So, I finally decide about 11 p.m. that I’m going to go to bed early so I can get up first thing in the morning and perhaps exercise outside before it gets too hot. I spend about a half hour talking over something with my room mate and go to the bedroom to sleep. Then I wind up scribbling away in a notebook until 12:30 a.m.

Thank you muse! It better be good is all I can say because it meant that I didn’t wake up until almost 9 a.m. by which point it’s already too hot to be outside for more than a few minutes :p Florida while I’m at it!

It’s doubly funny because we were over at a friends house over the weekend and Kore and I were both talking about the writing that we do. Kore’s actually taking several writing workshops in summer school, and I was saying that I’m not having much luck with the whole novel thing at the moment, and she said that she had been meaning to suggest writing short stories for a while to me, and that she was going to do some of that herself, because she knows that she doesn’t have enough time to get something done consistently and I have even less time on a day than she tends to.

So, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not sure if I’m going to be working on the werewolf story or “Too Deep” for the time being; but I will be doing the little snippets. Right now it should in theory be a little easier to work on the werewolf story because I’m working on a short game based off that “universe” which has things narrowed down a bit better once more; but at the same time vignettes come more easily to the “Too Deep” story because of the way I’m writing it, as an interview.

It’s also tricky working out how psychic visions and memories are going to work as far as translating them to text. I mean as far as I’ve experienced psychic phenomena are very hazy. You get very vague impressions and very little in the way of pictures. Mostly just ideas. I’ve experienced a few more detailed dreams. However that doesn’t translate very well to words. It’s hard to engage a reader if you don’t have something to describe clearly for them to really relate to the scene.

There’s bound to be rumors within the town about the families which live in the village on the outskirts. Wondering what strange things go on up there, but I wonder would the wolf-children tell the locals, if they were good friends with them, what they were.

Then that branches into “normal teen conversations” and girls lamenting that they wish they could find good diets for quick weight loss and how do you do it Cora? and her kinda going, “Um…well…it’s just my metabolism.”

During part of the game several characters hooked up with each other, or hooked up with NPCs, and then two of the main NPCs helping out the player characters were already engaged and got married during part of the in game down time. So, you have a werewolf marrying someone of were-raven blood, a werewolf marrying an actual were-raven and then possibly a werewolf marrying a cyborg if they could ever get their act together; and also the possibility of the reincarnated equivalent of King Arthur hooking up with one of the werewolf’s cousins who can’t shift.

All sorts of intriguing things. I’m trying to stay away from so much of that in the actual story. There are relationships during the course of the novel most notably the previously mentioned werewolf/were-raven one, but at the same time most of the other characters are more focused on other things, there are hints and crushes and desires but not so much acted upon because there are so many other things going on.

I try to steer away from romance in stories but at the same time through talking with several friends I’ve realized and accepted that given romance and even just “hooking up” is integral to our day to day existence I shouldn’t avoid it like the plague, instead I should embrace it as a sidebar as something which would strengthen many of the characters’ drive and need to actually complete the plot because they do so for caring about their family, their significant others and their future family.

On the one hand I know what you definitely do NOT give a werewolf groomsman: anything silver!

I’ve started in a different spot than when I originally started it for NaNoWriMo a few years ago. Then I started with the twins and the attack by their father. This time I’ve started with the twin who survived arriving at the clan home in Scotland and being brought to them by the destitute cursed wolf after he appeared outside his motorhome. The attack may be recounted in flashback. I think it’s better to have it be somewhat of a mystery and just be known to be this horrific event for some time.

I know what happened because I’ve already got that part written out and it can be told through nightmares and things like that, and perhaps recounted differently by different people in the story should they heard of it or even be a part of it.

Plotting things for the werewolf story is a little more different. They live out in a very rural area of Scotland and the initial mark of the story was that it takes place in the late 80s early 90s, at least for the start so technology is very low in comparison to now especially because around that time in the UK technology took a while to filter through, especially to somewhere out in the moors, so they would have landlines, *might* have computers but they wouldn’t be very super-powered. They wouldn’t understand DVDs or possibly even CDs.

It’s hard to think back to how things were in the 80s though; so I wonder if I should just move the story forward to now, but then I have to project forward from now into the future only a few years which could easily make things very dated, very quickly.

It’s interesting when inspiration strikes though with regards that. I was listening to someone give me spiel about free insurance quotes and I suddenly realized that I could bring differences in werewolves into it, the stigma between being born a werewolf or being made a werewolf. Those known as cursed wolves who can only change at the whim of the curse rather than when they wish it and things like that.

