Grief

My Dad will have been gone four years this July. It was a long and hard death for him. He'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's nearly 20 years before. He outlived my Mom by five years, and struggled to the very end in a body that literally disintegrated around him. My sister and her son took care of him and I helped when I could. But in the end we could only wait until he gave up.

I don't remember everything that happened then, but this is what I do remember:

Reading saved my life. My oldest best friend, Loren Rhoads was finishing up her space opera trilogy, In The Wake of the Templars, which she had sold to Night Shade Books. The fact that my friend had made a sale to a major publisher was literally the best thing that happened in.... it seemed like years.

She was on the tightest deadline I could imagine--it was months, where I take years to finish anything. Loren was doing it.

In the midst of all of that, she started sending me the book in progress, chapter by chapter. Now I couldn't tell you if it was one a week or a day, but it seemed as though, I woke up every day to something new, something exciting. Something that wasn't me at work, carrying my phone around all day waiting for the CALL.

My last memory of my Dad was that last day, sitting by his bed, trying to get him to wake up and take some water. It's also of Raena and her adventures. No More Heroes was so much more than a distractaction. It was a story that I could hang on to, in spite of everything. As I read Loren's story, I even had hope that there would be a time I could write my own again. I don't think I ever thanked her properly for that. 

Find all of them here

At the End of Things.

I am dangerously close to finishing a short story that has been on the back burner for a while. I write slowly. And that's also dangerous. Last year when Black Light, my novel, was published, it was the end of three decades of work. It's a rare thing when I come to an end. It's hard, I find to let go.
This story, as it turns out, is a prequel to Black Light. It's about Albrecht Christian as a young man, far, far before he meets Trace. It's set between WWI and WWII, when Albrecht is still adjusting to his new life as a psychic vampire, feeding off the misery and decay of Europe of the time.
I should have finished it months ago, but something has been holding me back.
After the election I could barely concentrate. I was lucky to get six paragraphs a day. I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to feel so afraid.
Awhile before all that a friend said to me, "I don't think your writing is holding you back. I just think that your characters are gay."
I know how that sounds, but she wasn't criticizing my choices, she was commenting on a fact.  Queer stories have a smaller audience than straight. I knew that, but, last year when Black Light came out, I thought the gap was closing. I mean, I read books about straight people, right? And I met a bunch of the people who bought the book.They seemed to be everybody.
But then November came, and you all know that story. So, I spent a while thinking about why I write, and who I write. Because suddenly I became afraid. Afraid that even less people would read my stories.  Afraid that it exposed me in a way that felt new to me. And I forgot that the best fiction is about what scares you. And that good words are dangerous.
So soon I will have completed a story about Albrecht Christian,gay  psychic vampire and his first true love, a powerful black magician and the Loch Ness monster. Yep, you read that right. It turns out that I like the story. iIt might find a home, it might now. But that doesn't matter, really. the finishing of it reminded me to write the story that I have. No matter what.
I think I've got my faith back now.

Without You I'm Nothing

I've been working on non fiction for the last few weeks, which is strange for me. I'm not sure how to do it. One the things I depend on when I'm writing fiction is music. Lots of music. There are soundtracks for all the stories I write. Sometimes I make them, sometimes I use actual soundtracks. The neo-Victorian novel I'm working on now is in turns Pan's Labyrinth and Cowboy Bebop. Yes, jarring, I know. But it works for me. Black Light was full of David Bowie music, especially live recordings, but also it boiled down to two of his songs in particular: The Bewlay Brothers, from the Hunky Dory album, and Lady Stardust--not the version on the album, but a demo that I heard much later.

Many writers I know don't work well with other peoples words in their ears, in fact, I think I'm in the minority. Writing is lonely, and I do better with voices around me.

Which leads me to my point. I just finished a novella called, "Speak My Name." It's the story of a demon, who tends bar. He falls in love one night with a man who can see him in all his aspects. It's out in the world, looking for a home now, so it's been on my mind. This morning, in my facebook feed someone shared a video of Frank's(demon) and Mica's(not demon) song.

What music do you need to finish your stories? Does the music you listen to shape what you write in any way?

