Friday Flash - A Different New Year's Eve

Tweet My New Year themed Friday Flash can be found over at my Fowlis Westerby blog - simply click here to read A Different New Year's Eve!

In the event you'd like to read a more vintage Icy New Year flash, then New Year's Dance, my story from last year, starring Captain Scarlight and Methuselah, can be found here.

Happy reading, and Happy New Year!

Friday Flash - A New Recruit

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My darling Cavalier decided to dictate this week's Friday Flash, so you can find A New Recruit over on his blog!

As a side issue, the image comes from the Old Operating Theatre, an amazing little gem of a museum in Southwark, London. If you happen to find yourself in the area and you're in any way interested in the history of medicine, or the Victorians, then go and have a look. It's a fascinating place, and it was during the talk on surgery that Fowlis first started to tell me this story!

Friday Flash - A Gentle Nudge

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Fear not, gentle readers, while this post is not a Friday Flash itself, I do have one up this week - as it stars my dashing Cavalier, it's over on my Fowlis Westerby blog (would that make it a Westerblog?)

Here it is - A Gentle Nudge.

And yes, that is where I write - it's actually a small dining room table but I commandeered it as a desk. Aston is my editor and keeps an eye on me when I'm supposed to be working, and he's got his paw on the Complete Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens.

Friday Flash - Lone Vigil

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Original image by dragoroth-stock. Edit by me.

Fear not, dear friends, there is actually a Friday Flash, it's just not here this week. Instead, it can be found over on my brand new Fowlis Westerby blog since it features the fearless Cavalier!

In future I'll be posting his flashes on his blog, although I'll still be posting regular Friday Flashes here, along with my Monday Photo Prompts and any other nonsense I can rustle up during the week, including more deconstructions and deleted scenes!

As always, comments on Lone Vigil are welcome either here or there, but Fowlis would be exceedingly pleased to see you.

Friday Flash - The Duel

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A veil of fog hid Browning Hall from view. Disappointed tourists in brightly-coloured raincoats milled around on the lawn. They'd come early to avoid the crowds, but the English weather thwarted their plans to see the house in all its splendor with no people in the way.

Brenda Whitstaff weaved in and out of the throng, trying to usher her coach party into the house. They shooed her away, insisting that they wanted to see Browning's famous Palladian facade. The tourists looked this way and that, as if they expected the house to loom out of the fog.

It’ll be like something out of a Hammer flick if it does, thought Brenda.

"Excuse me? Excuse me? We want to see the house," said a rotund woman in green wellies. She pointed in the vague direction of the Hall.

"And indeed you can, Mrs Lazenby. But why not have a look inside the house while you wait for the fog to clear? They've got a fine collection of early Impressionist paintings, and they do lovely cake in the cafe," replied Brenda.

"We want to see the house," said the woman. Her mouth set in a firm line.

"Mummy! Look!" cried the little girl beside the woman. She tugged at her mother's sleeve.

All eyes followed the girl's finger. The swirling fog thinned over the lawn. Brenda made out a figure in the remaining mist. He was tall, wearing shiny knee high boots, and an enormous hat that was almost engulfed by the feather sweeping around its brim. A white collar spilled out of the fitted jacket that fell to mid-thigh. He leaned on a sword. Brenda could see the walled garden beyond the lawn if she looked through him.

"It's Charles I! It has to be!" exclaimed a woman to Brenda's right.

"No no no, Charles was a short man, very weak. This fellow is too tall," replied a red-haired man in plaid. He peered at the Cavalier over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses.

A second figure emerged from the mist, looming behind the Cavalier. Clad in full samurai armour, the newcomer raised a katana in a fighting stance that Brenda recognised from the movies. The samurai sprang forward. The Cavalier feigned surprise at the attack but swung his sword to meet the katana. The metal sang in the cool morning air. The samurai dipped and wove, his katana seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once. The Cavalier parried and thrust, the fresh sunlight glinting through his blade.

Silence fell among the tourists as they watched the battle. They stared with open mouths, unsure what to do. Some of them looked at Brenda, wondering if this was a new visitor experience put on by the owners of the Hall to boost numbers. She shook her head – this was new to her too.

