#i'm not writing serials to turn them into novels

[not-poignant]

Hi there! I absolutely love your works and, having followed you for a while now, I also really admire you as a person and an author in general. Every update on AO3 and Tumblr is always such a delight. I'm sorry if this ask is coming out of the blue or if it's something you've been asked before, but how did you take the plunge from writing predominantly fanfic to posting original fiction in serial form and also self-publishing novels? I'm currently in the process of drafting two original works after writing/posting fanfic regularly for years, and I'm just lost as to how to set everything up. I have a general idea (post chapter-by-chapter on AO3 and offer early access and some exclusive content on patreon or some other subscription service), but it all feels so daunting right now. Any bit of info or advice on how you got started would be immensely appreciated <3

Hi anon,

Tbh, I went from writing fanfic to original fiction because I had original characters in my fanfiction and readers asked me about them.

I had no kind of...dreams of being an original author in this way, I was published via other pathways already, and fanfiction was really an escape for me, a chance to break with all the conventions of standard writing and just do what I wanted.

But I needed a broader cast than what the movie gave me re: my first fanfics, and I added my own OCs, and left them in the background as much as possible, but even back while writing that fanfic, even the OCs were getting fanart. Sometimes readers would send me anons about them, or ask me more details about them.

Finally, I decided to write some hatesex between them, just something to kind of...idk get it out of my system? Answer what the readers were looking for?

The flow through therefore felt natural. Game Theory flows very naturally on from From the Darkness We Rise & Into Shadows We Fall. And from there, moving into other original works has been easy, in part, because I've often being doing alternate universes from a core of original characters.

If I want to introduce new original characters, I introduce them in stories where pre-existing original characters have already been established.

I didn't even start writing original works with a view to making money off that. In fact I thought it was a very foolish thing to do. A lot of people on AO3 don't want to read original works on AO3 and refuse to do it or only do it if it's PWP / pornography.

I started my Patreon account because readers asked me to. I got asks from very very generous people who wanted to know my Paypal, or asked if I'd start a Ko-Fi, and finally a few people just asked if I'd start a Patreon. I said I didn't think it was a good idea, and they said it was up to them if they wanted to pay me or not, but I should at least consider giving them the choice.

From there, I found it all very overwhelming. I made lots of mistakes. I had to go on hiatus for a year because I promised too much and couldn't deliver on many of those rewards. And for many years I only offered one early access chapter per week for one story, and my main stories were never early access (and still aren't, Underline the Black goes up for everyone at the same time - and while that may change in the future, it's definitely unconventional).

I've always been transparent with my readers that with very few exceptions, if they just wait, they eventually get everything for free. But if they want to support this kind of writing and/or enjoy it, and can comfortably afford to send some dollars my way, they can ensure that I can keep writing this way.

I have for a long time offered no exclusive content at all, I believe that can do well, but it's not my preferred way of doing things.

This career has been incredibly reader driven, anon. I would not personally attempt it cold, without a really fantastic readerbase who encouraged me every step of the way in the first place, because I am a cautious, insecure writer who doesn't like to take risks. So I can't give you advice on how to build this career without the support of the readers there in the first place, and I believe the only reason why I had their support was, in part, because of the actual strength of the writing itself. Which isn't to say it's the best, it's not, it's what I needed at the time and it's what a few other people needed, and that's basically how this works.

If you turn up with the writing, and the audience comes, and they want the story, you have the career.

In terms of practical advice - you can introduce original characters in fanfiction, just be aware that readers tend to be hostile by default if they pull any significant 'screen time' away from the fandom characters (and readers are extremely savvy to authors trying to build a financial business through AO3)

It IS daunting, but the good news is you can do a soft launch. You can open a Patreon or Ream account tomorrow and tell no one. You can mess with your graphics and your tier rewards to your heart's content when you don't have any subscribers. Build a buffer of early access/chapters, and make sure you don't overpromise on anything. Whatever you think you can realistically deliver to readers, cut it in half, because the stress of chapter update deadlines every month can really add up and it's a very different landscape to novel releases.

You can take your time, you can build interest slowly.

Remember you can never ever mention any kind of site where you're getting paid inadvertently, sneakily, or directly on AO3. You can't mention Ream, you can't mention Patreon, you can't mention Ko-Fi, you can't go 'learn more about my writing here' and link to those places. You can't mention buy links. You can only mention sites like Tumblr, Linktree, Twitter etc. Places where the point of sale isn't happening. Not doing so risks AO3's Not For Profit status and risks your entire account, and it's not worth it.

I did an interview with Subscriptions for Authors where I actually talk about many of these things so you can watch (or listen to) the podcast here if you're inclined! It also talks about the importance of community-building, gratitude to the readers, and generosity.

I am here because my readers wanted me to be. So I'm very concerned with making sure I can give them the best writing possible within my abilities. This makes me not very suited to offering 'how to start in this career' advice because it was a happy accident. It's hard to teach something I have never done your way myself, anon, because I worry I'd give bad advice. My writing had people turning up, but I'm not sure anything else I did, added much! I think responding to Tumblr asks and replying to every comment helped too! But...I don't know for sure.

But this career path does make me pretty well suited to offering 'how to keep this going' advice, because I've been doing this for ten years. <3333

#asks and answers #pia on writing #pia on subscription #pia on fandom #i don't know how i got this lucky #but i do know that i stay lucky because i work hard on the writing #so the writing is where it's at #i've been thinking a lot lately on drafting some kind of course on #how to write hooky serials #but if you're writing novels/books that won't be very suitable to you! #i'm not writing serials to turn them into novels #i'm just writing straight up serials that are very messy and difficult to turn into novels lol #idk i do all of this ass backwards #and recently just pulled out of giving a speech on my success as a disabled author #because i actually feel like i'm not good at what i'm doing in a way that is tangibly useful to others #if nothing else anon #make sure you join the Subscription for Authors Facebook #and watch some of the podcasts on YouTube #Christopher Hopper's keynote speech is particularly good

[dduane]

From the Writing Advice dep't: A complicated ask, a serial answer (part 1)

Every now and then I get an ask in the box that's complex enough that it has to be taken apart and answered in pieces. Also, sometimes I get queries in that are painful enough (in varying ways) that I elect not to attribute them when answering. This one is both.

I read the ask (and reread it, and rereread it, four or five or six times after it came in, and a bunch more times while I was on my back this week being sick), and gradually came to realize that for it to be properly handled I had no choice but to break it into pieces for best management.

There are three main strands to the issues this ask brings up: motivation, growth as a writer, and coping with or succeeding despite the current state of the publishing industry.

So let's dig in. Here's the first part of the ask:

I know there's no One True Path, but I'm struggling with this, and I'm sure others are too, so I'll just ask it. I want to make a career out of writing, but with shrinking attention spans and so much content to mindlessly consume, how do you keep the motivation to write? My friends get mad at me for getting discouraged when not even they read my writing. They get mad and say, "write for yourself, not for the validation!"

Welp. (sigh)

First of all, I think your friends are absolutely right. But we'll come back to that.

You have to understand that as far as the Search for Motivation goes, I'm probably Spiders DD, the outlier who seriously should not have been counted. I have been motivated to write stuff pretty much nonstop since I was eight, and did my first novel in crayon in a school notebook. (It was one of the thick notebooks. The ones with the black and white marbled covers. Most of you who come of US schools know the kind.)

So I'm really the wrong person to be asking about this, especially since it's now nearly the Year of our (Wood!) Dragon 4722, which would make me nearly, uh, six Years of the Dragon old. And being of such age, and a career midlist genre writer, I have the same source of motivation as the vast majority of my similarly-aged colleagues: the need to write or starve. (There's an Irish saying perfectly descriptive of my situation: "Too old to dig ditches and too scared to rob banks." That's my situation exactly. There's nothing left for me to do but to write.) :)

...Anyway, it's kind of amazing how that kind of motivation'll focus your intention, and help you keep it in place, once you're been working with it for a while.

At the beginning of a career, though, things can look a lot different as you start getting a handle on exactly what it is you like to write and why you like writing it. And having another job to keep you afloat while you find your way is seriously a very good idea if you can manage it.

It sounds very much to me as if you're still in the early "finding your way" stages. This is a place that a lot of writers pass through, so don't be concerned. It's rare for sudden perfect motivation-to-write to crystallize out of nothing. And never forget, the word itself is based on old Latin roots for movement, and provokes the question, "Yeah, okay, but which way?" Movement without intended direction tends to turn into a lot of unfocused flailing, which looks good on Kermit, but not so much on the rest of us.

(inserting a cut here, because honestly, this is gonna go on a bit)

So you need to sit down and start asking questions—and answering them—so you can draw some kind of map. "I want to make a career out of writing"? Fine. What kind of writing? Fiction? Nonfiction? If fiction, what kind? What do you like to read? Why? Is that something you'd like to write? Why? Why not? If there's something else you'd rather be writing—what else? And why?

The more you ask the questions and answer them—"Keep asking the next question," Ted Sturgeon never used to stop saying—and the further along your investigations get, the more likely you are (as you get close to the answers that matter) to start getting the itch to write something, something in particular. This process may take a while, and the itch may take a good while to manifest. Don't be alarmed by that. The old saying is that the fire from Heaven won't descend until you've built the altar for it. And it may take a while piling the rocks up into the right shape. Don't hurry. If this is something you intend to spend a lifetime on, make sure the foundations are sound. The time taken will be worth it.

And BTW, do you intend that kind of length of commitment? If you're not sure, that's fine. But there's no one else to ask at this point who can give you meaningful answers. This is the time to get into it. Work out what "having a career in writing" looks like for you. Then start investigating to see whether your conception has any foundation in reality as a kind of lifestyle you actually have decent odds on achieving. (Again, I'm an outlier here. I'd been writing for pleasure for a long time before I had the good fortune to befriend an actual career writer, examine his habits [and those of other writers in the LA area] at close range, and realize that this line-of-work choice was actually something that could be successfully pulled off by mere mortals.) After investigation, this is a call that only you can make.

But anyway. Once you've started experiencing the kind of motivation that comes of increased certainty about what you want to do and why, you'll find you're way less concerned about sourcing or supporting it externally. It tends to fuel itself. (As once it does descend, the fire from Heaven is tenacious stuff: more Greek than otherwise.)

But also: trying to designate outsourced exterior stimulants for motivation is a bad idea. The reason's simple: one day you'll need them and they won't be there. Conditions will have changed, or the outside-of-you sources into the hands of which you've resigned your motivational agency may not be available for one reason or another, temporarily or permanently... and then where are you? The concept's a nonstarter. If your motivation's acting up, you need to be looking inward, not outward, for ways to kickstart it. This is one of the most personal parts of the writing process. You need to own it.

