Screaming into the Virtual Wind

The new issue of Twisted Tongue is out which means that the first two parts of my lil zombie novella, The Undead Alliance, are now published :)  If you want to check out the awesomeness for yourself, you can either purchase a paper copy of the magazine or download the free PDF. here.

How cool is this cover?!

I also found out today that a story I wrote about an imprisoned werewolf called The Lycanthrope Technician has been published in Dark Fire Fiction, and it was chosen as this issue’s Feature Story!  Check it out…

Vampires, zombies, werewolves… If I write a story about a Frankenstein-ey monster I’ll have the whole set!

In other Caroline-related news… I’m becoming scarily obsessed with getting a new tattoo.  My lack of money and a disapproving husband have yet to deter me (a girl can dream, after all.  That’s what writers are good at).  But not just any tattoo, oh no.  I want a fan-boi’s wet dream Lord of the Rings inspired tattoo.  I love hobbits and I’m not ashamed to admit it!  I want a tattoo like this…

Or this…

(Minus the goatee beard )

But not this.  Dear God, not this…

This tattoo would give me hideous nightmares.  Me and any innocent bystander who saw it.

Is it over-the-top-geek to want a Lord of the Rings-esque tattoo?  Maybe…  Now I just have to work out the Elvish for “I heart the Shire”…

I wrote a novella a while ago (feels like a long while ago, now) called The Undead Alliance.  And I sort of loved it.  It was the first time I had ever coherently plotted a piece of writing (I was mid-way through the first draft of Dunraven Road at this point, and seriously wishing I had given more thought to the rapidly spiralling plot holes) - and I was amazed at how quickly the story spun itself out once I got to work on it.  It was a joy, actually.  Even though the power to make and break characters, to raise entire worlds and civilisations from the flotsam of your own brain, is powerfully addictive… I have never found it easy.  I stop and agonise over a single sentence for half an hour or more.  I look out of the window.  I stare into space.  Only after much lengthy and profound procrastination do the words begin to flow.  That wasn’t the case with The Undead Alliance.  It was only a strange little story about zombies… tongue in cheek, really… but writing it was largely effortless, and immensely enjoyable.  Plus there’s a zombie sex scene (almost), an eye gouging using a letter-opener and an undead, screaming head on a stick.  What’s not to enjoy?!

In private, I called this my ‘Zombie Love Story’ and wanted to play with that line in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast - “For who could ever love a beast?”  (Or a zombie with a bad maggot infestation and breath like fetid cabbage?)

Much as I enjoyed writing this story, I began to think I would never find a home for it.  It’s very hard to sell novella-length work (and the rather awesome Brian Keene must operate in his own personal parallel universe where publishers worship at the altar of the undead, because it seems especially hard to sell a zombie related work) - too long for most short fiction venues and too short for regular book publishers.  Well, howdy do, I only received an email this morning to confirm my strange little zombie novella has been accepted for publication in Twisted Tongue Magazine.  I was just as excited to be included in the magazine itself as I was to have finally blagged The Undead Alliance into print.  Twisted Tongue is a humungous horror fiction magazine, and you can download it as a free PDF.  I’ve been a fan for ages, and now I get to see my name among all the others on the (very long) list of contents.  Giggity giggity, oh yeah!

So today, I do like Mondays.  Cool.

The Second Novel has a name!  The Second Novel has characters!  The Second Novel even has a plot!  I must be serious about this writing stuff because it took me over a year to get my ideas together for the last book.  In the end, I cut virtually everything but the setting and just started again.  But, this time around I’ve been much more organised.  The plot isn’t a blow by blow, chapter by chapter account because that would be far too restrictive.  There’s a beginning, a middle and an end; and that’s good enough for me.  So… I’ve been doing some calculations.  I can write (give or take) 1000 words in an hour.  Therefore, if I write solidly for two hours a day, I will have completed a 124, 000 word manuscript in two months.  Easy?  Or mad?  Only time will tell!  It would be cool to have one completed novel flying around various agents’ desks and another in the editing phase.  Let the madness commence…

Speaking of agents… Dunraven Road is up to three rejections and counting.  I’m not upset, being snapped up by the first agent you query would be like winning the lottery.  The UK lottery and the European version on the same night.  I also know that vampire novels are numerous and multiplying by the day, which will either make it a hard sell or an easy one depending on your point of view.  Or it could just be a shit novel (quiet, you negative voices!)  I’m sick of being negative, anyway.  I’m just going to keep writing and see what the universe chucks at me.

