Really pleased with the current project, a continuation and expansion of A Seed on the Wind:
He took a landing towards Neryon neighborhood, a narrow outjut of stone augmented with board and rope buildings dragging at the stone, which was carved with a sinewy overlay of snakes and bees. In midday, it seemed to be drowsing. In a few hours it would begin to stretch and yawn itself awake. The caffeine vendors, selling chai and kaf and a dozen teas would range about filling cups and mugs or doling out thick cups that could later be chewed to mushy fiber for a quick thirdmeal as the evening began in earnest.
He made his way to a sleepy tavern, and slouched in a rear table, nursing leedink, mind thumbing through the possibilities as he fingered the wicker and wood puzzle centered on the table.
He could always go back to Poit. Or Ellsfall. Either of those choices itched him wrong, though.
A being sliding onto the bench across him in the wall niche. The stone shelf under its elbow as it leaned forward. “Pleasance, chum.”
Expensive clothes. Rasp-skinned, narrow-headed, not-human. Flat dark eyes, cold as shadowed caverns. Smile tied on with insincerity.
“Fuck off,” Bill said.
The smile widened, deepened, showed pointed teeth, filed sharper. Gold inlay in the closest one, a design of fish and flowers, a spray of rubies in a line down the front. “An asking for you, Mr. Bill.”
Panicked question stabbed through his stomach. Why did this stranger know his name? He sat back. “What’s that?”
“You know a guy, cook at Fleur, name’s John.”
Chef John. One of the possibilities that had been flickering through his minds. He shrugged. “Don’t ring no chime.”
“All I want is you to takespeak a word or two.”
Bill waited. In the room, the clackclask of pool balls, two youths playing, dressed in leather and thorns. The electric light flickflickered on arcs of white and jasper plastic, stacattoing light.
“Tell him the big companies don’t mind freelancers trading bittybit on the side. But he’s getting bittybig. Needs to step back.”
He hunched his shoulders in a shrug. “Happen to run into him, may say. What’s the what if I do?”
The stranger’s fingerscales were pointed, each tipped with a flower of gold, a stinger of steel, as it spread them as though to smooth the shrug away from the air.
“Bittybit money for you, friend. Just come here an asking.”
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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."
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99 Statues, Part Two
Two down comforters were draped over them as well; Nicholas could not sleep without their weight on him, while Feniker, who seemed to burn with a furnace's metabolism, would inevitably throw most of them off during the night, onto Nicholas.(Another excerpt from the story I’m currently working on.)
Nicholas woke slowly. It was chilly in the room, and when he shifted his body between the clinging flannel sheets, he could encounter zones of warmth and cool. Two down comforters were draped over them as well; Nicholas could not sleep without their weight on him, while Feniker, who seemed to burn with a furnace’s metabolism, would inevitably throw most of them off during the night, onto Nicholas.
He could hear Feniker’s soft breathing, a burry almost snore, a sound so uniquely Fen that it tugged a smile onto Nicholas’s lips, knowing what his lover’s face looked like when sleep-slackened, how it must look right now. He had drawn the drapes across the windows; the hotel’s front looked out onto the plaza, but Nicholas had opted for one of the less ostentatious back chambers which he secretly thought more pleasant, overlooking the back gardens, which were the more handsome vista, even when leaf-deprived and blackened by the cold, due to the green cedars that ringed it round.
The hotel was stirring. Soon enough his breakfast, with plenty left over for Feniker, would arrive and be deposited outside the door with a discreet knock. The hotel’s own brand of fish tea, with an odd peppery brackishness. He still wasn’t sure whether or not he liked its aftertaste, even after living in the hotel for almost two months now. He had lived with his father before then, but fire had taken their mansion, and both had taken themselves to alternate lodgings. He had chosen this hotel, which he could afford on his lavish allowance, for the way it managed to combine proximity to the student quarter with luxury.
He rolled on his side and found Feniker watching him, no longer snoring, blue eyes bright in the morning light, almost luminous.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Nicholas said. He leaned over to give Fen a kiss. Fen’s fingers tangled in his hair, drew him down to meet lips.
“What’s on your agenda for today?” Fen said.
“I am meeting with my father to go over the plans for the new factory in Cloudmarch,” Nicholas said.
“Will you be visiting it? The expedition is going through Cloudmarch. You could come out with us, say goodbye there, do whatever you needed to do with the new factory.”
“I would serve my father ill as a factory manager,” Nicholas said. “I’m not good with such things.”
“You have a mind keen enough to keep up with anyone in their classes,” Feniker said. “If you chose to exert yourself. Instead you pretend yourself slower than you are, and use it as excuse to while away your days drinking fish tea and playing cards.” He pushed himself off the bed and strode across the chamber, naked, to reclaim his clothing from the bench below the window.
Nicholas gathered the covers around himself, reluctant to lose their warmth, even in pursuit of what the kiss had promised. “What of you, what does the Duke’s secretary do today?”
Fen shrugged and drew on his trousers, sat down to pull on his boots. Behind him the window panes were laced with frost, a pattern like the ghost effluvium a professor had demonstrated at the last University lecture Nicholas had attended.
Thinking of that, he protested, “I do go to some lectures after all, and meet with Professor Wirewit to work on my paper.”
“Meetings that are few and far between,” Fen said. He caught himself. “Look, I don’t mean to nag you.”
“Will you come tonight and see a play with me?” Nicholas asked.
“I will have papers to transcribe,” Fen said. “I have been burning the candle at both ends, and I must decide where I should be spending my time. I do not mean to imply that it should not be with you, only that I would rather spend time enjoying your company, than sitting together staring down at a stage while the audience gossips so loud that we cannot hear half the lines.”
The reasonable tone, the exaggerated patience in his voice made Nicholas want to smack him.
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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Really pleased with the current project, a continuation and expansion of A Seed on the Wind:
