HeliaXyana

HeliaXyana, 3 months ago to books

#reading #author #writing #writingcommunity #ebooks #books #bookstodon #privacy

Please help.

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.

Any ideas?

Mushroot, 3 months ago to random

"Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that."

—Cory Doctorow @pluralistic

HeliaXyana, 3 months ago to writing

#WordWeavers 30 Has your main genre changed with time?

Once upon a time, in a mind far, far, younger than my current, my creative world was nice, wonderful, filled with pure aesthetics and naive optimism.

With time, I’ve embraced the epic, the bizarre, the deviant, the disconcerting and downright dark as I’ve started to see that there are fights to be fought in this world.

Here is to the beauty in a fight worth fighting and a melancholy worth dwelling upon.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 3 months ago to writing

#WritersCoffeeClub 29 Describe the saddest moment you’ve written. Excerpt

I’ve written a couple of painfully sad scenes but this one always gets to me. Zonas has been unconsciousness for days and the realization that they might now just be tethering his spirit and preventing him from moving on by keeping his body alive is hitting hard. His little, now teenage, sister crawls into bed with him and whispers the same words she whispered when she was six years old.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 3 months ago to writing

#PennedPossibilities 206 — Does your MC often reflect on their own actions? Do they ever think about the past, and what they could have done differently?

Initially Freya dwells a lot but she discovers all she is failing to see and participate in so changes her perspective. She then focuses on the current and future despite her home being located right underneath a crack into the memory realm which causes her memories to perpetually play out in front of her eyes.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 3 months ago to writing

#WritersCoffeeClub 27 Hollywood is filming one of your works. Which actors are playing the main roles?

There is only one that I’d really feel comfortable with. Eva Green as Freya. The main character. Eva has a excellent range in her expressions. I love the way she portrays anger while remaining feminine. Often when a woman is asked to portray strength, it is presented as a more of a male aggression which would not match Freya’s character.

Elegant but deadly.

#writing #writingcommunity

Book cover featuring the main character

HeliaXyana, 3 months ago to writing

#WordWeavers 24 hardest scene

The days after Lazarus died. To really empathize with that surreal sense when you suddenly lose some one incredibly close to you, I had to explore what I felt when it happened to me.

He had a identical twin and the description of his struggle to breathe without his counterpart was intense to imagine. Writing grief often hits a little too close to home for it to be easy to write.

Luckily, I named the character Lazarus for a reason.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#WritersCoffeeClub 23 Publishing

Publishers seem conformist and restricting to me. I'd rather keep it experimental.

I am looking to self publishing but the marketing aspect is daunting.

Might create a “read along” type of podcast with music and sound effects. I’ve always liked soundscape art, it could match up really well with the more bizarre aspects of my stories. Carved out a bit of a budget for it, found artists willing to work on it, we’ll see what materializes. 🤞

#writing

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#WordWeavers 23 movie rating

Entire series: US NC-17/ EU 18

I embrace the dark side of fantasy and dislike the overly convenient twists in a narrative that offers a forced pleasant resolve to a conflict. It’s very Hollywood to sanitize a story like that.

Even in the relatively endearing narrative of book one the MC hunts down and suffocates people with plants, slowly kills using a rose bush and describes in detail how her own mother once disemboweled a man.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#WritersCoffeeClub 22 storyboarding

A few times, just to visualize my writing. With more complex interactions I sometimes fail to point the mental camera to a character before the dialogue. This really helped me comprehend what I needed to write to make sure it is clear who is speaking.

It also helps with very dynamic action sequences. It visualizes what is seen and what is purely narrated.Trying to write everything as sees can be a mess in such cases.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#PennedPossibilities 201 pseudonym

This is my pseudonym.

My visual art I had always done under my own name but that has lead to some unpleasantness. This allows me to chose my battles and fight for the perceived controversies in my work instead of getting blind-sighted by them.
I am not hiding. It is me in the picture.

The name Is a homage to the beloved grandmother I have never met. I’ve only ever known her by the pain of her absence in my father’s heart.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#TimeTravelAuthors 21 Time-travel story TBR

Too much TBR! I honestly don’t have a mental list, I have closets full of chaos. I would not know if these contain any time travel at all.

