#WordWeavers 2405.17 — Have you ever written for other age groups? (MG, YA, A)
My publisher pegged me as a YA writer. Lately, I've been pushing the envelope to adult in general, and in particular writing an erotic fantasy as one of the WiPs. It can all change in revision, of course...
#PennedPossibilities 317 — What clothing materials or outfits feel the most comfortable to your villain?
She was arguably a villain, and she got a thuggish prizefighter to try to kill the MC. She also tried to help a coup d'etat in the mob, which failed. The MC meet her in an alley when the MC dissed her gang boyfriend and she tried to slit her throat. The MC took away her ivory handled jackknife, which becomes a character by itself in later stories. She goes by the moniker of Mustang, maybe because like the car she's unsteerable?
She's described as
"The women looked overly girly in garish reds or pinks, with matching makeup and bracelets, except for a buzzed-cut blonde tanned woman [Mustang] who wore brass stud piercings. (Didn't brass have lead in it...? Poisonous... Oh, never mind.) It worked; she looked tough, more so maybe than her gold chain-wearing boyfriend in a white tee shirt."
We're talking cotton here. Cheap. She's wearing something tight and black around her hips.
Recently finished and recommend Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor aka @nnedi. I haven't read everything she's written, but everything I have read I've liked a lot, so I'll certainly read the second book in this series. She writes everything from "good for adults too YA" like the Binti stories to "very much NOT for youth" like the superb but intense Who Fears Death. Shadow Speaker lies somewhere in between, I'd say, and I enjoyed it a lot.
🧵 #sff#Books#bookstodon
@nnedi Okorafor is a gifted character writer especially. Her protagonists and other key figures are always striking and memorable. She describes her approach or vision as Africanfuturism and it's powerful, one that exists on its own terms, not defined in relation to historically mainstream western SFF. This context difference is for me a very welcome and enriching, and certainly sometimes humbling, one. There's an enormous sense of dignity and strength to her characters 🧵 #sff#Books#bookstodon
The fourth chapter of Stardust: Labyrinth is out! After the minor setback in the third chapter, the group ventures deeper into the eponymous labyrinth, and the sheer scale of the complex becomes apparent...
#WordWeavers 2405.16 — If your characters were in a museum, how would they act?
It would depend on how they ended up in the museum. If the devil-girl were put on display, it would end badly for whomever put her there. Were she a patron, she'd be indistinguishable from the crowd. Once she got herself into a sealed vault without breaking in or using the vault door; the interior turned out to be somewhat of a museum (it had family pictures), but she didn't steal anything. It did help her solve a kidnapping, however.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 15 — Have you ever attended a writer's fair / festival to promote your work? Would you?
I haven't.
I consider it if it were for the trade, that is for writers, publishers, and booksellers. If it were for the general public, considering that I feel knowing my gender could add a subtext to my stories I don't want, I'd have to think long and hard of the benefits of attending.
#WordWeavers 2405.15 — Who are your most and least gullible characters?
Of the MC's in the two current WiPs, it's exactly the opposite of what you might think.
The devil-girl had been very successful in most all her endeavors, but she'd never gotten to where she was if she wasn't used by someone every... single... time. Mind you, it doesn't always end well for those who gulled her!
Wintereyes comes across as an ingénue and innocent enough that you'll fear she'll get used like a tissue and thrown away dirtied. Not the case. She mediated between a dragon and a farmer whose silo got burnt down. The dragon apologized! (So did the farmer.) She's observant, quiet. Around people she's shy, but says what she sees and sets misunderstandings straight. Kind and helpful, everyone—humans, dragons, wolves, even cats—ends up doing what she sees is best for them and they like it, despite plans they might have had for her. Because she understands what she doesn't know, her skepticism and guilelessness plays havoc on those trying to use her.
#PennedPossibilities 316 — Does your MC or SC have a hard time connecting with others?
Both MCs in the current two WiPs have a hard time connecting with others for different reasons. They could be summed up for one they're people and for the other they're not animals.
If you've followed my posts, you're welcome to guess which is which.
#PennedPossibilities 315 — What smells remind your MC of their childhood? CW: Food, gross.
Two stories, two MCs, two very different answers...
