Character Picspirtation Time !

(Well, these are the most idealized versions of our narrators)

So, most of these characters really didn't have a lot of specific picspirations, but these are pretty darn close.

Jonah Morrow, 19

Louis Tomlinson has been the Soul inspiration ever since I found a picture of his eyes on We Heart It and used it in a chapter. At the time he still had that bowl cut thing and his look didn't exactly match the character. He  fits Jonah a bit more (well, he's lost a lot of weight, so not so much now) but, in my head Jonah pulls of the facial hair less successfully.

Corrine, 19

She also has a port wine stain on her face and neck..something like this

 I happened across a photo of Kayla Scoldero and her character on Skins, Effy looks SO CLOSE to how I picture Corrine (minus the leather jacket and eye makeup) ecspecially in this photo. I also think Corrine has a little bit of Kstew's attitude (minus the cheating)

Abigail

Zendaya was one of the first picspirations I had. I think her in the yellow is exactly how Jonah first saw her, but the photo in the blue is the expression she has on her face in general. Also those curls !


The Morrow Family

Aris Morrow, 52

Mrs. Morrow, 48

(Is it bad I still don't know her first name ?)

Ethan Morrow, 21

Oh, and there's TWO of him !

Corinne's Group

Phillip, 19

1999 Heath Ledger!

Phillip's Mom (Jillian), 37

Sevin Cademir, 18

Okay, I think that's it. Let's get to the next chapter !

Chapter 4
I'd like to say I hit a wall, but honestly I've just been letting myself get distracted by research to actually get words in, so I'm not as ahead as I'd like to be. Posting this now may put me behind in posting, but we will see what this week brings. I also predict a double chapter post at some point.

Corrine and Jonah meet to question Abigail, but she is just as clueless as they are. Will the answer lie in looking through The Eastham Record ?

Chapter Four Link
Playlist Link

-1- Made For This by Train
-2- Take on Me by The A-Ha (This is from a point when I was going to set the story in the 90s)
-3-Fast Car by Tracy Chapman
-4- Shot at The Night by The Killers

Blessed Souls Redux

 

HMLIS Origins
So, I usually wait until the end of a serial to do this, but I wanted  to explain a bit how HMLIS came to be.

Ever since I decided I was going to kill all the characters in BH and reincarnate them as humans with no memory of being angels and new lives I had one scene in my head. It was of a girl (Rin) and her boyfriend (Dark) using a stolen credit card to buy persciption drugs and then getting high in his mom (the Demon Queen) house. And then there was going to be an art student (Soul)...I just had no idea what they were going to do, but somehow they were going to go back to being who they were. I have an outline(ish) for this...it was called Blessed Souls. This is literally all the outline looked like for a year except with 2 scenes (that I may still use) lined out:



A coming of age story about a girl on the cusp of discovering what her life is going to be about. She has to make decesions for the first time in her life including who she lets into her life.

Corrine- Living in a group home which she sneaks out of to see her boyfriend. She is a high school senior who has no idea who she is outside of the guy she is seeing. She can’t see beyond the moment and is often trapped in depression and is looking for something beautiful in life.

Soul - A musical students who has drive and feels an amount of guilt and is fascianted by Rin’s freedmon,


Dark - Bad influence who clings to Corrine and her existence. He needs her.

 But then I took a break from Serial-ing and when I came back, that BH world wasn't in me anymore. Even worse...I had NO RECOLLECTION of writing it, so how could I even begin a sequel. Still deep down I wanted to write the girl who would be Corrine. As you all know, I pushed it back and rebooted Vice, but  I eventually got back when I saw something that I will talk more about later.

I Did A Thing
So,I guess one thing I learned from doing  HMLIS while doing Vice is that I like working in two different worlds and having another serial to work on as a "break". So, when I was getting particularly fustrated about a part of HMLIS, I started working some on Vice 2.

I'm mostly just writing scratch scenes and story vomit, but so far it's 1,000 words.

Hmm, I suppose this will beg some UL questions...I haven't written anything, but it will probably end up being a novella - length thing. The only thing I really have done is the title and plot.

