#WordWeavers 2405.28 — Did your MCs have comfort objects they carried as a child? Now?
I guess if you could run away from home and fear being dragged back again, you must be a child? Right? The day she ran away, she took only one thing that wasn't essential. It wasn't a doll. She was tutored on how to govern and had people (not dolls) to practice with everyday. It wasn't a remembrance of her parents. Their celebrity had made them shy away from photography, and then they died. Taking a vinyl record was a nonstarter; listening to it, if she could, would have made her cry. Not comforting. No, what she took was a very obscure book! I'll let her talk about it for you:
My books lay thrown on the counter, on top of the messenger bag, on top of my clothes. I felt a spike of anger. I looked from them to him.
He said, "Stop with the playacting. This—" He tapped a hand on my Marlin's Tertiary Primer for the New Age Thaumaturge."—is a month's basic for most!"
I shook my head. Over the last nine months, I'd learned the first edition was worth magnitudes more.
He pushed aside the book revealing the stained blue paper-backed journal. "And this: Thaumaturgical Review Letters. That's nobody's idea of light reading."
I snorted at how wrong he was. "I dumpster-dived that one. I hiked up to the university a few weeks ago. You'd be surprised what moneyed folk throw away!"
"I was saying—"
"My Marlin's is kind of like a plush bear for silly girls. And yes, I do sleep with it. Give it a sniff. It smells like silly me—"
#PennedPossibilities 328 — If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?
I'm way too #shy to meet them, even the kind and beautiful one... a white wolf with a gold collar that reads HUMAN follows her around. These people live a life on a different level from someone like me. I'd need someone to introduce me, and then I'd probably lock up.
Faith, hope and literature. In the latest @fictionable#podcast Lauren Caroline Smith looks for God in her teenage years and finds belief on the bookshelf.
#PennedPossibilities 327 — How much does your MC value other people? Do they wish to have many friends, lovers, and / or associates? Are they an easy person to love?
Both my MC's have difficulties with how they value people.
Wintereyes views people and beasts through the same nonjudgemental prism. She understands beasts' natures' intuitively. Where her gift allows her to live amongst the beasts she's befriended, she is prohibited from using her gift on humans. A decade of living with wolves, thriving, has rewired her social understanding of her species with no magical map to ease her way. It's unfortunate how people are attracted to her—and that she doesn't understand them or her body's reactions to them. She has met a boyfriend who she thinks will make her experiences in the human world better.
The devil-girl is autistic, but was raised with this being one of her best features. She isn't wired for dealing with people; it's a learned skill that her tutors drilled into her until using it became natural. Well, natural with a few glitches, if you were looking from the outside. She can be stiff. She can be undiplomatic. She really will only give you one chance. She finds too much glee in fighting (though her target needs to give permission to fight them, but implicit is good enough). The reader knows her struggle. Dealing with people is exhausting but a challenge; it's often a self-dare. Were she given her druthers, she'd say she'd rather be reading a book. Deep in a university library stacks. Alone. Helping people is a culmination of her skill, and part of her very much adores seeing people safe and happy. In part, this may be an achieved reduction of drama, but it may be her human heart. Now that she's discovered the concept of lovers—and that her brain is delightfully wired for it—and is learning the give and take that requires to make that work fabulously, her world is shifting toward really understanding those around her on their terms.
You'll notice people only ever uncover one significant microcode vulnerability in their lifetime. after that they purchase a new car. get into photography. love hiking. baking sourdough. talk to you forever about anything except the lies in the dies. every final security architecture review team has a member named Troy. Stephanie is stroking my head like I'm a rescue. talking to me like I'm five. suppose you make chips, suppose those chips are going into modems or maybe printers, then a man from the government comes to you and says hey do you wanna be able to sell these products to the government because before we can let such hardware be plugged in on a secure facility like a military base or the house of military personnel we need to examine the blueprints for vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities that only we know about, vulnerabilities we can't even tell you about, and if we find your design is potentially susceptible to such vulnerabilities we may need to take steps to secure this hardware by making certain changes that we can't even tell you about. and so the chip maker says sure and the government takes the plans away and the chip maker gets back a chip that looks exactly like the chip he designed which does all the things he expects it to do, the only thing that's happened as far as they know is that the chip design has been security hardened by government experts for free and all they have to do in return is not mention this ever happened.
This is a very good comic, and it describes every author (or #artist) who is unsure of themself. Don't let this be you!
Complete stories (your vision) regardless of the merit you see in them.
Start a next one. Full stop. Then another.
Complete and send out more stories even if some editor (or commenter) doesn't buy or like them.
It's all practice, every single failure or not-good-enough. Practice makes you better, whatever they think, or you think. Keep practicing.
