Kate Lowell's Blog, page 17

Tuesday Tickle: Five Alarm Blaze

Mucking around with another contemporary, which is an expansion of a short story that didn’t suit the market I sent it to. Kind of nice to be back on my old stomping ground, so to speak. I miss the days of making that instant difference in someone’s life, where the tone of your voice alone could change the outcome of a call. Dropping into smashed cars with a blanket underneath you to protect yourself from glass, holding c-spine, everyone working as one unit to get someone out of a bad situation.

Awesomeness. :)

���We safe?��� shouted one of the paramedics, a blond guy about the size of Cody���s thigh.

���Soon as Rescue finishes bracing it,��� Anguilo shouted back.

One of the Rescue crew stepped away from the car. ���You���re good.���

���Rock on. Gimme a boost.��� The paramedic jogged up to the car, bright orange bag swinging from one hand, and a standard-issue polyester blanket in the other. His partner followed behind with the stretcher, its straps wrapped around more bright orange bags and an oxygen tank. The first medic tossed the bag and the blanket on top of the uptilted vehicle and looked around, his eyes falling on Cory. ���You look like a sturdy lad. Come here.��� He grabbed Cody���s sleeve and pulled him back over to the SUV. ���Put your hands together and lift me up on top.���

Cody gaped at him, then the penny dropped and he laced his fingers together, holding them out like a step.

The paramedic patted him on the shoulder. ���You’re new, right? I���m Seth.��� He put his foot in Cody���s cupped hands. ���Alley-oop!���

Filed under: Tuesday Tickle Tagged: contemporary, firefighter, gay for you, mm romance, paramedic

Three Dirty Birds Talk about Take Your Pants Off! Another try to convert Kate

Okay, that really isn’t the title exactly. It’s Libbie Hawker’s Take Your Pants Off! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing.

The Three Dirty Birds are back, once more throwing themselves into the fray and trying to turn Kitty into a plotter. Today we���re talking about Libbie Hawker���s Take Off Your Pants! (which seems weirdly appropriate for people who all write erotic romance)

Ana: I feel like I���m in a sect and trying to get Kate to join.

Kate: One of those cults. Oh no, they���re brainwashing me!

Ana: I never thought I���d be in a plotting cult.

Zoe: I wish I���d had this book two years ago. :(

Kate: If any book is going to do it, it might just be this one. She strikes very close to the Seven Point Plot Outline that I���ve had some success with. (Mostly because it just points out the signpost moments in the story.) But the story she tells at the beginning–I���d love to be able to do that.

Zoe: Someone in another group I hang out in said that they���re a lot like the Save the Cat beats with different names.

Ana: I might have to look into that because I wasn���t happy with all the names.

Zoe: I���m not familiar with the Save the Cat beats, but in the discussion it was said that it calls the Ally the Love Interest, so I���m not sure the names are much better. :)

Kate: We could do a comparison for our next book.

Ana: The Ally isn���t the Love Interest in my plotting. But maybe that���s because I write Romance?

Kate: That���s what I think.

Zoe: No, I think it���s just that the ���love interest��� doesn���t have to be an actual love interest���it���s just a weirdly named beat.

Kate: Zoe, you���re going to have to explain that a bit more, because I���m not getting what you���re talking about.

Ana: Maybe that there isn���t a love interest in every book?

Zoe: I can only explain so much since I haven���t read Save the Cat, but apparently his ally role is called ���love interest,��� although it doesn���t have to be an actual ���love interest.���

I think that Libbie���s beats pair nicely with James Scott Bell���s 14 signposts from Super Structure (also mentioned in Write Your Novel from the Middle). They hit different points, different aspects.

Kate: Another one I have to read. I got sidetracked by a book on character naming, which is way more interesting than I thought it would be.

Ana: There���s a book on character naming?

Kate: Sherrilyn Kenyon, through Writer���s Digest. She goes into naming conventions, then gives a bunch of names by nationality.

Zoe: Naming conventions would be useful if you���re writing non-Anglo-Saxon characters…or fantasy.

