The FLU SEASON Trilogy: Doing What I Do

It has been a week since my new novel FLU SEASON 2: THE WAY OF THE SON launched and the excitement of that minimalistic day still lingers. The thrill of seeing my finger push that button to send a tweet into the void sizzles even now. It's all about the thrill, you see. I really can't stop. It's like a role-playing game and I get to play all the characters and make them do what I want them to do. By the end, I feel like I have put together a million-piece jigsaw puzzle and can finally see the big picture.

Whenever anyone might ask me why I write - a typical question in writing communities online - I pause thoughtfully, then launch into a diatribe about how it is all fun and games until I come to the end. Then I feel a great emptiness as the published book leaves the nest and tries to fly on its own. But the game analogy is valid. When I really think about it, that is what it is: a game. It gets me up in the mornings to play it. I want to see what happens next to these invented characters - blithely acknowledging that I have the power to make things happen in a certain way.

Puppet master? I think not. For as the characters come on stage more and more, they become real and often argue with me, demand a different turn of events, threaten to sit and pout. I offer a quick way out in the form of a murder or unlucky fall, but usually I cannot part with them. Even the villains compel me to assist in their crimes. Sure, there is some clear-headed planning and crafting a narrative that goes this way and that, making arcs, dropping seeds, foreshadowing, flashing back, information dumping but only in spoonfuls here and there. I know what to do.

However, at the bottom of all of that writerly stuff is the game. An old adage for writers goes a little bit like this: Write the story you want to read. And I do. I don't often know what kind of story I want to read when I start, but it comes to me soon enough. It usually comes to me when I've written about 10,000 words. By then, the story stays with me when I'm not actively writing. I start to think of what happens next - and what just happened and what I may have missed and need to add or change - through the day and into the evening. As the story progresses, I may be so driven as to sit down in the middle of the afternoon and type out another scene. Or, surprisingly, delve back in late in the evening just as I was certain it was time to sleep. It's a crazy process, but there it is.

For my FLU SEASON trilogy, which began as a stand-alone book, THE BOOK OF MOM, until 2/3 of the way into writing it, I developed a regular routine (me being a retired fool with little to occupy my hours). I would rise and get coffee while booting up the beast (an old desktop computer running Windows whatever-number, using Word of some kind). I'd sit and open the file, a running manuscript in which I add the next bit straight into the file, which is already set in book format - all the better to see how it will look in the final version. While starting the session, I begin listening to the "soundtrack" I've put together: music which fits the scene, always instrumental (don't need sung words getting in the way of the words in my head).

I usually begin by addressing spots I thought about since the previous session and fix those. Then I might read through the last scene I wrote and revise/edit it, which leaves me ready to dive into the next scene or chapter. In the alternative, if an idea is hot when I'm starting, I may go straight to typing out that scene while it rages, then return to my normal routine. Depending on the scene - writing coaches talk about the goal of a scene - I may begin with a little setting information, or jump into dialog to get it started. I'm always thinking of the mood of the scene - mood of the characters as well as what comes from the setting, like the difference between the same dialog and action in a sunny setting versus a dark and rainy setting. I know from a lot of previous writing how to mix exposition ("telling") with live action and dialog ("showing"), with the thoughts and feelings of the characters.

However, I tend to "write lean" just to get the story down in a basic form, knowing I will go back over it and make it richer. Sometimes an exchange of dialog runs the scene. Other times, getting the look and feel of the place and situation is most important. I find I have the uncanny ability to "become" a character and think, speak, and act as that character would. And yet I was never a great actor! Yet, in becoming my characters, I feel what they feel and that makes the writing effort exhausting - or occasionally energizing. It is almost like going to the gym for a hard workout, depending on the conflict in the scene I'm writing. A lot of that is driven by whatever is happening in my head when my fingers hit the keyboard. I might say it is magic but I don't truly know. Probably a form of mental illness of which I can make full use of its quirky features. Living in one's head is not just a metaphor.

I will write as long as I can. When the scene is finished I will go back immediately and read it through, revising as I go. I add more description (a sentence here or there), fill out dialogue (can't just have the necessary words but also need the extra phrases that make dialog sound real), and add thoughts and feelings (of the protagonist; can't know what other characters are thinking and feeling but I can suggest those through what the protagonist notices). When I get tired or I run up against having to do some other task, I'll pack it up, save everything in 6 places (3 places off the desktop computer), and call it a day.

