NaNoWriMo is coming...

One of my favorite things to do is NaNoWriMo. For one thing, it's a darned good way to whack out a first draft. I, the compulsive over-editor, get to throw it all aside and BLURT! I get a kick out of the forums, going to an occasional write-in (hardly anyone gets much writing done), and posting that frustratingly small number of new words. Some days my keyboard slogs uphill through warm butter; other days it sprouts wings and words dance onto the screen. Life interferes, dammit! My husband, the cat, a friend, need... Just when the plot is hopelessly dead and entangled there appear passages of absolutely golden prose. Which trickle out into a swell floop. And there's the last frantic push, after which I mentally collapse in a sweating little heap.
This year I "ought to" do the next section of Loriano's story, but I'm returning to my beloved Ancient World to continue the story of Karie the last true High Priestess with Speaker of Visions.
*The woman on the cover is not Karié; she is High Priestess Alina, who appeared in a Journal Workshop meditation exercise and told me to "Write! Or Else...!" 

Yet Another Sunny Day - Breakthrough!

In Memoriam - Blackitty

     We will be glad of all this sunshine when el nino hits.
     Just 'cause I haven't been posting doesn't mean I've been idle. I've written something nearly every day, even if it's just a sentence or two. A family member's health problems have required nearly all my time and wiped me out. And I've had to handle it without the comfort of a warm kitty. Our beautiful big sweetheart disappeared one morning 3-4 months ago.
     It's taken me 2 1/2 weeks to recharge my energies, and the chapters I was working on didn't help. My hero was trying to overcome drug addiction, and some not-so-nice folks strapped him to a bed. To write this passage, from his point of view, I had to live through my feelings after a bad fall--lying in the ER, endless waiting, nobody coming, morphine, helplessness, weird dreams, surgery, a rehab facility, inability to move... I dreaded writing it and could only manage a short paragraph or two a day. My trusty line editor said I'd done a good job. Now my hero is back on his feet, confronting enemies, and taking steps to move on.
     Today I had a huge breakthrough!
     While tinkering around with dates and moon phases in the World of Elakand calendars and timelines a bunch of plot lines wriggled into place and I was able to outline the last six chapters of my novel (working title: Troubadour's Quest; probably will end up as The Dark Lady's Troubadour).

Too much of a good thing

     My writing has been creeping along slower than a seasick snail. (Love the alliteration!) It's been a period of staring at the screen and writing and rewriting the same paragraphs over and over and feeling guilty for not progressing on the book. A few days ago I realized that my hero and heroine are confined in a place of utter luxury, unable to go anywhere, and all their needs and wants are fulfilled. It's a stasis where they have no motivation to change or move ahead. In other words, death for the story. In writing this, I see that I have to introduce an element of discomfort and danger to bring about  progress so I can finish it ...
     And so it goes in our lives. Without some problems, without a sense of "want"(ing) to motivate us, we go nowhere...

'Tis Fall - Autumn

The Naked Ladies have since died, and the plants look tired and dusty. Rain sure would be nice. The sun is slowly fading, and the year starts to wind down. I think of Dylan Thomas's call to rage against the dying light, to fight darkness with red passion. Thing is, when the light dies, I don't have the moxie to rage. I just want to find a hole, crawl down into it, and pull it over me.
But what am I thinking? It's another beautiful, warm, sunny day and the coffee is hot. Still lots of days to sit in the sun.
I'm plugging away at Book 2 of the Dark Lady series. I had to ditch a lot of great stuff on the heroine because it was too much for this book. Ah well, I can use it later.  Once this one is finished, I can resurrect an almost-finished novel about her early life that I'd abandoned.

Waylaid by Pandora

    Last week I planned to get lots of writing done--like on to the next section of the WIP. Normally I write to Early Music (pre-1500s), instrumental or a language I don't understand.

   Then I found Pandora links to 60s songs in my in-box. I succumbed and clicked on Pandora's box.
   And no writing. For a whole day I am back in L.A., smelling the smog, dancing around my living room to the Beatles (thank God I'm alive at a time when I can hear them!)-- at an Alumni Club dance to Creedence in a big Downtown hotel-- August '63 driving through the dawn with 4 strangers, NY to Washington for the March to "Blowing in the Wind" and "If I had a Hammer"-- The Mamas & Papas singing outside the UCLA Student Union-- Dylan "The Times They Are a-Changing" -- a whiff of pot on a summer afternoon ...
   I just now opened Pandora's box again and was lost in the 60s for another hour.

