Return of the Muse

I've often been complaining - to myself, anyway - that my muse abandoned me sometime ago, probably because most of my time was consumed with boring but necessary aspects of life. Like college. It was sort of a running joke with my friends from Absolute Write that my muse was AWOL (Absent WithOut Leave) and that if it ever came back, I'd shoot it for desertion. Well, it eventually did come back, at 6am on Monday morning, waking me out of a dead sleep. I was half asleep and so confused I couldn't do anything but start writing down notes.

I won't get into too much detail about the idea I've been developing over the past week. I want to make sure it actually goes somewhere and I start making some definite progress on it before I get everyone interested in a project that may or may not go anywhere. However, I will say that the ideas started clicking into place so well and so fast, that I spent two plus hours on Monday morning handwriting three pages of notes regarding characters and plot lines. I've since expanded the notes on characters into a seven page character bio file, which outlines background, personality, motivation, and physical appearance for each of the major characters, as well as a couple of the more minor ones. I've also done what I call some "setting teaser" pieces, bits of writing that may or may not be included in the actual manuscript itself, but help to establish the physical setting and the ambiance of the work for my own benefit. I will also say that right now, I plan on this being a novel-length work.

Furthermore, I will also say that this work seems to be falling into the genre of steampunk. I've never written anything steampunk-ish before, and I'm barely familiar with all the various details of the genre. I've decided that first and foremost, this work is going to be fun. I'm going to focus on making the storyline as awesome as possible, the characters as in-depth and three-dimensional as possible, and the world itself as interesting and amusing as possible. I'm going to be making a bit of a break with my tradition of having technology in my works be at least plausible or explainable, and just have fun with the airships, guns, and floating cities that will be in this project. Knowing me, it will end up being steampunk with strong elements of science fiction and fantasy thrown in.

Yes, I know, I've got a lot of other projects lined up right now. The Serenity Solution is still in the beta read phase. My beta reader just finished through Chapter 11 on it, and has requested the next several chapters. So progress is being made on that front, it's just taking time. I'm starting to get tidbits of ideas on how I want to go about rewriting it as well, once the time comes for that. Regarding the short stories I have going, yes I still plan on working on those as well. I'm hoping that with a variety of projects of varying genres going on, I'll be able to stay motivated and not get into a rut.

Speaking of projects that are lined up, and projects I've talked about on here that have yet to go anywhere, you may remember the few posts I made about the Bounty Hunter Quartet. Well, during Absolute Write's Flash Fiction Challenge last Sunday, I wrote a 1,900 word piece that is sort of an unofficial prelude to the first book. I'm not sure it will ever see the light of day, but it was good to get back into the fantasy genre a bit and work with a familiar character. Based on the prompt "the new job," the piece was a quick look at the events directly leading up to the start of the first book, which has been started and stopped three times now. And it's still in the brainstorming phase right now.

I will, of course, let you know when I've got more news regarding any of these projects. And I'm still waiting to hear from the Writer's of the Future Contest regarding "Exequies;" right now, no news is good news.

Networking!

I'm great at learning things. Sometimes it just takes me awhile to decide that I want to learn them. Networking is one of those things I read about in the various books I have on getting published, but it involves actually interacting with people, and I'm not too big on that. Which is why I have a blog, instead of having a conversation about all this with someone. Lack of social skills aside, networking is a pretty crucial piece of your strategy to get your book from manuscript form to the bookshelf. For example, sometimes you can find the perfect agent by yourself. But for many of us, we come up with a list of agents that represents only a fraction of the available options. In other words, we need to know people who know people.

I've made a couple advances in my previously non-existent networking strategy this past week. The first thing I did was mention my blog to someone, which ended up with me being asked to give a presentation on what I've learned to a creative writing class. That wasn't originally what I had intended, but at the very least, I'll probably end up learning more stuff through the experience. Time will tell if it's a good thing or not.

The second event happened when I was investigating a possible agent online. I happened across a writer's forum that seems to be pretty extensive. It's a home for writers of all experience levels, including several that have been professionally published. It looks to be a great place to look for advice on both simple and complicated questions. Writers can also share their work there in order to receive critiques on it. I just joined it yesterday, so I'm still exploring the site, but it looks like it will be well worth my time.

Nothing new to report on my effort to get TSS published. I did sent another e-mail query yesterday. I haven't received any other responses back yet, so no news is good news I suppose.

In regards to my Bounty Hunter Quartet project, I finished an outline for the rewrite of Book I, and have started the manuscript for it. I've reached about five pages so far, and hopefully that will be up and running at a good speed shortly. I did decide to go ahead with the high fantasy aspect of it, as opposed to the urban fantasy version. It just didn't seem right to convert the project from its original genre, since I've spent so many years envisioning it as high fantasy. But, the brainstorming process has given me some leads for ideas on possible future urban fantasy projects. I'll keep you updated on how it goes.

Here's the link for the Absolute Write Water Cooler: Absolute Write

The List Grows Smaller

Well, this last week saw some disappointing developments in the quest to get The Serenity Solution published. Those developments took the form of 3 form rejections in the space of 3 days. Oh well, at least I'm hearing back from them, right? And it only brings my total to 5 rejections, which isn't very much. Or, if you want to look on the dark side, it means I'm just starting down the long road of rejection. The list of possible agents I can send my book to is growing drastically smaller in a short period of time. I might have to raid the local library for the 2010 edition of Literary Marketplace and hope it has a greatly expanded list over the 2009 edition.

But I'm staying positive. Oh yes. I think...

Anyways, the last week also saw some positive developments, concerning the Bounty Hunter Quartet series I mentioned in the previous post. I dug up my old files on it and finished reading through them. I've come up with quite a few ideas about what I want to see in the books, especially regarding a much, much deeper level of character development than was there previously. I haven't had any brilliant flashes of inspiration regarding the plot yet; I'm still waiting on that. Partly due to the new character development, and partly in order to maintain originality and a more compelling plot line, I need to change things up from the original version.

I'm working on basic character biographies for it, and hopefully within the next week or two, I can have a rough outline of the first book laid out. Once that's done, I can start writing the rough draft of the manuscript. Theoretically, thanks to everything I've learned in trying to get The Serenity Solution published, this book should be even better. It'd be nice to have something solid ready to follow TSS with.

And of course, I'll post updates as they happen, regarding any and all of my projects.