xhesika | Entries tagged with research

I've set out the sequel ideas for Ritzko, and I think I actually like where it's going.

1st Installment -- The Final Commission of Bastian Freeman -- written

Bastian takes on a job that may be too much for him to handle and ends up in deeper trouble than he realizes, from the POV of Bastian Freeman.

2nd Installment -- From the Desk of Detective David Johnson -- in progress

The events from Bastian's initial disappearance to when Jenna is adopted, from the POV of David Johnson.

3rd Installment -- Gale DeWinter's Army -- planned

After Jenna's adoption, Gale and Ritz easily keep their involvement in Bastian's disappearance from Jenna, but the rest of the clan is cryptic, Gale begins to doubt Ritz, from the POV of Gale DeWinter.

(totally can't wait to write all the flapper goodness Paris flashbacks)

4th Installment -- Unmasking Ritz --planned

7 years after Bastian's disappearance, Jenna inherits everything her brother has left her and begins an investigation of her own, from the POV of Jenna Freeman

Here's the challenge for myself: the first book runs 50~51k words and just under 200 pages, I am going to limit myself and make an attempt to make each book as uniform in size as possible, while keeping the same writing style for each of them. All will be written like you're inside the narrator's head, and all of them will have unique personalities. I'm excited for the project, and slightly leery of the challenge, but, hey, I wrote the original in 10 days, should be a snap, right?

I dream when I write.

Current Mood: chipper

My last day at work is this Tuesday.

The power will shut off on Thursday.

I put Artemis on hiatus. I've been unable to write on it, I keep getting caught up on the fact that I lost so much of it, and I can't seem to get back into the writing groove. So I decided to make a sequel to Ritzko...rather three sequels. I re-named the first book The Final Comission of Bastian Freeman, and the whole series will be called the Ritzko Project. Each of the books will be in the same style as the first, but from another perspective. The second from Johnson's, the third from Gale, and the fourth from Jenna.

In the first sitting I was able to push out 13 pages, and it was strange, but after writing that I felt almost like I might be able to do some work on Artemis. So I opened up the document and although I was unable to write anything, its comforting that the feeling is coming back.

With that being said, Emily is back in town this week. I admittedly am using the move as an excuse to not see her because I still do associate her with anything bad that happens to Artemis after she vandalized the very first copy beyond repair. I've gone over my history with writing with Kory on Livestream and Skype several times, and its interesting how I'm noticing how fucked up it's been after I put everything out there. How somehow I manage to continue with something I like after Emily tears it all apart, and my Mother patronizes me at the dinner table...

The trouble with this is that I won't be able to spend much time with Samm before I leave.

It was the last night with some of the girls tonight. There are certainly a few I will miss, but there are a lot of them that I won't miss at all, and I don't expect to be missed by many in return...I don't really know a nice way to say it, but I almost feel indifferent. I'll miss connecting with patients.

Plans for a movie night with Tammi and the kids tonight, I've practically been living there for the past few weeks on my day off. The Haven is no longer the Haven, Robbie and I are on the move.

Ugh, I agreed to a dinner with my family at 6 tonight, hopefully it doesn't drag on too long tonight...and hopefully I don't get too sick from seeing Emily. I know it isn't her fault. I just never forgave her for that, and now I almost blame her for everything bad that happens to my writing...

Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Goldfrapp -- Satin Chic

Three in one day.

Takes place about a week after the biscuit one. Lilly as a character is hilarious and awesome.

had to research hand pump wells for this one, oh the research, it all has to be chronologically correct.

welp, we all knew this was coming.

( Short Story: Of Daisies )

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Coldplay -- A Rush Of Blood To The Head

Yes, lets sit at the table and talk about our underwear. Sounds prime, really.

You never really see a lot of Lord Covington in the book...not until his demise anyways, his relationship with Kamen isn't the most healthy, but he at least seems to respect his father.

At least the kids know when they're being completely ridiculous.

