM Dave Kiser for this one.  One summer he ran this wonderful but short-lived Vampire: The Masquerade game because I asked him to teach me the system.  There were aspects of the story of Cassidy Beckett, the vampire I played, that never quite left me and have come up time and again (at ISRP and elsewhere).  Reading a little too much modern paranormal fiction and urban fantasy (The Cheshire Red Reports by Cherie Priest, Black London series by Caitlin Kittredge, The Graveyard Queen series by Amanda Stevens, and the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, among others) and getting back to doing some World of Darkness roleplaying online has put me in the mood to write the same, now that I’ve got a little bit of a break from the Epsilon universe.

So when this little scene struck me, I had to get it down on digital paper.  Which of course meant I was further compelled to share it.

Comments and thoughts are deeply and fully appreciated!

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke
And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke 

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Broken Stars is now complete, heading into final reads and revisions.

[progpress title=”Epsilon: Broken Stars” goal=”70000″ current=”79949″ label=”words”]

A novel roughly thirteen years in the making is finally complete and should hopefully be released by the end of the month.  I’ve shot it off to a few test readers for their commentary (one of whom I’m certain is a bit annoyed with me thanks to the wall of text spam he was getting all day yesterday).  I’ll be doing edits and tweaks based on their readings/proofs.

Epsilon: Broken Stars came in at a higher word count than I anticipated, and will shrink/grow with the forthcoming edits.  I finished writing at around 2am last night, emailed it off, then crashed for five and a half hours (up by 8–yup, there’s something wrong with me).  I need to let it set for a few days before I go back to start any edits of my own I might decide to do, but as of this writing, it’s complete but for proofreading and minor edits.

That is to say I don’t think I’m going to be adding any more chapters, fight scenes, or any other such thing.  I might do some Epilogue tweaking, but that’s for another day, after I let it sit and rest.

Of course, I still need to write the dedication and the acknowledgements, as well as format copies for several different e-publication venues.  That’s a task for another day.

Between yesterday and early this morning, I wrote more than 7000 words.  That was a huge day for me (I also managed to somehow buy tickets to the Red Wings game in there, go figure).

Writing yesterday was mostly action sequences, which I have a great deal of difficulty writing.  Erik says it’s because I’ve never actually been in a fight before, and he’s probably right about that.

Here’s a sample of what I came up with, though, for two action-packed chapters.

            Desantis only hesitated a second before he triggered the detonator.  A series of quiet pops echoed off the buildings, followed by the larger, explosive roars of the charges going up in a secondary blast and taking the back end of the lander with it.  The craft’s pilot was knocked sprawling into the light of one of the streetlamps.

He scrambled to his feet a few stunned seconds later, yelling.  I grasped Sam with one hand and Desantis with the other.

“Time to go,” I hissed, then ducked down the alleyway, trusting them to follow.

Sam looked positively gleeful by the time we got back to the car.

“We did it!  We actually did it.”

“Celebrate later,” I said, giving her a stern look as I jerked the passenger side door open.  “It’s not over yet.”

She sobered as she caught sight of my expression and went quiet, nodding.  She ducked into the car without another word.

Desantis looked at me across the roof and I just shook my head.  He shrugged and got in, and I joined them a second later.

“Biesterfield and Twelfth,” he said as Sam got the vehicle moving.

She nodded.  “Thanks.”

We wended our way up a few side streets before we turned onto one of the north-south streets a couple over from Biesterfield and headed north toward city center.  I was doing math on the way and realized something.

“Mac, how many did you say were landing here?”

He blinked at me.  “Six, Cap.”

“And five on the other continent.”  Maybe I heard him wrong.  Maybe he said six and I misheard him.

“Right.”

Damn.  “Compliment on a cruiser like the Tallahassee is twelve.”  So where’s that last lander?

The car swerved a little as Sam caught up to my line of thinking.  “Five and six is eleven.  Where’s the last lander?”

“That’s what I want to know,” I said grimly as Desantis scrambled for his palmtop.  Three klicks out from the Scarlet meant there was significant lag between sensors and the palmtop, and Desantis cursed his way through trying to figure out where that last lander was coming down.

Sam whipped the car around a corner, headed toward Biesterfield on one of the east-west streets, then whipped around another corner onto our target street.

She plowed right into a roadblock and a subsequent hail of weaponsfire.

 

— Epsilon: Broken Stars by Erin M. Klitzke

Turned out pretty decent, I’d say.  That’s actually toward the beginning of the action, believe it or not!

Only time and readers, however, will tell me exactly how well I’ve done.  We shall see!

Look for Epsilon: Broken Stars in your favorite ebook store coming soon.

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Broken Stars nearing completion; new tale soon in the offing…

[progpress title=”Epsilon: Broken Stars” goal=”70000″ current=”68374″ label=”words”]

[progpress title=”What Angels Fear” goal=”21000″ current=”18738″ label=”words”]

 

So, I know that I tweeted that I’d announce the actual name for SEKRET PROJEKT this weekend, and it was mostly that I didn’t get around to making a blog post to that effect–it was on the business cards I was handing out this past weekend at the Grand Valley Renaissance Festival, promoting my writing as much as I was selling other things (jewelry and sewing things).

The true name to SEKRET PROJEKT is What Angels Fear, and it’s the story that I talked about in this post last summer.  It’s a short work in the same universe as When All’s Said and Done, my first Nanowrimo project.  I hope to release What Angels Fear shortly after the release of the forthcoming Epsilon: Broken Stars, which is nearing completion.

Rather than a true science fiction piece, What Angels Fear is a paranormal yarn in which normal chick Julia Kinsey meets a boy named Darien who seems a little…off.  A chance encounter in the creepy little town of Andover Commonwealth sends her down a rabbit’s hole into a mystery that could put her life in jeopardy.  It is almost a direct prequel to the story in When All’s Said and Done (in fact, as the current draft of When All’s Said and Done stands, events that take place at the end of What Angels Fear take place during the first few chapters of When All’s Said and Done).

Here’s a little taste of Julia’s story:

            A flicker of movement caught my attention and I tore my eyes away from the building, peering through the gap in the inner wall.  The angle made it hard, but I thought I’d seen…

There!  A gaunt figure stared at me from just within my line of sight.  It was a man, dark-haired and scrawny, dressed in what looked like sweats.  Though I couldn’t see his eyes, or really make out the features of his face, I had the feeling he was looking right at me.

Something about him reminded me strongly of Darien, though I couldn’t say what.  I tried to beckon him over.

He just shook his head and looked down.

What’s going on in there?

Something jerked the figure back and out of sight.  The massive gate in that inner wall ground shut with the sound of metal against stone.  No iron bars there, just solid sheets of metal.

Whatever it is, they don’t want people to know.  My pulse quickened and I stepped back from the main gate.

A hand grasped my arm.  I jerked, reeling away from the touch.  The hand snapped open and I went down on my butt in the grass.

“Who the hell are you?”  I demanded before I’d actually seen who’d grabbed me.

A woman about my age stood over me.  She had bristle-short red hair and was dressed in a black jumpsuit that made her look like some sort of extra from The Matrix.  She stared at me for a moment, then said softly, “You need to get out of here before someone else finds you.”

Someone else?  I was a little worried about anyone finding me.

She offered me a hand up.  I stared at it for a moment as if it were a snake about to strike.

“Who are you?”  I asked again.

She shook her head slightly, stone-faced.  “You don’t want to know.”

Her expression reminded me of someone else.  Oh, shit.  Darien.  That’s who it reminds me of.  It was the same blank mask of an expression that he wore most of the time, though this girl seemed much, much more functional than he did.

I took her hand slowly and let her pull me to my feet.

“You should get back to town,” she said quietly as she released my hand.  “You’re missing the show.”  She turned back toward the wall and walked toward it, looking back at me for just a moment.  With that last long, measuring look, she walked through the wall and vanished.

— What Angels Fear, © Erin Klitzke 2011

 

I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t think I’d want Julia’s life.

