Claudia Gray

Misunderstanding of the concept of communion?

Exorcism gone horribly wrong?

Mistaken for Easter cookie?

“Crucifix In Throat Removed Without Knife.”

Apparently the writer considered the knife-free aspect to be the oddest part of this story.

The strangeness of life is delightful, sometimes.

Believe it or not, there’s a lot of jurisprudence on this, including the famous Stambovsky v. Ackley case in New York that requires sellers to disclose the existence of a ghost. (Haunting, they find, is a defect that even a reasonably prudent buyer probably could not discover on his own during inspections.) Because the seller in question had given interviews in the local media about the ghost in the house, that seller was estopped from denying in court that the haunting was real, which meant that the house was haunted AS A MATTER OF LAW.

If all law were like this, I’d still be a lawyer. But I digress.

Anyway, to my delight, I’ve found a Web site that deals with the hard issues facing sellers who want to unload 3 br./2 bth./1 ghst. residences: Haunted Real Estate.

There are even tips for how to frame the existence of a ghost as a plus. Turns out plenty of people would like to live in a haunted house.

(Sometime I’ll talk about Aunt Kitty’s poltergeist. She loved him dearly.)

Scroll on down to the bottom of the page to get an eerily sexist slice of life from the 1950s:

Your Kitchen Can Fit Your Wife (or vice versa).

Usually, once I’ve got my outline together, I start writing at the front of the book and work my way right to the end before I get any revisions going. If I jump ahead to the stuff I’m most looking forward to, I generally find I end up having to redo it because ultimately, the context isn’t what I originally thought. And if I were to stop and revise as I went, I’d pretty much spend my whole life repolishing a single Chapter One without ever hitting Chapter Two.

This weekend, though, I went back and began revisions work on Stargazer, despite the fact that I’m about 15K short of the end. I knew a couple of plot arcs had developed in new directions — that happens all the time, and in itself that didn’t worry me. But those new plot elements meant that I had to go back and ask myself about the characters’ motivations, and in a couple of cases, those motivations had changed substantially. I felt like, if I wasn’t in touch with that, any version of the ending I could write would be so flawed that I’d end up having to redo it completely.

So. Saturday morning, I picked up with Chapter One. I didn’t do a full revision, but I straightened things out, refocusing on what I now know is more important. I pretty much worked on that nonstop until Sunday night. (Well, with a few breaks for food and “Singin’ in the Rain,” because there is literally no time when it is not good to stop and watch that movie. I think watching Gene Kelly dance improves your mind, health, spirit, complexion and karma.) And I am so, so glad that I did. Although there are still a few chapters to go, I feel like the story is so much more on-track and has regained its momentum. Or maybe that’s my momentum. Either way, I’m feeling good.

I got the manuscript for Evernight back from the copyeditors this week and have been proofing it in the evenings. Just got done about half an hour ago. And let me tell you something: I am so deeply, humbly grateful that I would run over to 55th St. and start hugging people at HarperCollins if it wouldn’t result in a restraining order.

I mean, I’m a pretty careful writer. I edit. And I re-edit. I research. I have grammar-sharp, plot-wise friends read my manuscript multiple times. I think of myself as creating a fairly clean product. And then the copyedit comes along to remind me, Hi, you know nothing.

The majority of the edits were style things; as a former journalist, I tend to write by AP style, which is not used in most fiction publishing. And some mistakes were the results of previous editing I’d done (moving the location of a scene and thinking I’d caught every later reference to the scene, but discovering I’d missed one), which, although still my error, I don’t feel too bad about; this is the kind of thing you want a new set of eyes for.

But I got the title of an album wrong, and I own that album. There are other numbskull errors too. OK, in the grand scheme of things, not that many, but every single one thwacks me smack in my forehead and shakes me out of my complacency.

Stargazer will get a much tougher read from me — and no doubt copyediting will save my skin there, too —

To make a long story short: Thank God for copyeditors!

But still, after Write-A-Thon 2007, I can report that I got about 22,000 words in during those five days — not bad! My rough drafts are fairly rough things (and I already see that Stargazer is going to require a lot of restructuring), but at this point, the main thing is to get the whole story down, and I’m a lot closer to that. So far this weekend hasn’t been especially productive, but I hope to make up for that tomorrow.

Today, instead of writing, I went to the Natural History Museum, where they have the “Mythical Creatures” exhibit — dragons and mermaids and griffins and the like. It was pretty amazing stuff, really, and thank goodness I was able to retain some self-control in the gift shop. Not only were there adorable stuffed potbellied dragons and remarkably good phoenix puppets, but there was a book called A Field Guide to Demons. Not only did it list most types of demons from folklore around the world, but it also included the time honored methods for exorcising and/or slaying them. I might have to reconsider, return and buy that one after all; as an urban fantasy writer, I could claim it as a valuable research tool —

It’s been much too long since I updated. I hereby blame a grueling set of deadlines at work and a nasty summer cold, both of which contributed to my also falling behind on my novel deadlines. About two weeks ago, I was well on my way to a full-bore panic. However, last weekend I was able to make some progress on Stargazer, and then I finally got done with the big projects at work — which meant I was able to take this Monday and Tuesday off, allowing me five days off in a row when I really have no major plans other than to write. My goal is to reach Chapter 16 by Wednesday evening; if I do that, I’ll be in the home stretch and confident that I’ll have a complete first draft by August 1, my original, self-imposed deadline.

(Granted, this first draft is rougher than rough, but I’ve started making “polish notes” as I go, thinking out the changes I’ll make and putting together an action plan for revisions that I can turn around and start on instantly. So I feel good about it.)

Will I make it? I hope so (and will report in on Wednesday.) I find that when I have a lot of time set aside to write and am healthy/happy enough to actually do it, I work at a faster pace — and it only gets faster the longer I’ve got. There’s a rhythm to it, I think, or maybe it’s simply a matter of catching the book’s mood and being able to live in that for a few days. Does this happen for you guys, too?

Whatever it is, I’m having tremendous fun (writing in the park near my home, in a little shady place where you could believe you’re in the woods instead of Manhattan, white butterflies fluttering all around). If only I really could do this every day!

First of all, the fangs_fur_fey contest has announced its winner, and lucky #102 gets to send her pages to Rachel Vater. I think the pages are terrific and I’m very eager to read the whole book — which, hopefully, we’ll be able to do by picking copies up in the bookstore someday. (Someday soon, I hope. I am concerned for Obie.)

I am a member of the community writers_5, but have rarely been able to answer the questions, as I felt like the honest answers would too spoilery for Evernight. Today, though, I think I can safely answer these:

While going to and from a Cinco de Mayo party, riding the subway, I worked on plotting for the very last book in the Evernight series. Not only did I make a lot of story progress, but something I hadn’t realized about the mythology finally came clear to me — it’s like it was always there, but I just hadn’t seen it — and now I’m on a high. So much can flow from this point, not just in the fourth book but in two and three as well.

There is this incredible sense of mischief, I guess, when you think of something new — it’s almost like you’ve just put one over on reality, coming up with something fictional that nonetheless feels true. Take that, surly bonds of earth.