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SiWC Post 1: Power Editing with Robert Dugoni, and a Book Giveaway!

This past weekend was mega busy, and oh so fun.  I volunteered at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, and worked my butt off for them.  In exchange, I got to pseudo-attend the conference.

I went to a masterclass, panels, and talks, and met some amazing people.  I’m going to do several posts on SiWC, because trying to fit it all in to a single post would be madness.  Just like trying to fit a whole year’s worth of writerly-networking and craft-discussion into a single weekend.

So!  Before I give out my notes from the Power Editing Masterclass, do go check out Robert Dugoni.  He was an excellent speaker, and in addition to giving me some things to think about, he managed to sell me on checking out his books.  (You can also have your chance to check out his books, courtesy of me!  Check out my note at the end of this post about winning his book!)

Onwards!

Please note that this is a mix of Robert Dugoni’s talk and my own opinions.  I made bare-bones notes, enough to trigger thought processes in my own mind, so what you’re about to read is a mishmash of his teachings and my experiences.  It ended up being more about story structure than editing, but it’s all relevant.

Also note that these are notes from a masterclass– this is not day 1 writing.  I’m not going to explain some of these terms.  You can look them up!  🙂  It’s still pretty approachable.

My brain had a little trouble right off the get go.  He mentioned that he’d done 14 drafts of one of his novels.  FOURTEEN DRAFTS.  This was one of those wonderful (read: terrifying) moments when I wondered “Am I doing it wrong?”

I knew some writers (myself not among them) wrote many drafts.  But FOURTEEN!  I tend to write one novel, re-write certain sections of it, and edit the crap out of it.  But I also outline beforehand… People that write a lot of drafts tend to be pantsers (they write by the seat of their pants, without much outlining).  If you plan it out, you know where it’s going, and thus don’t need to rewrite the darn thing so many times.

Once I got over that little factoid, I got right into:

Where the author intrudes on the story.

1) Opinion

Inserting your opinion into the work will bring the reader out of it.  Your opinion can come in the form of narrative judgement or even in the opinions of your characters.  This is difficult, because characters need to have opinions; convincing the reader that it makes sense in the context of the character is imperative if they’re to believe that it’s not yours.

2) Info Dumps

Insert information into conversations, naturally, so it’s not just unrelated information.  Sure it’s great to do your research, but you’ve got to get it into the story in a way that doesn’t jar the reader out and scream “LOOK AT ALL THE RESEARCH I DID”.

3) Biographies

No one introduces themselves and gives their life story.  Give characters information over time, naturally.  And don’t give information on characters that don’t matter or that we’ll never see again.

4) Flashbacks

Flashbacks are tricky.  Chronology works well to help story structure, and when you mess with it, things are bound to get ugly.

Basically, get your info across through your dialogue.

Appeal to core motivations: fear, love, wrath, envy, lust, greed- if it’s a deadly sin, you can use it.  People will identify with your character motivation if it’s universal.

High stakes: make the story personal to your character.

At the climax (the failure of the quest, followed by the triumph), remind the reader: what is at stake?

What is the physical journey?

What is their motivation?

What is the public stake?

What happens in the world, for other people, as a result of the quest?

What is the personal stake?

What happens to our character, personally, as a result of the quest?

But I’m way ahead of myself.  Let’s talk about

The Beginning.  

Do 5 things in the beginning.

1) Set the tone.

The reader should get a good feel for how the rest of the book is going to go.  What kind of story are you telling?  Is it funny?  Grave?  Who is telling it?  Let them know what they’re in for within the first few pages.

2) Introduce the protagonist.

Who’s quest is this?  Who are we rooting for?  We need to know this right off the bat.

3) Create empathy for your characters.

We want to identify with characters.  As writers, we need to give our audience reasons to like our protagonist, to want to go on a journey with them.

4) Hook the reader.

Get ’em invested.  You need to communicate that this story is worth their time, and you do that by hooking them with the most exciting, most pertinent part of the story.  Why are you telling this particular one?  Why should the reader care?  Get them interested.

