The end of this book remains an aggravating hundred pages away. And it was supposed to be this cute little quick and easy 360 page thing which has now grown to 420 pages and probably isn’t quite done there. And the changes made so far mean adding a scene and setting a written one somewhere else and then probably revising another one to a chase scene or something.

It all sounds like a lot of work. Sigh. I suspect it will overflow into November by a couple days to finish it, which was not my plan. OTOH, since we don’t get home from our American travels until Dec. 5th, it’s not like I’ll be starting work on the 1st of December, so I guess I’ll still get my full month off. But btltltht anyway. OT3rdH, all these bloody revisions should mean that everything’s really solidly set up for the second book, which will then hopefully be quick and easy to write, if not 360 pages long. @.@

And ah, crap, I need to turn those short stories in. Must do that tomorrow.

This weekend a fellow writer and friend emailed to say she’d gotten her first comic-writing contract, and did I have any thoughts/suggestions/advice/epiphanies, having written my own comic series. Indeed I did, and I’ve been vaguely meaning for ages to write those thoughts up, so she provided me with an opportunity to do so. So here’s what I learned about writing comics:

* turning the page is often a sign of a scene change. Not always, but it’s a good rule of thumb, and if you’re *going* to change scenes, it’s better to do it at a page turn than mid-page unless you can be very clever with your frames to show some kind of continuity leading into the new scene.

* Wally Woods 22 Panels That Always Work is probably something every goddamned comic writer, nevermind artist, should be given right away.

* Alan Moore is reputed to work within a 210 words per page format. More than that and the reader starts going “too many words” on a subconscious level. I have observed this in TAKE A CHANCE, where a couple pages were too dialog heavy and I went and counted and yeah, was like around 250 or something. More detail on that here.

* I go to a fair amount of trouble to describe panel layouts and angles and details. This is a technique I picked up from reading how Neil Gaiman wrote comics (and he apparently got it from Alan Moore). The important bit, really, is to end (or begin) the script with, “But if you have a better idea, go for it; you’re the artist, after all.”

* Story beats: I think this was maybe the most critical thing I realized while writing Chance. I was using 22 page scripts there, so basically you’re looking at, say, 11 scenes. Each scene became a story beat, to some degree, and I *really* had to get those figured out ahead of time before I started writing, because otherwise it got sloppy and out of control almost immediately. It’s like a mini-synopsis. “Page one: Intro. Page 2-3: Heroine in action on the streets. She meets a “helpful” powered hero who is embarrassed when he realizes she’s “one of them”–but she’s “NOT LIKE YOU.” Page 3-4: cut to Chance at her day job; use the words “NOT LIKE YOU” as her introductory phrase to keep continuity, so we know who the unmasked woman is. Backstory: Nila arrives with information about the man who killed Chance’s son.” And so on and so forth. Without the story beats I’d have lost my mind right off.

* Keep it simple. I did too many complicated things–too many frames per page (4-6 is good, up to 9 sometimes) a lot. I think it’s the novelist in me. That and the Bendis fan.

* Remember that the action in comics takes place between the frames. We’re just seeing still shots. Apparently it annoys the crap out of artists when a writer has an action and a reaction in the same frame. :)

* ALL CAPS usually emphasizes words in dialog bubbles or text boxes. On the finished page, those words end up slightly bolder.

* Don’t forget color, light and time notes for the colorist. Separate them out, because a colorist won’t necessarily notice them in the body of a description. So a page might say “COLORIST’S NOTES: this scene takes place during sunset” at the head, or “Grey rainy day” or “night shot” or whatever. I forgot those a lot.