Devil-girl:
She was not ever particularly copasetic with her elevation from middle class to atmospheric. When she found herself having mistreated a servant, threatening their livelihood, her autistic construction of empathy as in /I'm living in her shoes and this is fear/ kicked in. She worked hard from that moment on to /be/ with anyone humbly, and the servants kept her secret of visiting in their quarters or at the homes safe. (Actually, not entirely as the servant-mistake was one of her guardian's "lessons," but let's ignore that.) What she came to adore was a peasant bread that represented in her head getting away from all her responsibilities. Buttery, cinnamony, yeasty, with lots of honey and chopped up pumpkin. Passing by an open bakery door will often remind her of simpler times.
Wintereyes:
She doesn't remember a lot before her gift manifested at age 7. The going theory is that it broke something in her head. Farm smells, flowers, even fields of corn, elicit nothing, though she visits her birth parents' land claim regularly when the Blue Feather's pack hunting grounds shift to that part of the Fell Woods. Her mother's cooking in her kitchen, usually fresh venison or rabbit Wintereyes caught, is simply human food. How she survived going off with a wolf pack at that young age is a tale I should pursue at some point. The fact is that she did. Survive. And well. The smells of a fresh kill, laced with steaming iron scent, does make her remember becoming wild and first running free. It also reminds her of the other smells associated with recent death, some quite noisome. There's a thrill there, even if in the beginning she was barely surviving on too rich organ meat her teeth could chew, or when the alpha wasn't kind, meat Mother Wolf chewed for her. That was a special smell she remembers fondly. Her brother—a hunter that the wolves soon tolerated so long as he didn't visit often—taught her to make fire and to cook meat. The half-burned smell of meat dropped into a wood fire still makes her mouth water, even as it dredges up memories of reaching into a fire and burns, and of ashes and charcoaled fat, which ground in her teeth like soft sand. She became a much more skillful campfire cook out of necessity.
Oh, one other smell: Wet wolf (which is identical to wet dog), because while a wolf could keep themself "clean" with their tongue, the result of a human attending a kill, skin caked with ground-in dirt, sweat, and later ash, was more than the sensitive noses of her pack could stand. They often chased her into streams. She splashed them back, of course!
After a long run of disappointments and a lot of reading in other genres I'm finally hitting a run of good modern #sff#books I can recommend. First across the finish line is The Future by Naomi Alderman. It starts off in a pre-apocalyptic, more hopeful Bill Gibson mode with a highly capable young female protagonist getting dragged into an oligarchic power struggle by means of a Macguffin. Very readable, enjoyable catnip for anyone who despises tech billionaires.
🧵
There's a lot going on in this book but it moves along quickly. I suppose it is in the style I've seen called "hopepunk" but people need to stop trying to make fetch happen with that. There were a couple minor things about it that I personally didn't love, like too much time spent retconning the Bible and a primitivist-Romantic cultural vibe I can't buy into but these are nitpicks. Mostly it's a smart, well told story of resistance to the looming tech driven disaster.🧵
Some other bullet point/keyword type notes on The Future by Alderman:
forcefully, thematically feminist
lesbian main character
diverse characters
very on trend/current in its tech biz references
None of the above feels forced or anything at all though. And the politics in the book are interesting, being anti techbro capitalist but not anti technology. I'm not really buying it but it's enjoyable to read and think about.
#PennedPossibilities 314 — Has your MC ever felt as though they were reborn in the mental / emotional sense?
In the current story, she experiences a mental breakdown when events crush her worldview completely. [Spoilers, so you'll have to take my word on this.] Her understanding of what was evil, wrong. Her understanding of the trustworthiness of people, wrong. The goals she set to fix the magic that she saw as ruining others' lives... evil.
She's doesn't quite accept the latter. However, she finds it very weird to face the people around her without a deep down feeling that they will someday betray her.
Reading #AncestralNight by #ElizabethBear. I haven't read anything by her previously. It took a little while to get into, as is sometimes the case with Science Fiction, but some 80 pages in I'm liking it. #SFF@bookstodon
#WordWeavers 2405.12 — Who is the best friend in your story?
The MC is incapable of seeing that it is her.
For most of her story arc, she's suspicious of making friends having been a prizefighter and then working in the mob. She's also somewhat autistic, but trained to deal with people. The problem is that when she's amongst people, working with them, even the baddies, she's the type that gets the job done, teaches those that need teaching how to get the job done, and will always protect her teammates and subordinates, taking responsibility. You don't get in her face, however; certainly only once, anyway. Strangely or not so strangely, those in her orbit see her as a leader and personable. (All she wants is to go home to be alone with her books, but she'd never complain.) She goes along with it when others are friendly with her, not really knowing how to say no and understanding this was what she was trained to do.
