The Cantina Staring Back At You From The Abyss

Also, I posted THREE posts while AWWC was taking a much-needed shower

RELEASE DAY for Misfortune of Vision!

Call of the Morrigu is a finalist in the Golden Box Awards - please come vote!

The last entry in my series, Genesis of a Novel - Release Day!

Morning, Cantina.

I'm at con this weekend. Wound up not having a car to drive so Mr. Aggy is taking me back and forth. Not the situation we had hoped for. Today is the long day so hoping it results in some sales. Really need that money right now. (If you want to join in the fun of supporting a starving artist... bit.ly/touchtrilogy Or there are some more immediate and/or ongoing options in my sig. A new chapter drops on the Steampunk serial on Patreon tomorrow.)

Time to shower, feed the animals and get my butt out the door.

Aggy, drinking all the coffee this morning

Is it too on the nose for a character to note that something feels like a metaphor?

Congrats, GD!

Morning, Cantina. *is sleepy* It's that time of month where I'm super sleepy at night and in the morning until the lady issues start. (thankfully, only about a week away) I also had all the dreams last night. All of them. I'm starting to notice that I consistently dream a lot when I get to the BC pills with the most hormones. They're not bad dreams at least, just a lot of them, and I remember a lot of them, which makes me that much more groggy when I get up in the morning. Need food and wordage to help me wake up more. Dare I hope to finish my Sisyphus today???

Morning, Cantina.

Aggy, may you have enough sales to meet your needs, and then some.

I'm going to be offline for the next week. So if anyone is looking for me tell them to wait until next Saturday. I'll be back.

Fingers crossed, Aggy!

Have a good week, Ambrosia

That's badass, GD!

Religion0 said:

Is it too on the nose for a character to note that something feels like a metaphor?

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As long as you do it in a tongue-in-cheek way, it should be fine

E.F.B. said:

Dare I hope to finish my Sisyphus today???

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That would be cool!! I started mine just enough to feel confident with the idea, now I'm leaving it until I can be all stressed about the deadline. (why do I do this to myself? why? )

I'm doing my first beta on a full and it's been very fun and casual. My buddy's just looking for overall impressions, not fussing the details yet. While I'm reading, I'm keeping a little 'impressions log' after each chapter on the side, but it has me wondering how betas and editors go about writing their full editorial letter? (Shadowflame?). Do you finish reading the whole thing before writing the letter? Do you keep notes throughout, or work on the overall letter as you read? Do you highlight parts and keep them for later to reference in the letter? How do you keep your thoughts organized on a big project that would take more than a week to read through?

In the past, for critting short stories or chapters, I've rewritten my 'impressions letter' over many times, just trying to be as brief and helpful as possible. I realize the ability to write a good editorial letter is its own skill set, just wondering how to keep everything streamlined and coherent. Obviously, reading the MS as fast as possible would probably be in order, since the impressions would be freshest then, but when you don't have that kind of time, it seems easy to forget stuff.

Today is for editing my stuff... Which translates to deciding to clean my room instead... Which translates to 'cleaning' my to-read pile. Yup, that's my Saturday so far. You?

Mary, I'm not a professional editor, but I did get paid to crit/edit a friend's novel. (She insisted on paying, even though I would've done it for free for a friend.) My method was basically to make any small-ish comments (or fixing typos, which was the main reason she wanted my help) in the document itself, in Track Changes. Then I had a separate .txt file where I would make any larger notes as I was reading. So things like, "Hey, in this chapter X happened. Does this mean Y will happen later? Because I'd be disappointed if Y didn't happen (or if you want Y to be a big reveal, then maybe you need to cut a few details from X), etc." I find first impressions to be really useful, which is why I made all those comments after each chapter. Then I made overall comments at the end of the novel read-through - big comments, the sort of thing you tend to expect from a critique.

Does that help? It took me several weeks to get through it, because I would only do a chapter or 2 per day, and I had some other things going on, and yeah - I found I wasn't forgetting anything important. If memory serves, I would sometimes read back through some earlier post-chapter .txt-file comments to refresh my memory, but didn't need to do that too often.

