I drummed my fingers on the table beside her open grimoires. Not facing the bully, I turned my eyes toward the blonde, taking in her arrogant smile. She'd gotten me to do what she wanted. She held her wand steady, and the tip glowed like hot iron. "And that's all I need to do? I can't believe you're helping me like this after all we've been through..."
The bucket-full of water and me being hit by said bucket falling off the shelf above the door. The vanishing ink pen I used on a test. The worms in my box lunch. Other things. But I was also a T.A. Some responsibilities where inescapable.
I did volunteer to help Jill.
I wanted to laugh at the "we" in that last sentence, but sighed instead. She was predictable. Very predictable. "The mnemonic, the equations, the visualization. Spot on. It balances and your wand indicates that."
"So all I have to do is say what I want to conjure?"
Predictable. I didn't grin. Instead I switched to French, hopeful. "/Tu m'emmerdes avec tes questions!/"†
She blinked. "Merde? Isn't that French for—"
With magic you really need to be specific about where to target a spell affect and what you're asking for. She'd been specific about neither.
Where your wand is pointing is the default. Her's pointed above her head.
The spell understood what she wanted enough that the closest source proved to be the horse stables. I could see it out the dorm room window. The spell mucked every stall.
A load of small round spheres crashed down around her, bouncing off her head and bounding around the room. I squealed reflexively and jumped away.
I doubled over leaning against the door, laughing despite the smell. For her part, the bully sat stunned. Her expression wanted to be a smile. She had succeeded, after all. She also knew she'd been made the fool.
Exiting out the door was the better part of valor. I grabbed the nob.
"/Amélie/," came a growl.
=-=-=-=-=
† "You're so annoying with your questions!" Literally: "You're shitting on me with your questions."
People are getting paid for #publishing#AI-written #books, in an #author's name, when in fact the author did not, and knew nothing about this happening.
Then, when the author tries to do something about it to stop this obvious #abuse, they are told no.
I wonder what tense you've all chosen to write in and why.
I know past tense is likely the most common, but I have experimented with both and decided that present tense offers more direct immersion for my purposes.
This also ties into who the narrator is. In my WIP, it is a person in the room invisibly tagging along with the MC.
How did you decide, and is it reflected in the identity of the narrator?
Got down to #author stuff, now that I'm retired and can devote time to the #business of #writing#fiction. First order of business: catalog the unsold novels from after the burn out that need revision and rewrites.
Turns out that disconnecting my Mac from my work VPN messed up my folders. I had somehow mapped (don't know the Mac term) my work Windows computer folders to the Mac, and when I look in documents it tries to find it on the network and fails. If I reboot, so long as I go directly from my user's directory to documents directory, I'm good. If I click on Documents in Finder, it redirects and I'm screwed.
First thing I did was copy all my writing folders to the desktop. At least I've lost none of my old novels and short work.
I thought there were 7 completed books, and I said so online. There are actually 9, three that form a trilogy and one novel with a sequel in the mix. There are two incomplete novels.
Some works are older than others. Pages refuses to open one novel from 1996, a fun space opera that possibly has the highest chance of early sales. I haven't tried the others. Now I gotta install Word, of which I am not a fan, and investigate programs that'll open the really old files. If anyone wants to chime in with suggestions, please do! (I can always find someone with a Windows machine if need be.) Putting Google on TODO. I actually have original copies of chapters from my Apple ] days, but thankfully I updated those to the Mac and to a new millennium version of Word in what were my PowerPC days.
Incidentally, there really are three novellas in good shape.What surprises me though? There looks like about 15 short stories, many complete because I see multiple submissions in the various folders. I completely forgot about these, and was sure I never wrote short-form.
Today, I submitted my book 367 days after signing the contract. It has been an intense, exciting, boring, distressing, depressing, and uplifting process. A bit of everything over a year, but I'm so proud of myself for pushing through. The book will be out in 2025.
Now, to figure out what to do with my time and my hands...
Do you reply to your last toot, or do you reply to the initial toot of the thread? Why? (Please reply to the thread.) Please boost for a bigger sample size..