But today I am a bit charmed by this wish for happiness I discovered in a 1935 Agatha Christie bundle book I found at the thrift store the other day,

The book its self has time-traveled with demanding message for happiness to be here.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#TimeTravelAuthors 19 Punctual

There are clocks in this world but often times people still estimate time by checking the sun’s rotation. Punctual is there for still more approximate. Freya tends to dive into things too deeply and forgets the time. Sabre, how ever is military trained and very punctual because of it. Cedric isn’t used to any schedule. He flies in and out of events and assumes “dinner time” means there will be a cauldron of hot soup available from dusk to midnight.

#writing

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#PennedPossibilities 198 spirit animal

This is Dawn. A albino raven. She frequently guides Freya back into the light. She does demand shiny things and peanuts as payment.

This is where she is watching Freya go down into some abandoned ruins. If you look closely, you can almost see her roll her eyes.

#writing #bird #writingcommunity #birds

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#PennedPossibilities 197 Do any of your characters have their very own "kryptonite" of sorts?

There is a contraption nicknamed a “reality bomb”. It disrupts the balance of reality, forcing all the more cosmic beings to step back out of their corporal form and correct it.

Besides that each character has their own, more mundane vulnerabilities. Freya tends to drown in total darkness. It actually suffocates her.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#writerscoffeeclub 18 BookTok?

Some one offered me a BookTok thing for a hundred euros. Which showed me that it’s not all as spontaneous and genuine as it seems. Besides that I have not published anything yet. So it all seemed a bit pointless.

While I don’t inherently dislike the method of interaction, the platform is more of a infection than a app. Always ask yourself where the money is coming from. If it’s unclear, it’s you, you’re the product.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#WordWeavers 17 unsure about a story

I’m not sure I can write any of it. All of it seems absolutely impossible to me. Even now I’m on 150 000 words in book three, have outlines for all 20 books in the series, I’m not sure of any of it. While I know I can create stories and characters, I am very unsure I’ll manage to create any thing resembling a coherent book out of the chaos in my brain.

I can still hear my English teacher telling me to go find a rich husband.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#WritersCoffeeClub 17 WIP obsession

No, the best insights come when I don’t force it. I suppose on some level it plays in the back of my mind constantly but I purposefully take breaks and clear my mind.

Don’t dive into obsessive behavior because it’s how the movies portray creativity. It’s a harmful stereotype. You need a healthy attitude towards creative endeavors. It’s always heavy on the mind. If you’re not careful, you and the work you love burns out.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#writerscoffeeclub 16 ISBN

It’s ISO’s international book indexing database. It is important if you want your book to be found.

But be cautious when purchasing. Most third party resellers will offer some perks and extra options but you’re handing them a lot of control. They will be the publisher of record for your book. Enabling them to control in which country the book can be sold, determine new additions, set the retail price and restrict how the book is promoted.

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

GuerillaPublishing list update.

Thanks to:
@strangeseawolf
@AirlockDoc
@T

More ideas welcome! #GuerillaPublishing

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

• Sneaking into the library, adding books to the shelves.
• Leaving a books on a bus.
• Reading a chapter out loud in a train station.
• Sneaking books into the secondhand bookstore.
• Bring a bunch of books on vacation, leave them around the hotel.

Any one have any more fun ideas for #GuerrillaPublishing ?

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#WordWeavers 11 What writing was going to be like?

I am a writer in the sense that I press the buttons that make little black and white scribbles appear in a sequence that I enjoy.
Which is something I never imagined enjoying as much as I do.

As for all the professional aspects, I still don’t have a clue.

The one publisher that my friend pushed forward only urged me to make my characters younger and "not too woke".

As if my story needed a boob-job and a doze of 1980s misogyny.

#writing

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#WordWeavers 9 Jan
Is there a decision your MC has to make where all options are bad?

Infinitely and repeatedly.

When reality falters, at the brink of the void, that is where she stands. Drenched in all the pain life can throw at a person.

“You could be holding reality hostage. What if it will never be good enough to last?”

“It will still be beautiful.”

#writing #writingcommunity

HeliaXyana, 4 months ago to writing

#WritersCoffeeClub 9 Do you avoid or embrace adverbs?

It should not be one way or the other. It’s about balance. I tend not to avoid the usage but am mindful of overuse.

In my perception, choosing and forcing one way or the other does not benefit readability.

#writing #writingcommunity