Regina Glei's Blog, page 40

The Next Big Thing!

This week I am participating in a virtual writer promo tour called “The Next Big Thing”, where writers promote their recent or upcoming novels and other writing projects. Each writer who answers “The Next Big Thing” interview questions passes the “torch” on to one or more writers linking his or her blog to the next person.

I received the torch from historical romance/fantasy writer extraordinaire Marissa Campbell. You can learn more about her exciting 9th century England historical romance “Raven’s Blood” in her interview. Thanks a lot for tagging me, Marissa

Below please find my interview and at the end I will pass the torch on to my Odyssey Writers Workshop and SF Worldcon buddy Travis Heermann.

1) What is the working title of your next book?

It just came out from small press Dark Quest Books and it’s a contemporary fantasy novella called “Lord of Water”.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

I had this “desire” to do something with the elements and water just wouldn’t leave my head anymore. I love the ocean and I am also awfully afraid of it, that combination made it easy to come up with the story of Eric Aquatus who loves and fears the ocean even more than I do.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

I’d call it a contemporary fantasy. Being able to command water sounds like a super hero kind of story, but Eric Aquatus is far from that. He’s this guy from next door who happens to have an extraordinary ability and who must figure out what to do with it.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Oh, I never thought about that. Anthony Hopkins for Captain Jonas maybe, although he is probably too old already. Eric should be portrayed by a yet unknown newcomer who gets famous thanks to the part . Meredith should be played by someone sultry and sexy in the lines of Nicole Kidman, but alas, she is also too old for Meredith already!

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

That’s a relatively easy task. They call that high concept in Hollywood I’ve heard – when you can easily state with one short sentence what the story is about.

“What if you had the ability to command water?”

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The book has just come out in January. At the time of writing this interview, I am still waiting for the Kindle version to come out as well. It’s been published by a small press called Dark Quest Books, so it’s not self-published. I have self-published two full length novels, an SF adventure called “Dome Child” and a contemporary fantasy with the odd title “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried”, which is about an alchemist and has something to do with Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung. Unfortunately I don’t have an agent yet and am still hunting for one.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I’m a very quick “first drafter”. “Lord of Water” is just a 30,000 words novella and I think I had written a first draft in two weeks or so. After the first draft I have the tendency to doctor around with a manuscript forever. I do not remember anymore how many drafts there were before the final one that is now in print.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Actually, I find that difficult to answer. There are so many books out there and I’m sure my work is comparable to X or Z, but I haven’t read those. “Lord of Water” is a classic what-if story, what if you could command water? What would you do if you possessed such an ability? What are the consequences of using this gift? Maybe somebody has tackled this topic already somewhere, sometime, but I don’t know about that.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The ocean itself. Whenever I am at or on the ocean I have this feeling of awe and mystery. I love the ocean, but it also scares the hell out of me. I hope I managed to convey the intensity of that feeling with this story.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s a compact story and you can read it in a single sitting. I didn’t bother with elaborate subplots. There are however Meredith’s, in my opinion, rather unusual ideas about marriage and relationship. Eric is to a certain degree naïve and pure and also traditional. He cannot cope with Meredith’s ideas about relationship. Their two different world-views and concepts also play their part in this story next to the main issue, which is Eric’s nerve-wrecking relationship to the ocean.

Thanks for reading!

Regina

And now I am passing the torch on to fantasy and horror writer Travis Heermann, who just finished a successful Kickstarter campaign for a sequel to his “Heart of the Ronin” (Congratulations!). Apart from Odyssey and SF Worldcon that’s another thing that we share – experiences with Japan. Travis lived here for three years, I’m in my thirteenth now I don’t know if Travis will talk about his new Ronin (a samurai without a master) project or another in his interview – let’s see what he does.

First Draft of Hagen 2 Finished

Last night, exactly five weeks after starting it, I finished the first draft of the second book about my mysterious alchemist Hagen Patterson. I have thus not broken but exactly matched my previous record for a first draft. A novel that I am currently workshopping at Odyssey Online also needed five weeks for its first version (and has changed plenty since).

In “real time” I have broken my record though, since I didn’t write for a few days when that virus I dealt with in January was at its peak activity.

Hagen 2 has 82,000 words (at the moment, the word count will surely change during the revisions) and divided by 35 days that’s actually “only” 2350 words per day. I had some days with more than 5000 words, so that’s how I compensated for the no-writing days.

