Boxing Day has become for me a day of reflection.  I think about the past year.  I do not quite get to planning the future; that seems a continual daily process.  Upon reflection, I am not sure this has been such a bad year.  Many of the things that are important to me have been postponed - but only postponed.  I have not had as much time to myself and writing is what has suffered.  It has been a very unproductive and frustrating year (maybe two years) in that regard.  But, I feel that there is still time. 

I have just scrolled down the page and discovered that this entry is nearly identical to the one from last year - so there is no need to repeat myself.

I wish I could report greater productivity since my last posting, but I cannot.  I can report that I watched my favourite version of A Christmas Carol, the TNT movie staring Patrick Stewart.  A Christmas Carol is one of my favourites and I enjoy many of the versions: Alister Sim, George C. Scott, Bill Murray, and even the new one with Jim Carey.  I'm not sure why the Patrick Stewart version is my favourite - but then mine is not to reason why - etc, etc.

Not a very productive period where writing is concerned.  The more I think of it, the worse it gets.  But, I did sign up for Twitter.  I don't really get it, but there it is.  You can see my latest tweets on The Author page.

Slow but steady progress on Fresia's Honour, but that is not what I want to write about today.  Today I want to write about reading.  I have just finished Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt.  I enjoyed it very much.  Bernard Cornwell is one of my great influences in writing.  He takes history and makes it entertaining and manageable by putting it into a suspenseful plot and populating it with interesting characters.  I adore and curse Cornwell.  I adore him because of the many hours of ripping good yarns he had given me and curse him because he delayed my own writing efforts by several years.

I read in obsessive fits.  When I find an author I like and read until I can't find anything else he has written.  More than two decades ago I read James Clavell's novels.  From there I moved to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.  (I returned to Conan Doyle a few years ago with his historical fiction, but that is another story.)  After Holmes I found Hornblower.  Hornblower really ignited my imagination and inspired me to create a similar character of my own.  I read all the C.S. Forestor I could find, even his non-Hornblower work, except for The African Queen.  I never got around to the African Queen.  Nothing against the African Queen, just never got around to it - one of these days.

Anyway, point being that after reading all of the Hornblower stories I wanted more.  I tried Patrick O'Brien, but just could not get into the prose or the lack of concise plotting.  My father suggested Bernard Cornwell's Waterloo.  I liked the Sharpe character, a rough soldier surrounded by upper class snobs, but could not get into the book.  That might have ended it if not for Sean Bean.  I don't remember how many years after giving up on Waterloo it was, but I saw one of the Sharpe movies on PBS.  I think it was either Sharpe's Rifles or Sharpe's Eagle, but can't remember.  It may have been the one with Pete Postlethwaite (sp? sorry Peter).  I enjoyed the movie so gave Bernard Cornwell another try, this time with Sharpe's Rifles.  I have been reading his historical fiction ever since and still think Waterloo is one of the weaker pieces.

However, Bernard Cornwell was not the direction this piece was to take.  As influential on my writing and life as Bernard Cornwell is the 1974 Three Musketeers movie, the screenplay for which was written by George MacDonald Frazier.  I read a lot of Dumas because of the movie, but none of GMF's fiction.  This summer, I decided, I would correct this oversight.  Having finished Agincourt, I am starting Flashman in the Great Game.  I am not far into it, but am enjoying it very much.  At this point I am not sure that it will lead to a GMF binge, but until Bernard Cornwell or Arturo Perez-Reverte's next publication (Fall of 2009 in the States, I beleive), here's hoping.

I have made some real progress on Fresia's Honour, but cannot quite say that I am back on track.  I have done some light research regarding Wee Hughie and he is shaping up nicely.

I am very happy to report real progress on Fresia's Honour this weekend.  Our deck serves as my summer time office annex and readying it for the season inspired me to sit out there and use it.  Working of Fresia's Honour, I think Wee Hughie Long will have to wait.  I have quite a lot of work left to go on The Widow of Concepcion and Others and am finally dragging myself to get on with it.

We are making our summer plans which include two vacations, one of which is to St. Augustine, FL, where we went last year.  Thinking of St. Augustine's Spanish colonial history is motivating me to finishing (or at least working on) The Widow of Concepcion.  We are planning on a more laid back, hang around the beach type of vacation.  I think I will use the time to work on The Widow of Concepcion.  I may work on another project in the interim, but I am going to try and use that week for Fresia's Honour.  The best laid plans . . .

Still no progress of Fresia's Honour.  But, I have done more research on the Border Reivers.  I need a clean break - either commit to finishing the one or to abandon it and start the other.  Right now I'm more inclined toward the later.

