Beth has foolishly agreed to let me write one historically inaccurate romance novel. Hurray! Now I need to think of a pen name. (This is very, very important.) I've always thought "Julia Doyle" would make a good Regency romance name, but it might be a bit too plain. Survey says?

Of course, this also means I need to go back through my files and find that knife-fighting X-Files AU I wrote when I was seventeen, and see if it's worth my time. (Answer: OBVIOUSLY.) While I was busily crowing over "Miss Wood's unfashionable red hair" and other such gems, I also looked at my current plate of projects to see what I have going on. The list has become... large.

The Historically Inaccurate Romance Novel
Also known as the X-Files AU, also known as The Lady Brave, also known by it's working (horrific) title My Love, Take Me Now.

( Betrayal! (Did I write this when I was seventeen? Yes. Yes I did.) )

The Stupid Vampire Novel
My actual current project -- the sequel to Salt and Silver -- which octette is very patiently waiting for. One of the working titles was The Feast of Blood, because I am easily amused; the current one is The Doors of New York, because I am also terribly unimaginative.

( Soul-gazing! (Oh, is this a portion of rough draft that octette hasn't seen yet? Yes. Yes it is.) )

The Disability Novel
This is one that I can't futz around with -- it started originally as a story called The Ash and Oak Man, about a world in which superstitions now work. The main character was pulled through an ash tree and was cured of a coma (or something similar) before the story starts. He now has a strange affinity for superstition-magic. As of the current draft, as cool as his abilities are, it's actually massively disabling. And now, he fights crime! It's very exciting in my head.

( College! (Or rather, a set of class rules that has, so far, made it through every iteration of this idea.) )

The Serious Regency Romance Novel
This may also be just a straight-up historical novel. There's a love story, and it's the main thrust of the story, but considering the curtain!fic nature of it, I think it could be sold as mainstream. Anyway. Bah. Unfortunately, while I do know I've written a prologue for this, I seem to be unable to find it (augh, my nightmare). There's at least part of it handwritten somewhere -- it's a rather further-out project than everything else, so I have time to fret and research and tear through all my notebooks trying to find a measly three pages AUGH.


And finally:

The Austen Slash Novel
No, for real, this one's supposed to be serious lit. I can't screw around with the history on this one, so it's very back-burner, and compared to my other book ideas, it's a new kid on the street (it's only a couple of years old!). It has to sit around for a lot longer before I can even think of writing an opening (that will then be rewritten, discarded, dredged back up, rewritten again, and then discarded again, ad nauseum, until Claire can take up the mantle and write the damn thing for me instead). That being said, what I have plotwise is essentially: Mary Bennett. Anne de Bourgh. Those crazy kids. The end.


(True story: Once when I was but a wee sprat, I spoke unto pnh and said that I was mortally afraid I would only ever come up with one idea for a story ever.)

ETA: Oh, hell, I forgot the space opera one. Sorry, a4yroldfaerie.

ETA ETA: Dammit, and the "Christ as Tamburlaine" story that requires a pile of research and, uh, possibly a very fake identity.

I have a writing icon -- it's the one labeled, unimaginatively, "writing". This is my secret writing icon (except the part where I've just said so).

It's a flickr photo I found because octette wondered aloud if there was a loa riding her. I said there was; I included the link. I saved the file, too, but I didn't save the photographer's name (if you find it, tell me). In any case -- eventually, I made it into an icon.

It serves a lot of purposes. Sometimes I use it when I'm commenting to octette. Mostly it's just fun. But in my head, at the moment, it's all about writing. Forget that it's a chihuahua (but you probably can't, now that I've said it). The shadows, the eyes. Maybe it's my loa, right now. The rider, the weight on the shoulder that leans forward and breathes against the neck.

That sort of breath can get very... persistent. Irritating. Maddening. Especially if it doesn't resolve into some sort of ecstasy.




Essentially: I am terribly, terribly annoyed.

I've been trying to update more often for a while now -- as it turns out, it's much easier if I'm at home all day (and when I have odd sleeping patterns).

