First Cup of Coffee - October 25, 2018

Ruminations today on writing fight scenes/battle scenes vs. sex scenes and news on THE DRAGONS OF SUMMER. Also some squeeing about how good BARBAROUS by Minerva Spencer is, and thoughts on revising vs. redrafting. 

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Good morning everyone. Today is October twenty-fifth. It's eight forty-five in the morning. Gonna head outside to the east side of the house. It is cool this morning. Let's see what is it? Oh, it's already up to 44. It was like 35 when I got up. But uh it is sunny. Sunny today. Which normally I wouldn't make a big deal of, but we had just had days and days of solid rain. It was extraordinary. We we don't really get that. So yeah, um we got to the point where our roof started leaking. We had several leaks the last couple days. And to some extent, that's kind of a funny thing about living in New Mexico, because we all have these flat roofs, right? You know, they're just a flat roof with kind of um an asphalt base and a gravel uh gravel put on top to cushion it for sip. Mm, that's so good. I have standing water on the driveway. Um, which we do get occasionally, but you know, not more than like an hour after the rain has gone. So maybe we'll get a picture of the standing water on the driveway. What do you think? Just to commemorate. You guys might not care, but I find it kind of amusing. And you can see some of my Halloween decorations too. So it's a win for everyone. There we go. Still recording? I have to tell you guys, you know, after I was kind of whining on Tuesday about how they changed the interface, once I finished the podcast, I could not figure out how to save it. Like my my done and save button went away, and I was just sure that I it was gonna vanish, and then I was gonna have to like record it again or just sort of post a ranty thing about see I was right and software updates are the devil. But it all turned out okay. I finally figured it out. But it took me a few minutes, a few panicked minutes. It's funny how you can get so excited about things like that, which really are not that important in the grand scheme. So anyway, I haven't looked at how much rain accumulation we've gotten, but um everything is totally soaked, and with the flat roof, once you hit a certain point of um saturation, then we have the canales that drain off, but the water just starts to soak in. It soaks in around the vents and the corners of the skylights and stuff, and it's just sort of um I don't know, it's part of life. It's kind of funny how everybody talks about, oh well, that was uh enough rain that our ceilings started to leak. And it's not something that you really worry about fixing because A, it happens like once every couple of years, and B, I mean, it's there's really nothing to fix unless you put a pitched roof on the house, which I think is probably even against the architectural controls in our neighborhood. I'm not sure. So anyway, David's once it dries out a little bit, David's gonna go up there and see if he can see put some sealant on a couple of those spots. But you know, otherwise it's um just part of the charm of living in northern New Mexico. And it is kind of funny. But um, yeah, so rain and rain and rain. Uh fortunately we did it was not freezing, or we probably would have gotten quite the snow accumulation. Would have been cool to see, but might have been a real pain. So yeah, and and that freeze we had was a brief enough freeze. It was enough to kill my morning glories and the really fragile plants, but otherwise most of our plants are still really growing and the desert foreclocks look like they might be going for another bloom. It's a good time of year to get moisture, you know, everything's starting to close down, so they'll tamp it into their roots and hopefully we'll have a really pretty spring. Very pretty. The cat the cats didn't even try to go out yesterday. They never even asked. They just resigned themselves to the fact that it was that they were going to be snoozing, but they were all geared up to go out this morning. Enjoy the the sunshine. So yesterday was a banner day. It was granddaughter Arrow's birthday. She's very funny because she started texting me, which I find entirely delightful. She sends me gifts and anime pics. Uh and she's very literal about some things. But uh her birthday presents didn't arrive yet, so hopefully we'll FaceTime with her tonight and get to see her opening her presents. And I also finished The Dragons of Summer. Woo woo! And sent it off to crit readers at the end of the day. It did come in at almost 31,000 words, a little bit above my 25,000 mark, but uh so it goes. I understand that uh Amanda Boucher's story for the anthology Seasons of Sorcery is also 30,000 words, and Jennifer's is 27. Grace is still working on hers. So, you know, more more story goodness for you. And I sent it off to a few readers yesterday, and Corinne read it overnight. It's so funny because I'll send it off while she's still asleep and she wakes up and she reads, and then it's there when I wake up. It's a good way to uh maximize the time differences. And Corrine said, This is the story about Ursula