Don't think, just write!

If you are so inclined, head on over to Dreaming in Red, where I have contributed a guest blog on something important I've learned about process through doing NaNoWriMo :)

(Over 26,000 words at last count, by the way. Proper update after the post-Thanksgiving food coma wears off.)

NaNo NaNo

Yes, I'm doing the NaNoWriMo thing again. As I type this, I am over 7,300 words into NaNo '09 -- a follow-up to NaNo '08, in which one of that book's sidekicks takes center stage in her own adventure. This one has a very heavy musical influence... it's named after the song that inspired the protagonist's hairstyle*, the characters are in a band, and I'm having the most fun devising ways of working lyrical references and jokes into the story. This on top of the fact that it's about a band, so of course they're going to get into an argument over who they'd rather be, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.**

So far, I'm still in the building-up-to-the-big-adventure part, and taking my time to write my way into the story. I did this with NaNo '08 as well, rather than jumping straight into the action/sending in the pirates and ninjas; while probably half of those scenes were cut in my first revision, spending that time figuring out who the characters are and how they interact with each other was invaluable. This time around, I have a lot more characters with significant "screen time", so there are all sorts of animosities and alliances and past histories to figure out. These are turning out to be really fun characters to spend time with, so I'm excited to do more with them... and hope that that will help me push past the inevitable roadblocks that come along with writing a story that hasn't been heavily outlined. NaNo '08 had been a long time coming, but this one is maybe six months old... I'm sure it has a bumpy road to travel before it grows up into a nice shiny finished book, but I'm looking forward to the journey.

* "your purple hair looks good, I wanna comb out all the knots" - The Deathray Davies "The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower"

** Metric, "Gimme Sympathy"

interlude

Having finally found my writing mojo again after a notably lengthy period wherein dayjob, freelance and personal commitments threatened to consume me entirely, I have been working to finish some revisions on my novel before NaNoWriMo begins and I embark on the not-sequel. There's also much research left to be done for the not-sequel, so the next ten days or so are going to be action! packed! and full! of! adventure! Either that or I'm going to be spending a great deal of quality time with my computer. ;)

There will be updates during "Let's see how much writing Liz can squeeze in between work, more work, and sleep" Month, but in the meantime I share with you two of my current favorite things:

Losing Haringey -- Appropriately enough for this blog, a song that is actually a short story, written by Alasdair MacLean and performed by his band The Clientele.

All I need to know about writing, I learned from watching Gurren Lagann -- Simple but profound writing advice from the awesometastic Chandra Rooney.

city of angels (and faeries, and wizards, and...)

"Write the book you want to read" is common advice for writers -- and good advice, because I imagine it would be pretty miserable to spend weeks/months writing something that you wouldn't pick up in a bookstore yourself.  But this becomes even more important when the book you want to read doesn't exist... or it does, but you've already read it several times over! 

 

I've run up against this problem recently, searching for urban fantasy about Los Angeles. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of it, or if there is I haven't found the magic Google/Amazon keywords that will reveal it to me.  I'm not sure why this is... if it's because it's so bright and sunshiny here; because the "unreality" of Hollywood makes it too obvious a choice; because LA is so indelibly associated with crime/noir thanks to authors like Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and James Ellroy and movies like Chinatown and Sunset Blvd.; some combination of the above or something else entirely.  This is unfortunate, because there's just as much fodder for non-crime, non-Hollywood-related stories in LA as there is anywhere else, and because I think the city gets a bad rap as superficial, lacking history, revolving solely around the movie business, etc.  Not to knock the great noir writers (if you haven't read Cain's Mildred Pierce, I recommend doing so at your earliest convenience, and if you like your mystery just a tad lighter, Robert Crais's Elvis Cole series is a treasure), but I would love to see my favorite genre feature my favorite city a bit more often.

This is what I've turned up so far, in print and on film; if anyone out there knows of more, please comment, and I'll keep the list updated for anyone else on a similar quest.

