Random Blatherings: December Edition

Ah, December. Apparently some people have snow. Lower Earley, however, is sunny and snow free. (The joys of being a valley girl! Apparently our weather doesn't act like wot it does in the rest of the country.)

So, what news?

Well, Kari Sperring fans can soon look out for an interview of the fabulous award-winning multi-talented genius lady in the upcoming BFS Journal (being the new megamix hardback publication the BFS is putting out in a bid to merge Prism, Dark Horizons and New Horizons. Or something. I? Have no idea.) The cover is gorgeous though. BFS members can expect it as soon as it's back from the printers.

It's Women in SF week over at Torque Control! Go check out the many fabulous posts and discussions about women in sf!

If you're in need of some fun stories to brighten your December, go see the fantastic December Lights project organised by Stephanie Burgis and Patrick Samphire. Me, I loooooove Undead Philosophy 101 by Stephanie Burgis.

Women & Hollywood make mention of how Helen Mirren kicked ass at the Women in Entertainment Breakfast There is a video. And delicious quotes. (Helen Mirren also kicks ass in the film RED. Just sayin'. :-P)

M'good friends Pete and Jan (they of Wyld Stallyns... er, sorry, Wild Stacks fame) have now been made the editors of the BFS' Dark Horizons, and, thusly, are looking for subs.

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On personal newsie bits -
The Nano thing - duly done so my record of making the 50k in November goes unblemished. (Huzzah!)
OU status - Fiiiiinally got the results of the last course/module/thingy back. Passed it! 85% on the examinable part, 75% average on the coursework part (which is, apparently, a bit weird as most people get lower marks for the examinable bit.)
Now, just got to fight my way through the current course from hell then see how many course/module/thingies I can get done before the prices rise astronomically thanks to the Bastard!Government!Trolls! Ahem. Yes. Studying is fun. Really. ;-P

Nano (Day 4!)

I know, shocking isn't it, we're 4 days into Nanowrimo and I still haven't bored you with word counts and other Nano blatherings! Alas, poor people, that is about to change. ;-P

So, this year, unlike may others in recent memory, I shall not be going nuts in the wordwar due to the very distracting presence of coursework for the degree (specifically, a thingy on the rise of agriculture in the Neolithic that is due on 1st December. The bastards. November should be sacred. Really.) Meaning, instead of aiming for the brain-flipping 160k-ish totals that a true wordwar demands, I'm, apparently, going to be happy to make it to the 50k. (I say apparently because there's always the chance that Insane!Competitive!Jen! will wake up and insist on more, just because.)

Anyhoo, so where are we this year then? Planning? Hah! I wish. This year, again, unlike recent years, is going to be a total Pantser. (Ooooh, scary. Control!Freak!Jen! is attempting not to panic.)

Wordcount so far? 5129 words. Teeny, but just about keeping up with the minimum daily needs. (Insane!Competitive!Jen! would still like to make 50k by end of next week, just because. Insane!Competitive!Jen! may need locking in the shed to shut her up.)

Bodycount so far? 1 unconfirmed. (I know! I should be in double figures for dead people by now!)

Action so far? Daring!Smuggler!Girl! has broken into the Alexandrian Embassy during party night to return a love-token to a chap whose husband is a big to-do, she has also narrowly avoided getting killed by the Mysterious!Assassin! who has just committed Foul!Acts! that will come back to bite Daring!Smuggler!Girl! on the ass later.
In other news, Undercover!Revenue!Girl! is trying to close a sting on a renowned antiquities smuggler/crime-lord.(Crime-lady?). Hijinx are about to ensue.
One hopes that the two plot lines will converge in a useful manner at a later date. ;-P

Kaz's Summer Camp

Wahey, I'm in Summer Camp! Kinda. Virtually. Specifically, the funky writerly summer camp started up by Kaz Mahoney.

Our mission: to use the months of June, July & August to achieve writerly goals of our choice.

So, my goals: (being teeny as there's OU coursework and an impending bout of holiday cover to contend with...)

1) To finish edits on Wicked Sisters story and send off
2) Finish gorgon vs vamp short story (temp titled Emerald Eyes)
3) Write another short story (write, meaning, *write&finish*)
4) also I'd like to get enough decent wordage together to upload something to Authonomy but I forgot to add that one to the sign up post...

So, since today is the first goal update day...

1) Wicked Sisters edits finished. (Hurrah!) However, according to my many different beta-readers, it still reads more like a part of a longer work. Which is actually handy because I had this idea the other day of making it the start of an all-new B plot in the current novel-in-progress (see 4.) So, junk it as a short story and weave it into n-i-p? Possibly best. Plus, what isn't improved by the addition of mermaid-pirates? :-)

2) Emerald Eyes. Oy vey, is this one kicking my ass. It was started with the intention of submitting it to a monster mash anthology that Pill Hill Press is doing. (Blimey, but they're doing a lot of themed anthologies!) The aim: a scary story featuring at least two classic monsters. The problem: I suck at scary stories. Might work better as comic fantasy though...

3) Behave! There's two months to go yet! :-)

4) Taurus! Aka the current novel-in-progress. Aka, the Nano thing from a couple of years ago that just won't die. The original Nano version was just a little over 50k, being a fun romp with multi-world treasure hunting, insane death count and Minotaurs. Except it was a bit thin and cliche. However, latest version now has bonus extra mermaid-pirates and more action in the not-Earth worlds which is making it way more complicated but also way more lovely! I love multi-world fic!

I've got this pegged as the Authonomy one mainly because I asked a nice chap over there to do me cover art about a year ago so it would be quite nice to actually use it... :-)

As far as Authonomy & Taurus goes... I only need a 10k minimum of decent quality words (it's the decent quality bit that keeps blocking me... that, and them being consecutive words...) - so far, though, I've got just over 7k, so victory may still be mine. ;-) (Then I'll have to whip some semblance of sanity out of the rest of the plot...)

Nano Day 26

Wheeeeee! Technological crisis averted. Typical, ain't it, that just when you want perfect performance from your writing machine, it keels over and dies. And then so does its predecessor. Luckily, this time, the back up discs were actually working....

So, here we are at Nano day 26, and my current wordcount is now a sniffle over 132k! Woohoo! This means that I've beaten my wordcount from last year and, with luck, may just exceed the wordcount from the year before (which was 155k.).

Alas, England: Elsewhere is rapidly falling down the Word War scoreboard. We're at no. 7 currently, with absolutely no chance of ever approaching those lofty scores that Oxford and Birmingham are pulling...

So, the werewolf thing is well and truly done, the not!TombRaider one is done, if a little on the short side, and I'm now switching between the pirate-mermaids and the urban fantasy short story collection thingy. Which is fun. :-)

Though it must be admitted that the words are increasingly harder and harder to find. Just have to keep looking at my spreadsheets from the last couple of years to remind myself that, yes, this is actually a normal thing...

Nano Day 5

Alas, my lovelies, did not quite manage to hit the 40k target last night. Gave it up at 38,001 on account of no conceiveable brain cells left.

On the plus side, I did manage to write 8,000 words in 5 hours. Which was nice. :-) (I make no comment on the actual *quality* of said words...)

So what's new from Nanowrimo-land? The regional word wars have started up and Team England: Elsewhere are running second on the leader board. (out of 15 regions competing.) We're being soundly beaten by the mad gits in Oxford, who have one insane chap who reached 50k last night. This is the same chap who regularly pulls in epic level wordage - he was at 18k on the first day. Yipes. We've plotted to kidnap him from the Oxford team but they've hidden him in a secret location...

The Inter-Family Word War is new thing for this year. For some quite bizarre reason both mum and li'l sis have decided to have a crack at Nano. Surprising mainly as our Hell's doesn't write, and has had no previous desire to. She's at 9,057 words so far. Nice one that Evil Twin! :-) Mum's progress is also nicely surprising and is making her very pleased with herself given that she's got two manic businesses to run at the same time and is always complaining she doesn't have enough time to think about writing, let alone do it.
She's at around 27k at the moment, but keeps forgetting to officially update her count on the site....

What's particularly fun about mum playing this year is that she's by nature a very fast typist so we were in direct competition Sunday on the word front. She was keeping about 1000 or so words ahead of me all day until bedtime, when I snuck in an extra 100. I'm getting the advantage at the moment as I don't have as much day-job work to do as she does, so currently I'm in the lead, but things will probably get very interesting when the weekend hits. (Or they will once the associated day-job paperwork has been cleared up...)

Then there's the funky BFS peeps... (waves at funky BFS peeps!)
We've got Adrian F. rocking the house with 19,484
Stephen Theaker's at 9,085
Selina of Girlycomic fame is at 5,611
Ben McG was floating around the 2k mark last we checked.

And that's before we hit the Authonomy crew!
(Waves at Patty Jansen, who''s at 37,027!)

Me, my goal for the day is to attempt to reach 50k. Possibly I should have got up earlier this morning... :-) Ah well, what you gonna do? Vamps to kill, wolves to unmask as traitors to the cause, ghost callers to take down...

Nano Day 4

Knackered. But happy. This shall be my mantra for the next three weeks. That and Must. Write. Faster.
So before today's wordage get started, here's the state of play in Nano-Land.

