I started writing Epsilon Part 2 today, which is taking a bit of a different direction than the last drafts, interestingly enough. It probably has a great deal to do with the addition of Lucas Ross as a character to the cast and the establishment of a relationship between Caren and Sam well before I’d originally planned for it (but it works in this context and then makes more sense for what happens later on). I may or may not write a little more before I sleep tonight, considering sleep is trying to come on very, very hard right now and I need to get up and take pictures in the morning of the lakefront before there are any humans in sight and before it gets hot like it did today.
We checked out a new restaurant tonight, six miles outside of Elkhart Lake in the town of Keil, WI. It was a place recommended by one of our favorite bartenders at Lola’s, and is run by someone she went to high school with.
Koehring’s was freaking amazing. The food was phenomenal, the prices were reasonable, and did I mention the food was phenomenal? The decor is a little overwhelming, but the food more than made up for it. I had a filet mignon that I thought was going to kill me, it was so good. If it had killed me, I’d have died happy.
If you’re ever in the area, definitely check this place out.
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In between binge-reading Caitlin Kittredge‘s Nocturne City books (as lovely and dysfuctional as Luna Wilder is, she still doesn’t hold a candle to Pete and Jack from Black London, if you ask me) and blankly staring at very obnoxious children (thank god most of them are going home tomorrow so the pool will be a quieter place) I actually got some work down by the pool today.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t The Last Colony. Brendan, Lindsay, and the rest aren’t very talkative right now. No, it was Epsilon, and good progress, too–progress I’ll probably continue tomorrow. I finished off Chapter 10 and moved on to the last chapter for Part 1, which is Chapter 11 of the first book. I’m still not sure how long it’s going to end up being–it might end up being two parts, it might end up being three. It depends on how long Part 2 ends up being.
First off, the Awakenings part of this entry–I’ve written the ending. I know, right? I’m probably months away in writing and years away in posting from the end of the whole story, which will quite frankly probably span about fifteen years of in-character time (much more compressed in the writing, I promise! I really have no real intention of having days take up as many chapters as Day Zero did, I swear.), but I’ve already written the ending.
The ending, of course, sets up everything for the eventual sequel (which I may or may not start writing long before Awakenings has ended), Ambrose, which is about Lin, Thom and Marin’s son, and his eventual adventures in the world that his parents witnessed the birth of.
In essence, Awakenings is about not only survival, but witnessing the return of magic and wonder to the world–the reawakening of preternatural things that modern science could not understand and had almost managed to destroy. It’s about figuring out what kind of power your inborn affinities hold and about how you can affect the world around you through the strength of your will. It’s about friendship and love and starting over at the end of everything. It’s about not giving up even though you want to, and the power of love.
I know where the first year will end, too, but the road to getting there is going to be fun (and maybe depressing, sometimes), to say the least. I’m partway through the writing of Chapter 8, which will be hitting the site throughout July (it may run into August, but we’ll see what happens there). I’ve got notes on things that happen throughout the storyline at large, but not everything has a set time frame. Things will happen, I imagine, as the muse instructs.
I hope it keeps talking and doesn’t run off with Katie’s inner child to Tahiti, because that would be bad (though oddly fitting, since it’s conversations with Katie that made me write Awakenings in the first place).
Other random bits…
Finished reading Perfect Shadow by Brent Weeks. If you have not read the Night Angel Trilogy, read it. Then read this Durzo Blint novella. It was simply awesome and I read it in…probably about two hours, all told. Maybe three, but I was distracted by people.
Evil people.
And finally….this. (Mostly for you, Bits. Consider it payback for Iridescent. Which is pretty much Thom’s song for Marin, by the way.)
I’ve been writing fiction since I was ten years old–for fun, serious writing, not because I had to for school or any other reason. Most of it has been crap. Some of it’s been okay. I haven’t reached a point where I have a manuscript ready to send off to agents or publishers…but that will come sooner rather than later, I’d suspect.
Today, in the midst of cleaning the house and weeding out in the garden, I came across a few of my writing magazines that I hadn’t finished reading–this happens often enough, that I’ll get one of them and not finish reading them to my satisfaction and then they get shuffled someplace in an effort to get my mother to stop complaining about how everyone’s stuff is everywhere cluttering up her house (not going to offer commentary on that one). So, at some point today I sat down on the couch and thumbed through an article from the May/June 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest that had YA agents and editors talking about the category — how to break into it, what they’re looking for, that kind of thing.