I have started doing research on the Border Reivers.  Unfortunately my intent was to finish Fresia's Honor and the Widow of Concepcion before starting work on that.  Perhaps I need a change - to not be so focused on one subject for so long.  Maybe that is all this amounts to.  At any rate, I have been feeling more motivated.  Also, the weather has much to do with it.  February is the hardest month of the year.  We have had a break in the weather this week and my mood has lightened considerably.  This is by far the worst February I can remember.  I think it is due to the economy.  It has effected everyone.

I am sorry to report that I have done almost no writing in a couple of months.  According to this journal, I have made pathetic little progress as of November 3.  I have made no progress since.  I have stopped reading as well as writing.  In the last few days I have made a concerted effort to read.  I found my collection of Robert E. Howard's Conan books in the garage.  I enjoyed these books when I was in middle school and started reading one of them for nostalgia's sake.  It has given me a fresh perspective on something that was so influential and has given me inspiration to get back to work.

Today is my traditional day of reflection and relaxation.  It is my favorite day of the year.  It has been a very good year.  The economy has been bad and I have been very unproductive as far as my writing goes, but everything else is falling into place.  It has been a very busy year, it gets busier as the kids get older.  I have come to accept that I am simply not going to be able to write or even read the way that I would like until the kids are older - probably in college, which is only a couple of years away.  It seems to me that I will have time then to write and that I will just have to be patient.

I have not given alms to the poor today and I do not feel good about it.  There is still several hours left in the day, so there is time.  However, with our net worth being sixty percent of what it was before the economic collapse and my plans for business next year, we will be giving less than we have in the past.

I have made pathetic little progress on Fresia's Honour since my last journal entry.  Halloween has come and gone.  A successful holiday season, but the spirit waned more than prior years'.  It is because the kids are getting older and moving on with their own interests, leaving their Mother and I behind.  I have been bracing myself for it, but it seems to have taken me unaware regardless.   

As Halloween approaches, I have finally completed my Summer projects.  Napoleon's Wolf and The River Wolf are both available for purchase on the Amazon Kindle.  Onward to Fresia's Honour and the completion of The Widow of Concepcion and Others.

The River Wolf has been submitted to Amazon for publication in the Kindle format.  This one project done and complete - c'est tout.  Time to move back to The Widow of Concepcion and Others.  But, the next project for today is the garbage disposal.  Our old one (estimated to be 25 years old) packed it in.  I bought a new one and am going to try putting it in myself.  My daughter read my blog and complained that it was only about writing and not about the family.  I do that on purpose.  This was only meant to document the writing process and to do that in a very haphazard way.  I did not want something else to which I had to apply my usual methodical, painstaking approach.

Anyway, in that spirit I am going to digress from writing and move on to garbage disposals.  I bought a very expensive garbage disposal.  I did it because I live by a code.  We live in a small house and we live frugally (that's the polite word for it).  In doing so we have mitigated the effects of the current financial crisis and have plenty of money in the bank.  Except, I don't actually keep any money in the bank, which does cause some concern, but has nothing to do with buying an expensive garbage disposal.

Again, I digress.  Small house with a fixed mortgage means we have plenty of cash to buy a large garbage disposal.  I suppose that's my point.

More to the point, this afternoon I have to try installing the thing instead of getting any writing done.  Yeah, maybe that's the point.

I started Fresia's Honour last week.  It is the short story that will round out The Widow of Concepcion and Others.  In writing this I realized I should be concentrating on The River Wolf's Amazon Kindle edition.  I had forgotten about it.  Oh well, I will try to remember to concentrate on it before running off onto Fresia's Honour.  I am well pleased with the progress on Fresia's Honour.  It really fell together.  I have written the outline and now need to start filling in the narrative.

That part used to be my favourite part of the writing process.  In recent years, I have found the editing process more satisfying.  It used to be that I did not consider editing as creative, but rather a more tedious, technical part of the process.  Editing now gives me an opportunity to creatively add to the draft.  Dotting the 't's and crossing the 'i's are all still a part of it, but around that I can better organize what I have written and, more importantly, add to what I intended to write but only clearly presented in my mind, not on the page.

My notice of having finished the Amazon Kindle edition of Napoleon's Wolf was a little premature.  It took longer to clean up the HTML formatting than I had anticipated.  But, it is finally done and loaded onto Amazon.  Now to concentrate on The River Wolf so that I can finally move onto another project.

I finished the Amazon Kindle edition of Napoleon's Wolf.  I will finish up the Amazon Kindle edition of The River Wolf and then see about uploading onto Kindle.

I completed a draft of The Rosary this week.  This completes Draft 2 and I am ready to start Draft 3.  I was going to take care of the Amazon Kindle editions before starting on Draft 3 and think I will get started on those before I get too deep into it.  I'm not sure if I wrote of it here, but I think I will rename the anthology The Widow of Concepcion and Others and The Hen Frigate to The Widow of Concepcion.  When I originally conceived of The Hen Frigate, the idea was that it would be more about the life of a Hen Frigate and the transitory culture surrounding that way of life.  It turned into something else.

At any rate, I need another story to make The Widow of Concepcion and Others complete.  That will be a part of Draft 3, pulling the anthology together and into one edition and adding another short story.

I have fallen back into a good routine, but not one that includes as much writing as I would like.  I have been exercising in the morning instead of late afternoon.  We visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland last weekend and I was inspired to take up the guitar.  I have been spending more time with it than writing and I think I'm tone deaf - I have absolutely no sense of musical timing.  I can't keep a beat.  I've always known this, but have just realized that that is the reason music lessons were so difficult for me as a child and always seemed so foreign to me.  I have great respect for musicians and have always envied the ease with which they seem to play.  I will stick with it for a while - maybe even as a permanent part of my routine.  Afterall, I don't anticipate any major career changes at my age, certainly not to take up with a rock band.  Tone deaf or not - it ain't nothin' but somethin' to do.

I received an interesting e-mail this week.  Mr. John Mills in the U.K. found a button that appears to be from Les Equipages de Haut Bord, battalion 10.  In searching the Internet he found this web site and contacted me for more information.  It sounds like a very interesting find.

For more information, please visit the UK Detectors Finds Database (UKDFD) at:

UK detector finds database - Online

The direct link to the button is:

UK Finds Database - - Military Uniform Button - UKDFD

Wednesday 9 July 2008

I saw the movie Mongol this weekend.  It’s about Genghis Kahn’s early life.  I can’t imagine it was historically accurate, but it was way too long.  It was interesting to look at and it convinced me that they captured the period.  At its heart it was a simple adventure romance.  If they hadn’t tried to turn it into a sweeping epic it would have been a good movie.

I sit through so many movies thinking that they would be a good movie if only they were less of a movie.  So, I thought, why not 'lift' the underlying premise of Mongol and use the story as an simple adventure romance and leave out the sweeping epic.  I've been wanting to write a Border Reiver's story and I think Mongol would lend itself very nicely.  It goes way to the bottom of my to do list - sometime after finishing The Rosary and the Amazon Kindle editions of The River Wolf and Napoleon's Wolf.

My mother is Scottish, Galswegian born and bred as were her parents and grand-parents.  But, her name is English.  Her maiden name is Langley, the name I have adopted as my pen name.  Langley is as English a name as you will find - long field or long meadow in Olde English.

And there is definitely a story in how the Langleys came to Scotland.  For me, that story will be set in on the Elizabethan border between England and Scotland and it will be based on the neat little story that Mongol could have been.

Very little progress to report on this first week back from vacation.  I wish I had done more, but the days flashed by and all of my intentions to sit down and get to work fell apart.

I have fallen out of routine.  Not only the vacation, but changes at work.  I need to build a new one and stick to it.  That is the key to accomplishing anything - routine and discipline.  Both have come apart in the last few weeks.  They will probably not come together for another couple of weeks.  It's possible, they will not come together again until the kids are back at school.  I hope not, that is another six weeks.

Back home from vacation.  We went to St. Augustine, where I toured Castillo de San Marcus, Fort Matanzas, and several other historical artifacts.  That was not the point of the vacation, but those are things I enjoy that the rest of the family does not.

As expected, I did not get any writing done at all.  Instead of writing, the mornings on the beach were spent on reading.  It was not spent unproductively, but not as anticipated.

I could have spent another week away, but am still glad to get back.  I am looking forward to getting back to The Rosary.  Hopefully tomorrow morning.

Little to report other than continued progress on The Rosary and no other.  I have come to the part of The Rosary that deals with the Montevideo Currency Riots of 1832 and have largely re-written what was already written, slowing progress but leaving me happier with the final product.

The Currency Riots were one of the few, but a very important black mark on Eligus Bronsan's career and I wanted to ensure that it was well done.

Other than that, we are on vacation next week.  I always have dreams of being more productive on vacation.  I usually have several hours each morning to myself and always intend to write.  I usually end up either reading or not having the time to myself and end up being less productive on vacation than when at home.  C'est la vie.

