Tidying up.

I've finished the rewrite of Led to the Slaughter, and sent it to Lara, my copy-editor.  She should be done in about two weeks, and then I'll send it to my publisher.  Meanwhile, Lara finished a clean edit of Rule of Vampire, and I'm going to presume on the publisher's patience and do one of Death of an Immortal and Blood of Gold too.

Then I'll feel that I've done everything I can to make the books as polished as possible.

On this timeline, I'll probably have some time to give Blood of Gold another rewrite. 

Then, with everything turned over to the publisher, I'm going to try to move on. 

Start writing Ghostlander, and finish my rewrite of Faerylander.

I wanted to  post the nice map that Andy Zeigert did for Led to the Slaughter, but for some reason I can't get Blogger to post it.  Anyway, it's a very nice map, very professional.

Hey, folks. Sold my four completed books.

I've known for a couple of weeks, but wanted to wait until I had the signed contract before I said anything.

I've sold Led to the Slaughter: The Donner Party Werewolves, as well as the three books of the Vampire Evolution Trilogy: Death of an Immortal; Rule of Vampire; Blood of Gold.  I sold them to a publisher who specializes in the horror genre, Books of the Death Press.

This is the publisher who I sent Death of an Immortal off to a year ago, and who told me he liked my writing but didn't think he could "sell vampires."  Nevertheless I kept him up on the ongoing progress of my writing, and I think Led to the Slaughter, and particularly the cover, got him to pull the trigger.

I don't know what the schedule for publishing will be.  I had already embarked on a rewrite of Led to the Slaughter when I saw how great the cover was.  I've just finished it.  Now it's going to my copy-editor.  The publisher was OK with waiting until I got it right.

In fact, I asked the publisher if it would be all right to give the three vampire books one more "clean edit" and he agreed.

Anyway, hopefully, they'll be out there soon.  I feel a little bad that the people who bought and read Death of an Immortal and Rule of Vampire will have to wait awhile longer for Blood of Gold.

There are supposed to be physical copies made of these books, as well as ebook versions, but I'm not sure how or when that is going to happen.  The publisher is in charge of all that, including formats and covers and print runs -- all that.  He did want the cover to Led to the Slaughter (how could he not?) but will be doing all the rest.  Covers, printing, all that.

So here's the thing -- I'd been planning to embark on being a publisher myself.  I can write the books, edit and copy-edit the books, format them, create the covers.  So I was excited by the possibilities.  But I have to admit to myself, that what I can't do, what I don't have any aptitude or inclination to do, it to promote them.

Books of the Dead Press has an established platform that is far more developed than anything that I could probably ever do.

I did want to get paid.  And I did want physical copies.  As long as the publisher was willing to do that, I was willing to hand them over. 

It's exciting -- but the biggest thing is that once we get these four books all squared away, I can go back to concentrating on writing again.  Since Faerylander was nowhere near finished, it wasn't part of the deal, so I want to finish it and then get Wolflander as good as it can be, and then write Ghostlander, and so on.

It's a great feeling.

Information Junkie that I am and letting go.

As a general rule of thumb, I think information is good, the more information the better.  I'm pretty free with my info.  And I love gathering it.  It's my personality type.

It's also a survival mechanism, and I get a great deal of pleasure out of it.  I hate not knowing the current trends.  Sure, I've given up on certain portions of modern life -- electronic games, modern pop music, reality shows.    But otherwise, I try to hang in there.

BUT...I've decided that I need to focus on the inner, not the outer.  I'm very committed to writing right now.  So much so, that I spend very little time reading fiction.  Taking the time and effort it takes to read a book. (Which is great sacrifice, let me tell you.)

But I'm still grazing on the internet a whole lot.  Can just do it superficially.  But...I'm spending hours on it and I'm not sure it's helping me in any way.

There's always been a few magazines that were focused on the "industry" of writing -- and I always had the same sensation when I read them.  A mixture of jealously, and hopefulness, and wonder at how much there is, and a bit of despair about how hard it is, and so on.

So I stopped reading them before they stopped me.

I'm starting to feel the same way about the internet.  For instance, I had to give up paying much attention to the comic sites that talked about all the great material out there -- and worse, showed me cool pictures.   I would order them too often, and too often nothing happened.

It was too much information, if you will.  I was getting too far ahead of my customer base.

Writing is such an internal thing.  You bear down on your own imagination, do your best with your own resources.  You can do it on a desert island, and not only will it not be worse for it, but it probably will be better.

So I'm thinking I need to create a little more of my own desert island if I'm serious about writing.

This does not mean not getting out of the house.  In fact, I think I need to do more of that.

But the reading of magazines, newspapers and the watching of TV and most importantly the internet -- I need to let go of some of that.

Let go of my need to always be aware of the latest news, the latest trends.  Let myself become one of those people who doesn't know what's going on.

It's hard.  Letting go.  Not being in the loop.

But knowing what's going on isn't helpful for my interior life, takes a huge amount of time, and ultimately isn't all that important.

My life isn't any worse for not knowing who the latest pop star is who is getting in trouble, or the latest politician that is being crushed, or which sports team is on top, or what the coolest show is on TV.

The characters I'm writing about don't care, and have no knowledge of these things.  And it's the characters and stories I'm writing about that concern me now.

Amazon continues to mystify me.

Growing, growing.

No profits.

Grow some more.

No profits.

Grow, grow, grow.

No profits.

uh  Huh?


I just ordered some chocolate for someone online, to be delivered, as a thank you.  NOT AMAZON.  The shipping and handling costs were more than the chocolate.

Now, I may not much like that.  But I understand it.


Puzzle me this.  If Amazon makes no profit for 10 years, doesn't it have to make double profits for 10 years to make average profits?  (Yes, I get that they're growing but still...)

If you think you're tired of hearing about it...

If you're tired of hearing me talk about re-writing, you can imagine how I feel.

There is a satisfaction in coming up with the better word, or rearranging the sentence.  But it is hard work.  Hard to sustain.  I don't get the creative euphoria that is the payoff from the first draft. 

I think perhaps this the first time I've really sustained the effort all the way through a book.  (It is easy to over-write the first half and underwrite the second half).  So I'm proud of myself.

I'm just three 10 page sessions from finishiing.

I've been saying from the beginning of this second career of writing that the "process" would be just as important as the creativity, if not more so.  Without an effective process, I knew it wouldn't matter how many ideas I had, or how I strung the words together.  I short-circuited my previous career because I had an ineffective process.  (Plus...typewriters.)

So first I worked out the best process to write the first drafts.  When to write, what to write, how much to write, and so on.

Only now, a couple of years later, am I finally figuring out the a really effective process for re-writing.

I have decided to do it in 10 page or one hour chunks, whichever comes soonest.  Then I walk away for at least an hour, maybe even two.  Do something else, anything else. 

Then come back and do another 10 pages or an hour.

Keep doing that until my brain turns to mush.

Anyway, this has turned into a very effective method.  I can handle ten pages at at time.  It doesn't seem overwhelming.  I don't have to feel like I need to hurry.  I can deal with it in distinct chunks.



Meanwhile, it's amazing how often what someone suggests as a change is an actual improvement.  I mean, it isn't a different artistic choice, it's a real improvement.  I don't know whether I have no pride, or I'm just able to see when something has been said better.

Even if it shakes up the style a little bit -- I think that's a good thing.  It isn't good to become too predictable.

The danger I try to avoid in rewriting is getting too slick, too polished.  I used to call it, doing my 'sloppy' draft -- which isn't probably the most flattering way to describe it -- but means not getting too tight, too showy, too boring.

Anyway, I feel like Led to the Slaughter is a real book.  I mean, they're all real books, but I can see this book nestled among the other books like it really belongs.  

Theme music while I write.

I've always wanted to write a book while listening to the same music -- theme music, if you will.

When I read Lord of the Rings, as a young teenager, my older brother, Mike, was playing the lead in a community theater production of The Fantasticks.  So that album was on, it seemed, every hour, every day, for weeks.

Now, when I hear that music, the nostalgia for Middle Earth is so strong, I could cut it with a knife.

Obviously, if I want to try to produce that feeling, the album has to be good enough for me to listen to that many times.

I've been listening to the Beatles lately -- I have a big boxed set of all their music.  But those are the theme songs of my youth, essentially.  So doesn't quite work in the specific.

I thought of Born to Run, which I seem to have an endless appetite for.  Or London Calling.

Or maybe I should try something new.  Maybe I should do something classical.  I could probably listen the Beethoven for weeks.  Maybe the 9th.

I don't know.  The idea always falls through, somehow.  I forget, or I get tired of the music.  But I'm sure if I can find the right music, that is will serve as a trigger while I'm writing.

When improvements aren't improvements.

I went back and looked at my original version of chapter one.  And it was refreshingly simple and straightforward.

Which is strange, because every improvement I've made since has been an improvement, taken singly.  But combined in a whole, they detracted.

