Anne Is Fiction

Wow. I posted a new chapter on Learning a Lesson, and now I have 41 reviews. That’s like, a big number. Whoa.

In other news, I SAW THE DARK KNIGHT THIS WEEKEND! I liked it, but it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been. For such a long movie (2 1/2 hours) it didn’t develop the characters well enough (mostly Bruce–he was barely in it). But what they say is true: Heath Ledger kicked ASS in this movie. He was scary, and scary-funny too.

Harvey Dent/Two Face was pretty creepy too. Though I must saw WTF? about all the people bringing small children to see this movie. There were five-year-olds in there! Between the Joker and Two Face, there are going to be some serious nightmares. (There was the same problem with Sweeney Todd; idiots bringing their kids to see Johnny Depp!ohmigoshsrysly in an extremely violent movie. That’s just wrong.)

Alfred and Lucius Fox are my heroes. They are soooooo cooooool.

Well, I’m off to go watch Buffy. I love Buffy. (Season Three, yo.)

But I don’t want to jinx myself. In the news today: two new Covenant one-shots, Branch and Confidence Man. Branch is a prompt table fic, and it is my first 100% genuine slash story. Reid/Tyler, naturally. Very sweet and fluffy, though. I like it, and I hope ze readers do as well. Confidence Man is more angsty, with the forbidden ship of Sarah/Reid. Confidence Man made me cackle maniacally while writing it.

Other stuff: I am officially recommending two freeware programs that make writing a lot more fun and easy: FreeMind and yWriter4. FreeMind is for mind mapping, aka BUBBLE MAPS! It’s very easy to use, and I’ve already used it to develop characters and ideas for a novel idea. yWriter4 is a program designed for novel-writing, and lets you break down your story into chapters and scenes, and then shuffle them around. Also, cool stuff with word counts and goals. I command you, go download both of them and use them to write amazing stories that will make me happy.

Finally, we come to…DRABBLES. And not just any drabble, but THE drabbles from the Deliberate/OitC-verse. I’m going to be posting them on here one at a time, a day before they go up on ff.net. I think they’re pretty cool. The series is named Winter’s Chill; there are five so far, and they’re all exactly 100 words. It was fun writing them, because it really stretched my imagination to try and say what I wanted in 100 words. So, here we go with number one:

Running Away

She entered his room just as he ended the call, questions on her face. “The dean of Fortwright Academy,” Reid said.

She frowned, the slightest wrinkling of her brow. “The Boston school?”

“Yes.” He wouldn’t volunteer information.

“Why?”

“I’m leaving.” His tone was calm, but his hands were shaking.

She tried to argue, but he had decided. He couldn’t stay here, not everything around him made him reach for the pills the doctor had given him. Have to get out, away from the memories, away from the people.

“You can’t stop me, Mom,” he said eventually.

It was the truth.

My friend Sarah is over, but she’s on the phone, so I’m going to talk about the book Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow. I downloaded the free ebook last night out of curiosity, and stayed up until two in the morning finishing it because it was beyond excellent.

It’s about Marcus, a guy who’s pretty normal, if a little geekier and a lot smarter than most teenagers. His life turns totally upside down when he is arrested by the Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist attack on his city, San Francisco. He and his friends are held for days, interrogated mercilessly, until they are released to discover that the people of the city are being spied on by their own country. Random citizens are picked up by the cops for nothing, and the DHS uses every scrap of technology in the city to control its populace.

Marcus is the kid who decides to fight back. Using his experience with computers and the internet, he creates a network of young people who are determined that their rights will not be overthrown by the DHS. Unfortunately, the DHS doesn’t like what Marcus is doing….

It’s also about fear, and love, and friendship, and truth, and standing up for what you believe in. The importance of technology in this book was awesome for a nerd like myself, and it felt so real that when it was over I wanted to jump up and give all the characters a big hug (or a punch, in the case of Severe Haircut Lady). The writing is spectacular, and Cory Doctorow also dedicates each chapter to a different bookstore, which is very cool.

If you like science fiction, rebellion, or coming-of-age stories, you’ll like Little Brother. And you can download it for free and send it to all your friends (it’s got a Creative Commons license). I’m also going to buy a print copy, because I love it so much.

So, go download a copy of Little Brother right now, and read it and enjoy.

The Little Brother Website