Stick a fork in it...it's done!

Well - it took longer than I expected, but the full edit - line by line, word by word - of Loremaster is done.  The file is saved in four different places and I am happy with the result.

A line by line edit is an arduous task.  I can only sustain that kind of editing for a few hours before my eyes cross and I really need a break.  I am glad I took the time to do it.  I found numerous opportunities for improvement, overused words, awkward structures and the odd grammatical error.  Loremaster is a much better manuscript today than it was a few weeks ago.

What now?

I have a number of projects that need attention, but where to start?

Do I jump right in to the Loremaster sequel that I started a few months back?  Might make sense - I have the first book fresh in my mind.

Do I finally finish fleshing out Patriot or Herne to novel length?

Do I revisit The Witch, a little story that grew and one I'm very fond of?

Do I start something new?

I suppose the first thing to do is take a deep breath, look at what I have on the go and decide where my energies are most profitably spent.

I'll take the weekend to figure it all out.

A whole new look

I've had the blog's new look up and running for about a week now. What prompted a make-over? Well...a couple of things.

The Sand-dragon eating its creator was a fitting symbol for a blog about writing. It fit in with the fantasy theme and often when writing it feels like the writing is trying to devour the writer. Lately, however, I find my writing moving away from the fantasy genre. To tell the truth, Loremaster, my 700 page novel, is about the only thing truly "fantasy" that I've written.

More and more, of late, my writing has moved toward stories more rooted in worlds we recognize very much as our own. It's true that I've put out some horror stories lately and I'm currently working on a science-fiction story with a real Twilight Zone feel to it but more and more I keep returning to my Patriot re-write and The Witch and Small Town Secrets, all stories placed in reality (more or less).

I also wanted a more personal touch to the blog. The Sand-dragon was not my picture. It was a photo from a competition held in Vancouver (I believe) and the picture spoke to me so I used it on the title bar of the blog. The tin-boat above is a photo taken by me during a vacation in Northern Ontario a few years back. I snapped this picture shortly after dawn while the mist was still dancing across the still waters of the lake.

The boat, incidental, was on loan to me from my brother-in-law. I've caught a lot of bass in that boat...

Speaking of a whole new look - on a personal level - after 42 years yours truly finally has an ass. It's barely noticeable to the casual observer, but to me it's positively magnificent. My wife attributes the bike riding and the elliptical machine at the gym. After a lifetime of having an ass you could use as a straight edge, I finally have a little curve at the base of my spine. And hard! Sweet Jesus - if you need to strike a match or crack a walnut - I'm your guy. (Well, not quite yet...)

Anyway - kids are heading to bed and want me to read a story so I guess I'd better get my brand new ass upstairs.

Which Witch is Which?

Had a busy day today with various commitments with the local heritage committee and a luncheon at the Rotary Club, but I did find time to revisit a story started a while ago that needed some distance.  

The Witch was supposed to be a quaint little story about a depressed outsider in a small town.  It grew and grew into a coming of age story about a group of friends and a special friendship between an 8 year old girl and the town's most shunned resident.

I shelved The Witch some time ago when I decided to start writing some scary stories.  I have been thinking about the story lately and read over the first little bit today.  I like it.  I like it a lot.

The subject matter is difficult but exciting.  It's one of those stories with autobiographical content swimming in fabricated lies.  I'm not quite ready to return to The Witch, not just yet.  I have Farstrider to update and finish and am working on something with Old Timer.  I am also, each Friday while watching the kids at swimming lessons, working on Middleman Aquisitions and, I must say, am having a lot of fun with it.

In further news I seem to be having a little run of bad luck - nothing major, just a bunch of little things, since my little collision a few weeks ago. 

Appears that God had a favourite deer...and I killed him. 

Mercury Rising

Ahhhhhhhhhh.

For the first time in what seems like forever the temperature has moved to the happy side of zero.  It's 3 degrees Celsius right now and the forecast promises to hover around the freezing point for the next week or so.  You know it has been a long, cold winter when dancing around the freezing point is something to look forward to.

I gave Root of Evil a day to stew and have been going through it looking for typos and opportunities to make the flow and cadence run a little more naturally.  Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the result.  A little more clean-up and I'll send it out into the world.

I've now written two scary stories in the last little while and I have been looking toward the British markets.  Not only does the UK seem to grasp horror stories more readily but they tend to pay more.  Short horror stories in North America tend to get a price from anywhere from about 1/2 cent per word up to as high a 8 or 10 cents a word.  The UK pays about the same per word but here's the thing - their pennies are worth twice as much.  I haven't decided where I'll be sending Root of Evil but Britain certainly has its advantages.

Next up is rxpanding Patriot to novel length- to start, anyway.  I'll try alternating between The Witch and Patriot but I'm dubious how successful that will be.  We'll see.

