Monday, July 27, 2015

Is it Where You Come From, or Where You’re Going? (the Second Part, and Yet Another Coupon)

 Last week I gave a BRIEF run-down of WHAT I’ve already been and a little of WHERE; funny - I looked back at it and realized that I never did say much about places in my past, even though I knew I would be listing mostly places in the future.
Actually this whole topic may be a bit odd for me – you see, I’m by and large a homebody. I’ve done very little travelling.
On the rare vacations when I actually GO SOMEWHERE with my wife, we do try to explore wherever we are (all credit to her), but what’s really sad is that when I travel by myself (that would be for business), I rarely take advantage of being in a new place – I hole up in the hotel during my free time unless I have to go out in search of FOOD.
I’ve been outside the continental United States twice in my life – both times on business trips. Once to Puerto Rico (yes, I know it isn’t another country, but it feels like it), and once to Canada (Toronto), and aside from the travel that was necessary to get the BUSINESS part of the trip done, I really didn’t go anywhere while I was in those places.
And yet I have this list of places I would like to go. I know that I really want to see these places, but there’s a part of me that wonders – based on my past tendencies – whether I would actually visit the places, or just become an expert on the hotel room. That would be AWFUL – to go somewhere unique and only know about the inside of a room at the local Hyatt or Holiday Inn.
I think there might still be hope for me – my last business trip I spent a week driving from Denver & Ft Collins to Cheyenne and a couple of REALLY SMALL TOWNS in Nebraska I had actually intended to stay in my rooms and write, but instead spent a lot of time just looking around at the little that was there. Maybe I CAN change. Or maybe I was just trying to avoid writing. Maybe that’s it – I’ll trick myself into planning to do something that requires me to stay in my room, and then I’ll naturally avoid it by going outside and exploring.
So, where do I want to go? I was going to put these in reverse order, with my favorite on the bottom, but then it looks like the first place on the list is the last I’d like to see, when it’s really the 10th, so, in order of personal preference (that’s right, this is about where I want to go):

Mars.
I’ve been saying I want to go there for decades, and the fact is, we humans (LIVING, BREATHING HUMANS, not our robotic representatives) should have reached there by now. Mars is relatively close, and since it’s near our own gravity, would be a good choice for a colony so if/when the cataclysmic meteor or comet finally takes down our Mother Earth (all movie goers should think by now that this is inevitable), we’ll still exist in sufficient numbers somewhere else for the human race to survive. Even though we’ve frittered away our time (and money) since the Apollo landings, there’s still a chance that we’ll get there in my lifetime (although it most likely won’t be me unless there’s a lottery.)
The Moon.
Because it’s another planetoid, and we’ve actually had humans there, and the chances of my getting there are probably infinitely better than Mars. I particularly want to be able to watch Earth Rise.
An Orbital Space Station.
This would currently be The ISS, but I’m not picky – whichever one is up there would be fine with me (I just hope by then it’s owned by a friendly power.) I used to downplay going JUST into orbit – it mostly seemed like settling, like, “Well, I couldn’t get to <planetoid of choice>, but at least I made it into orbit.” Oh, let’s face it, it IS settling. However, if I can’t get any further out than orbit, it’s still worth it for the spiritual experience. There seems to be something transformative, something that strikes those who “slip the surly bonds of earth”, something about seeing our planet and NOT being on it, that I would like the chance to experience.
(Hmmm – my first three choices are literally OUT OF THIS WORLD; you’d almost think I don’t like being here…)
England.
Partly because they speak ENGLISH, and my facility for foreign languages (if I ever had any) no longer exists. With that, along with other cultural similarities, it would have the feel of a real foreign trip without being as intimidating. And I really would like to see the many historical places that eventually grew into the lost colony across the Atlantic.
Scotland.
Because they almost sound like they’re speaking English, and what I’ve seen of the countryside looks impressive. And Castles.
Australia.
More near English, with an attitude (as stereotypically portrayed in film) that almost seems more American than modern day America is (I think we could use an infusion of this – or at least a reminder.) And it’s large enough to have a lot of interesting terrain.
Somewhere Undersea.
It will almost be like outer space – just more crowded. Not the Marianas Trench – I want to go deep enough where I know I’m underwater, but not so deep that I can’t see anything. I don’t just want to be in a pressurized tin can – I want to be able to experience what’s out there. By the time I get around to this there will be plenty more underwater hotels built and I’ll choose one then (I didn’t have to tell you which Martian hotel I was going to, did I?)
Antarctica.
For the isolation, desolation, and otherworldliness of it.
Norway.
To see the fjords and imagine longships.
A Tropical Island Beach Somewhere (Tahiti? – I’m not picky).
Tropical climate, breezes, the sound of waves, and a white beach – something that would encourage me to lose track of time. Beaches are something I enjoyed in my youth, but haven’t been near in decades (and the last one I was on was on a lake, not the ocean – it’s not the same thing. I have no desire to be on one in cold weather – I want to be comfortable and just melt comfortably away.
Sometimes a man’s gotta go where a man’s gotta go.
Just saying…
<<<>>> 
My next ePublication is due out July 31st (this Friday) – it’s time for “Reflections” (How much control do we have over what we turn into.) If you follow this blog or my Facebook writing page you’ll receive notification when it’s available.
<<<>>> 
My featured work this week is “Anti-Social” (With technology changing our social contacts into avatars we see through electronic windows, which of your connections really know you?)- here’s the link:
 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/402085?ref=NoTimeToThink
Use coupon code EZ28B to save 50% off the list price at check out on smashwords. The coupon is good through August 3rd. Enjoy!
<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing can be found in many places, including:
To connect with him, go to
“William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook (and LIKE and FOLLOW), at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
Or his Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri
Or on twitter: @WilliaMangieri
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, July 20, 2015

