story: strange bedfellows

Tag: story: strange bedfellows

ROW80: In Which Lena Vanquishes Her To-Do List

Yup, you read that right. My massive summer to-do list has been conquered. Given that it’s been almost a month since my last check-in, it’s really exciting to have good news to report. Here’s the Awesome List of Success:

This is what happens when I am stressed and trying to procrastinate, and the cat decides he wants to distract me.

Day Job: I wrote my Very Big Paper, which ended up being 45 pages on the history of Catholic sisters in the United States during the nineteenth century. Next, I finished the Paper From Hell, a 16 page paper on conduct literature that included lots of social theory and more big words than you can shake a stick at. And Tuesday night I hammered out a 3.5 page dissertation mini-proposal, complete with some preliminary research questions and a tentative chapter outline. Add in the 6 hours of archival research I’ve been doing each week, and you have one very, very vanquished to-do list.

Now that all the hard work is out of the way, I can head back to Santa Barbara and meet with my dissertation committee next week for my “little conversation,” the final requirement that I need to advance to doctoral candidacy. Accomplishing that means that I’ve jumped all the institutional loopholes — coursework, papers, and all that jazz. In other words, the only thing standing between me and my PhD is the dissertation.

Writing: I didn’t get a chance to talk about this, since I’ve been stuck in the writing cave for the last few weeks, but I did end up winning Camp NaNoWriMo. STRANGE BEDFELLOWS is the poster child for the zero draft, with plotholes wider than the Grand Canyon, inconsistent characterization, and a million other problems, but I think there’s a fairly strong skeletal structure underneath it all. And, you know, it’s like 66k long, and I can’t complain about that.

For fun, and to keep up my writing momentum, I thought I’d try out my first round of Fast Drafting with a nugget of an idea that’s been nagging at me for a few months. (Yes, I am an overachiever. And yes, I am quite clearly a glutton for punishment.) I’ve fallen off the Fast Draft train over the last couple of days, derailed by migraines, the Paper From Hell, and my dissertation mini-proposal, but I am going to try to get back on track over the next day or two. Right now this little project (tentatively titled SOMEWHERE IN THE WEST) has a little over 17k — nowhere near my original goal, but still pretty awesome.

Exercise: I really fell off the wagon in terms of eating well and exercising, but my mom and I have a new plan that we have been implementing for the last couple of weeks. We are now walking 5 days a week, a minimum of 2 miles each day, and we’ve eliminated all the sweet, sugary things from the grocery list. I’m seeing a tiny difference, which will hopefully become a much larger difference in the weeks to come.

Social Media: My blog reading and commenting has been sporadic, I’ve been pretty quiet on Twitter, but I’ve been hanging out on Facebook a little more often. I’ve got a few blog posts drafted, so I might be able to start blogging again in October. This, of course, depends on whether or not I can have some time to unwind and chill out.

-oOo-

At the moment, my most immediate goal is to deal with my “little conversation” next week, and then to spend the rest of September doing nothing but gorging myself on novels, naps, and video games. I will also be carving out time to blog-hop and respond to comments, something that has been next to impossible with my brain all messy and overwhelmed, and my internal settings set to so-anxious-can’t-even-breathe.

Once again, Napoleon is my mentor in the art of leisure.

So yay! How is everyone doing? I’ve missed you all a ton! This ROWnd is winding down, but I’m hoping to wave at all my fellow ROWers in the days to come.

The Sunshine Award, and 7 Random Writing Facts

April 27, 2012 / Lena Corazon / 16 Comments

It’s been ages since I’ve written a post for Fiction Fridays, but I have an awesome excuse to do so this week: I’ve been given the lovely Sunshine Award from a few of my wonderful writing friends, and I’ve been tagged to take part in the “7 Facts” meme. Somewhere along the way, the latter morphed into the 7 Writing Facts meme, and that’s what I’m doing with it today.

First up, the Sunshine Award. Lynette Conroy, Em, and Shah Wharton were all gracious enough to pass this cheery award along to me. Many thanks, ladies!

The award requires that I answer the following 10 questions, and pass the award onto 10 more recipients. I’ll be passing the award along on Sunday as part of my ROW80 check-in. In the meantime, here’s the required Q&A:

Favorite color: It has, and always will be, deep, dark royal purple.
Favorite Animal: One word: SLOTHS. I know, you are shocked.
Favorite number: I rather like the number 9.
Favorite non-alcoholic drink: Tea. More on that in the 7 Facts below.
Facebook or Twitter: This is a toughy, ’cause I use them both but in very different ways. Facebook is where I find out about babies being born and childhood friends getting married. Twitter is where #teamsprinty gets into trouble and I catch up with my online buddies. Let’s call it a draw.
My passion: Letting my imagination run wild and creating stories out of the wreakage. Also, submersing myself in research, teaching college kids how to hone their critical thinking skills, and working towards social justice.
Getting or giving presents: Oh, very well, I’ll be honest — I LOVE getting gifts. So much fun. 😀
Favorite Pattern: I have a serious “thing” for art nouveau patterns of all kind, especially if they involve peacock feathers. The print below, taken from Eugène Grasset’s L’animal dans la décoration (1897), is a good example.
Favorite day of week: Friday, because there is an entire weekend that stretches before me, filled with all sorts of wonderful possibilities for relaxation, merry-making, and potentially-disastrous fun.
Favorite flower: Orchids, most specifically the phalaenopsis.

-oOo-

Next up, the Seven (Writing) Facts.

Because I am feeling silly, these are numbered in Tagalog, or as I like to call it, the “Father-tongue” (my dad’s from the Philippines). Enjoy!

Isa. When I was younger, writing was like a grown-up version of playing pretend. It gave me the chance to explore different careers and life paths, and to envision a world beyond the mind-numbing dullness of middle school and high school (oh, the joys of being way more mature than everyone else). As a result, almost everything I wrote between the ages of 12 and 22 were self-insert fics. Now that I’m more or less a grown-up person, self-insert fics are unnecessary, and all of my characters are original. Each of my female protags, however, have a teeny bit of me in them.

Dalawa. I have a soft spot in my heart for fan fiction. My earliest stories revolved around 90s boy bands. This includes the only story I have ever finished, the creatively-titled “Fan Fiction #3,” where my 3 best friends and I (the multi-platinum selling girl band, Eclypse) go on tour with ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys only to have hilarity and chaos ensue. These days, I’m more likely to read fan fiction than write it — the Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and X-Men fandoms are my favorites — but I will admit to having recently penned a couple of DA stories. I will also admit that TELL ME NO LIES began as a fan fiction, but has been considerably revamped over the last few years. 😛

Tatlo. Music drives my writing. I have playlists for every story, for individual characters, for relationships, and for specific scenes. There’s something really visceral about music that helps me to tap into emotion, and allows me to envision characters and their respective worlds. TELL ME NO LIES features an odd blend of late 90s alternative rock, Americana/folk, and country; PATH TO THE PEACOCK THRONE is all about Celtic music of the Loreena McKennitt/Cara Dillon variety; and STRANGE BEDFELLOWS is driven by ancient Mediterranean-inspired music, especially the Gladiator soundtrack and anything by Lisa Gerrard/Dead Can Dance.

Apat. In addition to music, my muse requires copious amounts of tea. Black Currant-flavored black tea is my absolute favorite, but I also love Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Jasmine Green, and Ginger teas. After 5 pm, however, it’s all about cocktails. Here, I defer to Hemingway’s advice.

Source: tumblr

Lima. Growing up, it always bothered me that I rarely found books with characters who looked like me or shared my background. As a result, most of my characters are people of color, and I try to create worlds (especially in my fantasy novel) that aren’t based on a western European model. I think a lot about the social location of my characters as well. Some occupy positions of relative privilege (Liandre from PPT and Alaia from SB, both royalty, fit here), while others, like Tempest from TMNL, find themselves on the margins of society. So social inequality, in whatever form, is something that’s always in the back of my mind when I write, along with the creative ways in which I can challenge those inequalities. Above all, I am deeply interested in the ways in which my characters draw upon their own strengths and agency to navigate worlds that attempt to constrict their freedom (that’s the feminist studies scholar in me, I think).

