DevinHarnois.com

I get this question all the time from family, friends, coworkers and acquaintances. My response is: “Which book?” Often I can’t remember what book I mentioned the last time I talked to them. Some people are talking about the due-to-be-published Darkness at Dawn. Some remember one of my NaNo novels, some remember Marked, or Crossbreed. A few even remember *shudder* the terrible fantasy I wrote in my early teens. My aunt brought that one up this weekend. She asked me if I was going to try to get that published and I said no. Then she tried to convince me that it might be worth looking at again and trying to fix. Um, no. Really. It’s bad. She kept trying to say that maybe if I changed some things, spent some time editing it, it might end up better than I thought. No. Really, NO. It’s not worth wasting my time on. I have other, much better novels that might actually be worth publishing.

People kind of boggle at me when I have to start counting on my fingers to remember how many novels I’ve written. I think a lot of people think you write one book, then you ride that horse all the way to publication before you do anything else. How depressing would that be? Doing nothing but sitting and waiting as you shop the book around to agents (and/or editors) … no thanks. The best distraction is moving on to the next thing.

Maybe next time someone asks, I’ll list off each book and what stage it’s in. (and watch their eyes glaze over)

Writing is hard enough, so why do I keep trying to make things harder on myself? My main characters tend to be of a similar type, and I worry that people are going to read this stuff and eventually go “hmm, this main character is sort of like the last three …” And I also want to challenge myself as a writer and go outside my comfort zone. But then I run into the problem of having a main character that’s supposed to carry an 8ok+ word novel that I just feel ‘meh’ about. I like them, but they don’t set me on fire like my lovely angry, dark past totin’, guilt ridden, good hearted characters do.

So in trying to stretch myself, I end up getting bored. In having a good time, I repeat myself. I think at this point in my career, it’s probably not something I should worry about too much. Maybe it’s something to revisit after I’ve published a few books. As my writers’ group reminded me, if I’m not entertaining myself, how am I supposed to entertain anyone else?

Apparently I have the memory of a goldfish since I just went through this in November and it didn’t stick. Vincent (who’s probably getting a name change) the main character from Flight, is an ok character.  Ok is not enough to carry a novel. The villain is muuuuuch more interesting to me. Whatever happens to Flight, I’m saving Eric Morrow and his boys.

The novel I just started has an ok main character. He might be saved by the suggestion of a fellow writer — that I write the story of how someone becomes one of my typical dark-tinged heroes.  Take a young man and ruin his life? Yeah, I can dig it.

I got an offer letter from Samhain Publishing for Darkness at Dawn! I was so shocked I had to read it five or six times, and I kept thinking that this time it was going to say “sorry but no thanks”. But of course, it said the same thing every time: “offer of publication”.

I signed the contract the next day. This is all surreal and amazing. I’ve wanted this for a long, long time, and now here it is. I joked to my manager that it’s like being in a new relationship. I’ll just be going about my day, and it will hit me: oh my god, I’m going to be published!

This is a whole new world.

It’s that time of year again (a week late, but still). My resolutions this year:

1. Read more. I’ve gotten a good start on this.
2. Write more. I only wrote around 105,000 words last year. This is not acceptable.
3. Edit and SUBMIT at least one novel. I now have seven novels sitting around and it does me no good if I can’t get them out the door.

I’ve been frustrated lately. I keep thinking of all the time, all the years I wasted poking around at my writing and pretending that I was getting somewhere. I should have been more serious about it, a lot sooner. Over and over I get the sense that I should be farther along in my ability and my career than I am. I feel like I’m always behind. And yet I keep letting laziness get the better of me. It’s a vicious cycle, and I want it to stop.

The only thing I can change, now, is what I do from this point on. I can whine about yesterday all I want, but I can’t go back and change it (unless someone has a spare Tardis?). Every day I start the struggle again: am I going to be weak, or am I going to be strong?

Lillith Saintcrow has a great post on her blog: The Mystery of the Mask where she talks about acting like what you want to become. If I want to be published, I should act like I already am by making writing a priority and so on.

I’m going to try it, and see if I can fend off my laziness.

Every Nanowrimo teaches me something, and this year I learned that my main character has to be someone I love, a character I can be passionate about, that fascinates me. This year I tried to hold back from my natural tenancies. I created a main character without the guilt, anger, or dark past that most of my main characters have had. I wanted to do something different this time and, well … it fell a little flat. Maybe I’m doomed to burden my main characters with a Dark Past of some kind. That seems to be a lot of what motivates me to write, to dig into these characters, to see what they’re made of and how they deal with their current problems and the shadows of their pasts. I like to go with them down into the dark, and then out into the light.

