kittydesade: A white feather quill laying across an open book with yellowed pages (am scribing)
Day 3: Simon "Spike" Kyne
Hm. This one required more edits, given that I've decided to smash this in with the rest of the Blasted Lands.

Spike was originally Simon, junior, named for his father whom he is rapidly growing up to resemble. He is the younger by two minutes.

His weather powers are less active than Chloe’s, but his weather predictions are more accurate and he is able to sense the most minute changes in the wind, the temperature, the rainfall, everything. There may be other powers manifest, but he hasn't discovered them yet, although he has an uncanny knack for dowsing. (He's unwilling to admit that this is a part of his magic.) He also has more physical manifestations than she does, color-swirling eyes and black feathery wings that spring out from his shoulders when he shifts his form. The rest of his form is more human, although his eyes go solid dark blue.

Spike has lived with most of this for all his life, except the shape shifting. Perhaps it was easier for him to accept his differences because his powers are more passive, or maybe it was just a difference in temperament. He is much more easy-going than Chloe, more patient, more willing to forgive or make allowances in the effort to make friends than she is. He is also much less afraid of what might be or what might have been.

However, Spike is also a great deal more apathetic than Chloe. Rather than seek out a solution to a problem he is more likely to wait it out or ignore it and hope it goes away. He is also more passive aggressive, taking the martyred position instead of forcing a concentration, and very good at the directed guilt trip.

Spike guilted his sister for a year about their father leaving, an act which caused a subtle but deep rift between them for two years after. Eventually they mended their differences, but it was a hard time for both of them, and made him all the more inclined to cling to her and protect her, as if to make up for what he put her through out of his own anger. He has always loved his father, looking up to him, and felt a little out of place in a household with two strong women. He idolized the shopkeeper, Carlton, after a while, out of a need for some kind of strong male role model. He does not, however, consider his mother or his sister unwomanly, and has defended their behavior and their actions to many in the town on several occasions.

Spike, like his sister, is a hard worker. He is looked on with some favor in the towns because he is willing to get his hands dirty to help them, and freely offers up his forecasts in order to help with planting and the harvest. He does not object to their whispering behind his back, although it does hurt him when he is depressed, vulnerable, or when he stops to think about it. He will take the pseudo-acceptance if he can get it; although he does see the difference he doesn’t remark on it to anyone but his twin.

Spike tries to be an everyman, family sort of person, which leads to arguments about whether or not he is trying to be normal. He isn’t, although he is glad he doesn’t have the more active or aggressive powers. But he isn’t bothered by the fact that he’s different either, except in that it makes people treat him oddly or badly. It’s simply a part of himself that he feels he has to learn to live with, the way tall people have to learn to live with their height. This matter-of-fact and relatively calm attitude puzzles Chloe but comes as a relief to their mother, who finds the her children to be a tempest in a teapot at the best of times.
kittydesade: (Default)
Day 2: Chloe
It turns out I'm actually lifting this with only minor edits from something I wrote... when was this document created. Oh, goodie, March of 2006, god this is old.

Chloe Kyne is fifteen when she starts to lose control of her powers. Her father has been away for seven years by this point, and it is not all that she hoped it would be. She was eight when they had their last fight, when she yelled at him that it would have been better if he’d never come back, and she had thought it would make their lives better. It didn’t.

The smaller parts of her powers, the calling rain and the ability to feel the wind and electricity, those parts she enjoys. The larger parts of her powers, the fact that they’re tied into her emotions and that it can give her migraines and spiral out of control if she isn’t careful, those parts scare her and make her cranky and moody. It gets worse when puberty hits and she has only somewhat of an idea what’s happening to her. Spike and Chloe have manifested different powers, different aspects, and she feels cut off from her only companion in that way, as well.

Like her mother, Chloe is a loner. She’s perfectly content to sit around by herself and make things out of the earth, garden, build something with tools, or read a book. She’s comfortable inside her own head and has few friends, all of them connected to the family in some way or another. She also is impatient with the people in the town, figuring that it’s pointless to try and change their mind about her and that if they aren’t willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, she shouldn’t have to tolerate or extend her hand to them. She is civil in school and civil to the townspeople, but that’s the extent of it. They consider her to have airs and graces, and don’t like her for that as much as for her strange powers, but she doesn’t know or see this.

