Alyc Helms's Blog, page 10

Accountability and the Single Girl

Because god knows I'd never be able to do all this if I was in a relationship. That shit takes time and energy!

I lost my document with my goals for last year, so I'm posting this year's document so I can check it/keep track. Sorry for the detail. If I don't break it down, I'll never get it done.

SMART Goals:
Finish and revise Chiaroscuro and get it out by mid-year
Resume shopping Mr. Mystic
Revise and get into submission nine stories from my current pool
Research and write first draft of next nove...

And even more Yuletide...

 Reveals are up! So now I can post links to what I wrote and talk about the process, etc.

I wasn't going to do Yuletide this year, because I really wanted to finish the first draft of Chiaroscuro, but then I saw that someone had requested fic for Castle of Deception, which is an old Bard's Tale (pc game) tie-in novel by Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman. It introduces one of my longstanding favorite characters (who... may have been the template for Jessmindara Duskwalker >.> ), th...

First Round of Yuletide Fic Recs

Snowed In
Rating: Explicit
Fandom: Oglaf
Relationship: Greir the Lesbian Mercenary/Snow Queen (Oglaf)
This is my second year of requesting this pairing, and my second year of winning Yuletide. The author captured everything I love about the source material. She hits that sort of good-natured bullshit-calling voice that is so very, _very_ Oglaf! Her Grier is confident, competent, and independent, and I could seriously follow her on any adventure she went on. Her Snow Queen is spot-on lovely and ch...

Hobbit Thoughts

On The Hobbit:

Overall, I liked it. I'm not really much of a Tolkien fan, but I don't mind that this got lengthened and split into three movies. The Silmarillion, Lost/Unfinished Tales, and Appendices stuff isn't popular or well-known enough to ever get movies of their own, but they are the glue that holds The Hobbit to the greater, grander histories of Middle Earth. I'm grateful Jackson took this opportunity to weave in stories that might otherwise never have seen the light of a projector. ...

Conversations with Awesome People

Thrace ( damselfish / maladaptive ) and I were going back and forth on who should repost this chat:


Thrace: oh. Just wanted to say I was thinking of Deja/Shan stuff earlier, and then read a story I started set in that world, and it is GORGEOUS. Pretty flawed but gorgeous and dang I don't suck (I was feeling sucky for getting meh in the middle of writing today)
and I just wanted to say that I love Deja and Shan's world. It's so lush feeling
Me: awww
girl, you don't even live in the same state as su...

Notes from the Teleidoplex: Slacker Edition

 At some point, I bought into the fiction that I was lazy. A slacker. There are many sources for this (parents, teachers, boyfriends, society, a pervasive protestant work ethic that tells me my main value as a human being lies in my education/job/productive output), but it all really culminates in the soul-destroying phrase I heard so often as a kid:'you're so bright, if you'd only apply yourself' -- when what they really meant was 'do the things we want you to do rather than the things...

Adventures in the Night Trade - Bubba Gump Edition

I love how our sleeping brains try to offer us plausible explanations for real-world intrusions into our REM cycles. Like how every time I get a midnight charley-horse, I dream I've been shot in the calf.

Here's my brain's newest pitch. I swear, this guy should get a job in Hollywood.


Me: ::sleeping:: What is that horrible smell?

Sleeping brain: Oooh! Ooh, I got this! Okay, you're in an amusement park, see?

Me: Amusement parks don't stink--

Brain: Will you just shut-up? I'm set...

Open Yuletide Letter

Dear Author,

First and foremost, thank you thank you thank you for volunteering to write for me. I will try to give you sparks for ideas, but I'm a pretty easy cookie to please, so if you want to go on a completely wild tangent, as long as it includes some romance, sex, or fancy braining, I will be happy to go along for the ride.

First, I'm going to link you to my letter to santa from last year and my fic recs from last year, because that alone might give you a good idea of what I lean towards:...

The Next Big Thing

So there's this thing going around a bunch of people's blogs where we talk about our current writing projects. I got tagged, and after blowing it off for a week or two, I finally got around to making my post. It's a long one, but hopefully it sounds interesting. Really hopefully, cause I've been slogging away on it for a while now! Stick to the end and I will link back to some other blog posts by other authors, and I will also tag some new folks. IT COULD BE YOU!

Interview Questions for The...

Clarion West Day 1: Time Compression and Liminality, Ahoy!

It’s Sunday morning, and just a few hours til the Clarion West workshop officially starts. We’ve been doing Locus awards events up til now – Congrats to all the winners, most of whom are Cat Valente.

I can see already one of the ways this becomes such a significant, life-changing experience, and it has to do with time compression. I’ve only been here for two days (less than, really), but it already feels much longer than that. There’ve been excellent conversation...