Clarion West

The Clarion West Write-a-Thon 2019

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It’s that time of the year again: I’ll be participating in Clarion West’s Write-a-Thon for the next six weeks. Well, five weeks. We’re already several days in now, and so far, it’s going pretty well.

Last summer, I began work on a project that I’ve been thinking about for, oh, I don’t know, a whole bunch of years now. It’s my “a group of amnesiacs wake up trapped together with a dead superhero” murder mystery–or, if you like comp titles: Six Wakes meets Justice League, with a healthy dose of philosophy a la The Good Place. I had a really great time working on it last year, too, but unfortunately, I had to set the novel aside to focus on a higher priority project. One year, one novel rewrite, a couple short stories, and a few very important fanfics later, and I’m ready to begin work on said Amnesia Murder Mystery again.

So far, I’ve primarily gone over and reorganized all my notes. (I have lots of them. There was a Twitter question recently about your favorite part of the writing process. Mine has always been the “so, let’s play with this idea” and “ooh, but what IF” notes.) I’ve also reread everything I’ve written so far and sharpened up Chapter 1 a bit. I was really worried I’d have difficulty sinking back into this story after nearly a year away, but so far, my interest levels are still high.

While I normally post a regular weekly progress report here on MGB, I haven’t decided if I’m going to do that for this year’s Write-a-Thon. After all, I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll just end up repeating whatever the hell I wrote last year. I might post a few semi-regular updates, or maybe just talk about mysteries in general and what I find so compelling about them, particularly in regards to this project. Time will tell.

Either way, I’ve officially hit the part of the program where I ask for your hard-earned money. I participate annually in this fundraiser because I’m incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to go to Clarion West; it quite literally changed my life, giving me the tools to become a much stronger writer and introducing me to people who have become some of my closest friends. Any money I can raise that might help fund this program or allow another writer to attend feels like the very least I can do.

So. If you’re interested and able to donate to Clarion West, you can sponsor me HERE. There are some incentivized rewards for sponsors, like, I will recap and review an episode of your favorite TV show, or your least favorite TV show, or the TV show that has disappointed you the most bitterly. You could force me to hate-watch some terrible movie and analyze what, if anything, works about it. I could write a Genderbent Wednesday film essay for you, if that’s more your thing. Or I can simply help you discover your hidden mini super power. The choice is yours. Full details at the link.

If you’re interested in donating to Clarion West, but not so much my superhero-murder-shit, you can also browse all these other participants and read about their writing goals and incentives. And if the financials are tight and you feel your money is best spent on a non-writing cause, I totally get it: the world is a pretty terrible place right now. What’s happening at the border is particularly unconscionable, so if you haven’t already, may I suggest Raices? Your money will be going towards helping separated and detained families.

For now, I think, that’s all I have for you. Happy Friday, everyone!

“She Has Now Become Satan’s Prisoner!”

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Well, that was predictable: for the sake of the 2018 Clarion West Write-a-Thon, I sold my reviewing services to the highest bidder–so to speak–and the highest bidder, once again, was Evil Tom.

Now, Evil Tom’s initial plan was to make me watch Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, as he was shocked to discover I’d never seen the movie. Such a selection would’ve suited me just fine, as I have mild interest in the film–almost entirely because Ezra Miller is in it–but not quite enough to actually bother, you know, renting it. Unfortunately, Evil Tom couldn’t resist changing his Evil Plan at the last minute, which is how I ended up watching 80’s Indonesian horror film Mystics in Bali instead.

Continue reading →

Clarion West Write-a-Thon: Final Week Update!

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Top Secret Code Name of Current Project: Who Murdered Superman? (It Was Aquaman, Wasn’t It, I FUCKING KNEW IT.)
Current Pitch: Six Wakes meets Justice League Unlimited

Number of Creepy Blackouts: 2
Number of Hidden Weapons Discovered: 1
Number of Plot-Relevant Flashbacks: 1 . . . so far.

Song From Current Project Playlist: “Red Song” – Suuns

Goal Met: YES. I am DONE!

