InsaneJournal

Current mood:	pleased
Entry tags:	personal projects, random mental floss

Yayzorz! Go me! ^_^
Last night, just before I went to sleep, I started going over "Blood Relations in my head, and I realized I hadn't mentioned Amber's age. It's only mildly important to establish this detail, I suppose, but my thoughts before bed became a mantra, "add Amber's age." Yeah, kind of alliterated, I know.

Well, I got up, and hubby took off for a gaming tournament at Casa Dei Giochi. So I realized it was probably my best time to attempt to record a new podcast episode. I got to work, and many, many hours later, I finally uploaded the new episode.

Then we went out to dinner at Pastarito, and I have Cavatappi with some kind of "Messicanna" seasoning. They can claim it's Mexican by just putting in beans, I guess, but I had to dump a lot of red pepper on mine to make it less bland. And yeah, my stomach is just trilled with me, believe me. -_-

I got back home and sat down, and I thought, "What did I forget? Oh yeah, Amber's age." (She's twenty-four, if you're wondering) I edited it in at two places, which also helped me to add in more of an explanation for Amber's motivations in the story.

I guess what I'm trying to aim for with these revisions is to make the story more emotional. I want people to feel creeped out in the right places, and scared in others. That's really, REALLY hard with a vampire story, I know. It doesn't help that the focus is pretty much on the plight of the blood drinkers, taking away some of the reader's ability to relate to the protagonists.

On the one hand, I'm thrilled by the way may vampires are amoral about feeding. They're not turned humans, so they were born needing blood to sustain themselves. On the other hand, hubby has pointed out how this book is kinda harsh to humans, who end up being cattle more than characters. But then, I think that was kind of what I was aiming for. I wanted to make a vampire book where the focus was on the vampires, and for once, their sense of self-loathing had nothing to do with them hating their existence.

Most of the vampires don't suffer from self-loathing. It's just Vicky having problems. She's developed recent self-esteem issues in the aftermath of "Redemption Lost," which are in turn compounded by her distant past. But she's got no problems killing a random human for food, and she doesn't care if they're good or bad. That feels appropriate for a vampire, in my humble opinion.

Tomorrow is probably going to be a half-day off for me. I'll still work on the corrections and revisions for two of my stories, though not with as much intensity as I've been using most of this week.

Next week, perhaps I might take out the fantasy story and see if I can bridge the gap from my current point to the "big twist." If I can make it to the twist, the rest should play itself out pretty quickly to the end, in theory.

Anyway, I'm babbling, so I'll go to bed.

Later...