* If you have ideas on where the text/word balloons should go, put those into the header: TEXT BOX (upper right): sorts of things. It may help the artist laying out the page. (or he might ignore you entirely. Nevermind that detail. :))

* I found it helpful to write most of a page’s dialog before I started trying to script the images. It gave me a flow chart for the page, by telling me kind of how much information was going to get dumped, and then I could work with that in how many panels I needed and things. I’d often get halfway through a page of dialog and then find myself going back and starting to write in the images, but it got me started. And it helped me not forget clever lines. :)

So there you go. Those are helpful things I learned while writing Chance.

miles to Morannon: 138 (completed!)
miles to Minas Tirith: 5.8
ytd wordcount: 245,800

Every once in a while something mind-bogglingly awful happens during or even before the creation of a book, and that something means the book will never be written. Sharon Lee has just made mention of such a book. Fairly recently the third novel of Melanie Rawn’s Exiles trilogy, another such book, was mentioned in comments. Sharon Lee says it seems to be something readers have particular difficulty understanding, and that it must just be a Writer Thing that writers must beg patience for.

(x-posted from the essential kit)

I was just updating my CV, in case I need it all shined up to submit to Marvel. This is what the first page looks like:

PUBLICATIONS:
Forthcoming:
   ”Cairn Dancer” (short story for THE PHANTOM QUEEN AWAKES, December 2009, Morrigan Books)
   ”Blended” (short story for RUNNING WITH THE PACK, May 2010, Prime Books)
   ”Perchance to Dream” (short story for DRAGON’S LURE, Spring 2010, Dark Quest Books)
   DEMON HUNTS (novel, June 2010, Luna Books)
   TRUTHSEEKER (novel, Fall 2010, Del Rey Publishing)
   WAYFINDER (novel, Fall 2010, Del Rey Publishing)
   RATTLESNAKE DANCES (novel, Spring 2011, Luna Books)

2009:
   WALKING DEAD (novel)
   ”Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” (novella)
   ”Take A Chance” (5-issue comic book miniseries)
   THE PRETENDER’S CROWN (novel)
   HANDS OF FLAME (novel)
   ”From Russia, With Love” (short story)

2008:
   THE QUEEN’S BASTARD (novel)
   HOUSE OF CARDS (novel)
   “Rabbit Tricks” (short story, web-based publication)
   “New York Hold ‘Em (short story, web-based publication)
   “Glasslands” (short story, web-based publication)
   “Previously, on Take A Chance” (comic script, web-based publication)
   “The Day the Pirate Attacked” (short story, web-based publication)
   ”Them Shoes” (short story)

2007:
   HEART OF STONE (novel)
   COYOTE DREAMS (novel)

2006:
   THE PHOENIX LAW (novel, writing as Cate Dermody)
   THE FIREBIRD DECEPTION (novel, writing as Cate Dermody)
   THUNDERBIRD FALLS (novel)

2005:
   THE CARDINAL RULE (novel, writing as Cate Dermody)
   WINTER MOON (an anthology inclusive of the novella “Banshee Cries”)
   ”Ill Met By Moonlight” (short story)
   URBAN SHAMAN (novel)

The half-dozen or so italicized items aren’t on the actual publications list, because they were short stories I wrote specifically for cemurphy.net, but I’m including them here sort of for my own elucidation. I think it’s only just very, very recently–like in the past few *days*–that it’s really begun to catch up with me just how much work I’ve done over the past several years.

The werewolf short story and the dragon short story are, pending minor revisions, done. I will not be signing on for any more anthologies for the next 12 months, because I have to in some way prevent myself from overworking, and categorically saying no is about the only way I can think to do that. Nor will I–with the exception of a couple pre-arranged exceptions–be reading any books for possible blurbs until at least next May.

Heard back from my agent about the third possible book in the TRUTHSEEKER series, and my editor decided to stick with two books. This is pretty much fine with me on every level, as it means writing two books over the next six months instead of three (the money would’ve been nice, but so, I expect, will the reduced stress levels be).

