Test of Freedom - Episode 7

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

Episode 7 - "Captain Trent"

by Camille LaGuire

IT WAS RUMORED that Cap'n Trent had been a pirate in his early days.  All anyone knew for sure was that he was a drawling, overdressed adventurer who had stepped into a leading role in the revolution.

During that war he'd been the hero of the southern plains, where he had formed a guerrilla army of bandits who kept the king's armies running in circles, and provisioned the rest of the revolutionary army from they loot gained in raiding.

But now he had gone back to the sea, as a trader, and he was available, which was a blessing.  There were others they could have called upon, but Mary knew Trent.  She was certain she could gain his help, and she would, even if she had to throw herself at his feet.

What was difficult was getting her companions to hurry up.  She finally abandoned them and struck out for The Battle inn herself, but she was only a block from the hotel, when she was overtaken by the trap Mr. Sherman had finally succeeded in hiring.  No one said a word of rebuke when Mary climbed in to settle next to Lady Ashton.  They understood her impatience, even if it did make Mary feel a bit ashamed of herself.

The Battle turned out to be a rather fine inn for dockside, but what else would you expect from Trent?  Sherman paused to inquire about him, and just as the innkeeper said the captain was out.... in swept the captain himself.

Trent paused just inside the door, pulling off his gauntlets and calling out for the innkeeper.  His fair hair was loose and long, and capped by his well-known fancy and feathered sea captain's bonnet.  He glanced around and saw Sherman.  He flung back his billowing green cape, and strode forward to shake the man's hand.

"Mr. Sherman," he said.

"Hello, Captain.  May I present Lady Ashton?"

Trent swept off his hat and took her hand with a pleased and surprised smile.  He was a charming man, and Mary was glad it hadn't been him she'd fallen for when she'd broken loose of all bonds of decency.  But then Trent hadn't made an attempt to charm her until after she'd been on her own.  Perhaps he was a bit less of a rogue than he pretended.  He still dressed in patriotic green, though the war was over, and he claimed to be a businessman.

"My lady," said Trent to Lady Ashton, and he made leg formally, prompting Lady Ashton to curtsey.  Like a pair of high aristocrats at a formal event.

The formalities were over, however, when he saw Mary.

"Mrs. Alwyn," he said, stepping up quickly and touching her face before taking her hand.  "You look unhappy."

"They've arrested Jackie for treason, down in the Peninsula," she said quickly, to dash any hopes he might have that she'd left Jackie again.  "They've sent him to Sabatine."

"What was the fool doing down in the Peninsula?"

"He was helping a friend."

"That man's an ass, to leave you and go make trouble where he had no business being!"

"He didn't go to make trouble," said Mary.

Lady Ashton came forward and took Mary's arm in support.

"They charged him from the Freedom Papers he'd written before the war," she explained.

Trent looked at her, and then back at Mary.

"And you want to go to Sabatine after him?"

"Yes," said Mary.

"I'd say that's unrealistic of most women, but...."  He sighed and tilted his head.  "What will you do when you get there?"

"We intend to buy him, Captain," said Lady Ashton.

"Oh, Jackie the Freedom will like that!" he said with more than a little sarcasm.  Lady Ashton's eyes narrowed.

"I'm sure it will be an improvement over his current situation."

"Of course."  He paused and looked seriously from one woman to the other.  "But you know you can't free him.  He's under sentence.  He can't be freed until the sentence is up, and he can't be brought back to the continent during that time.  Depending on the contract, he may never be able to return."

"Could you smuggle him back?" asked Mary.

"Perhaps.  But if we're caught, they can take him right back, or if they like, they can just hang him then and there."

Mary shuddered and closed her eyes.  "Then we can live in the islands."

"Yes," said Lady Ashton.  "We have many options.  My brother is at this moment on his way to talk to the queen.  My family has good relations with her.  I think we have a chance at an exhoneration, or at least a pardon.  Then he could come home, couldn't he?"

"Yes, that should do the trick."  But he seemed doubtful still.

"And if political pressures make that impossible, my brother has a very fine lemon plantation on one of the smaller islands."

"Exhile, then," said Trent.  He looked at Mary, and Mary pushed away the thoughts he was forcing into her head.

"I want him back," she said.  "We can worry about the rest when he's safe."

Trent nodded.

"Dine with me," he said.  "We'll discuss the particulars."

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 8 - "Singing the Wind"

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

---

The Test of Freedom should be available as an ebook 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.

Week in Review-Preview

This week on the blog was a full week: I got back into gear with two new episodes of Test of Freedom - Episode 5 and Episode 6, as well as a Miss Leech Cartoon, plus a post about dealing with necessary and unnecesary scenes, and a little something about my favorite heavy, Brian Donlevy.

I also got to thinking about priorities -- which will certainly continue to evolve. (Below the fold in the ROW80 update area.)

Coming Next Week on the Blog:

Monday - Test of Freedom Ep 7 - "Captain Trent"
Where the ladies add one more, plus crew, to their entourage.

Wednesday - Clearing Up My Mess of Covers
All of my covers are very different from one another. Time to start setting them in order.

Thursday - Test of Freedom Ep 8 - "Singing the Wind"
Mary bids farewell to Acton as they finally set out.

Friday Favorites - Daniel Craig and Judi Dench
Some commentary about Skyfall and the two previous Bond movies.

ROW80 Progress


A Round of Words in 80 Days Update

This Segment's Progress:

Wednesday Day 38 - 120 minutes
Thursday Day 39 - 52 minutes
Friday Day 40 - 150 minutes
Saturday Day 41 - 150 minutes

(See others who update today here.)


Full-Time Transition Diary: Priorities and Blogging

I am finding that it is hard to concentrate for more than two hours a day on one thing, except when I have momentum.  I've also been going through my trunk full of stories, and finding more to work with.  I'm really eager to get on to some fresh writing, though.

Which brings me to new thoughts on what I should be doing.

The popcorn kittens are finally settling down, and I find that I am now dealing with the Alternative Reality Version of Puss form Shrek Forever After. "Eh, I'll get it later."

