Happy 2014!

Greetings, Earthlings Readers of this Blog!

I think I've given up on regularly updating over here (and I've been kind of spotty on my LJ). Most of my organization and time seems to be devoted to Tumblr. If you ever want to get a bird's eye view of what I'm doing over there, my archive page there is a pretty great way to see what kind of inanity I've been getting into lately.

But in the meantime, I've also been kind of busy, writing-wise. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I've devoted some serious time and effort into working on That Which is Greater again. I feel a little more comfortable to tell you it's for the Winter Break story, one of the three I promised to finish. I'm working on the fifth chapter (Max has the first four chapters to beta) and at this time, I'm uncertain as to how many chapters there will be. At least six, it looks like. Also, administratively, I've renamed the Winter Break story on AO3 to Snowball Fight for reasons I'm sure you can figure out. When I've completed the story, I'll let you know a posting date.

Monday Gazette

Hello, lovelies!

I’m a little more recovered than I was last week. I love jetlag. Some important announcements! We’re up to chapter 9 of My Girl Sarah, and that chapter’s a pretty important one, as it kicks off the second half of the story and things are only going to get twistier from here on out. You can read that on my ff-net account. Please keep in mind that though we’re posting it under my name, mxpw is my co-writer on this, and not just in name either. He did half the writing and half the plotting but only one third of the whining. Trying to guess who wrote which chapter is a useless task because our co-writing doesn’t usually work like that, though you have been amusing the two of us greatly with your guesses, so thank you for that!).

Other announcements: I’ve gone through and updated my FAQ page, which you can read here. It has more answers about That Which is Greater stories in progress, and even more importantly, a new page I’ve added to my blog: My Transformative Works Policy.

Yes, I have one of those now (for the record: it’s a statement saying it’s okay to make stuff based on stuff I make). This was not something I ever thought I needed, as I’ve stated before that I would love to see sequels/prequels/meta of my work, as long as it’s credited. But I got approached by somebody wanted to podfic one of my stories, and I realized that I probably needed one of those. You know, officially. So I’ve posted that here, on my LJ, and on my Dreamwidth that I don’t really use. I hope you find it amusing, at the very least.

There are some more tiny fics. Good old Steampunk.Chuckster (who will not be writing the rest of Curtain Call—that was a joke) was having a bad day the other day so for every anonymous message she received, I wrote a new snippet of Chuckfic. And then I opened up my inbox for prompts for the night. So here’s a list:

• Incoming (Greater)
• Medaling in Pop Culture (Set, Spike, Dive!)
• Trailer of Tetris (Curtain Call)
• Y: The Last Graphic Novel (Fates)
• Sarah adopts a dog (Orphan Black)
• John Casey is asked to be a Godfather (Chuck)
• How to Piss Off Frea O’Scanlin (Chuck, canon compliant)
• The Rocketeerman (Avengers/The Rocketeer)
• Girls’ Night (Avengers/Chuck)
• The Magic of Tumblr (Avengers)
• The Horrible Hawkeye Essay (Hawkguy)

They haven’t been added to my archive yet, but they will be soon. In addition, I’ve gone through and added summaries to all of the fics on my archive. You just need to hover your mouse over the title.

Hope everybody else’s weekend was productive or relaxing, whatever you needed it to be!

Stay sexy,
Frea

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!

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

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.

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:

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.

How Fates Might Have Gone

So I wrote Parts I-IV of Fates. Originally I planned to write Parts I-VIII of Fates, but…

Well, have you seen how long Parts I-IV actually are? It’s like 1.5 Robert Jordan novels. And I’ve had a lot of people try to take me to task for the “rushed” ending, or the fact that “Fates doesn’t have an end.” You may agree with them; you may not. I don’t really care much either way, honestly.

I stopped writing Fates because it was driving me insane. I picked a place that I thought was a decent ending for everything I had written so far, where the characters were together without any hindrances between them, where everybody was in a good place and ready to go out on the next adventure, which was to get the Intersect out of Chuck’s brain. Am I obligated to write everything I've ever thought about the story since I started it?

Personally, I don’t think so. Others disagree. Again, let them. Here’s what I had planned for Parts VI, VII, and VIII. These aren’t Fates-canon unless I actually sit down and write them, so disregard them or regard them as you see fit. 

What Fates Impose Ebook!

The What Fates Impose ebook is shiny and ready for your reading pleasure on the downloads page. This isn't the annotated one I promised (that will take awhile), but it has all 68 chapters, hopefully with the proper quotes and everything.

- Frea

Fates Free-for-All!

Well, it's over.  And now, I imagine, there are questions.

A picture for Chapter 66 of Fates

This is my desktop background, and has been since I started pushing to finish Fates.  Staring at it helps me out quite nicely.  It's taken from near the a piè de má Wine Bar that Chuck and Sarah patronize during the chapter.  The sunset on my second day in the region.

:)

Frea

Warning: This post contains spoilers

...if you haven't read Fates 65 yet.  If you haven't, don't go beyond the "more" link.  If you have...

Come on in!

Also, before you click, once I post the final chapter of What Fates Impose, I'll post an open forum here on the blog and answer as many questions people have about Fates and the writing process involved. I may even share embarrassing stories about mxpw.

Shakespeare's Birthday! Celebrating with Spoilers!

Today, it's Shakespeare's birthday, and I needed to celebrate somehow since, uh, if you google the famous Shakespeare quote about Fates and being imposing, my story is kind of the first hit.  I kind of feel bad about that since I kind of picked the story title on a whim over two years ago (for the first couple of weeks of its life, Fates was called "The Bunker Story" as all of my stories aren't ever called by their real names ("The Audrey Story," "Smoke," "Isotope")). But since I named Fates after an awesome Shakespeare quote, I've gone on to give at least five other stories either Shakespearean titles or Shakespearean pun titles (including, by the way, the unwritten story of Fates Casey, which would've been called That Men Must Needs Abide).

So...here's the first part of Chapter 63, for your reading pleasure.  This will probably hit the stands on Thursday, maybe.  If I'm feeling particularly magnanimous on Thursday, that is.  Who knows?  I never do.

Have a great Monday, and Happy Birthday, Willy Shakes.  You inspired an entire language in so many ways.  You've certainly inspired me, and for that, I'll be forever grateful. Now, if anybody needs me, I'll be rereading Puck's amazing monologue from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Frea

A Few Things You May Not Know About Fates

1. Fates was originally a one-shot
2. Fates was concepted in a Fazoli’s, proof that there are indeed narcotics in the breadsticks
3. The first scene written is actually from the second chapter, in which Chuck and Sarah play Go Fish. The first chapter was written to bridge a logic gap, and, oh yeah, explain the whole bunker thing.
4. Jill had an additional storyline after the Lincoln Reveal where Chuck is forced to figure out if he got over her during his time at Project Lincoln or not. This has been cut because Sarah Walker is a badass mofo.
5. Part V’s original title was actually a titan name (possibly Kronos), and a Greek god (Hephaestus) wasn’t supposed to be used until Part VIII. Since roughly 150k were cut off of Fates’s story, plans changed.
6. Fates Sarah was viewed as cold and remote until I wrote To Resist Both Wind and Tide.
7. To Resist Both Wind and Tide was written on a bet about the word-count for Chapter 18 (mxpw bet me I couldn’t finish it in less than 5k. I finished precisely on 5k to the word, making both of us losers. mxpw has yet to pay his part of the bet)
8. I wrote To Resist Both Wind and Tide because it turns out being severely limited in perspective to a man who has self-image/slight depression issues doesn’t really invite the clear-eyed inspection required to see past the world’s most formidable poker mask. And yes, I was tired of people complaining about Sarah being remote. Of course, had I known that this would only lead to a deluge of MOAR SARAH, I may have changed my mind.
9. Just kidding. I adore To Resist Both Wind and Tide.
10. Of my stories: Fortune Favors Fools, Wasted on Us, Training, Lies, and the CIA, and To Sleep, Perchance to Scream were written as gifts, Not in the Stars, He'll Someday Call Her Bunny, and To Resist Both Wind and Tide were lost bets, and What Fates Impose seems to be the result of a waking nightmare.
11. Oscar Wilde is the most quoted chapter quote person. Seriously. The dude has a quote for EVERYTHING.
12. My favorite thing to do under my guise as Moonlight Pilot was to post a chapter of Walker’s Eleven on the same day I updated Fates. In unrelated news, I’ve recently been diagnosed with a severe case of masochism.
13. Walker’s Eleven and Fates both feature absurdist stories about livestock, FBI agents named Virginia Grey, and cute cartoon frog thumb drives.
14. I spelled the German word for rabbit wrong.
15. Speaking of the rabbit thing, that evolved naturally, I swear. I have nothing against our lucky-pawed brethren.
16. Since I’ve started writing Fates, I’ve done Google searches on semiautomatic weaponry, Molotov cocktails, how far can you fall into the water without dying and how, do bullets penetrate water, Speed, all varieties of RPGs, World of Warcraft, every Star Trek under the sun, the Santa Monica Pier, how long a Cessna can stay in the air without refueling, ferries in Greece, and the history of the CIA. To date, nobody has knocked on my door asking about my Internet search history, but I have to figure it’s only a matter of time.
17. My original beta reader swore up and down readers would murder me for Chapter 6, which only mentioned Sarah Walker twice. I laughed, and then realized she was right when Sarah didn’t feature for three chapters in a row.
18. Bryce wasn’t supposed to be in Part V. Then I figured there were a bunch of things I needed to wrap up.
19. I really, really don't have any thing against rabbits.  I promise.

Fates 59: The Lincoln Conspiracy

This is just the first scene, which isn't very long, but it's funny, so I thought I'd pep up some Saturdays with it.

:)

Frea

Two Years!

Maximus here. Frea is still on her trip right now and doesn't know I'm doing this. What is this, you may ask? Well, this is the second year anniversary of Frea's neverending story: What Fates Impose. Can you believe it's really been two years since she started writing her wonderful story? I can hardly believe it myself, mainly because that means I've known Frea for almost two years and it just doesn't seem like that.

I'm just going to take a minute and say some quick thoughts about what this story has meant to me. I'm very grateful to have met Frea and Fates was what made that possible. As much as I enjoy the story and have a deep admiration for her talent, getting to know her personally is what I enjoy most about the whole Fates experience. I've learned a lot about being an editor since I started editing for her, as well as learned a lot about writing. She's a pretty good teacher, even if she might not realize it. Most importantly, I'm just glad to be able to call her friend. That's what I value most from the whole experience. And like I said, Fates made befriending Frea possible.

I don't regret it, even if she does let her status as the most(ly) benevolent overlord go to her head sometimes. :P

Behind the Scenes Stuff

Just an administrative note to let you know I've updated the What Fates Impose ebook so that it includes all 55 chapters in one place.  You can download that here.

Also, a good friend of mine gave me an invite over to Archive of Our Own, and I've been archiving Fates over the past couple of weeks. I really like the AO3 interface, as it means I can sort the Fatesverse in order as a series...which I've done here.  I have a few one-shots to put up still and then I'll start archiving That Which is Greater in order.

Exciting things coming on Twitter, thanks to a reader/awesome person that shall remain nameless at the moment.  You know who you are, and you're awesome!!!

I've spoken with ninjaVanish, who is deep in HTML coding, prepping Sunken Treasure and Frontier to be made into ebooks so that I can host those here.  I've made covers for both of those already, so I'm excited to be able to add those to the collection.  In addition, I spoke to atlee, one of my favorite authors in the section, and I'll be adding some of those fantastic ebooks to the collection, naturally.

So...exciting things coming up!  Yay!

Frea

The Plan is Working: A Little of Chapter 52

I see that my captive, Frea, has found a way to get on the internet piecing together those old Macs we have stored in the basement. As I am a benevolent sort, and because she keeps rearranging the furniture down there when she gets bored, I’ll let her keep her link to the outside world.

I’m happy to report that my plan to make Frea write Fates seems to be working. When I went downstairs to bring her breakfast (and mop up the remains of a small fire she lit to keep herself warm), she delivered to me two pages of Chapter 52 of Fates. I didn’t think it was really necessary that she crumple the papers and hurl them at me, but whatever. I have painstakingly transcribed the pages for you here.

Now, one thing before you read. I know I promised to let her go once we received $480 in donations to Operation Smile. However, you all are so wonderful and generous we hit and surpassed that goal with ease. Unfortunately for Frea, I am also rather capricious and promptly changed the amount to get her out of my basement to $1,500. So keep donating to Operation Smile because as it stands right now, you have already bought six smiles. You are all awesome! Also, keep voting for the musical you want us to “Chuckify.” And finally, I owe her a chocolate muffin.