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Saturday, March 20, 2010

Free Story: The Queen and the Soldier

Originally written for the Torquere Social Happy Hour, "The Queen and the Soldier" is a short >1K m/m story written to the prompts supplied by various members.

***

Saturday is like an extra Friday

I'm pretty sure this really will be a short round up, unlike last week's short round up.

For those curious, my speech recognition software is still making my teeth clench, which is at least a different kind of repetitive strain injury. But moving along to the interesting news (some of which I have already covered):

1.) I have a new website (which is to say, I have a website): www.mollychurch.com. Please check it out.

2.) I have a new release, Pentimento: Poppy, available from Torquere Press.

2b) If you're interested in an excerpt or a "sexy snippet" for Poppy both are available (just follow the links).

2c) An extra scene, which doesn't appear in Poppy is also available.

3.) Another free story in the Dylan and Xavier semi-series was written on Wednesday (St. Patrick's Day) in honor of release day. It follows in a separate post.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

New Release - Pentimento: Poppy is OUT NOW

Pentimento: Poppy (10700 words and published by Torquere Press), is out now.

To celebrate that, and St. Patrick's Day, I'm throwing a bit of a party on the Happy Hour LJ.

In other news, I have a website: www.mollychurch.com. Please check it out!

Friday, March 12, 2010

Fortnightly roundup

Not such terribly big round up this time, though I have been busy. Still, it's the kind of busy that takes an awful lot of time but isn't necessarily all that interesting to talk about.

Point the first: Software :/
I am still having problems with repetitive strain injury (RSI), but I do now have software for speech recognition. It's pretty good if I remember to use a normal-ish volume for my speaking voice, but actually I tend to speak fairly quietly what I'm talking to myself, which is what it feels like I'm doing. I expected to have problems with pacing, by which I mean I expected the software not be able to keep up with what I want to write. This is not such big problem, especially since I have now switched off the automatic punctuation. It is a bigger problem when I'm writing fiction, because I do type much faster than software works, but it works fine for blog posts and e-mail, and reasonably well for chatting via text in gchat and Skype.

Aside from the issue of volume, the software does not like it if I forget I'm talking to it and speak with any emotion in my voice whatsoever, which has the side effect of making me wonder if the people I talk to are equally annoyed by the sound of my voice. Yes, I have begun to think that the software sentient, and furthermore has something of a cruel sense of humor. this was not helped by discovering chapters of 2001: A Space Odyssey in the training section of the software tools.

Point the second: Editing :)
I have discovered I love editing. This is not something I would have expected of myself; honestly, I was fully prepared to find it nothing more than a necessary chore. It is necessary, because nobody catches all their own mistakes. Also, an editor can point out something that isn't necessarily an error, but also doesn't necessarily work as well as it seems to him the author's omniscient standpoint, because the context simply does not exist in the story.

But for me I think it goes deeper than that -- I love words. I love sentences. I love punctuation. I love looking at them, and fiddling with them, and making them work together. It's like loving apples and cinnamon and cream and pastry, all each individually, but toying with them over and over in different combinations to create subtle variations on apple pie. An editor becomes in many ways a taste tester, a second set of taste buds who can point out that not everyone loves cinnamon as much as you do and that maybe you should cut it back a bit, or that you're being stingy with the sugar, or that if you add any more fat, the pie is going to need to come with a warning. After all, you can always make the cinnamon loaded version for yourself, but you'd like your guests to enjoy this pie.

I am also reminded of Neil Gaiman's comparison between writing and building dry stone walls ( which you can find here):
A dry-stone wall is a lovely thing when you see it bordering a field in the middle of nowhere but becomes more impressive when you realise that it was built without mortar, that the builder needed to choose each interlocking stone and fit it in. Writing is like building a wall. It's a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words. The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field. If she doesn't build it it won't be there. So she looks down at her pile of rocks, picks the one that looks like it will best suit her purpose, and puts it in.

The editor is also a bit like a friend, or stranger, who comes along after a long day, when the light is growing dim, and who points out that maybe this rock is better than the other. They are very often right.

Anyway, I'm off to do more editing. And I'm going to enjoy it. But that brings me back to my first point, about software: I'd really like a copy of white smoke, one of the versions that recognize and correct dyslexic writing mistakes. That would be awesome. Though I have a funny feeling that the mistakes the speech recognition software introduces into my text would just confuse it. It might be something to hold off on until I'm back to typing full-time.

Oh, and PS -- I love this, too:
Perfectionists like chasing the horizon;
You kept perfection, gave the rest to us,
so let me earn the wisdom to move on.
...
Lord, let me be brave, and let me, while I craft my tales, be wise:
let me say true things in a voice that is true,
and, with the truth in mind, let me write lies.

-from Neil Gaiman's Writer's Prayer