Anthony: Just finished a rough draft of JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE ... my fourth completed novel! Wallace: Anthony it is great that you have 4 what are they? We know Frost Moon, blood Rock, what was the 3rd? Barbara enjoyed putting them on audio. Anthony #1 is one you haven't heard of ... HOMO CENTAURIS is my first completed novel written in the early 90's. The next two were FROST MOON and BLOOD ROCK ... the third one in that series, LIQUID FIRE, is about 75% done. THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE is the first in a new series. P.S. The working titles of the next three Dakota Frosts (4,5,and 6) are SPECTRAL IRON, PHANTOM SILVER and SPIRITUAL GOLD. The working titles of the next next three (7,8, and 9) are something like SPIRAL NEEDLE, HELICAL LANCE, and CIRCULAR KNIFE. And the working titles of ... I'll stop there. I can keep going, but I won't ... don't want to spoil the surprise. I've already mentioned some of the later ones online. :-)Assuming I get that far ... no, I'm planning to get that far, and farther, God willing. -the Centaur Pictured: piles of notes between caffeine fuel and my computational engine.
Posts published in “Urban Fantasy”
The Dakota Frost, Skindancer series … and all of Dakota Frost’s friends!
With Patrick’s blunderblast slung over her shoulder, Jeremiah whizzed through the streets on her autocycle, discharging its cylinder flat out, its teakettle scream and clanking frame adding another layer of mist and noise to the steam and bustle of Boston. Her legs were tensed, her knees bent against the pedals, half to jump the cycle over curbs, and half to keep the juddering vibration from the cobblestones of Beacon Hill from rattling her tailbone clean off. She squealed to a stop before the Moffat’s, pulled the cylinder and tossed it to a street urchin. “Top me off?” she asked, hopping off onto the sidewalk with a whirl and pulling her bag out of its basket in one smooth motion. “Yes, ma’am,” the boy said, taking the cycle. His eyes lighted on her vest, her denims—and on the big brass buttons on her lapels, a steering wheel, sword and airsail overlaid with a stylized V. “Are you an Expeditionary?” Jeremiah smiled. “Yes,” she said, ruffing his cap so that tufts of blond hair showed. “Maybe one day you’ll become one too. Polish the brasslite a bit and there’s a second shilling in it for you. Quick now; I won’t be long.”I've got some cleaning to do and a whole 'nother draft before the beta readers can see it, but still ... on to LIQUID FIRE! -the Centaur
I was wondering if you could help me out a bit. I've always wanted to create my own comicbook from my own design and mind but I always, I mean ALWAYS have problems coming up with and sticking with a good plot. I can make the basis of the story, the characters, the world and different terms and creatures but I can never stick with a plot or make a good one that I know will drive the story. Could you give me any advice on these things or some pointers on how to make a really great story I could draw out? I'm so close to it blossoming I can taste it!Great question! I'm not sure I'm the best person in the world to answer it - my first pointer to anyone on plot would be Ayn Rand's The Art of Fiction - yes, I know, it's Ayn Rand, but if you're one of those idiots who can't see past your unjustified distaste for her political philosophy, well, then you deserve to miss out on her opinions in other areas which might prove of more value to you despite your disagreements - but I do think about plot quite a bit, so I'll give it a go. A lot of what I do is simply write cool scenes I enjoy ... and then think hard about who's the protagonist and what's their major conflict. Once you know, for example, the protagonist is a magic tattoo artist, that suggests she's going to be in conflict over some tattoo related thing - like someone skinning people who have tattoos. Once you know the conflict, then you can design the climax - well, your tattoo artist will eventually have to meet the evil skinning person, who will want to make her a victim. That basic strategy - write stuff that's fun, figure out who the protagonist really is, find what conflict they're embroiled in, design the final conflict, then work backwards from there - has worked very well for me. Why take this approach, rather than, say, starting with some theme and working back from there. Start with an abstract goal? Yuk! That might work for nonfiction but in fiction it's a recipe for heartless exercises in craft - and craft can't sell a story. The instant someone notices you're telling a story on skill alone, you're done. There are prominent authors I can't read anymore because I realized they had some point they were driving to and were using all of their craft to get me there ... even though there was no reason to go there in the first place. That might work in a movie with a lot of explosions, but it's not going to sustain a 300 page book. So. I need concrete events, realized situations with full-bodied characters where interesting things are happening. In short, I need to be entertained - in my writing most of all. That's why I start with "cool scenes" - I write to entertain myself first, so I have to write what I enjoy writing. But I want others to enjoy it too - someone once said the hallmark of a great writer is that they take what they find interesting and make it interesting to other people. To do that, to make my stories interesting to people not invested in my characters, I need to create a strong conflict that will engage. And to do so, I listen to