On Writing

Shade’s story is finished—for real this time. I wasn’t wholly happy with the ending of the first draft, so I gave it a few days and finally accepted that it needed more work. I did the hard copy edit at the same time and played with titles, none of which I liked until I glimpsed one this morning. I’ll wear it for a day or two and see if it fits as well as I think it does. If so, yay. If not, sigh.

In his most excellent book On Writing, horrormeister Stephen King dispenses a trove of advice on, well, the obvious. I generally shy from how-to books on creativity, since I believe that creativity has no boundaries and so many of these manuals state hard rules as the only way to success. While that may be true in the intellectual world, in my heart, I believe that the artist must follow her instinct and develop her own style unhampered by the fear of not following the formula. I once tried to write a formulaic romance. Into the third chapter, the characters were running off the page in all the wrong directions and I was bored enough to let them. Needless to say, it went no further than those 2.5 chapters. That’s when I decided to write what I want to read rather that what others may want to read. The formula romance market is huge and I could make a killing in the genre, except that I don’t want to write stuff that makes me roll my eyes. When I read a few romance novels in preparation to write my own, my eyes behaved like drops of spilled mercury. I knew what I had to do, and I had a template to ensure that I did it … but I couldn’t make myself or the characters do it.

I have great respect for romance writers. It’s way harder than it looks.

Anyway, On Writing is more autobiographical than instructional, which makes it far more helpful to me than any of the “How to Write Whizbang (Insert Genre Here) Fiction” manuals. One of the hints within is to drop a “finished” project into a desk drawer, ignore it for six weeks, then go back and look it over. If there are flaws—and there will be—that’s when you’ll be able to see them.

Naturally, I don’t wait that long. I buff and polish as I go (big mistake), and if there’s a structural problem, I usually know it right away. The end of Shade, for instance. I had promised myself to get it finished by the end of my Christmas vacation, so at 5:45 p.m. on January 10, 2014, I typed “The End” and breathed a big sigh. I had done it. The story was told.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. It was mostly told. I knew the ending was too abrupt and needed more work to tie up the loose ends—that means more envisioning, imagining, and composing—but I wanted to be finished by the deadline. A stupid self-imposed limit could have resulted in a sub-standard product. As it happens, it only needed half a page more, but I wanted so much to meet my goal (I hate that word except in hockey, and then only when it’s my team scoring one) that I ended the story prematurely. And I knew it. And I tried to deny it. During the course of last week, I made myself feel better by rephrasing the original commitment from “finishing the story” to “finishing the first draft”. It satisfied my ego, which is now only mildly miffed at a short delay in the cool inspection. Ego appeased, I was free to add a couple of vital paragraphs and now I can honestly say:

Shade’s story is finished.

I think.

Back to Work

Shade’s story is finished. I wrote for three solid days and got it done on Friday. A hard copy edit and cool inspection are the next steps before I decide whether to “publish” it; right now I’m caught between letting it go and revising it to death. There’s an odd sense of emptiness when I return to the real world from my own. I was so consumed by the story last week that I was basically useless around the house; I kept dropping things or bumping into Ter or forgetting what I was saying while I was saying it. I’m still kind of useless in those ways, but now it’s because I don’t know what to do with myself.

Fortunately (?!), I’m back to work tomorrow. I won’t say I’m tripping-over-the-moon delighted at the prospect of squeezing back into the 9 to 5, but I can say that my vacation was successful in that I got the break I desperately needed and feel somewhat ready to tackle the challenges of the fourth fiscal quarter. I have a new penguin calendar and a new coffee cup and a whole new bulletin board to fill with pics and quotes to get me through the year. Ter came with me to the office yesterday and helped me to prep it for 2014. This year’s theme is “wouldn’t it be fun to …” and I have a new bunch of coloured gel pens and Sharpies to make it more vibrant. Ter started it off by writing “Dobby was here” in deep purple ink; after I quit laughing, it occurred that I should invite people to scribble their own quotes if they like. My office has more of the playroom than the professional aspect to it anyway. Stuffies and Star Wars figurines will do that.

