Lou Paduano | Urban Fantasy Novels | Sci-Fi Crime Series

Writing Update – August 18, 2016

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I like to take stock on where I am with my work and I feel it’s important to share that with you here. Every two weeks you can find out what I’m currently writing, what I’ve been reading and other interesting factoids I have found on the interwebs instead of doing my work. (I actually stole the concept from my wonderfully talented sister, Sara Frandina. You can read her delightful coffee + content blog at sarafrandina.com.)

Currently Writing:

I am hip-deep in the self-editing process with Tales from Portents, a short story collection you’ll be hearing quite a bit about in the coming months. I’ve already set my deadline and a pub date for February 17th, 2017 so mark your calendars! There are six short stories involved pulling at different threads from Signs of Portents so I’ve been busy tweaking each tale, making sure it lines up with what’s come before (this is a prequel of sorts) and bridges the gap between the first novel and what is coming next summer.

Speaking of what comes next, I’ve started pulling notes and researching for my next novel. By research I mean reading a bunch of Superman comics so I can make Detective Greg Loren’s patented references. I should probably do some actual research too.

Finally, the best news of all:

writing - Signs of Portents proofs

The FINAL PROOFS CAME IN!! With two weeks to spare I have the final proofs for Signs of Portents. There is nothing sweeter than holding the book in your hands. More info on this coming in the next couple days!!

What I’ve Been Reading

Brad Meltzer and Tod Goldberg’s The House of Secrets – I’m a big fan of Brad Meltzer. I’ve read the majority of his books and am always excited for another adventure. I’ve always been fascinated with secrets hidden in history. The Freemasons, the Culper Ring, the Illuminati, all of them spark my imagination and I get sucked right into the story. The House of Secrets is no exception, this time focusing on Benedict Arnold’s bible and the conspiracy surrounding it. The book took some time to get rolling but by the second half I was fully engrossed. The nod to his previous trilogy was a nice touch. Always love those subtle connections between “worlds.”

Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman’s Thor – I know. COMICS. I could pretend to be sophisticated and call them graphic novels but they’re not and Jason Aaron doesn’t pretend they are either. His Thor is AMAZING. I fell off the wagon a couple years back during The Accursed storyline re-introducing Malekith, the dark elf. (From Thor: The Dark World. Don’t pretend you didn’t see it.) I lost touch, always with the intention of catching up. Big mistake on my part.

Ever since Jane Foster became Thor (WHAT? Thor is a woman? Yes and it is great.) the stories have been top notch, work-building and cosmic in scope. Russell Dauterman’s art is indescribably astounding. I never want him to leave the book.

Have a great book recommendation? Want to tell me how Walt Simonson’s run on Thor was WAY better than Mr. Aaron’s? Shoot me a message.

The Web

Jason Aaron talks all things Thor – Not straying too far from my love-fest for Thor is an excellent interview with Jason Aaron on the book and where it’s going. I love the enthusiasm he has for the character and the world he’s playing with.

Tiny Goals – Shaunta Grimes guest posted on Jeff Goins site with a great article on setting tiny goals rather than big, impossible ones. As a stay at home poppa bear with two wee ones this is something I wholeheartedly agree with and need to be reminded of way to often. With nap time, late nights and weekend mornings my only real outlet for writing, creating smaller, tangible goals rather than big, lofty ambitions is the only way the work gets done. AND I get to create checklists. I love checklists!

I’m checking this off my list right now, in fact! Ahhh, satisfaction…

Thanks for reading.

Signs of Portents – The Long Road to Publication

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Signs of Portents took a terribly complex and irrational journey from pen to page and finally to publication. The initial concept came about in 2008. Yeah, I know. Ridiculous. Image Comics’ ShadowLine imprint was looking for a companion book to their Bomb Queen title and were looking for pitches.

Being an overly ambitious fellow, I sent eight. They were horrible. Piddly little paragraphs like an elevator pitch more than a full blown, professionally constructed pitch. I did no research into Bomb Queen or anything else ShadowLine was publishing. Not a single smart move taken. It amounted to bupkus. Shocker.

Greystone, however, was one of the them, but not the same as the book you now have adorning your shelves.

Take a look at the original pitch:

To the outside world Soriya Greystone appears to be the epitome of normality.  Married to a man bringing home a middle class income.  Two kids, the apple of her eye.  And a house in the suburbs.  The typical housewife.

Wrong.

In the city of Portents, darkness lurks around every corner.  Creatures, demons, and more, all wait their turn for a chance at breaking through to our reality.  All that stands in their way is the Greystone, occult detective.

Working with Detective Greg Loren and an unusual arsenal of occult artifacts, Greystone uses her peculiar talents to solve supernatural crimes and keep her family safe and unaware of the true dangers of the city.

Like I said, horrible. No surprise it went into the slush pile we call life. But I came back to it at the end of that year. I was trying to figure things out as a writer and my focus remained comics and script writing. So I pulled out my pitch and wrote a four issue mini-series. I even came up with a title – Signs of Portents. (Progress!) After writing it I searched high and low for an artist but the process quickly fell apart. That’s how my writing was at that point.