Chapter 3
Previously...Boy Meets Girl. Other Girl Meets Boy. Boy Tells Other Girl That Girl is Dead. 
Chapter 3

Playlist
So, that music thing where they talk about the song that is playing is going to happen a couple more times.

- 1- It's Time by Imagine Dragons (Of course they make an appearance)
- 2- Give Me Love by Ed Sheerhan (He had to have been on someone's Top 40 bingo)
 -3- Spirited Away by Joe Hishani (More violins!)

Here We Go...Again

 
How My Light is Spent
So, I think many of you have figured out that the story within this story (Aris Morrow's book, How My Light is Spent) is a line from a poem by John Milton, a16th century  blind poet. I could look for some greater theme between the poem and this serial, but guys researching poetry is hard.  You have to read it multiple times to get all the meaning and it just gets complicated. I just needed a line from a blind writer and this sounded nice so...title !

But, honestly, I wouldn't look too much into the title...it was really just fulfilling my wish of using a piece of poetry as a title ala Of Mice and Men and Catcher in The Rye.

HMLIS POV 2

Another thing you may want to keep in mind (and something I'm just now realizing) the narrators are somewhat unreliable.

Oh, right. Okay, you all are going to notice A THING with a name. And it's not the Phillip name I had in the sample (who is btw no way related to LiLe.)

Chapter 2
It's a girl !

Chapter 2
Playlist

-1-Mr. Brightside by The Killers (They are going to make a few appearances... because of reasons. I used them for the ending of Vice too which is why I said it was an appropriate transition)

-2- Somebody Told Me by The Killers (see ? They make another apperance)

-3- It's My Life by Tim Myers (From the trailer)

-4- Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard (So..The Frames version is a cover, this is the original...it's from an Irish indie romantic-drama film)

Here We Go...

**Life Update**
So, things have been changing, I've decided to write with my married name, but I think we can all just roll with it!

How My Light is Spent
I'm not even going to play any games. It's time to let you all in on a little something called How My Life is Spent. I haven't been working on this too long, I wrote the first words on October 2013, but this idea has been simmering for longer. I'm about six chapters ahead of this and have an outlin-ish thing, so knowing so much ahead of time is a new experience for me.

I do want to explain one misconception that you all gleaned from the snippets that I kind of lead you on about. I never let you in on the gender of the other narrator;this serial does have two narrators and one is male and the other is female. This chapter is the male POV and the next is the female.  I'm excited to be finally be working on something new, so here we go.

Chapter 1
Playlist
Whose ready for Top 40 Bingo ?

-1- Ho Hey by The Lumineers
-2- Don't Stop Believin' by Vitamin String Quartet
-3- Home by Phillip Phillips
-4- Skinny Love by Birdy (Although this is a total Parisobel song to me now, I had it before Lux)

Oh Look, A Gif Post

Hey, Shawna is this GIF post you stalling on posting HMLIS ?

Quick note: I skipped a comment asking about El's name. It comes from this tendancy for characters in CP novels to have one letter names so technically his name is EL but it sounds like "L".

When I see something in a movie/book/tv/commercial/movie/Lile story that resembles something I wrote in HMLIS

How I felt finishing Vice

My muse when I decided I needed a 2-week writing break

When I post a chapter and realize I still haven't even edited the next one.

How I look emulating the cyberpunk genre:

Me after I post a chapter of something and  now have to write the rest

That One Time I Tried To Outline An Entire Serial #lifeofapanster

Although, I did outline HMLIS b/c of the dual POVs

When I was TDOSHing Sundays and started to like CPShawna

CPShawna After She Says Anything

 

Me When I Read You All's Funny Comment

So, about On Higher Ground:

If you asked me about the sequels/companions I'm thinking about writing about

When I actually have to sit down and make the ideas into words

 Me After writing one line of dialogue during have writer's block

Reading My Own Drafts

Lile and I

Whenever Lile says anything about Bellum

When You All Realize I made this post, but I'm not Posting HMLIS Today

But wait ! 

I Do Have Another En Moritas to Share and this one has a name ! 

The Persistence of Time

- Ce'st La Mort by The Civil Wars

Vice Wrap Up !

Let's Talk About Vice !

