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Monday, February 25, 2008
Oh my goodness Frayed Tapestry is on Amazon
Only if you have the Kindle ebook reader (and I know no one who does), there are no customer reviews, and there's no cover image, but still. My goodness, I'm on Amazon.
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Unreasoned prejudice (mine)
I do not like Captain Von Trapp from The Sound of Music. He is the epitome of everything that Alpha-male heroes do wrong. Well, apart from rape, I suppose.
He is awful to his children and his employees, he is patronising and rude to Max (who probably deserves it, but whatever), he lets himself fall in love with Maria while continuing to be engaged to the Baroness, he carries on intending to marry the Baroness and keep Maria as his nanny while knowing he's in love with Maria, and he doesn't tell Maria he loves her until the Baroness a) dumps him, and b) tells him to (practically).
He also has a stupid name. No hero has any business being called Gayorg. To be fair, I've looked it up and it's spelled Georg, which is much more sensible. And maybe the Baroness pronounces it in a particularly stupid-sounding way. I wouldn't be surprised (yes, I don't like her either).
Oh, and he sends his children back to bed when they've got up cos they're scared of the thunderstorm. Bad, bad hero.
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| Friday, February 22, 2008
Dystopic worldbuilding and cardboard characters
So, futuristic dystopias - the coolest thing ever. I'm having the funnest time in the world building my society for my RRH story (possibly called The Path. Clearly, I'm using up all my creativity on the worldbuilding rather than the title).
The characters are not so fun. I'm working on RRH (damn it, she needs a name and nothing yet has worked for me) and she's coming on okay. But I've got three other characters who are the miserablest, vaguest sketches of placeholder personalities so far, and I'm sorry to say I quite dislike them. I'd cut them out if I could and make it all about RRH and The Path, but they're really necessary for the whole plot arc.
You know, it's not story ideas I'd like delivered to me in an envelope each week, it's characters. I'll let you into a secret - I sometimes totally cheat and base them on real people. I once had to write a council-meeting scene in a book, and I drew a diagram to help me keep clear who was sitting where. And more than half the characters had a little label for their name, and another little label saying who they really were.
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| Thursday, February 21, 2008
Oh, I got tagged
Michelle stopped sitting on a cornflake long enough to hop over here and tag me. I'm pretty sure Diana Castilleja has tagged me with this before as well, and possibly MG Braden as well. So here I am, killing many taggers with one post. (By the way, Diana has the prettiest blog - go admire it!)
1. Link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.
- I was out shopping/coffee-drinking/writing today. As I was walking through WH Smith, I passed one of those stands that has various little travel-related oddments: a neck pillow, a pack of suitcase locks etc. One pack said 'alarm'. Oh yes, I thought, it's a rape alarm. Except it wasn't; it was an alarm clock. The next pack I saw said 'mosquito'. Right, one of those electronic Mosquito (TM) systems to discourage teenagers loitering in town centres. Except no. What it was, of course, was an insect repellent. Sometimes my mind is an odd place to be.
- I just answered a question on one of the internal Samhain loops, on how to increase font size in the comments balloons we use for editing. The email, reasonably enough, had the words 'increasing' and 'size' in its subject line. Which led (again, reasonably enough) to it getting caught in someone's spam filters.
- I can't think of the right name for the heroine of my current story. She's currently got the placeholder name RRH (short for Red Riding Hood - guess who she's based on?). Which I keep reading as HRH, which doesn't flow one bit, and which jars me out of the story every time. I'm sorry to say I've considered the names Red and Scarlet, but hello, cliche?
- When someone says something negative about a book - or, to a lesser extent, a film - I really love, my eyes actually go blurry with rage. I endeavour to keep this extreme reaction to myself.
- I don't like talking on the phone. To anyone. Apparently this shows - Abstract says I even sometimes sound frosty to him. This is not a good thing.
- I don't bite my nails, but I do bite the skin around my nails. Which is manky. The habit, I mean, not the skin.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your blog entry.
- Oh, goodness, anyone who wants to be tagged! If I find someone who looks as if they really need to be tagged I'll come back and post them here.
5. Let the tagged people know by leaving a comment on their blogs.
- If I do then I will. At least I don't have to do it by phone!
(Incidentally, re. the Mosquito (TM) - unethical and barbaric? I think so.)
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| Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Tuesday is Apostrophe-Abuse Day
In an email (mostly paraphrased, except the relevant clause which is bolded and sic):
Rediscover who you are.
...if that ring's bells louder than a toddlers tantrum, you'll enjoy our latest issue.
Look, I understand the difficulty with it's and its. Really, I can see why that's confusing. And plural possessives, and the debate over possessives for words ending in 's'. I'm sympathetic. I am. (Of course, it helps that when I'm editing I can fix these things, which keeps my OCD-ness under control.)