Well, maybe not that bad. But the excitement about So! Many! Opportunities! is less exciting.  It's time to get bored.  I've written before about the Value of Boredom.  (Note: the farm mentioned here was actually a different farm from the one where we boarded horses and raised tennis courts -- definitely a slower way of life.)

So now, instead of running around crashing into walls, shouting "I gotta do this!  I gatta do that!" I'm saying "I gotta not do this, or that."

What I actually have to do is write fiction.  Not build up a cover art business (that can come later if necessary).  And maybe I need to back off a little on the blog.

I've been writing this blog almost daily for three years.  I like where it's going, I enjoy working on it. But I've noticed that somehow as I got more time from being laid off, I have spent more time working on it.  And not to good effect.  I'm still somehow managing to post a lot of stuff that was thrown together at the last minute.

I want my blog to be better than that.  And I need a less "instant" frame of mind.  I need to concentrate on real goals.  On writing my "real" books, not just the serials.  On having a blog that's like a magazine, in that it's worth reading, but not a distraction from my real work.

To that end, I am adjusting the blog schedule to skip Tuesdays and Fridays a lot more. I might do some off the cuff commentary once in a while. (Those always prove to be popular and I never have a slot to post them any more.) 

So basically you're going to get the blog story on Mondays and Thursdays, Miss Leech cartoons once a month, and one actual thoughtful post a week on Wednesdays, and this Sunday review/update.   And Friday Favorites and commentaries will only pop up when I have something to say.

November and December Goals

What I really want to do most right now is get Test of Freedom off my plate (which I hope to finish on Monday) and then Devil in a Blue Bustle by the end of the month.... and then go full blast on The Man Who Stepped Up for December.  Two thousand words a day wouldn't quite finish a Man Who book, but it should give me the major skeleton of the book.

There is no reason not to get a Mick and Casey novel and a Starling and Marquette novel done every year, along with the serials.  (Especially since the Alwyn saga is already drafted.)

See you in the funny papers.

Friday Favorites - Brian Donlevy

Brian Donlevy was a character actor, most famous for playing heavies, villains and secondary characters... but he had a certain kind of class that made him especially good in these roles.  He was nominated for an Oscar when he played the villain in Beau Geste in 1939, but imho, it's his sense of humor, and tragedy, that made him shine.

And two films he made right around the same time are both in my list of about 70 flicks on my top ten list.  Destry Rides Again, 1939, and The Great McGinty, 1940.

Destry Rides Again, is a comic western, made in 1939 by Universal.  It stars Jimmy Stewart as the son of a famous sheriff who is called to clean up a really wild town... and he shows up without guns.  He just kind of drawls his way through the job, but there's steel behind the smile.  I could say that Destry probably is (somewhere back in the mists of my past) an influence on my creation of Mick McKee.

Perfect as Jimmy Stewart is in the lead role, he has a LOT of competition.  Marlene Dietrich staged a come back in the brawling, sassy role of the bad girl who falls for Tom Destry. The flick is elbow deep in other character actors, from Jack Carson to Mischa Auer to Una Merkel.  But, imho, it's Brian Donlevy who really makes the balance work.

He's the villain, and he plays it with no redeeming qualities, except a surprisingly genuine laugh.  He enjoys his job as town boss, but not in a sadistic way.  Sure, he's plenty mean. It's just that the joy doesn't come from the mean part.  The joy comes from being the boss, being clever and winning. There is something of the selfish child in his town boss.

The Great McGinty was the very next film he made, in 1940.  I was going to make this the subject of today's post all by itself, but I think we've had enough politics.  (Also, it meshes badly with modern politics, at least right now.  Some who had to fight to vote this election cycle might find themselves wincing at the voter fraud stuff at the beginning, for instance.)

However, like a lot of Preston Sturgis comedies, this story isn't really about politics.  The political corruption here is generic and the fodder for character jokes.  It does have a message about the human spirit and overcoming adversity with good humor, but also never quite overcoming your own limitations.  This theme is personified first and last and in the middle by Donlevy's performance.

He plays McGinty, a bum who finds out that he can make money voting for the crooked mayor, so he votes 37 times, thereby gaining the attention of the mobster political boss, played by Akim Tamiroff.  But what really gets Tamiroff's attention is McGinty's streetwise innocence. He may be cautious, but he's also fearless.  He's a cagey grifter and earnestly loyal all at once.  He's a wrong guy with a heart of gold.

And one of the people he's not afraid of is Tamiroff.  But since he has no ambitions of his own, that just makes him the perfect minion.

The story is full of clever dialog and great timing and fun, and clever shifts, sometimes misleading shifts. I am very fond of the framing device in which the story of McGinty's rise and fall is told in a small bar in a banana republic, implying it might be true or it might not.

One thing about Donlevy that comes out in both roles -- McGinty, and the town boss in Destry -- is his ability to play a guy a little beyond his own limits.  He has power, and wits, and just enough class to rise higher than he ever ought to, but the brawling street kid is always present, and you can see in his eyes that he's always aware that the joke may be on him, that he always has to be wary, that others may be smarter and more sophisticated than he is.

That quality, his awareness of the chinks in his own armor, give a tragic quality to even his most evil villains, and even in McGinty, his most likeable antihero.

Few lead actors do this well. They always seem to be acting, but some manage to just get it across with the eyes like Donlevy did: Bogie mastered it, Steve McQueen did it well, and so does Daniel Craig....

Which leads me to next week.  With the third of Craig's Bond pictures coming out this weekend, I will talk about James Bond in next week's Friday Favorites - Daniel Craig and Judi Dench.

See you in the funny papers.

Test of Freedom - Episode 6

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

Episode 6 - "Mr. Sherman and Hingle"

by Camille LaGuire

PARKIOL WAS ONE of the great cities of ancient Acteron.  It thrust out into the great Acton Bay, on a rise that marked the beginning of a ring of mountains that swept around the plains.

There wasn't much left of the old city.  An earthquake was said to have tossed half of it into the sea several centuries ago, and the rest had been built over by the king's engineers, fewer centuries ago.  Still, it had a feel of old glory around it, in bits of ruin thrust up here and there into the vibrancy of a very active city. 

When you came up the hill to approach it , you lost sight of the bay for a moment, then you hit a spot where the land fell away, and revealed a huge and full harbor.

