Marketing 101: Self Published Novelist Wonders: "What Kind of Controversy Best Defines Me As An Author?"

After painstakingly editing a manuscript for fourteen months, self-published Young Adult fiction writer Jackson Dundass took a moment to ponder what kind of controversy he could stir up in order to get his work noticed amidst the thousands of other titles published this year in the Young Adult category.

Dundass, who says he has worked tirelessly to create a book that depicts the pain and angst of teenage-hood against the backdrop of loneliness and isolation that he himself experienced growing up, admitted he had already submitted the novel to various web platforms when he realised he had failed the final marketing step of starting a viral controversy on Twitter.

Concerned that his work would be lost in the thousands-strong rankings of other self-published works, Dundass then sat down to decide how best to formulate his marketing plan, tossing up between garnering the rage of a small group of right-wing religious fanatics by drawing attention to his homosexual characters, alerting right-wing conservatives to the inclusion of explicit sexual content, or staging a terrorist threat against anyone who reads his book.

"I'm just not sure who should be angriest about what I've written," said Dundass in an interview on Tuesday evening, "But I want to start by offending one group before I try moving on to the next one - you know, you can blow your load too soon if you're not careful."

Dundass then put a hand to his mouth and giggled.  "Whoops.  Did I say 'blow your load'?  You should probably put that in the headline."

Angry right-wing conservatives, religious fanatics and people afraid of being blown up, were not available for comment.

NaNoWriMo from New Zealand

I was going to blog about editing, but as it turned out, I finished a novel and the story just wanted to keep going.  I guess that's how a series starts.  The date was the 1st November, which happened to coincide with NaNoWriMo.

What the heck is #NaNoWriMo?  I hear you say (Leaving you to wonder if I have exceptional hearing, or if I'm standing behind you in a mask.  Don't turn around.  Sssshhhhh).

National Novel Writing Month is an international event that draws together thousands of writers from all over the world to participate in a month-long writing frenzy.  The goal - to write 50,000 words in thirty days.

Generally, I tend to put down around 30,000-35,000 words per month, averaged over the three months it takes to put together a first draft of roughly 90,000-100,000 words.  So I figured this would be a good challenge to set myself.

So, instead of editing my (working title) novel, 'First Blood', a fun, supernatural-horror tale about a feisty twenty-something human living among werewolves and fighting vampires in the land of the long white cloud, I decided to join NaNoWriMo and scratch out at least half of a first draft in thirty days.

I have to say, if you have a competitive spirit and you love to write, NaNo is a brilliant way to keep up the momentum.  Even with a six-day break in the middle  (these things happen), I've managed to keep to the required word count because  I love statistics.  I love graphs that increase every day.  It's like an addiction.

What does this mean?  It means that in 2016, I'll be releasing two novels in this series, First Blood (if it retains that title) and Vaktare, the sequel.

And for all you aspiring authors out there who haven't yet put pen to paper... or, you know, keyboard to screen, I highly recommend NaNo - or, if you're reading this between Novembers, even just recording your stats and keeping a daily tally against percentage goals.  It's much easier to bang out a first draft if you know you need to put down 1650 words a night to reach a goal.

It leads to celebration when you run over, a reminder when you're under that you need to persevere, and I find that writing quickly fuels my creativity.  That sprint from idea to first draft is a hell of a rush.

Find out more about NaNoWriMo here:  https://nanowrimo.org

Not the best way to put keyboard to screen:

Tags:  #NaNoWriMo, #NZ, #NewZealand, #KaiaLeigh, #Novel, #Writing, #Vampires, #Werewolves, #SATCH

The writing process - should you know where you're going?

This is something I've often wondered.  I've never, ever sat down and written a book with a set of predetermined events in mind, and I wonder if knowing where my story was going would improve, or stunt, the writing process.

Here's how I tackle writing a novel.

1. I have an idea - usually it's a scene.  The scene will have a character, a place, a feel and a purpose.  Sometimes I know at this point what the log-line of the book will be - in other words, I'll have a high-level 'what if' premise that I want to work with.  Other times, all I have is an image, like a mental GIF.  This usually turns out to be my opening scene.  Nine times out of ten, it'll remain that way.