Eugen Rochko recently posted a thought:
"I think it comes down to, AI has no place in the arts. Machine-generated art has the appearance of what it is emulating, but no substance. Like cake made entirely of fondant. Or cardboard."
'Aiono' replied: "Also even if it could, like why would you automate one of the most entertaining part of being a human?"
#WritingWonders 7.9 — What are you good at when it comes to writing?
People have complimented me on my dialogue.
Recently, I've switched from 3rd person to 1st person narrative. That's essentially the MC talking to the reader, which may explain why my writing feels so much more fluid and natural.
I read most everything I write aloud. It has to pass the speech test. Getting tongue-tied is a bad sign.
So...
My answer to this one is what I am doing now. Talking to the reader. What do you think? Does it work for you?
Myself and @beardedtechguy are looking for writers to write for our #AllThingsTech blog that we launched earlier this week.
If you are interested in doing some blogging about tech related stuff, please reach out to us as we'd love to talk to you and possibly bring you on-board!
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask as I'd be happy to answer any questions.
I am looking for the most privacy friendly way to buy ebooks.
Every shop and platform I've looked at would index and sell my purchase and a lot of other information.
I can get my ebooks in different ways but I explicitly want to pay the author for their work without me and my behavior ending up a resell product for which ever platform I use to complete this purchase.
Short story collections. Strong theme, or just the best stories? Can a collection include nightmares and light-hearted stuff? (An experienced author says a good collection does not vary wildly in tone. But my stuff does).
what do you think as a reader, and what do you do yourself?
@jessie is a lover of #languages and helps run #CommonVoice, @mozilla 's open #voice#data set, which now supports over 100 languages. She also teaches #WebDev and loves #hiking. She's awesome you should follow her 🇬🇧
That's all for now, please do share your own lists so we can create deeper connections, and a tightly-connected community here
I'm reminded here of @maryrobinette's short story - "Red Rockets" - "She built something better than fireworks. She built community."
#PennedPossibilities 85 — MC POV: Tell us a quick love story. The story must end badly. CW: Um, frank talk?
I thought he was dead. The only guy who'd ever had a crush on me. My lieutenant from my days in the mob. He'd been bleeding when I'd shoved him through the /Interstellar/ apparition a year ago. When I'd escaped through the same working ten minutes later, the street it was anchored to in Home City was abandoned—but for Praetorian guards too frantic to notice me because Director Rainy Days had roared through only half a minute before, in full battle mode, without any of her guards.
A year later, Rainy Days cornered me. To convince me to stay, she'd baited her trap with him. She'd made him a cadet in her Praetorian guard, and oh my—my—my, did he look good in that uniform. He stepped up to me, no longer blushing or stuttering, not able to say those words that he liked me. No, he stepped up to be, cupped my chin, and kissed me deeply.
My knees nearly gave out, despite my worst enemy standing less than a dozen standards away from me. My heart racing, I returned the kiss, warming up, and letting him put a hand behind my back.
Rainy Days said something like, "She should get a room."
I stepped back, a hand on my lieutenant's chest. I looked at her in complete shock, but I couldn't think of anything sufficiently sarcastic. I flashed her a hand-gesture instead, then grabbed his head and kissed him back until he moaned. I expected that evening would be sweet.
He fought alongside me against Rainy Days, the strongest thaumaturge to ever live. We nearly died.
That night, after lots of events too numerous to enumerate, and me agreeing to work with Rainy Days as her minion (long story), I had to deal with my roommate. She was the first person I'd acknowledged as a friend since childhood. I had used her in a sting operation to catch a crime boss and for various reasons—including that she had never ever gotten laid because of who her mom is—was bummed out.
I "gave" her my boyfriend to cheer her up.
They took me literally. Loudly, I might add. You'd think an ivory tower would have better sound insulation, but you'd be wrong. I left as soon as I could the morning after as they were still at it.
