Outside Looking In

This is where I am most of the time, on the outside of life, watching it go past and wondering what it's all about. I have always been an observer, and a recorder of observations. It's not really something I chose; it's a part of my nature.

Have you ever had the most intense realization about the most mundane things? Thinks like: I'm eating pizza that I made myself. I have been overwhelmed by such realizations. On some level, of course I understood not only that there was pizza, but that I'd made it and that I was now eating it. It's not as though I'd somehow failed to grasp this concept entirely. It's just that for a split second I was somehow aware of how incredible it is that a universe where pizza is possible even exists, and I was in awe. I somehow switched from 'participant' to 'observer' in my own life.

Or perhaps it was the other way around, or both at once. Perhaps I went from going through the motions to being acutely aware of my own participation in life. Whatever it was, I found myself looking at that pizza as though it held all the answers to life, the universe and everything (which is ridiculous since it didn't look a thing like 42.)

The pizza isn't the point. The point is that there is something in my nature that allows me to shift perspective at the drop of a hat. Life is constantly a case of looking at a vase and suddenly seeing two faces, and I think this is why I write. Scratch that. I don't 'think', I know. I write because no matter how much I find myself on the outside of life looking in, what I see is so fascinating that I must find some way of capturing it, recording it in such a way that I might be able to share at least a fraction of it. I write because the only other option is to sit here watching the world go by.

Do you ever have moments like this? Do you find yourself on the outside looking in? Alternately, why do you write?

Shameless Self-Promotion

I'll admit that I'm not a fan of pimping myself, but to make it in this industry it's something I have to get used to doing. And right now, pimping myself is exactly what I need to do.

I'm not going to lie; I'm looking at some hard times here. I'm about to lose my job and though I'm searching for freelance work, it's not something I can rely on, at least not yet. My savings won't save me, and there's only so long I can keep the student loans folks away. And so, I come asking for help.

However! I'm not looking to get something for nothing. Life doesn't work that way and I don't expect it to. Now in my former life I wasn't a writer, but an artist! Well, I still am an artist though my focus has shifted. So, in return for your kind help, I'll draw you a picture of anything you want. Seriously. Anything. Ink on Bristol plate, 9"x12" (or 12"x9" if you prefer)... that's starting to sound pretty nice, isn't it? Of course it is! And we're talking full colour illustrations here, HD even.

I also have seven gorgeous pairs of earrings for sale. Each pair is unique, hand-crafted from sterling silver and coloured glass beads. Look at them and tell me you don't want some for yourself. Or if not for yourself, than for that stylish someone you know who will really love them.

Do you see something else on the site that you absolutely must have? Shoot me an e-mail and we'll talk: eric.satchwill@gmail.com .

Please, check it out. Treat yourself to something shiny and tell all your friends where you got it, and you'll make me a very happy man.

February the Fifth

I wanted to do this without making comparisons to other books, I really did, but when it comes right down to it, my first impression of Derek Haines' new book February the Fifth is the one that stuck with me. February the Fifth is like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Sir Apropos of Nothing, which is to say, my kind of twisted.

You have the young fool who has no business being a success at anything, yet ends up being very important to the future of the Twelve Sun Systems of Gloth. You also have the Supreme Potentate more-or-less stealing a ship in order to find the truth on a distant and wholly unremarkable planet. And, just to make things interesting, several puns revolving around the Gregorian calendar. If you're anything like me, this all adds up to a fun and humorous story, perfect for making people question your sanity while you're giggling over it on the bus.

I say go check it out! Get February the Fifth at Amazon or at Smashwords.

Momentum And Why I Need It

This is perhaps the most fitting time for me to tackle the subject, since I seem to have stalled out on the blog a bit. It was looking pretty good for a while there too, wasn't it? Every couple of days, something new.

But then I let myself take a break. I told myself, "Eh, I'll write it tomorrow." "Ran out of time." "Next time I have a good night's sleep, I'll be able to post something." (Note that once sleep-deprived, it is very difficult for me to have a "good night's sleep" for quite a while.) What it comes down to is I made a lot of excuses for why I didn't post something and I let myself get in the habit of not posting instead of what I wanted to do, which was get into the habit of posting a lot. I didn't keep up my momentum. Now, it is totally possible to recover from lost momentum. I've done it. I did it when I pulled out that old novel idea for NaNoWriMo, and I'm doing it again now. And honestly, it's not that hard once I get started. Hence the momentum bit.

