Sunday Update

As you may have noticed, I have not be reporting my progress for ROW80 lately. Most of the updates go like this:

"Well, I changed my mind about whether I'm counting words, or projects or minutes, but it doesn't matter because I forgot to count them anyway.  I did do stuff. I think."

I've decided that this is a hint.  Goals right now are a distraction.  ROW80 itself is a distraction.  The blog is a distraction.  Uncertainty is a distraction, not to mention The News, which is super distracting.  Everything seems to be a distraction right now. 

I'm like a Golden Retriever trying to do calculus homework while squirrels cavort everywhere all around me.  Except that the distractions aren't fun. Some of them are pretty horrible, but that just makes them more distracting.

But, as I said, my goals themselves seem to have become a distraction, so....

My one and only goal right now is to change my life.

And to do that, I think I need to unplug even further.  That's why I announced on Thursday that I'm going on a "blog vacation" and posting only episodes of the serial and Sunday updates until January 1.

What am I going to do on January 1?  To be honest, I don't know.  I expect to start up blogging as before, but I might decide I need a little more time.  Or I might have a whole new plan.  (I'll certainly have an idea by the December 30 update post.)

What am I going to do while unplugged?

Well, I never really did finish my "GTD Implementation" -- I got bogged down in Important Things With Deadlines and Follow Up Kerfuffle Involving Phone Trees and Musak (also known as, "Getting all my health stuff done before I lose my insurance" and "What the heck am I going to do with this single share certificate of International Paper for which they keep sending me uncashable $1 dividend checks?")....

So first I'm going to lock myself in the basement and double-down on implementing that GTD.

I'm also going to read, draw and write with no goals in mind.

I've also started reviewing the 1000+ plus posts I've already posted on this blog.  I am looking to collect the best of them for a book.  And I figure this will also give me a chance to look at what I've done well with this blog and what I may want to do in future.

One thing I'm considering for when I come back is not doing ROW80 for the first quarter of 2013.  Instead, I'll probably just go cheer on other participants.

In the meantime, things are going to get a little tougher for Jackie in Test of Freedom this week. And I'll talk to you next Sunday about how everything else is going.

See you in the funny papers.

Taking a Blog Vacation (mostly)

I said I was going to do a post on Friday about Hitchcock's remakes of his own work.... but I'm not gonna.

I need to really dive into sorting out my life -- and get away from as many distractions as possible. (More about that in the Sunday update.)  So....

From now until December 31, I will post three times a week: the two serial story episodes and a Sunday update.

On January 1, I will start up a regular posting schedule again.

See you in the funny papers.

Test of Freedom - Episode 16

First Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Previous Episode

Episode 16 - "The Sick House"

by Camille LaGuire

It was a hellish hot day, and men were falling over their hoes.  Cooper'd been kept so busy running buckets of water to pour over stricken men, that Rocken had given him a boy to help out.  And the afternoon heat was only now reaching its peak.

"Cooper!" came Rocken's shout for the fifth time that day.

This time, though, it was a broken leg.  Someone had dropped a log on someone else.  While Cooper bent over his patient, a man named Orin, Rocken whipped the other fellow for carelessness.  That would make another patient for Cooper that night.  The man had probably only dropped the log in the weakness from the heat.

"Dammit!" he said, among the least of his string of curses.  "We've got two lost in the sick house, we don't need another.  And now four down in the heat...."

"You could use a bit of cooling yourself," said Cooper, looking up from binding a splint of sticks.  The bucket boy came up with a fresh bucket just then, and Rocken took it without a word and poured it over his own head.

"How long until he's fit for work?"

"It's a broken leg, Mr. Rocken."

The overseer just let out another string of curses.

"We need to get him back to the pen," said Cooper.  "Can I have a mule?"

"The mules are getting work done," said Rocken.  He looked around at the men.  "You, Jack.  Come here."

Jack straightened and came, looking from Rocken to the man on the ground.  He didn't say anything.

"Do you think you can carry him back to the pen?"

Jack looked back at the pen, and then down at the man.  He sighed.  His face was a bit flushed and it was clear he was hot and tired as well.

"Can I have a rest afterwards?"

Rocken frowned for a moment in his own considerations.

"Sure," he said, waving in resignation.  "Get him back there and take your rest."

Rocken turned back to yell at the other men to get to work.  Jackie turned to Cooper as soon as Rocken was out of earshot.

"Nice to know I'm of less value than a mule," said Jack as he bent to pick up Orin.

"What about the chain?" said Orin, even though he was half out from the heat.  "The weight'll kill me."

"Anything we can do about it?" asked Jack.

"Not until we get back, if then.  Maybe one of the guards will get a chisel."

Jack shook his head and helped Orin up to stand on his good leg, and then scooped him over a shoulder, grabbing onto the chain as well to keep it from pulling on the bad leg.

"Careful," said Cooper, as the man let out a groan.

"Aye."

It wasn't a great distance, but the heat of the man's body must have added to the burden.  Cooper kept close to watch for a stumble, even even a collapse, but Jack kept it slow and steady, and made it to the pen with only a bit of a stagger toward the end.  As they made their way through the grounds toward the sick house--a dark little hovel that had more shelter but little air--Orin let out a complaint.

"I don't want to go to the sick house," he said.

"You'll be fine," said Cooper.  But Jack set him down outside, under the shelter of the pen's pavilion.  Then he collapsed down himself, to sit in the dirt.  He was red, and covered with more sweat than could cool him.  Cooper went and got a bucket and dumped it over the man's head.

"That better?" he asked, and Jack just nodded.

Cooper went into the sickhouse to get his medicines, since he had some herbs that would help with Orin's pain.  He had not had much time to go into the woods and gather herbs lately, but there was enough, he thought.

He checked on the two men already in the sick house--both with fevers--and wasn't surprised to find one dead.  He paused to fold the dead man's arms across his chest.  When he turned he found Jack standing behind him.

"What was his name?" he asked.

"Joe."

"Sorry to have missed you, Joe," said Jack.  Then he looked at the other man, and went and sat down beside him.  "Hello, I'm Jack Alwyn," he said.

The man, William, wheezed a bit, but smiled, and raised his hand.

"I've heard of you," he said.  "You're Jackie the Freedom."

"Not anymore."

Cooper shook his head and went to get his medicines.  He mixed up a tonic and gave it to Orin, and talked a guard into getting a chisel and removing the chain from the broken leg, although he wouldn't remove the shackle.  The truth was, the force of removing it probably would be worse for the leg than leaving it on.

Once that was done, he noticed that Jack still hadn't come out of the sick house, so he went in to look for him.  Jack was still talking to William.

"I'll tell them about that when I get back to Acton," said Jack.  William let out a wheezing laugh.

"You'll never get back to Acton," he said.

"I suppose not," said Jack, after a bit of pause and a laugh at himself.  "Then I'll tell that to the next person I meet who's likely to go to Acton."

"And how would you even manage that?" asked Cooper.

"Dunno," said Jack with a shrug.  "Maybe when I've served my ten, I'll find work on the docks."

"Or you could be a sailor," said William.

