No More Posts Until 2015!

Hey everyone! (meaning the three people who read this blog) No post today or December 30th, but expect plenty next year.

Of course, you can always check out my Twitter in the meantime!

Bring on NaNoEdMo!

Most writers are familiar with National Novel Writing Month. I say "most" because a writing friend of mine hadn't, but he's Canadian and I'm pretty sure I've worked around a Canadian long enough to get away with the phrase "Those wacky Canadians!" In a nutshell the rules are that you write a novel in the span of a month. Depending on the total word count you want to achieve depends on the number of words you have to type each day. Frankly I think Novella Month would be more achievable, but people have made some pretty good books under such time constraints.

I don't need that though, you know what I need? National Novel Editing Month.

Yes, I manage to procrastinate editing by more writing. I've written an entire manuscript to procrastinate editing the previous one, and you know what happened? I finished it. Now I have two written manuscripts in which neither have been edited.

Editing goes faster though, since the words are already down. You make a few tweaks here and there, maybe add a whole new scene, but it flies right by compared to writing from scratch. Right now The Crystal Witch clocks in at just over 38,000 words, a novella. Luckily the ebook market is more flexible about shorter stories. So, even if I edited a dismal 1,000 words a night (which is the goal I have each night when writing) I would still have it finished in a little more than a month.

More importantly though, Dusted came out all the way back in June 2012, and I don't want to pass the three year mark without publishing something else. What motivated me the most were two things, two authors really.

The first was Kristen Britain, she wrote a book called Green Rider, I already talked about it here, but the focus is how long it took her to write more books in the series. It wasn't that she was busy with other books like some authors, but it must have been some combination of a busy schedule and wanting to perfect it before release. Still, I dutifully read books 1-3, bought book 4 and have never read it (nor, do I think, I will), and now book 5 is out and I'm not even bothering. It took too long for the author between books, and it has taken her literally decades to get to things that were being foreshadowed in the first few books. Yes, you can always go back and reread books, but there are always new authors and stories coming along with promises delivered faster.

Second, and more relevant, is S.D. Tower. Who in the heck is S.D. Tower? This is an author who wrote a halfway decent book ("halfway decent" meaning I read it back in 2003) called The Assassins of Tamurin and then never wrote anything again. A "one hit wonder" except remove "hit"....and "wonder" too I guess.

Point is, I don't want to be like the first author, but I really don't want to be like the second.

So those are my motivations to edit. It won't be pretty and it won't be perfect, and I can't make any promises that I'll have something before the end of 2014, but I'll be working on it.

Let Me Get Sappy For a Moment

For me the holidays have never really meant a lot. Yeah, as a kid it's all the same "OMG stuff!" reaction but, as people get older, they tend to be a bit more family-oriented toward this time of year.


This makes my second winter since moving out of my parents place and, as of September, a full year of living on my own ("On my own" includes parents paying for bills, folding my laundry, washing my dishes, changing a flat tire, and cooking my dinner. Yep, good to be on my own...)

For me "family" doesn't really mean a lot. Whenever extended family visited (or we visited them) I'd be tortured by cousins as they broke my toys (I has toys that lasted 5+ years that only took 30 minutes to break in the hands of a cousin). I have always managed to interact better with adults than kids my own age and I'm glad I finally am one. Heck, I can't wait until I'm 30 so adults won't lump me into the "Stupid Young Adults" category.

You kids wif yer got dern laptops and infinity scarves!

Throw in the usual family drama llama sessions and figure the point I'm trying to make is that Thanksgiving and Christmas have always been a "Why?" thing for me. Had I known it was even a thing, I would have sequestered myself in my bedroom and listened to music with headphones on whenever the family thing happened.

When I got older my family stopped celebrating Christmas. It wasn't that we hated it, or were all bah hum buggery about it. We simply didn't bother. A tree was a pain in the butt to set up and maintain, wrapping paper is annoying, and we already get what we want the other 364 days of the year. Christmas is to me as what Labor Day is to you (except you don't have to hide for 2 months leading up to Labor Day.)

Except this year, it's like my heart melted. Suddenly I want a Christmas tree, something I haven't had in nearly ten years, and I want to put presents under it, and I want to get something special for my parents that says "I know you" and "I love you", and I want to go to their house and spend all day with them and have a huge dinner. We would load the wheelbarrow (or sled, depending on the snow level) full of wood, and I would pet all the cats who miss me (meaning everyone except Sandy), and we would do chores, and it would be lots of fun and as I go to sleep I have the warm fuzzies that only comes from being super duper happy.

Even if I don't accomplish all of that, it does give me an understanding of what real Christmas is.


...But no matter what happens, I will never tolerate Christmas music.

Classes That Should Be Taught at BYU-I

DRV101 - Driving on Icy Roads

DRV 110 - U-Turns are Illegal

DRV 120 - Your Brights Blind Other Drivers, Turn Them Off


EMO101 You're a Grown Up Now

EMO102 Seriously You're A Legal Adult

EMO103 Stop Acting Like a Child

EMO105-A Coping with Anxiety

EMO105-B Coping with Depression

EMO110 Moving Here Won't Solve Your Emotional Problems

EMO120 Helicopter Parents

EMO125 Being an Old Maid at Twenty Years Old


HLTH101 Nobody Cares That Your Mom/Aunt/Roomate is a Nurse

HLTH02 It's Just a Cold

HLTH105 If You're Vomiting It's Not the Flu

HLTH110-A Constipation - Help I Can't Poop

HLTH110-B Diarrhea - Help I Can't Stop Pooping

That Time I was Flash Robbed

Otherwise known as my first Trunk or Treat.

I know we're well past at this point, but if Christmas can sucker-punch me on October 28 then I can punch right back.

Plus, now that it's past October, have you considered adopting a black cat?

