Everything Old Is New Again – Using Mythology in Romance

May 16, 17, and 18 at Romance Divas

Featuring:
P.C. Cast

Robin D. Owens

Gena Showalter

Lori Handeland

Alyssa Day

Want to know how to use mythology, culture, fairy tales, or folklore in romance? Romance Divas is hosting a 3-day workshop with some of the hottest names in the genre. It will take place at the Romance Diva Forum. All are welcome. To get access to the forum you will need to register.

So, I launched a new site today... visitors would be appreciated.

http://bloodofprovidence.com/

It's a bit of an experiment for me, to see how it works out, but I could really use any help people might be able to direct my way. If you aren't able to donate, please consider forwarding the link on to other readers who may or may not be able to as well. The more people that know about the site, the higher chance I have of being able to meet that goal.

And hopefully you'll like the story, too. :) Some of you may have already seen it, but not too many... mainly the Impetus folks.

Ok, unscreened the two entries from the contest. Both got most of the song titles right and approximately the same number of artists correct, so I'll be giving you both copies of the two ebooks. Please drop me an email with what format you prefer (LIT/PDF/HTML/MOBI). Note that Waking the Shadows is only available in PDF and HTML.

For the curious... here's the playlist:

1. Assemblage 23 -- Awake
2. Assemblage 23 -- Naked
3. Ayria -- Infiltrating My Way Through The System
4. Ayria -- It's Been Fun
5. Eighteen Visions -- Victim
6. Entwine -- Bleeding for the cure
7. Entwine -- Snow White Suicide
8. H.I.M -- Rip Out the Wings of A Butterfly
9. H.I.M -- Vampire Heart
10. KMFDM -- Juke Joint Jezebel
11. Lullacry -- Without The Dreamer
12. Nightwish -- End Of All Hope
13. Nightwish -- Wish I Had An Angel
14. VNV Nation -- Fearless
15. VNV Nation -- Frika
16. VNV Nation -- Joy

Ok, I mentioned this earlier, but haven't gotten to it yet.

I'm giving away a double-shot copy of nonnycat's ShadowGuard ebooks:



The Twilight Deception is the first novella in the storyline. Waking the Shadows was released earlier and includes two short stories: Seeking the Shadows and Waking the Dreamer which fall afterwards in the timeline.

To participate, comment below with the names of the following songs and the band who made them. To make it a bit difficult, I've obfuscated them a bit :) First person to get all of them right wins, or the person with the most answers right by Friday.

1. KEWAA
2. DENKA
3. IIINNLRGFTAT YM YWA HHORTGU ETH SSEMTY
4. SIT NEBE NUF
5. MIVITC
6. NEEDGLIB ORF HTE RUCE
7. WONS THIWE DECISUI
8. PRI TUO HET SINGW OF A TTERBYFUL
9. IREPAMV REATH
10. EJUK TOINJ ZEBELEJ
11. WHITOTU ETH REAMRED
12. DEN FO LAL PEOH
13. SWIH I DHA NA NGLEA
14. SESLREFA
15. KAFIR
16. YOJ

I am also screening entries until Friday or someone wins so you won't be able to see what other people are guessing :)

Note: If you are not an LJ user, please let me know some way of contacting you.

Added two syndication feeds to LJ:

new_at_evo -- tracks new items added to Evolution.

alanmorgan -- tracks my WordPress blog about writing.

Both might take some time to populate, but wanted to make them available for other LJ users' convenience.

I've set up a new blog using WordPress that will focus just on the writing aspect of my life. Some opinion pieces, progress notes, etc. It's currently at:

http://amorgan.windsofstorm.net/

Though I will probably pick up alanmorgan.org sometime soon and switch to using that.

I think that this is probably going to replace my old personal website, which was mainly focused around my writing. I currently have a writing filter and a brainstorming filter on LiveJournal. The writing filter on LiveJournal currently serves two purposes-- it lets me post work in rough draft form without concern about giving up my publishing rights, and it also lets me post writing related topics without posting them to people who are not interested in that aspect of my life.

The former type of post will remain as-is, the latter type of post will move to the new blog instead. I will probably be going through and copying some posts over there and backdating them. Likewise, I'll probably start taking some posts from my old personal site and backdating them here.

