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Accounts of my disappearance have been greatly exaggerated. Things didn't work out like I'd planned.

On a positive note, there will be a Gothic novella published under my name at the end of April.
The current title is The Rose Garden but the name is pretty generic so it might change.

Nom De Plume

This blog is going offline in...A month, maybe. I'll post a link to the new one once I figure out what it is. See, the thing is, I have done a lot of writing, almost none of it under my name.
 I don't really mind if people know but I feel that a casual observer should have to put at least a little bit of work into figuring out the connection.
Also, I like attaching names to genres and since I intend to be a research psychologist I'll probably be publishing a lot of non fiction under my own name.
This is why having a writing blog with my name on it doesn't make sense.

Bis Spȁter.

How to Deal with Being a Toxic Person

This is a post for people who have trouble getting along with others because of certain personality quirks. I happen to be one of them though that's become less of a problem as I've made an effort to improve. I know it's not about writing but it might apply to a lot of writers since being able to think about negative things makes it easier to write about them. If this isn't a topic you're interested in stop reading.

So, you grew up in a family full of negative people. You hung out with a bunch of "losers".
People don't like you because of how harsh you are, how biting your comments are or how much you dwell on things. They don't like your destructive behavior.

Well, join the club, I guess.

I see posts online about avoiding toxic people. Cutting ties with them is the way to be happier. Articles will tell you how to recognize them. These are the same sites and blogs where the advice is dispensed to cut ties with people who aren't the kind of people you want to be.

I find this advice worrying. It suggests that if you find a damaged thing you should cut and run even if you can do something about it. It's all about the healthy person not being dragged down. There's no real acknowledgement that toxic people are just like you, people. Just like everybody else they can be bad people or good people and maybe they should be avoided. But maybe, just maybe, they grew up differently and don't even know what they're doing.

This post is for people who are toxic; The black holes wandering around haplessly sucking out the happiness. This is for you.

Here's what I know about being the little black hole sucking up everyone's ray of sunshine.

1. People don't like to overthink things or think about them at all. Relatively shallow interactions rule in casual conversation. Gory, depressing details are only for those who you know might be interested.

2. Negative emotions shouldn't be restated. If you find someone who wants to hear about what crap your day is, they still don't usually want to hear you howling like a hound dog. That's something that even close friends and family have limited patience for.

3. Just because you're willing to get as good as you give, listening to misery and hours of detail, it doesn't mean everyone you talk to is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, isn't how it works. You only treat people how you want to be treated if it adheres to standard societal practices. Strangers don't usually like back scratches so you can't give them and never have an itchy back anymore.

4. Don't take things on face value. People, as depressing as it may seem, are more concerned with their own worlds than they are with everything going on, especially with you, even if they ask. It's not necessarily a bad thing. By remaining more concerned with their own things they maintain more sense of self. If you aren't much effected by how people act around you than you're probably egocentric too. Gaining a better sense of how people are different might help you to understand why a person withdraws from a perfectly honest answer.

5. Try not to resent the world. People are adaptable. You aren't stuck being the way you are and neither are other people. All it takes is self awareness to start changing your behavior if you wish. Regardless of what other articles say about withdrawing from toxic people, that's only one way to do things but people generally have their own best interests at heart and harsh judgement just oversimplifies them as people. True, they're oversimplifying you but someone has to take the high ground for improvements to be made. Also, bitterness makes you miserable.

6. If you're engaging in negative behavior take a good hard look at it and really decide if you think it's negative behavior. Explore why others might not like it and figure out whether you hurt people with it. Really try to get in someone else's shoes and, above all, don't decide that because you're in more pain than them or you are more damaged that you've got more rights than them. Being hurt is still bad and different people deal differently with stress and pain. You could be mean to someone and that's the last straw. On the other hand, you could get in a fist fight with someone and it's just another Monday. Generally, when people hurt others it's the person doing the hurting lashing out without thought for the other person. Allowances should be made for the abusive person, despite what others may say, because in certain circles, abuse doesn't have the same gravity. I say allowances meaning consideration for situation and upbringing not a free pass.
That said, hurting people without thought is still not a good thing. There are behaviors that aren't a good thing and if you engage in them you probably haven't really figured out what your thoughts are on them.
If you decide you like the behaviors anyway and they're very destructive, well, for now you're a bad person.

