J.L. Peridot's Blog, page 6

Website and blog redesign

You might have noticed the little overhaul of my website last month. I have been feeling very nostalgic for a more minimal, old-school web. Social media is turning into recommendation media, adtech is taking over, and my ageing laptop and smartphone batteries are getting hammered.

I���ve missed the days of simple, basic-bitch websites. I was a teenager when I started building things for the web, and wanted to recapture those halcyon days of my youth, complete with Times New Roman font. That said, I don���t totally want to go back to the 90s because yuck, accessibility got increasingly marginalised for a while there.

So here���s the new jlperidot.com ��� lo-fi styles:

https://jlperidot.com

It���s everything I want for my author website and blog right now ��� information and a bit of personal flair with no creepy tracking or cookies.

My webserver does the non-creepy kind of tracking, and I hope there���s a way to automatically delete the logs after a certain amount of time for reasons previously stated.

Responsibility through ridiculous inaccuracy

Censorship is not my jam, but personal responsibility is. My first book, Chasing Sisyphus, is a futuristic cops-and-bounty-hunters romantic suspense that includes fighting, shooting and people dying.

So, naturally, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to learn some of the mechanics of real-world violence. It helped that I had access to self-defence subject matter experts, the internet and useful books. (For anyone interested in this topic, Rory Miller���s Meditations on Violence was educational in ways I didn���t expect.)

At some point, I came across a talk on knives that included a note on how you really kill someone with a knife versus how Hollywood kills someone with a knife. It���s no understatement to say this terrified the crap out of me and, despite my excitement at learning a new fact, I was absolutely not in a rush to share it in my writing.

Quite often, it seems like real-world accuracy affords you respect in fiction writing, particularly around historical accuracy and scientific accuracy. I fully concede my perspective on this may be skewed. I could just be living in a filter bubble of media consumers who love to hate on fictional elements that don���t reflect real life.

Anyway, Chasing Sisyphus was my first book and I was still getting my head around where my boundaries were with all this. Sharing true-to-life mechanics on knife violence just for dramatic effect ��� risking people using this information to nefarious ends ��� struck me as a hard no.

Is this the dreaded, awful thing we call censorship? It doesn���t quite feel that way, does it? That information is still out there, accessible to audiences. I just don���t want to be the bearer of it. This doesn���t feel like self-censorship either, because that would presume I actually wanted to write about that kind of thing in the first place.

Maybe it���s conceited to presume my book would even reach someone who���d weaponise this knowledge against another human being, but the (paranoid) part of my brain that imagines possible futures instinctively recoiled from this one. Graphic, gritty and gory is fine, but I���ll stick with the unrealistic, laughable Hollywood flavour of it. Even if it means my writing idols will never respect me.

Christy Cooper-Burnett takes 3-6 months to write a book

How long, on average, does it take to write a book?

CHRISTY COOPER-BURNETT: Usually anywhere from four to six months. Once the story is put together in my mind, I start taking notes on my iPhone notepad. I do this for a few weeks as things come to me, and once I start to write I keep at it until it���s completed, writing every day. I was only three chapters in on my last book when my publisher offered me a contract. Talk about pressure! Especially since I never know how a book is going to end. I let the endings develop organically as I write. It typically comes to me at 2am or some other inconvenient time!

My upcoming release was just an idea when my publisher contacted me to see what I was working on. I told him I had an idea swimming around and he asked if I could put together a synopsis for him. I had it to him the following day and signed without one word of the new book written. I must admit, that made me a tad nervous. I signed the new contract in mid-September and had the final draft to him on March 1st.

Passport to Terror by Christy Cooper-Burnett

What really happened to Jack the Ripper?

They always say, ���Be careful what you wish for.���

I wish I had been careful.

I could���ve easily sold my time travel machine for billions and walked away. Instead, I opened The Taylor Travel Group where I take the elite on vacations into history, to a time and place of their choice.

But when a big-time movie studio hired my company, I sold my soul.

What was supposed to be a few days of method-actor immersion in nineteenth-century London went horribly awry. Now America���s hottest starlet is dead, and Jack the Ripper is on the loose in modern-day Los Angeles. And it���s all my fault.

I was careless enough to let history���s most ruthless serial killer slip out of the past. Am I smart enough to match wits with him and send him packing before he vanishes forever?