Anim. I used to think that my training as a social scientist, with all of its emphasis on method and theory, rationality and objectivity, was a roadblock to my endeavors in creative writing, but I’ve found that the exact opposite is true. The sociological imagination, as we call it, is really useful, especially when it comes to world-building. It allows me to look my characters and their personal problems, and understand how those problems are related to the larger social issues within their worlds. I am constantly thinking about the social institutions, practices, norms and values that structure their lives. Even better, those theoretical paradigms that I once dismissed are actually really handy. Marxist theories of conflict, along with issues of social location and position that emerge in feminist theory, are particularly relevant in TMNL; Emile Durkheim’s work on the “elementary forms of religious life,” as well as queer and feminist critiques of marriage, are instrumental in PPT.

Hugh Jackman, the man behind the character.

Pito. I’ve been ~~obsessing over~~ ~~abusing~~ writing the same character, Pierce, for the last ten years. He is an amalgamation of Hugh Jackman, the various characters that Hugh has portrayed, and my own devious imagination.

Pierce has been everything from an 18th-century Scottish warrior, modern day English duke, divine and omnipotent ruler of the universe, criminal profiler, brooding dom, sexy submissive, gentle painter and gardener, semi-perfect husband/father of five, and countless other things that I have doubtlessly forgotten. He is the (fictional) love of my life, and is currently more than a little put out that I have decided to place two other novels before his. But one of these days I will get to STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, where he is a rebel prince turned plaything to the imperial princess, and he will have his time in the spotlight.

ROW80: Wrapping Up Round 3

September 22, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 9 Comments

With my mom in town and school starting back today, it’s been a busy few days since our last check-in. Mom and I have been out every day except for Wednesday, I’ve been doing a ton of driving for all of our adventuring, and I had a major case of the freak-outs yesterday, when I saw the syllabus for one of my classes (so many books and articles, I think my eyeballs will roll out of my head by December). I calmed myself down by remembering that this really isn’t anything new, but yikes, it was definitely a scary moment.

But onto fun things! Today marks the end of ROW80’s Round 3, and it is both an exhilarating and bittersweet feeling. Reflecting on Round 3, I’ve come to appreciate all the more the length and nature of this writing challenge. Having 80 days to work towards a set of goals, and being encouraged to be flexible with them if necessary, has been exactly what I’ve needed.

These were my initial goals for Round 3 (I actually had to look them up, because I changed them more than once, and forgot what the original ones were):

Write an average of 500 words/day on any project. This means that I’m doubling my Round 2 word count goal, which makes me slightly nervous, but we’ll see how it goes! I found myself exceeding the original 250 words/day goal consistently, so I don’t think this increase will be too burdensome.

Complete Act 2 of Path to the Peacock Throne, and resist the urge to do too much editing to Act 1.

Move from brainstorming and world-building tell me no lies to working on the first draft.

I ended up exceeding the daily word count quite a bit when I tackled CampNaNo in August. While I didn’t complete Act 2 of PATH TO THE PEACOCK THRONE, I did write over 50k for TELL ME NO LIES, which was a feat in and of itself. I also wrote roughly 13K for STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, although I’ve placed that on the back-burner for the moment.

I had a few other goals for the summer, in particular finishing the 1st draft of my MA thesis. I haven’t finalized the draft, but I did manage to write over 12.5K, retool the theoretical framework, and outline the remainder of the “results” section. I was feeling a little down about not having everything finished and wrapped up. However, I ran into my advisor at the grocery store the other day (oh, the perils of going to school in a small town), who told me to “take my time” finalizing the project. Definitely lifts a little of the pressure off my shoulders, though I do have my own timeline (defending by December?) that I’d like to maintain.

So that’s Round 3! Lots of success, lots of challenges, and lots of surprises. The best part, though, are all of the wonderful people I have met along the way, and who have been an amazing source of support and inspiration. I’m looking forward to ROCKING THE ROW with all of you when Round 4 starts on October 3rd!

In the meantime, I’m off for a visit with my younger sister this weekend, and to have a bit more fun with my mom before she returns back home next Wednesday. After that, it’ll be back to the grind of studying, thesisizing, teaching, and hopefully squeezing in time to work on my WIPs. I haven’t actually written much of anything in the past two or three weeks, and it’s starting to make me feel a little crazy.

