This week we are delving into what got our present works off the ground, how the idea came about and how we pieced it together. I am discussing An Unexpected Desire and Fatal Indiscretions over on Ellie Mack's Blog and over here Bruce Blake is keeping us entertained with his take on the subject.
What kicked off your current book?
That's the assignment this week on the blog
tour, but it leads me to ask another question: which current book? The one I'm
editing? One of the four I'm writing? One of the two or three I'm planning?
Hmm. Since the one I'm editing is almost complete and the second of a series,
the answer to the question isn't very interesting: it arose from the first
book. One of the ones I'm writing is the fourth book in a series I've been
working on for a few years so, to be honest, so much time has passed since I
had the idea, I couldn't come up with an answer to this question if you held a
torch to the soles of my bare feet and put a clamp on my...finger. To make my
own life a little easier, I'm going to choose one of my novels that is in the
early planning stages, because the inspiration came very recently.
This book will be one in my Icarus Fell
series, though I'm not sure if it will be the next (third) book or perhaps the
fourth. I was on the elliptical trainer at the gym and, like at most gyms, the
four televisions were on. My memory is a little hazy as to exactly what was on,
but it was mid-afternoon, so I'm going to say it was Days of Our Lives on one,
a reality show about people who make cakes and/or fix up houses on another, and
some exciting spectator sport like competitive staring, on the others. Suffice
it to say, none of the choices held my interest. And since there was an
overweight old guy on the treadmill in front of me, and not an attractive young
lady, I got lost in my thoughts.
What I started thinking about was a few
short stories I've started in past years, a line of thought that is unusual for
me as I've really set the short form off to the side since I got serious about
novels. Actually, you could hardly call them the beginnings of stories; they
are more sketches or brief scenes with no real form and no place to go.
Specifically, three of them came to mind:
1.
A guy who considers himself a
bad luck charm because everyone he cares about dies. His father before he's
born, his mother in childbirth, his pets, his friends. Everyone.
2.
A severely depressed teen who
decides to end it all and finds that he can't die.
3.
A guy who, after months of
having to hack off the tail he's been growing so people don't see it, becomes
concerned because he is starting to grow scales.
The inspiration? Combine these three bits
of characters/stories into one really unfortunate fella. I know, looking at it
on paper in one place, it seems kind of a natural progression, but when each
part was written at different times, in different places, on the backs of
separate napkins, it's not so obvious. It takes an elliptical trainer and a
little boredom to really bring things together.
So now the real work begins: fleshing the
character and his background out, then figuring out how he fits into Icarus'
world and what problems he creates. I've got a few ideas, a few 'what-ifs' to
ask, but there is a ways to go yet.
Time to go back to the gym and hope there
are soap operas on TV.
If you're a writer, where do you find inspiration?
And readers, do you ever wonder where you favourite stories came from?
Biography
Bruce Blake lives
on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. When pressing issues like
shovelling snow and building igloos don't take up his spare time, Bruce can be
found taking the dog sled to the nearest coffee shop to work on his short
stories and novels.
Actually,
Victoria, B.C. is only a couple hours north of Seattle, Wash., where more rain
is seen than snow. Since snow isn't really a pressing issue, Bruce spends more
time trying to remember to leave the "u" out of words like
"colour" and "neighbour" then he does shovelling. The
father of two, Bruce is also the trophy husband of burlesque diva Miss Rosie
Bitts.
Bruce has been
writing since grade school but it wasn't until five years ago he set his sights
on becoming a full-time writer. Since then, his first short story,
"Another Man's Shoes" was published in the Winter 2008 edition of
Cemetery Moon, another short, "Yardwork", was made into a podcast in
Oct., 2011 by Pseudopod and his first Icarus Fell novel, "On Unfaithful
Wings", was published to Kindle in Dec., 2011. The second Icarus Fell
novel, “All Who Wander Are Lost”, is scheduled for release in July, 2012, with
the first book in the four-part “Khirro's Journey” epic fantasy coming soon
after. He has plans for at least three more Icarus novels, several stand
alones, and a possible YA fantasy co-written with his eleven-year-old daughter.
On Unfaithful Wings
I was alive, then
I was dead, now I’m stuck somewhere in between.
My name is Icarus
Fell. I am a harvester.
The archangel
Michael brought me back to collect souls and help them on their way to
Heaven--that’s what a harvester does. If I get enough of them before the bad
guys do--if I do a good job--I can have my life back. Now people I knew in life
are dying, killed by a murderer’s knife, their bodies defiled, and the cops
think I’m the killer.
I’m not, but I
think I know who is.
But how does a
dead man, a man who no longer exists, stop a psycho? I’m not sure, but I’m
going to stop him before everyone I know is dead.
I have to stop
him before he gets to my son.
Icarus Fell
wasn't very good at being alive, and it turns out he's not much better at being
dead. When two muggers kill him on a rainy night, he thinks it is the final
relief he's been seeking from a life gone seriously awry, but rather than just
letting him be dead, the Archangel Michael has other plans.
As a harvester,
it becomes Icarus' job to help souls on their journey to Heaven. But when he's
sent to harvest the soul of Father Dominic, the abusive priest who raised him,
Icarus makes one more bad decision in a long string of bad decisions. Soon,
people he knew when he was alive start dying under the blade of a sadistic
serial killer, and the police have only one suspect: Icarus. Now he has to
avoid capture by the police and figure out who the murderer is before the
psycho carves a path through everyone he ever cared about, a path that ends
with his teenage son.
“On Unfaithful
Wings” is the first novel in the Icarus Fell novel series.
Twitter: @bruceablake
Kindle: http://amzn.to/GKi7mq
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