Genre: Sci-fi time travel adventure

Buy this book

About the Author

Christy Cooper-Burnett is an award-winning author based in California with a degree in Administration of Justice. After retiring from the new home construction industry she now writes full-time in Southern California where she lives with her rescue beagle, Gertie. She has one grown son who inspired her to write her award-winning debut novel, No Way Home. She began her writing career later in life, but once she started she couldn���t stop. Her work focuses on creating relatable stories and characters that transcend genres and encourage readers to imagine what they would do if thrown into the unique, imaginative situations her protagonists end up in.

christycooperburnettbooks.comChristy Cooper-Burnett on BookBubChristy Cooper-Burnett on GoodreadsEnter the giveaway!

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Why I expire posts

One thing that tripped my anxiety upon entering the world of publishing was the marketing. Now, I know this is something creative people either consider necessary or a ���necessary evil���. I tend to have one foot in each camp and shift my weight depending on the circumstances.

There���s a nice way to go about promoting your work, and then there���s a gross way.

And there���s also nice ways that can become gross over time in the same way that well-intentioned actions can have unintended consequences.

Death by data

In recent years, someone pointed out to me that as we go about our daily online lives, we���re generating reams and reams of data that don���t just disappear once we���re done with it. This was no surprise. It���s something I knew back from when I dabbled in website server admin ��� if you let your server logs build up for long enough, eventually they take up all the space on the hard drive and sometimes your website crashes.

But it���s not something I���d thought about much in the context of servers I weren���t managing myself. The thing is, maybe it���s something we could all do with thinking about ��� the same way it might be responsible to think about how much trash we throw out and how much food we waste.

But yes, back to book marketing

I���m not against cover reveals, launch day book blasts, social media parties and all that. They���re the kinds of things that bring people together, create excitement, inject some colour into the busy stressed-out lives we live.

They serve a purpose in the moment, sometimes a brilliant purpose of giving people genuine joy and community.

What worries me is what happens when that moment has passed. When all of those discarded social media and blog posts hang around for years after, like plastic cutlery left by irresponsible picnic-goers.

It���s not the same, but also, it kind of is the same. All this content, en masse, takes up space on data centres around the world. Data centres whose facilities keep chugging away just to stash forgotten content.

What a way to turn a nice thing gross.

No longer being on Facebook and Instagram left me with plenty of time to think about what I could do to take some weight off the problem. I mean, just getting rid of my accounts and data from those platforms meant I would no longer be generating ephemeral plastic cutlery on those servers, so that���s a start.

But as an author who keeps a blog, is there anything else I could to have an (albeit small) impact? Perhaps, yes: deleting old posts.

Want to know more? Here's how it works on this blog.

WIP report: 30 Aug 2022

Currently: 54,944 / 50,000

THE FIRST DRAFT OF YET WE SLEEP, WE DREAM IS DONE.

Thank you for following my WIP journey for the last few months. I���m well behind schedule, but still on track to hit a critical milestone (ie. getting it to my editor on time), so I���m fine with this. I���ve had to make the executive decision to delay the beta read, so that will come in due course.

For now, I am going to get some rest, eat something delicious, and take a few days off before the big revision.

~ A n d , b r e a t h e . . . ~

Backstory on Birdwatchers

Something I haven���t talked much about is the autism perspective in my work. Back when I wrote Birdwatchers, I actually sat down with the explicit intent to write an autistic first-person protagonist. It was a mentally taxing exercise of putting myself in the shoes of someone who saw, understood and interacted with the world differently to how I did.

In my former field of work, we referred to this as creating ���with empathy���. The idea is that what you���re creating is not about you, the creator, flexing your skills and showing off how well you can translate your ideas to the canvas.

It���s about the subject experiencing the environment you create for them. As a designer, my subject was the user of the system or website I was designing. As a writer, my subject is my fictional character.

To respectfully write an autistic protagonist in the driver���s seat of the story, it would be wholly inappropriate to project my simplified conclusions based on external observations onto the character. In fact, it���s pretty rude to do this in real life too. Real people are complex, often judged too quickly before enough data is known about their perceptions, feelings and motivations. Each individual, autistic or otherwise, has a rich complex inner world and subjective experience. (Sonder, anyone?)

So I tried to imagine more deeply what those external observations ��� like rigidity, staring, bluntness, and whatever else has come to be associated with autistic people ��� might suggest about what���s going on inside. Adults are so rarely a case of ���point A to point B��� because so much in our lives will have shaped the way we think and feel.

What if a person doesn���t cling to routine just because they���re fussy? What if they���re fussy as a form of self-preservation in a hostile and unpredictable environment? (In the world of schema therapy, this can be known as a ���coping mode���.) What if bluntness isn���t a sign of low empathy and low awareness, but the laconic tip of a hyper-aware over-thinking iceberg?