2. I start writing the scene and as I write it, questions will arise that will lead to filling out more of the story.  For instance - why is my character where they are?  What are they doing?  Are they waiting for something or someone?  Why are they sad/happy/angry - are they in danger?  From whom?  This will lead from a short opening 'teaser' scene into Chapter 1 where I start to explain the story (to myself).

3. By the end of chapter one, I've usually found out what my character's (initial) motivation is and this will lead me to the first Event.  This is plot point 1.  Here we are, doing a thing, when another thing happens that starts bigger things happening.  Usually things that my character wasn't expecting, or that we as the reader (and I was the author) wasn't expecting.

4. The journey begins.  There's always a journey, in the same way that there's always a lighthouse, always a man and always a city.  If you're a fan of Bioshock, you'll know what I mean.

The journey might be one from place to place, or it might be from one state to another (home planet to distant planet, bad, bad man to good man - or vice versa).

5. During the first third of this journey, I get to know my character(s).  They might start to build something, or do something.  Then plot point 2 hits.

6. Plot Point 2 - where everything falls apart.  Just when we thought we were getting somewhere, someone throws a giant spanner and manages to hit The Works first time.  Now my characters find themselves in conflict.  Often, this is where the 'real' adversary turns up, or if they've already met the Big Bad of their universe, it starts to ramp up a notch, perhaps revealing some motivation and purpose and unravelling answers to some questions we may or may not have asked.

Still, there's no planning.  What the Big Bad is, is often driven by the characters and their development - what they want, what's important to them, what they fear most.  When this happens is determined by whatever came before.

7. Plot Point 3, heading towards The Finale.  This is where more questions are answered, my characters' characters are tested, and hijinks begin to ensure.  Followed by...

8. The Finale.  Where everything comes together, anything left to reveal is revealed, characters fight or flee for their lives and the battle is won... or lost.  Its up to the characters.  I won't force them to win, although I always hope they will.

9. The wrap-up.  Everyone laughs, jumps in the air and there's a freeze-frame.

10.  There's a 10, because I like even numbers.  So, just as there's often a prologue, or as I often think of it when I'm writing it, a teaser (in the same way you get the before-credits teaser on a TV show), there's often an epilogue - just a little hint of where the character or characters are off to next.  Most of my novels aren't stand-alone, so these epilogues lead into the next book.

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, it's a messy process, but I find that when writing consistently, daily, plot holes are less likely to appear than writing over the mammoth period of time that Just Drink took (fifteen years from first draft completion to final draft completion, with a fourteen-year break in between).

Once the first draft has gone through the stages above, it's time for Editing... which I'll talk about in my next blog post.

I write... SATCH?

Supernatural Action Thriller Comedy Horror.  That's a LOT to try and pack into one book, and one genre.  But what if the standard genres just don't describe your work and SATCH just... does?

When you list your book on Amazon or Kobo, you pick the closest genre that fits your book; but then you and four thousand other novels are all sitting in the same Olympic-sized kiddie pool, packed in like sardines.  Sardines in a chlorinated pool.  I don't need to tell you how wrong that is.

There's a school of thought that if your book doesn't fit snugly into a genre or two, you haven't written to your audience.  And I agree with that... I do.  But... if you've ever gone online to look up your favourite genre, you'll find you're spoiled for choice - as long as you don't read the kind of books I write.  The astounding number of creative works out there under any one genre heading is... well, astounding.

So how can readers find the specific type of work they really love?  More than that, how can we tell original stories if we blinker ourselves to fit a genre heading?  How can we bring something new to the table when we write?  We know what we love, our audience knows what they love... and humbly, as a writer, I of all people realise, I'm not currently setting any new trends with my 'science-vampires pursued by evil scientists' storyline.  But if I were looking for a thriller, I'd be thinking crime.  If I were looking at action, I'd think guns and dudes in tank tops and red headbands who don't say much.  Vampires - well.  Don't even.  Science fiction is for world-builders whose vision extends beyond our own universe, and I'm not currently a world-builder, (although I do have a novel in the works that will be sci-fi, but that's not for here).

So I ask the question - are there really enough genres allocated by the big book sellers to allow authors to find their audience?  I would argue 'no'.  You don't have to be terribly original to find your work is simply not represented by the genres available.  Or the number you can select.

What do you think?

Find me on Wattpad

Hi all,

If you're looking for a free sample of some of my work, you can find me on Wattpad.  Find the first five chapters of 'Just Drink', the first few chapters of my second book, 'First Blood' (working title), which will be released around Christmas, and some of my older work, dusted off and published for fun.

What is Wattpad?  Wattpad is a writing community where all the work published is free, and writers of all ages and abilities can publish their work and get feedback from other writers and their potential audience.

Interview with Jim Vines on Jim Vine Presents

Recently I was interviewed by Jim Vines Presents, a blog for indie authors.  Read the full interview here.

Just... gonna leave this here...

Book Trailer for Just Drink

Finally published!

The day is here!  Just Drink is now available on Kobo (and shortly, Amazon).

What do the leader of a street gang and a teenage girl incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital have in common?

They just happen to share blood.

When Dylan finds her, Shaiyan is a teenager, locked inside a psychiatric hospital to protect the world from her unrelenting thirst for human blood.  Desperate to be with someone who suffers as he does, Dylan rescues her from her prison and takes her to live with him on the streets with a gang of misfits who collectively refer to themselves as The Six. 

Unknown to them both, the men who manufactured their madness are hunting them and will stop at nothing to finish what they began.

As  Shaiyan and Dylan find themselves embroiled in a silent power struggle between the most powerful entities in the world, they must find a way to stay alive and free, while holding together the tattered fragments of their family.

This is a modern vampire tale with a twist - there is no mythology, there's no vampire hierarchy and no one got bitten.  Instead, blood drinking is in their very DNA.  How it got there - that's the real concern.

Just Drink is book one in a series that follows the remnants of three families, caught in a battle between two global powers, whose motivations are unclear, and the outcome uncertain.

BUY IT ON KOBO HERE:

You can check out this book and more on my website, www.kaialeigh.com.

Great way to relieve stress

So, hey.  Having a stressful week?

This is a fun prank to play on your flatmates / family - especially those who have a nervous disposition.

You'll need a dark, empty house (preferably old and cold), Youtube and some speakers turned up loud.  Suddenly.  At night.  Through a closed door works well, for effect.

Cue up these two files and play simultaneously (I found Tiny Tim at full volume and Sound Effects at 30% volume is a good mix).

AND

If your housemates think you're not home, even better... turn your monitor off and quietly hide behind or under something.  Then jump out.

Okay, so they might hit you - or never speak to you again.  But I guarantee, you'll feel great.  Barring that lump on the side of your head where they hit you with whatever blunt object they had to hand.

* Results may vary.

Why hasn't the book been released yet? Isn't it after the first of July now?

Because:

They'll all be filled by the weekend... I promise...*falls asleep in exhaustion*

I didn't steal your name - I just like it.

Another fun thing about being a writer is getting to name characters.

Now, if you're writing Game of Thrones, you can get creative and just push and pull a few letters around to make new, unique monikers for your characters.  But my preference is for 'ordinary' names (most of the time) and to that end, I spend hours searching through baby name databases, finding names with just the right feel to them.

Unfortunately, the longer you're alive, the more likely you are to meet and make friends with people who share names with your characters.  And that can be a bit awkward.

I don't know what it's like for someone to read a book where the character shares their name as it's never happened to me.  But when a book that's been in the works for months - or, often, years - is published and it's filled with your friends' names, you have to wonder how it'll feel to them.  Even if you try and avoid using names of people you know, at some point that just becomes limiting.

In the universe I draw from, character names and even characters cross between worlds, take on different roles and appear in each others' stories.

This is part of a larger multiverse where multiple sets of characters live out their lives and adventures in altered versions of the same world.

In one version of the universe, werewolves and vampires are real.  In another, the concept of vamparism is real but is caused by a disease.  In other universes, supernatural beings only exist as ideas or hallucinations and occasionally, no one drinks blood at all.

So, to all the folks who find their names turning up in my books time and time again - I didn't steal your names, I promise.  The character models come from this infinite multiverse and those names came from the land of the internet.

Evaluating Style Writer 4

So, in my hunt for better editing tools to help speed up the process of refining my writing, I stumbled upon (or perhaps I read it somewhere), a piece of software called Style Writer.

