Starcaster 2 - Resurrecting Old Characters

I think I finally found my major conflict in Starcaster 2, and I've begun to outline it in my head. I wrote a thousand words and I think it's off to a great start.

I intended to bring in a minor villain from the first book and I decided to put her in a position where she can be not only a major annoyance, but a major villain as well.

She's now a cop. Detective Meyer, my crooked cop from Book One has decided that he needs some starcasting help. So he's recruited a few starcasters who don't necessarily have the sterling character so essential to good policework. But that's OK. Meyer isn't looking for good cops. He's looking for good toadies.

And I have the perfect older brother for her. Introducing: Clyde Yancy.

Clyde is a character I developed WAY back in the 80s. Yes, I said the 80s. Some of you were kids back then. But that was when I started my first novel, Oath of the Songsmith. Clyde was a highwayman in Oath. In A Spy and a Lady, he's pretty much the same, but he's a gang member rather than a highwayman. He fits rather perfectly into my Regency-era timeframe. He LOVES having a sister as a policewoman, and he has stepped up his criminal activities accordingly. I'm thinking Meyer offered him a job first, but when he refused, his sister convinced Meyer to take her on.

He's also a thug, which makes him a perfect nemesis for Cecil Crowley, Tory's gentleman friend and fellow starcaster, who's something of a thug, himself.

Clyde is six feet tall, so he is significantly taller than the 5'7" Crowley. But Crowley has one advantage over Clyde and almost every other man. He regularly hoists around his six foot tall mentally disabled cousin, and he is therefore very strong and tough.

I'm having a lot of fun putting together all these conflicts.

Status Report

Sickness is good for writing. I wrote a bit of everything last week; Starcaster II, Christian thriller and time travel fantasy. The Christian thriller went into a direction I didn't expect, and then came to another screeching halt. I wrote an opening scene for Starcaster II, then fizzled because I don't have a plot. I have a plot for a later book in the series, not the second book. And my time travel fantasy is still very much in the idea stage.

So I'm doing a lot of writing, but getting very little done. This is typical for me while I am querying. The querying is going well--better than the last time--but no representation yet.

Since I'm neck-deep in trying to prepare for my Word Expert certification exam, I started thinking about my Word for the Novelist series. Would you guys be interested in an article on Master Documents? I know some of you use separate files for each chapter. Well, a master document allows you to jump to each file in the master document by way of a hyperlink. It's very cool and would be a very viable alternative to the Document Map method I already detailed in this article. I used the Master Document Method for my trunk novel, Oath of the Songsmith.

Let me know and I'll get writing!

False Starts

I wrote several chapters of another Starcaster book before I realized that it can't be the second book. It has to be a later book. If it is used at all. For now, I'm discarding it and the entire outline I wrote the other week. Why? Because the stakes weren't personal enough for Tory. I still think the idea has merit. It is exciting and dangerous. But I think it's an idea before it's time because I can't think of a way to make the stakes personal for Tory.

For the second book, I need to keep it close to Tory and personal. After all, most of the time, we will not be following Tory through her espionage adventures. We'll only be following them when they get personal. That's the way these kinds of books work.

In the last book, I had a nicely corrupt police officer. I also threw an enemy at Tory without fulling exploring her potential. In the second book, some people in the Intelligence Ministry thinks that Tory's division needs to be disbanded. The corrupt police officer will happily get involved with this endeavor, because some people in Tory's division--including Tory, herself--knows just how corrupt he is.

And then we have Cecil, Tory's gentleman friend, who is just a magnet for trouble. He and the police officer would absolutely clash. And the boss of Tory's division is not really all that fond of Cecil.

Sounds like this could be the plot I was looking for. I'll explore it a bit before I know for sure.

Fun With Research

I'm doing some research again. I like looking into to obsolete stuff that was in use way back when and incorporate them into my writing. For Starcaster, I used coding disks, black powder revolvers and hackney coaches, among others. For Forging a Legend, we had codexes, papyrus and chariots, because horses weren't large enough in ancient times to carry a rider. Oh, and aqueducts.

I decided that for Starcaster II, the spy headquarters needs a network of speaking tubes. Here's a brief explanation of speaking tubes I found online:

A normal installation had a removable whistle plugged into each end. To initiate a conversation Person A removed his whistle and blew down the tube, sounding the whistle at the other end. Person B then removed his whistle, and talking could begin. Hence the expression, still current in Britain, "I'll get him on the blower" when a telephone call is meant.

Such systems appear to have been quite common in homes and offices, though very little information about them, and very few references to them, seem to remain today.

