The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

The plan for next month – if, unlike any of my other plans, it actually works – is to focus on getting the website sorted for 2014, so the admin work that has to get done, no matter how boring it is, gets done. I want to tidy the landing pages, so that they’ll lead to the first part of the story, that will then lead to the next part, and then at the end it’ll return you to either the landing page or the next story in the timeline (this will be done, for certain collections, by the whole timeline, the setting timeline, and the character timeline, to make things simpler for people who are interested in different things) depending on what you want to do. With the way I write I think this will work better than what I’m currently doing.

I’ll also be writing the Advent Story, which I have a vague idea for – I don’t do outlines, otherwise I feel like I’ve already written the story – and it’s going to revolve around a group of the vampires and donors preparing the tree (not a Christmas tree, because there’s a mix of religions there, but a winter holiday tree). As is normal for this collection it’s going to involve a lot of looking back at past holidays and conversations between the characters, because it’s a much more character driven than plot driven collection. (That might be a way to describe all my collections really.)

Except for words I owe people, because I’m really behind (honestly, I’ll be glad when this year’s over, although I don’t know if next year is going to be any better, not with James’ medical issues still being a problem) and I want to try to get them done before 2014, I’m not going to be writing much else. I have no idea if I’m going to succeed, but things are a little easier now as we have a day care room, where Baxter and I spend the days together. The plan is for it to also be an office, so I probably won’t be in here every day, but the days when I am it should make the writing easier. That is as long as I wasn’t having weird dreams the night before that make me feel shattered in the morning or waking up well before the alarm and laying there for ages waiting for it to go off. What I want to do this year, then, is send off some winter holiday stories, with the aim being to get them all to people on Christmas Day/Boxing Day -so if you’re interested let me know. You can ask for a specific collection, a specific character, or just go with a random story for one of your favourites. They’ll be at least 1000 words and probably more, depending on how much interest I get, and, if I have a least ten people involved I’ll do a bonus winter giveaway.

Sorry the form doesn’t work at my mirror sites. That’s the one downside of some of these things, especially the reaction buttons.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

From: meepalicious at LJ.

How did you get started?

Before I made the decision to crowdfund I was posting the odd story for a bingo challenge on LiveJournal. None of those stories are canon now, because things changed so much. I set up a separate journal on LJ to post those stories and it was that I decided to use as a place to start crowdfunding. First I posted some fiction that, back then, wasn’t for anything that I actually planned to write, but they were stories that I needed to write. Anyone who is a writer probably knows that feeling.

Then I had a prompt session. I had no idea what I was doing, but it seemed like a good way of starting my crowdfunding career, and it was great fun, although I still occasionally have trouble writing stories for prompts. Sometimes it is because the prompt is difficult and at other times it’s because I can’t write the story the way it needs to be written. Often I’ll have several attempts at a prompt, so I can write the right story, but for that first session the plan was to post them all on the day I got the prompt. I think I even managed to do it. Originally my plan for the sessions was to have them paid by time period rather than word count, which is something I may still experiment with, and I’ve never earnt much from a session, even though I have managed to write some wonderful stories thanks to the prompts I’ve received.

Once that happened I needed to sort out a system for keeping my fiction in order. I have to admit that’s still a work in progress even after two years, but I’m getting there, slowly. When I started I had no idea I’d be writing so much and for so many different collections, because the plan originally was to write for the Donor House (although it was a different place then); the Fae School (which has grown more than I believed possible); the Brotherhood; Thear (because it’s a world I’ve been writing about since I was 15) and write the occasional piece for the others; but then the World Walkers happened, some of the fiction I wrote for the others was found to be interesting, and now I’m writing for 12 different collections that all seemed to be liked by someone.

From then on I wanted to experiment with everything and early on I set up a number of things I’d never seen before but thought would be interesting, including the adoptions and rentals. I also borrowed the idea of people being able to earn something if they commented or linked by putting in place the credit system. That’s something I would love to have more people involved with.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

I have £180 for the rent, so I need another £10 by Monday. Any interested in purchasing some fiction?

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

From: ysabetwordsmith at DW.

What are some of your favorite themes in writing?

Magical doors. I love to throw a character through a door that leads to another world and see what happens. Although, with the way I write, normally the character has already gone through the door and is urging me to write their story. The World Walkers has the most magical doors now, but originally there were more on Kalinia, as that was where the fae lived and they’re the race with the ability to create them. I doubt, once all the fae who could create doors have moved on to their next lives, anyone will be able to do the same thing again, but it might happen.

Creature races. You’ll be seeing more of these as I write more stories for the World Walkers and Fae World collections. So far I have the Nox Gadael, the Alati Felis, the Terra Lepus, and the Griffins that I’ve actually written about from their perspective. Elizabeth Barrette created the races of Quiar, which I’m really happy about, because they’re something different to write about and there are some races I really want to start writing stories for when I have a chance.

Magic that affects people in different ways. This is something I try to explore in all of my fantasy collections. Magic is something that I give rules and limitations too, because I don’t want it to be something that is there to fix every problem that exists, and it always creates problems itself. In Aurora’s World magic is illegal, because I wanted to see how that would affect people, it can kill you, and there are people who might want to steal it from you, which could also kill you. In Heliopath’s World the more magic you use the worse it affects you – Heliopath calls them withdrawal symptoms, but that isn’t truly what they are, because they don’t know as much about their abilties or how they work as they should. In the Brotherhood magic is something that manifests as a young age and from then the children who have them have to learn how to deal with it, as well as the different people who want to use them for different things.

People who change. I have to admit this is mostly going to be a male thing, but there are going to be women who go through the same thing. What I’m trying to write is the redemable bastard, who eventually learns from their mistakes, although with some of them it is just a face they’re showing because they’ve dealt with a load of crap throughout their lives and it’s the only way they can deal with things. Eventually they will come to realise that they can move on from whatever it was and change. Of course at the moment this is just in my head and I still have to get it down on paper, so there’s every chance some of them might turn out to be unredemable.

Living with adversity. This is something I have experience with personally, so it’s something I like to write about, although sometimes the adversity isn’t something that we could experience, like being turned into a vampire. Showing how people change and grow is my aim with this. One of the things I’ve always been fascinated by is how vampires deal with the world changing around them in ways they probably never would have expected when they were living in their own time. Another thing I want to write about in the future is domestic violence as I think it will help with some of the demons I’m still dealing with from when I was younger.

Relationships and sexuality. In my writing I want to explore different ways relationships work – from monogamous to polyamorous – and different sexualities. I want to have gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, and any other sexual you can think of characters. Reading a story about a character who’s like you can help with coming to terms with who you are, so that’s something that’s important to me.

Being different. I’m not NT. It’s something James and I are learning to deal with, but it’s not easy, in part because it’s not easy to explain the way my brain works to someone who’s more NT than I am (although James isn’t exactly NT either). So I want to write about what it’s like to be dealing with these things, so that people know they aren’t alone.

These are also some of my favourite things to read about, because sometimes I’m in the position where I feel alone, especially when it comes to being different. I don’t have diagnoses to say that I am this or that, but that doesn’t changes who I am or what I’m dealing with. Getting to read fiction with a character who’s dealing with the same or similar problems does help.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

From: ysabetwordsmith at DW.

You mentioned using a local-to-you hotel as inspiration for the Donor House. What other influences does your environment have on your writing?

With pretty much all of my Earth based collections I try to set them in places I know, because that way I can describe the location better than I would if I was trying to set them in America or France or even Scotland. It is, of course, possible to research these places, but no amount of research can give you first hand knowledge of a real life setting. That’s why the second donor house will be located in the town I grew up in and it’s likely that the third one will be located somewhere in Devon. I know both of those places well enough to be able to write in detail about them.

The park the fae take over when they arrive on Earth in the Fae World collection in the park opposite where I live. The college that Anna goes to in the Pagan collection is the college I went to. The majority of the Kim’s World collection will be set locally, although it will be further in the future, so it will be slightly different to how it is now.

Personally I find it much easier to write if I know where I’m setting the story, although some do come to me purely with characters to begin with. There are still some stories that I need to work out where they’re set, like with Claire’s inherited hotel, but I know it’s local to me, as that’s closest to where one of the main doors was.

My environment can have an effect on my magical worlds too, as I’ve lived in the UK my whole life and know more about the weather here than I do anywhere else. However I’ve found it much easier to understand how it differs in other places than I have trying to understand a city by walking the streets on Google maps, which gives me more freedom to change the way things work. Aerith, for example, is a world that has only one season, because the collection is based on a dream I had where I walked through a magical doorway from Autumn into Winter. Originally the World Walkers collection was going to be a series of worlds with only one season each and I’m still planning on working that in somewhere.

The kingdom Aurora lives in has a very UK based weather system. Like me they deal with four seasons, although they are more seasonal than the ones we have, where you know what’s going to happen from one to the other, rather than wondering if they’re actually going to have a summer. Heliopath’s World is one I know a lot less about, although I know there are deserts, because it was always going to be set in the city.

