A.J. Maguire

Tag: entertainment

  • What I’ve Learned from Vampires

    I’ve had this week off from school and was focused almost exclusively on writing/editing for Tapped. (Yep, I’m still not in love with that title.) With a few Vampire Diary deviations I’ve been pretty well focused on getting this draft completed so that I can go to work on editing Persona.

    Yes, you read that right, I’ve been watching The Vampire Diaries. Me, the “vampirism = socially acceptable necrophilia” woman who constantly wrinkles her nose at all things bloodthirsty and angsty actually became addicted to this show. I blame Ian Somerhalder for that. Or rather, I blame the writers who created Damon Salvatore’s snarky, hilarious character for Somerhalder to sink his teeth into. (Pun totally intended. You can kill me later for it.)

    **Author’s note: if you follow the link on Mr. Somerhalder’s name it will take you to the IS Foundation, which is all kinds of awesome. You can look up The Vampire Diaries if you want to actually see him.**

    Now, I should probably mention that there are vampires in the Sedition series, they just aren’t undead and their consumption of a specific kind of blood gives them magic. So it’s not like I totally hate vampires, I just hate broody vampires constantly complaining over their eternal youth and fixation on killing people. Which, I’ll give the writers over there at Vampire Diaries two thumbs up for making Damon very different from this stereotype. They have one broodster on the screen (Stefan) so it’s nice to see a counter.

    But I think the real thing that caught me in this show was that the characters were complex enough that I honestly wasn’t certain what any single character would do in any particular scene. Each character brings a certain dynamic to the story and the writers really know how to use that dynamic well. What one person would do when presented with a half-starved, blood-craving, twitchy man is completely different from what Damon would do. So viewers are left wondering what’s going to happen next and who it’s going to happen to.

    And because I relate everything to my personal craft, this teaches me the value of understanding not only the characters on my page but the dynamic that exists between them. The relationships are paramount. Each character exists within the context of these relationships, has a history grounded in these relationships that will dictate future motivations, and every action/reaction that occurs on the page impacts these relationships.

    There are always conversations in the writing community about how important it is to know your character(s). I’m going to stretch that a little further — know your character(s) and how they exist within the context of their relationships.

    I’ve taken to using 3×5 cards dedicated to discussing just one relationship. For example, using the book I am currently editing, one card reads Johanna Rorry vs. Seach Barlow and everything below discusses how Jo feels about Seach, why she feels it, and how it might hinder/help her in the story. One day I will find a program that I actually like and make these notes on the computer instead, but for right now I need something tangible and easy to access.

    In any case, this is what I learned from vampires.

    Or at least what I learned from The Vampire Diaries. I still consider vampirism a weird form of necrophilia and fully admit that I am torn while watching the love stories unfold in the show. On the one hand, I’m a sucker for a good love story. On the other hand, I see dead people kissing. Or worse, living people kissing dead people. How is this not a problem?

    But for now I’m just going to ignore it and enjoy Damon’s snark. He is the king of snark.

     

     

     

  • The Dream Life of an Author — AKA Conquistadors?

    I cannot be the only author out there who wakes up after a dream and wonders what the heck just happened.

    Case in point — last night as I slumbered I found myself being chased by ex-communicated 15th Century Conquistadors.

    I should qualify that statement with the fact that I am not in history class at present, nor have I browsed the history channel since I’m in the middle of a semester and truly do not have the time. So … I have no idea how or why these Conquistadors would show up in my dream. I just know they didn’t like me very much.

    From what I could gather from the one Conquistador who actually befriended me and attempted to aid in my escape from said ex-communicated faction, I had written a book which exposed something about them that they were particularly displeased with.

    Which is ridiculous as I have never attempted to write anything about Conquistadors before. (Though I am sorely tempted to use them now.)

    Oh! And the Conquistador who befriended me?

    Yeah, he totally looked like Benicio Del Torro. Don’t ask me why, but for the sake of this post let’s go ahead and name my Conquistador friend “Benny.”

    So … Benny helps me on this escape, which for reasons unbeknownst to me takes us through an amusement park featuring none other than the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs. At this point in the dream I have established that it is, in fact, one of the most bizarre dreams I have ever had but … Hey, Benicio Del Torro is leading so I’m gonna just go for the ride.

    But then we hide in one of those old photo booth things. Because obviously no self-respecting Conquistador will be caught dead checking out a little photo booth regardless of the fact that our feet can clearly be seen under the curtain.

