#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.
#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!)
Who was hit hardest by #covid-19? Possibly immigrants in unprotected essential jobs. Osbaldo Varilla-Aguilar and others still face lingering, sometimes extreme symptoms. #sf#longcovid
#PennedPossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
An Australian author, Lucy Sussex, told us at Clarion West 1998 to be shameless in promoting ourselves. Being a shy person, networking and promotion has been a heavy lift, but I'm working on it and I know it's going to help. Mastodon: ☑️
#PennedPossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
Advice: Don't only write novels. Write lots of shorter pieces.
When I started I saw that you could only make a living if you sold novels, so I wrote novels. That completely discounted the fabulous practice you get completing lots of smaller stories. Completing a novel takes lots of time and there's a mounting anxiety that in the end the plot will fail or no publisher will be interested. Yeah, true with short fiction, but the investment is far lower (or should be if you're doing it right). There used to be lots of magazines you could sell short fiction to... for pennies a word, but it was something, and it offered a chance to build a brand name and a following. Such notoriety could help you sell novels, too.
#WordWeavers 2405.22 — Is your antagonist more a dragon or a dragon rider? CW: Innuendo
This question has me rolling on the floor laughing, but then you'd have to know the context of the story Fire Brand is in. The antagonist's type of human is called a... You guessed it. The MC has described his "attributes" cough intimately, having let herself be captured by him... And, well... "riding" is a euphemism she's well acquainted with. So, will she become a dragon rider...? 😊
I wrote about the dynamic between these two characters in the tootfic Ms George and the Dragon https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/110603595653290409. Please read it, if you haven't already. It should amuse you in this context...
For all the wonderful writers contributing to this shared-world anthology, it really reads like so many extra yards of the Jerry Cornelius novels. The best writing is by Hilary Bailey, who turned a lovely sentence.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 21 — Do you format as you write or do that at the end?
I am writing a manuscript for a fiction book or short story. Since I use a computer and now use #scrivener, the question is, what formatting? If you mean do I /italicize/ words? Yes. If you mean to I occasionally indent for stylistic meaning?
Yes.
I do.
It's ard to show on Mastodon.
Centered chapter breaks? I use a style.
Beyond that? What formatting? Scrivener blats out a manuscript when I'm done. If I want a book, I'll likely find someone to edit and design for me, if a conventional publisher doesn't buy it first.
#WordWeavers 2405.21 — Do you consider how your MC’s appearance may contribute to stereotypes?
Yes. Which is why I leave most details vague. Since I write fantasy or SF that's generally in the far future, I discuss issues like racism and inequality from different angles. For example, my devil-girl (her term for herself) in her internal dialogue might call a day angel a featherbrain, but if one of them should call her a /devil/ (it's not the "official" term for her kind), them's fighting words...
#PennedPossibilities 321 — Did your SC once admire their parents? Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?
Caramello admired his mother. He felt loved growing up despite a difficult situation with hostile step siblings and a status as the youngest child of the chieftain that kept children his age away. The chieftain took her as a second wife because he needed help ruling Crab Island; his first wife, though she gave him many children, had him on disaster patrol keeping her from ruining things. The business marriage required a child, Caramello. His mother did everything to protect him while she worked, saw he had a good life and a real childhood, ensured trades folk trained him in fishing and sailing (he admired them, too), and the mainland traders schooled him in letters and numbers. She saw him safely away on the mainland when it looked like a succession bloodbath might start between his siblings. Today, he misses her a lot, and fears the next letter he might receive via ship.
#WordWeavers 2405.20 — How did you settle on your antagonist's appearance?
Antagonists almost always are regular people with different agendas than the MC's. Rarely, they have a skewed sense of right and wrong or how reality works, which could describe a few MCs. In any case, I very much wish to prevent latching on to a stereotype as it will paint a divergent picture of what I want to represent and, far worse, comes with a subtext that I have no control over. Like the MC POV, I keep appearances vague so the reader can use their imagination, only less so because antagonists are seen and features important to the story must be eluded to. The MC will also make uncensored comments in her internal dialogue, aka 1st person narration.
In one case, the antagonist got her own side story as the POV. Note in the following #excerpt from Fledge, she has woken up with bodily changes (and amnesia). She self-labels herself as a chimera, a monster that's a combination of creatures but in her case parts of other people. She never states facial features, needs never say anything about hair color, or what we relate to as race. She does mention an in-story kind of human. However, the following feature is important to her "appearance" as it relates to the question, as well as the plot. She's squatting on a tree limb two dozen stories high...
He [her rescuer] pointed at the useless things on my back. "You remembered enough to shield your fall [...] using them. You're learning."
Below my normal right shoulder blade, a red-feathered monstrosity twitched. Adjusting my hips carefully, I glared left to see iridescent blue and purple feathers and down lit by the setting sun, better suited for a pigeon's breast. The day angel wing poked out, balancing, splaying breeze-rustled feathers to instinctively steady me. My blue "add-on" was larger than the red. Both went thwack to my back, acting as if they'd noticed I'd noticed my alien, unasked for, new limbs playing—behind my back—and hid. I had to steady myself with a hand.
#PennedPossibilities 319 — MC POV: Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like there?
On a farm and in the Fell Woods. I don't remember much about the former, but the latter was both exciting and difficult every day. I chose to live with wolves, which because of my gift better understood me every day. They were still wolves, and they lived and ate like wolves, not humans. I survived despite the dirt, raw meet, living without shelter, and an incredible amount of walking. The wolves cherished the cunning and technology I brought to the pack and helped me find a way. They taught me to hunt. People, I learned much later, like to be touched; contact was natural to wolves, but sadly despite people liking to be touched they don't routinely do so. The whole leaving the wild to attend school has left me with what one of Her Highness' psychologist call species-disphoria. I'm more comfortable living amongst beasts than people because they are so much more friendly and, if not, so much more predictable. I'm sure I'll go back when school's over—despite having a new boyfriend.
#PennedPossibilities 318 — What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?
Less is more in this case. That doesn't mean that in a perfect situation I won't suddenly find myself sweeping the floor instead of writing. They don't call it displacement activity for nothing!
#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?"
#WordWeavers 2405.18 — What kind of dragon (behavior or looks) would your MC be?
In one WiP, this question makes as much sense as asking a typical Irish person what kind of Tahitian they would be (body type). In the other, dragons also exist but seem to be (it's not totally defined) the result of some kind of contagious magic. We've already seen a wyvern, wbo is a monstrous fire breathing bat, and will soon realize there is a monitor lizard version (a wyrm?), but by this token there could also be a cat dragon. Thus, this question makes no sense in the other WiP, either.
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