For now I am on the best part of the vacation, the anticipation of it.  Anticipation includes fantasies of spending time writing each morning in an exotic local.  No need to infringe upon that with what I know will be the truth of it.  Much like at the office - no need to let the facts get in the way of an unfounded fantasy.

I have made good progress of The Rosary and am very nearly finished the draft.  I have done no work on the Amazon Kindle editions and am anxious to get to them, but feel that I cannot leave The Rosary until it is in a more thoroughly complete state - which should be soon.

5 May 2008 marks the 182nd anniversary of the founding of the United Republics' of South America and the 187th anniversary of what would have been Napoleon I's death had Lord Thomas Cochrane failed to rescue him from St. Helena.  It is a happy coincidence that Cinco de Mayo is also a celebration of Mexican culture in the United States.  I take the opportunity to celebrate Mexico and the United Republics.

I am making excellent progress on The Rosary.  I have made no progress on formatting my books for Amazon Kindle.

In editing The Rosary I have come upon a major change in which I am going to add another story that I had been wanting to write.  It was not a fully developed story and I need something with which to wrap a plot point.  This undeveloped story will serve nicely.

In related news, I am quite pleased with Open Office Writer.  I have transitioned all of my non-work work into it and it is working very well.  It is not MS Word, but is similar enough to pick up on quickly.  I am learning and growing more comfortable.  Perhaps one day I will be at the point where I will transition work files into it.  Depending on what Microsoft can do to stabilize Vista, that day may be sooner rather than later.

www.OpenOffice.org

I have been visiting family in Toronto this week.  Even so I have done a little bit of work on The Rosary.  Earlier in the week I did a little bit of work on the Amazon Kindle Edition of Napoleon's Wolf.  However, there has been too much going to make a serious dent in either.

I had trouble sleeping the night before last.  I woke up at 12:30 and could not get back to sleep until 3:am.  I spent the time productively by writing a paragraph in The Rosary that is key to the story, but which never quite gelled on paper before that night.  Here is that paragraph.

"My friends, I can relate to you only now after so many years that situated as I was upon the seat of ease, trousers around my ankles, I was quite devastated. I held no illusions as to the Doñita Fresia's interest in my humble self. But, as a man, I still held within my heart of hearts some small hope that a creature as fascinating as was the Doñita could hold in her heart some interest in one such as I."

I reproduce it here only because I am interested in seeing if the paragraph or some version of it ends up in the final draft.

I have done some work on The Rosary and am quite pleased with the progress.  However, I have been spending more time getting The River Wolf and Napoleon's Wolf ready for the Amazon Kindle.  These will be second editions and not just reprints.  I am taking this opportunity to fix some of the errors that have come to notice over the eight years since The River Wolf's original publication.  I will not be making any significant story changes and am currently debating whether or not to fill in a particular gap in the The River Wolf that has nagged at me since it was first reviewed.

So far so good for Open Office Writer.  It did not take long at all to get used to it over Word.  It is not as easy to navigate as Word and I cannot find all of the functionality, but we're getting there.  A couple of days into it and I am still determined to stick with it.

Today I am embarking upon an experiment involving the tools of the trade.  As a writer and in my profession, I consider myself a tradesman, even going so far as to think of myself a craftsman.  In writing I most definitely move from craft to art, but I like to think that I do so professionally.

As a writer I am an amateur, using the classical derivation of the word in that writing is done for love of the craft over the pursuit of money.  I enjoy and am proud of my profession, but this blog is about my avocation, not my vocation and while the experiment intersects both i will here write only about writing.

I have just bought a new computer and am very pleased with it overall.  However, I have been using MS Office 2000 since 2000 and upgraded to MS Office XP (2002) only in 2004.  Office 2000 and its 2002 upgrade have served me well for eight years.  This computer uses Windows Vista.  Since using it, Word crashes regularly and returns an error message to the effect that Office 2002 is not compatible and that I should consider upgrading.  I must note that I have lost absolutely no data in these crashes, not a word.  The crashes seem to occur only after the autosave - perhaps that is part of the problem.  So it is really only a nuisance.

For that nuisance I took MicroSoft's advice.  I upgraded.  I upgraded to Open Office, available for free at OpenOffice.org.  Bill Gates has enough of my money and I see no reason to give him more just because it has been a few years since I have given him money for Office.

That is the experiment.  I am going to try writing The Widow of Concepcion using Open Office Writer.  Professionally I will stick to Office and may even upgrade to Office 2007.  I rely on my clients for an income and am not ready to jeopardize that quite yet.  We shall see how it goes from here.

If the experiment is successful, then I will consider expanding into my professional endeavors.

