Moving over to tumblr!

Hello all!  Just writing this last post to let everyone know that I'm discontinuing this blog & moving on over to tumblr, so you can now find me there: http://musingsofaficfanatic.tumblr.com/

Or, of course, on Twitter: @Kari_FicFanatic

Hope to see you there!

-Kari

Sample chapter from my original novel

So I've been working on my original novel lately, & I've been so pumped to get back to it that I added an introductory chapter to the beginning, which I thought I'd share with you all. I'd like to state that I haven't finished the novel (it's probably about 2/3 complete) & I haven't even started looking for a publisher, but I plan on doing just that very soon.

Oh, & for my TWP readers, I still plan on actively working on that still, but for now I have no future plans to write any more fanfiction since I want to work on my original stuff. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the sample chapter from my novel:

Chapter One: Goodbyes

She was nineteen when she discovered that she was pregnant with her son, Dalton.

She was twenty when she lost him.

It didn’t rain the day of his funeral—a word that she despised; there wasn’t so much as a damned cloud in the sky to mourn his loss with her. The rain would have been a welcoming sight indeed, offering the illusion that the sky had opened up and poured out its grief for the tiny boy that had so recently been buried in the earth—her baby boy that had never had a chance at life.

But it hadn’t happened that way. Instead of standing in the rain, Fallon O’Malley found herself gazing out at the clear, sapphire sky over the southern West Coast, studying the way the white crests of the waves kissed that sky, the way the tourists and surfers littered the golden shore and dotted the water.

Oblivious. It was all completely oblivious to her pain, to the fact that a tiny baby boy, who’d been dead before he’d ever even breathed his first breath, her Dalton, was dead. The sob worked its way up in her throat, but she forced it back out of fear that if she began to cry she might not ever stop.

Plagiarism: Just…Don’t

Plagiarism: Just…Don’t

I’m thirty-one, and I’ve been writing fanfiction on and off since I was eleven years old and scribbled out my first “self-insertion” tale involving myself and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Mind you, at the time I’d never even heard of fanfiction; this was 1991, so I’m not sure that the term had even been coined yet. Nevertheless, over the next couple of years I wrote my own Star Wars stories, and in 1996 I stumbled upon a magazine article about something called “fanfiction.” Ever since that first time I got online and entered the address for The X-Files Romantic Fanfiction Archive cited by the magazine, I have been hooked.

In my collective involvement in various fandoms over the years, if there’s one thing that makes my blood boil it’s shameless plagiarism. Getting a vague concept from another author, movie, or book is one thing; everyone does it, whether inadvertently or not, since there are very few (if any) truly original ideas, and everyone draws inspiration from something/someone else. However, there’s no excuse for shamelessly plagiarizing an author who’s put hours of hard work into their writing.

Firstly, you’re going to get caught eventually: If you “borrow” a fanfiction story that was previously posted by another author and post it under a new title as your own, chances are that someone out there will have read the original version—perhaps even if the original story hasn’t been updated in years—and will call you on it and then alert the site administrators and the true author. And if that happens, not only will your reputation be tarnished, but you will ultimately end up looking pathetic for the following reason:

Secondly, as fanfiction authors, the only form of “payment” we receive is in the form of feedback, so what sort of satisfaction could possibly be derived from accepting praise for work that even isn’t one’s own? After all, you know that you didn’t put the hours of hard work and effort into it, so therefore how could positive feedback benefit you in any way?

Lastly, while no one is perfect and we all make mistakes, where’s your sense of morality? Your personal code of conduct? If you’re young and have been tempted to plagiarize another author for whatever reason, I hope you’ll reconsider after reading this, and remember that authors—whether they write for money or sheer entertainment—put many hours of effort into their writing, so the idea that any random Joe Blow could shamelessly copy-and-paste it and place his/her name on it is not only disturbing to the author, but insulting.

And if you’re an adult who has plagiarized/been tempted to plagiarize, well, you should already know better, shouldn’t you? ;) Just…don’t.

-Kari

FFn profile updates for the month of 12/11

12/29/11 - I cannot stop watching this video. You've gotta check it out; in my opinion, the song "Fix You" by Coldplay is the embodiment of Ron/Hermione. By the way, I'm actively working on Chapter 11 of The Waiting Place (Chapter 12 including the prologue), but no promises about when I'll get it up, since it's possibly more emotionally draining to write than the previous two, as I'm getting into what was going on in Ron's head in the previous chapter. Here's a little preview:

At that moment, Ron truly realized that he was here to do a job, nothing more, just like the Healer had said. His stupid fantasies about marrying her and all that other stuff were just that—stupid, juvenile, and had no basis in reality. What the hell would Hermione Granger want with a poor, second-rate wanker like him, anyway? He wasn’t smart, or good-looking, and, he admitted to himself grudgingly, he was a mediocre Quidditch player; he reckoned he was all right when his head wasn’t fucked, but that was a rare occasion, wasn’t it?

Even though he’d known it in his heart all along, it really hit him at that moment that he had nothing to offer her. He reckoned that the only sorta bird that would ever want him was one that was too daft to know better. Someone like Lavender.

Well, if he was here to do a job, then Ron was determined that he would do the best bloody job that he could; he’d fuck her, just like she needed him to, and then he’d let her get on with her life—without him. Just like she bloody wanted.

12/25/11 - Merry Christmas! I wish I could say that I have a TWP update as a Christmas gift for you all, but, alas, I've been uber-busy with the holidays & haven't had much time to write. At any rate, I'll see you all in the New Year! :)

12/18/11 - On vacation with the family! While I brought my laptop with me (managed to answer some reviews today), I thought it would be curteous to inform readers that the possibility of my updating The Waiting Place before Christmas doesn't look likely. Thank you all so much for your understanding, & I hope you're having a wonderful holiday! By the way, your reviews on the latest chapter all made me smile like an idiot, so thanks for that. :) It's wonderful to know that my efforts are so appreciated!

12/12/11 - Just wanted to let readers know that I'm actively working on Chapter 10 of The Waiting Place (chapter 11 if you're counting the prologue as a chapter) and will have it up sometime in the next couple of days. In the meantime, how about a little teaser?

“Merlin, you’re beautiful,” Ron breathed in a sexy, throaty manner that she’d previously heard only in her dreams—and which had her melting in more ways than one: Her core dampened and swelled for him inexorably as butterflies churned in her stomach, and she literally swooned. Swooned. She’d previously believed that that only happened to the damsels in distress from those drugstore paperback novels that her mother left lying about the house, but now she had actual experience to prove that such descriptions were, in actuality, based on fact. Who knew?

Quit thinking, and just feel, Hermione instructed herself as she closed her eyes, tilting her lips upward in anticipation of his kiss—

12/02/11 - Moved my profile's updates for the month of November to my blog, where I also post fanfic recs, book recs, the occasional movie rec, and other randomness: Musings of a Fiction Fanatic

FYI, I'm actively working on my TWP update, but since I don't wanna rush it I'm not making any promises about when you can expect it to be published. ;)

I'm Back!

After an extended absence from computer-land, I've decided to continue this blog.  More reviews & randomness coming soon!

Hello all! I just wanted to let you know that I haven't died or disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm merely having computer difficulties. I'm writing this now from my new phone, but what I can do online is extremely limited. I can't even update my FFn profile, which is really annoying. I'll be writing again as soon as I can. In the meantime, I'm sort of sidelined as a mere reader, but I may as well enjoy it.