"I think "roundeye fairyboy." would be a pretty blink-worthy insult."

I meant to post yesterday, and then I didn't. *cough* Some I'm back-dating this post so that it looks as though I have a perfect record. I'm so sneakrative.

But I'm trying to go back to writing, after a post-nano and then christmas and then New Year's break. Oops. It's HARRRDDD. *whines*

(But also shiny.)

An well, back to the suck! I want to write a fist fight. This sounds like an excellent plan.

"All the right friends, in all the right places, so yeah, we're going down."

It's entirely possible that you've seen this already on Bahnree's blog, since we share most of our readership. ^_^ But I have to share it anyhow.

Is it not PRETTY? And doesn't the lead singer look like Wash? Admit it, he totally does. *takes a moment to heart Wash*

And I need a masked ball with electric organ in my book. NOW. I DEMAND masked ball. With spies and pick pockets and glowing instrumentation, and possibly assassination/assignation. I am not sure how this all works out, but it's finally unstuck the damned block in my plot.

I think I've decided moral ambiguity is lame, and the bad guys are bad. Probably. Or maybe this will show that my good guys are the bad guys. IS COMPLICATED. Anyhow, there are masks and reveals and begging, so it's all better now.

If you've read the above ranting, I salute you. You clearly need some serious therapy. Watch the pretty video again, you'll feel better. There are dancers!

Top 10 Ways to Know You're A Writer

1. Your television is unplugged because you needed its extension cord for your laptop, three weeks ago.

2. You don’t notice your house is messy until you run out of food.

3. The tip of your middle finger is sore from using the scroll pad on your computer.

4. You don’t have time to blog because you’d rather write. (Alternatively, you don't have time to shower/sleep/study because you'd rather blog.)

5. You forget you’re eating dinner with your family because your mind is in the other reality witnessing an execution.

6. You go to your relatives’ weddings and funerals because your writing has taught you, despite #5 (see above), that those things are even more important than writing.

7. One of your dearest friends is another writer you’ve never met face to face, and she sends you cat pictures and bizzare links to make you laugh.

8. You start writing after your shower in the morning, stop for lunch, write, stop for dinner (see #5 above), and write again until bedtime.

9. You think a conversation about poison and explosives is perfectly normal and you've been known to start one with the words. "I killed him last week and he still keeps talking to me!"

10. When people tell you your book would make a great movie, you think having a good book is a better idea.

Stolen and then modified from Here.

GOALS AND OTHER SHINY THINGS (I lie, it's all goals)

So here it is, my New Years Goals post! Slightly late, but psh, who even notices calendars? NO ONE. In bullet form, because I'm lazy efficient like that.

Life

(You know, the stuff which is supposed to comprise 50% of your day?)

• Pay Off Debt. Preferably by the end of April. Then I go into the second trimester of the year FREE of financial burdens. Other than rent and books, and food. Minor things like that.
• Keep Head Above Water With Job. This means keeping consciousness in-body while being paid for my presence. It's just polite, you know.
• Get Out Of The House. Fresh air, keeping my metabolism moving, and oh yeah, exercise. (Also time to think about things, and get my consciousness out-of-body. Always fun.)
• Waste Less Time On Computer. I could say use less time, but that would just be silly. How bout I make my time productive, mmmkay? That's better? That's do-able?
• Read My Bible. This is always one I'm bad with, but I even have a plan! And people to bug me if I don't do it! Go me! Go us! High Five!

Writing-Related

(The IMPORTANT 50% of your day! )<

(You smile because you think I'm joking. I'm not. Story is ALWAYS more important than food.)

• Finish Karma Police. This means I have to 1.) write it, and 2.) figure out what on earth I'm writing. Case in point? I have to figure out who the bad guys are, if they know they're the bad guys, and if they die at the end. That's one of, uh, at least seven major plot threads I need to figure out and nail down. I suppose I should be writing more then?
• At Least One Hard Edit On Karma Police. This means research, nailing down the voices of the characters, re-writing re-writing re-writing... I mean I'm pretty sure at least half the scenes I've written for part two are going to have to die, and I'm adding probably that many over again. A LOT of work, before it's even slightly coherent.
• Hard-Edit Merchant's Daughter Fix the plot. I'm not even looking at the line edits, just tighten up the plot- till it's visible at least. Wow, that makes me despair just thinking about it.
• And while we're on the theme of despair- Break Up And Outline Expendables.
• Refine And Build a Coherent Platform On The Internet. So far I'm all over the place. I have different names in different places, and I was trying to keep my reading/writing self seperate from my "real" self, because I was scared/ashamed of that. NO MORE. This also means I should use my real name. Ulp.
• Write Two Short Stories (Novellas?) At Least. I want to get the unicorn/greek/robot/poison/dust thing out of my head, and also the freaky untitled story with Elizabeth and Albert in it. My strange, strange, strange characters. That could be my most grown-up story yet, since they, y'know, have kids, and it could also fail entirely, it's so strange. Either way, it'll be one of those where you stop writing and feel like you've been staring at feathers for five days while living only on moldy cheese. (That's pure conjuncture on my part, of course)
• Take A Fiction Class (?) Self Explanatory? But I'm not sure if I have the money/time, so it's a maybe.
• Research Like Mad For the-novel-currently-known-as-J4. I really like this story, but it requires some explanation, especially if any of my family reads this. Some of you know that my little brother was diagnosed with cancer almost three years ago now. Over the course of that journey since then, I've witnessed a lot in some pretty exclusive circles. Due to circumstances I wasn't actually actively involved in most, but I've seen a lot. My Dad wrote music about it, but for me all the stories starting beating against each other inside my head and turning into a story. So a lot of the incidences which happen are based on things which happened in real life, they aren't intended to be a factual representation of those things which really happened, and in fact they end differently in a bunch of cases. And the characters are not supposed to be real life, any more than every angry girl I write is me, or I actually know any Ewan-type characters. Whew. But though I love this story dearly, it's set in a couple of circles which I've witnessed from the sidelines, but never actually moved in. So it'll need a lot of research on things like Child Protection Services, Cancer Treatment Regimens, and High Schools. ^_^
• And this one at my family's insistence- Get Something Published. Even if I self-publish, they say I should get it out there. EEP.

There it is then! All my goals. :D

Night Train To Rigel, Timothy Zahn

I always get the impression when reading Zahn that the book showing in my head is in black and white, not colour. This is less connected to any actual mentions of colours in the story, and more to the from-another-era feel of the tale. This is not to say that the story is poorly done, any more than Casablanca or The Apartment are poor films. The pacing is just different!

Oh, and I always get the impression while reading that there is no way I will ever be able to make a plot like this. It's just SOOO complex. And there's no "leading the reader" along by the hand, these things are HARD to figure out, if you even do.

With this story, Frank Compton comes out of his apartment one day and finds a man who falls dead at his feet, in the best tradition of old-style mysteries. What makes the naturally interesting dead body even more interesting, however, is the fact that the body is carrying nothing other than a ticket on the Quadrail, in Frank's name- complete with accurate biometric info. Frank decides the dead body is a great reason to leave town now, and takes advantage of the ticket.

And soon he's recruited to help evert galactic war, carrying poison gas in his suitcase, traveling with a beautiful woman with a paralyzing fear of coral and friendships, and he keeps meeting travellers who are pretending to be drunk for no visible reason. (You fear the things done with no reason even more than the obvious ones, in this kind of showdown) (Also I can tell you all these things and they aren't even spoilers because they take place in like the first four chapters of the book. MANY THINGS HAPPEN.)

I must say that after reading so many romances lately, it was rather surprising for there to be no romance in this story. I kept expecting it to start growing, and it kept not. :D There was friendship, sacrificial friendship! But not romance. On the other hand, this is only the first book in a series, so perhaps it will grow in the other four books in the series! Which I now must add to my list of Books To Buy. Sigh. I gave it four stars out of five.

"In a little while/ it will be perfect/ I'll have a perfect style..."