So I kept only the most felicitous of the new words, and stuck mostly to the older version.  I think it reads much better.

That's a relief.

Fortunately, I haven't done this kind of overwriting to the rest of the book.  Though this is a good warning.

Now I can move on.

I'm finally a convert to re-writing.

I woke up this morning to check what I did the day before on Led to the Slaughter, and there is no doubt that I'm improving the book through re-writing.  When I'm deep into it, I can sometimes have doubts.  But with a fresh look it is very clear that the writing is improved.

I'm getting great editing advice from my friend Bren, down in Arizona, and from Linda.  I'm hoping to hear back from Martha, who is always good at it.

I've had several people mention that maybe I shouldn't rewrite so much.  I imagine from my descriptions of the process that I'm really over doing it.  But really, I'm just doing what I probably should have done in the first place.

I write rather sketchily with my early drafts.  Over the years, I've gotten better and better at making the first or second drafts mostly complete.  But a little extra detail is usually beneficial to my writing -- as well as making me look at the writing again, improving it here and there.

I'm getting excited by this book all over again.  I thought it was a good book before, and I think it is a better book now.

So cool.

I guess I'm finally a convert to re-writing.


Andy pointed out that the first chapter -- the one I've been struggling with on how much of my beautiful writing to retain -- is the only chapter written in 3rd person.  How could I not have seen that?

I've put a new foreword to my book, which explains that an older Virginia Reed is writing this from old diaries and journals and memories, etc.

So if I change the first chapter to first person, and just headline it with, "Diary of James Reed" that should solve the problem.

Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.

I've never liked it much when people bitch and moan about how hard something is.

"Try not.  Do or do not.  There is no try."

Re-writing is hard.  It seems to take twice as much effort as the original writing.  Partly because it's endless.  There is always more you can do.  Always a word choice.  Always a slight tweak.

I'm giving Led to the Slaughter the proper rewrite it deserves.  I saw that cool cover and thought:  "Is this as good as I can make it?"  So I delved in, and before I knew it I was giving it a top to bottom polish.

I had thought it was more or less complete, but I'm adding telling details as much as possible, and it is improving the book, expanding it, fleshing it out.

The only chapter I'm worried about is the first chapter -- not because it hasn't been worked on, but because it's been worked on a lot.  I'm afraid of "over-writing" or making is seem too "writerly."

I'm finishing the re-write before I go back to the original draft and try to find the most essential improvements on that first chapter -- pare it back just slightly.  Everything I've added has been an improvement, but strange to say, I think you can have too many improvements.

Meanwhile, I think most of what I've added or changed has been an improvement and I guess I have to admit that re-writing is a good idea.

But my god it takes time.   I'm about halfway through after two weeks -- working very long days.  I suppose that doesn't seem like a long time, and it is what a book needs.  The book deserves the best I can do.  So I'll be back at it in the coming days and finish up the rewrite and then read it through.

I'm proud of myself for making the extra effort -- though I probably shouldn't be -- the extra effort should probably always be made.

Being a writer is weird.

My personality is probably more suited to being shut in for hours, days, weeks, months concentrating on one thing than most.

But I have to admit, it even gets to me.  I so want to go outside and go for a walk, get out into whatever sunlight there is.  Tomorrow, when I go to work I'll be glad to see some other faces, and talk about other things -- though I'll be awkward and out of practice.

Isolation breeds isolation.

But it don't get done otherwise.  I just don't get done.  I've got a commitment I have to fulfill and I know it is going to take every ounce of concentration and energy, and probably just about every waking moment, to get it done.

I think when this whole enterprise is finished, I'm really going to take a break.  Spend as much time outdoors as possible for a week or two.

Caused I'm feeling trapped like a rat.

A nice slow start -- or a dramatic action scene?

I took the first two chapters of Led to the Slaughter to writer's group, for one last go around.  I figure the first two chapters are the most important chapters -- except maybe the last two chapters -- or...well who knows...

Anyway, the first chapter is beautifully written, if I do say so myself.  It has been worked on so much, refined so much, that it absolutely flows by now. 

But -- strangely -- I worried if it was too much of a good thing.

What happens when you rewrite so many times is that you add more and more refinements -- and in some ways, it can become too much of a good thing.  It can become "writerly" if you will. 

I'm going to pare it down slightly.  It works as it is, but I could cut a few of my beautiful descriptions and phrases and get the same effect.

