Chris Howard's Writing & Art

What, we're all traveling at the same time?

You'd swear someone planned it. Last week, my brother-in-law, Paul, arrived at Heathrow airport an hour after I did, and he flew out from the west coast.  I was passing through London, and he was on his way there on business.  I have several email accounts, but the one I don't check as often turned out to contain a note from a friend from California--saying that he'd be out in New England for the week I was gone!  I haven't talked to Greg in a while, but he's doing some really cool work.  He's in tech, working for a large commercial printing company on the IT side.  Wait a minute, unless you're a cobbler, it's all tech isn't it?

Check out Wheelbyte, Greg's photography web site (Stills and video). He contributes to several skateboard mags:

http://www.wheelbyte.com/

More pics from Greg Hall here: http://www.wheelbyte.com/Info/wg/index.htm

I'm a notebook--for lack of a better word--freak

I buy cool notebooks.  I'm always on the lookout for cooler ones, and when I find one I buy it.  I have dozens of them.  Some I've never written in, because they turned out to not be as cool as I'd expected or impractical (e.g., too small to write in even though exceptionally cool). 

The Molskines have been my favorites for a while, and they're even marketed as cool notebooks in which famous writers have penned their famous work.

I anticipated picking up a cool notebook or two in Europe, just because...well, it's Europe.  I don't have to Google anything, I just know, instinctively, that the Germans make some kick-ass writing materials.  It's part of the Kultur. French, English, Italians, name a European country, I bet they create notebooks that are beautifully cool, different, and interesting to the American eye--and pen.  I did see a few nice journals in shops in Basel, but they weren't quite what I wanted at that moment.

I bought this one in Zurich, but it turns out I could've ordered it from Amazon.  It's got this great old-fashioned fold-over cover, and very smooth cream paper.  Made by PaperBlanks.  With Amazon in every corner of the globe, pretty soon I'll have to go off-planet for the really unusual notebooks.  How long before I'm ordering stuff from www.amazon.co.mars?

I have my ending!

I have a method for structuring short fiction and novels that works for me.  I begin with plot ideas, a set of characters, an outline for the first few chapters, and a very simple notion of how the story ends.  Even with seven or eight chapters complete, I may not have a clear idea of the ending beyond "The protagonist succeeds."

As I work toward this ambiguous ending, I connect plot points, and try to make more sense of the climax.  What usually happens is that, as I proceed, the later plot points begin to fall into place, and...Voila!  The ending appears.  It seems like magic but there's actually all this context and character motivation tossed into the mix, and the ending usually emerges from it.

Well, this just happened with my current novel length project, while I'm sitting in a cafe in Davos Dorf, drinking espresso.  I won't tell you much more about the project, except that it looks like it'll end up around 200k words, and there are three main storylines, one of which ends tragically.  This is set in the same world as The Wreath, and Kassandra, although not the main character, plays a significant role.  I'm writing this one on my own, with a chat now and then with Chloe about how things are going.  (She's going to kill me when she finds out who I've killed off in this one).

This is probably my last post from Switzerland.

Auf Wiedersehen

A bunch of writing

I've been a writing fool the last two days, putting down somewhere around 8000 words and shoring up several chapters.  I'm really happy with the way things are going.  The plot's strong, the characters are behaving exactly as I'd like them to.  I don't mean that they can't misbehave, but that they're doing astonishing things while remaining true to their character.  I've got this total bastard king who has lived up to everything I could have hoped for in a despicably corrupt despot.

I little bit different:  I've been doing a lot of this in handwriting and typing it in later.  Blame it on the Alps and tiny cafe tables.  (My Dell is one of those monster notebooks, 15.4 inch screen, 9.5 lbs.)

A couple more pics

A couple more shots of Switzerland, the first two from Davos.

Shifting Gears

The business side of things here in Switzerland is complete, and it's time to do a little shopping, a little sight-seeing, take the train to Davos, and then...write--with some really good coffee, of course.

I have had some amazing meals here in Basel.  The first evening here, I had--of all things--kudu at a wonderful restaurant with German, Swiss cuisine, Safran Zunft (Saffran Guild).  Last night I had dinner in a restaurant along the Rhine that was established in 1412, the oldest restaurant in the city.  If you're going to put things like kudu and anglerfish on the menu, I'm going to try them.

Basel is so beautiful, and I'd love to come back with Alice and the kids.  I'm staying right up the street--a narrow cobbled street with a 20 degree grade--from the marktplatz, which is like...the best way I can describe it is to say that it's like walking into movie.  The marktplatz is a long fairly wide (maybe a city block) rectangle of cobblestones surrounded by modern shops, but during the day there are rows of awnings with fruit and vegetable sellers, the perfect scene:  voices in German, French and Italian, vendors selling bread and pastries, trolleys running, an old guy playing the accordion, surrounding walls of tall stone buildings, hundreds of windows (with shutters that really work), old cobblestone streets.  What a great city. It's not crowded, everyone is friendly, polite and speaks at least a couple languages.

A couple of pics.  I'll post more in a day or two.  (Click to see the large version)

Forest Magic

The kids and I walked around the forest this afternoon, inventing stories about things that live deep in the woods.  Chloe came up with a whole society of forest faeries who live in dens and work in the trees, their extraordinary weaving skills, creative uses of woodland materials, and, of course, their use of magic. 

I told the kids about the "forest boy" who lives under the ground and the door to his house is through an old willow tree.  He's lived there for as long as anyone can remember.  The first English settlers told stories of him, "a boy of fifteen, dressed in deerskins with branches and leaves twisted in his pale greenish-gold hair."  The Native Americans told stories of the "forest king" who never aged, controlled the animals, made the moss creep, the brooks and streams turn and flow backward, who befriended the trees, spoke to them, and through their roots and crown, could control the earth and the weather.

We finished up by taking some white birch bark peelings and using them--appropriately-- as the material on which to write forest spells.  We made up a squiggly forest language, which must be used if you are to request any service of the woods.

Here's figure 112, an ancient "control the forest" spell in superb condition.  (If only I could read it).

Bookmarks

We had sort of a family craft night last night, with all of us sitting around the dining room table doing various artistic activities.  Chloe and Christopher made a whole bunch of cool things with modeling clay, Alice did all this fancy cut-out stuff with special scissors, and I made millions of tiny dots for the background of a bookmark.  See pic at left and click it to enlarge.

If you want to print it out, get the PDF version.  It's a 300dpi, 3-up with crop marks.

Busy

Gearing up for the trip next week.  Scheduling stuff, presentations to write and build.

I'll be heading into Exeter later in the day to drop off five copies of The Wreath at Time of Wonder Children's book store.  It's next door to Water Street Books on--you guessed it--Water Street in Exeter, New Hampshire.  (Time of Wonder, 115 Water St, Exeter, NH (603) 778-6027).

Chris Africa, editor/publisher of Ultraverse, suggested my podcast of "A Corner Not Dipped in Styx" to Locus Online's Blinks section, and it showed up this morning, linking to the readable version at Ultraverse and the audible version here.  Thanks, Chris!

Dramatis Personae

I put up chapter 4 of The Wreath and a Dramatis Personae page over at the Lykeion Books site.  Take a look.

http://www.lykeionbooks.com/thewreath/