Kindle Worlds and My Take On It

You may not have heard, but Amazon released something that's shaking up the world of fanfiction a little this morning. It's called Kindle Worlds and it means you can download fanfiction in certain genres straight to your Kindle...by paying for them. The low-down is that WB has given up some of the creative licenses to things like Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars, which means that writers can professionally publish fic based on those shows. It will be content controlled, it looks like, but there haven't been any guidelines released yet (no pornography is one of the guidelines, but this is also the publisher of 50 Shades of Grey, so take that with whatever boulder of salt you find necessary).

And on the surface, it looks great, right? Getting to pay your favorite writers for fic that they write! The chance that other fandoms may follow in suit! WB has rights to Chuck and Fringe, after all, so some fandoms close to our hearts might be involved very soon!

Except...well, John Scalzi puts it way better than I can about why this might not be such a good idea for writers. Plus, when I wrote Fates, W11, W&T, SSD!, and my other fandomly works, I didn't write those for pay but for love of the characters/show/writing itself. Providing these for free wasn't taking any money from anybody else (except for lucky47, who used to buy internet on a cruise ship to read Fates), which is the way I ethically justify playing with characters that are not my own.

So, in the future I might change my mind, but currently, I won't be doing this with any new Chuckfic or other genre, should the opportunity arise. But I appreciate everybody that has pointed me to it! It warms me all the way down to my soul that you're looking out for me like that.

Sincerely,
Frea

PS - It's been a crazy couple of weeks, so there hasn't been much fic from me, but I did manage to write a really short piece about Steve Rogers acclimating to the future over on my Tumblr. You should check that out. And get ready for a long fic from me soon!

Thursday Digest

I realize that I’m actively involved in a lot of social media platforms and I use them all for different things. My Livejournal, for example, is usually all Avengers things, my Tumblr is such a random mess of different fandoms that I’m surprised anybody follows me at all, and my Twitter seems to be random observations that form together with absolutely no coherency at all.

So, here’s a brief round-up of the highlights from the last couple of weeks.

What I’m Up To:

My sister is getting married in two weeks, so preparations are ramping up for that. That includes things like deep-cleaning my apartment in case relatives want to visit, helping sister with wedding-related things, and doing a lot of photography. Writing-wise, I’m in the middle of Counterfeit and Counterpart, a deep look at the relationship between Maria Hill and Natasha Romanoff. I’ve got three scenes left to write and 2k to hit the 15k minimum for the Big Bang in which I’m participating with the project.

I also have two separate bets going with mxpw and Nervert about That Which is Greater (the original story) vs. Revenge of the Bartowski and Chuck versus the Double Agent. I have not forgotten about those bets. A goat’s honor is at stake.

Some Fun and Interesting Statistics Because I'm Too Lazy to Write a Real Blog Post

So I saw this on a friend’s livejournal and I was curious, so I decided to try it out, and a lot of people don’t read my LJ, so I'm bringing it over here. Oh, speaking of which, you do know I am on Livejournal, right? You can find me here and I have anonymous commenting turned on, so as long as you "sign" your post, you can leave me stuff there, too. Also, I post a lot of short fic there. Sometimes it’s even Chuck related.

Without further ado, the FFN/AO3 meme!

Happy Birthday, Peter O!

Happy birthday, Peter!!! This is just a short snippet of something I’m working on (I don’t want to give away too much, so that’s all I’ll say). :) Hope your day is as marvelous as you are (which is pretty darn marvelous).

Most of the family was still sleeping when Sarah let herself into the Bartowski house to drop off Sir after her morning run, but she still wasn’t surprised to find Chuck in the kitchen. Sure, he almost had his nose buried in a cup of coffee and there were bags under his eyes, but he was there. It had become a habit of his.

“You don’t actually have to get up just to see me,” she said as she knelt to unclip Sir. The elephantine puppy flopped onto his back and offered his belly up for a rub.

“Nah, I needed to be up. S-stuff to do, codes to…code. Mmph.” He yawned, put his head on his crossed arms, and made snoring noises.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

quistie and I got you a box of chocolates.



