Shaman Circus edits and influences!

First Installment

Just received the copy edited version of Shaman Circus from Deb, the editor at All Things That Matter Press. I was really relieved when I opened the file and the edits were not extensive, mostly punctuation, a little grammar, and thankfully she caught three contiintuity issues, I totally missed. Handled one with an addition of a few lines to one chapter but will have to rewrite part of another. And then will be done on this phase. So now we move forward one more big giant step. I'm very excited and not as nervous as I was waiting for the edits because I feared some large rewrites. You never know.

I still can't believe it's happening sometimes. A dream I've had for more than 20 years to see a first novel published. But I delayed. Started four novels and never finished them over the years until Shaman Circus wrote itself in less than a year in from October of 2005-to May of 2006. This speed and dedication was thanks to my writer's group and our serious dedication to being frank but always offering suggestions, along with critiques. I never would have completed a novel without this constant weekly support and honesty.

Other influences came from music. Jacob's character became part of Scotty T's rendition of Baron Samedi when he was involved in voudou ritual. When Jacob is in rock singer mode, he's based on the lead singer of 10 Years, (Tennessee) Jesse Hasek. http://www.10yearsmusic.com/

I got hooked on this band in the parking lot of the Greenville/Spartanburg International Airport. The song came on the radio when I was ready to get out of the car and I ended up late at my job as barrister at The Quarter Moon Coffee Shop on the top level of the airport. I had never heard anything like it and had to listen all the way through hoping they would say who the song and band was so I could grab the CD. I was lucky. They did. "Waasteland" On their tour to support the album, 1o years played at The Handlebar here and my friend, Donna, and I went to see them and I was blown away by the lead singer's passion for music and the intonations and emotionality of his voice and his crazy all-over-the-stage-amps-everywhere antics.

I found listening to music helped me a great deal and certain CD's related to the characters, 10 Years, "The Autumn Effect" related to Jacob LaQuerre, the protagonist, while Flyleaf http://www.flyleafmusic.com/and the Middle Eastern flavored music of Niyaz http://www.niyazmusic.com/ related to Lily (who is an American Tribal dancer influenced by Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Turkish folk dancing). Shrine and(sometimes Flyleaf) also inspired Mavis, who is based on my good friend, Wendy Swearingin (auhor and artist) and author, Brian K. Ladd's character, Candy Cane, in his novel, Trimalchio's Couch. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-K-Ladd/65334490836

The kick start of the book was a poetry reading/music show held at Coffee Underground, http://www.coffeeunderground.biz/sponsored by Wit's End poetry. It was the first time I saw Scotty T. and The Disease perform.

http://www.myspace.com/scottytandthedisease

It was the night before Halloween and they were all in costume and Scotty was Baron Samedi (although I didn't know who that was at the time, I just figured it was a personage from Voudou culture.) And I was so mesmerized by the whole five senses experience I had to write it down. It ended up as the first pivotal chapter in the book from the main antagonist's point of view. I was also reading Nick Tosches, "In the Hand of Dante" at the same time and this gave me the freedom to be radical. At a later time, Nick would play a pivotal role in Fissure and in my gutsiness as a writer. We e-mailed back and forth for a while and he sent me a poem to publish in fissure #2. But it was when he wrote "be a leopard." I got even more gutsy with pushing the envelope in Greenville and beyond with my small press, Shadow Archer Press.

Also at the time, I was painting madly and had already painted Lily in a couple of different forms. so she was already formulated in my mind as a figure, for figure painting, although not yet as a character. And the Shaman popped up in a painting I did of New Orleans.

Other inspirations came from visiting the local art galleries, reading lots of anthropological books on shamans in every culture, constantly haunting the blogs of authors, Neil Gaiman, Poppy Z. Brite and Caitlin Kiernan for writing and publishing pointers or criticisms. Reading everything I could on Katrina and especially seeing the damage first hand in New Orleans afterwards.

This was after the novel was actually written, but the experience came into use during the extensive rewriting and revisions from 2006-2009, while I wrote the sequel, Shaman in Exile, at the same time. New chapters were added, some chapters totally cut, other portions totally rewritten.

I tend to write a very fast and sloppy first draft to get the plot and dialogue down, then do extensive rewrites. It's not how most writers like to work, since the revision process is torture, but I'm ADHD and this process works much better for me. I like to see results and will work more diligently when I do. I'm old enough to be old school and wrote my first unfinished novels on a typewriter so got used to seeing that stack of pages on the side of my huge turn-of-the century walnut table. Seeing the page count on a computer is not nearly as satisfying. But typing on a computer where white out and an eraser ribbon are unnecessary is easier. Maybe I never finished those first four novels because I ended up spending a forutne on paper and typewriter ribbons and retyrped every page many times.

more to come later - must go back to finishing the final edits