I have a few ideas for my Round 4 goals, and I as I’ll be taking Kristen Lamb’s “Blogging to Build Your Brand” class, I’m sure some of these goals will include retooling and refining my blog. I also need to figure out which project I’m going to tackle for November’s NaNoWriMo, but I’ll be chatting more about this once October rolls around.

That’s all for now, ROW80 friends (you can find everyone here). Hope to see you all on October 3rd!

ROW80 Check-in: Exploring “Hell’s Half-Acre”

August 14, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 31 Comments

Summer marches on, and now that grading is through, life is calming down a bit. I spend my days writing and dealing with the family, and by the time I fall into bed, I’m usually exhausted. But I’ve reached 21k on tell me no lies, I’ve outlined and organized the next chapter of my thesis, and I’ve managed to spend time with friends and family, so I think I’ve been fairly successful in terms of progress. However, I’m starting to feel like I’m spending way too much time on the computer, so I’m going to have to unplug sometime soon and just read a book.

A sketch of Barbary Coast, circa 1889

I took a little time out yesterday to return to the San Francisco Chronicle‘s digital archives and poke around a bit. In my last round of research I spent time poring over crime reports, but this time I did a search for any mention of the Barbary Coast, and whoa. I was worried that my depiction of the Barbary Coast was too dark, but after reading these articles, I’m actually wondering if it’s dark enough.

A sketch of "Cutthroat Alley," circa 1889

By the late 1880s, the Barbary Coast was reportedly much calmer than during the wild west days of yore. Still, judging from these articles, conditions were still deplorable. Vice, murder, theft, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, suicide, child abuse… all of these were commonplace in “Hell’s Half-Acre.” Men were violent, women were loose, brassy and bold. It’s easy to imagine a serial killer at work in these parts, preying on ladies of the stage. Better yet, my MC, Tempest Dumont, would have totally fit in with her swearing, boozing, flirting ways.

One of the "battle-axes" of the Barbary Coast

This passage from an 1889 article, “Hell’s Half-Acre: Sights and Scenes on the Barbary Coast,” totally sums up the vibe that I’ve been going for in my WIP:

Entering a saloon on Kearny street near Jackson, on the east side, there were found about half a dozen horribly dissipated looking hags seated at tables with men of the same general appearance of themselves. Gin, rum, and bad beer had painted all of their faces of a lurid hue, the faithful reflex of evil passions within. “These,” said the guide, as he pointed to the women, “are the ‘battle-axes’ or ‘blisters’ of Barbary. They live on drink, you may say, and spend about half their time in jail.”

The scene actually reminds me of Roarke’s, the local bar where my characters hang out. It’s a rundown, ramshackle dive where the company is questionable and the only beer on tap is little better than bitter swill, much different from the glitz and glamor of the Belladonna, the saloon where Tempest works.

I’ll be writing more about setting and the Barbary Coast in the weeks to come, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to check out the Barbary Coast walking tour before I head back to Santa Barbara.

Seven Virtues Flash Fiction: “Kindness”

August 13, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 4 Comments

Here’s my last of the Seven Virtues Flash Fiction challenge, which was a total blast! This is goes along with my fill for “Humility.”

…

“Released”

“Break the rebel,” her father had told her, but as Alaia stared at the powerfully-built man chained to her bedpost, her heart ached with compassion. Pierce’s eyes were filled with loss and emptiness, his face hollow from malnutrition. The thought of punishing him left her nauseous.

This was bitter vengeance on her father’s part, a way to humiliate the man who led the rebellion against him, but she wanted no part of such punishment. With deft fingers, she freed him from his bonds, ignoring his noise of shock.

“I’ll find a way to free you,” she promised. “For now, sleep.”

Seven Virtues Flash Fiction: Humility

August 12, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 4 Comments

The Seven Virtues flash fiction challenge is coming to an end. I’m posting the last two out of order, as the fill for “Humility” and “Kindness” go together.

Like my fill for “Patience,” these two come from the world of Strange Bedfellows. Enjoy!

…

“Captured”

Pierce bowed his head and rolled his shoulders, aching from the heavy chains hanging from his wrists. It was almost laughable to think of the depths to which he had fallen: the powerful prince who had commanded legions reduced to a supplicant without a name, awaiting judgment from the emperor he had once challenged. But the rebellion had failed, his father was dead, his men imprisoned. He was alone to face the consequences of his actions.

The doors to the throne room swung open and a soldier pushed him forward with his spear. The time for begging forgiveness had come.

ROW80: Rolling Right Along

July 24, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 28 Comments

Happy Sunday, friends! I’m currently feeling a touch under the weather, so it’s going to be a Josh Groban, tea, and fuzzy socks sort of morning for me. 🙂

I want to extend another welcome to the bloggers who are visiting from the SheWrites Blog Hop. It’s gotten bumped down a bit, but my official welcome message is here. I’m looking forward to getting to know you all! For those of you who haven’t checked it out yet, please do. There are many of wonderful writers who have joined up.

I’m slowly trying to give this blog a bit more structure and life instead of only using it for ROW80 updates, so over the next few weeks you will see more posts on non-check-in days, covering a wider variety of topics. I’m toying with the idea of book reviews, wee blurbs about the historical research that I’m doing, discussions of world-building (which is one of my favorite past-times), and maybe a post or two on how I’m using philosophy and sociological theory in my work.

I added my first “experimental post” yesterday — a few idle musings about love and romance in the Odyssey, one of my favorite works out of ancient Greek literature. I’d love to hear any feedback that you may have!

Now then, onto my update:

The Life List Club: I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the ways that I can strive for a more balanced and healthy life, and so I am throwing my hat in the ring for the Life List Club. I’ve created a page for my list, which includes ten goals that I will pursue over the next year. I’ll try and report in on these, maybe during my Wednesday check-ins.

Social Networking: I downloaded TweetDeck on Thursday! I think I spent the first twelve hours just staring at it, because it is so very pretty. I am now learning the ins and outs of hashtags, and twitter communities, and lots of other awesome stuff like that, and I am having an absolute ball chatting with people.

Relevant to this: the Pew Research Center has found that spending time on social networking sites actually leads to a strengthening of interpersonal bonds, and helps to foster trust in others.

Writing continues on. I’ve been meeting (and, at times, exceeding) my goals over the past few days, which is awesome. Strange Bedfellows is coming along quite well, and I’m basically forcing myself to throw down words for Path to the Peacock Throne. I’m trying to lay down the overall skeleton for the final half of the book, and I am ignoring the perfectionist inside of me that keeps wailing that it isn’t absolutely perfect. I’m also struggling to find my MC’s voice, so I’m doing lots of writing exercises in the 1st person… and wondering if the story might actually be better served as a 1st person tale, rather than 3rd person.

Today’s goal includes finally getting around to tell me no lies, the story that is starting to feel like the neglected middle child (yes, my stories have feelings). I’d like to have the first chapter laid out — just the action and the dialogue. I’ll fill in the blanks with description and whatnot later.

Finally, the thesis is slowly taking form. My thesis advisor sent along a list of helpful suggestions and critiques yesterday, and she and I are meeting today to chat about my progress. I think I am going to approach this draft the way I do my fictional work: put the words onto paper, finish the draft, and then sit back, review, and figure out how to make it amazing.

And that’s all from me! I’m off to drink more tea and grade the rest of these papers before I have to dash off to meet my advisor. Enjoy the rest of the weekend, all!

ROW80: Recovering from Vacation

July 20, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 8 Comments

Happy Hump Day!

I’m back home from the family holiday, and it feels good to be snug in my little apartment once again. Flying always takes a lot out of me, especially when I have to deal with layovers (and Santa Barbara airport is so tiny that I almost always have at least one layover), so all I want to do today is curl up with a blanket and a good book and do absolutely nothing. The instructor that I’m TA’ing for is wonderful and told me to go ahead and take today off, so I plan to devour one (or two!) of the Georgette Heyer regency romance novels I have sitting on the shelf. Grading and thesis-work will commence tomorrow once I’m rested up.

