Fun with ships and pirates
Yesterday was not a good day for me. I was exhausted, right down to the bone, to the extent that I desperately wanted to fall asleep in the middle of my working day (which, despite the CFS, rarely happens to me), my brain ceased functioning for periods at a time, and sometimes I just sat and stared at the mountain of work I need to get through.
But it was a Wednesday, which meant that there was a Starwalker post to get up. Luckily, by the time I had got home and had dinner, I was feeling marginally more awake. Writing on the way home had energised me a bit, mostly because of the subject of the post. Space pirates! Crisis! And a mildly crazy ship.
Yesterday’s post has been coming for a long time. It’s one of those plot points that takes a lot of building up to – I love making my characters go ‘SPANG’, but I prefer to do it in a way that makes sense. Juggling all those pieces into the right place at the right time isn’t easy, but damn, it’s worth it.
I think I surprised myself with how little I had planned it all out. The write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants habit I got into with the Apocalypse Blog is continuing to work well for me as I write footloose and buffer-free. All I knew was the decision that had to be made and the ending of the post – the rest pretty much got made up as I wrote. I hadn’t planned to blow up half a moon – that grew out of the position the ship started out in, which only came about because I have that little positional information section at the top of the post. But it worked itself in surprisingly well. Don’t you just love it when a half-baked plan comes together?
Originally, I hadn’t wanted to leave it on a cliffhanger. I wanted to get right through to the end of the chase, partly for completeness but also because of the real-time aspect. But at the same time, the next portion of the chase deserves a good share of attention on its own – it’s a pivotal part of the story and seems only right to give it its own post. Plus, the damn posts are getting longer, hovering around 2,000 words each at the moment. Whoops. No wonder they’re taking me a couple of days to put together.
So, there you go. I wrote through exhaustion and confusion, got a little bit emotional in the middle of it (Starwalker breaks my heart), and wound up with something I was excited and terrified to post. That doesn’t happen often. I think the last time I felt that wound-up about a post was when I killed off Dillon in AB. Or maybe when Faith’s Dad said goodbye.
I’m glad to say that it was all worth it. I’ve had comments on it already, with exactly the kinds of reactions I was going for. Today, I am not quite as exhausted as I was yesterday, and a little bit elated at the feedback. One of the best things I did this time around was to turn comments on on the blogfic, because my readers are awesome.
I’ve been getting suggestions/requests to have some kind of discussion forum for SW, too. It’s not something I thought about before (or dreamed would actually be used/necessary!). But people seem to want it, so I shall look into it! Then readers can go and speculate about what’s happening in the story to their heart’s content.
But first, I need to get this next post written. Somehow, I have to follow up yesterday’s post with something that at least doesn’t suck. Wish me luck!
Fiction flash: Panic ensues
So, I was settling down on the train to write last night, and was in a musing mood. It was one of those days when sensory information twists into words and phrases in my head, in readiness to be used in some scene or other.
Usually, I don’t bother to do anything with these little snippets of description, but I decided to throw them into a two-sentence story, mostly to see if I could. Here’s what I ended up with:
Panic Ensues
An empty train carriage, cool with humming fans and the faint smell of disinfectant, is quickly filled up with bodies and bags, papers and books, iPods and laptops shoehorned in tight enough for typing. As the doors squeeze closed, a woman lifts her handbag, turns to the man next to her, and asks a dangerous question: “Does my bomb look big in this?”
For some reason, things seemed to want to come in threes. It seemed fairly natural, so I let it. And okay, it’s maybe not in the best of tastes, but I don’t pretend to be PC. Enjoy!
Kreativ Blogger Award!
The other day, I noticed a new comment pop up on my last post on my writing blog here. When I checked it out, I discovered that my friend, reader and fellow writer, Rissa Watkins, had chosen me for an award.
The award is called the Kreativ Blogger Award, given by recipients to others they believe are worthy of such a title. Clearly whoever started this off is creative in the spelling department (enough to make my internal editor twitch and claw at the insides of my delete key), but it’s a lovely idea. It’s also an honour to be chosen.
