After the Calling

Before I ask the question, I just wanna mention that I’m traveling for work right now, but I will be posting tommorrow hopefully eventually start giving myself realistic deadlines. (Got back home later than I thought. More tired that I thought.)  Not for the chapter unfortunately, but something you might otherwise enjoy. Or be annoyed with, I can’t judge. But thank you for your patience with me.

Okay, I don’t want anyone to take this question to mean a damn thing, NOT A DAMN THING (Penelope), it is just a question. For writers and readers alike.

When is it okay for the protagonist to die?

“Okay” Meaning, you feel the story would lose nothing/resolve conclusively/ remain enjoyable/not make you want to sit in your bathtub with gallon of gasoline and a lighter, if the protag dies.

Please

In the future of this story two characters have a conversation. About something. At a place. Where things are happening.  And that conversation got me thinking about… stuff. This stuff might be completely banal to you, because I’m trying to get fictionally scientific, and at first I wasn’t really going to indulge my wordy theories because I was only concocting them to keep some of my story rules in check. They aren’t really going to come up, but they might be helpful to know. And I thought maybe some readers might have thought about some of what I was tossing together and could be interested in the bio-genetic flap and yap that I pulled out of thin air.

The main thought that triggered my scientific evalution was, “Jax should probably have every form of hepatitis available and Chloe should probably be on baby number 27.”

If that ever crossed your mind, you can find my convoluted explanation and subsequent rambling tangent on the origin and genetics of vampirism, here. You can thank insomnia.

Sorry sorry sorry. My attention span was useless today. This is a short one. Well, for me anyway. For a number of reasons, the main one being I am a lazy lazing lazer. Part III is looking massive though. And Ten Years Prior is looking neglected.

Okay, I’m not going to make a habit out of teasers, because teasers are wrong and evil and cause global warming. At least that’s what Jax would say.  He wants it NOW!  Nevermind.  I was actually planning on updating Betray yesterday, and Ten Years tommorrow, but I did something so stupid to my pictures… so moronically idiotically stupid… I’m embarrassed just thinking about it. Let’s just leave it at me having to manually decompress like… 1000 pictures… because I fail. However, my weekend is turning out a little bit more busy, and a little bit less vegetative than I originally planned, so manual decompression can’t happen til tommorrow. But until then! I TEASE!

Coolsims just put out a new male hair that has made it absolutely imperative that I completely reshoot the next two updates for Betray to include it. This may or may not slow down the release of the next TYP, but definitely bring us to the conclusion that I’m a crank case (which I recently learned is someone whose ideal night out would include dinner, a movie, and a large pile of crystal meth. So eventually I am going to have to get out of the habit of using that label on myself and others, being that my own definition of it is quite different. But not until I reshoot with that hair.)

I’m sorry guys, I… am… swamped. Literally, the swamp creature rose up out of the an angry pile of muck and crickets and sat on me. For no reason. Just to be evil. I mean, I am terrified of crickets. That is just spiteful.

I have a breather this afternoon and I’m working on updating. A massive massive update. Goal: Tommorrow. Expectation: Saturday. I have to take some pictures and do some edits, and I’m planning on stuffing two chapter parts into one… or releasing them at the same time. Or something. And I know I’m a wet sock with the emails and comments, just bear with me.

To whet your palate (or make you completely frustrated with me) A TEASER! I think?

… but you have to understand why I’m so intrigued by this.

I am AMAZED.  OBSESSED AND AMAZED.

But in the end, I think I just have the amusement level of a pre-schooler. You can thank aching_maserati for this picture, and for my child-like giggling for the rest of the day.  Monkey Jax. I concussed myself from laughing.

I’m just going to spew at you for a minute. That disappearance was a bit longer than I originally planned. Stuff just exploded into crazy.  I had to go on a last minute trip to China for work. Tuesday morning staff meeting went something like this:

Boss: I need somebody to go on a last minute trip to China. Someone who is able to leave tonight, met the CP rep and knows the distribution laws over there, and remembers the brief on our new distributor banks that happened last week when Veron wasn’t here. Don’t volunteer if you’ve never visited this site, like Veron, or if you have any upcoming trips, like Veron, who is going to Hertford, England in like four days and is busy preparing for that trip.

Veron: *puts on her “I don’t even know what a CP rep is” face.*

Qualified Coworker: I can go. I know all the distribution laws, heard the brief, I’m already packed and can leave right now, and the CP rep is my mom’s boyfriend. I know Cantonese and Manderin. I learned both when I spent 10 years cultivating rice fields in Dazhai for my masters thesis which was entitled “Totally Qualified For This Trip”. In fact, I still live in China. I commute in every morning from Bangkok, which isn’t even in China, but Veron doesn’t know the difference.

Boss: Mmmmm, yeah that’s nice, but despite my already stating why she’s the worst possible person to go, I’m sending Veron.

Veron: WHA??!? No no no, see, look, I’m wearing my “please don’t send me to China” face.

Qualified Coworker: I completely agree. She is much more qualified than I am to go to China. Her England trip can be postponed even though its been put off for more than a month now.

Veron: Okay, wait, T for timeout -

Boss: Veron, shut up and go to China.

…Yep. So I got back from that craziness yesterday, spent the whole trip hopeless busy and hopelessy clueless, and I’m off to the UK on Thursday. So I figured, in this little interim, I’d just leak simly insanity all over the site.

My house still isn’t quite done, but my cats have been using their pee as a method of biological warfare, and my boyfriend evicted us the minute I came back. It is nice to have cable again though. I realized last week that a heavily dvr-ed routine of Animal Planet, Gordan Ramsey, Spongebob Squarepants, liberal news media, and general access to the internet, when encountered near daily, is more addicting than heroin. If I wasn’t busyoverdosing on the crystal meth of Sharon Shinn series, screaming “BUT WHY, STUPID?!” at her characters all that week, I might have succumbed to televinternisonet withdrawal and actually considered the boyfriend’s “seriously joking” suggestion to try and steal the neighbor’s wifi. Although, I will say, much like crystal meth, there is such a thing as too much Sharon Shinn.  Her good books drive you to unhinged madness and her bad books are… just… awful.  If I ever meet her in person I am going to deliver a swift helicopter kick to the back of her head. Or kiss her full on the mouth. I haven’t made up my mind. Honestly, both actions are equally likely and may happen simultaneously, proving only that I should lay off her novels for a while. And probably never meet her in person.

“Webbed cocooned erotic spiders” showed up NINE TIMES in searched engine terms this week. I love you all. Honorable mention goes to “invader zim bedsheets” , “red fart“, “thumb war lab“, and “loooooooook“.  Schools need to start offering classes on how to do a proper web search.  Despite my entertainment, this is ridiculous. I mean, invader zim and you click on me? For seriously? What the nuts is a red fart?

I’ve been blaming this insensibility on google, because wordpress doesn’t tell you which search engines lead the parade of WTF. But I’m finding that google ignores me, unless you specifically type AtC by Veron or, more recently, webbed cocooned erotic spiders. Any other time, google totally cockblocks me, and RIGHTLY SO because I have nothing to do with invader zim, or red farts, or erotic spiders for that matter. So something told me to check out yahoo, because… yahoo is just… the broken vacuum cleaner of search engines…  I type in “invader zim bedsheets” because, WTF. GUESS who comes up as the NUMBER SEVEN result on the FIRST PAGE??!?!?! As a result of INVADER MOTHERFLIPPIN’ ZIM BEDSHEETS?! I’ll tell you. ReaperofHate on Deviant art. I know this because AtC comes up as NUMBER FRICKIN’ SIX.  And frankly, I think that ReaperofHate should be number one. I mean, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it like you mean it. Why not? Yahoo doesn’t care. Yahoo isn’t even trying.

But they aren’t being entirely brainless (although they are being purdy damn brainless). Turns out that GAYL (!!!!!)  made a comment that  mentioned invader zim bed sheets a few weeks back and apparently yahoo was just as thrilled about it as I was. Number 6. First page. Crazy.  I’ll let you know when I figure out which one of you is behind ”thumb war lab”.

Real, live parapsychologists are commenting on my post where I call bullshit on parapsychology. I’m a bit frightened.

In this episode:  Ten Years Prior: Part VII, (Ten Years Prior: Part VIII is sort of done depending on if I’ll feel like editing the pictures, so I may have something to update with later in the month), “Self Found” for those who follow the SWA Collab, AND Posing Without Pose Boxes III: Not Your Granddaddy’s Overlays. And uploading all that crap in one day sucked more ass than a fly at a horse show. Now I can allow myself to be shipped off to Britain as a sacrificial offering to the gods of adult novelty distribution. We must not anger them lest they rain down their deadly wrath of bad porn and latex allergies.

…Hmph. Look at that. I just realized why searching for “dildo” can lead you to this site.  All of this has everything to do with the update. I will be in and out, around and about. Give me a sec with emails and comments and reading and breathing and everything. Actually, give me another two weeks. Fraps and I had a falling out so I’m not as pic heavy as I usually am… but still extraordinarily pic heavy. LINKAGE BELOW.

Soooooooo, I’m having my house “greened” because I’m a hippie (not the stinky kind, the tree hugging kind), and also because I needed a reason to renovate my attic, which was never actually an attic until I moved into the house and tossed all the crap I didn’t feel like finding a place for into the rooms on the third floor. I had taken the week off of work, not quite realizing that this venture would actually require a full taking over of my residence, and I’ve been trying very hard just to live with a bunch of construction men (and one very strong looking woman) walking in and out of my house, staving off wild attacks from my xenophobic cats. However, it has now come to the point where this is just impossible, so the cats, the dogs, the snakes, and I will be heading over to the boyfriend’s place, which, being that he has been squatting with me, is not cat-ready, dog-ready, snake-ready, or Veron-ready. It is also not internet ready, because, there is no need to pay a cable bill when no one is living in the place to watch it.  I’ve been denying for a whole year that the boy and I don’t technically live together because he has his own place. You know, he just stays over for… months at a time… yeah, well, that little fantasy has been squashed.

All that said, I won’t be around until sometime next week (possibly during the weekend) and then immediately after that, my job is sending me on a torturously long field trip, so September won’t be a great month for AtC. I’m going to try and get something out next week before I go, but can’t promise much. I’d like to say that I’ve been productive during my week off, but I’ve really done nothing. Just been lying around, binging on Sharon Shinn novels, because I’d give up oxygen to be able to write like her. And I talk about flawed characters, geezus. I’ve become addicted to the agony and hair-tearing frustration that this woman illicits in me with her stories. Whether suspense, or science fiction, or paranormal fantasy, or all three, this woman has me agonizing. And the romance, holy… I mean you’ll have this petulant, pigheaded, jerk of a woman, and then this control freak, hot-headed, jerk of a man and they piss you off SO BAD, but you can’t help but love each of them for what they are and who they are and how perfect they are for the story, and then the man will get over his own jerkiness for his love of the woman, because despite her being a complete ASS – oh, and she is a complete ASS - he loves her, and will always love her because she is his ass, and even when he shows her this truth again and again she continues to resist JUST FOR THE SAKE OF RESISTING, and you just want to smack her - you just – you just hate her because you’ve been reading all day and you’re STARVING, but you can’t stop reading now, becuase this ASS and her actions have now sexually frustrated YOU! And you’re the flipping READER! How must the male protagonist feel?!  But he’s not acting on it, no, he’s just letting her continue to be a douche. Because. he. effing loves her.

All you want is for these two gotdam protagonists to consumate the relationship and, knowing you are in the final pages of the book, you find yourself begging, PLEADING! with this woman: Please. Please! PUH-LEASE! Just sleep with him, please! He loves you! And you love him even though you refuse to admit it you petulant, pigheaded, ASS! I’ve gotten through this whole book with you, and all you’ve done is torture me! I hate you for making me feel like this, I want to cut out my own spleen with a butter knife! But I love you for doing this to me, I’m going to recommend this book to everyone! And he loves you too! Soo please (*sobs*) please, please have sex with him. Please. Just… (*weeping*)… just give him your sex! (*sobs harder, but then is suddenly angry*) JUST GIVE IT UP, YOU PRAT, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, THIS ISN’T EVEN A ROMANCE NOVEL!

And then she does. And despite all the shit, their love is overwhelming and they can deal with all the rest of the shit that is about to come their way. And then suddenly everything is once again right with the world because you just read the best fucking book ever and you need a cigarette even though you’ve never smoked a day in your life and something tells you that you should probably skip the nicotine and just settle for some guacamole.

… … … … … yeah, so… I’ll be around!

THIS is why I love looking at the search engine terms that bring people to this site. They don’t make a lick of damn sense. Don’t have much, if anything, to do with AtC.  But my link shows up and gets clicked anyway.  And I love it.

immovable elbow
wrench dog
psychic protection for telepaths
aeryn nekkid
grounded for sneaking out
roman numerals don’t make sense
dildos
“kurt cobain” hairstyle

AND, THE GRAND MASTER OF AMAZING

webbed cocooned erotic spider stories fantasy

WEBBED! COCOONED! EROTIC! SPIDER! STORIES!

SERIOUSLY???!?! REALLY??!?! And thank you.

That is my genre. Forget science fiction urban fantasy whatever the hell. I write in the genre of webbed cocooned erotic spiders. You can bet your dime on that. In fact, I’m about to google that shit right now.

EDIT! And as of this post, I am the first thing that shows up with you google “webbed cocooned erotic spiders”.  And my purpose has been fulfilled. I don’t need to accomplish anything else today.

Edit again: Okay… there are actually people with a spider fetish, and there actually exists webbed cocooned erotic spider stories, and everything in me wants to click on some of these links, but I’m afraid of viruses. But there is something called “Sticky bondage” and someone named Gabriel who “is really beautifull [sic], and exciting when she is cocooned.”

And I’m right at the top of that list. Excellent.