It would be easy to assume that I have the time to do exactly what I want, when I want to: I’m the boss around here, right? In a sense that is true. But I am also very aware of the promises I’ve made, on both sides of the desk, and so very behind on all of them. I continually try to do too much.

Most importantly, for our purposes here now, I’m way behind in the study. The one-year anniversary of the release of The Shadow of the Sun is next month, and I’m still writing the sequel. In fact I’m writing the next two books simultaneously, for a variety of reasons I don’t have time to get into here–some of which are discussed in the previous post. And this week I found a new way to put more pressure on myself. Yeah, I’m pretty good at that.

This week, in the midst of planning a scene in the third novel (which is what I’m supposed to be working on) I realized that I had overlooked some details of the wider story when I was developing one of the act breaks of novel #2: seemingly small details of what-else-is-going-on, natural outgrowths of a plot development that will take place entirely off-camera but which will matter late in novel #3. It would be out of character for either of the PoVs I am writing on this pass to have overlooked those details; it was obvious, as soon as I’d realized the omission, that I must go back and weave those details in.

So far, not so bad, right? I went back into Novel #2, right before the act break in question, and began looking at how the facts would play into those scenes. A whole group of new players had to be brought onto the stage; I had to stop and work out a couple aspects of worldbuilding I’d been mentioning but not fleshing out, even in my head, and then weave them in. Took me a precious day, but the results were well worth it.

And then my two PoV characters were in the same room, and interacting, and suddenly I found myself tripping over the edge of a veritable plot sinkhole.

Oh, yes, I know this territory. I was skirting the edges of one of the central problems of the series, a piece of backstory that I won’t otherwise be addressing for another two novels. This problem is the Third Rail of this part of the series: both an engine that drives major stretches of story and a thing that is so deep and complex that to touch it is to immediately lose all forward momentum. It’s a mind-trap.

And I don’t have time for that right now. I’ve got to get a novel out.

All the pro writers in the room are nodding vigorously: they’ve all been here. The wisdom of the deadline tells us to step away at this point, to slap a bit of paint on that scene and go make the deadline. By last night I had talked myself around to that position, promising myself a nice stretch of open weeks to do nothing but solve this problem right before beginning work on Novel #4, and resolved to come into the study this morning and start slapping on the paint.

I couldn’t quite do it. I convinced myself to look up one more thing while I ate my breakfast in front of the computer. That was the Muse whispering into my ear, of course; in short order I was entirely seduced by the tantalizing closeness of understanding. I learned things about the classical references I’m working from this week of which I had been completely unaware; it sucked me in, and I dug around in references, and gradually throughout the course of the day I built the framework I needed to do justice to this half a scene I need to finish before moving forward.

It ate the day. By this evening I was once again flagellating myself for allowing myself to get sucked into the seduction of research.

But then something magical happened. I sat down, “last thing before calling it another wasted day”, and made notes on the scene I was planning. And what I realized I had pieced together in the back of my brain was not merely something that would fill the rhythmic hole in character interactions that I couldn’t go forward without addressing–but something that offered an entirely new lens on not one but both of the primary plots’ conflicts in this novel.

I couldn’t have planned that, not with the left side of my brain. But the right side, the Muse, is smarter than me–as usual.  I had almost forgotten the importance of allowing myself the time to do things right. I had nearly fallen into the trap that separates the guild craftsman from the artist. And now I am reminded of the critical importance of following the instincts I spent so many years developing.

We all have those instincts, that knowledge of what is necessary. Sometimes there’s a lot of pressure on us to push those instincts aside in the interests of doing what we think is expected of us. But those slow-moving instincts are the source of the art we create, and we try to push them aside or put them on schedules at our artistic peril.

But I’m still behind, and so I have to race on again. As quickly as my slow creative brain can.

Meanwhile, I’m coming up to the halfway point, what will henceforth be known as the book break, of two of the three threads I’m writing in these two novels.  At this point I’m a little more than two chapters from the end of the first two threads in this (second) novel–with nothing written on the other thread. And yes, you read that right, above. I’m staring down 120K words. Good thing saner people persuaded me to split this novel.

For better or worse, I’m now writing two novels simultaneously: when I finish these two threads I’m working on in Novel #2, I will jump right into developing these same two threads in Novel #3. Because, absent the limitations of print publishing, Novels 2 and 3 would be one book, and that’s still how they work in my head. And I must write sequentially.

