Iconoclast

No talking of writing today, other than to say it’s coming along.  I awoke today realizing that yesterday I worked on writing things all day.  First I edited, then I blogged, then I worked on buildings, then I worked on my Camp Story.  As the song says, same as it ever was.

But I have something else to chat about today.

I want to talk Time Ladies.

If you are a bit of a geek like me, you know about the upcoming Changing of the Time Guard on Doctor Who.  Matt Smith, aka He’s One More, He’s Eleven, is leaving to find gold at the end of the movie rainbow.  As has happens many times before, there is not only the search for the next actor who would be The Doctor, but a lot of betting and speculating, including who the fans would love to see take over the TARDIS.

Sure, people would like to see someone high profiled take over, but there’s this thing called “money” that prevents that from happening.  That means having to go with actors who are not going to break the budget, and you’re seeing names on the short list like Julian Rhind-Tutt, Emun Elliott, Richard Coyle, Burn Gorman, and the person who has been tipped as the favorite for the while, Rory Kinnear.

Yesterday another name popped up on the short list, and if you listen to some of the report, the name is close to, if not at the top of the short list.  And that name is Sheridan Smith.  If this were true, then for the first time the producers of the show are considering an actress for the role, and for the first time in fifty years (okay, not fifty in a row, but you know what I mean), we might have a Time Lady running her fingers over the TARDIS console whispering, “Hello, Sexy.”

Me and a few of my fangirl friends were like, “Yes, bring it!”, when the news came out.  Since the show was revived there’s been a lot of changes that couldn’t have happened during the first three decades.  And now that we know regenerating means not only getting a new body, but perhaps a new gender (blame Neil Gaiman for that one, folks), some of us are like, “Hey, isn’t it time we had a lady at the controls?”

However . . .

I’ve seen a couple of people indicate they wouldn’t like this drastic a change, that they might have a problem with gender switching, that the show doesn’t do well when it’s experimenting, that such a move would turn fans off and hurt ratings.  Now, I don’t want to stereotype, but of the people who’ve said these things to me, how many of those comments came from guys?  Strangely enough, the answer is all.  I know:  I’m shocked.

As a long-time viewer–and by that I mean I’ve seen every episode two or three times–I have to look at the show and think:  when hasn’t the show had change that could turn fans off?  I mean, lets forget for a moment the the First Doctor considered killing one of his companions with a rock, but lets look at change:

Every time there’s a regeneration, there’s change and experimentation.  After the First became the Second, and then the Third, the producers could have said, “Hey, play it like the first guy,” but they didn’t.  They went from being an old pain in the ass (which the First Doctor was), to “a Dandy and a Clown,” to quote the old pain in the ass.  Then he went all, what was the phrase?  ”Teeth and Hair”, as the Third Doctor said.  Then he was some punk kid in a cricket outfit, and who thought some guy under thirty could do the role justice?

Then we go to the U-boat Captain and Doctor Emo and The Bow tie Hispster, and you get the idea:  there’s change, and with change you get something different than what came before.  The show runners are experimenting, and either the fans adapt, or they leave.  Most people who still pine for the Tenth Doctor Fjords have no idea what it was like when Tom Baker left and that new kid, Peter, took over.  I mean, what did he ever do for the show?  (Note:  that last was sarcasm.  I know what he has done.)

Companions.  Lets talk change and experimenting.  First couple of doctors had some good companions, some bad, and some who got chucked out an airlock because no one knew what to do with them.  Then the Third comes along and what do you get?  First you get the Lady Scientist, which totally raised the bar for companions.  Then you get the Doctor Who version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, aka Jo Grant–and why the hell she isn’t getting pulled into the Fiftieth shows I don’t know, but that’s another post.  Jo was a smart, cut, mini skirt go-go boots wearing lady, and had no problem using Beatles lyrics to describe the Doctor.  (She also posed naked with a Dalek, but that’s also another post.)

And who replaced Jo?  Why, one of those . . . Feminists!  Which was exactly what Sarah Jane was.  Don’t believe me?  Go back and check.  As popular as she became, producers found that she was scaring off the 25-45 male demographic, so when Sarah Jane said bye-bye, they replaced her with a Savage in a Loincloth and Leather Boots.  Hellloooo, Leela.

Every time there’s a new companion, there’s change, there’s experimentation.  Some good, some bad, some you kill with fire so hard their take out dinosaurs.  And some you love because they blow shit up with home made explosives.

Those were the old ways, however.  Today, we have–

Interracial couples.  Interspecies couples.  Gay couples.  Interspecies lesbian couples.  Bisexual con men (RTD’s description of Captain Jack, not mine.)  Werewolf royalty.  Human Daleks.  An episode considered the best of the revival that hardly has the Doctor in it.  Chav companions.  People of Color companions.  Annoying companions that saw death threats sent to the producers.  Horny companions.  A somewhat horny TARDIS.  Married companions.  Worst of all, you have The Doctor snogging!  Sometimes in the TARDIS!  And not only that . . . you have companions making TARDIS babies!  Does no one remember the First Rule of Doctor Who:  ”No hanky panky inside the TARDIS.”  We won’t mention that the TARDIS baby ends up marrying the Doctor after making friends with her much younger parents, who she originally got to start dating, but only after we first saw her die . . .

