Dispatch, Part I: Tale of an Epic Summer Road Trip

I've been meaning to do this for five years.

And now is the time.

We are about to embark on a tale of a ridiculous road trip. This tale includes multiple near death experiences (drama!), bizarre city shenanigans (comedy!), the concert of a lifetime (exhilaration!), a quick trip to the psych ward of Massachusetts General Hospital (whoa, what?), and forty-six hours without sleep (exhaustion!).

It will be told in multiple parts, over the next few days. All names have been changed to protect...well, everything.

And so it begins...

Once, there was a freshman in college whose friends introduced her to this amazing, awesome band called Dispatch. That girl's name was Kristy, and she is me.

As someone who listened to more punk than anything, you wouldn't expect me to be attracted to a band described by Wikipedia as indie/roots folk jam band.

If you'd like, you can listen to what I feel are some of their best songs here.

My Rhapsody Playlist

From the first song of theirs I ever heard, I was hooked. I listened to them as I studied, as I drove, and as I read. I danced to them. I introduced my brother to them.

And he introduced all of his friends to them.

Fast forward to the summer after college graduation. I'm interning at the local newspaper again, preparing for my wedding, hanging out with family and friends. I go to a party with my little brother, at some friend's house on the north end of town. The one thing I remember about that party is this conversation:

Me: I'm so mad that Dispatch broke up. I wanna go to the big last concert.

Brother: We should totally go.

Me: Eh, depends on where it is.

Brother: We should totally go!

Me: And it depends on how much it costs.

Brother: WE SHOULD TOTALLY GO!

Me: You know what? We should go!

The feeling spread to a bunch of Brother's friends. We discover the show would be in Boston on July 31, and it would be free.

FREE.

If that's not a sign, I don't know what is.

I try to organize the trip in some way--you know, make hotel reservations or something--but Brother's free-spirited friends will not be organized. "So-and-so knows someone in Boston, and we can sleep in his backyard," Brother says. I shrug and go along with it. "We can just park our cars at this beach he knows and sleep on the beach until the show, anyhow." Again, I shrug.

We gather together, about seventeen of us, with four vehicles, in the early evening of July 30. I had worked all day and was a little tired, but the excitement bubbling in my blood keeps me going. We pile into our four vehicles and head out. I believe at this point I'm driving the second or third car in the caravan.

Our town fades behind us and we push into the forest between Warren and New York state. Not forty-five minutes into the drive, we have our very first near-death experience.

On the twisty-turny forest road, a police car has decided to execute a three-point-turn on a sharp curve. The first car comes around the bend to find said police car directly in its path. She jams on the brakes, and the screech of brakes, joined by a chorus of screeching brakes behind her as we each follow suit.

If any of us had reacted too slowly, we could've had a serious problem.

Mr. Policeman continues his turn as we wait, but we have to pull over soon afterward as one passenger of the first car is having a panic attack. Please note the panic attack, as this will become a recurring theme of our journey.

We continue on. Sometime later, we stop at a gas station near Friendship, NY (which I always remember because my great-great-great uncle started a music school there). There are some shenanigans--mainly a very eccentric member of our group, Ivan, deciding he was hungry and that those strawberries in the trash can look good. Ew.

We pull out of the gas station, which is pretty much directly off the highway. I end up being the last car in the caravan, and an eighteen-wheeler separates me from my fellow cars. I should note at this point that we have walkie-talkies. I try to pass Mr. Eighteen Wheeler, who is going quite fast, and he puts his turn signal on as I'm doing so.

I do not know, at this point, that he is just letting me know not to hog the left lane, as he'd like to pass the cars ahead of him as well. I freak out, thinking he can't see me and might try to pull into my lane while I'm still in it. Brother, who is in the passenger seat, also does not know the trucker signal's meaning. As I speed up rather quickly to avoid becoming roadkill, Brother flips off trucker.

Bad idea? Yes. Very, very bad idea, but we don't know better and we think he's trying to smush us.

As soon as I pass Mr. Suddenly Angry Eighteen Wheeler, he pulls into the left lane and practically attaches himself to my car. Looking in the rearview mirror, I realize he is so close that I actually cannot see his bumper. This does not feel safe. I scream a bunch, my passengers scream a bunch, and several voices on the walkie-talkie scream a bunch. There is no room for me to slide into the caravan, so I have to pass our other three vehicles to get into the right lane.

And now I have another reason to never forget Friendship, NY.

I have a mini-panic-attack, which I suppress because I feel that the caravan stopping for two panic attacks in just a few hours seems like a bad sign.

Oh, how little I know.

We drive and drive through the darkness. There is some irritation at the leader car, who has our navigator in tow, as she's not really great at maintaining a set speed. In one 55 mph zone, we go 40, then 50, then 35, then 60. I realize that my cruise control will be completely useless on this trip.

We tell stories to keep entertained and stay awake. Or rather, the members of my car tell one story, each person making up a sentence of it and handing it off to the others. The result is probably unpublishable in this space, but we still occasionally make reference to it even now, five years later.

We finally make it to Massachusetts in the wee, wee hours. We stop at a gas station, which is technically closed but allows you to pump gas still using a credit card. We fill up, we goof around for a few minutes, stretch our legs, all that. And then Ivan's eccentricity rears its ugly head again.*

"Why do they say not to smoke around gas pumps?" he asks, taking his lit cigarette and sticking it into the gas dispenser.**

I've watched the Summer Olympics and still never seen people run as fast as we do in that moment. All except one. The most peaceable, easygoing member of our group stalks over to Ivan, grabs him by the shirt, and starts screaming at him. When the threat of an explosion or fire passes, we pull the two apart, pile into our cars, and get the heck out of there.

That is the last of our official near-death experiences, although there are a few more bad moments ahead.

On and on, across Massachusetts, where I've never been. I'm enchanted by town names, although the only one I can still remember now is Chicopee. I say the word over and over, until it sounds like something I made up myself. By this time, the other members of my car are asleep. I struggle to stay awake and lucid, downing caffeinated beverages that don't help, as I reached peak caffeination hours ago. I chew mint after mint, which oddly helps.

I start hallucinating. The car in front of me seems to be pivoting, turning 180 degrees until it's perpendicular to mine. I see large boulders rolling, bouncing across the road.