The one member of the group who hadn't heard it before liked the second chapter much more, and wondered why I couldn't start there, with the main protagonist starting off on the wagon train west.

He thought the first chapter was "too dramatic."

So -- I totally get what he's saying, and it is something I've been struggling with ever since I came back to writing -- this seeming necessity to start with something "dramatic."  Every action TV show or movie starts this way nowadays -- and most books. 

I'm not saying I like it -- but it seems to be the modern method.

As it happens the first chapter of this book was always the first chapter of this book -- and wasn't inserted to add "drama" or action early in the book.  I feel like it belongs there.

But I understand his point, and in many ways wish that was how books were still being written.

The Stream Beneath The Shrubbery.

And here is something a little less downbeat.


The Stream Beneath The Shrubbery

To dwell in a world, that should exist,
which does exist as long you're there,
or anyone else is there,
if only for a few moments.

To write through doubt,
and find friends in characters,
who you'd wish you could be and can be
for a short while.

There's something over there,
something about "selling."
It doesn't seem important
right now. Go away.

To find the seam into the mountain
and the trail along the valley
the stream beneath the shrubbery
and clamber across when you fail.

Justification for doing nothing,
if something is done for nothing
if nothing is done for something
then something is something.

Playing with words,
for the sound of them,
garbled together for effect
and meaning beneath.

It's fallout from a life of reading,
spillover from the beauty,
impersonations of moments,
that turn into moments.

To return the favor,
reformed and changed,
into something new
something that is all mine.

Mr. Ugly Writer Guy.

I dreamed of being Mr. Ugly Writer Guy,
who can't stop talking,
who knows it all,
And rolls his eyes if you don't agree.
Who spoils the conversation
because he can't stop talking

Who flops his dubious success,
on top the table, still alive and wet.
And waits for the chance
to gut it in front of you.
and explore its details
in all its questionable entrails.

With modesty that's plastered,
over of the wall of doubt beneath,
tasteful and gory and not yet dry,
He'll take any compliment and run
He'll ask any favor and run
He'll run from anything in return.

Mr. Ugly Writer Guy,
Who thinks he has something to say
and says it and then says it,
Who bends his will at others,
to get his way, to make the words come
to make them work, whatever else.

Mr. Ugly Writer Guy,
over takes over the mind, the body,
the mouth, the soul, for the selfish
and the higher and the lame,
but he'll try anyway, everyway
thinking it the sloppy truth.

So much effort made, for so little gain,
He drags everyone into his whirlpool,
though they slip away
looking for the magic string of words
that will make it all worthwhile for
Mr. Ugly Writer guy. 

Every once in a long while,
a few words congeal into something nice,
and Mr. Ugly Writer guy is redeemed
for a few moments he feels the glow
the flow of something good
and then it all fades, Mr. Ugly Writer guy.

Being coy with your plot.

I've exposed Led to the Slaughter to some new critiquers and they have some very valid suggestions.

I'm not willing to reshape the structure of the book at this time, but word choice and such are very helpful.

The thing about making structurally changes this late in a working book is that once you take out one piece of the puzzle, the whole thing can fall apart.  It can become a real nightmare to put it back together.  It may seem like a small change, but it may be something that the rest of the book hinges on.

I like the basic plot, the characters, and the mood of this book -- it is one of the first times I've felt like I've gotten all three elements right.  There is always room for improvement in the writing, though there comes a point when you should stop fiddling.

It was a conscious choice not to try to play games with the plot.

One suggestion that most of the readers have made -- and have from the very beginning of the book -- is that I slowly reveal the wolves, do a long tease, keep up the mystery.

I totally get that.  But I find that my writing works much better if I go ahead and explain things as I go along.  That doesn't mean the characters of the book know what's going on, but the reader will often be ahead of them.  It's a neat technique, but I'm not totally comfortable with it.

I tried to so that with Faerylander, and it just didn't work.  I went back and but in the villians point of view right from the beginning, and suddenly everything worked.

Trying to be coy entails a lot of -- "For the first time he realized..." kind of passages, which to me can be kind of annoying.

Anyway -- I feel the the rewriting is improving the book in a thousand small places -- incrementally but added up it makes for a better read.

It adds, in my opinion, about 5% to the overall quality to give it a real solid polish.  Which isn't a small number, because you add it to the existing material. 

Sure, I've totally made up that percentage -- but it feels right.  :)

One last quick polish.

After I saw Andy's cover to Led to the Slaughter, I decided to give the book one last polish.  Enough time has passed, that my re-writing seems to be very effective.  I really like this book, and the small additions I'm making are only making it better.

