Back to business, answering some questions, plus a preview of the novel.

So…that “Comment Challenge” thing…not so successful. I guess I overestimated my audience. Oh well, gotta keep moving on. I’ve had some problems writing my novel as my life is in huge flux right now, but it’s riding along at about 20,000 words right now. I thought about killing it since I’m not entirely happy with the direction it’s going, but I decided to soldier on and finish it. After it’s done, I’ll do an autopsy on it, see what I did wrong, what I did right, and see if it can be salvaged. Hemmingway said “the first draft of anything is shit”, right? Well, he also blew his brains out…but, that’s sort of beside the point, unless he was really distraught over the first draft of…what? Too soon for Hemingway jokes? Really? OK, moving on.

Now for Q&A time, brought to me by the one person that answered my call for comments, Mr. Ryan K. Lindsay. So here we go!

Where do you write? And when?

I write almost exclusively at my computer, though my iPhone has gotten a bit of a workout as a rudimentary writing pad when something comes to me. As for time, I usually write at night, once everyone has gone to sleep and it’s quiet. I tend to get distracted by the smallest of things, so it helps me focus in.

What helps you write? Music, darkness, virgin’s thighs,etc.

My most frequent companion when writing is a pair of earplugs. When all I see on the screen is words and all I can hear is my fingers hitting the keys, I can really get into the zone and pound out a ton of work. Of course, being a writer, especially being a writer of hardboiled crime, a stiff drink makes its way to my desk every once in a while. I’ll sometimes mix up a whiskey sour or a gimlet to put myself in the right mood to let my mind wander and feel out my story. I don’t write drunk, ever, but a drink sometimes provides nice lubrication for the brain

What websites do you most frequent?

When I’m not writing…well, hell, even when I am supposed to be writing, I spend a lot of time on Twitter, paging through my Google Reader news items, and I waste way more time than I should on Wikipedia doing research (it starts off as research, anyway…but usually ends in me looking up astonishingly obscure facts about things not even remotely related to what I’m writing)

Do you eat/drink when you write?

I usually have some sort of drink with me when I’m writing, but I usually don’t eat anything while I write, it’s too distracting.

When you write do you edit in your head, or just dump it out and you’ll heavily edit later on?

It’s a combination of both. I go back and edit details every once in a while, but I try not to. I try to keep my momentum going, because I feel when I have to spend my time fixing spelling errors, I just lose it. I guess I’d say that I write to write, not edit. Editing can be done later.

Please list a top five/ten of some of your favourite things, it’s the ultimate way to get to know someone, High Fidelity style!

You know, I’m really not good with lists. Never have been. Sorry. My favorite movie of all time is Chinatown if that makes it more info-y

Alright, and here’s (maybe) what you all have been waiting for. Here is a little sample of the novel I’ve been working on. Be warned, it’s the first draft of it, completely unedited. Things will be changed, hopefully it’ll get better. Enjoy.

Tina Hampton writhed in bed, the four aspirin she’d taken didn’t do anything to dull the pain, and she was fairly sure that she wasn’t going to stop hurting for a while. She hadn’t gotten to bed until seven in the morning, stripping out of all her dusty clothes and collapsing onto the matress, exhausted at what she did, her hands aching and bruised at the knuckles. Tina was sure that she wasn’t going to wake up until well into the night, and if it weren’t for Mrs. Thompson’s call at around one in the afternoon, she would have. Mrs. Thompson asked whether or not she’d heard from Sarah that morning. Of course, Tina hadn’t, so she told Mrs. Thompson the truth and assured her that Sarah’s phone probably just died or she was hungover, or a litany of other excuses. All of them were within the realm of possibility, right?
Tina looked at her cell phone by her bedside. Three in the afternoon. The pain wasn’t going to get any better just laying in bed, and maybe if she did something with her day she’d forget about it. She hoped she’d be able to forget about the whole thing, but there was no way she’d be able to just give something like that up. She rolled over and got out of her bed, and she didn’t get more than a few feet across the carpet of her bedroom before she felt her stomach throb more intensely than she’d ever felt before, and she had no choice but to dive toward the toilet as fast as possible, nausea getting the best of her as she threw up violently sitting on the floor of her bathroom. If she’d actually been able to stomach food in the past twelve hours, it would have been worse, so Tina was thankful for the one positive to come out of this situation. After she finished vomiting, she rested her head against the tile wall of her bathroom. She didn’t want to confront reality about her situation, but her body was forcing her to. Fighting against whatever her body was saying, Tina got up from the floor, wiped down her face and chest with a warm washcloth, and stared at her face in the mirror. After everything, at least she still had her looks…nothing she did could take that away. No matter what path her life would go down beyond this point, she was still a knockout. Maybe not as much of a knockout as Sarah, but she was pretty sure she’d be able to deal with that.