The Sable Fringe

  • k-avatarfetlocks of many oxen
  • something murky and shocking
  • how to proceed with his seductions
  • an act of extreme blasphemy
  • Then he shut his cupboards

The sable fringe adorning the monsignor’s cassock, once the fetlocks of many oxen, swept dry leaves from the path as he hurried to the cloister. His premonition bespoke something murky and shocking, an act of extreme blasphemy. The monsignor moved as fast as he could with the tiny strides permitted by his attire’s slender silhouette. When at last he reached the colonnaded avenue outside the cloister, the monsignor paused. His premonition revolved languidly in his mind, showing him the face of the malefactor. His own face. That visage acquired a delighted grin when the monsignor recalled that Sarah lived in the cloister, and Sarah had a reputation. Better yet, her twin sister was visiting. Walking now, as much to catch his breath as preserve his dignity, the monsignor pondered how to proceed with his seductions.

Ten minutes later, ox-bristle fringe dragged dejectedly over the gravel as the monsignor slogged back to his rooms. His premonition had been wildly inaccurate, Sarah and her sister scandalized by his visit. The monsignor took out a mug to make some tea. Then he shut his cupboards and stood staring out the window, waiting for the kettle to boil.

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I Just Returned From Fashion Week

  • by jenthe yellow stain on his trousers
  • Voilá un homme!
  • the old Mediterranean mafia
  • According to my calculations
  • Stirner’s perpetually mocking attitude

I just returned from fashion week, and I’m thrilled to announce the old “Mediterranean mafia” style is passé! According to my calculations (and Beatrix Stirner’s perpetually mocking attitude), the trendiest look for winter is, quelle surprise, nudity! Before your scandalized boyfriend has to explain the yellow stain on his trousers, allow me to clarify. The most stylish women in New York, Paris, and Milan will all be wearing skin-tight jumpsuits with exaggerated male genitalia protruding from the front. It’s a look that veritably screams “Voilá un homme!” in the chicest possible way.

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Substance Over Style

r-avatarOur current round of brainstorming is pointing out yet again why having a coauthor is such a marvelous thing. We’ve been kickin’ it old school, writing out notes longhand in a steno pad. It’s a great way to wake up different parts of the brain, but it’s also a great way to get a hand cramp. On those days when your fingers need a break, your collaborator can pry the quill from your gnarled fist and take over the scrivening duties. As long as you both have moderately legible handwriting, you’re saved!

A good writing partner has many uses besides that overly literal interpretation of the term. We know in broad strokes how the plot of our new novel will go, so right now we’re concentrating on fleshing out the major characters, filling in their backstories. Most of what we’ve been talking about won’t appear on the page, but it will inform the characters’ actions. We need to know who these people are and how they got that way. It’s the only way to make them feel real and fully formed. Details from their pasts often prompt plot points when we get to the outline stage.

So we’ve been flitting from character to character, having a grand old time gossiping about their secrets and what-have-you, until last night. That’s when we realized we’d been avoiding talking about the villain. He’s not a total stranger, mind you. We know several very important things about him, like his name, and what he’ll be doing in the novel. We know that he’s a very bad person, we just didn’t know how he got that way.

After chatting and throwing out wild ideas we whittled our list down to two possibilities. Option 1 has a really striking visual, and can probably be made to play nicely with the facts we already “know” about this guy and his MO. Option 2 is a bit more mundane, but opens up some really nice avenues for a character arc and some theme elements.

Obviously we chose Option 2, but the striking visual of Option 1 was very enticing. It’s over the top and gross and operatic. It represents a chance to really show off. It’s got style. Repulsive, dangerous style. Jen was having a hard time letting go, but luckily she has a writing partner. Kent was able to stuff his fingers in his ears and ignore the siren song. He argued for Option 2, for boring old plot momentum and character cohesion. And he’s right. The story overall will be much better if we opt for substance over style.

Never fear, Option 2 isn’t actually boring. It’s plenty disturbing and violent and sick. It’s just tame in comparison to the much bloodier Option 1. And we’ve filed Option 1 away for future use.

So maybe fear a little bit.

Joseph Made a Habit

  • k-avatarsneering at cultures
  • commodity as fetish
  • aped the follies and vices
  • “Shell? Milk? Moon? Jasmine? Crystal? Snowflake?
  • coupled with cruelty

Joseph made a habit of sneering at cultures lacking decadence, peoples who simply aped the follies and vices of wild animals pursuing crude gratification. So when traveling to Svenborgia, he naturally booked his ticket on the official national airline. And naturally, he flew first class.

