Yes, I'm supporting this. I have a paid account, but all the same, LJ management keeps fking with people.

...



For those of you who don't already know, there has been a strike scheduled for Friday, March 21st, 2008, during which we hope to have many members of LiveJournal provide LJ with absolutely no content for twenty-four hours. This means no posting and no commenting. If you post elsewhere and have it set up to be posted through a feed on LiveJournal, don't do it. Stay away from LiveJournal for twenty-four hours. That can't be too hard, can it? I know some of you are probably quite active on LiveJournal and will find it hard to stay away for an entire day, just as I will, but this is something that needs to be done, to show the people running LiveJournal that we're watching the changes they are making, that we're paying attention, that we're discontent, and that we want to be heard and taken in to consideration. We are not simply users who can be tossed to the side and ignored. We are the people who make up LiveJournal. Without us, without the content we create, without our words, our voices, our creativity, our participation, there would be no LiveJournal. This is a fact, and it needs to be realized and understood and then taken in to consideration when making decisions regarding the way that LiveJournal is run. The strike is only a few days away, so there isn't all too much time to prepare. While this is unfortunate, it isn't enough to keep this strike from taking place. It will take place, the second it is meant to, and it would be best to have as many people take part as possible. Please, spread the word. Spread it fast. There are only a few days to organize this. If you find that you care about LiveJournal or care about the people you interact with on LiveJournal or simply want it to remain a place where you can entertain yourself without constant censorship and money-hungry practices being thrown in without the consideration of those who use the service, act now. If you don't wish to spread the word, that is fine, but please: refrain from using LiveJournal on Friday, March 21st. Do something else for a change. It's for a good cause. (:

For background on this strike and why it is being held, please read the following posts:
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/394838.html
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395310.html

To find out exactly when the strike begins and ends, depending on where you are located, please see this:
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395125.html

What's this about?

* It's about free and ad-free LiveJournal accounts being abolished for new members, ignoring the advice from the newly-formed Advisory Board.
* It's about LJ staff trying to sneak this decision in under the radar, and when people found out, telling the users it was done 'to make the signup process less confusing'.
* It's about LJ staff failing to apologize for trying to hide the facts from view and for lying about the actual reasons for their actions.
* And finally, it's about the latest decision to hide certain user interests from the list of Most Popular Interests, some of them being fanfiction, bisexuality, sex and depression. This decision was not announced or explained in any way. Users found out for themselves.

-Taken from the journal of m03m

AND ICONS TO SUPPORT THIS:


(Icons not made by me.)

Copy and repost this in your journal and spread the word as much as possible. (There's a copy and paste bit HERE.)

...

I love livejournal, and despite its management screwing up like this, I don't want to leave. Nor do I want to be pushed around. I'm in - are you?

Title-- Hazrun C-6 (part three)
Rating and Warnings-- PG-13; hunting.
Species and Characters-- Species is Aerha. Characters are XenBi (narrator) and VetDef. (Please note that, despite duplicate names, these characters are wholly separate from those of Jackpot.
Summary and Notes-- (Part One, Part Two.) After a particularly devastating assignment that halves the number of living crew, the survivors of Hazrun C-6 start repairing their ship and scouring for new Aerhai to fill the roles left by the dead.

( To a rural, a few hours' trot is nothing. To a spacer, it's a bleeding marathon. )

Title-- Hazrun C-6 (part two)
Rating and Warnings-- G; no warnings.
Species and Characters-- Species is Aerha. Characters are XenBi (narrator), Pilot, Eng, Am, and VetDef. (Please note that, despite duplicate names, these characters are wholly separate from those of Jackpot.
Summary and Notes-- (Part One.) After a particularly devastating assignment that halves the number of living crew, the survivors of Hazrun C-6 start repairing their ship and scouring for new Aerhai to fill the roles left by the dead.

( We didn't get any more hails. )

Title-- Hazrun C-6
Rating and Warnings-- G; no warnings.
Species and Characters-- Species is Aerha. Characters are XenBi (narrator), Pilot, and Eng. (Please note that, despite duplicate names, these characters are wholly separate from those of Jackpot.
Summary and Notes-- After a particularly devastating assignment that halves the number of living crew, the survivors of Hazrun C-6 start repairing their ship and scouring for new Aerhai to fill the roles left by the dead.

( 'Hazrun C-6? Reading me?' )

Hi, guys. Can you help me out?

See, since I proved to myself that I can actually finish a novel (or a trilogy, as the case may be) by completing The Demon-God of Jubagh, I'm looking to up the ante this year. I have a list of projects that I want to finish. Genres range from high fantasy to sci-fantasy to science fiction. Though I set reasonable goals for myself, it's still waaay more than I've ever done before; even if I fall short, I'll still have done a lot.

When I finish these projects, I am going to need people to thoroughly review and critique them, because my goal is to self-publish them through Lulu.com (much like I'm doing with Jubagh right now!). Critiquing takes a lot of patience, a love of reading, a great eye for detail, a solid knowledge of the English language, and the ability to constructively criticize something you may either hate or love - and remain objective. You'll need to tell me if I leave loose ends, if I don't explain something enough, if I have too much unnecessary detail, if my characterization is too flat or too cliche or too complicated, if the pacing is too slow or too fast, if I've gotten something entirely incorrect (as I might well do when trying to be technical with sci-fi; I am no engineer!), if something is confusing, and, of course, what you feel is good and original and doesn't need changed.

It's a tall order. I'm picky and will have flea-combed the manuscript(s) before I ever send it/them to you, so hopefully the really obvious stuff, as well as the grammatical things, will all be taken care of well before you open the file. It's up to you to catch the subtle things that I can't. And each manuscript will probably be anywhere from 50-70k, with one in particular tending towards 90-100k.

It's also worthy of noting that any and all reviewers get a free copy of the published manuscript, if/when I finish revising it post-reviews and publish it through Lulu.com... as well as a mention in the book itself under "dude, you rock, thank you so much."

Interested? Speak up! And please, mention which genres you'd feel comfortable tackling; be as specific as you'd like. ("I can critique steampunk fantasy, but not technical science fiction" would be useful to know, for example! Yes, there will be steampunk, and yes, there will be tech scifi. No, they aren't in the same story. ^_^)

On that note, for your reference, a tentative list of my projects includes:

• an expanded (unabridged) version of The Demon-God of Jubagh
  
• a second trilogy set in the Jubagh 'verse*; there will be steampunk, magic, critters/aliens, disc-shaped worlds, and intersun travel in giant freaking boats
  
• an action-packed science fiction story that involves Terole and Drakka
  
• the first in The Panthera Walkers trilogy; this is the high fantasy one, folks - shapeshifting, magic systems, nature gods, and culture-clash galore
  
• a mostly-fantasy werewolf/shapeshifter novel with references to a parallel but modern-day Earth; it's ... kinda sci-fantasy, mostly beastie-based

*Yes, I could not leave well enough alone. You know you couldn't get enough of your favorite characters from Jubagh, anyways! The fun starts in February, if all goes well; keep an eye on jubagh! Oh, and for those going, "What do you mean, a second trilogy...?", keep in mind that The Demon-God of Jubagh was split into three Books ... and since I'm doing the "unabridged" version, each of those Books will be made into a more complete, mostly-stand-alone novel with a lot more flesh and depth, hence forming a trilogy, rather than an inherently omnibus novel.

[disclaimer] In all honesty, life is crazy, and I fully expect something to come up and bring my head outta the clouds. All the same, I will do my best to get these done before 1-15-2009, and even if I don't manage all of them... I will finish some or most of them. (I also reserve the right to exchange projects if some new plotbeasts snatches my jugular and demands to be written. It does happen, you know. *points at Jubagh and grins*) So, while it's entirely possible you might volunteer to critique a story that I don't finish, please realize that I'm going to do my best, and that at least some of these will need folks willing to help out. [/disclaimer]

Thanks in advance for your comments, guys. It'd be awesome to have at least three folks critiquing each manuscript; and, of course, the more the merrier! If I have to send out ten free copies of each book because that many people pitched in, I'd be so delighted.

...and now, since it's 1h20 AM here, I might want to sleep. G'night!

I'm going to make a good effort at reviving and enlivening pern_fic, so if anyone of you is a Dragonriders of Pern fan and would be interested in writing/reading some good fanfiction, as well as participating in some discussions and etc, feel free to wander over!

"What is that?"

The grey-furred Nila looked up, no expression crossing his flattened face. Yellow eyes sought the origin of the inquisitive voice, but the forest greenery was thick and concealing. He drew his brows low to express disapproval. "It is a drum," he answered flatly, four-fingered hands stilled on the wooden carving. He had been binding the head of the drum, made of Leasheas hide, to the mouth.

"What's a ... drum?" the voice asked, carefully pronouncing the new word. "What's it do?"

( 'A drum is this. It makes noise.' )

So, I've made the decision to only publish Book One: Jubagh of The Demon-God of Jubagh quasi-trilogy.

Why?

Well, for one, this is largely for my parents' benefit. Neither of them are huge readers, and Book One alone is 160-some pages when formatted for book-size. This will make it a lot more manageable for them.

For two, I don't have time to give Books Two & Three the attentive revisions that they deserve. Not to mention the careful eye to detail while formatting them.