This just looks like a self-inflicted food fight on Artemis' part.

( Short Story: Of Biscuits )

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Black Eyed Peas -- I Got A Feeling

Posted on DA, just wanted to keep it here for references.

Suddenly "Y" strap suspenders are attractive.

One of the things I like the most about writing childhood Kamen and Artemis is that it requires me to do a lot of research. Matches, the curses Kamen uses (I teetered on him using the word "bollocks" but decided that he wouldn't use it in front of Artemis), hatpins, and suspenders (American term) vs. braces (the British term that would have been used in that period).

The game sardines, its like hide and seek but one person hides while the others seek, then as people find the hider they join them, so after a while the hiding place becomes painfully obvious. The last person to find the hider has to hide in the next round. I don't know for certain how far this game dates back to, but my research dates it back to at least 1700's, then again, it's my story and I can say what I want really.

Also, anyone remember that episode of South Park where Tom Cruise, R Kelly, and John Travolta are in the closet? Yeah I totally watched that a few times while writing this.

Something else also interesting. This was pushed out in a few short days from scratch and with a very vague idea, it's referenced only once in the trilogy by Kamen in Book 2, but it still manages to just fall short of 5,000 words. This is why NaNoWriMo was so easy for me to get through I guess.

( Short Story: Of Closets )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Limp Bizkit -- Behind Blue Eyes

Robbie's getting a static IP connection today to host an airsoft site, and posed the idea that I could pay the 6 bucks and get my own site for all of my writing and writing-related things (arts and the like).

I love this man.

But I digress.

My initial ideas are that it would include Ritzko as well as Artemis, and while neither would actually be on the site itself, I would be able to post links to buy the books (when I get that far), as well as finally find a good place for all those pesky notes and family trees for Artemis. Of course I wouldn't mind churning out a bunch of short-stories for the site.

Maybe even a wiki.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Black Eyed Peas -- Rock That Body

Obviously they follow a form of Celestism, but Celeste really doesn't put rules down and rather goes on a morality/honor system. Rei drops the joke several times that he's an atheist, but when you're a prime example of your creation story you don't have much of an arguement. Much less of one when you've met the diety.

Nora Sybil is the only demi-god, she was the only one actually birthed from Celeste.

Twelve members of Parliament to allude to the twelve disciples or the twelve gods of Olympus, the addition of the Chancellor pushes the number up to lucky thirteen, turning the allusion more towards Jesus and the Disciples.

Namae based on Hindu Naga. Jaedis more a steampunk futurism.

Sacred Forest's name is "Jannah", after the Islamic Heaven. The pond that Celeste resides by is called "Lethe". Leading the Forest itself to be a junction of life and death.

Ending riddle: insinuates that the "old gods" are the human gods. Angels and demons don't exist in the religion of Buenae, but are rather myths.

The demon Vexus in Thorn Tower is considered left over from the old gods, and is neither Human nor Buenan.

Humans, according to Christianity, are made from dust. Referred to several times in the book as "stone golems". Buenans were flowers of Celeste's off shooting roots. Reinforcing the reasoning for hermaphroditic characters, and the reasons why Humans and Buenans can't mate. Also with the battle between Celeste and "The Old Gods", it is widely believed that the two species are separated in the afterlife and stone crumbles but flowers reblossom.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Samantha James -- Maybe Tomorrow

Sitting, writing Artemis, once again struggling with the content, and then another idea for a book pops in my head...and I could push it out in 10 days.

Anywho, something I noticed with Artemis, and it comes from this small excerpt:

Kamen stopped mid-bite on the dumpling and then shrugged, "Where do you get chocolate like that?"

Rei glared at him, "A gift from Alladair Udit."

Kamen swallowed slowly, "Send him my regards."

WTF is Alladair Udit doing sending Rei chocolates? Especially liquor filled cherry cordials? Anyone who missed that part of the book where they explained that Udit was Sargasso's FATHER wouldn't get much out of this. It was honest to god a random character that I picked, one that had been visited briefly in the story, but I wasn't planning on getting to much into them personally.

