And now for the OTHER half of my writing style. I published the goth stuff first, because it was easy and meant less to me emotionally.
What I care about is children's and YA literature. That's what moves me. And the first book I wrote, and my Masterpiece, is Wild Children. As of today it is published and purchasable on the Amazon Kindle Store and Smashwords. In a few weeks, Smashwords will finish reviewing and it'll be on other major online bookstores.
Wild Children was written in a rush of artistic inspiration after a five year writing drought. I could not be more proud of it. It is deeply philosophical, it is tragic and uplifting, and it's about children. Not just in general, but told from the perspective of five different children. It was my first real experiment in first person, deep point of view, voice intense writing. I could not be happier with the result.
Now to update my author pages everywhere, and maybe do a little advertising!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Cupcakes
Today, my bad little children, we're going to talk about Cupcakes. Not the delicious frosted kind, the other Cupcakes. If you're a fan of the new My Little Pony cartoon and you have very dark tastes, you've certainly heard of Cupcakes by now. If you haven't... well, that was your warning. You may not want to read this.
I just read it today. I've been putting it off for weeks, which is dumb, but I honestly expected it to be terrible and disappointing. Now that I've read it, I think it's worth a blog post both as a writer and as a personal issue. Even though I'll push this post down almost immediately with one about Wild Children publishing.
I'll start with a review. If you don't know where this is going, Cupcakes is an infamous MLP fan-fiction story about Pinkie Pie brutally murdering Rainbow Dash because the secret ingredient in her delicious cupcakes is pony meat. Fan fiction almost never meets my standards of writing quality, but this does. The text and story could use some tightening to remove awkwardness and increase punch, but the characters are very well portrayed and the duality of perky pony cuteness and gory violence is sharply contrasted, which provides the horror. That right there is the core of Cupcakes. I was surprised to find that it's standard modern horror. Something cute turns violent. The emotions it produces are visceral and strong, and it's really a successful and fairly well written story.
Which brings us to where I become fascinated. Why write this at all? Why the buzz? Why did I want to read it? Why is there what I will refer to as a Cupcakes community, currently spearheaded (I'd say) by Crookedtrees and Ask Pinkamina? Isn't it an odd combination, liking My Little Pony but something as dark as serial killer horror? Why is this all important to me, personally?
The best way to sum it up is with the goth adage 'The brighter the light, the darker the shadow'. And that ties into the very basis of the horror style that Cupcakes uses. Artistically, contrasts make things powerful. They provide depth, and make stories and characters relatable. My Little Pony is a very good show and its fans love it dearly, and it is very sweet and very positive. That makes it perfect for combining with dark artistic elements. Then Party Of One happened, and MLP begged for it.
Cupcakes was written before the episode Party Of One, which changed the Cupcakes community radically and turned it from merely a quirky horror story into a phenomenon that connects with some of us emotionally. In the episode Cutie Mark Chronicles, Pinkie's childhood is revealed to have been very grim, so much so that she never smiled until she hit puberty. Too many grown up abused children looked at the miserable Hell of her childhood and the manic silliness of her adulthood, and we said 'I understand perfectly.' Two weeks later, Party Of One showed Pinkie mistakenly believing her friends had abandoned her and her fun life was over - and she devolved quickly into madness. A cute joke, except that when combined with the look at her childhood, we understood that, too. As the crowning touch, when Pinkie thinks her happy life is over, her hair goes back to being long and straight like it was when she was a child. Because her mother referred to her as 'Pinkamina Diane Pie' in that flashback, any time Pinkie is shown with straight hair she's assumed to be unhappy and the fans call her Pinkamina. It all tied together into a consistent and much deeper character concept than the character had ever shown before. A level of character depth the show has been giving us in general.
It also showed real signs of much darker themes lurking in this candy sweet show. Cupcakes is based on the idea that since Pinkie is weird and crazy and manic, it's a believable leap to base a story on her being so crazy she doesn't know it's wrong to kill people to make sweets. Current versions follow that if the happiness ends, Pinkie will break. It's a much smaller leap than Cupcakes to suggest that she'll break by committing murder, and once she starts she won't be able to stop. If your childhood is bad enough, you learn to function and survive when everything about your life is outside the bounds of sanity.
Put all that together, and the serial killer pink pony fascinates many people, myself included. And I just read Cupcakes today and saw where it started, and it got me thinking enough to want to write this down.
I just read it today. I've been putting it off for weeks, which is dumb, but I honestly expected it to be terrible and disappointing. Now that I've read it, I think it's worth a blog post both as a writer and as a personal issue. Even though I'll push this post down almost immediately with one about Wild Children publishing.
