zoe_w

Chapter 2

Sorry for not posting more updates. I've been busy the last few days.

For our Christmas entertainment, hubby and I watched Southland Tales. I'm still not sure if I liked it, or if it was just so different that it goes in a special category by itself. The first fifteen minutes were hard to watch, partly because Dwayne Johnson is just being The Rock, but with different tattoos. (On the other hand, from the very start, Sean William Scott drops his typical obnoxious asshole shtick to show some genuine acting abilities in not one, but TWO roles. Color me stunned.)

Dawyne and Seann are supposed to be staging a fake murder scene to rig the election in the favor of the Democrats until another cop shows up, a real nutcase. THEN someone gets shot in front of Dwayne and he fucking loses it. (And kudos to Jon Lovitz for pulling off the stone cold psycho act so well. He REALLY creeped me out when he asked, "Do you wanna fuck, or watch a movie?")

After Dwayne takes off from the murder scene, the Rock is gone, and what's left is a big guy who looks scared shitless. He's muttering to himself, tapping his fingers, and steepling them in front of his chest all the time. He looks like a nut trying to plot his way out of his shell, and it's surprisingly good acting from him.

Sarah Michelle Gellar is atrocious throughout the film, BUT she's playing a porn star. So I present to you this quandary: if you know an actress can act, and they are put in the role of a porn star and act badly...then haven't they done their job? Yeah, it's a really deep thought, isn't it? (Okay, probably not really.)

There's a musical number at random. I love this, and it's my opinion that more movies need musical numbers at random. This is not to be confused with a request for more musicals. There's a moment when...when a junkie hallucinates a music video. It's just awesome, and it fits right in with the rest of the weird shit going down.

There's Bizarro dialogue going on throughout the film. A lot of it is sexual, but other times, it's...there a free-form poet, Dream, who goes apeshit, spouting a verse in front of a cop just before he blows her away. As a come on line, one of the aides tells his boss, "I could smell you all the way from my desk." Another schizoid GOP security screener tells Dwayne's character. "If you don't let me suck your dick, I'll blow my brains out!" Sarah Michelle repeatedly riffs on the same line, "Teen horniness is not a crime!" There's even a pop video to supplement this line, making for one random musical number, and one, not so random, but really grating on the ears. There were lines in this movies that made me choke and groan, "They didn't go there." If you've read my blog before, you know that takes some work.

The movie predicted the Democrats choosing Clinton and Lieberman for '08. (Just think about it...now shudder.) On the opposite side, the Republicans are made into serious control freaks beyond anyone's worst nightmares. You'd almost think they were being cast as the bad guys, except the "Neo-Marxist" liberals are cutting off people's fingers and hands to bypass the Big Brother network security set up by the GOP through the extended Super-Patriot act. There is a vast left wing conspiracy to match the right side in both size and function. The Democrats may, or may not be directly connected to the Neo-Marxists. (It's never made clear.) But one thing is for sure. The liberals end up looking just as psychopathic as the conservatives. The GOP has snipers posted on almost every roof, while the liberals willingly run over their own friends to cover their asses.

Nobody in this movie is a good guy. It's just like I'd want from more writers, a story where there is no way to find the hero, and everybody has some dirt in their background. But the creative minds behind this movie grabbed the weird knob and cranked it to full intensity. This is parody at such an extreme that there's no way to take any of it seriously enough to take offense.

There's porn stars, killer cops, Christopher Lambert as a mobile weapons dealer who drives his armory around in an ice cream truck, John Larroquette as a ruthless political advisor, US soldiers working as drug smugglers, reality shows hosted by porn starlets, dead bodies by the truckload, a pair of SUVs having full penetration intercourse, conspiracy theories from both sides of the political aisle, alternative energy sources, terrorism, a prophecy, and a rift in the space-time continuum...did I mention that there are two musical numbers? Because it bears repeating.

And yet, I can't be sure if I really liked it, or if it was just too different for me to forget it. In either case, I do believe that I'll be watching it again.

Later...

Okay, this time around I'll just post a link to the main page for the site, and let you decide what you want to look at first. ^_^

http://www.zoewhitten.com

If you've already read Touched, then you won't need to read the revised version unless you just wanted to refresh your memory about Amber McKenzie's past. You can download Touched in four flavors of e-books, and so whatever e-reading device you've got, chances are, I've got a free file that will work for you. Go to the stories page to pick up the new files in the archives.

