A.M. Gray's Blog, page 20

Why couldn't he just play along?

Writer’s Block
In one sentence is the spark of a story. Ignite.

Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a memory about this sentence. Write something about this sentence.

Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!http://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/975... couldn’t he just play along?” she hissed at Grace as they dragged the third member of their party along with them.“I do NOT know, Buckley.” She was hanging onto his arm and she actually shook him as she said it. “We told him often enough.”“I didn’t know,” he wailed.“Jeff, you idiot. You should have picked up your cues from us. Did we look like we were about to say something unbelievably dumb?”“Ah... well... when you put it like that.”“Walk faster,” Buckley said. “Maybe we should run?”“It was their faces... did you see their faces?” He looked panicked. His eyes too white and too wide. “They had teeth like needles and they... their faces were-”“Rotting. We know.”“How can something be alive and be rotting?”“They weren’t alive, Jeff. Haven’t you worked that out yet?”He sucked in a breath. “I think I am going to be sick.”“We don’t have time,” Grace said. “Oh, thank the goddess, there’s the car.”Buckley glanced back up the road, the way they had come. “Will the charms hold?”“They had better, or we won’t be going home in one piece.”“What?” Jeff squeaked.She flung the door open and pushed him into the back seat. “If they catch us, we’d be rotting, too, Jeff.”Doors slammed and the car roared away.“I am so glad that is over,” he said after a few minutes.“You shouldn’t be,” said Grace, looking grim, “You offended them and now you have to make reparations.”He giggled nervously, but when Buckley didn’t disagree he started to look less nauseated and a whole lot more worried.“And worse,” added Buckley, “Now we have to ask the others.”“And I hate the others,” Grace said. She glared at him in the rear-view mirror.“I’m sorry,” he murmured.Buckley tried to be conciliatory. “Well, at least he has learnt a good lesson.”“Uh, huh. I will be amazed if he listens to us properly in the future.”“So, I get to go out with you two again?” he asked hopefully.“Next time you mess up, I will just leave you there,” Grace growled.He went to laugh, but thought better of it. He suspected that she meant it. He huddled down in the back seat and tried not to keep looking behind them to see if they were being followed. Seeing things that he should not be able to was clearly his problem. Or one of them; keeping his mouth shut was obviously a problem, too.~~~~© AM Gray 2014

The prophecy is written on the back of a Thai take-out menu

Writer’s Block
In one sentence is the spark of a story. Ignite.

Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a memory about this sentence. Write something about this sentence.

Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!http://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/997...
*I'm not good at making up prophecies so I borrowed (stole) a random one from Nostradamus. ~~~~~~She stood on the other side of his desk and handed him the paper. He glanced at it before flipping it over, turning it sideways and looking up at her. “The prophecy is written on the back of a Thai take-out menu?” He sounded personally offended.“It was all I had.”“Right.”“Do you think the nature of the paper affects the words?”He made a face. “No... that would be-” he glanced up and caught her eye, “-that would be silly.”“Yes, it would.” She shifted on her feet. “Honestly, when he starts spouting, I have seconds to get it all down.”“It’s well written given you have so little time,” he conceded. He read it again. “Any hints?”“No idea.” She recited it from memory.“Seven conspirators at the banquet will cause to flashThe iron out of the ship against the three:One will have the two fleets brought to the great one,When through the evil the latter shoots him in the forehead.”He sighed. “It sounds like another war prophecy.”“Another one.”“Shooting... ships of iron.” He scratched his chin. “So who are the three?”“And two fleets. It sounds like nations at war.”“But there is a ‘great one’.” He used finger apostrophes.“Not that we know who he is yet.”“Who says it is a ‘he’?”She ignored that.“So where is he now. The prophet?”“He’s asleep. It wears him out.”“Asleep where?”She blushed and didn’t answer him.“Right...” He shuffled some papers on his desk and cleared his throat. “So, other than spouting gibberish occasionally, he’s normal?”“Of course, he’s normal,” she protested and then blushed again. “I mean, he eats Thai take-out doesn’t he?”“That does not rate as normal, in my book,” he commented.“Not good with chili, huh?”“I had this meal once-” he looked embarrassed and unsure of why he was confessing this to her, “-I thought they were small green beans and I swallowed them whole.”She made a face. “Ouch.”“You bet. It was worse the next day.”“He’s fine with chilies, not so good with conversations.” She made an odd shrugging movement.“Unless they are cryptic-”“-and have four lines. It is always four lines.”He grinned at her. “So try to write the next one on a blank sheet of paper?”“I’ll try, but they’re pretty random.”“You know the company needs him to keep making these prophecies?”“I know that and so does he. That’s why he gets so tense about it and then has this collapse afterwards... so much is riding on it and we don’t know what causes them to happen.”“Yes.” A pause. “It’s end of the world stuff or it could be.”“Yes. Yes, it is.” She sat down with a whump as if all the air had just gone out of her.“It’ll be all right,” he said. “He’s on our side.” He reached a hand put to her as if to comfort her.“I know... it’s just... sometimes-” She looked at him and her face was conflicted.“Sometimes you’re not sure we are the good side?” he asked.~~~~© AM Gray 2014

He finds her in his bathtub

He finds her in his bathtub, buried under twenty-seven frozen pizzas. Writer’s Block
In one sentence is the spark of a story. Ignite.

Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a memory about this sentence. Write something about this sentence.

Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!http://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/983... prompt, so it went weird places... that's my excuse and I am sticking to it. So there.~~~~~~He found her in his bathtub, buried under twenty-seven frozen pizzas. “Huh,” he said. He didn’t know he owned twenty-seven frozen pizzas.He crouched down next to the tub. “What are you doing?” he asked.“Keeping cool.”He thought about that for a minute. “You’ll smell like salami.”“So?”“You’ll have to scrub it out... to get rid of the scent,” he added.“You like salami.”“Yeah... but.” He had a vivid image of licking her skin and her tasting like salami. He cleared his throat. Doing that would probably warm her up, not cool her down. “Why do you need to keep cool?”“I feel strange.”“Strange?” he checked.Her face twisted where it peeked out from between the boxes. “As if I will... catch on fire.”“Okay,” he agreed. He wasn’t sure what else to say. His life had been very interesting since she had started living with him and he adored it. “Why pizzas?”“It was all you had in your freezer.”He made a face. “Really? I didn’t know I had so many.”“Why do you? Have so many, I mean.”“I don’t know. I guess I buy a few when they are on special and then I only eat one.”“I’m glad,” she said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have enough.”“I’m glad you have enough, I wouldn’t want you to be burnt up.”“Thank you,” she said with dignity. Tricky, given she was still hiding under the pizzas.He yawned. “When you’re ready, and all cooled down, why don’t you come to bed?”“Sure. Do I need to shower?”“Not unless you want to.” He grinned at her. “I knew you liked pizzas.”“Got enough of them... maybe we should stock up on ice-”She looked worried.He brushed the end of her nose with one finger. “- for next time.”She smiled at him, pleased to know that he wasn’t upset and encouraged that he thought there would be a next time.~~~~© AM Gray 2014

