Category Archives: Works in Progress

Anything about whatever I’m writing now.

WIP Snip, from the current story in progress…

Posted on January 8, 2012 by | Leave a comment

The working title is “The Boy who would not be Enchanted”

I had seen a wood-cut of the Moscasipay harbour once, and there is an old painting of the lighthouse in one of my cousin’s shops. Neither picture prepared me for the size of that porcelain man, for the shock of meeting his glazed, lake-blue eyes and feeling the Worldclock beneath him, the resonant tick-tock-tick blanketed in the normal sound of sea and wind, a rhythm, not really heard, that nevertheless came up through the timbers of Nightjar and seemed to find fault with the speed of my pulse.

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Posted in My Short Stories, Uncategorized, Works in Progress

Barely visible goalpoasts, or lapcounters, or somesuch…

Posted on September 21, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Happy Autumn, everyone… welcome to my favorite time of year. Here’s what late September looks like today, in Vancouver, at some spiffy pricey homes near Granville Island:

Posh Lake

In August, I made an arbitrary decision to finish drafting the current novel in progress. By mid-month, though, it was obvious I needed a little more time. I mentioned this to a fellow writer at Kelly’s office picnic and she pointed out that September 21st was the official first day of fall, so I reset the deadline accordingly.

And it is done! It’s Frankensteined and far from beautiful, but I’ve done this enough times now to know that beauty will come. (And, actually, it’s more polished than my usual finished drafts.)

Next up: a short story revision, looking over Blue Magic page proofs, possibly a new short story draft, then polishing, polishing, polishing. I also need to decide if I’m gonna do something akin to NanoWrimo–Spike is, I believe, and I’m tempted to join her. Who else might be in for some November word-crunching?

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Posted in My Novels, Photography, Works in Progress

Clarion West Writeathon metrics

Posted on July 21, 2011 by | Leave a comment

My write-a-thon count as of Tuesday was 17,139… I forgot to do any kind of count on Monday, and there was a day of switching projects and rereading and making tweaks to a long file, the better to crank out the next set of pages. The plan is to start drafting again asap.

Here’s some of the reread-and-tweak content:

Keeping her camera fixed on the ring, Sophie followed his gaze. The boy watching the mock duel from across the piazza was maybe eighteen, with curling auburn hair and a face right out of a Dante Gabriel Rosetti painting–big eyes, expressive mouth, skin like sun-burnished brass. He was surrounded by a bevy of expensively-dressed teens who were chattering and exchanging ribbons–more bets, Sophie guessed–but he was raptly watching the blow-by-blow between Acacia and the flaming man.

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Posted in Works in Progress

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All the little storytales, everywhere I go…

Posted on July 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Broken house on 2nd

A drafty snippet from the current story in progress:

It was splinters, driven into the burns. They were lined up like little dominos, bristles that ran along the lines of my hand, life line, heart line, brain line… all the things palm readers find so much meaning in. Tiny little fenceposts of bristling birch, embedded in both hands, and each filament barely aglow with the blue that had come to mean magic.

“Go to jail,” I whispered. “Go directly to jail. Do not pass go.”

And behind me, someone answered, in a deep bass voice: “Ma’am? May I have some clothes, please?”

Between writing words for the Clarion Write-a-thon (up to 16,411 words out of 20,000 as of Thursday!) and teaching “Creating Universes, Building Worlds”–which is focused on short speculative fiction–I have been trying to read a few new short stories.

So far there have been four:

1) “Crazy Me,” James Patrick Kelly – http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/05/crazy-me It’s creepy, it has great build-up, and it ends abruptly. Like many of the people who commented on it at Tor.com, I’m not sure I got the whole point; I may need to reread it. But it has been a fair while since I read anything by Kelly, and I like his style. I enjoyed this a lot.

“The Guy With The Eyes,” Spider Robinson. From BEFORE THEY WERE GIANTS, which is an anthology edited by James Sutcliffe, of first-ever stories by some well-known SF writers. I was surprised that Spider’s first published story was a Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon piece, though I’m not sure why that surprised me.

I want to pick a piece from BEFORE THEY WERE GIANTS to add to the reading list for CUBW… not this time, so much, but in the future. I love the idea of the anthology, and the right newbie story by someone who’s indisputably regarded as Genre Awesome just seems like a terrific thing to include my course reader.

(Anyone read the whole thing yet? Got any faves?)

“Down where the Best Lilies Grow,” Camille Alexa. Jessica Reisman recommended this a few days ago, and it’s a lovely little short-short–moody, self-contained, with memorable images.
(http://10flash.wordpress.com/genres/10flash-fantasy-stories/down-where-the-best-lilies-grow/)

And, yesterday, Michael Swanwick’s “The Dala Horse”, (http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/07/the-dala-horse) which has a “Little Red Riding Hood” feel but is so much more. I currently have Tanith Lee’s “Snow Drop” assigned as a fairy tale variation in CUBW; I might add this in as an optional reading, or swap them. Michael was one of my Clarion West instructors, a last-minute addition to the teaching roster after someone (I can’t remember who) had to bow out. He was, I might add, awesome.

