Human writes

Gratitude, yo

strangecreature — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 17:21:43 GMT

Hello, my lovelies!

So I know I haven't been over here in approximately a zillion years, but I know for a fact that I wouldn't have started taking writing seriously without the encouragement, feedback and assistance of my wonderful LJ gang. Just shy of a decade ago, I posted a tiny little snippet and than ran away from the computer flailing with nerves as usual. When I came back, a dear friend had left me a comment telling me that I had 'established myself with the big kids' and I remember having a little moment of "Whoa, have I? I better keep this up!"

Without moments like that and the years of solid, sincere support and lessons that followed, I know my life wouldn't be the same shape it is now.

So, y'know, I LOVE YOU GUYS. So there! Harumph!

Entirely related, for a change, I've sold a story to EDGE Publishing and am going to be appearing in Tesseracts 17 this October. I didn't think it was fair for long-time cheerleaders to not hear about that just because I haven't been able to locate them on Facebook or Twitter!

http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/tess17/t17-catalog.html

I hope everyone here is doing well and not getting swept away in the truly apocalyptic weather we've been having this year! I'm going to try a bit harder to stay in touch. Cross my heart. :)

Those subtle little hints...

strangecreature — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 05:58:46 GMT

So I logged onto LJ to check out a friend's post just now and was promptly sent an email to the effect of "Holy shit! Someone logged onto your account, bro! That's SUSPICIOUS and you should look into this situation!"

So, uh. Hiiii, folks! :D I still exist, I swear. Doing really, really well... Still plugging away at the courthouse, sending stories out into the universe, collecting an EVEN MOAR EPIC collection o' rejections, and adopting more cats. (Yes, I have two now. It was a life-or-coyotes situation, alright? My hands were tied!!)

I'm far more frequently on Twitter (@FennellFiction) and Facebook these days, so please feel entirely free to track me down on those venues, alright? It's strange not being even slightly up to date on you guys anymore.

strangecreature — Mon, 28 May 2012 03:45:28 GMT

After careful consideration, we have decided that we are unable to use your work but we wish you the best of luck in placing it elsewhere...

Aw maaaan! At least it's a kind rejection?

This day is just plain kickin' my ass, folks. Quickly, unleash the ultimate heavy artillery of cheering-up-ness!

And I can't even legitimately complain about the other stuff making me sad because it is so silly that I just can't. XD

squee!

strangecreature — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:39:16 GMT

So I have returned unscathed from the Comic Expo and fortunately wasn't one of the thousands of people they had to turn away at the door due to fire code regulations. (Oh, Calgary. Planning, preparation, and then ambition, okay? It's admirable that you want to be the Canadian version of Comic-Con, but methinks you broke a couple thousand hearts this weekend with that move.)

My mind is all a-boggle at how the event has absolutely exploded since I was there way back in 2007. I don't even know how much larger it was, but they went from about ten rows of folding chairs for the presentations to a stadium, and multiple buildings for the booths. Good golly, overwhelming! I think I spent about 90% of the time just staring around and beaming at everything!

Didn't manage to get too many pictures this time around, but lets go ahead and fling 'em on here anyway!

So first we did epic battle with the line up:

It looped around the Entire. Building. Twice. So when the line started moving (yay!!) we promptly found ourselves on a hobbit-tastic journey all the way around the world (boo!!). I remarked to the folks around me that it would be funny if we weren't actually being let in, but simply being blindly forced to wander the streets of Calgary for miles... Um, and then people made horror-faces, so I shushed. *g*

SERIOUSLY.

Tweeted this picture with the caption "Found him!" which lead to me being re-Tweeted by On Spec before actually setting foot in the building, mwuahaha!

And then we got inside and I proceeded to have The Shy about taking pictures. I'm sorry, okay?!

This Katniss, however, was too good not to ask for a photo. (A Peeta cosplayer discovered her a little later on and remarked to his friends with a frantic kind of joy "See?! If I stand with her, my costume makes sense!" Oh, Peeta, you damsel in distress...)

