My first ever video to you all. An update on how things are going. I thank you so much for your support!
Love you all!
~Emz
I got a reader question that I thought I’d answer here. I think maybe it will be helpful to all of you writers looking for some angst!
Emerian,
I love your vampire series and am halfway through Artistic License. How do you gear up for a fight scene? Is there anything you do in particular that puts you in the fight state of mind? Thank you for writing. You’ve made me want to read again.
Josh
Josh, thank you so much! You don’t know what an email like this means to me. If I can put just a little pleasure into readers lives, I have done my job!
Now, on the conversation about how to get in gear for a fight scene, here is my secret. I have a list of songs and artists that I listen to whenever I am upset with someone or something. They are songs that help me release my anger without doing something stupid like slashing the jerk’s tires or punching him/her in the face. When I encounter such a day, if I can I will write. I can usually get some really good fight scenes out of that. If I can’t write – like if I am on my way home from work in the car – I will listen to my angry music. This does two things…
Have you ever heard a song on the radio and it reminded you instantly of a time in the past when you were in love or going through a death in the family? It’s the same concept.
I advise you to make your own “Angry Song” list, but to help out, I have listed a handful of mine. I invite you to comment on your favorite Angry Songs!
Blood in My Eyes – Limp Bizkit, Disturbed, Godsmack
Let the Bodies Hit the Floor – Drowning Pool
F*ck U – Lily Allen
The Way I Am – Eminem
Bullet in the Head – Rage Against the Machine
Sway – Coal Chamber
Down with the Sickness – Disturbed
Head Like a Hole – NIN
I’m with Stupid – Static-X
Everything About You – Ugly Kid Joe
Goodbye You Suck – Shiloh
I’ve just spent four days working birth, death, and time period math. Not fun. Especially when I despise math!
Word to the wise. When setting up a story, set out all the time frames and player’s lives before you begin… or at least shortly after you begin. I have found this many times with my writing. When I was a beginning writer, I just wrote characters… I knew who they were and where they were going and a little about where they came from. Unfortunately, if your character becomes the star of an unexpected series, you will need to have their back stories well in hand.
For Night’s Knights, this presented a problem when I was recently asked how a certain character, Sandro, became a vampire and what his maker was like. You see, I thought I was smart. I mapped out the vampire family tree before I finished the book. I had names and thought a little about their backgrounds. What I didn’t think about was time periods, what was happening in the world at the time and how a 4th generation vampire came from the spawn of Satan even though that spawn of Satan had been in human form while that 4th generation vampire was still a mortal. Yeah… figure THAT one out!
Boy, did that one take awhile to figure out. Sure, it made for an excellent plot twist, but trying to retrace your steps and make all the dots connect sucks!
I recently ran into this same problem with the AL project. Without giving too much away, this story takes place in 1912, briefly in 1978, and in 2011 (or present day). When I began the tale, I just figured the magic in the tale would take care of itself, but recently I’ve realized, it doesn’t. And backtracking ain’t fun guys and gals. So do your math first… sketch your characters out (even if you have them in your head), and know when they were born, how old they are, when they died, and who their parents were before you cement your tale. Especially if it’s a sort of multiple time period piece… otherwise you’ll spend four days working out the math and may realize your dates and characters are off! Needless to say…. changes must be made!
Maybe one day I will share my genius charrie book format with you. o.o
Tonight started as a day all of us entertainers, authors… heck, computer users DREAD.
The day you have a long list of things to catch up on and you push the on button to your computer and zap! Nothing happens.
I couldn’t believe it. I did all the normal things… turned it off and on… hit the magic “reset” button… left it alone for awhile and came back… NOTHING!
I had given up… and in giving up, knew that these things wouldn’t happen:
What a sad and most horrible day for this to happen!!!
But now I’m on, you say. What effected the change?!
Three hours later, I switched it on to take a picture of the screen it kept being stuck on and sha-zam… up pops the beautiful Black Butler desktop image I hold so dear to my heart. “Sebastian!!!” I squealed. (Yes… I do tend to talk to my computer screen when in crisis!) “Sebastian! You’re back!”
Needless to say, Sebastian and I got right to work.
Barring any computer issues, the Season Finale of Horror Addicts – #45 with Phil Rossi & Outworld will be posted tomorrow night and well… with all the computer drama I went through tonight- 5 out of 7 tasks completed ain’t bad honey!