The Big 8-0-0

This is my 800^th post. I figured, in honor of the eight hundredth piece of crap that I've churned out to suck up slices of internet pie, I should do a rant.

If you are friends with me on the Book of Faces, then you will know that I recently got the disheartening news that I was once again turned down by a publisher. Ho hum. It's old hat at this point.

However, there was something particularly grating about this one.

I had decided to try my hand at one of these small, independent e-publishers. Since the market place is beginning to see a pretty wide array of e-readers as well as a moderate uptick in sales of electronically-published books, I figured this could be a good way to stay apace with technology and get myself into the hot little hands of teenagers everywhere!

*ahem* Sorry about that.

My wife had found this particular publisher for me. She knew someone who had published with them, so I thought I'd give them a go. Plus, you know, make the missus happy. *wiggles eyebrows*

*ahem* Sorry about that.

I prepared everything I needed as per the guidelines on their website. As they instructed, I submitted, waited patiently for word from them, and then got kicked in the teeth grundle. The reasoning for them to turn me down? Here, I'll let them explain it, cutting and pasting directly from the rejection letter they sent me:

To be completely frank with you, I believe The Boar War is too commercial a manuscript for a small independent publisher

I'm sorry? It's too commercial? What do you mean by that? Do you think that it's "too good" or "too mainstream" for your small publishing company? You're afraid that it would have "too much success?" Um. Okay.

At this point, I wasn't feeling so bad. And then I continued reading:

The story seems to be perfectly positioned as a middle-grade YA fantasy, in the same niche as the recent Guardians of Ga'Hoole.

Recent? Just because Hollywood made a shitty movie based loosely on the story does not make it "recent". The last book in the series was published two fucking years ago and the series itself was started in 2003. Yeah, that's fucking recent. That's real fucking recent. I guess if it falls within the current epoch, that shit's recent.

Also, just because a story features animals as characters does not mean it is exactly like another story with animals as characters. That's like saying Hamlet and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are the same fucking book because they both have Scandinavians in them. Or, better yet, claiming How to Train Your Dragon is the same story as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I mean, they have "dragon" right there in the titles, and they feature Swedes, more or less, and--the real kicker--they're both written on paper!

I do hyperbole so well...

After this, the real fucking slap in the face arrived. Please note that the following was written after the text of the email had changed fonts. That's real fucking professional, too, by the way. Let me be the first to point out that recently movable text was developed so that your documents did not look fucking shitty and like a third grader put them together. Maybe you should look into it, or even try the recent development of word processing programs that allow you to highlight a block of text and make it uniform with the click of a button.

Anyway, this is the line that really filled my veins with rage-ahol:

consider submitting your work to YA agents and perhaps to publishers like Peachtree and Scholastic.

This tells me that the asshole who wrote my rejection letter did not read a fucking word of my submission. They read the cover letter and the synopsis (maybe), and that was it. I can tell this because here is what happens in the first fifty pages I sent them:

• The bloody and meticulous slaughter of an important character
• An attempted rape on the main character of my story
• Implied sexuality between two of the first characters we meet
  
• Violent murders of those same two characters
• The main character's pet killed in cold blood and for sport
• Liberal use of the word "bitch" to describe one of the dead characters and the main character as she escaped the threat
• A bloody fight between a herd of deer and a pack of wolves
• A somewhat graphic description of the wounds sustained by one of the deer characters

Now, you tell me that this is something that is going to be targeted straight for middle school readers. In a recent development, rape is somewhat of a taboo in children's literature.

Oh, and by the way, fuckers, the main characters of the story--as clearly outlined in the submission summary and the synopsis--are humans, not a bunch of fucking owls. Yes, the animals are characters, but they are not the characters. This story is more like the fucking recent political story Animal Farm than motherfucking Guardians of Gahoole. Dammit, I want to skull fuck you stupid cockwaffles.

