Roxana Kiril on Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Un blog nou și un banc care a făcut turul lumii

Sat, 11 Oct 2014 10:08:28 +0000

Acum ceva timp aveam o dilemă legată de spațiul online de desfășurare. Pe scurt, îmi place blogul ăsta. E jucăria mea, mă distrează. Mai bag un articol, mai mă uit la o statistică, mai scriu, mai filozofez.

Doar că m-am trezit cu o problemă pe care cred că cel mai bine o înțeleg bilingvii: scriind în română, îi alung pe cei care mă citeau în engleză. Pot să chem eu cât vreau cunoscuții anglofoni aici, că văd trei articole în engleză, majoritatea blogului e în română, meniul e în română, secțiunile de una-alta sunt în română. Comentatorii sunt români și vorbesc română. Pur și simplu nu e un loc pentru străini. N-are sens să se aboneze la RSS pentru că dau în mare parte peste articole pe care nu le pot citi.

În schimb, dacă scriu în engleză publicul în română nu e foarte entuziast (oare de ce?). Mai apar cititori care vorbesc ambele limbi, dar nu atrag pe nimeni, dimpotrivă, îndepărtez oameni. Și vreau să mă adresez și-așa, și-așa, că am de ce și am și cui.

Am trecut mental prin diverse opțiuni. Mă gândeam să fac un subdomeniu, ceva gen writerly.roxanamchirila.com. Dar URL-ul suna prost. În plus, scriu sub pseudonimul Roxana Kiril în engleză. Ei, drăcie.

Am tot învârtit problema și am sucit-o pe toate părțile până când am decis să-mi fac alt blog, în engleză, cu propriul lui domeniu: roxanakiril.com. Zis și făcut, l-am pus pe net, am scris ceva, i-am dat drumul, pe urmă m-am trezit cu un atac de muncă și de deadline-uri de am neglijat aproape tot ce nu ținea de proiectele în lucru. Cu alte cuvinte, e un blog pe care scriu mai mult decât ocazional, deși sper să scriu mai mult în curând.

Bun. În condițiile astea, pe 16 august am publicat acolo un banc legat de Google Translate. La plesneală, nu serios. Nu știu cum l-a găsit cineva din domeniul traducerilor, care l-a dat apoi mai departe. Și m-am trezit cu mail-uri despre cum statisticile mele o iau razna – crezând că e vorba de blogul ăsta, am spus că oi fi primit link de la ceva personalitate, deși habar n-aveam cu ce. Când colo, bancul se plimba prin lume.

Mi-au venit sloveni cu duiumul, norvegieni, suedezi, americani – în doi timpi și trei mișcări, bancul ăla a bătut toate recordurile de pe blogul roxanamchirila.com, a ajuns la peste 3000 de vizitatori într-o zi și peste 1000 în zilele următoare. Când mai dau oamenii de el din nou, iar urcă la câteva sute de oameni într-o zi. Până acum s-au strâns vreo 10.000 de vizualizări pe pagina aia, peste 130 de tweet-uri, peste 2000 de ceva-uri pe Facebook. Am avut, cu alte cuvinte, un viral. Nu că mi-ar fi fost de foarte mare folos, că n-am rămas cu prea mulți cititori de pe urma lui, dar e interesantă experiența.

Oricum, de acum încolo sper să scriu și acolo mai des. Cine are chef să mă urmărească și acolo poate s-o facă aici: site, RSS. Mi-am pus un link și în widgetul de bloguri.

Re: Re: Boss, here’s my not exactly a pen name (Roxana Kiril)

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 20:12:27 +0000

Jim McGovern, the big boss of the small publishing house I’m writing for, wrote this blog post, musing about authors and their mysterious pen names. Why do we have them? Well, he proposes the obvious: going for the other gender’s target audience, or hiding your true identity, or there already being someone with your name writing stuff out there.

And then I got to this part, which I’ll quote:

Some of our authors at BigWorldNetwork.com use pen names, and I never ask why. It really isn’t my business as a publisher.

Well, in my case it’s clear, but I’m taking this as a challenge to reply. My nom de plume is a more readable version of my real name, obviously. My real name’s perfectly fine in Romania where you have about a lot Chirilă people running about, including an annoying musician. Romanians can pronounce my name just fine. But foreigners, well… their struggles are funny, but usually off the mark. So calling me Kiril is fine. Say it out loud and it’ll probably be similar enough to my real one (Kiril-uh) that I might recognize myself.

Now, my editor’s name is Amanda Meuwissen, and that’s the name she writes under, because she’s a bit evil, I’d wager. I had to listen to her reading her series to figure out what I was supposed to call her in my head: May-vessen. I kept calling her Mew-vise-en.

So, anyway, Amanda writes a series called Incubus, which she also narrates. It’s a nice, romantic, and adventurous sort of series which at some point reaches a steamy sex scene or three. Which she narrates. See, that’s another reason to choose a nom de plume: not ever letting your family find out what you did, especially if what you did was write stuff that might be classified by older family members as „erotica”, but said as a four-letter word beginning with „p”. She didn’t choose a nickname, and I didn’t either despite writing some questionable stuff myself, but then again no matter how damned proud I am of Flight from Hell, I have not given dad the link to my story. He’s not really into reading, which is part of why I’m not using a nickname (and I run from mum whenever a new episode comes out).

