werds is for nerds

You have to love the art of words for its own sake. Love the sound of words--how you can make music of a million different rhythms and moods, how the words and sentences you choose can make a million different atmospheres. Love what you can do with words--paint an image, share an emotion, put a person into a scene that only exists in the world of imagination. Love the different ways you can use words--different points of view and tenses, different formats and styles that can each provide a different experience of the story for the reader. You have to love words as your artistic tool and delight in learning new ways to wield them and new effects that you can create with them.

GLOVED FOX WRITER CHAT - June Edition - Summer is calling… or is it?

Gather around the campfire, dear patrons. Ready the blackfly repellent, prepare the smores, and hold flashlights beneath your chins because it is officially camp season.

(Unless you live in the southern hemisphere where it is currently winter. I am not at all jealous, who said that?!?!?!)

Pride month is very much underway, and today, we have a special challenge.

Your challenge? You know those silly, cheesy horror stories that seem to always pop up when googling "short campfire horror". You know the ones. The couple out for a drive and oh no there's a murderer on the loose and he has a hook for a hand! Or maybe that one about the grumpy old man who kills trick or treaters… or that one about the haunted lighthouse!

(I am very much showing my age with these suggestions, aren't I.)

Yes, the task is to write a short fiction! And to make the challenge more interesting… you have to do it in THIRTEEN SENTENCES. No more! Ready your commas and semi-colons, you will need them.

Be delightful. Be spoopy. Scare us shitless. Be unapologetically queer doing it.

Happy Pride everyone! >:)

For those who do not want to write a story:

Which queer identity do you find yourself assigning to your characters the most? Why is it important to you to showcase this identity? Is it one you happen to share with them?

Bonus!!

Have you ever re-imagined one of your stories or characters? Was it an alternate universe, a complete revision, or a necessary change? What new things did you discover about your story/character along the way?

Answer with reblog and tag with #glovedfoxwriterchat !

About Event

Last Month's Chat

taglist!! (yell if want on or off; also yell if you want a reminder 10 ish days prior to event)

@sunrisinguniverse

@thebookishkiwi @sodaliteskull @purple-dinosaur27

@write-with-will @traderotales @foxgloves-garden @seaglasswrites

The local gay bar, ladies night, a safe haven for lesbians.

You see her across the floor - smiling, beautiful, dancing with her friends - and your heart trips over itself in your chest. You want to go over and talk to her, dance with her, kiss her under the laser lights skittering across the crowd, but your nerves get the better of you, and so there at the bar you stay.

You flag down the bartender, get her to pour you something potent enough to give you some of that good ol' liquid courage. She gives you a sympathetic smile as she sets the coupe glass down in front of you.

The alcohol burns on the first sip, lights you up in a way that you hope will carry you across the room. When you glance over your shoulder, however, she's gone.

Movement in your periphery, and suddenly she's there - stunning and breathless - loudly calling out for a vodka soda.

Now's your chance, and you take it, turning to her, laying on the charm, hoping against hope. Her face doesn't fall - it flares into fury - lips curling back and teeth bared as she regards you.

"What?! Ew, I'm not gay!"

Your heart falls, bitter bile curdling in your throat, because this wasn't one of your kind, a woman here to partake in the pleasure of other women.

This was Hetero Jessica, and she was not here for you.

6 - Something they are better at than they think? Something they are worse at?

Harvie is an excellent pilot, even though by the time Super Nova has rolled around she's lost a lot of her confidence. Due to her upbringing at a planet-based trader port and her time crewing on Morning Star, she's learned a lot about how to troubleshoot ship engines and specifically how far within safe operating temperatures she can push while maneuvering. Without air in space and with tiny shielded nuclear reactors as engines, the ships in the Nova universe are super prone to overheating! She's NOT good at managing herself, despite thinking she is. She thinks she comes off as suave, that she can constantly make sound decisions and keep herself under control. Before canon, those thoughts probably ended with her drinking a bottle of whiskey when she started having too much fun at an inn and waking up on the floor of the room with a shoe missing. During canon, she's struggling with having to suddenly fill a role far out of her depth in a war zone. Asking for help? Well, who even knows how to possibly help with the impossible situation that she's in? 24- What calms them? What angers them?

Teela has been through some very heavy trauma, especially leading up to the series start (i maybe need to start getting more into the whump community with this novel but i digress LOL). She gets extremely angry and riled up whenever she perceives she's cornered or has any inkling that she will be manhandled/touched without her explicit permission. The Order and what has happened to her makes her angry, especially in book 2 when she's given more of a platform to tell her story. She soothes herself spending time by herself originally, but starts to warm up to people as the series goes on. She learns to speak Common fluently, and I see by book 2 her leaning into small-talking skills she had from her upbringing to chit-chat with people and feel safer around them. Being intimate with Harvie is another major way of soothing them both and avoiding difficult thoughts in the second novel. 39 - What is their guilty pleasure?

Jethra - I appreciate you asking about the supporting cast as well. I don't get to gush about them nearly as much. I feel like Jethra is a guy with some very wholesome and in depth hobbies--he probably samples dessert at every single restaurant and has a crazy rubric he's developed to rate them all against each other. I can see him loving NICE things. Luxury meals. Luxury chocolate. Luxury clothes.

21 - How did their childhood room look?

Eris - born to generationally wealthy parents, Eris' childhood was that of a privileged spacer. She always lived in lovely loft bedrooms in airy penthouses, luxurious spaces when every bit of square-footage is at a premium! I'm sure she had a room filled with little nice things -- hand sewn quilts patterned with metallic thread starcharts (surely the same beautiful quilts she's outfitted Teela's bed in, trying to offer her traumatized young housekeeper and personal assistant a bit of comfort). Eris strikes me as a child who would have done ballet and other disciplined physical activities. I can see the supplies for her activities taking up most of the space, as well as the ribbons and metals she won at various competitions. Shelves filled with treasures from a life well traveled would cover the walls, as her family certainly lugged her around League space on all sorts of luxurious holidays.