If you decide they're bad and really believe it it shouldn't be beyond you to make a change.

 If you decide they aren't damaging to others and that they aren't necessarily bad, then maybe you should look into different friends because you guys have a difference of opinion and they've shown a lack of tolerance for you.

That is one reason to get different friends; If you aren't really friends and it's nothing but a morass of criticism. Now who's negative?

Book in Progress

I have a friend who is working on a fantasy detective novella. I'm helping him with it. Look forward to the title before the end of summer. :)

Iron Fist Clothing

I have some problems with the Iron Fist series.
Why do Danny and Davos wear such dirty looking robes at the entrance to K'un Lun? There aren't any apprentice monks doing needlessly intricate martial arts training/laundry?
Monastery does not mean dingy. I feel like even making the assumption is insulting.
Maybe I'm wrong but I doubt it. A heavenly monastery at that.

Old iron fist (from the reel) got head to toe dark clothing that looks like ninja garb, complete with mask? New Iron Fist gets pretty(if they were cleaner) green and gold robes that look almost greasy?
Costume design for this show is weird, especially since the monks who rescued him seemed to have plain but unstained orange robes.

WW The Girl (some violence)

I lost my job because of a girl.
I went to France because of a girl.
I got a dog because of a girl, also a lizard.

I should really learn to think for myself. Nah, other people make big decisions based on lots of thought and stuff. I just wait until a nice body part attached to a woman walks by. It's served me well. Sure, I've been in jail a few times and Jacey (my dog) has had to be dewormed more times than I can count but life isn't boring and you just roll with it and things turn out fine.

I looked over at Basilisk my bearded dragon just as the door burst in, a gun went off and his little head disappeared in a spray of blood, his body flung to the far end of his tank.
"What the frack! What the frack! What did you do to my lizard!"
The woman who walked in first turned and shot the man who followed right through the side of his skull. He fell and she turned to me. I couldn't see her eyes behind her shades but she smiled. "He shot your lizard," she explained. "We don't just do that. Sorry."

"Y-you you shot that guy." I saw her smile disappear and added quickly, "he shot Basilisk. I'm glad he's dead." I was pretty unhappy about both deaths but my mind blanked when she took off her sunglasses and shook out her long red black hair. It was happening again. I made a note to mourn Basilisk later because I was about to do something dumb.

"Hi, I'm Maddy and I want to know where-, she pulled a crumpled piece of paper a pocket in jeans that clung to her hips. "Adriana Phelps is."

I stood. "Uh, sure. I knew her a couple of years ago. I'm sure I've got a box with her shit somewhere around here. Maybe she's got the same cell number too."
After a few minutes of shoving and pulling I got the shoebox out of the hall closet. She hadn't left much. I'd only dated Adriana for a few months, just long enough for her to convince me to buy a canoo. She took the canoo. "Here it is," I said, placing the box on the coffee table.
The woman sat down crosslegged and took the top off the Jimmy Choo box. "There isn't much here is there?" she said, taking out a few bottles of dried up nail polish.

"Yep, you want me to make you some tea?"

"No, do you have an espresso machine?"

My heart skipped a beat.

Total Rewrite

So yeah.
I need to rewrite at least seventy percent of the story. I need to change the way the main character gets involved in the mystery and I just generally need to shift a lot of stuff around and restructure it if not replace it all together.

Now I know.
It would have been better if I hadn't gotten so stuck on the work that I decided to ignore its problems until now.

The word of the day is; Perspective.

Also, Wordy Wednesdays will be returning.

I Know the Problems

This story has a rich young lady who goes to a patent office where there are six other young ladies and somehow they all try to solve a murder.

I didn't have to do much ploting to understand the problem. Two separate stories that converge occasionally and when they do you have to coordinate seven characters even if it's only directly from one characters' point of view? That doesn't work.

The second thing I realized is that most of the young women would have to do other things with their time besides sit around. One could go along with the rich young lady, not all of them.

The third thing is that the rich young lady has two young men who might be interested in her. One gets two appearances and the other gets three. They either need to be cut or actually be part of the story.

There. I know the problems.

Here's the stuff that might be important to readers. Don't confuse the narrative unless you know that you're doing so and you have a point. I have no reason to do so. Some say never to do so but I believe a lot of different approaches can make a good story.

A linear plot with one or two mains interacting with things means it's easier to flesh out the details. When I say linear, I don't mean one thing leads to another or chronologically. I mean that scenes connect even if they take place at different times or the correlation isn't immediately evident. A random scene here or there that doesn't immediately connect is cool. Ten might be a problem unless you have a point. There should be connections if things are going to be easy. A book can be this complex thing with many characters and changing to that characters' point of view and that's great but that might not be the way you want to go to write a straight forward story. An epic tale yes, but not something that should have a simple series of events.

Character Profiles

Sorry, nothing today.
All I determined is that using my current main character would be cool but not with my six other main characters. One or the other.

She could have a support character but not six.

I almost feel like the book could be two separate ones.

The only characters that don't mesh are these seven.

Ideas

I want to write a book that has steampunk elements and a mystery.
The main character should be female and the story should be Victorian.

 Main Character
A secretary in an organization.
A rich young lady.
A resourceful young woman.
An undercover agent for another organization who is stealing company secrets.
A group of young women who are tired of being taken advantage of.

Mystery
Someone dies
A series of murders (serial killer)
Theft?

Motivation
The main character is suspected of the murder.
The main character(s) wants justice.

My Plan

This is a tentative battle plan for fixing The Wind-Up Terrier in the first seven days of 2017. Things might change as I find out what I can do.

Sunday
I will be brainstorming. I'll try and figure out what I wanted to do with TWUT and I will be throwing out ideas for the story as if it's not already written. I might dig out some notes about what I wanted it to be.

Monday
I'll be writing character profiles and figuring out which ones sing. I might decide that some work but not for this story. I might decide others are fillers.

Tuesday.
It's time to write an outline. I might try to write out what I've already done and I'll write out other potential outlines. When I first started the book I had only one basic outline of what should happen chapter by chapter and then later I added descriptions. After that I added more plot. I think it became a bit cluttered that way. This time I have details from the original and it's just a matter of picking and choosing.

Wednesday-Thursday-Friday
It's time to begin writing.

Saturday
Time to tidy up and look at what I have, whether I succeeded or I've at least improved the book and my understanding of what I did.

Plan for Rewrite.

I'm going to set a challenge for myself.
Books can be written over a decade or in as little as a few days.
I wrote the rough draft for The Wind-Up Terrier over a couple of months. I did a few more drafts over a few years, trying to add more stuff to it, mostly.
Now the time has come to face facts.
The book might be publishable. It might be alright.

It doesn't work for me.

I'm not going to dump everything but I do need perspective and I do need to figure out exactly what I do and don't have before I can add anything else.  Starting this Sunday and ending on Saturday I will be "fixing" The Wind-Up Terrier. I will be posting my plan of action later this week and detailing what actually happens and my results as I go through the process.

If I am successful, I will have a book published in the first week of the new year which is a great start. If I am unsuccessful, I'm a few steps closer to figuring out what I'm doing.

Wish me luck?

I'm a big fan of Welsh. I don't speak much but I'm trying to fix that.
One of the problems is lack of welsh tv that I can access.
S4C, the public Welsh channel, is getting its funding cut.
There's a petition to try and prevent it and to suggest that maybe allowing subscriptions for people overseas would be a good idea.

https://www.gopetition.com/petitions/non-residents-of-wales-ask-for-s4c-funding-to-be-maintained.html

Books. Progress. Negligible.

So, The Wind-Up Terrier has been written for a while but I'm just not happy with it. I may have to do the unthinkable, for me, and just start from the beginning and redo it, taking things from the old version.

Snow Sands; Through the wormhole, is stalled.

I have a children's book I finished but I don't have a cover.

I have a bunch of things partially written and several short stories fully written.

