Only a handful stories to tell

A friend of mine emailed me to tell me she wasn't interested in reading "Scorpion".

(No, that's everybody's right - while I hope that people take chances on my writing, I understand those that rate a book badly because it's a menage and they hate menages, or people who don't buy books that deal with certain elements... writing romance, and especially selling romance, we make erotic fantasies. If it fails to turn on, it's not worth it for a huge amount of readers. People have a certain amount of things that gets them going - so they look for that. And ignore the stuff that doesn't... that's the deal with erotic romance. Like porn, people look for something specific and can't, usually, be brought round.... "look, you really want to try $kink" - no, they don't.).

So on the bus, I spent some time thinking about what it is that turns her off with "Scorpion". I analysed its deep structure. The underlying story. I wrote this by the seat of my pants, so I can only do the literary analysis now. I tend to discover the mythological structure (the "mythos") behind it much, much later. I'm not aware of it while I do this... I'm not sure I *want* to be aware of the structure, either. To re-create a myth, you have to firmly, deeply, passionately believe in it. Magic happens when you believe. I believe with my emotions and not my frontal lobes.

And I had this "oh wow" moment when I finally understood what the story is that I'm telling. Over the last two years, I've written a lot of stories that are about a younger/more immature guy maturing and proving himself "worthy" of an older, charismatic, even, in certain ways super-human man. Young alpha learns how to howl with the big guys. Young man becomes worthy of his idol.

It's in "Lion of Kent", "Return on Investment", "Blood Run Cold" (where the super-human is a vampire and the younger guy's a psychopath and craving to be a vampire, too), and, yeah, Scorpion. Usually, the moment of high drama is when the young alpha saves the older alpha's neck (William stops the murderer, Martin stops the rapist, Frederik is willing to lay down his life, Kendras frees Adrastes).

It's the same story. Sometimes told as a romance, sometimes told as a coming-of-age story, sometimes both in varying quantities.

This is one of my personal myths, one of the stories I carry in my bones, my creative DNA (and I'm pretty sure it's the most positive way for me to deal with the father issues I have. Fuck you, Freud).

The other story is that of the man reclaiming his humanity and independence. Usually, he's a deformed person with strong inner convictions that may or may not be good for him, and things that happen to him either break him or develop him out of an unbearable situation. Vadim in "Special Forces", the eagle shaman, and the spetsnaz in the sci-fi novel. It can even be applied to Thierry in "Test of Faith", Andrei in "Clean Slate"... and probably a number more.

Those are the two stories I'm telling. That's it. Fascinating stuff.

Kill your ego

I'm very nearly done with this place. 3.5 working days left to go. I'm cleaning out my desk, my bookmarks, my inbox, and everything else. Whoever's going to work on this computer, I'll give them the cleanest start possible. They'll need every help they can get with Sock Boy just two desks down. Pretty sure they'll wipe stuff, anyway, but I can make things easy on them.

My level of skintness is actually almost comical. I haven't been counting pennies like that since late 2007, when I started at this company and was missing 2 weeks pay, went to a trade fair in Germany and ended up with a negative zero on my account. Now, I'm going to Turkey for a week (which is thankfully cheap to live at, and I intend to hole up with a manuscript and my e-reader and a book on risk instruments), and I'll have to keep a tight budget, so no Turkish rug for the study.

I was looking forward to getting one for months, but I've done the numbers, but there's no way I can do it, even if I'm not overpaying this time (the rug in the study was more expensive than it strictly had to be, but I still think it's worth every penny. Which is my way of saying "I don't mind having been ripped off by the carpet dealer"). It's a bummer, definitely. The study really needs a rug, it's too damn barren at the moment, and the room *echoes*, which is distracting. It might get better with a few book shelves, but right now, I'm glad I'm facing the window to the garden since behind me is just desolation. Nice, white-walled, hardwood-floored desolation, but the impression remains.

Other things are more important. I need a chest of drawers and a smallish wardrobe (I mean, all we really own is work clothes, so we need a place for hanging some suits and shirts, some leisure clothes - in my case, that's two pairs of jeans and a pile of t-shirts, and then workout clothes - and that's it). Rug is decoration, and hence not strictly necessary. Will also have to find somebody to frame the prints we got in Singapore (pair of carps and a dragon), but that's also pretty secondary at the moment.

I spent yesterday watching Paraguay and Italy and digging around the house for my passport, doing some financial paperwork, and then doing some errata as the errata monkey for a publisher. One story I read made me throw up in my mouth a little. There are some writers I want to hit with their keyboard a lot and then lock the keyboard away, forever. No language should suffer such abuse. Thankfully, I managed to not send them an email offering them a "Style/Creative Writing 101 Course" - the fact they were rhythm-deaf and most likely mildly dyslectic didn't help (I'm not dissing dyslectics, I have several friends who are, and I beta for them, so I recognise the patterns). I've long since learnt to only offer help with writing when I'm being asked for it. It's too much work and offends too many people ("What? You mean I CANNOT WRITE? YOU BASTARD!") for no reward at all. At 35, I've finally learnt that. I've been called an "arrogant asshole" too often, I don't have to go out of my way to get more of those.

