Ready, Set, WRITE! - Week Eight

Ready, Set, WRITE! is a summer writing challenge hosted by Erin L. Funk, Alison Miller, Katy Upperman, Jaime Morrow and Elodie Nowodazkij as a way to encourage participants to get going on their projects and to help keep us accountable.  We share brief updates every Monday so as not to interrupt writing time with blogging.  You can find out more here or check out others' updates over at the hosts' blogs.

1. How I did on last week’s goal(s)

I'd wanted to write at least 4,000.  Unfortunately, the more time = less writing thing happened and I only ended up writing 3,262 words.  If I'd written anything yesterday I might have made it, but unfortunately work got in the way and by the time I'd finished my brain was just not interested any more.

2. My goal(s) for this week

Having missed it last week, I think setting another goal of 4,000 words this week is for the best.

And while I doubt very much I'll get to 30,000 words between now and the 31st, I'm going to at least try for 20,000 (which technically is 2,675 words away, but you never know...).

3. A favorite line from my story OR a word or phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised

Lirio let out a shaky laugh.  “I don’t know.  In some ways we did make it easier for them, whoever they are.”  He gently pressed his finger into the grey powder, leaving a clean mark beside the perpetually-empty vase—and its barely noticeable crescent where it had been replaced not-quite-perfectly.  “Think the florists have formed a militant guild targeting empty vases across the city?”

4. The biggest challenge I faced this week

Game of Thrones.  We started rewatching it from the beginning, so that's at least three hours of every evening taken up--if we're restraining ourselves.

Also, finding motivation to write.  Something seems to have been sapping it just lately.  Oh wait, that's work and the weather.  Come back heatwave, all is forgiven (mostly).

5. Something I love about my WIP

The fact my characters are still talking at me, even if it means getting lectured by a not-quite-antagonist on how I've misjudged him and how I ended up rendering a picture of the goddess of murder, on Lirio's request.  (I didn't even know one existed until he mentioned it, and now she needs a name.)

Shiny Distractions and WiPpet Wednesday

Sooo...  After another fairly unproductive week (but I wrote 271 words on Gabrys's story and... a sentence? on Jonathan's, so that's something, right?), my preorder of The Witcher III arrived yesterday and therefore I'm pretty sure that all production is now firmly out the window.  (I'm lucky it arrived at all; my bank have now frozen my account for fraud protection three times this year—third time being straight after my preorder shipped—and it's a massive pain.  Weren't so keen to protect me when I was broke!)

I'd read The Last Wish and loved it (I've read it three times now) but I couldn't get into Blood of Elves at all and all the other books took so long to be published in the UK that I actually ended up with them all fan-translated from other languages before I had the physical paperbacks...  So on the whole I was a little dubious about the games, but my mother bought me The Witcher II for the 360 for my birthday, and after a somewhat convoluted saga I even got to play it—and loved it.

Because of my attention span issues (mostly that I don't exactly have an attention span) it's quite rare for me to finish games.  That's why gaming has its own New Year's Resolution: it's the best way to get me to finally finish some although, like books, I continue insist on buying them.  So with that in mind, when I say that I powered through all 30 hours of my first playthrough of The Witcher II, finished it and then promptly restarted it so I could play through the other side of the story, that should tell you just how much that game excited me.

In the end I spent 60 hours on that game, it's gorgeous, I never did find Odrin, and the Harpy feather quest has become a household running joke.

This one is even more gorgeous, and I suspect it'll take me more than 60 hours just to play it once.  It's huge.  When they said it made Skyrim look small, it doesn't seem they were exaggerating.  I've already gotten lost a couple of times, even with the quest trail marker on.  Sod finding Ciri, I'm having enough trouble finding myself...

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a weekly blog-hop where participants share excerpts from their Works in Progress that in some way relate to the date, either via simple maths (like 20 sentences for the 20th) or somewhat less simple maths such as dividing the date by the month for 4 paragraphs.  You can find out more, read other participants' entries and join in yourself here.

My picture of RQ finally rendered!  It's not much but I do like making pictures of him...  Poor Fayth is distinctly neglected in this department, I'm sorry to say, which is kind of a shame because he does have his own charm too...

Convoluted maths today so I can get my own way (which is pretty much the only reason I'll ever willingly do maths): adding together the year, 2015: 2 + 0 = 2; 1 + 5 = 6; 6 - 2 = 4.  Today is the 20th May, so 20 - 4 = 16, for sixteen sentences that follow on from Fayth and RQ making good their escape from the Orenda.

