Living the Fictional Dream

Thanks for all the votes on “Fortune Cookies,” guys. For a brief and shining moment, it’s cracked both top stories lists at EDF — top 10 in the past 30 days and top 10 of all time. I’m sure that latter won’t last long — my stories appear there for a while and then drop off — but it’s always nice while it lasts.

Part of me really wants to write today. I’m feeling that creative urge. Sadly, I left my latest work-in-progress at the office, so I would either have to start over on it or wait on it until after my vacation. Bummer! And I don’t have the brain power to start something new this morning (yes, it’s still technically morning for 13 minutes in my time zone!). I was awakened at midnight last night and couldn’t get back to sleep until 4 a.m., so this morning, I’m a zombie, good for little other than surfing the net or playing Settlers of Catan on the X-Box.

This keeps happening this holiday season — me being woken in the middle of the night (either by people being loud or playing the piano at ungodly hours or by something I’m stressing about) and then being unable to get back to sleep for hours and hours. **sighs**

On the plus side, still over a week of vacation left. That is a good thing!

 

Wow… I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted here. Sorry, guys! The last push at work and the overwhelming task of getting ready for Christmas (not to mention hosting Christmas Eve mass at my house and celebrating my husband’s birthday on Monday) took over everything!

Well, to celebrate Boxing Day, you can read a new story from yours truly over at Every Day Fiction. It’s called “Fortune Cookies.” It’s a fun little flash piece that I wrote on a lark, and I was thrilled that EDF decided to pick it up. You can vote on it there (please do!), and leave a comment there if you want. You can also leave a comment here to let me know what you thought.

The following will be somewhat spoilerish if you haven’t read the story yet. Just warning you.

A few years ago, I got a fortune that actually said I would get my heart’s desire. I carried it in my wallet for a long time, because if there was some place to cash that in, I wasn’t going to miss out! I think it’s lost now — victim of a purse swap or something — but I kept that thing for several years. That was the inspiration for this story — the girl in this story, finally gets to do what I never got to do, turn in her fortune and claim her heart’s desire.

As long as I was writing about fortune cookies, I had to get all of the traditions in there. Especially the classic “in bed” and “then you die” bits.

So, I hope y’all enjoy this little piece of light-hearted fun to celebrate your Boxing Day. And a belated Merry Christmas to everyone!

I’ve been working on a couple of science fiction stories on and off for the past few months. I’ve mentioned them here before. They are set in a world where humans settled colonies on the moon. There five colonies — one for each of the major players in the space race. For a while, those colonies were dependent on Earth for resources, but after a century or so, technology developed enough that they were able to sustain themselves. Their world is full of domed cities, maglev trains, space shuttles, grav boots, terraforming, and atmo-packs.

When you read stories like that, do you want to know how these things work, or can you accept the idea and move on, suspending any disbelief?

Some of those things have a real basis in science. I actually read about a maglev train that has been proposed between L.A. and Las Vegas. And others on that list I’ve read about in many sci-fi stories over the years, even if I don’t know much about how they would actually be expected to work.

Personally, while I don’t mind descriptions of science in my sci-fi stories, I don’t really need it. I don’t care to know how a replicator, an android, a faster-than-light engine, or a ray gun work. I just want to know what they do and to see how they will be used in the story. If I can suspend my disbelief about magic in a fantasy realm, I can do the same for technology in a sci-fi world. All I want is a well-written story that establishes a world and treats it consistently all the way through.

One thing that gave me pause in the stories I’m writing, though, was a global event. The premise in one of the stories was that a cloud layer appeared, cutting the lunar colonies off from Earth. No communications, telescopes, etc., could penetrate, so the colonists didn’t know if everyone was dead or what. But that one turned out to be really difficult to write, because I kept thinking that the story wouldn’t be believable unless I actually had some scientific basis for why the cloud layer appeared.

How about you? Does one way or the other for technology or events/changes bug you when you’re reading sci-fi?

Maybe I should set a goal for myself — to finish one of these stories over my Christmas vacation.

I actually forgot a publication! I can’t believe it.

Last weekend was pretty crazed for me. My best friend and her daughter have birthdays on the 13th and 14th, so we go for a visit and have a Christmas party with all my friends from high school on the same weekend — double whammy! We brought our nephews down with us this time, as well as two friends who are staying with us for the holidays, so it was a packed house in my parents’ little four-room (if you count the loft) cabin this weekend. Not to mention, no Internet.

With all that going on, not to mention the usual end-of-year craziness at work, I plumb forgot that a small drabble I wrote called “Dog Vision” was the story of the day at FlashShot  last Friday!

Though it’s no longer on the main page, you can still read “Dog Vision” in the “Last Ten FlashShots” archive. It looks like after that, the story will no longer be available on their website, so read it now!

This story was inspired by my sister’s dog (you can see a picture of him here, on her wedding blog). Whenever we dog-sit for her, her dog has this obsession with the shower in our master bathroom. He stares at it, barks at it, and just makes all kinds of fuss any time he’s in the master bathroom — especially if I’m getting into said shower. “Dog Vision” is my fictional attempt to explain this strange phenominon.

Enjoy, and if you have any thoughts, please leave a comment about “Dog Vision” here.

I am cursed with stories that have good beginnings but never go anywhere. This happens to me all the time. I will get an idea for a character, a background scenario, a setting, or a combination thereof, and I’ll sit down to write. The first scene will come out beautifully — the situation seems interesting, the characters intriguing, hints of dire things to come — but the middle and end turn out flat. The plot doesn’t hold up, and the whole thing crashes and burns.

Sometimes, I can go back and salvage the ending with a lot of work. And sometimes, my muse takes a holiday and nothing ever comes of it.

One of my biggest failings, which falls into this larger issue of good beginnings and bad endings, is that many times my characters are reactive instead of proactive. They may have a larger goal, but the things that happen to them aren’t necessarily about that goal — at least not on a personal level. Instead, stuff happens to them that isn’t of their own choosing, and they react to it.

Once I wrote a story about a girl who met a sea dragon. She had a companion who was a sand wolf. I really liked these three characters. There was a whole adventure where they tried to sail to an island, and the sea dragon saved them from a sea monster. It was very exciting. But, in the end, there wasn’t really a theme to the piece. Stuff happened, people reacted, and then the story was over. I’ve fiddled with that story several times since, but I never can figure out what the main character’s motivation is, what it is she has to do.

I’ve been trying to work on the reactive/proactive thing. I think I’ve gotten better just because now I realize that tendency in my writing and work to eliminate it, but sometimes my characters fall back into their old reactive ways.

I’ve finally felt like writing again now that NaNo and that big work project are over. I’ve had a few ideas glimmering in the back of my mind, but they are more concepts than plots, and no good plots have come along for the ride.

This morning, I pulled out a story that I wrote for my writing group’s “Story Every Day” contest last summer. My goal had been to write something sci-fi that I could submit to the “Return to Luna” anthology, but this story fell into that same trap — the beginning was good, the characters interesting, but the plot fell apart at the end. It was cliched and somewhat trite.

Now I’m working on this story again, and the beginning has polished up really nicely. I just have to get some work done on the actual plot. I have to figure out what bad thing my protagonist did or will do and how it will affect him and the woman who’s helping him out. Seems like a tall order, but it’s been fun to get back into a story again (one that’s not in the ‘verse of my NaNo novel!).

So, what about you writer’s out there? Do you ever have this problem? Do you keep fiddling and fiddling with that great beginning until it becomes something marketable, or do you toss it down and look for the next good idea, which will hopefully have a better plot. What do you think about making characters proactive?

In other news, I got my copy of the EDF anthology in the mail last night. The hardback edition is really gorgeous!

I mentioned previously that my sister got engaged last weekend, and now she and her fiance have their very own wedding blog. I thought I would link it here, especially for any family members or friends who read my blog and hadn’t heard yet.

I’m really thrilled for them, as they make an awesome couple. They compliment each other so well. And I’m also looking forward to helping out (as needed — I don’t want to be pushy) with wedding planning. I’m such a nerd! But, all that stuff I learned when I was the bride can finally go to good use!

Wow… “A Million Faces” is back on the top 10 list of all time over at Every Day Fiction. (This is my shape-shifter story, in case you don’t remember.) It was briefly there right after it went live in October, and dropped off after a few days. Imagine my surprise to see it back up there!

What a nice way to start a Monday morning.

If you haven’t read it yet, you should pop over and give it a look. Comments and star votes are always appreciated.

The way things flux on those lists, I’m sure someone else’s story will replace AMF soon, but, as before, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

I purchased my copy of the EDF anthology. I look forward to receiving it. Hopefully, it will come in time for Christmas!

I spent the day working. Blah. But I made good progress. Hope to finish by deadline (which is somewhat miraculous because my schedule was cut quite a bit from the norm because of holiday vacations).

My sister got engaged yesterday. Very exciting! I was there when the proposal happened — very fitting, since she was there when my husband proposed (has it really been 7.5 years since then? Yikes!).

I need to remember to keep my most updated stories on my laptop. I hate it when a story gets rejected and I want to submit it somewhere else, and I realize that the last time I worked on the piece was on a lunch break at work and that’s where the current copy is saved. Arg!

Well, this post is particularly boring, so I will sign off for now. Perhaps next week, once the work binge is over and now that the NaNo juggernaut is over, more interesting writing topics will come back to the forefront of my mind. That would certainly lead to more interesting blog entries!

The Best of Every Day Fiction anthology is now available for ordering. This anthology includes 100 pieces of flash fiction — EDF’s best from Sept. 2007 to August 2008. Jens, Alex, Stephanie, and myself from Writer’s Ink are included, as are other great authors like Gay, Kevin, K.C., and more.

Alex is setting up a reading/signing for the EDF authors in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. If you’re an author in this area and want to join us, comment and let me know. If you’re in this area and want to come up to the event, I’ll post all the details when they are settled. It looks like it will be a Saturday in January — after the holidays but before Jens heads back to S. Korea in early February.

…but I don’t really have anything to say.

My brain is mulling over a few short story/flash ideas, but nothing has solidified yet. I think NaNo has stolen all my words!

Got another huge project at work, so if you don’t see much of me here until the 9th, you can imagine me slaving away.

Also… yikes! Christmas! I have two of the three December birthdays taken care of, but only one Christmas present purchased. Eep!

Speaking of Christmas, what kind of books would you buy for an 11 year old? Middle grade, I guess… I always read way in advance of my actual age, so it’s hard for me to guess what my friend’s daughter would like to read. I also think she’d probably like something more modern than, say, Little Women, which was one of my go-to favorites at that age. I’m much more into the Y/A realm than middle grade now, and know a lot of good books for that age bracket, but I think she’s still a bit young for the full-on Y/A (especially the Y/A vampire crack, LOL).