Wednesday Wanderings

So as I continue to do planning for my next novel, I've come to realize I will probably need to build a glossary for both point of view characters.  The magic system involves synesthesia, and both characters are magic-users.  Their forms of synesthesia, however, are very different, which means that given the same scene, both would perceive it with unique aspects.  That said, synesthesia is consistent within the individual, which means that to save my sanity, I have to keep track of the links I create without constantly having to search back through the manuscript.  I also have a couple other magic using characters in the storyline, which may mean making notes on how they "see" (or otherwise) things.

I am planning to have a few conversations revolving around the narrators seeing another character through different lenses.  I also might make a point of describing a significant landmark or two, but I haven't decided yet.  Certainly I want to make sure that I do pay attention to the synesthesia and not just brush it off as an intermittent special effect, and I think setting up a glossary will help keep me focused.

Story sale!

I've just sold my fantasy story "Waterways" (which has a particularly entertaining backstory that I'll share ... some day) to StoryHack Action and Adventure, due out in Issue #6 (probably near the end of the year).

Wednesday Wanderings

Happy (slightly belated) book birthday to Scylla and Charybdis!  My sprawling, epic science fiction novel came out in April of 2018.  It garnered some lovely reviews, and I'm still terribly proud of it ... especially as I never thought of scifi as my wheelhouse.  It was a book I didn't really want to write at first:  it started as a short story which editors kept saying needed to be a novel, and oh, I fought that.  I also never expected, when I started writing, how important the homebase of the story would be.  When I started writing Scylla and Charybdis (as a book), I envisioned it as a milieu novel, an exploration of a universe undertaken by an outsider.  But as I wrote the opening sequences, I realized how important Anaea's home was to her, and how it would inform the whole rest of the story.

So much happened in the writing of that book I never pictured.  I had no idea the character of Flick would pop into existence, all but fully formed from the first sentences.  I didn't realize how deeply I would end up delving into the politics of the warlords and the matriarchs.  I didn't know where Anaea would finally find her place, only that we would discover it together.

New Coat of Paint

So with my life settling out a little - for now - I've had some mental bandwidth to devote to other things.  I've decided to try out a few experiments with upgrading my social media presence. 

On Twitter - @lindseycduncan - and my Facebook author page - LindseyDuncanWriter - I'm going to be sharing images and links of the fantastic and the funny under the hashtag #UnicornIsle.  I've always had an affinity for unicorns, and Unicorn Isle is the "imprint" name of my harp CD, Rolling of the Stone, so it seemed fitting.

This won't affect this blog too much, though I may write a few articles or share intriguing links, and of course, I'll continue to put up my SF/F Goodreads reviews, as well as nonfiction / other books I think might interest readers and writers of speculative fiction.

Wednesday Wanderings

Having finished my draft of Surgeburnt, my fiction writing dance card has some free space, and I thought writing some short stories would be a nice change of pace.  I had a couple of ideas at the front of my brain, but they promised to be lengthy, intense, or both, and in my state of mind, I wanted something lighter and easier.  So I decided to write a short story about my Sniffer.

I mentioned this character a while back:  I came up with her as an alternate way to review my wine studies, by incorporating wine knowledge into a loose narrative.  I never wrote much of it and it was never intended to be a "real" story (too much infodumping), but I came up with the framework of an interesting setting and her backstory, and I thought ... why not use it for a short story?

The why-not, of course, is that I never named her ... and now, at the part in a stand-alone short story where I usually just pick a name and roll along, I've tumbled to a halt because I know I'm going to do more with the character, so the name is particularly important.  I'm sure some writers would say, "Just pick a name and change it later," but I can't do that.  As soon as I select a name, it and the character begin to adjust to each other.  Unnaming is nearly impossible for me.

You can imagine the headaches I've had when (ever so rarely) I have had to change a name ...

Wednesday Wanderings

So this past weekend, I finally finished the first draft of Surgeburnt, my post-apocalyptic science fantasy novel.  The setting was out of my wheelhouse, a stretch for my skills, and the plot required some delicate handling, because it involved two threads:  one, the present storyline, and the second, an out-of-order retelling of the events and people who got my narrator to that point.  They both came to a climax at the same moment.  However, the main plotline had threads that needed additional resolution, so I wrote a final action sequence to cap off the novel.

Because I hadn't planned on the continuation - and because of the chaos in my non-fantasy life - the end of the novel felt like wandering to a halt, rather than a resolute jaunt across the finish line.  But it is done, and I'm satisfied with the conclusion ... and oh my stars, there's a lot of editing to be done.  The book is enormous, coming in over the 150k mark ... which is at least shorter than the first draft of Scylla and Charybdis, and I'd like to think I have more tricks in my bag now.

So for now, Surgeburnt goes onto the shelf, for an editing eye after I polish off (or give up on) Undertaking Chances, my quirky little for-fun zombie project that turned out to have more potential than I expected.

To end, here's two songs I associate with Surgeburnt narrator, Maren - the first song I chose for, and the most recent:

Control - Halsey

Baby Outlaw - Elle King

Wednesday Wanderings

I know it's been radio silence on this blog for a while.  It's been a crazy few months.  I've been studying for the CSW (Certified Specialist of Wine) which exam I just passed - a huge feather in my cap.  Work has taken a lot of my emotional energy, so I've spent most of my non-studying time zoning out in front of the television.  I've come up for air enough that I really miss writing, and when I have the focus for it, the blog hasn't been the center of my attention.

But enough of that.  I wanted to talk a bit about sequel-itis, the impulse authors have to continue one book (or sometimes, one short story) with another.  It's not a disease I suffer much from.  (And yes, I use the term "disease" tongue in cheek.)  This might surprise you.  I've talked before about how I like to write stories with, "Yes, but ..." endings, which naturally lend themselves to the next chapter.

But for me, I'm content with leaving things open-ended, with a tale tied off in frayed knots.  When it comes to short fiction, I'm hyperactive:  I'd rather be on to something brand new and shiny.  When it comes to novels, on the other hand, whenever I reach the end, I already have possibilities and potential for a sequel, but I'm also a pragmatist.  As a professional writer, I'm not willing to put the time and energy into a second book until I know there's a chance it will see the light of day, which means selling the first ... and I'm not there yet.  Plus, by the time a book gets through the process of editing, submission, and potential acceptance ... you guessed it.  My hyperactive mind has moved on.

Does that mean there might be a sequel to Scylla and Charybdis?  I don't know yet.  I had two distinct possibilities for the direction, but there's a lot of water under the bridge between then and now.  There's also so much new on the horizon, different worlds for me to explore just as Anaea did.

Wednesday Wanderings

Anatomy of an edit, different story:  second (thousandth) verse, same as the first.

I'm working through short story of mine now, Written In Stone ... and I use the term "short story" loosely, because it originally clocked in a bit over 10k words.  I remember this very clearly because it was written for a monthly challenge on fantasy-writers.org, back in ye olde days when the challenge was capped at ten thousand words.  The first draft of Written in Stone was significantly larger than that, and I went about a crusade of sneaky word cutting.  I finally got it just under the mark at around 11:15pm on the last day of entries ... and then my computer crashed, meaning I lost the last three hours of trims.  At that point, I threw up my hands and gave up.

(The challenge, by the way, was to write a story inspired by a specific song - the song left up to the writer.  I started with "Writing On The Wall" by Blackmore's Night, which is very much a fantasy sort of song to start with, but then something very incongruous crept in:  Miami Sound Machine's "Orange Express."  Of such unlikely collisions are my best ideas made, so I went along with it.)

So the story went into my files until ... well, now.  Approaching the process of editing, I decided to print it and do a paper read-through / mark-up.  I usually only do this for novels; I choose to do it with short fiction when I feel I need a stronger grasp on the big picture.  Why the printed word does this better for me than words on a screen, I couldn't tell you, but that means my first pass is effectively a 1.5:  as I go back over my suggestions in my terrible, scrawled handwriting, I sometimes rethink them, change them ... or can't read my own writing and have to stop and recreate what in the world I was trying to say.  (More so in a novel where it took me longer to get through the manuscript, granted.)

