So, that experiment I was trying with outlining versus not--I've discovered, now with a more definite sense of certainty, that outlining in my case is a very, very bad idea. I could not get through one chapter once I got to the actual writing part on that project. Not one chapter.

However, I'm not sorry I tried it, because that's useful to know about myself I guess. It's really better in my case if I just write. And I'm not giving up on that story entirely--just can't deal with it right now, so it's going into the Trunk until further notice.

Anyways, what with my experiment and a number of other things going awry, this is what I have on the table as of now:

The Candelabrum: Revised, reformatted, and sent away again. Now waiting for a response. Wish me luck!

The Fire Worker: Up to 43k, and working out some revisions in my head for when I go back for a second-draft sweep. I say "in my head" because I've been trying not to monkey around with manuscripts at all until that first draft is completely finished. It's not easy. With the pantsing thing especially, I inevitably wind up with a number of plot holes that need filling in once I go back, and once I work out what they are I want to fix them immediately. Which I will, eventually, but the more important thing is finishing the draft. If it's complete, and has an ending, even if that ending winds up changing, then I have something I can work with.

Now, since those two are the only "current" projects I have, I feel myself flailing. Two projects, one of which is a short story that I'm for all intents and purposes "done" with at least for the moment, feels way too low. As anyone who's followed this blog for a significant length of time probably knows by now, I generally keep at least three or four going at once.

Which means I have a couple of options here--I can feed one of the plot bunnies (I always have a gracious plenty of those); OR I could take out one of my previous manuscripts and give it a good, clean overhaul and put it back in the queue. I'm thinking of one in particular that I think has loads of potential, but got put on hold once I reached the synopsis-writing stage and uncovered a number of plotting oversights that needed fixing. It's been resting for about a year. Maybe it's time to dust it off and polish it up.

I'm hesitant to do both until I get that draft finished. A girl has to have boundaries, after all.


Last book read: Wondrous Strange, by Lesley Livingston

Currently on: The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro

This post is somewhat spoilery--consider yourselves warned.

First and for the record: yes, I'm a Battle Royale enthusiast and dedicated Asia Extreme fangirl, but we aren't here to talk about which futuristic dystopia about a totalitarian government annually pitting its children against each other in a last-man-standing duel to the death came first or did it better. I do have a preference, but they are very different stories, and I happen to believe Suzanne Collins' claim that she hadn't read or even heard of Koushoun Takami's novel before writing hers.

So, what are we here to talk about? Well, first let me direct you to this excellent post by seanan_mcguire: Some thoughts about gender and literature. The Internet is no stranger to gender wars, especially the really nasty ones, and somehow they seem to be getting worse. In the literary quadrant of said wars we have YA paranormal romance in one corner, with their pretty dresses and broody Type A alpha love interests; in the other, we have so-called "boy books" about action and adventure and coming-of-age. The biggest point of contention being, not the actual content of the sub-genres, but the gender of the main characters and, by extension, their assumed target audiences.

Let me put it another way: certain readers who prefer not to read books with female protagonists say they avoid them on the off-chance that a romance will happen. As someone who isn't fond of romance on the whole, I get this . . . kind of. It has a twisted logic to it. Twisted, because, well, not all books with female protagonists are about romance. Just as not all books with male protagonists are without it. Using gender as an excuse to make assumptions about a book's content is perfectly ridiculous.

( Now, about The Hunger Games... )

Biggest news on the actual writing front is this: "The Candelabrum" has earned me my second personalized rejection. Yay! And I do mean that sincerely. Of course, I would prefer an acceptance, but this is the first place I sent this story out to, and it was both complimentary and just detailed enough to let me know where to go next.

So! As usual, I'm being attacked by plot bunnies left and right. Except this time, instead of ignoring them all, I'm trying to keep them neutralized a little differently: outlining.

As some of you probably know, I'm normally a panster when it comes to writing. Meaning, I prefer not to outline my plot, but start from scratch and just keep going until I get to The End. The reason being I tend to lose interest in a story once I know how it's going to end. Even if it's not fully fleshed out, if I have the basic structure "finished," my writer brain decides it's done with it and wants to move on to the next Shiny New Idea. Given the amount of plot bunnies clamoring for attention at all times, you can probably imagine how this goes for me.

However, also given the amount of plot bunnies I wind up with, I can see how outlining might actually be beneficial. I've just outlined a complete novel start to finish (dark, alternate universe YA--working title "The Light Bringers") in about a week, give or take. A fully fleshed out novel takes a lot longer than a week to write. But now, see, that particularly bunny has a home and is no longer nibbling at me. So perhaps this is a good way to keep them satisfied and still have time to work on my major projects in the meantime.

The question is will these unwritten stories still hold my interest enough for me to finish them fairly? Time will tell. This is an experiment. (There's a reason I decided to go with the Gambit icon for this post.) I'll see how it goes on this one for now, and I'll keep you posted as usual.

Last book read: Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

Currently on: Gail Carriger's Soulless, Book 1 of the Parasol Protectorate.

Egads! February's almost over already. How'd that happen??

