Find the latitude of any place.  

Alan Turner - As Long as

Alan Turner - As Long as the World Rolls On (1908)

Swedish study links health anxiety to higher mortality, parallels with long-term flu effects -termhealtheffects

So Threads is opening itself to the Fediverse
Remember, kids, that there already used to be a connection between what's the Fediverse today and what's Meta today. That was in 2011 when Friendica one-sidedly established bidirectional federation with Facebook. No, I'm not even kidding. Friendica was fully federated with Facebook. It did require a Facebook account, but still, you could use Facebook without actually using Facebook. People would mirror their entire Facebook timelines into Friendica.
This ended when Facebook found out and changed its developer TOS: Third-party applications that connect to Facebook were only allowed to send data to Facebook, but no longer to extract data from Facebook. This led to the slow death of Friendica's Facebook connector.
Fast-forward to 2023: Facebook (the corporation) is now Meta. And they've created their own micro-blogging service for the Fediverse, namely Threads. And now they're opening it to the Fediverse.
Remember that Friendica is still part of that self-same Fediverse.
And what do you know: One of the very very very first connections to Threads came from, wait for it, Friendica!
I think this calls for a variation on the good old meme.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Threads #Meta #Fediverse #Friendica #Facebook #Federation #Meme #FediMeme #MoeTossingBarneyOut #TheSimpsons #FediverseMeta #FediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #EyeContact #CWEyeContact To be fair, it's undeniable that there are these vastly different factions in the Fediverse.
The Old Guard, is one of them, has been around since long before there was even Mastodon. The Fediverse didn't start with Mastodon. The Fediverse as we have it now started in 2010 with Friendica, almost 6 years before Mastodon, and it also included Hubzilla which started life in 2012. Both projects which were and still are for extreme tech geeks because even Friendica is too unwieldy for your typical casual social media user.
So that Old Guard consists of absolute ber-geeks on Linux PCs and laptops, many of whom run their own instances without any help from Docker or Yunohost. From their perspective, it was Mastodon which had arrived and federated with Friendica and Hubzilla, not the other way around, because Friendica and Hubzilla had been there first, and Mastodon had always spoken a language which they spoke, too.
Needless to say that they find Mastodon ridiculously underequipped and underwhelming. In fact, Mastodon's refusal to even support certain features of other projects makes life harder for them if they want to stay compatible with Mastodon.
Then you have the millions of Twitter refugees, almost all of whom were mollycoddled and railroaded to their first Fediverse home with as little explanation as possible. They're completely different. They're mostly not very interested in technology, and more of them feel disturbed by Linux talk than use Linux. In fact, most of them are on phones.
Many didn't even know that Mastodon is decentralised until a few months in. Most thought that the Fediverse is only vanilla Mastodon for at least their first three months, during which they got used to their nice and cosy and fluffy and friendly Mastodon-only Fediverse with no posts longer than 500 characters and no text formatting and no quotes etc.
As they're so numerous, they managed to shape Fediverse culture around being non-tech and, worse yet, around the Fediverse being only vanilla Mastodon. And yes, completely disregarding the Old Guard because they knew neither the Old Guard nor the places where the Old Guard resides.
When they came across their first "toot" that looked "weird" because it wasn't a vanilla Mastodon toot, they were greatly disturbed. They felt like whatever project that post came from, Akkoma, CalcKey, Friendica, Hubzilla, whatever, had maliciously intruded into their nice and cosy and fluffy and friendly Mastodon-only Fediverse. And they wanted that to go away again.
They did not want to read what they were told then: Friendica and Hubzilla are not intruders. They were here first. They had been here years before there was even Mastodon. There has never been a time during which the Fediverse was only vanilla Mastodon.
It's such people who demand that the users of everything that isn't vanilla Mastodon limit what they do to what's possible on vanilla Mastodon in order not to disturb those who want the Fediverse to be only vanilla Mastodon. No posts longer than 500 characters, no text formatting, no quotes, no embedded images which don't work on Mastodon anyway, no embedded hyperlinks (only URLs in plain sight instead) etc.
I guess it's clear why the users of everything from Akkoma to Firefish to Friendica to Hubzilla refuse to let themselves be limited by the vastly more numerous Mastodon users.
Well, and then there's the third faction. It's those who have never really arrived in the Fediverse. They don't want anything different. They want Twitter without Musk. Now they're sitting on mastodon.social or another big general-purpose instance and patiently waiting for Bluesky to open registrations because Bluesky is much closer to Twitter without Musk.
These people use Mastodon exactly like they used to use Twitter. Official app only, no more than 280 characters, no alt-texts, no hashtags (what do you mean, Mastodon does not have The Algorithm), no content warnings etc. The only way they've adapted to Mastodon, if at all, was s/tweet/toot.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #TwitterMigration #TwitterRefugees You can definitely do both with Hubzilla.
For one, you can subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds.
And while you can't directly boost blog posts (Hubzilla hasn't re-introduced boosts yet), there's an optional feature called "Channel Sources". What it does is automatically re-post everything coming in from one or multiple selected connections. This can just as well be an RSS or Atom feed.
This has a few downsides, though. It's fully automated, so it isn't interactive. You have absolutely no control over what goes out, and what it looks like. Your Mastodon connections will have full-blown blog posts or news articles with tens of thousands of characters slammed into their faces with no content warnings.
Besides, Mastodon will mangle them, just like it mangles everything else coming in from Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams): It can't embed images within the text, so it rips them out and throws them after the end of the post in reverse order. And it can only handle a maximum of four images, so only the last four images will remain.
Lastly, AFAIR, Channel Sources does not create a link to the original, so any post or article coming in via feed and forwarded by Channel Sources will appear as if you've written it yourself.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #RSS #Atom #Hubzilla

Hamilton to go ahead with Macassa Lodge redevelopment despite soaring costs
City councillors approved an Emergency and Community Services Committee recommendation to proceed with building a new wing amid a $22.3 million bump in costs.
-termCare

The OpenSimulator Community Conference is saving the best for last. At least for those of us who live in central Europe, 9 hours ahead of grid time, and who don't want to stay up all night for the late-late events.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OSCC #OSCC23 #Events #OMRG #OpenMetaverse #Max #Maxwell #Maxine #MeshBody #ArcadiaAsylum

, Day 655: Prepares for Fight v. 's Invasion

Earlier in October, PM Modi had also spoken to the President of Palestinian Authority and reiterated India's long-standing position on the Israel-Palestine conflict

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Ontario auditor: at least 99 patients placed in LTC homes without their consent
The auditor general's office this week says the government has not been transparent in implementing a law that allows hospital placement co-ordinators to transfer those patients.
-termCare

Ontario auditor: at least 99 patients placed in LTC homes without their consent
The auditor general's office this week says the government has not been transparent in implementing a law that allows hospital placement co-ordinators to transfer those patients.
-termCare

Ontario auditor: at least 99 patients placed in LTC homes without their consent
The auditor general's office this week says the government has not been transparent in implementing a law that allows hospital placement co-ordinators to transfer those patients.
-termCare