NOTE: Should I have stopped? Yes. Did I? No. I had this strange need to prove myself, to show that I could drive to and in what is, if not the most dangerous city in which to drive, certainly in the top three. Later, looking back, I realize just how dumb I was, and even though nothing really happened, I learned my lesson.

We get into the city around 8 a.m., and my passengers awake. I am fully awake myself, as driving in this place is truly an adrenaline rush. Also, suicidal. Luckily, our navigator has lived in Boston for a while and gets us to our destination--THE BEACH!

The dirty, garbage strewn beach.

The beach we're supposed to sleep on.

I vote that we just stay at our cars and nap until the show starts. I am quickly vetoed, as everyone else wants to explore.

Into the city we go...

Stay tuned for part II, which involves admonishments from subway loudspeakers, balloon animals, and a little fountain prancing. Part II will be up...Monday-ish.


*I'd like to state right now that Ivan in no way represented the rest of the group. Many of us were not really pleased that he was coming. He did, however, provide moments of surreal entertainment that I will never forget, as messed up as it was.

**I've been told that there was really no risk that anything would catch fire or explode. I still have no desire to be around a lit cigarette and a large container of gasoline. It just doesn't seem like a happy place to be, y'know?

Writer Wednesday - Guest Starring...

Um, me!

Pop over to Fantasy Debut and visit, we're talking about (booming voice) THE DREADED OPENING. Comment, leave an excerpt, jump into the fray.

Battle of the Cats

We have a guest cat in our house for the week. Meet Tucker:

Catnip! CatnipCatnipCatnip!

He's just as skittish as he looks. The only reason he's not under the loveseat is that I brought him some catnip.

Tucker was brought over for catsitting on Friday night and proceeded to hide under/in a chair in the sunporch for his first few hours. Apparently Tucker has become the hiding master, as necessitated by the fact that he lives with a six-year-old girl who likes to use him as a dolly.

We eventually got him into the living room, where he slipped into the loveseat. Now, if we want to get him out, we have to either recline the seat and reach under there, risking head injuries or blindness as we squirm into the inner workings of the seat--or get out the catnip.

You can guess what my preferred method is.

Tucker has slowly, slowly come out of his shell/hiding place. He spent most of Saturday in the loveseat, but that evening he lounged on the living room floor for quite a while, only darting away when TH clomped* down the stairs. But he would hang out under the side table next to his sanctuary, rather than going all the way back into hiding, while he checked out the threat. He even wandered around the living room, hopping up to look out the window.

The prospect of temporarily housing a second cat worried me. I worried about Shakespeare. Not because I thought he might be in danger, but because I thought he might be a danger. See, Shakes has gradually become the terror of all my friends. He acts all friendly, rubbing against your legs and letting you pet him and even pick him up--but then he arbitrarily decides he's not all about this anymore, and he bites you. I don't know where we went wrong, but I blame TH. He never had a cat before, so he played rough with him, and that, I think, made Shakes think he could play rough back. Either that, or it's the classic Siamese temperament--which is temperamental. Bipolar, even. Although he's a barn cat, Shakes obviously has some Siamese or maybe seal-point Himalayan blood.

This here catnip is MINE. I will mark it with my belly fur to designate it so.

This is him sitting on top of his scratching board thing, where I had placed his catnip, evidently trying to absorb it through osmosis...or protect it from Tucker, the catnip fiend.

But Shakes has been a doll baby. Seriously. Every time he comes near Tucker, there's growling and hissing--but it's almost always from Tucker. Tuck's a good cat, so I think this is mainly a response to being in another cat's territory. Just self-preservation. Tucker's even batted at Shakespeare's face a few times, and Shakes doesn't really fight back. He even makes chirping, happy noises toward Tucker, which I translate as, "Won't you be my friend? Please? Please please please? It would make me so happy!"

To which Tucker replies with a hiss and a growl.

Of course, he does act in some ways I consider passive aggressive. For instance, if Tucker is in his loveseat enclave, there's a good chance Shakes is sleeping on top of the loveseat.

This has given me hope, though. I thought Shakes would be hard to socialize after almost five years of being the King of the Castle.** I thought I'd have to wait until we move to get my second cat.***

But I think--much to TH's chagrin--that Shakes will have a little buddy to play with by the end of August.

Hopefully this one will spend some time outside the loveseat.

I'm watching you.

*Really, Firefox? "Clomped" is a word? Okay, I'll take it.

**TH and I have no illusions. Our names may be on the deed, and we may pay the mortgage, but The Bard runs the joint.

***I remembered last week that I'd been promised: once I got an agent, we would get another cat. It was just another incentive to work hard, and I had so many of those that I forgot the cat thing until over a week after I accepted representation.

Reminder

If you're a writer, get thee over to Fantasy Debut post haste for Writer Wednesday, where we're discussing Unsavory Protagonists and Assorted Bad Guys. Post an excerpt (max 300 words) and comment on others'...it's really fun and quite thought provoking.

Get Ready, Kids

Listening to: Modest Mouse, "Float On"

Just popping up to tell you to get ready for Writer Wednesday tomorrow at Fantasy Debut. Jennifer Estep will the featured writer, and the topic is Unsavory Protagonists and Assorted Bad Guys. I think it should be an interesting conversation, and although I'll be AFK in the afternoon, I plan to hang out in the morning and on Thursday if the conversation's still hoppin'.

Yes, I just said hoppin'. Yes, I'm living in an Archie comic. Now, off to my jalopy.

Reading as Research

Listening to: The Starting Line, "Direction"

First off, thanks to everyone for the big congrats and everything. It's been a heck of a week...still looking around myself in pure amazement from time to time.

So I just finished, around 2:30 a.m., Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments Series. I finished Book II on the way to the in-laws on Wednesday, and Thursday morning I made The Husband take me to a bookstore to get Book III.

Okay, I was gonna be laying by the pool all day, I needed something to read. Never mind that my mother-in-law has like a living room full of books.

Plus, you know, I could potentially be writing sequels/a trilogy/more than one book in a world before I'm forced to move on to another world and other characters, sometime in the near future. So it's RESEARCH.

