Research is your friend. Outlining is your friend too.

I finally got started on doing my research on Voodoo. Keep in mind that without the outline, I wouldn't know in which direction I'd need to slant my research. Anyway. There is one Voodoo spirit that I wanted to use in some capacity, so I paid close attention to that one. (I won't say which, although it's probably obvious.) When I started my research, I learned a startling fact about this spirit, which made me toss out my originally planned showdown for something much, much better.

Just to clarify one thing: there is a reason why I made Christopher Price a horror writer. Back when I wrote Carnival of Lost Souls, I had already been thinking along the lines of "series." That meant, to me, that I needed a main character who could frequently become involved with supernatural problems, without that stretching credibility too much. I also needed someone who could figure out how to solve such problems.

Now, there are a lot such characters. John Sinclair is a cop. Professor Zamorra is "an expert of the supernatural." Tony Ballard is a PI. Dorian Hunter is the son of the Devil. The Winchester brothers were raised for the job, and Buffy Summers is the Chosen One. There are others who I just don't bother to mention right now. Putting a horror writer into this mix made sense to me, even though it does leave me open to accusations of Marty Stu-ism. That, let me assure you, is not the case, although there are occasional cross-fertilisations (see previous post) between Chris and me.

It's interesting how real life begins to mirror the novel's outline. In the novel, Christopher Price becomes involved with the zombie case because he goes to Louisiana to research voodoo. My own research for the novel is also increasingly focussing on voodoo. I hit the library yesterday and borrowed out all the literature they had on the subject.

I'm currently reworking the outline. As I wrote the various character outlines, I made some changes to what I had originally intended. For example, I had initially intended one character to be a lovable rogue. Instead, while I outlined his character arc, he became a dark, evil villain. In the opposite direction, I had intended another character to be a vicious, brutal rasict bastard. As I wrote his character outline, he became somewhat sympathetic.
I'm now revising the outline to reflect those changes, and to insert where the various characters' arcs logically/organically intersect.

The outline(s) is finished. The main characters are in place. I have my notes about what I need to figure out in order to make this work. For example, how does one character murder 50 people without anyone noticing? How do you stop a classic, non-Hollywood zombie? How do I manage to have Gilette retain enough of his mental facilities to act as a driving force for the zombie army?

Yes, I have some ideas about all of those. But I need to massively read up on voodoo. The plan for tonight is to go over all the outlines once again, see if there are any logic problems that need fixing, is it at least moderately coherent,and how much research I actually need to invest to make the novel work. In my experience, it's usually far less than it appears to when I set out.

That is one of the advantages of having an outline: I don't have to do research to create the outline, but the outline tells me just how much research I need to do, and it gives me a pretty good idea on what I need to read up on. If research tells me that what I want to do doesn't work, I can rework the outline to make it work.

I have now finished re-reading Jahrmarkt des Grauens. Which means I'm back up to speed on just who Christopher Price is. I've also made a list of characters from the first novel and decided who among them gets to show up in the new one.

The list is also important because I don't want to accidentally duplicate names.

Originally, the idea for what evolved into this novel was to be a sequel to my webcomic Berserker. Unfortunately, that isn't likely to ever happen, but the basic idea behind it ("Zombies vs. Ku-Klux-Klan") tickled me too much to let go. By removing the Berserker trappings, I can use the idea almost exactly as initially envisioned.

This novel in progress workblog will be mirrored on my LJ, a special Facebook group, and my MySpace blog. I will frequently (although not daily) update this thread to talk about the progress and process of writing this horror novel. Warning: may include mild spoilers.

What I can tell you so far: the working title is "Die Rache der wandelnden Toten" (The Revenge of the Walking Dead). I like the title, it has a nice 1950s B-movie feel to it. I will probably be required to change it.

It is, essentially, a zombie novel.

But it's not the zombies that have dominated the genre since Night of the Living Dead. Instead, I'm going a bit closer to the roots. Which means this novel will require a considerable amount of research into voodoo.

The novel will take place somewhere in Louisiana. I haven't decided where yet, I need to do some more research into the state first. Which includes the naming structure; I believe names in the region are more French-based than in the rest of the US.

I'm writing Revenge on spec, without a publisher in mind. Jahrmarkt was published by Romantruhe, but I don't want to take this one there. Their format is very short and constrictive. When I wrote Jahrmarkt, I frequently felt that I would have needed at least twice the allowed length to really make the story work. For Revenge, that means I'm approaching it freely, with no maximum length restriction imposed. I can really give the story room to develop itself.

Since Christopher Price is now a series character, I need to set up a concordance. For now, that means going through the first novel, taking notes of all the characters I introduced there, and figuring out which of them, if any, are needed for the second one. I also don't want to accidentally repeat names. Especially if this series goes beyond the first and this novel. :)

The next step will be outlining. I'll get into that when I start on it.

They say that when you become a writer, you forfeit the luxury of reading for pleasure. Everything you read is, in a way, part of your training as a writer. You take apart what works and why, what doesn't work and why not.

I'm currently 20 or so pages in James Swain's novel The Man Who Walked Through Walls, and learning about how not to do some things.