Maybe this isn't a problem for you. Maybe you've solved it already and are totally task-oriented, able to pump out content daily as a matter of course. But maybe, just maybe this is a problem for you, too. It's ok, I know. The secret is momentum. Each day, every day, I need to at least be actively thinking about my writing, by blogging, my book reviews, because if I don't, it can take me a long time to get back to it. Ideally, I'm actually doing something towards each of these things daily.

Yes, I slip up at times. But for the most part, I'm succeeding. Not a day goes by that I don't add at least a few words to my novel, or take down a fiddling plot point. Yes, it's been at least a week since my last blog post, but look at my previous dry-spell that lasted a good three months. The trick is to kick your butt into gear before too much time has passed and you forget that you even had anything going on. What's the best way to do that? Keep at it every day. Live it. Breathe it. Dream about it.

Whatever you do, don't lose momentum. But if you do, just be sure to pick it back up again as quick as possible.

For more about why blogging is awesome and some tips on how to go about it, check out Kristen Lamb's series on blogging starting here. And if you want to check out the rest of her stuff, I totally encourage that, too.

I've Agreed to Disagree With Ray Bradbury

I love Ray Bradbury. There are many reasons for this, possibly as numerous as the stories he's written, but there is one reason above all others: he's the first of my idols that I've ever disagreed with.

I didn't grow up with Ray Bradbury in the same way that I did with Douglas Adams(more about him in the future, I'm sure,) but he was there during that weird, confusing, universally upsetting period when I wasn't quite a child any more, but I definitely wasn't a teenager yet. I read Fahrenheit 451 in school, and made it my gospel. I cherished the copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes that I was given one year for Christmas. I remember fondly the summer spent on swing sets, reading Dandelion Wine with my mom and my sister. His prose had a way of carrying me away just that much more completely than other books, and for a child with an over-active imagination, who got lost in any story e came across, this was something special indeed. In my eyes, for the longest time, the man could do no wrong.

Then about four, five years ago, I reread Something Wicked. The book hadn't changed of course, but I had.  I'd grown up some, read a whole lot of other things, and had done some of my own questioning about the nature of 'good' and 'evil'. And as I was reading I realized that I no longer agreed with what he was saying, or at least parts of how he was saying it. I still loved the book, and I always will, yet it was a rare and precious moment, realizing that I could disagree with my idol's point of view but still respect him and love his work. It opened me up to the possibility of questioning my other idols without losing my love for them.

Why did I suddenly feel the need to share this with you all? Well, a few days ago TheEchoInside brought this video of An Evening With Ray Bradbury to my attention. It was a wonderful thing, listening to him talk about the art and the craft of his writing. There were many things he said that I agreed with, things like reading. A lot. Reading everything you can get your hands on, no matter how random or unrelated. Short stories, poetry, essays. Anything. And again, as with Something Wicked, there were things I didn't agree with. Mainly the value of the internet.

He seemed to view it as some sort of cultural sink hole, the information here trivial and without substance. I became incredibly aware then, the difference in perspective that a couple of generations and ten years of advances in information technologies can make(the video is from 2001.) I could see why, from his perspective, the internet could never hold a flame to hours spent exploring a library, and it's true that nothing can replace that experience. However, I don't see the internet as trivial or unimportant. Here I have access to information, even ancient information, that I wouldn't necessarily be able to find at my local library, and I have access to people I would never have come across otherwise. People I can share ideas with, who get excited about the same things I do, or have the same fears. Even ten years ago this was possible, if slightly more difficult.

In short, I love Ray Bradbury. His works will always have something to say to me, even if I don't always agree. And that's ok.

Cat-Bird Stole My Afternoon, And I Don't Care

I have just devoured Dog-Man And Cat-Bird.  I was supposed to be grocery shopping, and I don't care.  I was supposed to be baking buns, and I don't care.  Hell, I was supposed to be doing my own writing, but again, I don't care.  Because for the past 14,000 words, all I've cared about was Cat-Bird.  All I wanted to know was how and what now and oh god, why can't you see what's really going on here?  Yes, ok, I yell at characters in the hopes they'll figure it all out before it's too late.  I do it to the TV.  I do it to my characters too.  It's only because, even for a little while, I really care about them.  And like I said, I cared.

And now for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about here, I'm talking about the first story in Chuck Wendig's new short story collection Irregular Creatures.  Now that you know about it, go buy it.  If you already knew about it but haven't bought it yet, what's stopping you?  No Kindle?  Amazon doesn't like your method of payment?  Do what I did, contact the Man Himself through his website, send him the monies through PayPal and he'll send you a PDF.  Nothing easier.  And I'm not just saying this because he has those incriminating photographs of me...

Ok, I'm done.  For now.  Chances are I'll report back as I read the rest of the stories though, which I am very much looking forward to doing.  Until then, happy reading and writing, folks.

My Writing Process: Making It Up As I Go Along

Just based on process alone, it's painfully obvious that this is my first novel.  I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I started, or what I was getting myself into.  Hell, it started more than anything as a writing exercise.

It all started when this character with the unlikely name of Michael Pariah wandered into my head and politely requested that I write him down.  And so, not knowing any better, I did.  The whole first chapter was just me getting to know him.  (The fact that I've since completely cut that chapter is beside the point.)  I was just writing. I would write when I felt like it, and I'd often have to read what I'd already written to remind myself not only what was going on, but what kind of voice I was using.  I'd also edit.  A lot.  I was committing that most heinous of all writer crimes: editing as I went.  Honestly, even after I'd heard about it I thought I was above that rule.  I'm not, and neither are you.  I'd ask you to believe me, but chances are you won't until you've figured it out for yourself.

Well, between the long breaks and the constant editing, it's really no wonder that my novel fell by the wayside for over a year.  Even though I had begun to get an idea of the plot instead of pantsing it completely, I was storing it all in my head and losing momentum.  Other things got in the way, and I'd made it far too easy for these other things to distract me.  That is, until I noticed this intriguing little Twitter hashtag: #NaNoWriMo.

I'd figured out through context that it had something to do with writing a 50,000 word novel in a month, and thought, what the hell.  I've got that Michael Pariah thing sitting around doing nothing, might as well pull that out and see what happens.  It was already a couple of days into November when I finally found the official NaNoWriMo website, found out it stood for National Novel Writing Month, and joined up.  I found out that there was a whole community involved in this, and a local branch with in-person writing sessions that I resolved to take full advantage of.  This began my second writing phase: writing every day.  I still had my outline in my head rather than written out in any way, but I was keeping up momentum and I wasn't editing as I wrote.  I also began reading a lot more about the craft of writing, most notably at Terrible Minds, a blog by the brilliant and bizarre Chuck Wendig.

Did I win, did I beat the NaNo challenge of 50,000 words?  No.  But that wasn't really my goal.  My goal was to finish my first draft, a goal that (I thought) I had accomplished.  The fact that I'd only finished the first plot-arc is a post for another day.  The upshot here is that I got into the habit of writing, and writing every day.  I'd take my laptop on the bus with me, I'd plug in a few words before bed.  I was writing and I was reading about writing.  And eventually, when December rolled around, I started actually plotting.

Admittedly, I still follow a pretty loose format for my outline, more a series of progressions per character group of this action leads to this action, each one indented further than the one before until it looks like way too many nested replies in a forum thread.  Some of it still reads pretty vaguely, like: →Possibly by becoming Timoth's property as well, pulling a Michael? Perverse... Potential. Need to plot on this...  There's also a lot there that can only really be understood if you're living in my head, but it gives me something to refer to, something to give me a direction.  I've also been noting what scenes I've already written, and in what order so I have a better idea of where I left off and what plot-line to pick up next.

Is it a perfect system?  Hardly.  I'm still learning as I go along, but the more I do the more I can fine-tune my process, and what I do have now is in part thanks to reading the advice and experience of others.  Who knows, maybe by the time I write my second book, I'll actually know what I'm doing.  Until then, I'll be doing a lot more reading, and a lot more writing.

How about you, what does your process look like?  Is there anything you find particularly helpful?  Has your process changed much since you started?  I'd love to hear about it.

Making And Breaking The Rules Of Fantasy

I'll admit right now that I am a one, maybe two genre guy, depending on how closely related you consider Science Fiction and Fantasy.  Yes, I'll read other genres, and it's even possible I'll write other genres down the line, but this is where my heart is.  Fantasy, especially.

When they say "write what you know," this is what I go to.  It's true that I've never dealt with daemons, travelled strange and fantastic lands or wielded mighty magics, but if there's one genre I know inside and out, this is it.  I know the rules of Fantasy instinctively, the same way I know when a Chinook* is rolling in.  And the biggest rule is?  There are no rules.