It could be said that since 2005 the show has been . . . experimenting.  How’s it doing, you say?  Pretty good, if the fans are any indication.

If after all of that one might say that having The Doctor turn into a woman for their eleventh regeneration (or is it their eleventh?  Dun, du, duuuuuu!) could be a mistake, that it might turn fans off, that it might hurt the show because it’s a little to experimental . . . the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but may lie somewhere inside.

The great thing about science fiction, the thing that sets it apart for most other fiction, is that it you can take chances, you can push things, you can experiment.  Look at every great science fiction story, and you’ll see where the writer took things and turned them beyond eleven, and not only said, “What if?” they considered “if” a bit too mundane, and went further.

Maybe it’s just me, though.  Maybe the idea of swapping genders isn’t that big of a deal to me–and trust me, it isn’t.  I’ve seen that in games, I’ve seen that in stories–I’ve written stories where it happens.  I could see how it could open up a whole new side to The Doctor, and not because she’d get to wear a frilly dress now and then.

I mean, there are so many ways one could take that . . .

If only I had Stephen’s number, I’d be musing him out right now.

The Great Gates of Kiev

First off I have to say:  the WordPress make over is a bit strange, slipping into some Art Deco style black and white craziness that, for some, has been a bit off-putting.  But I am used to the strange and unusual, so I’m not nearly as bothered by this as some.  I’ve been in the software trade for some time, so change is both expected and dreaded.  In the end, I’ve had worse things happen, so move along.

Now that Welcome to the Fishbowl is something of a reality, I’ve started the task of bringing it together.  The world is so-so there–and by that I mean I have a majority of the basics down, it’s the little things that remain that will bring things into sharp clarity.  Yesterday I show the hospital wing from the main hall of my school, and after the post went up I spent some more time putting things together.  By the afternoon I’d arrived at the following conclusions:  one, because I was moving my story from a universe that wasn’t really of my making (yes, these things happen), and into my own private universe, there were things that were never in the building that I was now needing to add–like, say, an office for the head of school security, and a place from which to monitor everything.  And two . . . this damn place is huge.

Let us gander upon what I have so far.  As you can see, I’ve maybe half the second floor in place, and I’ve started putting in the library, which is going to be beyond that wall in the back of the building.  From the doors in the lower right hand corner, to the wall all the way towards the top, the building is one hundred and sixty meters long.  If you don’t do metric, that’s about five hundred and twenty-five feet.  To put that into some kind of perspective, I could fit this building inside Indiana’s own Lucas Oil Stadium, which is about two hundred and seventy meters long by my careful Google Map measuring.  Except my Great Hall will never seat sixty thousand people, nor require a tax on food so millionaire owners can keep the lights on.  It’s a world all unto itself.

My characters are developing as well.  The story has a huge cast, though maybe a half-dozen of them will get any sort of face time.  Still, when I think about the characters that do have a spoken part, and who end up becoming important to the main characters–I’m looking at over a dozen.  Easy.

Where do I get names?  Scrivener has a name generator that allows you to randomly generate first and last names based upon gender, nationality, and even letters of the alphabet, so when you need the name of a German woman whose last name starts with an E, no problems.  Then once you see something you like, move the name to your short list and copy it off for later use.

Or do as I did this morning.  I needed the names of three people who are part of the Foundation, and whom play a part in the story.  In the process of setting up their cards in Scrivener, I came up with Mr. Mayhew, Ms. Rutherford, and Mr. Gabriel.  If you know me, you know where those names came from.

The gates of the story are ahead, and I’m approaching slowly.  Won’t be long before I enter the city proper.

Or the school for that matter.

Infinite Space

The weekend is a good time to get creative, and it’s also a good time to think about what you’re going to do for future projects.  As I wrote yesterday, I’ve begun the process of getting my story for Camp NaNo going.  I’ve a title, a Scrivener project in place, and I’ve got some characters set up.  Yes, I have other things to do, but I also have two weeks to get my kernel of a story planted, watered, and sprouting.

I’ve done more with less, trust me.

As I pointed out to a few people I’m into the world building phase.  The good news is that I have a lot of the world already built.  The bad news is I have a lot of the world to build.  Reason?  I originally built much of the story within the framework of another world, and now I have to reverse engineer everything so it fits inside another world.  Does that make sense?  It does to me.

One of the things I use within my story are maps and floor plans.  I’ve always used maps to figure out where things should be within the framework of a story.  When I wrote Couples Dance I knew where the main house was located, and I used Google Maps to see how I’d get from one place in my world to another.  With Her Demonic Majesty I had drawings of what Chicago might have looked like had city plans been allowed to progress, and in my world that’s exactly what happened.

And in The Foundation Chronicles, I’ve a pretty big school to design.  Actually, it’s designed for the most part.  There are things to put into place, but I have buildings up, and names assigned to buildings and places.  Now all I have to do is write the story.