You know what I love about writing? Aside from, you know, everything. I love that reading is research. And NO, that's not just a cop-out to get my husband to leave me alone when I'm reading or make him go get me the next book in a series when I'm hooked. It really is. I almost always "read like a writer", as the creative writing profs put it in college--with an eye toward characterization, plotting, dialogue, description, symbolism, etc. Even as I'm following the story and getting caught up in the plot, a part of my brain is working to notice other things. It's not really something I can control anymore--the writer part of my brain kind of took everything else over a few years ago.

Every so often I mourn this habit, as I love nothing more than getting so sucked into a book that I forget everything else around me. You know, when someone interrupts your reading, and it's like waking up from an incredible dream--you have to re-orient yourself to your surroundings, figure out what time of day it is, and probably throw something at the person who interrupted you? But if a book is really good, like crazy good, it can still happen.

Mortal Instruments did that to me several times, which is why I re-read the first one--I wanted to read it with an eye toward style and plotting and all that technical stuff. The first time, I just got sucked in, occasionally stepping out to wonder how, exactly, she'd done it. Since I want to do that with storytelling, I have to figure it out, y'know?

It's still the most incredible thing to me, that this thing I've done since I was tiny, this thing I've never been able to help doing, could be a part of my job. I always hated it when I was little or in my teens, and I'd be reading, and my parents would force me to get my nose out of the book and socialize or do chores.*

MWA HA HA! I say to them now. Just TRY and stop me from reading. I have the world's best excuse now. "But I'm working!"

And speaking of which, since I spent yesterday at the in-laws, reading and getting a tan...it's time to get back to work. The actual writing work, not the reading work. I can only use the "But it' work!" excuse for so long, you know.


*My parents have multiple pictures of me reading on vacations, on holidays, etc. They'd turn the camera toward me and be like, "Oh, and here's a picture of Kristy doing what she always does, but in a different place/on Christmas Eve!"

Announcement

Listening to: Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'". Oh, hush up and let me have my sentimental fun, will ya? =)

I have no idea how to really start this blog post, so I'm just gonna dive in headfirst.

I have an agent.

As of this morning, I've officially accepted representation from Marlene Stringer of the Stringer Literary Agency. She offered representation based on my novel Grim Light, which many of you kids have watched me write. And I say now, thanks for sticking around through the craziness. And the craziness of querying, and all the craziness in between.

Wait, what am I saying? All that craziness had to be pretty entertaining.

Anyhow...holy tangent, Batman.

So.

The story.

I started querying Grim Light a little over two weeks ago. Yes, I know all the other writers out there want to hit me right now. Please don't hit me! Remember that I've queried three other novels, so it's not like this really happened right out of the gate.

Marlene emailed me last Wednesday to ask for a partial. I sent it and tried to think of other things. I was not successful, but I tried.

Then on Thursday, she asked for the rest.

I was a bit distracted on Friday. I think it took me 45 minutes to load the dishwasher. I would find myself standing in the living room with a dirty cup in one hand and a fork in the other, wondering how I'd gotten there.*

Then I stopped waiting and checking my mail and my phone, because it was the weekend and I figured the chances of getting any news were slim.

Silly writer, eh?

She emailed me on Saturday night, and I got it first thing Sunday morning. She loved Grim Light and wanted to speak on Monday to see if we suited each other.

We're gonna fast forward through the big smiles and the undignified dancing, k? You can all imagine it pretty well, I'm sure.

So I was up bright and early on Monday, waiting for The Call. I knew it wasn't coming until around 9, but I didn't want to be all groggy when it came. I'm somewhat incoherent for the first half hour of the day, and "incoherent" is hardly a good first impression for a writer to make.

We spoke for a little over an hour, and it was awesome. I knew very quickly that she was the perfect agent for me, but she wanted me to take a day or two to digest everything and contact some of her clients for their opinions.

So I did. Nothing but awesome, across the board. And the clients themselves seem pretty darn cool too, all very welcoming and interested in me and my writing. I feel like I've joined a very warm and talented family.

And then there was maybe a little celebrating. Just a little. And because I am lucky and I have such wonderful people in my life, I got TWO flower deliveries within a few hours of The Call.


The left ones are from my friends Amy and John, and the right ones are from The Husband.

So, after a day of calling people and celebrating and trying to make myself believe it, I called my agent--that's right, I said it--and officially accepted representation. We're both very excited about this, and I think it's gonna be a great working relationship.

I know I have a long road ahead. But it's been a long road getting here, so I'm gonna take a moment to thank everyone. So many of you have been so supportive and helpful, you've followed all the highs and lows and encouraged me and read my work, and it's helped more than you know.

So thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.

And now, because I know you're all wondering, "But what does the cat think of this?", I give you the Cat of Cats, The Bard himself, Shakespeare, looking very excited and proud:


Don't let his stern looks fool you. He really is very happy for me. No, really. He only tried to bite me once yesterday. That's totally cat-speak for "YAAAAY!"

*This is a slight exaggeration. Slight.

Life: It Really DOES Get in the Way

Well. I've almost got Pink Bandana Girls up to the point where I can continue where I left off last November. I needed to take out some elements that were really overdone and cliche, and make it a little bit special, which was pretty fun. All that encouragement definitely helped, but the chaotic air of the past few days has not.

I think it's weird how everything happens at once. A few weeks ago, I might've said I was bored with my life. HA! Silly me.

A friend's dad got critically ill, and I was busy meeting her for coffee when she could take a break from the hospital. Then Thunder in the Valley, which really isn't stress but is chaos, with the 16 million bikes in town (ours, of course, being one of them). Then, on Tuesday, I spent most of the day cleaning, and decided I'd spend the evening writing.

How stupid of me.

You see, I got a new phone on Saturday, after my old one broke. I wasn't able to retrieve my contact list, so I had to input the numbers by hand. And I made a mistake, and subsequently sent a few text messages to a wrong number, thinking it was my friend. They were fairly innocuous, slightly amusing messages: one regarding my neighbors playing very loud music, and another regarding our plan to combat that by having a lawn mower and power washer party. Then another with our plans for the evening.

I realized my mistake later that night, and promptly fixed the number. I thought that was it. Three days passed.