Ana: If I were writing non-anglo-saxon characters from a country whose naming conventions I���m not familiar with, I���d probably look at a few of those top 100 baby names list for a few years��� I mean, from a few different years, not that I���d be looking for years.

Zoe: lol I thought you���d be looking for years at first. I���m not sure the baby naming sites would help���they just give first names. I had to name a Hispanic character in a book recently, and looked up those naming conventions specifically. (Then I had to look up how it was handled once the family was an American Hispanic family because the character is actually second generation.)

Kate: That���s how this book handles it. There���s a section on Japanese and Korean, Ana.

Ana: Ah yes, I rarely think about last names. I���m good with Japanese! Probably won���t write Koreans.

Kate: The Japanese section talks about last names too, and how a married couple can take either his or her last name. Interesting, weird little tidbits.

And, we���ve gotten off track again. (Not like there���s ever a day where we don���t :) )

Zoe: We have. So Libbie sets out in the beginning to tell you that her method will help you gain more confidence in your stories at the outline stage and write faster. Having now read it and done three outlines and gotten back to work on my WIP, my thoughts on that claim are ���yes��� and ���maybe.��� I can see myself taking less time in rewrites because I���ll have fewer story problems to fix, but I���m not sure that I���ll first-draft any faster.

Kate: I���m looking forward to trying it out on something from scratch. I have two in-progress stories that I���m trying to work on where I plan to give it a whirl, but I don���t think it���s the same thing.

Zoe: Ironically I started a new story from scratch last night…and haven���t outlined it yet. (But her book still helped, because I wouldn���t have been able to grasp what I have if I hadn���t just learned all that stuff about character flaw.)

Ana: I tried the outline thing on a short project I���m working on now, and it���s going well so far. I���ve yet to test it on something longer, but will probably do so soon. At least, with this outline I get my story split into chunks that I can make into story goals so I know how much to write each day and about how long it���ll take me to get to the end.

Zoe: Yes! I made a list of scenes in Evernote with little checkboxes next to them, then broke them into days, with more scenes on weekends than weekdays, and now I can see that I can finish this draft by the end of the month. (I love ticking the little boxes…though I���m contemplating switching to index cards for the next one.)

Ana: I want little boxes to tick!

Zoe: Get you some Evernote!

Kate: I love having a goal to write toward, which is why the 7 Point Structure worked pretty well for me. But it would be nice to have more smaller goals, so I���m not spending days writing toward one goal, but can accomplish one or two each day. (Push the button, get a pellet. Repeat.)

Ana: I���m almost sad this story I���m writing isn���t going to be submitted anywhere. I already have a synopsis!

Zoe: Lol!

Kate: :D

I can certainly see the point of having an outline, or a serious plan, when you start writing. Libbie���s story about taking two years to write one book, then three weeks to write the outlined book, is one of the reasons I keep coming back to the ���There must be some way to make it work with my brain!��� idea.

Zoe: Kate, I have to ask now that you���re about halfway through the book: have you been an irritated bird yet?

Kate: Not once. How���s that for strange?

Zoe: (True story: I only wound up buying this book because I wanted to see if it was going to piss Kate off. Then I got hooked.)

Kate: And this is what I live with–writing buddies who do things just to see how far my tail will fuzz.

Zoe: I���d have told you not to buy it if it had been cranky-making. (After quoting all the cranky-making bits in chat.)

Ana: I would have been there for moral support. And popcorn.

Kate: That I can believe. But I have to say I���m glad you bought it and got me to buy it. I���m finding the specifics of the plot section a little harder to get into, but part of my method is that I write myself into the characters as I go. There���s a lot of stuff that comes out on the page that I have no idea where it came from, but then later something else comes out and the first one turns out to be foreshadowing, or necessary characterisation. And that all depends on the characters.

Zoe: Some people I���ve talked to had problems getting their heads around some of the stuff in this���I���ve seen discussions going on about the antagonist, the plot stuff, and the idea that the character has to overcome their flaw, which should make for interesting discussion in our chats as we get more into the specifics of the book.