If you're ready to move on to the next story on Amber's bizarre life, then you'll be happy to know that I've posted both the prologue and chapter 1 for Blood Relations on the same day. What's the deal with that? Well, if you haven't read the Campaign trilogy, a lot of you might want to skip the prologue, because of the spoilers contained within. So, I figured I'd just go ahead and post chapter 1, to give everyone something new to read before I take a break for Christmas.

Yeppers, this is my last post until after Christmas. I do still have one article in the AC queue, but I can make a post on it after I get back. And besides, if you're subscribed to my RSS feed, you won't really need me to tell you when new AC stuff comes out.

Aaand that's it for now. Happy Holidays to all of my readers, both of you. ^_^ May you get lots of gift, lots of food, and watch only the sappy holiday movies that you like. =^P

Later...

Um, this one probably doesn't require a blurb. =^P

Epilogue

Killing People You Don't Like, and Other Benefits of Creative Writing

This is the first "official" writing guide from me. I'm planning this series of short, half page writing exercises for beginners looking for inspiration to help get them going. Every guide will try to build on the previous guide, moving up to the point of "tying" all of the lessons together to make a short story or a novella. The series is written with a bit of black humor mixed in, and hopefully people will find this entertaining instead of annoying.

As with all of my AC stuff, I would appreciate if you would leave a rating or feedback in the comments section of the article.

Later...

Last night, I was cranking out stuff just fine. I finished up the edits on part two of Touched, and I finished edits on part 7 of Erick's Journey. I ate dinner and sat down to work on Changeling...and nothing.

My attempts to coax the writing process were awful, and out of desperation, I randomly tossed a vampire into a mall scene, just because I couldn't think of anything else to do. But I know that's awful, so I erased everything up to the point where the block began. I'll come back to it in a day or two, but I think I'll take today off and do some reading of other people's stuff.

It's not like I haven't done a lot recently. In addition to writing and editing my stories, I've been working on non-fiction and doing some research for my articles. YES! Actual research that involves finding stuff out instead of making it up.

I just wanted to post an update to explain what I'm up to. Hopefully, I'll get around this writers block fast. I truly hate it when the muse wanders away in the middle of a story. It always makes me worry that she won't come back to it. -_-

But anywho, I'm off to read.

Later...

This post, the stunning conclusion. Next post, the epilogue. Next post after that, new story. Can we tell I'm tired? Yeeeessss.

Part seven

Some of you might recall me talking about testing this story out at a crit group, and that I sent it to my editor to get her take on how to polish it up. Well now I've decided to release the story through associated content. Here is the very short blurb from their site:

A talkative companion who offers to walk you home for the evening reveals his less than honest background before explaining why he's walking you home. Be careful, watch your step, and whatever you do, don't look back.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1275453/walking_home_with_strangers.html

If you stop by to read this one, please be kind and give a rating. Comments are even nicer, but it really will help me know how I'm doing with my writing if everyone votes on the story with an honest rating. So please, help a chicca out, and let me know what you think.

An attack by an orc war party turns lethal, and only Dimitri's quick thinking prevents the raid from turning into a blood bath. Erick's hunt the next day gets just as ugly when he is set up for an ambush by a werekin cub. Only this time, Dimitri isn't around to slip in for a quick rescue.

Part six

Ilaria patches up the group while introductions are made at the dwarf camp. Dimitri comes to visit with Erick, but finds him too badly shaken from the battle for training. The wyrm must later return to the camp that night to rescue the young elf from his own flourishing magic abilities.

Part five

Whoops, almost forgot to post a link for this...

Erick takes his first magic lesson with Dimitri, although he doesn't realize it until after the meeting is over. But Dimitri cannot teach wisdom or patience to the young elf, as Erick aptly demonstrates the next day. Upon finding the dwarfs engaged against a goblin tribe, Erick rides to the rescue without checking his surroundings. His eagerness to fight instead pits him in a battle with a larger, much more powerful monster than the goblins.

Part four

I did make dinner tonight, a really interesting gourmet Tex-Mex version of pizza.

I also worked on revising some scenes, but I'm working through this slowly. I had to spend a lot of today researching the living arrangements of a bit character. No, really. I now know that he lives in Ravenna, Ohio. I even "drove" past his aprtment complex thanks to Google. (And seriously, is there anything about Google that isn't a writer's best friend when it comes to reserach? If google doesn't have it, you can bet Wiki probably does.)

