And We Have A Winner!

Looks like we'll be following Frank back to the day his father murdered his mother in 1865. Holy heck. Sure. Send the non-historical writer into the past. Egads. (g)

Can't wait to see how this turns out.... yipes.

Chunk Writing...One Wild Ride

You'll have to excuse this fly-by post. I had a lot on my mind last night and totally forgot today was my turn to blog. (Oops) You'd understand if I told you. Trust me. (g) Anyway -- I thought I would dig up a golden oldie from my own blog, Random Thoughts, to share with you today.

I once tried to answer the question, how does chunk writing work? What's the process like?

Here is the end result:

First posted September 14, 2007. (Holy hell, has it been that long??)

On the forum I belong to, we often share ideas about writing, etc. We talk about our process -- what works/doesn't work for us, etc. Anyway, in order to help out a fairly new writer, I wrote a post that gave the thought process behind my new YA -- trying to give her a brief glimpse at how I work when I begin a new book.

Anyway, being as I worked so hard on it, I figured I'd add it here. (g) Plus, it's fairly representative of how I work. All of this usually happens very quickly -- while in the process of writing, etc. But it shows how my mind starts to connect various chunks--even though I don't know the overall shape of the end story yet. Or, honestly, who the characters are. Hope you find it interesting.

So, without further ado:

The main things I try to remember:
1. Don’t stress over not knowing what happens next. Write what bubbles up and that will, in turn, reveal the next scene.
2. Don’t stress over not knowing every nuance of every character. You can’t truly know who they are until you throw them into a situation and see how they respond.
3. Have fun! Write what you love and don’t try to write like someone else. The great thing about writing is that YOUR individual voice is what will make your book special. Let it develop.

Against all better judgment and time constraints, I started a new YA paranormal this past weekend. Didn’t see it coming whatsoever. All I know is that I was watching a show about hauntings, and all of a sudden I thought it would be a great idea to write a book about ghosts. Random. Unexpected. And wholly unformed in my mind.

For whatever reason, YA felt right to me. And of course, a female MC because I’m still uncomfortable writing in a male POV. So, girl…ghost…high school… EH…nothing else. What’s the story?? *a bit of thinking*

I’m a child of horror movies. I grew up watching them LONG before I should have and spent many sleepless nights reading Stephen King novels. I like scary. So, it’ll be a scary ghost and not just a run of the mill haunting. Nothing where she has to help some poor hapless soul deal with unfinished business so it can move into the light. I want some heart-pounding, hands shaking, scary stuff.

K…girl…scary ghost…high school.

In this program I watched, they showed this girl clutching her young son to her chest as she stands completely frozen, petrified as this mist surrounds her. She’s standing in front of a mirror and can see this man in the reflection, sort of hovering around her, glaring down at her. He’s only in the reflection, but she’s terrified by the sight. It’s not just things going bump in the night, this ghost is terrorizing her.

Ohhhhh… next jump in logic--it follows her no matter how hard she tries to get away. So, she’s moving around a lot, each time hoping it’ll fail to find her… So, what does that do to her family? Gotta be stressful, right? In fact, it might actually break up a marriage if one parent is unable to cope. So, there I have it… she lives alone with her mother, who vows to stick by her daughter. However, she’s getting desperate, so much so that the daughter is worried sick and blaming herself for everything. After all, if the ghost is terrorizing HER, she’d probably think she’s done something to cause the whole thing.

So, guilty daughter, distraught mother, scary stalker ghost, many high schools – always the new girl. Always hoping ‘this time will be different.’

Scene idea bubbles up: They’ve moved again, hoping the “thing” is gone. The fear and anxiety of not knowing what will happen. And then bam…the thing reveals itself again, shattering their hope. I write it and discover that the ghost doesn’t reveal itself in front of the mother. Does she ever see things happen?? Hmmm, not sure on that one yet so I tuck it away to mull over. But in THIS scene, the mother doesn’t know it’s come back. The daughter is going to try and hide it – to alleviate the stress from her mother. But how much can one person bear alone?

