More Black Ribbon angst
Oct. 24th, 2004 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cleolindaGODDAMMIT I WAS DOING SO WELL WITH THE FIRST SCENE AND THEN SISTER GIRL HAD TO SHOW ME THE $120 HALLOWEEN COSTUME SHE'S ORDERING.
There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don't even know where to start.
There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don't even know where to start.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2004-10-24 02:17 pm (UTC)are there lots of silver bells and flashing lights attatched?
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Date: 2004-10-24 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 02:58 pm (UTC)CrazySister Girl should buy that fancy dress from hottopic.com and the teeth for like.. $15 from Party America.no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 04:37 pm (UTC)1. Quantity is not necessarily bad. I like my reading to be engrossing. For instance, i really loved "Catcher in the Rye", but at the end I went like "Aw, damn, it's OVER!". I really like long novels because they make for, well, simply a longer experience. I've read your Black Ribbon and i can state confidently that, yes, you do have the talent to write at length and still keep the reader absorbed. I, for one, really liked your ball scene. (BUT OMG DUN SAY "PINYIN" NO MORE!)
2. Ugh, point 2, what was it? Oh yeah. Take your time. I really checked my LJ a bazillion times today just to see if you have posted something akin to a victorious roar, but no pressure. Write nicely, so that words drip heavily like honey into warm and fragrant tea. 'Cause it's my birthday next week, and I can't wait to, ehm... dig my teeth into a cleolinda jones certified, stamped and satisfactorily approved 4th chapter of "The Black Ribbon". Yah.
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Date: 2004-10-24 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 03:22 pm (UTC)Bah! Halloween!
Date: 2004-10-24 03:27 pm (UTC)--Doctor Neon
Re: Bah! Halloween!
Date: 2004-10-24 03:30 pm (UTC)Re: Bah! Halloween!
Date: 2004-10-24 03:45 pm (UTC)Re: Bah! Halloween!
Date: 2004-10-24 05:17 pm (UTC)Re: Bah! Halloween!
Date: 2004-10-24 11:13 pm (UTC)Good luck with the writing!
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Date: 2004-10-24 03:50 pm (UTC)That's why I bought a laptop. I've written more this year (working in coffee bars and on the road) than I did in the last two years.
I still have to ignore my friends' comments about (any) books/writing, and my best friend is contemptuous of the subgenre I'm working in.
It's all about the story. Or the story won't be finished.
But hey, your sister is investing in a costume for more than one Halloween. Maybe.
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Date: 2004-10-24 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 04:18 pm (UTC)Urban fantasy, first person narrative, werewolves. But it's not Horror, not Paranormal Romance, there is no detective/cop character, nor is it wildly violent and erotic.
More a Gothic Romance atmosphere with snark, which hasn't been a popular sub-genre since the 1980s.
Forgive us while we try to write something Not Currently Popular.
"Oh, it's a vampire story?"
Oh, the vampire expectations. Even my agent said to me, "I was confused by your vampires, because they're not like Anne Rice's."
Gaughghgh.
Thanks for asking and listening.
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Date: 2004-10-24 04:47 pm (UTC)I hear that. Mine's sort of Gothic/Victorian fantasy, I guess--it's trying to be steampunk and not really making it that far yet. Plus the vampires. And I didn't set out to make my vampires SO DIFFERENT OMG, but once I decided how it worked and was spread, a lot of the old rules either got tossed (like the mirror and crucifix bits) or inverted (allergies to sunlight or garlic are reactions to the medical treatments), in a way that was just organic to the way the story was working. But everyone's like, OH GOD VAMPIRES ICK. And that's why they didn't even show up until, like, the end of the second installment and the word doesn't even appear until this one.
But it's not Horror, not Paranormal Romance, there is no detective/cop character, nor is it wildly violent and erotic.
Again, same here. There are elements of suspense and maybe horror, I guess, and people who have relationships, but it's not Horror Section of the Bookstore horror or Anita Blake orgies. Someone left a compliment for me at my Fiction Press account about how it was "psychological horror, and no one does that anymore!," like that was really rare or something. And that made me really sad, because--why should that be so unusual?