So next up is revising TRUTHSEEKER, which I can do now that I know whether there’ll be a third book. The lack of a third book means I can incorporate some of the elements I’d have used in the second and third into the first, which I think will help to accomplish some of the things my editor’s looking for. So that’s good. And those are due by the end of October, so I will either launch right into WAYFINDER for Nanowrimo, or I will basically take November off entirely while we travel, and write WAYFINDER in December/January. (Guess which of those two is the more likely scenario?) And then I’ll be out of contract to Del Rey, so I expect I’ll pitch more Inheritors’ Cycle (aka “the Queen’s Bastard books”) novels to them at that point. Fingers crossed. :)

And then while Del Rey’s deciding about the Inheritors’ books, I’ll write the sixth Walker Papers for Luna, which will take me up to next May. Et voila.

Last night Ted made a comment which spawned the very beginnings of an idea for that environmental-themed novel I’d like to write. (Not that the link is really about the novel, it’s just the rant which caused several people to say, “Gosh, Kit, you should write a book.”) I can just barely see the shape of what I’d want to do with it, and will let it sit and will write notes when I have ideas, but man. I…would really like to tackle that someday. Sooner rather than later, because I think it’s important now, but it’s also a project I think would take a couple years to deal with, between proper research and writing, the former of which I wouldn’t even know how to begin to finance. (Oh, to be Ian McDonald.) Anyway, I have a title and some ideas for the narrative threads, and…maybe someday I can get to it.

Ted and I are missing Anchorage. O, Tommy’s Burger Stop. O, Bear Tooth Pub & Movie Theatre. O, Coastal Trail. O, Title Wave. O, Kaladi. O, Termination Dust. O, Beluga Whales. O, Basketball Courts (god knows why, but I really miss basketball courts. They’re part of the American landscape, and I just…miss them. Anyway.) We concluded that really, we’d be perfectly happy to live in Anchorage if we just had the money to get out a couple times a year. Of course, we then had to admit we’d probably be happy to live just about anywhere if we had the money to get out a couple times a year. :)

I had rather a number more things I meant to touch on in this post, but I appear to have completely blanked out on whatever they were. I need to remember to do a MW posting, but other than that, I guess I’m done here.

miles to Morannon: 104.1

I got an email last night from someone notifying me of a site where my books were being offered as free downloads. This particular site just offers tidy zipped files which, in my case, contains every book I’ve written under the CE Murphy byline. It struck me as particularly egregious, and I emailed my editors and agent about it, put in a complaint with Blogger/Google’s content violation page, and have been posting on Twitter and Facebook about the site’s location so other authors can send their publishers’ piracy team to whack this guy on the peepee. (It’s here, if you haven’t seen my posts in other locations.) Because really, there are hundreds, possibly thousands of writers on this, a static site, not even a download with the decency to be a torrent, and it just struck me as beyond the pale. I mean, sheesh.

In the meantime, however, the one entire book of mine you can read online legally is IMMORTAL BELOVED, a Highlander novel I wrote ten or eleven years ago. Strangely, this is the only CE Murphy book that isn’t in the download Mr. Egregious has so thoughtfully made available. :)

This is a post of things that are totally unrelated to each other. Just so you know.

I haven’t been swimming. My shoulder’s doing better, by and large (though I think I spent too much time knitting last night, or possibly yesterday’s brief spate with free weights should have been done with the lighter weights, because it’s faintly achy today), and I’d been thinking that okay, I really should get back to the pool and that I could give it one more week’s rest and start after we got back from Belfast. And then yesterday we got a notification the pool will be closed for maintenance the second half of August. Doh. Oh well, two more weeks of not swimming won’t hurt my shoulder, that’s for certain.

And speaking of Belfast, there’s going to be an attempt at breaking the world record for the largest number of pirates gathered in one place on Saturday. They need more than 1500 pirates to break the record. I cannot wait to get pictures of the quays teeming with pirates and tall ships!

Probably everybody knows by now that John Hughes, director of our childhoods, died yesterday. He was only fifty nine, and although he’d apparently retired from movie-making a decade or more ago, he left a hell of a legacy. I’d been thinking recently that I needed to buy The Breakfast Club, because I haven’t seen it in years. Now I think I will.

