Editing and commitment issues

I have become fickle in my middle age and seem to have developed commitment issues.
I'm talking about my writing of course. Whilst the film stuff is all chugging along nicely, The Novel has stumbled again. Having taken a little break from my Banshee novel, re-reading it plunged me into despair - so many plot holes, clichéd characters and saggy bits. And I do find it difficult editing my own work at the best of times.
So I am cheating on Banshee with Dorcas Grubb, a former lover I set aside a few years ago when I decided I wanted to write a novel for adults. So with Dorcas I have a story of just under 50000 words for 10-14 year olds that needs a new middle. 
I have also started on a new piece I have been toying with for a while called Three Sisters that is a YA novel set in the village of the title, which blends fairytales and myths with present day village teen life. With family feuds. And Grim Reapers.
My writing routine is improving, and I am hoping to finish the new version of Dorcas by Christmas. I'm sure nothing else will distract me before then...

My Humble Musings post-World Fantasy Con

I know it's been around 3 weeks since I went to World Fantasy Con in Brighton, but I'm still benefiting from its effects.
I'm not going to give you a run down of the Con itself, not the sessions I attended; my friend Selina has done an amazing job chronicling most of our adventures already.
I also won't comment here about the organisation of the event; this was my first big convention and so it's a shame to read reports about all the negative aspects of the event.
What I will share with you is what I learned from attending the event, one of the main inspirations to my sudden burst of writing drive.

1. Most people are lovely.

I think I can truthfully say that every person I spoke to was wonderfully welcoming and friendly to me. I went with the preconception that it might be a bit cliquey, especially as I'm new, but people were happy to engage in conversation, and even the famous authors I met were really generous with their time. I know this experience was not shared by all who attended the Con, and so I count myself lucky that I was surrounded by amazing people and didn't encounter and of the dross.

2.  No one knows shit about upcoming literary "trends"

This is something Neil Gaiman talked explicitly about at the World Fantasy Awards ceremony, but the theme was visible throughout the event. With medias changing and the "word of mouth" phenomenon growing (aided by the internet), no one can really predict what's going to take off in the next few years or even in what format or media it will appear. This hit home for me as I was reminded of about 4 years ago when I was told by an agent quite bluntly that girls don't read dystopian fiction and that no one would buy my book because there was no market for it, so why not try my hand at Steampunk instead?  Fast forward, post-The Hunger Games, and "dystopian SF" is the latest, hottest genre in the YA category. Don't get me wrong, in no way am I saying my novel would have been the next Hunger Games, but it did make me think: actually, people can be wrong, and that leads me into my next point...

3. Write what you love and write it well

This is advice I'd read or heard before, but after realisation number 2 above, it became much more apparent to me that now there is more of a free market, you should spend your time writing those stories that you love and with all the new publishing options out there, if it's good enough it will find its market. Be the trailblazer! Buck the trend! Create good art! That is the only way to combine creativity and personal happiness. Do what you love, and hopefully it should resonate with others who will love it too.

I was surprised by how happy I was at the convention - hungover, tired, yes, but happy - and rejoining the real world was a jolt. Attending the convention has strengthened my resolve from "wannabe" to "will be". I will finish Banshee and seek publication. It will be accepted and published and read. I will write a sequel, and a standalone, and another, and I will go to more conventions where I hope they will continue to inspire me and thousands of other "will be"s, way past the point where we become "I am"s.

Status Update

So regular readers will know that I've been working on my Banshee novel for a little while now.
I'm starting to pull together my pitch and marketing ideas now, and for those of you who don't know, the premise of the story is that Caoimhe is a "normal" maths student, living with her best friend in London, until she is involved in a mugging that goes horribly wrong and she transforms into a banshee, keening a soul into the afterlife. You see, banshees in my mythology are actually more similar to grim reapers than flyer ghostly hags, and when they sing, it opens a portal to the otherworld. Hearing a banshee's song can kill a human or drive them insane, hence the bad press I suppose. Anyway, so now Caoimhe isn't who she thinks she is and has to work out why she is a banshee in exile, as well as deal with the new threat posed from this undercover community (someone's not too happy with her transformation), and to add complexity to the situation, she also has to try to save her best friend's arrogant boyfriend from becoming her next "victim".

