So, watching Supernatural has got me thinking about the world where Jacky lives.  Demons can walk amongst humans.  No need for possession.  Why?

Because demons crave one thing.

To experience free will.

That’s what they were cast out of heaven for, right?  Lucifer suggested that humans not be given free will, while Jesus suggested they should.  Big brotherly brawl, Daddy steps in the middle, and sends the big bad brother to his room.  Only in this case, the room was Hell, and 1/3 of the host of heaven went with him.  Because they believed in him.

Time changes a lot things.  Even for demons.  Humans evolved, demons got a chance to see what free will could do, could enable people to do.  Some demons excelled at twisting the thoughts and desires of humans.  These became the Corruption demons.  Others clung to the base elements of the world, because doing so gave them shape, and some kind of purpose other than messing with the stupid humans.  These are Elemental demons.

In present day, in Jacky’s world, demons have been given license to walk amongst humans.  To work amongst them, live amongst them.  Why?  So they can experience the illusion of free will.  They get to make their own choices, to an extent.  They get to pretend to have the lives they could have had had they stayed in heaven.  For a demon, it’s a priceless gift.  A gift many of them would do anything to have.

Which opens the door for a lot of nommy plot stuff.

Anywhoo, I brought this up because someone in my Writing Workshop last semester asked if I watched Supernatural and didn’t seem inclined to believe me when I said no.  Repeatedly.  Before yesterday, I’d heard of it, but hadn’t really seen it.  I’m not a huge T.V. person.  Only reason I’m watching it is because a trusted friend suggested it and lent me the CDs for season one.

I can see why she asked me if I’d seen it before.  Zach’s eyes are solid black.  Humans possessed by demons, in Supernatural, can have solid black eyes.  Caleb’s eyes are yellow.  (I was thinking more a bright, almost canary yellow) and the heap big demon has yellow (like fiery yellow/orange/glowing) eyes.

I’d like to take a moment to point out some other variation in MY demons’ eyes:

Hazel, gray, red, horizontal pupil (like a goat’s), blue, pukey olive green, putrid brown, and pus yellow.

My demons, considering they are able to manifest human forms on the mortal plane, are extremely varied.  So, now I can say “yes, I’ve seen Supernatural.  My demons wouldn’t ever be so crass as to possess someone to get what they want.  It’s so much more fun for them to manipulate the humans into doing the dirty work for them.  And the black eyes?  That’s just Zach.  Who could possess the fire in your fireplace, but he doesn’t do humans.”

This last semester, I took a writing workshop class to cover a course requirement for my major, and because I want to.  It’s been a great class, really helpful, filled with good (and not so good) writers.  For our “final,” we’re doing a public reading.

Because the class is larger than usual, we’ve been limited to two minutes.  About the time it takes to read one, single-spaced page.  I’ve spent weeks trying to figure out what I wanted to read, but last night I made my decision.  Might not be the best passage to read, but it’s amusing, and short, and that’s all that really matters for this.

I’m a little nervous. I’ve been reading stuff to classmates all semester.  But only to small groups.  The one time I had to read to the whole class, the teacher wound up taking pity on me after the first paragraph and read the rest of what she wanted to hear.  Why?  Oh, it wasn’t because I’m incapable of doing public speaking.  It’s that I was expecting to be able to stay seated at my table and read from there, but instead she stuck me in the middle of the room.  The sudden change threw me off.

I’ve performed before, many times.  I’ve performed solos, many times.  But I’ve never done a public reading before.  It’ll be interesting.

Assuming the whole thing isn’t ruined by an untimely bout of sneezing, or my faucet nose suddenly turns on.

I’ve reached that point in the novel that happens every time I reach the middle, nearing the end.  What now?  What happens next?  I should make a list of plot points that need clearing up, but I’m not sure that would help much.  Because there are things I want to carry over into later books, and things that I’m not sure should happen in this one, and I just don’t know.

That’s the biggest problem, really.  If I knew exactly where the end of this book was, I could work my way to it, but I don’t.  Right now, I feel like there’s not enough action, too much character development, and I haven’t worked the conflicts enough.

This is a first draft.  This is a first draft, kind of, and the important thing is to just get it done.  Right?  Right.

