Lord Wolf's Blog

Editing again

Lord Wolf — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:36:57 +0000

The other day I was somewhat downed by the realization that of the approximately 25 or so people I’ve given the Face Value Blues to read, only 3 people have finished it and gotten back to me with their thoughts and feelings.

That sad feeling lasted for about an hour before I started sketching ideas, plots, and themes for Book 2. I guess I really must want to be a writer.

And now I’m not only continuing to take the very first early steps toward writing Book 2, I’m also going back and touching up Book 1. I’ve learned that at least one local (non-chain) bookstore is willing to put local self-published authors on its shelves, so I have the ambition of getting FVB in an honest-to-goodness brick and mortar store before Spring arrives.

And…some of the supremely talented visual designers at my job have offered to create a cover for me. Faithful readers, when I have a self-published copy of my first novel with an amazing cover for sale, I will post a picture on this blog with a wide, proud smile that rivals the one I wore at the births of my two children. Stay tuned!

Arrivals and Departures

Lord Wolf — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:54:29 +0000

The universe has a tendency to keep us awed. Twelve months on our planet is absolutely insignificant when compared to the long procession of cosmic time, but although the stars are the same in a relative way since last I made a December blog entry, change has been the theme and plot of my life this past calendar year.

About one year ago, we were at my mother-in-law’s house, and we had one child and two dogs. This December finds us with two children and no dogs.

My son arrived on November 13, 2009, and his life was bracketed by the fates of the dogs: we found out we were pregnant with him around the time we put Bravo to sleep; he arrived on this side of the womb not longer after we put our second dog Racey to sleep. Our son’s namesake is a mythological figure who is associated with dogs, so I feel that in some way, Bravo and Racey went to the spirit world to make his arrival here possible.

And, yet, thinking back to those dark and silent nights I spent in Weatherford last December, I am struck again and again by the fact that neither the arrival nor the departures seemed imminent. That realization breathes life into the old cliches about enjoying every moment and being grateful for even the tiniest of pleasures given the one way nature — as far as we know — of time.

As always, thanks for reading.

Done! For now…

Lord Wolf — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:24:59 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, please ignore the dust and cobwebs and skittering creatures as we welcome you back to Lord Wolf’s Blog after a too-long absence to make a special announcement: I am D-O-N-E with the novel for now.

As I was doing my last touch-up and editing push, I realized that without this self-imposed August deadline, I could tinker with this book forever. Like Gimli in the Glittering Caves, I would do a light tap here, a little dig there, some polishing elsewhere, slowly, over the many years, until I had a marvel. But no one would ever have gotten to read it.

With this deadline in place, the next time I edit those 75,000 words (it was over 90,000 before I edited on my own), it will be because an editor at Bantam, Del Rey, Random House or somewhere else has returned a red ink version to me with hundreds of edits and expansions for me to do before the book hits the shelves.

Between that time and now, though, is a yawning gulf. In a sense, things are about to move out of my hands. I can control how much I write and edit; I have no control over the length of time between responses once I start sending out cover letters to solicit interest. And if I fish for too long with no bites, I’ve resolved to move onto the second, related book, rather than endlessly circle around the first one.

I’ll keep y’all posted on how things go. Every 10th rejection letter I get, I’m treating myself to a nice beer; hopefully I will make it no further than the end of this list before some crazy publishing house decides to take a chance on the Most Electrifying Man in Literature Entertainment.

As always, thanks for reading. I look forward to the day where I say to you “Thanks for reading the New York Times best-seller….”

Novel Update: 06/23/09

Lord Wolf — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:07:45 +0000

Wolf I may be, but I feel like Aslan when it comes to this novel: he once described himself as a builder of bridges, and I’ve done this with my book, at long last.

As I mentioned in a blog post way back in January of 2009, I cut out an absolutely huge section of the book, because in getting the characters from Point A to Point C, I found I’d written a Point B that didn’t hold up well on re-reading. So I put a good 60 pages or so on the chopping block. Thunk! went the blade, and, unlike the blood of various gods and heroes, the spilled drops did not cause flowers to immediately spring from the earth. No, this new bloom took some time to develop, but I finally did it: I put in an “on the road” section that fits so much better now, with much more character development.

And that’s one of the best parts about writing, in my mind. It’s a source of endless fascination to me to find that my characters do not reveal themselves to me all at once. I get to know them the same way I get to know any of my friends and loved ones. Just when I think I know all there is to know, they do something to surprise me, revealing some new quirk or some new strength; or they show me they still carry scars from something that happened to them long ago. And yet…just as with “real” people…nothing my characters do ever truly surprises me: hints are always there. Remember that when you finally read the novel.

So, the next step is to make sure everything from points C and beyond makes sense of what now exists at Point B, which hasn’t been all that difficult. My August deadline definitely looks like it’s within reach.

As always, thanks — wait, before I go, I want to do something unusual and re-recommend the Abominable Charles Christopher. I stopped reading it for a while — which is a good thing to do with something released on a weekly schedule — and I’m happy to say it’s better than ever. If I can manage to weave a story half as well as that comic’s creator, I will be a very happy man.