I’m happy to say that I’ve finished Chapter 5, and–save one last update I’ll be sending to sponsors over the weekend–I’m officially finished with the 2018 Clarion West Write-a-Thon.

Can’t lie: I’ve definitely had some chaotic weeks, trying to keep up with my self-appointed deadlines. Overall, though, I’m pretty happy with how this year’s project has turned out. Cause, like. I started a new novel! Admittedly, I’ll probably spend the next month rewriting, like, every chapter I’ve written for that novel, but still, we’re officially past the “I Have This Great Idea But Can’t Get Past The First 5 Pages, So I’ll Just Hop Over to One of My 67 Other Great Ideas” phase. I’m calling it a win.

As far as Chapter 5 goes: I have officially introduced my first flashback, and if you’re thinking, God, no, I’m still having Flashback Fatigue from Lost, cease and desist, please and thank you, dudes, I totally get it. But . . . yeah, the flashbacks definitely aren’t going anywhere. They are (as Starfire might say) most heavy with the plot relevance. Also, I think they’ll be fun, or anyway, I’m having fun writing them. I do, however, solemnly pledge that none of my flashbacks include mysterious tattoos or toy planes. Hand to God.

And . . . well, I guess that’s it. Honestly, I’m having a pretty good time writing this novel. I can’t say for certain that’s gonna translate into being good, nor can I proclaim I’ll be able to finish and sell it with any certainty, but I hope so on all counts. I’d like people to read this. I’d like to find readers who enjoy it as much as I do, at least right now.

Random Line From Chapter 5:

“Monsters,” she says blankly. “I hear monsters.”
That’s when Rosario starts to scream.

Clarion West Write-a-Thon: Week Five Update

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Top Secret Code Name of Current Project: Who Murdered Superman? (It Was Aquaman, Wasn’t It, I FUCKING KNEW IT.)
Current Pitch: Six Wakes meets Justice League Unlimited

Beginning the Novel With a Character Waking Up: Check
A Character Describing Themselves While Looking in a Mirror: Check
A Dream Sequence That Provides a CLUE: Close enough

Song From Current Project Playlist: “Ghost” – The Acid

Goal Met: Holy shit, YES!

This novel already has so many no-nos in it. That mirror one, for instance. That’s like Numero Dos in the 10 Commandments of Writing:

Thou shalt not describe one’s protagonist by having her gaze into a mirror so she can awkwardly narrate all her physical features to the reader.

And hey, that’s a commandment for a reason, one I usually try to live by. However, when you’re writing a mystery about five amnesiac characters . . . I mean, that rule just become silly because OBVIOUSLY they’re going to scrutinize the hell out of these strange faces they don’t recognize, these faces that are apparently their own.

Last week, I said Chapter 4 would deal with clues and choices, which is still true. However, a huge chunk of it also deals with identity, especially gender identity; one character, in particular, is really struggling to conceive of who he is without the context of his past. I try not to be too prescriptive about writing rules (because as evidenced above, they’re really understood best as–say it with me in your best pirate voice–guidelines) but if you’re writing an amnesia story (a thriller, a romance, a slice of life, whatever) and you’re not making identity a central theme in your story? I kind of feel like you’re doing it wrong.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m doing it well. But hopefully, I can succeed. I’m really aiming for this novel to be both fast-paced and character oriented. I refuse to believe it has to be one or the other. (Feel free to provide inspiration, though, and tell me your favorite fast-paced, character oriented novels!)

Random Line From Chapter 4:

Shit. Is he picturing who he wants to be, or who he wants to fuck?

Clarion West Write-a-Thon: Week Four Update

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Top Secret Code Name of Current Project: Who Murdered Superman? (It Was Aquaman, Wasn’t It, I FUCKING KNEW IT.)
Current Pitch: Six Wakes meets Justice League Unlimited

An Inconvenient Blackout: Check
A Mysterious Disappearance: Check
A Fair Amount of Blood Loss: Inevitably

Song From Current Project Playlist: Halo – MONO

Goal Met: Alas, FailWriter! continues.

Well. I completed Chapter 2, anyway.

While I’m aware I said this last week, I feel like I can still make my goal by tomorrow night, since I don’t go back to work until Sunday. Still, I hate being behind. It probably wouldn’t bother me so much, considering these are all made-up deadlines anyway, but if I ask for people to sponsor me with their hard-earned money, I feel obligated to actually meet my goddamn goals. You know, like a professional.

On the upside, Chapter 3 isn’t going bad so far. I’m really looking forward to Chapter 4, where I think the characters will finally have a little more time to properly investigate who and where they are. Thus far, they’ve spent the majority of their time either finding one another or reacting to all the scary shit that keeps happening. Not that I’m having a terrible time terrifying my characters, of course; being mean to your MCs is one of the finest sadistic pleasures that the artistry of writing has to offer. Still, I have ALL THESE CLUES that no one’s found yet, and I’m excited to see how my characters react when they do find them. The choices they make (who to trust, what to reveal, what to conceal, etc.) will depend greatly on how they interpret these clues, so yeah, I’m excited for all that. Interpersonal dynamics is where I live, yo.

Random Line From Chapter Three:

“Wait, you two aren’t gonna go and leave me like this, are you? With some probable Jigsaw shit going on out there? Uh-uh, fuck you, no thanks.”

Clarion West Write-a-Thon 2018: Week Three Update

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Top Secret Code Name of Current Project: Who Murdered Superman? (It Was Aquaman, Wasn’t It, I FUCKING KNEW IT.)
Current Pitch: Six Wakes meets Justice League Unlimited

Character Stepping On A Dead Body: Check
Character Waking Up Slightly Impaled: Check
Character Bursting Into Hysterical Laughter: Obviously.

Song From Current Project Playlist: In A House (In A Heartbeat) – John Murphy

Goal Met: Not yet

In a late Season 3 episode of The Flash, Leonard Snart, master thief, explains The Four Rules of a Successful Heist:

1. Make the plan
2. Execute the plan
3. Expect the plan to go off the rails . . .
4. . . . throw away the plan.

This is, honestly, a more-than-fair assessment of just how my writing process works.

I finished a draft of Chapter 1 last week, and I felt good about it–sure, the draft wasn’t great and I finished it just under the wire, but hey, win by an inch or a mile, right, and besides, first drafts aren’t actually about being sellable. They’re about discovery, about reaching The End, about giving your story somewhere bigger and better to live than just the solitary space inside your head. I often rewrite as I work, but considering my weekly Write-a-Thon deadlines, I decided to avoid that as much as possible here. The plan was to push through until the six weeks were over; then I could go back and fix all the frustrating inconsistencies.

Obviously, Week 3 was all about Step 4.

The problem was this: after finishing the chapter, I realized there was just too damn much I wanted to change. And that’s the thing about mysteries, you know. The setup is kind of important. The biggest change I needed to make was to one of my POV characters. Let’s call her BC. Originally, I introduced BC in Chapter 1, which seemed fine. By the time I got to the end of Chapter 1, though, I realized I wanted to end it on this mini-cliffhanger. And with that cliffhanger in mind, I realized BC’s introduction could be so much more dynamic (and creepier) if I waited until Chapter 2. Which then meant I had to rewrite half the goddamn first chapter. Naturally, it took most of the week to do so, because life gets busy sometimes, and because it was absolutely vital I helped my friends kick ass on Trivia Tuesday. (I’m more valuable in some categories than others. In Science Fiction, for instance, I proved useful. When Spirits & Liquor came up, I was basically just there to look pretty.)

So, yes, I’m behind. Again. But I made some solid progress last night, and I expect I’ll manage to finish up by the end of Saturday. More importantly, halfway through the Write-a-Thon, people! With any luck, I’ll successfully complete this and get back to posting about TOS episodes and terrible movies soon!

Random Line From Chapter Two:

Flesh has a very distinctive bounce.

Clarion West Write-A-Thon 2018: Week Two Update

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Top Secret Code Name of Current Project: Who Murdered Superman? (It Was Aquaman, Wasn’t It, I FUCKING KNEW IT.)
Current Pitch: Six Wakes meets Justice League Unlimited

Mysterious Bloody Footprints: Check
Mysterious Gunshot Wounds: Check
More Questions Than Answers: Double Check

Song From Current Project Playlist: “Taijin Kyofusho” – The Evpatoria Report

Goal Met: Nope

I’m starting to think I set a slightly too ambitious goal for myself.

Beginnings are a pain in the ass. It’s not that this novel is off to a bad start; it’s just off to a slow one, as I try to figure out what clues need to be given upfront and which POVs I want to begin with. That latter consideration is a big one to me; the whole idea of this novel came from the desire to see better “We’re Stuck In a Death Box Together And We Don’t Know Who We Are And/Or How We’re Connected” stories. Frequent readers of this blog will recognize that sub-genre of film is one my sister and I are hopelessly attracted to, like moths to a particularly disappointing flame. And while I’m not yet a screenwriter (who knows, maybe someday), I thought I could write the story I was dying to see as a novel instead. Only with superheroes, cause, you know. SUPERHERO MURDER MYSTERY, Y’ALL.

One of the things I want this novel to be, more than anything else, is a true ensemble. A lot of amnesia mysteries heavily focus on one protagonist. Other characters might have amnesia too, of course, but the audience is introduced to the world through this MC’s eyes, invited to primarily sympathize with (or primarily distrust) them in particular. Because whatever the Big Twist is in the story, whether our MC is secretly The Good Guy Who’s Only Pretending to be Evil or actually The-Bad-Guy-Who-Is-Now-All-Redemptive-And-Shit, it’s always going to center on them.

That’s . . . not a bad story? But it’s also one I have very little interest in telling. What I want is something closer to Anyone Can Die, except instead of dying, I want Anyone Can Be the Villain or Anyone Can Be The Hero or–what’s more appropriate for this particular novel–Everyone Is A Fully Realized, Morally Ambiguous Bastard Who Sometimes Does Bad Stuff For Understandable Reasons. What I really want, so, so much, is a mystery full of solid suspects, where every character’s identity and relationships matter and where no one’s around just to be a super obvious red herring.

Am I going to be successful in that endeavor? Shit, I don’t know; like I said, I’m not even done with the first chapter yet. (I’m almost there!)

Best get back to writing and figure it out.

Random Line From Chapter One:

Dissociative amnesia, perhaps. Psychological trauma. She IS wearing a dead man’s blood, so it’s not completely out of the question.

Clarion West Write-A-Thon 2018: Week One Update

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Top Secret Code Name of Current Project: Who Murdered Superman? (It Was Aquaman, Wasn’t It, I FUCKING KNEW IT.)
Current Pitch: Six Wakes meets Justice League Unlimited

Number of Amnesiac POV characters: 5
Number of Important Backstory Events Planned Out: 3
Number of Dead Bodies: 1 . . . so far 

Song From Current Project Playlist: Batman Theme (1966)

Goal Met: Almost

I am not a gardener, not in any definition of the word. If I mean to write something, especially if it’s long, a mystery, or both, I’m gonna need some blueprints to work from. Admittedly, I don’t always follow my own blueprints, but I feel a lot less anxious at the start if I at least have something resembling a plan.

This week has been all about Crafting the Plan, and while I’m not quite done yet, I’m feeling good about the progress I’ve made so far. This particular novel (or possibly novella) idea has been rattling around in my head for literal years, and it feels good to seriously start work on it. In fact, I’ve already identified a problem and since course-corrected: there were just too many characters for the story I wanted to tell. More characters mean more suspects, which obviously I enjoy, but too many suspects usually means a watered down mystery where supposed main players are clearly extraneous and thus easily discarded as possible culprits. Once I considered combining a few of my characters, though, I realized I had a much tighter mystery taking shape.

I also spent some time working out my Timeline of Important Events, not of what takes place during the novel but rather what leads up to it. I’d do this before tackling any mystery, of course, but it seemed especially important with this particular project, considering I start my story with a bunch of characters who don’t know who they are, what’s going on, or why there’s a dead superhero in the room. It seemed important I knew at least marginally more than they did.

Now armed with a bunch of secrets (SO MANY SECRETS) and a handful of origin stories, I feel like I’m in a much better place to actually, you know, begin the novel next week. Please do not expect any such optimism to persist on this blog. That’s simply not how we do things here at My Geek Blasphemy.

Finally, a Random Line From the Notes Without Any Context:

The Dead Guy Principles:
Thou shalt not murder

The 2018 Clarion West Write-a-Thon

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Yup. It’s that time of the year again. As going to Clarion West was, you know, one of the most rewarding experiences of my life (both practically and emotionally), I’ve come to ask for your souls money for Clarion West’s annual fundraiser.

Last summer, I worked on my Spindle City novel, which I’ve since completed and am currently submitting to agents. This summer, while I wait to hear back, I’m focusing on a different idea I’ve been kicking around for years now, a murder mystery with a handful of amnesiac superheroes, one dead body, and no way out. The unofficial pitch? Six Wakes meets Justice League Unlimited.

As always, I’ll be posting updates on my blog at the end of every week. If you’re interested in sponsoring me, fantastic! You can do that HERE, where I also have a list of rewards for anyone who donates. (If you’ve been wanting to torture me, for instance, by making me watching some atrocious movie, or if you’ve always wondered what neat-but-not-exactly-earth-shaking super power you might secretly have, you’ll want to go check out that link.) Or if you’re interested in supporting a good cause but aren’t so keen on my particular project or rewards, you can browse through all the other participating writers HERE.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I must go: I have a murder mystery in my head that I desperately need to untangle.

Clarion West Write-a-Thon 2017: Week 6 Update

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Top Secret Code Name of Current Project: Fedoras and Trust Issues
Current Pitch: Hardboiled fairy tale noir!
Slightly More Detailed Pitch: In an alternate post-WWII America, a cranky, bisexual PI and his ace, teenage Girl Friday try to solve the disappearances and/or murders of three different women.

Number of Unexpected Arguments Between Characters: 1
Number of Big Reveals This Chapter: 1
Number of Secret Plans Involving Murder: Well, lots. But in this chapter? 1

Song From Current Project Playlist: “Elias” – Ramin Djawadi, Stephen Coleman, & Hollywood Studio Symphony

Goal Met: YES

Last week of the Write-a-Thon, and I have met my goal! I wish I could just slack off now and go indulge in some fanfiction, but unfortunately I really need to keep up the pace to meet my deadline. I did, however, reward myself by buying an unconscionable amount of books from Barnes & Noble. The multiple shipping notices I received from them yesterday made me downright giddy.

This latest chapter is a relatively short one. It’s a scene pretty much lifted straight from “The Price You Pay Is Red,” and I wasn’t really expecting any surprises . . . only to find myself writing a brief but surprisingly intense argument between one of my protagonists and his love interest. And it was Prince, for once, playing the role of the idealist, while mild-mannered Hank was the angry cynic during the fight. It’s kind of a role reversal for both of them, but (hopefully) not out of character in scene, and I found it kind of exciting. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about turning these stories into a novel is having more time to spend on the side characters, especially Jack (obvs, since she’s no longer a side character), Hank, and Mr. Nguyen.

On the other hand, giving Jack a POV meant I had to add even more side characters–because unlike what too many stories would have you believe, most ladies have lady friends of their own. I didn’t want Jack’s whole world to be populated by people who were only important to Prince. So, there may or may not still be a Battle Royale going on for screen time (so to speak), because, as anyone reading this probably knows, I can be a wordy motherfucker sometimes.

Finally, Your Last Random Line of the Week:

People here, we don’t revolt. We just step over the bodies.