Kanna-Ophelia: I'm married to romana03 and we have an adorable baby boy, which makes me the luckiest woman in the world ♥. I collect fashion and ball jointed dolls, have been known to reborn baby dolls myself, and I read practically anything.

I've been out of fandom a while now, and I'm only sporadically coming back, so most of my earlier entries are privated as a personal record. Fandoms I care about: Enid Blyton, BSG/Caprica, Ranma, Utena, Sailormoon, Azumanga Daioh, Harry Potter, ST:DS9, Elder Scrolls, Pokemon, the Hunger Games, Jem, school stories and Agatha Christie. I tend to come down on the sapphic side of the fandom equation, as in real life, but I also have a big fondness for gen.

No one needs my permission to friend or defriend or comment. Just please play nice.

Thank you to everyone for the well-wishes! I feel very loved.

I know we are biased because we are madly in love with our Cai-baby, but he does seem particularly adorable, sweet-natured and well-behaved. ( Besotted baby talkCollapse )

I am beginning to get resentful when asked if we are going to have another one, because... isn't he enough? I guess I'm basically monogamous by nature. ^_^'

Tracking the last fiction books I have bought, from most recent to least...

Reached (Matched vol. 3, Ally Condie)
Seven: a Lesbian Snow White (Jennifer Diemer)
Fugly (K. Z. Snow)
The Sekhmet Bed (Lavender Ironsides)
The Blemished (Sarah Dalton)
Cinderella and the Lady (K. T. Grant)
The Fox's Mask (Anna Grant)

So. That's three e-first or e-only commercial/trade small or micropress books and three entirely selfpublished books. And a single one from a Big Six (Four?) trade/commercial publisher - and only because I already had the first two books in the trilogy. That is a MASSIVE change in my purchasing habits from two years ago. And it doesn't even count all the free downloads (mostly limited time offers or "first book in series is free") and samples sitting on my ereader or my tablet - there's a lot, and if I enjoy them, I do go on and buy full books, sequels and other books from the authors. I never would have even looked at Spencer Baum's vampire books if his/her unrelated The Demon Queen and the Locksmith hadn't been a random/temporarily free download that became one of my favourite books of the year. (It's free again, I recommend you grab it.) These are only books I've spent actual money on lately.

It's not just price. It's not that I used to spend a lot on individual books anyway, although I was constantly buying them, at least not in a way that sent money to the author in any meaningful way. I was a remainder book store junky - do you mean I can get 8 books for ten quid? LET ME AT THEM. I don't really do that any more, though. So it's not just that Reached was $10 now the antitrade judgement has gone through and would have been even more without it and Sarah Dalton's book was 99 cents. Don't get me wrong, I love buying a book for less than a cup of coffee. But I was cheap anyway, unless it was a high priority book for some reason, mostly series or author loyalty related.

Here's the thing. People who are very pro Big Six/4 and anti alternatives (and let's make it clear, being published by the Big Six is still an awesome dream and a great path if you can pull it off) like to lament that with the rise of self-publishing and micro epresses, we all are reading the slushpile instead of being protected by gatekeepers and have no way to choose books with any quality. All they do is reveal that they have no actual idea of how ebooks are chosen and purchased.

I have bought far, far more duds, in print or ebook, from big publishers than from Smashwords or little epresses. The last books I was really, really upset that I'd wasted money on were "proper" books - generally expensively purchased. My other books? Not so much so. And there is a very big reason for this.

SAMPLES.

It takes me only a couple of sample pages and about two minutes, in general, to decide that a book on, say, Smashwords, is better off left on the slushpile. Some are truly awful, but really? I tend to abandon them pretty much as soon as opening the sample. The amount of time I spend looking at dreck that the author was delusional to put out there is actually very, very small.

On the other hand, if I'm reading a decently sized sample on Smashwords or somewhere and I get deeply drawn in, I generally hit "purchase" long before I reach the end of the sample. Small e-first presses tend to give generous samples, too - at least enough to judge the quality of the writing and editing. Some don't; I'm less likely to buy from them. (Small press editing issues: they are all technically as much trade publishers as, say, Penguin, but that is absolutely no guarantee of decent editing. Cinderella and the Lady desperately required better editing, but what the hell, I felt like reading lesbian fairy tale erotica and it was $5. Some selfpubbed authors actually do a much better job through their betas than some trade publishers. I still don't know what Malindo Lo's editor is paid for, apart from spellchecking.*) I don't judge books by covers, either - after all, specialist lesbian presses tend to have horrendous covers. It tells you nothing about the quality of the book, only about budget. I judge by a) concept and b) words.

