Coming up with an initial idea for a story is most likely the easiest bit. Then you have to work on the idea; you have to create characters, a plot, settings and all the rest. This can take a long time, depending on how much effort you put into it all. Eventually you manage to finally get everything worked out; what happens here, who falls in love with who, who dies, how it all ends, stuff like that. You think to yourself “finally, I can start writing the story.”

So you’ve written the first couple of thousand words and everything seems to be going along nicely. The world your characters live in is starting to take shape and your story has really begun. Then comes that unpredictable problem that has certainly plagued me for a very long time; you come up with another fantastic idea (or so you think anyway).

Now what you want to do is work on that idea, develop it and create the characters, the plot, the settings and everything else. But wait…aren’t you all ready writing another story?

I know exactly what she means. I had been working on The Superhero Diaries, but when that stalled along came more and more ideas for He Came From The Sea. And then, while I was working on the beginning of He Came From The Sea, back came The Dead Girl (a fragment/off-shoot/mini story you might have already seen). And these are all ideas that have been plotted out and actually started, not ideas bounced around.

I both hate and love my brain sometimes. Do you have the same problem?

Warning for language and sexual references. Also for work posted without a beta (but with spellcheck).

“How old are you?”

Hopefully I’ve misheard that. I tap the power button of the vacuum with my foot and it goes dead. Silence fills the hallway of V-Floor for a second before I speak. “Pardon?”

He smiles and I’m reminded of, funnily enough, Scar from the Lion King and when he speaks his voice does nothing to change that impression – he’s all smooth words and smooth voice. “How old are you?”

“I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.” It’s the first time this vampire has spoken to me since he arrived two – no wait, three – days ago. How old are you? is definitely not the best way to approach a girl.

Especially an underaged one.

“What does anything have to do with anything?” he asks, dodging the question. I resist the urge to voice my thoughts – what an idiot – out loud. “Don’t you want to tell me?”

“I’m sixteen,” I reply flatly. Hopefully he will get the message to stop trying to go any further with the jailbait hotel worker. I know he would try and get me to ask so I add, “And I don’t know how old you are. You may look about 20 or so, but that doesn’t mean you actually are.”

He smiles again and this time his fangs are extended, complete with two lethally sharp points perfect for penetrating soft skin and flesh. “Aren’t you a clever little thing?”

“And aren’t you an artful dodger.”

Now go. Up the stairs and into the sunlight. He won’t be able to follow, one part of my brain reasons.

No, if you try to run he’ll chase you down before you take two steps, the other part argues back. Just act natural.

I follow the second voice’s advice. “Now, if you’ll excuse me I need to keep working.” I go to turn the vacuum back on but he’s there, right next to me, right in my personal space before I can blink. I gasp and drop the vacuum handle.

“Come on,” he says gently, mouth only inches from mine; I try not to stare. “Can’t you take a break for a just a minute?” He moves closer and close with each word, and I’m trembling like a leaf. “Oh come now, don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.” He leans in and whispers into my ear, “Unless you like that sort of thing.”

“N-, no,” I stutter. I try again and put a fraction more emphasis into it. “No.”

“That’s all right.” He buries his fingers in my hair, playing with the strands. My knees are knocking together so hard I think I’ll have bruises tomorrow. “You have pretty hair, did you know that?” I try to nod, thinking that going along with it might work. “And a pretty mouth, too. I bet I know what the boys at school think about when they see that pretty little pout.”

My stomach rolls at the mental image.

“But I doubt you’re like that. I like nice girls. You’re a nice girl, aren’t you?”

I bring my knee up hard and fast, hitting him in the groin. He makes a soft “oof” sound and releases his hold of me enough for me to slip out and run down the hallway.

To the door, to the sunlight… is all my brain can think, while all my ears can hear is, “You bitch!” and the sound of footsteps coming after me.

I’m in such a hurry to get out and away from him that by the time I realise a body has stepped into my path I cannot stop. A body in motion stays in motion until another force intervenes, and I stop when his chest intervenes with my face. It’s my turn to make an “oof” sound and after a second I look up. I’m too frightened to do much more.

It’s another vampire, one I don’t know. He has a kind older face – I’d place him in his late fifties or so – and hair that is more salt than pepper. There are laugh lines around his eyes, although his eyes grow cold when he looks over me to the vampire.

“I am well aware that Canada has no Treaty, but so long as you are in America, you must abide by Athanasios’s rule”

The younger vampire spits at the name. Oh great. More cleaning I’ll need to do. “He’s gone senile. This ain’t Rome!”

