9960 réponses à ce sujet

[MrStoob]

Similarly but different, a RL friend had a read over the first few chapts of my early works a while back and the first thing he said was basically, "Why are there no male characters?"  And he was pretty much right.  I dwelt on the female characters and their thoughts, feelings and the guys were just like 'there' in the main.  TBH, I was happy with what I was writing so didn't cram any male characters in just in case I lost demographics but now you mention gender ID, and I'm actually surprised by this, no-one has yet called me out for portraying a woman badly, or 'incorrectly', for want of better words.  My trilogy Shep I do play quite neutral, and she's probably as much my voice as anything (with a bit of my mum, hindsight tells me) but there's a fair amount of soul searching and (I'm loathe to use the term) 'angst' so getting that acceptable for female readers, I'm quite pleased.

 

Edit: At last, after all this time!  I've finally upgraded my N7 Hurricane to... II... *sigh*

 

Top post come around already? * goes into the darkest of basements to see if there's anything of interest to post *

 

Hm...

 

...

 

Unused.  Toyed with this idea for Ash's adopted asari daughter but there's enough layers of story to contend with.

 

Genes. They're a funny old thing. They define the characteristics of the organism they describe in code. Each instruction there due to its own strength, to ensure the survival and continuation of itself, and the organism it constructs. Encoded within is the elation when this is accomplished but almost cruelly, genes punish themselves with emotional torture for failure. To see decades or centuries of future potential dashed aside crushes the spirit by design.

“You tested her for what?! Without my consent?!” Ashley shouts at the asari tutor.

“It is a standard test for all asari reaching maturity. Sha'li was not singled out in this regard. I understand if you were not aware of this but...”

“I should have been informed.”

“You were away with your work.”

“You should have waited until I got back.”

“It would not have changed anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm sorry, Commander, we'll do everything we can to ensure Sha'li's safety and the safety of others.”

“Can we say this out loud, please? Just so I'm clear?”

“Sha'li is Ardat Yakshi, Commander, yes.”

“But... I mean... what does this mean? Really.”

“Sooner or later, your daughter will feel urges. Urges she will find it difficult to ignore.”

“But she's kind, and gentle, and... I don't think she'd want to hurt anyone.”

“What she wants to do may not matter. It is what she is compelled to do that does. And... I hope you understand when I say, Sha'li is very charming. We find that that can be a very dangerous combination.”

“What are you saying? That she's some kind of succubus? Come on! She's just a little girl. My little girl...”

The reality falls upon her and her genes begin their punishing cycle. A sickening feeling, imagining all the hopes for Sha'li that will now never be realised.

[Seracen]

Yeah, I've never really been overly conscious about whether the character was male or female.  Doing the worksheets give me the confidence to ignore such apprehensions.  Once I've done that, the character lives in my head.  In the case of the already established characters in Mass Effect, a worksheet isn't even needed.  I've been blessed in that I never really have to worry about what the character will do or say.

 

On occasion, however, the issue will be about HOW the character will say any particular thing (recently: my need to rewrite some dialogue for Aethyta and Jack), but this was more that their style of dialogue was out of my comfort zone, rather than pacing issues.  More often, my issues are more about how the plot will unfold.  If I can hammer the plot and motivations down, the characters tend to write themselves.

 

My biggest issue, however, is restructuring a scene once I've planned one in my head.  The biggest example, in my recent "Paladins" story, was a sequence where Kasumi Goto had to hack into a database and make contact with an information broker.  I had this sequence that was utter garbage, and I had to completely change my state of mind in order to think about how that scene would play out alternately.  I eventually ended up writing the scene as if it was happening in another story (or as a subsequent scene), simply because the previous scene lived in my head so vividly.

[MrStoob]

I had a similar experience recently.  The scene I had in my head was one thing, but because I had other things that needed narrating, it became a different scene but referring to the original scene imagined.  I found it easier to do as a flashback as to why the character is feeling the way they are right now, rather than the moment that caused it.  To wit: (***Portal 2 spoilers***) Doug Rattmann has to dispose of Caroline's body after her consciousness is transferred and in his fragile state, chooses a Companion Cube as a sort of respectful coffin. (I'm doing a lot of 'what ifs' on things that the fanbase have pondered such as what is inside the Companion Cube or in this case, Rattmann's).  But yea, I found it flowed better like that rather than doing the scene where he actually watches the events.

[Obsidian Gryphon]

Heya chaps, still rocking around I see.   I didn't check this area for a few months, things were pretty...traumatic in the last months of last year. I thought I'll have my ME fanfic all wrapped up but as it turned out, it's still chugging towards the end. There were problems (are problems), I couldn't write. Now I'm slowly clawing my way. Kind of difficult since I lost some threads of what I wanted to write.

 

So from DAI launch day, I've been burying myself in the game. PC version. The story is kind of short and not that well paced. It's just as well I didn't bother to read all about DAI during the days of its development so I have far far less expectations of it. I only expected something like DAO and DAII, I expect some RPG elements that Bioware is famed for.  So I find the game enjoyable. I like exploring the big maps and dungeons, they've done a great job in creating diverse environments. However they dropped the ball in making them all relevant or at least tie in to the main quest line. I also like that they have darkened the environs that veil fire really helps to light up the way.  If they did that for the Deep Roads, I can guarantee I would be jumping like a frightened cat at every pace.

 

And dragons! Need I say more?   For the first time in DA series, I find more than one companion not to my liking. However, only one of them was shoved to a corner and forgotten after the first play through. The others, I rotate them just to hear what they have to say in banter. That's one way of finding out what they're like.

 

For veterans, Bioware devs don't seem to realise players love to doll up their PCs. Give them a place to call their 'own", they will want to decorate the place to death. Sadly, they're pretty blind and deaf in those aspects even after all these years. Really bad hairstyles, eyebrows and base customisations that's very lame. And no one likes the pyjamas style casual outfit. There're complaints of bugs, glitches and PC controls. I can only say I'm lucky to have very few glitches and I don't find the PC controls terrible. The tactical camera however, isn't very helpful.