In any case, there were a number of overall concerns I had.  First of all, the worldbuilding was very oblique, with a steep learning curve for the reader.  It needed puzzling out and for the reader to hold onto pieces of information until they were clarified.  Fine for a novel, maybe, but a tough road to hoe in a shorter (... relatively) piece.  Second, it's a story of intrigue, but one very tightly focused on the narrator.  I had to make sure those aspects came through clearly.  Less urgently, but still important, the dratted thing was/is still much too long.  Surprisingly (to me, at least), I've found the paper edit very effective for finding places to cut.

Thwarting that need to cut is the fact that I think I need to add one more scene, or at least a fragment of scene, at the end, to truly tie up both the plot and the main character's emotional arc.  Still, when it comes to balancing the two, the story needs to be as long as it needs to be; I'm not going to leave necessary pieces out (or hack them free, pirate-style) to fit into a set word count.

"Chains" now available in Kzine!

Blink and you (... or at least I!) miss it:  my story "Chains" is out in the current issue of Kzine!  Check it out: 

Kzine (Issue 23)

Song Styles

For Christmas, I got Elle King's new album, Shake The Spirit.  I'm a big fan of Elle King; I like to describe her music as "Wild West Rock."  The thematics and lyrics remind me of the roughest parts of an old-school western.  (The two songs that most people are probably familiar with - "Exes & Ohs" and "America's Sweetheart" least fit into this mold.)

There's one song that reminds me very strongly of Maren, my narrator in Surgeburnt.  Not that I think anyone would try to babydoll her:  she's almost six feet tall, athletic, and essentially has venomous talons ...

Baby Outlaw - Elle King

Wednesday Wanderings

If you've been watching this blog space (which is a bit like watching grass grow, only less organic and more purple), you may have noticed that it's been quieter of late, fewer posts.  That's because I haven't as much time to write.  In fact, my ratio of brainstorming-while-doing-other-things time to writing time has been such that I can't keep my thoughts restricted to active project.

Which is why I've been playing around in my head with a concept of a group of investigators, directed by a seer / mage afflicted with wild magic.  There's a big secret underlying the magic of this world ... and our mage knows this.  It may not be the rationale for all the missions she assigns the team, but it definitely influences her decisions.

So the obvious course, even in a story with multiple third-person points of view, would be to omit her, leave her as a shadowy figure in the background, and let the secret and her purpose be a big reveal near the end of this imaginary novel.

But to be honest, I'm inclined to a different strategy:  have the mage be a point of view character from the start.  Let her know what she knows and let the reader in on the secret ... but not the other characters.  There's opportunities for so many levels of tension here, for characters mistrusting or misinterpreting her motives (and the reader screaming, "No, you fool!"), for learning the personalities of the characters and building the anticipation of how they will react to the truth ...

A long time ago, I read a book on writing which discussed the weaknesses of the trick / surprise ending.  When the writer is trying too hard to startle the reader, they lose out on other opportunities ... and if the story "plays fair," the reader may get to the answer ahead of it.  (This whole stream of thought ties into my personal theories about treating the plot of a story like a mystery, in the genre sense.)  Sometimes it's worth it ... sometimes, the more effective story pulls back the curtain.

A great example of a series where the reader knows more than any one character, and tension builds waiting for these in-story revelations, is Jana Oliver's Time Rovers series.  These characters come from two different societies, each of which totally change the game in their own way.  Watching them discover each other is far more fun than dropping a bomb on reader and characters at the same time.

Of course, this is all theoretical anyway:  this isn't even a project I've seriously considered writing.  But it's been a fun mental exercise, and I think it helps me as I develop the "real" ones.  Or ... who knows.  Maybe this will blossom into a novel in its own right.

Wednesday Wanderings

Lemming-like, I approach the topic of my year in review.  Initially, I thought that it would be a depressing topic, at least where my writing is concerned.  Then, I realized I had forgotten the biggest news of my year:  the publication of Scylla and Charybdis!  It didn't register because I sold the book long before that and spent months in the editing process, so I've been basking in that since before 2018 began.  But April 15, 2018, is when Scylla and Charybdis debuted to the world, and I loved introducing it to potential readers.