Work in Progress

I saw a comic this week that so neatly encapsulated my works in progress (WIP) problem that I copied it here. And I checked the site and it is okay if you credit them. So thanks, poorly drawn lines… THAT is my problem. A reader asked about my WIP. Oddly, I had just drawn up a table of them all, so I thought I would share.I am thinking of doing National Novel writing month (Nanowrimo) and you are supposed to work on a new project. I have maybe two (or three) that could be tagged as my nano project for 2014. If I have already written some words, I will just add more on the end. And a lot of the technical word count is plotting out the story and making back stories for characters rather than actual writing. Pre-planning is a bonus for nano. There is seriously no way you can write 50,000 words in a month without it.With scrivener, I can set it to only count the words in the actual manuscript and not all the prep stuff that is in the same document, so it should be okay.But here is a table of my WIP:
working title rough storyline word count genre watchword Watchers group, multiple worlds, forgotten tech, death vs life, messenger girl in between the two 110,000 portal fantasy secret thoughts polyamorous multiracial erotica, magic special forces, 19,000 paranormal urban fantasy midnight deals A girl hides on a tramp steamer, asks guy to protect her; he does more than that, teaches her that desire =/= love 6,000 Romance, drama conon's quest Adventures of Wizard Conon & Edwin, his human assistant, 15,000 Fantasy hero quest london & tuesday modern older woman romance w younger man, real life issues w age gap and blended families 40,000 new adult bluebeard's last wife fairy tale rewrite, BB’s last wife saves herself 52,000 fairy tale second chances Unhappily married woman dreams up a lover, literally 25,000 erotica promise supernatural hunters, girl bound to life partner by a ring, angst & drama ensue 35,000 young adult autumn leaves Romance but the guy ultimately wants her for her apartment 5,000 romance unusual house Girl inherits a house that protects itself and a lawyer that may be soulless. But was her Gran murdered? 8,000 murder mystery succubus / birds & bees stolen child grows up to realise she is a succubus, goes to a PI; only guy she can touch - he’s a fallen angel 6,000 paranormal urban fantasy kitten at the crossroads girl accidently sells her virginity to a crossroads demon who falls in love w her 6,000 paranormal urban fantasy the necklace short stories linked by a necklace that allows the wearer to hear thoughts, explores moral grey issues 7,000 modern, magic shifters and food The wolf alpha's son chose a non-shifter girl as his mate - why her? 8,000 paranormal urban fantasy the lock dragons thief steals item guarded by tiny dragons, one becomes a tattoo and the second leads a hunter to them 2,000 fantasy, magic Weredingos/brooklyn tigers aussie shifters, new teacher in small town dates the head Roo ? paranormal urban fantasy north by northwest aussie, impulsive street meeting turns into romance - quick; pretend you’re my girlfriend 3,000 romance HEA
So, there are seventeen stories that I have plotted out, thought up names and back stories for the main characters, found cool photos that look like my head canons, done some research on places and items that feature in the story, written a few words and maybe made up a Scrivener project for them. SEVENTEEN! It’s about 400,000 words in total, I think.And it’s not just that I have that many stories, but I have more than ten genres, as well!And that’s not even counting the other half baked ideas that I have never made a start on, or the short stories that people tell me should be extended, NOR is it counting the manic number of fanfiction stories I still have to finish.So my over thinking thoughts (as per the cartoon) go something like this… oh, my god I've written a hundred thousand words of bog standard portal fantasy with a magic girl who is probably a Mary-Sue. Who would want to read this? Start next story. OMG I have written a story that uses an ancient god. I have appropriated that from another people, I am a horrible person, and who would want to read that? Start next story… etcetera.I get that this is me censoring myself. Instead of going back and fixing the issue, I get intrigued by a new shiny idea. I will probably self-publish these, so I'm not trying to sell them to a publisher or literary agent. I won’t spend fourteen years getting it perfect like the Aussie guy who won the 2014 Man Booker prize this week. (Richard Flanagan won with The Narrow Road to the Deep North.)I'm not that kind of writer. After making a cover, the worst that could happen is that I upload them and they don’t sell. Although my fertile imagination could think up a few more scary options. *laughs at self* At least I didn't follow the cartoon and delete them! It’s all there to be edited. You can’t edit a blank page.It can be fixed. It can be finished. I just need to pick one and do it.

I see you

Writer’s Block
In one sentence is the spark of a story. Ignite.

Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a memory about this sentence. Write something about this sentence.

Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!
http://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/990...I see you.Words that changed her life. Her dull, ordinary life. Full of the creeping minutia of everyday stuff. Work, commuting, doing her laundry, grocery shopping, coffee with friends and watching TV. Her companion-less, single life.‘You are old enough; you should be married,’ her mother would nag. ‘I'll be too old to be a grandmother.’She told her mother that if she kept inviting what she considered to be nice boys over for dinner then she would never set foot inside her mother’s house again. What her mother thought were nice men, she didn't like at all. They were too loud; too abrasive.She liked her friends. She liked the occasional man. But she liked being alone more. And the more time she spent alone, the more she preferred it. She didn't even have a cat or a fish. She argued that she liked it that way; that she might go away for a weekend or something, and that to leave a fish or cat alone would be wrong.Withdrawing from friends meant that they kind of forgot about her. they would organise a night out and not tell her; she always said ‘no’ anyway.She was walking along the street when a person bumped into her. They didn’t apologise. It was almost as if they didn't see her.It happened more frequently until it was a daily occurrence.She decided that she had reached a new level of existence. Her own kind of nirvana. She was invisible.She revelled in it. She smiled at nothing. There was a new bounce in her step. Everyday was more interesting and exciting than the last with her new found gift.She danced in her house. Threw her arms above her head and shouted to nothing, “I am invisible!”And a voice replied, “I see you.”~~~~© AM Gray 2014