As for the novel itself, I am about four chapters away from finishing this current draft, and have had to make a few changes. One of my characters was supposed to die at the end, but after the death of my grandmother in May, I just couldn't do it. Before you start telling me to "kill my babies" and all of that, actually this decision has led on to a healthy sub-plot for the sequel, so it's rather enhanced my story than diminished it.
After this draft is finished, I owe the manuscript another edit for language, consistency and grammar, and then I hope it'll be in a fit state to show the world. Hooray!

And so...

After all of your kind feedback and support, I sat down and wrote for an hour on Sunday. I timed it on my phone and set an alarm and everything.

Going back to my novel, I found it was actually in pretty good shape. I mean, don't get me wrong, it still needs work, but the skeleton is practically there. Now all it needs is a few large meals and it'll be sorted.

Now I just need to find a way to keep writing. My motivation is back at any rate, and I suppose that's half of the battle.

How to get writing again?

Work has become crazy busy recently, now that I am in charge of organising events full time. I am trying to finish the second draft of Banshee, my WIP, but scheduling time to write is really difficult, especially when my "day job" creeps into evenings and weekends too.

So I've been thinking about ways that I can still work on my project, but without obviously slacking off during the day and getting into trouble at work.

Here are some ideas I've had to get started again:

* Writing for 30 mins - 1 hour before breakfast.
* Pretend conversations in my head between characters, and then scribbling it down or recording it on my phone.
* Staying late after staying late to write a little bit (this is how this blog post has come about!).

What are your suggestions? Do you have a good way of staying focused when life tries to get in the way of your writing?

Banshee - Editing Update

Happy Almost the End of January! Officially it's the saddest month, simply because it's been sooo long since pay day and the weather is simply awful.
I'm in the midst of editing and revising Banshee (book 1) and it's going pretty well so far. After the first draft, the two main issues to fix for draft 2 are:
1) The character of Tom is very passive, one-dimensional, which = boring.
and:
2) The first three chapters don't work!
So, I've been fixing 2) first, as in doing so, I've been able to make Tom much more exciting and not so much of a wuss. Huzzah!
I have to say, I'm really loving working on Banshee right now. I think the thing that makes it interesting to me is here is a story about a girl who had everything, who was powerful and successful in practically every way, and she gave it all up for the love of her life - who turned out to be a dick. It's not one of those stories where a girl bends over backwards (!) to conform to her lover's ideal. She's already done that before the story started, and so is completely lost at the beginning but doesn't even realise it. Sigh.
Thanks to a link from Zoe Marriott's blog to Azaleasdolls.com, I've even been able to create a cartoon version of what my banshee, Caiomhe, looks like. Ta-da:

Now, even procrastination can count as work!
I hope to have at least the beginning of Banshee in some sort of shape where I can post a little bit on here over the next month or two, so would love to hear what you guys think.
Here's hoping February is productive.

Editing Mode: On

So after finishing the first draft of Banshee v.2, my plan is to edit it and have it finished to send to agents in May 2013. Since finishing on Nov 30th, I’ve read the draft through again on my Kindle and thought it was pretty good (if I do say so myself). The end needs work, partly because an incident at the end needs to occur earlier in the novel, and partly due to pacing. Once that is done, I need to do a little work on my male love interest. And voila! One finished novel, and then on to Book 2. Sounds easy, right? (I can hear Future-Me’s patronising laugh from here).

National Novel Writing Month 2012

Look what I did.

