Finding Inspiration for a New Book

I’m just about to where I will put Carrying Light into a drawer to mellow for a while. I’m repairing immediately obvious problems, including cutting a subplot out that wasn’t adding anything and modifying some wordy expository stuff (telling, not showing) at the beginning. Today will be looking at continuity of the main relationship. I got so immersed in the book I don’t want to let it go. For a few weeks, it was my reality.

It’s time to pick up a new project. But what? I feel singularly uninspired. I have a book waiting for me, but no desire to write it. Richard (my husband) gave me an idea for a book but I definitely see no reason to write a book that feels like a contractual obligation in my series. I don’t write the next Kringle book until November; it’s my annual NaNoWriMo ritual.

Oh, but there’s another book I need to write … it’s in the Hidden in Plain Sight series, and it tells of why there are only about 300 Archetypes and thousands of different ethnicity groups in the world. (There should be Archetypes to represent most, if not all, of the groups.) This was revealed in a previous book with a lingering question. I’m not sure what to do with that book idea, because as momentous as the implications are, I don’t know how to get to the momentous part. The action goes fast and then there’s the revelation, and then there’s a lot of heaviness afterward. There’s a lot of feeling, but not a lot of there there. It could be a short story, but can a short story carry that much of the secret of the Archetypes? I think not.

I suppose I could take a break. But it’s the middle of the summer, and I am ahead on my classes. I work on them in the morning, and then work on writing. The ritual helps me with my moods and with my productivity.

So what am I going to write? Toss me some ideas!

Comic Relief

I have written some pretty dark stuff lately. Riots with body counts, bombings, scenes that traumatize my protagonists. The United States is falling into disorder, and in two years there will be no United States.

I may write dark, but I don’t write unrelieved grim. There is always humanity. There is always hope. And there is always humor. My characters shine in small moments where humor peeks out, and sometimes I go from subtle smirks to full-out silliness.

Take, for example, Nephilim cats. One of my Archetype characters created a passel of immortal Archetype cats that teleport and procreate. Their offspring, like human-Archetype crosses, fly. They also get into trouble flying around outsiders. The beauty is that most humans can’t believe their eyes, and they ignore the obviously flying cats. But when the outsider recognizes this cat is actually flying, and the ten-year-old girls are scolding him for letting the secret out … a tense moment of an outsider knowing secrets gets silly.

I worry sometimes about my sense of humor. On the other hand, I worry that my writing can get too dark. I wonder if I have the balance right. I would love feedback on this, so if you’re one of my readers, please let me know! Link to my books here.

Teasing you on Apocalypse

Adam settled himself in his corner of InterSpace, wondering whether it was truly his corner or whether it was the recycled molecules of someone else’s materialization. He pulled the black crystalline walls closely inward, with the only furniture a futon he had materialized. He lay on it, looking at the fathomless ceiling, and reached out with his mind to another Archetype, one who he knew well.

I have taught Laurel how to transport. It did not take much teaching, Adam spoke, feeling the granite and heath of the Archetype he addressed.

What does she remember? The other asked.

She doesn’t remember much. She mindspeaks, but she doesn’t remember that she has known my signature before. She transports, but she doesn’t remember where she has transported before. She doesn’t remember me.

She doesn’t remember you, the other repeated. She will not remember us, either. We need to awaken her, but there’s the chance that we damage her if we awaken her too quickly. We can’t afford that. The mindvoice spoke tersely, but Adam understood the carefully concealed swirl of emotions behind it. Emotions could be dangerous if not banked; one of the realizations of the renegade Archetype.

I want her to remember, Adam admitted. I want her to remember me.

You’re asking for a lot. She doesn’t even remember the last ten years, and you want her to remember her origins. She will, eventually, remember when we bring her back into the fold. But first, she needs to remember her exile, if not the reasons for it.

I know, Adam sighed. It just hasn’t been the same without her.

Take care of her. Adam felt the rugged edge of the Archetype’s warning fade behind his words.

Adam lay on his futon for a while longer, listening to the wooden flute he favored. He paid attention to his breathing, feeling each inhalation and exhalation, turning his attention away from the roiling thoughts.