But no one has any business missing the possessive apostrophe out of toddler's tantrum and then inserting it into rings bells. That's just, just...wanton.
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| Monday, February 18, 2008
Random updates
My vacuum cleaner filter is clogged up and needs to be rinsed and dried.
Today I have two manuscripts to edit, and another section of a short futuristic story to write.
I was going to do a short free read for the Romance Divas Valentine's Day Ebook Challenge. I started one, but it became obvious that to do justice to the plot I'd have to make it too long. So I made up another, intending to do pretty much a piece of flash fiction (under 1,000 words). Except that's now around 3,000 words, and only about half finished. There's still a nice link to me on the V-Day Challenge page (Melting into Sky, yes I know, nice title, shame about it not existing yet) but if I don't finish the darn thing soon it's going to be way too late for Valentine's Day.
But this is okay. Last year I originally intended one short story for the V-Day Challenge, and when that started to get too long I abandoned it and wrote something else (Meeting in Darkness, over on my website). Then I picked up the abandoned story, finished it off, changed its title from Rapunzel to Falling, and sent it to Drollerie Press, where it became their first YA release. So if this story just keeps on growing and won't finish until it's reached 10,000 words or something, it can just jolly well go off and be published. You know, if someone accepts it, that is. Anyway, so I have to finish writing that too.
I'm ridiculously, unnecessarily excited because I just sent off my membership forms to join the Romantic Novelists' Association. I'm busy saving up to go to their annual conference in July, and am thrilled to death at the idea of going to a proper writers' conference. And I'm hoping that, once my membership goes through, there'll be a local chapter I can join and extra meetings to go to. Meetings! Meetings! Hooray!
I'm also very pleased at the RNA's membership requirements. Fire and Shadow, a 35,000 word ebook novella, qualifies me to join as a full member. I did check if the length or format disqualified me (in which case I'd have had to join as a 'new writer' which would have hurt my pride), but the only thing that would do that would be if I were vanity-published, which I'm not.
Final random update:
There's back story to this one. I regularly get calls from cold-call salespeople, which sometimes make me very angry. Generally they're trying to sell me double glazing.
I also regularly get spam in my email spam filter - generally offering to enlarge a part of my body which, being female, I don't have. I have to say I love the subject headers of these emails. If you write 'are women dissapointed with your small ***' then your lack of spelling ability makes me disinclined to trust you with my sexual health. If you write 'wonderc*m and more wonderc*m' then, frankly, all you've done is made me go eww. If you write 'annihilate the opposition with your mighty weapon'...well, I admit, I clicked on that one because I just couldn't believe you were still talking about cosmetic enhancement. Seriously, what do you think people are going to do with it? Walk round knocking other men over?
Anyway, so Abstract phoned me from work. He wanted me to email him a file, but he started off by pretending to be a double-glazing salesman. I, being very intelligent, recognised his voice.
Abstract: Hello, madam. Can I interest you in some double-glazing?
Immi: No, I don't want double-glazing. I hate double-glazing. I like my windows.
Abstract: Can I interest you in something else?
Immi: No.
Abstract: How about an extension? Do you need an extension?
Immi (with lightning-quick wit): Do you need an extension?
Abstract got his file, but I'm glad to say I escaped without double-glazing, and Abstract will not be annihilating the opposition with his mighty weapon any time soon.
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| Saturday, February 16, 2008
The midwinter sacrifices worked...
...the sun has returned!
Wow, it's felt as if we hardly left the house all winter. Abstract did, of course, cos he gets stir-crazy in the house with all these women around him (the one other male is the cat, and he's unfortunately kind of neurotic). But the rest of us have basically looked at the weather through the window - not that close to the window either, because, hey, sometimes there's a draught.
But a few weeks ago the sun came back, and since then we've been to Sherwood Forest (there's an updated photo on the bio page of my website) and to see the snowdrops at Hodsock Priory (Gloworm calls it Hogsnog Priory, which is a name worthy of Harry Potter). Abstract and I went on a very long walk up hill and down dale - and ultimately to Southwell, which has a minster and - more usefully to us - a coffee shop. Oh, and a shop which sold me some thicker socks so I could actually bear to walk back home again.
And today Abstract and the girls went to a local canoeing and kayaking club. The girls have never tried kayaking before: Sparkler almost lost her nerve before going in. I sat outside the pool where they practise, and drank a coffee from a machine, and worked on my current story. A few times I went and peered through the glass door - I was up near the deep end of the pool - and tried to spot my children amongst all the little helmeted heads.