It seems like fully half the people I know are at Worldcon. I am envious. And *wow*, the whole blogosphere/Twitter/Facebook thing makes not being there a great deal more immediate. Of course, it means I can find out everything that’s going on even if I’m not there… :)

*laughs* Poor Lucy. Her tail is shaped like a crooked finger, and the other evening she was in the kitty bed, which has a crocheted kitty cozy in it. The cozy got caught on her tail, the poor thing, and she leapt out and spun in circles on the hardwood floor going, “Meeeeeewwww!” in this high thin pathetic voice. I got up and she instantly stopped spinning and just looked up at me with big sad kitty eyes while I rescued her. She’s a bit smarter than Zilli in that regard: he’d have run like hell all over the house, but Lucy seems to have a fundamental grasp of the ways in which humans can be useful. She doesn’t object to her toenails being clipped, either, because I think she’s learned to associate five minutes of nail clipping with *not* sticking to the carpet.

kylecassidy has some interesting things to say about the positive nature of being friends with talented people: I realize that having friends who are always doing something amazing, new books, new plays, new movies, whatever motivates me to work harder, lest I have nothing to bring to Show and Tell. Of course, Kyle Cassidy is friends with Neil Gaiman, which sort of puts him in a whole different level of “friends who do cool things” than most of us even dream of being in. :)

I think today’s kind of a day off. I may work on the short story down in the living room instead of making any real attempt at new words. Yes. That sounds good. Also I have plans to go to the Farmers’ Market. That’ll be good too. :)

I’m certain there were other things I was going to mumble on about, but I can’t think of any right now, and this is probably a long and eclectic enough post as it is. Off to feed the cats & go to the market!

My husband has come up with yet another absolutely brilliant book/series idea. I will *never* catch up.

There’s one last chance to win an early copy of WALKING DEAD over at Book Love Affair! Go forth, participate!

I have written the beginning and the end of “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” to my satisfaction. Unfortunately, that leaves some five or ten thousand words in the middle that haven’t been done…

Argh. I keep thinking of things to post, but by the time I come sit down to write them up I’ve forgotten already. Or they’re things I want to talk about but can’t yet. Grr.

miles to Minas Tirith: 526.3
ytd wordcount: 197,200

Periodically people (debela, particularly) want to know what it takes for me to be satisfied/impressed/pleased with myself/my accomplishments.

Here is the answer:

My first book came out 4 years, 6 weeks ago. Including the comics as one unit, what you see there are 15 books with my name on ‘em.

Today, I am officially impressed with myself.

…to live someplace where there are enough people I know around that I can throw Dessert Parties. I have all these great dessert cookbooks (Mrs Fields’ I LOVE CHOCOLATE Cookbook, a cheesecake cookbook, an ice cream recipe book…) and no reason to make any of the desserts in them. There are a hundred recipes in the Mrs Fields book. It could take years to go through just /that/ one. But the desserts are mostly too extravagant to make just for two people, and they’re *all* too *large* for just a couple people, so I never make any of them. But it’d be kind of fun to make, like, five different kinds of things for a party so everybody could get a taste and nobody would be too bloated. But I would need, you know. People around.

Ardian (and Mark Powers, the guy adapting the Dresden Files novels to comic form) has an interview with the Comics Waiting Room.

I’m very tired of doing revisions. The DEMON HUNTS revisions aren’t at all difficult, but I’ve been working on mostly revisions for the past six weeks, and I’m tired of them. I want to write something new. Or possibly take six months off, but I have gone to some effort to make sure *that* won’t happen. Which reminds me that I had a discussion with comics artist Matthew Dow Smith the other day which went something like this:

Matt: I’m trying to get all my side projects sorted out. Somehow I ended up with way more side projects than I intended to this year.
Kit: Me too. How does that happen?
Matt: Freelancers can’t say no.
Kit: Oh yearh.
Matt: Also we overflow with creative genius.
Matt: But mostly, freelancers can’t say no.

miles to Minas Tirith: 460

All right, the proposals for WAYFINDER and WORLDBREAKER are off. It’s true this meant working on Sunday, but it’s also true that it means I have no excuse to not start on the DEMON HUNTS revisions tomorrow, and really it should only take the week to accomplish them if I don’t dork around. And now I’m halfway through my list of major work that needs accomplishing this month, which is pretty awesome.