 

I'm now currently in my sixth PT and I've not played other races. For DAO, I created a dwarf and an elf just to get the back stories but once they arrive at Ostagar, I halted. So far, it's been human all the way through the three games. For DAI, there're even fewer reasons to play other races. Story wise, qunari and dwarf don't fit  in. An elf mage would have reason to be at the Conclave, a vital meeting to stop two warring factions from turning southern Thedas inside out.

 

There's very little information about the protagonist such that I'm already making it up in my mind and wanting to write it.   I probably will, after I finish the ME fic.

[Seracen]

Yeah...the Inquisitor is more of a cipher than any other Dragon Age protagonist to date.  That doesn't mean (s)he was a "blank slate," per se, but it does mean that one could pretty much make up any origin they wanted (or pull a Mary Sue and insert themselves).

 

Odd then, that I never really considered Cmdr Shepard to fall into that same consideration.  I'm not calling either character BORING, as the actual characterization and emotion came across clearly.  Granted, over the course of 3 games, one forges a different personal history for Cmdr Shepard, each as robust as the next!  I can see every Shep, from every fanfic, as a unique entity with rich character  As such, a cursory nod to Shepard's past, prior to Eden Prime, isn't really all that necessary.  The random tidbits were serviceable, but I could have done with a few more references to Talitha/Hannah Shepard/The Reds and Toombs/Zabaleta/etc...

 

Actually, more backstory in general would have been really welcome, as so much got dropped in ME3 (barring occasional ME2 crew).  Still, I've never written an Mass Effect story and completely inserted MYSELF as that character (no more than any writer does with ANY character or scenario).  Hell, if I "Mary-Sue'd" Shepard, I doubt I'd be able to write so many incarnations of him/her, much less create a crossover involving multiple Shepards!

[MrStoob]

I did use Shep's history a bit for my trilogy (well, quite a bit really), where she encounters one of the batarian raiders who was involved in the attack on Mindoir while investigating a raid on an asari craft.  There was no paragon interrupt that day.

 

That goes in the list of 'things I'd intended but basically, forgot'.  Talitha.  I'd wanted to explore Shep's obvious empathy here, being someone who experienced it too.  I seem to recall that I might have gone with the bad outcome, just so I could wring Shepard out a bit more. lol

[ftkerns]

Just a quick one right now. Lots of things going on...but there's been an interesting development with that paranormal/sci-fi romance thing I've mentioned before. I honestly didn't expect them to accept my story because I didn't think it'd fit in with the typical romance stuff you'd expect to see in an anthology like that. But I got an email a few days ago, and it turns out they love the story and the main character and one of the secondary characters, but asked for a few edits. All of which made sense and were reasonable -- stuff like, one of the scenes was way too long, the story had too many characters packed into it, two of the names were too similar (one character was named Corwin, the other Cora, so I changed the former's name), and stuff like that.

 

One thing they wanted me to add was a sex scene because the character's conversation about dildos and masturbation would make readers "expect" a sex scene. Or, if I didn't want to add one, I had to tone down that part of the conversation. Since that bit of dialogue was intended for humor, not titillation, I just removed it and added a couple more scenes to develop the characters and their feelings for each other, since as I've mentioned before, it should be about their relationship and their emotions, not just them humping it out. Anyway, it took me about a day to write the additional scenes and trim the too-long scene and all that stuff, and sent it back to them yesterday afternoon. And now I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

After asking for the edits, they finished up by telling me what they liked about the story:

 

 

Things we loved. I loved Kolya as a scarred kick-ass heroine. She rocks. She's strong, action oriented and ready for adventure. I loved the of the fight scene. [sic] I loved Cora.* I loved the premise of your story as it reminded me a little of Firefly. Your writing overall is smooth and makes sense. Your actions scenes are well-written.

 

* Cora is one of the characters from Game Over, who came into this story as secondary characters. She's an AI who started her life as a sexbot, and as she continued getting hardware and software upgrades, she gradually became sentient. As part of the background of the previous story she was in, humans were generally Genre Savvy enough to be worried about AI, but the approach they took was to go out of their way to make sure AIs understand concepts like kindness and compassion and friendship, and when an AI becomes sentient, they give it a choice to either continue its original task or find its own purpose in life. The ones who want to choose their own path have to be set free, otherwise it's slavery. So at this point Cora is a friendly and caring person, but if anyone tries to harm her loved ones or anyone whose safety is her responsibility, she'll straight-up waste them. 

 

And that comparison to Firefly is interesting. I once had a reader make a similar comment about Freelancers. What's interesting is, I've only watched three episodes of Firefly, and ... it didn't really hook me. To be brutally honest, I disliked the show pretty intensely. But tons of people love it, so I dunno ... could be I just missed something, or the show just took a few episodes to get rolling. I should give it another chance sometime ....

 

Anyway, this was a pleasant surprise. Like I said, I didn't expect them to be interested in the story at all, but they seem to absolutely love it. So, yay. This might be my shot at finally getting my foot in the door. After, y'know, twenty-five goddamned years of failure. 

[MrStoob]

Just a quick one right now. Lots of things going on...but there's been an interesting development with that paranormal/sci-fi romance thing I've mentioned before. I honestly didn't expect them to accept my story because I didn't think it'd fit in with the typical romance stuff you'd expect to see in an anthology like that. But I got an email a few days ago, and it turns out they love the story and the main character and one of the secondary characters, but asked for a few edits. All of which made sense and were reasonable -- stuff like, one of the scenes was way too long, the story had too many characters packed into it, two of the names were too similar (one character was named Corwin, the other Cora, so I changed the former's name), and stuff like that.

