So... where's my Torchwood Virtual Season Four?

I know they still do those, though I don't know if they're calling them 'virtual seasons' these days. I was involved in The Sentinel Virtual Slash Season, and I remember there was one for Highlander: The Series which fixed it from 'Archangel' on. So... is TW fandom on this yet? If not, may I put forth the suggestion?

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Anybody need a code?

Not putting these boys' talent down or anything... but... WTF? Who makes them do this? Uhm, yeah, I stopped at 1:50 and it only played that long because I was embedding the shit. That hurt. And now they're on the intertubes with that shit. That shit's forever. ROFLMAO.

ETA: This one's even WORSE. I know, shocked me too.

I don't aim to be a 'gay author', or have my books shelved under the LGBT sign. I just want to tell the stories I have in my head. The fact those stories contain a healthy amount of gay characters is no different than any other author writing about what he knows. The fantasy genre tends to break that convention somewhat, particularly if you're writing in a completely fabricated world. A Puerto Rican author wouldn't necessarily be writing about Puerto Ricans in the Mythical Land of Aguachufrita, except maybe for the lulz.

But I digress. I'm writing a fantastical story set in the real world, where you DO have Puerto Ricans, and Asians, and gay people in a specific cultural setting.

Since I begin with a set of characters as individuals somehow inhabiting this tale together, I don't start out by telling the audience where their sexual preferences lie because more often than not, it's not important to the plot, or not important in chapter one. I never thought of the impact this would have on the story.

Some of the comments I got were regarding Lincoln Guelcher's seemingly random appearance. And once I stepped out of the story and took a look at that, the Dan-Link connection did seem a little strange. Dan, for all we know at the time a 20-something slacker, somehow has this direct connection to a Private Investigator in his mid-30's.

For an instant I flailed, trying to come up with some explanation, something in both men's past that would have caused them to meet.

Then I came to my senses and looked back at the very first inklings I had of this story. I took a look at my own life and what elements of that I drew into the story. I'm not as young as Dan, but in my own circle - mind you, not my inner circle, but certainly within my circle - are men 10 to 20 years older than me whom I only met because we're all gay. And we run into each other at different parties hosted by other gay men. Do I talk to them outside of these parties? Not really. Could I? Sure. And if my best friend were in trouble and I knew one of them may somehow be able to help my best friend, I would call them up in a heartbeat. It's the same with any subculture, even fandom.

So, I have a choice to make. Leave it in the air, play with the reader's expectations and let them suspect Link for a few chapters, or put it all out in the open from the start. I don't even have to make this decision right away. It's simple enough I can retcon it later. I just thought it was interesting how something I took for granted was odd to some.

Attention to detail, I has it. Sometimes. LOL

So apparently something bad happens in Torchwood: Children of Earth. Thank you all who have kept the spoilers behind cuts, though the flailing and gnashing of teef is almost worse.

Whatever. I'm still going to thothscribe81's on Sunday, and there will be alcohol. And there will be lulz. And if we cry, we cry together. And if it's as bad as y'all are making it sound, there's always Merlin. *shrug* *is old enough to know fandoms come and go* *is also fickle and has waited long enough for s3 to kinda be over it* *is also going through tough personal times and has worse things to worry about* *and in saying that is totally not ragging on anybody who's upset, will probably also be upset on Sunday* *and then will have to go back to work on Monday and that's even more depressing*

I'm hungry. *goes forage for crumbs*

You mock me, LiveJournal! *fistshake*

WoW was really the only thing left before food. I stopped buying new clothes months ago except for those two shirts on sale a couple of months ago. Now I go to the gym so I can keep wearing the same trousers.

So I cancelled WoW. I miss it every so often, but then I busy myself with other things. And I know I'll go back.

I gave up yogurt. I figure I get my dairy from milk and cheese.

The hardest thing to cut out so far in the 'food' category, has been my morning French Vanilla Hazelnut coffee from Billy D's by work. Coffee is my comfort food. Luckily I get a free supply of the good shit from PR, but I took great comfort from going into Billy D's with its super friendly staff, mixing my own flavoured coffee, and enjoying it at my desk at my leisure. *sigh* Maybe in August.

Something my grandparents instilled in me from a very young age was the need to be something. My grandfather was a lawyer. My uncles, a doctor and an accountant. Even my grandmother is a 'homemaker' as befit her generation. The presumption being that you study, you graduate, you get a title and that becomes an achievement in and of itself, and it defines your self-worth for the rest of your life.

