Five Ways
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Filling In More of The Moon's Accomplice

Not sure if this is the very beginning, but it’s definitely in the first chapter.

The rub of metal around her wrists was what bothered Shyra the most. Not the standing with the others, chained on the back deck, exposed to wind and cold. Or the catcalls of the sailors, appraising each Dryad in terms of beauty and body. Or the pull of her home grove, dwindling with each mile of river the boat achieved. She wouldn’t die of that, at least until she rooted and became vulnerable. THe lack of food didn’t’ bother her either, as long as there was plenty of sunshine and water.

They all managed to send their hair down along the boat’s side, down to the water line to drink there. But when the captain was cranky, he would shout that they might tangle the paddlewheel and would order one of the boys to clear it.

The boy would come with machete and apologies to hack away their hair. It didn’t hurt, any more than cutting his own hair would have hurt, but they pretended that it did, in order to use their reproachful cries to make him wince.

They had little enough to amuse them. The Dryads knew they were as good as dead. Dryads and Naiads captured and taken to Tabat never returned. If they wanted to escape, they all agreed in their whispered conversation, relying on the great engine’s noise to mask what they were saying, it would be best to get away before the boat reached the city.

She suspected that the Captain, if not all the crew, knew exactly what the Dryads chained there were plotting. They were not the first Dryads the Swan had carried. The railing was matted with fine, greenish root-hairs, layers upon layers of them in the spots where the boys were too lazy to scrub.

And all along the side of the boat, on the inside of the railing, were pictograms scratched by former prisoners. Some were easy to decipher: Six Flowers, Sun and Rain, Riverfern. Others were harder, lacking an established alphabet. A clamshell might be that, or some other concept, or food, or the sea, and coupled with what could have been a candle or eel or sprout, who was to know the precise name of the former prisoner, fate as unknown as Shyra’s, who had scratched that, in letters no more than a fingernail high, in the space beside the hasp to which Shyra had been secured for the duration of the journey?

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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

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Teaser: Final Excerpt from The Crow's Murder

Abstract Image for IllustrationI finished a first draft of a new story, tentatively entitled The Crow’s Murder, today. It clocked in at 8300 words, which is technically a novelette, but I’ll probably trim enough to bring it down to official short story length, 7,500. I’m pleased with it, but there’s an angle that may let to WTFery on my writing group’s part when I run it past them. One thing I’ve done over the course of the past few days is track the progress of the story by taking pictures of early notes and saving snapshots of it from day to day. I’ll be using that in the Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction class and then looking at the story again when we get to the section on rewriting and revising.

So here it is. I hope it tantalizes you to read the rest!

I wheel the Colonel out into the day. He can walk, but prefers the dignity and slowness of the chair, in spite of its awkwardness, to having to struggle for every step. Dr. Larch will not let him have his artificial leg except when there are visitors. Otherwise it stays in the cabinet in the supplies room, along with all the rest, locked up so the patients can’t break or wear them down.

It’s just as well. Two days ago, when he surrendered it to me after a visit from his niece, the Col. said, “I knew every man of the three who owned this before me.” He slapped the brass surface. “And some fella will get it after me. Maybe someone I know, maybe someone I don’t. Do you think that ghosts linger around the objects they leave behind, the ones that accompanied them day by day? Because if so, I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t three ghosts riding this one.”

I didn’t answer and he didn’t expect me to. He knows my vocal cords were seared away in the same war that’s stole his leg, the same war that’s furnished most of the inhabitants of this asylum. Broken soldiers, minds and bodies ground-up by its terrible machines.

It used to be an injury was enough to get you out. Now if they can, they turn you into a clank, half human, half machine, and send you back to the lines. Nowadays we receive only the men who cannot be repaired, and here they sit or lie in their beds, waiting to die a slower death than the war would have given them, waited on by orderlies like me, other broken men who can function enough to pretend to work.

If you want to read the rest of the story, you can get it, along with at least six other stories, at the end of July by signing up to sponsor me in the Clarion West Write-a-thon. Even a small donation entitles you to the stories, so please do sign up!

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Your Online Presence: Is It Fun At Parties?

Picture of carnival masks
Your online persona is a mask, created out of what your words. You do have some control over how you’re perceived, perhaps even more than in real life.
I’ve updated my book, Creating an Online Presence, and it’s part of this terrific Storybundle of writing books. Since the Internet moves at the speed of an animated gif with Yakety Sax as the background music, I had a lot of work to do with the update (like checking every link to make sure it was up to date), and it included adding a few essays. Here’s one of those additions, talking about how you present yourself online.

Your Online Persona

One of the things I emphasize in the Creating an Online Presence for Writers live class is that before you start setting up your website and social media, you need to think about some things. What level of personal detail are you willing to give out on the Internet? What side of yourself do you want to reflect? How can you be both professional and approachable at the same time?

And perhaps the most important question: how do you go about being someone who people want to spend a little time with, whose words they want to read and consider, lingering on your webpage rather than clicking away to some more entertaining section of the Internet?

