Monday, January 30, 2012

Teaser: The Waiting Place, Ch.15

So this is a small except from the chapter I'm currently working on, but I'm nowhere near finished, FYI:

She had only been witness to the scene for a moment or two before the nausea had overwhelmed her and she’d been forced to make a mad dash for the toilet, but it had been enough. She hadn’t wanted to see any more than that. If she had…well, she might have reacted far worse than the time she’d caught them previously…and then McGonagall would have been forced to expel her, and that simply would not do.

Hermione had therefore made the decision to request to leave, if only through the weekend so that she could get her head on straight and refrain from doing anything rash. Before leaving school, she had calmly collected her assignments from her professors, and she took pride in the fact that she hadn’t shed a single tear. She hadn’t told anyone save Professor McGonagall where she was going, not even Harry. She hadn’t been able to face her best friend because there would be awkward questions that she wasn’t yet ready to answer. Furthermore, she feared that she wouldn’t have been able to hide the strongest of her emotions from him: her humiliation, rage, regret, grief.

She felt as if happiness had been a rug beneath her feet, and it had been snatched out from her so abruptly that she’d fallen and landed on her arse—hard.

I will not start crying. I will not start crying, she chanted to herself as a sob worked its way into a painful lump in her throat. If she started crying, she would likely never be able to stop—and she’d spent the past several months shedding far too many tears for Ron Weasley, who apparently had no true feelings for her, despite his pretty words. Apparently he hadn’t meant anything that he’d spoken in that hospital room, and his mother didn’t know him as well as she liked to believe.

She supposed that people said and did barmy things in the heat of the moment; what a clever, convincing, cruel actor he’d turned out to be, and when he’d said that he wanted to right a wrong, apparently he’d meant that he wanted to ditch her, Hermione, to be with that…that moronic tart.

However, despite it all, despite her dark thoughts and what she’d witnessed with her own eyes not more than a couple of hours ago, it somehow didn’t feel right, did it? There was something about the entire incident that didn’t ring true, yet she couldn’t deny what her senses had told her, could she? After all, she knew what she saw; there was no deceiving her own eyes, so what other rational explanation could there possibly be? Had Lavender fed him one of Fred and George’s love potions, perhaps? Had he been whacked over the top of his head? Hexed stupid?

Monday, January 23, 2012

Teaser: The Waiting Place, Ch.14: Faith Versus Logic

“You know can talk to me about anything, love.”

“Am—am I making the right choice?” Hermione finally said, a tremor in her voice as she met Molly’s eyes.  “About…the babies. What if…what if You-Know-Who…?”

Molly smiled tenderly at the girl that her son had been in love with for years, considering her response before replying, “I think that going with your heart is always the right decision. Making choices based on ‘what-ifs’ can only lead to heartache.”

“Even if what my heart wants isn’t necessarily the most logical choice?”

“What the heart wants rarely is the logical choice,” Molly replied with a laugh. “If I’d made the logical choice about whom to marry, I would likely be sitting in Trevor Dawson’s mansion right now; true, I would have all of my wants and needs met, but I wouldn’t have seven children that I would happily die for and a husband who adores me—which is all that I really want or need.”

Her smile faltered when she thought of Percy, but thankfully Hermione didn’t seem to notice as she grinned in return—and it reached her eyes. “I’m scared,” she finally admitted in a whisper, the smile fading from her face.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Teaser: The Waiting Place, Chapter 13: Caged Animal

She stared at the Healer, watching as her lips moved while gesturing at the clipboard in hand, but the sight and sounds were strangely distorted, garbled, as if Hermione was watching the scene from within the depths of a murky pool; in point of fact, that was quite an accurate analogy, since her throat had closed up, and she was finding it difficult to breathe as she clawed her way to the surface, struggling to no avail with all of her meager strength.

She was drowning, and those at the surface—Ron, Healer Thorson, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley—seemed to be completely oblivious.

The words that had propelled her into this state repeated themselves incessantly in her mind, clawing at the edges of her brain like a desperate, caged animal: Fertilization successful. Two viable embryos in their very primitive stages. Fraternal twins.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Plagiarism: Just…Don’t

Plagiarism: Just…Don’t

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Kari

Sunday, January 1, 2012

FFn profile updates for the month of 12/11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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