Mary had never been south of Twilletsburg before, never seen the sea.  She'd seen what she thought were impressive ships coming up the Oak River Seaway, and on the lakes, but this was an amazing sight.  But then they passed the heights and went into the town, and lost the view.

They were met at the hotel by Lady Ashton's man, Mr. Sherman.  He appeared the instant they arrived; a nondescript man of about forty, whom you'd never notice if you didn't pay attention.  If you did pay attention, though, you could see the intelligence in his moving green eyes.  He would have made a good spy, Mary thought, and perhaps he had been, by his ability to disappear.

"Trent is here, as we'd hoped," Sherman reported.  "He says he might be for hire, but not for a week or more.  He just got into port."

"Did you tell him why we need him?" asked Mary.

"No, mum," said Sherman.  "I thought it would be best to leave that to you, since you know him."

"Where is he?"

"There's an inn near the docks called The Battle."

"Then let's go."  Mary was already tumbling down the road, though she didn't know which way the docks were.

"Please, Mary," said Lady Ashton.  "We've only just arrived.  We haven't even been into the hotel.  These horses are tired, and we'll have to arrange for a carriage to take us...."

"It'll be good for us to stretch our legs after being cooped up."

Lady Ashton looked firm, and Mary supposed that was reasonable enough, but she couldn't hold still herself if she had a place to go.  She very nearly turned and headed off alone, but then a voice interrupted her from near by.

"Hoy!  Hoy, Mary!"

Mary turned to see a young man dodging up across the street, reckless and nimble.

"Why it's Hingle!" she said.  Hingle had been Mary's contact during the war, and sometime accomplice.  He must be sixteen by now, but still looked younger.  "How are you?"

"I'm looking for work," he said.  "You know Cap'n Trent, don't you?  Do you think you can get him to take me aboard?"

"I don't know, but I can ask."

Sherman looked the young man over.

"If you can lift some of this luggage, I can give you some work right now," he said.

"Sure," said Hingle with a grin.  "I'd rather work for Mary than anyone."

She introduced him, and he grabbed off his hat as he met Lady Ashton.  But as he picked up the luggage, he kept glancing at Mary, and he nearly tripped over the curb following Sherman with it.

"You have an admirer," said Lady Ashton.

"Ah, but he's safer than most," said Mary.

"Are you talking about his safety or yours?"

Mary laughed.  "Oh, his.  Men have bad luck when they hook up with me.  Best to keep them at arm's length."

But that thought only made her think of Jackie, who'd had the worst luck of all.

She looked off to the south, in the direction she thought the islands might be.  All she saw were buildings, and she felt for a minute that her will could fly through them, fly to Jackie's side, if she only knew where he was.

But she didn't know.  She couldn't even aim her thoughts properly, so she turned her mind to a place nearer by, an in called The Battle, where she could find Trent, and a ship and salvation.

If her friends wouldn't hurry themselves, then she might as well go alone, and she set off for the docks without another word.  They'd catch up with her.

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 7 - "Captain Trent"

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

---

The Test of Freedom should be available as an ebook 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.

Writing the Online Novel - Walking, and Dancing, to the Story

I got off on the wrong foot with Test of Freedom.  I made a couple of small bad decisions with each of the first four episodes, mainly due to distraction.  So I took a week off to get it back in gear.

Walking to the Story

The original draft of this story was written under Nanowrimo-like conditions.  Just sit down and start writing.  One really common problem for the "just sit down and write" process is called walking to the story.  That's where you stall on paper by having your characters walk through all their motions between one scene and another while you think.

It's like when your character gets an urgent phone call that her husband is in the hospital, and you don't just cut from her getting the call to arriving at the hospital: you have her hang up the phone, and then get her coat, and then go down stairs, and then open the door, and then go out, and then close the door, and then walk to the car, and then unlock the car door, and then open it, and then get in, and then....

You get the idea.

But this kind of nothing scene isn't always bad.  It's only bad if it's actually stalling.  It can be a great place for information and character development.  Your character hangs up and races about looking for her keys, which she can't find because she's too worried sick to pay attention to what she's doing.  That could be a powerful scene of it's own.

There are also what I call "bridge scenes" which are usually less powerful -- more summarized -- which you can use for timing and also to set up something to come.  For instance if the character had a frustrating time getting to the hospital and finding where her husband is, that can set up her state of mind for the next scene.  However, you have to be careful about how you use it, how much impact you want.

For instance, full vivid scenes will give you more impact and may actually compete with the next scene.  A summary, on the other hand, will have less impact, but can be more of a quiet set up so that the reader is really ready for the next scene.  You have to decide with any bridge scene how important it is: how visceral, how central to the overall story.

Walking on a Journey

Some stories are about a journey.  Classic road movies and quest fantasies are examples here.  (Or on the literary side, the "picaresque" novel.)  That kind of story is pretty much ALL "walking to the story."  That's what it's about.

It's harder, then, to differentiate between the stalling wasteful bits and the necessary bits.  And that's the trouble I've been having with Test of Freedom -- and why I delayed Episode 5 for a week.  I needed my wits about me to really judge what to keep and what to throw out and how to handle the pacing of the first ten episodes or so of this story.

But there is another thing that complicates this... or perhaps clears it up, because it leaves fewer choices: I'm publishing this as an online novel, and in particular I'm publishing it as a short episode online novel.

If my episode lengths were longer, say 2000 words, I would have space for less important bridge scenes.  The first 600 words of such a chapter could be a whole set up scene that leads into the meat of the chapter. I could also take a couple hundred words for a mini "capper" scene at the end, what Algis Budrys used to call a "validation" scene. (Cappers can also be twists -- a cliffhanger that happens after you resolve the issue of the scene.)

But that that kind of structure presupposes that the reader is reading all those parts as a whole piece. But with a short episode style I'm using, each of those scenes have to stand alone.

So for bridging sequences, I either have to make that bit stand alone with its own importance, or I cut it down to maybe a paragraph or two.  Or... cut it out entirely.  (Or take very short summary paragraphs and turn them into full episodes.)

So the problem is deciding which is which.

Dancing to the Story

In this first section, all the characters are basically walking to their part in the story.

