Holland Bay: The Final Report. For Now.

It is done. Finito. Finished.

Holland Bay Version 2.0 checked in on Mother’s Day at 90,613 words. To say that it looks nothing like the original I wrote a couple years ago is an understatement. In fact, it stopped paralleling the original about a third of the way through.

The ending is roughly the same, but without as many plot threads to wrap up. The original suffered from multiplying plotlines. A new character would appear, insist on having a backstory, and off we went.

Originally, I planned to plow through this from Thanksgiving through Valentine’s Day. Well, that worked out, didn’t it?

But for now, Holland Bay sits on my tower downstairs. I will not even look at it until I’ve finished revisions on Bad Religion.

I plan to do another one this summer, something original. The Richard Bachman to my Stephen King going to work. That’s right. I have a Dick Bachman to my Steve King. And my Dick is going to write a novel.

Holland Bay: The Home Stretch

I had an ambitious plan when fall semester ended last year. I planned to write long stretches of the new draft of Holland Bay from Thanksgiving through Christmas into the New Year.

G’wan. Ask me how that worked. G’wan.

Holland Bay moved in fits and starts as Spring semester began. It might have been finished in February or March when I took an anthropology class that put little demand on my time. But the class ended, and I found myself in a marketing class that crammed a 14-week semester’s worth of material into 7 weeks.

Then it ended. Suddenly, I had lunch hours free for writing. Not only that, our long, bizarre spate of cold April weather ended, so now I could go to a nearby during that lunch break. Which is good. Because I had zero patience for trying to write while listening to the Glenn Beck Fan Club pat themselves on the back for rooting out the socialist conspiracy or some other paranoid bullshit that raises my blood pressure.

So for two weeks, on work days, I’ve been able to write double my normal output, by adding an equal amount at lunchtime that I wrote at home. And then came birthday weekend.

Since I know how the story is supposed to end and had already written very nearly the minimum length for a novel, I was able to double my output yet again. (Do not try this at home.) Result?

Holland Bay will likely be finished this weekend. This draft is more a second first draft than a second draft of the original. But going back to 2000 words a day during the week with a little more on the weekend will bring this puppy in.

Which is good. For some inexplicable reason, I took summer classes this year.

Yeah. That’s going to be rough for writing.

At least now I can do it in my favorite writing place: The patio.

A Writing Wonk

I haven’t talked as much about how I write as I used to. Part of it was the annoying tendency of a lot of bloggers to blog about writing and doing damned little writing. Well, kids, I’ve been going to school for four years now. On the other side of that, I’m starting a business. I don’t have time to sit around and pontificate about something I’m putting off doing. As a matter of fact, this post was written on a Sunday morning after I got a thousand words in on Holland Bay. But now’s as good a time as any to take stock of how I write and what has been working best for me.

• I still need to write with music going. I have multiple PC’s, Palladia on my cable box, and a venerable early generation iPod. So usually, I can have tunes blaring while I write. I do know some who find music to be a distraction and wonder how some of us can write with “all that noise.” Mind you, to them, even Mozart is noise when they’re writing. I, however, have undiagnosed ADHD and a severe caffeine addiction. (Don’t look at me like that! I can quit anytime I’m deprived of coffee and Coke Zero!)  As such, I actually need controlled distractions. If there’s someplace my attention can go to because it will inevitably wander, it’s easier to bring it back to the task at hand. Gone are the days when I can sit for hours and let the prose roll off my fingertips. Of course, some of this may be a function of life changes. I have a family now, whereas in my previous marriage, I pretty much could be left to my own devices. I’m going to school, and that work demands a lot of my time. I am also trying to improve my programming skills. So with a lot on your plate, you get distracted. It is unavoidable. Music provides a sonic wall between me and the rest of the world. That said, I still have an annoying tendency to get up and air guitar to the Foo Fighters and Alice in Chains.
• While I love writing in the morning, I’ve found writing at lunchtime is quite productive. I take an hour for lunch, so after running across the street for a soda, putting lunch in the microwave, and booting the laptop, I’m actually down to forty minutes, less if I go out to lunch. A time crunch really focuses your efforts. Wish I could do that with my accounting homework.
• I prefer writing on my cheap Dell laptop, the 1545 that I’ve complained about here before. I can sit in the living room or take it out on the back deck (in warm weather). If I’m in my office, I’ll use my HP tower, but the Mac will be up running iTunes, usually on Shuffle. If I’m in the living room, I usually have something DVR’d off Palladia going. The nice thing about Palladia is that you don’t actually have to watch it. It’s music. (That did not prevent me from undressing Shirley Manson with my eyes during a recent Garbage concert. Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters has a similar affect on Nita.)
• Why, some of you ask, don’t you like to write on your iMac? It’s an iMac and totally superior to your crappy Windows devices. Simple. The USB slots are in the back. And I hate the way OS X manages files. Granted, it’s a vast improvement over that godawful system the original Macintosh operating system used, but there is no reason Mac, which really is a superior OS to Windows, can’t do the courtesy of deleting temporary files when it’s done. Windows does this automatically. If you never change the default setting to show hidden files, you never even know that there’s a temp file to begin with. Close Word (or Excel or PowerPoint) and that temp file goes away. I don’t object to .trashes showing up on my thumb drive while I work. I do object to it staying there after I close the file I was working on.
• I sometimes have to give myself permission not to write everyday. I have a busy life, and until you people start paying me more to do this, I need to focus on my day job, getting a better job, and starting a business. It’s not that I don’t love you, but I’d like to retire someday. So that means some days I have to pick between writing prose and writing code. You all have day jobs. You know what I mean. That said, I’m still happy to write, or I wouldn’t even bother with this blog.