You can check out my final word count and a very (very) small extract here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/grizabella

Banshee Second Draft

Last weekend I finished the outline for draft 2 of Banshee. If you remember, I wrote the first draft a few years ago as part of NANOWRIMO. Back then it was written from the perspective of Tom, as he discovers and falls in love with a banshee. This was where most of my problems lay in the first draft, as I just couldn't relate to Tom as a character (he was quite egotistical) and I realised that if I couldn't relate to him as a lead character then my readers wouldn't. So I've changed the focus and now the story is told from the pov of a young banshee . This opened up lots more story possibilities and I've even been able to think about ideas for the sequel. I'm looking forward to writing my second draft, and hope to have something to show you all soon.

Away with the Faeries

Recently, I have been doing some research about faeries for a new story I am writing. I thought I was quite informed about "the good folk" after all the research I had done whilst writing Banshee, but then discovered today that a "doxy" does not actually exist and was something made up for Harry Potter. Oops.

Nevermind.

I have been doing some research, as for years now I've wanted to write a short story about Tir na nOg and proper faeries* and it was only today whilst driving home from a school event that I worked out how to do it. So this is what I'm going to be working on for the rest of the evening.

I attended Alt.Fiction a few weeks ago and had a pretty enjoyable day. I've left it a bit late to review it, so will direct you to Selina's blog review of the event (diving into my own fragments of memory about the event, all I can really recall is talking about seal sex in front of Jon Courtenay Grimwood!). Will Ellwood also comments here.

*Canny regular readers will know I have already attempted to write about proper faeries once in The Tower (link takes you to the far superior audio version rather than text).

What I'm Reading...

I've been reading quite a lot lately. Recently, I finished Octavia Butler's Wild Seed - do you know it? It's quite an old book, having been published in 1980 (the year of my birth, coincidentally). The great thing about this book is that there is no waffle, no expedition. Everything is told in a very manner of fact way, everything relevant to the incidents of the scene you are reading. Butler knows exactly where her story starts, and doesn't preamble to set tone, universe, etc. That doesn't mean that the writing isn't lyrical or the world is lacking in some way - it is a very absorbing story. It feels like a very honest way to tell a story, and something that I'm going to try with my own writing.
I've also just finished reading Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope. The narrative unfolds as a series of stories told by a mysterious narrator to one of the title characters, going over events that have shaped his life in order to persuade him not to kill his son. At first I found the conceit a little trying as the stories were not perhaps as engaging as they could have been. But by the middle section, I was hooked, and I'm not sure why - perhaps it was when, finally, we were given a hero to root for. Aside from Point Fantasy and the usual children's classics, I think this is actually the first alternative world medieval-esque fantasy book I have ever read,which is quite depressing when I think about it.
I'm now reading Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. I am enjoying it so far, although I think I can tell it's for a younger audience, as a lot of the world-building stuff about the politics of the universe is presented to the reader on a plate. But aside from that, as I said, I'm enjoying the story, though I'm only about a quarter of the way in.
I've been reading Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories which I've had for a while but haven't tackled before. I've only just finished chapter two so far, but already it has proved insightful when analysing my own work and the plotting problems I've encountered. The chapter I've just finished explains the plot Booker has named "Overcoming the Monster" which covers everything from Star Wars, Little Red Riding Hood, The Magnificent Seven, the James Bond films, and, obviously, Beowulf. The hero/heroine gets "the call" - he/she must defeat some sort of monster that is threatening their home/mankind/the planet, and, equipped with "magical weapons", he/she goes off to face them. There is a stage where the hero first mets the monster/bad guys or their associates, and they win. Then they get captured/face the monster again, and it all looks like it's over for our hero until by some superhuman means, they overcome the monster at the last minute and save the world/get the "princess"/get the treasure. It's interesting, to me at least, because my own failed Inter Vivos sort of followed this story pattern, and comparing it to this very basic formula it's easy to see some of the places it went wrong (of course, to say this is it's only fault is being extremely simplistic!). My heroine Nox set out to defeat a monster that wasn't particularly threatening. Big fail.
So I've been enjoying reading lately, trying to write around it, think about the things that I want to do. I have been working more on my Corrie Flint-inspired novel, which is set in London and focuses on many different supernatural creatures that live there (the Banshee story sort of fits into this universe). It's been fun reinventing the troll and the leprechaun into 21st century London, and I just wish I had a little more time coming up to really be able to work on it more, rather than having to steal an hour here or there.
So things are looking up at the moment. I'm at Alt.Fiction on Saturday, so if any of you happen to be there, please come and say hi! The Speculators newspaper is free in the goodie bags apparently, so you can read my short story in there too!

