Wearing Book

 Hey all - sorry for the lack of posts.  I am still very much on a reading binge, which tends to make me want to reserve my writing energy for writing books, rather than writing posts.  I'm hoping to get Book of Firsts (the New Adult bit of fluff I've been working on) out end of December (though potentially in January).  Then I will probably spend my time swapping between writing Tangleways and the sequel to Book of Firsts.

But on to the subject of Wearing Book, which is a trope in Chinese webnovels used almost as frequently as rebirth (it's kind of a sub-category), and the type of story I'm reading a lot of currently (mixed with some metaphysical master is a teenaged girl stories).  "Wearing Book" is a plot where a reader wakes up suddenly in a book that they've (usually) read, often as a character with the same name as their real-life name.  These characters are rarely the main character of the book - they're usually the villainess, or the cannon fodder, or the friend of the heroine, or a total side character who barely gets a named mentioned.  Quite often they're the mother of the villain, in a kind of unwritten prequel to the book.

I somewhat prefer straight rebirth to wearing book, as the protagonist is considerably more emotionally invested, but there's also a lot of fun in seeing the doomed-to-fail rival for whoever's attention suddenly declaring that her Field of Fucks is barren, and romping off to do something far more interesting than follow the main plotline.

So far I've not encountered a Wearing Book which involves any actual written books, so they're not a variety of fanfiction, but I thought it would be fun to ask: If you could be anybody other than the protagonist of a book you've read, who would you be? [One for my books, one for all the other books.]

I'd say I'd like to be Nils, but I don't think I'd be very good at being a Setari, let alone Nils, so if I was going to go Touchstone, I think I'd be a pinksuit, someone in admin, doing the virtual equivalent of pencil pushing (while writing books in my spare time, of course).  However, if I could choose which book to wear, I'd definitely be one of the gamers who got the Starfighter Invitation.

Magic future tech

I got heavily into Chinese webnovels last year - an addiction that has yet to pass.  Originally I was reading licensed and/or fan translations of the novels, but lately I've shifted to reading directly on the official original sites (first dozen chapters or so are free, and then you can purchase the rest), and letting Google translate take care of me.

Google translate (the automatic function through Chrome) produces perfectly readable Chinese webnovels.  This is such an amazing thing to me.  Occasionaly there are confusions (particularly for people's names, which usually have a distinct meaning - so occasionally someone the novel usually calls 'Liang You' will be called 'cool pomelo' instead), but for the most part it's clean and readable text.  This is pure magic to me - to have that barrier of language taken away and give me access to reams and reams of virtual books.  [I'm presuming that Chinese somehow lends itself into translation into English - whether through similar syntax or some other congruity, because I've seen many very poor machine translations.  Or perhaps Google is just improving their translation tech year by year and has reached 'readable' level.]

I tend to be what I guess could be called a 'glom' reader.  Like, I'll get into the mood for Rex Stout or Agatha Christie, and then will spend the better part of half a year reading all their books in order of publication.  I don't think it's possible for me to glom the entirety of China's web novel output - the books are being written faster than I could ever read - but I seem to still be in the mood to try.

I started out with the historical reincarnation/transmigration novels, but am now on the modern day reincarnation/transmigration, with an admixture of gaming and game system novels.  [I just finished a gaming one which (entirely coincidentally) started off with a take-off a game I'd just been playing called Raft.]  I prefer the stories that go for around 100 chapters, though I've gotten quite a ways into some of the really long ones.

No novel has kept my attention for 6000 chapters, but I have made it more than a million words into a few of them.

On the gaming front, recently I've played a ton of Two Point Hospital, a fair bit of Raft, and have completed the first location in Viscera (a game where you are the janitor that cleans up after Doom Guy [or other equivalent] has blasted their way through the latest zombie outbreak or alien invasion).

Writing-wise, I'm about 3/4 through 'Firsts', which I guess counts as New Adult, but as usual for me doesn't quite match the genre.  It's something between slice-of-life and romance, with some plot vagaries and a ton of sex that somehow manages to be more friendly than erotic.  When I finish it, I'll move on to 'Seconds', a sequel, mainly because I like the characters, and then back to Tangleways.  [So, not a permanent shift to New Adult or anything - just want to write this story.]

All quiet on the corona-virus front - still working from home (with hopes of transitioning to at least part-time working from home once all this is over).  I purchased a face mask in case NSW mandates masks (it probably won't, but Australia's otherwise good progress tripped up and we've gone all second wavy here, and so I'd rather not be caught out trying to convert my socks into a mask at the last moment).

Hope you're all keeping well.

Caszandra in audiobook!

And finally the audiobook for Caszandra! 

• Apple (search through Apple Books).
• Audible.
• Kobo.
• Scribd. 
• Amazon.

Also available through a host of other channels.  Check your favourite distributor to see if it's there.

In the meantime, I'm a little over halfway through Firsts (non-SFF side project).  It seems to have gotten distracted from gratuitous sex into 'friendship is magic', but is still highly entertaining for me.

COVID-19 has impacted me very little, other than my day job at least temporarily shifting to work from home, which I greatly appreciate for the extra sleeping in time.  It does mean I no longer get my excellent commute writing sessions, so I write a bit more in the evenings now.

I hope all of you are keeping safe in this very unusual year.

Status - February 2020

As y'all noticed, my output over the last year significantly slowed down, in part because I'm finding Tangleways challenging.  An odd thing, given I have a very good idea of what I want to write in it.  I think, because I consider Pyramids the best book I've ever written, I keep worrying that the direct sequel won't live up to it, and keep trying to get every word right.  Giving myself permission to just write the book I want is important.

On the plus side, I am writing a ton lately, but that's because I put Tangleways down for the moment to give myself some head space, and went back to a silly side-project I've been writing on-and-off for a couple of years.  It's a high school romance with a lot of explicit sex, which definitely doesn't fit the rest of my output - I ususally don't even put sex scenes in my books because mostly they're unnecessary to the story.  But I fell in love with the characters, and have been having a lot of fun writing 'Firsts'.  [I'll probably publish that under a pen name, since it's completely off-genre, but I'll link to it from here.]

Apologies to all those waiting for Tangleways!  I've been keeping you on a chain for quite a while now, but I promise not to pull a McKinley!  Once I've gotten Firsts (and maybe Seconds) out of my system, I'll definitely have given myself enough distance to look at what I've done on Tangleways with clear eyes, and I'm already finding myself looking forward to getting back to it.

Snow Day - a Touchstone short story

Interrupting my packed schedule of reading Chinese webnovels, here is a bit of seasonal fluff for the Touchstone fans.  It was meant to be a quick short story, but turned into 10,000 words somehow.

Expect character glimpses and worldbuilding - this is not a plot-heavy story, though I did end up thinking quite a bit about the times of the year when families get together to have arguments about minor things but generally be cheerful at each other.

[The snow, of course, is not seasonal at all for Australia.  It was 44C here yesterday, but thankfully cooler today. (I'm not anywhere near bushfires, btw, though we do get a fair bit of smoke from them.)]

As usual, the publication process will take varying amounts of time depending on the retailer.  I'll add links below as they come up.  [Published in 2020 or 2019 depending on what part of the planet you're on. :) ]

Smashwords
Amazon US, UK, AU
Kobo US, AU
Google Play

Search Apple's app to get the story there (this usually takes a couple of days to publish).