Ack!

Since I started this blog last month I had a good buffer of posts ready to go, but it appears time has finally decided to get down and truly be a terrible, fleeting thing so that buffer has run out. You may have noticed that Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are post days generally. Oh noes! It’s Thursday already and I have nothing for Friday!

So here, because the proverbial black eyes I asked for are starting to roll in: a rant on feedback, inspired by one too many writers going off the way wrong way after getting constructive criticism. Also notes to self because I’m going to need it in the coming weeks here. I cannot swear enough, people.

After reading the feedback our “friends” gave us: I HATE EVERYTHING

Getting feedback – real, very critical feedback – is a lot like working out (I imagine – I’m sort of allergic to working out). It can leave you feeling like you’ve just taken a good crowbar to the gut. You get the wind knocked out of you because you find out you’re not half as clever as you thought you were and all those funny little moments that you thought were genius actually weren’t. You want to curl up into a ball and cry and never, ever let anyone read anything you write ever again. In fact, you don’t even want to write anymore because OBVIOUSLY WE’RE JUST NOT ANY GOOD AT IT.

The reality is more complicated. Stick with me here. The beta readers are on your side. Unless they’re total asshats in which case they’re not going to be helpful and need to be ditched ASAP. I wish I had an easy to spot solution for finding out who is trying to help and who is just worthless, but I don’t.

And after the workout you’re sore. Your ego hurts. It hurts because this is your baby. You have spent days, months, years, a lifetime of anguish to get these words onto the page(screen). We suffer for our art. Even comedians are drawing the funny from a very dark well. These words are a part of who you are. The story is, in some primal way, your life and to have someone point out that maybe it’s not quite as solid as you thought hurts in an almost physical way.

But hey, we’re all adults here. We’ve been hurt before – it’s what led us to do what we do. I hate being told that, as a writer, I need to have a thick skin. I know this get off my case and let me sob into my beer gawd!

Ahem. Let’s assume that people are generally good. This is difficult for me so you’ll have to bear with me. I’m sort of a misanthrope. So somehow I have to convince myself that getting critical feedback is a lot less like getting beaten to a bloody pulp by a gang of forty and more like this:

After the sore, if you keep at it, you start seeing results. You’re story starts toning up. It starts building muscle. And it starts lookin’ good. Your beta readers are the gym baby and after awhile you start to feel like dancing because you have all the energy and there’s a healthy glow about you and you’re ready to face the WORLD!

HERE IS MY BOOK WORLD! READ IT! READ! ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And it all comes crashing down after one stupid review on Amazon, but I haven’t gotten to that point yet, so my delusions, let me keep them.

Anyway! Coming up on Sunday I actually do have a post, in honor of Father’s Day. I’m not a fan of this day, generally speaking, but I do have a minor character who is a dad and the idea for the drabble was a cute one (shut up it is) so two plus two equals special post!

Note to self: go through said post and remove spoilers from said drabble, dummy.

Also incoming is a review (!!!). While I’ve definitely done some heavy-handed critique (my snark can get pretty epic, but I only break that out for people I know very well because generally speaking, they ask for it and give as good as they get *see above creys*), I’ve never done, like, a review before. I finished The Pull by Rob White last night at work, enjoyed it, and I’ve got some digesting to do before I get some thoughts together about it but really quickly: if you’re looking for something fun to read in your down time, definitely check it out.

I think that’s your lot.

Wait no. Have a Sassy Dancing Ood:

Now we’re done.

So I Turned 18 on Monday Apparently

Mostly the natural color – it’s been that way for six (!) years. Normally I’m a medium to light brunette. A friend put some (very subtle) highlights in.

Except for the part where I didn’t.  I mean, I did get older, but I didn’t turn 18.  Add a decade …and some.  I just, y’know, had fun with hair dye.  My mother made the comment awhile back when I first bought this and stated I hadn’t done anything like that since high school.  She’s wrong.  The weirdest color I’ve ever dyed my hair was dark eggplant purple, no bleach, so it looked like a dark burgundy wine color.  Fun, but not exactly out there, if you catch my meaning.