The Man Who Walked Through Walls, originally published in 1989, is a thriller about an escape artist, Vincent Harare, whose daughter is abducted and, under false charges, put into a Mexican jail. Her jailers believe that he has a notebook with information in it that, if given to the DEA, can make life very very difficult for them.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it? But right out of the gate, the writer makes a crucial mistake:

He turns Harare into the biological nephew of Harry Houdini.

Houdini died in 1926.

In the course of the novel, some more information is given. Harare's age is given as 36 years. His daughter's age is 16. Now, these days, in the 21st century, having those ages pulls me right out if the story. Harare is described as very ambitious, it's difficult to conceive that he would burden himself with a child at just 20 years of age. Of course, things might have been different in the... Yes, and this is where we really get into problems.

By chapter 4, the novel has mentioned helicopter stunts and a version of the US's war against drugs. Before WW2, a helicopter would have been referred to as an autogyro. Plus, there is the question of when magicians started to use helicopters for their stunts. (I'm not talking Hollywood here, I'm talking, well, David Copperfield equivalents.) Just when did the war against drugs start anyway? It's also difficult to imagine that teenaged girls would be allowed to spend their school vacations in Acapulco in those times.

Most of the time, thus far, the novel reads as if it were set in what I call "the perpetual Now," the elusive present day. But there is this nagging thought in the back of my head that insists the novel is a period piece. The problem is that there are very few clues as to which period. Is it the 1930s? Considering how much of the early story is set in Europe, there is very very little indication of what really bothered the people at the time (recession, the specter of WW2, and suchlike). It can't be set in the first half of the 1940s, and if it were set in the latter half of the 1940s, there should have been at least some mention of postwar reconstruction. (Europe, remember?) Since Houdini died in 1926, and Harare's age is given as 36, I find it difficult to believe that the novel is set later than 1950.

The problem with this novel, as I perceive it, is that the writer is not giving a clear picture of the time period in which he has set it. That would have been fixed very easily by just mentioning, somewhere in the first chapter, where he sets things up, that it's the 1930s or 1940s or something, and then remaining consistent with that time. So far, though, the novel reads as if Swain wants the Houdini connection (what for isn't clear -- simple name dropping?) but other than that didn't think about what that means for the novel as a whole.

And that is what I have already learned: if you write a period piece, mention the time of the setting. Then, you can remain almost as vague on details as if you were writing a contemporary novel, the reader's knowledge of that period will fill in the blanks. You will, however, have to do more research to get the facts right. The flip side is that if you want to set the story in modern times, perhaps even the "perpetual now," you must avoid anchoring the story to a certain person or event. Especially if that anchoring is entirely superfluous.

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/jensaltmann/fail/series.php

Usually, when a celebrity dies whose work we've enjoyed, we go, "Fuck. Bummer." Things like that.

I don't know about you, but when it's a celebrity whom I've met, it's a bit more personal for me. I met David Carradine at a con some time ago, and I have a signed "Q The Winged Serpent" DVD booklet to prove it.

Anyway. Carradine had been at that small-time movie con in conjunction with the then fairly new Kill Bill 2 movie. From what he told, it had not been a good experience. Something had gone wrong with his flight from LA, so he had had to spend the night sleeping at Heathrow Airport. The airline had lost his luggage, so he had been unable to change before coming to that con. He had barely had enough time to get from the airport to the con for his signing. No time to rest, no time to eat.

Despite that, he stayed about two hours longer than he was supposed to, because the line was so long and he didn't want to let his fans down. An hour later, he had been scheduled for a Q&A with his fans. Barely enough time, again, for a little bit of rest and some food. He apologized for how he looked, and that he wasn't at his best (which is why I know all the above -- he told the relatively few fans in attendance). As we were not that many, we gathered almost cozily around him for his Q&A.

Based on the day he had had, he had had every right to be cranky and cantakerous. Instead, he was very warm, friendly and funny. David Carradine was the only person I've met so far who I would describe as having a magnetic and charismatic personality.

That is why it actually made me sad when I heard of his death yesterday (more so than the usual "Fuck. Bummer." reaction), and why I felt the need to make a tribute strip.

I re-used an old Made of Fail strip that worked fine visually. I pasted the original word balloons over with blank paper and wrote the new dialog. My one regret is that I didn't have enough time to create something completely new to honor him.

I'm getting tired of doing the Made of Fail comic strip. It doesn't help that I'm taking longer to produce each strip (more than three hours per strip, it was two hours per strip when I started), and that readership has gone down -- massively. To the point where I wonder, why bother.

My options, as I see them, are as follows:

1) Continue Made of Fail as it is, updating three times a week.
2) Reduce Made of Fail updates to twice a week, or maybe once a week.
3) Stop doing Made of Fail and write a new novel instead.

The thing is that in order to make the time to write a new novel, I would need to stop doing the Made of Fail strip. As usual, I have too many ideas for a new novel. It could be that vampire romance I've mentioned before. Or a new Christopher Price novel, with zombies, that I had an idea for earlier today.

I can't do both the strip and a novel. One would have to go. Right now, I favor letting go of the strip in order to write the novel.

If so, what do you think? Which characters would you like to see more of? Of which characters would you like to see less?

Generally, what do you think of Made of Fail?