Wednesday, November 30, 2016

November 2016 update

I’m not going to lie. I just finished NaNoWriMo and this is mostly a mindless ramble.

It’s at the end of November, which for many writers means the end of NaNoWriMo (or as my friend will say nanorama!) I've done pretty good this year, kept mostly on track with 3-5k jumps occasionally during the weekends. Overall it's been a good Nano year.

Every year I always consider writing a weekly or daily blog about my progress with Nano. Unfortunately, I just don't think it would be very interesting. It would turn into ‘today I made my word count.’ And ‘today I didn't’. Don't worry, I've tried. It's never good.

So I guess what I want to reflect is over my years of doing Nano and what it means to me as a yearly exercise. I first started Nano almost ten years ago. It took me two years before I managed to get to 50k words. By that point I had already written completed works at about that length (granted not in that time frame). Since then, barring some personal crises (i.e. college) I've been able to finish Nano every year. I don't mean this as some boast. I've been doing this for almost ten years. Heck yes, I should be able to pound out 50k.

The difference is now, as I've become a published author and hope to continue publishing, I write so much all year round. I've done 2 short stories in one month. I've re edited a 40k novel into a 70k novel in two months. I once rewrote almost forty pages in two weeks. Every day I sit down to write and edit and make blog posts or compose emails or browse tumblr.

In the past couple of years, 90% of what I write is for publishing (whether or not all of it gets published is another matter) Just about everything is written with a publisher/publication in mind. Clear goals, set deadlines, work.

I'm not complaining. I enjoy having a structured writing experience. Publisher's guidelines or editor comments are like prompts to me. I use them with other half baked ideas I have and make it work not only for the market, but also to my own taste.

Nano is a strange time in my usual writing schedule. Yes, I often use it to pound out bulk words that I can later use for publishing. However it is also a time for me to write fanfiction, or to write using bad writing habits that I constantly have to be aware of the rest of the year. Even the words that I think could become a short story or novel for publication often drive away from clear cut romance or fantasy or adventure. It turns into mush, muddled ideas, dropped characters, dropped tenses. By mid month I write without thinking of grammar or purpose. And at the end? Well, it’s a mess.

Out of the ten or so Nanos that i have completed, I have published zero. This year I am feeling really good about my strategy of writing a few Christmas short stories, but time will really tell if I will find a use for them later. It has made me realize that Nano shouldn't be some crazy bulk writing in my yearly count of words.

Nano is a purge. I usually write about two novels a year. One of them usually during the summer and maybe into the fall. The other is, at least in part, written during Nano. My summer novel may take years of editing, but it's brought me Tokyo Love, Amemus, The Warrior the Healer and the Thief, and Cursus Honorum. Nano has brought me fanfiction, a structurally flawed fantasy series, and so many terrible romance novel ideas.

It’s like, I finish a big project during most of the year, then I vomit words for a month. Reconsider my life choices for another month.

Then I’ll write some fluffy romantic short stories for the rest of the winter to make myself feel better and then get started on my next big idea come spring.


This is how I have been for about 4 years. I'm still young and undoubtedly will change my habits in the future. The only thing that will not change is how much I need that Nano word vomit once a year.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Inspirations

I feel like I can't truly describe what inspired me to write romances until I talk about Megan Derr.

There was a time when I was in high school that I began to realize there was more gay romances out there than just fanfiction. This search led me to Fictionpress and eventually Megan Derr. At the time, she had posted a great many m/m sappy, lovely, sexy, fluffy romances. I read a great many of them, but my favorites were her Fairytales Slashed series.

Let me tell you, I have read those short stories so often that I can literally open this book to any page and just start reading and thoroughly enjoy myself. I don't need to be at the beginning of a story or even in any logical place, I have it memorized. Any one of Megan Derr's short stories or novels are my ultimate comfort read. When I want something light and romantic and a happy ending, I go to her.

Now I don't know the life story of Megan Derr, but I do know she eventually took down all her works on Fictionpress and moved some to her website and others she began to publish through Less Than Three Press. Since I couldn't get all my kicks for free, I began to purchase some of her novels/collections, especially the older works I knew so well.


(please don't judge some of the other books in frame. I judge myself every day for owning Twilight)

I still have plans to basically collect all of her works, but this is a good start.

So flash forward to a few years ago when I decided that I wanted to try getting published. I wanted to try to find small publishers that would be more likely to accept my work. Naturally, one of the first places I looked was Less Than Three. At the time they had submission calls out for more Fairytales Slashed stories and I decided to try and write a couple of original fairytales.

