Writing

May 12 2012

Wow. It’s May already! Where does the time go?

I’ve been working on Avatar now, pretty much non-stop, since last June. Yes, I said last June. I’m still not finished, but I can at least SEE the end of Book Two. This is a good thing, since I gotta tell you as much as I love Avatar, I’d like to move onto some other projects. Once book two is finished, it’ll be a while before I return to the series. Oddly, I get people who ask me if they can write in the Avatar universe, and while I’m flattered, I’m sad to say I’d prefer you didn’t. I have plans for upcoming stories. I’ll tell you though, NONE of those plans include anything else as long as Establishment. Sheesh, that’s a lot of writing.

It’s been hard to stick to just writing Avatar this last year. Especially after I released that short story on Amazon and it was completely ignored. No, I’m not whining and asking people to go buy it, but it was kind of a wakeup call. Dark Pen is a somewhat known name, but the other name is not. I want to build that other name up, since I want to release standard SciFi books using it, but well, sales like that make me wonder why I should bother. Amazon is a tough market.

Building name recognition is important and when I see the success that people like Felicia Day and Will Wheaton have had, I understand even better what they went through to get them. Promoting is a lot of very hard work and while I’m not a bad writer, I do believe that I suck at self promotion. Worse, I don’t do this full time. Still, the advice I keep hearing from people who’ve “made it” is: “Don’t give up!”

I hear that the hardest part of getting yourself known is actually getting people to read/listen/view your creative works. They can be the greatest things in the world, but if you can’t get people to give them a chance, you ain’t goin’ nowhere. I know this as both a musician (yes, I really am in a band) and as a writer. As Dark Pen, I have a certain small amount of notoriety. And when I say small, I mean it. I’m not being disingenuous here — thems just the facts. I write BDSM, and it doesn’t matter how good it is because when it comes to getting the word out, let’s face it: 50 Shades notwithstanding, the number of people who like BDSM is pretty small.

Oh, and don’t get me started on 50 Shades. Really. Just don’t.

I know I write pretty good sex scenes. There are main stream authors out there who TRY to (like LKH), but I’m sorry, most of them just aren’t very good. Not that those people aren’t good story tellers — their own successes are confirmation that they are — they don’t write good sex scenes. And believe me, there’ve been many times when I’ve wondered if I’m good at writing sex scenes but nothing else. I suppose that the later chapters of Avatar, the ones you haven’t seen yet, will give me some indication in that. Or maybe not. I mean, if you’ve gotten this far in the story, you’re obviously at least somewhat invested in the characters.

I know I’m not alone in wondering if explicit sex combined with good SciFi/Fantasy is just not interesting to people. Maybe people just don’t want to be jerked in two different directions in one book. A little sex here and there in a good SciFi story is fine. Or some SciFi in a good sex story. But both? I just don’t know.

A1 books, who distributes my hard core writing, will be putting one of those hard core books up on Amazon. I’m leery of Amazon, but they’re the big fish in the pond right now. Bigger than Smashwords. And as such they have the clout to tell the credit card companies to go fuck themselves when they try and censor creative works in the name of whatever morality they want to push. Yes, moral credit card companies is a serious oxymoron — much like Fox “News”, but, like the religious right, they are sneaky. They chip away at your freedom, counting on the fact that you won’t really notice, or, more likely, you’re just too embarrassed that you like to read about a piss-drinking, masochistic eighteen year old girl to complain about what they’re doing. (You just cringed there, didn’t you? C’mon, admit it, even if it’s only to yourself. See? THAT is why they’re winning.)

So back to Avatar. I’m unsure if I’m going to take a break from it or not before I make that final push to finish. I love the story, but I feel as if it’s dragging. Writing, creating, really, is a mood thing. A good project will pull you into the mood. It won’t let you go and it’ll keep slapping you until you’re finished. Avatar is a good project, but I think it’s slapped me too many times.

I have written something like 22 chapters that haven’t been posted yet. Now, because of the story arc, I can’t just post them all, then go back to writing more. These things have to be done in order. But I really feel as if I’m closing in on the ending. It’s a ways off, but I can see it. I just don’t know if a break would be good for the story or not. Plus there’s the attention span of my audience. I mean shit, some of you guys have been around since the beginning. Probably not many, but a few. I know because I’ve got your emails — yes, I keep all of them. And I really appreciate them. But it’s been years, and I don’t want to keep dragging it out. Even for what’s turned into a serial, years is a long time.

So, no answers at the moment. No idea if I’ll take a break or not. Every time I sit down and decide to work on something else, Avatar is there reminding me I’m not finished. That’s both good and bad. Now I have to decide if it’s more bad than good. Even if I do take a break though, I have at least 10 chapters that I can post with no problems. At my current rate, you’ll be reading for a while even if I do take a break.