Take from criticism only whatever helps you identify or fix problems; reject being put in your place or ridiculed. It's practice. Your art is unique to you. Be truthful with yourself, though.
Keep starting and completing stories. Statistically, some will be good—and you will start to recognize the wheat in the chaff.
Their first stories weren't fabulous. Neither may be yours. The difference? They kept on starting, completing, sending (or posting), until they found success. Let that be you.
Please remember: #boostingIsSharing and boost to give others a moral boost.
#PennedPossibilities 326 — Do any of your characters have a favorite place that they've ever visited?
I'm sure they all have somewhere, but I've never asked.
For the devil-girl, it's doubtlessly any library she's visited. She'd sleep in the stacks were she allowed. It could also be Silver's Gym where she trained for and became a champion mixed magical martial arts prizefighter—and achieved her first K.O. Brings back fond memories. Despite the athletic funk and the muscle nerds overflowing with testosterone and attitude.
Wintereyes loves her Fell Woods and running with the wolves, However, this happened in the last chapter and it feels like her recalling a favorite place?
Recessed radiance light lit [a ceiling with] a painted dusk sky full of fluffy clouds lit by a recently set sun. The cloud shadows and the orange, pink, and purples felt as if the painter had somehow captured an instant of time and transported it above me.
I'd stopped so abruptly, Caramello had to dodge, nudging my left shoulder. I caught him reflexively, grabbing his shirt to keep my balance, saying, "I've lain in the meadows at Streams End, staring up at skies like this. I like."
#WordWeavers 2405.25 — How often do your characters think of death?
The reader and author are privy only to the MC's thoughts. "Often" is a vague word. Generally the MC doesn't think of death as you and I would experience time. However, in story time, she thinks of it rather often. She experiences PTSD episodes from when she saw someone die horrifically during a gang war, then realized her actions (or rather her inactions) resulted in dozens of others dying. Being responsible but powerless to stop it rattles her to the core. Her death? Not so much. Having been a bodyguard for a mob boss, and to an extent being a prizefighter where an errant strike could be lethal before that, she's never expected herself to live to old age. Twice someone has tried to murder her; only quick thinking and skill saved her. Twice she actually died, only extraordinary attempts at resuscitation bringing her back from the brink. She's not yet 20 years old. Each time she learned something or achieved something, the very last time saving not only the life of her lover but the life of his assassin because actually murdering the assassin was worse to her than dying herself. Not becoming a murderer is a possible tipping point in her life story because she is was conceived as a evil character, and if something doesn't get in the way she will be responsible for the destroying the world...
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 25 — Do you use a cover artist or design your own covers? Share your cover art.
I design my own covers, but I often pay a cover artist to draw them. I provide detailed stage directions (text) and supply excerpts, approve thumbnails then sketches, then negotiate color corrections to get them on one pass. I've also created abstract covers myself, or bought stock art. I've never used my photography in a cover. Yet. Once I colorized a sketch (digital watercolors) when a sketch was all the artist could provide when a family issue caused the artist to bow out.
I do the titles myself (and plan with the artist in the composition phase where I plan to put my titles). I've offered to do titles for others, but no takers, yet.
Um. Not sharing artwork. It's all for my other alias, which I feel uncomfortable revealing.
Hey Patrons, both current and future! This is just to remind you that supporters at even the lowest monthly levels get full access to the catalog of professional-grade releases of fiction and any nonfiction worthy of publication—feature-length, short stories, and everything in between.
This will include audio works also as soon as I find a suitable volunteer or find a way to compensate a professional.
STUMBLING TOWARD ENLIGHTENMENT in Seoul: university friends now in their thirties find heartbreak and lesser forms of anomie in this eloquent, multivocal experimental novel rich with details of life in today’s South Korea. B PLUS
#PennedPossibilities 325 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life and change its course of events, which day would you choose?
[Adds to my response for the SC in 324. —R.S.]
Let's see. Relive a day and change it? Hmmm.
The day I told my parents that I wanted to haul furniture and machinery as a living? Basically, become a mover? The day they reacted badly, grounded me, starting nagging me about school, wouldn't let me fly anything for my friends that weighed more than a few books—or airtaxi anyone—started telling me I was weak in the head? The day I ruined my childhood?
Yeah, I'd keep my enthusiasms and dreams to myself, could I rewrite history.
Or maybe it would be that day that I threw a brick through the Moving Guild's window. Wouldn't let any company hire a woman. Okay, I turned over all the parked moving vans. For the record, only one rolled down a hill. Hmmm...
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 24 — Is there any work of fiction you could have written better? Don't be shy.
