Category Archives: Short Fiction

The Ghost Story, WABWM, and TALYSMANA
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10

I finished my ghost story. Title?

>>>–4EVR—>

The title means a lot.

I got it to Trisha Telep in time, heard back that I’d made the deadline—and we are NOT going to talk about the morning-to-next-morning hours I worked for several days getting that revision done. What was supposed to have been a 6500-word story that might creep up to 7000 words became a 12,000 word PROJECT.

But I love the story. And when The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance comes out, it’ll be in there.

Meanwhile, with that done, I’m holding firm to my commitment to the Write A Book With Me project.

To that end…

TALYSMANA is live again. I finished chapter 26, posted chapter 26, and am prepped to do 10 minutes or 300 words a day on this from now until I wrap the first draft of the project.

What this means for Write A Book With Me folks is that we’re jumping BACK to the TalysMana blog, because that’s my WABWM project. You’ll note that Write A Book With Me now has its own tab at the top of the weblog, too.

Post your wordcounts and progress to the most recent post tagged Write A Book With Me. I can’t promise to post every day. I’ll do my best.

FInished My Ghost Story
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1399 words, and my ghost story, The Other Chance,; is done.

The story in first draft runs 7641 words.

I always add some words in second draft, because my first drafts run lean.

I like my ending, I like the twist I got, and I definitely did not see the last bit going the way it did.

I’m going to collect my short paranormals into a Kindle edition, I think, after this story comes out. Probably throw in a couple of original short shorts, and maybe some other things.

So. Anyway. That was my words.

How did yours go?

1711 words, and another story revamp
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7

Blasted through the fourth scene today, and in it managed to do everything I’d planned for that scene, plus enough of what I planned for the next one that I think the story will wrap up with scene five.

I currently have 6242 words total. Damn close to my minimum word count.

I know I skimmed a few things, and this second half of the story will require more revision than the first half, I think. But I’ll have it done in time, and off to the editor.

And I like the story. Looking forward to writing the ending. Maybe tomorrow.

I’m enjoying reading how your words are coming. How did your writing go today?

A Story In Pictures
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6

Today is my day off. Back-to-back-to-back 70+ hour weeks getting the HTTS Walkthrough ready, working with Margaret on the NovelWritingSchool.com setup…

I was pretty ragged.

But I woke up late today, and knew where the next part of my ghost story had to go.

And I got 1832 words, and a complete scene plus change, and revamped the last bit of my outline, tossing one plot card and rewriting the other two.

The story is about an artist-turned-photographer in love with a singer-songwriter who got her first big break, then disappeared three years ago, while on tour.

The way the concept for the story came to me was in a series of sketches and photographs that appeared in my mind’s eye. They didn’t seem to have anything to do with each other.

  • A young woman on a picnic blanket.
  • A young woman on a record cover, back to the viewer and guitar in hand.
  • A girl crying in the rain.
  • A girl on a bus.

 

I tossed the crying-in-the-rain image today, when I figured out that a strip of those photo-booth pictures you get in malls would work better.

And the story is fascinating me in the manner that it comes together. My main character, the hero, picks up a picture on the back of which the heroine has scrawled a note, steps back in time to when the picture happened, and then steps forward in time to the present moment, and the clue his lost love has left him. (No actual time travel is involved—I just do his memories as if they were happening at that moment.)

I haven’t tried this method of presenting a story before, and while I love the way it’s coming together, I may be in for a hefty revision when I go back and read through it once I finish it.

I’m three scenes from done, though—wordcount-wise, more than halfway home. I have 4531 total, the agreement calls for 6500 or more, and I suspect I’m going to run pretty close to 8000.

That’s me.

What about you?

By the way, if you’re playing Write A Book With Me, you’ll see that the game has its own dropdown link in the top menu now. I figure this will make it easier for everyone to find the most recent post.

696 words, and CRAZY week
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14

I’ve written thousands of words this week, and designed web pages, and installed software, and built forms and site foundations.

But tonight, I made time to work on my ghost story again, and got 696 words.

The story flowed, I got a nice twist to end the scene, and a heart carved into a tree turned out to be much more meaninful than I’d imagined when I tossed it into the first scene.

So. How about you? Good words? Cool ideas. Anything fun going on with your writing?

1001 Words, and a Ghost
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24

Write A Book With Me is back. I’ll move back over to Talysmana and start doing words on that at night again, but Tricia Telep asked me for a ghost story to go into her next collection (I’ve previously written for The Mammoth Book Of Paranormal Romance and The Mammoth Book of Time-Travel Romance for her).

I like working with her, and I enjoy the odd work of doing short stories, so in spite of my schedule, I told her I’d come up with a story for The Mammoth Book Of Ghost Romance (I may have the title wrong here–don’t hold me to it).

Anyway. I have to have it to her by the end of the month. I did 999 words last week, and 1001 tonight. I have 5000 words to go. So I’ll be writing faster than usual to get this done and still have time to edit it.

Tomorrow, I dig into the HTTS Walkthrough. Tonight, though, was for the sort of side project that just makes you grin.

Anybody still here with me? If so, how are your words coming along. I’ve missed WABWM.

WABWM — Jace and the Job
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99

More words on HELP WANTED tonight. Again, I’ve not been able to work on this regularly. Because of the headaches, I’m at a creative low ebb…but tonight I got 554 words in a bit over 30 minutes, and this through the headache.

I figured out how Jace’s job works, which is a big deal, because she ends up with just about the most dangerous job in the universe.

Use this thread for WABWM for the next few days. I’ll do my best to write more this week, but I’ve been trying my best to get the site fixed up before I take the Christmas/ New Year holidays off to spend with family, and I don’t know that I’ll have the opportunity to work on it again before I come back next year.

January 10th is my “end of vacation” return date. I’ll be doing customer service during my vacation because I don’t want to shut down all the courses—but that’s it.

Anyway. How did your words go?

Jace, Quin, and the Baseball Bat
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13

My main character, Jace, has developed a Type A personality. Quin, ostensibly her butler, has the same Type A personality. She’s American, he’s British, and neither of them sees eye to eye on much of anything.

Each of them is determined to get the other to work the way they think work should be done. A baseball bat gets frequent mention in tonight’s scene.

The story is up to 9,677 words, 709 of which I wrote tonight. And at this point, I have diverged enough from my outline that I’m going to run over the 12,000-word-limit I set for myself.

I may end up cutting in revision. I may not. I really like what I got, though. I had fun writing it, and I made myself laugh a couple times.

So. After days and days of not writing any fiction, I’m back on the board.

How are your words coming?

The butler did it
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36

531 words tonight, a few more earlier in the week.

Jace has now met Quin, the butler.

Butlers in space. Who’d'a thunk?

Anyway. There was writing, I got words, and if I seem to me to be drifting a bit off track, I am acknowledging that this is first draft, and first draft always sucks to some degree.

I will joyfully embrace the revision when Help Wanted is done.

How are your words coming?

A new character arrives
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I knew Jace Winter would be meeting Kih Soh Hohito in this section. What I did not know was that a new character, Quin, would appear.

Yet his arrival makes perfect sense. I don’t know him yet. I have an idea of what he’ll have to do in this story and the ones to follow, but I don’t yet know who he needs to be.

Again, in first draft this feels way too expository. But it IS first draft, and I’ll do a brutal once-over before I submit it.

527 words tonight. How about you?