2011 Update

There's been a lack of posts these past few months mainly because there's not been a lot of activity moving my novel closer to publication. But allow me to catch everyone up on what all is happening.

First of all, the Gideon Cain anthology did come out and what feedback I've heard from it has been positive. But something I would certainly crave is more reader reaction to the anthology and, of course, to my story in particular. I'm sure that's true for any fledgling author. I do believe there's a lot of really golden potential in the Gideon Cain property and I hope to see more done with it in the future.

Perhaps something I can do this year on this blog is put together some Q & As with some of the contributing authors.

Another new, exciting development started taking shape back in the fall. In my day job as a

video producer, I had a client step into my edit suite one day and flip out over some drawings I had scattered around my desk.

He was sitting on an idea for a new online and outdoor advertising campaign for a client of his but he needed the right artist to bring it to life. He wanted to feature his client's pet bulldog in a comic strip.

So I whipped up a few samples, including the image you see here, and he got very excited.

We're still in the pre-launch stage but we hope to get things rolling very soon. This looks to be a fairly long lasting gig that will keep me happily chained to a drawing table for most of the coming months.

When the site launches, I'll announce it here.

But this blog is about my writing novels in my "Galahad's Doom" series. The first one is entitled "My Brother's Keeper" and the follow up is called "Marching As To War". There's been movement on both in recent weeks.

No, I'm no closer to having my cover art finished for the the first book, but that's a blessing because I've been able to continually revisit that manuscript and improve it with each polish.

But I could be looking at doing some real work on it with a thorough revision thanks to my friend and editor extraordinaire, Sam McDavid. Sam has read the book and has been very generous with his praise. He's got a very high opinion of the story and is encouraging me to really shop it around to major publishers.

BUT.... since the story is so good, and the wait has been so long, the prose should be perfect. Sam is good at catching things that could and should be improved upon and challenging me on details. For that I am thankful, and I'm encouraged by his positive feedback, but I look to have a lot more time that still needs to go into this first book than I thought.

As for "Marching As To War", I was finally able to get some writing done on it back in November. Knocked out between 5 and 6 thousands words, completing 3 or 4 scenes. That book stands at around 40K, but before I go much further on that I'm going to really be looking at my outline to make sure this book is shaping up the way it needs to.

In all humility, the first book did surpass my own expectations and came out a lot stronger than I ever thought I'd pull off. Reader opinion may differ once the book is out, of course, but I feel like it turned out so well that now I have to question what I have planned for the 2nd and 3rd books: do they adequately deliver on that standard set by the first one?

I don't know.

But I'll find out.

Update

It's been a few months since I've updated this blog. I'll try to be better. I've got several more character sketches that I want to post. Maybe I can get to them in the coming weeks.

But I do have some news to report. It's not necessarily good news for folks ready for the first book to come out, but it is news.

Short version: I still have to wait an indefinite amount of time before my cover artist can get started on my commission.

But I'm okay with that. I had told him in December that I wanted to have books in my hand ready to sell by the end of May. He responded that he could meet that but that he would have to change his planned approach.

I thought about it, but I told him not to do that. I wanted him to take the time and do it right, to do it in a way that he could be proud of. His original plan was (is) to do a large oil painting, a piece that could be a featured item in his gallery and generate sales of prints strictly on its own strengths.

I decided I'd rather wait a few more months and have that remain the approach he took. And he was very happy to hear me say that.

One reason he remains very busy in his schedule is that he is involved in the production of a major Hollywood movie (starring Nicholas Cage). He is providing artwork that will actually be seen in the movie, this isn't just developmental stuff. In addition to this, his schedule with Marvel Comics remains busy.

The best thing about all this delay is that it will cut down tremendously on the amount of time that will pass between the publication of the first and second books. I have found it a lot more difficult to get into a good writing groove with the second book than I ever did with the first one. I trust I can work through it and eventually start cranking out pages at a good rate.

And, speaking of writing the second book, I just spent a week on the road doing some work in Florida. I managed to knock out about 4,000 words on the second book, including a very important scene that will basically drive the rest of the series.

So good news: progress is being made on the second book and when my cover is done for the first one it is going to be awesome.

My First Autograph

I can now say I have signed my first autograph. I find that hilarious. It's strange the things that happen in your life sometimes:

I once made the Atlanta news attending the funeral of UGA IV, the University of Georgia's mascot.

Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and the X-Men, once told me "You're my hero."

I've been the onstage cameraman for Kenny Rogers and a rapper named Li'l Romeo.

I've directed Bart Starr and Mia Hamm.

I've even had a goat slain in my honor as an entire village sang my praises.

But none of those are as strange as attending a Sci-Fi/Fantasty Convention.

At one of these events, you can easily find yourself with a guy dressed as Chewbacca on one side of you and the actress who voiced the 1980s cartoon character Jem on the other side. Or you might see a panel discussion labeled "Hard Science" moderated by a girl dressed in faerie wings.

Those are actually two examples that really happened to me at ImagiCon in Birmingham on March 29th. And while it is a place to buy anything from old comics and Star Wars toys to replica swords from Lord of the Rings, it is also an opportunity for small-press genre publishers to market their books directly to the public.

My novel will be published by White Rocket Books, the company created by Van Plexico. And as it happens, Van was invited as a guest and was set up with a booth space for White Rocket. So I headed downtown to catch him there, hang out for a while and help with a comics-related panel.

And although my book isn't out yet (I'm still waiting patiently for the cover art), the short story anthology The Sentinels: Alternate Visions is available and Van was selling it at his table. While I was there behind the table with Van, a guy came up and bought the final copy. Van had brought 5 or 6 copies to the show, along with all the other books from White Rocket, and he sold out of the anthology early on Saturday.

So when the guy bought the book, Van signs it and then slides it over to me because two of my stories are in it. Suddenly, I'm staring at the title page of the book with a pen in my hand. I tried very hard to keep the grin off my face as I signed my autograph. For my fan. (Okay, more like "customer", but still...)

I don't know how prepared Sci-Fi Convention attendees will be for a book like mine with such strong spiritual content, but it also has plenty of swords, castles, creatures and catapults to interest fans of that genre.

Regardless, once my book is out I'll probably do more of these types of events as one way of marketing and selling it.

So I can look forward to signing more books for fans.

Even if they are dressed like Spock.

Character Sketch: Glamis

Here is the first look at a supporting character from my novel. This guy's name is Glamis Gryme. He is the chief advisor to the king with the title of Counsellor.

What is not generally known to the public of this Christian kingdom is that Glamis is actually a wizard. He is forced to keep his magical abilities a secret for political reasons. As the chief advisor, Glamis is clearly the true power behind the throne handling most of the decision-making for the kingdom's affairs.

Serving the king, however, is not his true priority. He has a secret agenda that he considers to be in service to the greater good.

Glamis is impatient by nature with little tolerance for those he perceives as intellectually inferior to him and for any who may hold prejudices against wizards.

Visually, in designing Glamis, I wanted to stay away from the stereotypical appearance of wizards. The long robes, pointy hats and long grey beards of characters like Merlin and Gandalf were all things I did not want to see on Glamis.

So he got a short beard, with only a touch of grey on the chin. And instead of flowing robes, he wears complicated, multi-layered garments as might be seen on members of royal courts. And I made the decision that his color palette would be a range of purple, spanning from near-black to lavender highlights. Mostly, the hues are subdued, deep violets. In the book, I usually describe them as wine-colored.

When I drew the above sketch, I didn't mean for him to look so much like General Zod (Terrance Stamp) from "SUPERMAN II", but that's exactly what happened. I decided that was okay, but realized I didn't have a firm idea on exactly what the outfit would look like, so I started looking at period movies for ideas.

Even though the historical era might not quite match up to my story, I found what I was looking for in Geoffrey Rush's character from the movie "ELIZABETH".

So this image here is something I cobbled together in Photoshop. That's Terrance Stamp's head (as General Zod) on Geoffrey Rush's body (from ELIZABETH). I doubt the Shakespearean collar would be a part of Glamis' look, but the broad shoulder pieces falling off similar to robes, the various layers and textures, and the jewelry all fit well with the design I have in my head.

Working in prose, I don't really have to get this detailed with my character designs. But by doing this, I assure myself that I'm writing consistently from a concrete visual design. This eliminates having to constantly look up my previous descriptions for the sake of consistency.

Write right, Wright p3: Cracking A Scene

Before I write a scene I have to spend some time thinking about how I want to approach it. I may know what's going to happen next in my story. I may have my little index card in front of me that tells me who is in the scene and what the scene needs to accomplish (the "plot point") but that doesn't mean I have the scene figured out yet.

I call it cracking the scene: figuring out the hook that allows me to execute the plot point in a way that is interesting to read, true to the characters and logically flows from what has come before. I have cracked scenes in several different ways but usually the first thing I do is find a way to make it as exciting as possible.

For example, when my index card told me "Lucas joins the army", I ended up with a scene depicting Lucas surrounded by bad influences, falling to temptations, resisting arrest, getting beaten by enforcers, thrown into shackles and pressed into military service against his will. In other words, I believe I took the simple note about the plot point and punched it up considerably. And at the same time, commented on the character of Lucas by showing what sort of people and situations he allows himself to be around.

But punching up the action is just one aspect to cracking a scene. The primary choice I believe a writer has to make in presenting a scene is choosing the POV. I'm writing in limited third person, so who is going to be the point-of-view character for a particular scene? My answer is informed by two factors: 1) Whose POV will be the most interesting? and 2) Is there a character whose POV is revisited regularly through the course of the book?

In addition to POV, the choice must be made when to pick up the action of a scene. Should it start in a quiet moment? Should it start in the middle of action? Should it start in the middle of conflict? Should it start with a line of dialogue or a descriptive passage? There will be no consistent answer to these questions, nor should there be. The variety of presentation will make the story better.

Sometimes, if I'm stuck on how to open a scene, I have a trick that usually helps me out. That is, focus on one of the five senses. What does a scene sound like? Or smell like? What's the POV character's reaction to it? That's usually enough to get me started. Hopefully, it succeeds in pulling readers into the scene, helping them to visualize.

Looking back on what I've written, I can point to another emerging pattern in my style. That would be one of symmetry in structure. Whatever I open with, I try to revisit it at the end of the scene. I find this usually provides a pretty solid spine for the scene. For example, I opened one scene with a character studying the night sky, he turns away and other things happen but I end with him commenting on a constellation. I think I've heard this concept called "callbacks". Stuff like that seems to put a nice little bow on the end of a scene, providing a complete miniature reading experience.

Cracking a scene. I start with a plot point note on an index card, then make a series of decisions (regarding action, POV, starting point, sensory hook, closing callback, etc.) and before I know it I have what I consider to be a pretty strong scene.

Write right, Wright p1: Dialogue over Narration

Well, I've talked this up enough that it seems like I'm going to have something huge and profound to say.  That's not really the case at all. It's just that there's a certain in pitfall in writing that has tempted me.

I've worked so hard on my plot and in weaving together all the various plotlines that now I just want to tell everybody the whole story right away.

It's sort of frustrating to know all the major story elements of all three books but  yet still be forced to sit down and flesh scenes out.

The temptation in writing the scenes is to just describe the plot to the reader. But I know that's a huge mistake. I believe the success of any story is judged by the degree to which the readers can relate to and invest in the characters. 

As I started out constructing my scenes I had to remind myself to not just use my power as omnipotent storyteller to explain what is happening. I  have to allow the characters to arrive at their decisions and actions naturally. They each need their own distinct personality, preferences and agendas.

One of the keys is to rely on the dialogue and actions of your characters to carry the reader through the story. Sounds obvious. But if you are an amateur novelist like myself who is excited by the story you've cooked up, the temptation can certainly be there to get through everything as fast as you can so that you can describe the next cool thing.

Of course, by forcing patience and allowing the characters to carry the story, the writer opens himself up to one of the greatest joys of the process. As I discussed in "Characters Can Surprise You", it's a blast to see  your characters come to life and begin dictating to you what they are going to do.

This may be my last post for a while. I leave Wednesday for three weeks in Sudan, Africa. I'm shooting a documentary over there that will detail what missionaries have accomplished for the area. So it will probably be April before I can post again. 

I've got plenty of hours in airplanes ahead of me. I'm taking my laptop and hope to knock out a few thousand words while I'm gone.