Mari Miniatt's Blog, page 21

Teaser Tuesday: A view into Killer (rated R)

I have been teasing people on Twitter all day with short lines from my three works. Fledgling (You can buy that), Killer (out hopefully in October), and my Work In Progress (slated for 2011 release).

Here are the first 1,000 words (about), for Killer: And like always, things may change, it's in rough draft, so enjoy warts and all.

The blood flowed like molasses away from the body. It laid across the back hallway, limp, lifeless, and headless. Swen shook his head. Vincent nudged the unattached h...

Fan Fiction: Good, Bad, and Ugly

I have mixed feelings about fan fiction. I've written some myself. 99% of those will never be seen. So how do I feel about it?

As a Fan:
It's fun: You can think about your favorite characters and put your ideas to paper. It's a homage in a way. But even when I was writing mine, it didn't feel right. It must have been the writer in me. I liked doing it. But the characters I came up with, became more interesting to me.

It's practice: What a great writing exercise. You can try out a lot of differen...

Writer fuel

Writer Fuel:

I define writer fuel as the food or drink you must have to get the brain going. You can do other things, such as take a shower, to get the synapses moving, but the fuel is needed to maintain the energy.

Here is my favorite, inspired by the coffee shops.

Poor Man's Mocha (or the damn shop is closed)

1 cup of skim milk.
1 tbsp baking cocoa powder
2 packets of splenda (or sugar what ever you like)
1 shot of espresso.

Heat the milk in the microwave in a tall coffee cup. Mix in the cocoa and ...

Auto play videos? You just lost me.

Warning a rant ahead

I am not a web site designer expert. I know a little HTML, I know why css is used. But as you can see (I use blogger) I don't design websites. But I use them.

Why? Why do supposed professional sites, that are set up to "help you with your website traffic" make a fundamental mistake.

You click on their page a few second later suddenly a video plays, loudly. The worst ones will have very little written content. Look this is something I know not to do. If you run one of these s...

The birth of an idea.

Done with my writing yesterday. I wrote almost 900 words on my WIP. I changed the ending to chapter 8 in Killer. So I come home and sit down to do some business and promotion stuff with my books. Something starts to nag me.

Mummies.

Mummies have been cropping up in my conversations and my thoughts in the last few weeks. Mummies? Why?

So I hit wikipedia. I start to read up on mummies. Then I read about bog people. I knew about bog people. I had read the articles of remains found in peat bogs, tha...

Characters are Formless Spawn.

@ZiggyKinsella that runs the blog The Feckless Goblin posted this question on Twitter. "What's your top tip for developing the characters in your book?"

I could tell you I spend days in research, I take out long questionnaires and fill them out. I could tell you  I have notebooks full of dates and times and mini stories backing up the character. I could tell you that, but those techniques do not work for me.

I have tried them. And sometimes when I get stuck I will do a little "what if" scenario...

In Defense of Those Naughty Words.

For the rest of this post. I will substitute a letter and @ for the swear word. Just to be nice.

"Lose the swears."

That is another oft repeated suggestion. But just that, nothing to back it up. Again, if I was given a good reason why, I would reconsider.

Lets explore why I don't mind having them. First draft did not. But the first time you met Vincent, after Beka stumbled in on his feeding. His line was "That was unforeseen."

In the novel it is: "That was a f@ up."

Which says more about his chara...

Trends and me.

Okay, it's a vampire book.  Okay, you either hate them now or love them. Here's the thing, this is my story and I don't want to be told to change it to make it more sellable.

Don't get me wrong, if someone, whom I respect, came up to me and said "Why don't you try this to make your book better." I would listen.  But lately, I have been getting well meaning people that just don't understand why I wrote my story.


A little background for those that are just tuning in.  This story, characters, and ...

Authonomy

I am going to give Authonomy a try.

What is that? It's a place for authors to put up their writing and have other authors judge it, give feedback on it, etc. And it is own by Harper Collins. Which has taken a few of the books that have risen to the top of the lists and offer contracts to the writers. Not a lot, my count is five, but the company is watching the site.

You hear good things and bad things about this place. So far this has been my experience.

Pro:
The upload was easy, at least if you...

Insanity or creativity

Riding home on the bus today, listening to my MP3 to block out the woman yelling at her boyfriend on her phone, loud enough for everyone to hear. I shuffled until I landed on a Dr. Steel song.  And I really understood the lyrics.

Who is Dr. Steel? He is a musician, a mad scientist, a toy maker, future ruler of the world, no seriously, check him out HERE

But the song Build the Robots, struck a cord with me today. It's not just about building robots. Its about an obsession, to "Make the world a b...