All Posts By

Angela Korra'ti

Short Pieces

More planning for Oscar

No brand new words tonight; instead, I’ve been taking down notes about the Oscar story and trying to get some idea of the other involved characters, and what the plot might be.

After my chat in email with my editor serasempre, I’ve pretty much decided that this will be part of the collection of Faerie Blood universe shorts. Which therefore leads me to affirm that the other major character in the story should be the obligatory Warder, and it’s likely that the antagonist will be one of the fey. I’m not sure whether Unseelie or Seelie yet, or whether he or she will be aligned with one of the Courts at all.

I have only the beginning picture of the Warder in question, but I’m pretty sure she’s somewhat older than Oscar. Old enough that she is established in her power, but young enough to be still in her prime. Old enough though that she might look askance at Oscar as a potential romantic figure–and that’s okay anyway because if there’s any romance in this story, I actually want to downplay it hard. Touch more on the hint of potential rather than state anything outright, and focus instead on these two characters reaching out to one another because of their common love of music; hey, if it works for Aubrey and Maturin, it should work for Oscar and this Warder. 😉

The setting is rural and coastal, although I haven’t nailed down where yet to my satisfaction. Nor am I a hundred percent sure that it’s set in “current day”; still thinking about that. (Since the trio of stories I have proposed to Deena will have one period piece and one current day, this one could I think be either.)

The plot that’s starting to take shape is that a migration of Big Creatures–some form of sea-based dragon–is violently interrupted when one or more of them are hunted and killed. My Warder woman is all about putting a stop to that, but it’ll turn out that it has to be Oscar who’ll be challenged to the musical duel, with the stakes being the lives of the remaining dragons. And my antagonist, not being an idiot, will be clever enough to yoink Oscar out of a Warder’s territory first. Muahaha.

More than that I don’t think I’ll get into, because then I’ll start getting spoilery. Suffice to say that the story is beginning to take shape.

January 11, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Book Log

Book Log #80: Amber Beach, by Elizabeth Lowell

Note: This is a late review from my 2010 book log, posting as I’m trying to get caught up. The 2011 book log will commence once the 2010 reviews are up to date!

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amber Beach is going back a while in my re-read queue, back to earlier days of Elizabeth Lowell’s romantic suspense novels. It’s the first of her Donovans series, which to this day remain among my favorites of hers. Not because they’re particularly better written or less formulaic than her later work, but more because I’m partial to the family of characters she depicts. Plus, while the cast travels all over the globe, they’re headquartered in Seattle. And I’m a sucker for books that reference Pike Place Market, what can I say?

Anyway, her Donovan clan is fairly fun. You’ve got a large group of brothers and sisters, all headed up by a forceful tycoon of a father and a hugely talented painter of a mother, and the various stories of the series all focus upon a particular sibling. Since the siblings also run an international jewelry business, each book focuses upon the starring sibling’s particular favorite gem. Amber Beach‘s jewel du jour is of course amber, and its heroine is Honor, one of the two Donovan sisters. Honor’s desperate to find her missing brother Kyle, desperate enough to overcome her own phobia about going out on the water and hiring a man to help her search the San Juan Islands by boat. This being a romantic suspense novel, Jake Mallory, the man she hires, does of course have an agenda of his own. And his reasons for finding Kyle are much less benign. And, of course, there are Bad Guys out to find Kyle too, along with agents of the US government. Every last one of ’em is out to find out what Kyle knows about the fabled Russian Amber Room, and the fortune in amber from it that’s gone missing.

Like I said, formulaic, but it’s a decent enough light read. Three stars.

January 10, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Bone Walker

Back to Bone Walker

Tonight’s writing activity: just over 200 words into Chapter 11 of Bone Walker, just to remind myself where I left off with that and to try to get it moving along again too.

So far so good. This is ten days in a row I’ve managed to do something writing-related, and I think part of what’s helping is not having any specific thing to shoot for besides “do something writing-related daily”. It’s the least stress-free goal I’ve been able to think of, and it’s actually helping! I think it also helps to be loose like this since I do have so many different projects vying for my attention; this way, I can latch on whichever one demands my attention the loudest on any given night. (Still though the lion’s share of this attention has got to go to Lament, and I won’t go more than a day or two without poking at it.)

Wish me luck on keeping it up, folks.

January 10, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Bone Walker, Short Pieces

Oh hey look Chapter 20!

I’ve finally pulled through the end of Chapter 19, and now I’m in Chapter 20! I’ve noticed that Chapter 19’s the only one in this draft of Lament thus far to have actually gained a couple hundred words, but that’s okay–I’d actually pulled in content from Chapter 17, after all. Given how much I’ve edited out of the chapter to make up for that, winding up with only a couple hundred extra words works for me.

Chapter 20 is one of the smaller ones in the last stretch of the book, so I’m not sure yet how much I’ll edit out of it yet. But it’s good to get the momentum going again.