As always, thanks for reading.

Squalor and Fantasy

Lord Wolf — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:09:58 +0000

I’ve read some research that suggests smells are the most powerful triggers of memory, and so I wasn’t surprised that, as the air turns hot with summer’s approach, some of my recent walks in the alley behind the office where I work have brought on a rush of remembrance.

I wish I could say the scents that the sun bakes back there have brought on pleasant visits to the past. The reality is that my late afternoon strolls send me forcibly back to the ghetto where I spent ages 10 – 17: Behind the offices where my colleagues do work on multimillion dollar contracts for international corporations, I experience the same environment whose very wretchedness spurred me down the path that sent me to that office in the first place.

What you’ll get should you ever walk down that alley is the scent (and occasionally sight) of human excrement, stale beer, and abject poverty. And when I interact with the alley’s inhabitants, I am constantly reminded of how shameful it is that we as a nation tend to ignore the large role mental and emotional unwellness plays in making people homeless.

Then, later, when I’m more reflective, I think about how wrong and cheap it is that so many fantasy and science fiction authors turn mentally unsound homeless people into conduits for communication with higher beings and alternate realities. I challenge any author who’s written that kind of character — it’s worth noting that some of my favorites, such as Gaiman and King, have done so — to spend 15 minutes in the alley behind my workplace on a blazing hot Texas day while waste products, cheap liquor, and unwashed bodies are simmering and then try to write a story wherein the random utterances of a mentally ill homeless person hold the key to unwrapping the Big Mystery or defeating the Main Villain.

It’s funny: I didn’t mean to turn this post into a rant, but there are some things I hate to see authors do, not just because they’re tropes, which are, after all, meant to help us escape from the mundane in some sense, but because they actually obscure and distract us from reality in a way that’s harmful to ourselves and our fellows.

Okay, I promise the next post will occur soon and be at least 50% less preachy. As always, thanks for reading.

Age of Wonders

Lord Wolf — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:11:18 +0000

Emerging from a wild week — pandemics, crazy schedule at work, crazy busy at the house — I took a little time today to do some thankful reflection while eating lunch, as every other mammal in my house but me took a nap.

I’d spent the morning cleaning up the house and folding laundry, then shortly after C- and F- went down for their naps, I drove to the beer store, picked up some great brews from the Pacific and Atlantic coasts (California and New England, to be more precise) then drove home to eat and do some (rare) leisure reading.

As I ate, I realized that I live in an age of wonders. I was able to travel many miles in a matter of minutes, get beers brewed in a style virtually unknown to America as recently as 50 years ago; return home to drink and read an amazing collection of essays on natural history by the late Stephen Jay Gould (Dinosaur in a Haystack); comprehend what was written (not just because of Mr. Gould’s writing prowess but also because of the educational background I have that my grandparents — black sharecroppers born and raised in the poor, rural early twentieth century American South – -literally could not even have dreamed of); and then I topped it all of by using an electronic device to share my thoughts with the world.

I believe there’s a Buddhist prayer that in its entirety consists of phrases that roughly mean “Thank you for everything; I have no complaints.” That’s certainly something I felt like I could say today.

As always, thanks for reading.

How to Finish

Lord Wolf — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:05:35 +0000

I was telling a co-worker the other day that having a firm deadline for C-’s birthday gift was of incalculable value as a spur to finish the project.

And I realized that this holds true for work projects as well. Not only do companies need to get their products to market, but at a certain point, revisions and refinements become destructive rather than constructive.

One of the hardest parts of starting this novel was convincing myself that it is fine for the book I write to lack in comparison to the book I imagine: no matter how well I do this, nothing will match the awesomeness of the novel as it exists in my head. The machinery we humans use to know the world — both our transmitters and receivers — can’t do one hundred percent lossless communication of mood and emotion. So I had to defeat the part of myself that threw its hands up and said “If it can’t be perfect why bother?” before I could type the first word of the first sentence in the book.

And now that part of me has started the fight again from a new front: “You can make it nearly perfect if you keep revising and editing.” But that’s untrue. As I mentioned, at a certain point you begin to subtract from quality.

As a result, I think I’m well-served by assigning myself a deadline: by the end of August 2009, I will be finished with this novel. It doesn’t matter if I put in 10 hours of work between now and then or 100 hours of work: September 1, 2009 is going to see me put the book aside and begin writing letters to literary agents. Wish me luck!

It’s Been a Long Time

Lord Wolf — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:46:37 +0000

It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you/Without a strong rhyme to step to… So sayeth the all-time great rapper Rakim, and so say we all. Of course, by “we all” I mean “I,” and by “strong rhyme” I mean “blog entry.”

So here we are.

It’s been hard to get to either this ol’ blog or my novel these past few weeks. As I told a colleague the other day, my creative writing tank was emptied by the act of crafting C-’s birthday gift: a book of photos and poems about dear daughter F-. I’ll temporarily cast aside the Cloak of Humility here and say that I think it rocked. F- and C- both loved it, but, man, did it wear me out. So I’ve been waiting for the creative spirit to rise within me again before doing either blog entries or tinkering with the novel.