(And yeah, even career writers' motivation slips sometimes: annoying career things happen, cyclic lows cut in at a bad time, you name it. Most of us work out ways to jar the motivation back into correct operation when it acts up. But for such corrections to work you must first know what it's like to generate or mine yours yourself... and you're still working on that. The methods you find to generate motivation toward doing the Work will also assist you in diagnosing it when it goes south, and putting it right again.)

Also: (sighing) Please let your friends off the hook as regards reading your material, and feedback. Your motivation to write should not be dependent on their feedback, and it's not a good idea to try to make friends feel responsible for keeping you on the creative track. Chief among reasons for this: they may not feel themselves up to the task of giving you the writing support you're apparently asking them for—possibly because they simply don't feel competent to. (This is where we could get into how I had to stop @petermorwood from rewriting his third novel for the third time due to conflicting notes from friends... but let's leave that for later.) At best you're possibly making your friends deeply uncomfortable. At worst, the pressure may damage the friendships.

Tl:dr; our friends may love us dearly, but that doesn't make them competent editors. If you're online, so are many writers' groups who'll welcome a new member who needs advice. Wait till you've got more data and clarity on your motivational issues, and then start shopping around for assistance that seems friendly and trustworthy.

And finally (for the moment), about other people's attention spans:

It'd be good if you can start training yourself away from the habit of worrying about those. For one thing, there's absolutely nothing you can do about them. You might as well worry about the 11-year sunspot cycle. The attention-span issue is just one more distraction from things you should usefully be thinking about. But also: A lot of what we hear about that situation strikes me as fearmongering (as, IIRC, it was supposed to cause the downfall of western civilization around the time I started writing for Scooby-Doo).

If you look around, you'll see that loads of people are willing to spend HUGE amounts of their attention on stuff they love. (I mean, have you been on AO3 lately? And we're just talking about free stuff, there. Lots of other people will do the same for traditionally published work, given the chance and the money.) Your job is to get on with writing, start putting what you're doing out there where people will have a chance to fall in love with it, and then deal with the consequences.

More of this next time. (And please bear with me, as I'm still not up to best operating speed after the last week's illness. I'll get to everything else you sent me, I promise.)

HTH!

#writing advice #masked ask #is that a term? #it is now #motivation in writing #motivational issues

[cillianmesoftlyyy]

Horror Movies Pt. 1 | Neil Lewis x fem!reader

Summary: She shares a special passion for horror movies with her boss, Neil Lewis. But it doesn't end there, she also shares his secrets... or at least the ones he can keep himself. He's been keeping one from her but maybe a night of adventure will break the silence and scare them to their senses.

Warnings: Drinking, semi-public sex, boss/employee relationship, struggles with self-image, spying, invasion of privacy, slight disrespect for the dead, smut, moments of miscommunication and assumed consent, unprotected sex, oral, and some fluff.

word count: 3781k

Nothing's New- Rio Romeo 🎶

We Used to Wait- Arcade Fire 🎵

I'm Writing a Novel- Father John Misty 🎶

Not proof read- sorry folks!

Neil’s eyelashes fluttered gently against his pale, sleepy skin. He woke to the soft hymn of a record player’s needle spinning on a Billie Holiday disk. When he opened his eyes, he saw her standing at the milk crate, flipping through the old vinyl, dusty with age. He sighed and stretched out his arms above his head on the cracking leather couch. She glanced over and smiled. 

“Long night?” She teased as she put the stack of records back. 

“How could you tell?” He rubbed his eyes and sat up, an empty can of cheap beer sliding off of his leg and onto the carpeted ground in the store. 

“You almost never spend the night here unless you have a special guest,” she wiggled her fingers and leaned against the register counter. The store still bore the signs of the night before, lamps dimmed, empty beer cans, and a woman’s bra hiding between the seat cushions of one of the couches. 

“You know I can’t have anyone over yet… it feels weird to bring them home with me, like the start of a horror movie.” He laughed awkwardly and checked his watch. 

“What horror movie starts like that?” She raised her eyebrow. 

“What if she turned out to be a serial killer?” He argued and she laughed lightly, shaking her head. 

“So who was it this time?” She walked over to the couch and retrieved the bra from between the cushions. He watched her with an embarrassed blush creeping up his sharp cheekbones. “34D?” She whistled slowly and tossed it at his chest, “impressive, Neil.” 

“Oh shut up!” He fumbled with the bra and tossed it aside. 

“We need to open in fifteen minutes,” she stopped herself from sounding too annoyed and clocked in on the ancient time-clock system behind the counter. Neil grunted and forced himself into a standing position. Jonathan and Lucien arrived at the front doors and pressed their faces against the glass. She rolled her eyes, “Neil, your friends are here.” 

Neil, holding the bra, dashed behind the counter and stuffed it into her purse. 

“What are you doing?” She protested, struggling over the bra and her purse. 

“Can you just keep this in your bag for a little while? I don’t want the guys to see.” His hair was pushed up over her forehead, showing the freckled texture of his skin. 

“Neil…” She warned and he pouted playfully. 

“Pretty please!” He widened his eyes into wide pools. She sighed and pinched the skin between her eyebrows. 

“Fine, fine!” She pushed her bag into one of the counter compartments and crossed her arms across her chest. 

“Oh God, thank you!” He smiled and hurried to let Lucien and Jonathan inside the video store. “I owe you one!” 

“Yeah you do.” She couldn’t help but laugh to herself as she watched him scramble over to the front doors and unlock them. His friends came inside without a second thought and continued the argument that they had been having outside. 

“No, I don’t think you understand. Quentin Tarantino is so overrated.” Lucien protested and beelined for her. “Here, is Tarantino overrated?” 

“No, I don’t think so.” She shook her head, “I love all of his movies.” 

“See!” Jonathan laughed. 

“Sorry, Lucien, I’m with Jonathan on this one.” She pulled out the order receipts and started slipping through them, her short acrylic nails scratching at each slip.  

“How could you like Quentin Tarantino?” Lucien exclaimed and walked angrily to the small circle of couches that Neil had previously been asleep on. I exchanged a look with Neil and smiled down at the papers, trying not to laugh. 

“Come on, I don’t pay you two to sit around and argue.” Neil followed them. Jonathan stepped on a crumbled can and laughed. 

“Well you certainly pay someone to sit around and drink.” He picked up the can and showed it to Lucien who stopped arguing to look. 

“Jesus Christ.” Neil pulled on his face and ran away as they started bombarding him with questions. 

“Did you have a girl over again last night?” Jonathan laughed loudly, gesturing to the empty cans. 

Again? She thought it only happened once or twice but it happened enough times for Jonathan and Lucien to notice. She felt her heart drop into her stomach and tried to go back to work. 

“Shhhh!” Neil tried to shush them and glanced over, embarrassed. She pretended to not hear. “I’ll tell you guys later, ok?” He whispered and she saw the boys nod out of the corner of her eye. 

“I can still hear you!” She sighed and opened the register. 

“You mean… you two?” Lucien pointed between them and Neil laughed tightly. 

“No, no. I just didn’t think it was appropriate to talk about it… in front of my employee.” He struggled for the right words. 

“Ohhh, sorry.” Lucien held up his hands in defeat and plopped back down on the couch. “So, anyway, the reason why I don’t like Tarentino…” 

Neil left them to their argument and wandered over back to the register. 

“Sorry about that.” Neil blushed and avoided eye contact. 

“It’s ok. We’re all adults here,” she looked over at Lucien and Jonathan, “at least we are.” She corrected and he laughed. 

“You have some…lipstick…” She pointed to a place on his neck and he wiped his neck with the back of his hand. 

“Damn, I should probably change.” He let his voice drone on for a second longer and spun around on his heels, heading back to his office. 

She had hid her feelings well for the past few months. She joked with him about the girls he brought back to the store and covered his ass when he slept into a work day. She felt like that was the only way that she could be with him, his friend or his younger sister. Strictly platonic. She’d been working at Gumshoe Video for nearly a year and gotten to know every one of Neil’s quirks. She’d started to like them, even though they could piss her off. The bells on the front door hit the door frame as a customer entered. She was short with black-shoulder length hair, twisted into small curls around her face. Her hooded eyes were focused on the racks of VHS tapes around her, speaking into a pair of string-earbuds. She was speaking to someone on the phone so she just waved at the customer and mouthed “hello.” The girl smiled back and started looking. Neil came back out into the store wearing cartoonish prisoner garb, a white undershirt visible at the base of his neck. He took a stack of returned VHS and put them on the counter. 

“Hey, could you rewind these for me? I’ll help the customer.” He tucked a loose strand of black hair behind his ear and waited for her nod of assent. 

“Sure, boss.” She liked using the nickname, especially when she was frustrated with him over something. His mouth twitched, starting to form a smile. She took the tapes to the tv in the store and Jonathan helped her load a tape into the box. 

“Geez, how many are there?” He pointed to the stack at her side. 

“Like ten.” She shook her head. “They never rewind the tapes, do they?” 

“No, I guess they don’t.” He pressed the rewind button on the base of the box and they waited for the movie to go back to the beginning. She glanced over at Neil who was sorting tapes on the case behind the register. When the customer approached, he didn’t react, until she cleared her throat and asked again. 

“Oh are you talking to me now?” He whispered and she nodded. 

“Which do you recommend?” She held up the tapes and Neil smiled. 

“Next tape, please.” Jonathan asked and she took the next tape from the box and loaded it into the player. “I’ll start a pile here.” He started to stack the boxes beside him on the other side. 

“I need a form of ID.” She could hear Neil say behind her as the movie rewinded. 

“I don’t have one.” The customer responded and she could hear Neil’s apprehension.

“No driver’s license?” 

“I don’t drive.” She answered as if it were obvious.

“We don’t usually rent to people without ID.” 

“Can I pay in cash? I have cash.” She handed him some money and he shrugged. 

“Uhh that works.” She could hear his smile in his words. “It’s due back in two weeks.” He handed the tape over and she left. 

“That was weird.” Jonathan mumbled beneath his breath and looked over at Neil who was watching her leave. “Looks like he’s found his next target.” 

Neil chuckled and said took out an envelope from beneath the register. 

“That girl was definitely on something. She gave me a $50.” 

“Jesus…” She nearly dropped the tape in her hand. 

“That is crazy.” Lucien fiddled with his pipe. 

“And no driver’s license?” Jonathan asked and Neil nodded. 

“She was hot though. Oh, Lucien?” 

“Yeah?”

“Could you get that box of old thrillers from my office? They’re in a cardboard box, it's a recent shipment.”

“Oh dear God… thrillers.” Lucien stood and shuffled into the backroom, speaking beneath his breath about thrillers.

She rolled her eyes and focused back on the tapes. Jonathan cleared his throat beside her. 

“So… I was meaning to ask you-”

“Yeah?” She asked absentmindedly and he started again. 

“I was wondering if you’d like to do something this weekend.” Jonathan asked hesitantly and snapped a VHS box closed, “just the two of us.” He added and she paused. She looked over and blushed, suddenly very sweaty and uncomfortable in her own body. Neil looked up from the desk, having overheard the conversation. 

“We could watch a movie… your choice of course.” He smiled and she mirrored him. 

“Well, um,” she struggled to come up with an excuse. The truth was that she didn’t have one. Sure she favored Neil but Jonathan was cute too and obviously, Jonathan was interested in her. “Sure… yeah. I’d like to.” She allowed and Jonathan grinned. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, why not?” She shrugged and Jonathan smiled down at the tapes in his hands. 

“Look, I don’t mind if you guys fuck eachother but don’t do it right in front of me, ok?” Neil almost sneered and Jonathan looked over his shoulder. Lucien came back with the box. 

“Says the guy that had sex right where Lucien was just sitting!”

Lucien almost dropped the box. “Where I was SITTING? Neil! You could have warned me!” He exclaimed and pushed the box onto the countertop. Neil’s face paled slightly and he swallowed, looking down at the box of movies.

“Nevermind, sorry.” He grumbled and Jonathan returned to tapes. 

She and Jonathan finished the tapes quickly and returned them to their places on the store’s shelves. She stayed out of Neil’s way for the rest of the day, trying to ignore the growing core of frustration in her stomach. She hated the way he made her feel. They were only a year or two apart and yet, she felt so much younger, so naive. She knew him from high school when he was a senior and she was a sophomore. They’d done AV club together and he’d done tech in theater when she acted. They’d been nearly friends by the time he graduated. He had been attractive in high school too though he wasn’t very popular. They’d bonded over their mutual love for film and corresponded a few times over email in college. She’d only seen him as a friend until now, running her eyes down the length of his chest to her narrow hips. Neither of them had made as much as a move on the other since they’d met and now she willed him to see her as more than just a colleague or coworker. 

She was perched on the stool behind the counter when a customer came in to return a video. She scanned the barcode and completed the transaction, bidding them a good day. She held the tape between her hands and flipped the box over, looking at the image of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. She’d cut her hair weeks ago, inspired by Mia Farrow’s character. Even though she knew she looked good in the shaved pixie, she felt almost undesirable. She had hoped that it would make her more confident but instead, it had weakened her sense of self-confidence. She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. Even having Jonathan ask her out didn’t help her confidence, it was pretty pitiful. Neil came around the back of the counter and checked a folder of receipts. 

“This envelope is for that girl from earlier if she comes in again.” He pointed out the envelope with ‘That weird girl without a driver’s license.’ She smiled at the envelope and nodded. 

“Got it, boss.” 

He laughed lightly and started to turn away when she interjected. 

“Do you want that bra back now?” She was suddenly conscious of her own breasts, pressed against the soft padding in her own bra. She crossed her legs, fixing the hem on her jeans. Neil cleared his throat and blushed again. 

“Eh yeah, sure.” He avoided his eyes and she dug around in her bag for the bright red bra. When she found it, she draped it in his open hand, brushing her fingers against the skin on his wrist. 

“Here.” She met his eyes. 

“Thanks,” he looked down at it and then cursed beneath his breath, “shit I just realized that I don’t know her address. I don’t know how to get this back to her.” 

“Do you remember her name?” She pulled up the business log on the computer. 

“Umm… Nancy?” He offered and she typed in the name checking the rentals from the day before. 

“Nancy Rand?” She read out the only name in the system. 

“That sounds right.” He nodded and licked his lips absentmindedly. 

“This is the address,” she read it out as he wrote it down. 

“Are you doing anything tonight?” He asked and she turned, shocked. 

“What?” 

“Do you want to help me return this?” He smiled. 

“You’re ridiculous,” she stood and brushed past him but turned and then nodded slowly, “ok.” The store closed at 8pm. She changed the vinyl on the record player and sought out the broom and dustpan. Jonathan and Lucien left at closing and Neil closed the door behind them, flipping the sign on the door to ‘closed.’ Jonathan gave her a nod goodbye and she waved shyly. They closed down the video store in relative silence, only the music from John Lennon’s Double Fantasy filling the space. She swept the store thoroughly as Neil closed the register. She waited as he locked up and pulled on the doors to ensure that they were secure. The summer humidity hit them like a cloud as soon as they stepped outside. Neil had switched out of his prison costume, now wearing jeans, his white undershirt, and a green button up that he’d left unbuttoned. She took off her cardigan and stuffed it into her bag, preferring to confront the heat in her plain brown camisole. Her jeans were a little too long and brushed the pavement as they walked. 

“Do you know where we’re going?” She asked Neil and he shrugged. 

“Kind of. I think I’ve been in the neighborhood before.” 

“Nice neighborhood?” She stuck her hands in her back pockets as they walked. 

“Oh yeah. It’s across the street from the golf course.” 

“Do you think Nancy Rand golfs?” 

“Probably.” 

“It's the Victoria’s Secret.” She sighed with a nod.

“What?” 

“Her bra- it’s Victoria’s Secret.” She pointed to the tag on the side of the bra and he raised his eyebrow. 

“Oh… right. What does that mean?” He smiled. 

“It means she dropped like $30 on that. She has the kind of money to play golf and buy expensive bras.”

“What??” He held the bra further away from him. “Why are they so expensive?” 

“The super fancy ones are. I can’t believe she left without it. It's nice.”

“Well to be fair, neither one of us were very sober.” He put the bra back into his pocket and swung his arms back and forth.  

“Mmm,” she hummed. 

“Soooo,” Neil shoved his hands into his front pockets and shrugged his shoulders up to his ears, “Do you wear Victoria's Secret too?” He smiled naughtily and she rolled her eyes. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “It seems like you have plenty of Victoria’s Secrets to go around, Neil.” She joked and pointed to his back pocket. He laughed and kicked his shoe against the pavement. 

“Yeah, yeah.” He held up his hands in surrender. 

“Is this the house here?” She pointed to a large house with wide round columns. Neil whistled low when he saw the house with two station wagons parked out front. 

“Yeah…”

“How are you planning on giving that back?” She asked and he shook his head.

“I have no idea.” 

“Oh, man… I have got to see how you pull this off!” She started laughing hysterically and he massaged his temples anxiously. 

“I’ll just go up there and knock on the door.” He claimed and rubbed his hands together. 

“Ok,” she smiled. “Go ahead! I’ll be right here.” She gestured to the curb. 

He sighed dramatically and walked up to the front door, framed by symmetrical fake gas lamps. He pointed to the gaslamp and pursed his lips, she could almost hear him trilling his lips in mock admiration. She giggled and waved him on. When Neil rang the doorbell, an older woman opened the front door and greeted him with a confused smile. 

Neil met the woman with a wide grin, immediately regretting the whole trip. 

“Can I help you?” She asked and Neil shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. 

“I uh, I’m… I just moved into the neighborhood and I wanted to introduce myself.” He thought quickly on his feet and the woman smiled.

“Oh! I didn’t know someone was selling their house. Which is yours?” 

“It's uh… over there.” He gestured widely behind him and cleared his throat. “So er, nice to meet you.” 

“You haven’t told me your name.” The woman furrowed her brow. 

“Right, right. I’m uh Neil… Neil Lowry.” He came up with a random fake name on the spot and clasped his hands behind his back. “Well, I should be going. It was nice to meet you!” He called and hurried down the front step to the driveway. 

“Well, goodnight!” The lady frowned and closed the door, locking it. Neil practically scrambled back to the curb, panting. 

“That was fucking embarrassing.” He coughed out and she stifled her laughter behind her hand. 

“No luck?” 

“God no.” He put his hands on his knees, his shirt falling away from his thin stomach. 

“Why didn’t you just ask for Nancy?”

“I’m not even convinced that this is the right house!” He flailed his arms above his head. 

“Well, we could always leave it in the mailbox.” She shrugged and he sighed. 

“And run the risk of this not being her house and leaving a bra at a completely unrelated family home?” He cringed. “Could you use it?” He held out the bra and she smiled.

“I’m not a 34D, though I appreciate the offer. Ummm,” she rummaged through her bag.

“What are you looking for?” He asked.

“My binoculars.” She answered seriously and he laughed. 

“You carry binoculars?” 

“Yeah,” she shrugged, “they come in handy.”

“Do you often spy on people?” He crouched beside her on the curb, his hands held together in a tent. 

“It's called people watching, Neil.” She withdrew the small pair of binoculars and brushed them off. 

“Its fucking weird.” Neil retorted and laughed when she swatted him painfully on the shoulder. 

“Do you want my help or not?” 

“Ok, ok, sorry!” He took the binoculars and fixed the magnification onto the house. “We’ll have to go up to the house.” 

“Now who sounds like a stalker?” She grumbled and grabbed her bag. They snuck around the house to the side fence. 

“We’re both too short.” She pointed out and took the binoculars from Neil. “I could get on your shoulders…” She offered and bit her lip uncomfortably. Neil nodded and crouched down, his hands planted on the side of the house. 

“Alright, climb aboard.” 

“Don’t say that- it makes it sound weird.” She grumbled and scrambled, putting her thighs on either side of his neck. He stood upright and wavered a little. 

“Steady.” She whispered and peaked over the top of the fence, and looked into the second story room through the binoculars. She could see a girl sprawled out on her bed, a tv playing Singing in the Rain. 

“How do you feel about old musicals?” She asked and Neil huffed his response, not having to say anything. He hated Hollywood musicals. 

“Is she in there?” He asked in a strained voice. 

“Yeah, second story bedroom.” 

Neil lowered her to the ground and she put the binoculars back into her bag. They went around the fence and crouched beside the side of the house, below the window. 

“How old did you say this girl was?”

“I didn’t… and she’s in college.” He added quickly, “senior at NYU.” 

When she didn’t respond he changed the subject. 

“I’m going to throw a few pebbles at her window,” Neil thought aloud, “and when she opens the window, I can slingshot the bra up to her. 

“Slingshot? You can’t be serious.” 

“It’ll work.” Neil assured her and took a pebble from the ground. She sighed and waited for him to gently toss the pebble against the glass. He did it two more times before the window slid open and she could hear the girl leaning out. 

“Neil?” Nancy asked, confused. “What are you doing here?”

“You, uh, left this in the store.” He raised the bra and gave an awkward, crooked smile. 

“Oh, gosh. Thanks but I have so many. It’s ok, who’s telling what kind of stuff is on it now. You can just toss it.” She shrugged and waved. “Bye, Neil.” She closed the window with a loud snap and Neil lowered his arm. He said nothing though his brows were knit together. 

“Well what do we do now?” She asked below him and Neil smiled suddenly. 

“I have an idea. Come on!” He beckoned her to follow him as he crossed the street and held aside the fence onto the golf course.

----

End part 1 here :)

#cillian x fem!reader #cillian murphy #cillian fanfic #fanfiction #neil lewis x y/n #neil lewis #watching the detectives #gumshoe video #neil lewis smut #neil lewis x reader #smut #neil lewis x fem!reader #fem!reader #y/n #young cillian murphy

[johannestevans]

I'm 80% certain I discovered you through a story about a vampire and the guy he was feeding off of that I absolutely ADORED, but cannot seem to find! I remember it being pretty long, published on ao3, being an original work, and the two specific scenes I remember are: vampire standing behind the guy he's about to feed from and telling him many people find it pleasurable; and the vampire getting ill (and maybe passing out?) because some of the people he regularly feeds from got sick and he doesn't want to take their blood while they're recovering. if this was you (and very sorry if it is not!), could you share a link or the name? I loved it very much and have a few friends who I think would also enjoy it greatly! your writing is very fun and I enjoy reading your more serious essays and the.... more scandalous material :)

I found the vampire fic lmao anyway hell yeah for getting it published!

Haha, yes, it was initially on Ao3 and I actually took it down because I thought I had to, when it turns out I didn't!

Heart of Stone was my first novel, published in 2020, and it's a slowburn fade-to-black romance between an ADHD vampire named Henry Coffey and his new secretary, Theophilus Essex, who's big autism! It's full to the brim with neurodivergence and sweet gentle affection and a blossoming romance between the two of them.

Read reviews on GoodReads / / Read reviews on the Storygraph / / Buy on Amazon / / Buy on Smashwords

Thank you so much for reaching out, and I hope you enjoy it on the reread!

With my other serials that are on Ao3, such as Powder and Feathers (a contemporary dark romance between a fallen angel assassin and his deeply depressed artist boyfriend, originally inspired by Les Misérables) and An Uncommon Betrothal (an interwar romance between a lonely and self-isolated translator who's a polio survivor and relies on several mobility aids, and his butler-cum-fiancé who begins to connect him with other queer men like them), they're not going to be taken down even when I finish, re-edit, and then publish in paperback and eBook! They'll remain up.

I only would have had to take them down if I was enrolling in Amazon's KDP program, which I don't and won't.

#musings #original fiction #aplusjaybirdie

[daphneblakess]

reading some fanfic aus is like 'wow this author has really cool ideas they might not be ready or don't want to turn into original fiction, and i'm glad that i got to experience them through this fandom we both are clearly passionate about' and then reading other fanfic aus is like 'this author is trying to write booktok's next top filed-off-serial-numbers romance novel'

[txttletale]

What's worm? I can't exactly google it bcs of the name but I'm intrigued

worm (2011-2013) is a web novel about superheroes by a canadian author who goes by wildbow. it was published serially over the course of two years and in that time managed to get well over a million words long. i think it's very good for a couple reasons:

it takes an approach to 'deconstructing the superhero genre' that i don't think i've ever actually seen--instead of something like the boys or watchmen it doesn't extrapolate forwards from 'what would superheroes be like if they were real', but instead extrapolates backwards from 'what real-life conditions would have to exist to lead to superheroes acting like they do in comics'. the world of worm is believable, well-drawn, and interesting to inhabit

it has incredible character writing. this might not be one of the first things most people associate with it but wildbow has an amazing capacity for giving characters, even side characters that appear for half a chapter, extremely intriguing personal and internal conflicts. sometimes wildbow will write a chapter from the perspective of a side character you never see again and it will leave you wishing they had their own novel series. also despite a lot of problems wildbow has with Some Demographics, most of these well-developed characters are the female ones, who get to dominate the emotional landscape and the plot in a way that's refreshing to see tbh

the protagonist is great. a lot of attention is paid by some fans to the fact that she's a smart problem-solver, and that is true--her power is 'controlling bugs' in a world where other people can fly and shoot lasers, so she has to get smart with it. but i like her mostly because she's an extremely traumatised freak making horrible decisions and justifying them to herself post-hoc constantly. it's fun and interesting to be in her head

worm gets away from a lot of the more reactionary undertones that the superhero genre often fails to escape by making powers an in-universe result of (and, on a narrative level, a pretty clear metaphor) trauma. they are essentially coping mechanisms exaggerated to the point of superpower--because of this it neatly avoids two genre pitfalls because 1. there is no 'some people are better and stronger from birth' angle and 2. it mostly takes a social view of crime--supervillains in worm aren't cartoonish forces of evil (mostly), they are people who are marginalized and desperate.

the powers are cool. this is lower down on my personal list of reasons i like worm than many people's but it's undeniable true. each character has a strictly defined powerset with certain inbuilt limitations that both work to say volumes about their personality but also make fight scenes fun and interesting to read because wildbow puts a lot of thought into how they interact

this is not intentional and worm is at times downright homophobic but i would be lying if i said this didn't play a part in how i and most people i know think about worm: a queer reading of the main character is very easy to make, and the intense and at times tempestuous relationship she has to the girls around her is damn compelling. don't go into it expecting 'representation' or anything, wildbow has insisted at length that the main character is straight. but fr shes gay af

now all this said: there's a lot of nasty stuff that happens in worm. there is a lot of body horror and a lot of insect horror. there are so many instances of bugs being forced into human orifices in this book i could have filled out this list with that instead. so if that turns you off give this one a miss. child abuse and violence against children in general is also something that comes up semi-regularly.

and to expand on something i said in the post that i assumed prompted this question--when these topics come up, worm does a very very poor job of handling race and a better but still not great job with gender and sexuality. the world outside north america is sketched with a looseness and a lack of research that borders on caricature (i can think of like five organizations/characters that were very clearly named through google translate). the pacing takes a huge hit after a certain event in the back half of the story, and it can be a little exhausting to read because it is both thematically and literally about constant crisis and escalation.

still, if none of that is a dealbreaker for you, i'd recommend it 100%. i'm definitely glad i've read it. it's a powerful story about trauma and authority and control that does reward the outrageous time commitment it demands. there's also a fanmade audiobook if that sweetens the deal for you. i haven't listened to it but i've heard that it's pretty decent for a volunteer effort.

#ask #long post #worm #girlbossgoroakechi #somehow i doubt 'really homoertic but in a homophobic way' will be a dealbreaker for you . tumblr user girlbossgoroakechi

[elvensemi]

I'm Publishing Serial Webnovels

Hi guys! I'm @elvensemi, and some of you might know me from writing Dragon Age fanfic Keeping Secrets, or from writing weird gargoyle porn with @unpretty, or from that time I accidentally told a popular blog I write dragon porn on my main blog @solitarelee, or maybe from that one fanfic where the knight with a crossdressing kink fails at slaying a dragon so hard he gets seduced!

I've graduated college, and you know what that means! Student loans Free time! And so I'm finally pursuing my long term dream and publishing serial webnovels. The short version is: ebooks, I'm publishing ebooks via Patreon to see if it works because I don't want to deal with Amazon and marketplaces. Chuck Tingle does it, kind of!

I am writing such things as!

The Problem with Faeries An urban fantasy series for fans of Holly Black, featuring faeries and a librarian who has been cursed by a witch to turn into a tiny dog at night.

Everything at Once A coming of age fantasy novel set in a post-post-apocalyptic world full of many monsters and very few humans, with a nonbinary (genderfluid) protagonist and a rotating cast of gods and monsters.

The Demon Isles An adult romance series set in the same world as Everything at Once, this one's for the monsterf*ckers. Step into the shoes of an escaped slave who's been stranded in Fantasy Australia But All The Dangerous Things Can Be Seduced.

A Place Among the Stars An adult sci-fi political space opera that is also technically just solidly omegaverse sm*t plus space dragons. That's right, one of my friends dared me to write omegaverse and I overdid it and now they're aliens! All for you my friend.

Novelizations of works that previously existed only as RPs, such as Sanctuary and The Kingdom of Aeris.

AND SO MUCH MORE.

For $5 you get access to SFW material, and for $10 you get access to that and the things that are not SFW. You can view a full summary of the serials I'm working on at tinyurl.com/SemiSerials , or click the read more.

The Demon Isles (NSFW, Second Person)

Oceanside is a world full of elves and gods, monsters and magic. You, however, a human with no magic, no martial training, and a fear of... most things. Stranded on an unfamiliar island full of monsters, you must learn to harness humanity’s true power in order to survive. The issue with that is, as far as anyone can tell, humanity’s true powers are friendship and fuckability.

The Demon Isles is a erotic, second-person monsterfucking romp through the dangerous Demon Isles. The second person character is referred to by gender neutral terminology and they/them pronouns, physical appearance left ambiguous. Sex scenes have two versions with different sets of genitalia for the main character. Tags and content warnings are available for each chapter.

The Problem with Faeries (SFW, Third Person)

The problem with faeries is that we love them. We know all the sharp and cruel ways they twist us apart and we love them with a helpless, hopeless foolishness that never fades until it destroys us.

Bree is a human living in Valesport, a small town on the east coast of the United States that functions as a secret haven for the supernatural. As a cursed human, it’s one of the safer places for her... at least, safe from other humans. Everything else Valesport has to offer remains a threat. She’s already had her run-ins with werewolves, vampires, and whatever the hell Jean Cernunnos is... so, in retrospect, she was probably due to get into trouble with the Fae.

A fan favorite finally finding a venue of publication, The Problem with Faeries is a SFW urban fantasy with a side of romance perfect for fans of Holly Black. It is third person and follows the point of view of the protagonist, Bridget “Bree” Corey, as she finds herself tangled up trying to navigate faerie drama and her own personal feelings, neither of which she is particularly equipped to handle.

Everything at Once (SFW, First Person)

Babs wants everything the world has to offer... everything except what it’s actually prepared to hand over. As the eldest child of the ruling noble family--or what passes for it--of the only human village remaining old and large enough to still have a ruling noble family, even if just in name, Babs’s whole life has been laid out in front of them since the moment they were born. And they want none of it. However, after a bold escape from the village they knew all their life, they find themselves adrift in an unfriendly world of monsters and magic that seems much larger and much less friendly than they had hoped.

Everything at Once is a SFW fantasy novel set all over the world of Oceanside as our determined protagonist, Babs, attempts to explore all there is to explore and experience all there is to experience (it is possible they have not thought this through). Babs is a non-binary, gender fluid illusionist referred to varyingly by he, she, and they pronouns based on presentation. The story is a first person mixed POV exploring a wide range of characters and topics, but always staying focused on the many transformations of the main character as they learn what it is they want... and what it is to want.

Future Projects: Projects that are in development but do not have a set release date yet.

A Place Among the Stars [Working Title] (NSFW)

A Place Among the Stars is a NSFW erotic political space opera featuring Omegaverse style aliens and also space dragons, amongst other alien races. It features two protagonists: an exiled and excommunicated Saint who once led a cult that threatened the peace and stability of his homeworld, and a mid level government official presiding over the walled ghetto where the Ab’ed keep all foreign visitors and immigrants to their planet. They quickly find themselves entangled: politically, as the Saint once again threatens the stability of the world around him--in more ways than one--and sexually, as the tension between the two reaches a fever pitch.