Chloe is scared more of the time than she’s willing to admit. Scared of her powers, scared of her solitude, scared of her future. She doesn’t want to be stuck on the farm the rest of her life, but at the same time she’s too afraid to go out and seek other options. She definitely doesn't want to turn into a pet rainmaker for the town, though it's always been one of the more fertile areas of the Blasted Lands. Though Spike has a plan for the future, she doesn’t, and she both resents and admires him for that. Admires because he is capable, strong, resents because she doesn’t want to be hanging onto him the rest of his life and yet she also doesn’t want to lose him. Her mother is a fixture in her life, always been there, always will be. Her father is a source of much confusion; she is puzzled by his love for her, and hates him for making her into someone who can never be normal.

Through talking to the gods few magicians and sorcerers who come through town she realizes that she is more at home among them than she is in the town. She enjoys not only feeling important, but also dealing with large-scale matters, fixing things and keeping a kind of order on a general level. Being with the gods self-styled immortals, or as good as as far as she knows also gives her a sense of peace she has never found at the farmhouse, although if asked she couldn’t pin down exactly why. Some of them scare her, but the ones she met are nice and she considers them friends, or rather will after Violet is revealed to be a conspirator and not her friend after all. With them, she finds acceptance of herself and the manifestation of the storms in her blood, she finds a way to make peace with who and what she is.

OC October:

Oct. 1st, 2015 10:32 pm
kittydesade: (nameless is dubious)
This is entirely [profile] bethany_lauren and [personal profile] kikibug13's faults.

Day 1: The King

King Lathan, or King Sluagh as I called him before I gave him a name, is one of the Kings in the House of Oak and Ash, among several other titles I will surely give him at some point. Possibly involving a Lord of the Northern Marches or Reaches or some such ridiculousness. He's a Sluagh king in a largely Daoine Sidhe controlled territory, which makes them pissy and him pissier and nervous, especially since it's contested land with the Sluagh and the Fomori and has been for quite some time. Before he ruled, it went back and forth for several hundred years.

The House of Oak and Ash, and particularly the British Isles branch, have suffered from a lack of new blood for a considerable while going back at least two thousand years. When I say new blood I mean rather acceptable new blood, because with the various incursions and traders came new blood in the fae worlds as well, but several factions didn't welcome the new fae into their beds or at least into their families, and sadly these were the ruling factions. This led to a slow decline in fertility and population as emigration and conflict happened, decimating (in the classical sense, yes) the ruling fae and forcing them to pick and choose their mates carefully. A little over a thousand years ago, the Sluagh King, knowing that he was unpopular regardless for being a Sluagh among the fair folk, hatched a plan. He would impregnate several human women who were chosen for affinity to the fae and hope for the best, hope that an heir would come out of it sooner or later. One did, in fact two did but one was sickly and died within a century, and the second he didn't find until nearly a thousand years later.

Lathan has some profound control issues, as one might expect when you're a king of a race of conniving selfish jerkwads who have had plenty of time to practice being conniving, being selfish, and being jerkwads. Then again he also chose to be one of them many, many centuries ago, and he succeeded, and he's very good at it. It's how he's survived so long.

He doesn't appear to have any emotional connections, not any profound ones at least. He lacks the trust necessary for it, and he doesn't appear to feel the lack of it. Or at least he hasn't shown me yet. It's possible if I do some stories from his point of view that'll turn up, but I haven't the reasons or inclination to yet.
kittydesade: (Default)
Okay, since I've seen this all over my flist and Network lately: When you see this, share lines from 3 random WIPs.

Three original fics:
Sandborn
What she would have done, she decided in a fit of honesty so sharp she figured she might cut herself on it, was either die where she was of thirst or eventually pulled herself together and gone on to the next village. Where they might or might not have taken her in. There was enough wealth in her father's hacienda that she might have been able to make her own way. Or she might not.

Untitled
She dropped her fork onto the plate at the right angle to send a piece of wet chicken flying into his face. It was so perfect he didn't think she could have done it on purpose. The argument stopped for a handful of minutes, long enough for the girls to laugh, him to laugh, one of them to grab a napkin, and him to mop off his face.

Untitled Beauty Kincaid dime novel
"Please don't," a third voice spoke up. Her new friend. If she could call him friend for speaking up like this.

"Why?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the man whose balls she held on the barrel of her gun.