“Shell? Milk? Moon? Jasmine? Crystal? Snowflake?” importuned the stewardess. Her almond eyes and alabaster complexion marked her as deep-lineage Svenborgian. Ah, theirs was a truly magnificent decadence: commodity as fetish.

“Alabaster,” replied Joseph with a wink. The stewardess laid aside her tray and led him to the lavatory, where they kissed with sang-froid and coupled with cruelty.

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In the UFO’s Holding Cell

  • by jenlike a malicious genealogist
  • the fireflies’ sexual organs
  • with a jackknife
  • manners, gestures and physiologies
  • This was his sole fear

In the UFO’s holding cell, Kevin felt like a firefly in a jar, like the ones he spent his childhood collecting in the backyard. The alien scientist assured Kevin that he and his race came to Earth merely to study humankind’s manners, gestures, and physiologies. They had no desire to mate with humans, to tamper with their family tree like a malicious genealogist. The alien peered down with the same detachment Kevin had employed as a child while removing the fireflies’ sexual organs with a jackknife. This was his sole fear, that they would treat him the way he had treated those long ago insects.

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2015 – The Year We Take Over

r-avatarAs promised, here is our grand scheme for the year ahead.

This past week we sent out our first round of query letters for the infamous Science Novel. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and it will be our only round. If not, we’ll continue querying.

Meanwhile, we’ve begun brainstorming and outlining for Novel #6, aka Son of Music Novel. This very early stage in a novel’s lifecycle is one of our favorites. Everything is shiny and new, and the world is awash with possibilities. We’ve been able to escape the writing cave for the comfier confines of Writing Cave 2, which is located downstairs and has a fireplace and surround sound.

Once we get this new beast tamed (ie, have a complete outline) we’ll write it. Since it is a sequel to the Music Novel, we’ll look for ways to tie the two strongly together. This might require small changes to the Music Novel, so we’ll take care of those as they come up.

Sometimes we like to let a project rest for a while between steps, so that we can come back to it with fresh eyes. If that’s the case with the new novel, we’ll switch into editing mode on the Music Novel. Our critique group gave us good feedback and there are some changes we’d like to make. If the new novel does not require this refractory period, then Music Novel edits will happen after the first draft of its sequel is done.

And then, if there’s any time left in the year after writing an entire novel and editing another, we’ll turn our attention to plotting out the sequel to the Science Novel, which will by then have been acquired by a major publisher. Fingers crossed.

It Was a One-Way Window

  • k-avatar“Squint your eyes
  • but he’s a whizdang now!
  • noise made down here
  • It was a one-way window
  • felt a minor isolated quiver
  • A tourist in Glasgow!
  • They call me Smith
  • should keep it sharpened

It was a one-way window with a no-way view, because of all the green smoke in the interrogation room. Harold wondered if this was normal Scottish police procedure.

“Squint your eyes and you can just see the point of his hat!” proclaimed Harold’s new partner, Seamus MacCallahan. “Lafferty used to be a siphontopper, but he’s a whizdang now! Aye!”

Harold didn’t bother squinting, because he still remembered Lafferty’s tall, blue wizard’s hat, and the matching robes. He thought they should be more concerned with whether the suspect was still in the room, and no amount of squinting was going to help with that.

“They call me Smith,” said a booming, gravelly voice from somewhere in the roiling smoke. Harold felt a minor isolated quiver in his left arm. Something about the Caledonian weather, no doubt. Just this morning he’d been a tourist. A tourist in Glasgow! But now he was a detective inspector in Edinburgh, and he was determined to do his best.

Lafferty didn’t ask any questions. The unseen Smith spoke, his voice like cumulonimbus fender-benders, like no noise made down here on terra firma. “One thing my teacher always told me about my pencil,” Smith droned, “I should keep it sharpened.”

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The Host of My Favorite Music Podcast

  • by jenentirely the wrong kind of inflection
  • turned into wobbly rubber
  • delicately touched the sleeve
  • because of technical embargoes
  • liquor and the jellies
  • with ice in his voice
  • only to force cursing
  • Caesar, the Decembrists, Prince Charlie, Xerxes

The host of my favorite music podcast made the announcement with ice in his voice, and entirely the wrong kind of inflection. Big Jim Caesar, the Decembrists, Prince Charlie, Xerxes and Lolita, and KGI would all be playing Bonnaroo this year, but because of technical embargoes, Liquor and the Jellies (my favorite band), would not. The news seemed designed only to force cursing from me, and I complied, letting loose a stream of profanity that did not stop until my neighbor pounded on the wall. My stomach turned to wobbly rubber when I remembered how much I’d paid for my ticket on Craigslist. I delicately touched the sleeve of my kimono to my cheek to blot my tears of disappointment and fury while inwardly I vowed vengeance against the president’s new War on Synthesizers.