He had learned the meditation a long time before, as a refugee from InterSpace, hiding from his heritage in a Buddhist temple in the south of China. There he learned to draw upon the unemotionality that was his heritage as an Archetype, to hide the human turmoil that represented the special circumstances of his creation.

Breathe in, breathe out. Let go of the longing, the impatience. Let go of the very human frustration. Let go …

Six thousand years of existence, bouncing between the monastic cell of InterSpace and the Buddhist temple, and the civil service in a beautifully cultured Luoyang, and the days set laboring on the railroad that eventually stretched across the States. Hiding in plain sight despite his unearthly beauty and his freakish strength.

Six thousand years of existence, and his mind still wandered back to one day, the day he was created, his first glimpse Earthside. A verdant landscape, with a riot of flowers, an oasis in a dry land.
The only time in his life — moments, it seemed — he felt accepted for himself.

After a long time, Adam awoke from his reverie, and he thought about Laurel.

Laurel looked like she hadn’t aged a day. Of course she did, Adam countered; Archetypes didn’t age unless they committed evil against their charges. She had stayed pure despite her exile, despite the centuries she had spent, as he had, Earthside.

He had kept track of her when he could, staying out of her sight. He realized there was a word for his behavior in the modern day — stalker. He could not help it, however; he had been charged with her safety. And the safest thing for her those millennia was to not remember him.

She had done a fine job of taking care of herself. She had remade herself many times, as he had: as a hedgewitch, as a cloistered nun, as a nanny, a shopkeeper, a manual laborer. She had studied human cultures, much as he had, trying to find a home and never quite finding one. She had never found a partner, just as he never had, because she knew instinctively that sex would result in half-human Nephilim, a taboo for their people.

But he had been instructed to bring her back to herself gently, for reasons he didn’t understand. He felt the ambivalence rise in him, wondering if she should be left alone, wondering if she would remember him and what she would say if she did.

Seeking direction again

(Note: I am experimenting with larger print for a reader of mine.)

Idea for my next book from the idea file:

Luke Dunstan, 6000-year-old Archetype, serves as a liaison between the immortal Archetypes and the humans whose cultural DNA the Archetypes hold. An edict from the Archetypes’ Maker bids the Archetypes prepare to return these memories in the trust of the humans. Facing their loss of identity, the Archetypes draw battle lines; countless human lives are at stake. It is up to Luke and one young woman, Leah Inhofer, to stop the battle of Archetype against Archetype.

*******

I really need to get back into writing. Or at least editing.

I’ve been editing a bit, but even then I often skip out on it because it’s tedious to go through a document to kill all the extra “have had has was were”. I haven’t written on a novel since finishing Whose Hearts are Mountains in December. I have some old ideas in my file (see above) but no new “a-ha” falling in love with the idea motivation.

Writing the blog every day, as I mentioned yesterday, is my lifeline to writing. As long as I write in my blog I’m still a writer. Right?

I’m afraid that if I keep getting rejections, my current lack of commitment puts me in an easy place to just walk away. This might be a good thing for me in the greater scheme of things, but it’s not good when I think about being a writer.

So I’m musing about what to do. Again.

Removing the Growth of Words

Yesterday was a good editing day.

Generally, a writer is supposed to write the first draft, blocking out the basic action of the story, and then edit. But I had gotten into a muddle, and I knew it, and I couldn’t write more unless I found the muddle and corrected it.

I knew the muddle originated in the chapter that was half again as long as the other chapters, but I had to decide which material drove the plot and which material was extraneous and superficial. That gave me a formula to work with.

It turned out I had tried to give too much background on my mythical beings, the Archetypes, and their half-human offspring, the Nephilim: “Here, Anna, here’s everything you need to know about your ancestry.”

Last night, I asked myself the following questions:

Do people give hours of expository dialogue in real life? No.
Is this just going to give Anna Schmidt, the protagonist, information overload? Yes.
Have I written myself in a corner, because I’ve overexplained one plot line to the detriment of the other (She’s in danger, the whole world’s in danger?) Yes.
Am I going to have to edit this mess to proceed? I’m afraid so.

The murder of two thousand something words (and not even great words) later, I’m happier with the chapter. Not final draft happy, but first draft happy.

The moral of the story is that some words harm the story as a whole, and surgical excision is necessary.