I need another character to help her through this. If this has been going on a while, she’s probably confided in others before. So, what happened? Most likely they didn’t believe her… or if they did, were scared off. She’s become very independent and alone during this time, afraid to trust people. What’s the point, right? If she tells them, they’ll think she’s a freak. She’s not going to just blurt it out. This person will have to see something happen and seek HER out.

So who?? Being a romantic, I always have a love interest of some sort. So, a guy….

Scene idea: He confronts her and wants her to confide in him. She’s scared to. In fact, the presence “warns” her not to speak. The guy plays the hero and gets her to confess. But wait, the big strong guy rushing in to save the day is SOO boring. Maybe he’s scared sh*tless, but manages to rein in his fear long enough to stick by her… Oh, I like that. I write the scene. He confronts the ghost and gets it to leave her alone long enough to tell her story so they can “understand” it. The entire time, his hands are shaking, voice trembling, sweating profusely. It’s endearing. (g)

But wait…they haven’t even met yet! LOL. What in the world would that be like? Who is this guy anyway? Being as she’s the epitome of a fractured soul, he should be the antithesis of her. Normal life, good family, lots of friends, outgoing, etc. Not quite the man on campus, but definitely well-liked. What would he think of her? Who is she anyway?

We know she’s hiding this big secret. That’s got to be killer on your nerves…hard to eat or sleep…always on edge. She’s thin, she’s slightly pale…she doesn’t interact with the other students at the school. So why would he like her?? Don’t know yet – tuck that away to think about. But right now, they’ve got to meet.

Right about this time, I’m thinking pure 1st person POV isn’t going to work. For one thing, if I’m going to have anything truly terrifying happen to her, wouldn’t it be better to get the perspective of someone on the outside looking in? Oh yeek, that means I’ll have to jump into his head. Okay, I can do that, but it also means I have to write in third.

Scene idea: He sees her at school and is drawn to her, though he can’t figure out why. There’s something different about her, though, and he wants to meet her. I write part of this scene…not the actual meeting, but just him seeing her across the school quad and taking an interest.

Okay, so that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I have no idea WHO the ghost is. I have no idea how this story will resolve… but as I go forward, one little thing will trigger another idea and everything will begin to come into focus. Not going to stress out about anything at this point. I’ll learn more about the characters as I go… and they’ll tell me the story.

Right now, I have several “kernels” coming to a slow boil. I see a scene where he follows her home. What would her house be like? The activity can be quite destructive, and they’ve been going through this for a long time. You’d think their furniture would be pretty jacked up by now – and instead of replacing items just to have them broken again, they would get to the point where they’re buying second hand. So, rag tag furniture… lots of lights because she’s afraid to be in the dark… no artwork on the walls, no knick knacks. Spartan. Nothing to provide this thing ammunition.

And I need to have him witness something. What? No clue. It will bubble up eventually.

And onward I go…

**

So what's your process like? All I know is that reading this makes me want to pull out this wip again. (g)

Four plots, one story

It's been a bumper week of writing for me this week- the drought has finally broken! In just two days, I cranked out 5150 words of BETWEEN THE LINES, plus precisely 1998 words of A Kill in Time. All up, that's just over 7000 words of writing in a week. That's peak production. That's awesome!

There are a number of factors behind why I've managed to write this week when I've failed to do so for so many weeks of the last two years.

The major one is that, as previously mentioned, I succeeded in fulfilling my number one New Year's resolution very early in the year, and my daughter is now going to bed at a suitable time, in her own bed, and sleeping (mostly) through the night. The haze of exhaustion that has followed me everywhere for the last year is starting to lift, and my brain is actually working again.

Also, as bad as a two year break from the story sounds, it has come with benefits. The biggest of these has been perspective.

