Writer's Grove

I once convinced one of my students that marshmallows grow on bushes like cotton, and that I used to spend my summers harvesting them in Louisiana.

Marshmallows are fun like that: they have the potential to make you smile. Dump a few in your hot cocoa and it’s instantly happier. Roast a giant one over a fire, slap it on top of a slab o’ chocolate and grab some graham crackers, and you’re so close to bliss that you can rub Buddha’s belly.

I recently sent a package to New York with a gift inside, and instead of using packing peanuts I used marshmallows. They’ll probably be rock hard by the time they get to New York, but I found it highly amusing in any case.

Progress report: 3200 words on HAMMERED. I have chapter 1 finished, a wee bit of chapter 2 down and a really good start on chapter 3. Working on fleshing out chapter 2 now.

Now that I’m starting my third book, I’m beginning to notice a pattern. Beginnings are really, really tough for me compared to other parts of the book. I’m talking about the amount of revision and fiddling I do with it—not the raw creation.

I’ve revised the first paragraph of HAMMERED at least ten times already. I know what I want to say; finding the most elegant way to say it is the tough part. The first sentence, especially, has endured major reconstructive surgery. When the book is finally published, people will never know (unless they read this) that I spent a couple of hours on it, trying and discarding much more complex sentences before settling on a relatively simple one.

Once I get the plot firmly rolling, however, I rarely revise much; just a sentence here or there, usually. No single part of the book gets the attention that my opening chapter does.

HOUNDED’s first few pages went through 24 different versions before I finally left it alone—and that’s only because my editor told me to. I’d still probably still be hacking away at it if she hadn’t told me to leave it.

Speaking of which, I’m supposed to get my Copy Edits on January 14. Can’t wait!

I received super cool news today: my super cool agent, Evan, loved HEXED and told me to deliver it without any changes! I’m fairly well gobsmacked because I just assumed I’d be changing something, if not quite a few somethings, before it was ready to send…but I guess I must have learned something after writing that first book, eh?

I’ve learned some spiffy things about language in the past few weeks. Number one is that while the Internet is a wonderful tool for learning a few words of another language here and there, there’s really no substitute for a native speaker. Actually I knew that was true before—I just got reminded why it is true.

This morning I just finished writing HEXED, the second book in my series. Right now it’s 82,256 words, and I’m quite smug.

Of course, once my agent and editor take a look at it, it’ll probably change significantly, and the revision process is like that, but it’s also entirely enjoyable, just tinkering around the edges. What I’m grooving on is the fact that I managed to bang all of that out in less than five months while still holding down a day job. I didn’t know I had it in me!

I’ll probably start messing around with HAMMERED soon, but for now I’m going to take a couple weeks or so off from writing and enjoy the sense of completion while it lasts.

I just finished writing the epilogue to HEXED. It came to me just before I nodded off to sleep last night, and I wrote a quick, rough version before I forgot it. I polished it up this morning.

It’s odd because I haven’t finished the actual climax of the book yet. Sometimes I do that, though: I skip ahead in the sequence of events, then go back and fill in the gaps later. Chapter 18 was like that; I wrote chapter 17, then 19 and 20, and only then did I go back and write 18.

I’m at 74K now and I’m going to start the climactic Chapter 21 momentarily. Blood and guts, baby, blood and guts.

HOUNDED was formally accepted on Dec. 9, and now it’s going to the copy editing stage. I’ll be receiving the copy edited manuscript on Jan. 14, and I have to return it with my corrections/amendments by Jan. 27.

I’m at 70,000 words on HEXED, and I’m hoping to finish it up this week. Right now there is coffee to drink and presents to unwrap, and later there is Sherlock Holmes to enjoy. :)

I’m going to tell you all a secret.

There’s a really cool little place in Payson that I visit every time I’m in town to visit my parents. It’s called the Red Elephant Bakery (which you probably guessed from the post title) and it’s a wee place that serves coffee in porcelain cups on saucers, with a wee spoon on the side and real cream to pour into it from a miniature carafe. Paintings of the African Savannah adorn the walls, and in a tiny room they have a gift shop full of handmade goodies. The handbags in particular are stunning—if you bought them in a department store they’d be $70 or $100 easy, but they’re selling for under $20 because they’re getting the material almost free from a local upholsterer who lets ’em have scraps of his most sumptuous fabrics.

They have a small menu—salads, eggs dishes, and grains, not much meat—and I’m here to tell you that the portobello mushroom sandwich is mighty fine.

Free wifi, my friends, free wifi.

The bakery/cafe is actually inside an old house, so it’s very homey inside and it’s utterly anti-corporate. The people who own and operate it are completely delightful and very welcoming. I truly dig it and spend some time writing there every chance I get. Discover it for yourself if you ever make it up to Payson!

It is a sad, unavoidable fact that James Cameron’s new movie, Avatar, not only uses Papyrus for its movie title logo, but also for its English subtitles when the natives of Pandora are speaking in their native language.

Clearly he failed to consult even a single graphic designer worth the name.

However, despite this screeching eyesore of a font, the rest of the movie is bloody brilliant. Go see it, because movies that can make me forget I’m staring at Papyrus are rare indeed.

My curiosity bids me ask, why do male Disney villains have acres of space between their noses and upper lips with razor thin mustaches resting on top of said lips? I’m actually just thinking of Jafar and the Shadow Man, the latter being the latest Disney villain in The Princess and the Frog.

In many ways, it seems that Disney just took Jafar and recycled him into this new setting. Like Jafar, the Shadow Man is very tall and skeletally thin; he wields a cane with a globe on top that’s eerily similar to the scepter Jafar used in Aladdin; he has a tall, black hat like Jafar’s monstrous headgear; and then there is the aforementioned mustache.

What can we conclude, then, about facial hair? A long, white, ZZ Top beard means you’re wise and ready to save Middle Earth; thin, black, and trimmed means you want to rule over Agrabah or New Orleans; a brown, bristly beard suitable for sanding down petrified wood means you’re Chuck Norris.

Gandalf can still take Chuck Norris any day of the week, by the way.