5) The first sentence poses a question, and early on, a story worthy quest is set up.

The following five questions can be used to describe any story.

Who?

What?

Where?

But when…

What stands in the way of their goal?

Let’s try it out.

Alan Grant is a palaeontologist who is invited to Isla Neblar to vet a new dinosaur theme park.  But when the attractions break free from their enclosures, he must help the others on the island traverse the facility and escape from the once extinct predators.

Who? Alan Grant. What is he?  A palaeontologist.  “But when”? Got it.  And of course, the dinosaurs are in the way of his escape.  Easy!  You can boil down any movie or book into these five points and get the basics of the story across.  It’s what makes or breaks elevator pitches as well.

We are at the end of the first page of my notes.  Good job!  Have a silly picture to give your noodle a break.

Ok, let’s get back to it.

1) Senses: appeal to them all to set the scene.  Put your reader there.

2) Goal: ever present.  Each scene is about realizing the goal, or about revealing character.

3) Obstacles: Escalating.  Each one reveals a new character trait; don’t show your character overcoming the same kind of obstacle over and over, challenge them in different ways each time.

4) Conflict.  Always conflict.

5) The final words of a chapter raise a question to keep the story moving, keep the pages turning.

On to The Middle.

The middle= the crossing of the threshold —> the climax.

Here is where we find out

1) Whose story is it?

2) What’s the through line of your characters?

3) How are they to achieve their goal?

4) Who helps them achieve it?

5) Who hinders them?

Which brings us to

The End.  

You must fulfil the promise, the promise you made the reader at the beginning (a story worthy quest, a character they want to follow).

The end must be completely inevitable, but unexpected.

The end must be satisfying.

The end has one more big obstacle.

Let’s talk about twists:

A twist is either an escalation, or a revelation. A twist is inevitable, yet unexpected.

There can be a twist of:

Character (like in the Wizard of Oz, the twist with ‘the wizard’)

Awareness (like in Planet of the Apes, when he realizes where he is)

Complexity (like in The Game, how everything was much more complex than anyone in the story or the audience realized)

Cleverness (like basically all of Sherlock)

Danger- the peril isn’t what we/they thought it was, it’s much, much worse, or different.

In the end, no new forces may be introduced, and no new characters.

When you’ve got all that (you did get all that, right?), then:

Go through scene by scene.  Ask yourself, do you need it?  Does it a) move the story forward or b) reveal character?

Raise a question with the first sentence of every scene.  We spend so much time on our first sentence, our first page; make every start of a scene that important.

If it can be presumed, it can be cut.  You don’t need a whole ton of description for mundane things.  He picked up the cup of water and took a sip.  No!  He took a sip of water.  There’s tons of actions that just don’t matter- cut them.

Readers’ emotions mirror the characters’ emotions.  If the protagonist cares, the reader will care.

Describing clothes: let details be revealed in motion.  Movement/action= active.

Her hair was red, her eyes were green.  No no no!  

Her red curls bounced behind her as she ran into the room; her green eyes darted from the gun on the floor to the knife in Robert’s hand.

And now one of those points that gets made that blows your mind (at least, it blew my mind, particularly because it has effected me and I didn’t realize it):

Secondary characters can be more interesting because main characters are too much like us.  My first novel’s protagonist IS too much like me.  And who did I pick to follow for the second book in that series?  A much more intriguing secondary character.

My notebook has a word that stretches the entire width of the page after that note…

DDDDDAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Looking at character development: just one step up the ladder is enough.

1) The character cares only about themself.

2) The character cares about 1 other.

3) The character cares about a group.

4) The character cares about a community.

5) The character cares about all.

You can have character growth that doesn’t involve them becoming a saint.  Just one step up in this little hierarchy is enough to show development.

You did it!  You got to the end!  That’s it for that class.  It’s all over the place, I know… Hope you found it useful.  I sure did.

Or if you were more like

then I thank you for stopping by nonetheless.  Sorry for the technical post; I hope other writers find it helpful!