Now I just need to convince myself of it.  If I can just reach the end of this book, get everything, good and shitty alike, written out, then I can go back and scrap section, rewrite section, clean things up.  Get a better feel for the flow, and stuff.  Getting a solid feel for it is impossible right now, because it’s not finished.

Okay.  That being said, I’m going to go finish this chapter, come Hell or high water.

The beginning of this sad tale starts at the end of spring semester 2009, at a little college in the middle of nowhere.  Some fifteen students had gotten together for an entire semester of writing, discussing, and critiquing.  The teacher had told them, at the beginning of the semester, that they’d be doing a class book.  Something they can put up on Lulu.com to have friends and family buy online.  It seemed a great idea.  A wonderful idea.

The writers worked hard (though apparently some of them didn’t work hard enough), and last day of class came around.  All their writing was compiled into one word doc. with promises of a finished book to come soon.  Soon, he promised.  I’ll e-mail you when you can purchase it on Lulu.com.

The year ended and the students fled to different corners of the country.  Summer started, was well on its way, and still no e-mail.  No book.

So I e-mailed him, asked him. When are we going to see this book?

There were complications.  It wasn’t as easy as he thought it was going to be.  But he’d have it finished soon.

Summer ended, and school started anew.  A different school for me, closer to home, a bigger school.  A four year university rather than a two year college.  Harder classes, more homework, busy, busy, busy.  The thought of that nearly forgotten book rose out of the depths of insanity, but I never e-mailed him again.  No time.  I think I’d given up any hope of seeing a completed novel.

Then lo-and-behold, an e-mail!  But not the one I’d been expecting.

Dear Jennifer,

I am so sorry… but I am unable to launch the creative writing book from our class at Lulu.com.

I’m simply too overwhelmed with other obligations.  I am forwarding to you the cover that was created for the book.

The text files remain in your area of the google documents.

I am handing this off to you because I know you are earnest about this project and you have a really good ear for language, and because I know the time spent editing these stories will help develop you as a writer.  It is very easy to set up your own account at Lulu to launch this.  You have contact information for all the students in the class via the documents area.  You might write them for permission to continue editing their work — I will confess privately to you that the more I looked at the stories and encountered the number of mechanical errors and grammar errors that remained, the project just felt too daunting for me.  While the workshopping aspect of that semester was very fun, some students really needed to commit more time to simple proofreading and editing.

Please carry on with this.  Contact others in the class to see if they too might help — or at least finish working on their own stories by editing them further.

You have been the only student who sent me curious messages about this and that is yet another reason why you are nominated.  It’s really the class’s project, not mine, and so I hand it back with respect and encouragement.

I hope all is going well with you this semester and I look forward to buying a copy of this once you get it up there!  I promise, I will be your first sale.

Thanks,
Proffesor

Oh, how could he?  He thought it too daunting?  He’s a teacher.  I’m a student!  I have grades to worry about, a book to write, agents to query, finals to pass.  How could he dump this on me now, at the END of the semester?  Why not at the beginning of the summer?  Why not sooner?  Why now?

I do not know, but I do know that it has killed my respect for him.  He was a good teacher, but anyone that can’t hold up a promise… well, if you aren’t sure you’ll be able to do it, then you shouldn’t make the promise in the first place.

What did I do?  I told him I’d see what I could do.  That I’d try to get it finished.  That I made no promises about when I’d be able to get it finished.  Because I have a life.  I have other things I want to be doing.

I should have said now.  My mother told me I should have said no, but that was after my e-mail was sent.  Unlike that prof, I will see what I can do.  Send out e-mails to those forgotten classmates.  See who’s still interested in a book, and who doesn’t care.  See who will help, and who won’t even respond.

Sigh. This is not what I needed today.

The answer to this is sort of.  My family is varying degrees of moron.  I was raised as a mormon.  I’m not anymore, though.

Kind of random, jumping in with a discussion of my religion, so this is the catalyst for it.

My cousin, upon finding out I was working on getting a novel ready for publication, asked to read it.  I told him he could read the finalized version, since I was in the middle of revising/rewriting, and there were changes to the begging/middle of the book that would effect the end, and I hadn’t gotten around to writing the end bit.  By the time I finally finished it, I’d completely forgotten about sending it to him, but he remembered.  He even called my dad (cause he doesn’t have my cell number) and had him ask me about it.  So, with great misgiving, I sent my MS to a cousin I wasn’t sure about how mormon he was.

