Villains…
I’m not very good with writing villains or antagonists, so i’m working on studying them.
My question for you is: what are your favorite bad guys? What did you like best about them?
Thanks 
Wow… 3 weeks since I last posted…
And roughly the same since I last wrote, more disturbingly!
There were reasons – fatigue from a virus, then bronchitis, then as soon as I was over that Brian and I started going to Crossfit (Yankee Crossfit, specifically), and I was exhausted from that…
(And hmm… they have a recipe for Chicken Paprikash posted today that I might need to look at more closely.)
Anyway… writing. Today, I did some more work on Refuge: Tales from a Zombie Apocalypse, fixing a couple of problems that my awesome beta readers pointed out, and a couple more that I noticed in my re-read. It’s always interesting to read something I’ve written after a long enough break that it’s not all in the forefront of my mind already. Easier to actually read what’s on the page than what’s in my head that way, for sure.
So I think the draft is done, and even better – I really like it! Next up: look up how the formatting for Smashwords and Kindle need to be done and get to work on that. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that done this week – if not, I guess next weekend… we’ll see. In any case, it’ll be done soon, where “soon” is a value somewhere between tomorrow and a month from tomorrow. :-p
Tree Lobsters, Dark Matter, and Zombies, oh my!
And zombies…
I’ve finished the last of the stories for Refuge: Tales from a Zombie Apocalyps, for a given value of “finished.” There will be seven stories in total, all set in the same world. The collection includes the long-time favorite “Corpse Pose,” and was, in fact, inspired by it.
I still have major revisions to make on one of the stories, plus a polish for all the others, but I’m hoping to publish the whole shebang next weekend, after getting comments back from a couple of patient, generous, and long-suffering beta-readers. 
(If you’d like to join them, and expect to have time this week, shoot me an email and we’ll see what we can do.)
Oh, wow… take a look at this new book!
Not mine, though I did just buy a copy on my Kindle 
The Weird, A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
It’s got over 100 stories, from the past hundred years or so, in chronological order, which I think is pretty cool. I just skipped ahead to read the contribution by Neil Gaiman, and it was amazing. VERY creepy.
Take a look! Just $15 for the e-book version.
Found via http://jaylake.livejournal.com/ and http://www.jeffvandermeer.com. This is a big part of why I love following links from blogs.
New Cover for The Trouble With Wishes!
Guess what! I made this this weekend, with a little help from Dreamstime.com, the artists Fredweiss and Vector, and gimp 2.6.
Also, credit to Teenbull for the image used in the cover for Refuge that I posted earlier.
And of course, I don’t think I would’ve summoned up the guts to try it again, or the straightforward idea of assembling everything in PowerPoint, without this tutorial by William King. Thanks!
Anyway, I just uploaded it, so it’ll take a few hours (days) to show up on Amazon and B&N, but it’s up on Smashwords right now!
Can you tell I’m excited?
For comparison’s sake, and since I’m going to be changing it in the sidebar too, here’s the original version:
Coming soon, to an ebookseller near you :)
I’m still working on finishing up the stories, editing and so on, but I hope to have this published to Smashwords, Amazon, and B&N in a week or so. I’m also planning to offer a coupon here so that all of you can get it for free this time.
Sick Anthea is starting to get better…
I caught a cold last week, and then felt better, and then felt worse, and then felt a LOT worse and took two days off from work trying to sleep it off.
It didn’t work. 
On the third day (Friday), I finally went to the doctor, more because I’d been out from work for three days than that I thought he’d prescribe anything but rest and fluids.
I walked out with a prescription for antibiotics instead, and a few hours later, I started feeling like a shadow of my usual self, rather than just an Anthea-shaped body without even the energy to write.
Fatigue, dizziness, mucous, and a rather annoying cough are still plaguing me, but I’m back to writing, so I’m definitely on the mend.
Sorry for the long radio silence here, though! I’m working on a project and hope to have big news soon, but I think I’m going to wait til it’s actually done to make any new announcements or bold declarations. There’s no telling, after all, whether I’m really in my right mind yet, or just on my way there.
Always learning…
Learning what kind of writer I am is a fascinating process.
Sometimes, I’ll write and write, and though the words are fine there’s no real story underneath to hold them together. This usually happens when I think I know what story I want to write.
A lot of writers talk about themselves as a duality – the everyday self who does the grunt work of typing, and the muse, or the writer-brain, or lizard-brain, or the characters, or the story council.
I’m definitely finding that I have the same sensation. That there’s a part of me that can spin magic into a story, and a part of me that can type and edit and spell correctly and remember what the character’s names are, and that successful fiction writing requires a delicate balancing act between the two.
In some ways, I feel like I sit down and start writing, and by doing so I invite my writer-brain to come out and see. I’m coaxing it out, like putting out bits of food to coax a small animal out of its hole. And like that small animal, if I look too closely or too directly at it, then it’ll flee back into its hole and make me start the hole process over again.
But if I manage to coax it out and not scare it off, my writer-brain will start poking at the words I’m writing. Sometimes an image of what happens next will pop into my mind, or I’ll realize something I’ve already written should change in *this* precise way.
Once in a great while, my writer-brain will get confident enough to take over, and then the writing flies but I don’t recognize everything when I read over it again. (Sleep deprivation will also have this effect, but I don’t recommend it.)
But a lot of the time I forget that I’m trying to coax out a shy and temperamental part of my mind, and I write blithely on with no attention to anything else, and then wonder why the story isn’t coming out the way I wanted it to. :-p
Learn to code in 2012!
Codeacademy presents a full year of interactive online programming lessons for beginners!
Here’s an article on it from Slate: You Need to Learn how to Program.
I figure at one lesson a week, it shouldn’t interfere with my writing time any more than random websurfing, tv-watching and reading do, and I definitely buy the argument that basic programming is becoming as important a skill as being able to type.
(No judgments from me on *how* you type – hunt and peck gets the job done just fine with enough practice, though I do find touch typing to be convenient.)
Writing is communicating with other people, programming is communicating with computers, not just in terms of telling, but of understanding.
Signal boost: EBooks for Breast Cancer Screening and Education
John Scalzi and Subterranean Press are donating all proceeds from the sales of his ebooks published by them for the next week to Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening and education activities, a gesture inspired by the way the Susan G Komen Foundation recently withdrew their funding for the same.
You can read all about it, and find links to the ebooks, at his post.
There are several shorter works available for $0.99, as well as a couple of longer options for a few dollars more. I’ve read The God Engines, and it was quite good, even if I wasn’t sure about the ending.
© 2010 Catherine Wechsler, used with permission.