Rissa has been a wonderful supporter of my writing since I started the Apocalypse Blog. I met her over on the Accentuate Writers Forum and haven’t looked back since; she’s one of the reasons that I keep going back there! Thank you, Rissa!
So I suppose I should get on with this whole award thing. How does it work? Right. Here’s what I cribbed off Rissa’s post:
- Thank the person who awarded me the award, and link that person’s blog on my blog. (Check! Go me!)
- Identify seven things about myself. (Ah, crap.)
- Award seven bloggers with the “Kreativ Blogger Award,” post links to their blogs, and leave a comment on each of their blogs, to let them know of the honour. (Wow, seven? Well, okay then.)
Seven things about myself. Oh, I hate these. I could cheat and list things most of you already know, but I guess that’s not really the point of this. So let’s try something a little bit different:
- I’m still waiting to grow up. I’m <censored> years old, have my own (rented) place, would love to own my own house, pay all my own bills, and am sidling into management at work. I also dye my hair to hide all the white ones sneaking through. And still, I feel like a kid half the time, especially around people I respect, and have to remind myself that I am, in fact, an adult. It doesn’t help that I play video and computer games and make stories up every day.
- I’ve never truly punched someone. As in, totally lost it and smacked someone in the face. I know how – I’ve studied karate, sparred and even done competition fighting – but I’ve never done it in anger, or fear, or need. I am pretty sure that if it came to it, I would, though, and that scares me.
- I’m not as organised as I look. I make a lot of stuff up on the fly and am lucky enough that it usually works out just fine. I used to be concerned with being prepared for everything, planning and revising, and to an extent I still try to do that. But time and pressure have eroded away opportunity, and apparently, if you drop me in the deep end, I’ll do all right.
- I prefer driving a manual transmission to an automatic. I like the extra bit of control it gives me over the car, and I don’t like having a car think for me. I know what gear I want, thank you very much, and I’d like it now, not in a couple of seconds when you’ve had a chance to consider what my foot up your ass means. Never met an automatic car I liked to drive as much as any of my manuals. It’s perhaps ironic that I’m currently writing a story about a strangely sentient vehicle that doesn’t always do what it’s told.
- I have pretty good coordination. I pick up physical techniques easily, especially routines. It was very handy when learning karate and kata, and probably a holdover from the dancing I did when I was little. I still hope to one day put it to the test and learn to fly a helicopter.
- I like to fix things. I’m a problem solver and if someone brings me an issue, I’ll do what I can to fix it. I enjoy helping people, whatever that means at the time, though that doesn’t mean I’m a doormat. I once shared a house with a girl who didn’t believe that altruism existed in the world and not all the help I could give her was able to change her mind.
- I hate these ‘say something about yourself’ memes. Same with self-promotion – it never feels quite ‘clean’. But apparently, if you say something nice about my writing, I’ll do it anyway and be unable to shut up. Luckily, I think this is number seven, so I’ll stop now.
That’s enough about me! More than enough, I think. So, moving swiftly on to the lucky recipients of my vote for the award. This has been hard to pull together, because I don’t read a lot of blogs in the five minutes a week of spare time I have. Here are my choices, in no particular order:
- My dear friend Clover, author of the Inventor blogfic. It’s a wonderful story she’s got going there, rich with details from the city she lives in. She does a great deal of personal exploration to get her authencity down and it shows.
- Tonya R Moore, writer of science fiction stories, both serials and short stories. She runs a a web fiction directory on her website as well. She’s friendly and supportive, and always a pleasure to talk to. She doesn’t keep a writing blog, but do her serials count? Well, good enough for me.
- Becka Sutton, writer of fantasy fiction, mostly online serials. She also maintains a writing blog, on which she does frequent reviews of other online fiction. It’s always wonderful to see someone offering their opinion on others’ work, supporting other writers by doing reviews. She gives honest reviews as well, which is important, in my opinion and as a writer.