Of course, absent the limitations of print publishing, all three of these novels (The Shadow of the Sun being the first) would be one book. It would be 800K words long. How big a surprise can that be? My sentences go on like normal people’s paragraphs.

But I digress, as usual.

I am pleased by the way this novel is unfolding. It’s deeper and darker than Shadow, and because it’s the second of a series it doesn’t have the longish set-up period of the first. Things go absolutely to hell within the first twenty pages. And I hope that most people will be surprised by most of it.

Most of it surprised me.

The result? Books like my The Shadow of the Sun, which has sold nicely, is in hundreds of libraries worldwide, is up for the Compton Crook–and has only one review by a troglodyte. Seriously, go look. The reviewer didn’t even read the book.

I can tolerate it when a reader just doesn’t like my work. My work isn’t for everyone. Hey, I even kept my chin up after Publishers Weekly hit me with that right cross. But people who not only form but publicize opinions based on their own neuroses…that bugs me.

But I digress, as usual.

Here’s my point, buried in paragraph 5 (also as usual): Reviews still matter. You know that; every time you look at a book on Amazon, you also check out the reviews. We all do. And Shadow has no useful reviews, which is of no help whatsoever to prospective readers. Please, if you have read the book, whether you think it was the greatest contribution to fantasy literature ever or believe no evil like that should ever be perpetrated on the reading public again, please stop by and leave a few lines of opinionation on the Amazon sales page.

Please. Don’t let someone who formed an opinion on the basis of the back cover copy have the last word.

Okay, I’m pretty weird by anyone’s standards, but until recently there was a huge hole in my geekish education: I’d never played a roleplaying game, and the last computer- or console-based game I’d spent any serious time with was built on ASCII characters. (Rogue, anyone? Oops, I’ve just dated myself.) I had no idea what a huge part of the storytelling universe just wasn’t on my radar.

Fortunately, I’ve got friends & associates who can spot the need for an intervention. In recent months I’ve come to realize that games can take story into territory that the written word alone can’t accomplish. And in typical obsessive fashion, I’ve been sucking up knowledge in this area as fast as I can digest it: reading; picking the brains and observing the work of some very generous gaming masters; learning by doing in cooperation with the guys from Cliche Studio, who helped me develop two games for my Way of the Gods universe. And I’ve been regaling anyone who was too polite to send me on my way with tales of this fascinating new (?!) area of my storytelling life. Just in case I’m not the only writer who has managed to overlook the wonder of gaming as it relates to story and doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, here’s the meat of it.

Written stories—and film, by the way—have the ability to deliver a carefully-crafted glimpse into lives we would never otherwise know. They deliver a sort of vicarious experience, and they excel at communicating *meaning*. In the end, I think, that’s the most powerful thing those sorts of presentations can give their audiences: ideas and events that resolve in ways we can digest, can experience without real risk, can derive meaning from when real life frequently leaves us wondering what the *point* of it all may be. If the writer has done her job right, we carry the memory of that vicarious experience and the meaning we’ve derived with us long after we close the book or leave the theatre.

Where game excels, it seems to me, is in the arena of *experience*. When we read a story, that is not the same thing as living a story. When we write a novel, we’re delivering one story, more or less, even though each reader will take it in according to her own mindset. But when we craft a game, we create a cloud of possible experiences. In some cases, when the game we craft involves roleplaying, among the experiences we offer others is the opportunity to build and participate in wholly unique stories that will never exist except in that time and place. Game masters create stories, create the frameworks for experiences, within the frameworks game designers create. They are telling stories to the people with whom they game. And those gamers are also creators of the stories they experience: they frequently create their own characters, and they change the game the game master originally conceived with the choices they make.

In game, there’s not usually an audience in the typical sense. You don’t go to a tabletop gaming session to watch a story play out, but to help create it. The satisfaction arises not from the game’s completeness and evident meaning—neither of which a game necessarily delivers, or even really promises to—but rather from the experience of participating in it.

In a sense writing a novel is “high art”, while participating in a game that offers story is “arts and crafts”: games matter to us because they are our own experiences, our own creative expression, rather than because they are likely to please a disinterested observer. I see written stories, film, and game as parts of a continuum of ways we can experience stories, parts of a continuum of ways artists can share their conceptions with others.

To me this is the essence of the thing people mean when they talk about “transmedia”, and I believe game—true, usefully participatory game, as distinguished from the thinly-disguised advertising so many media tie-ins are guilty of—allows the story to become something we can participate in. It allows us to experience the story world, almost as if we could actually enter it.