"Well, for one, I'm enjoying the first hot sandwich I've had in a fortnight."


Bonus fanfic:
Untitled Grant Ward Redemption Epic
He'd availed himself of Hydra and SHIELD technology both, and just because there weren't cameras there didn't mean they hadn't been hidden better than he could see with his own two eyes. But he didn't hear any background electric hum. He wasn't even sure these people had computers. The library still had a paper card catalog, for God's sake.
kittydesade: (this time i believe)
Gaeilge )

Well, um. Apart from the sixteen hour blogging day which happened on Saturday, Sunday was a paragon of getting unexpected shit done. Such as putting together my desk (finally) (there is a picture) and making closer friends with someone who I strongly suspect is going to get abbreviated simply to "our knight" after a while and when the frell did this happen. What lives choices.

(Yes, I'm watching Farscape again. Or listening to it. What have you.)

So, yes. It looks like the new year isn't going to be any less chaotic than the last one, I have no idea what to do with that. I mean, apart from keep doing my work the best that I can, which goes without saying, but what the hell if shit is going to keep going sideways for better or for worse like it did last year. Last year we made friends on the cast and production crew of two fucking TV shows. Our blog skyrocketed in attention. I made friends with writers. I self-published a dime novel and a full-length anthology. This year? Goddess knows.

At least a couple of those things won't happen without help, though, so okay. Today will be White Lightning day. In the evening, Person of Interest, which while I don't expect it to get done before Friday, it'd be nice if I could pull off a miracle and do it by Wednesday night. Saturday was just too full of blogging to give me any brainpower for Sunday. If I catch up adequately with White Lightning today, there will also be Sandborn and finishing a couple dime novels. That ought to give me more than enough to do for the next few days. And after that, well. Keep on keeping on.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (two in red)
Gaeilge )

All right, let's assume for the sake of me not going stir crazy that these sniffles are just my standard morning sniffles and that I'm not coming down sick again, or relapsing, or anything like that, mmkay?

'kay.

Didn't actually get the house cleaned as I intended, but I did get a fair amount of rest, which after the last two weeks was sorely fucking needed. TV was watched, silly fanfiction was written (more in the Darcy/Loki cycle, which gave me ideas for more fanfic, which is now sort of being worked on slowly. Also need to finish this other thing) and generally very little was done. I've not done much of doing little lately. I'd forgotten how good it can feel.

I'm sure stuff's going on today at work, but damned if I can remember what. I know we have a buttload of basket materials coming in. Maybe in between that I can get some more fanfiction written and some of White Lightning re-read, because that's the next thing to do, since that's this winter's Nanonvel. Completing that, more to specifications. I can't do much about the timeline right now without completely going through and diagramming and restructuring. (Which I might try to do anyway, but more when I'm at home.) I suppose I can go through my notes, which at least I took notes on the outline rather than in the text of the novel where it'd be harder to access, and see what else is going on. The whole thing didn't turn out quite as I'd expected. Then again, when does it ever.

So, I guess I have that to do. And bashing Nerd Girls into something resembling better shape so I can start that up again in December. I keep thinking I'm missing something, which might be Sandborn, which would be my brain not having caught up with my rescheduling. Hopefully that's all it is. And, you know, the endless blogwork. But that's always there till the backlog gets caught up.
kittydesade: (sweet pea)
Gaeilge )

Apparently I'm going in to work today because the Guild Show is this weekend, the fiber fair is next weekend, my aunt isn't actually as ablebodied as she likes to pretend she is, and I'm not as sick as I want to pretend I am. Or sick at all, really. And I'd feel guilty if I took a sick day and skived off work on a day when I didn't really need to but I really, really want to. Maybe after the trade shows. Maybe I will get a break ever if I just refuse to go to the doctor ever and break both my arms. Why no, I'm not resentful of a certain ditzy co-worker at all.

At any rate. Gods and Monsters almost finished yesterday, now I just need to finish it tonight. Hopefully. Today, the only thing I'm writing is Nerd Girls, and please dear god let today be less chaotic than yesterday. I think I'm giving up on getting Halloween decorations made until at least tomorrow night, if not this weekend. They're not even that hard! I just have no goddamn time. The gargoyles are still in the boy's car, but those can go out when the rest of the decorations are out. On the other hand, ooh. Maybe if we still have black felting fiber I can make some spiders to go in/with things. That would be at least some use of my time at work, and it's not like we don't have bushes and trees we can put them in. Okay, so it's not that bad.

