Fun Short Story from Carla Harker

Mme Harker wrote a brief and fun Christmas story, which she has graciously shared on her blog. I will share it back at you all.

“Captain Mollytibbles, we have a situation.”

I looked over the mounds of paper on my desk at Lieutenant Twinkle standing in the doorway. The bells on her red-and-white-striped uniform jingled merrily, but worry made her green face lime, and her pointy ears quivered above her red hair.

I swallowed a sigh. I was hours behind on the days’ lists already, and it was still morning. “What is it, Lieutenant?”

“We lost half the crop in field seventeen last night.”

I leaped to my feet in shock. “The teddy bears?” Not the bears! They were only two days from harvest.

Full text here.

Small Trifles

Something I have been wibbling over in my novel. Clothes.

I have a very distinct vision in my mind of what the outfits elite guard (around which the novel takes place) look like. The coat in particular. The coat is key, you understand.

The problem is what I call it.

I want to call it a frock coat. Most everybody knows the term. It’s smaller than a greatcoat, lighter, worn when jaunting about town.

In my mind’s eye, it is a morning coat. Cloth not being in front of the knees creates greater freedom, as well as allowing the waistcoat worn underneath to be visible. The waistcoat is important, see, because the colors denote certain ranks. Also, I rather like the plunging neckline, and it allows me to have one large brass button in the center bearing the nation’s coat of arms.

I could always call it a cutaway coat, but I’m not sure if that helps the situation at all.

But if I call it a morning coat, it doesn’t sound very military. Nor does it sound particularly distinct. Unless someone knows such clothing at a certain depth, they might think it’s a robe or something. There’s also the problem that morning coats were worn in, well, the morning.

For visual reference…

Morning Coat

Frock Coat

God bless search and replace. I can press on with writing (25% complete on rewrites) without letting this malarkey slow me down.

Steampunk Convention Redux

Photos here.

Day One – October 31

Spent the bulk of the evening around drinks with Shweta, Emily*, Jeff, and Ann*. Conversation was mainly of the speculative variety, from loved fiction to their Clarion experiences to politics, though we mostly grazed that latter topic with frustrated fists and let it be. I have not had a “Clarion Experience” myself, but I enjoyed being a fly on the wall for this one. And as long as I didn’t mention my lack of Clarion, I remained unnoticed by Emily and Shweta and their odd desire to see me go to Clarion.

It’s likely to not happen, though I appreciate the sentiment.

I tried to subtly snipe a photo of Nathaniel from Abney Park. Ninja I am not. He cornered me over whiskey and tea and we discussed everything and nothing.

Met a lovely group of people and drank Black Bush. The topic of the day for this and many conversations was how wonderful the steampunk community is. Which, truly, it is. But more on this later.

Met more lovely people who apparently were Platform One. Had a lovely discussion about music and general creativity, and did my best to explain steampunk to someone who demanded more punk and less steam. But our punk comes not from our willingness to destroy but our willingness to create and reclaim that which has been lost. We say no-thank-you to the society that demands we drink and party every night, that rampant and tawdry consumerism is a sign of being confident in one’s self, and that maybe, just maybe, sitting in your room with a soldering iron and a cup of tea is an okay way to spend your Saturday night.

Moreover, unlike regular punk, steampunk owns the fact that the visual aesthetic is a big part of the identity. But this is perhaps an essay topic for later.

Day Two – November 1

It took me a day, but I discovered the game Damnation, demo of which resided in the lobby just by the vittles stand. I spent far too much time here, waxing about this game. I, by history, am a gamer, and this is a good game. I’ll likely make a post exclusively about the game once it’s released. It’s got a steampunk look to it, though I can’t speak to the steampunk feel from the demo. It was standard shooter goodness, with a bit of magic powers, and some acrobatic platform-jumping. If you’re a fan of things like Resident Evil 4, Bioshock, or HalfLife, as far as gameplay goes, you might enjoy this one.

