The WAL

Okay, I found my way out of the corner.  Just hope my solution wasn’t too easy.  I think it makes sense, but if I ever get it far enough in the editing process to let someone read it, I’ll find out for certain.

I really hate it when that happens.  Something really bad is about to happen to my main characters unless they can stop it and it was a challenge for them to figure out that it was coming.  But they’re a clever group and the figuring was logical.  The problem is, I don’t know if I’m clever enough to have given them the tools they need to avert disaster.  No, actually, the problem is that I don’t know what those tools are so I’ve currently got no way to be clever in giving them to my characters.  Frack.

At any rate, progress report:

This is the last big plot complication before they reach the end of their journey and while I’m not completely happy with how the story has shaped out, sufficient editing will make me happier.  The ending is clear in my mind and just waiting to be written.

Did I mention this was a Superhero novel?  As if it weren’t obvious from the title.  It’s actually an idea I had several years back that I’m just now pursuing.  Of course, you could say that about a number of the stories of various lengths that I’ve worked on in the past year.  The past is past but sometimes deserves some attention.

On July 13th, Matt Selznick’s book “Brave Men Run” hit Amazon and got all the way up to #53 in overall sales.  It made it that high by Matt rallying the troops, getting the word out and writing a damned good novel.  My copy arrived on Thursday last week and I finished it this morning just before bed.  I listened to the podcast via podiobooks.com last winter and really enjoyed it.  The story is just as good written as audio.  I won’t spoil anything for you, but let’s call it a coming of age story set in a slightly alternate 1980s where people with weird powers and abilities do exist, more or less hidden until a declaration by one of the most powerful of them reveals their existence to the world.  A fast, fun read, and Matt’s working on the sequel.  Not quickly enough for me, mind you, but it’s coming.

Oh, and by the way, it’s coming.

With respect to Jonathan Coulton, but I’m sure he won’t mind the small quote since I’m linking back to him and I’ve been humming the song for days.  Besides, it’s germaine to today’s subject: Zombies.

I’ve been neglecting my short fiction a lot lately in favour of first one, and then a second novel (plus the beginning of  a third) and I thought I might like to change that.  I have been doing some editing and have half a dozen things I intend to send out in the next week or so, but nothing new.  Following some a link provided by the inestimable Mur Lafferty in an episode of I Should Be Writing a few months back, I skimmed through the anthology section on Ralan’s Webstravaganza and found a listing for an anthology by Permuted Press titled “The World Is Dead”, a post apocalyptic zombie anthology.

I’m not really a big horror fan, preferring most of my horror to come mixed with comedy.  “Bubbahotep”, “Sean of the Dead” sort of thing.  But zombies can be a lot of fun and I’ve never written a zombie story before.  The idea of this abthology grabbed me, and I immediately knew what kind of direction I’d take with the theme.

So I’m writing a zombie story.  Will it be done, edited, and polished in time for the 31 August deadline?  I hope so.  Will it be truly original?  I’m not sure I can judge that as I’m not well read enough in the genre, but I think that might change a little.  Will it be good enough?  That will be for the editor, Kim Paffenroth, to decide if I can get it in on time.

On a related note, check out The Takeover, a zombie-related audio drama presented by, hmm, Mur Lafferty.  Absolutely hilarious.  Only five episodes in, so it’s still easy to catch up.

The great thing about digital cameras is that you can take as many pictures as you like.  If one doesn’t turn out, delete it and take another, and another, and another.  No developing costs, no physical storage and no financial cost beyond batteries unless you print them.

The downfall of digital cameras is the shear number of pictures you wind up with.  I take a lot of pictures during major family events and a few scattered around the calendar otherwise, anywhere between 50 and 150 in a typical month mostly, but peaking a lot higher if we go on a trip or vacation.  I’m not so good at labelling them right away and so I’m really far behind.  As in, up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t labelled most of 2007.  I’m on a quest to fix that with now only September to December of 2007 left to go through, 622 photos.  Doing about fifty per day, which doesn’t take that long, but breaks it into bite-sized chunks that make it seem like it’s a manageable task, I should be done in less than two weeks.

After that, I’ve still got nearly 1200 for 2008 so far, about half of those from our most recent vacation.  Paleoboy has his own camera, a gift from his maternal grandparents for his last birthday.  He’s got 700 photos downloaded to the hard drive.  This could take a while.

Okay, not exactly a vacation post, but I did this for the first time during my vacation, so there’s the tie in.

We initially crossed the border to go to the aquarium in Niagara Falls, New York but my better half heard about an outlet mall there, so we got directions and made the ten minute drive mentally converting kilometres per hour to miles per hour every couple of minutes to make sure I wasn’t speeding too badly.

Long story short, I got 3 suits, cuffs on the pants included, and a pair of shoes for $372 US and then paid tax crossing back into Canada (GST and PST to my surprise and dismay).  We also bought some kids’ clothing and my wife contributed a bit to her wardrobe as well, but I think I had the best deal.  I can easily spend $300 on one suit on this side of the border before alterations, even during so-called sales.  Low end suits are usually around the $150-$170 range and are 100% polyester rather than wool.  The tax coming back into the country irritated me, but it was absolutely worth the trip.

One of the named by the CBC 7 Wonders of Canada (some of which are decidedly odd choices), the Falls are certainly worth seeing at some point in your life just for the feeling of standing next to something so large.  I believe the quote was summer flow over the falls is on the order of 154 million litres per minute.  That’s the Horseshoe falls on the Canadian side.  The American falls, while still impressive, only hold about 10% of the overall flow from the river.

Between the upper deck, the Maid of the Mist boat tour, and the tunnel behind the falls, you’ve got three different ways to get close to the falls and two of them will get you wet enough that raincoats are provided.  Throw in the White Water Walk (a boardwalk next to one of the nastiest stretches of rapids below the falls), the Butterfly Conservatory and the biggest Budhist temple (The Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple) I’ve ever seen, and you’ve got an entire day of tourist stuff.  Yes, we bought a package of tickets that included all of this plus a full day of transportation on the shuttle that runs the length and much more of all of these.  It didn’t include the Buddhist temple which happens to be across the street from the White Water Walk; that was a happy bonus.

A fun, if tiring, day.

I still have two more posts based on my vacation, but thought I’d switch things up a bit for those of you interested in how my current novel is coming along.  I took the trip off from writing, mostly, seven entire days without touching a keyboard.  Nothing done on Skip to My Luu on the trip, but I did squeeze in something over a 1,100 handwritten words on Heroes Inc.

Skip to My Luu Progress
46,113 / 60,000
(76.9%)

And I’m more or less on track for a 60,000 word finish.  Counting the chapter I’m half finished, I think I have four to go.  I didn’t do serious plotting for this novel, although more than I originally intended and much more than I did up front for Dragon Summer which I typically plotted a couple of chapters ahead for.

For Heroes Inc (9k on paper, 7 of which is now in the computer), I’ve rough plotted the first quarter of the book, but I’m still trying to work out in my head how to bring about the true conflict of the story, particularly in light of knowing more or less how the climactic confrontation scene is going to go.

And I’ve set aside the novella I’ve been working on because I have no idea whatsoever where the story is going.  Sometimes plotting can be a good thing.  This story might have been one of them.  It might still be, someday.  But just at this moment, I’m not working on any short fiction.