Sanctuary (NSFW, Third Person)

Most people would consider Ren unlucky. After all, she’s been homeless since she was a child, has no living family she knows of, and she was recently kidnapped by sex traffickers and ripped away from the city she had been living in for years. But as far as Ren is concerned, she’s the epitome of good luck: not only has she survived all the things life has thrown at her, but she’s escaped said sex traffickers and even found shelter in an abandoned, boarded up cathedral. The fact that the cathedral, undisturbed for a century or more, is home to a guardian whose only experience with the world is violently murdering intruders, well... once again, whether that’s good or bad luck is based purely on interpretation.

Sanctuary is a NSFW urban fantasy erotic romance featuring a cis female protagonist and a male (as these things go) gargoyle love interest, as well as a mix of other romantic interests (primarily M/F with some F/F or NB/F thrown in). Tags and content warnings are available for each chapter. This fan-favorite returns in serialized, ebook form for easy reading. Follow Ren’s journey anew from mixed perspectives as she explores the streets of Valesport and finds something she’s never had before; a place to call home.

#writers on tumblr #writeblr #webnovel #writing #authors of tumblr #fiction #web series #web serial

[writingquestionsanswered]

Finding Your Story

nothingbutgog asked: I'm not a writer. i dont have enough patience to write a fictional story (which is what i want to do) but i will try! for some reason, i have this feeling that a story is inside of me. but.... i dont have a story... in fact i barely have 2 characters. but.. i have a little bit of 2 characters? so.. how do i get a story? i dont even know what genre i want it to be! the only thing is that i have 2 characters, and i want them to fall in love. so id greatly love your help! where do i find my story?

I wish that there was a really quick, straightforward answer to this question. I wish I could say, "Do this..." and you could do this one simple thing and the story of your heart would flow out of your fingertips. Unfortunately, that's not how writing and storytelling work.

Feeling that you don't have the patience to write fiction is a wobbly place to start, because writing fiction requires patience... a lot of patience. Unless you can find a way to learn patience, writing fiction may not be the right avenue for you. But there are other things you can do with characters and storytelling. Roleplaying--either in person (like LARP or historical reenactment), online (via roleplaying communities), or in games (such as video games and board games)--can be great for creating characters and exploring their stories without having to actually write them.

If you want to stick with writing, you might consider writing a short story serial, which plays out structurally like a TV show, in short, self-contained "episodes" that either deal with a new subject each week or which follow a continuing arc, or both.

You can also look at writing a novelette or novella, which is shorter than a novel and can require a little less patience to write. Either way, if you decide to write long fiction (novelette, novella, or novel), your best bet is to spend time reading some different novellas and novels to get an understanding for how they work. You can also visit my Plot & Story Structure master list of posts to learn about how stories work, how to plot them out, and how to structure them.

The following posts can help you tease out a story from the few ideas you have:

Finding a Story in Characters and Setting Finding a Plot to Go with Characters/Setting Where to Find Story Ideas Coming Up with Ideas and Plot Turning a Barrage of Ideas into a Plot How to Turn Ideas into a Story Want to Write but Can’t Come Up with a Plot

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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#writing tips #writing help #wqaadvice

[pb-dot]

Writeblr Introduction

Suppose I should introduce myself per the writeblr Very Friendly Suggestions. I'm PB, or peebs if you prefer, I'm in my 30's, bisexual, dyspraxic, and as behooves a man of my standing I'm also grappling with considerable depression. I like to write, like it a lot and I always have. My main WIPs are: a clockpunk love story titled The Clockwork Boy, a Lovecraftian Horror Romance titled His Impossible Brushstrokes and a 30s-punk portal fantasy serial titled Thereafter. I also dabble with smaller projects I won't get into here. Mostly coherent and concise synopses of The Clockwork Boy, His Impossible Brushstrokes, and Thereafter follow below.

The Clockwork Boy

My NaNoWriMo 2022 novel was initially conceived because I couldn't find much fun MLM genre fiction to read, so I decided to get myself good and wedged into that niche. The story follows Jake, who's stuck in a dead-end job of machining gears and sundry parts as well as lifting heavy things until a small, yet deceptively strong young man crashes into his life, and also his arms. The young man is called 13, his entire body from the neck down is made out of impossibly complex clockwork parts, and he's on the run from multiple powerful people and factions.

13 is stronger and faster than anyone has the right to be, but several broken parts hold him back. Jake is immediately smitten by the complex mechanics of 13's clockwork body, not to mention his sad, blue eyes, and so vows to help repair 13. The complexity of the task at hand is only increased by the two being pursued by local goon squads as well as other clockwork-bodied people with numbers for names.

The world of The Clockwork Boy and the Hearts In Clockwork series, provided I get around to writing more of these things, is languishing in a peculiar type of anarchy. The Age of Steam has come and gone and after a series of destructive colonial wars known as The Coal Wars, the power of government and nation has all but eroded. In their place, an alliance of powerful merchants and holders of capital keeps an iron grip on what passes for law from their seat in the massive tower known only as The Spire. Their power is exerted through monopoly and other economic maneuvers, but also by their rowdy Enforcers, who rule through intimidation and sheer brutishness.

13, as it turns out, is part of The Clockmen, a hitherto hidden faction within The Spire, whose acerbic leader is working to create an elite force of clockwork-powered individuals to overthrow The Spire and their enforcers, but even within the clockmen, agendas differ. 13 was originally made to fight and kill rogue clockmen, but so objected to this that he fled, searching for his memories and what freedom could be found.

Jake and 13 eventually find themselves under the auspices of The Northwest, an underground worker-owned coop parts workshop that takes them in and offers them succor in their time of need. In the relative safety of The Northwest's hidden workshop, Jake and 13 get the time they need to perform the sizable number of repairs needed, and perhaps ask the question of what they are becoming to each other and what comes next.

The current status of the project at the moment is going through the old rewrite and editing wringers. I'm currently having the thing beta read and I'll make whatever changes I need after that before attempting to hook an agent to help me get the thing published. In the meantime, I post about it a lot. If you want to be up-to-date on the most recent rambles in the setting, check out the tag list post here

My final goal with this project is to somehow get it published and, provided I am not met with immediate scorn and ridicule, get started on writing one or more sequels. I don't have the entire series planned out or anything, but I have several stories in this universe planned, and I know where and how I want it to end.

His Impossible Brushstrokes

My 2023 NaNoWriMo entry and current Lagrange point of my life. Continuing the trend from last year of writing novels that I wish someone else had written already so I could read it, Brushstrokes is a male-led queer horror with a mspec protagonist, exploring the shared points between love and fear, admiration and obsession, and art and madness.

The story follows Oscar Skerry, an obsessive San Fran art critic who goes to progressively more extreme measures to understand the works of his favorite artist, a pan-European enfant terrible by the name Tomasz Gildebrant. Gildebrant is an obscure artist, whose paintings nevertheless go for exorbitant prices on account of his cult appeal.

Following the thread of an art patron going berserk and attempting to destroy a Gildebrant painting by eating it, Tomasz unravels the urban legend of Gildebrant Psychosis. This sickness allegedly drives some who see a Gildebrant painting into acts of brutality, depravity, or the profoundly absurd, and Oscar starts to suspect there is something deeper and darker going on than repeated failures of the mental health system.

Seemingly out of the blue, Oscar gets an invitation to join Gildebrant in his home in the southern Carpathian Mountains. Eager to get to the bottom of things, and share his theories with Gildebrant, Oscar accepts.

Once there, two things become readily apparent. One, Gildebrant is incredibly charming, so much so that Oscar finds himself doubting that Gildebrant could be the man behind the dark, disturbing paintings he obsesses over. Two, there are way too many things not adding up, like how the doors to his guestroom in the Gildebrant household lock automatically at midnight, and how many pairs of shoes fill Gildebrant's hallway.

Per April 2024, the first draft for His Impossible Brushstrokes is complete. The plan remains to seek tradpub or indie publishing once I've edited the thing.

Thereafter

My first self-released project. The first chapters of Thereafter is slated to be released via buttondown starting May 1st 2024. This story follows Michael, a man in his 30s who traveled to, and saved, a magical cave-world populated by kindly molefolk at the tender age of twelve (and a half.) Now, 20 years later, Michael struggles in life and finds himself wishing for those simpler days of adventure again. Life is not without a sense of cruel irony, as the phenomenon that spirited him away all those years ago reoccur. Michael doesn't find himself in the serene caves of the molefolk, however, but in a desperately ramshackle city built from the flotsam and jetsam of thousands upon thousands of worlds.

This strange town goes by the name of Thereafter, and it was the surviving population of the cave world, as well as many other worlds, built with what they could salvage after The Calamity. Few who saw the world-destroying catastrophe lived to tell the tale, and the few who have, tell conflicting and surely nonsensical tales of it. Either way, the few that survived being flung into the void between worlds found their way to this nexus of the dispossessed, where the despair of dispossession percolated under the pressure of resource insecurity and a general sense of the world quite literally coming to an end.

To assuage some of these fears, The Council of Thereafter, a hastily assembled collection of wizards, wise men and the occasional cryptic hermit, decided to summon heroes of the old to their side. Due to the way time flows differently in the realms of magic, centuries and even millennia have passed since Michael saved the Molefolk, and the tales of his exploits have only grown in his absence.

Fortunately, Michael will not be alone in his task of portraying a heroic figure far beyond what he is able to actually be. Unfortunately, his colleagues in this endeavor are all messed up to an equal degree to him. Lex, the Polish enby scientist, is cynical on a level that borders on the parodic and worryingly horny. Felipe, the Mexican pro athlete archer, is arrogant, flighty and seems physically unable to take anything seriously. Finally, Alicia, the New York-based fitness influencer, seems restless in a way that either speaks to undiagnosed ADHD or truly world-shaking rage contained under the athletic facade.

Together, this rag-tag band of 30-somethings must unite in their quest to portray the heroes that history have made them, all the while grappling with what it means to be a hero in a desperately imperfect world. The city of Thereafter is full of crime born of desperation, hatred born of fear, and runaway magic, but that is not all. After all, the only thing anyone can agree on about the Calamity is that it is still out there and may one day turn its destruction upon Thereafter.

With Thereafter, I plan to work more with character and group dynamics than I have in my earlier works. The dysfunctional found family of the Heroes is supposed to be a big draw of the story, alongside the mystery of The Calamity and more pressing concerns about survival. As usual for a Peebs story, there will also be rumination, politics and philosophy involved, tigers don't usually change their stripes after all, but we're also getting a fantasy post-apocalyptic tale of love, bravery, and the many obscure pains of growing up.

Thereafter will, as mentioned above, be released on a chapter by chapter basis via Buttondown, with an archive also being kept on Cohost. A subscription link will follow as release date approaches.

