LONG
- Demon of Crosstonross
- Elf Confidence
- Mizzenmast
- Dark Country
- Divenska Dreams of Kings and Queens
- Street of 2 Doors (erotic)
- Harem story - girls in a harem, fantasy
- Lesbian school girls - college
- Exodus style camp
- Creationstyle kids story with the dinosaur pals!
- Zeem through the underworld
- Rania, Aphen, Anton
- Steampunkvamp
- Girl meets sky-pirate who comes to his school
- Dead grandmother's book re. vampire has girl make vamp friend.
- detective future eunuch DREAM
- Fauns & Pan
- Frankie Goes To Perugia (Luminael & St Francis of Assissi)
- King of the Air (Zeem's ex girlfriend and how he ended up where he is)
- Zeem in Africa with Mama Wati
- Johnny & Babushka
- Chinese dragon crash lands...
- (Mizzenmast) Location, Location - a flying house crashlands in a crap neighbourhood
- (New Persia) Message of the White Deev (eroticesque)
- (qverse) Guy murders another guy while plugged in a la Steve Mann
- (New Persia) Story of thief (fantasy) who works like Gig, hacking people
- (-) Religious priesty story I don't know what yet but I like stories like that
- (Mizzenmast) Stinker Tinker in trouble with Morality
- (-) Schitzophrenic chick with goblins who give her powers!
- (-) Computer AIs don't like to talk about the fact that they're descended from viruses
- (-) Girl falls in love with a plant
- (-) Hit list of 10 uploaded photos. Detective races to find the people and prevent killage.
- (Mizzenmast) Large Hadron Collider invention to get rid of things. Jessica!
- (-) A world sans abortion. Article-style.
- (-) Righting antarctic shelf - avec MW
- (-) Wife steals husband's affair
- (New Persia) Woman sells men to country folk
- (Mizzenmast) Carrying a virus as a weapon.
- (Mizzenmast) Hunting AIs like old English families
- (-) Eros fighting with Cupid over who gets to fill the world with love
- (Mizzenmast) Playing poker/card games with a psychic/empath
- (-) Letters from Utopia
- (-) Gay Clockworld-themed story about Josie/football/planetary fun
- (-) Person recognises murderer from childhood events and knows them.
- (-) Two kids with amulets who can see each other through time
- (-) Love affair, one lives in the Victorian/Regency/Renaissance/whatever era, one in the present day
- (Mizzenmast) A huge Skein through which you can see ocean animals
- (-) Two guys, one lake (erotic hopefully)
- (Mizzenmast) Prostitutes in the city, real ones...
- (-) Modern day Hansel & Gretel
- (-) Morphing kid... maybe YA?
- (-) Kid who can see things that nobody else can (future vision maybe)
- Geeks rule the universe
- Obese lesbians in the future with exploding brains
- (-) How I Got To Be Employee Of The Month
- (-) What the Pauper Did Next, New Myths/ Kirstys mag
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mikandra is making a helluvalot of sales lately. Previously I had always been genuinely confused by
mikandra's general lack of sale-age, as she has always been the anomaly in what I understand is the Natural Order of Publishing: i.e. I know when the fuck I should be able to buy someone's book off the shelf and when the fuck I should be snerking about them behind their back. mikandra is easily the best Australian writer I've read and this is coming from me, I actually don't flatter people as I've always said, I just say well obviously this is really good. And I feel rather fangirlish and lame about all this but I feel like to be fucking honest I'm probably just a fangirl who's a bit ahead of the curve, and later on there will be hundreds of fangirls, it's just that the other fangirlstobe haven't yet read her shit.
So. Given
mikandra is now selling out her entire winterfucking closet of fiction it's like, hah, I fucking knew publishing and publishers were not a bunch of total fucking idiots, thank fuck, THE WORLD IS AS IT SHOULD BE.Goddammit I know my shit!!!!!
Yes I've just made this post all about me. Well guess what, I'm wearing a false mustache. So I HAVE THAT RIGHT.
It's going to be an audio thing too. That's never happened before, so doubly awesome.
I've never sold to an audio mag before so I'm yeah, pretty excited. EEEEEEEEE.
I'm doing Mizzenmast. It's slowly falling into place.
I am annoying
sandykidd by systematically cutting the testicles off FOS. It's not a nice book and I'm not just talking about the necrophilia and the incest and the necrophilic incest, and I'm still stuck on the idea that If I Just Change Like A Few Words Seriously the whole thing will turn into something Anne of Green Gables wholesome. I think it's the casualness of it's vileness that wigs me out. I am quite a vile person, but I don't often keep a physical record of it. I was meant to write a serial for a mag and completely forgot it, but I should probably get on it. It's set in Clockworld and has Josie, Aubrey, Xioaping, Val and War Vladistov, who is the younger brother of Ingemar. Hah, I just had to fit in that link.
