Personal Digest Saturday: January 10 – January 16

Life news this week: 

• I spent last weekend drawing, reading, making videos, eating tasty food, and getting a ton of stuff done. I was very productive, especially on Sunday!
  
• I finally turned my latest novel in to my agent. She's reading it now and I guess soon I'll know whether she liked it and if she wants to represent it. It will feel really weird to have a new book on submission.
  
• Got BIRTHDAY PRESENTS from Mommy, Ronni, Daddy, and Jeaux!
  
• Monday I released a blog interview of my friend and crit partner J.C. Fann and did a bunch of stuff online to draw attention to it. I hope it caused a little bump in sales from the attention--and that better yet, more readers will find something they love!
  
• Tuesday I spent a restaurant gift certificate I got for a holiday gift on taking my mom to Carrabba's. We had a good time except she seems to have gotten food poisoning and spent the rest of the week sick. I hope she gets better soon. :(
  
• Jeaux Day was Wednesday, as always. Jeaux bought me Gail's book (Gail is a Pitch Wars pal) and we ate at Best NY Pizza. Then at my place we watched two more episodes of Galavant and listened to the Night Vale episode we didn't get a chance to hear last week. And we found out they're actually finally coming to Florida! We might get to go to one of their live shows! YES NIGHT VALE!!! We'll see if I can slide in and get tickets when they go on sale. Supposedly tickets sell out in like under an hour.
  
• Thursday was kind of a bummer day--I had to ride my bike in the rain after dark to go buy things that might help Mom feel better and help her keep herself hydrated, and got my sister to take the stuff over to her, and then I fell down in the parking lot while picking up my mail and scraped my knee.
  
• And Friday I didn't have to go to work because IT IS BIRTHDAY VACATION TIME! I spent Friday morning packing and panicking because I hate packing. Really really hate it. But I just didn't have time to do it the night before because I was finishing Negative One and it turned out to need 14 frames instead of the usual 10. Trust me to plan a long issue for a night when I have a time crunch.
  
• I got to begin my vacation with Meggie driving to Cape Coral and getting into our rental home with no hiccups. We went out for a celebratory pizza, went grocery shopping to stock the house for our vacation festivities (we'll be here Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, leaving Tuesday), and watched The LEGO Movie after we got home. I hadn't seen it and wasn't disappointed. :)

New reviews of my book:

• Nobody loves me this week.

Places featured:

• Gail's post on Kidliterati showed off several photos she got of her book "in the wild" during release week, and the picture I tweeted was one of them.

Reading progress:

• Completed reading: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. Five-star review.
• Currently reading: Love Me, Love My Broccoli by Julie Anne Peters.

New singing performances:

Here I'm singing "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles.


 
New drawings:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0505: "A Word About Me."

Webcomic So You Write Issue 44: "Always a Hobby."

New videos:

I published Not-So-Frequently Asked Submission Questions, which is all about questions authors might have while on submission to publishers. 

  
New photos:  

I ate cellophane noodles while wearing glasses and . . . they fogged up.

Here's me with Gail's book, Breaking the Ice!

Here's me with Meggie in the pizza restaurant at the start of our birthday vacation!

Meg with her pizza. (We shared that pie and ate it!)

Me with pizza. It was a cheese pizza with mushrooms!

Back in the vacation home, it's sweatpants o'clock.

And finally, the monthly haircut comparison photos:

Back, February 2014	Back, January 2015
Front, February 2014	Front, January 2015

Social media counts:YouTube subscribers: 4,254 for swankivy (20 new this week), 429 for JulieSondra (1 new). Twitter followers: 602 for swankivy (1 new), 815 for JulieSondra (3 new). Facebook: 273 friends (no change) and 156 followers (no change) for swankivy, 509 likes for JulieSondra (lost one--someone unliked me lol), 54 likes for Negative One (no change), 91 likes for So You Write (1 new). Tumblr followers: 1,782 (1 new).

Myers-Briggs character profiles

So I decided to be silly and take the Myers-Briggs test on behalf of my characters.

Myers-Briggs, if you're not familiar, rates people on four qualities and combines them to give you one of sixteen personality profiles. It measures Extroversion vs. Introversion (E vs. I), Sensing vs. Intuition (S vs. N), Thinking vs. Feeling (T vs. F), and Judging vs. Perceiving (J vs. P). It's not an exact science, obviously, and it relies on a person's self-reported beliefs about themselves, but it is nevertheless an interesting exercise for understanding characters!

Especially if, like me, your characters don't test out to be the same type as you.

I almost always test as INFJ. And even though most people suggest you should write what you know, I've always felt like my characters were very different people from me, and on this test, that was reflected.

(For the record, I took this test for my characters, and the abbreviated descriptions I'm offering here from that site have been altered slightly to fix typos.)

I did this test for four major protagonists: Ivy from The House That Ivy Built (and later Negative One), Delia from Bad Fairy, Cassie from Finding Mulligan, and Nick from Stupid Questions. First I'll show you their result, and then I'll give you a quick reflection on each.

Ivy's Result: ESTP (Extrovert/Sensing/Thinking/Perceiving)

Energetic and constantly on the go, you are a natural born risk taker that thrives on adventure and new challenges. You live life to the fullest and want to share your time with like-minded people. You are always very aware of what is going on around you and do well in crisis situations. You have a good deal of courage in you. Your view of life is very realistic. You focus on what is, not what might be.