If any young writers out there need some encouragement, check out Jessica Burkhart’s Website.  She’s recently secured a four-book deal with Simon & Schuster for a series of young adult novels, and she’s only 21!  Am I jealous?  Nah…

Well, maybe a little. 

It feels like ages since I posted anything. Well, I suppose technically it has been ages… Any hoo, I’ve begun submitting my synopsis and shiny opening chapters to agents, which is both exciting and terrifying. Acceptance means I’m shuffling further up the path towards my dream of writing full-time and having real, live people read my work (excluding my mum, of course!) Rejection means I might well be on to a loser, my work sucks and I should have filled out the application for the McDonalds graduate training programme. I can fully understand why so many writers whittle away at their craft for years, only to hide everything they produce in a deep, dark drawer… That way, you can never fail. Obviously, you can also never win; and as Delboy says: “He who dares, wins”. I hold deep reverence for the philosophy of Mr Trotter (from the legendary TV show, Only Fools and Horses, for anyone outside the UK), so thus, I keep taking my efforts out of the deep, dark drawer, brushing them off and sending them out into the world.

I’m also happy to report that the foundations for novel number two, as yet untitled (it’s actually novel number three, but the first one really is staying in a deep, dark drawer… Or at least in a well hidden folder on my USB stick), are firming up nicely. I wanted to create an actual world for this one, dark and rich and full of hidden facets. That’s the idea, anyway I came across something called a Basic World Building Worksheet at The Scriptorium which I’m going to use to set down ground rules for my world. The worksheet’s great because it covers things you might never think of that could create eye-watering plot holes further down the line, such as the ratios of different races and major geographical features. You can print it out or do what I did and paste into Word (I hate hand-writing anything these days… Is that a major character flaw on my part?!)

Now I just have to think of some awesome, completely non-boring names… Which is something I’m very bad at. The novel is set in a grand, all-emcompassing city where the poverty stricken are forced to live underground. That needs a name. My cast of characters are beginning to take shape. They all need names. The only name I’ve decided upon is the name of one of two conflicting religions… So basically, I’m giving myself a major headache over this. I think I’ll have to resort to my tried and tested trick of scouring baby name websites. Any one else have this annoying blockage when it comes to naming your own creations?

I think I may have finished the synopsis for my novel (deep intake of breath…) It was every bit as horrible as every writer says it is. How, after all, can you possibly relay the intricacies of your masterpiece, the motivations of your characters and your flawless, hole-free plot on two pages of A4? It’s enough to send you prematurely grey (incidentally, my family found FIVE pure white hairs on my 25 year-old head recently… That’s not normal, is it?!) But it’s done. Now I just have to write the agent/begging letter and polish the first three chapters until they’re shinier than tin foil.

I’m not happy though. I had so many things planned for when I finished my first draft. I was going to follow Stephen King’s advice and put the novel away before revising (because I always listen to Mr King, my copy of On Writing is so well thumbed, it’s yellow. It also falls open exactly to the page where he tells Tabitha King how much Carrie sold for and she starts to cry… Love that bit!)  After burying the novel and pretending it no longer existed, I wanted to write a short story I’ve been thinking about for a long time and maybe start planning the next novel, which I think is going to be a dark fairytale set in a labyrinthine city (yes, I know we’ve all heard that old chestnut before, but the muse wants what she wants). The thing is, none of these grand plans materialised.

