A smug and ill placed sense of self satisfaction...

Since moving to America, I've not really worked.  This wasn't really through choice at first - it took me a long time to get a green card, but since I got that late last year I've applied to a lot of companies and gotten nowhere.  I seem to be stuck in a middle ground, either over qualified to do entry level jobs or under qualified to do the stuff I know I can do.  So life has been rather frustrating and demoralizing of late.  I know eventually I'll land something but I'm having to try different things to make money.

One of those things is photography.  I'm just starting out as a professional photographer.  Photography is something I've done for a number of years, but I've really fallen by the wayside with it since moving to America.  My camera sat dormant for a long time, until I got the opportunity to get into wedding photography.  Last weekend, I shot my first wedding as a second photographer, assisting the guy who shot my wedding.

He's very good.

I'm not.

I'm really not, and that's just not false modesty.  I found it incredibly difficult.  I shot a lot of photos and most of them were crap, both from a technical and compositional point of view.  I was really disappointed, but I also learnt a lot from being so bad, about what to do and what not to do, if that makes sense.  I know that if I get another go, which I should, that I will be much much better next time around.  Most of the stuff I got that I was pleased with were the detail or incidental shots, but then as a second shooter I suppose that's what I was there for.  I reckon I got about a 30-35% hit rate, which is okay but I want to get 45%.

Most of the stuff I've shot previously has been still life or outdoors.  This was indoors in low light and I really struggled to catch things, especially when everything is happening so spontaneously.  I got better as the event went on, and it's kind of telling that my best shots all clumped around the end of the day.

In addition to this, I also drew my first money this week from selling microstock photos, which are just photos you sell the rights for online.  Seventy dollars from shooting still life shots.  I need to get into that more and sell some more of those.

As well as this, I've done a lot of writing.  In fact, right before I started writing this I reached 70,001 words to finish the first complete draft of my third novel.  There's a long way to take it before it's really completed, but I'm pretty pleased with it thus far.

Now for the tricky part.  In the next few weeks I'm going to put together some packages, consisting of a cover letter, a synopsis and three chapters of each of the stories I've written.  I'm then going to submit these to agents, publishers and maybe magazines to see if I can do something with my writing.

I really don't know how this will turn out.  It's pretty nerve-wracking even thinking about it.  Most likely, I will fall flat on my face and get nowhere, but I've reached the point where I don't want to see the chance of actually doing something worthwhile with my life slip by because I didn't have enough self belief.  If I'm able to move to America and marry a gorgeous blonde, how hard can it be to get a book published?

That's what I want to find out this year.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanksgiving and all that

This is Thanksgiving season in America.  I say season because Americans really like to string their holidays out.  Thanksgiving seems to kick off right off the back of Halloween, even though it's not until November 26th.  Halloween starts sometime in mid-September.  Christmas is going to be interesting.

I had my first experience of a family Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, which was very nice.  It's always good when a family gets together for a positive reason.  In my experience, my family only ever got together because somebody had managed to die.  Still, with my family being mostly Irish, this means that family gatherings have marginally cheaper bar bills than they otherwise would have done.

It wasn't the gathering that put me in a bad mood yesterday, it was the preceding events.  You see, everyone had been asked to bring a dish and be there for 5pm.  Sounds reasonable.  So we decided we would make green bean casserole, which is to all intents and purposes a load of green beans shoved into some cream of mushroom soup.  Not the most challenging of dishes to prepare.

As usual, I was left with the task of cooking, which I happily did (I don't mind cooking).  I did however miss out one semi-important step in the cooking process - I was supposed to cook the beans first, but instead I threw them into the mix in their frozen state.  This brought about howls of derision from wifey, along with the instruction that we had to leave early.  Okay, so I can cope with a bit of a cooking mishap and salvage most things, but as I am sadly lacking in psychic powers there was no way I was to know we were supposed to be there early when nobody on the face of the planet had mentioned this to me.  The combination of wife's wails of doom and her inopportune deadline rescheduling irritated me greatly to the point where I suggested that she go ahead, alone, while I tried to rescue the food.  She took me up on my offer following a brief exchange that included lines such as "Why don't you go back to England?" (I paraphrase but you get the gist of how loving the exchange was).  So there I found myself, wifeyless and trying to sort out the dinner and in a bad mood.