Style Writer is great.  It scores you on all the important parts of your writing, which for anyone who enjoys gamification of life, is quite addictive.

Scoring categories include Bog (how often you mention wet soil in your novel), Passive (whether or not your characters hit other characters), Style (general fashion sense), Jargon (I can't think of anything witty to say about this one) and gives you an overall grade.

All sad puns aside, one of the most useful checking tools it offers is looking for signs of over-writing, which are characterised by bog or glue.  These are words that are used to hold sentences together but which don't offer much in the way of moving things forward.  The more bog and glue you have in your sentence, the longer it takes to make your point... the less attention your reader's going to pay.

For instance, an example of a sentence that needs tidying might be:

She stood still in the cold, dark night, breathing in shallow gasps, wondering how long it would take for the narrator to make a point.

Well, we could just have her standing in the dark.  After all, if your'e standing somewhere, you're generally not prancing about, so my telling you that that she stood still is irrelevant - as is probably the fact that it's cold and that it's dark because it's night.  So you start to see how you can shave words off to make your point.

My natural instinct is to over-write, so I like Style Writer's no-nonsense analysis.  You can't argue with an algorithm.  Well, you can, but you'd better do it succinctly.

Style Writer also looks for passive verbs and overused words such as 'nice' and you can add in new patterns to check for if you know you have particular stylistic tendencies.  For instance, I talk waaaay too much about eyes if I'm not careful.  The trick is to make sure anything you do in your writing is intentional, adds to your voice or the vibe you're trying to create, and doesn't pull readers out of the story to ask themselves 'why the hell do you keep going on about his eyes?'.

It grades your sentence length, checks for sexist comments (yes, seriously) and gives you everything in an easy-to-read pane that highlights whichever elements you want to check for, colour coded to their category.

It's not perfect - as with MS Word's grammar checker, it often highlights words that are correctly used and suggests alternatives.  This refers to the 'confused word' category, where folks might use lie and lay interchangeably or confuse its with it's.  More often than not, I find its suggestions are flat out wrong.  But the developers do ask for feedback and are adding to the software on a regular basis, so I'm hoping this is something that will improve over time.

I'll spend a few more days putting it through its paces, as I haven't used anything like it before, but I think this might be the one for me.  Licences are only $150 USD for one, and another $30 to add additional licences for a laptop or other work station.

At first blush, the only thing I would ask them to add is perhaps some achievements you can unlock (I scored Excellent in BOG!)  so that you can post your success to Facebook, because who doesn't want to do that? - And perhaps to re-skin it so that it looks less 1994 and more Age of Apps.  But many of the writing tools out there do have that ye-olde-world feel and I guess it doesn't affect how it performs.  It's just my preference to have things look shiny.

So, there's my blog post run through Style Writer.  I wonder how Style Writer will score me?  (For the purposes of this experiment, I haven't edited this post to tidy it up).

The Report #stylewriter4

I WANT to believe...

Beta Reading, Everybody

So, the 'final' draft of Just Drink (the name is now finalised) has been distributed to my kind and attentive Beta readers for their feedback and some final checks.  I've vowed to put the book down for a couple of weeks and come back to it once some initial feedback comes in and then start to do the final tidy.  This will be the final tidy before publication.

The cover has been created.  The ISBN has been registered.  The next three books in the series have been drafted and some initial talking-book samples have been created to see if it'd work in that format for another project.

Breathing space is... terrifying.  I'll admit, writing is a little like a drug habit and the ringing silence that follows when you put down your metaphorical pen (or pipe or whatever, I'm just mixing up this metaphor as much as possible here) is actually quite disturbing.

For a full year I've lived with these characters, exploring their motivation and living their emotional lives with them.  It's like watching a TV series, in a way, one that's fully immersive and when it's done, you don't quite know what to do with yourself.

Thankfully, I have other hobbies (obsessions), one of which is singing, another is composing and my next project will likely be purchasing some decent composing software and sound libraries and starting on that journey.  This'll complement the talking-book project.

And then there's the art - my passion for Anime has spilled into a desire to be able to create my own characters, so there's that.

But for all the waffle above, the key takeaway is (not sweet and sour pork, no), is that the book is essentially finished.  I believe it'll be ready for the Amazon and Kobo marketplaces by the end of June.