I would wear this ON MY FACE. snakewhissperer more sanely wanted the picture as reference though. *g*

Our valiant chauffeur and all-around awesome gal, Sarah, (who hopefully doesn't mind me posting this, lalala!) and a very friendly jester-guy!

And then I spent about an hour gibbering frantically at Deb about not being able to get seats for James Marsters' talk... and then we figured out it was in a stadium rather than the rows of fold-y chairs from last time and I shushed and calmed down. *g*

Oh my goodness, the dude is eloquent and self-depreciating and, as Deb so beautifully put it, "confident without being cocky".

Damn near impossible to get a good shot, but I tried! Hello, wow, how is he in his forties?* The guy is stunning.

Cheekbones of Doom.

We got to hear his impression of what a Cajun Spike would sound like. And a Spike-voice rendition of Happy Birthday for a flailing-hiding-beaming gal in the front row, whose friend made the request for her. And his wide-eyed revelation that, after five takes of the Jack/John kiss in Torchwood and his fiance's approval thereof, "a lot of girls really go for the boy-on-boy stuff!" All-around awesome talk. The guy is such a pro.

At one point someone asked about accents and how he manages them and he graced us with the statement that "You just reach a point where it feels right in your mouth." Cue a stadium-wide titter, a visible delayed recognition of the innuendo from him, and him cracking up. Oh lord. XD

And then I dragged poor long-suffering Deb all around the world with me again to go stalk the publishing houses I was interested in. All I will say is that it appears to have been worth our while, mwuahaha. Networking for the mighty win. \o/

In conclusion, buttons I have obtained. *g*

Yes, yes I do. I think I was tweeting while snakewhissperer bought this for me! @FennellFiction, yo. Follow the hell out of me! *G*

Relevant to my interests, I tell you! *joy*

And that is all for this year! Next year, more bravery with regard to photos, and better planning, and a costume. *nod-nod*

* Addendum: He's not. He's fifty. XD At least Kita's paying attention, bwah!

I'm really just in it for the stories

strangecreature — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:01:55 GMT

Frivolous civil claim: $200 to file

Custom-made suit: $500

Amount you're paying your top-notch lawyer to sit in court: $600/hour

Hearing said lawyer stroll up to the counter and, with complete seriousness, ask if his re-filed documents had "passed the mustard"...? PRICELESS.

It's 'passed muster', man. Passed muster. I think I wounded something with my silent internal guffaw.

Little sisters = eternal amusement

strangecreature — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:47:04 GMT

Here's one for hannahsarah and the ongoing "Williams Syndrome Kids Say The Darnedest Things" files...

I was chatting with Dee on the phone tonight and she was telling me all about some episode of Dancing With The Stars where the folks were sharing life stories...

"And oh my gosh," says she, "It just ripped at my heart cords!"
Pause. "... Tugged at your heartstrings?" says I.
"Yeah, that!"

Hee!

(She also proceeded to talk about "Wrath of the Titans" and call it both "Revenge of the Titans" and "Running with the Titans", but I feel that's a mistake anybody could make. *G*)

Aroooooo...

strangecreature — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:56:37 GMT

So apparently my dad decided to go snowshoeing in the mountains recently and came across...

Timber wolvesies!

He let a game warden know about them on the way out and he said it was a super rare sighting and that rangers who'd worked in the area for years hadn't even seen one, let alone two at once. Pretty damn nifty! I think I've only seen a wolf once in my whole life.

Weird girl doing weird things

strangecreature — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 03:32:13 GMT

There's a fine line between a run-of-the-mill introvert and something more worryingly hermit-tastic, methinks, and I often have to wonder which side of that line I've set up camp upon. Does anyone else get exhausted after being around too many strangers? And, like, require a significant period of complete silence and isolation to recover from it...?

Well, anyway. Here is a Viking chest! :DDD

Line art by me, carving and construction by mah buddy. Once he stains it and puts some banding on, it's going to be amaaaaazing.