Overall, though, 2018 was a year of gradual progress rather than dramatic breakthroughs, but that doesn't mean I had no momentum.  I sold stories to new markets, including a long-time goal of mine - Andromeda Spaceways Magazine - and other editors who were a pleasure to work with at Metaphorosis and KZine.  Though it hasn't been as swift as I would like, I've been finishing edits on Unnatural Causes, and I feel like I've made more headway with it than any pre-submissions edit.  I'm closing in on the end of Surgeburnt, which is unlike anything I've ever written before.  And finally, after months of research on synesthesia, I'm crafting a world that centers around it as a magic system.  I've also had a few hints and whispers that I can't yet divulge.

Looking forward to what 2019 might bring.

Song Styles

I've gone through a bit of a hibernation period as a harper.  Not that I haven't been performing and teaching, but before I started on my Christmas repertoire, I noticed that practicing had become a chore.  I wasn't looking forward to it the way I used to, and was even putting it off.

I've come to the realization I need to make a change.  Pre-Christmas, my goal had been to take old pieces from my repertoire that had gotten dusty and revive them.  A sensible project, but not strictly necessary:  even without these contributions, I have enough "active" music to play a solid three hour set, which is usually the functional limit for this poor harper's fingers.  (I did seven hours in a day once, lunch and then dinner, but I came out bleeding.  Literally.)

So apart from one or two obligatory repertoire projects - I need to revive / finish a couple classical tunes and make sure The Entertainer is still in the pocket; the latter is *not* a chore, because it gives me a total kick to play - I'm going to let myself play around, goof off, try things on a whim and see where the music takes me.  I don't need the tight discipline from a professional standpoint, and on an emotional level, I think I need to let go of the reins a bit.

Ha ... not like that's in my nature.

I've done this on the writing side.  I was feeling grumpy and that writing was becoming something of a chore.  That's when I decided to do a purely for-fun, goofy project that I thought was unsellable:  the zombie novella.  And I've never had so much fun writing something.  I'm approaching a review of it, and maybe it's not so unsellable after all, but the greater point is:  it rekindled a spark.  Maybe letting myself play will do the same here.

I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions, so the timing is coincidental.  From a harp standpoint, I've just gotten out of the Christmas rush, so it's a natural point for, "What next?"

Play on.

Wednesday Wanderings

Happy Boxing Day, (belated) Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Wonderful Winter Solstice ... whatever you choose to celebrate or ignore, I wish it all to you with a homemade candied cherry on top.  I've been almost radio silence on this blog for most of the month due to the craziness of the holiday catering (and musician) season, plus some personal malarkey keeping me running amok.  (Amok amok amok!)

I haven't been writing as much as I would like, in part because a good chunk of that is editing, which takes more brainpower, and generates additional and undesirable desires to stab something.  Seeing as I work around knives, it's best to be cautious.  I have actually been contributing writing for a work feature, Kitchen Wisdom Wednesdays, and that's been a lot of fun.  I've toyed with posting Foodie Fridays here, but I know myself and I fear I wouldn't maintain it.

In my (leisurely, molasses-esque) editing, I noticed something new.  I've had a couple short stories go to press over the past few months, and both editors thought I used too many speech tags and, to a lesser extent, too many action cues connected with dialogue.  Now, for me, I often find that's a comment I give other writers in reverse:  their dialogue can feel like "talking heads" to me, words floating in space without clear connection to characters.

As I went back through these stories to trim up speech tags, I found I resisted it.  It made the characters' speech feel disconnected to me.  Somehow, having tags in particular spots made the dialogue feel more grounded, more attached to the character speaking.  What I realized is that it comes back to something in my underlying nature.  I'm a very kinesthetic person:  I experience the world and learn through action, tactile sensation, movement and activity and *doing*.  So cutting those ties - via cutting the speech tags - was very disconcerting to me.

To some extent, I still feel as if I make good choices on this topic; I also feel that part of this is stylistic, a writer's way of crafting prose.  But this whole experience has taught me to look more closely at the dialogue and analyze, not always listen to the instinct I wasn't even aware of before.

