New Year - Writing Round-Up

I did not post as much as I ideally would have liked in 2009, but it was still more creativity-oriented effort than I've ever engaged in before except perhaps the headiest days of my fanfic-writing days. I did write more non-NaNo original fiction than ever - two connected short stories, some more UFPE, and some RP with an original character of mine I've had in the back of mine for forever now. I've got a much better handle on her now that I've been forced to write her interacting with people and doing things. I may have written other things too, but those are what stand out - again, aside from my two fanfiction pieces, one revived and one started for a friend's birthday.

So overall, I count this blog a success! I'm not going to make a formal resolution on the subject because that's probably the best way to make me procrastinate, but I'm going to try very hard to write more in this blog and more in my Creativity folder in My Documents. My main ideas for this year are: more UFPE and a new story, which is currently called "Alien UN story" in my head.

UFPE: There's so much to do! Perhaps my most important goal is to figure out exactly what tone to take with this burgeoning epic. I have enough genuinely cool things that I want to write it as at least a halfway serious story, but the whole point of the UFPE originally was to indulge in the kind of overwrought prose I do so love writing. That has been a lot of fun! If UFPE were too serious, I might have to spend a few less paragraphs (that is mild exaggeration) describing A's color-changing eyes and Z's long-winded affections. That would be a tragedy.

I want to re-write the first volume. I have to re-write it at least to add a lot more punch to the opening scenes and to improve the pace of the story generally, and I might have to re-think the story extensively because I want a posse for A to travel with, at least for awhile. There's just too much internal monologue, even for a Parody Epic. I should sketch the other characters more fully - I know A and L pretty well, I know Z less than I should, and the others (aside from the Prince I interviewed on this blog) remain foggy figures. In fact, I should sketch more characters period, especially a posse for A. She does have that nymph who appears periodically, but she's too flighty and alien. Hmmm.

I also want to write some short stories set in the Ten Free Cities. I had a wonderful time naming and describing the Ten Free Cities in a notebook, along with the central character in each city that the short stories will revolve around. Each is based extremely loosely on an existing city. I have to say, my excitement for writing fantasy has jumped with my reading of the latest "Wheel of Time" volume, which encompasses both the excellent and the meh in fantasy.

Alien UN: this story was first inspired by my viewing of the first season of "Babylon 5." I want to create something like a United Nations of aliens, except it's completely useless. Okay, more useless than its critics today say. They're purely a figurehead so the powerful races can wreak havoc and the weak races can feel like they aren't total chumps. Except one day, for reasons I've not yet fully comprehended, they suddenly are forced to become relevant. Do I know where this is going? Not really. But I love the idea, and I really want to try my hand at some original science fiction. I also have a character, the RP character I mentioned earlier, who's been in my head for years but unable to find her own story. She would not be one of the diplomats; I think she would be first mate on a spaceship run by a shady bounty hunter. I think there's going to be a huge disaster, natural or otherwise, that wipes out a LOT of the races' leadership, and the Alien UN are so desperate for info/communication/travel/whatever that they basically commandeer this bounty ship. Wacky antics ensue! I don't even know where the focus of the story will be; it could even be several interconnected tales.

So those are my goals! I'm not sure which is my priority, but I should poke myself to post something here once a week or so and to write... well... more often than I do now.

Excerpt - NaNo 09

I may fail to post anything creative during NaNo, but that doesn't mean by two faithful readers should be completely deprived. Well, one of them is actually not deprived at all because I email him excerpts. Well, here's an entire Chapter of the Book of Venire for your perusing pleasure. Now let's see how screwy Blogger can possibly make the html here...

Oh, and I have removed the footnotes. They're fun, but this part is long enough without them.

