A Twist of Things to Come

If so, Hi!

I've fallen into the gay Chinese wizard Fandom hole, and been drawing and doing digital art more.

What about you?

It's a sickness. I am obsessed. I'm also retreating from life in the hellscape of my world at large right now (pandemic, political...shenanigans, etc.) so it works out nicely.

I have worked up a few cheat sheets to explain the context of xianxia tropes and how they work in this particular Chinese drama, because it was made for an audience familiar with the genre, and there is a lot of stuff that they don't explain or that doesn't make sense in a western worldview.

So, I'm probably going to put up bits of that here, as I go, mainly to have it some place outside my hard drive.

***

Here is a video about a character I tend to identify with a lot, because he comes from an upbringing of strict orthodoxy, which he slowly begins to question and eventually confront. I've been there. (He's prettier, a better fighter, and has better hair, but the rebellion against fundamentalism we have in common.)

The subtitles are small, but visible on full screen even though they are white and often against light backgrounds.

I don't even know who is still here, but I can't let Facebook and the like continue to be too much of my life, just for moral reasons. So here I am.

I'm also kind of retreating from the awfulness that is the state of the world at large. I'm fairly happy with my own small corner of life, even if my environment and the national conscience of the country where I live are both going to complete shit.

I received a kidney transplant in December, as a part of the national kidney exchange. My dear husband donated a kidney to a stranger, and stranger donated one to me. I think there were 13 recipient/donor pairs in the exchange, and I can only hope that all of them are doing as phenomenally as I am. Seriously, very mind side effects, if any. They had to wait to taper some of my meds because I could not get one of the others for a little while due to the pandemic, but I'm three months back on schedule now. If there is any effect of the meds, it's probably that my face isn't as thin as it used to be. One of the meds can give you the munchies and make your face a little full. I haven't gained weight, so it's probably the medicine.

In any case, I'm super healthy and very lucky.

***

Recent obsessions include the video game /farming sim STARDEW VALLEY, and the Chinese drama The Untamed, based on the BL novel Mo Dao Zu Shi (translated as either Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation or Founder of Diabolism). It's freaking amazing and I love it. It's fifty episodes of the most fucking romantic shit that has ever been in my eyes. Here is trailer with english subtitles, though you may have to turn on captions to see them:




So, who's still here?

Hello. My last post was about failing kidneys. In December of last year, I received a kidney transplant, and it's going super well (like, textbook ideal), aside from the whole pandemic thing. My husband was not a match, but he donated a kidney as part of a kidney exchange. We are both well, and being really careful.

Who's still here, and how are you doing?

Even though members of my household have been going around muttering things like "Moffat must die", I am still personally hopeful about what is to come with Sherlock and Doctor Who. So there.

This made me LOL:



I do not know where it came from originally, but I thought narniadear and abrynne might be amused by it.

Also by this:




I continue to travel hopefully. :)

I'm seriously considering going this year. People have been talking about it for ages, and something has come up every year. This year I just might make it.

Anybody going? Any suggestions about what to do?

So, I entered the Baker's Dozen Agent Auction over at Miss Snark's First Victim. There were 25 slots for adult fiction, and up to 200 submissions were accepted for those 25 slots. (Submissions were a logline and first 250 words.

I was all excited that I got in, because I thought, "Hey, my logline doesn't suck!"

How it works is, they put up the submissions that made the cut on November 29th. Everyone who got in had to critique a certain number of the submissions, but they were all open to internet criticism, too.

One of the perks for those who made the cut was a critique of your submission by a pro writer and an editor in your category (Adult, YA, or Mid-Grade). After they were open to critiques, I realized that the criticism didn't bother me. Like, I was honestly able to listen dispassionately. That was huge, but I didn't mention it because I didn't want to jinx it. Like, as soon as I said, "Wow, critique doesn't hurt me anymore!" I'd be dooming myself to a truly spectacular breakdown. ;)

Yesterday was the auction. How that works is that the minimum bid is 5 pages. Then bids must be 20 pages higher (at least) than the last bid, and you can't bid a full manuscript until there are at least five bids. I checked just before lunch, and was pleased to see the top bid was 50 pages. I refreshed once and saw that the high bid was now a full manuscript.

That felt nice. My Beloved took me to lunch, and when I came back, it turned out that there had been a bad bid (less than 20 pages more than a previous bid), so the moderator threw it out. This meant that the full bid was also invalid because there had not been 5 valid bids before it. Make sense? I was confused. I went to lunch thinking I'd be sending out a full MS and came back and it was down to 100 pages. But still pretty cool.

Then a third agent swooped in made the 5th bid and then bid for a full, to lock it up. This agent "won" the auction of my submission. It was odd, because I looked at her page and she doesn't list an interest in the scfi/speculative fiction genres. She does list urban fantasy, which you could call mine that, but it has no romantic tensions to speak of. (My protags both have romantic impairments.) But it's cool. Maybe she's branching out, or maybe she thinks my story might have a strong romantic subplot. Anyway, I get to send her a full MS, and she has a week long exclusive on it. I can still query the two others who bid on my story after the week is up.

My head feels asplode-y. I was not expecting that. It's not a deal, not an offer of representation or anything. But I guess it still feels validating. I had just said it was time to start querying. So.

I just compiled my 4th draft from Scrivener. It's 310 pages, and has some formatting issues. Guess I'll have to fix them fast. I'm just all O_o

Not posting much these days. I finished my 3rd draft edits (though I still have a few details to retcon and do some minor fixes here or there).


What I'm looking to do is start a writing group that meets monthly via Google Plus hangout. Ideally, it would consist of 4 people with a finished novel draft they want feedback on. Every month, two people submit 50 pages of their draft. The next meeting, they get feedback and the other two submit 50 pages each.

So the reading load is 100 pages in a month, and you can get feedback on a novel-sized manuscript in less than a year, if all works out well.

The first meeting we'll probably talk about our projects so we can make sure everybody can stand each other's genres and stuff. I'm specifically trying to recruit people I know write well, so we won't have any really really remedial contributors.

PM me if you're interested. :)

If you'd like to beta-read the novel but don't want to submit anything to a group, let me know. I can maybe pay you in straight trade or gift cards or something? :)

I hope that it was great!bi

I was out of town and now I'm sick and I missed a bunch of people's birthdays and now I don't even know who all I missed. I'm sorry. I'll hit you all next year. :(