Every day I spend about ten minutes touching up my face.
Image via yenhoon on SXC
First concealer, then blusher, eyeshadow and eyeliner, with a final buffing of finishing powder to pull everything together.
Despite my boyfriend thinking the entire exercise is unnecessary, I would rather show the world the most polished version of my face possible.
And it was on one of these mornings when I realised that make up isn’t all that different from editing.
Unless you’re into masochism webfiction, you WANT the world to see the most polished version possible of your story.
Even with webfiction, the urge to go back and fix things is there.
First you need foundation and concealer to smooth out the edges of your story and correct any plot holes. If the story’s basis is uneven, there’s no point working on anything else.
Then you need blusher, to add colour and breathe life into your story, and to make your characters have shape and definition.
Then the eyeshadow and eyeliner, the flair and drama and emotion. The best bits, shown off to their best.
Finally, the finishing powder. Blend your edits together, remove irksome typos, make the finished story seamless.
This is a silly little update, but I thought I’d spread the fun.
As you may recall, I ran a blog tour for the print/ebook release of Above Ground last November, with prizes up for grabs.
One of the prizes was a mini foldable character of the winner’s choosing. Onge, the winner, picked Silver.
I had great fun designing the mini Silver online, but it doesn’t compare to how cool it is to see a photo of the final result. Bless his grumpy face.
You’ll have to ask Onge how hard Silver was to assemble. :-)
p.s. I am 99% positive that my NEXT release is going to be a Jake/Fang novella, covering how they met and ended up with the Lakeside pack. I’m already working on it now – aiming to start posting mid-year. Woo!
A short and sweet blog today to point you to two excellent science fiction short stories: The Last Question by Isaac Asimov, and A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber.
1. A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber
There is no atmosphere… bitter cold… only way you can breathe is to dig up a pail of liquid oxygen and heat it…
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth has been dragged far from the sun’s orbit, this is one creepy little tale that nonetheless grabbed — and held! — my attention. Well, I say it’s creepy, but then it takes an unexpected twist. You’ll have to read it to find out.
One of the reasons I enjoy straddling the science fiction / fantasy line with Above Ground is that I have the chance to play with werewolves and high-tech gadgets at the same time.
Much of the world building and gadgetry of the story has existed in my mind for years… so it gave me a very strange sense of deja vu when, throughout the course of writing, I stumbled across the same concepts.
Take Google’s Project Glass.
In Chapter 10 of Above Ground, Emma is harassed by a blogger/journalist called Mike, who suspects her of being involved in a government plot. He wears a pair of sunglasses that double up as a computer, very similar to what Google envisioned.
Excerpt from Chapter 10:
Mike touched his glasses, adjusting whatever screen he was reading. “You touched out on this level,” he said, “but there was no record of you touching in.”
“You got that information illegally,” Emma said, nervous. “The privacy acts—”
“So you don’t deny it?”
“I’m not a fare evader,” she replied. “I paid for my fare in cash, and forgot that I didn’t need to touch out.”
“In cash?”
“It’s archaic, not illegal.” Or so Emma hoped. If Liam had lied to her….
“Either way, I don’t really care,” Mike said, dismissive. “I’m not writing that piece anymore, not when there’s a bigger story out there. The theatre,” he added, once again flipping through screens on his glasses. “I ran checks. You’re the only one who went above ground this morning who has come back. The only traceable one, anyway. If you hadn’t touched out, I wouldn’t have found you.”
He pulled his glasses down for the first time. His eyes were small, bloodshot, the blue pupils fixed on Emma. “You bought two tickets to the theatre; I know you were there. Tell me what you saw. Give me the exclusive, and I’ll make you look like a hero.”
Check out Google’s version:
Then there’s the Nokia 888
In Above Ground, phone are flexible, adaptable, and shape shifting. Snap them onto your wrist. Project holographic screens. Unfold them into normal phones. Clip them onto your belt.
Excerpt from Chapter 4:
King’s phone beeped. He glanced down, read the message without unsnapping the phone from his wrist. He’d opted for the latest model—a thin, flexible strip of smart plastic which could be worn almost anywhere—and the sight of it made Emma long for her own phone, as inconvenient and bulky as it was. She felt naked without it, defenceless. The thought of being locked up in this tiny room, cut off from the world with no means to call for help, was terrifying.
And lo and behold:
Rather than feeling bummed about my ideas lacking originality, I’m intrigued by how similarly people think. It is pretty incredible how quickly technology develops.
Although, really, if all our predictions came true, we’d already be driving around in flying cars.
It’s easier to start with what I DON’T want to accomplish.
I’m NOT going to set any reading goals, because reading distracts from my writing. (Besides, that time I read 120 books in a year? I had no social life.)
I’m NOT going to set any blogging targets, even though I would like to update this blog more regularly. Every year I resolve to update more often, and every year I fail. Clearly this tactic isn’t working.
So what AM I going to do?
Resolutions For 2013
Write one book to completion.
If I tell myself to finish a particular book, I won’t. My brain is silly like that. So I’m keeping the goal general enough to make sure I at least write something.
Participate in a short story anthology.
Last year I appeared in Best of Fridayflash: Volume 2. The year before in Tales for Canterbury. And the year before THAT I was in 12 Days 2010. I’d like to keep up this tradition, so if you’re organising an anthology get in touch!
Find balance.
Last year I fell off the tweeting/blogging wagon, my writing output was fairly consistent but too slow. Rather than set impossible individual targets, I want to organise myself to make time for writing, online stuff, my day job and a social life.
Yes, that’s it.
Ultimately all I want to achieve in 2013 is to fairly accomodate everything, without feeling like I’ve let something slip. I’m a Libran, after all. We like balance.
A.M. Harte 