j_q

Kitty Ian and human Mickey and their cute babies! 🙋🏻‍♂️❤️🐈🟰👶👶👶👶👶

The Gallakitties have been infiltrating their favorite fics these days. Here are Ian and Mickey from Brand Spanking New by @jackieq.

If you're not reading this yet, you should be! It's way hot, has all the feels, and is super funny to boot.

From the fic description: The term “brand spanking new” means to leave a permanent mark of ownership or a brand on something that has been restored through tender, loving care.

In hopes he’ll return home brand spanking new, Mickey’s siblings, who are fed up with his “failure to launch,” arrange for him to spend some time at a discipline-centered retreat that specializes in punishing bad behavior.

Hello sir 👀🔥🔥🔥 >>> clotheless version <<<

The fic writer we’re spotlighting this week is almost a complement from last week’s interview with @jackieq and I’m sure she won’t mind at all if I refer to her like that. Please enjoy this fab interview with Margaret aka MarzgaPerez (@marzgaperez ), author of Your Wish Is Granted, Across State Lines,  the Together Apart series and the Mickey and Monkey series, among several others.

GT: Tell us a bit about yourself, please.

M: My name is Margaret (she/her), I’m a USA native, a mom to humans and felines, and a fair-to-middling wife. I work in healthcare, and my favorite color is orange, like the sunset (THG reference) and Cam’s hair.

First off, understand that everyone sucks ass at something. Get over it. In the indelible words of my very first college professor, “It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done.”

A successful summary will accomplish two or more of the following: Declare who the significant characters are, describe the beginning of the story, give a tiny spoiler for the end, and won’t give away too much of the rising action.

Here are a few little tips that you may (or may not) find useful when writing a summary:

Option 1:

Take my college professor’s advice and just get the shit done. Compose the most basic summary you can & post/submit that shit. ‘Cause there is such a thing as do-overs and resubmissions. You can always go back and tweak your summary over and over until it reads just right. In the wise words of @notherenj-nowherenj: “Summaries, and fics in general, are living documents. You can ALWAYS go in and edit that shit.”

Further, if you’re posting on Ao3, your subscribers are likely going to read whatever you post no matter how poorly you write the summary and your non-subscribers are likely not going to read whatever you write until you’ve got at least 2-3 chapters up. So? Pressure off, right? No? Ok. Option two.

Option 2: 

Talk to yourself. Open up the voice-to-text feature on whatever device you’ve got handy & go to town asking yourself (and replying, of course) what your fic/storyline is all about. Turn your brain off, open your mouth, and let the self-love fly –seriously! Just go ahead and boost your own written work with the same aplomb you boost your favorite works. Talk about everything –the quirks and nuances, the samenesses and uniquenesses, the narrative strengths and weaknesses –just as if you were talking about that one book that changed your life that one summer. By the time you’re done poppin’ off in your favor, you ought to have plenty of material to get you started on a solid summary.

Option 3:

Ask a friend to read your story and ask them what they thought. This should give you some basic material to work up a summary. Consider giving them a shout-out in your notes section/dedication page.

Option 4:

Pay someone to write your summary for you. Why the fuck not? You suck at summaries, right? You’re reading this post ‘cause you’re hoping there’s some type of magic solution for getting out of sucking at summaries, right? Well, here it is: Float your friend/mutual/beta/neighbor a couple o’ bones to do the less fun part of writing for you.

Option 5:

CHEAT & PLAGIARIZE your way into a summary (part one). Yup, that’s what I said. Cheat by plagiarizing yourself (not someone else; should go without saying, but still) by using the “first and last” technique. Start by chosing two significant points in your story. Examples:

First paragraph of your first chapter and the last paragraph of your first chapter

First paragraph of your first chapter and the last paragraph of your last chapter

First paragraph of your first act and the last paragraph of your second act

Do you see the pattern? You’re looking for the beginning of a significant “something” and the ending of a corresponding significant “something.” Try not to pick just anything at random, look for two things that actually match or parallel in some way.

Once you’ve got it, open up a separate doc, copy/paste them together to make one huge paragraph. HERE’S THE FUN PART, hack and slash the holy bejesus out of that paragraph until it looks like a summary of your work. When I say hack and slash the holy bejesus out if it, by the way, I MEAN IT! Be brutal! This is a summary, not a brand new piece of literature.

IRL EXAMPLES:

Goldilocks is looking for just the right things in her life. After breaking beds and burning her mouth on porridge, she’s given up all hope. (Thanks to NJ for this gem!)

Little Red Riding-Hood

(NB: These paragraphs are short enough you don’t have to copy/paste them; you can just scan for all the words & phrases you’d want to mine. Larger paragraphs will require the extra step of copy/pasting.)