So here's the wierd bit. Udit is sending chocolates to the leader of his daughter-in-law's fanclub. And they're full of booze. I don't know if it's just a cute gesture, or if its meant as "LOL CRY MOAR NEWB".

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Maroon 5 + Bimbo Jones -- Misery

Samm: "Page 7?" [Talking about Ritzko]
Me: "Yeah, I just couldn't get into it."
Samm: [gives me a look]
Me: "That sounded bad, didn't it?"

As the author I shouldn't have said it, but its true! I just don't get hyped up over vampire novels. Don't get me wrong, I do like Ritzko, but its something I have to be in the mood for, and it seems really, REALLY dumbed down compared to Artemis.

Speaking of, here's a taste of Van Dean's dialogue, not as bad as a few of the things he says later, but its racy enough to give the reader an idea of what he plans to put Artemis through. Sad and good part is that I don't really have to re-write much of the dialogue, his from the first draft was near perfect. My only quandary is why didn't Artemis go more insane in the first draft?

I swear the only good part about these next few chapters is that Kamen finally gives Pandome a reason to cower with him, that and of course what ACP really stands for.

“Quid pro quo.” His jaw tightened, “And my dear, my whims change quite quickly. You’ll find it hard to keep up if you truly wish to save your Covington.”

She wiped the tears from her face and bit the inside of her mouth. “You’re turning this into game.”

He looked at her for a second before allowing a sinister smile to cross his face, “It is me you want to save Covington from, isn’t it? I want you. You understand that, don’t you?”

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: MGMT -- Kids

Texting dream officially makes sense to me. If I'm getting to a point in the story where one of the character's dialogue makes me want to cry and throw up at the same time it only makes sense that they apologize profusely in a dream.

None of the dialogue between Van Dean and Artemis is in the excerpt below, but it gives you a pretty good idea what bargains they're making. I'm leery of putting much of anything up on DA, or LJ at this point. The material certainly isn't as graphic as Chapter 50, but its crude and grim. Then there's the whole scene coming up where Van Dean does an excellent job of showing how serious he is over everything and I need to be careful with it or it could turn into another missing chunk of pages

( Quid Pro Quo )

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: Coldplay -- Daylight

I really, really don't like how I'm looking ahead to what needs to happen still in Book One and trying to tell myself, "No, Van Dean wouldn't do something that despicable." Then come to the realization that "yes, yes he would."

I feel sick just thinking about it.

It rather goes hand in hand with the dream I had only two nights ago, where I was angry. Really angry, but I didn't know why, and I was getting text messages on my phone from Van Dean and they were all apologies, but I had a hard time swallowing them.

Jesus, even looking back over the old dialogue between Artemis and Van Dean makes me want to cry, I was going to take it out but it's too heart-wrenching to slash.

Current Mood: numb

With a small twist of the knife he had broken the rind, and the peel of the orange was cut from the fruit in a long thin twisting ribbon leaving the segments to blossom outwards. In watching Van Dean perform the task Kamen’s attention was caught by the remaining oranges on the tray, each of which were in the act of mirroring the actions of the fruit in the hands of the demon, with identical spiral peels, and each blossomed effortlessly in their dance.

I already decided on how to do apples, just looking for a place to insert it.