Though there’s something else here as well . . .

I may have mentioned that I have designed buildings that I use in my stories because I like to have a visual reference for what my characters are seeing.  This was actually forced upon me, more or less, by someone I know, because when I’d start talking about these buildings that these characters were visiting, she was like, “I can’t really see it.  Can you draw it out?”  Most of the time I’d say, “No,” but I have a hard time saying no to this person . . .

What we have here is the hospital of the Main Hall for my school in The Foundation Chronicles.  It’s a big part of an even bigger building, and as there are three main floors to this place, it’s taken some time getting things in place.  My two main characters end up going here after they arrive at the school, and it’s here that they not only meet someone who’ll be a part of their lives for many years to come, but it’s where one character learns some rather unusual news–

Actually, they learn a few things in this area.  There’s even a joke that comes out of the story where one of the beds is named for one of the main characters.

I have stairs and a lift to the floor above.  I have bathrooms.  I have a place for patients to sit and eat if they can.  I have beds for quick examinations, and beds for overnight–and longer–stays.  I have the doctor’s officer, storage, and . . . the waiting room where one of my characters gets the news, and they have a bit of a freak-out moment.  Oh, get me a fainting couch!

Then again, if you look hard, you’ll see I already have one . . .

 

From the Beginning

When I start a new story, it seems as if I go through this intense period of “What the Hell Am I Going to Do?” thinking that can, at times, be a little madding.  I can have a title for my story, and still not have any idea where the story is going to head.  Or I’ll have a concept, but no characters and no title.  Worse yet, I’ll know the characters and concept, and even a good direction for a story, but I have no title.

Camp NaNo put me in the position of thinking about a project.  I had an idea; I had characters; I even had the story.  What I lacked was a title.  I know this sounds strange, but I almost never start writing until I have a title.  This is a habit I got into a long time ago, picked up from a couple of writers that I read quite often in my early years.

That’s where I was last night, up until about seven PM.  That was when inspiration hit me, and the “Putting the Project Together Rag” began playing.  And when I was through, maybe around nine-thirty, I’d created what you see to your right.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to the Fishbowl.

I know what you’re thinking:  Fishbowl?  And what is this thing at the top:  The Foundation Chronicles?  There’s a reason for this, so sit back and listen up.

The Foundation (yeah, I know, it’s original, move along) is something I started playing with months ago:  an organization that sorts of started out as a club for super scientist, and eventually evolved into something else more . . . paranormally.  Is that a real word?  It is now.

So I have my organization that looks for strange young minds to bring into their fold, and once I knew who they were, then it became a matter of figuring out what to do with them.  And then I remembered something from real life . . .

When my daughter started 6^th Grade–or middle school, take your pick–the administration, and the kids, refereed to the experience as “being in the fishbowl”.  While they were in the same school as 7^th and 8^th graders, they were kept as segregated from them as possible.  The idea was to get them as used to middle school, and the transition of going from class to class, as easily as possible, without having to deal with a lot of interaction from the other grades.

When I applied that idea to my new student, it made sense.  In my story you have thirty-two kids out of thirty-three coming into a school not knowing anything about the world they’re entering, and the transition will be hard enough without upper class kids getting in their way.  Ergo . . . they get fishbowled.

This is my project, this is my story.  My goal is thirty-five thousand words for July, and then I’ll shut the story down, work on something else–at this moment I think I’m going to edit Couples Dance and get it ready for publishing–then when the Big NaNo Dance starts up in November, I’ll pull The Foundation Chronicles out again and add my fifty thousand plus words to finish the story.

Oh, and did you notice the folder “Book Two”?

Yeah, I love Scrivener.

 

The Fountain of Salmacis

After all the fun and frivolity of yesterday, I’m back to the grindstone this morning.  It’s not really as much of a grind as you may think:  I’ve been up about seventy-five minutes by this time (the clock on the computer says 7:12 AM), I’ve had a cup of coffee, and I’m almost forty minutes into listening to a concert by Genesis from 1976.  It’s a normal morning for me, more or less.  At least I’m getting some sleep these days.

This was going to be a very different post today, because as I was powering up the computer something struck my mind, a sliver of memory that had been hanging around for a few days.  When people say, “Where do you get your ideas?” the answer is they just come to me.  My blog posts are like that.  A few times it seems as if all I’m doing is detailing things that happen day to day, and there are times, weeks even, when I do just that.

But every morning I have to come up with something.  Now, you might say, “You don’t have to come up with something,” and that’s true.  I don’t have to do anything.  I don’t have to write the blog every day.  I could just take a day off and–I don’t know?  Shop for hand bags?  Shave my legs?  Strike out on a massive road trip to find every Facebook friend who I want to share a dinner, a cuddle, and a warm bed with?  (Actually, that last could make for a great story, and I have some ideas where I’d start.)