But it's not quite over yet, and my fellow Women in Horror have been quite busy. Here's what the rest of my Hounds have been up to:

Diane Dooley posted this interview with Nicole J. LeBoeuf, author of several short stories, including "My First Breath," which appears in the Ellen Datlow anthology, Blood and Other Cravings. If I haven't mentioned this here before, Ellen Datlow is my favorite horror anthologist, and deserves a mention on her own.

Ms. Dooley also put together this helpful index of some of the other bloggers and participants in this year's festivities--including yours truly!

Sara Jayne Townsend has two blog entries to commemorate the month: Part 1 discusses the traditionally male focus of the genre, and the perception that women just don't do the horror thing; Part 2 is a roundup of some of her favorite horror writers.

Lastly, horror writer Foinah Jameson talks about the difference between fear and viscera, and the importance of gallows humor here.

As for myself, I have submitted "The Candelabrum" to the first magazine on my list. (Help! Help!) That's the most exciting writerly thing I've been up to lately, but I will keep y'all posted on any further developments.

First, check out this interview with Luke Walker about his new ebook, The Red Girl.

Second, in the continuing spirit of Women in Horror Month, fellow Houndie Night Flyer has posted on a spotlight on author Sarah Langon on her shiny new blog. Check that out as well.

In other news, I have now read two--count 'em, two--of the books in my TBR pile: L. A. Banks's Minion and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Crossing 'em off the list now.

Anyways, since I haven't done one of these in far too long, here's a progress report on what I'm actually working on writing-wise:


Novels:

Fire Worker--previously known as "Demigeists," so obviously the first piece of news on this one is I changed the title. The reason being that "demigeists," these neat little fun-sized ghosties I made up that travel through mirrors and steal souls very, very gradually, while still worth a shot eventually I think, just aren't going to work in the context I worked out. The total wordcount so far is 28,000. I'm about at the halfway mark.

Early Risers--Currently standing at 13,000 words, and passing the Plot Twist. Which, this being a zombie story, means the outbreak is getting worse. Another issue is I realized I haven't described what my protagonist looks like yet. I tend to be lax with physical descriptions for some reason, particularly for POV characters. I don't know why. I'll figure something out, I hope.

Shorts:

Doppelganger--four rejections so far, all form, no takers. I took another look at it and decided the beginning was weak, so I'm putting it back into the editing stage before sending it anywhere else.

The Candelabrum--3,000 after the second round of edits, and now I'm scouring my lists for where to send it. Wish me luck!

Happy February!

As most Americans know, this is Black History Month. As somewhat fewer folks know, it is also Women In Horror Month. With both of those things in mind, I'm compiling a reading list starting with the late L. A. Banks's Minion and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower--both prolific, black, female authors of speculative fiction, and very successful to boot.

I don't know what else I'm putting in the list yet, but I figure that's a start anyway. (Recommendations are very welcome, by the way!) As rachelmanija is trying to show for the LGBT circuit with the YA Floating Diversity Book Club, there are plenty of options out there. You just have to know where to look.

The issue that we try to bring forward this time of year is the existance of dark, weird, creepy stories written by, about and for women--and I'm not talking about the standard Scream Queen types who always wind up getting rescued by the hero (or not) at the end, usually after losing most of their clothing. I'm talking about real characters, with their own goals and passions, outside of a token appearance as the male hero's trophy or backstory.

There is a huge gender discrepancy not just in characters, but in creators of horror fiction, at least when giving the genre a cursory glance. The recognized "greats" of horror fiction--Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Bram Stoker, Peter Straub, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson--are overwhelmingly male, with a few notable excepts such as Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson and Anne Rice.

Even putting this discrepancy aside, horror is still mostly perceived as a man's genre, just as romance is seen as a woman's genre. Neither of which is true, by the way.

Given that perception, I've wondered sometimes what draws certain people to horror. What compels a woman to write, read or watch horror, when so much of it is so gender-biased and uneven? What draws me to it?

( Read more... )

First, Mira Grant, author of Deadline, Book Two in the Newsflesh trilogy, has been nominated for a Philip K. Dick award--yay to her! I'm excited on her behalf, because her books are among the best I read last year, and easily my favorite books in the zombie genre. Read more here.

Second, I seem to be nominated for something also: The Versatile Bloggers Award, courtesy of Ann Elise Monte. (Thanks again!) I've never been nominated as blogger before, so I'm very excited about this. The rules say I'm supposed to nominate some other folks too, which I'll do in a future blog. Need to think about that for a bit.

Third, Luke Walker, fellow Horror Hound and one of the finest writers I know, has his novel, The Red Girl out as an ebook as of this past weekend. Yay to him as well! He's been working on this for quite some time, so I'm very happy for him for getting it out to the public. More info here.

Which brings me to my broken resolution: I did it. I went and bought some books, including Luke's, before getting through my TBR pile. Almost made it through January. Damn. I will get through the pile before the year's out though. I'm . . . revising the resolution, let's say. But I will do it.

Firstly, no, I'm not cheating on my resolution (yet). I checked out Alison Goodman's Eon from the library late in December, and got around to finishing it only a week ago. (I am a slow reader.)