I saw a fork today that reminded me of the Clovinian fruit forks! Zencha dessert forks, so tiny, so delicate, I can just see them being pushed into a grape half.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Lady GaGa -- Speechless

OR
Aesod Childrens Conservatory, Winter Play Number 23
OR
The Magic Yellow Bicycle With Rainbow Streamers

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD is sent to her GRANNY’s house by her mother the SNOW QUEEN to take food to her. LITTLE RED is accompanied by her friend/bodyguard the WOLF, and his boss PUSS IN BOOTS. Once at GRANNY’s gingerbread house, she offers countless sweets to the children and they devour them, and then asks where her dinner is. LITTLE RED whips off her cloak and reveals that SLEEPING BEAUTY has been asleep on her back for the entire play. The WOLF and PUSS immediately claim that they should be allowed to eat SLEEPING BEAUTY for payment of being LITTLE RED’s bodyguards, LITTLE RED makes the argument that she rescued SLEEPING BEAUTY from the tower before she ever hired WOLF and PUSS, and that she only hired them to take out the Prince if he ever showed up. An epic battle ensues between LITTLE RED and GRANNY against PUSS and WOLF. A GIANT comes out of nowhere and steps on the gingerbread house, killing them all instantly.

The moral of the story is: always share your toys.

Current Mood: busy

I don't know if I already posted this up here, I may have, but its a little more polished now, I'm darting around Chapter 50 and realizing that the story is just going to get depressing from this point on.

Also an interesting note: the "Haven" that Kamen keeps in order for the family and constantly offers to hide Artemis in, is referred to at least once as "Haven in Jannah". Jannah is the name of Celeste's forest, the center of which is said to contain the gates to the afterlife, making Jannah the forest of life and death. The reason why it was named "Jannah" in the first place is because it's an Arabic word for heaven. Heaven in the more Islamic sense, but its not so blatant a connection that any 13-year-old (who wasn't Muslim) could make, something that's become expected this far into the book.

( <Insert Cool Title Here> )

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Garbage -- I Think I'm Paranoid

Artemis has one at this point in the story, of course when she gets it she makes the remark that she wants to keep it for the sheer fact that having it makes her feel closer to Kamen.

"If you kill him, this will be all I have. Just like the mark you gave him."

Throughout the story up to this point, Kamen’s been the only one with a really distinguishing mark, the scar that Van Dean gives him as a child is the biggest giveaway that he is the archetype of the classical tragic hero. Noble birth, a disfiguration (his scar), character flaw (he definitely has hubris, but jealousy and arrogance are also big ones), and tragic demise (Samm hates Part 3 for a reason).

The issue is this, Kamen is not the true hero of the story, and so by Artemis having this scar and keeping it throughout the entire Part 1 and into Part 2, she’s slowly becoming the archetype of the classical hero as well. There’s also the idea that she could have an ulterior motive to keeping the scar; Artemis is shown several times feeling almost guilty over Kamen’s scar and she could perhaps be keeping her own scar to provoke a similar guilt from Van Dean?

At this point my characters are in so deep that their actions are no longer determined by their personalities alone, but the circumstances and events that put them in their current predicament. As much as I would like to think that Nancy pulls Artemis out of her insanity in Part 2, I’m really thinking that Nancy is just as nuts as Artemis, they just happen to be the right kind of nuts for each other?

All things considered, Artemis needs Nancy psychologically to become her own Prince. Somehow this story got a lot more complicated than it was originally. It makes me want to pull out my big silver book for some simple reading.

There are so many words and names I have come up with that I just love the way they feel in my mouth. Q'ael Dan'il is definitely the best name so far, but even the names of random characters feel good in my mouth. Maybe I'll get around to putting up my list of characters up here some time.

( "Delightfully oaf-ful" indeed. )

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Goldfrapp -- Deep Honey

Tons of excerpts in here, stuff that won't be posted on DA, but I think I may have posted a bit of one of the excerpts on a previous entry. I'm having a hard time making headway at this point, mostly because of the content, I can't seem to write one of the scenes without feeling sick, and although I do plan on omitting it from the final project (the chapters will jump from 49 to 51seamlessly and only someone paying close attention will notice), I do need to know what is said in order to make things work after March 0.

That being said, this is completely out of context, but heart-wrenching nonetheless:

"I’ll believe anything you tell me.”

“The sky is red.”

“And a beautiful shade.”

Playing around with the idea of Ambrosia, I've decided to push up Kamen finding the jar, and decided to actually show the discovery. Including a few bittersweet memories of Lillaine, and actually eating some of the poison himself (it isn't like it would effect him anyways.)