In relationships you can be made to feel trapped by obligations and commitments. Your independent nature needs a great deal of latitude so you may roam as you need to. You will rebel against anyone who tries to control you. Unless you are with others that share your need for new and exciting experiences, those around you may find themselves sitting on the proverbial bench alone. You have the social skills and attitude to get along well with many types of people. You do not dwell on emotional issues. You rely on your charms to impress those you are attracted to. You're not one to shy away from a fight. You are materially generous, but may shy away from deep intimacy. You will bring excitement to any relationship you enter.

Is it true? This is pretty accurate for Ivy. She's definitely an extrovert--probably my only major character who actually seems to thrive on attention from others and feels particularly lonely when she doesn't get it--and she's definitely a free spirit. She's a go-go-go person who's always impatient with people who don't move as fast as she does, and she makes a ton of split-second decisions. She does have a tendency to sulk or brood sometimes, which this profile doesn't really cover, but other than that, I think it captures her well. The need for novelty, the rebellion against those who seek to control her, and the tendency to stand ground in a fight are all particularly appropriate.

---

Delia's Result: INTJ (Introvert/Intuitive/Thinking/Judging)

You are an individualist and very independent by nature. You are very adept at devising systems and creating theories. Self-improvement is important to you, and you look inwardly for the energies to reach your goals. You are creative and an excellent problem solver that has the endurance to get those tough jobs done. You need your privacy and time for introspection. So much in the world interests you that you sometimes have a difficult time choosing what activity to pursue next.

In relationships you are very loyal and prefer a traditional structure. You tend to only demonstrate your affections to those who are very close to you. You enjoy one-on-one relationships that are very intimate. You sometimes like extroverts, because they can take the "heaviness" out of your personality. You love the intellectual arena and the exchange of ideas. You are very sensitive to rejection but hide your emotional vulnerabilities well. While very loving, you can get so absorbed in your own projects that you neglect those around you.

Is it true? Sounds like the person who wrote this basically must have known her. Delia is a rather private and driven character who spends the entire first book focusing on her magickal studies with single-minded, nearly scary dedication, to the point that she sets achievement records all over the place and scares people's socks off. The bit about not being able to choose a direction is funny because she literally wants to master everything known along with a few unknown things too. She's very quiet, but formidable when challenged, and her best friend is more of an extrovert. Her mother complains about the "getting absorbed and neglecting your loved ones" bit.

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Cassie's Result: INFP (Introvert/Intuitive/Feeling/Perceiving)

You are devoted and compassionate. You have a well-developed distaste for rules, orders and schedules. You are a natural born learner and can get so absorbed in your projects that you forget those around you. You are passionate about your beliefs and love ideals. You have very high standards for yourself. You are very creative, sensitive, reserved, and introspective. You respect the values of others and expect them to respect yours.

In relationships you are loyal and totally committed. You prefer a few deep relationships over a horde of acquaintances. Because you are somewhat reserved, you do best in one on one and small group situations. When you feel comfortable, you can be very entertaining and capricious. You are nurturing and supportive by nature. Your greatest social challenge is to balance your need to withdraw into your inner-world with your need to keep a strong connection with those you care for.

Is it true? It's hard to tell sometimes with Cassie, because in the story, she's really two people. I was trying to answer for the part of her that's actually Cassie, not the idealized version of her that lives in an alternate reality. (Dia is another story. She needs her own personality test, I think.) The part at the end there about withdrawing into an inner world is 100% spot-on and literal in her case. She travels to an alternate world in her dreams (where she is a different person), and it absolutely does affect her social life because it changes who she wants to be. She definitely has some creative bones in her body, and she spends a lot of this story looking for her love connection.

---

Nick's Result: ISTP (Introvert/Sensing/Thinking/Perceiving)

Naturally reserved and thriving on adventure and challenge, you much prefer action to conversation. You also have a penchant for observing what is going on around you. You enjoy activities that require hands-on skills. Resourceful and independent, your motivations come from within you. You are a collector of information, rational, realistic and pragmatic. People often have a difficult time figuring you out, and you will remain a mystery to many.

In relationships you are not one to have deep talks, but would rather let your actions speak for you. You display your love and care for others by doing practical things for them. You are not one to take on too many commitments or obligations--if any. You need your time alone and even though you are probably very loyal, this may cause conflict at times. You are not one to start fights, but you won't back away from one either.

Is it true? It's definitely true that people can't figure him out easily, and he's definitely paying attention to stuff that goes on around him, but the "preferring action to conversation" I'm not sure about. That said, in his relationship, she talks way more than he does, and he definitely gravitates toward practical solutions and wanting to provide for those he cares about. He thinks himself quite rational and gets really irritated and avoidant when he doesn't understand his feelings, which is interesting because he has a lot of those and doesn't want to deal with them.

---

And as a bonus, I saw this fun post on Tumblr where someone had figured out what Myers-Briggs types went with which Hogwarts houses, naming a primary and a secondary house. According to that chart, Ivy would be Gryffindor/Ravenclaw, Delia would be Ravenclaw/Slytherin, Cassie would be Hufflepuff/Gryffindor, and Nick would be Ravenclaw/Gryffindor. I kinda agree with those assessments too. Especially the one for Delia. Hahaha.

