WiPpet Wednesday: gloom and (impending) doom

Sorry for my total uselessness at getting around the blogs last week.  I've been in a frankly ridiculous "blah" mood for a while.  I think it has something to do with the weathers or the seasons or something.  Either way it's irritating.  I'm getting nothing done.

Well, not strictly true.  I'm trying to keep my hands busy so I've been making some jewellery for my mother's birthday.  Well, was, until I ran out of 4mm green bicones, so I have to wait for more to arrive...

The flowers are a necklace (hence being so irritating when I ran out); the diagonal stripes are a bracelet.  She also wants some glasses cords for when her glasses make a break for it, so I'm trying to figure out how best to approach those (have all the materials I need, anyway, including some "how much??" non-tarnish silver wire).

Oh, and a tiny anvil.

It's very heavy.  I think you could brain someone quite effectively with it.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is hosted by the always-lovely K. L. Schwengel, and is a blog hop where participants share sections of their works in progress (hence the name).  All entries should relate to the date in some way, either via simple means or complicated WiPpet Maths.  You can find out more and read the other entries over here.

It's the 16th September 2015, so 1 + 6 = 7; 2 + 0 + 1 = 3 and 3 - 5 = 2.  7 + 2 = 9 for the convoluted maths, or simply 9 paragraphs because it's the 9th month.

The elevator has come to a stop and the doors have opened on Fayth and RQ.  It's... going about as well as you'd expect.

Five weapons of varying sizes were levelled at his face as the elevator door pinged closed behind them.  In his grip, he felt RQ tense, then lean back slightly.  The door sighed open again.

“Any sign of them yet?”  He said, forcing a smile.  “I was just telling the guards how everyone knows the secure block is at the bottom of these things.  We decided RQ was better off upstairs where they wouldn’t think of looking.”

Two guns wavered, then lowered.  The other three sets of fingers edged closer to their triggers.

And still RQ remained silent.  He could break away, make a dash for the safety of the guards and crewmen and there’d be nothing Fayth could do to stop him.  He could scream, yell how he’d been abducted yet again, but he stared at the floor and didn’t say a word.  Fayth should feel grateful, he knew he should, but it was downright irritating; his life was at least partially in the hands of a man who acted more like a spoiled brat.

A third gun slowly lowered, its large owner giving him a long, searching stare.  “Where’s his escort?”

“Two came up here,” Fayth said without missing a beat.  “I guess by the stairs, if they’re not here yet.  The other two said they’d stay down there just in case.”

The speaker looked unconvinced.  Fayth didn’t blame him; he was being incredibly unconvincing.  “There’s nothing on the radar.”

“I bet there was nothing on your radar last time either.  If you could just get out of my way...”

The gun snapped up again.

Perhaps Fayth should stop talking now.

WiPpet Wednesday: the half-arsed project from the black lagoon

Work.  Has been insane.  So much for my quiet week!  If I finally break and you guys see vague, ranty and twitchy Twitter comments, that'd be why...

Well.  More ranty.  Ranty-er?

Because I clearly need more.

Ughhhh.  I need to sit with my still-unfinished crochet on my head for a while and hide from the world.

In other news, the half-arsed project is very, very unlikely to reach 30,000 words by the end of the month, but 20,000 might just be possible (you'd think so, but see above...).  Either way, it's still more than I ever envisioned writing by hand in a month.

Don't think I can stop now though.  I ordered another two new fountain pen inks yesterday.

WiPpet Wednesday

It's Wednesday, so it's time for a WiPpet!  WiPpet Wednesday is a works-in-progress blog hop hosted by the always-awesome K. L. Schwengel, where every entry relates in some way to the date, either through simple logic or WiPpet maths.  You can find out more and visit the other posts by ambling over here.

It's the 29th June 2015, so 29/07/2015.  Today we're discarding the year entirely.  2 + 9 = 11; 1 × 1 = 1.  7 + 1 = 8, for 8 sentences, where Ais has finally got Lirio home again.  They were about to continue the Moment they'd been having last week when they received an unpleasant shock instead, one that's put Lirio on edge...

(So first-draft-y it hurts.)

Asking just how he got caught when he was usually so careful would have made being smacked in the face with a brick seem tactful, so Ais didn’t, and just hoped Lirio appreciated just how much more careful cleaning his face Ais was than when the roles were reversed.

He suspected he didn’t.

Lirio was worryingly silent throughout.  He was quiet enough normally, sure, but when something upset him he was usually very vocal about it.  Sullen silence just didn’t suit him.  He didn’t even make a peep when Ais accidentally caught a sore spot with his cleaning cloth and Ais was sure he’d at least have complained or tried to swat his hand away.

Very worrying indeed.  And he’d only done it slightly on purpose too.

No Self-Control and WiPpet Wednesday

I shouldn't be allowed to keep my computers and my debit card near each other, and particularly not when I'm not exactly feeling cheery.  I end up... buying things.  And I forget to read the dimensions on the things I'm buying, so when they arrive I get a bit of a surprise.

At least it gives me things to play with on my desk.

...Not that I can be trusted on that front either...

Still got very little on the actual writing front done, though at some point I know I'm going to have to stop staring at one of these stories and start writing.  At least the characters are still fidgeting around in my head and providing new revelations—for instance, one did actually deign to tell me his name was Demiah and he has heterochromia, so now I at least know what he looks like.  Always useful.

In non-writing news, although I've not resumed work on the other four (*sigh*) crochet projects, I did sit down yesterday and crochet a cuddly bunny.  It was kind of an experiment, to see if it'd be feasible to make some for my NaNoWriMo group, but he was too fiddly and time consuming: around five hours total, start to finish and finding eyes etc.  Plus, making him used almost all of a 50g ball of yarn, soooo...

And halfway through it I remembered stray fibres really don't play so well with my sinuses, so that wasn't much fun either.

Ahh, it's been such an exciting week.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is K. L. Schwengel's brilliant blog hop, where everyone shares snippets of their works in progress with just one twist: the snippet must in some way relate to the date!  It's a lot of fun (I say this every week, don't I?  Well, it's true) and you can sign up and read other participants' WiPpets here.