When I finished my first draft, I let it sit for about eight long weeks before attempting a revision. I thought that was enough. But I really hadn't been able to stop thinking about it in the meantime, and my perspective hadn't changed at all. I wasn't seeing things with greater clarity or more objectivity. I was just as mired in the middle of my plot problems and twisty character conundrums as I had been to start with.

Two years is a much bigger break than I wanted, but with it has certainly come that objectivity. I've been able to see that some of the things I was clinging to just don't fit in the story. I'm killing my darlings in unprecedented quantities.

My greatest revelation has been about my major plot, and my subplots. BETWEEN THE LINES is a pretty complex story, with four story threads running through it. From the first moment I started writing the story, I knew what was going to happen (linear writer, remember), but I was always trying to organise it as one story in the "present" (WWII) with three subplots in the past. I was going to flash back and forth from the present to the past to tell the whole story- and I'm still going to, but it's the way in which I'm going to write all these scenes that has changed.

This is how BETWEEN THE LINES was originally conceived:

An Australian veteran of WWI travels to Blitz London to seek answers about the disappearance of his son. As he searches, he gets help from his son's fiance and her eccentric sister, and in the process we come to learn about the events of his life that led him to this place and time- his enlistment in WWI, the tragic deaths of his best friend, brother and fiance, his struggle to raise his son as a single father while dealing with post-traumatic stress, and his determination to make things right, just as it might be too late.

When I plotted it out, I sat down with note-cards (a topic for another post). I had the storylines for each subplot written out on those cards, one scene on each. And I would sit down and lay them all out the way they'd appear in the final story. You saw me talking about this not quite a month ago, here, where I gave an example of the way the story jumps back and forth in time.

I was also talking there about how I wasn't feeling very inspired by the linear approach- when linear meant following the story as it was going to appear in the book.

I felt like I had to write it the way it would be read in order for me to keep track of what present scenes related to what past, etc. But instead all I managed to do was confuse myself, repeatedly.

What I've discovered is that if I take each of the four separate plots, work them out from beginning to end, and then concentrate on each one like a mini-novel, I'm completely inspired again. I have a direction. I know exactly what's coming next, how it links into the scenes before and after it, and what contribution it makes to the overall arc.

I think this is what I was missing a few weeks ago- the sense of purpose that for me comes with knowing where I'm going. All I have to figure out then is what route to take on my way.

Here are the four major plots in BETWEEN THE LINES. Like I said, these will be chopped and spliced together so that the story weaves back and forth through time. The last one is the "main" plot, and the first three will be woven through it. But for now, I'm writing each one from start to finish. I've already knocked off three chapters of the first one.

1. Bill, 1914- 1920

Young Australian farmer Bill has everything going for him in 1914- he's helping to run the wildly successful family sheep and wheat farm, and his girlfriend Kit has agreed to marry him. Then war breaks out a world away, and Bill's life is forever changed by his decision *not* to go fight. After his best friend is killed at Gallipoli and his brother is seriously injured, Bill is forced to change his stance and does sign up to fight- but by the time makes it out of the killing fields of Europe in 1918, he and his world have changed forever after his brother is killed in front of him, and Kit dies suddenly in his absence.

2. Bill and Jared, 1920- 1939

Bill comes home to find himself a single father to a son, Jared. The two struggle to keep the farm running through the drought and depression, all the while battling Bill's post-traumatic stress. Jared grows into a young man and eventually hears rumours that Bill may not be his father after all.

3. Jared, 1939- 1940

Jared joins the RAAF and goes to England at the outbreak of WWII. There he meets the girl of his dreams, Laura- who in breaking plot news is unfortunately the wife of his commanding officer. A passionate affair ensues, sending Jared spiralling out of control, with the end result that he goes mysteriously missing in action during the Battle of Britain.

4. Bill, 1940

Bill travels to London with a mission- he wants to rescue a pregnant Laura and bring her home to Australia. But Laura won't budge, and Bill instead finds himself seeking answers about Jared's disappearance with Laura's eccentric sister Meredith. The quest itself initially seems pointless, but Bill soon finds himself getting closer to the truth of Jared's disappearance, and in the meanwhile discovers a new lease on the life he'd given up on as he begins to fall for Meredith.