I am the gardener type of writer and although I knew how I want Hagen 2 to end, it was as usual a roller coaster ride how to get there.

I do love the roller coaster ride, but it is also rather stressful – high tension for weeks so to say. Can I get where I want to go in a convincing and plausible way? That “pressure” is quite significant for me in the writing process and it also makes me write so fast, since I want to get rid of that pressure and have that, “Yes! I made it, I got where I needed to go” moment in the end.

Nothing much compares to the feeling of writing the last lines of a novel, it’s a deep satisfaction and a boost of confidence. That confidence will of course crumble away again during the revisions. So, now I have to step back into editor mode. I wish I could be as neutral and objective as when editing or critiquing other people’s work but alas, it is immensely difficult to step back from your own story and to look at it with a fresh and critical mind. I am going through highs and lows in the editing process, some scenes are awesome and I can’t believe I’ve written them, some scenes are so horrible that I’m asking myself who the idiot was who wrote that. In a way, the roller coaster ride continues during the revision process, if at a slower and less stressful pace.

Anyway, all in all I am very happy with the outcome of Hagen 2. Quite a number of things surprised me about the eventual outcome and the road there, which is great, because I firmly believe that if the author cannot surprise him/herself, then how is the reader supposed to be surprised? The story, or rather Hagen Patterson, took quite some unexpected turns and he behaved not as I had thought he would when I started to write part 2 . But that’s exactly what I wanted from him. So thanks for the excellent cooperation Mr. Patterson and I am looking forward to what you will do in part 3 now that you finally know who Alberich is and what he wants…

Some Experiences with Medical Doctors in Japan

Thanks to my whatever-it-was viral infection that entertained me during the past three weeks, I have been in close contact with a variety of Japanese physicians and wanted to share some peculiarities. (Just one remark about my condition – I’m not 100% restored yet, but we’ve settled now on viral infection – nature of the virus unknown, it was not the typical flu virus going around – let’s call mine virus X )

As in every country (I guess) there are those independent doctors with their own little practices around every corner, then there are the physicians in the big hospitals. Of course you go first to the little practice around the corner. From living here for 13 years now and with this little experience especially, I must say that the independent doctors have the unfortunate tendency to avoid touching you. They listen to your symptoms, then they give out bunches of medicine and they are very generous when it comes to handing out antibiotics. First round of antibiotics did not work, I got a different kind (harder ones), then a third kind (again lighter ones). The harder ones seem to have worked for a while, but the third kind apparently killed the effect of the harder ones and the fever came back plus ear problems.

I finally changed from inner medicine to an ENT doctor when the ear problems started. I know this guy for a while, he has treated my usual sinusitis for a couple of years. Now ENT doctors at least look into your nose, ears and throat, because that’s their job. My ENT doc is a bit of a ruffian and a grouchy type and I did not really like him, but this time he proved much more competent than the inner medicine doc who just pumped me full of drugs. The ENT was worried that the fever takes so long and freely admitted he has no clue what’s wrong with me and called a big hospital on the spot and acted very concerned and arranged that I could go on to that hospital on the same day. My opinion of him has mightily increased.

I then went to the hospital and oh my, finally someone who touches you! The young female doctor there was great, concerned, patient, taking her time, not afraid to examine you. Quite a difference to the first guy who gives you five minutes of his precious time, then fills you up with antibiotics.

But, doctors are human beings of course and so much depends on whether there is a same wavelength or not. I felt comfortable and in good hands immediately with the inner medicine young lady but the ENT specialist she sent me to in the same hospital showed again another typical behavior of Japanese doctors – the foreigner syndrome. He talked to me like an imbecile because I didn’t understand the medical terms he used that I am convinced the average Japanese does not understand easily either. There was this – yikes – a foreigner! vibe around him that I did not feel for one second with the inner medicine lady or my around the corner ENT.

Anyway, it’s difficult in every country to find doctors whom you trust, especially when you are a foreigner. At least I know now an ENT who cares and if something major is going on I know which hospital to go to and which doc to ask for. Anyway, I am a bit tired of the “I’m not touching a patient” kind of doctors and shall keep looking for a doc around the corner who is not afraid of doing his or her job.

Opening Lines

A great opening line for a novel or any story is hard to come by and now that I have four longer pieces of fiction out there I felt the urge to review them quickly.

So here they are:

Dark Matters:

“I deliberately kept it pitch dark at night so that I didn’t have to see my cursed cell at least for a few hours.”

