Talking to myself yet again – Ilene and her Alpha “ability”

Sooooo I had my surgery on Feb 2nd and I am finally out of the splint and somewhat mobile after a week of being laid up.  Hated it and thought a lot about my writing, although I wasn’t really coherent enough to do anything about it (vicodin, yanno) and the #1 decision I made is to finish up Alpha Female.  So I had today off from work as well as tomorrow and I decided that since I’m supposed to be resting and bearing some weight on my ankle, might as well get some writing stuffs done.

Opened the AF document and tweaked a few sentences.  Reread the last scene and read my last “talking to myself” post.  And…went completely numb yet again.

I love the idea of there being an ability that’s the flipside of the Alpha Male madness — the “manipulation” aspect as I’ve been calling it.  I also like the two bonds going on.  But then I threw myself a curve ball, and I am still puzzling it out.  The idea that the Alpha Female can use the ability as Alpha Female but once she ceases being that, she loses the ability/memory of how to use it.  Okaaaay.  Easiest thing?  Change it.  Remove it altogether.

But I’ve never been one to go the easy route, or one to ignore something potentially cool that came from the Muse.  So let’s run with it, shall we?

And since I haven’t done a character convo in like forever, I think it’s time to do another one.  The character in question is Ilene, the former Alpha Female of the Pack and Luke, the male lead’s mother.  Natasha, Luke’s Alpha Female and the main character, has shown evidence that she’s possibly gained this ability, whatever it is, and needs to learn how to use it because otherwise her nemesis Delia could destroy her through a mental bond.

With me so far?

Okay, so Ilene doesn’t remember a whole lot about this ability for the aforementioned reason.  But I need to know what it is she does remember, and what she’s forgotten, and if this is a viable solution to Natasha’s problem.  Kind of big for a single line of text, but it might turn out to be cool.  Or not.  But I’m gonna figure this out.

*takes a deep breath*  *cracks knuckles*

ME: So, tell me about being the Alpha Female of the Pack.
Ilene: It’s an important job.  The Alpha pair sets the example and tone of how the Pack will function.
ME: That’s good.  I take it you were a good leader.  And you’re now the Pack healer.
Ilene: Correct.
ME: So what do you remember of this ability to manipulate your wolves?
Ilene:I know what it is.  It comes from the same place the Madness comes from.  It’s dark.  It’s not for evil Alpha Females, Alpha Females who want to completely control their wolves.  Tyrants.  Dictators.  It’s to keep the wolves in line, but with love and respect and goodness.  It just seems  like manipulation to some.  And then there’s keeping the ones in line that need it, like Delia.
ME: What is with this chick? She really has it out for Natasha.
Ilene: *nods* Oh yes.  She was sure she was going to be Luke’s Alpha Female.  It’s eating her alive.
ME: Truly.  So do you recall how it works?
Ilene: Through the bond.  Somehow.
ME: But you don’t recall how.
Ilene: It’s foggy.  I don’t believe it was harmful to the wolf it’s used on.  It can be if warranted, and that would need to be discussed, but an Alpha Female’s purpose is never to harm her wolves.
ME: What about the golden threads Natasha sees in her head?  Do those have anything to do with it?
Ilene: *nods* Possible.
ME: But not for sure.
Ilene: No.
ME: Any other stuff you remember, no matter how insignificant it might seem?
Ilene: Yes.  When Tasha saw Deliain her head, it pinged my brain a bit.
ME: Explain?
Ilene: It seemed familiar, as if maybe I’d had that happen to me as Alpha Female.  That might be a direction to investigate.
ME: But Tasha was hurt by that, horrifically (and SPOILER ALERT! there’s more coming! END SPOILER ALERT).  She can’t possibly have to use that to “manipulate” Delia.
Ilene: It’s a distinct possibility.
ME: What about psychic stuff?  Delia’s got something psychic going on.  Could this ability be psychic in nature?
Ilene: We as a race aren’t actully psychic, although we do use a basic form of telepathy when in wolf form.
ME: And the healing.
Ilene: Yes. 
ME: Could Luke healing Tasha have anything to do with this?  Would it give her more ..power, for lack of a better word, in this ability?
Ilene: It’s part of it, but it’s actually because she almost died once and actually died once.  It gave her an expanded awareness of her wolves on a totally different level. 
ME: Could her dying tie into the ability?  Kind of like necromancy?
Ilene: *looks baffled* I don’t think so.
ME: Necromancers don’t just raise the dead.  They communicate with the dead and can control the dead.  Could Tasha’s ability be a form of necromancy, except…it’s with living wolves?

NOTE: Now we’re on to something.