Also on the topic of short fiction, Kris Rusch says that the prospects for writing them are better than ever, thanks to the growth of online magazines and e-books. (http://kriswrites.com/2011/06/22/the-business-rusch-short-stories/) What’s your take?

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Posted in Books, True Stories, UCLA Extension, ucla-creatinguniverses, Works in Progress

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Looking for miracles in the app store

Posted on July 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Happy Canada Day, fellow northerners!

I am a firm believer in stepping away from the Internet when trying to write. I think better when I don’t face temptation in the form of a quick check of the Twitter feeds, status pages, Google reader, etcetera blah blah. One part of Cafe Calabria’s allure, for me, is that it hasn’t really got wireless.

Calabria is not an entirely distraction-free environment, but its diversions feel more human and, somehow, worthwhile. I don’t begrudge the occasional moment spent trying to comprehend the italian lyrics of Frank Senior’s eclectic musical choices, for example, or eavesdropping on the other early-morning regulars. As I write this, the fellows I think of as “Chatty Guy,” “Brother of Chatty Guy” and “Their Friend” are chewing over the ethics of hunting. They’re good with it in cases of self-defense, I’ll have you know and mostly all right with the idea of hunting for food. (“There’s something so right about killing something and eating it,” one of them opines.)

The conversation has bogged down, though, over the issue of sport fishing and catch-and-release. It is a typical morning jaw over java, and the longer the conversation goes on, the less sense it makes. Friend Of seems to be saying that you might as well eat fish because you don’t know they wouldn’t attack you if they could.

(Obviously that isn’t what he is actually saying, but it sounds funny as hell. Usually they talk about Celine Dion or Arnold’s Divorce or the Canucks. I find this topic preferable.)

Calabria is across the street from a Starbucks with fairly robust Wi-Fi, which has been tricky as I adapt to writing on my newest toy, an iPad. I can just barely pick up a feed if there are no big trucks parked on the corner. And the pad will sync if I’m online, which is a nice little hedge against data loss. So every now and then I get sucked into checking: is there Wifi after all? From there, it’s a short hop to The Forbidden: checking my Inbox.

In other words, I have not perfected my new regime.

I did write 187 words on Thursday–revising again, and adding as little as possible–which brings me to 35% of my Write-A-Thon goal of 20K words. And not having the 5 pound laptop on my back wherever I go is a very nice lifestyle change. Having got the weight of the laptop off my shoulders, the next goal is to give my hands a break as much as possible, so I’m working to make more effort to dictate things like e-mails and blog posts. I like the iPad version of Dragon, especially the part whereby I don’t need a tangly-corded external microphone to use it.

Of course, though I am trying to make the gadget serve my writing and health needs, I really spent the three months saving for the thing because I wanted a damn TOY. I spend a lot of time in the App Store, looking for the two dollar piece of software that will change my life forever. Have you found it? I am a fan of Simplenote and Dropbox, but I was already using them on the iPod. And though I love Flipboard, and am having fun with Sketchclub, I have yet to find anything, you know, miraculous.

Cafe Calabria

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Posted in My Short Stories, Process, True Stories, Uncategorized, Works in Progress

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Words for birds

Posted on June 29, 2011 by | Leave a comment

My Clarion West Write-a-Thon Word Counts so far…

Total= 6813 words
July 29 – 616 (revision on novel)
July 28 – 712 (novel)
June 27 – 987 (novel)

The 616 Wednesday were a bit of a surprise… it’s what got added to a rough draft of a chapter after I’d refined it a bit. I know my work tends to get longer as I go through it, but it had felt like I was cutting.

Snip:

Her private chamber was as luxuriously appointed as a five star hotel. A fresh plate of the bland food–mourning fare, the Conto had called it–sat on a low table in a little… sitting room? Or parlor? She tried to muddle through the difference, if there was one. Then she caught a whiff of humidity, and followed her nose to a steaming bath. The same servant who’d wrapped her in the long gray cloak before the burial was waiting to remove it.
*It’s as if she’s been here the whole time, just waiting*, Sophie thought.

I also shot a Northern Flicker last week–they’re a lot less camera-shy when they’ve dug into an ant hill–and got a pretty decent close-up, complete with bugs on the beak. There’s video of it peck-peck-pecking away, if you prefer action:

Northern Flicker

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Posted in My Novels, Works in Progress

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Adventures and spiderlings

Posted on June 26, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Saturday’s word count came to all of 89 words before it turned out the relatives coming into town late Saturday night had meant to arrive in the morning, and had rebooked their flights accordingly. Using Twitter, of all things, we mixmastered our entire weekend schedule on the fly. Kelly shot off to the airport; I kept a twice-rescheduled date with my mother. Three hours later, we converged for a run to Granville Island (where, as I predicted, it was like LORD OF THE FLIES, but with tourists fighting tooth and nail for parking and places vendors’ attention) and then dinner in the West End.