--

Appearances for today have been cancelled, since wee baby had a rather good showing yesterday that ended with a slight over-stimulated meltdown yesterday evening -- she is now refusing to leave her trailer until someone gets her agent on the phone, dammit.

--

So at College of My Heart (and, I assume, other schools as well), there's this phenomenon wherein the anxious student (i.e., all of us) will procrastinate and avoid one class's work... by doing the work for another class. So even though the student is doing the right thing and working her tail off, she still feels guilty for skiving off.

Turns out, this feeling does not disappear after college. Which I sort of knew, thanks to the day job, but I'm being reminded of it right now because I am researching/plotting the sequel to Salt and Silver... while at the same time reading some Val McDermid books to study the style for a project of my own. They're both good uses of my time, but every time I get sucked into the McDermid, I feel hideously guilty. Hurray for anxiety.

(The McDermid is extremely appealing, but the sequel work is actually more pervasive. This includes drawing little diagrams in my notebook, reading a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots, looking up mythological mermaid variants from notes I'd taken several months ago, and actually writing. The mermaid thing might be a dead-end, but it's a start.)

--

Today's oddity: I looked in the mirror today and realized that, huh, I can sometimes be considered reasonably attractive. This is... extremely surprising to me. I was expecting a lot of things from and following pregnancy, but finding myself pretty wasn't really one of them.

Fun: Writing essays blog posts about esoteric stuff and writing, as if I am at all worth listening to in this regard.

Not-fun: Writing these blog posts because I am putting off worldbuilding and such, despite very much needing to do so.


Fun: Knowing the baby is going to come in around a month (or less. or more. hurray for the imprecision of infants).

Not-fun: The sudden desire for a hovercraft with which to maneuver through life. You'd think that wanting a hovercraft is a normal and reasonable thing. Perhaps. But when one really wants it, and knowing it is cannot be yours, you find yourself much less charitable with the world.


Fun: Something, I suppose.

Not-fun: The lack of ice cream, omg.

Shameless promo ahead:

Salt and Silver, hot off the presses and already arriving in people's hands! Get yours today (and then don't read any of the bits involving bugs!).

For a glimpse at the REAL cover for the book, as well as the place where all this shameless promo is going to go from now on, and anything writing/research related we may decide upon, check out Anna Katherine's silly blog here. You may notice a striking similarity in the second post to something I wrote here ages ago, but that's just because I think everyone should be conjuring fairies all the time. Hurrah!

Oh! If you want to add the blog as a feed, friend it with this handy widget: annak_blog. That way you get all the news and rants regarding... oh, who knows what, but without having to click away from LJ. (My number one reason for loving feeds.) Yay!

Why, I do believe I have my author comp copies of Salt and Silver. They've changed the font of the front cover from what you can see on Amazon, and all to the better. It's lovely.

Poll #1363156 odd occurrences
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

Have you ever had (or met someone else who had) an odd, almost supernatural experience?

Let us say I am writing a short story, and I need a couple more odd occurrences to round out my own. Would you mind terribly if I stole yours?

Either which way, tell me a story?

If you're not sure what I mean, here -- have a bit of uncorrected story that uses one of my own weird tales. It in no way resembles the actual thing that happened to me, but it'll give you an idea (and it's a fair exchange, after all).

( 'How grim,' said Mme. Thibault. )

After the highs and lows of Boskone, Beth and I were determined to have a relaxing time of this weekend. So, naturally, I worked.

Saturday was spent outlining a book -- the file name is "stupid plot for stupid book," because I left out all the character stuff, and it is astonishing how awful a mystery outline can be without the red herrings of emotional confusion dumped in. Like, really awful. Ugh.

