Paging Inspiration

Still no spike on the Inspir-O-Meter. My online haunts have been quiet, too. I visit a few blogs almost daily and this past week, no one has been posting much of anything. Either everyone is writing for real or life in general has distracted them. It happens—the latter more often than the former, I fear, but there you go. One simply has to roll with it. At least I’m not climbing the walls or fretting my innards to fiddlestrings over not knowing what to do next. My attitude adjustment is proceeding nicely in that regard.

When none of my regulars are around, I swing over to see what Chuck Wendig is saying at www.terribleminds.com. Earlier this week, he posted a lengthy dissertation (one might call it a diatribe) about the pros/cons of self-publishing which was interesting but not terribly helpful in that my head ain’t there at present; however, on Wednesday he featured a guest blogger named JC Hutchins who wrote about writing in a way that resonated like an Oriental gong.

Writing will drive you crazy. By the same token, stay with it, do not give up, and for the sake of all that is holy, do not abandon an idea. Put it on hold if you must. It might be years before you can pick it up again, but pick—it—up. It was an awesome post (read it here) that struck me for a reason:

Reijo.

I have longed to write a romance for Reijo since 2005. He is easily the most poetic character I have ever met, more so than Julian because Reijo is truly the pristine white knight of yore. In my hands, of course, he has suffered mightily; he’s not near as pure as he was when he started, but he’s been through the mill and if anyone deserves a happy ending, it’s him. After six volumes in the Fixed Fire series, book 7 is it. Reijo’s happy ending, the story I waited half a decade to write.

I finally started it in 2011. Started it and stopped it, moved house, started it again in 2012, moved house again, stopped it again, got distracted by Sian, Julian, Comfortable Rebellion, Jake and, most recently, Shade. I’ve been sitting on a half-written novel for going on three years, a novel I have dreamed of writing yet appear to have done everything in my power to avoid completing. In truth, the entire series got out of control; it took over my life in 2002 and my life has been fighting to reclaim me ever since. It’s tough being the bone in a tug of war, I’ll tell you, and while this sounds a lot like whining … well, it is. I think it’s just dawned on me that I want to pick up Reijo’s romance and finish it before I am distracted by anything else. I can entertain new ideas and stash away scenes and little conversations for future reference, but he must be my priority.

So get on it, Ru. Write Reijo’s happy ending. Really. You know his world better than your own; how hard can it be?

Pick—it—up.

Paper Chase

Nicole and I play card tag. One of us writes a greeting card and sends it to the other, who promptly (most of the time) replies with another card. It’s one of my greatest pleasures to spend a lunch break sipping ridiculously expensive tea and composing a literary snapshot to my propinquitous (?) poet. Equally joyful is finding an envelope bearing my address in her flashy handwriting when I get home from work. Neither of us has any trouble finding blank cards with cool motifs, but in the event when a “real” letter is warranted, I, at least, am pretty well hooped.

I spent two days last week on the hunt for writing paper. Nothing special; just a pad of six-by-nine in a pretty colour with matching envelopes. I hit office supply stores, art supply shops, paper shops (yes, paper shops), and the downtown Hallmark store, and the closest thing I could find to what I wanted was a heavier-weight 8.5 by 11 in soft gold that was probably meant for laser printing or scrapbooking or drywalling because, short of special-ordering personalized stationery from a highfalutin print shop, ordinary paper for the purpose of handwritten correspondence is extinct in Victoria. An online search rendered similarly dismal results. Nobody stocks quality writing paper anymore. What is a correspondence artist to do?