Ana: To come back to what Kate said about the specifics, I think that even if you don���t follow the outline in the outlining part of the book, it can still help you if you got your character flaw and theme figured out before you start writing. (And possibly also how you want the book to end.)

Zoe: Yes. I think this book works for pantsers as well as plotters.

Kate: It does feel less ���This is the word of our Lord��� to me, which means I���m more likely to take a kick at what she says to try, and be less frustrated when and if it doesn���t work.

Zoe: I also see most of the book as more what you���d call ���guidelines��� than set-in-stone rules. I���ve been loosey-goosey with a lot of the plot stuff, changing headings, moving them around, grouping them together. But the book indicates you can do that as well.

Kate: One thing I figured out right away, and haven���t had time to go back and apply my new knowledge, is that you have to use this book either with notecards or a computer–you can���t just pull out a sheet of looseleaf and go to town. It���s definitely designed to be flexible, and for you to move stuff around, add and subtract, etc. Which is very much my way of doing things. (Although I do love my looseleaf)

Zoe: (I have a binder full of blank looseleaf. I bought it with the best intentions. Over a year ago.)

So, are we ready to dive into the Story Core in our next discussion?

(Ana: Nice, Zoe, ending the chapter with a question.)

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk, Uncategorized Tagged: Libbie Hawker, OMGitmightjustwork, outlining, Take Off Your Pants!, writing advice

I Wanted to be Warm, but Not THAT Warm

In the midst of our n-fucking-teenth winter storm that has everyone trapped in their houses because the roads aren’t safe, my *%@!(* flue caught fire. Or so I thought.

Some very nice volunteer firefighters showed up in the midst of this snowbomb to check the flue and make sure I wasn’t going to lose the house. Turns out it was some creosote that had fallen into the pot at the bottom of the flue, but it was burning. And before I found this out, I had moved all three cats, the hamster, the kid, both our purses, and my laptop out to the car, and was trying to figure out how to get the fish out.

Wednesday night, our neighbour up the hill did lose his house to a flue fire, because the fire department couldn’t get there in time in the middle of another f-ing snowstorm.

I’m done. That’s it. No more winter. Fuck you, Old Man. It’s on now.

Filed under: rant Tagged: fire, keep your fire extinguisher handy, winter excitement

Three Dirty Birds Talk about What We’re Reading

Over at Zoe’s blog!

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk Tagged: writing advice

Three Dirty Birds Talk Bunnies. Plot Bunnies, that is

Since Zoe got plot bunnied during our Monday discussion, we thought it was only appropriate to talk about plot bunnies on Ana’s blog.

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk, Uncategorized Tagged: authors chatting, plot bunnies, where do ideas come from, writing advice

Tuesday Tickle: The Emperor’s Favorite

Oops! Between getting ready for storms, dealing with storms, and cleaning up after storms, I completely forgot what day of the week it was. Anyway, this section makes me kind of weepy every time I read it.

Krys swung one side of his cloak around Addan, who curled against Krys���s side like a scrawny kitten���a vast improvement over the wild punches and vicious language of the first couple of months of Krys���s ���courtship���. They found a sheltered spot in the lee of a small warehouse and settled in to watch bales of southern spices and tuns of wine being unloaded.

���Is it really summer all th���time where those boats���r from?���

���Yes, and warmer.��� Krys dug a roll out of his pocket and passed it to Addan. He should have brought cheese, but he hadn���t thought of it. Addan seemed happy enough gnawing on the dry roll, anyway.

���Someday, I���m gonna live someplace where���n it���s always warm. Imma get onna boat and never come back.��� This was said in a decided tone, as if there was no doubt about it at all.

���Sure, if you want to. You���d have to learn to sail first.���

���Cain���t be that hard. Siaphal did it in summer.���

���Then you shouldn���t have any trouble with it.���

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the shouts of the men as they offloaded the cargo. Addan wiggled closer under the cloak, bony arms and legs pressed tightly against Krys���s side.