Meanwhile, I’ve pinged my editor serasempre to start the official conversation about what Drollerie and I will be doing next. We do not have official details nailed down by any means. However, interest has been expressed both in Bone Walker and in the shorter pieces set in the Faerie Blood universe.

Which leads me into thinking that Oscar’s story may well wind up in the FB universe now, and and that it could wind up being a novella. That’d work quite a bit for me. I’m thinking that Oscar’s story, Elizabeth and Ross’s story, and Millicent’s origin story would be a lovely trio of things to have in one book.

Writing activity for the 8th

Small progress through Chapter 19 of Lament, pretty much, since most of my day had to go to other activities. I’m on page 19 of 23 at this point, though, so if I apply myself I should be able to finish the word count reduction for this chapter tomorrow!

I’ve been continuing to mull Oscar’s story in the back of my brain, and while I don’t have a real core plot idea for it yet, I do have a couple of beginning ideas. One, it’s possible this story may be non-urban fantasy, by which I mean, contemporary fantasy NOT in an urban setting. It may be rural/small town, and specifically, coastal. Two, I’m keying off a remark solarbird made to me that has stuck with me: “tuba is piccolo for whales”. The idea here being that a tuba is one of the few mortal instruments that can dip down into the range of the deep, primal music I want to be part of the plot of this story. This implies that there will be Big Creatures involved with this story.

Possibly whales. Possibly dragons.

Character research counts

Yesterday’s general exhaustion continues, so no new words tonight–instead, I started listening to the album of tuba concertos I purchased from iTunes, just to see what it stirs up in the way of story ideas.

I’m finding that just jotting down notes about what the various pieces make me think of is a useful exercise. This, I think, will give me some concepts I can maybe work into my boy’s story somehow.

And I can definitely tell just by listening to the first four pieces on the album that one, a smoothly-played tuba actually sounds pretty awesome. Especially if the piece is an allegro one, which gives you deep, fast, runs of notes that can be evocative of something big moving very quickly. I’m finding myself thinking of bears, of avalanches in storms, of dolphins racing whales deep underwater. I need to listen to the rest of the album and maybe another one or two to know for sure, but I definitely find myself wondering if this story’s going be in a non-urban setting. (Which would sit well with me, given that I’m in the mood to avoid a lot of the tropes you find in urban fantasy right now, and writing a non-urban fantasy would be an excellent way to do that.)

Two, it’s kind of unfortunate that the particular recording I’m listening to has obvious places where the performer is hauling in a breath, but on the other hand, I expect that’s almost unavoidable given how much air you need to get through a tuba to get it to make decent music. This however tells me that my boy Oscar, whatever social skills and graces he may like, has excellent lung capacity. 😉 It also tells me that I totally want him to be able to play smoothly and liquidly, like several of the stretches of music I’m hearing on here.

(For those of you who are interested, the tracks I’ve listened to so far are three parts of a concerto by Edward Gregson, and now I’m working on a concerto by Roger Steptoe. The Vaughn Williams in F minor is on here, too; I’ll get to that.)

Three, listening to music in the name of character research rocks.

ETA: Correcting Vaughn Williams’ last name since both kathrynt and wrog have told me I got it wrong. Oops! Thanks, folks.

January 7, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Mirror's Gate, Research

Tired tonight

But I did throw about 200 words into Chapter 2 of Mirror’s Gate, and therefore have done something writing-related! Thus, I can go to bed with a clear conscience.

Thanks by the way to everybody who has made such encouraging comments about the appearance of Oscar on my character radar! Props to sticckler in particular for finding me fiction that stars tuba-playing protagonists (although I note that in all cases, they’re all general fiction and not fantasy, mystery, or romance, so I’d be REAL interested to see if anybody could find me genre novels that fit the bill). She’ll be getting that copy of Faerie Blood I promised!

And I’ve already watched a few of the YouTube video links kathrynt and wrog provided, just to get a feel of how classical tuba music should sound. Some good stuff there, and it begins to give me an idea of what I want Oscar’s own music to sound like, but I need to listen to more. I’ve found an album called “British Tuba Concertos” on iTunes, which includes the Vaughn one in F minor, and I do believe I’ll be buying that; there’s a really nice-sounding Gregson on here too if the preview I’m listening to is any indication. I hear some nice smooth playing here.

It’ll be a while yet before Oscar gets an actual story, I think; I am still mulling that. I can add though that this boy has absolutely no magical talent inherent to himself whatsoever. He’s bog-standard human, and as previously mentioned, his music is his one awesome skill. Now, in the usual Instrumental Duel With the Fey type of story, the mortal always wins the day because the music of humanity is supposed to be Just as Awesome as Magic–but I don’t think I’ll quite play it that way, since that’s the Expected Way, and the whole point of this is to screw around with the trope.

But it’s all good. I’ll listen to the music and let myself randomly brainstorm and see what it tells me! Woo, buying iTunes music in the name of character research! 😉

And ha. I need a suitable tuba playing icon for posts about Oscar, I think!

January 6, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Older Posts

Newer Posts