Nerd Girls, and maybe reading over White Lightning, what I have done of it, and seeing how I need to rewrite the beginning/how much I need to write of the end. If I use what I have already and try and blend the two together, which might work since I don't think my writing has changed too much since I started, or if I try to write entirely from scratch. Nano dictates that I write entirely from scratch, but if I have a Nerd Girls draft by then I might just try to write something else entirely from scratch at that point. It's not like I have a dearth of novels to write.

Feeling less overwhelmed and like I have no goddamn time to do everything I want to do today. I just need a couple good days where I can get caught up on Nerd Girls even though I haven't actually promised that on a deadline to anyone. Because my brain is weird like that.
kittydesade: (black ice)
Gaeilge )

HAH. By George she's got it! That only took about a week to learn one fucking noun form. Irksome.

Speaking of things I may have almost got, am on the homestretch of getting Black Ice finished, which is to say making sure all the bracket notes are taken out and the typos fixed and the random little quirks of words that make one go "... the fuck was she thinking?" are out. This generally means I'm swinging wildly from "oh god another one can't we just be done with this already" to "WAHEEEYYY THIS IS AWESOME" and back again. Being sick for most of yesterday didn't help. I suppose technically I was sick for most of the weekend, but at least part of the weekend I was sitting at a computer typing furiously and with many expletives about Haven. Which is to say that recapalypse Is out. Only 13k this time! And apart from that, what, I have dime novels to finish and Nerd Girls to do? Black Ice first.

And then resting my damn wrist from this massive RSI flare-up. It's not even that painful, just persistent and I haven't given it time to properly rest. We'll see how the next few days go, I guess. I should plug in my headset and start doing Dragon again for the next few evenings, but I don't have it installed on my work computer, which means if I want to get writing done at work, I'm kind of screwed. Maybe it's time for piles of anti inflammatories for a bit.

I have been blessed with a windfall (or am soon to be) which means trying to figure out all those things I was bemoaning that I didn't have the money to just go out and buy. It figures that as soon as that happens, I don't actually remember what I was going to go out and buy. Boots, yes, but what else? Probably what I'll end up doing is continuing to slowly clean the house and write things down as they come to me, and see how far I can stretch this windfall budget thing. I do love my family, though. Yes, these two things are related. Boots! Shiny black stompy boots.

What else happened over the weekend. I finally got around to seeing the pilot of the Blacklist, which had been sitting around. The boy and I both watched it together, and share the opinion that this show might not be around for much longer. They seem to have made the grievous error of making James Spader the smirking manipulative badass at the expense of the competence of the agents, which makes me want to smack everyone. Spader is doing what he does best, which is smirking and smarming all over everything, delivering smug speeches and other words that start with s (and sometimes end in y) (this is commonly known as Spadering) but everyone else is rather bland. Harry Lennix is wasted on this show, and I find myself not a little bit invested in the mysteries the pilot presented. Yeah. Unimpressed. I'm not sure what other pilots are still on there that I have to see, but so far it seems like the best pilot of the lot this season is Sleepy Hollow.

Right. I should go do that exercising thing if I want to stay awake at all today. Also, there may still be some pumpkin pie.
kittydesade: by <user name="nope"> (novel idea)
Gaeilge )

So. Podcasting went fairly well! I think. I hope. I got to be erudite and vulgar all at the same time, [personal profile] lireavue and I got to be Voltron. We amused our hosts. I think it went well. Now I'm faintly nervous about how it did go, but oh well. I may be more nervous now than I was yesterday. Not more nervous than I was before Tuesday, though. Heh.

So glad it's Friday. Tired, sleepy, want to get stuff done. Today's writing I think will be finishing clearing out the edits in Black Ice in the morning, dime novel in the afternoon, supplemental docs in the evening. Which should hopefully get me to the weekend with less to do around the Haven recaplysis and the Person of Interest recaplysis that I want to try and get most of done on Sunday. Dear god there's too much crap going on. And also what the hell, why is it suddenly a very short time till book birthday? I'm trying very hard not to let myself think about it, because if I think about it I will panic. Just keep going to the next step, and the one after that, and the one after that.

