Sunday Small Talk

[jana_denardo]

Hi. It's been a few weeks, hasn't it? Mostly I've had nothing to say. I've not been writing. It had seemed rather pointless.

I'm picking up a little this week. I found an anthology that was looking for fey characters and I did send out Conned to that which is an older story. It was shockingly too short so it has a new (and better) ending. Now that I reread the open call, I'm not entirely sure it fits but I took a chance any how.

I did sign up for Camp Nano and I will be doing These Haunted Hills. I'm not sure I can write contemporary but I can at least write paranormal. This is a blend of those. I wish it would gel in my head more though.


I'm revising Blood Red one more time to remove yet another plot line and work on some of the passivity. I am truly ready to just chuck it. It seems like I've been wasting years of my life on this.

Comments

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

Blood Red is one of those stories you'll have to decide what exactly you want out of it. If you're going to write it to those editors' expectations, both the plot and the characters will have to be changed radically. The new, "marketable" version will not be the story you started out with. Do you want to turn Blood Red into a publishable product, or do you want to remain true to the original vision you had for the story and characters? If it's more fulfilling to _you_ to keep the story the way you originally wrote it, then it's probably best to stop torturing it into something it was never meant to be and tuck it safely away. It may be that the characters are too personal to you to make a good "product," in which case you're better off keeping it yours and yours only. Like I say, it's all about what you want for the story, and that's a decision only you can make.

Good luck with the open call.

[jana-denardo.livejournal.com]

I doubt anything will come of this open call (which in retrospect has the most confusing blurb)

I have to think there is a compromise between turning my characters into something I can't recognize,( especially when a lot of people enjoyed them and since they're already freaking published. I can't exactly change them much) and never doing a thing with it.

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

Whatever compromise you reach, do be particularly aware of how you introduce Luc and Arrigo, because that sets the stage for how readers see them. As it stands, Luc is naive and seems to lack a will of his own, and Arrigo doesn't seem to have much interest in Luc beyond he's pretty and contains blood. Straight predator/prey, except Arrigo doesn't seem that excited about preying on Luc, and Luc is such a pushover for Arrigo to prey on that the lack of conflict kills the scene emotionally. A bit later there's a kind of vague pity for Luc on Arrigo's part because of the bruises, but the meeting lacks any kind of spark that raises interest in the characters and/or their possible relationship. It's like all the problems the editors were griping about start and center on that meeting, so like I say, if you're going to revamp heavily anywhere, you might do it there.

[jana-denardo.livejournal.com]

That is fair enough. I'm not exactly sure how to fix it. Arrigo's interest originally IS purely physical (which is not usually a problem with a romance as far as I can tell since that's about how 90% of the ones I've read start).

I suppose I could have him and Luc know each other from the diner but I still need a good reason for them to be caught behind the bar and Luc be beaten because again, that's already been published. I guess he could be there to see if Luc wanted to go to the diner for dinner. Not really an exciting beginning either. Hmmm