The final nail in the fuck-you coffin, also in the "hey, we're a fucking joke of a company" vein, was how I was told that I've used "highly-repetitive language" and where my "prose could flow more smoothly." On their website, they implore potential authors to avoid "thesaurus abuse" and not to worry if things seem "choppy" or "rough". These things "can be fixed later."

So, while I was originally kind of sad, I think I'm just mad. Mad, and relieved that I won't be working with these hacks. Sure, this might seem like sour grapes, and perhaps a little of it is. However, when you tell someone that their story is too commercial and then suggest the wrong places for the story to go and slap it all in a form email that is poorly formatted and, by the way, repetitive, then you open yourself to some criticism of your own.

In that light, fuck you, electronic publisher. My too commercial manuscript and I will go find someone who actually gives a damn about potential new authors. And, more importantly, someone who has their shit together.

Writer's Amnesia Sucks

I've been kind of stuck on the writing thing lately. I put it aside because I had a case of writer's...ennui? Everything I would write I didn't like; it sounded childish and bland, and if I'm going to write a book, goddammit, every word is going to fit together. I realize that I should just toughen up and push through it (I've had these fits in the past), and that just pushing through helps.

But then I did the blog move and relaunch thing, and that just sort of slowed me down more. I had a convenient excuse, right? Right. We'll leave it at that.

But, I'm on the very cusp of getting into the meat of a good Greek legend: fighting monsters, chatting things up with Gods, rescuing and the subsequent bedding of maidens. This should be exciting times for our young hero and the guy who is guiding him around the Ancient World, right? Right!

And yet, I'm still trying my best to just churn along.

That's when I was hit with some brilliance the other night. The muse (or muses) opened my eyes on a very brilliant turn of phrase that would help propel my hero forward, all but blindly accepting the impossible task, and really putting the hook in the story that I've been seeking for some time.

Unfortunately, my muse apparently only comes around after midnight. I kind of feel like that Offspring song. I may be dumb and all, but I'm tired of my muse playing me for a sucker with low self-esteem.

Damn, she knows me too well.

Anyway, inspiration struck after I had tucked myself into bed. Usually, I spend a good thirty minutes either staring off into the dark or staring at the one glowing green star on the ceiling above me, pondering the ways and wonders of the world--this one and any world included in the book I'm reading and/or writing. As it was, I was staring in the direction of the wall that my bedroom shares with the bathroom, when this brilliant turn of phrase hit me.

"Fuck me, that's brilliant!" echoed inside my skull--there's lots of room in there for ample rebounding of sounds. "Oh, how will I remember that? I should write it down!"

Then I decided that it was too much work to find the pen and paper. Plus, I didn't want to bother with turning on the light. I, uh, didn't want to disturb my wife. Built in excuse, right? Right!

"I'll commit it to memory!" I said rather than do the smart thing. "I'll remember it in the morning!"

Surprisingly, I managed to remember it in the morning. And throughout the day. All that time, surrounded by many sheets of paper and writing utensils, and I did not write down my idea. Hell, why would I? I've remembered it this far.

Then, last night, when I was coming upon the scene where I could use that which the muse had gifted me with...I completely forgot it. I remember it had something to do with the hero's mother...and that's about it. It was enough to piss him off sufficiently that he'd let his emotions get the better of him (he's pretty even-keeled, despite his inner emotional turmoil...you know, like he's Greek or something...), but I cannot remember exactly what I wanted to say. Curses!

Despite my best effots and good intentions to remember what it was I had dreamed up, I've been struck with a powerful case of Writer's Amnesia: I had a good idea, but I forgot it. I'm still plodding forward, though I don't remember what it is I wanted to write, no matter how hard I wrack my brains.


*sigh* The muse giveth and the muse taketh away, I suppose.

31615 / 100000 words. 32% done!

Okay...Really?

Last night, as I was working on the current manuscript, I needed to relate a story about Athena between my characters. Athena, of course, was a war goddess (among other things) in Ancient Greece, and, as such, she was typically shown garbed in the dress of a warrior. This usually involves holding a spear or a shield or a helmet or any combination thereof.