Excerpt: The Book of Venire, Chapter in which believer Kinshos receives a True Dream but denies His True Word

Author: Unknown
Publisher: AuthorHouse

The Power That Dreams did touch the mind of a believer, Kinshos, and Kinshos did dream. The dreams of Kinshos foretold a new world, and in that world, Kinshos told all peoples about The Power That Dreams. Far did he travel and far did he preach the Word of the Supreme Lover of Souls. Though he did the work of the Higher Power, yet was he spat upon and kicked and thrown to the dust. Though he preached the Words of Love, yet was he battered by the people tainted by the whispers of the mongers of hate, the winged ones. Kinshos awoke with tears streaming from his eyes, for he had witnessed in his True Dream his own death. The Power That Dreams had shown him that the claws of the winged ones would tear Kinshos in twain, and again in twain, until naught remained of Kinshos but blood on sand.

Kinshos told no one of his True Dream, not his brothers and sisters in the True Faith, not his wife and children. The Power That Dreams saw all this as He slept 'neath the sea, and He did tremble with a most holy wrath. Kinshos forsook his brothers and sisters in the True Faith, his wife and children, and fled for a distant port on waters sapphire and still. But when Kinshos placed his unworthy foot on the ship that was to carry him far from his home and community, lo! The seas foamed as if beaten and the waters ran red as blood. The heavens darkened. Great storms whipped the seas into a screaming frenzy and harried the ship until it was many leagues off course. Monstrous creatures never glimpsed by human eyes rose from the seas, gnashing their many teeth and moaning their hunger.

“Surely a god has set his wrath upon this ship!” the sailors cried, but Kinshos remained silent. These sailors were masters of their seafaring craft, yet their every trick only cast the ship further and further from familiar stars and familiar waters.

“Surely a god is demanding vengeance!” the sailors wept, but Kinshos remained silent. He knew that his disobedience to the True Dream had sent this storm, yet the same fear that had driven him from his home and the course he had dreamed now drove him to silence.

The surface of the waters broke as a mountain appeared to rise from the sea. Luminous it was, shining though there were no stars to light its skin. The sailors fell upon their deck and hid their eyes, for they knew without understanding the reason that one glance upon this Great and Mighty Creature would drive them utterly from their senses. Only Kinshos dared to look, for he knew that he gazed upon the Power That Dreams. Still the Supreme Lover of Souls dreamed, but in His True Dream, he lashed out with one mighty tentacle to destroy the one who had defied the True Dream He had sent.

It was not a mountain that parted the foam, but a tentacle, as long as the horizon. Kinshos wept to see The Power That Dreams, no longer for fear but for the love he felt. The Power That Dreams sends True Dreams to those He Loves most dearly, and this man's treachery had cut him to His Loving Soul. For even in anger, the Power That Dreams Loves humanity with a Love that is beyond our reckoning. Kinshos leapt to the bow and spread his arms wide.

“Supreme Lover of Souls!” he wept. “I have failed the True Dream. Though I have woken Your Wrath, I do not deserve this glance upon Your Shining Flesh! Only spare these sailors, and I shall preach Your Word this very day. I shall preach it until the day I perish, whether that be this day 'neath Your Sea or a century from now in a far land.”

The Power That Dreams then Dreamt that He touched Kinshos as gently as a mother kissing her newborn babe. The waters stilled, the thunderheads departed, and the sailors stood again, amazed at what they had witnesses.

“'twas you!” they cried. “Kinshos, you brought this storm upon us!” He confessed that he had provoked the Power That Dreams, and they spat at him. They kicked him and battered him, but as the blows landed on his flesh, Kinshos proclaimed the True Word of the Power That Dreams. When the sailors tired, they found that their ship had drifted back to its course. They tied the moorings of their ship and brought Kinshos to the front of the bow.

“Kinshos! You have caused the wrath of the seas to rise against us, yet you also calmed them. Even as we punished you, you preached the True Word of the Power That Dreams. We must cast you now from our ship, but we must also confess that we are eternally indebted to you. For your faith, we have realized the error of our false faiths and have accepted the Supreme Lover of Souls into our hearts. Go now and do not curse our ship again, but spread the True Word that the Power That Dreams has tasked you to spread.”

