I’m tired.

But, part 9 is here. Next week part 10 will be the conclusion of this novella. After that I’ll compile, beta and have it edited before it’s made available as an ebook! Yay. So, without further delay…

Rumor Has It
Pt 9
Phaedra Weldon
© 2012 Phaedra Weldon
Published by Caldwell Press

Halfway down interstate 75, a familiar shape faded into the passenger seat. Joe turned the volume down on the radio. The sun moved behind a few dark clouds and the temperature had dropped again since the morning. “What is it, Phanty.”

Azriel sighed. “I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“I know.”

“Why do you want to find that stone dragon?”

Joe glanced over at him. Azriel looked intensely curious. “Let’s just say…I have a hunch.”

“How?”

“Why are you grilling me?”

“Because,” and this time the Phantasm of the Abysmal Plane shifted in the passenger seat of the pickup. “I don’t like it that I didn’t know you were that power.”

Uh oh. Joe pursed his lips and looked back at the road. “You were in the kitchen.”

“I’m everywhere.”

“Oh don’t give me that bullshit,” he frowned. “You were little more than a fading First Born with an odd addiction to grapes and milk a few months ago. Now you’re the Phantasm. Either way, that doesn’t make you omniscient.”

“You like pissing me off.”

“No, I like you people not just showing up in my truck. So,” he took the exit to 285. “Why are you in here grilling me.”

“I told you. I don’t like not knowing things. And I had no idea you were that powerful. I don’t think Nona knew either.”

“Well news flash. I’m not.” Joe signaled he was moving in between cars. “And back page story—I didn’t know I could do that till I did it.”

Azriel nodded slowly. “I see…so do you often take our own life into your hands?”

“Every day of my life,” he took the exit to 85 South. “Look, if you’re just going to sit there and annoy me—”

“Why do you need the stone dragon?”

Why did he? Joe hedged only because he didn’t have an answer. His abilities weren’t something he’d really ever understood. They were different than his family’s. His mother blamed him being a male. His grandmother assumed it was because he’d been forced to deny the magic for so long the building pressure warped it.

Whatever the reason was—the sucker was way past telling him what it was. “I just…I see things sometimes. I can do a few spells, like Rhonda and Nona. Simple magic. I used it to help get Dags out of the old house.”

“I remember.”

True. He’d been there. “Right. So the bigger stuff is more like… ” he sighed. “Well I know what I want to achieve and I sort of wish for the outcome and the means to get there just…happens.”

Azriel didn’t say anything.

“So when I was in the kitchen and Rhonda was PMSing—” he shrugged. “I wanted to stop her before she hurt Nona, or me. So when the answer came to me on what magic to use to stop her—I got an image in my head of that damned dragon. I remembered the thing from when those two freaky disembodied spirits kidnapped Nona’s soul and put it in the dragon before they put it in that puppet,” he glanced at Azriel. “You know, before you showed up and took Nona out of it.”

“I’m not going to defend my previous actions. I had my reasons.” He frowned. “And if I remember correctly—you kissed Zoë at that time.”

Joe’s expression reflected his inner turmoil. And a bit of irritation. “What I did or didn’t do with Zoë isn’t a part of this—”

“Sorry,” the Phantasm said. “You’re right. I’m just…a bit at a loss as to what’s going on. Rhonda’s not been herself. Her actions leading up to removing the Grimoire’s memories,” he leaned back. “Damn it Joe, it just isn’t her.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Joe exited off Piedmont and then turned off toward Ansley Mall. “I dated her, remember. She’s been obsessed with Dags since she met him. But he’s always been fascinated with Zoë, and I seriously didn’t think she’d ever give him the time of day. I didn’t think she’d ever leave Daniel.”

“And if she did, she’d choose you?”

Joe didn’t answer.

“Halloran—I’m going to need your help. As well as Nona, my sisters and brothers still living, and Zoë. We need to bring her and Daniel back from Canada.”

“Not yet. Let’s exhaust everything before we interrupt them, okay?”

“You’re quiet an honorable man, Joseph Halloran.”

“Yeah…” he sighed. “A real fucking saint.”

Once they arrived at the shop in Little Five Points, Joe pulled the truck into the driveway. The place was locked up. Jemmy only opened it three times a week and sometimes on weekends. He parked the car as Azriel vanished. Keys in hand, Joe held up his hand as he opened the ward so he could cross through. He grabbed the mail piled on the floor before he stepped in to the house. It smelled musty and there was a faint hint of incense. Tossing the mail on one of the tables, he hits the light switch and moves through the hanging mosaic fringe into the botanica part.