    At this point I push the button for the photo booth to take our picture. (Heck yes, I did! It’s Benicio Del Torro!) Only instead of spewing out real pictures, it spits out three totally different photographs. Benny proceeds to explain that said photographs represent what we desire most, what we fear the most, and one lie. In no particular order. So you sort of have to guess which is which.

    Bizarre, right?

    Anyway, I only got to see one of the pictures before the alarm woke me up. I’m thinking it was the picture for what I feared the most, but I can’t be sure. All I know is that I sort of laid there for a while wondering what had just happened and where that had come from.

    I cannot be the only author who has moments like this, can I? I mean, I had a dream where I was Medusa once and that was weird, but Conquistadors? Really?

    And if I’m honest, I did use the Medusa dream to write my short story “The Man Who Loved Medusa” so I’m not necessarily complaining. I’ll probably use that photo booth idea somewhere, too. It’s just that these dreams are sometimes so bizarre that I just can’t help mentioning them. I truly hope that I’m not alone in this.

  • Bad TV

    I can’t literally watch television because I’m in school and all that, but I do have Netflix so I can watch various shows.

    (Alas, no Castle on there at the moment.)  So I decided to watch some Star Trek.  There are lots of choices out there for me, but I picked Star Trek: Enterprise because the concept interested me and I liked Scott Bakula.

    Now, my mother always taught me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say then I shouldn’t say anything at all.  So … while I can’t say that the show was awesome and go wildly fan-spastic about it … I can say that it taught me a lot.  And since anything that teaches me how to be a better writer is awesome in my book, this show falls into a strange category of “So Much Potential, So Little Follow Through.”

    (That’s a new category I just made up for stories that fall short of greatness.)

    So here’s what I learned from Star Trek: Enterprise …

    1) You cannot make a hero look good by making all the supporting characters look bad.  

    Captain Archer was repeatedly put into positions where he had to save his senior staff from certain doom, thus weakening his senior staff until one had to wonder how these people got chosen for the first space exploration mission.

    Point in case, an early episode where his tactical officer – Lieutenant Reed (who really wasn’t given enough screen time, by the way) – gets pinned by a mine on the outside of the hull.  And because it makes TOTAL sense that the Captain would be the right man for the job, Archer goes out to have a heart-to-heart with Reed while he tries to disarm the mine.

    It was a blatant appeal to the audience that Archer was supposed to be “the man” on this trip and the story could have been so much better if Reed had been given the opportunity to show what he was made of.

    And that isn’t even the first time a supporting character had been undercut.  I can’t count how many times poor Commander Tucker was made to look stupid.  I get the “good ol’ boy” thing he had going for him, but “good ol’ boy’s” aren’t necessarily weak.  In fact, I could have loved this show so much more if Tucker had been allowed to really be as brilliant as he could have been.

    By the middle of the first season I actually waited to see which character was going to be sacrificed on the altar of Archer’s Awesomeness in every episode.  And in fact, by season three we still don’t know anything more about Archer as a character than what was revealed in the first four episodes of the show; he has a beagle, he likes water-polo, and his dad built the engine.

    Which brings me to point number two;

    2)  Pets do not a character make.   

    Yes, Porthos is cute.  In fact, my son thought he was the best little puppy in the world.  And yes, you can reveal a lot about a person by putting them in the room with an animal.

    Do they pet the animal?

    Do they talk to the animal?

    Do they show compassion and get gushy?

    Or do they run in fear?

    However likable a pet might make a character, you cannot rely on the audience to make a connection with them based solely on this likability.  A hero needs to have more oomph to them.

    3)  Flaws!  Gimme some flaws, please!

    As much as I love Scott Bakula, Archer needed some flaws.  And I don’t mean his over-fraternization with his senior staff.  That’s not a flaw.  That’s a non-military man in command of something that has distinct military aspects (come on, Navy).

    For as much as I hated the way Tucker was massacred in season one, he’s my favorite character in the show.  Why?  Because for every weak moment he had with the Captain, he had some tremendously wonderful moments on his own.  I loved him because he had flaws that I could relate to, moments of indecision and moments of strength that made him who he was.

    4)  When working in a known and beloved Universe tread carefully. 

    I say this because of the weird way the show dealt with Vulcans.  Any Trekkie worth their salt knows that Vulcans are the most repressed beings in the universe.  Yet this show … I mean … it just …

    Ugh.