Kinshos wept many tears. The sailors cast him from the ship, and he fell on sharp rocks as he tumbled to the sands of the shore. At that moment did he understand the True Dream the Supreme Lover of Souls had sent him. In truth, he had been spat upon, kicked, cursed, and battered. In truth, he now lay upon sands of a distant land as his blood spilled from him. In truth, he died, but it was his fear that died, his hardness of heart. All these were the claws of the winged ones he had seen in his dreams. After a day and a night on the sand, Kinshos arose again and began to preach the True Word of the Power That Dreams. He showed many of his brothers and sisters the Way of Love and Unity, and together they rejected hate and fear.

The world that Kinshos witnessed in his True Dream did not come to pass within his lifetime, for his brothers and sisters in faith were sworn to secrecy. Thus he had been taught, and thus would the True Faith thrive for thousands of years. Yet Kinshos did expand the community of True Faith, and many more reached out to trusted brothers and sisters. Thus for the first time did the community reach across the globe, like the great tentacles of the Power That Dreams.

Plotting - NaNo 09

Only 8k words in, and I began despairing of making word count. This isn't because I don't have sufficiently rich fodder for my fictional non-fiction account of a made-up cult but because I have a hard time organizing it and keeping the passages different from one another and interesting to write. I can only say "Cthulhu loves us" in so many ways, so many times.

But then I had a revelation: if I ever am desperate for words, I can re-write various Bible stories according to my modified Cthulhu mythos. The most fun of these will of course be Cthulhu Genesis and Cthulhu Revelation (in which we actually are eaten, but in being eaten, we are transported to a dimension of pure love and union and wisdom), but the more I think about it, the more I think that any Bible story can be re-written as a Cthulhu story. One of the founders claims to be the illegitimate son of African dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa. I forgot which country he dictated, but the important thing is that he claimed to be the 13th Apostle secretly anointed by the Pope. Admirably crazy. This is a great way for this character to claim that he is a prophet and so has visions of the way various Biblical stories REALLY went.

Jonah and the whale? Jonah and the tentacle monster (who just ate him because he wanted to enlighten him). Dude on the road to Damascus? Dude on a sea voyage where he meets Cthulhu. Tower of Babel? Big tower that gets destroyed by the evil winged creatures because people were working together too much. I think there's definitely 50K worth of material there if I can't think of anything else. But I draw the line at the begats. Oh, and I also have arbitrary rules to make up. Woohoo!

Fanfiction - plotting the end

Not the end of fanfiction as a phenomenon, the end of a particular piece of fan fiction. As my two readers may recall, I have two outstanding - as in incomplete, not wonderful - fanfic pieces. One I've been working on with something like regularity, and the other has, until this afternoon, lain dormant for about two years.

No more! At the funniest request I've ever received, I decided to resurrect that story and to finish it once and for all. To my immense surprise I discovered that, despite some issues especially in the early part (wherein I try to be way too clever), I really enjoy this tale. I stopped where I did because I had a chapter to write that didn't fit very much into the larger story arc and because, until I had the action in mind, it seemed like a pretty boring chapter. I had it end with the return of a character who left the story ages ago, a gunfight, the uncovering of a genocidal secret rising to the highest levels of government, and our MC skillfully turning her enemies on each other.

The request went something like this: I'm really glad you're working on the story you're writing for me, [it's a birthday gift for an online friend of mine who loves fanfic more than some people love their spouses] but I feel bad that it's taking your time away from your other unfinished fanfic. We gotta be nice to our readers, right? So maybe you could take some time off my fanfic and update the other one, and I won't feel bad.

Or something. It was strangely sweet.

Anyway, I'm feeling a surge of affection for the story which I hope will be able to last me through the last couple of chapters. I even wrote up a two-page summary and posted it along with the new chapter, for any remaining readers I may have. It was a lot of fun re-reading my story, especially the romantic/sexual tension scenes between the MC and her two loves. So now I must plot the end and get writing it, hopefully before NaNo steals all my time and writing energy!