I have made excellent progress on The Rosary today.  Not so much during the week, but today was a holiday and I spent it productively.  I have had some Windows Vista issues with Office XP.  Word XP closed cold, but I did not lose any work.  I'll have to keep an eye on it.  If it is an issue I may have to upgrade, which pisses me off - more money to Bill gates because he can't produce a reliable product.

This entry is to acknowledge my Celtic heritage.  My mother is Glaswegian born and bred, but she is descended from Irish and Nova Scotians.  I really do not have much to report today, I just wanted to be sure to make an entry on St. Patrick's.  I have done a little work The Rosary but have spent more time setting up a new computer, named Murphy in honour of the season, and our network.

I am at the red ink and paper stage of The Rosary.  it's the only way to really see what you have written.  I have found that I cannot edit without have paper in front of me.  I miss too much when trying to look it over on the computer screen.  So, The Rosary is printed, I am reading it over and marking changes in red.  When I have complete a few pages, reaching a good break in the story, I will put the changes into the computer.

Since this blog is dedicated to the process of writing, perhaps I should begin at the beginning.  When I have an idea for a story I open a new Word document and jot down my ideas.  If / when it is time to turn the ideas into a proper story (and there are many more ideas that there ever will be stories), I go back into that document and start to develop an outline.  I plot out the whole story before I begin the narrative.  The outline is often changed before the end, as the narrative develops, but the skeleton upon which the meat of the story is grown stays basically sound from that point.

During the development of the outline is when I do my hard research, reading books to make try and get an authentically historical feel across to the reader.  From there I begin on the narrative - to fill in the spaces in the outline.  All the while I continue my research.  That being done, the result is the first draft.  I print it out and start in with the red ink.  Depending on how I feel, there could be half a dozen drafts or more.  I used to hate the editing process, feeling that it stifles creativity, but I now enjoy it and look forward to it.  Rather than stifling creativity, it gives me an opportunity to expand upon it, giving me a second chance (or fourth or sixth) to find a better way of writing something.

I've been making good progress on editing this draft of The Rosary.  I have adjusted my schedule for daylight savings time and have been working more in the evenings.  Don't mistake this progress report for an acceptance of daylight saving time.  I was still more productive before Indiana started with this nonsense.

'Tis done.  This draft of The Hen Frigate is done.  I'm playing myself the fool if I think there won't be another, but 'tis done for now.  Time to finish The Rosary.

I've made some good progress in finishing up The Hen Frigate this week.  I also finished Dan Simmons' The Terror and am ready to begin Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road.  The Terror and the movie Black Robe have given me a story idea to round out The Widow of Concepcion.  I would like to write a story about the Araucanian wars in Chile.  They figure perfectly into Napoleon's South America.  To fit with the other stories, this one has to be set in or around Concepcion and have a female who is central to the story.  Perhaps an Araucanian maiden?  There was an uprising in the 1850's.  This would fit well with the idea I've had for a river gunboat under the command of Henri Ceurotte III.

The ideas are flowing.  It's exciting to have a blank page to let them spill on to.  It has not seriously happened in a while.  Even The Rosary was conceived of many years ago and the process now is one of crafting raw materials rather than creating them.  

I am sorry to say that I have made almost no progress since the Lost Weekend of which I wrote last entry.  The Lost Weekend has turned to a Lost Week and is threatening to turn into a Lost Fortnight.  A cold and Dan Simmons' The Terror are to blame.  The cold and dark of Winter is a good time to be caught up in an Artic horror story.

A lost weekend.  Nothing to do with drink.  TV substituted for drink.  I watched TV all weekend and did almost no writing.  I wrote half a page of The Hen Frigate and by late afternoon deleted the entire thing because it took the story off track.  The half page tied up a loose end that was meant as ambience rather than story line.  I felt it was too distracting to tie that end, so I will leave it loose.

The passage has to do with inviting Madame Lopez to join Bronsan and Encalada's traitorous cabal.  I like the idea of it and it definitely fits with the bits and pieces I have written concerning the 1850's civil war.  Perhaps I will hold onto it to work into that as some sort of a flashback.

It's been a cold weekend in Indianapolis.  We have been inside with the fire blazing and sipping hot drinks.  I have spent the time productively and am very close to finishing The Hen Frigate.  From The Hen Frigate it will be back to The Rosary.

I am very nearly done with the most recent draft of The Hen Frigate.  Usually when I bother to update this journal I am dissatisfied with the progress I have made of late.  That is not the case tonight.  I am very happy with what I have done in the last week.  I am especially happy with the edits I have made to some of the phrasing with which I was not satisfied.  This unusual optimism probably comes from seeing the end of a long journey.

