Canadian Writers to Read

The Canadian Writers to Read series of posts will highlight a few Canadian authors whom I think deserve to be more widely read. Number one on the list is Matthew Hughes, science fiction and fantasy writer of elegant and eloquent stories.

Hughes' short stories have become, if not staples of, then at least regular offerings in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction over the past few years. With several novels and a ream of short stories under his belt, Hughes is a fast-rising star in Canadian SF.

If you've heard of Hughes at all lately, you've probably read a short story featuring either Hengis Hapthorn (a professional discriminator, similar to a private eye) or Guth Bandar (a "retired explorer of the collective unconscious"). Both these characters have made appearances in longer works as well, Hapthorn in Majestrum and The Spiral Labyrinth, Bandar in Black Brillion, and both in the collection The Gist Hunter and Other Stories. The stories are by and large clever and intriguing, many combining mysteries with unusual and fantastic settings to keep the reader obsessively turning pages.

Personally, it's Hughes' use of language that I appreciate most of all. He doesn't shy away from using a vocabulary that is both eclectic and capacious, a refreshing break from the ever-narrowing range that many contemporary writers seem unable to reach beyond. I recommend Hughes' stories and novels for their unconventional and interesting characters and intriguing plots, but even more for the way he makes words sing on the page.

eMate Update

I mentioned picking up a Newton eMate 300 a little while back. I now have the capability to connect it to my PC to export files that I create on it. I had to find the proper cable, and hoping to pick up some advice I joined the NewtonTalk list server. What a wealth of information! It's a very active list and after I asked where I might find such a cable, the replies came thick and fast. I found an online store and ordered one.

I should have held off a little longer as someone on the list offered to send me one for only the price of shipping from Holland, but mine was already ordered. Live and learn!

Anyway, the cable arrived today, I downloaded the Newton connection program from the United Network of Newton Archives, and installed the program. It took me about ten minutes of fiddling with my serial connection settings and ping! I had a connection. Now I can export any files I create on the eMate onto my PC in .rtf format, quick as a wink.

The last thing I'd like is a new battery for it--the one it came with works, but doesn't hold a charge for as long as it could. There are instructions on the 'net for building a new battery, which I might resort to, but right now I have a line on a new one that I could pick up for around $20 and shipping. If so, that would bring my outlay to less than 100 dollars. A great bargain! I'm thinking this rig is going to come in really handy during NaNoWriMo this year...

Steps

Today I mailed out three queries, and I have two more ready to go tomorrow. Whew! Now the waiting begins...good thing NaNoWriMo is on the horizon to give me something else to focus on.

Query and Synopsis

These are the two things on my mind these days. I'm working steadily trying to whip them into shape, and it's hard work! I don't want to fall into the trap of becoming obsessed with getting them perfect, but I do want them to be the best I can make them.
There's a lot of advice on writing both of them, when you start looking for it, but I think the key is trying to distill all that down into some basic premises.

Also hard work!

Cool Name Meme

No, I really don't have time to do this, but when I saw this meme on Helen's blog I just couldn't resist.

1. My rock star name (first pet and current car)

Trixie Caravan

2. My gangsta name (favourite ice cream flavour plus cookie, or biscuit)

Hoofprints Shortbread

(Ooh, scary!)

3. My fly girl name (first letter of first name, first three letters of last name)

S-Ram

(Sounds like something you put in a computer)

4. My detective name (favourite colour, favourite animal)

Green Horse

(Yeah...I can't see me getting a lot of clients)

5. My soap opera name (middle name, city of birth)

Deborah Sydney Mines


6. My Star Wars name (first three letters of your last name, first two of your first name)

Ram-Sh
(kind of hard to pronounce the second part!)

7. My superhero name (second favourite colour, favourite drink, add “the”)

The Purple Bailey

8. My Nascar name (the first names of your grandfathers)

George Russell
(that actually works pretty well...good character name)

9. My stripper name (favourite perfume, favourite sweet)

Vanilla Dark Chocolate
(now that's just silly, but I don't have a favorite perfume so I subbed in my favorite scent)

10. My witness protection name (mother’s and father’s middle names)

Lillian Francis


11. My weather anchor name (fifth grade teacher’s last name, a major city beginning with the same letter)

MacCuish Montreal


12. My spy name (favourite season/flower)

Spring Rose

13. Cartoon name (favourite fruit plus garment you’re wearing, with an “ie” or “y” added)

Blackberry Tee

14. Hippie name (what you ate for breakfast plus favourite tree)

Granola Red Maple

15. Your rockstar tour name (favourite hobby plus favourite weather element, with “the” and “tour”)

The Sunshine Reading Tour

(sounds more like a children's author's book tour)

WFNS Gala and Word on the Street

It was a very writerly weekend for me. Saturday night I attended the 30th annual Writer's Federation of Nova Scotia Gala in Halifax, where the Atlantic Writing Competition awards for this year were handed out. It was a fabulous evening of readings and fun and chatting with other writers, along with bidding on silent auction items to raise money for the Writers in the Schools program.

Sunday was Word on the Street, the Halifax version. WOTS is an annual book and magazine festival that takes place in four cities across Canada. There are reading stages, bookseller and publisher booths, panel discussions and presentations, illustrators drawing free sketches and giving them away, libraries and schools giving out information...if you are interested in books, this is the place to be. Now that I've finally been to one, I want to go every year! I came home with a beautiful green t-shirt that says, "Read Books!" I'll be wearing it to school library tomorrow!

Yes, it's finished!