What Angels Fear should hopefully be out by the end of the year.  And speaking of release dates…

I still don’t have a solid one for Epsilon: Broken Stars, but I hit the 68k mark this morning, which means there’s less than 2k words left to write before I meet my 70k goal.  The tale will go a bit longer than that, however (I have at least two chapters yet to write, one in the section I’m working on now and one at the end of the book).  Price point will be $2.99 when it releases, and I’ll keep things updated here when it comes to release dates and the like.  I’m hoping for mid-month, but that’s going to depend on two factors: inspiration, and how fast I can get editorial turnaround from my volunteers.

This year’s nanowrimo project, however, will be the sequel to Broken Stars that focuses on Lucas Ross, leader of the Resistance and friend of Broken Stars narrator, Aaron Taylor.  There’s a few thoughts for that already bouncing around in the back of my brain.  Hopefully, that will take less time to materialize than Broken Stars has!

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Getting back into the groove

Today, I cleaned my room.  Then I checked the status of Falling Stars on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, then checked to see if I’d sold any on Smashwords (I hadn’t) while I slept.

Then, I sat down to write.

It’s been one of those days when it’s been difficult to get something started, despite having ideas percolating in the back of my brain for a couple days.  The characters weren’t feeling chatty, the words didn’t feel like they wanted to flow.  So, after typing some pre-work scribbles from yesterday afternoon and confirming that I did not, in fact, have to show up at the store today, I headed for my local Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte and a change of scenery.

Lo and behold, the Awakenings chapter 11 opener was written.  Here’s a taste.

            I hope that you decided not to go to the city.  Something’s about to happen, something connected to that damn asteroid, and I just feel like it’s better that you’re with everyone at the university.  Something—not someone—tells me that.  I know you stopped believing her and believing yourself, but please, just believe me in this.  The interview isn’t that important.  If you walk away from her—from all of it—now, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.

However long that’s going to be remains to be seen.

Now, Chapter 10.06 went up today.  Page hits have been down since last weekend for some reason, though I’m not certain why.  Possibly has something to do with folks getting back into the swing of school, possibly the weather, possibly a piss-poor advertising spread the past week–any number of factors could be to blame.  I certainly don’t seem to have the malware problem I was having before, which is amazing (apparently, stripped-down, recustomized versions of the WordPress main themes are helpful in that regard!).  Hopefully, numbers will go back up again soon, but only time will tell.  I know that there’s at least a small following for my little epic post-apocalyptic urban fantasy, and I think I can live with that.

I mentioned at the top of the post that I’d checked various outlets for sales figures on Falling Stars.  For folks not in the know (ie, anyone not privy to my brain or my AIM name), Falling Stars is a novelette set in the same universe as Epsilon: Broken Stars.  The story itself is just shy of 13k words, but the ebook release has the first chapter of Epsilon: Broken Stars attached to it.  I’m actually really excited about all of this, because it’s my first ebook release.

I posted it to Smashwords and Amazon on Friday, then posted it to Barnes and Noble on Saturday (as of this writing, they’re still processing the file for listing in their catalog.  My fingers and toes are crossed that Smashwords will accept Falling Stars for its premium catalog, which is distributed to other e-bookstores such as Kobo, Apple, and a few others.  At 99¢, it’s a fairly affordable little read and I happen to think it’s a decent story to boot.

From the way things have been going the past couple days with Epsilon: Broken Stars, that may well be out in early October.  Fingers and toes crossed–it depends on how much I can plow through in the next week or so and how quickly a couple able volunteers can proof-read the document for me.

I’m building my book portfolio, slowly but surely (and possibly faster than some new indie authors, too)!  Publishing that first ebook was exciting and scary all at once, but I’m fairly pleased at the result so far…even if sales are next to non-existent.  Hopefully, more friends in the facebook crowd will give me a hand with advertising!  A huge shout-out to Erik of Dear God What Have We Wrought?! for his Facebook marketing of my work (I netted one sale out of that so far, thanks!).  For those of you who’d like to give me a hand with that and don’t know how, it’s as easy as heading to the Smashwords or Amazon pages for Falling Stars and hitting the “Share” button for Facebook (in both cases, the button is on the right hand side of the page–on the Amazon page, it’ll be tucked under the “Read on these devices” box, and on Smashwords…well.  Smashwords makes the share button pretty easy to find).