September already.

Well, so I owe a few page a day posts from last month stillI . Oh, I've written them, I just haven't posted. Why? Well, I got a little distracted in the last week and a half. Not from writing, but from the novel. My plot to have Adella meet a vampire and come up with a master plan hasn't turned out exactly the way I exspected, because, of course, being Adella, she befriends the vampire and suddenly he's gotta be part of the master plan too. Thanks, Adella.

So I left that alone and decided to pull out a couple of half finished novellas. How many half finished novellas do you have in that virtual drawer, you might ask? Well. Two. Okay, three, if you wanna count Drifter. So, my friend Loren Rhoads is doing this thing where her goal is to have one hundred rejections in a year. I am in awe of that. I haven't sent anything out in forever. So last week I pulled out one the the novellas, and found that instead of half finished, it's really NEARLY finished. I spent a while poking around the ending, and then sent it off.  Then I found a place to send the second one to. But, of course instead of NEARLY finished, this one really is half done with moments of the complete SUCKAGE. And the call's deadline is September 20. O....kay. I've been sneaking up on is sideways. But I think I can have it finished in the next couple of weeks.

I don't know if I'll post pages from this, because mostly they will be rewrites and not rough draft stuff. But as soon as Adella tells me the plan.......

Black Light: Repeating Themes, Nail Polish and an excerpt

Asia looked away.  He didn’t answer, because as much as he wanted to believe everything Trace said, he knew it wouldn’t do any good in three weeks when they got evicted.  Still, when Trace was so close to him, he couldn’t concentrate on that.  He found himself leaning in, letting their arms almost brush before he pulled himself back.  He stared at the chunks of nail polish Trace had flicked onto the sidewalk at his feet.  As Asia watched, an army of ants converged on them, bickering over them, picking them up, carrying them off.  Trace continued talking, not even noticing.  He had no idea that he was the god in their world, casting pieces of sky down to them.

It’s been mentioned that I have a fascination for blue nail polish (the color of Trace’s polish here) that could be evident in this book. That might be true. In high school nail polish at the drugstore wasn’t a reality for me yet. My mother didn’t approve of the colors I saw boys wearing on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. Iggy Pop wore black nail polish—that was certainly not in the approved pallet. I wore Avon, in colors of Blush and Pinkly. Yes, that was back in the day of the Avon Lady that came to the house. 

Black, though, was elusive, even after I started driving. At least is was in my small home town.  The color I remember wearing most, was that metallic light blue that Wet and Wild made. It was .99 cents a bottle, and it flaked off as soon as you put it on, no matter how many coats you gave the job.

What does that have to do with Trace? Because things repeat themselves. Trace wears that same blue nail polish, and then later, Asia notices, after Trace, that Mica is wearing it too. It connects what was to what will be for Asia.

 And fiction echoes life, even if that reflection is sometimes distorted. This little excerpt above is actually an echo of my childhood. I have a clear memory of sitting with my best friend on her parent’s front porch, in the cool of a Michigan evening. I don’t know what we were talking about, but I remember watching her chip off that sky blue polish, and the ants racing from the sidewalk cracks to drag it away. It is also the only clear memory I have of thinking, “I’m in love with her.”  As the ants stole the polish I thought, “I can never ever say that out loud.”

The scene wasn’t in the first draft of Black Light. Somehow it re-surface when I was writing the end. It’s memory that comes to Asia as he regrets his silence and dreams about what he should have said.  

Cover Reveal:Black Light!

Hey look! Here is the beautiful cover for my book, coming in May, from Automatism press. I can't wait till I can hold it in my hands-and get it into all of your hands too! re
Isn'tit beautiful and mysterious? Bioblossom Creative did the art. And below is the blurb, so you can be even more intrigued.

I

It’s 1983, Los Angles, and Trace Dellon, lead singer, knows exactly what he wants; the white heat of the spotlight. When his band, Black Light is offered a record deal, Trace grabs for it, eager to move up from their club gigs. He will do anything it takes to make it.