I am not looking forward to getting up at 6:00 a.m. when I’ve been sleeping until 7:30 these past weeks., but I’ll get over it. My main challenge is Ter, who is so convinced that Monday morning will be a gong show that she’ll unwittingly make it so unless I can use the Force to counter it. Our work environments are so different that I can’t blame her for getting her angry on before she gets there, and while I may envision myself greeting colleagues with enthusiastic vigour, who am I kidding??? I am not a morning person and Mondays can be brutal.

They can be. They don’t have to be. It’s up to me which way mine goes.

Wish me luck.

Going for Gold

Team Canada - 2010

The Canadian men’s Olympic hockey team was named yesterday. No real surprises, a couple of disappointments, and at least one derisive smirk – but while I could go the Leaf fan route and downplay the team’s chances in Sochi, I’ve decided to get fully behind them and cheer until they reach the Finnish line. Did I say Finnish? I meant finish. Silly me; still smarting from the world juniors. Anyway, who knows? Despite naysayers and injuries, past stats and increasingly skilled opposition in the Games, the Canadian guys could very well win gold! They have to believe it going in, else why bother? And we have to believe it, too. Expecting failure is a good way to ensure it … though I hope Carey Price is the starting goalie over “24 second Lou”. Pittsburgh played in Vancouver last night; before the game I wondered if Sidney Crosby would skate up to Luongo and say, “Am I gonna have to save your a** like I did in 2010?” Ter replied that such trash talk wouldn’t be terribly captain-like, and after a short debate about what constitutes unsportsmanlike conduct, she suggested that the classier comment would be something like, “I’ve got your back, buddy.”

Which is why she’s a cut above me in the realm of hockey fandom.

The discussion was moot in any case. Luongo is out with an ankle injury for 1 to 2 weeks, so Price’s chances are looking good. I hope he crashes and burns tonight, though – les Habs are in Philadelphia and the Flyers are on a roll. They beat New Jersey last night, 3 - 1 in regulation.

In other news, I’m on pace to finish the first draft of Shade’s story before I go back to work in five days. I have a few significant scenes and the ending left to do. I’m hoping the former will lead the latter into writing itself, as it’s not immediately clear to me how this story will be resolved. It’s taken me months to get this far, so obviously patience is the key. Patience, and me trusting the muse. I don’t even know what to call it – a romance, a mystery, a fantasy, or what. No title yet, either. Tiny details designed to distract me from the greater work, so before I get hung up on the trivial, I’d better focus on the main event.

Kind of like Team Canada will have to do for the Olympics.

Musings

My first writerly Christmas tree ornament!

No story this week. I have yet to decide which way to go with the next serial. I’d like to post something new, but haven’t got anything new to post. We’ll see what I can do with two more weeks of vacation.

Now that the seasonal festivities have ended, I can devote more attention to Shade. I’ve felt him drifting in the mental background; given time and some solitude, I’ll get his story in writing. There’s a song called “Breathe Me” on Sarah Brightman’s latest album that is so powerful it might be him singing in her voice. Often I will hear a lyric that suggests a character in such condensed detail, I am compelled to expand on the theme and bring him to life. Strangely, Shade himself has not caused any real trouble, though he isn’t as I had originally envisioned him. The other characters are starting to come, crossing wires and messing up the backstory as they emerge. That means some rewriting, some relocating, and some plain – I hate this most of all – deleting. I have yet to accept that it’s okay to write a thousand words and use none. This story will be worth the blood and angst, I think. It’s only that it’s been so long since I’ve tackled a whole new cast in a whole new world and every step I take seems to be on quicksand.

Cristal and her plastic Pony-driving lover are on indefinite hold. Her story seems to be more of a comedy, which is brutally difficult to write well and is not my literary forte. At least Shade isn’t leading me too far off my usual twisty-turny-tragic-romance path. His darkness seems a good fit for winter writing. Maybe Cristal’s story will be less daunting come spring/summer.