Ilene: I suppose that could be.  Don’t necromancers have an expanded awareness of the dead?
ME: Bingo.  So if we could treat this as a form of necromancy (Lupi-mancy?), maybe we could figure out how it works.
Ilene: I believe I might remember something.
ME: Tell me.
Ilene: Well…it’s the mind.  Tasha needs to connect with the mind.  Delia’s in wolf form, so it’s going to be harder since she’s not.  But that connection is key.
ME: I’m still thinking psychic.  Perhaps it’s sort of like a separate plane of existence?
Ilene: I’m not sure.  Just that it’s the mind.  Delia attacked Tasha there, and Tasha can attack or manipulate back using the same channels.  I’m almost sure of it.
ME: *smiles*  Well, I think we have a good chance of nailing this down.  Thank you so much.

So….in summary:

~It’s like necromancy except with wolves who are alive b/c of Tash’s brushes with death.  May allow her to communicate with/control/sense her wolves (“expanded sense of her wolves”)
~It’s connected to the mind.  That Natasha might be able to use the same channel, for lack of a better word, that Delia used to attack her.
~It might have something to do with the “golden threads” in Natasha’s head.
~It’s not meant to harm any wolves, but it is used to keep wolves in line.
~It’s not for “evil” Alpha Females who want to rule.

Soooooo lots to ponder, huh?

ETA: Notes: The life force or inner wolf could be the conduit for this manipulation.  Or something.

Status update.

I’m still alive.  The holidays just about ate me, and I’ve had a few things come up that kept me from making any noticable progress.  But I persevere!

The first thing is Alpha Female.  I’m almost done with the current pass.  I have a few new scenes to write, and do another overall edit for things I might have missed, and after that, I’m calling it done.  Going to see if I can get it beta’ed.  It’s been slow going for the most part.  I haven’t really been focused as of late.  I don’t really know why, just that I’m getting tired of looking at this story.  But I promised myself I wouldn’t set it aside to languish after spending all these months hammering away at it.  So I gotta hang in there, and get it done.

Without Wings, my 2nd chapbook for Turtleduck Press, is almost ready for the approval process.  It’s due on Feb 1st.  I’ve done a few edits and it looks good, so I’ll need another pass to make doubly sure — and to add the acknowledgements and such.  Very exciting.  I was hoping to have some new poems written for it, but that just hasn’t happened.  I just haven’t been in the poetry mindset.  I’m hoping I can write more in the future, though, because I want to get back into it.

And finally, my surgery is happening Feb. 2nd and I anticipate being laid up and doped up for a week, so I have no idea if I’ll be able to get any serious writing done.  We’ll have to see how I’m feeling.  I want to use this time wisely, but if I’m not feeling it, it’s okay.  I remember when I had surgery to remove some hardware from my jaw — the pain meds made me so dizzy that I couldn’t sit at the computer to save my life, so I dictated a scene to a microcassette (this was in 2004).  It was weird, but it worked (and it pre-dated my first serious foray into voice recognition software).  That’s how desperate I was to get something done.  Dunno.  We’ll have to see.

Future projects are Pirouette and Darkweaver, in that order.  That’s another reason to get Alpha Female done and gone.  So I can move on.  I want to move on.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to start Pirouette sometime after my surgery.

So that’s what’s going on.  I had a recent career development that I can’t get into at the moment, but it is a good one, so cross your fingers that it comes through.

Taking a break.

Ever since I got Alpha Female back from my beta reader (who was wonderful and quick and cool about everything), I’ve been taking a bit of a break.  There were alot of things missing, due to the wordcount limit of the antho, and while I had a feeling that might be a problem, I thought possibly that I could pull it off.  I tried, right?  I made my goal of finishing the draft on time.  However, I can’t submit it because 1) it’s too long at 27k, and 2) the story would be better served by expanding it vs. cutting 2k and then trying to fill all of the holes AND keep it at 25k. 

So here’s my plan.  I’m going to expand it to about 40k and submit it to the e-publisher’s regular submissions or another e-publisher altogether.  It’s okay — the story is far darker than the antho wanted.  Sometimes a story unfolds and as it unfolds, it mutates into something else.  Also okay.  I had a feelng that was happening, and I didn’t fight it.  I trusted my muse on this one.  And, after rewriting it 3 times, I wanted to make it work this go around. 

Am I happy with this?  Actually, I am.  I learned alot about my process and got a peek at what it’s like to write to a deadline.  Obviously, there was no contract-stipulated deadline so there were no consequences to speak of, but I took it very seriously and buckled down and got it done.

The only real variation in it is that I rewrote it 3 times before finishing the draft, something I rarely ever do.  My feeling was I didn’t want to continue to write a story that feels wrong, and then have to turn around and rewrite the entire thing.  Possibly several times.  It seemed like an exercise in futility.  Normally, I’d write straight through.  But I had a deadline, so things changed a bit.