- Ann Somerville, author of gay romance stories, from short stories to epic novels. She offers many stories for free on her website, but also has many books for sale. Her blog contains a wealth of information about writing, the communities she is active in, and self-promotion for authors. She’s honest, no-nonsense and doesn’t pull her punches, and it’s great to see someone telling it how she sees it.
- Gabriel Gadfly, poet and short-story writer. He offers his work for free on his website, and his blog contains lots of useful observations and insights into the web fiction world. I enjoy his poetry, and the advice he offers is well worth taking a look at.
- Naomi Kramer, short story writer, all offered for free online. She also keeps a personal blog, where she talks about lots of stuff, including her writing. She offered a promotion service for web fiction writers through Twitter and a Free Fiction Online blog, though sadly she hasn’t had time lately to run those. Her website says she’s too busy with her writing – I hope that’s true, and I hope she finds time to come back soon too! Whether she’s active right now or not, I still think she deserves an award for her hard work.
- Zoe E Whitten, writer of ‘dark and weird stories’. She offers lots of work for free online, including e-books and serials. They’re a lot of fun to read, and her blog is well worth checking out, for fiction, news and reviews.
Congratulations to all of you, and thank you for your work. Your creativity shines on the rest of us. May you continue to do so!
Starwalker: Into the Second Week
Phew. Another week or two has slipped by, and I am way behind in my blog posting again. But never fear! Here I am!
Starwalker has got off to a rocking start. I keep looking at it and reeling, just a little bit, quietly, to myself. Allow me to explain.
Let’s start with the comments. It wasn’t until after I had started the Apocalypse Blog that I found out comments are a good idea. It was a conceptual decision and I didn’t realise that it was a good way to communicate with my audience (be gentle, it was my first blogfic!). With Starwalker, I was determined not to make that mistake and left the comments on. (Okay, they broke and it took me two days to fix them, but they’re all working now!)
Now, I have comments. More than that: I have good, positive comments. I can’t say how much this means! I was more nervous going into Starwalker than I have starting any other project, and it’s good to know that people are liking it.
I have been getting other feedback, too, and I’m grateful for all of it.
Then there’s the web stats. I check this a few times a week, mostly because the little graphs going up makes me happy. The Apocalypse Blog got off to a slow start, mostly because I had no idea what I was doing and no-one knew who I was. In its first two weeks, it got a grand total of 177 visitors. Starwalker is a week and a half old, and it’s had 247 visitors so far (with a higher return rate, too).
I’ve also had over 100 visitors a day for the last couple of days – something that took me two months to achieve in AB. Whoo-hoo!
Part of this is my existing audience and contacts, going over because I nudged them and they (hopefully) like my work. I also know a little bit more about where to advertise, and that’s helping too. And okay, maybe I teased people about it beforehand enough that they were almost as excited (and more excited, in some cases!) than I was to see the first post go up.
I’ve been busy over the past couple of weeks, trying to get all the links and listings in place. Here’s where I’m at so far:
- Muse’s Success – done and approved (go give me pretty stars!)
- Epiguide – done and approved
- Write Blog Fiction – done and approved (go give me pretty stars!)
- Web Fiction Guide – done and approved (go give me pretty stars!)
- Technorati – done and awaiting approval
- Blog Fiction – done and awaiting confirmation
I’ve also been spreading the word through my Twitter account and Facebook. I set up a Facebook fan page a couple of days ago, and that’s going well so far! I’m using it to send out notifications whenever a new post goes up on Starwalker (and will post when the AB shorts go up, too), so please go hook up there if you want to join in!
Also, it looks like the Web Fiction Guide have changed their submissions procedure (not sure when this changed, but it didn’t happen a year ago!). Now, they are having an editor give the fiction a rating and brief (incomplete) review when they approve the listing. So I have a 4-star (out of 5) editor rating and a really positive semi-review already! (On looking at other recent listings, that’s a high rating, too!)