Quiet achiever

I said back in the first week of October that my story ‘I'll be home for Christmas’ has ever so quietly crept up the statistics table. Its still doing that, but what I hadn't noticed was how well it is doing on Wattpad. It just passed 1,000 reads. For contrast, on Ao3 it is just over 400 hits and on FictionPad it has 105 hits with 23 followers. With 74 chapters, it doesn't take too many reads to push up the stats, if someone finishes the story. So I find it rather intriguing that the math just doesn't add up. Unless people are following it with the intention of maybe reading it one day? With those numbers one or two people have actually read it all the way through. *shrugs* I don’t know.I kind of skim read it myself this week. A reader was reviewing every chapter (bless them) and I had to read it to remind myself what happened so that I could reply. They said they were a Cullen fan and hadn't read much wolf fic before. For some reason this story gets a few comments like that. They expressed surprise that I only  had 3,700 reviews… no, really, I told them, that’s huge for a wolf fic.I just did a quick search on FFN - it has fixed up the search tags a bit more - and found that for a Paul/Bella pairing the story with the most reviews has 3292 and is of course, Apologies… written by ME! bwahahaWhen I change that to Edward/Bella the story with the largest number of reviews has just under 25,000.Sigh. Wolf writers always were swimming against the tide.~~~~~~Read the story here at fanfiction, here at fictionPad, here on A03 or here on Wattpad.

Forgotten

Writer’s Block A picture says a thousand words. Write them.Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about this picture.Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!
Picture Source: hrfleur.deviantart.comhttp://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/873... battle raged for what seemed like days. The light and noise frightened the local villagers so badly that they abandoned their homes and went up into the mountain to hide in the caves.When they came back, the village was damaged; the soldiers had raided it for supplies and valuables but luckily most of the buildings were still standing. Not like their crops and fruit trees; they were all destroyed. The villagers felt justified in searching through the abandoned camps for anything the armies had left behind. They buried any bodies to stop disease and ploughed back the churned earth into straight furrows. They didn’t know which side had won and they didn’t care. It didn’t make much difference to the day-to-day life of the villagers.The girl was sent out to find any stray livestock. The noise had frightened them too and most had startled and broken the fences the first night. The others probably got eaten.She had walked quite some way when found the dead soldier in the ravine; his blue uniform damaged and dirty. He lay flat on his back with his hand above his head. He looked as if he was sleeping, but oddly, the earth under his head was blue. As if the colour had leached out of his uniform and stained it somehow.She had never seen anyone with such fine pale skin and delicate features. His hair was even light coloured, almost silver. The colour looked like some of the old people in the village but his skin was not wrinkled or aged. She leaned down to look closer and noticed that the hair in his eyelashes and brows was dark. Had something happened to him to lighten his hair? Or, like she knew some women did, did he dye it?He looked so different that she wanted to touch him. His features were as fine as glass. She touched his cheek and was not surprised that he felt cold. Then she brushed a fingertip over his eyebrow and jumped back a foot when the eye opened. He wasn’t dead.He tried to speak, but only croaked something she didn’t comprehend but she did understand. Water.Carefully she poured drops from her drinking flask into his mouth. His colour improved immediately. And it seemed to get more blue, especially his hair. Once he had the water inside him, he rolled over and as the skin of his face touched the blue puddle, it sucked up the blue hue from the ground. She blinked. “What w-was that?”He understood that. It took him some time to find the words, as if hers was a language he seldom used. “My... blessing? No... gift... manna?” he tried.She was confused. “It’s magic?”He nodded.“And it kept you alive?”Another nod. “The fight, no battle. Who won?”She shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re all gone.”With a groan, he threw his body back on the ground.“Don’t do that! You’ll hurt yourself.”He rolled onto his side and curled up. “Let me die.”“You can’t stay here,” she said. “Someone will find you.”“I... don’t care.”“Well, I do.”He glanced at her. “Spoils of war?” he said in his own language and then he laughed.She frowned at him, suspecting he had made a joke at her expense.“Fine.” He took a deep breath, but it hurt him to do it. “I am yours.” His hand reached out to her. “Help me move.”Racking her brain, she was trying to think where she could hide him, and bring food and water without raising suspicion. The shepherd’s hut might work.It wasn’t until later that night, when she was in her own bed and sleep evaded her that she started to worry if she had even done the right thing.~~~~© AM Gray 2014

Do it today

I have a heading in GoogleKeep that just says ‘do it today’ and then there is nothing listed under it… scratches head. Maybe I meant write this blog post? *grins*I was messaging a reviewer in the fanfiction site. We were in Offerings and that was a story I was inspired to write after seeing a banner made by Goldengirl27.