#writeblr #writing #hearts in clockwork #writeblr intro #writing community #his impossible brushstrokes

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Bezzle excerpt (Part II)

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me next in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

Today, I'm bringing you part two of this week's serialized excerpt from The Bezzle, my new Martin Hench high-tech crime revenge thriller:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Though most of the scams that Hench – a two-fisted forensic accountant specializing in Silicon Valley skullduggery – goes after in The Bezzle have a strong tech component, this excerpt concerns a pre-digital scam: music royalty theft.

This is a subject that I got really deep into when researching and writing 2022's Chokepoint Capitalism – a manifesto for fixing creative labor markets:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

My co-author on that book is Rebecca Giblin, who also happens to be one of the world's leading experts in "copyright termination" – the legal right of creative workers to claw back any rights they signed over after 35 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

This was enshrined in the 1976 Copyright Act, and has largely languished in obscurity since then, though recent years have seen creators of all kinds getting their rights back through termination – the authors of The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High Books, Stephen King, and George Clinton, to name a few. The estates of the core team at Marvel Comics, including Stan Lee, just settled a case that might have let them take the rights to all those characters back from Disney:

https://www.thewrap.com/marvel-settles-spiderman-lawsuit-steve-ditko/

Copyright termination is a powerful tonic to the bargaining disparities between creative workers. A creative worker who signs a bad contract at the start of their career can – if they choose – tear that contract up 35 years later and demand a better one.

Turning this into a plot-point in The Bezzle is the kind of thing that I love about this series – the ability to take important, obscure, technical aspects of how the world works and turn them into high-stakes technothriller storylines that bring them to the audience they deserve.

If you signed something away 35 years ago and you want to get it back, try Rights Back, an automated termination of tranfer tool co-developed by Creative Commons and Authors Alliance (whose advisory board I volunteer on):

https://rightsback.org/

All right, onto today's installment. Here's part one, published on Saturday:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

It was on one of those drives where Stefon learned about copyright termination. It was 2011, and NPR was doing a story on the 1976 Copyright Act, passed the same year that was on the bottom of the document Chuy forged.

Under the ’76 act, artists acquired a “termination right”—­ that is, the power to cancel any copyright assignment after thirty-­five years, even if they signed a contract promising to sign away their rights forever and a day (or until the copyright ran out, which was nearly the same thing).

Listening to a smart, assured lady law professor from UC Berkeley explaining how this termination thing worked, Stefon got a wild idea. He pulled over and found a stub of a pencil and the back of a parking-­ticket envelope and wrote down the professor’s name when it was repeated at the end of the program. The next day he went to the Inglewood Public Library and got a reference librarian to teach him how to look up a UC Berkeley email address and he sent an email to the professor asking how he could terminate his copyright assignment.

He was pretty sure she wasn’t going to answer him, but she did, in less than a day. He got the email on his son’s smartphone and the boy helped him send a reply asking if he could call her. One thing led to another and two weeks later, he’d filed the paperwork with the U.S. Copyright Office, along with a check for one hundred dollars.

Time passed, and Stefon mostly forgot about his paperwork adventure with the Copyright Office, though every now and again he’d remember, think about that hundred dollars, and shake his head. Then, nearly a year later, there it was, in his mailbox: a letter saying that his copyright assignment had been canceled and his copyrights were his again. There was also a copy of a letter that had been sent to Chuy, explaining the same thing.

Stefon knew a lawyer—­well, almost a lawyer, an ex–­trumpet player who became a paralegal after one time subbing for Sly Stone’s usual guy, and then never getting another gig that good. He invited Jamal over for dinner and cooked his best pot roast and served it with good whiskey and then Jamal agreed to send a letter to Inglewood Jams, informing them that Chuy no longer controlled his copyrights and they had to deal with him direct from now on.

Stefon hand-­delivered the letter the next day, wearing his good suit for reasons he couldn’t explain. The receptionist took it without a blink. He waited.

“Thank you,” she said, pointedly, glancing at the door.

“I can wait,” he said.

“For what?” She reminded him of his boy’s girlfriend, a sophomore a year younger than him. Both women projected a fierce message that they were done with everyone’s shit, especially shit from men, especially old men. He chose his words carefully.

“I don’t know, honestly.” He smiled shyly. He was a good-­looking man, still. That smile had once beamed out of televisions all over America, from the Soul Train stage. “But ma’am, begging your pardon, that letter is about my music, which you all sell here. You sell a lot of it, and I want to talk that over with whoever is in charge of that business.”

She let down her guard by one minute increment. “You’ll want Mr. Gounder,” she said. “He’s not in today. Give me your phone number, I’ll have him call.”

He did, but Mr. Gounder didn’t call. He called back two days later, and the day after that, and the following Monday, and then he went back to the office. The receptionist who reminded him of his son’s girlfriend gave him a shocked look.

“Hello,” he said, and tried out that shy smile. “I wonder if I might see that Mr. Gounder.”

She grew visibly uncomfortable. “Mr. Gounder isn’t in today,” she lied. “I see,” he said. “Will he be in tomorrow?”

“No,” she said.

“The day after?”

“No.” Softer.

“Is that Mr. Gounder of yours ever coming in?”

She sighed. “Mr. Gounder doesn’t want to speak with you, I’m sorry.”

The smile hadn’t worked, so he switched to the look he used to give his bandmates when they wouldn’t cooperate. “Maybe someone can tell me why?”

A door behind her had been open a crack; now it swung wide and a young man came out. He looked Hispanic, with a sharp fade and flashy sneakers, but he didn’t talk like a club kid or a hood rat—­he sounded like a USC law student.

“Sir, if you have a claim you’d like Mr. Gounder to engage with, please have your attorney contact him directly.”

Stefon looked this kid up and down and up, tried and failed to catch the receptionist’s eye, and said, “Maybe I can talk this over with you. Are you someone in charge around here?”

“I’m Xavier Perez. I’m vice president for catalog development here. I don’t deal with legal claims, though. That’s strictly Mr. Gounder’s job. Please have your attorney put your query in writing and Mr. Gounder will be in touch as soon as is ­feasible.”

“I did have a lawyer write him a letter,” Stefon said. “I gave it to this young woman. Mr. Gounder hasn’t been in touch.”

Perez looked at the receptionist. “Did you receive a letter from this gentleman?”

She nodded, still not meeting Stefon’s eye. “I gave it to Mr. Gounder last week.”

Perez grinned, showing a gold tooth, and then, in his white, white voice, said, “There you have it. I’m sure Mr. Gounder will get back in touch with your counsel soon. Thank you for coming in today, Mr.—­”

“Stefon Magner.” Stefon waited a moment, then said, for the first time in many years, “I used to perform under Steve Soul, though.”

Perez nodded briskly. He’d known that. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Magner.” Without waiting for a reply, he disappeared back into his office.

ETA: Here's part three!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#copyright-termination

#pluralistic #the bezzle #martin hench #marty hench #red team blues #fiction #crime fiction #crime thrillers #thrillers #technothrillers #novels #books #royalties #wage theft #creative labor

[yallemagne]

You are right turning Dracula into The Lover is so danm needless!

-"Oh we need vampire/human romance with the vampire's tragic end!" Why make a convoluted romance with Drac and Mina? The book has served you what you seek on a silver platter. All you need to do is fill in the gaps of the epistolary novel to play with. Flesh out Lucy and Arthur and how they got closer. Keep Lucy as she is to make me cry for her doom. Dracula dying makes me go oh no. A rapist serial killer just died. Tragique.

-Want a vampire/human pair where the human chooses to walk with the vampire into eternal twilight? Let Jonathan complete his blasphemous vow. Actually focus on his trauma and how much he feared and hated vampires and how he chose certain death over vampirism, to give to his oath the gravity it deserves.

-Oh and want to also do "the vampire is suffering from being cursed by their God"? Mina is right here. "I was betrayed. Look what your God has done to me" whines 1992 Dracula, motherfucker you started it! Mina didn't! And look what He did to her brow! She who always walked the path of righteousness. She was betrayed. She is the forsaken sinner you want!

Sorry for the essay oh gosh

Literally.

Instead of rushing Lucy's death so they can get to their fake ass romance, adaptations could just,,, make Lucy's death its own story. Draw it out! Have Bloofer Lucy be more lucid and have her beckoning to Arthur be in earnest. And in this case, the trope of the vampire realizing at the last second that murder is wrong and begging their lover to put them out of their misery is less convoluted because Lucy knew that murder was wrong when she was human and Dracula certainly fucking didn't, not if we're going with the stupid Vlad the Impaler route. Lucy had an inherent goodness that was robbed from her in death and Dracula was always a cunt even when they try to rewrite him to be sympathetic.

I'm seconds away from just writing a story where Dracula's death doesn't cleanse Mina of her vampirism and Jonathan goes down with her, I swear. But my artist brain keeps saying I gotta design their vampire selves first aaagh. You can also just have Lucy take a big bite out of Arthur without being hampered by VH. It might be anticlimactic, but hey, I wanna see at least one fanfic where it happens. There's only ever fanart.

Like the whole "God fucked up my life" thing is whatever. Supposedly human Dracula (who is always goddamn Vlad Tepes for no good reason) had a wife who died and decided to make that everyone else's problem. I fucking doubt this ol' thirteenth-century bitch saw his wives as anything more than property. You know who doesn't see their spouse as property? You know who would actually grieve their spouse's death? You want the tragic vampire grieving their dead spouse?? MINA HARKER IS RIGHT THERE. Maybe Jonathan dies and Mina just fucking goes feral because that was the last damn straw and now she's going to murder God.

Your essay is appreciated, I was just vibing.

#queuing this post but be aware that I DID answer it right when I got it bc of course I'm up so late #someone tell me when arthur/lucy gets a proper ship name #please they need one #dracula #dracula daily #arthur holmwood #lucy westenra #arthur x lucy #mina harker #mina murray #jonathan harker #jonathan x mina #jonmina #update #people ask me things

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading update: november 2023

hiiiii, sorry I'm late! I know we're a week past November now, but I've been busy! and struggling to pull my mental health out of an absolute crevasse! I think I've mostly made it at this point, but unfortunately my month of seasonal affective woe did leave me with a pretty paltry reading list for the month of November :/

not that I have a quota to hit, but I'm getting back into reading with a PASSION now and I'm hoping to get a few more really great novels in before the year ends!

what have I been reading?

Exquisite Corpse (published as Poppy Z. Brite, currently known as William Martin, 1996) - man, you guys know how I love a fucked up little story about some nasty freaks? this is a FUCKED UP story about the NASTIEST freaks. gay serial killer Andrew escapes a life sentence in England by faking his own death and flees to America, where he lands in New Orleans and promptly meets a man named Jay, who is - holy shit, what are the odds? ALSO a gay serial killer! they get along like a house on fire, setting their sights immediately on a beautiful young runaway drug deal name Tran who has his sights set on Jay. but Trans' ex-boyfriend, Luke, a bitter writer turned pirate DJ dying of AIDS, is also up in the mix, complicating things for everyone. the tone is unrelentingly gruesome but beautifully written and frequently funnier than should be possible. certainly not a book for everyone, with about every possible trigger warning on the table, but god. WHAT a ride. I savored every second.

