Flying Fingers

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The clock on the mantle announced the hour of one a.m. with a delicate bong.

Seated on one of the more comfortable silk-covered Regency couches, Phil gazed down the hallway. How many times had he and his friend, Herb Rubin, encountered the undead's evil? Too many to recall. Nearly ten years worth, he guessed off the top of his head. During that time they had kept close vigil on odd occurrences of cluster disappearances, monitored anemic victims in hospitals, learned of strange stories of corpses vanishing from morgues and mortuaries, and of the freakish phenomenons of instantaneous combustion mostly by newspaper accounts and through their covert investigations, which usually turned up vampiric attacks on a whole community. Some of these attacks had been on acquaintances, and they could operate with the victim's blessings. Others, and there had been many, were on people who didn't even know them, and yet they had been successful in snuffing out the lair--either quietly, or in a big way--and had to flee the area in order to keep themselves out of jail and continue to do their important work to fight this evil. They hoped to, someday (along with others doing the same work all over the world), eradicate this terrible plague from the world, once and for all. 
~from Vampire Legacy 2005, by Lorelei Bell

Hello, my pretties. The above is a sample paragraph from the older mss., which I'm working from. I've renamed it Dhampire Legacy. As I go through I am editing out things/characters/scenes, and deciding where, if at all, any portion of a chapter (or all), I can use in the new version, and where it will go. The "edited out" pile is pretty large. The "entered" pile is large, but then, I had two or three drafts to look through and choose what I wanted to use.

I've run across a number of files where I've written notes for it. This thing took on gigantic proportions at one time. I've mentioned to you that at one point it was over 800 pages, and I honed it down to 400 in a month's time. I can see now, as I go through and discard certain chapters, where this thing got out of hand. The need to "kill" my darlings has become like a slaughter, in this case.

Nevertheless, I have just reached over 60k words--yesterday it came to 62,350 words and 191 pages. I'm nearly at the 200th page and I'm working to get my mss to the climax point of the book. It's easier if you have a diagram of a plot and know how to implement it. (If you need one, just ask. I have something I can send you via email.) It was something I discovered through the various places I go to learn how to write and plot.

As you may have guessed this is a slightly different sort of vampire book, it is more on the order of a police procedural, mystery, and supernatural suspense sort of novel. It is pretty much the opposite of what my other books are like, and borrows from novels such as those written in the 1980's, before vampires became sexy and got into the bedroom and became objects of women's sexual fantasies. I used to read novels such as 'Salems' Lot by Stephen King, They Thirst by Robert R. McCammon, and various others which had vampires seeking human doctors to either explain their condition, asks for help or tell the true story of their existence (before Anne Rice), like Vampyr by Jan Jennings, and By Blood Alone by Bernhardt J. Hurwood, and there was The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen, among the few I'd read. Some I wasn't too impressed with, but these weren't too bad. They Thirst being among the better of these for suspense and action where the vampire was strictly evil and blood thirsty--which as it should be! I'd have to re-read 'Salem's Lot, however, as I keep getting it confused with the ridiculous movie rendition. They simply could not keep from messing with, and changing (screwing up), King's books on the screen.

With this post, we are looking on a brand new year and I hope to get two brand new books out in 2014. The first one will be #4 of the Sabrina Strong series, and I'm working on the edits while beta readers are still working along, chapter by chapter. And I am definitely slating Dhampire Legacy for a 2014 release! Hopefully with nothing else on my slate, I should be able to get these two books out next year.

Until next time, my pretties!

Happy Good Friday!

I think that could be considered a double positive... But Happy Friday to everyone!

I don't recall a more beautiful Spring in a long, long time. Everything is still in blossom. The crab apples are brilliant and smell wonderful, as are the lilacs out around our yard. I may have to cut some more soon.

Had a short day at work, and now that I'm home I've sluffed that memory away, and I'll be back at my edits. I should be done with this run-through early this weekend. Once I am I will take a break from it and do some other things, give a few things attention that I've wanted to and get more caught up on things.

Just wanted to make this a short post and hope you all have a great weekend, whatever your plans.

FRIDAY ~ Editing...don't over do it!

thank you to Rich Evans for use of pic!

Okay, so you might realize I've been busy. Writing my fingers to the bone--they're bleeding (see picture if you don't believe me!)

Or maybe you haven't missed me all that much. That's fine. I'm okay with that. You're all busy too. We're writers and some of us are either working on our WIP, or taking a break. You do need to take breaks once in a while. Don't feel that this is a bad thing. It is not! I once took a 4-year break from writing completely. But I worked on my craft hobby during that time, which was fun.

