Can this body be saved?

Some of my readers may know that since June of this year, I've been battling a fast-growing form of lung cancer...which has my doctors baffled because I am a nonsmoker. That's right, never smoked a day in my life, yet I have the classic smoker's lung cancer. No explanation for what triggered it. Maybe on a cosmic level I was bored, writing about life and death situations in my books and stories, but without much empathy for what life - and the loss of it - really means.

When I was admitted to the hospital it was an emergency life and death situation. Could barely breathe from the tumor in my left lung pressing against a bronchial tube. Since then, I've been in the OR twice, am halfway through a 6-cycle chemotherapy treatment with possible radiation at the end, and had two transfusions. It's a scary ride, and some nights my husband and I have held each other and cried.

We won't even speak of the cost, over $100,000 and still climbing.

Every day it's a constant fight to keep all my internal systems functioning. At any given time my white platelets may be too low, I might have scary-level anemia from not enough red blood cells, not enough potassium, not enough magnesium, not enough fluid intake, the list goes on...not to mention the ordinary daily process of kidney function and avoiding constipation. I've lost over 20 pounds because it's hard to keep food down on a regular basis, and many of my favorite foods have been ruined by the salty metallic taste the chemo drugs cause in my mouth.

All this is daunting to say the least, but there have been some positives as well, which is really the point of this post. The outpouring of support and encouragement from friends and the wonderful company I work for (I'm currently on leave of absence from them but hope to return before the end of the year), the selfless help of people who went out of their way to make things better for me, and so much more. I was also amazed at the number of writers I'm associated with who have their own cancer survival stories to share.  The biggest positive of all is the upgrade in my prognosis status for survival from "poor" to "good" with the goal now being long-term remission.

What has this done for me as a writer? I think it has made me less cerebral about the big issues of life and death. So easy to kill off characters on paper. But having stared my own possible quick demise in the face, my perspective is changed forever. I hope it will infuse my storytelling with a level of immediacy and empathy that was missing. We'll see....

Where do story ideas come from?

It seems to be a staple question on almost every interview I've done - where do you get your ideas?

I honestly cannot say specifically what fuels my imagination for stories and novels. Most often ideas come unbidden, when I'm not even looking for inspiration. I'll be thinking about something unrelated to writing and realize it could make a viable story, or I'll be tinkering with some story possibility that's not really working and a solution or better alternative just suddenly sticks its neck out.

I know that if I deliberately set out to come up with what to write about next, I'll get nowhere. This doesn't apply to assignment-driving writing, of course; I'm talking about my own creative endeavors where anything goes. I guess my muse is a like quantum particle. If I try to look at her directly, she disappears. If I ignore her and don't think about writing, she slips something into my brain pan, like she did last night when I wondered what my next novel would be about. I should learn to trust her more. ;D
 

Checking in

Sorry I've missed most of this month due to health issues. Blogging will return next month. See you then!

Feeling accomplished

Sometimes I think I must be one of the world's slowest writers. I have to be in the right mood to make words flow or to see the signposts up ahead that tell me where the story's going. Occasionally even being in the mood doesn't make the chapters get written. Never could be one of those people who sit down at a certain time every day and get up after X number of words or pages have been written.

And research...don't get me started (because I will not know when to stop!). I love researching details to the nth degree, knowing full well that only a small portion of those details will ever make it into the book or story. But the fact that the greater gestalt of fact lives in my head allows me to write a scene for a chapter that rings with authenticity.

So it is with some surprise that I find myself with two long, complex pieces of writing (a novel and a novella) finished and turned in within weeks of each other. I can say now that my next dark fiction novel, The Cornerstone, is scheduled for publication with Journalstone Publishing in February of 2013, and my novella, We Employ, will be part of the LIMBUS shared-world collection due out in November 2012, also from Journalstone.

So now I have time and energy to turn my attention to the second novel in the North Florida Trilogy that I'm co-authoring with P. V. LeForge. We wrote the first version of Museum Piece many years ago, and revisiting it now is almost like reading it for the first time - I have no idea where the plot is headed and even less feel for where it ends, which is a good thing, I think. I'm seeing this story with 21st century eyes and a number of things have changed, from technology to social issues and even our slang and vocabulary, not to mention clothing styles. But underneath all the window dressing, there's a really solid, intriguing storyline and some unique, memorable characters the likes of which I've never met in anybody's novel (although Confederacy of Dunces comes close). Hope we can get this one out by the end of the year... we'll see.

A little night music

Lately, I've seen more and more writers posting playlists for their latest novels, stories, poetry, etc. Some even compile them into a download (wondering about copyright issues there...). I have to confess I'm actually fascinated in a voyeuristic sort of way to see what writers I'm interested in are hearing in their headphones as they write, edit, revise, or just watch eye-lid movies as they're making stuff up.

Had to try it myself, of course.

I usually don't listen to anything when I'm writing new material because it interferes with my ability to hear the characters' voices. But I love to put on music when I'm editing or revising. So I made a list of the music I played the most when The Cornerstone was in its final revision stages. Hm. Kind of made me think, woman, you are nuts! Wide mood swings from the creepiest cuts in the Togainu no Chi soundtrack to angst-ridden Carnival of Rust from Poets of The Fall, laced heavily with Cara Dillon, MUCC, Disturbed, Evanescence, BUCK-TICK, Jane's Addiction, Jean-Luc Ponty, Yoko Kanno's Ghost in the Shell OST, Underworld's Oblivion with Bells, stuff by Incubus, Pantera's Cemetery Gates, Sibelius' Kullervo Suite, Yngwie Malmsteen's Relentless, and Värttinä's Ilmatar.

Not sure I'd want all those cuts on a CD for sequential listening, but somehow they got the job done when I was editing and (ruthlessly) revising.

PW exposure!

My fiction publisher, JournalStone Publishing, scores the front and back covers of this week's Publisher's Weekly magazine!

It's coming...

LIMBUS wants YOU!

What's a limbus, you ask? Limbus is Latin for "edge" or "boundary."

Limbus, Inc. is my brainchild, spawned by reading a number of other exciting shared-world books like Welcome to Bordertown and Irregulars. It just seemed to me that given the connections of my publisher to some heavyweights in the dark fiction world, we could do this ourselves in spades.He agreed and recruited four like-minded authors in addition to myself to write stories within the set world of Limbus, Inc.

The result is LIMBUS, a shared-world anthology of dark fiction, to be unleashed from Journalstone Publishing in the fall of 2012.  More details coming soon...

VERITAS ebook single

My short story "The Veritas Experience" is now available as a single on Kindle, Smashwords, and Nook.

Kindle link:  The Veritas Experience

Smashwords link: TVE

B&N NOOK link: nook

New projects

My next novel, The Cornerstone, is done - whew! This book has been hatching for over a year now, if I don't count the time it was an unfinished ms. stuck in a drawer.  It's been gestating, I guess, and a very small piece of it became a short story that won Honorable Mention from Absent Willow Review several years ago. The Cornerstone is now with my two beta readers, who are ruthless but generally spot on when something needs fixing, so although they make me cry, I wholly trust them.

Next up is a wildly exciting project involving a shared-world anthology. More on this as it comes together, but look for some heavy hitters from the horror/dark fiction realm to wade into the waters!

And finally, I have the rights back to my longish short story "The Veritas Experience," which I'm reediting and plan to put up on Kindle and Smashwords as a single. That should be ready next week, and I'll come back here and supply the links.

What else? I hope that's enough for now!

ebook giveaway!

And now...a word from my publisher, JournalStone, about a very cool giveaway for the month of April:

http://journal-store.com/category/bookstore/