Is it Where You Come From, or Where You’re Going? (the First Part, and a Coupon)

What really tells you about a person – where they’ve been, or where they’re going? Today, let’s try to cover where I’ve been.
My pat(ented) biography (what I put on my books and in the cover letters for my story submissions) lists me as a “karaoke junkie, former theater student, and recovered wargamer”, but that isn’t all that I’ve been. So - where (& what) have I been? Let’s ramble together…
I spent most of my childhood in Massachusetts. First came Quincy, where I was too small to be allowed to wander, and there was a girl in the neighborhood who was… of questionable safety, so I was secured in the yard on a harness (or was I staked out like a Judas Goat – A-Ha! My first Job. Next was Franklin, where I remember a haunted barn (not ours) and being chased around the yard by a bull (not ours, either.) Third was Wilmington, with a backyard that looked like woods when my parents bought the place in winter, but turned out to be swamp when the thaw came – a lot of blueberry picking and my first musical instrument (trumpet.)
Last was Tewksbury, where I wandered in the woods a lot, my instrument list expanded – French Horn (because we were ranked based on grade so I could be 2nd chair on that instead of 3rd trumpet), E-Flat horn (because my band teacher saw me dis- and reassemble my French horn during a Christmas concert), Alto Horn, Trombone (was in a garage band for a couple of months and got paid $5 for a “sweet 16” birthday party, so I’m a Pro!).
Started my acting “career” there by cutting my lip during 6th grade recess so I was sitting in class when the girl from the Senior Class Play said they needed someone to play Unbearable Scragg in L’il Abner.) Played Captain von Trapp, Ito, and Snoopy among other roles
Moved to Texas in ’73 (during the oil embargo and the Watergate hearings), and even though I’ve lived in several towns since, it’s all been on the Dallas side of DFW. My last 2 years in High School I picked up guitar, wrote a dozen songs (that I still have), wrote some other things besides (that I don’t.) Went to school for theatre (Dionysus, Theseus, The Player King, Travis Macefield, Fontaineux, etc.) but stopped when I decided I wasn’t going for a degree. My last foray into theatre was The Reindeer in The Snow Queen with Theatre Onstage, for which a couple of months of work netted $25 (I’m a PRO again!) and a promotional appearance on Mr. Peppermint (where I watched Jerry Haynes beat Muffin with his cane during a break in filming; don’t worry – Muffin was a puppet (a raccoon?).) And thus ended my acting career (although I might argue I’ve been acting ever since – we are all a formed and evolving composite of the many experiences we have had.)
I worked a lot of warehouse and manufacturing jobs, I got married, was soon laid off and decided I needed to go back to school for… COMPUTERS (I had dabbled with BASIC programming, so why not?) And FIVE-AND-A-HALF YEARS of school and work later I picked up the TWO-AND-A-HALF YEARS of school I needed to get my Bachelor’s degree JUST IN TIME for my son to be born. (It would have been SO MUCH EASIER to do this straight out of high school, but then again, computers weren’t even on my radar – my first exposure was as a student assistant in my theatre days, running registration cards from the gym to the computer center (yes, I was paid to be a SNEAKER MODEM) where the geeks there gave me printouts to take back.)
It took another couple of years to actually get a job that used that degree (being a Machine Shop Supervisor paid better than any of the entry level IT work I could find), but eventually I made the transition, and I’ve been in IT ever since – although I’m a Project manager now, and my coding days are WELL behind me.
