Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 10

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

This week, I’m continuing with the sample chapters of my unfinished Nano. Thanks to everybody for your feedback on the snippets I’ve shared so far, I’m going to be working to revise that scene this week as my sample pages for Kij Johnson’s novel workshop.

This time, I’m skipping ahead, but it’s still Vanessa and Gordon talking about their past:

Snippet 1 Snippet 2 Snippet 3 Snippet 4 Snippet 5 Snippet 6 Snippet 7 Snippet 8 Snippet 9

“Why did you come to Balance? I mean, you said that you were here when this was a growing ghost town.” I tried to think of what the community must have been like then–probably at least a third of the Libran construction had been finished, if not more, but without enough Earthlings to fill more than a few percent of that. Had they clustered in the buildings near the eight-way, to start with, looking for the security of fellow Earthlings against the oppressiveness of all those empty, alien-made buildings in the images of old Earth?

“Probably a lot of the same reasons as you. I thought there were opportunities here, to build a career and make plenty of money. I’ve got family connections in the hotel and hospitality business, like you do in restauranteering. I’ve turned my own hotel into a stable money-maker, and invested some of the profits into other deals; like this building for you.”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.blogspot.ca/.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 9

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

This week, I’m continuing with the sample chapters of my unfinished Nano. Gordon is surprised to be out to dinner with a beautiful girl and her alien sweetie, and he’s been telling them a bit of his family history…

Snippet 1 Snippet 2 Snippet 3 Snippet 4 Snippet 5 Snippet 6 Snippet 7 Snippet 8

“Is that enough about my parents for now?”

Doomah barked quietly, (was that how Librans laughed?) and Vanessa nodded. “Certainly enough, especially if you’re talked out.”

“How did the two of you meet?”

“I was working at town hall,” Vanessa said, “and he was a protester, occupying the town hall as part of a stunt that was designed to get us to all leave the planet or something.”

My mouth dropped open for a second. “Really?”

“I was young and foolish,” Doomah explained, “afraid of what would become of our beloved planet if we started inviting lawless aliens to live among us.”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.blogspot.ca/.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 7

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

This week, I’m continuing with the sample chapters of my unfinished Nano. Gordon is surprised to be out to dinner with a beautiful girl and her alien sweetie, and he’s telling them a bit of his family history…

Snippet 1 Snippet 2 Snippet 3 Snippet 4 Snippet 5 Snippet 6

“When I was thirteen, I started to get interested in cooking, myself. Mother suggested some good training programs for adolescent chefs… actually no, that’s not right. Mother picked out ONE program and actually enrolled me in it, but my father pulled me out of that one. He said it needed to be my choice, not hers, so then she offered half a dozen alternative courses, and I picked one.”

“I think I’m sensing some mommy issues,” Vanessa said.

“I guess she was used to being in charge, especially when it came to the kitchen. Wyatt was her birth name; did you know that? Dad agreed to change his, when they married, because she was the brand, the star.”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/.

Generating creative magic

So, I’ve been working for a while at the Storywonk Making Magic class. It’s taken me a little while to get into the magic groove, actually, (odd since I’m such a fantasy fan,) but there’s some great stuff in the course. I totally recommend it, especially for the encouraging tips Lani has about different ways to go out and hunt your magic; activities to help you get in touch with your muse, and sort out the inspiration you need for this particular book.

The first big exercise was the soundtrack. I love using music to fuel my inspiration, and Lani had some good tips for how to pick a good soundtrack, and avoiding the dangers of using something with too many memories that don’t really fit the book. On the other hand, I found I had some problems with her approach of going out and finding brand new music, because it takes me too long to figure out how I feel about a new song. So for my ‘Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale’ soundtrack, I ended up going through the ‘mid-tier’ of my music collection, considering a bunch of songs that I kinda liked but hadn’t rated with high numbers of stars. A few B-list songs snuck in there, mostly because I couldn’t shake the fact that they’d shown me something important about my characters, and I had to work for a few days cutting the list down to a length that seemed reasonable. Here’s the final soundtrack, more or less in the order of priority I was using to axe the last few stragglers:

• Love Is My Witness, by Amanda Marshall
• Clueless, by Billy Gilman
• If My Life Was a Movie, by Steve Fox
• That Was Us, by Alexz Johnson
• Clocks, by Coldplay
• Not That Different, by Collin Raye
• Variations 1-4, by Andrew Lloyd Webber
• More Love, by the Dixie Chicks
• Snow Globe, by Chely Wright
• Benefit of Doubt, by Chris Cummings
• I Just Came Back From a War, by Darryl Worley
• Waiting For Angels, by the Ennis Sisters
• Haunted (Acoustic version) by Taylor Swift
• Life For Rent, by Dido
• I Wonder, by Aaron Pritchett
• St John’s Waltz, by Ron Hynes
• Blown Away, by Carrie Underwood
• Summertown Road, by Brad Johner
• Must To Be Free, by The Watchmen
• Reasons Why, by Nickel Creek

Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 6

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

This week, I’m continuing with the sample chapters of my unfinished Nano. Gordon is surprised to be out to dinner with a beautiful girl and her alien sweetie, and he’s just started telling them a bit of his family history…

Snippet 1 Snippet 2 Snippet 3 Snippet 4 Snippet 5

“My mother went on one of those reality video competitions when she was twenty-seven, won first prize, got an offer to run the kitchen for one of the top hotels in New York, then broke her contract there to start up Wyatt’s–when she fell in love with my father and he offered to bankroll her dream. When I was young, my parents were always running around the world, opening new locations, putting out fires, doing publicity stops. Sometimes they took me along, more as I grew up, but a lot of the time they left me with nanos and tutors, wherever they thought I’d be stable for at least a few months.”