Apropos of last week, I meant to reply to everyone's comments but somehow it got away from me...  I should say that RQ isn't a crossdresser in the everyday, 21st century meaning of the term.  It's a little hard to explain, but (as I'll no doubt go into further detail on later), he was born on and has lived his entire life on an orbital space station—and a quite particular one at that, but that's a little spoileriffic—with its attendant lack of access to anything other than plain, functional clothes that are assigned to pretty much everyone on board.

...In short, as far as RQ's concerned, if the clothes fit and look good on him, he couldn't care less who they were intended for.  This in no way reflects personal reasons for my general horror over clothing stores and their layouts, of course.  And Fayth certainly isn't complaining.  :p

It's the 3rd June today (and a surprisingly humid day too), and as a result my maths is 3 × 6 = 18, plus 2 from the year for a total of 20 paragraphs.  They don't follow exactly on from where I last posted, I skipped a little bit about Fayth asking why RQ was kidnapped for his gardening skills so I could have a section instead that shows how sheltered RQ actually is...

When he looked up again, it was with a proud smile that took Fayth’s breath away. “I’m the only person who can grow Halfeti roses in space.”

Fayth stared blankly at him.

He’d feared his incomprehension would dim the man’s pride; instead, the Rose Queen grinned. “They’re black roses, hence the name.”

Well, that made sense, as much as anything plant-related did, although it didn’t necessarily answer one important thing: “but... Queen?”

The Rose Queen shrugged. “I know as much as you do about that. It’s probably the hair. It usually is.”

It was so, so difficult to resist the urge to lean across and run his fingers through the glossy black strands, but Fayth had already seen how unexpected contact seemed to make him nervous, and with good reason judging from the events of a few hours before. Still, he couldn’t help imagining touching it, envisioning it spread behind him like a dark halo as he lay, sweet and compliant and beautifully naked, on the floor beneath him—

He hurriedly turned his attention to the navigation panel. “Maybe it was to throw people off the scent.” His voice sounded thicker than it should; he swallowed a few times, trying desperately to clear his mind. “You know, to make sure people were looking for a woman, not for a man.”

“Maybe.” The Rose Queen didn’t sound convinced.

Fayth waited until it was clear no further answer was forthcoming, then busied himself with re-checking their co-ordinates for the fourth time in as many minutes. No change; big surprise. He leaned forward to flick to another exterior camera.

The Rose Queen murmured something in surprise and reached out toward Fayth’s hand, pausing when Fayth froze. “Can I look?”

“At what?”

“Your knuckles,” he said, frowning at the hand in question. “When you hit—there was blood. You hurt yourself.”

“Oh, yeah. That.” Swallowing again, he let the Rose Queen very gently take his right hand and turn it this way and that. “My nanites are pretty good. I was fixed up within a minute.”

His frown deepened. “Nanites?”

Some people might be suspicious of them, but pretty much everyone Fayth had ever met at least knew what they were. How could the Rose Queen not? It was Fayth’s turn to frown at nothing in particular, the feeling of the Rose Queen’s skin on his own momentarily forgotten. “Yeah. You know.” But his mystified expression made it obvious he didn’t. “Tiny robots designed to repair any scratches or scrapes I get... or pretty much anything else so long as it’s not too badly damaged. They even fix diseases.”

The Rose Queen dropped his hand like it burned. “Really?” His voice filled with either distaste or panic, and Fayth wasn’t sure which. “They’re inside you? Can they get out?”

“Well, I assume I lose some when I sweat or sneeze or whatever, but they replicate to keep up a steady supply, so—what?”

Horror was written plainly across the other man’s face. “I could catch them from you?”

“No!” He laughed, unsure whether to be amused or just slightly insulted. “No, they’re hardcoded to my DNA. They won’t work for anyone else so don’t worry, you’re safe.”

“Oh...” The Rose Queen breathed, taking possession of Fayth’s hand again to stare more closely at his knuckles. There was no trace of the graze beyond some flecks of dried blood staining the back of his hand, which the Rose Queen flaked away with one nail.

New Skills and WiPpet Wednesday

Last Saturday I went with a friend to an introductory bookbinding class we'd signed up for in February.  It was at the Malt Cross in Nottingham and was taught by the downright brilliant Heather Chou, who was so enthusiastic and such a good teacher that I think it's definitely another hobby that I'm going to take up.  I learned so much during the four hours she was teaching us, from a simple accordian fold to the complicated Turkish Map Fold, from pamphlet stitching to finishing off by making this tiny hardback book.

I swear I will find a use for these things somehow.

She also introduced us to the most random "thing you never knew you needed": the bone folder.  It's literally just a shaped and polished piece of bone that's pointed at one end and it turns out it knocks the spots off folding and flattening paper with your fingers.  (Yes, I've now ordered one.  I was folding some paper for something and found I really, really missed it...)

Also, today my copy of Celldweller's End of an Empire: Dreams arrived today.  FiXT announced not too long ago that ten copies would have an autographed poster inside and I thought, oh hey, that's cool, and that was about the extent of my consideration.

 Well... uh...

I was surprised, to say the least.  I'm pretty sure that's all my luck for the year used up!

Also, it was packaged in a very sturdy cardboard ... package and my first thought there was, brilliant, I'm going to use that to make a book.  Funny what opens your eyes to new possibilities, isn't it?

Not that I know what I'm going to put in this book...

...Probably not any actual new short stories, though I did manage to write two new sentences, woo!  Alex now won't shut up, so fingers crossed something unblocks this week.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a blog hop corralled by the awesome K. L. Schwengel.  It's very easygoing: the only requirement for sharing your WIP is that it relates to the date in some way.  You can read everyone else's posts and sign up here.

Today's WiPpet maths is somewhat convoluted again.  Always dangerous.

It's the 18th March, so 18/3.  1 − 8 = 7.  7 × 3 = 21, so it should be 21 sentences from the start of the third chapter of The Rose Queen.  (Yes, only the third.)  "Should be" because I had to recount four or five times as I kept getting interrupted.

Fayth had always thought he worked alone because it was more convenient, left him free to make his own choices; turned out that the fact it meant there was no-one to make sarcastic comments when he screwed up might also be part of it. “Shush,” he muttered, pocketing the hackpad as he scanned rapidly along the line of doors. He hadn’t walked far to reach the ship proper so it had to be down this end, but they all looked the same. His heart sank. Next time he was bringing good old-fashioned low-tech chalk, because running down the corridor shoving his thumb against every access panel until he found the right one wasn’t his idea of fun.