So the next thing is to expand/rewrite/edit Alpha Female, addressing the problems that my fantastic beta reader found.  And adding a few things I couldn’t fit in this go around.  I’m thinking of cutting the death of the main character’s spouse from the entire thing, or make it already happened when the novella starts, as per the original draft.  I wanted Natasha to have a reason to be emotionless and distant, and a deceased spouse could do it.  But then while writing the ending, I thought, hmmm, what if he died in the fight that injured Natasha?  Killed by the same race as the man who wants her as his mate?  Brilliant, or so I thought.  But I had a wordcount limit, so I couldn’t let it play out the way it should have been.  I could put it back in and try to make it work, or cut it altogether.  Decisions, decisions.

And then there’s Natasha being a “latent” werewolf — aka she doesn’t — can’t — shift.  My beta reader felt it was a convenient plot device, and nothing more.  I needed Natasha to have another strong reason to allow Luke to turn her — besides dying, that is.  She’s an enemy of his race, and I would think she’d balk at it — even if it saved her life.  Stupid?  Nah.  She’s just very stubborn.  So I gave her the latent thing so the idea wouldn’t be so abhorrant.  She was already part werewolf, so going that extra mile wouldn’t be so bad.  I don’t know.  In some ways it works, but then again, my beta might be right.

So that was the idea behind my break, and to rest my brain.  I’m still really tired from dragging my cast around.  And I suspect a bit burnt out, too.  I just need to recharge the batteries, you know?  Let it come, but slowly.  This weekend, I might take a crack at it.  If I feel up to it.

But what about Pirouette?  you ask.  Well — that’s happening, too.  I actually think this “rest period” has given me alot of insights.  I have the first scene somewhat figured out and a few other things.  I’m almost ready to start the big revision.  So it’s Alpha Female next, all the way to submission (my one goal for last year and this year was to submit something to someone) and then Pirouette.  Maybe some Pirouette pre-work in between.

And as usual, I got smacked upside the head with the perfect NaNo idea — except I’m not doing NaNo and I can’t do any new stuff right now.  But, it’s a doozy, and pretty unique I think.  Oh well.  It can get into line with the rest.

So…hopefully I’ll have more to report in a few weeks.

Alpha Female is done.

I officially finished it Thursday, and it came in at 27k, just 2k over what I needed.  It is now with a trusted beta reader, who’ll give me the lowdown on what’s working and what’s not working, and I’ll have less than 2 weeks to do a revision plus a 5-page synopsis.

I must be crazy.

Actually, while I’m still actively trying to make that deadline, it’s not a huge thing.  I mainly wanted to see if I was capable of producing something on a deadline.  And I pretty much did, for the most part.  It’s going to depend on what my beta reader says, because I’ve lost all objectivity.  So, I gotta wait for that.

Pirouette is next up, particularly finishing the notecards and rewriting the first few scenes.  Beyond that, it’s just tearing through the manuscript much how I did with Alpha Female, except on a bigger scale.  I’m worried that I won’t nail it, and I simultaneously believe that I can.  Which will win out?  I has no clue.

The website is almost finished — at least the writing section, anyway.  That needs to be done before Life as a Moving Target launches on December 1st.  I have a few things planned for that so stay tuned.

Life as a Moving Target is almost ready to go on sale.  I have a second proof ordered and if it’s good, then it’ll go on sale with the other Turtleduck books on Dec. 1st.  It’s so exciting, seeing it in print, something I never thought would come true.  I’ve gotten some wonderful support and encouragement on it so far, and that’s so important as the subject is so personal to me.  All in all, I believe this is going to work out nicely.

It’s after midnight as I type this, but I still consider it Oct. 16th until I wake up in the morning.  It’s a weird quirk of mine.  So….today was not only Sweetest Day, but it was the 1-year anniversary of the day the family drama began, and my life, as I knew it, changed irrevocably.  The person who caused it still remains out of my life, although I still think about this person and what this person did almost daily.  It’s not enough to say that I’m hurt, or angry.  I’m livid.  Still a bit numb, even after all this time.  My world hasn’t quite gotten back on track and I’m still feeling pretty dark and empty inside.

I don’t even know what to say.  Except there are poems in this.  They’ve been whispering in my ears for months,waiting patiently for me to put them to paper.

In other news, I’m now in a cast because my foot doc feels that immobilization of the joint might do the trick.  I’ve never been in a cast before, so it’s been a real interesting — and frustrating — experience.  Exhausting, too.  I went downstairs to my office for the first time in 4 days and was terrified the entire trip up and down.  I did it twice today, and I feel more stable.  But dang, it’s tiring. Especially going up.

I hope this is it.

Also, I got hit with a doozy of a plotbunny.  I’m not even going to speak of it, because evey time I even think about it, it grows.  Halloween is perfect timing, but I’m standing firm on my no new projects decision for the rest of the year.  It’s going to have to wait, and so will my mini-Nano.  There’s always next year, right?

So that’s what’s happening here.  I’m so excited about everything.  I can hardly stand it. 🙂