C.L. Stegall

If you read the pre­vi­ous entry, Caf­feine and Choco­late Might Help, you have an idea of just how ridicu­lously busy I’ve been (and will be) for some time. One of the clos­est projects on my deliv­er­ables hori­zon is a story that is quickly becom­ing near and dear to my heart: Harder vs Stone.  Here is the sum­mary, before I continue:

Harder vs Stone — a Valence of Infin­ity tale — by C.L.Stegall

HARDER VS STONE (a Valence of Infin­ity story) — In a world where vam­pires rise to pow­er­ful com­mu­nity posi­tions, every­one is watched with a cau­tious eye. When one of the world’s most infa­mous assas­sins moves in on the vam­pire tar­get for whom he’s been con­tracted, he never expects to meet some­one more dan­ger­ous than him­self – espe­cially not one sent after the same tar­get. Mer­cury Stone may have finally met his match when he comes up against an oth­er­worldly coun­ter­part – and falls for the one per­son in the world who is not afraid to try and take him out of the game. Permanently.

*E-Novella Avail­able in June 2011*

This story is my first “cross-over” within the worlds I’ve built in my writ­ings over the years. Stone, for instance, is the MC from a novel I’ve been play­ing around with for decades, lit­er­ally. The main rea­son it is tak­ing so long is that it is very *semi-autobiographical* and that makes things SO much more complex!

When you begin writ­ing a story about real events and real peo­ple, the onus on you to pre­serve the truth in even a fic­tional man­ner feels greater, I think. It’s cer­tainly done me in on sev­eral (dozen) occa­sions as I’ve tried writ­ing Stone’s ori­gin tale.

Now, on top of that lies the cold hard facts of real­ity: I spent many years in mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and there are things I can­not, under any cir­cum­stance, speak or write about. That’s just the way it is.  So, then it comes down to cre­ative license. How do I walk the line of pre­sent­ing the infor­ma­tion in a fact-based man­ner that does not “get me in trou­ble” with the gov’mint? :)

Stone’s life takes some very nasty turns on some very piv­otal, very tragic events — some of his own doing, some beyond his con­trol. The path he walks (or, at times, runs) from a young age until the time he is out in the world on his own with his *rep­u­ta­tion* at stake is a long and twist­ing and dan­ger­ous road. Some of his his­tory is mine and that has been the tough­est part. How do I present parts of my own life that I know will be vis­ceral and cathar­tic to both myself and those who knew me dur­ing those times? How do I deal with the after­math of my fic­tional truth? Do I take the chance that I present it well enough that those involved don’t quite rec­og­nize it? Or, do I shut the hell up and write it like I see it, then take the heat like a man?

Like I said: it ain’t easy.

So, back to the cross-over bit. The other MC in the novella is Jessie Harder, who is the vam­piric flip­side to Stone’s assas­sin coin. In the tale, she reminds him of some­one from his past and, for the first time, he lets emo­tion get in the way of his job per­for­mance. This is not a wise deci­sion in his line of work.

Harder, being a vam­pire, is at first not sure what to do about Stone as she doesn’t see him as much of a threat. He is only human, after all. In her world, she rules the roost, so to speak. Her world is that of my vam­pire series Valence of Infin­ity. (Yes, that title has spe­cific mean­ing.) You can sneak a sep­a­rate peek into the VoI world by read­ing the first short story in my col­lec­tion, Ordeals — called One Night In Hol­ly­wood. I have sev­eral shorts and novel­las in the works, built in and around this world of vam­pires and other crea­tures of the night, such as The Moon From Heaven, Read­ing Paris, and Songs From The Heaven Room.

Harder vs Stone allows me to take the char­ac­ters from one world and insert them into another with­out really break­ing the “real­ity” of either.  It’s FUN!

So, any­way, that’s kind of what I’m up to lately, writing-wise.

Oh, and look for the novella in June!

(Also, big news com­ing from me (and a few oth­ers) onMay 1st! StayTuned!)