Beside him, the Rose Queen let out a strangled noise that may have been a half-suppressed laugh. “I don’t think they’ll put me back in the habitat.”

“You’ll be alright. I stole you, remember?” The shouts were getting closer, but their owners weren’t visible yet. More worryingly, the voices behind the door had fallen silent.

“You stole me with my consent. They’ll realise that the minute they review the camera footage.”

It certainly wasn’t the first three bays, Fayth was sure of that. It was just a shame that the further away his bay was, the nearer it was to the voices. Soon-to-be-approaching voices. “Oh, screw it,” he muttered, and grabbed the Rose Queen’s wrist restraints.

The black-haired man stumbled as Fayth pulled him into a trot, but kept his mouth shut as Fayth ran his thumb over the first three panels for good measure. After the fourth and fifth, he didn’t appear able to resist any longer. “Lost again?”

“Don’t tempt me into leaving you here,” he snapped, thumbing the sixth door. Nope, not that one either.

I think after this, RQ is going to have to sit down with Fayth and start working on some brain training exercises...

The Cough of Doom, Shinies and WiPpet Wednesday

The Cough is still here.  I am a terrible patient—arguably an impatient patient—and I hate being ill.  Worse, I like my sleep and the damn thing keeps waking me up so I'm coughing and crabby.  Work has calmed down slightly so I've had more free time, but there's nothing like trying to bring up a lung to put you off writing smut.

However, it does mean I've had enough free time to do another pin-up for Sunday.  And how did I manage that?  Well, it turns out that I seem to forget to breathe while I'm doing postwork so I don't cough so much.  Who knew there was an advantage to a bad, albeit involuntary, habit?

Still, something arrived to cheer me up today: this little guy, also known as Nanase Haruka from the anime Free! (also known as "that swimming anime I made my friends watch the first episode of and they enjoyed it, and therefore are now slightly frightened").  He was supposed to be my NaNoWriMo reward but his release date was put back twice and he eventually shipped seven days ago.

Plus, he can always lend a hand or eight.

Aside from being a fan of both seasons of the anime, you can probably see why I bought him...

It's expensive to buy models like this in the UK (most Nendoroids will set you back £45-£60, for example), but it's significantly less expensive to preorder them from America, even factoring in shipping.  This is why I've only just started buying things without needing a trip to the US in the first place.

Thinking about it, I probably ought to break out my Love Hina Mutsumi Otohime figure at some point.  I've had her ever since I first went to Otakon, but she's never left her box...

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is K. L. Schwengel's genius work-in-progress blog-hop.  You can check out other people's and join in yourself right here.  (Go on, do it, you know you want to.)

Although I've written some of chapter 6 of The Reconstruction of Kirill since last week, it's still a pathetic amount and I still feel guilty about it.  Soooo you're getting another section of The Rose Queen instead.

Since today is the 28th January 2015, You're going to get 11 paragraphs from the second chapter because 2+8+1 is 11 and the 2 from the year is the chapter.  And just for spite's sake I'm going to post this at quarter past the hour, so not only will the 015 part not go to waste, it'll also be posted at 20:15.  \o/

When we'd left our dashing hero, he'd just discovered that his pretty quarry wasn't quite so very... female as he'd been expecting and, worse, there seems to have been more to that previous excitement than meets the eye...

(Again, unedited.)

This, if Fayth was brutally honest, was not how he’d expected their meeting to go.  For a start he thought he’d be a chick.  A lady.  A pretty and biddable girl he could happily spend the return journey with because he’d have no interest in her whatsoever.  Not—not—

“Well?”  The Rose Queen repeated irritably, shifting from one filthy bare foot to the other.  “You’ve come to stare too, have you?  You know, I really don’t care so long as you don’t get in my way, so...”  He dropped to his knees beside the small balls of root, pressing his fingers back into the soil and smoothing over the patch he’d been working on before he’d been interrupted.

Fayth had prepared a speech he’d intended to use on the girl of his imagination; it went straight out the window.  Stepping the few steps forward to close the distance between them, he leaned down and caught the Rose Queen’s elbow, pulling him to his feet again.  “Listen to me,” he muttered, ignoring the way the Rose Queen glared at the hand that kept a firm hold on his arm.  “You need to come with me.”

The black-haired man drew himself up to his full height, only a little shorter than Fayth.  “Did you miss that discussion I just had?  I’m not some—some whore who’ll go with the first person who asks—”

“How many cameras are there in here?”

“What?”  For one instant Fayth was sure he saw a flash of fear in those stunning eyes.

“Cameras,” he hissed, squeezing a little harder.  “How many, and where?”

It took a moment for the Rose Queen to answer.  When he did, it was with perfect, cold composure, his face a stony mask.  “Enough, and plenty are pointed right at this tree.  If you try anything, you’ll be caught.”

“Because they came running not five minutes ago when someone tried to assault you, didn’t they?”  He thought it was a perfectly reasonable comment, but the Rose Queen stiffened beneath his touch.  “Don’t worry, beautiful, I’m not going to touch you, but you need to leave with me right now.”

“You missed the part where I can’t leave?”  The Rose Queen asked bitterly.  “Are you new here?”

“You could say that,” Fayth grinned, enjoying the way the Rose Queen’s eyes widened.  It was a big risk, but the man’s apparent exhaustion made him think it might be worth it.  More than the lies he’d had lined up would be, at any rate.  “I’ve been sent by Kaeder Pynes to bring you home.”

Ooooh, mysterious there, Fayth.  *wiggles fingers*

The Writer's Blog Tour

Not too long ago, the ever-lovely Nicole Nally asked me if I'd like to take part in a Writer's Blog Tour questionnaire she'd been tagged in, and I thought, what the hell, it sounds like fun.

And then I kind of forgot about it, but now she's posted her entry and that serves as a remarkably good reminder.

What Am I Currently Working On?

I've got several projects on the go, all in various states of disrepair—and then there the ones I should have on the go, but am apparently trying to avoid by trying to avoid working on other things instead.