Anywho, this new guy is a bit character like Gavin, in that later on his importance in the story becomes greater. Still, in the first scenes that John had in the stories, he was a very blank character, and he just felt like "filler" if I didn't give him more details.

This was also the case with Davis Briggs. I knew that he had a larger role in the series, but in the rough drafts, he was never described. He was just supposed to be "cop-like," I guess. Like I said in my last post, the rough drafts aren't always pretty.

But now like Davis and Gavin, John has a back story and a basic physical description, and chapter one of the rough draft is now completely revised. Yay! And tomorrow, I will finish working on his history in the other book. Then I'll attempt to tackle the first half of chapter two in the rough draft.

And on a final side note, John's age was chosen arbitrarily. I worried that I'd guessed wrong, and I stated going over his history to check his age. And it turns out, I was right on, he is supposed to by 52. There's no other way that he could have been a lt. colonel in 1978. (when he was 33) And since the story takes place in 1996, I'm all good and squared away, mathematically speaking. ^_^

Okay, rambling...must go to bed. 0.o

Later...

I'm looking over chapter one of a rough draft. I knew the story would need to be fixed up, but some of the problems in this story are really worthy of major cringing. I am so glad that no one gets to see my stuff until much later in the production process. Because sometimes, my rough drafts blow and suck at the same time.

I know that eventually, I'll get the errors worked out, but there's some problems with this story that an editor might not know to fix. As an example, a whole page of dialogue that reads well is all very wrong, because the character asking the question to start the conversation is psychic. She should already know the answer, even if the reader doesn't.

The introduction of the bit character's back story had to be completely reworded to become an internal musing of the psychic character instead of a long conversation. I shaved off a half a page in the process, but I would describe most of the dialogue in the book as being in serious need of similar repairs. It's not just that the dialogue runs long. Many times, the dialogue simply starts out wrong for a simple reason like the above example.

I had similar problems with my other stories, so I know it not supposed to be a big deal. Still, I feel annoyed, because in my rough drafts, it doesn't look like I've learned anything at all. I'm still making a lot of the same structural mistakes repeatedly, and my main flaws are always there, no matter how hard I try to write differently. Of course in the revisions, I know about these mistakes,, so I know what to look for and change. But you'd think after this many stories, I might just NOT make those mistakes in the rough drafts anymore. And instead, I'm still writing the same way.

So yeah, I reiterate. I'm so glad that no one reads my rough drafts. -.-

Later...

The journey to search for the dwarf hunting party leads Erick's group past a tree prison, and Erick learns the legend of Queen Karin's fight with the wyrm, Prom Orvest Dimitri.

Part three

Erick is brought before the king, and then sentenced to serve time in his quarters. But shortly after dinner, Luther arrives to explain that the two of them will be leaving on a dangerous assignment.

Part two

I almost forgot to post this here. New fantasy story from me, going up in 8 parts. The blurbage:

Erick is a young daoine sidhe (black elf) who should be leading a sheltered life in Stout Hart forest as the son of a rhyndarhim king's security advisor. But the young elf is unhappy with the quiet, scholarly life, and he prefers to take his lessons while escorting trade convoys with the dwarfs instead.
Erick's rebellious streak gets him in trouble with King Finrod, who punishes Erick by assigning him with an important task that will right the balance of Lissand and prevent a war between the local orcs and the werekin.
During the journey, Erick meets a wyrm, an ancient blood drinker who has just recently been released from his prison inside a tree. Dimitri takes an instant liking to Erick, and the shape-shifting wyrm agrees to assist the young elf in his quest for the king.
But once the secondary goal of their hunt becomes clear, Erick is no longer certain if he can fulfill his mission. With everyone urging Erick to "do the right thing" by killing a sentient creature, Erick begins to question if maintaining the balance in Lissand is important enough to justify cold-blooded murder.
But if there is no one that Erick can trust, where else can he go?

Part one is up on the site, and I will be posting every three days. For the next few weeks at least, there should be plenty of new writing updates, to make up for my inability to do podcasts or live readings for now.

Later...

I went into this film with high hopes. Too high. 28 Days Later was a creepy plague story with a strong premise, good writing, and great acting. 28 Weeks Later continues the story, but the writers just try to make do with great acting. The story is horrendously cobbled together, and the premise makes absolutely no sense.