The end of the journey brings with it the troubling question of what shall the next journey be?  I think that will be put off for a while in that The Widow of Concepcion needs further editing and a story that has yet to be fleshed out.

Another holiday season gone.  It is a time to clean and organize and get back into proper routines.  I have done some writing over the holiday season, but we have been so busy with other things this year that it does not feel like I have done much. I am very nearly done with what should be the final draft of The Hen Frigate.  I become depressed when I have finished a project, which is why I need something else to move onto right away.  In this case it will be The Rosary.  I need another short story after The Rosary and will have to start deciding on what that will be.  But, there is still plenty of time for that.

Boxing Day 2007

Today is the Feast of St. Stephen and my favourite day of the year.  It has been one year since I began this blog so in writing today's entry I have taken the time to review the past year. 

For all the lack of progress that I whine about in each entry, reflecting upon a year's work, I am quite pleased with how much I have accomplished.  Yes, it could always be more - but everything and everyone could always be something other than what it is.  I am editing The Hen Frigate and am also pleased with the content.  The sections I have been editing the last few days have a real flow to them.  It’s hard to say if it carries through the entire story.  I may never have the serious time needed to know.

Boxing Day is the day for leaving Alms for the poor.  We did something a little different this year.  We all made our own charitable donations instead of my doing it for the whole family.  This way we can all contribute to the causes we find important. 

The rest of the day is for relaxing and having fun.  And that is how I will be spending the rest of the day.

I have not made much progress on The Widow in the last couple of weeks.  I have been busy with work and getting ready for the holidays.  Shopping and decorating this weekend - a few minutes to update the web page and then back to the holidays instead of writing.  I have added some Christmas pudding to the home page.  I would like to do more to it, but with time being my scarcest resource (it is inversely proportional to money not being in that category) the web site usually falls to the bottom of the list.

One day, hopefully no more than five years from now, I will have more time for writing.  As I have mentioned here before, I have been toying with the idea for another book that is not a part of Napoleon's South America.  Of late the ideas have evolved around a fantasy concerning the meeting of Anglo-Saxon mythology with the Roman culture that had abandoned Briton prior to the Anglo-Saxon migration.  I am not sure exactly where it is going as I have not done any serious work on it.  Any time I have for serious work is devoted to The Widow of Concepcion.  That is the only way to get something done - just sit down and get on with it.

Still working on The Widow.  I am making good progress, but everything takes longer than planned.  Recently I have been distracted with Halloween.  The superstores are open and I have spent too much time and money on decorations.  Halloween always brings to mind thoughts of writing a horror story.  I don't want to become too distracted.  It would be a long time getting back into routine should I break off now to work on another story.

Still working on the draft of The Widow.  I was watching Pride & Prejudice on HBO yesterday and came up with an idea for another short story that could be included in the anthology.  However, it is a dueling story that would work well with Jean-Denis' dueling club and I am not sure I want another story like it so close together.  It could also serve as a sort of introduction or first part to A Duel Arranged.  However, doing that would mean changing some of the basic story structure.  I'll have to give it some thought.

Yesterday, at Half Price Books, I found Vicente Perez Rosales' Times Gone By.  I wish I had come across it years earlier.  It is an excellent resource for the the times and places of which I write.  His brief description of Santiago, Chile in 1814 is worth the price alone.

I have finished the umpteenth draft of A Duel Arranged and I am quite pleased with it.  I have also put the three stories together in a draft of The Widow of Concepcion and have decided that I need another story.  Maybe I could finish off The Mountain House.  The Widow of Concepcion has become an opportunity to polish off these many half-finished United Republics' stories that have been bouncing around my head for the last ten years.

I would like to move on and write about something else.  Perhaps finishing up The Widow of Concepcion will give me that opportunity.  My son and I put together some ideas for a pulp fiction series involving zombies in the Napoleonic Caribbean.  There are also several other ideas floating around that I would like to solidify.  Another one was a sword and sorcery type thing but being firmly grounded in Anglo-Saxon lore.

I have finished the first draft of The Rosary.  There is still a lot of work to do.  With the first draft I know what areas need more research.  With the second draft, I will either research those areas or find ways to write around them.

For The Rosary, the main areas of research are the history of monetary policy.  A central theme of the story is a forced change in currency and the resulting chaos.  President Bonaparte imposes a central currency on governments that had used their own. I need to find historical examples of this sort of situation so that I can apply the real-life results to my made-up history.  This year, a book was published in France about Napoleon's relationship with money.  I have not found an English translation yet, but I would like to read it before putting The Rosary to press.