The VanderMeers held a panel, solo (duo?), though I believe they were supposed to have others with them. Which led to them interviewing one another, not having rehearsed the questions beforehand. The highlight of the whole thing was when Ann embarrassed the living hell out of Jeff. She opened the interview session with, and I’m paraphrasing: “Now, Jeff doesn’t know I’m about to say this, but we’ve done this before, asking one another interview questions. But we’ve always done it naked. So this will be the first time we interview one another with clothes on.” I’m not exactly certain, but I think Jeff turned purple at one point.

What I took away from that panel was the five awesome things of steampunk, which Ann claimed to have bogarted from someone else: one, it’s something the genders can share; two, fantastic visual aesthetic; three, it’s goth’s nicer cousin; four, it bridges the subgenre gaps; and five, it goes back to the “promise” of science, of a glorious future-that-could-be. The last could be another essay topic all on its own.

The VonSlatt keynote was wonderful, and I won’t do you the disservice of summarizing it. Instead, I’ll link it. I particularly enjoyed his discussing tinkering with respect to open source projects; I feel too many stare at a computer as a terrifying black box with a shaman inside, and I work to demystify the thing to my friends.

Then came the Party at the Center of the Earth. Mme Cavalaxis had the wonderful and decidedly drunken idea to dance. I followed, as did a few others. I decided our party was too small, and there were questing eyes in the audience, the longing look of, “I want to dance but none of the boys want to dance with me.” I pulled hands and we danced around the room until the floors were flooded.

Abney Park and Platform One put on good sets.

Day Three – November 2

My first event, after getting a Jamba and hiding the fact that my hair was in need of a deep cleansing, I went to a panel on Researching and Writing Steampunk, with Ryan Galiotto*, Gail Carriger, Mike Perschon, and Jeff VanderMeer, moderated by Ann VanderMeer. What I liked about the panel was the opening question, about entry points into steampunk. The answers varied from the clothing (Gail) to having a story idea and being told it’s steampunk (Mike) to comics (Ryan). It really does emphasize the all-inclusive nature of steampunk.

Gail did a very good, detailed writeup for this panel, over here.

So, that’s my redux of the con. Hope you enjoyed reading.

* If you have a link and spot this, let me know, so I can link you properly in the text.

Lad, I don’t know where you’ve been, but I see you’ve won first prize.

Neurosis Averted

I’ve been flipping out about my story lacking plot. The fact that I’m losing my mind can likely be attributed to having clocked too many hours at work on too little sleep, but it’s compounded by a messy new house and concerns about finances (byproduct of aforementioned messy new house). Nonetheless, this is a novel I started back in March and am now rewriting due to… well, it needed it.

So when you’re about 20K in what looks like it’ll amount to a 60K novel, concerns start to arise. Am I doing this all wrong? Is the plot craptastic? Is the plot decent but I take too long to get to it? Am I confusing plot for story? Is this story going to captivate anyone or am I a brain in a vat and nothing matters?

When you start to edge into solipsism, it’s time to talk to someone else.

Normally, when I write, if I ever show anybody else, it’s as finished a product as I can make it. But my “finished products” rarely crested 30K, and tended to fall around the 10K region. When you’ve hit mid-story at twenty pages, perspectives are a little different.

This is my first excursion into novel-land. I’ve never written for this long without either (a) finishing or (b) getting feedback. I wrote a fic that took me a year to get done, but I posted each chapter as I went (every two weeks, with a hiccough here and there) and got feedback. I’ve been writing since March, and have shown next to nothing to anybody.

Both Mme Harker and Sarah stand in the wings as betas. As do others, but I didn’t want to show any of them rough work for a variety of reasons (and they should count themselves blessed). Plus I’ve been chatting with those two since I started this novel, so they’ve been there for the bulk of my whining.

I finally asked for a glance-over of my first three chapters, for content only. Of course I wanted to hear praise. Who doesn’t? I longed to receive comments along the lines of: “Your writing, c’est magnifique! You possess the writing talent of Bradbury, and will be as famous as Rowling with the longevity of Lucas!”

If you’re going to dream, dream big.

What I anticipated, with 100% honesty, was to hear the following: “You’ve got decent writing, though it certainly needs some thorough line-by editing, and your story is developing far too slowly. No action, no tension, nothing.” In anticipation of this, I told them to stop the second they got bored, and tell me where and, if possible, why.