One day I'll make some new characters, but not when I still have these ones.
I know a lot of you have done this and started looking like this - I do work two jobs though so sometimes it's hard to get into the mood - I can sometimes work 25+ hours a week so I'm like BLARGH at the end of the day.
So what's helped you make the switch from a day job to writing fiction?
---
Why not preorder the Crossed Genres anthology: http://crossedgenres.com/store/antholog
Support small presses! :D Particularly ones who have published/are publishing me and people I know. :D :D :D And if you don't preorder, just pass this on through your blog or whatever to someone who will, hey :D
These are persuasive smiley faces.
I've always figured that smarts were mainly inherited genetically, as well as interests. I have a little second cousin who I met when she was 2 and never again until 2005, when we went to France and discovered we were both queer gothy atheist writers, despite the fact we'd been brought up in entirely different continents by very very different parents and had very little connection to anyone else in our families. We also played the same instruments, did the same course in university and have basically the same job.
However maybe they ain't. Oddness.
I know the husband seems to have quite little in common with his family, being that he is not musical and not a photographer. But maybe he has a distant cousin out there who's Just Like Him. Who knows?
Anyway.
What am I reading?
I'm inspired to write as I read through Graceling - I put it down the first time after a few chapters because it was shit. I am now rereading for reals and it is bad enough to make me want to write. Fuck though. She's like a super fighting chick but it's like her CURSE n' shit and it's not what girls do normally but she doesn't have a choice because you know it's an inborn shit thing and the other chicks are into skirts and shit and look rly is that what you meant to say? Not that I don't expect that kind of stuff (as Patty pointed out previously) with "chick with sword" fiction... but. WTF.
Bring me back my Xena, okay.
I'm also reading fecking racewank. I'm hating on that black faux-feminist chick who is skanking up my atheist blogs with her I hate whitefolks schtick, which alternates occasionally with I HATES MENS. Yeah, after that, it's no fucking wonder they hate you too.
After hunting for ages I have found some brilliant gay fiction, not spec fic, and am eagerly devouring and gurgling and probably need to find the entire book instead of just these bloody extracts. HURRAH. It contains evil horr-ful women and it's old fashioned and whatever but I don't care, I am in luv.
I also have some old Pratchett I read when I was younger. :D TRUCKERS DIGGERS WINGS WIN
Plotter. But only after I've finished chapter 3.
2. Detailed character sketches or “their character will be revealed to me as I write”?
My stuff is all plot, no characterisation - which comes as you write, I figure.
3. Do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing?
They just follow what the plot needs them to.
4. Books on plotting – useful or harmful?
Never read one.
5. Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?
I procrastinate. I get the itch... until I sit down, then I procrastinate.
6. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?
A bit of both.
7. Are you a morning or afternoon writer?
After I should be in bed is my writing time.
8. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?
I wish I could kill everyone else in the world just so I could have silence and alone-ness.
9. Computer or longhand? (Or typewriter?)
Plot by longhand, computer gets the text, changes to the text go in long hand.
10. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One?
Yes. Um. Most of the time.
11. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?
No.
12. Editing – love it or hate it?
I only write first drafts. Editing is for people who aren't me.
With respect to Patty's rarr about no women over 50 in science fiction lead roles, I've decided to make my lead Klara Pratt, who is in FOS (briefly); she is a 50 plus older society lady who liked knocking off her rellies. Is totally reformed now, though. OMG.
Andy has pointed out that while I vomit about Twilight and about that Time Traveller's Wife book while trying to scrape off my own skin, I have some fairly significant age difference stuff in my fiction as well, what with Harmonica (49) and Gig (28), Vona (46) and Percy (17 whatwasIthinkingsrsly), Inea (19) and Sink (38), Alleluia (19) and Royal (31) and, probably worst of all, Val and Kiki, where Val becomes technically engaged to her at 12 as part of an East-West business venture. I'm not entirely sure Val & Kiki actually count, given that they're more like friends than anything else, but. Ergh.
This makes me uncomfortable. I did date people in their forties + when I was a teenager. But. That's not the point.
Heh. And Zeem (9000+) and Trinket (30-something). XD
-
I will do some Mizzenmast today. I fecking will.
I forgot how twisty it was and how essential it is that it plays out in EXACTLY THAT ORDER otherwise it's not clevar at all. We had a lot of conversations like this while I was retelling:
"And then like Sink REMEMBERS WHAT DAY IT IS. Anyway..."
"Wait. What day is it?"
"Um. It's just like, a really important day."
"Why is it so important?"
"I CAN'T TELL YOU IT WILL RUIN THE SURPRISE OK."
