8:28pm: Help?
OK the novel I was working on finally has a first draft! *Snoopy dance* Took about 3 years, but there's an actual whole draft at last.
I'm trying to write a synopsis of the story line, prior to trying to write a query letter. Can you all take a look and let me know what you think?
After breaking up with her controlling boyfriend, Ellie Donovan moves to the tiny town of Clarion in upstate New York to start a new job as head librarian. But the sour relationship has stirred up a lot of emotions, especially relating to her domineering father, and Ellie decides to focus on her career and forget about romance for a while. She's not the only one.
Jack Lowe has become a single father of two girls almost overnight. After he discovered she was having an affair his ex-wife has vanished, leaving him no choice but to transfer out of his dangerous Special Forces position in the Army and to sleepy Fort Bell in Clarion so he can be there for his daughters. Jack has no intention of getting into a relationship while he's still reeling from the end of his marriage, but when his older daughter starts working at the local library, he finds himself drawn to the new head librarian.
Ellie and Jack have plenty of reasons not to pursue a relationship, but the connection between them is impossible to resist. The complications of their respective exes, Ellie's struggle with depression, and Jack's rebellious daughters are all difficult enough, but when an enemy from Jack's past shows up and puts all of them in danger, they both have to decide what they want and what they're willing to fight for, no matter the odds.
The other major influence on Ellie is that she's fat/overweight, but I'm not sure if I should mention it at this point or not?
Any reactions/comments are appreciated.
This entry was originally posted to http://miera-c.dreamwidth.org/727396.html: Please comment there if you are willing
8:20pm: I'm in print!
OK so in an effort to make a bit more money and try to get my (pseudonymous) name "out there" into the romance community, I have decided to self-publish a few of my longer stories. Names and such have been changed for obvious reasons.
First up is For Brighter Skies (link goes to Kindle edition; there is also a paperback version for those that might want one).
Summary:
Christine Charest, daughter of a prominent New Orleans family and skilled nurse, was finally engaged to the perfect man - a tall, handsome, successful doctor. But the morning after the proposal, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Christine's plans for her perfect future were put on hold when she enlisted with the Army Nurse Corps. During the next four years she traveled halfway around the globe, saw war and death unfold before her eyes, found a best friend, and met another doctor, one who made her question whether passion might not be more important than perfection when it comes to love.
Please, if you are able, consider purchasing a copy? The book is also enrolled in Kindle Unlimited for anyone who has that.
If you really love me, reviews would be immensely helpful, as Kindle uses the number of reviews to evaluate whether to promote the book. (Um, honest reviews, obviously! Not asking anyone to lie! :)
I've also created a Facebook "author" page, where I'll be sharing updates, it's here.
Liking or sharing the Facebook page or the book link would also be awesome. I'm doing this on my own so promoting myself is going to have to rely on word of mouth a lot.
Next up will be two stories from my Austen obsession ;)
This entry was originally posted to http://miera-c.dreamwidth.org/727092.html: Please comment there if you are willing
9:57pm: Fic: Long Lost
Title: Long Lost Fandom: Stargate Atlantis Pairing: Weir/Sheppard sort of (it's a gen story - read into it what you will) Summary: John's connection with Atlantis is strong, but may not actually be the strongest of the expedition team.
I wrote Sparktober fic! It's short. The other thing I had a plot bunny for got kind of dark and was not working, so I went with the other much shorter idea.
For mylittleredgirl, the greatest Sparky fan in the world, of course, and melyanna for reminding me in the last couple of weeks how much I loved these two.
Fall tv season has arrived! Yeah, I don't really care except for Arrow & Flash. I'm trying to finally watch the rest of S2 of "Sleepy Hollow" so I can watch that. I will watch the new "Supergirl" show and give it a chance, but that's about it so far, unless something gets good reviews.
I watched the first episode of the Muppets and didn't like it. These are not my Muppets. I don't want to watch the Muppets being terrible people. :(
8:52pm: Fic: A Blue Million Miles
So I'm writing a thing, mostly because I've been writing nothing and writing something is better than nothing.
Even if something is a rather stream-of-consciousness Arrow werewolf AU. :)
I'm kind of just writing and posting without much editing, so be warned. It's Felicity/Oliver but it starts at the end of S1 so there's a ways to go before it gets shippy.
Oh and Tommy. Because I miss Tommy and him not getting the opportunity to snark with Felicity was a terrible tragedy.
