July is Summer-like

That being said, I am a happy camper. Yes, it is hot and I do hate sweltering, but it also means not having to wear jackets, eating icy desserts (which I love), swimming, and general chillaxing (yes, I do use this word in every day speech). After June Gloom, sunny sunny July is long-overdue.

With the return of SoCal sun, our dear friend Luce returned from her year abroad. She is the friend we wrote A Story of Very Questionable Origin for, and we were finally able to put the book in her hands (literally!) last, last Saturday. She was delighted and informed me Tuesday that she had begun reading it.

Tonight, she informed Alz that she had finished the book in which nothing really happens, and I believe the quote was "nothing happening has never been so glorious." I am thrilled; Alz was thrilled; and really, nothing happens in the story except for a very long, very crazy dinner party.

Anyway, perhaps best of all is that she also told Alz that she couldn't tell our writing apart later in the novel (structure in the beginning has something to do with this telling-apart business). Yay! Being able to blend two writing styles seamlessly is, of course, important in the collaborative process. So this was good to hear, especially from Luce since she's been reading our writing since days of yore (or some might call it high school).

I intend to interrogate her ruthlessly tomorrow when I see her for lunch. Perhaps more on her experience and what that means for Alz and me as a dynamic duo at a later date. Maybe after this weekend since I am insanely going to Disneyland in predicted-to-be 100 degree weather and then hosting a birthday party for small children on Sunday. Fantastic!

I do love the summer. Peace out.

Magnum Opus

Krispy and I are beholden unto those who offered their comments and congratulations, for which you've our thanks. Nor shall we neglect requests to gaze upon the wondrous beauty that is our physical book, self-published courtesy of CreateSpace, complete with glossy color cover, black and white interior on white paper, and that CreateSpace-assigned ISBN our dear Krispy is so jazzed about. As if I'm not jazzed about it myself ~♪♫♪. (Also, I'm to blame for not posting this sooner—the physical copy of our book currently resides with me. I'm just a lazy bum when it comes to taking and posting pictures.)

Alas, but at the time of completion, my computer suffered a tragic, inexplicable, and sudden death, and so I lacked the tools with which to create a cover worthy of our masterpiece. (No Photoshop makes for a sad, sad Alz, because it is her number one choice for drawing and photo-editing.) Fortunately, CreateSpace did offer a range of moderately customizable cover templates, and so with a bit of fiddling and fooling and sending images back and forth, Krispy and I were able to put together a more than halfway decent cover.



Krispy's sister is a marvelous photographer and we were able to pillage her collection of holiday-ish photos and abscond with them for our own nefarious uses.



And here's the back, complete with author blurb and portrait (thank goodness I had a suitable image I could dig up that showcased our good sides).



...and a closeup of our ISBN and barcode.



What can I say of CreateSpace's quality? This is the second book I've printed with them and the quality is very, very good. The first book I tried came back with a strange faded stripe that ran the width of the cover as if it the machine had messed up while printing, but since it was a free proof copy just like this one, I can't complain.

Fortunately, A Story of Very Questionable Origin came out beautifully--glossy cover, beautiful colors, looks quite professional. The black and white interiors are printed on white paper (they also have a cream option which allows for more pages becuase of the thinner consistency of the paper, but I chose white for ASoVQO because it looked great on the first book) and the text is clean. Illustrations are also printed clearly.

CreateSpace is also nice because you can order however many you want, with options to either sell privately just to yourself, or to actually list it on Amazon for a fee. I quite like what I've seen so far and would recommend CreateSpace as a great venue if you want something approaching professional quality, for the sheer joy of holding a physical object in your hot little hands, a labor of love, of blood and sweat and tears, is quite gratifying.

June Gloom

It's June! Weirdly enough, it is gloomy and sometimes threatens rain despite it being this time of year. I don't like that it seems like winter when it's supposed to be summer. What's this got to do with writing? Other than it putting a cramp in my mood, nothing really. I'm just popping in for an update and to take care of some belated business.

Firstly, Alz and I finished the Holiday Cookie! Yay! She already went into it a bit in the earlier post below, but it's kind of awesome. No, it's really awesome! Why? Because we have an effing ISBN NUMBER!!! Alz, being the Word Monster that she is, won Nanowrimo last year, and the reward was a coupon for createspace, which does self-publishing projects. Since she didn't want the coupon to go to waste AND because we had written this monster of a cookie for a friend, we thought it'd be cool to actually GIVE IT TO HER TO READ in BOOK form. It arrived in the mail last week, and it's kind of amazing. Mostly, I am psyched we have AN ISBN NUMBER.