I discovered that all I had to do was to cook the food a bit longer and it would be fine.  So, no big deal and I could still be there for 5pm as originally planned.  This was okay, until I realized that I would be taking the casserole dish straight from the oven and had no way to carry it.  A few texts to wifey later and I had a solution that involved balancing said casserole dish on my car seat on some pot holders.

You can see where this is going.

At 4.50 I set off with the steaming hot casserole dish sat next to me in the car, full of perfect green bean casserole that I felt rightly proud of.  It was a dish suitable for a grand entrance to my first Thanksgiving dinner.

Now to get to the main road, I need to drive along a bumpy, uneven gravel track.  You'd think if the casserole was going to make a bid for freedom, it would have done it there and then, but it hung bravely on until I reached the main road and made a left turn.  Not a fast left turn, just a regular one, but that was enough to overbalance the casserole and send it on a magical journey over my car seat and onto the floor, like a tidal wave of fresh donkey vomit.  The casserole had survived all of a minute in my car.

You know those moments in life where everything just stops and you sit there and think 'This is not happening to me'?  Well, this was definitely one of those moments.  I pulled over and just stared at the steamy, drooling puddle that was dripping onto the floor while the casserole dish leant drunkenly to one side, lined with the remnants of the casserole.

I couldn't think of anything to say to make myself feel better, so I just said what I was thinking, which was: "For fuck's sake." Then I turned the car around and drove back.

I spent the next forty minutes cleaning out my car and washing away bits of bean and onion, held together with lumps of cream of mushroom soup from my car and then pot holders.  I was in a foul mood and texted wifey to say I'd had an accident and wouldn't be making it.  This resulted in a barrage of calls and texts from my family demanding I turn up, which I eventually did, carrying the remains of the casserole in a tupperware dish.  I'm sure half of them thought I was making up excuses to not go.  Well, for those half, try crawling around on your hands and knees scraping up warm casserole off your car and then tell me you're in the mood to go party.  And no, I didn't scrape the remains back up off the floor, tempting as though that was.

When I arrived, my uncle (he is technically my uncle, even though we are the same age) opened the door and said the magical words "Do you want a beer?"  It's amazing what cold, cheap beer can do to you.  That and the company of a good family.

I have another family dinner on Thursday.  This time I hope there is no carnage or car decoration because I don't think I could handle that again.  I can however cope with more beer.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Pipe dreams

When I moved to America, I had to buy a car.  In England, I drove a Citroen C1, which I named Benji.  I bought Benji for a couple of reasons.  He was cheap - to buy, run and insure - and also the C1 was the least depreciating car in the UK market at the time.

I owned Benji for three years, and in that time I put about 13,000 miles on him.  That's nothing.  When I took him for his first MOT on his third birthday, the mechanic turned the ignition on to read the mileage, burst out laughing and said 'I don't think you're going to have any problems, mate.'

Benji went to live with my brother when I moved here.  That car was like new - it even had new tires fitted to it, so he really did get a great little car that replaced his dying Nissan Micra.

So I had to replace Benji.  There's no real equivalent to Benji in America.  They have Smart cars here, but they are a novelty and given how Americans drive, I wouldn't put my life in one of those things.  HGVs and trucks are not restricted here.  I got overtaken by a cement mixer doing eighty miles an hour once.  Imagine that hitting a Smart car.  Splat.  So no, that wasn't an option.

I did a bit of hunting around for a second hand car.  It had to be second hand because I didn't have the budget for a new car and I didn't have a driving license, ID or credit, so no dealership would come near me.  Using Craigslist, I started looking around at local cars.  Craigslist is useful in that it puts you in contact with a lot of sellers, but it's also full of some supreme bullshitters.  I went to look at an old Mercedes E class that was described as being in 'immaculate condition'.  It wasn't, it was a piece of shit and it had clearly been hit in the side at some point, despite the owner denying it had ever been in an accident.  I walked away from that one.

I looked around at a few Ford Focuses, because they're exactly the same as in England and I've driven them and I liked them.  The only ones I found though were really tatty and didn't appeal to me at all.

Then my future father in law suggested 'a fun car' (his words).  He had been helping out a colleague at word with their MX-5 and had test driven it and told me it was a lot of fun.  We looked around and found one that looked really good, so we went to look at it.

I should point out here that in all my car hunting, not once did I talk to an American.   All the people selling cars were foreign.  The guy I bought my car off in the end was Russian.  I don't know if that was all just coincidental or what but it did strike me as strange.

