Book 3 - still being written

[hgladney]

I mentioned chipping brush piles was going take longer than I thought?
Sigh.
Yep, some of the piles are still there.
I haven't had time to do much on the fiction front for awhile now.
Real Life was busy throwing in including trips along Highway 1 and work conventions and tests for promotion (still waiting to hear) and one friend of mine says she feels guilty now for helping me get back to work in the first place.
I'm not sorry she did--health care costs being what they are--but I would like to get back to a more leisurely pace.
This may not happen, as more friends of friends are scheduled to come pouring through here this summer, but we will see.
Ont he positive front, I have a link to lots of great writing resources, a link to website by Storm Grant, gakked from her post on live journal.

http://www.stormgrant.com/storm_work/no ... _calls.htm

[clong]

Thanks for the update, Heather. I hope you can find more time soon to get some serious work done on the further adventures of Naga Teot.

[hgladney]

I appreciate the good wishes, and I hope so too!
I do have some great stuff that I put together a few weeks ago, I just need to get back to it.
How's things going in your neck of the woods?

[clong]

Things are fine with me, Heather, although I haven't been doing much writing recently. I'll look forward to seeing what you've come up with for Naga, when the time comes.

[hgladney]

I'm trying to remember there's a swamp to deal with, not just the next alligator. I won't even claim I've got good at alligator-wrestling, I'm just better than I used to be.

===

Rex Stout makes my brain fizz in some interesting ways. For some reason I got frustrated enough to hit Half.com for a stack of very cheap paperback Nero Wolfe mysteries that I haven't had time to read yet.
(They lurk, waiting to pounce.) I hesitate to start gulping Stout like popcorn, in some fear of my own writing sounding like a bad copy of a tacky film noir script.

On the other paw, the reading might only improve it. I find Stout is terse and economical in all kinds of places I might have taken too long to get to the point.

===

I made another trip this summer, driving up Highway One from LA to cut inland about Gilroy--this got way too many snapshots, just like the ones last year. I've posted some more of last years' pix up on Flickr, but there's still many more to go.

I guess I'm using Flickr like an offsite archive of all those reams of travel pix, as well as flower pix. Sagebrush and rock textures, anybody?

===

I've also been learning how to use Photobucket for other sorts of themed pix. I've picked up a strange new hobby from friends of mine who are also into sf & f. A lot of the ball-jointed doll fanciers create figures right out of fantasy illos, so it's not just about the Shirley Temple wigs any more.

This one, for instance, could be about a lot of different stories.
Frtiz Leiber, perhaps? Scroll down slightly to see the graphic.

http://harlowkitty.livejournal.com/104198.html

The doll's name is Feyd Asher, which evokes all kinds of echoes for me.

Oh yes, it's yet another sucking bog of a hobby that can eat your whole life if you have any obsessive-compulsive traits and a willingness to infect others with it. I'm still moaning to everybody that I've just picked up a new fandom. Think of it like a new cold virus, but longer-lived.

Yes, this is good news, because it reflects interesting shiny new lights on ideas for the Teot manuscript.

===

I'm still in Toastmasters, in a lunch-time club that's incredibly informal because a lot of our folks travel at short notice. Let me clarify that it isn't about delivering speeches, you're writing them yourself. You plan it to stay within the time. As you can probably tell, this is a useful discipline for me... I bring that up to mention something that I quoted there.

"Your job, as a writer, is to create a context in which *other* people can think."

In actual writing technique stuff, my family found this amusing bit of writing commentary for me, as I haven't been keeping up on Laurie King's Mutterings of late. Her writing always makes my brain fizz like a sparkler, in completely different ways from Stout.

I think she feels even more strongly about copy-editing than I do, possibly because she's had to deal with far more of it. Yes, that feeling of dread she mentions?

Be afraid.

http://www.laurierking.com//wp.php

She also has a delightful grandma's attic of essays.
I just spent some time knocking my brain against the one on religion in writing mysteries. She always sets my brain fizzing, but I'm also finding it difficult to paraphrase her. The attic awaits you here.

http://www.laurierking.com/mutterings.php

[bob k. mando]

still?

[hgladney]

I assume that was the question?
Many people think it's just like a class, and a few months are sufficient.
I find members' growth and development is an interesting part of it.
On the writing front, of course it's much more, "yep, still slogging."
Life's tough and then you get back to what you really wanted to do.
Or as some of the Zen folks would say, "Having no body, where is the sorrow?"

[tollbaby]

Heather, I find I have to take Stout in small doses, otherwise I simply can't enjoy the other mysteries I like to read (J.A. Jance, Faye Kellerman, Sue Grafton, Sharyn McCrumb, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Agatha Christie... wow, all women.. okay, and Jonathan Kellerman and Ian Rankin). Simply because Stout is at once noir, gumshoe and intellectual, it tends to overwhelm the senses a bit and makes the more sensational suspense stories seem garish by comparison. It's funny, but I've never considered my choices of reading materials as influencing my writing... maybe I'd best watch out for that.

clong, I don't know if you ever wrote more of the six chapters you had written of that sci-fi story you had started last year, but it was excellent and I've been dying to find out what happens next ever since! You did mention you wanted to revise significantly I hope it's still alive?

[hgladney]

I found that the things I was reading and the music I was listening to were all tied together with what I was writing, and if I was setting myself in the wrong mood, I wouldn't get it right. That's what happens when I'm listening to the radio and something begins to annoy me, for instance, or when I've been reading too many trivial popcorn mysteries that hit me all wrong.
RE: Stout, he's not always the right thing for me, but he's really good at packing a lot into a small space. It's surprising, because you think Archie is being chatty, but it's actually very spare. I found when I worked on a bit of Wolfian fanfic, I began to learn how terse Rex Stout really is. (I regard that as much like copying a masterly painting in an art gallery as a student, with the intent of learning how. Generally you learn how much more you have to learn...)

[bob k. mando]

still?

I assume that was the question?
Many people think it's just like a class, and a few months are sufficient.

actually my question was "On Topic". ie - "Book 3 - still being written"?

[hgladney]

Hi Bob!
Yes, Book 3 is still being written. I hope that insights into Rex Stout will improve my skills, but of course it drives me crazy while I try to do it!

[clong]

How about an update, Heather?

[sl33py]

Hello Heather and everyone else!

I've read them all, as they came out... I check in every few years (typically at the book store) and see if book 3 is ready yet.

found this forum, so thought i'd check directly with the source!

So what's the latest? Any ETA to satisfying your long and patiently suffering fans?

thank you for the story so far. One of my absolute favorites.

Rob