Sunday was spent attempting to work on the stupid vampire novel (and can you tell what I've named that file), but instead, at around 2 PM, I finally figured out how to write a story I've been musing on for ages, and proceeded to spend the next eight hours locked in the bedroom with our fading laptop (fading because, periodically and without warning, the "P"s, semicolons, hyphens, and question marks would stop working), typing up a thirty-odd page story. This story is the culmination of years of thought that started with:

-Wee teenage me: Late 1800s fantastic fiction is cool! Arthur Machen, omnomnom.
-Some time later: Hm, I have collected several people's weird stories from their lifetimes. These are neat ideas. I will steal them someday and write many stories. Oh look, college!
-Three years ago: Hey, wouldn't it be neat if all these stories were told at once? Around a campfire? Maybe there are werewolves! This thought has nothing at all to do with my nostalgia for New England and these other two short story ideas that also, mysteriously, take place in the woods around campfires.
-One year ago: Wow, I like the 1700s.
-A bit less than a year ago: Hey, house parties did crazy stuff, right? Maybe I should skip the whole campfire thing and make it one of those parlor games. With debutantes!
-Yesterday: ARTHUR MACHEN PARLOR GAME ONNOMNOM.

Yeah. So. Now I need to go through and make the history, the style, the metaphysics, and the length all make sense. I am certain this will not at all be difficult. Excuse me while I dribble.

So. Um. In the realm of embarrassing, this is pretty up there, so I might as well say it.

octette and I cowrote a paranormal romance -- we turned in the final manuscript to our editor this morning. It's coming out in May of 2009 under a single-author pseudonym from Tor Romance.

Um.

:D

SFWA: The Suicide Note

It had been a long-term amorphous goal of mine to eventually join the Science Fiction Writers of America. But in light of this, and previous related actions, and any number of stupidities (I remember when there was the "kid's membership" or whatever, a handy little backdoor for the young'uns to use if they wanted to "join" SFWA, thereby completely fucking taking away whatever credibility a young adult might have if they'd actually managed to join SFWA through merit, excuse me while I relive that rage) -- honestly, I don't see it happening. At this point, and with all this garbage -- why bother?


ETA: And for God's sake, don't get me started on LJ/6A. Would it be a good idea if it worked? Yes. Is there any mechanism in place to guarantee that it "works"? No. Therefore: LOSE.

Hey folks, quick question. Is there anyone out there who is

1) Familiar with both the movie Empire Records and the show Without a Trace;
2) doesn't mind betaing fanfic;
3) and is not named octette?

I'm three-quarters done with something (I think), and I need someone to take a gander.


ETA: How much do I wish I had my crayons here? Oh, so much.

parsnips has an update (starting here), with two versions of a fairly hefty abandoned WIP from 2001. Buffy and Peter Crossman -- she's a Slayer, he's a Knight Templar, they rewrite the fifth season!

If you're me, then it's a fun look at how the same plot can look really different if you, uh, write it in a different way. If you're not me, then it's probably just a really frustrating example of why WIPs should never be put on public display.

Though less breast-related:

If you've tried to find any of my fiction through this journal over the last few weeks months, you may have found a strange link over to a journal called parsnips. That's me, folks. Any future fanfic, including new stuff, old stuff from when I wrote under different names, and some abandoned WIPs I've found lurking around my hard drive, will be posted there. No more fanfic here! Well, I'll talk about it, but I won't post it. And... I'll probably link to it from here. But that's it! Go to parsnips!

In all seriousness, I've been meaning to make the move for a while, and I'm ridiculously pleased that "parsnips" was available as a user name. LJ's horribly stupid TOS is only one reason I'm moving the fic -- the big one, though, is that I've been meaning to make a gianormous archive of my fic for ages, with one author name, and now I've finally had the time (TEN DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING OH SURE I HAVE LOTS OF TIME) to make a fair start of it.

Check it out, though mind the plaster -- I'm still trying to make it look pretty. (Note: Any offers to make it pretty will be seriously considered.)

I have a short story percolating in my back-brain called "How Lady Luck and Glass Girl Got Started on Their Life of Crime." It's lesbian superhero erotica. Obviously.

