Category Archives: Threads & Ties

MGR: Protagonists

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Protagonists.  Specifically, my protagonists.  What to say about them?

I have a few I like.  Let me introduce you.

  • Inuit (pronounced Eye-knew-it).  Inuit is my female polar bear character, and she’s telling her first person account of what her life was like as she transitioned from a wild polar bear to a polar bear living the American human lifestyle.  Inuit has learned a lot during her journey, and she taught her author a few things as well. Her story is nearing completion, and I hope you’ll find her journey as interesting as I have when she’s finally ready to share with the world.
  • Jeff Forrester.  Jeff impregnates his high school sweetheart during their first year at college.  He successfully convinces her to have the baby she does not want and turn the baby over to him. They break up, and Jeff raises the baby.  They meet again years later.  Can they resume the relationship they both wish had never ended, or is there too much baggage?
  • Harold, Charlie, and the Freakin’ Geeks: This elite cyber team searches and destroys cyber criminals determined to wreak havoc upon the nation. They’re also a bowling team.

Those are the protagonists from my first three draft novels.  They are likely to be the first three novels I revise for publication — Polar Bear on the Loose, Inuit’s story, is nearly complete.

This post is part of Forward Motion’s Merry Go Round Blog Tour.  Find other author’s participating in the tour here.

A Decade of National Novel Writing Month

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In November, I completed a decade of participation in National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known at NaNo. In my first attempt, in 2003, I wrote my first novel, Polar Bear on the Loose. I finished the first draft while deployed to Bahrain in the summer of 2004.

Here’s a brief summary of my subsequent NaNo efforts:

2004: Twilight. A secret computer network defense team defends against a cyberterrorist.

2005: Threads and Ties. An unplanned pregnancy breaks up a high school sweetheart couple with the girl leaving their daughter with the boy to raise. After twenty years, can they pick up where they left off?

2006: 30 Days to Regularity. This was a non-fiction effort.

2007: Hot Coffee. A hipster attempts to revitalize her grandparent’s 60’s activism.

2008: Parallels. Trying an alternate reality story.

2009: Something’s Fishy. My first attempt at a category romance.

2010: Fooling Mother Nature. It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

2011: Granite Hill. An entitled son of an influential family and his buddies impact their small town.

2012: Reunion. Six high school friends who have lost touch reunite at their 35th high school reunion.

2013: Flash for 100, Please. The plan was to do 100 flash fiction stories. I may have gotten two. It wound up being a potpourri of writing.

NaNo has been great for generating first draft material. I’ve proven I can write a first draft. I’ve not done so well at getting those drafts revised and publishable. Because of that, I believe my time for participating in NaNo may be through. I need to focus on revision and polishing. That will be a significant part of my writing plans for the foreseeable future.

I haven’t mentioned this for a little while, but have you signed up to join The RandR Fiction Club? Just add your email to the sign up form either on the top bar ribbon or the sign up box in the upper right sidebar. If you sign up before the end of January 1, 2014, you’ll be eligible for a drawing for Stephen Bagley’s Murder by Dewey Decimal, among other things.

Interview with Me

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This month’s Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour topic is a self interview.  Right.  I’ve browsed Google* and have come up with a few completely unanswerable questions, and I will attempt, before your very eyes, to answer them.  You will think they are simple, but the words are deceptive.

