Echoes in a Hollow Space

Okay, not the first pass, but the first I'm willing to show anyone.

Anyone care to offer any input on my synopsis for A Rain of Angels? It's just under 2k, single-spaced—a lot longer than a simple query, I realize. Any input greatly appreciated.


( Synopsis. )

I just learned there's a vampire in one of the Twilight books named Caius.

Is nothing sacred???

Publish or perish.

On a related note (not really), I am in the throes of synopsizing Angels. Oh the torment! Oh the agony! I'm beginning to sound a whole lot like Edward Cullen, actually.

My plot, however, is not.

This first pass at the synopsis has more in common with a compost pile then a workable synopsis, but I seem to have to go through a "throw everything in" pass before I can settle down and make something workable. Once I get this out of my system I will start to refine it.

And my reward for coming up with a workable synopsis?

Writing the query letter.

Well, and hopefully getting an agent or editor interested. Look at the big picture, PJ. BIG picture.

My comprehensive synopsis for Night Warrior has burgeoned to 4 pages in Word--and that's only through chapter 19. Obviously, I need to do some slenderizing. Synopses are always a pain, but doing them on a chapter-by-chapter basis is a good analytical tool for me on deciding and synthesizing what's important in the story: the essential elements and characters. It helps me when I do the rewrites and need to start cutting.

Of course, cutting is always a pain, too. But as necessary an evil as synopses.

I started chapter 29 today. The dance of the seven veils is getting down to the last few wisps of cloth and soon the plot will stand naked for all to see. For better or for worse.

"If, as you live your life, you find yourself mentally composing LJ entries about it, post this exact same sentence in your Live Journal."


But you all knew that about me anyway.

Things I thought of blogging about today: Of how some readers confuse current times with historical times and think current cultural mores are the way things have always been. 

Why I didn't blog it: Bizzy.  I may still blog it.  Or just think about it.

Goofy thought of the day:  I should start a band called the Jimi Schmendrix Experience.

Cliché du jour: I stared open-mouthed at him.

Darling du jour: n/a - Nothing really opened up my third eye.

Gratitude of the day: To those who offered to beta my novelette.  'Preciate skit!

Agony of the day:  Boiling down the two page synopsis for Shivery Bones to one page.  Oh. The. Humanity.

Refrigerator of the day:  In deference to those who have moral standards (unlike myself), I've put this behind a cut.  If buymeaclue wanders by, the erotic Ancient Greek pot we discussed some months back is right below the green car.

Here There Be Man Parts&

[broken link]

Here's my weekly report on The Rewrite That Will Not Die 2: The Winnowing:

Chapters completed: 21

Revised page count: 599

Revised manual word count: 147,254 (net words cut 1966)

Revised Word line count with a zero stuck on the end word count: 146,650 (net words cut 1640)


I spent most of the week battling with chapters 17 and 18. They needed more than just winnowing, they needed more rewriting. So I did. It was a hard slog. Some added text balanced out text cut and slowed the whole winnowing process down, but I feel better about these chapters now. I still don't think they're quite there, but I've gone as far as I can go with them at this juncture, from my current perspective. It's time to release them back into the wild and see if they can fly on their own.

But I feel real good about getting the page count below 600! Yowza! True, it's only 599, but the 600 mark was a real psychological barrier. Now getting this monster down to 145k seems eminently feasible, and getting it down to 140k is an outside possibility. I've got 11 chapters and an epilogue to go, so we'll see.

I didn't get any other writing work done, of course, but I did get some good creative noodling done. I thought through some problems with my Dos Lunas/JK novel (a contemporary fantasy), but still have to figure out some major elements there. (Like, for one, why did Ramona hijack the story, what does she want, and do I give in and let her have her say or tell her to shut up.)

A completely new story popped into my brain, tentatively titled, "The Mistress and the Loon." And a completely new voice started talking to me the other night. I'm not at all sure where she fits in, but she does have some interesting things to say. I also did some creative noodling on the story that refuses to let me change its working title. I suppose it would be wrong to write a story called "Barfing Angel"? Yeah, I thought so.

Now, what I really need is to finish this rewrite and the attendant synopsis, et al., and get it out the door so I can turn my energies back to other projects and crits. I'm beginning to loathe this novel—which means it's definitely time to let go.

Usually I wait until I have some inspiration to write these journal entries, but the only inspiration for this one is to say I'm busy as @$*!.

A couple of weeks back I had a nasty respiratory thingie that knocked me on my butt and put me behind on everything. Then I was both scrambling to catch up and busy as @$*!. I've finally managed to get mostly caught up, so my condition has been downgraded to merely busy as @$*!.

Where's all this @$*! coming from?

Work has been unreal—I hold down a full time cubicle job—and it's non-stop action all the time these days. And there doesn't appear to be any let-up on the horizon there. Don't these people know I have a creative life to keep up with???

Then there is the creative life: I was on a big push to finish my latest novel. I did that a couple of weeks ago, as few days before the respiratory thing hit, had the usual post partum blues, moved on. But I had to edit it so I could post it to the OWW (did that yesterday), had a gazillion crits to catch up with, and was working on getting a couple of stories out the door. "Band of Angels" didn't grab Joe Adams at F&SF but he took longer then usual to be ungrabbed by it, so I was hoping I might get my rejection from Gordon, but alas... And speaking of alas, I sent "A Tale of Two Moons" to Asimov's. I hope not to hear back on that for at least a couple of months—that way I don't have to think about it again in the interim. Oh, and I've been trying to get the first 60 + synopsis of my second novel in shape to send out again. I've begun to hate that novel. (Sorry, Tara, but I just don't want to look at it anymore.) That should be ready to go by next week, then maybe I can swing back around to some of the other stories that need revising and sending.

Added to that, I'll be leaving for England in about 4-1/2 weeks and of course I've left everything to the last minute so I'm running around like the proverbial chicken with the head cut off. Unlike the poor chicken, I hope not to collapse and end all motor function at the end of that mad scurrying.

I've been trying to squeeze a life in here somewhere, too. In that vein, tonight I'll be seeing Secret Window with Le Depp. Ah, the ineffable! Never too busy for the ineffable Depp.

Then again, every time I think about how busy I am, I remember my friend Tara who has more stuff going on in her life than anyone I know. (You're a good girl, sweetums, and we're all proud of you.) Compared with her, my life at its busiest is a walk in the park. So I'll just take a deep breath, realize it could be worse, and say a prayer for my friends who are going through hell at the moment.

Busy as @$*! is not nearly so bad as Hell and I hope everyone returns to Middle Earth right soon.