Archive for the ‘Girl from Mars’ Category

May 30, 2008 | Girl from Mars

Well, I got the call from my agent, and all is well. *big sigh of relief*

But I’ve got some tightening up to do. So my task is to print out the thing again, and then arrange it by chapters. Chapter-by-chapter, I have to pinpoint the major high point of that chapter, and then adjust things as necessary so that the focus is on that high point.

Sounds easy, huh? (not)

April 15, 2008 | Girl from Mars

Life here in Julie land was particularly cool today, because after dropping off the Fecklet at his much-loved child minder I headed to Oxford to meet with the editor of science fiction action comic weekly 2000AD.

In my professional capacity as a writer of popular fiction researching her latest novel, that is. Not because I am a giggly fangirl. No, never.

2000AD is famously edited by a green-skinned Betelgeusian called Tharg the Mighty. In real life, the editor is a very nice bloke called Matt who works with a handful of other nice people in a corner of a big warehouse even more green-skinned and mighty than he appears in the comic, and he rules his droid workers with a rod of iron. In fact he executed one while I was there. You should have seen the sparks and oil fly!

I am happy to report that I giggled my ass off and couldn’t stop saying “cool” like the sad fangirl I am I learned a lot of very useful information for my novel.

Anyway I can wholeheartedly recommend that you rush down to your local newsagent tomorrow, when the next issue comes out, and buy yourself a copy. “The Ten-Seconders” is worth the cover price alone.

March 27, 2008 | Girl from Mars

Okay. I need some help. I need a plausible-sounding, yet original, name for a device in a science fiction story, which causes localised time distortion.

At present I have “Particle Deconstructor” but I don’t think it sounds convincing enough.

Any ideas? I will love you forever if you can come up with something.

(And yes…I know I write romance and not science fiction. But I have found myself having to make up the entire story arc for a series of comic books that the heroine is drawing. Why do I get myself into these messes??)

March 8, 2008 | Girl from Mars, writing

Despite all that planning in the photo below, my heroine has just done something completely unexpected which changes her perception of everything, so I’ve got to rearrange. I think.

Which goes to prove that all this planning bunk is completely rubbish, because the characters are just going to tell you what they’re going to do anyway, and stuff the coloured cards.

March 6, 2008 | Girl from Mars, writing

I’m about at the halfway mark for Girl from Mars, so today I attempted to plot out the rest of my novel. I did this by using a technique I’ve recommended to my students, but I’ve never done myself. So this is the first time.

I brainstormed all the things that I thought should happen, and then I wrote them, with different colours of card depending on which story thread they fit into. Then I tried to put them into an order that made sense, so that each story thread is spread throughout the book, and so their climaxes roughly fit together and interact.

Then I Blu-Taked them to my closet door, going chronologically from top to bottom, with roughly simultaneous events side by side.

There you have it: the rest of my novel. A little scary, huh?

March 4, 2008 | Driving Him Wild, Girl from Mars

I’ve had fun today writing about the differences between comics and film. See, my heroine is a comic book artist, and my hero is a screenwriter, and they approach narrative in a completely different way. Anna gave me the idea that their learning about each other’s way of working should be the first step towards them learning about each other. So I’ve been writing about them doing that.

Comics are so cool though. One thing I love about them is that they are visual, like film, but they tell stories through space, rather than through time. A comic will show the still beginning of an action in one panel, and then in the next panel show the outcome of that action. The action itself takes place in the blank space between panels, and the act of the reader filling in that action is called closure. Therefore the reader participates in the deciphering of what’s going on, and there’s potential for big differences of interpretation.

Gaps are interesting. I’ve started to leave more and more gaps at the end of my books; I used to do epilogues quite a bit, but I’ve moved away from them because I like the reader to fill things in herself. I read a review of His for the Taking which speculated on what happened to the characters and the pigeon they rescue after the end of the book. The reviewer wanted something totally different to happen than what I would have written. I’m sort of glad I didn’t write it, because the reviewer got a happier ending for her that way.

February 18, 2008 | Girl from Mars

I am having such a ball writing Girl from Mars!

