Inner Monologue

Finishing up a few things on Gale before I go to tackle the two other books in the series. I've come to the conclusion that Jenna, the next and last book, will be the only one in the series that is properly plotted out, chapter by chapter. I'm still pretty amazed that these three books did so well with no planning at all. Literally I had a basic idea, sat down, and just started typing. Of course the document of notes is pretty impressive now.

I think the best preparation for me is simply being able to bounce my ideas off of my editor, and to top it off editing one of the books at the same time allows me to bounce even more ideas off of her, but more complex ideas.

The editing for Bastian is coming along okay so far, we've come to the conclusion that we'll be going over the books at least three times not including how much I go through before sending it to her. Basically I want this to be immaculate by the time it goes to print. I can't afford to have too many mistakes or continuity issues on my debut, it just looks bad on me as a writer. In the meantime, I'm learning all sorts of particulars about the English language, random stuffs too like dove v. dived (both are correct but dived irks me for some reason). I'm feeling a little strange about the idea that I have a particular writing style, I don't know if I'm proud of it or what, but its something that will be interesting to see in the future.

And so, here's the excerpt that makes my editor "aww" every time. God, I'd be lying if I said I didn't like that scene in the rain, Gale's three word line is the best.

( Kat's Favorite )

Gale excerpts below, trigger warnings: blood, gore, vivisection, abuse, necromancy, I'm going to go ahead and say sexual content as well since some of the descriptions get pretty racy.

The relationship between Gale and Ritz has a nice start, but it quickly becomes...unhealthy, I'm just waiting to be ridiculed for writing this book.

To make it worse my mind has been in very dark places during the entire month of November because of this, I am seriously reconsidering my December endeavor.

( Here we go... )

Not for the whole Delilah bit, but for the foxes. I was looking over numerology for Gale and was looking over the number three-hundred. So I see something about foxes and decide to pull out my bible and take a look...

So he comes home from god knows where and his father-in-law is like, "I thought you hated your wife, so i let her shack up with the best man at from your wedding!"

And Samson is like, "WTF M8?"

And his father-in-law is like, "It's okay! Her younger sister is prettier anyways, you can shack up with her!"

And Samson is like, "And you guys wonder why I'm always nerd-raged?"

And then he goes off and CATCHES 300 FOXES WITH HIS BARE HANDS. Individually, all of them lured, took him hours, didn't hurt not-a-one...that is until he TIES TORCHES TO THEIR TAILS AND LIGHTS THEM ON FIRE THEN SENDS THEM INTO THE WHEAT FIELDS.

Then when they come to arrest Samson he's like, "WTF M8, WHAT DID I DO TO YOU?"

And he kills a thousand men with a jawbone that he tears from a donkey that just happens to be lying around, my version of the bible (NKJV) doesn't say if this animal was alive or dead, but w/e, I doubt Samson cared either way.

I don't know if I would call him bad-ass or crazy as hell, but one thing is for sure, I bet PETA was in on arresting him and his downfall.

Gale wasn’t interested in leaving the house before Keane and the police arrived, he instead pulled up a chair and sat to the right of Mr. Crawley’s corpse, cigarette in hand, cat in his lap, and sniffing the air curiously every so often. I didn’t stick around to ask him what details his nose was picking up, while he wasn’t bothered with the smell of rotting flesh, I had to rush out of the house for fresh air and the first cigarette in half a month.

Its bad enough scouring the internet for “Necromancy 101”, but its worse when all these sites are citing resources that are in my own library.

I’m going to have to tone down some of the details in the chapters I’m working on, either that or put trigger warnings on them.

Even worse, I’ve been snacking the whole time I’ve been writing.

Looking over my earliest draft of Artemis, reminiscing and looking for things that I could throw into the re-write of Book 2 I found a few more gems I’m almost 100% certain I will re-incorporate.

Things I’ve grabbed from the old book already in Book 1:

• Pandomé (the entire character)
• Kamen and grand theft auto (the whole mechafly crash as a tribute, but I DO plan on having him steal a cab just for old times sake)
• Celeste’s Lithe (a tribute more to the old Firebird myths that were used in one of the old lessons, might use that later in Book 2)
• Sharon (Now Rei’s leftovers and possibly number six for Fosh, oh god, Alladair was the first? O.o)

Something neat I found: Nancy was severely asthmatic, actually the proper use of Celeste’s blue pearls was to provide relief. Of course for most of the story early on Kamen ends up giving lots of piggy-back rides.

Ah, Kamen’s family lives in this version…yeah no dice buddy, your family is dead dead dead

Kory: “I don’t know, the way it’s written makes me think he’s going upstairs.”

Me: “Yeah, gimme a sec, I gots this.”

Kory: “Unless he’s Spiderman and going up the side.”

Me: “~Bas-ti-an, Bas-ti-an, does whatever a spider can!~”

An excerpt, still needs a little work, but the dialogue sums up a lot about Artemis as a character.

Closing in on the final chapter, although I still feel leery of it for some reason despite it being something I think about constantly. I just can’t seem to type when I actually get to it.

( Read more... )
Meanwhile, Rei's standing in the corner, feeling VERY uncomfortable.

I watched the anime a few years back, but never got around to reading the actual books. In the name of research I delved into them tonight, makes me want to re-watch the series now, but I can't for the life of me find a good copy.

