It's not the end - New Website!

This is the last time I change URLs, I promise :D

There are just things I missed on this blog, things I couldn't do but dearly wanted to, and I've finally had enough. Now I'm hosting my own website and transferring the blog over there. Everything in one place and way prettier than Blogger could ever do it!

This is my new website:

http://www.hannahlcorrie.com

This blog will not be continued! If you liked it, please change your bookmark to the new website, I will continue blogging and brainfarting there.

Thank you for your patience with me!

"Manastorm - The Quickening, Book One" - Tell me your thoughts!

Hello my dearies!
I've got a special task for you and I really do need your help, so please keep reading :)
My two WiPs (Works in Progress) are coming along swell, but I'm ever the worrier when it comes to my work and I haven't had much luck with finding my special someone, betareader-wise. After a bit of thinking and a little cider, I decided I want to try something new:

A story hook poll! Whee!

Eh... What?
My thoughts are as follows - The first pages of a book decide if a reader likes or hates a story.  Those first few pages, or rather the first chapter, also make or break the atmosphere of a book. They have to be just right, hit that sweet spot so to say, to pull in a reader and drag him along (sometimes against their will, ha!).
Do my WiP stories have what it takes? I have no idea!
Which is where you come in. I've added a link at the end of this post that will lead you to the hook of my primary project, "Manastorm". At the end of the hook, you will find a link to a Google Poll site where you will be asked two to four questions with very basic/simple answering options. All you have to do is read through the hook (or read as far as you like, then scroll down to the link), click the link and answer the questions. No registration necessary, no personal info needed, I will not ask for an e-mail address or anything else. (Of course, if you fall in love with the story and want to be notified when it's up for ARC reading or publishing, I do have a lovely newsletter...)

So yeah, let's try this story hook poll thing. Ready? Here goes:

Manastorm Hook Chapter

Back to work - Hannah's Handout newsletter

Phew! November was harsh. I never thought I would actually finish the National Novel Writing Month as a winner, but there you have it, I surprised myself. It's good to know that I could write a rough draft in a month if I put my mind to it. I admit, my November project lacks everything, from consistency to style, but things like that are fixable. Writing nothing isn't.
I already mentioned the things I learned in my last blog post, but now I'm at the point where I'm actually putting them to good use. Unwilling is at the resolution stage, where Jared and Darwin make up, talk it out and clash with George who fights his own guilt over what happened with Carl. Those dudes have problems! Luckily, I have a vague idea how to fix it and get them back home soon.

I've also gotten to know new people who also fight the good fight. I dabbled in ARC reviewing and stumbled upon a handful of really great stories that I shamelessly gushed over on Goodreads and Amazon and I re-read some of my all-time-favorites. I feel ready.

Ready for my own mailing list. *shudder*

I decided on starting a newsletter while drooling over the book cover for "Unwilling". Yes, you heard right, I got the cover today! Now I'm thinking about the best way to do a cover reveal, because honestly, I'm not the most graceful online personality in the world :D Noticed that, didn't you?
I do want to connect with my fans, but it's not easy. There are too many platforms, too much social media opportunities, and if I go by my own experience, at some point it doesn't matter how great an author is. The sheer noise of too many feeds gets overwhelming and you just want it to stop. I'm not a big fan of e-mails, mostly because I'm being spammed by Goodreads and Twitter, but I'd still prefer a newsletter to having to check multiple sites for new content. After all, I can't bookmark all of them and still know who is who and what is what. Nobody can. And I don't want my fans to become social media managers just so they won't miss my ramblings. A newsletter seems like a good way out of that. One e-mail if something new comes up, at most once a month, you click, you read, you're done. Sounds like a deal to me, so I did it. And here it is:

Hannah's Handout on Tiny Letter!

 

I don't like Omegaverse. Here's why.

Hello my lovelies!
While I've been busy editing and revising "Unwilling" and "Moonrise", I spent a few evenings reading books from genres people mentioned to me. A good author knows what people are talking about, right? One comment in specific confused me: One reader gave "Unwilling" 1 star, saying that he (or she?) felt betrayed because I hadn't used the term "Alpha" correctly and he/she felt tricked. I had no idea what he/she meant by that, so I went out and bought some books mentioning Alphas or Omegas.
For those of you unfamiliar with words like Omegaverse or Alpha-romance, please visit this link to get a more detailed description!

