To Write Short Stories, Read Short Stories

This is the YA SF novella (?) I’m working on.

Synopsis: Stella’s life is on the unusual side, but whose isn’t nowadays, half a century after the Fall that led to this ruined landscape with its mesh of mythology and machinery? Still, being brought up as part of a troupe of circus performers wandering along the coast of the Inner Sea, going from small village to small village, sets her apart from many.

Even more alienating is the fact that she doesn’t know who her parents were. The others in the troupe deny any knowledge of them, and so Stella feels herself a stranger among them, particularly as adulthood draws near and she must figure out what her role with the circus will be.

When one of the circus elders reveal that Stella’s mother was, in fact, a circus performer, Stella must navigate feelings of betrayal, new responsibilities, and her mother’s legacy of magic-enhancing technology. When she fails to control her temper and half the circus burns down as a result, she’s ejected from the only family she’s ever known.

Accompanied by a village girl named Abacus (Abbie), the two strike inland, hoping to find the city that Stella’s father was rumored to come from. Their ingenuity and bravery are put to the test as they battle minotaurs, mutants, and other perils created by the crumbling technology of a long-gone scientific age.

When they finally come to the city, they find it deserted, much to their despair. But that night they are seized and taken to find Stella’s father, who lives far above on the space station. Abbie is slated to be the human sacrifice who will “pay” for Stella’s admission to the station, but when they find out they manage to (with great peril and suspense) flee to an abandoned lunar colony, where they come face to face with the greatest challenge of all: the aliens who created the Fall.

From the first chapter:

I’m practicing juggling again, because it’s raining outside, big fat bloodwarm drops drumming on the tent’s waxed canvas. In an hour, as the day’s light vanishes, the circus’s light will begin to flicker and shine, powered by the ancient turbine/treadmill pulled by three ponies and a servobot. Townsfolk will wander through the maze of entrance gates and aisles, hesitant and eager all at once, pockets full of silver slugs and other tradeable metal.

They’ll wander through the booths, looking at the freakshows and trying their luck at the games, winding their way towards the bigtop, ready to make their way up the creaking bleachers and sit to watch marvels unfold.

This time we’re within earshot of the ocean, a jungle-hugged glade near two different villages.

I drop a beanbag and curse. I’ve worked my way up to four at a time, but keeping five aloft continues to elude me.

Roto the Tiger Boy sticks his head in the flap in time to catch the last words. His whiskers twitch. He holds out a tin silently and I take it, gesture at him to sit on the floor. He does, closing his eyes as I start to apply the orange greasepaint that colors his dun fur, turning him from an ordinary cat-man to something more exotic.

What can I apply to myself, what will turn me into the exotic thing the circus just hasn’t realized it needs yet?

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So my promise to myself is that the sequel to Beasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, will be DONE by November 14th, which is my birthday, and which I plan to spend with Skyrim and a nice sativa (legal here in the marvelous land of WA) and not one ounce of work throughout the day as a thank you to me for working my butt off the last six weeks and getting this DONE.

The book is scheduled to be released at Emerald City Comicon next year, so you may see why the time pressure has stepped up in intensity. I told myself I’d get it done this year, and I have, along with a whole bunch of stories, not one but two collections, the update of Creating an Online Presence for Writers, a bajillion trips, and opening the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, including cool new classes from Rachel Swirsky and Juliette Wade, so I feel darn good about how much I got accomplished this year despite SFWA’s demanding maw chewing up my time on a consistent basis.

I thought, however, it would be useful perhaps for people grappling with novels to see what the last bits of work involve. I’ve been incorporating edits from the hardcopy manuscript but still have lots and lots of comments in the e-copy to address. In the process of adding those, I was able to look at the manuscript from a high-enough level that I could sort out all the chronology (oh dear GODDESS please let that statement be true, because that’s been the biggest pain in the rear so far) and make sure that everything made sense, that storylines were resolved, and that all the hidden plotlines got bubbled up in a meaningful way.

I’m adding in a few stray scenes that got dropped somehow, and then I’ll do the following passes (this is taken from the TODO list currently hovering at the beginning of the manuscript in Scrivener).

I’ll get through as many of these today as I can, but at some point I’ll have to print it out, because I want to take it on the road with me. I’m headed to a conference on nonprofit storytelling (ha) on Wednesday and back on the 13th, which is a complication I really wish I hadn’t introduced into my life, along with a class I’m teaching on the 12th (ditto the regret for the timing, but it’ll be a fun class), which is one reason I deserve a little Skyrim next Monday.

Anyway, here’s the todo list that I’ve been making as I went through and added my edits in:

Do a search on:
“¢ One of, not for the first, little, square
“¢ Penny-wides (penny)
“¢ Swam, abandon, tilt
(These are words I’ve noticed I use a lot, and I want to make sure they’re not over-used or consistent.)

Points that need to be checked or addressed:
Position of Temples on Beasts
Is Lucy set up as a name?
Are there too many duplicate things, like Lucy getting dismissed twice, multiple fights with Eloquence, etc? Outline events and examine.

Echoes:
Terra-cotta trade god dolls
Riot and Duke’s Occasion

Passes that need to be made:
“¢ Titles and capitalization
“¢ Read through each person’s story and map out times against BoT
“¢ Mapping pass – streets align
“¢ Trade God pass, check all the names against morphology
“¢ Names – consistent Bannister/Faustino, Serafina/whatserface, Marta/Ruhua, all of Elo/Obed’s sisters
“¢ Thought patterns (x 4)
“¢ (spoiler removed) clues
“¢ Mother references from Elo and Obed
“¢ Motivation for Lucy’s (spoiler removed)
“¢ Passes on significant locations: the stables, Sebastiano’s bedroom, Adelina’s, College of Mages, Great Hive chamber, the press, Adelina’s office, Letha’s stillroom, Silvercloth breakfast room, Murga’s tent
“¢ Possible redundancies: Adelina’s hiding of the press, Dryad forest and furnace, orange paper, election explanation, Sphinx

With the passes, I’m going through looking at a specific aspect, usually. For example, looking at each time a particular location occurs in order to make sure there are no contradictions and that the successive iterations build on each other rather than being redundant. That was the biggest flaw (IMO) of Beasts’s multiple drafts, a legacy of how many agents and editors wanted changes to the point where the book got rewritten a dozen times.

So we’ll see. I think this is a better book than the first one, which is reassuring, but there is always that perhaps I am deluding myself and this is just a manuscript with all work and no play makes Cat a dull girl repeated over and over again feeling lurking in the back of my head when I get to this stage.

Now, back to work.

#sfwapro