a motel mystery

Two witches accidentally pick a haunted motel in the middle of the Anza-Borrego desert for a romantic honeymoon. Between overdramatic vampires, ghostly apparitions and a fifty-year-old murder mystery, it'll take one hell of a magic spell to get any time on their own.

[tomwindeknecht]

They’re watching you 👁️

El Cosmico in Marfa, Texas.

[melonmemes]

[ghostfails]

[hearteatermotel]

one of the big things that rana and effie have to deal with in their relationship is rana’s skepticism.  rana’s seen all sorts of weird stuff in her life, but she’s never seen vampires or werewolves or even ghosts, despite the fact that effie is a freaking medium.  it doesn’t help that effie is constantly joking about the spiritual energy of places around them... she’s made too many jokes and called out too many “vampires” who then walked right out into the sunlight without a problem, and rana’s just like “nahhh man, i don’t buy it”

[hearteatermotel]

when you have favorites...

so when i first started this project, the story mainly revolved around effie, rana and francis. i knew pretty early on that francis wasn’t going to be getting a lot of actual pov time, since effie and rana are just better characters to read through as (francis is hella biased against everything lmao)

but what i didn’t realize at the time was that i would be including antoine, francis’ ex, as more than just a passing reference.  and then i didn’t think hugo was even a character, he was just gonna be some dude hanging out at the motel too.  now he and antoine have a whole b-plot going on about vampirism and francis being a shitty sire and all this stuff.

but now that they’re here, getting included and stuff, there are all these plot holes and storylines that i didn’t even notice. so sometimes it pays to throw a couple more characters into the mix.  the only problem is now antoine and hugo are a little less fleshed out than their pals, so i gotta work doubletime to fix that.

ughhhi wish i could share more of what i’ve been working on. hopefully soon i’ll feel comfortable with it. also apologies for the bad typos, tumblr has a really shitty rtf editor and if i hit backspace it will delete everything i write lol.

[hearteatermotel]

A Few... Months?... Later...

hearteater has massively grown in the last few months since nanowrimo.  obviously i haven’t been posting to tumblr because of the whole “tumblr is fucking awful” thing, but also i haven’t been posting much anywhere.  it’s been difficult for me to find details that i can share that won’t spoil the story, and most of the parts until now have been super duper rough.  almost every snippet i’ve ever posted has been completely rewritten from the ground up, every single scene has been heavily modified, etc etc

i’m sure once this draft is done i’ll feel more comfortable talking about it, but for now i’ll try to make an effort to at least update once a week about my progress.  if only so i can keep track myself!!

i have some amazing commissioned headshots of the characters that i’ll post later with some character details, because everybody loves extensive oc work with no plot right!!!

[hearteatermotel]

51k!

i officially finished nano today :) there’s some stuff from the original draft i’m going to put in, and then i can take some time off to focus on fanfic before i get back into this story! i’m excited to start editing, because that’s when i’ll be able to start sharing!!

so yeah keep following this blog, i’m going to ironically be using it more in 2019 than i did for all of novemeber lmfao

[hearteatermotel]

43k and counting

when i decided to make a side blog for this year’s nano project, i had been going off of the way last year’s went: i’d post a couple of snippets every couple of days before dropping off as i forgot to update.  the problem is that last year i had been riding pretty much by the seat of my pants.  originally i had planned to work on a story i’ve had for a while about a stoner who moves into a monster-infested house, but then i got random inspiration for a vampire story/pseudo detective story, so i just sort of went with that last minute. 

everything i posted was raw but brand new, and i was having a lot of fun exploring dez and the vampirism i’d built up. i wound up petering out update-wise when the story started hitting what i considered “spoiler” territory. also by that time, i’d realized the story i had was nowhere near complete enough to be showing the ending off.

this year, though, the story is something i’ve been tinkering with for two years, so every time i think about putting something up, i think about how it might possibly give something away.  also, the writing i’m doing now feels a lot more like work than it usually does - not in a bad way by any means, but i’m no longer playing in the space, you know?  now, i’ve set up my foundations and it’s time to stick to the plan and get the framework up.  the result is that i feel like a lot of the original work is much punchier and fresher than the stuff i’m writing now, which is technically true but only because i had no fucking plan, and my style is pretty organic so it plays into that a lot.

this is really just a convoluted post that means “sorry i’m not posting,” but i figure there are only 15 followers here so you guys don’t really care about me posting or not. it’s more about the support at that point, and i appreciate that more than you know.

the good news is that the story is really coming along; i’ll be wrapped up on time, and unlike my last attempt, every part of the story has been at least bare-bones written out.  i have some plans for the next couple of months too, but i have to get through these next few days first!!

[cephalotodd-deactivated20190310]

werewolves stink like wet dog and shed all over your furniture and are probably really really needy around a full moon and wake u up all the time with questions about morality but on the other hand vampires are like “øh hëllö thêrę vøuld yoü lïke to help me örganise mai evening vear closët for the third time this veëk :)” so really you cant win

[hearteatermotel]

francis has a really tough time with romance :(

[universalfanfic]

me, a writer who does a very poor job at outlining: oh!! that’s right!!! i was going to include a murder!! glad i remembered in time!

[hearteatermotel]

ahha 15 k

right on target, i’ve pretty much wrapped up the first act (there are a few spots i just skipped over, but they’re small connectors between bigger parts so i can wait til round 1 of rewrites to worry about that).

i really liked this exchange from the part i’ve been writing, wherein effie and francis bond, so i’ll put it up here as a raw, uncut look at what the fuck i’ve been doing... this whole scene is so different from the original, but the bonus is that effie and francis get to hang out and be pals so i’ll take it!!!

