I'll Show You Mine if You... BLOGFEST!

BLOGFEST! I almost forgot, but better late than never. :)

January 3rd: post 500 words of your Nano novel.

Join the blogfest here.

Setting: Central Park

The sun went down in a splash of color that freckled the horizon. Normally, it would have been romantic, but I wasn’t feeling it tonight, even with Travis’ hand clasped around my own. It felt strangely delicious, being close to them this way—the dust of the Earth once made the brightest stars. People didn’t see themselves that way, but that was just because they couldn’t. They didn’t see what I saw when I closed my eyes. They didn’t see what my third eye revealed: the truth of their origins.

“What are you thinking about?” Travis asked me, brushing the blunt cut bangs from my face, a futile gesture, but a romantic one.

“I’m thinking about you,” I lied. But it wasn’t a lie, really. I was thinking about him. His kind.

His big, country boy hand squeezed mine, and a wholesome, toothy grin made his aura swell a brilliant royal blue. “It’s incredible,” he said. “How do your eyes change so quickly? It’s almost like you’re from another planet.”

I didn’t laugh. I didn’t even chuckle. I cried. I know—wuss, right? I’m a total wuss. But if you’d said goodbye as many times as I had in the past three hundred years, you’d know the salty taste of tears by heart. I’d have loved to taste that salt just once, but tears weren’t part of my makeup. The Earth and I were only passing friends. And Travis…

“Oh, Travis.” I looked at our hands with so much longing, my heart chakra threatened to explode.

“What’s wrong? You haven’t been yourself since Carnegie Hall. Are you really so put off by fame and fortune?”

I smiled at his nervous chuckle, grateful for once that I couldn’t produce tears. “You know I have no use for those things.”

“Well…” he squeezed my hand again and wrapped a burly arm around me. Stronger and bigger than most of my chosen ones, he was the softest of them all on the inside. That’s what made this so hard. “Every girl likes to have nice things, right?”

“Not this girl,” I told him, letting my face go slack. “This girl wants peace and quiet and retirement.” And there it was—the first whole truth I had ever told him.

“Why push us so hard, then? Why push me?” For the first time since the purple pink hues of the horizon faded to white, Travis frowned. “You don’t want fame, but you want me to be famous. What do you really want, Azalea?”

Right then, I wished I could zap out—reveal my nature in my escape—a clean break. At least for me. “I want to say goodbye,” I whispered, finally looking him full in the face. “And I want you to understand that it’s not because of anything you did.”

The look of shock—the tense open jaw, the round, lovely eyes—yanked at my soul. I’m sure my eyes turned navy blue, like his aura.

He couldn’t speak. He never could when it came to goodbyes.

Editing adventures and a question of GORE-not that one

Tonight, I spent three hours reading and line-editing the first five pages of a friend's scifi novel. This guy's got skills, so it was a pleasure...except for the part that gore-d me out. At least this morbidity drove the storyline and had a point.

After all the Bones, CSI's, and even medical dramas like House, I'm getting wary of the "gritty realism" that gives me nightmares and/or alternately keeps me up for many sleepless hours. Is it necessary? Huh? Dan Brown, I'm talking to you.

When is gore necessary to fiction? When is it gratuitous? Can writers tell the difference? Can readers?

I'm interested in your point of view. Do you think GORE has its place in literature? Or do you believe--as I lean--that sex and violence are the tools of poor salesmen? Ha! Incited yet? Answer in the comments section.

Six Sentences...endless fun

I just discovered the Six Sentences (6S) social network on ning.com. Tell your story in six sentences. I've done three 6S stories, and it's unexpectedly addicting.

My Page

http://sixsentences.ning.com/profile/KatrinaLantz

The Blog

http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/

Members are friendly and encouraging of each other. Superb online community!

Dumb Museums:

In retrospect, maybe I should have left that giant ruby where I found it. It didn't have a name on it or anything, but I should have known it belonged to somebody. After all, rubies that big don't polish themselves and settle into velvet cushioned pedestals.

On the other hand, putting something so valuable out in public as if it were a magazine rack....I mean, anybody could have made my mistake. The police didn't really need to be so rough.

Survival? Overrated.

She was the last person I would have picked to accompany me on my proverbial desert island.

All through middle school, she made my life miserable.

I was relieved when our tiny school flowed into the giant local high school, and I could become anonymous at last.

But she insisted on keeping in touch, moving to the same towns, going to the same university.

Now we were trapped in a basement bomb shelter, together with four toddling boys, my food storage, her kids' electronic toys--and not a coconut in sight.

When the basement hatch was axed open on day 57, I didn't care if our discoverers spoke Russian, Chinese, or American...as long as they didn't have batteries for her sons' Tickle Me Elmo.

Astral Break

One moment, he stood above his body, anchored by nothing but a silver strand of light. The next, he vaulted through space, completely detached. What went wrong? He remembered what the guru had said: "Focus on that connection until the astral cord becomes thin and pliable." Great, I'll never get to date the guru's niece now.

Well, now I'm off to work on Drats! Foiled Again! I could write sixes all day, but my novels aren't going to write themselves. I hope you enjoy the 6S network as much as I have.

Update: end of March 2010

Still revising Empty Vial, and learning more about the publishing industry and all its little cogs. I now believe that my third book (Empty Vial) is YA fantasy science fiction. Apparently, that's the new word for "soft" science fiction. But if I could specify it to death, I would call it YA neuroscience fiction. It's really the only label that fits 100%. I also now realize why, when somebody convinced me my work must be literary (because it had to do with the mind), agents turned and ran when I labeled my MS as literary science fiction. Apparently, very few agents work with "literary" anything. Good to know. Some of my favorite industry blogs are Nathan Bradford's agent blog, and one he recently linked to: http://www.pimpmynovel.blogspot.com - VERY helpful!

My fourth work (work-in-progress, really) is middle grade fantasy of the superhero/super villain variety. I'd be more specific, but I really like my premise and--although it isn't perfectly original (it was actually inspired by a favorite movie)--I don't wish for the market to become saturated before I finish it. So I'll write about it when it's agented. Count on it.

As for the Empty Vial project, it still needs a lot of work. It's been out for submission before, rejected around 8 times, and I hope it will be out for submission again soon. But I am NOT going to jump the gun this time. I need to get it industry-ready. I have also decided that nanowrimo projects aren't so easy to revise into working novels. I have limited experience, to be sure, but it's been surprisingly difficult with Empty Vial to take my stream of consciousness, first person ramblings and turn them into a tightly plotted story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It's still not there yet. I have a very supportive group of family and friends reading for me. They are wonderful and usually tell me when something is way off in my work. Of course, it would be nice to have an industry professional reading my stuff, offering advice, etc., but I'm not rich. I don't see us being able to afford a real editor until after my first book is on the shelves for a while, ironically.

I'm off to write chapter 4 of mysterious new project, and revise chapters 8, 9, 10, etc. of the last one. Wish me luck. As Margaret Atwood said, "...there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine."