Archives for October 2012

A creaking door. A cackling laugh. Look out! Behind you! No, behind you! OH NO IT IS A DRACULA and now all your blood is gone.

In sympathy for your exsanguinative plight, may I offer you a special Halloween flavored City of Angles story?

It’s for VIP Club Members, of course. If you’re not one of those, you should join the club and reap the benefits. Reap. Like you do with a scythe. Ahaaahahahahaa

Read. Enjoy. Just whatever you do, don’t look in a mirror and say my name three times. Because if you do, it will summon me forth, and I am SO making you pay for an airline ticket back home because I mean seriously, what a drag.

It’s the Planning-to-Plan update.

I’m posting this a day ahead of schedule just in case we get wiped off the map by impending hurricane-shaped doom. I kind of doubt it, but odds are even-steven that we’ll lose power, and that’s basically the same thing as far as the six people actually reading these words are concerned. No power = no story, in the same way no house = no story.

The good news is that this chapter is finally flowing free, with a cohesive outline ready to rock and everything falling in place nicely. The bad news is my health continues to take a sharp downward dive towards oblivion thanks to a head and chest cold I’ve picked up somewhere along the way and I crave death. So, until that mess clears up and Mother Nature leaves me alone I don’t think I’ll have monster-large story updates.

Still, these scenes bring us up to Act II, so that’s not nothing. Enjoy. What do you think so far? Does it sound and feel like kids in action? Are they compelling and/or cinematic?

Lights, camera, update.

This has been torture to write, but I’ve finally got it in a shape where it’s properly flowing and moving. Considering this chapter had to be dreamed up on the fly to replace the original story idea I dumped, it’s a miracle it got this far. Several serious scene overhauls, multiple tweaks, dropping a character completely… yeah. Wow. Janky.

Fortunately I think the end result works. Plus, it’s longer than I thought it’d be — this is at the core a very simple story, “Penelope makes friends and goes on an adventure,” but I haven’t even gotten to the adventure yet and we’re at 57k. So… yay? Shame it’s not NaNoWriMo right now.

You can get complete details on how this chapter evolved and changed when the printed book is released. Every chapter has extensive author’s notes, laying down the thought process behind each story and how they transformed from early concept to final work. ETA to release is… kind of a long ways, but hey, something to look forward to.

So, how’s this workin’ for ya so far? The kids are all right.

BONUS CONTENT: I also did a timeline table so I could keep track of how old everybody was during key events in the City of Angles history. Minor spoilers and teases ahoy! This is a revision of the simpler table I posted two weeks ago. (If you saw this on twitter earlier, check again, I’ve revised it.)

Subdivisions, suburbs, subliminal lairs of repression and torment.

Yeah, I’ve lived in a few. And now Penelope’s stuck in one.

It took me two weeks to figure out what coa//005 would be. Originally I had this all planned out, a weird and intense story about a grocery store… but then I realized how it’d be far more appropriate for volume//002. (I’m doing it again, aren’t … committing to a myth arc of epic proportions. I hope you’re happy.)

That left me high and dry with no story idea. The obvious solution was to pull Penelope and Gregory back into play, since otherwise they’d go another 2-4 stories before getting a focus, but what to do with them? Eventually I figured out what to do with them, recycling an old idea I was going to jettison and rejiggering it to be a Penelope piece. (Gregory features heavily in the intro, but he’ll be departing the story after that. The results of his quest will be featured later.)

This is a very long way of saying “New story, Penelope’s in it, go read dammit.”

Not much up so far, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. More to come next week.

Eighteen wheels ‘o steel, comin’ your way fast.

The grand finale to 004 is now here. What will Cass find in the mysterious house? How will she survive the encounter? What’s the history behind the teddy bears? How does this all tie into the schemings of the Lucid child? You’re going to have to read and find out.

After this chapter, we’re going on a wee hiatus, I think. Problem is, my original idea for 005 — a repeating grocery store of the damned — is a MUCH better story for what I’m tentatively calling “volume two” of City of Angles.

Volume One is dealing with the machinations of Bedlam, and her designs for the heart of the city. It’s a complete story onto itself with a clear beginning and end, even if it doesn’t wrap the entire universe. Volume Two will be dealing with Echo, and the grocery store story is a MUCH better fit for that arc.

This means I need to come up with something entirely different for 005. I’m aiming to make it a Penelope / Gregory story, maybe more focused on one of the two rather than the pair in general. But, it may be a standalone, or it may be… I dunno. I need time to come up with something now that my plans have fizzled. I could jump right into the next Wei Sisters story but it feels like it’s too soon for that. And Dave’s next focus story really has to come before the finale.

Writers, scheming away in little poorly lit dens of literary villainy  Oh, what horrors do they plan, banging away on their Clark Novas? We’ll have to wait and see. But in the meantime, Cass needs your attention, and I need your reactions to her tale.