Just before I sat down to write on Tuesday, I started getting calls. The first, I noticed, was from the number I'd accidentally texted. I figured that if they had something to say to me, they could say it in a voicemail. After that, they were blocked. As they were from a blocked number, I ignored them.

I couldn't ignore the voicemails, though. They contained a special brand of drunken psychosis that can't really be ignored. Especially after the eighth call in four hours, with three very lovely voicemails calling me all sorts of pretty names. On the eighth call, I allowed a friend to answer, as by that time I was shaking with anger and anxiety and didn't think I'd be able to stay calm.

His end of the conversation was actually rather hilarious. The caller kept trying to talk over him, and he'd say, "N-no. N-no. YOU listen. N-no." My other friend said he sounded like the b*tchy flight attendant from SNL. "Buh-bye. Buh-bye."

And then I called the police. I put it off for as long as I could, hoping that the caller would decide enough was enough, or maybe pass out or take her meds or something. But at that point, I figured two calls an hour for four hours, frequently coming within a few minutes of each other, was my breaking point.

Then I got a text from my friend--her dad would not make it through the night.

I think, between all this happening, I wrote about 200 words. I did manage to get some brainstorming done, and I have a better idea of where I want this novel to go. But this was all done between my shaking and ranting and pressing "ignore" on my phone and listening to cracked-out voicemails, and then being sad for my friend.

I guess what happened is that the phone I accidentally texted was owned by a male. His girlfriend got her hands on his phone and--three days after the fact--decided to take matters into her own hands. This was according to the voicemail I got from the police at 7 a.m. the next day. So, as far as I can tell, it's over.

I'm going to try to write tonight. I'm pretty excited, actually--I can't wait to get immersed in the story again, to really feel my characters and be part of that again. I miss it SO MUCH.

There's a pretty good chance I'll be turning my phone off before I even start.

Confessional

Okay. So. Confession time.

This is really, really hard to admit, so I'm just gonna come right out and say it.

*Braces self*.

I haven't written a word of fiction since November.

Gah! I want to go run behind a chair or something, so ya'll can't see me.

I mean, yes, I worked on the revisions for Grim Light, and they were quite a task. 6000 words out, 10,000 words in. And that was like the third start-to-finish revision. And I was doing work-work, too--you know, the stuff they paid me for. But as for fiction...I fiddled with a few potential projects, brainstormed some, but I didn't actually sit down and just write.

This, after a four year streak of nothing but writing.

I don't know who or what to blame, aside from myself, who I blame a lot, of course. Was it because I had a job?* Was it because of other things in my life that were pulling at me? Was it because of NaNo? And if you go to that link, let me tell you--that was written the last day I wrote something non-revisional, on my NaNo project. And yes, I'm making words up, at least according to Firefox's spell check.

I recently went back to that project, the NaNo project, and re-read it. I have 35k words there. I want to finish it. There are some changes I need to make before I do, because I hated the direction it was going. It's the old pressure-cooker vs. crock pot analogy I used back then--some people plot better under pressure, but I'm a crock pot kinda writer. I need to just take it slow and let my brain do its thing. There's all kinds of stuff going on up there that I don't know about.

Let me state that it's NOT writer's block. I know writer's block. This isn't it. This is...I don't know. Confusion? Discouragement? Distraction? A combination of all three, maybe.

So today, I'm going to work on fixing those things. I'm going to get the manuscript all ready to be continued.

And later today, or maybe tomorrow--

I'm going to write. And I can't freaking wait.

Have you ever had a period of non-writing, be it writer's block or life? How long did it last? What did you do to stop it?

*I just recently took a leave of absence for a few months, due to both the writing thing and a few other factors that I can't discuss.

Twitter for Writers

Just popping up to send you to Toasted Cheese, where my article on Twitter for Writers is up. I think it looks so pretty with the screenshots.

Still working on that query as I work on other things. I'll get it, I just feel like there's something I'm not quite seeing and I need to let my brain figure it out on its own without any help from me. More often than not, I just get in the way with these things.

There and Back

Listening to: Dispatch, "Two Coins"

Oh. My. Gah--

Yes, that's right. I'm back. Again. I know I have these periods of disappearance, when life gets crazy or I get a bit burnt out on the blogging thing. And you know I do, too. So if you've been patient and awaited my glorious return, thank you. And if you appreciate the sarcasm in that last sentence, DOUBLE thank you.

I'm in a weird mood. Sorry.

Anyhow, my life has been weird and crazy and exhausting and weird and crazy all over again over the past few months. I have no particular news, except that I finished the massive revisions on Grim Light, and I'm getting ready to query. I'm making my usual query spreadsheet, and I somehow managed to write my short synopsis (one page, baby!) in one sitting. Without fiddling with either font of margins, too.

Who's a pro? I'm a pro, kids. Either that, or I've done this crap one too many times. Leaning toward option B.

Now I'm working on the longer synopsis. I think I'll do one page for every 10k words, which will come out to about seven pages. Does that sound right? Someone tell me if that sounds right.

And I think--I think--I've come up with a decent query letter. I'm going to tweak it a bit, and then I'll put it up here for ya'll to poke and prod at, if you wish. Or you can just bask in its glory. You know, whatever.

Maybe I'll do that for Teaser Tuesday, actually.

My problem with queries tends to be that I rewrite them a million times over the course of querying. Tia can attest to that, as she was instrumental in a long, long series of revisions last year. I'm hoping to avoid that this time. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then on to the next book. Whatever.

So I'll be ready to query in the next few weeks. Sooner, hopefully. And I've decided, as part of my new "if it works, great" attitude, that I'm just going to shoot them out ten at a time, every Sunday night. I'll have my querying order all worked out in advance, and I'll just move to the next 10 on the list every Sunday, regardless of responses (or lack thereof). I'm just going to do this and get it over with, because I'm freaking ready. It's been far too long since I started this novel, and I'm tired of it sitting around.

So that's what's going on with me, writing-wise. And you?

Return to Revisionland

Listening to: Damien Rice, "Cannonball"

The betas have spoken.

When you hear the same comment from several people on a major aspect of your story, you pretty much have to listen. Eventually. After like, the sixth person says it. Maybe.