Jackie's journey is easier, because it's pretty much covered in Episode 4. His main story will take off later, but there isn't more to write about him until then.  Mary and Lady Ashton, on the other hand, are on a quest, so they're going to be on the road longer, and for this first part, they have to carry the story alone.

What had me in a dither was this: as with any good journey/buddy story, there's character development and revealations going on in the trivial scenes of the journey.  It's what the story is about, at least in part.  When I look at it one way, whole rafts of story seem unnecessary, and then I look at it another way and I think that's the most important part.

In writing Misplaced Hero, I learned this: every episode is a vignette.  Every episode has a purpose in and of itself, and it's more important for it to work individually and just to move on to the next episode, than it is for it to advance the whole overall arc of the story.  This story is going all winter long.  Hurrying doesn't help.

When I look at things I follow eagerly -- blogs, comic strips, a friend's adventures in parenthood which she relates on a forum I frequent -- I notice one thing about them all.  I get hooked not because they are leading somewhere, but because they're interesting NOW.  Each unit is worth reading, and that makes me look for more units.

And that is the hard part with this story, because I already wrote it, thinking it was a novel.  Some of the interesting bits don't stand alone.  And sometimes the less interesting bits fare better as an episode.

Heres' the irony: I drafted this post before I finally got Episode 5 in the can. At that point, I firmly intended to skip what happens in the episode as useless business, just something the characters do.  And I was going to move straight to a scene with the ladies in their carriage, headed for a port city in Acteron. That traveling scene was a bit of character development, just a little discussion of feelings and moods: Mary's frustrated because while she's sitting in a carriage, she's not DOING anything, and the others try to distract and amuse her and all agree that traveling is all they can do right now.

In other words a scene about the characters not doing anything but talking about how they aren't doing anything.  Still, it was a more fun, more character-filled, more enjoyable scene overall than the scene I posted.

The problem is that the scene failed at its only actual purpose. It missed the one thing that it really needed to do:

In the first book, Mary describes herself as a "Mary-in-the-box."  She has a high capacity for latency.  Sure, she is a coiled spring inside, but when she has no choice but to wait, she can wait like nobody's business.  She doesn't waste time or energy fretting over things she can't help.

But Jackie's arrest, of course, threw her for a loop, and I suppose I wrote that scene -- as a part of a sequence -- to show her getting her equilibrium back.  But like so much about Mary, her equilibrium came back instantly when Lady Ashton offers to fund the expedition.  Heck, she got it back the instant she learned that Lady Ashton knew more about Jackie's transportation.  "What's the name of the ship and when did it sail?" -- that was Mary back to normal.

I realized that one little sentence in the scene about crossing the border actually did a better job of character development than a whole scene: Lady Ashton describes Mary as like a dog who never strains at the leash, but is gone the instant the leash is released.

Showing is better than telling, and a descriptive sentence is not as vivid or visceral as a real scene, but that one did the job better than the scene I had in mind.  So I went with the scene where the characters were actually doing something -- even if it wasn't as clever and entertaining as it could be.

In the end, I'm not sure I danced to the story yet.  I think there are upcoming scenes where that happens, but I don't have to dither over them, because they actually work.  They're intersting and they have a purpose.

If I were writing this story afresh, and not just reworking an existing story, I would make some different choices. When your options are wide open, you can make anything dance.  But when you're editing, you're more about skipping the boring parts.

The next story in this cycle -- League of Freedom -- is much more maleable in this way. It is less goal-driven at least at first. It's the middle of a trilogy and the characters have to adjust to the situation. That's where dancing to the story will really come in handy, and I hope to be more ready for it.

Anyway, I wavered from my original conclusion to this post, but I'll give it to you anyway because I think it's right:

So in the end, it's about skipping the boring parts, but it's also about making the boring parts interesting.  If a story is a journey, the journey matters.  If your actor has to get across the stage, then get him across the stage in an interesting way, whether it's waddling like a duck, or leaping like Najinsky.

The thing that makes it interesting, though, isn't the novelty, but rather that it makes a commentary on the story.  There's a purpose to it.

See you in the funny papers.

---

 A Round of Words in 80 Days Update

Other folks checking in today, and this segment's progress:

Sunday Day 35 - 150 minutes
Monday Day 36 - 105 minutes
Tuesday Day 37 - To heck with it, it's election night.

Running Late

I will post my regular Wednesday post later today.  I just had to get up early to vote, and then stayed up too late watching returns on jumpy internet video.  (I did enjoy the way they did the electoral map on the Rockefeller Center ice rink!)

I mainly did art today (since that's something I can do while listening), but as it's all for the blog, I'll let you see when I post it.  (A pic of Brian Donlevy for this week's Friday Favorites, and one of Daniel Craig since I might do a FF on the current Bond series.)

I've got a good post for today: a hybrid of a theory post, and a story notes, but I'm too sleepy to finish it up and still make sense.

See you in the funny papers.

Miss Leech and The Yard 3 - An Inaccessible Body

The third 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.

This strip appears once a month, on the first Tuesday of the month.  Check out earlier episodes:  Miss Leech #1, Miss Leech #2. And the next episode: Miss Leech #4.

See you in the funny papers.

Test of Freedom - Episode 5

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

Episode 5 - "The Ladies' Expeditionary Force"

by Camille LaGuire

AT LAST PENELOPE wasn't useless.

Mary might have the gumption, but by the Prophets, Penelope had the resources.  And she did have influence.  Perhaps not with this provincial court, but she had friends at home.  She could do something.

She sent for her agent, Mr. Sherman, and began at once to make arrangments, sending letters and arranging for travel.

All the while, Mary lurked in the background, not saying or moving much, but she seemed always on her toes.  Like a coiled spring, or like a dog on a leash, who didn't strain at it, but you knew the instant that leash was released, she'd be off like a shot.

When Penelope made plans to return to Agritaine to charter her ship, Mary broke her silence.

"No," she said.  "That'll take at least three weeks longer.  We have to go straight to Sabatine."

"There is no boat that goes to Sabatine from here for over a month.  That's why they rushed him off on this one."