I have two story ideas that revolve around the how currency and general finances of Napoleon's South America may have been managed.  The Rosary expands upon one of these ideas: the conversion of a conquered country onto a standard currency.  The other idea has to do with the initial funding of the United Republics and features Jerome Glassiere and some fairly disreputable acts for which he earned high office in the Republics.  It was Jerome's death during the events of The River Wolf that precipitated the beginning of the United Republic's end.

Having finished the first draft of The Rosary, I have created the first draft of The Widow of Concepcion.  It feels good.  It feels like progress.

With the transition from Spring to Fall, work on The Rosary has been slight.  School is out, we have taken our summer vacation, and we are getting the kids started in their summer activities.  It has not, I am sorry to report, left much time for writing.  Hopefully as new schedules are sorted out, we will be able to get back into a productive routine.

However, Harry Potter is a major presence in our household.  Less of a presence now than it was a few years ago, but still enough that we have to plan events around the movie and the book.  With that and a mini-vacation to visit the family in Toronto, I reckon July will be as busy as the end of May / beginning of June was.

C'est la vie.  However long it takes to get to paper, I am young and it is still all bouncing around my head, shouting to get out.

Nothing much to report beyond last week's entry - progress wise.  On the home front, we have laid our vacation plans, around which we must plan our summer.

I did want to acknowledge here that 5 May marks the 181st anniversary of the United Republics' of South America's Constitution Day and the 186th anniversary of what would have been Napoleon I's death had Lord Thomas Cochrane failed to rescue him from St. Helena.

 I have started a new writing schedule and it is working out very well.  For seventeen years I have risen early, made tea, and written.  Last year, Indiana made a pointless (read the statistics one year after the switch - no energy savings whatsoever) transition from God's Time to Daylight Savings Time.  I never did like the expression God's Time - but when put against Daylight Savings Time I will go for it.

As usual, I digress.  Daylight Savings Time has kicked my ass.  For sixteen years I enjoyed getting up long before sunrise in the cold, dark winter and at sunrise the rest of the year.  For three weeks out of the year, the sun rose before I did.  Now, with Daylight Savings Time, it is always dark when I get up in the morning.  I did not have a problem with this in the Winter, but now that it is Spring and Summer approaches too quickly, I am having trouble writing in the dark.  At this time of year I should be able to sit outside on the deck as the sun rises.

So, I tried something different and so far it is working.  I am sleeping in (until six o'clock most days - six twenty-two on weekends) and I am writing while sitting in bed between nine and eleven in the evening.  On one of the many evenings that I could not sleep, I brought the laptop to bed and was surprised how much work I did.  So I tried it again and it has now become a regular routine.

I'm sure this is all terribly fascinating, but in the last week I have been more productive and in a better sate of mind. I have made some good progress on the Rosary.  Once I have finished the first draft I am going to edit the Hen Frigate.

On an absolutely unrelated note, Sarah Bower's The Needle in the Blood is going on my must read list.  And so it goes.

I am well into the first draft of The Rosary and, as is usual in the process, have not written anywhere near as much as intended.  Lately the distractions have been birthday's, moving, and Spring cleaning.  It is mainly the latter in that we are doing quite a bit of work on the house this year.  We have lived in this house for twelve years.  As we all get older, we all require more work and greater expense to maintain.

St. Patrick’s Day 2007

I have started on the first draft of the short story that will round out The Widow of Concepción.  Its working title is The Rosary. It is to be a first person narrative written as if originally published in a Victorian era magazine.

I have wanted to write a first person narrative.  Twice now I have nearly re-written a project to first person narration.  Each time I was too far deep into the story’s structure for such a major change to work.

With The Rosary, I am going to begin it as a first person narrative.  It will be told by Augusto Isadora, Bronsan’s long-time clerk.  It will tell the story of Bronsan’s introduction to Augusto and will tie up a loose thread from Napoleon’s Wolf: the relationship between Bronsan and Fresia Vasquez.

I created Fresia Vasquez for Napoleon’s Wolf, but wish that I had thought of her for The River Wolf.  She should have played a much more significant part in the formation of the United Republics than she did.  I can only think that the reason she did not was her untimely demise.  But, I will have to see how The Rosary takes shape.

I have finished the fourth draft of The Hen Frigate.  It is late in the evening, too late, but I was so close to finishing that I just could not stop.  Tomorrow I will print it out so that I can start on the fifth draft.  The fifth edit will be to tighten and clean the story.  There will be a sixth draft but that will be a final edit and formatting.  At this pace it will only be another year before it is finished and I can start work on the short story that will introduce the anthology.

