My Writing Process Blog Hop

This is the first time I’ve done something like this in quite a while. I was tagged by Will Hahn. Thanks for thinking of me, Will!

Sometimes, timing is everything. Shortly after I posted something about making this blog a book chat site once again, Will emailed me, offering to loop me into a blog hop he just happened to be participating in. So I went along with it.

You regular readers may already know the answers to these questions, but you may want to read on anyway, because I may just have tagged you. That’s right–participation is the name of the game.

Here it goes:

1) What am I working on?

I am working on a time travel historical called East of Yesterday. It takes place all throughout the 20th century before plunging into the 19th at the very end.

And I have a Regency-inspired fantasy called Magic by Starlight almost ready to query. If I can just smoothen (don’t you just love that word? My daughter invented it) out one key scene…

And finally, I have a highly experimental science fiction dystopian series of short stories out there called Petroleum Sunset. Episode Three is almost ready to go, but since I am self-publishing these, it takes me a while to crank these out. Here is the info on Episodes One and Two.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I am very excited about East of Yesterday because I am using time travel concepts that I have not seen anywhere else. I spent two weeks scrutinizing tvtropes.org time travel section to be certain.

So yeah. I’m not going to be specific. I’ll just say two words: road trip. And four more: fish out of water.

Magic by Starlight is a very polite action-oriented spy fantasy that draws heavily on Jane Austen. I went for pure fun with this story. I have a couple of other stories in the series thought out too, with fairly comprehensive outlines.

To sum up what is different about my work, I’d have to say the characters. In my two published works, The Sevenfold Spell and The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf, my main characters are a strumpet (Sevenfold) and a dwarf (Magic Mirror). I’ve gotten more subtle about the characters in my works-in-progress, but still, I like writing about characters who don’t quite fit in, even if the reason is not entirely obvious.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I like writing books that I’d love to read, so I write books that take place either elsewhere (out of the Western world), elsewhen (future or past), or both. I almost never read contemporary work. Julie Moffett is currently the only author I know who can get me to read contemporary work. I want to be swept away from modern life. I want wonder.

And so that’s what I write.

4) How does my writing process work?

Very poorly at the moment. Due to exhaustion most evenings, I am doing most of my writing on the weekends. That includes blog posts.

But when I do write, it is on a recliner, with my laptop on a very superior lap pillow (from Brookstone), with a small pillow propped behind my head. This is all to avoid repetitive motion injuries. (I am currently recovering from a dislocated shoulder blade that went undiagnosed despite repeated attempts for about 3 years). My recliner is tucked up next to a bay window, and I have two small tables at my side. It is very pleasant.

I warm up by looking at social media properties such as Facebook and Twitter, but I am not very good at social media that is not blogging, so I mostly participate by posting replies. I do this for about 20 minutes before opening Word and plunging in.

I always keep a wiki of my worldbuilding gazetteer using a wiki tool called TiddlyWiki. When I am drafting, I generally keep my wiki open and add any new names, places or concepts to it.

Tags

Since I didn’t clear any of you in advance, instead of tagging, I decided to ask for volunteers. As incentive, if you want to post your writing process next week, let me know in the comments and I’ll put up a post linking to your blogs.