 

One thing they wanted me to add was a sex scene because the character's conversation about dildos and masturbation would make readers "expect" a sex scene. Or, if I didn't want to add one, I had to tone down that part of the conversation. Since that bit of dialogue was intended for humor, not titillation, I just removed it and added a couple more scenes to develop the characters and their feelings for each other, since as I've mentioned before, it should be about their relationship and their emotions, not just them humping it out. Anyway, it took me about a day to write the additional scenes and trim the too-long scene and all that stuff, and sent it back to them yesterday afternoon. And now I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

After asking for the edits, they finished up by telling me what they liked about the story:

 

 

* Cora is one of the characters from Game Over, who came into this story as secondary characters. She's an AI who started her life as a sexbot, and as she continued getting hardware and software upgrades, she gradually became sentient. As part of the background of the previous story she was in, humans were generally Genre Savvy enough to be worried about AI, but the approach they took was to go out of their way to make sure AIs understand concepts like kindness and compassion and friendship, and when an AI becomes sentient, they give it a choice to either continue its original task or find its own purpose in life. The ones who want to choose their own path have to be set free, otherwise it's slavery. So at this point Cora is a friendly and caring person, but if anyone tries to harm her loved ones or anyone whose safety is her responsibility, she'll straight-up waste them. 

 

And that comparison to Firefly is interesting. I once had a reader make a similar comment about Freelancers. What's interesting is, I've only watched three episodes of Firefly, and ... it didn't really hook me. To be brutally honest, I disliked the show pretty intensely. But tons of people love it, so I dunno ... could be I just missed something, or the show just took a few episodes to get rolling. I should give it another chance sometime ....

 

Anyway, this was a pleasant surprise. Like I said, I didn't expect them to be interested in the story at all, but they seem to absolutely love it. So, yay. This might be my shot at finally getting my foot in the door. After, y'know, twenty-five goddamned years of failure. 

Congrats and good luck!

[ftkerns]

Congrats and good luck!

Thanks!   I'm still not expecting it to actually work out because that's how life works for me, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. At least getting this far is encouraging. 

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 Getting really frickin close to finishing up the piece I'm writing. Currently writing up the story's climax, but the event surrounding it is immense and really taking me a while to work on. At the moment I'm at 15 pages in Word on Google Drive, and about five pages are just very vague outlining that will need to be filled out.

 

 

To give you an idea of what I am undertaking here, Leviathan basically took control of a planet and Kaidan needs to travel into another dimension to undo it.

[YurigirlzCrush]

Is anyone else having trouble with ff.net? I can view content if I go to the site while logged off, but if I try to log in, I get a 503, server unavailable error. is this just an issue with my computer? or is the site's login down?

[ftkerns]

Is anyone else having trouble with ff.net? I can view content if I go to the site while logged off, but if I try to log in, I get a 503, server unavailable error. is this just an issue with my computer? or is the site's login down?

 

Same thing just happened to me, when I tried to reply to a PM. Probably a server went haywire or something.

[MrStoob]

Yup, same for me.  Click log in, 503.

[Fatiguesdualism]

[Ambles in twenty-four hours late] ....ehmm...ff.net seems to be working now!   

 

 

@ftkerns:  Bit late I know (one of my life goals is to be on time once - as twice seems overly ambitious!) but I'd like to add a 'Well Done & Best Wishes'   

 

@HYR 2.0: Congratulations as well!  

 

Only thing is - now I feel ashamed about working on SITM for two years  and it's not even at a stage I could just abandon it!

 

Anyway, finally got some free time (thank's, real world, for sucking up my time this week )  to try and work on the Valentine story I was musing and...well...yeah   I'm probably going to go for something simpler than my original concept, which was to have three separate conversations between Shepard and three ME2 squad-mates - without clearly saying which squad-mates but leaving little clues for readers to pick-up on.  It was a nice idea (I thought) which could have been expanded on, or left.  But...not going to happen.    Still trying to work in the 'Peanuts' section though! 

 

Which gets me to wondering - how do folks write?  I mean I try to set aside one day a week to write, but recently it's been more like setting aside a day to stare at a computer screen!

[Seracen]

Hah, the age old question: what is the source of inspiration?  Again, I imagine I'd be more motivated to "force myself to write" if it were my job.  However, I find that forcing the issue, as if it were a job, only works for planning and outlines (hence the use of my "insert fight/romance/dialogue scene here" method for chapters I wanted to skip at the time of writing).

 

I liken it back to an epiphany I had several summers back.  I attempted to finally make a dent in my dreaded "gamer's backlog," and endeavored to beat an RPG a week.  It isn't the best way to enjoy anything, much less a 40-100 hour video game.

 

Dad: [sees my face] what are you doing?

 Me: [sigh] gotta go play a damn video game...

Dad: er...doesn't look like you're enjoying it much...which sort of defeats the purpose...

 Me:  HOLY CRAP HE'S RIGHT!

 

If it takes me until retirement to put a dent in my backlog, I intend to enjoy my games at my own pace.  Same with writing.  Again, if it were my job, I could partition a section of my day accordingly, but as a HOBBY that I'm doing for fun, it is counterproductive to do so when I'm not "feeling it."  On the other hand, doing the "dirty work" of outlining a scene will usually set the stage for inspiration later on.  I'll have a paint-by-numbers idea of what should happen, then go relax.  Invariably, something will set off a spark, and I will be inspired to craft the scene accordingly.  What's more, that I am having fun will lead to a more compelling read.

 

That's my take on it, at any rate...

[MrStoob]

My life isn't entirely conducive to setting aside specific time, so it's normally just when the mood takes me.  That can mean splurges of content followed by nothing for a while but at least something's being written at some point.    I don't see it as a chore but I don't write if I'm not in the mood as there seems little point, although articles on the matter would say otherwise.

[ftkerns]

Well, things with at least a couple of my publishing efforts are finally falling into place. I'm told the editors of that paranormal/sci-fi romance anthology loved my story and the main character. One of them told me it was a pleasure to read. They gave me access to the anthology's members-only Facebook group, which all but confirms that they've accepted my story. I'm waiting to find out if they want any final edits before the book is locked down, and I'll probably hear back from them about that sometime this weekend. But yeah, amazingly, it looks like it's a done deal. I never expected this to work out. Didn't think my story would fit in at all with the others, since mine's not a bodice-ripper or anything like that. Just a kind of humorous adventure into the unknown with some pretty creepy horror elements coming into it in the second half.