Thanks for sticking with me. Thanks for reading. You guys are great!

Corporate Censorship and the Theocratic States of America.

If you’re not interested in reading about my thoughts on Paypal and the theocracy the USA is becoming, feel free to skip ahead to the portion after the three asterisks (***). Otherwise, read on, but beware. I’m not pulling any punches. The time for that is over.

So everyone’s breathing a sigh of relief because Paypal backed off their corporate censorship bid. Well, maybe not everyone. I’m not, and I’m sure there are other people who aren’t either. Because it isn’t over. And it won’t be over until we have laws in this country that protect our rights.

We have laws like that, you say. Do we? Really? You could have fooled me.

The Frog in the Pot theory was mentioned on one of the blogs I read, and it’s a theory that the government — Republicans and Democrats — have been using for a long time. My hot button with the Democrats is gun control. They’ve been chipping away at Second Amendment rights for a long time. There have been some reversals of that in recent years, but with the good comes the bad. And this time, it’s a whole lotta bad: Fundamentalist Republicans.

It’s one thing to run the government using a fiscal philosophy and there was a time when Republicans did that. No more. Now the government is the dog that’s being waged by a theocratic tail. Ah. Theocracy. It’s not much better than an Idiocracy. But I’m not going to mince words anymore. I’m going to say it straight out:

It’s the rabid Christians that are causing this problem.

Oh, I can see some of you shaking your heads, but you know it’s true. Are the Jews or the Muslims trying to get the bible into our education system? our court rooms? the halls of our government? No. It’s the Christians.

Now I’m not gonna go off here and say All Christians Are Bad. They aren’t. In fact, I’m betting that the vast majority of them aren’t. But the vocal ones are. They’re ignorant and proud of it. They think people like Palin, Michele Bachmann and that barbarian from the Middle Ages Santorum are smart. And somehow they’re gaining control of our country.

Enough of that. Back to Paypal. Paypal has a leg to stand on because if there’s one thing here in America we’re proud to say we’re against, it’s sex. Sex is evil. It’s like a drug, and you know how we feel about drugs! We gotta stamp them out! Well, except for the ones we can make an obscene profit on — or are government approved. Like having sex only for procreation (which is why we don’t need birth control). Anyway, Paypal was able to contemplate banning completely legal fiction because if they were brought to court, they’d win. No good, Christian, law-abiding American would read that horrible trash. Sex with dogs. Pseudo-incest. And Rape — which is always bad unless it’s State Sponsored Rape (you know, like all those bills our theocracy keeps passing), or where everyone knows the girl was a slut. How do we know she’s a slut? Well, she’s taking birth control pills!

Never mind that there is no such thing as “pseudo-incest”. The major reason why incest is BAD is because of biology, plain and simple. Because of bad gene reinforcement. But of course, in this country, talking about a biological fact is verboten.

Note that I said the major reason. I should have said ONE major reason. There are others that are not so easily pinned down. Power dynamics between parent and child would be another. And I’m sure there are more.

But murder is bad. Horrific murder, described in loving detail. Described in ways that show you how to get away with it. That kind of fictional writing is in thousands of books, and no one cares. It’s on TV almost every night, and no one cares. But bring that truly evil thing called SEX into the picture, and It Must Be Stopped.

This thing with Paypal isn’t over. Not by a long shot. They’re gonna do what the anti-abortion and gun control crowds do — slowly nibble around the edges until your right to read what you want is gone. Hell, if you want to read about a seventeen year old boy pounding the shit out of his high school teacher, you’re already out of luck — unless we’re talking about violence. Because seventeen is too young to be having sex. In this century, anyway.

So please keep your eye out. Watch carefully what these fuckers, and by ‘fuckers’ I mean monopolistic corporations (Paypal) and the coming Christian Theocracy, are doing to us. I’m not saying you shouldn’t believe what you want. I’m saying you need to stop from trying to force other people to believe it.

The Christians say “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And that shows the fatal flaw in their thinking. What if I don’t WANT to be treated like a Christian? Sure, there are commonalities in our beliefs. I don’t want you to walk around slapping people, for instance. But when you push your religion on me. When you push a free government into adopting YOUR morality, and YOUR beliefs couched as scientific fact, you’re slapping me in the face. Keep that shit up, and I assure you I won’t be turning the other cheek.

***

So, on to other news. I’ve almost completed a major story arc for Avatar. This makes me a happy camper, even though it’ll be a while before you guys see it. I’m working hard to wrap the story up. Today, I’ll be posting chapter 62 which for me means I have eighteen other chapters written, but not edited. Yes, I could put them out faster, but things towards the end of the story are getting complicated. Yes, I know where I’m going, but when I get there with you all, I don’t want you to be thinking “What the fuck?” because I missed something and f’d up the story. So I’m posting slowly. Now, once I’ve finished the story — and I have no idea when that’ll be in spite of knowing how I’m going to get there — I’ll be trying to edit as fast as I can and post weekly.

