To Future or Not, a Bloodsucking Dilemma

If it’s the 10^th, it’s my turn to blog.  Welcome readers and blogerites.  This is my first time so you can expect a little awkwardness.  Maybe you won’t find it, but it’s there.  A lot like writing my first novel—a long and smelly proposition….

So, there I was, not a writer, (I hated writing) but someone with a story to tell, a story that had its beginnings when I was immersed as a young teenager in the science fiction section of our rural county library.  The section covered one whole wall—I read it all.  Then, there were the other books from at home, the ones that came first, Tarzan, Robinson Crusoe, The Black Knight; books left over from grandma’s attempts to get her children to read the classics—all hundred of them for whatever they were charging then.  Then came romance, old Harlequin books with dynamic men and womanly women having adventures in foreign countries.  Many of those old books were written by obviously English writers and I didn’t care.  The foreignness was part of the appeal.  Those English writers got around.  They wrote about Spain, Italy, and South American countries.  My eyes burned up the pages.  Then I discovered Regencys.  Ah, my heart.  Manly men with swords.  The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer earned me an A on an oral book report as well as the scorn of my fellow classmates.  I was supposed to talk for three minutes—fifteen minutes later the bell caught me mid-sentence and a classroom full of teenagers ran for their lives.

So much for the beginning.  Now to the end.  I wrote a story.  It ended up a novel.  I was such a novice I didn’t know how long a novel was so I called a publishing company to ask.  Their answer: it depends.  Imagine the conversation that followed as I pressed them for concrete details.  The conversation resembled a comedy club act.  However, I now know the answer to that question if you need it.

Writing that novel was absolutely the most addicting fun.  Some days I didn’t want to go anywhere but to the computer.  I’m sure that if I’d not had people who pulled me back into real life occasionally, that I’d have been found, a dried up smelly relic, sometime in the murky future.

Here’s the real problem.  I wrote another novel.  The first one was a futuristic, survival romance.  (See why I told you what I read?)  The second novel was set in the same location, futuristic and survival romance.  There are over twenty more story lines set in the same location.  But, being a futuristic world, someone was supposed to know or should have kept track of the special stuff.  You know, like what a knockert is.  A hitsnake?  How high can a camine jump? By the way, is the first gate to the Proving zone in the east, or the last step located in Randar in the west?  Fine, so a bunnyhop is obviously a rabbit.  But what is a whorlcat and what are its attributes?  How about that flower that Tory sipped sweet nectar from?  Where was that again?  Yup, the second novel was pretty dicey, but I can see the writing on the wall.  I should have been writing the special things, people, society, animal, places, down as I went in some sort of information keeper.  I didn’t.

Second novel finished.  I guess I expected divine intervention.  I didn’t keep anything on the second novel either but coped by making up mostly new stuff for the second novel.  Do you see I just compounded the problem?  In my own defense I have to say I didn’t know I was going to be a writer or that anyone would want to read what I wrote.  I did, they did, now I’m really facing a problem.  Novel number three.  So, I coped again, I switched genres. I’m writing a historical.  By the way, I can see the same problem developing there too.

So what’s this whole long post about?  Caution.  You’ll want to think not only about your characters and about the joy of world crafting but of determining a way of handling the storage and recollection of details.  Details, which may be needed again for the next story.  I’m running out of genres….

Where does your story fit in the Science Fiction, Futuristic, Fantasy, and all the rest of the not-so-easily-pigeonholed variety pack?  Science Fiction has more scientific world crafting.  It relies on the intellect of science.

Futuristic is far enough in the future that society or people are changed substantially enough to not be what we’d expect to see next year.  The time may also be far in the future.

Fantasy stories are crafted with myth being integral in their world.  The myth factor can involve fanciful creatures or everyday ones.  However, fantastical abilities are essential.  These fantastical abilities may or may not be very nice.  Creatures/characters may have many different degrees of humanity or not be human at all.

One overlying fact is true of all of these types of stories, whether from Jules Verne’s’ science fiction classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to The Huntress, a sexy alien erotica sizzler by Barbara Karmazin, the qualities that excite us are the ones we identify with emotionally as humans.  In a true alien story, we wouldn’t know their toes from our ears.  In fiction that appeals to us, it is the human qualities we inject into those alien places that have us attending fantasy fairs dressed as our favorite sprites hoping to excite a little vampire action or hoping to ride on the Star Ship Galactica.