Now may also be a good time to say that the title we settled on was "A Story of Very Questionable Origin" because I'm...not that creative and mostly because the story (if it can be called that) takes place in my Story of Questionable Origin storyverse.

Also, we have a back-cover synopsis now too, which I will now provide for those of you who are morbidly curious as to what this "cookie" Alz keeps talking about is.

The House of the Fallen is having a holiday dinner party. Who shall they invite? Why, their friends of course! Lady Lucia intends to throw a soiree to be remembered, and to make it extra memorable the guest list includes Crimson Imperator Banscray, Royal Knight Sincère Vrai, Lady Ciel Vrai, and Scarlet Kestrel Firalaer Firenight Phoenix; at the behest of Lord Lucianus, so too are invited Death herself—Lady Soleil Morana—and her companions Irihi and Vikenti; and Lucia's son Lucifer will, of course, be dragging his dear friend Michael into the familial holiday fray. Cross-dimensional travel presents no obstacle when there is the promise of fine food, fine wine, and even finer company.

Of course, this is the House of the Fallen. And what happens here stays here…

…or does it?

Secondly, the very sweet (despite her curious desire to bottle people) Danyelle at Carpe Mousa and Myth-takes awarded our blog with this very lovely award! She's so nice! I'm still so flattered, I don't know what to do with myself! So yay! Thanks!!! (And excuse me for taking so long to post this up!)



Oh also, HAPPY (June) BIRTHDAY to the cyber-twins Merc and David! And that's all for now!

Cookie Completion

Let this post stand as a testament to determination, literacy, contrivances, plot devices, randomness, creampuffs, and above all else, unmitigated genius—for last night, on the 27th of May of the year 2009, Krispy and I completed our first long term collaboration.

The Christmas Cookie is complete. It is baked. It is fragrant and delicious. There are further cosmetic plans for it currently underway, but the text itself stands alone as a monumental effort some six months in the making.

Final word count is ~105,000 words. It can be done. 80,000 is average novel length. We can do it. We did it. We are amazing. Yes, I am stroking our egos madly, but mostly I am impressed that we pulled so much off in such a short time span.

Collaboration works! It really, really does. I think that I'd been attempting to write this solo, it would have petered off any number of times, and gone in fits and starts, and eventually it would have trailed off while I moved on to something else and only came back a year later to work on another couple of pages before prancing off again. But the creative madness that ensued in playing page ping-pong with someone else served as sufficient motivational force to keep us writing on a regular basis, I think.

This is probably the most writing I've ever gotten out of Krispy on such a consistently regular day-to-day basis. Thank you, Krispy, and congratulations. KEEP IT UP. ♥♥♥

Slow-Baking

So our Holiday Cookie has been slow-baking in Krispy's oven for a while now. Amazingly enough, we managed an amazing three-four months of cookie-ing back and forth nearly everyday! This unprecedented streak of sheer genius produced a whopping 155 pages of dinnertime story—97,603 words so far. That's nearly 2x as much as Nanowrimo demands! To our dearly beloved friend to whom this cookie is dedicated: You shall be amazed when you read your severely belated Christmas present in its entirety.

Alas, but we have slowed down during April. Krispy has Real Life and I am supposed to be doing Real Life things too, soon. The ball is in her park though and though progress has been slow, it is being made. (Plus she's been working on other exciting writing! Which she has yet to share with me, be it added. *cough cough*) I think we both needed a break—breatherspace!—time to reflect and recuperate and rejuvenate, and at any rate, I think our cookie needs only a bit more time in the oven before it's ready to come out and cool while sending out delicious wafts of sweetness.

And—

Damn if Krispy hasn't posted just as I was writing this post! And more or less on the same topic. With some of the same terms and wording! Clearly we're on the same sort of wavelength.

Well, having read Krispy's post now, most of my random maunderings are redundant as she's already stated them so delightfully well down below. GO, KRISPY, GO!

I shall just add in my two cents. In my writing program, professors have encouraged me to take a break from writing for a while—told me to sit back and not write anything at all for a couple of weeks, except perhaps in a journal. They said it might help give me perspective and time to get re-energized and re-enthused about the material. They said that I just need to power over and through that (writers') block and then I would see the shining light at the end of the clear path beyond.

What I did not tell them was that I was not writing furiously every free hour of everyday like they seem to think I was doing—I work spastically, either in little fits and starts and drabbles, or enormous quantities of unexpected text all at once. (Cookie, mind you, is an exception for some reason. I think the energy of collaboration and the momentum cookie had gained over the weeks helped a lot. A lot.) Probably I should practice writing in a more regular manner, but, well, years of attempting to do so have only gotten me this far so far. Probably I just need more discipline.