I'm working on edits on third book. I like using the find button of my edits selection. I type in a word, or phrase and it will find that word or phrase throughout your mss. If I hit "find all", it will do that in a matter of seconds. I then hit the high light button and I'm done with high lighting that word or selected phrase. This is one thing I find that makes the job so much easier for working on the edits. And since we can't read through with our eyes the over-used words like was, or that, or even, etc., this high lighting idea helps you see them, so to make your job a little quicker (I had not done this with the first two book--stupid, I know!), and you won't spend quite so much time working through it over and over again.

When you are editing, it's a good idea to not over-edit. If you pick up any printed book (traditional paperback), you will see that these words will still be in use. We don't have to get crazy and yank every was, even, that, as, or but etc. out. Especially when these words are in dialogue, because people do speak that way. What you want to do is make sure you don't have a trail of WAS all the way through your pages. Try and get as many of them out as you can.

Now, I'm going to give you an excerpt from one of my favorite authors to give you an idea of how sometimes these "be" words are still left in. You'll notice that the read is fine. It sounds very much like your best friend is talking to you, while relating her story to you (first person).

From Embrace the Night by Karen Chance:

I heard him yell something in French and felt a bullet whiz by my head, but it was unimportant because I was falling, and there was nothing to hold on to, just sliding dirt and limestone rocks crumbling beneath my hands. My arms flailed wildly, grasping for the one thing I had to find, but for a long second I felt only air. Then my fingers collided with something warm and alive and I grabbed it and we were both falling. There was a dizzying rush of air and my power wouldn't come and all I could think was that I'd killed us both--then my brain whited out and my heart tried to stop and reality twisted and bent around us.

I might have tried to pull a few there was's, and I felt's, but this is Chances' style. Who can argue when you are a New York Times Bestseller?

My main point is to not go crazy trying to delete and somehow find a replacement for the "be" verbs. I can't even find my list of all of them, but I've listed a few.

My lazy writing tends to be the phrases it seems to, and I felt, and I saw, and I heard. These are the ones I'm most concerned with because when I read it through I'm wanting to vomit all over my PC, and that wouldn't be blood like in the picture above. Sorry...

Anyway, this is what I've been up to. Also I'll be visiting a couple of blogs here and will post a link for them.

So, back to the type pad. Promise no blood... or anything gross.

Which or That ???

I've always had trouble with grammar. Plus I'm a lousy speller. Been that way all my life. But now, with spell check on the computer, and so many sites divoted to helping you, I really have no excuse. Along with, of course, my Writer's Digest, their Questions & Quandaries section has been the best part of the whole magazine. I've ripped these pages out and just placed them into a notebook in a plastic sleeve, so that when I can't remember how to use certain words, I can just grab it and flip to the page.

It isn't just how to use a word like which, but other words as well. It can get rather confusing: Lay or lying; it's or its; who or whom; lead, lead or led? And there's all sorts of sound-alike words. Like compliment or complement. If you don't know what to watch for, you can read right through and not even notice such a minor (or major?) error, and I know I've probably done this with certain other words. Aside from the word "which", my all-time favorite: Affect vs. Effect. It stumps me every time, but thanks to Brian A. Klems of Writer's Digest, dummies like me get help when we need it.

I had to go through the entire manuscrip in order to find every "which", to make sure I hadn't miss-used it. This was easy to do, even in a manuscript that is over 300 pages long. I just used my "find & replace" option on the computer. Of course, being careful not to hit the "replace" button, until I checked it, plus, if I did change it, I would still have to illiminate the comma in the sentence, and probably rewrite the sentence. In some cases I could see that I needed to re-write it, or could simply split the sentence into two.

I discovered a new (to me) site called "Grammar Girl" http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com I found this site where you can read, or listen to explanations of common grammatical conundrums. It is very easy to use, and has all the problem words lined up on about 4 or 5 pages that you can click on which ever one you want--ooo, there's that word again--and it will take you to a separate page for a full explanation and usage.

I liked her "quick and dirty tips" in each section. Mignon Fogarty goes into very detailed usage, hitting anything you might need on the word(s) in question. I placed her site on my desk top. I can't live without it.

With my dyslexia, the find and replace option helps me find words that might have slipped by me several times, not knowing that I'd miss-used or miss-spelled it. Which makes me so darned mad!