With each of my fantasy collections I’ve tried to use a mix of what I know and what I can learn, along with a little magic, to make each of them different from the other and different from worlds that have already been created.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

For some reason the poll had closed itself, so I’ve opened it and I’ll keep it open for another week. At the end of the week I’ll close it – but if we still have a tie I’ll see if I can break it with another poll.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

The year is nearly over and 2013 hasn’t been anywhere near as good as I hoped it would be, either personally or professional, although I have been taking some steps in the right direction. Honestly it’s been much worse personally, due to James’ medical issues, which haven’t been solved. At the beginning of last month he did seem to be getting a lot better, but now the pain’s returning, and he’s getting more stressed, so it’s really not been good. I did mention before that the specialist he saw wasn’t sure if the problem was one that could be fixed and with it coming back I’m more worried that the specialist was right, and I’m really not helping that worry by googling things. So once again we’re back in limbo, which isn’t great for either of us.

Even though James, as far as I know, has never visited my website, I’m not going to publicly post what his issue is, because it’s one of those things he’s not comfortable talking about, so I’m not going to make him uncomfortable by talking too much about it here. I am going to say that it makes it hard for him to walk, stand, or get into a comfortable seated position, and that means that all the things he likes to do are pretty much impossible for him at the moment. When things were getting better it seemed like he might be able to get back to normal, but now… I have a horrible feeling that we’re going to be looking at managing the condition rather than fixing it, when all he wants is for it to be gone for good, and I don’t blame him. Things are bad enough for me when my hips are bad – I can’t imagine what it must be like for him at the moment.

Unfortuately James can’t take any more time off work. We can’t afford it. To be honest I don’t really think he wants to either, because he hated taking so much time off, and sick pay can’t cover the rent. I can help now, thanks to the day care, but I’m not earning enough to be able to cover the rent and the groceries. By now I was hoping to be making a little income through the website and it hasn’t happened, so that’s something I need to be thinking about now, just in case things get bad enough that he has no choice. I’m just not sure what to do. Should I advertise more? Should I stop posting so much for free? I know I need to be finishing stories and that’s my aim at the moment, but there are days when I feel like there’s no reason for me to. There are people I know that read my work and I am so grateful to them, but I get so little input that I feel like I’m never going to be able to reach my goals when it comes to my writing.

For those of you who do read – thank you so much. I appreciate it, I really do, but it would be really great if I knew you were reading. I’m not after a comment on every post, I’m not after an essay on one, it would just be nice to know that your there and I’m not alone, because there are days when I’ve been feeling so down. James is dealing with too much to be able to help me with my issues, so having a comment to read from someone, on the website or one of the mirrors, would be wonderful. Getting a donation every so often would be even better, because I want to be earning a living from this, and right now that seems impossible.

My aim is to be earning £500 (approx. $800) a month here. I will be charging more for my words from the 1st of January 2014, going from £1.50 for 1000 words to £3.00, to see if that helps at all. Maybe it will make me seem like I’m taking this more seriously than I was before, even though I was already taking it seriously. My hope is to sell more commissions, adoptions, and rental. Commissions I take for my worlds or anyone else’s, so if you want me to write a story for you let me know, because I love writing for other people’s plots, although I’m not so good at word counts. (Take the Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments as an example of how the stories I write can stretch, thanks to the characters in them.) Adoptions and rentals are two of my favourite concepts, but very few people seem to be interested in them, and I don’t know why. Do I make them too difficult to understand? Are they just something that won’t sell well for some reason? Are they too expensive?

I have a feeling the next couple of months, at least, are going to be difficult, but I want to have all the prompted fiction completed by the end of the year, as well as my to-do list of writing, because I know I can do it. There are just days when I wake up feeling tired, like I have the whole world on my shoulders, and writing, as much as I love it, is one of the hardest things for me to do. One of the most annoying things about that is that writing is one of the few things that keeps me sane. When I don’t write I get much more stressed than I do when I am writing, but I’m still learning to work it around everything else that I do in a day. At the weekend I didn’t get as much done as I hoped because we have two puppy staffies here, but one of our regular visitors, a cocker spaniel who’s not a fan of scary big dogs, didn’t much like them, so I ended up sitting on the stairs with her for company. It was my choice, because she’s one of my favourites, but it wasn’t helpful when it came to getting much done. She’s gone home now, so I’m in the kitchen with the staffies, TillyBob’s in the lounge (our two dogs – who lay in the same bed and look like one dog with four legs and two heads – so they are known as the TillyBob), and our two long termers are in their secondary spot.

One of the long termers, who we’ve nicknamed Houdini, has a habit of escaping, so the seconday spot had been made into a place we hope he can’t get out of, especially as last time he ended up crossing the road to go to our local shop before someone, thankfully, took him to the vets. The annoying thing was he was by himself in the garden for maybe as long as five minutes and he disappeared in that amount of time, and to get out he needed to climb a six foot fence. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it, but it was the most worrying, so he’s someone we need to keep a very close eye on. He’s too smart for his own good.