(hint: click the chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get)

Speaking Up About Written In the Stars

Congratulate me, I’m some kind of fandom boogey-monster. About eighteen months ago, a story was posted with a similar storyline to mine (different climate, though), which was fine until they outright took whole paragraphs from my story, To Resist Both Wind and Tide). I asked for either attribution or removal of those paragraphs. Instead, the author pulled the entire story down without an explanation to her fans. She told me that she didn't think it was such a big deal because it's just fanfiction.

Later, she returned: the story had been updated, the paragraphs removed, but…the plot was just too familiar for me. After messaging the author privately, I said something publicly along the lines of “I hope the plot is changing soon because I’m uncomfortable with this. You said that you were planning to change the direction of your plot, so I hope that’s soon.” Given that this person had already outright plagiarized my work, I feel like this was understandable. In reply, the person told me again, “It’s just fanfiction!” and yanked the story down, again without an explanation.

I didn’t ask the story to be removed. I didn’t report the story. I asked readers not to get involved because I didn’t want a war. People on the message boards blasted me, others boycotted my stories, so on and so forth. I got a couple of angry messages, one from somebody named missupertigz who went on to start writing in the fandom with messages along the lines of “if my writing sparked an idea, then go ahead and write it because to the people who think chuck belongs to only a small group of people – your wrong (sic).”

Well, turns out that story is still going on behind closed doors. You can PM MsRomanceWriter’s ff-net name and get access to it, if you like. Have at it. I chose not to speak up in my own defense when the story was pulled and I wonder if that was the wrong decision. Maybe it was, but I didn’t want to sling mud at MRW. Mostly, I want people to know that I didn’t have anything to do with the story being pulled. I know it’s my word against hers, but it was the author’s choice to pull it both times. I didn’t make any threats or demands.

And that’s all I really have to say about it.

Frea

Chuck vs. the Recruits ebook!

Good news! I have completed the ninjaVanish collection of ebooks here on the blog! That’s right, you can download Chuck vs. the Recruits now for your ebooking pleasure. It’s available, along with the rest of his works, here on the downloads page. Happy reading!

In other news, I reorganized the ebooks page. I’ll have the graphics back up eventually, but for right now, it’s all ebooks.

Thanks,
Frea

I'm Dreaming Of A Portable Christmas

It was Christmas Eve. Chuck sat deftly in the dale, sipping pernicious eggnog.

He looked at the opalescent dragon hanging on the Christmas Tree and sighed. Last year, Sarah had hung it there, just before they looked at each other terribly and then fell into each other's arms and transcended each other's earlobe.

If only I hadn't been so charismatic, Chuck thought, pouring a fecund amount of rum into his eggnog. Then Sarah might not have got so never-ending and left me all alone at Christmas time. He wiped away a triumphant tear and held his shin in his hand.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door and then a legendary voice lifted swiftly up in song.

I'm dreaming of a portable Christmas
Just like an inanimate object being lovingly cuddled by two estranged sisters that have found common ground for the first time in 15 years. Chuck ran to the door. It was Sarah, looking dogged all over with snow.

"I missed you idly," Sarah said. "And I wanted to transcend your earlobe again."

Chuck hugged Sarah and started to sob.

"I think you're drunk," Sarah said.

"I think so too," Chuck said and they transcended each other's earlobe until they knocked the Christmas tree over.

On Christmas Day, they ate roasted octopus left knee and lived crookedly until Chuck got drunk again.

LOOK! I MADE YOU A DRABBLE!

...okay, maaaaybe it came from this, but I made it for YOUUUUU. Don't you feel special?

Okay, I'll see myself out now.

The Art of Finishing Up

Fezzywhig asked me something on Tumblr today, and I thought it might make a good writing entry on the blog, so I’m putting it over here, too. As with every piece of writing advice I give, please keep in mind that this may not necessarily apply to every writer. We’re all different, and those differences should be celebrated.

Fezzywhig asked: Apologies if this was asked before. As a prolific writer, have you ever been tempted to go back to a finished work and tweak or change it? Also a sideways question. Has anyone addressed you by one of your nom de plumes’s in person? If so how do you overcome the fanboy awkwardness?

Hey! I think somebody has asked me this before, but not in a public setting. And I definitely don’t mind getting asked a question multiple times, as long as that question isn’t, “IS THERE GOING TO BE A SEQUEL?” (while not commenting on the fic itself) or “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO UPDATE SO AND SO?” when I’ve already said that that story is on hiatus. Also, a lot of it has to do with the tone of the question being asked. :)

To answer your first question: I’m tempted, a lot, to go back and change my work. Every time I reread it, I see something I could tweak or even rewrite. Just watch me reread That Which is Greater sometime. It will enlighten you as to how hard somebody can grit their teeth. There are entire chapters of that I would cut or rewrite in a heartbeat.

Now here’s where some authors are about to disagree with me because, even though I’m tempted to go back and rewrite things (like the first chapter of Fates, for example), I don’t, and I won’t. My philosophy is that once something is published, it gets minor cosmetic changes and nothing else (like, fixing a grammatical error, or using Angry Birds in 2002 on accident). I don’t believe in going back and rewriting my old fics because to me, those stories have been told. They’re done. Hopefully, I told them the best way I could, but it’s time to move on and to use the things I learned writing those fics to write newer and hopefully better tales.

New Ebooks!

Hello, dear readers!

So I realize it’s been awhile since I released some ebooks, which is my fault. I’ve been making them, but I haven’t been going through the process of uploading them and making them available for public consumption (seriously, though, my Kindle is triiiicked out), and I thought I’d get on that. So I’ve got three new ebooks for you today, one in each of my fandoms. That’s right, you can get The Bank Job, The Woman in the Crosshairs, or The Abbey. Two have complicated scenes inside of banking buildings, the other one makes up for the lack with aliens, I think.

Also, if you subscribe to me on AO3 or fanfiction.net, you may have noticed that I have a new story out. The title is really strange, I know, because it comes from a Disney ride, and the concept is even stranger. The Avengers are pirates in the 18th century. But it’s not like they woke up one day thinking, hey, I want to be a pirate. They’ve all got backstories that explain how they got to where they are, and there’s a long and shared history between them. I don’t want to tell you the plot because that’ll give too much away, but let’s just say you’ll recognize quite a few elements.

Anyway, that’s up on fanfiction.net and AO3, and I’ll be posting a chapter a day. Yes, it’s already finished, so no need to worry about me abandoning this one mid-story.

Oh, speaking of my stories (and abandoning some), I’ve organized my list of stories, where to find them, where you can download the ebooks, by fandom and then by series (Greater and Fates are in order). You can check all of that out here. They’ve all got statuses now that tell you where I’m at with them (Comp.=complete, WIP=work in progress, Hiatus=will come back to it someday, Aban.=orphaned), too. I’ll add to the list as I write more.

Anyway, that’s the news. I’m off to go destroy mxpw so horribly, he begs for mercy in his sleep go do my usual things.

Frea

[TEASER] Chuck vs. the World

Lords, ladies, gentle folk, I am absolutely honored—nay, it is my pleasure, my DELIGHT, my absolute joy to bring you a small gift by way of JoelTotheD, whom you might know around the blog as Joel (it’s confusing, yes: he’s British, but I’ve not been able to detect an extra letter “u” in his name, and trust me, dearest readers, I have tried!). Joel is the writer of such fine work as Moving On and Kill Jill, but he’s quite possibly best known for writing the fic with the Most Amount of Awkward Hugging in the Chuck fandom (we did a sampling; malamoo came close, but a panel of impartial judges thought that the amount of detail given to the extremely awkward hug in chapter 13 meant a clear win for Joel), Chuck vs. the World. And today, we have a special treat: a delicious piece of chapter 18 of that very same story!

 ...okay, I’m done with the flowery language. Joel gave me a thing. I posted that thing under the Read More link. Enjoy. ;)

2012: A Year in Review

I promised greater transparency, so here it is: I’m working on That Which is Greater. I’m not very far, but I have ideas. I’ll keep you posted as to when chapters are finished/will go up. I don’t know if I’m going to finish Greater: Winter Break. I don’t know if I’m going to write anything else in the Greaterverse. I’m not open to suggestions for more stories, either (I wasn’t for Fates or W11, if you’ll remember, and I don’t intend to start). If you want to know about Curtain Call, ask mxpw. If you want another unfinished story finished, please be patient and let me cross one hurdle at a time. Thank you.

Now on to the meat of the post: I didn’t make resolutions for 2013. Resolutions, I feel, should be between you and your conscience, so I was disgusted to have mine from 2011 thrown in my face by a total stranger. I’d love to see some great things happen this year to people I love and people I know, I’d love to watch some awesome movies, read some wonderful stories, and make fantastic memories. But that’s as far as I’ll go with resolutions.

Now, a look at the year 2012 in writing and other stuff, as best my memory goes:

My Entire List of Yuletide Recommendations

Need something to read? Well, Yuletide was unleashed upon Archive of Our Own, which is where I hang out more than fanfiction.net these days, which means that a bunch of smaller and non-existent fandoms (Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me has a fandom now, guys) get the blessing of loads of fic. The authors will be revealed soon, but I've been going through and reading some of the best, and I've culled them here for you to read. I'll match them up by fandom and everything. You might surprise yourself.

A Change to the Blog

Hey all,

 Previously I had the entirety of Curtain Call and Romeo and Juliet But Without Teenagers or Death...Well, Okay Some Death posted under the fanfiction tab, but that was messy. Instead, you’ll find links to those in the fanfiction chart. I have added Previous and Next links to each chapter in the blog to enable easy navigation. Of course, it’s probably easiest to just download, you know, the ebooks from the page.

In addition, I have completed the Ultimate Fates Guide with color coded table cells, listed by date. That is located underneath the fanfiction tab.

And if you’re curious about how I’m doing with Nanowrimo, the answer is completely ambivalent and about 5k behind, so good times all around!

Happy Monday!

Frea

Stuff and Updates and Other Stuff!

So the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (or possibly that’s just science/experimentation, but what do I know?) and here we are, about 8 days into November, and I’m stressed and headache-y, and thinking, “I get this way every November. Why do I do this to myself?” And then October rolls around again and I’m like, “Hey, I finished Fates and that was 400k long. A little thing like November is NO BIG DEAL.”

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Currently, I’m on track (as of yesterday). I’ve completed two chapters and am halfway through the third. It only just occurred to me last night I’ve signed up for an entire month of writing climaxes and endings, two things that require a lot of thought, second-guessing, and mental fortitude. Evidently, I like challenges to remind myself every once in a while that sleep is a luxury, not a right.

You’ve likely seen some of the fruits of my labor by now, too. Max and I posted the fourth chapter of The Bank Job. The first two chapters were co-written; the last two were written by me (yes, even the hand-job line) because I lost a bet. You can read it here on ff-net and here on AO3 and I’ll try to get the ebook posted for everybody’s downloading pleasure soon.

I’m finishing up The Abbey, so my Downton fans can rejoice in that much, at least. The seventh chapter is done. I’m letting it percolate while I finish the eighth because they’re so deeply intertwined, so people will be able to rejoice to see quick successive updates on that. My next project was supposed to be That Which is Greater, but I’m struggling so much with The Abbey that I’m going to give myself a break and work on something Avengers-related because that’s where my passion is at the moment. I signed up for a fandom winter exchange, which will be released upon the world in a little over a month, so you’ll get to see something very different from me in December.

Speaking of things that are very different, have you guys heard of this new writer Alexandria Dunn? She hasn’t done much with her website yet, so I don’t want to link you to it, but she’s (begrudgingly) signed up for Facebook and she has a Twitter, and if you like my writing, you might like her. It’s weird that she and I have the same real name and we look exactly alike and our writing style is, like, completely identical, plus she also feels the same way about all of my favorite shows and…okay, have I dropped enough hints yet? Not much there yet, but it’s a start.

:)

Frea

 PS – if you want more consistent updates about what I’m doing, it’s much easier to check my livejournal.

Scary Halloween Statistics

I did something scary for Halloween: I tallied my word counts and put them in a chart, and I even added some stories that weren't on the chart you might have seen last night if you follow me on Twitter. This chart does not include Sarah vs. the Curse or my birthday story for quistie64, for some reason (or the millions of tiny Tumblr fics I've written, like Sarah taking Vi grocery shopping), but I did, you know, add RaJBWToDWOSD.

It hurts my head, guys. Enjoy at your leisure, I suppose. I'm going to sit in the corner and quietly comtemplate my life.

Nanowrimo Survival Guide, Part II

This edition of the guide has some handy links for you, and not too much else at the moment. So, without further ado, let’s dive right in.

Write or Die

Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences.

You know that lab experiment where you have to keep doing something or you get zapped? WOD is like the Word Processor version of that. There’s downloadable apps, it’s online if you want to use it there, too. You can customize how long you want to write and how “gentle” you want it to be when you stop writing. Kamikaze mode, just FYI, is insane, and if you do that one, you must be a glutton for punishment.

Written Kitten

Written Kitten was created by Skud, Emily and contributors. We like positive reinforcement, so we decided to make something a bit like writeordie but cuter and fuzzier. Images are randomly selected from Flickr's “most interesting” photos matching the tags “kitten” and “cute”. Enjoy!

WK is like WOD’s much nicer maiden aunt who gives you cookies and kittens instead of beating you mercilessly about the head. If you’re convinced your writing is lacking small, fuzzy creatures, it’s the perfect solution.

Scrivener

Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft.

Scrivener, to me, is like Evernote and MS Word had a baby and it grew up to be Captain Awesome. It’s a great program. It’s a word processor, but it lets you store a bunch of different things in the same place—word documents, research, outlines, images, notes, etc. It’s great if you’re not organized (like me!), and it’s powerful and easy to use. Plus, the company offers an extended trial period during Nanowrimo.

They Fight Crime!

He's a Nobel prize-winning moralistic ex-con with a mysterious suitcase handcuffed to his arm. She's a high-kicking nymphomaniac mermaid on the trail of a serial killer. They fight crime!

Need a plot? Look no farther!

Try a Character Sheet

You can use this one here or try Googling a few. Fill them out about your character, or if you really want to get creative, AS your character. Get to know the people you’ll be spending November with while you can.

Bromance and Romance and Jobly Things

I’m attempting to write a Clint/Natasha story that’s supposed to be a romance. I say attempting because as much as I adore reading romance between them, I seem to have a hard time writing them as anything but...heterosexual life mates. It’s like I have the opposite problem than the one I have with Chuck and Sarah, where every single one of their conversations threatens to turn adorable and fluffy. Clint and Natasha skew more toward the understated and double-talky narrative.

Or it’s possible that Downton Abbey spewing feelings everywhere is killing my groove.

But yes, apparently I have talked myself into writing a Clintasha Bromance. Halfway through, I watched the Iron Man 3 trailer and it dumped half my plot dead in the water, too. So that was a bucket of fun.

In other news, a project that I’ve been stressing out about has been given a “Holy crap! That’s awesome!” rating, so…yeah, I’m no judge of my own abilities anymore. I’ve been beating myself to hell and back, convinced I was screwing up all over the place and meanwhile my boss is like, “This is amazing.”



Here’s a sneak preview of the Clintasha story I’m writing:

The Nanowrimo Survival Guide, Part I

I can’t actually give definitive rules for Nanowrimo because, let’s face it, I’ve always been of the opinion that no two writers are exactly alike. It’s like telling all artists to paint with only one brand of paint, or on one type of canvas, or even one category of subject. You just don’t do that.

That said, I’ve done Nanowrimo a few times, and I’ve only “lost” once (I moved cross-country in mid-November, so I kind of think I had an excuse, but you may proceed to mock me now), so I could probably give some advice. Which I will proceed to do after this fascinating introductory segment coming up right now.

So for the uninitiated, Nanowrimo stands from National Novel Writing Month. It takes place in November of every year, and has for the past several years. It was founded by an insane man named Chris Baty, who gathered a few of his close friends near and said, “Hey, why don’t we write a novel? In a month? Doesn’t that sound like a great way to cut through the excuses that get in the way of writing novels?”

And so it began. And the next year, more came to study at the feet of Chris Baty, and the next year, they brought their friends, and it grew into such an event that we regularly crash the Nanowrimo homepage. Hundreds of thousands of writers flock to this website every year with one goal: 50,000 words in 30 days.

Three Sentences

So yesterday on Tumblr, I challenged people to fill my ask box with three-sentence fic prompts that I would write in reply. Here’s an archive of what happened.

(I also wrote some Avengers fic, and some Chuck fic for a writing group I joined.)

But without further ado...writing prompts!