The MX-5, or Miata as Americans call them, was in great condition.  It was twelve years old and had 111,000 miles on the clock, but we test drove it and it seemed fine.  All the electrical systems worked and it drove okay.  So after a little haggling, I bought it for $5,150, and owned an American car.

Since I've owned it, I've sort of fallen in love with it.  I've never driven anything that handles or feels like it.  It feels alive.  That said, it's given me some headaches.  The driver's side electric window broke, which I replaced after a lot of hard work.  The gear change wasn't great, but I read up and took the shifter out and cleaned and replaced parts and it seems to be doing better.  I'd never done anything to a car before this one.  Now I can change oil, spark plugs, filters, rotate tires, and do minor repairs to a gearbox.  That's nothing but for me it's an achievement.  It's also given me a bug.  You see, for all the fun of the Miata, it's underpowered.  It could go faster and be more exciting, it really could.  And having done a lot of reading, it seems that for a not impossible budget, you can modify these cars endlessly to turn them into supercharged racers.  I would kind of like to do that.

What I'd like to do is get another, sensible car, like a Ford or a Kia or something to commute in and turn the Miata into a project car.  Then I would add a roll bar, race seats, new wheels and tires, new suspension, a new clutch, radiator and flywheel and then a supercharger.  I reckon I could do all that for around $10,000 dollars.  Yes that's a lot, but $15,000 dollars for a truly exciting sports car sounds like a decent deal to me.

I'd also lighten it, taking out as much excess weight as possible, and adding carbon fibre panels if I could.  All this would be with the aim of making it even more thrilling to drive.  But in spite of all that, I'd do it carefully, so that any modifications could be easily removed and returned to the original settings.  I wouldn't want to completely bastardize an already beautifully handling car.

Now this may all remain a pipe dream, since it will cost time and money and buying a new house, which I'm in the process of doing, tends to eat into those things.  But having now discovered that I can work on, fix and improve a car with my own hands, it's given me a bug.  I don't know if I'm going to be able to shake it off.

Oh, and my Miata doesn't have a name yet.  I kind of think it's a girl rather than a boy, but I can't think of a decent name for her.  Maybe I will find some inspiration soon.

Pride

There is a man, and he is trapped.

He is a prisoner of his own making.  Nobody forces him to stay.  He could leave at any time, but if he did, everyone would know and then he would feel shame.  It is pride that makes him a prisoner, and pride that stops him from walking away.

Pride is dangerous.  Pride can consume and devour without a shred or warning or a hint of remorse.  Pride lets slip words that fall from a silver tongue so easily and yet hold the weight of air.

Resentment follows, and it is a dangerous companion, for with resentment comes The Fire and The Fire can be no more, for The Fire is somewhere he can never be.  The Fire is banished, no matter how hard he strives to find it or how desperately he feels the cold of its absence.

It is pride that lost him The Fire.  It is pride that made him a prisoner.  It is pride that will stalk him to the end of his days, and follow him beyond.

Here we go again

If you've read any of this blog, then you will have noticed that it comprises of two things: excerpts from the fiction I write, and me complaining about how hard it is to write fiction.  Depending on your point of view, you may or may not be pleased to know this post is another piece of fiction.  Then again, you might never have read any of my other posts and may now be thinking "What on earth is this person gibbering on about?".

What I really should start doing is varying this blog a bit - start complaining about American drivers, fat people and other things that aggravate me.  But I don't want to come across as some cut price Jeremy Clarkson, so I will avoid doing that and stick to the fiction.

So onwards to the point of this post: right back at the start of writing this blog, I mentioned a story I'd started back in 2006 called Infinite Diamond.  A few weeks ago, I was heavily into finishing two other stories, Satisfaction and GhostWalker, both of which I've now finished and posted the first few chapters of on here (if you go looking, beware that Satisfaction is VERY rude).  I wanted to take a break from writing, but then I opened up Infinite Diamond and started reading...  It's really not that bad.  It's rough, it's literally in it's first draft but still, it's got potential.  It's also about 60% complete.  It would be a crime to leave it incomplete, surely?  I might as well get a first draft complete.  That way, if something happens to me, a least the concept would be captured, if not the final words.

So I'm going to have a stab at completing the first draft.  Not reviewing what I've done previously, but finishing an imperfect story.  Saying that, I did review the prologue last night and that's what I'm posting here.  It's only 1,200 words so I thought 'What the hell?'.

