Madeline Turnipseed - Author

Clickbait title?  Riding the coattails of a hugely successful franchise? Yeah. So, Wonder Woman has been insanely successful.  It had some cool stuff going on but was not my favorite movie.  I had several problems with it, mostly happening after Diana leaves Themyscira.  But I'm going to put most of them aside to talk about why Wonder Woman was actually an anime, despite being live action, full of white people, and made by 'Merica. Anime style poster used to promote the Wonder Woman movie in Chinese Flickering Myth YEAH. I'm working on the assumption that you've seen anime before in a quantity sufficient to familiarize yourself with its tropes, so I'm not going to go into detail about why these are tropes and how long they've been around.  Also going to assume you've seen Wonder Woman and not going to worry about whether I'm spoiling anything for you. Blessed From Birth From birth Diana is special.  She's the only child on her island...

Oh, hey.  Is it June? Howdy friends.  Today I'm fawning over a new favorite world, the world of the Craft Sequence created by Max Gladstone . maxgladstone.com No I'm not asking you to read 5 books.  There are two more stories within the world that you can explore as interactive novels , plus Gladstone is contracted to release a sixth novel with Tor.com, then future novellas within the world until his contract is up .  I'm asking you to read so much more! So with that stellar pitch out of the way, what are these stories about? Imagine a world where power is money is influence is law is utilities is faith is forces of nature is magic.  Welcome to the world of the Craft Sequence. Humans learned how to use magic, called Craft, and used that to kill off most of the gods in the God Wars.  Now craftspeople are the CEOs and lawyers and stock brokers in a world they blasphemed for. *again with the crap pitches* Okay, we'll try it this way. ...

Hey, two moth hiatus, no biggie... TV Tropes Things I learned while I was out: 1.  Working on sad/intense stories is fine, as long as you are getting good/fun/happy things back into your life somewhere else.  You can't pour yourself out in more than one or two areas without going dry. 2.  Being an ML ( municipal liason ) is tons of fun.  If you love NaNoWriMo and love helping other writers, it's highly recommended.  3.  Save all your writing all the time.  Every day you work on it, back it up in three places, at least one of them cloud based.  Jesus saves, but apparently Madeline needs practice. 4.  I want to keep working on my novels in progress, but I think in the future I am going to try to focus more on interactive storytelling.  The more I play in that genre, the more I like it. Updates: 1.  I finished NaNoWriMo 2016 with 23,712 words :D and a lot more story to go.  Not winning, but considering...

As part of my research for Head Games, I've been reading into what my psychologist/psychiatrist team would be doing for our heroes. The Writer's Guide to Psychology by Dr. Carolyn Kaufman has been really helpful in this aspect.  Sadly, she passed away a few years ago , but her work remains an excellent resource.  She explains things in ways people with no training would understand, but doesn't dumb it down so much that you're bored if you have some knowledge of psychology. Even if you're not a writer, but just a fan of mental health issues and disorders in pop culture, you might enjoy this book.  Kaufman includes examples, both good and bad, from popular media (up to publication in 2010), always with explanations of what it would look like in real life. There are extensive explanations of the most common mental health disorders, broken down into related sections.  This helps keep similar disorders separate  (like schizophrenia vs. schizo-affective)...

I am ecstatic to announce my next project, Head Games!  The origin story on this one is a bit mussed.  I've been sitting on this idea since before I started writing Spitfire, so, a few years. The Fighters Generation I was contemplating the Hulk one afternoon, as one does.  It makes sense that he gets giant and violent when he's angry (unless you buy that he's always angry), but I never got why he turned green.  I started thinking about what emotions would look like as superpowers.  I imagined a little girl literally glowing with joy, reading a book by her own light under the covers long after her bedtime.  And it kept going from there.  But most powers were painful in their first showing.  For example, a flash of light from a burst of joy would blind anyone close enough. So I have a group of people with emotional superpowers.  But they're also super messed up because of what happened when their powers first showed.  And anyone w...