What have I left out… GAMING. I’ve played games all my life (yes, I know we all have as we grew up, but I went further.) Playing army in the woods, chess in the library (I NEVER tip my king), Canasta with my grandparents, Monopoly (won 25-cents off our Priest for that and mortified my mother in the process, but there I am – a PRO again), elaborate plastic soldier battles across my yard that escalated into an arms race with more advanced models and weapons, including aircraft (hey - we didn't have computers yet), lots of boardgames, wargames, French Napoleonic miniature battles, Dungeons & Dragons role-playing (when it was just a little box with three little booklets), an era of fantasy miniature battles with my Dwarven Hoard, and backgammon, Scrabble, UNO and such with my wife, and here lately Texas Hold’em.
I’m overly analytical (and competitive), and it really comes out when I play. At the height of my gaming days I was known as “The Threat”; other players would often gang up on me to knock me out of whatever multi-player game we were competing in. One friend told me it (the nickname AND the ganging up) was because I always seemed to be winning, and so they had to take me out first, but another said that it was because I always acted like I knew something the rest didn’t (theatre again? Or arrogance?) and I never gave up (I told you, I don’t EVER tip my king) so I needed to be taken out of the game just because of how annoying I was. (actually, there’s truth to both.)
Then there’s the karaoke. I love to sing – no matter where I am, but up in front of people feeding off their energy (like when I used to be on stage) and being immersed in the backing music (much more fulfilling than a Capella in a grocery store), and having to keep up (competitive, sort of, but I also like structure.) And especially having the words right there in front of me so I don’t have to worry about remembering them means that I can sing just about anything; I have a talent for picking out melodies on most songs even if I haven’t heard them. Of course, there’s a lot of new stuff lately that just doesn’t seem to come as naturally to me – doesn’t fall into the traditional patterns.
Each of us is a unique, growing, unfolding pattern, but a pattern none the less, and we only change so far. The more history you have behind you, the better able you should be to predict where you’re going (and where you’ll wind up.) And yet, how many of us really can?
(Next week we’ll talk about where I want to go…)
Times change, and we do, too, but only to a point. Everything we’ve been and seen and done informs how and who we are now. I can look at all the things I’ve listed above and see how they are reflected in my life today – even in how I approach my job. So don’t ever think that you are JUST a programmer, or a musician, or a construction worker, or a wife, or a husband, a doctor, or a writer, or ….whatever label you find yourself applying TO yourself. You are all of those things and more. Be sure to use it all.
Just saying…
<<<>>> 
Our featured work this week is “Flee Markets” (that is NOT a misspelling – it actually MEANS something in the story. You can always find something unexpected at those – well, maybe not THAT unexpected. ) Here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/402085?ref=NoTimeToThink
Use coupon code UC78A to save 67% off the list price at check out on smashwords (that makes it only 99 cents – such a deal!) The coupon is good through July 27th. Enjoy!
<<<>>> 
Prepping another story for ePublication on July 31st – more details next week…
<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing can be found in many places, including:
To connect with him, go to
“William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook (and LIKE and FOLLOW), at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
Or his Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri

Or on twitter: @WilliaMangieri
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, July 13, 2015

The Origins of Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND (and a Coupon to See For Yourself)