Oh dear, she's doing it again.

strangecreature — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:04:29 GMT

I have started two new stories this month rather than finishing the story which I said that I would be finishing. And of course the one I'm most fond of at this point is the one that makes me headtilt at the most dramatic angle. *facepalm*

Charlie Fayton had never understood the insistence of terrified children that there was a monster living under their bed. Or in their closet or peeking through the gaps in the basement stairs, for that matter. At the age of twelve, he could spot the obvious flaws in those theories without much difficulty. His father had always insisted on Charlie exercising critical thought.

For one thing, there simply wouldn’t be enough space. Assuming that the hypothetical monster was larger than the average housecat as the majority of tales would generally indicate, it would be irrational to believe that their first preference would be to cram themselves into the narrow dust-fuzzy space beneath a single bed. There would hardly be enough room to breathe or stretch their limbs, never mind executing any more complicated child-snatching maneuvers.

The issue of a food source was similarly problematic. The monsters were invariably man-eaters with a preference for the more tender flesh of children. Even with an astronomically slow metabolic rate, it just wasn’t a realistically sustainable diet. He had briefly entertained the possibility that such creatures (genus: monstrum, species: under-the-bed) were uniformly cold-blooded and could survive off a biannual feed, but even that was too much. Two children per year disappearing from the safety of their own bedrooms within the same geological region wouldn’t go unquestioned for very long.

The most damning evidence, of course, was that for as long as Charlie could remember, he and his father had kept their monster in the garden shed behind the house. And aside from the occasional grumble and request for fine-tuning, that set-up had worked out just fine...

Teratophilia strikes again

strangecreature — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 03:13:02 GMT

So I've stooped to using my little doodles as blatant bribery. *g* snakewhissperer doesn't get to keep this picture until she's completed the agreed amount of swimming, mwuahahaha.

But you can't expect me to just keep it sitting in a drawer here for another couple weeks, can you?

In keeping with my unfortunate tradition of only drawing RPG characters after they've been killed by plot, this is Kitt and Isaac. Our Storyteller told us to create the most badass characters we could dream up... And then proceeded to shatter our poor monsters within the course of about eleven sessions! Tsk, I say, tsk. (Kitt got her throat torn out twice and spent most of the campaign paralyzed and healing very slowly, and my ugly charmer Isaac was so mentally destroyed by the end of it that he essentially asked to be put out of his misery. Never let it be said that our ST is anything but brutally effective when he wants to be!)

It still pleases me immensely that I designed Isaac to be a real monster's monster and Kitt still insists on calling him 'sweetheart' with real affection and making sure he doesn't do anything too stupid. *g*

enthuses

strangecreature — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:42:20 GMT

Aw yeah, all set with opening night tickets for The Hunger Games because my friends are amaaaaaazing and tolerate me yelping frantically at them from Calgary about how tickets are all going to be sold out if we don't buy them RIGHT THIS MINUTE... Look, in my defense, the earliest showing was indeed sold out by then and I was supposed to be pretending to listen to purportedly clever people lecture us about work/life balance and personal effectiveness. Heh.

BUT YES. I am excite! :D As mentioned on Twitter, I was under the impression that Hunger Games was basically an Americanized version of Battle Royale and (having gorged myself on Battle Royale a few years ago) I wasn't particularly interested. But my words, they have been eaten with relish since then. Nom nom nom, tasty words. And I do so love being able to take part in some collective excitement. Which is probably why I will grow up to be a fine upstanding cult member, but, y'know. *beams*

In other thrilling news, these fine folks over here put together a list of all authors eligible to be nominated for the 2011 Aurora Awards for Canadian sci-fi/fantasy. One of whom happens to be yours truly. Which means my name is totally on a list that also includes Kelley Armstrong, Cory Doctorow, and Douglas Coupland...

Manic delight, y'all. *g* Manic delight!

No, to the best of my knowledge I am not nominated and have no hope in hell of that happening with authors of that caliber in the mix, but allow me my little triumphs here, would ya? *G*

PS - After seven months at the court, I appear to have earned not one but two nicknames in the space of a week. 'Mouse' and 'Astrid'. One of these is a timid rodent. One of these is an animated Viking. ... I think you can guess which one I'm championing for. (Anyway, my mom already calls me Mouse. Heh.)