"Then we'll have to go to Acton, won't we?" she said.  "Trent will take us, if no one else.  He has a fast ship.  He runs the loyalist blockades all the time."

"And that's the trouble.  We'd have to run the blockade."

"Trent can do it.  And he knows the territory out there, and the people."

So it was against Penelope's better judgement that they headed for Acton the very next morning.  And as Penelope expected, they had trouble almost immediately, at the border.

First, on the near side they looked askance at Mary and searched Penelope's carriage very thoroughly, but Penelope's position was too high to discommode for long.

At the other side, though, Penelope had no standing at all.  As Lady Ashton, she was the widow of the greatly disliked governor of Acton Bay.  The Actonian official who checked her papers looked on her with an almost sneering suspicion.

"Do you hope to get your husband's property back, Mrs. Ashton?" asked the official.

"No."

"Because you won't.  But you can petition for compensation...."

"I'm not interested in any property in Acton."

"And what are you here for?"

"I'm here to assist a friend."

The fellow sat back and looked at her narrowly.

"And what kind of friends would you have that need your assistance in Acton?"

Penelope opened her mouth, but Mary had had enough. She stepped forward and leaned in, eyes a blaze.

"Look at my papers," she said to the official, her voice clipped and sharp.

"All in good time, miss," he said.  "Sit down."

"No," said Mary.  "If you want to know what kind of friends she has, look at my papers.  Now."

He made a little face, but he shuffled the papers to glance at them.  But when he saw, his eyebrows went up and he sat back.

"Do you know who I am?" said Mary.

"Yes, Mrs. Alwyn."

"Do you know who my husband is?"

"Oh, yes."

"Do you know what's happened to him?"

"No."  The man looked up with some new concern.

"The damn loyalists got their hands on him, and they've charged him with treason and transported him.  They would have hung him but for her.  And they might hang him yet.  You know how they are with those prisoners.  So quit messing about and let us on our way."

The man quickly shuffled through the papers and gave them their proper stamps.

"I beg your pardon, ma'm," he said, glancing back and forth too quickly for them to tell whether he was apologizing to Mary or to Penelope.

As they got back into the carriage, Mary's face was red, and behind the fury she looked a tad shaken.

"It's always a risk, parading who I am," said Mary.  "Even in Acton.  But a bad reputation can break through a lot of barriers."

Penelope thought it was the reputation that bothered her more than the risk.  But was a bad reputation worse than a secret guilt?  Penelope didn't know, so she squeezed Mary's hand to comfort her as the carriage trundled off on the roads of Acton.

---

Stay Tuned For Episode 6 - "Mr. Sherman and Hingle"

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

---

The Test of Freedom should be available as an ebook 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.

Week in Review-Preview - Update

This week on the blog:

I had to put some things on hold, as my computer acted up (and my cat), I talked a little about the covers I was playing with, set my goals for November, and I got The Case of the Misplaced Hero finally polished and formatted and out into the universe.  I also talked a little about The Band Wagon, and the optimism of show business for Friday Favorites.

The delays were good for me, and I am now beginning to settle in, but not quite up to my goals yet -- more on that below.

In the meantime:

Coming Next Week on the Blog:

Monday - Episode 5 "The Ladies Expeditionary Force"
The ladies set out for Acton, and experience a little trouble at the border. 

Tuesday - Miss Leech 3
Inspector Stride has a theory about bodies which are difficult to access....

Wednesday - Writing the Online Novel - Walking, and Dancing, to the Story
"Walking to the story" is a common problem in pantser stories -- but what if the story is about the journey?

Thursday - Episode 6 "Mr. Sherman and Hingle"
Lady Ashton has an agent to assist her, and so does Mary.

Friday Favorites - Preston Sturgis and The Great McGinty
My favorite film by the great screwball comedy director Preston Sturgis, is a political comedy. You may be sick of politics, but it's hard to resist Brian Donlevy playing a likeable heavy.


Fulltime Writing Diary and ROW80 Progress


A Round of Words in 80 Days Update

This Segment's Progress:

Wednesday Day 31 - finished up and published Misplaced Hero
Thursday Day 32 - 136 minutes
Friday Day 33 - 138 minutes
Saturday Day 34 -92 minutes (but they were FRUITFUL minutes)

(See the other folks who updated progress today at the ROW80 linky)


Writing Full Time - Week 3 (or Week 1?)

I always feel like starting off this section of my Sunday update with "It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone...." (This is not helped by the fact that I often listen to the News From Lake Woebegone while I draw.)

But it's usually not an actual quiet week chez Camille. It's been pretty busy.  I have really settled in during this third week after the layoff, though I have not quite shifted into gear.

Or maybe I have.  I have been getting a lot done. All the niggling little things which you put off.  I would go nuts trying to track this and account for it, and that's part of why I decided not to count an 8-hour day for the dare goals.  I can fill the day just fine without the dare.  I need the dare to focus me on projects that need to get done.

And this week I have proven I needed it.  I have yet to actually hit the "3-hours on the WIP" target. I usually end up about 2.25 hours or so.  But it's getting better.  One of the reason it has been hard is becuase I've had a heck of a time getting back into the voice of the thing so I could rewrite some bits that don't work quite right.

In the meantime, among the many other things I did....

Cool Beans! A Mick and Casey Mini-Serial!

So, in going over the whole story, I discover that Test of Freedom splits up into fewer episodes than I thought. There are a couple which might split into two, but I don't think so. And that means that this will end at the beginning of March, rather than at the end.  Meanwhile the next summer serial, The Case of the Misplaced Baroness, really shouldn't start too early. I need to make sure it has time to start right.  So....

I looked at an old Mick and Casey short story, "A Fistful of Divas," and that looks like it might clock in nicely as a 6-8 episode serial of its own; just perfect to fit in the gap between ToF and Baroness.  It isn't finished, because I was thinking of expanding it into a novella... but I think it works at the length it's at, and it shouldn't need more than 1000 words.

Other than that, I've been doing blog posts and formatting and stuff like that.  A little prep work on other stories.  Some artwork, but not what I should be working on.  I also realize that I need to get back to laying out paper copies of both The Man Who Did Too Much and Wife of Freedom.