Psssst! Touch: A Trilogy is now available in audiobook format. You can get it through Amazon/Audible. Possibly elsewhere that distributes audiobooks, but I'm not familiar with that part of the business so don't hold me to that.

Day Three of con.

Yesterday was bizarre. One lady overheard the end of a conversation I was having with the author at the next table about how maybe Disney would someday do a DVD release of the original Star Wars trilogy. Only, somehow, she hear "Song of the South" and shouts (in the middle of the dealers room "They won't ever release it!" And we say "Er, Star Wars?" And she says "Oh, I thought you said 'Song of the South'" and then proceeds to explain, very loudly, why it isn't racist.

And then a dude asked me if my Southern Gothic horror trilogy (see link above) was a "woman's book" because the protagonist is female. "But you didn't write this for me," he kept saying. "You wrote this for women, right? It's a woman's book."

Aggy, lady author extraordinaire

Because we all write for specific people, right?

Yup, I only wrote this novel for 65-year old grandmothers who have magical brooches and a sarcastic attitude. Oh, and like mead a little too much. Yup, that's my target audience, you wouldn't like it.

*waves* I write SFF, but for some reason most of my time on AW isn't spent on the SFF boards...go figure. But, hello everyone! Nice to meet you all.

to the SF 'n' F Cantina sockycat
It's a time sinkhole (it's a time sinkhole)
It won't eat your soul
No need to run from the SF 'n' F Cantina
It's not sentient (it's not sentient)
So be its servant


*may have to do the entire lyrics now*

lilyWhite said:

to the SF 'n' F Cantina sockycat
It's a time sinkhole (it's a time sinkhole)
It won't eat your soul
No need to run from the SF 'n' F Cantina
It's not sentient (it's not sentient)
So be its servant


*may have to do the entire lyrics now*

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So say we all!

lilyWhite said:

to the SF 'n' F Cantina sockycat
It's a time sinkhole (it's a time sinkhole)
It won't eat your soul
No need to run from the SF 'n' F Cantina
It's not sentient (it's not sentient)
So be its servant


*may have to do the entire lyrics now*

Click to expand...

.....now I feel like I need the full lyrics

sockycat! D'aaaaw what a cute kitty avatar! I miss having a kitty. Hopefully one day in the not too distant future we'll be ready for one again.



Just finished getting a new Etsy listing up. Once I get it put up on all my social medias I'll get on to writing.

In funny news, one of my students in Sunday school momentarily got North Carolina and North Korea confused.

Student: "I was born in North Korea!"
*everyone in room raises confused eyebrow*
Teacher who knows where student was born: "Um, don't you mean North Carolina, honey?"
Student: "Oh yeah, that's what I meant."

Yep, pretty big difference between those two locations, LOL. Not to mention his parents are originally from Iran, so everyone was like, whaaaaaat?

E.F.B. said:

Yep, pretty big difference between those two locations, LOL. Not to mention his parents are originally from Iran, so everyone was like, whaaaaaat?

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I had a girl in my class with three other siblings and whose parents were I think diplomats. Each child was born on a different continent which, for kids like us in a small town with generations of local ancestors, was very much out of this world. She had a lot of 'whaaat' comments too but she was also a little upset that while her sisters had been born on (for us) very exotic places, she had been born on plain ol' Europe and that was a lot less exciting for us.

Cliff Face said:

Mary, I'm not a professional editor, but I did get paid to crit/edit a friend's novel. (She insisted on paying, even though I would've done it for free for a friend.) My method was basically to make any small-ish comments (or fixing typos, which was the main reason she wanted my help) in the document itself, in Track Changes. Then I had a separate .txt file where I would make any larger notes as I was reading. So things like, "Hey, in this chapter X happened. Does this mean Y will happen later? Because I'd be disappointed if Y didn't happen (or if you want Y to be a big reveal, then maybe you need to cut a few details from X), etc." I find first impressions to be really useful, which is why I made all those comments after each chapter. Then I made overall comments at the end of the novel read-through - big comments, the sort of thing you tend to expect from a critique.

Does that help? It took me several weeks to get through it, because I would only do a chapter or 2 per day, and I had some other things going on, and yeah - I found I wasn't forgetting anything important. If memory serves, I would sometimes read back through some earlier post-chapter .txt-file comments to refresh my memory, but didn't need to do that too often.

