In honor of World Book day, I am giving away 1 signed copy of Emergence Collective!
The first one to email me (link below) will get the book.
Tag: novel character
Character snapshot Revisited: Willy Winston
Characters are like your children. You love them all, and it’s hard to choose your favorite. Willy is one of those (Don’t tell the other characters, but he’s one of my favorites). I like characters that can be equally tough and tender…
Willy turned around to face his friends and make sure everyone was out and
ok. Sandy started to sob and fell to her knees as Jonny put his arm around
her. Frank, still huffing from his sprint, bent over to catch his
breath. Gregory and Daniel looked around, frantic.
“Where’s David?” Gregory asked in an awkward girlish-sounding
voice. Frank stood up straight and looked toward the tent.
Sandy gasped. “Oh, oh my God!” she cried, seeing the tent collapsed.
Gregory and Daniel rushed over to the tent, calling his name. Willy and
Frank followed, quick to help, struggling to find the tent opening in the
darkening light of the sky. Frank froze cold. He looked down, and his voice
turned a chilling tone of horror. “Blood,” he whispered, forcing the
word out of his mouth.
Willy looked down at where Frank was staring. Fresh splats of blood dripped
at Willy’s feet.
Frank looked up at Willy. “You’re bleeding, old man,” he said with
a worried tone.
A trickle of blood ran down from Willy’s forehead and nose into his beard.
He reached up and touched his forehead, searching for injury. “Oh,”
he said with a nonchalant tone as he pulled a toothpick-sized piece of cable
from his head. “Would ya look at that.”
Character snapshot revisited: Barney Derrick
I really enjoyed writing Barney’s Character. I wanted to make a character that you love to hate. I am sure everyone has met a person like Barney.
The sound of Barney’s boots echoed down the quiet hall with a hypnotic cadence. The overhead fluorescent lights seemed to flicker in time with his footfalls. He arrived at the lab and pushed through the door, causing it to bounce off the wall. Drab faces looked up from computer screens at the abrupt entrance. A soldier rushed over with a handful of disheveled paperwork, trying to organize it into a manila folder before handing it off to his superior. Barney grabbed the folder out of his and studied the file briefly. The soldier watched as he scrutinized the file, flipping pages, eyes scanning. Barney’s nose crinkled against his mustache, causing the soldier to wince. He held the folder out for the soldier to take it, allowing the pages to slip out with a whoosh onto the floor.
“What is this? Is this how I am going to get all of your reports? Is this how you show your respect to your country, to me?”
“Sir! No Sir!”
“This report is not even in order! Do you expect me to finish your work for you?”
“I understand, Sir, no Sir, I apologize, Sir.”
“Well–What are you waiting for?”
“Umm …yes, sir,” the soldier said as he scrambled to collect all of the paperwork and organize it all at once.
“Umm, yes, Sir? That’s how you address a superior officer? An umm? You Sure this is the right career for you, boy? How did you manage to crawl your sorry ass out of basic training?” he scolded, then turned away so that he could smile without being seen. Ah that felt good, better than coffee, and I’ll never get a bad report from that kid again. He took a few steps before turning around to see the soldier standing at attention, holding the folder in his shaky hands.
“Sir, your report is ready for your review Sir.” The Airman forced his words out.
Barney snatched it out of the soldier’s hands. Again, the soldier watched his eyes and fingers do their work. “That’s better, Airman. You’re dismissed.” The young Airman made his way to his desk and sat down, all the while avoiding eye contact.
Character snapshot revisited: Mark and Trina
It’s a character snapshot, but these two characters are equally important
together as they are apart, so I decided to lump the snapshot together. I
really enjoyed writing the relationship between these two. I really wanted to
express the kind of purity of love two people could share if they had the
freedom of innocence….