The idea that hit me first thing is different from the words you’re seeing on your screen right now.  I’m not going to throw that idea away, because it’s a good idea, and it’s very possible when I’m sitting down tomorrow morning in my local Panara (which you can see to your right–unless you’re reading this upside down, in which case it’s to your left), and I only have one hour to crank out my post, I’ll write it up.  Yes, that is very possible.

Instead I have a project to start.  Camp NaNo is getting closer, and I can smell the stale air in the cabin now.  I know we’ll need to air this sucker out, and with the nice weather of late, I’m hoping it stays cool enough to get some warm summer breezes through the windows and make this place smell like a field in the early summer morning.

It’s time to get into Scrivener and get a project started.  It’s time to do up the character sketches, which I’ve got in my mind but not on note cards.  I was up late speaking about the story with . . . let us say a collaborator, who will probably do her damnedest to keep me honest and not to stray from the straight and narrow of the story.  While she won’t be helping me write this story, you can bet I’ll feel her behind me, because she certainly helped develop it in such a way that I can get it out of my head.

I need a title.  I’ll have a title.  And then . . . well, we know where then is going.

At least I do.

In the Glow of the Night

Flight and building homes–that’s my activities the last twenty-four hours.  But it’s fun, let me tell you!  I mean, look to my right:  can’t you see I’m having fun?

I’m off into the building mode for the next story, and damn but if I don’t get weird at times.  In thinking through one of the scenes in my soon-to-be story, I have two of my characters jetting along to the U.S., talking about planes and flights.  One of my characters asks the other if they’ve ever flown before.  They say something like, “Oh, yeah.  When I was eight we flew from San Francisco to London . . .”.

And there were are.  Just because I did that one line, I now gotta look up flights from San Fran to London.  I should have done this last night, but hey, while I got you here, I’ll bring up the Travelocity site and plug in SFO to LHR . . . and here we have it!

Just what I wanted:  a non-stop flight, because the character in question was telling his friend about how he flew on a 747, so he knew the layout of the plane pretty well.  I also have the flight number, and with this I can roll over to Seat Guru, pull up the flight, and find the layout of the interior.  Which, I may say, is pretty nice on the inside.

That level of information tells me what I need to know about the character, and what they know about that particular type of aircraft.  And that just comes from one simple question about what one character knows about 747s.

Such is life when you’re finding things to put into your stories.  It’s not just writing, it’s how you build your world.  And if you want to build it right, you have to do this crazy leg work.  Even if it is for just one line in one paragraph.

But that’s not even the best.  Oh, I’m just gettin’ warmed up . . .

One of the things I’ve been doing of late is building layouts of places I have in my stories.  I will build maps so I can get a visual reference of a place, and of late I’ve been using some open source software to lay out homes and buildings so I can get a feel for a place that I’m trying to describe.

The one to the right is a perfect example of finally seeing something that I’ve written about.  This is a home I built for my novel Transporting.  This is the domicile of one Duchess Scoth, and while it might not look like a lot here–and it’s just here and an AI servant, so it’s not–it’s location is seventeen hundred meters up the side of a twenty-three hundred meter cliff.  That means when you’re walking from the upper to lower levels . . . that that big window on the right, where the stairs take a sharp turn to the right?  Yep:  nothing but a sheer rock wall and open air for a mile straight down.

I’ve always wondered if my idea for the home was right, if my vision was correct.  After a day of playing around I can say, yes:  my mind’s eye is as good as my regular eyes.

Now, what other insanity can I come up with in the glow of the night?

 

It’s No Game

There has been a lot of playing around the last couple of days, and some yelling on the phone as well.  Why would one be yelling on the phone?  Because there’s someone on the other end who isn’t listening, that’s why.  That’s all short-term nonsense, however, and I expect things to go back to some semblance of normal by the end of the week.

Or a black hole will open and suck me into another dimension.  Anything’s possible at this point.

There’s been a lot of thinking going on between writing.  Most of said thinking isn’t about the new story, because I know what’s happening with that, and since I’ve mind mapped the story and I know the ending, all that is required is getting the middle parts written.  I’m into the sexy bits now, and while I’m only doing a thousand words a night, it’s fun getting into that stuff.  Right now I don’t feel like doing more than a thousand a day, but the end is already in my head, and I’m guessing that the totally erotic stuff happening now is going to be good for another three, four thousand words.

There’s the nagging feeling that I want to get into another story, a different story, soon.  I know I want to edit Replacements so I can get it ready for publishing, because the writing’s complete, it only needs a cover and some polishing and then it’s off to be self-published for fame and glory.  Sure, that’s why I’m a starving artist, don’t you know?

Beyond that–well, I’m thinking of getting Couples Dance out and starting the work on that as well.  Despite my emails I’ve heard nothing from the publisher that wanted a look at the manuscript, and I have to guess they’re either not interested, or they’ve went belly up.  Now that story, it’s a strange one.  If I can get that published alongside Replacements and Her Demonic Majesty, that’s three out of the four titles I set as a goal for this year, and it means there is still the possibility I can make Number Four happen before the end of the year.