And now dear readers, I offer you a chance to win a book!  The first book in Robert Dugoni’s David Sloane series, The Jury Master, could be yours!  Just leave a comment below, or head to Reddit and comment in this thread in /r/books.  If you do both, I will count you in for two entries!  I will draw one person at random in one week (on Wednesday, November 6th), and I will contact you for your details.  And then you will have the first book in this thrilling series!

I will congratulate the winner in next week’s post.  And if you don’t win this time, I’m planning on doing more of these, so you’ll have more chances with other great books.  🙂

Next up: Surrey International Writers’ Conference Idol: Crushing Hopes and Dreams in front of Hundreds of People for Fun and Profit!  (j/k it was actually really useful, interesting, and fun!).

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.

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Wild Gears is Live!

My husband, Aaron, has been working hard at making an exciting new project.  “Wild Gears” is a laser cut spirograph set that he designed himself, and it’s awesome.  He’s been testing prototypes and experimenting with art made with the circles and gears.

I wanted to share some of it with you, because it’s beautiful!  Our apartment is rapidly becoming filled with this stuff though, so uh, be careful, it’s addictive.

Anyway, here’s some art from Wild Gears!  And a link to the Kickstarter page, in case you want in on it! Also… a link to the video in case you just want to watch that!

The actual clear acrylic, laser cut gears!  You’re seeing right- pentagonal, square, and triangular gears.  He put a of work into getting these perfect, and they’re amazing.

Gears within gears!  Everything works with everything else.  He’s brilliant.

Weird, right?  He’s developed some new technology that allows for the creation of some pretty wonky designs.

And when he uses colour- ah my eyes!  Haha, it’s a fine line between mathematical beauty and crying tears of geometry.

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR ARE THOSE PARALLEL LINES

You’re darn tootin’ right they are.  This is perhaps the most amazing thing he’s developed- the ability to create parallel lines with a spirograph.  It makes for some really interesting pieces.

Another one with parallel lines.

So that’s “Wild Gears!” Thanks for checking it out. The album on Imgur has even more photos, and some descriptions. His video on the Kickstarter Page has even more stuff too!

Cheers.

Heidi out.

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Prisoners

I just got home from seeing a screening of Prisoners.

Holy smokes, I was not expecting that.  It had me on the edge of my seat for almost the whole film.  My chest is tight, my heart hurts from living in my throat for the past almost 3 hours.

The performances are excellent, the soundtrack is so unsettling, and the visual storytelling here is just top notch.  Oh, but the best thing, the very best thing, is the script.

I am so jealous of this script.  I want to give it a read and find out just how it managed to take me on this journey.  It had me in the palm of its hand and did things to me… things that films don’t do to me very often.  Like seriously, the intensity of emotion they managed to create; the craft level on every aspect of this film is stellar.  And like I said, the script-fu is just… damn.

I am a huge Hugh Jackman fan so I basically had to see this film, but it became apparent very early on that I was going to be in for way more than I bargained for.

I am having a hard time figuring out just exactly how to recommend this film; it’s not going to be for everyone.  Its pacing was brilliant, but it was slow (although it didn’t feel slow, if you know what I mean).  And if you have kids, god help you; I already feel sick to my stomach after seeing it, I don’t know how parents would survive this film.

 

Prisoners.

 

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PAX 2013: Top 10, and the Record Speed Bureaucracy that Got Me There

Well hello there!

Been a while.  It’s been a little slow going on the writing front; sometimes it’s a slog, and you just have to muscle through it.  ._.

I just got back from PAX!  Penny Arcade Expo is a huge gaming convention in Seattle, and this year it went from Friday August 30th to Monday September 2nd.  Four days of wicked awesome gaming fun with my best friends, and 80,000 other people.

We had an 8 bed room at a hostel.  I made a nest up on the top bunk by the window, and it was excellent.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

This is perhaps the most clutch example of bureaucracy I will ever recount.  I still cannot believe it happened.  Truly, I am in the luckiest timeline.