I'll start with a review. If you don't know where this is going, Cupcakes is an infamous MLP fan-fiction story about Pinkie Pie brutally murdering Rainbow Dash because the secret ingredient in her delicious cupcakes is pony meat. Fan fiction almost never meets my standards of writing quality, but this does. The text and story could use some tightening to remove awkwardness and increase punch, but the characters are very well portrayed and the duality of perky pony cuteness and gory violence is sharply contrasted, which provides the horror. That right there is the core of Cupcakes. I was surprised to find that it's standard modern horror. Something cute turns violent. The emotions it produces are visceral and strong, and it's really a successful and fairly well written story.
Which brings us to where I become fascinated. Why write this at all? Why the buzz? Why did I want to read it? Why is there what I will refer to as a Cupcakes community, currently spearheaded (I'd say) by Crookedtrees and Ask Pinkamina? Isn't it an odd combination, liking My Little Pony but something as dark as serial killer horror? Why is this all important to me, personally?
The best way to sum it up is with the goth adage 'The brighter the light, the darker the shadow'. And that ties into the very basis of the horror style that Cupcakes uses. Artistically, contrasts make things powerful. They provide depth, and make stories and characters relatable. My Little Pony is a very good show and its fans love it dearly, and it is very sweet and very positive. That makes it perfect for combining with dark artistic elements. Then Party Of One happened, and MLP begged for it.
Cupcakes was written before the episode Party Of One, which changed the Cupcakes community radically and turned it from merely a quirky horror story into a phenomenon that connects with some of us emotionally. In the episode Cutie Mark Chronicles, Pinkie's childhood is revealed to have been very grim, so much so that she never smiled until she hit puberty. Too many grown up abused children looked at the miserable Hell of her childhood and the manic silliness of her adulthood, and we said 'I understand perfectly.' Two weeks later, Party Of One showed Pinkie mistakenly believing her friends had abandoned her and her fun life was over - and she devolved quickly into madness. A cute joke, except that when combined with the look at her childhood, we understood that, too. As the crowning touch, when Pinkie thinks her happy life is over, her hair goes back to being long and straight like it was when she was a child. Because her mother referred to her as 'Pinkamina Diane Pie' in that flashback, any time Pinkie is shown with straight hair she's assumed to be unhappy and the fans call her Pinkamina. It all tied together into a consistent and much deeper character concept than the character had ever shown before. A level of character depth the show has been giving us in general.
It also showed real signs of much darker themes lurking in this candy sweet show. Cupcakes is based on the idea that since Pinkie is weird and crazy and manic, it's a believable leap to base a story on her being so crazy she doesn't know it's wrong to kill people to make sweets. Current versions follow that if the happiness ends, Pinkie will break. It's a much smaller leap than Cupcakes to suggest that she'll break by committing murder, and once she starts she won't be able to stop. If your childhood is bad enough, you learn to function and survive when everything about your life is outside the bounds of sanity.
Put all that together, and the serial killer pink pony fascinates many people, myself included. And I just read Cupcakes today and saw where it started, and it got me thinking enough to want to write this down.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
A Rough Tease
I'm sitting on at least half a dozen chapters of Quite Contrary. I love posting my roughs, and from a business perspective as long as I don't post the whole book, it's just a teaser. I'm over halfway through the book now, approaching what I think will be the three quarters mark, and I have to make the painful decision when to stop posting roughs. I don't get feedback anyway except from friends privately reading, but it makes me feel good that some people are reading. But it feels unwise to post the whole gol dang book. Now, as I write the last chapter of Part 3, I have to figure out what to do.
On the plus side, no amount of distractions have made me lose the thread. Mary demands my attention, and things are about to hit the crisis point - if a book about being chased by a wolf doesn't come pre-crisised.
On the plus side, no amount of distractions have made me lose the thread. Mary demands my attention, and things are about to hit the crisis point - if a book about being chased by a wolf doesn't come pre-crisised.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Kindle All Stars like me!
So, I'm here to make a very exciting announcement that everybody who will ever read this already knows about. I have been accepted for the Kindle All Stars anthology project thingy sorta ebook. The editor has a web page that I will TOTALLY READ SOMEDAY.
Here is the thing, as I understand it. I'm taking the epublishing route, as are a lot of new authors. Bluntly, the legacy publishing system is a mess and there's no guarantee anymore that you'll get published, ever, no matter how good you are. On the epublishing side you can at least keep writing, build up a library and followers, and create something from nothing. And you WILL start from nothing, which is where I'm at.