Ok, that's a lie.  There are lots of rules, and they're different if you're talking about High Fantasy, Contemporary Fantasy or Urban Fantasy.  Good and evil are more black and white (or at least you know which side a character/creature ought to be on,) magic and fantastic creatures abound, and chances are someone has a Destiny.  The fun part is, even within these rules, you get to reinvent the world each time.  In fact, that's pretty much the point.  While there's only so much you can change about a certain "race" or "species" and still have it be recognizable, you get to take it and make it your own, with your own rules.  For example, there are certain things that make a faerie a faerie or it isn't a faerie, but that can range from sweet Victorian flower fairies, through Tinkerbell right to something downright malicious like Jenny-Greenteeth.  Don't like what came before?  Reinvent it.

Vampire stories are notorious for having a different set of rules for every author, and while each reader has eir own preference, we can (usually) recognize that it is a vampire when you tell us so.  As long as we have drinks blood + immortal/unnaturally long-lived, we'll go "yep, that's a vampire all right," even if the rest of the details get changed faster than topics in an ADD conversation (though some of us still draw the line at sparkles.  I mean, seriously!  He's a vampire, not a disco-ball.)  The upshot of this is, in Fantasy you get to change the rules.  A lot.

One thing you can't do is break your own rules.  Once you've established a magic system in your universe, you have to stick with it.  Your trolls turn to stone in the daylight?  You can't have one suddenly take a noonday stroll.  Your vampires are allergic to garlic?  They probably won't be going out for Italian.  Whatever else you do, you have to keep up an internal logic or the reader with think you have no idea what you're doing.  Keep that in mind when you're doing your world building; consistency is key.

If you're writing a Fantasy story, how well are you sticking to your own rules?  Think I'm full of crap here?  Tell me why.  I'll never learn otherwise.

*For those who don't live just west of the foothills of the Rockies, a Chinook is a warm wind that comes in from the Pacific Ocean, over the mountains, and is known to raise the temperature above freezing in winter.  Also known to cause nasty headaches from the pressure changes.

Getting Comfortable With Being In Transition

And I don't just mean the big obvious one, though that's something I've had to get comfortable with too.  I mean the whole big transition that is life, that thing we all do every day or else we become some stagnant, stale shell of a human being.

When I was a kid, I thought that all I had to do was figure out who I was, and that's who I'd be.  Forever.  Nothing else, and nothing less.  I'd grow up, find a few words to describe myself, and that would be that.  One thing I've had to come to terms with is the fact that that is never going to happen.  Who I am today?  Really not who I was yesterday.  Tomorrow?  Well, I'll be someone else again, won't I?

I don't mean every transition I go through is as big and life-changing as the one from trying to be female to finally being male.  Sometimes it's as simple as reading an insightful blog post, or engaging with new people on Twitter.  Or in real life even.  That happens too, on occasion.  If who I am is the sum of my experiences, then with every moment I'm in transition from being someone who hasn't experienced something to someone who has.

This also means that I have to update who I think I am at almost every turn.  I thought I was someone who was only romantically interested in people of a specific gender or type until I realized it wasn't that simple, not for me anyway.  I thought of myself as someone who hated kids and would never have any or want to until I met my niece.  And the big one?  Perhaps bigger than all the rest, even THE big one?

I thought I was always and forever an Artist before anything else.  That was the pinnacle of my identity, the one thing that I had always been and would always be no matter what else changed, I was an Artist and I would paint/draw/make jewellery until the day I died of some bizarre cancer or heavy metal poisoning from my work.  I believed this until I looked up one day and realized I was becoming a Writer.

I looked at what I had drawn or made in the past week, the past month.  Nothing.  I mean literally.  I hadn't made a damn thing the whole time, not so much as a doodle.  I looked at what I had been doing instead.  When I wasn't writing, I was reading about writing.  I was talking about writing, and I was on my way to someplace where I would be writing.  (Or I was at my day job, but even there I was thinking about writing.)  That's when I realized that I was watching my own transition from Artist with a little writing on the side, to Writer with a little art on the side.

I can't say that I was entirely happy about this.  I mean, I'd put how many years into that identity?  I now owe how much in student loans because of it?  And what will my Grandma think?  I was always the Artist in the family, one of her kind.  I felt like I was betraying a core part of me.  But that didn't stop the transition.  Because even though I was mourning the Artist, I was celebrating the Writer.  You see, the big difference between the two has been commitment.  I have actually been able to commit to one writing project, my novel, far longer and more consistently than any body of art I've undertaken.  And I've realized, that I'd much rather be productive and prolific at something that I love than be sporadic and occasionally brilliant at something that I love.

