The World Upside Down

Trivia:  The cats are upset.  On Thursday, their favorite lounging chairs went out the door to be recovered.  The monkeys have uncomfortable replacement chairs (in comparison), but cats don't do uncomfortable.  Worse, they can't curl up in the same chair and sleep all afternoon.  They don't fit.  -- Monkeys don't have to have wings to be evil in some universes.

Reading:  I've given up on Barbara Hambly's Traveling with Vampires.  The bookmark remained stuck at page 60-something.  I scanned a couple chapters, but the book didn't draw me back in.

So, what goes wrong when a favorite author writes a book you can't read to the end?  I'm not looking for the "wow" factor -- when you end up reading until 2-3 in the morning because you can't put the story down.  All I want is an enjoyable read to give me a break from writing, cooking, TV, and whatever.  One thing:  I'm not into the vampire thing -- good or bad or both.  

I've been thinking about it for a day and came to the conclusion it was the characters.  They all went in the cliche column.  

Must say in the positive column, train travel added a different dimension [in contrast to carriages], but she didn't exploit the captivity of traveling by train.  Corsets presented another problem.  The character struggles with them, but avante guarde Edwardian ladies did without them.  So, the protagonists ran all over Europe (Turkey included) chasing vampires and their henchmen (women).  Eeh.


Now I have to find something else to read along with Rutherfurd's The Forest.  Maybe Kootz's Odd? 


(Aren't I supposed to be reading young adults and/or fantasy?  I'll have to settle for another episode of the Omega Factor [old British TV program].)


Writing:  Emma and crew are stuck in a smelly cell, waiting to be rescued.  I have to flesh out the spriggen nastiness, but that'll probably end up after I finish the draft.  At this point, I want to get an ending on the book.


Tangled?  It's still getting chopped.  


One of my critiquers on this made a comment that changed my perspective on my Half-Elven.  I decided to concentrate on Kerry (a child) because she was the vulnerable member of the cast.  She still is, but the emphasis of the books is more abstract -- dealing with societal changes.  Yeah.  Really, marketable, huh?


Whatever, now I'm going back, yet again, and changing things.  Isn't learning wonderful?


Progress:  Not much.  I'm playing as much solitaire as I'm writing.  (Not counting the blog.)

Another Day

Trivia:  Yesterday, we were going to look at the leaves, only the forecast said rain on the flats.  It's too early to drive in snow, even possible snow, so we went to Loveland instead.  Schmidts for a krautburger lunch.  Yumm.  You can't get a good krautburger in our town.  [My Russian German background sneaks in in odd places.]


Then, on to the Loveland museum for their ofrenda exhibit -- Memento Mori.  While interesting and worth the drive, I'm not into rococo.  Too ornate for my taste.  You can't see anything for the clutter.  Bottom line:  I'm glad I didn't have to set up the exhibit.  Maybe the pieces were glued together.  I hope so.


Comment:   The papers and magazines are saying that the "people" don't think the Obama administration is solving our economic problems quick enough.  Do they really expect instant results?


The problems took over a decade to develop.  The Republicans turned the "free market" loose during the Clinton administration by reversing the bank regulation put in place during the Depression.  Their reason:  the market experts, not government, knew how to regulate best.  Their Greed reigned and eventually exploded in our faces -- and wallets.  Logic says, it'd take a while to clean up the systemic mess thus created.  But what do I know?  Maybe someone has a direct line to a miracle worker?  I haven't seen any sign of it.  Only hot air.


So far, one good result: no one is talking about privatizing retirement accounts.


Reading:  I'm reading less.  The new television series have arrived.  Castle.  The Forgotten.  I even watched Eastwick last night, but don't know if I'll continue.  I could always rent the movie or read the book ... if I wanted to visit that world.  Maybe, it's because Cher isn't there.  (She was in that movie, wasn't she?)


Picked up a Barbara Hambly book, Traveling with Vampires which ended up being a disappointment.  Right off, the first chapter didn't clue me into the time period.  I waited until the second chapter to learn it was set in Edwardian times, just before WWI.  The vampires are the gothic kind with a helpful faction and an evil one plus the academic heros.  Why are smart female characters in historical novels always wearing spectacles?  [Of course, I don't read books where vampires are the primary characters ... except for the Anita Blake series and ??...]