The more I think about Agent Square-Jaw's role in the show the more I think he really is there to play the straight man. Not that I think that's necessarily a good thing. Still, a few more episodes and we'll see.

It's Friday. I'm really glad it's Friday. I still want a week off work to more leisurely catch up on everything, but at least I get some sleep. A little more sleep than before on account of not having to wake up immediately. I slept in a bit today on account of not having early morning shit to do and it was glorious. And it doesn't look like I have much in the way of incoming, and I don't think I have much in the way of outgoing either, so. Let's see how much I get done today. And in addition to the supplemental douments I just now realized I should get the scene by scene done on Nerd Girls AUGH. Scene by scene and promo materials. Sigh. To work, then. Why can't I just get paid enough to do this shit all day?
kittydesade: (anton is my anti-drug)
Russian: Маленькая девочка и коробка )

Haven't done that for a couple of days both because it's been really busy at work (we're down two people and argh) and because I've hit that point again where every time I look at what I've done I'm convincing myself I suck at this and I'm never going to be any good at it and just go ahead and quit now before you try to speak Russian to someone and embarrass yourself. I hate this stage. It's basically level grinding. Also I hate this stage because I hate feeling bad about myself, but doesn't everyone?

One correction at a time. Seriously. There is no need to scream, throw your hands in the air, and give up on everything, self. No table flipping just because you didn't understand how to properly phrase a single fucking sentence.

(How I ever got through school without getting kicked out for either dropping classes when I got annoyed with them or for getting violent when frustrated I'll never know. Maybe it's just me in isolation.)

I did at least get the first draft of this week's Gods and Monsters done, which means tonight is edits and dime novels and tomorrow is all dime novels. If I get all my edits done. I've definitely hit the Gods and Monsters boggy middle part, which is sad because this should be the exciting end. And yet, not so much. The last uphill push of the boulder? Anyway, that'll be done soon, and then I can get back to freaking out about what happens when Black Ice goes live. Fun stuff!

... I think I need to rewatch Night Watch or something.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (sherlock and kitten)
Маленькая девочка и коробка )

Oh, right. Noon is the hour of doing my Russian. Oops.

There. That's that done. This story's coming along much quicker than the other one, although I kind of started it to be a Pandora story and I think it's going to turn into something else. Oops.

I'm saying oops a lot today.

So, in the last couple of hours I have come up with a third dime novel to add to the two I'm attempting (and failing) to work on at the moment, finally come up with a Nerd Girls outline that... may be too dark for a young adult ish novel in that that's who I'm writing about and likely who my target audience is. (Look, it's Nerd Girls, not Nerd Women, yes?), debated going back to White Lightning and finishing or just starting it over again for Nano, leaning towards going back and finishing but argh, and started edits on the last and largest part of Black Ice. My brain is running a thousand miles a minute and it will not fucking stop. I'm pretty sure it will still be like this if I ever get to a point where I can write for a living, but goddamn. My head hurts and I feel dizzy. Where's the flow chart of projects or something.

I think what I'm going to do today is try and work on two dime novels and Black Ice edits during the day, and then Person of Interest blog in the evening, except when I'm watching Miss Fisher. With any luck I can make some progress on something that way without having my head explode from all the things I want to do and all the directions I want to travel in.

Mostly right now I just want to curl up with a bowl of soup and stare at pictures of Clark Gregg. Tomato soup. Definitely.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (occasionally five - sam)
Gaeilge )

Today's kick: All Coulson all the time. Technically this started yesterday, but I needed to close out what I could of the Jack Carter of Eureka obsession, and now it's down to the Son of Coul. I'd say this is inexplicable except for the part where between the new promo pictures for Agents of SHIELD and the debut next week it's entirely explicable. No apologies.

I will remember my goddamn dictionary today. I really will. Aside from that I have edits to do on today's Gods and Monsters and that's it, which is for once pretty amazing. And I'm relatively up to date on edits for Black Ice, and now that I have some idea of how easy it is to publish an eBook on Lulu I am MUCH more sanguine about my ability to get it final-formatted in a weekend, which means I can take today and tomorrow to finish Blood in the Gutters edits and the supplemental documents and everything. The most annoying part will be the cover art. Not difficult, just annoying, trying to figure out how to format it and everything.