The Plan (Take 2)

Hope you all had nice holidays everyone! I meant to write a blog post two weeks ago, but was so busy at work that I never got around to posting.

So, over the last few weeks I've been taking some time to think about what to do next. It feels like ages since I actually came up with a new writing project, which is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. As I mentioned, I've been busy with work, which meant only snatched moments to ponder things, but not really any time to be productive and dedicate to new projects. And then over Easter, when I thought I'd have time, I had food poisoning instead. So yes, anyway, this post is about the Plan. Or the New Plan, as it should be known.

I want to continue on with Dorcas Grubb and The Banshee, my two completed first drafts that are currently sitting on my memory stick collecting electronic dust. I need to work out what the main event is in Dorcas, and I need to come up with an actual plot that means something for the Banshee, rather than it being just a string of events that don't lead anywhere.

I came up with an idea for a new novel, I think, though it's all a bit sketchy at the moment, and to be honest, every time I start it, it doesn't come out how I want, and I don't know whether it's fear or inability that's hindering me. The idea anyway - there is a town in contemporary England (at the beginning it was going to be Medieval, but I've scrapped that now) run by two very powerful, feuding families - the Knights and the Bakers. The story goes that once upon a time, Death had a fling with this mortal woman, who had three daughters by him. Death gave each daughter a special gift - the eldest could turn invisible, the second could move as swiftly as Death himself, and the third could see into the future. Anyway, the mum dies and the sisters start squabbling. The eldest married a Knight, hence the surname, the second the local baker, and the third became a nun (Cloister). Anyway, the story is about their descendants today, using their powers to gain the upper hand in the feud which is verging on all out gang war (a bit like modern day Capulets and Montagues). I have a few sketchy characters, a setting, a back story, but no plot as of now. So that's what I'm trying very hard to come up with at the moment.

I also started a short story last night, and I really enjoyed writing it, but I'm not sure where it's going, if anywhere. I was told a few weeks ago that Jay Lake set himself the goal of writing one short story a week, which is a great idea if you have time, so I've decided to write one short story a month starting April 2010. Even if they are just "practice" stories, it'll still be good to write on a regular basis. Plus you never know, some of them might have potential.

And there it is, the Plan. Write a short story a month. Come up with a plot for Three Sisters and write that. Work on the plot of Dorcas Grubb. Come up with a plot for The Banshee story. I think I'm sensing a pattern...

Catch-Up

This post may be a long one. Don't say I didn't warn you. You wait months for something interesting to report, and then it all happens at once. I'm going to report things in reverse chronological order, just for fun.

The Monastery OK. So here are a few photos of the lovely abbey.

It was so peaceful, even with a boarding school in the grounds. The monks wore black robes, and were perfectly lovely and polite, if scarce. Apparently there were only 30 there. I had supper with the headmaster (a monk) on Sunday evening, and had cajun chicken and tequila-laced salmon, drank wine and elderflower cordial before retiring to my room at 9:30. It was a good event, the Higher Education bit that I was there for, and a pretty unique experience I suppose. Yorkshire is lovely - I think I may have to have a special day trip to explore properly another time.