Getting to the heart of the problem is the central characters, whose last name ought to be Plotdevis or something equally obvious.

First of all, Mr. Plotdevis runs out of a house full of infected people, who are acting a lot more like zombies than infected people by munching the victims. However, Mrs. Plotdevis somehow runs down and out of a full house of infected people an sustains only one bite wound. Mrs. Plotdevis is supposedly a Typhoid Mary, and she meets back up with Mr. Plotdevis, who curiously has the authority to walk into an American Army medical quarantine without a single guard seeing him on the way to his wife. The same card that runs his apartment also grants him access to the US government quarantine. Of course! And, pray tell, what does Mr. Plotdevis do for a living to explain this level of authority? No one says in the movie. He just does, because he has to, to keep this unholy clusterfuck of suck running.

Once he becomes infected, Mr. Plotdevis chases his kids around. And the two "darling" Plotdevis kids are spoiled brats who immediately figure out a way to break quarantine to go find Mrs. Plotdevis hiding in the house...despite the fact that there's been no food to eat for 28 WEEKS So, thanks to the kids finding Mom, Mom finds Dad, and this horridly stupid film somehow does not collapse in spite of these gaping holes in the premise.

After infection Mr. Plotdevis does not act like an infected person or at least, not a person infected in the first film. Mr. Plotdevis avoids traps and extermination groups while spreading the infection to the quarantined people. Sure, the Army just locked everyone down, but Mr. Plotdevis just has to push open one door to get to them.

The movie never gets better. The "zombies" can slam through walls or open steel barriers just by shaking them a little bit, but near the end of the movie, breaking plain old auto glass eludes them. There's even a "zombie" running with a hole blown in him near the end, suggesting that he's somehow still alive without lungs.

So, my impression was, somebody said, "Boy, that first movie made so much money that we cannot resist raping it for a sequel!"

I really loved the first film, and so this movie was just full of bitter disappointment and fail, in my opinion. I give it one star, and I'm being nice because of the great acting.

Later...

Tonight, I've finished the epilogue on Berserker, and I cannot stop blabbering about this one to hubby. Every single character has got me excited, both the old returning favorites, and the new faces that come from moving to a new city. (Boerne, Texas, FTW) It's not just that this story is exciting, but that the next stories based off of this are going to be...my gosh, you really just have no idea how wonderfully complex these people are.

I think one of the main reasons why I love the story is that the antagonist is such a great guy. He's a slacker, but he earns money, and he doesn't take from other people. He's a hunter, but he believes in eating what he kills. In fact, until the curse begins affecting his judgment, he's a pretty decent redneck who most people would like. And this guy is a stark contrast to the antagonist in the other book I completed last month, A Perfectly Empty Vessel. Where Phillip Cassidy is an evil sadist who feeds off of pain, Dave Carson is a nice guy who you really wish didn't get cursed to turn into a monster.

And oh, what a monster! Everyone of the protagonists goes solo against this guy at some point in the story, and they ALL get their cans handed to them. It isn't just that he's big and tough. He's smart and self-sufficient. He's resourceful, and yes, he's the bad guy.

And in this book there's a whole new slew of problems for the protagonists besides Dave. Jobe and Gavin have to learn how to work together in spite of their problems. But Jobe is also being entrusted to watch over other cursed people, and in the process, he's getting caught up in their personal problems. There's Rosa Delgado, a victim of urban violence who had her eyes and most of her humanity taken from her long before she became a werekin. Jobe suspects that Rosa may also be a berserker like him, and a budding friendship begins to develop. Meanwhile, weredog George Brahn is discovering that his ex-wife isn't quite ready to give up on him yet, now that he's become something other than human. But what is Lucy Martinez supposed to be? Is she a vampire? A kitsune? Or is she some other blood-drinking race that has kept itself hidden among the humans?

There's a few other characters, and that includes the return of Damien, who's also going through some changes because of his imprint from Stephen Collins. There also Erick the black elf, and Url the orc/werebear.

Just....gasp! It's really exciting stuff, and while it isn't a horror book, it is without a doubt a very creepy dark fantasy that I can't wait to put out on the web site.

YES! It's going to the web. This being a book about the bit characters in their own right, I felt like it was a great way to tell the story without resorting to a huge series of novels that nobody has the money to afford. I'll still have the cor stories published properly, running them through my editor first. But these tangential stories can hopefully help to build a name for me. (Especially if I release them as free e-books)

Okay, so, what's next? Well, after I take a break, I'm going to finish up the last little bit of Erick's Journey, a short story that connects Blood Relations, Berserker, and Shadow Walker into the same general time line. Then it's time to write a couple of shorter stories about the third level bit characters, the people who cannot carry a full novel or a novella on their own. So this is where Marcus/Jenny will get their own standalone story to explain more about who they are, and who their people are. And finally, I have to write a story about one group of halflings who got out of Austin at the conclusion of the Collins family trilogy.

So, here's the basic idea. By the end of 2009, I hope to have given people enough stories for free and as paid work, that they know me, and they can have confidence that I will not be making every book about sex or ultimate evils. So then, I can release the Collins family Trilogy without worrying about the first book sinking my career before it ever takes off.

I'll be honest. I still worry about this, because it's a slow book, and its a creepy story. But after the first book, a lot of the creepy sex stuff goes away, and the story moves on as the characters evolve.

Little Monsters was the first book I'd ever written, but I knew for a long time that it wasn't "first book" material. I didn't have anything else to show people to prove that where the story starts is not where it will end up. So, I pulled a "George Lucas," and I skipped ahead to episode 4. After I get Blood Relations out, I need to seriously consider stopping and going back to episode one. Because before we can move ahead, readers should be given the chance to get to know Cora and her family.

Well anyway, that's the plan. And like I said, I'm going to be resting for at least one day before I get back to hitting the keyboard again.

On a final note for tonight, my progress for this year is four novels, three novellas, and two short stories written. If I can keep up this pace to the end of the year, I may be able to match my output from last year. And that's not too shabby, for a sickie.

Hokay, I R tired. Gab at you more tomorrow.

Later...

1) I am working on Berserker, which I think is around 50% finished right now. The bad guy just showed up and got scratched, and there's two weeks to the next lunar cycle before he makes his transformation. Of course, some of that time, he's going to dedicate to hunting and some slightly related plotting. As bad guys go, I think he's one of the more likable villains I've ever made.

This story should give me a chance to set down some ground rules for my werekin, and it also allows me to put together the first werekin pack on Earth. And it has an orc and a black elf too, so it's...it's different. Obviously, I'm liking it so far.

2) I have not had a cigarette in three days. I'm having bad withdraw symptoms, and I have thoughts every few minutes of rolling a smoke. After a few times, I have to look down to make sure I'm not really rolling anything. So far, I'm not.

Okay, I'm ready to drop on the couch for a nap.

Later...

I've been cross-posting a lot today, because Books on Board has got all of my e-books up on their site now. The link to Redemption Lost is still a pre-order, but this new release of the first books gave me the chance to start my official Campaign trilogy promotions. First, here's the books.

And now here's the deal: I want to generate 300 new e-book sales by January. If I can make this big goal (big for me, anyway), I will release a free e-book version of my next story, A Perfectly Empty Vessel. (The print version can't be free, obviously, but it will be priced just above production cost.) This is book one in the new Sin City trilogy, and it takes place right after the events in the Campaign trilogy. And, without giving anything away, the new killer makes the bad guys in the previous three books seem benign by comparison. So, if you finish the first series and find yourself hungry for more, puh-lease help me out by talking up your friends, relatives, and possibly even your worst enemies. =^P

Now that the first trilogy is done and out in public, I'm really looking forward to starting the next story arcs. In addition to A Perfectly Empty Vessel, I'm also getting ready to released a free novel to the web site. Yes, you read right. I'll be posting the story in chapters, so that's a whopping 22 posts worth of story.

I'm holding off on saying this anywhere else just yet, (mainly to have something else to post about later on in the week for other places) but the free story is Blood Relations, and it is the next part of the story for Amber McKenzie and Vicky the vampire. It will introduce a new coven of vampires into the story, as well as introducing readers to Dimitri, yet another of the "major heavies" in the coming mystical wars. This story also makes for a shocking change in Amber, and in the nature of Amber's relationship with Vicky. The conclusion also ties into another free story already on the web site...and no, I don't mean Touched. (Ooooh, the mystery! @.@ )

And Marcus? Well, you'll just have to read the story to see what happens. ^_^

And so, that's about it for now. Since I've just finished up most of the work on the rough draft of A Perfectly Empty Vessel, my head is now also somewhat empty. So if I've rambled too much, forgive me. Now I must try to finish up a few other work projects before bed.

Later...