The samurai lifted his arms to swing the katana in a killing stroke. The Cavalier darted forward, exploiting a tiny gap in the warrior’s armour. The Cavalier buried his sword up to the hilt. The samurai dropped his katana, wheeling around in a dizzy circle. Brenda saw the rest of the sword protruding from his back. The samurai dropped to his knees, and keeled over. The Cavalier looked down at his fallen opponent and bent to pull his sword free. The pair vanished from sight.

The tourists erupted in a clamour of questions and exclamations. Half of them crowded around Brenda for answers. The other half tottered around on the lawn, taking photographs and pointing at empty patches of grass.

* * *

"I say, old chap. Are you alright?" asked Fowlis Westerby. He stretched out a gloved hand to the samurai. The warrior accepted it, and clambered to his feet.

"Fine," replied the samurai.

"That was a most impressive show. Can't thank you enough."

"Is nothing. I won last time."

Fowlis chuckled, remembering their melodramatic duel in the ballroom at Chatsworth House. Then he remembered the sword through his gut and winced. The samurai might be the finest stunt actor in the afterlife, but he did get rather carried away.

"Until next time."

The samurai shook Fowlis' hand and winked out of sight, recalled to HQ for reassignment. Fowlis gazed across the lawn at the tourists, still gawping and snapping photos of thin air. He chuckled again. The story of a seventeenth century Cavalier and a seventh century Samurai having a fight to the death on the lawn of a nineteenth century manor would be all over the Internet by tea time.

That's sure to win me the title again, thought Fowlis.

He straightened his hat before he disappeared, bound for HQ.

* * *

This marks the third flash fiction outing of my Cavalier ghost, Fowlis Westerby. He's the star of his own supernatural YA novel, currently in the redraft stage. You can enjoy his other adventures here - First Impressions and The Priest Hole.

Friday Flash - The Priest Hole

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Pete threw down the EMF meter in disgust. The needle lay at the neutral end of the scale. Six hours of staring at it, and the damn thing refused to move. He hoped he could find the receipt when he got home.

Pete made another circuit of the room. His objects remained where he’d planted them. No footprints disturbed the flour sprinkled across the floorboards. The thermometer wouldn’t budge below a consistent 22°C.

He yanked open the door and stomped into the corridor. A trail of flour followed him down the hall.

“Hello? Who’s there? Is that a spirit?”

A voice called from the library. Melanie. The supposed psychic who called him in on the job to accompany her. Oh Bettley Hall is definitely haunted, she’d said. I felt a real presence when I went to see Lady Maude, she’d said. I’m sure we’ll have success this time, she’d said.

“No, Mel, it’s just me,” he replied.

“Oh.”

Pete pushed open the door to the library. Melanie sat cross-legged on the floor, a ouija board laid out in front of her. She sat at the northern point of a square formed along with her three assistants. The teenagers kept their black hair long and straight, and wore identical black outfits. They turned their sullen gazes towards him.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“Not as yet, although I’m still hopeful,” replied Melanie.

“I thought you said you’d felt a presence,” said Pete.

“I did. I can’t understand it, I thought we would have made contact by now. But there’s still time,” said Melanie.

“Still time,” echoed her assistants.

“It’s nearly dawn. We’ve been here for hours. Surely, if something was going to happen, it would have happened by now?”

“It’s your negative energy, that’s the problem. You’ve chased it away.”

“Oh really? Maybe I should go into exorcisms then.”

Melanie pouted. She leaned in toward the ouija board. Her assistants did the same, and they all laid their fingers on the glass.

“Would you mind leaving the room? I don’t want your negative energy blocking the spirit,” said Melanie.

Pete rolled his eyes and left the library. He walked back down the corridor to the morning room. Lady Maude claimed most incidents happened there. Disembodied voices, orbs, cold spots, floating body parts - Pete couldn’t think of a typical symptom of a haunting she hadn’t listed.

He retrieved the EMF meter from the floor under the table. He switched on his digital camera and waved the meter over it. The needle flickered, and dropped back to zero when he turned the camera off.

“So at least you’re working,” he murmured.

Pete checked his watch. Only an hour until dawn.

“Seriously, is there anybody there?” he called.

Nothing. The EMF meter remained quiet. Pete walked around the room, feeling for cold spots. He switched the camera back on and took a few aimless shots. He couldn’t see anything on the viewer but maybe something would show up on his PC.

