Growling morning and musings

Urrr, I've already realised by chapter 4 that a lot of this absolutely fabulous writing I'm doing here will have to go. Including one of those effing excerpts down there. 

Too much chat and not enough movement. That's what happens you get a bunch of gay police officers in a book, all they want to do is stop investigating the crime to discuss their feelings, compare the price they paid for their off-duty clothes an borrow each other's deodorant in the showers... 

Okay, channelling my grumpy sergeant there. I feel like a grumpy sergeant this morning. It's always a bit bottom-of-the-sine-wave when I've sent something off anywhere. Now I have to get stuck into the hard work of the other 90 or so K.

Less chat, more murders! That will be my watchword from now on! Actually, what I'll do, what I always do, I let em natter on for 120K or so then cut all the blah out and I end up with a book that's about the size I want out. Jeez, that sounds like I wrote hundreds of the things... it's what seems to work so far.

This is my fourth. I think - no, I wrote a couple of novels years ago but they were more fanfiction than anything, I didn't make up the milieu, just the characters and plot and stuff. 

Then I wrote one that was really a collection of (very raunchy) linked short stories with illustrations, no less.

Next I wrote a steampunk novel at the end of 2010 which needs revising as the ending, well, let's just say it has Patented Dyson technology for no loss of suction. One of those what WAS I thinking moments.

Then I had a ghastly 2011. No writing to speak of, at least, none I want to admit to. In 2012 I did NaNoWriMo and that resulted in a fantasy novel that needs the fuck of a lot of work on it. I'll do that later. It's part of a series that I've written part of already, but the one I did for NNWM is pretty far on in the series so there's no rush to sort it out. The first one was suffering from slack lazy won't-write-an-outline writer syndrome so I left it on one side for a bit. Rather than keep on writing stuff I'd just have to delete.

Now this - it is a crime novel and I must say, I've always wanted to write one. Which is what I should be doing, having reached the point where I've realised I'm just putting it off. Well, I had a huge bowl of muesli to get through but there's only a spoonful of milk and a couple of raisins left so - nose to the grindstone. That does sound painful, doesn't it? I mean, suppose you got that little pumice thing you rub off dry foot skin with, and you applied it to your nose instead? Ouch, yes? 

Right at the back of the closet...

... I found my t-shirt. Needs some morphs. For the non-3d among us, I need to make some variable adjustable modifications to the mesh so that it can fit a variety of body shapes.

Job Satisfaction?

He's my Japanese boy

I need to get a template that isn't so relentlessly pink. Here's Mikio Matsumoto - one of the detectives in my book. Isn't he cute? :D

I find having pictures of the people helps me think about them. In the sense that I think about them while I'm making the pictures and that seems to move the story along as well. 
Miki had a t-shirt on originally which I made the 3d model of myself. Unfortunately, during some instance of PC collapse, the parts of it became separated - no, not sleeves and body, the part that describes the 3d mesh became divorced from the mesh itself and now I'm having a bit of trouble trying to get it back together.
So just imagine, for now, a black tee with a rainbow flag on it.

Why the Blog title - you may ask. Or not.

Yeah, I realised the blog title is somewhat obscure - 911 because my story is set in the USA, a place that for the first time in my life is beginning to seem slightly more appealing than David Cameron's junkyard. 
And 69 because my characters inhabit the 69th precinct. Not all of them are cops. Some of them are just concerned citizens who like to make an honest dollar pimping, hooking, stealing, lying and the like...

Doodle

Shou and Kenji. They're not the main characters in my book, but since I was writing about them yesterday... Kenji's the one with the spikes, Shou's the Man in Partly Black.

This is just a 3d doodle, the equivalent of a sketch...