So. It has been a busy couple of weeks. A lot has happened, and I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten some of it. There are still places I need to advertise (some have minimum post requirements) and other stuff to sort out. I have to go back through my links to AB and make sure I’ve covered them with Starwalker.
Tomorrow’s SW post is already edited and scheduled to go up in the morning. This new project is going well, I think. I’ve even had time to start the first AB short story between SW posts.
Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me to get this far with Starwalker (and my other projects!). There is so much more to come and I can’t wait to take you there with me! I think tomorrow’s post sums up how I’m feeling right now. You’ll know when you see it.
Un-glitched
Been fighting with the Starwalker website over the past couple of days. The comments form was borking – for some reason, trying to submit a comment just sent you back to the homepage.
I checked everywhere I could think of. Compared code to the test site I had for the theme (where comments were working fine), replaced files, replaced code…. I hit up helpful friends who know a lot more codestuff than me, who pointed me in the right directions.
I wound up having to copy the theme files over to my test site one at a time, testing the comments after each one, to see which file contained the code that broke it. It took a little while, but I found the issue – the search form in the sidebar was overriding the comment form. Remove the search form, and it all works fine.
Huzzah! So now comments work on Starwalker. The one thing I didn’t think to test before it went live. Oops. Guess I won’t be making that mistake again! Thanks to those who offered help – it was much appreciated!
I might try to put the search form back in at some point (I think I know what was wrong with the code now, but, well. We’ll see). Do I really need one? Would anyone use a search on a blogfic?
The second post went up this morning. Friday’s is all scheduled and ready. Working on next week’s posts at the moment. So far, it’s going well, I think!
Starwalker begins!
The first post of Starwalker is now up and available for reading! Go, my lovelies, read and be amused!
Starwalker: starts tomorrow!
I can’t believe it’s February tomorrow. January has gone by so quickly, stuffed full of bits of this and that. I had hoped to have a rest, find my feet, and set myself up for the year’s challenges ahead. I think I’ve managed at least some of that. The rest is still a work in progress.
I’ve spent a lot of time doing background work for Starwalker. The nature of the new blogfic means that it requires a more solid setup than the Apocalypse Blog did – with AB, I had a lot more freedom to make stuff up on the fly. I also had a clearer idea about how the first couple of weeks of posts would go. Starwalker is different and, for me, harder.
I haven’t done a lot of hard scifi before. I’ve been reading books on astronomy and physics to try to get my head in the right place for this one. I don’t intend to put a lot of the science into it, but I do have to understand it! So far, it’s going good, and I’m gathering some interesting material.
I think the hardest part to put together has been the cast list. I had a couple of characters fairly solid in my head when the idea first formed, but fleshing out the rest of the crew of the Starwalker has been a challenge. I don’t usually do this much character prep! I’m more of a ‘toss them together and see what happens’ kind of writer when it comes to that. But as the blog takes place on board a spaceship, the crew and passengers are finite and fairly inflexible. Whatever I start with, I have to run with.
Thank goodness I took January off. I have the Cast page up now, with all the base stats of the story’s regular players. The About pages have been polished up for both the story and Starwalker. The Colonies page is there too, but I have yet to fill out the information on that one. That’ll probably be a work in progress for a little while as I tease out the details and feel the world out. I have a notebook full of notes that will eventually make it onto there. Some of it I don’t want to reveal yet!
I had hoped to have the first couple of weeks’ worth of posts written by now. As it stands, I have almost the first week done. I wound up with visitors and chores filling up yesterday, which was great fun (okay, the chores not so much, but the friends visiting, definitely). I don’t mind giving up writing time for that! Today, the CFS is biting hard, and I’ve been mostly resting and unable to focus enough to do something creative.
Instead, I edited the first post and got it scheduled up on the blog. It took me ages to format the damn thing – I have chosen an awkward format that requires some fiddling with code to make it look right. Hopefully it’ll publish the way I want it to, and it won’t be confusing (I’m going for clear and readable, not pretty). Luckily, there won’t be too many posts quite that heavy on the formatting (I won’t say why, but you’ll see in tomorrow’s post!).
