aamcnamara: (Default)
Despite cutting my hair off (nothing like a freshly shaven head...) and joining Twitter this afternoon, I still got all my homework done in good time.

Time, that is, enough to let me actually open the file on A Returning Power and start shuffling bits.

Which brings me to my question. A Returning Power is set in a secondary fantasy world. However, the main character--Shannon--lives in a community that's sprung up in the ruins of a university (devastated by a war). The war left behind remnants, musket balls and bits of magic.

Problem is, several people reading the beginning have gotten the wrong idea, that this is in fact a post-apocalyptic landscape. That the 'magic' is misunderstandings of nuclear radiation, et cetera.

The university is the only place like this, everywhere else has moved on, which seems like it'd be easy to make clear... but to Shannon it's her whole world and so I've been having trouble figuring out how to represent that in the very beginning.

Halp? How do you read genre/setting from the beginning of a novel? What signifiers could I stick in to make this seem more secondary-world, or take out to make it less post-apocalyptic? (I realize that this is partially an exercise in futility, 'cause few of you have read it, but in the general sense.)

Query.

Jan. 12th, 2011 11:22 am
aamcnamara: (Default)
I'm looking for a photo-hosting service with few/no known security concerns, where you can make albums private (ideally password-protected, ideally not the kind where you have to have an account on the site to view private albums), also where you don't have to click the button for 'female' or 'male'.

Sites that I'm aware of are things like Picasa (doesn't seem to have the sort of private albums I want) and Photobucket (has that sort of private album, but not so much on the gender thing).

I know DeviantArt just went through the whole gender thing, but I don't know about private albums and that's not quite the sort of thing I want anyway. Mostly I have pictures of friends, of various events (tea party!), and of me wearing nice clothes.

What site am I missing? There must be something out there.

... see, I am contemplating moving all my stuff off Facebook, as the site does its tenth redesign and I have continuing itchiness about the whole privacy/security thing. But I won't until I have full functionality elsewhere--I don't mind having to have accounts at several sites, but if I'm up and moving off Facebook, I want those sites to be good ones, darnit.

For me, full functionality means some kind of restrictable photo-sharing thing, microblogging, and blogging. Blogging is what LJ/DW are for; microblogging, I think I have a line on something, but I also might end up on Twitter. Restrictable photo-sharing... anyone?
aamcnamara: (Default)
This post is large. It contains multitudes.

Fourth Street! )
---

While at the last panel at Fourth Street, I had an idea for a slightly related question.

How is your revision process (for novels, particularly, but short stories as well) reflected in the material things and/or software structures that you use?

(For example, if a writer restructures their novel in one stage and then goes through to polish, do they use notecards for restructuring, Scrivener, just work it out in a notebook? Do they print it out and go through to polish it, scroll through, check scenes individually?)

...however, it was not really relevant, so I am posing it here instead, or possibly will suggest it as a panel topic for next Fourth Street (if they let us submit panel topics) or WisCon or something. It seems interesting to me, at least. Some writing software is designed for certain things, and some for others, and since writers All Do It Differently, a certain amount of mishmash cobbling together of things is necessary, I should think.

---
Arrant pedantry, unrelated to both above )
---

I have a few more thoughts about Fourth Street (and conventions in general), Et Cetera, but right now I need to do my Ideomancer slush and work some more on my novel.
aamcnamara: (Default)
...offered without explanation:
- The Secret of the Old Clock
- The Bungalow Mystery
- The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse
- Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway
- The Tombs of Atuan
- Shakespeare's Bawdy
- Much Ado About Nothing
- The Princes of the Air
- The Moonbane Mage
- King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy
- Burning Bright
- Dreamships
- Dreaming Metal
- The Eyre Affair
- Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot
- Collected Poems of James Wright

What's on yours?
aamcnamara: (Default)
A question:

When you leave your place of residence, what is absolutely essential? When was the last time this changed, and how did it?

my thoughts )
aamcnamara: (Default)
Since I know there are some teens out there somewhere--

Here's a link to a post by [livejournal.com profile] shadesong about "Fandom: The Next Generation".

Ironically, so far in this discussion, [livejournal.com profile] aliseadae and I are playing the role of the Token Teens. So I thought I'd get the link out so that any other teens who are in fandom could chime in, too. ([livejournal.com profile] mlt23, I am looking at you!) And, of course, anyone else, but especially teens, given the nature of the discussion.
aamcnamara: (Default)
From a post about high fantasy on Tor.com, referencing a Le Guin short story:

"This story taps into primal powers back when the world itself was still a primal thing."

Is the world still a "primal thing"? Discuss.

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