Asia Heyes, bass player knows what he wants too. It’s not the fame or the adoration of fans and groupies. It’s Trace. It’s always been Trace.  Though it’s been unspoken between them- his other lovers-his audience-push Asia aside. 

With the contract, comes Albrecht Christian into their lives. He is a man with everything but what he needs to live: the energy that runs just under Trace’s skin. But even Trace isn’t enough, and Albrecht finds himself starving.

When everything crashes with a bullet, they all learn the truth. Rock and roll, like magic requires both love and sacrifice. Then Black Light’s fragile trajectory to greatness really begins.

First lines in the dying days of January

So my friend Loren Rhoads tagged me. She recently wrote a blog that included the first lines of everything she is working on now. Whoa, she is way amore ambitious than me!  Go take a look. But anyway, she tagged the rest of us to do that same. So, here goes my stuff:

The book I'm revising about a rock and roll band in 1983 and a psychic vampire is called The Black Light: Trace stands in the wings backstage at the Refugee Club, a narrow shadow.

So, then there's the short story about same psychic vampire's youth, called Knives: I light a fresh cigarette off the butt of the dying one before crushing it into the tray set in the door of the car.

And of course there's The Night Was Not, which is the NeoVictorian third gender romance that I'm stuck in the middle of: Kerry Hazard slid into the pilot's seat of the Starshine as he toggled the print switch on the com console. 

Yep. There you have it. Or at least there you have some of it. I'm not a very fast writer, and some of these things I've  been working on for quite a while. I'm trying to write more every day, and faster too. I'll never be one of those writers who can write ten thousand words a day. But  I think I'm ready to get to the ends of at least these things. Wish me luck.

So, I'll ask the question of the other writers I know: What are your first lines? 

In Which I Fail to Explain What a Crappy Day Monday Was

I'm not sorry that David Bowie is dead. I mean, I've seen enough people suffer to the end of their lives. I don't wish it on anyone. Certainly not on a man that I owe so much. I do feel for his children. I just lost a father, and I didn't even want to be the one to call the family. I can't imagine how hard it was for his son to tell the world.

 Now, this is the place where I tell you that I'm not crazy. I didn't know the man. Yet, I got the news at three a.m. the next day--the very same time that I got the news of my father's death. Soul's Midnight, Bradbury called it in "Something Wicked This Way Comes". When my Dad died, I knew it was coming. I got up, put my pants on and went over to his house.

 No tears. But for Bowie, I cried. And my phone continued to go off until it went dead at about ten that morning. At first it was, "Are you okay?" and "I thought of you when I heard." I heard from people I hadn't seen in a decade. It was all very sweet. But with each text or call, I realized, no, I'm not okay. Not today. There's a hole in the world. Not just mine, Bowie left a hole in people's lives that don't even know that he affected them. He was part of the bones of this century, with his influences in everything from men's fashion to gender politics to children's cartoons. And what wrecks me now that all's said and done is he left us in the gentlest way he could. "It's not that I don't love you," he said. "It's that I can't stay." And he made it as strange and beautiful as everything else he did.

 I'm not sad for Bowie. I'm sad for me. Most of the important things I know about myself, I came to know through his filter. When I was thirteen years old, an insomniac in a small town, I found him, long before MTV, on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. It was I Am a DJ, and it answered so many questions that I hadn't even begun to ask yet. It was a shrill piece of desperation that I could hang onto in the middle of the night. I wasn't alone, suddenly.

 Nothing I could ever say would explain how grateful I am for that. His influences on my writing are obvious, and, again, I'm so grateful that words fail. For everything, really. Thank you for being there to save me in the middle of the night.

The things I (would have) left behind

My best friend and I have always written. We've known each other and have shared our stories for over thirty years. We have lived on opposite sides of the country for almost two thirds of that time, and of course become different people than we were as kids. We've had different lives, but writing has always been the constant.

She asked me, a while ago if she could use a character of mine in a new story she was writing. She would change his name, and the setting, of course, but she wanted to know if it was alright with me if he made an appearance.