I think I might do some of my lesser protagonists and minor characters sometime too, but it's doubtful anyone wants to see me ramble about that. If anyone's read my stuff and wants to know a certain character, though, feel free to comment and bother me for the result. :)

30-Week Writing Survey: Week 27: Character Appearances

WEEK TWENTY-SEVEN OF THE SURVEY FOR AUTHORS!

QUESTIONS ARE  HERE!

Today's question: Do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters?

Gosh. I don't even know how to answer that. It varies depending on the character, right? Some people are very aware of and affected by their appearances. Some aren't. Same with characters.

I wouldn't say appearances usually play "a big role" in my stories. I usually discuss it peripherally if it's not important (just because people generally like to picture who they're reading about), and usually there will be some internal monologue or dialogue discussing characters' appearances if they are relevant to the story.

I find that in my short stories, it's very common to have a main character whose appearance is literally not touched on at all. "Baby Talk," "Clouds," "Derika & Emily," "The Escape," "Final Verses," "Goodbye," "Her Mother's Child," "In Love With Love," "Modern Goddess," "The Mother," "No Longer Junior," "Problem Recipe," "Protector Cat," "That Story About Fortune Cookie Girl," "Uncle Avery's Garden" have no or almost no physical description of characters whatsoever. That's more than half of my short stories. And in "Bloom," "Brady," "The Curse," "Dear God," "Glass Dawn," and "Wind," you might get a description here and there but you don't even know the main character's hair color. "Bloom" mentions Kamber having charms in her hair. "Brady" mentions Megan's shaved head and jewelry style. "The Curse" mentions that Zarry had hair that was "not straight." Jamie in "Dear God" is described as "the short, skinny kid." Dawn in "Glass Dawn" is mentioned to have green eyes. Lihill in "On the Inside" has some description of her curly hair and how she hates when her mom cuts it off. And Thomas from "Wind" is not described at all except for his habit of biting his lip when he grins; there's quite a lot of description of Windy, though. What Windy looks like IS important.

In "Just Like Stephen," George's appearance is only significant in that he looks like his brother, so a couple things got mentioned offhand, but it's not so much about his looks as that I wanted to point out how similar they are right down to how they look. It worked out well.

"Mother's Day" discussed appearance a bit, but mainly because the main character Hendrix is a clone and he lives at a complex with like 500 of himself. He grew up identifying his best friends by their nametags instead of their faces. His thoughts on outside people's appearance: "Everyone's got those bizarre recessive genes that make them look like ghosts: sky-colored eyes, corn-colored hair, and paper-colored skin. Even if our 'family' wasn't famous, I'd still stick out like a sore thumb. I look like some kind of speckled, brown-eyed carrot among these translucent people. But even though they all have that same color scheme, they manage to look so different from one another. It always amazed me how one species could have so many different ways of being human."

I literally had no idea what the protagonist of Stupid Questions looked like until I was almost done writing it, and then I went back and filled in a few little details of Nick's appearance. His opposite, Summer, was described largely while he was admiring her, so you know her hairstyle and her hair color and her eye color and how she dresses, but she's a very ordinary-looking person and her appearance isn't integral to the plot at all.

Delia in both the novel Bad Fairy and its short story version has some significance to her appearance. Mainly that she doesn't look like a typical fairy because she isn't. She's got black hair and purple eyes, and looks kind of sinister with her pale complexion. I did that on purpose because she's practically archetypal and I figured she should look the part if I was going to do a fairy tale, you know? The typical fairies, including her mom, are almost always curly-haired blondes. There's no standard for eye colors, though. Delia looks very human even though she's half fairy, so I guess that was pretty important in her life.

Going more into novels, I don't do a lot with appearance when it comes to Bay from Joint Custody, but you do get to know what he looks like, and you do get to see him through other people's eyes (his friend Marz is a photographer, and he is one of her favorite people to photograph!). Erm, he's Irish with curly brown hair. Not much to go into really.

Probably the works I have in which appearance is most significant are The House That Ivy Built and Finding Mulligan. In Mulligan, protagonist Cassie obsesses over her appearance a LOT, mainly because her alternate self, Dia, is basically what she idolizes in terms of what constitutes beautiful, and she'd really like to look like her. During the course of the story, Cassie gets a perm and colors her hair in order to turn her straight brown hair into Dia's curly blonde locks, and she even gets blue contact lenses to be like Dia. And runs around in white dresses with bare feet and sticks star decals on her face. It's kind of strange. o_O But hey, "being" Dia is what helps her learn to find her confidence and actually take possession of some of her major talents. Switching appearances had a huge effect on her mental state.

THTIB just kind of has more appearance-related issues than you can shake a stick at, and a few of them showed up in Negative One if you look closely. In the books, sometimes Ivy is incredibly insecure about how she looks. She's usually pretty confident, but she grew up most of her life not really knowing a lot about restraint or shame or self-consciousness, and when she first started getting into situations where those things surfaced for her, it was almost overwhelming. In general, she sometimes finds herself wanting to blend in, and even though she doesn't always want that, it upsets her that she quite frankly cannot be inconspicuous.

Ivy isn't the only one in the series with appearance issues, but she is the protagonist, so she's the only person whose inner monologue delivers such things in the story. I have quite a few literally non-human characters in that book, and if they are ever in a situation where they have to be in public they have a disguise (Adele does this a lot with her robe). But my non-human characters don't really seem to be particularly self-conscious about not being human or whatever. I saw a little of this from Tab in book 2 when she was pissed off that Bailey got to go to school and she didn't. :P (Bailey and Tab being mad at each other is never good. They are both vicious in very different ways.)

