Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #howtosucceed, aggregated by home.social.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been alternating between reading high fantasy, Codex Alera (6 books) and urban fantasy, Essex Witch Museum Mystery series (5 books).
I reckon it’s time for a bit of palate cleansing so now it’s on to a thriller, Burner by Mark Greaney.
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Tom of Finland a Finnish illustrator died on this day in 1991.
Touko Valio Laaksonen, to give him his full name was a Finnish artist who made stylized erotic art featuring suggestively hypermasculine male characters.
He worked primarily in pencil, producing drawings on paper and for publication in a variety of magazines and other formats. These works profoundly influenced late 20th-century gay culture and sexuality, their rise in popularity coinciding with gay law reform successes and the cultural and political emergence of LGBTQ+ communities from the 1960s onward.
Tom of Finland has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade.
Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated sexual traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.
Tom’s cocksure leather look, a breakout sultry aesthetic dating to the 1950s, captured the early attention of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Raymond Pettibon and Mike Kelley.
It also influenced fashion and music: designers Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler and Queen’s Freddie Mercury. Today, Finland embraces its artist-son as a national hero, one backed by plenty of online merch as diverse as sex toys and holiday ornaments.
Tom’s bevy of built rogues, always affable and forever awash in unapologetic lust, has aged well.
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#WordWeavers 7: Share a description of a character from your WIP that doesn't mention physical appearance.
I’ve avoided describing Nathan and Vicky other than saying she’s attractive and he, conceitedly, reckons he’s ruggedly handsome.
I prefer the idea of leaving what they look like to my reader’s imagination.
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My Word of the Day today is PUNICEOUS. Share YOUR words to describe this picture in the comments!
Puniceous, from Latin pūniceus, from pūnicus, Punic, an ethnonym, an adoption of Ancient Greek Φοῖνιξ, Phoînix, homophonous with φοῖνιξ ,phoînix, Tyrian purple, hence the connection with the colour. + eous, suffix used to form adjectives from nouns to denote possession of.
Meaning: Bright red or purple in colour (obsolete).
The picture shows a close-up of vibrant crimson and magenta autumn leaves hanging from slender, woody twigs, as seen through the canopy.
For a moment there I thought it might somehow be connected with punitive, but there’s nothing punishing about the word except for it being somewhat obscure.
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I’ve already talked about my self-published book today, How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List, in response to the subject of today’s #Fantastic Prompts.
So instead of banging on about that one I’d like to mention the 2 works I’m looking to get traditionally published.
The first is a piece of metafiction The Secret Life of Books, a 50,500 word urban fantasy.
It’s a wryly humorous story about a struggling author who discovers a hiring agency which supplies fictional characters for writers to use in their books.
Complications ensue when these fictional characters start to come to life and interact with the author.
There’s a story within the story which tells the tale of a Criminal Mastermind, complete with henchmen, and how he tries to take over the world and the overall story is written as a memoir with the author talking to his readers.
In addition to telling a story the book also acts as a mediation on the craft of writing, discussing such things as titles, characters, plots, and the tropes which go into making up the genre fiction of today, be it SF, fantasy, thriller, or crime.
Oh, and most of the action takes place in my local Wetherspoons…
In some ways it's a companion piece to How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord.
You can learn more about me and my work by taking a look at: https://timhayesauthor.com/
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#ScribesAndMakers #WritingCommunity November 7: Are you participating in novel writing month? Did you ever participate in NaNoWriMo, and if so, is there anything you miss about it?
I’m not participating this year, I’ve got too much on my plate.
If you take a look at my earlier post in response to the subject of today’s #Fantastic Prompts you can read a little bit about my experience last year.
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#WritersCoffeeClub 11/7 How detailed are your plans before you write?
A new novel in my ongoing urban fantasy series, The Wheel of the Year sequence, can originate from as little as a fresh idea for a magically imbued artefact or perhaps some supernatural entity my protagonists haven't previously encountered.
As I’m six books into the series I’ve already got an established cast of characters to work with and have the world in which the story takes place pretty much sorted out.
So all I need to do is weave the new idea into a story within my customary setting.
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#Fantastic Prompts 07.11: To write a whole novel in a month (50,000 words): Have you ever done this or at least tried it?
Yep, I’m proud to be able to say I wrote, How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List, to
demonstrate that it really was possible to write a fully-formed, if short, novel in such a brief period of time.
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#WritersCoffeeClub 5. November: What do you get the most pleasure writing?
Things that amuse me.
If I write something amusing that makes me laugh the next thing I start to wonder is whether my readers will find funny, too.
So I read it again and if it still make me laugh I stop worrying and carry on writing.
There, I’ve done it again, I’ve just come up with the title of the next Carry On film, Carry On Writing…
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#WordWeavers 5/11: What is a superstition, myth, or urban legend unique to your story's world? Is there any truth to it?
Nathan suspects hereditary witches keep their weight down through the use of magic.
He reckons it’s all down to things such as flinging fireballs around with gay abandon.
The way his reasoning goes is they’re burning up calories to fuel their magic. Weight Watchers the witch way, perhaps?”
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#ScribesAndMakers 6/11: Share a sentence that you read, heard, or wrote recently that resonated with you. (Please give credit if it isn't yours.)
Here’s one, in the words of Oscar Wilde, "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.'
I guess that's the reason we're all here...
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My Word of the Day today is SAPROPHYTIC. Share YOUR words to describe this picture in the comments!
Saprophytic, from saprophyte, borrowed from Ancient Greek σαπρός (saprós, “putrid”). sapro-, putrid matter, + Ancient Greek φυτόν, phutón, plant, -phyte, plant, growth.
Any organism that lives on dead organic matter, such as certain fungi and bacteria, + -ic, adjective-forming suffix.
Meaning: Relating to saprophytes.
The picture shows a close-up of a cluster of pale cream mushrooms nestled among fallen autumn leaves and blades of green grass.
I hope my definition wasn’t too long-winded for you, I was worried it might be so soporific it sent you to sleep…
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#Fantastic Prompts 06.11. What are your sales figures (e.g. total sales, sales per month, most sold works)?
Regarding How to Succeed... minimal.
Although I was pleasantly surprised to find my non-fiction book, Aquatical•Latin, is still ticking away nicely.
The sale aren’t high but that’s to be expected with such a specialised book.
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#PennedPossibilities 1176 What genre(s) or sub-genre(s) would you classify your WIP as?
It would depend on which of my current WIPs I was referring to.
My much interrupted Tales From the Demi-monde is urban fantasy.
I’ve just finished compiling an anthology comprising of the winners and runners up from my writing group's monthly competition.
And the latest interruption is a piece of metafiction based on an idea I came up with yesterday.
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L. Sprague de Camp, American historian and author died on this day in 2000.
As an author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature he wrote over 100 books, including biographies of other fantasy authors during a career spanning 60 years,
A major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.
During World War II, de Camp served as a researcher at the Philadelphia Naval Yard alongside his fellow-writers Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein.
L. Sprague de Camp noted he rarely used pen-names, stating, "partly because my own true name sounds more like a pseudonym than most pseudonyms do."
"Extraterrestrial", a coinage from "extra" + "terrestrial", meaning from beyond earth, attested as an adjective in 1868, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. L. Sprague de Camp is credited with its first usage as a noun with the meaning of "alien life" and with coining the abbreviation "E.T." in the first part of his two-part article "Design for Life", published in the May 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
Best known works include the Harold Shea stories co-written with Fletcher Pratt and a particular favourite of mine, Lest Darkness Fall. A time travel novel similar to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but where the method of time travel was rationalised, and the hero's technical expertise was constrained by the limitations of the age.
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