Having all the dogs here is great. It is one of my dream jobs – because I’ve always loved dogs – but there are days when it’s not as much fun as others. Poor Teresa’s been spending most of her time walking dogs, so she’s shattered, and with Tilly being on high alert the other night I’m not feeling much better. Fortunately I don’t have to go out in the wet to walk everyone or shower the dogs, as she did this morning with Tilly and Bob, because they’ve got soaked while they were walking.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

If I receive £10 in donations today I will be posting an update for my serial.

Easy ways to donate: character adoption; setting rental; sponsor a collection; or send a donation and let me know what it’s for – I’ll even write you a story based on your plot, whether it’s in one of my collections or in a world you created yourself.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

As of last night the ghostwriting job I was hired for is now complete. It’s a really strange feeling to be done with the story, but the plan is for us to work on the rest of the series together (however long it ends up being), so hopefully the plans for those will be sorted in the next couple of days and I’ll be able to let you all know what’s happening. I am really looking forward to writing the next story for the series, which is going to be a prequel novella, and hope I’ll start getting the plot for the next book soon, because it’s really strange to have written a cliffhanger and not know what’s coming next.

This means I’ll be able to focus more my own work, which is something I haven’t done a lot of recently. I’m slowly getting used to working around the dogs, although some days it is harder than others, depending on who we have here and who’s currently sitting on my lap, so that should be a huge help. What I’m still desperately looking for is someone who can help me with the admin side of all this, because it’s something that can easily take up hours of writing time and, for me, it’s the hardest part of all this. You will, to begin with, be paid with words rather than money, but hopefully that will change in the future (unless you’d rather have the fiction). Another thing that would be really useful is if people started adding pages to my wiki for characters, or settings, or anything I haven’t got round to doing, categorise them, and let me know if I need to link things.

Normally today would be round-up day, but as I haven’t posted much I’ll be adding September and October’s stories to the December Round-Up. The plan for November is to be posting as much as possible, so I can start building up speed again, and I am getting back to being able to write as much as I did before (current top word count for a day: 7,500 words). It’s good. Writing is still the way I want to be earning the majority of my money and that means I need to get sorted out. By the end of the year I want to have at least five ebooks ready – and one of them should be easy enough to do because all I have to finish off is the cover, I want to be writing and publishing two ebooks a month – one to be given away for free and one for donors – which will include five new stories, and I want to have at least half of the introductory ebooks done – the plan being for them to include the basic collection information, a character creation sheet, and probably an introductory story.

It’s something I should easily be able to do. I have the ability, I have the time, I just haven’t been treating this enough like the job I want it to be, and that’s what I need to change.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Sorry for not being about much recently. I’ve been getting used to having two jobs and I’m slowly getting there, although this month I’ve had my entire focus on the ghostwriting job I’ve been doing. That should be done relatively soon, so I’ll have a chance to write more of my own fiction, even though the plan is to continue writing books for the person who hired me. Writing a story for someone else, while a little scary, had been wonderful, and I really would love to have a couple more ghostwriting jobs or commissions for stories that other people have created for my worlds but don’t have time to write. Getting other people involved in my work is still something I really want to do and something I hope I’ll have time to focus on next month, because I am planning for November and December being months when I write more of my own fiction, especially as I have a whole list of things I want to be working on.

To celebrate Halloween, the day I still view as my new year even though I’m never become the practicing pagan I want to be, I plan on having a month long raffle. I’ll have weekly prizes and a monthly prize. The monthly prize will be the normal raffle prize of words for stories and the weekly prizes will be character adoptions or setting rentals (based on the winner’s choice) with the word count/character count depending on the number of people who enter. Please signal boost the raffle, because the more people I get involved in this the better, especially as I plan on getting back to posting at least 500 words a day.

I’m also working on getting my ebooks out, but for that I need a little bit of help. What I’d like is for a couple of people to look them over, let me know what they think of the layouts I’m using, and let me know if there are any typos. As always if you help me out you’ll get something for it – probably a free rental or adoption, because I’m still getting wonderful stories from them, even though I’m not selling as many as I’d like.

Another thing I wanted to mention is the Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments, because I’ve started asking for money for it but haven’t really said much about what I’ll post in return. The Wednesday update will always be 3000 words long and for both extensions I’ll post another 1500 words, making the Monday and Friday update 3000 words too. I’ll also post a free bonus story if I receive the income for all four of the Wednesday updates and another bonus story if I receive the income for all eight of the extensions.

My plan is to increase the amount I charge t0 £4 per 1000 words, because that makes it easy to split. That won’t be happening until the end of the year, after I’ve written 2013′s advent story, which I think will be doubled. I’ll post 2000 words a day instead of 1000, as I won’t have a chance to do NaNo this year, but I really want to do a 50,00o word challenge, and doing it in December should work well for me.

I think that’s all I wanted to write about, so I’ll say goodbye for now, thank you for your patience, and I hope to see some of you taking part in the extended Halloween raffle.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.