So tell me, how do you keep your plots and subplots in order? If you're writing a tale that jumps back and forth in time, how are you approaching that? Do you write in chronological order, or in the way your story will appear in the book, or are you a chunkster and you just know it's all going to come together in the end?

Still Time To Vote!

Just a quick announcement that I'm leaving this week's poll for what happens next in A KILL IN TIME open until Monday, 6PM CST. There's no way I have time to look at it before then, so the more votes we get, the better. I have no clue what's going to happen in the next installment, but I can't wait to find out. So vote, ya'll, and help a girl out. :)

A Kill in Time: Part 9

Frank opened his eyes to darkness.

It was probably just as well, because he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a headache this bad. This time he didn't even have the benefit of a bottle of scotch to blame it on. His eyes adjusted to the gloom slowly as the cool of the room washed over his skin. Soothing. He sighed and relaxed.

He was lying somewhere soft, scented with the thick dusty smell of dried rose petals.

“He lives,” came a woman's voice from the shadows, sharp but somehow gentle, too, full of wry humour.

He opened his mouth to speak but found himself coughing instead, violently hacking until all his strength was gone. He sank back against the pillows again. “He does,” he croaked. “Just barely.”

There was a rustle of clothing and the bed dipped at his hip. A cold glass was pressed into his hand. Gloves. She was wearing gloves. What kind of woman wore gloves these days? “Drink,” she whispered.

He followed her suggestion and downed most of the water in a couple of gulps. “Who are you?”

She took the glass from him. He heard the chink of jug on vessel and the glug of more liquid replacing what he'd drunk before she handed it back. He could see her silhouetted against the open space of what he now saw was a large room with high ceilings, old-fashioned wallpaper and ornate cornices, a chandelier hanging dull and still. She was tall, and... oddly shaped. It was her hair. High. Cruella de Ville style.

Finally, she spoke. “You can call me Midnight. They all do.”

“Magda,” he whispered.

The bed shifted abruptly as she stood. “You remember?”

“No, I...” He didn't know what had made him say that. Just that her name had been in his head when he opened his lips. “I don't. I don't remember a thing.”

It wasn't completely true. He remembered... something. The clack, clack, clack of shoes on cobblestones. And blood. He remembered blood. He didn't want to.

“You said my name.” Her voice had gone chilly.

“I must have heard it somewhere.”

There was a long silence, broken eventually by the creak of the bedsprings as she sat back down again. He felt her fingers on his arm, stroking lightly. Familiar. What was she to him, in the past?

“What do you remember?” There was a note of curiosity in her question, but most of her tone was inquisition.

He sighed. Could he trust her with the fragments of his memory? Or would it be a huge mistake to tell her everything? Perhaps she could help him, somehow. Not to remember more- he didn't want to remember more of what he'd seen- but to make sense of it all. To understand.

“I remember... night,” he began.

She leaned in closer. “Go on.”

#

Sam shifted against the hard corner of a richly-upholstered divan with ornate wooden framing. “They didn't build furniture for comfort in 1888, huh?” She hadn't meant to say it out loud, but Brahman roared with laughter anyway, perched as he was on a footstool that was defying gravity to hold his weight.

“No, but it all gives the right impression.”

The impression was one of space, opulence and refinement. She was in what looked like a library, walls covered with floor-to-ceiling oak bookshelves, stuffed to bursting with a rainbow of leather-bound volumes- red, brown, blue and every colour in between. The wide polished floorboards were covered in thick Persian carpets. Everything had a place, from the antique lamps that lit everything with a soft glow to the tasteful nude statuettes displayed in a large glass-fronted cabinet near the panelled door.

There was no sound in the rest of the house, though Sam caught herself listening for it, literally on the edge of her seat. She fiddled with the delicate handle of her bone china teacup, wishing there was something stronger in it.