Well, this one settled for the gold leaf. It turned out to be appropriate, given that I was writing a rave review for Nic’s latest short story—a riveting epic rivaling any of mine for number of pages. The author deserved a “real” letter, written in my illegible scrawl as evidence of my enthusiastic response to her effort. Ink from a pen is more personal and heartfelt than ink blurped from a printer cartridge, even if the font on the latter is easier on the eyes than my cramped and crooked handwriting. The organic nature of putting pen to paper makes it a more meaningful act; love and praise and admiration flow from my heart to my hand through my pen and thus into the very fibres of the paper itself. I become part of the correspondence so when Nic receives it, she can feel my energy as it was when I expressed it. The same applies when I hear from her—before my brain even interprets them, I can tell whether she was bubbly as champagne or flat as old ginger ale by the slant and size of her handwritten characters. Knowing that she handled the paper before sending it on its way brings her a little bit closer, too. Though she is undeniably Nicole when presented in Arial font, I just don’t get the same warmth from an email.

Whining aside, I did find a pad of strawberry-ice-cream-pink notepaper that would have suited perfectly, had strawberry-ice-cream-pink envelopes been available. They weren’t, so I perused the loose paper section in hope of a match among the errant envelopes. Colour, yes; size, no. &$%#.

I bought the paper anyway. It might be worth something someday.

Writer Without a Cause

Being stuck between projects is like being stuck in an airlock. I’ve returned from one world and am awaiting entry to the next, but the doors are jammed on either side so all I can do is wait for inspiration to rescue me.

Time spent not writing seems wasted, but is it? I’ve wasted equally precious Sundays writing complete crap, emerging grouchy and frustrated from my room with x-number of substandard paragraphs to fuel my ire. Better to admit I’ve got nuttin’ at the start than force the Muse and end up with worse than nuttin’. Is it writer’s block? Could be—though I prefer to take the advice of Professor Ekkles and accept that writing is simply not meant to happen at this moment. It’s a Zen challenge because Sunday is pretty much the only day of the week when I can write from dawn ’til dusk, but if you don’t like the way something looks, change the way you look at it.

I may not be writing, but I can still be creative. Being creative doesn’t mean having a measurable output at the end of the day, either. I read more when I’m not writing. I listen to more music, take more walks, and do more pondering. (I don’t call it meditating because pondering doesn’t put me to sleep.) I nurture the Muse by poring over poems and paintings, by watching movies and concert videos, and, I confess, by revisiting my own work. It’s remarkably helpful to read something you wrote a year ago (or more); you can either see how much you’ve improved or be amazed at how much better you were than you thought. I usually see room for improvement because I am still evolving. What I wrote then I would write differently now, as what I write now will be written differently in the future. One thing is certain: the day I reach my potential is the day I quit writing forever.

“Black and Blonde” Part 1

He saw her come in from his regular place at the end of the bar: petite, pretty, deceptively delicate to the naked eye. He would have disregarded her except that his eye caught something incongruent with her china doll appearance and, even at a distance, it chilled him.

She had a hunter’s eyes.

He ordered another shot. His throat clenched too late to block the whiskey, and the booze burst like a Molotov cocktail in his belly. By the time he was able to grab a full breath, she had seen him and was coming his way.

He made himself be interested in the muted boxing match on the TV above the bar, sipped his beer and ordered a third shot. When he felt her slip onto the stool next to his, he didn’t turn his head when he spoke.

“Sorry, sister; that spot’s reserved.”

She didn’t speak. She parked an elbow on the bar and stared so intently at his profile that his cheek started to burn. Irked, he let his gaze slide sideways. Pretty at a distance, pretty up close. He had never seen skin so pure. But her eyes disturbed him, deterred him from meeting them. He sent his gaze back to the TV and tried again.

“I said that spot’s reserved.”

She leaned in to whisper. “I know what you are.”

Time hiccoughed. He downed another shot. “You don’t know a damn thing.”

She leaned so close that her breath misted his ear. “I saw you kill that girl.”

The beer went sour in his mouth. He swallowed gingerly, taking care to stay cool on the surface while his mind scrambled to save him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you want to take the chance?”

He turned his head for a good look at her. God, she was pretty. Delicious, even. Creamy skin, honeyed hair with strawberry lights, lashes too long to be fake adorning Arctic blue eyes. Her bones were bold but fragile. It wouldn’t take much to pluck her from his paw.

“If you saw me do the girl, you’re the one taking the chance,” he said.