Want some #verisimilitude for your post-apocalyptic story? Four years after the pandemic started, 7 out of 7 examined #battery-powered candles had burst batteries. 3 out of 7 had destroyed circuitry and were irreparable. I restored four of the candles to working order with a lot of cleaning and scrubbing, but of course they required fresh #batteries.
Takeaway: Nothing battery-powered left for four years will work when found. Much of it will be destroyed.
Bonus: Gasoline has a shelf life and may be useless in 6-12 months. Sorry, no verisimilitude in Mad Max.
Hey, I just created an account on bookwyrm. Who here uses it as an author? It only shows one of my books. Can I add the other? Can I use bookwyrm to promote my work?
Never thought I’d need to say this, but:
When designing book covers, be aware that a lot of teens and young adults can no longer read cursive. It’s no longer taught in a lot of US schools. I just showed a cool cover to some college students and was shocked that they couldn’t read the title.
Hi, I'm an as-of-yet unpublished YA author and high school math teacher who just joined Mastodon. I'm looking out for suggestions of who to follow in the writing/teaching community!
In 1963, in a bid to settle a conflict with his English teacher, a 16yo student from San Diego sent a 4-question survey to 150 well-known authors or commercial, literary and science fiction.
"Did they consciously plant symbols in their work?" he asked.
Here are many of their wonderful answers, very much worth the read
Technology and science wasn't magic, and Sharp Eye knew this more than ever. Five generations ago, Fleetmaster Running Talon had turned a portable cannon on his first Tyrannosaur, and ended their species rein of terror. Since that day, science and progress had ruled their world. Telescopes and the study of astronomy were unknown to her grandkin. The laws of orbital dynamics took a decade to render correctly, and her own grandmother had invented the slide math-relator that made verifying it all possible.
She lived in a world that promised her hatchlings steamships that could cross the Great Ocean between ports reliably, in days, because it need no sails. It offered /their/ hatchlings the possibility of powered flight using a lightweight heat engine. Literature discussed the not too fictional possibility of one day visiting the moon.
She ought have been happy with life and her grand future.
This wasn't the case. She turned the great telescopes with there photo capture plates toward the sky every night.
She'd found a streak.
Not a new planet. Something far smaller. Something far closer.
The rodent was very brazen outside the window. She'd been throwing the mammal bits of meat for the last month as she'd directed the telescopes, so of course he was. It chittered. With googly eyes, needle teeth, and the rotted smell of offal, the creature wiggled its pink nose and whiskers at her. It could see through a window! So smart. Its furry kind survived the freezing nights on the mountain, where despite her downy feathers, and a heavy parka, she could barely breathe the frigid night air. It burned her lungs.
She'd found a giant rock in space. A week later she confirmed it was two. The latest plate insisted she'd found a co-orbiting swarm, the biggest the size of a city or larger, the rest not that much smaller. Its mass made her think it was mostly iron-nickel. The length of the streaks on the plates grew smaller as the planet's gravity well influenced the orbit, sending it down on their heads.
Physics was physics. The ellipse calculations were irrefutable.
Between the constantly erupting volcano lands on the opposite side of the continent—which made sunset burn orange and purple, and sometimes caused snow to fall at the equator—and the dirt and dust that would be kicked out of the atmosphere by the meteor impact to rain down molten rock across the land, would it be that prolific mammal's descendants who'd inherit her decimated world?
Sharp Eye took a deep breath, inhaling the steam of her tea. The big question was: Did she announce her findings? While she had time?
Did it matter?
Who was she to break the world's ignorant bliss by announcing the inevitable? Fame didn't matter any more. How could it?
She sipped her tea and watched the soon to be victorious vermin nose through gravel, looking for roaches. She set the cup down, thinking how pleasant living only in the present was. She knew the future.
Then she thought, surely roaches would survive. Right?
Yesterday, one market called #SpellCheck an AI and does not want your work if you use spell check. Doesn't every #Author use spell (and grammar) check?
Another claims if they suspect the story is AI, they will block your email, and not even reply or verify.
#Autistic, #Blind, #DeafBlind, cognitively disabled, and people for whom English is a second language will be left forever waiting on a reply.