Add your location to a Google Map

-lasting energy for memories

Granted, that tool wouldn't work for me anyway. Not only because Hubzilla doesn't use the Mastodon API, but because my image descriptions don't go into the alt-text. I've always provided both alt-text and image descriptions ever since I've discovered their requirement in the Fediverse, even though I'm still honing and improving my style.
Also, it's hard to generally define when an image description is always too long, not to mention that an 860-character alt-text doesn't mean 860 characters of image description in my case. It rather means an even shorter description and a reference to the actual description which is well over 40,000 characters long. But within a post, it's hard to automatically draw a line between the actual post text and the image description to count their respective characters.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost Unfortunately, I'm not a seer. I can't know beforehand who discovers my posts in their federated timelines. I can never know whether one of my image posts catches the attention of someone who is interested in and curious about but also completely clueless about what my images show.
So I always write as if this happens. And then I have to go extremely in-depth because my images tend to only show things that almost nobody is even remotely familiar with. I can't just mention what's there. I have to explain what it is. I have to explain how it works and what it does if it actually does anything. And I have to describe in pain-staking detail what it looks like, not only for blind or visually-impaired users, but also for sighted users who are curious about it, but it's too small within the image.
I mean, I could simply mention there's a teleporter somewhere even if it only takes up some 35x35 pixels in an 800x533-pixel image. I could omit it and do as if it's unimportant. What I do instead is use 5,000 words only to describe that teleporter and at least briefly explain it, including 4,000 for the preview image of the teleport destination that's only about 30x10 pixels in the picture. And the other 1,000 characters don't even include a list of all the several dozen pre-programmed teleport destinations, much less explanations what and where they are. Someone may want to know that as well, but I had to draw a line somewhere when I actually wrote that description. I limited myself to transcribing what's actually visible on the teleporter which only includes the names of ten destinations.
But you're right, I can't satisfy everyone. Some may find my image descriptions way too long. Others do love them for how detailed they are. And I can't rule out that yet other people find them still lacking certain details. For example, I've never mentioned the camera position, at least not the altitude above ground.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions Let's not limit this to only image descriptions in alt-text in toots from vanilla Mastodon.
How long is too long for an image description in general, regardless of whether it's in the alt-text or the post text Or specifically when it's part of the post text Is there such a thing as too long
I'm asking because while I'm indirectly bound to Mastodon's 1,500-character limit for alt-text because Mastodon cuts everything that's longer permanently off, I'm not bound to Mastodon's 500-character limit for posts because I'm someplace very different from Mastodon. And my image descriptions tend to grow unimaginably long.
They have to be that long in order to be sufficiently informative. My own pictures are always from non-real-world places that nearly nobody knows, and so they only contain stuff that nearly nobody knows. And they don't always focus on one element so that everything else can be swept under the rug. So I have to describe a lot, and I have to explain a lot.
Let's just say I can no longer write full detailed and sufficiently informative image descriptions within Mastodon's constraints, not even within 1,500 characters. Even a carefully chosen camera angle that shows as few surrounding and background details as possible plus cropping away some more details won't let me stay within the 1,500-character limit.
Now, the thing is I hardly get any feedback for my image descriptions. Most of my image posts get none at all. Some sighted users say they're generally too long, but they never criticise any particular description of mine. Instead, they go by the character counts I tell them.
On the other hand, I've just received from a blind user for (content warning: eye contact) with two pictures and my longest image description to date: The preamble for both images has slightly over 1,300 characters, the description for the first image has almost exactly 40,000 characters, the one for the second image which references and relies on the former has about 6,750 characters.
Mastodon's alt-text police seems not to have discovered my posts yet, probably because none of them follows me. That, or they're perfectly okay with what I write. Without any feedback, I can't know. So I'm asking all of you.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #CharacterCount I guess this has two causes. One, Hubzilla is older than Mastodon and based on something even older. Mastodon didn't play a role in Hubzilla's development. So Hubzilla handles vastly differently from Mastodon. Two, Hubzilla's documentation not only reads more like a technical specification than a user manual, but it's hopelessly outdated and incomplete.
Thus, Hubzilla users know how to make their posts Mastodon-compatible either from hearsay or not at all.
Mastodon's content warning field is Hubzilla's summary field. It's the exact same field. But hardly anyone knows because that isn't documented anywhere. By the way, this is even worse for Friendica users because Friendica has no such field and relies on BBcode tags instead.
Also, Hubzilla doesn't support Mastodon-style content warnings for replies at all. That's because Hubzilla, like Friendica and (streams), has a blog-style/Facebook-style/Tumblr-style one-post-many-comments thread format whereas Mastodon has a posts-and-more-posts thread format.
So replies on Hubzilla are comments which, unlike Mastodon, even have their own dedicated entry field and only one of these. There is no summary (= Mastodon's content warning) field for comments. I mean, why would someone give a summary for a blog comment or a Facebook comment or a Tumblr comment!
Also, especially the old guard on Hubzilla can't comprehend why content warnings need to be issued by the poster in a specific field. They're used to having a dead-simple reader-side filter system called the "NSFW app" which automatically hides posts behind a content warning when it finds one or several from a list of keywords (substrings actually) in a post. It has a tendency for false positives, but still.
Mastodon didn't have anything remotely similar before version 4.0 when its filters grew the ability to hide posts and not only remove them. And now the filters are too complicated for most casual users, not to mention that their favourite mobile app doesn't have filter controls, and they've never touched the Web interface even once. Strangely, this is actually something where Hubzilla manages to be easier to use than Mastodon. So almost nobody uses filters to generate content warnings.
What makes matters worse is that Mastodon hides the post text behind a content warning, but not the images. Hubzilla does, and Hubzilla users who have never seen Mastodon in action assume that so does Mastodon. Instead, however, Mastodon blanks them out. Not only that, but it uses its own homebrew, non-standard, "proprietary" sensitive flag for it which I think isn't documented anywhere except for Mastodon's source code. And it stubbornly refuses to adhere to existing standards. Basically, any other project that wants its images optionally hidden on Mastodon has to reverse-engineer Mastodon's image flagging first.
Hubzilla doesn't have a nifty alt-text entry field like Mastodon either. Some may think that the image description field which is only accessible when uploading an image and then never again is that, but it isn't. On Hubzilla, just like on Friendica and (streams), alt-text has to be manually grafted into the image-embedding BBcode. There is no documentation for this on any of the three either.
Well, and all this collides with the countless Mastodon users who don't know that the Fediverse is more than just Mastodon, much less that everything else isn't just Mastodon with a different UI and one or two extra features.
So you have encounters of Hubzilla users who don't know what alt-text is, much less how to add it because there is no even halfway official source for such information and Mastodon users who don't know that their opposite is not on Mastodon but on something that's as far from being Mastodon as it could ever get.
I guess Friendica accounts and Hubzilla and (streams) channels are being muted and blocked on Mastodon left and right for not following Mastodon's unwritten rules. Not because the users don't care. Not even because the users actually don't know these rules, what with how little exposure most of them have to Mastodon's overarching culture. No, it's often because they simply don't know how to follow the rules.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams

Resident of central Ontario long-term care home died by homicide, police allege
Police say a man who lived at a central Ontario long-term care home has died after an alleged homicide at the facility.
-termcarehome

24 Nova Scotia long-term care homes currently dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks
There are currently two dozen COVID-19 outbreaks reported at long-term care homes across Nova Scotia, and some health-care officials are concerned about a lack of COVID protocols.
-19 -termCare

24 Nova Scotia long-term care homes currently dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks
There are currently two dozen COVID-19 outbreaks reported at long-term care homes across Nova Scotia, and some health-care officials are concerned about a lack of COVID protocols.
-19 -termCare

To be fair, something like "mobile identity" already exists. In the Fediverse. Not as an experimental proof-of-concept, but in stable daily use for longer than Mastodon has even been around.
It's called "nomadic identity". It was created by Mike Macgirvin in 2011 with his Zot protocol and first implemented by himself in 2012 in the Red Matrix which became in 2015. It's also part of the Nomad protocol, a successor of Zot, upon which Mike's latest creations commonly referred to as is based.
Nomadic identity allows you to have your channel (similar to what an account is just about everywhere else) on multiple server instances at the same time. Not backup-like static copies, but identical clones which are being kept in sync in near-real-time.
In case any of you don't know yet: Both can use ActivityPub as well, and they're federated with Mastodon. I'm actually writing this from a Hubzilla channel that has one spare clone.
Also, both Hubzilla and (streams) have bidirectional support for another creation of Mike's, a single-sign-on system named OpenWebAuth which automatically recognises your login on compatible instances.
The obvious catch is that neither of these features are available anywhere else, at least not to this extent. Hubzilla and (streams) are the only nomadic federated server applications, and they're also the only ones that with server-side OpenWebAuth support which means that they can recognise OpenWebAuth logins from elsewhere.
And it's safe to say that what doesn't exist on Mastodon may be seen as non-existent in the Fediverse altogether.
CC:
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #NomadicIdentity #OpenWebAuth #Hubzilla #Streams

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Its the first Thursday of the month and that means more writing prompts! , Ive got prompts from , and .

Before I get started, I always want to shout out the people making these prompts! is a daily prompt put together by . The prompts arent specific to the calendar day, just incrementing from the start sometime back in July. You can see .

is put on by and . They put together a list of questions for each day of the month. You can see . Some of the questions this month come from community members!

is organized by with some questions by the community. is a bit more of a writerly prompt, asking questions about writing more generally than the other two prompt games. You can find .

One final thing to preface this before I let loose: Im working on two projects at the moment, a single protagonist police procedural (in the prompts, Ash belongs to this one), and a multiple-protagonist closed-circle murder (Sara, Jennifer, Anthony, Jace, Beau, Vincent, and Lacey are in this one). I just choose whichever I want to talk about each prompt.

Ok, so, without further delay, lets get to the prompts! This is bound to be a very long post, and I dont always have a good answer for every prompt.