Once the ship was comfortably blazing along in slipspace, an aurora of colour dancing across the cockpit window, Fayth unbuckled his straps and stretched in his seat with his arms above his head. “That went better than expected.”

Wordlessly, the Rose Queen turned to Fayth and raised both hands, held together at the wrist.

“What’re you—oh...” Fayth’s voice trailed off as he stared at the metallic cord still binding his narrow wrists together. “But just now, you touched me—”

The Rose Queen wiggled one set of fingers at him. “Them being tied together doesn’t stop me from using them independently, you know.”

He had a point, but Fayth couldn’t help wishing that a smile had accompanied the gesture, or at least something that didn’t indicate the Rose Queen thought him a complete moron. He’d had other things on his mind, like fulfilling his request; he couldn’t be expected to remember everything.

Judging from his blank expression, the Rose Queen expected him to.

Fayth sighed as he set to work untying the knot that seemed to have worked itself tighter since he’d first tied it. Every brush of his knuckles over the Rose Queen’s soft skin sent a jolt of energy the length of his arm and straight to his heart if he was romantic—straight to his groin if he was honest—but the black-haired man sat and watched the movement of his fingers without the slightest hint he felt anything similar. And why should he? They’d known each other for less than a day and soon enough they’d never see each other again.

It was going to be a long three weeks. 

Frustrations and WiPpet Wednesday

You know that render of RQ I had cooking last week?  Well, after almost a week solid of rendering time... it turned out to be useless.  Oh sure, the background looked nice, but RQ himself?

Not so much.

The figure I use for RQ has many, many problems in Poser anyway, and I guess taking it into the external renderer somehow zeroed the shape and pose...  More than a little frustrating.  I've made some changes so it'll render faster (at the expense of those pretty rose stems; might have to revert those without RQ in shot) and it's now cooking, but it's taking its time again so the best I've got is a part-done screenshot I've added some postwork too, to compensate for my awful lighting.  One day I'll actually have a sensibly-calibrated monitor set up somewhere.

I think my poor laptop, Sixteen, is on his last leg.  Due to a particularly intrusive and memory-hogging program my employers made me install, his already shaky fan ended up having to work in overdrive a lot more and even though I've now successfully dug the program out again the fan now runs (and rattles) non-stop.  I really need to get into the casing and see if it's off-balance or full of dust or something, but being a laptop it's not easy so... bleugh.  Not happy.  I love my crabby semi-sentient laptop and now he's on his last legs.  And honestly, I've gotten so used to the rattling noise that I'm just as worried when I can't hear it these days,

By the way, when I say 'dug out', I mean that closing instances in Task Manager didn't work (they came back) and trying to uninstall made it demand I contact my administrator for remote approval!  I should point out here I'm a freelancer, not an actual employee, and my laptop is supplied by myself at my own expense so not only was I unimpressed at this, I've now had to buy another (much cheaper) laptop to use solely for work.  I finally got the damn program out -- without administrator approval damnit, it's my laptop -- by disabling its eight different systems to let me uninstall it properly.

Aaaaaand then it turned out it had, by itself, uninstalled anything that looked remotely like an antivirus so that was fun to fix too.

I've had such a good week.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a weekly blog-hop where participants share snippets of their Works in Progress on a Wednesday, and each snippet should somehow relate to the date, whether through simple means or complicated WiPpet maths.  It's hosted by the lovely K. L. Schwengel and you can read all the blogs and sign up yourself here.

They're all lovely people who hopefully I will actually be able to spend more time with this week! *growls at last week*

Against all odds I managed to write a little on The Rose Queen and a bit more of J for Jonathan, and I think I've worked out where G for Gabrys is going (i.e. longer than I expected...), so while it's not been a massively productive week it's had its moments.

Today is the 13th May 2015, so it's 13 + 5 = 18, 18 + 1 (from the year) for 19 sentences which follow straight on from last week's, where Fayth has finally managed to get himself and his passenger/prisoner/willing follower back to his ship.  There is also some profanity involved.

He’d expected the Rose Queen to be in one of the ship’s two quarters, since Fayth had pointedly left both doors open, but instead found him sat in the unused co-pilot’s seat, already securely buckled in. “Is it okay?” He asked in the face of Fayth’s blank stare. “I wanted to see.” 

