Delivery day!

Was actually two weeks ago.  I'm kinda lazy.

Yes, Siren is done and off to the betas, and I'm leaping forward to do the outline on Bulletproof.  I hope to have Siren out by the end of the year, but you know me and promises by now.  Naomi, as I have said before, was a difficult character to figure out.  For so much of the series thus far, she's been either a side character or a pushing point between Ophelia and Marcus.  She's been something that the other characters have to act against rather than her own self.  I think I finally found that self.  A good thing, as Naomi's role in the Grand Finale is huge.

And now looking forward to NaNoWriMo and Bonnie, my dear Bonners.

The most important event of the fall.

The weather is probably starting to cool if you live above the equator.  (Please, send me some.)  A lot of people out and about in the meat world with are extremely excited about the beginning of football season.  Yay, pigskins and violence!  Well, as much as I enjoy bacon and hitting things, my interest in sports rests in the negative, so my main reason for loving fall is this: TELEVISION PREMIERE SEASON!

Nikita: About to have its last hurrah, I'm afraid.  The third season got a little more sci-fi than its world could support, I must admit, but Nikita as a character, and the show as a whole, hit the right notes far more than the wrong.  I'm going to miss her terribly.

Arrow:  Back for a triumphant second season!  I've always been predisposed towards liking Ollie, but I have to say that Ammell is the best Ollie I've seen to date.  And the ensemble cast is perfect.  (I do wish someone other than Katie Cassidy had been cast as Laurel, though.  If--and I pray, I pray to the writer gods--Laurel is ever going to become Dinah Freaking Lance, she's going to have to step up hard.)

Elementary: I started watching this show mostly out of spite over the truly awful, racist, sexist bullshit hurled at Lucy Liu.  Once I settled in, however, I found myself honestly enjoying it.  Johnny Lee Miller hasn't been one of my favorite actors in the past, but he brings a brilliant nuance to his portrayal.  And Joan!

Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D:  Oh, please.  Like you didn't see this one coming.

Sleepy Hollow:  Or this one, either, for that matter.

I will never grow up past twelve.

Ye Olde Day Job is holding a "secret pal" game to boost morale; the basic gist is that we each have a secret pal that we're giving little gifts to each week, with a big reveal to take place in October.  Clearly, my secret pal knows me extremely well.  I wrote everything in longhand until I graduated college and got my first laptop (this is what happens when you're po'...and even as I type that I can picture the truly po' folks out there lining up to kick my ass, so never mind).  Though I've joined the modern world and do my drafting and editing out of a computer (likely thus saving myself early-onset arthritis in my fingers and wrists), I still do all of my outlining out of notebooks.  The prettiest notebooks I can find, with pens containing the shiniest and most childish of ink colors.  I carry them about, I cuddle them, I know this is strange.  A coworker actually had to ask me if I needed them removed from my possession until the day was over.

I might have bared my teeth and growled a little.  I'm not perfect.

However, now that I'm close to finishing Naomi's book (an admittedly hard birth), I'm starting to think ahead to post-Super things.  (Now you watch Bulletproof kick the living crap out of me.)  I've had a series of books centering around the Lilith myth chasing me since high school; they sort of haunt me.  I can't think of a better place to put the outlines.  Putting dark books under happy veneers always amuses me.

(Yes, that is my desk, and the rest of it is even worse.  I actually had to frame the picture carefully to avoid revealing people's sensitive information.  But I know where everything is!)

Fellow geeks, I say unto thee: chillax.

Yes, we've all heard the news by now.  Yes, Ben Affleck is going to be Batman.  The sky is falling, DC is doomed forever, we're all still going to see this movie but we are by-God use our Comic Book Guy voices as we do it.

Guys.  It's going to be all right.  Allow me to make a plea on behalf of Benny.

1) Gigli was a long time ago.  Lord help me if I was still held accountable for all of my lapses in taste and judgement over the years.

2) Argo.

3) Hollywoodland.

4) His directorial history.  I highly disliked Man of Steel on the basis of its being too grim and failing to understand the ultimate optimism of Supes in the slightest, but DC has decided to take their cinematic universe in a darker direction and it is what it is at this point.  Batman is a noir figure; Affleck is excellent at noir.