I wrote one new scene, involving wolves.  Can't have too many wolves.

And I smoothed out the introduction of a major character, which was the only awkward part of the story that I still wasn't completely comfortable with. 

Fixed.

So now it's just a matter of doing the little things to improve the writing slightly.  Feels good.

If you remember, I had a hard time getting into a re-write kind of mood, but somehow I've broken through that block and now I kind of like it.  It was the constant re-writing of Faerylander, I think.  Seeing how the book firmed up and became something more substantial.

For some reason, I'm much more confident that I'm improving the book.  The only part of this polish that I retracted was some of the stuff on the first page.  It can be a temptation to over-write the first page, so I went back and only kept a few of the changes.  The rest of the changes in the book have been nothing but an improvement.

But I think doing more than this last polish puts the book in danger of being over-thought and over-done.  I think this last polish is finding a light but effective course.

Actually, I do have a subject.

I've wanted to make Led to the Slaughter more period feeling.  So I thought I'd try the True Grit trick of not using contractions.

But it doesn't work.  Mostly because I don't think you can retroactively change it out.  Because if you're writing without contractions you would probably use different wording in the first place.

The same problem comes up when you try to switch from first person to third person or back again.  It isn't a simple matter of changing from "I" to "he."  Because you would have said it differently in the first place if you'd used the other method.

Same thing with tenses -- going from past tense to present tense isn't a simply of matter of changing 'was' to 'is.' 

Because you would have used different words to say the same thing.  So it creates an awkwardness, and artificiality.

I've done quite a bit of this kind of thing with Faerylander -- mostly because I was struggling so much with the book that I thought changing tense or who was talking would give me a fresh look.  And it did.

But it also created a bit of mess that I've had to work at fixing.

Couldn't have planned it better.

I'm in limbo, for reasons that will become clear later. 

But I can't let that stop me from making my usual daily entry.

I'm sort of amazed that my prolific writing over the last couple years has taken on a certain order amongst the subconscious urgings.  That the results aren't as chaotic as I might have expected.

I've got a complete vampire trilogy.

I've got a stand alone historical horror, which has a main character who can continue her adventures.

I've got the first two books and am working on the third of a paranormal series -- that I intend to extend beyond three or four...

What's even more surprising, is that they are all coming out in an orderly fashion. 

Meanwhile, in the background I have a trio of fantasy novels that need work but which can be connected into a larger mythology.

And I have a S.F. series (more S.F./Fantasy) of which I've written the first two books.

In other words, they kind of shake out nicely.  I didn't plan it this way, but I couldn't have planned it much better.

Cover to Led to the Slaughter

The rather awesome cover that Andy Zeigert did for my book.

How can you resist?

Getting the writing clean.

I'm busily looking at the editorial changes that Lara made to Blood of Gold.

I got started on a rewrite of Led to the Slaughter, which is extensive enough that it will need another copy-editing pass through.

I want the Vampire Evolution Trilogy and the Led to the Slaughter to be perfectly clean and ready to publish.

Then I'm going to turn to getting the rewrite and editing done on Faerylander, the editing done on Wolflander, and the writing and editing done for Ghostlander.

I'll probably settle on continuing the "Lander" series, because I'm enjoying them so much.

I'm also thinking of a sequel to Led to the Slaughter, with the 13 year old heroine, Virginia Reed, as the protagonist.  I was looking at the Marie Celeste incident, for instance.  (Virginia would be in her late 30's.)  Or some other "strange western" incident.  Alfred Packer?   Gold mining.   Tran-continental railroad, etc. etc.

And Virginia would be in prime hot heroine age during the civil war.  All kinds of things I could do with her in that time-line.  Could really do a retro-futuristic, steam-punky kind of horror novel.

So much fun.

Blood of Gold is edited.

Got Blood of Gold back from the editor.  So as soon as I go through the edits and get a cover made, I can publish this -- the third book in the Vampire Evolution Trilogy.

In the not too distant future, I hope to sell the entire trilogy in one volume.  Use the mirror and blood from the cover of the first book and the backgrounds and colors of the second book for the design.

Also seriously considering doing a physical version.

I'm almost positive I'll do a physical version of Led to the Slaughter.  Hoping to publish that in late spring.  I want to do it right, though.

After being somewhat in limbo for awhile, it seems like lots of things are coming together.  The covers and the edits and the rewrites.  I'm really starting to see how much writing I got done in that one intense 16 month period.

Just a matter of finishing these up.