Fayth shrugged. “Suit yourself.” As he busied himself with some very hurried launch procedures, the Rose Queen nodded in his peripheral vision. Damn it, damn it, damnit, why did he have to be so distractingly fucking pretty, right at a time when flicking the wrong switch at the wrong time could end up incinerating the man the Rose Queen had been so adamant about protecting. 

Well, that was a little exaggeration, but still. 

Only a little. 

It wasn’t like he was sat there to be sociable anyway: he was simply ensuring that Fayth kept his word, even though Fayth would have done so without needing to be watched. Without looking at his passenger, he thumped his middle finger into a button, “ship, open access door.” 

“Warning, Handsome Prince,” the ship’s lovely voice filled the cabin at the same time heat filled Fayth’s cheeks under the Rose Queen’s startled stare. He’d kill Matthew. “Bay is still occupied.” 

“Override,” Fayth said, adding under his breath where the ship was unlikely to pick it up, “if he doesn’t leave then call it natural selection.” 

A screen displaying the rear camera showed the naked man diving through the doorway into the waiting arms of several conspicuously-armed guards before Fayth gunned the engines, the ship’s monumental dock door began to open and the automatic failsafes sent the access door plunging down again. He turned a broad grin to the Rose Queen and flicked down the switch marked ‘lock’. 

The one-time Handsome Prince blasted from the bay in a roar of engines. 

Pinup Boy Sunday - Corliss

Today's pin-up is Corliss Baenan, mercenary, head of security and current punching-bag from The Rose Queen.

Taken on as the head of the Orenda's security with the specific task of guarding the Rose Queen, Corliss managed to screw up spectacularly, losing not only the Rose Queen's trust, but the man himself.  So much for good intentions.

Tasked by his Captain with retrieving him, Corliss discovers his adversary might be a little quicker-witted than expected—and even if he wasn't, RQ has his own opinions on the matter .  If Corliss is to have a hope of fulfilling his job and avoid being unceremoniously dumped back into his past life he might just have to join forces with a man he hates to protect his target, because if he can't he might just lose everything...

Pinup Boy Sunday - Alex

Today's pin-up is Alex, former antagonist and now slightly unexpected main character from Radial and my occasionally-ongoing webseries Unravel.

The acerbic Alex started out life as a guinea pig in a semi-governmental facility, passed along—he supposes by his parents—due to his paranormal abilities and odd personality.  From there, he moved through the Academy to graduate at 18 and take his place working for the same shadowy organisation, cataloguing others like himself and 'claiming' those signed over to them for experimentation.  (And indulging in a lot of alcohol and casual sex along the way.)

One of those was Milos, and because the damn alfa survived his procedure, Alex is stuck with him.  But it did turn out that Milos had more uses beyond clawing his opponents and spectacularly failing to hit him during sparring lessons—though the same can't be said for the floor.

Not that he can work out how casual, grudging and somewhat blackmailed sex ended up in what seems to be an actual relationship, or why it seems so natural to share Milos's bed...  but it does make getting laid a lot easier.

Not that they really need a bed for that.  The car'll do just fine.  Or their office; the gym; behind the bar.  Or the kitchen, or alleyways, or...

Pinup Boy Sunday - Milos

Finally found time for another picture that took wholly more time than it looks like it did!

Today's pin-up is Milos from my occasionally ongoing project Unravel.

Milos has not had the best start in life, but through several incredible twists of fate he has ended up in a significantly better situation than he could have hoped: he's employed by the government, has been given an apartment of his own and best of all, a place to keep his beloved motorbike--the only thing of his own he was able to take from his old life.

The only downside is the colleague he's now forced to work with--the man who kidnapped him in the first place, with the paperwork to prove that it was all perfectly legal--who, despite Milos's best efforts, has become more like a partner to him, in every sense of the word.

Oh, and the genetic mutation he was forced to undergo that turns his fingers into polymetal claws.  That too.  Only that he can use as an advantage.  He's yet to find any advantage to Alex at all.

...Well, except that if Alex is in bed with him, it's another night he can put off buying a radiator for his apartment.

Post-NaNo 2014: Now What? (Give Me Something To Do)

The thing with finishing NaNoWriMo is that there's weird sense of nothingness.  I know my story isn't finished but, for once this month (...not counting the start of it...) I'd like a little bit of a break.  The oddest thing, though, is that although every year I promise I'll finish my story afterwards and never do, this year I think I really might.  I'd like to know what actually happens, for a start, and in this case I'm only finding that out when I write.