Secondly, the January pick for the YA Floating Diversity Book Club is up: I'm doing Libyrinth. And I'll be reviewing that, and the December pick sometime later. (Yes, a very slow reader.)

So, Eon is the story of the Dragoneyes--young men trained from an early age to commune with the spirit dragons of an alternate universe Asia, and thus control things like weather, the health of the emperor, crops prospering, and all kinds of good things. There's one dragon for each of the animals in the Chinese zodiac (although it's not called that in this universe), except one, the Mirror dragon (associated with the dragon zodiac), which has disappeared for centuries. And then Eon, a young apprentice Dragoneye with a lame hip and the unprecedented ability to see all twelve dragons without any prior training, comes to the ceremony that selects the Rat Dragoneye for that season, and the Mirror Dragon resurfaces and chooses Eon as its Dragoneye.

The catch is that Eon is actually Eona, not a young boy but a girl, and women are forbidden from using dragon magic--not only forbidden, but it's assumed that women have no power, so her training as a Dragoneye is not only prohibited but laughable.

This setup is pretty basic, actually, and I was expecting a good swashbuckling adventure with some high-minded preaching maybe about gender roles. However, what's amazing about this book is that it captures perfectly what it feels like to go through life closeted, to stifle your true identity so completely that you forget who you are and how to reconcile your role in life with what might happen to you if your secrets are discovered.

It's remarkably well-written to start with, so I knew by the first page that I was in for something more interesting and original than what I expected. Eon/Eona is an active protagonist, forced to grow up quickly make her own choices early on, and her growth and maturity were both believable and painful to witness.

She also has a close friend and ally in a character named Lady Dela, a transgendered female, who is described as having "the body of a man, but the spirit of a woman"--perhaps the most poetic and elegant description of a transgendered person I've ever seen. Goodman doesn't shy away from the malicious hazing this character has to endure either--Lady Dela has scars from where someone carved the character for "demon" into her skin, and she travels with a bodyguard to keep from being attacked. Also, Lady Dela is consistently referred to as "she," never casting any doubt on her feminine nature.

There is plenty of adventure here--mystery and hidden conspiracies, political intrigue handled in a way that stays interesting and holds the reader captivated, and Eona's budding friendship with the Prince which may turn into something more in the sequel, I'm not sure, but even if that's the case it's, again, handled in such a way that it comes off beautifully. But it's also a coming-of-age story about gender identity and knowing one's true self. Eona goes through an internal struggle on how "female" she really is, whether this masquerade is becoming part of her identity or whether she is just denying the female part of her nature for her own safety. The author brings up with deft subtlety the difference between conforming to prescribed gender roles in whatever society you're in, and claiming whatever gender you are as part of your being.

I don't know that this is really a metaphor for the closeted teenager, but boy does it have a lot of the same feeling behind it. That itch to confide in someone is there, coupled with fear that she might be exiled or even killed just for being what she is, and also the doubt about whether her friends will ever trust her again once they know she's kept such a big secret from them.

My looming TBR pile is the only thing stopping me from reading the sequel right now, but I highly recommend this book regardless.

Greetings! Just so I have something to link back to and cross things off of, here is my projected reading list for this year.

( The TBR Pile )

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! I sure did. Better than last year, anyway, and I have a new job that I actually really like, which is quite exciting.

On the writing front, I haven't stopped working on any of my various projects, but I'm thwarted by technology and its failings. (Translation: The lappy is D-E-A-D, and I'm borrowing my stepdad's mini to work on my manuscripts until I can get a new one.) This has been an issue since mid-October, and has been in a state of flux until recently, when it became a state of D-E-A-D.

Anyway, I finished the first draft for "The Candelabrum" and have had two beta readers look it over.

Got another rejection back on "Doppelganger," and I'm holding back on any more submissions until we actually hit January, because that's when all the magazines open up for new material again.

For the novels, I'm 17k into "Demigeists" and getting a slightly better handle on the plot. (Yay!) I also have a plot bunny I've decided to feed--taking my 2010 NaNo, "The Time Ghost," in a different direction, and that one has about 4000 words on it already. Lastly, "Early Risers" is at a standstill, but I've passed the 10k mark so it feels like a real manuscript now. Something about hitting that fifth digit is encouraging.

Nothing further in the works right now, but I think that's plenty.

I do have resolutions for the New Year. Let me show you them:

1) Hone my synopsis writing skills.

2) Whiddle down my TBR pile. This means no buying any more NEW books until I read all the ones currently stacked up in various piles around my room at this very moment. It's 54 books. I know I can do it. I will post my reading list here shortly after the new year so I have something to cross stuff off of.

Speaking of lists, the final count for Books Read in 2011 stands at 78. Coming in last is John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids--the heartwarming story of a world being slowly taken over by seven-foot-tall man-eating space plants. To tell the truth, the narrative tone is wretchedly sexist and ablist, but the concept and execution is brilliant. It's one of those pulpy, sci-fi classics that people like me simply must read at some point their lifetimes.

I'll do a blog with my top ten books I read this year some time later.

Anyone else have resolutions they'd like to share? I'd love to hear 'em.