Hm… too long but a tiny bit catchy, since the reader hopefully wonders why the speaker is in what he calls a cell and why he doesn’t want to see it. It already hints at that he has spent quite some time in that cell already.

Dome Child:

“Grand Priest Shavendra lay on a divan in his private chambers of the Mukol temple, sipped from his rice wine and looked at the communication bracelet around his wrist.”

Yuk! Way too long. But at least it conveys that we are in a weird place we’ve never heard of before (Mukol Temple) and that we might be in the future due to the “communication bracelet”.

Now, actually this prologue was formerly the second chapter, but I decided to pull it up front to introduce the antagonist and a bit of a mystery with his weird conversation partner Merjen.

So the original opening line of the Dome Child was this:

“Jove Hendricks looked into his chew-chip pouch and a stab of cold fear shot through his stomach.”

Well, a bit too long, but first of all we have something weird here, what the hell are chew-chips, which arouses interest and second we have an emotion here, cold fear, so why would Jove be afraid when he looks into his chew-chip pouch? Not a bad opening, if a bit too long.

She Should Have Called Him Siegfried:

“Never before had Hagen Patterson allowed a potion client to see his cellar.”

A bit better than the Grand Priest opening sentence of Dome Child. There is the word potion in there, which immediately indicates alchemist and we ask ourselves who the person is, whom Hagen allowed into his cellar. Not an ideal opening sentence though, since there is no emotion in the sentence.

Lord of Water:

“I needed to die like this.”

Now that’s a cool opening sentence. At least in my opinion. It’s short, catchy, and immediately opens up a horde of questions. What is happening? Who’s dying? Why does s/he need to die? Why does s/he think s/he needs to die? Why like this? What’s the method of dying?

Well, one cool opening sentence out of four – I hope my “hit-rate” will get better

Lord of Water Published

I’m very happy to announce that Dark Quest Books has now released my contemporary fantasy novella “Lord of Water”.



The Kindle version should be up shortly as well

Mysterious

A little blog pause (or a shorter entry), since I have been stricken by a mysterious disease, which I shall call “fever come and go”. I’ve never had something like this before, so it bears some novelty, but it gets pretty much on my nerves by now. Since last Monday I felt awkward, since last Wednesday I have random fever bouts, sometimes going up pretty high to some 39 Celsius. I have nothing else, well, more headache today than the previous ones… weird! Doc says it’s a cold, not influenza, but I don’t believe him (well, I generally have difficulties believing doctors). I’ve had MANY colds in my life (mostly sinusitis) but nothing like this yet. I hope the mystery will be solved soon or simply disappear… Cheers.

Enoshima Wildlife

Happy New Year everyone! I am thrilled as to what 2013 will bring, especially book-wise…

Last year I wrote a blog article about Japanese new year customs.

A personal custom of mine is to go to the Enoshima beach around New Year. When the weather is really good and clear you can see Mt. Fuji from the beach. Last year it had been dry for several weeks and Mt. Fuji presented itself in all its glory, this year though the weather is less dry and stable and although it was a beautiful day, clouds hung in the distance and shrouded the mountain.

There were loads more people at Enoshima shrine than last year and I refrained from lining up yet again and only got a hamaya (holy arrow) promising success and washed some coins at the dragon shrine.

The animal tour started with several schools of fish nicely visible from the bridge between Enoshima and the mainland.

The beach was crowded with hard-core surfers and that at 5 degrees Celsius air temperature. Luckily the wind was rather mild so no big wind chill factor but also no big waves for the surfers. Despite Mt. Fuji in clouds, it was a great visit to the wintry beach. I’m going to that beach once or twice a year, but I have never seen the beach so alive with creatures before.

Usually the beach is pretty clean of shells, but this year there were loads, from tiny shards to complete oyster shells. The highlight were two starfish and a marine gastropod and all of them were still alive! I did not take a pic of the gastropod since I thought I could collect its perfect shell, but the shell was still lived in I chucked it back into the water and tried the same with the two starfish. That was the first time I saw any live creatures except birds at that beach. Come to think of it, there was not a single seagull far and wide, only buzzards. Maybe that’s why the beach was alive with crawly things.

Although Mt. Fuji hung in clouds, the island of Oshima was visible from the beach which also does not happen too often. After having been to the farther away Tokyo islands of Hachijojima in 2011 and the Ogasawara islands in 2012, nearby Oshima is actually my next target this year during Golden Week. With a speed boat it just takes two hours till Oshima. Let’s see if I’ll make it to the island in May

You can find pics of starfish and Mt. Fuji with surfers etc. on my Flickr account.

