My narrowboat, moored up on one of England’s sleepy canals. What better place to dedicate myself to my craft? Peace and tranquillity, a total absence of intrusive cares, woes and worries, eh?
So, there I was, tapping away at my laptop working on the my magnum opus, and suddenly there’s a fully-grown sheep licking the boat’s windows. It’s a distraction and no mistake. One moment I had my two favourite popular scientist types soaked and running for cover across a wild and lonely moorland (right into trouble, where I want them), and the next moment I’m staring down a woolly ruminant’s throat, peering deeper and wondering if sheep have tonsils.
I am not unfamiliar with sheep, m’lud, my sister and I had a couple of pet lambs (orphans) during that part of our childhoods spent on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. One of them, “Whisky”, died young…
We got our 4th Nor’Easter in 2 weeks on Wednesday and this one had to be the worst of the lot. It started off relatively tame, but then dumped snow over night to many people’s surprise. We have an extra car here too, so Thursday started with digging my wife’s car out since we couldn’t fit on the driveway. Not that I had to take my son to school. He was off on Wednesday, which I expected. Thursday was a second day off that I didn’t see coming and it almost made me cry. We did have fun playing in the snow for two hours, but that was really draining and I barely had the energy to begin with.
The source of my exhaustion was that my main goal was to finish the first draft of War of Nytefall: Lost. The original plan was to finish it Friday afternoon and rest until Sunday when I could start a final edit on War of Nytefall: Loyalty. It’s going to be a rough job since my son starts his Spring Break on Thursday and then there’s Passover starting on Friday. With all of this in mind, I factored in Wednesday being a snow day and worked hard accordingly. I didn’t expect Thursday, which threw everything off and forced me to pull a longish night on Friday. Some people around here kept talking to me as well, so I had to work with no back support and in a room that is starting to make me feel very drowsy. I managed to get the first draft done though, but I do fear that I may have rushed the ending. The last section is only a page that I had more planned for, but may work better as an ominous teaser.
Needless to say, those invisible anacondas (panic attacks) have been working overtime this week. I’ve kept them at bay until I try to go to bed. Then, they show up and I keep fearing that I’ll fall asleep and never wake up. This fatigue and fear compounds itself over the week, which gets slightly undone by some extra sleep on the weekend. Not that I’m getting that this time, so we’ll see how long I last next week. Editing isn’t going to be a tough thing since I already went through it a few times. This is to put my mind at ease and make sure I didn’t make any continuity mistakes with the second one. That shouldn’t set off any really bad panic attacks and I’m going to minimize my news watching again. I fell off that wagon because it felt so much was happening.
As far as the next release goes, I’m still aiming for early April. My hope is for the 7th, but that’s the end of my son’s break and my birthday weekend. Things might get a little shaky during that time, which is why I’m hoping to get more volunteers to help promote this book. I put out a call for guest post volunteers last weekend, but I’ll probably have to do one on a weekday too. Weekend traffic is very lacking. I’m having trouble thinking up good topics since I used so much for my blog, so I have an option for a standard html if I can’t think of anything. Feel free to volunteer here if you want.
That’s really it. I’m gearing up for the Spring Break period, so I’m just trying to clear the big things off my plate. My extended plan is to take the week after my son’s break to relax and recover (if people here will let me). After that, I’ll be editing Quest of the Broken-Hearted and preparing to write War of Nytefall: Temptation. At this rate, I might be able to finish this year’s releases and the final Dawn Addison story before my son hits summer break. Considering he doesn’t have summer school this year, getting that far would be amazing. Then, I can spend July and August with him and only having to worry about blog posts and some outlining. I’d ask what could go wrong, but I think we’ve established that something will go south.
So, what are the goals?
Edit War of Nytefall: Loyalty
Prepare requested guest posts
Work a bit on June blog posts
Continue reading Dragonball Z. Just got to the first two androids and waiting on the next volume to come in
Start playing Lego Indiana Jones with kid on his break
Brace self for Passover and lack of pizza
Maybe find a way to get a little extra sleep
A side thing: Shannon Thompson put up a really interesting post on Ageism in Publishing. I really recommend reading it. In fact, it got me wondering about the ages of authors when they finally made it. This infographic came up, so take a look:
Within Clyde’s gang is a smaller group that calls themselves the ‘Vengeance Hounds’. I can’t go into too many details because the members will be getting their profiles posted throughout April. No sense in spoiling their moments. Yet, I can talk about how they operate as a ‘mini-gang’ and demonstrate how layered vampire society can be.
