If you’ll kindly look to the right of the layout, you’ll see my blogroll. Among the expected writer, editor and review sites, there’s a section called “My Places.” I thought it would be helpful to explain these a bit.

I Am Not a Foodie is a recipe collection site. As the name says, I’m not a foodie: I eat far too many burgers for that. But I do like experimenting now and again and collecting interesting (and simple!) recipes, so that’s the primary function of that site. I’ve also got a lot of family favorites added (with more to come when I get around to it) to preserve recipes that you can’t find in books and to share recipes I love (like Afton’s chocolate sauce. It is the best stuff ever.) I also accept contributions of other people’s recipes, because variety is fun.

Jenna Jones @ Livejournal doesn’t get updated as much as this blog does, because I am lazy. I mostly use it when I host the torquere_social community blog.

MissLucyJane.com is my fanfiction/free fiction. I’ve been writing fanfic since 1997 (longer offline–I’ve got a couple ST:TNG stories on paper somewhere) and I’ve put up most of my old favorites and all my newer stuff. If you’ve ever wondered how I learned to write, the answer is there: by writing a lot.

My del.icio.us is a bookmarks service. My interests and research at-a-glance.

Project Wiki is a personal wiki where I’m planning to collect all the background information for my stories, so I have a centralized location for them. There’s not a lot of information there currently. Most of it is open to editing by anyone, as with other wikis, though of course I reserve the right to reject irrelevant/erroneous information.

Shop @ CafePress, should you ever have a burning need for a Gallaghers bakery t-shirt or barbecue apron.

There you have it: the other stuff I do online.

First, an FYI: I’m redoing the categories and tags for the site, trying to neaten them up. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Now, for the Deep Thoughts:

When I’m writing a first draft, I prefer to write it straight through rather than skip around in the timeline. I look on a first draft as a draft of discovery: this is where the characters tell you what’s going on with them, and I usually have good luck with this. I’ll discover things or think of things that I never would if I were following a strictly rigid outline. (All of my outlines, when I make them, always have a portion that says “some stuff happens here.” There’ll be plot before and plot after, but there’s always a nebulous space where I have to figure out how the characters get from Point A to Point C.)

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This is something I’m not terribly comfortable asking, but I’ve been thinking about it for a couple days and I’ve decided the worst result is that no one does it. So.

If you have read any of my books, please leave reviews or ratings for them, particularly at Torquere Books or Amazon. It doesn’t need to be a huge review: even just a “I own it” and a star rating at Amazon will be a boost.

If you do write a review, be honest: this isn’t about my ego. Even a mediocre review is better than no review at all. Reviews help sales; sales earns me more royalties; more royalties brings me closer to the day I can write full time. Everybody wins. (Well, I hope you think it’s a winning situation for you: I can only assume you’re here because you like what I write.)

• Chiaroscuro at Amazon
• The King’s Diamond for Amazon Kindle
• Something Beautiful at Amazon
• My page at Torquere Press

New reviews for Diamond at Literary Nymphs and Amazon, which also has new reviews for Something Beautiful. Thanks, everyone!

(Also . . . I get a little bit of a thrill when there’s a “customers who bought this also bought . . .” list. That’s so awesome.)

My current project is a screenplay, and it’s not coming very easily. This is due to a lot of factors, I think, the two biggest being subject matter and form.

Subject matter: it’s a biopic, about a solider named Bill Aalto, who grew up in the Bronx, fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and knew poets and writers like Alan Ginsberg, Truman Capote and Ernest Hemingway. He was gay and a communist at a time when being either would make life difficult, and he paid a high price for being both. However, I find him heroic for the simple reason that he never took the easy road. Of all the things he could have done, all the compromises he could have made, he never did: he chose integrity instead. That’s powerful to me: that’s a life worth celebrating, even if in the end it was not triumphant in any traditional Hollywood sense.

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• July: movie rough draft: seven pages. It’s been seven pages since last week. But at least that’s seven more than I had in June.
• August: the Four of Cups finished and sent! Which means August will be more movie and working on the Leo-Stuart story.
• September: More of the same. Polish the movie to a fine sheen.
• October: possibly a Christmas-themed novella for Torquere, and I want to start a few things for a Livejournal-based project in February called 14 Valentines, and starting the story for the wedding anthology.
• November: NANOWRIMO.
• December: finish the wedding anthology story, and more 14 Valentines.
• January: finish stories for 14 Valentines, start the next Arcana. I get the Queen of Wands, I think.

I know, not particularly exciting and I haven’t had any Really Deep Thoughts lately . . . but sometimes there just isn’t energy for Really Deep Thoughts, you know?

• The general attitude in society that characteristics traditionally defined as “female” are so looked-down-upon. Things like nurturing, compassion, gentleness. God forbid a man ever be gentle–he must be a sissy if he is! Even many vocal feminists deride traditional female attributes, and as a feminist, I find this very disappointing. I’ve always had the opinion that being kind and gentle and supportive of people was the ideal, not something to be mocked. But then I’m a starry-eyed optimist. And a hippie. And various other labels.
• The attitude of the general reading public that a romance novel is the refuge of the semi-literate. Granted, some lines are geared towards a fifth-grade reading level. But most aren’t. And you do actually need more than half a brain to read a romance novel, let alone to write one. Romance novels are a form of escapism, just like, say, anything by Tom Clancy or John Grishom or any other popular novelist you’ll see at the local Barnes & Noble. I’m as guilty of it as any other person, I suppose: I call my books “little romance novels.” That’s all they are: they’re not going to change the world or start a revolution. But that’s not what they’re for: they’re just to pass a few hours in a pleasant way with a good (*knocks wood*) story. I have no pretensions about what I write. But at least I’m working on having no embarrassment about them, either.
• The attitude among many romance readers and publishers that m/m stories aren’t romance. Yeah . . . because men never fall in love, of course. *eyerolls* There used to be a “writer’s guide for the beginning slasher” by a fellow named Minotaur, and he had a section on why he liked slash fic: because you get to see men being romantic with each other, which at the time (I think he started the site in 1998 or so) you didn’t see in any other gay literature. And if you’ve ever checked out my own fanfiction, you can see I have a serious jones for the romantic. Everybody deserves some sweetness in their lives.
• That the only “great” love stories are the ones that end tragically. Okay, so “Brokeback Mountain” is held as the end-all-be-all of gay literature, but it’s a tragedy. There are love stories that end well: the complete works of Jane Austen, Maurice by E.M. Forster, “Moonstruck”, most musicals (including my favorite, “Guys and Dolls”), Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands.” Even Dickens has some happy endings, in between all the dying of tuberculosis and social injustices. Of course, the only difference between a romance and a tragedy is where the writer stopped, but still. I hate the notion that things are only deep if they’re sad.

It’s been a very irritating day. Makes me want to break out the pokin’ stick.