BOOKS, PUBLISHING, WRITING, GENRE, AND VARIOUS ODD THOUGHTS
Since the latest “short story” in the prequel Observer Tales quickly developed into a novelette, I have decided to publish its four parts in short story-sized installments.
This back story has been brewing since I worked out the longer story arc for the Observer, and realized the central importance of Diana Ashcraft, her significance in the larger story, the Observer’s relationship with her, and the secret details of her family history. The Dun Cat of Mill Bridge helped develop the dynamic between their personalities, but left open the circumstance of their first meeting.
And, I wanted to firmly establish the series’ mash-up of detective story and “New World Fantasy” by performing a literary marriage of the Tolkien-inspired deep history of the Observer’s world with a reference to hard-boiled American pulp fiction. The eponymous Woman Who Wouldn’t Die — a tip of my writerly hat to the classic noir film and the Clayton Rawson novel that inspired it — is a thing from the darkest depths of Antiquity.
This brings us to my third motivation, elements of the larger story that I felt could not be fairly sprung upon the reader in a sequel to The Ligan Of The Disomus, the series’ first true novel. These hints to the deeper legendarium eventually prove key to the greater conflict that the events and revelations of Ligan kick off; they were ever-present under the surface off the narrative (even in Ligan) but I wanted to offer a clearer set of clues for the careful reader.
These elements include the most ancient of the “bad animals” that so terrify Deputy Tom Sul, the closest thing to vampires in the Observer’s world, and the religious background that explains how the Observer’s commanding officer (in the age of sailing ships) is Commander Lea Thomas rather than Leo. The “Man” becomes “Woman” in more than just the title.
“I need to get this rambling word-monger back to the task at hand,” the Observer would grunt. So, with one last minor comment (If you recognize a paraphrase or linguistic play-on-words in this installment, then kudos to yudos! Post it in the comments.) here is the first installment of The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die.
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I have several updates today, on the site itself, on archaeology, and on publishing blogs, all of which I want to wrap up at once, considering that it’s Saturday and we should all be going out, enjoying the weather (where possible) and taking advantage of the weekend. Read more »
I have just posted the 5800-word short story I have been working on for the past few weeks, the latest story in the Observer series: “The Dun Cat of Mill Bridge.”
As those of you familiar with the Observer and his world know, it’s an Age of Sail fantasy setting with a pulp mystery attitude and darkly spiritual undertones. I think of these stories as hard-boiled Whodunits for the narrator, but character-driven adventures for readers, who see much more of the world than the Observer allows himself to see.
I’ll keep “Dun Cat” up for a while, but I will eventually polish it up for submission either as a short story, or in a larger compilation of Observer short stories.
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Part II of The Crow and The Kinnebeck is now open to the public. First Readers’ recommendations have been implemented, but reader suggestions are still welcome!
It has been a while since I actually wrote a post for the blog; this entry is the “catching up” part. After I began fleshing out Chapter 8 of Ligan, I put the TOC page up as a splash and concentrated on polishing up the novel.
But the draft of Ligan has been complete since July* and I’ve been researching literary agents, reading advice on the querying process, working up a synopsis (pain-ful), and writing and outlining the sequel(s).
Also, I took down the TOC splash in order to go back to regular blog posts; that’s the “stepping back” part.
The complete draft has been translated to Word format for submission, and what you see here is the initial draft before several significant additions, edits, cuts, and rearrangements.
Actually, you can only see that here if you have the passwords, which most of you don’t. The password to Chapters 2 and 3 (yeah, I know these were public earlier, but this is business time now) I might be persuaded to reveal to interested readers/critics who show insight into the writing.
I will keep you posted on the progress of the querying process.
IN OTHER NEWS
The poetry pages have been consolidated as a single page, simply to clean up the blog. After writing “Storming” earlier this year, I felt a bridge had been crossed and likely will not be writing poetry in the future.
Also, due to problems with my web hosting service and their ever-shifting file manager (which inexplicably changes public access permissions and invalidates .htaccess files) the music previously available here is now, enragingly, unavailable. Multiple conversations with tech support have resulted only in having my intelligence repeatedly insulted while tech support’s lack of intelligence and listening skills were repeatedly demonstrated.
I won’t mention the soon-to-be-former web hosting service here, but I will say:
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* Inasmuch as a writer—particularly a writer who has also been an editor—will accept that a piece of writing is ever “complete.”
Stories that are in the submission process will be password protected. Apologies.
If you are eager to read something based on the title, genre, and graphic please email johnnelsonleith at gmail and I may share the password.