But my hair is the longest it’s ever been and I sort of love it, so I want to have fun with it.  I promised myself that I’d do something fun with my hair once I finished the first draft of The World Outside.  Once I got it into the hands of beta readers.  Well, that happened.  So, since I was getting older, I decided to go blue. 😀

This, I am told by society, is not what a proper adult woman in her late 20s (okay okay early 30s) does with her life.

I’m surprised that I didn’t even use the second bottle, but it’s good that I have it for future use.

Bugger society.

For real.

But I will admit that this sort of thing is scary if you’ve never done it before.  Oh god!  I have to go to work tonight too!!1!  What if I fry my hair and it all falls out!?

That isn’t what happened.  To be honest I’m not sure what color it’s turned out.  It’s still wet, I don’t have a hair dryer, and I spent the past hour and a half scrubbing the bathtub because blue dye is awesome like that.  *falls over*

If it’s too dark I’ll probably wait for it to fade and then go nuts with the bleach.

So why go about telling you all this?  Because I can and because it’s not often I do silly impulsive things like this, so enjoy your WTF while  you can.

……………………..Okay so two hours later how did it turn out?  Meh, not bad:

Yeah, that’s a filter. Too bad. I am not at all photogenic.

It’s exactly what I wanted, which is a dark navy blue in sunlight and black/really dark brown in indoor light.  This saves me some uncomfortable questions at work.  Though, I am thinking that this turning out the way I wanted means I will probably use more bleach and a brighter blue next time.  We’ll see.

Catharsis

[kuh-thahr-sis]

noun, plural ca·thar·ses [kuh-thahr-seez]

1. the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

2. Medicine/Medical , purgation.

3. Psychiatry.

a. psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.

b. discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

From here.  In relation to where I’m going with this, what I’m talking about is FEELING ALL THE FEELINGS EVER FELT IN THE ENTIRE WORLD AT ONCE.

Which is pretty much how my whole week has been going.  How’s your week been?

Essentially it’s started out like this:  Hi!  It’s June, which puts me in the interesting and uncomfortable position of going to my beta readers and poking them on the shoulder asking them to maybe give me a little bit of feedback.  In other words, to reword my post into something more polite and send it off in an email to the list of like eleven who asked to read the currently raw manuscript.

And I have to do this because while I’d love to be able to, I really can’t afford to have a professional structural edit done.  Especially since a copy edit is not really optional (it is but it isn’t) and I’m looking to get some cash to my cover designer by the end of this month.

So that’s fun.

But every time I open up my email program this happens:

I think we’ve already gone over how easy it is for me to use reaction gifs.

It is literally exactly that.  I stare at it for about thirty seconds and close the window with a “NOPE!” face to rival NOPE faces.  I don’t want to bother people, even though the rational part of me knows better.  I have been told as much by the very people I’m terrified of bothering.  That doesn’t change the visceral reaction.

So I guess this post is more me working through how to get over myself and, y’know, bug the people who put themselves into a position to be bothered.  And I’m sure that, by the end of June (which was my deadline for myself because if I haven’t gotten something by then…) I’ll have finished feeling feelings and have a few less cares to give.  Hopefully that promised relief will come.

But.

Five times now I’ve sat down to do this necessary thing and five times I’ve immediately turned into Nathan Lane in The Birdcage.

Now did I say that just so I could link this .gif? The world may never know.

So it could go either way, really.

I fully accept that I am a complete and total pansy.  You guys should see the posts that don’t get published.  I have many many opinions, and many of them expressed with more four letter words than can be found on the Jolly Roger.  Blessing in disguise for you guys, really.

Of course, that could change once I get comfortable with the idea of saying things that might be wrong holy crap.

You keep using that word…

An Open Letter to the Brave Men and Women On Call:

To the heroic doctors, nurses, funeral directors, plumbers, HVAC techs, and other emergency sort of workers whose lines it is my duty, honor, and privilege to answer:

Love,
Me

How Not To Write A Book

A view from my living room.  This is also what my cat, Audi, thinks of what mom does.

I have read a lot of books on writing.  In fact, for awhile I was one of those people that got so caught up on reading about writing that I didn’t get much writing done.  I’ve heard it said that you need to write anywhere from ten thousand to a million or so words, burn them, and then you’re almost ready to start writing a story that doesn’t suck.