    Don’t mess with beloved tropes.  If you use them at all, respect the audience you’re going to be using them on.  You’d better have a very, very good reason for turning a culture on its head in a show like this.  And make sure you make it right again when you’re done.

    Because fans will murder you.

    And that’s it.  That’s what I gleaned from watching Star Trek: Enterprise.  Honestly, I did enjoy Tucker’s character.  I didn’t think I would because his accent drove me nuts the first couple of episodes, but after a while I fell in love with him.  In fact, he and Reed made the show bearable for me.  I wish it could have been Archer, but that just wasn’t in the cards for this one.

  • Fact vs. Fiction – Chapter Six (Persona)

    All right, here we go again!

    For those unaware, these posts are following my historical fiction novel Persona as I serialize it online for free.  You can find Persona at its story blog or at its Wattpad address.  Because it’s my first historical fiction, I’ve opted to post pieces of the research I’ve had to do for the book …

    Hence, Fact vs. Fiction Chapter Six!

    Fact:  I have a massive orange and white male cat.  He is very vocal and a great deal of fun and I opted to immortalize him in this novel because … well … I’m the author and I can.

    However, his name is not Grendel.  In fact, a friend of a friend had a cat name Grendel once and I just loved the name so much that I opted to use it here.

    Fiction:  You’ll notice I had Megan keep the lights on all night.  Given the war and all the bombings that were going on, that is very unlikely.  It’s a small detail, I know, and I’ll probably change it during the next round of edits.

    Fact:  Cat box vs. litter box.  I researched and found that litter wasn’t exactly a thing back then.  In fact, it wasn’t really invented until 1947 by a guy named Ed Lowe.

    My Americanized view of pets is completely different from what was likely the norm.  While I know pets have been around for quite some time, I’m sure if Grendel were a real cat living in a real country estate like this that he would most likely be comfortable outside.

    In fact, he probably would have been in charge of catching rodents in and around the house.  (My own cat would be in heaven.  He goes nuts when he can take on a spider.)

    But this poses the problem of Gunter, since we learn here in this chapter that he’s been coming out to VanBuren’s place to care for the pet.  I’m sure this is a matter of my American culture and the way I was raised with pets, but I don’t think I’m going to change it.

    Fiction:  Herr Rahn’s reaction to Megan is highly fictional.  In all likelihood, the SS (Schutzstaffel) would have tossed Megan into a camp very quickly, with or without the word of a high-ranking naval officer to aid her.  I’ve implied that VanBuren’s wealth probably had something to do with the way she has been treated, but … yeah … it’s unlikely.

    This is just one of those moments where I’m hanging a large “FICTION” sign on it.  I hope readers can suspend their disbelief long enough for the story to progress.

  • Fact vs. Fiction – Chapter Four (Persona)

    All right!  Just a quick heads up for anyone who doesn’t know what this is about … My WWII story Persona is being serialized and posted online for free via Wattpad and its story blog.

    Because this is historical fiction I’ve had to do quite a bit of research to help me wade through it.  I know I’ve only touched the surface of what I should know about that time period, but in the meantime this is what I’ve got so far.

    Fact vs. Fiction – Chapter Four

    Fact: Vernacular … you’ll notice VanBuren called Megan Frauline Vonclese in Chapter Three, but here in Chapter Four I’ve dropped it to call her “Miss Vonclese”.  I did that on purpose.  As I’m writing primarily for an English-speaking audience — I speak English, I write in English, I understand things in English — I thought it best to help equate what ‘Frauline’ means roughly in … you guessed it … English.

    Way back in Chapter Two I used the word “Nein” as well, because I wanted to make it clear who was plucking her out of the ocean.  I use German sporadically throughout the book but don’t want to frustrate readers with too much of it. (Remember, I’ve got a primarily English-speaking audience.)

    Fiction:  I don’t go into too much detail with the port authority and everything.  This is for two reasons; one, I’m really not familiar with how the Nazi party would have handled this particular situation; and two, VanBuren is rich enough to circumvent the normal processes anyway.

    However, it’s safe to say that if Megan were a real person and had somehow been rescued by a German vessel in the middle of WWII, she would not have been show this much lenience.  She’d likely be sent to a camp somewhere to wait out the war.  I acknowledge this and then point emphatically at the word “fiction”, asking for … well … some suspension of disbelief.