For anyone who read my last post, I felt the need to share this...

strangecreature — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:09:06 GMT

I strolled in to work today and found a couple of the folks already there just grinning at me in a suspicious fashion. So I went over to the board where the team leader makes her notes and found in GIANT CAPITAL LETTERS:

"Employee of the week is: MEGAN! (So you cannot fire yourself, quit, or go on strike. :D)"

... with flowers and smilies all around it. XD Oh, my team. They make me giggle!

The epitome of Mondayness

strangecreature — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 23:21:02 GMT

Oh my good golly, I am jittering around the place, my left eye is twitching, and I've succumbed to desperation-drinking for the first time since November. O_o WHY? Because they made me team leader for the week, for the second time ever, and I am SO BAD AT IT.

Well, no. Correction: I am a very good team leader for the other members of my team. I made sure everybody was taken care of and got their breaks and got to their kids' appointments on time. However, brilliantly, I failed to schedule any assistance or fail-safes for myself for the entire afternoon and thus became the sole member of the first-line team. And then my cash register and it's keyboard stopped talking to each other and I had to do everything manually... *FACEPALM*

Eye-twitchy Megan at end of day: "Supervisor, I would like to strongly recommend that we fire the team leader."
Supervisor (who tends to take my opinion seriously and thus looked horrified for a brief moment): "... Wait, aren't you the team leader this week?"
Megan: "Yes. Yes, I am. And I am firing myself."
Supervisor: *grinning* "You don't have that authority."
Megan: "Then I resign."
Supervisor: *loling* "Then I reject your resignation!"
Megan: "THEN I AM ON STRIKE."
Supervisor: *walks away laughing*
Megan: "... I WILL MAKE PICKET SIGNS IF NECESSARY."

Threat of signs notwithstanding, I am still team leader tomorrow. *woeface*

What does Freud say about flying zombies anyway?

strangecreature — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 06:08:50 GMT

Last night I dreamed that I was a zombie. Not just any old zombie, but an extraordinarily fat male zombie that the other zombies had decided to eat because A) there were no humans around to nom, and B) evidently I looked delicious. So I started running away, but then I figured out that I could fly and tried crashing through various skylights to escape. And then the other zombies realized that they could fly too and the whole thing devolved into this epic aerial undead dogfight! :D!

... And then I woke up and was convinced right up until about 9:30 that it was Sunday. *shrug* My brain is a muddled place.

Tenuously related only by the fact that it also involves monsters, my self-discipline went splort and I've started writing this little story that's been amusing me in my mind for a couple months now. (Dr. Frankenstein moves to the suburbs, yo. O purest genius!) Which means that my Serious Business lit-fic thingy isn't being finished, but damned if I'm not having fun writing about monsters and lonely kidlets, as I seem to do when left to my own devices. XD

Also, I'm still not dead! Whoo!

strangecreature — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:59:49 GMT

So I've been doggedly carrying this dream-fragment around with me for a few days now because my subconscious brain pitched a fit and demanded that the concept it had created was so fantastic that I needed to bring it back to the waking world with me. So I memorized it in my sleep and now I can't un-memorize it.

Basically, there was this team of superheroes (or possibly super-anti-heroes, given the amount of havoc they were wrecking) with nifty powers and what I thought to be the coolest hero-names ever. They were, wait for it... Malware, Godmode, Hi-Tech, Voodoo, and Ghoul. Their names were proudly emblazoned on the front of their costumes, y'see, which was how I knew.

...

Oh, subconscious brain. You insisted that this would somehow make me rich and famous if I just remembered it. So far all it's done is make me giggle. A lot. Tsk!

(Malware was basically Harry Dresden to boot, so sleep-brain was cheerfully disregarding copyright infringement matters as well. Double tsk!)

I will admit to liking 'Godmode'. *g* It's like something a geeky teenager who accidentally stumbled into superpowers would dub himself! Like 'Kickass'. But geekier.

strangecreature — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 01:37:30 GMT

So you know that first time you sat down and decided "You know what? I could write fanfic. I could totally write fanfic! Look at the crap that's out there; it'll be so easy!"