I've never known if this is super obvious, but I did write those stories as if I was Megan Derr. I tried to use her same style, same tropes, same fluffiness. And it worked! I got published for the first time!


(Admittedly, I do think my first couple of stories are a bit rough, but I blame that entirely on being inexperienced on the whole short story business)

I've branched out since then. I've tried different ideas and moved from short stories to novels, but I do think a bit of my Megan Derr inspiration is there in every romance I write. Or maybe I just think "would my high school self love to read this?" and I go from there.

Monday, October 17, 2016

The Warrior, the Healer, and the Thief inspirations



So The Warrior, the Healer, and the Thief, started out as a simple idea. I wanted to write a poly story and I wanted the characters ‘roles’ to be based off of RPG/D&D character classes. To make it a bit more interesting, I wanted the characters to be useless in their class (i.e. a healer that cannot heal, a thief afraid of the dark, a non-typical warrior)

This is about where my idea ended. I tried different genders, different fantasy worlds, but nothing seemed to stick. Then Less Than Three Press put out a call for a western collection and I wondered if I could finally flesh out my idea. 

Thus was born the magical western lesbian polyamory romance.

When I created the world, naturally I needed to incorporate magic. (I mean, being inspired by D&D means this is a requirement) I wanted a variety of magical users whose classification wasn't entirely based on types of magic, but more like the culture and family they were born from. Mages and healers and witches and voodoo. I also wanted monsters but I didn't want to take entirely from European myth. So I started picking from Native American myth and American folklore.

Fun fact # 1: Speaking of mythical creatures featured in the novel, hodags are from Wisconsin and the legend started based on an old timey ‘photoshop’ picture of one. 


Also sharp tongues are my own mythical creation based on a short story you can read here.



I spent a long time agonizing over what sort of western setting I wanted to use. From the Oregon trail, to the transcontinental railroad, to cattle herding in Texas or frontier farming int he Dakotas. I watched all of Ken Burns The West and fell in love with all of them, haha.

I picked a typical Oregon trail setting, if only because it would be easier to bring different characters together. It was a time when the west was still relatively fresh and untouched by European influence and I had played the game, Oregon Trail, too much as a child.

Fun fact # 2; if I had used the transcontinental railroad someone would have definitely been a Chinese immigrant. Possibly Chase. Ahh, perhaps for a spin off…

Throughout the book I learned a lot of things. Not only what it means to write a poly romance, but also how writing three people falling in love is exponentially more complicated than two people. I'm also just not very good with more than two main characters, haha.

I'm hoping to one day get started on a sequel.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Fixed!

I think I managed to fix my blog! Hooray!

I'll give a proper update soon. Also, in case it wasn't obvious, I've put a link to my author Tumblr page in my profile.

Here is a link for anyone interested in seeing me reblog writing related things on Tumblr!

http://dianajeanauthor.tumblr.com/

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Small Update 9/7

It seems this blog is having some technical difficulty. I have been attempting send requests for assistance but so far have received no reply. I may have to move this blog to another platform.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Cursus Honorum and Amemus

In anticipation of the upcoming release of Cursus Honorum being published by Less Than Three Press,


I’ve decided to share my inspirations for both Cursus Honorum and Amemus, since they share genres.

I started Latin classes in High School and even managed to get a Latin minor in college. While it’s been some years since I’ve done serious translations, I’ve always been inspired by the literature that I was exposed to. Ovid is by far my favorite author, but since Cursus Honorum  and Amemus have none of him in them… whatever!

I’ll start with Catullus, who was the most romantic (and crude) poet that I’ve translated. His poem 5, written to a love interested called Lesbia, starts with the line

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love.

To me, the poem is about passionate and desperate love, despite what the world around them might think. I wanted to use a word/phrase from this poem and so I chose ‘amemus’ or ‘let us love’.

In Amemus, I wanted to explore the rolls of gladiators and slaves in ancient Rome (or around 65-70 BC). I’ve always found it interesting how varied slaves could be. They could be prisoners of war, people in debt, former criminals, etc. They could be Roman or they could be foreigners. Often, especially for those in debt, slaves could earn a small amount of money from their masters and ‘buy’ back their freedom. If a master was kind, they could free a slave and the slave might stay with the master as a paid servant. Of course, the treatment of slaves could vary greatly and many children were used as slaves (often to pay off their parent’s crimes/debts). But, as an American with our own history of slavery, it was interesting for me to explore another culture’s interpretation.

I also chose to write about gladiators for similar reasons. Gladiators were, for the most part, slaves. Yet they could rise up like superstars to the general Roman public. They had fans and supporters (if they were good enough) and could potentially free themselves. Of course, many gladiators were criminals and often were put in games as form of execution.

It was fun to play around with these ideas and to explore the city of Capua, as opposed to Rome. I just wanted my characters to walk around and interact with the scenery and culture and each other. Which is practically the reason why I have the 'Bathhouse Scene of Much Gratuity'.

For Cursus Honorum, I wanted to explore the other side of the Roman Republic (at around 146 BC). Instead of slaves and gladiators, I wanted to try out the patricians and politicians. Cursus honorum translates to ‘course of offices’ or the path a politician would take to rise in the government. It was rather strict, both by the age of the applicant as well as the path they must take. It would be like if an aspiring American politician wanted to become president, then they would have to first be a mayor, then a governor, then a congressman, than a senator, etc. It appealed to me to have a character in the middle of this progression, constantly trying to reach ever higher for the better position. They would have to be someone exciting and social, constantly having to make allies with other powerful politicians.

Politics and military exploits have always gone together since ancient times and Rome was certainly not excluded. But not every smooth talking politician is going to be a great military fighter. So it was rather common in the Republic for politicians and honored military generals to ally themselves. It is one of the reasons why I set the story in 146 BC, the end of the third Punic War and when the current pro-consul was paired with a strong general.

I just loved the idea of putting together a roughened war veteran against the softness of a pampered city politician. And, of course, I got to put them in Rome during the height of the Republic and the Roman Forum. In Amemus, I got to have my gratuitous bathhouse scene, in Cursus Honorum, I got to have gratuitous party scenes. And I got to have my characters walk around fancy Roman villas.

Also, my main inspirations for the parties were definitely from Petronius’ Satyricon. Which, if you are into crude humor, orgies, crazy dinner parties, and two men battling to woo a young male slave, then you should definitely check it out.

What’s up next for my Roman inspired romances? I’m hoping to get a little lesbian loving in there ;)

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Tokyo Love and Japan (part 4)

Continuing my excitement for my upcoming novel, Tokyo Love. Being published by Crimson Romance this July.



I feel like I could probably talk about Japan for a million and one blogs. But this would quickly turn into some sort of terrible travel blog in which all I can say is 'Oh, I went to this one place and it was cool and we ate this great food and that was fun.'

So I guess I'll just try to wrap things up a bit before I get out of control.

I feel like I learned a lot about the world through Japan. What it means to be the minority in a foreign country. (And really what it's like to be the majority in my own). I can appreciate a culture that is so tightly knit and strong like the Japanese. And I appreciate looser, more varied culture of America. I understand what it means to not have the native language be my first language. And I learned not to judge people in my own country that prefer to speak their own native language instead of English. I've learned how to ask for help when I'm confused or lost and to accept whatever reaction I might get for asking for help, whether that be acceptance or ridicule.

Finally, I learned what it means to be from both sides of the world. Whether by family relations, or the choice to be a world traveler. I suppose that is what I wanted to convey in Tokyo Love.

I also really really wanted them to visit shrines and buy doujin

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Tokyo Love and Japan (part 3)

Continuing my excitement for my upcoming novel, Tokyo Love. Being published by Crimson Romance this July.



More fun stories from my adventures in Japan!

One of the most exciting things I got to experience in Japan was teaching summer classes at KA International School.

In Japan there is a lot of pressure on succeeding academically. For any parent that wants their kid to be ahead of the curve, they send them to 'after schools'. So, after a long day in the public school, the kid goes to another school until the evening. 'After schools' have become such a booming business that they compete with one another for the best reputation of helping their students get into better middle schools and better high schools and better colleges. Yes, kids in Japan have to test into their middle and high schools. Some tests they take are rather similar to the American ACT and SAT, but also involve a heavy use of foreign language (English) and a professional interview. It's called the juken test and KA helps 5th and 6th graders to pass it.

I won't go too much into my criticism of the Japanese academic situation. One, it's not really my place to criticize since I don't live in Japan (or have school aged children in Japan). Two, KA was a super awesome school, with a great program, great teachers, and amazing kids. I'd love to teach there again. Seriously amazing experience.

The kids at KA were a little different from the normal students. These kids had all either grown up abroad (usually Canada, USA, or UK) or they had a parent that was a foreigner. Many of them had spent the first years of their life in a foreign country and now lived in Japan. Others spent half their year in Japan. In all cases, they came to the school to keep up their English.