There is the feeling, though–I want to do something science fictiony again.  Yes, I have science fiction stories that I could either write or edit for publishing, but I want to get back out into space.  I want to do something that is adventurous.  I don’t know why I’ve had this feeling kicking me about the back of my mind of late, but when I’m looking at the desktop of my computer I see my 3D rendering programs, and I want to get into one and start playing about with ship designs and the such.

I want to jump back into the sci fi game.  I want to do something that’s fun–maybe a bit of space opera wrapped up in some seriousness.  I want to do it and keep it “short” and see if it touches my mind.  I even have a character that would be perfect for this sort of story–

Maybe it’s time to pull her out and give her a run at the readers.

 

Lady Stardust Speaks

Over the weekend I conducted an interview–a rather strange one, at that.  But then, I like strange.  I hope you like reading this as much as I liked doing it.

Remember:  strange.

 

(Location:  New Oxford, University, Hyades Star Cluster. 2 June, a little more than 20 Minutes Into the Future.)

Greetings, young and eager minds of New Oxford and Miskatonic Universities. Welcome to another addition of Author’s Profile—or as I like to called it, “Audrey’s Excuse For Eating Up Web Time.” As you can see I’ve brought along the noted historian and local stuffy peer, the Duchess Scoth, the Lady Cytheria . . . That special personal I call “Sweetie”. Say hello, Sweetie.

*Glares at Audrey* Hello, everyone. To my students out there, please do ignore Audrey’s excessive rambling this day: I’m afraid she’s had a tad too much coffee.

It’s only too much if you start vomiting and get the shakes, my dear.

I believe you had both—

*Snorts* Well, then, lets move on. Today we have a special treat. We’re speaking with a new authors who’s sort of . . . It’s a bit confusing, but if you’ve been paying attention in class you’ll know what I mean. So, joining us now on the hyperwire, we have—

*Whispering* Did you clear this with—you know.

*Audrey speaking out of the corner of her mouth* On’tday alktay aboutway ethay imetay aveltray, neh?

*Cytheria sits back in her chair, shaking her head*

(Audrey) If you will please welcome, coming to us live from her home, the one, the lovely, Cassidy Frazee.

(Cassidy) Thank you, Audrey, for that warm welcome. Did you say “Miskatonic University”?

(Audrey) I think you mis-heard me.

(Ca) Ah. Okay, then . . . Thank you for having me, then.

(A) Yo have a new novel out, Her Demonic Majesty. It came out, what? A couple of weeks ago?

(Ca) Yeah, times flies, you know? Feels like yesterday.

(A) *Turns to Cytheria* If she only knew . . .

(Cytheria) *Ignores Audrey* Congratulation, Cassidy. It’s my understanding your endeavor to publish this novel has taken some time.

(Ca) Yes, that’s true. I’ve been working on this novel for a year and a half.

(A) Tell us what you’ve done during that time, if you would.

(Ca) As anyone who’s followed my blog since 2011—

(Cy) Blog?

(A) You remember, Sweetie? People write and then post their scribblings on the . . . “Internet”? *winking* Yeah?

(Cy) Oh, of course. Silly me. *Nervous laugh* Go on, Cassidy.

(Ca) Sure. I’ve been blogging since the middle of 2011, and it was in November of that year that I decided—well, was sort of talked into—writing something during NaNoWriMo—

(A) The National Novel Writing Month?

(Ca) Yes, that. I’d been asked to do it the year before, but bailed because—well, a lot of things, really. Mostly personal things, like just not being able to write due to depression.

(Cy) Audrey can certainly empathize with you there.

(Ca) Oh? You get that, too?

(A) *Mumbling* More times than I care to like. Tell us about the experience.

(Ca) It’s all about getting it written and edited. I wrote the first draft in twenty-five days, then edited it three times before handing it off to another person so they could give it a good cleaning. Even after that I found a few typos and cleaned them up—

(Cy) Not uncommon for any published work.

(Ca) So I’ve been told. Then it was setting up account, getting covers made, getting everything formatted . . . When you’re self publishing, there’s a lot of work involved in getting your story in a shape that makes it worth putting it out there for others to read.

(A) I know. I’ve been through my copy of your novel a couple of times, and you did a great job with the layout. Very professional.

(Ca) Thank you for buying it.

(A) *Sets hard copy down* Yes, buying it . . . Tell me, how do you go about promoting a novel?

(Ca) That, too, is an interesting process. You have people put out good word of mouth for the book. You set up a writer’s page and trying to get the message out to as many people as possible. You ask people to give you reviews and to spread the word. You listen when you have a mistake and fix things as quickly as possible. It’s a huge amount of hustle, and it wears you out.

(A) You write in a few genres: science fiction, fantasy, horror, erotica. How do you classify Her Demonic Majesty? It seems like it should be fantasy, but it’s . . . not.

(Ca) I like to call it my science fiction fantasy with touches of steampunk. I think this particular novel covers so many bases that it’s nearly impossible to pin to one genre. I want to write stories; I don’t want to think I have to write any particular kind of stories.

(A) You were always critical of genres, and it seems—

(Ca) *Confused* “Were”?