 

Another book, well, a novelette titled Game Over I'd submitted to Vook last week, and things are moving forward with that. Their response after the submission was that it would take about ten days to tell me whether it was accepted or not. It actually only took about four or five days. They converted the final draft into epub and mobi, sent them to me to approve, and then I completed the submission this afternoon. It should start going live on a bunch of different sites starting around the end of next week or the beginning of the week after.

 

And there's finally -- after two years -- some progress on my novel that was accepted by an ebook publisher. Months ago, I'd been going back and forth with them on the cover image, because the images they were trying to use didn't resemble the main character at all and were completely inappropriate for the tone of the book (their second attempt looked like it belonged on a Saturday morning cartoon  ). A few days ago I wrote up a character profile of the book's protagonist as a promotional tool, posted it on my blog, and put a link to it in the publisher's Facebook group. One of my friends had done a sketch of the character over a decade ago, so I used it as a placeholder image. Couple days later the publisher told me that a cover artist was working on it, based on the sketch. So I'm interested in seeing how the final picture turns out ... but after arguing with them a few months ago, I'll probably go with what the artist comes up with, since they're putting actual effort into it and I don't want to be a pain in the ass. 

 

And I'm finally going back to work tomorrow after recovering from the hernia operation. That'll cut down on the time I have for writing and pimping my books, but it's a necessary evil, I guess. 

 

@ftkerns:  Bit late I know (one of my life goals is to be on time once - as twice seems overly ambitious!) but I'd like to add a 'Well Done & Best Wishes'   

 

[snip]

 

Which gets me to wondering - how do folks write?  I mean I try to set aside one day a week to write, but recently it's been more like setting aside a day to stare at a computer screen!

 

Thanks!   I'm really surprised this one actually got my foot in the door, but what the hell, I'll take it. 

 

As for how I write ... I wish I could have a set schedule, but my job isn't a regular schedule and I often have other stuff keeping me distracted. I've actually gotten a lot more writing done in the last month that I have in several previous months, but now that I'm going back to the job, I'm expecting my output to drop. 

 

Hah, the age old question: what is the source of inspiration?  Again, I imagine I'd be more motivated to "force myself to write" if it were my job.  However, I find that forcing the issue, as if it were a job, only works for planning and outlines (hence the use of my "insert fight/romance/dialogue scene here" method for chapters I wanted to skip at the time of writing).

 

I liken it back to an epiphany I had several summers back.  I attempted to finally make a dent in my dreaded "gamer's backlog," and endeavored to beat an RPG a week.  It isn't the best way to enjoy anything, much less a 40-100 hour video game.

 

Dad: [sees my face] what are you doing?

 Me: [sigh] gotta go play a damn video game...

Dad: er...doesn't look like you're enjoying it much...which sort of defeats the purpose...

 Me:  HOLY CRAP HE'S RIGHT!

 

If it takes me until retirement to put a dent in my backlog, I intend to enjoy my games at my own pace.  Same with writing.  Again, if it were my job, I could partition a section of my day accordingly, but as a HOBBY that I'm doing for fun, it is counterproductive to do so when I'm not "feeling it."  On the other hand, doing the "dirty work" of outlining a scene will usually set the stage for inspiration later on.  I'll have a paint-by-numbers idea of what should happen, then go relax.  Invariably, something will set off a spark, and I will be inspired to craft the scene accordingly.  What's more, that I am having fun will lead to a more compelling read.

 

That's my take on it, at any rate...

 

Yeah, that's a really good point. Something you do for fun shouldn't feel like a chore you just have to get done. Luckily for me, I love writing and in fact I'm actually driven to keep writing, to the point where I start going a little nuts if various RL stuff keeps me from working on one of my stories for too long. I'm pretty sure I'd actually love being able to write for a living, since I've intensely hated every normal job I've had and can't stand the thought of working in retail or the food service or whatever for the rest of my life. The only reason I keep working is because I have to do it to pay the rent and the bills and buy food. I don't know, maybe part of it is because I have so many stories in my head that I just need to get written before my brain starts to fall apart from old age, and even though I've been writing since I was in high school, I didn't really have an outlet for it, or a decent shot at getting any of it published, until about ten or twelve years ago. I kind of feel like all the years before that just slipped through my fingers. So, part of it is that I love writing ... and another big part is that I need to write.

 

As for inspiration ... I think one of the reasons I end up with so many stories and characters in my head is because I'm always running into something that sparks off a new idea. Like this story I wrote for the anthology. All it took was a single image in the old cinematic trailer for the first Borderlands game. I hadn't even seen the trailer until just a few months ago, but a single glimpse of that one image started my mental gears turning, and soon afterward I had a whole character waiting for a story to use her in.

 

 

Then when I was asked to write a story for that romance anthology ... given the kind of hotter-than-hell characters who typically inhabit those sorts of stories, my immediate instinct was to go in the opposite direction and take this scarred character and make her the protagonist and give her a love interest who could see past the disfigurement. As I wrote the story, I gradually made a couple of changes ... decided to give her African-American ancestry because it's still not that common to see a protagonist who isn't whiter than Elmer's Glue, particularly females (and those you do see are usually lighter-skinned). And because I figured the dark skin would make that damaged eye stand out a lot more. And I also made her a much more positive, upbeat kind of character than I originally had in mind. So she ended up being the kind of person who's always looking for the next adventure and takes most things in stride and maintains a positive outlook. And sometimes beats the crap out of a mugger while eating a sonoran hotdog.   But overall, yeah, all it took was that one image to generate a whole new character and a 23,000-word story. And I'm planning to write a whole series with this character, hopefully all of them full novels.

 

Because I really needed even more books to write all at the same time.   But at least there's a chance of this series actually going somewhere, now that a story featuring this character has already been accepted. I can hope, at least ....

 

Another inspiration, at least for the kinds of fight scenes I tend to write, is the late, great Monty Oum. Up until a few years ago, the action scenes I wrote were just kind of "meh." Then I saw one of the first episodes of Red vs Blue that had actual CG animation. Had no idea who Monty was back then, but seeing that video was like seeing a whole new universe open up before my eyes. He had a unique way of approaching fight scenes ... and watching his animations changed the way I think about characters' movements, fighting styles, and other things, like having them use objects around them in the fight. He had a way of making every single fight so over the top that it looked like over-the-top was simply everyday life for these characters. At some point I noticed myself thinking in ways that never would've occurred to me before, particularly in the fights I write for Freelancers. Every krogan in the games has a slow, kind of lumbering way of moving, so I probably would never have thought of having them move any other way if I hadn't seen the stuff this guy produced. But I ended up with a krogan character moving quickly, Parkouring across a rubble-strewn landscape, chasing Kai Leng down and then slapping him around like the ****** he was. 