And then, there will be cake.

House At The End of the Street

When you engage in any artistic endeavour, I guess you hope that anyone who reads/hears/goes to see what you've created will get it. Will see what you've done - appreciate the detail, appreciate the shout-outs and the easter-eggs you've hidden for them.

I watch almost every horror/thriller/supernatural movie made, save torture-porn and straight up hack n' slash, because I love suspense. I love jeopardy. I love creepy. But for a long time, I've been frustrated, as I think have so many viewers of these genres, at the ridiculous decisions the characters make.

House At The End of the Street doesn't do that. Not once - at least by my count. The world Max Tonderai (and let's not forget the writers, David Loucka and Jonathan Mostow) have created, is a believable one, albeit a little on the dark side for your average suburban teenage love story (which, incidentally, this is not).

In an interview with Perri Nemeroff*, Tonderai was quoted saying: "I got really annoyed with the critical response that we got from it because it was like a lot of the critics were going to the film and looking at it, but they weren't seeing it. It’s a very big difference, you know? There’s a phenomenal amount of detail and thought processes that went into the film."

I'm not a film critic, and wouldn't claim to be, and I don't write movie reviews.  So why write this one?  Well, as a writer trying to create something that's both fantastic and as believable as possible, within a genre, while trying to create something original in a world where almost every idea has already been explored, I recognise effort when I see it.  

The first draft of Just Drink was written under the title 'Shaiyan' more than 14 years ago.  It took 17 days to complete and sat at 85,000 words.  It was my third full-length novel and my best effort to date (at that time).  Since then, I have agonised over it, unable to edit it to the point where I felt happy to release it - to the point where I felt I'd answered all the questions readers might have, including those pesky 'but why did they?" questions that Cinema Sins is so fond of asking.

I've used this book to learn how to write.  The first two novels will never see the light of day, but this one - I want to share this one.  

But back to my point - I went looking for more information on this film after I watched it precisely because that detail, that effort, shone through and I got a sense of the exhaustive process behind it. This film was really, really good in that every character was a person. And you care more about what happens where it's happening to people.  

It completely robbed me of the experience of rolling my eyes and saying 'I bet....' (fill in the blanks) because not only was I not trying to guess (I was engaged with the action) - I wouldn't have guessed.  

No spoilers here, but I hope the final scene makes you laugh with joy as I did.  Satisfaction rating, 10.

It's not The Babadook, one of a handful of movies in this cluster of genres that I rate very highly - and I don't think it's trying to be.  But it's right.  It's what a good Horror/Mystery/Thriller should be, and it just gave me a spark of joy seeing it play out.  I definitely recommend you see it.


* read the original interview here.

Website now ready to go!

WEBSITE NOW READY TO GO!  (although the book isn't).

Slowly moving towards an unknown release date, my WIX website is now up and running, albeit unfinished.  Next will come a custom domain, as soon as I figure out how to point it there (http://kaialeigh.com), but until then, you can find it here:

http://kaiamleigh.wix.com/kaialeigh

This is a rough draft of the cover, which I'll be putting together hopefully over the next week.

Now, all I need, is three weeks completely to myself to actually finish the final edit, and three seasoned editors to do final checks.

Should be done aaaaany day now.

How I imagine the next step to be...

#writing #dbza

The first draft was so simple...

Last week I edited 200 pages in just under 100 hours (14hrs a day) - of a book that was supposed to be ready for a final touch-up.  I took a week off work to 'get it done'.  But it's not done.

With 245 pages left to revise and fix, never mind incorporating feedback and spelling fixes from my dedicated pre-release readers, I am wondering if it would be easier at this point to stop writing, log into Warcraft and level up a Blood Elf Hunter on an almost exclusively Alliance PVP server.  I think it might be less frustrating.

On Sunday afternoon, with bloodshot eyes, my unkempt hair pulled back in a pony-tail, on my 43rd cup of tea for the day and still in my pajamas, I rage-quit this book and slept for two hours.

Then, because one of the themes of this damn book is 'there's always a way', I put a Half-life 2 run-through on Youtube as company and went back to work.