I've been thinking about WIPs and wanted to do something like a serial while I'm going through A&B with Luzon and Wings... and a little plotbunny popped up. Here's the start...

Disclaimer: blood, death.
Genre: urban fantasy/dark fantasy
Word Count: 411

This post by ammepyre about novel issues over on Evolution caught my eye.

For me, I have shared an off-and-on relationship with writing. I basically stopped writing during the entire time I was with ardras156, and only got back into it when the two of us broke up. Not that she prevented me from writing, but with everything going on at the time (mainly, the time that I was spending learning tech stuff when I was working at iCi/WinStar/OSDN), I just didn't have much left to put into writing.

Occasionally, I would dust off the first Luzon book (originally Sword and Staff of Fire, then Heir of Luzon, now Shadows into Twilight) and try to get going on it again, but I never got much further than a few paragraphs (if that) before it got relegated to the closet to collect mothballs again.

That changed with 2003. I came back to writing, and I started working on Luzon again. I drafted drakisfire into working on typing up the handwritten pages for me, and then sat down to put in more words. I looked at the huge chapters and started breaking them up into more averaged size chapters. I started talking with nonnycat and robertsloan2 and ended up re-plotting the story arc of the book as I realized that everything I wanted to do in the book simply wouldn't fit. The plot for book 1 turned into the plot for book 1 and book 2, and I re-arced book 1's plot to be self-contained.

I went and added some 30+k of new words to Luzon over the span of the year. I got involved at Forward Motion, and I started working on some short stories (Wings of Love was started in 2003... wow, I didn't realize that, heh).

What happened in 2004? Not sure what my word count for 2004 was, but it was pitiful (looking back through my blogs, I would have to say I think it was under 10k). I did do some work on Luzon through that year, and worked on some shorts, but it wasn't close to what 2003 was. There were some major life events, though: car accident in January, being out of work for quite some time due to the reflux/month-long sore throat, leaving Brylane and getting hired at Vanguard, moving to Sharon in October, the second car accident in November. (Both cars were totalled in both accidents.)

What happened in 2005? In 2005, I ended with a word count of only 20k... most of that being pre-writing for the novel version of the Wings setting, A&B stuff, and misc short stories. Major life events: Boskone with nonnycat in February, her moving in in March, and a lot of health issues throughout the year.

What's happened in 2006? So far, I've already written 10k. Half of what I spent the entire year of 2006 doing... already done in two months. I have more ideas of things to work on, and a much better idea of how I want to go about working on things. In 2005 I took nonnycat's advice and set Luzon aside to work on other things. Ultimately, I found that I didn't need to-- I can't. It's my first project and it always keeps dragging me back to it. I can't leave it undone, because it needs to be done. I need it to be done... and after all the years I've worked on it, I still want to do it.

Passion. I haven't always had it... or I never would have been able to set writing down so totally for as long as I did. Luzon wasn't the problem. Working on other WIPs wasn't the problem. Nothing mechanically was the problem-- I was the problem. Not just motivationally, it wasn't just a matter of FOKAIC (Fingers on keyboard, ass in chair), it was a matter of finding passion in and for my work again.

2005 may not have accomplished much in and of itself. But it was the time period in which I discovered my passion for writing again. And that's worth more than any number of words can equal.

Did some pre-writing work for Shadows Into Twilight...

2006 Progress: February
3207 / 10000 (32.07%)

The sad thing is, it's February and I've already written about 40% of what I did total for 2005. And I haven't even really written that much this year, either.

For those that have read Sunlight and Moonlight, I'm thinking of working on another story following Owein's brush with Rhiannon.

What would you be interested in seeing? No promises, but if I like what you propose, I may run with it. :)

(If you're not on my writing spam filter, and want to be added, just leave a comment and I'll add you. All entries are marked with the writing tag for easy reference.)

There's an interesting thread about omniscient POV over on gerriwritinglog's journal. I've never really worked with omniscient, for many of the reasons she mentions.

The last batch of comments about "Normal People Fall into Fantasy World" novels did catch my eye, though. I am a fan of this style? subgenre? device? They may not be the best, but they're fun, and that's something I look for... enjoying what I read. And it's also how I got back into reading Holly Lisle. I'd read her Magic in the Mist a long time ago, but was reminded of her when I saw Glenraven in the bookstore. And through Holly, I found Forward Motion, which lead me to Evolution and to nonnycat.