the story. Whether the story features a tattoo artist accosted by a werewolf deep in the Lovecraftian underbelly of Atlanta - or that same tattoo artist and her adopted weretiger daughter out school shopping in the sun - those first key scenes of the story, those first inspirations, will tell you what belongs in the story. If the story begins with Dakota school shopping with Cinnamon, then some part of the story must hinge on Cinnamon and Dakota in a school - or that scene's got to go. If the story features a magic tattoo artist investigating magic graffiti, then some part of the story must hinge on our tattoo artist confronting the graffiti artist. And for the story to really be interesting, something important must be at stake - generally, life has to be on the line in the kind of melodramatic action adventures I write, but it can be more subtle if you're writing something more subtle. One famous way of looking at this idea is Chekov's Gun - "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." Ayn Rand's take on this is similar: you should decide on your theme (what your story is about), then your plot-theme (what type of events realize your theme), then your conflict (what is being fought over in the plot) then the plot itself (the actual sequence of events) which will then dictate the characters, scenes and settings in your story. I believe in the same causal structure, but prefer the opposite order. I let my subconscious play scenes out I find entertaining, and then let the characters and the situations tell me who they are, what conflicts they encounter, and what themes I should explore. You have to find your own way of doing things, of course; every writer is unique, and it's your unique story and vision that matter. Whatever you have to do - outline or no outline, start from the beginning or write backwards for the end - just do it. Just write, and eventually it will all sort itself out. -the Centaur
I can't even begin to tell you all that I've gone through recently: sleep deprivation, tonsillitis, tinnitus, internal injuries, a trip to the emergency room (unrelated), and near disasters at work. I've started another blog entry to explain what's been going on, but even that had to be put on hold by other disasters.
The quick point I want to pass on is that I work hard sometimes. I used to describe as working two jobs: by day, my work at the Search Engine That Starts With A G, and by night, the author of the Dakota Frost series. Both could take 40 hours a week or more, meaning normally almsot every nonworking minute ends up on writing.
Recently, that's become like four jobs: my old project at the Search Engine, a brand new project at the Search Engine, both with hard and conflicting deadlines, a scientific paper for my new project, also with a hard deadline, and my fiction writing, also with deadlines. Each one could be a full time job. Aaa.
Recently, this came to a head: I'd finished my scientific paper, had a breather on the writing, yet still knew I was going to have to work hard, nights and weekends, just on my two work projects. So I decided one night I needed to take a break, to chill out, to go to bed early and catch up on sleep. To recharge my batteries.
Too late.
That night, when I got home, planning to crash out early, one of my cats urinated all over our curtains, then tracked it through our house, necessitating a 3:45AM cleaning job (cats will urinate after each other unless it is completely cleaned up), just before a Monday at work. The next night I was kept up by a sore throat, was worn out Tuesday, and was diagnosed with tonsillitis on Wednesday. The throat pain caused sleep deprivation, the coughing fits caused hemorrhoids (yuk!), the nasal congestion caused tinnitus and hearing loss in one ear, and all of this indirectly caused my trip to the emergency room (more on that later). This went on for days, then for over a week. And all of this just before a huge presentation at work, which we figured out we needed to cancel much too late to cancel - so I had to keep working, even though I could barely keep working. I couldn't really code in my exhaustion, and when I did readings for my other project - and I did work on my other project, because its deadlines wouldn't stop either - the textbooks actually blurred when I sat down to read them.
It was almost two weeks later, a day after the presentation, when I finally crashed, for essentially 36 hours straight.
So my point, and I do have one, is that you should take care of yourself. Now. While you're still feeling good about yourself. Because if you wait to take care of yourself until you're all worn out ... it may be too late.
-the Centaur
I would like to purchase Blood Rock, but I have not been able to find it anywhere.... Can you direct me to a site which has it for sale? If it is in fact for sale? I am a little curious since your site says it is in Beta release, but the site has not been updated in several months, so I am unsure as to the status of the book.Well, sorry about that ... Blogger changed their terms of service and the Dakota Frost site is frozen until I can fix it. The answer? BLOOD ROCK is in editing right now - the publisher wanted some big cuts, but I'm in the last throes of National Novel Writing Month right now and had to put BLOOD ROCK down while working on my new series. I'm picking up BLOOD ROCK December 1st and hope to have it to the publisher before the first of the year, so if all goes well it will be out in March. I'm well into the sequel to the sequel, LIQUID FIRE, which I hope will be out the following October. -Anthony