So the day started for me actually on October 30th. I worked 12 hour night shift starting at 6PM and had to switch to dayshift as fast as possible (I keep night shift hours even on my time off) so the fastest way possible was to stay awake long after I would have normally gone to bed. I got off at 6 AM, went home, waited for my brother to get up, helped him into his costume (which takes an extra person and 20-30 minutes to put it on), put on mine, and was right back to where I had worked only two hours earlier.

Now, I haven't done anything with Halloween since I was about eight years old. After that we would just buy our own candy and have a Simpsons marathon consisting of VHS tapes we'd recorded episodes on years ago. So it was actually a lot of fun to see people letting their inner child have free reign. There were people dressed up Mario Kart style, including 3 balloons and scooters. Green army men. Enough pirates to form an actual crew and enough witches (self included) for a coven. After getting my fill I headed home, 21 solid hours of being awake under my belt, and took a long nap while playing the "Just one more hour" game for 4-5 hours until my brother got home from work.

It was like having kids except  I actually got sleep.

From there we went to out friendly neighborhood trunk or treat.

Initially it felt like a flash rob, the participants becoming increasingly wild as the sugar in their system hit critical saturation. There were plenty of Elsas this year, and the one girl going as Cinderella was probably mistaken for an Elsa too, but there were a lot of cool ones too. A couple of my favorites were a tiny little Anna with a crochet hat made to look like her hair (complete with white streak) who's name was actually Anna, a Luigi with a ghost vacuum, and a kid in a stack of boxes I had mentally nicknamed Awesome-O.

If you're still young enough to go trick or treating yet watch this cartoon, your parents don't love you.

Now here's where I probably turn into an old coot.

I'm already awake trunk or treats defeat the whole point of the thing and that it has basically broken down into a fast-grab of candy, but what I wasn't expecting was the picky nature of the kids. I had one walk right up, take a good long look at the bowl, and proclaim "nah." And, by the end of the event, our bowl had actually gained different candies. That's right: the children were dumping lesser candies on us.

All I could think was "What the heck?" Back in my day (there's the old coot thing again), when we had to actually walk further than 6 feet for our candy, we appreciated every last bit we got.

I still enjoyed it though. It's been so long since I actually saw children dressed up in costumes that I guess I forgot the whole event of Halloween even existed on that level.



And, on a totally unrelated note do you have any idea how expensive razors are these days?

When You Get Stuck on a Scene

When I write sometimes I just end up getting stuck. Call it Writer's Block, call it your Muse taking a vacation. Doesn't matter how it's said, it basically means you reached a certain point where you can't write any more. This can bring any story to a grinding halt.

Especially when you try to rekindle your inspiration with Cheezburger.

A personal rule I use is that I give myself three days with no writing. I don't force myself to think about it either and instead hope it comes along more organically. It does, especially when I give my brain the opportunity to go on Standby Mode (which I will discuss in the next post). Sometimes I just rehash in my head what I've already written, other times I think too far ahead, and sometimes I work out exactly what I need.

Other times, however, my brain just flat out refuses to cooperate, and my three days are up. What do I do then?

I write anyway.

Sometimes it's my best writing, sometimes it's not. The times that it's not I plow though anyway because, later on down the road during the editing process, I come up with a much better idea or flesh out the one that's already there.

You can give yourself more or less time, depending on circumstances, but I use three days because if I have less I'm distracted with the deadline of getting back to writing. Longer than three days and it starts getting too far from my mind. You want a golden point between the two.

Brain Standby Mode

No, I don't mean burst suppression brought on by events such as hypothermia, I mean spacing out. I call it Standby Mode because I see the brain as a lot like a computer. With no activity it goes into standby mode waiting for outside input to get it working actively again.

As a kid I used to space out a lot. I could do it at the drop of a hat, in a crowded room, or even in the middle of eating. Although not as often, I still space out today.

Just honk if you're behind me and the light turns green.

This is one reason why all your best ideas come when you are falling asleep, or taking a shower. When falling asleep your mind isn't distracted by the input of the day, and when you're not kept awake with other thoughts ("Should I watch Honey Boo Boo or Jersey Shore tomorrow? They're both on at the same time and I can't decide, aaaaaargh!") your brain is free to roam. The same goes for taking a shower. If you're like me you shower pretty much every day.

And if you don't shower at all you probably smell like a hobo.

After a bazillion times showering it's pretty much a routine. It's so routine, in fact, that your brain doesn't even have to devote a lot of thinking toward it, giving it a chance to wander. A shower is also a bit of a sensory deprivation chamber, since the sound of the bathroom fan and water make white noise so that you can't hear the outside world, and there's not a whole lot for you to see in the shower either.

Unless you've got, like, a super rockin' bod.

So maybe you fall asleep really fast and your skin chafes from taking five showers a day, how do you manage a Brain Standby Mode?

Force it.

It's both easier and harder than it sounds. I imagine it's a bit like meditation, except instead of letting go and emptying your thoughts to achieve nirvana or the like you're merely providing your brain an opportunity.

Basically, you want to unplug from everything. No Internet, no TV, no phone, no people, not even a book. You want to make your brain go from focusing on the outside to turning toward the inside. You want it give it an unchanging environment so that it doesn't have to use all of its power processing what's going on. It's why so many authors having rooms dedicated to writing (Neil Gaiman's writing gazebo being a personal favorite of mine.)

Granted, sometimes if you find your brain spacing off about the wrong things (the car, the house, the kids, what's for dinner, work, etc etc) you have to give your brain a little nudge in the right direction. Think of the last scene you wrote, or think of a different scene, or a scene in the future. Play with some ideas, your characters, go through some scenes in your head you don't plan to have in your book.

If you need to, open up to the last page of what you've written, but don't actually write. Sometimes I find myself doing that. I don't stress that I'm not actually writing though, because I'm working it through in my head.

If anyone saw me staring glassy-eyed into the computer screen and asked what I was doing, however, I would tell them "Writing" because, in my mind, that's technically what I'm doing.

Yet Another Maximum Ride Book!?