“Do you think he'll wake up soon?” she asked.

Brahman fussed in his jacket pocket and pulled out a leather flask, mirth in his eyes as he unscrewed the cap with deliberate slowness. “I think he's already awake.”

Her heart gave a great jump. “You do?” She couldn't hear his voice. Couldn't hear anything.

He extended the flask with one great arm and tipped a big slosh into her tea. “I do.”

“When... when do you think he'll be allowed to...” She licked dry lips, then took a long gulp of scalding hot tea. It burned all the way down her throat and set a fire in her stomach. “When will she let him go?”

“As soon as she's sure it's his own soul in control.”

Sam nodded. It was ridiculous to feel so afraid of Frank- her Frank!- especially surrounded by all these amazing people with their amazing powers. Especially with her own powers. But it was the way he'd looked at her back at Lipsenard's office, just before he lunged- like a hungry animal. And it was her he wanted- it wanted- not anybody else.

“His soul...” She didn't know how to ask what she wanted to know. She put down her cup and saucer on the mahogany coffee table and rested her head in her hands.

“If your soul and Simon's are forever linked, then who belongs to Frank?” Brahman's voice was surprisingly gentle as he spoke her innermost thoughts out loud.

“Yes,” she whispered. Tears welled in her eyes. Just yesterday she'd been so sure about everything. She'd even thought that Frank might be ready to propose to her, finally! And now...

“It's simple, really,” the big man said.

She raised her head, raised an eyebrow. “Simple?”

“Yes. It's you.”

A whole host of four-letter words ran through her mind. “That's not simple. That's... what the hell does that mean?”

Brahman shifted on his stool. “There are different kinds of bond between souls. There is the love bond, like the one that existed between Simon and Livy- the kind that can never be broken.”

She bristled. “Are you saying that what Frank and I have- had- have- isn't love?”

“Patience, little one.” He smiled. “There are all kinds of love. What you and Frank have is something unique. You are two halves of the one.”

Sam sank back in her chair and groaned. “Do I even want to hear the rest of this?”

“You do. You heard before about Frank's... ability, to steal souls. He used it with the best of intentions, but it's a curse. It's dark magic. Whenever you steal the soul of another, you risk your own.”

“Makes sense.” She couldn't believe she was even having this conversation. Frank, senior detective. Frank, friend and lover. Frank, stealer of souls? What the hell? The world had changed so much since yesterday.

“You, on the other hand...” He laid a big paw over her fingers, eclipsing them. “Your ability to hear was just the beginning of your powers. When you hear with supernatural ability, you hear the truth in all things.”

“That's not the kind of hearing I have.” She shook her head. “Had.”

Brahman chuckled. “Have you wondered yet why Livy chose you?”

Sam frowned. “She... chose me? Wasn't this all, you know, chance?”

He shook his head. “There's no such thing as chance in this world. Livy chose you because you were ready. Her powers were always meant to be yours.”

“And... what exactly are these powers? I can move things by thinking about it, I can shatter air by screaming, I can...” She rubbed her forehead, trying to stop the world from spinning. “I have no idea what I can do.”

Brahman inclined his head slightly. “Ah, therein lies the rub. You see, I don't know. Nobody does.”

“Of course they don't.”

“We know what Livy could do. Livy could bend minds, move mountains. We just don't know what will happen now her powers are yours. The only thing we do know...”

“Yes?”

For the first time, he looked hesitant. “It's that without Frank, you would be nothing.” He let her absorb that for a few moments before continuing. “And without you, neither would he. Without light, there is nothing to brighten the dark. There's no good amongst the bad. No morality, no control. No... hope. But without the dark powers, there would be no need for light.”

“There's always a need for light,” she murmured.

“If there was no dark, there would be nothing to fight for. No challenge to push humanity to achieve, to change, to grow. Humankind would stagnate. And eventually, the dark would rise from the light regardless. One cannot exist without the other.”