"I don't much like the sea," said Jack, shaking his head.  "Although I'd do anything if I thought it could get me home."

William closed his eyes, but he was still smiling.  He spoke again, a little bit quieter.

"Do you have family back there?"

"Aye, a wife."

"I expect to them it's like we died."

"We're just ghosts now," agreed Jack.

"You think they'll forget us?"

"Never!  But they'll have to move on, won't they?  We want them to be happy."

"Think your wife will find someone else?"

Jack laughed.  "My wife?  Yes.  If she needs somebody, she'll find him.  She's already proven herself capable of that."

"Oh, it's the wife that left you."

"You heard about that?"

"Everybody heard about it.  From that book."

"Even here?"

"No, I've only been here two years."

"Oh, I see."

"So you took her back?"

"I had to.  I love her."

"And why would she come back to a lump like you?"

Jack paused.  In the dim light it was hard to see his expression.

"Because she wanted to," he said at last.  "That's why she does things.  I'm a bit worried about that."

"Why?"

"When she hears I've been taken, she might get herself into trouble trying to do something about it."

"She'll be all right," said William, with the assurance of a lost man who knows that there is no way they'd ever know what the truth was.

"She does have a way of slipping through trouble," said Jack.  "Maybe it's her shining smile.  It just blinds everyone."

William didn't answer, but you could hear his breath rasping.

"Come on, Jack.  Let him rest now," said Cooper.  They went out of the sick house, and stopped in the shade of the pavilion, where they could feel a bit of breeze.  Jack sat down and leaned against a post, closing his eyes.  Cooper looked down at him.

"They talk a lot about becoming sailors," he said.  "That doesn't mean it's possible.  Ship captains don't want us once we're used up.  Don't expect to get out of here."

Jack opened his eyes and looked up at him, smiling just a bit, his blue eyes clear.

"Oh, I'll get out of here, all right.  The same way that Joe did," he said, gesturing back toward the sickhouse, and the dead man in the other cot.  "Only with a bit more spectacle, I hope."

Cooper tensed.

"What was that about calling you Jackie the Freedom?"

"That's because I incited a revolution."

"You aren't expecting to incite one here, are you?"

Jack's smile faded and he looked away.

"I'm too weary," he said.  "We were half free already in Acton.  More than half.  There's no freedom here at all."  He paused and looked up again, eyes narrowed in a calculating way.  "William told me something about men up in the jungle."

"Thinking of escape?"

"Aren't you?"

Cooper shrugged.  "I don't bother anymore.  If you manage it, there's no place to go but up there in the jungle, and those that are already there will kill you.  They're just bandits."

"Bandits, are they?"  Jack looked off toward the green jungle which rose up along the mountain.  "We had bandits in Acton."

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 17 - "The Bush Knife"

First Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Previous Episode

---

The Test of Freedom ebook available at major retailers in December 2012. It may be rewritten from the version you see here.

The first book in this series, The Wife of Freedom is at most ebook retailers.
Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Deisel, Kobo, and Smashwords. 

Also, Amazon International: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan.

Telling It Twice - Incompatible Versions of a Story

So.....

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, this series of posts (well, two posts so far) is partly inspired by a bit of off-hand advice Dean Wesley Smith gave to a commenter on his blog a while ago.  The commenter said something about having to choose between two ideas for her book, and he said "write them both."  And he didn't mean "write them both and then choose the best one."  He meant "Write them both and publish them both."

And I'll talk about the obvious version of this advice on Friday when I talk about the stories Hitchcock told twice -- his remakes.  Movie makers do outright remakes all the time, and one of the reasons is because movies are just a kind of play.  Just recast it and you've got a new production.

This is less common for books, but writers still do revisit the same themes and plot lines. Heck some whole series are the same story told over and over and over again.  And that's interesting, and I really do want to talk more about it one day.

But today I'm not interested in the situations where doing this is easy, obvious and normal. What I really want to talk about is the rarer situation where this advice really seems impossible.  Because that's where it gets really interesting.

The thing that can make this advice impossible to follow is not really a story problem (you can always come up with a way to change a story to write it twice), but a writer problem: whether you can write it twice depends on your motivation for writing the story in the first place.

If your whole interest in writing the story is invested in the specifics of the story -- that is, you want to write about that character, and that world, and that set of circumstances, and changing them something which is merely similar won't do it for you -- that can present a real problem for just blithely writing a story twice.

I'm going to give you two examples.  One is common in series writing.  The other is an actual problem I have with a decision about a story, and may be less common.

Series Fiction

When you have a series, and you're invested in it, and your audience is invested in it, you have limitations on what you can do, or at least how you can do it.  You can't make Columbo an ax-murderer or have Miss Marple run off with a hot young stud and form a nudist lacrosse club.

But the limitations aren't just about what the audience will accept.  Heck, authors have made big changes in their series and sold it to audiences before.  Sometimes it just means that the old audience goes a way and a new audience jumps in.

But you also have a limitation in your own head: you love your characters and are driven to write about them.  And you may not be driven to write about characters who are like them.

For instance, I like writing about Mick and Casey McKee, my two young newlywed gunslingers in Have Gun, Will Play.  I'm not at all interested in writing stories about any other young gunslingers in love.  So if I have an idea which would change their lives completely and irreversably, I have to give up other ideas where their lives have not changed.

So, if I ever got an idea for a story where Casey gets pregnant, I have a choice to make. That story will change their lives, even if she miscarries.  I can't have it both ways.  As a result I have no plans for Casey to ever get pregnant.  If I come up with a good idea for such a story, I'll stick it on the shelf just in case I get bored with the way things are now for them.

More serious yet: what if I came up with a really good idea for a story where one of them gets killed and the other has to deal with it?

Now, you might say, "If it's a great idea, develop it for some other characters!"  Except that I am not interested in writing a story about Dick and Stacy McGonigal, Frontier Chiropractors.  The thing that would interest me are the specifics of Mick and Casey's relationship, their history, as told in the stories I've written about them.  The idea doesn't work for me -- isn't interesting to me -- if it's not specifically for Mick and Casey.

However, thinking about that idea -- considering it -- that is actually useful.

I get to know more about the characters when I think beyond such boundaries.  My other stories are richer for having thought about it.  Considering their profession, I imagine that they, privately, imagine such a future for themselves.  So when I consider a story like that, it gives me insight into what's going on in their heads, unspoken.

And sometimes it even gives me a different story to write twice.  I when I have considered what would happen to these characters if they lost the other, it drew me to think of Mick's devastation if Casey ever left him.  And though I haven't developed that story, and I don't know if I'll ever get to it, it's one I know I could have fun with.  And it doesn't make me choose.

In that sense, "writing it twice" is what series fiction is all about -- it's about exploring variations.  Letting your mind explore beyond your boundaries keeps it fresh and gives you options.

Writing the Unique Story Twice

I have another story where writing two versions seems even more impossible... and yet, if I think outside the box a little, it also could be a solution to a conundrum.

