Story noodlings

I’ve been writing along on my superhero story and just got royally stuck.

Actually, I was royally stuck on it months ago, when I jumped ship and went back to fanfiction. So I’ve come back to it, full of determination … and I’m still stuck.

So I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why I’m stuck. And I think it has to do with how I’ve written these characters over and over and …. O V E R. These are the Spacetime characters, which I’ve been trying to get right for years.

I’m afraid I’m stuck on that treadmill of perfecting that first book by rewriting it over and over. I should just throw it out and write something else, but every so often I go back to these characters and try something new. First they were … something like urban fantasy. Then they were actually urban fantasy. Now they’re more superhero. I think superhero fits their personalities the best, but the story is giving me fits.

At one point, one of the characters becomes a werewolf. I’ve done this in different ways in each incarnation of the story. The first version was a really cool science fiction werewolf that had the guy actually having two bodies, and one of them was always swapped into hyperspace. I still think that was my favorite version. But the story also had this whole Fortnite plot of OMG teh giant storm! And it was … uh … lame.

See, this is cool. And stoppable. I never could come up with a good way to stop the storm in my old stories.

So then I had him be a more traditional werewolf, and that worked all right for urban fantasy. But for the superhero world, it doesn’t work as well. I actually don’t want him to be a werewolf this time, because his other powers are so cool. And really, once he turns, he steals the spotlight from the other hero. Maybe I should just give him his own book for that.

Anyway, as soon as I started messing with that plot angle, my story came grinding to a halt. I think my brain was trying to tell me that it wasn’t right for this particular story. This story, aside from being about superheroes, is also about Youtube politics. And I was getting away from the Youtube politics thing.

So I think I’m going to have to delete about 2k words of this story, go back to before this particular plot point, and let the story go a different direction.

My writer friends, at this point, are screaming at me to re-outline the story. I’m writing this story without an outline, just following the logic of the characters and their choices. I used to write with outlines. The stories they produced were shallow and too quick. I’ve gone back to writing by the seat of my pants, making it up as I go. But as long as the hero and villain have strong enough motivations, their clashes drive the story quite nicely. And if I have no clue what will happen next, neither will my readers. 😀

The January slump

Here it is, the middle of January. And I’ve hit the slump. And a lot of my friends have hit the slump.

January gets cold and dark from the snow and storms. I think the lack of daylight contributes to the slump, as well as the cold. You just want to stay bundled up and not move. Screw exercising and eating right. All you want are high-calorie foods to help keep your body warm.

Holidays seem to start in October, with the Halloween madness. Then we charge through Thanksgiving and onto Christmas, with all the shopping and parties. Then we hit New Years, with the resolutions and year-end analysis. And then … nothing. For weeks. Cue the slump.

It might also just be burnout from all the madness and bustle on top of our already busy lives. It’s just nice to kick back and do nothing. But after a while, the resting becomes slumping.

So how do you kick the slump?

People usually suggest exercise at this point. Get off your butt! Move your muscles! Get that circulation up! And those are good things. The brain is connected to the body and exercise fires it up.

For me, I embrace the slump and use it to absorb books and movies that I’ve missed. Kind of like storing up fat for the winter, only it’s stories. As a creative, you’ve got to fill your tank with the things that delight you. And when it’s cold and you don’t want to move, what better way to embrace it than with books or movies?

This is the time of year when my family used to binge-watch the BBC Jane Eyre, or the BBC series of Pride and Prejudice. (Or the BBC Hercule Poirot … yeah, we did the BBC in our house.) In later years, it became the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings.

This is the time of year when I read really huge, thick books. I’ve been thinking fondly of going back to Bleak House again. The book is massive, and also like watching an entire TV series in a book. But I also have a ton of books on my Kindle to catch up on. Marc Secchia has some satisfying thick dragon fantasy books that I’ve bought and not read.

So that’s how I cope with the slump. I embrace it! How about you?

Money – the ultimate success metric?

I was looking over my blog post Writing Books of the Heart. It springboarded off a blog post by Kris Rusch, who talked about writers burning out, writing in a genre they don’t really like, but can’t stop writing, because it pays the bills.

I had another thought percolating related to this one. I was lurking in a writers’ discussion where people were talking about why they write.

People have a lot of different reasons for writing. A lot of them want to change the world, or help/encourage people in some aspect of their lives. Some people talk big about “if I help ONE PERSON then this book will have been worth it!”

Then they turn around and talk about how they made four bucks in book sales last month. Everybody shrugs and laughs, embarrassed.