…this is not how normal people spend their Sundays, is it.

July Thinks To Do:
- TRUTHSEEKER revisions
- WAYFINDER proposal
- WORLDBREAKER pitch
- Chance graphic novel proposal
- revisions for DEMON HUNTS
- proposal for Walker Papers #6
- an essay or two for the Chance GN
- write “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”

July Thinks To Do:
- finish TRUTHSEEKER revisions
- revisions for DEMON HUNTS
- proposal for Walker Papers #6
- write “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”
- Chance graphic novel proposal
- an essay or two for the Chance GN
- getting together all the materials for that GN
» includes asking my team if they want to write essay things
» and getting color notes to Jason
» email a reminder to the team
- proposal for WAYFINDER
» messy outline completed, synopsis to follow
» actual chapters & stuff won’t be done until I get the 2nd TRUTHSEEKER revision letter, I think, ’cause that still needs work
- (rough) WORLDBREAKER pitch

I have moved:
- Marvel application
- Mia graphic novel proposal
- Walker Papers short story

to August (first half of August, I swear, Lanny), although I had previously thought I’d moved the WAYFINDER/WORLDBREAKER stuff to August. Today corrected that think.

Damn, I feel like I’m juggling hot potatoes right now. I also just agreed to write another short story (that was what prompted LAG’s comment earlier), but it’s not due until December, so that shouldn’t be difficult. Also, I think I’m well past the place where I can claim I don’t write short stories. I used to not write short stories. Now I do. :)

You guys have blown my little tiny mind. The “Hot Time” commission closed out at over $1100, which is, uh. Well beyond my wildest expectations. It’s far and away the most I’ve ever been paid to write a short story (excepting “Ill Met by Moonlight“, which Harlequin bought from me lock, stock and barrel), and I’ll do my best to write you a very good story.

For those who couldn’t participate this time, there’ll be an opportunity from November 7-30 to buy the story directly from me for $10 (or more, if you feel like it), which is the minimum amount set by fundable, so I think that keeps the playing field level.

Wow. Thank you. O.O

Bryant has got me thinking all sorts of thoughts now, with regards to not only sustainable funding models (I love that phrase. I could use it six times a day!), but also about direct marketing models and, tangently, Creative Commons Licensing.

Essentially, a creative work licensed under CC is an open invitation to play in someone else’s sandbox. There are a variety of licenses available which offer lesser or greater opportunity to play. The most restrictive is a redistribute-only license; the least restrictive is “give me credit on this, and you may go forth and make money from this if you can”.

I think it’s an inherently awesome idea. I’d love to develop something under CC at some juncture (no, it will not be any of my current published works, those are all copyrighted and my publishers really would not understand), just to release it into the wild and see if anybody found something to run with. CENTENARIAN, which I have vague ideas of making my Experimental Development Book, seems like the most obvious potential piece to license under creative commons. It’s a thought, so it is!

…but it wouldn’t be true. I will keep my rants to a minimum, though. Discussion on my earlier post prompted salient commentary elsewhere.

Since I went off on a climate change shout-a-thon last week, it seems like I probably ought to link to this petition, encouraging the EPA to support carbon restrictions. It’s my somewhat bitter and cynical opinion that it’s not enough, but on the other hand, it’s better than nothing. So if you’re of a mind to at all, signing that would be, well, something.

The Frozen Dublin event has been canceled on Facebook. I don’t know if this means it’s actually been canceled or if it just means somebody got sick of all the stupid messages being posted, and since they seemed to grant everybody admin access somebody just whacked it. I’ll be in Dublin tomorrow anyway.

I *almost* got to the halfway point on revising (revising, hah. re*writing*) TRUTHSEEKER today. But because chapter lengths are changing, it turned out I’d have to get two more revised tonight in order to crest that mark, and I just wasn’t up for it. I’m going to have to work a lot harder next week than I have been, to get this thing done by the end of the month.