When I started reading m/m (or boyslove) novels, the m/m genre offered me an escape. With two men in a relationship, authors were able to shake off the standard dynamics between the genders and be free to do whatever the heck they wanted their characters to do. Two "alpha males" (brrrrrgh) could end up in a relationship, as could two nerds, two Joe Blokes could get kinky, a power couple was just as interesting as a houseman/working father couple adopting African orphans. There were no set roles and therefor every opportunity to do something new. And to women readers, it was easy to imagine themselves in this new dynamic and rejoice.
Then along came the Omegaverse genre.

Now, I'm not adverse to kink. I've had enough forays into dub-con and shifter sex myself and I understand the allure of something like predisposed gender roles. It's titillating to watch someone struggle against his genetic programming, even though the reader already knows he will fail and find his place no matter how much he fights it.
After the sixth or seventh Omegaverse novel, something stood out to me though: switch the Omega with a girl and you have het romance.
To me, this is just sad. I switched to m/m because I was bored to death with het romance and the depiction of women in those stories. Fainting, helpless little flowers who bitch and moan and angst away and get dragged around as they scream for help, or break out in tears and run because some dude did something even slightly inconsiderate. Then drama, making up, kissy kissy, the end.

It's sad because there is so much you could do with genetic predisposition. So many opportunities are being overlooked!
Back in 2011 when I started writing "Unwilling", the word "Omegaverse" didn't exist yet. I just wanted to write something a little different from "the usual werewolf flick", to try my hand at the same theme and put a different spin on it. I was excited that so many people liked it, but now that I'm thinking about publishing the story as an e-book, I'm having a hard time deciding on a genre. "Shifters" is almost as prone to prejudice as "Alpha romance", and since you, dear readers, seem to have either learned to skip any and all story that carries even a hint of maybe containing shifters or beings declared as "Alpha", or expect the story to be about archetypical power exchanges, this whole "Omegaverse" hype is making me rather grumpy.

No matter how well an "Omegaverse" themed novel is written, I don't like it. And I, oh, so hate how popular that genre has become, because it pushes aside the kind of werewolf-stories I actually enjoy. In my opinion, the distinction between "Shifters" and "Omegaverse" should be more explicit. One should be about what the name implies, meaning shifters in each and every constellation the human mind can come up with (and with no rebukes for using words like "Alpha" or "Omega"), whereas the other should be only about het-with-an-m/m-spin plots.
Unfortunately, to get there, authors would have to abstain from using each and every category even remotely connected to their theme. Readers draw connections between the chosen genre/category a book they like has been placed in and its contents. They understandably get angry when after ten books from the "Shifters"-category, the eleventh suddenly doesn't have the constellations they liked most. Problem is, that eleventh book gets a one-star-review, no matter how well written and interesting it may be, and it's all because of this habit of mixing categories.

I personally would rejoice in a clearer distinction of what category a book is placed in. What do you think? Do you enjoy Omegaverse? Do you hate it? What about Shifters stories? For both: Why?
Maybe you can help me come up with a solution for my situation :)

Love,
Hannah

Hannah's Writing List (April 2017)

New short story: Get them out

Hello dearies!
Last weekend I tried my hand on a short story challenge from Sci-Fi-London. It turned out rather well, albeit devoid of any grabby guys :D I'm still proud of it, so here it is:

Get them out

 Have fun reading!

Love,
Hannah

Me, now, on Twitter

I bowed to public pressure and got myself a nice little twitter account :) I'm not yet sure what I should post there, but I guess that will come with a little time. At least I hope so.