The fandom is Andromeda, and this fanfic is very AU. The MC is Beka Valentine, and the two male leads are Tyr Anasazi and Charlemagne Bolivar. For the first part of the story, Beka is wreaking criminal havoc and falling in love with Tyr as her loyal bodyguard under the auspices of a crime boss, Darjella Milein. For the second part, she's negotiating an alliance with Charlemagne Bolivar, a powerful leader of his Pride, after Tyr has left to pursue his Nietzschean ambitions. He keeps trying to seduce her, and she wants to marry him off. But Nietzschean family arrangements are odd, and the prospective bride is eager to become Beka's sister; she's under the impression that Beka and Charlemagne are lovers because only a Nietzschean's family would make such an offer on his behalf. Beka's seriously considering fulfilling the other woman's expectations.

Oh yes, and people keep trying to kill Beka for various reasons. She's made a lot of enemies. This story is going to end in a glorious Shakespearean bloody melee, complete with Tyr and possibly Charlemagne delcaring their love for Beka in very extravagant terms. I did already write one line of faux-poetry for Tyr to recite, and I have to say, crafting it was a lot of fun. The line is: “Never have mortals set mortal eyes upon these stygian flames resplendent, aureate damnation.” He doesn't usually talk like that, but he was rendered poetic by circumstances.

Good lord, this post is getting long. I just got a review from ff.net, thanking me in particular for the recap. I wrote it partly for myself, I must say. I would not have remembered half of what was going on if I'd just started writing cold.

Anyway, the plot!
-Having narrowly escaped an yet another assassination attempt, Beka finally going to allow herself to be seduced by Charlemagne, but not before getting a good night's sleep.
-The aftermath of her report on the investigation that nearly got her killed will be widespread chaos and violence on that world, not to mention serious threats of reprisals by the few remaining members of the decimated race.
-I'm not sure if Beka's going to have moral qualms about her job and lifestyle. I think that if she did, Darjella would be willing to employ her in a more diplomatic avenue, which would be fantastic. But that might draw out the ending more than I like. Hmm...
-After a series of meetings which will prove completely surreal for Beka, Charlemagne marries the other woman, and Beka for the first time in a loooong time will have something resembling a family. She will find this highly unsettling.
-Meanwhile, Tyr has started gathering the smaller Prides to him with the bones of Drago Museveni. I'm trying to decide whether he impregnates Freya as he does in the TV series... having little Tamerlane running around would complicate things, especially his willingness to die at the end. One of these Prides the Volsung, which are after all distantly related to his Pride (which is canon!).
-So the whole lot of our heroes are drawn back together again. Tyr needs Charlemagne to bring the Jaguar Pride to his alliance to counter the strength of his mortal enemies, the Drago-Kazov Pride. Awkward times ensue! Beka was once deeply in love with Tyr, and even though her feelings for Charlemagne aren't nearly as strong, she IS sleeping with him and sister to his wife. Soooo huzzah.
-The Jaguar Matriarch, whom we've already met, agrees to discuss the possibility of throwing her support to Charlemagne, against the Jaguar Alpha who hates Charlemagne on principle and opposes the alliance with Tyr precisely because Charlemagne supports it (and probably for various reasons of strategery). Beka goes planetside while Tyr and Charlemagne are negotiating furiously, and the ladies chit chat. Sidebar: conversations between humans and Nietzscheans are just as much fun to write as the ludicrously fancy places I have these characters visit. Nietzscheans cannot resist highly charged conversations, and humans are always intent to prove that they can hold up their end of any discussion.
-The Jaguar Alpha finds out about the meeting and stealthily brings his secretest forces to kill Beka and, if necessary, the Matriarch. It's a bold and probably stupid move, especially considering that Charlemagne finds out about the Alpha finding out and brings Tyr along, ostensibly to stop them from killing the Matriarch and destroying the aliance but obviously in large part to stop them from killing Beka.
-People die. Trance, who's been telling us this whole story, gives us a cryptic epilogue. Everyone proclaims their love for Beka.

Excellent! This is a very exciting prospect, full of loaded conversations and sexual tension and angsty romance. I think I can fit this all into something like three chapters, excluding the epilogue, unless I decide that more sexual tension is needed. It might be.