November 01

Introduce your story as a high-budget film or series coming soon.Faceless Justice: Ash's job researching crimes for the Investigators is comfortable, until Spencer crashes into his life as his new field agent. Spencer's experienced, confident, and she thinks Ash has gotten too soft. And she's right.Then Estrella Ventura's dead and the case lands on Ash's plate. How can Ash solve this murder without telling Spencer how he knows the victim And how does Ash's boyfriend figure in all of thisFacility 108: Jace Kinsey just wanted to save his family from a viral threat by signing up to live in Facility 108 for a year, but his wife thinks he's stolen their lives away from them. She may be more right than she thinks. Will their marriage surviveSara lvarez is used to working tense situations as a social worker, but she wasn't ready for murder in this safe haven. Can she figure it out and get lockdown lifted before the residents run out of medicine Or did she do it herselfI tried to do one for both stories. Less than 500 characters is a bit tight for what's basically my book blurb, and I tried to make it sound more exciting. This was a tough prompt and a wild way to introduce our works this month! If you've got feedback, I would be happy to hear it Halloween Edition: Your MC gets trapped in a parallel universe where they die horribly every day in different ways. How do they reactI think almost every one of my main characters would not handle this well. Because I'm writing these characters, there's a lot of fragility there, even in the headstrong ones like Jennifer and Anthony (I actually just looked over the chapters where Anthony breaks over a dead body on his watch). Spencer could deal, but she's not an MC.(Because PennedPossibilities is rolling rather than on specific days, the posts for holidays tend to come out the day after where I am.)What's the best writing advice you've heard or readI think it's "Do what works for you." or "Write however you need." I take issue with the "just write" advice I hear because it puts pressure on people who write slowly for reasons beyond their control. So don't just write, but find a way to write that works for you. We're all different and we tell different stories in different ways.Happy November!

November 02

Do your characters play any gamesBeau does, and it's mentioned in chapter 3 that they are good at fighting games. None of my other main characters across stories are particularly into games at this point in their life, though I'm still playing with this idea that Ash wanted to be a game designer when he was young. I think the strangest connection is that Spencer, hotshot field agent, collects classic board games. Citadels is mentioned in one chapter, though not by name.Tell us what you enjoy most about writing speculative mystery.Alright, so I love the chase of the puzzle. I love figuring out who did it and why and how. It's got to be someone interesting for me to enjoy it, though. It has to be built up well. Writing that is amazing.I also want my work to do something. Since mystery doesn't care as much about setting, I give that to sci-fi and let some hope show through in the future. Plus, I can make things up when needed I've got some blog posts on these topics, if you're curious:And also check out my  on my site for more of my thoughts on mystery and sci-fi together.Do you keep a notebook or digital device by your bed if you have an idea during the nightI keep my phone by my bed, though I rarely use it for this purpose. For a little while I was keeping a dream journal, but my dreams were just so weird and unusable that I stopped. That said, sometimes my brain can't keep quiet on a project when I'm trying to get to sleep, so I'll note something down if I decide something, because I can't be trusted to remember if I don't.

November 03

Who is your favorite antagonist Why
How to answer this without duplicating my PennedPossibilities answer for today and still keeping my mystery secrets 
I definitely have a favorite in my current stories, but antagonists in mysteries can be a lot of things. I've read mysteries where the antagonist is actually the police department getting in the way of the investigation. The murderer isn't always the antagonist, from a dramatic standpoint. Sometimes it's the detective.
Who is your favourite character to write, and why is that person your favourite
This changes all the time. Yesterday, before I started writing his next chapter, I said I hated writing Vincent. But then I really got into it. So maybe I like writing Vincent.
I think I like my spitfire characters the most, though. I enjoy writing Alejandra and Spencer, both secondary characters but so full of fire. When I write them, I get to be... someone I'm not.
"Are dialogue tags flexible" laughed John.
"Yes," Michael said. "Although sometimes you just need said to get the idea across."
A look of realization spread over John's face. "An' you mayn't need a tag at all if action identifies."
"Agreed. Plus, if you've established who's speaking, no attribution is needed."
"Too right! An' diction helps too!"
"Right," Michael said, "but it works best if you mix it up as needed."
Realistically, use whatever works best for the scene, flow, and pacing that you're going for. "Said" is very quick. Action can be quick (if that action is moving the scene) or slow (if it's more showing off character). Unattributed lines can be rapid fire, but the reader can get lost without an occasional touchstone.
So, it's my common advice, use what works for your story.
That said (ha!), I can't stand every line being "he said" repetitively. It gets tedious to read.

November 04

Do films or theater play a role in your story
Not as often as one might think. Ash likes "classic" horror (which is just code for the horror I watch now, since he's watching them in 2062). It becomes a talking point between him and Dev (his love interest in the story). I had them talking about Jordan Peele films before I'd actually watched them  (that's fixed now!)
There's a media room in the facility, but honestly we barely go there except to mention games a bit.
Oh, an interesting tidbit is that originally, Beau was just a resident rather than volunteer electrician (I combined them with another character, as you do as a writer). When they were a resident, Beau was really into film and was writing a film with their partners. Beau, short for Beauregard, came from Violet Beauregard, the character from Willie Wonka (specifically the 70s film).
PennedPossibilities 122When a new WIP is started, do you go into the project with a particular theme in mind or does one develop along the way
I'm pretty big on themes, but new projects start in all sorts of ways. Granted, I'm always looking for my stories to "do something" so, I have a tendency to think about theme more than most people do at the start.
My process starts with "find the basic idea" and "find the start and the ending". Sometimes the basic idea, start, or end is theme.
When I started the idea for Ash's story, I went in angry and disheartened by the George Floyd protests and police corruption. So it started with that theme.
When I started Facility 108, in its current rendition, I was angry at pandemic response. So that's also a thematic start I guess.
Although theme can get a bit muddy (are those themes or topics), and mystery tends to lend its standard themes, so who's to really say I do start with a baseline of hope, though.
Have you ever seen a movie which was better than the book
I don't tend to read or watch interchangeably, and I think that each medium provides a different experience, and it's really quite hard to compare the two.
I will say, and this may be blasphemous for a mystery writer, but I enjoyed the BBC Miss Marple rendition of Nemesis much more than the book, but they're so separated by time and ideals. (I also enjoy adaptations of Orient Express more often ).

November 05

What is your MC's favourite form of entertainmentAsh is into classic horror, but I think he probably prefers reading. Though, his truly favorite "entertainment" is research spiraling, I feel.For my other story's MCs, I don't really have this for most. Beau, while they had originally been a big film buff character, they are leaning over into games in the current writing. Although, it may be about the same for them. Oh, and Vincent loves books, but he's a lit professor.What do you like to do when you're not writingRecently, I have started watching NCIS, which is good, not very deep mystery that I can watch during a meal or something. I also read, but that feels like work sometimes. If I ever get the gumption, I might pop on a game (though lately it's been Path of Exile for something a bit mindless).WritersCoffeeClubHow are you affected by reviews of your workI am cautious around reviews. I haven't had any fiction reviews yet, but I've had "reviews" for games and some formal, big-name reviews for interactive fiction. I know that I can be heavily affected by things people say, both positive and negative (and sometimes in the reverse of what you might think). But reviews are important and I have to know what people are saying. Otherwise I'll make the same mistakes.

November 06

What does your MC know that other people don'tAsh is a researcher, so he knows a lot of information that gets remembered instead of other important things. But this information never really seems at hand when he really needs it. This question actually has me rethinking my first chapter a bit. In it, Spencer steamrolls into the scene and solves a case basically before the ink is on the paper (though ink and paper are pass). But maybe Ash should impress her somehow. MC POV: What is standing in your way right nowAsh: I'm not sure there's anything to stand in the way of. Like, the easy answer is Spencer. She's a hard ass and definitely loves giving me hell, but I don't know she's standing in my way. If anything, I'm in her way. She's made that pretty clear. I'm some obstacle she needs to overcome to accomplish... what exactly I don't know, and I'm not going to ask her. She has ambition, so much of it, but where is she goingWould you consider an audiobook of your novel or short storyAbsolutely. In fact, if a contract doesn't include audiobook adaptations for a novel, I'm less likely to be interested. Audiobooks are a growing market and they're how I read most books these days. I even text-to-speech e-books that I can't get audiobooks for.My line here is AI narration. I want real people narrating my books, and I want them to be fairly compensated for it. That's a deal breaker for me.