At any rate, being in this so-magical writing program, I've learned several things:

1.) Nobody has the same process of writing.

2.) What works for one person might not work for another.

2a.) This includes everything from plotting a novel to actually writing to environment to, well, everything.

3.) Nevertheless, it's a good idea to try all suggestions to see if they work for you.

4.) But if they don't work, then they don't work. Don't force it.

5.) And don't let people force you into it either. This includes professors.

6.) This black sesame-flavored soymilk drink they sell down at the café in little cartons is actually pretty good.

Now seeing as Krispy is being so diligent as to post, bask in free time, and write, I can't let myself not compare to her and damn straight that's a double negative! I'm going to make good on what free time I've got right now and write too!

Stories within Stories within Stories within...

I'm sure that there's some specific literary term for stories that contain stories/narratives that contain narratives, but despite my long literary history, I have mostly failed at term-retention except for "hubris" which was one of my every English teachers' favorite words since freshman year of high school.

Anyway, in our Holiday Cookie, Krispy and I have boldly set forth to accomplish exactly that! No, not hubris, of which I'm sure I've plenty and probably Krispy has a healthy portion because we both lead tragic, tragic lives that incite fear and loathing in many and hey, every hero needs a tragic flaw—nay, but stories within stories! The Holiday Cookie has become the nesting ground for separate little tales contained within the larger narrative.

Why? Because I bullied Krispy into doing so. Our characters are finally at the dinner table and dinnertime conversation has drifted towards tale-telling. Also, it's a midwinter feast, and the grand tradition of Christmastime/wintertime ghost stories is a long and celebrated one—although, well, there haven't been any ghosts in the stories so far. Except for Krispy's, which had zombies. Zombies count.

One Thousand and One Arabian Nights is, of course, the most iconic example of stories within stories. Some crazy-nut of a king discovers that his wife is a bitch unfaithful and has her put to death, and then decides that he's going to marry a new virgin every day and have her put to death the next morning. Ah, the benefits of kinghood. This goes on for an unspecified but very loooong time, until eventually the daughter of one of the king's closest advisors decides to volunteer her pretty neck for the chopping block.

Nay, says her father, who loves her and incidentally does not relish the prospect of her imminent decapitation.

But Scheherazade is as clever as she is pretty! She has a plan! And so her father reluctantly yields to her will and she marries the king. That night she tells the king a fascinating story—but when the sun rises, like Battlestar Galactica, 24, and Heroes, Scheherazade ends the story on a cliffhanger, and the king decides to put off her execution until the next morning so he can hear the rest of the story. This gives her ample opportunity to continue weaving the tail of each tale into the next tale, until lo and behold, 1001 nights have passed and the king decides his earlier decision to execute his wives the morning after is bunk, and he keeps Scheherazade as his queen and they live happily ever after. Hooray.

Alice in Wonderland is a slightly different example more along the lines of what Krispy and I are doing. The novel is a novel, not a story collection with an initial story acting as a frame for the individual tales within; in Alice, the little mad tales of the Wonderland folk tend to be incidental rather than integral to the main narrative.

I know I've read quite a few other stories which incorporated further stories within their structure but for the life of me I cannot remember authors or titles except for Jane Yolen, who wrote at least two such short stories: "The Five Points of Roguery" and "Dream Weaver."

The first story contains the three much shorter and fairly clever anecdotal stories regarding the titular five points of roguery, including "One: The Eye," "Two: The Hand," "Three: The Voice," and the framing story which contains the other two points. The frame is essential for the final punch line.

The second story contains a blind dream-weaving woman who, for a coin, weaves visions and stories for passersby. The stories she weaves are fairytales and folktales ranging from humorous to dark to touching. In order, they are "Brother Hart," "Man of Rock, Man of Stone," "The Tree's Wife," "The Cat Bride," "The Boy Who Sang for Death," "Princess Heart O'Stone," and "The Pot Child." In this case, the frame is a little less essential compared to the other story; the individual tales can stand alone fairly well. The frame, however, pitches the stories in a deliberate context and allows for commentary and insight via the characters who receive the woven dreams. I daresay the stories are richer for the framework around them.

In the Holiday Cookie, well, the stories (there are four of them so far, each told by a different character, although two of them are actually the same story, just from different points of view) are nonessential. They don't have to be there, I suppose. Krispy and I started this whole shebang with a pretty basic premise—what happens if we throw all these people together for a dinner party?—and have been exploring and exploiting the situation for all that we're worth. Our stories within stories serve two basic functions: dinnertime conversation and personal entertainment.

