End of Year Update

I’ve been fairly occupied over the holidays, and have a love-hate relationship with Christmas.  The sentiment of the holiday is wonderful but I kill myself all through December trying to pull off an amazing celebration.  Hence I’m happy it’s over with.

Needless to say, I’m behind on my writing also.  I missed a Witchfire update last Thursday.  I’m going to be working like mad to get one done on time this week also.  It’s looking a bit iffy right now.

I did come to a few realizations about my writing however.  Partially due to some quality feedback from readers.  In my Conan story for example, Tyche had no character development at the beginning or during the story.  People didn’t feel connected to her or have a reason to care about her beyond being an enemy of Set.  A problem similar to my not explaining costumes and such for the DangerBabeCentral characters I’ve been borrowing.  I hope at least I’ve developed some personalities for them all that readers can connect with.

I also keep telling people on Twitter that I want to write professionally, yet I keep getting involved deeper and deeper with my Witchfire story.  It’s a wtory I genuinely want to tell through to the conclusion, but I feel I need to be better balanced there.  I’ve written 84,081 words for it’s 8 chapters.  That’s enough for a short novel, and I’ve barely advanced the plot.  I need to be better organized, map things out better and make my chapters shorter and more concise.

I think I’ve learned more about editing the last week than actually writing, depending upon how you want to take those two examples.

On a related note, I picked up a new book called “How to Write a Novel” by Nathan Bransford.  First I have to say it’s probably one of the most helpful books on the subject I’ve found.  I’ve gone through MANY books too.  It has 47 rules on the subject.

Rule #2 is Think of an Idea (subject or genre) you love enough to neglect everything else you enjoy in life.

Essentially you have to be passionate and knowledgeable on what you’re writing.  That’s helping me focus on goals and planning better.  It means even my professional work will have some superhero stuff, and that not all of it will be smut either.  I love sex too much to turn my back on smut though, LOL.

I also downloaded Scrivener; the word processor geared towards book writers.  I’ve barely had time to play with it, but it does seem nice thus far. Some things could be done in MS Word also, but not as easily or cleanly.  It’s too early to deliver an accurate or detailed review yet, but thus far I’m liking it.  More to come as I have a chance to work with it further.

All that said, I hope everybody has a safe and amazing New Year’s Eve and an even better New Year!

 

Conan Era Story Published

I got a handful of likes on Twitter from a snippet of a Conan era story I wrote about a year or so ago.  Because of that, I decided to publish it here.  It’s only 2/3 done at this point, so I’ll need to finish it if it gets attention.

Playing the video game Conan: Exiles inspired this story.  Fair warning before anybody reads it also; the Hyborian age of Conan was 15,000 BC in the stories.  Thinking about bloodshed, violence and such were very different in that day and age.  ONLY read this story if you’re over 18 and can read it with that in mind.  The story is meant to be darkly realistic and NOT an endorsement of such behavior.

Conan – Tyche Defends Derketo’s Temple

Beyond that, there a few paragraphs that will serve as a quick primer for the story before the actual story itself…  The same place I usually put my disclaimers.

Witchfire Pt 8 Published

I finally got this one finished.  Krystal’s nearly losing her life to Count Ivanova on Halloween has major consequences when Hexanna blows off the near defeat.  Krystal’s up and down relationship with the She-Legion goes down again, and Amazing Babe reacts poorly to discovering Krystal’s true heritage.  In the middle of everything, the Aberration decides to tear up the town also.  Can anything be salvaged, and can Krystal continue to hold everything together on her own?

Witchfire, Pt 8 – Reinforcements

Hope everyone enjoys.

No Witchfire 8… Yet

I think a few of you wait for this on Thursdays. 🙂

Sadly the story just was NOT coming together this week.  I had health issues and other distractions.  What I DID get together I felt was an incoherent mess unworthy of my handful of readers.  I’d rather delay it and get it right than release a rough, half finished story.  I hope nobody’s too disappointed and I’ll do my best to make the chapter worth the wait when it comes out.

My Thoughts on BDSM

Since my half dozen (thus far) non fan fiction erotica pieces all have at least a slight element of domination and submission to them (Amy’s Seduction being the only real exception), AND I’m picking up followers on Twitter into that lifestyle, I felt I’d take a couple of minutes to spell out my thoughts on the subject.

Plain and simple, my view is that as long as it’s safe, sane and above all mutually consensual, it’s all good.  All of that requires a great deal of communication and self awareness by both parties.

I have one huge gripe with elements of the community.  That being the “if you’re not doing it MY way, it’s not really domination!” crowd.  To be blunt, that’s not only utter crap, it also tells me the Dom or Domme uttering it has no idea what they’re talking about, quite likely little or no respect for submissives, and / or massive insecurity issues.  A real dominant is going to want to talk, make sure the other person is more than just titillated, and has compatible ideas about what BDSM is.  If their ideas later drift apart on the subject, they will set the submissive free instead of trying to force them past hard limits also.

