Fantasist's Scroll

As I mentioned in a previous post, here’s my Magna Carta I.

Well, just to refresh your memory, Chris Baty talked about two Magna Cartas of noveling in his NaNoWriMo primer No Plot No Problem. The first is all the things I think go into a good novel. (That’s what this one is.) And the second is the list of all the things that I think should be definately left out of a good novel. (That’s for a future post.)

So, without further ado, here’s my Magna Carta I, Elements of “Good” Fiction:

• Violence. Lots and lots of violence.
• Mystery
• Exotic locales
• Magic, or at least the hint of magic
• Religious beliefs
• A real villain who has good points (ie. “loves his mother”)
• A tough “everyman” hero who’s good but has bad habits
• Surreal interiors (ie. Basement hothouse, warehouse filled with Asian antiques, building facades that hide something super cool)
• Smart use of current technology
• Slightly futuristic/near future sci-fi stuff
• Exotic creatures
• Characters who change based on the plot
• Characters who LEARN during the course of the book
• Something criminal, or potentially criminal
• Books, lots of books
• Libraries
• Big, strange houses filled with rooms of unusual things
• Quirky supporting cast
• Characters who worry about bills, money and similar every day concerns
• Characters who have bodily functions
• At least one scene inside a bathroom
• Guns
• Knives and swords
• A monk, or hermit, or wiseman or guru
• Characters with strange things in their pockets
• Secret organizations
• Adventure and daring-do and, maybe, even a bit of swashbuckling
• Memorable images
• Cinematic moments: action and description
• Humor from what the characters say, not bad writing (ie. Humor from the characters being funny with each other.)

Up next… My Magna Carta II, Elements of “Bad” Fiction.
(And, sadly, I had computer trouble last night on my main system, so I have sincere doubts that I’ll be able to make up my 12000 word deficit at this point. Still, I keep working at it. Hope springs eternal!  And, yes, this also appeared on my other blog: Diary of a Network Geek.)

This is fun, in a literary way.

James Triptree, Jr. has long been thought of as one of the greatest science-fiction authors ever. However, if he’d written under his real name and gender, he most likely would never have gotten published at all.
“He”, of course, is actually “she”. And her real name was Alice B. Sheldon. Apparently she was quite secretive in life, which might be understandable given the circumstances of her professional career. But, now, Julie Philips has written a book about her life. The book is called James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon and I’m sure it will be a fascinating read. In the mean time, you can check that first link for a brief review on SciFi.com.

If you want links that are more fun and crazy, check out my other blog; Diary of a Network Geek. Until then, though, I have to get back to writing or I’ll never even come close to the NaNoWriMo finish line!

Yes, I’m going to make a feeble attempt at NaNoWriMo.

With my work schedule and the rate at which my friends are having emotional breakdowns, I sincerely doubt that I’ll actually find a way to get 50,000 words out in a single month, but I’m going to give it a go.  I’ll post my personal guidelines, based on No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty, who originated NaNoWriMo, and I’ll make my Friday Fun posts, but, other than that, all my updates will be on my other blog, which more people know about; Diary of a Network Geek.

In essence, though, as I expect total failure, this is just going to be a month long writing exercise.  But, it might be fun, and, if it gets me writing regularly again, it’ll be worth doing.

Hey, it’s for charity.

A “blog friend” of mine, Jessica, aka Sassy Suspect, is running for charity.
In fact, she got her sister to run, too. Or, maybe it’s the other way around.  In any case, the charity is the MAGIC Foundation, which is meant to help the families of children with Panhypopituitarism. More importantly, it’s a foundation that’s helped Jessica’s niece, Karenna Grace, aka “Ruby”. And, really, that’s all that matters to me. So, if you can afford to support them financially, go to the site they set up Run For Ruby, and make a donation.

If Jessica supports it and it’s helped her family, it must be a worthwhile place to donate your money this holiday season.

And, yes, by that I mean, Friday the Thirteenth.

I always thought it was because Judas was the Thirteenth Apostle or something like that. No, according to this article on GlobalPsychics.com, it has to do with the plot to suppress the Knights Templar. Hey, stop laughing! That’s what it says!! And, I quote:

The modern basis for the Friday the 13th superstition stems from Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in Conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant against “the Knights Templar”. The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long. There Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. A Black Friday indeed!

So, there you have it, Friday the Thirteenth is a global conspiracy! Personally, I usually have better luck on Friday the Thirteenth, but, then, I always have been a little out of step with the world. Oh, and here’s a link to some alternate ideas why everyone else is afraid of Friday the Thirteenth.
Enjoy it.

‘Cause it all comes down to the dough, re, mi!

Sometimes, it feels like there just aren’t any paying markets for fantasy and science-fiction short stories. Of course, that’s not true, but, still, outside of one of the Writer’s Digest Novell and Short Story Writer’s Market books, where are you going to find a place to send your work? Try looking at these pages to find someone who would like to buy your work:

The Writer’s Write Paying Market List
The “Goblin” Markets
Story Pilot’s Science-Fiction and Fantasy Market Engine
SFWA Magazine List
Julia West’s Paying F&SF Markets List
So, now that you have places to send the work, the only thing you need to do is write the story!

Now, this may not be your idea of fun…

Personally?  I love to read and times are a little tough right now, so reading fantabulous writing for free rates as big fun for me.  Also, I love thumbing my nose at authority.  So, if I can combine those two things, I would be in literary hog heaven!

Oh, wait, I can!  All I have to do is go to Google BookSearch’s  Banned Book list!  Then I can find great literature that was banned, or temporarily challenged, by small-minded, bigoted censors trying to think for me!!  Yea!

Seriously, this is fun for me and, hey, it’s Friday, so what else are you going to do?

I mentioned this on my other blog, but not here yet.  I’ve recently upgraded my blogs to the latest version of WordPress. Now, no one has probably noticed that, but I thought it was noteworthy. Well, if I did the upgrade right, no one noticed. Certainly, no one said anything if they did notice.

Mostly, it was a Very Good Thing to have upgraded, but there are some differences that still throw me off a bit. First, there’s the whole new interface deal. It used to be that I had to deal with a pretty simple, text-only interface. Now, though, the whole thing has gone all WYSIWYG and it’s totally throwing me off. Especially because it edits HTML natively. I’m getting used to it, but, still, I have to remember little details like not just hitting “enter” when I want a new line instead of a whole new section/paragraph. Secondly, the tools have really been improved. Linking and formating and everything else have been upgraded to match that slick new WYSIWYG interface, but they’ve added some HTML tools that they didn’t have before. Or, if they had them, didn’t showcase very well. Also improved is the preview section. Now, instead of just showing me a preview of the code in the post itself, WordPress previews the post as it would appear on the blog, with headers and footers and everything.
The one thing, so far, that I don’t like is the way the new version updates the timestamp on the post. For the most part, it doesn’t. Once you save a post as a draft, it takes a timestamp and seems to hold that until you manually change it. Other than that, though, I really adore the new version.

So, now you know. Doesn’t that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Anyway, one of the reasons for the upgrade was because I was developing plugins for WordPress. I showed you one a couple of weeks ago, and now, you can get to other one from my other blog. Moonie, the name of the plugin, is a little dodad that let’s you add the neat moonphase stuff to your WordPress blog. Now, after admiring it on my blog, you can have it for yourself. Enjoy!