Because no matter who my uncle works for, or whether he works at all, or even what he ends up doing later in life, he will always be an M.D.

As I began to show more of an aptitude towards Humanities, they were hoping I'd become an English teacher or something along those lines.

And yet here I am, and what am I? "I work in billing" doesn't make me an accountant. Doesn't make me anything at all. Just like "I work at McDonald's" doesn't make one a waiter, or a chef. Is my job not important? Oh, it is. I make sure my company gets paid for its services. That's important. But it's a job. It's not a career. It doesn't help me as an individual.

I write. Does that make me a writer? Probably. But I can't call myself an author until I've finished something. Even before it sells, if I'm trying to sell it, I'm an author.

Perhaps learning music is another attempt at becoming 'something'.

And perhaps following the little Celtic band that could across two states is a proxy for the religious experience I'm unable to achieve with actual religion. But that's a ramble for another entry and I'm sure pop culture sociologists have debated that one since the birth of Elvis Presley.

Okay, I'm going to give myself 20 more minutes to write about Channon Grey and his little wolf pack, then shower and some practise before work.

Gott sei dank es ist Freitag! (Or something similar. I'm trying for 'linguist' next.)

Happy birthday, dinoflagellate! Wherever life may find you these days!

When I first wrote the first NaNo draft of Gypsy Fiddle, there was basically one POV, Kostyantyn's. I had planned on going back and filling in the 'gaps' with POV from Dan and Lincoln, but as I went back to do that, I started adding Sorin's and Kane's POV as well.

And now Channon Grey got into the picture. In part because I know he'll play a larger part in book three, and there is backstory to that. In part because he's gotten into my brain just a little. Also, some of the reviews seemed interested in Kane and his crew, and Channon is part of that crew. Kane isn't going to be a POV character. He just pulls some strings.

I don't know if I'm jumping around too much. Though this doubt may be because the last two books I've read have all been in 1st person POV. I still can't write 1st person to save my life... the character would either ramble forever, or the book would be 30 pages long. There's usually too much going on in one of my stories for one character to know everything.

I suppose that can be a challenge for later on, try and write from one character only, and play around with what s/he knows of all that's going on. I can't get the feel for that just yet though.

With Legacy of Olympus I had three main POV characters, and I added a fourth and fifth basically on the antagonist side. It didn't seem like I was jumping around too much, though. Maybe I should go back and reread that, see how I did it.

And ironically, I think that right now my weakest POV character is Lincoln. He's a major protagonist, and he drives a fair amount of the action, but for some reason I'm not as deep into his brain as I am into Tyn's and Dan's brains. Furthermore, even in draft 1.1, where I'd already added a couple of scenes with him, there really weren't any other scenes for him to narrate. He's always with either one of the boys after that. So I think that scene can be cut. I just need to make sure what we know about him from that scene comes across in another. Like the fact that he is uber lawful good in alignment.

Should I cut him out as a narrator completely? This could open up a separate possibility for the story. If we can't see what he's thinking, we may not trust him. Or, I could retool him a bit. Even I think his appearance is kind of contrived.

For now I'll leave the scene in, at least until I can figure out where else to reveal what it reveals.

Here's the scene which inspired the poll. I'd like to note I'm not stressing over this, I'm just curious what people think.

The sound of helicopters makes Kostyantyn's heart jump before he notices that the TV is on, colored flicker on the wall, hushed voices and the sound of gunshots. Why is this on when nothing else is?

He approaches the room, crossing the small hallway. He hears the familiar beep beep of Jack Bauer's ticking clock, probably a repeat on FX. A shadow parts the amber glow for a moment, then disappears. The fictional agent continues to shout at somebody amidst the sounds of guns and helicopters.

Kostyantyn stops cold. His right hand moves back to touch the bottom part of his violin case; an unnecessary but nonetheless vital reassurance that the instrument is still there. It sings a nervous tune in his mind, the notes cautious and somber at the same time. He's never felt such apprehension from the fiddle before. His breath shivering, he forces one foot in front of the other. He forces himself to believe the shadow was a trick of the lights and his mother has fallen asleep on the love seat.

In the room the television is louder, the screaming nonsensical to Kostyantyn as he steps over to the set to turn it off. The sudden silence hurts almost as much as the sounds. The couch is empty, the window open just a crack.

So I was having this dream that I kept snoozing for. It was somehow Merlin-esque but not exactly. I was some sort of commoner/servant in love with the prince/noble, and his daddy, who bore a resemblance to Athony Stewart Head, disapproved. Until we put on an impromptu concert a-la Scythian's Celtic Fling Ceilidh finale and he could no longer argue that I kicked massive amounts of ass even though I was only playing the maracas.