The responses I received have buoyed my spirits hardcore. I am really grateful for the patience of those two gals, and their willingness to put up with my freaking out and running around in circles. (Carla even twittered about it! I’m still reeling.)

But even if they had come out with what I expected to hear, I still would have been happy. Less happy, certainly. But I would be equipped with the ability to address major plot slowness a quarter into the work instead of at completion. I felt, while outlining, that things were solid. But as the word count progressed and all I had on my HDD amounted to a series of conversations (and a nabbing of a runaway, and a black eye)… well, I began to grow nervous. Nobody was blasting out of docking bay 94 to escape the Imperials, nobody was driving madly in a blue VW Bug dodging flaming tar, nobody was making the old stones of a cathedral speak.

I have been appeased. My initial instincts were correct. The plot is good, and I just need to finish writing the book. But without running it past a beta, I would have been trapped in my own head forever.

Moral of the story: Know when you need to bounce something off someone. Then do it. Could save your story, as well as your sanity.

I have some very wonderful friends. Thank you both!

It Will Go Downhill From Here

Balls to this. I’m going to write about writing. I don’t care that I’m a noob. I don’t care that I’m unpublished. I don’t care that as a result my opinions are worth scant little. I’ve been doing this whole “writing” thing for coming on 16 years now and damn if I don’t feel like I might know a little something about the topic!

Ahem. Sorry about that.

I’m going to start with a brief exhalation on what I’ve spent the past year doing (which has been the first year I’ve finished work since 2004). I’ve got one short story that is shopping around, another that I need to fix the ending of (Mme Harker is correct in that the endin’ needs fixin’), and a novel currently being rewritten (25% complete). If this seems rather paltry bear in mind: one, the novel is beingrewritten, which implies it has been written once, and clocks in at over 60,000 words; and two, I work a very demanding full-time job.

And besides, deciding to be published is a recent thing. Hard to call me on it when I’ve received a grand total of two rejections in my life (and one was very kind).

So that’s just the start of it. This is going to get ugly. You have all been warned.

As Luck Would Have It…

At the beginning of this merry October, day one, the weather had the good sense to act like it was October. And I decided I wanted to write a scary story.

I don’t know if I’ve succeeded in making it scary. But I believe I’ve got a decent product on my hands. At least, it’s readable from beginning to end.

And then I see that Kelly–clever, published girl that she is–has posted a notice about this contest that my freshly-finished short works very well for. Fantasy/horror at 1500 words.

So, time to get other eyeballs on this thing to help me make it suck a little less. I highly doubt I’ll win (after all, it’s one winner out of the hordes that will be submitting, so statistically, odds are not in my favor). But, I’m going to give it a shot.

Oh, and if this blog post seems a touch disjointed, it’d be because I haven’t slept in 24 hours. My body decided last night would be an ode to consciousness.

Writerly Meme

I stole it from Writtenwyrdd. I’m allowed to. (Well, who says I’m not?)

Your genre(s)?

Short answer: speculative fiction. Longer answer: last novel was “steampunk-esque, with magic.” This novel is “steampunk, with assassins.” Next novel is fairy tales. Before that it’s been fairy tales or science fiction.

How many books are you working on now?

One. Steady as she goes.

Are you a linear or chunk writer?

Mostly linear, but a little chunky.

The POV you’re partial to?

Third-person limited, followed closely by first person. Currently working on writing in third person omniscient.

The theme that keeps cropping up in your books?

Er. I guess I’d call it the problem nature versus nurture; if someone is born and expected to be a bad seed, will they become evil because it’s their nature or because nobody ever gave them a shot? Perceived versus actual nature. The tension between the They and the Self. Willingness to allow yourself to trust and be hurt.

How many days a week do you write?

Six days a week, Sunday through Friday.

What time of day do you get your best writing done?

After 7pm. Writing before then is a rare thing and usually fraught with disappointing letters. Though I do try.

Who are your mentors?

Er… I don’t have any. Not in the traditional sense. My parents never encouraged my writing except to say “You’ve got a way with words, but you’ll never be published.” No teachers ever saw promise in me; I don’t expect them to, as I never showed them anything. Closest thing I have to a mentor would have to be Mme Harker*, who patiently deals with my naiveté.

