Three projects on the go!

Finalising the (final?) edit of my contemporary crime fiction, No Working Title …

Two chapters of the grimnoires and gumshoes mashup done, with the story line pretty thoroughly mapped …

Three chapters of a science fiction tale done (no magical fireballs, but there is a leggy dame!).

And there I was thinking that I had not been doing any writing in the leadup to Christmas!

For those of you who are religious – a Merry Christmas to you. For those of you who are not, a safe and enjoyable weekend to you.

Just went to a book signing….

Not mine, but of a good friend – Kev Webb and his illustrator, Ant Puttee – together, they have put out Dream Raider. Follow the link on the left ( <— THAT side ) to get to their site and order a copy of the book – it is terrific.

It took place at That Book Place at Jimboomba, and from my couple of hours there I was very impressed with the proprietors and the ambience. Consider this a two-thumbs-up, guys!

Now, back to writing so I can do a book signing there someday as well!

Site tidy up

I have begun a rewrite of No Working Title and so have removed it from view on here. I have also deleted some other pdf material, so if you go to click through and find a dead link, please notify me and I will do my best to sort things out.

 

Happy writing!

Private Eyes, Leggy Dames, Fireballs and Jazz

In between scribbling notes on my current ‘main project’ I have been doing some world building based in the Fantasy Noir genre – think “The Maltese Falcon meets Gandalf”. Or the magnificent works of Jim Butcher.

And the tagline “Private eyes, leggy dames, fireballs and Jazz” seems to sum it up. Oh, and con men, crooked politicians and tommy guns.

 

Writing plans…

Listening to a writing podcast recently, I realised that apparently there are two kinds of writers – Discovery and Outliners. I think I tend towards the outlining, in that I have notes on the plot, notes on key scenes and the eventual ending, and then fill in the blanks.

THEN in the ‘cast, they started talking about what is more important, dialogue or description. Of course, the majority of the time the dialogue is. One of the commenters, Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary fame, apparently writes his comic by doing the outline, then doing the dialogue, and finally deciding how that will block out into four frames for the daily comic strip and what needs to be drawn.

Doing the dialogue first is something I have never tried, and which I am going to have a chop at.

If any of you out there are devotees of doing this, please let me know how you came across it!

More Maguffin thoughts

A little while ago I mused on the idea that star drives in science fiction were Maguffins.

I’ve been reading and reading, trying to respect the science more and  more in my sci fi story notes, and you know what?

In a science fiction story, it is SCIENCE that is the Maguffin!

Where do ideas go?

I have ideas. My brain fizzes and pops with them. I write them down, work on them for a bit, then WHOOSH they’re gone, stale, crumbled, set aside like a christmas toy without batteries.

I think they are hiding in a storage locker, down in the recesses of my brain.

I want to know who stole my key to the ideas locker, so I can go retrieve some of those ideas and get them back working for me. Good grief, don’t they know I offer a great dental plan?

Star drives and Macguffins

Hitchcock had a name for those things which seem to be an important part of the story, but aren’t really – Macguffins. The example given is the Maltese Falcon… it is the heart of the story. Or is it? Watch the movie again (go on, you know you want to!). Notice that the statue, with it’s elaborate history and even the title of the story, could actually be removed and you would still have a story?

 

SO…. along comes a sci fi story. Starting with the premise that Einstein was right, any star drive has to have some serious abracadabra hand waving to make it ‘work’. BUT five minutes research shows that as soon as you can go fast, Sir Isaac Newton become the toughest hombre in the universe. To get to a velocity of c, essentially you need to magic away ‘mass’. And if you magic ‘mass’ back while still travelling at c, then, well…. either you tear a bloody big hole in the fabric of time and space, or you better wave your hands bloody fast!

 

But when all is said and done, it is still just a Macguffin.

Writing thoughts – the wiki’d novel

Tthe thought struck me that some kinds of fiction lend themselves to non-linear reading.

I mean, we have all heard of “those people” who read the last page, or who randomly sample various parts of your opus out of sheer deviltry. Having the story in the form of a wiki might just suit their tastes. It lends itself to ‘sort of’ serialisation, without dragging out the product over months for those readers in a hurry to digest the story.

So, what if a piece of fiction was to be presented in the form of a wiki? Yes, I realise it does not lend itself to traditional publishing. That is the whole point – writers are leaping at e-books but not quite exploiting the ‘next big thing’.

I can’t find any ‘wiki’d’ novels or stories online, but I have a couple that might lend themselves to the concept, and will try it out in the near future.

If anyone HAS seen works of fiction produced as a wiki, can you let me know?

The Talking Sword – hiatus

I have smashed against a brick wall in my development of the talking sword stories. That wall is an inability to avoid preaching morality when I come to the culminating scene of the current storyline; as a result I have put it to one side to pull out and ponder. The story is still there in the back of my head, but (as they say on Writing Excuses) the voices are just not yammering to have their story told.