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All fun and games until someone gets hurt
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Today
Today I managed to write a pretty good chunk of Shades. I got Saeli started in the portal form, and brought the first of my obstacles, Geris, onto the scene. Today I almost managed to write myself into a corner, when the established rules of magic in my world prevented me from doing something the simple way. Please Login or Register to view this.
Anyway, that’s why we’ve taken a break from our regular schedule of bloggish activities. I’ve actually been, you know, productive.
And the apartment is clean! It’s great! I can actually concentrate on clearing up some areas that always get ignored because I’m too busy trying to catch up with a backload of dishes and laundry.
An update, and some art
Well, I never did get around to posting something in here yesterday. Alas, alas. However, I’ve been pretty productive with my writing, so I say that makes up for it. I finished the chapter that was bogging me down, and am a good ways into the next one. I find myself making Raphel much nicer this time around, in the way he says things..which is interesting, because I’ve apparently also been making him meaner, too. There is a definite disconnect between his words and his actions, and the gulf is growing as the story goes on. He will do something awful to Saeli, but then he will list all his reasonable, unavoidable reasons for doing so, and show himself to be as worried and frustrated and human as she are, and he doesn’t like doing stuff like that, but…and Saeli finds herself nodding her head in agreement without a clear idea of how she got there. It’s all very underhanded. He knows if he’s outright mean, he’ll scare her off for good.
I’ve also been working on a book cover idea. It’s a scene that doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the story, but is rather a nod to the initial dream I had that inspired the story in the first place. I was with some dark-clad people, and we were hiding in a big city from a group of cold, white-robed people marching down the street, chanting like monks. I wasn’t one of the dark people, though, and I had the impression that I was actually supposed to be with the white-robed ones. But I wasn’t really one of them, either, though I was more like them than I was like the dark ones. But the dark ones weren’t really so bad, I found. (Thus, Saeli’s unique position in the world was born). Originally I had called the two groups the Blacks and the Whites, but it was suggested to me that those names were much too un-politically correct, and I agreed.
Scan:
This is the scan of the original drawing I did. It’s cobbled together from a bunch of different sources, which I put together in Photoshop and printed out. I then did what many might consider cheating, and traced straight from that composition using a lightbox. I would torn my hair out trying to get that architecture right otherwise. I’ve had to tweak the image sufficiently that I no longer feel guilty about it. (Wait…no. I never felt guilty about it. Oh well.) It looks weird at the bottom because the drawing is bigger than the scanner, and so I had to scan it in two pieces. The drawing isn’t going to show up on the finished piece; it’s only a guide for my Photoshopping. The figures in the foreground are Raphel and Saeli (if that wasn’t obvious). That is the High Priestess leading the line of professors; I haven’t decided who the others are (if anyone). That’s supposed to be the city Temple in the background.
Value sketch:
I learned about the concept of an underpainting in one of my Stetson classes, but I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually *needed* to do one. The purpose of the underpainting is to figure out where all the lights and darks will be. Because my source images came from so many places, my source composition had no consistant value scale whatsoever. (Plus, they were all daytime images, and this is a nighttime picture). The final image won’t be sepia-toned.
Where I’m at now:
Here’s where I’m at in the coloring process. I made the scene take place in the purple hour, Saeli’s favorite time of day. Right now I’m just filling in the flat colors; I will go back in different layers to put in the shadows and highlights. White buildings at night are interesting, to say the least. Black and white clothing isn’t much better. I’m trying to make it so that the grays on the left side of the image are made from purples, and the grays on the right are made from yellows, so that I have a warm gray/cool gray contrast. Saeli is pretty dead neutral.
The amount of work I can get done when I’m not at home is astronomical compared to what I do at my desk. I wish Books-a-Million opened earlier than 10AM. Places like Panera Bread and various coffee shops open early, but you really aren’t supposed to just sit in there without buying something (some places have a policy), and that could very quickly get expensive. I suppose I could sit outside and work (maybe when it gets a little warmer, heh). I got a lot of writing done Monday…if I can do that on all the days when Eli is at school, I can have the first book of Shades done by the end of March, which is my goal.
Art!
Posted by nightphoenix on Feb 4, 2010 in Art, Artsy Thursdays
It’s Thursday! Here’s a drawing I did a while ago of my main characters from Shades.