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity (Devon Price, 2022) - any hype you've heard about this book is absolutely worth it. Price is really exemplifying the excellence that comes from in-group writing, the magic that happens when people with firsthand experience living a life outside The Norm infiltrates academia and get the credentials to be recognized as the experts they are. I can't speak to the experience of reading this book as an autistic person, but as someone who's often the token allistic among my friends it clarified things that I had never even thought to wonder about with straightforward, accessible style and firsthand understanding. also, hey, it's so cool to see a book just straight-up advocating for autistic people to get more autistic and worry less about appeasing the allistic people around them. Dr. Price writes great advice, and I strongly recommend checking out this book and more of his work here. reading this also made me absolutely feral to check out Price's first book, Laziness Does Not Exist, so expect notes on that soon!

Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture (Sara Petersen, 2023) - listen, we can be honest here: that title is too long. but the read is worth it, even if I do have some mixed feelings about Petersen's messaging. she's not a momfluencer, but she is a mom who has been and still is very invested in momfluencers, letting that fascination fuel this book's creation. I found Petersen a bit too quick to come to the defense of influencing as a profession, which could grate. yes, women influencers are often the targets of a particular hostility that certainly stems from misogyny. yes, it certainly is true that being a full-time Instagram poster on top of raising living human children requires a lot of time and effort, which I guess does make it a "real job". but there are lots of "real jobs" that I disrespect on principle, and influencers are certainly on the list. Petersen has analysis on the stark hegemony of momfluencers, particularly the insidious white supremacy that controls which mothers are seen as aspirational, and she's certainly not lacking in self-reflection about the role momfluencers have played in her own parenting decisions, but it would have been nice to see more pushback on the concept of influencers existing at all, not just creating space for more diverse moms to take up the title. having said that: the chapter in which Petersen reflects on her own mother's lifelong dissatisfaction and grapples with learning to see her mother as a person, rather than just a perfectly happy crafty homemaker, was one of the most riveting things I've ever read and attacked me right in my own maternal baggage. she's a chatty writer who sometimes pulls back the conversational curtain to say the most haunting shit you've ever read in your life, particularly if you're like me and regard motherhood as a sort of horror movie scenario.

Unfortunately Yours (Tessa Bailey, 2023) - god, more like UNFORTUNATELY THIS BOOK, am I right? Unfortunately Yours was November's romance novel, which I finally got around to reading after it was gifted to me this summer by my housemate who clearly hates me. I already bitched about it at length in this month's hater roundup over on my Patreon, but god. jesus christ. I've had a lot of fun reading romance novels that are pretty charmingly crappy, but Bailey just fucking sucks. this book has it all: incessant references to the size difference between our hulking he-man protag and his itty bitty love interest, WEIRD gender dynamics, the most half-assed alleged "enemies-to-lovers" I've ever seen (they just kind of don't get along, it's nothing), convoluted fake marriage, "witty" "banter" that really reads like Bailey has never heard two clever or funny people talk to each other before and has to guess, and some viscerally upsetting sex scenes including one that takes place IN THE MIDDLE OF A FLASH FLOOD. also, the male protag is a war criminal. nobody ever shuts up about how he's an ex-Navy SEAL, but they never seem to want to talk about what SEALs actually do. might be kind of a boner killer.

what am I reading now?

The Bandit Queens (Parini Shroff, 2023) - I started this novel a couple days ago and I'm absolutely devouring it; I've got about 100 pages left and cannot wait to see how the story resolves. it's tremendous fun but also hits on emotional depths that I didn't expect going into a black comedy about rural Indian women killing their husbands! I'm very excited to finish it up and talk about it in my next recap; I think it's one of my favorite novels of the year for sure.

Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (edited by Jordan Peele, 2023) - I meant to read this for October but oops, there were too many holds at the library! regardless, the stories have been nothing but bangers so far.

Small Game (Blair Braverman, 2022) - I haven't started this novel yet, but it's been on my list for a while and after listening to several of Braverman's guest episodes on You're Wrong About in a row, I had to check it out. her episode on the Flight 571 crash in the Andes almost had me in tears; cannot recommend it enough.

#bookblr #reading updates

[theimaginatrix27]

My Personal Approach to Fantasy AUs

I have received a number of comments on my Deep Space 9 Fairy Tale AU, Seven for a Secret, to the effect of "I love how you've kept everyone so in-character!"

I also recently sent a friend part of the first chapter of a prequel fic in the same setting, and they said they're not usually interested in AUs of this nature, because too often, they've seen characters written in ways that make them less recognisably themselves. But they did like my writing.

So I'm going to try and explain my process in a way that hopefully makes sense to everyone reading it. I'm absolutely not making this post to gatekeep fanfic, or to tell someone how to write their story, I'm just explaining what I do when writing a Fantasy AU within a fandom context.

For clarity, this post is about AUs where the characters were born into a high/epic/secondary world fantasy setting (I have heard all these terms before). It is not about charas being isekaied into fantasy settings for crossover purposes (that genre encompasses portal fantasy, doesn't have to involve the charas dying), though tbh I love those, too. Excellent fun. But the characters in those cases are still the canon ones, just being put in a situation. I actually plan on writing a series of DND campaign fics with the casts of my three favourite classic Trek series that are basically this premise, but that's not what I want to talk about today.

In a lot of cases, when someone has written a fantasy AU, the characters are changed so much that you could, theoretically, file off the serial numbers, switch out canon references and turn it into an original novel. This is also not strictly a bad thing—I've done it myself, and although that story never got finished, it paved the way for those that followed, so it's helpful in the creative process to recognise when you have enough material for an original spin on something.

However, for me especially, it is more fun to see and recognise the fandom characters, and then watch them navigate a story that is both unique and would not be the same without them.

Presenting Exhibit A: The Princess and the Dragon, a fanfiction for Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, written by my dear friend, @kohakuhime

This was one of the first fics of this nature that I came across in my wanderings through the blighted wastelands of FFN—Kohaku's fics were very much an oasis in the desert, so refreshing and vibrant were they, but this was her big fantasy baby, centred around a ship we both loved, and rich with lore and magic and mystery. It was also peppered with canon references, and all the characters were kept breathtakingly in-character—I won't get into spoiler territory, but let's just say I could hear the voice-actors saying so many of these lines, they were so good! My bar for this type of AU was set pretty high in large part because of this fic.

To be quite fair, Kohaku has said she could probably file off the serial numbers of TPATD, change some of the components of the magic system and release it as an original novel, as the concept itself (again, avoiding spoilers by going into details out of respect for this friend and her excellent story) is a fun twist on a particular trope. But although there are many original elements, it still feels like a Yu-Gi-Oh! fic, because of all the grounding points woven throughout, and how familiar the characters are.

This fic was not the only story I found that helped shape my approach back in 2012—there were a couple other fics in the Dragon Ball Z archive on FFN that also contributed, but they were both written a long time ago and I'm not sure they'd hold up nearly so well today. One of them was a fairy tale retelling (well, a Disney film retelling, but it was really good from my perspective as a fic newbie!), and this plus some other—shall we say, less interesting adaptations in the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom inspired me to write the fic now known as Wild Swans of Domino, which I'm not linking here because I am in the process of editing it up to my current standards. Seven for a Secret is, in its way, a spiritual successor to WSoD, though I do intend to finish the latter (and the sequels I developed over the years). WSoD was my practice ground for developing the approach I wrote this post to explain, and it kinda shows in the current version, because I started out simple, and then my brain started generating lore and places for more canon references to go and the story got away from me. That—happens to me a lot.

My approach with this type of AU comes down to one major point: If I am writing a fairy tale adaptation (it's usually a fairy tale adaptation that starts this for me), or some other fantasy story in an alternate universe which these characters are, for the purposes of the fic, native to, then both they and the setting must have some familiar aspects tying them back to the source material. The characters, especially, must still feel like themselves, or you may lose readers' interest, because "Benjamin Sisko wouldn't do that!" or "Seto Kaiba wouldn't react that way in this situation! Stop making him quote the movie's dialogue, it sounds so contrived it is painful to read!"

... Ahem, moving on from bad memories of bad fics.

WSoD and Secret are both based on a fairy tale I already have an original story idea for (several, actually), so I don't need or want either of them to be unique enough to divorce them from their fandom origins. Therefore, while developing them, I have done/am doing my utmost to weave in as many threads from canon as possible within the boundaries of the setting, and have also done my best to preserve the characters' personalities. And according to those aforementioned comments, I'm doing pretty well!

To be absolutely fair, in both cases, the fandoms in question are either another form of Fantasy or as close to Fantasy as a Sci-fi setting can get (Sisko's an honest to the Prophets Chosen one, for goodness sake!). But I do believe you can do this with any character, from any setting, if you put enough thought into it.

And maybe that's part of why I don't see it around as much, because some (often younger but not always) fic authors can have a concept float into their head or sent to them by another fan, and bang out a fic in a week that hits all the points they wanted it to without too much brainstorming behind it. Whereas I, a perfectionist and possesser of an increasingly plot-tribble-infested brain, can't make a single plot decision without pondering it for several days, and fret over little logistical details until I'm purple in the face (probably. I don't have eyeballs and thence can't look in a mirror). But I still think it's doable for any character.

To do this well, you must consider what fundamentally makes this character who they are. What traits would you absolutely have to keep (aside from physical appearance in most cases) to ensure this character was familiar to the reader who clicked on the fandom tag and subsequently your fic. If you ran across Sherlock Holmes in, say, the Pokémon world, how would you know he was Sherlock Holmes? Why, he'd be solving mysteries, and doing so by analysing all sorts of details, noticing things others failed to, putting pieces together that formed a solution others wouldn't have even considered, because the majority of those puzzle pieces were overlooked! And he'd probably be skulling shuckle juice when he didn't have a mystery to solve. And obviously he'd be autistic.

Are you imagining it? I hope you are. Now imagine a character, or several, from one of your fandoms, that you love. Imagine what you love best about them, what makes them who they are, from your perspective. Now imagine a setting that's different from their source material—there are any number of AUs you could pick. Now, think carefully about how you would write them in this setting, while focusing on changing as little about them as possible.

In Secret, Ben and Julian are both princes (this is revealed in Chapter 1, I don't mind telling you). The Dax symbiont is a Fae being magically bound to Jadzia, who is a mage. Their personalities are still familiar to the reader. Miles O'Brien has barely changed at all, because he doesn't need to.

And there's the single golden rule: When writing an AU like this, only change as much or as little as you absolutely need to for your story to work. You can, of course, have fun with how you change things—just check out Innate Conditions and its companion fics by @tokidokifish for a DS9 example (Cardassians are shapeshifting dragons! How cool is that?)

I hope all this makes sense. And again, this is not an attempt to dictate how you, personally, write your stories. I do hope you at least give it a little thought, though, if you haven't already. Most importantly, have fun!