She smiled, pleased to have his full attention. “I don’t think so,” she replied, settling back on her barstool. “See, if anything happens to me, you’re busted.”

He frowned. “I don’t know you.”

“No,” she agreed, “but I know you. I’ve been watching you for weeks, making notes, taking pictures. I’ve got quite the dossier on you, Mr. Black.”

His frown deepened to a scowl. This was great; just what he needed. An amateur P.I. with an attitude culled from vintage cop shows on cable TV. “What do you want?”

“I need your help.”

He stared at her, waiting with thinning patience for more information. His own eyes could shock the socks off a ghoul, but he kept his sunglasses on, hoping that no eyes at all would be enough to shake her confidence.

She glanced at the bartender as if estimating her chances of being rescued, but Black was a regular and she wasn’t. She would get the heave for pestering patrons before anyone else was tossed. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”

“Nope,” he answered, gesturing for another shot. “You wanna talk, talk. I’m listening.”

Now that she had him, she seemed unsure of what to do with him. The bartender put his drink before him and looked inquiringly at the blonde. She shook her head. “You’ve got to order something, lady,” she was told.

“I do not. I’m talking with this gentleman, so if you’ll excuse us …”

The bartender looked at Black. “She bothering you?”

Black shook his head. “Bring her a beer.”

The bartender moved to comply. Black knocked back his whiskey and picked up his pint. The blonde watched him curiously, studying him up close at last. It was hard to ignore those witchy eyes. She was making him nervous. He didn’t like that. He had the awful feeling that she was telling the truth. She did know what he was.

So why wasn’t she screaming?

“Look, sister, I got nothing to say to you. You came to me, so get on with it or get lost. Your call.”

She turned to confront the foaming glass on the bar. He watched with grim amusement, waiting for her to confirm his suspicion. She picked up the glass, started to bring it to her lips, then set it down again. Black smirked. Definitely not a beer drinker. He showed her the way by draining his own glass in a series of deep swallows, then crashing the glass to the bartop with a chunky thunk.

“I didn’t take you for a lush,” she said.

“I’m not. I just like the taste.”

She restrained a disdainful twitch of her little nose. “I’m surprised. I thought you were restricted to liquid protein.”

“You’re starting to annoy me, lady. You’ve got two minutes before I get up and walk out that door. Make ’em count.”

Again, that tremulous uncertainty. She fingered the condensation on her beer glass, her eyes aimed at but not focused on the silvery beads. She wasted thirty of her hundred and twenty seconds preparing a speech she should have had ready when she came in off the street. Black used those seconds to observe the play of light in her streaky blonde hair. It was the closest thing to sunlight he had seen in ages.

“My man died six months ago,” she finally said, speaking to her glass. Her voice came so softly that even Black’s hyper-sensitive hearing barely heard it. “The police ruled it out as suicide, but it wasn’t. He was murdered. By a vampire.” She shot him a quick glance, looking for reaction.

He gave her none. He kept his face neutral as he watched a spiderweb of cracks threaten her composure. She tried to stay brave, but her eyes lost some of their ferocity to a flicker of grief neglected. He wanted to accuse her of being crazy, but she wasn’t crazy. She was bent on avenging her man’s murder. Others might think her certifiable, but Black didn’t.

He got up from his seat, digging into a pocket for cash to settle the tab. He pulled out a crumpled fifty and left it on the bar. “Let’s walk,” he said.

The rain had stopped, leaving the world slick and shiny under harsh streetlights. A few errant drops blew on the breeze that lifted his hair from his shoulders and stirred the blonde’s at her throat. She wore it short and fluffy, the perfect frame for those brazen cheekbones. He had no inclination to smooth it with his hands.

“Do you believe me?” she asked when they had walked a block in silence.

“I believe your man is dead.”

“And the rest?”

He said nothing. Small as she was, she walked with authority and he found it hard to keep pace with her. Her cheeks had come up pink in the rainwashed cold. She smelled of citrus and almonds. Sweet.