 

If you've never seen that video I linked above, check it out. That bit at the end with the teleportation portals and the heat-seeking rocket is one of the most awesome things I've ever seen.

[ftkerns]

Just a quick update on the story I've been talking about. Looks like it's official. Couple days ago I got an email from the anthology editor that began with this line:

 

 

It is a pleasure to inform you of our official acceptance of your story, Mission to Bellatrix, to be included in Irksome Rebel Press's Lucky Stars Box Set.

 

So, that was surprise number one. Surprise number two was, they only requested one edit for the final draft, and that was just to change a somewhat repetitive word to something else. Surprise number three -- they didn't want a sex scene shoehorned in, which was nice. Since it's a romance anthology, and from the cover images of the other stories I've seen, many of the other entries are a lot ... spicier. Which is exactly why I didn't expect mine to fit the general tone of the anthology. Some sexual content seemed right for Game Over, which features several characters from this story ... but it just didn't seem right for the protagonist and the general tone of this story. But they told me they loved it right from the rough draft, and I'm hoping it stands out from the rest enough to get me noticed. 

 

Just sent them the final edit and author info a few minutes ago.

 

Heh ... here's the quick-and-dirty cover I slapped together for it ...

 

 

 

Now that I've finally got my foot in the door, I guess I'll have to "come out" as a sci-fi writer on my Facebook page to help promote the anthology. That'll probably be awkward for reasons I've talked about before. But I've got to use every tool I have to pimp my books. 

[Seracen]

Congrats Kerns!  Is the anthology going to be print or digital?

 

So I've been on a romance kick lately, reading fanfics with some of my fave couplings.  I ended up coming across a Harley Quinn Romance (pun intended) with Batman.  There's a fandom for it, but surprisingly few fanfics that are complete.  Still, I found several of the stories freaking adorable!  On the one hand, it is cool that I got new ideas for fics.  On the other hand, I still need to continue working on the two present projects!

 

Ah well, copious note-taking will have to suffice for now, I suppose.

[ftkerns]

Thanks!  It'll be ebook and print, both. The ebook will be priced at 99 cents to give it a better shot at as many readers buying it as possible. If someone isn't sure whether they'll like any of the stories in it, well, it's only a dollar, so what the hell. Very low-risk purchase. I'm not sure what the print edition will cost. They'll offer the authors whose stories are in it a discount code to buy copies at the wholesale rate, so depending on what that ends up costing, I might pick up a few (I should be able to swing it since I should have my tax refund by then) and see what I can do with them. Maybe pass a few out to coworkers if they're interested. Maybe see if I can get some copies into nearby libraries. One of my friends (one of the few who know I'm a writer) already requested an autographed copy. 

 

Guess the next thing I need to do is write up a post for my Facebook page, but like I said, I've never talked about it there because I never had any success until now, and also because of the fanfic thing. Dunno what sort of reaction that'll get. But I've got quite a few connections there, and I'll need to promote the hell out of this book and my other works. So, sooner or later, I should just get it over with.

 

And yeah, absolutely take notes.  Getting new ideas is always good, wherever they come from. Never know when one might turn into a subplot in a current project ... or when one tiny little thing, like an image in a trailer, might blossom into a complete story. 

 

And since I mentioned this a post or two back ... I finally gave Firefly another chance. I'd seen a couple episodes and just didn't like it. But now I'm something like eight episodes in, and they've been getting better. The characters are really growing on me, and each episode has some genuinely awesome moments. For me at least, the thing keeping it from being a completely awesome show is all the western crap. It's all just really off-putting. Characters riding around on horses, herding cattle, and all sorts of other stuff straight out of the Old West ... yeah, I understand the excuse for it -- low tech, backwater planets, and all that -- but it just grates on my nerves. Especially when almost everyone sounds like a hick when they talk. That's the worst thing of all, in my opinion. I just find myself gnashing my teeth after listening to the dialogue for a while.

 

Still, I like the characters. And the humorous parts work really well. I do love characters being smartasses. So, overall, I'm glad I started watching the show again. It's more entertaining than I thought it'd be. I just doubt I'll be buying the Blu-ray set any time soon.

 

Anyway ... guess I should get back to work on some of the promotional ideas I've been mulling over .... 

 

Oh, speaking of promotional stuff ... how about a snippet from the story? 

 

 

The group continued walking for several more minutes before they finally turned a corner and found a series of doorways. Kolya stepped into the first one on the right and took a quick look around.

 

“Huh. Shelves, large tables or desks, and some chairs.” The surfaces appeared to be made of green stone with a pattern resembling wood grain, but it could’ve been artificial. “As odd as the style is, it looks like some sort of administrative office.”

 

Lorkis slithered past her and made his way around the room. “Huh. No computer interfaces, as far as I can tell. Maybe the people here packed up all their equipment before they left.”

 

“I don’t think they had a chance to.” Donovan grimaced and pointed at the far corner of the room. “Why am I always the one who finds the f***in’ bodies?”

[Seracen]

Nifty!  I'll have to ask you about the process, if only to see what my options are should I ever have stories ready to publish!  Really excited for you!

 

As for Firefly/Serenity...yeah, I can understand your apprehension.  Joss Whedon's works, until recently, had a tendency for slow build, even slower burn, and early cancellation.  He is an amazing storyteller, but the man needs a good editor.

 

In regards to Firefly specifically, I feel like the Old West stuff was as much for budget concerns as anything else, b/c the movie doesn't have quite the same issues.  My only real gripe with the series was the lack of an overall plot.  If taken with the movie, you can finagle a central story, but certain threads never developed to the point that you can definitively say "this is the underlying story."