The big publishers? Arrgh. Part of the reason I wasted so much money on a book about dealing with anxiety and depression in pregnancy is that the free sample consisted of an introduction by someone else telling me how amazing it was plus part of a first chapter saying the same - not enough to judge that it was nothing but bog-standard CBT workbook stuff (which is clinically demonstrated, as well as by my own experience, to make OCD related anxiety WORSE long term, unlike DBT) with a pregnancy theme inadequately pasted on. The Daisy Dalrymple books, or Sarah Water's latest? I just couldn't pick up enough info through flicking through a paperback copy to realise I'd hate them. Reading samples is by far my favourite method of deciding on book purchases.

It's not always true that big publishers fail at this, of course. I bought The Hunger Games because I ended up on Suzanne Collins' website through TV Tropes and there was a lengthy enough sample - ending right when Prim is chosen - to make me realise that Katniss was a hell of an interesting heroine. In general, though, the samples are too much front matter and not enough content to sell me.

And then there's the issue of if you can get books as ebooks at all... or in your region... or charging differentially dependent on region.

Then there's the issue of author payment. When I bought remaindered and second hand books, the author didn't see a cent AFAIK. Small epresses generally give generous royalties to balance out the tiny or nonexistent advances, and selfpubbing even more so. I will always try to buy from a small press site directly or from Smashwords to maximise what they get. I like the idea of my money, little as it is, going directly to the author. And it costs me the same as an Australian, no markup for not being from the US, unlike a lot of books with major releases.

Finally... I'm a lesbian. It is much, much easier to find the kind of book I want to read in the world of selfpubbing and small epresses, many of which have GLBT and, increasingly, YA GLBT imprints, which don't necessarily have the "gay characters written for straight readers" thing that seems needed to get an agent and publishing deal elsewhere.

There are small presses that just suck, too. Hello, most of the older and more established lesbian publishers, who charge a fortune for badly produced and unattractively written and edited paperbacks and ebooks priced higher than blockbusters. Or Girls Gone By, who tie up school story classic copyrights in overpriced paperback editions and refuse to release them as ebooks, leading to stupid secondary market prices. (Bettany Press, OTOH, do it right, if kind of expensively.) There are very, very many incompetent, scam or just useless small and micropresses, who seem to take author royalties and give them nothing in the way of editing or high quality cover art or distribution or marketing in return. And evils like iUniverse and Publish America. But there are also gems like Musa Publishing and Star Moon Press. And so, so many DIY authors believing in themselves and their writing.

I'll still buy Big 6-4 books, although mostly out of series or author loyalty. I'll buy the Jasper Fforde Shades of Grey prequel the day it comes out, for instance, even though I'm gutted that it is not the promised sequel. (I suspect he has no clue how to dig Jane and Eddy - haha, fellow Jane Eyre fan - out of their hole.) I'll buy loads of picture books for Ponyo - as well as some locally written selfpubbed books about diverse families. I think getting a big publishing contract with a huge marketing budget behind it is still the most fab thing ever. And libraries still mostly stock books from big publishers, and I love libraries.

It's hard to talk about this stuff without being accused of prematurely dancing on the grave of traditional publishing or believing everything Konrath says or whatever. I was just thinking about the huge change in my own buying habits, as someone who buys books a LOT, and the fact that I can't be the only one to completely reassess how and when they plonk down money for a book.

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romana03 and I treated ourselves to the Joan Hicks Miss Marple 1980s adaptations a while back, and we've been watching them through. They are pretty much the best adaptations of anything ever - right up there with the Hunger Games and Order of the Phoenix movies and the 1980s BBC and more recent ITV Jane Eyres and the early (NOT later) David Suchet Poirots. (I'm not counting adaptations that I only love because they bear hardly any resemblance to source material but are vastly better, like Miyazaki's freely interpreted adaptations of Howl's Moving Castle and The Borrowers.)

Part of what makes this adaptation perfect is seeing Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd from A Murder is Announced as if they were taken from behind my eyes when I read, and they are SO ADORABLE. They are what I think of as my vintage butch/femme portrayal ideal. (And, yes, I think they were explicitly intended as a lesbian couple by Christie. I've never understood why people think Christie is somehow oblivious to the existence of non-heterosexual people when Miss Marple's nephew EXPLICITLY talks about his house proud queer friend and then worries that his dear protected Aunt Jane won't know what he means, and of course she does because Miss Marple is a dreadful and uncannily accurate old gossip. No one involved in theatre and general intellectual and writing circles in Christie's era would not have come across gay men and lesbians.)