That’s pretty much true.  My only problem is I didn’t keep track of how much I’d written before I decided this was it and lo, the holy grail of my efforts had borne fruit and it was good.  Or at least slightly more palpable than its forebears.

When I say I’ve been working on this story for three to four years, what I mean is that I’ve been working on this particular incarnation of this story for that long.  In all honesty, the “world” the current characters reside in has been in the works for about a decade, slowly being tempered and refined into what exists now.  The original main characters have moved into supporting roles, one of the former supporting characters got a makeover and is now in the spotlight and several more didn’t even exist and only walked into my head when I sat down to bang out the first draft during the NaNo of 2010.

Oh, that’s right.  I NaNoed this baby.

I went on to NaNo (this is a verb right?  I can verb this?) two sequels.  So yeah, this thing is a series.

I first attempted NaNo in 2003, got about halfway, and gave up.  I went for it again and “won” in 2004.  The experience was so soul wrenching and stressful because I did it for the wrong reasons that I pretty much left it at that forgot about it.

Prior to 2006 I was writing pretty much daily.  If it wasn’t for myself it was online roleplaying (shush, that’s a thing and don’t you judge me).  Livejournal was huge in my world back then.  Words were everywhere.  I loved reading and I loved writing.

Then life happened and they sort of took a back seat to other things.  I went back to school, got married and then moving and job hunting happened.  Also I discovered WoW at that time and that’ll kill any creative desires you might harbor if you’re not careful.  I still loved reading, but I wrote a lot less.

Then this “nephilim” idea that had been bouncing around came back with a vengeance.  The idea of half-angels (or demons), half-humans as superheroes was not going to go away.  I had a friend that was an artist and the idea manifested as a potential web-comic (minus spandex).  I got character outlines, a basic plot, a ten page treatment and the first chapter’s script written.  The comic never went anywhere and that’s probably for the best.  The story was still in its infancy and while it’s still got a ways to go, it’s not nearly as far as it had to go back then.

I continued to poke at it like a sore tooth.  The artist friend disappeared into the ether and attempts to find a back up went nowhere because I had no idea how to sell this particular snake oil.  I brainstormed and outlined and wrote a few exploratory things.  Then October 2010 rolled around and I remembered NaNo.  Having completely forgotten the gut wrenching hell I’d put myself through six years earlier, I tossed the nephilim into the wringer and, thirty days later, I had something of a beginning, middle, and end.

My main character, Joseph, also started existing, as did a few others.  Joseph’s not what he started out as.  It’s especially funny when you realize that Joseph in the first draft was actually a priest.  My villain wasn’t my villain yet.  Mal, Joseph’s best friend, was definitely not Mal as he exists now.  Sam is pretty much the same.  The three inch high book imp didn’t exist until rough draft round two.

Essentially what I’m trying to say is that the rough draft that existed in 2010 resembles the current incarnation about as much as a porcupine resembles a butterfly.  And that’s okay.  If you’re using NaNo for anything other than throwing ideas at the dartboard to see what sticks and what doesn’t, you might be doing it the hard way.  I took what stuck, tossed what didn’t, and forged ahead trying to temper draft two into something workable.  This is the part that actually took the longest because I did everything All Wrong.

Yeah, I did this a lot.

I decided on the re-write that rough draft #2 would be The One.  I set up a blog for it and started over from scratch, changing things as I went.  I ended up with changes I didn’t like, an ending that didn’t get posted because it didn’t match the beginning, and a bunch of fluff in the middle that didn’t need to be there.  Clearly, I was wrong about The One.

Back to the drawing board then.

I knew a lot about writing, but I knew nothing about structuring those words.  Oh I knew beginning, middle, end was a Thing.  I knew falling action came after the climax and I knew rising action came before that.  The problem was that before all I’d ever really done, prose wise, was write short scenes that I figured would eventually magically squish into that story structure formula.  Some of them did, but a lot of them didn’t and I while I don’t think I wasted my time in writing them because I got things like character development and ideas from them, I could have probably gone about it a lot better.

I’m still learning, but I’m better these days, I think.  At least, it shouldn’t take me three…ish years to write a novel again.

(You can quote me on that when it’s time to have a joke at my expense.)