Mark’s beat-up Honda fishtailed around the corner of the driveway and then
skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust in front of the longhouse. Trina had
a white-knuckle grip on the dashboard as if she was holding on for dear
life. “Why do you have to drive like a crazy person?” she shouted, but the look
on her face was one of excitement rather than terror. “Umm, because
it’s fun?” he said with a chuckle. “Well, here we are. Let’s find the best
cabin before anyone else calls dibs.”
“Yeah, good call,” she said as she got out of the car and stretched her
back. “This is a cool place,” she said as she looked around, taking in the
layout of the place. “But geez, namaste much?” Mark chuckled at that last
remark. “Yeah, he was the poster child for hippies, I guess. That’s
probably why my dad and Grandad pretended he didn’t exist.” “I think
you might be cut from the same cloth, honey, ya know? A long-hair dropout in a
family of lawyers and doctors. You’re not gonna get rich, but I love ya,”
she said softly.
He walked over and put his hands on her tiny waist, and pulled her close to
him. “That’s how I know you love me. You’re not a gold digger. He
whispered in her ear, “That makes me richer than any of ’em.”
“I think this place is making you mushy,” she whispered back. He moved
closer to her ear. “It’s also making me horny.” Then he playfully swatted her
butt. She pretended to be mad and started to push him away but grabbed his
hand and started pulling him to the cabins. “Let’s go find us a cabin, my
‘mushy’ man,” she said and winked at him. He dared not resist as she led
him down a random path. “These cabins are all in good condition. I was
imagining something like sleeping in a dirty barn,” Trina said as she
peered into the window of a pleasant-looking cabin. “I like this one, but I
want something, ya know, a little more private.” “Anything for you,
love,” he said, smiling. “Yeah, I think Uncle Frank had a lot of time on his
hands and kept the place up nicely.”
They reached the end of the path at a cabin that seemed to be the farthest
from all the others. Mark walked up the few steps to the porch and opened
the door. “Should I carry you over the threshold?” Trina pushed past him
with a smirk. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, bucko,” she said
sarcastically.
“Well then,” he said with an exaggerated bow, “after you, m’lady,” then
followed her in.
Pieces of me
I have a story to tell. Actually, I have many stories in my head just aching to get out. I have the idea, think of how and who, and where. The story is just the beginning of the journey. Characters are the meat of it, but one has to have a split personality as an author. I have to be a ten-year-old girl who is into anime or an old battle-hardened war veteran. Sometimes in the same paragraph. Where does this shit come from? The setting can also be a character; how does one pretend to be scenery?
Every character has a piece of me in them. Part of my split personality. I draw from past experiences and interactions I have had or just witnessed. When writing an evil character, where in me is that? Am I that kind of person just under the surface? (I hope not, but it has to come from somewhere.) One of the hard parts of writing in my experience is to make all the characters uniquely different and consistent in their personalities. I think I do a pretty good job of it, but it is a challenge. After all they are all me. And I may be uniquely different (a politically correct term for weird?) but maintaining that is my biggest challenge.
I think of actors and how they have to be different people all the time. I think that there is a kind of freedom in that we can not be ourselves for a time. Halloween for example. Think back to the last time you were in full costume. The protection of identity that you get are you acting the same “normal,” or are you letting go and getting into the character, saying and doing things that you would not normally do? That’s the freedom I feel when writing. I get to express all those slices of my personality in the characters I write.
Character snapshot revisit… Frank
Frank is a fan favorite, Mine too. I tend to use people I know as a template
(not biographically) for some characters. Frank is modeled after a real
person….
Still lost in his thoughts and even a little excited, he must have been
driving faster than he realized since he got to the hardware store in
quick time. It was good, though; the evening was going by fast, and the
store was about to close up for the night. He got out of his Volkswagen van
and pushed open the old door of the storefront. He only got a few steps
into the store when the cashier gave him an odd look. The young kid had spiky
black hair and a ring in his nose.
“Mister… you can’t come in here like that, sorry.” The young kid sounded
apologetic and amused at the same time.
“Like what?” Frank was oblivious to any reason why he should not be
there.
