Sarah Scheele's Blog, page 26

Let's Talk Ryan and Essie

Ryan and Essie have always been there. When I was a kid, I drafted a part of a story about them and their twins—very beta, of course, and not the story we read today. But still, they were Ryan and Essie. Even when I was very young, I knew that they represented ideas. I meant them to contrast in every way. I carefully made sure every detail about them was opposite. A little later, when I was more of a teenager, I added characters like Tarvelas and Viltan, and a rather expanded area with just Ryan and his adventures with these characters.

I trimmed this back because I wanted absolute balance between the two and I had written more Ryan than Essie material. I wanted sets of chapters to alternate, so a lot of extra Farlent and Vindillam stuff didn’t make it in. But we still see quite enough of these characters, especially Tarvelas, to understand what they bring to Ryan and Essie’s world. It’s a story I’ve always felt very far from personally, which sounds odd because stories formulated early are likely to be very personal. After all, I was too young to be professional. But this book is about ideas and ideas aren’t personal. They are beyond.

Ryan and Essie has always had a resilient strength from within, a sort of harsh, dry integrity. It is about what it is about and nothing can change that. That’s why it wrote itself rather than that I had much control over it. As an adult I made an ending for the story and linked Ryan and Essie’s duality into a kind of Christian philosophy, because that’s the belief system I’m used to and the story, I felt, should tie into the biggest thing there is.  I’m not trying to preach, just to say this story is about big ideas.

It is a quiet story too. It has never made a lot of noise. And that is what makes it unique.
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And there will be more updates.

What "Rewriting" Means For Me

Over the last 5 months I’ve been doing a massive representation of my books and that’s meant a lot of rewrites. But “rewrites” is a very vague term that might give the wrong impression. I am not taking back any material. I once overheard a woman who was married to a traveling pastor, when I was a teenager. She said she’d always been very impressed by this man and been attracted to him because he was genuine. He never took back anything he said. He never apologized or retracted statements. Even if people disagreed with him, he was proud of what he did.

Similarly, I’m not “rewriting” because I feel I made mistakes or said the wrong thing. I don’t think I gave the wrong impression and I don’t care if I did. I am not ashamed of, nor do I question, anything I’ve ever written. I simply feel the stories weren’t marketed correctly. It was hard to find people who would give me an idea about who would want to read a particular story. So I’ve been trying to get them into some sort of order that makes them marketable. Some were a little weaker than others, but that doesn’t mean I did anything wrong in writing those ones. No story is ever perfect.

But of course I always find things I could do better, from an actual writing perspective—like use of words, style can always mature—and an occasional paragraph or area that feels very dated and uninteresting now. And that always goes towards better marketing. A better told story will sell better. Because perfection, if not attainable, is still always a goal.

And there will be more updates. 

The Assassins from Castile

I started Victoria as a retelling of Snow White and female relationships are incredibly important to that fairy tale. I’d thought to show Snow White from the outside because stories from her POV always seem angsty and failed. So Victoria, her scheming younger sister, would play the lead, and Bella—the beautiful—would be Snow White.

But the story didn’t turn out that way. In fact, Bella became a rather shady character. And unlike in Snow White, the world of Victoria got filled with assassins and thugs and gained a very different theme altogether. When I created Ignacio, I’d had an idea of him as a benevolent character who would care about Bella. But he became more like Boba Fett. (Yes people keep writing romances about Boba Fett and I don’t know why they do that. I wish they would stop.) Ignacio can pretend friendliness, especially when he’s trying to get information, but he is always up to something and is very confrontational.

The Hirado is a trained and hired mercenary who goes around killing people—again like Boba Fett, or like any criminal or bounty hunter from other stories. And Webster, though lighter, is always verbally aggressive. I call historical from 1400-1800 “Bigga” because of the Bigga dresses, obviously. Everyone who’s into Bigga seems to have a bigga attitude too. And I’ve noticed something bad always happens to people after they get into Bigga historical. They always divorce, or lose all their money, or get caught in being deceptive and lose a friendship, or it’s found out what they really believe about something, or they disappear and their friends don’t hear of them again.

I guess Bigga is where people who have been living a lie go to get popped off. The assassins are waiting for them. I’m glad I’ve never had a bigga attitude.

And there will be more updates. 

What I Find Attractive

It’s funny I’d need to address this topic. But then, I never have. People have almost never asked me and I’ve never shared because it didn’t relate to my writing. That was for an audience and my opinions on men are personal. But I’ve felt it would be best to make something clear. My expectations from men are also my opinions from people. They apply to women too. True, there’s a specific factor with guys, but in any friendship, any relationship, I look for exactly the same thing.

Politeness. And a pleasant personality.

I don’t know why people think a bad attitude will be something I find appealing--or at least, acceptable. That’s definitely not true. I’m not demanding, but you have to be pleasant to be around. That’s literally the only thing I care about in any kind of friend, not just a guy. Nothing makes you more attractive than a nice personality—and if you don’t have one, I won’t ever forget it. Jerkishness can be subtle as well as blatant, sometimes just a tone that shouldn’t be there, but it’s indicative of so much more below the surface. Even a tiny jerk needs to be dropped fast because they will start spewing out of control if you don’t.