The Writing Industries Conference I had a very good day, with the quality what I've grown to expect from a Literature Network/Writing East Midlands event. The programme was just about perfect, and they made up for the fact that attendees couldn't attend everything I wanted to by recording each session as a podcast. There wasn't too much waiting around for sessions to start, but similarly it didn't feel rushed. The theme was about New Media, and the need for writers to diversify to become successful. My agent one to one went very well, but probably not for the reasons you might think. He tore my work to shreds, pointed out the gaping holes that I have been in denial about, and made the most liberating suggestion of my life (in regards to Inter Vivos anyway!). I hate it when people give feedback and they're afraid to hurt your feelings, so they use stock phrases and platitudes, and this guy did no such thing. I know some people couldn't have sat there taking it without crying or arguing or something, but I thought it was great. Because it means that I should not waste anymore time on a project that is fundamentally flawed (no matter how hard I try to resolve those flaws) and that I should work on something else.

The day after my meeting, it did hit me that I wasn't as far ahead as I had thought, but - well - nevermind! Back to the drawing board. I'm going to salvage what I can from Inter Vivos, perhaps take a few characters that I like and play with them a little, and treat Inter Vivos like you do your first ever boyfriend - you look back fondly but think, what was I thinking?

So what does that mean now?

Well, I'm going to stick to Fantasy, which is where I'm more comfortable, and I know a little bit more about. I'm going to have a think about what it is I want to write, what I like to read, and go from there. I may revisit the Banshee story, because I think that has some potential, although the plot still isn't clear to me. I'm going to write more short stories and practice the "craft". And I'm going to be more honest with myself. I knew IV wasn't working - I couldn't get my head around the core science in the book, and no amount of characterisation would fix that. There was a reason I hadn't been able to finish it for NaNoWriMo, why I'd been working on it for 4 years with little success, but I'd blinkered myself to it. Everything negative that the agent said, I knew already but had been denying it to myself.

So all in all, the Writing Conference was extremely valuable. Now I just have to work out what to do next.

Winner!

Sorry about not posting sooner. I think I've been so occupied with the writing, that I've not had time to write about writing, which is a good thing overall, no?
I won NaNoWriMo 2009 with The Banshee. I finished on Sunday, though had to wait til Monday before I got internet connection so I could upload my file into the official word counter thingie. Sunday was hard. I had basically written the story to the end, but had about 3,000 words to go until my target, so I gave my banshee and her best friend a nice Christmas dinner together.

I'm not sure what I'll do with my Banshee novella, whether to write it as a novel or adapt it as a short story or play even, or whether to just leave it in the drawer for the foreseeable future. I think it has potential, and the characters seemed very real to me, but as I mentioned before, I think I'd have to introduce some sort of exciting sub-plot to liven things up a bit - currently, Tom meets a banshee, falls in love with her, whilst his best friend falls in love with him, they run around a bit, whilst also trying to save the man the banshee is assigned to escort to the underworld, and then people die. It was at the "running around" part that things got really boring.

Anyhow, for now, it's back to Inter Vivos. I'm reading through all the way to the end without making notes. I'm on chapter three right now, and so far can say very definitely that the first three chapters suck. I think because I still wasn't sure at that stage how to begin my story, so I left out vital pieces of information and wrote really formally for some reason. All stuff that'll need to be rewritten in draft 3. Sigh.

No rest for the wicked!

Rut Be Gone!

I had a lovely birthday (thanks for the phone message, Mekon!) and am now feeling pretty chipper. I guess I was just depressed two days ago when I wrote that post, but a day off yesterday + sushi means that I'm feeling better today. Saw Men Who Stare At Goats last night, which was actually good (I thought I mightn't like it, after hearing it was a "military satire"). The cast were really strong, and the story simple and strangely optimistic, and it was amusing (not 'wet your pants' funny, but good).
I have just under 6,000 words to write before I reach 50,000 for NaNoWriMo, and my novel is almost finished. The banshees have bansheed, and my cast is one character lighter, but it feel good. I still don't think the middle is that exciting - I think if I were to write a second draft, I'd have to add an interesting and adrenaline-fuelled sub-plot to raise the stakes slightly.