I've struggled a lot with this particular aspect, which was having my protagonist (Freya) in first person and chapters from my antagonist's (Grigory) POV in third person--then first person--then third person again (through multiple revisions, not varying within the novel itself). I knew I was taking a risk with it--it's done by some authors, yes, but not terribly often, and it's a rarity in YA. I have about 25 books on the YA shelf of my bookcase, and only one series out of all those books does this. Although in that case, the POV varies between first person for the protagonist and third person for secondary characters.

So yeah, it was a risk. And I fought a lot with it, as is clear from the fact that I kept on changing Grigory's POV. In third he was wooden; in first he had more personality but I felt it was confusing for the reader; when I moved it to third again, I felt I'd nailed it--he had personality, but I made sure the reader knew in each of his chapters that it was from his POV.

But after so many comments about it--none of them really negative, just uncertain and concerned--I decided to do something.* And I realized that I was being an idiot. A really, really big idiot. The whole reason I had multiple POVs was due to a rule I created that Grigory couldn't approach Freya until a certain thing had happened.

Um, hello, McFly. If you create the rules, you can change them.

So I'm restructuring the whole damn thing. Grigory appears in Freya's life by the second chapter, and it's all from her POV. His method of getting what he wants from her, or trying to, is going to be markedly different. He's going to be more hands-on, sneakier, more manipulative.

And so far, I love it. I'm loving being back in Freya's head again. I feel like this adds a new element to the story, a deeper element to Freya's character and her journey, and more suspense and mystery to the plot.

Of course, it's also ridiculously complicated. I'm performing surgery here, people. This is the most complex revision I've ever taken. I like a good challenge, though.

To keep track of when and where all the changes are taking place and how my plot will change, I needed some kind of storyboard/timeline, though. I couldn't just go in there willy-nilly and move this and that, add, subtract, and whammo.

So I went into Word and started having fun with text boxes. This is what I came up with:



It's small and blurred--don't want to give away my plot--but you can see what I've done. One line for Grigory, one for Freya. Red boxes are scenes that need to be added. Red text represents things that need changed within existing scenes. Text in gray is stuff that happens off camera, so to speak. The arrows are sort of cause and effect, more to keep my mind clear and connect various incidents than anything. The scenes on the line, obviously, are scenes in which Freya and Grigory appear together.

I'm about halfway done with the whole thing. It's taking up every spare second, as I want to get this thing done already. But I've learned something really important: be flexible. Not just when my betas are concerned (I learned that a long time ago), but also in the initial writing.

If I'd just decided to change that one silly, unnecessary rule when I first realized I had a problem, I wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.

One last thing, before I go back to my revisions. After almost every reader commented on this particular aspect, and after I really dug into the revisions, another friend finished reading. He told me at the bar on Saturday, and we started talking about his thoughts. I asked him what he thought of the varying POVs (clearly, he was reading the pre-revision version).

"I loved it!" he said.**

Head, meet desk. Oh wait--you've met before? Ah, yes. You're good friends. No introductions needed, then.



*Tia was the straw that broke the stubborn writer's back. Hear that, Tia? You're a straw! =)

**This is why I kept a copy of the previous version. Just in case I either change my mind or mess it up entirely. I'm not stupid, yanno.

Teaser Tuesday #3

Listening to: Barefoot Truth, "Roll if ya Fall"

Other Teasers this week: Tia, Dan, Steven, ChristaCarol.

Okay, I realize practically all I've been posting lately are Teaser Tuesdays. I'll get on that, I promise. Later this week, you'll get a little peek into how I'm fixing some problems with GL. I'll even have graphic aids.

This week's teaser comes from Battle of the Hexes, the YA/Contemporary Fantasy I finished before Grim Light. BotH is technically the last novel I wrote, since I'm still fixing GL and I stopped halfway through Pink Bandana Girls. So we're truly going back in time here.

But this is the farthest I go. Before this...meh.


The rusty blue Buick was parallel parked on the street directly in front of the quaint-looking brick building. I instructed Rilla to park down the street, two spots from the corner.

"Are you sure you can do this?" I asked as Rilla flipped the visor down, exposing a small mirror.

She ran her fingers through her long curls. "Can, yes. I can flirt like nobody's business. Want to...not really, but I'm willing to sacrifice myself for the cause." She pulled a tube of lip gloss from her purse and applied it with expert speed.

"Well, thanks in advance. I know this won't exactly be pleasant, and I appreciate it."

She shrugged and turned to me, her shiny lips gleaming in the sunlight. "I look at this like a trip to the dentist: it's not fun, and it may even be painful, but it'll be over quick, and then I can just forget all about it."

"In a way, it's even better than the dentist--you don't have to go back in six months."
Rilla chuckled, but her eyes turned serious. "I'm more worried about your part, actually. Do you really think you can break into a car in broad daylight?"

I had actually been trying not to think about that part.

"Don't worry about me," I said, struggling to reassure her as much as myself. "If you're going to worry about anything, worry about whether the secret's still in the car. This is all pointless if he took it out."

"Oh, it's there. Darren may be clever, but he's lazy and arrogant, as well. He would never imagine anyone could con him or steal from him."

"How's the traffic on this street?" I asked. The café sat among other cute little business on a narrow street that branched off the main route through town. Since we'd parked, only one car had passed, but even light traffic concerned me. If one person who knew me saw me breaking into Darren's car, I was busted. And this was a small town, so a lot of people knew my face already.

"It's not too bad," Rilla said, applying powder from a compact, "but you'll still want to watch your back. What about the people in the café? It has two big windowseats that face the street."

"Just keep an eye on the other customers. If anyone stares too long out the window, create a diversion. Drop a glass, fake a heart attack, anything."

Rilla let out a loud huff of air. "Yeah, right. No problem. Should I put on a clown suit and do a little jig?"

I grinned. "You can if you want, but I don't think Darren will be as interested." Rilla rolled her eyes.

"We need a signal," I went on. "Some way I can let you know when I've got it."

"Just come to the car and lean on the horn. Once you're done searching the car, it doesn't matter much if we draw attention to ourselves."

She took one last look in the mirror, fluffing her curls and smacking her lips. Then she flipped the visor back up. In my heightened state of anxiety, as my nerves jangled like a tambourine, the sound held the frightening finality of a prison cell door slamming shut.