Slayer of Clocks is a play I wrote that was produced at the Discovering New Mysteries Festival.  It's a noir story, often humorous but generally on the dark and tragic side.  I also have a version of the story in my head that is a cozy mystery.  The characters change from bad to good and good to bad and swap around who is on whose side.

It would seem to be ideal for the "write two versions" strategy.  Hey, if your characters change from good to bad and vice versa, then there is no problem just changing their names and making them different characters.  You aren't just filing off the serial numbers: They ARE different characters. And obviously the plot is different, and the situation is different.

The problem is that there are certain central details which are very specific and kind of weird. Way to unique and specific to pretend they are separate things.  These two versions of the story are linked.  They're almost like alternate realities....

Which might be the key to my solution.  What if I wrote these as conjoined novellas?  One book, two linked stories.

It might work, it might not.  The noir version is a play. The cozy version, if I were to stay true to my thoughts on that, is longer and wanders more from the original premise. Furthermore I feel like it would set up a series.  Should I go ahead and do that? Or should I write it more as a reflection of the play?

No matter what I do with it, it's way down my priority list right now.  I've got too much else to do. (Heck, I've thought often about just writing an adaptation of the noir play, to force myself to abandon thoughts of another series.)

But still, I do feel a spark at the thought of the twin novellas. And a part of that thrill is doing something that seems, at first glance, an impossible problem.

See you in the funny papers.

Telling It Twice - Misplaced Hero, Misplaced Baroness

A few weeks ago, in the comments on Dean Wesley Smith's blog (I don't remember which post), someone was bemoaning the fact that she couldn't make up her mind between two possible endings for her novel.  Dean answered as Dean always does: So write -- and publish -- them both!

And there are times when this is the obvious and easy answer.  But I want to talk about how this can be a good answer even when it doesn't seem like a good idea.  Because the hard solution is always the more interesting one.  Even if you are sure you can't write it twice, it's worth thinking about seriously, if only to get your head outside the box.

So today and tomorrow, I'm going to talk about two story situations of mine where "write it twice" is an option for solving a sticky problem. (And Friday, I'll talk about how Alfred Hitchcock remade several of his movies.)

Today we're going to talk about a critical problem for The Case of the Misplaced Baroness, the story for next summer's serial.

The Problem

The Case of the Misplaced Baroness is a sequel to summer's serial, The Case of The Misplaced Hero.

Misplaced Hero isn't really the first story of the series. It's actually outside of the series: a kind of side story that gives a little background on some squirrely secondary characters who may well be a mystery to the main characters.

Or at least, that's what it was supposed to be.

And it would have worked fine if I had left it as a side story -- just setting up the world.  But when I wrote that last "credit cookie" episode, a little imp inside me went ahead and connected this story firmly to the main story.

Without giving spoilers: The story ends with Rozinshura asking for the whole story about how the baroness came to be missing.  It isn't a promise that he's going to investigate and find out; it's a promise that we're actually going to flash back and expeirence that story.  And seeing as the same episode reveals a mystery that is unsolved at the time he asks -- clearly that story will not be resolved just in the flash back.

So this second story is going to start before the first story, and it will end after it. And there is a chunk of story which will overlap in the middle.

Do you see the problem?

I will have new readers who don't know what happened in the first story, and old readers who don't need to be told again. And the flow of the story is going to need at least some of it in there.

First Solution

I was going to write Baroness as a flashback, complete in itself.  I'd just have to come up with a subplot which can be resolved before we even get to the events of Hero.  Then the mysteries raised by these first two stories can be addressed by the third story.

The problem with that is two-fold.  One is that the ending episode of Hero really does promise that we'll move on, that we'll actually address the mysteries raised by the ending.  The second is more important: I don't have a good idea right now for anything but the plot I set up.  If I end up having such an idea, then I can probably satisfy the reader okay anyway.  It's like Scheherazade and her stories inside of other stories -- you can delay the answer to a question if you've got interesting other answers to give first.

But you've not only got to have those other interesting answers, you have to be interested in them yourself. And I'd like to get on with the story.

Second Solution

Maybe I should try to skip over as much of the overlapping section as possible. Write truncated summaries where possible.  Come up with ways to get around the holes.  Heck, should I skip it altogether and just add a note referring new readers to the first book, and ask them to go back and read it?  Gah!

The problems with that?  It's a short episode serial; boring exposition parts just don't work.  They could slow the thing down by weeks.  And it's a serial.  It's not supposed to take time out for things!  It's supposed to move from one episode to another.  So seriously, pausing to read another serial is just not .... good.

My best hope here would be to magically come up with gyrations in the story to simply avoid that part -- to write my way around it -- but that's not the story I have in mind.  As with the first solution -- if something like that comes to me, I'll do it, but I'm not going to warp the story to suit it.

The Third Solution

There's another technique -- a perfectly good, well established, well aged technique which is as old as storytelling itself -- which could work here.  And that is, just go ahead and write the same story again from another point of view, using the new pov to fill in information and make jokes and give a different perspective.

There are a lot of different versions of this technique.  For instance, mysteries use a version of this all the time: the detective talks to all the witnesses and gets the same story over and over again, each time illuminating a different aspect of the case.  There are some stories, like Agatha Christie's The Five Little Pigs, which use the technique more intensively -- including first person narratives along with the investigation.

And there was a great series of modern suspense/mysteries written by Phillip Craig and William Tapply, were they wrote a series of books together.  The series (which begins with First Light -- unfortunately it's a Simon and Schuster book, and the ebook is incredibly expensive), involves both of their detectives.  Each writes from his own character's point of view, in alternating chapters.  Some of the chapters overlap the same time frame.

And in the movies we see this all the time -- whether it's the classic Roshomon, where the whole plot is based on showing us the same exact story from several different points of view, or smaller uses, like the quick flashbacks you might see in a heist or con film, which reveal what the crooks really did to get away with their crime, after the fact.

I don't know to what extent I am going to use it in The Case of the Misplaced Baroness, but I do think that this is the solution with the most creative and entertaining possibilies. It gives me the most options for fun.  It allows me to weave this story in or out of the other story as far as I like.

There is only one problem, and I don't see it as a big one: it may well leave the new reader seriously puzzled about what's really going on with Alex and Thorny.  Because this is told from the point of view of people who are unlikely to ever know what's going on, it could be annoying and dissatisfying to the reader.  However....

That could also be an opportunity. I want Alex and Thorny to be a bit of a mystery.  So maybe I need to think about how to play that up better.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about a story with a more serious double-identity problem.  It's a story which has elements which are so unique that there is no way that anyone could read them as just two takes on the same concept -- these are the exact same characters, exact same situation, with mutually exclusive tone, character development and endings.  Good characters are evil, evil characters are good.

That story is far down my priority list, but one of the options I have for writing it is to write both.... as a single book.  The dark side and the light side.

See you in the funny papers.

Test of Freedom - Episode 15

First Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Previous Episode

Episode 15 - "Sin and All"

by Camille LaGuire

Mary guided Lady Ashton into the little cabin they all shared.  Loreen wasn't there, so Mary closed the door, as Lady Ashton sat and sighed.

