The Omnivorous Geek

Hey guys! Here's a new project I've been working on for quite a while. It's an audience-driven (aka choose your own adventure or interactive fiction) story where I'm asking the audience to vote for what happens next. I'd really appreciate it if you give it a shot.

Description: After her fiance is hauled away by imperial soldiers in the middle of her wedding, Rainy decides to leave her rural village and travel to the capital to find out why he was taken.

Long time no see, LJ. I'm not much in fandom at the moment, except for occasionally reading fanfic and even more occasionally checking my flist.

I've been writing a lot lately, but it's been original. I'm trying to become someone who makes money off her writing. :) And then, maybe, when I can quit my factory job and write full-time, I will have the time and energy for fanfic again. Maybe. Who knows. I'm also going back to school this summer, so my schedule will be even more nutso crazy-face.

But here's five hundred words I wrote this morning on my work laptop while waiting for IT to come and set up my network connection so I could work. (I'm on my break right now.) It's kinda tone-poemish.

( The Dandelion Clock )

It's Big Bang season! So many fandoms are having them, and so many of my flisties are going for it, which is very awesome. I decide to dust this off as a belated Valentine's Day gift for you guys. ♥

In 2006, I graduated from college with a degree in Professional Writing. In the same year, I made this "mix CD" for some of the writer friends I had met in that college, who I loved dearly (and still do). It's amazing to think that even that recently, downloading large files over the internet was mostly impractical, at least as far as I knew. Did broadband even exist then? But yeah. I burned these to CDs, and made my own artwork, and printed out "liner sheets" with the lyrics.



Track List:
My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors by Moxy Fruvous
The Engine Driver by The Decemberists
I'll Be a Writer by Soltero
Paperback Writer by The Beatles
Seize the Day by Carolyn Arends
Open Book by CAKE
Novel-Writing (Live from Wessex) by Monty Python
Song for Myla Goldberg by The Decemberists
Shadow Stabbing by CAKE
Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick
There She Goes, My Beautiful World by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
See the Flames Begin to Crawl by Five Iron Frenzy
That's How the Story Ends by Five Iron Frenzy
Escape (The Pina Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes

Included in the liner sheets was this little story. I've added a few parenthetical phrases and a PS to make it more applicable for my current readership.

A Musical, Writerly Journey

This album is a gift to some of my very favorite writers ever. However, note that the songs on this album are very eclectic. Therefore, you may not like one or two or ten. That's okay. While you're deciding whether you like them, enjoy the story they tell about the writer's journey.

First of all, I figure that pretty much every writer starts out by liking books. Having a spouse who shares that inclination would just compound the problem, of course. "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors," you may have noted to yourself. But that was okay, because you did too.

So there you were just living your life, as a cafe worker or librarian or student or perhaps even an Engine Driver, when you had an epiphany. "I'll Be a Writer," you declared one day. "It can't be that hard."

But deciding to be a writer was not enough. Then you had to decide what kind of writer you would be, a poet or a columnist or a critic or one of those people who write illogical letters to the editor (or comments on the internet). "I want to be a Paperback Writer," you declared further.

That was it, then. It was time to Seize the Day. Your life would be an Open Book, prepared for the perusal of strangers. You were ready to share all of your insights and wisdom, humor and love. It would be eloquent, moving, and entertaining, an instant best-seller.

And you began to write. It might have been more exciting with a commentator on some sports-like show, perhaps called Novel-Writing (Live from Wessex) or something like that. But no matter. You pressed on. Already you were thinking about an interesting, attention-grabbing title for you book. Song for Myla Goldberg, maybe. Or perhaps something a bit more ambiguous and poetic, like Shadow Stabbing. You had lists of ideas, but hadn't hit on the perfect title yet. It would come, you were sure. Well, pretty sure.

And now you were down in the real nitty-gritty of your novel. It was beginning to come a bit harder. You realized that you were sharing some rather personal things, and didn't know if you could write anymore. Either that or you realized that you were writing utter crud, and weren't sure what do about it. You kept trying, though, until one day you found yourself awake at 2 AM in the morning, clutching a pencil in one fist (or pounding on your keyboard with that fist), the other pressed to your burning temple as you blinked your gritty bloodshot eyes and struggled to Breathe.

It was that most dreaded of maladies: writer's block. It hit you hard. You could not get around it. "There She Goes, My Beautiful World!" you cried in despair. (Writer's block stinks a lot. It also inspires melodramatic cries of anguish.)

For days upon days, you fought your writer's block. You wrote pages of drivel, crumpled them, then smoothed them out to see if you had been wrong, then decided that they were definitely drivel and crumpled them again. At last you had piles of them, enough for a bonfire. So you set one, just to See the Flames Begin to Crawl. It was very satisfying, in a morbid way. So you decided that That's How the Story Ends. Rather easy decision, it was, in the end.

And now you just really, really needed to Escape. So you wrote your last creative effort, a personal ad sent to the newspaper, and you found someone who liked pina coladas as much as you did. Good for you! That's really the best final destination for your journey that you could have reached.

After all, this writing stuff, with its sweat and blood and many, many tears, is for chumps of the first degree.

The End

PS: Or you could always come to the dark side and write fanfic. IT'S SO MUCH FUN YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Download from mediafire 100 MB, 54 minutes

Single tracks uploaded on request.

Going through old notes is fun. But Oh Em Eff Gee, I do not remember writing this and I have no idea where it came from. It took up exactly one page in my teeny little notebook I used for newspaper meetings in college.

It felt like a very random day. Blake was tired of feeding the cow. He wanted a new pet. So he went to the pet store to look around. "Ah, barracuda!" he thought. "No, too toothy."

"Dove?"

Too holy. Blake could only deal with doves one day a week, and the poor thing would die on a Tuesday.

"Kangaroo rat?"

Too dusty. Same went for chinchillas.

"Whale?"

Too much blubber. And the size of the aquarium would be a bit of a problem in his dinky apartment.

Skunk--the neighbors would complain. Cat--too quiet. Dog--too noisy. Hamster--too small.

Finally admitting defeat, Blake went home and fed his cow.

I DON'T KNOOOOOWWWWWWW.

I dreamed that somebody made my first novel, which I wrote when I was thirteen and fourteen (a rather awful fantasy thing that ripped off every fantasy novel I loved), into an animated movie without my permission, and I found it on TV. It was in much the same style as the animated Hobbit movie from way back when, and just as bastardized. My wood-dwelling elf tribes had turned into these sort of savage folks who spoke in pidgin, the character Arim had a talking pet mouse the size of an apple, my main character was no longer the main but completely sidelined (probably because she was a girl, and you can't have girls as main characters in movies, now, can you?), and there were awful, awful musical numbers, which I never wrote.

And my dear Lenny, who was such a serious character in the book, when they came to the large mechanical, booby-trapped door which he figured out in the book, said: "This is a Dancing Door, and so I shall dance all over it." And then he did this awful Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks kind of dance all over the door. ::shudders:: Poor Lenny. Did not fit his character at ALL. That would be more of a Ralph thing to do.

...

Yes, I had characters named Lenny and Ralph. And they were kids.

...

Shut up.

It's time for more D&D! This is the first chapter of Tikaani's back story, my new character in Josh Hornbarger's campaign. More stories will come--since we started at level four this time, my paladin has had some time to do some stuff. But this is the beginning.

For my Christian friends who read this blog, I'm sorry that this is so utterly pagan. But that's just the way the D&D world works--it has a pantheon and everything, and several classes are tied to the deity the characters choose. If it makes you feel any better, I thought about Moses and the burning bush when I was writing this. It's the same sort of story, really. I know that God is in me, even if He's not in this particular bit of writing. Not by the right name, anyway.

( The Call of the Wolf )

First chapter! Didn't quite hit the mark, but I'm not going to artificially stretch out a finished scene just to hit an arbitrary number. No doubt I'll start work on the second chapter later today, so I'm sure I'll hit the word count for the day at some point.

I'm not going to write the whole novel in second person, by the way. That was just for this introduction--I thought it might be fun. It was, too.

( Murphy's World Chapter 1 )

X-posted from my xanga.

Found this while sorting stuff. I really want to finish this one, but I have no idea where I was going. Looks like a children's book, maybe.


In a place you have never heard of, on the shore of the Tungsten Sea, there lived a group which was properly known as The Record-Keepers of the Eight Lands, but everyone just called them The Quiet People. They made books in which were written the news of their visitors from all the neighboring countries: the scientists from the Kingdom of Haipothess, the explorers from the Land of Startustear, the politicians from the Democracy of Letibec, the lawmakers from the Oligarchy of Twelve, the teachers from the Queendom of Hikristek, the musicians from the Autonomous Territories of Fyoog, the artists, poets, and novelists from the Isle of Mews, and the craftsmen from the United States of Pragma.

Did you catch all the jokes in that? I've forgotten some of them, though with much thought I've recalled a few of them.

Oh, I remembered what this was going to be! It was going to be a story about a little boy--or possibly girl--who washed up on the shore in a basket and was raised by The Quiet People, who basically live in a hugemongous library and are entirely preoccupied with books and ink and binding and the sharpness of their quills. Naturally the little girl--or boy--would not be a quiet sort, and there would be all sort of problems, and I think he--or she--had made a friend of a big talking cat. Or dog. Can't remember. Didn't have an ending, obviously. I think I gave up on it because it seemed too derivative. Do you think I should give it a try?

More later, maybe. I haven't been able to use the internet much lately, as I only have it at work, and at work I'm usually far too busy proofing stuff to write a blog.