Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 152

Random Friday

First a total randomness thing:

re: second search (click on image to enlarge) – Whose blog do you think this is? Just because I love Bollywood and live in Italy you think I might have that piece of information? Sorry, but I don’t give a drat about Ash. But if you happen to hear Duggu comes to Italy, please stop and leave a comment, I’ll most certainly do my best to find him!

Ahem! Switching movie industries now. Last weekend I watched Django Unchained. I’m not a Tarantino fan, in fact I watched only 2 of his movies and both because there was someone I like to ogle in them. Inglourious Basterds for Brad Pitt – which introduced me to Christopher Waltz, wonderful polyglot actor who is back in this one – and now Django Unchained for various reasons. I’m not a fan of spaghetti western, and even if I recognize Franco Nero’s face doesn’t mean I’ve seen his movies – he does a cameo here, and even speaks Italian except for 3 words he says to Jamie Foxx.

I liked Leo DiCaprio before he started doing almost only biopics (biopics are boring, Leo, or maybe you pick people that don’t interest me, LOL! Well, unless you work with Steven, in that case, I’ll make an exception! Catch me if you can is good! ) and I do remember him in The Quick and The Dead, so I thought “What the hell… let’s see how he handles westerns 20 years later without Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone! (Russel Crowe was a nobody back then, but that’s the only movie where I like him, hehe)”.

So I got me the DVD of Django Unchained. I would have happily lived without Tarantinian splatter and too many gun fights, but well… I enjoyed the story. I thought it was funny, actually, since I kept chuckling for most of it (okay, I’m a Sadist Author, I can be a Sadist Reader/MovieLover as well). I’m not American and I haven’t studied the 1800s yet, so I just took it at entertainment face-value – I don’t think Tarantino wanted to do an historical movie anyway, but I guess a few things were quite accurate. The flashbacks were sort of jarring, but I’m used to linear/chronological narration, so it’s just me!

Jumping to totally unrelated randomness – here’s what I was working on last Wednesday (because I wrote the movie review during the weekend and Shafali’s book made me think about oglers – of both sexes). Please note the big glass frames (so 1980s) and my natural (and then the most recent) hair color…

Maybe I should start The Adventures Of Teen Barb At The Island! (and then Jo killed me because I still haven’t finished SKYBAND… Okay, just kidding! )

One last thing that kind of ties up the blog hop about diversity. This went around Facebook. After reading this, I might stop coloring my hair now instead of 2015! It’s kind of interesting, since I’m not feeling well these days, but I was thinking that my body is a temple and I’m not really taking care of it but don’t know how to because it’s sort of shifting – and I’m not Sikh (raised Roman Catholic, have my own beliefs now)… Internet serendipity is unbelieavable!

Last fun random fact – I now have the same number of followers on this blog than Facebook friends (unwilling followers, I doubt they actually read my blog from the Facebook link! ) Have a wonderful weekend!

Writer Wednesday

The blog hop is still going and comments are still coming in, so I won’t contact the winners yet. Just wanted to mention that last year’s prize, Allan de Sayek, just got a review at World of Diversity Fiction. Let’s hope this will bring a few people to take a closer look at Silvery Earth!

While working on something for Friday, I realized there are actually 3 Silvery Earth. The Original Silvery Earth (where Samantha the Witch comes from and that will be explored in a later book) from my childhood. The New Silvery Earth – the adult fantasy world you can see at the top of this blog with its chronology, which was created mixing all my fantasy worlds this millennium.

And then there’s Teen Barb’s Silvery Earth – except it wasn’t called Silvery Earth. It was supposedly Earth with all those characters from anime and TV series I watched in the early 1980s, but I had this island (a.k.a. The Island) where I spent most of my time. Setting: a desert island. What does this tell you about the writer (who was starting way back when)? No setting. Only characters mattered. The people I interacted with (whether from real life or TV or whatnot). Not the setting. Okay, I admit to a ride or two on the Millennium Falcon or the Enterprise, but my best adventures ended up being on The Island!

So that’s why I’m still so character-oriented and plot-oriented and don’t care much about setting and descriptions. Although there’s obviously someone on my wavelenght, as I’ve seen from the above review (that same novella got opposite comments from another reviewer who didn’t post her review on GR because I said I’d consider her comments if and when I rewrote it. Now I know I won’t rewrite it, so Megan, if you want to post it as you sent it to me, that’s fine). Will have to handpick my readers, I guess!

Ciaran&Harith went live on Apple in two hours and a half and Barnes&Noble a few hours more – not days like it happens with Smashwords premium catalog. So I’m still very happy with D2D – officially out of closed-beta stage – and they even sent me an email with my April sales. Yes,they report monthly, like Kobo. Yay!

Thank you for voting on the covers of Choices, now I can get back to writing the actual story, LOL! And then I’ll need to find a male reader or two, just to make sure I’m portraying a man here. Writing screenplays is less introspective than writing prose – although my prose is not too introspective, since my influences are movies, comics and TV more than literature. I guess I didn’t read much when I was younger, and learned that a writer needs to read a lot only as an adult. Although I did have a house full of fiction books, like Moira Allen in her excellent piece on reading habits…

Now, for those of you who might think to

We’re all struggling through the shifting sands of publishing, I guess. Please check Kris Rusch’s post on the changes in publishing. Yes, it’s scary, but we can do it! Now, since I’ve been bloghopping this week, I didn’t have time to check my regular blogs, so that’s all for now… Sorry, guys, I’ll catch up next week!

Happiness is…

Surprise Sunday

Happy Sunday! Hope you’re all busy with the blog hop! I’ve just started visiting the 170+ blogs that signed up, but I’m sure I’ll have to continue through next week – which is probably fine since I might have a slower week at DayJob, LOL.

I’ll be doing a sort of Art Sunday. First of all, if you don’t already know her, please check Shafali’s books on Smashwords. Her latest work, Oglers Inc, is a verbal caricature as funny as the others. Especially for us women, used to those oglers throughout our lives. She nailed it again! Really, you shouldn’t miss her or her blog! (although she still owes me a certain caricature… *ahem!* Just kidding! )

Now, since B.G. Hope has a new title out – the funniest body switch I have written to date, I hope you’ll have as much fun reading it as I had writing it – I’ll post here the links to all the retailers. The print version will come out next year when all 3 body switches are written. So, ladies and gentlemen, please check Ciaran&Harith on Smashwords, Amazon, Apple US, Kobo or Barnes&Noble.

The cover still features Samantha the Witch, in case you were wondering (like Johnny&Marian). I couldn’t do the cover with the virtual cast, so I used her, since she’s always available for pics!

Still working for B.G. – told ya it’s her month, didn’t I? – I’m preparing the covers for her next n0vella, based on my last screenplay (written in 2009/2010) Choices. Please help me choose the cover here. First, I’ll show you the other B.G. Hope covers of the other novella based on a screenplay and the anthology that is also in the blog hop giveaway – both obviously romantic/love stories:

Here are the covers for Choices. The theme is ambition and money (hence the “diamond” shape and the green background – should be $-green, hope it is). And since his past is catching up on him, and he’s questioning his choices, he’s turned towards the left – or looking behind, so to speak – especially in the first.

So, what do you think? Left (1) or right (2)? I’ll do a little poll, so your voting can be multiple AND anonymous!

Take Our Poll

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Sunday!

Blog Hop

Hello Visitor!

Welcome to the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia (HAHAT). This post will remain up here for the duration of the blog hop, so if you’re a regular visitor, please scroll down for newer posts after May 17.

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia and being a member of the QUILTBAG myself (letter A, in case you’re wondering), here I am! I might have not been a victim of any phobia (except maybe being considered “weird”), but I know what it means to feel like an outsider or an outcast in this crazy world of ours. I’d love to see more… LOVE and less hatred around – in general, not only towards QUILTBAG members. I have many gay friends (for some reason not as many lesbians…) and I enjoy the beauty of diversity – as long as one remains civil. Fanatics of any kind and color irk me, even if they hide behind the excuse of religion or (worse) society.