“Your feet, bro. You have to have shoes to come in; it’s a safety thing.
Might step on a nail and sue us or something.” A smile indicating laughter
was soon to follow was on the boy’s face by now.
Frank looked down at his feet and realized that he wasn’t wearing shoes. The
thick calluses on his perpetually dirty feet did not feel shoes in the
summer most of the time. He was an old hippy and stuck in a time warp.
Shoes were for winter when it was too cold to go without. He chuckled at
himself and smiled back at the cashier.
“Sorry,” Frank said with a bit of a giggle. He was not embarrassed by his
attire. Look at that kid; why should I be embarrassed by the way I dress?
he thought to himself, almost laughing out loud. Nonchalantly turning
around, he gave the cashier a nod goodbye and headed for the exit. He
only felt a little disgruntled by the situation since it was a wasted
trip. He did not have anything much to do anyway, but wasted gasoline was
wasted money.
Gray matter
Thick sticky gray gelatin oozed out of his ears and nose with a wisp of steam like smoke. The texture of the brain tissue had been slowly liquifying over the week as more and more information was funneled into the skull, like ten pounds of crap in a five-pound bag.
I am back at home and trying to normalize and get back into routine comfort. There is something sad about the idea that I couldn’t wait to get back to work just so I could have a mental break. My training is done, and now I can get back to focusing on my writing and posting on the blog.
Today marks the second month of the blog. I hope that you are enjoying it as much as I am writing it. A big thank you to those that are following me! It does make a difference, knowing that I am not just shouting in an empty room. If you are new to this blog, I started it to promote my book “Emergence Collective” and other writings. It also is a platform to show off some of the other creative stuff. If you want a signed paperback copy, you can get that from my Etsy page. There are also some of the stuff that I make with my laser there, such as custom ouija boards, Crystal pendulum boards, and crystal grids, just to name a few. If you have a custom project in mind let me know and we can see what I can do for you. There are a few ways to contact me on my about me page.
Thanks for checking out the blog!
Back at it!
Just finished my saturday word count, and I am annoyed that I cant keep writing. All my “writing” time has been used up and now I have to re-enter reality and do stupid things like chores and feeding myself. I am satisfied with my writing today. I got back into that flow state, where the words and ideas are streaming out of me. I hate to stop that. Its exciting to feel this way, the exact opposite of writers block.
At least I can look forward to tomorrow morning, I will have a little more time to write, then prepare for a work trip. I am excited for that since I will be isolated (after my work duties) and will be able to really lay into this story.
Im not gonna spoil it for you, but there is some shit going on in the sequal that will blow your mind. I saying to myself… “holy crap did that just happen?” Yes I am also an audience to myself. I enjoy the stories as much as the reader!
30 minute shivers
Pumping Neurons
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness”
Read that again, let it sink in….
I think I might add this “Style” to my writing exercises. Something like a writing prompt idea to get the juices flowing. It has been said that the first line of the novel “Paul Clifford” by Bulwer-Lytton is the poster child for bad writing. I, however, think that there is some genius to it. I mean, it is challenging to be a good writer. But the genius to this lies in being a good, “bad” writer. I think it flakes off the rust in the creative parts of your brain that have been neglected. (Akin to building muscle belly density, the first muscle fibers that fire off are generally the ones that get used the most, but as they fatigue, muscle fibers are recruited from deeper muscle tissues to assist, and as they fatigue, fiber recruitment gets deeper and deeper increasing strength and endurance overall). Where was I? Oh yeah, anyway, hitting those deep and unused neurons in the creative parts of your brain only strengthens your overall skill. (Just a personal theory). It’s a fun challenge, and if you think you got the chops, you can try out your work by entering the contest at https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ The Bulwer Lytton fiction contest.
I have not entered the contest as of yet, I don’t think I am good enough bad writer to enter yet, But I am gonna play around with the idea.
Hand-prints of Darkness 