Back when I was sixteen or so (maybe older? I'm not sure I really remember at this point unless I conscientiously do the math, and I'd rather leave this parenthetical comment instead), I started writing horrible fanfic under a joke pseudonym because (among other reasons) it was fun to write garbage. I was busily trying to grok the idea that a writer could (should) allow themselves to be bad, and just sitting down and writing whatever came to my mind with no apology, explanation, backstory, foreshadowing, logic... It was glorious.

A few years later I was being a volunteer at a week-long writing conference when one of the instructors asked that everyone meet up that night with a plot outline for a story whose inspiration came from Teresa Nielsen Hayden's evil overlord plot generator. I figured I'd give it a shot, but since I wasn't really a student I wouldn't try very hard -- I put my Bad Writer cap on, took the generator's suggestions, and put together a six-page space opera outline about a ship-albatross of an engineer and a morally ambiguous rogue politico. There was a lot of running around, the phrase "then something happens" was overused, a great number of people got coshed on the head at random intervals, and I was later informed by one of the instructors that the story didn't really start anyway until around page two of the outline, and the first bit should just be backstory.

Also, that I should write it.

Long story short, the Bad Writer cap turned out to be a keeper of a mental device when it came to the outlining of long plots. Without that mind-set, I tend to fumble and splodge and get caught up in details when really, I should just be writing "then something happens" and cosh someone to buy narrative time.

--

I ended up inadvertently demonstrating the Bad Writer to a friend of mine the other day (which is where the impetus for this post comes from). This time tomorrow night I'll be attending a Harry Potter release party, and various bribes and threats had to be given to get my friend to promise to also appear. The threat that I came up with was the idea of her starring front and center in a not-particularly-good HP fanfic. I wrote the following (real names changed, natch) to first create fear in her heart:

( To all but the most psychic eye, an Invisibility Cloak hovered... invisibly... in the corridor outside Snape's quarters. )

Beneath this excerpt I wrote:

...next time on The Potions Apprentice: Will Ron and Nigella ever discover the cure to the dastardly curse laid upon Harry and Hermione? What is the dreaded Potions Master planning to do with the stolen cloak? How will Nigella live through her first detention with her gentle artistic temperament? Will Ron escape his time with Filch to actually appear in the story? And why does Colin Creevey keep dropping love notes in Nigella's cauldron right where Snape can find them? Oh the embarrassment! Oh the revenge! Next time... on the Cass Goes Through With Her Threats, Yo, Superstation.

She was surprisingly less threatened than I'd hoped, but it did lead to a discussion of why I wouldn't complete the story:

It's probably just as well -- I admit, I feel a bit squeamish about using Real People I Know (as opposed to Real People I Don't) in stories, particularly as leads -- horrible things have to happen to them, and then I feel all guilty.

...and that's when I went a bit mad.

( Wherein I discuss how I would have plotted that story, if I'd actually wanted to write it, which I didn't. )

And following swiftly on the heels of that horror, I made an ill-considered off-the-cuff remark:

Well, I could put you into Slytherin, but then you'd have to have an adoption plot, and then I might have to gag on my own vomit. Sorry.

...which led to my needing to explain my plotting shorthand, and apparently for quite some time.

( Wherein there is an even *longer* outline of single-paragraph glory )

And finally, there was one last gasp before I forced myself away.

[...] I should totally think of what your storyline would be if you were a Hufflepuff. Except -- owie.

(Further evidence of the disease: I turned to get a bit of chocolate before sending this email, and I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that it would be a romance with the fanon Draco Malfoy, with you being faintly Luna Lovegood-ish. Oh brains, please to be stopping.)

I think all that came out over the course of maybe two hours. A bit more time, and I could have had the story plotted out scene-by-scene, ready for the writing.

I haven't yet written anything longer than eighty pages (and that was a play) -- my natural long length so far has revealed itself to be around forty. I want to write longer -- and I can come up with the stories for it. But I just get... bored, tired, anxious, and uncertain. Which tells me what my next step needs to be, frankly. I'm not looking forward to it.

On the other hand, if I can work through it enough to get to write these incredibly silly stories, it will probably be worth the grossness of the effort.