The Big Change
In Vice I made changes that were more than just story. One of the biggest changes I made in Vice thematically was the amount of violence. Between the time I was writing this, Sandy Hook, Zimmerman and Aurora and a lot of other shooting happened and I just didn't feel comfortable writing about gun violence anymore. Sara never shoots anyone and when Luce does it Sara chastises  him for it. I know it may have bowlderized the characters a bit, but, I have to say, doing this also helped me understand Sara's character more. In both versions of the story she joins up with Rayne as a hacker, not an assassin so she really isn't a killer. Her pre-quel story will explore this.

Also, Alan doesn't really kill anyone, but in retrospect it never made sense for him to kill in Veritas. He is sort of thrown into this world and in reality he wouldn't be able to just shoot people and be okay with it. Which is why in Vice it's a recurring joke how bad he is with a gun, to Vice!Alan just holding the gun is enough of an intimidation.

Toxic Pixie Dream Girl
I don't know if this is a trope or if I heard this somewhere, but somewhere along the line I decided I wanted Minnie to be a Toxic Pixie Dream Girl. I wanted her to come into Alan's life, make things feel a little better and more fun but  also ruin his life because she's just selfish, young and has a toxic personality. She does this a little in Veritas, but I wanted to pump it up to 11 in Vice. If Sara is an anti-hero then Minnie is an anti-love interest

...And yes, despite her nearly killing him and being a little selfish Alan still can't let her go.

Name-Spirtations
As we learned from TDOSH, Shawna is unoriginal at times and sometimes I have a lapse at names for things. So I took names from people/places in Cyberpunk lit for some items in Vice. I think I mentioned some, but here they all are:

New Rose Hotel Noir (Sara's wine of choice) - Named after a William Gibson short story New Rose Hotel

Asimov Hotel - Named after the CP lit magazine Asimov, which is named after the writer

Gravity's Angels is a band in Vice, but in real life is  Micheal Swanwick short story collection

The Metronome Hotel -  Another cyberpunk lit magazine

Arkham School - Named after Arkham Publishing, a house that published CP fiction, but their mission statement is to publish "weird" fiction.

Also, the briefly mentioned Pretty Boy is named after the titular character in a Pat Cadigan's short story Pretty Boy Crossover . I'll also note Pat is one of the few female CP writers. Speaking of CP fiction:

The Research
I had to dig into my old research when rebooting this to get back into the genre. I even skimmed a thesis called (wait for it) Technology and The Vulnerable Body in  Feminist Post-Cyberpunk Science Fiction. It talks about disability/cybernetic in cyberpunk fic and I used it to help a little bit when writing Luce's character. I also liked that it referenced and explained stories that went over my head.

 Thanks to Google Books and Creative Commons (and Wikipedia)  I was able read a couple of CP short stories for inspirations. A lot of them are fairly weird and too out there for me to use like Bruce Sterling's Mozart in Mirrorshades, which is about a company that uses time travel to take historical artifacts and the consequences of the Alternate timelines.. Another one I liked, but was a little to odd was called Pretty Boy Crossover about a young man in a club who is being encouraged by his friend and businessman to sign up to live a new existence as data, where he will be kept young forever in a screen in the club.

But, the one story that really influenced me is a Micheal Swanwick short story called Ancient Engines. It's very short and takes place in a bar and is basically about an old man explaining  to a young, arrogant android about how he won't live forever.

Sound familiar ?

Yeah, I pretty much "sampled" the story for the last lines in Vice. But this story also convinced me to make Alan an android.

Other things
The only thing I never explained was how Luce is able to lift the gun without touching it. It's because his cybernetic insides have magnets that allow him to manipulate certain metal objects. I kind of added this in to make you all think he was an android.

Future Fridge Horror
Oh, also apparently they have made a human liver using a 3D printer, so maybe we aren't that far from creating humans ????

What's Up Next ?
You guys....you can get a little excited and I'm going to get a little scared because I am going to open the vault for En Moritas. I now realize Lile's trepedation about opening vaults because this thing has been in the Vault since March 2011.

Untitled En Moritas #1
This story kind of influenced Vice because it focuses a lot on war and the effects. There is one line in particular that sums up why I wrote Vice. This didn't have a playlist, but I picked an unused song from my Vice playlist, Ashes by The Bengsons for it.