Er, beyond that, I think I got nothin'.

30-Week Writing Survey: Week 26: Character Drawings

WEEK TWENTY-SIX OF THE SURVEY FOR AUTHORS!

QUESTIONS ARE  HERE!

Today's question: Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Share a drawing/some drawings of your characters, created by yourself or others!

Do I draw my characters? DO I DRAW MY CHARACTERS? THBPPTBLURGLE!

Yeah. Yeah, I draw my characters. Obviously I draw a webcomic so there are characters I draw there, and I love doodling my fictional folks either for fun or to help me figure out what they even look like.

My drawings are generally pretty cartoony, even when they lean toward realistic proportions. I like drawing in black and white kinda for effect, but then I also like experimenting with color.

Here are a few drawings from Bad Fairy:

Here's protagonist Delia, having recently entered magick school, experimenting with her first wand:

Here's a ridiculous group drawing I did of all the fairy students and teachers from Delia's class, so I could figure out what they all looked like:

A cute one of Delia being exasperated with her study partners Fiona and Drake because they seemed to be studying each other more than the material (she's leaning on the table, so she looks even smaller than usual):

Now here are a few drawings from Finding Mulligan:

Black and white drawing of Dia and Mulligan from dreamland:

The same couple in color:

Here's one from Stupid Questions:

Nick and Summer texting each other and being silly.

Here are some from webcomic Negative One:

Meri Lin, mom of the world's weirdest baby

Adele, a prophet chick from another dimension

Weaver & Dax, weird pals also from another dimension

 

"Photo" of baby Ivy

Here's something from a short story called "On the Inside":

Girls playing house!

 I kind of draw characters a lot so I could keep posting them all day, but . . . I'll stop. ;)

To NA or not to NA?

I have a question and possibly a request for you savvy readers out there.

I have written what I believed to be a science fiction romance. I am now wondering whether it is New Adult--or really, whether it would sell well as New Adult if I tried to spin it that way.

From what I hear, New Adult is primarily categorized that way because of two things: its characters' ages, and the themes it covers. The ages are early adulthood. The themes are finding one's feet in the adult world, perhaps tackling college/first job/serious relationships--and sometimes there are some identity-related speed bumps. However, the New Adult that's selling is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) romance-oriented, and the truth is that speculative fiction has been featuring characters of New Adult ages for a long time without calling it New Adult. It might just come down to tone. Help!

I'm really thinking about cleaning up this manuscript and showing it to my agent. Before I do that, I might like some advice and possibly even a couple of new beta readers for it. It's already in good shape (I think), but if anyone who reads a decent amount of New Adult wants to read it and help me figure this out--especially if you read New Adult romantic stories that aren't necessarily romance-tropey--I'd love to hear from you.

Reasons I think it might be New Adult/Science Fiction Romance rather than just Adult/Science Fiction Romance:

• There's a lot of identity stuff in it--maybe too much for traditional "adult" readers to enjoy.
• The characters do a lot of typical young adult stuff--there's some fairly immature behavior.
• The characters are all Internet-savvy--there's a fair amount of texting, using video chat, forum discussion, Internet culture.
• The stakes are pretty low. I don't think this is the case with all New Adult books, but sometimes New Adult as a category seems more tolerant of the main thing being when, how, and whether the characters get together.
• The voice just doesn't feel altogether "Adult" to me. But it's definitely not YA, so it could kinda go either way.

Reasons it could just be Adult Science Fiction Romance:

• New Adult does skew heavily toward expectations of a female POV. This is male POV. My romantic lead is the dude.
• Though both romantic characters are in some kind of transition, it doesn't necessarily feel like a "kid-to-adult" transition. The protagonist is a college grad who's been in his job for several years, and this is not his first serious relationship. The love interest is younger--only twenty-one--and didn't go to school, and from her POV it might be more of a NA story, but it's not from her POV.
• I just don't know the audience for NA as well as I know the audience for Adult SF, so I probably have written it skewed toward the familiar.
• It's maybe on the long side for NA but pretty standard for Adult SF, not so much Romance. (Oh, what, you're surprised something I wrote was long?)

So, if you're interested in beta-reading it or asking me some questions to help me figure this out, comment here or contact me in one of the ways available through the "contact" button at the top of my blog.

Here's a bit about the story so you can decide if you want to meet these guys.

Working Title: STUPID QUESTIONS
Word Count: 100K

Camera guy Nick Harris lives in a rational world--or so he thought. He’s no longer sure what’s real when the enigmatic Summer Astley appears on his news show displaying genuine telekinetic powers . . . and a charming smile. As mutual attraction brings them together, Summer reluctantly trusts Nick with her secret doubts and heartbreaking loneliness, leaving him puzzling over how to pursue a down-to-earth romance with a girl who can fly.

Little doodle of the couple! ;)

But Summer isn’t the only one with unusual abilities. Nick’s got a knack for understanding other people--sometimes to the point that he accurately guesses their thoughts. Summer, eager to connect with someone like herself, presses Nick to accept that his “good people skills” are far from ordinary, but Nick isn’t buying it. And he certainly doesn’t want it to be true. After all, being too perceptive creeps girls out and gets guys dumped.