As stated, Clyde’s gang has the core members and the outer groups. The Vengeance Hounds fall in the middle of these two factions. They are part of the inner circle, but interact a lot with the lower level vampires. Part of the reason for this is because they act as mercenaries, which means they need to bring more on for bigger jobs. This also makes them the recruiters of the gang since they interact with others more often than thieves like Clyde and Mab. Any problems are passed through the Vengeance Hounds, which is another job. You can tell that they serve an important purpose similar to the trusted advisers of a noble.
I thought one of the hardest things to do would be to figure out what they were doing after the Great Cataclysm. It actually turned out to be the easiest once I went through with the mercenary idea. This helped them transition to the war pretty easily. Not official soldiers, but a special force sent on missions and into battles. Similar to Mab hunting powerful enemies, the Vengeance Hounds went after larger targets such as bases, weapon storage units, and enemy special forces. With battles, they would be unleashed to attack from the shadows and hunt down escaping enemies. As before, their numbers would change depending on the job, but a difference this time is that they don’t have as much control over their membership as before. The nobles they work for choose their added forces from their own armies.
A big part of the Vengeance Hounds’ story in War of Nytefall: Loyalty is them deciding on what to do in the face of the Dawn Fangs. Unlike Mab, they have integrated with the new world to a greater extent. They want to join Clyde, but they also have positions and loyalties to their new lives. Getting the gang back together means they would sacrifice something. They differ from the nobles too because they are not part of that higher level of society, so they don’t have that big an attachment. For the Vengeance Hounds, every member needs to choose between returning to their old lives and staying with their new one. This is what happens when loyalty gets spread between multiple factions even if they’re friendly with each other.
Don Massenzio It’s time for the next subject for my 2018 author interview series. Author interviews are posted every Friday throughout the year. I am honored to continue this series with Canadian author Audrey Driscoll. You can catch up with … Continue reading →
Please also read the following from Mike Murphy on Quartz Media LLC:
If you’ve been on Facebook for a while, you’ve probably installed games or given sites permission to log into your Facebook account. You may even use Facebook to log into services like Spotify, Netflix, or Tinder.
But if you’ve been following the news around Cambridge Analytica, the data consultancy firm hired by the Donald Trump campaign for the 2016 US election that harvested the data of up to 50 million Facebook users without their permission through data collected from third-party apps, you may want to know how to make sure that something similar isn’t happening to you.
Stephanie Talon falls into the same category as Gregorio Roman because she was never a game character. While I was planning the series, I realized that there were only 3 female characters. All of those were impressive and powerful and designed to have an impact on their scenes. I felt that having a more low key female character would be fun and fill another gap in the roster. None of my vampires specialized in rituals and scrying, which felt important for a series that revolved around a war. At least that’s how it turned out because Stephanie wanders through my notes for this series like she got lost on her way to another story.
Due to her having to be a low key character, I had to hold myself back. That wasn’t easy and resulted in her repeatedly getting left behind. She was an assassin at one point and the meek child of Clyde in another. Another version ended up being forgotten for two outlines before she returned as a noted ‘present’ thing. Finally, I made her a vampire twin and her brother ended up on the opposing side of the war. This was going smoothly until I realized the brother wasn’t working out and he got dropped. Obviously, things weren’t going well for Stephanie, so I put her on the shelf while I flushed out all of the other characters. This is when I noticed that ritual and scrying need. Unfortunately, she didn’t really fit well with Clyde, Mab, or Xavier.