Jennette Marie Powell

Full disclosure: Jennette became my li’l sis around 1984. I’d call her my “sister from another mother,” but that doesn’t work as well as “brother.” But you get the idea. Anyway, I’m interviewing Jen here about Hangar 18, her latest offering.

Hangar 18 is a departure for you, leaving the Saturn Society behind for now. Tell us about it.

Hangar 18: Legacy is about a psychic Air Force officer and researcher, Adam Keller. Adam’s used to sensing the thoughts and emotions of others, so he keeps people at a distance. But when a desperate, telepathic voice demands rescue, dark thoughts of death threaten to overwhelm him. Then he meets a woman whose attraction to him—and his to her—quiets, if not silences, the voice. All he has to do is risk his heart and experience the emotions he’s long denied himself.

Skeptical programmer Lisa Stark wants nothing more than to finish the subliminal messaging software she’s worked on for over a year, a project someone wants badly enough to kill for. Then Adam discovers the voice plaguing him is an imprisoned extraterrestrial thought dead for decades. Lisa’s software is key to freeing the being and silencing the voice… if she lives to finish it.

This book has a long history. How did it start out?

LOL long history is so true! However, I don’t think you’re referring to the legends that say the wreckage from the Roswell incident were brought to Wright Field in 1947. As you know (but others probably don’t), Hangar 18 began its life in 1999, as Nothing to Hide, my first completed novel. There were no aliens, just a psychic, a skeptical programmer, and someone who wanted to kill her. And lots of first-book problems, like boring scenes with nothing more than a character thinking. Yet it sold to an epublisher, and was released as an ebook in 2002. However, this was five years before Amazon’s Kindle came out, and before ebooks were really viable—the only ebooks that were selling well were erotica, which my book was far from! After its contract ended, I let it sit, but when I decided to publish through Mythical Press, I knew I had to resurrect it. At its core, it was still a good story. So I completely rewrote it, without even looking at the original. This time, I added aliens, and put the mind-control software where one would expect to find it being developed—in the military. And no more boring scenes with people just thinking!

You work at Wright-Patterson AFB (where the real Hangar 18 is located). How prevalent are the rumors of aliens on the base? Or is it more the realm of Internet denizens in search of a good conspiracy?

LOL no one admits to believing this stuff—it’s all just for fun! There’s not even a Hangar 18 there, nor was there ever. The generally-accepted explanation for the Roswell incident was that the “spacecraft” was actually cold war surveillance equipment. Captured Soviet technology would have certainly been shipped off to the military’s Foreign Technology Division, which was indeed located at Wright Field. That I believe!

Do you think you might return to the Saturn Society after two books and a short story?

Yes! I’m working on another short story right now, and letting ideas ferment for a third novel. No ETA for that one, however.

The RWA features prominently in your blogs and your marketing. Why not tell us a little about that group?

RWA is Romance Writers of America, a professional organization for romance writers. RWA is different than other professional writers’ organizations in that writers at any point in their career are welcome, including unpublished writers. IMO, it’s hands-down one of the best places to learn craft and business, especially if you’re fortunate to have a good local chapter. This is true even if you’re not writing romance, but perhaps another genre, with some romance in it. I’m certain I would not be as far along as I am now without my friends from the Ohio Valley RWA.

I listen to a lot of music when I write. What have you been listening to lately?

I find a lot of inspiration in music! Pink Floyd has been drawing out the muse for working on my short story this past week. And I can almost always dig into something while listening to my favorite, Front Line Assembly. This may explain why I come up with so much weird stuff.

What are you working on now?

At the moment, I’m working on another Saturn Society short story, which may be included in an anthology with work from some of my OVRWA friends. I’ve also started planning and outlining a futuristic romance I’ve wanted to write for years. And I’m still getting ideas for the third Saturn Society novel, so that may be coming up within the next year!