9PM the night before leaving for PAX: someone in my group posts on our coordination thread that they just realized that their passport was expired.  The rest of us gave our condolences and continued packing.

So at about 9:05PM, the night before we leave, I also discover that my passport is expired.

There was much freaking out, but I kept it together.  Discovered that it was possible, though not likely, that I could get a new passport in time to make my 11:30 bus the next morning.

10:05PM: get passport photo taken.  Thank goodness for late night convenience stores that take passport photos.

That night I packed and figured out the timeline for the next day.  If I got up at 6, I could get in line for the passport office at 6:30.  When it opened at 7:30 I was the first in line, of about 40 people.  I explained my situation to the teller with a good a mix of urgency, optimism, and cheerfulness, but with an underlying panic that was impossible to conceal.

Longer story shorter, my new passport was handed to me at 11:17AM.  I was in a cab at 11:20, and on the bus with all my friends at 11:25.

I cannot believe that worked.   The people at the passport office in downtown Vancouver are wizards, literally wizards.

Bonus: my friend who was in the same predicament got his passport as well and made it to PAX in time for An Afternoon With Patrick Rothfuss.

Onto PAX!  Here I shall share my top 10 games to check out.

#10: Against the Wall

Against the Wall is a first-person platforming-adventure game set on the side of an infinite wall.  You have a weapon/tool equipped to manipulate sections of the wall, pulling them outwards so you can climb on them.  This game looked challenging and fun and I look forward to trying it out. (by Michael Consoli)

#9: Mushroom 11

I only got a quick look at this game but it seemed really neat; you’re herding an ever-growing fungus through a side scrolling maze. (by Itay Keren)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkFGbMYmeT8#t=5m54s

#8: Orbitor

There was a contingent of Australians up on the 5th floor of the main convention hall, near the PAX10, and I had a brief peruse to see what would catch my eye.  Orbiter jumped out at me because of how insanely beautiful it is.  It’s a space game where you orbit stars and moons and blow them up for energy.  The effects are eye catching and the soundtrack is great.  Just a beautiful game that I look forward to playing more of.  (by Tim Stasse)

#7: Aarus Awakening

This game was eyecatching- everything in it started hand drawn on paper.  The concept was neat and challenging- little beasty-dude can teleport to where your mouse cursor is.  I had a tough time picking it up, but that was mostly because I was exhausted by the time I got to it.  This is one game I will be playing again, when I have skills like basic hand-eye coordination, and brain function once again.  A neat game.

#6: Cannon Brawl

Cannon Brawl is out right now.  My husband plays it a lot.  He was very excited to meet the creators of it; he made a shirt and they were pretty thrilled to see how into their game he is.  They signed it for him, and played the game with him.  The creators are super cool, and their game is absolutely fantastic.  Think Worms Armageddon meets tower defence, with real time zeppelin warfare and destructible terrain.  It’s super fun!  Check it out, and get your Cannon Brawl on.

The next three on the list are all about sound.  Visuals and gameplay are great, but mostly it was the soundtrack that drew me in.

#5: Soundodger

It’s like asteroids, but you can bend time.  Oh and also the soundtrack sometimes kicks into reverse, and so does everything else but you.  It’s hella cool, and free to play.

#4: Electronic Super Joy

Sidescrolling 2D platformer that has a kickin soundtrack to accompany you on your perilous journey.  The look and feel is really great.  Bought it when I got home.

#3: Crypt of the NecroDancer

This is a fantastic concept that’s so well implemented I could have played this game all day.  You move to the beat of the music to keep your combo multiplier going, and it rocks my socks.  This had such a crowd around it, mainly because they had a DDR pad hooked up to it, so people had to get their feet moving to the beat to dodge skeletons and fight dragons in this roguelike rhythm dungeon crawler. No picture could do it justice; you have to hear it to believe it, and everyone watching was bobbing their heads along to this awesome game.

#2: BattleBlock Theater

This game was round 2 of the Omegathon, and boy oh boy was it fun to watch.  It’s like Smash Bros, but with more game types, and with the cute factor pumped to 500%.  Customizing your little battle dudes before the fight is super fun; there’s a jillion different heads to get.  I bought it when I got home, and have a stoic lion head as my mug of choice.  Want a party game?  This is the one.  Epic fun times ahead with Battleblock Theatre.

#1: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Holy moly this was fun.  Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime at the top of my list for sure: it’s beautiful, sounds amazing, and is so inventive I fell in love with it immediately.

It’s two player co-op.  You and your partner are manning a ship, and there are four guns, a shield, a giant space lazer, and thrusters, and you have to operate the ship in real time while being assaulted by space aliens, and simultaneously trying to save whole planets that are being attacked.  It’s super fun, and I cannot wait to play more of it.

But wait there’s one more: it was the most hilarious thing to watch and then to play.  Octodad: Dadliest Catch is a game where you play an octopus in disguise as a normal human dad, trying to fake his way through normal human stuff without letting on that he’s an octopus in a suit.  Controlling the jelly-noodly-flip-floppy-cephalopod resulted in constant laughter.  Having to do such mundane things as “Get your daughter the milk” and “Make coffee” resulted in near catastrophe as my flailing tentacles sent things flying around due to my inept control.  It was so, so funny, and I will make everyone that comes into my house play it, so that I can laugh at them.

So that’s *my* PAX10.  PAX11 I suppose.  There were so many games, and even more that I list here that I’m looking forward to.  The final round of the Omegathon was “Spy Party” and I think I’ll get it and play the heck out of it, and I will learn a new meaning of the word “subtlety”.

(My lanyard by the end of the con!)

That’s all for now folks!  Thanks for checking it out.  I hope I’ve inspired you to take a look at a few of these games and see if you like them.

Cheers.

Heidi out.

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“Luka and Iso”- Top 10% in The Nicholl Fellowship!

Hello wonderful blog readers!

I received an email from the Nicholl Fellowship today.

Every year, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences picks five writers and pay them, based on the strength of the script they submitted, to produce another feature length screenplay.

I didn’t make the cut for the Fellowship, but my script scored in the top ten percent!

7,251 entrants, and I’m in the top 10%?  Pretty awesome, but of course, disappointing not to advance.

Ah well, I’m hoping I can find someone out there as excited about the story of the first genetically engineered dragon as I am!  Perhaps this will help me along.  It will make a killer film.

Congratulations to everyone that is advancing.  I’m sure there are some amazing scripts, and how they’ll ever pick just five is completely beyond me!

In other news, I received my second ever royalty cheque!  Seems that A Quick Bite of Flesh is still selling.  Want some zombie flash fiction?  Then this book is forrr yoooouuuu!

I am waiting on an awesome agent for a new book I’d like to see in print.  Paranormal romance/urban fantasy here I come!  I’m well into the sequel already, and hitting short stories out of the park on a daily basis.

I’ll keep at it until- BWA HA HA YOU CAN’T STOP ME

Thanks for stopping by.

Oh what’s that?  This is my 100th post?

Hurrah!

Oh man, if I’ve been this into my small successes so far, when I get my first novel picked up I’m going to be happier than a kitten with a feather.  More excited than a porcupine with a banana.  You do know porcupines love bananas, right?

Anyway, thank you for stopping in and staying with me on this long, long journey to authordom.

Heidi out.

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I’m Still Here


Well, I’m still here.

I’m just keeping on keeping on.  Written another book.  Am having another go at finding an agent for “Luka and Iso”, the tale of the sentient genetically engineered dragon.  I really hope I can get that one represented; the time is right for the story, and it needs to be told.  All the fuforah about GMOs lately is wild.  There’s some great opportunity for marketing, and great potential for cross talk when stories about GMOs and advancements in genetics come up.

Glow in the dark monkeys, anyone?

Meanwhile, my new project is going over well with an army of anonymous beta readers.  It’s nice working with people I don’t know, and that don’t know me; they’re giving me good, honest feedback.  …And a lot of it is positive.  They already want the sequel!