If you've read my blog posts in the past you know about my Love / Hate relationship with the Maximum Ride Series by James Patterson. Well just last Monday I discovered this:

From Barnes and Noble:

THE NINTH AND ULTIMATE MAXIMUM RIDE STORY IS HERE! Legions of Max fans won't be disappointed by this encore episode in the beloved series about the incredible adventures of a teenage girl who can fly. As Maximum Ride boldly navigates a post-apocalyptic world, she and her broken flock are roaming the earth, searching for answers to what happened. All will be revealed in this last spectacular "ride"- a brand-new grand finale featuring all of the nonstop action, twists and turns that readers can rely on in a blockbuster Patterson page turner!


You know what I say to that? Bull. Freaking. Crap.

This book says to me "Remember that really crappy ending in book eight? Haha just kidding here's the real-real ending!" Book eight is literally titled Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure. I bet this is Patterson's (or, what I suspect, one of Patterson's many ghost writers) attempt at "fixing" the mess of the Maximum Ride storyline that was already so messed up even as far back as book three. So stop, just stop already.

Am I going to buy it? Yes, but my heart won't be in it. It died reading book four, and went through agonal heart rhythm during books five through eight. I'm going to read through book nine and watch as they take a bad taxidermy job and try to make it look better using a baseball bat.

What the series looks like, and also my current expression.

A Sunday Adventure Featuring Footloose, Brony Baristas, and a Zombie.

As you may or may not know I'm quite religiously inexperienced. My parents raised me under no specific beliefs and allowed me to think upon it and decide for myself. I've pretty much made my choice a long time ago, and continued to build upon it from there, but it's always interesting to experience new things.

Deciding to do something different, my dad took my brother and I to a Nazarene Church, which is apparently a Footloose religion that doesn't allow dancing (at least, so I've heard.) Being night-shift I go to bed at about 5am usually, service started at 9. Coupled with the fact that I had worked a long night Friday and got uneasy sleep, meant the whole thing had kind of a sleep-deprived wackiness to it.

Now, the area I live in is about 99.99% Mormon, so if you know anything about them picture growing up surrounded by them, but not being one.

Around here we have shirts that say "BYU Idaho" which mean the same thing.

So, first stepping into the church, I immediately fell to me knees and screamed "THANK YOU JESUS!"

Was it a divine revelation?

No.

...I just smelled the coffee.

Sweetened with the love of our Lord.

The place had a little coffee bar (plus juice and tea and muffins) and it was set up more like a cafe. They played some acoustic guitar group of three people and sang a little like a holy karaoke. The whole time I'm switching my attention span between the music and a picture of Jesus with open/closed eyes that followed you around the room.

Still not as creepy as Potato Jesus though.

Sometime during the singing one woman holds her hand up and I think at first that she's trying to gesture to a friend of hers to say hi. However, on the far side opposite her is an older woman doing it while her eyes are closed. Toward the end of the singing about ten percent were holding their hands up. At that point I start to wonder if I missed the memo.

Maybe they were all directing traffic?

Overall it was an interesting experience, although I don't know if I could consistently deprive myself of sleep like that. Still, the people were very friendly and nice and it looks like a great place to meet people.

Afterwards we went to a place called Villa Coffeehouse, a place I read about in a blog called Lost in Idaho (Hilarious reading about a guy moving from California to live in Idaho Falls, but a some of his subject matter is NSFW, so you've been warned.)

The barista was a Brony, judging by the hat he wore (he also had a Pokemon belt, but that never came up), and he was an interesting guy to talk to. I've never really been to more than just a Starbucks inside of a Barnes and Noble, like a little caffeinated tumor. So this was really interesting, and it had a group of people that I thought didn't really exist in Idaho Falls. I even saw a couple of girls who had some light PDA while waiting for their espressos. At least, I assume gazing deeply and gentle petting means they're more than roomies.

I think it would be rather interesting to see what the place is like in the evening on a weekday.

Afterwards I got home and crashed for about three hours. As much as I still wanted to sleep I knew any more would only mess up my sleep schedule more than it already was. So I dragged my feet into the kitchen and decided now was the time to try some Zombie Cure tea.

That's right kids, the zombie craze has infected tea now, and it is deliciously awesome.

Normally I'm pretty much exclusively a chai drinker, but when I first opened my little bag of Zombie Cure I already knew I was in for something good. It has a sweet, caramelly smell, which is the kind of teas I enjoy. It tasted the same way it smelled, going perfectly with milk and sugar. Best of all? It woke me right up and kept me going for hours.

So, in all, it was an interesting day.

If you hear me snoring, however, don't wake me.

Omniscent Versus Limited

I've already mentioned before about first and third person (as well as the abhorrent second person) but third person has yet another branching option, one of which is better left to people better at explaining things than myself.

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2012/11/third-person-omniscient-vs-third-person.html

Books to Read When You Have Book Depression

I really love dystopian books, especially of the YA variety. The problem is, sometimes they really start to get to me and I find myself getting something I just now named Book Depression. It's basically feeling depressed from having read a really sad or depressing story, and now you need something to contrast all the bleak (but utterly good) books you've been reading lately.

Here's what happened to me.

I guess it must have started when I read Allegiant by Veronica Roth. After mowing through the Wayward Pines trilogy by Blake Crouch and chasing it with The Giver Lois Lowry, I then read The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder, some of Dirty Magic by Jaye Wells and most of Moth by Daniel Arenson (I also apologize for my list of hipster indie books.)

My dad says I use this picture too much.

I had just started Enclave by Ann Aquirre. The story starts in a dank, grey subway tunnel. I was interested, but also felt myself going "Unnnngh" as I could feel the depression of the story kicking right in. I only made it a couple of pages when I knew I had to stop.

What could I read that would kick my spirits back into high gear though? One immediately came to mind and, after some thought, I managed to compile a list of books that I would give to someone if they said they wanted a more happy read.

Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead

This one is a favorite of mine on my Kindle, and the very first ebook I ever read two years ago almost to the day of this post, so it has really stuck with me. It's got a funny cast of characters, a "bad to worse" situation, and manages to give you whiplash through it's flawless combination of comedy and horror. This was the one I grabbed when I was feeling down from an overload of dystopia. Best of all, there's a brand new sequel!


Undead and Unwed by Maryjanice Davidson

 It's the perfect mix of vampires and humor. The story brings the laughs and never takes itself too seriously.

Hounded by Kevin Hearne

While not an outright comedy it's a very lighthearted story most of the time, which is why I would actually recommend it over Dresden Files in terms of overall happy factor. Plus, the author is a complete, lovable nerd, and it shows in every page.

Ithanalin's Restoration

I have almost no memory of this book, but it's been on my shelf for over ten years. Any book about a wizard turning himself into runaway furniture and his apprentice reversing the spell has to be a good way to lighten up your reading.



I have a big stack of dystopian books ahead of me, so I would love to hear about some more happy reads to keep me going in between the dark ones!

How Writers Think

An Open Apology to Billy Burke

Dear William Albert Burke,

You suck.

At least, that's what I used to think.

Yeah, I saw you in Twilight and, like Charlie Swan in the novel, you were just as soulless and forgettable as every other character.

His arms are around her but his eyes are dead

Of course, working with Kristen Stewart tends to cause that to people. The thing is, it's always permanent damage. For example, Robert Pattinson was awesome in Harry Potter, but has promptly sucked since then. You want to know my theory of how you blended in with the vapid crowd of Twilight, yet managed to escape unscathed?

The mustache.

Behold...

Yes, Willy, (I can call you Willy, right? Oh fine, Billy it is...) as you were on the set of Twilight, you were smart to have grown a mustache. There was no other way to resist the dumb that permeated the very air but to filter it through your lip weasel.

That's right, I noticed that no other actors in the Twilight movies have flavor savers, and that you specifically grew yours for the Twilight movies, subsequently shaving it off once they were all finished, leaving your sanity intact.

Sure, I didn't recognize you when you were in Revolution, but I knew I was in love the moment I saw you.



Platonic love, of course. (You're the black cat.)

Though your pushbroom was doomed, it saved you, and through saving you, gave me a far better respect for you after seeing you in your true form.

How does your sword always manage to stay so clean?

So I just wanted to say I'm sorry, Billy, to both you and your deceased snot mop, for ever having doubted you.

The Night Club Scene

You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can judge an urban fantasy series by its Night Club Scene (henceforth known as NCS because I'm lazy.)

It's practically an obligation of urban fantasy writers to have a raving, pulse-pounding, light-strobing, night club filled with sweaty, hollow-eyed, scantily-clad, club-goers. After three or four different books including a NCS you start to roll your eyes (I specifically avoided a night club in Dusted because the main characters are underage, and I felt a Steampunky honky-tonk bar set the better tone for a group of war-tired fighters just trying to have a day off.)

Hexed, by Kevin Hearne, is what brought night club scenes to my attention in the first place. The main character walks in and then promptly walks out, a literal U-turn. Granted, there's some throw-down just outside the club, but it's not set to bass music thumping rhythmically. So, for kicks and giggles, here are listings of night clubs in books I've read:

Kim Harrison's Hollows series:(Can't remember the name of the club (which sounds an awful lot like a line in a Lady Gaga song.)

MaryJanice Davidson's Betsy the Vampire Queen series: Scratch.

Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series: Fangtasia, probably the most well-known example, but certainly not the first.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series: Zero (there are a couple of others, but they vary in classines.)

Barbra Annino's Opal Fire: The Opal (and it gets set on fire at the very beginning, go figure,) as well as a rival night club.

Cassandra Claire's Mortal Instruments series.



Books that I can't remember but probably do have night club scenes are Nightwalker by Jocelynn Drake and The Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs.

Night club scenes are also popular in YA (particularly near-future) science fiction), but tends to have less of an impact, probably has something to do with the fact that alcohol is served there, and main characters of YA fiction tend to be more morally upstanding because teenagers emulate everything and everyone they like.

Which is why fans of Dusted are known to sew crappy homemade vests.

Think of some of the examples of night club scenes you've come across and use that to see if it reflects the tone of the rest of the book. I've found that the NCS gives you a good idea of where the story is going to go, and what kind of person the main character is. The scene can be dark, mysterious, sexy, the cliches, but it can also be action-packed or even kind of goofy, or embarrassing to the main character.

A great way to figure out who a character is would be to mentally plop them in the middle of a night club and gauge their reaction. I've got some characters that would U-turn, some that would join in dancing, and others that would just sidle up to the bar and hope the night is over soon (and one that would pickpocket everyone she bumps into, but she's not allowed into clubs anymore.)

Dusted Gets a Facelift

I've been talking about it for a while now and it was about a month ago when I did it.

Out with the old...

 And in with the new!

To me both covers are gorgeous, but I feel like the second one grabs attention better. As far as I know anyone who has already purchased the book will keep the old cover, while the new one will show up to new buyers. I also made a few minor grammar and spelling edits as well as extra disclaimer/legalese while I was at it. You can check out the new cover on Amazon here!

Oh Look, Social Media!

A couple of days ago I made a Twitter account to help promote my writing. Me and social media get along about as well as oil and water, orange juice and toothpaste, wizards and television. But there are times when I feel like saying something that is far too small for an entire blog post here on Dusted Glen, so I decided to try my hand at Twitter after seeing my brother's Facebook and reeling backwards from it so fast I'm pretty sure I took out a wall in the process.

Nope.

After setting it up and dodging forced followings like bullets ("I don't even know five people!") I managed to get it up and running.

So sit back, relax, and watch me hilariously go down in flames. Come on, it'll be fun! (and I promise no updates from the toilet.)

Again, here's the link.