And I’m over here thinking, but what if those four bucks came from that ONE PERSON who really needed to read your book?

But no, the only metrics that matter, when you get down to brass tacks, is the money. The numbers of books moved doesn’t matter. It’s pretty well known by now that free book giveaways don’t do anything, because readers never read something they picked up for free. You can move a million units and nothing happens.

But when people buy a book, they’re more invested in reading it. Aha! Writers latch onto those sales as a measurement of worth. Somebody wanted my book bad enough to pay ACTUAL MONEY for it.

And let’s not even get into the rabbit hole that is reviews.

So, I’m curious, now. Which is it? Are we writing to help people, seeking validation that way? Or are we only validated by making gobs and gobs of money? Or are we only helping people when they’re paying us gobs of money?

What I learned in 2018

I went back and looked at my first post for 2018, back when the year still had that new, fresh smell. Ah, I was so optimistic.

My word for this year was Steadfast. And that was a good word, because it wound up describing everything I did, including getting unexpectedly pregnant and hanging on to life by the skin of my teeth.

I had mentioned wanting to publish a new Spacetime book, as well as the second dragon cozy. Welp. I published the cozy. But the Spacetime book got 30k in, and I had too much of the old books in my head. So I set it aside to get some distance.

I had planned to write a fairytale book. And I did wind up writing a short story with the idea I had, and it appears in this anthology. (A guy and a girl share a psychic link, which gets more interesting when she is cursed and turns into a dragon. The idea of the story was that psychic links would let you share too much information with the other person, so the story is called Too Much Information.)

I also revised and launched the first book in a series that is superhero fantasy. People with powers fighting each other and such. I have two other books in the hopper that only need revisions and editing, but I didn’t have the brain.

What did I wind up writing? Fanfiction for the game Destiny. The space opera setting just appealed, for some reason, so I wrote 17 fanfics in it. I really wanted to read official novels in the setting, but there aren’t any, so I had to write my own. It was kind of a self-therapy, working through being pregnant for the sixth time. I was so very sick with this baby, and when I stopped being sick, I was in massive pain. And I was so scared of labor. So all that got rolled up and dumped into the fanfics.

I now have a whole bunch of readers who like the slush I was cranking out, and I don’t know if I can write it anymore, since I had the baby. Sorry, readers!

I did come up with some really great characters who I’d love to transplant into other stories someday. And I found that I really dig writing space opera. Writing the physics of space ships and battles and space marines on other planets was totally fun.

But yeah, this year went nothing like I expected. I’ll write a goal list tomorrow, so I can laugh at them next December. 😀

Destiny fanart. Nell is sitting in a tree, chatting to her ghost Hadrian.

Writing books of the heart

Writing books of the heart













Someone, apparently.











Doubting Thomas and the entertainment factor

Last week, I was hanging out on Facebook, reading discussions in the various groups I hang out in. I happened across a fairly benign question: If your characters are Christians, how much do they express the tenets of their faith?

Since it was a Christian writer’s group, I didn’t bat an eye. Then I started reading the comments.

“My character struggles with doubt.”

“My character doesn’t really believe in her religion.”

“My character is angry at God after a tragedy.”

The entire comment thread was like that. A whole crowd of people writing about characters who don’t really believe their own religion.

I commented about a character I’ve been writing who has unswerving faith in his deity, but this brings about other problems in his social circles, because he goes and does things nobody else would dream of doing, and people think he’s crazy.

Then I asked why there were so many Doubting Thomas characters. I was writing the only character who had any faith at all. I was told that doubting characters are written by doubting authors.

Which is troubling.

Now, I know that doubting the unseen is a common thread in speculative fiction. Characters doubt whether anything spiritual is real, in urban fantasy and paranormal romance and all those. But Christian books seem especially prone to it. Every Stephen Lawhead character is like this, and pretty much all Ted Dekker characters … my reading pool of Christian books has shrunk over the years, so maybe the doubting character thing isn’t as widespread as it was.

Or, judging by that thread, maybe it’s alive and well.

Angel of Renewal, Magic the Gathering card art

Now, I can understand why you’d have a character struggling to believe some cosmic truth. No character really wants to be the Chosen One, destined to fulfill the prophecy or slay the vampire king or take down the dragon or whatever. It’s a stage in the Hero’s Journey, after all.

But when the main theme of the book is a character who doesn’t believe in their own religion? Come on. If you’re going to bother putting religion in your book, make it worthwhile. It’s got to be either a bad religion, with cultists summoning eldritch abominations, or a good religion that helps people in some way. And have the characters either believe or disbelieve it. The lukewarm dithering thing gets old.