I have sold four! Four dime novels! I have no idea to whom, I'm not sure I care, I'm just still giddy over the success of having sold things. Even if it amounts to very, very tiny sales. Also giddy over how easy it is to crank out dime novels, which, for me? Stupidly easy. I think my brain is seizing on this because my Nerd Girls outline is giving me fits. Some of it broke in the middle of the night last night, but the rest of it? Ugh. Absolutely nothing. On the plus side, I guess, I have ideas for a handful of other dime novels, so we'll see how they do. And then maybe tonight and tomorrow I can get the episode of Person of Interest that I'm currently working on finished, and do a whole other one on Sunday! It would be magical if I could do that. We're already doing only one Haven episode on Saturday! The one that airs Friday! It's like magic when we have only currently airing episodes to do! God help us all when Grimm comes back, though.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (beautiful day)
Gaeilge )

One of these days I will stop leaving my damn dictionary at home and just buy a dictionary to keep at work so I can look shit up. Today is apparently not that day, so Russian will be done by going back and forth via Google translate and trying to figure out if it's a decent translation or not, plus looking in some of the halfassed dictionaries online. What fun.

And on the other hand I, um. May have done a thing. It may be the first of many things or I may run screaming in terror, I'm not sure yet. Basically in preparation for self-publishing Black Ice (AUGH) I published a 10k word short story and put it up for sale for $1.99. Because I'm not going to charge that much for a 10k short story. Not quite a novella. Something. My categorizations are fuzzy. Anyway, that happened yesterday. It's the first time in a long time I've felt close to losing my lunch out of nerves. I don't like that feeling. Let's not do it again.

Anyway. Today I have at least one set of edits to do and an outline to prep, and then maybe I'll get started on some other stories I've had running around for a while that would make good dime novels. After I finish blogging everything, doing everything, posting everything, etc. No, I kid, there's actually not that much to do, it's just that I remembered about it all at once.

It's funny. Actually putting something of mine up there for sale in such a way that people can read it is a big thing for me, and I feel like I should have more to say other than "oh god gonna puke." I don't. Other than maybe "oooh now I need to write more of these." And also "when the shit did ten thousand words get so easy to write?" I have no idea what's going on here. But this actually, as a general sense of things, is much, much easier than sending shit out to publishing companies, especially since whether or not I eat is not dependent on whether or not I sell things. I have a dayjob. This is play money and my own amusement and ego and for the sake of telling these stories to the world and maybe getting a little bit paid for my efforts. And I can kind of live with this. Even if I'm still fairly terrified of putting my stuff out there where people can read.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (carnival magician)
Gaeilge )

I'm deeply entertained that I'm doing my Irish exercises while Copper plays in the background. I'm also not entirely sure that's enough practice at word mutations, but I'm out of exercises and it's not like they'll go away just for continuing on in the book. I'll review some more tomorrow.

Body still hurts in the morning from dancing. Though I got more done this morning than I did yesterday, on account of ... well, I don't know what on account of since I had an interrupted sleep last night, too. Maybe just being more aware of it and taking greater efficiency. I did at least almost get a Gods and Monsters draft done, but not much else. Too damn tired. Getting really tired of interrupted sleep, but tonight I wont have the boy coming down for a nap before I go to bed and getting up because night shift after I fall asleep. Extra bonus not appreciating this points because at two in the morning, if I wake up enough to think coherently, I fuss about needing to get a physical and maybe needing to crawl under the house to patch the holes and all kinds of things, and then this spirals down into I'm a bad homeowner and a bad adult and fucking wolves.

Definitely wolves though, because this morning it's all "oh fine, I guess I have to do my routines" and getting on with it.

Finishing up one story, finishing up edits, still need to finish up Phryne inna Jaeger. Which is still the most amusing thing ever. And still cleaning, slowly, the house, but that's a permanent thing. Some of the cleaning involves finding homes for things that have been in boxes these many past weeks. Life goes on. I'm still debating whether or not to do Yuletide this year, I just have so much work to do that fitting one more thing in might push it over the edge. Alas, I'm not getting paid enough for writing this year that I can take days off my job to do it. Or hours. Maybe if I was making any money at writing I would do the shipping and take the rest of the afternoon off, but oh well. We'll see what happens come signup time.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (black ice)
No Russian today, on account of I'm trying to still figure out what to do with it. Go back to translating the Gods and Monsters blurb? Start writing 100 word short stories? In Russian? That's a terrifying thought.