They walked ten city blocks, leaving the bar district for the park. It wasn’t late—not quite midnight—and people were about, in couples or clusters, strolling hand in hand or hanging out in bunches, stopping for gourmet coffee or harassing passersby for the fun of it. Black disliked crowds of any ilk, but she wasn’t letting him steer her into isolation. She knew what he was, all right, and she wasn’t taking any chances.

“I want you to find the one who did it,” she said at last.

“You mean the vampire?”

“Yes. You can do it. You know where to look.”

Black snorted. “Do I?”

“I think you do.”

“So tell me why I should.”

“I’ve got cash,” she said.

He eyed her sideways. “You don’t dress like it.”

“I had to dress down to fit in with your environment.”

“You mean the whores and the drunks and the druggies.”

The truth made her squirm, but she ploughed ahead with courage born of desperation. “I know you can use the money, you can name your price. Just say you’ll help me.”

He didn’t care what inspired it; her audacity angered him. “You’ve got some nerve, sweetheart, coming to me like this, accusing me of God knows what and adding the insult of assuming I need the money bad enough to play along. I’m sorry that your man offed himself and you can’t get past it, but I’m telling you that the help you need is not the help you think I can give you. Now, blow.”

She stood her ground. “I do know what you are, Mr. Black, and I know you can find the one I’m looking for. You have to help me.”

“I don’t have to do anything for you,” he tossed over his shoulder.

“You’re wrong, Mr. Black.” She hurried to catch up to him, grabbing at his sleeve to stop him in his tracks. He scowled at her but she refused to back off. “That dossier I mentioned? It’s in a safe deposit box, but I’ve kept a few items with me to help with my case.” She rummaged in her shoulder bag as she spoke. Black watched her with growing alarm, beginning to suspect that she might have what it took to extort him into helping her.

He was right. She did have what it took: a handful of photographs taken on high speed film through a zoom lens. A stop action, frame by frame account of him and a runaway teen dealing drugs and death. He remembered the incident well: a starving child mad for junk and him mad for the child, each taking one after the other; a closeup of his license plate and the final nail in the proverbial coffin—the girl unconscious with open wounds in her throat.

“I didn’t kill her,” he said quietly.

“You didn’t have to,” she replied. “The drugs finished her for you.”

He glared at her through tinted lenses. “You’ve got more like these?”

“Like I said, I’ve been tailing you for weeks.”

“And there’s no point in doing you because a letter has been left with someone you trust, someone you’ve instructed to open the letter if anything happens to you. Right?”

She smiled. A pretty smile, straight, white and dimpled. An angel’s smile capped by glacier eyes. “You could try and find that person, I suppose, but if you have to look for someone, why not look for the one who won’t get you killed?”

He looked at the pictures again, flipping through them to make the images dance. Cliché or not, she had done her homework. He handed the pictures back with a piece of advice.

“Don’t call me ‘mister’.”

to be continued ...

“Black and Blonde” (Preface)

 

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Without it, I would never have been invited to become a member of the 21^st Century Poets—an online group of writers who started a forum wherein we posted bits and pieces, chatted back and forth, and generally communed with others of our ilk. It was a small group, more of a cluster, really, but boy, did we jam up cyberspace with our bounty. The forum was a safe place to exchange ideas, ask for reviews, assistance, advice, and assurance on things we had already done, and experiment with things we wanted to try. It was the most convivial, supportive, and creative group I have ever been a party to, and I miss them all—except Nicole, who was a founding member and remains my sister in propinquity—dearly. Nic might even remember this story, posted in installments as I wrote it, with neither revisions nor any idea of what was going to happen next.

 

At the time, I was writing the Julian stories and watching reruns of Miami Vice. Ter and I have all five seasons on DVD, since we were too busy living life on Friday nights to be home for the series in its heyday. It was more inspiring without commercial breaks, anyway. I adore what Don Johnson did with Sonny Crockett, and since I am usually inspired by actors, rock stars or both, I decided it would be fun to write a vampire with attitude.