I don’t really know what happened. One moment I was full of excitement, eagerly imagining my dream future as a full-time writer, which is so important for lil’ unknowns like me… The next I was staring at the abyss, wondering where the hell my mojo had gone. I’ve written barely anything since I finished my first draft, and I know Mr King would be ashamed of me. Maybe my muse just wanted a holiday after I forced her to work like a Trojan to finish the book? Who knows…. What I do know is that the muse won’t often arrive willingly. My muse, in particular, is a rude, churlish woman, prone to frequent swear words and large bottles of vodka. I have to poke her with a very pointy stick before she agrees to come out and play. Which means I should get off my behind, get those three chapters ready to send to prospective agents and write that short story.

Here’s a brief side note and probably (?) little-known fact - J.K Rowling’s agent doesn’t accept genre fiction. What’s that all about?! I’m guessing they received a deluge of the stuff after the success of Harry Potter and now they can’t bare to look at another word of it. That’s my piece of wanton speculation for the day, any way

One more side note! - I don’t know why, but every writer seems to have a cat. Which I find harshly unfair seeing as I’ve always wanted a kitty of my very own but live in a first floor flat above a shop (hence, no way can a cat live here). So for now, I’m making do with this cute picture (I wan’ ‘im, I wan’ ‘im!!)

BBC Four have just shown the last part of a series called Worlds of Fantasy, which followed the rise of fantasy as a popular literary genre. It started with Victorian childrens’ writers such as Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie, chronicled the cult of Tolkien and his rise to near god-like status in the sixties (a state of affairs, apparently, that appalled him); and finished with the notable writers of modern times, including Terry Pratchett and China Mieville (who I still haven’t read… so many books, so little time, sigh). As a life long fantasy fan, this series was for me what a doughnut is for Homer Simpson (I didn’t do that drooling thing, “Mmm… Doughnut”, but I certainly felt like doing it).

What I particulary loved was the little insights into the writers’ minds. What compelled them to invent fantastic creatures and awesome landscapes, often during periods when everyone else was writing middle-class, kitchen sink dramas? It also reminded me how much I adore Terry Pratchett, god love ‘im. A real British institution, the man should have his own statue in Trafalgar Square. He was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which is a ridulously tragic disease for a man with his imagination.

I’ve abstained from picking up a Discworld novel for far too long. When I was in my pre/early teens, Pratchett was my favourite author. I read as many Discworld books as I could get my grubby little hands on. I even had the map of Ankh Morpork pinned to my bedroom wall and cherished the signed copy of Johnny and the Dead I won in a competition (using a photograph of an unfortunate pen pal because I was too wussy to have my own mug displayed in a national paper… but that’s another story). The thing was, I always knew the Discworld stories were supposed to be humourous, but I was too young to get the joke. I loved them because the characters rocked and the plots were engrossing (plus I had a crush on Death, oh dear), but they never made me laugh. Since watching Worlds of Fantasy and finally understanding what that line in The Colour of Magic about Rincewind’s enduring hetrosexuality meant, I suddenly have the burning need to read them all again. Thank you BBC!

I would have posted a neat little clip from YouTube, but for some reason the BBC won’t let you embed their videos (and I’m a license payer, dammit!), so you’ll have to make do with this text link. You can still see the entire last episode on the BBC’s iPlayer site, although it’s only up until Wednesday 19 March so you’ll have to be quick. You’ll also have to be patient. I missed this episode and watched it online, braving the terribly slow rate of download and frequent pauses while it caught up with itself. I would say that rather than making the unmissable, unmissable, the BBC have made it unwatchable. But that would just be callous

The first draft is back from my mum, my official editor/proof reader/unpaid cheerleader; and perhaps worryingly for a horror/fantasy novel, some of it made her laugh. It really is amazing how many glaringly embarrassing phrases you can shoehorn into a manuscript without ever noticing (can’t see the wood for the trees and all that). My mum gives great constructive criticism, but if something strikes her as hilarious, there’s no reigning her in (which is good, incidentally, because then I can laugh at my mistakes too… often until my mascara runs down my face and my throat hurts). So, because a good laugh can add five minutes to your life, here are some of my best crappy phrases:-

“He shook himself and sat beside Sapphire, reaching for his own vodka.”
– Apparently, my mum stopped when she read this and turned to my sister: “Do you shake before sitting down?” You can already guess the answer was no.