So, I'm going to set it up a little bit. I think this story will actually make more sense since I TDOSH'd Sundays recently.

 It takes place 2 years after Sundays ( in the Veritas cannon) and Alex and Maxwell are still a thing. The story picks up after Alex has been on a 3-month leave to see his family. Also, (and this is never mentioned in the story) during the time Alex was gone their camp was bombed so, they've moved it somewhere else.

Sundays En Moritas

Double Chapter Post !

 A Note To Lile
I know, I know I'm always bringing up Lile, but I've been using her NAF playlist to write to (to switch things up from my own) and my favorite song has to be Keri Hilson's The Way You Love me. Anyway I think this lyric in the rap also totally fits Lux Aerterna that goes "you look like an angel, but you sexy as hell"

P.S To the three men who may reading this that is not an acceptable pick up line. Unless you're Ryan Gosling.

Other than that I don't have much to blog about, so straight to the good stuff !

Double Chapter Post 16 & 17
Wow, when was the last time I had one of these ? Don't get too used to it...I'm only doing this one because one of these is a shortie.

Previously....Alan's finally seen his mother and she's warned him he can't come home, which forces Alan to complete his job of helping Sara take down Julian Walker. But before he can finish, he may just be caught...

Chapter 16 
Playlist Here
-1- I Will Follow You Into The Dark (Instrumental) by Gavin Mikhail
-2- Too Late by M83
-3- Welcome Home, Son by Radical Face
-4- Radioactive Kings of Leon version covered by Boyce Avenue

Chapter 17
Playlist Here
-1- Turn Me On by The Grates
-2- All These Things I've Done by The Killers

Chapter Hoarding / Long Time No See...

Turning Pages
So, I've been working a lot on tweaking and writing some new Vice chapters to a point that I've been hoarding them in case I need to change continuity, so maybe there will be some double chapter posts in the future...maybe.

I've  also been writing some more of HMLIS and it's been interesting as always doing that with Vice. In HMLIS the characters don't swear much, so when I was working on Vice I noticed the characters suddenly weren't cursing anymore. So, there is something about HMLIS; not a lot of swearing.

HMLIS has a few similarities structurally to Lile's NAF, but much less gritty. Which is really just a segue to how much I am really enjoying NAF ! I would love to write a character like "April."

Speaking of Lile
So, as I stated I pulled a Lile last chapter because I had written the last scene of Chapter 14 months before the rest of the serial and it was kind of fun to tie all the events to that scene.

Like, originally I had imagined Luce was going to lose his leg in the serial from an explosion which is why he had trouble walking on the new leg. But, then I wanted Luce to already have a fake leg, so I had to figure out a way that he would need help walking on it...which is pretty much the only reason Rayne pulls it off.

Also I originally had the same "twist" from Vertias, that Alan's mother was the robot which is why he is thinking about his mother, but I changed it so that she was one of the scientist involved with his creation.

Your Questions !
What's up with OHG ?
*sighs* Okay, so as far as I'm concerned it's not technically 'cannon' anymore...kind of. I have an idea for one more UL, but it may not be something I get to until Fall 2014. With that said, I think it will keep most of the backstory and set up in OHG, but with a different plot. It will also not be called OHG.

Sidenote: I'm done remixing serials, but if I ever did remix UL I'd change it so that Sawyer is Caine's legitimate son and sort of second in command and Juliana is the girl who pulls him away from it. Then they'd go outside of the commune and "break bad" or something.  It'd be all about believing in something and then finding out that entire thing is a lie.

Ever thought of doing third person ?
Yes ! I think I blogged how I rewrote HMLIS in third person, but it just didn't flow as well...I'm thinking of doing a flash fiction in third person though...don't get excited.

Chapter 15
You guys, I have NO idea how this thing got so long...

Playlist
1. - Falling Away- by Big Scary
2 - 500 Miles by Sleeping At Last
Chapter 15...

Sara and her crew have been assigned to assassinate Julian Walker at the Peace Summits and Sara has decided to send Luce to boarding school to get him away from it all. She has also decided she isn't going to kill anyone and has a different idea of how she wants to do things. Will it work ? It all depends on everything going according to plan...