Anyway. I'd be really interested to see what you're doing with the werewolves. I have a brief detour into French werewolves planned for the second series, but it's so tailored to the origin story of Black Ribbon vampirism that I doubt we'd get our wires crossed or be in danger of copying each other or anything.
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Date: 2004-10-24 06:14 pm (UTC)After I complete this revision, let's e-mail/talk. Maybe we chat or swap feedback. Thanks for offering!
I have a brief detour into French werewolves planned for the second series, but it's so tailored to the origin story of Black Ribbon vampirism that I doubt we'd get our wires crossed or be in danger of copying each other or anything.
I doubt we'll cross wires at all, as my origin elements are tied to Eastern European wolf folk lore and urban legends I was told traveling in the Czech Republic and Finland.
Had no idea you were writing vampires. "Black Ribbon" - so much is explained, just with that knowledge. Or, so much imagination woke up for me.
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Date: 2004-10-24 06:34 pm (UTC)And yeah--now you see what I was having to do, work with the concept in a way that 1) people who would go "Ick, vampires!" wouldn't be scared away too soon, 2) people who like vampires wouldn't get bored waiting, but 3) the eventual introduction of vampires wouldn't seem like a total non sequitur.
I doubt we'll cross wires at all, as my origin elements are tied to Eastern European wolf folk lore and urban legends I was told traveling in the Czech Republic and Finland.
That sounds really cool. I have a foray into Romania planned for series 3, but since it's actually in the whole villagers-and-pitchforks period, I've actually planned it as being more of an exercise in cliche subversion. :)
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Date: 2004-10-24 07:56 pm (UTC)*cough* Sorry, rant over.
P.S. My own stereotypically pale, dark-haired, sexy male vampire is currently fulfilling a life debt by raising an infant. Let's see them publish THAT.
P.P.S. Feel bad for the guy that little girl grows up and marries, lol.
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Date: 2004-10-24 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 08:34 pm (UTC)So when she announces that she's pregnant... well, I'd love to be a fly on the wall.
And you know you need to spend some time away from your characters when you start describing things like that...
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Date: 2004-10-24 05:23 pm (UTC)Gaughgggh indeed.
And is your agent yet living? I mean, really?
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Date: 2004-10-24 06:08 pm (UTC)He's still agenting.
Unfortunately, once you begin marketing your work, the first thing you hear is, "What's it like?" Because if everyone can glom onto what other books yours is like, then they know how to sell it - or they believe it can be sold.
I'm writing about werewolves. I'd like a dollar for every time I hear, "So it's like Laurell K. Hamilton?"
This logic is why Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair was rejected by agents/editors eighty-three times before it sold. It wasn't like anything in print.
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Date: 2004-10-24 07:22 pm (UTC)He's still agenting.
So is that distinct from living?
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Date: 2004-10-24 08:21 pm (UTC)They all seem to move & speak at the speed of light, a sign of hyper-existence.
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Date: 2004-10-25 09:48 pm (UTC)But as another writer in an aspect of that same genre, I get the same comparisons and it makes my head want to explode, being compared to Anne Rice or LKH.
At least now I can offer some other suggestions for comparisons.
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Date: 2004-10-24 04:31 pm (UTC)One year in college I was too broke to afford a costume, so I wore a T-shirt and my peasant skirt and put my pink twin-bed sheet over it tunic-style, pinned my hair up with 'laurel leaves' from my roommate's ivy plant, and called myself Percalia, Roman Goddess Of Bedsheets.
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Date: 2004-10-24 04:36 pm (UTC)(That reminds me of the long grey jersey robe I used to call the Obi-Wan Bathrobi.)
I mentioned this somewhere else in the comments, but I have "dressed up" as both a grad student and a CIA agent ("Shhhh! I'm undercover") in the last couple of years.
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Date: 2004-10-24 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-25 10:40 am (UTC)BWAHaHAHahAHAHAHaHAhahAaarrgh
Yarha, Who Busted Something On That One, Ouch
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Date: 2004-10-25 06:57 am (UTC)