I've found I'm better writing fast paced, short books, running in at about 80,000 words.  That's the target for this one too.  It's still some way off completion but with the way I've been writing in the last few months, I reckon I could have a draft complete in a month.  If I do, that means I would have 3 complete 80,000 word stories, all of which are completely different in nature and style.  I think that's something to feel reasonably happy about.

Anyway... Here's the prologue to Infinite Diamond...

The man ran as fast as his weary legs could carry him, his breath as ragged as his peasant clothes.  The dark, muddy track that he followed was heavily rutted by cartwheels, and he slipped and stumbled as he ran, but it did not slow his escape.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the recently passed storm had left the earth beneath his feet treacherously wet.  Branches tore at the man’s rough clothes as he stumbled to his left and rolled along the hedgerow, before resuming his desperate course.
A gibbous moon emerged slowly from behind low, scudding clouds, reflecting in the long deep puddles that lay ahead of him.  The pale light shone on his face, giving his skin a pallid glow that echoed his fearful expression.  This was a man running for his life.
He did not let up his pace, even as each breath he took became shorter and more painful; his exhalation hung for a moment in the cold night air as though he were steam train driving on in desperation.  He was young and fit, but he was pushing himself beyond endurance to escape the fear that pursued him, and with every step his stamina was beginning to desert him.
He jinked around a large puddle ahead of him, seeking firmer ground so as not to be slowed.  The thunder rolling across the horizon to his left continued to sound its death knell, and as it faded another sound took its place.  He pulled up quickly, stopping for a moment.  He bent down, hands on his knees trying to breathe quietly, straining to listen beyond the rush of blood in his ears and the laughter of Mother Nature.
There it was – the unmistakeable bass sound of hoofbeats.  Somewhere behind him, not too far away, a horse was galloping towards him.  He gave a short yelp and resumed his desperate course, but it was all too obvious that he was going to be caught by his pursuer.
The horseman was hunting with intent, driven by an anger that tore at him from within.  He wore a knight’s tunic, all black save for a white lion on the right breast.  He wore no helmet, but had on the gauntlets and boots from a suit of armour, and a heavy coat of chain mail glinted beneath his tunic.  His mount was a black stallion and wore no armour; it was a animal being ridden for the speed of pursuit and it snorted fiercely as the rider drove the beast forward towards his ever closing quarry.
The fleeing man was exhausted, his race run, but still he did not stop; driven on by fear and fast fading hope, he began to run again. The sound of the horseman closing on brought panic rising in his throat, and he could not stop himself from glancing over his left shoulder to glimpse a sight of his nemesis.  It proved to be a fateful mistake.
His boot landed on a smooth, wet rock sitting in the middle of the track.  It was slippery with mud and his foot turned as he landed on it.  He yelled out in agony as his ankle turned over, sending him stumbling forward.  He fell into the mud, splashing into dirty dark water.  In moments he was pushing himself to his feet again, but the fall had allowed the rider to close to within killing distance.
The horseman was no more than thirty yards from the fallen man and without slowing he released the reins, reached behind his back with his right hand and drew an arrow from the quiver strapped across his back.  He never took his eyes from his quarry as drew a heavy bow from his left side, notched the arrow, raised the bow, drew it back to its full weight and let the arrow slip.  It flew true and landed square between the shoulder blades of the running man, who cried out and fell forward, splashing down into ground.  This time he did not rise, but lay prostrate, his head turned to one side, his breath laced with cries of pain.
The rider whipped by the stricken runner, and wheeled his horse around before dismounting in one swift movement.  He sheathed the bow, and drew a long sword from a scabbard hanging on the horse’s saddle.  He strode up to the fallen man, his face filled with hatred.
“Get up,” he ordered, standing over the prone body.  The man on the ground didn’t move; only his shallow groans suggested there was still life in him.
“Maybe you need some encouragement,” snarled the knight.  He grabbed the shaft of the arrow rising from the man’s back and tugged on it.  The man screamed in pain, agonisingly lifting himself with his elbows to try and ease the pain.  The knight quickly slipped his foot under the fallen man’s body and kicked him onto his back. The arrow shaft snapped as he rolled over and he screamed again as he fell back into the mud.  Their eyes met, one gaze full of hate, the other swimming with fear.
“Why?” the swordsman demanded, putting the tip of his sword to the fallen man’s throat.
“You know why,” the man on the ground answered, his teeth clenched with pain.
“Your betrayal will cost you your life, you fool,” the knight said.  He drew the sword up, wrapping both hands around the hilt, ready to plunge it down.  “Make your peace with God,”  he hissed, “for you are about to face Him.”
He drew his gaze from the fallen man’ face to his chest, to where he was about to drive his sword but as he did, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.  He suddenly lunged down, grabbing at the fallen man’s left hand.  He prised back his cold dirty fingers to reveal a small, dark disc of metal.  The knight took it and stood up, examining it.  It was warm to the touch, and in the centre was a recessed button.  His eyes flicked back to the fallen man, who now had a defiant look on his face.
“They are coming for you, Luyten,” the man on the ground said.
“You will not live to see them,” Aaron Luyten spat back.  He raised the sword and thrust it down with one hand, stabbing the fallen man through the chest.  He let out a loud moan, and grabbed at the blade, clutching it.  Luyten twisted it, feeling it crunch against his victim’s breastbone, and he saw blood from the man’s hands run down the blade as the keen edge of the sword sliced his hands open.  Then, with a last gurgling breath, the hands went slack, and life slipped from the fallen man.  Luyten waited a few more seconds, his weight resting on the hilt of the sword before he drew it back from the lifeless body.  He looked down to his hand and thumbed the button in the centre of the disc.  It popped back up flush with the surface of the disc, and he then slipped it into his tunic.  He turned, leaving the body in the middle of the track, and walked back to his horse.  He glanced up at the distant storm as a sheet of lightning illuminated the horizon.  He knew the dead man, Second Lieutenant Chase Crawford, was right.  They were coming, there was no doubt of that.  But thanks to the murder he had just committed, he would be ready for them.