If you want to add me: https://twitter.com/Hannah_L_Corrie

Supporting the arts

A friend of mine is an artist, one of those who show their works on Deviant Art and other sites, but hardly earn money with it. She loves painting and drawing, and people still think that you're supposed to get stuff from artists for free, because they need the "exposure". Draw for free, play music for free, write for free,... That's not okay.
I decided to stop this circle and hired her to draw a cover for one of my books, "Shapeshifter". It worked great, the picture is absolutely beautiful, and I'm the happiest author in the world right now. When it's finished and I'm through editing the story, I'll show it here so you can drool over it. And I'll be more than happy to give you the contact details for my dear artist friend ;)

On another, equally happy note: The crazy dog lady lawsuit against me was dropped, yeah!

There's the Follow-button!

After experimenting around with different methods of subscription, following, like buttons and whatnot, I decided to take out the RSS feed and go back to the good ol' Blogger Follow system, because I miss those little avatar pictures. I know people read this because I see it in my statistics, but I want to know who you are, so I can thank you :)
If you like my work and would like to have me know that, please consider following me. I promise not to spam!

Love,
Hannah

My first official review!

Getting your first review is a special moment in the life of every author. Reviews are like badges you get for work done well, and they are handed out by the people who matter most: Readers. I'm so hyped right now!
I already mentioned finishing "Shapeshifter", my first story ever, I think, but now it also got its own review - check it out here!

Happy Hannahdays! Off to Greece

Not really where I'm going, but holy crabs, look at that beauty!

No posts for me for a while, I'm going to Greece today and I'll be there for a week. Don't worry though, I'm taking my laptop with me to write whenever I find a moment!
I'll be back. With pictures!

Editing and the confusion it causes

Me, supposedly.

I read somewhere that it's rather normal to hate your own work when doing the final editing. Okay, I didn't read that somewhere, I read it everywhere, in each and every single writer's help blog, article, book, forum, ...
I'm confused by this. I got my first novel back with a very nice rejection letter (not sarcasm, those guys were really great), so I decided to do a bit of quality checking and editing before submitting it to the next publisher, seeing as how I got a few good hints why my story didn't fit their profile. My only problem is that I really don't know how to make it any better, except by adding to it where I deleted stuff before. I hope I'm not arrogant, I don't think I am; I'm just really happy with my work as it is. I don't see the need to rework big parts of the story, and the feedback I got also didn't sound like I'd have to. Maybe I simply chose the wrong publisher, maybe I'm delusional, maybe I'm just not that good at writing readable Science Fiction. Maybe romance just doesn't mix with detailed futuristic worlds. Maybe...
So now I'm confused. Dear author buddies, am I the only one who actually is happy with their work? Does nobody else reach that point of 'yeah, baby, this is it!' that I feel when a novel is done? Should I listen to my gut feeling and not do any major editing, or should I get help and trust in others to tell me where I need to work on my novel?
Or should I just submit it to another publisher?

A sudden poll appears!

Hello dearies!

Some of you might know that I am the author behind "Shapeshifter", a story on Literotica and Gay Authors that started me on writing romance and erotica back in the day. I've finished that story a few days ago (yeah baby!), but since that fateful night, I've been haunted by so many story ideas that my (Ever-)notebook has been constantly gaining weight like an old lady-bodybuilder.
I'm absolutely planning on writing each and every one of them, but I need your help! On the right beneath my Google+ badge you'll find a (poorly formatted, thanks blogspot) poll with a range of choices, and I'd like you to choose what you'd like to read next.
My Friday Fade-Out will still run for a few weeks, probably until the end of year, but I like to be prepared!

If you'd like to go a bit further with the whole "ending my free-range-existence", you're welcome to leave additional suggestions as to what I should write in your chosen category in the ways of a comment to this blog entry!

Hannah's Cyberpunk Playlist

Soooo... how do I get in the mood to write?
Usually it just takes music and the right kind of circumstances to get me going on a new story. I tend to hamster songs into playlists, because this allows me easy access to the right mood. I recently started plotting a Cyberpunk-Romance and a matching playlist, so I'll share it with you.
Each and every song in this has its own meaning for me and gives me a boost to write either something aggressive, something fearful, something relaxed or something vaguely or blatantly erotic.