So books got bought, outlines got written, note cards got posted to cork boards and moved around and omg!  That last bit was way more fun than should have been possible.  The end result was something close to a novel.  So while it’s far from done, I can look over the horizon and see the finish line.

I realize there has to be an easier way to do things.  I’m all ears!

A Place To Call Home

*cracks knuckles*

I mentioned the last post that short stories are not my strong suit, so I’m taking the opportunity while in hurry up and wait mode to practice.  And because I now have a soapbox from which to proclaim all my lovely thoughts and feelings, you get to read my bungling attempts at this stuff too.

Lucky you!

Characters and Such

I want to write more short stories in this universe I somehow cobbled together and as I do, I’ll post them.  Short stories are one area (of several) where I’m not very strong.  You may have noticed I have a tendency to ramble.  This “skill” lends itself better to longer works.

A lot of the plotted stories (oh wow, planning!) will have to do with the minor characters that, while I love them, I wasn’t able to provide with as much “screen time” as I’d have liked.  To satisfy my need to write about them, you get to deal with drabbles about them.

Important Note:  While I’m only human and will mess up from time to time, this blog is as bigotry-free as I can possibly make it.  If things like boys (and probably later: girls) kissing makes you want to start ranting and raving and screaming about eternal damnation (or even if you’re just tempted to drop a “friendly” – these things are never actually friendly – note quoting the Bible at me like I’ve never read it before) then a) what are you doing here seriously?  And b) please just take your toys and go away because those sorts of comments are just going to get deleted.

All good?  Good.

Now let me introduce you to three who will be coming up in a couple days:

• Theo is a Native American nephilim more at home in the big city than on the open plains.  He was born blind, is a master of close hand to hand combat, and sports a temper shorter than your average Smurf.
• Simon is Theo’s saccharine sweet and eternally curious about everything ever nephilim boyfriend.  He also looks like somebody took him and dropped him in a vat of chalk dust and this makes him slightly self conscious.  He may also still be learning how to human because he grew up …elsewhere.
• Raphael in the normal Christian centric myth is the turtle what uses the twin sai the archangel tied up with healing.  Here we’ve gone a step further: he’s got Life and Creation (though in his case it’s more creative than creating) in his corner too.  He’s probably had one too many glasses of wine – or hits on the bong, depending on the decade.

Those are the three you get.  Their story will be up soon!

As a general rule, my stories are probably best classified as “urban fantasy” – I write about nephilim and mythological figures like angels and demons in the modern day.  I love mythology and I love mucking about with parallel myths.  I also really like humanizing mythological figures.  So there’s that.

Ummm

So this is a thing that happened.

Full disclosure: This is not a funeral home whose phones I have ever answered but the “it’s taking too long to get the cremains back!” is a message I’ve taken many, many, many times for several dozen different places.

Unfortunately where I am I can’t watch the video and it doesn’t say in the article how long the families were kept waiting.  To be honest though, I think anything over a week is too long and I’ve talked to families who’ve been kept waiting several weeks.  Understandably, they were less than thrilled.

Of course my first instinct is to shield the director because he pays for the service that gives me a paycheck and there are several people in the world who don’t understand that the one thing funeral homes don’t usually do is pick the body up and immediately chuck it in the fire.  I have talked to nurses who make sure I know to tell the director to not cremate the body until the family has had a chance to view it.

So.  Um.  Speaking of people who should know better…

Things that I know that I can’t actually tell you while I have you on the phone because I’m expected to play a certain degree of dumb: A funeral home cannot (and will not) cremate a body until all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed.  If they don’t wait until that’s done, they’re either in a place where the laws are really relaxed (not likely) or in big trouble because that is a HUGE no no.  Oy.

So I’ve heard anywhere from 24 hours (if it’s prearranged and the family/doctor/coroner has already signed off on it and even then, while close, it’s not a pick up-chuck into fire situation) to a week.  If it takes anything more than that people start getting irritated because memorial services start getting pushed back.  Burials don’t happen (yes, people bury urns – my grandfather was cremated and buried in a garbage disposal at his request …that should tell you everything about my sense of humor right there).  Stuff like that.

And like I said, my first instinct is to shield the director, but I can’t wrap my head around this one.  How long did the families wait?  The wording on the article is weird and sounds like the bodies were actually just stashed in the shop.  If that’s the case: dude wtf?!