November 07

MC POV: you can change one thing about your life. What will it beJace: It seems harsh and weird for me to say, given how much I love Alejandra and our kids, but I almost didn't take that class. I had a conflict and chose that class over a bio elective. And I think I chose wrong. Everything with her has been so hard... for her... since we met. So maybe it would have been better we didn't at all. I sacrifice my love for her happiness.Ash: I don't go downstairs.These are unrelated, I just got done writing Jace's second chapter in Facility 108 yesterday, so his thoughts are bouncing around in my head.I'm being ever cryptic about Ash's past. His story is first person, so it's harder to keep secrets from the reader, but Ash doesn't let himself go there, so the reader can't either.Do any of your characters ever "put on airs" around othersI think I purposefully create characters who just can't help being anything other than themselves. Sure, people might act a little more formal when Vincent is leading a classroom. And Ash will be a bit more professional sounding around his supervisor. It all depends on how people perceive each other and respect one another in situations. Of course, Ash is nerves and "what am I supposed to do" around Dev.Oh, actually... I specifically have Amrit, a secondary character in Facility 108 putting on the affect of being a tough street thug, when he's really a scared kid inside just wanting to protect his sister. Originally I had this idea that he was an actor, but I don't think that's in the way I've written him.I don't know if that's "putting on airs" so much as wearing a mask, but it's close enough.How would you describe your WIP's core plotWIP 1: Ash, an official investigation researcher in 2062 gets a new partner and works on a series of cases that get increasingly close to home. Along the way he must find the courage and motivation to do work way outside his comfort zone.WIP 2: Facility 108 is one of many refuges for people isolating from Air-Hanta 28, a deadly virus. Everything is going smooth, but a murder occurs and outside contact cuts.N.B.: Apparently this was intended to be a bit more of a "general idea" than a "plot breakdown, so here it is:WIP 1: Police procedural in 2062 when policing has changed.WIP 2: Closed circle murder mystery set in the near future.Both mysteries, a genre that has a stranglehold on plot in general. I'm always looking to experiment, but I *like* the plot arc of setup->murder->investigation->complication->investigation->revelation

November 08

Has another author ever inspired you to change anything about your writingI am constantly affected by what I read and that churns into my writing style, so yes, but not in a specific way. I pay attention to character descriptions and word choice because those can be areas I'm not as great with. What I'm learning is that you can get away with anything as long as you keep it lean. Oh, and I vowed never to have a page block of single-speaker dialogue after reading Nemesis.Which of the senses does your MC rely on the mostI am so bad at sensory detail. Sight is what I rely upon the most in life, so that's what my characters tend to rely upon. Then hearing, because I tend to overhear a lot and that's something I put in my stories. This is a pretty boring answer, but I'm bad at putting smells and tastes into my stories. Touch is sometimes there, but I think I don't make my characters touch things as much because I don't What does your most productive writing space look likeIt's not very exciting, just a single monitor, keyboard, and mouse on a desk. The number of cups grows as weeks go on until I wipe it clean. I've never felt comfortable writing anywhere that isn't the space where I spend 90% of my waking hours. I know there's some psychology about having a separate place for work and play, but it just doesn't work for me.

November 09

SC POV: What do you respect about the MCEmily: Jenny didn't want to be a doctor like Daddy was. She wanted to be a nurse, and she fought him every step of the way. After the lawsuit, we didn't have money for med school anyway, but Jenny, she pulled herself through. She wanted to help. To save people. Doctors did that, eventually, but it was the nurses who helped people recover. So she forced her way through nursing and took care of Daddy when it got bad.Emily is Jennifer Downs's sister in Facility 108. Jennifer is one of my POV characters. The two fight plenty, and tease each other, but they're really close. Jennifer has a habit of being a bit of a helicopter parent to Emily (who is old enough to make her own decisions, thank you very much!), but after losing their mother and with their dad's health, she's protective.What is your MC's most treasured possessionFor Jace, it's his wedding ring. That was taken away from him when he joined the facility, though. All of their personal possessions had to be left behind to ensure a sterile environment. He was humiliated and frightened by the idea of not wearing it. To him, the lack of him and Alejandra's rings represented the terror of the gulf that had grown between them. Like it was some confirmation of doubts long buried.Is there any kind of scene you could never writeI have a rule for my own writing that I don't kill animals or children. I think I could write those scenes, but I don't want to include them in my own works. You'll probably also discover, as I finally publish things, that I don't tend to put either in danger.I also am unlikely to write sexual assault in scene form, but I may need to refer to it or gloss over it if it's important to the mystery plot.I think there's a strong distinction here between what I can and what I will do. I'm not always going to be in control of the content required of me. In my job, I have to write whatever I'm assigned. I still think I'd be uncomfortable writing sexual assault. But I've been on the receiving end of that so I probably *could* write it. I just would not be willing and I'd say so.

November 10

Do your characters eat any unusual food
The facility provides food in the form of what has been described as protein mash that is flavored various ways. In reality it's a kind of textured vegetable protein. There are freezers with meat in them intended to be used sparingly, but no automatic process uses them. Since Facility 108 doesn't have any volunteers specifically for food preparation (just production) these don't see much use.
How much research did you need to do for your book / story
I am constantly researching something. In my last writing session, I had to verify what was between ribs 2 and 3 on the left side (spoilers, not the heart, that's for sure!), and to verify where exactly the right subclavian was. I'm also always absorbing new and emerging tech for future studies stuff to put into my settings. But that's mystery and scifi for you. So much research goes into it 
What's the biggest mistake you've made in your writing journey
I am of two minds about this.
First, I believe that everything we do required everything else we did before it. Our actions are the sum of our experiences.
But also, abandoning prose writing in 2009 in order to pursue games was probably the most harmful thing I've done for a writing career. I threw myself into games for a decade and that could have been spent writing.
It would have been different.

November 11

What tools can your MC useLeaving out what you might expect from educated contemporary people, Ash is handy with his headset. These headsets are for AR/VR use and can overlay information and functions in realtime or offer immersive experiences similar to VT. Ash uses immersives to go over virtual crime scenes after they've been processed. He's better at it virtually than he is in person.What is the hardest part of the writing process for youThere are so many difficulties here. I glanced at some responses while grabbing the prompt and was nodding along with them. Getting started, finishing, making decisions, remembering the decisions you made in the moment.Writing is hard. It's my biggest talent, and I know somewhat what I'm doing (we never really totally know), but there's a lot of challenges and obstacles along the way.Does your writing include comedy How do you add comedic momentsI am of the firm belief that when you're writing about murders and the people who commit them, you need something lighter to balance it out. I'm not really a "funny" person, but I like to include levity where it seems appropriate. Sometimes it just feels off, but other times it can deflate a tense situation or create a transition. The humor for me is usually dry or sarcastic, but it works.

November 12

Antagonist POV: what food would you serve to your enemy
I don't think I have really a good answer for this one. I don't really write characters who would think this way, antagonist or not. This is definitely the kind of thing that someone who is a real villain of a person, who epitomizes evil, would have an answer for, and that doesn't work for me. Characters like Moriarty don't interest me. Give me an Irene Adler any day.
What does your villain truly desire On the other hand, what do they lack
I can't answer this in the specific because mystery, but let's talk mystery villain desires. Almost every murderer does so because of some kind of desire. The killer *wants* something, and has arrived at the precipice where only killing someone will get them what they want. Most people will stop there, but the desperation of desire, the lack of self control, will push killers over. Every time.
Do you prefer to write on a desktop, laptop, typewriter, pen and paper, quill and parchment, blood and stone
I'm a computer writer. My primary writing is on my desktop, but I *can* use my laptop (I just don't really have any reason to). Handwriting for long periods really hurts my hands, so I can't do handwriting drafts like I know some writers prefer. I do tend to write notes or trial some ideas out on paper, though. I love my notecards!
(Yes, this was the actual question.)

November 13

When youre drafting, do you consider comps and marketingNo, but for one of my stories, I've had to, since my MFA program requests them along the way. If I start thinking about comps then I might start thinking of what I can do to connect what I'm writing to a comp, and I don't want to write like that.The only real "marketing" I've considered is trying to figure out what my cover might look like. But I'm not really a marketing-oriented person.Does your MC or SC have any scarsI will take this as physical scars, rather than emotional ones which abound in my characters, especially my main characters. I am so bad at this, giving people scars. Anthony's husband has a scar. I think Dev does too, in my last iteration of how I described him.It's funny, because *I* have a scarwell two from the same injuryon my face, and I constantly touch them, but I rarely consider giving them to my characters.Whats the hardest emotion for you to writeShock, or "being upset". As a murder mystery writer, there are moments where someone close to a victim will find out that the victim is dead. I have a hard time with that moment. Recently, one of my readers mentioned that they thought everyone was taking it rather well considering I emulate when I'm writing, and I don't personally get much affected by dire news. I don't emote either. So it's hard to get in the mode.