    Fact:  Frostbite!  This was actually researched for Chapter’s 3 & 4 due to Megan’s lengthy stay in the water.  I learned that, in the event of frostbite, you actually have to keep appendages (such as Megan’s poor feet) in water and slowly acclimate them to warmth over a period of time.

    Also, those parts of the body that have suffered frostbite cannot be used until they are completely healed.  (Which explains why Megan was in bed for all of Chapter Three.)

    Having never suffered frostbite myself, I am only imagining that two to three weeks after the injury Megan would still feel some tenderness on her rescue toes.  Especially given she hasn’t actually been allowed to walk for much of that time while the feet were healing.

    Fiction:  The bakery scene.  Honestly, I’m not sure how good Wilhelmshaven looked after the 1941 bombing of the port town.  I’m not certain they would have kept a bakery open in such a targeted area during the war.

    But I needed a place for Megan to meet up with Schuler.  It’s possible that I could alter this scene in a future revision to show Megan and VanBuren making their way to the train depot instead.

    Author’s Note:  Now that I look at it, the depot does seem like a better place to send her.  I will likely change it. 

  • Fact vs. Fiction — Chapter Three (Persona)

    For those following along with the serialization of Persona, here is the Fact vs. Fiction page for Chapter Three.

    So far this whole experience has been incredibly fun!  If you’re just hearing about it, Persona is my WWII novel that is currently being serialized online for free.  You can find it at its Wattpad address or at its story blog.

    But here’s the battle of Fact vs. Fiction in Chapter Three!

     

    Chapter Three – Fact vs. Fiction

     

    Fact:  When I was in high school I took German as my second language.  (We totally watched The Sound of Music and The Great Escape during school.  It was awesome.)  But I remember our teacher Mr. Vanburen (yes, I totally snagged his name because he was one of my favorite teachers and I wanted to immortalize him somehow) said that there were different dialects in the German language.  It is much like anywhere else, I imagine, with different accents coming out.

     

    Doctor Who fans will remember the Ninth Doctor being accused of coming from the north (of Britain) and his response was; “Lots of places have a north!”

     

    So!  The idea of Uncle George’s “language game” isn’t too far-fetched.  It’s a little weird, but that gets explained as time goes on.  Uncle George isn’t the most honest of fellows, after all.

     

    Fiction:  I shoved Megan into a converted storage room on board the ship because I really didn’t know where they would keep a stranded girl on board.  I always imagined it was positioned just beside or inside the sick bay so that Herr Schuler could see to her.  Let’s face it, this sequence of events is very fictional and I doubt they had a manual for what to do when they picked up a half-drowned woman.

     

    Fact:  There really is a place called the Jade Bight.  In Germany it’s called Jadebusen and it’s a bay just south of Wilhelmshaven.  I had to mention it somewhere because, quite frankly, that’s the coolest sounding name in the world.

     

    Fiction:  This is only a quasi-issue because Megan isn’t in the military and really doesn’t know what’s going on, but in the event someone was taken on board a ship like this they would most likely be kept alive.  The whole “remand her into custody of the port authority” is semi-realistic.  VanBuren would need to give her to his superiors, who would then direct her to military intelligence for interrogation and then relocation to a camp.  (More about this in Chapter Four.)

     

    Fact:  My original draft of this story had four other POW’s on board the ship, which Megan was kind of interrogated through because Wycoff forced her into the same room with them and then listened to see if she revealed anything.  She then set about trying to help rescue these four men, which she managed during a bit of a battle, but she still got stuck going to Germany because she had to act as a distraction in order for the men to run.

     

    It was a fun sequence, but after quite a bit of research I dug up the fact that it was very unlikely for prisoners to be taken on board ships like this.  Which meant if I had Megan rescued then I had to dump the other four guys.  I mean, I was already stretching the whole suspension of disbelief, so I needed to trim it down.

     

  • Story Bibles (aka – Consistency, People!)

    A friend of mine uses a Wiki to keep all her files straight while she’s writing a book.  I’ve seen software designed to help maintain little “sticky-notes” to help authors as they’re in the middle of creating their fiction.  Both would fall under what I define as a “story bible”.

    Basically, that’s the spot the author goes to in order to remember all the crap … uh … I mean brilliant details … they have written to help keep their story feeling real.  Because those details are important.  Details are what keep us grounded in a particular work.

    (I heard a rumor George R.R. Martin got skewered for renaming a beloved horse in one of his books.)