And finally something I haven't done, but want to do, is to make a little audio version of Episode 4 of The Case of the Misplaced Hero.  Or maybe Episode 5.  Thorny makes for fun scenes, and I think it would be a fun thing to do.  The problem is that I would probably want to upload it to YouTube as video, and I don't know what I want to do with visuals.  I really am not ambitious enough to do anything interesting.

See you in the funny papers.

Friday Favorites: Show Business and Writing

I wasn't sure what I was going to write about today.  I very nearly said, "Aw, to heck with it. This week's kind of a wash."

But two things have been bouncing around in my head lately.  One of them that people wonder where I get my perky optimism.  And I think, "Hey, you try growing up on a diet of Hollywood musicals and depression era comedies and you see how you turn out!"

So I thought I might rewatch Sullivan's Travels and talk about that today, but I didn't get around to it.  But the theme of Sullivan's Travels -- which is high art vs. low art -- made me think of The Bandwagon.

I haven't seen that in a long time, but what I have to say about it doesn't require rewatching, at least not of the whole picture.

The Band Wagon is a 1953 musical that was seriously overshadowed by a movie released just before it, Singin' In The Rain.  And I'll admit to you that while Singin' In The Rain is in the actual top ten of my top ten list, The Band Wagon isn't even among the 69 other flicks of my top ten list.

It is, however, one of the great underappreciated MGM musicals, and both flicks were written by Comden and Green, and it featured Oscar Levant (which earns any picture some extra points).

But the thing about this movie that stands out to me -- and it stands out so far that I seldom actually bother to watch the movie, I just go to YouTube and find this clip below -- is one number: The song "That's Entertainment."

I like this song not only because it has a bouncy tune by Arthur Schwartz and clever lyrics by Howard Dietz, but because of the theme: High art, low art; it's all the same.  Anything that happens in life can happen in a show.... it's all entertainment.

The movie is about a clash of high art and low art: a has-been hoofer (Fred Astaire) is going to make a Broadway comeback, when the director decides to go high-brow and bring in a classy ballerina (Cyd Charisse), and it all ends up in a disaster, with everybody being intimidated by everyone else, and they rebuild the show to be entertainment.



The thing about showbiz is that it really is all Showbiz.  It doesn't matter whether it's a baggy-pants comedian or Oedipus Rex (where a chap kills his father, and causes a lot of bother).  It's all greasepaint.

It's all entertainment.

But, in some ways, I think this brings me to why The Band Wagon isn't in my enormous top ten list: because I think the high-brow vs. low-brow emphasis causes it to miss the mark.  Oh, the theme is there, but it misses that one really cool thing that makes show business so special... and it applies to the writing business.

There's an old joke, which I will summarize for the culturally deprived: There's this guy who spends all day doing nothing but cleaning up the elephant dung at the circus, and somebody offers him a better job and he's shocked and horrified. "What?!?" he says.  "And quit show business?"

The deep echoing point of showbiz-based Hollywood musical is, like the point of so many depression era comedies and even dramas: it's not about winning and losing. It's not about success or being a star. It's about the show itself.

Let's go, on with the show.

And I think for writers, and readers, more than anything else, it's about the story.  Low-brow, high-brow, crap or national treasure.  The story is it.  It starts and stops there.

I think in the more modern era, the Muppets were the performers who held on to this idea more than any other, so I'll sign off with another video -- it's kind of crappy quality, but hey, that's kinda the point.  It's still entertainment.


Next week, maybe I'll get around to talking about Sullivan's Travels, or even my more favorite Preston Sturgis flick, The Great McGinty. It all depends on if I'm too busy putting on a show.

See you in the funny papers.

The Misplaced Hero eBook is UP!

It took me longer than I thought, but...

The Case of the Misplaced Hero is now live on Smashwords, and should be live on Amazon by the time you read this.

It will take a few weeks for it to trickle through to all the other vendors, though some may get it as soon as this weekend.

I'll update the intro page with all the purchase links when I get them.

Here are the short and long blurbs:

Short:

Novella, originally written as a blog serial. When Alex, an idle college student, tries to rescue his drunken professor from drowning, he finds himself in another world, which resembles old adventure tales and silent movie serials. Now Alex must rescue his professor from more than muddy water.

Long:

The Case of the Misplaced Hero was originally written as a twice-a-week serial for the Daring Novelist blog.  Here is the whole story collected into one novella-length volume -- 42 episodes, plus the teaser episode that leads into the next story.

When Alex was a child his eccentric aunt gave him a ring and told him that one day he should go jump in a lake.  He never knew what to make of that, and never tried doing it, until one day at college, he tries to rescue his drunken professor from falling in a river.  They both plunge in... and come up in a very different river, in a land that reminds Alex very much of the stories his aunt used to tell: a world like old adventure books and silent movie serials.  It's a dream come true, except that his drunken old professor gets himself lost and arrested.  Alex must find and rescue him, and return him home, before the old fool gets shot as a spy.

* * *

It's novella length -- about 32k words or 100 pages.  It's $2.99, but if you don't want to pay that much, you can always read it online here, starting with Episode 1.

I'm sorry to say that I simply did not have time to create two workflows for this -- so I had to go with Word for my uploads to both platforms, because that's all $%@# Smashwords will accept. It would have gone much faster if my source file could be HTML, and I could just create an epub and a mobi for upload.  I'm told Smashwords will allow uploads of epubs Any Day Now.

In the meantime, I've got to get on to the next project: Test of Freedom.

See you in the funny papers.

Full-time Writing Goals: Focus

It has been two weeks since I was laid off and this adventure began. I told myself that I could have these two weeks without any goals at all, just take that time to do what I need to do.  That time is up.  November 1, I get started on my new full-time writing life.

I don't expect to hit the ground running, but maybe I'll hit the ground Groucho-walking.

And I'm going to manage that via FOCUS.

To that end, I am not going to worry about the 40+ hours of miscellaneous tasks I need to put into my writing business, including blogging and art and keeping up my websites and all the rest.  I'm only going to worry about the 20 hours or so I want to devote to one project at a time.

Starting Thursday, November 1, 2012, my writing dare goals will be three hours a day on whatever project I have on the top of my pile.