It's been an up-and-down month, as I think my progress chart makes abundantly clear:

I didn't have a great start.  I actually thought I'd fail to finish for the first time in eleven years.  And then seeing some of the incredible word counts coming from some of the habitual overachievers kicked me up the arse -- though the last day was nuts because I'd really wanted to at least break 100k.  I finished up by writing 10,018 words yesterday to manage it.

My final total is 101,606 words (it seemed a nice round place to stop) and I'm now about 2/3 of the way through the story.  It needs heavy editing, I rambled a lot (you'd never guess, right?) and there are a lot of sex scenes in it because I worked on the theory that if I got bored or felt like I was slowing, then it was probably time to write one, but it's been fun so far.

You can probably figure out the way it's going from this Wordle image...

But like I said, I hit December 1 and this weird sense of inertia slips over me.  I want to write but I'm mentally exhausted -- and I've got Sunset Overdrive and Dragon Age: Inquisition waiting for me -- and, to make it all worse, it's Cyber Monday today.

Last year I prepped Three Graces as an ebook (with a downright awful first cover) and did a (very) limited release for Cyber Monday.  I think it got something like 15 downloads.  This year I'd wanted to do something else but since NaNo has been eating my brain so very badly I completely lost track of time until I started getting emails about Black Friday.  So I find myself on Cyber Monday with a cover for The Fair Automaton and a mostly-completed ebook, but here's the thing...

I don't like releasing short stories as single ebooks.  I mean, it's 5,000 words.  That's kinda small -- not that it felt it when I had to handwrite the damn thing.  I'd prefer to release at least three in a book at once, preferably five, and am only slightly hindered by the fact I have two with a third sitting in my head going "look at meeeeee" very quietly.  So I have nothing.  I am empty-handed on this most scifi-sounding of shopping 'holidays'.

So, instead, if you comment with two names and a situation, or a location, or anything you'd like a short story or flash-fic about, I'll write it for you.

It's not much, I know; I'm expecting a resounding silence, but I'd like to try anyway.  Smut, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, whatever, I'll give it a go.

Pinup Boy Sunday - Tauma

Maybe not a two-weekly feature per se...  Though in my defense, this one proved to be a little awkward.  I couldn't do it the way I wanted in 3D so this time, I'm sorry, you get my actual hand-drawn and coloured artwork instead.

This is Tauma, protagonist of my NaNoWriMo 2014 project.  He's a happy, unassuming man who works at a 'Palace'--a kind of exclusive club where men go for alcohol, music and conversation with handsome and intelligent young men, and who can then choose to sleep with said men.  Tauma has a secret, but who doesn't in that kind of place?

Except Tauma's secret can bring two countries to their knees.  Worse, so could his crush on one of his clients, the enigmatic Raven, whose own secret could just be enough to ruin Tauma's life entirely...

Pinup Boy Sunday - Admiral Fayth

This is rapidly turning into a two-weekly feature, isn't it?  The irony is, it's not the time it takes to render the image--it's the time it takes to render it again, and again, and again, until the lighting looks good and as little looks weird as possible (which in my case is the most time-consuming part; I always miss something).

Still, it's a good thing I enjoy it!

Today's pin-up is Admiral Fayth, the protagonist and all-round force of nature from The Rose Queen.

Fayth lives his life from his shuttle, quite literally: he eats, sleeps and works from it, hunting down property that is, if not already lost, then is likely to be in the foreseeable future.  Fayth is a thief, and he'd like to think he's damn good at it too (as well as being the hottest misappropriator of goods this side of eternity, of course).  That's why he gets hired for obscure jobs... like finding a certain gardener and returning them to their rightful owner.

Shame it all goes horribly wrong, really.  Still, every cloud has a silver lining, right?

As to the gun?  Well, he wouldn't want to brag... too much.

Pinup Boy Sunday - The Rose Queen

Possibly as punishment for being so happy last week that I could finally render images in a timely manner, this week's image took around a week to render, which is why I missed last week's posting.  Not a week continuously, no.  The main body of the picture, however, took around 25 hours solid to complete.  I then discovered some issues that needed correcting, so without the hanging and foreground plants, the image took around 7 hours per pass to render, and had to be re-rendered twice to fully correct everything.