Since, of course, Athena is female, I was going to use the term "warrioress" as an epithet for her. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure if "warrioress" was a word or not, so I turned to the online dictionaries that I often frequent when I'm unsure of a word's true existence or not. Turns out, warrioress is in a dictionary and it is defined, as you might guess, as a female warrior. I then decided that I didn't actually like the word "warrioress" and just went with "warrior goddess", figuring that that covered both bases when it comes to epithets for Athena.

I couldn't leave well enough alone, however. I decided to check out images and pictures that would come up if one searched for "warrioress". I almost immediately wished that I hadn't.

My cursory study of female warriors reveals that, when a woman becomes a warrior, she no longer has need for armor. Or, any clothing at all, for that matter. Her breasts grow as big as or bigger than her head. Her hips flare, her waist shrinks, and--naturally!--she pulls on a pair of high-heeled boots or sandals in order to go running off into battle. All of this seems rather impractical--especially in the costuming department--but perhaps I'm just misguided. To my eye, it seems as though a woman's flesh would be pierced by an arrow or a sword since there is absolutely nothing there to slow the weapon's progress. Silly me, I guess, assuming armor was for protection.

Also, the Amazons, a famed tribe of warrioresses, cut one of their breasts off so that they wouldn't be hindered in drawing a bow. It does seem to be a bit of a hindrance for a female warrior's big, floppy breasts to be in the way when in the middle of battle--especially when she opts for either no bra, or one that really doesn't do anything for support. But, hey, what do I know?

Apparently, not enough about female combatants...

This is something that I have vowed never to do. Though I have no objections to scantily-clad women, writing a female character into a story simply to have her strip and/or run around naked for long periods of time for no apparent reason is something I refuse to do. Female fighters in my stories tend to follow the path initiated by Eowyn (she of Lord of the Rings fame); that is, they dress for battle just like men, they fight just as hard as men, they die just as easily as men. I might be writing stories that can be classified as "fantasies", but they certainly aren't going to be sword-and-shield erotica.

Not that it really matters for my current work, since there isn't much in the way of women on the battlefield anyway. The closest thing I have is appearances by Athena, and she's wearing a chiton whenever she shows up, anyway.

I'll end my rant now.

I'm nearly finished with the sixth chapter of the manuscript, and the main arc of the story is finally shaping up. When I finish this chapter, it will be as the hero of the story is embarking upon his quest. He just got the information for the quest...though he doesn't know it yet...and is about to do his big impulsive, hot-headed act of braggadocio that will see him on his way and the quest undertaken. Fortunately, I have the subsequent chapters already mapped out, so I don't need to pour a lot of extra research into what happens.

While I was researching ancient Greek funerary practices this week (turns out, they're not that different from our own...though we don't typically sacrifice rams on top of the fresh graves of our dead family members...much...these days), I came across one of my favorite words, and I thought I'd share it here. It is Sunday, after all (at least where I am).

threnody: n. a poem or song of mourning or lamentation.

It comes from the Greek word threnos which means "lament" or "dirge" and oide which means "song" (such as in "melody" or "ode"). A threnos was a song of lamentation sung at during the period of mourning during a funeral. The Greeks, afraid that they would offend their dead relatives, really put their all into mourning them by wailing and beating their breasts and clawing at their faces and even hiring professional singers to come and sing the songs of lament. A professionally-sung song was called a threnos.

After digging through my rant about the dress code for women on the battle field and the boring ancient Greek lesson, here's the writing updates:

6883 / 50000 words. 14% done!

25915 / 100000 words. 26% done!

Suck It, November

A couple of weeks ago, I was going through my new blog followers, checking out their blogs and updating the bloglist(s) in the side panels when I came across, almost by accident, a site called "NoMoSlackMo". I was intrigued, at first, but when I saw the tagline of "Suck it, November", I was in love. Er, as much love as one can be in with a website, I guess. No, no, I take that back; I was quite smitten.