Recently I talked with Elizabeth Campbell of Darkcargo about my explorations and the things I’ve been learning about story and game. She remains one of the most penetrating interiewers I know, and she made me have a number of new thoughts on this fascinating new-to-me medium in the process of our conversation. You can see what we talked about here.

Meanwhile, I’m going back to the studio. I’ve got this great idea for another game…

One fine morning, the old bull and the young bull stood together on a hill overlooking the pasture, which was full of cows. The young bull got very excited.

“Look at all those cows!” he said. “Let’s run down there and f*ck one of ‘em!”

“No, son,” the old bull replied. “We’re gonna walk down there and f*ck ‘em all.”

Time to walk back down to the pasture. I’ve got a lot to do.

From their website:

The Compton Crook Award is presented to the best first novel of the year written by a single author: collaborations are not eligible: in the field of Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror by the members of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, Inc., at their annual Baltimore-area science fiction convention, Balticon, held on Memorial Day weekend in the Baltimore, MD area each year.

So what happens now?

The members of the award committee read the books that have been nominated. The committee will present a short-list of finalists to the BSFS membership early in March 2012.  The membership then has a month to read any books they’ve missed and make their final scores.  The winner is known early in April but kept from the membership in general, so they will be surprised at the convention when the winner is announced.

It’s a cliche, but it’s true: it’s a huge honor just to have been nominated for the award, and I’m beyond thrilled. (And everyone who is nominated hopes to win!)

As is the norm with these things, Mercury Retrograde will be providing the BSFS with a number of copies of The Shadow of the Sun, in Trade Paper and eBook formats; so if you’re a member, this may be your chance to lay hands on a free copy.

In any event, keep your fingers crossed for me.

The writers among you will surely find ideas worth stealing. For everyone interested in such things, it’s a cool lens into an artist’s process.

“Some scenes just deserve a sound track. I don’t care where you find them; whether it’s on the big screen or in a many-thumbed favorite novel, or an emotion-invoking short tale. Some scenes are easy to match to music, no matter what ilk they take, like ball room dances (think string quartets) and sunsets (sweeping voiceless G-rated tunes). Yet  some of my favorite reads, and indeed some specific characters, have their own sound tracts.”

She goes on to list some of the music she matches with her favorite books and characters, from a fan’s perspective. It made me wonder what songs the writers among us linked to their own works.

What music goes with your characters and scenes?

btw, be sure to stop by Darkcargo and weigh in on your fangirl/fanboy music match-ups.

Did I mention the Faerie programming?

–you should definitely come out.

Here’s what I’ll be doing this weekend:

Breathing New Life into the Fae–6 pm Friday: A workshop on breaking free of the tired and cliche in Faerie-influenced stories by tapping into the wild, diverse, and under-used depth and breadth of the Faerie storytelling tradition.

Faerie Storytelling–9 pm Friday: A group reading with Mercury Retrograde Press authors of their faerie-influenced work. I’ll be bringing a sneak peek at War-Lord of the Gods.

Develop Your Story and World Through Games–12 pm Saturday: A workshop on using games to create better, richer stories and deeper worlds. I’ll be bringing current work on my new Tarot-based game (developed by Cliche!) as a case study.

Writing Meetup–2 pm Saturday: This is hosted by the con, but it’s open to the public. You can attend whether you purchase a con membership or not. Come meet fellow writers! I’ll bring something to read as an ice-breaker. You can make that unnecessary.

New Realities for Writers–1 pm Sunday: A program on the choices available to writers in this rapidly-changing market. I am of the opinion that publishers can perform important services for readers and writers alike, but are no longer strictly necessary. Discuss.

Off the Radar Books–3 pm Sunday:Readers get together and discuss books they love that no one else seems to have heard of, so other readers can find out about new and wonderful things to read. Bring your list of undiscovered gems!

Meanwhile, today, here’s an article in Forbes: Why (Some) Psychopaths Make Great CEOs. Now, doesn’t that sound like a fantastic villain? So I finally wandered off and looked up the oft-referenced Hare Psychopathy Checklist.

Here are the components, for your villainous pleasure. For each characteristic that is listed, the subject is given a score: 0 for “no,” 1 for “somewhat,” and 2 for “definitely does apply.” According to Ronson, the author of  The Psychopath Test, “Somebody you have to be wary of would be in early 20s and a really hard core damaged person, a really dangerous psychopath, would score around a 30. In law the cutoff is 29.”

A brief description of each of these metrics appears here.