I think what bugs me the most is that any other religion gets represented well in books. If a character is a Buddhist, I see them trying to live out the tenants of their religion by trying to be a good person, eschew material goods, etc. If a character is a Muslim, they observe the holidays, the food laws, the prayers, and so forth. So, why is it only the Christians who whine about “Is God really real? Why should I bother doing any of my religious stuff?”

I think it’s an alarming indication of how lukewarm we American Christians have become. I would love to read a book, even speculative fiction, where a Christian character actually has faith, lives by it, and goes through all the ups and downs of that. Kind of like Father Tim in the Mitford books, which is the only example I can think of. And he’s Episcopalian, which is closer to Catholic, so not even the Protestant branch so many of my writer friends are.

Faith in any religion requires life changes. And in fact, it increases the entertainment value if a character’s faith motivates them to get stuck in all kinds of interesting situations. At this point, in a book, I’d be happy with any kind of fantasy religion, as long as the author is true to the character’s choices about it. The Queen’s Thief series is like that–there’s a pantheon that interacts with the heroes, depending on their actions and beliefs. And those books are tremendously entertaining.

Does anybody remember Testament, by John Grisham? A super rich man dies and leaves his fortune to a niece or something who is down in the jungle in Brazil as a missionary. A troubled lawyer is dispatched on an epic jungle adventure and tell her she’s inherited a zillion dollars. Missionary doesn’t want it, back the lawyer goes to the States to settle the crazy relatives who are fighting over the will. Hugely entertaining. Wonderful presentation of a character who lives by faith in the jungles, and the impact of her faith on the lawyer.

So, I guess my point is, authors, dare to write about characters who FREAKING BELIEVE IN SOMETHING. It’s more entertaining than a wishy-washy character who doesn’t really believe anything and you know will have some kind of cringy “return to faith” scene at the 3/4ths mark.

How to use Song of Solomon to write hot romance

There’s lots of guides out there about how to write romance. One of my favorites is Jami Gold’s romance beat sheet, which single-handedly taught me how a romance works.

But there’s other ways to write a romance. When I was studying Song of Solomon one year, I realized that I could use a lot of this material as a pattern to really amp up my own writing.

First off, I’m using the Amplified translation, because it has all kinds of stage directions and explanations in it that make it even hotter. Let’s take a look:


The book opens with the girl proclaiming her love for the man in all kinds of metaphors. Never underestimate the power of metaphor in setting a mood. She compares him to wine and perfume. Ever notice how in romance novels, the girl always thinks the guy smells like vanilla and sandalwood? Same idea.
One key to a hot romance comes early on:
First off, the girl doesn’t consider herself beautiful. She’s a shepherdess and she’s got a super dark tan, her complexion isn’t great, etc. But she longs for her lover anyway, and asks her boss where he is. Her boss sends her back to work, lol. Notice the longing is starting to build.
Her lover reassures her that he finds her beautiful anyway:
He reassures her that he will adorn her until everyone sees her as beautiful and valuable as he does. Comparing her to a horse seems like a bit of a slam in our culture, but horses were the height of power and wealth at that time, so it’s meant as a high compliment.
2 But Solomon replied, Like the lily among thorns, so are you, my love, among the daughters.
Again she states her low status, and again he reassures her that he loves her anyway. They go on a hot date where he introduces her to his court.
And then they have to wait for the wedding.
[Vividly she pictured it] The voice of my beloved [shepherd]! Behold, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. [John 10:27.]
The lattice refers to all the barriers still standing between them. All good romances have these to heighten the tension.
The next thing all romances have is anticipation. She’s looking forward to spring, presumably because that’s when the wedding will happen.
The little foxes are the cares and worries that slowly pull a relationship apart. They spoil the vineyards of love. Again, this causes great conflict in a romantic story, but it can destroy a couple if it goes on too long.
16 [She said distinctly] My beloved is mine and I am his! He pastures his flocks among the lilies. [Matt. 10:32; Acts 4:12.]
More longing. Lots of longing. All the longing. This is the engine that drives any good romance. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing one with lots of bed scenes, or without any physical contact at all. It’s all about the longing, and the more you stretch it out, the more your readers will be panting for your characters to finally get together.
To sum up, here’s the points to remember:
  • Self-deprecation (I’m not worthy! What does the other person possibly see in me?)
  • Adoration of the other person (he’s so wonderful! She’s so wonderful!)
  • The lattices and little foxes that keep them apart.
Song of Solomon repeats this cycle in later chapters, with interesting additions of the girl looking for her lover at night, and being caught and beaten by the night watchmen for being out alone. (Harsh culture, no?) I think that’s to show what lengths she’ll go to reunite with her lover, even if it costs her dearly.
Anyway, if you need to add a little romance to a story, or if you’re writing a romance novel, these are a few points to keep in mind. A romance can be smoking hot without any physical contact whatsoever if you add plenty of longing.