One more thing: Portugal reader, who are you? You make me curious.

Dream sequences

I love writing dream sequences. They allow me to write abstract sequences that nonetheless hint to future developments of the plot.

My idea here is that we do a lot of subconscious processing when we dream. One theory of dreams, which does not sit well with non-scientists, is that the objects and happenings in our dreams are processed and reviewed to put into long-term storage. If your newfound Aunt Martha reminds you of your long-departed Aunt Mary, you’re as likely to dream of Martha as Mary that night, because your short-term memory connects Martha and Mary. The next morning, you think to yourself, “Oh, that’s why I felt the presence of a ghost — Aunt Martha reminds me of my dearly departed Aunt Mary!” often without remembering the dream.

Non-scientists like to believe that dreams are ripe for interpretation. Freudians have set symbols they look for in dreams, focusing on the Freudian hallmarks, the urges and taboos we sublimate to be acceptable adults: sex, defecation, and death. An interesting situation in Freudian interpretation: dreaming of turning on a faucet symbolizes sex. Dreaming of having sex with someone does not. Many dream interpretation books on the market are at least semi-Freudian in their interpretations.

Meanwhile, Jungian interpretation focuses on the people in your dream, and how they resemble the archetypes that feature heavily in our stories and deeper psyche. So the Jungian dream would look at the animus (your darker self), mentors, quests — in other words, Jung puts your dream through a Star Wars filter.

Others’ take on dreams is that they give messages — not only the result of subconscious processing above, but prosaic messages from the outside that the brain connects — much like the scientific theory above — but precognitive messages, messages from mystical connections, messages from others alive or dead, messages from our most inner self. Even though this sounds like mental illness, we all know people we call superstitious that have these beliefs. The person who dreams of deceased Aunt Mary believes that anything Mary said or did in the dream is a direct message. They may believe that they themselves are the next family member slated to die. A common belief is that cardinals carry messages from the dead, so someone might dream of a cardinal instead of Aunt Mary.

When I write about dreams, they have elements of subconscious processing of mysteries with a touch of the mystical — but just a light touch. Generally, a series of seemingly unrelated data come together through subconscious reasoning — but still may not be interpretable to the dreamer because of the need to disbelieve. At the end, I introduce the mystical finger pointing to a future revelation. That’s just how I do it, and I’m sure the Freudians and Jungians disagree.

I wrote a dream last night and I’m really proud of it. I may show it to you later.

**********
This morning I start at 32,000 words, give or take a couple. My goal is to be finished by Friday, which gets me to the 50,000 goal 14 days ahead of time. I will continue writing, except at a slower pace, and I will have a writers’ retreat (with massage! And sauna and steam bath and hot tub oh my!) at The Elms in Excelsior Springs for Thanksgiving with Richard!

Love you all.

Facing the inevitable plot glitch

I’m a morning person. When I’m in the middle of writing a novel, I must stew over it in my sleep, because I wake up with insights on the plot. This morning, the insight was that I had outlined a major plausibility problem that will have to be fixed.

The problem is as follows: The commune, Hearts are Mountains, faces a major threat on their horizon, the neighboring country of Free White State. FWS was founded during The Fragmentation by idealogues among white supremacist groups and nationalist ultra-conservative Christian groups, who had in commonality a desire to create a “pure” state. Their territory comprises a good portion of what used to be the Pacific Northwest states in the former US and borders the high desert where the commune resides underground (literally).

One of the main characters, William, works as a border guard for Free White State — and a spy for Hearts are Mountains. He appears to be a Native American mix; however, he passes well for white such that living and working in Free White State isn’t a problem for him.

Anna (the protagonist) and Daniel (from Hearts are Mountains) visit William for intel. At least that’s how I wrote the outline. The problem is that Daniel appears as a black/Native American mix. That’s going to get him, maybe the three of them, killed in Free White State. A shortened novel, and not an ending I’d wish to write.

I puzzled over this dilemma this morning and realized: William is an Archetype. Archetypes can teleport! (At least they could over the past four books I’d written about them.) He could teleport to Hearts are Mountains without any of the indoor or outdoor surveillance catching him just by crawling into a shed.

Problem solved!