(Cy) Audrey tends to have problems with her tenses— *Glances to Audrey and smiles* Isn’t that right, my love?

(Ca) *Muttering* Wibbly wobbly . . . After reading the novel I wondered if there will be any sequels. Any chance?

(Ca) *Smiling* One never knows. Lets just say that I know what happens to the characters in the story for a few years past the events in the novel, so maybe their will be other books. I’ve got so many stories I want to do—

(A) Science fiction? Fantasy? Erotic Japanese Tentacle Romances?

(Ca) What?

(Cy) I’ve heard writers say that it’s not unusual for segments of their personality to make it into their stories. Did that happen with you here, with this novel?

(Ca) Let me answer that second part first . . . With this novel I wouldn’t say much of my personality entered the novel say for some of the more geekish parts of Jeannette’s personality. I drew on my own experiences as a reader and a gamer to get an idea about the sort of things she might enjoy and do.

Beyond that, I don’t put too much of myself in my stories. Though there are a few stories, as yet unpublished, where more of “me” shines through than in other stories.

(Cy) You seem to write a great number of female characters. Any particular reason?

(Ca) I like writing women; it’s difficult to get them right, I think. I hope I’m doing a good job at presenting characters who can handle anything thrown at them, who don’t need to go running to the nearest guy screaming, “Please save me!”

And if they do work with men—as one of my characters has done in two stories—they work with them as equals. They know what they’re doing; they’re not afraid to speak their mind and follow up with their own lines of inquiry. And the men they work with aren’t threatened by a woman who knows as much, or more, than they.

(A) Sort of like Cytheria and me.

(Ca) That would be true if you were both like a couple of characters I developed. It’s strange, you know: Cytheria, you have the same name as—

(A) Fascinating! So, a couple of human interest question. First: boxers or briefs?

(Ca) Um . . . Boy shorts.

(A) Really?

(Cy) Audrey loves bikini bottoms. Never took her for that sort of girl.

(A) Silence, Sweetie. Fly or drive?

(Ca) Depends on the distance. I’ll fly to other parts of the world, but if it’s less than a thousand miles, I’ll drive.

(Cy) What’s the furthest you’ve flown?

(Ca) Around the world: Chicago to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Hong Kong to Tokyo to Minneapolis to Chicago. Not all at once, mind you: it took about eight weeks. But Chicago to Hong Kong is probably the longest continuous trip with layovers of a few hours.

(A) Favorite writer?

(Ca) Too many to list. I love to read.

(A) Favorite movie?

(Ca) It’s impossible to have a favorite. Maybe twenty, thirty favorites. But one? No. For the record, quite a few from the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s.

(A) If you could be a tree, what would you be?

(Ca) Um . . . Kristian Stewart?

(A) Cheap shot!

(Ca) Who wants to be a tree?

(A) Poison Ivy?

(Ca) Point taken.

(Cy) Would you prefer to live in the past or the future?

(Ca) There’s something to say about growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, though if I had to go through that again, I’d rather do it with a few things changed . . . If I had a choice, I’d pick the future—maybe two or three hundred years from now. Nothing’s happening these days, and I’m bored. I’d like to see what’s coming down the time line.

(A) Some interesting things, let me tell you.

(Ca) And you know this how?

(A) *Long pause* That was the drugs talking . . .

(Cy) Pay no attention to her, Cassidy.

(Ca) Thank you—Duchess? Like in the song?

(Cy) No, a duchess is what I am.

(Ca) Do you know Albert? He’s a born loser.

(A) *Now glaring at Cassidy* On that note . . . I’d like to thank Cassidy for appearing today. It’s been a lot of fun speaking with you.

(Cy) I agree. Thank you for agreeing to speak with us.

(Ca) Thank you both for having me.

(A) Oh, and August, 2015: if you’re smart you’ll cancel your trip to Boston.

(Cy) Audrey!

(Ca) I’m sorry—what?

(A) *Mumbling* See who’s the loser now! *Turning to the virtual audience* That’s it for today! Join us next week when we interview Cleopatra and find out if she was bi, or just really horny. Bye!

 

Are you looking for Her Demonic Majesty?  Look here!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Sony

Smashwords

 

See you next time!

The Rising Idea

This has started off as a very strange week, and after today I have to say that can’t imagine it getting any stranger–unless someone picked up a contract for my book.  Then my day would be made.  Maybe tomorrow it’ll happen.  One can only hope.

I’ve been working on my story, but it’s been sort of give and take.  Not that I’m not getting in any writing, but as I told someone today my mind seems to be in a strange place when I write.  When I’m working, the words come, they flow like mad.  I can get scenes and conversations down quickly, and there doesn’t seem to be any hesitation at all in getting things worked out.

It’s just getting into the story . . . because it seems like my mind is cluttered with distractions galore.  My mind is wandering like mad, and I can’t seem to get focused on the work in progress because of–well, therein lies a good question.  After all the work I spent getting Suggestive Amusements finished, and Her Demonic Majesty edited and published, my mind is once again wondering, “Is this all worth it?  Am I doing something that, in the end, will pay off?  Or am I just fooling myself?”