As you may remember, I'm none too keen on the whole NaNoWriMo thing. I personally get nothing from it. Oh, sure, it's fun to hammer out words for thirty days straight, but after a while I felt as if, as a writer, I should be doing this more than just thirty days at the end of the year. I mean, if I want to be a serious, professional writer, I need to commit to it, right?

And, I had. I was about 19,000 words up on my current work in progress (WIP) when I sort of...slacked. Purposefully. You'll notice that the writing updates withered during late November and on into December. The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is stressful enough, to be honest, without worrying over how much of my masterpiece novel I've gotten finished. So, I kind of quit and tried to focus on doing other things, like playing Lego Star Wars cleaning the house and preparing for a visit from Jolly Old St. Nicholas.

The holidays are, once again, sadly, behind us. New year resolutions are, once again, sadly, upon us. And so, too, is NoMoSlackMo. For the uninitiated, NoMoSlackMo stands for "No More Slacking Month", and is sort of the bastard child of NaNoWriMo, but without all the stigma that goes along with that. And, the rules are pretty simple. As per the authors:

• Writing takes place from January 1, 2010 to January 31, 2010
• Goal is to reach 50,000 words by midnight on January 31, 2010
• You don't have to start from scratch. The point is to finish what you slacked off on in November.
• You can start from scratch if ya want.

Obviously, I didn't start from scratch. However, I was 19032 words into my current work. I thought, "I could cheat and just start out 20,000 strong, so that I only have to write 30,000 words and be 'a winner'!" But then I thought "Hmmm...I want my book to be somewhere around 100,000 words, so if I were to follow through and write 50,000 words plus what I already have, I'd be almost done with my book."

And, so, that's what I've done. Which is kind of a bitch to keep track of, since my starting word count wasn't nice and round or anything like that. Alas, I have to do...math...and shit...now that I'm doing this. Fortunately, Windows comes with a built-in calculator! How convenient?

Anyway, I finally got to the point where I introduced the king. And, he's supposed to be a slimy bastard lusting for the main character's mother. I thought, "Who embodies this better than anyone else?" And then after I stopped looking in the mirror, I thought, "Who in pop culture embodies this better than anyone else?" The answer: Lando Calrissian. That's right. The king (er, one of them) in my neat little myth story is roughly modeled off Lando. Except, he's Greek, not black, he's a king, and not an administrator of a mining facility, and he tricks everyone into giving him horses, not tibanna gas. Although, I do think they both rock the cape look pretty well.

I have, officially, finished five chapters in the book and I've started number six, but I need to re-read some Greek funerary rites before continuing too much further. Plus, I need to figure out how "youthful" I want my "youth" in the story to be. I'm thinking sixteen should be about right--he'd be hotheaded and impetuous, which is what the character calls for. However, I've vowed to myself that my hotheaded and impetuous character isn't going to be a whiny bitch like Harry Potter; he's actually going to listen when someone imparts some wisdom or knowledge or guidance upon him, rather than just get mad and strip naked on a stage with a horse. Wait...I think I'm mixing Daniel Radcliffe vehicles there...

Anyway, here's the progress to date. I've got 66 pages, and if that's 1/5 of the way done (estimated), then I should end up with about 330 manuscript pages. Not bad, I think. Short enough to get some interest, I'd hope, but long enough to qualify as "novel" status.

The top word bar is my NoMoSlackMo status. The second is the overall word count (sorry, ladies, but the word counter and the button you provided on your blog are a little too...pink...and that would clash with the layout colors of my blog. Yeah...yeah...that's a good explanation...we'll go with that. *shifty-eyed*)

2433 / 50000 words. 5% done!

21465 / 100000 words. 21% done!