A good start to my NaNo novel —

“Once upon a time, there were beings who looked like people, only they weren’t the people you see every day. For one, they were stronger than ordinary people, and they lived a lot longer than ordinary people do. They existed to help people understand who they were and where they came from. By the few who knew them, they were called Ancestors, Archetypes, or sometimes Alvar.

“They lived in a realm far away, yet as close as a thought. In this realm, they existed rather than lived, mere vessels for the ancient memories they held. Some of them tired of this passive role, and wanted to go Earthside to see these people they represented. So they jumped to Earthside, which was only a thought away, defying their Oldest. These Alvar occasionally chose to bring children into the world, which defied their Oldest to a degree that could not be forgiven. Of those Alvar were born the Earthed Alvar, who lived among people.

“There was one of the Alvar who was born of the male Kiowa Alvar and a female Alvar of legend, Lilith. They left him (for Alvar were born full-grown) with the Kiowa to learn about them and to help them. All he remembered of his birth was that two people, his parents, told him he was special and that he was never to give it away to anyone.

“The Kiowa shaman named him “Old Man” even though he looked young, and as time passed, he did not age as the others did. Eventually, the band felt frightened of him because of his lack of aging, and he left to join other bands of the First People to hide his true age. He understood that others grew old and died, and he didn’t understand why he didn’t. He also wondered why he had never been young like the babies born to the Kiowa.

“Eventually, he was kidnapped by evil people who put him in chains, people who didn’t realize he was Alvar, but he escaped by jumping – something he had forgotten he could do – back to the place where the Kiowa, his original people, banded. They had gone away, but he became a cowboy, moving from place to place and job to job so that his true nature – which he didn’t understand – wouldn’t be detected.

“He lived like that for years, and finally found himself at a place of learning, so he could discover who he was. He fell in love with a woman named Allie, who looked at him as if she knew him, and asked him lots of questions that tipped close to uncovering his secret. One day, Allie took him to talk to their professor, and she, Mari, told Will that she was different in the way he was. Mari told Will and Allie about the Alvar, and Allie grew to love him even though he was not like her.

“One day, they made a child, born fully grown as children of Alvar and humans were born. All of the pain of Will’s past washed over him at the sign of his offspring, and his mind shattered. He disappeared before Mari or Allie could stop him. Allie never stopped loving him, or the child they had together, and she surrounded that child with all the love she could muster, love enough for two.”

“Mom,” I groused, “that’s not a bedtime story for a child – that’s an anthropological treatise.” I wasn’t joking – My mother, Alice Schmidt, was a preeminent anthropologist who studied Plains cultures at the arrival of white people. The story went that she had been trained by the famed Native American anthropologist MariJo Ettner, who disappeared ten years before and left her research notes to my mother. Alice Schmidt disappeared soon after, when my dad retired, and an anthropologist named Elaine Smith was hired halfway across the country from where Alice and her husband disappeared. I remember the safe house when we were in transition to our new identities, and the day I became Annie Smith.

“What do you expect?” my mother asked, her green eyes laughing. “You ask an anthropologist to tell a bedtime story, and you get anthropology. If you told a bedtime story, it would be a fable about an encrypted ghost that terrorized hackers.” Mom, of course, was right – not only because I had chosen to become a sociologist specializing in urban legends, but because I was my father’s daughter – and my father had been, before his retirement, a key government encryption expert. In other words, his programs were the ghost in the system.

“So that’s the bedtime story you told me?” I chided, hiding the fact that I couldn’t remember my childhood once again.

“It was the best I could do,” Mom shrugged, then looked at me searchingly, as she often did. My dad strolled in – although I was my father’s daughter, I didn’t share his blond hair and blue eyes. My looks came from my mother – dark wavy hair and pale skin and freckles. “I packed up your car,” he sighed. “Could you pack more stuff next time so I actually get a workout?”

“What, and give up my life as a pauper?” I snorted, and hugged my father, who came to just above my chin. I hugged my mother, plump where I was slender. I studied their faces, which looked just a little older, just a bit more worn, than my first memories of them fifteen years before.

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It was the last time I would see them. Three months later, they were murdered by assailants unknown.