The manga however is quite interesting, it follows very closely the old Bram Stoker, much closer than I do with The Ritzko Project, but I'm taking my own creative twist on them. I love that they can't cross water, I love that they use coffins, I love that Alucard talks about skills learned at Scholomance (he hasn't used the actual name of the school where Dracula learned them) and uses them, and I LOVE that they tie in the whole zombie apocalypse.

Very similarly as to what Gale does with necromancy and raising zombies as an army (planned book 3), Hellsing goes with the old stories that a vampire can only sire those who are pure and virgin, otherwise a "ghoul" is born, oh and there are armies of ghouls.

So back to the whole Dracula myth, something I came across in the book that gave me a twinge of awe was a Vlad the Impaler referrence. Most people are well aware that Vlad III Dracula is the closest historical figure to Dracula and a large influance on the character himself, a Prince that lived in Wallachia (modern-day Transylvania and Romania), he was most known for "impaling" his favorite method of torture. It is said that several times armies that came to seize power often turned back after being met at rivers and city limits by thousands of people impaled on large pikes of wood left to die and rot off.

Gruesome, right?





Best. Reference. Ever.

Sorry, but the scene is just kick ass in every way. Kouta Hirano (the author and artist) seems to capure exactly the scene I imagine when I think of Vlad, the pikes neatly surrounding the building like they were there for decoration...Vlad was a pretty messed up character with a long history of abuse, I imagine he had a personality like Hannibal Lector...without the whole eating thing...that kinda fits the Dracula aspect tho...

And as I'm really not that far into reading the series, I figure I'll have a lot more to say about it, this just caught me off guard and I loved it.

I wonder if they'll incorporate a form of a Drone? That was more of a Fright Night referrence though.

I read over a few of the short stories I was pumping out before June 19th, and I realized that the stories definitely have a different feel to them. I actually really, REALLY like the way they flow before June 19th as opposed to the attempts at rewriting the final chapter afterwards.

For example, Of Closets, a short story detailing Kamen and Artemis' childhood and their many blunders, this one detailing a point where the two find themselves locked in a closet. Hilarity ensues.

"It's never dark back home." She said with her voice much softer than it had been during her lecture.

Kamen glanced over to her, standing with her cheek against the door with the vague light from the bottom of the door creeping up and outlining the both of them. "Sunlight all day?"

She shook her head, "No, I mean…well it's never this dark." A small smile made its way across her face, "I suppose it does get dark in the country, but where I live the light from the city is always bouncing off of the buildings. People are awake all day and all night."

"That's silly. Even London sleeps."

"I didn't ask for your opinion. If I wanted it I would have asked." She said coldly, then added in the same tone: "I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry."

"Because you steal my food, you petty thief." She poked his chest.

Kamen shrugged, "Yours tastes better than mine." He wrinkled his nose, "How exactly does light bounce from building to building, they're made of brick, aren't they?"

"Different bricks. More like glass. And colored, a lot of the buildings are dark green."

He blinked twice, "That's silly."

"And," She said while glaring at him, her voice self-important, "We have tiny machines that you can listen to music with and talk to people who are far away with, and we have dragonfly machines that you can fly on—"

"And you're crazy."

She rapped the back of her hand on his chest, "You're one to talk, did you forget that we're locked in the closet?"

Of course after posting this I don't even want to show anyone the final chapter. it just doesn't have the same magic the rest of the book does. All poetry is crushed and the passion just isn't there.

If I'm ever going to be able to write like that again I'm going to have to read through ALL of Artemis, as well as probably finish all of the short stories that were started and never finished. Oh god, the Lady Godiva one, I don't even know how I'm supposed to make a conversaition about being naked in public in the 1860's permittable between a 15 year old and an 18 year old.

Yes. Yes, it is that bad.

EDIT: Figured it out: Kamen keeps pushing with borderline lewd comments, Artemis tries to ignore but inevidably ends up hitting him with her book.

I need to find a good artist to listen to while I write FTDDDJ, for the first book it was nothing but Maroon 5, because it fit Bastian. The next will definitely be Goldfrapp, because it's pure Ritz. I'm not sure about the last one yet tho, I'm leaning towards AC/DC and all the good oldies. I'm just sort of on shuffle for this one now, but I don't think I mind it so much. Its certainly not moving as fast as it could, but then again, when I wrote the first book I didn't expect to be writing sequels, now as I'm writing I'm thinking about what I want to happen later on, and how everything I want to tie in will work out.

I am loving some of this back-story that the reader gets from David.

I'm liking the Ritzko Project more now that I'm working on sequels and I'm pretty sure that its because I ended the first book so quickly and there were a lot of loose ends that were never tied up. I don't actually expect to ever tie up all those loose ends, but the reader does eventually figure out what all is going on by the end of book 3 (i fully expect more loose ends to be uncovered by the end of this book), and Jenna is really the only character that ever pieces everything together.

The biggest problem I seem to keep encountering on this project is that each of the characters that are narrating are withholding information from each other, so things that Bastian explained to the reader in book 1 have to be discovered by David (unless Bastian has already mentioned it to him, but there is a lot he never told David).

I love writing Gale and Ritz, they're such a kickass combo.