So... some of the different books I liked that fall into this category:

1. Glenraven 1 & 2 -- MZB, Holly Lisle
2. Mall, Mayhem, & Magic -- Holly Lisle, Chris Guin
3. The Landover series -- Terry Brooks
4. The World Gates series -- Holly Lisle
5. The Last Rune series -- Mark Anthony
6. The Dragonsword series -- Gael Baudino
7. Pure of Heart -- Chris Ricci (not published, as far as I've been able to find... knew the author and critted the book)

How about you?

"Possession is 9/10ths of the law."

Sounds like something I need to make a demon say at some point in a story.

A few reponses to the Evolution poll, I felt, deserved some type of response back. Since the poll was anonymous, I don't really have any way to do that outside of commenting on it here. I've tried to make sure that these answers address your concerns without revealing too much information with the context of your response.

#1.) Why did you leave Evolution? (Select primary reason.)

Also, really, the existence of a Core Group was itself a problem. Being an active Evo member but not a Core member felt a bit like hanging around the periphery of someone else's party.

The Core was an administrative group, not a crit circle or anything else. It was a term intended to differentiate the people who made site policies rather than the group of moderators. This differentiation became less important over time as we decreased the number of moderators.

It had nothing to do with how important someone was to the site, it was more a reflection of their administrative authority.

#3.) What did you dislike about Evolution? (Check all that apply)

Too many posts to keep up with...also for the life of me I could not figure out how to do the signature stuff!

The original PIP system was horrible, I fully admit that. We did revamp that later on with the addition of the PIP Builder, and that is something that I will continue to work on.

I've checked Classes here, but it's largely to do with timing, which doesn't work as well for those outside the Continental US.

We'll try to run classes outside the Eastern timezone as this has been commented on by a few people. That being said, the times when we tried to do so before, we had poor attendance, so no guarantees. Given that all of our moderators are US-based, it is not always possible for us to do so.

The other thing I'd like to mention is that members are allowed (and encouraged) to host Classes and Workshops of their own. If you have an area that you've got down pat and want to help out others with, feel free to put together a plan and talk to a moderator. We'll get you set up on the Calendar and good to go.

#6.) In what ways do you think Evolution could be improved? (Technical or otherwise.)

Well, having 78 replies on a single page is a bit much. And to be honest, I don't like the setup of the individual pages. If the posts could go on a different page once it hits a certain amount, it'll be easier to navigate.

There has always been that option. phpBB natively supports what you're referring to, pages of (by default) 20 posts per page. We customized it to use threading, so you can visually see who X post is replying to, but if you're not comfortable with threading, you can certainly switch to flat view. On a per-post or global basis.

I'll add a section in the "Welcome to new members" post describing this and how to go about doing that.

I also plan to develop the threading system further to support over-loading (users of DCForums know what I'm referring to) so that a long thread will get broken down into subthreads, but it's very complex code to add, and I haven't had the time to get it working right yet.

I'm not sure how well this would work, but maybe scheduled wordwars, which would work similarly to wordcount challenges but going on time rather than wordcount (read: how many words you can write in say, an hour, as opposed to how quickly can you write 1K).

I've recently added in support into StormChat for word war timers. Currently it's based on a fixed time (one hour) though I will be adding in support in the future for customizable times so if people want a half-hour war, then they can have it timed.

Clear instructions on how to join crit groups or who to contact to join. [snip] Crit groups with specific dates to submit work.

There was a forum called "Spinning the Circle" which had a list of current groups, who ran the group, whether or not they were accepting new members, and instructions on how to form your own.

I don't think that we as administrators will dictate how crit groups work, I think that's up to the group in question. Some are for critique, some are for support (brainstorming or encouragement), etc. It's up to the group moderator (and, really, the group itself) to determine what they want the group to be about.

And if there isn't one that fits you... post with your idea, and see if other people are interested in it. If they are, form your own. :)

have the site more scalable. I have to scroll sideways to see the boards, and that's just annoying.

I'd love to hear more details on this. What screen resolution do you run at? Which theme do you use (evolution, subSilver, Appalachia, or Andromeda)? Default is evolution.