In each of my short story collections, I include an “afterword” called ORIGINS that speaks a little about where the stories came from, and since my writing for Swordsmaster (and this blog) has suddenly halted at the insistence of a new story (“Pipes”), now is as good a time as any to explain how these things happen.
Below is the ORIGINS section from my first collection, titled Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND. And below that is a coupon for 50% off from smashwords if you decide you’d like to read it.
Just saying…

Origins

People have on occasion asked me how I write - more specifically, how do my stories “happen”. I’m not a great planner - even in life I tend to fly by the seat of my pants, and my writing process reflects that.
I don’t do outlines - at least not for a first draft; it would be foolish, since I rarely know where the story is heading (I know where I want it to go, but I can’t be sure it will get there.) I just need a starting point; it can be a phrase (I’m fond of puns and double-entendres), a single word, a full sentence, a piece of tech that I’ve read about or envisioned. I start writing, and the story pretty much builds as I go. I rarely try to write a story to a particular word limit - the story is as long as it wants to be. Sometimes, I don’t know how it’s going to end until it does.
“Passed Life” started as a project exploring FATE for a college class on mythology. It was brief (1700 words), but I was in love with the idea, and when I decided to become a writer as my mid-life renaissance, my first attempt was a rewrite of this ... year-old story (hint - I still had the original printout from my brand new Apple II.)  The image of the colonial merchant bending over a newspaper machine in the rain is always in my mind.
“B.I.T.” resulted from a writing exercise book in which I had to write down fifteen potential first lines that I would never start a story with. When I tried writing from “My dog doesn’t know who I am”, my first thought revolved around a dog with Alzheimer’s, so I threw that idea out and let the dog have a legitimate reason not to recognize the owner, and this grew into “B.I.T.” Self- identity confusion seems to crop up a lot in my thinking...
“Through Her Eyes” was triggered by a writing challenge (I never entered) about the victim of a haunting. I thought of letting a ghost communicate with their blind former lover by passing her visions into his mind. The story I originally envisioned was much longer than “Through Her Eyes” became, but I was more interested in the vision idea than in writing what could have turned into a melodrama. Although I still have a lot of images floating in my mind related to this...
“Business is Business” was an attempt to tell Rumplestiltskin from a perspective that made the fairy tale a fairer tale. I always felt the miller’s daughter in the original tale was a bit too innocent to be believable. Her father lied, the King was greedy, she makes a deal with the gold-spinner, gets what she wants and then regrets it and wants to reneg on the deal. Rumplestiltskin even gives her a way out; why is he considered a monster? And why did he want the child in the first place?
 “A Dish Best Served” started simply with a desire to use an x-course meal as the vehicle for a story. I started writing with the critic vs. chef theme, and the rest of the story came out of the pen on its own (or with the help of my favorite Poe story, “A Cask of Amontillado”, which has been floating in the back of my mind for most of my life.) I really didn’t know if Bonaventure was going to survive the meal until HE opened his mouth and complained at the end. Always a critic...
“Quiet!” came from an idea I wanted to explore about encountering a hive-mind organism on a fictitious planet, different enough from us that we might not notice them (or how we were effecting them). The planet turned into our moon when I was thinking about how little we’ve really done with manned space exploration since the Apollo missions wound down with Apollo 17 in 1972. I find it hard to get excited about orbiters like the ISS, but I’d be thrilled for a chance to step on another planet (I’d like to make it to Mars in my lifetime, but I’ll settle for the moon if I have to.) I wrote the story, then researched the Apollo 17 transcripts for a place to connect my fiction to reality.

<<<>>> 
Our featured work this week (surprise!) is “Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND” - here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/178302?ref=NoTimeToThink  
Use coupon code KY65W to save 50% off the list price at check out on smashwords. The coupon is good through July 20th. Enjoy!
<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing can be found in many places, including:
Connect with him, go to “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook (and LIKE and FOLLOW), at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
Or on his Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri

Or on twitter: @WilliaMangieri
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, July 6, 2015

Tribal Orthodoxy, Alien Invasions, and the Truth (and coupon news)

