Always

I don't listen to secular music, but I hear it at stores and restaurants sometimes. The other day I heard a song that sounded like it was about a man in love with a lawnmower. It was too noisy to hear most of the words, but the chorus was loud enough. It went something like this:
I'm loving you, mower, mower, mower.
I'm loving you, mower, mower, mower.
As someone who cuts a lot of grass, I'm curious as to which model he was singing about. Maybe Weird Al knows.

[I had a fun parody of Kristian Stanfill's Always here, which is where the blog title originated. It was about Bilbo's love of food and his scoring free food off Gandalf. However, someone was offended. If one person is offended, there's bound to be more. I'd like to get to the point where I make enough writing that I can do it full time. I won't get there by alienating potential readers.
Romans 14:21 What is good is not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.
If parodies of Christian songs cause some people to stumble, it's better to remove it.]

Book Stuff
An intrepid test reader for the mystery/romance pointed out a sentence that was "borderline run-on". That happens when I try to cram multiple sentences that either don't flow together very well or would turn into a boring, lengthy paragraph into something that's shorter and hopefully sounds better.

The intrepid test reader(You know who you are!) pointed out the sentence at the end of a pile of corrections. I proofread. How could there still be errors? Shouldn't the book be Error Free(TM) by now?  By the time I got to the borderline run-on sentence, it was comical the number and types of fixes I had to do. The test reader's wording made me laugh. For fixes that are more than simple things like a missing comma, I email back what I've done to correct them. For that sentence I sent back what might be my new catchphrase: Borderline run-on. That's how I roll.

Too geeky? It made me laugh, although I never heard back on it.

I've been working on the Messengers sequel. I ran into a problem. Something was prophesied in Call to Selah that I tried to put in too early. I had two choices: alter CtS or alter the sequel. After talking to a couple of readers and praying, the solution was to alter the sequel. I just realized I forgot to tell you that the rough draft is finished. I finished it the other day. As I've been going through the finished rough draft, I've been fixing that prophesy problem. It's going to add an exra scene that still needs to be written. There's another unrelated scene that I probably need to add in. We'll see. I've also been removing some background characters that were redundant. Another character was already doing their job. I actually caught that during the writing. I think I'm past the point where I stopped referring to them. So, it's moving along. I'll let you know how it's going when there's more to tell.

It was like the 70s

Last night was like the 70s as I ran from store to store trying to find that one specific object before all the stores closed. Along the way I saw this:

Yesterday was Aug 7. Halloween is almost three months away. There was a whole section of Halloween candy. In August! Why?

I got an email from Walmart back in June for summer clearance items. It was barely summer, even in the south. And they were doing clearance? It was crazy. If I'd had money to burn, the canoe/kayaks did look pretty good, but that's not the point. Like the Halloween candy, it was far too soon.

Book Stuff
I have the mystery/romance in the hands of tester readers. I'm still not sure the book works, but we'll see what they say.
I just about had the rough draft of the first sequel book done when I ran into a problem that made me want to throw cotton balls at a window. I have this long storyline involving Etan that contradicts a prophecy about him from the original series. Aw, man. The choices are ugly. I could alter the original series. Argh! I could alter the storyline. Difficult. I could leave it and do an Author's Note explaining the change. Disgusting. I don't like any of the choices, but something must be done. I was talking to a reader(also a test reader for the mystery/romance) about it and got some helpful feedback to ponder. I was leaning toward altering the original series, but I need to think about different angles over the weekend.

Words of Wisdom
Getting upset about something you can't change is like throwing cotton balls at a window.

80s Music

I was in Fred's a while back. If you have don't have Fred's where you live, they're kind of like a miniature department store. I haven't heard the term department store in a long time, but Google assures me they still exist in the current century. So, I was in Fred's, and their ambient music was 80s music. A Men at Work song came on that I recognized. I didn't have a lot of albums during the 80s, but that song was from one that I actually had. If you lived in the 80s, you know it was like every 5th song was a Michael Jackson song. A lot of songs never made it to radio. The Men at Work song was one of those. It was never played on air during the 80s. That made me wonder something. People today don't know what was on the radio back then. Since that song didn't make it to radio, is it really an authentic 80s song?

It was made during the 80s. It came out during the 80s. But is it authentic 80s? Nobody but people who bought the album ever heard it. Does it really count? The kids today listening to 80s music don't know the difference. It's all 80s music to them. I got to thinking about that.

Back in 2013 or maybe 2012 I was at Burger King. They were playing 80s music. A Duran Duran song that I hadn't heard since it was on the radio in the 80s came on. That was the first time that had happened to me. It's hard to describe the feeling I got. Burger King was a place I went during the 80s, so I was in an 80s-type setting. Music can trigger a lot of things in a person. Hearing that song again took me back to the point in time when I used to hear it. It was like I was seeing myself then and in the present. It was like the song put me in two time periods at once. It was extremely strange. I've had that happen a few times since but never as jarringly as that first time.

