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cornerofmadnessWell I'm half blind from uploading stories into the new Geek Girlz autoarchive (which yay on all accounts) check it out. See if our review links work. This will take off all the pressure on poor Chris.
I've got half the test done for monday so good on me. I finished one of the two stories I'm doing for the lyrical ficathon. Sigh. Yes I said I'd only do a few and I am but damn did they all have to be due in March? Also redoing an old story I finished finally two years later and it occurs to me that it really highlights one of the disappointments I've had lately. There's a song-ficcy kind of chapter in it with some powerful Country lyrics. Lately I've been listening to country less and less, losing interest, getting bored with the songs. Then I see these ones and realize it isn't me. These lyrics from three years ago still grab me. Sigh.
Bookish Musings
Maybe it’s Goddess Blue’s impending bookish community or my own recent pillaging of the local library but I’ve been thinking about books a lot lately. First up is J.D. Robb’s Eve Dallas series and it’s official, I just don’t like near-to-our-time Sci-Fi. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a lack of imagination or faith on my part but I just don’t see us gaining this much in technology in the next 50 years. Oh, I know it’s possible. Maybe it’s because not-to-far-in-the-future SF is always so grim that it depresses me. Now, I came in mid-series here (and I bought one that’s not here yet. It was buy something or the Mystery Guild was going to cut me off and I figure if Nora Roberts could get me to read a romance then her mysteries under the name of Robb would be good.) So I’m not exactly sure what the Urban Wars were but whatever it is, coffee is now only affordable by the super rich (yes, that was the one thing I took away from this.) I’m not sure why I found it so unbelievable as a setting: no longer needing organs because we can grow them (we’re working on that now), beat cops that are androids (yeah we’re working on them too), auto-chefs (okay just call them a replicator, JD), no money just credits (okay we’ve talked about that too), totally different lingo (yeah language DOES change radically but beer’s been beer for centuries do we honestly think we’re going to start calling it brew and drugs chemi’s in the next 50 years). Any one of these I could probably accept by itself but put them all together in 50 years (with life spans suddenly over 125 years), and there’s just something I can’t buy into.
That aside, was the book any good? Yes. Okay Eve and her husband have more sex than any married couple I know (and of course he’s stinking rich. You can’t have mystery any more without a rich benefactor) but at least Robb knows how to pace out the NC-17 so it doesn’t bog down a story (fanfic writers please take note, lots of sex does not always a good story make). I, of course, picked the one were she’s framed and loses her badge (such a tired chestnut of the police procedural that seeing it makes me want to dig out my eyes). The one thing I really couldn’t buy, androids looking and functioning like humans. We’re not even trying to make them that way for police work, too difficult bio-mechanically). And why the hell would a droid have nuts you could kick it in and disable it?
And it’s always feast or famine for me with the interlibrary loans. Either I never see the books I order or they all come at once. It’s the latter right now. I have a new book, a glossary of mythical critters with a heavy emphasis on vampires and werewolves and pulp culture. In skimming it, I saw two series I’ve never heard of: Susan Krinkard’s werewolf series and Sherrilyn Kenyon’s vampire series (though I think I may have received a book of the latter as a gift just as I was moving from Wisconsin to Florida a few years back and packed up and never read). I asked around and none of my friends had heard of them either. Curious, since we tend to eat this sort of book up. Well I got one from each lady. No wonder, I never heard of them. They’re both romances.
Sigh. It’s not that I don’t like romances. I’ve got several friends who write them and I do read them but there’s a certain style of writing that often goes along with romances that I can’t abide. It’s that florid description and the oh-so-perfect men, you know what I mean. I think that’s why I like Nora Roberts. She tends to avoid that. Krinkard does not. I’m less than 20 pages in, and Quentin is oh so aristocratic and perfect. ‘Every part of him was a manly ideal.’ or something along those lines. Gag. I’d much rather read about a man I could actually meet. I’d be more interested if Quentin’s nose was a little off-center or his smile a little dorky and THIS is why I’ll never be the target audience for a romance. I also don’t like the arrogant macho romance hero (and I’ve been told that romance publishers don’t look kindly on their writers straying from that stereotype, the more the pity). Quickly bored with Krinkard’s book, I set it aside into the ‘if I have time I’ll read it pile.’
Then I picked up Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series. Okay, I swear to God, if I read another vampire in New Orleans book I’ll shriek. Even I have a series that I’ve stopped trying to market because it’s been SO overdone that I don’t even want to see it and I’ve sold two stories in this series over the last decade. I’m about 15 pages in, the characters are instantly annoying and of course, ever so perfect to look at it. Snooze. It’s on the same pile as the Krinkard book.
So that leaves me with my Peter Straub book, "In the Night Room." Hmmm, you know the write up’s on Straub’s books always sound so good. I didn’t like "Lost Boy, Lost Girl" very much. Good idea, not so great in the writing. Three chapters into this one and I’m wrinkling my brow thinking if this wasn’t from Straub it wouldn’t have gotten past the slush pile. Maybe it’ll get better. I know Straub can write some disturbing stuff so I’m hanging in there. But really he’s become addicted to putting email conversations in his book and it’s really rather annoying.
Hmmm wonder what to read now.
Well now that the rpg is quiet, I need to get my butt back to writing.
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Date: 2005-02-12 06:49 am (UTC)And I LOVE the new look of Geek Fiction! That eFiction thingy is what I want for "Farewell", so I'm d/ling and praying I can work it out!
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Date: 2005-02-12 06:54 am (UTC)Thanks! Tell Chris and ask HER how it works. I've got no idea except that it hate me. It won't load half my stories which is weird since we're using the same software as Forever Fandom and I have NO troubles there. Sob.
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Date: 2005-02-12 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 12:34 pm (UTC)It was all the gobblydook at the eFiction FAQ that scared me. And yes, the archive making looks hard. I'm a wimp. If it looks hard, then it must be hard - so I wimp out...I'll have a go at it, but I don't like me chances.
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Date: 2005-02-12 03:06 pm (UTC)And you are not the first person to tell me how scary I am (ELD's protests aside)
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Date: 2005-02-12 10:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 07:16 pm (UTC)Maybe I'll manage to figure a bit of it out. In, like, a couple of
eonsyears.no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 09:31 pm (UTC)PS, rhetorical question,not asking you to explain XD
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Date: 2005-02-13 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-13 07:21 pm (UTC)