Amanda Ching's Blog, page 7

ILU-486 Update

It's been a week, and I had no idea that this would be as insane as it has been. I'm not going to address reaction to the work in a critical way, because people are allowed to like/dislike it for whatever reasons they might possess. And I am not arguing with them. It does have legit flaws, but every work does, and in the end, it is what it is.

But some people have asked for a few things:

1. Are going to put this up for sale anywhere? Probably not. I released it into the wild, and it...

Short story: ILU-486

Summary: In the not-so-distant future of Virginia, the Personhood Act has outlawed abortion and chemical birth control. That doesn't mean they don't exist, though.

 ILU-486

 for Evil Dr. Em and the twitter brigade

Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? James 2:25

About fifteen percent of Merrimack, Virginia was unemployed, but by god, they had congressmen looking out for them. It was comforting, one...

Dear Mr. Vonnegut

Dear Mr. Vonnegut,

Upon contemplating writing this letter to you, I was rather nervous about what you might think of it. I had pondered what you might think of me should I say something you mighn't like, or what your secretarial staff (if you have one) might think of its contents. Then I remembered that you are in fact dead, and that took most of the pressure off.

Until recently, I had never really read any of your work. Sorry about that. There are many things to read in the world, some o...

Have you thought about doubling your coverage for just pennies more a day?

A friend recently posted a whole list of reasons that Writers are crazy, and I found myself reading them and sounding like Empress Nympho picking her escorts in History of the World Part 1. I don't think writers are all that crazy, in reality, and I don't like anything that tries to make them seem that way, particularly the sense that authors tend to give themselves. I also have a serious dislike of people who tell you about something wacky that happened to them (as wacky things happen to a...

Oh it’s on now.

Really, there’s nothing frightening about plastic lawn decorations. They’re plastic. They don’t move. They might light up or something, but they’re powered by a cord or a battery, and they’re pretty much tethered to the socket that way.

Grandma couldn’t have seen it coming. Even punched up on eggnog and her prescription weed for her glaucoma, she couldn’t have seen it. And I like to think that what with the glaucoma and the snow coming down, she didn’t see much of anything. It’s better that w...

Oh it's on now.

Really, there's nothing frightening about plastic lawn decorations. They're plastic. They don't move. They might light up or something, but they're powered by a cord or a battery, and they're pretty much tethered to the socket that way.

Grandma couldn't have seen it coming. Even punched up on eggnog and her prescription weed for her glaucoma, she couldn't have seen it. And I like to think that what with the glaucoma and the snow coming down, she didn't see much of anything. It's...

Writing 101–Timing (I can’t has it) and rereading (i can has it).

I am pretty horrible about blog posts, just as I am horrible about writing and deadlines, so as I let Project Runway stream, I'll just write some things that have occurred to me recently.

1. In trying to get a story done for Riptide publishing's "Buyers of Love" anthology, I failed miserably to meet the deadline for two reasons: firstly, I gave myself a week to do 15K, which is fricking insane in some ways. I also forgot that I had to write a synopsis and a query letter, and by the time I realized that I would have had to be working on that while I was still working on the finished product, and I sort of stalled. I still have about a third of it done, so I might just complete it for fun. The second issue is that I was only moderately inspired. I don't mind forcing myself to write something I'm not super interested in if I know I can meet the deadline, but I think that was what petered me out. The idea is that three mannequins come to life once a month and solicit sex from prostitutes. It's pretty good, but I keep feeling like to make it really good it needs to be about 25K and I CERTAINLY didn't have the time for that.

I guess the lesson I learned here was, uh, plan better. I'm setting myself up for two deadlines for the end of March, and I figure whichever I latch on to productively will be the one I push.

2. So, a friend of mine got the hand-bound versions of the (re) Visions: Alice book, and when he brought it over, he suggested that I sign it, maybe write something personal. Because most of the story that I wrote was inspired by The Annotated Alice, I jokingly suggested that I annotate my story for him, and he was excited about that. The margins on the hand-bound version he received are very wide, so I selected that, got several beers, started Buffy Season 5, and sat down on the couch to note.

It was actually amazing the stuff I forgot that I had written. Yeah, I was eager to point out all the little things, like all the poems are pop songs from Carroll's era, and yeah, a brougham is a two-wheeled carriage, and in Victorian time, corpses were routinely dug up to make way for new corpses. And yeah, I was eager to point out that Mary Ann's poisoning of Mister John was based on the death of Charles Bravo, whose story I had recently read in James Ruddick's Death at the Priory: Love, Sex and Murder in Victorian England. But what I forgot, was some of the completely free moments that I had with writing in and of itself, that when I looked back it it this time I had that moment where you say, "Wow, I forgot I wrote that."

3. I would like to write more Whippoorwill Jones. Right now she and Clo are discussing how you can floss your teeth and find a bit of popcorn in your gum, even though you haven't eaten popcorn in a week. These are the things that plague me. Clo is also trying to convince Whip that Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson are the same person. Later they're going to strangle someone in a motel. Because they are horrible people.

Writing 101–Timing (I can’t has it) and rereading (i can has it).

I am pretty horrible about blog posts, just as I am horrible about writing and deadlines, so as I let Project Runway stream, I’ll just write some things that have occurred to me recently.

1. In trying to get a story done for Riptide publishing’s “Buyers of Love” anthology, I failed miserably to meet the deadline for two reasons: firstly, I gave myself a week to do 15K, which is fricking insane in some ways. I also forgot that I had to write a synopsis and a query letter, and by the time I real...

Writing 101–Timing (I can't has it) and rereading (i can has it).

I am pretty horrible about blog posts, just as I am horrible about writing and deadlines, so as I let Project Runway stream, I'll just write some things that have occurred to me recently.

1. In trying to get a story done for Riptide publishing's "Buyers of Love" anthology, I failed miserably to meet the deadline for two reasons: firstly, I gave myself a week to do 15K, which is fricking insane in some ways. I also forgot that I had to write a synopsis and a query letter, and by the time I...

2011 in Books (Wot I Read and Stuff)

I was going to make it a point to blog every other day this year, and it seems I'm already falling behind. But this post was long in the making, so here goes nothing.

Books! I read a lot of books this year, about 80 or so, actually, not counting a massive reread of every Laurel K. Hamilton book I have, and a brief foray into some childhood favorites, namely Hail, Hail, Camp Timberwood (which did not withstand the test of time), and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom (which did).

Of all...