“Nanos?” Doomah asked. “As in extremely small machines?”

“No, um… have you heard of nanos?” I asked Vanessa, and she half-shrugged and half shook her head, all at once. “It’s one of those slang things, maybe never caught on outside of… it’s a term for male nannies who specialize in taking care of young boys — the masculine, testosterone-laden, surrogate father figure equivalent of a nanny.”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 5

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

This week, I’m continuing with the sample chapters of my unfinished Nano. Gordon is surprised to be out to dinner with a beautiful girl and her alien sweetie, and he just asked a slightly rude question about the alien!

“Yes, I’m male, and I’m thirty-seven cycles old, which would be perhaps thirty-four Earth years,” Doomah said. “Is there any other statistical information you need?”

“No, that just about does it, thank you. Umm, your turn to ask questions, I guess; either of you.”

“Well–would it be unforgivable if I asked you about your mother first?” Vanessa asked.

“Not if you let me tell you about her my own way,” I said. “It’s weird to grow up with a mom who’s a celebrity chef.  I wasn’t around for her rise to fame, of course, but I’ve seen most of it on the video archives.”

Snippet 1 Snippet 2 Snippet 3 Snippet 4

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 4

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

This week, I’m continuing with the sample chapters of my unfinished Nano. Gordon is surprised to be out to dinner with a beautiful girl and her alien sweetie, and things aren’t getting any easier for him! I’m skipping ahead a little in the scene, over the food talk. Gordon and Vanessa get a little bit of awkwardness out of the way, while Doomah the alien stays quiet.

Snippet 1 Snippet 2 Snippet 3

“Is it okay if I ask you more personal questions?”

“Yeah, but can I sneak one in first?”

“Is it about Doomah?”

I nodded, not quite sure how to phrase it.

“Yes ,we’re… well, in the Libran fashion, we’ve declared an intent to become life partners. In Earthling terms, I guess you could say we’re engaged.”

“Oh–I just wanted to know if Doomah was–a he or a she. Sorry, I know that they do have gender more or less the same way we do, but blast me if I can tell the difference.”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 3

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

This week, I’m continuing on directly from last week’s excerpt from my Nano. Gordon is surprised to be out to dinner with a beautiful girl and her alien sweetie, and things aren’t getting any easier for him!

Snippet 1 Snippet 2

Doomah smoothly took my hand in its own many-jointed fingers and gently lifted it up and down, as if a handshake was more like a properly choreographed dance move than… well, what the heck was it, really? Just a routine courtesy gesture that none of us Earthlings think much about anymore, do we?

“Thank you so much for coming, Gordon,” Vanessa said, shaking my hand too, and took her seat on the far side of the booth from where I’d been sitting, Doomah taking its place next to her.

“It’s my pleasure,” I said, turning to the menu as the most obvious distraction. “Any recommendations for what’s good?”

“I’d be curious as to your opinions on the chicken-fried steak,” Doomah said in a rich baritone voice. He seemed to be speaking English quite fluently, not using a translator pack the way most beings did when they needed to communicate with aliens. “Should I tell you what it’s made with first?”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 2

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

This week, I’m continuing on directly from last week’s excerpt from my Nano. A lot of you commented with curiosity about the introduction of Doomah, so hopefully this snippet will shed some light!

Snippet 1

The conversation where I’d joked with Tommy about him setting me up with Vanessa flashed through my mind. I’d been prepared for Vanessa to bring a man to dinner with me, or even a woman, and was generally ready to take either as a sign that she just wanted to be friends with me and wasn’t interested in a new romance.

I certainly hadn’t expected that her significant other would be a freakin’ alien.

“So, umm, nice to meet you, Si– citizen.” I put a hand out towards the Libran, unable to remember if that was considered good manners with them. Hell, after being blindsided with this, I could be excused for a little well-intentioned rudeness, couldn’t I?

I have no idea about the genetic standards of attractiveness for Librans, but Doomah seemed to be well put together, as far as I could stretch human esthetic standards. It, or he, (she?) had a generally narrow frame and long arms that were always gracefully in motion.

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale 1

Welcome friends, followers, and Weekend Writing Warriors!

Thanks for all the great comments on ‘Return to Civilization!’ But I’m going to switch to one of the rough drafts that I was working on in Nano this year. This is from the scene where Gordon, my MC, is meeting Vanessa for dinner; he met her at the Earthling chamber of commerce a few scenes earlier.

“Hey, Gordon, you’re here already!”

I looked up to see Vanessa, dressed in a bright red dress with a miniskirt hem, long sleeves, and a high collar, with little cut-outs around the shoulder. She had her hair gathered up into a poufy tail behind her head. “Um, yeah, I wanted to get here early to scout out the place by myself,” I admitted, and checked the chrono on the table menu. “You thought you’d be the first to get here early?”

She chuckled. “Yeah, I guess so. Gordon Wyatt, I’d like you to meet Doomah.”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/.