We got onto talking about ideas and how to get them; they were stuck. I suggested that they could look at writing prompts, images or photos, or check out contest entries or any of the banners on printing paws available for adoption if they want ideas for the Twilight wolf pack.I told them that I am swamped with ideas. They suggested that, seeing as how I have so many ideas, I could give some of mine to them to write.I kind of know what they were getting at, but I told them that it doesn't work that way.I mean... it's not the idea  that makes the story good.How many times have you read a story that had a great premise but was just really badly executed? Or, you read a great story that basically rehashes an old trope and it doesn't matter if it is well written.How can I explain? Recently I was watching a video lecture from Brandon Sanderson and he was talking about this. He was laughing about how he was at a conference with Jim Butcher, who writes the Dresden files and they were arguing with a guy in the crowd about ideas and execution. Jim said he could write ANY idea into a good story and the guy challenged him to write a mix-up of the lost Roman legion and Pokemon... and he did it. And he got so carried away he has published six books in the series! Way to go with winning that fight, Jim. lol"The Codex Alera is Jim's six-book fantasy epic set in another world, mixing the politics of Rome with a world alive with elemental animism." From his website I get ideas from all sorts of places, on tumblr there are a dozen sites that send images or starter sentences every day. Or just Google writing prompts.The trick is to ask yourself: what happens next?Or what do these people have in common? What would they fight about? Fighting/arguing is conflict and conflict is the heart of a story.Or think of the ending and then ask: how did they get here? And then go back and start them at the exact opposite point.
Just write... if it is 300 words or 3,000 just write them down.

Making coffee

Writer’s Block A picture says a thousand words. Write them.Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about this picture.Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!
Picture Source: gonzale.deviantart.comhttp://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/965... lay on the bed; the sheets held up around her chest and watched him bustle around in the tiny kitchen.“What are you doing?” she asked.He turned to look at her. “You’re awake.” He waved the kettle at her. “I’m making coffee.” He filled the kettle at the tap. “You do drink coffee?”“Yes, I do.”“Just as well.”“Pfft. That sounded like a threat.”He flashed a grin over his bare shoulder. “Oh, it was. Not drinking coffee is a deal breaker.”She chuckled. Watching the lean muscles on his back bunch as he lifted the now full and much heavier kettle to the stove, she had a flashback of the previous night. Her hands gripping at those muscles as he moved above her. Her nails sunk into his flesh. She had left marks on him, she was sure. Not that she normally behaved like that. Not that she normally picked up guys in the street. Nor did she normally stay. She was used to sliding out, getting dressed while they slept, and running.This one seemed to be different.But his back was bare and obviously unmarked. She didn’t think about it before she spoke, “I scratched you,” she said.“Nah.” He had moved on to making toast.“I did.”He didn’t look at her, now. “I can’t be sure... I was enjoying myself too much, but I don’t think you did.” He searched in the fridge for spreads.Frowning, she tried to think.“You can have another try, if you like.” A wicked grin accompanied that suggestion and a wave of the strawberry jam jar.“After breakfast,” she said.“Sweet.”She didn’t normally stay for seconds, either. This guy was very different.~~~~© AM Gray 2014

Abandoned mansion bathroom

Writer’s Block A picture says a thousand words. Write them.Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about this picture.Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!
Picture Source: zerberuz.deviantart.comhttp://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/980... his eyelids apart he looked blearily around. Moving his head hurt. Weird... everything was in black and white... oh, wait... it was just this room. He waved his own hand in front of his face and it looked pale but still pinkish. Situation normal. It was just this room that was all muted shades of grey.The light coming through the open shutters made his head hurt, too.Party... had he been to a party? He couldn’t remember. He must have had a really good time.“Ugh,” he groaned. His back hurt and he shifted painfully. It was leaning on something hard and cold; the bath. No wonder; he had been asleep in the bath. Weren’t there any beds in this house?Was it a party? Was it in this house? Who’s house was it? That was weird. He didn’t remember coming here, let alone how he ended up asleep in the bath. Tacky, dry mouth made him look longingly at the taps. When he sat up he nearly fell down again. Ugh. Sharp pain in his head. That hurt. And his left arm was hard to lift and useless. He peered at it myopically. It was manacled. A large, metal band went around his wrist and -- he glanced over the edge of the bath to the floor-- and it was bolted to the tiled floor. What the Hell? He spent too long waving around that hand and still not being able to comprehend it.He tried to speak but his mouth clicked with thirst. He shuffled down the bath and worked at the tap. It wouldn’t turn.Maybe just as well. When he thought about it, if he had turned it on he would have worn the water rather than drunk it, still sitting in the bath. He eyed off the basins against the wall. He clambered out and clanked over to try one and got some rusty water out of it. It ran clear after a while giving him the impression that it had not been used for some time. The shelf above the sinks was missing. The brackets remained.Now, his thirst quenched, he noticed the paint peeling from the walls.The house was clearly abandoned... but why? Why was he here? Why couldn’t he remember? And why was he chained up?And then he heard the front door open... ~~~~© AM Gray 2014