She was silent for a long while, absorbing what he said. “But Frank...”

“Frank is not the dark.”

She let out a sigh of relief.

“But he has the darkness in him. His powers are matched to yours. Dark, and light. And both of you are needed for balance. When the darkness rises in him, the light will rise in you.”

A thought was niggling her. “And if the darkness should...” She looked him directly in the eye. “...die?”

Brahman shifted uncomfortably. “We don't know what would happen.” To her, was the unsaid comment. They didn't know what would become of her without Frank.

“Then... how do we defeat this thing inside him?”

From the room above, there came a sudden scrape of furniture on floorboards, the thump of boots and a shout. Sam jumped out of her seat, but Brahman was slower to rise.

“We must go back to when the darkness began, so we can begin to separate the real Frank from the monster within.”

There were more voices now, footsteps running along the hallway overhead. Sam followed the sound with her eyes. She couldn't hear what was happening, she realised. She truly had been replaced inside by Livy. Her heart was heavy, but she pushed the feeling aside.

“So, we have to go back to when Frank took this guy's soul? The beast, or whatever he's called?”

Brahman casually drew a pistol from his pocket, broke it open and checked the chamber. “No. We have to go back earlier than that. We need to visit the point in time where Frank was first exposed to the darkness within him.”

Just then, the door burst open with such force that it slammed against the wall. Midnight stood panting for breath, uncharacteristically flustered, her immaculate silver hair half pulled from its elaborate nest to hang down over her left shoulder. For the first time, Sam realised Midnight wasn't much older than herself.

Midnight had a hand on her sternum, chest heaving. “He's gone,” she gasped.

Brahman went to her, moving quickly but with cat-like grace. “Where, Magda?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. He was telling me about his dreams. He remembered violence, killing. Blood. I...” She looked down at the floor. “I let my guard down. I thought the real Townsend was back.” When she looked up, her face was taught with fear. “But I was wrong.”

Simon appeared behind her at the door. His eyes lighted briefly on Sam's face before he looked to Brahman. “He opened a rip and slipped through. The memories... triggered something in him, some need to revisit the past.”

Sam glanced at Brahman and back at Simon. “The past? Are we all talking about the same time?”

Simon nodded curtly. “I believe so. The day his mother died. July 21st, 1865.”

Midnight laid a hand on his arm. “I thought I could read him,control him, but he was too much. We need help, Simon. Reinforcements. We need Nemo.”

“Time is of the essence,” hissed Brahman. “And besides, the past is in the past. We still need to help Sam understand her powers better. She is the ultimate reinforcement.”

For the first time in their short acquaintance, Sam saw a look of tiredness cross Simon's fine features. “Very well,” he said. “We shall...”

Friday Fun Videos

While Claire is hard at work on the serial (ack, what will she do, what WILL she do??), I thought I'd put up a bit of entertainment.

I don't usually listen to music while writing. Since I often wrote when my kids were napping, I got into the habit of having total silence. However, I always listen to music in the car, which happens to be the place I tend to plot, dream up new ideas, etc. (driving safety at its finest). Certain songs will always be synonymous with my stories.

When writing The Petal Falls, I listened to Siouxsie and the Banshees a lot. A lot. Lol, I can't tell you how badly I wanted to look like Siouxsie Sioux when I was in high school; she was the epitome of cool in my world. Alas, my blond hair ruined the effect.

Anyhoo... in honor of Petal, here is Siouxsie and the Banshees singing Dear Prudence (with the added bonus of Robert Smith playing guitar, sigh.)

Now, as for West of the Moon, well are a lot of songs I think of in conjunction with Archer and Miri's story, The Cure's A Strange Girl, Coldplay's Twisted Logic, and the current favorite (because I listened to it over and over while editing), Echo and the Bunnymen's Lips Like Sugar. And I shall go on record here in saying that Ian McCulloch has one of the sexiest voices EVER.)

Sigh, I LOVE that song. :)

So, what about all of you? Do you have songs that define your stories? Favorite music that you listen to while writing? Put up a link in the comments section and let us take a listen!