Strong Women and Weak Men

Oh boy, here I go again! More of my strange views of men and women, particularly as regards to fiction.

What set me off this time was a book blog I was reading. The book premise sounded interesting, so I clicked on to see if the author could sell me. I was almost ready to pick up the book when the author started virtual signaling. She talked about how she changed up the myth she was using because “she only writes female characters”.

Nothing irritates me more than virtue signaling.

So I quit reading and tried to figure out why that had gotten under my skin the way it had. I’m writing multiple stories right now. The female characters in both of them are stronger than the men, mentally, sometimes physically, and as relates to their powers, definitely. I have nothing against strong women. As I mentioned in one of my other blogs, I don’t actually know any weak women.

But it’s writing them in a vacuum that bugs me. Guys are people, too. When I read, or write, or, heck, hang with friends, I want a mix. Men and women have different perspectives, and the interplay between them is so fascinating.

I looked at the books I like to read and write. And … aha … there’s a pattern.

Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. Sophie is a Strong Woman helping a Weak Man who is under just as bad a curse as she is. Howl has more magic than she does, sure, but he can’t save himself without help.


The Lake House, by Kate Morton. The main characters are all women–Alice the author, Sadie the cop, Eleanor the mother. All of them are mentored, helped, or in the case of Eleanor, desperately trying to help the men in their lives. The men are critically flawed in endearing and sometimes frightening ways, and these women shoulder impossible burdens to help them.

The Beaumont and Beasley series by Kyle Schultz. Although these books are told first person from the male perspective, Beasley is hampered by his sheer logic. Magic can’t exist, therefore, it doesn’t. Lady Cordelia comes along and wrecks that paradigm by accidentally turning him into a Beast. She’s better educated than him, knows magic, and has all kinds of magical connections. But they need each other, because she’s trying to break his curse, and he’s the detective who still reasons out motives and puts together clues. (Great series, too.)

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the argument about Strong Women isn’t stated very well. A Strong Woman is Strong, not when she can beat a man in a fistfight, but when she can reach out to a Weak Man and help him become strong.

Everybody needs help, men and women alike. In Proverbs, Solomon observes that an excellent wife will do her husband good, not evil, all the days of his life. He also points out that a wise woman builds her house, but a foolish woman tears it down with her hands.

In books, part of a character arc is that a character must start in a place that demands that they change in some way. Sophie acted like an old woman before she was cursed to become one. Alice believes she’s responsible for the disappearance of her baby brother. Beasley thinks he has reality all figured out. They all start in a place of weakness. But that’s part of the joy of fiction–that journey from weakness to strength, or acceptance, or whatever the goal of the story is.

When a male character is weak, often a Strong Woman can come along and help him out. This leads to the complex interplay between genders, that push and pull of attraction and affection. Conversely, a Weak Woman will need a Strong Man, but that’s taboo in our culture, for some reason–admitting that a woman might ever be weak for some reason.

(This works in reverse, too–the strong one can tear down the weak one, and the weak one can undermine the strong one. These are toxic relationships, and aren’t the point of this blog.)

As part of the ongoing cultural discussion about Strong Women, I thought this was an interesting new angle to explore. Strength is fine, but it means nothing unless it’s used wisely, to build up others. That same strength can destroy and shatter. As writers (and readers!) it’s something to be aware of.

10 things I learned at Realm Makers (and I didn’t even go)

Realm Makers is a little writing conference geared toward that weird demographic of Christians who actually read Harry Potter. They have lots of good classes and keynote speakers.

Funny thing is, I didn’t attend Realm Makers due to boring real life problems like cash and childcare. But in shmoozing social media, I did learn quite a few things.

1. Writing should be a joy. It’s play, it’s what you do for fun. If it’s not any of those things, find something else to do.

2. Editing is hard. So, if writing’s not a joy that awaits you at the other end of the editing tunnel, find something else to do.