The last thing I'm going to write about rewrites - for now...

Well, I have finally completed rewriting my story Ghostwalker.  I began doing it in November 2010, and due to some events along the way (moving to America, getting married, that sort of thing) I took my time going through the story.  As it is now, it's hovering somewhere around the 78,000 word mark, which qualifies it as a short novel.  And yes, I'd like to try and get it published.

Looking back over the various iterations of this story, I noted a couple of things.  The details of the story have changed, developed and evolved so far that the rewrite I did turned out to be just that - I would estimate that there's no more than fifteen per cent of the story that remains as it was in the previous version.  Saying that, it's hard to place exactly which version is which.  At no point in the past did I have a fully completed manuscript; rather I had bits and pieces linked together by the odd instructive paragraph explaining the events.  Even so, the previous versions of the story ran to 120,000 words and then later 100,000 words.  So it's safe to say that a lot of extraneous details and events have been removed to tighten the pacing and tell the core story as swiftly and succinctly as possible.

I'd say that when writing a story, less can very much be more.  It all depends on the type of story.  If you want to write an elaborate, multi-stranded story with lots of richly defined characters, then wandering over then 100,000 word mark makes sense; indeed, it's essential.  If, on the other hand, you're trying to write a fast-paced, exciting thriller then that sort of word count just drags things down and slows the pace to little more than a grind.  I do find that if something is painful to write, the chances are that it's going to be equally painful to read.  It's the same with movies - why make it 150 minutes when you could have told it in 105 instead?

The one thing I have noticed though is that despite the many changes to the story, it remains fundamentally unchanged.  It has a beginning, middle and end that are unchanged.  The events take place in the same sequence.  The denouement is pretty much the same.  What has changed is the details of how characters move around, and how they interact.  Whereas before it was a plot driven story, I hope now that events unfold because that's how those people would really act in those situations.  Of course, it's still a thriller, so people do find themselves in some improbable scenarios.  I just hope nobody reads it and thinks 'Why on earth did they just do that?'  If they do, then it's going to be back to the drawing board.

But for now, I can relax a little and not think about this story, until I get it proofread at least.  Any takers?

More about re-writing

I'm currently rewriting Ghostwalker, as I've said before.  It's going reasonably well, but the further I get into it, the more I'm changing.  Small changes at the outset of the story ripple down throughout the narrative, which means scenes and conversations between characters are having to be re-written.  In addition, I'm changing some of plot points; people still get from A to B as before, but how they get there has changed.  I'm doing this to (hopefully) make it more believable, and to simplify the story, make it faster paced and to move around some of the revelations within the story to make them a little more natural.

The result is an absolute pain of a re-write.  I just hope it's worth it.