Gratuitous Kir nudity is always fun

I guess, most pertinently, there's The Reconstruction of Kirill, the sequel to The Destruction of Kirill, which takes place in Gascony, which, in my steampunk universe, is a separate country from France.  I've just started chapter 5 and life is becoming rapidly terrible for the unfortunate hero (again).  It's all plotted out so there's nothing keeping me from writing it except the fact that it's all plotted out.  I had this problem with its predecessor too.

On that note, there's a short novella I'm supposed to be writing about Kirill and Niko's first Christmas as a couple, but that one's quite slow going....  Does so far involve sugar plums and smut though.

There's also The Rose Queen, a scifi about a man who's hired to steal a very quiet, shut-in young lady and discovers that if the information in the file is sparse, it's probably best not to make assumptions...  It's actually in marginally better shape than Reconstruction as I'm on chapter 6, but unlike Reconstruction it's not plotted out and suffers somewhat from the fact I was incredibly 'flu-ey when I started writing it.  It... needs some significant work, let's put it that way, but I think it has promise.

I'm supposed to be detailing the writing process of Dust & Ash for this blog, but it's safe to say there's not actually been that much progress to detail.  I discovered that it didn't feel inclined towards being plotted meticulously out like Destruction was so I've found myself starting chapter 4 and feeling a bit lost.  It needs even more work than Rose Queen does, or at least a spark of sudden plotting inspiration.

I should also have nearly finished with Three Graces: Spectrum now, but it's safe to say I've done absolutely sod-all on that in ages.  I reread the existing pieces and I've figured out why I got suddenly and abruptly stuck on it ('Black' and 'White' are in the wrong order, of all the stupid things) but I've yet to sit down and finish it.  I think I'm worried that how I write now is actually worse than how I wrote then (true, not actually just paranoia), so I keep putting it off.

And on the subject of putting it off...  I've been prodding a story called Chime lately because I feel incredibly bad about not even finishing chapter 3, but as I started it in 2011 I think we may be waiting some time for that...

And finally, I write occasional stories about a genetically modified dokkalfa (dark elf) and his co-worker / lover / ever-ready irritant human who work for a shadowy, semi-governmental British , which can be found both on this blog and on the Radial: Unravel tab up top there.  I love those dorky boys so I can never keep away from them for too long.  They're a comfort blanket.

How Does My Work Differ From Others In My Genre?

I honestly couldn't tell you...  I don't stick well to one particular genre—I write fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk (though I guess that's a derivative of one or the other, or both, aforementioned genres) and contemporary sci-fantasy—and as a 'genre', the m/m one is pretty colossal.  There's probably a ton of people who write the same kind of stuff I do, and I've just not met them yet.  Although I'd say perhaps my work differs in that other people actually have a knack for finishing it...

Though again, if they were just like me and didn't, we'd never know, would we?

Why Do I Write What I Do?

To be honest, I have no idea.  I've just always written like this, usually in the same genres.  Way (way) back in school, if ever there was a question in an exam that was just a single word, it was pretty much guaranteed that I'd write fiction for it.

For my A-Level English Language & Literature exams (that's a mouthful) there was one such prompt, which of course meant that I needed to write about two demons having thinly-veiled metaphorical sex in a dreamworld, that left one stabbed to a tree... and it was only a thinly-veiled metaphor because I wasn't too sure how well gay demon sex would go down (hah) with the examiners.  I kind of wish I'd written it explicitly now, just to see what would happen.

That was a depressingly long amount of time ago, and I'm still writing in the same genre, so I think we're stuck with one another now.  (And the demons; I still have those characters too.  I miss them but don't need another project right now.  So, guess what I'll no doubt be doing next week...)

So basically...  The short answer is: I can't help it.  The characters and events appear in my head, so I write them.

How Does My Writing Process Work?

It varies depending on the project is the short answer.  The long answer is that I actually am not quite sure, because of the fact it varies between projects.  Some projects seem to lend themselves to being plotted out chapter by chapter while others seem to demand being flown by the seat of the pants, and a few like to straddle the line between them without ever managing to put a foot in either camp.

A lot start out like the image to the left: a stream-of-consciousness set of notes that helps me sketch out ideas and work out who's doing what and where.  These all go in one notebook and I use different coloured inks to keep the stories separate.

If they're lucky, they then end up like the picture on the right: a series of key scenes.  In this case, the red ones were the ones I thought of before I started plotting Destruction out, and the green ones were ones I'd thought of during the plotting process.  I'm not entirely sure why I decided to to it that way, but it made sense at the time.  (Disclaimer: this might as well be my battle cry and will probably end up on my gravestone.)

Also, might include spoilers so on the off chance you actually want to read The Destruction of Kirill proceed carefully and possibly avoid the stuff in green.

Once I've got the scenes in non-specific order, I can figure out where it is I want them to go, hence the purple numbers beside it.  The actual plotting is always done in purple (I'm on my second atyouSpica Lavender pen) because somehow it just feels right.  And if it feels right I'm not going to argue with it.

When I've got those basics, I can either skip straight to the plotting, or I can make a detour via beats/breakdowns which is (in my case) when I break down the plot into a string of events.  I use a two-column method because I can then use the second column for relevant notes, cute ideas etc. that link directly to the first, left-hand, beat.

To the left is the start of Reconstruction (so no actual spoilers), complete with little note about the the room Kirill and Niko are sparring in and an addition to a section from the second chapter.  Some pages have nothing in this column, others have five or six notes.

Then, once that's done, I can move on to the actual plotting.  In my case, it's a scene-by-scene stream of text, all in the aforementioned lavender pen (which actually ran out halfway through the plotting of Reconstruction as a dodgy kind of portent), which expands on the breakdown until it fills out approximately a chapter.  Again, if you want to read Reconstruction you might want to not look at the right-hand image too closely as it possibly contains spoilers, coming quite near the end.  It was when I'd just replaced the pen, so it's in a stronger colour than pretty much everything before then.

Once I've got that, I'm all set to write.  The one problem with this approach is that you can feel like you've already written it so it can take away the desire to rewrite it.  On the other hand, you have a very clear roadmap of where you're going so, unlike writing by the seat of your pants, you're unlikely to get stuck unless your characters suddenly and wildly deviate from the plot (which is always possible, admittedly).