Root of Evil

It is finished - well, the first draft is anyway.  Around 3:45 this afternoon I put the stake through the heart of Root of Evil.  I've forwarded it off to the usual suspects for a first reading and will look at it myself in about a week to edit.  For now I'm just glad to have it done.  At just over 12,300 words I'm not so sure it's a short story anymore but we'll see where it ends up after editing.

I'm thinking Patriot is next up, but The Witch is calling out to me too.  Maybe alternating days - work on one, next day the other?  I've never tried that before - might just work.

It is numbingly cold here again today.  Since we got the dog I am more aware of the cold (nightly 11:00pm walks will do that), but I must say my usual hatred of winter has lost its zest.  I guess having kids takes the edge off - I mean who can be too pissed off at the cold when the people you love most are hauling you out into it for tobaggoning and snowball fights.  

A little bit of news -  The Beynon family is heading to the UK in the spring.  At Christmas my aunt not so subtly hinted that she and my uncle are not getting any younger and that a visit was long overdue.  We agree and are making plans.

One last thing - that picture of me up there.  It's been two years and about fifteen pounds (I'm lighter now, thanks for asking) since that picture was taken and it's time for something new.  It'll change in the next few days, I'm sure.

That's all for now - kids are calling.

Strange Days, Indeed...

It's been a strange one here for me.

First of all, I had a very satisfying day at the key board.  Root of Evil keeps growing but I think tomorrow or the next day and the 1st draft will be finished.

Secondly - my birthday came and went and I was having a wee bit of a crisis.  I have been a little frustrated with rejections of late and after a disheartening Friday I gave myself a slap in the face and told myself to smarten up.

A wonderful thing spawned from my birthday.  In the fall we added the wonderful Willow to our family.  On Sunday my daughter gave me her big birthday secret that wasn't finished in time to share with me on my actual birthday.

My daughter found a pattern on-line and with some help from her mom cut out the material and sewed it together.

It's amazing.  It sits.  It stands and it lies down.  It has four points of articulation and it is entirely handmade.  It will live with me in the basement office.

The weather has been a roller-coaster.  Mostly we've been in the bitter grip of Arctic air but for a short, miraculous pair of days it was merely freezing.  Here are some shots of our river - normally this time of the year the flow is far less frozen.

The next thing I have truly mixed feelings about.  This morning I heard that my former employer - the one that canned me after 16 years without cause - filed for bankruptcy protection along with its US parent.  I am worried about the friends I have who still work there and the uncertainty of their futures but I predicted this three years ago and my timeline was pretty much spot on.  There's the satisfaction of "I told you so" but there's also a lot of folks not sleeping well tonight that deserved better governance of their company.  Oh, did I mention that the top five executives of the company took bonuses well in excess of one million dollars only a week before declaring bankruptcy.  Oh, there's bankruptcy all right and not all of it is fiscal.

The last thing I'll share is one of those moment you have when inspiration hits you from out of the blue.  I was washing the dishes a little while ago and my mind drifted to The Witch.  The Witch has been shelved for a while - fermenting, I guess - and as I was scrubbing something stubborn off a pan, a huge portion of the story gelled in my mind.  I now have a very good idea how to proceed with The Witch.  

I should wash the dishes more often.

Bonfires, Poetry and Fireworks

A lot has happened since my last posting.

Let's see...

Hallowe'en was a joy as always. It's my favourite holiday and always has been. Unfortunately our street is one of the oldest in town with large spacious lots so the number of steps between houses create a poor distance to candy ratio for the trick and treaters. We got about twenty or twenty five visitors before the older kids started showing up in their teenager costumes.

I submitted a collection of poems - yes, poems - to the CBC Literary awards collected under the title Sign Post Deep in Snow. I've never really been much of a poem writer but I am pleased with wjat I came up with. Now it's wait and see.

During the weekend to family attended a Guy Fawkes celebration a few days late hosted each year by some ex-pat brits we know. There was of course a bonfire and fireworks - our host told me that the fireworks were technically illegal as Victoria Day and Canada Day are the only two days you can lauch fireworks in Canada without a permit (don't know if this is true or not but I'll take the word of the guy with the lighter and mittful of explosives). The location makes the annual bonfire an event to be attended. The house is large and was built for entertaining. It is litterally a stones throw from a small lake (more of a pond really - you can walk around it in ten minutes) with a cleared torchlit path around it. The fireworks were set off over the water so you got the double effect of the reflection. The kids loved it. When we got home we even got a chance to catch a bit of V for Vendetta before retiring to bed.

Currently I am working on finishing Root of Evil - before returning to The Witch.

Holy Crap!!! I'm writing poetry today!!!

It's true!

Last week I was reading over one of my posts and it struck me as ever so slightly poetic. I cleaned it up a bit and what you know? It really was a poem.