The lesson here, buckle down and do it. I had been gradually doing things a little bit at a time but I think that locking myself in a closet and working for several hours until I reach a frothing frenzy may be the only way to complete things. Maybe if my work was fine after a couple drafts I could just work slowly but at this pace I'm not sure which way is up anymore when it comes to my plots.

I need to clean out my closet.

People

So, people.
People say they do things because they make decisions about things.
This is not true.

People often get impressions about things, usually unconciously and then make decisions with those impressions weighting the scale down. It's why a company will decide that red is a much better color for a product package than blue and they might spend a whole lot of money determining this. This is why being yourself if you just naturally have the wrong body language doesn't work. Also, only be yourself if yourself isn't too aggressive or opinionated. I can't generally be a lot of the mes that are in my head, when first meeting people. I have to be the friendly, bland me that doesn't overstep. That's professional me, not actually me.

People also say to treat others as you would wish to be treated.
That may be true, but only if you have common expectations.

If you're a person who likes having long conversations about lint or, I don't know, dog breeding and wouldn't mind having them with a complete stranger that phrase doesn't completely apply to you.

Apparently you stay verrrry superficial with initial reactions to find out what way the other person wants to be treated. It has nothing to do with how you want to be treated, it's all them.

I know the phrase often means to be nice but nice doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.

I wish someone had told me that a long, long time ago. It would have saved me some trouble.

This applies to book writing because, for one thing, shiny covers are important, regardless of if they quite match the book. It's also important because writing a book in such a way that, despite any mistakes, the reader likes it because of content they identify with, might be a very good thing. I'm not sure how to do it yet but I am working on it. I know romance novels use formulas for such a purpose. Describing an every-woman main character is a thing, though what you think appeals to everyone can cause some to reject her completely.

It's food for thought, anyway. At least it is for me.

Exposure!

I'm on Patreon now under the name Kaijuurabbit. I've got a thing for large monsters, so sue me.
I'm also on tumblr under the same name.
Patreon is for stories, mostly futuristic or about some sort of conflict.
tumblr is for poetry and rants.

:)

Prey

I've been reading sites that have to do with dating. They deal a lot with hunting behaviors in men and women. They're not entirely wrong or right but they do seem to fly in the face women's magazines. The male sites urge for dominance, though not too much and the women's sites urge that you should make him pursue you.
I don't like being prey unless it's all in good fun so a lot of this stuff wouldn't work very well on me on a first or second meeting. I think it's good to know to put in romance novels, though. It explains a few things I've read.

Murderous Chihuahuas

I've decided to write a book.

The working title is; Murderous Chihuahuas.

For some reason I like the idea of having a pack of Chihuahuas patrol around the neighborhood punishing wrongdoers with their pearly white teeth and doggy jaws of justice.

The book is going to be a series of comedic essays and thoughts and like most of it's kind it may be semiautobiographical.

I think it will be fun, but I do like to spread the insanity around like extra thick peanut butter on a table. I don't know why I want to do it but now I really do want to see a peanut butter covered table.

Hiiiiiii

Hi. Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi!

I forgot my email account. I've been stuck out of this blog for aaaaages.

It feels good to be back.

I'll be doing some real work again.
In the time I wasn't on, I started college. I'm not a teenager but I figured better late than never.

I don't really like college. I'm agoraphobic. Still, we do what we can, right? Also, there're lots of classes online which makes things easier.

I took Theatre and Speech online. Heck, I've taken honors classes online. It boggles the mind.

I'm back on track. Publish date, sometime in...a year, maybe.

The Wind-Up Terrier is on it's way. I'm back to work on the thing and happy with the new approach. Hopefully there will be a finished book in the next year. I know that sounds really optimistic (I'm kidding) but that's all you'll get.

As small recompense, here's the rewritten beginning for the book. Careful of expectations. It is only a rough draft.

We live in intriguing times. The nineteenth century is one of advances in every conceivable arena, of science and commerce, convenience and lifestyle. Think of our grandparents. Those that we are still blessed with can hardly conceive of such strange things as these motor carts, seeming roaring dragons with hard-

Miss Euphemia Hatter closed the book in disgust. This was a primer for dabblers. She sighed. It had been a bit much to hope her brother would have ordered a proper engineering book. 