A Little Short

Well, I didn't make it to the magical 13,000 word count mark that I had imposed upon myself "by the weekend". I mean, I'll probably reach that mark tonight. I could have written some this afternoon, but instead I cleaned up my closet (which desperately needed to be cleaned--hey, look! I found that shirt I've been missing for three months!), cleaned up the kitchen, and took some stuff to Good Will (about a hundred baby-sized socks that my kids have outgrown and a stack of pillows as tall as the bureau in my room).

I have some bad news to report. The Kids Who Never Get Sick, aka my nieces, have spread their vile plague to me now. I've got the same sniffles and sore throat that afflicted my children at the beginning of the week--just in time for the Christmas party tomorrow! My kids bounced back quickly from the illness, so I'm hoping to do the same.

I came to an interesting part of the story last night. When he went to the Oracle, the king learned that the child born of his daughter would kill him (the king). This makes the king come back and lock his daughter away in a tower. First, I decided that I should have the tower built as part of the action of the story. I was worried that I gave my hundreds of Greek workmen too much credit in erecting the tower in a short six weeks. Then I learned last night that Julius Caesar was able to have his 6000 legionnaires erect a fortified wall some 24 miles in length in about the same amount of time. I figure that if the Romans could do it, so could a bunch of Greek engineers and slaves--especially with rewards of gold, silver and freedom promised them for timely completion.

Second, I wasn't sure how in the hell the king could get away with locking his daughter in the tower. I mean, surely, someone would have to be upset (I mean, aside from the daughter). And then the answer came to me: spin. So, I had the king gather together his household, the servants, soldiers and various townspeople, and he gave them a speech outlining what the Oracle had told him...from a certain point of view. From there, he whipped everyone into such a frenzy that they were wanting the princess dead for threatening the life of the king and the livelihood of the kingdom. Therefore, the king could turn it around--again!--and look benevolent by simply locking his daughter away in the tower rather than spilling her blood. Either way, the problem is solved, but this way, the king looks like a hero and a saint.

Anyway, I'm about to finish up chapter three and I finally transferred chapter four from my wife's computer to my own, so I can continue to work on it. For now, though, I'll just be trying to focus on getting past the 13,000 words and move on toward 15,000 words and such. Hopefully, I can make up some ground over the next few weeks and be back on track to have this finished by the end of the year or shortly after 2010 arrives.

12410 / 100000 words. 12% done!

When It Comes to "Do or Do Not"...I Did Not

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A Paucity of Josephs

I've been mulling a post over for a few days, mostly because this is my three-hundredth post on A Crown of Thistles, and as I've trolled the blogosphere, I've found that 300 seems to be a seminal number as it applies to the number of posts. I thought about something funny, I thought about something thoughtful, I thought about something romantic, I thought about something political. At the end of the day, I tossed all those out the window and decided to go with the status quo: egregious use of the word fuck.


And fucking aye, I decided to do a grass-roots movement here on A Crown of Thistles, which I started--long ago--to be a blog that detailed the writing process as I saw it through my eyes--and interpreted it through my fingers. However, what was I to talk about if I was going to do something on writing--an activity which I haven't done recently. Well, one of the things I have been doing recently is going through my character lists, in order to refamiliarize with the various people I've crafted in my little world so that, when I finish playing Rogue Galaxy (check it out, NOT Civ III), I can take the story back up and continue pushing through the third installment.

Now, a little bit about how I chose names for my characters. When I went about choosing the names for my people, I decided that I would delve into British names for most of my characters. One of the things that I've seen in various stories is the use of European names to help create a sense of identity. For instance, northerners are usually depicted as being big, gruff, bearded and Norse. They typically have names like Skoli and Sveld and Hern.