Troubadours in Life and Literature: My First Guest Blog Post

Today my very first guest blog went live on Anne E. Johnson’s blog -

 http://anneejohnson.blogspot.com/2014/06/historical-fiction-from-christie-maurer.html  

     Anne is a historical and science fiction writer who majored in Medieval Music and was attracted to my announcement of “The Whitewood Kitarra” on Broad Universe. 

It was fun putting together this post on how troubadour songs inspired my writing. 

     Do stop by if you get a chance, and I hope you enjoy it. 

Dark Lady's Stone out in e-Books

Yesterday I got The Dark Lady's Stone up on Smashwords for distribution in various formats to Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and so on. It's available through Kindle as well. What a trip--not only uploading the manuscript but setting prices and getting book descriptions and my biography up on different websites. I keep wanting to tinker, to change a word here, a phrase there. And trying to get the word out that it's published ...  Keeps the old juices churning!

Now it's back to the coffee shop to take a moment to continue work on the sequel.

It's a new year

Happy 2013 everyone!

I'm finally getting time to write after overseeing repairs to the house. Those beastly termites had done a fair bit of crunching on the walls--and paid for it with their lives.

It's a new year and time for resolutions and goals. No, I am not planning to go on a diet. Rather, my personal goals center around staying healthy and in good spirits. I'm going see The Hobbit tomorrow with a writer friend. I love Tolkien and Peter Jackson does a phenomenal job.

As for writing: On Saturday folks in my RWA Chapter set out goals for the coming year. I plan to explore self-publishing for The Dark Lady's Stone and keep working on The Dark Lady's Troubadour, a.k.a. Troubadour's Quest. I also look forward to interacting with my fellow writers--and hopefully readers--both on-line and in person.

Where to go?

I'm stuck in a scene, or rather an episode, and what to do? My hero and heroine blundered into a raid on a village. Knowing they couldn't win over the bandits, they started to leave--and the bad guys took off after them, wanting their horses. My hero turned to fight them, so the heroine could get away. And . . . a) manages to hold them off; b) gets captured; c) wounds/kills 1 or 2; d) tricks them and escapes; e) heroine doubles back and steals the pack horse and loot; f) hero escapes, can't find heroine . . .

I'll just leave it for a bit and go on to the next part for now while the inner juices churn.

Loriano's troubadour poetry

Everyone insisted I had to include Loriano's poems--and I am no poet. After one poetry class in college I read a few and got bored. What to do? I got a bunch of CD's of troubadour music and listened, probably hundreds of times, following along in the booklet both the Occitan and the English. The originals are in the public domain--the poets have been dead for 900 years--but the translations are not. In studying them I appreciated just how subtle and complex the poems really are. Finally I used metaphors and themes from Bertran de Ventadorn, troubadour to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and put together verses appropriate to Loriano's situation and character. He sometimes excuses their clumsiness by saying he's still working on it. 

I did "receive" a couple of epics. One changed my original 6,000 word short story into a novel. A major turning point in The Dark Lady's Stone comes when the old shaman Edroc recites an epic about the Sea Kings and Lake Illia. To get in the mood I listened to a CD of songs from the Icelandic Edda. The epic started to unfold and I got the basics out over a couple of days. It was much longer than I'd intended and it needed a lot of editing, particularly when I was struggling with the scenes at Lake Illia. A while later I took an on-line course on The Vikings. To my surprise many elements in Edroc's tale were right-on. Of course many others pertained only to my world. 

I read at J.R.R. Tolkien's Sigurd and Gudrun a couple of summers ago. It must've sunk in because Loriano's final epic came to me while I was washing dishes. I was finishing up the last chapter and Count Reynal asked Loriano to tell the court about their long journey. What the heck would he say??? I presumed it would be straight narrative, maybe a few summary sentences. To give myself time to think I got up from my computer to make dinner and discovered all the dishes were dirty. I put my hands in hot, soapy water and Loriano started declaiming in my head. I heard his voice, his tone, his rhythm. I rushed back to my computer and took dictation. When I surfaced and looked it over, I only had to change a few lines. 

To my surprise, folks seem to like it.