Jack of All Trades, Once Again!

"I'm happy you're making progress on your next book. I continue to wish you good luck with it. Can't wait to see the final result!" ~ B.L.

This is a quote from B.L., one of the readers of my blog, a reviewer on Amazon, and the one behind Shadows and Sleuths, a two part video review of my book, which, to be honest, I love.  I wish she'd review the other Phantom/Holmes crossovers, cuz I'd love to hear what she has to say.  Oh, and B.L., if you read this, there is another Phantom/Holmes crossover.  You can buy it on Amazon here.  I definitely want to read it at some point, because it has not only the Phantom story in it, but also Holmes facing off against Jekyll and Hyde.  It should be an interesting, if short (only 106 pages,) read, but hopefully worth it.  I've yet to pick up Canary Trainer . . .

Anyway.  I'm still chugging away on Jack of All Trades.  I've gotten past the reveal, I need to go back and finish writing about a segment with Erik that opens a can of worms for him, Watson and Abberline have done something of a team-up, because Watson is now feeling like Erik has replaced him, and none of the officials, (the policemen and such,) are any closer to finding the Ripper after the night of the double murder.

Sounds exciting, right?  I hope it does.  All I'm feeling now, though, is disorganized.  There are definite ways to go about writing a novel like this, and I can't help feeling that I'm falling short of where it should be.  I Will Find the Answer was definitely a step up from Rendezvous, and I want to continue on that up and up.  I'm just not sure how to accomplish that with such a historically based writing.

Plus . . . I've gotta admit, I'm going through a rather crap-tacular period in my personal life.  Usually, I want to keep my personal life out of this blog, because who wants to hear an author whining?  The readers want to know about the books, right?  But I want to rant a bit about this somewhere.

Long story short, part of the reason I want to rewrite Rendezvous is because, honestly, I can write it better.  But more importantly, I finally truly understand the kind of Hell Christine was going through.  I actually had something of a Phantom-Christine-Raoul triangle happen to me.  Except neither of them stayed.  And now, neither of them wants anything to do with me, despite both claiming to love me at whatever points in the past.  Yet, oddly enough, it was the Phantom-ish character in the situation who was generous enough to give me a last conversation so I could attempt to get some closure on things.  With him, at least.  The Raoul-ish one . . . refuses to grant me that.  Who knew, right?  Who knew the bad-tempered one that all of my friends hated would give me something that the one all my friends like and say is such a great guy would refuse to?

Honestly, the situation's killing me, and it makes it hard to go back and write about Holmes, and especially Erik, because I'm dealing with a situation in here that reminds me of the entire mess of my personal life.  I do try very hard to separate it, but then, when that kind of pain is my inspiration of some things, it doesn't really work.

And it's only gonna be worse, potentially, when I get to the next novel, because the next novel is my Holmes and Dracula take.  And where did I come up with that one?  Flat-out, I didn't.  Back in 2008, right around Halloween, I'd written a short story for a class I was taking that starred Holmes investigating the case of Jekyll and Hyde.  I'd just become obsessed with the musical at that point, and since I was still working on editing Rendezvous, a combo of the two seemed inevitable to spring forward in my head.  Well, I talked to my real life Phantom-ish guy about doing up a full novel of Holmes/Jekyll and Hyde, and he said, "Nah, forget that.  What you should do, if you're gonna write a Holmes novel, is have him face off with Van Helsing against Dracula."

We didn't get the chance to talk about it much that night, but I went home and wrote out a few ideas for it, because I seriously liked the idea.  So, the next day, I went in to work and told him what I'd been thinking for a possible plot and whatnot.  He basically looked at me and said, "No, not like that.  This is what you have happen . . ."  And while I followed him around the store with a notebook and pen, he outlined the entire novel for me.

I'm adding in and fleshing out a Hell of a lot to the plot he gave me.  I'm bringing in some info that C.C.Humphreys wrote about in his book, Vlad: The Last Confession, which talks more about the man Dracula is based on, rather than just vampire legends and such.  But all in all, the novel is still his, and it's a brilliant idea.  (As I'm hoping the future readers will agree.)

The other thing stressing me now is school.  I'm in four classes this semester, to finally finish off my AA in not only Creative Writing, but Psychology.  I'm hoping I pass them.  I mean, the one class for the Creative Writing degree, I'm confident I will, but the three for Psych . . .  I'm not so confident about one of them.  I hope I'll pull it together somehow.

On the upside, I do have a friend from where I'm working now who said that he'll read the initial type-out of Jack of All Trades and give me his opinion on it.  He was an English major before switching over to culinary.  (I know, ???, right?)  But the fact is, he's still very good with words, he's intelligent, and he's another set of eyes to read over things and catch typos before it's published.  Plus, with any luck, he and I can actually sit down together and go over plot points, work on segments that need work, and figure out how I can get away from such a disorganized feeling about this one.  Cuz, if I'm feeling that, there's no way readers won't pick up on it.

Well, another writing spazz has come to an end for now.  Here's hoping I get some more writing done before work today.