Not quite so much as what I'm doing now, though. I'm not quite at the point of vomiting from fear, but there are tears springing up at the most irritating and unhelpful times. I've done a blog post. I'm slowly starting to set up a blog tour, mostly by asking friends. I'm writing up promo copy. I'm starting to compile the damn thing into a word document, and once I start figuring out what else needs to be done over the next couple of days, then I'll have a better idea of how this is going to go? I figure I might even eventually request spare copies and see if Malaprops wants to do something with me. That really will make me vomit with fear, though. Or stage fright. It's not even necessarily the fear of doing publicity, it's that it's all accompanied by the sudden worry that this book sucks and I'm not as good as I think I am and what was I thinking.

Well, I was thinking that if I'm not going to get this done any other way, I might as well do it myself. And when I look at the short list of things I'm doing for publicity, it's not even that bad. I need to code a web page, write some more short promo copy for RFM, and line up a series of blog tours and the podcast thing. That's not that much for promo. Plus finish compiling, and that isn't that much either, right? Of course right.

But dear god, I'm starting to wish I'd never decided to do this. Not seriously, I know that's all the fear talking, but it's a chatty bastard.

Okay. So, I'll do another post later today for practicing my German and giving a status update on how all of this is going, and then ... yeah, I'm not sure how language routines are going to change, or if they're going to change, now that I'm not running at the speed of a freight train. But still, I can't spend too much time on this panic. I have shit to do.
kittydesade: (don't panic)
Gaeilge )

Because what I really wanted to wake up to was anti-Semitism and Holocaust/pogrom/everything else denial in the guise of calling out white privilege. Ugh. Fortunately it was immediately followed up with someone else frothing and ranting and calling out their bullshit, but fucking hell, people. Can we stop? Can we just stop hating and pointing fingers and calling blame and stabbing each other in the back for two fucking seconds?

I hate people and everything they stand for some days.

Right, so. I've looked into self-publishing companies and discovered that, heh, print books are likely to be eyepoppingly expensive, at least as far as any kind of profit margin and assuming the kind of print book sales I think I'm likely to get (small, right now) but ebook publicaton looks generally equal one service to another. I'm leaning towards going with Lulu at this point simply because that way I have the option of having a run of print books if that's what I want. And still starting out with ebooks because there are at least two shorter pieces I can put up for $.99, $1.99, what have you. Print books will be more complicated, but if I can build up a decent catalog of ebooks I can tackle more than one or two print books after that. In short, I'm starting to look at the business options of this and it is happening and what the shit what is this handbasket I am in.

So. Mm. On the calendar today is Gods and Monsters, which is good because although I have an outline right now I only have one scene drafted. So get that started, and then bash the two short things I have into shape so I can, horror, publish them as ebooks. And then we will all be very terrified. Yes? Yes.

This may turn out not to be so bad! Yes? Maybe? No? Goddammit.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (to-do list)
Gaeilge )

Suddenly I'm disappointed to find out that the literal translation from Irish for "for example" is not "because reasons".

So at this point I think I should just give up on whatever estimates of writing efficiency I had before because clearly I was overestimating myself. Or I always have been. That is entirely possible. Definitely not getting costumes done before the weekend, though. On the other hand I might actually get them done on the weekend. Or a lot of them.

That said, though, I think the major project aspects are done, which means that today, in addition to writing next week's Gods and Monsters, can be devoted to planning out the Nerd Girls Save The World project. Only now I can't decide between calling it Revenging Angels (or something similar) or Nerd Girls Save The World. Or Revenging Angels 1: Nerd Girls... etc. Nerd Girls Assemble? I should take a poll or something.

So, yes, today will be finishing up Gods and Monsters in the first hour or so and then more Gods and Monsters while planning the nerd girl revenge thing. Tonight there will be all the Photoshop for the Haven tagging contest, which should be fun and hilarious, and possibly productive of something. Between that, I guess, more wrangling of my writing schedule for the next few months/rest of the year, and doing some blog posts. That should at least be do-able as far as that goes. And at some point today or tomorrow I need to figure out a budget for Dragon*Con. I hate budget. Bleh.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (put some pants on)
Russian: still triggery )

DEFINITELY need to start copying that over to a notebook and starting a new list. I'd say I'll do that tonight but I already have a stupidly long list of things I want to do tonight.