Life is busy, work is frantic, and while my brain wants to watch about 20 different new things and read a bunch of books and write fanfic and original fic... none of that keeps happening? I just sit and read Tumblr and rewatch "Arrow" over and over and then it's time to go to bed? It's frustrating.
I need to do something because I need to break up with a couple Arrow WIPs. One of them involves Felicity being about to marry Ray and starting to cheat on him with Oliver. I'm not a fan of cheating fics, since I find that behavior despicable in real life, but I started reading it because I was in that "I will read anything" mode, but it's just dragging on and on and the writer has done a terrible job of making it seem like there's any reason for Felicity to stay with Ray at all. (Also I don't see Felicity as someone who would ever cheat, especially not when she's about to marry the guy.)
The other one is just a hot mess. It's enormous, I've been reading it since winter, and it keeps dragging on. There's a lot of violence, including sexual violence and also some seriously kinky stuff that I've skimmed over because it's too extreme for me, but the thing that's annoying me the most at this point is that Felicity does nothing but fall apart and cry until Oliver cradles her in his arms, or get treated like a fucktoy by everyone. Sometimes both in one chapter. But the sunk cost fallacy, I've been reading this thing for so long, I want there to be a point to it! Argh. (Also the author continually uses the word "azure" to describe eye color. "Azure pools" to be exact. WTH.)
OK now that I've vented all of that hopefully I will click the unsubscribe buttons at least.
So other things: um *checks when I last updated, holy shit*
Liked Avengers 2, not as much as the first one, got highly defensive of Joss Whedon as usual.
LOVED LOVED LOVED "Mad Max Fury Road." Possibly the best movie of the year. Lots of awesome meta floating around on Tumblr about that one.
"Inside Out" made me cry. I overidentified with Sadness.
Not going to see "Ant-Man." Got spoiled for the post-credits scene so I don't feel a need.
Have not seen "Magic Mike XXL" but will rent - can't handle my embarrassment squick enough to see it in the theaters.
Have zero interest in the Batman vs. Superman thing or any of the DC movie universe. The real Deadshot is the guy from "Arrow" for me now.
TV:
"Arrow" finale stunned me. Guys, I've never had a happy OTP, ok? Most of my OTPs aren't even canon so I just... I don't know what to do with this. I know there'll be angst and Issues and shit before the S4 premiere is half over but for right now my OTP is happy and together and having a lot of sex and I'm just *flail*
"The Flash" is okay. I find it too silly to really love. I really don't want to watch the new spin off but Sara! Dammit.
I seem to have stopped watching SYTYCD? I don't even know what night it's on at this point.
Ecstatic about the second season of "Agent Carter." Best show I've seen in ages.
I don't think I'm even watching any other shows? I'm 2 seasons behind on "Orphan Black" now.
I may be the only geek in the world who isn't caring at all about the X-Files reboot. I stopped watching the show way before it ended, and I'm so, so tired of reboots and shit.
So, how're you all?
This entry was originally posted to http://miera-c.dreamwidth.org/725731.html: Please comment there if you are willing
9:53pm: AO3 is being attacked by a bot
Heads up, if you've got fic up on AO3, this Ebooks-tree site has a bot scraping fic and then posting links to their own page. 6 of mine got pulled. It's weird, because it's a random selection of fic and if you click on the entry and try to download the mobi version it pulls that download from AO3. The pdf download page hasn't been working for me at all. Apparently if you try to actually get the download it redirects to an entire different site that requires you to create an account using a credit card, so, you know, major fraud alert.
The AO3 folks are on it but it's not a simple switch to throw. I've protected the 6 fics of mine that got scraped so only registered users can see them for now.
10:59pm: Arrow fic rant
So all the WIP fics I read for Arrow are not updating right now, and looking for something to distract me during lunch, I thought I'd try reading this other WIP that's got a ton of hits.
Bad idea. There's a reason I'm mostly working through author's collected works and not just reading whatever is recently updated.
The premise of the story is that Oliver and Felicity have a one night stand and she gets pregnant (there are quite a few fics like this, some of them well-handled).
So I start reading and right off the bat there's some consent issues. She finds Oliver in a bar and he's pretty drunk, but he starts kissing her and they go back to his house and have sex. There's no mention made in the fic of her checking his sobriety or asking if he's sure (he may have drunkenly asked her, I don't remember).
But okay. Despite not warning for dubious consent, I could've been on board with exploring this, at least from an angle of "Felicity's been pining for him for ages and so she gives in to temptation and sleeps with him and doesn't really think about whether he's thinking straight because she's wanted this for so long." It could be something interesting to explore, at least, although I find the idea of her doing that really out of character (Felicity has been brutally honest with Oliver through the whole show, one of the few people who doesn't hide things from him, which is why the triad of her, Digg and Oliver are so important. Digg and Felicity are the two people Oliver trusts the most).