Sample Sunday: A Discussion of Self in Carl's Café

Obviously, some things have changed since I first wrote this.  I'd be surprised if it hadn't, seeing as this comes from that same 2007/2008 era as Friday's flash piece, and in fact appears on the page just before it in the notebook.  Does it mean that what I wrote then is now completely untrue?  No, not really.  It was true at the time, and I think I needed it to work through who I was and get to who I am.  The fact that I chose to do this through a fictionalized encounter with myself is also unsurprising, given my tendency in the past to use a fantasy world for both escapism and self-discovery.

Anyway, I've done more than enough babbling here about 'what it all means' and other self analysis.  I'll let you get on with actually reading it now.

A Discussion of Self in Carl's Café

"I'm not like other guys," he said.  "Then again, most other guys aren't perfectly happy living in a woman's body."

He laughed then.  "Hell, why shouldn't I be?  I mean, I get to live the 'lesbian fantasy' to its most satisfying fullness.  But seriously.  A man in a woman's body who's not about to do anything about it at all.  Am I being a coward?  Not taking the risk, not making the commitment to become 'who I am?'"  He shrugged.  "Maybe.  But I'm really only a part of who I am, aren't I?" 

He smiled at me and finished his coffee.  As he left, I smiled and nodded to myself.  What he'd said was true.

Friday Flash: And the Mysteries Knew Me

Going through an old notebook, I found this little piece.  I'd say it's circa 2008, though possibly as early as late '07.  I was a bit spotty with dating my work in here.  Uncertain time-line aside, I do remember that it was one of those things I wrote in a torrential flood of inspiration and then had no idea what I was going to do with it, especially since I didn't know about flash as a writing style at the time.  So I'm posting it here, with a little on-the-spot editing and a new title.

And the Mysteries Knew Me

She sat with me all the while, singing the songs we'd learned in the empty places. Her voice shone with her wings, both lit from some wondrous source. As I lay there, listening, I could feel it. The velvet night wrapped me up in its warm embrace and carried me up through the higher planes of its silence. When I sought to look, I found that my eyes were no more, nor was my body.

The song though, was a thing I could see, a thing I could touch. Her voice became my world and my world became the stars. Light came to the deepest shadows and dark engulfed where light had been. I was ecstatic. When I laughed, my voice was that of the stars which were bells, shimmering in the highest of the heights.

Then the skies became cold, so cold. The very marrow of my being shivered and ached. I found my body again and with it, I found agony. My laughter was no more. My screams ran at right angles to my being. Her song now was a keening, a wailing despair echoing in my existence. The world trembled, and I trembled with it.

Within eternity I wept, tears running hot over cold sweat. Her voice was softening, a whisper then. The chill became bearable, the kind found in a draughty winter shelter. The song slowed. My trembling eased. My breath ragged, I returned to myself, but I was changed. Innocence gone, I now knew the mysteries and by the gods, the mysteries knew me.

Sample Sunday: Christmas at Barnaby's

Since it is now technically Sunday, I figured I'd take advantage of #SampleSunday and post a sample here.  This is a rough scene from a short story in progress derived from a novel just newly into the editing stages.  And yes, that is all the context I'm giving you.  For now.  And now, I hope you enjoy them as much as I've enjoyed bringing them to you:


The Faerie mummers from Christmas at Barnaby's

They were watching the mummers, Michael sitting at Barnaby's feet. Isabell sat before Tristianne, her arms around Lisa. It was, to say the least, an entertaining show.

“My Lord,” said Michael, “are you quite certain hiring the Faeries for this was such a good idea?”

Barnaby raised an eyebrow. “We always hire Faeries. Besides which, where else could we find mummers these days, particularly ones who will perform in the Realm?”

Michael shook his head slowly. “I suppose, my Lord. It's just that this here is the strangest Herod I've ever seen.”

Lisa looked more closely at the Faerie cavorting before them. She wasn't sure what the creature looked like it might be, but she definitely couldn't see how Michael had gotten the biblical king out of it. “Herod? How d'you figure?”

“Who else would the villain be?” said Michael, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Lisa watched the Faerie a while longer as it pantomimed running off the end of a cliff like Wile E. Coyote.

“Michael,” she said, “you might not have watched any TV, but between this and the carollers back there, I think these Faeries have.”

Isabell giggled and the Daemons smiled while Michael just shook his head again. “Strangest Herod ever,” he repeated.