... AND THEN IT WASN'T EASY AT ALL?

This, I feel, is the perfect summation of that moment. In musical form.

Also, it makes me laugh so hard that there may have been tears. XD

Whoa! The creature emerges!

strangecreature — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:52:09 GMT

Holy crap, it's been over a month since I've posted here! DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER ME? O_O

Suffice to say, I'm alive and well, for a definition of 'alive and well' that encompasses trading in a week-long head cold for a violent stomach flu and then deciding rather masochistically that, hell, since I couldn't keep anything down in any case, I might as well try to kick the coffee habit. *cough* Yeaaaaah. I've had half a cup this morning just to keep the worst of the 72-hour withdrawal at bay and am feeling distinctly more human.

In job news, my position has been extended until the end of March (whoot!!) and the manager says she has 'plans' in terms of how to keep me on after that, so I'm ridiculously pleased. Especially since next Friday would have been my last day otherwise. Still loving that damn job. Still not bored.

In writing news, the rejection letters continue to flow... but at least that means I'm consistently putting stuff out there, right? *G* The writers' group gals and I are thinking about putting together some sort of collaborative blog over yonder on WordPress so, y'know, watch this space! ;)

Hope everybody is doing well. Please believe me when I say that I haven't stopped reading my flist, I've totally just fallen down with the posting thereon! ... And I enjoy how the Internet is a place where a sentiment that can essentially be translated as "I've just been stalking you in silence, that's all" can be interpreted with a great deal of friendship and good will. XD

*hugs to all*

My friends were concerned about my caffeine intake levels...

strangecreature — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:42:06 GMT

... It's like Clifford the Big Red Dog, feline edition! *adores*

For anyone who's been having trouble locating a hard copy in bookstores, a digital version on the latest On Spec with my story and interview in it is now available: HERE

evil

strangecreature — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:37:14 GMT

Guess what? It's the lovely jackiesjunkie's BIRTHDAY today! *G* Go ye forth and tackle that gal with boisterous affection, because she more than deserves it.

Hope you have a fantastic year, my dear, filled with inspiration, relaxation, and all manner of wonderful things. *glomps and happy sunshine*

Another week like this and it'll be Rebel Yell time...

strangecreature — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 00:36:45 GMT

IT'S FRIDAY! I've made it through an entire week on cash with nary a dollar unaccounted for, and that's taking in daily sums greater than what I will make this entire year. Nobody threatened me, nobody swore at me, one lady thanked me for being so pleasant, and another said "Hey! Photo-radar lady! I remember you... You made me laugh last month!" :D

Thus, it is time to watch Billy Idol leap around like a moron while battling unconvincing zombies with... with electrified sex appeal or something?

YES, I DO BELIEVE IT IS TIME FOR THAT.

(As earlier yelped about on Twitter, it's taken me, like, four months to notice that the first digits of my court ID number are 007. Clerk. Court clerk. License to file...)

Though it would give me time to read the rest of the GoT novels...

strangecreature — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:53:15 GMT

It's January, y'all! This means that I've only got two months until my term at the courthouse expires. Eight weeks, more accurately. :-\ Oh, looming unemployment. I didn't miss you much, bro.

Have been informed by all the right people that, if there is a position available at that time, I will get it. (At the moment, however, the court is at full capacity for employees.) Have also been informed by one of the gals whom I trust to give me the brutal truth that they kept her on as a temp for two years on a week-by-week (and occasionally day-by-day) basis. YEESH.

So we shall see what we shall see, eh?

Retweeted a link to this marvelous slap-upside-the-head article today: "25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now)." http://bit.ly/w2kU4f

@FennellFiction I love Chuck Wendig's rants with an unholy passion.

@ChuckWendig @FennellFiction And they love you.

Hee! *delighted*

"It's not supposed to make that noise. You leave the brakes on."

strangecreature — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:30:29 GMT

Oh, snakewhissperer, I do believe we had a discussion a while ago about how easy I thought it would be to make a teeny tiny TARDIS out of the stuff I find on the construction site by my place...?

VWORP! VWORP!