I had taken a break to finish writing Legends of Windemere and went back to add another story that came to me. It was here that Stephanie popped up in the plot synopsis and stuck to Nadia Sylvan. She was like the woman’s obedient shadow and developed what I could only describe as love. The slightest bit of praise made her swoon and she was nearly as protective of Nadia as Lou. I planned on making her a personal maid, but that didn’t work with the ritual master thing. Instead, Stephanie became another adviser who butts heads with Kai. While he prefers physical spying, she believes magic is a superior method. She tends to play obvious favorites too if anyone disagrees with Nadia. Though, Xavier gets away with it because he’s the husband and Clyde simply unnerves Stephanie because of his new powers. Still, she now had a role and personality that ended up making her fun to write. I couldn’t use her as often as I’d have liked because of her specialties, but she’s there to stay.
One of the really fun parts about Stephanie Talon is that I immediately decided to make her something other than human. I went with a calico, which are the cat-people of Windemere. This meant she was a vampire with tufts of hair on her ears, natural grace and agility, and a tail. One of my favorite things to do with Stephanie is have her act like a pampered cat because putting a vampire twist seems to give her a playful personality. For example, when threatened, she can puff up her long tail with blood and it becomes huge with a dark red tint. It’s a small quirk, but those are what make characters so memorable in these stories.
Welcome to this week’s edition of Lisa Burton Radio. I’m your host, Lisa the robot girl, and we’re waiting for a very special caller. While doing that, let me ask you something.
How would you feel if you were accused of something you didn’t do? What if the ramifications were beyond serious? Would you rely upon the system to get it right? You only have so much energy and time. Would you focus on proving your innocence, or would you try to find the actual culprit?
Oh, my phone lit up. “Hello, this is Lisa Burton.”
“You are receiving a collect call from the Suffolk County Jail. Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes, please.”
“Hello. Is this Lisa? Please forgive the collect call. I didn’t know when we scheduled this interview that I would still be in jail.”
“Yes, Greg it’s me. Don’t worry about the call. I’m sure you…
Sitting between the nobility and common vampires are the gangs like the one that Clyde runs. While his is more infamous, there are plenty around that exist for various reasons that typically boil down to survival. Some go with crime while others stay together to hunt and hide. They can live in the wild, ruins, or the vampire cities depending on what brought the members together.
One important thing with the gangs is that they are watched by the nobility and other powerful members of society. They can be considered the biggest threat to vampires since they don’t always act rationally or within any types of laws. Some go full anarchist too, which is what causes a lot of vampire hunts. Unfortunately, a gang becoming a danger and exposing their presence can create backlash on others. Mortals only know that there are vampires in the area and will hunt all of them down. They aren’t aware that there could be individuals nearby with no association to the gang causing trouble. This is why the nobility in some regions will purge gangs that get too big or try to cause any crimes against mortals.
As far as Clyde’s gang goes, they were certainly one of the biggest in Windemere. The reason they didn’t get in trouble is because they had their own internal hierarchy. You had the inner circle that did the big heists that ranged from thievery to mercenary work. The other members did their own things with the protection of the gang as long as they didn’t make too big of a mess. More importantly, Clyde and Mab created a system of hideouts that their people could use for a fee. Unlike other gangs, they worked with nobles to get some leeway with their antics. Not that they caused a lot of trouble, but Clyde had his moments of doing large heists with the inner circle. This separation helped hide the size of his gang with the Duragians who considered it a smaller one instead of a giant organization.
Something I try to portray with the gang is that they are a family. At least in Clyde’s case, he depends on them to support his ideas and plans. They are the ones who keep him on the right path and he does the same for them. Considering he has been absent from the world for fifty years, Clyde needs his gang to help him acclimate to a new Windemere. The group probably becomes more important than ever before because of all of this. No matter what happens, he has the gang and they have him. This is going to be a major part of the entire series too. It feeds into the question about his humanity and how hard it is for him to hold onto it. With the gang depending on his leadership and control, Clyde has to think about more than himself.
It’s going to be hard to pull all this off though. As things progress, you’ll have Gang vs Nobility. This turns them into anarchists in a way, which makes their existence problematic. Then again, some nobles may see them as a useful ally if they want to control vampire society. It’s not going to be easy working politics into this series even slightly, which might be why I’m focusing more on the gang than the council.
Although, there is one more ‘group’ that should probably get some attention . . . Friday.
A perfect corpse floats forever in a watery grave.
on Quartz Media LLC:
