K is for Kyle Carey

(Post 11 on my WIP)

Kyle Carey is the first man that Jane meets after joining the academy, and after having sworn off men to concentrate on her studies. Like Jane he has a connection at the academy, his cousin Brian works as the chief administrator. Unlike Jane only a few people know this. He really doesn’t want the nepotism comments Jane’s been getting. He worked bloody hard to secure his place at the academy thank you very much.
Kyle’s skills are ‘more of the physical kind’ and he is one of the few trainees to pass the circuits test first time, just.
Being an attractive type, it isn’t long before he has female attention, not least from Gabrielle. But he has his sights set on Jane and he’s not shy about letting her know.

Michael Trevino is actually a fair bit shorter than I envisioned Kyle but he’s got the dark brooding looks.

If you were Jane would you cancel Man-Lent early for Kyle?
In general how do you decide what to prioritise in your life?

J is for Jane Thomas and Jamie Trainer

(Post 10 on my WIP)

Like Gabrielle, Jane has already said hello – here. But, as our main character I think she is allowed more blog exposure. I’m also going to more formally introduce her stepbrother Jamie Trainer (initialling things to distinguish ownership wouldn’t work in their house).

I see Jane as being similar looks wise to Amber Tambyln – an actress I’ve admired since seeing her in Joan of Arcadia.

Here’s a glimpse of Jane and Jamie’s first meeting.

Jamie scuffed in first, he had a mop of brown hair that a comb would probably get stuck in. Jane thought he’d be better off cutting it all off and starting again.
‘Jane, this is Jamie Trainer,’ Jamie gave her a nod and a grin that made her feel that perhaps he wasn’t like the sullen teenage boys in the higher school. ‘and this,’ her mum continued, ‘is his father, Sergeant Benjamin Trainer, he’s a policeman with the local station. We met,’ her mum shot him a coy smile, ‘when I parked somewhere I shouldn’t have. He gave me a ticket and his phone number.’
Sergeant Benjamin appeared very serious. Surely if you liked someone you would have let them off a ticket. Jane realised that they had probably been told more about her than she had about them but decided to introduce herself anyway. ‘I am Jane Violet Thomas, I am nine years old and six months and,’ she faltered not quite sure what she wanted to say next, so plumbed for something in between the whole truth and a lie, ‘and I think I’m happy to meet you.’
She got another grin from Jamie, a sideways glance from her mother and a frown from the sergeant. She chose to ignore the adults and wink conspiratorially at the boy who would, within six months become her stepbrother.

Jane and Ben do not see eye to eye and part of it appears, at least to Jane, to be his favouritism of his biological child.

Jamie and Jane at first tolerated each other. Their mutual presence had meant that things were changing and neither of them much liked change. Jamie who had grown up with only his father’s influence and discipline after his mother died in childbirth was better behaved, at least on the surface. Jane who had been let off small bouts of naughtiness because she had just lost her father was not used to being told no. It seemed that no was one of the Sergeant’s favourite words. No Jane you can’t keep that big room, Jamie is older and needs the space to study hard so he can follow in my footsteps and join the police force, no Jane we can’t take you to ballet and horse riding, Jamie’s police cadets programme is very expensive, what about a horse riding lesson once every two months. No Jane you can’t get down from the table until we all, Jamie included, have finished.

But despite this Jamie and Jane become true friends and Jamie steps into the protective older brother role with ease. She is devastated when he dies and spends the book trying to solve his murder.

When I was searching for images of my characters I actually found this picture of Orlando Bloom and Amber Tamblyn together and found out they have acted with each other before (along with Colin Firth in Main Street, which I’d never heard of). How freaky is that?

Can you get a sense that our Jane may not always be the most reliable narrator?
Do you think Jane should break the ethics of time travel to get her brother back?

I is for Ideas and Investment

(Post 9 on my WIP)

I’d tried NaNoWriMo a few times with the same old idea that I’d had since before uni (which involved Vampires! – Pre-Twilight but Buffy had just started) and I barely made 2,000 words for a number of years, I think because I had already started it and was already invested in making it ‘right’.
So for November 2010 I decided I’d try something new that I wasn’t so invested in. The whole idea of NaNoWriMo is to go for quantity over quality, cutting off your inner editor and just writing, writing, writing that first draft with the plan to edit at a later date.

I really wanted to succeed having decided to gain sponsorship for completing the challenge. My Auntie had been diagnosed with cancer so I chose Cancer Research UK as the charity to support (she actually passed away in December 2011 and I still have plans to organise something to raise money for the Hospice that cared for her in her last days).

I read a post last week (sorry can’t remember where now, visited too many good blogs – do tell me if it was yours) about people thinking writers have to have some special power and one foot in a special world of inspiration and then once they have their idea everything forms and comes together like magic. But as most writers themselves know really it takes a lot more hard work and stress and hair pulling than that.

So, where did I get the idea for Training Time?

Well after I’d decided I was in NaNo for the long haul this year I woke up one morning with this idea. Magic, hey?
Well no, not really. To be honest I wish I’d written down then what the actual dream had been about because I can’t remember now. I just know that there was a girl and she was going to a time police academy. I think (sorry my memory really is shocking) this was actually only a few days before the challenge started but I decided to do a bit of work on identifying characters and I came up with a list of 30+ prompt images/scenes etc to keep me inspired. So I guess I started with a bit of ‘plotting’ but only at a basic level – then I moved to a lot of ‘pantsing’ writing in a notebook or iPad on trains in Italy while I was on holiday. Then I came back and went to work and didn’t get much written. Eventually in the last weekend of the challenge I wrote 12-15 thousand words on the Saturday and Sunday to reach my target skipping to the end because ‘I wanted to know how it ended’.

Then I literally did nothing with it until Nov 2011 other than look at it every now and then and only managed to add 10,000 words in that month before sending it off to Beta-readers (as I’d promised). Now I’m back to ‘plotting’ stage and using Scrivener (more about that in a later post) to organise myself. I think because this book is about time travel it is going to need more intricate planning to make sure everything is where it is meant to be (more on that later too). I also think I work better in chunks of time. I know all the advice is to write a little every day but this just doesn’t seem to work for me (it never has with essays either).

Of course I’ve heard all of the horror stories of your first completed novel being a load of rubbish and often consigned to the back os a drawer never to be seen again but I really hope thats not the case and that it gets to be published even if I’m the one doing it myself. Because now I’m well and truly invested and already talking about sequels before I’ve completed the first.

Do you write everyday or have a different routine?
Where do you get your Ideas from?
Do stories pop into your head fully formed or require lots of nurturing?

Actually I’m wondering if everyone just has a bad memory like me so thinks ideas come from nowhere.