#Fanfiction #Fantasy AUs #Seven for a Secret #Family Defiant #Because it's most relevant to that AU

[de-vespertiliones]

Can I ask why you don't like RHaTO 2016? I started it solely because the scene of Jason and Bizarro talking on the floor on the first issues did things to my heart the one time I saw a panel of it, but I didn't get much farther. And I like how you talk bout issues

Oh, thank you for the compliment! Apologies for this taking so long. I had to reflect a bit. (For what it's worth, the scene you're referring to is one of my favorite scenes in RHatO and some of the best writing in the entire run).

Some caveats:

I like reading serialized comics, but I'm unpracticed in the art of reading serialized comics, so my structural analyses come largely from analyzing other forms of writing (mostly novels, some TV & film). This means that I might be expressing critiques that are not entirely fair given the nature of the medium.

I read the entire run in a couple sittings last September, so these are generally remembered vibes and not nuanced analysis. I'm open to correction if I've misremembered something.

I actually don't dislike all of RHatO 2016, even though I do strongly dislike some of the canon introduced (this canon is discussed in points 5-6, and thus contains spoilers)

Also, for brevity's sake (ha!), "RHatO" refers to the 2016 version; if I mean RHatO 2011 I'll indicate that.

Anyway, my problems with the run (cut for length):

RHatO doesn't know who Jason is. This is not a "RHatO!Jason isn't who I think Jason should be" critique (though I certainly feel some element of that as well) but rather a "Lobdell cannot decide the basics of who his version of Jason Todd is as a character." In a different run that went through the hands of multiple writers, I'd find this far more forgivable, but barring the tail end of the run, Lobdell is the sole author. Jason is by turns incredibly clever and incredibly stupid in ways that felt contradictory. I had very little sense of what he valued or cared about. Sometimes he expresses great empathy and sometimes he's bafflingly self-absorbed and the only thing that seems to determine these behaviors is what's most convenient for the plot. Don't get me wrong: there are Jason moments in RHatO that I absolutely love, but they're balanced by Jason moments that utterly confound me because I don't understand how this is the same person.

It's not an ensemble book but it's pretending to be an ensemble book. This is a fundamental issue with every iteration of RHatO (including the webtoon) because no iteration of RHatO is written as an ensemble book--Jason is always the main character. RHatO also sort of sets itself up for failure in that regard--Artemis and Bizarro are far less well-known characters with less history than Jason and would require more investment and buildup on Lobdell's part to make them more than just props, but Lobdell doesn't put in the work. Even arcs that ostensibly center Artemis or Bizarro end up feeling flat, especially because so often they operate in service to Jason, The Main Character. (Incidentally, the point when I found Artemis & Bizarro most compelling was when they were separated from Jason and allowed room to breathe and exist).

The emotional core of the story, insomuch as there is one, is between Bruce and Jason and it really, really shouldn't be. Don't get me wrong, I would read a million issues of Jason and Bruce being completely, wretchedly awful to each other, but because the emotional core lies between Bruce and Jason, and also because RHatO is trying to be an ensemble book, and also because Lobdell is very uninterested in crafting a story around an alternate emotional core, whenever the story isn't about Bruce and Jason (which is most of the time) it flounders. I'd say that's fine if Lobdell just wanted to write a fun, dumb adventure book, but the Bruce and Jason bits are too present to ignore, making the whole thing feel very off-kilter.

From a team perspective, I don't understand what Jason adds. The whole run is sold as a "dark trinity," but the role Batman plays in the Wonder Woman-Superman-Batman trinity and the role Jason plays in the Artemis-Bizarro-Red Hood trinity isn't really the same? I feel like I'm supposed think Jason deserves his place on the team because he's The Main Character, but even from a very mechanical powers and abilities perspective I don't get what he's doing there. He's not particularly clever or strategic. He doesn't have the resources Batman does. He's not the brains, especially because later arcs give that role to someone else. If I had to assign him a role I'd say he's the "heart," whatever that means, but I also fundamentally don't buy Artemis and Jason as a team or companions and would argue that Bizarro serves as the "heart" (as well as the brawn) most of the time.

(This section contains spoilers) RHatO introduces the stupidest plot threads and then proceeds to do nothing with them. Willis Todd is alive, for reasons. He's Wingman, who's just randomly part of Batwoman's Bat-Team, for reasons. He's Faye Gunn's son, making Jason Faye Gunn's grandson, for reasons. None of this has any real bearing on the plot but it does create a lot of problems for Jason's canon backstory, whatever it is at this point in time.

(This section contains spoilers) Which also, the fact that it opens with conflict with Black Mask, one of the few rogues Jason has had extensive conflict with as Red Hood, creates a nightmare of what's in continuity and what isn't. My understanding is that UtRH is in continuity, which makes literally everything about the opening act not only nonsensical, but actively confusing.

This is less a critique of the series itself, but worth noting: I generally disagree with how people rec the first half of the run (i.e. the run with Bizarro and Artemis) and not the last half of the run (the Red Hood: Outlaw part). I read the series in trade format so I don't have the issues on hand, but I think RH:O vol. 2 is way more enjoyable (at least when it comes to Jason content) than the middle sections of RHatO.

So I guess I have problems with consistency, character work, storytelling choices, and ensemble writing. I don't with it's a worthless run per se; it's certainly better than other Jason-centric stories, and I love Dexter Soy's art about as much as I dislike Kenneth Rocafort's, so that's definitely a bonus for (early) RHatO 2016. I also don't think Lobdell is a completely incompetent writer, necessarily; he's just lazy, and incurious, and generally kind of a hack, which in some ways makes it worse.

I also don't think anyone is wrong to like either version of RHatO. I am a very brittle reader with specific wants & desires from comics that are usually only ever met by accident. So, obviously, take all this with an amount of salt anywhere between a shaker and a mine.

#the mortifying ordeal of never shutting the fuck up

[far-too-many-posts-for-my-taste]

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (review)

So here we are, starting off the year with a time loop murder mystery, so picked because it comes alphabetically before everything else on my TBR (counting numerals prior to alphabetical characters). This might be a bit spoilery in places (not about the murder), so please avoid if you're very sensitive to those.

This was a fun read, and a successful mystery, but not quite a satisfying novel. It's a high-concept thing; as is gradually revealed to the protagonist, and far more quickly revealed to the peruser of the back cover, the conceit centers around a mysterious death at an English country house with a detective bound to answer by repeating his investigations day after day, waking up in the body of a new witness with each repetition.

It's a fun concept, but the full scope of the setup is both stricter and less explained (it's not a spoiler to say there are Forces At Work, but we don't really get a sense of how any of it actually functions), and the investigations, though numerous and byzantine, do seem sometimes to be far too easily accomplished by our protean hero, especially when a certain mysterious presence shows up and cannot reveal anything, until he can, for no real reason. The main character gains abilities at the end not through any effort of his own, but because of the passage of time, and, seemingly, the needs of the plot.

Turton does an admirable job of getting us to care about a protagonist whose character is, even to himself, a blank slate, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the cast, so when there are significant reveals and reversals that involve them later on, it's hard to feel much of anything about it, especially when some of the surprise and thematic depth is supposed to come from backstory that we're informed our main character feels strongly about 7/8ths of the way through the book. (I don't think this was accidental, for what it's worth, but I don't think this experiment pays off.)

The writing is zippy and does a particularly deft job with unexpected similes and clever turns of phrase, even if much of the dialogue is centered around the logistical trappings of what has or hasn't just happened (hardly a fault in a book as potentially confusing as this one). I am a serial non-predictor of the end of mysteries, and thus easy to please on that score, but I found the final layout of how the crime occurred supremely satisfying.

All in all, I quite enjoyed the book although it didn't cohere very well for me, and seemed to tire of its own concept towards the end. I would absolutely read another mystery by Stuart Turton (I'm excited to pick up his The Devil and the Dark Water at some point). There's a very strong mystery plot within the high-concept trappings of this book, and if it often fails in its ambitions, that's partially because it has so many lofty ones.

postscript: I *do* wonder how many bookstores have despaired at the similarity of this title and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

#7 1/2 deaths of evelyn hardcastle #stuart turton #mystery fiction #book review #booklr #2024 reviews

[aria-i-adagio]

WIP Ask Meme

Bold of you to think I'm organized enough to have a WIP folder @hoochieblues.

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

I'm adapting these to brief descriptions. If there are any ongoing files in my GDrive I'll include the title/first line, but those are temp then everything moves to Scrivener.

Tagging: @atypicalacademic @motherofqups @niffty24, @ankoku-jin and @hollyand-writes

Here's what we have going on right now:

(In addition to the super fun work of writing my own bloody geometry textbook because the major publishers can't be bothered to do it decently/even vaguely in line with the current academic standards.)

Thrift Shop Vikings continues. It is cringe, it is dark, it is... hopefully actually decent. It has also grown from, "eh, think I can make the Nanowrimo draft into a decent short novel" to "yeah... this is going to be three genre length novels." I want to say I'm 80% of the way to beta-reader ready draft of Act 1, but I'm scared of jinxing myself. (That said, if anyone is interested in not quite Game of Thrones level dark fantasy, with yours truly treating crack [omegaverse] seriously, HMU. This is... not for everyone, and much darker than the fic I've written.)

Once Sindre had recovered enough to not feel that he needed to sleep until the end of days and the final battle, he began waking with the sun. Misery barely described... There's an idiom: as useless as nipples on a man

Where the Elfroot Grows is not dead. It is just percolating. In fact, recently Jeanne has been very loud about being the POV character for the arrival back at Skyhold. Also, the fish out of water appeal of forcing Rhys though Halamshiral is just too damn much. Also, I feel entirely empowered to make up my own canon now.

Jeanne became one of Rhys's primary minders Scene: Getting Hawke moving Rhys wakes to a kiss pressed to the back of his neck Adrian's arm remains extended R&D Ocean

On that note, I'm not really filing the serial numbers off WTEG per se, because I think I've backed far enough up to basic fantasy tropes. Or maybe I'm filing the serial numbers off, IDK and IDC. Either way, I'm at the world-building, occasional scene writing, creating lore, boning up on history and anarchist theory stage of taking the elements I particularly like and running with them, while paying more attention to consistent characterization and general coherence in terms of theory and theology. Currently has more of a steampunk vibe, as I can't quite pull off the level of 'sweeping social change more than mage rebellion' with a thoroughly medieval world-build. I would get into my Xnity, but to the left, meanderings here, but it would turn into a thesis. Anyway, both this and Thrift Shop Vikings are engaged with the idea that anyone who believes god is on their side is as dangerous as hell, just in very different directions.

And @hollyand-writes I really do have enough of an outline for Gatsby meets Kirkwall to get somewhere with it. Just maybe not until the school year is over. Every time I drive past the road named for the local moonshiners I'm reminded/start thinking on it.

#my writing #ask memes #thrift shop vikings #wteg