As a strained long-distance relationship develops between them, Summer and Nick battle shared challenges and personal demons. Summer struggles to balance her supergirl public image with her love life, unintentionally pushing Nick away in the wake of a recent loss. And Nick is starting to think he can't handle the occupational hazards of dating a super-powered celebrity, especially since the distance between them is maddening--he's never tried to conduct a romance from across state lines without the subtle cues he's used to. With their unsteady partnership always on the verge of toppling, Nick is ready to pick a direction for the fall. After all, no girl has ever swept him off his feet quite so literally.

30-Week Writing Survey: Week 23: Drafting Time

WEEK TWENTY-THREE OF THE SURVEY FOR AUTHORS!

QUESTIONS ARE  HERE!

Today's question: How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting/submitting for publication (if you post/submit)?

I'm an extraordinarily fast writer. I can write a short story in a couple of hours, I guess, and for novels it's sometimes measured in days or weeks, though for some books I've gone on little hiatuses sometimes when my life gets busy.

The House That Ivy Built, Book 1 was written in fourteen days, and came to about 155,000 words. I'm not sure but that might be my record. Bad Fairy's first version was 255,000 words and took me five weeks. A while back, I wrote a novella at 35,000 words in a week. (I was working full time during that last.)

I have, however, been known to go on indefinite hiatuses. THTIB 2, 3, and 4 took longer because I was just kinda plugging along at them whenever I felt like it, and they were pretty aimless books so that makes sense. THTIB 4 actually spanned about three years. Joint Custody was begun in 2002 and the last time I worked on it was 2006. Finding Mulligan was begun in September of 2006, but then life interruptions made me shelve the project, after which I picked it up again in 2008 and knocked it out of the park in a couple weeks. The latest Bad Fairy took two years to write in weird little bursts. My latest book, Stupid Questions, took ten months, again in bursts.

The bit about "planning" in the question also deserves a nod. I'm a bit weird in that there is rarely any planning whatsoever for my novels. Sometimes I think that shows. Most of the time it looks like it was on purpose, heh. But I have never started a book knowing how it was going to end, and while there have been instances for which I've gone BACK and researched and fine-tuned (of course!), I generally do very little pre-planning, unless noodling on it the evening before counts. 

If I'm actively writing on a project, I'd say my average is around 6,000 to 8,000 words a day, with a couple thrown in where I only write maybe a couple thousand words and weird peaks that arch up to around 15,000. I seem to recall one Sunday many moons ago that saw a 23,000-word sprint. But I seem to be more often falling into this sprint-and-rest mode. Probably because life does an awful lot of interrupting lately. . . .

Nicknames

Sometimes people assume that "Julie" is a shortened form of "Julia," but it isn't; "Julie" is my legal name. I never liked when people shortened it to just one syllable--calling me "Jul" (though I guess it's prettier if you figure it sounds like "Jewel")--but my mom does that all the time. (I don't think I ever expressed that I don't really like it. I think I just don't like names that contain long letter U, and the short version emphasizes it.)

My sister grew up as Pattie, but decided in the summer before fifth grade that she wanted to be Patricia, and after some bumps, we learned to call her that. What's funny is now we mostly just call her P. My sister Lindsay gets called L a lot. You probably don't want to know some of the hilarious things Sister L has come up with to call us.

In the first book I wrote when I was fourteen, the protagonist didn't like being called by a shortened form of her name. Her full first name was Cristabel but her brother called her Crissi and she hated it so much that it became a running gag for him to call her that all the time. The next protagonist I had was named Skyler and people called her Sky sometimes but she didn't hate that. My next protagonist was Ivy and nobody really calls her any nicknames except when they're goofily making it longer. She was actually originally named Amanda by her mother (but her mother didn't raise her and her given name was unknown so she got another one later). Her mother doesn't like nicknames and steadfastly refused to call her anything but the full three-syllable name. Her father does the opposite.

Cassandra, protagonist of Finding Mulligan, goes by Cassie. She flirts with the idea of making people call her Cassandra when she goes to college but it never happens. Delia, protagonist of Bad Fairy, doesn't have any nicknames. (You'd better not call her anything cute. And no, it is not short for Cordelia.) She uses a variety of different names later in life, but she doesn't have a problem with her given one. Nick, protagonist of Stupid Questions, never suggests his full name might be Nicholas, and I wonder if maybe it isn't. I have several friends whose full first names sound like they're short for some other common name, so I could imagine someone naming their kid just Nick. (His last name is Harris, and "Nicholas Harris" sounds like too much of the same sound at the end.) And Bay from my unfinished novel Joint Custody has a very good reason for going by "Bay." You would too if your parents named you Bainbridge.

Authors usually handle this pretty well in their books--the fact that people usually have formal names and then names their loved ones call them. If everyone calls a character by a formal name that has a natural shortened form, I always wonder why that is. Changing and shortening each other's names is a symbol of intimacy and familiarity, and I love seeing it in books; it's a nice shortcut to show us history and affection, and also to show lack of it if necessary.

There are always exceptions, of course--like my character Meri Lin who doesn't like to use shortened nicknames for others because she didn't like having a short name and eventually had it legally changed to incorporate more syllables; she was born just Lin. But she calls her partner Fred Fred instead of Frederick because that's what he wants to be called--and even though he loves nicknames, he knows how she feels about her name and calls her Meri Lin as requested. It highlights respect, in the same way my first protagonist's brother repeatedly calling her Crissi highlighted typical sibling rivalry. What characters call each other can tell you so much without saying much of anything.

My nemesis: Titles

I'm bad at coming up with titles.