After that I wrote another and today I find myself struggling with yet another poem. All of them share a common element and so I've decided to keep plugging away and write a few more to enter into CBCs annual literary awards.

A common element they share is snow or wintertime. I know it's hardly original but for the CBC awards the more Canadian the better. I haven't yet written anything about lesbian Inuit heroine-using interpretive dancers - I don't know if it needs to be that Canadian - but hey, the day is still young.

In other news, the Old Timer story that I was pretty sure had found a home was very kindly and apologetically rejected over the weekend. The publication where I submitted Old Timer is moving to a shorter fiction format. They now have a firm 5000 word limit, with preference for stories between 3 - 4000 words. Old Timer, at 6700 words, was just too much for them to accommodate. I have today submitted it to a different market where I am certain it will find a home.

The Witch, is brewing. I've put that story on hold for a little while so that the elements can simmer while I work on something else. The something else is another horror story told from a unique point of view. I also have something else rattling around in my head about a demon and a glassblower. Should be fun.

Whacked

It's been a wild and crazy week and finally, on Friday, I seem to have recovered.

On Tuesday I accompanied my daughter's Grade 3 class to the Toronto Metro Zoo. It was a fantastic outing that afforded me some great daddy-daughter time. We traveled from Pavilion to Pavilion, taking in animals from all over the world. It was especially good for my daughter because it was her first day with her brand-new glasses. She marvelled at how much clearer the world appeared through a pair of prescription lenses. I had an amazing time but a day of corralling children takes its toll. After we finally managed to manoeuvre the kids onto the bus I sank into the seat next to my daughter and breathed a sigh of relief. Despite my aching lower back and my worn-out knees I slumped into the uncomfortable, too closely spaced schoolbus seat and nodded off to sleep. I awoke sometime later to a pounding headache, the screaming words to "This Is the Most Annoying Song in the World" being sung at tooth-shattering decibels from the kids in the seat behind me and to the delighted smiles of the two little girls in the seat in front of me who had been watching me sleep. My daughter, who had been reading a book beside me gave me a look that said, "Don't fall asleep again, Daddy, you're embarrassing me."

On Wednesday was Wordfest III, presented by the Elora Center for the Arts. It was a collection of local writers, poets, storytellers and spoken word artists to celebrate... well, words. It wasn't really my cup of tea and I'm not entirely sure that I'll be attending Wordfest IV, slated for April 23, 2009-William Shakespeare's birthday. I did have a good time but it seemed a fairly closed group and I felt like a bit of an interloper. After Wordfest I headed out to the little pub in Elora for my usual Wednesday night Philosophers Club meeting. The Philosophers Club meets every Wednesday night and consists of a number of local artists, entrepreneurs, craftsmen and businessmen. It's usually an all man sort of thing but occasionally we are graced by the company of one of our spouses. During these weekly meetings to discuss matters grave and mundane, political and environmental, grand and small... and sometimes, maybe, we'll talk about something philosophical. It was an especially late night with the Philosophers Club this Wednesday and when I arrived home-closing in on midnight-the dog still needed to be walked.

On Thursday-a day I really wanted to knuckle down and get some writing done-I had a commitment with our local Heritage Committee. The meeting went far longer and at times was far more tedious than I had anticipated. By the time I was done and I'd come home and walked a not so happy dog it was time to pick up the kids.

Today, Friday, was to be my heavy-duty writing day-and it started out that way. I did revamp a story for submission to Cemetery Dance Magazine before the call came in from school. It turns out that my son was not feeling so well on this Friday before a long weekend. I went and picked them up and detected the merest hint of a smile-it was almost as if he had gotten away with something. I had the sneaking suspicion that he had pulled one over on his Grade 1 teacher-and he knew it... Well, since he's upstairs fast asleep, I'm going to assume that he really was sick... but they're still that sneaky little smile.

After I post this entry, I'll go up stairs and check on him and if he's still asleep I'll let a little more to The Witch.

Awesome

Well...she's here to stay.

My last post talked about the lovely Willow and how if she adjusted to life at the Beynon house she would be a welcome addition to the family. I'm happy to report that after a few nailbiting days where she wouldn't eat her food, Willow is comfortable and happy in our home. We are all so very pleased.

With Willow adjusting to life in the house, I haven't been getting as much writing done as I would like. I made a little bit of progress on The Witch. I also reread Patriot in preparation to flesh it out to novel length. In addition, I have been mapping out a series of stories centered around the main character in one of my short stories, Old Timer. Another project that has been on the back burner is Middleman Acquisitions and it seems that a crossover between Old Timer and Middleman Acquisitions is inevitable. It's great to have tons of material, but now I need to knuckle down and get it on paper.

One last little note-about a week ago I was watching the Discovery Channel - someone who writes speculative fiction does well to watch the Discovery Channel -and I came across this little gem below.

Enjoy-I really did...