As for the novel … kill me now.

I also want to revisit the Cassandra series from a dozen years back, to get that into some sort of shape and resolve the calamities that were left hanging when Lucius took over my life.

Then there’s the Julian series to a) tidy up and b) continue in the present day.

Once the novel is done, the next in that series awaits, too. So much to write, so little time in which to write. I am my own worst enemy in that regard. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but perhaps I should start. In 2014, I will write more!!!

Getting to Know You

During a mindless moment at the office last week, I clicked over to Chuck Wendig’s blog and discovered a lengthy post on character development. It was an informative and somewhat entertaining read (I find him unnecessarily crude, but his message often rings true), especially because I am currently disentangling Cristal from Shade and trying to get a handle on each of their stories. Nicole is also struggling with the voices of her latest fiction, so something must be in the literary collective consciousness to have inspired Chuck’s piece on characters.

As usual, I agree with some of what he says and disagree with the rest. Personally, writing is more about what feels good than what the experts advise. Creativity doesn’t have rules – or it shouldn’t. The business side insists on them, however, and that’s as frustrating as a natural talent being critiqued by an arts degree. I know someone who is a published writer in the real world, and she spends a lot of time adhering to editors, agents and pollsters to get where she wants to go. I envy her in some ways, respect her in all ways, and honestly wish her the greatest success – which I believe she will eventually have because she works so diligently at it. But I wonder, where in the process does she have any fun?

I digress. Back to character development. For me, a new character is like meeting a stranger. Either you click or you don’t. If you don’t click, then the relationship won’t work and you should each seek satisfaction with someone else. I cannot conjure a character from thin air. To me, that’s like building a robot – you’ll have the physical details in place and maybe some personality programmed into it, but at the deepest level, he will only ever be two-dimensional. Great for a formulaic genre, but not for me. I want feeling. I want emotion, conflict and drama. I want to bleed with my characters. I want to soar with them, love with them, hate with them, fight with them, die with them, give birth with them. I want to be scared with them, of them, and for them. I can’t do that with a checklist. Nope, characters come to me fully-formed and full of mystery. They know who and what they are. My job – my pleasure – is to discover who and what they are as I write about them. It’s slower than hammering out the top ten qualities and manipulating them into situations, but I prefer it despite my whining at how little I get done in a day.

Shade began as a cheerful sort, a bit mischievous and a lot mysterious – when Cristal was telling the story. When I switched to his point of view, I got a completely different take on him, and that’s how I knew he and she actually feature in two different stories. Now that I’ve split them up, she is still befuddled by a mischievous mystery man, and Shade is free to tell his different, darker tale. I didn’t know any of this when I started my angel story all those weeks ago. I learned it as I wrote, first about her, then about him. The secondary characters are introduced by the main. I write what I see and hear. I write what I am told, and if I have a question, I ask the character. What happened then? Why did you—? Who said—? Sometimes the answer surprises me, but I must trust that it’s accurate.

Only one character has ever outright lied to me. For many many years, I believed something that everyone else in the story had to believe, and that one character was responsible for duping us all. Her argument? “The scribe had to be deceived lest the secret be imperiled.” In short, I’m the weakest link!

Insulting as it is, the revelation presents grand potential for a new story down the road … when I am ready to let someone die.

Some stories I don’t want to tell.

There might be something to the cardboard cutout character after all.

Writer's Conundrum

A Scribe’s Skirmish

writer’s conflict

the impossibility

of writing with

magnificence

contrasted with

the impossibility

 

of

 

abandoning

the challenge

writer’s conundrum

            © Nicole D. Myers 2013

What do you do when neither version is working? You dump the whole project. Except that there is something in a writer’s makeup that refuses to quit.