Current words: 30,423
Body count: up in the 40s somewhere. (There was a break out at a blood farm, carnage ensued!)

So, now our kick ass chick has discovered she's being haunted by a vague ghosty presence, had a couple of failed attempts at finding the mobster's son, managed to finally kill crazed werewolf, been kidnapped (wolfnapped?) by blood harvesters and helped stage the amazing break out and mass destruction of the blood farm. She's also picked up another possible lead re. mobster's son and moved into wolf town after getting evicted on grounds of werewolf.

Today's action: spying on a sorcery retreat/commune thingy, extracting mobster's son whilst avoiding the mage wars that are about to spring up, more ghostly pesterings and then there's the vamps bringing charges for her killing their head enforcer. Which is going to get very very messy. :-) (More body count!)

Aiming to hit 40k by end of play tonight, but we'll see how that goes!

Now I've just got to squeeze in the work on two OU courses... honestly, non Nano stuff in November should be illegal...

Nano Day 1

So can I just say, word count for the end of Nano Day 1 is... (drumroll...) 11,110 ::faints:: This makes it an all new Nano first day record. Woohoo!
Body count so far: 3. And they totally deserved it too.

So far, kick ass chick has been attacked by ghosts, had her beloved bike nicked, been attacked by a crazed werewolf, then attacked by some idiot muggers just as she was going through her first change, had to juggle with the bureaucratic aftermath of being a new werewolf who needs to get registered and also avoid getting done on a murder charge. (It was totally self defence, I swear!) And that's before having to deal with the ex husband and a couple of highly arrogant pack enforcers...

Tomorrow there will be adventures in witch country, the hunting of both the crazed werewolf and the missing mobster's son and possibly some sneaky ghosts mucking things up...

And I'm soooo done for the day! :-)

Nano Jitters

As it's five days until Nanowrimo 2009 officially starts, it's about a time I did a post about it! Excited? Not 'alf. I've only been planning for it all year...

This year I want to take things to new extremes of insanity - we came so close to the number one slot in the regional word wars last year... so very frustratingly close, only to be knocked off the top in the last couple of days. Bugger.
(And if you're a Nano bod who happens to claim England: Elsewhere as their home, word war sign ups have started in the forum... get in there and kick ass...)

Anyhoo, what lovely projects is yer 'umble blogger chick going to attempt this year? Ah ha, sez I, many and various, as my first drafts tend to only just skim the 50K and there's many words need doing... As yet I have no idea what one's getting done first, so, in no particular order, there's:

Aquarius:
Being the prequel to last year's Nano project 'Taurus'. (For those of you who remember last year's blatherings, Taurus was the Minotaur thing with the ridiculously high bodycount... which is currently being edited & rewritten to within an inch of its life in the hopes of getting enough decent wordage together for an Authonomy upload...)
But back to Aquarius - starring kick ass not!tomb-raider chick Abigail Jones, whose search for the ruins of Lyonesse take her into multiple worlds. Hijinx ensue! :-)

Then there's Blackthorn:
This one's another Nano prequel - charting the rise of Alice Blackthorn from respectable(ish) trader to planetary rebel to queen of the Salia system pirates.

A recent addition to the line up is Ghost Wolf:
An urban fantasy with werewolves. (Definitely was not expecting I'd write that, but the more I plan it out, the more fun it looks!)
So here we have Lena Morrigan, ex-mob hit-woman turned magic-supplies courier whose recent attack by a werewolf is just the start of what's turning into a really bad week. Do I need to mention at this point that assorted supernatural hijinx will ensue? :-)

Then there's Wicked Sisters:
The Little Mermaid gets a curse intervention and dumps the idiot prince, then chooses to make the most of her new human life by turning pirate, much to the chagrin of her nearest and dearest.

For a little breathing time there'll be Durrington Tales:
Being a collection of short stories of the urban fantasy/contemporary mythic fantasy type, set in the town of Durrington. With urban mages, old gods and other wild spirits wandering around causing chaos. A bit Charles De Lint meets Hellblazer in tone. I hope!

And if I'm feeling particularly brave there'll be a more traditional secondary world fantasy called Tides of Marigan:
In which the acolyte of an exiled goddess must find a way to free her people from invaders while trying to survive the fall out of making questionable allies.

Plus there's a few smaller projects, but we'll cover them as and when (and if) they get done!

Ultimately, the aim is to get somewhere between 5000 - 10,000 words a day done to keep the word war numbers up. (And then my fingers will drop off and my brain will dribble out of my ears in a picturesque pile of goo...) :-)

Nano Finite

And we're done! :->

Final Nano wordcount - 108,678! Woot! Thanks in no small part to a mini competition between me and two others yesterday as we updated word counts every hour until closing in the bid to out do each others wordage...