But I’m sticking to my guns about not writing more than one book in a series until the first one gets published.

So I’m starting yet another one.  While I polish the new book, I’m outlining the next, which will be my fifth novel.  A fun sci-fi, inspired by a short story I wrote last year called “The First Gentlemen’s Galactic Scavenger Hunt”.

Short stories continue to be sent out, rejected, accepted.  The latest is in the upcoming “Zombies Gone Wild II”, for which the cover was just sent to me.  I think it’s hilarious.

So that’s me lately.  It’s been interesting trying to temper my least favourite part of the process (trying to find an agent) with my most favourite (writing); the new projects pull me along even as I drag my heels cold-emailing amazing agents who I would absolutely be ecstatic to work with.

Oh, and I’ve levelled up my procrastination skills.  Whenever I finish a major project, there’s a decompression that happens afterwards.  So far it’s been things like fill a sketch book or write a zillion short stories, and my latest: watch all of The Office.  Seriously, I’m almost done.  This has been the least productive of my come-downs, but man is it good.

Thank goodness for the Self Control app, which I use to block out every distraction, but leave the rest of the useful internet free for research.

So, onwards I go.  Book after book, I’m going to just keep ’em coming, until I find an agent that’s into one of them.  And then we’ll really see what I can do.

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My book is coming true before my very eyes…

It is at once exciting and frustrating to see my sci-fi future coming to pass.  Exciting to see how things are progressing down the path I speculated they would- nice to know I can see into the future somewhat correctly sometimes.  Frustrating because, well, once all the things happen, my book isn’t going to be as topical.  I want it out in the wild soon, to stir the pot with all the questions that we’ll have to be asking once things get really serious.

And they are getting serious!  Check it: “Scientists want to bring 22 animals back from extinction.”  DE-Extinction.  I can’t wait!  I know I know, it’s going to be years, decades, before things start actually showing results.  But I’m still pretty excited.

As usual, relevant TED Talk.

And here’s the thread on Reddit about it (ignore all the “comment removed” posts; memes and jokes are simply not tolerated in the science subreddit).

So, I hope I can find someone to help me sell my book, and get it on the shelves, while its content is just starting to make it into the public awareness.  Also, it’d be pretty sweet to have current affairs to help me out in the publicity department…  🙂

Right!  Well, onwards.  I’m going to write a children’s short story tomorrow, one about dragons, for Spellbound.  And then, thinking of the next big project.  Something that’s started to just peek into my conscious thought is this desire to put my fantasy series on the big screen… and I have to resist for now.

…Because I’ve decided not to continue writing anything that could be a series until I sell it.  If I write the first book in a series, as I’ve done twice now, I will leave it be until I can actually publish it, and there’s an audience who wants more.

This is great, it’ll mean I can keep breaking new ground with new ideas and characters, and have the benefit of creating a huge body of work that I could continue at any time.  Once I “make it” I’ll have several series that I could choose to continue if there’s an audience for them.

I leave you with this picture, from another planet!  It absolutely blows my mind that we have something on another planet, and it’s sending us back pictures.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.

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Kells and Reasons for Rejection

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  The Book Of Kells is free on iTunes today.  I don’t know a thing about it, but I will soon enough.  Enjoy!

And today, author Michael J. Sullivan posted some interesting insights from another author, Marion Zimmer Bradley, on Why Stories Get Rejected.  A good read, and something every new author needs to internalize.

I have it down pat by now.  Though I think this can be a problem; this insidious expectation of rejection has effected me in a way I didn’t anticipate.  I have four things that I’m really excited about right now: my novel got a full request at an agency I would love to work with, my screenplay is being considered for the Nicholl Fellowship, as well as a contest to get me into Pitchfest, and also a short story of mine has been shortlisted for an anthology I’m excited for.

This is a lot of excitement.

Usually it’s just a lot of little things, various stories out for various anthologies, and the trickle of rejections come in steady and constant.  No big deal (anymore).

So when I actually have things to be excited for, I realize how oppressed this expectation of rejection was making me.


