Nor Gloom of Night is live!
Published and available for sale for a lousy $1.99 [coughbuymybookscough]
Previewable here.
Please buy my stuff. Writing is the only thing I can really do.
Freakin’ Lurgi
The entire family - minus me and the the antisociallite Captain Useless - have been struck low with Lurgi this week.
Which, for me, means interrupted sleep, tired days, lots of coffee caramel mochachinos, and entire swathes of the Blah’s.
More ranting on the Blah’s after the cut.
A call for volunteers
You’ve had some free samples of my writing [check the #story tag in my posts] and now I’m looking for Beta Readers because it’s just occurred to me that handing out stories for free before I try to sell them might just be a bad business plan.
So. Does anyone out there with sharp reading eyes wish to subject themselves to the alpha drafts of whatever the heck my warped mind concocts next?
A small dilemma (and an ask)
Firstly, apologies to everyone who’s been expecting a thing a day. I’ve been busy with pestillence, family and (again) waiting for someone who could help me to get their finger out of the metaphorical divot.
All my loyal readers will know I’m on Smashwords now and have my first work allegedly up and multi-compatible.
C'mon. Buy the dang thing. It’s only two freaking dollars. I need the money.
Ahem.
Anyway. I have three other short tales ready to rock [except one, more on this later] and I would like to ask you a few things:
1) Which of my other tales would you like to see in a professional package first?
2) What sort of publishing schedule should I try for?
3) How in the hell can I do a decent cover for my re-imagining of Puss in Boots?
89.8
That’s my weight, this morning. I’m finally down to sniffing distance of my target weight.
After my personal disaster cascade [see earlier posts about me tripping on a chair], I honestly believed I would be battling weight problems and increasing weight until such time as I could actually walk again.
What I forgot is that I would also be less inclined to get up and grab another snack.
Here’s my regime - or what passes for one. Note that I do not recommend this to anyone.
* Wake up, battle forces of lethargy with the argument that one cannot bear to lie down any longer.
* Grab crutches. Hobble to bathroom. Take medication.
* Morning ablutions. Check weight while still clad in knickers. Note date, weight, weight to lose until goal reached, theory on why this is so, and how much up or down.
* Get dressed. Grab crutches. Hobble to computer. Get some blogging done before it’s time to wake the kids.
* Grab crutches. Hobble into Eldest’s bedroom. Wake eldest. Make sure he: feeds dog, preps breakfast, wakes youngest, feeds youngest, eats for himself, preps lunches, gets dressed for school, helps youngest get dressed, gets shoes and socks on for both, packs lunches/homeworks in bags, and gets the bags zipped up. Most of this is achieved sitting down. And yelling a lot.
* Sometime during the previous step, grab crutches. Hobble into kitchen. Prepare chia drink of cordial, chia, and water. Get Eldest to carry it to computer. Hobble back to computer and continue barking at kids to get them ready. And try to achieve breakfast for oneself.
* Grab crutches. Hobble to front room, don shoes, socks, and any athletic braces needed for supremely painful joints. I have one for each wrist, and two elastic bandages - they’re ‘wild’. And yes, I have used all four at once.
* Get eldest to restrain hound whilst I grab crutches, hobble to car. Get kids in car. Get kids to school.
* Come home, grab crutches, hobble to dog. Free dog. Hobble back indoors.
* Extract plastic bag from pocket, place inside 1 apple jelly &spoon, one daily ration of chocolate, and a couple of muesli bars. Carry same to computer.
* Work on various projects [FYI: One Minecraft adventure map, four novels, several stories of indeterminate length and potentially infinite fanfics.] until it’s time to get the kids home. Snack as needed. Drink chia drink.
* Grab crutches, hobble to hound. Restrain hound. Hobble to car. Drive to school. Wait in parking lot for kids. Harangue Eldest re: things he’s forgotten. FINALLY get rolling back home.
* Grab crutches, hobble indoors, chasing kids in also. Make sure Eldest frees dog, closes car.
* Make sure Eldest preps dinner, does homework. Make sure Youngest also does homework. Work on projects in-between progress checks.
* Make sure dishwasher loaded and going, washing machine/dryer likewise.
* Have dinner when ready. Do not have seconds.
* At bathtime, get Eldest to run bath, help Youngest. Grab crutches, hobble to bathroom once it’s time for bed. Get kids out of tub, dry, dressed, in bed. Hobble to own bedroom.
* Divest self of bracers, clothing. Change into night attire. Take medication. Sleep.
That’s pretty much my day, during weekdays. During weekends, I usually try not to do anything harder than typing. And I have to try and remember to eat. I spent this past Saturday not eating a damn thing.
Must hobble. Time to wake the kids.
Slowly Getting There
I took an actual day off, today. Well, most of a day off.
Possibly 50% of a day off.
Because a Mum’s work is never done. I can’t have a complete day off.
The dog got out and I had to go catch him. Invisible fences are looking increasingly attractive right now.
And I spent the afternoon teaching Mayhem (my eldest) that playing with the dog is fun.
That was exhausting. But fun.
But I didn’t get any writing done. Not one word. Not one line. Not even in a fanfic.
OTOH, I did get a whole page done, yesterday. At the pace I go at, that’s lightening speed.
When I write, I sometimes have pages and pages of ideas battling for priority. Sometimes it’s a battle to get one sentence out.
In the latter occasions, I need a break to let some more ideas percolate through my skull. Sometimes I just veg in front of the TV. Sometimes it’s Minecraft. Most of the time, it’s fanfic.
Today, I just slugged in front of the PC for half the day. Zen and the art of fartarsing around.
I did absolutely nothing and I loved it.
Why are the most enjoyable things the things that wind up wasting our time?
This is it.
The 14th post in my queue.
This means I can officially take a break from seeking blog material and go write some independent fiction.
Or, as I sometimes put it, I’m going to commit some literature.
Expect the next few blogs to be me honking on about my latest Work In Progress.
Unless something spectacularly heinous pops up concerning OWS and the corpratocracy’s slow collapse into malevolent dictatorship.
Or I get a funny idea.
Changing Worlds
I thought I’d take a break from OWS for a bit to discuss my writing. It is why I started this blog in the first place. Thinking of something to write every day has had me quasi-geared towards finding material for my blog. Great.
But it’s been keeping me from my indfic.
Thank goodness for fanfic.
I love writing fanfic. There’s so much less one has to explain, keep straight, or look up. An admired writer once told me, “It’s fanfic. You can make [character(s)] purple if you wanted to.” [FYI- that writer is Donna Barr and we were communicating via email of my depiction of her character, Stinz Lowhard.]
But… I like being accurate. Sure, you could make character X purple. Or put them on the moon. Or make them walk across the ceiling for the lulz… but would they still be character X? Or are you making a new character based on the character you love?
This is where cannon meets fannon. It’s also where Movie vs Book tends to raise a lot of fire. When you change the environment that something is depicted in [even if it’s a transition from prose to stage] things have to change.
You can’t always find an actor that looks exactly like X should. And you can’t always write character X walking into world Y and have it turn out to be a good story.
So when my figment, Sara Louise Adrien, wanted to be a pony [I have a strange relationship with my creations] I had to really think about things. The things that made her wonderful in my X-Men: Evolution fics could not translate directly into the land of Equestria.
Verbally abusive mom? Ponies aren’t abusive moms of any kidney. This is a world where ponies are (mostly) nice to other ponies and, if not fully befriending - at least accepting. So I couldn’t put Jaqui in a horse skin and have it work.
So… Jaqui became a dragon. Literally. Who has yet to appear in my fic. Dragons strike me as being a lot more… physical… than verbal, so she’s both a dwarf dragon and obsessed with exactness. And Sara, now Star Wishes, is a lot more high-strung and strung out than her mutant version, as a direct result.
Absentee dad? Er. The story surrounding Sara’s adoption is still unravelling in my head [I’m debating whether or not Dragon-Jaqui destroyed Star’s village in the final act of the Dragon-Equine war and was forced to adopt the only survivor…] so I’m currently not mentioning dad at all. I have another debate as to whether or not pulling a long-lost dad out of my butt at the end would make for satisfying narrative.
Pretty much most of this got thought out before I put finger to touchscreen [I write on an iPad - it goes everywhere with me] to place the first words in my story.
Even if you’re writing fanfic - where the world-building is unnecessary - there’s still a bit of history and continuity to consider. Some you may know. Some, you may draw conclusions for from things mentioned or shown in cannon [that which we see or is stated by Word of God (the creators of said work) ] to create your own or shared fannon [stuff the fans hold to be true, regardless of what the work explicitly states or the creator has said].
For instance, back when I was running Realm of the InterNutter [it’s down and out for the count, until such time as a sufficiently large mallet can be found] I had the fannon town of Heirelgart for Evo!Nightcrawler to grow up in as a well-rounded individual. It also had centaurs in it, which explained why an entire town could be so casual about a kid with blue fur and a tail. I was happy to share Heirelgart with anyone who asked - or gave credit - and it was entirely up to them as to whether or not they wanted the centaurs with it.
Give it a decade or so and Nightcrawler’s home town may be mentioned in cannon as being Heirelgart, just because it got around :) I like that idea. I’m not going to squeal “copyright” or sue for millions. I’m going to grin like a smug little bastard ‘cause something I made up is Out There. But I digress.
Fannon or cannon, I like to stay as consistent as I can to make the story read true. And I’m an obsessive-compulsive, sometimes. Which is why I sent Laura Faust a note asking if there was a Cutie Mark Code writers as anal precise as me could use.
Of course I’m going to share any reply. I’m not selfish.
Anyway. I was trying to make a point, wasn’t I?
Um.
The point I’m trying to make, I guess, is no matter what changes you make when writing something, the work comes out better for those changes making sense. If only sense to you. You are your first audience when you write. That’s why so much writing advice boils down to, “write what you love to read”, because you’re going to be re-reading that sucker ad infinitum to make sure it’s all good.
And if you can’t please yourself with what you make, how can you find anyone else who likes it?