and Harlan that I didn't know I needed. I think that's pretty awesome, don't you think? I think that's really cool. I'm happy. Um she wants me to add to the final battle scene, which yeah, probably I need to do that. I'm I'm looking up the phone to make sure it's still recording and the interface has changed yet again. I just don't even I can't even with this. I can say oh, I see why. Alright. Well, stop messing with it, Jeffy. So that is that is done. I will see what the other crit readers say. I know that um Jim Sorensen will agree with Corrine, and if I'm lucky, he'll give me ideas for some things that could happen in that battle scene. Um I don't know why I don't like writing battle scenes. I find them boring. Um, you know, and and it's funny, you know, being in this anthology with Jennifer East Step, because she and I had you know had debated about this before. And she even created a panel for RT in Atlanta a couple years back that was called Steam vs. Scream, which was whether we liked writing sex scenes or fight scenes better. And um because she's definitely the fight scene gal. And she loves to watch action movies, and I find um, you know, like the fight scenes in action movies, I find them terribly boring. Um you know, and and I've people have even said to me that writing sex scenes is just like writing fight scenes, that it's you know, like all about the character transformation of the scene, you know, and I just cry bullshit to that. I just I don't think there's a lot of character transformation in most battle scenes. Um, you know, and I know oh yeah, you can argue that about sex scenes. I've I think that all of my sex scenes involve some sort of character challenge um transformation. Something emotional happens in every one of my sex scenes. Um a fight scene, I don't really get what emotional happens. You know, and I get the advice that it should be, you know, like the person facing some sort of challenge, having to overcome something in themselves in order to make the fight, uh, in order to triumph, and I get that, you know, okay, that makes sense. But, you know, like when you have people who are hardened warriors who have been in a lot of battles, like Ursula and Harlan have been in a lot of battles, then I just don't see how there can be all that much more for them to to do, you know, other than beat back the baddies. And to me, that's like what most fight scenes come down to is like here's the big baddie and we're gonna beat him down. And I know that there's entertainment for the reader in that, in the being afraid and titillated by the danger and then the triumphant beating back of it. Uh but to me that feels very, I don't know, rote. Every once in a while I can do a good action scene. I'd you know, like I had fun doing the ones and arrows of the heart, and I think a lot of that was because that was meaningful character transformation for me with Karen. Um, because Karen was not a warrior and didn't know how to fight, and she knew how to use her bow to keep birds off of the orchards from her family estates, but she uh, you know, had never really been in pitched battle. So there was interesting stuff to do with her there. Building her confidence with people who are fighters. What do you do? You know, other than I think, I think it becomes a thing of, you know, like the people who find it so interesting to debate if Wonder Woman and Superman got into a fight, what who would win, you know, and that's what happens in a lot of the superhero movies, right? You know, it's basically one contest of might and skill against, you know, one after another. You know, that's that was it basically the entire premise of um civil war, right? The with putting Tony Stark against Captain America, you know, like who would win? And I don't know, to me, maybe it's um maybe it's too much of a testosterone thing for me. You know, it's uh I don't really care who matching those skills against each other, and you know, like who can use his uh you know superhuman indestructible strength and shield against the techno-wizardry of Tony Stark. I just start to get bored. I keep using that word, but it's just not interesting to me. So I'm gonna have to find something interesting in this battlefield, battlefield, battle scene, and in the battlefield. Uh I'll let it rest for a few days and maybe I'll come up with something. Maybe Corrine will have wonderful ideas. Uh, I think that the monster, which was actually her suggestion, is a terrific idea and suitably creepy, but it ended up being, I don't know, a little too ephemeral, a little too distant. So maybe we need to tweak that and make it a little bit more more of a physical danger, I guess, maybe. So I'll think about it, I'll think about it. Today I'm going to work on Twin Star is the working title. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that before. This is a collaboration I've been working on with the aforementioned Jim Swanson. Um Jim comes out of a Transformers background, and he and I have been working on a uh a secret project together, and we've gone through a few iterations of it. And I uh he has had done a new opening and I need to essentially rewrite it. Um I think what I'm going to do is rewrite the chapter that he did in my own phrasing. One of the things that I have discovered is that sometimes, very often, if you have to do a massive revision of a story, then it takes less time in the end to simply start over with a blank page and rewrite it than to attempt to revise what's there. And it feels counterintuitive. After all, Nora Roberts very famously says I can edit anything except a blank page, and she's fabulously productive. Um, and I do think that there's a lot of truth to that. You know, if you haven't written the thing, you can't fix it. But sometimes, and I've certainly I think I brought this up before when I was talking about working on Orchid Throne and recasting the hero's chapters in first person instead of third person, it would have been faster if I had simply rewritten those chapters because it takes so much involved tweaking, and there is a point at which the text that is already there becomes more of a distraction than an aid. It's like it it gets in the way, it's too heavy, you keep trying to reshape and reshape, and by the time I don't know, I'm thinking about this like sculpting again. You know, if you have this big block of clay and you keep reshaping and reshaping and reshaping, and by the time you've whittled it down to this point where it has the shape that you want, you realize that you could have just started with a fresh block of clay, and it would have been faster and and less work. So I do try to learn this, and I'm not sure that I have ever made the decision in time. It's I've always made it in retrospect where I thought, heh, I should have just started fresh and rewritten it. So I think I'm gonna try that this time. I'm going to read Jim's chapter. You're hearing me work out my pro work out my plan. On the fly. Is it exciting? Is it as exciting as a battle scene as I try to figure out what the hell I'm gonna do? Probably not. Uh but yeah, I'm gonna read his chapter, and then I'm gonna close it and I'm gonna start a new document, and I'm just gonna write it. Um I think that's the thing to do. I'm I'm contemplating whether I should even reread it, but I think I need to because um he he has a lot of it has a great story in there and a lot of great detail. I just need to um so I need to refresh myself on it because I haven't looked at it in a while. And my head is full of Ursula and Harlan and this battle. So I need to cleanse. Cleanse. Maybe I'll just sit out here and finish reading Barbaris. Barbaro by Minerva Spencer. Um, you guys know Minerva is my friend, but uh it's always so nice when someone who is your friend also writes books that you love. And oh wow, is her book good? Um You know I loved Dangerous. And she was just sure that I wouldn't love Barbara. She thought I wouldn't like the hero, but I made her give me a review copy anyway. It comes out on Tuesday. So I'm just now getting to it. Oops. But um I don't know. She just she writes historical romance in a way that I find absolutely delightful. Um she does these clever jokes that have to do with the time period, using it to um sort of enhance the world in relationship uh rather than waiting it down. Um sometimes I get tired of historical romances because they feel very samey same. And and I and I really don't mean to um disparage anyone out there who is writing historical romance, because frankly, I just don't read much of it anymore. You know, it was my gateway drug. I in the beginning, I've all I read was historical romance, and now I just rarely read it because it's just it doesn't sound appealing to me. When I read the back cover copy, it sounds the same to me. So I only read Dangerous because um Minerva was a friend and I was being nice and I was you know all set to say nice things about it and move on with my life. But then I loved it, and and I love Barbarous too. I I put a highlight on Goodreads um where there's this great scene where they're at the big dinner party, you know, before the ball, and there's all the crystal and the china and the cutlery on the table, and he the hero puts his hand on the heroine's thigh and he's teasing her, and she tells him if he doesn't move his hand, she'll stab him with a fork, and he looks at the elaborate place setting and he says, Now, which is the appropriate fork to use for this? And it was, I don't know. I thought it was a a great regency joke. Uh so anyway, I encourage you all to uh if you love reading romance full full stop. This is just a terrific romance. And there are pirates. And it's all those things that I loved about pirates back in the day, and the heroine is is smart and she reads German philosophy, and I think that's cool. So, alright, there is my cup of London fog done. I am going to go get to work. Um I hope you all have a lovely Thursday. One more day of the typical five-day work week for those of you who do that sort of thing. And then we have Friday tomorrow, and then to the weekend. Uh I have a Halloween party Friday night. I'll t maybe talk about that and my costume tomorrow. And hopefully I'll have cool pictures to post. So you all take care. Thanks for sharing my first cup with me, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye.