Blog Hop: A Peek Into "The Humble Abode"

All right, ladies and germs, welcome to my first Blog Hop. I'm told it works something like this: some writer friends of mine have been passing around the following interview questions. When tagged, one must answer the questions about one's latest work-in-progress and then pass them on to someone new. I got tagged, so now it's my turn to talk about what's got me banging the keys of late.

If you'd like to see the answers of She Who Tagged Before Me (that's her Native American name), then visit the following blog: http://seeredwrite.wordpress.com/. If you want to know what I'm up to right now, then read on!

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:

What is the working title of your book?

Well, I've got one still in progress and one I'm putting the finishing touches on. The latter is the one I'm going to chat about here. It's called The Humble Abode.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Honestly, I couldn't tell you anymore where the particulars stemmed from, but the main character is based on a true story of smart-assery. I have a friend whose sarcasm setting was turned up so high when I first met him it nigh scorched my eyebrows off. My initial impression had me torn between amusement and kind of wanting to drown him just a little. Then, the more I got to know him, the more hilarious I found him, and the more I was like, "Hey, who are you kidding, buddy? You're a ridiculously nice person! You can't fool me with your diverting snark!"

Of these traits, a cranky hermit was born.

What genre does your book fall under?

Fantasy, but heavy on the comedy a la Terry Pratchett.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Honestly, I have no idea. The only character I have a notion for is Jior, my pointy-eared grammar freak. I'd find it quite charming to see what Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory" fame could do with him.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A cranky hermit living in a haunted forest gets dragged out of his cottage and into a madcap adventure.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I admire the hustle my indie author friends have, but I'm going to take a run at representation.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I started writing it when I was 22 or 23. I will be 33 in February... :O

Honestly, it didn't take that long to write the dang thing, it just took me that long to quit picking at it. But I can tell you, there is not a comma out of place. This baby is IMMACULATE.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I think there's a zippy, wacky quality to it that's comparable to the works of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

See the above response regarding my unnamed friend who speaks sarcasm fluently.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Well, it's got a little bit of everything: mystery, romance, adventure, death, grammar, and ghosts haunting jam jars... I mean, what more could you want from a story?

So anyhow, that is what I have up my sleeve just now!

Now, I'm supposed to tag others to answer some questions as well, but it looks to me like so many of my writer friends have already done this that I'm going to just post this picture of Norman Reedus in sexy nerd glasses instead. Enjoy!

"I feel like I just got tagged in a blog post that has nothing to do with me. That's so weird..."

Of Fickle Muses and NaNoWriMo

I've always been a genius at coming up with logical-sounding excuses. This is a decent skill to have when one is an attorney by trade and a serial procrastinator as a side endeavor. However, these past few months, I’d been focusing my talents on laying out all the excuses for why I have made no effort to flex my creative muscles and write something new.

"I work. And when I come home, I'm tired. And on the weekends, I have errands and I don't really feel like doing anything. And I dunno, maybe I'm just out of stories. I don't feel moved to write anything, so whatever I did write would just be 'blah blah' awfulness."

And everyone always nodded and agreed with me that these were good reasons. I was acquitted of the charge of being creatively lazy by a jury of my peers, so I felt justified in continuing to let my keyboard keys go cold. 

Honestly, what impresses people the most is my professional set up.

That and the free lemonade with purchase of a will.

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Except... I used to love it. When I was younger, it wasn't something I tried to talk my way out of like a kid trying to fake sick on a school day. It was what I did for fun. It was what I stayed home from school for! Honestly, I had felt that way until not that long ago. And then the excuses started falling out of my mouth and I started calling in sick to writing.

It is true that taking a day off can have fabulous results.

However, I suspect "Ferris Bueller's Three Years of Hooky"

 would have lacked the same hilarity.

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When NaNoWriMo rolled around this year, it was something I'd heard of and always wanted to try. And I admitted to myself that I hated that writing had stopped being such a big part of my life and had just become a dream I had when I had more time to care about such things. Something had to be done. Maybe NaNo was that something. A jumpstart for the dead battery of my writing life.

However, I was highly skeptical about the whole concept. I had always been a firm believer in writing in those fevered moments of inspiration where you can't type fast enough to keep up with the words spilling out of your brain. I didn't feel like such moments could be forced, and that what happened when you just wrote to keep writing was that your misguided stumbling landed you into a corner and you ended up deeding another story to the graveyard file. I’ve always needed to see where I was going clearly. I need those flashes where it's like someone lit a match in the dark room of my mind and suddenly, I could see everything the way it was meant to be.

On a good muse day, I can write ALL OF THE WORDS.

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But I also had to admit that this hadn't happened in a long, long, long time. And that a lot of my stories had gone cold when the initial fevered sweat of inspiration ran out and never came back. I just ended up discarding them and started anew when the next lightning bolt struck. The result was that I had actually finished few things, edited even fewer properly, and ended up with only one finished, publishable novel out of the dozens hibernating on my computer or in the Tupperware drawer of old manuscripts under my bed. Over two decades of letting my muse call the shots was availing me naught.

So I rolled the dice. On November 1st, I opened up a blank document and started typing. And typed more every night of November, no matter how little I had to say. I typed until 2 am on a work night and went in the next day dragging ass. I typed over holiday visits with my family on nights when I was so run down from darting from one gathering to the next that all I wanted to do was sleep. I wrote through my favorite TV shows (thank God for DVR, though) and through social events I could have attended and through nights when I was so exhausted I didn't even know how to spell anymore. Sometimes, I didn't even have much to show for it. Sometimes, was leaked onto my page was utter drek that got smacked down by the strikethrough button faster than you can say, "purple prose." And sometimes, I didn't even make my word count, no matter how hard I tried.

The NaNoWriMo word count at work.

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But over the course of sweating over my keyboard day in and day out, no matter what, it was like someone was turning lights on inside me until I was lit up like a Christmas tree. I went through the days, those hours between bouts of writing, feeling so tired that I didn't know my own name and so filled with joy that names and other such minutia seemed unimportant.

I'm not going to lie and say it's easy, or that it will always work out that way for anyone else who's struggling with being in a writing rut. It's been a hard knock life throughout the month of November, and I've had my share of complaints. (See my Tweet feed for details.) But I learned a few lessons that I like to hope will stick with me. At least until next year’s NaNo.

I learned that having to sit down and bang out 1667 words a night whether I was feeling blessed by the muses or not gave me panic attacks and sometimes resulted in directionless drivel.

I also learned that sometimes, the mere exercise of forcing my fingers to the keys resulted in my typing some unexpected detail that gave birth to an entire plot sequence, unlocking the new several scenes like a quest item in a video game.

I also level up with every 10,000 words. True story.

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I learned that, just like walking a little farther every day had given me ever-increasing endurance such that my leg muscles can now carry me over any distance, the more I exercised my plot brain, the more easily it brimmed over with new ideas. In fact, at this point, I can't shut the damn thing off. I've had to start carrying my notebook again and occasionally texting myself notes or voice recording snippets on my cell.

I learned that there were others just like me with key-shaped imprints on their foreheads from banging their heads on their laptops in moments of NaNo-induced woe. But we cheered each other on, and urged each other to finish. And I realized that even in NaNoless times, that same support was available to keep me plugging away when I was being tormented by blank pages or go-nowhere subplots.

I also learned, all over again, that I love writing. Love it like I love a warm summer day at the beach with the sea breeze tousling my hair and the sand tickling my toes. Like I love reading a good book while draped in an arm chair at a bookstore sipping some chocolaty caffeinated pseudo-milkshake. I loved writing as the best part of who I am and what I do, something that makes me feel like, even if there’s a million people out there doing exactly what I’m doing, I still have something special to contribute to the world. And I realized that no matter how busy I get, giving that up would be absolute madness.

This about sums it up.

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I was also forced to recognize the truth I had known all along: novels aren't just written by millionaire playboys and starlets with ghost writers. I suppose that happens on occasion, but more often than not, novelists start out as people with day jobs and bills and spouses and children and responsibilities. They had to beg, borrow, and steal all the time they put into their dream, just like I did. But in the end, the most amazing thing happened: their stories got told.

Just like my story is getting told now. My novel isn't over yet. Being in the epic vein, it’s still got a few K to go before all the loose ends tie together and I can sit back and contemplate the joys of the editing process. But it's a lot closer than it was before because I made time for that to happen, and I put the effort in whether I was feeling like it or not. And now I know what I have to do to make it the rest of the way there. 

No more excuses.

The Dixon Fairy

Legend has it, if you're a good little fangirl and you eat all your squirrel sushi and send lots of lovey tweets and/or care packages to Norman and Michael, the Dixon Fairy will come and leave sexy Dixon pictures under your pillow...

CLICK THE IMAGE FOR AN UNOBSTRUCTED VIEW.

BACKSTORY: The Dixon Fairy is the product of a conversation with a fellow Vixen who had a hard time tracking down a copy of the Entertainment Weekly with the Dixon brothers on the cover. It just so happened that I had an extra, so I mailed it to her. Somehow or another, this turned into daydreams of a motorcycle-riding redneck fairy with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bag full of treats.

Gleeful Days Are Here Again

The last season of Glee did not fill me with the emotion that the title promised. It was hard to put my finger on exactly what wasn't working for me. The best I can figure is that after two stellar seasons that smartly balanced the chuckles and the drama, able to sing out with feel-good bubbliness in one moment and lament as melodiously as Billie Holiday the next, the third season started to feel like it was playing to the audience too much. The laughs felt forced, the plotlines lacked conviction, and the twists were painfully predictable. (Yes, we knew they would win at nationals before the seniors graduated and that Finchel wouldn't continue on with our boy keeping house for his happy starlet. Cause Glee may not always nail it, but the writers are not brain dead.)

They did throw in a Christmas wookie, though. If that's not a ratings saver, I don't know what is.

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After the airing of "The New Rachel" last night, this season smells vaguely of redemption (perhaps with an undercurrent of teen spirit). It's not flawless, mind. There's a little been-there-done-that to some of the plotlines we've seen so far, such as the group losing sight of their policy of acceptance for all due to competitiveness and a yearning for popularity. Not only has this idea surfaced before, but in this episode, it wrapped up almost faster than one could recognize it. It might have been intriguing to see the Dark Side of the Glee club for a change (in fact, I'd pay good money to see a little Darth Britney), but it would have ultimately felt wrong to see our sweet and scrappy underdogs going all "Mean Girls." So discarding this notion was probably smart. 

The Glee Club: Give us your tired, your nerdy, your out-and-proud gay men yearning to be free.

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And Puckerman the sequel worries me. Don't tell me he's going to start out as a bad seed and learn the value of friendship through membership in the glee club, because I can already see that coming from a mile away. Then, all that will separate Jake Puckerman from his brother, Noah, will be the impregnation of a cheerleader and a subsequent lust for larger ladies. As for our singing Pollyanna, Marley, the offspring of the much-derided lunch lady, she concerns me as well. She's somewhat charming in an overwrought Oliver Twist kind of way right now, but she's going to need to develop some complexity to avoid being as two-dimensional as a Disney princess.

Want to hear a new level of wardrobe fail? Our musical pauper is 

depicted as wearing a thrift store sweater that her mom sewed a 

J. Crew label in to make her cheap-o duds look cool. When I moused 

over this image on the original site, it gave me the option to shop the look. 

Turns out, this is a $168 Marc Jacobs sweater. Really, wardrobe person?

 REALLY?! There goes authenticity.

However, what thrilled me to no end was how well Glee incorporated our recent grads. I smelled doom when most of characters who made life at McKinley High seem worthwhile moved on, leaving behind newbies and a few folks who made stellar supporting characters, but were questionable as leads. What reassured me and has me engrossed anew was the integration of plotlines for our favorite new New Yorker, Rachel Berry, and the man who brings style to lurking at the high school after graduation, Kurt Hummel. Those two, alone, make the whole show worthwhile. But it also gives me hope that they'll find a way to incorporate Puckerman (the elder) and Finn into the current plot, especially with Carbon Copy Jake now skulking around the high school. This will be absolutely necessary until Glee can deliver lead characters on par with Rachel, Finn, and Kurt and develop them enough to make us love them.

Concerned that the leftover gleesters can't carry the show? 

Never fear, Fancy Man is here! Look upon his cravat, ye mighty, and despair.

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And Kate Hudson. Kate Kate Kate. I had not been tracking the spoilers, darling, so it was a lovely surprise to see your unfairly gorgeous mug here. Kate Hudson as Rachel's dance teacher is the most delicious of bitches. She sets her sight on "Ms. David Schwimmer," as she keeps referring to Rachel, and seems determined to grind her under the heel of her tap shoes before the first semester is through. And yet, she's not so bad, as we see in her brief but supportive interaction with a TA who just landed his first Broadway role as a flying monkey in Wicked. Their conversation shows that this Grinch's heart may be two sizes too small, but it does exist, only perhaps it's a bit broken over her own lack of Broadway success. Her singing and dancing was divine, her performance quite capable, but this is a role that could also end up like a stock character from a thousand other stories. The broken, has-been alcoholic who scorns others out of pain is very well-traveled territory. I like where they're going with this so far, but Glee will need to watch its step to keep this character from becoming too cliche.

She's obviously a cold-hearted snake. Look into her eyes.

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With the dramatic reunion between Rachel and Kurt at the end of the episode, Glee leaves us with the hope of good things to come. Certainly, as discussed, there are some false notes and missteps, but the general theme remains one worth singing along to.

Are these musical puns doing it for you? Cause this last one will have you doing a...

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The Quick and Dirty Update

If you saw the words "quick and dirty" in the title and you came here hoping for 50 Shades of Nerd...

She was a fragile geek with a passion for punctuation.

He was a handsome devil who put his commas where he pleased.

Bosoms heaved.

Conjugation ensued.

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...then prepare to be disappointed. It's not that kind of "quick and dirty" blog. Sheesh. People these days.

And nerdgirls everywhere heaved a heartfelt sigh, having gotten all amped up for the 

cos-play sex scenes and naughty calculus.

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Ahem. The upshot of this blog is that I feel that I've been derelict in my duties here, having absented myself to the "real world"  to prepare for Dragon*Con next weekend, so I wanted to pop in for a minute or two and just give up two brief updates on the world of TV. Specifically, I wanted to tell you, past the lump in my throat, and with a gleaming tear in my eye: "I was wrong." *swallow* *glittering tear slides down cheek*

In my TV reviews, I can occasionally judge too harshly and too quickly. On two shows in particular, I am preparing to eat crow. Lots and lots of nummy crow. 

1) The Grimm Reversal

"That Lady in Black is one baaaaad mother"

"Shut your mouth!"

"I'm just talkin' bout Nick's mom!"

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Not so very long ago, in a blog entry not so far away, I lamented the failure of "Grimm" to choose a conceptual direction and stick with it, and to depict our hero as anything but a normie with some books. These things are still true. However, even with these flaws, these first episodes of season 2 hit me like a tidal wave of awesome. To kick off the show's sophomore year, the woman in black's secret is revealed: she's Nick's mom, not quite dead yet after all. And oh, by the way, she's a lean, mean, ass-kicking machine that makes you pity the PTA who didn't vote her way back in her more traditional mommying days. The dialogue has improved, the pace has picked up, and the ongoing plot-lines are beginning to stretch cohesively from one episode to the next. Aside from the end, which saw Nick fighting a sabertoothed Thundercat (not exactly the most awe-inspiring bad guy we've ever seen), this new season looks sharper, slicker, and full of promise. I can't even begin to go into episode 2, because the plot twists and further badassery will blow your mind.

Quick, Liono, use the Eye of Thundera to stop him!

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So insofar as I indicated in the past that "Grimm" was a lame duck, I must humbly admit my folly. All the promise I saw in the very first episode that made my hopes for this show shoot so high is back again, tantalizing me with the notion that "Grimm" may yet live up to its potential. So stay tuned in and let's see if greatness happens, shall we?

2) Fanged Flip-flop

"Why can't you just threaten my boyfriends with a shotgun like 

a normal dad?"

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The other mea culpa I must deliver isn't 100% certain yet, but there's definitely a possibility that season 5 of "True Blood" is going to go down swinging after all. If you'll recall, I wrote a somewhat lengthy dissertation about what a hot mess "True Blood" was becoming and what needed to be fixed to keep it from derailing completely. Then, this past Sunday, "Sunset" aired, our second to last ep of the season. While some of the problems I mentioned remain unsolved, this show has also suddenly picked up the pace, reengaged, and started running, full-throttle, towards season five's finish line full steam ahead.  Evil Bill still bothers me. However, Evil Bill's delegating to Jessica the task of turning Jason Stackhouse into her vampire progeny to punish her for her attempt to trick him was just delightful. Plus, in the ensuing action, as Jessica tries to razzle-dazzle her way past her guards and save Jason from becoming a permanent member of the night shift,  their charming interaction ended with a line from Jessica that had me nearly weeping bloody tears, myself. Then Jessica went to hide out at Fangtasia, having defied Pops for the love of a hottie in uniform. (Who hasn't?) This reunited the baby vamp club, Tara and Jess, and had them gossiping on their coffins and bonding into BFFs as I'd hoped they might in my giddiest dreams. Pam, of course, was resplendent in the ebbs and flows of bitchdom, one minute snapping at her fledglings, another laying some grudging wisdom on them, and then, in the ultimate show that underneath that fashionable leather bustier beats a heart of gold, she sacrificed herself to the Authority to keep them from taking Tara in for Sheriff Criss Angel's death. And lastly, the fairies also saw a spike in the level of awesome in their plotline, with a Fae Elder introduced who really digs pop music on multiple cosmic levels. This plot-line ended with a showdown brewing between Russell Edgington and a whole nightclub of burlesque fairies waiting to put on a strip laser-light show of doom in defense of their right to be bloodsucker-free. Suddenly, things aren't looking so bad here, after all. 

Now you're just some Elder that we used to know...

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I'm still tired of seeing Lilith's rack and wondering why a goddess can't seem to find a decent bikini waxer. And I'm  not wholly sold on Nora, although her insane love for Eric is somewhat entertaining. But I actually think that season 5 may yet leave me a contented Trubie, nonetheless. 

"Hey, I have a plot, here, too!"

Ssshhhh, Alcide. Go back to digging shirtless while

glistening with manly sweat. There's no need for plot here...

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So, there you go. When I'm wrong, I (almost, and with only a few qualifications) say I'm wrong. And I was (kind of) wrong about both shows. I look forward to seeing what "Grimm" has in store for us, and if "True Blood" is ready to really bring down the house in its finale. And if, perhaps, I've judged them harshly, it's only because I care so very much. Like a teacher with two precocious, if wayward pupils, I am pleased as punch to see them both succeeding, and look forward to cheering them on as they excel. 

But if they start to suck again... *twitches fingers over keyboard* ... I'll be waiting! 

Da-da-DAAAAAAAAAA!!!

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Of Men and Peanut Butter

Sometime before I moved from Fort Lauderdale, I started working on yet another novel. In my lifetime, I've started dozens, and I've finished four. The first one was abysmal, good for little more than an object to prop under a broken table leg to keep it steady. The second and third showed promise, with a few shining ideas and interesting characters, but everything good about them had gotten hopelessly entangled in overwrought descriptions and far too many subplots for comfort. These, I would need to come back years later, when I had far more strength of will to rebuild and restructure than I do now. The fourth and last novel was actually pretty sound on all fronts, but because I'd been staring at it for 10 years of my life, I needed a second opinion. I'm in the process of obtaining such a second opinion from 10 other people in the form of 10 friendly neighborhood beta readers. But in the meantime, I didn't know how to live my life without telling stories.

This newest tale came bubbling out of my brain one evening when I had absolutely no time to entertain it. But I couldn't help myself. It's like it was spilling out of my ears and running across my floor to soak into my carpet, and if I didn't try to collect it on the page, I'd lose it forever. So despite having to get up and go to work early the next morning with absolutely no time to indulge in random acts of writing, I sat down at my computer and let my fingers go dancing and kerplunking across my keyboard. A whole world began to form. I filled it with people I suddenly cared about quite fiercely, and words that alternately amused and upset me. As it came together, I realized that it was a story I was excited to tell, because it felt unexpected and unique. Even if I wasn't the first person to think of all of the elements I was employing, I felt like maybe I was the first one to combine them together this way, and that felt utterly thrilling. For many nights after that one, I worked on the novel like a woman possessed, just burning with ideas. Then, sometime after I made the move up-state to Tallahassee, I sputtered to a halt and could write no more.

It didn't make sense for me to flail ineffectually upon reaching this portion of the story. This is the part I'd been waiting for. Every moment, every plot twist, every line of dialogue had just been a step I had to take to lead me here, finally, to the introduction of this character I'd become almost smitten with in the course of dreaming him up. And now that I finally led my heroine into his part of the world, I didn't know how to introduce him, or what to say about him when I did.

I stopped writing on the novel for a while and worked on other things. From time to time, I'd come back and sit down in front of the computer, calling up the Word document where my new character was waiting just off-set for his cue. Ultimately, I'd end up going back and re-reading what came before, monkeying with some descriptions and giving some unnecessary adverbs the quick and brutal death they deserved. But I made not a letter's worth of progress towards my guy coming onto the scene. Something about this character had rendered me speechless.