I’m fairly passionate on the issue because I used to have a virtual part-time job counseling women who were responding to ads looking for submissives on a certain free site that no longer runs personals.  Horrified by some of the “dom” ads I saw I posted my own telling submissives that their submission was a gift given, it had to be earned, that a dom should listen to your wants and needs when establishing relationship boundaries, and that it was just as much about their orgasm as his.

It was amazing and scary how many “thank you” replies I got from women with strong curiosity but who were confused and scared after ‘talking’ to abusers who told them that if they were submissive at all, they’d immediately do anything and everything the “dom” said, no questions asked, right from the moment they met.  A few of them even told me they were made to feel like they were crazy until they read my post.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m anything but a saint.  I’m proud to say I saved a few women from abusive relationships though.

It Happened Again!

For those who missed my last post, the day before yesterday, Twitter made a follow recommendation that was completely unrelated to anything I’d tweeted or searched (anywhere online), or even been near in almost a year.  It was a place I’d just been talking about however.  Since there was NO way to know otherwise, the only conclusion I can come to is that the recent conspiracy theory about various social media outlets tapping phones and computer microphones is true.

Of course there’s pure coincidence.  That’s unlikely, but people win the lottery all the time despite there being a ten times better chance of being hit by lightning, right?

Well, it happened again last night.  The TV was on and the local news was talking about a serial predator getting state paid legal representation.  I commented aloud that it sucks, but that I believe that guarantee is an important part of our legal rights.  A few minutes later I log back into Twitter and the top of my recommended follow list is the Federalist Society.

Again, they have NOTHING to base that recommendation on.  I don’t surf or search political sites, and I keep my writing completely free of politics also.  The rhetoric is just too heated and unthinking on all sides, and I do NOT want it poisoning my writing or alienating followers.  With that being the case, the only thing they have to base that recommendation on is verbal comments picked up by a PC or cellphone microphone, and almost right after said comments were made.

Facebook, Google, Twitter…  They’re all eavesdropping I guess.

OK, This is Just Creepy…

For those NOT in the know, there’s a conspiracy theory going around that social media, especially Facebook, actively taps your smart phone mic and camera to eavesdrop and target advertising to a scary level.  I saw an article the other day that explained how it was all actually done via phone GPS and merchants selling your transaction data… supposedly.  It seemed a reasonable explanation, albeit still a massive invasion of privacy.

The “SUPPOSEDLY” comes in because I just had an Orwellian moment about a half hour ago…  I logged into Twitter on my laptop, and at the very top of my suggested follows list is a place I hadn’t been within miles of in a year and had done NO online searches, etc… about.  I had just gotten done discussing the place face to face verbally with somebody else though.

And then it just magically pops up at the TOP of my list on Twitter?!?  Like hell somebody isn’t listening.  The odds otherwise of that place popping up are astronomical, especially when you factor in it’s one of the last places you’d expect to see an erotica author!

Witchfire Halloween RetCon Published

For those not familiar with it, RetCon is shorthand for ‘Retroactive Continuity’.  It’s a term that first came about in comic book circles.  They occur when the writers have mucked up a story so badly that they need to rewrite a chunk of existing history.  Sometimes they just happen when a writer  thinks they have a better idea to tell a story in a more modern way.  I’ll spare my opinion of most of those efforts.

Getting back on track, I had very limited information on Mister X’s character Hexanna when I wrote the first version of this story.  I tried to take some creative liberties and made her a character with a magic staff who didn’t actually believe in magic.  I thought it would be an interesting contradiction to explore.  Probably a bad idea to start with, and once I learned more about Hexanna’s character, I decided a re-write was in order.

Without getting preachy, I feel that if somebody writes fan fiction, they should keep it as true to form as possible to the work of the original author.  Ergo, I’m doing what I can to humanize and add some depth to the characters, but I do NOT want to change long established canon about them.  Nuff said. 🙂   Here’s the story:

Witchfire, Pt 7 – Halloween RetCon

As the name might suggest, the re-write also lets me fit the story more properly into the existing story line also.  Readers will have to suffer through an added sex scene too. 😉

I’m (not) Famous!

Just a quick update.  I had a downturn in views over the last week.  Holidays will do that I suppose, but it went back up to 17 yesterday.  Not bad considering a tweet when I post a new story is all the publicity I go for.

I jokingly say I’m famous now because I got my first referral from Google.  The big bad privacy invader knows I exist, LOL.

Work wise…  I’m trying to keep up with my once a week Witchfire story segments.  That last one was too bloody long though.  But as I’ve said previously, the whole point is to get more practice.  I’m putting out the stories so fast that I don’t feel I’m getting writing practice (in terms of improving sentence structure, etc…) but it is helping my imagination and just being able to put a general story together as I try to put myself in the characters’ shoes and spin a plot as well.

This upcoming week I’m working on a rewrite of the Halloween story I did that ties in better to the main Witchfire series.  I’m also working on what I hope will eventually be my first published for sale story (ie NOT fan fiction).  Depending upon time and mood, I may even get other things written.

By the way…  Interesting note for my fellow readers and bloggers: My VPN blocks the “Like” button from showing up.  It doesn’t affect the Comments options at all though.  Go figure…  I have to shut off my VPN to give folks a “Like”, so if you get one, rest assured I meant it.  🙂