Category Archives: Walls

Interview with Me

Philosophical Meanderings, Too Posted on by

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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Friday Snippet: If These Walls Could Talk

Philosophical Meanderings, Too Posted on by

I started playing around with this idea as a daily writing exercise while deployed to Bahrain back in 2004. I have a series of vignettes based upon this opening. I think it has some potential, but I haven’t played with it since then. Completely first draft, unedited, all the usual disclaimers. Enjoy.

———————–

I was still pretty stunned. I wanted to put my back against the wall, so I could see everything that was happening around me, but since what was scaring the hell out of me was those very walls, I was at a loss for what to do. I couldn’t detect any movement in the walls like lips or anything, but I was definitely hearing something outside my head. Were there any speakers? I studied the walls for hidden speaker grilles. I could sense them watching me. I turned around, searching for eyes, lips, anything that would indicate where the sound was coming from.

“Oh, Dear. This happens every time. Just once, when we speak to someone, I wish we didn’t scare them half to death.”

“How do you do it? It’s as if you’re watching me, but I can’t see any eyes. You’re talking to me, but I can’t see a mouth.”

“We use a kind of telepathic projection. Nobody else can hear us. We’re very selective about who we talk to.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, trying to get a handle on the situation. This must be what crazy people endured to make it seem like their world was sane. Now I’d lost it for sure. Well. Nobody else must know. I must continue on as before. I’d always talked to myself. That was nothing new. Except, for a change, I didn’t have to make up the other side of the conversation. The walls would give me my stories, I’d copy them down, and I’d have something to sell. “So, to other people, when I talk to you, it will seem as if I’m talking to myself, but I’ll really be talking to you, but they won’t hear that part?”

“Well, if you insist on talking out loud, it will seem that way. When you’re directing thoughts at us, we can hear them just fine. Strangely, to us, we can’t hear other thoughts, only spoken ones. When you were looking for ideas, you were wondering if these walls could talk. Since the thought was directed at us, we heard it and chose to answer.”

That might not be so bad. “So if I think thoughts directly to you, you can hear them? I can sit here and think a conversation with you and not have to say anything if don’t want to?”

“That’s right. We’d go crazy if we could hear every thought of the occupants of a given room at any particular time.”

“But you can hear what everybody says out loud?”

“As well or better than you can,” the walls confirmed.

I stared at one particular corner of the ceiling above the door. I weighed my options. (1) I could continue trying to come up with ideas on my own. (2) Since I had apparently summoned the walls, and they were willing to give me stories, why shouldn’t I take them up on it? (3) I really was going crazy, but maybe, just maybe, I’d get some good stories written before they took me away to the funny farm. OK, Walls, I thought, I’m ready to give you guys a shot. What do you have for me?

We’ve been composing our thoughts. Here are a few ideas we think might be worthwhile. Let’s get started.

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Weekend Productivity

Philosophical Meanderings, Too Posted on by

A very good weekend. I accomplished all the writing tasks I set out to accomplish. I have a review steeping. I’ll pull it out in a couple days and polish it before sending it off.

I finished looking at a friend’s project and sent comments back. Finally, I finished this pass on Twilight. It’s on ice and waiting for a complete revision — something I’m likely to begin next year.

I still have lots of things to sort out at work, and that could require a few longer days during the rest of the year. Those will cut into evening writing plans, but I’ll deal with that when it comes.

I have one more item to read for another friend. I’ll also print the current version of Threads & Ties to refresh my memory about where I’m at with it. When I get back from Texas late next week, I should be ready to focus on the Threads & Ties project.

Sometime before November 1, I need a project for NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo gives me my novel project for the year, and will be my fifth novel (the Walls project, currently on hiatus, is not a NaNo project). There’s a remote possibility I could become a male polar bear this year. Inuit’s son may have a story that needs telling.

Writing?

Philosophical Meanderings, Too Posted on by

No, I haven’t done much writing lately. Since early this year, I’ve focused on Twilight revisions. I’m making slow progress with them, but at least it is progress.

November is nearly upon us, though, and that brings National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). For me, that means it’s time to write another novel. I synopsized this year’s NaNo novel last March while I was recovering from eye surgery. The novel will be called Threads & Ties. It answers the question, “Can you pick up with the love of your life twenty years after abandoning him with your newborn child?” I’m going to try to get some outlining done before NaNo kicks off this year, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll produce a better integrated first draft. I re-created the soundtrack playlist in RealPlayer tonight. It may not be critical to most writing, but this story has a well-developed soundtrack–kind of a country-rock opera if you will.

As for my other two “in-progress” works, Polar Bear on the Loose requires extensive revision (not surprising for a first novel), and it is waiting for me to learn more about the craft. If These Walls Could Talk is on hiatus at 34k. It started on a whim and rolled along quite well, but I don’t know what I want to do with it, if anything, so it’s waiting patiently for me to wander back to it.

Due to work commitments and Thanksgiving (seeing family for the first time in several years), I’ll have fewer than 30 days to work NaNo. I’ve calculated I need to average 2200 words per day to meet the 50k threshold. I met that easily last year, but I was “in shape” after writing regularly for the last half of the year. This year, I’m curious to see if I can hit the ground running with little regular writing preparation.

Writing Update

Philosophical Meanderings, Too Posted on by

No progress on If These Walls Could Talk. I have, however, been slicing and dicing the first 5k of Twilight. It’s kind of fun to read whole passages, decide it contributes nothing to furthering the plot, and line through it. After procrastinating all weekend, I finally started on it last … Continue reading →