I’m having fun with the setup of the SW fictional blog. There’ll be log entries from two or three of the crew (the chief engineer and the captain, and possibly one or two others) that Starwalker ‘peeks’ on, as well as the ship’s own logs. Conversations are going to be more like transcripts, done in script-format as if they’re recordings (I’m still toying with the style of that a bit).
It’s going to be different to anything I’ve written before. The more I think about it, the more I realise that this is a departure for me. AB was an experiment in discipline and a new format (blogfic), but a familiar way of storytelling. I hadn’t done a lot of first person before AB, but that’s not hard to fall into, especially when you’re doing it every day. For SW, I’m straying into hard scifi, a stricter setup, more characters to juggle, and a more rigid format.
The voice hasn’t come as easily as Faith’s did and getting the posts down has been a struggle. The 20-minute train commute isn’t long enough to get much of a flow going, especially with new characters, and a couple of times over the past couple of weeks, train system issues have meant that I haven’t been able to write on the commute at all. After I get home, I’m usually so tired that the last thing I want to do is write.
I think part of this year’s challenge is going to be getting past that hump. I should be able to get a post written every day, which will give me time to get other writing done as well. I have AB shorts to put together and a novel to edit. I think I need to set myself a schedule and be merciless about sticking to it. And kick this CFS in the ass, dammit.
9am tomorrow morning, Brisbane time, the first Starwalker post goes live. There’s no turning back then – I have to make it work! Head down, tail up, off we go.
I’m nervous about this one. With AB, I was exploring and excited. With SW, I have people waiting to read it, an audience I might disappoint, so the pressure is a lot higher. It’s fantastic and I’m lucky to have people who want to read my work! But I am nervous. Thank goodness WordPress is going to post it for me – at least I don’t have to push the button myself!
Fingers crossed! I hope you all like it. Onwards into the black, my friends!
Apocalypse Blog Shorts
I have been pondering the idea of doing short stories in the Apocalypse Blog world for a while now. I’m definitely not ready to let go of that world and its characters yet – there are stories yet to tell, and I’m a storyteller.
But what, when, and who? These are questions that I’m throwing open to you, my happy readers.
The Starwalker planning is going well – there’s actually more spinning out there than I had anticipated, and I’m almost ready to sit down with a pinboard and a crapload of notecards. But I’ll save that stuff for another post. What all that means is that I’ve had a chance to start thinking about AB shorts and what I can do.
On the train ride home today, I scribbled down some ideas that have been percolating for a couple of days. Plans there for about four shorts – I’m not sure yet if they’ll come out as proper short stories, or just snippets that will make a story when read together (three of the ones I made notes on today are about Jersey, AB’s punch-happy little crossdresser).
WHAT – I see these as primarily character-centric stories. The things that happened when Faith wasn’t around. Retrospectives, telling the stories that happened before we met the characters. Also, current events are up for grabs (and future ones, possibly, depending on how much of a headache it gives me).
I’d like to explore different facets of the broken-down world. Maybe go into some of the background that the Seekers will never know about.
What subject would you like to see a short about?
WHEN – I have been thinking about a schedule. Knowing the way that I work, I am far more likely to do these shorts if I have a fixed schedule to post them by. So, once a month, I think. Let’s aim for the end of the month, in case I manage to get one done in the next couple of weeks and can get it sorted before February. No promises, but you never know your luck.
I hadn’t actually planned on doing 12 shorts, but after today’s little idea-splurging, I don’t think I’ll have a problem turning out that many. The main issue will be time.
Okay, no question on this one – most of it depends on everything else I’m doing.
WHO – This is a slightly trickier issue. I have a few characters that I know I can write about, and have some plans for. They are:
- Jersey and the Wolverines
- Masterson and his family
- Bree and the Pride.
I also have an idea for at least one new character, and am pondering a couple of the dead ones.
Who would YOU like to see a short about?
Suggestions welcome! Anyone whose idea gets picked up gets a cookie!