He wrote this: If this gets published and becomes successful, people everywhere will notice that you are from northern Utah. You will be getting the, “are you Mormon?” question a lot. I think that finding the right balance between your answer to that question and your freedom of expression is very important. If you say yes, you will be verbally bludgeoned by Mormons and nonmormons alike for the language and sexual values portrayed in the story. In addition, I think you will have a hard time being accepted as a serious writer if you ever write anything in the future that does portray LDS values. This could be very limiting. On the other hand, it you do not claim to be LDS, the language and morals portrayed in the book will be merely mainstream America. It doesn’t really matter what an author believes; the world will always perceive his or her values to be the ones in print.

Which is a very good point.  Thing is, I’m not mormon.  I left the church five years ago, and run around as a declared Pagan of no particular belief system.  I’ll believe what I want to believe, and worship how I feel is right.  The problem is, a large chunk of my family (especially on my dad’s side) is very, very mormon.  Dare I say some of them are Nazi Mormons?

Of course, knowing this has made me hesitant to share Jacky with them.  Because there is foul language, and a dollop of sex.  Nothing too explicit, but it’s there.  There’s no tap dancing around the fact that Jacky has sex with someone.  This cousin that I shared it with has been very kind and opened minded about the language and sex.  The rest of my right wing mormon family…  Well, them I’m not so sure about.

Here’s the big question: How do you tell your family you’re not a part of the religion you grow up in, that they firmly believe you are a part of?

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just a chicken, but I haven’t found a good way to do it yet.

After over a year of ripping my hair out, getting opinions, and revising/rewriting ’til my eyes bled, DEALING WITH DEMONS is done.  It’s ready to query.  It is, but I’m not.  Why?

Because of the huge ass list of things I have to do which include: writing the synopsis, writing a botany paper, doing french homework, reading/writing for my writing class, revise/rewrite query letter, personal said query letter to meet the requirements of desired agents, get my head on straight and prepare to deal with rejection letters.

And it’s NaNoWriMo month, and I’m trying to get 50,000 words written.  Not on a new project, like I should, but on rewriting ANGELIC DEMON, the second book in the Jacky series.  So far?  It’s moving too fast, and too slow.  Hitting all the key points that need to stay from the original MS, but I’m not sure it’s flowing as well.  Meh.  At least the writing’s better.  That’s a plus.

I’ve not blogged for a while, and then all of sudden this.  Does it mean I’ll return to a regularly scheduled blog?  Probably not.  I can try, try, to write one a week.  But frankly, if I’m feeling inspired to write, all that effort is going to be turned toward Jacky.

Anyway, I am on twitter, as the twitter feed to the right would indicate.  I tend to twitter more when I’m writing than when I’m not, which means I’ve been very active this last month.

School is an eater of souls, and so is World of Warcraft.  Lucky me, I still manage to find time to do what I love most, and that is write.  I’m getting close to taking the next big step on getting published, and to be honest, the thought is enough to make me feel ill.  But a good kind of ill.  And anxious, excited ill.

Here’s to querying, and happy writing.

No matter how I look at this chapter, or what I try to do with it, it comes back to this.  How would demons fight?  Why would one demon use a woman as bait to lure the other? (Though I already have the answer to that.  The woman happens to be this demon’s offspring.)

The first answer that springs to mind, is they don’t.  Demons, in general, prefer sneaky, conniving, backstabbing, and anything else that won’t dirty their hands.  They’re not beyond hiring human assassins to do their dirty work.  Or demon assassins.  Occasionally, they’ll even stoop to talking one of the fallen or lost into doing the dirty deed for them.

But they rarely come together head on.

Which is what I was trying to do.

Which is also why it’s probably not working so good.

Okay, so I’ve figured out what the problem is.  That’s all well and good.  Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.  There’s not enough word count left to completely redo the end of the book.  I don’t want Denzel to come charging in to the rescue, because that would be a set up for the heroine in trouble falling for the first man that comes to save her.  (Though the falling for is a long, highly amusing process.)  If Milandu sends someone in his place, I don’t know what would happen to Jacky.