Song Styles

Another few months, another set of music CDs to entertain me upon my driving ... driving ... so much driving.  As always, I create CDs with themes, whether it be "House and Home" or "Long Distance" ... and then one set that where the connecting theme is word association, the title of one song suggesting / playing off the next.  Sometimes, admittedly, the link is tenuous because I'm bound and determined to get a specific song in there ... and other times, my brain is just peculiar.  You decide.

Shivers - Rachel Platten
Ice - Sarah McLachlan
Cold Shoulder - Adele
Get Away - Chvrches
Don't Shy Away - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Whisper - A Fine Frenzy
Scream It Out - Ellie Goulding
Cry - Faith Hill
Cry to the Beat of the Band - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Is It the Beat? - Selena
Dr. Beat - Miami Sound Machine
Medicine - Shakira
Recovery - Broods
Better Life - P!nk
Good Life - Rachel Platten
Life Uncommon - Jewel
No One Like You - Sarah Brightman
Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera
It's Raining Men - Geri Halliwell
Echoes in Rain - Enya
Cue The Rain - Lea Michele
Rain, Tax (It's Inevitable) - Celine Dion
Pot of Gold - Dian Diaz
Wrong End of the Rainbow - Anne Murray
Wrong Side of the Sun - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Brighter Than The Sun - Colbie Caillat
Sun, Moon and Stars - Loreena McKennitt
Heavenly - Lea Michele
All This and Heaven Too - Florence + The Machine
Heaven/Hell - Chvrches
Who the Hell Are You? - Emma Bunton
Who's That Boy - Demi Lovato
Fell in Love With A Boy - Joss Stone
A Boy Like That - Selena
My Boy Builds Coffins - Florence + The Machine
Building a Mystery - Sarah McLachlan
Ritual - Ellie Goulding
Black Magic - The Green Children
The Blackest Lily - Corinne Bailey Rae
Flower - Liz Phair
Opening Up - Waitress soundtrack

Wednesday Wanderings

Since I've had a number of short story sales lately (huzzah!), I'm working on editing a new story to put into submissions soon.  This tale, "Lip Service," is a contemporary fantasy. where phantasmal creatures resembling bees secrete magical energy; their sting puts victims under their spell.  The story is told from the perspective of the teenaged daughter of a hunter who gets dragged into her mother's life.  It is also chock-full of references to both the word "kiss" and phrases / idioms that involve it, hence the title.

Editing it has been a bit of frustration, though.  I've gone through it twice now, and each time, the goalposts of what I need to revise change.  On the bright side, it's mostly tweaks and expansions, adding more detail rather than serious alterations to the plotline.  Though part of the point of the story *is* that the character is a teenager unsure of her direction in life, I've tried to sharpen her goals and motivations.  Another goal in the editing process was to intensify the sense of stakes - a fine balancing act between the trivial and, "Why would her mother let her get involved with this?"'

And then, just as I reached the end of the most recent pass through, I realized I needed to work a bit more on the line of investigation the story follows.  Why didn't I pick this up the first time through?  Am I just an idiot? ... don't answer that.

Making all this trickier is the fact that the story was just too long, somewhere over 7500 words.  Ideally, I want to get it under 6000 ... which means a lot of cutting while still building up the elements mentioned above.

Another point on my mind is the tone.  The story is light and sometimes humorous, but it's not intended to be comedy - it just incorporates human foibles and a narrator with a tongue in cheek streak.  It also includes some in-jokes about Celtic / traditional musicians that are probably only funny if you're part of that community.  I could push it over the line into outright humor, but I'm not really feeling that.  Conversely, it wouldn't bear the opposite treatment:  I'd have to strip out some of the bones to make it read as a truly dramatic, serious tale.

I'll be going over it one more time, but if I'm not satisfied after that, I may have to shelve it for longer to get somewhere I'm happy with.  Or maybe, perfectionist that I am, that's just not possible, and I should give up and be sensible ...

Ha.

"Super Solutions" now available!