At the same time last night I hit on a different way to work with ‘Too Deep’ and to properly get across the issues of Nadir and it’s social structure (such as it is) and also a better more organic way to tell the story because while going chronologically from beginning to end is a way to tell it, given the story centers around an extended conversation and re-telling much the way of “How I Met Your Mother” it’s not going to be told entirely chronologically things get missed and have to be come back to or are just inferred. You still tell the significant points but there’s certain times where it’s like, “Oh! Wait I didn’t tell you about that, okay, when I was living with X this happened and now I can go on and tell you the rest of it.”

Here’s a short-ish excerpt:

To whom this may concern:

This movie was a complete waste and I feel that it offends ALL Twilight Fans around the world, that including myself. For one, it was a COMPLETE remaking of the Wolf Pack from the Twilight Saga: New Moon. It gives the werewolves a bad name and makes them look like some deformed mutation of a rabid dog. I actually started to like werewolves after seeing Jacob Black and all his awesomeness on the big screen at the movies. That was until I saw your crappy remake of what you call to be a “were wolf”. I don’t see how you live with yourself for making it the way you did. If I made this movie, I would be ashamed to even admit that I owned it. How can a werewolf be killed with a silver bullet? Better yet, have you saw the transformation of the man that is “supposed” to be the wolf? He sits in some chair and his entire body turns in to some mutated freak. If you would watch the transformation of Jacob Black, (Taylor Lautner) he doesn’t come close to looking as fake, cheap and or mutated as the wolf man. You tell me, who looks to be the better werewolf. Your stupid Wolf Movie didn’t even make the top Movie for the charts;

To read the rest click on the link above; seriously? Wow! I know I used to get all bent out of shape about rip-offs but that was usually when some idiot on the school bus was complaining that Sting stole Puff Daddy’s song or something equally stupid. I’m just…do your research!

I can’t help but be ruffled because Stephanie Meyer has ripped off a lot more things than others, I could go on for hours about her blatant “Mary-Sueing” and what little I understand of her imprinting said werewolf on a baby! But I haven’t actually read the books so it’s entirely possible I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. All I know is that I couldn’t watch the entire “Twilight” movie because it was so appalling. I did however enjoy the new Wolfman movie immensely, particularly because of the transformation and the fact that the wolves didn’t de-transform every time the moon went behind a cloud as they did in Van Helsing, which is another travesty I’m just not going to get into (and I love Hugh Jackman).

I wonder how bent out of shape Ms. Patterson will get if she ever reads any of my werewolf notations. One of the stories I have on the back burner involves a lineage of werewolves whose line have been involved in historical events such as interpretations of King Arthur and Robin Hood. They do have a wolf-man form and a wolf form and a man form. Oh, no am I ripping off Meyer? :p This is another story of mine which came about after running an RPG for some friends. There are some vampires in it too, but they certainly do NOT SPARKLE!

This section is Abigail looking at the college the same time.

Around the fountain were gardens they were ill-kept and it looked as though someone had recently fallen into one of the bushes and perhaps rolled out into the neighboring flower beds.
The college itself loomed over the fountain. To get to the front entrance they had to walk around the fountain and up a flight of chipping stone stairs to a large arched heavy wooden door bound with metal. The walls were thick grey stone and red brick. Now, Abigail realized how many people were milling around them. Sveral of them were wearing bright blue shirts with the St. Aurous logo on it, and they were leading groups of students and people who were probably their parents around.
“It looks more like a hotel,” Hajime said.
She was right, with the mosaic floor and the wrap around stone staircases and the lighting fixture a huge chandelier that hung down over the center of the entrance she couldn’t help but imagine the security office used to open up to keys and receptionists.
“It was a hotel,” a blue shirt nearby said. He was sitting at a large collapsible table stacked up with folders all bearing pictures of the college surrounded by circular insets of students engaging in happy activities and studious ones with equal glee.
“That explains it then,” Abigail answered, not sure what else she could say.
He laughed and she felt her insides melting.

Planning helps. I’ve been realizing that certain ways of doing things make more sense, not just planning story-wise, but the way that the characters in the story would plan things too. It makes a lot more sense if you’re looking for someone who should be coming into the area and you’re at a college to station one of your number on the “welcoming” and “tour guide” committee for example.