I pulled the Slim Jim, a long, flat strip of metal with a notch cut into one end, from my backpack. Arching my back and bracing my feet against the floor, I slipped it into the waistband of my jeans on my right side so it rested against my leg and pulled my shirt down over the handle, which stuck out past my waistband. Rilla tried to look nonplussed.

"Ready for your close-up?" I asked when I was finished.

Rilla tossed her hair over her shoulder and smiled coyly.

"Ready for your felony?"

Lucky

When I started this blog two and a half years ago, I thought it would just be a fun place to document my progress as a writer; somewhere to let loose all those thoughts and theories that arise during that long, wonderful, arduous, exhilarating process known as "writing a novel." You know, just another place to get the voices out of my head and onto the page.

I didn't know I would make such wonderful friends, and that has been the best surprise of all.

First Tia. We started reading each other's work, helping each other with query letters, consulting each other on decisions (I think the email thread in which I debated whether to enter the Golden Hearts lasted a week!). She's a great writer and a dedicated reader, and her insights never fail to blow me away. She sees things that I never thought of before, opens my eyes in ways I didn't think possible.

Then, when I was at the 2008 Pennwriters Conference, frequent commenter Eden asked me to write an article for Toasted Cheese about conferences. That opportunity, offered at such a tumultuous time in my writing life, bolstered my confidence--and going back to my old newspaper roots and writing in article format was incredibly fun. I must've done a decent job, because she's now reading Grim Light. Considering that she's an ABNA award semi-finalist (go read it! go review it!), I can't wait to hear her thoughts.

Lisa popped up in late 2008, offering to read Battle of the Hexes when I was considering self-publishing it on the Internet. She's a reader of Tia's, as well, and I think of her as our cheerleader. Unfailingly insightful and helpful, always enthusiastic, she pointed out aspects of my book that no one had noticed before. She's now read Grim Light--you can see her thoughts here--and as I go through her notes and apply her advice to the novel, I'm certain that we're making it a better book--together.

I met Steven on Absolute Write, early this year, after he found my blog and asked for some advice about starting his own. He's added his name to my reader list, and I've added mine to his. Considering his poetry, I'm eager to get started on his novel, A Birthday Suicide.

I don't even recall how Jen Hayley and I met. But I've been cheering on her progress, as she snagged an agent and is now, I believe, on submission, and I can't wait to see more success from her. Partly because it's so exciting, and partly because she keeps on posting teasers that make me desperate to read more, and I want to go to the bookstore and buy the darn things, but I can't because they're not there yet, and it's very frustrating, and it makes me write with excessive italics. I tell her to stop torturing me, but she keeps doing it. So maybe next Tuesaday I'll fight back with a little of my own...

So basically, I think you guys are so full of awesome, it must be bursting out of every pore. And I just wanted you to know that you're making the writing so much less lonely, and for that I thank you.

No April Fool's here, because it's the damn truth.*

*Argh. More italics. Darn you, Jen!

The Fear

Fear is a huge thing in this writing game.

I'm afraid that I'll never make it as far as I want to.

I'm afraid that the words will stop coming.

I'm afraid that the ideas will dry up.

I'm afraid that each novel won't live up to what I have in my head.

I'm afraid that my readers, when they give me praise, are just trying to be nice--and that I'll think I'm better than I really am.

I'm afraid that my learning rate will plateau, that I'll reach a point where I can't improve anymore.

I'm afraid that my genre will go south, that agents won't be interested and editors won't be acquiring it when I finally manage to write the right book.

I'm afraid--and yes, this is ridiculous--that I'll stop loving the writing. I'm afraid it'll become a chore to me, that it'll be tainted with the bitterness of rejection.

I'm just plain afraid.

Fear is like a disease. It spreads from one thought to the next, infecting each with anxiety and doubt. If not treated soon enough, it can disable and destroy you.

I don't know how you treat it. Everyone has their own methods. Mine is fairly simple, and can be condensed into one word:

Write.*

When I'm writing, it's so much easier to push the fears back. Yes, they're still there, lurking in the dark corners of my mind. But the writing quiets them, calms them, makes it easier to concentrate on what's important. Maybe it's just because the writing distracts me, but I think it's something else: the love of writing is strong enough to beat back fear.

So when those dark corners grow larger and larger, when the voice of doubt shouts louder than the others, I sit down and I write. Or I think about my next project, and let the excitement for it do its job. Or I just remember all the good times, those thrilling moments when the characters become real, when the right words are close at hand, when the plot takes an unexpected turn.

Before I know it, I'm smiling. And that right there is the first step of recovery.


*Please consult your health professional before seeking treatment. Side effects may include euphoria, voices in your head, grammar nazi-ism, and obsession with fictional characters of your own creation. If you find yourself sitting in a cafe, wearing a beret and talking about "your art" or "the craft", please contact your doctor immediately.

In Between

So I've carried this idea in my head for almost a year now.

It started as just a germ of something, inspired by a big news story. After that FLDS compound in Texas was raided last April, I decided I wanted to write something involving a fundamentalist religious cult of some kind. That was it. That was all I had. The idea of someone being stuck in one, with no way out, and being fundamentally (hehe) different from her fellow members and unable to reconcile her life with those of her peers really attracted me.

Keep in mind that I normally, at least in my long fiction, write about witches and reapers and kids discovering their magical powers and such. So you wouldn't think that "fundamentalist religious cult" would be right up my alley.

I let the idea just sit in my head for a month or so, and then one night, I brainstormed on it. Just opened my notebook and started writing down ideas. And everything just came out, came up, came together. That germ of an idea merged with all the germs in my brain, the ones that I'm normally interested in. I have no idea how or why this happens. It's like my brain requires ink and paper to make things concrete.

The idea has continued to simmer since then. I made some false starts on the beginning and did some reading and research to put everything together, but then I got a job and had to focus on one book. Grim Light was that book.

And now GL is almost done. After some discussions with beta readers (and I'm sure there are more to come), I figured out what needs to change, what I need to work on. And I'm determined to get that work done...because I want this book off my plate. I want it to be done and out there and ready to be seen. Mostly because I'm proud of it, and I want to send it out in the world to have its chance.