"So you've told your son that you killed his father," said Mary. "And now he won't speak to you."

"He can't forgive me."

"But he hasn't told anyone?"

"No.  He does love me, even with this."  She paused, eyes cast down as if studying the weave of her skirt.  "He's a thoughtful person.  Much as he might want to lash out at me, he can see that he can't take it back once he's spoken.  Like pulling a trigger, once it's done it's done."  She looked up.  "But it wouldn't be done and over, would it?  He'd have to watch the slow and terrible consequences of a trial, and ... hanging."

"Poor boy."

"I shouldn't have told him, should I have?"

No, she shouldn't have but it wasn't Mary's place to judge anyone, and besides, it was done, wasn't it?

"How old is he?" she asked instead.

"He's sixteen."

"It's still a burden, to bear it alone, no one to speak to," said Mary, shaking her head.

"There's Sherman.  They get along quite well."

"You told Mr. Sherman too?" exclaimed Mary.  That seemed like a real risk.  The man seemed so correct.

"I had to tell someone I could trust, for your safety.  If you were ever accused, and I was unable to testify...."  Lady Ashton paused.  "Sherman has been with my family for a long time.  His father was with my grandfather in his later years, as a sort of 'accomplice,' mainly."  She took a breath and looked up.  "I shouldn't say that.  Not when I'm the criminal of the family."

And with that she covered her face and began to weep.  Mary stood and looked down at her, perplexed at the foolishness.  And yet she did understand: Lady Ashton did not know how to be guilty. Which was fine in a person who wasn't guilty, but if you were you couldn't dither about it.

"Have you told anyone else?"

"No, although I think my father suspects," she said between sobs. "And possibly Loreen."

"Penelope," said Mary, using the woman's given name to get her attention.  "I don't know about murder, but I do know about guilt.  It's fine to let the guilt drive you.  That should make you a better person.  But you can't let it rule you.  It'll make you do foolish things and it'll make you selfish."

"Selfish?" said Lady Ashton.  She stopped weeping and looked up, not sure of what Mary was saying.

"When you dissolve into a puddle of guilt, that just forces people to sympathize with you. And that's not fair when you're the guilty party.  You've got to be brave, and live with the choice you made."

Lady Ashton sat quietly a moment, and then finally spoke in a hushed voice.

"Mary, I'm ready to hang, if it comes to that," she said, now calm.  "I consider my time to be borrowed.  I know I have to make good use of that time.  And my fortune."

"I dread asking this," said Mary, "but is it your fortune, or your son's?"

"Oh, no, I don't touch his money!" said Lady Ashton.  "I have a fortune of my own.  My grandfather didn't trust Roland, and he put protections on the money he left for me.  I think, considering what a great man my grandfather was...."  Her voice cracked, and she paused to gather herself.  "I need to do right with his money."

"Dunno how right it is, but I'm grateful for your help to me," said Mary.  "And there's a boat full of sailors happy with the bonus you gave them, and at the start of the voyage, too.  I don't think they're used being trusted."

"That's terrible," said Lady Ashton, wiping her eyes.

"But it's probably reasonable."

"It would make grandfather happy, then, to know where his money was going.  He was an artist himself, and he always said he hated the respectability our family had fallen into."

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 16 - "The Sick House"

First Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Previous Episode

---

The Test of Freedom ebook available at major retailers in December 2012. It may be rewritten from the version you see here.

The first book in this series, The Wife of Freedom is at most ebook retailers.
Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Deisel, Kobo, and Smashwords. 

Also, Amazon International: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan.

Week in Reveiw-Preview - Doubles Week

This Past Week's Posts:

Last week was Cozy Mystery Week.  As part of a blog festival, I did three posts on that subject this week, Tues, Wed, and Friday.

• Monday: Test of Freedom Episode 13 "Old Cooper"
• Tuesday: Miss Leech and The Yard comic strip #4
• Wednesday: Writing the Cozy Mystery: Hiding Twists with Misdirection
• Thursday: Test of Freedom Episode 14 - "Lady Ashton's Admission"
• Friday Favorites: What a Cozy Mystery Is To Me

Coming This Week on the Blog:

A month or two ago DWS suggested, in the comments on his blog, that if you can't decide on the ending of your story, write the story twice and publish them both. There are some situations where that seems impossible... but is it?

I'll be talking about "Writing it Twice" on Tues, Wed and Friday this week.

Monday - Test of Freedom Episode 15 "Sins and All"
Lady Ashton and Mary discuss the concept of guilt and what use it is.

Tuesday - Story Notes - Misplaced Hero, Misplaced Baroness
What do you do when the first story in a series takes place in the middle of the sequel? Skip it? Summarize it? Stand on your head to make it not matter? Send the new readers off to read the first story in the middle of the second?  Or do you write it again?

Wednesday - Writing Two Versions of a Unique Story
What if you have two incompatible versions of a unique story? Can you write that twice, and pretend it's two different stories?

Thursday - Test of Freedom Episode 16 "The Sick House"
Jackie is given leave to help an injured man, and Cooper learns a little about Jackie the Freedom.

Friday Favorites - Hitchcock's Doubles (and maybe Roshomon)
Thinking on Dean's "write it twice" advice: Hitchcock overtly recreated two of his early movies later; The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The 39 Steps.  (And if I have time I might talk about Roshomon too, but that may deserve it's own post.)


A Round of Words in 80 Days Update


This Segment's Progress:

I did not keep track of what I did this past half-week.  I let the kerfuffle get away from me.

(It's not that I didn't do anything - I had some very fruitful days - but I was completely out of my routine and didn't track it at all.)

See the other folks updating today at the ROW80 Linky.


The Not Ready For Full Time Diary

Getting laid off causes a lot of kerfuffle and paperwork and issues to be dealt with.  Way more than you'd think.

For instance, I'm getting all sorts of medical stuff done while I still have insurance.  And that means I'm "flyin' standby' on appointments sometimes, which can be very disruptive.

And just as those issues settle down, I'll be dealing with the fun and wonder of the Unemployment Office.

One of the side effects of accepting unemployment checks is that you are legally, morally and ethically bound to actually look for another job.  Lee M. made a comment on a post this week to the effect that my journey is interesting because I'm not just playing at jumping into the full time writing life while I wait for another job.

And that's true, except that we aren't really at that stage yet.  If I were to be offered a job like the one I had, I would have to take it; I couldn't turn down the insurance.

I was going to talk more about that, but, you know, I need to leave that until later. Why borrow kerfuffle if kerfuffle isn't borrowing you? (I think I mixed a metaphor there....)

So instead....

I'm going to talk about mugs.

I was chatting with some other fiction bloggers on the forums at Web Fiction Guide, and asked what sort of income streams they use to support their habit.  Most of them do exactly what one would expect -- they have many different sources of income.

There was a discussion of merchandizing, though, and one person with a very nice Zazzle store happened to mention that people tended to buy mugs, and maybe postcards and mousepads, more than anything else.

Oddly, these are things I wouldn't never consider becuase I don't buy them myself.  I buy t-shirts sometimes (which she says don't sell that well), but never mugs.