Click to expand...

That sounds pretty similar to my method, but I bet every editor has their own slightly different approach. Especially thinking of the ones who do it for a living and have their methods down pat.

E.F.B. said:

In funny news, one of my students in Sunday school momentarily got North Carolina and North Korea confused.

Student: "I was born in North Korea!"
*everyone in room raises confused eyebrow*
Teacher who knows where student was born: "Um, don't you mean North Carolina, honey?"
Student: "Oh yeah, that's what I meant."

Click to expand...

Turkey, in Portuguese, is Peru. You would not believe how much I used to get the two countries confused, as a kid.

I should be making the final song on my debut album. And writing my Sisyphus story. Instead, I feel like playing a video game. One I bought months ago and haven't even started yet (like so many of my video game purchases... *sigh*). It's an RPG, so should take maybe 60 hours to get through. For that reason alone, I've held off on starting it. It just feels like wasted time, y'know? Because even if I enjoy it, it means I'm not doing more responsible things.

Which has made me contemplate a Let's Play channel on YouTube yet again. I mean, if people are watching me play video games, and I'm earning a small amount from ad revenue, it's not really wasted time, is it? (Never mind that 2 months of Let's Playing would only earn me *maybe* $100, probably less, which would be about 10 album sales, which I could no doubt make with 1 week of social media activity...) I don't even have a way of recording myself talking while playing games, but do know that for about $100 I can buy a gaming headset with headphones *and* microphone. But yeah... Probably a waste of time.

sockycat said:

*waves* I write SFF, but for some reason most of my time on AW isn't spent on the SFF boards...go figure. But, hello everyone! Nice to meet you all.

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*rises from the soft and comfy smibble pile* Hello! I lurk round-about. You'll see me pop up maybe once a week, then every day for a bit, then I'll disappear for a while. But the computer is my main social outlet, so I'm always glad to get a message!

*waves* It's baaaack! School is now a thing again and OMG I can see the heaviness of all the homework already. On a more positive note, I finally used that Amazon gift card that one of my friends gave me for Christmas to get some new fun reading material for those in-between homework, school, gaming, sleep, and chores times. *seriously wishes that dad or brother would at least help with the cooking so I can have a break once a week*

Morning Cantina!

I wrote real live words today and it was glorious.

*skips off the coffee hot tub*

Morning, Cantina. I'm eating homemade rice pudding with pineapple compote for breakfast. Om nom nom. I just got a reminder call about my first dermatology appointment scheduled for Wednesday, so I just printed out the many medical forms that are required for new patients and will get them filled out so I don't have to do it in the waiting room. They say you should really get your skin checked out once a year whether you're having issues or not, so that's one I'm doing. An "ounce of prevention" and all that good stuff. I just wish the appointment didn't have to be at 10 am. *grumble*

tjwriter said:

I wrote real live words today and it was glorious.

*skips off the coffee hot tub*

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W00t!

Now... what's this about a coffee hot tub? Is this a new addition to the Cantina?

E.F.B. said:

Morning, Cantina. I'm eating homemade rice pudding with pineapple compote for breakfast. Om nom nom. I just got a reminder call about my first dermatology appointment scheduled for Wednesday, so I just printed out the many medical forms that are required for new patients and will get them filled out so I don't have to do it in the waiting room. They say you should really get your skin checked out once a year whether you're having issues or not, so that's one I'm doing. An "ounce of prevention" and all that good stuff. I just wish the appointment didn't have to be at 10 am. *grumble*

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Hope everything is well. And 10 AM is nothing.

SaraP said:

Now... what's this about a coffee hot tub? Is this a new addition to the Cantina?

Click to expand...

The Cantina has everything anyone could ever want. Like it somehow knows exactly what everyone who enters would like.

There she stood in the doorway
Draped in feathered wings
And I just let myself enjoy
All of the beautiful notes that she sings
Then she spoke in her aria,
"Come inside, in you trot"
Then she led me right into a tub
Of some poutine hot

Welcome to the SF 'n' F Cantina
Such a welcome club (such a welcome club)
An enthralling pub
Become as one at the SF 'n' F Cantina
Anything you want (anything you want)
In this lovely haunt