Human beings are tribal – we gather into groups and then we war with each other – either REAL war, or some sort of less deadly competition. We group together inside religious-economic-geographic-racial-cultural-gender-philosophical borders, sometimes over something as ridiculously meaningless as the Lilliputians’ argument about which end of the egg to break. We need to identify with a group… something larger than ourselves – sort of artificially puffing ourselves up like a cat (I remember being in Carlsbad – they were having issues with mountain lions, and told us that if we ran into one, bunch together and try to make our group look like ONE BIG ANIMAL instead of a bunch of smaller ones.)
And then we look at the other group and say – “Nyah, nyaah! Our group is bigger than yours!” (will humanity EVER get out of junior high?)
Why do we continue dividing ourselves this way? That’s what we’re really doing - we aren’t really making ourselves bigger – we are dividing into smaller and smaller tribes within tribes.
And of course, there’s also an ORTHODOXY that comes from this – a litmus test of ideas that you are expected to hold in common with the tribe, and if you don’t hold to those beliefs – if you think the egg should be cracked at the other end – then you are not one of US – you are one of those OTHERS.
With this orthodoxy, we create our reality – it doesn’t matter what you really see out there – don’t mention it if it doesn’t conform to the facts as we know it or you will be thrown out as a heretic.
For each tribe to have its own set of beliefs, it would follow that no tribe has all of it right – well, maybe one tribe does, but what are the odds? And that means, the majority of us would still be wearing goggles to keep us from seeing the world as it really is, each of us in our own tribe’s ALTERNATE REALITY.
Writing fiction (or READING it) is a way to imagine yourself as a different person - even a member of a different group, living in their reality instead of your own. It can get you to thinking a whole slew of “what-ifs” and expand your possibilities. And as we understand one another, maybe we start weeding through the differences and discover which ones are based on facts and which are merely dogma. Then we could all live in THE SAME REALITY instead of a bunch of ALTERNATE ONES.
What’s wrong with just living by the truth? What tribe could be larger than all of humanity? Why don’t we expand our tribe instead of dividing it? Could it truly be that we need something massively destructive – like an ALIEN INVASION – to unite us into one tribe? I hope not – those never seem to go well for anyone (trust me – I know.)
Instead of waiting for the aliens to come in and weed us out, why don’t we each try breaking from our dogma. Be UNORTHODOX - think for yourself. The TRUTH will set you free.
Maybe we all just need to read a little more.
Just saying…
<<<>>> 
“Gladius” was ePublished July 3rd (alien abductions and gladiators, and the bull-headed man on the cover) – here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/556125?ref=NoTimeToThink
Use coupon code WT63N at smashwords checkout for 50% off through July 13th.
<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing can be found in many places, including:
Connect with him, go to “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook (and LIKE and FOLLOW), at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
Or on his Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri

Or on twitter: @WilliaMangieri
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, June 29, 2015

Growing a World (and coupon news)

