Do you know what makes publishing a story even better?

Getting an unexpected review of it.

Do you know what's even better than that?

Getting an unexpected review and recommendation of it on io9.

The io9 review

Or here if you don't want to click the link:

A bit of lighthearted fun to end this week's fiction offerings. I love little Princess-Warlady Ceilidh McCallum and her large family, of which we get mostly glimpses. I have the feeling that this story is part of a much larger world that the author is working on. One day I hope to find out the story behind the "super evil" fairy lady. For now, just remember that not all unicorns are filled with happiness and far rainbows, kids. As I mentioned last week, sometimes unicorn stories don't end well.

When I got this story published, I didn't think too much of it beyond "yay first story published!" But it's a small magazine and it's a small story. Something to put on my resume, so to speak.

However, I got an email from twitter saying that I'd been mentioned on twitter - twice. Which was odd. I have a twitter account, but I never use it. At first I thought it was spam, but then I saw io9 mentioned and the link.

Linked clicky and there it was... my brain shut down for a moment or three.

This was not something that should happen.

But it did.

And it's even more awesome.

Though, while she is correct, there is more to this world than is shown... I don't really have much for Lady Forlorn. Clearly I will need to make some now!

A friend of mine died suddenly over the weekend.

We only knew each other over the internet but we were good friends. She was even coming out in May – around the 21st- to visit me on her way to New York and grad school. She was going to be getting a Masters and then a PhD in History specializing in like the Prohibition era. I was going to take her to the restaurant where they filmed the Schwarma scene in the Avengers.

We met over Journal/DW rping at a game called the Library and eventually we hit it off smashingly. We clicked over banana slugs of all things.

I was talking to another friend, one that I met through her, about how strange it seemed that we both missed her so much. After all we never saw her in person, just through photographs she posted. We never heard her speak, except through voice recording memes. Our entire contact was through words and screens. Why should someone like that, someone we’ve never had a physical contact with hurt so much when they go?

After some thought, I realized what it was: we told stories together. In our Role playing, during games or private story lines, we were telling stories together and that’s a very intimate thing to do. We were creating lives together. We were creating worlds together. Opening ourselves up to the other person and saying this is something I think is interesting that I created and I want to share it with you. I want you to be apart of it.

We told stories with characters and lived their lives, their private moments, their hours, days and years. Births and deaths, finding love and losing it. Anxiety over things, over family and friends and the world around them. Laughing at the good things, enjoying the strange moments that happen between lovers and friends. Every piece of a person’s life that they could go through with another person, we did together. Several times over.

And now these stories, all of them incomplete, all of these lives incomplete are gone forever. They will never be finished. They are lives cut short, just like hers. We’ve lost a part of ourselves, a creative and intimate part of our self that we shared with another person. We lost a bit of our self that said to someone let’s make something bigger and better than just the one of us.

Even if we were to find another person who plays the same characters she did, it wouldn’t be the same. The new person would play them differently. They wouldn’t have the same history or knowledge of the ideas we came up with. They wouldn’t have the same experiences that the two of us shared to get to these stories. After all, everyone has their own spin on what makes a character tick or work.

I think this is why role playing, is so involving. We’re not just playing make believe. We’re creating something more than ourselves and we’re sharing it with other people. Saying, I want you to help me make this thing. I need your help to make this thing, to put this idea into the world and to make it grand and wondrous and glorious. It may only be the two of us who ever see this, but it will be an awesome and amazing and fantastic and beautiful and I want to do it with you.

I am choosing you, I think you would be good, perfect, to share this experience, to help create this experience.

And now, it’s gone.

Gone forever, a broken book with the ending pages torn out. A doll left by the wayside on the road caught in the rain. The sad house, falling apart in the field. You can see the glory of what it used to be, but all you have is memories.

At least the memories are good ones.

And at least I can go back and read the stories we created.

Gimpy hand is still gimpy. It makes it difficult to type at speed, especially with the brace on. Which is annoying because I have story ideas and I want to write them up.

First is the continuing on the urban fantasy, of course.

Second is a short story about the adventures of a cat in the goblin market as she looks for something, I think a fairy servant like a brownie because her humans are messy people.

I'm stuck. I don't know where to go forward with this. ARGH



Nobody told Alan about the terror birds. The survey report mentioned a few mythological animals and what would be considered earth animals with what might be evolutionary modifications. Terror birds -to be scientific about it maybe some variation of a Titanis walleri-, were not on the report. Watching the three meter tall birds, that had the same body shape of an ostrich but with a beak that looked like it could crush a coconut like he could crush a peanut shell, but with spiky feathers that glossed like a hummingbird's, poke around his campsite Alan wondered if he should just give up now and portal back home. Of course the only problem with that idea was that there were five birds between him and the portal generator. Five very large and curious birds. He groaned as one of them managed to get into his tent. It stood up, ripping a hole in the top as it did so.

( Read more... )

Title Prayer
Series Alternates (Ten Alternative Shorts)
Character(s) Marlina
Notes Number five out of ten shorts.


Prayer

There are no priests to Tangar left. At least not here at the ruins of Pentarch. They were all element wizards and now they are all dead. The great temple, home of the Oracle and priests is nothing much but melted stone. So, I do the next best thing: I build a traveler's shrine. I make it away from the camp of refugees, of those people who are now homeless because of the destruction caused by an element wizard. I don't want to remind them of my existence, of what caused them this misery of being homeless and hungry and hurt.

( Read more... )

I've been randomly fic'ing random things.

This is a bit of crack for me. At Milliways there's a Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere books. In the books they're a pair of human shaped monsters, in the bar they're trying to be human shaped monsters but kinda are boring and predictable. Not at all worrisome. Now I have Orion who is pretty much a gentleman monster. He comes off as perfectly normal until after you learn what his favorite hobbies are, including torturing his pet boy that he mentally broke into utterly adoring him no matter what happens to him.

I'd have loved to have Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup meet Orion but sadly Orion can't be apart of the Milliways community because he's not a canon -published- character. However that didn't stop me from writing a fic about it, because sometimes your brain is the next best thing.

So, that's the story behind that.

And I just finished up a PPC for Alec after who knows how many years since my last one. You can read it here If you'd like. It's a Pern story.

I've been going through my short stories to create a list of things to send out. Found this one, I must wrote it around 2000. But I just reread it, and I think if I finagle it a bit, it would be send out able.





The Man in Black

I first saw him in an alleyway standing over a homeless man. He was dressed in black, black jacket, black pants, black button down shirt, with a blood red scarf around his neck. No one else seemed to notice him as he knelt by the man and killed him. I know this because I felt the man’s mind drift away into nothing right inside my own mind. This man in black then stood up and rubbed his hands together, letting me see his face. It was pale with a sad smile on it, black hair framing it. And then he looked right at me. His eyes narrowed and he took a half step forward towards me, but then he stopped and shrugged. He gave me a mischievous grin that seemed to say I dare you to follow me and then walked back down the alley. I took his dare.
( Read more... )

Story Hostile Takeover
Chapter Epilogue: Aftermath
Fandom Anita Blake.
Rating Adult.
Summary Orion and his court clean up, and we find out what happened to Richard.
Notes As mentioned before, Lan, Maddy, Kev and Orion belong to canadianevil who has kindly allowed me to use them for my evil purposes. Alec, Kale and Trever mine. Anita and the others belong to LKH. She can have them.


( I would have put a teaser, but it's kinda ... gross. )

This post is in response to the comments given here. To my readers and the commenter let me make clear, in no uncertain terms: I am NOT mocking the comments. This was a fair and decent review where the commenter was trying to give me critical advice in regards to the story I posted up. However, the way my mind works, is that I find it easier to post up the comments in a large format and go through them one by one answering and rebutting the points made. As I feel it's only fair.

Thank you.

Kips.


( The comments )

canadianevil is evil, as her user name suggests. I was showing her a scene from my novel in progress. The scene involved Greywolf, Alec's older brother confronting Orion and being loudly argumentative. At one point Alec, whose POV we're in mentions that he's surprised at the amount of emotion Greywolf is putting into it. Greywolf usually being rather reserved.

Where upon reading this canadianevil immediately declared Greywolf/Orion! Having no idea what she was talking about it took me several readings of the passage to see what she meant. As she explained it, since Greywolf was having such a strong emotional reaction to Orion, he obviously must be attracted to him, using fan girl logic.

It made sense.

Sadly.

She then demanded that I write such slash.

This is what I came up with:

( slash! )

Unfortunately, I kept them in character and they had absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. Zilch. As you can probably see from the piece.

From Greywolf's other behaviors, I believe that I've come to the conclusion that he is, in fact, asexual. Which is rather unusual in fantasy fiction. Unless you're an old wizard like Gandalf or the older teachers at Hogwarts to pull examples. Old people don't have sex. Young people like Greywolf who's only twenty-five in this story are not.

Even if he doesn't get the girl/guy he should at least express an interest in the gender preference(s) of choice that he sees around him. Secondary characters do this all the time. It's standard protocol.

But he's never shown an interest in anyone. Even when I've tried to write him a love interest, he's not interested. So, I've just let him be over the years and he's quite happy with his studies in magical creation.

Still it's an interesting revelation and those are always fun as you move through a story and learn about your characters.

The sad thing is that canadianevil is right. Greywolf will be slashed. And there's nothing the poor guy can do about it.

She's promised to show me the worst of it as well. Good friend she is.