I took several warbooks to my seaside vacation last month and managed to read three. I’ve never read that genre before and I wanted to get acquainted with it in the name of research for one of my writing projects. My picks were essentially random, from the several dozen old pocket books I inherited from my father and largely ignored because they’re mostly stuff I’m not interested in – books about the Second World War and Vietnam, books about mafia, books about Japan and books based on a variety of successful movies*. Anyway, the three books I read are, in the order I read them: GOING AFTER CACCIATO by Tim O’Brien, AN AFFAIR OF MEN by Errol Brathwaite and AND THEN WE HEARD THE THUNDER by John Oliver Killens. And the extraordinary thing is, not one of them is really a warbook.
A New Mass Effect Fic: Conference Transcript 159
Conference Transcript 159 is a redo of a sexy Saren/Nihlus flash-fic titled “Fluff” that I posted elsewhere a long time ago. It’s a bit of an experiment in form, consisting of pure dialog. I had a lot of fun writing it and hopefully you’ll enjoy it too.
Image: excerpt from Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep by MisfireAnon
PS
This is not the fic that I hinted at in the previous post.
PPS
You can also read it at AO3.
Writer’s Intuition
In an attempt to get back to writing fanfiction for Mass Effect, I’ve been reading and hesitantly poking at some old unfinished pieces. Among them was this rather long short story (about the length of The Candidate), about Saren and Nihlus, of course, tackling some unusual and heavy issues. Like the others, it was unfinished, but unlike the others, it was really close to being finished. I don’t know when exactly I started to write it, but it must have been way back in 2013. When I picked it up a few days ago, it read almost like a fresh piece of (not very good) fiction that I’ve never seen before. Yet I had no trouble whatsoever understanding why it had gone unfinished. At the time when I started it, I simply didn’t know how it should end. The only way I could see it ending was in total disaster, whereas I wanted it to be a learning experience for the characters. Reading it five years and a lot of diverse experiences later, I realized that now I do know how to finish it. And I set out to do it.
Continue reading Writer’s Intuition
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
This unique game draws the player into the frightening world of Senua, a young Celtic warrior, as she’s pushed over the edge of sanity upon discovering that her lover has been tortured and killed by the Vikings. She launches on a dream quest to wrest his soul from the clutches of death, a journey that takes her — and the player with her — through the depths of her personal hell. It’s an experience both disturbing and deeply touching, deeply human. A story of love and courage in the face of torment and despair, presented through incredible acting, stunning visual and audio effects, and last but not least, engaging and fun gameplay. Hellblade is one of those very rare games whose value reaches far beyond good entertainment.
NaNo 2017 Winner
Yesterday afternoon, I finished the first draft for “Under Her Wing” at 50850 words and won NaNo. Yay!
NaNo 2017
This time around, the decision to do NaNoWriMo again came out of the blue. Other than a rather vague idea for a story and the nagging feeling that I should get back to writing, I had nothing in the last week of October, when I remembered that November was a Novel Writing Month. It took me all of that week to come up with a slim outline which doesn’t cover even a half of the plot (read: I’ve no clue how the story will progress beyond that point) and imagery for a couple important scenes. You’re thinking that doesn’t bode well? So did I! But lo, 10 days and 15,000 words into it, I’m making steady progress, I’ve no trouble allocating the time or meeting the daily goals, and my writing, although very rusty indeed, isn’t half as crappy as I expected it to be after five years of break.