Moving Forward

Today, after feeling a little guilty for working on Signet, I decided boo to all that.  I need to move forward in the series.  In fact, if I want to give Signet stewing time I'd better get hopping.  In the unlikely event that I sell Masks this year, Signet better be ready close behind and, well, if I haven't finished writing the rough draft I may be looking at a rush job.  The idea fills me with horror.  Over the years I've shortened up my editing time considerably on novels, but it still took me a good 2-3 years to get Masks into decent shape.  So, forget the reward system.  I'm going to write me a novel!  Yay!

Another Sub Flies Off Into the Sea of Holes

I may have to stop posting about my agent queries if I keep sending out one a week.  This could get boring for anyone following along.  For me, on the other hand, every query is a new adventure.  Jumping through the hoops, finding or guessing preferences, adapting and polishing summaries and bios and similar tasks are keeping me entertained and on-edge.  In this case on-edge isn't a bad thing.  But it's not stress-free.  I've caught myself, after reading yet another set of guidelines, thinking oh gawd, I sent a query off just last week that includes a feature that is a pet peeve of this agent, now I'm doomed because I bet the other agent hates that too!  It doesn't stop me from persevering, but holy moly I'm glad I don't have nuts because at times it feels like I've been kicked in the groin when I think I might have made a mistake.  Having said that, the hope is worse than worrying I might have blown my chance to get a good agent.  If this was just an exercise in futility I could sit back and flow with the process.  Instead I get these jagged moments of maybe, just maybe.

Hey, aren't I supposed to be writing or something like that?  

Actually I did get a chance to work on Signet today.  Because I've done so much editing recently that I get distracted by thoughts of going back and enriching the setting, increasing tension and all that.  It's getting easier to ignore those thoughts, and they're coming to mind less often.  I'd say I'm shushing my internal editor, but what's really going on is that I'm getting sucked into the story.  The internal editor can scream as loud as he wants once I'm deep into the world.  I won't hear a thing.

Bliss

I feel like I'm being very naught.

Signet is now at just under 14,000 words. The King's Breed is at a little over 10,000 words.

Progress on Masks--zippety do dah, zippity-yay!

My lame excuse is that I really want to hear from my readers before I proceed with the edit. After all, their insights will definitely inspire me, and will certainly change things about. Why fuss with it twice or three times when I can fuss with it just once?

Sounds reasonable to me.

But the real reason is that I love writing first drafts, and I get to play with two at once. Yippee! Bad me!

You know that time I mentioned writing and discipline and all that? Well, um, do as I say, not as I do.

Woo hoo!

Excerpt from Signet

He didn't have to go to the Church, however, but to the neighboring Court. It was a long, rectangular black building with a graceless, blocky entrance, also watched by two guards. These doors would always open, day and night.
"Because vengeance cannot sleep until justice is done," he whispered, paraphrasing from poetry.
The guards straightened up and looked wary as he came up the narrow stairway. Without question, they opened the doors. Interesting. He didn't have to declare his business, and they didn't escort him either.
He didn't need an escort. He knew the way.
There, in the cold, plain hallway, the bench where he'd sat and waited his turn at regular intervals from age eleven to age nineteen. At the moment an old woman sat there, nodding beside a middle-aged man who had a sleeping baby in his arms. The man hugged the child closer when he noticed Lark. The shifting drew the old woman's attention. She looked Lark's way and stared boldly, sizing him up as if death held no fear for her anymore. Then she looked back down and clasped her hands tight over her belly.
The door opened and a girl of about twelve years in a dirty skirt and dirtier blouse came out. A cold voice followed her. "Next."
Oh, that voice, so familiar. The old woman and the middle-aged man didn't move. Lark nodded thanks to them and walked in.
Icy blue eyes gazed up and froze. The dark-haired priest stared, the pen in his hand still after a long stretch of scribbling across a ledger. His mouth tightened and he closed the ledger book.
Lark set the bottle of brandy on the desk. Anger bubbled up from nowhere and everywhere, a hatred for this priest that ran so deep it was a part of his spine. The priest hadn't done anything to the boy Lark had been. He'd only been a stone in a cell wall, and as free of personality as rock, but still Lark felt a powerful urge to destroy him. "Remember me?" Lark asked.
The priest turned around to place the ledger among many others in the bookcase on the wall. Then he turned back, folded his hands together on the table, and looked a long time at Lark's face. Defensiveness and loathing gave way to realization in the priest's expression. "Yes."
Lark sat down. "I'm here to pay off my indenture."
The priest continued to stare a moment before he pursed his lips. "Clever."