Listen in, find out if the songs move you! :)

Love,

Hannah

Clumsy little me

I'm a big dog lover, as I mentioned before. I realize that I only have enough time for one dog, but I sometimes take in foster dogs for a few weeks, usually in the summer months. Right now, my foster is this little lady:

 

Unfortunately, she hates cats. My cats hate her too, so I can't just let her run in the garden whenever she feels like it. I walk her outside on the leash when the cats are there too, which was what I did last night.
And promptly missed the last step, twisting my ankle.
So now I can't walk her at all, or wear shoes for that matter. But at least I learned how to wrap a perfect dressing on my ankle, so there's that :)

I'm still wondering why people with a twisted ankle act like they're unable to stand at all in the movies, because standing honestly isn't a problem right now, it's just the walking that hurts like a bitch. I can drive better than put on my shoes!
Still, it doesn't help my foster dog. She needs two one-hour-walks a day to keep her calm, otherwise she starts to lick the floor, hunts shadows on the wall and whines excessively. I don't know what I'll do, but I'll think of something. Soon-ish.

A dog named Zampano

I'm a dog-person, always been. My parents tried to get me hooked on cats, and I do like cats, but nothing could ever come near the love I have for those hairy, loyal beasts. When I was five, I met my first 'real' dog. To this day, I don't count my grandfather's dog as 'real', because he was tiny and grumpy and had no love left for children, but I still didn't feel like I knew a dog to that point.
This changed when I met a giant Leonberger-Mix. Just so you can get the mental image right, have a look at this Wikipedia picture of Leonbergers:

From Svenska Mässan from Sweden - Grupp 2 LEONBERGER, C.I.B. NO V&NORD V-14 NO V-15 NORD UCH SE JV-13 SE V-14 -15 Namupalan Bling Smack Chap, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47878872

So one sunny day, I, being five and therefor both indestructible and invincible, at least in my own little mind, asked if I may take over the leash and walk this pony-sized dog named "Zampano". And since my mother was nowhere around to scream at the lady-owner, she said "sure, here," and gave me the leash. I guess she was so happy that at least someone- namely me- wasn't afraid of her monster dog, that she went a bit overboard with generosity.
Now that I had the leash, I started walking. The lady owner was close behind me, getting ready to grab the leash in case the dog did what he always did, which was dragging her to kingdom come until she found a lantern post to hang on to, but it didn't take her long to understand that this wouldn't happen.
For the first time in big-ass-Zampano's two-and-a-half-years of life, he actually walked calmly, watching out for the little human thing holding onto the leather thing that he usually used to steer mankind around.
We walked her dog for a whole half hour and I would have kept it up longer, if my mother hadn't caught up to us and thrown a fit at the sight of me holding the leash to a dog that the neighbors ran from. It took her a while to grasp the concept of her little angel being more in tune with giant, slobbering monsters than pink dresses and sandboxes, but when she did, she rolled her eyes for the first time in my young life, then decided that being a dog person was still better than getting hooked on drugs.
I, for one, was in love, truly and forcefully so, and what Zampano started was a lifelong obsession with the canine folk that lasted to this day.

Writing methods I've still got to try

Writing is just as much a freelance job as every other. You're working from home, mostly after hours, and are responsible for yourself and your own coffee supply. That doesn't only mean time, creativity, self-marketing and the writing itself, it also includes advancing your own skills and training yourself. That might sound pricey, but it's actually rather simple: You are bored, your mind is blank, you still have to write so-and-so-many words to finish your self-imposed quota, and you just can't get in the mood. What do you do?
If you're me, you google ideas to get shit done. If you're a writer and trying to do that, there are thousands of websites and blogs dedicated to just that magical thing. Most of them basically tell you the same, but with minor digressions and different emphases.
I tried most of them at one point or another, but here are some I still haven't or didn't want to try yet. Let's take a look at the three runners-up!

The Snowflake Method

... as it is described here! I came as far as step 1, the selling sentence, and that was it for my brain. It's not so much that I can't do it, but rather that I'd lose all those little ideas that start popping up as soon as I've got my one-liner. If I didn't write those down, and then the follow-up ideas, I'd never get anything done. Since this method asks for a full outline and filling in details afterwards, I can't do it. Yet. As I said before, writing is a skill and knowing one- and only one- way to do it doesn't mean you're actually good at it.