My personal poet laureate, the exceptional Nicole D. Myers, wrote this poem a few weeks—yes, weeks—ago, and has kindly given her consent for me to share it here. I asked because dang if she didn’t nail the universal quandary square on the coconut. I loved the poem from the get-go (it’s posted on my office bulletin board) and came face to face with an example of “the conundrum” last weekend.

The angel story isn’t working. Shifting perspective temporarily fooled me into believing otherwise, but as Ter observed following my latest grouchy rant, I have emerged from my room unhappy and dissatisfied each time I’ve tangled with it. She recommended that I bag it for the nonce, adding that I can always go back to it when the time is right. The story is good. It’s just not meant to happen right now. So I skulked back to my room, opened chapter 18 of my stalled Castasian novel, and actually finished it (the chapter, not the novel). At least I worked on something, even if it evolved from admitting defeat on another count.

Only admitting defeat does not come easily to this writer. While I was distracted with the tale of Reijo and Jannika that afternoon, the other part of my brain was pondering the problem with Cristal and Shade. It is a good story. Why the %^$#*&^ isn’t it effing working????

The answer came, as usual, at bedtime.

It’s not one story. It’s actually two. Two different freaking stories about angels. This explains why Cristal and Shade in her version are completely different from Cristal and Shade in his version. I mean it. The characters in one POV (point of view) are polar opposites of the characters in the other, hence my garment-rending angst over getting anywhere. Clearly I have four characters using two names. I’ll fix that forthwith, but the relief I felt at discovering the potential for a whole new pair of stories set in this angelic realm was akin to the relief of discovering that the headache you’ve endured for weeks is finally gone.

The impossibility of writing either with magnificence remains. Okay, so does the challenge of crafting two separate stories when I’d anticipated a single piece. If there’s any good news here, it’s that I have a whole new world in which to play ... assuming I can relax enough to accept what comes when it comes and quit forcing it when it won’t.

Writer’s conundrum indeed.

Sunrise, Sunset

Sunrise September 13. 2013

 
Ter sent me out last night to take pictures of the sunset (which I did) and since today is my last day of these holidays, it seemed an appropriate subject for the final daily post here at the Rebellion.
 
'Course, I had to take a couple of pics of the sunrise to go with it. Shooting into the sun can be a bit tricky, though - I really like this one, but the angle makes it look like it was taken from a rocking boat and the sun itself didn't make it wholly into the frame:
 

 
The mist created a neat effect, eh? Talk about shooting through a filter.
 
Last night's sunset was far more generous. It let me play with a few more camera settings:
 

 Automatic setting - the Canon did the work

vibrant blues

 

vibrant colours, period

toy camera (good for portraits, too)

 

This morning, I have plans to continue with Shade - he took me on an unexpected trip yesterday and I want to see how it ends before I quit for the nonce. I normally write for 2.5 days straight before needing a break; by the second half of the third day, my brain is too tired to create properly, so this afternoon, I shall hie myself to the village to collect my allowance (it's payday, yay!!), hit the g/f bakery and get some more of that really good veggie rice pasta Ter cooked up the other night, then maybe treat myself not to a chai, but to a frozen yogurt at the newly-opened Qoola shop. I can sit outside and scribble a card tag to Nicole. It's a nice, late summer day. I must take advantage of it. Writing is so absorbing that the world will pass me by if I don't pull out of my own head once in a while.

I'm happy with what I have accomplished, though. Big strides with the angels, growing affection for my protagonist, lots of Ru time, and much fun pointing my loose Canon. So, on that cheery note, the sun sets on my writing holiday:

Going once...

 

going twice ...

 

going ...

 

... going ...

 

gone

With love,

Breakthrough

Seriously No Sprinkles

As per usual, the breakthrough with the new story happened 12 days into my holiday. I’ve written two false starts, thirty pages of backstory and a bunch of notes (unheard of for me) and finally, finally, yesterday I got traction. I still don’t know how it will go or where it will end, but it’s going and at last I am in a space where I’m able to go with it.

Same thing happened last May, with Jake. This one in no way will be finished before I return to work, but now it has teeth.