Obviously, when it comes to thinks like Rose Queen, it all starts and ends with the first step.  Everything else is crammed into my head—so if I get hit by a truck tomorrow, that'll be where it stays.  If you're worried about the possibility of sudden death, plotting might be the best way to go.

I Tag...

As the adorable Nicole tagged me (and you can read her four answers over at her blog: http://nicolenally.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/the-writers-blog-tour/), I choose to pass the baton on to Danni and Windi.

Danni has a degree in Writing Contemporary Fiction from Southampton Solent University, writes fanfiction and is a fiend at NaNoWriMo (my description, not hers, but anyone who writes 55,000 words in 18 days is a fiend).  She likes shiny things, has an impressive collection of notebooks that I am just a little big jealous of, and is a Fountain Pen Enabler—mostly by encouraging everyone around her to buy them.  You can find her stationery-based blog entries at: http://fourwordsfourworlds.wordpress.com/category/danni/.

Windi is another stationery addict and the owner of some very beautiful handwriting.  She has a lot of varied interests and tends to gravitate to new things often, but her love of Matt Damon and Jack Davenport will never die.  She also likes shiny things and notebooks, and is a very sweet and enthusiastic personality who is currently finishing up a novel.  You can find her various blog entries on a variety of themes here: http://windismusings.wordpress.com/.

Writing Dust & Ash: Starting The Process

The other night, I wondered 'aloud' on Twitter whether anyone would be interested in following the creation of a book, from first flailing ideas to an actual finished product, bearing in mind that I am about as far from a proper, professional author as you can get.

One person liked the idea, so guess what?  I'm doing it.

Not just because Danni was interested (though it is a big part of it—no one wants to work on something no one's interested in) but also because it's something I might learn from the experience of and—fingers crossed—help keep me focused.

The project I'm going to be working on is one that crashed into my head a couple of days ago out of nowhere (I suspect it got lost en route to someone actually competent's imagination) and, in my case, the 'working on' bit of the process usually comes after characters with names decide they're going to infest me.  Sometimes even when they don't have names.

And 'names' is exactly where this all started, so it's where I'll start.

The Initial Idea

One thing I have in common with a lot of other writers is a notebook I use to jot down names that have either come to me out the blue, or I've seen somewhere and liked, or that might not even be names at all but could be worked into one.  They either sit on the page and wait until they're needed, or they randomly attach themselves to characters: for instance, Kirill wasn't supposed to be called Kirill, but once the name was attached nothing else seemed to work until I stuck with it.  In this case, I'd jotted down two names a couple of months ago: Dust and Ash.

So far, so generic.  At the time, I looked at it and thought, "I bet they investigate supernatural crimes in modern fantasy or something," and promptly forgot all about it.

I was working when suddenly I realised, apropos of nothing, that Dust was a twin and his brother was called Echo.  Echo had been born second, was a little smaller, a little quieter, and followed his brother everywhere.

And then I realised that Echo didn't follow his brother everywhere; he'd led the way once.  Echo was dead.

Refining The Idea

It's not much, but it's a place to start.  Now I've got the kernel of an idea, I've got questions I can ask: why is Echo dead?  How does Dust feel?  How does Ash, Dust's best friend, take it?  What genre is it?

For me, this is the part where I start to work out the plot.  Life is significantly easier when the plot appears first because you can sit down and start to work out the kinks almost immediately, but in this case I've still got a lot of work to do before I can get to that point—like find the plot.

For me, this involves asking more and more questions and writing down everything in another notebook.  Being me, I have different pens and inks for different stories at this stage: it's handy if you use one notebook for every idea.  I don't do it all in one go—I can't, it doesn't all pour straight out of my head, although damn I wish it did—so I write what I can and go away and do something else, and if something else comes to me, whether it's a question, an answer or a random idea, I scribble it down.

Music Helps

No, really.  I'm not kidding.  Sometimes, something in a song can spark an idea I might not have otherwise had, or made me realise something much quicker than I would have without it.  I usually construct playlists for stories I'm working on, which is partly a procrastination exercise (my favourite hobby), and partly because while I might not actually hear it while I'm writing, as I tend to tune it out, it helps keep the outside world from encroaching—always handy when you share an office with a parrot—and feels like it helps keep me focused.

In this case, I'd heard a song on the radio in the supermarket earlier and I couldn't get it out my head, so I looked it up on YouTube.

While listening to the lyrics, I realised something important: Echo's body might be dead, but Echo himself is not.  This gives me the genre: fantasy of some flavour.  And if Echo's soul is somewhere else, then it means someone has done this to him, which gives me the shadow of a villain—and a lot more questions.

And for no apparent reason, I can see a tea shop / café, which gives me something to think about for world building: what kind of fantasy world needs a tea shop?  Probably a fairly affluent one with good trade links and plenty of social time; now I can start to work out where Dush, Echo and Ash live.

This is about as far as I've got.  I still need to work out who the villain is and what he gained from doing what he did, what Dush and Ash are going to do about it, and an actual plot (always a good idea, right?), but it's a starting point.

Next time, I'll talk about plotting and, hopefully, I'll be able to start working on this in earnest.

Craft Sunday: A Slightly Less Nekkid Box

I know I said these would be occasional but I guess this is a little ridiculous.  Sorry about that.

Still, I've not had much to blog about in this regard.  Or at least, looking at all the photos, it turns out that how I feel and how I've been documenting it haven't quite matched up, so this might turn out to be a little longer than expected.

Two months ago, shortly after my first post, I met up with my fellow Notts NaNoers (my local writing group as well as my local NaNo group, and all at least as odd as me in their own ways) and after chat and food, @anikadaniels and I went and examined the paint department of the Broadmarsh Wilkos.  To be honest, I didn't have much idea what I was looking for and I'm pretty indecisive, so having Anika with me was a great help, particularly when it came down to narrowing a surprisingly large amount of wood stains and varnishes down to particularly 'steampunk' colours.  We settled on Teak and Antique Pine.

The first thing I've learned about painting wood is...

Shake the goddamn bottle properly.

That, to the left, is Teak.  Or at least, it would be if I'd given the bottle/can the thrashing it clearly needed, because it came out looking remarkably pine-y.