For now, though, it’s time for me to get back to the writing.  Wish me luck!

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September slumps (and updates)

So Septembers come in two varieties for me: incredibly productive, or incredibly unproductive.  This September, thus far, has been strangely both.

The first week or so was insanely productive, especially when it comes to Awakenings, and I have to admit that this past week wasn’t so bad, either.  Epsilon: Broken Stars still requires quite a bit of attention before it’s ready for e-publication, so it may not see digital shelves until October, since the magnitude of the additions I decided to make (and the breadth of some of the rewrites I decided to do) were greater than anticipated–we’re talking the addition of several chapters here and a couple of unexpected subplots, which up the complexity level of the story quite a bit.  My schedule at the store last week basically meant I had to decide between sleeping and writing, and I wisely chose sleep when and where I could (I help a lot with the visual merchandising where I work, and my store manager was out of the business for a week–when we were supposed to be totally rearranging the store–so guess who got to do most of the rearranging by herself.  That’s right.).  Schedules are becoming lighter in that regard…just in time for me to prep for the 16th Annual Grand Valley Renaissance Festival in Allendale, MI, which I’ll be attending with Jude’s Chest again this year.  Something’s different about it this year, though, and that’s me bringing someone who’s never been (and therefore, since I’m there with the booth, will be requiring garb for the trip).

There goes more time.

The upshot is that as a result of the sewing break, that helped kicked some writer’s block in the sorry arse.  I’ve managed to finish Chapter 10 of Awakenings much sooner than I anticipated (I wasn’t expecting to be done with that until next week) and I’ll be able to launch into working on Chapter 11 as early as tonight.  I’ve also been getting some words down on a page for an Awakenings side story, one involving some characters that won’t debut in person in the narrative proper for some time.  The story will either serve as a filler after Awakenings: Book One is completed or will be released as an extra with the ebook version of Awakenings: Book One.

Of course, if I’ve got the cover designed, that means it should be coming soon, right?  Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no.  This is the third or fourth version of the cover that I’ve played with, but it’s the one I’m the happiest with.  However, in this case, I can fairly safely say that Awakenings: Book One should be complete on the website within another few chapters–probably by Chapter 12 or Chapter 13, but we’ll see where the story takes me.  Following that, there’ll be a time-skip forward probably a couple months, then a resumption of the (mis)adventures of our hapless heroes.  I have plans, after all.

Those plans, of course, change as I write onward, but that’s what keeps webfiction fun and interesting, isn’t it?

Speaking of…I was a guest on a podcast that’s available streaming here or as a download from iTunes.  It was a lot of fun, and I love the Webfiction World folks.  They put on a good show (even when they’re put on the spot–hell, especially when they’re put on the spot!).  Keeping my fingers and toes crossed that they do a show based on Jim‘s superhero webfiction idea.

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On writer’s block…

Yesterday, I was at my local Starbucks, enjoying my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season and getting some work done on Awakenings. At about the midway point in my work, I ended up engaging one of the senior barristas in conversation for a few moments. She asked me if I was working or doing homework, and I laughed and told her (with a pang of self-consciousness) that I was a writer and I was out getting a change of scenery. I told her about what I was working on, and she said, “I’m a writer, too. But I have writer’s block!” I don’t know if she was being serious or not, and I didn’t get a chance to reengage her subsequently. If I had gotten to reengage her, I would have told her that ‘writer’s block’ is just another excuse not to write.

Crazy, right? But the more I think about it, the more I realize how true that statement is. Yes, we all need a break from our writing sometimes–I know that as well as the next person. This having been said, there’s no reason why anyone should ever be completely blocked. Occasionally, walls do arise, yes. But that’s just a signal that you need to take a break.

But while you’re taking a break, you also need to think. Sometimes getting away from the keyboard is exactly what you need to get the ideas flowing, too.
Over the past few years, I’ve developed a few tricks to beating writer’s block.