I didn't know what to say. I was more than happy to let her have him. I wasn't doing anything with him, that was for sure.  When she began to talk about what role he would play in this new story of hers, I was hit with a wave of uncertainty, as though I was falling back into who I was all those years ago. I was jealous of her new idea, of the writer she was. I felt awful. She had improved her writing so much since then, why was I still struggling with every word?

I wanted to protect what was mine, but I also wanted to let him go. I wanted to see what she did with him. Of the two of us, I had more faith in her than I did in me, to complete the story.

So I gave up my seventeen year old self who felt inferior, and angry about being inferior. That was the first thing, and it wasn't easy. Then I decided to try to be as much help as I could. Not only because she is my best friend, but because I knew I would learn things along the way.

She did finish the book, and my character, who is a relatively minor one, is also one of the heroes. He comes across as a guy who is just doing the best he can while trying to stay as deceit as he can. He's perfect, but he's also not mine anymore. He's one facet of my character, as seen through her eyes, so reading him was so much more fun than I ever expected.

There was another unexpected bonus. She got me thinking about those stories we wrote back then. I decided it might be time for me to start telling my version. I could write that character from the present, with all the things I've learned since we were kids added in. I haven't stayed in the same place, I've moved forward, I've just moved differently. I wanted a story that reflected that, even if only to myself.

The result is the novel I'm working on now, called “The Night Was Not.” It's a neo-Victorian story. This incarnation of the character is called Kerry Hazard. He flies an airship, and is called back to the city of his childhood by an ominous message from a friend. It's a very different story from my friend's novel, which is a space opera (yay!), but the character came from the same place. He was born in the back of a notebook, scribbled in while lying on either of our bedroom floors in the middle of the night. It's where he would have stayed if she hadn't picked him up again. 

The New Year (viewed with dread and glitter)

I'm a little late with the "Last Year In Writing" post, aren't I? Well, actually, this might be my first one.
Last year was..... Complicated. It wasn't all bad. I got to go to Gilchrist twice. That was great. My nephew graduated from High School without giving his mother or me a fatal heart attack.  That was fantastic. My Dad is still hanging on with us, and I'm grateful for that.
Also, we published Out Of the Green (available on bn.com and Amazon.com), and I'm fond of the stories in it. I had a great time writing mine. I wrote two other short stories that have yet to find a home. One's a post-apocalyptic lesbian djin story. Yeah, okay, that one might be hard to find a market for.... And the other... Well the other is an Asia story. I haven't decided what to do with that one yet.
I know I promised to have a book out by late fall last year, didn't I? Well, it's a little late too, (cover issues plus just plain too much life-intrusion) but don't forget about it! It's still coming.
The first two weeks of the new year, though, are for the novel I'm working on right now.  I'm working that subplot.
So, while life isn't perfect (I work in a hell hole, still, and home is really prickly at the moment), I'm working on it. I wish I could be the kind of writer that had big lovely announcements at year's end, but for me, this works for right now.

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Tired of Waiting

Do you sometimes feel like you've spent your whole life waiting? I do. I feel, in the situation I've been in with the care of my father that I've been waiting. Today I waited for the Doctor to read Dad's ex-rays to tell me if his hip or pelvis was broken. Last night, in lieu of sleeping, I waited for my alarm to go off so I could get up and go over to help get Dad ready for his appointment. Today I'm waiting to see if this latest bout of re-arranging my work schedule will be the thing that pushes them over the edge to knock me down to part time. I wait for quiet time to write.....Wait....wait.

 Before I continue this rant, there were no broken bones, luckily. But back to my point. Oh, yeah. I'm not going to wait anymore.

I haven't updated this blog in a while because, while it's been a really productive year for my friends, (Reflection Pond, by Kacey Vanderkarr, available from amazon and bn.com, As Above, So Below, Loren Rhoads and Brian Thomas, Black Bed Sheets Books, available from amazon and bn.com), for me, not so much.

I have decided that's going to change. So here's my plan, and it's secret, so don't spread it around. I'm going to finish "The Night Was Not," before Christmas. (novel). I'm going to put out "The Black Light" this fall (novel), and I'm going to finish two short stories, and finalize the story I wrote for "Out of the Green," the fairy anthology from Urban Fey Press, and then help it to print.