Of course, none of this would have been possible at all on my laptop, so perhaps it was less of a punishment and more to prove a point.  So, therefore, after a week's unintentional hiatus...

Today's pin-up is The Rose Queen, from my project of the same name.

The Rose Queen—which is his title, not his name, but his name is something he guards jealously and dislikes announcing, instead most commonly going by the name of "RQ"—is sometimes a quiet and unassuming man, but not incapable of defending himself or standing up for himself verbally.  He is intrinsically a good man...

...but if he really wanted, if he really knew what he could do, then absolutely nothing in the galaxy could stop him.

Pinup Boy Sunday - Milos (Sci-Fi)

These have been on hiatus somewhat since my original attempts, mostly due to the fact that Sixteen sometimes struggles with rendering images and it's nearly impossible to do absolutely anything else while it's going on.

However!  Now I have Echo, I can still use Sixteen for everyday things and renders that could have taken five or seven hours on Sixteen only take two or three at most.  Unless they're ridiculously enormous, of course, and then what might take seven or eight hours on Echo would have probably overheated Sixteen entirely...

As a result, this totally pointless weekly feature is now back!

Today's pin-up is Sci-Fi Milos.

I normally avoid the 'elves in space' trope, especially considering his canon is already pretty damn odd, but I had the unexpected urge to render this.  I think he came out nicely enough, so I'm not complaining...

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/.

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?

My Spare Time (Not All That Spare)

First off, apologies for the fact I seem to have forgotten that I usually blog on Tuesdays.  It doesn't much  help that I actually thought today was also Tuesday and I'm now slightly concerned to find it's Wednesday.

I'm not sure I actually remember Tuesday.  This is the downside to working from home: all the days seem to blur together.

Victoria 4, based on the singer Nana Mizuki

I've been writing (and traumatising my teachers with my stories) since I was a child, but the other pastime I have is a little more recent... relatively speaking.  For at least seven years now I've had an interest in 3D artwork.

That makes it sound like some sort of therapy introduction, doesn't it?  Arguably it can become quite addictive; you can certainly lose a lot of time in it without meaning to.  I'm not a talented 3D modeller—what little I can do revolves around clothing and I'm appalling at making it follow the figure afterwards—so a lot of what I end up using is made by other artists and is sold via online stores such as Daz3D and Renderosity.  That doesn't mean, however, I have to be constrained by those.

You can also buy things called texture packs, which can be either a pre-made set of textures for a specific item, or a set of flat photographs that you can apply to any model you wish.  Some come with settings that turn them into seamless tiles—meaning the image can be repeated into infinity, theoretically, if your model was large enough—and others are literally just photos that you can use to make your own textures.  You can even take photographs of your own and use those.

'Ring' for the JSF Onepiece

If you're a fashion-minded person, you can create your own textures in Photoshop too and then apply them to outfits.  It requires different skills to straight-up rendering, but is a different way to personalise outfits and scenes.  (It also takes me ages and I struggle with inspiration, so I only do it infrequently.)

'Ring', to the left, is one texture I made for an outfit called the Japanese Style Fashion Onepiece and released free for other people with the same outfit to use.  The bodice section is made from a photo of my own leather trousers; a subtle pattern in the red came from a notebook, and the design was done painstakingly in Photoshop—arguably more difficult than the slow but straightforward process of making the texture itself.

Dokkalfa Milos London (and his arse)

3D is in essence like digital photography, only instead of hiring the model, telling them what to wear, lighting them and photographing (I'm over-simplifying the process, I know), I have instead to make the model male or female, put skin on them while trying to ensure it looks semi-realistic or at least suits the scene, dress them, manually pose them and their outfit, find (or design, if I use a Pixar-style program like Garibaldi—something I used for David's stubble on the Three Graces cover) suitable hair, ensure that all the textures work well, light the scene and render it.  For something a lot of people deride as "easy", it's a lot of hard work.

To me, at least, the end results are worth it.  I don't have to trawl around the internet hunting for a photograph that resembles my character and then worry about acquiring the rights to it if I want to use it in an image.  Instead I make the figure resemble my character, and I can then render at any resolution.  This is particularly handy for characters like my dokkalfa Milos, who would require more effort in Photoshop with a photograph than I ever have to put into a render, especially now I've got his settings how I want them.

It's time-consuming to do, requires practice (like most things!) and may one day kill my laptop, but it's a remarkably enjoyable way to kill time.  Even if I have grossly over-simplified it here!