At one point a couple of kids paddled past where I could see them. They seemed to be wielding their paddles with great efficiency, and I watched with some admiration. It's going to be a while before the girls do that, I thought, and I wonder if they'll ever dare move out of the shallow end. Then one of the kids paddled round so I could see her face...and it was Gloworm!
Later, when they came out, they were just giddy with excitement and the joy of accomplishment. Sparkler had capsized (although not rolled), they'd done races, and one of the first things they said was, "Can we do that again?" Fortunately, Abstract is more than happy to take them again, and I think we've found a regular Saturday activity. Not that drinking coffee and writing is markedly different from what I do all the rest of the week...
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| Thursday, February 14, 2008
Happy Valentine's Day, Abstract
This is what I got Abstract for Valentine's Day. We don't really do Valentine's as a rule, but I got this as a surprise. Except that I was so pleased with it I couldn't resist telling him when the parcel got here- "Your Valentine's present has arrived!" I'm lousy at surprise presents/parties/anything. I don't have a problem lying if I decide I need to, but I can't lie to people who matter.
Um, where was I? Oh yes, ethics aside, this is his present:
 This is a Freeloader Solar Powered Portable Charger. Those shiny bits are solar panels: they absorb solar power and store it, then you plug in (via lots of different attachments) your digital camera, iPod, mobile phone etc and they charge in a completely environmentally-friendly way!
It's the cleverest thing in the world. We have lots of gadgety things, which I wouldn't be without but which I know have an environmental cost. Abstract is keen to do what we can to be more eco-friendly (he did a load of house insulation a while back, aside from the vegetable garden/recycling/cycling to work and school). And he likes gadgets that are genuinely useful. And because it was Valentine's Day, of course I bought him the pink version.
My parents had the girls for the last couple of days, so as well as shiny pink environmentally-friendly presents Abstract and I actually had time off from being Mummy and Daddy, as well. We had dates - we went out for lunch and coffee, and a hugely long walk near Sherwood Forest yesterday. It was like a whole extended Valentine's celebration. The girls are back now, which is lovely, but he's back at work tomorrow, which is sad. I'd like it if he were around for a bit longer.
But hey, at least he has a pink present to cheer him up.
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| Friday, February 08, 2008
So, what do you think...?
I've gone off my old business cards, and want a more grabby, hooky tagline. I like 'where shadows come alive', but it doesn't really tell you what kind of stuff I write.
So I've been playing at Vistaprint - what do you think of this design?
 I screwed my courage to the sticking point today and asked at the library if I could leave some promotional items - bookmarks, business cards. The lady I spoke to said yes, so I was just handing them over when another lady came over to say no, they don't allow any commercial advertising. Which is fair enough, given that it's a public-funded library, but a shame for me!
I'm thinking, however, that if I get some bookmarks printed that advertise the free fiction on my website, that's not commerical advertising, is it? I'm not advertising something to buy - I'm just advertising four free stories, plus a pretty website to look at. I'm trying to decide if that's a legitimate loophole or whether it's kind of unethical.
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Changes
I've been getting some fabulous responses to my writing lately. Mostly to do with the short story I've got in the free Drollerie ezine (Dust and Dead Roses at Scattered Things, in case you forgot).
So thank you, nice people, for a) reading my work, b) enjoying it, and c) taking the trouble to let me know. It's been a good week!
In other news, at the end of April I'll be leaving Samhain Publishing. This is a decision that makes me sad, because working there has been brilliant, and Samhain is definitely going places - and I'd like to be part of that. However, I've been finding that editing uses up the same kind of creative energy that I need for my writing. I've only got space in my head for a certain amount of words in a day, and when I'm busy editing a manuscript all those words end up being someone else's, and I have no space or energy to focus on my own words.
Which is probably the reason that in the last year I've only written short stories. I love my short stories, and so far Drollerie Press (and readers - you see how I don't forget you?) seem to love them too. But I have bunches of ideas that need to become novels. And I like writing novels. I like character depth and character development and slow-burn relationships and world-building spreading out through three hundred pages.
So, I'm leaving. I gave in my resignation shortly before Christmas. I also told my authors, who instantly decided to punish me by sending in wonderful-sounding book pitches, or amazing manuscripts (yes, Anara Bella, Beverly Rae and Evie Byrne, I am looking at you) that I've had to pass to other editors.
And it's sad. But at the same time, while my editing tails off as I finish the last of my scheduled releases, I'm noticing that I'm writing more. I'm having more ideas - loads of ideas, actually. I'm also spending more time with Abstract.
So look for more short stories coming soon! And at some point in the next year there should be a full-length Imogen Howson manuscript out on the market. Somewhere.
(warning: Evie Byrne's blog - linked above - is a blog of erotic art and, as such, contains explicit imagery)
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