So I'm no longer doing the thing where I coordinate my goals with the blog, and the blog counts toward my goals.  That was fine for before I was laid off, it isn't fine now.  Now it's all about getting books done.

Which isn't to say I'll neglect the blog.  As a matter of fact I think this will work out a little better, once I get my feet under me:

First project is to be finished today: get the ebook of Misplaced Hero uplaoded to Smashwords and Kindle.  Thursday I'll announce the results of that, and a couple of other publishing things.

Second project: Test of Freedom -- all episodes in the can for publication over the winter, and the ebook put together and published, I hope by Thanksgiving weekend, but it could take longer.

One of the reasons I postponed the episdoes of ToF for this week is because I realized the story was suffering from neglect while I had too many other things on my plate.  So I postponed it specifically so I could get other things off my plate completely, and concentrate only on ToF for a while.

Third project: After ToF is off my plate, I will throw myself into Devil in a Blue Bustle, which I hope to publish in December.

Debt Snowball - Writing Snowball

If you're into personal finance, you may notice that what I'm planning above is like Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball: where someone with overwhelming debt goes after one debt at a time to get it off their plate and out of their hair -- and also to free up resources to go after the remaining debts.

Now mathematically, you would be best off to go after the debt with the highest interest first.  However, people who are in crisis, and overwhelmed, very often can't keep up with such a plan.  They are up against it and stretched to their limits.  So Ramsey suggests that the best plan is to go after the smallest debt first: pay minimum payments on all others, and get that small debt off your plate NOW.  When that is gone, it lowers your minimum payment load, and gives more relief sooner.  This gives you momentum, a psychological boost, and most important: it gives you more leeway.

Or maybe most important is the momentum.  At least, I'm thinking that where this overlaps with writing, momentum is the big thing.

All of those unfinished stories and ideas are like debts. I've got to get them written before I die. And the sooner I get them done and out into the world, the more attention I can put on the remaining ones.  Also, the more support I can hope they give me in terms of income.

So this week, for ROW80, I didn't really track what I was doing.  That starts for reals tomorrow.  (NOTE: find other participants for A Round of Words in 80 Days here in the Halloween Check-In.)

I'll end with a Groucho video. He doesn't do his famous walk, but it's one of my favorites.  "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" from At The Circus. (Which is one of the pictures the Marx Brothers made to pay off Chico's gambling debts, I understand, so it's relevant to this post in many ways!)


See you in the funny papers.

Fun with Covers (and a storm delay)

I'm blaming Hurricane Sandy.

I had to skip an episode Monday because of computer problems.  But I was also having a certain level of creative problems, too. I realize there are some things I have to stop and focus on.

Which is the whole basis of my next set of goals: focus.  So, given that everybody is distracted by the Big Storm (and a whole lot of people may not even have power or internet for a while) I have decided to skip this whole week on Test of Freedom.

I'll talk more about how this focus thing is going to work for this story tomorrow when I post the new goals.  In the meantime, here's the illustration I did for the ep.  I had to do it at the last minute, and so I just hunted down a period engraving for a reference, and recomposed and drew.  I like working with black and white and gray.

On the good side: the prequel to the story, The Wife of Freedom, is finally being offered for FREE on the  Amazon Kindle Store! (In the U.S. anyway.  International stores don't often match the prices the way the U.S. store does.) Other stores where it's already free: Barnes and Noble, Sony, Deisel, Kobo, and in every format at Smashwords.

This sale lasts until Thanksgiving. (Some retailers will continue to offer the free price for a while after that, but I can't predict how long.)

The Case of the Misplaced Hero, almost published.

Okay so here it is, the first final cover of The Case of the Misplaced Hero.  I hoped to have it published by the time you see this, but the computer issues kinda cascaded into that project too. I should have it done by the end of the day, however, and I'll do an official announcement on Thursday.

I'm pleased with the cover concept -- basically characters from the header illustrations, enlarged and polished up.  The type in the logo gave me trouble: I really like that font for the title... but it's so thin that it doesn't up and down-scale well.  Since the upload copy has to be high-rez, it's a long way down from 1600 pixels to 100.

I tried a number of things, but I finally did the one thing I never would have thought of:  I exported as a jpeg at full resolution and then resized the jpeg.

Resizing a jpeg is normally not recommended at all, ever.  I mean, seriously, you just don't resize a jpeg if you can avoid it because every time you re-save it, it recompresses and you lose a little more of the image quality.

But for taking a high rez print image with text, and shrinking it down to the tiniest thumbnail, it works better than resizing the Photoshop file, or resizing a png.

What you see here is actually still legible even at half the size. (Though the smallest text is just barely legible). The little figures across the middle still look like figures, though it's harder to see what they are doing.  But then, they are a design feature, and it doesn't matter if you can see their details in the thumbnail.

Random Pre-Designed Covers

I hope, in January or so, to start selling pre-designed book covers.

For that you need more than a portfolio of designs, you need stock to sell.  So I'm foodling around a little here and there.

I really like the design to the right ("BlueYellowSmear1"), even though it doesn't feel like any particular genre.  It's more abstract and fine arty, so I'm not sure if there is a market for it.  Still, there are a lot of writers, and stories, which don't have a genre.  And something like this has a literary feel, so who knows?

That is one of the problems with pre-designed covers: you have to have an idea of a niche or audience who wants them.

Still, I like the idea of doing the art on spec because most of the cost of designing a book cover -- that is, the billable hours for the artist's time -- is taken up by going back and forth with the client trying to get the thing right.

I'm assuming that is why Joe Konrath's cover guy went to "pre-designed" covers rather than doing work on commission.  It's a better deal for everyone.

So the question is whether I can find my niche, to fit my skills to a demand.

This other cover, "FireMoon." is an image I posted earlier.  Just something I did off the cuff, which doesn't stand alone as art at all.  But when I put it together with type, I like how it came out.  It's got kind of a 'retro' meets 'out of date' look.

This look is has to do with how the font matches the design. They're both just a touch simple and ugly in a way that works together.  The font is Apple's Capitals font, which is a sucky system font available only to Mac users.  Using a different font would have a different effect.

This one would probably be a "bargain basement" type work, though. It's a very specific image that may be hard to match.