Naturally Mr. Felding, the Commissioner of the Starcaster Corps, will have a network of speaking tubes that all lead to him. And naturally, he will keep the whistle removed at his end, because that's just the way he is. And naturally, a bunch of people will constantly be sneaking into his office in order to use the speaking tubes when they can't find someone. Down in the workroom, people will quickly get tired of the tube whistle and may even "lose" it from time to time. It will drive the dog--who belongs to Tory but stays at HQ because HQ has a larger garden--insane, and I'm thinking that the dog really needs to start howling whenever the whistle sounds.

Low tech. It's fun stuff. It makes my imagination run wild. I have as one of my reference books a copy of Isaac Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. Sadly, it appears to be out of print, but some people are selling used copies at Amazon. One is even billed as a collector's item!

A Spy and a Lady - Progress

The second Starcaster book is opening a bit rough. But that seems to be par for me. I take a while getting into the story, then I go back and whack alarming chunks off the start of the story. And then I rewrite what's left two or three times.

But it's not wasted effort because it gets the backstory in my head, where it can leak into the rest of the story only when it is necessary.

I have over 6000 words written, and it's unlikely I'll get 4000 words written tomorrow and meet my 10,000-word 4 day weekend goal. I found myself absorbed in a Janet Evanovich novel (Twelve Sharp--her best one in a while) and my story was unable to compete with hers. She gave me a lot of good ideas. Never mind that her voice and my voice are about 200 years apart. The way she has Stephanie's running commentary throughout the novel must have influenced the way I wrote the first Starcaster. And I wasn't doing that enough in what I just wrote. It was boring--just a recitation of events. Since the voice was probably the strongest aspect of Starcaster, I need to stay consistent.

I did write a number of scenes that I like. In one, Miss Young, Tory's mentor, lectures her for spending time alone with Cecil, her "gentleman friend". (Anyone know a good word for "boyfriend" that might have worked in about 1810? I know Jane Austen used "Beaus" but that's too French for me.) Tory's got to protect her reputation, you know. In those times, a girl's reputation was her strongest asset.

And in another scene, Tory wants Cecil to go to her mother's soiree, but he flat out refuses. There isn't going to be a soiree, of course--Tory doesn't have time for soirees. She's got a mission to perform.

A Spy and a Lady

I officially started my file for Starcaster book 2, A Spy and a Lady. In it, I took advantage of something that I had changed in book 1 after all my beta readers read it--Mr. Layfett didn't die after all. I figured he could be useful. So I made him disappear, instead. I don't leave it a mystery long in book 2.

I have 30 or 40 pages in my head, so I'll go ahead and get that down. After that, if it keeps on flowing, I'll keep on writing. I'm more hopeful about this novel than the last one, so I may just go ahead and write at least one sequel.

Here's about 300 words. It starts with Tory talking to Lucy, who is Sgt. Crandall's granddaughter. Sgt. Crandall is the owner of a pub on Tory's street. A mysterious gentleman just tried to talk to Tory, but she brushed him off in order to protect her reputation in front of a gossipy neighbor.

"I don't know," I said to [Lucy]. "But he obviously wanted to talk to me."

"Are you going to talk to him?"

"Discreetly, yes. Please tell your grandfather to tell him that I'll meet him in the history section of the bookshop."

"But the stranger is standing right there with him."

"Whisper it in his ear."

Lucy did so and came back inside. Shortly afterward, the Tarquillan gentleman departed.

I tarried twenty minutes before I followed. I couldn't make my visit much shorter than usual without making it stand out in the minds of my fellow patrons.

I entered the bookshop. As I walked in, I noticed that Sgt. Crandall had followed me and he now lingered outside. This didn't really surprise me and I appreciated the backup.

"Hello, Betsy," I said to the young woman at the counter. Her husband was the owner.

She gestured for me to come up close. "There's a man back there," she whispered. "A stranger."

Needless to say, strangers didn't often appear on our street. "Well, if he tries anything, I'll scream," I said with a wink, only half kidding.

She giggled.

I wandered through the fiction section, eventually ending up across from the history section. The bookshop wound and twisted behind the shop beside it, so we were out of sight of the cashier.

"Miss Lawrence?" he asked.

"You'd better talk fast," I said. "My neighbors can be somewhat protective."

"I represent a group of dissidents within Tarquil who wishes to make contact with the Alden intelligence community."

This was not what I expected. "You're not after asylum?"

"No. I intend to go back to Tarquil as soon as possible."

"How did you know about me?"

"Messer Luc Layfett said that you could be trusted."

I have this great scene in mind where Miss Young, Tory's mentor, feels that she must interfere in Tory's love life in order to protect her reputation. I can't wait to write it.