Favorite authors to read?

Neil Gaiman (everything), Tom Stoppard(Rosencrantz and Guildentern are Dead, Arcadia), Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, Cat’s Cradle, Player Piano), Albert Camus (The Stranger, The Fall, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus), David Hume (A Treatise of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ), Douglas Adams, Soren Kierkegaard (Repetition, The Sickness Unto Death, Fear and Tembling), Frederich Nietzsche (The Gay Science, Thus Spake Zarathustra), and probably others I’m forgetting at this moment.

* Maybe not…

me: Heads up: I’m doing this meme, and one of the questions was “Who are your mentors?” And I realized, you’re the closest thing to a writing mentor I’ve ever had. Just letting you know, so that you don’t see that in my blog and go “WTF?”

Carla: Now I’m gonna totally fuck with your head. Did you know you should be submitting everything in single-spaced, 9-point Comic Sans?

me: I hate you.

Carla: And margins greater than .25″ are out. Also, every story should have cyborgs in it.

Me: I’m going to delete my answer now.

Novel, Draft, Finished

Holy crap.

I just finished the first draft of my novel.

Holy crap.

I never want to look at that thing ever again.

Jim Butcher @ B&N in San Mateo

As I’ve mentioned before, somewhere last year, I enjoy the Dresden Files. It’s great for distracting me from the tickling sensation on my neck as my brain leaks out my ears from other books.

I spotted the appearance in the BookTour.com email I get, updating me on authors popping into my area. I decided I would stop in and get a book signed for the friend who introduced me to the series.

On my way to the signing, I decided to give the back of the book a look-see, to find out exactly what Jim Butcher looked like. Perhaps I am a strange duck, but it is not really in my nature to fan over people and obsess. I like what I like, and it takes a great deal for me to push past my shyness and unwillingness to draw attention in order to be the Baptist, speaking of He Who Is To Come. I do this for a select few. (Neil Gaiman is on that list.)

As I said, I wanted to see what Jim Butcher looked like. I came face-to-face with this brooding, serious, head-on-clenched-fist picture. My eyes went heavenward. ‘Oh Lord,‘ I thought. ‘This guy is going to be so full of himself.‘

Imagine my pleasant surprise that no, Jim Butcher was quite the opposite. Funny, charming, self-effacing with an undercurrent of confidence bought solely with success.

“I write popcorn,” he said, “and I aim to write the best damn popcorn I possibly can.”

He struck me as charming, for a nerd. That nerd-charm that brings laughter while you sit around a bucket of dice deciding what your next campaign will be. I felt he was someone I would have gotten along with if I had met on the street, though probably not very closely (as we are different breeds of geek: he the pen-and-paper fantasy nerd, I the console gamer and internet junkie). He played Cthulhu, though, which is major points in my book.

When asked why wizards, why Dresden, he responded “Because My Teacher Made Me.”

Pardon my para-phrasing in quotes.

“My teacher told me, ‘Jim, you like those Laurel K Hamilton books so much. Why don’t you write something like that?’ I said no for about two semesters, then I finally got fed up and did it. I took all her worksheets, filled it all out, made everything as contrived and stereotypical as possible, to show her exactly how formulaic a book I could possibly make. That’s how I wrote Storm Front.”

Which just goes to show that you can follow every cliche in the book and still make something people will want to read. It’s all in execution.

I handed him the battered old copy of Storm Front. He looked at the name on the paper, then at me, curiously.

Jim Butcher: Dr. Alex?

MD: It’s for my friend. He introduced me to the series.

JB: His name is ‘Dr. Alex’?

MD: Er. Yes. It actually says that on his driver’s license.

Jim laughed at this and signed the book. I felt the need to explain further.

MD: Well, his mother told him, “No matter what happens, we now have a doctor in the family.”

JB: (smirking) I suppose that’s true.

MD: Thanks for writing the series.

JB: No problem.

Like I said, a really nice nerd.

I Believe A Toast Is In Order

Major congratulations and indeed props to Monsieur Wolf for having the guts to start submitting. May your rejections be few and your bottles of bourbon many.