I'm working on a New Year's resolution post, but basically I'm too lazy to finish it now. :D Aren't I honest? *preens self*

And also I keep being expected to be social, which apparently means playing cards, not watching movies like I always thought. HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO BLIND? *weeping*

Ah-hem. Anyhow, there was actually a coherent thought a thought which appeared coherent at two am this morning- motivating this post. Here goes!

Is it better, when writing, to have a firm sense of place in the story, or to be general, so a reader can place the story in their own location? I mean, obviously this only applies to a certain extent to High Fantasy, or Hard SF, (or any kind of SF,) but what about the almost-in-this-world genres of Urban Fantasy, Portal Fantasy, or even steampunk?

Is it better to be universal, or should one root the story in a location? The upside of rooting would be- as far as I can puzzle it- that the details of weather, vegetation, food and language make the story seem real-er, and exotic for the reader who doesn't live in the same area. I haven't actually read them, but I understand both Beautiful Creatures and The Demon's Lexicon are good examples of rooting a tale. And you know, the authors seem to be doing pretty well, and the books are pretty well respected. The upside of keeping things vague would be that nothing jars the reader, and if things are vague enough most everyone in the Western World can identify with the surroundings of the story, thereby putting themselves in the place of the characters. A notable example of this would be Twilight. Which sold a few copies, you know.

Or does it depend entirely on each individual story, how much you detail the surroundings? TALK TO ME, people. *smiles*

Hush, Hush, Becca Fitzpatrick

I'm still not sure what I think about the romance in this book. And I've been thinking about it for two weeks now. See, the plot is that due to a seat shuffle, Nora ends up being Biology partners with Patch, who no one knows anything about. Well, to be honest, they know a LITTLE, which is that he's new, and probably bad news. Nora's friend Vee thinks that she should totally take advantage of the biology pairing to study sexual behaviour (if you know what I mean and I think that you do,) but Nora is slightly freaked out by the bad boy.

She gets slightly more freaked out when he starts showing obvious interest. And by obvious, I mean the story happens to contain some great sketchy exchanges, including one of my all-time favourites.

(So he tells her she looks good, and then this happens.)
"You smell good too," said Patch.
"It's called a shower." I was staring straight ahead. When he didn't answer, I turned sideways. "Soap. Shampoo. Hot water."
"Naked. I know the drill."

And he takes her out to his dangerous haunts, and keeps being attentive and obviously interested, and against her better judgment she starts being interested back. Then basically it all goes to heck in a premium hand basket. Random pretty boys show up and stalking her, (and not in a Twilight, dawww-he-really-cares way, in a OMG-He's-Bigger-Than-Me-And-He-Knows-It-And-No-One-Else-Belives-Me-That-He's-Scary way.) Someone important is hospitalized for trying to protect Nora, and she might be going insane. Plus, Patch keeps not being trustworthy. But he really looks like he might be fun to kiss.... Not Trustworthy! Fun to Kiss! Not Trustworthy! Fun to MORE than kiss! He looks way too comfortable with that knife in his hand... Doesn't he look comfortable? If you know what I mean and I think you do. Etc, Etc. :D

I'm not sure if I like this romance or not, especially given some grand reveals which I will not tell you here! *gloats*Okay just a few. (Maybe he's being seductive because he has ulterior motives beyond a cheap hotel room, and maybe you keep feeling in danger for a reason? Just saying...)

It's a very fast read, and I can attest to the fact that it will serve in place of pain-killers for a moderate stomach ache. :D I'm not saying I loved it entirely. I have this thing with falling in love with the MMC, and despite my love of bad boys in fiction, Patch wasn't really my cup of tea. Not enough menace, or something? He's got some awesome lines though! Really Excellent sketchy lines. :D GJ Patch

I very much enjoyed reading it, but I did feel lost at the end. E.g. Wait, what happened? It's OVER? But, we were just in the middle of things! I hear that the sequel is being written, which I will definitely seek out and read. I found this FUN, but a little too much like Twilight for me to put it in my "faves" pile. The characters didn't set up residence in my head, which I would like them too! (I mean, Helloooo Patch. You need a place to stay?) :D I gave it three stars out of five.