Reader Feedback Request: City of Glass

by Liana Posted on August 17, 2012

In the effort to meet my deadlines on City of Glass, I pounded out the middle of chapter one, working off of some previous work that worked pretty well—before I put it in a serial. I distinctly do not care for how chapter one turned out because it seems to have lost all the tension from the prologue and I'm pretty sure it's because I went with the outside POVs and am holding my real main characters at a distance. These are Hayley, Jena, and Shelley, who hasn't even shown up on screen yet because I dumped her remand scene.

Should I power ahead on chapter two or rewrite chapter one? Do you care?

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1.5 The Sum of Their Parts

by Liana Posted on August 16, 2012
This entry is part 10 of 13 in the series City of Glass

"So what is your specialty?" Jena asked as she carefully unlatched her cases to begin unpacking. "You're vocational?" Her father had told her that only married students or students from the same program roomed together.

Jena's father had wanted her to do the standard program, as he had when he attended Kailin University, but Jena had little patience for the supplementary and core classes required of semester students. She had requested an interview with her mother, then her mother had requested leniency for vocational. He grimly relented.

Hayley's muffled "Yes" drew Jena's attention back to current details.

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The Interdependence of Mythos and Culture

by Liana Posted on August 15, 2012

Author's Note: Prompted by lithiumlaughter at the Nonfiction Fishbowl.

A Treasury of Children's LiteratureWhen I was in seventh grade, I wrote a research report on Greek mythology. An eighth grader used my research paper as a source for her research paper on the same subject.

From my earliest years, my father kept great big books of fairytales, legends, nursery rhymes, and folktales for us kids to read. I fell in love with these books and wandered into each library looking for more. In the process, I stumbled into mythology: Greek, Roman (which is basically Greek appropriated), and even Norse and British. I never did understand Tolkien's bemoaning the lack of British isle myth. The land and cultures have a rich heritage of mythology, including faery folk, goblins, and more.

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Defining the Blog in Writing Vernacular

by Liana Posted on August 13, 2012

This story begins with a tweet, a fairly innocuous little fellow as tweets go, based upon a fairly commonly upheld principle that if a writer wishes to write in a particular form or genre, that writer ought to read in that form or genre.

Here is the tweet:

Writers who would blog about something other than writing should read blogs that are about something other than writing.

— via @lianamir1

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A Nonfiction Fishbowl

by Liana Posted on August 9, 2012

FISHBOWL NOW CLOSED

at 15 out of 28+ prompts

I need your help. Freelance articles for Constant Content are my bread and butter and put beans on the table, keep a roof over my head, but the output required to earn that bread over there is something I haven't quite been able to produce without help.

FishbowlSo without further ado, I am offering a nonfiction fishbowl, in which you may prompt for blog posts, personal essays, research articles, anything between 500 and 800 words that you want to read or know more about. Ask questions, express wonderments, mention projects that need more documentation for how-to—anything you want. Some of my favorite topics include designing a Wordpress website for noncoders, myth and legend, natural health, tea, fiction, creativity, etc.

I figured out that I need to post two articles daily, which is fourteen articles a week, and roughly fifty-six for the month. Constant Content pays me about $0.05/word when the articles sell, and these go much faster when there's a good size backlist.

Prompting

  1. You may prompt as many times as you wish. If you prompt, I promise to write at least one piece to your prompt(s).
  2. If you prompt an article or blog post, I will send you a private copy of it in PDF format for your personal use.
  3. Any prompt is fair game, but if I do not feel conversant enough with a given topic, I may ask you to prompt again.
  4. I will reply in the comments to each prompt with the article/post title and a brief summary or teaser.
  5. I will post at least one blog post or article from the fishbowl on the website and make it freely available.
  6. All completed prompts will be posted on Constant Content for sale unless sponsored.

Sponsoring

  1. Want me to post something on this blog or see an article someone else prompted? You can sponsor an article for $0.02/word. I will offer reprint rights for sponsored articles on Constant Content, though as I understand it, full rights sell much better.Example Cost: 500 words = $10.00 and 800 words = $16.00
  2. Want a guest post for your blog or to purchase the content outright for your own use? You can purchase an article for $0.05/word. I will sell the article or post as work-for-hire and relinquish all rights to the piece.Example Cost: 500 words = $25.00 and 800 words = $40.00
  3. Want to read all of the articles and blog posts generated from the fishbowl? Donors of $10 or more will receive a private copy of all pieces in PDF format for their personal use.
  4. Want to donate to the fishbowl? You can donate any amount of $1 or more through Paypal or snail mail. If you would like to donate through snail mail, please send an email to info at lianamir dot com for the address.

[paypal-donation]

Feed the Scribbler

Please consider prompting and sharing this fishbowl. I am hoping to produce at least 28 articles and get two weeks worth of work going.

Thank you for any and all support!

Mirrored on LiveJournal.

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Creative Plans: Daily Reports, Kickstarter, and Fishbowls

by Liana Posted on August 8, 2012

The Daily Creation was an idea I had to create something daily. Well, one week in and I'm discontinuing it. While I still intend to create daily, I will not be reporting or sharing along that aspect of my life. It's too stressful, and as I told someone else, I work well under deadline and lousy under pressure.

On the other hand, I have looked into Kickstarter as an option to bringing you more fiction projects but have found them insufficient to my long-term needs and recalcitrant at allowing me to use a non-DBA penname. Surprisingly, you don't have to get a doing-business-as to use a penname. Just provide your real name whenever legal items or payment is involved.

That said, I've been studying successful fishbowls of Anke Wehner, rix_scaedu, and Ysabet the Wordsmith, and I think it's a good way to develop and stockpiling the fiction and nonfiction frontlist I've got mulling over here.

More on this soon!

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Designer Files: Covering The Creative Life

by Liana Posted on August 7, 2012
This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series The Publisher Series

So I reworked my series pages today and how they worked with my theme. I want to do more, but alas! I haven't solved PHP coding yet. In the meantime, every post in a series now displays the series icon, which was formerly relegated to the sidebar. Wait a second. Hold that thought. It what?!

Not all of my series icons made awesome book covers, to put it mildly, and the icon for The Creative Life was certainly not going to cut it as a book cover.

Who I Am icon by photoshopfreak
icon by photoshopfreak

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