For three, by printing only Book One, I'll have a good example of how things work with Lulu.com so that I can tweak and refine the process for Books Two & Three.

I still plan on releasing an "omnibus" edition of all three books in one fat novel, with custom cover-art and all, but I just don't have the time to do so now. I'll use my vacation days to go over, edit, and revise Books Two & Three so that, when I'm back in January, I can knock the other two publications out quickly.

Look at me, talking about publications. *giggle* I had a conversation today with one of my coworkers about Nanowrimo and Lulu.com and all of this crazy stuff. I think I may have awed her. Completely unintentional, I swear; I was just kind of geeking and she got a O_O expression.

Those of you waiting on Jubagh - be patient with me. You'll get the whole big thing in January, once it's been cleaned up and prettified. I promise it'll be worth the wait!

jubagh is done.

The Demon-God of Jubagh is done. Rough draft finished.

NOVEL COMPLETE.

Wow.

Now for the editing... but first, blessed sleep...

Guyz. Lookit.



*flex*

Now, to finish Book Three in and of itself...

EDIT:

The official one!:



*grin*

Okay, okay. I'm woman enough to admit it. I failed hard.

Most of you likely know this, but for the folks who don't - I'm ADD. Somehow, in challenging Chaz to prove himself and then offering to compete with him, I miraculously forgot this one important factoid. It's hard enough for a normal person to focus on one thing for 12 straight hours. For me, it's downright impossible. My brain shut down and refused to function within the first four hours. Even after I tried doing something else and it rebooted, it bluescreened whenever I thought about going back to the new story. (Yes, my brain is a crappy Windows machine. You can't tell me you're surprised.)

So, I failed at writing 50k in 24 hours.

However. Before my brain dissolved into a steaming pile of mush, I was writing at a pace of over 2k an hour. And it was not a steaming pile of feces, either.

Which means that, had I made it all 24 hours - I would've had 50k at the end.

After NaNoWriMo, and after Jubagh is finished, I am trying this thing again. I'll leave myself a few days to write 24 individual hours, in whatever increments won't make my head essplode, and see if I can make 50k.

Granted, I won't be able to say "I wrote fifty thousand words in a day!"

But "I wrote fifty thousand words in twenty-four hours!" sounds just as impressive. *grin*

I'll keep you posted on when I try to drive myself insane again. It'll likely be after December.

Oh Chaaaaaz~! What was your end result, O Claimer Of The Impossible?

That's right, I said it. Jubagh is cluttering up my journal and probably spamming a lot of people who aren't interested in being spammed.

SO!

jubagh! Friend this journal if you want to keep up with the story from here on out. Nothing is friendslocked, and I'm not going to monitor who friends it and friend you back - it's just my journal for Jubagh bits.

I've crossposted all the past bits over to that journal with the original times, dates, and etcs, but I'm not going to delete the original posts off this journal just yet. I'm too fond of everyone's comments! =3

Again, friend jubagh to continue keeping track of the story! No further snippets will be posted on this journal.

To my fellow NaNos - keep writing! =D
To everyone else - you just rule. ^_^

Title-- The Demon-God of Jubagh (book two, part fifteen)
Rating and Warnings-- G; mild language.
Cast-- Rai Gerring, defected black magician (human man); Brandon Styhan, exiled paladin-warrior (human man); Lhafa Softstep, blind voodoo warrior (baghan woman); Jujinkajou, native guide (shapechanger Sivefi man).
Previously-- Book One: Jubagh. Earlier parts of Book Two: Sivef.

( Rai forced a smile at the Sivefi who seemed determined to pack himself into as small a ball as possible... )

Title-- The Demon-God of Jubagh (book two, part fourteen)
Rating and Warnings-- G; mild language.
Cast-- Rai Gerring, defected black magician (human man); Brandon Styhan, exiled paladin-warrior (human man); Lhafa Softstep, blind voodoo warrior (baghan woman); Jujinkajou, native guide (shapechanger Sivefi man).
Previously-- Book One: Jubagh. Earlier parts of Book Two: Sivef.

( The lady looked surprised, and maybe a little hurt, when he pulled away so suddenly... )

Title-- The Demon-God of Jubagh (book two, part thirteen)
Rating and Warnings-- G; mild language.
Cast-- Rai Gerring, defected black magician (human man); Brandon Styhan, exiled paladin-warrior (human man); Lhafa Softstep, blind voodoo warrior (baghan woman); Jujinkajou, native guide (shapechanger Sivefi man).
Previously-- Book One: Jubagh. Earlier parts of Book Two: Sivef.

( Rai paused in his inspection of the strange, woven curtain that sectioned off the sivefan bathroom... )