This used to be sort of true with legacy publishing, and sometimes you'd get successful people who would find New Talent and show off collections of their stories because... well, honestly, authors look at each other and go 'Dude, EVERYONE needs to read that story you wrote about the guy with the bees in his brain.' So now with the epublishing market the anthology thing is starting again. Harlan Ellison and Alan Dean Foster are both sponsoring this and putting in their own stories, and New Talent will get to have their own stories appear side by side with these big name legacy authors.
We don't get a penny off of this. No one does. We get people to learn we exist. All the money goes to the Center For Missing And Exploited Children, and they could NOT have chosen a charity I like more.
So this is all extremely awesome.
Now I just have to rename my entry. Seriously, it was a fairy tale and I was under no pressure to name it properly at the time. I've never been good at naming anyway, and I left it at 'A Rat Tale'. That just won't do.
Here is the thing, as I understand it. I'm taking the epublishing route, as are a lot of new authors. Bluntly, the legacy publishing system is a mess and there's no guarantee anymore that you'll get published, ever, no matter how good you are. On the epublishing side you can at least keep writing, build up a library and followers, and create something from nothing. And you WILL start from nothing, which is where I'm at.
This used to be sort of true with legacy publishing, and sometimes you'd get successful people who would find New Talent and show off collections of their stories because... well, honestly, authors look at each other and go 'Dude, EVERYONE needs to read that story you wrote about the guy with the bees in his brain.' So now with the epublishing market the anthology thing is starting again. Harlan Ellison and Alan Dean Foster are both sponsoring this and putting in their own stories, and New Talent will get to have their own stories appear side by side with these big name legacy authors.
We don't get a penny off of this. No one does. We get people to learn we exist. All the money goes to the Center For Missing And Exploited Children, and they could NOT have chosen a charity I like more.
So this is all extremely awesome.
Now I just have to rename my entry. Seriously, it was a fairy tale and I was under no pressure to name it properly at the time. I've never been good at naming anyway, and I left it at 'A Rat Tale'. That just won't do.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Defining Innocence
As a writer, and being fond of YA as well as goth (Man, maybe I'll do The Cult Of The Necromancer's Children after all) lit, I have to know how my characters work. This leaves me trying to come up with definitions for things we're usually content to leave with 'I know it when I see it'.
And I was watching Kiki's Delivery Service, because it's AWESOME, and I got an inspiration to update my theory of 'innocence'.
Innocence is a tough one, and it's bread and butter if you're writing YA. I mean, what is innocence? It's not ignorance. I'm fascinated by stories of abused children, and you can see shocking innocence in a child who's prepared to commit murder because she's been abused sexually for years. That's an extreme example, but that's why I'm using it. You know it when you see it, and you see it in young children (and sometimes old people) who know too much. And that gives it even more power.
So what is innocence? My new theory is that innocence is system of ignorance, not the ignorance itself. It is the set of attitudes and emotions that come along with viewing the world as something new that you're still figuring out. Any knowledge, no matter how much the innocent has, is considered a drop in the bucket and fresh mysteries are around every corner. It's taken as a given that they're around every corner.
For a cute example, turn over a rock. The jaded person won't bother. Why? There's dirt under there. For the innocent there might be bugs, a weird damp patch, someone's lost keys, or in extreme cases a dragon. Who knows? Every rock is a new possibility.
For an example on the other end, take sexual relationships. Stories of teens winding their way through their early relationships are charming because of the innocence. Heck, even late teens. Two seemingly identical scenarios (difficult, because attitudes change behavior, but possible). Subjects meet someone in a bar, strike up a conversation, get drunk, have sex. One of them spends the whole time asking him/herself questions like 'How far will this go? Should I kiss her? Is this love? Does she like me?' The other knows how this will go, and is expecting it. They may have both done this before and have equal experience, but one seems much more innocent than the other.
It is the attitude that the world is open-ended and full of possibilities, or that the world is predictable and completely understood, that differentiates innocence from jaded corruption. I think I've got it this time, and it's a useful tool.
And I was watching Kiki's Delivery Service, because it's AWESOME, and I got an inspiration to update my theory of 'innocence'.
Innocence is a tough one, and it's bread and butter if you're writing YA. I mean, what is innocence? It's not ignorance. I'm fascinated by stories of abused children, and you can see shocking innocence in a child who's prepared to commit murder because she's been abused sexually for years. That's an extreme example, but that's why I'm using it. You know it when you see it, and you see it in young children (and sometimes old people) who know too much. And that gives it even more power.
So what is innocence? My new theory is that innocence is system of ignorance, not the ignorance itself. It is the set of attitudes and emotions that come along with viewing the world as something new that you're still figuring out. Any knowledge, no matter how much the innocent has, is considered a drop in the bucket and fresh mysteries are around every corner. It's taken as a given that they're around every corner.
For a cute example, turn over a rock. The jaded person won't bother. Why? There's dirt under there. For the innocent there might be bugs, a weird damp patch, someone's lost keys, or in extreme cases a dragon. Who knows? Every rock is a new possibility.
For an example on the other end, take sexual relationships. Stories of teens winding their way through their early relationships are charming because of the innocence. Heck, even late teens. Two seemingly identical scenarios (difficult, because attitudes change behavior, but possible). Subjects meet someone in a bar, strike up a conversation, get drunk, have sex. One of them spends the whole time asking him/herself questions like 'How far will this go? Should I kiss her? Is this love? Does she like me?' The other knows how this will go, and is expecting it. They may have both done this before and have equal experience, but one seems much more innocent than the other.
It is the attitude that the world is open-ended and full of possibilities, or that the world is predictable and completely understood, that differentiates innocence from jaded corruption. I think I've got it this time, and it's a useful tool.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Quite Contrary INDEED
So, I spent the last several days in a haze of madness, unable to think about anything but writing. As a result, I am proud to have new links for you!
Chapter 8: Rose Red
Chapter 9: Pizza In Purgatory
Chapter 10: Her Only Friend Isn't Her Wolf
This ends part II of the book, and since there's like 3 or 4 more parts I'm starting to wonder if the book will be rather long. It's Mary's fault. I love writing her.
Also, I'm in negotiation for Wild Children's cover art. By far the best thing I've ever written, I'm strongly looking forward to publishing it soon.
Chapter 8: Rose Red
Chapter 9: Pizza In Purgatory
Chapter 10: Her Only Friend Isn't Her Wolf
This ends part II of the book, and since there's like 3 or 4 more parts I'm starting to wonder if the book will be rather long. It's Mary's fault. I love writing her.
Also, I'm in negotiation for Wild Children's cover art. By far the best thing I've ever written, I'm strongly looking forward to publishing it soon.
Friday, July 22, 2011
So, what AM I writing now?
This blog has been slightly less useful to me than my DA account, because I have been unable to post any of my in-progress roughs. What good is a writer's blog if you don't know anything about what he's writing?
This post is an experiment in fixing that problem!
My current project is a book entitled 'Quite Contrary'. It follows the adventures of a nine year old girl named Mary. As always seems to happen to everyone who gets lost, she has an amazing and magical and unbelievable story to tell. Unfortunately for her, that story is Little Red Riding Hood. Unfortunately for Little Red Riding Hood, Mary Stuart fell into it.
But you can't get the flavor of a book from descriptions. How about some rough drafts of the chapters so far?
Chapter 1, Mary, A Rat, A Wolf, And An Unfortunate Change Of Clothes
Chapter 2, Here There Be Fairy Tales
Chapter 3, Kickin' It In Fairyland
Chapter 4, Girl Meets Girl Canceled On Account Of Wolf
Chapter 5, Blondes Who Hunt Trolls
Chapter 6, Mary Is Briefly Happy
Chapter 7, Freaky Viking Romance And A Fast Exit
The chapters don't have actual titles, but I felt some way to differentiate them might be nice
This post is an experiment in fixing that problem!
My current project is a book entitled 'Quite Contrary'. It follows the adventures of a nine year old girl named Mary. As always seems to happen to everyone who gets lost, she has an amazing and magical and unbelievable story to tell. Unfortunately for her, that story is Little Red Riding Hood. Unfortunately for Little Red Riding Hood, Mary Stuart fell into it.
But you can't get the flavor of a book from descriptions. How about some rough drafts of the chapters so far?
Chapter 1, Mary, A Rat, A Wolf, And An Unfortunate Change Of Clothes
Chapter 2, Here There Be Fairy Tales
Chapter 3, Kickin' It In Fairyland
Chapter 4, Girl Meets Girl Canceled On Account Of Wolf
Chapter 5, Blondes Who Hunt Trolls
Chapter 6, Mary Is Briefly Happy
Chapter 7, Freaky Viking Romance And A Fast Exit
The chapters don't have actual titles, but I felt some way to differentiate them might be nice
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