Phew.

My third chai latte comes from Serious Coffee, two blocks down from the Cook Street Starbucks. The shop’s on a par with Moka House in that it is also locally owned and the chai is equally as good as yesterday’s … sans sprinkles. That’s the one (trivial) complaint about Serious Coffee, a chronic condition that has led to us code-naming the place “No Sprinkles”. If I was truly serious about coffee, doubtless sprinkles would be frowned upon anyway. Their chai is foamier than Moka House’s and it cost .50 cents less than yesterday’s, which cost less than Bucky’s, so Serious Coffee is the better deal for a comparable chai ... if you don't care about sprinkles.

I also noticed while awaiting my drink that they have poetry/prose readings and open mic on the third Monday of each month. I know what Nicole would say: “Ru, check it out!” I just may do – coincidentally, the next session is this Monday at 7:15. Come early, get a drink and hang out in the back corner to see what evolves. I’ve got the email address at least; I’ll get on their mailing list for sure.

In other news, a nearly-100 year old message in a bottle was found on the beach in Tofino this week. It took almost a century to bob its way up from the San Francisco/Seattle shipping route (it probably came by way of Australia). The year is 1906 as seen through the glass, and the ship’s name and location was named, so research is in progress by the fellow who found it. I mention it mostly because Ter glanced at me and wryly quoted her own message to be discovered in 2113:

“September 2013 – Roberto Luongo is still a Vancouver Canuck!”

Bwahahahahahaha! A little hockey humour to warm us up for the 2013/14 NHL season, the exhibition series of which begins on Monday.

It’s been a long summer.

Chai du Jour

3.5 of 5

Moka House this morning, strategically located across from the Starbucks in the village. They don’t do a chocolate chai, so I sprinkled chocolate powder on top of a regular chai and proceeded to sip and scribble. They brew it from Mighty Leaf tea but they foam it up thick and creamy, so compared to Bucky’s and Teavana, I give it a 3.5. Tomorrow I’ll see how Serious Coffeeʼs stacks up against the competition. 

While I was sipping, I made notes galore about the angelsʼ realm. I had a blazing revelation yesterday and, as usual, nothing is as I suspect. I had to handwrite it, though, before I forget anything important. This story has got me in a bit of a tizzy given that a) itʼs coming out of sequence, which wrecks my neatly ordered method of starting at the start and writing through to the end, and b) the realm with which I am dealing is wilder than I imagined it would be. Not that I had much to go on before I began; angels donʼt get a lot of air time in Sunday school. Aside from delivering the occasional heavenly message or dropping off a set of golden plates for translation, they were pretty much left unaddressed … which frees me to write what my characters describe. All my children are interesting, but I am developing a special fondness for Shade. He is literally caught between two worlds and has been a party to this one long enough to become fearful of an inevitable outcome, yet his heart drives him toward Cristal in spite of it. I donʼt yet know what the point of the story will be, but I found this scrawled in my notes and it seems to capture the essence of the piece: 

They cannot be together

but they must be together

because they are lovers

from the dawn

of time

Greys of Shade

There’s a change in plan with the angels. I may have been wrong in accepting that Cristal was going to tell the story. It started out okay with her narrating, but somewhere along the line it went sideways and I’ve been unable to get it back on track. I hate when this happens. Not only is it a confidence-rattler, it’s frustrating as heck and only serves to stress me out. Seeking a fix has made my head hurt. I’ve driven Ter as nuts with it as I’ve driven myself. I set it aside for a weekend (but couldn’t stop fretting about it), and came thissssss close to bagging the project entirely … especially when another voice popped up with another story, shoot me now … but a possibility occurred to me on the walk home last night and now I’m pumped again. 

I’m going to switch the perspective to tell the story through Shade. Ironic, considering that he introduced the concept in the first place, and proof that one should follow the initial prompt and not over-think it. Over-thinking will often lead in a willfully wrong direction. 