And to round out five things make a post, fantasy author Judith Tarr is having a Midsummer Mentoring sale. If you’d like four hours of one of fantasy’s best writer’s time for your own manuscript or for a friend’s, this is an excellent opportunity.

I’ve been doing what will, I imagine, turn into a four part series over on Magical Words, all prompted by a reader question “who pays whom?” Part one, discussing the editor/agent/author relationship and the differences between an editor and an editorial service, is here. Part two, discussing vanity presses, is here. I expect I’ll be talking about POD and ebooks over the next two weeks, and I’ll link to those later, maybe.

For the moment, though, I thought I’d bring up what turned into a very long comment from the second part, and post it here. It’s a little about what drives people to vanity press, and a little about other stuff, and probably none of it’s news, but I think it probably also bears repeating. And it’s long, so I’ll put it ( behind the cut. )

(x-posted from the essential kit)

I reached the part of the book where I can start putting stuff back into TRUTHSEEKER again. The place where I started to do that was, in the original manuscript, page 42. It’s page 85 now. A whole chapter went back in with almost no revisions, which was exciting. I have no idea how this whole middle section will end up working, at this point. It’ll be a little shorter, which will make my editor happy, but shortening it means the last section is going to have to be lengthened, which doesn’t make /me/ happy.

I have to go in to Dublin on Saturday to exchange the new shoes I bought. There happens to be a Dublin Improv Movement/Frozen Dublin (facebook pages) Big Freeze going on at 3pm Saturday afternoon at the spire, so if anybody would like to, I don’t know, grab lunch and then go hold still at the Millennium Spire for five minutes on Saturday, that would be cool.

We got my bicycle fixed! I now need to get a lock for it again, and then I can ride it to and from the gym, and possibly, excitingly, some other places too!

jimhines/Jim Hines talks sense about a writing career vs real/day/safe jobs.

And to pull together five things make a post, I will briefly natter about X-Men Noir and X-Men Forever ( beneath the cut. )

(x-posted from the essential kit)

I just got a package in the mail from the redoubtable Blue Haired Angie. This is always a fun thing, so I opened it quite happily, and discovered within the two Beauty and the Beast comics Wendy Pini did based on the late 1980s television show. And I thought, “AWWW,” and smiled a lot, because that was very wonderful and thoughtful of Angie, and well, she couldn’t possibly know that I already owned them. So I plunked down happily to read the note that Angie sent along with the comics and halfway through the note I went… *!!!!!!* and opened them and

OH MY GOD THEY’RE SIGNED

I have the best friends *ever*. EVER. Apparently Angie found them three days before Wondercon and knew Wendy would be there, and SQUEEEEEE! BEST. FRIENDS. *EVER*. <3 <3 <3

On another topic entirely (fivethree things make a post!), I was doing Pilates this morning and although I realize it’s anthropomorphizing, I swear sometimes my random shuffle on the MP3 player does things on purpose. There’s a coda from the Young Guns II soundtrack that ended up on my playlist, just one line by Keifer Sutherland: “You rode a fifteen year old boy straight to his grave, and the rest of us straight to hell.”

Which, this morning, was followed immediately by “Walk Through the Fire” from Buffy. I love it when that happens. :)

In case you missed the Friday posting, I’m running an experiment, and have put an Old Races (Janx and Daisani) short story up for commission through fundable.com. All the details are here, but I wanted to mention it again because I posted it kind of late on Friday and because the commission is now halfway to goal, which is kind of (okay, VERY) exciting. :)

Okay. Tons of work to do today (ranging from housecleaning to revising to making BBQ sauce and macaroni salad because we found pork ribs! yay!), so I’m going to toddle off quite happily and work and think of how splendid my friends are and just. Yeah. Thank you, Angie, and everybody who’s participated in the commission so far, and…just yeah. Thank you all. You’re awesome.