I think this blog entry is an indicator of optimal levels being reached again, but whether it is or not, I just wanted to serve a reminder to everyone that I’m still here.

Things I Like That You May Also Like: Television Tropes

Lord Wolf — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:28:38 +0000

I love people who are fans of a thing but also fully aware of their love’s limitations and inelegancies (yes, I just made that word up). The wrestling term for fans like this is smarks, and it seems that the smark equivalent in the world of sci-fi and fantasy is troper, as found on the Television Tropes and Idioms website.

It’s important to note, as the site does, that a trope is not a cliche: the author and the audience must in fact share certain tropes in order for the full meaning behind the work to emerge. That said, having spent a great deal of time on that site, I discovered more than a few tropes that I have to consciously avoid. To get you started browsing through TV Tropes, I’ll list a few of those here:

Bury Your Gays
Action Girl (not so much outright avoiding this one as I am trying hard to exercise careful thought and technique when using it; as you’ll see after reading the entry, it’s quite easy to completely bollocks it up.)
Bond Villain Stupidity
Villain Ball

(By the way, consider yourself warned: even more so than its cousin Wikipedia, TV Tropes will seduce you into spending hours of your precious time link-hopping from entry to entry, especially if you’re an avid consumer of fiction.)

As always, thanks!

The Deed Is Done

Lord Wolf — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:32:18 +0000

Update:I decided I needed to update this post with a picture and two of my favorite Bravo stories.

I looked at the picture below just before bed last night, and it surely played a role in precipitating my dream:

Cricket, Me, and Bravo

As I’d hoped I would, I dreamt about Bravo last night. I was back at the small apartment where I grew up (6th – 12th grade) in Fort Lauderdale. It wasn’t a time travel dream — I was very much as I am now in appearance and temperament — but when I walked through the door, Bravo sat in the living room waiting for me.

Again young and healthy, he bounded up to me and I hugged him. “I was sad and crying about you this morning,” I said to him, “but now I don’t know why I felt that way.” He didn’t respond in human speech or “telepathy” — the dream would have been far less comforting had it been too fantastic — but I certainly got a “You don’t have to worry about me now” vibe from him.

I hope that was one of those very, very rare dreams we get that is both true and meaningful.

The song in the video below is one of the ways I’m coping with my loss. The theme matches the last words I said to Bravo at the vet’s office: “We’ll see you again.” I hope you enjoy it, too. (If you find the sound effects they added for the video too distracting, look up the original song on Songza.)

Story 1: The Dog Door
It was easy to love Bravo, but he was never the brightest of dogs. When C- and I first moved in together, back in 2000, we decided to install a doggie door so that he could go in and out as he wanted. We spent quite a bit of time trying to teach him how to use it from both sides, but even when we managed to successfully push him through to go out, he would still bark at the backyard door to be let back in.

One day, C- went off to run some errands, and I stayed at home with Bravo. When he signaled that he wanted to go out, I once again guided him through the doggie door and went back about my business while waiting for him to bark at the backyard door. I cranked up the music and went to the fridge to get lunch ready. The fridge in the apartment sat against the kitchen’s far wall, and the door swung out toward the rest of the room; meaning, that when you ducked down to get stuff off the lower shelf, you had no view of the rest of the kitchen.

Well, there I was singing along to the music, grabbing food for my meal, thinking Bravo was running wild outside. I shut the door and turn to walk to the counter, and there he is! I have never before or since seen something where I expected to see nothing, and I think that was the only time I’ve ever felt close to jumping out of my skin. The rascal had learned how to use the doggie door without telling us…and he nearly gave me a cardiac event when he decided to show off his newfound knowledge.

Story 2: The Buck
The apartment in the story above was right on the edge of some untamed property, and although we knew deer ran around in the woods beyond our backyard fence, we’d never seen any. We assumed they only came out at night.

One day — post-Bravo learning how to use the doggie door — he went outside to run around for a bit. After a long while, he began barking, loudly and at length. This puzzled me, because I knew by then that he’d learned to use the doggie door.

When I went to open the door, my confusion grew because his barking was clearly coming from the far side of the yard, not near the door. I threw open the door and began yelling, “Bravo! What the hell are you ba….” The words halted on my lips, because I walked out into the backyard to see Bravo facing the house, clearly barking to get my attention, while on the other side of our fence stood a magnificent buck.

Once Bravo saw me, he fell silent and kind of gestured with his head. The buck stared at Bravo, then at me, then at Bravo again. The three of us stood there in stunned silence for what felt like a very long minute, and then in less time than it takes for your brain to recognize the dot at the end of this sentence as a period, the deer turned and fled into the woods, in complete silence. I kind of gasped “camera?” as he disappeared, and Bravo gave me a contemptuous look. If we live through that moment again, I promise to be quicker with my camera, my friend.

As always, thank you for reading.