    Easy example … Harry Potter’s round-framed glasses.  If those glasses had changed at any point in the books I think Rowling would have been deep-fried by her fans.  You see those glasses and immediately you’re on the lookout for jumping chocolate frogs (also a detail) and people running for a brick pillar, heading for Hogwart’s train (yet another detail).

    Now then … Until I started writing sequels to my books I never kept a story bible.  The characters and worlds were fairly clear in my head and I was stupid enough to think I wouldn’t really need one.

    Saboteur isn’t really a good example of my needing a story bible because it took place in a part of the Dyngannon world that I’d never visited before.  But as I am currently writing the third book in the series (Usurper) and I am revisiting places both in Saboteur and Sedition …

    Yeah.

    I’m wishing I’d went ahead and written one out.

    It’s not so much the characters that worry me — I know who I want to show up where and why and what impact that’s going to have on the story — but the descriptions, the landmarks … those I might have some trouble with.

    My solution?  A notebook.

    I love that people can use technology to make Wiki’s and such, but there is just something about having my scribbles in weird margins, writing running vertical across the page, and using multiple colors that just appeals to me.

    What can I say?  It’s a jumbled mess in my head, it’s going to come out bizarre on the page, too.

    The only exception I have here is the notebook for Tapped.  That story bible is far more organized than any of my others.

    Then again, it does have the outlines and big plot points for 7 novels and novellas in it.  That’s right.  I said 7.  There might even be more than that.  I’m not sure.  I think I could do it in 6 but the whole series has a very episodic feel to it.

    And I’m looking forward to the novellas.  There are at least two of them.  So, technically, I could do the series in 4 books with 2 novellas tacked on.

    I think.

    But really, who wants to put a limit on a series about rescuing refugees?

  • Quests

    So there I was trying to take a nap because I’m either coming down with something nasty or have finally developed allergies — Hopefully I’m just getting sick.  I really don’t want to look forward to a seasonal allergy every year — when I opened my eyes and saw something strange on my bookshelf.

    Image

    Do you see it there?  Right between Jennifer Crusie and the Fantasy Reference Guide …

    It’s an old hardback notebook.  I kept squinting at it, trying to figure it out what in blazes it was when it hit me; it was the first notebook my mother ever gave me.  I’d already shown an interest in writing with “Noises Next Door” and “Noises in the Night” so she bought me this notebook to write in.

    Author’s note:  I was like twelve when I wrote those stories, people.  The titles are bound to suck.  And trust me, the stories were awful, too. 

    So I got up and pulled out that book and started reading the whole six chapter story I wrote in the sixth grade.

    It’s title?  Quest for Bravery … (with “bravery” spelled wrong, no less.)

    I used far too much punctuation and too many people were shouting, and for reasons I can’t understand I actually chose to write in cursive.  (I don’t think anyone writes in cursive anymore.  Not straight cursive, anyway.  I use a bastardized cursive-plain-text-print myself because I know that nobody else has a chance of understanding it.  It’s called author security.)

    The story was about a girl — yes, I’ve always written strong female fighters — who, for reasons I don’t explain in the story, is beholden to a wizard.  Said Wizard’s name was Henry because that was the oldest sounding name I could come up with at the time.  (Again, I was twelve.  And anyway, aside from Prince Henry how many “Henry’s” do you know that aren’t getting up there in years?)

    So anyway, the girl in the story was named Amanda Forcalmer (points to me for not using my own name that time) and she basically served Wizard Henry.  And for six whole chapters she got to meet a prince, fight a dragon, save a princess and then leave said prince.  (Again, points to me for not writing a romance.)

    It was really horrible writing-wise and I laughed as I read it.

    And then I started thinking about how many quests I have been privileged to go on both in my real life and in my writing life.  In real life I have jumped in the ocean in Alaska (that’s cold, by the way), swam in the Caribbean twice, lived in Hawaii, traveled from coast to coast, and been in the Army.  While none of those can be categorized as a “quest” per se, it has been an adventure in learning who I am as a person.

    In my writing life I’ve quested for the Ebony Blade in Sedition, fought against prejudice and for the safety of family in Saboteur.  I’ve hunted for nobility in Witch-Born and learned how fickle Fate can be in Dead Magic.  I confronted the demons of inner self in Deviation and am neck-deep in the quest for self-understanding in Persona as we speak.

    And I’m only 34 years old.