November 14

SC POV: How would the story be better if you were the MC
Spencer: Look. I'm going to tell you straight. I'm the main character of this story. Ash may be narrating this thing, but he'd be lost without me. Nothing's going to happen without me doing it. I can't rely upon him and his research. If it were up to me, we'd be doing this the old way. Interviews and interrogations. Actual lab work. None of this virtual crap. And get a doctor on scene! Do I have to do everything
Do your characters wear glasses or contact lenses Do they have any distinguishing facial features
I think Vincent is the only character in either story who wears glasses. Bit of a stereotyping there for a professor. Glasses cause some logistical problems for having headsets with visors, so I've just avoided the issue here 
Throughout the novel, Jace grows a beard because the face filters made shaving a necessity. Perhaps THAT's my Chekhov's Gun WritersCoffeeClub!
Share an example of Chekhov's gun in your work.
I... don't think that I can. In mystery, Chekhov's Gun usually ends up being a pivotal clue that ties everything back to the very beginning. If I were to share something like that, then I would be giving away entire plots  I have a few of these, of course. I love tying things together in nice neat bows. It's fun dropping something in near the start that has a big impact to the solution of a mystery.

November 15

Do you favor certain sense when writing If so are they your dominant senseThis was a PennedPossibilities last week, but I do rely a lot on visual because that's how I see the world. Hearing, especially eavesdropping, can be there too. I'm pretty bad at sense data in my writing, sadly. It's something I have to put in intentionally, and that doesn't often happen so much on the first pass for me.What does your MC or SC think about their current job What are some of their past jobsAnthony's a bit miffed at running security, because it's the kind of thing he didn't want to do in the military. He does love doing personal training, and finds time to do that in the facility.Beau is working at the facility as an electrician, but they have a degree in electrical engineering. Although the electrician thing has always paid the bills, they want something bigger.If you find you've used a name from a famous novel, do you change itI'm careful about names. I always do a search to make sure that it's not someone well known. This also helps me make sure I'm building good names rather than just things thrown together. What I *do* have to watch out for is reusing names across projects. In Facility 108, I had a secondary character named Ash. I renamed them to Mason, which is a character I have to rename in the other novel now.

November 16

Do you make up words for your books If so, any tricks you'd care to share
Since I use scifi settings, I do have to make names and/or brands for new technologies. A lot of this is just appropriating existing words (like Lattice or Patchwork) or smashing words together or truncating words (like automat). It's a lot easier than it is in fantasy where you have to make things up according to language, but you sometimes run afoul of words already existing as brands.
When you're writing an emotional or difficult scene, how do you set the mood
I usually don't need to. When I write, I become my characters, so I just have to start thinking the way my characters would in the moment and I'm there.
Sometimes I need a bit of distraction from what's going on around me so I'll turn on a playlist, although YouTube has been making that difficult lately.
What ancillary writing apps / sites do you find the most useful
I write almost exclusively in Scrivener now. Google docs for anything collaborative. Google Drive for backing stuff up.  is great for visualizing spaces.  is good for quick counting a passage. I use  for figuring out words I know I want but can't remember.  for names.

November 17

Do you get book cover ideas while you write, and have you ever used those
I don't tend to really think about book covers when I'm writing. For my thesis novel, we had to think about it and write a description for one, so I have that in my mind, but I just don't think about these kinds of things often. I do know that I have a leaning towards simple, symbolic covers over busy representational ones, though.
MC or SC POV: Is there anything you're ever a snob about
Vincent: Jane Eyre is a better novel than just about anything put out today. I still read the heavily plotted drivel that's designed to get good reviews, but they simply do not challenge anyone anymore. They are too afraid of saying something that has any substance or meaning. Literary novels are a dying breed. Readers today want endings that tell you what to think. Readers need to think for themselves.
Do you draw out maps/floorplans/diagrams/etc. for key set pieces in your writing
I love drawing maps, even though they never really matter in the end. It just helps me to visualize things. Here are four maps, one for a project I'm working on and three that aren't being used at the moment.

November 18

If your MC was a superhero, what would their name be
Ash would be something like The Quiet Observer. For the others:
Jace: The Botanist
Anthony: Mr. Pick Me Up
Beau: Mx. Fix
Lacey: Grade A Zoomer
Sara: Mom (some of the group home kids already call her this)
Vincent: The Analyst
Jennifer: Nurse Downs (people already think of her as a bit of a superhero)
What modern technology (in your world) would your MC or SC have trouble living without
Hands down, Ash couldn't do his job without his headset. Although he grew up with Virtual, he adapted to the headset quite quickly. Most people these days use their headset at least for one activity a day. It's basically the evolution of the cell phone (although older generations do sometimes still use a cell).
How do you do research for your writing Do you ask specialists
I do a lot of internet research. If there's ever something I have to get absolutely right and I can't find an answer, I might reach out to someone who would know. But there's a lot of information out there. You have to weed through the misinformation. I'm lucky that most info I use doesn't need to be 100% accurate because near future means I can make some things up.
I do own a book on poisons (a mystery writer's best friend) and a book on symbols (visual symbols, not symbolism, though I have one of those too). There was a book featured in Butterfly Effect (I think) that was just a bunch of street signs and their meanings from the globe and I wanted that book so much. Physical references tend to get outdated though.

November 19

Do you ever use mundane daily tasks to show character or world-build
When your story is set in a world that isn't standard "today" then you have to establish the "normal" for the reader. This includes showing mundane tasks, if they differ from expected norm. Being near future, I can still shortcut a lot of things, but I have to show the new stuff off so the reader can get a sense of the time. This is a slow build style of writing, which I generally prefer.
MC or SC POV: Who would you be lost without
Jace: Alejandra, mi vida, my love, my guiding star. Everything I do, I do for you. I do not care what has happened in the past as long as I keep holding on to that future with you in it. There is nothing what will turn me away, I am certain. Please understand. Please let me tell you. Please, stop all of this pretend anger, the hatred. You do not believe that. I know you don't. I know you don't.
Describe the funniest moment youve written lately. Share an excerpt.
I am in the last third of the book, so most of it is pretty serious right now. As much as I think it's a good idea to have tonal lightness paired with the dark bits, there's a point where it seems inappropriate. Here's a passage from chapter 11 that I think is the most humor I've shown in a while.
Be angry at me, then. Beau puffed out their chest and held their chin up. We were going to gym together tonight among other things. But I forgot about the meeting. So I canceled. He went anyway. Told me to meet him in the showers after the meeting. Im the reason he was even here tonight.
The slap felt soft and feeble. When Beau opened their eyes, Emilys face looked somewhat lifted. She wasnt smiling, but there was something in her eyes that had just a bit of light to it. Other people have to use those showers, Beauregard! A jab. Not a good one, but still a jab. As though the words had slapped her back, Emily put her hand to her face. Im sorry, I
Beau shook their head. I deserve it. They nodded in Jennifers direction. Slap her too, it might help
The tiniest of chuckles erupted from Emilys chest, and she frowned at it. Dont make me laugh right now. I want to sulk. But I guess its time to bite that bullet. She turned toward her sister down the corridor and took a deep breath. As she started walking, Emily reached out and clutched Beaus wrist, dragging them along.

November 20

Whats your antagonist's soft spot
Rather than switching this about and making this about another character, I think antagonists, especially in mystery stories need to have ordinary, everyday things. Guilty pleasures, habits, beliefs, that make them more human. But also, they need things that they just won't do. In mystery, the villain isn't usually completely evil, just desperate. Just because they've killed once doesn't mean they will for every problem.
What comes first for you, the plot or the characters, and why
This really changes depending on the story. For one of my novels in progress, the plot came, then the characters, then I scrapped the plot and recycled the characters, and the new plot happened.
In the other, I started with setting, then two characters, came up with a plot that added more characters, then rewrote a lot of the plot, which changed a lot of characters.
So, it's a big process.
Do you have an author's website specifically for promoting your writing
I do! 
My blog posts go up on Thursdays, and I post them here! My MFA program makes its students design a website (with an added encouragement for offering services, which I have clearly not adopted). I actually started working on it before the class where it's assigned because I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with what I could produce at the time.
(This one is a bit meta, but if you're reading on an app, there's a website attached to this blog!)

November 21

"If a scene is boring, add dragons." What do you do if a scene is boring
If a scene is boring, is it needed What's the purpose of the scene You're clearly not you delivering on that in a way that keeps the reader interested. What needs to change so that the information comes across more engagingly The idea of "adding dragons", or "making someone show up with a gun" as I've heard for mystery, misses the point. Adding more ancillary doesn't make the scene less pointless.
If your MC was a genuine psychic for hire, what would be their main specialization: tarot reading, palm reading, mediumship, astral projection, the gift of prophecy, reanimation of corpses, or curses
I don't really know how to answer this one because my characters often tend to be realists. My detectives often rely upon observation for their skills. They're researchers, analysts, and watchers. So something there. Maybe cold reading
Oh, an interesting idea here is that Ash uses astral projection because he uses scanned versions of crime scenes rather than the actual scene because he feels more at home using the virtual environment.
What things make a good book cover design
The things I look for in a good cover:
Good use of space
Not cluttered or busy
Good contrast on the text
Seamless transition between elements (i.e., doesn't look badly composited)
Something I really like is when a cover shows something that only makes sense at the end of a book, or which raises questions. I prefer a good abstract cover over a representational one, but I know that this varies a lot with personal taste.