I still haven’t done any new writing this month. I’m 3/4 of the way through my first read of Marked, and the quality of the novel gets better as it goes. It’s definitely fixable, and in January I’ll tackle edits.

I’ve got the spark of a novel idea floating around in my head, about traveling between broken worlds that were once a single whole, and a young man’s quest to save his home. Good old fashioned story stuff.

I haven’t written a word of fiction since Nov 30 (not counting RPG stuff). Instead, I’ve spent my time catching up on what I missed during Nano, watching lots of movies and TV, and getting acquainted with my new Wii and Wii Fit. December is my month off, to relax and recharge.

In the middle of November, I got a rejection letter for Bayou Girl. It was a very nice rejection, though. The editor called it well written and original, and the story did make it through some cuts. So I need to figure out where to send it next. A nice rejection is just a step away from acceptance, right?

I printed out Marked so I can read through it before starting on editing next month. I realized that it’s been OMG 14 months since I finished the first draft. I’m so far behind.

Woo-hoo! Last night I crossed the 50,000 word mark, meaning that for the third year in a row, I won NaNoWriMo! I wrote almost six thousand words yesterday AFTER working at the day job. It was hard, and exhausting, and I’ll probably not want to do that in the future, but of course the bright side is that I’ve won, and now I can relax. I’m going to keep writing, to hit my personal goal of writing every day in November, but it doesn’t matter how many words each day. I could write one, and that would still count. (I’ll probably end up with at least 100 per day. Even with glossing over, I have some story wrapping up to do).

So, in celebration, I give you another excerpt! This is way, way unedited. Meet my major villain, Eric Morrow, “The Shadow Man”:

Thanks to a quick internet search, he found his boys in the Saint Michael Medical Center morgue. They’d been taken there after someone called in a fight to the police, and the police had showed up to find two headless bodies. Someone had figured out, or been very lucky in guessing, that his boys were healers. Unless Mar had bragged about it. Sometimes his boasting got the better of him.

Eric showed up at the morgue and told them he might be able to identify the two bodies they’d brought in two nights before. Drinking buddies, he said. The nurse on duty called a doctor, and the doctor let him know that the police were going to want to talk to him if he in fact did know the deceased. Eric said that he understood, and the doctor led him down to the morgue.

Two lockers were opened, two bodies slid out. The doctor warned him that the sight was gruesome. The autopsies weren’t complete, and their heads were still detached. Eric nodded, and the doctor unzipped the body bags. Those were his boys, all right. He looked between them and summoned up a touch of crocodile tears. “Yeah, I know them. Could I have a few minutes alone?”

“Sure. I’m sorry for your loss.” The doctor touched a hand to his shoulder and walked away. Eric waited until he heard the door close. He went to Clifford first. Reliable, steady Clifford. Eric pushed the man’s head firmly onto his neck. Would two days be too long? He waited a few seconds, studying the ragged flesh, waiting for signs of healing.

Maybe it had been too long … maybe ol’ Cliff needed a bit of magic to kick start his body. Eric looked around and found a scalpel lying on a table. He went over and grabbed it, bringing it back over to the body. Eric sliced the end of his index finger and dripped the blood onto the torn flesh of Clifford’s neck. “Come on, Clifford … wake up, my boy.” Drip, drip, drip. The drops of blood fell, bright red onto the pale flesh and dried blood of Clifford’s neck.

One small piece of flesh latched on to another. Another connection was made, and another. The flesh knit itself together faster and faster. “That’s it.” Eric smiled. Clifford’s pale, cold flesh started to warm. Eric moved on to Mar. The wound on his index finger had started to close, so he sliced it open again. Holding Mar’s head against his neck with one hand, he dripped blood onto the neatly sliced hole between neck and head. This had been done with a blade, or something very sharp. Clifford’s neck had been torn and chewed as if by an animal. The two very different methods of severing the head made Eric think that there had been at least two people involved in hurting his boys. He was very eager to find out what the story was from them.

The blood from his index finger dripped onto Mar’s neck, bright red against the pale dull colors. “Wake up, Mar. Your boss is here.” It took a little longer for the flesh to respond, reaching out to bridge the gap between head and neck. Eric watched, fascinated.