    We writers tend to bemoan how lonely our jobs can be.  We set out to tell a tale that no one else can.  We might get research and inspiration from the people around us, but in the end we’re alone as we write it.  And yes, the solitary act of writing can be hard sometimes.  But it is totally worth it.

    Because we writers are uniquely blessed.  We have quests like no one else in the world.  We create worlds in order to draw out and pinpoint certain aspects of human character.  We see reality differently.  We see people and what motivates them because we understand that the underlying motivation is what dictates what we do as human beings.

    So if you’re a writer then embrace that solitary time.  Take that quest that no one else can and share it.

  • Persona is Live!

    That’s right!  You can now read Chapter One of Persona at either its Wattpad link or the Story Blog.

    And just as I promised, I’m going to post the Fact vs. Fiction rundown for the story here.  You can find it on a separate page on the story blog as well, but for those who prefer Wattpad I thought I’d smack it up here as well.

    Fact Vs. Fiction

    Chapter One – Fact vs. FictionFiction:  Persona’s original draft had Megan in an airplane and getting shot down into the sea.  Obviously that changed because it wasn’t really normal for a passenger like Megan to be on an airplane going from place to place back then.  So!  I decided to let her get sunk instead.

    Fact:  The SS Ceramic was a real ship.  If you take a look at Uboat.net you can find the SS Ceramic.  When it sunk just after midnight on the 7th of December, 1942 (yes I made the date the same) it actually had 133 fare paying passengers on board, which is exactly what I needed for my fictional Megan Crossweathers to be there.

    That’s just the fare paying passengers, there were actually many more people on board, to include nurses in Queen Alexandria’s Imperial Nursing Service.  You’ll notice I put that in the chapter as well.

    I chose not to mention the 12 reported children on board the ship for several reasons.  First, it breaks my heart.  I’m a parent myself and I just can’t read/write books that highlight the death of a child.  Second, there just wasn’t enough time between Megan’s seasickness and the sinking.

    Fiction:  Regardless of whatever Captain Denton Gray might have been up to, there’s no way one man and one woman would have taken a boat on their own.  With so many people abandoning the ship they would have likely joined in with one of the other boats.  However, for the purposes of the book I needed to get Denton and Megan away from everybody else.

    Fact:  The sole survivor of the SS Ceramic was Sapper Eric Munday of the Royal Engineers.  The only reason he survived is because Henke — the dude in charge of U-515, the U-boat who sunk the Ceramic — surfaced at around midday to find many of the lifeboats had capsized in the massive storm.  He ordered for the first survivor who reached the U-Boat to be taken on board, which happened to be Munday.

  • The Countdown is On!

    That’s right!  In just four days I’ll start posting Persona as a serialized novel online for free.  I have to admit, I’m excited.  I’ve got a seven week buffer, which means I have seven chapters edited and prepped so that if life gets in the way, or if I just need a little break, I can take one and not miss the weekly deadline.

    I’m considering an audio version but I’ve only got the one little microphone and, let’s be frank, the idea of anyone listening to my voice nonstop for twenty minutes makes me a little self-conscious.  For now I’m only guaranteeing the story blog, which you can find here and the Wattpad version.

    I can’t give the Wattpad link yet because it hasn’t been created, but early Tuesday morning it’ll be here.

    The amazing Chris Howard has been hard at work on the cover art for Persona and here’s what we’ve got so far …

    Cover Art by Chris Howard
    Cover Art by Chris Howard

    Honestly, I love it.  It absolutely captures the tone and heart of the book.  This guy is amazing.  You should really check out his stuff.

    And now I have to confess that I’ve decided this blog will be echoing the Fact vs. Fiction page on the story blog for the duration of Persona’s serialization.  The reason I’ve decided this is because I am a single parent who works full-time and goes to school full-time.

    Time is tight and while I have a seven chapter buffer, I don’t have a blog buffer.  If I want to get the fact vs. fiction stuff up at all, I have to sacrifice something.  And trust me, I can’t sacrifice lego playtime with my kid.

    Besides, it’s still a blog post about writing so I’m not really cheating here.

    So!  Here we are with four days left to go.  The story blog is already set up so if you want to sign up via email it’s ready to go.  That just means you’ll get the story delivered directly to your email every Tuesday.

    I’m still working on how to upload a PDF version that can be downloaded and delivered to your eReader of choice.  (If anyone knows how to do that, please say so.  I’m a little lost myself.)

    See you all in four days!