In the meantime, I’ll keep spinning out my plans and see what comes of it all.
Review: True Blood
I watch a lot of shows, mostly on DVD these days because TV broadcasting tends to suck. It’s not often that I feel moved to talk much about the stuff I watch, let alone do any kind of review, but I occasionally make an exception. I am fussy about my fiction, and things that irk me make me want to pick them apart until I know what it is that irks me so much.
I shall attempt not to spoil anything major, but I make no promises. I will also point out that I have not read the books, only seen the series.
A wonderful friend gave me the first season of True Blood for Christmas. I’ve heard good things about it (and a few not-so-good things, but mostly good) and have been tempted to pick it up myself. It might be part of the recent vampire craze but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s crap. The cast looked pretty good and the premise seemed interesting, and that gave me hope.
I wanted to like True Blood, I really did. But it’s like a sister with an addiction – every time you come around to forgiving past trespasses, she goes and falls on her face again, leaving you with a string of WTFs and FFSs. I kept hoping that the next time would see her right, that she’d find her feet and stand up properly for a change, and dammit, she’s family and you don’t give up on family (it was a gift and I’m stubborn enough to see things through to the end). But when she finally came to an end with promises of more to follow, I was left with an aftertaste of frustration and hair-pulling.
I just spoke with a friend about it, and wound up describing it as: “Cheesy porn. The kind that comes around to fix your dishwasher naked. Lots of filler and disappointing climaxes.”
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, True Blood is about a small Louisanna town in a world where vampires have come ‘out of the coffin’ (their words, not mine) and promise to drink bottled fake blood instead of people. The main characters are: Sookie, the telepathic waitress; Vampire Bill, who has nothing else interesting about him; Jason, Sookie’s brother (hereafter known affectionately as Fuckadoodle); Tara, the black girl who can’t get away from the fact she was named after a plantation, among several other sticks up her ass; and Sam, the huggable, dependable employer of half the cast who, unsurprisingly, takes shit for the whole season. Cue predictable romance between the telepath and the vampire, add a serial murder mystery and a butt-load of sex, shake and spill onto your screen.
Let’s start with the plot of the season (as I’ll probably go on at length about the characters within this section). First of all, the episodes annoyed me for their lack of structure. They seemed to meander all over the place without having much of anything achieved or resolved in an episode, though they made sure to end on a near-audible DUN DUN DUN note. Alias pulled this off well; True Blood did not. Clearly part of a larger story or three (one would hope, though many of the threads that were started didn’t actually go anywhere), each episode still didn’t have a coherent purpose in what it was trying to do.
What looked like the main plot of the season (the murderer killing vampire-fanciers) wound up being a damp squib at the end. I was disappointed with who the murderer turned out to be, and frustrated that Sookie failed to have any kind of clue until it was way too late. She’s a telepath who can barely control her ability to hear what people think, and yet she completely failed to pick up on the murderer’s hostility towards vampires, vampire-fanciers, and fangbangers, despite being around him frequently and even discussing these issues with him. When she did see inside his head, she failed to recognise him. No-one is that careful with their thoughts.
Which leads me on to another point: the writers seemed to forget about Sookie’s telepathy when it was inconvenient. It wound up being a plot point that was used when they felt like it, and then randomly ignored when they didn’t want her to know something. The excuse that ‘she blocks most of it out’ is thin when she clearly fails on frequent basis, enough that it’s common knowledge that she ‘knows stuff’ and she has no caution about responding verbally to people’s thoughts in public. It’s also impossible to tell when she’s actively blocking her telepathy, and the result winds up looking like clumsy writing and careless continuity.
The story I found the most interesting was the shapeshifters. This came along late in the season and didn’t get anywhere near a conclusion, but was left hanging for the next season to address. If I was jaded, I’d say that I have yet to be disappointed by it, but there is a part of me that hopes that won’t be the case.
Tara’s plot with her mother, ‘demons’, and exorcisms is interesting and fairly well done, until it runs headlong into the shapeshifter issue and stumbles into the woods, never to be seen again. What could have been an engaging story is abruptly forgotten and sidelined into something quite different, as if the show had just seen something shiny and run off after it.
I was bewildered by Tara’s sudden grab of the bottle, and more confused by her inability to recognise the person who caused her to crash her car (she was drunk, but that’s no excuse for forgetting the sudden naked woman – or at least, its a very lame one). Her storyline was so hijacked that she almost disappeared entirely from the story and the show – I was surprised to see her around Sam’s bar towards the end, and annoyed that she seemed so ‘fine’ after all of her previous struggles.
I loved Fuckadoodle’s storyline, right until the end. He’s a fairly well-constructed character: an unashamed horndog, which I appreciate for its honesty, yet he manages to be lovable as well. Through the season, he grows beyond where he started in a believable way and actually has something of an arc; something few, if any, of the other characters achieve. It’s unfortunate that it crashes down into a weird, religious puddle at the end – I didn’t buy his abrupt conversion and it left me with a ‘FFS’ aftertaste.
It’s a shame that he didn’t get a chance to find out who Amy really was. Fuckadoodle’s story would have been so much more involved and compelling if he had had to face just how nuts she was, and she would have been less two-dimensional had her character been explored further. But sadly, that was cut off. I wish they had spent more time there, before poor little Fuckadoodle was sent on a spiral which he (the actor) successfully made sympathetic.
I love his spiral; it was one of the highlights of the season for me, because it worked and felt realistic and understandable. That’s why what followed in his storyline annoyed me so much – it felt cheap after the wonderful, painful arc he had just been through.
The story that I found least interesting was the vampire/romance one. This is especially sad as it seems to be the mainstay of the series. Sookie had ‘please fuck me’ stamped on her virginal forehead from the moment she laid eyes and a blank brain on Bill. Bill found her interesting because of her telepathy and her persistent interest. I won’t go into all the detail of it, but I felt that the relationship was clumsy at best, with a lot of missed opportunities to make it feel ‘real’ or at least believable. They see each other and then they’re fighting off this irresistable passion between them. It feels forced and unconvincing, though it seems to be trying to grow into something more solid.
Once they’re screwing, it turns very strange, as Sookie is apparently in the mood for sex even if the vampire has just crawled out of the cemetery’s ground and is covered in dirt. I have no problem with sex, but I do expect it to at least be explainable beyond ‘he was there and she was there and then they fell on each other’ with no regard for anything else that’s going on. See my earlier comment about the porn coming to fix the dishwasher naked – that’s what it felt like.
We don’t get very much about Bill’s character. We see when he was turned and how sad he is about his family, but little to explain who he is now. I wanted to know why he came to the small town to live (beyond ‘I wanted my old house back’) and why he kept trying to separate himself from his fellow undead suckers. There is a lot he left unsaid, and a lot of questions that Sookie should have asked him but never did. I kept wanting to know more about him, to have an idea about who he is as a person. What I wound up with was a blank, broody vampire with a chip on his shoulder hot for a little blonde bloodbag, but in a less interesting way than Angel and Buffy.
I liked Sookie in the pilot. She’s not quite in charge of her telepathy, she’s runs off into dangerous situations without hesitation, and she’s fearless. She’s also a little bit telekinetic. Unfortunately, the more the series goes on, the more these things are forgotten. The telekinesis is the first to go – it could have been a mistake in the effects, but there’s definitely a hint of something there (see the chain in the pilot), and after the first two or three episodes, it stops happening. She’s obviously not aware of it, but the writers should be.
As the season goes on, she turns into a whiny teenager, and seems more like a foot-stamping adolescent than a woman heedlessly running into things. She keeps having to say that she’s old enough to make her own decisions, which only reinforces the fact that she really doesn’t seem or act like it. She’s erratic in ways that defy explanation and is confounded by problems she could solve if only she remembered that she was a telepath. She’s often ‘wet’ in the way that Twilight‘s Bella is, and that’s always going to annoy me in a heroine. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give Sookie a clue or a spine. I don’t mind weakness, but I do mind being asked to sympathise with characters with few redeeming features to balance out the uselessness.
Also, her reactions to events are often missing. When she loses a family member, she barely blinks. She gets flashbacks to cleaning up blood on her kitchen floor, but at the time, she acted as if it was nothing unusual. If there was a feeling of her covering up her emotions, putting on a brave face, I would accept that, but that’s not the impression I get. Reactions just seem to be missing from her. I don’t know if it’s some weird character quirk they didn’t bother to explain or a failure of the actress (though I would expect more from Anna Paquin).
Unfortunately, it is difficult not to think of Twilight when looking at True Blood. This series is an adult version of the limp, teenage-fantasy Twilight, with added balls and sex. It seems to want to do other things but it doesn’t quite know how to pull it off. I feel like there are societal issues that want to be brought to the fore (the ‘out of the coffin’ politics make nice background noise but could have been more), which would make it a more interesting series.
In all, True Blood is a series with a lot of potential but full of ‘if only’s. This poor, drunken sister likes the gutter and getting dirty. Her hands are clumsy and prone to fumbling. She seems to want to make the right moves, but never quite finds her footing and slips frequently. Best to put her to bed and hope she’s better once the hangover has cleared.
Reshaping
I have been busy over the past week, so busy that this post keeps being delayed. On the one hand, I have a pile to do this month. On the other, I’m trying to take a break and catch my breath, before I dive into the next project.
My first task was to tidy up the Apocalypse Blog. As it was, it wasn’t easy for a new reader to catch up because the posts were in order from newest to oldest. I had put in links so that a reader could step from one post to the next, but finding a post in the middle still wasn’t easy.
So, once it was finished, I managed to find the right code to reverse the post order. The website now reads from start to finish, including the category/chapter links. Hopefully that will help make it more readable!
I also put a front page on the website, so I can navigate visitors to the right places. Eventually, it will have a happy little blurb on it – I’m still working on that part.
It’ll also have links to the e-book versions of the blog. I still have to figure out what I need to do for that – how many e-books to do, what formats, how to convert it. Luckily, I know of a handy e-reading forum that is chock-full of handy information about that, plus a writer friend who sometimes self-publishes her work, so I think I can get that figured out.
It’s coming along! Looking good so far, and moving towards being all tidied up.
It makes me sad. On the one hand, I’m glad to have finally finished. I have this complete entity now, an entire Thing that I can hold in my hand and say ‘I did it’. On the other hand, I miss writing it every day. It’s weird not typing on the train, or carrying my netbook to work every day so I can use up my commute to get a few hundred words down. It’s weird letting the threads of the story go and trusting it to the minds and imaginations of my readers.
I have promised not to stop entirely, both to my precious readers and to myself. I have ideas for short stories about the cast of AB, spotlights on the parts Faith didn’t get to see. When Jersey joined the Wolverines. Bree and the Pride. Masterson’s family. Maybe people we haven’t met yet – I have a couple of ideas percolating that might work.
I have been asked to do a sequel. I’m still reeling in the aftermath of the first one! At the same time, it’s incredibly flattering to be asked. I’m not going to say ‘no’ off the bat, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted. There might even be a germ of an idea lurking in the back of my brain.
Not this year. I have so much lined up, new projects to start and old ones I want to resurrect. And I need time to pull a proper plan together. I don’t know if I can do a sequel, but it’s definitely a maybe.
In the meantime, AB is just about tidied up. Work is going well – they just gave me an award for my efforts during September, when I had to take over the team leader role early! And a juicy bonus. Working full-time might be a huge drain on my time, but I’d by lying if I said it wasn’t worth it!
Starwalker is due to start next month. I’m pulling the planning together – I’ll post more about that soon. I didn’t get any feedback on the website, so I shall assume it’s perfect for now.
I guess I should set out my goals for the year soon too. I’ll get to it! Hang in there, my happy readers. It’s a shiny new year and there’s lots to fill it with.