← Feed

Posts

• Post #1299055

  #WordWeavers 20. How much romance is in your story? romance is a significant plotline, as is appropriate for a story with the word 'Venus' in the title. i have an optimistic view of love: love is the force that compels Lucifer to finally look beyond herself, and it eventually redeems her.

• Post #1299054

  #PennedPossibilities 962. If there was ever going to be a film or a series based upon your WIP, what do you imagine the soundtrack would be like? What genre? i imagine something like Max Richter's recomposition of Vivaldi's Four Seasons: recognizably Baroque but with a subtle modern reinterpretation. https://youtu.be/41IOkVjy3MM (too bad the original Four Seasons is about 30-40 years too young for the time period. as is anything by Bach. but hush)

• Post #1299053

  massive headache after dealing with a power outage at work (first we had to reschedule all the appointments to a sister clinic, then i drove there, then the network came back online and i had to drive back again to see the re-rescheduled appointments—all of this wasting time, and making me rush between patients) ffs, couldn't the power stay off so we could just reschedule everyone and go home?

• Post #1299052

  i always get a minor spring bloom on the Thanksgiving cactus. mine has several colours grafted on, which i did as a boredom project. the red grafts are the least likely to bloom, but i did get a couple of red flowers this time. #plants #houseplants #succulents

• Post #1299050

  finished work on the dance-off scene, for now. it's a bit of a long excerpt, but dangit, some scenes need a little more buildup to make the payoff worth it. context: Luce and Eleanor are on the run together, and aiming to cross the Channel to the continent. the ship leaves in two days, and they don't have enough money for the fare, and a few nights at the inn. a local loudmouth named Crosby has been daring passersby to wager against him in a dance-off, and he has already bested...

• Post #1299049

  #ScribesAndMakers 20. Self-promotion day. Shame optional. Boost away. my novel, Venus Verticordia, is complete, and free to read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62147545/chapters/158967184 The book is inspired by the fact that Lucifer and Venus are the same celestial object (the Morning Star). The Lucifer of this story therefore takes inspiration from both myths, a creature with the soul of Aphrodite in the body of an angel, created with the blessing of this contrary and conflicted p...

• Post #722348

  #ScribesAndMakers 21. What everyday object would you photograph as if it were art? i did a series a few years ago where i photographed a bunch of shells i got from the craft store. i shone a light behind them, which penetrated the material and made them appear to glow from within. it's debatable whether you would call these everyday objects, but they were pretty easy to find, and unremarkable if you photographed them without special staging.

• Post #649455

  #PennedPossibilities 957. Does your MC have or wear a signature color? Lucifer is often wearing something vivid purple. this has to do with decadence (purple being an outrageously expensive colour); i was also thinking of the Whore of Babylon, who is specifically mentioned to be wearing purple and scarlet. Lucifer uses her powers to shapeshift her clothes into whatever form she wants, including colour, so she doesn't have to worry about paying for these things. Eleanor, on the other hand,...

• Post #480071

  #ScribesAndMakers 01. How much time do you expect to have for creative work this month? i expect to have about as much time as i had in February. don't tell my boss but slow days for business equal productive days for writing, lol

• Post #480070

  #WritersCoffeeClub 1. What is the fundamental goal you seek to achieve with your current WIP? stories have many goals. i don't think i could narrow it down to just one, other than the fairly banal 'to tell a good story.' i wanted to express several ideas about enlightenment, individualism, failure, and forgiveness. a story invoking Venus also has to care about love, and sexuality. if i wanted to have one clear thesis, i would have written an essay, not a novel.

• Post #480069

  taking a short break now that the novel is done. it feels weird not to be writing anything, like i'm wasting my precious free time. but i know that i have to lie fallow sometimes, and work out new ideas in my imagination before they are ready for the page. maybe i can set the goal of dreaming up a title for the sequel. (i plan to have two books total, not a series.)

• Post #480068

  #WordWeavers 1. What is your greatest fear about your characters? my greatest fear was that the characters would lose the sympathy of the audience. i thought people would find Eleanor too weak, Lucifer too arrogant and selfish, and Raphael too boring. but so far, people seem to like everyone they're 'supposed' to like. nobody talks much about Raphael, though, positively or negatively. won't anyone give his older adult struggles some love? not everyone is still i...