And, perhaps a couple of maps. It’s funny, I actually didn’t draw these until the first draft of the story was almost done, when I finally needed to know exactly where things were.
Here’s the world as a whole. You can see Aschera and Chisge in the upper center area. The village where Raphel was born is almost due west of Aschera, on the other side of the Midplains. The red area is the cursed Midplains, top-left pointing stripes represent Mantle territory, top-right pointing stripes are Cowl territory, and crosshatching is disputed territory. (You may notice that there is quite a bit of disputed territory, and that the Cowls have much less undisputed territory than the Mantles. The Mantles are winning the war when the story opens). Iadnah and Lanschport are both southern Cowl cities. Iadnah is nominally under Mantle control, while Lanschport is purely Cowl. Lanschport has a rather unsavory reputation even among Cowls, which is probably why the Mantles don’t want it (people on Verre have odd superstitions about the ocean); both Geris and Teja hail from that city. The battle of Iadnah plays an important role in all three of my major Cowls’ pasts: Mora lost her husband, infant daughter, and father; Kaladan lost his faith in the Mantle cause and turned Cowl; and I haven’t yet decided how Raphel was involved (but I have decided that he needs to be).
Here is Aschamon. A great deal of the action in the first and third books takes place on Aschamon’s campus, so I needed to know exactly where each building was in relation to the others.
It sits on a hill in the western quadrant of Aschera (Aschera I have not mapped yet. Not sure if I need to). The Temple and the main sorarc tower are the hub of the school, both physically and spiritually. The small triangular buildings are the dormitories: one for the youngest (gray) students, three for the various ages of Mantle students, and one for the cleric students. Saeli lives in a Mantle dormitory, even though she is not a Mantle; she and Cara got special permission to be roommates, and since Cara is a Mantle, the school allowed it.
Raphel is afraid of the dark
Did that get your attention? It got mine. Blame Saeli for the revelation.
Love and Shades
I had read somewhere that a writer must love her characters. Seems pretty logical, because if the author doesn’t care about the lives of the people she’s creating, why would anyone else? I got to thinking about this in conjunction with Shades. Do I love these characters? Actually, there was only one character in Shades that I couldn’t respond with an immediate “yes”.
Raphel is my favorite character, hands down. Do I love him? Oh yes. Too much. I occasionally I have to make sure I’m not lavishing too much attention on the guy. He has such a strong personality that if I let him have too much leeway, he would take the story and run. Nix that, he wouldn’t run…Raphel would dangle the storyline in front of my face, smile at me with that sexy, challenging glint in his blue eyes, and dare me to try and take it from him. Who could resist? (Apparently, not me 
). I like to think that somewhere in that dark heart of his, he harbors a soft spot for Saeli, but honestly, I’m not sure. Beefing up the world around him, Aschera, the raider culture, etc. has actually helped keep him in line. Raphel might want everyone to think he’s got everything under control, but I have a whole world of problems I can use to take him down a notch, if I have to. I’ve already given him a rival cabal to worry about (that was a godawful chapter to write, btw).
Mora is actually keeping her distance from me in this rewrite. I do love her, though, because she’s always cool, and unflappable, and quietly sardonic, if the occasion arises. She’s such a tragic character, in that Raphel had already stolen her soul before Saeli ever met her. She’s a strong woman though, with a lot of history you only get glimpses of. She represents what Saeli could have become, if Raphel had really had the chance to break her. (I think that Saeli has more inner strength than Mora, and that Raphel would have never been able to completely conquer her, but it would have been a near thing.)
I’m having a lot of fun with Kaladan this time around. He’s a complicated man, and next to Saeli, he probably has the biggest character arc of anyone. You have to love a character who can throw out one-liners like this one:
Geris licked his lips. “You can’t blame me for being careful. This is enemy territory,” he said.
“Aye, we’ve only remained undiscovered in the largest Mantle city in the region for two whole moons,” Kaladan remarked. “Clearly Raphel’s subterfuge skills leave much to be desired.”
But his history is what really makes him fun to work with. In a way, as a Mantle turned Cowl turned Gray, he has the most perspective of any of them.