November 22

Did any particular books, movies, or games influence your story
What hasn't Such a hard question.
Books: several Agatha Christies, The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne, anything on my analysis posts ().
Film/TV: Murder, She Wrote, Knives Out, so many police procedurals.
Games: Technobabylon, Tacoma, The Sherlock Holmes series by Frogwares, countless mystery games I can't list.
Everything influences.
Facility 108 was originally directly influenced by Danganronpa and the Nonary Games series of games. It's less of an influence now. Also directly influencing it was the poor pandemic response.
Ash's story was directly influenced by the George Floyd protests, as I think I've said somewhere on here before. A very unusual direct influence for structure was The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.
Do you agree with the choices that your characters make (Excluding your villains / antagonists, of course.)
If my characters all made the right choices and never had any problems, then it wouldn't make for a very interesting mystery now would it It's almost a required trope that you include missteps and bad choices in your crime novels, on everyone's part. Witnesses withhold information, victims trust the wrong people, and detectives follow the wrong leads.
I think the spirit of the question is if I generally agree with the direction my main characters take in life in general (rather than specific choices in the novel), then sure. I always try to make my main characters at least share something ideologically with me. In a lot of ways, I make characters who I think have made better life choices than I did. I live vicariously through my characters. But not all of them. And not every choice.
Who do you acknowledge in your work
I haven't had much occasion to put in acknowledgments yet, but I explicitly would acknowledge those who helped along the way. My family (and not the blood kind) who always offer a read. The people who give me a roof to sleep under. The people who showed me the way.
Implicitly, I acknowledge people sometimes with a phrase or a name in my works. I don't do this purposefully, just sometimes it happens to work out.

November 23

Do your characters ever express gratitude to each other
Generally, I think so. My main characters, especially. I tend to write more humble main characters who aren't afraid to admit that they don't do everything on their own. Even a loner like Ash will show gratitude to Fiorela when she's being overbearing.
That said, I rarely have overt, "for show" gratitude. Thank yous and such are pleasantries rather than actual gratitude. They show it in actions and reciprocation.
Do you see writing as a kind of therapeutic (or even spiritual) practice
I don't see it as therapeutic like I know some people do. Some people need to write to understand themselves. I know myself pretty well, so I don't need that.
Throughout my life, I have toyed with the concept of writing as a kind of divine act. I'm not a religious person in any traditional sense (and I'm an atheist anyway), but creating is something only humans can do. It's our superpower.
Do you have any profanity in your work **** you, I want an answer!
I'm not the kind of person who swears, hardly ever (nothing really against it, it just was never part of my vocabulary). So, my characters rarely do. I don't avoid it at all, and sometimes a situation requires the emotion that can come from profanity. Even my characters who swear more often only do so on occasion.

November 24

What would make your protagonist and antagonist work together
I'm struggling how to answer or modify this one. It's a good question for genres where the antagonist is readily apparent from the beginning, but not so for mystery where the goal of the protagonist is to unveil the antagonist.
Something I've been toying with is the idea of "antagonist" in mystery. The murderer isn't always what's preventing the MC. Sometimes it's police. Sometimes it's the MC themselves.
How does your SC act when they're afraid
Let's talk about Emily in Facility 108. She's the sister of one of my main characters. She was involved with the victim. She's afraid, but her reaction is anger and despair. She loses herself in those emotions so she doesn't feel the fear.
Alejandra, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite. She takes the fear by the throat and tears it a new hole. The fear is afraid of her. For her deeper fears, she lashes out on others.
What's the best time of day for you to write
Soapbox: there's no such thing as a best time of day to write.
For me, I tend to write during the afternoons. I cannot write in the mornings. I'm barely functional in the mornings. If I don't get up, take my shower, and then eat breakfast, I'll end up with a headache later on in the day and so I generally don't get started until after that. And there's a bunch before I can sit down to write, so it's usually afternoon.

November 25

SC: You're allowed to play a prank on the MC. What would it be
Fiorela: I do this all the time. He thinks he's so neat and tidy and gets so flustered and frustrated when everything's out of order at home, but it's his routine. He comes home and goes through the apartment straightening up. Then, when he's done, he seems relaxed. One time I didn't put anything out of place during the day and he was brooding about something all night. Maybe it's not a prank, but it's fun.
SC POV: What do you look forward to each week
Emily: It's hard to do that, you know Every week's the same here. But I met someone, and he's just so different! He's like a wild stallion, even though he looks more like a hyena. We've got Dr. Walker's class together, and he lets me lean on him when I'm tired. I've got other friends there, too, but Wayne's just something else. I don't think Jenny'd approve, so I keep it quiet. But class and book club are good excuses.
What's a better (more truthful) name for a famous novel
Snarky answer: The Four Failed Novels, or I Tried to Write a Novel Four Times and Here's the Result, by William Faulkner.
Honestly, I don't pay a lot of attention to titles, at least as much as I probably should, considering how much I tool my titles until they're "perfect". I assume every author goes through this, so I give them credit to their titles.

November 26

What question would your MC dread being asked by an interviewing journalist
Ash has had his fill of journalists. Which is why, when Dev comes along, Ash doesn't know how to handle it. On one hand, he doesn't trust reporters, but on the other, that part of his life has been long forgotten. Dev asks those questions. How's your family What was it like growing up What are you looking for Those questions a potential boyfriend would ask. Ash is trying his best to go with it.
(The original question was: "What question would your antagonist dread being asked by an interviewing journalist")
Does your MC have a romantic partner
Let me start this by saying you don't always need a romantic subplot. Include one if it fits your plot, but there are other subplots. (Sorry, I'm tired of every story having a love story somehow in it.)
That said, Ash does have a romantic suitor. I wanted to include this to create tension of having to work and live separate lives (and how those lives might come together).
In Facility 108, some MCs do, and others don't.
Have you ever retconned a story after publishing Is it okay to retcon
Do whatever you want for your stories, but for me, if it's in print, it's true. I'd considered pulling back on a detail in my Bear and Bird series, but the first story that got published there, Bear and Bird at Clairmont Circle, has that detail in it, so it must stick. Now I just have to deal with it.
Retconning character details is a bit unfair to readers, in my opinion.

November 27

At what point during the writing of your WIP do you know what the last line is going to be
Very honestly, it's when I write it. Even when I know exactly how the final scene will play out. Even when I've planned to the nines. It never, ever, comes out of me quite the way I expected. The last line isn't written until I type it out. And I don't write out of order. (How can people do that It's so weird to me! But you do you.)
Along the same vein as yesterday's question, does your SC have a romantic partner
Some do, some don't. For example, Emily in Facility 108 is romantically involved with the victim, but so are a lot of people.
I guess I find this a little unusual a question because I feel like the answer is always going to be "some do." Are there genres (outside of Middle Grade and Children's obviously) where this question has a different answer
How do you feel about the use of AI in writing
I don't have enough time, space, or patience to answer this. The short answer is don't. The slightly longer answer is that we use the term AI too liberally these days for something that hasn't actually been invented. Algorithms and statistics are not AI. They are not intelligent. Large Language Models are pattern shufflers. They're as intelligent as a pack of cards. They're being used as shortcuts to make money. Chuck em.

November 28

Do you target your work to a specific audience
No, and I think there's a problem that targeting a specific audience creates (in that it obscures the work for people who fall outside that audience), but also there is a danger for writing toward a "generic" audience (because that really doesn't exist). Personally, I write stories that are in me, and I don't try to mold it into some kind of preconceived notion of what some imaginary reader "might" like.
MC or SC POV: What does your future hold
Ash: What an absolutely awful question to ask someone. I'm happy where I am and I hope that my future remains the same: happy. But I'm a realist and I know what's happening here. Something's going to change and it'll be different. I will be ok, but it will be different. I don't like that, but life doesn't care about what I like. So please, let me enjoy this for a little while longer. I don't need this kind of pressure.
How do you approach a fight scene or other high-action scenes
Poorly Let's say poorly. I am awful at action. That's one reason I prefer traditional mystery to other kinds. There's not a lot of running around, or fistfighting going on. I'm the kind of guy who hesitates when something tense goes on, so my characters tend to as well.
My desire is to be cinematic in these kinds of scenes, but I struggle with that. I can see it play out. Describing it is another matter.

