A Bit of a Wonky Transition

Posted on 17 April 2012 by Hayden

And so the winner of the epic work-in-progress stare-down last week turned out to be Helleville, which wasn’t surprising, seeing as how that story’s already nicely outlined in my writing journal, while the fairy tale I began was more like a let’s-see-what-happens-next thing.

On one hand, I’ve been able to make significant progress with the new book. As of today, I’ve got over 8,000 words written, and so far, so good. I’m slowly getting the hang of Noah’s voice as well as his mother’s, and I’m about to let loose with the setting.

My inspiration for 'Helleville'.

On the other hand, I’ve been having a pretty tough time transitioning from Eric’s point of view to Noah’s. I don’t want Noah to sound like Eric at all and give readers the same old, same old.

That said, I do find it difficult to fully get inside Noah’s head. He’s Eric’s complete opposite by way of temperament, and Helleville is written in third person limited omniscient, so there’s even more distance between the reader and the main character. Since I’m still in the process of writing it, I’m way too emotionally and mentally close to the story, so I can’t make any objective judgments about how the story’s turning out overall. That won’t happen till the massive revisions after the first draft’s written, but I do wish I could accurately assess it right now.

I must admit that I’ve been tempted to just chuck any attempt at new contemporary fantasy series and simply focus on expanding Masks to however many volumes it’ll take me to write it (I initially gave myself no more than ten books for the series) and then publish occasional short fantasy fiction on the side to keep my historical fantasy skills up to date.

But I don’t know how that would work out. I’m currently reading a historical mystery series that runs eight volumes long as I type this, and the author told me that she’s just resurrected her characters and is working on a new installment. I wonder if she’s doing that because of the same issues I’m currently having, switching over to a new character and a new world in the same genre after being fully immersed in something else for six volumes of the series. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is, and I empathize completely.

At any rate, it’s full steam ahead with Helleville, and while it looks like this book will end up being a full novel, I’m still not sure whether or not to turn this into a series.

The Wobbly Noob Diaries: The Cure For Indoor Cycling Ennui

Posted on 14 April 2012 by Hayden

Winter apparently decided to show up, finally, and we’ve been battered with several days of not just steady downpours, but also thunderstorms. Considering winter here in Northern California was like spring, Nature appears to have had one too many Mojitos during Christmas and got her timeline screwed up. If anything, I don’t think she’s ever recovered from her hangover.

At any rate, rains mean hooking up the bike to the trainer and trying hard not to snooze through intervals. But I’ve discovered a great way to counteract Indoor Cycling Ennui, and that’s to have Netflix on and getting myself reacquainted with Miss Marple (the Joan Hickson series, that is).

I only saw about half of the entire series when A&E used to show tons of fantastic British titles (Pride & Prejudice, Poirot, Inspector Morse, Emma, etc.). Watching the episodes from Season One has been a nice jog down memory lane for the most part, and since I’ve also sampled from the more recent production with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple, it was fun seeing the differences in interpretations. From what I understand, though, the more updated version takes a lot of liberties with the source material, and while I’ve never read the books (I really should), I still find that I prefer the “old school” version much more.

Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple is really cute, sweet, and quirky. I’d love to have her as a great aunt or something. But Joan Hickson does a great job evoking jadedness, which I think works much better in mystery-solving. I’ve yet to see the most recent version (I think there are three different productions now of Miss Marple*) with Julia McKenzie. Again from what I’ve seen online, viewers didn’t take to that production as well, i.e., the consensus seems to be that Joan Hickson is Miss Marple in very much the same way that David Suchet is Poirot, and Jeremy Brett is Sherlock Holmes.

Mind you, despite being entertained by Netflix, I still managed to get good cycling workouts in. But that can never, ever replace the beauty of being outdoors and on the roads. With the weather looking pretty nice this coming week, my Miss Marple viewing will be strictly on a “downtime” basis.

* Since 1980, that is, but I could be wrong.