I'm only halfway through, but at least I'm still going.  New deadline - I'm giving myself another 4 weeks to complete it.  Then it goes out.  I'm hoping my readership (are you out there yet, readership?) will go kindly on this first piece of work, and keep in mind that the plots of most major (yet awesome) movies are fairly illogical.  If cool things happened in real life all the time, we wouldn't need fiction now, would we?

Wearily yours,

Kaia.

Days turn into months...

So, I booked leave to get this damn book's final edit done and dusted and what have I done? Inspired by the good people over at DEF CON, put some of my recent research to use to try and write something for their short story comp.  I'd love to attend the conference but that ain't gonna happen - I'll be in Vegas in all likelihood at the end of the year, but I can't make the trip twice.

That was a 29 page short story btw, which should have been called 'Procrastin Nation'.  It was actually a slightly derailed (re-railed?) version of a book idea that started mid-last year, originally titled The Turquoise Door, which was more robotics-themed.  I may come back to that, now that the comp has spurred me to take action on that story, but working on two other projects concurrently, it may not see light until next year.

Meanwhile, the original book I intend to release this year - working title 'What Can I Call This That No One Else Has Already Used?', should be finished by the end of this week.  There's science (totally solidly, unquestionable science), vampires (well, kinda), lots of tasty conspiracy (who doesn't love that?) and a poke at anti-vaxxers (because VACCINATE!).

Also in the works is a werewolf-themed book, working-title 'First Blood'. Before you start with the Rocky quips, I picked up that term from Black Beauty (1877), used in the context of fox hunting. From Wikipedia: "Social rituals are important to hunts, although many have fallen into disuse. One of the most notable was the act of blooding. This is a very old ceremony in which the master or huntsman would smear the blood of the fox or coyote onto the cheeks or forehead of a newly initiated hunt follower, often a young child". *

If you want to see how that connects, keep an eye on this blog for the release of First Blood (which will probably be under a unique title at that time), likely in the later half of this year.

Meanwhile 'WCICTTNOEHAU' should be released to Kobo by the end of April, under a slightly catchier title.

Hopefully the guys over at DEF CON won't giggle too much over my attempt to portray the lives and values of hackers at odds with a creature from a 23 dimensional universe, used as a form of mind control.

* For the record, I absolutely loathe fox hunting or any form of blood sport.

Timelines

I've spent the past week working on timelines.  If that sounds like a torturous homework assignment, that's because it's a lot like a torturous homework assignment.

The book I'm currently working on has been in evolution for 14 years.  That doesn't mean I've been working on it for the full 14 years - I'm not #GeorgeRR (sadly).  The original draft was finished in 14 days but as time's gone on, I've honed my craft, worked with mentors and matured - so that when I revisited the idea of publishing it, there was a lot of work to be done.

I don't recommend this as a strategy.  Firstly, while they say you should put a book away and come back to it for a fresh perspective, I'm pretty sure they don't mean put it away for 14 years.

The evolution from 1st draft to final edit brought up something important - timelines.  As the story was re-written into an era with different social expectations, technology and pop culture, the characters' back stories needed to change and of course, so did their timelines.  Changing the age of a character by a couple of years to fit with a plot line can cause chaos where that age is relevant to a series of events or their arc intersects with another's.

So, in order to clarify events, character arcs and story arcs, I downloaded a trial of a programme called 'Aeon Timeline'.  I'm ah, not one to do too much plotting before I start writing - I find it too restrictive.  But retrospectively adding in timelines has made the final editing process infinitely easier.

All conflicts were easily ironed out, ages established and I started to get a different overall feel for the book once I placed it within a specific time frame.

I'm not sure that doing this retrospectively is efficient (okay, it's just not) - but if you write as I do, it's definitely helpful.

My suggestion, based on the last week or so of work is that even if you are a 'free' writer, if you start with a timeline and add events as you go, even if you don't pre-plan your arcs, you'll find that referring back to your place in time is extremely helpful and a massive time saver at the end of the process.

So far, I would definitely recommend Aeon (and no, they're not paying me to endorse them - although I wouldn't be against the idea :-P) - as easy to use and inexpensive.  But no matter what you use, I definitely recommend blocking out your timelines - as painful as it may be.

- Kaia.

#likeagirl

The video linked below isn't new.  It's done the rounds of the internet a few times now and each time I see it, I have the same reaction.  I cringe.

