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The Origin of a Character

2/20/2016

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About twenty years ago I worked with a young lady plus a couple of young men. I was not their supervisor in any official sense, but I did guide the work they did and often directed them in their efforts.  How I did my primary job depended on how well they did theirs. They were all very good at what they did.  I was just a tiny bit better.
Then this young lady, I'll call her Cat, met a man that she loved, or thought she did.  She quit her job and went with him to his home. He was an OTR trucker and she was going to ride with him on the job.   About six months later she was back.   She was hired back at her old job because she'd done it very well.
Not too long after the relationship began his physical attentions went from affectionate to hostile.  Punches and slaps became the order of the day.  It didn't take long for her to break out of that pattern and return home.
I wrote a short story for her about a young woman that found herself in a similar situation, but actually married to the bozo.  The story was told in first person by a man, Ron Russell, that she had known from her high school days.  He was the husband of her volleyball and basketball coach. 
Desperate for rescue and not knowing anyone else she could count on, she called Jean, her coach, and pleaded for help.  Jean could not help her that weekend, but Ron was free and agreed to bring her back home.
Ron was special.  He was big—about six-three—and quite strong.  But he also had a major disability. His left arm was totally without function and he rested it in a harness at all times.  He was also as proficient in martial arts as a one-armed man could be. He demonstrated this when Cat's abusive husband tried to dish out some of his medicine to Ron. 
Cat was returned home safe and sound.  End of story...almost.
For many years though, on random occasions, The character of Ron Russell would give me a mental nudge.  There was so much more to his story than that little bit.  How had he become disabled? How had learned martial arts? How had he managed to marry Jean, a woman that was not only smart and a terrific natural athlete, but also one of the twenty most beautiful women any man had ever met?  What about his family and friends?
I finally surrendered to that particular persistent muse and wrote the whole story.  The original short story, now very much rewritten to fit in with what had gone before, comprises the final two chapters of the first novel.
I didn't plan to turn Ron Russell's life into a two (or three) volume story.  It just sort of happened.
Robert E. Howard claimed that when he wrote the Conan stories it felt like some presence was telling him the story and he just wrote what he was "told." 
I never got the sense that I was being told or guided during the writing, but the story arc never wavered.  I had to make decisions about some of the characters regarding their appearance, strengths and weaknesses, personalities, and the like. But I never had to make any decisions on the story itself.  It simply was there.  When I finished one chapter the next was already waiting to be written.
I borrowed a few minor incidents from my college days and incorporated those facts into the story, but I never had to decide to do that. It all just grew together.
For the span of a few months I wrote every day after work and sometimes on the weekend. I wrote until I was finished. Then I looked at how much I'd written. I was almost shocked to see I'd written over 300,000 words.
That's when the pain of editing began. Only recently did that stage end, and only for the first volume.  I still need to do a software edit (at least) to the second volume but I'm waiting to see if the first volume gets published before I tackle that chore.
That is how a simple little present for a co-worker turned into two full volumes of commercial fiction that will, I hope, eventually get published.

 

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to...

2/2/2016

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Hey!  I'm back!  I was working on editing my commercial novel, Just Lucky: Friends and Enemies for a novel contest with a deadline of January 31.  I edited out about 7,000 words, mostly over-used words and adverbs, plus I had a song lyric intro to each chapter and I deleted those too.
But something strange happened on the way to the deadline.  A publisher, Gnome on Pig Productions, who I had contacted last spring, contacted me with an interest in publishing the novel.  They sent me a general work contract which says that neither of us owe the other anything, but that I may not show this novel to anyone during the six months of the contract without their permission.  During that time, starting 1/20/16, they and I will work together on the final publishable draft of the novel.  At the end of the six months, or before by mutual agreement, we will both enter into a publishing contract (they included a sample template) or walk away.  They offer the chance for publication in hardback, paperback, e-book, and anything else for reading.  I took them up on the offer.  But it meant I couldn't offer the novel in the contest.  That'll probably save me twenty bucks.  I needed to do the editing anyway, so it's not like there's any wasted effort.  I just didn't need to hurry it as much as I did.
I've been offered a bad contract before, and I've signed a decent one, so I had examples to look at.  Their contract offers an excellent split to the author and lasts only two years.  The contract makes sure the author retains the copyright, which is probably the most important thing.  The general work contract specifies that I can work on any other author project and offer it anywhere.  It only limits this specific project.
Just Lucky has been declined by about a dozen agents and/or publishers in the past.  The publishers wanted to define it as a Romance, but it does not have a Happy Ever After ending so it didn't fit their market's preferences.  I've never considered it a Romance, though.  But it is a two-volume story and the second volume does provide a sort of HEA.
The publishers have been complimentary about the writing, evaluations ranging from "adequate for publication" to "lovely."  The writing is better after that edit, so it ought to be terrific now.  The challenge will be the market and marketing.  I wrote this without any explicit thought to market.  It's intended to be enjoyed by anyone who's been a college student, men more than women but not that much more. 
The reason I wrote this 300,000-word story, which I pared to two volumes totaling almost 200,000 words, is worth a blog entry all by itself.  And so it will be.
Till next time...  

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    I'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.

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