An exciting tiny milestone

RedBubble milestone reached!

A couple years ago, I got started on RedBubble with a focus on more artistic designs – tree sketches, photography, and a couple odd graphic-design items.  I had some hopes that RB would turn out to be a good match for me (instead of CafePress or Zazzle), but sales have been an occasional drip instead of the steady trickle that I get elsewhere.

Most interestingly, the things that have done best there have been the two oddball items I tossed up there.  That is, the two really obscure joke/pun designs.  That is, the two designs that get no love anywhere else.  That is:

This last week, I finally hit a tiny milestone of “enough sales to get them to pay me”.  It’s not going to pay the mortgage or anything, but I’m inordinately excited about it.  First payment this year, first payment from RedBubble, first post this year, and hopefully not the last of any of those.

Bonus Teapot!

As excited as I am about all that, mostly I wanted to share this link to Google’s teapot: https://www.google.com/teapot

Curious about the whole Teapot thing? I wrote about it a while ago here.

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My kind of princess designs

Not An ISO900 Princess

As one might have guessed, I’m not into your typical princess stories and not into the typical “all girls are princesses and so wear pink”.

Life’s been hectic, but here are two new designs I’ve finished and put up on RedBubble:

The Princess with the Pee

 

is at: http://www.redbubble.com/people/ninthcircle/works/11829812-princess-with-the-pee

Not All Princesses Wear Pink

 

is at: http://www.redbubble.com/people/ninthcircle/works/12603489-not-all-princesses-wear-pink

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How the story starts

For publication. Horror stories. Two sentences.

Someone on the Book of Face linked me to this one: 20 Terrifying Two-Sentence Horror Stories

As an occasional flash fiction writer, I found the concept intriguing, even though I’m not usually a fan or horror.  Most of them are a bit trite, but a couple give that frisson that heralds both a good story and good horror.  On reflection, I think these are the ones that read like the opening of a story … showing, not telling.

It could well be argued that most of my flash fiction is largely openings to stories … or at most hint at the shape of a story without actually wrapping it up.  The few that don’t (say “If This Were A Fairy Tale“) are, arguably, some of the better ones.

Or it could be argued that the open-endedness works really well for horror flash fiction (say “The Volunteer“).

As I was thinking about which of the two-sentence horror stories worked best, I found myself wondering about the possibility of writing science fiction stories in two sentences.  Would it even be possible to write a good one, without stumbling on the world-building (or universe-building) that comes with so much science fiction?

The idea is in the back of my mind lately, because I’ve been following The Ferrett’s current project of evaluating the opening chapters of 20 books to see how they integrate world-building.  These are all books he’s read before, and so the evaluation is in the context of knowing everything that comes after that opening chapter.  You can see the initial post at: How Can I Make These Opening Chapters Better? An Experiment and he’s posted the first three in the series so far.

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A brief update on RedBubble

Hiatus still not over, but …

… I found some photos I’d gotten prepared for RedBubble  before the hiatus began and posted them.

You can see them here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/ninthcircle/collections/164432-photography

Sample:

a light purple flower

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In which I steal time from sleep

The only way anything gets done these days

I posted on Twitter the other day:

That moment where you realize your beautifully framed, perfectly in-focus flower photo has a half-bug-eaten leaf in frame and thus useless.

Tonight, I stole some time from sleep to see if there was another photo in that shoot in which said leaf was less obvious. I found one … or did I ‘shop it out? You be the judge:

rose-of-sharon-fullClick through for full-size.

 

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The long hiatus is not yet over

There is no time, let me sum up …

It is a bit frustrating to have built up to a regular posting habit and then to have fallen off the face of the planet again for several months.

I’m still rather off the face of the planet, but visiting just enough to want to explain my absence:

an infant's hand rests on exposed skin

a hand, so tiny, reaching out

As a fairly private person, I’m unlikely to post much about this in the future, but … this is what is consuming my present.

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