Writing vs Everything Else

When does writing take over and everything else fall by the wayside?

My Latest Bout of Creativity-Induced Hermitobia*

For me, it happens when I am utterly inspired by my writing. The latest bout of intense creativity began around mid-October, and lasted until this very week when I finished the second draft of my latest novel.

For the past three months, I've done little to no online socializing or blog posting. In fact, I feel as if I am coming up out of a deep well. This well is perpetually replenished by a font of creativity, but it also blocks my view of the outer world unless I peer straight up at the sky.

Wow! What a pretty place I've been stuck inside!
Well by Sally.
Licensed under CC by 2.0.

Emerging From the Well

So what does it feel like to emerge from this well?

Well, life has gone on up above me, and I have to catch up. Did I know the primaries were beginning? No. Did I keep up with other writers, bloggers, artists and photographers I normally follow? Other than a few exceptions, no. Did I even read many books during the past three months? No!

However, I emerged, soaked from well-water, with a second draft of my newest novel (thankfully I have a waterproof laptop... all right, enough with this metaphor!). So my sojourn was worth it and more. I feel contented, and pleased, and ready to take on some new challenges while my beta readers have at it.

What does the future hold? I'll be working on my next novel, while at the same time doing a lot of interior painting and redecorating, hiking more, and gearing up for springtime.

Springtime Brings Yet Another Chance to Create

Springtime flowers already bloom in the desert of Arizona,
where we are staying now.

I feel like saying how I always greet the morning, "Hello, world!" And I'll add, "It's nice to be back among the real world for a while, until I hop back inside my deep well!"

*Hermitobia: Hermit-like behavior periodically exhibited by a person so intent upon her or his chosen task that the rest of the world falls by the wayside.

The Quays of Lac-Carge: Steampunk and Gaslamp Intersect

How Can One Explain a Novel? I'm Not Sure One Can!

My latest opus, in all its glory!

How To Pigeonhole Classify Quays

I wrote Quays 5 years ago. It was when Steampunk and Gaslamp fantasy (the two genres which I waffle between classifying it as... Steampunk usually wins out) were much more fringe than they are now.

It was also when self-publishing was not as common as it is now.

Thematic Veins Running Through the Narrative

Commonalities

This novel features themes and tropes common to other pieces of my fiction: parents missing or dead; a childless main character; a personal goal or vendetta intersecting with a grand, world-shattering event; a totem or animal choosing the main character, and a sense that things don't always progress linearly in life.

Differences

A Male Main Character

Quays has differences, though. It is the only one of my novels with a male main character. I don't know why I wanted to write about him, but I just did. I felt like this character was male. In other words, there wasn't anything I could do about it after he first strolled into my head.

Science Fiction? Fantasy? Why Not Both!

Also, there is an intersection of science fiction and fantasy. My other works fall more into one side or the other. That is just how it came about. To be strict Steampunk, I believe many readers would say that a piece of fiction should not contain any fantasy. However, I have never been much for following rules (especially in my fiction), and so the novel contains elements of both genres.

Winter: A Character Unto Itself

A third thing that this novel contains is winter. It's a winter that has nothing to do with spells or evil Winter Witches, but it adds a plot element that becomes almost a character unto itself. Winter, for anyone that has lived in a cold climate, certainly can be just as deadly as a mortal enemy.

Compressed Timeframe

A fourth thing is that the novel takes place in just a few weeks, aside from the epilogue. My other novels tend to have much more of a grand sweep. The passage of time takes the place of winter in these other novels, again, until time itself becomes another character.

Humor and Light

Given the constraint of genre and time, plus the added stranglehold of bitter cold, Quays is filled with moments of true friendship, adventure, delight, beauty and love. It also has humor, a time or two almost as much as I could stand to give it without turning a scene into a farce. The dark, despairing, disgusting and desperate parts of this novel cried out for laughter to balance them out.

A Denouement and a Treatise on Friendship

I love Quays. Of course I would love it, I hope, having written it and published it.... And yet I can attest that some of the moments in this novel feature the kindest hearts and truest friendships I have ever written about. The main characters would die for each other, but would of course all much rather go on living together instead. This great-heartedness is a central point of the novel, and the characters' friendships go beyond family or master-servant, or even that of lovers, or any other easily classified relationship.

When a character saves the life of the person who has wronged him almost to death... well, that is the epitome of great-heartedness.

My New Novel: The Quays of Lac-Carge

My new novel is now available!

I'm thrilled with the cover. It conveys the feeling of the world I've built;
a gaslamp/steampunk era where magic still lives.

Lac-Carge is the capital of a nation on the brink of a new age. Gaslamps light the city streets, and sandusk pellets propel motorboats and the fledgeling balloon industry. Yet underneath this shiny new technology, magic still lives.

This is a world where Alexander was born into privilege and great wealth, only to have it stripped away by an insatiable queen. Four years later, he's conspiring with the quay workers at Lac-Carge's busy shipping port. Their goal? To wrest control of the quays back from the queen.

Yet no one realizes the depths to which the queen will sink. Not only is she intent upon keeping the property she stole from Alexander, she is also scheming against her own daughter, the heir to the throne.

Enter Alexander's old flame, now a daring aviatrix; and his boyhood schoolmate, a receded thaumaturge whose powers may not have receded as much as he claims. Together, they must save Lac-Carge and its princess from the queen's army of walking dead.

Join Alexander, Chloe and Hugh as they battle against everything the queen and her thaumaturgical allies can muster.

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Happenings

What's happening in my life

A new novel

I'm putting a few final flourishes on a new novel, to be published next week! It's a steampunk/gaslamp fantasy, entitled The Quays of Lac-Carge. More details to come soon.

Travel: My Inspiration

We're getting ready to go to Yosemite for about three weeks in October. Despite living in California for several years, I've not been to Yosemite yet. I'm so excited to see what other people rave about. I'm an avid hiker, although I definitely feel content to stand on terra firma to watch rock climbers ascend sheer cliffs.

This is a scene from one of my favorite hiking trail near Oak Glen, CA.
I hope to be seeing a lot of the russet California autumn colors soon.

Current writing

I'm currently working on two novels at the same time. I've never done this before, but it's really working out. One is a science fiction novel with lots of space travel, and the other is fantasy with an alternate history twist. In general, my writing is split pretty evenly between the two genres. In the past, when writing a fantasy novel I'd usually stop in the middle to write at least one science fiction short story, and vice versa.

Although some people who this happens to may say that they get tired of one genre and have to move to the other, I prefer to think of it as I love both so much that I can't stay away from either one for long.

This time, as I work on two novels at once, I'm finding it so motivating to be able to go from one to the other. As of right now, though, I'm really going strong on the science fiction novel, and if it continues as it's going now I'll finish it before I return to the fantasy novel.