It wasn’t there.

He stood in the center of the room and stared at the fireplace. Azriel appeared beside him. “Joe?”

“It always sat up there, even after we got it back from the police. It was right there,” he pointed to the mantle. “Nona said she believed it was there.” He moved forward and put his hand in the spot. Cold. Not even the trace of the thing. “It’s been gone a while.”

“The purpose of the dragon is to capture souls,” Azriel said.

“Yeah,” Joe leaned on the mantle. The thing captured souls, so why had he seen that thing when he was wishing for a way to stop Rhonda?

Unless…

“Joe? You look somewhat surprised.”

No…that wasn’t possible, was it? I mean, had she taken it to use it specifically for that reason? Or did she have it and it was just a convenient way to…

“Joe?”

“TC,” he turned and grabbed the Phantasm’s jacket sleeve. “I know where Morgan is.”

•••

It took over an hour to get back to the Society House. Rhonda was in the infirmary with Dags so Joe went straight to Security with Azriel popping in out around him. Once at the records desk, he called up the camera footage from the archive room where Manuel was found. Originally the footage didn’t give them any answers, but Joe hoped it was because they were looking at the wrong thing.

Azriel popped in and stood by the door, facing Joe.

Fast forwarding through he stopped when he saw manuel walk from the archive room into the storage room. The angle of the camera was designed to show maximum archive area, to show the computers. But there was a small sliver of the storage room visible in the upper left hand corner. He zeroed in on that corner and refreshed several times. He sharpened and cleaned up the noise.

“Joe—”

“I see it.” And there it was. It was only a half image since the other half was hidden by the storage room door.

The stone dragon.

He stood and headed down to the archives and storage room. Of course, it wasn’t where he’d seen it.

“Did you really expect it was still here?” Azriel said.

“Not helping, Phanty,” Joe closed his eyes and this time he wanted to find the stone dragon. The need was there. The desire and then suddenly, he had an image. “Its in her closet.”

“Are you sure.”

He opened his eyes and looked at Azriel. “Trust me. I lived with her for a while. I know how disorganized her closet is. There’s only one problem.”

“Getting into her closet without her knowing?”

“Yeeeeah.” Joe moved past him back into the archive room. “The only way I’m going to get in there without her knowing is shield myself. But I can’t get past the Boggars on the door and Rhonda’s own wards.”

They stood still thinking. Then Azriel said, “You could give her what she wants—if only for a few minutes.”

“You mean Dags?”

“Yeah. I think if she sees him and is near him it’ll be enough of a distraction you can run in and grab the dragon.”

“True,” and it would work. But they’d have to make sure she couldn’t hurt Dags. “There just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Nona’s never going to let Rhonda spend time alone with Dags right now.” Joe refocused on Azriel. “It’s going to be harder to convince Nona to let Rhonda out of that room and near Dags then getting the dragon itself. And once I do get the dragon,” he shrugged. “I have no idea how she got it in. How do you get a First Born’s soul out?”

We all have things that inspire us. A lot of mine comes from shows, movies, commercials (my God have you seen that new Absolut commercial?!) and books, a boatload of mine comes from songs.

The new book has a tentative title, which I’ll give out once I have Zoë’s new cover on my hard drive. But for now, this is the song that’s been the constant two-year inspiration for it. There are animes that have a hand in it as well, but I’ll do that on my anime site.

Stone Sour (Corey Taylor) with BOTHER…

There is an apostrophe in the title—but the theme font keeps deleting it out.

Our small family is split in two places—Atlanta and Baltimore—this is due to job availability, a home in need of repair, and a crashed home-owner market. My husband works his arse off in order to provide for his family, paying for a mortgage and a rental and two sets of utilities. I tell him all the time I’m proud of him—but I don’t think he listens. After four years of working so hard it hurt—he finally achieved Tenure. I am so proud of him I want to shout it to the world.

But…I don’t think he believes me.

I’m living my dream, really. I work from home and I finally get to write. That’s what I hear from people. But that’s not really true. I’m raising our daughter alone. My days are spent with rising early, packing lunch for a ‘tweener whose attitude meter has blossomed, drop off at school, and the day starts. Home repair, lawn maintenance, car repair, errands, groceries, dinner, housework, laundry, homework, school meetings, school functions, after school activities and being owned by four very fussy and messy cats. These take up a lot more time than they should, and I have the organizational skills of a bean. It’s sort of like that commercial where there are all these different moms, and the IT Mom quits.

Trust me, there are days that my Writer Mom takes a hike because she can’t be heard above everything else.

There are large issues in the day to day that can derail writing. But what I want to bring to the front is the impact non-writing spouses have on a writer’s ability to create. We as writers build our words on personal experience. Most of us write what we know, or what we feel. I don’t think non-writers understand how hard it is to write when your mind is worried about something else. It can be something as simple as having a rather stupid argument with your child that morning, getting a sharp, brisk, almost hateful seeming text from your spouse. Get a non-supportive, curt jab in an otherwise rare phone call. These little things can halt an entire day.

I’m married to a non-writer. He’s a Scientist, therefore I call him Science Guy most often. We’re very different. He’s Science. I’m Science Fiction. He’s Fact, and I’m Fantasy. He says the glass is half full, I usually just want to pour more in. That’s not meant to be a criticism of him, or me, but it is what it is. They say opposites attract. But what I’ve learned in this relationship, is that it’s very one-sided when it comes to support. I pretty much know what he’s doing, who he talks with, the issues he faces, his triumphs and his disappointments. I want to give him the support he needs so that he can continue doing good things.

But he doesn’t have a clue what I do. Nor is he interested. Writing is very lonely profession. We sit in a room or at the kitchen table and we make shit up. We never know if anyone will like our worlds, or our characters. We as writers still sit at our computers or pull up our pads (or iPads) and we type out those sentences never knowing if what we do is any good. We don’t need to have someone condemn our prose—we’re pretty good at wrecking our work all by ourselves.

I realize it might not look like a “real” job. And most of the time we do it in our pajamas (or me in bunny slippers). But writing isn’t just writing anymore. It’s blogging and marketing, formatting and cover making. It’s putting stuff out there for other people to hammer and critique. And we take it, and we move on, and we cherish the next world and its characters because we can’t…not…write.

I think my message in this post is if you have to text to your writing spouse, or email them, or even say something, realize that whatever you say or do or text or email that day is going to have a profound effect on how they work, what they write, and how they feel.

In my opinion, the job the writing spouse is doing is much, much harder. The non-writing spouse might have a small group of people they work for, answer to, and put themselves out for. A company. A small business. Maybe even a self employed entrepreneurial job.

But a writer? Well…they expose themselves to the entire world.

There is a new name coming for Zoë Martinique Book 6. It’s changing from Cherubim. It’ll be on the upcoming cover—so—I’ll announce it when the cover comp gets to me. Which is hopefully soon.

So, once again, the title will change. >.<

Odd—that for the first time in my experience at writing—I’m writing two books at one time. I’ve done this for short stories. I’m doing it now, having 3 shorts stories in process as I type. And I admit—running that many at once does help break up the grip of the dreaded Brick Wall when I get stuck on say, SS-A. I flip the Scrivener file to SS-C and scan where I was, look at my outline and then write. And usually as I do, the Brick Wall comes down on SS-A and I go back to it when I find a stopping point on SS-C.

I’ve found, for me, this kind of shuffling of ideas happens when I write. Meaning, when I write, NEW! ideas come. Popcorn Kittens are born or a Plot Bunny stands up on its hind legs and sez, “Uhm…I won’t fit here, but I can show you a new story where I’ll work there!” And poof. I have 3 short stories in different states of completion with 3 open Scrivener files (God I love that program!)

Short Stories are easier I think, to do this with. Not as many characters or intricate plots. And when I write a short I can usually see the end at the beginning.

Novels…eh….not so easy. Yeah, I plot those suckers out using Rachel Aaron’s method, and it works great. I’m back to being obsessed with a book as I write and I drive down on it. Meaning I wake up thinking it, I dream it, I run scenes in my head while I do dishes or cook dinner, Mini-Me asks “Wha?” when I suddenly start talking in response to a character in my head, and then she just sighs and goes back to her own thing when she realizes Mom’s gone off with those imaginary people again.

And usually, that book will run to the end, I finish, eat tons of Sarah Lee and then pull up the next possibility from my “tickle file.”

This time—I applied Mrs. Aaron’s method to three different books right before Spring Break. Cherubim, an older book, and a new book. Older and newer meaning the older one was a book I’d started and then found the end of the Audubon rather abruptly due to lack of knowing where I was going, and newer meaning a book I’d been mulling over for nearly two years and finally committed it to some sort of physical form, IE, the outline (in Scrivener).

In doing so, Cherubim caught fire—which is what I wanted. THAT book has to get done fast for me and for readers. Yeah, even if finished end of this month (April), it still has to be beta read, edited and then copy-edited. I’m not rushing a book out there anymore (IE, Grimoire). I want it done right (IE, the time it’s taken for Tales of the Abysmal Plane’s print version). If a reader is going to pay for it, whether print or ebook, they deserve not so many glaring mistakes.

But…it wasn’t just Cherubim. Noo… During the week of Spring Break, I sat down with my laptop and had the Scrivener file open. I’d had this vivid dream of a scene in this newer book, the one I’d been mulling over. So I sat and wrote it out. 4K later, I started Chapter One and went from there. In three days I wrote 18K on the new book. And now, it’s caught up to where I am with Cherubim. This book has nothing to do with the Abysmal Plane. No connection to Zoë or anyone there. It’s a completely new series based in Oregon. What it does have is a girl, and a boy, and a lot of supernatural creatures. I already have 3 books plotted.

So—I can’t just shut either one of them off. If I have momentum, I have to go with it. Some days Book A, Cherubim, wins out with my attention and I end up marathoning it. And then the next day, it’s Book B. I have no idea which book will finish first. And it’s not as easy to flip from one book to the next. There’s a lot more that goes into a book, IMHO, then a short story. And trust me, I’ve accidentally mixed up my protags. Which is kinda funny since one is a girl, and the other a boy.

Sample Week (this week so far)

But what’s been on my mind the most (besides getting Cherubim finished and this new book done) is what does make a good website for an author? Is it about the author, or about the book? I have a Zoë site, and I have plans now on making it a Wraithapedia sort of site in the near future (after Cherubim). This is just the basic me site. But…should there be sites for Edward & Brenda? What about Aby & Siobhan? Or the upcoming Reen & Faith (yeah this new book that said I MUST BE WRITTEN NOW!)

Eh…it’s too late to really worry much about it now. All I want to do is grab my laptop, head upstairs and just write. And tomorrow—that’s ALL I’m gonna do.

I’ll still tweak it (like I just did) but I’m thinking white with black type is easier to read if I’m going to continue to post fiction on this site and not the Zoë site.

It was also suggested to me by a trusted friend, to turn the Zoë Site into a Wraith-a-pedia. That’s going to take a bit more time too, but I like the idea. Right now, I have more words to write before getting Mini-Me to school!

A word of warning to WordPress users: careful randomly downloading free themes. There are some nasty people out there who like to mess other people’s lives up just for the pure hell of it. Just be careful. My suggestion is to only get themes through WordPress or pay for it.

Sorry for any inconvenience. Now I have a lot of words to catch up on.

Bitch Be Crazy

I’ve started Cherubim off by combining what I know works for me with a bit of what I gathered from Rachel Aaron (because I seriously need to up my wordcount per day). What that means is I’ve started plotting heavier and not doing it mostly by the seat of my pants.

In her plotting post, Rachel goes into detail about what she knows about her new book/world before she dives in to write. That means knowing the ending first, and then knowing the beginning. Filling in the middle and plotting out each scene and its purpose.

Yes…I was a panster. And I was tired of writing a boat load of scenes and sentences only to discover I’d majorly screwed up a plot point and had to start over. And I found that knowing where I was going actually made it faster for me, as well as got me better prepared in the story.

Has it taken away the element of surprise or deadened the points I like to make?

Hell no. Let me point back up to BBC. KNOWING where the events of the story are going has apparently freed up my creative brain so much that it’s pulling things from previous parts of Zoë’s life that I’d forgotten about. And readers of Zoë who’ve kept up with her story from the first book have pretty much figured out which bitch is crazy.

Oh…but it remembered. And it’s messing with me, and with Zoë. It now has the freedom of creative expression because it doesn’t have to keep me on track of who knows what where. Now, will this work for everyone?

Nope. Am I saying this is the only way to go?

Nope. Am I pretty happy with it so far?

Yep. And you know what?

I LOVE IT! ‘Cause… bitch be crazy!