My first published short story was pitched as "Hope Came Out" and published as "Your Terms."

My recently sold nonfiction piece for The Toast was pitched as "Have Fun Dying Alone In Your Houseful of Cats: The World Reacts to an Asexual Woman." (Wow, what a mouthful.) They published it as "'Enjoy Your Houseful of Cats': On Being an Asexual Woman."

My nonfiction book on asexuality was pitched as So You Think You're Asexual: An Introduction to the Invisible Orientation. It was acquired and will be sold as The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality.

I like all the titles other people picked for me better than I like the ones I came up with. My title will probably get changed on everything I ever sell because I think I'm Really Bad at this. It's a little weird for someone whose life revolves around picking the right words to say she sucks at doing it in one particular situation, but I guess this is a symptom of my broader difficulty in being concise.

Summing up the essence of your piece while making it appealing to your audience is very difficult. It's a rare talent.

And now I'm struggling with naming one of my short stories and I just can't do it. I named it something silly at first. Then I named it something even sillier because I was exasperated. Now I just kind of want to find a title for it that isn't too ridiculous, and I probably need help again. Anyone want to read a 10,000ish-word short story and help me name it? General fiction, queer characters, commentary on relationships.

The first book I ever wrote, at age fourteen, was called Double Vision. There was no reason for this. The "double" part had an obvious tie to the plot, as the action focused around nine pairs of twins. I have no idea what the "vision" part was supposed to be. I probably just thought it sounded cool.

The second book I began to write and left unfinished never got a title. I call it the "Skyler Stories" book because the protagonist's name was Skyler Stories (yep, that was her last name), but it also makes it convenient in talking about it as a story, haha. What a nerd.

The third book (which ended up blending into book four, five, six, seven, and eight for me) was a fantasy series about a telekinetic teenager named Ivy, and the series literally got named by a drunk guy in a chat room. I was basically doing then what I am doing now--complaining about my inability to name my work--and this dude started throwing out ridiculous and funny titles to "help" me. My friend and I were in the chat room goofing around with him and then all of a sudden he said "The House That Ivy Built!" and my friend and I kinda "looked" at each other because, well, actually she built a house in the book. It stuck. I later thanked the drunk guy for naming it and he didn't remember the experience at all.

I couldn't think of good individual titles for the books in the series so they became THTIB books 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, with a prequel I titled Book 0. Then when I started writing a webcomic based on it that covered the events before Book 0, I just called it Negative One. Yeah, that's the ridiculous reason behind my webcomic title. It's not profound or anything. It's just me being bad at titles.

Then came Bad Fairy and, well, it's an awfully cutesy title for a book that's not friggin' cute. It's a series too. I haven't named any of the individual books in it, much like with THTIB. When that sells (hehehee, I love saying "when"), I bet the publisher will change it. They probably should. Or at least add a subtitle.

Then I started (but didn't finish, yet?) a book about a kid with divorced parents and wow, the originality must have been leaking out of my pores when I decided to call it Joint Custody. Subtle, eh? And it's sad, because the protagonist is really an interestingly complicated little boy and there are so many other things his story could be called. But then I go and pick the obvious thing. Shame on me.

Finding Mulligan is probably my best title. Like, it's mysterious and you're like "huh, who's trying to find WHAT now?" and it's totally accurate because the protagonist spends most of the book looking for Mulligan, but I'm not sure if other people think it's a good title.

And then we have my latest, Stupid Questions, which I like because it kind of attracts your attention and makes you wonder what kind of questions are stupid but to be honest I'm concerned about it being ableist (even though it's questions being called stupid, not people).

With a lot of my short stories I just named them after characters because I couldn't think of anything. I have twenty-eight short stories listed on my most comprehensive page. Five of them are just a character's name. Three more mention a character's name. Most of the rest of them are incredibly vague/boring/generic. Like "Goodbye." And "The Escape." And "The Curse." And "The Mother." I actually like a couple of my story titles. "Her Mother's Child" is a pretty cool, evocative title, and since that short story sold to a magazine but isn't published yet, I guess we'll see someday soon whether they keep it. I like the title "Bloom" despite its simplicity. I like "In Love With Love." Kinda.

But for some reason I'm really stuck on this one and I haven't listed it amongst my short story lists anywhere because I can't think of something to freaking call it! And even if it's a temporary title, you can't pitch something with no title, even if you hate the temporary title you picked. Maybe somebody who doesn't suck at titles can help me out?

30-Week Writing Survey: Week 16: Romantic Relationships

WEEK SIXTEEN OF THE SURVEY FOR AUTHORS!

QUESTIONS ARE  HERE!

Today's question: Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)

Hmm, interesting question for an asexual person, eh?

Most of my characters experience romantic relationships. This is because most of the world experiences romantic relationships. I've had some people tell me that it's WEIRD that I write them--or worse, that it's some kind of secret confession, way of acting out my fantasies, revelation about my desires that I can't express in real life, or hidden cry for help--but that's a bunch of crap. If I completely removed sexuality from the lives of characters understood to be non-asexual, I'd be writing hollow, dishonest characters; and if I went the other way and only wrote asexual characters, I'd be accused of just writing self-inserts. Can't win.

But the bottom line is that it only makes sense that most of my characters would have romantic relationships, even if it's beside the point.

And I guess to answer the question about how "far" I'm willing to go in my writing, the answer is all the way. I don't write porn or graphic sex, but there have been a few places where I write about characters having sex or imply that they have done so.

