State of Projects

I was inspired by my good friend Adam's post yesterday, to take stock of my writing, so that I can feel good about what I have accomplished, and stop worrying about what I haven't (yet). Go read his post, first, because Adam is awesome, and you should never miss out on his blog.

Now, here are where things stand for me:

WARRIOR-MONKS: A YA Rural Fantasy, the query for which you've probably read. The first manuscript I ever finished, the one that taught me how to actually write (novels) and took up nearly four years of my life with joy, pain, elation, and enlightenment. This book is essentially shelved. It does still have a full out with one agent, and there are a few queries un-replied to, but I'm ready to move on.

RUNNING FROM RUBY RIDGE: A YA Contemporary Thriller. The draft is 95% done, and then it will be on to revision. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just say that writing your second manuscript is so much easier than your first. Sure, it will be like 8-9 months by the time I'm done with this one, but that sure beats years. After a round or two of revisions, it will be off to critique partners.

SECRET PROJECT: A MG project of undisclosed genre. I can't talk about this one yet, but I've been brainstorming it for a while now, and I have over 10,000 words of outlines, character sheets, plot notes, and other sundry details. Hopefully when this is done and sold, it will finally justify my membership at the group blog: Project Middle Grade Mayhem.

SUPERBAD KICKASS (not the actual working title): A YA Non-Super-Hero Comedy. This is just an idea, really. I have some character sketches, but they're still quite thin and loose. I don't even know what's supposed to happen in the story yet. This is something I plan on collaborating on with one of my favorite people in the world. She knows who she is.

In addition to all these novel-length manuscripts (or dreams of manuscripts), I have a bunch of short fiction that is published in various venues. Most of you have probably already read it (and one story needs to be re-published, because it got taken down), but I'll give you a brief summary here, in case any of today's visitors are new readers:

The Deafening Silence: a bit of adult Memoir, published in the anthology: Literary Foray, from Static Movement Press. You can read it for free, at The World in Miniature.

Babysat by the Man in the Moon: a bit of MG Memoir/Fiction crossover, unpublished. You can read it for free, at The World in Miniature.

Dragon on my Back: a bit of adult Horror, published in the anthology: Literary Foray, from Static Movement Press. This one is temporarily unavailable online.

Lake Argo: a bit of adult Fantasy published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal Issue One. You can read it online for free, at that link.

Cubic: a bit of adult Humor/Horror, published at Underneath the Juniper Tree.

Other than all that stuff, if you simply can't get enough of me (yeah right) there are several links to interviews, guest posts, and other non-fiction stuff on my Creative Writing Page.

Now, this post has certainly gone on long enough, don't you think? In the spirit of disclosure, why don't you share about a project of yours in the comments? If you're not ready, you can certainly ask me about any of mine.

Finally, big day today. If you haven't: VOTE!

Be Inspired - Tagged by Autumn

Man, I love the fall. Football. Baseball. The weather cools off. I came outside this morning, just after 5 AM, and there was frost on the windshield of my car. The air felt crisp. My dog hurried with her business. Autumn is my kind of season. Jeans and hoodies. Craft beer. Great sports.

Anyway, I got tagged in one of those things. You know, those posts that people tag you in? I was tagged by Michael Offut, and I then proceeded to forget about it, as I often do, even though I kind of wanted to do this one. I've wanted to talk about this book for a long time. So, then I got tagged again, by Adam Heine (who was tagged by Authoress) and I realized I better just do it, before I forget (reading back over the posts, these might be two separate post-chain tags, but whatever, I'm combining them here).

The idea is to answer some questions about your WIP. I'm not going to talk about my current WIP, because I'm still drafting, but I will talk about my last WIP, which is technically still in progress, because I haven't sold it.

So that's an image of The Eight Principles of Yong up there, separated into individual strokes. The character means 'permanence' in Chinese Hanzi and Japanese Kanji. East Asian Calligraphy features prominently in my manuscript WARRIOR-MONKS.

Now, to the questions:

What is the working title of your book?

WARRIOR-MONKS.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Well, I actually went to reform school as a teenager, and one day the thought occurred to me: what if I wrote about that experience, except I made the school (mostly) cool, instead of some place you would want to run away from? Except, the kids do still want to run away, at least at first, because they're punks.