Was it worth it? No. I rolled out of bed at 7:30. This HAS. TO. STOP!!

Perhaps since I'm not flexing my creative muses in the waking hours I felt the need to revel in the dream.

Then I got up and reamembered that there's bird shit on my car that didn't come out in the car wash (waste of $7) so I had to go scrub it out.

And now I'm here with coffee, no breakfast, and less than an hour to write if I want to practice violin.

Let's see. Prioritahs. Writing > Violin.

I think I can bloody well skip a day if I get some writing done.

I think I jinxed myself with Gypsy Fiddle by posting it on OWW. I should have finished it before starting to post. My plan made sense at the time, but now I have all these changes to make, and not even a finished product to work on. In some ways it should be easier, since I can just make changes to what's already there without worrying about changing 13 chapters. But at the same time I feel pressure on both ends, to finish it and to fix what I have, and it seems to be a bit much at the moment.

The biggest sign is that I'm working on the sequel more than I am on GF. That's not gonna work.

Real life just won't leave me alone long enough. I think I'm going to thank the last commenter, then take the chapters down for the time being. As far as OWW, I will concentrate on reviewing the work of others. It should help my own writing, no?

Then when I have the whole story written, and I'm no longer worrying about 'omg it will be too short if I keep cutting!' and no longer stressing over finishing it, I will repost.

Also, I think I need to download all the reviews I've gotten and start organising them. Make bullet points of things that have cropped up more than once and things I think I need to change. That way I'm not all over the place with 5 different people telling me 5 different things.

I have to write. Even if it's tripe only I care about. The dream is the only thing keeping me alive. I can live on the dream, indefinitely I'll bet. But I have to write. If something is keeping me from writing, then I have to change that. Not that I don't think OWW is worth it. It truly is, I've received good crits that I have already put to good use. But I think I have to find my own approach to how I use OWW, so that I can write better, but keep writing. And in an ideal world, I could keep up with the crits and the writing and editing all at once - back when I was unemployed, that's what I did, 24/7. But I have too much stress going on right now to put so much pressure on one of my main outlets.

Something else I'm learning about my own writing - again, thanks to OWW - is that when I add an element I previously did not have in a particular point in the story, I forget to go back and see the big picture it (re)creates. I'll have to focus on that as I go forward. I think for the most part I'm capable of portraying likeable characters (reviewers who didn't like them for one reason or another are a tiny minority), and for me that's a major victory.

I think it all goes back to what gets me off as a reader. There has to be a plot, of course (Way of the Wolf anyone?), but I can deal with a so-so plot if I really like the characters. Fuck, how do all of you think I sat through 4 seasons of The Sentinel? That show was shite, but the characters were so engaging, amusing, and real that I couldn't stop watching. The main reason I cite for liking Star Trek's 'Enterprise' show is the characters. Highlander: The Series was so formulaic it was painful... and yet I think I've seen every episode, some more than once.

Another thought I've had is that we all seem, to some degree, to fall into the mindset that we as writers have to follow certain 'rules'. And yet, when I look at books I read and enjoy, they're breaking most of these rules. I think I want your opinion on one of them.

Poll #1426270 Dating yourself?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

I've been told to use 'a classic TV show' rather than '24' as background noise to avoid being 'dated'. Is being 'dated' such a bad thing?

If you answered 'Yes', please explain. Can't a story just take place in 2009? Everything about it will become dated eventually.

2.5 minutes of brain-explody goodness. This is the moment on Sunday night when I got chills. At the end of 'Broken Line', by Enter the Haggis, Joey and Leks from Scythian walked in and helped them out with the violin bits. Magic.

Star Trek, of course.

These little clips amuse me. Where would we be without our time-honoured traditions, huh?

Funny when LJ tells one of my RPG characters that my other RPG character's bday is coming up.

see more Political Pictures

I am in need of Ye Olde To Do Liste. I'll put it on my list.

And I can't believe I forgot to mention the whole walking on stage in kilts and wigs idea came from Kris and me.

Trufax, people.

We told Danylo to do it at the Mauch Chunk Opera House a few months ago. We're quite proud of ourselves about that one.

I mean, how awesome is that? I wouldn't doubt if Dan appropriated the idea and didn't mention he got it from us, but who cares? They did it, and it was epic.

And to make this post something other than pure self-service, here's another angle on the epic prankage.