To say she's well liked is an understatement. Not many people support you as she does, or will straighten you out and make you fly right when things are bad for you. She saves one marriage by punching the husband in the nose. She's there for others. She'll enjoy a meal with you if that's what you need and listen to you vent. At least one guy has a crush on her. Others fight for her. Some will risk their life for her...
#PennedPossibilities 313 — Is your MC or SC one to confess romantic feelings early on, or to conceal them for long periods of time?
It's hard to know for sure. She has worked in a world were such attactions are a tool to control others, and she's controlled others with them. Having transitioned from being a criminal to operating in a similar capacity on the other side of the law, she ended up tailing a snobbish dandy... who went on, after various provocations, to being someone quite different than his affectations indicated. She thought to pin him in a wrestling hold to get information out of him, but he threw her off and she fought him only to a draw (not easy for anyone to do since she's a former prizefighter). When later that day she got him to drop his façade, she found him actually adorably vulnerable. Not really knowing her own reactions, she obsessively took him from dinner, to dancing, to... um... dessert in one evening.
I have three new writing workshops coming up in June and July! Building on the success of Design-A-Ghost, I'd like to invite you to join me to explore some more familiar characters from #SFF and #horror by reading extracts from classic and contemporary authors together, and then using writing prompts and exercises to create your own unique monsters, aliens, and robots! 👹👽🤖
#PennedPossibilities 311 — What is a memory that makes your SC swell with pride?
That armor. The black dragon armor, light as an autumn breeze. The last who owned it, legends say, a million died to take it away from her, but failed in the end.
She gave it to me: The ruler of the world, the most powerful thaumaturge alive. I was the one who nearly killed her, when we fought for our lives incidentally breaking the Curse of Harmony upon her.
I didn't break the curse but was the one who nearly killed her. Yet...
My friend—whose life I saved by pushing her out of the way of a plasma bolt and getting my flank burnt as a result—reminded me of the legend. Made me test the magic, which let me fly like an arrow and loop and dodge more agilely than a sparrow. She added, "She told me it's the first time anyone's got that close in a century. It's a bribe, you know, A loan. She wants you to work for her. You impressed her. "
#PennedPossibilities 312 — Is your MC or SC a leader, a follower, or something in between?
Wintereyes is not a leader, nor is she a follower. She knows her mind and will state it when needed to help someone, or protect to herself. She's human, but also a member of the Blue Feathers wolf pack—and she's bitten its leader when he's abused pack mates. She's not omega, not low status; wolves respect her knives in the hunt. She knows when to help, and when to stay back. She's a mediator, as she's demonstrated between a dragon and people. It's that she truly cares to do her best for others. Those that know her know this; they listen; they protect her.
It was a great surprise to everyone when an unassuming Australian physicist worked out the equations that permitted faster-than-light travel.
It was an even greater surprise to find that the engineering required to build a device to implement the theory was found to be almost trivial. It was not even particularly expensive - a typical EV car cost more than an FTL drive unit.
In accordance with things coming in threes, there was one final surprise: Organic life could not survive the process.
It only cost the lives of five astronauts - and several dozen test animals.
Once this was proven, enthusiasm for the FTL projects around the globe dropped dramatically. But some did continue. One of the more interesting aspects of the mathematics was that the process did not involve any sort of acceleration. The device simply created a field that linked two points in space. Increasing the energy just increased the size of the object transferred.
All you had to do was define the relative coordinates of the origin and the destination.
The first probe sent further than across a room vanished. So did the next three. On a hunch, the engineering team of the fifth probe fitted a powerful transmitter, and sent it on its way. Again, the return program appeared to fail.
And then, a few minutes later, the NASA Deep Space Network reported receiving a beacon message from the probe - just inside the orbit of the moon. The probe had been gone 30 minutes.
Astronomers quickly worked out what was wrong - it was not a problem with the probe, it was because the Earth, and the Solar System had moved.
Having worked out that problem, the next probe was retrieved successfully. And then sent on the first real mission: to a point outside the Milky Way to image our home galaxy.
The probe dutifully returned several hours later, to a point far enough away to not fall to Earth, but close enough to transmit the data it had gathered. The image of the galaxy was all that the designers had hoped for.
The radio transmissions were less expected. Hundreds of them, very high powered, but all structurally the same. And only able to be picked up outside of the radio noise and gas clouds within a galaxy.
When decoded they all basically said the same thing, in many different ways.
#PennedPossibilities 310 — MC or SC POV: What was your favorite day or holiday when you were a child? Favorite Day Remembrance CW: Sad.