Who are you reading?

Right now, I’m reading a contemporary young adult novel—Come Back to Me by Coleen Patrick, and on the treadmill is crime fiction—Dirty Martini by J.A. Konrath. I have a collection of short stories about some Kepler guy queued up on my Kindle for after those are done.

Thanks so much for having me, Jim!

When Do You Write?

The best time to write is in the morning. Your mind is fresh. It’s quiet. There are few distractions. I can get several pages out quickly without losing focus.

The day job and school have forced me to write in the evening. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn’t. The problem here is that the mind, like the body is tired. It’s hard to get the words to come some nights, and I’ve often found myself resigned to just riffing on something I’ll never publish. It used to be that writing at night was ideal. But that was before I was “serious” about writing. I worked two jobs, and sitting at the computer late at night making stuff up was a wonderful way to come down from the day. Since those days, not so much. My night-owl days came to an end probably about a year or two after I married Nita.

Lately, though, I’ve discovered writing at lunchtime has worked wonders. I only get 30-45 minutes of writing time, but I like what I write. I’ve been doing this on days I have class and don’t want to do homework. It’s helped with the progress on Holland Bay. The only thing I fear is someone coming up behind me and wanting to talk about writing. Or some busy-body who likes only certain kinds of stories lecturing me that I shouldn’t write such trash. I try to get a seat in a corner at the back of the breakroom.

If I had time or could get up early enough, I’d go back to writing mornings. As it is, I write mornings on the weekends, before anyone else is up.

Holland Bay Thus Far

One of my early goals for the year was to get Holland Bay completely rewritten by Valentine’s Day. Ask me how that went. G’wan. Ask me.

Wilmington College has a four week break between Fall and Spring semesters. I decided I would take all that time I spent writing essays and reading short stories and doing case studies to go all out and write a new Holland Bay from scratch. I had an ambitious goal of cramming 90,000 words into a time from Thanksgiving weekend to the week after New Year’s, then spending maybe a month to finish up.

I got reminded why it took almost three months to finish Northcoast Shakedown, Second Hand Goods, and Bad Religion in first draft. I might have all this time to sit and write, but there’s a limit to what I can write. I’m writing this post on Sunday, waiting for the Superbowl to begin (and procrastinating doing a run). I wrote two scenes this morning, but beyond that, I had to shift gears. A blog post is not a work of fiction. It’s basically like a newspaper column (if you do it right.) So I don’t have to exert myself mentally the way I do writing a novel or a short story.

So instead of 90,000 words, I have 25,000. My pace is picking up, and I’m building momentum, but it was slow-going getting started. Most of what I’ve written came in the last thirty days. It just goes to prove you can’t plan this stuff. And it’s not like when I started writing, when I’d often come home from a second job and park at the computer to wind down from a long day.

As long as this isn’t a chore, though, I’ll keep doing this.

Rewriting From Scratch

I used to make a big deal out of Holland Bay, that novel I’ve been working on off-and-on for years now. When I wrote the first few scenes of that novel, I lived somewhere else while married to someone else and working at a different job. I was also still a community college dropout. I had yet to do my first standup gig. The first draft checked in at 105,000 words. So…

Quick revisions, pack it off to the betas, and then send it to my agent?

Oh, that’s another thing that changed. I don’t have an agent anymore. They find it productive when you send them stuff.

Plus, the plot of this thing was absolutely Dickensian. I’d come up with a character intending to use him or her for one scene, and they’d spawn a new plotline.  I had about a dozen to wrap up at the end, which explains why it checked in at 105,000 words.

So I had to go back and start over from scratch. I’m writing partly from memory, but partly by limiting myself to two protagonists, two antagonists, maybe adding a third to each side late in the novel. In some ways, it’s too bad. I wrote a great scene about a reporter I came up with sparring in the news room with a Rutgers-obsessed sports reporter named Dave White. Had to cut the reporter and that scene. Too much to keep track of.

Part of the problem is the inspiration for this tome, The Wire. The Wire had about a dozen episodes to tell its story each season. I get 200-400 pages. I need to be more 87th Precinct, less Wire.

I’m taking my time this round. I had convinced myself I could finish it over winter break, but that didn’t happen. So now it gets done when it gets done.

It’s a whole new first draft.

We Interrupt Our Holiday Posts For The Next Big Thing

I’ve been tagged in The Next Big Thing blog project. Since they asked nicely, I’m in. Here goes.

1. What is the working title of your next book?

Bad Religion, the third Nick Kepler novel.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I grew up on the fringes of both Cleveland and Akron. The latter had a number of televangelists, including some big names, based there. It also allowed me to write about a couple of characters in a fan favorite short story, “Full Moon Boogie.”