 

Enter Ariel Black, a blood hunter as different from Julian Scott-Tyler as burlap is from cashmere. He’s cynical, savvy, abrasive, and cursed with a set of morals that most of his kind abandoned long ago. His world also differs from Julian’s in that he operates among knowing mortals—vampires are an emerging reality that we are just beginning to accept. Black has figured out how to live among us without posing a threat, but when a determined mortal woman shows up with a proposition for him, he is forced to reconsider his position …

 

Part one of eight goes up tomorrow. Enjoy.

Bibliography (Part 2)

“Dangerous Women”

It’s the latest anthology edited by my hero, George R.R. Martin, and his buddy, Gardner Dozois. A collection of stories about … three guesses and the first two don’t count. I requested it for Christmas and am not quite halfway through the content. Some of the stories are longer than mine, and the book itself is so heavy I can’t read it in bed without risking a concussion. I don’t generally read anthologies—the last one to be acquired was “Warriors”, edited by the same pair to the same hefty result—but the subject matter is one dear to my heart, being a bit of a bad girl myself … in my dreams, at least.

There’s no set definition of what makes a woman dangerous. She doesn’t have to be a whip-cracking, gun-toting, chain-smoking dominatrix out to seize control of an industrial empire. She can be a danger to herself, as well. She can be an unstable mother, an insecure wife, a downtrodden daughter; or she can be a fledgling sorcerer without a mentor, a secret agent, a queen regent, or the unassuming cover for an infamous bounty hunter whom everyone refers to as “him” or “he”. This book is stuffed with tales that span the spectrum, though so far I have yet to happen on a heroine in the grip of PMS. After all, that’s when I am the most dangerous.

I’ve written a lot of female characters over the years. I thought Génie/Janine was the most dangerous of the herd, but then I remembered a story I wrote in 2001 so, in keeping with the theme, I’ve carved it up for serial posting starting this Saturday. Working with it again after all these years, I believe that the most dangerous woman of all is probably the one who holds a man’s heart.

The things we do for love …

Food Porn 2 - Pasta Borgia

Flour

Butter

Milk

Hot mustard

Aged white cheddar

Bacon

Green onion

Salt/pepper

Pasta of choice 

Fry up the bacon and crumble into bits. Set aside (and no snacking!)

In a small saucepan over medium heat, make a roux with the flour/butter; add milk and stir until thick. Add salt and pepper, mustard, cheddar, green onion and whatever bacon bits are left from illegal snacking.

Cook pasta as per directions on package.

Pour sauce over cooked pasta and toss to coat.

Serve with baby tomatoes, more bacon bits and more green onion as garnish. 

* * * 

While this is in no way an original recipe—a zillion variations are doubtless unique to a zillion home cooks—Ter and I christened it “Pasta Borgia” because it’s killer yummy.

The greatest challenge of going gluten free has been what to do about pasta. We ate a lot of it in our day—pasta with red sauce; pasta with cheese sauce; pasta with pesto cream sauce; pasta with sausage, peppers and mushrooms; pasta al forno (dubbed “al porno” because, well, nothing in our house is ever called by its proper name) … the list seemed endless when we realized just how many of our favourite dishes contained noodles in one form or another. Linguine was a staple, as were penne and fusilli. Ter made a veggie lasagne that was so good I never missed the meat. Spaghetti, rotini, farfalle, fettucine, vermicelli, you name it, we had it in our pantry.

I know, I know. There are sundry forms of gluten-free noodles. We tried a few. Yuk, blech and erg. Noodle consumption for the better part of the past year has been at Asian restaurants because the best pasta requires durum semolina. Yet Ter’s passion for pasta has dwindled not one whit, so she’s persevered in the search for a GF brand that will at least try to fool us in ways the competition has not.

She found one at our local healthy food store. It’s not cheap, but it’s edible. And it comes in baby shell form! That was our favourite shape for Pasta Borgia – and now that we’re able to eat it again, we’re likely to take on a similar shape ourselves.

Oh, who cares? Mangia!