The fic doesn't go there, though. They have sex, she freaks out when she wakes up assuming he's only going to have wanted a one night stand and sneaks out before he wakes up.
Then it got worse. Because Oliver wakes up alone with no memories of the previous night, aware that he slept with someone but no idea who it was, and it turns out he was roofied by someone in the bar. So now the consent issue is really serious, beyond just being kind of drunk - and again, I could see this being interesting if it had been written as "Felicity finds Oliver kind of drunk but he starts kissing her and she checks with him and he says he wants to do this and so they have sex but later she finds out he really wasn't capable of consenting and everybody freaks out."
Also not what happens. They find out he was roofied and has no memories and she doesn't tell him it was her that he slept with (again, way OOC, Felicity doesn't lie to Oliver).
And of course, she gets pregnant. This was where I stopped reading, not because of the trope, but because the scene in the doctor's office, when it becomes apparently that it's an unplanned pregnancy, the doctor brings up the idea of abortion and Felicity screams at the doctor that she's not a murderer OMG.
I just. First, the doctor is presenting options, as you would expect a doctor to do in a situation where you have a pregnant patient looking totally freaked about an unplanned pregnancy. Second, writing that may be your personal belief but you just implied that, what is it 1 in 3 women in the US alone who has had an abortion? All of those women are murderers. It offended me. The odds are pretty high someone who has had an abortion will read that fic and have to deal with that. And there aren't any warnings on the fic to prepare people for all of this.
And there's no way to communicate that to the author. Ao3 seems, at least to me, to have a very clear culture of "positive comments only." I'm afraid to leave critical feedback, even of the "hey I think you meant this word" type, on any story for fear of being called bitchy. And there's not really a way to contact an author privately. I wish there was - there are a couple Arrow fic writers who could be really awesome if they had better beta readers to catch their grammar issues. I'd even offer to do it myself but there's no way to get in touch privately, and putting that into the comments doesn't seem to be the norm.
8:09pm: Stargate DVDs in need of a home
I'm purging my DVD collection and I have 3 Stargate DVDs I need to get rid of. Let me know if you want any of them:
Stargate Atlantis "Rising" Stargate Ark of Truth Stargate Comic Con Panel 2004
8:43pm: More Arrow fic
I've been kinda stressed due to work stuff and holidays, so I've written several more Arrow fics, with a longer thing in progress I haven't posted any of yet (while I look at my novel and feel guilt. Sigh).
Code Word - basically Oliver/Felicity hotel sex. Silly, not very explicit fluff, with poor Digg learning more than he needed to know.
The Ache - period sex, so do not read if that squicks you (explicit).
For Now - UST, mostly in canon piece where Felicity encounters some street harassers and Oliver kind of freaks about it.
And I've been sucked into another fandom. "Arrow" midseason finale was too much, I needed fluff. And, well, y'all know me. Even my fluff tends to get R rated.
Movie Night - "Now that they're officially dating, Oliver wants to have something resembling normal date nights with Felicity, including watching her favorite movie." Spoilers through 307 and kinda through 309? Nothing major about 309 though.
New job! Cool new job with good $$ and some fun coworkers. Definitely a long-term thing given what they want me to do. Downside: I have to dress up pretty much every day (I'm running through panty hose at an alarming rate. Please let it be fall so I can wear boots and long skirts now) and a long commute. But! I'm getting paid enough that I will be able to move into an apartment of my own this fall. HUZZAH! I miss my stuff, you guys. SO MUCH. I will never ever take being able to shower whenever I want for granted again. (I'm so not designed for cohabitation.)
I'm having some severe and epic mood swings. As usual with my brain, once the whole "career" part of my life got dealt with, my mind started to obsess about all the other parts of my life that are lacking in accomplishment and scream "Failure!" I'm starting to think it's tied to my hormones, though, as I've noticed the last two months that once my period is over, my mood seems to even out. I downloaded an app to track some of this stuff, so hopefully that will help.
Semi-related to that, I deleted a few of my longer fanfics from the internet (or at least everywhere I could remember posting them to). I already went through one and filed off the serial numbers. I'm not sure any of them could be expanded into a full-length novel, but I'm thinking I could put them up as novellas or short stories for sale to start developing a pro writer identity sometime in the next six months.