 

I never was one for vignettes or slice-of-life, yet the characters in Firefly are so compelling, their interactions become the driving force for the series.  It's rare for me to get hooked on a show that uses that as its primary dynamic (yes, I feel it is important, but I tend to tune it out in absence of some greater purpose to the plot).  At some point, I will have to pick up the graphic novels, since they apparently fill in a lot of blanks.

 

Anyways, I am glad you are enjoying it!  Myself, my go-to scifi TV series has always been Farscape, although the Sci-Fi Channel nearly screwed the last season up, constraining the writers with stupid demands, and nearly losing the fanbase.  Still, the writing team brought the magic back in time for the last half of the final Season, and they even managed to wrap up everything in a mini-series!

[ftkerns]

Thanks.   About the process ... there's a lot of variation depending on the situation and the publisher. For just sending in a manuscript, you look through the guidelines of a magazine or novel publisher, find one that you think your story fits (and one that has a word count range your story fits into), and send it off. And then wait for it to be rejected, because there's a 99.9999999% chance it will. Be prepared for this to keep happening for years. And years. And years. In fact, one of the reasons I gave up completely several times was because of this, and because of frustration with the contradictions in the guidelines and the excuses they used for rejecting my manuscripts. One thing I saw a lot of in magazine guidelines twenty years ago was, in one paragraph it would say, "Show us something new. Surprise us with a story we've never seen before." And a paragraph or two later, for the same magazine, the guidelines would advise you to "Read our magazine. Study the stories we're currently publishing and send us those kinds of stories."

 

There are still some magazine and book publishers who will not accept online submissions. I stopped sending manuscripts to them a long time ago because, for too many years, I wasted a lot of money on paper, printer ink, and postage just to have the manuscript rejected. After getting fed up with that, I started submitting only to publishers who accept online submissions.

 

My novel that actually got accepted by a publisher started off as a short story. From what readers told me, it was damned good. So I sent it to a few publishers. It was rejected every time. The last time, the editor told me the story was excellent and "deserves to be published" (his exact words) ... and he told me that in a rejection letter. Why was it rejected? There was one or two sentences that had a throw-away reference to the protagonist being bisexual. She was looking through her contact list, trying to decide who to invite out to dinner. Both of the people she considered were high-school acquaintances, one male and one female. So that was mentioned in one sentence. In the following sentence, she thought about dating both of them at once (with their knowledge and consent, assuming they both wanted to go along with it). That was the only mention of it. Right after that, the main plot kicked in and she had to deal with it instead of asking them out. Based on that alone, the editor told me that he'd accept the story if I "remove all the lesbianism." I told him that he had no business running a science fiction publication if that was the bit that triggered his rejection, and then I told him to go suck an exhaust pipe. I then proceeded to expand the story into a full novel and add a subplot with this character getting into a relationship with those two others, and then all three falling in love, because f*** that guy.

 

Another time, the last time I submitted my first novel to a publisher, the excuses for rejecting it ranged from, "The dialogue sounds like parodies of real people" followed by the somewhat contradictory "your characters don't talk like real people at all" (after numerous readers told me that the dialogue I write seems like the way people talk in real life). That's the point where I realized I had no chance at all and stuck the book and its sequel on Kindle Direct. I've made less than $100 in sales in the years since, but that's still more than I made in sales in the previous twenty years, which was zero.

 

To be brutally honest -- and this is my personal experience only, so things might turn out differently for someone else -- the only way to get your foot in the door is to have connections with someone who's either already in or who works for or has some pull with the publisher. Even though I'd been having tons of readers tell me the stuff I wrote was good enough to be published, the editors I submitted stories and novels to never even gave the manuscripts a first glance, let alone a second. There were times when I'd send something in, and even though the guidelines said their response time was a month or more, my manuscript would be rejected in one week or less. I'm absolutely certain that I would never have gotten that novel accepted two years ago if I hadn't made a connection or two in the previous few years.

 

Here's how it happened. I'd been posting rough drafts of my first couple of novels on FanStory.com, and one of the other authors started reading and commenting on every chapter I posted. I also put up the rough draft of my third novel, Chaser, and she commented on every chapter, as well as everything else I posted. A few times I expressed my frustration with never getting my foot in the door despite all the positive comments and high ratings (almost everything I've posted there gets either a five-star or a five-plus star rating). She suggested I send a manuscript to her publisher, so I gave Chaser one more rewrite and sent it in. She never mentioned doing this, but I'm fairly sure she put in a good word or two with her publisher. A few months passed by, I finally managed to move out of the town I hated with every fiber of my being and relocate to Tucson, and a few days later I got an acceptance letter from the publisher in my email. The contract was drawn up a few days later, I did another polish on the book, signed the contract, and made it all official. It's been two years and they only recently got started on the cover illustration, but still, it was my first official acceptance, so that's something I can put on my resume.

 

I was given access to the publisher's members-only Facebook page. After getting acquainted with other authors who've been publishing books through that ebook publisher, and posting things now and then (such as blog entries, character profiles, a link to the breakdown of action scenes in one of my fanfics, new cover images for my first two novels, and whatnot), a few of the other authors decided to invite me to submit a story for a paranormal/sci-fi romance anthology they were putting together under their own imprint. And that's the one I've been talking about ... I wrote it, they absolutely loved it, and the rest is history.

 

But it wouldn't have happened if some of them hadn't noticed my posts on that Facebook page, and those wouldn't have happened if another author hadn't helped me get my foot in the publisher's door.

 

Now, there's a small chance that someone might notice my story in this anthology, take a look at my other work, and decide it might be worth actually publishing. But I'd be very, very surprised if things worked out that way.

 

I suppose other options might include writing a crappy, beat-your-meat erotic Twilight fanfic, have someone notice it despite how poorly written it is, and give you a book contract if you change the setting and characters' names, so you end up with Fifty Shades of Grey. I can't get my brain around how this actually happened, but it makes me furious, to be honest. Write garbage, and it gets published and becomes a best seller and gets adapted into a movie.