And I thought, "Hey, a mug would be a natural fit for Miss Leech!"  So I went and checked out the products at Zazzl, and then I saw something else:

Frosted beer mugs!

I know, I know, they're probably too expensive to be popular but the idea of having a beer mug with the official seal of the Awarshi Revolutionary Committee of Bureaucratic Practices - and the slogan "Beer Makes Bureaucracy Run Smooth!" or something like that - just tickles me pink.  (See ep 9 of The Misplaced Hero if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Also, maybe an apron with a "Niko's Blootchkes" logo on it. ("Everybody Like Blootchkes!")

Anyway, I have a lot of chores ahead of that, but I do think I could at least do a Miss Leech mug pretty quickly.  (In an upcomig cartoon I have an "American Gothic" type image of Stride and Leech which I could redo to suit it perfectly.  Or I could use some individual episodes.)

See you in the funny papers.

What a Cozy Mystery Means To Me

Over a decade ago we were tossing around definitions of various subgenres of mystery, and when it came to the cozy, people got tangled up with specific rules nobody could agree on: every "rule" anyone came up with had numerous exceptions from classic mystery.

Everybody knew a cozy when they saw it, but nobody could agree on what made it a cozy.  So I gave my definition, and we all had to agree it fit:

A Cozy Mystery is: "Murder all in good fun."

Murder mysteries by nature are about violence, sex, greed, hatred, psychopathy, and all manner of scary, horrible things.  In life, we control these things via the rules of society, law, and enforcement... and vigilence.  And crime fiction of all kinds is about these topics -- whether it's the silliest cozy or the darkest of realistic police procedurals.

A cozy mystery is a crime story which explores these things without leaving your comfort zone.

Given that everybody has a different comfort zone, that leaves a pretty large gray area.  But even if you restrict it down to stories with a very safe buffer inside the comfort zone, you really do find a nice variety of titles inside it.

And that's why I prefer it over more rule-based definitions, like: "It has to take place in a small town and have an amateur sleuth." (Whoops, that lets Poirot AND Nero Wolfe out.)  "No bad language." (Bye-bye, Lord Peter!)  "It must be a puzzle/whodunnit." (So long, Columbo.) "It must not have moral ambiguity - no criminal heroes!" (Nice to have met you, Simon Templar, Raffles and Arsene Lupin.)  "The detective needs to be a nice person." (Uh, have you actually met Miss Marple?)  "No sex." (Sorry about that, Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn.)

I don't mind that the Cozy has become more and more restrictive lately.  Even if it does end up excluding the classics of the genre.  You can still call those "mystery" -- and in this day and age, where anything goes and serial killers can be heroes, it's really nice to be able to draw a line between the comfortable and the uncomfortable.

It's just that, to me, when I think of the term "Cozy Mystery," it doesn't conjure up a completely safe and risk-less environment.

What it conjures up, for me, is a dark and stormy night.  I'm sitting, warm and comfortable in a chair, wrapped in a nice quilt, with a cat on my lap and some hot cocoa on the side table, reading something thrilling.  Something that's dangerous, but only in the way good gossip is dangerous.  It's like that news story about that horrible thing that almost happened to that puppy, but you know the puppy survived and has found a great home with the fireman who rescued it.  And you know from the tone of the story that's how it's going to end, even if they keep you in suspense about how it's going to end.

So for me, the thing that makes a cozy really super cozy is that the subject (murder, crime) threatens my comfort, but it doesn't challenge my comfort.

And the thing that originally set apart "cozy" from "hard-boiled" was realism.  In hard-boiled fiction, the point was to see all the dirt and grime and sweat, and that the puppy is most likely gonna die, because that's real.  The point of hard-boiled fiction is to challenge your comfort zones.

And that's okay.  That's good. We should never become complacent.  Challenge makes you act.

At the same time, constant challenge and disruption and discomfort can be paralyzing.  It triggers the irrational part of your brain and keeps you from actually processing what is right, what you should do.

One of the very best places to process a dangerous and disturbing concept -- like murder and injustice -- is in a safe, controlled and cozy place.  With a quilt and a cat and some hot cocoa.

See you in the funny papers.

---

Check out cozy mysteries by Camille LaGuire:

The Man Who Did Too Much, a small town Michigan mystery suspense. Available in ebook form at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple's iBookstore, Kobo, Sony, Diesel, and Smashwords, and Amazon's international bookstores UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain. (Paper coming soon.)

Have Gun, Will Play, a mystery western. Available in ebook and paper at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple's iBookstore, Kobo, Sony, Diesel, and Smashwords, and Amazon's international bookstores UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain.

Test of Freedom - Episode 14

First Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Previous Episode

Episode 14 - "Lady Ashton's Admission"

by Camille LaGuire

The wind still wasn't favorable, but after some choppy weather, it had improved.  Trent entertained everyone by flirting with the women.  And he was teaching Hingle to flirt as well, not that Hingle needed encouragement.

It seemed to catch with the crew, too.  There had been some discussion, at first, about the bad luck of having women on board.  However, since Trent had carried women before, and since he was known for his good luck, the sailors apparently decided that the good luck of Trent cancelled out the bad luck of women.

And the luck of the Whore of Freedom had to be worth more than that.  After all, it was clear that she was a witch who could lull the winds with song.

As the voyage drew out, Trent kept spirits up by having contests among the men at their drills, which became contests to entertain the ladies.  At one point, when Mary went out to pace the deck, she heard them singing above her in the rigging.  It was a familiar tune, a marching song which had held many bawdy lyrics, but none so popular since the late war as those about Mary.

Fortunately, the men were terrible singers, and worse at remembering the words.  You couldn't really make out what they were singing, at least not until they got to the last line of the chorus, which they all sang clearly and in unison, "...and he called her the Whore of Freeeeee-dom!"

Mary looked at Lady Ashton.  "Do you think they're trying to make me feel better?"

"I believe so."

They laughed and waved up at the men, who saluted back.  Mary couldn't help feel a bit hollow inside, though, because it all brought her back to thoughts about Jackie, no matter what.

They finished their rounds of the deck, nodding to the men, who had picked up on Hingle's courtier lessons, and now all tended to make leg, or at least bow, when they went by.  That was quite entertaining, to watch them try to do it without interrupting their duties.

And Mary knew it wasn't them and their songs and jokes that forced her thoughts back to Jackie.  She was doing that on her own.  She had been over it all, and was making herself numb.  She needed to talk about something else.  Anything else.

"How is your son?" she said, suddenly turning to Lady Ashton.  "You haven't mentioned him."

Lady Ashton looked away.  "He doesn't speak to me."

"I'm sorry," said Mary.  She'd never met young Lord Ashton.  Lady Ashton had left him behind when she came to Torquon at her husband's insistence.  She hadn't said much about him.  Even so, Mary did think there was a feeling of warmth in those few words.  No sign of alienation.

"I told him," said Lady Ashton in a whispered rush of words, watching Mary's face for a reaction.  Mary needed no explanation as to what Lady Ashton had told her son.  There was only one subject which could leave such a look of despair on the woman's face -- the death of Lord Ashton.