Then I think about the story as I go through my day. I'll drive to the grocery store but there is the next scene in my mind's eye as I'm sitting at the traffic light. I push the cart through the store and I'm thinking through that last exchange of dialog, perhaps deciding a better phrase to have my character speak. Or I might realize I forgot to include something or I discover in reviewing what I just wrote that I need to add some important detail - something a reader would point out. Later, often lying in bed ready to sleep, I will also find "plot holes" (seldom these days, despite being a make-it-up-as-I-go-along kind of writer) or other spots I need to address. Then, if I'm lucky, I will go on to sleep. And sometimes I will have a dream which relates to the story I'm writing and I'll pop up in the darkness to scribble something on a note pad next to my bed and deal with it in the morning.

So for the two years in which I've worked on three novels, this has been my usual daily work routine. It is good to have a regular schedule when nothing else such as getting to work is there to keep me on track. I often confuse the day of the week now, unless the TV schedule reminds me. After a while they all run together as one big writing session, anyway, and I don't mind that.

I'm not sure what comes next. The FLU SEASON Trilogy is finished with Book 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS - coming in fall 2023. I have teased that I will have an artificial intelligence app read my trilogy and then create a fourth book. Then a fifth book. And I shall be reduced to mere editor. We shall see. At least read Book 3, the final fully human-written novel of my career!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2023 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Sloth & Indolence: A Grand Re-Imagining

Happy New Year! Like most people I know, I have been busier the past couple months than I would have expected or wished. No, it has actually been quite the opposite: a time of sloth and indolence with the best of intentions. Oh, sure, we had our holidays, full of the usual mirth and merriment, family squabbles and sporting events, and the ever-stressful shopping online for the relations. Books were offered up as suitable gifts and I missed the deadline.

Now I'm trying to make amends by pushing out my next here in the early year. I hope that the third book of a trilogy would be enough excitement to get readers of the first two books to the keyboard to click a Kindle into their lives or else to order the full paperback version for its tactile pleasures. Aside from that New Year's wish, I should take time to reintroduce myself.

What is The Deconstruction of the Sekuatean Empire?

When I first hammered this blog from hell's own fire and brimstone, I had in mind a place to post the "back material" for my sci-fi interdimensional drama THE DREAM LAND Trilogy. Because the trilogy is set partly on another world, where the chief political entity of that world, known as the Sekuatean Empire, becomes a focal point. Hence, the title of this blog would make sense: taking apart the history, geography, culture and customs of the place where much of the action of the story occurs. However, as time has progressed, other books have come to the forefront which have nothing to do with Sekuate or its hard-working rebels. It seemed at the time to be too much effort to create a wholly new blog from whole cloth.

You will also note the list of book titles with convenient hyperlinks in the upper right corner of this blog page. They are not simple decoration but actually serve as keys that open doors to my dementia. Experience them and be enlightened forever more! Or, at the least, be entertained, perhaps even enthralled. My writing strives to enfold profound truths of the human condition within pages of action and adventure, liberally marbled with reasonably applied sex and romance while sprinkled with haughty pontifications and jokes best left on the cutting room floor. That sounds a lot like a warning, doesn't it? But it's all in jest. I can assure you that 99.9% of the words are spelled correctly and good grammar is always in use - except for the dialog of those characters who have not been well-educated and then only for the sake of authenticity.

To update you now, the conclusion of my "medically accurate" vampire trilogy is about to launch. The conclusion to the story which began in Book I, A Dry Patch of Skin (2014), and continued through Book II, Sunrise (2018), follows a romantic phlebotomist with a dark family history through his transformation into a vampire (according to medical plausibility) and, in Book II, into his playboy years. Book III takes us up to the year 2099 when he has gained a sizable reputation for cruelty. With Book II being titled Sunrise, Book III's title seems obvious: Sunset. More on this trilogy in my next blog post.

Aside from the latest novel hitting the electronic shelves soon, I have also written science fiction, fantasy (indeed EPIC fantasy!), and a few contemporary (a.k.a. literary) dramas and what I would call action/adventure tales about real; people with real problems in real settings. You know the genre. (You can read samples of other books on the other pages of this blog.) I dabble at poetry. I've written a few screenplays, too. I love to invent stories, generally as a way for me to tease out the answer(s) to an assortment of "what-if" questions. For example, what would it be like if a man and a tiger could read each other's minds? This premise will be available to sort out in my next novel, Year of the Tiger, by the way. Because I am happiest when I am deep in a story, fighting my way through to an end that comes too soon, I will always be writing. I have ideas for the next five years. By then I will have ideas for the next five, and so on. I call these my "five-year plans".