But I did at least get most of my web page for Black Ice coded, bar the graphics. And, you know, the actual text. So it's coded but nowhere near finished yet, but at least it's coded and I know how it's going. And I'm surprisingly more comfortable with it than I thought I would be. Give it time, I'm sure I'll soon be convinced it sucks.

My friend April had a good idea I figured I'd run by alloy'all, once I get 'about' posts up on my blog for Sandborn and Black Ice so the tumblr posts have somewhere to link back to, what do you think of me trolling DeviantArt for art that I think is in the spirit of those works and tumblr'ing it with credit/linkback to the artists? Good promotional tool? Bad one? Yes/no/what the fuck Jag?

My mind is spinning around in circles. I think I'm doing a better job than I used to be capable of at corraling it and making it be productive, but still. Circles. I have so much that I want to get done and it feels like it all has to be done now and it's driving me bonkers. Exhibit A: this list of things that I want to do tonight. Bonkers, I tell you. Of course what's probably going to end up happening is all the writing stuff will be opened and all the other stuff will happen in between the writing stuff as I hit snarls in my brain for the writing. I'm sure that made English sense somewhere.

1. Spinning
2. Pick up in patio
3. Sew mended places in jeans (1/4)
4. Kink Bingo
5. Finish Pacific Rim fanfic
6. Gods and Monsters
7. Blog posts for soundtracks and other stuff
8. Pay bills
9. Edit Blood in the Gutters

On the plus side, we seem to have a new computer for the boy (whose laptop is dying a screaming painful death) so, at least I'll have my netbook and it won't get constantly stolen every time my back is turned. I have no idea what I'm doing about dinner, though. ARGH.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (and so good night)
Gaeilge )

Okay, that Irish was marginally easier once I figured out what all the damn words meant. The glossary at the back of this book is seriously broken and doesn't have anything of use.

I have no idea what the hell happened with the traffic last night. It took maybe half an hour for me to get home, which is normally a ten minute drive, and it took Anna an hour and a half? Two hours? Something ridiculous to make a nice half hour or so commute. And we come at the house from different directions, so I really have no idea what snarled the traffic. When we came home even the back roads were slow-moving and full. I still have no idea what the fuck was going on last night. And it doesn't seem like the news has any idea either. Last time it went crazy like that we had a President or a Vice President or something in town (although for as often as the candidates were in town, and the President, they've usually been very good about not snarling traffic like that). So I don't even know.

Today! Today today. Today the plan is get in, see what stuff I have to do is like, I know there's at least three fairly sizable orders that need to be shipped out. Finish dealing with the email I'm sending out to the mailing list, do the packing, and then sit down to work on Gods and Monsters and Black Ice, both edits and the web page. Three projects ought to give me enough shuffling around things to do. And I'll bring my spinning so I have something to do out front if I get restless or what have you. Maybe. Something. Argh. And I need to sit my butt down and do my Russian on time, corrections or no. And. Things and stuff. Too sleepy to think. Not really sleepy, just tired, I think.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!
kittydesade: (every night i burn)
Gaeilge )

Yeah, that seems to occasion a need to review the goddamn verbal nouns in Irish since I can't make head nor tail of them yet. Because this book is arranged poorly. Argh.

Sleepy this morning. Getting a late start on everything. This irks me. It's irksome. And on the other hand it's my own damn fault for staying up past my bedtime last night. I was also going to make johnnycake this morning, but if I'm going to stagger around half awake I should not be near a hot skillet. So, yeah.

Today's intents are to get through more chunks of Gods and Monsters and outline that other new thing, and edit Blood in the Gutters and get that email done and out. I don't know how much of that I'm going to get done considering I don't know how much and what I'm going to get up of the Black Ice website. It seems like the closer I get to release day the more freaked out I get by the prospect of showing it to everyone and the more excuses I find to put it off and put it off. Predictably. So I'm fighting against that every step of the way and, argh. Panic panic panic.

And then last night I got randomly inspired for some Pacific Rim fanfiction, so there's that in progress. Too many writing tasks. But if I don't take my spinning to work I should be able to at least focus some on that in between work tasks, so. I guess it's just one word in front of the other, now. Bit by bit, and keeping moving.

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!

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