In the beginning the world was without form…
It really was.
Writing for me is bare bones CREATION. I am not God – not even A god. I think though, when we talk about God making man (that’s non-gender specific, okay?) in his own image, I think the purist meaning of that is that we also are imbued with the ABILITY (and NEED) to CREATE.
There is this germ that comes before it’s a story  – a bare seed with different characteristics depending on the story itself. It might be a piece of futuristic technology, or an idea for an alien, or an interesting picture I’ve seen, or another that’s only in my head. It could be a character who starts talking to me, a turn of phrase (pure poetry or pun), or something that really happened (or sort of.) Just this single element, alone in the formless darkness.
And from there it grows. The technology has to impact something, the alien has to be from somewhere, there are other things beyond the borders of the picture. The character takes a step and sees more of what’s in the room – or wherever else they might be reveals itself. The words continue; the darkness recedes.
It can’t be a story if this doesn’t happen. The longer it is, the more relationships occur, the more things and places and people come into being to feed it, to fill the emptiness that it sprang up in the middle of.
At first there are only hints of an outside world – in short fiction that’s all you need, as if the character is stuck inside a room and doesn’t have to show you the rest of the house. But the longer things go on, the more likely he’s going to remember something about what’s outside the room – maybe even open the door and show the rest of the house, or go even beyond that.
That’s the way writing is for me. I start out in the dark, all by myself, except for this – SOMETHING – that winds up growing a room, or a house or a WHOLE WORLD around it.
I wonder why it never stays just – DARK. Is it because nature abhors a vacuum? It’s probably just because I’m afraid of the dark (well, I AM.) Regardless of the reason, it never does stay that way.
“A Dish Best Served” started with something undefinable on a plate, which had to be on somewhere. In front of someone. For a reason. Where did the tricorn-hatted man in “Past Life” come from? Where were things disappearing to in “Bugging Out”? Each of these expanded from a tiny germ of life into its own mini-world; each surprised me with the way they filled out. All of my stories do.
But they are all nothing compared to “Swordsmaster.” I don’t know if it’s because I said “I think it’s time to write a novel,” but it doesn’t seem to matter where I thought it was going to go – there’s always more detail than I intended or was prepared for. More places. More people.  More plots. More world.
Short fiction was so much less demanding.
Just saying…
<<<>>> 
Our featured work this week is “Cannabis Alienus ‘alien dope’” (yes - adapted from a brief experience I had after high school – read it and let me know which which part you think was real.) Here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/382205?ref=NoTimeToThink  
Use coupon code TW56C to save 50% off the list price at check out on smashwords. The coupon is good through July 6th. Enjoy!
<<<>>> 
“Gladius” will be ePublished this Friday (July 3rd) – follow me on Twitter or Facebook (see links below) and you’ll receive notification AND the opening coupon code once it’s online.
<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing can be found in many places, including:
Connect with him, go to “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook (and LIKE and FOLLOW), at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
Or on his Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri

On twitter: @WilliaMangieri
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, June 22, 2015

Pretending Not To Be Me (And the Latest Coupon)

I’m not a people person.
I say this often (it’s one of my mantras), and some people have disputed it with me, but I think they mistake being personable with being into persons. I tend to keep to myself, and a lot of my time is spent inside of my own head away from other people (the ones that we could all agree are real; of course, all bets are off if I find some real people in there, too) (believe me, you really don’t want to go there.) I spend entirely too much time thinking about… thinking (that’s called intellection) to be a people person.
But I can “do” people – in fact, I sort of fall into them. Sometimes - in public - I  adopt accents as I hear them – and when it happens, I’m generally not aware of it until my wife hits my arm and tells me to stop. If you ever catch me doing this to you (the adopting, not the hitting) please understand that it is NOT a deliberate act.
I’m not sure why it happens; I like to think of myself as being strong-willed (or is it willful?), and I’ve been told at times that I have an over-bearing personality, but maybe I’m susceptible to suggestion. I wonder if that means I should watch out for:
·        Hypnosis (I don’t THINK I’ve ever tried it)
·        Possession (I haven’t SEEN any dead people)
·        Mind control (how would you KNOW if someone was doing that to you?)
I used to act. I enjoyed pretending to be other people (we all pretend while we’re growing up, don’t we), and over the run of a show (generally a couple of months of rehearsals and performances) bits of the characters I was playing would slip into my everyday life and become part of who Bill looked like to other people. This would be confusing to people, particularly those who met me during one character, then saw me change into another. They were never sure who I really was.
Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m sure. It just goes to show, it can be a dangerous world in there – at least if I let other people in. It’s crowded enough as it is.
(and NO, I’m not schizophrenic.) (Why are you saying that?)(Because I don’t want them to get the wrong idea.)
I used to think writing fiction was different from acting, but I’m not so sure anymore. You see, when I acted, I was telling a story to an audience, in the voice of a character in that story. When I write fiction, I’m telling a story to an audience (except they aren’t there when I write it) in the voice of (several) characters in that story.
Look at my books (please.) There are a host of characters in there varying from sweet, passive people to aggressively evil ones, and they all had to come from somewhere. I seem to be able to move from one to the other with ease. Male, female, animal, alien, human, demon, AI, gangster, bartender, old, young, are all crammed in my head and trying to find some way to get out; some of them make it onto the page.
I think I’d be in real trouble if I had Tourette's – imagine if I couldn’t control how and what was coming out. There are so many thoughts running around in my head that I know aren’t my own – how could they be? – they belong to those OTHERS that are in there, too.
So don’t give me a hard time when all I do is burst into song in the grocery store – there are a lot worse things I could be doing if I lost control of them all.
Guess this means I’m more of a people person than I thought.
Just saying…
<<<>>> 
Our featured work this week is “The Right Idea” (Detective Jimmy Delaney story #3, in which mayoral candidate Mathews promises to clean up Barnstow, and Jimmy wonders what that will do to his business.) Here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/382205?ref=NoTimeToThink  
Use coupon code BZ29W to save 50% off the list price at check out on smashwords. The coupon is good through June 29th. Enjoy!
<<<>>> 
“Gladius” is slated for ePublication on July 3rd – more news to come…
<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing can be found in many places, including:
Connect with him, go to “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook (and LIKE and FOLLOW), at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink

Or on his Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, June 15, 2015

Swordsmaster Update: The Long and the Short of It and What Rules There Be (and coupon news, of course)

Last week I crossed the 20,000 word mark (out of novelette and into novella territory) on the first draft of Swordsmaster. This being my first attempt at novel length fiction (well, first attempt in over 30 years, but who’s counting? Besides, it’s the same story. I can just see the blurb online now: SWORDSMASTER! OVER 30 YEARS IN THE MAKING!), I thought I’d have another go at sharing what I’m learning about the process – or more specifically, MY process.
You see, there is no approved methodology for creating art – at least not art that’s created by an individual. Collaborations have to be built some sort of organization that the collaborators agree to or nothing will get done, but there are as many ways to create a story as there are authors – more really, because even for one author (at least me, so that’s one author) there are differences between how each of my individual stories make it to term.
There are also no hard and fast rules in writing. There are guidelines and there are costs (Magic has a price, dearie!) You learn what the rules are so that you can evaluate how much you can break them without totally torpedoing your project. And we all break some of them – if we didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between us. If you want to stand out, you break different ones in different ways, and you hope that you did just enough to catch the reader’s attention, but not enough to make them stop reading.
There is definitely a difference between writing short and long fiction. When writing short, I write a first draft in my chosen writing tool – I use MS Word and take advantage of color highlighting and side comments to keep notes of various things I know I will have to come back and shore up. On a short story, there is so little going on (because it is SHORT), I may need a couple of character or place names, research whether a weapon might work a particular way, but generally there isn’t that much I have to check into, and I’ve already put in almost all the details before I finish the first draft. After this, I make a pass looking for inconsistencies, fill in names, and catch grammar and other mundane issues. I then pass it on to my reader (if I have a reader, that is), or wait 3 weeks or so and make another pass. That’s three drafts total to get to a finished product.
I know there are going to be MANY, MANY passes in writing this novel. I’m pretty good at STORY – it seems to just spill out as I write, but because there is SO MUCH MORE going on, I have decided that I can’t afford to slow down the story in the first pass filling in details. I can see from the notes I’m making so far that completing the first draft is NOT going to mean that I’m almost done. After the first draft, I will have to make a pass to make sure that the story itself works. Multiple passes to fill in details (for example, I can visualize sword-play just fine, but now I will have to describe it with more varied words. All my descriptions will be have to be redone to avoid common word repetition.
There will be passes to make sure that the WAY each individual character speaks and behaves is consistent throughout (possibly a pass for every character who is mentioned more than half a dozen times.) And there’s even the VOICE of the story to check for consistency. This isn’t a problem on a short piece of fiction that I wrote over a couple of weeks – but it will take me at least half a year to make it through the first draft of Swordsmaster; I suspect the VOICE will change multiple times along the way, and I’ll have to pull it all back together.
When I set my goal to write a novel this year, I really didn’t think it through beyond the increase in word count. Well, we live and we learn (or die trying J.)
Just saying…
<<<>>> 
William’s 5th collection of speculative short fiction (Yet Still Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND) is still available with a coupon on Smashwords. (Just saying…) Here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/548456?ref=NoTimeToThink
Use coupon code XW25A to save 50% off the list price at check out on smashwords. The coupon is good through Sunday, June 21st. Enjoy!
<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing can be found in many places, including:

Connect with him, go to “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook (and LIKE and FOLLOW), at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
Or on his Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)