So once again the cup is half full.

As soon as this is over, I'm going straight back to Inter Vivos. I have started reading it through, and am half-way through chapter two at the moment. It's really difficult to read it without wanting to take notes and mark it up, but I promised myself I'd read until the end without getting my pen out once before going back and dissecting it to pieces.
I have to admit, the beginning so far isn't very good. There are some good bits, but like the flowers in my really messy garden, they are being smothered by crap.
I got a rejection from Weird Tales about one of the stories I had sent off, so have sent it back out to another magazine, and hoping I'll be second time lucky for a sale.
I'm really hoping that this new year will be when it all takes off for me, so for now I have to keep slogging away.

NaNoWriMo Day Nineteen

I'm just over 32,000 words, and I'm not finding it too hard right now. I have actually managed to catch up to my word target after a weekend away on a Hen Do. Not too bad, I think.

My story is a little boring, lacking in explosions and the like, but at least I have stuff planned now which should see me through to 50k.

After writing Inter Vivos though, 50,000 words seems like nothing. I don't mean in terms of effort, because it is still a big achievement to write that much, especially in such a limited time. What I mean is in terms of story developement. I've less than 20,000 words to go, and I'm starting to realise that the big things in my novel are going to have to happen soon. I had planned to kill off a minor character at 32K exactly, but I'm nowhere near that yet (about a day away in story terms). And then a major character has to die, and I've realised I'm going to be writing that in about two days time at this rate. So the whole writing process has gone so fast that it doesn't feel like it's even sunk in what has happened yet. It's like I've sleep-typed my entire story. I can type approx 2000 words an hour now so that helps and it doesn't - the story is just thoughts on a page, rather than laboured over prose. Oh well.

NaNoWriMo Day 11

Things are still going well for me, NaNoWriMo-wise. I'm one whole day ahead of my target word count, which I'm hoping to add to tomorrow and Friday as I have a hen weekend to go to this Saturday, and chances are I won't get any writing done.

In terms of word count I'm doing well. In terms of story though...it all feels a bit rushed. I haven't read back over anything I've written yet, so I don't have anything to really reflect on, but I feel like at the minute I'm merely capturing scenes, rather than feeling and living them. I've moved away from 3rd person singular to 3rd person multiple viewpoint, so that now I can jump into anyone's head that I feel like it, depending on whose is the most appropriate mind to view a particular scene from. It's working so far. Plus, it's nice to get out of Tom's head. He's a bit dull. I might have to inflict him with a lisp or something to make him a tad more interesting. If he was a Sim, I probably would have drowned him by now.

I've had quite a productive year this year. I've written Inter Vivos draft 2 from scratch starting in January, which amounts to just over 120,000 words in its unedited state. I've completed three short stories, two of which are making the rounds at the moment looking for publication. And now I'm almost 19,000 words into my new Banshee novel.

I'm not sure what I'll do when I can finally say "Inter Vivos is finished" and start sending it off to publishers and agents. I will start working on another novel, naturally, but the decision will be between Dorcas Grubb and Banshee, and possibly something else, depending on how long it takes me to finish IV. I also want to work on a collection of interlinked short stories, ordered a bit like Pulp Fiction out of chronological order with occasional recurring characters.

It's good to have options.

So that's it really. Still reading Juliet Barker's Brontes biography, which weighs a tonne. I've drawn the conclusion that Charlotte wasn't particularly likeable, rather selfish actually and quite condescending. My favourite is Anne, the more practical, realistic one. Going to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall next.

Day 3 NaNoWriMo

It's Day Three of NaNoWriMo and after a productive session on Sunday (Day One) I am now just over a day ahead of my quota. This will come in very handy when I have to go to Hen Weekends and Birthday thingies later in the month.

So my word count is healthy. However, it is definitely a case of "Quantity" over "Quality". This is some of the worst prose ever, not just from what I've written, but from what anyone has ever written. Ever.