It got me to thinking a bit. I’ve always written younger protagonists (there are a few notable exceptions, including several of the major supporting cast members in Epsilon and The Last Colony–heck, Adam Windsor is a PoV character in The Last Colony and he’s in his fifties–as well as characters in Fate and Second Chances and its untitled sequel…though I’m not entirely sure elves and dragons count as “older protagonists”), characters ranging from their late teens through their twenties. In some ways, my characters have aged with me and in others, they certainly have not.
Paranormal and speculative fiction have become huge in young adult fiction, and that subsegement of the genre have yielded works that have transcended the age category (see: Harry Potter and as much as I hate to mention it, Twilight–Vampires do not sparkle thank you very much!). To carry this even further and away from the article I read, manga, Japanese graphic novels, tend to have speculative, paranormal, and fantastic elements to them as a matter of course. Manga is extremely popular in the United States–and growing in popularity all the time.
Which brings me to what really got me thinking–the untitled sequel to my D&D-inspired Fate and Second Chances already has two very strong teenage protagonists in it–Alysta Riverden and Kaelen Verrel–and could quite possibly be transformed into a YA novel. It’s something I’ll have to think about, because the story as it stands right now (in its very early stages–there’s only about 23500 words of ramble to it) is planned to be about as much about Alysta’s father, Talasin, as it is about Lysta and Kael.
But it’s entirely possible, and could be fun. I’ll just have to do some homework on it, and some thinking. But maybe. Just maybe…
So for the past week or so I’ve been feeling the need to put pen to paper (literally) and do some freewriting. I don’t do it often and so when the mood strikes, it’s strange. So between thesis and cleaning, I’ve been freewriting. I’m up to fourteen handwritten pages (almost fourteen pages, there’s only a few lines left on page 14 to write). Freewriting is a strange thing…you never know what’s going to happen.
So I started with a first person point of view and rambled. My narrator told me pretty quickly that her name was Julia (Julia Rhiannon, no less) and that she’d been living in this creepy little midwestern town for a few months because she’d been taking care of a sick (now deceased) relative that she’d been visiting there since she was eight. Most of the town, especially the good Reverend at the local evangelical chapel, give her the heebie-jeebies.
Then there was this boy–maybe about her age, maybe a little younger, a mysterious, broken thing that on the surface looked crazy, “special,” or drugged. He kept popping up, kept looking for her. She found out his name was Darien fairly early on. He came to her in moments of almost-lucidity and asked for her help.
Now…I knew by this point (heck, I knew by a few lines into the first page) that this story is in the same universe as my first Nanowrimo project ever, When All’s Said and Done, which has been on my mind in between thinking about Edward I and III because it’s about time I finally gutted the thing, revised it, polished it, and started sending it to publishers. It’s a strangely disturbing piece, probably because there’s elements of it that are just maybe a little too real to not be creepy. The freewriting ramble I’ve been working on was very clearly very intimately connected to the story of the Insitute, given Darien’s whisperings about the end and the Institute and how he’s very clearly reluctant to tell Julia the whole truth for fear she’ll either think he’s crazy or get herself into trouble with the sprawling installation just outside of the village of Andover Commonwealth.
I’m writing page 13 and 14 today, where Darien is giving up some of the secrets he knows about the place…and it hits me. Bam. Right between the eyes.
Darien isn’t Darien at all.
Darien is Ridley.
Now that revelation isn’t going to mean anything to anyone except for me and maybe one or two other people who may happen to stumble across this. And if Miss Jen reads it, she’s going to blink and ask me who Ridley is and I’ll tell her. And her eyes will get big and wide and she’ll be all “Ooh.”
And then she’ll ask if she can read the ramble. And I’ll let her, because she’s Reece, and maybe someday Reece’ll actually meet up with this broken soul who feels like he’s betrayed people he cared about, people who cared about him in return.
All depends on what the redrafting process brings. Either way, this ramble…fantastic background and yet another layer added into what was originally a lot less complex than it’s going to become.
Nanowrimo went spectacularly well for me this year — I made goal with time to spare. It seems, however, that the story of The Last Colony is more conducive to a trilogy than than it is to a single volume. The whole of the story just can’t be told in such a small package, I guess. There’s just too much story to tell.
Speaking of too much story to tell, it’s high time I turn around and do the serious editing that When All’s Said and Done, my first winning Nanowrimo piece, requires. The work has some serious potential; I think if I can get through a rewrite I might even be able to put that together into a duology or trilogy (or even a single book) and start shopping agents. Hopefully.
However, the most important bit of writing I need to be doing in the near future is my Master’s thesis. I’ve gotten somewhat disconnected from it of late and need to bring myself back to it–and badly. That’s one thing that’s on tomorrow’s agenda, to reconnect with my thesis research. Before the semester ended, I had started reading From Scythia to Camelot and I should really get back to it. But I started reading Devil in the White City today, and I have a feeling I’ll race through that and then get back to research.