Arm crossing.
– The outwardly innocent act of having my characters cross their arms when they faced other people or leant against door frames garnered much red pen. “Why do they keep crossing their arms?” my mum wondered… and so did I once I realised how often it actually happened.

“An uncomfortable silence bloomed between them, only broken when Dylan frowned and crossed his arms.”
– More arm crossing! Plus, in my mum’s words: “How did Dylan break the silence? He hasn’t said anything yet.” Doh!

“Zach refused to shake the man’s hand. He looked down at it and wrinkled his nose slightly, as if he was looking at something that shouldn’t be borne amongst polite company.”
– The wrinkled nose came under the same category as arm crossing – Over Used and Unnecessary. The rest just prompted much hilarity. “…Something that shouldn’t be borne amongst polite company” – What was I thinking?! Truly tragic…

“It was the smell of raw offal, of bad prawns and rancid, sweaty cheese.”
– God damn. Sweaty cheese?!

“Her eyes slid across the floor to the wall…”
– Next to this my mum wrote: “I hope she put them back in again.” Oh, and there was more than one incident of incredible sliding eyes. Sigh.

That was probably the funniest one. I seem to have an ongoing fascination with eyes. My characters’ eyes are luminescent or hooded, or they stare crazily or wildly… all the time. Yes, very lame.

Thank the lord for editors/proof readers/unpaid cheerleaders.

A little aside concerning my last blog post :-
I’ve considered what I wrote and now realise that calling the ability to do what you love while getting paid for it a “modest” want is more than a little ridiculous. Being able to do what you love for a wage is a privilege enjoyed by very few - movie stars, big name musicians and professional sportsmen and women among them; and breaking into any of those careers is hardly easy, nor is the dream of doing so a “modest” one. Dammit.

I was trying to articulate my wish to simply afford boring life stuff like bills and food and takeaway pizza on a Saturday night by writing, which certainly is modest when compared to the huge fortunes amassed by the J K Rowlings and Stephen Kings of this world. Maybe I didn’t do this very well. Maybe I blogged about whiny pussys who love to wet-blanket all over writers’ dreams and ended up sounding like a whiny pussy myself. But I really was having a bad day. Could you tell?

Then again, who the hell cares anyway, right? I’m just screaming into the virtual wind (which smells a little like raw offal, bad prawns and rancid, sweaty cheese… but only a little).

Why do so many successful writers spend inordinate amounts of time lecturing on the pitfalls and perils of their craft?  I can appreciate they don’t want to raise young writers’ hopes, they want to let them know there’s a world of failure out there and that in order to succeed you have to persevere and develop a thick skin.  That’s all fine.  But when you hear things like this over and over (below), you honestly come close to jacking the whole thing in, burning/deleting everything you ever wrote and settling down in whatever day job will have you, miserable, down-trodden and completely lacking in any inspiration or hopes for the future until the merciful day that you die:-

1. Most writers never make any money/give up the day job/move out of their parents shed.

2. Even if you sell your first novel, the chances are it won’t sell very well and you’ll never have a second published.

3. Writing is a miserable, dark slog of a profession, conducted in poorly lit, claustrophobic back rooms where you never interact with anyone, lose all semblance of a social life and forget what colour the grass or the sky is.

4. Your spouse will leave you.

5. Your spouse will have to support you (writers never make any money, remember?); and then your spouse will leave you.

I know there’s more I could add to this list. Every piece I’ve seen written on this topic (of how terrible/hazardous/crappy writing is) seems to run along the same lines and contain the exact same, soul crushing, whiny old toss.

What’s wrong with having a god damn dream, people?!

I don’t want to hear your tales of woe, I want to hang on to my image of my perfect future.  A future in which I’m able to write/work from home, afford a family and raise them myself, rather than having my parents do it while I sit behind a desk somewhere ticking off the minutes until five o’ clock and wondering where the hell my youth went.