“It’s sweet, but not too sweet.” Artemis said with two fingers to her mouth, her eyes still searching the black waves. “It’s delicious, but disgusting at the same time. First it was stuck in my mouth, but then it moved down my throat, and I can feel it in my chest now. I feel heavy, like I’m stuck in a nightmare.” She looked at him, easily meeting his curious eyes, “What is that?”

Van Dean slowly shook his head, “I’ve never felt anything like that, I couldn’t say.”

Arrogant Kamen is someone I want to strangle a little, and I've been told others feel the same way, but it still feels good to give Van Dean a rival that he can't touch, especially with how things seem to be spiraling downwards. Artemis really seems to have become a pawn at this point in the story, and for all practical purposes she's not really doing anything except for going insane. To me this only seems to make the final action in book 1 more inevitable.

( "I'll eat your heart." )

Somehow it seems like the roles of Kamen and Rei have become a little jumbled, once Kamen's got no reason to play nice with Van Dean he reverts to the Kamen from the original story, the guy playing hello kitty island adventure on a stake-out and panicking while sliding through Gorgosa on a rope into a death-march (jesus, were the original shenanigans really this wacky?). It works though, he melds perfectly with his Victor Covington persona, and becomes a little more gritty than the oath-bound tragic hero.

( "You guys are stalkers." )

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Adam Lambert -- Strut

Finally finished making a time line of the first year back in Clovis.

( 1863 )

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Rihanna -- Shut Up And Drive

I can't even begin to properly describe how happy this month has made me.

I am just under 16k words from finishing my NaNoWriMo project, which is looking more and more like it's going to be what gets me out there. I went to Tim Horton's to get some work done on it today and Kyle came and took the first hundred pages from Samm and started editing. This is why he's my editor, because he loves everything I write completely.

I am having SO. MUCH. FUN. writing Ritzko, you don't even know. Even Kyle admitted it's written in a COMPLETELY different style than Artemis, and it has a strange personal charm to it. You're literally inside Bastian's head and you catch all of his snide thoughts and remarks. Its a lot less squishy than Artemis, and I almost can't believe what is coming out of my head.

With all of my writing I feel happier in general. I'm happier at work, at home. I feel alive.

I can't even describe how happy I am right now.

( Ritzko Excerpt )

Current Mood: jubilant
Current Music: Maroon 5 -- The Way I Was

I looked back over my LiveStream and was slightly weirded out by it. I noticed that when I write its a little more than obvious that I don't use much structure. I have my major points I want to hit sitting in little brackets at the end of the chapter and as I hit them I delete them. But I start typing something and then I'll go back and change it, I do this quite often. And I do it most of the time before the sentence is actually finished, meaning I'm literally typing whatever pops into my head and then going back to fix it as I read over it.

I'm probably going to use my free day off (this sunday) to splurge write Artemis until my brains fall out because I WON'T touch ANY of it during the month of November. I want to make sure my full attention is on this project and with this in mind I won't do any artwork/writing/modeling for Artemis. LiveStream once I wake on sunday (I work the night before) until NaNoWriMo officially starts at midnight. I want to prove to myselft that I can push out a good novel in a short amount of time.

*whimper*

( One of the more squishy things. )

Current Music: Maroon 5 -- Secret

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xhesika

August 2012

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Inner Monologue

The Good Parts Edition

Entries tagged with research

Sequels

"We don't do ballads."

Short Story: Of Daisies

Short Story: Of Biscuits

Short Story: Of Closets

Website!

Religion in Artemis

Funny story...

Chilling Foreshadowing

Add salt to old wounds and stir...

The most recient dream

Looking for more cool ways to eat fruit.

Really Messed Up Children's Play

coffee shops seem to be a creative haven for me.

Scars for All

(no subject)

delightfully oaf-ful?

1863

Sweet November

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