I have an actual novel that is about 125K and... 2/3rds of the way done? Finishing it got put aside while I was finishing school and frantically job hunting. I made a deal with myself that once I had a draft of that, I could get started on creating a website and all the stuff in the previous paragraph. I'm honestly not sure if that's a carrot or a disincentive. :\
Media-wise, loving "Musketeers" which is horrible on historical accuracy, filled with goofy plots, but has several very hot British men (Athos and Aramis. D'Artangan doesn't do it for me, though I loved the actor in "Snowpiercer") who frequently get soaking wet. And two intelligent, passionate female characters with actual backstory and interests (well, Milady is evil because she's Milady, but evil interests still count!). It's fluffy and goofy and doesn't require me to think, which is a bonus.
SYTYCD has been much better this year than last. Valerie has been my fav from the beginning, although in my heart of hearts I know she's probably not as good as some of the other girls. She's probably going to make it into the finale, which is all I ask. I'm just psyched that both tap dancers made it this far this year!
John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" is awesome too. Kind of filling the gap in commentary left by Keith Olbermann's ego.
I saw "Guardians of the Galaxy" and it was okay? Don't get me wrong, I loved Groot and I go watch the dancing baby!Groot video once a day. But otherwise, I was just whelmed. I was afraid it would be worse in terms of how it dealt with the female characters, so there's that.
Saw "Lucy" which I enjoyed. Just remember it's a weird, pseudoscience science fiction movie with some action sequences, not an action movie with scifi overtones. It's like an episode of Cosmos with some "homage to the Matrix" bits.
So, yeah. I realized the other day that this is the first August I haven't been depressed since about 2001? Because I'm neither teaching nor attending classes, so I'm not contending with school starting at all. I could actually go away over Labor Day! I'm not, but I could! This whole "go to work, go home and stop thinking about work" thing is pretty much what I wanted when I went back for my MLIS, so that's of the good.
10:37pm: Er, hi?
So long time, no post. Turns out working, interning and classes eat up a lot of time. I'm tired and chatty tonight though.
I think I will have to distance myself from the MCU and Steve Rogers fandoms for the foreseeable future. I loved the new movie, absolutely adored it, but it's produced a reaction in the fandom that is entirely predictable and completely depressing for me. ( Collapse )
I'm not following much else at the moment, fannish-wise. Loving "Arrow" this season immensely, kind of staying away from the fandom because I'm enjoying it and don't want to think too hard beyond that.
I'm just barely still watching "Agents of SHIELD." I stopped for a couple weeks entirely over the awful Lorelai episode and then got caught up after I saw Winter Soldier. I just really, really hate Skye. I can't even articulate why, I just hate every moment she's on screen. It's like all forward momentum of the story crashes to a halt. I still love Coulson, I like May and Simmons a bit, and I don't care about anyone else at all. I just think the writing and the story arc have been badly done, and, again, I HATE SKYE SO MUCH. Argh.
That's kind of it? I gave up on OUaT at mid-season. I watched all of "Almost Human" which I liked but did not really love. I wanted to love it, and I loved bits of it, but the lack of storyline for the ladies was an obstacle, as was the lack of resolution to any of the larger plot arcs. I am watching "Crisis" solely for Max Martini although I am reluctantly starting to get intrigued by the overarching plot. Loving "Cosmos" but that's not really a fannish show, it's just cool. That theme song sucks, though. Puts me right to sleep. Still mildly obsessed with Pacific Rim too. And I'm rewatching "Sleepy Hollow" because it's silly and spooky and fun and I kind of wish Ichabod was real aside from the spooky parts.
I've written about 123K of a novel and got completely stalled due to stress. I know all the remaining scenes that need to happen, just haven't written them yet. I can't vouch for the quality of the overall thing, but I will finish it and even if it is a hot mess, it will be my finished draft of a hot mess. ;)
7:56pm: Battle 15
I have no shame in saying I intend to put as many Pacific Rim prompts as I can think of into this year's battle, at least for my preferred pairings.
9:27pm: I guess it was worth it. :)
So The Thing has over 1400 hits at this point, which is 300 or so more than the next most popular thing I've posted on there (which was the long Chapel/McCoy WWII AU fic that must have gotten rec'ced somewhere to drive the hit count so high).
Advantage of posting in a semi-active fandom I guess.
Now back to Waffles. * is cryptic*
PS if you haven't gone and read The Thing after encouraging me to do so, shoo. The whole thing is up now, so you can download the ereader or PDF file for easy portability: All of Me