On the regional word war front - yesterday England Elsewhere managed to crawl to first place... alas, 'twas but a brief victory as by this morning and the final numbers, Ireland had beaten us over the head and snatched back their top place. So we end this year at number 2. Which is, if memory serves, a few places better than the very tragic placing we had last year.

Worldwide, still number 12, and still beaten by London. Bah, humbuggery.

However, all numbers aside, this one was a particularly good Nano. I'll lay claim to two (short) novels finished (one of which is even polishable), a very bad very short story, half a SF novel, and the opening chapters of two urban fantasies. Plus a few bits of random blathering. We like random blathering...

And now there's books waiting to be read, and work to be done...

Nano day 23

So here we are with one more week to go of the fabled Nanowrimo and my total is up to... (drumroll please...) 81,038. Cool! Was hoping I'd be well past 100k by now though... must be something a bit psychological going on as I slowed down considerably after hitting 50k. Och well. 100k by the end of the month of there will be foul punishments and torture. Oh yes indeedy.

The sci fi thingy is stalling a bit. I've got very holey B and C plots that may need to be axed completely. On the plus side, I've worked out a way to do a cross over with my space pirates that were going to appear in one of the other potential Nano projects. So, yay!

Problem being, need way more research on that and the other potential projects to be able to launch as manically into them as I did on Taurus. So I've done a few thousand words on a couple of other things to add to the multi nano mash up wordcount, including a sequel to Taurus. Which is one of the things that's going to need the research. This time all things Ancient British - so running from Celts to Romans to Vikings with anything else I can get away with.

So December is apt to be read until you go blind month. Always a good thing!

Nano stats: England Elsewhere have dipped to number 12 in the world region wordage - beaten on these shores by those bastards in London....
In the UK regional wordwar, we're at number 3! Woot! Thanks mainly to one brilliant person who's at 160k already. Not jealous. Oh no.

Authonomy
I really wasn't going to do much on Authonomy this month, cos of the Nano thing, but it's so easy to get distracted. (This possibly explains why my wordage is stalling a bit!) Also, they added some new features and someone tempted me to read their book.
Which I did. And which I totally recommend. So check out Sim by Jak Brienhead - it's a fab YA scifi/fantasy thing wherein our hero discovers the ability to move between worlds and fight off the terrrrrrible destiny he keeps getting flashes off. It's well written, totally compelling, plenty of action and generally excellent. And totally free to read. (and if you happen to want to sign up and vote for it, I'm sure Mr Brienhead would be quite chuffed!)

In other news... snow! Wheeee!

Nano day 10

Wordcount: 54,164!!! Do I hear a woot! :-) And also a woohoo! Virtual drinks all round.
Coincidentally, have reached the end of the Taurus plot. (Apart from those three chapters in the middle I've been avoiding. They're all basilicas, mithraeums and the University of Newcastle. Which means more than your basic flyby wiki research.)

So while I'm procrastinating over that, am straight on to Nano book number two. Title as yet not a clue, but it's a scifi thing with control freak A.I.s, survival horror hijinx on distant space stations and a motley crew of miscreants on a stolen ship who are constantly trying to find ways to stab each other in the back before the ship A.I. gets them all killed.

As yet, only twelve people have died so far. Well, unless you add the 4000 odd that carked it in one of the flashbacks. Still, the night is young.

Other nano stats - as far as general wordage goes, E:E is at number 10 worldwide. Top English region on that one.

However, we're not doing so well in the regional wordwars. Yesterday saw us at number 5, so I'm hoping we can claw our way upwards tomorrow...

In other news, procrastination being everybody's friend... saw Doomsday the other day. Goodness that was a lot of fun. Totally mad. Possibly improved by never having seen Escape to New York if the odd bit of online chatter is any judge. Except that there seemed to be a couple of scenes missing here and there which jumped the plot a bit. Use of music was cracking!

Also saw Wanted, which was better than the chatter allowed. A couple of naff bits, but some funky action sequences. Very weird listening to James McAvoy do the American accent. It's like listening to Daniel Craig in Tomb Raider 1 or Rosalind Pike and Karl Urban in Doom. There's just something totally wrong about the voice doing the accent. And is there something about changing accent that makes them all do it in deeper voices? Maybe that's where it gets disconcerting. Och well...

Nano day 5

Current word count - 32,193! Woot!