Sometimes we need to step back to see things more clearly…

The danger of getting excited is that it makes the rejection just that much worse.  I’m finding this creeping into other aspects of my life; I’ve stopped getting excited for movies (movies that I would have gotten excited for in the past!) because of past let downs (not a rejection, but the same feelings are at play).

Last week was the most difficult I’ve found meditation.  My mind kept racing forward to the future, and I’d have to pull it back.  Sit.  Stay.  Not terrible, but it got me to realize just how much I’ve been not been letting myself get excited.

So I’m excited.  Even if none of these four amazing things happen, it feels good to have so much possibility laid out before me.  And even if a single one does happen?  Well damn.  Things are pretty swell.

 

Silly kitty.  My own is hiding under my blankets, scared of the wind.

Right!  So, hope all is well with you, dear reader.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.

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Time to type every word I know: Coffee, Writing, Iron Man, Duck

As you may know, I enjoy participating in the various gift exchanges through Reddit Gifts.  It’s like doing a secret santa, only with thousands of other people, and for specific categories of things.

I was so pleased to open my Coffee Exchange parcel yesterday!  My package came from Macedonia– and contained Turkish coffee!  I tried making a cup this morning, and it was delicious (Without cream?!  Amazing.).  Very flavourful, and unusual.

In writing news, my short story “The First Gentlemen’s Galactic Scavenger Hunt” has been shortlisted for the World Weaver Press anthology, “Far Orbit- Speculative Space Adventures”.  I’d be super happy to see this one in print; I feel like it’s actually a project I’d like to expound upon a bit.  A scavenger hunt in space: what’s not to love?

I have also entered my screenplay in a contest to win tickets to PitchFest, where I would get a chance to hook a studio.  That would be totally mathematical.

Currently, I’m continuing a read-through of my Spell Carriers series, and I’m into the second book.  The first book took me three days, though it would have taken less if I weren’t making edits here and there.  It was a pretty easy read.  Trook Hunters starts off more complex, having had book one to set it up.

Anyway!  Enough ramblings.  What’s important here is seeing how they did the Arc Reactor makeup for Iron Man.

Painting on the latex.

A lot of latex.

A good sport.

Different colours for the different layers.

Airbrushed to make it look real!

They can peel the latex back and make it look like skin.

Final effect: amazing.

And, seeing as I have duck brining in the fridge, this:


:O

Well, I’ll keep you posted.  I hope one of these days to have some truly excellent news for you.  For now, I’ll keep at it.  I know that one day all this work I’m doing will pay off.  I hope it’s soon, but I’m in it for the long haul.  🙂

Cheers guys.

Heidi out.

PS: Leaked Jurassic Park 4 logo!

Posted on

Remove Head from Sand

I get so focused on writing that I forget to see what else is going on.  There’s a ton of great blogs out there, and I don’t read them as much as I should (if you’re reading mine, you have my deepest thanks).

So I was doing some catching up, and found the following:

Robert J. Sawyer is doing a book tour.

Query Letter FAQs!

Patrick Rothfuss had a good video to post about Ira Glass on art (get well soon Mr. Rothfuss!).

And as for me, well, I’ve spent the last three days reading over my first novel, book one in the Spell Carriers series, a fantasy epic.  I am so pleased that it is not terrible!  My writing has evolved, for sure, but it still flows, and holds me in a way that surprises me- to not be able to put down a book that I wrote?  What is this fresh narcissism?  I genuinely enjoy it, and am really relieved to see that it holds up against my newer works.

And it’s the first time I’ve read it in my new program, Scrivener.  I had to teach it all the new words, all the new names.  And that first time I right click a name and say “learn spelling” is rather magical; for I can see into the future of the characters, and know what a journey they have to come, and it’s wonderful.

Characters I introduce in book one go on to have major parts in book two, and to see their conception, when I didn’t even know how great they would become, leaves me glowing.

So yes, reviewing, and removing one’s head from the sand.  I will try and do this more; there’s a lot of great stuff being posted about this great and mad endeavour of writing.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.