That's it. I'm not waiting anymore.  

The Night Was Not-nano edition

My first frantic post of Nano. I said I wouldn't do it again. Never. Not this year when I'm so busy, not while my Dad's health is so bad. I don't need the preassure of watching the word count spiral away from me. But I am doing it, despite all that. My goal is less about the word count and more about reaching the end this time. I want to see these characters through to their happy--or not --ending.
Wish me luck.

One of those End of the Year posts

I don't really know what to say about this last year. I spent it buried, the same way I'll spend this year, I expect. I didn't have a lot of writing sales last year, and by not a lot, I mean none. That's the danger of writing novels, isn't it?

I'm about 80 pages from the end of The Night Was Not, and that makes me feel....  I don't know how it makes me feel. Exhilarated. frightened and tired, in turns. Much like the characters in that book, I've been standing on this ledge for a while, and I can't decide what the next move will be. Like the main character, I know what I want to happen, but also like Kerry, I'm frightened that what I want and what is to be aren't the same things.

But the end is coming, I can feel it in every word.

As for the other big project I worked on last year, Iron Moon, well, the end is not so near on that one. The lesson I learned with Nano was that I simply need to let those characters live in my head a while longer before I'm comfortable enough to trust them with the story. I spent too much time trying to make them do what I wanted last year. I decided that the only reason I wrote so slowly was that I was slow. Now I realize that there's more to it than that. Oh, yes, I'm still working on the serial to put on th blog, and no, I don't trust the circumstances of my life enough to simply post the first part without having written to the end. Sorry. But soon. 

Really, the new year came in just the nick of time for me. This is the year of finishing, I'm sure of it.
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Nanowrimo

It's November, and I think we all know what that means. Yes, it's the beginning of the holiday retail season, and Nanowrimo. Two things that I don't really look forward to.

Why not? Well, holiday shopping makes me feel, as Charles De Lint says, "Laid low by an ill will." All I can really do is try not to make it my ill will. This year is my twentieth Christmas at the bookstore and the last few have been killers. But a day job's a day job, right? And if I had to sell shoes, or pet food, how much more awful would it be? At least this way I get to touch books.

And Nano? Well, it's November, isn't it? It's dark when you get up at four am to get your pages in. And cold, actually. So why do it? Because I need to finish things.  Because I need to get stuff done and moving out of my hard drive. Nano makes me crazy because of the pressure of a fake deadline, but it also gives me a goal that's out side of my head.

So let me tell you about my Nano project. Iron Moon. Werewolves and fairies. More later on that.  Because I should really get some words in....  Right?

Demons and Angels

I've been wandering again. There's something about being so close to the end, and yet not so close to the end that makes my focus falter. If it ever was that great to begin with. I've been scraping along in my not-writing life, just barely paying the bills--or not paying them, trying to deal with family, trying to make people buy my sewing... It's endless distractions. And I've heard three different people in the last week say that it's easy to avoid writing, because there are so many other things they'd rather be doing. Three. There's something fairytale-ish about that, isn't there? Like a warning. Like all I'd have to do to finish the book is bake three loaves a bread (one with a stone, one with seven kernels of corn, one with mouse fur, but that's another story). Or maybe I should go away for the weekend to a cottage on chicken legs, or....

It's so easy not to write. Because, as Natalie Goldberg says in The Thunder and the Lightning, writing is hard. Sewing is easy, it's finishable. Dishes are easy, they're finishable. Writing is... It's never ending. One story bleeds over into another, and they're all connected in the brain, right? In my brain, Ziggy lives in the same world as Mica and Frank, and the same world where my werewolf pack runs the North End of Flint.

Writing is hard. There's other stuff to do. Each time I hear that, I think, "That's not me." I would rather write than anything else. Anything else. So, why not this? Why write about writing the end, instead of actually doing it? I don't know. I'm stuck at the gates of Heaven. Not metaphorically, either. I'm right there. I didn't expect to be there, and I don't know what's going to happen if we go in....

If we do, will I be done? There's only one way to find out, I suppose.