How disappointing was Traveling?  Let's just say, I got to page 66 in the week.  I'm on page 52 of Charlaine Harris' A Secret Rage in one day.  In between, I read two sections of Edward Rutherfurd's The Forest.  [I reread the sections like short stories.]


Writing:  Back to the Rococo thing.  One of my faults when drafting a WIP is saying the same thing twice, maybe more times.  It doesn't bother me that much because I figure I can always take the best description and eliminate the rest.  It helps reduce the word count.



But in working through Tangled, my second writing effort, I find there is another way I repeat.  I show the action, then tell the reader what's happening.  I wonder how many other beginning writers do the same thing.  Of course, I'm deleting some and my critique partners are finding others I missed.  More words on the chopping block.  [Am in chapter 8, almost ready to start 9.]  -- We won't talk about backstory.



Whatever, I find I'm trying to imitate Lee Child's style ... which may not be such a good thing with YA fantasy.  But, then, Tangled isn't YA.  It's a multi-character driven adult political fantasy.  I think I got off to the wrong foot by emphasizing the kid character in the book, something I did because I needed a vulnerable character.  Adult elves aren't much vulnerable except to boredom.


Progress:  Tangled.  I'm thinking of getting rid of the "Austel's Idiot" angle in the title, queries, etc.  Am about a fourth through the chopping an eliminated 10,000 words.  It may actually get down to a reasonable size when I get to the print editing phase.


Emma?  Finished chapter 13 and found out why Fritha lured her into Faery. [Not the reason I thought.]  I even know how she's going to escape in 14.  I'm getting to the end of this WIP because of the water constraints.  You can only go so long without drinking water and you can't carry much in a knapsack.



 

Critiques Piling UP -- and I'm Playing with This?

Trivia:  Got back from the farmers' market.  [The old man's accumulating squash for the winter.  I buy kettle corn for breakfast.]  Anyway I cooked posole for dinner.  The aroma of the house as I came in the door was heavenly.  Much better than fried fish.

Another nice thing about farmers' markets:  You meet people you know but don't normally see.  Discovered a friend had an apricot poodle I didn't know about.  [It went crazy over the cat smell all over my clothes.]


Comment:  I had a sneaky suspicion that I was spending more money than usual.  When I checked, I was.  Things like going out to restaurants and buying books.  No big deal because we have the money.  It's just out of character.  

Then I noticed where the money was going.  To mom-&-pop places that I would like to see survive the recession.  The US of A must be in bad shape when your spending turns into charity.

If so many people weren't getting caught in the middle, I'd be laughing at the corporate-America mind-set/ethos.  They shipped hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas to improve their bottom line and increase executive pay, then expected the public to keep buying.  I rest my case for the intelligence of corporate group-think.

Reading:  Am well into the fifth book of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series -- The End of the Olympians [I think.  I'm not going down stairs to look it up.].  I'll finish it because I think it's a good case study in stringing action scenes together, even though I find them rather repetitive.    I also find it rather shallow in its characterization.  I can't quite excuse that away by saying the story is told from an adolescent male's viewpoint. 

Also bought a Barbara Hambly book about vampires.  I don't read about vampires, but there you are.  I'm a fan of hers, but I like the Ben January mysteries best.  [This was one of charity purchases.  I need another book ... like five pounds on my hips.]

Writing:  Am thinking my writing is a disaster at the moment.  I've got this short story which became the basis of my novel manuscript -- There Be Demons, and have been submitting it.  Rejections have come in regularly, some with nice personal comments.  I decided to look at it before I sent it out again.  Before I had chopped it down to 2700 words.  Now the story is 2300 words

Now I got to go back to the chapters I have to critique.  I recommend critiquing, beta reading, or whatever you want to call it.  I've learned a lot about revising and editing.  More important, I have a better idea about my bad habits from my critiquers.  Thanks all.

Progress:  Not much.  See comments about Night for the Gargoyles.