  • How long does it take you to write a book?  You think that’s an easy one.  The easy, snippy answer is, “As long as it takes.”  That’s not the answer you want to hear.  I can tell you a first draft takes approximately three to four months.  Don’t ask about revision.  I’m still working on that.
  • How many books have you written? Are we talking finished first drafts? (3) Polished, submittable works? (0) Mostly finished drafts? (3) Finished wherever they’re at, because they will never see the light of day? (2) Not counting the ones in the answer to Question 4.
  • Which is your favorite? It’s kind of like children in that respect.  You can’t ask a mother which her favorite is, because each child has characteristics they admire, love, and respect.  Books are kind of that way.  Polar Bear on the Loose will always have a special place for me — it was my first full length novel attempt, I completed the first draft, I love the story, but it needs a lot of polishing before it will be a book others can love.  Twilight is another draft I’ve completed.  I love certain aspects of it, and it needs a serious revision before I can really get it going, but it has so many elements that tickle me and interest me, that I hope I’ll be able to get it to a point where it can be read by someone else — one person has read it and provided wonderful feedback and has kind of a crush on one of my characters.  I think if you can write a character people want more of, that’s a good thing. Threads & Ties is another book near and dear to me — the subject matter is a twist on what is considered “normal” behavior, so I’m enjoying playing with it.  It’s a not very romantic romance.  Finally, there’s Walls, which is a play on the phrase, “If these walls could talk.”  Walls is a series of vignettes narrated by the walls of one of those lower budget, park at the door, and walk into the room motels.  The walls narrate what they see.  It’s incomplete, but I enjoyed writing it and would like to polish it for other eyes to see. I’m currently working on Granite Hill, which is a working title (they’re all working titles).  This one may be shaping up to something I could really like, too, but it’s too early to tell.
  • When did you write your first book and how old were you? I have two self-bound books I wrote during my teenage years.  One, which this blog is named after, is a conglomeration of my physics and trigonometry class notebooks from high school.  One was titled, Rantings of an Insane Trigonometry Student and the other was titled, Ravings of an Insane Physics Student.  Some friends wanted copies of it.  Copier machines were not as prevalent then as they are now.  Computers were room-sized or building-sized devices that programmers fed punch cards into to perform calculations (really).  So I typed those notebooks into book form on my electric typewriter (it looks like this) in three copies — one for me and one for each of my friends.  Yes, this is pre-Facebook, and I only had two friends back then.  Some time before that, I typed a book of poems and bound them between two hand decorated pieces of cardboard.  My artwork indicates something pre-teen, but I’m pretty sure I was a teenager at the time (I’m not much of an artist).
  • Um.  Okay.  How are the kittens doing? They’re wonderful.  Thank you for asking.  Tarzan KittenLadyKit

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the left is Lady back when she was known as “Three Cat.”  On the right is Tarzan, back when he was known as “Four Cat.”

 

This photo was taken this week of the four cats in the San Antonio house garden window.  Ajax is in the upper right, and Natasha is in the lower left.  Tarzan, of course, is in the upper left, and Lady is in the lower right.Tarzan, Ajax, Natasha, and Lady

Thank you for joining us today.  If there are any questions the interviewer missed, please ask in comments below, and we’ll see if we can get a follow up with the author.

* Some of these questions have been taken from this page: Suggested Author Interview Questions

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Threads and Ties Revisited

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According to the date on the file, it’s been three years (!) since I last made changes to Thread and Ties.  I just finished reading it from start to finish for the first time in at least that long — probably longer.  Did someone come in and work on this story while I was away from it?  I really like it.  Sure, it reads like an Advanced Reader Copy with some of the errors, but I love the story.

I thought I hadn’t come up with an ending, but now that I’ve read it, I think maybe I did.  I saw a few places where I could tie it together a little better — just a few small ways.  A little more detail here and there.

Unfortunately, I can think of a lot of ways it’ll get shot down, and I’ll need to consider those and see if I can address them.  One is the distaste some people feel for Nikki.  Nikki earns this distaste, but I hope she’s able to win people back.  But will they stick around long enough to be won back?

I suspect I have too many tertiary characters — walk on; walk off characters.  I have to make sure I haven’t promised they’ll be more than they are.

And finally, Nikki does some unsavory things in her personal life.  Do readers really want to know?  Is it too much of a contrast to go from Nikki to Jeff (who does NO unsavory things — and is that a problem?) and back again throughout the book?

I’ll be pondering it over the next day or two.  Then I’ll have to get to work.

Farewell, 2008

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This has been a roller coaster year.  On the up-side, I’m thrilled to have been able to retire this year after 28 years on active duty.  I never would have imagined I would be able to do so back in April 1980 when I signed my enlistment contract with the … Continue reading →

Threads POV Plotting

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I returned to working on Threads & Ties today.  As a result of last month’s workshop at Forward Motion, I’ve downloaded a writing tool from Margaret.  It’s a spreadsheet for outlining a novel by POV. Ideally, I’d use the tool as I begin work.  In this case, I’m doing it … Continue reading →

2008 Writing Goals

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I have four primary goals for this year: Write regularly Finish US Military for Writers Finish Twilight Finish Threads & Ties To help with achieving those goals, I’ve added the progress bars to the sidebar and signed up for Forward Motion’s Marathon Plus 2008 (write 250,000 words this year) and … Continue reading →

Not So Hot

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Not feeling so hot tonight.  I wonder if that Boca Chili I pulled out of the freezer at work had thawed and refrozen somehow?  You know the feeling when you’ve eaten something that wasn’t really bad but wasn’t quite right either? Or maybe I’m just tired.  Local weather spawned tornado … Continue reading →