In other news: I have the next chapter of Learning a Lesson outlined, but I haven’t gotten around to writing it yet. BUT, I’m getting used to my crazy-busy schedule, so I’m getting more general writing done. I’ve also got a few potential Covenant one-shots rolling around my brain, so we’ll see where that goes.

Nothing more to say right now. Y’know how glamorous and awesome Spenser seems in the Covenant? Yeah, real boarding school, so not like that. I wish.

Well, I’m off to enjoy the Internet while I can!

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.)

Winter’s Chill, Drabble Five: Can’t Deny The Past

It shouldn’t have been so hard to find someone. They did it in movies all the time.

Reid must have changed a lot, Tyler thought, if an Internet search only found old swimming articles. The blond had loved the spotlight…but there was nothing. No mention of him for five years.

Tyler knew why Reid felt like he had to hide.

Finally, he gave in and called Clarissa. It was a wasted effort. She hadn’t heard from her son since he left Boston.

No, Reid won’t be coming to the wedding. The news made Sarah cry. Caleb didn’t say anything.

Winter’s Chill, Drabble Four: Can’t Deny The Past

The annual party was a pain, but Reid went anyway. It let him prove his ability to socialize, which his coworkers doubted. Young guy like you, you should be out on the town, not in the office!

This year, Reid even made an effort to impress the clients who attended. He avoided clients like the plague, but one night couldn’t hurt.

Two glasses of champagne later, the impossible: “Garwin? Any relation to the Garwin family over in Ipswich?”

He froze. He had come to California to avoid this.

The client was waiting. “Distantly,” Reid mumbled.

He left two minutes later.

This one was surprisingly difficult to get right. I had to twist it all over the place to get the material into 100 words. Oh, and I have no idea what kind of job Reid has. Something with an office, and annual parties. With nosy coworkers. *Shrug*

So, yeah, that’s my excuse for the lack of drabble-ness. Writersword nudged me politely (and I ran out of episodes) so here I am with number three.

Winter’s Chill, Drabble Three: Graduation, Minus One

Sarah hadn’t said anything, but her pointed looks to the telephone conveyed her meaning. He had gotten the number from Clarissa Garwin, but the slip of paper remained on his desk, unused.

He tried to tell himself it was because he didn’t have time. The chaos of graduation kept them busy. When that excuse didn’t work, he turned to Reid’s own silence.

He doesn’t want to talk to us, Caleb told the mirror. I shouldn’t bother him. This didn’t work either, but hiding the phone number under his alarm clock did.

In the photos, Sarah’s eyes were dark with disappointment.

Oh yeah. Caleb GUILT. Mmhmm. So good. Oh, and I’m posting these on ff.net. If you want to fave/review/whatever over there, you can find them there.

This takes place after Running Away, where Reid decides to leave Ipswich and Spenser and go to Fortwright Academy in Boston. Fortwright is purely the figment of my imagination.

Winter’s Chill, Drabble Two: The New Guy

Whispers followed him around Fortwright like ghosts. So handsome, said some. Others: Why’d he transfer? Only one semester left…

It took days for someone to get the courage to ask him that question. His new icy reserve kept the others away, but not this persistent soul, a pretty girl who kept looking back at her friends for encouragement. Before she would have been treated to a charming smile. Now, she got distant blue eyes. Made her sigh anyway.

“Best thing to do under the circumstances,” was his answer.

He wouldn’t tell her the circumstances no matter how sweetly she asked.

GRRR! Fanfiction.net is being mean, and won’t let me upload any documents. So cruel…don’t know when it’ll start working right, but I’ll keep posting the drabble here in the meantime.

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.

So, first of all, the big bit of news: the prequel to Deliberate, titled Outside in the Cold, is officially posted! I’m very pleased with it. It’s loooong, and bloody, and full of difficult choices. I hope my readers enjoy it. If you are interested in reading it, click here.

I’m thinking about writing a quasi-essay thing talking about the making of OitC. I’d probably ramble on about why I did certain things. Could be boring, or it could be interesting. In any case, I plan on posting some spoiler-ish stuff about it in a day or two.

Writers’ Group! There is an official board over on my forums for it. Everyone is welcome, no matter their experience or fandom. Basically, if you have an interest in writing good fanfiction, this is the place for you.

A good book to check out if you’re into science fiction: Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I read it the other day and loved it. Bunches of aliens, and ass-kicking, and cool geeky technology stuff.

Two funny websites I’ve stumbled onto: I Can Has Cheezburger? and FAIL Blog. Both have pictures with hilarious captions, the former with cats, and the latter with moments of failure. Both provide endless hours of entertainment. Warning: addictive. Don’t visit if you have something you’re supposed to be doing, because you will forget.

I do want to know if anyone else is interested in the writers’ group idea (beside the lovely writersword–go read her story Takes a Tragedy for excellent Reid-ness). Don’t know yet how it’s going to work out, but if you’re a writer, or if you read fanfic and have been thinking about writing some of your own, we’ll be happy to have you.

Poll! There have been 13 voters so far (that’s an interesting number) and the top three results are: characterization, plot, and writing style. No votes at all for theme or canon accuracy…intriguing. Anyway, I’m leaving it open for now, so feel free to vote if you haven’t yet! And super-thanks to all the nice people who voted (after I badgered them with PMs). You’re very sweet.

So…yeah. Nothing else to say. I’m going away now. Bye. *slinks off*

Edit: I forgot to mention that I changed the theme. I was bored with the old one (and just bored in general) so I changed it to this cool blue-grey-white one. Tell me what you think!

Even if I went bonkers and no longer wanted to write Learning a Lesson, I think I would anyway because I adore the reviews I get from readers. Looking at my statistics page, I have 21 reviews for three chapters (average of 7 a chapter!) and over 1000 hits. It gives me a very a happy feeling to see review alerts in my inbox.

I do believe that fanfiction is the crack for this generation.

Something I’m thinking about: a virtual writer’s group for fanficcers. I don’t have anyone beta my stories, because they’re usually pretty correct, but I would enjoy getting critical feedback as well as helping other writers. If you’re interested, leave a comment.

I made a poll about what readers consider crucial to a well-written story. It’s over >>>there>>>, on the sidebar. If you have a second, please pick some answers! It’s for a good cause: improving the quality of fanfiction.