Writing a Gay Character

This is a post I've fussed with for over a year, not sure how to properly go about it, but it's also a factor in writing that I feel needs to be mentioned. I'm going to tread lightly on this subject by keeping my own views on anything gay as unbiased as possible. I will not say anything for or against gays in any manner, any opinions you see are simply a reflection of your own reading into it.



Except for the phenomenon that is caused by reflection of light in water droplets in the planet's atmosphere known as rainbows.

First, I've seen some well-written gay characters and I've seen some horribly written gay characters. Unfortunately, the latter outweighs the former and, for or against, you're not doing anyone any favors by having a badly written character of any kind.

How do you make a badly-written gay character? In the simplest terms: You make him gay. Period.

Now, before you grab torches and pitchforks, let me elaborate.



I REFUSE TO KEEP READING FOR A PROPER EXPLANASHON!!!111

What I mean to say is that he's just gay and that there is no other characterization to him whatsoever.

Say there is a gay character named Dale who calls himself a slut when he's being (inevitably) spitfire who talks about how absolutely gorgeous all the other male characters in the story are, and is the most fashionable character ever.

Being gay is the only attribute they have and, if you were to mentally subtract that, they don't even equal up to a Bella Swan measurement of characterization. Not only that, but they have to keep reminding friends (and, thus, the reader), via dialogue that they are, in fact, still gay.

"We should let Dale handle the Prom Dance decorations, him being gay and all."

"Being gay means I'm the best at this, remember?"

"Does this dress look good, Dale?"

"Absolutely."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I know what looks good, I'm gay, remember?"

These are pretty much paraphrased from some actual books I've read (and I apologize to anyone named Dale). The only way to make it more obvious is if he were making out with another guy for the entire duration of the story.

How do you make a well-written character? Depth. Take away the single, defining feature about a character, do they still stand up okay? or was that the kick-stand of their cardboard cutout?

By now you're going "Okay, okay! I see what's wrong, but how can I make it right?"

Let's look at Dale again. What are his hopes, dreams, aspirations? What is his favorite movie, what does he do on his time off? When he's in a crowded room what is he doing? What's his house like? Does he read? What do other people like or hate about him? What kind of car does he drive?

Don't immediately go for the gayest answer you possibly can, either. Favorite movie being "The Notebook" is too obvious. Liking Lord of the Rings would be more interesting, especially if he uses the excuse of "there being so many hot guys" when really he's using that as an excuse because he's actually a closet nerd.
 

Characterization comes down to working backwards. Make a character, wholly flesh them out (fill out a character sheet if you find yourself struggling), and then give them that defining aspect, which in this case happens to be the fact that they're gay.

Seriously, no one makes a character based entirely on the fact that they're straight, or female, or Asian, why should a gay character be any different?



"I Want to Write!"

Recently, a coworker's friend's fifteen year old daughter (confused yet?) said she wanted to write. My coworker asked me if I could help her out a bit. My response?

"Sure!"

My expression?

OhgodwhydidIreplywiththatnowIhavetomovetoAustraliaandchangemyphonenumber.

But not for the reasons you might think.

In no way am I going to balk at a fifteen year old deciding she wants to write. I started "professionally" at around that same age (which I already told you about). However, any fifteen year old dreaming of publishing their first manuscript at fifteen years old and becoming a rich-successful novelist with the combined incomes of Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, Veronica Roth, and Cassandra Clare, is going to be more than a bit heartbroken.


Which is why I warn people that...

1. I have to be mean (even though I don't want to)

Lots of people in the past have asked me for help, or have asked for help from anyone willing to on open discussion areas on the Internet.

Problem is, I have to be mean.

Not out of spite or hatred, of course I mean, if a little kid ran up to me with a crayon drawing of their house, I certainly wouldn't say "The house is not orange, there are more windows than that, the roof is hovering, your tree sucks, we don't own a space ship or a dog who can pilot one."

Unless it's actually fanart of Laika?

However, writing isn't a kid's crayon drawing. At its harshest writing is a profession whereupon you release a product that you expect people will pay money for. If you release an inferior product (meaning crappy writing) then people are not going to pay for your goods and services when there is a wide array of said product elsewhere.

In a lot of ways I have to be mean in order to spare you the real mean people.

I've done it before. The phrase "brutally honest" comes to mind. People post little snippets of their work, usually a first chapter, and ask for help. I come in and say "Nope nope and nope. Don't do this and this and this." Unfortunately 9 times out of 10 that person never wrote again as far as I'm aware.

That 1 person of the 10 though, his response? "Holy crap, you're right!" And that's toning it down a little.

The point is, your fans that are sugarcoating your writing skills (be they your parents, your BFF, your New Age Aunt who encourages you in all endeavors) will get your writing nowhere.

All families are required to have at least one New Age Aunt.

Being mean to yourself is a double-edged sword. It keeps you grounded and your ego in check, but it can also reach a destructive point. The latter is what I see more often than the former, your inner mean self is so mean that it causes you not to write anything at all.

This is why you practically need a designated Brutally Honest Person for your writing. Someone who will point out every flaw, but you know you can trust them because they want to help you.

The problem is, I have to be mean (in the eyes of the writer, their fans, their BFF, their New Age Aunt who has decided to put a Feri Witch Curse on me). I'm not, by nature, a mean person, but I put on my Big Girl Pants and hope the writer has theirs on too.

Being mean, however, is made difficult because...

2. I'm shy

Yeah, like a lot of  authors (or runaway best-selling indie videogame creators), I'm incredibly shy. I'm more than shy, I'm downright awkward. I spent two entire years in college with my eyebrows clear up into my hairline because it's apparently my listening face. Also, I bite my tongue by accident a lot, which can cause be to sound like I pronounce certain words like an idiot. I also get kind of pale when I'm talking to someone at length whom I don't know. This is all compounded by the fact that, when I panic, I stutter a little. On the whole I'm betting it's pretty funny to watch, like a dog pressing his face against the window.

I halp wif yur writing. Hurr durr.

Of course, all of this is made pointless to me and the person I give mean/shy/awkward/honest advice if they don't do exactly what they're wanting to to. That is...