3. What genre does your book fall under?

It’s a PI novel.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I could see John Cusack as Kepler and Julianne Moore as Elaine. When I wrote the original draft, I envisioned the character of Jackie as strongly resembling Neve Campbell.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Private investigator Nick Kepler finds a local church is dirtier than the mobster he does business with.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It will be self-published and available for Kinlde via Amazon.com.

7. How long did it take you to write a first draft of the manuscript?

It took about three months to do the first draft, and another six weeks to do a second one.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I just reread some of the edits someone sent back to me when this was originally going to be published, and I thought its tone sounded an awful lot like Robert Crais.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with religion. On the one hand, it’s where I learned right and wrong. On the other, there’s a lot of hypocrisy and outright evil justified in the name of God, even when it blatantly runs counter to the same Bible some people want to thump you with. Nick is an agnostic, so it just piles the conflict on more and more.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

The relationship between Elaine and Nick evolves, and there is an amusing character named Eric Teasdale from Second Hand Goods who plays a bigger role in this one.

Tagging: I’m lousy with tagging, but I’m consistent. So no tags.

The new Needle is now available to order

The new Needle is now available to order. Check it out here! http://ow.ly/f7ZR7

So why am I disrupting the normal flow of things for this? Because it features my story “The Heckler,” about a frustrated comedian who is actually jealous of someone less successful. And yes, I saw this happen during my brief standup career. All except the last part of the story. Still not pretty.

They Never Told Me College Was Supposed To Be Hard

My associates degree came from a two-year technical college. Most of the classes were done online or even in the workplace. As you can imagine, the demands on my time, as long as I only took two or three classes, were not that great. In fact, the classes that taught programming languages, especially once I learned C#, mainly consisted of learning a new way to write a “Hello, world” program, followed by if statements, loops, and eventually talking to a database. I do this stuff for a living now.

Then I get to Wilmington College’s Cincinnati campuses. They have a program where I can take three classes a semester, but only have to take two at a time. My advisor suggested taking three during the summer. Since there are no accelerated courses in the summer, that ain’t happening. When I started my first class at Wilmington, the prof said first thing, “We expect two hours of homework time for every hour you spend in the classroom.” I hear that all the time. Nita and AJ, who both attend University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash, get that, too. Except most of the time, that doesn’t pan out. Then again, they are both taking technical majors. I am taking Business Analysis so I’m not a complete geek when I enter the consulting phase of my career. And boy, they’re not kidding at Wilmington.

Currently, I take a Society & Business class that runs the entire semester. That class is 2 1/2 hours on Tuesday nights. OK, that’s five hours of homework a week. I can do that easily enough. But both accelerated courses, Introduction to Management and now Modern Short Story, are four hours every Saturday morning. (I am soooo looking forward to December 15, when I can finally sleep in!) That’s eight hours a week.

Uh-oh. My job is 40 hours a week with 5-7 hours of commute time each week. Somewhere in there, I have to write. Somewhere in there, I have to spend time with my family. I have to exercise, get groceries, deal with car breakdowns, illnesses, bills… Yeah, 13 hours is hard.

I did have one classmate who is taking four classes this semester while working full time with a family. She takes two accelerated classes at a time. That would be 16 hours a week at home. Now I know not everyone’s going to spend that much time working on homework. We’re adults. Life doesn’t stop because we went back to school at roughly the same time as our kids started college.

The problem for me is writing. It’s hard to get it in when the coursework is reading and writing intensive. If I mention this problem, I hear, “But you like to write,” and “You’re always reading anyway.” The problem is a term paper on why BP looks rather saintly next to Kerr-McGee (Remember the movie Silkwood? Kerr-McGee did a lot of stuff like that.) doesn’t pay the mortgage. And I’m always reading because I want to, not because I have to.

Of course, you’re probably saying, “Hey, Jim, you’re writing this blog post. What are you whining about?”

I’m writing this on a Sunday morning, about the only time I have to do it anymore. But yes, I am complaining. I know I committed to getting a bachelors after I finished my associates. So it’s not like I begrudge the work. But it’s taken me most of the semester to find a way to balance out the work and still get writing and exercise and learning a new programming language in.

But there is some relief on the horizon. Originally, I wanted to get an MBA if I finished the bachelors by a certain date. (Right now, I can probably be done by 49.) But you get an MBA to impress someone enough to make you an executive at either the company where you work or another one. I work at a small family-owned business. They are not going to make me CEO or vice president of anything in the future. My next job will likely be at a consulting firm or as an IT manager somewhere. The only CEO position on my horizon will be at a company that has not formed yet. And the CEO’s position will not be determined on whether I have an MBA or not. It will be decided by me and Nita playing rock-paper-scissors. So no MBA. Which means no deadline to finish the bachelors.

Which means I can take whole semesters off.

Good. Because summers are for writing.

And margaritas.