What I Read In 2011

strangecreature — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:07:42 GMT

This being the sixth year I’ve done this, a bit of bonus statistics:

Number of books read in…
2006: 41
2007: 41
2008: 35
2009: 25
2010: 27
2011: 26

Iiiiiinteresting. (Verdict: law school appears to have broken my ability to read somewhat, but at least we're holding steady now.)

As ever, an asterisk indicates a re-read, and a heavy concentration of certain mainstream authors indicates that I still have horrible taste. :D For further thoughts about any of the books on this list, just drop a comment and I'll whip out my post-read notes on it.

What I Read In 2011

1. Page Fright (Harry Bruce, non-fic)
2. Light Lifting (Alexander Macleod, anthology)
3. The Gunslinger (Stephen King)*
4. The Drawing of the Three (Stephen King)*
5. Full Dark, No Stars (Stephen King, anthology)
6. The Waste Lands (Stephen King… yes, I have a problem)*
7. Wizard & Glass (*sigh* Stephen King. Shut up.)*
8. Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer)
9. Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident (Eoin Colfer)
10. Wicked (Gregory Maguire)*
11. Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk)*
12. Bitten (Kelley Armstrong)
13. A Game of Thrones (George R.R. Martin) – oh hai thar, unemployment! Let’s blast through some 1100 pages novels like they’re Goosebumps.
14. A Clash of Kings (George R.R. Martin)
15. Stolen (Kelley Armstrong)
16. Happiness ™ (Will Ferguson)
17. Son of a Witch (Gregory Maguire)
18. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
19. A Storm of Swords (George R.R. Martin)
20. Dime Store Magic (Kelley Armstrong)
21. Industrial Magic (Kelley Armstrong)
22. Devil Unknown (Steena Holmes) – first e-book I’ve read!
23. Enthralled (multi-author anthology, paranormal genre)
24. Magic Bites (Illona Andrews)
25. Magic Burns (Illona Andrews)
26. The Antagonist (Lynn Coady)

Creature Features

The Antagonist – Lynn Coady

Augh, my heart, my heart! This was just plain gorgeous. I love the story-through-emails format, and authors who can throw light onto grit so that it sparkles. The pacing is reminiscent of Catch-22, where the entire plot is building up to the author finally talking about the big moments that changed their life and then everything makes sense in retrospect and you want to cry. Essentially, it’s the story of a guy who feels that he’s been made into a bit-piece thug in someone else’s story and decides to fill in the blanks for him. Pretty damn excellent.

Light Lifting - Alexander Macleod

Holy grim-sauce, Batman! A snappy little collection of stories that are clear, readable, and quietly dark as hell. I love when an author can cram that much detail and sense of character into a short story but, hoo-boy, you do have to brace yourself for the fact that a lot of these end on a fairly hopeless note. Don't know whether I want to applaud the author or give him a hug and go "Don't worry, dude, it'll be okay! I swear!" Gorgeous writing style with a lot of subtext, plenty of variety in the stories.

Biggest Let-Down

Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer

Everyone else in my writers’ group appears to adore it? I… just didn’t get the appeal. Likely a combination of my unfamiliarity with the middle-grade genre and a bit too much “it’s like pre-Harry Potter Harry Potter!” hype going into it. Stopped reading after the second novel.

You started it, babe...

strangecreature — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:56:51 GMT

Ever been to wrongnumbertexts.com?

So this just happened to me...

You better believe I submitted that. XD

I'm, like, the actual polar opposite of a hot sweaty black man. That's kind of amazing.

flail

strangecreature — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 05:32:58 GMT

You guys, I just received fanmail. What is this even?

It's from a lawyer. *g* He decided to write to me after reading my author interview* and congratulated me on getting out and pursuing my dream. Ridiculously validating, that.

Augh, I don't even know what to do with this. Given the shameful amount of time I spend daydreaming about the accoutrements of having things out there in print, the knock-me-over-with-a-feather reaction certainly doesn't lessen for it when something like that actually happens!

* the subtitle of which is "A Self-Proclaimed Geek Tells Her Story". I'm not even joking. I laughed so hard.