#PennedPossibilities 654 — How would your SC introduce themselves?

Answers for (Lightning) Bolt, assuming I write the day angel's later stories:

Gives you a look and visually checks for weapons before giving a practiced harrumph then scanning the area for actual threats. She's training as a praetorian, but is already the devil-girl's captain of the guard. She nearly killed the main series antagonist for that woman; she has the knack for being a bodyguard, and she's being trained by one of the best: The devil-girl herself.

Out of uniform, she's not likely to introduce herself unless asked, and then give de minimus until she knows you. She spent a decade blackmailed and working for a crime syndicate. Not being noticed, and not identifying is pretty much branded into her brain. Since the devil-girl was also blackmailed, they'd been forced to work together before they ended up bonding over common experiences.

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#PennedPossibilities 653 — MC POV: Your best friend comes over at 3 am to go on an adventure. Where are you (both) going?

If Thorn Rose comes over at 3 a.m., the adventure is going to be in my bedroom.

To study. Definitely to study.

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#PennedPossibilities 652 — Do you ever use cliffhangers at narrative breaks and / or chapter endings?

Most of my chapters end with a cliffhanger or mystery of varying intensity. When I write something that feels like either, it's the truest indicator that the chapter is complete, and it's time to start another. However, I recognize the need for a cooldown period every so often, and throw in a slice-of-life chapter—the calm before the storm—or a handkerchief wringer where I calmly milk the emotional angst the narrative has built up.

A.K.A. and D.B.A. a "page turner."

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.22 — Earth Day! Who’s your most traveled character? Your least traveled?

The main Reluctance Series antagonist has probably been everywhere in the world and been most every profession, with mother having been her most repeated job. Immortality and always being 24 has its up and down sides.

Wintereyes has traveled all over the Fell Forest with the wolf pack that adopted her, but it's still a just a forest despite the size of the territory. Her parents' farm is just outside its border. Now that she's earned magical fame for befriending a wyvern (and arbitrating a dispute between a farmer, a sneezy so-called red dragon, and an exploded grain silo that had undergone undiscovered fermentation), she now attends a university in a Township—but she's two shy to explore the place because, well, all the people.

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#WordWeavers 2504.23 — Do you plan your themes or do they arise from your writing and then get tweaked in edits?

My themes are pretty much the same from story to story: feminist with a dose of gender politics. Regardless, they do arise from my writing because I don't know the plot until I write it, and I definitely tweak the theme during revision. Thus, my answer is Yes.

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#WordWeavers 2504.22 — Would your story work in a vastly different setting?

Hehehe.

I tell stories about characters with rather universal issues. The story is a plot line and transmogrified characters from an earlier work in a vastly different setting. Shhhh!

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#PennedPossibilities 651 — Name one person that would willingly hold your MC back if they were ever in the “raving lunacy” stage of anger.

Mi and Mau, May Ri's twins Miriam and Maurine, do this for their mother in Mars Needed Women. The overwhelming rage they moderate is very reasonable for their mother to feel, but the emotion wrapped up in it could ruin what the woman needs to do about it. It's Mau who succeeds in averting Armageddon.

Streak Carryingaton starts Reluctant Moon by trying to stop Thorn Rose from doing something very much in her character but which common sense says she should not. It's the catalyst for the story. He fails in stopping her since she's the mission commander. At the end of the novel, it's him who tries to stop the main series antagonist who he knew intimately. It's his lot in life to moderate the women in his life.

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#PennedPossibilities 650 — What profession would you have if you lived within the world of your WIP?

Were I female, I'd probably still end up a programmer. Thaumaturgy is actually a science of semantics and coded imagination, and relies on arranging ideas grammatically. Not everyone with horns is good at logic as well as mathematics, so there's room for collaboration. I could definitely do the logic programming, though it's nothing like JavaScript. I could be college educated and I could find white collar jobs. I wouldn't look forward to having children since I've no brothers to raise them while I work. Fortunately, it's possible to find men who go into childcare whether they have sisters or not, but it's expensive. I doubt I'd be willing to abstain to prevent children, not in their society.

Were I male, I'd have much more limited prospects, programmer not being one of them. The era is a lot like the 1960s with defined gender roles. While there are plenty of things I could do in our world, they are not considered men's work in theirs. I'd face prejudice and likely be barred. Since I'm not good with math, even work as a computer (look up the origins of the word) would be unlikely. That means either manual labor—factories, construction, or waiting tables—or attending to women's "needs." Since I have no sisters, I wouldn't be able to look forward to raising her children, either. Writing is an option, but I'd likely need a patron for that as it wouldn't support me, and favors would be implied. No, RS is not suited for that world.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.21 — Do you create for a certain niche or do you hope to have as broad an appeal as possible?

"Creating for" and "generally writing in" are two different things. I have an aversion to heavily researching things (bore-ing), which means I can't write historical, detective, military, modern settings, or hard sf. Too many things I can get wrong, and will! A story for me always needs be set in a place and time where I, as was once said so eloquently, "…We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical…"

This generally means I'm writing soft or social SF or I am writing fantasy that had more in kin with Theodore Sturgeon than Tolkien. If you can say I write to a particular niche, my stories will appeal to readers who enjoy female protagonists and feminist messages where the effect of gender roles play an important role. I don't consider that to be a "broad" appeal, but I think my writing ought appeal to SF and Fantasy readers, though maybe not hard SF fans.

As for my photography, I go for eye contact, dramatic color, and/or stateliness. I have no idea whether any of it is appealing. What do you think of the attached picture?

As for my cooking creations, I appeal to an audience of one, though sometimes two. My spouse approves. Check out my media tab on my profile for photos.

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#WordWeavers 2504.20 — If someone gave you a million dollars (or equivalent) to never write again, would you take it?

I spent a lifetime scrimping, saving, investing, and being frugal to get to this point. Retirement. Now they offer me a million dollars? Sheesh. Gonna have to make me a better offer to stop me from doing what I like to do. [Sticks out tongue, makes raspberry.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.20 — What rôle does religion play in your writing?

Religiosity is important in many of my stories, even when it is as prominent as vacuum by its absence. Usually, I don't write in the point of view of the religious, but I did write an SF novel in the point of view of a shaman. I'd lived in Bali for awhile, and having studied the culture and theatre of the island during college, felt I had a feel for animism. At university, I studied religions and non-western cultures as part of my degree, as well as folklore and mythology. I find it fascinating. At least as far as my writing goes my degree has proved useful.

More often I write about how people wield religion to abuse society. My latest novel (now in revision) pits a fictional religion and a theocratic plutocracy (where our world is headed) against one woman's quest for freedom. It is the background main antagonist. For the people in the other WIP, the concept of a supernatural or the divine is absurd; they don't even have words for it in their vocabulary. Nevertheless, the MCs are destined to face people who bear unusual ideas about how reality actually functions, who might react badly when upon meeting a woman with bull horns and a man with ruby-edged white feathered wings.

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#PennedPossibilities 648 — MC POV: Tell us about your home.

[Streak:] I live in an apartment building near the edge of the better part of town. It's remarkable for being in a neighborhood populated by day angels because it's not a village tree nor built into a hill, but a conventional building. I live there with my sisters and my mother, and I'm the middle child. My room is little better than a small pantry or a large closet, but I'm happy for it. My sisters hate me because I had to raise them and set rules (long story), so I'm thankful for a window I can fly in and out of, a black lacquer floor desk, where I keep my books, and a place to unroll a sleeping mat. Baskets and hampers hold my things. You would call the place a boarding house where you live. The apartment is only three bed rooms and a kitchen. The rain room (showers) are on the shared entry floor at the end of the hall, opposite the entry with the post boxes, next to the squats. Both utility rooms are unisex, so you'd better knock before entering.

[Thorn:] I'm a daemon, but live in what many consider a bad neighborhood populated by day angels. It's a village tree house my mother bought because she feels safer there than amongst people who look like us but refuse to accept us as their equals. Our entire nest is called an aerie, and it once belonged to a famous day angel who rebelled against the government a century and a half ago. It requires us to climb ladders to enter it and to levitate provisions to stock it.

My room is a chamber grown from a flattened lateral branch, in a crotch between an auxiliary trunk and uprights. The floor slopes upward and my bedstead is in a hammock across what amounts to a raised dias. I've a nightstand that is a cut-off stump. It's opposite from the casement windows installed at the lower end of the space. I'm thankful for the door like crank windows because they're convenient for when Streak comes to visit—when Mother isn't home, obviously! They provide light despite the tree's heavy canopy, and are enough that foliage forms an interior ceiling and I can culture moss and lichen as carpeting so I don't have to wear slippers to protect my feet from the bark. Smaller windows with rainbow-stained wedged rock glass also provide light to fill in shadowy corners during day light, and can be tilted to encourage convective circulation.

My desk is a form of wood ear mushroom, the top of which is polished to a glassy sheen. The shelves scattered up and down the walls for my hundreds of books are a combination of the same myco-archeculture and woven smaller branches.

I've hung posters by red ribbons, so as not to hurt the living tree, including a grand one Mother bought me of an exploded diagram of the structure of the crystal spheres. After our adventures with Rainy Days, I've also hung enlargements of pictures the woman gave us of her and Streak, though I know he finds them embarrassing. I can't help but admire my boyfriend's best attributes.

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#WordWeavers 2504.19 — Have you ever learned something about yourself from your characters?

Almost every creative writing course instructor I've met has justified students taking the course on psychological grounds, not as a vehicle to learn the craft. They say something on the order of "write to get it out of you," the "it" being anger, trauma, toxicity, anxiety, unaddressed or unadmitted abuse or guilt.

Me? I scoffed. Of course, I did, because I was young and naïve.

For the vast number of people, creative writing won't become a craft—it'll become an outlet, maybe a confessional booth. It can lead to journaling or short stories nobody ever reads, something hidden in a dusty box or burned ritually in a fireplace. It might remain totally private. Or, these folk might write novels.

People tell stories about "somebody they know" in distress. Don't they?

We write from experience. I do. I admit it. My thinking my SF and fantasy wasn't that, also, was what I meant by my being "naïve" before. Yes, I've realized, and should have from the beginning, that my characters are how I work out my emotions and frustrations, how I learn about myself—and I've learned so much! However, since it's also personal, all I'm going to admit is that beyond my attempts at entertaining you and trying to say something meaningful about our world so I'm not simply contributing to the noise, my writing (the verb) has been therapeutic and my characters have taught me much about myself.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.18 — Do you write under a pen name? Multiple? How did you choose?

My mum did not name me RS.

Names are symbols that point to a thing or a person. They aren't that person. Sure, I can input an identity into a name, just as a given name can gather that weight during life, but it is still a symbol. I've made peace with myself that whatever achievement or infamy I gather under this name still applies to me. The idea is fascinating enough that I'm playing with the idea of a society where parents don't name their children, instead the children are forced to choose, and can change them at whim throughout life.

I assumed my nom de plume before I attended the Clarion Writers Workshop. Mostly, this was me once more playing with the idea that as a feminist writer, the gender of the author does add subtext to all narratives.

Growing up, I thought Andre Norton was a man; it added a definite context to all his stories, like The Beastmaster, A Breed to Come, and Moon of Three Rings. I liked the nuanced way that the author depicted masculinity and femininity. The softness set the author's books apart, and it appealed to me. But Andre Norton wasn't male; I learned that quite sometime later.

Choosing a name of the opposite gender didn't work for me anymore. I could have chosen a name used by both genders, like Ryan or Riley, but when you think about it, that puts the onus on the readership to assign gender based on their experience with people of the same name. Either way, it creates creates a bias. Before I started the workshop, we were given an email group address. Back then, as now, I was careful never to reveal my gender nor my preferences. By the time I arrived in person on campus, most had guessed wrong.

These days, there are further reasons for noms de plume, especially since I write fiction that boosts women's rights, their right to sexuality without shame, gender preferences, and gender agnosticism. Further, I tend to add subtexts to my stories that question both secular and religious authority; in today's "climate," doing so can be… worrisome.

Best I don't use my real name.

PS: I write fan fiction under a different nom de plume.

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#PennedPossibilities 646 — How would you describe your MC’s job or occupation? (You can be comedic about it, if you like.)

These stories hop around over more than a decade, thus the lists. Some stints are very temporary.

• Thorn: High school then university student. Occupational prefecture governor. Astronaut.
• Streak: High school then university student. Lover. Researcher. Test pilot. Advisor. Astronaut.
• Devil-girl: Homeless ascetic, grocery clerk, prizefighter, transporter, bodyguard, dõna, troubleshooter.
• May Ri: Student, mother, engineer, princess (she considers that one a joke but others don't), general.
• Wintereyes (feral but kind human): Friend of animals (including wyverns), wolf pack member and provider, involuntary student, idiosyncratic mage.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.16 — What one thing would you tell your older or younger creative self if you could time travel?

The agent said don't write in 1st person. Ignore that commandment.

You sold the novel. Write the sequel now. While the day job is important, opportunity has a limited lifespan, as do editors who like your stories.

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#WordWeavers 2504.16 — If your MC wasn’t involved with the story, what would they do with their life?

Wow! That's a very interesting question. This character is well-storied, so let's unwrap.

Current story: It was a turning point. In the previous story she'd learned something very essential about how people work, something she thinks she can fix. If she never gets to be in the current story—where she learns she can trust friends and then finds love—she turns the path toward evil.