I go through this every few months.  You bust your ass to do these things, to move into a realm where you would love to be working, and it seems a constant struggle to get anywhere.  I’ve had friends tell me to take it easy and keep doing what I’m doing, because I’m on the right track.

At the same time, I want to move faster.  I want to get where I’m going now.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of “I’m just not good enough.”  If you know anything about Dunning-Kruger effect, you know it’s not unusual for those who have the talent think everything they do isn’t worth a damn, while the Ed Woods of the world think they are the god’s all might shit when it comes to being the best.  It would be nice if the overtly incompetent would just once say, “I totally suck, and I should let someone else do this.”  But, no:  that almost never happens.  They continue churning out shit, and the rest of us bang our heads against the wall wondering what it is we’re doing wrong.

I have ideas coming to me all the time.  I’m working out a story on my computer, and a world in my head, and at the same time I’m having images of a story coming to me as I go through the day–a story that I sort of mentioned in passing as a strange dream I had a few days back.  It’s how it goes:  these things happen to us to prod us onward to sit before the computer, or your writing medium of choice, and get this stuff out of our heads.

Once you’ve been bitten by this affliction, you can’t lose it.  It will never let you go.  One could give up writing tomorrow, and the ideas will continue to rise, reminding you that something wants your attention–

And it won’t stop until you give it due diligence.

Camping on the Story

I hit my goals yesterday; yes, I did.  I blogged, I wrote an article that took up much of my afternoon, and then, after Doctor Who was over and done, I got down to working on my story, because these stories just sort of languish and do nothing on their own.  It’s like you have to write all the words for them.

The first part is sort of strange, because I was free forming as I went along.  I have a feeling that when I go back over this story, I’m going to end up rewriting a lot of this part.  But it’s a good set up; it gave me the feeling that something is different about this place in the woods, so when things happen, the reader shouldn’t be taken by surprise.

There was one big change that I had to do before heading off to bed, though.  I was looking something up–research, you know–and I just happened to take a closer look at the name of the place where my story takes place.  And that was when I discovered (let me say this in my Hermione voice), it’s not Harmony, it’s Harmonie.  Oops.

Hey, even the best research can be wonky when you’re looking at Google Maps at ten at night after being up for seventeen hours.

A was a bit bummed out, but not so much that I went into a mental tailspin from which I couldn’t recover.  No, I was level headed about the matter, since all I had to do was change the name of the story and rename the project.  Ergo, the story is now known as Fantasies in Harmonie, which gives it an even nicer ring than what had gone before, don’t you think?

there wasn’t a whole lot of writing last night; when I was finished with the scene I’d only written around five hundred words. I wasn’t looking to do a lot of writing last night because I was doing a set up and I knew it was going to take a little finagling to get the words right.

Also, I’m a bit more careful when I write these days.  I found myself writing then stopping so I could look over what I’d written.  If it looked good, I went on.  If I didn’t, I read the lines until I knew what I wanted to write, and then wrote that.  It’s sort of editing on the way, which slows you up, but ultimately helps me keep the text as clean as possible.

I checked my timelines, because if there’s one thing I am, it’s attentive to the time it takes to do anything.  From the time I finished Suggestive Amusements to the time I published Her Demonic Majesty, about seven weeks went by.  That time was spent in edits, getting covers made, and setting up my accounts on Smashwords and Amazon.  As I told a friend the other day, writing is work, and publishing things correctly takes even more work.

So the more I get right up front, the less I have to react to in order to finish my work correctly.

Slowing down now so I don’t have to rush latter is a great idea.  Just like finding a good cabin in the woods, you gotta take your time.

 

Expiration Infinium

First, the great news:  Her Demonic Majesty is up on Amazon this very moment, so if you want a copy, go snag her here!  It took some fooling around, but she’s up and live.  If you buy it and like it, please leave a review.  If you buy it and don’t like, please leave a review and I can try to do better next time.

Now, on to the not-so-great . . .

I spend time on Facebook.  Some times I’m there to chat with friends, sometimes to play games, other times just to see what sort of insanity is passing for real life.  It can be a place of bad information, where if you posted as a fact that taping swiss cheese to your genitals for a week would release enzymes into your blood that would help you lose weight, someone would re-post it with a, “Yeah, this could work!” tag line.  It is also a realm of memes, both good and bad, some funny and others not so much.

I happened to check my home wall yesterday and came across a meme, one with a upset looking character in the picture, and the wording explaining everything:  ”I’m still pissed they canceled Firefly.”

Really?  After ten years you’re still pissed?  Please, give it rest and watch your DVDs one more time to relieve whatever angst is gnawing at you, though chances are good you’re still gonna be pissed in 2023.  Maybe you can get together with your friends and hold a “Still Pissed Twenty Years Later!” convention–you know, to remind all the other pissed off people you know that your darkest moment was the day Fox put the ax to your greatest show evar.