���You cold?���

Addan shrugged. ���S���normal. Allus cold.���

Krys wrapped a tentative arm around Addan���s shoulders. ���Move closer. Here, where���s the gloves I gave you last week?��� He pulled his gloves off and pushed them into Addan���s hand.

���Stoled.���

���Ah.��� He tugged his scarf free with his other hand and tried clumsily to wrap it around Addan���s neck. ���Suppose that���s where your hat went too?���

Addan shrugged and jammed the last of his roll into his mouth.

Krys sighed and hugged him closer. Tomorrow he was going to talk to his father about having a page.

Filed under: Tuesday Tickle Tagged: fantasy, historical, mm romance, The Emperor's Favorite

Three Dirty Birds Chirping about Sequels, Series, and Sequelitis

In which Zoe is bunnied while we watch, and the Dirty Birds risk excommunication.

It���s a Random Dirty Bird Day! Today we���re talking about…what are we talking about?

Ana: We���re talking about how sad we are that we can���t get guest birds.

Kate: We need some guest birds. That whole work-life balance thing is doing us in.

Ana: I have to eat so much chocolate because I can���t get people to bird with me. -puts it on her list of excuses for her chocolate lifestyle-

Kate: Mmmm, chocolate. I���m eating the first Easter bunny of the year right now. I can���t wait for the kid to come up looking for some, so I can offer her his bum.

Zoe: I keep eying the Easter bunnies at the store, but I haven���t bought one. Yet.

Ana: I don���t have any either.

Kate: Now I feel special. :)

Ana: Only because you got the first Easter bunny bum of the year.

Kate: The Great Fluffy Orange Hunter triumphs!

Actually, today we���re not talking about how much chocolate we���re eating (though I���m sure it���s going to come up, because we are who we are). Instead, we���re talking about sequels, and series, and sequelitis.

Ana: Actually, did you make that last word up?

Kate: It���s the illness you suffer when the stuff you wrote in your original story makes it impossible to do the cool thing you thought up for the next one, because it violates canon. It���s an illness that involves much weeping and eating of chocolate.

Ana: I want to say that���s an illness I���m deeply familiar with, but the only time this has happened is with a story that was never, well, officially published so I just went back and changed the first story. Again and again. While eating chocolate. (Now when I sent stories to publishers I���m always scared that I���ll think of things I want to change later.)

Zoe: It would be handy if we could publish our stories on those Magic Doodle pads, so we can just change it as we go and no reader will ever know. (They���ll just think they went crazy.)

Kate: Live action editing!

Ana: I like making readers think they���re crazy.

Zoe: I just love erasing my tracks.

Ana: Is it just me or does Zoe get scarier every week?

Kate: I sleep with a cross and holy water now, because garlic makes me wheeze.

Ana: I thought you did that because you live with a teenager.

Kate: Naw, that���s the ring of loose change in front of my bedroom door. By the time she���s picked it all up, she���s forgotten what she wants me for and is rejoicing in her new-found riches.

Zoe: : I need to try something like that with Mr. Rider. He���s starting to become inured to the sounds of gay porn playing loudly at the doorway.

Kate: Lol, here we go again. It���s like herding cats–we never seem to go in the direction we plan, even when we���re the ones making the decision. And we promised ourselves!

Ana: Sorry, my brain stopped at ���gay porn��� and didn���t hear what you were saying.

Kate: Lol.

Zoe: I���m writing a sequel right now. I���d say ���remind me to never do it again,��� but honestly it���s on par with writing any book. A lot of work.

Ana: When I wrote my sequel to my first book, I liked that I had most of the characters worked out already. But at the same time it���s more difficult to give them new arcs.

Kate: I find I have to keep rereading the first one, even though I���ve made notes, because I don���t remember some of the little details and things that were said or implied, and those are often the things that the next book hinges on.