So I had a script but no way of producing it. Back to the slush pile.

Getting closer to publication… by inches.

Soriya and Loren refused to leave me alone. They plagued me for years to the point where I wrote the sequel to Signs of Portents just to get some release, some closure on their world. It served to do the opposite.

In 2013, having left the working world to take my role as All-Star Dad, I pulled out my old script and set to work. I wrote the first prose draft of Signs of Portents in six weeks. I was on fire. (Sometimes literally. Raising kids is tough.) Everything I had sat on and shoved away since 2008 came roaring to the surface and the book took over.

Then nothing. Again. (WHAT AN IDIOT.)

I didn’t have a next step. A plan. A goal other than to make it work. Traditional publishing was as much a mystery as taking it all on myself. So it sat. And I wrote other things. New worlds. But Portents called me back.

It always calls me back.

Making 2016 the year for publication.

Eleven Ten Publishing came about in January of this year and I wanted the perfect launch product for it. There was only one choice. So I edited the holy hell out of Signs of Portents. Then a real editor made it readable. Kit Foster Designs added the window dressing to perfection and here we are. Publication of Signs of Portents is only two weeks away.

Easy peasy.

Plans don’t always come together but some deserve the extra time and effort. Some sure as hell demand it. Signs of Portents is definitely one of them.

I hope you agree.

Thanks for reading.

Balancing Your Love/Hate Relationship with Self-Editing

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You did it. The draft is set. You’ve typed The End and can finally put this beast of an endeavor to bed. Never to be plagued by its myriad paths, the subtle turns or its exceptionally developed characters again. Time for your readers to see your masterpiece and shower you with praises.

Let me know when you wake up from that dream. That wonderfully, deceptively, beautiful dream. Take your time. I can wait.

Sigh.

You know what comes next. What has to come next. It’s painstaking. It’s torturous (not for all but definitely for some). The self-editing process. (dun dun DUN.)

It’s necessary. Absolutely necessary. Some walk away from the work for awhile, focus on other things – blogs, cooking classes, those pesky kids that haven’t seen you clean shaven in three months – and then come back to the draft refreshed and energized. Some barrel in, list in hand at the problem areas they noted during the first draft. How you do it and when you do it are dependent on you.

But you have to do it.

Self-editing is crucial.

And when it comes to that time it is important to remember your attitude. In my case? I hate editing. Not because I’m so great it isn’t needed, though early on I thought this (a topic I’ll be chatting about soon because of how unprofessional it made me at the time and how it stymied any and all growth as a creator). No, I dislike the process because it is SO needed with my work. I hate catching errors in story logic worse than catching the flu. Typos? Missing words? The multitude of grammar errors? Fine. So be it.

But the big ones? The ones that make you question the entire work? UGH. That’s why I do it though. I have to. It bolsters everything else up. That brilliant reference to Krypton exploding might be the best quotable in the manuscript but if your character says it while being choked to death IN SPACE, it might not work.

You should love your writing, in as much as you love the art OF writing. Not your genius at solving racial discrimination in Chapter 314 of a 900 page opus. Just putting thought to paper (digitally is preferred these days though I love a good legal pad) is such an accomplishment in and of itself. Walking away from a draft thinking it is plated in gold and should be hung on an altar surrounded by statues of you is where most writers get off track.

Hating yourself helps a little.

Cursing the inconsistencies, screaming at the lack of logic, is the best thing for your book. And for you. Fiction, be it short or epic, is the ultimate word problem. (Math, I know.) It is though. Looking at it from a critical standpoint first – noting every question, every leap that fails to land – gives you your starting point for your self-editing. Love blinds you to this but hate, a true critical outlook – brings the work back to earth and you can see the places that need work.

Love comes back into play for revisions. You’ve pulled it apart. You’ve ripped your greatness to shreds. Now it’s time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and the hater has no place in the equation.

But balance is the key.

Pull it apart. Put it back together. Do it enough times and you start to ask less questions, your notes lessen until it is all nit-picky garbage that is only keeping you from moving on. Getting to that point though takes time, time necessary to build a better book, a more powerful tome for your readers to enjoy.

And that’s why we do this, right?

Love your work. Hate it too. You’ll be better for it. And for the love of God hire an editor when you’re done. They make everything even better.

Thanks for reading.

Great Motivators

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No one cares.

I come back to this story every once in awhile and I wish I didn’t. It’s upsetting but more than that – and why it always circles back in my mind – is that it is the greatest motivator in my arsenal.

In college I majored in creative writing but I was also a member of the Honor’s Program. Not a bad thing to be part of, it opened doors to new ideas, different philosophies. But it took over my workload and writing became a memory. So I dropped the program.

During my exit interview the head of the department asked for my reasons. I gave them easily enough. Writing is my passion. If I’m not doing it why bother being here? His response?

No one cares.

When asked for what he meant he replied earnestly:

No one cares about your writing.

I couldn’t believe it. This man, teaching about the greatest philosophers in history telling me no one cares about the written word? I had no response, other than to check to make sure my ears weren’t bleeding.

Then he repeated it.

No one cares.

It certainly made dropping the program that much easier.

