» WIP Wednesdays

Happy New Year Y’all

Gordon — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 20:26:45 +0000

I guess by now everyone is past the holidays and back into the swing of of things? I certainly am. I’ve set up a fresh Scrivener project, and am officially making 2017 the year of the Black Box. If you’ve read Santuario, you might remember the mention of a mysterious computer? A black box that was collected as evidence and never mentioned again? Well it will be now. I’ll be following Matti and Tom around, and diving into the history of the world Santuario is set in and it’s secrets.

Marginally connected to that, I’m aux anges with the set-up of a KVM switch between my two machines, so that I can now write in Scrivener on the mac and still do everything else on the linux box WITH ONLY ONE MOUSE AND KEYBOARD. This makes my life so much easier.

Anyway, that’s my January update. I’ll now go back to shoveling snow.

Oh, wait, before I forget: I didn’t do a best of my reads of 2016 (sorry, I was swamped), but you guys will have to read Kirby Crow’s Malachite. Trust me on this. It is easily the best thing I read in 2016.

I’ve been quiet on the social media front

Gordon — Wed, 04 May 2016 17:58:20 +0000

The reason is two-fold. One – there’s only so much dickery and drama I can deal with before I have to hole up and regrow a bit of skin armour. Enough said.

Two – on the plus side, I’ve been quite busy with edits, blurb and cover art for the next Bluewater Bay novel. And let me tell you, that cover turned out sooo perfect. I can’t wait to show you. (For those of you who’ve read When to Hold Them, this is Jack’s book, the new grocery store owner.)

Also, while I’m waiting to get the second round of edits back, I’ve been plotting, and actually started to write yet another Bluewater Bay. This one hasn’t been contracted yet, but the Greencard plotbunny is all Sarah Lyon’s fault.

On the whole I think pulling back a bit has done those two books good. It’s certainly given me a breather. So, back into the fray, right?

New Year, new book

Gordon — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 01:15:59 +0000

The Other Side of Winter (Santuario 2) is pretty much wrapped at my end. We finished the copy edits yesterday, and I ordered my box of print copies. I don’t expect proofs to be too much of a headache (famous last words, I know). What I should do for that one is break my head over posts for the blog tour.>>If there’s any particular topic you’d like me to cover, or any questions you’d like me to answer, shoot me a comment, or hit the red ‘Get in touch’ button on the right edge.<<

As for the Bluewater Bay novel, I wrote synopsis and blurb last weekend, and finished the cover art request, so that one’s out of my hands until the dev edits come back.

That leaves me free to work on Black Box. I started writing that one around Christmas, but fizzled out after only a few hundred words. The plot outline I had was just not working. The beginning bored me to tears. And if it bores me, it’s going to bore you, which is not acceptable. I’d been more or less idly kicking that one around in my head for the past few weeks, the muse feeding me stingy little bits and one-liners that ever so slightly shifted the characterization of both protags. Today I sat down to redo the outline. I threw index cards around like confetti, rearranged them in elaborate mosaics, scribbled here, scratched out there–in short, I made an inspiring creative mess of things, and I’m much happier with what I have now. I should be able to do at least the first few chapters, before I run into a couple of looser points that need to be tied down still. We’ll see.

Finishing Chapter 4

Gordon — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:50:43 +0000

I think I finally got a grip on that last scene in chapter 4 yesterday and how to give an idea of internal turmoil without a lot of navel gazing. Hoping to finish that this week, so I can move on to a very seasonal chapter 5.

The muse is being her assholey self and throwing plot bunnies at me left and right. Some of them I’m filing (hutching?) away for later use, some of them are so out of the blue that I can only give her a wtf look. Like, a Christmas story? I don’t really do Christmas stories. I got murders to plot and characters to torture. Which part of that gave you the idea I’ll write a Christmas story? Now, be a good little muse and focus on friggin’ chapter 5. (I’ll so pay for that line. )

I’m a structuralist, dammit!

Gordon — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:13:57 +0000

What the muse doesn’t get is that I don’t work well in utter chaos. She keeps throwing these enticing bits and pieces from all over the story at me in no particular order, and I get mired. I know roughly what insights and changes need to happen in my charas, but I need to work them out sequentially. These things have reasons and consequences, ya know?

“Lighten up!” she tells me. “Don’t be so anal about order.” I can feel her derision. “You’re supposed to be the creative type.” I swear, one day I WILL strangle her. I’m writing chapter 3, for krissake; I might be available for a bit of sexy stuff in 4, but stop dangling fucking chapter 16 scenes in front of me; I ain’t there yet.