I think I might, um, do another story set in FOS world. Actually. It's sort of in my head. It's sort of my nanonovel but it works better when it's set in Kamphor.
Will be starring Mz Arifia Fawles, Captain of the Guard by default and Klara and Joshua Finkle *definitely*, obviously, because I still have big loves for Joshua. Will be merging my plot about the illusionist and my plot about the Honourable Ladies. I think I'll be making some other characters too. I have a guy called Marcus Degas who's descended from Rochare Degas the Duke from FOS. I want him in it. And I have a little magician called Fritz. I also have a pair of identical twins.
I think it's going to swing between Arifia and Klara in the guard, Marcus and the twins who I suspect are magical types at a magician's guild.
I'm looking forward to writing Joshua again. Maybe all this is just an excuse to write him again.
Torvault, Sink, oh the lulz.
Just so you know, it's all classy and NSFW. ROFLMAO.
( Moar Oart. )
marcimojo mentioned settings. I thought I'd look at mine.Northern England* 4
America, random 4
West London, UK 4
Australia, NSW 4
Post Apocalyptic India 3
Fantasy universe 2
International airspace, Seychelles/IndiO 2
Austria 1
Australia, North/Kakadu 1
New Zealand, offshore 1
West Indies or PIs 1
International Airspace, Pacific/PIs 1
Central London, UK 1
New Zealand (starting point), round the world 1
Another planet 1
Ancient Persia/Middle East 1
Yeah, it's mostly in the bloody Cotswolds and West London. No prizes for guessing where I grew up.
*And that's often Northern England as in North/West-of-London, not exactly the top bits.
Someone tell me that's not a good idea, quickly.
My mermaid story seems to be about (so I've discovered) them creating a cyborg-thing that wants to like, make friends. And it starts making deep sea creatures rise to the surface and explode hilariously. So it's going to have vegan stuff in it in the Do No Harm and suchlike way and my little vegan is going to wailywail his way into killing it.
It's Valery fiction, too. Heterosexual Valery fiction. OMG.
God I love writing him. I mean I don't think I've ever had a character before where I've been EXCITED to write about him. When I'm feeling bored sometimes I just doodle out random scenes for him where he goes to the supermarket or washes his hair or whatever.
avepasifika still needs love. Will you love it?I worry, sometimes, about myself.
I like redesigning the future world. I love cultural appropriation; either appropriating it meself or writing about it, so in my future worlds Australia is dominated by Southern Asian and sub-Saharan African cultures; New Zealand is completely and irreversibly twisted by Americana. I like the idea of a Japan that's kind of fucked itself into its most crazy media, a la Tokyo Gore Police; I like an England that's self-fucked itself into a self conscious, anachronistic parody of itself. I do India fully multicultural by choice and the west coast of Africa multicultural by necessity. I do cities in rural China and a failing cultural identity. I do the Philippines as the unofficial mediators between East and West. My superpowers are India, China, Australia and Nigeria.
I put all scientific discovery and research - well, all the fun stuff, cloning, etc - on the west coast of Africa, around the Seyschelles and Madagascar, as well as throughout the Pacific islands. I do English as the lingua franca of the world. I do exploding new languages and Creoles. I do veganism. I do a scientific, not social solution to global warming. I do no solution to over population. I do nationalist social democracy in the countries that function. I do socialism, personality cults and theocracy in the ones that don't. I do the spread of the Euro - renamed and repackaged as appropriate - across Africa and then Asia and Oceania.
I do international airspace too, and transient lawless cities that form and reform over the oceans.
I do garbage island resalvaged as a continent.
I don't lose the fish. I love fish. :(
- Johnny and Babushka
- The Awakening Giant
- The untitled fantasy murder mystery
- Letters from Utopia (which I'm fucken editing!!!! I can't even edit!!!!)
- Meme Hunt
- What they did on the lake
ARGH. I know I've been drunk for... about a week straight, now.... but alcohol doesn't usually mess me up this much when I'm sober again.
I need... juice. Writing juice.
I'm having a bad time trying to write women right now. All of them are coming out bland.
Maybe 20000 words is waht I should be aiming at for a story at the moment. I don't think novellas are really sellable anywhere, but wotevar.
I have this though. I've got to finish it. I might use virtual reality.
Today the sun is no brighter than usual, the sky no clearer. Today there will be no great tragedies; no great inventions; no political scandals; the newspapers tell bland stories of sport, economics and real-estate. But for me it is a special day, a day like no other; for today I have discovered that my husband is unfaithful.