For a final blast of excitement we ended up chasing the Modo car to the city impound after dinner. This was an experience that turned out better than I’d have expected, as Impound is more or less directly on the route to our house. (It could have been at the end of the Skytrain tracks or something!)

Anyway, as much of today as possible has been allocated to some much-needed chilling out. It looks sunny and gorgeous, an entirely promising day. I am frankly hoping the house gets stupidly warm.

Here’s a snippet from one of the works-in-progress:

Isle of Gold is one of five nations formerly known as the Piracy. A barren rock unfit for agriculture and without much of a fishery, its difficult-to-navigate coastal waters and dense military fortifications led to its becoming the treasury of the alliance of thieves, smugglers and raiders during the decades of warfare that plagued the seas…

Finally, for those of you who saw my tweets about the baby spiders, here’s a picture.
Spiderlings

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Posted in Photography, Works in Progress

Let the write-a-thon begin!

Posted on June 19, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The Clarion West Write-a-Thon begins today. I set a modest fundraising goal of $100, as I’ve never done this before, and if you’re interested in sponsoring me, the link is here:

http://www.clarionwest.org/events/writeathon/AMDellamonica

My goal for the next six weeks is to write 20,000 words of fiction, some of which will be expended upon revising a very rough draft of a story called “Wetness.” Here’s a snippet.

“There’s a naked man in your bathtub.”

“I can explain,” Calla said, which was basically a lie. She was on Skytrain, headed for her mandatory therapy session. “What are you doing at my place?”

“Returning some DVDs.” Calla’s ex, Richard, had given out sets of their keys to a half-dozen of their friends, the better to get their cats fed if they suddenly had to go out of town. She’d managed to retrieve all the others, but June had made a whole big don’t-you-love-me, OMG, and I’m the one who’s been loyal to you all this time issue of it all. Calla hadn’t found the backbone to ask, not with June being the only person still calling her since her job and relationship had both turned to manure. “I went downstairs for a pee and saw him in the mirror and scared myself witless.”

“Sorry. But June, can this wait? Right now I’m prepping myself to seem sane and sensible so I can have my job back.”

“How’d you even get him home? Ignoring the fact that he’s probably infested with… well, I shudder to think. He’s too heavy to ship. Even if you find someone on Ebay who wants a well-hung garden gnome, you’ll never make money off him.”

“But he’s okay?” she asked, and then bit her tongue. Shit, shit.

“Calla, he’s a statue.” June said.

If you are at or shadowing Clarion this year, I wish you the best.

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Posted in Appearances, Works in Progress, Workshops

Who you gonna call? (Funkbusters!)

Posted on June 15, 2011 by | Leave a comment

My current, lovely, talented and very hardworking group of Novel III students is reaching the end of another quarter, with fifty new pages under their belts, and some of them are feeling the re-entry burn. They have more to do, and they’re falling prey to the “Is this shit? Can I finish?” blues.

I’ve told them they’re not alone, and offered a few of my tried-and-true funk breaking-techniques (punitive amounts of caffeine, bribing myself just to keep on, freewriting, Ignoring it and Hoping It Goes Away), but I am always happy to hear more. The more so because my current story, “Wetness,” is kicking me in the head with the Pointy Boots of Vagueness.

**

On another note, M.K. Hobson explains here how you and twenty-six of your friends can earn Clarion West $1500 just by joining the Write-A-Thon.

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Posted in Resources for Writers, UCLA Extension, ucla-novel3, Uncategorized, Works in Progress

Joining the Write-A-Thon

Posted on June 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I have just signed up for the Clarion West Write-A-Thon… they’re trying to get 100 writers joined up for the summer, so I thought I’d play along. If you might like to sponsor me, there’s a link here. Clarion’s a terrific workshop and a good cause. I got to meet some of last year’s class and their excitement about writing and general enthusiasm for SF and fantasy writing was infectious and delightful. You could be paying to teach your next favorite writer evar.

I’ve never done this before, but it’s pretty straightforward. The site says:

Sign up by June 18 to participate as a Clarion West Write-a-thon writer. Pick a writing goal: something that’s a little stretch; something that motivates you. Shadow the workshop from June 19 through July 29. Then write, write, write! Write 15 minutes or 4 hours a day, 250 words a day, or maybe 8000 words a week (we call that a “Swanwick”); revise a story or a chapter of your novel every week; complete a story, novella, or trilogy; submit three short stories to professional markets; or do something else completely different.

My goal is to write 20K of fiction between June 19th and July 29th. Ideally this will wrap up two half-written stories in progress and get me a little further into the current novel.

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Posted in Announcements, Uncategorized, Welcome, Works in Progress, Workshops