Anyway, in considering his perspective, I’ve struck a goldmine of information about him, his place in this world, his role in the “other” world, and how he fits into Cristal’s world. I’m seeing dimensions to his character that I couldn’t grasp in hers. I’m intrigued, if not yet in love, and it’s looking like fun again. 

Soooo, after taking this long weekend off to celebrate my birthday, I’m on vacation for two weeks. A writing holiday? You better you bet.

A Touch of Shade

I don't know who owns the copyright on this,
but it reminds me of my dark angel so copyright be hanged

I still haven’t nailed a surname for Curtis, but I’m getting warmer. What I have nailed is my first deleted scene – five pages in and I’m already cutting up the content. This was actually the second scene, but after writing the fourth, I see that it doesn’t work given what happens later on. I like the piece, though, so I thought I’d put it up here as a bit of a teaser. Cristal is walking home after experiencing some powerful déjà vu and discovers that she has a shadow …

ó

Drawn off course, my eye caught a shadowy movement across the street. The misty twilight made it hard to identify features, but I recognized both his build and the contraction under my ribs. Seized by unaccountable elation, I streaked toward him.

He tensed as I left the curb. A car came from nowhere and would have—should have—hit me had I not veered back the way I’d come. I stood on the sidewalk with my heart pounding so hard that my vision shook. The near miss rattled me into shouting. “Are you following me?”

“Just making sure you get home okay,” he answered from his side of the street.

“Who are you?”

His grin glowed like a night-blooming flower. “Your guardian angel.”

“I don’t have an angel.”

“Looks like you could use one.”

“Are you applying?”

“What if I am?”

“You blew the interview when that car almost hit me.”

“It didn’t hit you, though, did it?”

I couldn’t believe it. I was arguing about angels with a stranger. “What do you want?”

“I’m just making sure you get home okay,” he repeated.

“I can make it from here.”

“You’re sure?”

I waved an ambiguous hand. “It’s not far.”

He nodded and rotated slowly on his heel. The movement was so powerful, so eloquently graceful, that imagining wings was easy. They’d be dark wings, I thought, and slender, black like his hair, with a sapphire sheen in the moonlight. I watched him walk away and felt myself begin to worry that he wasn’t joking.

What's In a Name?

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Not so, Will. A name can cause a problem by word association if the author isn’t careful. Case in point: my angel story.

The protagonist’s name is Cristal – named for her father’s favourite champagne. (Her father was a rock star in the 80s so I suspect that particular libation may have had something to do with her conception.) She came with her name; I didn’t have to hunt around for it.

Her father came with a first name – Curtis. His surname eludes me, but I know it starts with a hard C or a K. The first option was King, which would absolutely fit his persona, but there’s already a musician named Curtis King and while I doubt it’s copyrighted, I want to respect that someone else in the field already owns it. Next up: Clarke. Yeah, “Curtis Clarke ˮ has a nice ring to it … but then I realized that his daughter’s nickname is “Cristiˮ (“Crisˮ didn’t work for either of us), and even though she wasn’t given her father’s name at birth, there are still some folks who would automatically assume that her name is Cristal, or Cristi, Clarke.

If you live in BC, and if you know me at all, you probably know where this is going …

The Premier of BC happens to be named Christy Clark. Spelled differently, sounds exactly the same. I refuse to saddle any of my characters with a name that instantly sends me to a blood pressure situation, ergo “Clarkeˮ has to go. The story is going so well, though, that I’ve been forced to type a placebo where Curtis’s surname would be until I can figure out what it actually is, and then I’ll do a global replace. Bother.

My hero, George R.R. Martin, once told a story about a famous sci-fi author who named no characters until after the story was complete; she would simply type “Name Aˮ for the hero, “Name Bˮ for the baddie and so on. She would plug in the names later. George couldn’t get his mind around that and neither could I. Names are important, not only for identifying the character, but for developing it as well. People really do become their names; at least in my stories, they do.