Also: Y’know.  Randomly.  I think the comment on the article calling for the directors to be jailed for life is a tad excessive.  Perspective, my darlings.  The dead don’t care if they’re left hanging before the barbeque.  They ain’t goin’ anywhere on account of a sudden case of dead.

I feel for the families.  I do.  Every time I take that sort of message I feel bad, because I am a human being with who still knows what the word empathy means.  But the dead have no such feels to give.  They weren’t killed by the director.  They were just left hanging, and there is a massive world of difference between the two.

I also note that nobody’s pointed this out:

WTF is a funeral home doing with a second hand store?  Think about that for a minute.  Do you really want to shop there?

Really?

Black Cooper Sander Funeral Home, Hollister, California motorcycle rally, 2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) We don’t answer for this funeral home right now, but I totally would. Because it’s awesome.

 

Things People Say When They Call Me

Happy Memorial Day!  Since I’m getting 14 hours of holiday pay while you lucky ducks get your barbeques and whatnots, have a fluffy fun lil post and remember why we get to do fun things like barbeques and picnics:

Image from Wikipedia.org

 

 

 

My job is full of fun.  Considering how often we deal with death and those left grieving, you wouldn’t think so.

But then we get the weird callers.  Of course, my first instinct upon getting a weird caller is to make them feel at home by being equally weird:

After suppressing that temporary urge, I’m able to deal with the call in a professional manner but every once in awhile I’ll get one that just makes me stop and stare at the computer for several seconds while my brain blue screens.

These are very real things that very real human beings have said to me.  Nope, I am not naming the business they were calling and yes, this covers more than just the ones calling funeral homes.

But first, a PSA:

“I just killed my husband/girlfriend/dad/mom/poodle you need to come pick him/her/it up.” – is a running “joke” among funeral home prank callers.  I’ve gotten several variations on this over the past couple years.  It wasn’t funny the first time.  It will never be funny.

If you’ve ever been tempted:  Don’t.

And now, onto the actual really strange stuff (hopefully funny or at least groan-worthy)!  Wording has been slightly changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

“I am a certified, licensed prophet.  That’s prophet with a ‘ph’.” – funeral home

“My toilet has gremlins.” – plumbing company (no, they were not joking)

“Are you a person?” – every account ever

“My dog is having the butt problem again.  …They’ll know what I mean.” – veterinarian

“Do you sell formaldehyde?  I want to preserve this animal embryo I found when I went hunting.” – funeral home

“Do I have to be dead before you’ll cremate me?” – funeral home

“So I used to be a stripper.” – funeral home (an elderly woman told my male co-worker this …at 2am)

“NO WAR IN DETROIT!” – funeral home that is no where near Detroit…

At least no one can say my life isn’t interesting.

27 Things I Want To Ask My Beta Readers

Apart from trying not to breathe down their neck, the hard part about getting feedback from beta readers (who aren’t already professional editors) is making sure it’s useful.  “This is good!” and “It was entertaining!” doesn’t help (well, it soothes the ego but that’s more of a placebo effect than anything) and sometimes you (re: me) can’t afford to drop three hundred smackers or more on a professional who isn’t a copy editor.

So what’s a writer with a budget to do?

Step one: find some suckers friends to read your stuff.

Step two: figure out exactly what sort of feedback you want from them.  If all you want is a pat on the back, then don’t do anything.  If not, well, here’s what I plan on doing:

Note: This actually requires stepping back and looking at the manuscript with a far more critical eye than you’ve used so far.  Put it away for at least a week, if not more.  Don’t touch it.  Don’t look at it.  Don’t think about it.  I failed this step at first, but I’ve since figured it out and left it alone.  Now that I’ve come back to it I find it’s full of things that need fixing up (it will always be full of things that need fixing – deal with it), but more than that it gives me an idea of what to ask.  All of these questions can be prefaced with things like “in your opinion” or “do you think” or “would it be helpful if” – I found it a lot easier to just go straight to the meat of the issue.

Cutting this because some of the questions I want to ask are “spoiler-y” on the off, off, off, chance someone reading this post actually wants to read the book.

So you’ve been warned!