Actually, the entire Cookie is for personal entertainment, ours and others'.

Upon such fragile sheets are monstrosities of literary confection half-baked.

Momentum

Personally, I find that collaboration helps a great deal with regards to actually producing writing. I work better when there's a deadline, and I also work better when there's a little judicious prodding going on in the background. While we have not set a deadline for ourselves, Krispy and I sufficiently prod each other every day for our daily dose of delicious cookieness. Partnership! Tasty indeed.

This is the longest collaboration we've ever done. F'realz. I mean, technically speaking, I suppose that our neglected Penny Drabble is the longest as in we worked on it over a longer period of time (months—maybe even a couple of years?) but really, this Holiday Cookie trumps all both in terms of length and intensity of production. We've written far more of our Holiday Cookie than of our Penny Drabble, and within a much shorter span of time, practically all at once. One or the other of us has been cookie-ing practically every day as we roll out the wordage dough between us and stamp it over and over again with our own character-shaped cutters. That was a bizarre metaphor and I don't care.

I daresay that I'm particularly happy with this cookie because it means that Krispy has been writing a lot more than she normally does and I'm a greedy bastard who will take all that I can get and if getting more necessitates incessant nagging, then nag I shall! Krispy understands this because she reciprocates in kind. Thankfully we've got our momentum going good and strong and the cookie is ever mounting in size, and the nagging is at a minimum for the both of us. We blasted through the latter half of December and have not plugged through January so much as frolicked, and with determination and high spirits I'm sure we will be just as frolicsome going into February.

We are familiar enough with each other's characters to write them pretty well, we know what we're doing or at least appear to know what we're doing, and if ever there are doubts or uncertainties, there's this marvelous feat of technology known as instant messaging that facilitates consultation. We're going strong. We cannot be stopped. We are invincible! We're a two-person army, are Krispy and I. We're like the Spartans only instead of 300 of us it's just 2. Three hundred might seem like a more dramatic number, but really, what if only two held off the Persian army? How's your drama then, eh? Eh? Silly, you say, too silly? Not as far as Greek mythology goes. What was I talking about again?

Ah yes.

Are we getting anywhere?

Yep.

Slowly?

Maybe.

Entertainingly?

I think so.

With a minimum of bloodshed?

Well, now that I think about it, I do believe there has been no bloodshed at all. So far. Although this is, of course, subject to change as whim and passing fancy dictate. Which is basically how this entire cookie is proceeding, although we do have a vague plan for the future to which we shall adhere: The setting is a dinner party and a dear friend of ours has graciously provided us with a simply superb menu, and so there will be, in the very near future, without qualm or question, food.

And lots of it.

Cookies and Collaboration

Long has it been since Krispy and I have paid attention to our sorely neglected co-novel baby. We are bad, bad parents.

However, we have been collaborating on a Holiday Cookie these past couple of weeks, and it's going quite well if I do say so myself. We've collaborated before on a sack of pennies as well as numerous other bits and bobs, cookies and crumbs, and cracktastic alternate universe high school melodramas. (Just kidding about that last—that was with another friend, although still containing Krispy's characters.)

But in our defense (as though something were attacking us besides our parental consciences), some of our co-novel characters appear in this Holiday Cookie, and by some, I mean one, and that one is a member of our novel's supporting cast. (Incidentally, this same character also appears in Krispy's Nanowrimo story, playing a slightly bigger role than in our novel.) So what if our current cookie endeavor is a multiple-world-crossover of questionable alternate universality? At least we're getting to know someone a little better, and see how he reacts under pressure and behaves in general. Chronologically speaking, this takes place a good many years decades centuries after the events in our co-novel and while I suppose that a few hundred years might make a difference in one's character and personality, I'm going to ignore that thought right now.

Collaboration this time is a wee bit different than how we wrote (and should still be writing, if only Krispy would freakin' write the next drabble) our Penny Drabble, wherein we took turns writing a section at a time, taking things in random directions to see where the other would run with it. For our Holiday Cookie, we've been writing different scenes simultaneously (and said scenes are more or less happening around the same time), consulting each other as necessary for information concerning settings, character whereabouts and interactions, etc.

Perhaps by the time we actually finish planning and plotting our novel, we will have smoothed out a few of the kinks, ironed some of the wrinkles, and sandpapered away the most awkward bumps of figuring out how to actually write it. I have the feeling (take no bets, please, for my feelings are as fleeting as they are fickle) that our novel will require a combination of both Penny Drabbles and Holiday Cookie techniques along with inventing some brand spanking new co-authorial anything-goes literary kung fu.

We will be co-author kung fu masters by the time we're through. Masters.