#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.06.14 — Do you take notes for your WIP? How closely do you follow them?

Irregularly, but I do that. If I find myself waking during the night with the story running through my head, I write notes to try to get it out of my system so I can continue to sleep. If I were willing to do so, it would be better for me to get up and write the scene instead.

Do I follow them? With Reluctant Moon, I've written all the scenes for which I've taken notes, though not slavishly. Notetaking has its place.

BTW: I use a Kindle Scribe for note taking because I can make it very dim at night. Not entirely sure this is better than dimming the iPhone and thumb typing. WIP.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2025.06.13 — Self-promotion day: show us what you're proud of. Let's boost away.

While I plod at composing story, work at revising stuff, have brought a decades old story into Scrivener to rewrite, and work with beta readers on the most recent novel, what I'm proud of is some of this month is my photography. The moving images are photos: live photos rendered as a wigglegram aka a Harry Potter photo. It includes one tree from my Trees project.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.06.12 — How much of your ideals are imbued in your work? Give an example.

This ought be my No Kings day post on the June 14th.

I definitely imbue my ideals into my works. I admit it, I write message fiction and each story has a message, though I work not to be to blatant about it. My characters tend to be honest (even when criminal). My women characters know what they are doing, and what they want, and are willing to fight for themselves and others in their own unique ways. Same as men, but with headwinds. They are more feminist than I am, often.

Of pertinence is the persistent theme, often subversively so, that royalty, in whatever form, is something you don't want to become tangled up with. You will get used. I have a particular dislike for princesses, more so the romanticized Disney-style ones I intuitively think corrupt girls. Many of my stories subtly or less subtly poke at great power (whether religious, political, hereditary, or monetary), at how it inevitably corrupts and makes people less human, inhuman, or completely alien in real life. My devil-girl is a great foil in this quest, but she too is powerful magically; she continuously walks the sword edge between good and evil in her brilliance and peculiar ignorance.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.06.13 — Do you restrict what you read or watch while working on a WIP? Why or why not?

Me? Too distractible, like a golden retriever. Wait, is that a squirrel!? Also my memory ain't what it used to be. What were we talk'n about. Right… I don't have the discipline to restrict myself. Well, mostly. I do however never read Charles Dickens anymore. I vibe with his style so much I want to mimic it; that would be catastrophic! I am probably influenced in all sorts of ways of which I am blithely unaware.

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#WordWeavers 2025.06.13 — If your MC magically became a dog, what breed would fit them best?

Sorry, not dog. Never a dog. She's an alpha female wolf who's perfectly fine with the males and the females who position for power around her—but endanger her pups, or any pups, or her pack—whether male, female, or puma—and she will likely kill you.

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#PennedPossibilities 698 — Where was your antagonist (or your villain) born?

She is a composite character being recreated in an SF universe. Blithely saying she was born in the western mountainous region of Saudi Arabia isn't quite right for her current iteration, since it implies religious factors I don't want to address. I'm now imagining the drier more mountainous region in Arizona, New Mexico, or Colorado, but during a time of accelerating climate disaster where the nations we know are gone (after a singularity event in the 2500s). It's a place she refers to as the High Desert, and she's fiercely proud of her people and their autonomous region. As a naïve young woman in patriarchal society that seriously restricts women and keeps them covered head to toe, all she wants to do is protect her twin autistic brother from being discriminated against, to the point of secretly learning to read and write so she can teach him. Her first steps towards becoming the formidable main antagonist begin when she's recognized for a talent she's not aware she has, as unscrupulous men violate the rules of their society to try to possess her because they think they can use her to conquer the world.

Someone does end up conquering the world.

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#PennedPossibilities 697 — MC POV: What, to you, would be the worst way to die?

I've been revived medically twice now, so I've some experience with this. For me, the worst way to die is dying having failed to save those I fought for. The first time, I won and but bled too severely. I knew; I reportedly was reassuring everyone until I passed out. The second time, I was ill to start with, then had to fight people trying to assassinate me. Not a good combination! I focused on saving my injured boyfriend and then my assassin, because I knew she'd been misled—brainwashed. Saving her, not to mention him, might prevent a war. I felt myself losing consciousness, though, and wasn't at peace. Unable to fight the "disintegrating," the sense failure, the loss of control of your body—it's horrible. The idea that it might not matter after my next heartbeat never crossed my mind.

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#PennedPossibilities 696 — In your SC’s opinion, what would be your MC’s greatest skill?

Bolt would say it is how the devil-girl translates the platonic love she feels for people she likes, or for whom she feels responsible, into supporting those people in any adversity and often at any cost.

The devil-girl is autistic and would scoff at the "love" part, which she distrusts at least as much as the concept of friendship. She can't deny that she does support the people in her life, though. She saved Bolt from having her life destroyed by intervening violently when Bolt was being arrested by the constables, but that's because she saw someone abused by the system the same way she had been and detests unfairness, especially since she's lived through so much of it herself.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.06.11 — Who sees your WIP before it’s done?

Normally, nobody. I can't stand the thought of someone having read something I end up not being able to finish.

However, when I wrote under a different pen name, I sometimes let a pre-reader see materials that were finished up to that point. Usually, I had to be super confident I'd complete the story. He may remember me in crazy-worried mode a few times, however. @vextaur

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