At KA, we taught a little differently than most public schools. Since all of us teachers were native English speakers, we tried to keep the classrooms more western as well. Which means there is a lot of class participation, questions and answers are encouraged, and we generally try to be louder. Some kids could get really into this, and some kids were too used to the Japanese method of 'keep your head down and don't get noticed'. There is nothing more depressing than when you ask a question to a group of students and they all stare at you like you are the crazy one.

I taught a range of ages, from K-12th grade. Most of my classes were only a few kids. Though I did have an eventful day in which I got ten 3rd graders in one class. My one tip to aspiring grade school teachers; confidence is key. Any troubling students were usually satisfied, however, by entertaining class work and that I usually had some fun games for them to play between learning.

Some highlights of my experience was a kindergartner who was so smart and studious that I could play a game with him for ten minutes, then send him straight back to work with no trouble (he also could write better English sentences than I could at that age). He was the darling of the school.

The one day I actually got to teach some high school kids, I spent half of the class time rambling about Latin roots as pertaining to their vocabulary. I'm pretty sure they thought I was insane, but I think they enjoyed my anecdote about Sextus Molestus.

When I got to teach five kindergartners at once and it was terribly exhausting. But worth it when they all were working and decided to quietly sing every song from Frozen, in perfect English.

The middle school girl with whom I got to talk about poetry with. And totally showed her some clips from Lord of the Rings. Because I am a nerd.

My amazement when I found that if the attention is lagging, just let the kids write on the whiteboard. Writing on the whiteboard is the best thing ever. Also stamps, everyone loves getting a stamp.

Discussing Frozen a lot. Let me tell you, the Japanese love Frozen. So all Japanese kids love Frozen. Elsa is their favorite character. How dare you suggest otherwise.

Fun fact, after Frozen came out, the top songs on the Japanese Charts was 1. Let it Go (theatrical version) 2. Let it Go (pop version) 3. Let it Go (Japanese version).

Last fond memory, having a normal class with some 3rd and 4th graders, and hearing my sister yelling at her students through the walls. Good times.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Tokyo Love and Japan (part 2)

Continuing my excitement for my upcoming novel, Tokyo Love. Being published by Crimson Romance this July.



More fun stories from my adventures in Japan!

This one also takes place during my first trip to Japan and was actually one of the first things I did after stopping off in Tokyo.

My sister is a part of many traditional music groups in Japan. One of them is gagaku, traditional Japanese court music. My sister plays the shō, which I have seen described as a mouth organ and has a very particular sound that is a bit unforgettable. Seriously, youtube some gagaku or shō, you won't regret it.

Anyway, the shō section of her gagaku group decided to have a mountainous retreat together to practice and have fun. Since I was staying with her at the time, I was invited as a guest. The only other guest happened to be a young daughter of another shō player.

This girl was very friendly and polite and knew very little English. I, of course, knew even less Japanese. But for an entire afternoon, while my sister and the other shō players rehearsed, we only had each other to entertain.

For anyone who has tried to spend an afternoon with someone they cannot fundamentally communicate with, a very strange thing happens; you learn to understand each other. It is hard for me to describe how it happened. But after some faulty starts, we mutually decided to simply stop trying to speak the other's language and just talk. I'd blather on in English about how nice and cool the weather was on the mountain and she'd respond in Japanese.

We went for a walk, found some trails, took some pictures. At some point, I got pretty thirsty, so I said I wanted to get a drink. She understood me enough that we went and found a small store and she picked out a juice for me (and helped me pay for it. Children are too nice). As we were heading back to the ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) we came across a rather pretty lizard hanging out on the side of the path. I took a picture and told her that lizards could lose their tails and just grow another one back (see? pretty inane dialogue on my part) she responded and we went back to our rooms.

In the rooms, we watched some Japanese TV and she got out some paper and scissors she had brought. Then, right before my eyes, she cut out a paper lizard, then snipped off the tail and threw it in the air. I have no idea if she understood what I said earlier, or if she simply knew the same inane facts that I did.

On the TV, an actress came on to some talk show. She pointed to the woman and called her hafu, which means that the woman was only half-Japanese. It was the beginning of my understanding of the monoculture that is Japan.

It is a strange thing to say, but there are a lot of Japanese people in Japan. Coming from America, where any city street could have ten different nationalities, seeing someone that is different from myself isn't a big deal. But in Japan being only half-Japanese is an oddity.


I don't know if that girl thought I would appreciate seeing someone on the TV that might have seemed just as foreign as myself. Or if she was simply making small talk. 

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Tokyo Love

So an exciting update!

