Have you ever had to change anything because you felt it was no longer relevant?
Yeah. I wrote one short story years ago, then realized that the main character who spoke about people landing on the moon hadn't been born yet so couldn't remember that. Made me feel no longer relevant.
Someone is either selling pirated copies of my book, or they're trying to scam people using my name and book. They even uploaded it under the name "River Hopkins" instead of "River J. Hopkins."
Can y'all please report the seller? This is the link. They're selling it for $14.99, and there's absolutely no way they have new copies for that price.
Ugh! I found someone had scanned and uploaded a copy of my book to the Internet Archive, without my permission. When wanting to find a review to recommend a book to someone, I found that copyrighted book there, so looked for mine. I still own my copyright. This interferes with me creating an author-preferred edition (instead of the publisher's vision) as planned.
In their terms of service, you will find:
While we collect publicly available Internet documents, sometimes authors and publishers express a desire for their documents not to be included in the Collections (by tagging a file for robot exclusion or by contacting us or the original crawler group). If the author or publisher of some part of the Archive does not want his or her work in our Collections, then we may remove that portion of the Collections without notice.
You can only contact the Internet Archive through email as their telephone number is voicemail. AFAIK their website doesn't list take down procedures.
I have emailed them a takedown demand, with their identifier for my novel, and left the same message on their voicemail.
Please boost so your circle of followers will see this, especially if they are authors.
PS: Yes, they consider themselves a library. I don't mind if they loan an original paperback from Del Rey in paper form. I don't give them permission to scan and then display, or display someone else's scan of my book.
Safeguard the digital sovereignty of your writing.
When using cloud storage, do not rely on companies based in countries you do not trust or know the laws of. These laws might obligate them to break the privacy of your data.
Make a conscious and informed decision on how to handle your data. You put your heart and soul into your writing, so please don't just click accept. 💜
#WordWeavers 2405.19 — How did you settle on your MC’s appearance?
Historically, I wrote my characters such that I found them attractive. I don't do that anymore.
Sometimes I don't have control, except for hair styles and clothes, or the lack thereof. The story or character may have certain in-the-moment requirement, like when the MC needed to train in an almost all-male fight gym as a prizefighter (she'd later win a championship). Of course she had tailored pink and black gym wear made of technical fabric that outlined every curve—which proved interesting.
These days I do the best not to assign an appearance at all, instead keeping things vague and sticking to describing only what's absolutely necessary. My experiences with publishers is that'll they'll ignore your descriptions for cover art and promotion anyway. In any case, doing this allows the reader to imagine someone they would find attractive(†). The MC in the current WiP is described physically only as tall, shy, so beautiful that both sexes fall for her, and that she has "winter eyes," whatever that is. In the other story, the only thing I'm settled on is described by the devil-girl something like this:
"Take two finger length pieces of rusty rebar, sharpen one end, bend it ninety degree, and stick one above each temple, pointing backwards. Makes wearing hats problematic. Yeah. Gets messy when they try to grab you by the head in a fight, especially if it sticks in..."
She's also describes her very olive complexion; she's mentioned green eyes in a mirror and red hair everywhere. It could easily change in revision.
(†) A recent writer's prompt asked about my target audience. Can I say "imaginative?"
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.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 03 Part 2 — Should books include a content warning?
Well, I inadvertently conducted an experiment in content warnings. I added a content warning for Ch 10 Nbr 4 (here: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112560345961576143) consistent with my eldritch.cafe instance's standards. It stated:
How do you handle highly intimate scenes? CW: Intimacy. Nothing graphic, but, really, if intimacy or discussion thereof bothers you, don't read.
In my opinion, it worked a little too well. 😊 I generally can count on more response. Yeah, maybe the post wasn't deserving.
The "experiment" does allow me to discuss my fears about CWs—despite agreeing to use them in the spirit of their requirement. In warding off people who need them to be sufficiently detailed, or want them, reading a CW forms in the reader's head a preconception without actual knowledge of the facts. It's a cudgel not a scalpel. In my cited CW, I overwrote it because in the back of my mind I fear picking up a hater. I've dealt with getting badgered because someone's interpretation of reality wasn't mine, and I became an evil to be purged for the good of the world. As a shy person, this is a very difficult thing for me to deal with, so I use CWs.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 18 — Have you written sections where the action occurs against the clock? How did you do it?
My current story segment in serialization takes place over a very short time period, after the last third of the previous story taking place between dusk and dawn. The other story I am working on is a three act story, each act taking place over very few hours.
Writing stories in compressed time isn't much different than writing stories that take place more episodically over longer periods of time. In both cases, I write about what is important for the character and how they deal with events. An example may help.
In the serialization (obviously spoilers if you know which story I'm referring to), the MC realizes that though the leader has left on a military adventure to handle a "guerrilla insurgency," she sees evidence that same foe may attack the capital city. In theory, she's politically second in command. In practice, she has no real power. How she spends that day scheming and conniving with only a title to get a single frigate on patrol drives the story and the clock. It starts with a PTSD episode where she realizes she may be responsible again for innumerable deaths without the power to prevent them, then her working every contact she knows, butting heads with the generals who discount her experience running a crime syndicate (briefly), convincing a discriminated against officer who wants to accept discharge to instead command a museum-piece frigate, getting into a bloody fight with the XO, avoiding what the reader will see as assassination attempts, and it just gets worse with her love interests (plural!) pulling at her heart.
All in 12 hours. Tick-tock! That's one day of three days of escalating existential threats. The fourth day's events take place over one hour, which is about the time it would take to read.
