What have I been up to? Up to no good? Hardly! Too old for much mischief anymore it seems. Or rather, I just don’t have the energy. Did manage to get a few things done this week though!
Fiction
Toadie’s Gift
First release from the rounds of Scribopile. It’s an old story of mine that I felt could be spruced up. Hopefully I will have plenty more to come soon.
The Ups and Downs of Being a Writer
Remember how I said ages ago that my therapist is awesome? She still totally kicks ass. Today I just went in to discuss with her how I’ve been struggling with rebooting the Nusquamton series. She’s known about it ever since I launched here it’s just I never read any of it to her. The cool thing is since I’ve started writing it I’ve been able to discuss some things with her that I haven’t been able to discuss with anyone before – like that reoccurring dream. We talked about that again today, but that wasn’t the cool thing. Continue reading
Nusquamton is being Rebooted
Something unexpected and interesting has come to my attention over on Scribophile. As you know my novel and the responses to it for the most part are frustrating to me. It means I’m not doing something right. Thomas isn’t resonating with anyone. And for someone like me who is emotionally driven and prefers to write emotionally driven stories, this is bad – real bad. I feel like I need to pull it off the shelves of Scrib and seriously look at what the hell I’m doing with this and perhaps reboot the entire damn thing instead of repeatedly polishing the first chapter that isn’t doing what I need and want it to do. It’s becoming a beast that isn’t my own. Continue reading
Sleepless Thoughts on Writing
It’s 5am and I’m still not able to sleep. No I don’t want a sleep aid. My dreams are generally weird enough without them. I’d use alcohol more often but Topamax don’t seem to mix well with it in my system. And this is with just a low dose – or so the med clinic loves to remind me every time I go in. Hurray for pharmaceutical sensitivity, I guess? Continue reading
The Demons that Spare Us
This is what I came up with for Chaos Pen Challenge #4. I think officially I missed the element of “economic crisis” in the challenge set, unless you want to count the need to produce babies an economic challenge for a kingdom. I mean… I don’t know? It’s a long stretch, I know. Shoot me. Bleh. I still haven’t figured out in my head why that’s even a thing for these people. It just is. Why aren’t they having babies? Why is crossbreeding bad for the upper class? Why are half-breeds rare to begin with? I’m running around with species on my pages I know nothing about. @_@
It was hard for me to write this piece. It was difficult for me to be in Angelia’s head because I have felt the things she feels and for similar reasons (but not exact). And there is one in entire scene I “cheated” and pulled the fade to black. I hope it’s clear what happened without needing the explicit visual details. Essentially this is a story about domestic violence in a fantasy setting and because it’s a fantasy story and it’s my blog I will say she does get rescued. Yeah I know… SPOILERS. I didn’t say how. You have to read it find out.
The other thing is, thanks to using solely randomized challenges and prompts continuity and facts and whatnot can some times get wonky. This story already messed up some info that was revealed in the last story. So I’m just going to apologize ahead of time for that. But I suppose if this ever turned itself into a book… that’s what revision is for?
Anyhow, anyone that’s just joining me in this weird randomized serial adventure, you can find it all here. As always comments are welcome. Let me know what you think.
Writing Romance and Erotica is Still Awkward
It turns out writing romantic/erotic fiction has become more complicated for me than in years past than I previously thought and posted about. You can recap that discussion over here.
I have some theories on this as to why, but the Chaos Pen series keeps trying to go down that route. Maybe it’s self therapy (torture) by way of writing. I mean I have been using the word demon in all the titles thus far. Doesn’t help that for me hypomania tends to bring hypersexuality and now thanks to PTSD it’s a triggering experience.
So I’m finding that my writing has got this push-pull thing going on that is difficult for me. The hypersexual part of my brain is bubbling up, whispering in my ear with all sorts of thoughts but then the PTSD rears its head and brings in the ugly.
I really don’t know what to do with this. A part of me says I should keep at it, face it, and let it out. I will say that most of what I’ve written so far has never happened to me in life. It’s just bred from the things that has – if that makes sense? I suppose that’s what writers do best. They take one truth and spin it into a story that will resonate with as many people as they can.
The Demons that Charm Us – Part 2
Here is the revised edition of Part 2 for this story. As I said before, this is pretty much the same story but from a different character’s point of view. So some scenes are kind of the same, but you do get different information. I feel this character reveals more of what’s going on. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet and you would like to, CLICK HERE. Scrivener word count for Part 2 is 9,364 so once again it’s longer than my previous Chaos Pen short stories. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to post your comments below.
The Demons that Charm Us – Part 1
Well this took me an unexpected 8 days to write. I did have to split it into two parts. Here is the first part. Hopefully it’s properly revised and polished otherwise I’ll be back to tweak it. According to Scrivener, it’s 9,171 words long so it’s a bit longer than most short stories I guess.
I still need to work on Part 2 which will be the same story, but using the point of view of the other character. With the unedited two parts blended together the story came out to be a little over 20k words long. I haven’t decided which I liked better. Honestly I could probably work on Part 1 a little longer, but I think I need a different set of eyes and after I’ve worked on the other half of it. Part 2 reveals a ton of information and I’ve debated on whether I ought to release it at all. Together though they potentially provide a platform for a story arc I didn’t plan for. This randomized challenge launched plot bunnies everywhere. Pretty sad that I only intended for 3k per short story. This just ran away on me like a beast.
Anyhow, I hope you enjoy Part 1. Your thoughts on it as you wait for Part 2 are welcomed.
And of course, here is the link with the random prompts used for it:
The Demons That Drive Us
Sorry this came out later than planned. Because, Thanksgiving.
Here is the link for the Chaos Pen Challenge #2 on the Writing Hallow used for this.