Writing and Authors

http://piebald77.blogspot.com/2010/06/amichael-on-escaping-hazel.html

Printing is as stressful as recording music and recording music is as stressful as printing. CLEANING UP however isn’t stressful at all but is somehow much worse to do.

Fiction wise, apart from many a multiple copy and free distribution to sort out, things are up to date. It’s looking like ESCAPING HAZEL will definitely be the next novella, co-written with my cousin A.Michael, aka The Horror Apprentice. I’ll be taking care of the ‘escaping’ part while he spends his time contemplating the far-reaching tentacles of ‘Hazel’. See link at top.

The first chapter is done (included in 50% Rude) and the outline for the rest of the story, or most of it anyways, is also done. An outline is new to me and it’s weird knowing how things generally are going to end up. The tale already exists, it’s just a matter of telling it.

I couldn’t do it on my own. It’s too sombre. The mindset is all wrong. I almost don’t want to give it life. That’s why I’ll be writing solo on something else simultaneously. It will be called Mr. Ridiculous. The title was thought of yonks ago, and then the character Ron Todd came along and fit into it later.

Personally, I hate it when authors talk about their characters like they are real people; it can’t be helped referring to them sometimes, but please, don’t go overboard. Dean Koontz said that his franchise character ‘Odd Thomas’ spoke to him. Something like “My name is Odd Thomas, I lead an unusual life.” He dropped what he was doing (another novel) and wrote the first chapter on the spot. Forget Dean though – he needs to get out more. The dude literally pulls titles out of his ass. Not like King, who only writes 3 or 4 hours a day.

Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee is my favourite short story author. What, you don’t have a favourite short story author? Getalife.com! That’s another thing I hate, actually – when authors have a long list of their favourite authors and influences, like they are merely just showing off how many other authors they know of, and how many books they have read.

Tanith Lee is the biz. She’s the first I read in anthologies. Her prose teaches, and I learn. She’s so descriptively gothic she transports you to another time. I hold my hands up in the presence of a higher power within her pages. I know that A.Michael does too. There’s another thing I hate, as well – authors who say they don’t read anyone else’s work while they are working on something because it intrudes into their own work. Pish! These guys are the guys who do twenty rewrites and endless revising, rereading, and redrafting. I’d be sick of myself if I did that. Sick indeed, and very soon!
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DB TINKERBELL has loads of lyrics to add to songs but he is forgetting the fact that he can’t sing. Just because the option is available to him now, it’s no good reason to flood every melody with his deadpan monotone voice. If he had female backing vocals, maybe, but he hasn’t. He’s ready to complete the last song of his 3rd album today and then that’s it until a better microphone is purchased. The one he has cost 7 bucks. The guy who work in Dawson’s cost a 1000 bucks. He compared it to a bicycle and a Rolls Royce. DB Tink is taking his tunes to a new level, and that next new level has to involve some serious equipment.