Hi, all. Sorry for the radio silence. A bunch of stuff piled up on me all at once. I had a phone interview for a job I really want, and might get yet. Yay.

Circlet is re-running several pieces of serial fiction, which means I have been sitting here queueing up several hundred blog posts for them. The Prince's Boy (M/M, BDSM, NSFW, intensely smutty from about chapter 5 on out) is currently running on Wednesdays; Capricious (mainly M/F with visitors of all genders, paranormal, intensely smutty from sentence one) will run on Tuesdays, starting November 1; Incubus Tales: A Thousand Words (M/M, light and fluffy, the porn pretty much is the plot) will be on Thursdays, starting in December. We hope to also start Chocolatiers of the High Winds (M/M, proper romance, adorably Final Fantasy-esque and full of airships and chocolate) in January 2018, but we're waiting on the author, H B Kurtzwilde, to present us with some bonus material he can't stop chattering about. If you're impatient enough to pay for any of these, you can by ebooks and paperbacks on Circlet.com.

On top of that, I have an XXX-Mas Advent Calendar to pull together for Circlet, and a less porny one for me. If you're new this year, I run daily posts of holiday-oriented things in December, basically so I can go on "vacation" if I want. I also decorate das Rathaus, and feed the critters their own little Ratmas Eve Dinner. (I say "little." It's always like twice as much as they can manage to eat, and they end up wallowing in the leftovers. Plus their holiday "garlands" are made of Cheerios.) If it comes out pretty, I post pictures. I try to get out to the tree on Boston Common and other local events, but it's cold out and I'm left by myself a lot as people with reasonable families goes to visit theirs, so mainly I work and stare at the internet. I do have something to do on Christmas Eve: I volunteer to usher for The Slutcracker, an infamously dirty burlesque version of the traditional Nutcracker ballet.

All of my spare brain space is currently being consumed by another random thing, which is that about a week and a half ago, a novel I've had in my head for almost a decade now suddenly and unexpectedly acquired a point. I don't usually do NaNoWriMo, but the impulse struck me this year, so I have about 36 hours to finish plotting the thing out well enough to write scenes I can actually use. Circlet fans may be disappointed to hear it is not at all naughty, and in fact the single sex scene in it refuses to be written out, probably because of awkwardness. If it comes out readable, it would likely be classed as a YA novel, just because the main character is young, and her youth informs the plot. I don't know if anyone would deign to publish it; the moral of the story is shaping up to be less "stay in school, don't do drugs" than "sometimes your elders are full of shit". The fact that this is not currently a popular conclusion in the mainstream media is in fact part of the point.

Oddly enough, the majority of important characters in it are female, particularly on the protagonist's side. I didn't do it on purpose, that's just how it shook out. I have no idea how many characters might be queer; the extent to which sexual orientation figures in this particular novel is that the POV main character happens to be straight and her romantic foil is male. One of the peripheral characters is definitely a lesbian, though it has no bearing on this protagonist's story. (Some chunks of background are detailed enough to be novels of their own; one of them revolves around the long-ago murder of her de facto wife.)

Gender and orientation are actually not things I specifically plot out when I start building stories -- they generally just kind of happen, becoming apparent when I throw characters into a setting and they start doing things. (I figured out the abovementioned lady was queer when she started crushing badly on another woman during the main plot. I figured out that it was requited when I noticed that I was picturing the apartment they later shared as having one bedroom, and one double bed.) I realize a lot of authors pick these things intentionally, but I've never had much luck doing that. The imaginary people just sort of go and interact according to their own internal rules, which may or may not be apparent until stuff happens. I move the characters by pulling strings on the universe, not the other way around.

I'm torn on whether I want to show anyone my NaNo results as they happen. I normally edit pieces as I go; the essays here mutate continually while I'm typing them, get a couple of line edit and last-chance-to-delete-embarrassing-things passes when they're done, and then get posted as-is. Casual internet blogging has a much higher allowance for acceptable warts than you get in other media. I'm considering releasing the better bits of the NaNo novel to my Patreon subscribers as they occur. Quite probably out of order, since I don't know if I'll be writing this turkey in linear fashion. I may also serialize the finished product and/or offer an ebook as a Patreon bonus. Dunno. I'd like to release a CreateSpace paperback of something someday, but now that I know how to do it right, I can't make myself do it wrong, and I don't have the funds to pay an editor to patch up my mental blind spots.

Comments

  1. Crossing my fingers for you on the job front.

    The moral of your story being "sometimes your elders are full of shit" should not be an obstacle to eventual publication. There are plenty of YA books with that message already, and even if some big publishers didn't like it, there are tons of little independent presses.

    Best wishes for NaNoWriMo!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are other points that might not go over so well, like "the self-esteem/positive thinking movements are so stupid they are actually causing damage". And I know about indie presses; I work for one. If I am going to have to be most of my own publicity machine, which is what happens when you publish with someone who isn't gargantuan, I might as well do it the less aggravating way and self-publish via Amazon. The book can be picked up by a commercial house later, if someone wants to, and I get to make hilariously small amounts of money on it in the meantime, rather than just leaking cash printing and sending out manuscripts.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The mystery of "Himmmm"

Fun things to feed rats