I know there’s been a culture of promoting jerks in books, but the fact I am an author doesn’t mean I am into them. I’ve never written about such a character as a hero because I don’t like them. I also don’t like women who act this way, and I quickly give them a really low score and dismiss the friendship. Being nice really is the best idea in the long run. If you’re unpleasant to be around, you are getting negative scores that will impact you forever.

And there will be more updates. 

The Harrisons in Perspective

The Harrisons is a pretty long book, much longer than I normally write. In fact, when I removed it years ago I talked about lots of additional material that I might put in a published version. But of course I never did. I worked with those extra bits for another couple of years, but something never felt right, and then I forgot about the story for a long time.

When I came back I realized those extras weren’t needed. In fact, some trimming was what was really required. What appeared on FB was a rough draft, and I can’t remember when I pieced together the document I have, but it’s even rougher than the one I presented. So tidying The Harrisons is a massive undertaking even if almost no new additions are needed.

The style was rough-draftish, drifting and just a lot of words. I’m giving it a good deep edit and the story is growing back into a nice shape. It’s about a homeschooling family of grownup daughters who live on a country estate in Texas. One is crippled in a wheelchair; the second is going to college; and the third is a teenager and a very quiet, sneaky girl. A secondary plot involves their cousin, a cynical woman who works in a restaurant and gets back together with her mother, a famous singer, and a tertiary plot concerns the congregation of the Harrisons’ church.

So it’s hard to say what the story is about, exactly, since it really does have a lot of arcs. And while I’m working on it, words after words, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed. It poured out of me with amazing speed, like a river, and now I’m channeling it back into something publishable.
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And there will be more updates. 

That Tachimant Boy

As long as I can remember, readers have had a little thing about Don Tachimant, the hero of Jurant. One girl told me “his character grabbed me right from the start” and another reportedly said that a later, very slightly altered version of Jurant with fewer words “wasn’t the same.” He was all right, still cool, but he wasn’t the same. I found this odd because Don’s character never grabbed me at all and he did the exact same things in this later Jurant version. He even had most of the same dialogue. What could be so different about him?
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I never did figure out the inexplicable way Don was always mentioned. But I can tell you a few things I DO know about Don and one is that he always does the wrong thing. Pretty much always. Not because he’s a bad boy, but because he’s honestly a bit dense. And seems compelled to have the wrong reaction to a situation, as if he doesn’t know what’s good for him. From the first lines we’re told “Don Tachimant hated his grandfather” and this, like everything else Don does in the story, is not a good idea.

Don’s grandfather is a bad person, but worrying about him isn’t necessary. The opening scene shows a man in higher authority scheming to deal with and investigate him. Lord Tachimant is not getting away with anything, even though Don’s sister Julie died. People have been suspicious for years. That’s why Don is sent back—there’s a plan already in motion. Don does not need to freak out, run away from the school, pretend to be a criminal, and basically go around blowing things up. And he doesn’t need to attach emotionally to Julie in this morbid way. She actually wasn’t a terribly likable girl, though we don’t get to see much of her, and seems very weak. Weakness is not a good quality and there’s no need for Don to sentimentalize it.

There might be something cute about reacting so much to situations—something vulnerable, for lack of a better word. And many readers love a vulnerable hero. (Even if he doesn’t mean to be, in Don’s case, and would not be pleased with that term.) But because he permanently makes mistakes, I just never thought he was very interesting. People who do the wrong thing all the time aren’t commendable.

And there will be more updates. 

The Brief History of Me

Since my author bio has always been very short, I thought I’d add a few more details. These could go on the Author page, of course, but I dislike long biographies. So I’ll do a post and stick to some very basic background information.
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I was born in Texas and grew up on a small, dusty farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t see a lot of people or have a lot of access to things, as funds and distance were limitations, and one of my earliest memories is standing in an old farmhouse doorway and seeing a golden light of blazing hot sun outside over short grass. In short, if you have any mental image in your head of Luke Skywalker on a moisture farm in a desert planet, with almost no one in sight, you’re heading in the right direction to visualizing my life. Especially in August.

I was educated at home and in college took a distance degree that was also learning at home, just at a higher level. This was very important to my mother and my father went along although he never understood quite that I would be doing school during these hours and often interrupted us with noise about his work, etc. Lol. I was always curious and did a lot of science, trigonometry, advanced English, term and research papers (my college one was on the art of the Byzantines, how’s that for original?) And I studied literature constantly as my aim was to be a writer one day.

Over many years I’ve run into countless people—relatives; so-called friends; guys hitting one me--who acted as if I wasn’t up to par. What I had didn’t sound like real education, after all—just reading at home and then taking some tests instead of going to a real college? Not much. This led to winceworthy situations—at least, I was wincing for them—in which they tried to adopt a tone with me when I had quite as much education as they did and sometimes more. And many who behaved this way had been educated at home themselves. I was often also lectured on a need for cultural diversity in my life, which I thought very funny since I represented cultural diversity to these exact people and they weren’t responding very well. Don’t assume you have more information than I do just because there’s a lot of dust around my home.