I ended up getting to the point where thinking about trying to conjure him up made me feel vaguely nauseated. My head pulsated with the memory of how much I'd wanted him to come into being, and my stomach ached with the guilt of having abandoned all efforts to make it happen. The only thing I can really compare it to, strangely enough, is that feeling I used to get in high school when, after having idealized some poor, unsuspecting heartthrob past the point of being a plausible human being, I could no longer bear the notion of trying to approach him and interact with him like he was just an average guy who ate, slept, farted, and changed his clothes. I can't tell you now if that's because I no longer knew how to see the boy through all the myths I'd created around him or if I just didn't want to anymore, but I suppose that's irrelevant to the matter at hand. All that mattered was that my fictional character was as unattainable as the guy with the blazingly azure eyes in my Physics class who had scant knowledge of my existence.

Long after I had gone through all of the stages of grief over this failing and finally arrived at acceptance, I hit upon the answer. At the time, I was reading American Gods in my bathtub, draped over the rim with a highlighter cap in my mouth while I marked through the most intriguing bits in bright gold. Every now and then, I traded the highlighter for a pen, marking down observations in the margins that were alternatively keenly analytical and just plain silly.

Around page 50, I got hung up on how Shadow's character had been revealed. I flipped back through the pages, admiring how every detail spoke volumes about this man, whereas a lengthy exposition trying to concisely describe his existence upfront would have lacked the same effectiveness. He wasn't explained, he just was. I really felt like Neil Gaiman knew this character. Thought his thoughts. Knew what he smelled like, how he cut his hair, and what his favorite TV show was when he was a kid. Sensed him in a way that was far more telling than a recitation of objective historical facts could be. And because Neil Gaiman knew his character so intimately, I felt like I did. This was someone whose fate I was keenly invested in, a mere 50 pages into the book. I was worried about him, upset for him, and admired him by turns. Even having read his story once before, I was caught up in his life all over again and fretting like I had no clue what was to come. And it occurred to me that this was the kind of character I wanted to write. This was the only way I could write the man I'd dreamed up for my own book and feel like I'd done justice to the idea of him nestled inside my head.

The answer was so obvious that I would've never thought of it without help, because that's how these things work. I needed to know my character like Neil Gaiman knew Shadow Moon. Shadow hadn't been scattered, willy-nilly, across a page in the hopes that he would make sense to someone someday. The details that made him believable had been spread out through the chapters with the deliberate care of a man spreading peanut butter across the crunchy surface of his toast. No globs and splatters. He'd been revealed to us slowly and carefully: the words that resonated in his mind, the memories that made him happy, his mannerisms when he was concerned, his precise handwriting and his cautious reactions to things that might make another man exclaim and react impulsively. Whether Gaiman plotted him out in advance or his clever brain just happens to work that way, he wove an intricate and subtle image through the pages of the book that made Shadow seem so real that I had to keep reading about him long after my bathwater went tepid and my fingers and toes had became hideously pruny.

So before I sit down again and start stabbing at keys on my laptop, trying to force my character into existence prematurely, I'm going to take him to lunch. Not literally, mind. I'm not that crazy. Yet. One day this week, I'm going to take my moleskin somewhere peaceful during my lunch break and I'm going to write about him until I know him well enough to make him live in my story instead of just existing as a prop for the main character to interact with. Chances are, I won't actually write anything that will make its way into the finished product, but whatever scene or story or details that feel authentic to me when I consider who and what he is. It could be that I'll pen out his family history, or about how he copes with an upsetting event in his life, or how he interacted with other children when he was a boy. It might be something that can be woven into the novel, it might not be, but the bottom line is, it just has to be something that makes him real to me. Because ideas are a fine thing, but people are much more interesting. And whereas some characters just spring into existence, fully-formed, as if they've just been waiting for you to notice them, sometimes the really special ones take a little more care.

Hopefully, if I show my character that I care, he'll take that cautious step into the scene I've set up for him. And my fingers will once again find their rhythm on the keys.

Let Your Pun Monkey Be Your Guide

Somehow or another, my buddy, Sabrina, a.k.a. @sabrinalibrary, and I ended up having this ongoing joke about the Typo Demon who ruins one's texts and Tweets and such and the pun monkeys who dance enthusiastically when one tells amusing but slightly terrible jokes. That joke inspired the following drawing, as I mulled over the warring influences battling for preeminence in my Tweets.