I cringe because I remember being a 'little girl' and hating that so much that I wished I was a boy.  Not because I was having an identity or gender crisis, but because they were the ones with the power.  They were the ones who got to be heroes.  They were the ones who everyone looked up to.  They were the leaders.

Girls were weak.  Girls were pathetic and emotional - they couldn't do anything cool, they liked dolls and dresses and ran away from fights.  They needed to be rescued.  They were always dependent on others.

Can you guess the kind of girl I became?

I was independent.  I refused to follow or conform.  I put myself in dangerous situations to prove I could get myself out of them.  I walked alone late at night with a giant dog at my side,  I explored creepy places like tunnels and dark forests.  I refused to wear dresses and I hated sports because there was proof I was 'just a girl' - I sucked at sports.  I went overboard because otherwise I would have drowned in the all-male soggy-biscuit game that was highschool.

In my twenties, in my chosen profession I found I didn't exist except as the female attachment to my partner.  Even though I had technical skills and abilities, clients didn't trust me to do the work because I was female.  They'd take an unskilled male over me any day.  They always assumed I was a subordinate. They looked past me at meetings and assumed I was the office worker.  If I gave them an ultimatum, they wouldn't accept it - it had to come from a man in order to be official.  I ah, well, I was angry in my 20s.

I was always striving to gain even just the baseline respect that guys had for each other.  Why?  Because men had ALL the power.  It was the 80s - women were still struggling to get past being considered good for nothing but secretarial duty in the corporate world.  So to achieve, I had to get noticed by the guys with the power.  And not in the way they USUALLY noticed women.  I did that by eschewing 'female' behaviour and dress.  How else could I be taken seriously?  I lived in black jeans and t-shirts for years.

Guys will never know what it's like to be a girl.  They don't seem to realise that women can have EXACTLY the same amount of courage and passion and fury and dedication that guys have - they also dream of being the hero.  They don't dream of being the love interest.  Who wants to be a bit player who makes the hero a sammich and sends him on his way to go achieve all the things she can't because she's too busy being pretty for him?

Don't get me wrong, it's changing and I'm so excited to see those changes, knowing the world will be such a different place for little girls of the future.

So to address "You're just a girl."  Here's the thing.  If you put that message on girls from birth - that they'll never be good at anything that involves drive and grit and stamina and courage - you run the risk of creating women who inhibit themselves and never try or women who drive themselves twice as hard to achieve respect and who then may lack respect for those who had the privilege of that respect from birth.  i.e. the Angry Feminist stereotype.  You may create women who hate women because they don't want to be associated with a gender that's considered weak and useless.

When what you represent is constantly being portrayed as less-than in the media, and your role in popular media is generally as support and nothing more, you're gonna lose your patience with it eventually and many of us have.  We can't stop talking about it.  We want it to stop and that's not making friends out there on the ole internet.  Which is why we must not stop until it stops.  Until men fully expect us to stand beside them, not behind them, and we as women have the same expectations of ourselves.

If you're a dad and you've ever told your kid (whatever its gender identity) to 'man up' or used 'like a girl' as an insult - please think about the message that sends.

To the girls it says:  You're weak and useless from birth.  Not worthy of respect.  Don't even try.
To the boys it says:  Women aren't worthy of your respect.  They're weak - don't be like them!

As for those vile internet commenters who fill up the comments section of every female achievement or opinion published online, the cognitive dissonance between those phrases voiced in early childhood and the realities those kids must then see as they grow up - that women don't care what they think and simply go out there and do whatever they want to do and are now being supported and celebrated as much as the guys are - must cause such confusion.

What if those women are better than they are at traditional 'male' pursuits - no wonder they try to deride them.  If they believe women are weaker than 'boys' are from birth and they themselves are weaker still - wow.  That's a lot of unpleasantness going on.  But I believe some of it could be stopped by parents who discouraged that kind of thinking from the get go.

No more using female nouns as insults.  Let's get that shit gone.  :-)  I, for one, will then be a LOT nicer to watch TV with.  :-P

Inspirational Animation

Writing fiction, I've found some of my strongest inspiration has come from cartoons - particularly anime.  Keep in mind, I'm not writing this as an expert on anime as a genre - or even as a die-hard fan (I'm pretty sure 'true' anime fandom requires a raft of knowledge I don't have) - just as a fan of some shows that I particularly liked and that left some kind of lasting impression on me.