I’m a writer and I love putting all kind of characters in my stories – no matter the genre. Gay “angels” (called Sila on Silvery Earth), lesbian cyborgs (Star Minds) or anything inbetween (mostly M/M, though) – past, present or future, I’m very character-oriented and I like diversity, feeling quite often an outsider or an outcast myself. I’m probably not writing better worlds, but I like watching my “different” characters interact with whatever is “normal” in their society – which often distracts me from my own life, but my husband, Mr Writing, is very understanding, since I give birth to our babies!

This blog participated also last year with a simple giveaway of one title. This year I’m hosting also my other pseudonym, B.G.Hope, who doesn’t have a blog, but is as QUILTBAG-friendly as Barbara G.Tarn. And we published a few titles in 12 months, so this year’s giveaway comprises a choice among the following titles:

Smeraldo and Kyrio (Death of Queen Amazonia)

Silvery Earth (adult fantasy by Barbara G.Tarn): The Death of Queen Amazonia.

Star Minds (science fantasy by Barbara G.Tarn): Technological Angel (or any other of the series, if you already have the first).

body switch by B.G.Hope: new release Ciaran&Harith.

Or you can have her anthology of M/M romance Variations on a theme.

To win the ebook version in the format of your choice (Smashwords coupon for free download) please leave a comment on this post – not on other posts, on the Goodreads event or on Facebook. Only comments on this post will be entered for the giveaway. Specify the title you’d like to “win”, especially if you’re already familiar with my work.

The last day to enter is May 27 (end of the blog hop). And because I love you guys so much, I’ll give away one copy of each. The 4 Winners will be contacted by e-mail before the end of the month (you need to leave your e-mail to comment if you’re not a WP user anyway – leave a working e-mail, thank you!).

Thank you for stopping by. Feel free to continue the blog hop with the neat linky link below (the link works even if you can’t see the image – click on the red X)!

Writer Wednesday

Changed back the Timeline image on Facebook, since in June I’ll be back on Silvery Earth anyway. Will get back to Star Minds Snippets in July. A last flash of Star Minds – Kol-ian and Ker-ris went to Ciaran’s sofa a couple of days ago.

This is B.G. Hope’s month, so she’ll be included in the upcoming bloghop and has a new title out – another body switch, hoping that it will be as successful as the previous one. One beta-reader thought the second flowed even better than the first – I certainly had more fun playing with these two characters than the first two. Might be because it was a brand new story?

I’m also trying to turn Happiness is… into ebook format… I’d love to have the trilingual version available for e-readers. So far there’s only the print version of the first year (I know, I’m still with Lulu for that one…), so I’m thinking of making it 3 e-books with different happinesses – writing, spiritual, general. And then maybe a new print version of all vignettes in chronological order, since even Kris Rusch says it’s the year of the bookstore!

But I’ll need to switch POD first, open that CreateSpace account and do the print version of Star Minds – plan to do this in June, when I have 2 weeks off DayJob. Then I might even do a new print edition of the Silvery Earth titles already in print with Lulu. Or I could go with DriveThru/Lightning Source for those… like I did for SKYBAND Omnibus 1 and 2. We’ll see – first the new titles, then I can think about the new edition of “old” ones.

If you want to learn how to get visible, check David Gaughran’s book. I’d rather be off writing, LOL! Or reading. Or drawing. Or… procrastinating, haha! I love fiction and many of my friends have put out books, I’d rather be checking those than another non-fiction/marketing book… but maybe I’ll add it to the wishlist anyway, who knows…

David Farland is doing a series of Daily Kicks on how to get into your writing zone. He mentions being more comfortable with long writing sessions (at least 3 hours). Personally, I’d rather do short instalments like Dean Wesley Smith. I don’t have problems at getting back into my stories – be it for 5, 15 or 55 minutes. I write when I can, and don’t need to sit at a computer to do it. But then, I’m already in the habit of writing, like Dean and his wife Kris Rusch!

Since Friday is Blog Hop day, I’ll add here a warning about a scam going around the US. I’m not American, but if you are… watch out! That’s all for today… have a great week!

Happiness is…

Oh, boy, can’t believe another 3 years have gone by… he’s now almost as tall as me, LOL! Just kidding, but he has grown up – and his father, Dear Techie Bro, is younger but taller than me, so…

Sunday Surprise

I have contacted a few people to do guest posts, but either they didn’t get back to me with the post or didn’t decide a date, so I thought I’d do the Words of Wisdom/Writers on Writing today – in the hope to welcome more guests later in the month. So, for your eyes only (so to speak, since this is a public blog, LOL) and because I’m too busy writing and formatting and publishing this weekend to do much else, here are some more words of wisdom from writers!

Then around a year and a half ago I started toying with the idea of self-publishing. The main reason I started writing in earnest, five years ago, was I wanted to be able to control something creative. I’d been involved in many endeavors that required several people and lots of money to get off the ground. Something broke down in each one of them. But writing was all me. I either did it or I didn’t. It either sucked or it didn’t. There would be no one else to blame if I didn’t make it. So self-publishing began to look like the perfect fit for me.

- D Robert Pease

 

I also wrote a prologue for Ascension, but ultimately cut it because *I* didn’t feel it fit.  This is part of the empowerment of self-publishing.  I’m not writing to suit one individual’s tastes (read: the agent).  I’m writing for myself.  I will frame my books and pace my stories the way I deem best.  I will succeed or fail based on my own decisions, not those of someone who’s looking for “the next big thing”, so long as it fits their particular mold.

- S.L.Madden

 

“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”

- Neil Gaiman

 

Would you have any words of advice for the would-be-writers out there?

Start today. Write. Finish what you start. Submit what you finish. Repeat. Don’t get caught up in the ‘someday I’m going to do that’ trap. Don’t blog and tell yourself that it puts you on the road to being a published fiction writer. It just makes you a blogger. Get your stories down on paper now. Don’t wait. The stories that you can and would write today are irreplaceable. The story you will write at 15 can’t wait until you are 30. It won’t be the same story. It will be gone. Don’t write a lot of stuff in other people’s worlds. You are not a cookie press pushing out dough into a pre-set shape. You’re a writer. If you don’t write your own characters and worlds now, today, no one ever will.

If you don’t write them now, your characters will shrivel up and die, unknown, unread, unmourned, and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT!

(Isn’t guilt a wonderful motivator?)

Robin Hobb in an interview at Grinding to Valhalla

 

Stop spending your time worrying about things that are beyond your control. You can not control who reads your books, who buys your books, or what they think of your books. Just keep on writing!  You’ll find your audience. There’s even an audience for bad writing. Like, really bad writing. All kinds of people are reading eBooks these days – even the functionally illiterate. That horrible pile of crap you saw at Amazon might just be someone else’s favorite book.

- Shaina Richmond, indie author

Random Friday

Hello, spammer

I don’t care if I rank low on SEO. I don’t write for SEO. I won’t waste 8 hours between Amazon and Google to find keywords for my books like they suggest to make a killing on Kindle, imagine if I want to spend even 5 minutes to optimize this blog. I’d rather be off writing, thank you. Besides, I’ve read somewhere that SEO writing is so passé… So, thanks, but no thanks. Besides, in spite of the low SEO ranks, I’ve more than quadrupled my followers in the past year and a half, so I’m not really worried…

Hello, visitor!

Sorry for the above reply to the spam comments I get over and over again. This random Friday is about… well, Happy Fangirl Barb has found someone very similar to her, so please check this advice on art and life from Mr. Harrison Ford. This lady and me have a lot in common! Han Solo? Check! Indiana Jones? Check! But then comes Devil’s own, and poor Harry can’t compare with Brad – at least for this gal.

