Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Burning down my hometown. 'cause I can.

Originally, I figured I'd burn down Sonora, California. I had a couple of minor characters I thought I could spin off for a chapter.

I had to work a couple of days at the store, and today I suddenly realized I had a much better town to burn down: Bend, Oregon. I'd already pretty much set it up, both the good guys and the bad, and it comes at the right moment in the book. Besides, I know the terrain without having to research.

It seems so obvious...now.

This has been the one advantage to taking so much more time on a book. It gives me time for these things to really settle in, and for my subconscious to come up with an answer.

I'm going to spend the next 8 days researching and adding details, then I'm going to do a quick rewrite. I probably will go ahead and approach some agents, but it has to be on my terms...though I'm sure I have nowhere near the clout to ask for my terms.

The terms are; the representation if for this book, only. That is, I don't wish to be tied up while this book is being offered. Probably a moot point, since agents have shown zero interest in my ideas or my writing.

I'm going to put this out in late spring, in time for the fire season.

Still don't have a title I love. "Terror by Fire." I don't know why, but it still doesn't do it for me.

2 comments:

Dave Cline said...

The ultimate oxymoron -- quick rewrite.

Dave Cline said...

So, novel names...

Here's a quick python script you can copy into a file name (I called mine fire.py).

If you run this you'll get an output (linked).

I use something like this to generate a bunch of different combinations of names that give me fodder to ponder. Enjoy.

#Five Alarm Allah
#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
# Main program entry point
def main():

words1 = ["Terror" ,"Fear" ,"Dread","Alarm" ,"Dispair","Fright","Horror" ,"Dire" ,"Extreme"]
words2 = ["Fire" ,"Blaze" ,"Coal" ,"Inferno","Ember" ,"Pyre" ,"Tinder" ,"Spark" ,"Sear"]
words3 = ["Infidel","Heretic","Pagan","Heathen","Profane","Sin" ,"Djinn" ,"Allah" ,"Fanatic"]

f = open('output.txt', 'w')
for a in xrange(0, len(words1) - 1):
for b in xrange(0, len(words2) - 1):
for c in xrange(0, len(words3) - 1):
print >> f, words1[a] + " " + words2[b] + "s " + words3[c]
print >> f, words2[b] + "s " + words3[c] + " " + words1[a]
print >> f, words3[c] + " in " + words1[a] + " " + words2[b] + "s"
print >> f, words1[a] + " of the " + words2[b] + " " + words3[c]
print >> f, words2[b] + " of the " + words3[c] + " " + words1[a]
print >> f, words3[c] + " of the " + words1[a] + " " + words2[b]
f.close()

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()

Ouput.txt...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29771494/Writing/output.txt


Some names that caught my eye:
Sin of the Dire Spark
Djinn in Dire Flames
Embers of the Pagan Terror
Sin in Embers Fear
...
Have fun.