It was hard, trying to imagine all this. Working against one���s own habit of lazy thinking is an exhausting endeavour. What I didn���t imagine was how close my imaginings would be.

Years after the story came out, I received an autism diagnosis of my own. To that end, Birdwatchers may well have been indirect shadow work, in that writing Robin���s character allowed me to understand and contextualise some of my own lived experience as an undiagnosed spectrum kid.

This ended up being very helpful, as it galvanised me against the common misconceptions people project onto autistic individuals. I could skip the part where I doubted myself, because I���d already stumbled upon the soul searching beforehand.

I was lucky. Not every autistic person is afforded the space and opportunity to think about this. Many have been conditioned to hate themselves because of certain stereotypes and misunderstandings, compounded over many years. And the lack of autism awareness in mainstream conversation means they���re more likely to encounter harmful judgements before any helpful context.

I don���t intentionally write autistic fiction, but my diagnosing clinician pointed out that the characters I write are all probably autistic because they came from my brain. Recently I learned the term for unlabelled autistic characters is ���autistic coded���, which resonates nicely with me ��� you just are what you are, regardless of what people call you.

Excerpt from Birdwatchers

She looks at me and sits up. Her body is exposed now, breasts heaving as her breath comes back to her. She keeps her eyes on me while she re-does her hair and rests the sunglasses on her head. She smiles.

���Why didn���t you take a picture?��� she asks. ���That���s what you came here for, wasn���t it?���

���N��� no,��� I say. I hold up the camera, fighting the weight of the lens. ���I came to watch the birds.���

She sits back and crosses her legs in front of her. She points her toes towards me, then at the sky, then back to me. She licks her lips.

���So������ Her smile deepens. ���Watch the birds then.���

Read the rest of Birdwatchers on jlperidot.com

Music is Maggie Blackbird���s biggest inspiration

A guest feature by Maggie Blackbird.

When it comes to writing, music is my biggest inspiration. I am a die-hard music fan right from the tender age of four when my father bought my siblings and I our very first record. I even remember the name of it. Juke Box Jive. LOL. Sure, it wasn���t hip, but who���s hip when they are four? I even brought the record to kindergarten for show and tell.

Each time I start a novel, I always have a playlist for the couple. I find the playlist keeps me in the zone while I���m doing dishes or exercising. But for some strange reason, I never created a playlist for S��amus and Shannon, the main couple for His Proposition. And I���m not sure why.

At least one of my main characters is always a die-hard music fan like me in each book I write. This time the person in question is Shannon Nadjiwon. I wanted to choose something a young woman wouldn���t normally listen to. For Shannon, she was all about Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Diamond, and Barry Manilow.

Music for the main character always leads me into researching the music. In a now defunct romance series that I started in the 90s, I had one female lead adore music from the sixties. So I naturally had to purchase tons of sixties music. I find listening to the same music that my main character enjoys introduces me to artists I wouldn���t have explored on my own. Take the Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow thing. I wouldn���t have purchased their songs freely, but once I did, I savoured every note and lyric like a box of Belgium chocolates.

Even listening to a song can inspire me to write a novel centred around it. My dad was not only a die-hard music fan, but also a musician, so music must be in my blood why I am so in love with it. And I don���t stick to my main genre of heavy metal and hard rock. I explore it all from 1950s doo-wap to country and western. Like right now, I am hooked on Waylon Jennings.

Imagine S��amus��� shock when he unearths Shannon passes on contemporary pop and hip-hop that most young women enjoy in this day and age, and prefers Gordon Lightfoot. I have my husband to thank for introducing me to this Canadian artist. He���s introduced me to a lot of music, even country.

So yes, it was strange Shannon and S��amus never got a playlist, let alone their own romance song LOL. I guess I���ll have to chalk it up to being super-busy and playing catch-up after a very crazy 2021 that left me unable to sit at the keyboard for a good six months since so much was going on within my extended family.

But for my next novel I have submitted to my publisher, they had a playlist and their own ���song.��� Yay!

His Proposition by Maggie Blackbird

Her biggest dream���s offered on a platter, but the clincher is, she has to marry a perfect stranger.

When her employer offers the no-nonsense Shannon Nadjiwon the position of chauffeuring S��amus Daugherty, she jumps at the chance. To work for one of Toronto���s most powerful families means she can make her biggest dream of owning a fleet of limos come true, something her female relations tooling away at her Ojibway community want badly for her, and she won���t let them down.

His reckless need for speed cost S��amus Daugherty his license. If he doesn���t marry, as demanded by his overbearing father, he will not only lose his lucrative job with the family business ���the only positive aspect in S��amus��� gilded cage life���but everything Daugherty.

The unpretentious and gorgeous Shannon will make the perfect bride, and S��amus is ready to strike a deal with her. One that will ensure he keeps everything he holds dear if she puts a wedding ring on her finger. However, they face three big obstacles: His family, her family, and a marriage neither truly wants, leaving both wondering if the sizzling sexual chemistry and cozy rapport they share is enough to grasp a happily ever after.

Buy this book

Genre: Interracial Contemporary Romance
Length: 263 pages/75,756 words
Publication Date: August 12, 2022
Publisher: eXtasy Books

Excerpt

Shannon hit the turning signal and guided the Audi into the parking lot of the coffee shop. Speaking on a personal level was forbidden, one thing she���d learned from her boss the very morning when she���d started working for Elite Limousines. Although sociable clients existed, to engage in more than idle chitchat was a no-no.

Anything could upset a client, even favoring the wrong basketball team. Speaking about the area���s history, something she���d studied up on, was a safe conversation. ���I understand your community was named for equestrian bridle paths in the early planning stages.���

���Yes, so I���ve heard. I must admit I haven���t really bothered to dig any deeper. I s���pose I should.���

Asking S��amus why was out of the question. Yet, it was rather strange he wouldn���t take an interest in the history of his neighborhood. She stopped at the drive-thru board so he could order.

���What would you like?��� he asked.

Even a simple question coming from his mouth was a nibble to the lobe of Shannon���s ear and carried a hint of m���dear. Such sophistication. She flexed her thigh muscles, an automatic response to tense or uncomfortable situations. ���Excuse me, sir?���

���Ah, ah, ah.��� She glimpsed him waggling his index finger. His wide mouth formed into a teasing grin. His emerald-green eyes, what the grass of Ireland probably looked like, crinkled at the corners. ���What did I say about formality?���

���Once again, what is your order, please?��� The drive-thru attendant���s query came through the intercom.

���One moment. I���m in the middle of speaking to my driver.��� S��amus��� tone was dismissive, as if used to making someone wait. He settled his delicious gaze back on her.

His discourtesy to the attendant rolled off Shannon. She���d heard the same dismissing tone from past clients. The annoyed hiss coming from the intercom didn���t escape her notice, though.

���You don���t need to keep repeating my name. Now, I asked you what you���d like.��� S��amus reached into the breast pocket of his navy-blue designer suit that hugged his athletic body.

Which sport gave him such an attractive physique? When Shannon had arrived for work at eight this morning, she���d spied a swimming pool and tennis court on the grounds. ���A medium double-double is fine. And thank you.���

���Not a problem.��� S��amus waved his hand in a casual manner. He leaned on the console and spoke at the lowered window. Once he���d ordered, he settled his delicious gaze naughtier than a schoolboy back on her.

Teeth clacking, Shannon pulled up past the drive-thru window so S��amus could pay for their coffees. Her phone was off, but wait until she got home after work and told her friends she���d be moving into the guest house for the duration of her job. For sure she���d receive a more than raving reference from Padraig Harrington the fourth. Her biggest dream was at her fingertips. Mom and Kokum would squeal.

About the author

An Ojibway from Northwestern Ontario, Maggie resides in the country with her husband and their fur babies, two beautiful Alaskan Malamutes. When she���s not writing, she can be found pulling weeds in the flower beds, mowing the huge lawn, walking the Mals deep in the bush, teeing up a ball at the golf course, fishing in the boat for walleye, or sitting on the deck at her sister���s house, making more wonderful memories with the people she loves most.

Maggie Blackbird���s website Maggie Blackbird���s newsletter Maggie Blackbird on BookBub

My Aug 2022 in lists

What I���m working on lately

Yet We Sleep, We DreamAdmin��� so much admin ����Reading for a friendFive-Star CottageDot Club

What I���ve read/watched/played lately

The Dare by Harley LarouxThe Suicide SquadKingdom: Two CrownsThe OrvilleMinecraft

What I���ve eaten lately

Wonton noodle soupDonut holes filled with hazelnut chocolateHam, cheese and tomato baguetteLamb stew with okraPlain roasted almonds

What I���ve pondered lately

How do almond slicers work?Is historical accuracy in fiction worth it if it means your text perpetuates undesirable behaviour?Do humans possess the intellectual and empathic capacity to recognise machine sentience/sapience if it happens for real?From purely a self-knowledge standpoint, how much of a certain race must be in your heritage before you can identify as a person of that race?Could fiction writers make water pipe maintenance sound so interesting that it helps foster a culture of sustainability? (Municipal utilities romance ��� how���s that for a subgenre.)

What I need to research for upcoming work

Effects of radiation exposureMaladaptive coping modesAI doing creative workFamous rebellions throughout historyRegional British accents

WIP report: 26 July 2022 plus excerpt!

Currently: 43,200 / 50,000

My WIP is not where I needed it to be by now, but with just under 7,000 words to go, there���s no time to stop and worry about it. I thought the falling action and denouement would be easy, a free-flowing tumble of resolution that would see me writing at breakneck speeds until The End.

Alas, it���s not like that at all. Everyone gets their emotional resolution in these final scenes and there���s a lot of darning and weaving to do. Who could have predicted that six perspective characters would make for a complicated convergence of story threads? WHO COULD HAVE POSSIBLY PREDICTED THIS?

My partner and I have instituted a new thing in our home to help me get this manuscript done in time to give beta readers a reasonable deadline. We call it our ���hour of power���, where we both sit in the study room and work alone together. Him on his projects, me on this beastie. It���s a lovely sharing of suffering, and I���m so touched by his enthusiasm and support. On my moodiest, most sluggish and unmotivated days, this seems to help me keep writing.

So, a little news���

Project CLAY now has an official title and launch date. Yet We Sleep, We Dream is a steamy SF paranormal romcom landing across bookstores on 23 September 2023.

It���s an Aussies in space story, and I can confirm it contains sex, drugs and casual swearing. Blurb and cover are on the way, but for now please enjoy this excerpt featured earlier this month in Dot Club.

To my subscribers who read this in the newsletter, thank you for keeping our little secret. Another sneak peek excerpt will be coming soon!

Excerpt from Yet We Sleep, We Dream:

���Engineering���s more of a concern. You know, in case the sensors and monitoring are wrong and it���s not just the lights that are out. But that���s why we need to make sure gravity���s all good around the ship, in case someone needs to go down there and check things out. I, uh...���

Is it really necessary to explain this in such basic terms to a figment of his imagination?

And did he really have to explain it out loud?

Am I even speaking out loud?

He huffs a smile to himself and eyes the half-smoked joint again. Funny business, all of this.

But the redhead walks over. Nick is mesmerised by her bare feet across the cold floor. Her footfall somehow seems too thick and loud and physical. Especially physical. He never knew his imagination could be so vivid.

���No, you don���t need to explain it. Although I adore the sound of your voice, young one.��� She runs a cool hand across the back of his neck. ���I knew someone like you. He saw me bathing in a river beneath a twin moonrise and fell in love, the poor soul. He visited the river every moonrise for seven years, hoping to win me over. And then he gave up. And now that he���s gone, I find myself thinking of him, of what-ifs we never gave a voice. Now that I���m near you, I wonder all the more. I lament that even gods can be na��ve.���

���Is that what you are? A god?���

She stands so close he can feel the heat radiating from her body. Her long hair smells like honey and wine. She touches him on the face, thumb brushing the ghost of a kiss across his cheek. Vibrations gather on the tip of his tongue.

Titania.

He knows her name like he knows his own heartbeat. She is here. She is real. Of course she���s real.

���Come.��� She holds out a hand.

���Where?���

���Over by the window.���

Nick drops the tablet and obeys.

Craft and business

Something that���s becoming clear to me is that authoring is just as much a business as it is a craft. And to avoid the extremes of being a shonky sales sleaze or a suffering starving artist, one must walk a very fine and zigzagging line.

Frustratingly, there seems to be a stigma attached to making money from your art, as if creative people are automatons that don���t need to eat food or sleep in a safe, warm bed. Was it always this way or did internet-enabled easy access to media diminish the value of stories and entertainment in our minds?

It���s interesting how money-making norms are different in certain types of creative industries���and how they differ even within a single industry. For example, no one bats an eyelid when a corporate web designer charges premium rates for a clean and modern design, yet Etsy and Themeforest abound with bargain hunters looking for templates in similar styles.

So, what of books and publishing? I know of readers who only acquire free books and almost never buy titles from an author despite having the means to do so. And I know of other readers who don���t make much but will spend on books because they love them and want to support writers and artists dedicated to their work.

The latter are the readers who motivate me to hone my craft and write in a way that hopefully makes it worth their while, though it makes me sad to think they���d have to sacrifice so much while others get away with just taking and taking. One would hope they give back to the world in other ways so at least something balances out in the end.

As an indie author and apparent business owner, this kind of thing is always on my mind.