The novel I've written with the most focus on sex and romance is definitely my most recent one, Stupid Questions. Protagonist Nick is pretty traditional as far as his attraction to the girl he likes and what that makes him interested in doing--meaning he's interested in a romance and a sexual relationship with love interest Summer. The romantic relationship that develops between them is sort of cute and innocent at the beginning because Summer has never had a boyfriend before and Nick doesn't want to be overbearing, but then since they live in different states, a bunch of the flavor of their relationship then develops long-distance.

My first doodle of the couple. ;)

Then the book goes into two visits--he visits her first, then she comes to visit him--and in both visits, there's some attempted or actual sexual contact. (There are some complicated reasons why they don't have sex during the first visit, even though they both want to, but interestingly enough, Summer seems more intimidated by commitment to a relationship than she is regarding doing the deed.) There's also a decent amount of sexual humor and couples arguments and stuff. Despite the stuff that makes their relationship very weird, I'd say it's pretty typical sometimes. (This book is a science fiction romance.)

Another novel of mine, Finding Mulligan, also has romantic elements but ends up being more about identity. It did not end up straying toward anything more explicit than a few kisses, but pretty much the whole book plot orbits around protagonist Cassie trying to get her boy. The romantic aspects are complicated because Cassie is actually two people. Her other self is interested in a guy and she's trying to find sort of a different version of that guy. But she finds herself attracted to two guys that may or may not be the right one, and has to figure out what to do about it.

Finding Mulligan has very little sexual content overall (though Cassie's best friend explicitly talks about having sex with her teacher--ah, Gabi, what a gal!), but the romantic elements are central.

Bad Fairy involves sex and romance too, though in the first book the only onscreen romance is Delia's study partners having a very innocently described relationship with each other. In the second book, Delia has her first boyfriend, but the relationship doesn't last very long (it happens when she's thirteen), and in the third Bad Fairy book, there are some opportunities for adult relationships. During her time in disguise, the usually stoic Delia gets rather friendly with a boy fairy, and she seems to be able to let loose a lot more when she's pretending to be someone else. During that time she develops a more romantic and companionate closeness with a local human baker, and even though he isn't as physically attractive to her, she overall values her relationship with him more, especially once the jig is up. I do actually go into some bedroom detail, and as with everything with Delia, plenty of detail filters in about what they're doing and what her experiences were like, though I kind of stepped away from describing the actual sex acts because I felt like Delia would probably spare us that in her writing of the scene. (It's penned as her autobiography.)


And my webcomic Negative One has romance in the Meri Lin storyline, as Meri Lin and her partner Fred are very much in love and the story includes them having a child. There have been a couple bits in her storyline when she expresses some sexual frustration because Fred has become withdrawn due to, ya know, terribly sad circumstances. All of the other adult characters have at least touched on their takes on romantic thoughts, but nothing has really come up beyond philosophy.

I have sort of written one asexual character in my older stuff--in The House That Ivy Built series, the protagonist isn't interested in other people in a sexy way, but even she experiences some attempts at romance, including kissing with two different partners and a few attempts from would-be boyfriends to talk her into more. I think one big difference between her and me is that she sort of wishes she wanted those things--that's partly because lack of interest in such matters is one of the many things that makes her feel like she doesn't belong, and sometimes in her insecure moments she wants to make everything simpler and be like everyone else. I'm not sure yet if she'd be considered to be romantically attracted to anyone, though she has strong attachments to others sometimes.

There's definitely some romance in my short stories too. "Brady" discusses it marginally, when a girl realizes that romantically is not the only way a girl can like a guy. (I'm going to base a YA novel on his short story someday soon.) "Derika and Emily" discusses Derika's lesbianism and how it influenced her take on religion. "Her Mother's Child," the story of mine that's going to be published in Kaleidotrope next year, includes references to a young woman's sexual experiences, but it doesn't go into any detail as it happens offscreen; it's part of a fertility rite (though it happens to be between two cisgender young ladies, so, uh, no babies). And, of course, "Wind" is about the romance between a young man and a fairy.

Anyway, long story short, I don't make a big point of writing sex and I don't think I'll ever be writing something for which I need to write explicit detail of the act, but as for romance and "going far," I'm not afraid of it, and I let my characters decide whether such things are appropriate in their lives. If they want to do it, they get to. Yay.

30-Week Writing Survey: Week 11: Favorite/Least Favorite Characters

WEEK ELEVEN OF THE SURVEY FOR AUTHORS!

QUESTIONS ARE  HERE!

Today's question: Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?

Even after all this time, I probably actively enjoy writing my character Ivy the most. I invented her in 1996 as a teenager in a bad fantasy series, but after I decided the series wasn't publishable, I developed her and her pals into the stars of my webcomic Negative One and I continue to use her as a point-of-view character (though in this version she is very young--she was practically pre-verbal at the time that I made her a narrator). What's great about Ivy is that she's got a lot of problems but she's pretty confident thanks to a smart upbringing; like, sure she has angst, but her mind is a comfortable place to hang out most of the time (despite her being a bit high-strung and quick to anger). She grew up in the world we all know--a contemporary setting--but she was raised outside society and has telekinetic powers that are strong enough to let her affect very large objects and get around by flying.