I hope my fellow blog ladies will come by and add their own videos to this post as well (hint, hint, Jen, Rach, Claire *g*)

Happy Friday!

#

All right, it's Claire here- still working on that serial installment! But music has an important place in my writing, too- there are just certain songs that have a particular lyric, a strength of feeling... Maybe they're songs I heard at a certain time in the writing process that just made sense to me right there and then, and they stuck with me.

First up- one of my all-time favourite songs EVER- Crowded House, Fall At Your Feet. This song makes me swoon just a little (have I mentioned that I love Neil Finn beyond all reason?). If Bill and Kit were living in this era, I'd call it their song (g). This is a neat acoustic cover version (don't you love YouTube?).



Next, two songs that give me shivers. They're the ones that put me in Bill's mindset after he returns from the devastation of WWI. First, Mad World by Gary Jules. Call me crazy but my favourite version of this one (other than the way it was used in) was the one sung by Adam Lambert in the 2009 American Idol final.



Then the Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah, sung by Rufus Wainwright (just while we're chucking our hats in the ring for sexiest singing voice out there).



My oddball bit of music for Bill's changing frame of mind is Linkin Park's What I've Done, originally seen in the first Transformers movie. I love the power of the lyrics as they relate to my story- "I've drawn regret from the truth of a thousand lies; let mercy come and wash away what I've done. I'll face myself to cross out what I've become, erase myself and let go of all I've done." And so on- plus I LOVE the video, which shows good and evil throughout humanity and the natural world. Love it.



Then we come to some actual period music- Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller is the song Bill and Meredith dance to when they're falling for each other in 1940 London.



Lastly, what I've come to see as Jared's song- partly because the main storm trooper dude about to whup the band in the video bears a little bit of a Jared resemblance (g). This is the Foo Fighters, singing Pretender. Best played at top volume. For whatever reason, embedding is disabled on this video, so you can see it at YouTube here.

Okay, okay- now to get back to writing that next installment!

##

And it's Rachel here.

I have a whole batch of songs that I listened to, over and over, when writing Blood of the Heart, and what I listened to in any given writing session would depend on what scenes and characters I was writing.

My villain, Philippe, is a serial-killing psychopath; very clever at keeping a mask of apparent normality over his real nature, but when that mask slips, and he gets out his knife ... well, to write those scenes I just have to have The Prodigy's BREATHE blaring on my Mac. Kinda captures the seething craziness that lies beneath his mask, and the line "Come play my game, I'll test you" sums up his how he thinks of Isabel Knight, my book's heroine.

And when writing Philippe in his less evil moments, Gnarls Barkley's CRAZY does the trick - (for some reason the embedding is disabled, but you can watch it on YouTube here.)

When I write my main character, Dr Isabel Knight, I've gravitated towards U2, particularly A MAN AND A WOMAN (no video, just the music)

and lately, UNDISCLOSED DESIRES by Muse:

Sigh. Love that song.

And, when Isabel and Sebastien Ricard - the man who would be in her life, if she let him - get a little up close and personal, it's back to U2: ELECTRICAL STORM, and THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE:

Ah, a young Bono. Be still my beating heart!!

And, for a little lightness amongst all this intense music (well, I am writing suspense!) and to get into the vibe of Paris, there's Ben Onono's TATOUAGE BLEU (BLUE TATTOO), sung in French. Enjoy!

Poll results: A Kill in Time

A little belated, but for your reference- after last week's installment of A Kill in Time, with an overwhelming 89% of the vote, you chose:

To go back in time to safe house six, to see what will unfold between Frank, Midnight, Sam, Simon and Brahman...

Stand by- installment 9 is coming right up! Now, just give me a couple of hours to write it... (g)

ETA: Life has officially gotten in the way. I'm going to have to break the good record and post tomorrow (Saturday, that is). Don't fall off the edge of your seats or anything! (g)