Just look at these Hinch and Murgatroyd clips - especially the scene with the Inspector. SQUEE.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=FuSJp6ilLBU&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFuSJp6ilLBU

I want more portrayals like that. It worries me a bit that I default to writing fourteen-to-twenty year old lesbians -- a side effect of coming through anime/manga/gaming and school story (including HP) fandoms, plus Xena, because Gabrielle was obviously written much younger than she was cast. There need to be more positive portrayals of overweight middle aged and elderly butch/femme lesbians who don't wear makeup or pretty clothes.

The newer Granada adaptations? SPOILED EVERYTHING. Apparently, you can't have lesbians on TV unless they are something out of Tipping the Velvet, i.e. young, hot, and appealing to men. And they totally screwed up Miss Marple's response. Miss Marple's social circle's idea of being tolerant of lesbian couples is being too well-bred to notice the obvious while still respecting the depth of the bond they have together, not all this wink-wink nudge-nudge I'm on your side girls stuff. Worst of all was comparing lesbianism to adultery because hey, it's all forbidden love. Only one kind involves the deep betrayal of another human being, natch. And having Miss Marple have adulterous memories is so out of character and out of canon it makes me spit. We know what Miss Marple's teenage love life was like..

I'm not returning to work after Ponyo is born. (Which is, OMG imminent, and also prodormal labour is the most unfair thing in the world, we thought we'd be mothers by today, part of the reason I'm posting here is to take my mind off painful contractions that have started AGAIN but I have no faith will lead to active labour.)  It feels a little strange, as a feminist who has all often been described as a feminazi bitch, to say that - but after all, I always believed in choice.

I really, really loathe the term "full-time mother". It implies that working mothers are somehow only part-time mothers, which is crap, Romana will be just as full-time a mother as I am even though she will be working full-time as well. The term (deliberately, politically) sets up an unfair bias against women who work outside the home.

I have nothing against mothers working outside the home. My mother, who was always a working mother, was also  the best mother imaginable. I know everyone says they have a special relationship with their mother, but I do think Mum and I are genuinely much, much closer than most mother-child relationships, so much so that other people don't always understand our bond. My Nanna was, quite frankly, angelic, the most loving and giving woman imaginable, and she was also a working mother. My Grandma was a housewife, and I don't think anyone envies having her as a mother.

Mem Fox drives me to fury, and not just because of her support for a convicted pedophile or because Koala Lou is toxic. (I am really hoping no one gives Ponyo any Mem Fox books. No matter how beautifully her illustrators do their jobs, they will have to go straight in the charity donations bag, because, RAGE.)

I'm staying home at least the first few years, rent allowing, because - oh, because I'm selfish. Because I am lucky enough to have an amazing wife who will support me despite the financial sacrifice it entails. Because my career is not currently fulfilling and I just don't wnat to go back there. Because my health is rubbish and I have never really dealt with full-time work well because of it. Because I want the chance to have more time to focus on my writing. I suspect none of these reasons are acceptable to the kind of woman who says things like "Working mothers only work 9-5, I have a 24 hour seven day a week job!" as if it matters at  2am with a vomiting toddler whether your day is spent on laundry* or on being a corporate executive, or call childcare child abuse.

So just for the record. I am not making any sacrifices for Ponyo by staying home. I hope he will like having me around, but I also think there are real advantages in socialisation and stimulation etc in outside childcare. It's not that one model is better than another, it's a case of swings and roundabouts.

I need to find a title that doesn't imply that I'm guilt-tripping working mothers. Housewife probably suggests far more interest in housework than I actually have. (I can learn to vaccuum. It's like riding a bike, right? I've done it before. I do like cooking.) Homemaker, again, implies that single-working or dual-income homes aren't really homes. I suppose I could be really anticipatory and use full-time writer, even if I don't end up making any useful money from it... But that seems, um. Presumptuous.

* I AM LEARNING ABOUT THE WASHING MACHINE AND HOW IT WORKS, OKAY? I'm sure nappies will give me lots of practice... Actually, I'm going to practice now by prewashing some nappies.

I've had this Dreamwidth account for a very long time and never used it, but there's comms I wanted to join and also lj and my iPad don't get along - bloody thing likes to autorefresh in the middle of a post and I lose everything and can't restore as a draft. I don't actually know if DW will work any better, but I'm going to try crossposting for a bit. And to read friendspages on both.

I am lazy and it will take me forever to hunt down and friend people on DW as well, so if you want access on DW, please friend me and I will return suit! But really, as I'm crossposting, it won't make much difference, it's just a matter of which site I'm on when I type into a box. :D Comments can go to either site.

UNBELIEVABLE.

