Clare-Dragonfly

The Patreon story for February is now up! Pledge just $1 per month to read this story and all the other patron-exclusive stories I post there.

Angel sits up in bed. The moon shines down on her, bathing her in light.

She is aware she is dreaming. She knows that the moon is not full tonight; it is in its waning quarter, and could not be shining this much light down on her. She knows, too, that the moonlight could never enter her window like this in the true night.

But she sits, and then she stands, because that is what she feels she must do.

Happy new year! When I put my iTunes on shuffle this morning (as I usually do), the first song it played was "Pretty Good Year" by Tori Amos. I'll take that as an auspicious sign... but not an amazing one, since it could have chosen "This Will Be My Year" by Semisonic.

Here are the books I read in December:
63. His by Aubrey Dark - ****
64. Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund - *** 1/2
65. The First Star to Fall by Diana Peterfreund - ****
66. By the Sword by Mercedes Lackey (reread) - ****
67. Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater - ****
68. Tithe by Holly Black (reread) - *****
69. Moomin Vol. 1 by Tove Jansson - ***
70. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (reread) - *****

( Reading Bingo, writing, and 2014 goals )

For 2015, I have made a few goals, but most of them are "do this small thing every day." One is to successfully plan my wedding, which is May 2, so that's going to happen whether or not I work hard enough at it. And one is to do well at my new job! That's why I'm not making any big plans or goals for 2015--I'm going to have a full-time job for the first time, and I don't even know if I'll be able to keep up with my usual habits and plans!

Here's to a wonderful 2015 for all of us!

My Patreon campaign has just reached its second milestone! Now that $10 per month has been pledged, I will write and post at least one story to patron prompts.

That story will only be available to patrons, so if you want to prompt it or read it, hop on over! You only need to pledge $1 per month to read patron-only stories. If you pledge $3, you can give me a prompt! The theme for December is "winter holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, etc.)."

I'm at 30k words now, and I am swiftly approaching the end of my outline. The plot is almost wrapped up; I don't think I have more than 10k left to go. It actually doesn't bother me that my novel(la) is going to be 40k or less. The whole plot is in there, I'm happy with the pacing, and honestly, I really like shorter books!

But of course, this is NaNo, and I need a way to fill out my 50k. So I figured I'd ask you guys for advice.

( plot and ideas below! )

Any thoughts? Feel free to cast your vote for one choice or the other, ask any questions you can think of, or suggest other options I haven't thought of!

aldersprig tagged me in a blog hop! A long time ago! Now I am answering the questions.

What am I working on?

A lot of things! Today I started writing my fic for intoabar, which is a fanfic fest in which you pick a character from one fandom and several other fandoms to choose from, and they pick a character from one of the other fandoms for you to write a crossover with. It's supposedly random, but this is my third time participating and the third time I've ended up with a Warehouse 13/NCIS crossover. Okay, yes, I picked Claudia this time in the hopes that it would happen again, but what are the chances?!

I'm also planning--mostly planned, I think--my novel for NaNoWriMo, which is a YA dystopia. There are psychic powers and evil oppressive governments. And there might be lesbian love. I haven't decided yet. (I probably won't until book 3, since this is planned as a trilogy.)

And, of course, I'm still regularly updating my fantasy online serial novel, Chatoyant College, which is about students at a college that teaches magic. Some of their fellow students, teachers, and nearby, menacing antagonists include faeries, mermaids, and werewolves.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

Heck if I know. I just write what I like and want to see.

Why do I write what I do?

Uh, see above?

Though I have to admit I have no idea why I seem to write quite so many queer ladies. I mean, I love queer ladies, but I love straight ladies, too.

How does my writing process work?

Hmm. I guess I usually get an idea based on something random, and I might write it down right away, or I might let it percolate. Letting things percolate in my brain seems to be pretty important for me. For example, in the YA dystopia I'm working on, I wrote a lot of notes in the last few months, and when I went back to look at them I realized that I had completely failed to write down the part about the psychic powers. I'm pretty sure it was there all along; I know it's important. But I guess it had to percolate in order to be fleshed out properly.

I get a lot of ideas from dreams. The YA dystopia is one of them. I am trying to remember not to be so glued to the details from my dreams.

Actually, the YA dystopia came half out of a dream, half out of some principle I teased out of reading a few other YA books. I think. Or maybe it was one of the ones where I read a book and thought "it would be interesting if this trope went the other way" or "wow, it annoys me that it turned out that way, I would do this differently." (The latter is part of the idea for the A Star to Guide Her trilogy, but I won't tell you in what way because it's a spoiler.)

After that part, my process seems to change from story to story, but I do like to outline.

Who’s next?

I will tag lynnoconnacht, with the caveat that she doesn't have to do it if it feels like an obligation, but only if it feels like fun.

After much deliberation, I have finally created a Patreon. It's set up so that patrons will give me prompts, which I will then use to create patron-only stories (or at one of the higher levels, patron-only and free stories). I'm hopeful that this will be a better way for me to write stories to prompts and get paid for them than the Garden of Prose was. (I really liked doing it, but because I was hurrying to get the first bit written and posted for each prompt, most of the stories ended up unfinished.)

So obviously I will be grateful if anyone decides to become a patron, but I will also be delighted if you just spread the word. And I will keep posting free stories here to prompts or whatever else catches my fancy! With Patreon, there will just, I hope, be more stories.

47. First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones - DNF
48. Polly Oliver's Problem by Kate Douglas Wiggin - ****
49. Reset by MeiLin Miranda - *****
50. Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey (reread) - ****

August seems to have been a slow month for reading. I think that's just because I've been reading so many books at once that I haven't gotten to the ends of many of them. September should have a longer list!

( Reading bingo and writing )

37. Sleep by Infinite Ideas - ***
38. Allegiant by Veronica Roth - ***
39. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - *****
40. Mythology by Edith Hamilton - *** 1/2
41. Across a Star-Swept Sea by Diana Peterfreund - **** 1/2

Huh. It sure felt like I read a lot of books in June. Well, some of them were long.

( bingo and words written )

Announcement!

Love As It Was Made to Be is now available as an ebook!

This edition has been through an additional round of editing and includes an exclusive epilogue.

It is available at: Amazon US Amazon UK Smashwords Barnes & Noble Kobo
and elsewhere!

I also have an official writer blog that I plan to just use for updates on e-publishing and short stories in magazines/anthologies. But I'm going to post about that here too, so don't feel like you need to follow it.

And don't feel like you have to buy the book, either, though of course I'd be delighted if you did, as well as if you spread the word. I'm not really planning on doing any promotion on this, but I'm not going to complain if/when people find it.

I have joined Page Buoy and created a group for anyone who wants to join me! Because the site is kind of a pain to navigate (apparently to see site stuff instead of your stuff, you click "show public content," except sometimes that means see the same thing you'd see if you weren't logged in), here is a link to the specific group: Bunnies!. There are no goals yet because the site won't let me add one--I've sent an email to the creator. But I was thinking maybe 7,000 words a week as a basic goal? Unless goals don't need to be monthly, which it doesn't look like they do.

I haven't entirely figured out how to use the site yet. But I will. Probably.

ETA: The goals thing is fixed so the group now has a goal of 7,000 words a week. (You choose whether or not to join goals within a group.) Open for suggestions of other goals. I'm not sure how the system learns that you've achieved a goal--you might have to upload projects for it and that might be too much of a pain in the ass for me.