What do they got that I don't got?

No one questions Sam Spade's motives for finding his partner in the Maltese Falcon, though it was pretty clear to me that Spade didn't have much love lost towards the dead man.

No one questsions why Phillip Marlowe keeps working even though his client is dead. He doesn't have to explain why he keeps on the case after every couple of chapters.

No one has to explain why the private dick will do anything for the beautiful, but dangerous dame who shows up on his door with a flimsy story and the smell of gun powder on her hands.

But write a story where a misanthropic female private eye is getting paid to investigate a situation, and her motives get questioned. It's money! How the fuck do people not understand money as a motivating factor? *I* understand what people will do for money. I understand money as a motivator far better than love or lust.

With this, I add another to the list. There are some publications that are completely unattainable for me. Some simply because I have a tendency to write stories with (gasp!) sex and violence and "bad words!" Some because a slew of rejections and the reasons given. Some because I'm damn sure that the editors just can't handle Bo Fexler.

But no body crosses Bo Fexler.

• Story in Progress: technically, nothing
• Last story finished: A Valentine's Love Story for Bo
• Reason for not writing: working on grad paper

Hmm. That didn't work.

Okay, so I wrote up a review for Frank Zafiro's 2nd novel, "Heroes Often Fail." Then I saved the draft here in the blogger intending to proof it and publish it. Well, I finally prooffed and puclished it. But Blogger apparently published it back on "Dec 31" rather than publishing it "today." Stupid Blogger. If it had kneecaps, I'd kneecap the damn thing...

Anyway, click the link, read the review. I've learned something new today about Blogger...

Plodding Along

Or maybe that's supposed to be Plotting Along. It's hard to say at this point. I still maintain that Bo's Novel is hovering about the 50k word mark... even though I just hacked over two thousand words out. It's for the good of the novel, but I steadfastly deny that the novel has only 48k in it. I wrote 50,000 words. Hmph.

After I wrote the now-hacked Chapter, I realized that 1) I didn't like where I was going and 2) I didn't know where I needed to go, other than it wasn't where I was heading. So, I got out my trusty notebook-- with the collage of magazine images on the front cover-- and starting writing the questions. And in between cobwebs and unused nuerons in my brain, I found some answers. I know where I want to go. And what I want to do.

But it sure looks like an awful lot of, well, *work*. =P Up until this point it was more fun, in a story-plotting and writing way. Hey, I'm a writer, that's what's fun to me. But sometimes fun writing isn't great writing. And I have to go back and hack, slash, burn, rebuild, recast, remold some significant parts.

It's like anything that's for one's own good. It's a hell of a lot easier NOT to do it.

And don't get me started on those nagging thoughts about synopsis, summary, taglines, and other marketing shit. I'm trying to keep those out of my head as I finish with the quesitons of "Who drugged Melanie?" and "What does Emily really know?" and "Where the hell did Jackie go, anyway?" Write first, ask questions later!

But, in the mean time, I have been doing some other things that are for my own good. One of those includes reading more. I'll be posting about some of my reading and observations later. Usually when I should be working on my novel and figuring out how to write Bo out of a sitaution where she has a gun to her head.

• Story in Progress: Still Bo's Novel #1
• Last Story Finished: Skeletons of Past Loves
• What I should be doing: Grading papers (or working on the novel)
• Current Song: The World is Not Enough by Garbage (heh-- when this title came out as a PS1 game, it was abreviated on the top as TWINE and stuck in my head as thus.)
• Musings: What's the difference between writing in a style or imitating a style? Can a writer write like Chandler but not be trying to be another Chandler?

Attention-Getting

Seems Bo Fexler's attetion-getting activities have been successful. Jochem Van Der Steen, over at Sons of Spade, invited me to do a little Q&A with him. Of course I agreed. There's no such thing as bad publicity! And it's a nice way to start off 2008.

Christmas break ends for me today. But it was a productive one. I happily have written more than 50 thousand words in my novel. And that doesn't count the ones that were cut out. You know the drill: write two pages, hate them, delete them, write two more pages and sometimes those two new pages are worse than before! I'm at the hardest point of any story-- answering the questions that have been plaguing Bo all novel. Maybe the fact that Christmas break is over is a good thing since I have classes to teach, papers to grade, and other things to keep from glaring at my computer screen and cursing it for not supplying me with the answers to the mystery I'm writing. (Stupid computer.)

But, the good news is I'm still having fun with the novel.

• Story in Progress: Bo Novel #1 (still not even a working title for this beast) 50k
• Last Story Finished: Skeletons of Past Loves, see it at Sons of Spade while your there
• What I should be doing: Preparing for class tomorrow morning
• Current Song: Crushcrushcrush by Paramore, no Garbage but they're okay.

Skeletons in the Closet

Bo's not taking any time off. The story "Skeletons of Past Loves" is now at Sons of Sapde. In this tale, Bo's been hired to find the story behind the skeleton in the ground. Natrually this means digging up old secrets that people would rather leave alone. Bo is also listed as one of Jochem Van Der Steen's favorite daughters of Spade, and I'm quite flattered.



As for novel progress, surprisingly, I've just hit the 30,000 mark. Yes, it was just a few days ago that I had rolled past 22k. Apparently, this is how much I can write when I'm not working. I have to say, I kinda like being able to stay home and write. Until then, I'm going to get as much done as I can before Christmas break ends and I got back to my classroom.



It looks like 2008 could be an exciting year. 2007 was filled with more short stories than I even thought possible. Maybe this year will have my novel reach important hands. Could be fun.

• Story in Progress: Bo Novel, 30k words


• Last Story completed: Skeletons of Past Loves


• What I should be doing: preparing for the last two weeks of class this semester


• Current Song: The World is Not Enough. by Garbage