I've decided that the Men at Work song I heard at Fred's, even though it was never on the radio back in the day, is indeed an authentic 80s song. The kids today can listen to the old music and enjoy it. They're just doing it out of context. They don't have the 80s experience that goes with that music. The setting in which they're listening to it is out of context.
It makes me wonder if older people thought about things like that when I was listening to classic rock.

Book Stuff
I've gone through the proof copy of the mystery/romance and fixed things and ordered the updated version. It'll probably get here Monday. The plan is to mail it out right away to test readers and see what they think. I still have doubts about it. Ideally, I'd like to find an agent for it, if I can, though that might be very difficult.
I've been working on the Messengers sequel. I'm very close to the end. It's going to be a lot of work to get into shape, once the rough draft is done.

Seeing Some Progress

I read a book not long ago by William Woodall that was set in Texas. Somebody in the book made brisket, which I had to look up, because I'm from the south. I don't know what all people out west eat. I forget exactly what the definition was, but it's basically some kind of beef. So, I was at the store recently and noticed some pulled beef brisket in barbeque sauce. I had to get it to see what brisket is. Well, hmm, it isn't different than normal barbequed beef. I've been making barbeque sandwiches with it.
Here's the point. I had a barbeque sandwich with barbeque potato chips on the side. It made me wonder something. Is eating a barbeque sandwich with barbeque potato chips too southern?

Anyway, the forces of darkness have been fighting me tooth and nail on the writing front lately. I could use prayer for that and prayer in general. It seems like it's been one roadblock after another. I need a breakthrough in some area.

There's been some good news. A cold front from Canada has moved in bringing lower temperatures and lower humidity. It's July in Georgia, and it's been in the 70s and 80s without the oppressive humidity we normally have. (That's 21-26+ degrees in Celsius.) The high today is 73o(22.78C), and tomorrow is about the same. The nights have been blessedly cool. The weather feels miraculous.

I've been wrestling a bit with the ending for the first book in the Messengers sequel and decided to change it because the original idea didn't seem dramatic enough. I think I have it now. I just need to force some time to finish it.

And, I've finally gotten back to the mystery/romance and read it through making corrections along the way. I finished that last night but still need to transfer the changes to computer. I printed it out to read so I could work on it anywhere. Plus, there's something about going over a hard copy that's more real than doing it on the computer.
I still don't have a title for it, but I think it works. I wasn't sure it would. It seems to flow along once I get past the first few pages, which makes me worry about the first few pages. They set the stage for later. I'm just not sure that's enough to grab a reader's attention. The first bit of suspense doesn't happen until page 4. I need to make sure people get that far. I'll have to think about it more. Right now, the plan is to get the changes done then let someone else read it while I work on the sequel to Messengers.

Sequel 2

Blogspot got me again with the New Blog button. It wanted me to create a different blog. No!

If you haven't heard of NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's in November. People write a 50,000 word "novel" in a month. I've never done it, because it didn't fit what I was doing at the time. I wasn't going to stop Messengers to do a 50k book. I was thinking I might try it this year. Why? Because I got about 60k words done on the Messengers sequel in less than a month. I'm over 85% of the way toward the target word count of 80k words now, although it's slowed down quite a lot due to various things like dental problems, sleep problems and structure angst. Sci-Fi and fantasy novels run 80k to 120k words depending. I'd call 40k words a novella. That's why I put quotes around novel up above. Is 50k really a novel? Ask a publisher. ;)

Structure angst. When I was doing Messengers, I wrote the kind of book I wanted to read. I ignored a lot of rules like: not adding important characters at the end, putting in scenes that added atmosphere but didn't necessarily advance the plot, telling instead of showing, etc. If I came to something cool that I wished someone else would've done at least once if it wasn't against "the rules," I went ahead and did it if I thought it worked! If I'd followed the rules, everyone would've been healed at the end of book 4. Joe and Ceinwen would marry at the end of book 4. The rain would have been at the end of book 4. Etc.
Anyway, from here on out I'm paying more attention to the rules, especially structure. Novels have a certain structure to follow. The sequel may not exactly follow the structure. So, I'm having some angst about what to do about it. I guess I'm going to finish it up and then go back and see how it looks. It makes me tired thinking about it.
I have two main storylines. Marion and Etan are the main characters most of the time, and they're doing their own things. That reminds me. In the last blog I was talking about the prologue being long. Forget it. There was a lot more story there than I thought. The prologue turned into book 1. But. There's still going to have to be a division between this book and the next one because there's a time gap between the things that happen in this book and the beginning of the war. This book(which doesn't have a title right now) happens the same year that Messengers ended. The next book takes place about three years later based on everything going on now. So, back to the storylines. I have to make sure they follow the correct structure and that things are timed properly so it's not jarring to skip back and forth.

The mystery/romance. I haven't gotten back to it in any significant way. I think the structure is mostly okay. ;) I need to do a read through on it to see how it reads now and then fix anything that comes up. I already know I need to add a little in the ending chapters to make it flow better. I've been debating whether to take a break from the sequel to do that or keep going. So far I've kept going on the sequel.

I'm out of time. I'll let you know more later.

Sequel

Picking up where I left off the last time, I finished up the read through and editing pass for the Mystery/Romance on the 16th. I'm giving it a month's rest so I can look at it with fresh eyes.

I woke up one day and had an idea for a story set on a space station in the outer solar system. It would be a mystery/suspense type of thing, I think. I started doing research. There's enough of a timeline to do at least two books. The station has to be built. It probably needs a shakedown cruise to Mars to get the bugs worked out. I have multiple distinct time periods: construction, shakedown cruise, journey to the outer system(six years) and then what happens after it gets there. There's a lot to work with depending on what I want to do and think I can do. These would probably be short novels, but that brings up an idea about doing shorter books that needs a future post of its own.

However, instead of going straight to the space station books, I've somehow ended up working on the sequel to Messengers. The prologue begins within days of Call to War then jumps two or three months ahead to Afton wanting to sign a peace treaty with B'vellah. Maybe a few months later Etan and Kayley's wedding would take place. As mentioned in the last book, at some point a war breaks out.

I've already been writing the prologue the events of which seem pretty much set in stone. It's too big for a normal prologue. Maybe I'll divide it into something like Part I. I'm not sure of all the plot yet. Marion is one of the main characters. Afton's sons will play a larger role. The reason I barely mentioned them in Messengers is because I didn't think of them until the end then had to go back and add them in, but by then it was too late for them to be a real part of the series. Oops.
Some things will take place on earth, but I'm not sure how much. A future book about Calliope has events that take place on earth. I need to figure out how to keep that discrete from the sequel.

Anyway, I'm out of time. The next little while should be working on the sequel to Messengers.

Moving Right Along

I clicked the New Blog button and was presented with a screen for creating another blog. It wasn't what I expected. I wonder how many people need multiple blogs or have time to write for each of them. But anyway.

So far, this has been a hard year in a lot of ways, but I'm making progress. I'm 105.75% of the way through the rough draft of the current book. I went a little over the word count, but that's okay. It gives me flexibility in what to trim down. The rough draft is finished. Yay! This book is one I mentioned before that was a bit of a break from Messengers. It's a mystery/romance or a romantic mystery. It's set in a small, fictional town in South Carolina far from the beach but near a lake. There's a murder, but it's not really a whodunit type of murder mystery. It's a Christian inspirational cozy sort of thing, although I really need to look up the exact definition of what constitutes a Christian cozy book before I try to call it that.

I'd have been done sooner, but I had to do a lot of research into police procedures. That took longer than I thought and kind of dragged on. The vast majority of it never made it into the book. Actually, it's almost invisible in the sense that the actions of the police take place mostly off stage. I needed to know how the police interact with suspects and how they investigate and such in order to make the detective and the police department believable instead of ridiculous. That reminds me. Did you know the police department and sheriff's office are different entities and have different jobs? I didn't! That's what I get for never having pursued a life of crime. I've never been arrested, so I had a lot to learn about how a jail works and all that. The result of the research is that the police in the book do their jobs, but I don't explain why they do certain things.

The next step is to go over the rough draft and proofread and edit and knock it into shape. I'm not sure how long that will take, hopefully a week or two if I don't find any massive structural flaws. I did a certain amount of editing and proofreading along the way. After that I want to put it away for a month and let it grow stale so I can see it with "fresh" eyes and find all the hideously embarrassing things I missed during the first edit. However, there's some good news. Somebody on a writers forum I occasionally visit posted a link to a cheap, professional editor. I'm not rich, but I think I'll be able to try them out with this book. I'm excited about that. Part of my research aside from the police stuff was to read some books on the market today and get a general feel for what's out there. Too much of it needed more editing. It wasn't that the writing was bad. It was a polish thing. Some of it needed some major work, but there's one guy in particular who does a good job but needs that last little bit of polish to push him over the top. He's not the only one, of course, but he stood out because his stuff is good enough that I read more than one of his books. I don't want to put something out there that's "almost good enough" but falls short on silly little things.

I know I don't blog a lot. I try to wait until I have something to say instead of just slapping something up. Now that things are going faster, I should have more to say. Like what will I be doing in that month I'm letting this book rest? Working on the next one, but that'll have to wait for another day.