'Tis the Season

You'd think yes, but actually no....

This could quite easily double up as my end-of-year roundup, but we'll see.  Basically, we're at my Mum's for Christmas, with everything that entails, and I need to write something.

Because that's how things work now.  I write.  I've had my little tablet since just after my birthday, and if I'm honest, it's been pretty revolutionary.  I needed something that I could use in the evening while my phone was playing audiobooks to get the Chap to sleep, and something that wasn't the computer.  Computers are too easy.  They make my habits easy.  But my tablet is crap enough to make my habits really hard to do, leaving just typing stuff as the only realistic option.

And it's brilliant.  I've found an outlet for my stories that doesn't involve late nights and dangerous behaviours.  Wattpad is great.  I've found a friend.  I've got two long books about half-done, and the feedback I'm getting on each chapter is really positive.  I think that might be one of the things I need in order to keep going.  I need feedback and support, which is why my Flickr behaviours are so addictive.  I get sucked in by favourites and comments.  It's dangerous.  But not with writing.  I still get nice comments, but I can somehow manage to get to bed before midnight.

And just this month, when it looked like none of my stories would be ready for publishing, I took a short story and put it through Smashwords.  It's over there on the right, just under my profile stuff, available to buy, for something like 75p in our money.  Smashwords is also great, and I liked it so much, I wrote another short story and made it available for free.  I'm developing unhealthy behaviours with the stats page, hoping that I might crack 100 downloads before Christmas, but at any rate, I'm having a very positive experience.  The plan is to get the HGS thing in shape in the New Year and upload a chapter book for a coupla quid.

Like we're about to form some kind of
 Power Rangers Voltron Mega Zord kinda thing,
which me and my siblings could probably
actually do if it came to it

And so it is in a good place that I find myself at the end of this year.  There's a blog post to be written about what's come out of therapy recently and how it relates to my Cinderella thing, but I'll save that for another time.  Spoiler alert:  I had a horrible childhood with enough privilege to paper over the cracks.  It'll take some working through, but in the meantime I've come to spend the festive season with the very people who caused it all, and I don't feel bad at all.  These people, aside from one obvious exception, are the people who will ultimately see me through.

LMW

Mission accomplished

So, yay!  I got a story published on Smashwords, which was my goal for the year. 

Clicky-link here: Kiss Me Again or check out the fancy-pants widget over there on the right. 

Due respect to Smashwords, which is a wonderful website that really, really wants people to publish eBooks.  Also, they provide all kinds of stats and data and fancy-pants widgets to help you sell your book.

Also, Wattpad has been a revelation.  I'll write something about that at some point too.

So I'm happy now.  It was a draft that I'd had knocking around in a more or less finished form for a while, the computer geek big bum story.  It was fairly straightforward to get it formatted and uploaded to the site.  I'll need to do a bit more work on the next one, but basically, it's great, I've achieved my goal, and I'm keen to do it again very soon.

Also, sold a copy, which makes me feel legitimate.  This is important for me.

LMW

Blindsided

This song.  Just...

Stephen Fry did a documentary about Wagner, in which he said there are times when he wonders what the hell he's doing with his life when the only thing that's worth doing is spending all one's time listening to Wagner.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the same is true with Leonard Cohen.  I'm beginning to think the same might be true of Iron and Wine.

Also, this song is about mothers and sons, so obviously it strikes a chord there (Em-C-G-D if you're doing it properly, or Am-F-C-G if you're on the ukulele and you want the noodly bits (I always want the noodly bits))

I think I'm far from killing the last snake in the creek bed, but I think I've made it up from the bruise on the floor of this prison, and the creek has certainly drunk the cradle she sang to.

So, therapy's going well, work is going better, family is good enough to be expecting another child in 6 months' time, and the writing looks like it could be a really useful thing for me to deal with my fantasies.

I now have two stories up and running on Wattpad, 13 people following me, and one very wonderful person who is happy to message me on a more or less daily basis.  I'll write a proper post about it all when I have some time, but basically, writing yay.  Check out my stories:  A Question of Faith and Stupid

LMW

There's a draft in here...

Except this is a short story, not a big book

This is exciting.  I have a draft, and it's now a revised draft that I'm happy to spread about.

I'm also happy to spread it about freely, because I'm fairly sure I'll be giving it away for free when I come to properly publish it via the proper publishing thing I'm looking at.  First one's always free, and if I can get more than 2 people to download it, I'll count that as a win.

Clicky link here for the revised draft.

It's just shy of 5k in terms of words.  I think that's not too shabby.  You can read it and leave it at that, and I'd really welcome some feedback, mostly on the whole 'doctor' 'Dr' issue that presented itself.

Of course, there's a back-story and a trail of inspiration which might give you a window on how my mind works these things out.  Read on below, with spoilers...

Updates and writing

Excerpt, excerpt, read all about it!

Chapter 10 is well underway, and my genius idea for this chapter is that it's all dialogue.  It's mostly a world-building exercise, with a few hints at a couple of things that are coming.  It's the Supervisor character talking on the phone to various young ladies and various submissives, arranging a month's worth of home visits between the two.  If you're new to the premise of my current work in progress, a good place to start is here.

So yes, the Supervisor's job is to arrange these home visits between young ladies and submissives, which involves a lot of telephone calls, which means I can write the whole thing as dialogue.  By this point in the chapter, the Supervisor character has already spoken to 3 young ladies (one of them twice) and one of her submissives, weaving a complicated web of offers, dates, and callbacks.  This particular excerpt is between her and a female submissive called Melissa who likes to serve as a maid.

Make Good Art

Does this picture really need a caption?

It's been a bad year...

Let me fess up:  I'm in a bad place, and I'm not handling it well.  2016 can officially get to fuck, for so many reasons, and while therapy is going well, it's a regular slot at the start of the week during which my anxieties are poked and prodded.  Current massive crisis detailed below.

This post is pretty much a list of what's going on at the moment for me, and how much of a mess I'm getting myself into.  Also, some vague and misapplied wisdom from Neil Gaiman.  Ready?

New character

Impossibly lovely though she is,
my new character doesn't really
look like this young lady

Chapter 5 is written, but it needs a lot of work.  It's over twice the length of any of the other chapters so far, and while I realize that that shouldn't really be an issue and that chapters length is pretty much anything you want it to be, it is an issue for me, because of the way I do things.  I'm also loath to split it into two chapters, because of the way I'm doing things in this book.  I don't have to do things that way, but that's the way I'm doing it, because of the way I do things.

I won't rework Chapter 5 now, because that way lies madness, so it's time to get excited about introducing a new character in Chapter 6.  I (probably) won't post an in-depth fanfare for all new characters, but this one in particular will hopefully show a bit more about what sort of book I'm writing.

She's also interesting because I know exactly what she looks like.  Read on?  Read on.