While a lot of the anime I watched in the early days was aimed at kids - shows like Dragonball Z, Yu-gi-oh, Bey Blades and Pokemon, there were a lot of themes in there that I loved and related to.  Especially the idea of self-sacrifice, and the lonely hero who lives on the outside looking in.  This is a character type that comes through in a lot of the fiction I write.

So what does anime have that other types of fiction don't?  More adult anime often explore seemingly hopeless situations.  In Wolf's Rain, the last remaining wolves in Japan are searching for 'Paradise' - a place where they'll be safe and will finally be free of persecution from humans.  The journey is soul destroying - there are so few of them and they face incredible odds.  Most of them aren't even sure if Paradise exists.  It's an idea that their leader, Kiba, can't let go, because if he gives up on this dream, he feels he'll have nothing to hope for.

In Attack on Titan, the last of humanity hunkers down behind a giant wall as seemingly mindless giants roam the earth, eating any humans they find.  Only one boy dares dream of one day living in the world outside those walls again, a beautiful world that in his lifetime, only exists in stories.

In Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric seeks to find a way to return his brother, whose soul is trapped in a suit of armour, to a human body.  Again, his search is based on a vague legend and he's driven forward by a pure sense of duty.

The odds are astounding.  Death is everywhere.  But they keep going.  Anime is fantastic for putting impossible obstacles in the way of its heroes, constantly forcing them to try, fail and learn.  They get knocked back, they make tragic mistakes, they have their faith and friendships tested, and when they win, it's not that obnoxious 'Independence Day' kind of victory.  There's always a subdued acknowledgement of everything they've sacrificed for their end goal.

It's that quiet determination, the self doubt, the exploration of the dark place that a true sense of duty comes from that I love and hope to capture in my own writing.

If you're a big anime fan, tell me about your favourite characters in the comments below!

- Kaia.

Writing and Biology

There's a reason I left writing until the end of my 30s.  While I was a passionate writer in my early 20s, I soon realised it wasn't just a passion - it was an obsession - something I couldn't do without (an old 'Meet Joe Black' reference there).

I wrote during every waking hour when I wasn't working.  This left no time for me to enjoy a relationship with my partner.  While my turning to writing was symptomatic of a bad relationship at the time, regardless, I decided it's not something I wanted to do while I had a partner.

So while the ideas would come and get jotted down - sometimes to the tune of 150 pages or more, they were left as ideas, waiting for the day when I would be old and infirm enough to be able to enjoy writing without guilt.

As is common, my life didn't go as expected.  And now I find myself in a position where my writing won't get in the way of anything else and my passion - my obsession - is back in full swing.

Which leaves only biology to interrupt.

There is nothing more annoying that being alive.  Bear with me here.  Living beings need to eat, sleep, relieve themselves, shower, exercise and a myriad other small things that take time and energy.

Whether it's writing or recording music, biology is the thorn in the creative's side.  Especially sleep.  Nothing is worse than being in full creative flight and realising that if you don't lie down soon, you will probably die.

Eating no longer gives pleasure.  It's just a chore, something you have to do to feed the nagging insistence of your body.

Relieving yourself - well - I've become quite annoyed with my body's apparent deliberate attempts to sabotage a track by suddenly reminding me this needs to happen.  I feel silly afterwards, but having a tiny tantrum on finding I have to go to the toilet, however humorous it may seem, is a part of my life when I'm in Creative mode.

If biology is such a drag, imagine how much of a drag social obligations can become - or chores like cleaning, cooking, shopping and dressing yourself.  Wearing a bra?  Hahahahaha.  I don't think so!

I envy those who can earn a living from their art.  I would never expect to - my writing is a passion I want to share with the world, but I have no expectations that the world will feel about it as I do.

My 40hr a week job is my first commitment, after which, the world unfolds into colour and scent and life as I write or sing.

In this lifetime I may never find a partner who fits the (rather unique) bill I need him to fit in order for him to be The One and that may be a blessing.  Because this passion - this obsession - with its concomitant antisocial behaviours, is not something I would wish on a relationship.

- Kaia