Who am I kidding? There’s nothing here, he thought. I’m just a ghost hunter who can’t find any bloody ghosts.

The anticipation of the vigil had turned to boredom some time earlier, and Pete left the morning room again. Instead of turning left to the library, he turned right. The corridor crooked around a corner. Pete ducked under a cracked oak lintel into a narrow passage. Threadbare tapestries covered the panelled walls, and the pitted floorboards creaked beneath his boots.

Pete shivered. He guessed the passage led to the west wing, the original block of the house. Lady Maude told him the first Bettley Hall dated back to the Tudors, and the family harboured priests during Elizabeth I’s campaign to uncover Catholics.

Pete shoved his hands into his pockets. Puffs of his breath hung in the cold air. Pete wondered why Lady Maude never installed heating in this part of the castle. She could make a fortune renting it out as holiday accommodation.

The EMF meter crackled into life in his pocket. Pete pulled it out, feeling the cold nip at his fingers. The needle shot up the scale, buzzing around the upper level. Pete’s jaw dropped open.

A sharp knock made him jump. It came from the wall to his right. Pete swept the meter along the wall. The meter squealed when it reached a moth-eaten tapestry depicting a pregnant woman kneeling at an altar.

“Is there anybody there?”

“Succurro mihi.” 

The disembodied voice came from behind the tapestry. Pete held out a trembling hand. He fumbled with the edge of the fabric. Plain wood panelling lay behind the wall hanging.

“Wh-wh-where are you?” called Pete.

“Hic, hac.”

An opaque figure passed through the wall into the corridor. It wore the robes of a priest. A large crucifix hung around its neck. It turned its bald head to face Pete. He looked into empty, staring eyes of the apparition, and fainted.

* * *

Fowlis Westerby pulled off his ridiculous Tudor priest disguise. He straightened his hat and moustache. The Cavalier looked down at the pitiable ghost hunter at his feet.

“I do apologise, old boy. You’re just so much easier to scare when you’re not expecting to see anything.”

The ghost strolled down the corridor towards the library. The séance would surely net him scores of Scare Points.

* * *

The theme for this week’s flash came from the Write Anything Fiction Friday prompt, “Include this theme in your story… After a long night, a hunter sees something he/she cannot believe.” It also marks the second appearance of Fowlis Westerby on my blog – you can read his first appearance here. My beloved spectral Cavalier ghost stars in my very first novel, currently in the redrafting process.

Click here for more information on priest holes!

Waging War on the Editing Demon

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Back in November 2008, I finished writing my first novel. I already had two unfinished novels to my name, but I have to give some credit to NaNoWriMo for impelling me to actually get to 'The End' - without the daily 'deadlines' required to make the minimum 50,000 words by the beginning of December, I doubt I would have been able to maintain the impetus to get the story of Fowlis Westerby out of my head and onto the page.

The intervening time has seen me flirting with short stories, flash fiction and now a web serial, as I procrastinate like hell so I can avoid the dreaded 'rewrite' process. All of the writing manuals advise you to leave a manuscript to 'breathe' before you return to it, so as to develop some kind of distance from your own work and revise with a more objective eye, though I think eighteen months might be pushing it! Eisley Jacobs kindly wrote a guest post about her own editing process back in March but today I'm going to discuss my own process, and how it relates to my first novel.

Step one is easy - it involves printing out a hard copy of the whole manuscript. For the environmentally conscious among you, I did this using single spacing, a size 10 font and printing on both sides. (Helvetica was designed to be readable as small as 6pt, simply so that the writing in the New York phone book could be small enough to read, and thus stop the book being about a foot thick). I simply read through the manuscript, making comments and notes as I go. So far, it looks like I've scrawled 'expand' across most of it - NaNoWriMo is great for motivating you to get the words out, but in a lot of cases that's all I was doing; a general brain dump of ideas. Many scenes require expansion, or explanation. Even during this initial step, no matter how much I am tempted, I do no actual rewriting - not until I've read the original manuscript in full.

It is very tempting to rewrite as you go, but you can only get a 'bird's eye view' of the story as a whole when you read it 'as is'. You may fix what you think is a problem in the opening chapters only to discover you've created another one later on - by re-reading the whole thing, you may realise that what you think is a problem on page 10 is actually necessary for the events of page 98 to make sense.