 

As for Twilight itself, the writer having some sort of connections is the only way I can explain how that piece of crap ever got published. And again, it pisses me off. After spending half of my life making an effort to tell good stories without relying on sex scene after sex scene ([Edit] Oops, got that confused with the average Laurel K. Hamilton book ... that sort of stuff just kind of blurs together for me), and getting nowhere with it ... seeing this kind of stuff succeed makes my blood boil.

 

And then there's something like Eragon, which, if I remember correctly, was a badly-written book that became successful after the author's parents self-published it. I shouldn't even have to explain how that makes me feel.

 

But anyway. This probably paints a bleak picture. As I said above, it's just my personal experience. Someone else might send a manuscript in and have it accepted right away, or after only a few rejections. I had one editor tell me not to give up because it took him two years to finally sell a story. At that point, I'd been failing completely for over fifteen years. And it'd be almost another decade before I finally had that first big break.

 

As for some of the minutia ... some of the details get a little confusing. For instance, some publishers will accept a range of different file formats. Some will only accept RTF. Others will insist on DOC or DOCX. Which is a problem for me because, if I use anything other than RTF, the text formatting gets all screwed up. I was trying to use DOC for a long time, but when I'd copy a chapter and paste it into the editor at a site like FanStory or FF.net, a paragraph that had a sentence (or even a single word) in italics would suddenly appear in all italics, or sometimes all the spaces between every word would disappear and I'd have to manually re-insert them. That stopped happening once I switched back to RTF.

 

So anyway, (from my perspective) it looks like the best shot at getting something officially published is to post rough drafts on sites like FanStory, where you can get critiques and maybe a published author likes your work enough to put in a good word if you send any of it to their publisher. And also to post free stuff wherever you can, to get more samples of your writing in front of readers. I even used my fanfics for this, by posting them on any site I found that accepts fanfic -- FanStory, Wattpad, WriteOn, Textnovel, DeviantArt being a few examples. I've even been posting my Transformers Prime stories on the TFW fanfiction section, and the current one has actually been doing quite well despite the forum's general hostility toward the Jack/Arcee pairing. In the few weeks since I posted the latest chapter, it's gotten nearly one hundred views.

 

Having a website and a blog with links to all the stuff you're working on also helps quite a lot. Twitter's also given my stuff a considerable boost. Talent alone probably won't get you in the door. Build up an audience and hope that the right person notices your work.

 

Heh. That went on longer than I planned, but I hope there was some helpful information somewhere in there. 

 

As for Firefly, yeah, I can definitely see the Old West stuff being done to save money. I just feel like they laid it on way too thick. I can let most of it slide, but it's the turbo-redneck way the characters speak that really gets on my nerves. The characters are the single most compelling thing about the show, for me. And that's probably the only reason I can stand to keep watching the show when so much of the rest of it grates on my nerves. I like the characters and their interactions so much, I just kind of shrug off everything else that happens in the show. I'd be okay with watching a show that was nothing but the crew having conversations and walking into totally random situations just so they could make smartass observations about what's going on around them.

 

I think a slow build-up can work at times. If the first season is mostly stand-alone episodes and it takes a while for an overall story to take shape, I'm okay with that, though I wouldn't be able to stick with it if I didn't care about the characters. 

 

Yeah, Farscape was awesome.  I'm still pissed off at the Sci-Fi Channel for promising two more seasons of it and then cancelling it abruptly. That channel just isn't what it used to be. But at least the crew did a really good job of wrapping the story up with the miniseries.

 

My personal favorite for the last 20+ years is Babylon 5. Despite the shaky start in the first season, once the overall five-year story started to emerge, it really turned into something special. The story holds together really well despite things going wrong along the way -- actors leaving and whatnot. I'd love to see the show get an HD remastering and updated CGI like the original Star Trek got a few years ago ....

 

[Edit] Well, I just wrote up a big post about all this and put it up on my Facebook page. I have friends I've known for at least a decade who had no idea I was a writer all along. This oughta be interesting .... 

[Seracen]

Man, that sounds like a real grind.  As for some of the examples, I understand the frustration.  There have been times I've read and story and thought "I know people who can write better than this...hell I can write better than this, given an editor!"

 

Concerning Amazon Prime, that's partially why I don't want publish there.  The market is so inundated, I rather doubt I'd turn much of a profit.  Moreover, from the initial version of the program, a company could have paid Amazon a licensing fee to develop IP into a movie/game/etc, and cut the original author out of their deserved payday.  Dunno if it's still like that, but I am still wary.

 

As for Eragon...[snore].  Crap, if that was a self-publish, I need to look into doing that through my university's writing center!  At any rate, I'm glad you seem to have gotten your foot in the door.  If I ever develop my original writing to that point, I'll have to confer with you!

 

Anyhoo, I never really got into Babylon 5.  Don't know why, that stuff is usually up my alley, and certain stories near the middle of the series caught my interest for a time.  I guess certain arcs happened to garner my attention.  I am stalled on Andromeda, but it was moderately entertaining.  I think my favorite scifi series, after Farscape, is Outlaw Star (even though it's an anime, and just as much mysticism as sci-fi).

 

That's probably another facet of what caught my attention with the ME series.  It's rare to see such a competently done space opera on such a grand scale, regardless of the medium!

 

PS: I've hit you up on FB, hope the request went through!

[ftkerns]

Oops, I did get a friend request, but I didn't realize that was you. Just accepted it a few minutes ago. 

 

Yeah, it's been a grind, alright. I sent my first couple of books out to just about every traditional publisher I could find, and got rejected by all of them. My decision to put them on Kindle Direct was part desperation and part seething contempt for the publishing industry. Like you said, you read some of the stuff that actually does get published and realize you can write better than authors who make a living at it. For so many years I've heard published authors saying self-publishing is a shameful way to get published, and the publishers are gatekeepers who filter out the crap and only let the good stuff through ... which is clearly a lie. If there was any truth to it, there are so many books that never would've gotten out of the slush pile. And when you know your work is worth publishing, but you're locked out for over two decades ... well, what else can you do?