Ridden by the Muse

What's my best metaphor? I like ridden by the muse because it has this being screwed in both a good way and a bad way implication that fits the way that writing has (yet again) taken over a lot of my quality time. Then there's sunk into fantasy. I'm definitely sinking, although there's a quality of being swept along a swollen river factor, probably with a waterfall coming up soon. In the zone: definitely zoning out for very long periods of time whether I'm at the computer or not, working out what's going to happen.

What's getting written? I've been swapping between Signet, the sequel to Masks, and a concept that I've restarted twice before and I think I've got it right this time--working (ugh, can't even bring myself to call it a title, more like calling it names when it gets on the bus) King's Breed, which was previously Kingmaker. Really need a new working title for it.

Anyway, I started out Signet wrong, which is normal, so I restarted it. Following the theory of deleted writing isn't always wasted, I realized that I could use that false start as a logic train for Lark. Basically, on his long ship voyage back to the mainland, he thought out as many possibilities as he could. If he'd picked the most paranoid and reactive path, like I started him out with, he'd quickly paint himself into a corner and wouldn't be able to do anything without taking even worse risks than the ones he'd been avoiding. So, rough draft two starts out with him taking the tiger by the tail, and when Winsome protest that ack! too dangerous what are you doing?!! he can honestly say I couldn't think of a better way to get it done. Call me stupid, but this is how it has to be or we'll fail. Believe me, my writer tried it a way that seemed much smarter and we got stuck in an incredibly crappy place. So just relax and enjoy the impending doom.

The issue with King's Breed that I'd been having was not enough of the right kinds of magic. I tried writing it completely without magic and that didn't work either. The characters themselves, their souls are steeped in magic and under the threat of gods and creatures far more powerful than them and that's where they operate best. 'Normal' problems roll off them like water off of oilskin. And yet I didn't want the typical amorphous, worshipped sort of gods and typical magic, because then everything comes off shallow. (See how many drafts of this damned thing I've tried??!! You'd think I'd just give up on it altogether.) I think I've got it this time. Magic is soul, and soul is magic. The farther away you get from the soul's tether, the more difficult employing magic becomes. Most can't affect anything outside their own bodies. Really magical creatures/people can affect things they are intimate with (interpret intimate freely here.) Super magical creatures can affect things they touch as long as the other soul is on board with the changes. Very powerful magical creatures can overcome another soul's will and dominion within the husk. And the most powerful of all, those refered to as gods, can affect things with souls without even touching them (though even they need to be pretty darned close.) Suddenly my conflicts clarified, and the danger was clear. It's been a fun ride for this first 5000 words. Don't. Want. To. Stop ...

Daydreams

I'm supposed to be polishing Masks but instead I've been daydreaming constantly about the second book. Luckily it's raining, and it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon. This means I'm probably off the hook as far as getting the yard and a half of mulch out of our pickup truck and into the garden, therefore, I can be very bad and start that very first (aka sucky) draft of Signet. I haven't hatched a plan for the last book of the trilogy yet aside from the climactic triumph/horror, but that's okay. I'm sure plot will present itself while I'm writing Signet. I'm not sure this needs to be a trilogy. Two books would be fine. But I'm also not convinced that two books, or a trilogy for that matter, is all I've got. It's a pretty plot-heavy universe and playing there is fun. If readers agree, this could end up being a series of unknown length. It would be fun to take Mark/Lark into old age. He would be a nasty player as an older man.

Quote I'm playing with to drop somewhere in Chapter Two of Signet: "I'm learning that the number of scars a man's body can wear are infinite. There's always room for one more without compromising the presence of all the others."