Character sketch and interrogation — Daniel Workman

Here is a character sketch with what I call an interrogation (although, ironically, it’s done with open-ended questions so it’s not really an interrogation):

Daniel (Daniel Workman)

Role in Story: Anna’s future partner; member of When Hearts are Mountains, Mari’s son

Occupation: Jack of all Trades; security

Physical Description Tall, lanky, with long chestnut hair, light brown eyes, and café-au-lait skin.

Personality: Low-key, gentle, bemused, righteous (not self-righteous). Jokes about being an outlaw. Has some baggage from No-Space detention.

Habits/Mannerisms: Touching/settling into objects to make sure they’re solid. On rare occasions, dissociating.

Background: Daniel is the offspring of Mari, a woman of Lakota/African-American Archtype heritage, engendered for the Buffalo Soldiers in 1866. This makes him relatively young. He is one of the renegade Archetypes that left InterSpace 500 years before to visit Earthside, and one of the ones who never checked back in on InterSpace. (Most of the commune has origins in this exodus, as do Lilly and Adan. Others bounced in-between Earth and InterSpace like Luke. He spent 30 years in No-Space from 1920-1950, so he has no recall of that time. He particularly likes his Wild West Days from 1870-1895. He was the one who suggested the commune build out in the high desert.

Internal Conflicts: At times, feeling like he’s lived too long but at the same time enjoying life; Does not know if he’s good relationship material with his dissociation.

External Conflicts: With Jude, who later betrays them to Free White State. With Anna when he discusses how his Nephilim son was born and talks about why he’s not good for her.

Notes:

Me: Daniel, tell me about yourself.

Daniel: I am called Daniel, and in the world of men go by the name Daniel Workman. I am an Archetype, young at 200 years old. My mother is Mari, known as Mari Ettner in the world of men, and Valor Burris is my father. As an Archetype, I was born full-grown and able to participate in human culture, which I have. I have always found the West a haven from my early days on the frontier when someone who was half-black, half – Lakota was accepted at face value. Back then, I had an affair with a comrade; same-sex couplings do not produce offspring.

In 1920, not knowing that I had the potential to engender children, I visited a prostitute in Reno and had a child. That child was Nephilim, of course, and ran away immediately. I did not know who he was until 2022, when Luke Dunstan found him on a farm in Nebraska and brought him here. Jude has taught us much about subsistence farming and founded our herd of Navajo-Churro sheep, which is big enough for plenty of wool and occasional meat. We now know that Nephilim can live to over 100, although he is starting to show his age now and we estimate his lifespan will take him to 150 or maybe 200.

The Powers that Be arrested me soon after in 1920 — this was when the Triumvirate held power in the Council of the Oldest. The charge was engendering a Nephilim, and my sentence was thirty years in NoSpace. I believe it was done to break me; I later heard they tried to capture others but did not succeed. Perhaps I was the slowest and the weakest; I don’t know.

Me: I’m sorry to hear about your stint in NoSpace. You sound very upset about it.

Daniel: NoSpace is an evil place. No sound, no light, no touch, no time. No anchors. That could drive one crazy after a day, a week. I spent thirty years there. It took away a piece of me, the piece that keeps me rooted in the moment; I sometimes detach from the world and float in nothingness, and someone has to touch me and speak in my ear to bring me back. When I hear of the Triumvirate — who now spend their time in NoSpace — or any of their free minions, the vision turns to red and I dissociate. I’m told I yell a lot when that happens.

Me: You talk more than my usual interviewees. You don’t need many prompts.

Daniel (*chuckle*). Mari says I could talk the ears off a mule, but Eldon tells me she doesn’t know a mule from a mosquito.

Me: You all talk like cowboys.

Daniel. We’ve picked up Earthside speech mannerisms — partly because we can’t help but do it; particularly to provide protective coloration. I can talk like many, many types of humans.

Me: Tell me about your relationship with Anna.

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Daniel: Anna is quite an interesting person. She’s one minute pulling out her field notes and another minute laughing at something happening around her. She’s joyful, which is surprising despite what she’s gone through. When she gets mad, she’ll go toe-to-toe with me, and I appreciate that. She pulls me out when I dissociate. I don’t know if I can give her as much as she gives me, and that lessens my chances of bonding with her. Plus, what happens when she finds out I’m an Archetype?