"Oh," said Mary.  "How horrible for both of you."

Lady Ashton seemed to deflate.  She glanced around and lowered her voice.

"I had to, Mary.  I had to," she said, in a hushed and hoarse voice.  "I know it was unwise."

"I can't be one to judge the wisdom of others," said Mary.

"I couldn't let him grow up deceived.  I can't lie to him, and I want him to know that I wouldn't even in such horrible circumstances."

Mary glanced about and took Lady Ashton's arm.

"Come," she said. "Let's go inside where we can speak."

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 15 - "Sin And All"

Available after 8am EST, on Monday

First Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Previous Episode

---

The Test of Freedom ebook available at major retailers in December 2012. It will be slightly rewritten from the version you see here.

The first book in this series, The Wife of Freedom is at most ebook retailers.
Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Deisel, Kobo, and Smashwords. 

Also, Amazon International: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan.

---

Support this site directly via Paypal

Writing the Cozy Mystery - Twisting Your Contrivances

Once upon a time a writer friend had a problem with her mystery/suspense story.

She had a character who had to miss a phone call -- a phone call that would warn her she was driving into a dangerous situation.  The problem was that the character was just not the sort of person who ever would or could miss a phone call. She was a smart, on-top-of-it businesswoman who had a no-fail cell phone that she would not only have on her, but she would check for messages just in case she missed any.

And as a group we had a lot of suggestions for how she could miss the phone call.  Mainly they were simple things like have her drive through a tunnel where there was no reception.

The problem with those simple answers is that they often come off contrived.  If the audience believes that this woman would never miss a phone call, and then circumstances just happen to make her miss it, they see the mechanics of the story cranking away, and tension is lost.

Still, for minor things, that can be okay.  They do the job and you move past them as quickly as possible.

However....

Something like that could be a place where you delight your audience too.  IMHO, every time you come across a contrived coincidence, you're looking at a delightful irony that wasn't set up right.

You just have to lay the seeds so that the audience can feel satisfied, rather than bored or annoyed, when it happens.  Further more, a little contrivance like that can be turned into something that makes the whole story sparkle.

It's All About the Red Herrings

There are several ways to do this, but you have to start with raising an expectation that will lead them astray -- a red herring.

It can be especially effective if you actually start by raising the expectation of exactly what will happen, only it's so early in the story, the audience doesn't know where you're going with it. It's easy to divert them into another direction at this time.  But they will remember that first thought and be satisfied when it pays off later.

For instance, say this woman has this really super cool never-fail phone, and she happens have one of the recall list because the battery won't hold a charge.  This detail is already satisfying, all by itself, because it's ironic.  A no-fail phone which fails.  It's a great joke.  Plus we also feel a little satisfaction (and a little shadenfreud) that this person who is so perfect actually has a flaw.

Still, when the audience learns that the phone is faulty, they will think "Ah ha! It will fail her when she most needs it!"

They feel smart having figured that out, but they will be bored if they wait until the end to see that pay off.  So you distract (and delight them) by paying off early.  You make them think that some other event is going to be the one where it fails her.  She's waiting for an important call, for instance, on which her entire business hinges.

You can double the value of that red-herring if you make this a part of an interesting subplot.  Her super spiffy phone doesn't work, and that pays off almost instantly when you learn she is waiting for an important phone call.  But then the audience learns that they don't want her to get the call.  Maybe it will help her business, but it could make her miss her son's birthday party.

So the audience isn't fearing it will fail, they're hoping it will fail.  They want it to fail, dangit. And because they want it, it stays in their mind, but in the wrong context.  And you can even drop the issue of the phone and the phonecall completely, and focus on the kid and the party and the business deal.

Then, later, when she needs to be warned that the killer is waiting for her, the audience remembers the phone and goes "Oh, no, that's right, that phone doesn't work!"

Which is satisfying, but...

You can do better than that.

Remember that the more conscious the audience is of something, the more impact you can have.

So.... remind them that the phone doesn't work just before the person tries to call her.  The audience thinks "Oh, she's not going to get the call..." and they start to sigh... and then you hit them with the twist.

The phone rings.  It works.  She answers.  Great!  The audience sits up.  This is not how it's supposed to go.  But it's the business call she was waiting for.  And _that's__ what prevents her from getting the warning call. That danged call we didn't want her to get in the first place! Oh, the agony.

Worse yet, she might even see the warning call is coming in -- she has call waiting -- but the friend who is trying to warn her is against that business deal, and she's pissed at him, so she ignores his call.  She chats away. The warning goes to voicemail.

And she is so happy to have got the business deal, and so satisfied with having thwarted her friend, that she never checks the voicemail.

But it gets better!

Final payoff? We know that voicemail is there.  There is still time for her to check it and be warned.  She might even regret being rude to her friend, and think about calling him back.  She looks at the phone with guilt. But she's got to get where she is going first.

She's there, she's getting out of the car and she looks at her phone and sees "1 voicemail message" on the display.  It's the very last moment where she could possibly get away... she flips open the phone to get the message, and _then__ the phone craps out. (Or the phone works and just as she's listening to the message, the killer shows up and it's too late anyway.)

And thus the conveniently missed phonecall becomes more than an author's contrivance which bores the audience. It becomes a riveting, amusing, delightful center of attention.

Hitchcock specialized in this sort of multi-threaded red herring, but it isn't just a thriller tool. It's also something that every great comedy writer has to master.  Read P.G. Wodehouse or Donald Westlake, or watch madcap movies like Arsenic and Old Lace.  You'll see detail after detail set up and pay off again and again, twisting in new and better directions all the time.
The thing that makes this trail of twists and red herrings work so well is that it doesn't just solve one problem with one pay off -- it makes the whole darned story interesting and satisfying.  It pays off again and again, like a government bond.

Now, you might think: well, that works fine for people who plot things out in advance, but a "pantser" can't make use of that technique... can she?

Actually, the best writers I know who are pantsers are masters of this technique.  They do it one of two ways.  The first way is that they learn to recognize details with great possibilities. So they might start the story with the wonky phone and the expected business call, and they have no idea where it's going to go, but they keep playing with it and complicating it while it's interesting and then drop it when it's not, and then bring it back when they need something to pay off later.

The other way is that many pantsers have a general idea of where they are going.  They might know, for instance, that the protagonist is going to be lured into a confrontation with the killer at the end, and that a missed phonecall might be a good way to ramp up tension -- and then they start laying the groundwork for it, even if they have no idea how they're going to get from point A to point Z.

That's pretty much how I came up with the scenario above.  I knew the problem and I found a starting place and just rambled out the complications, building one on the other.  (I have seen too many Hitchcock movies.  And madcap comedies.)  And if you're a plotter, you can plan it out in advance, but you can also change it as you go, becuase it builds.

The one thing that's hard is to retrofit something you've already written.  Still, you can do simpler versions by just planting in a few small details earlier.  Look among your existing subplots for one that might do the equivalent of the "important business call". 

The key is that you have to have fun all along the way. Because that's what you want the audience to have.