There are plenty of TV or episodic dramas I could have written better. Doing so would have been procrastinating for me, though I have written my share of fan fiction and retconned really egregious plot advancement by stupidity...
Almost anything I've written, even a few years ago, could qualify as fiction I could have written better. I recently "rewrote" an earlier novella, changing and fixing a few details to retcon a prequel (including typos and grammar faults), then used that as an excuse to tack on the rest of a novel by changing the last couple of paragraphs.
#WordWeavers 2405.24 — While drafting, do you avoid or binge watch similar material?
I binge watch all the time. K-dramas and anime. I avoid watching or reading similar material to what I'm writing while I'm composing, so I'm not influenced. I want it to be me writing; I want the voice to be mine.
I avoid reading Dickens. I think his is my default writing style and I need to avoid it at all costs.
#PennedPossibilities 324 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life without changing anything that happened, which day would you choose? Tootfic: Reframing the Experience
[When my SC says armor, it's really a weightless magical exoskeleton that melds with her body. It looks like blackened bones, because it is. —R.S.]
Oh, there's plenty of days I'd relive unchanged. Like the day I fledged, when I first flew on my own. Or the day learned the thrill of hauling things through the sky. Both good events in a rather dull and awful childhood that turned to cinders when my parents disapproved of the way I wanted to live my life. Said I aimed for the dirt not the sky. Maybe they weren't so dumb—I ended up badly, flying messages for a crime boss over a dozen years. But, then, there was that day last week...
I've told you a few times how I ended up with the armor and a new job training as a pretorian, you know, having faced down the greatest thaumaturge who ever lived, having nearly killed her. Impressed her.
I thought.
Well, my drill instructor was training me that dawn. I wore the armor. The thaumaturge dove at me, full speed. She's a monster flier, taller, more massive, immortal. I jumped into the sky. Fled.
She followed.
Though the armor let me fly like a sparrow, change direction in a heartbeat, and take a thumping only slightly changing my course, it had been her armor once. She kept appearing before me, striking at my face or heart, sending me into spins toward the ground, stalling me out, almost panicking me into flying into trees or buildings. For all her mass and the inertia that implies, I barely avoided her, half the time with her cackling at my barrel rolls or dives that sent down feathers flying. She had muscle; I tired despite the armor until I thought my heart would burst from my chest, at which point a flyby pitched me into the ground.
I skid across the running track on my belly right up to my instructor. I don't know how I didn't break a wing or my neck. Ok, I do: The Armor.
She landed beside me with a loud thump. She wasn't even winded! She told him, "She lacks stamina. Train her harder."
She leaned down until her face was in my face. I smelled maple syrup on her breath. She said, "You need to use the magic in the armor. There's a class at first bell in the Ivory building, room B7. Shower and be there ON TIME."
I have wings.
I don't do magic.
I showered though, once my legs stopped shaking. I slunk into the class still half-frightened out of my wits. My new friend was there, the curse breaker, a former prizefighter, the one I'd fought beside against Her, that ended up with me getting the armor. It was some sort of advanced special Ed class for mages. I suddenly felt totally inadequate and I cried. Me. At the age of 27, I cried telling her my story, pointing to my purpling bruises, complaining that had She gotten in a good strike She would have caved in my rib cage.
My friend was having none of it. She said, "You're a day angel who just went ten minutes fighting Her. Somehow, you're still alive."
I hadn't thought about it that way. I later learned the word, "Reframing."
The instructor came in with a truckload of tomes and grimoires. She had prepared him for me. He gave me a magic primer. I knew it was a primer because it had PICTURES of youngsters playing. Despite the stares of the other students, I read the book.
Half hour later, I got the armor to glow dull red, like iron out of a forge. Truly. Awesome. Didn't know what it did except look intimidating, but still...
Awesome.
I felt my heart grow large in my chest, and it struck me. Someone (okay, the ruler of the nation) wanted me for who I was and who I could become, and because I was capable. She wanted me to aim for the sky. My new friend supported me and pushed me forward. I liked this, who I was, what I was finding I could be, could become.
And.
Oddly.
I realized, for what it was worth, my parents would approve. (And flap them if they didn't!)
For no particular reason, I had The Rooster Bar by John Grisham on my TBR and started reading it this week. I don't normally go for "airport books," but this one is a ton of fun. Now I remember why I read over a dozen of Grisham's books in the 90s and early 2000s. It's been a while since I picked him up... almost a couple decades, but I'm glad I did again.
FTR, The Rooster Bar has nothing to do with chickens. 😉
In the week Jenny Erpenbeck won the #InternationalBookerPrize catch her on the @fictionable#podcast recalling the fall of the Berlin Wall and discussing her prizewinning novel Kairos, translated by Michael Hofmann.