This morning, on the train, I had two or three strong scenes from "Iron Cross", both towards the end. The muse is flagging towards the middle, but the ending is fully there, with Dolby Surround, 3D and kick-ass special effects (okay, there are only a few scenes that *need* special effects, but hey). This is the manuscript I'm taking to Turkey, most likely.

Got feedback on ROI which did a cracking job of confirming my deepest fears and insecurities about the text, so I'm kicking that one to the bottom of the "to edit" pile and forget about it for at least another 6-12 months until I've finally found a solution for all its issues and focus on the easy victories in the meantime.

Chances are, I won't have the concentration or focus for it once I've started the new job, which will demand 150% of my brain and that leaves only 10% for writing. Perfect time to edit and fix minor issues, bad timing for reworking a book like ROI. I think maybe the voice is all wrong, so I'll look into that. It may turn into first person, too, and end up more disjointed and "literary" than it's now. Or I go the totally different way and just got out the finance stuff and move it more towards "office romance". I don't know. I might have to do both to see if either of those works. But at 140k, it's a huge project and might need another year until I can tackle it. Growing with your challenges, again, I guess. I'm not sure if the flaws a fatal, I just know I'm not telling the story right. That itches and irritates, but well, that's the life of the writer.

Or as I keep telling newbies and not-so-newbies who can deal with the truth (some are too fragile and can't deal with it, which is fine) - nobody gives a fuck about your ego. Time I put that on the wall and look at it a lot. My ego doesn't matter. I just have to tell the bleeding story, whatever the cost.

Back to the drawing board.

Post interview comedown

I've been told that crashing feeling of ebbing adrenaline can be called comedown, so that's what I had yesterday evening. Got home, chatted to my partner, was chatting a little with friends about the interview/job/magazine, and suddenly my energy level just went through the floor.

That's five days of stress crashing all at the same time. Woah. I went to bed, had 9 hrs of badly-needed sleep, and awoke, feeling much saner.

To recap yesterday, I went to the second interview and rocked it for about 90 minutes. I just had fun, really. The Publisher dude said "just in case if you don't get this, please keep applying for jobs here, because you're a perfect fit for the company as an editor", and if I shouldn't get that job, I'll give him a call and ask him for leads. It's a great company which offers really good opportunities. And the commute would be much faster, too. :)

So apparently I'm up against two others, one of whom seems to be weaker than me and the other person. It's a close race. Depending on the interview with the other person, they might offer at the beginning of next week, or they might do a third round of interviews, or, as they said "make you jump through another hoop". But they also kept asking about my notice period and "who will replace me." A good answer there: "I think they'll struggle."

I kinda want them to struggle. After the way they've demoralised, dismantled and plain abused my team, I want my old employer to struggle with replacing me. I want them to look at the mess they created with a feeling of "oh shit." Not that I seriously believe they'll learn from it, but at the very least, I want them to look at their utter failure and that they made thing worse, not better.

Call me vengeful, but after 4 months of this shit, I've had it.

So, after rocking that interview, I had to return to work, but I also had a sudden urge to get ice cream, so I got off at Leicester Square and went into the local Haagen Dasz shop. Then I realised that if I stroll into the office munching ice-cream, while my team holds the fort and does my work, too, I'd get likely crucified, so I bagged seven cups instead of one and went to the office, handing them out to the editorial team (leaving out research and sales - I have enemies there, and I'm not spending £40 instead of £20 on a whim... I'm not making that kinda money. Also didn't want to feed the fat bastard from research who backstabbed me by telling my boss about a "negative" remark I've made AFTER HOURS).

So, munching icecream, I checked my email and saw a contract offer for "First Blood" from Dreamspinner. I'll sign the contract and shoot it over to Barbara today or tomorrow. It'll likely be published in the third quarter of 2010, both print and ebook.

In other positive news - I did the line edits of "Lion of Kent" and now waiting for Kate to approve a name change.

Writing, job hunt, and house move are all on track. If I get the job, the writing may suffer a little, but I don't think so, but it'll be a *lot* easier paying off that house. It'll mean, in effect, that I can almost double my mortgage repayments. Every buck I make more than what I make now is disposable income, and I'd love a tight schedule to improve the house, insulate the roof, get fitted wardrobe and study furniture, the lot.

So. Whew. Much going on. I hope to be back to writing today. I'll also have to prepare my financial thriller for submission to a publisher, but I might do that next week rather than this weekend.