 

I thought about actual self-publishing, but could never spare the money for it. So I was left with Kindle Direct or nothing at all. I have my own doubts about it, but like I said, at least I was able to make some money from those two books, but if I hadn't gone that route, I never would've made a penny from them. But now that I've got a couple of things finally starting to fall into place, maybe something can be done with them. I'm currently working on the third book in the series, and I'm thinking about giving Chaser's publisher first crack at it instead of just putting it on KD. If it's accepted, maybe I can see if the first two can be published as reprints. Or if nothing else, maybe I'll eventually have enough money to self-publish them the proper way and take them off KD.

 

The GI Joe thing I did for Kindle Worlds isn't selling at all, and from what I can tell, nobody is even looking at it. So I'll probably take it down and just put it on FF.net and AO3 and whatnot. Same for any more entries in the series, if I get around to them. It was an interesting experiment and I was desperate enough to give it a try, but it just isn't even getting on anyone's radar. Which is a shame, because I thought it was a fun story and was a kind of different approach to the subject matter.

 

Anyhoo, yeah, any time you get to that point, confer away.   Glad to offer whatever help I can.

 

Every now and then I run into someone who couldn't get into Babylon 5. Eh, it happens. Different tastes, and whatnot. I think the thing about it that drew me in back when it was in its original run, was that is was just something different. It was a sci-fi show with spaceships and whatnot ... and it wasn't Star Trek. I'm a lifelong Trekkie, but around that time, Star Trek was really starting to stagnate. So that could be part of why B5 caught my attention and held it. Another fun thing is, the people making the show planned ahead enough to film it in letterbox format years before other shows started doing the same, so it was already in the proper format for widescreen TVs (back in the days when CRT screens were still the standard).

 

Haha, I just remembered one of my favorite lines from the entire series. In a third-season episode, a government tool was trying to manipulate Captain Sheridan by taking off her clothes and seducing him. His second-in-command, Susan Ivanova, popped in at just the wrong moment ... and when Sheridan was able to get away from her and speak to Ivanova privately, Ivanova deadpanned the most priceless line: "Good luck, Captain. I think you're about to go where everyone has gone before." 

 

I tried to watch Andromeda, but couldn't make it through the first episode. Loved Farscape, though. I really liked how the writers knew when to take things seriously and when not to. And they took risks with their storytelling all the time. They weren't afraid to try an idea that was bizarre or screwed-up.

 

Something I forgot to mention about Firefly -- one thing I absolutely love about it is that they didn't have any sound effects in the space scenes. Sound in space is one of those things that's just always bugged me ever since I learned there's nothing in space to carry sound waves. Sometimes little things like that bother me so much it jolts me right out of the story. Another one is spaceships banking like they're in an atmosphere. *headdesk*

 

All sorts of things about Mass Effect pulled me in and held my attention. Epic scale, for one. Another was the way it usually leaned more toward hard SF than stuff like Trek and Star Wars. I'm a sucker for sci-fi stories actually making an effort to get the science right (which is also another thing I loved about Babylon 5). But more than anything, it was the characters. I'd thoroughly enjoy a game that was just the characters interacting with each other and getting into trouble.

 

Oh ... hahaha ... okay, this idea just popped into my head. Imagine Kelly getting pissed off about rumors going around about her. "The next one of you who blames me for the scale itch will end up in the med-bay with ruptured testicles!"

 

Gotta remember that one. *takes notes* 

[YurigirlzCrush]

*deep breath* this is totes off-subject, but I just need to rant a little...

 

I can't remember if I mentioned that I got Alien: Isolation from my little sisters for Christmas, but I did. and I have to say that whoever developed this game did a lot of things very well. it builds tension extremely well. from the music to the sounds to the environments, after a half hour of playing, I'm jumping at every little thing and scrambling to find cover every time one of the automatic doors opens as I pass. I like the main character, the acting is mostly good, and the alien is unscripted and cray smart. it learns what you do and doesn't fall for the same tricks over and over, forcing you to mix things up. these are all positives in my book. *another deep breath* however, there is one major major downside to the game.

 

manual save points.

 

this is a horrible, horrible idea. you can't pause and save from the menu, it doesn't autosave whenever you accomplish a major task, you have to access machines on the wall to save your game. why is this a problem, you ask? because I've had the game since Christmas. I play it fairly regularly. and I have been stuck on mission five for two freaking months! two months! that's insane!

 

no story spoilers in case anyone has the game or wants it, but essentially I have to do a series of things in this one fairly expansive area in order to get something to work. and the alien busts in at a certain point and is prowling around randomly. the problem is that there are literally no save points between the point where it busts in and the furthest I have gotten, which is the third objective. that was over an hour of me sneaking around, hiding under beds and in lockers, using flares and noise makers as distractions, crawling in and out of vents, only to get killed and have to go all the way back to my last save, which was just before it busted in. *grinds teeth* I do like this game mostly. I think it does many things well. but I literally feel like I will never be able to progress further in the story because there's way too many objectives to complete in a row without running into the unscripted monster that's popping in and out of the ducts, prowling through rooms, and randomly wandering around. you can't study its patterns and learn it because it's unscripted. and sometimes it seems really adept at knowing right where you are, or always seems to be right between you and where you need to go. plus, for added realism, if you use your motion tracker or move around in a hiding place while it's nearby, it will hear you. which is great for realism, but absolutely awful when you think you're safe, bring out the motion tracker to make sure the coast is clear, only to find out that it was just around the corner from you and heard the beeping.

 

if it autosaved as each objective was completed, it wouldn't be so bad. at least then there'd be progress, and less to redo when I die. but I have to say that spending well over an hour completing the first two objectives only to die midway to the third and have to do all three objectives all over gets irritating. especially since all together I must have logged about 18 hours over the course of 30+ attempts and still haven't managed to complete it.

 

sorry. I have bitched to friends in the past about this game, but I just failed yet again after getting to my furthest point yet, and there is no one awake and able to listen to me whine about it. *sigh* so I dumped it on you all. sorry.

 

tl;dr: the idea of having to access manual save points to save progress in a game instead of being able to save wherever and whenever or having an autosave every time you complete something major is horrible. if they patched in an autosave, this game would get an easy 9/10 rating from me.