For the record, this doesn’t mean I’m a writer just because I want to earn mega-money.  Far from it.  I’ve written stories since I first learnt to write and before that I made them up in my head.  Writing is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, the only thing that fills me with ambition and purpose.  I get excited about my characters and the worlds I create.  That doesn’t mean I don’t want to get paid for doing it though, because I live in the real world; and the real world usually sucks bigger balls than a lady rhino in mating season.

Selling as many novels as Stephen King or Dean Koontz or Anne Rice would be phenomenal, I won’t lie.  But I ask the universe for very modest things. I want to do what I love and pay the bills.

So, whiny successful writers of the internet (you know who the hell you are), if that’s my modest dream and you strive to take even that away from me… I wonder if you’re just chomping on sour grapes because you’re not mega names like Stephen King or Dean Koontz or Anne Rice.

Just a thought.

I finished the novel a day later than I’d anticipated; and today I feel like crap and have to maintain the delicate illusion of wide-eyed enthusiasm while negotiating my work day because I laid the last sentence down at 1am and then couldn’t sleep…. but the deed is done, the first draft of Dunraven Road is complete!  Phew.

The reason I couldn’t sleep was because I was already worrying it wasn’t good enough.  Had I used the passive voice too much?  Did my characters’ motivations make sense?  Was this THE ONE?  Can I give up the day job soon and be a full-time writer??!  Then I remembered I had to get up in five hours, told myself to stop worrying because this was only the first draft, panic and sweaty palpitations should be reserved for the edit; and forced myself to sleep.  Ah, the bitter sweet miseries of a would-be author.

I was actually really happy with several scenes that occurred spontaneously, away from my outline (because they’re always the best kind of scenes).  I also loved the way my protagonist changed and stepped up to be a hero… Maybe there’s reason for hope after all!

I’m going to write a little epilogue, a swift glimpse into the future to show how my protagonists fared after the events of the novel; but that’s about it.  Then it’s off to my mum for approval and lots of red pen.  She always gets to see my finished writing first because she’s brutally honest and won’t put up with any overly descriptive, self indulgent crap (which I’m far too fond of).  This basically makes her a godsend and me a very grateful daughter

Incidentally, my mum’s been writing for years and has never been published, but she received an email today that made her scream down the phone at me (disturbing for the first few seconds until I could work out what she was saying).  Apparently, someone at a well known online magazine loved a story she submitted and will be recommending it to his editor, even though it’s not the sort of thing they usually publish.  Yay mum!  Now we just have to wait and see if the editor likes it…

Please can I sleep now?

So…as the title implies…hello world :)  This is my first ever blog post so I’m a bit unsure how to start.  My sister convinced me to try this; and seeing as she has many skills and knows about these type of things I listened to her and signed up with WordPress.  Maybe I should start at the beginning…

I’m a horror and fantasy writer living in the UK.  I’ve had some success with short stories in the last year and have been published by Hungur Magazine and Night to Dawn.  Which is great!  I was so excited when I sold my first short to Hungur I screamed and ran around the room until I felt sick, then I phoned my parents and texted everyone I knew, or had ever known, or was possibly going to know in the future.  All this while my bemused husband looked on, wondering if I’d really lost it this time.  I knew he didn’t understand the enormity of the situation because he was the one who read the acceptance email and his exact words (in a very bored sounding voice) were, “Yeah, you sold a story by the way”, as if it was an every day occurance.  Anyway, that was in May 2007 and since then I’ve sold three more stories, which involved more jumping and screaming…but any excuse, right?

So what should any self-respecting wannabe bestselling author set her sights on next…a novel of course!  A novel about addiction and dangerous love and vampires and dark cults and lots and lots of blood…usually at the end of a razor blade because that’s the best kind (or so I’ve been told).  I’ve actually been writing this novel for about two years, whittling away at it between day jobs… and this weekend I’m actually planning to finish it…whoo and indeed hoo!

So I suppose it might be an interesting time for me to start a blog.  That’s if you’re interested in hearing about re-writes, queries, tears and all the rest.  Maybe I’ll eventually blog about my ultimate failure and the sad day when I discard this novel and plough on with the next one…but how depressing it that?!

But for now, I’m 99% finished with the first draft and it’s all big dreams and imaginary interviews from here on in.