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?

Launching on April 1, 2009, on Webcomics Nation

I have once more changed the concept of the comic strip I intend to do. The reason is simple: I had an idea that worked in the original premise, of a mostly self-contained 4-panel humor strip.

Make no mistake, though: Teh Funny is hard.

By now I have drawn the first strip, and I have worked out the second (which I will draw this evening) and third (which I will draw tomorrow evening).

Initially, I had drawn one background for the first couple of strips and, using a sort of copy & paste, made a page of four identical backgrounds. That didn't work out as planned. When I started to actually draw, I couldn't make the panels work. Therefore, I discarded it and started from scratch.

The second strip was more difficult. My first idea for the second strip wasn't funny. I dismissed it. The second idea was funny, but I couldn't make it work. What to do, what to do? Something two people said on a message board I frequent gave me another idea for a strip, a very funny idea. I decided to put the one that didn't work aside and do the new idea first.

(That is the advantage of doing self-contained humor strips: if one thing doesn't work, you don't have to force it, you can do something else that does work instead.)

The new idea, however, led to an opening for the other idea. Which was funny. It wasn't funny enough to make the punchline work.
That was until I realized that the two panels for the set-up of the punchline matched the opening credits of an old TV show. All I had to do to make the punchline Laugh Out Loud Funny was to complete spoofing that credit sequence.

Which I will draw tomorrow evening.

That will complete three strips. I know what I want to do beyond that, so it should get easier for a while. (Unless it turns out that the jokes don't work.)

For the last two or three weeks, I've been busy with Made of Fail. That is the main reason why I haven't done any work on my novel. Once I have Made of Fail on track, and segued into a rhythm, I hope/expect that I can get back to novel writing.

How did the devil get into my story?

One thing in favor of bathtime: it frees the mind to think. In last
evening's case, I took the time to think about Made of Fail. I was just
trying to come up with possible jokes for the regular strip, and one
idea I had was that Craig (previously Arthur, I changed some names)
would sell his soul to the devil in a minor snipe against Marvel's
OMD/BND. From there, more ideas developed, some funny, some not so
funny situations that could stem from someone selling his soul to the
devil in order to be a success in the media.

Before I knew it, I had an overarching storyline for the strip.
Before I knew it, the devil (whom I'll try to make look like Gustav
Gründgens' Mephistopheles) was a regular character in the strip.

You see, the idea is this: Craig is a wannabe creative genius, who
isn't getting anywhere. The devil makes him an offer: give me your love
for comics, and you will become very successful as a creator. The fine
print, which Craig doesn't read, is this: if Craig becomes successful
as a comics creator, he loses his soul to the devil. Plus, because of
the open terms of the deal, he'll spend his life doing something he
hates. The other catch in the contract is that Craig will not become a
success at anything other than comics.

Hijinks ensue.

I took notes yesterday, and I now have material for at least 25 strips.

I have also started to draw. I did the background panel for the
first five strips, drawing all the props. All I need is to draw the
character into the panel. I scanned the panel and did a copy and paste,
so that I now have a printout with four identical background panels.
Tonight, now that I know exactly what I'm going to do (including having
an idea for the long run), I will start drawing Craig into the panels,
creating the actual story. I'm not going to try to do it all this
evening -- I'm sure regular artists could and would. But I'm now ready
to do the intimidating part and try to draw people.

Last night, progress was as expected. Wrote some text, did some pages. Writing in longhand works for me, so far. If I were using the computers, I would be saving the file to a USB stick, which I would swap around between the computers. But frankly, using the notebook computer is a major drag. It takes five minutes to boot up and five minutes to boot down. Which takes 10 minutes out of my available working time. So if, as it happened on Sunday, I have only 30 minutes or so available, if I had to use a computer I wouldn't bother. That happened frequently when I wrote Coldest Blood.
Writing longhand, I just flip open the clipboard and start writing. I can make progress even if I have only five or ten minutes of time available. Much more efficient. (Plus, automatic revisions, since I will need to retype everything later anyway.)

This morning, I had an insight on my vampire character. You see, I am cold all the time. My hands get so cold that when I touch my wife, she flinches. When I take a hot shower in the evening, I feel the hot water driving a chill from my body. In the morning, over breakfast, I usually put my right hand on the heater. This morning, doing that made me shudder as the warmth from the heater drove the chill from my bones.

I realized something. Vampires are dead. They are cold. Cold to the touch. Maybe cold inside? Maybe (and for the purposes of this novel, definitely), when they drain the blood from their victims, it's the only way that they can feel slightly warm for a while. The vampire feels cold all the time, except for when he is flush with freshly consumed blood. Which means that even if I had considered it, my vampires couldn't drink blood from a blood bank. That blood is cold. They need body-warm blood, or else it has no effect at all.

I'm also having a fun time with naming characters. The female teenager's name is now Geri Howard. The writer's name is Melissa Matheson. The characters from Melissa's novels are named Jonathan Cartwright, Clarissa Cody and Quincy Ransom. Geri's brother's name is Martin Stuart Howard. (Yes, Marty Stu. Not a declaration of intent, but an inside joke.) The vampire goes by the name of Sebastian Alucard. I will decide on the female homidice detective's name when I get to her.
All names of course pending a Google check. For all I know, there might be a real Melissa Matheson out there who writes paranormal romances. In such a case, I would change the names.