In what genre would you classify your book?

I call it YA Rural Fantasy, which is obviously a play on Urban Fantasy, but works, because it applies. It could also fall under Contemporary Fantasy or Magical Realism, but I don't worry too much about putting things in neat little boxes.

Who would you pick to play your characters in a movie adaptation?

This is going to sound like blasphemy to some of you out there, but I really don't think about this much. Do I think about my books being made into movies? Hell yes. But I don't think much about the actors, which is pretty odd, because my mother was an actress and my father was a stage manager. There is one character in my book I would love to see played by Ken Watanabe, or maybe Hiroyuki Sanada.

Give us a one sentence synopsis of your book?

A reluctant juvenile delinquent must achieve knowledge of self and let go of resentment amidst magic and martial arts at the world's strangest reform school.

Is your book already published?

Nope. Still working on getting an agent. Considering shelving this one for a while if the last full I have out comes back with a big R.

How long did it take you to write this book?

Write? I must assume you mean draft, because while I haven't made any changes in months, I won't consider it done until an editor has paid me for it. It took me just under a year to draft.

What other books in your genre would you compare it to?

None. I'm not trying to be a pretentious ass-hat, but I've never read anything like this. I suppose it's a little like Harry Potter, because there is a special school, but the similarity ends there. I suppose it's a little bit like Stormdancer, by Jay Kristoff, because it's a YA Fantasy steeped heavily in Japanese mysticism. But really, I haven't read a book like this.

Which authors inspired you to write this book?

I've wanted to write a novel ever since I was a little kid, so I guess J.R.R. Tolkien. It always comes back to Tolkien for me.

What else inspired you to write this book?

Well, other than my own past experiences, mentioned above, it was my love of Eastern thought, and things like tea, Zen, Japanese swords, Yoga, meditation, martial arts, and kicking ass.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

Well the setting is mostly absolutely authentic, because I actually lived in that part of the world as a teen. Also a lot of the story is based heavily in the truth of my own life. Other than that, there is a lot of awesome magic, weapons, martial arts like Kenjutsu and Aikido, and there is even some kissing, for the ladies.

Now, as far as actually tagging other people like you're supposed to, I'm not into it. I don't like tagging people, because I don't like leaving anyone out. And besides, I'm no good at following up to make sure they do it, anyway. Also, this post is way too long already. Happy Tuesday!

WIP Thursday?

First of all I've been hovering at 249 followers all week! I swear I don't obsess over something as petty as followers (yeah right) but 250 is such a nice, round number. Could someone please go make their family pet a follower of my blog? I don't care if Fido ever comes back to read (but if he does he better comment) or not. Seriously.

Other than that I can't come up with much to say today. Part of the problem is that I drive to work at 5:30 in the morning. It's still quite dark out. And yet, AND YET, by the time I get here I am already sweaty. I hate Georgia Summers. There, I said it.

A couple of you asked last week for an update on WARRIOR-MONKS, my current WIP. So I will give it to you. As you may or may not know the first draft was astronomically long. I managed to cut to 300,000 words (yes new followers, that's correct, no it's not a typo) before I realized it was going to take something more than normal editing to fix it.

So I embarked on a massive re-write from a third person perspective that vibrated somewhere past objective and closer to omniscient, into first person. My novel is essentially YA so first person is rather fitting, drawing the reader into the heart and mind of my MC right away. But even better than that is the fact that first person forces some of the descriptions and scenes into the realm of impossibility. If Lee wasn't there to see them (or dream them, whatever) then they didn't happen.

My crit group and I share a chapter with each other at least once a month but often every three weeks or so. We haven't existed for very long so so far we've only shared two chapters (of my book, others have shorter chapters so they share multiples as long as the word count is fair). The good news is that so far my new, re-written chapters are approximately half the length of the previous ones, and I haven't even gotten to the longest parts yet.

What that means, I hope, is that with only the perspective change the new manuscript will end up somewhere near 150,000 words long. Then with help from Ted, Ben and Simon I can figure out a way to cut another 30,000 words or so. Then I'll have a novel of a length that at least I can dream about getting published.

Wish me luck.