I strive to post a new entry once a week, all the better to take advantage of certain Twitter hashtags (@StephenSwartz1) such as   #SundayBlogShare,  #MondayBlogs,  #TuesdayShares,  #Wednesdayblogs, and  #Blogorama. I do not hold to this schedule religiously, however - as this month's fare will attest. But I try. You know how life tends to interfere with your best intentions? It's doubly so for writers and teachers. Worse yet if one is both a writer and a teacher. But I'm not complaining. Not really. 

In keeping with a "best practices" model of book promotion, I shall attempt to keep blatant marketing efforts to a minimum - except when something new is launched. As always, I expect followers of this blog to read everything I produce and go forth to gather all their family members and friends, coworkers, and just about everyone they encounter in their daily lives, and make them also followers of this blog, readers of these books, and all-around nice people who live to love and love to live, helping all of us enjoy this wonderful world we occupy and yet still be prepared to battle the interstellar aliens who will invade us circa 2345 2217. The choice is yours, as always. But I have high hopes for you!

Thanks for your attention to these matters. Now carry on making the world a better place for me. And I shall return the favor wholeheartedly!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2019 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Year's End of Kind of a Review

There comes a time in every blogger's life when the blogging is easy, and that time is known as the Year End Review or some variation on that topic. You simply recount everything you have done, and/or blogged about, during the year. It's a chance to rewrite history or boast on yourself, or perhaps humbly beg for more readers.

For me, this has been a difficult year - and yet I have persisted, keeping my claws locked in the edge of the cliffs time and time again. Fortunately, my actual life and my writing life have coincided strangely. When I don't feel well, my protagonist has difficulties, too. When something goes right for me, my hero has a good day, too. It's eerie how that alter ego keeps me going. But I suspect many writers role play a happier life (or, at least, a more invigorating life) through the fictional personas they create. Am I right? Am I?

So 2018 began for me with the finishing of the second volume of my vampire trilogy. Any Book 2 of a trilogy exists because something was not addressed in Book 1. And Book 3 follows automatically once the decision has been made to take the plunge into a 2nd volume after a so-called stand-alone novel fails to wrap up one or two crucial issues. So I did that, and launching Book 2 of the Stefan Szekely Trilogy was a pleasant diversion from the run of the mill runs around that old mill.

But seriously, then Book 3 stared me straight in the face, demanding what I would do for an encore. I said, "Here, hold my Merlot goblet." And promptly ratcheted up the rhetoric and the horror. For what could be more horrible that to be forced to commit evil every day lest you be punished? Everyone hates you for that daily act of evil yet you must do it or those around you whom you care for will suffer. It's an unpleasant conundrum. How to escape from this situation? Ah hah! And so Book 3 was born and shall be available soon enough (yet not so soon that you wouldn't have time to read Books 1 and 2 first). As with previous years, I went to China to teach a class in the summer and spent a lot of my free time alone in my hotel room typing away on the latest book. 

Besides the day job, that is what has occupied my time and attention for the bulk of the year. Except for the NaNo - the National Novel Writing Month - which I elected to indulge in by finally writing my autobiography. You know: finally a chance to write down all those little anecdotes you remember being told about when you were a baby or a toddler, and the adventures you remember from your elementary school days, and the first inkling of puppy love in junior high school.... Oh dear! I sense I'm getting into "spoiler" territory so I must cease. Well, it remains unfinished, as most good autobiographies are until the author ends it with a good whack or a doctor's note.

So what else did I do in 2018? You can look back through the blog posts of this year, down by count from previous years. As mentioned in a blog post or two, on too many occasions, when I planned to post a light-hearted entry about nothing important at all, something horrible would happen in the real world and my blog post seemed even more frivolous, so I did not post. I don't think the problem was my posts but, rather, the things people do to each other. What work of fiction can stand up to the reality we often face every day? It almost makes the writing of fiction a delicate luxury: a place to hide, or an escape into a mental landscape - which is good for a time, yes, but should not be a permanent condition.