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2014 Is In the Rear View Mirror

r-avatarOur look back in wonder at 2014 probably should have been posted last week, but this way it will stand out from all the other “year in review” posts around the internet. It’s not procrastination, it’s a feature!

We started off 2014 with a newly reorganized blog. I’m pleased to say we did such an excellent job with it that it was unnecessary to do it again this year! In other organizational news, we also launched our Stichomancy Writing Prompt Generator.

In February we were busily editing the Music Novel, and were rather obsessed with its high word count. That early in the process we were still adding new material, filling the holes our beta readers demanded we fill, so the count kept rising.

In March we introduced the newest member of Team Skelley, the very distracting Lady Marzipan. As you can see, she’s a bit bigger now, but is still quite a distraction.

ladymarzipan

Lady Marzipan makes sure we take frequent forays from the writing cave to walk around the neighborhood and sniff all the mailboxes. We use the time in between smells to discuss whatever’s going on in our fiction, which in March was a lot of editing of the Music Novel.

April brought posts about the other work we had in play, the Science Novel. Our critique group was working their way through it which meant that we had to switch gears once a week from being deep in the guts of the Music Novel to remembering what the hell we’d even written in the Science Novel. To escape the stress we ran away to Europe for a quick, frigid vacation.

In May we couldn’t stop talking about how much fun we had in Prague, and the various ways we were distracted.

June brought the startling realization that the Music Novel has swelled to a whopping 187,000 words. Yikes! Time to start winnowing it back down again.

So that’s just what we spent July doing.

On August 1 we were thrilled to announce that we were done with edits on the Music Novel! As of today, our critique group is just about done with it, which means that we’ll have another round of edits coming up soon.

September found us deep in contemplation about where our writing would go in the future. We lamented not being in “writing mode” for quite a while.

We spent October editing the last book in our Trilogy, which prompted much thought about writing advice, both good and bad.

November is National Novel Writing Month, of which we still do not approve.

Come December we were finishing up edits on the Trilogy, doing a final reading of the Science Novel, and warming up for (gasp!) marketing.

So, it was a year where not a whole lot of composition happened. We kept our writing muscles limber with writing prompts, but the majority of our time was spent editing. That’s the part of writing a lot of people don’t take into account. It’s not enough to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Once the words exist, you have to poke them with sticks, gouge them with forks, and occasionally set them on fire.

Next week we’ll talk about our plans for 2015. Happy New Year (a week late) everyone!

The Floodgates Were Opened

  • k-avatarIt never ended.
  • were opened three times a day
  • indistinguishable from the rustling of a tree
  • Limping up to the altar
  • graveyards for machines

The floodgates were opened three times a day, to manage the pressure. Beatitude manifested spontaneously in the cold stone building. It never ended. And if it wasn’t bled off on a regular schedule, the strain would become too much for the ornate stained-glass windows to handle.

No one could go inside, of course.  Too intense. Just being within a two-block radius at any of the thrice-daily ventings of surplus divine grace tended to overload most people’s sensibilities. No one lived that close to the cathedral anymore. Respectable businesses couldn’t operate in the hot zone, so the textile district had shifted north, abandoning the old work floors to be graveyards for machines.

I camped under a disused loom in one of the old mills, just yards from one of the huge double doorways that served as relief valves. After two days I felt accustomed to the bizarre climate of the zone, like a mountaineer adjusting to thinner air. But already my skin was raw and my mind was growing brittle. I had to make my move.

I knew the floodgate schedule well, so I was ready when the doors gave forth their gust of rose-scented golden light. I was off to one side, and dashed inside the building after the radiance had diminished, seconds before the doors boomed shut again.

The bird roosted on the pulpit. I couldn’t look directly at it, the glow from its plumage was too dazzling. The pressure was building fast, but I knew that right now it was as low as it ever got. Limping up to the altar, I shut my eyes and groped toward the shining creature. I only needed one feather.

The bird spread its huge wings with a sound indistinguishable from the rustling of a tree. I kept my eyes closed tight and leaned forward until I feared I would lose my balance. I strained to reach the shimmering avian beast.

I only needed one feather.

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