This July, I will be having a new romance novel coming out, Tokyo Love. Published by Crimson Romance.

Please witness the beautiful cover…



I'm super excited! I've always wanted to write a novel that takes place in Japan. What better way to express it than to write a romance based around the tropes of all my favorite shōjo manga tropes? I've got café dates, shrine visits, getting drunk at a nomikai, hanabi, hanami, Nikko, New Years, and I've even got a love robot.

Why yes, I am a weeb.

So I've decided to write a small blog series of some of my experiences in Japan that helped inspire the novel.

Some background on why I've been to Japan multiple times: my sister lives there. She has been living there for about 8 years now, studying traditional music in Tokyo. Taking a trip to Japan isn't very cheap, but it really cuts on cost when you can sleep on your sister's floor for free haha.

I guess the first story I'll share is probably my favorite experience of Japan. It also happened the first time I visited (at age 19) and it also has zero relevance to my novel. Besides the whole… being in Japan thing…

So, just in case it wasn't clear, I watch a lot of anime. My taste really ranges from actually well-done, meaningful anime, to pure trash anime. No, seriously, I can enjoy Baccano and Junjō Romantica in the same sitting. I have no class.

Well, one of my favorite anime is Hikaru no Go. Which may look like a typical gaming/sports anime from the outside, but trust me it is beautiful and makes me weep. Anyway, it involves something of a road trip from Tokyo to this super tiny island outside of Hiroshima called Innoshima (not to be mistaken with Enoshima). What is on Innoshima? A tiny Go museum with a graveyard that has the grave of Honinbō Shūsaku.

For the uninitiated, Go is a Japanese game similar to chess. Here's the picture from the Wikipedia page. 



Honinbō Shūsaku is a famous Japanese Go player from the 19th century and was born in Innoshima.

If you watch Hikaru no Go, you'll understand why this is super nerdy and not just super lame of me to want to go to this landmark.

Anyway, back to reality… Innoshima isn't exactly the easiest place to get to from Tokyo. It's about 4 hours on shinkansen to Hiroshima. Then you have to take local trains to Onomichi Station, and then a bus to the actual island. Well, we made it on to Innoshima, but from where the bus dropped us off, it was still a ways to the museum and gravesite. So we opted to try to catch another local bus.

We waited for probably over thirty minutes. We were beginning to lose hope that a bus would ever come. (Japanese public transportation can be pretty flawless, but we were rather in the boonies of Japan at this point). We began to notice this van of Japanese boys was cruising around town and had totally passed us a couple times. We began to joke that they were stunned by the sight of foreigners on their tiny island and would probably try to pick us up the next time they passed.

And they did! My sister was able to talk to them in Japanese and asked them to take us to the Go museum. They were super eager and friendly and really bad at driving. To this day, I am convinced that they had never talked to a foreigner in their lives. They could barely find the Go museum (even though it was a tiny island) and my sister managed to convince them that we didn't want to go out for drinks later.

At the museum, which is only a couple rooms large, we were greeted by the director of the museum (who had possibly never gotten foreigners at his museum before) and who gave us a personal tour of everything in the museum. When he found out that I knew very little Japanese, he attempted to explain everything in simple Japanese words and phrases. Which mostly helped my sister, I still was lost (I mean, the Japanese I knew was dumb phrases I had heard in anime. So totally useless). So then he also started acting everything out. This grown man hopped around like a rabbit and crawled into a closet for the sake of my understanding. It was beautiful.

Then a friend of his came to the museum to play a game of Go and he let us watch. Admitting later that he was super nervous. Which, honestly, my sister and I barely understand the fundamentals of Go. We could hardly judge his strategy.

We went off to find the grave of Honinbō Shūsaku. It was the first time I've ever been in a Japanese graveyard (more like gravecity!) and it was up on the hill, giving us a great view of the small town.

For reference, here is a picture of the grave that my sister took



And the view!



When we returned to the museum, the director gave us a lift back to the bus station. There, we met a stranger who complimented my skin, saying it was very pale. But I think I could write a whole ten blogs about the differences in Japanese vs Western aesthetics and why I received many compliments on my white skin.

Over all, Trip to Innoshima? 10/10 would travel there again.


Look forward to see none of this anecdote in the novel! Haha!

Friday, April 29, 2016

April Update

Things I've done in the past year and a half.

1. Moved twice

2. Changed jobs twice

3. Wrote two novels (granted, one is still rather incomplete)

4. Updated this blog


Look out for two new publications later this year!

And maybe some real blog posts =P