Give the man a chance, oh intarwebs.  I thought Chris Evans and Mark Rufalo were going to be steaming piles of cat mess when they were announced, and I could not imagine any other actors playing Steve Rogers or Bruce Banner now.

I just want to throw this out there.

So...Miley Cyrus, she of legal age, does a sexually provocative performance to Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines."  The world is horrified.

Robin Thicke, he who came up with the song in the first place, does a sexually provocative performance of "Blurred Lines" with Miley Cyrus.  The world says, "Nice suit, bro."

Male privilege doesn't get much more blunt than that, folks.

Ah, we are such strange creatures.

As I was a-writing today, I had to do something-awful-to-a-character-I-love/make-a-character-I-love-do-something awful/all-or-both-but-they-triumph/I'm-melodramatic-they-get-a-torn-nail at Ye Olde Day
Job.  And I broke down crying.  I mean, the ugly kind.  It was not a polite, ladylike lament.  There was snot.  People were concerned.  And I was completely at a loss as to how to explain it.

This is the thing.  I tend to grok towards certain character types, but I don't do Mary Sues.  (If anything, I'm often told that my characters are too snotty and aggressive.)  My persons all have quirks and flaws, sometimes very deep ones*.  I'm used to dealing with characters Being Very Naughty or going through Very Naughty things.  I giggle when I kill my darlings.  WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME HERE?  I used to be objective.  I swear I was.

...well, I could fake it, anyway.

*I am a sad little redemptionista.  I love watching characters fall to their very bottom and then scrabble back up, bloodied and wiser.  It ties both into the part where I love them and where I'm a wee bit sadistic.  All I can say is: I used to be in fandom.

Character spotlight: Bonnie

It's extremely rare that I do a character spotlight before the release of that character's book.  Particularly so in this case because, well, Bonnie hasn't had a very big role since Super, has she?  Surely the more logical choice would be Naomi, as her book is the one I'm currently editing up for the betas.  Bonnie's role in Siren will be extensive, however, and I find my thoughts returning more and more to her arc as I begin the outlines for Bulletproof and her as of yet unnamed novella.  'Ware spoilers, as I'm going to stay vague but don't have any bigger respect for my own spoilers as I do spoilers for other works.

One of the biggest problems I have as a writer is that, as I try to stay subtle, I overshoot and then have betas constantly telling me on first drafts that they aren't sure what's going on.  I'm working on the balance.  In the meantime, Bonnie is probably the most dynamic character of the series, making the biggest transition from damaged and nearly feral youth into a graceful young hero.  That the majority of this has happened behind the scenes...Jesus, I hope I land this bird.  So here we go:

Bonnie, Ophelia, and Marcus: Bonnie worships Ophelia and Marcus.  Her blood family was cruel to her, her first experience with her own powers was Evelyn abusing her...she's got issues.  But the slightest kindness shown to her from Ophelia and Marcus, and she snaps right around into a shining pupil.  This is one of Bonnie's greatest strengths.  She wears her damage, but her inherent goodness turns to gold when given the tiniest window.  (This is my favorite vein to mine as a writer.  I unabashedly love a hero.  I love to watch someone rising up.)  However, Marcus and Ophelia did so much for her on a material, spiritual, mental, and emotional level that she cannot ever feel equal enough to them to challenge them on the pedestals she has given them.  She cannot grow until she recognizes her parents as flawed and still worthy of her regard based on their strengths (and maybe also their flaws).

Bonnie and J:  And then we have Bonnie and J.  I freely admit that this is among my favorite relationships of the series.  J needs someone to pull her back (and I adore that the twenty year-old is the one who does that), while Bonnie needs someone with whom she can have fun as an equal.  Marcus, Ophelia, and even Naomi (as the stepmother she doesn't particularly like) are her parental figures.  J is her first genuine friend as an equal.  After the events of Super, J is also in pretty dire need of a friend she can lean on, even if she does like to play the role of the superior, naughty aunt now and then.  Besides, the dialogue between them is fantastic.

Bonnie and romance:  Ophelia and Naomi are, of course, the major OTP of the series as an established couple long before the meat of Super begins.  Each book since then has contained a little taste of romance--just a taste, as I am far more interested in developing the women themselves as individuals than in romance as far as this series goes.  So does Bonnie get a beau?  Well, her book is the last of the series before the Thrilling Finale, and she's got some heavy lifting to do to set things up.  I'm going to play coy on this one.