I finished the novel draft on Friday and it's off to some readers for a trial run. It was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for a day there, excitement at finishing vying with anxiousness about the next phase of agent-hunting. However, after a weekend of doing writerly and bookish things in Halifax, I'm feeling good about it. My plan for today is to start putting together my synopsis.

So close!

I am down to just two things left to do with this novel draft: I have to add a couple of early references to something that is important later, and I have to go through and check my descriptive elements. This seems like a somewhat mechanical approach, but it's simply something that I don't include much in early drafts. It seems to work much better for me if I concentrate only on that aspect on a run through the entire manuscript.

So this means that I think I will be finishing it up tonight or tomorrow. Wow. I can't believe it. I feel very positive about it--it's improved so much since I rewrote it following the competition. It's taken me longer than I thought to arrive at this point, but it sure feels good.

I think I've learned that one thing I absolutely must try to do is make myself stay with a project like this with dogged determination until it is finished. There are things that I feel guilty about not doing this week and last, but that's what always happens to me--I am working on something, leave it to fulfill other obligations, then take months (or longer) to get my head back into the right space to work on it again. This time I've been ruthless and simply not let myself be called away. I don't know what my family thinks of this, or even if they understand the reasons why I'm not helping out with certain things, but hopefully I'll be able to explain once it's done.

Worse than rejection?

I hate rejections.

However, I think I hate it even more when, after waiting X number of months and more, a reply on a story comes back to say that the market has folded. They haven't read your story, or if they have, they're neither saying they liked it or hated it. They're just giving it back to you.

They usually have very good and understandable reasons for folding, but it just feels like such a waste of time. [Sigh]

Update

I'm more than halfway through the notes I've made to myself throughout the manuscript. These notes remind me of things I have to double-check for consistency, facts I have to check or fix, and things I thought should be added, expanded on, or reinforced. Some of them take mere minutes to check and fix, others require more thought and actually adding scenes or sections of scenes. Still, I expect to be all the way through them by the end of this week or the middle of next.

Then I'll be haunting AgentQuery.com as I make my pitching plans.

Update

Hard copy markups are all in! Hurray!

On to the notes check...

Rewrite progress

I've been working steadily on this rewrite and I think that today I will finish transferring all my hard copy markups to the computer file. Whoohoo!

Then I have to work my way through about forty internal notes I've made during read-throughs, dealing mostly with consistency issues. I think I might be able to finish that by the end of the week, although I'll have a better idea once I start to go through them.

And then...it will be time to hammer out a query letter. I can't believe I'm finally, finally getting to this point.

Newton eMate 300

A while back I read a post by Doug Johnston over at D*I*Y Planner about a nifty-sounding little rig called an eMate. Originally made by Apple for the educational market, they're no longer in production, but the ones that are still around are tough little things. I picked one up on eBay for about $35.00 including shipping, and it arrived yesterday.

It's super cool. Better even than a laptop for portability, and there's no startup lag time--open the cover and start typing. We're just talking basics here, folks; word-processing, notes, calculator, etc. on a monochrome screen with backlight, but with re-celled batteries it can run for up to 24 hours. I still need a cable to connect it to my PC and I'll probably have to play around with software a bit, but it will export files in .rtf format so it should be a welcome addition to my writing tools.

My seven-year old son loves it and is already writing a story on it.

Third Person Press

I think it's official enough now that I can say...Third Person Press lives! It doesn't have a website yet, but probably by the end of next week. It's a new independent small press founded by myself and two friends. Our first project is a short story anthology titled "Undercurrents", for which we've been putting submission guidelines together. It will feature short speculative fiction by writers who live in or have a substantial connection to Cape Breton. I'll post a link to our website once it's live.

Novel progress

I'm continuing to make good progress on the novel rewrite--this week I'm transferring all my hard copy markups to the computer file. About a quarter of the way through that now. Then I'll just have to review a few notes and make a few last tweaks and it will be FINISHED.

Now I'll Find Them...

Last night I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to find the lost index cards, and I made up new ones. I'm sure the old ones will come to light any day now.

I also started a quick read-through of my novel Operant Moon, the second installment of the Nearspace Chronicles, just in case there's anything I really need to set up in the first story that isn't already there. It just occurred to me that it might be a good idea, and it's the kind of thing I usually wouldn't think of until it was too late!

The kids start back to school on Thursday (waaaah!) so I'm planning to start inputting all my manuscript markups then. I find it's good to have a solid work plan for the first couple of days to keep me from being too lonesome--and worrying too much about how they're getting along!

I also have a couple of stories to get back into submission so I'll tackle that Thursday or Friday.

Clean and Tidy Office

Last night I sat down to go through the set of multicolored index cards that serves as an outline for my novel. When I lay them out, they allow me to see the progression of each plotline and subplot of the story, since each one is recorded, scene by scene, on its own color of index card.

Problem number one: only about half the index cards were there. I had them divided into two sets, one for the first part of the novel and one for the second part. Only the second part set was where I expected them both to be. A hunt for the missing cards ensued.

Problem number two: once I had gone through all my materials for this novel (several printouts, a binder, a couple of folders...oh, you've seen the picture...once I'd gone through all of that without success, the next place to search was my office.

I tried to search, but my office was really such a mess that it was futile. Nothing lost could be found until everything out of place was properly stowed and all the un-dealt-with stuff dealt with.

So today I cleaned my office. It took almost the whole day, with a brief respite for family time this afternoon. It looks wonderful. My writing area is organized and begging me to write. My art area is clean and tidy and waiting for me to draw.

But I didn't find my cards. I guess I won't find them until AFTER I've made new ones. Isn't that the way these things usually go?