-1 Story: She attends a school like Princeton with her saved prizefighting money. She becomes a professsor in thaumology and a spinster. Because she doesn't intervene in mob family politics, the main series antagonist may be assassinated. Whether that kills her is another matter.

-2 Story: She works as a grocery clerk and doing other odd jobs, possibly even performing "magic" tricks, eventually ending up in a lessor college. In this path she becomes an eccentric because she doesn't really trust people (she's autistic and can't really read them), something like Nikola Tesla. She likely invents something evil.

-3 Story: Having never run away, she grows up an increasingly angry and dissatisfied elite, with power she feels she has not earned. She governs a small but prosperous prefecture well enough that she is well loved, which confuses her. She marries someone suggested to her and has children who end up squabbling over accession. Being as they are her children, one will be evil. The author will ensure she's female and has to fight her brothers, which sours her.

-4 Story (unwritten, hinted at in backstory): The immortal main series antagonist has been practicing eugenics, amongst her other sins. In her case, it's encouraging the migration of peoples between towns and prefectures, also doing some careful matchmaking. The MC's mother was one such highly "magical" methodically bred endpoint, and one of the main antagonist's lessor students. Had the woman not encouraged the MC's future mother's thaumaturgy and singing talent, the woman would not have met (read: been strategically introduced to) the MC's father.

The MC would not have been born, and neither would the MC's mother died an untimely death having being caught on a spy mission. (Of course, that death is assumed. The author gets to retcon that fact in a later story, as has already been done but not confirmed for the simultaneous death of the MC's father.)

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#WordWeavers 2504.15 — How much attention do you give to the rhythm of your words?

Words, not so much. I am no poet. Meter on such a small scale is a bit finicky for me.

I am a prosaist.

I used to spend a lot of time at the clausal and sentence level, rearranging whilst composing, trying to vary the length of each sentence as I went, in a fool's quest to ensure never creating similar-sized groupings. Now a-days, I simply write. I've enough awareness of the music I compose, while I compose, that thinking about the its lyrical rhythm would add unnecessary drag. I'm aware that I write in Grammar B. That helps; adds trust. What I find written down rarely proves monotonic.

In revision, I fix things: Meter. Rhyme. Alliteration. Elocution. Sometimes I concatenate sentences with semicolons, sometimes with commas and conjunctions. Sometimes, well, I change commas to periods.

Or.

Periods to a new paragraph, to accentuate an idea—giving the orator time to look the audience in the eye, one by one. Maybe I'll italicize a word. Let the heart skip a beat.

Yes. I read it aloud. Again and again. If it doesn't flow, I kick words and slide sentences around.

So… Do I pay attention to rhythm? Yes. And No?

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#WordWeavers 2504.13 — How dangerous is your MC? CW: Definite Background Spoilers.

The Reluctance Series stories MCs by danger score least to most:

• 0: Devil-girl — Give her a book and leave her alone.
• 1: Streak — He's a sweetie. He'll have your back if you are mobbed by bullies. His danger score is multiplied by Thorn's as he's protective of her. He did charm the pants off of Rainy Days, so there's that wild card.
• 2: Thorn Rose — She's capable, just not very antagonistic. Pushed into a corner, watch out. Her danger score is divided by Streak's because she realizes he has more common sense than she does and listens to him when he's around to advise her. She loves him.
• 3: Rainy Days — She's a lot less capable then most people think, but she has experience. Her inclination is to fight for others. First it was family, then it was for women. After millennia of bearing children, all of humanity is related to her—except the dragons. She's very sweet, caring, supportive, and she'll teach you lessons if she thinks you'll benefit from it. You don't want to cross her, however. She's lived through the fall of two civilizations, and ended up being rebuilt from parts at the end of the last fall. She's technologically immortal and always 24 years old.
• 4: Devil-girl — Told you to give her a book and leave her alone, didn't I? Nobody listens! She's very capable (unlike Rainy Days) and self-taught. People keep using her as their sharp tool. She'll try the dangerous, impossible, and taboo things anyway because, Well, that's Interesting! The character was conceived as a study in how evil isn't born but is created through interaction with others and their environment. Each story is, Which side of the knife edge will she tumble? Will she end up saving people or suddenly be so frustrated she ceases to give a damn? Recently she discovered love, and got that used against her—not by her lovers, thank goodness! Well, we'll see.

BTW: Streak and Thorn live 200 years before the Devil-girl. Roughly 1960 vs 2160.

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#PennedPossibilities #PennedPossibilities side prompt: Elevator quick pitch of your WIP, only the worst pitch ever.

A daemon and a day angel fly to the moon. The lunatics there believe they're really a demon and an angel. They're as right as they are wrong.

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