I am very close to finishing the fourth draft.  But, progress has slowed this week.  It has never taken this long to write so little.  There are simply too many distractions.  But, I will keep at it.  I am also thinking of ideas for the short story that will lead The Hen Frigate in the Widow of Concepción anthology and for some revisions (hopefully for the better) of A Duel Arranged that will follow The Hen Frigate in the same anthology.

I made tremendous progress of The Hen Frigate this week.  Looking forward to a productive week as Mardi Gras and Lent approach.

Sporadic progress on The Hen Frigate these last two weeks.  Not as much as I had hoped.  Aside from researching Anglo-Saxon history, work continues to be a major distraction.

Burns' Supper
Attended the Scottish American Club of Indiana's Burn's Supper last night.  Haggis with neeps, pipes & drums, sword dancing, whiskey, and poetry.  The Indiana Caledonia Pipe Band performed throughout the evening.  We had a wonderful time and by the end of the evening, when all in attendance joined hands for Auld Lang Syne, I was already looking forward to next year.

It puts me in mind of my Scottish heritage, something that I have sorely ignored in my writings.  Eligus Bronsan is a Cotswolder, taken from my father, who was born in raised in the same town as I chose to place Bronsan.  But, because Thomas Cochrane was so deeply Scottish and for the sake of advancing Bronsan's relationship with Napoleon, I made his mother French.

My mother was born in Glasgow.  She immigrated to Canada when she was in her twenties.  The Scottish American Club is a good way for her to socialize with like-minded Scots.  There is a character in there and there is 'one day.'  There is always 'one day.'

I have done some writing this week and made good progress of The Hen Frigate's third draft.  However, this weekend I became diverted by my Anglo-Saxon heritage.  Since high school I have written a series of short stories around the Anglo-Saxon pagans involving old magic and its demise at the hands of the Christians, blah, blah, blah.  It's nothing as grand as all that, just a story of a half-goblyn, half-aelven monster raised by Anglo-Saxon pagans as Christianity beats at their door.  To the pagans he is a god.  To the Christians he is of the devil.

I have never published any of these stories, but thought I might see about putting one out on the web site.

Saturday 6 January 2007
Twelfth Night (I think)

We are cleaning up and settling in after the holidays.  My deadlines for work have come and gone and I am working on re-establishing a routine that includes work on The Hen Frigate.

We just saw Perfume and I cannot recommend it.  I enjoyed it up to the end, but was unable to suspend disbelief and laughed out loud at the silly ending.  It did give me ideas for the Encapotados.  I may try working those into The Widow of Concepción anthology either in their own story or as a re-tooling of A Duel Arranged.

Boxing Day, 2006

 Boxing Day, December 26^th, has always been my favourite holiday of the year.  I love Christmas and Christmas Eve, and all that leads to it.  Boxing Day is the day when we relax and play with our new toys.

 Growing up in Canada and raised by British parents, we learned that Boxing Day was the Feat day of St. Stephen.  It was the day in which the wealthy passed the bounty of Christmas to the poor.   The name of the day refers to the alms boxes that were left at the Church for the poor.

 We celebrated the Boxing Day was always a holiday.  As a child we would spend the morning playing.  In the afternoon we would go downtown where all the stores were mob with shoppers seeking Boxing Day bargains. 

 In the evening we would celebrate the Feast of St. Stephen much as we celebrated the Feast Day of the Christ, but on a reduced scale.  The feast was leftover from Christmas, but there was food aplenty, and there were new deserts and candy.  And there was wine and beer – always plenty to drink.

 When we moved to the United States, I was surprised that Boxing Day was not a holiday, was not even particularly known, but was celebrated in exactly the same way.   Even though Boxing Day is not a holiday in the United States, I have always taken the day off work to ‘celebrate.’

 As an adult, I have taken more of the origin of the day to heart and I usually spend the first part of the morning writing checks for the year’s charitable contributions.  My motives are less than entirely charitable in that it is a good time of the year to look at our finances, including the tax benefits of these contributions.

 Boxing Day 2004 was ironic in that this was exactly what I was doing when I heard of the Indian Ocean Tsunami.  I made a substantial donation irregardless of taxes to the Red Cross that day.

 This year I intend to spend the day as any other Boxing Day.  I will take the day off work.  First thing in the morning I will leave alms boxes for the poor by writing a few checks.  While I take the day off work, I have never considered writing work (certainly never an effort although the editing process is another matter) and I intend to spend a couple of quiet hours, the first in many a day, working on the Hen Frigate.  Afterward, we will spend the day playing, relaxing, and eating.  Boxing Day is a good day.