I started out self-publishing (more on reasons for that in another post) and learned every step myself until I’ve reached this point. I’ll detail publishing-specific history of me later on. This one is just an overview of my background.
And there will be more updates.

Family in Facets of Fantasy

When I made the decision a couple weeks ago to retire Facets of Fantasy permanently—both versions—I started to notice something different about it from any other books I’d written. The role of family. There was something about Facets I could never “get right” and it created a big roadbump for me. Sometimes the right thing to do is just let go and move on. Some books just honestly can never get over their internal flaws and continuing to work with them is wasting time.

When I realized that, I found the Facets stories could all be defined as attaching very unusual importance to family. Even A Year with the Harrisons, though family are prominent, really has an emphasis on individual decision-making throughout. In Facets, the heroine’s families define their actions in a way that might be honestly shown, but it just isn’t a good message. This is what many people in life actually do on a daily basis—they are defined by their circle and what’s around them, starting with their families. Writing this collection wasn’t a reflection of my life. But I could never “fix” Facets because many people saw this element of the book and wouldn’t let it go.

Cassandra, Violet, Victoria, and Sekana are all set in motion and dictated by incredibly important families who create the plot behind the scenes. Karl, Julie, Juranai, Bella, and The Hirado all respond according to this dynamic as it unfolds around them. Many times, like Karl, they are themselves dictated in interests by family things. I enlarged Taranui into a series and sent Millhaven Castle’s Alyce back into her original plotline to clarify that the similarity in these two stories is coincidental. Katia and Alyce can appear to have the same submission to family when they’re in the Facets collection, but once they’re in context in longer stories readers can see that’s not really true of their worlds.
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Only Don stands apart as defiant or critical of family, refusing its claim on him to any degree. This is what makes him stick out as a character, and even Don is emotionally drawn back to family situations and obsessed with them rather than truly moving on. In none of my other books are families dominating influences over people. There was something genuine about this collection, reflecting the lives of people as I observed them. But I think it’s time to move it into the past.
 
And there will be more updates. 

Heroine Spotlight ~ Lucy

Lucy was one of my simplest heroines to create, but is one of my hardest to talk about. Surprisingly, because it has such a distant, futuristic plot, her journey in The Birthday Present is an extremely personal one for her. Over 10 years ago I was watching a now forgotten anime airing on Disney channel and there was something about the heroine’s expressions really struck me. I set about creating a real person instead of an animated cartoon and Lucy and Aure were there.

It’s difficult to put sensitive matter into words, but essentially Lucy is growing up and it’s a tremendously important shock for her. She doesn’t have much sense of humor and because she’s lived in a very isolated way she doesn’t have a lot of context on what’s going on inside her. Unlike her father’s obsession with the GMFs, Lucy’s willingness to go on this quest is about herself, really, not these larger issues. Throughout the story she is shown as intensely self-conscious, faltering, suspiciously drawn into herself, and very, very vague about exactly WHY she’s here. Of course the plot and Aure’s reactions to her aren’t revealed until the last page, but the vagueness is indicative of Lucy’s motives. She just . . . just can’t describe it. She doesn’t want to.

Naturally, Todd is suspicious of her because she’s acting so weird and Eric, who’s constantly characterized as doing the wrong thing, is the only one who ever actively embraces her ideas. Behind all the worldbuilding, Lucy’s personality is as simple as Juliet’s. She’s very young and exploring something that she doesn’t understand at all. I wrote an alternate version where Aure refused the box and Lucy died. I sent this story to a magazine because I wanted really objective feedback, which was almost impossible to get at the time. I suspected the story was too depressing and the editor confirmed this. (Though I got a very nice letter that complimented my writing.)
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And in the end, the happy ending is true, because of Aure. He understands and smooths it over. It might be really lucky that things ended well, because that kind of person easily makes poor decisions and a mess of things, as Lucy is self-conscious herself when dealing with the HInzetzu. But it’s also true there are lots of people in life who can step in and manage it.
 
And there will be more updates. 

From the Top

As I said before, I’ve been working through every one of my publications—many of which, like the men in Middle earth, were scattered, divided, and all over the place—starting with the first. Some had to be repackaged and melded into other books. Some needed prints, some needed new direction, some new covers. Some just had to be dug into pretty deeply, like surgery, to separate them from each other and find the good ones.

This process is still ongoing. I’m currently doing the first 4 books—The Birthday Present; A Year with the Harrisons; and two editions of Facets of Fantasy. In a pretty exhaustive way too, and I’ve made great progress. To paraphrase David Copperfield, I will begin my publications with the beginning of my publications and record them from the start.

When I visit an author’s blog, I look at about 4 books to give me an idea if I should continue with the author. The others, even if published, are clutter that would deter me. I would feel overwhelmed by so many books from someone I don’t know. So I’ll keep only a few books on the website and discard the others. But to know which ones to put aside I’ve had to do some extensive probing, rewriting, and analyzing.

But it’s been a wonderfully fun experience and for about the next month I’ll be talking about the 4 books I mentioned. I’ve already done quite a lot of talking about Facets, so just a few more posts there, and several about TBP and the Harrisons. 

And there will be more updates.