I have a desk, now, though, and it’s gloriously beautiful. It’s a library table style desk that my father made for me and it’s lovely. I can’t wait to start being able to use it, but that requires that the bedrooms be switched out so I can (my desk is currently in the larger bedroom, occupied by my brother). I’m very much looking forward to having my own space to work, though, where I can leave stuff out.
I’ll only be doing one class this semester–I was going to take seminar again, but financial constraints will prevent me from doing so. Instead, I’m going to work intensively with Dr. Chapman on my thesis and get it done so I can defend in the spring. There’s no other option–that’s the way it’s going to be.
And then hopefully, I’ll get into a Ph.D program for the fall of 2011. Hopefully.
I’m not going to bore most folks with the character list. Hell, I want to keep a lot about the characters a secret, since characters are often the key to my success in writing. Instead, I’ll just offer a brief taste of some of them.
Here they are, in alphabetical order.
Grant Channing – Member of the Psychean Guard held by the Eurydice Compact for at least fifteen years. Father of Lindsay Farragut.
Alana Chase – Born to the Eurydice Compact conglom, heavily cybered soldier. She escaped to E-557 eighteen years before the story begins.
Brendan Cho – Born to the Chinasia Corp conglom and trained as a military pilot. He is the only survivor of a ship shot down over E-557 eleven years before the story begins that was allowed to stay.
America Farragut – Member of the Psychean Guard held by Chinasia Corp. for at least fifteen years. Mother of Lindsay Farragut and sister of Rachel Farragut.
Lindsay Farragut – Born a member of the Psychean Guard two years after the decimation of Mimir, the home of the Psychean Guard. She is the Oracle and came to E-557 with her aunt twenty-three years before the story starts. Member of the Rose Council.
Rachel Farragut – Member of the Psychean Guard who came to E-557 twenty-three years before the story starts. Aunt and surrogate mother of Lindsay Farragut, the Oracle. Member of the Rose Council.
Ezra Grace, MD – Born and bred on E-557, Ezra is of genius-level intelligence when it comes to medicine and the interactions of humans and cyberware. He’s not quite thirty when the story starts.
Adam Windsor – Member of the Psychean Guard who came to E-557 shortly before Rachel Farragut, after the destruction of Guard HQ on Mimir. High-ranking military officer on E-557; one of the Guardians (military commanders of E-557).
This particular directive — that is, starting to outline plot — is something I started a bit ago, as scenes started to form themselves in my head. Basically, the exercise for day 20 asks the writer to say what the story’s about — what’s the overarching plot.
On the Nanowrimo forums, there’s a thread that was fantastic: the 20-word summary of your plot. This was mine:
Humanity has killed dozens of worlds. They’re not allowed to kill this one.
Thirteen words to describe the plot of The Last Colony. We’ll see what the ending holds.
I do have one major subplot already in mind, which deals with the rescue of America Farragut and Grant Channing from the Chinasia Corp and Eurydice Compact congloms respectively. Of course, Lindsay isn’t going to like the plan that Ezra (since it will be Ezra that comes up with the majority of the plan) comes up with for rescuing her parents.
Largely skipping this one, except for to jot down the note that there are various terrestrial species that have been preserved since the loss of Earth that have become semi-domesticated. Other species were used to populate the lands of E-557 long before the colonists ever landed there. No one’s really sure who terraformed the planet or seeded it with terrestrial species. There is some data to indicate that E-557 was a world that had once harbored life before being terraformed, but for some reason had been abandoned in a very distant past.
Day 24 is all about artwork, mood, and music playlists for working on your project. Of course, this can take a long while to put together, especially the artwork. So, for the moment, I’m going to forgo some of the artwork but share some of the music that’s evocative and inspiring lately…
Other songs include “Keep Holding On” by Avril Lavigne, “Now or Never” by Three Days Grace, “Wonder” by Natalie Merchant, “Believe” by Staind, “Carry You Home” by James Blunt, and “World” by Five for Fighting.
This isn’t so important, since I don’t have any nighttime sequences in mind that will require moonlight. I love the moon in all its phases, and if it becomes important to have the moon be a certain way at a certain time, I’ll be sure to keep track of phases. Though the exercise is a wonderful cautionary tale.
The rest of the days on the world-building lists are mostly wrap-ups — finish up with this, that, and the other thing. So I’ll be spending my last few days before Nanowrimo working on school work and doing some outlining for November 1!
