I wouldn’t have used this description over a year ago, but Ficly is like Twitter for fiction writers. And like Twitter, there is great freedom in restraint.

A long time ago, I followed a link recommendation from Wil Wheaton, which brought me to the most wonderful, awesome site for writers I’ve ever known: Ficlets.com (I won’t link because that site is now dead.) Ficlets restricted your story to a mere 1,024 characters, or a few brief paragraphs.

Some of the things you could do with it included prequel or sequel any author’s story and hopefully get a chain of different authors adding to one story; issue writing challenges; write your own little series; comment/rate stories (leading to one of the most instructive, constructive feedback sites I’ve used); use creative commons pictures from Flickr as inspiration for a story; use quotes or starters as inspiration.

A lot of fun packed into a neat little site. Ficlets (and the nifty Flickr inspiration) helped me break through a problem I have always had whenever I tried to write a long story – namely, I could never write anything longer than a short story.  But Ficlets helped me create a story, with characters I fell in love with and storylines galore. and with the help of being able to write brief sequels, I found myself with a workable outline that eventually grew into what I hope will be a book in the near future: CherryPopMcGee.com.

So I have a deep love for Ficlets. Imagine my dismay when I learned it woul be closing down. For reasons I won’t go into, the creator of the site was made to shut it down. Oh we had warning and most of us were able to save our stories – our babies really – before the last day.

And then, one day, came the word that he was rebuilding it. That he was taking his time to make the improvements he couldn’t make before. That he and a core group of people, out of the kindness of their hearts and love for the community they had originally built, were going to bring it back.

And after a very long wait, this weekend Ficlets returned with a new name, Ficly, a beautiful makeover, and a crowd of voracious writers ready to make it what it once was. As of this writing, already over 600 Ficlies have been written. To me, that is phenomenal and worthy of a visit, if writing is your thing I give it the highest of recommendations I can give it.

I hope it’s good though. I’ve also revived the website, and I’ve released three chapters and the prologue so far. Interspersed with the chapter releases are blog posts from the two main characters themselves: CherryPop and Liam (the Zombie). Liam and CherryPop are also on Twitter, though things aren’t looking so good for our girl as she’s become the victim of a Stupid Zombie bite that was infected with something and now she’s out cold. You’ll have to follow them on Twitter to find out what happens next.

I’m slowly building up a little ‘verse for my story that I hope can get noticed and (hopefully) is enjoyed by folks who dig on Zombie/Magic/sci-fi-y type stories. Ican’t narrow down a genre to pin this to yet.

I also have plans to do a podcast, maybe 30 minutes or so on Zombies that would end with the release of another chapter of the story. I figured I could do Zombie trivia, have someone review a Zombie movie and umm, other Zombie stuff. It’s a Zombcast. Or will be if I can recruit helpers. If anyone reads this, get a hold of me and let me know if you’d like to help me out

So that’s me done pimping what I’m up to. This is my main project right now in my free time and I am having an absolute blast working on this.

From the folks who brought you Buffy Between the Lines comes… Angel Between the Lines! Read the info below and consider joining an awesome team to produce or BE in this cool audio drama podcast. It’s gonna rock and I’m not just saying that because I co-wrote the first episode

Angel Between the Lines is coming soon! The first season of Angel Between the Lines deals with the summer between AtS Season 3 and Season 4. Join the gang as they deal with Angel and Cordelia’s disappearances and stick around for the season finale: Angel – the musical! (We’re not even kidding). This season consists of 12 episodes and a lot of surprises along the way.

From the team that brought you Buffy Between the Lines comes the next fan-created audio drama sensation.

Auditions and crew signups start on March 7th – 21st, 2009

Sign up for email updates by subscribing to Angel Between The Lines by Email.

The site totally re-energized my writing fever. I’d been in a slump, lacking the will to just get on with it. If you know me or have read this blog for a while, you’ll know that I would love to write a novel some day. But one thing or another comes up and I just get away from it.

Ficlets was amazing. It helped me focus. It taught me how to tell a story in a short space and forced me to get creative with imagery and word use. The generous and lovely feedback from an awesome community of Ficleteers helped me dream up the first idea I’ve ever had that I thought was actually viable as a novel-length story (I have trouble getting past short story stage.)

But the mastermind behind Ficlets had to leave the project and it was left to languish. Though he tried valiantly to save it from extinction, AOL refused to let development on it continue for whatever reason. Probably because it didn’t make them any money. (Do people really still use AOL?)

They are working on Ficlets-inspired site though, outside the AOL realm, and that makes me happy because I dearly loved that place. So I thought I’d post a few of the Ficlets I really liked here. The rest will be saved somewhere on my hard drive and maybe serve as future novel ideas Oh and I often hear a song and dream up a story behind it, so a lot of my little ficlets were inspired by good tunes.

—

She

I don’t know. i’m babbling now. All I do know is my head hurts and when I feel like this I don’t have any desire to, you know, move. No matter. Shannon took the car to work today, so I’m stuck home anyway.