These are screen shots of the first paragraph, as well as the final paragraph of Little Red Riding-Hood. Scanning what’s there, a possible summary may look like this:

“Little Red Riding-Hood had a good, but never very well, grandmother who lived in a wood. After many wonderful things befell Red Riding-Hood, she got in some trouble which she needed saving from. Luckily, a woodman arrived.”

Perhaps it’s not the best summary you’ve ever read, but it does its job. This makes the “first and last” technique a valuable tool to keep in your back pocket for those times when you’re really stuck.

Option 6:

CHEAT & PLAGIARIZE your way into a summary (part two). Do the opposite of hack and slash –take all your discarded lines and give them a home. Throw them into a blender, make word smoothies out of them, and use all those beautiful misfit lines to create a summary. They were supposed to be in this story one way or another anyway. Might as well let them be the first breath of life your readership gets from this new world you’ve just created. Right?

Option 7:

CHEAT & PLAGIARIZE your way into a summary (part three). This one is tricky because, if you overdo it, you could end up spoiling your entire plotline. For this technique, pull out a few of your favorite quotations from your storyline –they can be dialogue quotes or line quotations. Some writers will stop here and simply post their chosen quotation in the summary section. That’s definitely an excellent option. If you’re bumping up against a hard deadline, this is a solid go-to plan. Use it at your leisure.

If you have the time, I suggest you collect these quotations, add them into a soufflé, bake a 400℉ (200 ℃), and use this fragrant mélange to build your summary.

I’m purposefully using the weird food analogy, including standard to metric conversion to illustrate the point: This is not like Tips #5 & 6 where there is no real danger of accidentally giving your own spoilers. You see, for me at least, the lines that tend to be my favorite quotations are often those lines that occur during moments of major emotional upheaval for my characters, which, in turn, usually happen during a climactic scene. If you’re not careful, you just might over (or under) bake that soufflé and be left with something you’ll have to mess with way too much to be worth your time. Might as well hit the drive thru.

In other words, be careful which quotations you pull & how you mix them all up to construct your summary; you want to make sure you’re not giving away too much of your story.

~~

There you have it, seven different ways to help you figure how to suck less ass at summary writing. With any luck, this will give you plenty more time to apply your ass sucking skills elsewhere.

Gracias por su atención/Thanks for your attention,

After a short break for Gallavich Week, we’re back with the Writer’s Spotlight, this time bringing you an interview you won’t want to miss with the delightful Jackie ( @jackieq ) aka J_Q, author of dozens of Gallavich fics, including PikUp, Cubicle Wars, Paradise City and the Holding Out for A Hero series.

GT: Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

J: I’m…a college instructor, teaching technical writing, critical thinking, and public speaking.

I have two teenagers and one husband…and (poor @wehangout will be envious) we just got a puppy. She’s a 9 week old terrier/shih tzu.

I live in western Canada and I’ve been in this fandom, my first ever fandom, for 4 years this month.

Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich

Characters: Ian Gallagher, Mickey Milkovich, Mandy Milkovich, Sandy Milkovich, the Gallaghers, other Milkoviches, Original Characters

Ratings: Explicit

Summary:

Enemy lines (idiom): the territory controlled by the enemy

In this slow burn, enemies to lovers story, a social justice warrior and a lawyer go head to head and learn that sometimes your worst enemy is your past and the control it has over your heart.

According to Mickey Milkovich, the last thing he ever wanted to become was a goddamn social justice warrior, but life had other plans for him. When the authors asked what he thought about this fic, Mickey replied: Who the fuck are you callin’ a social justice warrior? Imma protest the shit outta this story. #ProtestMyAss #FightFor15 #DefundThePigs #FuckULookingAt #🖕

According to Ian Gallagher, the only thing he ever wanted to become was a social justice warrior, but life had other plans for him as well. When Ian was asked about the fic, he said: Holy fuck, is Mickey here? You tell him that I’m gonna sue his ass in every court in the land, including but not limited to, the Supreme fucking Court!

Check #EnemyLines out here.

Thank you for everyone who read along and supported us with kudos and comments. You guys have been amazing and if we hadn't read over your kind words and appreciation multiple times, we wouldn't have gotten out of the writer's block that happened around ch.40 that quick. ❤️

We're leaving that universe with a melancholic feeling behind, since the characters grew so much on us. But we're happy to say that THIS FIC IS NOW COMPLETED and are looking forward to the new readers who'll start their journey NOW.

And thank you Jackie for being the best writing coach a girl could ask for. I've learnt so much from you and will forever keep this year in my heart ♥️

Thank you for everyone who helped with ideas, research and betaing and made this fic what it is ❤️❤️❤️

Love,

J&J

The kiss.