The second half of the trip was absolutely wonderful. We left my grandfather’s house in southern Nevada Sunday afternoon and made our way to the Las Vegas Strip, where my parents renewed their vows to mark their 25 wedding anniversary.

The Happy Couple

The event turned into a mini-Jamison reunion, with my mom’s younger brother and sister, niece, and father in attendance.

The family (except for me, as I am taking the picture)

All in all, it was a wonderful trip, especially because it was the first family vacation that we’ve taken since I moved out of the house for grad school, three years ago. Now that my sister has moved out to go to college, finding time for all four of us to be together is a major challenge. It’s good to be back in Santa Barbara and to have a little quiet time (three women in one family = lots of squabbling), but I do miss having all of them around. However, I don’t have to despair for long: summer session ends next Wednesday and fall quarter doesn’t begin until the 3rd week of September, so I’ll be driving back to San Francisco next weekend. I will have six weeks for lots of family time, and even better, lots of non-school time. I’ll also be able to work on the thesis without other distractions, which means that I should be pretty productive.

Now, for my ROW80 check-in. I didn’t have internet access Sunday-Tuesday, so I basically worked my smartphone to the bone. I now know how to utilize my Twitter app, the WordPress app, the MS Word app, and the copy/paste function — all incredibly useful tools for when I’m on-the-go. I also managed to write for an hour or so each night since the last check-in. Yesterday was the exception, as I was basically was sitting in an airport or airplane for six hours straight with nothing but my ipod, a blank notebook, and pen (that sounds like some sort of desert island challenge!), so I did a lot more brainstorming.

The breakdown, project-by-project:

Thesis: I took a break from the behemoth that is my thesis for the last few days. I have a check-in meeting with my advisor by the weekend, so cross your fingers that her feedback is favorable!

Strange Bedfellows: The characters for this story won’t shut up, so at the moment I am a slave to their whims. However, I was able to put a hold on the snappy and snarky dialogue to focus on developing the first couple of chapters, which is good, because I’ve been writing scenes out of order, just to get them out of my head. I added another 1400 words to this, which brings the current MS up to about 12,700 words. I went through my notes the other day and realized that this project took over my life at the beginning of July, so yeah, I’m a little shocked at this total word count.

Path to the Peacock Throne: I haven’t written anything new, but I devoted all of yesterday to working on backstory, world-building, and character development. There’s a lot of stuff that goes down in this tale before the story even begins, so the challenge is (1) getting the details all straightened out and (2) finding a way to allude to the backstory without a major infodump. I now have many handwritten pages with notes about systems of magic, and fictional civil wars, and my MC’s personality. She is shy and a bit aloof, I think, with a secret wish to travel and explore the world. She’ll get her wish in Act 2, though not quite in the way she imagined.

That’s all from me right now. Off to do a bit of bloghopping, and once I am done with that, to grab a book and enjoy a decadently lazy day.

ROW80: Last-Minute Rally!

July 17, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 21 Comments

Another short post from me today. Vacation continues, and we’re having an excellent time. The highlights so far have included catching the midnight showing of Harry Potter, and taking a daytrip to Zion National Park, where we took a short tour via shuttle bus, and took many, many photographs of pretty rocks. I’ll post those sometime in the coming week, when I get the chance to upload them to my computer.

When it comes to progress, I seem to have done better over the past few days than I did earlier in the week. I’ve noticed that it’s easier for me to satisfy my goals between Wednesday – Sunday, probably because the weekend makes my responsibilities a bit lighter, so I’ll have to see how I can take this knowledge and use it to my advantage. I’ll potentially end up saving up my writing for the latter half of the week, when I know I’ll be able to have the time to go beyond 500/night.