I could do this without the major fight.  Maybe still a little fight, but Perssius needs to be banished again so that he can be an interesting character in later books.  I need Jacky to summon the sword.  I need her to get her throat torn up a bit, so that (strangely enough) Denzel can come and save her.  Oh, and we can’t forget Bane.  Not sure what part he’d play in this, but he needs to play a part.

I just don’t know how to make this all work together to create a chapter that hits the climax of the book, explains things without being an info dump, and still be exciting.

So, I’ve made progress, at least.  I know what the problem is.  I have a general idea of what needs to happen to fix it.  I’m just not sure how to do it.  Maybe a bit more time (and some more blogging) will help me arrive at a conclusion that will solve all my problems.

If time is what this book needs to be great, than time I can give it.

I think I’ve finally figured out what part of the problem is.  This chapter is “final battle,” where Milandu and Perssius come together and bash heads.  The problem is, they’re demons.  I was trying to write this as most other epic fight scenes are between the antagonist and the…slightly protagonist.  Those are the battles between good and evil, but this isn’t one of those fights.

Because Perssius isn’t your typical villain.

Why?

Well, it’s true that one of the things he’s seeking is revenge.  He has good reasons, though.  (Reasons I’m not sure how to explain without one of those stupid villain monologues that I hate and don’t want to write.)  But would a devious water demon seek revenge in an all-out brawl with a fire demon?  Even backed by his sin?

I think not.

The end of this book needs a complete re-think.  Because really, the best way to get revenge on Milandu is to go after Jacky.  Which has already happened, to an extent.  I just need to decide if I can still have all the things I need to have happen actually happen if I change the fight scene around a bit.

I think I can.  I just need some time to iron out the details and make sure everything it going to fall into nice clean lines.

Unfortunately, I don’t have that time right now.  Class is going to start soon.

Once again I’ve come to a fight scene, the final “epic” battle, and I’m having issues.  Don’t even know where to begin looking for solutions, either.  Usually when I come to blog about my issues, I have some idea of where to start.  Right now?

I’m blind as a fucking moth at a lights festival.

Part of the problem is I’m feeling rushed.  School starts on my Monday (the 24), and I wanted to have DEALIGN WITH DEMONS completely revised before I got sucked into classes, school work, and the possibility of regaining a social life.  It’s not the time pressure getting me, though.  I work better under pressure, usually.

Again, I’m left wondering what on earth is wrong.

I’ve tried all my usual tricks.  None of them have helped clear the block.  I may try resorting to packing up the laptop and going someplace else to work, see if new surroundings will help at all.  Maybe I’ll try finding a nice place where I can sit and work on campus, since I’ll be spending oodles of time there in the coming months.

The most frustrating bit is not knowing why I’m having issues.  I want to pick apart my thoughts and feelings to get to the bottom of the problem and get over it.  Everything seems to be such a tangle, however, that I can’t find an end so I can begin to unravel the mass.

I was hoping blogging would help, as it so often does.  Since it hasn’t.  Well… maybe it’s time to write a short story.  Something, anything, to get my mind off Jacky for a bit.   Though I really hate that idea.  Hate it a lot.

Ugh.  Just, ugh.

As some of you probably noticed, I posted a short story today. Not even a story, really. Just a scene that has everything and nothing to do with the Jacqueline Kendricks series I’ve been pouring myself into for years. What I didn’t say in the comments was that was the third attempt to get something from Lusivar’s point of view written. (FYI, you don’t meet Lusivar until HIGH COURTS OF HELL.)

The other two I never even got close to finishing. But they contained some very valuable little tidbits that could have a very large part to play in later Jacky books.

It was fun going over them.

It’s always fun going over old content. Whether it’s completed stories, or just bits and pieces that are written as they occur to me. Some of the writing makes me wince because it’s so horrible, others make me blink and think “holy shit. I wrote that? Really?”

Mostly, though, it makes me glad I’m a writer.

So, don’t throw anything away. Ever. You’ll always come to regret it. Because going back and reading over stuff, you get to see how far you’ve come. How much you’ve improved. It’s good to see that every once in a while. It lets you see where you’ve come from, and gives you hope for where you’re going.