Writing excerpts 1

I've been writing the start of a book for the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger competition. Although I've had stuff published before, I've never had an actual book published so I'm eligible to enter that.
The book's characters are based on ones in some short stories I wrote a few years ago. And one of them is very slightly based on an original character I added to some *cough* fanfiction. 
I'm hoping to write a series of books about these people, but - best to let them speak for themselves. 
I can't post the first chapter as it's what I'm sending to the competition, but here's an excerpt from later on. Please excuse the language. It's Miao Shou. He wasn't brought up right. :D

“Polymath, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Kenji said. “That’d imply I had an exceptionally high IQ.”

“Do you?”

“What makes you think I’d know?” Kenji countered.

“Because you’re avoiding telling me,” Shou said. “This water’s warm. Will you fill it up again, please.”

“Sure.” Kenji got up and took the jug over to the washbasin.

“So why are you ashamed to be clever?” Shou persisted after he’d tasted the fresh water and nodded to say it was acceptable.

“I just –“ Kenji shrugged. “I’ve just found that people generally don’t like to give a job to someone who’s more intelligent than they are.”

“You think you’re more intelligent than me?” Shou banged down his glass, spraying the table with water. “I don’t fuckin think so.”

“You’re very competitive, aren’t you?” Kenji said.  “But even if I had a higher IQ than you, you’ve probably got a lot more life experience and stuff.”

“What, you’re sayin I’m old now?” Shou demanded. “First I’m fuckin stupid, now I’ve got one foot in the fuckin grave? Did you ever think about takin a course in fuckin interview skills?”

“Uh –“

“I notice you don’t say I’ve probably got more common sense than you,” Shou railroaded on. “Most people would say I’ve probably got more common sense. Since I’m so much fuckin older than you. An I run my own business an so on.”

“Well, you’re lying in bed with a gunshot wound and I’m not,” Kenji said. “So I don’t think I’ve yet encountered all this common sense you think you’ve got.”

“Hey, that could happen to anybody!” Shou said. “Drive bys happen all the time.”

“But you run a gay brothel,” Kenji said. “It’s got to be a high risk business as far as getting shot is concerned. Or getting arrested for that matter. Or getting a social disease. I’m not sure it’s the most sensible of career choices.”

“Yeah, right, what fuckin ever,” Shou said. “Anyway, Mr Sense an fuckin Sensibility, what the fuck job are you fuckin doing right now this very minute?”

“Well, at this exact minute –“

“You know what I mean!”

“I’m running your brothel.” Kenji grinned.

“Yeah, an tou fuckin ché to you too,” Shou said. “An please don’t call it a brothel in public. It’s a bathhouse.”

 And here's another bit from later still - Kenji must be having a calming effect on Shou, he only uses the f word once in this ;)


 

“I don’t know why you bother to exercise,” Miao Shou said. “You’ll be fat by the time you’re forty, anyway.”

“No I won’t,” Kenji said. “Why should I?”

“All Japanese men get fat. You just look at any group of middleaged Japanese men, there they are with their bellies hangin over their belts.”

“I don’t intend to be like that.”

“You’ve got no option. It’s genetics. Age forty, lardass time. Blib blob, all over the place.”

“Well, I’ll watch my diet,” Kenji said.

“Why bother?”

“I don’t know,” Kenji said. “I mean – I might have a boyfriend. He might not like it if I’m oozing around like a big puddle of grease.”

“You got a cute face,” Miao Shou said. “That should make up for – hey, wait a minute. Boyfriend? Are you – gay?”

“Huh?” Kenji stared at Shou. “Well, duh.”

“You never told me you were gay!”

“Why do you think I came for a job at your bathhouse?”

“You thought you were gonna get a job doing massage,” Shou said. "All that New Age Reiki Shiatsu shit."

“Yeah, but I knew it was a gay bathhouse,” Kenji said. “I checked it out before I came in.”

“Oh, you did, did you?”

“Yeah, I waited outside for a couple of days to see what kind of people went in and out.”

“You must be fuckin sneaky,” Shou said. “I never noticed you.”

“Yeah, I’m quite unobtrusive when I want to be,” Kenji said. “Despite my incipient lardass.”