Zoe: Since Word takes so long to open an 82,000-word file, I���ve just been sticking brackets in the sequel to remind myself to look up the info later. Fortunately it���s been minor details, not anything I need to verify in order to make sure I don���t go down a wrong road.

Kate: I���ve been considering a third monitor, so I can keep the original open on one screen and flip through it. Or that might just be my tech greed showing it���s ugly head. I do like toys���

But seriously, I do find myself going back to the original a lot, for stuff that wouldn���t be covered by Weiland���s character interviews or extended outlines.

Ana: There���s things she didn���t cover? Oh right, kinks and such���.(Not that I���d have to remind myself of those)

Kate: I���ve kind of got myself coming and going, because I���m doing a prequel and a sequel for the same book, so I���m writing in both of them at the same time in order to keep things in line with each other. It���s weird, but it���ll be fun to see stuff foreshadowed in the prequel and show up in the sequel.

Zoe: I wonder if I started working on book 3 of the trilogy now if I���d finish it before book 2. What I didn���t think about before I decided to do a trilogy was that the sloggy middle would now be an entire book long.

Ana: Poor Zoe.

Kate: It���s an idea. Even if you only get part of it done, it might shake things loose for number 2.

Zoe: It gets more exciting in the later half of book 2, but the set up��� *sigh*

Kate: Add some zombie Easter bunnies, that���ll liven it up. ���Eat them, before they eat you!���

Ana: Zombie Easter bunnies are your solution to everything. It���s like a substisolution.

Kate: High risk, high reward.

Ana: I was pondering adding a third book to my��� book with a sequel. But I���m not sure about it and that makes it difficult because I want to get book one and two out of the door, but I keep thinking that if I eventually want to do a third book, I should set it up in book 1 and 2 before publishing those. (As I tend to want to go back to change things so other things can happen)

Kate: I wonder if all pantsers feel that way. I know I do.

Ana: I just have to stop dragging my feet and come up with a definite plotline for book 3 so I know what���s needed. (And then I���d have to somehow stick to that plotline.)

Kate: Hahaha, that���s funny! We both know how that goes.

Ana: Remember how I said I was going to pants my Goodreads m/m group story? And then I was all ���I accidentally plotted it like I���ve never plotted a story before��� ? Yeah, I���m back to pantsing already. 7k in. I think the outline lasted all of 3k.

Kate: Not surprised at all. I would dearly love to outline something and have it stick beyond the first five paragraphs.

Ana: So we���ve talked about sequels. Do we have thoughts on series?

Kate: I think you need to have strong characters for either of those. And a real goal in mind, growth for the characters and a gradual increase in the conflict over the whole thing.

Ana: I���m not sure. In romance, I often see series where you have side characters take over the next book of a series, even if they were barely present in the ���original��� book and then the prior main couple gets a few cameo appearances.

Kate: I���m a bit iffy about those. If a character is going to get his own story later on, he should really play more than a bit part in the first story. At least, have some impact on it. Although, I���ll admit to reading books, not because I���m interested in the main characters, but because of the cameos of previous characters. Although, if you���re going to do that, it better be a damn good cameo, where they still have some agency, and not just a quick, ���I know you like these guys, so here they are for a total of two pages doing nothing.��� (I was just disappointed by a book that did that.)

Zoe: My fear with starting a series is that it will suffer the GRRM effect���plot threads multiplying like rabbits beyond any possibility of being able to tie them all up without having to write forty-seven-zillion brick-sized books.

Kate: Oh, yes, that���s a tough one to keep on top of. The plot-lines I���ve killed off…

Zoe: What if our existence is all the result of a series God decided to try writing, and it just got way out of control?

Kate: I hope he has something good planned for me. Wonder where he keeps his outlines?

Zoe: He gave you a bunny butt. What more do you want?

Ana:I think he���s more of a pantser.

Zoe: I have a feeling that���s the case.

Kate: That makes me nervous.

Zoe: Now I���m imagining him up there going, ���Shit. I shouldn���t have killed Kennedy off back in ���63. I could have really used him here.���

Ana: Better throw a random hurricane here to distract people from my poor plotting skills.