But also because there's a tasty plate full of scrumptious morsels over there, and this one in front of me got cold long ago. And some of those scrumptious morsels got rearranged into a really solid meal the other day, as I was driving, and now I feel really ready. I can do this. I itch to do this. I want to get sucked into a plot, a character's mind, a story in my mind that has to travel to the page. I want that nervous, all-consuming feeling that I have to be writing every second or it'll all float away.

But there's GL, sitting there, whimpering to be finished. For good. I've been such a good girl so far, staying dedicated to one project...

So what am I going to do today?

You totally think I'm going to just work on GL, because I'm a good girl, and because I'm so ethical with my writing, and because I'm practical like that, don't you?

Hehe. I'll show you.

I'm going to do...both.

The Busy Bee

Listening to: The Hives, "Hate To Say I Told You So"

Why haven't I been around you ask? Oh, I don't know...it could be blog malaise. It could be blogger's block. Or it could be that my life has gotten so freakin' crazy that I can't tell my right hand from my left anymore.

Okay, so I couldn't do that to begin with. Whatever.

Seriously, it seems like I'm spread out all over the place here. I don't mind it so much, though. Let's make a list, so I can feel even more overwhelmed:

• Still querying on Battle of the Hexes. What can I say--I'm slow. I don't have too many agents left to go, but I tend to query when I have the time. Which, lately, hasn't been very often. And for the past month I've been waiting for a query critique on a writer's forum from a pretty awesome agent, who's on my list anyhow. I figured I'd wait and see if I could get some good advice before continuing.
  
  When's the query crit, you ask? TODAY, I answer. Am I nervous, you ask? HELL YES, I answer. Who's the agent, you ask? STOP ASKING QUESTIONS, I answer.
  
  Lesson: query faster for the next one. I think I'll send out ten a week, regardless of when/whether I receive replies. That way I can just get it done and over, instead of dragging out the process for....dear lord. A whole year. Yeesh.
  
• Grim Light is out to some betas, and I've gotten some great feedback. I need to do at least one more round of revisions before I query. I hope to be ready by mid-April.
  
• House-hunting/selling: We just got a storage space, woo! So I have to start packing some junk away so the house looks all uncluttered and spacious when it's showtime. Which, it being spring, will be very soon. What I love about this? I'm going to pack away pictures and knick-knacks and stuff, and then in several months, whenever we finally find and get a house we love, I'll get to unpack them. And it'll be like Christmas! I love that. Yes, I'm weird.
  
  Also, I'm spending this weekend cleaning. That is NOT like Christmas.
  
• Brainstorming for the next one. I expect to start as soon as revisions on Grim Light are completed.
  
• Judging for the Golden Hearts. That took more time than I expected, and was certainly an interesting experience.
  
• Working on my website. Yes, that's right. The blog will be moving as soon as the new website is up and ready. Which, again, I hope to have completed by mid-April, so I can comfortably use the email address that comes with my domain for my e-queries. The website thing is a new-ish arena for me, so it's been slow going. I learn as I go...and I don't go very fast. If I set aside one night a week to work on it, though, I should be done by my deadline.
  
• Work. Oh, that's right. The day job. It's starting to get down to crunch time. As it's just a temporary gig, I expect to be done by June...but I was also supposed to be done last September, and they kept me on. So that is certainly subject to change. I'm surprisingly comfortable with this.

And, aside from family and friends and all the usual stuff, that's my life these days. I think that, once I hit mid-April--and especially once our current project at the day job is done--I'll have more time for blogging.

So...what's been keeping YOU busy these days?

Grim Light Playlist

UPDATE to last post: I don't think you have to register with Rhapsody to listen to this list. I can't be 100% sure, but you may be able to listen via the link in the sidebar without registering OR signing in.

The playlist is available over in the sidebar, through Rhapsody. But if you can't get that to work or just wanna view the songs, here they are:

1. Middleman - Bright Eyes
2. Chasing The Sun - Alex Lloyd
3. Autoclave - The Mountain Goats
4. Bad Sun - The Bravery
5. Winter - Jason Webley
6. Thunder - Boys Like Girls
7. Get Lonely - The Mountain Goats
8. Blue In The Face - Alkaline Trio
9. Under The Ground - The Working Title
10. Other Side - Dispatch
11. I Must Belong Somewhere - Bright Eyes
12. Hopeless Case - Less Than Jake
13. Little Death - +44
14. Yellow Birds And Coal Mines - The Scene Aesthetic
15. Against the Night - Jason Webley
16. Dance With The Devil - Breaking Benjamin
17. Cemetery Lawn - The Rosebuds
18. Hold Hands And Fight - The Rosebuds
19. Slow West Vultures - The Mountain Goats
20. Your Neck - Alkaline Trio
21. This Is A Suitable Valedictory - The Scene Aesthetic
22. This Is Not The End - The Bravery
23. The Coroner's Gambit - The Mountain Goats
24. Hallelujah - Paramore

Writing & Music

Yes, here it comes. The blog that every writer writes (especially the YA ones, for some reason. We love our music, I guess). The blog...about music and writing.

I never used to be able to listen to music when I wrote. From my first "novel" (I use that word loosely in this case) all through college and a year beyond, music would just distract me. This fact actually kind of bothered me, because I wanted to listen to music while I wrote. A lot of times, as soon as I would finish something, I'd pop on the music just to feel some relief, to get something else in my head.

The only time, during all those years, that I used music when I wrote was when The Husband and I got our first apartment together. It was in a house divided up into three or four apartments, and there was one right next to ours. The couple that lived next door was...interesting. He was, as I called him, the Jack of All Trades. If I needed something, he would tell me that he used to do it, but for some reason was unable to now. Case in point: when I locked myself out of the apartment, and needed to get to my very last class of college--ever. He informed me that he used to be a locksmith, but his equipment was in Ohio. Then he told me that I should keep a key in a magnetic box under my car. Buddy, I thought, I left the barn door open and the horse is already ten miles down the road--and you are not helping. Also, when we got our wedding pictures back, he informed me that he could edit them all to look absolutely perfect (*ahem* I already looked gorgeous, thank you, and the photographer did a great job with editing)--but he didn't have his computer anymore. I wondered if, should I need a Sumo wrestler for some unknown reason, he would offer his services except that he didn't have that weird loincloth-diaper thing they wear handy.