Why are you making me remember this now? My favorite day? When I was a child? It was /that/ day, each time Mom returned home. She would sing to me, but she belonged to the world, the theatre, to the concert hall. Plenty of her albums proclaimed that. "Midnight, the Voice and the Heart of the Nation." Those albums, they're all I really have of her. She wasn't one for family pictures. Or family. It's why I can't listen to them any more, and walk out of restaurants when any of her show tunes play.
I do sing her songs in the shower, unthinkingly. My roommate doesn't know who I really am, but she's told me my voice is just like hers. Stupid memory. Stupid reflexes.
I remember being /so happy/ when she'd return home. She'd sing to me, but wasn't at all "hands on." She'd sing and she'd listen to me telling all the things that happened that day with friends and nannies—always with a smile, but I was always on the floor or in my bed or in someone else's lap. Her manager—with whom I share my hair color and skin color so he likely fathered me—would hold me while she sang sometimes. He'd read to me. He'd call me his little tomato, since that was the hair color we shared.
I remember the pair once laughing after I'd been put to bed, not sleeping. I'd peeked through a barely opened door to see. /Him/ she held.
I loved them both.
You've made me remember. Are you happy now? How many times could it have been that I remember her returning? A few dozen? They died before I was five, and now I remember /that,/ too.
[That's the Aurora Midnight, the devil girl from the Reluctance stories. Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]
#WordWeavers 2405.10 — Antagonist POV: What do you like the most about yourself?
[A short tootfic. Likely canon. Her Highness speaking. From /Inklings:/]
My jaw almost dropped at the shear gall of the question, but the Midlands plenipotentiary was, if anything, expert at being jovial. His smile was disarming. He was a diplomat. I didn't gape, but put the tea cup down carefully.
"You're referring to the dragon incident, aren't you?"
He nodded. He plunked a couple lumps of brown sugar in his tea, stirring. It accounted for his corpulence, something rare amongst his gaunt brethren who spent much of their day running on forest paths. He'd made it from the Midlands in just weeks, on horseback I guessed. Poor horse. "It's on everyone's tongue. You'd mobilized the militia. Detailed reports hit the Forest Ridge High Tower as if carried by a thunderstorm."
He was making sure I knew "people" kept him well informed, and that my military wasn't what interested him. Much, anyway. I sighed, crossing my legs as I sat back.
I'd mobilized the best and most radiant of my magic users. None could best me, but we expected to face a wyvern the size of my in-town mansion. It had burnt up part of the Fell Woods. A good thing, thinking about that unassailable haven for monsters and wild beasts. Then it attacked a farm.
"The attack on the farm was an accident," I said off-handedly, steepling my fingers.
He paused. Blue eyes speared me. I'd never announced the details of what happened because if I made them official rather than rumor, the public might panic. Nobody died.
The Midlands ought know, I decided then and there. It'd be to my advantage. I'd let him decide the implications. "The grain silo had a moisture problem. It had started to ferment. Who would have thought a dragon might like beer?"
He chuckled, then, "You're serious? You know this? /How?"/ He put down his tea cup with a loud clink, spilling some of the reddish liquor.
I'd rode in with an elite company of my army, through a wood arch that proclaimed "Cornfeld," into a farm yard. I'd been ready to use my radiance to repel fire; dragons of all shapes breathed fire. My troops had the best spears, but it had been centuries since anyone had needed weapons against dragon scale. Would newiron even work? Drowning the beast by swirling airborne the farm's pond was almost our best offense, if the magical beast decided to fight. I knew they disliked fighting. I hoped that I had that much correct. If I had to resort to radiant kinesis to heave rock from a stone fence, it might decide to retaliate against my Townships—if I failed.
What I found was a half-naked girl, barely a woman though very tall, mollifying a distraught farmer and mediating with a red dragon who looked to be hanging on her every word. I could tell this, even though the dragon had the form of a giant bat.
Apparently, with her mediation, both parties were apologizing to each other!
Worse, though covered with mud and ash, visibly scarred, the young woman was devastatingly beautiful. The type of beautiful that made a seasoned and well worn woman like me think of a different kind of bedmate. I wasn't a man...
Wintereyes was her name. She had befriended a dragon.
Innocent and kind.
And immeasurably dangerous.
The ingénue now attended my magic university, despite being uncomfortable around people and wearing clothing. Learning to be human. One of mine.
I said, "What I like about myself is that I know when to fight and when to make friends."