Ugh. I do have other things to talk about, honestly, but the headache is distracting. Anyway, the second season of Buffy Between the Lines begins today. Very exciting! For those of you who know me, My little scene will be in the 4th episode which I don’t think will be coming out until some time in October (they release the episode, and the next week the release that episode’s commentary, then there’s a 2 week break while everyone except me gets to go to Dragon*Con, then they resume.) I got a chance to hear the scene and it was cute. I’m not saying much about it though because I think Tabz (The Joss) would, you know, kill me and stuff

So yeah, I’m just on the actor side of the show the one time. But I’ve worked on every episode doing a lot of editing, so if you’ve got an extra 40 minutes-ish ever couple of weeks, throw it on the old iPod and listen to the audio drama BBtL 2 takes place between seasons 2 and 3 of Buffy. She has taken off to LA to deal with her grief at having to kill Angel, and the gang is left in Sunnydale to take up the vamp-killin’ slack. Also if you check out the commentaries, yours truly hosted the commentary for episode three.

In other news, My lovely co-writer and I finished our script for the first episode of Angel Between the Lines and we released it into the wild (well, we gave it to the beta readers anyway.) I’m very nervous. I’ve never written a script before and it was definitely a challenge. But it was a lot of fun too. Now the betas will fine-tooth comb it and give it back to us, we’ll make changes, and then it’s out of our hands for good. It will be so cool to hear it acted out though. I’m very excited about.

All right, I’m going to stop for now and go lie down.

Anyway, yes I did some rearranging around here. Again. I got a wild hair last night around 9:30pm and decided that I needed more than one sidebar for all my junk. Since this blog is serving as my website, I needed a place to put all this stuff. And I’m sure no one really gives a toss but me, but I felt I needed to ‘splain.

So last night around 3am I was rudely awoken by the sound of hammers and rocks being chucked at my bedroom window which is right above my head and I was forced to flee. I don’t know who decided 3 o’clock in the morning was a good time to have a hailstorm, but who ever it was, I’d like a word.

I’m having mucho fun with the new camera that has so many settings I’ll never use them all. I took pictures of stuff in my house because I’m thinking of replicating (which sounds so much better than ‘stealing’) Dooce’s Daily Style posts. Not only can I practice macro photography, but as I was looking around last night, i realized, Hey, I have some neat stuff. Ok so I have some geeky stuff too. The up close and personal pic of a toy Dalek on my bookshelf may only interest Who fans, but I could also showcase a lot of my mother’s artwork I have hanging around.

If anyone’s wondering how I’m doing on the whole CherryPop story, I’m not doing so hot. I’m having motivation issues. I’ve written a few more ficlets and several attempts at starting the story (one of which is actually working for me) but I let myself get distracted. I’m wondering if I should just force myself to write. No internets, put the new camera away, unplug the Wii, no swimming (see? I do get out of the house on occasion) and write. Maybe start with 1 hour of writing and work up if I get on a roll. I keep thinking I’ve got to do it, and how cool it would be to actually finish it and the great sense of accomplishment I’ll have whether I publish it or not. And yet, something, some kind of block is going on in my head that won’t let me dig in and do it. I don’t understand it, and it’s pissing me off too.

So that’s where CP stands. I haven’t blogged as her either. Feeling guilty about that. Argh.

Ok first, a little backstory here. I’m pretty much writing these on the fly. I have an idea in my head of where the story is going, but I’m fleshing it out one Ficlet at a time. So when I sit down to write a sequel, I never know exactly how it’s going to turn out. Makes it kind of exciting for me to do it that way.

So as I’m writing this particular sequel, in which CherryPop and Liam have to kill some time until sunset when they can go investigate the headquarters of the Anti-Zombie Coalition, who they think might be responsible for a brutal Stupid Zombie attack. As they kill time, I have Liam poke around online looking for info about the AZC.

Poking around. Online. All he finds is a plain website with a mission statement and contact number. A website… Online… Noo.. that would be silly. But funny! Yes! I’ll do it! And I did. I waited to publish the ficlet until after I purchased the domain www.anti-zombies.org. Then I made up a little mission statement, named my character who will be the head of it, and made up a phone number for him. And I put it online. And I published the ficlet with the URL as the title. Hello expanded universe!

It’s a Ficlet with a kick! God I love that site.

Sure it’s a little OTT and silly, but it reminds me of the viral Lost sites that kept popping up when the show was on the air that enhanced the show’s mysteries. Fun!

It’s been a big job and there’s still tweaking to do, but this is the sort of stuff I love to do

Watched the Smallville finale. It was meh, even with James Marsters in it. I don’t think the writers are even trying anymore. I used to love this show. Somehow, somewhere along the line they lost the plot entirely and I stopped caring about the characters. And I loved Lex too but Rosenbaum isn’t given much to do other than talk menacingly to flunkies and taunt Clark. I was happy to hopefully see Lana finally go. I think that storyline should have ended a couple of seasons ago. And I just might be biased, but for what little he was in it, I thought James stole every scene he was in.

Ok, it’s been a weird week and I’m knackered, so bedski for me.

And don’t get me started on the fact that this sucker’s got Bejeweled on it.

Sunday I’ve got my first group recording session as Geraldine, the poet who’s prose is as bloody awful as Spike’s. Funny side note, some of the other actors sent me a bunch of Geraldine-esque poems and haiku for my birthday. I laughed Here’s one that cracked me up:

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

Bwah!

I’ve got some scenes to edit as well. This Buffy thing keeps me busy. Which is a good thing. Not tonight though because I am up late posting election results on the site. I’m very sleepy atm but the state results are only 80% counted. Obama is beating Hillary by a few thousand votes, but McCain has more than both of them combined. Ah the joys of living in a red state.

I wish I had wittier observations atm, but frankly, I’m tired and headachey so I think I’m gonna go read until the final results are in. I promise better postage next time.