The Fifth Di ... December 2018 issue is now out, with my story, "Super Solutions."  Check it out:  

The Fifth Di - December 2018

This is my oddball little superhero reality television show story.  I had so much fun with it, but humor always seems to be a harder sell ...

Song Styles

One of the reasons I have this Sunday feature is because as a professional harper, music is very important to me, though my listening tastes are quite different from my playing tastes, where I specialize in Celtic and early music, with some contemporary / show tunes.  

Sound like your cup of tea?  Or perhaps it perfectly matches someone you know?  (Here comes the shameless plug ...)  My harp CD, Rolling of the Stone, could be the perfect holiday gift.  Check it out here:

Purchase Page

Please do buy directly from me; Amazon not only takes a sizable cut, they require me to send them replacement CDs one at a time, which makes any profit I might make virtually nil.

If you buy from me and give me permission to cut the shrink-wrap, I would be happy to autograph the CD liner - just let me know.

Wednesday Wanderings

Notes from a worldbuilding ...

The world creation aspect of this project has certainly taken me longer than in the past, but it's not because of the quantity - and believe me, I have one set of world notes that clocks in at around 50,000 words, as long as a short novel, so quantity is a thing I have been known to indulge in - but rather because life keeps getting in the way.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been doing some things differently this time around.  Rather than defining a few global elements and then narrowing down to individual countries, I've spent a lot more time discussing trends, tendencies, and, "some places are X, some places are Y."  This means that as I get into writing up descriptions of specific locations, I'm defining where each falls on various spectrums ... and I keep finding that I need to circle back and add more detail.

This is a little irritating to me; I'm not usually this disorganized.  Also, it means that I'm not always putting the information in exactly where it makes sense.  For instance, it makes more sense to have something minor like currency after discussions of larger elements like technology and gender bias, but that's not where it fit in.  Of course, since I'm not writing an RPG guide (or for anyone but myself), and since Word has a handy-dandy Find function, it only makes a difference to my anal-retentive side.

And now you might be wondering (or more likely, you're not) why I can't just put the information anywhere.  It has to do with the way I write.  Even beyond narrative flow, my sentences in stories tend to connect to each other, a chain of logic and poetry.  It's why I often find it so difficult to add sections to my stories:  it's artificially forcing another link into the chain.  Of course, maybe the logic falls apart a bit here in that I find it much easier to cut, but it's easier to remove a link and connect the remaining ends ... maybe.  I'm a writer (harper / chef), not a jeweler.

Right now, I'm reaching the point where I'm setting up two rival nations whose struggle (or more particularly, the struggle of the people representing them) will play a part in the plot ... and one of my goals is not to make it too symmetrical.  I don't want them to be too perfectly opposed.  The real world, after all, is not so neat.

Song Styles

(Past few weeks have been very hectic, hence the radio silence here.  Hope I'm back in action now!)

I talked a lot about the various portions of my Scylla and Charybdis playlist during my blog tour, but I don't think I ever posted the list in its entirety.  So here it is, a combination of general theme, specific character / situation inspiration, some tongue in cheek inclusions (mostly for the gender aspects), and songs I otherwise associate with the novel:

Us Amazonians - Kirsty MacColl
Walk This World - Heather Nova
Suddenly - LeAnn Rimes
Defying Gravity - Wicked soundtrack
Drops of Jupiter - Train
There Is Nothing Like A Dame - South Pacific soundtrack
I Do - Lisa Loeb
Breathe - Midge Ure
Turn This World Around - Amy Grant
I Enjoy Being A Girl - Flower Drum Song soundtrack
Children of the Revolution - Kirsty MacColl
Wishing Heart - Lisa Loeb
The Safest Place - LeAnn Rimes
Don't Rain On My Parade - Glee Cast version
It's Raining Men - Geri Halliwell
Free - Sarah Brightman
Poor Little Fool - Helen Reddy
Always Tomorrow - Gloria Estefan
Fire Under My Feet - Leona Lewis
In The Arms of the Milky Way - Laura Powers

Most of this list was composed years ago; the only recent addition is the Leona Lewis song.  But I've always been a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to new musical releases ...