Actually, not many can compare with Brad – although for me it depends. Sometimes I think he’s gorgeous, sometimes I think he’s really ugly and since “12 Monkeys” I know he can act, but it’s a conflicting interest. Something that’s happening also with Hrithik (the gorgeous/ugly part, I’m not sure I’ve found his “12 Monkeys” yet, although I know he can act – and only jealous men can speak ill of him, or Brad or Keanu or whoever else I “admire”) – never with (or he wouldn’t be Da Muse, right?). But I digress.

I must say that the aforementioned post gave back some points to Mr. Ford! I agree with both of them about luck. And about the advice of not letting anyone turning you into a thing. Like JC, I had to say a lot of “no” – single, almost 48, etc. And then the Writing NOs – no, I’m not writing your book, no, I’m not publishing it either. I’m a writer and I already have enough to write on my own without bothering with lazy wannabes who talk a lot and never get anything done.

I’m a quiet person. If I have more than one person in front of me, I’d just shut up and listen – maybe, or maybe my mind will wander to my babies if the discussion is “boring”! I’m a fangirl when it comes to meeting other artists or writers (see me with Terry Moore last year and imagine me whenever I get to meet Colleen Doran…), but about actors – well, they’re muses. I already said that somewhere.

That’s because I have a visual imagination and virtual casts for all my stories – okay, sometimes some characters just don’t exist on this planet, and if they do I’m not aware of them, but you got the point! So, what is the point of this post, you may ask? Just a random rant because, hey, it’s Friday, I’m tired, weather is crazy, DayJob is even worse and all I want to do is go to sleep and wake up when it’s over.

But I still have to write 2 Snippets, and one has a virtual cast but I don’t seem to be able to figure out the scenes because I’d rather be thinking my variations on a theme that I will never write. That’s another great procrastination technique, telling myself stories I know I’ll never put down in writing for various reasons instead of concentrating on the projects that I have set up back in January. But then I can bemoan what a sloth I’ve become and how hard it is to break into this brand new world of publishing, LOL!

Just kidding. Something will be published next week, so I’m doing just fine. Yes, I’ve slowed down the writing, so what? The first 2 years of publishing were basically backlist – old stories translated and rewritten. This year I’m improvising, so I need time to let things settle before I hit publish – and I need time to get comments  from beta-readers as well. But it’s not a gold rush, so… I’ll just keep writing. And because in May I was supposed to be finished with the Snippets but I’m not, I guess I’ll go back to them in June – from tomorrow I change pseudonym hat!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Writer Wednesday

Sunday I had one of those “dumb writer” moments. In the afternoon I opened the document for “Lost Son”,  changed the title, deleted the whole short story, and started typing “Half-blood”. I do that often to keep the document formatting identical for stories that go together. Except usually the first thing I do after changing the title and deleting the document, is “save as” with the new title. The dumb moment means that I forgot, and simply hit “save” when I was done typing. So when after dinner I went back to the doc, it was still called Lost Son, but the actual short story was gone. All of it. YIKES!

Enter Dropbox. By now I have all my documents on Dropbox since Dear Techie Bro invited me to it. All I had to do to solve the Dumb Writer Mistake was to go to the site, select the document, look at its history, and recover the version from Sunday morning, which was indeed Lost Son. All this after renaming the wrong document Half-blood like I should have done at the very beginning of the afternoon… So the story was recovered and saved from oblivion. Well, I could have gathered the printed version – which I had already recycled – retype it and lose an hour or two in the process. While it was all solved in minutes.

I also tend to forget I don’t really need to save the different versions with different names, since Dropbox keeps the history of the documents… but old habits are hard to die! Anyway, if you’d like to try this cloud-based archive – accessible from anywhere, so even if you’re traveling and you don’t have your laptop but you meet an agent/editor/producer who is interested in your work, you can go online and share a link to the document with him/her – let me know, and I’ll send you an invite. Or you can just log in to the site and get your 2GB of free storage…

I’ve sent the body switch to editors after a final pass – had to wait for my male betas to give me their impressions even if they’re not my target audience. I really appreciated them reading something that wasn’t really meant for them, but badly needed their input since I’m not a man! And I’ve completed 5 Snippets – 3 more to go. The bodysuit Mya wears in my drawing is not that baggy in reality (I guess I’ll have to describe it somehow – it probably looks more like Maela’s outfit than how I drew it) but then, my drawing skills are quite bad when it comes to sci-fi and technology – that’s why my graphic novels are all fantasy, LOL!

What I enjoy of writing the Snippets is that I get to rewrite some scenes that are in Star Minds from somebody else’s point of view. I use mostly third person limited, so you don’t know what’s actually going on in, say, M’aera S’iva’s head – well you will know when Half-blood comes out! Or even what is behind Lin-sun’s wedding to Ker-ris or S’lyss’s governorship of Gaia/Earth. I tried not to repeat the scenes – if, for example, in Technological Angel I had a dialog between Kol-ian and M’aera S’iva, in Half-blood I have a summary of the dialog with M’aera S’iva’s thoughts.

Writing World has an excellent article on POVs. So if you’re still confused about third person limited and omniscient, please check Victoria Grossack’s article – it’s a part 1, so you should subscribe to the whole newsletter, so you can read the rest. And then you can take the test – 10 signs that you’re a writer. I score very high on points 4, 6, 7 and 10, a little less on the rest.

Now if I had some strength to do some intercontinental travel, I’d love to try a 3-month residency – except with DayJob I can’t really take 3 months off – since applications for 2014-2015 are now open. M Writer’s Residencies are either in India or China – can you guess which one I’d choose if I could take those 3 months off?

An interesting interview on self-publishing and restarting a series – Q&A with Delilah Maryelle. Don’t you love this brand new world of publishing? Heck, she’s almost got me interested in the 1800s, although this history buff is more for the Middle Ages… but her series sounds really intriguing… I’ll add it on Goodreads then who knows when I’ll actually be able to read it, sigh!

More authors crossing the self-publishing line: Alex Sokoloff guest on Joe Konrath’s blog. Don’t fall into the author exploitation business (BTW let’s boicot Penguin – as readers first, and then authors. Except we’d need a list of all its imprints. Damn) – yes, it’s not fun being a businessperson, but it’s still better than being scammed out of your money!

Back in my early days of blogging (read 3 years ago – seems like a lifetime, or another century) I read many agents blogs, trying to figure out how to query and get published. My blogroll of pro was half agents and half freelance editors. Then I stumbled on a blog that Killed all the Sacred Cows of Publishing… and the indie revolution began. And yesterday on an indie author list I was pointed to Passive Guy’s blog (I tried to follow him but he’s too prolific, LOL!) and the name emerged from the mists of the past – Rachelle Gardner. Heck, she was on my blogroll with Nathan Bransford and Jessica Faust and… So, so glad I never went with any of them!

Now feeling sorry for those authors (not writers, real writers don’t need pampering from agents or even publishers) who still want an agent so bad. This control freak, here, is so scared of those draconian trad pub contracts that she won’t be a hybrid author yet! Being indie isn’t easy. I’d rather be off writing than spending hours formatting and uploading to the various distributors. But I enjoy cover design – and getting to decide when I publish and what goes on the cover… Writers AND artists should learn to manage their own careers and their own money. Take some advice from great artist Colleen Doran who knows what she’s talking about!

One last link – everything you’ve always wanted to know about print runs, by the always excellent Dean Wesley Smith. What, you had no idea of that was? Me neither. And honestly, I don’t care. I’m publishing in the 21st century, so that old stuff doesn’t apply to me! Now I better go open that CreateSpace account and start working on some print versions… Gee, next month I have two weeks off, I’ll do it! No need to rush me! Have a great week!