#irishcoffeeclub How would your characters attempt to catch a leprechaun?
If the devil-girl got a visual, she'd drop a gravity fold over it like a bell jar.
The main antagonist would charm the pants off of the guy.
Wintereyes isn't allowed to magically befriend anything humanoid. She might ask her dragon friend to speak fire to the fellow dressed in shamrocks, to convince him not to run.
Would the little guy notice Bolt dropping down on him from the sky? She's very fast.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 7 Nbr 18 — Do you ever use parentheses/brackets in your writing?
I use em-dashes in 1st person narrative quite often, mostly in the sense of setting off parenthetical remarks. I occasionally use parentheses, usually in dialogue but sometimes for very short or one word inserts.
I rarely use brackets, except for out-of-context author inserts in essays (see below), for inline author clarifications usually in front or rear matter in a larger work, or for attributions in quotes or epigraphs.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 7 Nbr 17 — Have you taken high school or college courses in Creative Writing? Were the classes useful?
Yes. At community college, I recollect taking a class. I recollect that mostly it wasn't so much about story telling, as it was way for the students to air their demons and bad life experiences through journal writing. I didn't stay long.
At university, I tried again expecting an academic approach to writing fiction. That's was what the catalog promised. I think it was just before I got an agent and I hadn't yet published. I had a couple completed novels and had short stories making the rounds at the magazines. I submitted an SF short story, necessary to be enrolled. The first critique session, the professor acknowledged that I had a completed work. However, in the next breath he said, "We only write Christian stories in this class."
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 7 Nbr 12 — What would one of your stories be like in an alternative universe?
Me: "Well, my first story was about a white-feathered dinosaur girl who falls in love with a human—"
Her: "Non, ce n'est pas vrai! She had the red scales!"
You: "White /feathers./ Baka! They proved that with fossil—"
Watashi: "You're both wrong! She was white, but she was a fox of five tails."
Boku: "She wasn't female. My MCs are always guys—"
And with that I closed the parallelogramaphone. Sorry. Next question...
[Author retains copyright (c)2024 RS.]
Dear #writers
I'm begging you, please just talk to a behavioral scientist/psychologist before publishing. Or read a textbook. Read Wikipedia. Anything.
"Psychotic" doesn't mean what you think it does. No, that's not why therapy works. Your armchair theories about mental illnesses and substance use need to be updated or scrapped altogether. Freud's theories were never any good and haven't been relevant for decades.
While I'm here: you also might not know what "bemused" means, and even if you do, please limit its use to perhaps twice in one book.
Cursed with clairvoyance, only Andra knows that the end is near for her employer and his traveling show. Can she save her costars? Can she even save herself?
Only if she can learn in time that not everything is what it seems.
Today in Labor History March 11, 1850: French anarchist Clément Duval was born. His theory of individual reclamation, which justified theft, and other crimes, as both educational and legitimate ways to redistribute the wealth, influenced the Illegalists of the 1910s, including Jules Bonnot, of the Bonnot Gang. According to Paul Albert, "The story of Clement Duval was lifted and, shorn of all politics, turned into the bestseller Papillon."
Spring Break accomplishment: I finally made time to move Cory Doctorow’s novels to my e-readers and phone. Looking forward to listening to Wil Wheaton narrate while driving to the eclipse next month. #Reading#Fiction@pluralistic
Today in Labor History March 9, 1911: Frank Little and other free-speech fighters were released from jail in Fresno, California, where they had been fighting for the right to speak to and organize workers on public streets. Little was a Cherokee miner and IWW union organizer. He helped organize oil workers, timber workers and migrant farm workers in California. He participated in free speech fights in Missoula, Spokane and Fresno, and helped pioneer many of the passive resistance techniques later used by the Civil Rights movement. He was also an anti-war activist, calling U.S. soldiers “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniforms.” 1917, he helped organize the Speculator Mine strike in Butte, Montana. Vigilantes broke into his boarding house, dragged him through the streets while tied to the back of a car, and then lynched him from a railroad trestle. Prior to Little’s assassination, Author Dashiell Hammett had been asked by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to murder him. Hammett declined.
"When they got home, the Rat made a bright fire in the parlour, and planted the Mole in an armchair in front of it, having fetched down a dressing gown and slippers for him, and told him river stories till suppertime."
Kenneth Grahame, "The Wind in the Willows"
🎨 E. H. Shepard
Dipping into this story from 1910 by Jules Lermina, translated by the late Brian Stableford who did so much to bring such French fantasies to the anglophone world.
#PennedPossibilities 244 — Do your characters have any co-workers they’re close with? Are there any they can’t stand?
My MC grew up rather distrusting of people, after being betrayed by a friend at a young age. When she got assigned a team to transport things-you-don't-ask-questions-about for the mob around the city, she didn't feel any attachment to the people assigned to her to help her complete her task. They could fight. They could take orders. They could run when she said run. She'd also been setup to take a fall.
Rival leadership in the gang tried to use her to bring down the Doña. With her co-worker's support, she turned the plan on its head, capturing one of the plotters and successfully delivering the merch. Over the following months, they worked together as they were obviously a perfect team, but then the rival leadership tried to kill her on another job. Her co-workers had become friends, and she'd always had their back, so they backed her up. They protected her. They all survived, and insisted they were all friends, even standoffish her.
She acceded.
They became the core of the team the MC formed as the bodyguard for the Doña. Two turned out to be married, but separated. She didn't like the husband much; he had tried to pick her up once. She ended up beating him up as part of knocking some sense into him and getting him back with his wife, but that's another story...
#WordWeavers 2403.4 — If your SC had to describe their world to an alien who knew nothing about it, what would they say?
