Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

I Could Use Help! Seriously. I need 10 freaking blog posts about Blood Red Roulette. I seriously need ideas for them. I have THREE which I need to turn in tomorrow. I have Vegas as a setting. Luc's reaction to being in Vegas. Luc's homophobic family. ELD had some interview questions for Arrigo but I could use them for him and Luc. I know I need an Arrigo centric post. Being the villain is female, I don't want to use one on Eleni.

So the interview can be number four and Arrigo centric number five and me taking 20 years to write this can be number six. I still need at least four more and I need to be writing them now.

So what would you like to see from gay vampires in Las Vegas? Seriously, throw out anything. I would appreciate it. Might even have ARCs for the reading if you'd like one. Some of you have already read parts of Blood Red so help if you can!


Not a lot of links this week because I'm trying to get these blog posts done.

How Authors Can Become Part of the News Cycle


Red Pen Praising: The Best Thing You Can Do For A Writer

Your book metadata

From Betty

Marketing Advice Roundup: Best of the Last Year

Words Are Radical! (or, How to Cherish Language)

Writers Beware of the Legal Pitfalls — Copyright Basics Part 2

PODCAST
193 – The History of Haunted House Stories


Seven Common Problems With Spec Fic Technology


Six Wordcraft Questions Writers Fight Over

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> So what would you like to see from gay vampires in Las Vegas? <<

Layers of culture. What have they seen from the past, good and bad? How does that influence the present? How well, or poorly, are they adapting to the rapid changes in queer culture now? Are they comfortable with genderqueer or transfolk? And if so, does that influence feeding, particularly if someone's on hormones?

Riffing on Las Vegas as gambling central, do they have conflicts with reservation casinos? Which cause arguments even in reservations that don't have one. And if that happens, how do the gay vampires fit into -- or not -- area legends about monsters or respect for two-spirit people?

Re: Thoughts

[cornerofmadness]

Ooo these are good too (actually if I do a sequel or some other story I might like to explore the idea of what the overload of hormones tastes like. I do explore illness and addiction in this).

Thanks

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Ooo these are good too (actually if I do a sequel or some other story I might like to explore the idea of what the overload of hormones tastes like. <<

If they're gay male vampires, I would expect testosterone to taste good to them -- to me it smells bright, metallic, and sometimes yeasty. Too much estrogen is probably unpleasant and cloying. But if you have someone taking crossover hormones, sometimes the mix feels muddled, especially at first before it settles down. Hormone blockers, which younger transfolk might still be taking, probably muffle the flavor. They might taste bland or chemical.

>> I do explore illness and addiction in this). <<

That sounds interesting.

Re: Thoughts

[cornerofmadness]

I like your ideas on the hormones. It sounds plausible.

For me, I saw them as predators and just like we wouldn't want to eat tainted meat or take a sniff of the milk every time, I figured they wouldn't want to drink blood with diseases or drugs in them (though the latter might appeal to some who want the second hand high)

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

*laaaauuuuugh* Health food vampires! They hang around all the health food stores looking for people into clean living.

Works great right up until they nip someone who takes garlic supplements to repel mosquitoes.

On a more serious note, though, it must make life very challenging because humans aren't healthy anymore. Over half of people take prescriptions regularly, and that's not counting over-the-counter stuff.

And what if one of the vampires can't stomach something ubiquitous like caffeine? He'd be like my friend who can't eat high-fructose corn syrup. 95% of the store might as well not exist, and whole categories don't have a single safe product.

Fuck, what about endocrine disruptors? They're chemicals that mimic hormones, and they've permeated the entire biosphere. A few are natural, but most are synthetic, and they're difficult or impossible to avoid.

Your setting sounds fascinating. :D

[sylvanwitch]

Maybe you're going to cover this in the Vegas setting post, but I had a gay friend who moved to Vegas from Dallas and was really disappointed by the gay scene. Part of that was a product of his lack of transportation for the first few years--the "burbs," so to speak, aren't really near anything. But part of it was the vast disconnect between Vegas' public image as an anything-goes latter day '30s Berlin (eg. trans entertainment, for example) and the actual, real-life gay scene of any city, complicated by the fact that Vegas isn't like any other city. Dallas had (has?) a thriving, vibrant, and HUGE gay population, with whole neighborhoods populated by hang-outs that are LGBTQ-friendly. Vegas, not so much. Now, that may have changed--he moved to Boston from Vegas in, maybe, 2013 or 2014. But anyway, I always found it interesting.

[cornerofmadness]

I actually wasn't because I wasn't particularly aware of this (the gay scene figures not at all into the story to be honest). But it's something to think about, thanks