Alas, as with every end of the year, the optimist I keep in my shirt pocket pops out his little head and grins precociously as if certain the new year will be nothing but merriment and mirth. I wish always to agree. And yet, as we so well know, it may not be. In each of our corners of the world, or in our own little neighborhood, try to take care of each other, share stories, be less suspicious and ready to wield weapons. Talk - for that was the reason the great Rhetoric was invented. Words are not sticks and stones; they're made of phonemes, which are soft and squishy and slide right off us unless we pin them to ourselves.

"Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow." 

-Weekend Update sign-off, Saturday Night Live

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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How I Ruined My Summer Vacation - 2018 (part 2)

Everything begins with a departure and an arrival. For my summer trips to Beijing to teach a university course, every year is the same. Get the visa first - which is a trip in itself. There is no express or same-day service at the visa office, so I must wait four days. A mini vacation, a chance to get some writing done. They almost know me by now.

Then comes the day of travel. Two-hour flight to the hub airport, couple hours of layover, then the 13-hour leg to Beijing. I can never pick the right seat. Less success choosing the right seatmates. Going, I had a Chinese high school exchange student in the middle seat and an older professor from a northeastern university on the aisle. When they both were awake, he regaled her with tales of university life and which university she should apply to in order to continue her studies in the US. I was too tired to correct some of the ideas he had for her education. Instead, I watched four movies - two I had wanted to see and two which I endured almost to the half-way point before just ending it already!

Thank goodness there is something new every time I arrive in Beijing's Capital Airport. I actually felt good at the end of this flight, even with only four cat naps of about 20 minutes each. But the two-kilometer walk through the huge complex upon arrival always zaps my goodwill. This year foreign arrivals first must use automated machines to record their fingerprints prior to entering the immigration lines. (I suppose refusing fingerprints would have caused me to be sent back on the next flight.) Not all the machines were working - certainly not the ones I tried. Then, with receipt in hand proving we had offered up our most intimate details, we should have been allowed to proceed.

However, foreign passport holders had to wait in a weary bunch as Chinese passport holders went ahead to the immigration counters. It wasn't as though we competed for the same lines. I did not complain - too tired. Once in the long foreigners' line, I passed easily because I'm a nice guy and a regular joe. I also got my bag - historically I'm always near the last - and passed through customs - nothing to declare except my contempt for the hassles of travel. The international flight was 13 hours; from exiting the plane to exiting the secure area of the airport (including the shuttle train that takes us from the outer area of the gates to the inner portion for immigration and customs) took 1-1/2 hours.

My decision to stay in Beijing was eventually rewarded when I finally exited into the public area and easily found my student assistant for this summer there to greet me. "Serena" got me and my bags to a taxi and then to my hotel, which is across from the UIBE campus. It was an overcast, humid afternoon as we went from the airport to the hotel, a situation which did not change much during the course I was to teach. This year, I was asked to teach the same course in two weeks instead of four - I presumed it to be a way to save on my hotel bill, which the university paid.

Back to the Yinghua ("Cherry blossom") Hotel, my old nemesis. The staff knows me well, understands I like good a/c. I also care about feng shui. My free time during these summers includes a fair amount of writing in my room so feng shui is important. My first two years I was in room 424 - I actually requested it the second year - which had great feng shui; I wrote the greater part of two novels those two summers (A Girl Called Wolf and Epic Fantasy *With Dragons). However, last year's visit was a terrible room-shuffling experience (read about it here), but I still managed some good writing production during the room changes. This year, only one room change.

More on the room experience next post!


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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How I Ruined My Summer Vacation - 2018

As many of my dear readers may be aware, I was on vacation last month. That is my story and I'm sticking to it. In my last post, I offered you a fine selection of books to entertain and enlighten you while I was away. Yes, I do notice if anyone has added one or more of them to a to-be-read list, and those of you who followed through with your reading scheme, I thank you. 

This is your vacation on rain.

Actually, I was working - so let's call it a working vacation. I traveled to Beijing, China for three weeks to teach a university course called "Business Writing in American Context" (Chinese translation). My course, like all those taught at the University of International Business and Economics, was in English. Students must be fluent enough to be successful in their classes. I went last year, as well. And the year before. Yes, it seems it is becoming a habit. However, I have vowed that this visit (2018) would be my last - unless I get a very good reason to go through all the hassles to get there again.

For 2018, they threw me a curve: to teach the same course in half the time. So my class went from 4 weeks (2 classes a week) to two weeks of 4 classes each week (one class was about 4 hours). That made the grading of papers for 62 students this year a challenge. In fact, I did little else during those two weeks but focus on the class. I knew that going in, so I arranged to stay an extra week beyond the end of the course to have some sightseeing, shopping, hanging out time.