3. You have to have already be writing

If someone ever says to you "I want to be a writer!" the first thing out of your mouth should be:

"So what have you written?"

99% of the time you're going to get "Um..." That's a really popular book title, that "Um." In reality there are a lot of what I call the Armchair Author. To write we sit in a chair...

A chair at Starbuck's with a frotha-mocha-lattechino if you're a hipster.

But I use the phrase Armchair Author to mean the same as Armchair Activist. Armchair Author means you want to be an author, but you spend so much time daydreaming/talking to people about wanting to write that you, as a result, don't write. Even before I had Dusted finished I could claim a whole slew of writing that I'd done, people were generally either impressed, or were too busy telling me to write about their ideas.

This is one of my fears in trying to help someone. I ask them "So what have you written?" and their reply will be "Um..." with an implied "Nothing" because they haven't written anything.

That's like saying "I'm having trouble learning how to play baseball."
"Well how often do you play?"
"Um..." (with an implied "I never have before.")

This leaves it too open-ended. There is an endless amount of things they could be having trouble with: hitting the ball, catching the ball, signals, keeping score,

The "No Crying in Baseball" rule.

For writing there is: character descriptions, area descriptions, action scenes, dialogue, chapter breaks, editing, publishing, first-second-third person perspectives.

These are just basics, we can delve further and start using more direct examples: Chekhov's Guns, red herrings, forshadowing, Mary Sues, cliches, plot devices, deus ex machina, dream scenes.

It goes on and on the deeper in you go. It's basically trying to visualize every line in a Mandelbrot Set in its entirety:

(The song that aptly accompanies the video drops an F-bomb, careful!)

Let's Try Something Different

Last week I went on a trip to Boise for a One Republic concert. Rather than make an ordinary blog post I decided to try something new, so I made a video.

For those of you not interested in seeing my face (with those dead eyes, toneless voice, camera moving between shots, stutter....I'm getting off track here) a video with just the concert is below.

Enjoy! (or mock, either way it was made for entertainment.)

Being in the Writing Chair

I used to read every piece of writing advice I got my hands on and would treat it like a holy sanskrit. That is, following it to the letter. Enough reading and, of course, I ran into information that was contradictory. I would always worry because I had no idea which one was the "right" advice and which one was wrong.

Along with your personality affecting the type of genre you are going to write (which, for those of you who suffer from 10+ days of amnesia, I mentioned in my previous post), it is also going to affect the writing habits you will have.


You have to read all kinds of writing advice and filter between "That makes no sense," "That makes sense," and "That makes sense to me." It's the "to me"s that are compatible with your writing personality.

What if you don't have any "to me"s yet? You find out by experimenting. Try one method and, if you find it's not working out well, try another.

Being an alcoholic like ye olde poets is neither recommended nor healthy.

That said I'm going to offer some contradictory advice about two versions of a Writing Chair works for you.

Be Free Little Bird!

Years ago I read writing advice that said not to tie yourself down to one special writing setup because it can cause Writer's Block.  "I can only write in my bedroom with Bach playing in the background," you'd say. Problem is, setting up that exact atmosphere is difficult, so you often don't get the chance and, thus, don't write. Instead, leave yourself open to any gap you possibly can, be it ten minutes or two hours. Laptops are handy for just such a thing.

Or...

Situate Your Brain

I used to have a lot of trouble sleeping. This led to long nights that, actually, let me come up with a lot of cool ideas for writing. I've read lots of stuff for insomniacs but what helped me the most was not to use your bed for anything other than sleeping. Don't read in bed, don't watch TV in bed. Your bed is not an awake-time place. It is for sleep only. That way, when you lay down in bed your brain goes "Oh, we're in the Sleep Place. So it's time for sleep!" rather than it becoming confused.

Brains are, ironically, really stupid.

I apply the same for writing.

Contradictory to the previous advice, I wait until a specific time of day, set myself down in a specific chair, and put on some atmospheric music. This says to my brain "Hey, it's time to write!" and I either get writing or sit back and work my way through a scene in my head for a couple of minutes.

So, try both of them out for a while, and decide which Writing Chair works best for you.

Writing is a Personality-Based Skill

For skills (and hobbies, etc) there are two types: Ones that rely on the base of the skill, and the other on someone's personality.

Steve is a lumberjack.

He chops wood with his bare hands.

Steve has a very warm personality with a hint of self-depreciating humor in the form of sarcasm. Now, can he chop wood warmly? Or sarcastically? No. You can't apply personality to the skill of lumberjacking.

Ellen is a hopeless romantic with a love of cowboys and Irish Wolfhounds.

Who doesn't love dogs that can eat entire sheep?

Ellen's personality is going to factor into her writing in big ways. Even if she's not writing romance books she'll be writing, say, murder mysteries with elements of romance and maybe modern cowboys who are the love interests of plucky heroines who own massive Irish Wolfhounds.

There are more obscure skills, but the fluffy ones (painting, music, arts and crafts) are going to be personality-based whereas industrial (plumbing, electrician) aren't generally. There are some blurred lines (carpentry, clothing) but you should get the picture.

Why bring this up? Because along with personality affecting your writing, it will also affect your writing habits, which I will bring up next. Consider this the introductory post to the upcoming one.

The "Everyone is Pirating my Book" Freebie Event!

I've Googled my book several times, and you know what I found?

Lots of people are pirating my book.

I know I'm not a special snowflake. In reality I recognize that Dusted is but a blip in the 31725744359543I3436819436 other books also being pirated (a number so large that I bet you didn't even notice I threw a letter in there, eh?) But I've always not only recognized the fact that Dusted would be pirated, I am entirely comfortable with it thanks to two people.

Cory Doctorow (Ye Olde Lorde of Ye Internete) has offered his book, Little Brother, for free ever since it was released over six years ago. He provides a compelling reason on his website for it that I have followed in much the same vein.

Neil Gaiman, meanwhile, started out as a grump about piracy but, after a few experiments in giving away one of his books for free, now sees it in a new light. The details are in this video (which is 4:30 for you time-sensitive types.)

The information and opinions in both links are ones I have followed closely in my own writing. Dusted is as DRM as I can possibly make it while selling through Amazon, and I have made the price of my book as cheap as it will allow while offering freebie events.

If I were guarenteed the safety of various websites that have pirated copies of Dusted, I would actually provide links (remember, kids, nothing is ever truly free)

They have Smarties and M&M's, and Twizzlers, and fun size Twix, and...

Probably the most legit one would be Lendle. Which sort of "cheats" in how it pirates. Instead of allowing a free download it lets you list which books you own and people can lend each other Kindle books from there. I discovered it through Googling Dusted.

Don't feel like going through shady, back-alley websites so that you can finally get your fix for YA urban fantasy-comedy?

I tried looking for a picture with the word "shady" but I just get getting Eminem so, following logic, he... pirates copies of my book?

Luckily, Dusted will be free this weekend starting May 23rd and going through May 26th, Get It Here!

Happy pirati- er reading!

Get a Free Book From a Local Author!

Hello readers! I've come out of my hidey-hole of posting every ten days (a schedule that is working out beautifully, I might add) to tell you about a local author!

S.M. is a someone that I discovered only a couple of days ago. Her novella, The Circus in Me will be available for free May 17th, you can get it Here! Don't forget to write a review, us wee indie authors need reviews!

Here's the book description from Amazon:

The Circus in Me confronts a girl’s outcast journey. Amish to the bone, born and bred to be as such, Tracey Aliza discovers a magical land outside of her traditional community. On a quest for solitude amongst the vagabonds. She comes as a drifter transforming into a better version of oneself called by the name Trae Lae.

Outside the safety of confinement Trae Lae learns hands-on experiences being an adult in modern society. Struggles to let the past remain behind her she concentrates on performing as part of the team. Back and forth motions bring her to a whole new level of acceptance. College in due course calls to her. Off she flees to the next adventure on the map marked with an X.

Welcome to BYU-Idaho! A Mormon college located on the southeastern region of the great potato state. Trae Lae traces a path in-between a religion she was forced to vacate and another indulging her capacity to a newfound faith that contradicts her soul further. The journey grimy and gray toward the new beginning of endearment. On a mounting podium to seize control of the wild beast conformity. She becomes an acquaintance of a young man by the name of Briggs who is also in torment of historical demons. Their lives intertwine into courses neither of them accused as possible. One girl’s bonnet for another man’s briefs. Do our conclusions meet requirements previously posted? Turn the pages to find out if Trae Lae and Briggs can find a way out of fate’s fortitude. With every whimsical there is a wish, with every star there is a shine, where there is a shunned Amish girl there is bonnet about to be burned.


You can also check out Bjarnson's blog. 

The Deckle Edge

I love books.

I can hear your blatant sarcasm, you know.

What I mean to say is that I love books. The actual, physical being of them. I love that there's an entire world closed up into one little orthotope, that they come in different sizes, that they often have beautiful pictures on the cover. I can spend a long time just shelving and reshelving books until I get the "feng shui" of them just right.

I let a hipster and a New Age woman battle for the honor of being my feng shui picture. She choked the hipster to death with a string of beads.

Because of my love of books I like to learn lots of little things about them. I know why there are those little backwards-counting numbers on the copyright page (it has to do with the edition number, in case you're too lazy to look it up and want a quick, glossed over answer), and how there is a difference in the binding of hardbacks.

I learned only recently about something called the deckle edge.

It started with looking at different formats for Andrea Cremer's Nightshade I noticed the hardback edition specified deckle edge. Curious, I looked it up. Here's an image as well as some text stolen from Wikipedia, because I'm not in school anymore and can be as lazy as I want with my sources.

I will, however, provide a link for the lazy-but-curious reader.

In manual papermaking, a deckle is a removable wooden frame or "fence" placed into a mould to keep the paper slurry within bounds and to control the size of the sheet produced. After the mold is dipped into a vat of paper slurry, excess water is drained off and the deckle is removed and the mold shaken or "couched" to set the fibers of the paper. Some of the paper slurry passes under the deckle and forms an irregular, thin edge.

The Wiki continues saying that, as technology progressed, the cutting of paper became much easier and cost-effective. However, suddenly deckle edges became "fancy", making people think it was made with a higher-quality paper or was more "Artisan" in its craft. These days machines are built specifically to reproduce the old-timey deckle edge in books, though uninformed people believe deckle edges on their books means the book was made cheaply, or the printing process was defective. For a long time I thought some of my deckle edge books were defective, until I started seeing a lot more of them, then I started to think publishers were getting cheaper with their printing process, resulting in crappily-cut paper. But it's worse...much worse.

They're hipster books.

The hipster recovered, because dying is too mainstream.

Knowing what I do now, I'm still not a fan of deckle edge, and have actually waited for certain books to come out in paperback in order to avoid the deckle edge hardbacks. I just feel like, with their rough edges, they'd be more prone to tearing. Still, it's good to know there's a reason.

Writing Yourself Into a Corner

And Loose Plot Threads (Featuring: The Crystal Witch. Coming Soon(ish)!)

This is different from Writer's Block, though it often does cause Writer's Block. Writing yourself into a corner means you can't really get from Point A to Point B in the narrative. You've written yourself into a corner, but you don't want to chop out what you've done because it's required to happen later on into the story.

Right now I'm deep in the writing of The Crystal Witch, so I am currently dealing with plenty of these challenges myself. Note that I say challenges and not problems. Problems are things you need to fix in order for them to go away, a challenge is something you face in order to make yourself (and, as a writer, your story) better for it.

Because of the way I write (all over the place shotgunning narrative like a maniac and mostly making it up as I go rather than planning it all out with a cork board and string like logical, sane people) I end up with this a lot. As a result I have gotten pretty good a figuring them out without it feeling like a totally convenient deus ex machina.