Yeah, sure, I don’t know what’s going to happen, after the next chapter or so. But the heroine, Fil, is truly a hoot. Also, I’ve had to make up the history of the science fiction comic she draws for, and drop in tidbits of episodes from it, and that is lots and lots of fun.

I keep on having to read bits aloud to my husband.

Remind me of this, will you, when I get to the suckage point?

January 25, 2008 | Girl from Mars, One Night Stand, writing

Because I am being an internet whore (hooray!) I’m a guest today on Jennifer’s Random Musings. Pop on over for a chance to talk about beautiful men and also to win a copy of One Night Stand!

I said I’d blog a little bit about my process for plotting a novel. I’m not much good with plot as a whole; I tend to find that the characters provide the action, so my main job is figuring out the characters. Yesterday, I wrote down a whole bunch of questions about my main character, her three best friends, and the comic book she works on. I’ve answered some of those questions, but I’ve got more work to do on it. As I answer the questions, often scenes pop into my head.

In the early stages of structuring a novel I need to think about how the themes of the book work, and how the secondary characters reflect the main character. Like, for example, in One Night Stand, the characters of Eleanor’s relatives, Sheila and June, reflect issues that Eleanor herself is going through, about change, parenthood, and the nature of responsibility. I developed them and chose what happened to them purely because of how these things would affect Eleanor.

Girl from Mars is about loyalty, and I’ve begun to figure out why and how loyalty affects Fil (the heroine) and Dan (the hero). Now I’m going to do some work about what loyalty means to her three best friends, Jim, Digger, and Stevo–and also what it means to the character in the comic book she draws, “Girl from Mars”.

This should, pretty much, give me the plot! For example, I’m suspecting that Digger has a secret about his family, a very good reason why he doesn’t owe his father any loyalty at all. But something traumatic will happen that tests how he feels about his father and what kind of person Digger is. Of course Digger is a secondary character, so I need to think about how and where I can place this traumatic event so that it actually tests the protagonist Fil’s emotions and sense of herself, too.

I really find that choosing themes in this way, or an issue I want to explore in various permutations, helps me develop the story. Other themes come in, too, and it all gets complicated, but having a general “big idea” is really useful to me.

January 24, 2008 | Girl from Mars

I gave in my revisions for Honey Trap yesterday, and spent the afternoon unsuccessfully shopping for a frock for the RNA awards lunch on the 4th of February. I figure as I’ve been shortlisted this is a good excuse for a new dress. Why is it, though, that when you don’t need a new dress you see loads and loads of them that you love, and when you do need one, everything is either black or stupid?

Anyway now it’s time for me to get back to my next book, Girl from Mars. I opened the word doc this morning and had a read and I am happy to say that I just LOVE this heroine. She is absolutely hilarious and also very sweet and (like all my characters, strangely enough) completely obsessive. I laughed out loud several times. So this is all a really good sign. If only I knew what was going to happen.

I’m going to spend a few days brainstorming and diagramming.

November 25, 2007 | Girl from Mars

I’m having the most awesome time doing research for Girl from Mars, my next book, about a female comic book artist.

There are three books beside my bed. One is William Eisner’s classic Comics and Sequential Art, an examination of how comics work. The other is the fun and awesome Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, which is an analysis of comics, drawn/written as a comic book. I got the Eisner out of the library, but I bought the McCloud, and I’m glad I did because I think it’s given me some of the central metaphors for this book. Comics work differently than plain text; they have a vocabulary and grammar of space and time and image that is unique, and gives me an insight into how my heroine’s mind works.

Beside that is Batman: Dark Victory by Joseph Loeb and Tim Sale. I am a Batman fan and when I got the idea for Girl from Mars I went to the library and got out every Batman comic they had. This is one of my favourites so far (except for the weird, weird gothic Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, which I own and have read so much it’s falling to bits).

My internet research has been on Batman (of course), but more on 2000AD and Dan Dare, because the comic Girl from Mars, which Fil draws, is a British comic. Which gives me another theme, differences between the USA and UK, which is something that I’m interested in for obvious reasons.