Den of Angels now has clear, explicit criteria for on and off topic dolls, which involves actual features of the doll and not a random "aesthetic criteria" which meant that equivalent dolls from different companies were on and off topic at the whim of the mods.

And they've divided the forum into Asian origin and Western origin dolls, so they are no longer labelling actual Asian dolls off-topic for "not being Asian aesthetic" while allowing American and European dolls because they were "more Asian".

I never thought they would do this, ever. I have not felt so positive towards the forum for years and years. Some of my favourite bjds are still off-topic, but at least it's because of actual criteria now. Awesome.

Still waiting on my incredibly cheap Mirodoll beauty. It's been like no time in the bjd world, but people who have ordered after me have theirs... mind you, I think I'm the only one who ordered a faceup, which takes time. I'm impatient, but actually, thinking about it, I don't even have eyes that would fit her, because I think she has bigger eyes than any of my other girls, including my bug-eyed Himeko. Whoops.

Well, now I've established that the Snowflake method of plotting works exactly as well for me as mind mapping, i.e. I get bored and annoyed a few steps in. *snort* But if it does work for you, there is an awesome Scrivener template to take you through step by step if you google.

Mind mapping was compulsory in my Masters. I ask you. Fine, the lecturer found it useful personally, but I found it an obscene waste of time when I had to budget my research and writing time very carefully because I was working two part time jobs while studying full time with chronic illness. And completely useless in planning either academic writing or plotting. And a seriously inappropriate thing to demand at a postgraduate level.  At least I found a free program so that I didn't have to draw the stupid things by hand.

Also, most brilliantly, my supervisor, when I had a referencing inquiry about a certain piece of hard to handle grey literature (bear in mind she was a librarianship and information management lecturer) told me to mind map it. Um. Because that helps with referencing obscure and difficult to verify sources.

Then I had to do them in training at work, on butcher's paper and with pictures, and it was supposed to make my life goals clear to me. *cringe*

Googling:
All too often messages like this from students turn up on Twitter: "now to do the mindmap argh i hate mindmaps". I believe that in the majority of cases, they really mean "I hate thinking" or "I hate learning".

OMG they have to be kidding.

On Tolkien: But is [JRR Tolkien's written works] a massive fandom? I'm not saying the book isn't popular, of course it is, but there aren't that many fics on AO3

OP is simultaneously saying she read The Hobbit 15 years ago and hated it and that she's been traumatised by spoilers in a fanfic, and that she never would have expected that ending. 

The tags make my heart happy, too.

ETA: I love this, too:

don't know who would call the Hobbit a children's book

Can anyone suggest any good fiction writing apps for iPad? I downloaded Writer's App today for the times when Ponyo kicks me awake (at 3.30-ish every night, like clockwork) and I have an hour or two of bright wakefulness, so that I can jot down plot bunnies and notes better than in the Note application I generally use. It's a barebones but helpful planner that has already paid for the only 99 cents it cost by taking me from a vague story idea to a clear idea of what I'm writing in half an hour while waiting to be picked up just by filling in the fields and letting things take shape in my head.

But it's not designed for actually writing. And while the weather has been so horrendous, I've been escaping the flat by going to the uni library during the day to play on the internets and write. I'm not supposed to be carrying, well, anything, so a handbag with iPad, Kobo and DS (YES I NEED ALL THREE) on one side and a laptop on the other, plus lots of drinks, is not a good idea, so I am thinking of getting an iPad keyboard tomorrow and ditching the heaviest component for when I want to write outside the house. But I need something to write in, and I don't just want a word processor.

PC writing wise, I am a Scrivener convert from about a year ago. Omg, am I ever a convert.( Cut for squeeing about why Scrivener is the best thing everCollapse )
Anyway, I am never, ever going back to writing in a word processor if I'm not at work. (Tangentially, here are some free alternatives to Scrivener - haven't tried any of them, but they are probably all better than word processors, too.) So I want something... well, not as full-functioned as my beloved Scrivener, obviously,  but that easily can do notes and outlining and chapters and things with as well as just adding words. And transfer things into Scrivener when I get home.

The author of Writers' App also has an app called, confusingly, Writing App. It's a whole $2.99, and it looks like a distinct possibility. From reviews, it has helpful templates and things for all it is bare bones. But I am leaning towards Storyist. It's only $9.99  which seems almost expensive next to Writing App - I can't get over how cheap apps are, by the way - but it looks really good. I just wish there was a way to free trial things for iOS instead of just reading reviews and taking your chances. But then... cheap.

I'm just wondering if any of you have experience with writing apps for iOS and can suggest a better alternative, or if you've used one of these?