In The Crystal Witch, Gareth (the main character) breaks his swords in battle because they're cheap practice blades. Later on I found myself scratching the top of my head because he's having to fight several times. Initially it creates tension: how in the world is a swordsman going to fight without a sword? This also creates the opportunity to show how smart he can be (by making do without a sword and using something else as a makeshift weapon). Eventually, however, it's going to become inconvenient, and he's going to need a sword. Problem is, how is he going to get one considering the circumstances he's in?

Another example:

I love action, but I also like a dose of realism. I like things to be gritty and maybe even a little depressing. When my hero gets into a fight there is blood, vomit, and a building burning down.

Thanks to Jim Butcher I am pretty much required to make something burn in each of my stories.

This battle wasn't easy and, as part of the "show don't tell" part of writing, I show it in his clothing. Problem was, after that, he had a long journey ahead of him that was in between places that would allow him a change of clothes. Now, I have written myself into a corner where he is forced to either continue wearing those clothes (which, with my "dose of realism" mentality, would begin to stink), or go naked.

Oops.

To solve this I had to take a tiny step backwards so that the building wasn't completely obliterated in the fire, just the part where the battle occurred. This left other parts of the building untouched and, thus, salvageable. Thus, a change of clothes!

Loose plot threads are a little like moments where you write yourself into a corner, but you don't realize it.

A big part of The Crystal Witch revolves around an academy where witch-hunters are trained. In one scene it's mentioned that one of the students, Drake, had a grandmother who was a witch, giving him strange abilities he uses to help hunt witches. In another scene it's mentioned that Gareth was nearly kicked out of the academy because he might have been the son of a witch.

So...is the academy pro-witch background or anti-witch background?

These two clashing scenes could have easily slipped right past me. Luckily they were close together and I wrote down a note to remind myself to fix it in the edit process (I don't edit when I'm in the writing process unless there's something horribly out of place). However, had they been on opposite ends of the story, I might not have even noticed them at all.

However, a fresh pair of eyes (ie: not yours) is more likely to catch it.

Sometimes, however, they don't. This leads you to publishing the story with a plot thread dangling.

Let's pick on Dusted, shall we?

After the scene at Walmart, when they are attacked by faeries, I originally just had them get away, leaving the faeries at the parking lot and getting home safely. This, however, left open the possibility for a "car driving down the road during a battle" scene, so I expanded upon it. This left me with the car being ruined, and that gets fixed as well. They repair the windows and remove the werewolf blood from the seat, which is then given to Crystal.

...Hey, did you guys ever notice when the werewolf blood gets mentioned again? Because I sure didn't, and I wrote the thing.

However, Dusted was meant to be read as a standalone story, with only the possibility of expanding upon it. Crystal does decide right then and there that she's going to throw it away, however...

...Did I mention one of the reason I like Jim Butcher's writing is because he has Checkhov's Guns that span entire books?

Yes, I wasn't planning in doing that originally (oops!), but causing a very minor, loose plot thread to dangle also gave me an "Ah hah!" moment for the future.

These are two examples that you get to learn as you go. You likely won't notice them when you first begin writing. As time goes on, however, you catch and correct them. As more time goes on you instead leave them alone for the most part, stroke your author's beard, and decide how you can make your mistake into something awesome.

Even female authors are required to have beards.

I've Been Living a Lie

I have to admit, this guy makes a pretty good argument.

So where do I live if Idaho doesn't exist? Probably Skyrim.

This goes on in my back yard at least once a month.

A Trend That Needs to Stop

I like book covers, it's like a little slice of the story made into a good visual. I am particularly in love with the Italian edition of Moira Young's Blood Red Road. If I could have this as a poster hanging in my bedroom, I would.

But there is a trend in book covers, YA books in particular that needs to stop.

I am talking about the Half of a Face cover (which I will now acronym into HOAF, which sounds like a sound effect for being punched in the stomach.)

I'm not talking about a whole face, either. There are lots of whole faces on book covers, and those, with a few exceptions, are rather uninspired, but the Half of a Face is definitely a theme I'm getting pretty sick of. Maybe all of our super-gorgeous models these days are disciples of some secret order of Harvey Dent we don't know about? Don't know what I'm talking about? Let me show you some examples of covers just from going through the books on my shelf. We have...

Uglies, by Scott Westerfield:

This the older (and way less creepy) cover. It technically wraps around the book, where there is a whole face, although if they had made the whole face the cover I think it would have looked much better.

The whole series is at fault for following the HOAF theme, actually.

If there's an odd number of eyeballs on your covers, something is wrong.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan:

I actually like this cover, but it kind of distracts me that the girl would be wearing eyeliner during a zombie apocalypse. Now, it's believable that a girl would wear some during a recent outbreak, but to give you a time frame for how long zombies have been roaming, the quest of the main character is to find the ocean, which no one in her village thinks is real. It would have to be several generations into the zombie apocalypse, eyeliner being the least of people's problems.

Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead:

Mostly it's the first one, and I definitely prefer these covers over the new ones, which are faded out versions of these with a giant VA slapped over the top of them...except for the 6th, which is further zoomed in to create the HOAF look.

Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce:

Tamora Pierce is a prominent author of my childhood and none of her other books have HOAF as far as I'm aware of.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver:

(Pic refused to work right, so I removed it.)

What is it with girls hiding in the woods? First Uglies, then Forest of Hands and Teeth, now Delirium? I picked this book up about a week ago at a thrift store for a buck, and is the only one listed here I haven't read yet. It sounded dystopian, which drew my interest since the second book has been out, but it also sounds romancey, which made me cringe. It's another of those books that makes me afraid to read it because I've been disappointed so many times since the Twilight craze started.

For comparison, here's the cover's whole face:

I'm not the only person who's noticed this (thank heavens, I'm not crazy) as this gal has pointed out this trend, as well as many more.