Her mind is set up so differently from all the other characters I've written. She's so much like the rest of the world in most ways, but the differences are really quite profound. This is hard to get across in print while writing ABOUT her from outside her head, but the way she sees space shapes her whole perception of the world and its people . . . there's this weird balancing act going on there. Half of it is a sense of superiority partially based on being able to literally take herself above the world (and, of course, have pretty much effortless influence over anyone who tries to cross her), but then the other half is this weird feeling of impermanence . . . like she can't truly belong on the ground because she doesn't have to stay there. Sometimes she wants desperately to belong and other times she's glad she doesn't. It's a very odd place to be, especially when she fights with herself about what she wants and doesn't really come to an agreement.

I should also say I really love writing about Delia from Bad Fairy, but she's so intense and dramatic that it also stresses me out, so I guess I'd go with Ivy as a favorite to write because it's not so hard on me emotionally.

The "which character is your least favorite to write about" is a VERY tough question. I don't actively dislike any of my protagonists. I would say the biggest STRUGGLE was writing Cassie from Finding Mulligan. She did piss me off sometimes and I did not like her sometimes. This is mainly because she hung a lot of her self-worth on a boy. I didn't like that desperation. And I didn't like that the core of her being was so, you know, damaged. She is really really not well for most of the book, and doesn't even know it. But writing AS her certainly connected me to her sorrow and her fracturedness and her desperate desire to be something more, so I certainly can't say I didn't like writing about her. It was very hard though, writing as someone who was that unsure of herself and that motivated by things that don't exist in my life.

I don't write in third person very often, but I did so for one of the THTIB books (Book 0). For that one I bounced around between perspectives quite a lot, and the ones I found myself kind of disliking the process on were Alix and sometimes Adele. That might sound weird because I love Adele, but sometimes her superiority complex gets whipped out without warning and she is pretty impossible to be around. She's done that quite a few times in Negative One so far. Alix is another story because let's face it, he's kind of the story's jackass, and I don't write from his actual perspective in the webcomic. Get him together with Adele and some very obnoxious interaction ensues, because Adele likes to put on her condescending mommy hat when she's around him and Alix HATES getting bossed around by anyone, especially if that "anyone" is a girl, and MOST of all if said girl is frigging ALWAYS RIGHT.

And I sometimes had a hard time with writing Nick from Stupid Questions because it was a constant struggle to balance his sensitivity with his masculinity and I was not always sure I was doing it right. In order to make him seem authentically male, I sometimes had him make the kinds of generalizations about women that I've seen many men make when they're faced with their own romantic failures, and the way he sometimes rejects aspects of himself that he would like to be allowed to treasure just because he wants to be a tough guy was really obnoxious, but I had to make it seem to come from somewhere real inside him--to not sound grafted on by a female author who's trying to think "male."

30-Week Writing Survey: Week 10: Weird Situations

WEEK TEN OF THE SURVEY FOR AUTHORS!

QUESTIONS ARE  HERE!

Today's question:What are some really weird situations your characters have been in?

Weird situations my characters have been in. Gee. Wow, let's see. I'll try not to make this spoileriffic or really super specific. But a lot of what I say will probably be like "wait, what?" Which I guess is the point.

Bad Fairy (the whole series, not just the part I've written)

• Eight-year-old Delia getting into a fist fight with twelve-year-old Beatrice during their Fire studies, after Delia spied on Beatrice's dreams and made fun of them

• In general, the whole process by which fairies in this story do a ritual and get their wings is very very weird

• Delia having to wait on her estranged father at her place of work 

• Delia almost accidentally killing herself by being in a trance for too long

• Delia conducting interviews with dead people

• Delia convincing the queen that frogs talk to her

• Delia having to change her appearance completely within three days to hide in another kingdom (hey, you think actors gaining/losing weight for a role is serious? you should see what she has to do)

• Delia telling one of her friends what some dead person is saying in the afterlife

• Delia disguising herself as a rebellious leader of a group of textile freaks in order to distract the po-po (since the truth was, um, weirder)

• Delia frankly narrating about fairy sex positions

Finding Mulligan

• Cassie falling in love with a painting on a bathroom door, for starters

• Dia having to fight a monster made out of red slime and defeating it by magically making the clouds rain two-percent milk

• Gabi totally has sex with her teacher

• Basically the entire premise and plot of the book is one huge roller coaster of weirdness, so. . . .

• Cassie refusing to wear shoes for half the book (and that is super gross in the bathroom and on the bus)

• Dia having wings randomly for a couple of scenes, but not wanting to use them for flying

• The perfect nightcap: floor wax and mayonnaise. Feed it to someone you love today!

Stupid Questions

• Nick's girlfriend complaining about how dirty the top of his refrigerator is, because she could see it from where she was hovering three feet off the floor

• Nick deleting an in-progress e-mail to another guy because he was afraid it was too much "hey bro, let's talk about our feelings"

• The entire scene where the characters agree to buy condoms after church

• Also, making out while sitting on a church (well, several churches, and a temple and a mosque too)

• Summer referring to a penis as a "ding-a-ling" in complete seriousness (Nick replied "Please never say 'ding-a-ling' again") 

• Summer's first kiss happened while levitating in the sky

• Nick punches a wall, and when Brian asks what happened to his hand he says "I punched a wall. I'm better now."

• Nobody seems to think it's a bad idea to let a girl with macro telekinesis and poor impulse control go to a bar and get drunk

You know what? I could go on for a very long time like this and I think I should stop here. I didn't even talk about older and incomplete books. :D