Zoe: I see that he only tried the ���Shit. What if I bring this character back from the dead?��� trick once before realizing how cheesy it was.

Kate: That was probably a good choice. Though, did he not do it twice? Or was the first one foreshadowing?

Zoe: At any rate, he did it less often than GRRM or the American Horror Story writers.

Ana: There���s an anime studio called Studio Sunrise who does it so often fans have coined the term ���sunrisen��� for resurrected characters.

Kate: Lol, gotta love the fans.

Zoe: ���Sunrisen��� is an awesome term. ~Is totally not thinking about how to work that into a vampire story~

Kate: Like an un-vampire? How would that work?

Zoe: I���m thinking more that sunlight turns vampires into zombies.

Ana: How do vampires turn into zombies. Are they suddenly undead? Wait���

Zoe: Okay, it���s probably not perfect. Scratch the vampire part – what if sunlight turns dead bodies into zombies? (I guess that would cut down on the incidence quite a bit. Just bury them overnight.) (So scratch that idea too.)

Kate: Depends. How fast does it happen? Is it like being infected where if you die and the sunlight hits you, even if they bury you, you still turn? Or do they change within minutes? That would make car crashes fun. Imagine a train or a El going off the tracks���

Zoe: What if sunlight just brings dead people back to life? They seem perfectly normal. But of course, over time, you discover they���re not. But for a while…they look and act normal. Some people wouldn���t even know they���d died, because they���d pass out, then wake up.

Kate: Oh, you have to write that.

Zoe: People���d be digging up the recently buried, dragging their loved ones out on the lawn.

Kate: This is such a creepy idea. I won���t be able to sleep tonight.

Zoe: Poor Kate. Just eat the bunny bum. It���ll make you feel better.

Kate: Nom, nom, nom.

Zoe: The what-if part of the idea is always the easy part. The real work is in figuring out what the story is. And then, to get back to the discussion topic, WHAT TO DO IN THE SEQUEL!

Ana: Luckily we have a talk on plot bunnies coming up!

Kate: Are they chocolate?

Zoe: I wish. Then they���d be easy to get rid of. Om nom nom.

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk, Uncategorized Tagged: sequels, series, writing advice

Three Dirty Birds and The Bonus Tweeting (Because we ran out of chapters)

It’s a secret bonus, so you have to go to Zoe’s blog to find out what it is!

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk Tagged: don't do this, writers getting weird, writing advice

Three Dirty Birds and the End of Outlining Your Novel

And I’m cranky.

Check it out on Ana’s blog!

Tomorrow, we’re at Zoe’s blog, rambling without a purpose. (I hear you–how is that any different from normal? :) )

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk Tagged: KM Weiland, Outlining your Novel, writing advice

Tuesday Tickle: Kev ‘n Mo

I seriously think that Todd needs his own book.

A cute guy with red hair and freckles brushed against him on his way to the bar, and Mo found himself turning to watch.

Todd squeezed his arm. ���Does he have a cute ass? I like a nice ass.���

Mo gaped at him for a moment���he knew Todd was interested in girls; it had never occurred to him that Todd might be bi.

Todd grinned, his eyes still locked off in the distance. ���You���re looking at me funny, aren���t you? I can tell. What can I say? I���m an ass man.���

���Sorry, I didn���t know.���

���It don���t think the subject ever came up. Don���t worry, I already decided that it was a bad idea to put the moves on my roommate, no matter how delicious an ass he had, so you���re safe.��� Todd nodded his head. ���But, I depend on you to alert me to any cute ones in the neighborhood.���

���You don���t care if he���s ugly, so long as the ass is cute?���

Todd gestured at his eyes. ���It���s not like I need to keep a stock of paper bags around, is it? Being blind has its advantages. Just make sure the equipment is fine, and we���re good.���

���So, I���m your pimp now.���

���Naw, just my eyes. I���ll take care of the rest of it.���

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Kev 'n Mo, mm romance, new adult gay romance