How bad is it? you might ask.

This bad:

"Tom finally got to his new halls of residence. It was situated in zone three, a thirty minute tube ride to class. As he walked up to the building, he nodded to himself satisfactorily. The building was modern and white, four stories high with dark blue window frames and blue panel and glass front door that was propped open on this day as dozens of people, parents and new students like Tom moved back and forth from cars and moving vans, carrying suitcases, bedding, small bedside cabinets. "

And I don't know if it's just because I'm writing a male protagonist, but I'm finding it really difficult to get inside Tom's head. I don't believe that you should only write protagonists that are the same sex as yourself - look how well Adrian Mole turned out. Anyway, so I'm writing terrible prose and missing Inter Vivos terribly.

Still you can't make a diamond without a chunk of coal, so I'll try not to let my inability to write coherent sentences put me off right now. At least not until 30th November anyway.

Banshees for NaNoWriMo

Thankfully, the busy period is over with at work now, and so I can finally get back to concentrating on my writing.

I am still working away at Inter Vivos - going to go and do some more once I've finished this blog post - and I'm still waiting to hear from a couple of magazines where I've submitted work, so it's quite busy at the moment, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed all goes well.

It's almost NaNoWriMo time, and so I thought I'd blog a little bit about this year's project, although I don't have everything planned out yet. I have mentioned it before in bits and pieces, but thought I'd try to expand a little bit on what I've already told you, so you have more of an idea what I'm on about.

Right, so this year, my story is about a banshee named Caoimhe (pronounced Kee-va), and a fresher called Tom. Tom starts university and instantly goes about forming himself a band. He's talented and convinced he's going to be a rock star. He's quite big-headed, with that arrogance that comes from being 18, fairly attractive, and the best thing from his little local sixth form. So anyway, he's playing his first gig at some pub and is drawn to bar maid Caoimhe, who looks like a model - 6 foot tall, skinny, with long white-blonde hair (see picture above for how I see her), who happens to also be enrolled at the university reading mathematics. Turns out that not only is Caoimhe the only one he's ever met who isn't instantly into his music (and him), but she's also a banshee - born several centuries earlier, she and her "sisters" are charged with the task of escorting the ancestors of the ancient noble families of Ireland to the underworld when they die. Drawn almost magnetically to a place whenever someone with noble blood is marked with a "halo", the banshee doesn't know until it is too late whom that person is. Some of the sisters, such as Caoimhe, play detective to try to find the person to protect them from death (if they are able to) as a way to save those whom they are eternally bound from suffering and misery. So Tom becomes attrached to Caoimhe, and follows her about until he witnesses her at "work", and is eventually drawn into her world as she tries to track down her latest halo, who also happens to be enrolled at Tom's new university.

So that's the jumble that's in my head at the moment. Will hopefully have it in some sort of semblance of a plot before November 1st.

The End is in Sight!

OK, so I've reviewed Inter Vivos, after what I wrote in my blog post here, and I find, actually, that it's not that bad. Shocker.

So, in actual fact, I don't need to rewrite 25,000 words. I went through it, and I think I need to make 16 minor changes, and then write a slightly different last scene and I'll get rid of my passive heroine and tie up all my loose ends without it seeming too devised.

I found, on rereading the six penultimate chapters, that I liked my novel. And not just that, but I like my characters too. In my head, Nox is played by Nemi; Cyrus by the old man (now deceased) who was the blind man ("Duncan") in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; Thaddeus by a young Jared Leto; and The Captain by Chris Pine or Eric Lively (who I've never seen act in anything, but he looks about right in this imdb picture). A motley crew indeed.

So that's what I'm working on at the moment.

I'm also trying to decide what is going to be my next NaNoWriMo project - the banshee story, or the Nevada story (of which Corrie Flint is a part). I'll end up writing both eventually. Well, I still have another 2 months to decide.