I need not have worried about doing anything fun when I wasn't in class. Those two weeks were full of rain or such oppressive humidity that I would have preferred rain. I brought a collapsible umbrella which had served me well for several years. Unfortunately, I left it in the classroom when I went home (the rain had stopped) and only realized that fact the next morning when the deluge returned. The hotel, thankfully, had full-sized umbrellas for guests to use. Then the doorman pestered me about returning it even though I needed it for another couple of days before the rain finally stopped.

Everyone remarked it was the rainiest summer anyone in Beijing could remember. Students, however, were very courteous with their umbrellas, always lining the hallways in an orderly fashion. On one particularly heavy rainfall day, my class assistant relayed the consensus of the students asking if the class would be cancelled. I was already in the classroom - on time - so it was on, baby! I did not count anyone late and, in fact, I delayed the start for 15 minutes. At the end of the two weeks, one student gave me a lovely postcard with a message on it, noting among other things that I was always punctual "even in rainy day".

With jet lag waking me earlier than normal, I had time to write. I continued working on the first draft of the third book in my vampire trilogy. I had written a huge portion of book 2 last summer. I also worked on two different short stories. Cranked out about 75,000 words total in three weeks. After my class, it was lunch time so I would grab something simple, often from the nearby 7-11 store, then return to my room to relax, eat the lunch, take a nap, then get up and write. With little distraction (no substantial social media access, for example), it was possible hunker down and type those chapters.

Room 634, which had decent feng shui.

For my dinners, I had plenty of company. A new Japanese (mostly sushi) restaurant had opened next to my hotel since last summer, which became a regular hangout. A new Chinese (mostly Cantonese) restaurant had also opened up the street since last year and got a lot of my business. And there was always the big Pizza Hut several blocks north of my hotel to try - especially if I wished to show a Chinese lady how "real" American-style pizza is (it wasn't, but that's another blog post). At least I did not get sick like last year.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Why I joined the Nanowrimo cult

It pains me to use the word cult but perhaps that is the most accurate word. Let's try to keep things in perspective, however: it's a good cult.

November is the period of worship in the cult of Nanowrimo (what the uninitiated may call the "National Novel Writing Month"), chiefly for those whose nervous fingers cannot avoid the lusty keys. I have never been able to participate because of its unfortunate scheduling. You see, November is the fattiest meat of the fall semester and tough to cut; it's when I have the most day-job work to do. Sure, I could write a draft of a novel in a month--if I had no day job to tend to, if I had no other disruptions, and if I had the idea in advance. I would like to give it a go one of these years--and so, finally, I have joined!

I finished Halloween with sufficient aplomb, whereby my new vampire romance novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN went viral like a patient with ebola (Thanks to those who downloaded or purchased it! Please post a review.), and so I lay exhausted and drained of energy, devoid of plot ideas. How could I possibly participate in this festival of wordcraft?

Until, alas, one ancient tale arose in my mushy consciousness late Halloween night not long after several diminutive alien costumes accosted me upon my doorstep, demanding healthy treats! The horror! And so was born the story which shall consume me lo these many nights of November!

The goal for celebrants of NaNoWriMo is to create from sacred mind-fire a 50,000 word book. By definition, that is the minimum length for something called a novel. That seems to be easy enough. My previous novels have been in the 72,000 to 122,000 range. However, let us not forget the time factor: one month--with the day job looming precariously over all.

When we are embroiled in the vagaries of daily life, we cannot simply sit down at a given moment and type out a story! 

I, for one, am a slave to my muses. I cannot work unless they approve of the project. And they will not approve of the project until they have been adequately wined and dined, made indolent and subservient through pleasurable stimulations, coaxed and coerced into finally granting their favor upon me.

Once started, however, I can run on fumes until it's finished. Then, when it's finished, I fall into a useless funk, dreading I'll never write anything ever again. Months later I get another idea and run it by my muses to see if it passes muster. I wonder why I ever had doubts about writing again. It is what I do, after all. No matter what month it is. 

Therefore, to claw my way out of the grave of vampire novels, I enter this new house of worship with full knowledge of the many sacrifices required of me! 

FYI

My NaNoWriMo ritual is titled "The Masters' Riddle"

It is a sci-fi tale of captured aliens trying to escape a barren prison planet. And none of the characters are human.

Stay tuned for the amazing result!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.