"Did you know that Francis is a vampire?"

Rana laughs.  "That would explain the fashion choice," she teases, although Effie knows for a fact she doesn't buy it.

"I'm serious," Effie says, "I'm only speculating here, but I think he and Antoine are old vampire buddies, maybe like a sire-siree situation?  Either way, it's totally a bad situation.  But he's not so bad, I guess, I know I called him creepy, but -" Effie can practically see Rana waving her hands as she cuts her off, "Wait, wait, wait.  Who's Antoine?  Actually, never mind, you don't seriously think he's a vampire, do you?"

"I've told you that vampires are real," she says, more amused at Rana's skepticism than angry.  Really, if Rana questioning everything upset her, she probably wouldn't have married her - the skeptical, analytical, rational green witch, go figure.

"You've joked about vampires being real," Rana clarifies, which - okay, point taken.  Maybe Effie does joke about this kind of stuff too often.  "Wait, are you hanging out with Francis right now?"

"Uhhh..."  Inside the store, Francis disappears into the back, reappearing a moment later with a case of beer in hand.  "I think we might be hanging out with Francis right now."

Impromptu socialization goes against Rana's hard-and-fast three hour rule, but instead of getting upset about it, Rana only sighs with fond annoyance.  "I should have known not to leave you to your own devices in a weird little place like this."

The bell chimes as Francis steps through the door, stopping to take another drag of the cigarette sitting on the window ledge.  "I hope you aren't mad," Effie says.

"Honestly, as long as he isn't cooking meth in his room, it's probably better than ours."  She sighs, and even across the line, Effie can hear pent-up exhaustion in her voice.  She covers it well, though, asking with some amused, unbelieving excitement, "Unless, are you under his thrall or something?  Effie, if this is just a vampire's ploy to drink my blood, you're obligated to tell me."

"Uh, I'm obligated to do my master's dark bidding," Effie replies, trying hard not to laugh outright at the idea of Francis convincing her to do anything.

[hearteatermotel]

nearing 14k, the world is waiting

thank god november is 30 days, i’ve been going with the idea that i have 10 days to spend on each of the 3 acts. i’m pretty much done with act 1′s rough rough rough rouuuugh draft (we all know how writing is, the only draft that isn’t rough is the one that is published where we can’t take it back), which means the next chapter is where all the fucking plot kicks in.

without giving anything away, the second act is when effie and rana, out of the gooooodness of their hearts (and not at all because they want to get a good night’s sleep on their honeymoon) help contact the ghost haunting the hotel, only to find out that the ghost wants them to do more than just hit her up for a quick “how you doing”

meanwhile, francis is a huge baby over the fact that antoine has decided to meet his internet boyfriend at the motel, which is basically francis’s entire world because, again, he’s a GIANT. BABY.  it’s already gotten him punched in the face once, and it’s bound to get him punched again

actually i’m stoked for act 2 because it means i finally get to talk about lola!!! who deserves better than i gave her, sorry babe but you can’t have a murder mystery without a murder

[ashokanspring]

commission featuring @hearteatermotel‘s characters rana and effie

if interested in commissioning me you can find my info here

[hearteatermotel]

an absolutely fantastic job by my pal shannon, who understood what i was looking for immediately <3

[hearteatermotel]

i was mid-post talking about how i never know what to post here when i realized i had a perfect set up!!! so here is my workspace, sans my phone (gotta take a picture somehow).  you can see all of my books on the shelves (mostly unread lmfao), which are fun to stare at when i’m trying to avoid writing. i moved my most relevant books up to my desk’s reference section, so i don’t have to get up to grab whatever book i need. 

you can see my tarot cards in the black box next to the books, which i picked up to use to help channel my creative energies. tarot’s a great way to figure out the things you haven’t figured out yet. i have a couple other fortune telling things too, like my runeset in their blue bag, and my (haunted???) magic 8 ball.

my binder’s there, got that on clearance at target so i could hold my daily writeup sheets, plus printed out references.  i even have a tray of crystals that are important to each character, as well as some quartz to rub when i need extra focus. then you can see my water bottle and my coffee mug, which should have a coaster but i live on the edge!!!!

basically my desk is set up so that i can avoid the internet and getting out of my seat for as long as it takes to bang out the skeleton of a scene. my routine basically consists of sitting down, fiddling with as many things as i can on my desk before i start a timer, then banging on my keyboard frantically for two hours at a time.  a lot of times if i get stuck i’ll just drop my head to the edge of the desk, stare at my feet and just write whatever words come into my head. i like to call that the “michael scott method,” in which you just keep going with a sentence not knowing where it will end, hoping you’ll figure it out by the time it’s over.  and i did, so that’s proof it works!!

well, this was a great way to procrastinate before work!!!! i highly recommend it to any other nano participants who are looking for productive ways to slack off

[hearteatermotel]

what would be something good to post here that isn’t just heavily cropped pieces of unfinished writing??? asking for a friend

[hearteatermotel]

wordcount, etc

i hit my wordcount in an hour “today” because i wrote probably half the amount before i went to bed around 2 am, so it counts but also doesn’t, who knows. anyway, today was fun but i am actually more excited about tomorrow, when i finally get to start working on the scene where antoine punches francis in the face. pretty much my favorite part in the story. i pick on francis a lot b/c i love him, promise, but also he’s a shit and antoine deserves a few punches on him

trying to decide if i should try writing somewhere else, but these last couple of days have really made it easy for me to put writing into my schedule.

anyway now i can just relax and if anything pops into my head it’s just icing on the wordcount cake YEAAAA