“No. This time, Athanasios is ruler.” I have no idea what they’re talking about but I’m okay with it, so long as attention’s not on me. “Now turn around, go back to your room and think about what you have done. And be grateful that all I’m doing is warning you, not reporting you to Athanasios. Although I don’t think Huo would mind bringing you in.”

With a huff, a sigh and a pointed glance at me that promised trouble, pervy young vampire stalked back into his room and slammed the door shut behind him.

“I’m sorry about that.”

I eye the older vampire suspiciously. “You are?”

“Of course.” I’m finally calm enough to notice he has a Scottish accent. “That is exactly the sort of thing that the Treaty is supposed to prevent.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I’m blushing red now, and that’s not a good thing to do in front of a vampire.

“Go upstairs, and don’t worry about him. I will be keeping an eye on him as long as he’s here.”

I’m still blushing as I make my way to the V-Floor exit and I mumble my thanks all the way.

“My name is Eoin.”

As I open my door, I hear another slam shut.

 
For those of you who want to know what happen to the vampire, he tried it again in Las Vegas, with one of the blood hookers. Now this was a bad idea for three reasons, and they are called Scarlett, Eoin and Athanasios.

1. You do not mess with Scarlett’s girls.
2. Eoin is the on-site doctor and he already had given this vampire his warning.
3. Athanasios takes Treaty-breakers seriously.

In short: he was executed. Athanasios’s Treaty = srs bsns.

A query letter sells your article, novel, short story, or other work to an agent or editor. You send a query letter to get a request to write a piece or to save you (and the editor or agent) the expense and hassle of dealing with a manuscript that isn’t wanted. Query letters are sales tools. If you’re trying for an assignment, then the letter tells how and why you will do an excellent job for the editor. If you’re trying to place a completed manuscript with a publisher or agent, then the letter describes the book and your worth as an author.

They say that the hard part comes first but to me it’s the opposite. Writing the novel was the easy part. :/ Before I can even get the whole thing down perfect, or even submit it to Absolute Write for critique, I have to actually complete it. Unlike with writing BB it’s less… instinctive? Intuitive? Easy? Whatever the case is, I have a much shorter space to write it, I have to sum it up but still make it catchy, and I have to make the agent want to actually read it.

I’m almost there with a first draft thankfully. Just got to fill in a blank space I have, round it off and a few little bits. Then I can have it hacked to pieces by the people of Absolute Write.

And once that is all done, and I am happy with the final product… then I can actually start contacting agents about my novel.

Complete at 80 000 words, BLOOD BOUND is a young adult urban fantasy novel about a girl, a boy, and a hotel for vampires.

Hee hee. I am still giggling over that.

Not bad for a thirteen year old, I think. Unfortunately my thirteen year old self did not have the dedication to see the story through and even if I did I suspect it wouldn’t be as good as Blood Bound is today. Eight or nine years was good for me in that respect.

However Never Trust A Hybrid is not lost: it still leaves traces of influence on Blood Bound. One character survived from Hybrid and now is firmly settled into the BB universe. He is mentioned throughout BB, makes his first appearance in the sequel and was last seen shaking his fist at the sun.

Of course, Athanasios has changed since Hybrid: he is no longer the protagonist’s father (Delia: “Thank God!). His name is no longer Marcus/Mars and he was no longer identified with the god of the same name (in fact, he’s gone slipping down the Roman social ladder, all the way down to “slave”). On the flipside, he is still seen by some as a stupid radical for changing the way things have been done for centuries. He still has a surprisingly warm and fatherly demenour. He still has a fondness for modern technology.

Characters and stories evolve within themselves as well as from older, deceased works. I first came up with the concept of The Superhero Diaries back in 2006. Since I resurrected the idea there have been a number of changes.

• The overall plot has changed, while the opening sequence is still very similar in events.
• In the 2006 version, Gaia was called “Diana”. Now she is “Georgie”.
• The German superhero (whose civilian name is) “Aylin” was called “Sabine”. Now Sabine is someone else, although connected to Aylin.
• “Diana” lived with her parents and two younger brothers, aged 7 and 10. “Georgie” lives with her mother, stepfather and twin stepbrothers (aged 13).

Many things remain the same as stories evolve but some things do change. I can see how my own writing has evolved, just as The Superhero Diaries has evolved from its 2006 idea into the 2009 draft. Characters change and grow, new ideas are added and entire planned scenes are dropped (I learned this in BB when I had to cut some scenes because they didn’t fit anymore - I am still sad that the vampire macarena scene between Charlie and Jared is not mentioned in-text now).