In hindsight, that photo is hilarious.  You'll see why, assuming you haven't already scrolled down or seen a later picture.  But still, let that be a lesson to you all.  If you're going to paint something, really, really shake the can, because otherwise you'll end up with a wishy-washy colour.

So I picked the damn thing up and gave it a proper shake.

Significantly better results.

Still a bit light though; I wanted to go for something deep and rich.

It should be noted here that I'm doing all of this with a very cheap paintbrush that I'd bought specially for the job.  I've got proper paintbrushes and there is no way I'd use one with wood stain or paint, but cheap ones from The Works do a remarkably good job, even if I had to clean what looked like glue off the one I'd chosen for the job—which came from a sealed pack.  I suspect whatever they used to glue the bristles in leaked somewhat.

So I kept on and the more coats I applied, the darker it got, until I
settled on a nice dark colour.

Using a brush gave the effect of it being made out of real, solid wood, rather than the balsa wood it's actually made out of, and looks better in person than these pictures would lead you to believe.  I started out by painting the inside of the box just to test it (and you can see why above), but after a while it became...  I don't know, just something that felt like it should be done.  I know I'm planning on covering it over, but it didn't feel right to leave it naked.

I'm undecided about covering over the inside top as well, so I painted that too.

It's quick-dry paint so it didn't take too long to get through layers, and I still have a lot left which is handy as my mother has now put in her request for one too.  (I don't think I can make an industry out of it.  I'm having a hard enough time sticking to writing.)

I've designed the top, but it's still as yet unpainted, because I'm not wholly sure how to approach it.  I don't know whether to outline the cogs in waterproof pen and then paint, as the cogs are supposed to be Antique Pine while the rest of the lid matches the box, or whether there needs to be a design in the middle.  I've considered buying watch parts too and simply attaching a real cog in the center.

On that note, if anyone knows of any good UK-based sellers of steampunk construction pieces or jewelry box items, I'd love to know about it.  I'm particularly looking for interior chains to stop the lid opening all the way, but anything would be good.

All that was done over the course of May.  At the start of this month (June), I headed to John Lewis in the Victoria Center with @SplitShilo and @AgentNotts, where we proceeded to ooh and ahh over the various fabrics, some of which are eye-wateringly expensive.  If I won the lottery I'd just camp out there and sniff material, I swear.  We examined all the fabrics and I stupidly neglected to bring the actual box along to check colours, but both my friends are very talented artists and could take a good guess at the colour I meant, and in the end we settled on this particularly nice burgundy taffeta.  I only bought half a metre (£3) but there's a lot there for the size of the box.

I've yet to figure out how to actually line the box, so any details there would be greatly appreciated.  It's probably not a good idea to start a project like this without any actual idea what I'm doing, but being thrown in at the deep end is the best way to learn.

Probably.

Not that I could resist the lure of all the fabrics entirely.  I did end up splurging on some expensive but beautiful material.

I've got no idea what I'll do with it, but the squares are surprisingly large and the material's pretty thick.

I even ended up buying a £35 sewing machine (for light work).

Now I just find myself wishing that my sum total knowledge of sewing wasn't a couple of weeks of art classes where we all made T-shirts to a pre-ordained design and size.

I still have it, sixteen years later.  It still fits.

That doesn't say much for the T-shirt; I hope this is a much greater success.

Unboxing: Watch_Dogs Dedsec Edition

Long time no post!  It's in part due to the fact that I'm actually writing The Rose Queen—I know, me, writing; whatever is the world coming to—and partly because I am a lazy arse.  I'm pretty sure you've already noticed the latter.

I didn't feel like I was making much progress with The Rose Queen to be honest, until I actually paid attention to my total word count last night and realised it's currently at 21,000 words.  So... not a novella then.

Short update aside, that isn't what this post is about (I'll maybe do a dedicated one later on).  Nooo, this post is about the downright huge box that arrived this morning.

Meep.  AC:IV for size reference.

 I normally preorder games from Game due to things like shiny reward points and supporting British game stores, but in this case they'd actually sold out of the Xbox One version(!) so I bought it from Amazon instead.  That comes with the added advantage of coming via Amazon's delivery network, which now they've worked out the kinks is pretty good and means deliveries arrive when they're supposed to.  Anything using the Royal Mail here is at the mercy of the postman—which can mean anything from the delivery driver shoving a "You Weren't In" card through the door when I plainly was, to returning items without attempting to deliver them because they were damaged by postal staff, to outright theft.  (Yes, all three have happened to me; the first and last most recently.)

Rant aside...  I thought the size of the box would be misleading, because sometimes things are packed to the gills with paper and plastic, and the contents are tiny.

And to be fair, when I opened it, this was the first thing I saw, so you can't blame me.  So I dug in, started fishing around in the box and realised...

I hereby claim this box...

It wasn't misleading at all.  I was not expecting that.  The last special edition I ordered was DmC, which came with a hoodie, soundtrack CD and DLC, and all items were separate in the cardboard box.  To have it arrive in a nice box was... unexpected, although possibly shouldn't be because Ubisoft have a history of nice packaging.

The skinny little legs in the background belong to Q, a cat with a pathological love of boxes.  He'd perked up when I bought the box in, and now he was going to nonchalantly come and 'look'.

Once I unwrapped the packaging (so much for Amazon's eco-friendly stuff, the amount of plastic that went into covering this!), I was again surprised.

The box is nicely designed and the inside packaging is designed with a place for every piece of the special edition kit—although in my case, a lot of it had slid down during transit.  You can see the bottom of the Augmented Reality card box beneath the game box, which should have been much higher up, but all the contents were safe and undamaged.

The full extent of the contents is still surprising, considering IMO the price isn't that much higher than a standard Xbox One game.  It comes with a fairly large and very nicely detailed Aiden Pearce figure, soundtrack, AR cards, map, artbook and three badges as well as the steelcase box.  Aiden comes in his own safe packaging to protect him, so he hadn't budged in the slightest in transit.  I've yet to find a good home for him (he's bigger than Shiki and Akira on my desk, so between them doesn't work) so he's gone back into his box for now.  Everything seems nicely detailed: the artbook is hardback and filled with beautiful concept art, the cards come in a staggered file-type packaging with their own box, and the map is made of glossy, good-quality paper and fits neatly into the steelcase box for handy reference.

