6th March, 2011 - Conquering the galaxy by not doing what anyone expects of me

So guys! Beneath A Beating Sun.

It's finished.

I'll be posting the last chapters over the coming days.

Also 6 March, 2011 - The continued gripes of an FFN user

Fanfiction.net has eliminated all the scene breaks in anything I've posted before 2011, as well as a goodly number of long dashes. If you're wondering why there aren't any in my old stories, or why there are single hyphens where em dashes should be, that's why. I'm slowly going through and replacing them, though it's a long, annoying process and I may not get to everything I've ever written. Sorry about that.

The Eensy-Beensy Biography: At the moment I'm a one-quarter-century-old writer and web application developer who's recently graduated from the University of Iowa with a BA in Linguistics. I'm also a graduate of the Clarion West Writer's Workshop, and I publish original fiction in professional markets.

I love talking about fiction, writing, fiction writing, writing fiction, and several other topics. As a rule, I'm very approachable and welcome emails. I've beta-read a very few stories, and am a lot better at suggesting stylistic/thematic/structural/plot edits than grammar and spelling, though I enjoy editing short(ish), well-crafted stories.

I am a Wikipedia junkie.

...I like cats?

1st June, 2009 - State of the Novel, and other things

Dear lord, has it really been almost two years since I've updated this thing? How does this even happen?

It's been a pretty insane time for me, which is six or seven stories in and of itself, but if you're reading this notification, I'm going to assume that you want to know what's up with Beneath A Beating Sun. I can't blame you; I want to know what's up with it, too.

Here's the deal; it's still unfinished. I still want to finish it. I obviously can't promise that it'll be done on any reasonable timeframe; if I could, it would be done and posted already. I do know how it ends, and I have scenes and scenebits written up through the major plot events and up to the end.

I also have three chapters or so which are finished but unposted. (I decided, years ago, to wait to post the final chapters until I could post them in an unbroken run, without a hiatus of months between them. You can see how well that worked out.)

This is the plan: I'm going to post the chapters I have finished over the next few days or weeks. I'm going to try to finish the ones that aren't finished. If you would rather just see the rest of the story in its rough, unfinished form (you know, without risking having to wait three more years before I finish the last chapters), feel free to email me at magistrata (at) gmail (dot) com and I can send you the .rtf file. I write nonlinearly, so it really will be a bunch of disconnected scenebits, phrases, and conversation snippets, but just pretend that you're piecing together an ancient epic from damaged stone tablets. It'll be fun.

17th July, 2007 - Ya uzhe pishayu! I neskolko raskazui napisala!

I'm still in Russian, in case you couldn't tell. (And it's still eating my time, in case you couldn't tell.)

Anyway! I've finished a good handful of fics for various canons ("Various" hereby defined as "Life on Mars" and "Doctor Who"), and am agonizingly close to finishing a chapter of Beneath a Beating Sun. There's also wonderful news on my front--the 11th through (hopefully) final chapters now have a beta reader! Fig Newton is helping me unsnarl issues in the chapter drafts I have, and as they fall into place hopefully the last chapters will come more quickly.

I'm confident. (Me too.) (As am I.)

25th June, 2007 - Ya pisala i pisala, no nikogda napisala.

I'm apparently in a Summer Russian Intensive course. Jack would be so disappointed in me.

Beneath a Beating Sun is still coming along, with four chapters finished in draft and one nearly finished, weighing in at about 110,000 words. Yes, a hundred and ten thousand. I'm almost to the point where I have more unposted than posted--wow! Anyway, I'm hoping beyond hope to have it done by the end of the summer. Maybe I'll even have it finished by the one-year anniversary of its posting, but I wouldn't count on that.

In the mean time, I've been poking at a number of smaller fics in a number of fandoms: Life On Mars, Doctor Who, Stargate: SG-1, and a bit of Silent Hill. Those will see posting somewhere, someday. Watch this space! Or, y'know, don't.

2nd December, 2006 - "Ha" is Sanskrit for "Alas"

And this is the point at which I flail around on my keyboard and ask for forgiveness.

Here's the scoop: school brought with it not only lots of homework, but lots of illness as well. Since the end of September I've been in and out of the hospital (mostly for tests and the like--don't worry), and I've been overwhelmed with stuff in general. I've been able to poke at Beneath a Beating Sun, but I haven't been able to do nearly as much work as I'd liked.

Now, my commitment to finishing it is as strong as ever. I'm actually very nearly done with the next chapter. But--and this is one of those double-edged swords--I'm going to hold off on posting anything until I've finished the fic. As in done.

I'm doing this so that even on busy weeks, I can keep to a quick posting schedule. It's not fair to keep you guys waiting a little longer on every chapter. Once I start posting again, I plan to move you all at a nice clip toward the conclusion. (In case you're wondering, my tentative outline has BaBS finishing out at 17 chapters. My TextEdit file is already nearing around 93,000 words. At this point, I've done way too much work on the fic not to finish it. I just need more time.

So, those of you who have me on author alert or have BaBS on story alert will get the news right away when I start posting again. Or, if you want to, you can drop me a line telling me you'd like an email when I post the next chapter. As always, I welcome correspondence--email me at "magistrata" at gmail dot com