There have been signs of his infidelity for a long time. There have been all the signs, if I’m to be truthful. The late nights spent at the office, his cell-phone mysteriously off. The exotic smells that waft from the fabric of his discarded shirts—Venom, Believe, CK5—expensive perfumes that I don’t own. The credit card receipts for flowers I never received, for dinners I never attended. The phone bill lists innumerable calls to an unlisted number, and always during the hours when I am out of the house. Our lovemaking has become irregular, and he always pulls away too quickly, guilt written in the hard lines of his face.
My husband has not been clever, the way some men are about their affairs, hiding their tracks; he has treated his lover like a girlfriend, not as a mistress. He has blundered in ignorantly and, perhaps, optimistically—but that is how my husband is, big and brash and blunt. There is something bovine about the way he lumbers along, his head low in the crest of his shoulder blades; he is something solid and unstoppable. At his work, they call him the Hammer. It is not in his nature to be discreet.
The day begins; it is morning. I am in the kitchen. My husband has been sent off on an errand: he is to pick up fresh milk (for coffee already cooling on the stove), a newspaper, and margarine.
While he is gone, his cell-phone rings.
At the same time this comes with somewhat mixed emotions - while I'm delighted to get my book freed up, and regret the whole venture entirely, I do feel bad for the new authors, and those people who'd never had anything out before.
I remember getting an acceptance from this publisher and my response was pretty much eh whatever, great, I'll have to do some FECKING EDITING NOW, life sucks. But when I got my first novella publication with Abyss & Apex back in 2006 - which was pretty much the first speculative fiction story I'd ever written and sent out - I seriously SCREAMED at my desk for like half an hour. Despite everyone thinking I was a dumbass. (I worked for a traditional printy-booky publisher at that point so no one else thought it was a very big deal. And my manager's mum was the best selling children's author in the country, so she was sort of like, clap clap clap, jolly good... now can we talk about this book?)
But yeah. I WENT HOME AND CELEBRATED. I'd had sales to other random places but like, I'd made a decision (which was suggested to me by an agenty-type person many years before) that I should stick to what I was good at - fantasy and cyberpunk - and quit doing literary shit. SO. It was like complete validation for me that I was LEGENDARY and could actually SELL in this market. I was soooooo happy. The story itself had to be reworked across the board pretty extensively for publication, which fuckdamn I hated doing but fuckdamn was SO RIGHT and the editor at A&A is a fuckdamn legend.
So it was awesome not just because I sold my first story in that genre, but because THEY MADE IT BETTER and because it was validating and exciting and I got paid Real Cash Monies and HURRAH! IT WAS AWESOME! IT WAS FANTASTIC! YAY!
So... I hope that conveyed the sense of massive win that I felt getting an acceptance. And people at the publisher I'm at have recently got their first acceptances, haven't had their books out though. And they aren't going to, now. So many of them are desperate to hang on for dear life to the publisher in the desperate hope it won't go under. They'll take any shit at all. :/ They JUST WANT THEIR BOOK OUT. And it sounds like they've wanted this for a very very long time.
I'm yay for me. But sad at the same time for them. Very very mixed emotiony.
But I have a weird urge to write it. Grown up fantasy. Murder mystery style. See I'd like to relocate my story about Cecil and the Honorable Ladies society to a fantasy setting. And I've wanted to write my other legendary mystery as well. AHH. AHHHHH.
I mean I could. Or I could combine them both. The crazy chick with the hole in her head and Cecil and the Honorable Ladies. I mean... two plots is better than one. But what would be my logical connect there? There must be something that brings these two together.
Hm.
Maybe I could flip Cecil's gender AGAIN and have Cecilia and Anton as the lead guardsmen characters. I did think Cecil needed more balls and I think the only way I can make tough-ass characters is to add-a-vag. I don't know why. I just don't know any strong leader type men. On the other hand, I know heaps of leader, visionary women. I'm not saying that the men I know aren't successful but they don't seem to have the same, I don't know, drive or whatever. They're more content to sort of stand behind women and act as a support. I guess I'd have to meet more strong leader-ish men for me to actually be able to write about them, every time I do they just end up turning into women. HRRRRRR. Closest I've ever had without flipping were Kelar and Sink - and both of them are 100% dependent on having a hardcore chick to back them up in any situation, their ballsyness pretty much depended on that. HrrrrrRRRRrr.
Maybe I can make that a challenge, I know Anton's a guy because I nicked him from someone else. :D
- Christmas, Johnny brings round a present that's a GPS
- Lady hit in the street OMG presents, Johnny decides they will go bring presents
- Zeem wank about how dumb humans are, bringing presents A
- Bringing Presents B
- Going to the hospital for further lulz at humans generally
Not sure what yet. Will FERMENT. Ideas as usual welcome.
I'm bargh and blurky over writing with many things open on my desk, and this one appears to be the only thing my mind is presently interested in.