See you in the funny papers.

---

 A Round of Words in 80 Days Update

This Segment's Progress:

Saturday Day 62 - 1000 words (mostly blogging)
Sunday Day 63 - 697 words (fiction)
Monday Day 64 -thousands of uncounted blogging words, but mostly I just had an existential crisis.
Tuesday Day 65 -2692 words (half fiction half blogging)

Miss Leech and The Yard 4 - A Present for Stride

The fourth installment of the cozy mystery comic strip about Miss Leech, a little old lady amateur sleuth, and Inspector Stride, the long-suffering policeman whose life she makes miserable.

When I created this month's gag, I intended it to stand alone. You know, he makes a flip remark and she takes him seriously, and you know she'll follow through.  But looking at it now, it really does beg for a follow-up, doesn't it?  I don't have a gag for it yet, but I guess I'll have to come up with one. (Don't expect it to show up any time soon, though.  Unless I get really lucky.)

This strip appears once a month, on the first Tuesday of the month.  Check out earlier episodes:  Miss Leech #1, Miss Leech #2, Miss Leech #3. And the next episode at Miss Leech #5.

See you in the funny papers.

I Could Use Some Feedback

I'm thinking about making some changes in direction in the blog.  These are big picture changes that are further out there, although maybe not as far away as you or I think.

I would like some perspective from the readers.

Here's the thing: I want this blog to be like a magazine, with fiction, art and non-fiction, commentary and information.  But the serial is the center of my writing life.  And my writing life just expanded to fill my life.  That threw the balance of everything off.

Now that I'm coming out of my wild spin, I realize that I set up the blog serial to work with my old life.  The story I'm doing now, Test of Freedom, was chosen mainly because it was the best option for both me and the story at the time.

But but times have changed now I'm having doubts about whether this blog is the right venue for it, and whether it's the right kind of story for this blog.

Not that I'm going to drop it, I'll finish it here, and probably at a faster rate than I'm doing now. I'm thinking bigger picture for the whole series and also for what should go on this blog.

And that's why I want feedback, because a part of this is driven by the Writer Jitters.  Just going by my blog and RSS stats, people are accessing this story differently than they did with Misplaced Hero. Should I react to that? Can I even read anything out of it to react to?

This is a bigger question than whether you guys like it, or whether it is a success. (I'll be talking about the creative, technical and even marketing issues involved later on.)  It's a bigger question even than that particular story.  So I want to hear from people who follow the blog in general, or just like the pretty pictures, and not just people who follow the story.

What I'm considering:

*I will accelerate the posting of Test of Freedom.  I will start on Thursday with longer episodes -- at least for those longer scenes which  I broke into several episodes.  I might also start posting three times a week, and the story will be complete in January.

*I might create a separate blog just for the Adventures of Mary Alwyn. It would have longer episodes, posted once a week -- more suited to the story. It would be completely devoted to that series and nothing else.  I might have "story notes" or publication announcements.  And I would still announce publications of episodes on the Sunday Review-Preview posts here.

If I do this separate blog, I would post Wife of Freedom there, and move Test of Freedom there once it's completed here  (with possible rewriting to fit the new format of longer episodes).  AND... the story would be continuous. I might take breaks once in a while, and I'll collect the sub-stories into ebooks, but it would be more of an ongoing soap opera than it would be discrete stories.

This is what I feel I should have done from the start, but I couldn't while I had a day job. I simply didn't have the time.  I couldn't continue the Misplaced Hero series into the fall.  I was worn out and overburdened.

*When ToF is done posting here, I will probably serialize The Scenic Route.  It has a lighter, quirkier tone.  It's more adult than Misplaced Hero, but I think it suits the overall tone of this blog better.  And since I am adapting it from a screenplay, I have more leeway to make it work better with the short-episode serial format. If that's not ready I'll probably do a couple of Mick and Casey short stories.

*Alternatively I might jump straight into Misplaced Baroness.  Next week or the week after I'm going to tell you some about some of my plans for that. I'm excited about it. But... it might not be ready to start before March or April.

The big issue is going to be workload. I would like to get to more stories, faster.  I have SO many stories on my plate and one thing I've learned is that serializing them makes me get them out there.

What I'd love to do is start posting three times a week -- Mon, Thu, Sat -- and otherwise keep the blog the same.  That would allow me to get through three long novellas a year, rather than two.  But if I'm also doing an Alwyn blog, that makes four episodes a week. And I want to do art for them all.  Yikes.  Maybe not a good idea... but maybe it is.

But that's not your problem.

What I really want from you is:

What do you look forward to on this blog?  It doesn't matter if it's the fiction or the art or the Friday Favorites or posts about controversies in the publishing world, or writing theory.  Or something else. It also doesn't matter whether I'll ever do what you want me to. (I will always do what works for me.)

I just need some perspective from the readers.

Thanks, and see you in the comments section.

Test of Freedom - Episode 13

First Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Previous Episode

Episode 13 - "Old Cooper"

by Camille LaGuire

Among the prisoners at Clement farm was a man named Cooper.  Everyone assumed he was older than he was.  He had a bad leg that gave him a bent look, and his skin was wrinkled from too much time in the sun.  He didn't mind being thought old, though, since people tended to either treat him better, or ignore him altogether.

He had been around for a long time, having survived the disease and poor diet and dodged the sometimes vicious treatment by the guards.  He was trusted to go more places, and given less supervision, perhaps because his bad leg made him less valuable, and less dangerous.  He could go out in the woods to gather herbs, and was sent on errands instead of the slaves sometimes.  He was the nurse to the compound, and when there was an accident, or someone collapsed from heat or exhaustion, he was the one they called for.

It was in the late evening, when things were finally cooling off a bit.  Most of the prisoners had dragged themselves in and eaten, and were collapsed on the ground for well needed rest.  Cooper was placing a paste of leaves across a cut on young Tim's forehead.  The boy was probably sixteen, another youth from the Acton Peninsula.  He was about worn out, but there was nothing Cooper could do for that.

Jack Alwyn came and sat down next to him with a wince.  He looked exhausted, too.

"You should put more effort into looking like you're working hard," said Cooper.  "Rather than actually working."

"It's a fine line, though, and I've had enough knocks today."

"The Rock caught you not paying attention."

"You could say that."  Jack adjusted the way he was sitting, and then rubbed his shoulder.

"He likes you to be aware of him," Cooper told him. "He'll give you a knock just for not knowing he's there, sometimes."

As if the very mention of the name were likely to call up a demon, both Cooper and Jack looked over toward the cook tent, where you could see Rocken leaning on a post and smoking a pipe.  The cane dangled from his arm, but he seemed at ease, and was certainly too far to hear whey were saying.

Jack nodded and looked thoughtful.

"I heard something odd today about him," he said.

"You mean that he's a prisoner too?"

"Aye."  Jack turned to Cooper with interest.

"He's a murderer," said Cooper.  "Has a life contract.  The only way he can ever get free is if the governor commutes."

"And beating the hell out of us will help with that?"

"No, beating the hell out of us gets him a decent life.  And I think the bastard likes it too."