If this sounds interesting, you can find information for beginners on Smith Micro's Beginner's Poser Tutorials or HubPages' Daz Studio Tutorial.  Daz Studio is a free program you can pick up here; Poser Debut is $49.99 from Content Paradise and the more fully-equipped Poser 10 is $129.99.

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 1

National Stationery Week is upon us once again.

I say 'once again', but in reality I managed to forget all about it last year.  So this year I've flung myself into it wholeheartedly.  Somewhat overzealously, in fact... the full extent of which will be revealed tomorrow, and when I say 'full extent' I do mean it.

Today is 'Pencil Day'.  I used to have a decent collection of watercolour pencils (as shown to the left) and regular colouring pencils, along with drawing and metallic ones--I still do, in fact, somewhere--but as I don't draw much any more a lot have fallen by the wayside.  These days, my trusty assistant for everything from sketching to puzzles in the newspaper is an ancient and slightly disgusting mechanical pencil that I 'liberated' from a former workplace many years ago.  I should probably replace it, but it's served me well.  I'd feel bereft without it.

Most people swear by various pencil grades (I have a set of those somewhere too), but not only am I a heathen who uses a mechanical pencil, but I'm doubly damned by using generic HB leads too!  At least it's not so bad these days, as all I do is ink over the pencil lines and then erase them--but it's arguable that I'd be better using a softer 2B lead...  But as the side of my hand is grey and disgusting by the time I'm finished normally, anything softer and more easily smudgable would be disastrous!

In preparation for my big project, I've been working on two illustrations.  I forgot to take a picture of the first one before I started to ink and colour it, but I did remember the second.  So, in honour of Pencil Day, this is the pencil sketch of the second illustration (the one that shows just how out of practice I am!).

Fancy handwriting will be the death of me.

You can see my trusty pencil, along with the putty eraser that might look disgustingly disreputable, but is actually supposed to be that colour.

Hopefully, tomorrow, the whole finished picture will be ready for you to see!

Tomorrow: Pen & Ink Day, the day I may have gotten a little carried away with... Notepad Day, my favourite photographic subject!

Short Story: Christmas Tree

Rating: 15
Universe: Unnamed Steampunk
Word Count: 2,791
Summary: Niko and Kirill go Christmas tree shopping, but end up meeting people Kirill would sooner forget.

“It’s early enough that it shouldn’t be too crowded, but will you be alright?” Niko asked, twisting to look over his shoulder as he lifted his shirt over his head. “I know you’re still a bit.. with... after...”

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Short Story: Tinsel and Hooks

Rating: PG
Universe: Unnamed Steampunk
Word Count: 1,152
Summary: Kirill asks Niko about Christmas decorations, only to find he has none—except it turns out that's no impediment to actually having any, when your lover is a talented mechanic.

Kirill waited until Niko finished hammering the sheet of metal until he tried speaking, and even then it came out more quietly tentative than he’d hoped. “Um, Niko, where do you keep your Christmas decorations?”

________________________________________________________

Pinup Boy Sunday - Niko Lunen

Postponed from last week due to certain technical hitches, this Sunday it's the turn of Kirill's love interest, legal owner and unintended rescuer, Nikolai Lunen.

Niko is a 29-year-old engineer, mechanic and alchemist with an affable, if somewhat solitary demeanour.  He lived alone in a small manor in an upmarket part of the city until Kirill came to live with him, and makes a living by working on constructing mechanical and alchemical commissions.

He enjoys reading, working and music (sometimes both at the same time), and enjoys taking care of Kirill.  He dislikes the practice of slavery and isn't quite sure how he ended up with one, although suspects a soft heart is a bad thing to take to an auction.

Pinup Boy Sunday - Kirill

It was originally going to be "Sexy Boy Sunday" but... really there's no word less appropriate to describe half my characters, so this is what we're stuck with.

Today and nothing to do with procrastination whatsoever it's the turn of the protagonist of the steampunk story I'm working on, Kirill.

Kirill is a quiet and serious young man whose most distinguishing features are the white streak in the front of his hair and the gold scarring covering a large part of his upper face.  At 24 he has the general demeanour of a man twice his age and, until the riots, was living quietly with Nikolai Lunen, his legal owner and best friend.

He likes nice food, the feel of soft fabrics and the sight of Niko's smile; he dislikes people invading his personal space and the cold.  His favourite place to be is curled up in a chair in Niko's conservatory.