Again, happy 2013 and let’s hope it’ll be a good year!

2012 in Review

This will be my last blog entry for 2012, so I felt like writing a little retrospective

One thing is for sure, it’s been a much better year than 2011, which was hectic, chaotic and unsettling due to the March 11 earthquake and changing jobs internally at the day job after having done the same old thing for some eight years.

In 2012 I got used to wrangling my new day job tasks, published my “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried” novel, and almost published my second novella via Dark Quest Books. The “Lord of Water” is still under the “forthcoming” books, I guess/hope it’s release will happen in January 2013.

“Dome Child” and also “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried” won prizes, though, unfortunately, some doubts have come up as to the legitimacy of these awards…

I still don’t have an agent or a major book deal – the big sharks of the industry are yet ignoring me small fish, but I got some interest raised here and there, if nothing substantial has resulted from it yet. I reconnected with the WorldCon community by attending Chicon 7 in Chicago and as almost every year the learning curve was steep.

I have another four novels in the drawer. The goal was to make all of them submission ready in 2012, I managed to get 3 ready, well, not too bad. I also revised my first ever longer publication, good old “Dark Matters” and its new version is now with the publisher for review.

My record for churning out a first draft of a novel is five weeks. Just two days ago I had another record – the longest first draft ever. I finally finished the first draft of a second volume of one of the yet unpublished novels. I started with that one in autumn 2011, but then got interrupted by day job changes and the task to make the existing novels submission ready and to release “Siegfried”, and put it aside for quite a while. I’m very relieved that two days ago I wrote the final words under that draft, which took me thus one year and three months to finish. The pure writing time was of course much shorter. I must say I found it highly annoying to have something half finished lying around for so long and it is not my intention to repeat this experience.

So, what will 2013 hopefully bring?

First of all I’ll attend another Odyssey Online Course and then I hope for the publication of “Lord of Water” in January. Next, I expect something to happen with good old “Dark Matters”, third, a sequel for “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried” is due. In fact I started writing it yesterday I’m planning on releasing Siegfried II in autumn, before I will go for the first time ever to World Fantasy Con (instead of World SF Con), the membership is already bought and the hotel booked. Apart from that 2013 will be a year of submission, submission, submission… = courting sharks with the yet unpublished novels.

Let’s see what happens and wish me luck with the sharkies… good luck to you all as well and Happy New 2013!

The Singing Writer

Wanna hear me sing? Check this out

- on any iPhone, iPod and iPad that means.

Look for the “Punk Silent Night” starring my British friend Gazza Grimm GT Tomita and myself under the pseudonym of Igu-chan. It’s short for Iguana. I sang in a (copy) band for a while before time constraints put an end to that and the band was called Iguana Complex with me being the Iguana

You have to download the Groove Coaster game (the “Zero” version is for free), then navigate yourself through the tutorial and so forth and eventually you should stumble across the free present of the “Punk Silent Night”!

Recording of the not so “Silent Night” happened in a tiny studio in Shibuya’s Dogenzaka region. Amongst “love hotels” and bars stand a few inconspicuous apartment blocks and in one of them hid the recording studio inside a remodeled apartment. The studio is so tiny that you cannot record drums there – the recording cell fits two people or one person with a guitar. If two guitarist or a bassist and guitarist were to record in this studio they would have to stand sideways or back to back to each other so tiny it is.

Here’s the studio’s website for anybody interested.

And here’s a pic of the avid singers Gazza Grimm (in the middle) and myself plus a friend who works at Taito and who talked us into this little adventure



And now go and download the “Groove Coaster Zero” and our “Punk Silent Night” – both are for free!

Merry X-mas

“Siegfried” Novel Wins Award

I’m happy to announce that my contemporary fantasy novel “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried” is the winner of the “genre-based” category of the London Book Festival 2012. Though there has been some doubt as of late as to the “validity” of contests like this, anonymous judges, etc., it’s still kinda cool to win and have your name up there somewhere and the hope that someone actually read the book and liked it.

The psychological factor of being able to call your novels “award winning” ones is also something that cannot be negotiated away. After all something like this allows the author to make some advertisement and to publish a press release for example. Here’s the “Siegfried” wins press release I made for the award.

So I shall take this win as a welcome X-mas present and toast my potion master Hagen Patterson and his father Alberich – part two of his/their story is about to be written!