It gave me doubts, that statement. Doubts about my self-worth, about my goals in life, about everything. It still does to some degree, every time a family member asks when I’m going to get a real job, people that have never bothered to crack open one of my books because of a Big Bang marathon on the tube. (Hey, it happens.) How could I not feel that this man, this oh so wise professor, was correct?

To some degree he was and still is. Some people won’t care. I’m not here to win over the world. I’m here to write and I’m not alone in that regard.

The power of the written word is in everything we do, in everything we take in, from books to television to film to theater. Our culture is dependent on it. On our need to express ourselves and our individuality. To find our own voice in the wilderness. It is why social media has such a hold on us. It is why people love to create. To put everything they have into some tangible product, some all encompassing message.

It is why EVERYONE cares.

Where this lovely little tale comes into play – and coming back full circle to the beginning of this rant. This man hurt me that day so long ago. He belittled the power of what I could do because I wasn’t doing what he wanted me to do. It made me angry and it drove me to keep writing. Not just to remain stagnant but to keep improving, to keep learning about my craft and how to create better and more interesting stories.

Anger, while sometimes leading to the dark side of the force, can be a great motivator but flip it around and it becomes hope. Hope that this man genuinely is wrong about the world – how it is today and how it can be an even better one with my voice in it.

Use what you have, use what you’ve experienced, not always in the tale you want to spin but to drive you to tell the one that is bursting inside you. Let it motivate you. Let it drive you. Because we need more voices in the world. Bigger and brighter and unceasing, no matter what you’re told.

Thanks for reading.

Some great writing books to motivate you:

Steven Pressfield – Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is and What You Can Do About It (how appropriate)

Jeff Goins – You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One)

And the gold standard on the subject –

Stephen King – On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft

Welcome to Portents

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Signs of Portents Banner

Or more appropriately, welcome to Greystone – a new series of novels combining the methodical nature of a police procedural with the action and intrigue of an urban fantasy.

Why Greystone?

Greystone brings all of the elements I love about fiction – drama, suspense, fantastic settings hidden among the mundane, and characters that you can hear when you read their dialogue. It also brings together subjects near and dear to everything I write – faith, trust, friendship. And questions about perceptions, the universe and our own fragile mortality as well.

Detective Greg Loren is the window into this world. Reluctantly so, by the way, though he has some stake in the game. His wife was murdered by the darker elements of the city (or so he believes), elements he knew nothing about until he met the other player in this drama.

Soriya Greystone. Twenty-two year old badass with a nose for trouble and the firepower to back it up. She exudes the elements of the true city, the hidden underbelly of Portents with all that comes with it. Gods and monsters. Myths and legends. All hidden beneath the surface. She carries with her the Greystone, a weapon of unknown origin, able to channel the elements and more by focusing on the rune case upon its surface.

She is the city’s protector. But she needs Loren. To ground her. To see more. To help everyone.

There is more, so much more to their world. To Portents. Mentor, Captain Alejo Ruiz, the Bypass Chamber. Every piece of the puzzle has their own story to tell, a mystery to solve.

This is just a taste.

Signs of Portents is out August 30th.

I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for reading.

A Writer’s Journey

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I made a promise to myself to keep these long diatribes about who I am and my so-called humble beginnings wandering the Earth in search of the unknown – wait, that wasn’t me. Anyway, I’m much happier to talk about anything other than myself, a little habit I’m trying to break with you here.

I mentioned on the wonderfully created About Lou page the genius of eight year old me with my first opus tucked away. But where was the second? And why am I, a thirty-something so-and-so just getting my crap together?

This little endeavor of mine started in late 2013, with just about the greatest trigger known to man:

DADHOOD.

I quit my job, never to miss cubicle walls again, and prepared myself for poopy diapers and a seemingly endless supply of drool. It was no big thing – leaving my job I mean. A decade of tolerable professions had left me cold inside – desperate for a new start.

I still have nightmares about this view…

Babies are magic that way.

It wasn’t to say I hadn’t been writing in the decade since college. There were countless scripts, false starts, misshapen messes and even the occasional treasure in my personal slush pile. Writing, however integral in my happiness, had been a hobby instead of the dream to end all dreams.

It was time to change that.

Since 2013 I’ve produced more content in the scant hours available (praise be to nap time) than the decade previously. And while I will unfortunately always miss a regular paycheck, or binging on Supernatural while eating dinner on the couch, I am more fulfilled with thirty minutes of solid writing time than an eight hour shift doing something less than meaningful.

I’m not special in this regard. Jeff Goins (an insanely inspirational fellow that I recommend following – not down the street) can tell you the same tale. Except he was much faster and much smarter about it. Family changes things. But that’s me.

I look at my lost decade and I cringe. How much more could I have done, should have done during that time?

What’s keeping you from writing?

What’s holding you back from your goals?

How can you overcome them, reposition them, shift the schedule to make writing, reading, and whatever your passion is take the top spot it deserves?

Make it happen. Make it work. Tell yourself that there is nothing else going on in the world. It is just you and your goal. You and your dream.

At least until nap time is over.

Thanks for reading.

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