Love in Dark Settings

My writings: Love in Dark Settings Omnibus (all of my fiction, nonfiction, and fiction recommendations in one HTML e-book) | E-books | Online fiction and nonfiction. Coming this year: Paperbacks.

This blog is intended for people who are permitted to read fiction and nonfiction in the adult section of their public library. Parental supervision is recommended. If you're just here for announcements of my friendship fiction, I also post them at my warfiction blog, for which parental supervision is not required.

How I reply to comments at this blog.

Versions of this blog: Dreamwidth | InsaneJournal | LiveJournal.

My updates e-mail lists, feeds, and social networking profiles.

I love receiving comments here (as those of you who have heard my pleas for comments already know). But because I have to limit my online time, it's difficult for me to reply separately to a dozen or more comments that have been posted since I was online last, especially since I read those comments offline.

In order that I can reply in a timely manner to all comments, I'm starting a new policy of replying periodically, in a round-up post, to all recent comments. The round-up post will be tagged this way:

Dreamwidth: reply to comments.
InsaneJournal: reply to comments.
LiveJournal: reply to comments.

If you're watching this journal regularly on your Friends/Read/RSS page, you'll see the "reply to comments" post when I post it. If you're not watching this journal regularly, just wait about a week (between April and September) or about a month (between October and March) and click on one of the above links. You should see my reply posted to you, along with replies to all other recent comments. I'll link to the comments I'm replying to.

I'm sorry that this is somewhat less convenient to folks posting here than me posting a reply directly to your comment, and I hope that this won't discourage you from posting comments. I think this will help me to respond to comments more quickly than I have in the past.

I had written that I'd want to read a particular author's work before buying a book by them. lee_rowan pointed me to a free short story by that author at All Romance e-books.

My reply:

(*Rushes over to All Romance.*)

However (not to sound ungrateful, which I undoubtedly do), this seems the proper time to explain why free online samples and free short fiction aren't of much use to me when I'm deciding whether to buy a book.

( Read more... )

Authors I'm currently reading or plan to read during the next few months (excluding research literature):

Gay literature: Marquesate and david stein.

Heterosexual romance: Mary Stewart.

Historical fantasy: Diana Gabaldon (the next Outlander novel is due out on September 22).

Historical fiction: Catherine Christian, Cynthia Harnett, Norma Johnston, Naomi Mitchison, Sharon Kay Penman, Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, and Barbara Willard.

I'm fairly top-heavy with dead authors, as you can see. What I'm desperately searching for is authors that my Muse likes, namely:

1) A fair amount of description.

2) Good stylistically.

3) Has all the usual elements I like in a story: dramatic tension, interesting and sympathetic characters (I include "angst-ridden villains" as sympathetic), and preferably an interesting theme.

It's category 1 that's killing me. I have loads of books on my shelf that fall into categories 3, and a select number that fall into category 2, but I have the darnedest time finding authors who insert descriptive passages into their stories, other than something along the lines of "He looked over his shoulder, frowning."

What I'm looking for is descriptive passages like this:

( Examples )

Can any of you help with suggestions?

Feel free to add your own quotations in the comments.

( Theodore Roosevelt, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Norma Johnston, Sydney Taylor, Sylvia McNeely, Carolyn Haywood, Hazel Wilson, Keith Robertson, and Madeleine L'Engle )

"I am more and more certain that I still have not left the world but keep lingering on the edges. I am plainly and simply scared of 'no return,' and fear that the road of total commitment . . . is arduous, painful, and very lonely. . . .

"It is this type of extremism, of absolutism, of total surrender, of unconditional 'yes,' of unwavering obedience . . . that frightens me and makes me such a wishy-washy soul, wanting to keep a foot in both worlds. But that is how one stumbles."

--Henri J. M. Nouwen: The Genesee Diary.

( Background to my entries )
( Taking a second look at my life )
( Spiders, housework, and me )
( An unexpected visitor )
( Miscounting The Eternal Dungeon )
( Progress with publishing and with my Internet addiction )

What was happening during this time: Just a few items of everyday life.

Background to my retro daily life entries


( Trespassing )
( Kid power )
( Questions about death )
( Neighborhood kids )
( Book dedications and our car )

"If you really don't want to post actual warnings, a generic 'I don't warn' statement is better than nothing. Though, please always warn for mpreg and watersports. That way I can find stories I want to read. I mean avoid. Umm, yeah."

--Not giving credit on this one, for obvious reasons.

Below, a slightly edited version of my response to Jane Carnall's post about the warnings issue. Only likely to be of interest to folks in the fan fiction community.

( Read more... )

"Books are normally built up from gatherings or signatures - printed and folded sheets - with each signature forming a unit of 8, 12, 16, 24, or 32 pages. The 16-page signature is by far the most common. Typographers therefore work to make most of their books seem divinely ordained and conceived to be some multiple of 16 pages in length. Seasoned book typographers recite in their meditations not only the mantra of points and picas - 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72 . . . - but also the mantra of octavo signatures: 16, 32, 48, 64, 80, 96, 128, 144, 160, 176, 192, 208, 224, 240, 256, 272, 288, 304, 320, 336, 352, 368, 384, 400. . . .

"In a work of continous prose, the illusion of divine love for the number sixteen is obtained by straightforward copyediting."

--Robert Bringhurst: The Elements of Typographic Style.

( Background to my entries )
( ISBNs )
( Death and leading )
( Oo, shiny! Font Conference video )
( Life outside the Internet: gardening )
( Gardening, layout, and publishing plans )
( Prison City research day )
( A WTF moment: 'Career Building Through Fan Fiction Writing'? )

Anyone need one? If so, let me know where to e-mail yours, or just drop me a line.

Some of you will have heard this already - I only just received this news - but Minotaur, a member of the slash community and of Gaylaxicon, died on June 14.

The entry on him at Fanlore, with related links. See especially the testimonials section.

The details of his death, as posted by his roommate, and news about memorials in his name.

I owe a lot to Minotaur; at the time I entered the slash community, in 2002, his Slash Page Database Project was one of the few Web directories collecting links to original slash and original yaoi (as well as many other types of slash and yaoi). The database helped me to find other original fiction sites and to get the word out about my own.

I also crossed paths briefly with Minotaur through his appearances at Connexions and Con.txt. I was very sad to hear of his death.

"'I wouldn't want to make it look like a gardener's garden, all clipped an' spick an' span, would you?' he said. 'It's nicer like this with things runnin' wild, an' swingin' an' catchin' hold of each other."

"'Don't let us make it tidy,' said Mary anxiously. 'It wouldn't seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.'"

--Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden.

That's what I want too: a "lovely wild place" that "would be a wilderness of growing things." But I'm darned if I can find any writings on this topic.

( Can you folks help me find what I'm looking for? )

Josh Lanyon: Man, Oh Man! Writing M/M Fiction for Kinks and Cash. (Author's Website.) A popular writer offers advice on authoring M/M fiction, as well as quoting professionals working in that field. ¶ Male homoerotic nonfiction, authorship manuals. ¶ Nonfiction books and nonfiction e-books. ¶ On-screen sex. On-screen violence (occasional). ¶ Review.

As an antidote to a really discouraging day struggling with InDesign, I've decided to put together a guide to the most popular print-on-demand services used by self-publishers. At least two of you folks here might be interested by this information. :)

(Those of you who are knowledgeable, please correct any mistakes I've made.)

Currently, the Big Three are Lulu, CreateSpace, and Lightning Source. All three services take care of printing and distributing books for self-publishers, for fees that range from moderate to zero. All three are recommended frequently enough to suggest that they're reasonably satisfactory services. I've only used Lulu myself, but I've hung out at forums where CreateSpace and Lightning Source self-publishers post.

( Lulu )
( CreateSpace )
( Lightning Source (LSI) )
( Running the numbers )
( Further reading )

This is flash fiction for my upcoming Prison City retrofuture series, which is partly set in a 1960s world that has Jetsons-like devices. It was written in response to this prompt by Lothy at the slavefics LJ community.

Depositing money in the bank was always the worst problem.

"UK booksellers are not yet reduced to the condition of their American cousins, who have gone beyond firing staff and are now using their bodies for food and heat. They fear the Kindle like it was the breath of the devil's cock on their shoulder - despite the fact that Mr Bezos's clever little board has probably not sold a million units yet. Because, as any American bookseller will shriek at you while gouging their own forearms open with Stanley knives, only 34 Americans actually buy and read books."

--Warren Ellis: The Kindle is a mewling, crippled pining thing.

( Background to my entries )
( Mapping out my publishing time )
( Oo, shiny! Closer v. 2 )
( GLBT Bookshelf (wiki for GLBT literature folk) )

You guys are the best. I'm loving your discussion of the last installment; I'm learning so much from it about my own characters.

Best of all is Telepwen, who has posted a delightful little piece of Eternal Dungeon fan fiction, Fall Together. It has major spoilers for Rebirth 5: As a Seeker.

I've also added a link to this story on my page devoted to fan works set in my worlds.

New online fiction.

The torturer was naive, inexperienced, and lacking in knowledge of the world. The prisoner was tough, worldly-wise, and had an infallible plan that would give him escape from this place. So why did the prisoner feel as though the torturer had the edge?

I could see before me a ceiling-high slate tablet covered with prisoners' names, and a goodly number of those names were crossed out. I knew what that meant.

Index to series links:

Darkling Plain at the Main Bookshelf.

The Eternal Dungeon at the High Bookshelf.

Comments, queries, discussions, and calls for lynching me are welcome. (Okay, not the last, but I'm expecting a few calls after the previous installment.) Main Bookshelf readers should be aware that High Bookshelf stories may be mentioned in the comments below.

This is (I'm sure you High Bookshelf readers have noticed) the final part of the first volume of The Eternal Dungeon. The second volume of the series is coming soon.

Manna Francis: Control. (Author's Website.) The fourth volume in the Administration series, about a pathological torturer and his lover, who despises torture but loves SM. ¶ Male homoerotic fiction, male/female friendship fiction, BDSM fiction, employer/employee fiction, erotic fiction, mental illness themes, mysteries, prisoner fiction, science fiction. ¶ Online fiction and online samples of fiction books. ¶ On-screen sex. On-screen violence. ¶ Archive of my reviews: Buried Treasure.

( Read more... )

So here I am, publishing stories about the propensity of a certain character in The Eternal Dungeon to self-destruct, and meanwhile, I'm trying to convince a close friend not to kill himself.

( Read more... )