And finally, please remember that there are links to paid content on this blog. If you buy something off Amazon, feel free to rate it. The Amazon story is softer core than my other books, because it’s more mainstream. Of course, I still think it’s a good story, or I wouldn’t have posted it. And when I say softer core, I don’t mean the sex isn’t hot and descriptive. I just mean that there’s not as much BDSM in it as I usually write. I would have put it in there, but I was afraid Amazon might ban the book. Again, with the censorship. But I have somewhat less of a problem with Amazon doing it because it’s their site and for now, I have other places to sell my work. Paypal, on the other hand, is all but a monopoly, not to mention it’s just a fucking pay service. Like my bank, they should have absolutely NO say in what I buy with MY money.

So have fun, enjoy this latest chapter, and feel free to email me about what you like or don’t like in my books. Or, you can comment here.

Avatar and other writings

Jan 27 2012

Well, it’s a new year. Hope you all had a great time doing whatever it is you do at year’s end. We spent our time with good friends, playing board games and enjoying great (geeky) conversation.

I’m posting a new chapter of Avatar today. Hope you all will like that. I’m trying to bring things to a close in the second Establishment book for a number of reasons. One of which is well, it’s gotta end sometime, right? Besides, I have all the plot lines set up — I just have to actually line them up to make sure everything works. From your perspective, I’m posting chapter 60. From mine? I’ve got probably 16 more chapters already written, and even more to write to finish things up. So don’t worry — the story won’t be ending anytime soon.

I’ve worked pretty hard on Avatar in the last year. Gotten more chapters posted and gotten a lot of plotting done. It’s not easy, but it’s been (mostly) fun. However, other writing has suffered because of it. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing about that. Concentrating on Avatar to the exclusion of everything else has its advantages. But it has some severe disadvantages as well.

I do want to write some actual SciFi someday. And Some Day is gonna have to be sooner rather than later, cuz I ain’t gettin’ any younger. I won’t be writing it under the Dark Pen name, so once I DO write something, I’ll have to hope that hints to you guys about where to look for it help get it sold.

Speaking of which, thus far that hasn’t worked. The hints I mean. I did post on twitter that something has gone up. Not SciFi, but some erotica with a BDSM slant. Let’s just say that the response is well… lacking. To say the least. Over the years I’ve had a lot of people tell me I should do commercial writing. “Commercial” as in putting up the writing on sites OTHER than purely adult ones. So I did, and I’m going to link it in the side bar over there. What you do with that info is up to you.

Anyway, I hope that this New Year will be good to all of us. I think in a lot of ways it’s going to be a rough one. I hope that reason and reality will prevail, but thus far — at least in America — I haven’t seen much to make me believe it will. Perhaps I’m wrong. That would be awesome.

Finally, thanks for all the emails I’ve been receiving about Avatar. I hope I’ve gotten back to all of you, but it’s possible I’ve missed a few. If so, I apologize. Enjoy the new chapter and please take note of the top link.

The New Year

This is just a quick note to thank all of my readers and followers.  While I love to write, and would probably do it even if no one read it, writing is a gazillion times better when I know that people are out there enjoying it.  So thank you for reading, and thank you for your emails.

For us, 2012 is tonight.  A new year and one that I suspect will be a very tumultuous one for our country.  That’s fine — maybe the changes will be good ones.  I’m hoping that it will be a great year for me and mine.  I have a few goals that I’d like to achieve, so here’s to hoping I succeed.

As for you all out there, may your new year be excellent as well.  And thank you again for reading!

    Happy New Year.

Avatar for the Holidays

Dec 17 2011

Well, here’s to hoping the holiday season is finding you all well. You might (or might not) have noticed I haven’t been blogging much. The reason for that is because it would be extremely difficult for me to keep politics out of the blog. I am so utterly and completely disgusted with the government, so despondent over what they’ve done to our country, that the best I could do is rant. People don’t want to read a rant. And while it’s my blog, I do like it when people read the thing. Plus, politics are slippery. I know that I stopped reading Michael Z. Williamson’s books after I’d read his blog for a while. A more conceited, arrogant asswipe I’ve rarely encountered.

So, that’s what I haven’t written in the blog. Politics and the idiocy going on in this country have been pretty overwhelming for me.

Anyway, I present to you the latest chapter of Avatar. I really am working hard to finish this book, but there are a huge number of loose ends to tie up. Plots to converge, characters to bring in and a Circle to complete. I have worked on nothing BUT Avatar for months, believe it or not. Hell, I haven’t even put out a commercial book this last year, although I did write something back in June.

That’s gotta change though. I love Avatar, but if I restrict myself to only working on _it_, I’ll probably fall out of love. I feel the press from other stories that I want to tell, and, quite frankly, try and sell. I do have one thing that I’m going to put up on Smashwords and Amazon — hopefully in the next few days. It’s a very nice, romantic, BDSM (of course) story. Of course, I can’t put it up under the Dark Pen name because well, Dark Pen stories contain completely fictional accounts of completely fictional characters who are not above the State Approved Age for sex, having sex. And worse, they’re enjoying it, and we simply can’t have that in this here “Christian State” of ours (theocracy anyone?). Okay, enough politics. But you see how quickly this shit can affect something someone wants to do, yes? Even when what they’re doing isn’t illegal and concerns FICTIONAL WRITINGS.

So I’ll be posting under another name, which sucks for me. But we’ll see how things go with the story. It’s a short story — like twenty thousand words or so — that was rejected by a company I submitted it to. Of course, they couldn’t be bothered to keep enough control over their people, and the person who rejected it was fired — and they lost my story in the shuffle. Nice, eh?

I hope that you and yours enjoy the holiday season. I have every intention of doing just that. But I will leave you with these last thoughts:

“When did the future become a threat instead of a promise?”

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

September 11th — Ten years later

Everyone is thinking and remembering THE September 11th today, and that’s as it should be. We shouldn’t forget that we were attacked by radicals from a foreign nation and we should never forget that they specifically targeted civilians. They are honorless scum, and deserve little more to be gunned down and shoved into an unmarked grave. Or buried at sea.

We should not forget those people who responded to help others that day — whether they were professional Firefighters or just people off the street who saw a problem and helped. And we shouldn’t forget that too many of them lost their lives as well.

We should never, ever forget the soldiers who were put in harm’s way overseas to prove that you may NOT attack our country and walk away. We will come for you. We will find you.

Just as important as all those things, we should never forget what our politicians have done to us. How since we were attacked, they have so often done our enemy’s work for them. How they’ve stolen our liberty and turned to fear and fostered ignorance in an effort to advance their own agendas. You’ll note that I’m not naming a party here as I feel that ALL of our so-called leaders are guilty of this. Some far more than others, and it’s truly criminal that they will never be tried for the treason that they committed.

It isn’t just the men and women in our armed services who have a responsibility to protect our country. We who are not serving that way have a responsibility to ensure that the country those men and women return to is a proud, free country and not one ruled by and for the elite, the politically powerful, the fear mongers or those who would see the United States turned into the very thing that bread the fanatics that attacked us in the first place: A theocracy.

I’ll end this with two quotes by Thomas Jefferson:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. “

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

Avatar for the long weekend

I’m not sure why, but I’ve been doing a lot of work on Avatar lately. I also have no idea how long my current flurry of activity will last. Perhaps I’ve been working on it because I think I’ve filled in a bunch of the gaps that were there and holding me up. Perhaps I’m just taking advantage of a creative spurt. Whatever the reason, I’ve written quite a few chapters in these last three weeks.

My plan is to post the story more often. Since I’ve already written a number of chapters, this should be easy. I’d love to get back to posting once a week until the story’s finished, and, from where you’re sitting, that’ll be a while – even if I posted once a week. From where I’m sitting, I think I can see the end of the tunnel.

I’ve always known where the story was going to end, and for me, the fun was in getting there — even though for a time I wasn’t sure how I was going to get there. I have a much better idea now, which is good. I’m still waffling on a character here and there, and the characters themselves occasionally get out of hand (Jane, I’m talking to you here!), but they are accepting my guidance. Mostly.

Regular life is still… challenging in many ways. There is still too much illness in it for my comfort level, but there’s nothing I can do about that. My job still sucks, and is still in jeopardy — although not quite as much as it was a few months ago. With the level of corporate stupidity being proudly displayed by our company’s ‘leadership’ team, no one is safe. Including the company itself.

Oh, and I’m still pissed at google plus (is the plus the part where they fuck over people who don’t fit their idea of the perfect, easily identifiable user?), and am hoping that Diaspora will eventually get its act together and send me a fucking invite. I put in for one, but ain’t seen nothing other than their “Yeah, yeah, hold your fucking horses” emails from them. Oh well. It’s free, so I really can’t bitch.

I can wish that online ‘services’ like google plus and facebook would make themselves safe for adults to use. Wishful thinking, I know.

Anyway, enough of that shit.

To all the readers that have stuck with me so long, thank you. I write for myself, but I also write for you and you’ve been kind to me. If you’re Stateside, have a safe and fun holiday, and, if you have a wee bit of time, read the latest chapter which should be up sometime today.