  • Getting up and taking a walk
    Doing this can not only get the blood flowing, but you never know when or where inspiration will strike while you’re out and about. Sometimes when I need to get away from the keyboard and what I’m working on, I grab the dog and go for a once around the block. Usually about halfway through, I’ve come up with a solution to whatever sticky situation I’ve written myself into.
  • Reassess old projects
    It sounds like a weird tip, but it actually works. If you’re like me, who has dozens of half-started projects floating around, you might find inspiration in one of these fragments–even something you can rework and insert into your current project (that’s what happening with me and Awakenings right now–I found an old short story that I wrote that’s gotten me all inspired).
  • When in doubt, work on something else.
    Just get up and work on something else–writing or otherwise. Work on one of those aforementioned other projects, just to clear your head, or go and do something crafty and otherwise creative. Failing that, clean your room, vacuum your living room, or bake some cookies. Believe me, it helps.
  • Grab your computer (or your notebook) and head somewhere else.
    Your local library or coffee shop can be great venues for this. I personally prefer my local Starbucks or Panera Bread, but a lot of authors (Caitlin Kittredge comes to mind) write at their local libraries. Sometimes, people-watching in those locations, coupled with the change in scenery, can really help the creative process.
  • Try writing longhand.
    I went for months having a hard time writing anything. I finally snapped that streak by sitting down at my desk with my computer turned off and writing longhand on notebook paper. Yes, it’s killing a few trees, but the creative process sometimes requires pen (or pencil) on paper. Mother Nature will understand.
  • Just sit down and write.
    Just do it. Make words come, put them down on paper, and stop caring whether or not it’s good. This is something Chris Baty of Nanowrimo advocates. Turn off the inner editor, ignore personal recriminations, and just pour your brain out onto the page/screen. Some of it won’t be good, but sometimes you’d be surprised by what comes out.

Those are just a few ways I use to combat writer’s block, and I’m sure they’re not the only ways to do it.

So if you’re suffering…try a few of these things and see if they help. Good luck!

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I’ve joined the Dark Side (oh, and an Epsilon: Broken Stars update)

[progpress title=”Epsilon: Broken Stars” goal=”70000″ current=”49912″]

[progpress title=”Awakenings WebSeWriMo” goal=”35″ current=”12″]

I finally broke down and got a Twitter account after resisting the urging to do so for quite some time (I never saw the point, and then Writer’s Digest, Etsy people, Poets and Writers magazine, and several other sources encouraged me vigorously to do so).  So now I’m known as EMBKDoc on Twitter, so you can follow me as you see fit.  Or don’t follow me, that’s up to you (if you aren’t on Twitter yet, there’s no reason for you to get it just so you can follow me.  I followed Caitlin Kittredge without being on Twitter for months before I actually hit the “follow” link on Twitter).

Ended up not having to go into work today, so I took Stupid the Wonder Mutt for two walks today, and dove head-first into work on Epsilon: Broken Stars.  This occurred mostly because the Awakenings cast was being obstinate this morning and I’ve given up on making my WeSeWriMo goal (I’ll call it all a victory if I manage to keep myself two weeks ahead when it comes to Awakenings.  It’s a lot of work!).

I finished a new Chapter 5 for Broken Stars about fifteen minutes ago and will shortly commence work on an unexpected new Chapter 6.  The additional chapter isn’t a bad thing at all and gives me some interesting options going forward, I think, especially as I work on revisions and continue with the series at large.  Chapter 5 includes some teasers for later plotlines as well as a bit of background for the universe itself (I have a lot of backstory worked up for the universe, truth be known, probably because I’ve worked on it for so bloody long.  I had to promise Mike I wouldn’t spoil more of it for him than I already have!).  I also revealed Sam Cooper’s Resistance code name: Page of Blades.

It makes sense when you think about her sister being the Ace of Spades.  When you really, really think about it.

Tomorrow’s another day off work, though at least part of that will be given over to some WoD action, I think.  I need to write more journal updates for Haley…

But that’s for later.  Now, there’s other writing to be done!  Back to Aaron Taylor’s brain…