I wish Curtis himself would be more helpful here, but he’s not giving me an inch. I guess it doesn’t matter that much to him, but it will drive me crazy until I figure out what he signs in an autograph …

Next!

It’s true that creativity breeds creativity. Halfway through anything, I’ll be struck by a spark of something else – a voice, a scene, a plot portent or a title that has nothing to do with what’s currently underway. I generally spend the last half of a story fighting to finish it. I’m a pro at starting something new, but my computer is like a quilter’s shop: lots of scraps lying around that could each contribute to a greater whole if only the quilter could stick with it until it’s done.

I spent three quarters of last weekend dithering. Once I’d polished “Between the Storms”, it was time to let Jake go and decide which thread to follow next. I had three options:

1) go back to volume 7 of “Fixed Fire”, presently on hiatus because a bunch of short stories were clamouring offstage ... and I’d written myself into a corner from which I could not readily extricate myself. However, I have waited for ten years and six volumes to write it and it deserves to be attended;

2) pursue the urban vampires and see if my plan to update it as per “Finis?” gets traction; or

3) confront the angels.

Hm. Option 1 is peopled by characters I’ve known for a decade, who are as beloved as my own family – foibles and all – in a world where I’m very comfortable.

Option 2 is peopled by characters I knew before I started FF, and the vampire lore employed by that series is also familiar. Plus, I’m excited at the notion of reworking it to fit the present day.

Option 3 is peopled by total strangers in a world I know nothing about, whose pasts and futures involve a whole lot of unknown. When I consider option 3, I freeze like the proverbial deer in headlights.

I chose option 3 because it scares me to death. An entirely blank canvas. A whole new world. Strangers in my head. A continuous bout of who, where, what, why and when? Yup, I’m terrified, but I’ve rarely felt so inspired. One thing I can say for sure is that this one will be as twisted with passion, conflict and darkness as all that’s preceded it.

It’s my style, man.

The Importance of Tea (Part 1)

"Creativitea"

I started a new story last weekend. Currently untitled, it stars a new cast of characters and is told by the female lead. (This surprised me. I had imagined that Shade would do the talking, but hey, I’m merely the scribe.)

Getting to know a new character is awkward at first, so to help break the ice, I consider tea. Perusing a pathetically diminished stock, I determined that nothing on hand would do for my new project because what I have is either already spoken for by someone else, or it’s just inappropriate.

Of course, I don’t actually have tea with my characters. I have it for them. It puts me in touch with the voice I’m writing – for one it’s vanilla oolong, for another it’s pure Japanese green. It’s kind of fun, in fact; I sat with the Davids Tea spring list on Saturday morning and pondered the possibilities for Cristal (named for her father’s favourite champagne). It didn’t take long; she chose Gold Rush for its sweet butterscotchy undertone. So of course, because I can never buy just one flavour, I picked up some Vanilla Orchid oolong at the same time. I brewed the latter because I wanted to try it (for someone else, how inconsiderate of me); Cristal was okay with it, but I think she’ll really open up when I brew the one she wanted.

I reckon at some point Ter will know which story I’m writing simply by which tea I’m drinking.

And in This Corner ...

I saw it on a form at work and thought, Cool name for a …

A what? A vampire? No.

A vampire hunter? No.

A hit man? No.

A spy? No.

Well, what then??

An angel.

Oh, perfect. I know nothing about angels. Beyond the usual, I mean. Winged messengers from God. Naked cherubs who sit on clouds and pluck harps all day. Clarence Oddbody doing good to earn his wings. This means I have to do research. Yuk.

Wait a minute. Research could mess with the story. Why not let him tell it the way he knows it and see where it goes? I might learn something. I learned about my vampires this way. (My vampires are a little different from everyone else’s.) My cool inspector and I held a jam session last night, during which so many pieces fell into place that I am devoting the rest of this weekend to working with this story. I’ve no idea how long it will run or how it will end, but I write because I want to see what happens.

His name, by the way, is Shade.