By this point, I'd moved the packing box and paper contents to one side; you can see Q eyeballing it.  He hopped in not long after and proceeded to traumatise the parrot, who thought a kraken had moved in under his cage...

So, that's the unboxing of the Watch_Dogs Dedsec edition.  If anyone wants closer, more detailed pictures of anything, just let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I've not even had a chance to play it yet!  That's this afternoon's entertainment...

The Rose Queen

I used to take part in NaNoMangO, a twice-yearly comics event in the vein of NaNoWriMo, only instead of 50,000 words in a month the object was to draw 30 pages.  I very rarely finished NNMO, mind.  My best was to complete 30 pages of two projects in the month; one of my worst is probably The Rose Queen in 2010, where I managed—drumroll please—

—two pages!

The problem was, aside from the fact that I decided to not only sketch it, but line and colour it (bad idea), that beyond the faintest outline of the story I had no idea what was happening.  I knew it involved a man boarding a ship to steal the Rose Queen, and he didn't exactly know what the Rose Queen was.  It would turn out to be a woman.

That's it.  That's all I had.  The whole premise, and both characters names, was based around a newsreader's vocal stumble and something I misread.   It's no wonder I only got to two pages.

In a fit of procrastination driven by a bout of something that could be a cold, or could be 'flu (shush), I sat in the conservatory that was, for once, fairly warm, and felt sorry for myself rather than write.

The next thing I knew, the Rose Queen was a man instead of a woman.

And a whole new world of questions suddenly opened up, ones that hadn't existed four years ago, and I could (can) barely keep up with them.

There are a lot more now

This is odd for me.  Normally a story starts to grow in my head, and I ignore it until I'm ready to do something with it.  This one has crashed headlong through the ceiling and is giving me funny looks.

The oddest thing has to be the characters.  I had a vague idea about and a 3D version of Admiral Fayth, and a 3D version of the female Rose Queen that I've since lost (I think it's on another computer), but no grasp of their personalities.  Now, with RQ's sex change he's developed a personality—and a strong sense of sarcasm—and, even odder, he and Fayth are getting along so well that I've got unsolicited sex scenes floating around in my imagination.

I'm starting to think I need to imagine a bucket of cold water.

So now my question is: wait until I know what's going on, or start writing and pray it comes to me?  And more to the point, will these boys actually let me wait?

As a bonus, here is RQ dressed up... or down? for Easter.  He wasn't particularly amused about it.

Who says procrastination is always a bad thing?

Craft Sunday: The Nekkid Box

I say 'Craft Sunday', but it's only going to be an occasional thing.

I bought this box online a few days ago, because I need somewhere to put the necklaces I keep buying and not wearing.  It's just a cheap balsa-wood thing and the corner decoration is glued on rather than properly secured, but I'm (hopefully) intending to decorate it up and make it suitably steampunky.

I'm not wholly sure how to yet though!

One thing I'd definitely like to do is get some material (possibly felt?) and line the inside, padding it a little with cotton wool to protect the contents, although I'm not quite sure what colour yet, and it all kinda depends on what I can find.  I'm hoping for some kind of deep orange-brown, rich red or coppery.  Here's hoping that I can find something particularly steampunk, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

For the box itself, I'm not sure (big surprise), but I was considering staining the box in two different colours, a light one for a suitable pattern—I'll probably be generic and work out a cog design—and a dark one for the rest of the box, but I'm always open to suggestions.

As to the corners, I'm not quite sure what to do about them.  Glue isn't exactly anachronistic, but it doesn't really fit the style of the box/project.  I don't know whether to try to remove the corners entirely and screw them in instead, sand down the glue and somehow fake a screw head, or leave them be.

So, this is my 'nekkid box', a bare canvas for ideas... when I have some.  It's likely to be the start of next month when I actually try to work on it, since that's when I'll be heading into Nottingham to meet up with friends/writers, but there'll be photos of anything fun I can find and when I actually get cracking.

I don't know whether I'm looking forward to it or dreading it...

Collecting Pen-Based Addictions

(Oh look, I'm remembering to post on the right day!)

Like a lot of writers, I'm a bit of a stationery nut.  My favourite places in Nottingham involve either books or stationery (and the best kinds of places contain both), but until recently I mostly contained it to notebooks.

I think, between here and Twitter, I've documented fairly well my love of all things gel pen, particularly of the novelty kind, and my undying adoration for the Copic atyouSpica glitter pens (also known as my preciousssss).  But recently, my pen-based addiction has taken a darker, more sinister turn...

Lamy fountain pens.

(Did you think I meant sniffing permanent markers?)

My friends Claire and Danni are big, big stationery fans (I am but an apprentice in the art) and one of the things that they both mention, now and again, are Lamy pens.  They come in different varieties: not only fountain, but ballpoint and pencil too, and in various different styles and themes and, in the end, my curiosity won out.

I've not used a fountain pen in... well, over a decade, not since I was 14 or so, and I've never bought any of my own, so when I became curious I turned to them for advice and in the end bought a Lamy Nexx (the grey one) and a Safari (the blue).  I have suitable ink cartridges to go with them, and a couple of converters that allow me to use bottled inks—one of which I wrote The Fair Automaton with, and covered myself with it in the process—and, to my surprise, I've been getting on really well with them.

Recently Lamy brought out a new special edition AL-star pen in a particularly violent shade of coral.  Pink isn't really my colour, but while I was looking at it my eye was caught by the beautiful colour of the bluegreen AL-star and... well, let's just say that as you can see, my tiny pen family has grown, and my non-too-fondness of pink didn't stop me from buying two sets of limited-edition coral cartridges either.  And, of course, where there's a pen order there's other stuff too, and I seem to have found myself the owner of three Rhodia notebooks I didn't quite intend to buy (they leapt into the cart themselves, honest!) and a pretty nifty mechanical pencil that rotates itself every time you use it.

So it looks like I've picked up another addiction, to go with my sparkle-pen one and my gel pen habit...  because where there's fountain pens, there has to be a healthy range of inks to go with it!  And on the up side, at least it means I'm physically writing a lot more now, even if none of it seems to be related to what I'm supposed to be finishing this month (sorry, all two readers of Three Graces, it's not the sequel yet).