Hello Friends! Even though I haven't been blogging, I have been writing!  I have been using Twine to work on a short story idea I've had in the hopes of putting it up on the Episode platform once I get it finished.  It will be a lot of work even beyond the writing, since programming is not my thing and this is a period piece which will take some rigging of the normal Episode set pieces and character clothes.  But I believe in me.  And I believe Episode can stand to stretch its boundaries beyond the stories that are most common. I've also been working with our local BCS Writing group, which is essentially our off-season NaNo group.  We've had some neat presentations and workshops by our writers this year, which has helped me keep up the drive to write. Which brings me to why you're really here! NaNoWriMo National Novel Writing Month is almost here!  This year I'm a Municipal Liaison for the Bryan/College Station region, along with two wonderful...

     What follows will sound like a backhanded compliment, and I want to clarify that it is not intended that way.  Rather, it is stated in this way to highlight the skill of Jeff VanderMeer .      The Southern Reach Trilogy is the best work I have read where basically nothing happens.      Now, those of you that have read the series might be objecting quite loudly at this point.  A lot happens in the story.  There's an expedition to gather information about an unknown environmental occurrence.  There's shadowy government agencies.  There's mind-bending multi-dimensional/monster/alien/God-knows-what things happening.  There's verbal sparring.  There's guns.  Sometimes they even get fired.      But you know what happens most of all?      Navel gazing.      Deep, deep, POV for these books.  First person for the first book, Third person for the se...

This week has been incredibly emotionally draining. Oh Icharus!  Is that the sun you fly towards? Our wings are strong.  I made them.   They have carried us this far. Lo,  your wax is melting, But the sun does not push you away; It consumes you. Over the course of this last year and a half, I have been thinking about the phrase "to work tirelessly."  On face value, you keep working when you get tired.  But in reality, it means there is no stopping point.  There is no giving up.  In the absence of a door, in the face of an unscaleable wall, you get out the sledgehammer and carry on. Violence like we've seen this week produces the kind of feeling in the pit of my stomach that makes me want to fall over the back of the chair to vomit to have done with it.  But the response I have seen reaffirms in me that if a few people can cause this much pain, every person that decides to value life, to hold out mercy, to expect and pray for the bes...

Hey everyone, it's Friday and I hope you're enjoying what life offers instead of staring at this screen, hoping the internet will entertain you once more. Not that I'm not glad you're here.  It can get lonely sometimes. So, I started work, and that ate a week.  Then I went on vacation, and that ate another week.  But I got to do some awesome stuff and meet some awesome people, so I'm not sad. I've worked some on The Neif , but most of that has been trying to catch up to where I was when I paused writing it.  Due to me not being as paranoid as I should be, about 10K words of The Neif were lost.  ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK.  DO NOT TRUST "THE CLOUD" TO KEEP IT SAFE.  The internet is terrible about hanging on to things that you'd really rather stuck around.  So, that's what's been up. I am participating in Camp NaNoWriMo starting today, which is awesome.  It's basically a chilled out version of NaNoWriMo , where you can set your...

Hey friends!  It's Friday already? Loryn Brantz I've been thinking about what I have to do to finish my current projects, and how to stay on track with finishing those and starting new ones.  Sometimes Pinterest brings you what you need, and this time it brought me to  Kristen Kieffer's   She's Novel site and the post about the Drafting Cycle . You can (and you should) go to her site and read all about it.  Instead of pushing through each of my projects to the point I'm exhausted and no longer care about them, I'm going to alternate month by month to keep my momentum.  Here's what that's going to look like:      June:  finish draft of The Neif      July:  finish draft of Spitfire (and Camp NaNoWriMo !)      August:  finish draft of/edit The Neif      September:  finish draft of/edit Spitfire      October: Prep for NaNoWriMo     ...

Hello friends!  Happy Friday! Haven't gotten to check/update everything on the blog just yet.  Still a work in progress. If you recall, way way back in August, my awesome friend Leah did a guest post for me about visual novels , which was a great way to introduce you guys to some alternate forms of interactive storytelling.  I'm going to introduce you today to some other forms you may or may not have seen, because this is the format I'm exploring for my next project .  I haven't decided on one in particular, I'm still weighing my options, but it will incorporate reader choices that directly affect story consequences. Why reader choice?  Why not just tell the story? Some time last year, I was watching a Let's Play of the game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons .  At one point, one character is burying someone he loves.  The digging of the grave is shown as a cut scene, but the player is then given control and has to drag the body of the loved one int...