Bolt would say pleasant, with plenty puffy little clouds and thermals that allow you to spread your wings and fly all day. You find boring cities and surrounding farmlands and occasional large forests most everywhere.
Her statements are in /her context./ Here's a much needed 21st century context that I wrote for (hashtag)WritersCoffeeClub today:
Do environmental concerns feature in your work? Not usually, but are tangentially important in the Reluctance series.
[Minor spoilers follow.]
Thousands of years ago, humanity solved the climate crisis and was on the way to becoming a multi-planetary patriarchal species when something purposely collapsed civilization [spoilers], seemingly to make humans go extinct. The planet is now mostly uninhabitable due to incredible cold or heat, with one stretch just barely cool enough to not cook mammals and grow food. There's practically no temperate zones, and they're reserved for agriculture and special needs.
None of this plays a role in the stories except peripherally. After some time reading, you might ask yourself these questions: Why do people never use anything disposible? Non-renewable resources are few and mostly inaccessible. Why is child mortality so high? Heat exhaustion. Why are buildings almost always white, spherical, or built like ventilated chimneys? Heat dissipation, by reflection, minimization, or convection. Why do many people take "siesta...?"
People who have no choice but to cope, will. To them it's not odd so they won't note it. It will simply show up as Easter eggs, now and again.
#WordWeavers 2403.03 — What food from your fridge or favorite restaurant would your MC enjoy the most?
Wintereyes lives amongst wolves, so of course she eats a lot of meat. Since her teeth aren't strong enough to eat meat raw, she cooks it enough to chew. Her pack has gotten a taste for it that way, especially the eldest wolves. Thanks to her magical gift, they can use fire, too.
It's not the meat in the fridge that would attract her, it's the cheese. Nothing so delectable is imaginable to her, especially the Romano and gouda. She might like the smoked salmon, especially since everything she eats is also smoked by wood fire.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 7 Nbr 4 — Do environmental concerns feature in your work?
Not usually, but are tangentially important in the Reluctance series.
[Minor spoilers follow.]
Thousands of years ago, humanity solved the climate crisis and was on the way to becoming a multi-planetary patriarchal species when something purposely collapsed civilization [spoilers], seemingly to make humans go extinct. The planet is now mostly uninhabitable due to incredible cold or heat, with one stretch just barely cool enough to not cook mammals and grow food. There's practically no temperate zones, and they're reserved for agriculture and special needs.
None of this plays a role in the stories except peripherally. After some time reading, you might ask yourself these questions: Why do people never use anything disposible? Non-renewable resources are few and mostly inaccessible. Why is child mortality so high? Heat exhaustion. Why are buildings almost always white, spherical, or built like ventilated chimneys? Heat dissipation, by reflection, minimization, or convection. Why do many people take "siesta...?"
People who have no choice but to cope, will. To them it's not odd so they won't note it. It will simply show up as Easter eggs, now and again.
#PennedPossibilities 243 — Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe… Which of your characters is most likely to attempt karaoke?
The way I see it, to do karaoke a person needs one or more of the following:
A good singing voice or being deluded about the same
Succumbs easily to peer pressure
Likes to do goofy things
Willing to become inebriated
Doesn't care what other people think about them
Willing to use it as a tool for other objectives
The devil-girl inherited her singing voice from her mother who was an international opera star. She hates singing in public, but does sing in the bath. Show tunes, mostly her dead mother's. She's bulletproof to peer pressure and couldn't care less what people think of her—unless it would help her achieve her goals. As a leader, she'd definitely suggest karaoke to bring her new classmates together, or in a more military setting to build moral and team spirit. She'd demure from singing until given no choice, then would hide her talent.
Seems to me that though the concept of karaoke is foreign to her world, it could very well exist, too. People do a lot of the things machines do in our world, so it might require live musicians or phonographs.
You sprinted by- but it was there again now! Waiting for you! The print was curling away from the walls!
You could watch it happen if you'd only found the calm or exhaustion to stand still and stare a moment. Every soft spiral of brittle, floral-patterned paper shearing from its anchor, leaving tracks that twisted back toward their patient nexus like the star-churning limbs of some cosmic amalgam.
[-Non-human. Lexical insights gleaned via shamanic mind-twinning. 🧵1/9]
Tau Zero, Bob Eggleton's masterpiece, makes the cover of the Worlds of IF Science Fiction Magazine
This new issue of the venerable magazine offers a blend of scifi litterature and art, including stunning artworks by Rodney Matthews and Bruce Pennington.
#WordWeavers 2403.01 — Introduce yourself as if you were a character in your story. What would your role be?
Can my story be autobiographical?
My first recollection was looking up at a dashboard in a car. It was green, made of metal. My dad was driving, but I don't think there were seatbelts.
I don't remember much from those days because I acquired language late, and then it was French because Mom sent me to a Montessori. I don't remember French, so I don't remember much. Autism was a secret that ran in the family, though I wasn't as bad as Uncle who stayed home all day building houses with cardboard and tape.
My specialness would account for other factors when I grew up, and, oddly, lead me to becoming an author. I think I had little native understanding of people's behavior, less of their expressions. It led me to intensely studying them, learning to predict what they'd do as if my life depended on it.
It did. If I didn't get it right, bad things happened. Don't remember specifically what, but I'm sure of this. Not understanding the language, nor the people, made it hard to remember more than images.
My next recollections come from when I was 7 or 8. It was night and I was home alone, no lights on. Batman was on primetime (/POW! Zowie! Holy Guacamole!/). By the flickering light of the the TV, Chef Boyardee raviolis heated in the pot and smelled really good...