Fandom is a strange thing.  I will admit to being a fan of several things, and I will even admit to getting right down to the point where I could recite even the lamest point of trivia for my favorite forms of entertainment.  But when things went away, when they ended on a good or bad note, when things were left hanging because some suit looking over a spread sheet said, “This show is eating up too much revenue can it and put on wrestling in it’s place,” I’ve also sort of went, “Okay, what’s next?” and moved on.

Ah, but there are some people who just can’t let go, who are gonna be upset when something they love ends.  Just last week we heard about how Charlaine Harris, she of the The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels that became True Blood, was receiving death threats from fans upset she is taking their Sookie away.  I remember the forums soon after Farscape was canceled, and Bonnie Hammer got C-worded about a thousand times.  And I’ve suffered through years of the sordid tales of raped childhoods because The Phantom Menace was release–or, worse yet, because Gredo shot first.

As some omnipotent alien once said, “All good things must come to an end,” and these days if it’s a television series, or a movie, the only way that’s gonna happen is if there’s money to be made by doing so.  That’s what happened with Star Trek:  the demographics were underestimated, the the first movie was made, didn’t do what was expected, and someone went, “I got an idea–”, the second move came out, and the rest is history.

That didn’t happen with Serenity.  There was a very loud and boisterous fan base that snapped up DVDs, and the studio thought, “Hey, they want a movie, maybe we can make something off this.”  And the movie was made, and that’s when it was discovered that while the fan base was loud and boisterous, they weren’t as large as was hoped, and that was the reason there wasn’t another movie, and there hasn’t been another series–and likely will never be.

Sometimes you have to let these things go, because they were good in their moment, but when you want to see them again, as they were, a decade later, you’re going to have something that will never live up to the expectations of the fans.  Say Joss doesn’t want to make another billion dollars with super hero movies, and decides to ruin Nathan Fillion’s and Morena Baccarin’s careers (as he said he’d have to do when he was on Reddit).  So everyone comes back ten years later–oh, wait.  Two characters don’t, ’cause they’re dead, and if you know where Joss was going with the story, Morena Baccarin doesn’t have to worry about long term contracts, ’cause she’s going belly up soon.  Simon and Kaylee are probably knockin’ out kids, and do you want those rugrats on a ship, ’cause we all know how well precocious kids and space ships get along.

No, you’re not going to have a continuation of what left the air ten years ago–you’re gonna have a reboot.  Let the childhood raping begin.

It’s never a happy moment when something you love goes away.  But nothing last forever–and if it does, thy name be The Simpsons, which is still on television because it’s a money maker for Fox.  Everything else goes the way of dusty death, and I’ve even planed out the end of some of my stories–

Though it would help if I could get them started first.

Designing the Unseen Imagined

Though the book is up, there are issues–things I should have seen, but didn’t take care of before hitting the “Upload” button.  Never fear; I’ll have everything sorted out this week.  I hope.

In the meantime I’m playing with other things:  concepts, story setups, that sort of thing.  I need to get a Scrivener project set up for my next story, but as one person told me, I should take it easy least I burn out.  Ha!  I laugh at burning out–don’t I?  Already I’m starting to feel like a lazy git because I’m not really working on anything.  That’s a bad habit to get into, because you end up beating yourself up for the silliest things, and before you know it you’re obsessing over every damn thing that comes your way.

Must.not.do.

One of the things I’ve been on about is trying to imagine a school I built for one story–a story that could be called fan fiction of a sort–and how I can bring it over into a new world that it completely mine.  There will be a number of changes to the layout and functionality of the joint, but the one thing I want to keep is a huge, grand building that sits somewhere between small castle and grand edifice.  For now we’ll call it the Grand Hall, and when it was originally conceived, it was part cathedral, part meeting place, part protected school.

It’s really big, is what I want to say.

I’ve always had this image in my head about the building, and the layout.  Entryway; central hall in the middle; Hospital on the second, third, and fourth floors on the left, administration on the right; library to the far end; basements below.  It’s a huge building, though probably not much bigger that most modern buildings.  It’s just that in my mind’s eye, I can see it being a very shadowy place, full of darkness and light beams, and during the evening, enduring silence.  (Not to be confused with The Silence, who may be there anyway.)

As much as I’ve seen this place in my head, I should be able to lay out the floor place, right?  Guess again, Gilbert.

I started a layout last night, starting with the central meeting hall.  That place it meant to be huge, about one hundred fifty feet by fifty. Then I moved outside that point of reference, and . . .

Nothing.

I got as far as laying out where the staircases are–and, now that I think about it, shouldn’t be–and then I looked at the plan on the screen before me and thought, “Shit, man, this place is huge.”  That was as true as anything gets, because it is a big building.  With all sorts of things hidden in its black corners.

And I’ve not even thought of what the basements look like.

Everyone gets those moments when they realize they have hold of something that might be a bit too much for them to control, and this is one of those moments.  It’s not that I won’t figure out the design, it’s just that it’s going to be something that takes a bit of time–just like when I was doing three dimensional designs of spaceships.  Or writing a huge novel.

Don’t rush the scale.  Like a mountain, you climb it slowly.

You’ll get to the summit eventually.