Categories
Novels

Stopping to Ask for Directions

It’s becoming clear that I’m using the story, characters, and relationship dynamics in Jackal as a way to work things out in my personal life. I’ve gotten too close to this project, which is preventing me from getting any farther. I don’t wish to file Jackal away in my ever-growing story file. At the same […]

Categories
Novels

Details, Details

Found this rotting in my Drafts folder: A self-sequestered night at Owen Valley Flooring while Russell worked at the drive-in a few months ago proved to be productive. I did some more exploring of Ramona’s character. I’m good about getting character traits but not always good about translating those into physical choices. Car or public […]

Categories
Novels

How to Break a Heart

I realized it as I talked out the relationship between characters with Tim yesterday: Ramona has to hurt Ciarán. Badly. That will not be fun to write. Not sure of the when or how yet. Ro just doesn’t have the life experience or maturity that Ciarán has, especially in the romantic relationship department. I’m trying […]

Categories
Novels

Miscellany

Lately, the only chatter on this blog has been housekeeping-related or private (only because those posts were more very specific notes-to-self and incoherent). So I thought I’d update. I haven’t done any writing although I did some more character sketching over the holiday break (although sadly, I did this on paper so I will have […]

Categories
Fiction

Ciarán

I forgot to follow up on my previous post on character naming woe (a minor woe in comparison to the ‘crap, I have writer’s block’ woe or the ‘crap, my laptop died and my novel is gone’ woe). Ciarán finally has a surname: McDonagh. So why did I get so excited about a surname anyway? […]

Categories
Fiction

A Word from the Oh Crap Department

Ciarán finally has a surname. A Google search reveals that my character shares his name with a long-running UK soap opera character who was created a few years ago. Jackal character: Ciarán MacCarthyCoronation Street character: Ciaran McCarthy Head. Wall. Bang. I really like both the meaning (Ciarán means ‘little dark one’ and MacCarthy means ‘loving […]