Cara is great because on the surface she seems like a typical young woman, flighty, scatterbrained, and doesn’t care for much other than socializing. But on the inside, she has an unwavering spirit and deep affection and loyalty to those she cares about. She’s the type of person who would never take charge unless they were forced into it, and then they would do an amazing job. Her early optimism and carefree nature is something I regret taking away from her at the end…but everyone in this story has to lose something.
Brendan…eh, who wouldn’t love Brendan? He’s the classic boy-next-door, who is willing to suffer in silence while the girl he loves dates someone else, just so she can be happy. Until he finds out the other guy is hurting her, of course…he won’t stand for that. Unfortunately, he’s a character that only really becomes important by dying.
Geris is like Peter Pettigrew from HP: one of those cowering, whiny villains who are so pathetic that it’s incredible how much trouble they manage to stir up. I like him for that, and because he gets what’s coming to him in the end. The High Priestess, aka Linserae. Avalgo. Othau. Isharyel. Hakarin. Adna. The Keeper of the Oath. Jalil…those are all my minors that really get screen time, and I love them all, for various reasons. And there are my gods: Yuril, Scisaxar, Naeth.
I considered every single character in Shades, and interestingly enough, the only one that I’m not sure I love is…Saeli. And I was like “uh-oh…I love everyone except my PROTAGONIST? That can’t be good.” It’s not that I don’t like her, it’s just that I don’t seem to have any real perspective on the matter. She is so much of ME, in this story, that I can’t distance myself from her. Saying I love Raphel or anyone else is like saying I love my husband…I’m analyzing my own feelings for another person. Trying to decide if I love Saeli is like me trying to be someone else trying to decide if they like me. She is…transparent, to me. I have been trying to give her more backbone this time around, and a few definite quirks that are NOT like me. But for the most part, how she reacts to things is pretty much how I would react, were I in her shoes. However, I’m pretty sure she’s not a Mary Sue…she screws up too much. She doesn’t always make the best decisions (clinging to Raphel for so long being the chief of these…but interestingly, I’m pretty sure I would make the same mistake).
The rewriting is going more slowly than I would like. I worry, sometimes, that I just don’t write quickly enough to survive in this industry. Even when I have a block of five hours to work with, I still don’t get a whole chapter done. I don’t know if I could really write a book per year, even if I had huge blocks of time to work in. I guess either it’s something you learn, or you find a publisher willing to let you take two and three years to produce a work. I’m beefing up some of the sexual tension in this story, even though I still don’t think I could market this as a genre romance. But the story is about Saeli and Raphel’s relationship, so I’m trying to keep the focus there, where I can.
Reinvisioning parts of Shades
The revision process continues. Please Login or Register to view this.
Anyway, I have precisely three months to get this story done and polished before the conference. (Technically, I may have a little longer, because even if I get a bite at the conference, there will still be a period of days or weeks of querying and conversing back and forth with a potential editor or agent). That’s a little scary, but I’m going to try to do it.
My voice, and a Shades update
Well, I woke up this morning with no voice. I’ve had a cold since last Thursday or so, though luckily it hasn’t been a really bad one. Lots of throat soreness, which is a change from the I-can’t-breathe stuffiness I usually get. I think I actually prefer the sore throat…not being able to breathe is scary, especially at night when you start having dreams about it. Plus, I’m not using boxes and boxes of tissue. (No, it’s just all dripping down the back of my throat instead )
It’s amazingly difficult to handle a three year old child without a voice. I could whisper this morning, but Eli thought that was some kind of game, and refused to listen to me. *facepalm* My voice has come back gradually throughout the day, but my throat is still very sore.
Icons
So I got a wild hair the other day and decided to make some avatars based on characters in my story. It was so much fun that I just kept going. The pics are of real actors and other famous folk, so you might recognize some of them. (So if by the 0.00001% chance that you are one of these celebrities, and you happen across this site and see these pics, know that they are simply for my own entertainment and all in good fun.) The quotes are things that these characters have actually said, but as I have a massive trimming job to do on my second draft, there’s always the chance these sayings won’t appear in the finished story. (If you can’t read them, just hover over with the mouse…or click to see a slightly bigger version.)
As always, don’t steal…though I can’t imagine what anyone else would do with them.