Brainstorming - NaNo 09

Something I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about Made-Up Religion is the financial shenanigans, which I'm thinking will prompt the investigative journalism that will make up part of the book. And what self-respecting wacky cult doesn't engage in financial (and possibly legal) shenanigans??

My ideas so far, are...
1) "Free" dream interpretation - I also forgot to mention that, because Cthulhu our all-loving savior sleeps under the sea, dreams are very important to this religion - which inevitably leads to harassing people for a longer, paid report or session.
2) Expensive hypnotherapy sessions to tap into the humanity's collective unconscious. During one's intensive hypnotherapy, one is encouraged to cut off contact with non-believers, even loved ones.
3) Expensive training to become an expensive hypnotherapist (unlicensed by the ignorant state boards, of course)
4) Ridiculous claims of trademarks over common phrases and the lines they use in hypnotherapy sessions
5) Ponzi investment schemes. As investors get higher in the ranks, Slytherin claims that they get more in tune with humanity and thus the stock market - and their returns will increase as more people join, especially if they become hypnotherapy trainers.
6) Aggressive litigation against people who criticize them. The journalist undertaking this book is risking a major suit and will probably remind the reader of this many, many times.

I think six financial/legal schemes is sufficient fodder, at least to begin with, in addition to the other things I need to figure out. Very exciting!

A friend linked me to this article, which I'm reading right now. I suspect it will be inspiring.

Brainstorming - NaNo 09

My vast and varied body of readers knows of my plan for NaNo 09, so I'll recap very briefly: made-up religion. Actually, that's exactly how it started in my head after I read a wiki article on one of those cult religions. I've been thinking about it ever since that fateful wiki surf, and I've had some more ideas elaborating the story.

For one thing, it will be written like a non-fiction documentation of the religion, with both narrative passages by the author describing the founders and practices, as well as pamphlets and things written by them. I'm not sure who the narrator will be; actually, this is the first time I've even thought to wonder about that. Hmm.

There are four founders, who my brain insists on associating with the Hogwarts founders. I may change the genders of some of them. Slytherin = the sleazy businessman who engineers the profit-making part of the enterprise. Hufflepuff = the clueless, obscure daughter of minor royalty who finances everything. Ravenclaw = the hardline fanatic who believes passionately in the religion. Gryffindor = the classic insane demagogue personality who attracts all the attention. I think he's the one who made it up in the first place. He's so self-deluded that he may actually believe in it.

The basic tenet of the religion is that Cthulhu loves us all. He wants us to be happy and to enjoy our full potential as his equals, which means accessing our collective magic. He sleeps under the sea and rules it through his disciples, but he's happy to give us the land. His enemies are the cloud-dwelling beings (sometimes mistaken for angels) who want complete dominion over the earth, including the land and the sea. The cloud-dwelling beings have been working all throughout human history to divide us and to pit us against each other so we don't learn to use our communal magic. They've also been working to give Cthulhu a bad name, and as you probably know, they succeeded pretty well on both counts.

So there are some points I need to ponder further, perhaps even outline. These are:
The backgrounds of the Founders, especially Hufflepuff's (supposed) lineage
The history of the cloud-dwelling beings
The history of Cthulhu

However, one of the best part of this project is that the details are completely allowed to be contradictory. The factual parts, the biographies, should be fairly consistent (though differing reports would be fun), but I imagine that some contradictions would not only be realistic for a made-up religion but also present a lot of fodder for pamphleteering and speechifying.

I'm very excited about this. It's an ultimate parody epic in its own right!

Short Story - CannRomCom

For the livejournal writing community of which I'm a member, I wrote this short story in the CannRomCom-verse. Sadly, I finished a day after the challenge ended, but I should be able to post it this weekend. I had no idea what to do with the prompts for the longest time, but suddenly, just a couple days ago, I started writing something--and it turned out to be from the POV of CannRomCom MC. Fun!

My prompts were: abide, pitch, "What part of my subconscious do you hail from?" This is the first entry I've put behind a cut, I think. It's longer than what I usually post here