Andromeda currently has some issues with missing graphics (because I haven't been able to find the font freely available that the theme author used, though I will probably end up buying it).

We do also intend to tweak things a bit so replies in threads won't take up as much space as they do with all the links for IM clients, etc.

#7.) Do you plan to return to Evolution after the redesign?

There's no point in being part of a site that keeps making you inactive when you have to be gone for whatever reason for a month or three.

Try six. The deactivation script only makes you inactive if you have been gone for 6 months. It doesn't delete your account, but it does flag you so when we say "we have X members", we aren't counting the people that haven't logged in in over 6 months.

Because, really, I know of sites that say "we have 3000 members". But if you look at the accounts, frankly, most of them haven't logged in in over a year, I'll bet. It is a general rule of running any website that requires visitors to sign up to access some content that many people will sign up on their first visit and not return to the site again. We also delete people who are inactive and have not posted on the boards after 6 months of signing up.

The other reason we put in the deactivation system is that moving forward as we start sending out more email notices, we can prevent inactive members from getting spammed. You'll get one email when you get deactivated, and you won't hear anything else until you come back. Of course, if you don't want to receive email notices you can opt out of the usergroup ("Site Email Notices") but the emails sent to that group will not be sent to inactive members.

Evolution has shut down for the revamp.

See you all in February!

Most of the Evo folk have probably seen this already, but if not:

http://www.evolutionwriters.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5586

For those that have looked over Evo before and not signed up, or who let their accounts lapse... please help us out by filling out the poll located here:

http://test.windsofstorm.net/voting/votes.php?vote_id=1

That would be appreciated as we work to revamp the site.

Did make some progress on A&B character bios... total for the month:

Progress: December 2005
2510 / 7750 (32.39%)

Lowered my goal for the year:

Progress: Year of 2005
19156 / 25000 (76.62%)

I've been stalled on this WIP for a while, mainly because I had to come to terms with it changing genres on me. But:

Upon Wings of Hope (Outline)
44 / 44 (100%)

All is good now. :)

( outline behind cut... )

Just a reminder that I have a writing filter on this journal (which I've been actively using lately)... I post worldbuilding/brainstorming notes as well as stories and (eventually) novel chapters. They need to be behind a friends lock to protect first publication rights (publicly accessible == published, thus tossing away potential $), and I use the filter to prevent from spamming my flist. They're all tagged with writing as the core tag.

Comment below to be added/removed from this filter... no hard feelings if it's not something you're interested, and no real qualifications needed if you want to be added to it. If you comment, great; if you critique, even better-- but neither are required to remain on the filter. (If you do comment, please keep it to constructive criticism. However, rough and tumble crits are welcomed, so don't be afraid to be mince words when doing so.)

I have a new erotica story that I'm working on over at sacred_passion for Evolution's Equinox Marathon... feel free to friend the journal and leave a comment on the first post for access to the erotica filter.

Please make sure to specify your birthdate in your profile so I can ensure you're of age.

Equinox Marathon
1513 / 2000 (75.65%)

Been meaning to post this earlier... but I know that there are a few folks on my flist that aren't regular members of Evolution Writers. Over at Evo, August is home to the writing challenge EvoLunacy, in the same vein as April Fools and NaNoWriMo.

EvoLunacy is about taking a month to work on one novel and/or multiple short stories (as many as you want). What sets this apart from other months is a focus to set the normal routine aside and get down to business... in the company of like-minded people who will cheer you on and help you overcome blocks that come up. We have a whole forum on the boards dedicated to this challenge, and the forum is open to everyone-- members or not. (You don't even have to register if you don't want to, though it would be nice.) Registered members can feel free to drop into Chat and join in a Word War to make the words fly by.

Also this month, Evolution is taking applications for two courses that we will be giving. nonnycat is running Above and Beyond, a course aimed at intermediate to advanced writers who want to BAM! kick it up a notch, as Emeril would say. The course is adapted from the Donald Maass book Writing the Breakout Novel. Deadline for applications is August 15th and spots are limited.

macfey is also running Baby Steps, a course aimed at beginning writers to help cover some of the basics. The deadline for applications for this course is also August 15th.

So come on over and let us help your writing evolve :)