Angel

This is the show that made me fall in love with the Whedonverse, and I think it helped that I started watching it very soon after I moved to LA.  Whedon & Co. struck just the right tone when dealing with the city and maintained a nice balance of Hollywood-related and unrelated stories.

Barton Fink

Classic Coen Bros. weirdness about a struggling 1950s writer living in a run-down hotel.  The Angel episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been" (a personal favorite) seems to have a bit of Barton Fink influence.

LA Story

A magical love story, and an affectionate satire of the city and its residents in all their quirky glory.

The Twilight Zone, "The 16mm Shrine"

Sunset Blvd. as reinterpreted by Rod Serling. One of the all-time greats, featuring the amazing Ida Lupino.

Death is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard for Lunatics, Let's All Kill Constance by Ray Bradbury

This trilogy would probably count as mystery/detective fiction as well, but with a liberal helping of Bradbury magic realism.  They feature an unnamed protagonist based on Bradbury himself, and adventures inspired by his life in Venice (CA) and in Hollywood in the mid-20th Century.  A Graveyard for Lunatics was the first one I read and is hands-down the best; its subtitle is "Another Tale of Two Cities", and it focuses on a mystery involving a very thinly veiled Paramount Studios and Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  Still one of my favorite books of all time.

The Weetzie Bat series by Francesca Lia Block

YA magic realism, and, aside from Bradbury and LA Story, the closest I've come to finding "grown up" genre fiction about LA that doesn't veer towards noir.

The Neddiad by Daniel Pinkwater

A middle-grade book about the adventures of young Neddie and his family, who have just moved to LA.  It's classic quirky Pinkwater, opens at the La Brea Tar Pits, and features midcentury details like the Brown Derby.  There's also a sequel, The Yggyssey.

Cinema Spec: Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy, Karen A. Romanko, ed.

Found out about this yesterday and ordered it from Amazon right away; I'm looking forward to reading this collection of short fiction and poetry.

Works that I haven't seen/read myself:

Forever Knight

Another vampire detective.

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

Werewolves bent on taking over Los Angeles.

High Bloods by John Farris

A near-future involving a worldwide lycanthropy epidemic.

From the Internet hive mind:

Norse Code by Greg Van Eekhout

Expiration Date by Tim Powers

The Bible Repairman by Tim Powers

public accountability

No, I haven't forgotten about 50 Songs v.2.0... it's just been a busy couple of months, and ideas keep trying to write themselves, which is excellent, but not conducive to working on this project! I did actually draw the first song weeks ago, but as it was one of the ones that goes with an existing story and said story is still stalled after this long, I thought it best to start over again rather than continuing to spin my wheels. And so, the first prompt of the new project is "Sweet" by Denise James. If I don't have an update or haven't moved on to the next prompt in, say, two weeks, smacking me upside the head with a large trout might be a valid option.

more linkage

Leah Bobet is a prolific short story author, in addition to being the editor of Ideomancer Speculative Fiction. She is also very, very funny, as evidenced by her story "The Parable of the Shower".

Lisa Mantchev is the author of Eyes Like Stars (Powell's) (Amazon), Act I of the Theatre Illuminata trilogy, one of the most delightful YA novels I've read in some time.  She also has an extensive collection of short story credits.

Award-winning author Catherynne Valente is posting a charming serialized fairy tale, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, on her website. (more info here)  Also head over to Clarkesworld for her story "The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew".

Marie Brennan offers a broad sampling of short stories and novel excerpts here. Donations are welcomed to support original-to-the-website projects like "Deeds of Men", which is set in the Onyx Court universe featured in her novels Midnight Never Come (Powell's) (Amazon) and In Ashes Lie (Powell's) (Amazon).

publication day, v.2.0

Today my short story, "Found in an Antique Shop, Postmarked October 10, 1907", went up on PostcardShorts.com. I've been trying to figure out what to do with this little piece for some time, and the postcard format was just *too* perfect :)