This is not something that I wanted to do. I mean, cigarettes aren't supposed to be invented yet in my world, so how could I possibly have someone with the last name DuBois or Ouvrey? Plus, we don't have rifles. How can Lord DuBois drop his? It's not so much that I didn't want to offend anyone--I mean, Christ, look at the shit I sporadically puke onto a screen and call a "blog"--it's just that I want my characters, my nations, and my world to be unique...or as unique as can be for the genre (there are no filthy Elves here...those fuckers can keep making toys at the North Pole for all I care). So, across all my nations, I created my character's last names with an eye toward the familiar, so I tried to keep my names centered around British names--English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish. I tried not to go too overboard, by hanging an O' in front of everything or a Mac on anything--though I do have a handful of tiny Houses whose name begins with a Mac or Mc that I've tied together as being interrelated and parts of the original inhabitants on the lands my stories center around. But if you look at the big, main Houses in the story--Wilhelms, John, Campbell, Montgomery, Greyskye, Nagel--these are names that you would not find too uncommon or, more importantly, too difficult to pronounce, if you came across them in your everyday life. That was the effect for which I was searching as I set about giving my people their names.

The thing is, with British last names, I felt it was important to have first names that largely matched up. To that end, I've also used first names that have a particularly "British" feel to them. I found this very amusing as I kept ploughing through (heh, British) the seemingly endless list of names of characters. This means that I've got an oversufficiency of Williams, Patricks and Roberts, and various incarnations thereof (Liam, Paedrag...). One thing I noticed, however, was that I had not a single Joseph. None. Zilch. Kaput. Zero.

Now, I realized that Joseph is of a Middle Eastern descent, but it is still a popular name in the British Isles. In fact, I can trace my ancestry back to Joseph Jenks (yeah, I know, terrible name), who came over here from Shropshire and set up shop after his wife died in the Old Country. So, way back down the way, I'm related to a Joseph (at least one), but then, when I think about, I've always been surrounded by Josephs. A few examples:

- First friend in kindergarten: Joey Collins
- Drinking buddy: Joe P.
- Stupid best friend Flanders: Joe
- Stupid best friend Flanders' version of Rod & Todd: Joseph
- Favorite chemist: Joseph Priestly
- College: Saint Joseph's College
- Grad School: University of Notre Dame...which is in St. Joseph's County, IN
- Wife taught at (and a former girlfriend attended): South Bend St. Joseph's High School
- Favorite cartoon growing up: G.I. Joe
- Favorite cartoon in college: Josie (Josephine) and the Pussycats
- Running partner during Freshman gym class: Joe Molholland...who also helped his dad dig up my backyard to install a pool when I was in college.
- Favorite girl from "Facts of Life"...Jo.
So, you can see, I've always had a assload of Joes around me, which is why I find it curious that I haven't named a single character--important, role, back-up or throw-away--"Joseph". This meant, naturally, that I had to start looking for a place to insert the name Joseph. I mean, of the multitude of Williams, Wils, Wills, Willems, and Liams, one of those guys could step aside and, at least for his brief time on camera, could change their name to Joseph, right? However, I liked the names as they were. That's when I suddenly discovered that one character--a main character, no less--had not one and not two but three separate names. Depending on the place in the story, he was Peter or Justin or Ricard. To top that, his name had actually originally been Gregory, but I changed it when I changed his last name and never made the switch in my notes, which is why he had three (or four, depends on how you are counting) names. What better place to take the big magic eraser and wipe clean his old identity and inserting Joseph? None, says this reporter.

So, I introduce to you Joseph Chavonec, the youngest of Nicholas Chavonec's three children, who is knighted after the Battle Beneath Beech Grove and serves as Kenneth Chavonec's heir until Kenneth can knock up his wife Corrine. In case you can't tell, the sex isn't going so well between the last two. So, there, I successfully was able to alleviate this shortcoming as it pertains to my characters and their names and my apparent need to surround myself with a Joe at every corner of my life. Just, uh, don't get too used to him, if you know what I mean.

Also, I jotted down a couple of notes to myself in the margins of my character lists. Should this thing ever get published and should you ever deign to read it, not only will I thank you greatly whilst diving into my piles of coins in my money bin outback, but there just might be a few people that you might recognize. I'm not saying, I'm just saying.