"You think so?" said Jack.  There was a note of doubt in his voice.

"If you think there's anything soft about the Rock, you'd best learn otherwise right fast, Jack."

"Oh, soft, no. I don't believe there is anything soft about Rocken," agreed Jack.

And yet the note of doubt remained in his voice.  What it was about, Cooper couldn't imagine, but it made him uneasy.

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 14 - "Lady Ashton's Admission"

Available after 8am EST, on Thur

First Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Previous Episode

---

The first book in this series, The Wife of Freedom is at most ebook retailers.
Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Deisel, Kobo, and Smashwords. 

Also, Amazon International: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan.

Week in Review-Preview: It's Cozy Mystery Week!

This week on the blog...
... we saw a few extra posts, as I discovered an old, unpublished, intro to one of my books as I cleared up paperwork, and I did a new cover for a book I haven't written yet.

• Monday: ToF - Episode 11 "Pictures and Doggerel"
• Tuesday: a bit of writing from my archives
• Wednesday: The Essence of Genre Part 2 - At The Movies
• Thursday: ToF - Episode 12 "A Poetic Ox"
• Friday: A new cover for The Scenic Route

This coming week is Cozy Mystery Week!

Okay it's only a few of us who are declaring it so, but I think Cozy Mysteries deserve a week. I'll be devoting several posts to old time mysteries on the blog this week, including a new Miss Leech cartoon!

(For new readers, the current serial novel, Test of Freedom, is not a mystery.  More of an old time melodrama.  Everythign else this week will be cozy mystery oriented.)

Monday: Test of Freedom Episode 13 "Old Cooper"
Jack learns a curious fact about Rocken from an old prisoner.

Tuesday: Miss Leech and The Yard cozy mystery comic strip #4
Inspector Stride doesn't want a sweater for Christmas.

Wednesday: Writing the Cozy Mystery: Twisting Your Contrivances
Every coincidence is a red flag that tips off your audience, unless you play a game of misdirection. Or double misdirection. Or triple misdirection....

Thursday: Test of Freedom Episode 14 - "Lady Ashton's Admission"
Lady Ashton needs to confide.

Friday Favorites: What a Cozy Mystery Is To Me
Continuing the genre discussion: To me "cozy" means "murder all in good fun."


A Round of Words in 80 Days Update

Sunday Update: Progress, Schmogress!

What I did this week: mainly a lot of art.

*ToF artwork for several episodes
*Miss Leech Cartoon
*Concept cover for my standalone crime novellas
*Wrestled a troublesome episode to the ground and pinned it.
*Resolved a problem for Misplaced Baroness in a creative and fun way.
*Wrote small snippets for this and that.
*Blog posts.

And, of course, I spent a lot of time and effort working on getting my inbox to zero (see last Sunday's report). (Or perhaps I should say "moving my inbox toward zero" as it is far from empty.)
For other folks reporting progress today: ROW80 Linky.


Not Ready for Full-Time Diary

I mentioned last week that a big, fully integrated lifestyle isn't compatible with a writing dare.  It's too hard to condense down to a quantifiable summary.  (Also, unless you are a zen productivity fiend, it's pretty boring stuff.  If you ARE a zen productivity fiend, you might try a blog like Zen Habits, or just search on "GTD blogs." You'll find lots.)

But, in the time since last week, I have tamed a few tigers and I'm not so utterly absorbed in my GTD Implementation or setting up new patterns in my life...

...and I'm ready to deal with my writing the old-fashioned way again.

So as of today (which is Saturday, December 1, as of this writing) I am going back to word counts. I'm not setting a goal, and I'm not going to set a particular project. I'm just going to see how far I can go.

One thing I am doing differently: I'm going to include blogging.  If it's for publication, it counts.  (Outlines, and notes and brainstorming don't.)

Projects

The biggest problems I've had in the past year is that I've been working on existing projects for which word counts don't work -- old drafts, partially written things. I've discovered that in most dares, quantifiers other than word counts have mixed results.  Sometimes minutes work, and sometimes they don't.

It's a problem when my major, most important projects don't really fit into the dare format.

Well, since I'm not battling a day job for time just now, I think I'll just leave those projects uncounted. They may be my main projects, but may not show up on the progress reports.  

Instead, I'm just going to do some new writing every day, even if it's just a session off to the side during a break, and I'll count that.  Some of those words will be on my main work-in-progress, and some won't.

Among the things I'll be working on:

*Micro-fiction.  Now that I have a cool short story cover template, I feel like doing more shorts.  I have a collection concept: "stories for when you're standing in line."  I've got a few, but they are so short, I definitely need more. I also might want to submit a few of them to EQMM, so I'll need extras.

*Devil In a Blue Bustle.  Mick and Casey's next story needed something.  Another layer of depth.  I think I have a handle on that, but I'm so far out of the story, it will take a while to layer it in right.  This probably won't be out as soon as I'd like (uh, I was hoping for next week) but it is high on my priority list. (Actually, it's the official work-in-progress.)

*Other Mick and Casey stories.  I've got lots of them. Sometimes when one is stuck, I can work on another to get back into the mindset of the series.  I kinda want to make the short story A Fistful of Divas into an interim serial in March/April. And there's the novelette Stone Cold Dead at the Trading Post.  Not to mention Six-Gun Santa, which has a fab opening, but not a good story to go with it.

*The Man Who Stepped Up.  The second Starling and Marquette is in the exploratory stage. I know the front story.  I know the first murder... but I have too many options for whodunnit and why.  That needs some brainstorming sessions as well as exploratory writing.  Character development for the suspects, witnesses and guest characters.  But I do know one thing, a funny scene involving a towel and a visiting meddler (which I had in mind for book three or four) is going to happen here.

*The Scenic Route novelization.  Now that I have a draft of a cover, I kinda want to get on with doing a novella version of my screenplay.  I'm going to do this a little at a time, unless it catches fire. 

*The Case of the Misplaced Baroness.  (AKA The Perils of Lady Pauline.) While I enjoyed writing a lot of last summer's serial off the cuff, I do want to have at least some of next summer's story nailed down before I write it.  Last summer's story was relatively simple -- Alex had to find Thorny and get him home.  Next summer begins a complicated set of mysteries and adventures which I need to sort out and figure out where the pieces fit.  By the time I get to this, though, I expect to have the complications narrowed down to relatively simple individual stories.

*Test of Freedom.  While the story itself is completely written, it needs a wrap up episode, and a credit cookie which will lead to the next story. I hope to do that soon, because I mean to publish this next week. You know, as a whole book.

*Blog posts.  I mention this only because they will count in the word count.  I'm not going to count noodling with ideas and outlining.  Only focused efforts with a specific post in mind. (You would be surprised at how much fiddling and twiddling I can write that you never see.)

With all that, I should be able to hit 2000 words a day easily, except that I'll probably devote a lot of time to editing (especially of ToF and Devil in a Blue Bustle) and art and brainstorming, and all the other tasks in my life.

We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm not done with Saturday yet, so that will be reported at the bottom of Wednesday's post.

See you in the funny papers.