November 29

If you could go back and change one thing about your writing in your previous work, what would it be
There are so many things left undone. I spent so much time in planning and not actually writing. I've solved that now, I feel. I should have actually learned how to write screenplays and written them. I wish I'd allowed myself to do mystery stuff earlier. None of this is actual writing. My "previous work" is a bit of a misnomer here, since there's nothing to change, really.
MC or SC POV: Where did you grow up
Ash: Right here in Metro. It wasn't called Metro then. Not until I was a teenager. A lot of people moved around as a kid, but we had the same house for years. I think maybe we lived somewhere else when I was young, but I don't remember it. But I grew up... well, in two places. One was on Virtual. All of my friends were there, and I did school there. The other place... I don't talk about that, so it's best just to leave it.
Some writers hate exclamation marks! How do you feel about them What about interobangs!
Exclamation points are fine when I need them. Double punctuation is rarely a good idea, though, because it looks unprofessional to readers. But that's all personal style. Do whatever works for you. There are really no hard and fast rules about these things. Now, ask me about semi-colons and I will tell you they don't have any place in fiction. But again, that's personal style.

November 30

How would your protagonist and antagonist describe you to their besties
In general, the answer is, "I don't know him." I'm not the kind of writer who talks with their characters. They don't know me. I'm not in their world. I know this is a bit of "not playing" with the question, but honestly, I just don't see my characters this way. I see them like people I pretend to be when I write them. They exist as entities, but also like hats I wear. If any of that makes sense.
What did your MC or SC want to be when they grew up
Ash (maybe) wanted to be a game designer as a kid, but he also felt the very real call of following in his parents' footsteps. Fiorela almost certainly always wanted to be into arts and crafts and got there. Dev perhaps wanted to be a filmmaker, but that didn't pan out when he got the itch for telling the truth. I think, in general, everyone ended up where they thought, though there was some misses along the way.
How much detail do you put into character descriptions Discuss
I go back and forth about this. Do I put in a lot of description That slows down the writing and means we have to make pit stops for description. Do I keep it sparse Then I'm relying on the reader to do the work. I've been told that sparse descriptions are better, though. I like to give a detail to a character that I can use to link the reader to the character later. Just one thing that I can mention.

Another month of prompts in the bag. If youre enjoying these and want to join in, head over to you Mastodon instance and start following the hashtags , and . Its such fun. As always, if you have your own answers or want to talk about mine, leave a comment!

#Blog #Craft #long #longPost #mastodon #Mystery #novel #November #PennedPossibilities #process #project #SciFi #scienceFiction #scifi #speculative #speculativeMystery #WordWeavers #writing #WritingPrompts

All this has already been covered years before there even was ActivityPub, namely with the Zot protocol from 2011 and its first implementation, the Red Matrix from 2012 which became in 2015.
Zot was designed with two features in mind which the current ActivityPub-based Fediverse doesn't cover: advanced permission control and instance-independent ownership of all your data. The latter was made possible by so-called nomadic identity which allows you not only to move your channel from instance to instance with ease, but to actually have your channel on multiple instances simultaneously. The former ranges from a new single-sign-on system named OpenWebAuth to a blog-like/Tumblr-like/Facebook-like one-post-many-comments thread model inherited from Friendica, but which now allows the thread starter to moderate their own threads, including deleting comments.
Zot eventually evolved into Nomad which is even more advanced and the base protocol of which takes especially permission control even further.
Before someone asks: Both have always been bidirectionally federated with Mastodon & Co. In fact, one advancement of (streams) is that ActivityPub compatibility no longer only comes from an add-on, but it's tied deeply into the core now.
Mike Macgirvin , an experienced communications protocol designer who single-handedly created all of this, had actually also tried to advance ActivityPub to something that'd follow his ideas of what a good federated protocol should be capable of. AFAIK, all of his ideas were turned down. This is the only reason why he keeps developing and maintaining a separate protocol: The Federated Web desperately needs features which whoever has the power over ActivityPub stubbornly refuses to even consider, let alone implement.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Zot #Hubzilla #Nomad #Streams #NomadicIdentity

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for &

N.B. man, 98, in hospital 7 months waiting for long-term care home
A 98-year-old New Brunswick man has spent seven months in hospital while waiting for a spot in long-term care. He was hospitalized in May following a heart attack.
-termCare

N.B. man, 98, hospitalized for 7 months waiting for long-term care home
A 98-year-old New Brunswick man has spent seven months in hospital while waiting for a spot in long-term care. He was hospitalized in May following a heart attack.
-termCare

N.B. man, 98, hospitalized for 7 months waiting for long-term care home
A 98-year-old New Brunswick man has spent seven months in hospital while waiting for a spot in long-term care. He was hospitalized in May following a heart attack.
-termCare

The same thing happened to the Fediverse, but probably at a larger scale than you may be aware of.
Today's Fediverse essentially came to exist when Friendica was launched in 2010. Yes, that was before Diaspora*. And yes, that was almost six years before Mastodon.
The typical Friendica user was the hobbyist IT geek who was proficient with Free Software. People who were on Friendica also used desktop or laptop computers with Linux on them. Lots of Friendica users were, at least initially, willing to host their own nodes which means they were also technologically capable of doing so. That was convenient because a Friendica node had troubles handling significantly more than 150 users. On top of that came a few leftist activists who used Friendica to network somewhere where nobody could find them, where they felt safe from mainstream oppression. Not even Diaspora* could offer them that.
Speaking of Diaspora*, Friendica users probably viewed Diaspora* users as largely clueless casual hipsters, and what few Diaspora* users knew about Friendica tended to view its users as elitist nerds with a superiority complex.
This didn't change much over the next years. The Red Matrix from 2012 was experimental until 2015 when it became Hubzilla. Just like Friendica, it federated with almost everything out there, including Friendica itself. But since it was even more complex, and since the word of Hubzilla even existing spread slowly, it was even geekier. I think the existence of Hubzilla only became really known on Friendica around 2018 when Osada and Zap promised to become the next big things. But as Hubzilla was so small, most of its users relied on Friendica connections, also because most Hubzilla users had actually migrated from Friendica.
Pleroma and Mastodon were federated with both Friendica, Hubzilla and each other from the very beginning. After all, Mastodon was built around OStatus at first, and Pleroma actually started out as an alternate GNU social frontend. And something free and decentral had always been inherently geeky. Thus, they essentially didn't have a much different user base. But especially Mastodon was semi-isolated right away because early Mastodon users didn't know about the other projects that Mastodon was already federated with.
Then it happened that droves of otaku and furries were chased off Twitter. Where should they go instead They decided that commercial walled gardens weren't safe havens, and both Facebook and Google+ were just that. And then they discovered Mastodon. Combined with those whom these refugees invited, their numbers were so big that furries became a substantial subset of the Fediverse users, and "Awoo!" became a standard Mastodon "battle cry" of sorts.
Still, the Fediverse was geeks all over and not much else. Only it was different kinds of geeks now.
Then came 2022. In February, Elon Musk announced he might buy out Twitter. That was when the first Twitter users started looking for an alternative, and Mastodon was the only one that was commonly known. Then Mastodon introduced an official iOS app, paving the way for non-technical iPhone users into the Fediverse who wouldn't have been able to get there without being able to load an app named "Mastodon" from the App Store. Then, in late October, Musk actually took over Twitter.
Eight years before now, the Fediverse was a hive of hackers and Linux geeks. Now, the Fediverse has fewer Linux users than people who want all talk about Linux and FLOSS in the Fediverse silenced because it goes on their nerves.
At the same time, the pre-Pleroma projects Friendica and Hubzilla still form one or two bubbles that are kind of stuck in the 2010s with little coming in from Mastodon. Their users may have spent years blissfully unaware of what's going on in the greater Fediverse, on Mastodon specifically. And then they encounter Mastodon users who have spent three to six months "knowing" that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. This can lead to nasty clashes that teach Friendica and Hubzilla users how different Mastodon is and Mastodon users that there are places in the Fediverse that are nothing like Mastodon.
To give you an example for how different these cultures are: Your typical late-2023 Mastodon user does everything with products from Silicon Valley gigacorporations without flinching. It's not only totally natural to them, but without any alternative. They don't know what FLOSS is, and the only FLOSS they use is Mastodon plus maybe the corresponding app. And they're likely to gush over the Apple Vision Pro. For your typical Friendica and Hubzilla user, Apple is evil incarnate, as are Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon etc. and all their products. And this kind of user does everything with FLOSS.
Also, many Mastodon users don't want quotes, they want "quote-tweets" even less because these are considered harassment tools, and they feel disturbed by stuff like text formatting or over 500 characters in one post. That's because they don't know it from their Mastodon-only experience. Friendica users, on the other hand, have been quoting each other, sharing each other's posts which is largely the same as quote-tweeting, using all text-formatting tricks in the book and written posts of just about any length imaginable for almost six years longer than Mastodon has even been around. That's because it's totally normal for them, and it's absolutely weird to them that Mastodon didn't or still doesn't offer these features.
Another example: On Mastodon, alt-text for images is pretty much mandatory now. On Friendica and Hubzilla, almost nobody describes their images. Ever. They've never done that. In fact, none of the two projects explains in their respective user documentation how that's done because alt-text has to be manually grafted into the image-embedding BBcode. So Friendica and Hubzilla users may not even notice existing alt-text, and they may wonder why someone from Mastodon attacks them for not providing an alt-text, not to mention what that is.
An even better example: content warnings. Mastodon uses the summary field for that. Friendica and Hubzilla use optional, automated reader-side filters for that. On top of that, it isn't exactly common knowledge that Mastodon uses the summary field for content warnings. Not to mention that Friendica doesn't even have a summary field, and a summary requires a pair of BBcode tags. Hubzilla does have a summary field, but if it's used at all, it's probably mostly used as a "full-post spoiler tag instead of using the actual spoiler tag". The typical Hubzilla user would rather install the Articles app, write a long post as an article and link to it in an actual post than write it as an actual post and put a summary on it. So if Mastodon users complain to Friendica or Hubzilla users about not providing content warnings, the latter may not know what the Mastodon users are talking about and whether they don't have filters for that.
Still today, Mastodon users see Mastodon as the one and only Fediverse standard that everything and everyone else has to adapt to in all regards imaginable. Friendica and Hubzilla users see Mastodon as out-right ridiculously underequipped and, for some strange reason, deliberately so. Both see each other as intruders on their respective home turfs.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Friendica #Hubzilla #Diaspora*

