5/28/2015 3 Comments Technical DifficultiesI finally got envious of the visually interesting blogs other people have and redecorated, but when I went to see how my comic After Dark fared in the transition, I realized that half of the images were gone. This is not a Weebly fault, but rather a Photobucket fault. When I first put After Dark on Weebly, it wouldn't display the uploaded images in full size, and since they're comic panels with word balloons, that was kind of important. My work-around was to upload the images into a private album on Photobucket, then use Weebly's embed code feature. The album is still on Photobucket, it still contains over a hundred comic panels, and there's no logic behind the missing images - they are no more or less offensive to Photobucket standards than the remaining images. I have no idea when the images disappeared. Which led me to the realization that no one had noticed. Making the fix very easy. Meh, the novel was better, anyway.
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5/25/2015 3 Comments The Fictional AuthorI'm not going to talk about how prevalent or not the fictional author is because I haven't really noticed. It is something I've done, several times. My fictional authors are Nicholas Blake, a nineteenth century spec-fic writer (since sci-fi as a genre hadn't been named); Jake de Winter, a contemporary fantasy writer, and Deirdre Valentine, a romance writer (though that's a pseudonym. Those who followed After Dark know what I mean!) I don't know if it follows from "write what you know" or not. What I have done, is once created, I tend to refer to them in other works. For instance, both Blake and de Winter were mentioned in After Dark (Deirdre's story). And I've got titles for them and even blurbs for some of them. I mean, Jake de Winter's book came true as he wrote it.... I'm assuming that since I've done this, other people have, too. I know I've read at least one book by another author who had a writer as a character. So have any of us ever wrote their books? I was just thinking about an idea for this year's NaNo. I know it's quite some months before November, but from previous experience, it's best for me to have an idea in advance so I can research and/or world build, otherwise, I spend too much time in November trying to figure out how stuff works. My plot bunny file is thick with ideas, but none are screaming "WRITE ME!" and I found myself thinking about my fictional writers, and their non-existent books. I'm thinking of trying to write one of Blake's books. The blurb I wrote for The Mechanism sounds quite exciting, and I'd actually like to read the book. Can't do that unless I write it, first! Meanwhile, back to editing my current work... 5/23/2015 1 Comment How to accept critiqueSay thank you.
That's it. Do not argue or rebut it, a reader's opinion is not wrong. If they didn't "get" what you meant, there's a possibility you wrote it wrong. If more than one reader crits the same issue, the possibility you wrote it wrong increases. Accept the crit and fix it, or ignore it, that is your choice. You are not obligated to fix every little thing, though it would be foolish to dismiss it without thinking about it first. But always thank your critters for their time. I don't normally review books I download for free, but this one is the first in the author's Once Upon a Wedding series and is intended as a marketing tool for the others. Also, the book in general is readable, and what I really didn't like about it may be totally fine for you, so I'll include a link to her Amazon page. (The grammar, spelling, and Kindle formatting issues mentioned in some of the reviews seem to have been fixed, though there are still one or two areas of uncertain pronouns.) In all fairness, I didn't finish the book. I couldn't because I found the hero so incredibly unlikable, and although we are told repeatedly how honorable he is, we are shown a petty, immature, misogynistic, liar. The central conflict of the book, the "scandalous" secret, could have been cleared up with a five minute conversation with his mother. He had no reason to treat the heroine as he does, he just lies, and lies, and then lies some more, while everyone tells us how fucking honorable he is. That word does not mean what you think it means. I hated him. And I quit reading because I did not want to see such a thoroughly despicable man get a HEA. And because although the heroine is unrealistically naive and has moments of shining stupidity, I didn't hate her. But I would have, as soon as she forgave him his assholery. The ebook is available free on Amazon, and if you can abide asshole "heroes" I recommend you judge for yourself. Sadly, as an inspiration to buy the other books, it failed for me. 5/4/2015 6 Comments Bad Writing Monday: wtf?I was going to try a pun on metaphor, but I'm not sure the examples today are supposed to be metaphors. I'm not sure what it is at all. It doesn't really matter what the characters say, because the actual dialogue is the only thing that sort of makes sense in all this, although they can't seem to use contractions. All quotes are from a passage the author describes as "beautiful and sad".
He pulled at her lips and she dropped her face, where he felt her body steaming like the white wiffs of milk into his back. The word like implies a simile? It might work if I knew what steaming white wiffs of milk were. It almost makes me forget my concern for exactly where she dropped her face. The sentence does suggest that she dropped it into the steaming white wiffs, but her body is already there... I think? ... he said, noting the way she looked with her hair tied back, and the ginger cat smile that remained like a friend who had stayed in the background as to not mess up his home life, the friendship that had more of him, than his wife. I'm not sure if he has a friend that his wife's smile reminds him of, or if this is another painfully bad simile. I'm going with option B, based on the author saying "like a friend" instead of "like the friend" but your guess is as good as any. Normally with a Bad Writing Monday post, I can usually suss out what the author meant to say, but in this case... no. ...she would continue through the slight passage way of his lips down until she was fully dressed in his skin, and then she would pop out his eye balls one by one and call his face a mundane form of entertainment on her dry and boring nights of doing laundry and envying her sister’s joy. See, a man comes home from work and his wife accidentally stumbles across him, and wants to have sex -- that's the lip pulling and face dropping and steaming milk on his back bit -- but he doesn't want to, I'm guessing from that description, which comes just after he says he's tired and he wants to go to bed. Also the walls are getting off on watching them. Or so it seems from this passage: “You look nice today,” he said from his lips as the walls watched them with the slime of attention. Yes, he said from his lips, as the walls... I don't even. Then we get how his wife feels about wanting to have sex with her husband: Like a pig in the barn yard, she was rolling around in the dirt, and playing with the strange sensation and was not in any mood to clean herself. So hubby decides he wants to have sex after all: It was the strangeness of sex, as he watched her move, studied her meaningless thoughts as she pulled her hand through her hair and looked bored as her eyes grazed over his book covers, his flaccid face that was watching her back. I guess if he can study her meaningless thoughts, that bit where she's comparing herself to a pig rolling in dirt really turned him on. I'll agree it's strange sex. ...she said as she closed her ears and tried to focus on the water running inside of her, the water that sounded more beautiful than a man. ...what? “Your breasts are nice,” he mumbled feeling her nipples under her skin, feeling his lust fleeting with the whips of air. They're in the bedroom. I don't know how her nipples got under her skin or where the whips of air came from. I'm glad it was a short excerpt because I only have so many wtf's to mutter per thousand words, and I've already been on Wattpad today (I know, I'm a glutton for punishment.) |
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