Cameron Lowe's Blog, page 4
October 15, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapters
Utterly pointless drivel. Almost certainly these would have been cut. At this point I’d checked out of this novel.
Chapter 24
As much as they liked the Canadian Rockies, the relentless heat and the conditions it caused drove them out of Jasper National Park regrettably early, but they promised each other they’d come back, possibly to Banff in the spring during a long weekend. After an early brunch with the Halls, they packed up their things and headed west through the park, stopping a few ...
October 14, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 24
Of particular note with this one are the Halls, a pair of RVers. They’re modeled after my grandparents Jean and Leonard Hall, who spent a great part of their lives RVing back and forth from Palmdale to Sam’s Town in Las Vegas. Leonard used to say of his RV that the mechanics dropped all the pieces of the vehicle in the desert and let the wind blow it together.
Good people, and missed dearly. Nana would have a fit about me including them in a book this full of swearing and violence. Hah. And ...
October 13, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 23
More of the Not-Right Man here, so if you’re looking to avoid spoilers on a future Rankin Flats novel, skip this chapter, or at least the dream sequence. The frank talk about sex afterwards as Garrett and Brianna are road-tripping is actually sort of a highlight for me in this one. You don’t often actually read couples having discussions about kinks in romance-centric books. The kink usually becomes the book itself, which is totally fine. But I wanted this book to be as much about Brianna and Ga...
October 12, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 20
Still with me?
Why?
Chapter 20
The phantasmal child did not think in the same way as any human might. Maybe there had been words before steel-crunch-screaming-tires, but if there were, those had been wiped and replaced by ideas and pictures.
Kind-eyes-craggy-face had nearly come close enough to the rage she craved, but not quite. She could have fed off his simple anger, but kind-eyes-craggy-face was better than just a quick snack. He was a table-spread-turkey-happiness. If she was pa...
October 11, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 19
I forget what the cause was, exactly, but this chapter wound up taking me something like four days to write. I think I came down with a cold or something. It reads like a discordant mess as a result, and you don’t really get the feel that the child is influencing things. Instead, it just kind of comes across as Garrett and Brianna being randomly violent.
Chapter 19
It wasn’t all pleasant in Edmonton.
After a day at the West Edmonton Mall spent shopping, traversing a maze, blacklight min...
October 10, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapters 17 & 18
I think if I had rewritten this novel in its entirety, there would have been a stronger central conflict born from the discussion about money in chapter 17. There’s a great amount of potential there there, something I touch on in later chapters in this novel. But obviously this came way too late in the story, so it never really had a chance to blossom into the central conflict it could have been.
It may wind up rearing its head in a future novel. I like the idea of exploring guilt over wealt...
October 9, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 16
The cracks in the foundation really started to bring the house down with this one. I love the research I did on Edmonton, and fully intend on visiting that beautiful city someday. But apart from that, this chapter is all over the damn place, and you don’t get any feel for why it’s here, apart from the painting scene. This kind of tonal dissonance only gets worse from here, so buckle up, kiddos.
Chapter 16
If Calgary was a sweet fever dream, then Edmonton was a long, luxurious afternoon nap...
October 8, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 15
Skipping 14, onto 15. Some of it doesn’t make sense out of context, but that was always going to be the case with this thing. Almost certainly the first few sentences would have been cut. Marlon Lord is a name I didn’t mention since the first Rankin Flats novel and almost assuredly I was the only one who cared that Garrett never brought him up apart from that one conversation. This was my attempt at closing a loophole of sorts, as Pitt, the first man Garrett killed, is brought up frequently but...
October 7, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 13
Short one today. Enjoy!
Chapter 13
Brianna expected the call days later, perhaps when one of the couple was emptying their pockets while doing laundry. But they were only an hour away from Calgary, Garrett’s mood still fixated on the fast-coming future.
“Hello?” Brianna said, tucking her book under her armpit.
“How did you know?” Jenna asked, her voice thick as syrup. Crying. She was crying.
“Know what?”
“Don’t tell me this wasn’t you. You snuck us the cash when we took the pho...
October 6, 2020
On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 12
Skipping 11 today. More side story garbage. Bleh.
Not much to say about this one. It’s grammatically rough and their are writerly problems with trying to describe two couples making separate road trips. I liked the family in this, and had this made it to publication and the series gone on much longer, I would have liked to have seen them transplanted to the States, maybe becoming a semi-regular part of the cast. That’s my problem. I write all these side characters and kinda then want to explo...