So, without further ado, this week’s accomplishments:

Thesis: I finally managed to tidy up the latest section of my findings and send it off to my advisor. As I’ve warned her, it’s a very, very rough first draft, there are holes and things that are missing, and many things that will need to be cut. All the same, it is 19 pages long (almost 6000 words), which brings the current draft to about 40 pages in length. I estimate that I’ll need another 15-20 pages to talk about the next set of findings, along with another 10-15 pages to encompass other details (methodology, conclusion, etc.) which means that the complete first draft will approach somewhere upwards of 80+ pages. Granted, I don’t know what will happen during the editing process, but I feel rather proud of myself. After three years of stressing and reading and pursuing countless ideas, I’m finally at the point where I feel like I can say, unequivocally, that I will finish this. When I am done, I have promised myself that I am going to utilize my esoteric knowledge of 1920s etiquette and apply it to a new story, one that involves flappers and bootleggers and vampires, or something paranormal. 😀

tell me no lies: I managed to get some research done last night. As a grad student I have access to digital newspaper archives, so I availed myself of the San Francisco Chronicle‘s collection of issues from 1887, when “tell me no lies” takes place. I started combing through all the stories on crime and murder (a cheery topic, let me tell you, though infinitely fascinating), and stumbled upon some real gems, including a trial for the murder of a “Chinese highbinder.” From what I can tell, highbinders seem to have been the Chinese version of the Italian mafia. An article from an 1886 issue of Harper’s Weekly compares the Highbinders to the Freemasons, except with lots more blackmail and bribery. It’s a fascinating read, for anyone who is interested, though it drips with the casual racism that was prevalent during the period.

Strange Bedfellows: I added about 2000 words to this between Wednesday night and late Saturday night. I’d like to say that it was difficult, but at the moment I feel like I’m just eavesdropping on my characters’ conversations and transcribing them. Out of all my WIPs, I know these characters the best. They’ve been salvaged from earlier abandoned projects, and so we’ve managed to “form a rapport,” if you will. The hardest thing about this story is slowing myself down long enough to scrawl out some decent descriptions, but I managed to hammer out an opening scene (the aftermath of a very bloody battle) that will satisfy me until it’s time for rewrites and edits.

All in all, not too bad. If I am doing the math properly, it looks like I more or less squeaked past the goal post by the skin of my teeth this week! I’d say that this is an excellent time to head to Las Vegas, as a bit of partying is in order. 🙂

How’s everyone else holding up? Has anyone met or exceeded their goals for the week? Anyone else need to tweak things a bit?

ROW80 Social Media Roundup + Progress Update

July 15, 2011 / Lena Corazon / Comments Off

Over on the homepage for A Round of Words in 80 Days, Kait Nolan has invited participants to share our Twitter accounts and Google+ pages. I’m trying to get back into the swing of Twitter, and I’ve just picked up a Google+ account that I don’t quite know what to do with (currently poking at it with a stick to see what it will do), but I’ve posted mine over there nonetheless. I love connecting with my fellow writers in all ways possible, so add me on G+ and/or follow me on Twitter. 😀 Better yet, check out the rest of the lovelies from ROW80! They’re listing Google+ accounts, as well as Twitter accounts.

In other news, the whole family made it to Nevada in one piece. We all came together in a rather circuitous way, with Dad leaving San Francisco a day early to drive down (he has to take off a day early to get back to work), Mom and Rowena, my sister, flying from San Francisco on Wednesday, and me flying from Santa Barbara on Wednesday as well. But we’re relaxing at my grandfather’s gorgeously wonderful retirement house, and although the heat is more than our thin-skinned, Pacific Coast-selves can handle, it’s fun for everyone to be together.

On the writing front: On Wednesday night I hammered out 594 words of a new scene for Strange Bedfellows, along with 1379 words worth of brainstorming. I also started drafting a blog post (currently at 704 words) for Sunday’s ROW80 check-in, since I’ll be on the road to Vegas and potentially without internet access until next Wednesday morning. And then yesterday I suffered through a migraine and forced myself to edit twenty pages worth of thesis. I’m not finished with rewrites, sadly, but I abandoned ship to head off and catch the midnight showing of Harry Potter (infinitely more important that limping through edits, I think). Hopefully I can pull things together by tomorrow morning so I can send it off to my advisor.

Anyway, the family is slowly dressing (one thing that I always forget — how long it takes to get four people showered, dressed, and out of the house) so we can drive into Utah for breakfast, and then onwards to Zion National Park to poke around at nature.

Hope everyone has had a grand week! Any exciting developments? Who saw Harry Potter?

Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy