Ape's writing thread

BY CROM!!!

Mendalla joins the august ranks of Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard

Now gird your loins, tighten your thews, and get ready to storm the White Ape Palace of the Lambent Flame

The stones will be stained tonight!

the opening of one of my fav movies. the best adaptation of his work imho
SFW
the racy stuff comes later in the movie
aaand my fav Oliver Stone movie

Delightful Life said:

BY CROM!!!

Mendalla joins the august ranks of Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard

Now gird your loins, tighten your thews, and get ready to storm the White Ape Palace of the Lambent Flame

The stones will be stained tonight!

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Description of the protagonist:

"The huge man strode down the main road of Varan. His dark eyes glared as he looked around, watching for defenders. Battle Lord Jadek Prynn was taller than any of the other warriors fighting in the street. His heavyset body was a mass of muscles, scars, and tattoos. In his hand, he held Blood Thief, his long sword, at the ready."

Later, it leans more into a kind of mythical fantasy rather than straight "hero battles nastiness" S&S, though.

I will enjoy reading it :3

Looking at trying some actual paying markets.

I found one that might be ideal for my story "Down in the Well" and might take it down from StoriesSpace to submit it there.

And there's a Canadian company looking for material for an anthology of fiction about Bigfoot. I have always wanted to write about the mythical West Coast ape so maybe this is the time. Just need to come up with an interesting piece of fiction.

(And I have written one "Bigfoot" story but it was (a) erotica and they want SFW and (b) it is long since deleted for reasons)

So, yeah, not much happening. Bashing away at ideas but not really getting much out (at least that's mentionable here, I did get one new NSFW story out).

I have been wrestling with where to go with the characters I introduced in The Spirits of Tan Maldrin. Some ideas are direct, right where it left off sequels but I've always thought I wanted more of an ongoing adventures of type of series and a bit lighter in tone than the Tana stories that these are a follow-on to (One of the characters is Tana's daughter, now seventeen. Since Tana was pregnant with her in the last story, that puts about 17-18 years between them.).

However, I seem to keep flailing or deciding I'm not happy with where things are going. For instance, how much do I reference what Nalia (Tana's daughter) went through in Shadows, where a monster nearly killed her? Do I do the old Star Trek thing and largely forget it ever happened until they actually go back? Reference it as a bit of backstory or character development? Explore how it affects her fairly deeply (ie. she has PTSD)? But that would militate against the "bit lighter in tone".

Current attempt has them travelling a long distance to a far-off city-state in search of ... something. I'm not 100% sure what. An incident leads to Nalia meeting the heir to the city's Crown Prince who attempts to romance her. She's wrestling with her calling as a priestess and life in general after the events at Tan Maldrin, which complicates her handling of the Prince's wooing. And his guardian is ... something weird, maybe an embodied spirit of some kind? Which she can sense but isn't sure what it means. So, yeah, lot of ideas and moving parts and, while I am pretty happy with what's written, there's some stuff missing that's needed and I am not sure where and how to bring it all together. And to do it all justice, it might need to be a novella or short novel, in which case do I pull Shadows of Tan Maldrin down and incorporate it into the longer work?

Decisions, decisions. Sometimes the thinking is more work than the actual writing.

Tossed that story aside for now. I have two stories going and am kind of dancing back and forth.

One is horror/urban fantasy about a city plagued with supernatural manifestations and a group of citizens who are trying to figure what's up (an engineer turned tech exec, a team leader from his startup, a friend of his who is a United Church minister with a science background, and a psychic witch). Think Ghostbusters minus the team of professional ghost hunters, just ordinary folks in over their heads. So maybe more Haunting of Hill House (the novel, not the TV show).

The other is about a young woman who was abandoned as a baby and went through years of foster care who discovers at 20 that she may be heir to a small fortune. A romance component is likely as well.

Both seem like they could go fairly long, which once again brings up the issue of where to publish. If these get into novella territory, I might bite the bullet and take a crack at Amazon Kindle or Smashwords self-publishing. StoriesSpace is almost useless for longer works now and I'm not sure how I would fare starting my own site on Medium or something like that.

very cool, Mendalla.

Welp, with all my current efforts flailing, StoriesSpace came through with a new, and intriguing, competition. So I'm dumping my current work into my "Under Review" folder and focussing on that. 1000-5000 words, very broad theme of "It's Not What It Looks Like". Due May 25 with the announcement to follow on May 31 (just in time, since I leave on vacation on June 3).

Here's the details for anyone interested in joining the site and putting in a story:

You know, meditating on "It's not what it looks like" and how often I get computer issues where an error makes it look like one problem but it is actually another underlying one that is the real cause, I'm almost wondering how I can make IT support sound cool and thrilling in a story. Maybe a computer "error" that turns out to be a hack happening? Or a "hack" turns out to be something more mundane but causes serious stress finding that out? Suspenseful race to find out what is really happening before something awful happens? Hmmmm.

Very cool subject, looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

So what I thought would be a great and inspiring comp theme has led to four attempts at stories, all but the latest ending in dead ends at less than 1000 words. The new one might just go somewhere, but we shall see. I thought that about a couple of the others, too. With only one story submitted so far, this comp needs some life but I also need to get things right and not rush just for the sake of moving the comp along.

Oh, how frustrating

It's unfortunate, I found school turned me off a lot of things. Book clubs come to mind, it seemed too much like the assignments we would have after reading a book for LA. Then I did a few and enjoyed them. Writing is another, maybe I will give it a try one day too. I didn't really understand the appeal of fan fics, but I have seen/read enough books/tv shows in the last 10ish years that I felt like they had an amazing premise and then I felt like they wasted a really great idea. That didn't really mean I knew where I wanted the story to go though but I guess I wouldn't know if I could get the type of result I wanted as a viewer/reader unless I tried.

@Mendalla for the competitions how do you pace the word count out? With something like an essay I can do that. With fiction - I think of books as page counts, not word counts. Assignments, I don't think I had any after jr. high and I think the constraints we had were all time, not words or pages. Poetry was a bit different.

I hope the latest one turns out into something you are satisfied with!

ChemGal said:

@Mendalla for the competitions how do you pace the word count out?

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To a degree I don't. I sit down to write and keep going for as long as I can. If I have a strong idea that engages me and am really in the groove, I can easily do a first draft of a 2000-3000 word story in a couple hours. The problem, of course, is that I have a fulltime job and a household eating up a lot of time so realistically, for a 5000 word length like this one, I budget 2-3 days for a first draft and a couple weeks to finish something submission worthy (I nitpick my stories to death when editing). That's if I don't keep changing story like happened with this one. I have been through four partial drafts, each a totally different story, to date.

Which brings to where I am at. <2 weeks to go and I do have a finished story. Needs some more editing and refining but I hope to publish by the weekend. I am a bit stymied about what to do for a cover image, though. I am trying to go back to using stock images rather than AI but my resolve on that point is wavering right now. I just can't figure out what to use that can be found as stock vs. writing up a prompt for something more specific to the story. It's set at a wedding ceremony and reception (mostly) so I've been looking at pictures of halls decorated for such events. I try not to use people, at least not individuals, since finding someone who fits what I describe in the story can be a serious challenge.

Mendalla said:

To a degree I don't. I sit down to write and keep going for as long as I can. If I have a strong idea that engages me and am really in the groove, I can easily do a first draft of a 2000-3000 word story in a couple hours. The problem, of course, is that I have a fulltime job and a household eating up a lot of time so realistically, for a 5000 word length like this one, I budget 2-3 days for a first draft and a couple weeks to finish something submission worthy (I nitpick my stories to death when editing). That's if I don't keep changing story like happened with this one. I have been through four partial drafts, each a totally different story, to date.

Which brings to where I am at. <2 weeks to go and I do have a finished story. Needs some more editing and refining but I hope to publish by the weekend. I am a bit stymied about what to do for a cover image, though. I am trying to go back to using stock images rather than AI but my resolve on that point is wavering right now. I just can't figure out what to use that can be found as stock vs. writing up a prompt for something more specific to the story. It's set at a wedding ceremony and reception (mostly) so I've been looking at pictures of halls decorated for such events. I try not to use people, at least not individuals, since finding someone who fits what I describe in the story can be a serious challenge.

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Is a fixed story thus an instituted myth ... due to shift and creep ... secular rheid! In continental drift ... fecundity? Still motive ... it goes on like Trump's virtue ... stretched! Anxiety Rae intercourse at high levels??? It branches off the tree of Sophia ... Y's demo ... temporal ... cause the rigid will not have it ... defines pious! Carved in stone???? It blows through dark and unseen domains ... that's Earth or the Mire thing ... Mire Maid as Marah (an eastern word for a vessel) ...

Gode grief Charles ... then the question of the fluid Ð ... t' Ꜿ ... when the light reverses? Nacht fall ... knoc kout? Light soude? Shadow stretches ... the under bed effect ... monsters ... Chimera? The jokes about this blinding domina are legend ... but not a Mina concern!