And even better, England: Elsewhere is number 2 in the UK regional word war!
Also, E:E is also number 8 worldwide as far as wordage goes, which can't be bad either... :->

Book number one, currently going by the name of Taurus is turning into quite a surprising beastie. The body count is up to 61 - 8 archaeologists, 13 named mercenaries, 22 unnamed mercs & associated support staff (do support staff count as mercs?) and 18 hedonistic party goers who picked the wrong island to park their boat at. Gosh, all this carnage is exhausting.

Still gutted about one of the surprise deaths. (Shut up. I know. It's only fiction.) He was such a nice boy too. He was going to end up married to his agent and everything.

But there was a last minute reprieve for the other one. It was very close though.
And also, one of the mercs who was definitely supposed to have died managed to crawl out alive too.

Cool! :->

Questions that have arisen:
Is a minotaur in a leopard print bikini a bit OTT?
And do you still call female minotaurs minotaurs?
And can they swim?
And how big a pack of minotaurs can you get away with before it starts getting ridiculous?
And also, could any of said pack hit the broadside of a barn with a decent gun or would the weird shaped heads screw up their aim?
And just how many explosions can one underground temple take before it makes an island cave in completely?

Enquiring minds need to know... :->

Over on Authonomy some brave peeps have uploaded the first 10,000 words of their Nano efforts. Rest assured, I won't be inflicting that on anyone with mine! Not until it's gone through at least three edits. Which is not going to be happening until next month at the very least.

Meantime, I've some more plot to find, and a mad panic to do the chapter outlines for the next potential one as I'm almost at the end of #1 and, dammit, there's a wordwar on!

Nano day 3

It's all about the Nanowrimo this month. Or at least it would be if I could only get on the bastard site to update word counts and play in the forum. Good grief, how am I going to know how manic to get if I can't see how everyone elses word counts are going?! (Mine's around 10,500 as of last night, in case you were wondering!)

So, because my first drafts tend to be very short, I ended up with a total of seven possible novels to hit the ground running with. (What? Shut up.) And right up until last week, the first attempt of the month was going to be a funky space piratey thing. Because it has to be done... :-> Except for some reason I'm starting out with a tomb raider-y thing. Which was meant to be a fun adventure type thing, except I got to the third chapter and started killing people. Then killed some more. And some more. And it's all gone disturbingly horror-ish. And one of the main characters that was supposed to survive to go on to other adventures is now dead. Oops. And so is another of the prospective survivors. Double oops.

Well, I had this pack of raging minotaurs, you see, so people were going to die anyway. I knew this. It was only supposed to be the redshirts that bit it, though. And technically, as far as the RMs go, that worked. However, one of the main protags, the one that was supposed to be a core part of this particular story, got himself gored in a tomb trap. The other one gets it somewhere near the end, in a more unceremonious bullet to the brain from a bad guy. Bugger. That'll teach me for skipping ahead to write bits of the end chapters.

Authonomy
In other news, apparently I'm currently the number three talent spotter on Authonomy! Grief, how did that happen? This apparently means that when I vote to bookshelf something it gets more points than someone who's a lesser spotted talent spotter :-> Now how can I capitalise on my evil new power? :->

strike

A short link post today...
The Writer's Guild of America is on strike. Doris Egan explains why here, Stephen Gallagher explains what this means for UK writers and Joss Whedon adds his views here.


Oh, and in other news... Nanowrimo count = 80,045 words... Woohoo!

nanowrimo is go!

If it's November, it must be Nanowrimo madness! My wordcount so far is just a few words over 40,000. In 6 days! Woohoo! Am starting to lose the ability to type though.
I blame the Word Wars. I love the Word Wars. We just got my region signed up to the UK & Ireland multi region war so the new goal is to whip the asses of everyone everywhere... Oxford are the reigning champions - for three years straight they've topped the daily average word count... this year victory will be ours!

Film Fun
Just watched Mirrormask - got a nifty box set with Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and MM in, and, actually, MM is better than I expected. Probably to do with the lead actress actually being good. The plot was a wee bit wobbly at times, but there were some fun visuals.
Have also discovered that I can't watch Dark Crystal without giggling at the voice work. Can't even watch it all the way through as it seems to drag a lot more than it used to do. (Oh, and according to the back of DVD box, 'Jen' is an official trademark! Perhaps I should be changing my name?)

Book Fun
Have also just finished reading the latest Tom Lloyd - The Twilight Herald. (Though after discovering his blog, keep wanting to call it Twiglet...) It's been a while since I read the first one, so there was a few moments of 'what was that about again?' and some of the early viewpoint changes almost lost me, then came a point about a third of the way through where the 'can't-stop-reading' kicked in, so all was right with the world! Utterly champing for the next one now.