This is the point at which I now find myself, with a hard copy covered in multi-coloured notes, comments and even doodles. The next step is go back through the work and actually do an initial rewrite to incorporate the comments I've made, including those dreaded expansions. I'm expecting the word count to shoot up, although the addition of new material will probably end up simply balancing out the elimination of the frequent adverbs I've found (I try hard not to use adverbs in my fiction these days, but apparently I still thought they were a good idea in 2008).

The thing that strikes me the most is that although there are passages that make me cringe, or sections where I can tell what I was getting at but now find the writing clunky or uninspired, I still enjoy what I've written. It's clear the point at which I really got into the story as the flow improves about a third of the way in, and the number of comments drastically reduces. I've even re-read these sections twice, to make sure I'm not just skipping the 'bad' parts in my desire to get it out of the way.

The writing is quite clearly 'mine', even though it has obviously both improved and matured in the course of almost two years. This does raise the question of whether or not my writing will change again by the time I've rewritten this draft! Could I get stuck in a cycle of always rewriting a draft, only to put it away, and come back to it to rewrite it again? This raises my final question, that I throw open to all writers (or even editors)...

Would it be possible to endlessly revisit the same manuscript and never declare it 'finished'? Furthermore, how many existing books could have been improved by just one more editing pass?

Shameless Self Promotion

Tweet Today, it is my turn to be unveiled as part of the new Chinese Whisperings project! It's really rather exciting, seeing oneself on a web page that's not yours (and, I would venture to guess, less confusing than seeing yourself appear someone distinctly unpleasant). If you'd like to take a look, have a wander over here, although it pretty much will redirect you back here! I even answered five questions on the website, the answers to which are here.

I feel like I'm bursting with ideas at the moment. I'm redrafting the third instalment of The First Tale, from my Tales from Vertigo City serial, and I'm redrafting my first novel, Fowlis Westerby. The redrafting process hasn't been as painful as I thought it might be, mainly because I did a lot of revision while I was still writing it (I know you're not supposed to, but yah boo sucks to the establishment). I do have a couple of plot holes I want to fill, and I want to expand a couple of secondary characters, but hopefully I'll have my first revision complete by the end of April, at the latest.

I've also got another idea floating around in my brain, but I'm letting it simmer just below the surface before I even attempt to get anything solid on paper. There is, after all, the possibility of biting off far more than I can chew...

I write, therefore I am...or something.

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Receptionists will tell you they are receptionists. Solicitors will tell you they are solicitors. Yet writers will tell you they're "trying to write", or they're "working on being a writer". They rarely own up to what they actually are. If you write, then you're a writer. It's that simple. (For a better explanation of this concept, see C.N.Nevets' post here on the same subject).

Funny thing is, I'm no better. I talk about being a writer, and I've even had work accepted, and yet I still have problems nailing my colours to the mast and saying "I am a writer". I'm not sure why. It's probably something to do with the difficulty in reconciling something most people see as a pasttime with a profession, and it's also something a lot of people say they're doing when, in actual fact, they're not doing anything. Still, I've sold a few of my stories and I write most days, which satisfies most criteria, but yet still the doubts remained unquenched.

Still, I've decided to redraft my first novel, and 2010 will be the year when I try to find it a home. With this in mind, I'd better learn to call myself a writer!

So I thought I might tell you a little about my book. I suppose it best comes under the young adult/middle grade umbrella, sitting squarely in the 'supernatural' camp. It's about a teenager named Sarah, who is growing up in the western Highlands under the far-from-watchful eyes of her socialite mother and scientist father. Sarah not only discovers that ghosts are real, they are also organised. She befriends the castle's ghost, a cavalier named Fowlis Westerby who has been assigned to her family. When things go wrong at the ghostly HQ, Sarah and Fowlis have to team up to straighten everything out.

I'm really proud of it as it stands, but I know it needs work. Luckily I think I know how to solve the few plot niggles, and once I'm done, Sarah will be getting her own blog. I may even given Fowlis his own Twitter feed. Before you scoff that spirits can't use computers, I shall direct you to watch Ghost!

Right, I'm off to do some editing. Have an excellent day, people!