Let’s think about a real life situation: parties. A person’s choice of reading material is like a party they’re creating, inviting different voices and entertainment in order to assemble a pleasant and entertaining medley. If you’ve got a choice, do you invite the braggart to your party? The weepy incoherent girl? The dude who makes every conversation about himself? The preachy lady from down the street? No, and no, and no, and no.

Here’s some ways you can create a bad impression that makes people want to close the door in your virtual face.

Spamming about Spamming

I know, I know, we’re all brought up to believe that it was spam, not lead pipes, that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire, and it’s been causing social ills and woes ever since. We all hate spam. And we hate being thought of as spammers too.

Which brings me to what I’ll call “social spam.” Not some nameless person somewhere on the Internets trying to get you to buy Viagra. Nope, it’s your Uncle Edith, and he wants you to come work his farm in Farmville. Or your buddy Big Burt has tagged you in one of those silly memes where your friendslist gets translated to show which character each friend would be if they were a pie filling. Are either of them doing it because they want to harass you? Probably not.

So what to do if you want to avoid that spam?

Well, first let’s consider the notion that people who, in real life, spend a lot of their time correcting other people are probably not as popular as they could be. And let’s think about whether or not that carries over to virtual life.

Here’s a hint. It does.

Let’s factor in something else. A certain amount of spam is unavoidable. If you post something loud and shouty and ANTI-FARMVILLE on your Facebook page, it may cut down on the Farmville requests. For a while. And then some Farmville player’s going to come along who hasn’t seen it.

So perhaps rather than excoriate the players, disable the game so it can’t send you requests? That’s what I’ve learned to do, and when a new game pops up, I don’t spend time upbraiding my friends for being silly enough to invite me to play a game. I do get invites whenever some new game is popular. I used to get annoyed, now I just ignore.

If someone tags you in a meme, just don’t respond. No one’s forcing you to play. But don’t go further and be a jerk about it and scold them, particularly publicly. If someone tagged you, it’s because they thought you might be interested or enjoy it. It’s as though, in a real life party, someone offered you a mint and you started yelling at them for pushing sweets on you because you’re trying to avoid candy.

Vaguebooking

It’s just…ugh. Just don’t. First and foremost, it makes you look childish, and melodramatic. So often it’s passive aggressive BS and the only person who cares is (sometimes) the person you’re committing it to, which is just petty. Come on. Get out of the high school mentality. For everyone else, it’s like being around that couple that keeps fighting and pretending they’re not.

Beyond that, it makes you look horribly unprofessional, particularly when you’re doing it about an employer, past or present. Yes, you are being funny and entertaining right now. You are also saying to anyone who might want to hire you and that looks at your social media presence — increasingly common with employers — that you will be doing this about them as well.

We have all yielded to this temptation at times. Avoiding it is a habit I continue to work on, because every time I’ve done it I find myself regretting it later.

Setting Other People Straight

Is someone saying something wrong on the Internet? Probably.

Does it matter? Probably not.

If it does, and you have the bandwidth and the energy, more power to you.

Pooping on Other People’s Passions

I know, I know. Everyone else is saying how hot and innovative that new show about the Emperor’s clothes is, but you’ve got the skinny. But maybe hang on a moment before you start letting them know what fools they are.

Do you remember when your grandparent said, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all?” Yeah. They were right about a lot of other stuff too.

It’s okay for other people to like things that you don’t, maybe even love them or otherwise find value that you just don’t see. It is. It really is. Nascar, for example, still exists, much to my bemusement. And that’s okay.

You Are Only a Small Part of the Universe

A wonderful one, to be sure. but one that does not exist for most people. Don’t assume slights are deliberate or that your perception matches up with the other’s. I find that giving other people the benefit of the doubt goes a long way. Such a very long way.

The Perils of Pontification

It is pleasant to be the authority, to hold forth on something you know well, and to have everyone listening. It is okay to do every once in a while. But if that soapbox is something you rarely descend from, rather than something you rarely hop up on, think about your strategy. It’s good to listen; it’s great to solicit opinions (and listen to them). Remember that good communication is a two-way street.

Along the same lines, don’t be afraid to admit when you screw up. It’s part of being human, and it’s better form than blustering or emitting a cloud of excuses and half-truths. Pretending you didn’t make a mistake when you did is not a good strategy usually. Own up and say what you’re going to do in the future to avoid making the same mistake. If it’s something you can fix, fix it. Don’t pretend that it never happened.

Conclusions
In short, you have some measure of control over how you are perceived on the Internet. Act the way you wish other people would act and you have a much better chance of influencing them than by bluster, mockery, or other attacks.

And finally — no one is ever looking as closely at you as you think they are. We are all the center of our particular universe, and that’s always, inevitably, inarguably going to shape your perceptions. If you keep that in mind, it makes dealing with your fellow humans a little easier.

At least, that’s the opinion of one of your fellow humans. Be well and prosper.

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