It’s Like Cutting a Vein Open

Posted on 11 April 2012 by Hayden

The worst thing for me is starting a new story. Getting the words down is like cutting a vein open or flaying myself alive because, usually, while I have the story pretty much mapped out in my head, the opening scenes are always – always – so nebulous and elusive.

Right now I have two – count ‘em, two – freshly started drafts of a couple of stories. One is a French fairy tale, and the other is Helleville, which I attempted yesterday. I’ve been going back and forth between them, revising here and there, and largely fretting over whether or not I should move forward with both or with just one. I’m technically not a multi-tasker, and I don’t like having my attention divided between two or more unfinished stories. I hate working like that. It’s not normal for me. I have to decide this week which story to focus on all the way to the bitter end, and it’s not going to be easy, the way I vacillated like a spoiled and indecisive brat yesterday.

I’ll try to look at stuff tonight and see if something will make up my mind for me.

In the meantime, I’ve been drooling over Prometheus, which is Ridley Scott’s newest film and possibly a prequel to Alien.

I mean, holy shit, I’m salivating and pawing away at my laptop screen every time I read an article about it or see the trailer for the gazillionth time. :D Sure, it looks completely Hollywood-glossy by Alien standards, but I don’t think it’s really fair to compare two different films that were made decades apart as far as special effects technology’s concerned. Still – being a worshiper at the Blade Runner shrine, I’m really champing at the bit, and I’m planning to do a sci-fi marathon leading up to the theatrical release of Prometheus. I’d like to see the first two Alien(s) films plus Blade Runner and John Carpenter’s The Thing. All classics, which can never be surpassed by this generation’s crop of sci-fi and horror filmmakers.

Stumbling to My Feet, Finally

Posted on 6 April 2012 by Hayden

Oh, drama! This week was the designated week for me to get started on a new story, which was technically Helleville. Unfortunately I got bogged down by my hand-wringing over novel-length stuff and ended up scrapping an entire writing day to all kinds of writerly existential angst. I got online, dug up articles and blog posts regarding the short fiction market, and in the end, I got into an email exchange with my publisher regarding her thoughts on the matter.

And that helped a lot, in addition to a quick chat I had with a writer of lesbian romance fiction who’s currently self-publishing fairy tale novellas.

Anyway, I decided to cut back on my novel-length fiction – at least indefinitely. My plan is to keep my Masks series going with novel sequels, of course, but that’s also because Eric’s universe is packed with so many possibilities as far as sequels go. And since there’s really no major story arc that strings all of the books together, I write them episodically – like a sitcom, pretty much.

But as far as new contemporary fantasy and especially historical fantasy stories are concerned, they’ll all be published as either novellas or novelettes, which will all be bundled together as single author anthologies following specific themes. I like the idea of having a huge backlist of shorter fiction from which readers can pick and choose (I sound like iTunes, don’t I, but that’s the idea) what they’d like to read without the burden of being stuck with other stories they don’t care for – or books that are too long for them, considering my writing style, which might not sit well with some readers. But if they want collections either in e-book or print, they also have that option.

I may be writing series novellas, but that’ll depend on how well the stories do with readers, i.e., if there’s enough of an audience to justify sequels. By and large, though, the shorter stories will all be linked thematically. Original fairy tales, ghost stories, and boarding school fantasy stories are lined up so far. More themes will pop up as I go along, but the beauty of writing these shorter pieces is the fact that I can also alternate between them and not get bogged down so much from writing in the same genre for too long, the same way I get burned out on marathon writing that’s required by novels.

Today I finally started writing the first novella (the story’s too elaborate for a novelette but not enough for a novel), which I’ve yet to title. It isn’t Helleville, and I did this to shock my system into moving again after several days of lazing about and resisting the idea of creating something. On that writing day that I wasted, I was really hell-bent on working on Helleville, but I couldn’t get a single word written. I figured then that, having written two contemporary novels in a row, I was just burned out on the genre. Now that I think about it some more, it could very well have been a combination of genre and story length in addition to my indecision.