Anyhow.

His live-in girlfriend was quite loud, and spoke very slowly. She was quite nice otherwise, but this could get annoying to a serial-sentence-finisher. I'd be sitting at my computer, trying to write, and she'd be talking on the other side of the wall, and I could hear every word. And I wanted to finish her sentences instead of the one I was trying to craft in whatever masterpiece I was working on.

So--in that case--music. Loud, loud music.

Then I got my first tech writing job. For the first few months, the small office I worked in with about seven other people was rather quiet. I never bothered listening to music, because it was easy to get wrapped up in my work in such a (relatively) peaceful environment. Then an employee returned from a long business trip. An employee I'd been warned about.

You see, he had severe untreated sleep apnea. He would fall asleep quite frequently at his desk, which was two over from mine. And snore. Loudly.

That first day he was back, he fell asleep three times before lunch, for an average of a half hour each time. I spent my lunch hour at Target, picking out headphones. From then on, as soon as I heard the first snore, those headphones got popped onto my head, and blissful music would replace all sound.

And from then on, I vastly preferred having music handy while I wrote.

This preference slowly evolved into something. I was still working on my first (real) novel then, and I can honestly say that no particular songs popped out at me as appropriate for it. Once I started my second novel, however, a few did, and I created a small playlist of about nine songs. The trend continued with my third, and a bigger playlist was created--about thirty songs. I used it when I needed to get back into the mood for the story, when I felt blocked, whatever. What at first seemed a procratinatory tool became very useful at my lowest writing moments.

I never organized these playlists, however.

Until now.

Let me tell you, this was an otherworldly experience. See, usually I just scribble down a song in my notebook if I'm writing and it speaks to me; if I hear it while I'm writing, I pop over into a special document I keep just for my playlist and add it. Sometimes I'll hear a song while I'm driving, and I practically melt at how perfect it is for the book. But it's always just a random group of songs, never a structured set that reflects the book itself.

When I actually ordered the songs in a manner that follows the plot and pace of Grim Light, I felt this natural high come on me, this feeling of completion. Here was this set of songs that rises and falls with my plot, that speaks in the voice of my narrator, that follows her path. And it was wonderful.

And now I'm sharing it with you. I posted it in the sidebar, so if you'd like (and if it works, ahem) you can pop over to Rhapsody and look at the track list or even listen (although I think you have to sign up for that, but I'm pretty sure there's a free account that will allow you to listen to up to 25 songs, and there are only 24 in the playlist).

And in case it doesn't work, I'll post the plain tracklist in my next post. It won't make nearly as much sense to you as it does to me--obviously, since you haven't read the novel. But what is a blog if not for sharing things that don't make sense to others.

Anyhow. I'm all hyper now, so I'm going to go channel this energy into something useful. Like revisions. Or bouncing around the house like I'm on a pogo stick. Or chasing the cat. Something.

What bands or songs speak to your novel, if you have one? Do you listen to music while you write? If you have a playlist to share, please do in the comments, or on your blog (and post a link back to it in the comments), because I'm always open to finding bands and music I haven't heard before.

Wheeeeeee!

Revisionland

Listening to: Jack Johnson, "Holes to Heaven". Gotta say, it's nice to have a laptop with speakers that I don't cover with my hands when I type. Much more logical, yes?.

I'm still stuck in Revisionland.

It seems like I've been revising this book forever, but it's only been since December 8. Yeah, yeah, that's a bit of a long time, but remember that I had Christmas in there. The holidays always screw me up--all the hustle and bustle, all the buying and wrapping and traveling, makes it hard to work.

And then there was the avoidance. Oh boy, was there avoidance.

When I first started writing this one, I had no idea where it could go. Once I flipped the idea around in my head a bit, I saw some possible paths, and I took one. That path, in the end, required me to take a bit of a risk.

The scenes that are in my protagonist's POV are written in first person. Her voice just jumped at me as soon as I started, so there was no getting around it. The story demanded it. Which was fine with me, because I do first person a lot better than I do third. A LOT. While yes, this is something I should work on, I can't really change what the story is asking, can I?

Okay, done with the excuses now.

The story also, however, demanded another viewpoint character--my antagonist. That's one of the downfalls of first person--you can't really tell what's going on anywhere but around the protagonist, and since she couldn't have any personal contact with the bad guy for the first half of the book--didn't even know he existed, really--I needed to throw his POV in to up the tension, as well as help the reader get to know him.

It started out in third person. I didn't really want to take that very risky move of having two first-person viewpoint characters. I quickly realized that his scenes were becoming rather annoying, though--he was cardboard, one-dimensional, and kept spouting all these cliche bad guy lines. "She will be mine." "I would not fail again." Blah, blah, blah.

So I switched all his scenes to first person, sometime last summer. Surprisingly, it seemed to work--it fleshed him out quite a bit, got me much farther into his head. It helped me come up with a plausible backstory that explained his current actions. And that backstory even begged the reader for a bit of sympathy, which I like. I'm not a fan of antagonists that the reader automatically hates.

It was only when I finished and was reading through the manuscript that I realized: his sections were also ridiculously telling. Since he was alone most of the time, and we were stuck in his head, there was nothing for him to do but tell us his plans, hint at why he was doing what he was doing, fume over this and that. I wanted to smack him. I wanted to smack myself.

So I made a plan to add another character to his scenes, a sidekick or cohort of sorts, someone he could talk to.

And that's where the avoidance came in.

This seemed like such a big project, I couldn't help but shy away. The little voice in my head whined, "But we already changed all his scenes! I don't wanna do it again!"

I finally got to work on it, though. And on a whim, I changed the scenes back to third person. If done with care, I can keep the things that cropped up in first person that helped flesh him out. And boy, I'm only halfway done, but those scenes are so much better now. The dialogue in there, plus the character I pulled from the second half of the book and into my antagonist's scenes, who amuses me (he's very impassive, and it infuriates my antagonist, which pushes him to do things he might not do otherwise, just to try and get a reaction from his cohort).

I'm going to try to finish those scenes today--just power right through them. Looking back over how these sections have evolved, I can only say that, once again, writing has surprised me.

I don't care how long you do this--there will always be something that takes you by surprise. And that? Is just one of the many reasons why I love it.