She placed the book beneath the foldup table beside her and picked up her spyglasses which lay beside a fine camellia patterned bone china cup still half filled with tepid tea and set upon a matching saucer. It was time to engage in one of her favorite breakfast activities, dirigible watching. It was more reward than bird watching. The volatile gas bags that were currently all the rage even exploded occasionally, though she’d yet to see one do so. The papers usually covered the incidents which tended to occur in the cities. The victims were usually well to do, or the servants of the well to do, so there was often some mention in the society pages of some London dandy or a lesser lord “perishing in a terrible tragedy.” Euphemia thought they couldn’t expect much better given how so many floated about willy nilly and didn’t bother to read the operating manual. 

She caught sight of two dirigibles, small cruising models putting across the sky and she flicked down another set of lenses to see them better. She leaned forward in her chair, lips pursed but the two vehicles passed harmlessly by. They’d probably only gotten so close to hail each other or some such. That lot was always so keen to out show one another. An accident was unlikely to happen over Swallow’s . Most occurred above much greater urban centres. London or Paris or, most often of all above Belfast as many dirigibles were made within its limits and, Euphemia had to wonder if the great new toys were whisked off the assembly line not more than moments after completion and driven into each other by foolhardy lords and gentleman. That lot were much too eager to show off and not at all interested in taking care to read the manual or have a turn around an isolated hamlet.  She flicked the lenses back up and the world returned to its customary proportions, the bustling town of Swallow’s Field laying spread before her scant miles in the distance with the small cottages and modest houses of the village her family’s manor and factory watched over spanning part of the way between.

Euphemia sat back and drank the tepid dregs of her tea. It would not be nice to see an accident. She would not wish such a volatile death on even the most vapid lord but, good god, for something of interest to happen in her life. Anything at all! She stood and made her way off the platform, boots ringing out against the metal steps and echoing tinily on the tile of the roof. Work beckoned and she must not disappoint. What would her governess have said? At the door to the stairs down into the manor, Euphemia paused and glanced unconsciously from side to side, though she was clearly alone. She reached back behind her and carefully felt her bustle to make sure it was entirely in its proper place. It certainly didn’t do to leave such things to chance. Secure in that, at least, she patted her pale blue skirts and descended.

She fetched her satchel, full of odds and ends she liked not to be without and closed the manor door behind her though she didn’t bother to lock it, there was no point. She walked down the dirt path in front of the manor careful not disturb her maid and the cook who were busy gossiping in the kitchen garden. They had better things to do than curtsy to her. The walk along the road which terminated square in front of the great big block of a building that her family had earned their fortune from was a pleasant one. She felt it did her good to get the old arms and legs moving before she had to sit at a desk for half the day, besides that, the country side was nice early before the air had got time to sour and it was far quieter than the factory.

The factory was alive with workers, mostly women in their matching dove grey work shifts and crisp white pinafores, working the machines or cutting the felt or gluing and sorting decorations. There was movement everywhere within building and the chatter of voices blended with the clatter of the apparatus. Euphemia navigated the work floor, dodging and dipping where necessary until she reached the great iron stair case that lead up to a platform and office which overlooked the production floor, or at least the landing in front of the office did. Euphemia had a desk on the landing and her brother worked within the office. They barely saw each other, if Euphemia was lucky.

Euphemia settled into her chair, hard and proper as it was. It was the sort of chair her former governess would approve of. She would not have approved of the smile that accompanied the thought. Fortunately, miss Leigh had been bundled off to Bath for the last nine months and, save the dreaded but required correspondence, Euphemia no longer had to maintain the appropriate appearance, she straightened the lace picots of one sleeve, though with enough training, even the most difficult lessons had a tendency to take hold.  She did wish though, that a governess hadn’t been needed. Mother had been gone for five years and father for two. Her brother Benton was the head of the family and had acting in such capacity ever since father had started to decline which had been for a while now. Euphemia sighed. She wondered what would become of her.