A gasp behind him, a thump, and gurgled moaning. Clifford was awake. Eric turned around and looked into the panicked wide eyes of Clifford. “Quiet, or you’ll attract attention.”

Clifford calmed and nodded to show his understanding. His neck would take at least a few more second until it was healed enough to allow him to talk. Eric turned back to Mar. In a few seconds, he drew in a gasping, ragged breath and his eyes flew open. Eric made sure that he was the first thing Mar saw. “I’m here, don’t worry. Let yourself heal.”

Mar opened his mouth, trying to speak. A rough, gurgling sound came out of his throat. Eric put a finger to his lips. “Shhh.” Mar settled down.
“Boss,” Clifford said, his voice raw. “They killed us.”

Hello! Boy, I haven’t updated in a while. I’m poking my head up from NaNoWriMo, where I’m doing well (current word count: 37,080).  I went to the 28 hour write-in tour last weekend, which was all kinds of wacky fun, although most of the words I wrote were awful. Really, really awful. Oh, well, as some of my wrimo friends say: Embrace the crap!

Here’s a quick excerpt from my novel Flight (note that since this is from Nano, it’s even MORE ‘not edited’ than usual):

“Wings.”

Vincent froze, his heart beating double time. Spinning around, he saw a girl staring at him. “You have wings,” she said.

He reached over his shoulder, patting his shoulder blades. Nothing. He stared at the girl. She smiled. “I can see them, but no one else can. You hide them, don’t you?”

Vincent glanced around, looking for a parent and seeing if anyone was paying attention to their conversation. No parent, and nobody was looking at them for more than the second it took to walk around them. He stepped closer to the girl. “How can you see my wings?”

She was about twelve or thirteen, with light brown hair tied in a braid. Shrugging, she said, “I can see things like that. Usually I can see what people _do_, but you’re the first one I’ve ever seen with wings.”

For the second time that year, Vincent felt like he’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. He stepped over to the wall to get out of the way of the foot traffic and motioned for her to do the same. “You can see my wings?”

She nodded. “They’re black, like crows’ wings. No one else has ever seen them.”

He took a shaky breath and rubbed the side of his face. Ever since the wings had first appeared, he’d been trying to hide them, afraid of how people would react. Although he wasn’t big on conspiracy theories, he couldn’t help envisioning being carted off to a secret lab. Somehow, he could make the wings disappear at will, and now here was this girl saying she could see them.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.” She smiled. “I think they’re beautiful.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. “Um, thanks.” He looked around again. People looked at them, but it was all fleeting glances. “You said you can see what people do. What does that mean?”

She tugged at the hem of her shirt. “Well, it’s only been a few times. I saw a man that could find things, and a woman that could move things by thinking about it, and another woman that can talk to the air. I think she can fly like you.”

Twilight Zone for sure. Or maybe a comic book. “So you see people with, like … super powers?”

“Sort of. It’s more like … magic.”

“Magic,” he repeated. Curiosity warred with the urge to get the hell out of here. What if one of his coworkers saw him talking to this girl? Fear won out. “Look, I’ve got to get to lunch, okay?”

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she nodded. “Okay.”
He stood for another moment, then turned and went down the street. The urge to look behind him was strong, but he resisted. He ate half his lunch and picked at the rest, his shoulder blades itching. He focused on keeping his wings hidden, fearing as he had so many times before that if he thought about them they might appear. He thought about the girl, too, and what she’d said. She couldn’t be making it all up, because she’d been right about his wings. If she was telling the truth about that, did that mean she really _had_ seen the other people she said she had? Other people with powers as impossible as his wings.

Without any burning story ideas, I’m in absorbing mode, watching movies and TV, and reading. Eventually, a few elements will come together and spark a story idea. In October, I’ll start planning for NaNoWriMo.

I have a number of things in various stages from rough draft to almost there, so I’m poking around with editing. Today I looked at both versions of “Bayou Girl”. Version A is my orginal rough draft, version B is the draft I did after getting the story critiqued in my writers group. In version B, I move a major scene to a later point. After reading both, I like version A much better. Moving the scene threw the whole story out of whack. Sometimes, changing things can make a story better. Sometimes, it’s better to trust your instincts. So I’m going to clean up version A and look for a market to send “Bayou Girl” to.

It’s been way too long since I’ve done that. You can’t get published if you don’t submit. *glares at self*