3. Why are you writing? Figuring out the answer to this can carry you through the dark night of editing.

4. People at writing conventions say really weird things. For instance, discussing plans to bump off fictional people.

5. People read books to escape difficult times in their lives. I know that I read different genres because of needing that particular kind of comfort. Whether it’s a thriller where the heroes defeat the bad guys against all odds, or a cozy mystery where the sleuth has tea and cookies with the suspects. I get annoyed having to explain this to authors. You’d think it would be pretty obvious.

6. Perfectionism is fear in disguise. And oh, how I’ve seen perfectionism utterly destroy writers and their stories.

7. Figure out what you’re good at, then develop that. It’s your superpower. Don’t bog down in trying to prop up your weaknesses.

8. Marketing is interesting. When you write your book, you are writing for someone like you–age, gender, etc. Go out, find people like you and tell them your book exists.

9. Only you can make you fail. And you fail when you quit. Rewriting is not failure. Low sales are not failure.

10. “A sermon with elves is not fantasy.” This one made me laugh. I’ve read a few of those, and boy, they’re not fun at all. Instead, weave themes organically into the story.

I think that pretty much sums it up. I’m kind of glad I didn’t go, because my social media is now lamenting how real life just isn’t as much fun as the conference was. I imagine the people headed home from San Diego Comic Con are saying the same things. 😀

I’ve just been over here, prepping for school (next week!) and writing around the edges. And playing Destiny 2. Way too much Destiny 2.

The Last Great Ahamkara by TDSpiral

Failure: what drives the beta hero

Lately, I’ve found myself writing a lot about characters who are failures.

At this stage of my life, I’m now older than a whole lot of people. I have the leisure to look around at peoples’ lives, particularly the “failure” kinds. You know, the people who get on social media and weep that their book only sold four copies, so it’s a failure and they’re taking it down. And then they leave the group when people tell them to try harder.

Failure is such a nebulous thing. In school, you get a big fat F and have to repeat a class or rewrite a paper. That sucks. It’s like being slapped in the face. But all it means is that you didn’t meet a certain standard set by the teacher or the school. Kids don’t have this perspective. Failure is the END OF EVERYTHING OMG.

But once you become an adult, what is failure, really? When you go bankrupt? You’re still alive–you can start over. When your project doesn’t sell? When people say nasty things about you? What is the failure point? Those are all setbacks, not the END. The END is when you’re dead.

Success can feel like failure when it eats you alive and rockets you to an all new tax bracket. Talk to lottery winners about this.

So, in my pondering failures and what it means to fail, I sat down and wrote a superhero trilogy with a beta hero.

Beta males are fascinating to me, especially in a team dynamic. It’s the sidekick, the guy who is content to let somebody else lead. He usually has his own interests and ideas, but he keeps them to himself. He’s easy-going, and plays off the driven personality of the alpha male.

But what happens when the beta hero is forced to become the leader?

You guessed it: failure. Lots and lots of failure as he has to learn to make decisions. Sometimes he makes bad decisions because he’s not good at this leadership thing. This creates friction with his friends, and especially the previous alpha male, who can see the outcome of all these mistakes miles away and is gnashing his teeth at his friend’s perceived stupidity.

This is fun to play with in a superhero setting, because everyone on the team has some kind of power. They could all be leaders, and they all have ever-present stakes as they fight the resident supervillain. In a setting like this, forcing the beta male into an alpha role is even more devastating. He could get all his friends killed with one bad choice … and he carries this knowledge as a terrible burden.

So, I present to you Guardian’s Awakening, first book in the After Atlantis trilogy.


Tane is the beta in his team of superheroes–the muscle who lets his team do the thinking. He and his friends defend their small town on the Atlantean Isles from the experimental robots of a neighboring mad scientist, earning enough bounty to live on.

When Tane discovers a mysterious gem that threatens to take over his mind, he accidentally drags his friends into becoming the crew of the mysterious Mercury Island. In addition, the island accepts Tane as its Guardian, making him the leader of the group. This sparks a cascade of conflicts between himself and the previous leader, Sebastian, who doubts and questions Tane at every turn. To make matters worse, they discover that a girl lies in stasis deep within the island–and she is the most powerful super of all.

Now Tane is in deeper and deeper trouble as the girl’s powers awaken, attracting the attention of supervillains and monsters alike. But she is the key to making Mercury Island fly again.

Tane has only begun to grow into his Guardian role, but his enemies–and allies–may kill him first.

Available here on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

This book is a little heavier on the “Fantasy” end of superhero fantasy, but don’t worry. The next book will be heavier on the “superhero” end.