Seven virtues - diligence

Links to all the participants here

Diligence

The man shakes as I straighten his fingers and staunch the bleeding from where his fingernails used to be. "Shh," I murmur. "You must keep still."

Blood weeps from cuts all over his body. If he moves too much I won't be able to save him. I stitch every slice closed so that he can live another day. When I finish my fingers ache, but my lord will be pleased.

Tomorrow we start again, then the next day, and every day after that, until the man has told me everything he knows and we have all his friends too.

Seven virtues - charity

Links to all the participants here

Charity

The boy is delighted with the skateboard. "It has glow in the dark paint," I tell him. "Pretty cool, right?" Giving it away makes me feel warm inside, like it's the best thing I've done in a long time.

I go to different parts of the playground to give the X-box games away; don't want the same people to get everything. I want to see as many happy, smiling faces as possible. Every time someone thanks me I feel good.

Plus it will make it that much harder for my horrible, Barbie-beheading brother to get all his stuff back.

Bonus.

Seven virtues - temperance

Linkies to all the participants here

Temperance

Mark grins as he produces a bottle for the party. "I nicked the brandy. Mum will never miss it."

I take an interest in my lemonade as he pours the liquor into the punch bowl. It disappears, swallowed by the orange juice and cherryade.

He offers me a cupful. "You man enough?"

"You know we're not allowed." I'm sticking with lemonade.

"Stay home next time, loser." He drinks the whole cupful and takes more. His friends crowd round him, wanting some too. They don't even taste the pee I put in the brandy this afternoon.

Mark and his idiot friends 0 - loser little brother 1

Seven virtues - chastity

Linkies to all the participants here

Oh nightmare, for I am Not Ready For Kickoff. I wanted to have all my posts cued up and ready to go, but instead my first one is just going to scrape under the wire. They are all scribbled on paper - a weekend spent sitting on a hillside at Gatcombe Park writing microfic while watching the cross country was blissful - but I just got in and I'm going to be typing feverishly.

I plan to read all of the other stories, but I have just entered into an agreement with someone to beta read each other's manuscripts, so I may save the commenting for a few day's time. I am playing though, honest!

Titles went by the wayside this time - I'm just going to use the virtues as titles and call it done.

And so, off we go with:

Chastity

Dora strokes the cat sitting on her lap as she waits. "Now you have to be good. No getting jealous." He is about to lose his spot in her bed, his for too many years; guilt makes her squeeze him until he mews in protest.

She hesitates at the knock on the door, not wanting to appear flustered when she answers it, but the postman doesn't even look at her as he hands her the box and walks on.

She wonders if she should wait another year before opening it, but twenty years of chastity is too many to bear. Eventually, Mr Battery-powered becomes Mr Right.

Say what again?

I got a Versatile Blogger Award, courtesy of the sweet but evidently misguided Rebecca Clare Smith. I am somewhat stunned, since at the point I first read the words 'blog' and 'author platform' in the same sentence, I started to feel like I was under one and all the bloggity words evaporated from my brain. I just hoped they found new and loving homes.

Now apparently, as the recipient of this *holy crap I got an* award, I get to nominate more bloggers to receive the goodness, and also have to dish out seven previously untold facts about myself.

So, I point the happy finger of cool green and yellow iconage at.... Lissa for having some great discussion of the issues raised by Disney princesses as well as lots of other interesting posts.

On to seven facts about me. Um, okay, right, so... shut up, I'm trying to think...

1. I think steak and kidney pie tastes like pee. I'm not sure whether it's the power of suggestion or whether I am the only person who is aware of this. Seriously guys, can you not taste the urine? It's kidneys; processing pee is what they do.

2. My science brain and my fiction brain have a no-fly zone in between them. It takes at least half a day for the neurons to apply for the appropriate permissions and switch over. This is why I can only crack out a decent word count on holiday, with good old fashioned pen and paper.

3. I have an approachable face. This is the only reason I can come up with for why every time I go out surveying, somebody ambles over to ask what I am doing. They never ask my colleagues. Never. Actually, maybe I just look suspicious.

