28 Jan 2008

week four (jan 22 - 28)

The story notes for In the Cage of Ghosts are almost done. It remains to be seen if my decision to put in some extra preparation before starting the first draft was wise or over-cautious. Some of my best stories were hardly planned at all, while some of my not-so-good stories were – probably – planned to death. As is usually the case, a happy – and successful – medium ought to be found. I've perhaps got some work to do on the characters before I begin, but the plot is approx. 95% in place.

In the Cage of Ghosts will be to Circling what King's Desperation was to Bachman's The Regulators – only shorter and not as good. What I mean is both stories will share a number of common elements. For example, both deal with the aftermath of a plane crash, both feature a character, Tom Camron, the man responsible for the crash. There will be other connective threads, I'm sure. Now, I should say that I'm not trying to be clever with this. All I'm doing is retracing my steps to early 2006, to when I wrote Circling, in an attempt to write the story as it was originally conceived: two guys, both of whom have been deeply affected by a plane crash – one of them the cause, the other the effect – meet in a motel for the first time to discuss what happened. Not the ghost-trapped-on-the-runway tale Circling turned out to be, which was good but…flew its own course, shall we say?

Monday saw me resume work on The Novel: The Ballerina, the Boy, and the Thing in the Water. It's a working title. Maybe. I haven't really mentioned it on here before, not because I have anything to hide you see, but because I've had my share of false starts with novels and wanted to be sure, or as sure as I can be, that I was truly serious about this one. Which I am. It's not a matter of if but when. At my current rate of production, however, I won't be typing 'THE END' anytime soon. It is my hope that by mentioning or discussing, or perhaps by not mentioning and not discussing it on here I will remain motivated enough to write the bloody thing sometime before my thirty-fifth birthday!

Okay, I've gone on long enough, but I'll leave you with this small teaser: The Ballerina, the Boy, and the Thing in the Water was inspired by a Salvador Dali painting that I happened upon whilst image-Googling the word "Dali". Which work of his provided the spark, you ask. I'll give you a clue: it's not on the first page and it's not after the tenth…

STATS:
3 submissions: Espresso Fiction, Triangulation, Not One of Us
3 rejections: FRiGG (all 3)

Currently reading: Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry
Recently watched: Prison Break Season Two (*****), Before Sunrise (****), The Host (**1/2)
Current iPod favourite: audiobook of It by Stephen King

Finally, here's a short vid of Stephen King talking about the inspiration behind his latest novel, Duma Key.

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