That's it for this week's images.  Next week we'll have another Miss Leech cartoon.

See you in the funny papers.

Next Episode Postponed

My computer power supply and battery decided to go gazookie tonight, just as I was belatedly getting down to fix up the episode for posting.

The first and most urgent task of tonight is to back stuff up, before the computer decides to go down for good.

But hey, I thought. I can write by hand.  I only had to revamp the first paragraph, right? Heck, I'll put the relevant draft up on Blogger, so I can get at it from other machines, while I back up this one.  This'll be great.  I'll use my iPad.

Except....

I swear my blood pressure only went up a tiny amount, but that was sufficient to bring about the feline apocalypse.  The orange cat decided that it was time to get SO incredibly needy and anxious that for a whole hour and a half he absolutely HAD to break or chew or roll on anything I looked at. He had to be under my hands, under my feet, up my nose.

"Mom! Mom! Mom! Look at me! Give me your full attention NOW NOW NOW! Oh, wait... gotta puke first."

And the iPad?  Worse than Max.  iOS and Blogger are not happily compatible.  I'm not going to say any more because Max is finally settled down and I don't want another spike in stress from me to send him in to fits again.  (Too late, there he goes again.  Must hold computer tightly to keep it from flying off the counter....)

Also, I think I had a silent migraine before this started.

And I think I made a bad mistake in the stuff I intended to skip over to get to this episode, but my brain is unable to process it.

So I'm going to bed, as soon as the most critical back up is finished, and the computer is put away, safe from cat-maggedon.

So you'll have to wait until Thursday (make that next Monday) to catch up with the next episode, which may be different than I thought it would be -- but maybe it only needs to be a longer than usual episode.

None of this is going as well as I'd hoped.  Too much distraction.

See you in the funny papers.

Week in Review-Preview - Layoff Diary 1

I had this really cool idea that I'd write a little "Layoff Diary" as a short feature of my Sunday updates. What I've learned/experienced each week.

What I've learned these first ten days is that things move so fast -- in my head at least -- that something that seems like a brilliant idea on Tuesday, not only loses it's luster, but I can't even remember the train of thought that made it sound cool.  Or worse, I do remember and I think "Why would I want to do that?  That was, like yesterday's thought.  I'm sick to death of thinking about that."

Which leads to the main thing that happened to me the first week: Popcorn Kittens on Speed. (For newbies, the reference is to this video, and Kris Rusch's blog post about how the excitement of indie publishing has her brain neurons firing like popcorn kittens.)

When I got laid off, I knew I shouldn't expect anything of myself for the rest of October.  I was right.  There was more kerfuffle related to the layoff than expected.  I also had a lot to process.  I have been very distracted and my mind has not been in the right place to actually write.  I have been able to do some drawing, and I can write to meet deadlines for the blog -- but thinking much beyond tomorrow's blog post has been a little beyond me.

Other than make grand plans, that is.  Thinking Big Picture stuff.  But not actual work yet.

And then, a few days ago -- just about exactly one week after being laid off -- my brain kicked into gear.  I realized just exactly how I was approaching this wrong.  I have been setting myself up to be overwhelmed, and my brain didn't like it.

The Irony of My Dare Goals:

I used to go after a novel dare the way others did: with word counts, just pushing toward a single goal on a single project. Like Nanowrimo: write a book in a month or two months or whatever.  This works when you have a day job and a life and you're not planning to change from that any time soon.  The point is to eliminate distractions.

But for the past few years I've been working on changing my lifestyle, and making the transition toward writing full time.  And for that, I found that I needed to measure my "time on the job" for the writing dares.  So I split my work week, 20 hours at the day job, and 20 hours at the writing business.

And that worked really well.  I have to say that that has helped me wonderfully to make the mental transition.  I was already working 3 days at day job and 4 days at home. I'd just take what I do on those 4 days, and do it 7 days a week.  It seemed like the perfect way to transition to 40 hours a week on the writing business.

And it will probably work in terms of habits.  The problem is with substance - what I'm doing, not just how long. I'm going to be fitting a whole lot more different tasks and pressures into that 40 hours. A whole lot more opportunities too.  Just punching a time clock is not going to solve the problem of managing so many tasks.

That's part of why I am so distracted. I've got a lot on my plate, and now everything is integrated into my life so deeply that there really isn't a good dividing line for that 40 hours.  It's more like 24/7 now.

And that's okay for everything with an external deadline.  You pay the bills by the due date, and get that blog post done before bed time.  And most other things will take care of themselves -- either becoming urgent or forgotten.

But the writing needs its own special place.  It's ironic, but I think the best approach to writing when you go full time is the same one I used in the beginning, when I wasn't planning to give up the day job:

Focus on, and account for, just one work-in-progress at a time, and let everything else take care of itself.

Just like a regular old vanilla novel dare.  And with so much on my plate I like to think of it as like being badly in debt, and the solution as being a little bit like Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball.  I'll talk about that on Wednesday when I post my official goals for the rest of ROW80.


A Round of Words in 80 Days Update

This Segment's Progress:

Wednesday Day 24 - 135 minutes
Thursday Day 25 - 210 minutes
Friday Day 26 - 90 minutes
Saturday Day 27 - 210 minutes


This Past Week's Posts:

• Monday - Test of Freedom, Ep 3 "Mary Black"
• Wednesday - Full Time Writing: Ready or Not?
• Thursday - Test of Freedom, Ep 4 "Only a Ghost"
• Friday Favorites - Halloween Movies

Coming This Week on the Blog:

Monday - Test of Freedom, Ep 5 "The Ladies' Expeditionary Force."
Because of computer problems and other things, I'm postponing both of this week's episodes until next week.  I'll explain more on Wednesday.

Tuesday - Covers!  (And maybe a published book announcement)
I've got some art to show you, and I hope to have Misplaced Hero published.

Wednesday - New Goals: The Writing Snowball
New priorities for my New World Order.

Thursday -Test of Freedom, Ep 6 "Hingle and Sherman"
Postponed until next week

Friday Favorites - Uhhhhhh ... a Surprise!
Seriously, I don't know what I'm going to write about.  I haven't even thought about it.


See you in the funny papers.