Wintereyes, the MC, is kind and considerate, and really wants to help, but when it comes to love she thinks like the wolves she's lived with over a decade. They don't have the concept. The closest is companionship and sex, which misses the point. Learning the concept of love is one of the many reasons Her Highness is forcing Wintereyes to live around people.
Caramello, the SC, fell in love a couple years ago. He knows that if he to return her interest in him, she'd be caught up in the succession war he's living in exile to avoid. The women since then have been substitutes. Wintereyes, however...
Wintereyes doesn't realize she could discover human love. Caramello doesn't realize that his dangerous past might learn about his present because of Wintereyes' kindness.
None of this bodes well for either romance novella character.
The main image may be mirrored, but fascinating anyway. Elites provided tax relief for followers all through history. Don't forget why people do things for powerful friends.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 09 — How do you select ideas from all the ones floating around?
I require a character I can relate, to with an agenda to fulfill and a problem to solve. If that generates an ending I can write toward, it's "Tag yo it!"
Sadly, I sometimes write without an ending. Those rarely end well.
#WordWeavers 2406.09 — Who has the best meals in your story?
The main character's first non-vegetarian meal was crab cakes. Her marathon trainer insisted she needed more protein in her diet. Since then, her diet has been more like a day angel's than her own kind, which is a problem because day angels live on the top of buildings and any good day angel restaurant is going to be a rooftop restaurant. Her day angel friends and team mates fly her up to the best fish and chips places. I think she eats pretty tasty food, both sky and earth cuisines.
You'd think her antagonist would have the best meals, since in the worst case she could choose takeaway delivered from ten different worlds. (Okay, all but one of the colonies are non-earth-like planets, but still.) Problem is she prefers dessert. Not a meal.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 10 — Do you revise and add more plot if you feel your story is too short?
Inklings was supposed to be a sudden fiction story, but 800 words proved insufficient to express a shy person's predicament with attraction. Adding more words developed the characters to where I could see a further ending, first to where they might misinterpret themselves into bed, and then again to where the love interest's past breaks into the present and the MC has to save his life with her magic. Now I see an epilogue, too.
Yes. Each change required a revision and backfilling earlier parts to create foreshadowing. This allowed me to add more plot.
Was it because it was too short?
Um... except for the 800 words in the beginning, well... dunno.
#PennedPossibilities 339 — Does your MC learn from their past, or are they prone to repeating the same mistakes?
My MC is way too prone to making mistakes. Repeating them, not so much. Somehow she survives.
From the current work, this:
..."Better not to get hit?"
"Definitely. Though the direct route through an obstacle is sometimes more unexpected."
And:
Were my trust misplaced, I'd learn something about myself. But, then again, that seemed to be my method of operation: win—or get hurt, pick myself up, make different mistakes.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 08 — Do you agree with Michael Moorcock, who said: "Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say"?
The advice boils to down to learn how to write and practice enough that you understand the basics (items 1 through 9), and understand what about all that gets in the way of you telling your tale... then tell your tale the way you need to tell it instead. I kinda agree...
To the extent you can be truthful with yourself and keep your ego at bay. This took me decades.
#WordWeavers 2406.08 — Where would your SC go if they had a bad day?
She's a day angel. Solitude is easy. Near sunset on the always hot world she lives on, she can always catch a thermal and spiral high into the sky. Gliding way above it all, the city she's trapped living in seems so peaceful, so devoid of people. She can make believe for a few minutes that the boss doesn't hold blackmail that would frame her for murder, and that she can soar off into the coming purpling dusk and start anew. The dry air swiftly dries all tears.
This keys into pennedpossibilities 338 rather well (https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112573054902942695): a betrayal. She. Doesn't. Cry. Stoic, right? When she's held it in for three-quarters of the novel, when she's trusted her identity with someone who has suddenly proven trustworthy, at least in her heart, my MC admits the first hurt of two betrayals that sunder her.
Whilst I won't reveal details, it is a case of a once trusted adult providing only material support when the MC required a simple act of love and caring.
Never forgotten. Never forgiven.
Thus she breaks, while being held. Actually, both cry over being betrayed, but that's also spoilers. In a subsequent novel, the friend characterizes the event as a "cloudburst."
#WordWeavers 2406.10 — MC POV: if you could wipe something from your memory, would you do it? CW: Intense
Hypotheticals are valid only in quantum thaumadynamics, but I'll humor you on this one. I watched someone die, struck down on the street realizing in the same moment that had I not saved the evil beside me that had thrown the grenade he would be alive. The horror of the moment, the smells of smoke and the sounds of shots, return to me as PTSD episodes. It's triggered when I find myself powerless to protect the people I'm responsible for. It happens more often than you would expect.
Would I wipe away that memory? No. Without it, might make the same mistake of justifying evil. Especially when I see it in myself.
Citron is an arsonist. He likes to see things (not people) burn. He is also a gawky teenager who works to pay the rent for his aged parents, while trying to act cool around his coworkers. He dresses sharp. And he's employed by the mob. He's got plenty to fear, like keeping his fragile world together for as long as possible.
Lesser fears?
Girls. It's not like he can talk about his hobby or his job or comic books with them.
Well, not exactly. His boss is around his age, though a heck of a lot more mature. She especially likes how he can be all business and turn off his ego. She's incredibly cool, like that time she handled the constables that had been tipped off about their evening delivery. Best of all, she likes his talent. (Spoilers: It's magic.) Calls him her power-pyro.