I'd say I think the guilty parties responsible for this particular addiction know what they've done, but I also think they're both quite gleeful about it really...

National Stationery Week, Day 5

Today is Pencil Case Day, which is quite a difficult one for me.  Honestly, I haven't had a pencil case since I left school, and gods only know where that one is.  It was a plain metal flip-lid case that I glued cut-out anime pictures on and covered with plastic.  Now and again I'd peel off the plastic, change the images and re-cover it.

I was actually 17 or 18 at the time, so it's even more pathetic than it sounds.

Since then I haven't bothered with one, for the simple reason I never needed to.  My house is littered with pens, pencils and large tins of crayons, and somewhere there's a toolbox full of acrylics and gouache, but I haven't seen that in years either so I think it's taken itself off in disgust.  Most stationery just floats around on desks or in drawers.

However!  Very recently I did splurge on a Kokuyo NeoCritz Transformer pencil case, in order to keep my inking pens in line.  They were spilling over the case of the unused desktop and I'm fairly sure they were planning a rebellion with the Cocoiro pens, but now they're neatly penned away in their own case.

It keeps them all together, is perked up by four OHTO Smile Slide Clips—I didn't buy them to clip paper together, they were just so cute I wanted to own them—and they're chaperoned by Barkvolio, my furry bookmark who's currently on sabbatical while I work my way through some ebooks.

I no longer have to clatter around fishing out the right pen for the line I'm drawing and it keeps everything in line so efficiently I'm actually tempted to buy another to keep the gel pens in...

Not too bad for my first pencil case in twelve years.

National Stationery Week, Day 4

After all the excitement of yesterday's Pen & Ink day (well, my excitement, anyway!), today is a more relaxed and sedate affair.

Allegedly.

Today is Tidy Desk Day, a kick up the arse for people like me who just seem to attract mess.  Papers everywhere, notebooks left and right, an abandoned crochet project with my PC screwdriver wedged in it and my latest stationery order strewn across the disused desktop (not mine—the desktop, that is; the pens definitely are).

There are times I think I should stuff a "Where's Wally" figure in there and be done with it.

So, in honour of Tidy Desk day I caved in and... well, tidied.  They say a tidy desk is the sign of a tidy mind, although back when I worked in an office it was actually a sign of having nothing to do.

I'm hoping that at least in this case a tidy desk will actually lead to being able to write without having to dig around desperately for something every ten minutes or so.  Although it probably can't do anything for chronic procrastination or mild ADD.

Yes that is an old cellphone propping Sixteen up.

And I have to admit, it does look better tidy.  Not least because now I have space to display Shiki; he's no longer wedged down the side of the desktop gathering dust—since being almost completely black and glossy means he shows it to perfection.  At least Akira is predominantly grey and it blends in with him.

While I'm more sure than ever that a tidy desk has nothing to do with a tidy mind, since mine's as cluttered as ever, it does feel nice to not feel penned (ahah) in again.

We'll see how long it lasts this time!

Tomorrow: Pencil Case Day.

National Stationery Week, Day 3: The Fair Automaton

Day 3 is Pen & Ink Day, which meant undertaking a special project: a short Steampunk romance story, handwritten with a Lamy fountain pen in Ancient Copper ink (a recommendation from the lovely KenouniRenashin, and very aptly named).

There are many different kinds of pen and ink, not just of the writing variety, so there are also two illustrations, done with my trusty Copics, inked with Microns and embellished with a Gelly Roll metallic pen.  Although I don't draw too much any more, and I usually avoid fancy handwriting like the plague (downside of writing like a drunken spider normally), they've been really fun to draw.

So, without further ado, you can find the opening two paragraphs just here and the story and illustrations proper under the "read more" (please be aware they're quite large).  I hope you enjoy it, and that my handwriting isn't too terrible!

National Stationery Week, Day 2

I lied to you yesterday: today is not Pen & Ink Day, but Notepad Day.

I have a love-hate relationship with notepads.  I accumulate them without really trying, to the point where I had to start using them because I had developed a hefty pile that had no chance of ever diminishing.  I am, or at least was, primarily a laptop kind of person who carried all their plotlines in their head.

This is all well and good until you start becoming ancient and decrepit, like me.  I figured there might be a problem when I forgot the name of AU!Alex's sister.  (For the record, and before I forget again, it's Melia.)  That's when the ever-growing stack of notebooks starts to look like a good idea.

They have another purpose too, one I wouldn't have believed a couple of years ago: I actually use them for plotting.  Whether it's just a list of prompts I'm using for chapters, like the Unravel AUs, or full-blown semi-detailed plots as I've done for the still-untitled Kirill stories, they've turned out to be remarkably handy and I'm now starting to get through them.  Well, some of them.  There's nine around me at the minute that are unused, three of which are likely to stay that way forever.  *cough*BeautifulPaperblanksbooks*cough*

No, those serve another purpose: my ridiculous 'artistic' photography.  The thing with Paperblanks notebooks (such as the filigree ones to the right) is that they are stupidly beautiful and make for a variety of stunning photos, even in the amateur hands of people like myself.  Combined with other items, such as jewelry from my favourite online store, and you can end up with some surprisingly lovely pictures.

I daren't actually use those though.  I'd need to be sure of both a fantastic idea and the sudden ability to write neatly and coherently.  I just like looking at them and trying not to think about the price.

No, the ones I use for writing usually come from The Works.  They're still attractive, but they aren't so expensive that I'd panic about messing them up... which is quite handy, because my notes are always anything but clear, or even sometimes legible.  They're usually written in my favourite atyouSpica pens with different colours for different sections.  Plots, for example, are in purple; notes are orange.  Pre-considered sections are green, while new ones are red.

The book at the front on the left with the pink handwriting (solely my Kuretake Zig Cocoiro letter pen with brush nib) is for my book review notes when I read, although sorely neglected at the minute.  The book at the back contains the first draft of the story I wrote for National Stationery Week.  Everything else is, unusually for me, plot-related for several different stories.

Tomorrow: Pen & Ink Day, for real this time!