Happy Friday Friends!  It is so good to be back here with you guys. Odditorium, formerly EccentricTeatime It feels like forever since I last posted (November 1st!  Yikes!) so here's what's been going on.  I FINISHED SCHOOL!  And I am set to graduate next Friday.  I've been dreaming up new ideas for stories and working on writing workshops with a local writing group, BCS Writing .  I'm super excited to have a bit more time now to dedicate to my creative pursuits.  This week and next week I'll be going through my posts and making sure that links still work and images still display properly.  I've changed the mobile platform look and I'll probably be changing this layout also.  If you have opinions on any of those things, let me know. Since I'm graduating next Friday, there won't be a post next week, but look for one on the 27th.

Hey everyone!  It's been too long since I've posted.  One of the voices in my head said I can't post on a Sunday since traditionally I post on Fridays, but another voice said that it's my blog, so I'll do what I want with it, thanks much. This year is a bit sad for me.  With my time commitment to school, I can't participate in NaNoWriMo .  I still have a ton of story ideas, I'm still going to several write-ins (albeit to work on homework and mooch the creative enthusiasm), but I'm not working on a novel of my own. NaNo was my first really positive creative writing experience.  NaNo has been my start of new novels and my deadline for finishing them since 2011.  Not that I've stuck to the finishing bit that much, but in my head it's been the goal.  Not working on something this year almost feels like I'm betraying my people.  Like I'm betraying myself. Needless to say, but worth saying anyway, I can't wait to graduate in May so I...

Hey there! I’m Leah, also known as the person responsible for piquing Madeline’s interest in visual  novels. So much so, apparently, that she asked me to write a guest post about them. So without further  ado, here we go. What are Visual Novels? Visual novels are like choose-your-own-adventure books in video game format. The emphasis is on reading through the story from the protagonist’s point of view, occasionally making choices that influence the type of ending you get. They can be any genre, and usually include art of the characters (a.k.a. ‘sprites’) and background art, as well as background music. How did I do? Hope that was clear enough a description for you to get a basic idea. “Okay, Leah, you’ve piqued my interest, too,” you might be saying. “So what visual novels do you recommend I check out to start with?” I’m glad you asked! Here are two recommendations that immediately come to mind. 2 Short (and free!) Visual Novels to Try: Ripples W...

Happy Friday, friends!  It's been forever!  Here's what I've been up to: 1) Adult Health I (6 hrs), Mental Health (4 hrs), and Evidence-Based Practice (3 hrs).  One A and two Bs! 2) That's Midna from Twilight Princess . She's a little over two feet tall! 3) Having my brain go crazy with new ideas for stories.  There is nothing like being busy to make your brain have plans for you to be doing anything other that what it is you are supposed to.  I've planned out several of the characters for my next novel.  The one that I won't be able to start until after May 2016.  The one that I shouldn't start until after I've edited Om Nom Nombies  and finished the drafts of The Neif  and Spitfire .  But it's so awesome!  Sigh. 4) I've been inspired by an incredible new storytelling format.  I say "new". New to me, really.  You might know it as the format uses for visual novels or choice-based games.  I can't say more ...

Happy Friday, friends and neighbors. This week my family laid to rest my paternal grandmother.  She was one of the most awesome people I have ever met.  Her house was covered with watercolors and oils and sculptures that she had made.  And they are quality stuff.  Her creativity is something that nurtured mine as I grew up. Today, in her memory, I'm going to share with you guys one of my methods for coming up with and developing stories.  There are a few *spoilers* for stories I haven't told yet, but I'm going to keep all the most exciting ones to myself. :) This is the pickle jar that I keep story ideas in.  For a while it still smelled like Kosher dills every time I opened the lid.  If I breathe really deep when I open it now, the aroma is still faintly present.  I sacrifice a piece of paper every so often to be cut into strips and I keep them on top of the jar so that whenever inspiration strikes, I can write down my idea, fold it up, an...