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I've made a few pictures in a virtual place modelled after Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon.
But I probably won't share them with the Fediverse because I'm not too keen on spending half a day or even the whole day again on an image description. An image description that nobody will read anyway because it'll be well over 10,000 characters long again. And I'm likely underestimating how long it'll actually end up.
Also, there's eye contact in them because my avatar is in them, and I've got no way to hide pictures from Mastodon users except by linking to them rather than adding them to a picture.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #EyeContact #Inclusion #Inclusivity #Accessibility #A11y #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost I'd go even further. Forcing AI-generated image descriptions upon all pictures and only allowing edits after posting is still bad. Not only unethical, but it'll allow for bad image descriptions to be posted to the Fediverse in the first place.
Image descriptions by AI must be optional. Opt-out maybe, but optional. Some people, myself included, post pictures that they themselves are vastly better at describing than any AI out there because they've got the necessary niche knowledge, and they have means of looking up details that an AI doesn't have and probably never will. So a mandatory AI-generated image description will always be inferior to a human-written one.
Fortunately, it's unlikely for something like this to be introduced to all instances of a major Fediverse project. It's even more unlikely to be introduced to all instances of all projects. I can name at least two projects that'll never introduce mandatory AI image descriptions.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #AI #OCR I always provide full, verbatim, word-by-word, character-by-character transcripts of any and all pieces of text in my pictures. Even if they're too small to be readable or even visible as text. Even if they're partly or mostly obscured. Even if they're only partly within the borders of the picture. Actually especially then.
If it isn't in English, I always try to provide an English translation in addition, one that's as close to being literal as possible.
I never rely on an AI when describing images or transcribing text. I always do it all 100% by hand.
And I'm not posting screenshots from , newspaper scans or photographs of posters. I'm posting digital renderings from within 3-D virtual worlds that can have dozens of pieces of text in them.
If I can do that, then checking and correcting an OCR-generated transcript of a newspaper scan shouldn't be asking too much.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #Transcript #Transcripts #Transcription Okay, I have a theory

Generated object types (Article vs Note):


The blogging projects WriteFreely and Plume publish everything as Article objects.
Friendica publishes posts as Article objects if they have a title and as Note objects if they don't.
Hubzilla publishes everything as Note objects. This might have been decided in case Hubzilla's Articles app, basically its own built-in long-form blogging engine, should ever start federating its contents (it currently doesn't).

Acceptance of Article objects:


Mastodon handles Article objects by creating a link to them with the title written above. It was decided for Mastodon to act like this because Mastodon simply isn't compatible with blog posts. It couldn't handle text formatting before v4.0, it still can't handle picture embedding, nor can it handle more than four pictures. Besides, it'd irritate Mastodon users who aren't used to seeing stuff with over 500 characters in their timelines to find a full-sized blog post with several dozen times that length.
Friendica and Hubzilla can handle Article objects properly. They know all text formatting tricks in the book, they know image embedding, they know what a title is, all their available user interfaces fold long posts, and their users are used to posts of just about any length anyway.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ActivityPub #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #WriteFreely
C) The attitude of some of the longtime users (yes, sorry). It does not help at all to tell people who are not happy with some of the aspects of the Fediverse to set up their own servers if they are not technically minded.

We got countless new Fedizens over the last 13 months who have only ever had iPhones as digital end-user devices and never laid their hands upon an actual computer in their lives. Now they find themselves in a space that was almost exclusively inhabited by Linux geeks until thousands of otaku and furries were chased out of Twitter.
It also does not help to expect that all of the newcomers will play by their book.

Yes, it still seems to occur that someone who has been on Friendica or Hubzilla in the mid-2010s or earlier has their first encounter with a Mastodon user. And just like the Mastodon user is irritated that there's something in the Fediverse that isn't Mastodon, that long-time user is irritated how Mastodon can possibly be so different from Mike Macgirvin's creations, both technologically and culture-wise.
Sometimes both sides want the respective other side to adapt, justified by "We were here first" vs "We're the majority". It's so very ironic how this pops up around Thanksgiving.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediverseMeta #FediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CWFediMetaI'm tempted to add the following preamble to all my posts and comments. This would answer a lot of questions right away and maybe leave nothing unclear.

Preamble


IMPORTANT: I am not on Mastodon. I am on . Hubzilla is not a Mastodon instance. Hubzilla is a wholly different project in the . . The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And Hubzilla is not a fork of Mastodon either.
Mastodon was not even here first. The first was StatusNet from 2008 which later became . Then came in 2010. And Hubzilla is from 2015 and based on a project from 2012. Mastodon was launched in 2016. It was immediately federated with all three because it spoke a language that these three spoke, too. Except for GNU social, all are still federated with one another to this day. And this is normal, legal and fully intentional.
We aren't the intruders. Technically speaking, Mastodon is the intruder.
Hubzilla has features that Mastodon doesn't have. Hubzilla has an unlimited character count where Mastodon has a limit of 500 characters. Hubzilla can create various ways of text formatting such as bold type, italics, code blocks, lists or headlines Mastodon can display them now, but it can't create them. Hubzilla can embed hyperlinks Mastodon toots only support URLs in plain sight. Hubzilla can do both quotes and "quote-tweets", and it doesn't have to resort to screenshots for either. And Hubzilla always mentions users by their full name, not by their short name like Mastodon.
When Mastodon was launched with its self-imposed restrictions, Hubzilla had had all these features for almost four years already. Friendica had had the same features for almost six years already. And many of these features, including longer posts and text formatting, have been available on all other Fediverse projects since they were created.
Thus, I will use features that are not available on Mastodon even though Mastodon users could read this. I will not refrain from writing over 500 characters in one post, and I will not refrain from using text formatting just because Mastodon users aren't used to that.
We were here first. And we won't limit ourselves just because you're limited by the software you're using. We will continue to make use of features that you don't have. Deal with it.

Unfortunately, the target audience of this, Mastodon users, won't read it because it's too long. Not to mention that it'd require a boatload of content warnings and filter-triggering hashtags see below.
#Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters #TextFormatting #Quotes #QuoteTweets #QuoteToots #Long #LongPost #LongPosts #CWLong #CWLongPost #Meta #CWMeta #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #Fedisplaining #CWFedisplaining and casting This is kind of ironic. What Mastodon uses for content warnings is actually the summary field. At least Friendica (6 years older than Mastodon), Hubzilla (4 years older than Mastodon) and (streams) actually use that field for summaries. All three have no character limits whatsoever, so it's even justified to have such a field.
Using content warnings on Mastodon to hide graphic images is rather useless itself or has been for the longest time because the summary/content warning doesn't actually hide images on Mastodon. It does so on other projects, by the way, including the three I've just mentioned.
I've only seen actual "read more" implemented on Write Freely which is a Medium "clone" in the Fediverse. And even that requires a bit of HTML to be put into the text. Nothing your average Mastodon user would do.
And in my opinion, content warnings should happen on the reader's side by using configurable filters. Unfortunately, while Mastodon has had the technical means for that since v4.0, it fails for a whole list of reasons.
#ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #Mastodon #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost
Last updated: 2023-12-16






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