4. Boy, this is tough. Time for that good old fallback, environmental health. In my previous career, I discovered that in a microwave, cornflakes begin to smoulder and people begin to phone the fire brigade a long time before the larvae infesting them are more than mildly annoyed. I also learned that you cannot seal infested cereal in a plastic bag. Mealmoths laugh at plastic bags. And then they infest the laboratory and all the other samples.

5. I learned that I cannot kill. Not even to put something out of its misery. This made covering for the pest officers something of an embarassment. Unless you mean The Boy harm, you are safe from me.

6. I learned that nothing disturbs a man more than walking into the pub toilets to find a woman with a white coat and a clipboard. Good times.

7. I am a fair shot with an air rifle. Doesn't that make you happy about fact number 5? We won't mention the fact that when I fired something with some stopping power, I fell over backwards.

So how do you market kid's books?

A popular blogger and writer of middle grade books, Nathan Bransford, recently received some negative criticism for suggesting that users of the free and hugely helpful publishing information on his blog and forum might consider buying the book (harsh, right? Your site, your rules as far as I am concerned). The post is here.

Now I think it is fairly common knowledge that you're pretty much on your own as a debut author when it comes to book publicity, and you have to do things to try to sell your book yourself. I have to be honest, just the thought of it makes me nauseous. Given that the internet is where a very large number of books are sold, an internet presence is necessary.

So what do you do if you are writing for an age that has limited access to the internet? This was raised in a comment by Maureen Crisp on Roni Loren's blog, and I think she has a huge point.

Children of 9-12 don't have unrestricted access to the internet and they don't exactly read a lot of blogs. They are too young to (officially) use social media, and as a stranger, you shouldn't even be trying to reach them directly. It's clear that you are trying to reach them via their parents and teachers.

Now I think that Nathan did exactly what you need to do to reach readers in a previous post, which was to post his first chapter online. Check it out. In fact, sit down with your offspring and check it out together. I follow his blog because I'm a baby writer, so I saw it, and I sat down with The Boy and we read it together. The Boy loved it, so I ordered the book and he is reading it now. But how many parents use the internet to read with their child?

It strikes me that I can't be the only parent of a child who finds an author he likes and ploughs through the backlist. We have hammered Roald Dahl, Dick King Smith, Francesca Simon and several others. Box sets abound in my house. He reads one, and he wants the rest. Writing tasters are what float my boat too. If I read a short story I love on the internet and the author bio says they have a book out, I go looking for it. Disappointingly, I haven't always been able to find it, which means a lost sale for that author. Note: if your bio mentions a book, make sure we can buy it, please.

So wouldn't it be great if there was a site or a network dedicated to free short stories or first chapters from published authors, where we can introduce our children to their writing in a safe online environment and see if it's a hit? The Boy's school gives them limited internet access to use sites like Cool Math Games. How about Cool Stories too? Maybe with enhanced content like games and puzzles to go with them.

Or is this wishful thinking?

Fun with the seven sins

Image courtesy of Mark du Toit

Well, the dust is settling from the Seven Sins writing challenge and I'm back up to my elbows in the big scary book project. I really thought it was worth noting, though, just how much fun it was just writing for the hell of it. It reminded me of the days when I had just started writing and I wasn't researching publishers and agents and revising again, and again and again.....

There is something freeing about a group of buddies and a game of being the best storyteller you can under a set of crazy conditions. Maybe you'll have a theme, a word count, a set of words you have to include. Your challenge is to do something with them that nobody else has, to do something interesting and entertaining. No worries about publishability or trends, or what agent might be interested, just how much can you entertain people within the rules of the game.

I truly believe that anybody starting out should aim for a couple of years of challenges and fun and thinking out of the box before they settle down to craft and researching the industry. I think it is when we play that we lay down the foundations of our future skills, in exactly the way that children learn motor skills with the aid of play bricks and cuddly toys.

And with that, thank you to my Seven Sins playmates for making this a whole lot of fun, both to read and to write. I have found some great short story writers who I will be keeping an eye on in the future.

I would like to give a big round of applause to Antimony, our play leader, and all the good folks who played the game.

I had a blast and read some great stories.

Thank you.