Notecard outlining

I've done something vaguely similar to this for NaNoWriMo 2014, but it didn't work out and I dropped the technique before I actually got anywhere. It's basically writing down all the scenes you want to build into your novel on separate notecards and shuffling them until they fit in a neat outline. It does sound useful, especially if you keep the scenes general enough to use one stack of scene notecards for all your stories, color code them into action, love, surprise, violence, lazy, and so on ...
Might be a good way to get unstuck if you don't know what to do next and need some spice. I'd just pick a card matching the atmosphere I want and continue writing.
I haven't gotten to the point of actually writing something on the notecards I procured, though, so there's that. They do make my desk look more sophisticated and writer-y!

Visual Maps

I'd actually love to try this method, because I'm a sucker for visual representations and overviews. But I'm also a lazy bum and I don't want to fumble around with design software for hours, just to get some picture that won't ever be able to give me more information than a block of text, a list, or a notecard.
I'm still hoping to find software that can do both-- generate timelines and context graphics and spit out lists or pre-made summaries at the same time. As soon as I got that, I'll try outlining via visual maps.


So... does any of you use one of these three outline techniques? If so, how do you like them and did you make your own, small changes to make them a better fit for you?

Money for good deeds

To contribute something outside the box, I'll tell you something about why I just paid a small donation to a photographer, who wants to develop film rolls for 1.200 photographs from the 1950.

One: I love the mystery, and I really, reaaally want to know what's on them. Since I can't develop photographs, and since I don't have the time or the money, all I can do to contribute is a small donation and to spread the word.

Two: I'd love to see more depictions of ancient or medieval times. Especially texts or pictures made by the Celts would have made my day. But we don't have them, because they didn't write things down and only made very few paintings. I want to make sure that future generations get a chance to see what this-or-that time was really like.

Three: The most fascinating visit I ever had was one to a Victorian era museum, where they showed paintings, the first photographs, and a tour through a typical lower-class living quarters. They were able to do that because of photographs that depicted one single storey of a workers house, but couldn't do much more than that. I'd hate to sit by and watch as our grand-children are robbed of a learning experience that would be made possible by small things, like saving a bunch of film rolls.

If you'd like to see what this is all about, please visit this crowdfunding site on Indiegogo!

Welcome to my new site!

Welcome, willkommen, bienvenue, bienvenido!
I finally got around to designing a blog for my work as an author and I'm thrilled you found me! As I dive deeper and deeper into the workings of being an author-- which I now proudly am able to call myself-- I discovered a few things I didn't know before. For instance, a good author has a blog. Not one of those strictly on-topic-blogs, but a kind of welcome-sign for his or her readers to congregate and communicate.
And here I always thought I'd be able to skip the spotlight :D
No more skipping my fans for me, though, I am taking this very seriously and I'll try my best to keep you up to date on my work and other interesting topics that coincide with my stories.

Since you are new to this site- after all, it's all but a few hours old- let me give you a tour. I tried to make the layout as easy on the eyes and structured as possible, but since I've been staring at it for hours and hours, maybe you can give me some pointers as to what's still missing and what parts I should keep working on.

About the Author
I admit, I hate talking about myself. I think this is a flaw most ladies share and it's really hard to overcome. I've tried to give you a short and crispy insight into little ol' me, but it'll definitely get a do-over, as soon as I know what is bothering me with that site. And a picture! Of course I'll add a sufficiently preposterous picture :)

Free Appetizers
This section will hold all my short stories and vignettes, free reading material for new and old visitors. I added a little icon index to make browsing easier. It'll make sense as soon as there's more than one link.

Books by me
You actually can't see that category yet, since I didn't like how empty it looked. I'll fill it with my published works, release dates, covers and reviews, as soon as there is something to show you. Patience, patience!

My worlds
A big thanks to my friend Denise for suggesting this category! Since I'm one of those writers who like to create their universes for more than one story, I'll put all my backgrounds and side information, those little tid-bits of knowledge that won't actually be in any of my stories but still might tickle your fancy, in there.

So, you like? What additions to my blog would you suggest?