• Post #480067

  went to a local Eastern European market and saw these fun-looking cheetos clones. online search tells me they are probably Polish. (the store had lots of other Polish goods.) maybe i should have bought a bag because i'm wondering what they taste like. i did have a nice latte and a deli sandwich. fun outing, would recommend

• Post #480066

  i spend so much time around low-information coworkers that i wonder what the percentage of low-information voters actually is. this statistic (if it exists) is not easy to search for, because of low quality sources, and likely due to subjectivity in the term. but i suspect there are more low-information voters than most people think. these people are not even strictly conservative; they often lack a coherent political philosophy, and just form opinions by reacting to their gut emotions, and rat...

• Post #480065

  ok, i lied. i tried taking a night off from writing but it stressed me out way more than knuckling down ever did. so i'm plotting an outline for another book, to stay sane. this time the setting will change from bucolic countryside to a fictional urban centre reminiscent of 17th century Brussels. the problem is that i know nothing about 17th century Brussels, and the research will be demanding. i have been to Brussels over a decade ago, and i'm going back to Bruges sometime thi...

• Post #480064

  writing forum adventures: all these young people who don't seem to understand that you can do your research in the library when the internet turns up nothing

• Post #480063

  a winter prune for my Portulacaria afra (spekboom, elephant bush). this little plant had humble beginnings but it is slowly growing more convincing as a miniature tree. P. afra is a great choice for indoor bonsai, as long as you can provide enough light. they respond predictably to pruning; the wild plant is used to being eaten by elephants, so my little trims are no problem. it is also tolerant of inconsistent watering. #plants #succulents #houseplants #bonsai

• Post #480062

  feeling like you have to dumb yourself down to fit in is a good sign that you're in an anti-intellectual space

• Post #480061

  #WritersCoffeeClub 2. Does your overall goal differ from project to project? every story will have different goals. my next book is a sequel, so it will have similar themes to the first. but where the previous book meditated a lot on failure and forgiveness, this one will likely put more emphasis on atonement for those failures. oh, and now that the two leads have run off together, there will be a lot more opportunities for sex scenes. so that will be fun to work on.

• Post #480060

  #PennedPossibilities 945. MC POV: What do you need right now? Eleanor: Right now, we need to leave town, and find somewhere safe to regroup. We have the advantage of flight on our side for the first stretch, but it's a conspicuous way to travel, so we will have to make do on foot once we've put some distance behind us. Luce says we won't be safe until we've left the country. I've never travelled before, and I've never been to the coast, or the ci...

• Post #452589

  #ScribesAndMakers 27. Splat? i used the word 'splat' exactly once, during a scene where some wannabe teenage 'witch' is trying to impress her friends by reading the entrails of a dead cat. an unserious word for an unserious exercise. 'Eleanor supposed she ought to be more afraid. But more similarly skeptical thoughts occurred to her as the spectacle went on, and the clumsy pokings of the surgery fell rather short of the drama one expected from the witch&...

• Post #359306

  @benroyce@mastodon.social @crow@cville.online i think there is a significant and unjustified shifting of blame going on when people say that normal posts have 'caused' panic attacks, nightmares, and so on. non-extreme posts are not the primary cause of mental health tailspins. a picture of a sandwich does not 'cause' someone to spiral into an eating disorder relapse. if something so innocuous sets that person off, they were already on the brink, and it's unfair to blame the...

• Post #204125

  #WritersCoffeeClub 1. How satisfied are you with your current writerly 'voice'? i made a point of developing a strong voice in the current WIP. i took inspiration from the works of Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, who all had strong voices, and i wanted the story to reflect that lineage. the techniques behind a narrative voice are hard to pin down. mostly, i have a persona in mind when i write the narration, and i bring out the narrator's idiosyncrasies by instinct...

• Post #163886

  people often wonder why certain businesses don't offer payment plans, but they severely underestimate how ruinous it is when clients stop paying their bills