And I’m glad I held off and talked to my publisher and that other writer. Maybe I just needed that bit of reassurance from people in the know after having devoted four years straight to nothing but novels. Letting go is always a hard thing for me; separation anxiety tends to hit me hard, even though the logic of the situation is so glaringly obvious. At any rate, I’m ready for it now, and I look forward to exploring uncharted territory.

Signal Boost: Kickstarter for Roulette

Posted on 4 April 2012 by Hayden

This is something I should’ve done yesterday but was unable to for a variety of reasons, so I hope this is still timely. Anyway, I just got a heads up from Tina Anderson regarding an indie artist’s struggles in getting her project off the ground after being cheated out of her payments by the press that contracted her.

This book was at first written by my dear friend Tina Anderson, and bought by Dramaqueen, a small publisher in the USA, and it was published for a short-short time in their magazine called ‘RUSH’. Suddenly, they stopped paying me, and the writer of my book, because I hear they ran out of money, this is what I think, because they stop printing all Rush books, and stop contacting me! I’m owed monies for my work on Roulette and so is my writer. My Tina is not quiet like me, and made a terrible noise to this company, and managed to be paid only in copies of RUSH. She sold these copies on Amazon for a time, and sent me the monies from these sales. I was elated, and happy, but very guilty, because I think she is owed monies also—but she will not take her half of sales, from me. Read more

The link I shared in the blockquote will take you to Laura’s Kickstarter page, where you can also check out a sample of her work, and her art is incredible.

I love indie artists because of the richness and diversity of their contributions to markets that otherwise would stagnate under the weight of the money-first-artistry-second dictates of the mainstream publishing world. So if you’re a supporter of indie graphic novels, especially of the LGBT bent, perhaps you can help out or even boost the signal where you are.

Thanks so much. :)

Back to the (Kinda Sorta) Daily Grind

Posted on 1 April 2012 by Hayden

Well, that’s been a pretty good break from the (publishing) rat race. :) I disappeared from the ‘net for a few days – or more like reduced my online time to an occasional tweet or simply reading blogs I subscribe to. This is a new month, and this week marks the beginning of the next writing project I have on my plate, which is Helleville.

I mentioned before that I decided against turning this into a series, and the main reason why is because sustaining a series really depends on how much of a loyal audience you win from the first book. I don’t know to what extent the numbers over at Goodreads are any indication of readers’ ongoing interest in the Masks series, but it’s pretty understandable (and logical as far as I’m concerned) if numbers taper as the series goes on.

Then again, maybe I’m just shooting myself in the foot by letting reader responses dictate the series. One argument against that runs along these lines: what if I get inspired with more stories in the same universe, with the same characters? Then I should go ahead and write them, yeah? Yeah.

The long and short of this is “I don’t know. Maybe I should just play it by ear and not fret over it so much.” That sounds reasonable enough. Fretting is in my blood, though, so as far as that’s concerned, it’s way, way easier said than done.

As for historical fantasy, I haven’t decided yet on how to publish future stories. I continue to vacillate between novels and novelettes (ideal length would be 15,000 words), the latter also leading to single author anthologies that are themed, but I find myself leaning more and more toward novels. I’m just more used to that length even though I started out publishing short stories. The good thing is that at least I don’t plan to get started on that French fairy tale till after I’m done with Helleville, and that’s largely because I find the holiday season very, very conducive to inspiration for historical fantasies. :D Yeah, I know, I’m bizarre that way. But at least that’ll give me enough time to mull things over some more.

At any rate, I’m back and refreshed and ready to tackle something new. I’m pretty excited about the new book even though I’ve yet to name the characters. That’s because when I take a break from writing, I really take a break from writing. Now it’s panic time.

Hayden Thorne

LGBT Young Adult Fiction