They evolve.

 
——–

In a shameless plus that is not related to evolution of stories etc. but is about growth in a way, some friends and I have just opened up Bibliocon, a forum for the discussion of YA fiction (and other types as well. :P). So if you’re interested, join! Help Bibliocon grow. Help it evolve.

Backstory: This scene features Athanasios¹, the king of vampires in the United States² in his newly modified Vegas mansion… which has tinted windows³ and is partially solar-powered.

And so he says to the sun, shaking his fist, “WHO’S THE BITCH NOW?!”

So yes, that’s a little bit of Blood Bound humour for you. And as a little update: JK is on the last four chapters of BB in has finished the first round of editing. We’re getting closer and closer to getting ready to start querying literary agents. Cross fingers everyone.

1. He is mentioned several times over the course of Blood Bound, but we have to wait until book two to meet him in person
2. Minus Alaska and Hawaii… long story
3. He doesn’t know how the tinted windows keep him and others from frying, but as he says, “Gift horse, mouth, you know the phrase.”

So check out the projects page, read up on The Superhero Diaries and Mirror, Mirror and, of course, check out the opening scene from The Superhero Diaries!

And for those of you wondering about Blood Bound… my beta is currently on the last few chapters in the first round of editing and should be complete in the next few days.

So what does this mean for BB? Well, the first round is smoothing out sentences, cutting out bloat, keeping things in line with previous statements, and Ameripicking (one thing I love about TSD is that the narrator is a kiwi, so I get to keep my natural “writing accent” you might say :P), amongst other things. As for the second round we get to go in more heavily… JK probably can explain better than me - she’s beta’d published stuff before. And since she’s been ill these last few days, please go ahead and give her some comment love. She deserves it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the little snippets here and there. I promise to have the spellchecked-draft of Mirror, Mirror’s prologue up soon. It’s almost done.

It took me a while to get into Delia’s voice - my wonderful beta says it is because I was doing exams at the time, and so my head was in essay mode - but once I did her voice was clear to me. She’s very sweet, and what you might call an old soul. Despite the weirdness of the world around her, she’s used to it, and it doesn’t faze her much.

Despite being the same age as Delia (give or take a few months) Georgie comes across as being much younger - she’s going through the period of forced growing up that Delia went through several years earlier. Unlike Delia, who is an observer by her position and nature, Georgie is a world-changer by the nature of both her personality and the position/powers that have been thrust upon her as the newest Supe. She’s much drier in tone than Delia, plus I get to have fun using New Zealand slang and the like when she’s speaking. No more having to type “trunk” instead of “boot” and the like.

While I am enjoying writing The Superhero Diaries there is just one thing that really is a hassle: having to go Ctrl + I whenever I want to write fragments of a telepathic conversation.

Oh well. Writing the scenes and conversations between Georgie/Gaia and Santiago/Morph is worth it.

You okay up there?

The voice was in my head, but it wasn’t mine. I jumped just a fraction at the sound; I still wasn’t entirely used to being able to send and receive telepathic communications from a few certain people. A few months ago my mind had been mine, and mine alone, so it was still definitely a little awkward to have other people invading it.

Yeah, I sent back. I paused to wriggle my way through a dense part of the crowd. I guess you could say I’m still not used to this skin, even if it is mine.

Laughter echoed through the telepathic link. I hear you. I still get that feeling now and again.

You’re a shapeshifter, Morph. Of course you feel so out of place in your own skin – you’re in and out of so many of them I almost forget which ones are actually yours.

That earned me more laughter. Okay, okay. Time to get serious now. Can you spot me?

Not with Andre the Giant’s sister in front of me.

I have to admit it does sting a little to get a chapter back filled with little blue lines running through the words I have so carefully written. But when I step back, look at the edited text and see that it does look better with the changes I feel a lot better about having put my hard work up for deconstruction.

I am not a writer who spews stuff out and considers it perfect the first time around; I don’t think there are many who do write like that. Everything can be improved, everything should have at least one round of polishing before put on display. But even though I know my writing isn’t perfect, it still does hurt to be shown that you (or your writing) are not perfect.

Right now I’m focusing on dealing with my crutch word: moment.

For a moment appears 22 times over the course of Blood Bound, while a moment appears 45 times. And the word on its own? 118 times.

Yeah. I really need to do something about that. But that’s (at least in part) what editing is for.