It's been cold here lately which makes all my joints hurt and makes writing difficult if not impossible. Which is why this batch of meme answers are rather overdue. Four days worth beneath the cut. Oops? Let's just say that joints are evil.

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Day eight: What's your favorite genre to write? To read?

To write: supernatural themes, fantasy, m/m romance. To read: fantasy, history and auto/biographies. That was easy!

Day nine: How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

There isn't a process per se - usually the idea comes to me while I'm in the bathroom. Doesn't matter what I'm doing - taking a shower, brushing my teeth, whatever - the bathroom is the Room of Wisdom, aka RoW. Nearly every idea for plot or characters or dialogue has come to me in the RoW. I've also gotten a lot of ideas from my dreams, which usually results in waking up, staggering half asleep to the laptop and getting down enough to be able to work with it when I'm awake for the day. On occaision, I'll wake up completely and write solidly for several hours before going back to sleep.

No great revelations of writing secrets here, I'm afraid. It just happens when it happens, and usually the RoW or my dreams is when or where it happens.

Day Five: By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

I'm not sure who the youngest would be, most of my characters are in their mid to late twenties or thirties. In fact, most of the time, I don't really state their age, just make it clear that they're adults. Actually, now I think about it, the youngest is probably Chase, aged seventeen, for the currently stalled Clockworld project which was to be a series of stories for young adults in the sci-fi genre.

The oldest would definitely be the Archangels. They're all older than time itself, and immortal with it, though not immune from injuries or death. It's hard to find a character I write that is older than the Archangels, considering that!

Day Four: Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

One of the first stories/characters that wasn't appallingly Mary Sue drivel and will never see the light of day because of it's awfulness is the story The Corazon Empire and the lead character, Dregen. The Corazon Empire was a sci-fi-fantasy story set on a planet called Corazon, with a city-continent of the same name. The rest of the planet was uninhabitable, resisting even the most advanced terraforming techniques. The lower levels of the city were full of pollution and garbage and was where the lowest social groups lived, the poor and homeless. As well, it was the part of the city given over to drug trafficking and prostitution. The highest levels of the city were where the rich lived, the rulers, the socialites, the politicians and the religious order that was the main religion for the Empire.

The story followed Dregen from childhood, born to poor parents and living not quite in the lower levels but near. He was gifted with music and his father was a trader who died in a space accident when Dregen was twelve. At thirteen, his mother sold him into slavery and Dregen was taken down into the lower levels of the city to work for his owner. When he reached adulthood, he was turned into a rent boy. It could be said that this is not exactly the happiest of backstories but I chose to make Dregen's life in the brothel a happy one - he had friends, he had an adult encourage him in his music, he found a place to hang out with like minds who loved music, he joined a band. He was good at his job and well paid and got on well with his clients.

In his twenties, Dregen met two acolytes from the temple in the upper levels of the city. At the same time, political machinations were going on and Dregen and his new friends and others were caught up in the political games that ended with the planet itself taking revenge on the ruling class. The city was destroyed as the residents who realised this wasn't a joke fled into space on deep-space freighters in an exodus looking for a new home.

The story is full of all sorts of cliches of the genre: mystical powers, made up science and technobabble, magic, politics, poor boy is elevated to almost messiah status. It was around 210K words all up and I don't really have any plans to revist it and rewrite it or fix it up or anything.

Yesterday was a busy day so I didn't get the chance to post day two of the meme. Not that my answer to that was terribly long, but time got away from me.

Day Two.
How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

Oh boy. A lot. I tend to have a cast of hundreds, mostly supporting because no one lives in a vacuum and people are going to meet people as they go on their journies. I don't really have a preference either way for writing men or women, but most of my writing is m/m so therefore the characters are predominantly male.


Day Three.
How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

It varies because names are something that I always find myself wildly indecisive about. One character, for instance, I wasn't at all satsified with the name I gave her and kept changing it, going back and doing a find/replace on her name every time I changed it. Finally, I polled my LJ friends to see which name they prefered and it was one that I hadn't used up until that point. I changed her name - again - to fit the results of the poll and the name stuck.

Usually, I'll look at baby name sites or historical name sites, particularly medieval. I'll look at sites that focus on names from a given nationality, such as French names, when I'm writing a French character. Sometimes, I've used names that are historical. Rarely will I use a name that I simply like the sound of because, as with aforementioned female character, I'll find that if there's no background to that choice, I'll keep changing it in a frustrated quest to find the name that fits the character. I suppose having done medieval reenactment and working out persona names and stories/histories helps in that regard, too.

For places, if I get really stuck, the Place Name Generator is a great tool to get ideas from. Another good resource is Seventh Sanctum. The Fantasy Name Generator is another great source for ideas.

Writing Meme Day One: Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

So far, there are two. I am, I admit, my own harshest critic but there are two projects that are like my babies to me, even though one isn't finished and the other needs to be beaten into some semblance of acceptibility before I even trot it past one of my Awesome Editors. That one is a completed first draft, the first one is about half way through.

The Order of Shadows Trilogy: is half finished, I started it a few years ago intending it to be one novel and it's grown into a trilogy. The reason I haven't sent the first novel out for editing yet is that I want to finish all three for one thing and for another, I know how much I hate it when I'm reading a series and it isn't finished yet, with no clear sign of when the next book in the series will be released or, in some cases, if it ever will be released. The frustration at being cut off half way through a highly engaging story and left with a cliffhanger has made me determined not to do the same thing and I want the first drafts of each novel finished at the very least. The story is set in a dystopian future where humanity has returned to a medieval, agrarian lifestyle sans the majority rule of the landed/titled classes but with an overall rulership by a seemingly benevolent quasi-religious order called the Order of Shadows. The story follows an accolyte of the Order as he uncovers the truth about the history of the world post the Apocalyptic event that set back technology to the middle ages and his companions that he meets along the way. Book one is set in the Temple of Shadows itself, inside Mount Broken (a play on words of the real name of the mountain - Brocken) in Germany, book two is set in the catacombs beneath the city of Paris, France and book three will be set in Russia. The events take place five hundred years in the future.

Broken Wings: is completed, and now I need to go over it and make it read like a story of some kind rather than a hodge-podge of words and ideas. The latter is all very Dali-esque but doesn't really make for a good narrative that people will want to read. I need to understand that as well as being my own worst critic, being my own favourite comedian isn't really conducive to writing a good story and in-jokes are all very well and good... unless no one else can get the joke. The story is set in the present day with the Apocalypse looming over humanity. (Hm, I'm detecting a theme here.) It is set in Scotland, the Vatican and Sydney, Australia and features Archangels, demons, humans, war, and the beautiful coastline of my country. This is a m/m romance novella, clocking in so far at 50K words but I'm sure that word count will change drastically by the time I and my Awesome Editors have beaten it into shape. My love of this story is firstly the idea of it, even if I know I have to alter a few things so as not to send medievalists like myself into a raging fury (I know how nitpicky I can be of anything set in or with a basis in medieval history, so I know I have to alter a few things to make it clear that this is fiction). However, my main love in this story is the character of Archangel Gabriel, who I am not ashamed to admit is my baby and continues to surprise me no matter how much I write him. Just when I think I've got a handle on him, my muse decides to take an unexpected turn with the character that makes me love writing him all the more.

Both stories required a lot of research and world-buildling. Research is something that I am good at and I love it. Everything I've written has involved tremendous amounts of research; once a research junkie, always a research junkie, I suppose. I've learned a lot in the course of researching things for these stories. World-building has never been a particular forte of mine, but in the cases of these two stories, I've found myself creating worlds that, while set in real places, are fantastical enough to be, I hope, plausible as a possible future or alternate present. Both stories also meant I spent a lot of time playing around with Google Earth, particularly Order... and I've found myself becoming distracted by random tangents as I work out how far a horse could travel in winter from Mount Brocken towards Paris and what historical landmarks one would find on the way, the sort of terrain that needs to be covered. There's also the joy I get from writing certain characters; in Order... it's the Varangian Guards, who are the protectors of the Royal House of Russia and can be hired as expensive and efficient mercenaries. In Broken Wings, it's Gabriel and his brother, Michael.

The quickie I submitted to Dreamspinner Press has been accepted for publication. If you don't have an account with them you can create one and request the newsletter during sign-up. If you do have an account, just log in to make sure you've signed up for the newsletter.

Echoing others here on my flist, DSP is having a contest on their site at the moment:

The Easter Bunny has been hippity-hopping around Dreamspinner Press’s web site, leaving Easter eggs hidden in various places. There are twenty-five Easter eggs on different pages. If you want to hunt for them, email the names of the products where you find them to ariel@dreamspinnerpress.com before 6 PM Eastern Time on April 1 to be entered in a drawing for $50, $25, and $10 gift certificates. The winners will be announced the evening of April 1. See if you can find them all!

And so now, to bed. For it is 1am and I really must stop this cycle of going to bed around 4am and waking up three or so hours later.

A wonderful cause that Serena Yates and I among many others are participating in is the E-Book Benefit. From the site, the E-Book Benefit is The eBook will include all kinds of stories - gay, straight, romance, paranormal, any kind of original short story that the authors choose to write. This eBook will be a gift from us to anyone that donates to a cause geared towards the aid of victims of violence and forwards us the receipt.

More about the E-Book Benefit can be found here. There's also a Twitter feed here.

To see who the participating authors are, go here. And please do donate for this wonderful cause, aiding the victims of violence/violent crime.

An article from The Guardian that I found quite interesting, Ten Rules for Writing Fiction, it's The Guardian's 'survey of established authors' tips for successful authorship'. I know I'm guilty of using 'then' far too often, I have to break myself of that habit.

And for interest's sake, Michael Moorcock talks about The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot, which also makes for an interesting read.

I was watching a documentary on ABC2 the other night about war photography. It was very interesting - and heart wreching - and one of the interviewees said something that has stuck with me solidly since I heard it.

He said (paraphrased): when we imagine scenes in our mind, do we imagine them as moving images or as still photographs?

I actually had to think about this and I wasn't entirely sure. At first I was positive that I imagined things as moving images, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that no, I imagine things as still photographs, snapshots if you will. I thought about the opening battle scene from Gladiator, remembering a discussion I'd had with Cav some years back about a similar thing, and realised that yes, my mind focuses on the scene as a series of snapshot stills rather than a moving scene.

This led me to realise that when I come up with a scene that ends up being the starting point for a story, I see it either as a jumble of words with a still picture or as a still picture. So, imagining a 'scene' isn't as accurate as I'd thought to describe the process, rather, imagining a still photograph from a scene. Which is an even narrower view of what ends up being written down.

It struck me as interesting, so now I ask: how do you all imagine things, see things in your mind's eye? Is it as a still photograph image or a moving scene?