Tate Hallaway's Blog, page 20
May 20, 2014
The Saga Continues...
My newest installment of UNJUST CAUSE is up on Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/50932760-unjust-cause-part-9-naked-dragons-on-the-lawn. I feel like the title pretty much sums this one up, "Naked Dragons on the Lawn."
What I really need soon is some cover art for this thing. I'm thinking about commissioning something from someone on Deviantart.... if you know any artists, let me know!
What I really need soon is some cover art for this thing. I'm thinking about commissioning something from someone on Deviantart.... if you know any artists, let me know!
May 14, 2014
More Manga Madness
My son and I have produced our 9th MangaKast, Nine is Fine... in which there is a lot of giggling, spoilage, and squee...
May 13, 2014
It's Tuesday again...
So that means that my newest installment of Unjust Cause is up on Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/49931265-unjust-cause-part-8-of-tops-and-bottoms
In this episode, Alex attempts to play the part of the dom to varying degrees of success.
--
One of the things that I'm enjoying about this experiment on Wattpad is that not only can I be a lot sexier than my NY publisher seemed to have wanted, but sex can also be... silly and more, IMHO, like Real Life (tm).
In this episode, too, I'm showing off my queerer side a tiny bit, something else that got a surprising amount of resistance when I tried it in the Garnet Lacey series. (The book in which Garnet is able to see people's inner gods and goddesses I'd really wanted Matyas' inner god to be a goddess and that was given a very strong no-go.)
I'm not going crazy, by any means, but it's nice to know I can stretch where I like.
In this episode, Alex attempts to play the part of the dom to varying degrees of success.
--
One of the things that I'm enjoying about this experiment on Wattpad is that not only can I be a lot sexier than my NY publisher seemed to have wanted, but sex can also be... silly and more, IMHO, like Real Life (tm).
In this episode, too, I'm showing off my queerer side a tiny bit, something else that got a surprising amount of resistance when I tried it in the Garnet Lacey series. (The book in which Garnet is able to see people's inner gods and goddesses I'd really wanted Matyas' inner god to be a goddess and that was given a very strong no-go.)
I'm not going crazy, by any means, but it's nice to know I can stretch where I like.
May 7, 2014
Podcast and More...
My son and I have recorded our 8th podcast: http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/05/07/eight-is-great/
And... my alter ego was tapped to participate in SF Signals: MIND MELD. This one is about books we've worn out reading. Check out all the great answers: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/05/mind-meld-books-weve-worn-out-re-reading/
And... my alter ego was tapped to participate in SF Signals: MIND MELD. This one is about books we've worn out reading. Check out all the great answers: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/05/mind-meld-books-weve-worn-out-re-reading/
May 6, 2014
Coming to you from Indiana: New Installment
A new installment is up!
In this episode, Valentine reveals more about his past (and his kinks!) Alex finds herself wildly jealous of someone who died over a hundred years ago...
http://www.wattpad.com/48927549-unjust-cause-part-7-kinbaku-and-kitsch
Go get it!
Next episode should be very "interesting" as we say in Minnesota. I would have gone forward and written it for this episode, but I just couldn't write a sex scene while sitting on my mother-in-law's couch!
In this episode, Valentine reveals more about his past (and his kinks!) Alex finds herself wildly jealous of someone who died over a hundred years ago...
http://www.wattpad.com/48927549-unjust-cause-part-7-kinbaku-and-kitsch
Go get it!
Next episode should be very "interesting" as we say in Minnesota. I would have gone forward and written it for this episode, but I just couldn't write a sex scene while sitting on my mother-in-law's couch!
April 29, 2014
The Story Continues!
I just posted another hot-off-the-computer-screen installment of UnJust Cause for you over at WattPad: http://www.wattpad.com/47941159-unjust-cause-a-dragon%27s-confession?d=ud
Which is a giant tease, of course, so go find out what he says!
In this chapter, Valentine makes a startling confession...
Which is a giant tease, of course, so go find out what he says!
April 28, 2014
A Rainy Monday
Shawn, Mason and I had a nice weekend. We spent a good part of Saturday morning estate sale/rummage shopping, which was a blast. There were a couple of church basement rummage sales, including a really awesome book sale at St. Olivet's, which is this beautiful Congregational church close to the Merrim Park Library. In fact, Mason and I were done early and we just sat an admired their gorgeous 'gymnasium.' Shawn and I joked that we were tempted to join the church just for the building.
St. Olivet's was a stark contrast to the house we stopped at that was just down the road from Stepping Stone Theatre (behind the law school). It was... straight out of a Stephen King novel, not only had it suffered HARDCORE neglect (on a squalor level), but, you know how most of the time you can feel the good strong bones of a house underneath all the grime and disrepair? Yeah, no. This house had been born with a mutated, malformed skeleton. Because, even though people had 'remuddled' it over the years, there were pieces that were clearly original that were just... odd. Like the second story... prayer alcove? It looked like people had been using it last as a closet, but it had been built with a stained glass window and a little buildt-in kneeler. The rooms were also all off at odd angles, which were perhaps originally meant to be 'charming' or even 'eccentric' but came off as cramped and wrong after time had worn the beauty away.
Mason, who has a very low threshold for bad vibes, walked in and instantly said, "Oh, no. Let's just go." Shawn and I pushed through with sheer curiosity and, much to Mason's chagrin, we both brought something home from that house. (Shawn got a roll of rope and I found a leather wallet.)
That house was one of the ones that all the sale-rs had to stop and chat with strangers about (which, if you aren't from around here, you might not realize what a BIG DEAL that is in Minnesota.) I would say something to Mason like, "My god, look at this, the original builders didn't even finish off these floor boards..." and the person passing by on the way up the stairs would feel compelled to stop, look, and then comment about some other odd feature they'd seen in the garage or elsewhere. The estate sale workers kept trying to sort of reassure people by saying, "This house is old. It was built in 1913." To which, I replied, "Our house was built in 1911. It doesn't look like this. Something more than time happened to this house." To which, they had no other response than, "The workers are coming back on Monday."
The other thing that pissed off all the estate sale-rs that came through was that, possibly to fund the remodeling, the prices were jacked up. There were things there that should have been marked ten bucks (generous) that were set at SEVENTY.
Mason shadowed me through the whole house saying, "This place is like a HOG (Hidden Object Game)." Because on top of all the weird angles and decrepit-ness the estate sale workers had just piled all the goods in boxes and in tables in a way that just made it all seem that much more chaotic. Even the back yard garden was a mess.
It was kind of amazing, really. It was the sort of place that sticks in your head, and it may have to work its way into a novel, because it's too good to waste, you know?
Sunday we spent doing some housework, baking cookies (for real! I made chocolate chip!) and playing some board games. It was that kind of day because we woke up to a rain that beat down steadily all day long.
During some of my housework, I started a new anime series. I'm now watching Witch Craft Works. I'm not entirely sure I can recommend it. It's weirdly compelling, though. The story is about "an average high school boy" who, it turns out, has a witch guardian who considers him her "princess." A lot of the humor in the story has to do with a shounen reversal. She gets all the power-ups, is popular and aloof, and he's just kind of a pretty/handsome load she constantly has to rescue. Weirdly, that kind of works for me. All the villains and side-characters are female, too, so it's very much a conscious 'see, this is what you look like!' in terms of reversing all the gender stuff.
I'm watching it on Crunchyroll, so it's a new anime, only just having aired this year in January in Japan. There are 12 episodes, and I'm just about to start #4 with today's load of dishes. I suspect that if this anime follows the flow of most 'new-ish' anime, the real action will start now that they've set up the characters and the situation. I feel like it was right about episode 3 or 4 that Rei was introduced in Free! Iwatobi Swim Club and that's when things really started rolling.
At any rate, I'm enjoying that.
Today my plans are to get a good start on my new UnJust Cause installment. I have to say that given time, the serial thing on WattPad is starting to work better for me. I've decided that I'm not allowed to look at my statistics, which helps, and only concentrate on the comments. I have one really faithful reader (who is not actually someone I know outside of this context), so I'm kind of writing this for her. She leaves comments at the end of each chapter and is even starting to try to guess at the plot, WHICH I TOTALLY ADORE AND HAD BEEN HOPING FOR. So, that's working.
More importantly, having the publishing deadline of once a week on a Tuesday afternoon, means I'm writing forward every week. This is a very, very good thing.
Plus, even though I hate it, it seems like my social media blast about the updates are getting re-blogged (at least a friend saw it happen once), so that's kind of all I can hope for.
I really do think this is the sort of thing that might become a THING given enough time. For now, I'm along for the ride... and it's keeping me writing on a project.
St. Olivet's was a stark contrast to the house we stopped at that was just down the road from Stepping Stone Theatre (behind the law school). It was... straight out of a Stephen King novel, not only had it suffered HARDCORE neglect (on a squalor level), but, you know how most of the time you can feel the good strong bones of a house underneath all the grime and disrepair? Yeah, no. This house had been born with a mutated, malformed skeleton. Because, even though people had 'remuddled' it over the years, there were pieces that were clearly original that were just... odd. Like the second story... prayer alcove? It looked like people had been using it last as a closet, but it had been built with a stained glass window and a little buildt-in kneeler. The rooms were also all off at odd angles, which were perhaps originally meant to be 'charming' or even 'eccentric' but came off as cramped and wrong after time had worn the beauty away.
Mason, who has a very low threshold for bad vibes, walked in and instantly said, "Oh, no. Let's just go." Shawn and I pushed through with sheer curiosity and, much to Mason's chagrin, we both brought something home from that house. (Shawn got a roll of rope and I found a leather wallet.)
That house was one of the ones that all the sale-rs had to stop and chat with strangers about (which, if you aren't from around here, you might not realize what a BIG DEAL that is in Minnesota.) I would say something to Mason like, "My god, look at this, the original builders didn't even finish off these floor boards..." and the person passing by on the way up the stairs would feel compelled to stop, look, and then comment about some other odd feature they'd seen in the garage or elsewhere. The estate sale workers kept trying to sort of reassure people by saying, "This house is old. It was built in 1913." To which, I replied, "Our house was built in 1911. It doesn't look like this. Something more than time happened to this house." To which, they had no other response than, "The workers are coming back on Monday."
The other thing that pissed off all the estate sale-rs that came through was that, possibly to fund the remodeling, the prices were jacked up. There were things there that should have been marked ten bucks (generous) that were set at SEVENTY.
Mason shadowed me through the whole house saying, "This place is like a HOG (Hidden Object Game)." Because on top of all the weird angles and decrepit-ness the estate sale workers had just piled all the goods in boxes and in tables in a way that just made it all seem that much more chaotic. Even the back yard garden was a mess.
It was kind of amazing, really. It was the sort of place that sticks in your head, and it may have to work its way into a novel, because it's too good to waste, you know?
Sunday we spent doing some housework, baking cookies (for real! I made chocolate chip!) and playing some board games. It was that kind of day because we woke up to a rain that beat down steadily all day long.
During some of my housework, I started a new anime series. I'm now watching Witch Craft Works. I'm not entirely sure I can recommend it. It's weirdly compelling, though. The story is about "an average high school boy" who, it turns out, has a witch guardian who considers him her "princess." A lot of the humor in the story has to do with a shounen reversal. She gets all the power-ups, is popular and aloof, and he's just kind of a pretty/handsome load she constantly has to rescue. Weirdly, that kind of works for me. All the villains and side-characters are female, too, so it's very much a conscious 'see, this is what you look like!' in terms of reversing all the gender stuff.
I'm watching it on Crunchyroll, so it's a new anime, only just having aired this year in January in Japan. There are 12 episodes, and I'm just about to start #4 with today's load of dishes. I suspect that if this anime follows the flow of most 'new-ish' anime, the real action will start now that they've set up the characters and the situation. I feel like it was right about episode 3 or 4 that Rei was introduced in Free! Iwatobi Swim Club and that's when things really started rolling.
At any rate, I'm enjoying that.
Today my plans are to get a good start on my new UnJust Cause installment. I have to say that given time, the serial thing on WattPad is starting to work better for me. I've decided that I'm not allowed to look at my statistics, which helps, and only concentrate on the comments. I have one really faithful reader (who is not actually someone I know outside of this context), so I'm kind of writing this for her. She leaves comments at the end of each chapter and is even starting to try to guess at the plot, WHICH I TOTALLY ADORE AND HAD BEEN HOPING FOR. So, that's working.
More importantly, having the publishing deadline of once a week on a Tuesday afternoon, means I'm writing forward every week. This is a very, very good thing.
Plus, even though I hate it, it seems like my social media blast about the updates are getting re-blogged (at least a friend saw it happen once), so that's kind of all I can hope for.
I really do think this is the sort of thing that might become a THING given enough time. For now, I'm along for the ride... and it's keeping me writing on a project.
April 23, 2014
New MangaKast
Mason and I just don't know when to quit. We've posted our SEVENTH MangaKast. In this delightfully short podcast, we discuss how Kenpachi can defy the vacuum of space with his irritated impatience and whether or not heads floating on plates might be delicious....
Yeah, admit it, you're curious:
http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/seventh-heaven/
Yeah, admit it, you're curious:
http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/seventh-heaven/
April 22, 2014
Werewolves and Autopsies
The newest chapter in my WIP/sequel to Precinct 13 is posted! http://www.wattpad.com/46894855-unjust-cause-part-5-werewolves-and-autopsies
In this installment, more and more evidence seems to point to Valentine's involvement in the death of the homeless woman found at the base of the clock tower.
April 19, 2014
Pumped from Using the Prompt
I came back from my "First Pages" Loft gig at Chanhassen Library today feeling really hyped. I had a blast playing with some of the story idea generators with the participants. We found a couple of really entertaining sites that I'm going to share with you...
The first is really best if used completely randomly (press 'fill in) and see what happens. We got a completely zany storyline that included robots poking each other at a funeral. (Exactly, right? I mean, that image is going to stick in my head... possibly until I figure out how to write it.) http://www.plot-generator.org.uk
The other one was slightly more useful. This site offers a number of tailored options, including the one I ended up using with was 'how I got my superpowers.' http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/plotgens.htm
The prompt I got in response to 'how I got my super powers' was: FROM THE FAIRY. I couldn't resist that one and ended up writing this little snippet...
I don't know if I'll do anything more with it, but it's a fun start, don't you think?
Anyway, I have no idea if the participants (I hesitate to use the term students in this situation) got as much enjoyment out of the program as I did, but I hope so. One of the challenges of the 'First Pages' program is that it's meant to be flexible. That's a good thing, because it can mean that the "class" is tailored to individual needs, but it can also mean the instructor (me) does a lot of flailing around from subject to subject hoping to hit on something that works. I felt very flail-ly, but I sincerely hope that since I had fun it means they did too.
We nominally have a subject to discuss, but this one was "Read to Write" and so the 'discussion' was meant to be structured around what books can teach us about writing. Since, as far as I can tell, the answer is: everything, we talked about that for a while, but... well, that wasn't much of a sustaining sort of subject, you know? Maybe if I'd had a blackboard we could have listed books that influenced our writing. Perhaps, since I'll be doing this again in Roseville next month, I can start with that next time.
But, so after we'd exhausted that subject, I opened the floor up to questions. What do you struggle with with your writing? And, somehow from there, we got to plot generators, and silliness ensued.
Ultimately, as I said, I had a good time, if nothing else. And, well, I guess, worst case scenario, they got what they paid for (it's free.)
The first is really best if used completely randomly (press 'fill in) and see what happens. We got a completely zany storyline that included robots poking each other at a funeral. (Exactly, right? I mean, that image is going to stick in my head... possibly until I figure out how to write it.) http://www.plot-generator.org.uk
The other one was slightly more useful. This site offers a number of tailored options, including the one I ended up using with was 'how I got my superpowers.' http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/plotgens.htm
The prompt I got in response to 'how I got my super powers' was: FROM THE FAIRY. I couldn't resist that one and ended up writing this little snippet...
They told me if I wanted to get superpowers, I had to buy
them from the fairy. The problem was you
never knew what it’d cost you. Fairies
are fickle, you know. Sometimes they
just want something mundane. I heard of
a guy who got the power of invulnerability and all it cost him was a slice of
Munster cheese. Other times, they wanted
too much, stuff no sane person would part with.
Sure, you’re immortal, but your body is gone, and you’re just stuffed
teddy bear without even the ability to move or speak.
I don't know if I'll do anything more with it, but it's a fun start, don't you think?
Anyway, I have no idea if the participants (I hesitate to use the term students in this situation) got as much enjoyment out of the program as I did, but I hope so. One of the challenges of the 'First Pages' program is that it's meant to be flexible. That's a good thing, because it can mean that the "class" is tailored to individual needs, but it can also mean the instructor (me) does a lot of flailing around from subject to subject hoping to hit on something that works. I felt very flail-ly, but I sincerely hope that since I had fun it means they did too.
We nominally have a subject to discuss, but this one was "Read to Write" and so the 'discussion' was meant to be structured around what books can teach us about writing. Since, as far as I can tell, the answer is: everything, we talked about that for a while, but... well, that wasn't much of a sustaining sort of subject, you know? Maybe if I'd had a blackboard we could have listed books that influenced our writing. Perhaps, since I'll be doing this again in Roseville next month, I can start with that next time.
But, so after we'd exhausted that subject, I opened the floor up to questions. What do you struggle with with your writing? And, somehow from there, we got to plot generators, and silliness ensued.
Ultimately, as I said, I had a good time, if nothing else. And, well, I guess, worst case scenario, they got what they paid for (it's free.)