Jim mentions something else in his blog post: JK Rowling writing mystery novels under a nickname to disassociate those novels from Harry Potter. Which is fine for her, since she’s very rich and successful and need never earn any money again, but without her fame, one of her new novels barely sold 1,500 copies in hardback in the first few months. Once she revealed that Robert Galbraith was her, sales skyrocketed, obviously.

And that’s one reason against nicknames, or against switching between them: spread yourself too thin and it’s like you’re a new writer again and again and again.

Roxana Kiril. Here’s my writer’s name, both real and fake, neither loved by me, nor unloved. When sending in the first episode of Flight from Hell, I considered calling myself something special. Hell, no, even before that I spent a long time wondering what name to choose as an author. Should I invent something? Something pretty, with a lot of ‘a’s and not much krl-ness. I came up with some ideas, and some were great and elegant and suave. I loved them, and they loved me back. Except, unfortunately, I am a person who finds it very hard to commit to things such as names (or initial plots, for that matter: Amanda never commented on how I strayed from the summary I sent her last summer).

No, I decided, I’d rather my pen name was following me around, forcing me to keep it.

Now, there would have been another option. Since I am a woman, I could theoretically have it changed permanently and commit-fully* through marriage: since I’m not a huge fan of my name, I might use this little technicality to grab someone else’s. But whose? Not being clairvoyant, I can’t exactly choose the name of my future husband and run with it. And even if I could, prior to being married, it might be a bit of a faux pas to do so.

Obviously, my writing could not be put on hold for want of a name. I couldn’t wait to get married in order to write, since I’m not part of the chaste-writing club, or whatever the hell I’d need to be part of for such an oath. Nor could I get married in order to get a name, obviously. I could make a name for myself as a porn writer, which I’d never want to get associated with my real name, so I’d need a nickname anyway – but then I’d have to write porn bad enough to never want it known that I wrote it, which… nah.

Nearly real name it is, then. But it wasn’t an easy choice.

Yes, I make up words. Shush.

Cărți, știri, foiletoane și romanul meu disponibil gratis

Fri, 02 May 2014 12:58:26 +0000

Editura la care public Flight from Hell și-a schimbat stilul de funcționare. Pe scurt: toate romanele sunt disponibile gratis pe site și cei care donează prin Patreon pățesc tot felul de chestii bune. Schimbarea s-a produs azi, cu relansarea site-ului și înscrierea editurii în Patreon.

În ce mă privește sunt sceptică cu privire la mișcarea asta a celor de la Big World Network, dar pentru voi e numai și numai o chestie bună. În primul rând pentru că aveți acces gratis la romanul meu (și cei cărora nu le place de mine pot să se plângă mai în cunoștință de cauză, fără să dea niciun ban pentru asta):

Și în al doilea rând pentru că aveți acces la tot felul de alte romane, cărți de non-ficțiune, cărți audio și toate cele. (aș dori să precizez că m-a lovit la un moment dat revelația că Amanda Meuwissen, editoarea mea, autoarea seriei Incubus, scrie scene sexuale explicite și le citește ea însăși cu multă dăruire 😀 )

Pentru cei care au ajuns aici tardiv și au ratat toate anunțurile mele în privința asta, Big World Network e o editură care publică foiletoane în epoca digitală – câte un „episod” de carte de 4-10 pagini în fiecare săptămână. Pe site sunt și serii complete, și unele care sunt încă în scriere (ca a mea). Cărțile complete audio/ebook/tipărite sunt disponibile la vânzare și de obicei sunt re-editate, adăugite și în general mai bune decât ce apare pe site. (cei care donează primesc cărți pe gratis – inclusiv tipărite, inclusiv livrate internațional)

Nu știu dacă o să rămână pe donații la nesfârșit și dacă accesul gratuit o să fie disponibil pentru totdeauna, așa că merită să băgați un ochi sau doi pe acolo în perioada asta, să vedeți dacă vă surâde câte ceva.

Flight from Hell – the end of season 2

Sun, 05 Jan 2014 15:07:27 +0000

There’s still a bit to go before the last episodes of season 2 of Flight from Hell are available online, but I’ve already sent them out. (which reminds me, a new episode was posted today)

For the past few days I felt lost. I’ve written 2 seasons of Flight from Hell – 12 episodes each, so 24 in total. About 3000 words/episode, give or take. About 70-75 thousand words, I think. Unless my maths deceive me. And I know where the story is going and who the characters are, but there’s a point in anything I write when I wonder if the story isn’t, in fact, dull, crap, stupid, cliche or unreadable… or all of them together. That point, for Flight from Hell, is now.

Once upon a time, that feeling was absolutely correct. I wrote crap. That’s what teenagers and beginners do. It’s how you learn, by smearing the paper with what you think is brilliance and seeing later that you sound like a childish drama queen with a speech impediment and a slight IQ problem. These days the feeling is usually wrong (not always, but usually). As such, it’s something that I need to deal with. I need to push myself through doubt, through indecision, through the desire to flee and abandon the novel.

This is why last year I thought writing a serial novel is a brilliant idea: I’ve already made a contract to go on. As well as being a series of physical, on-paper contracts, writing for the Big World Network is a metaphorical contract with myself, a promise that no matter what, I’ll go through with it. Flight from Hell might not be the best thing I’ll ever write (I should hope not; it’d be disappointing to write my best work at 25). It might not even be as mind-blowing as I wanted it to be. But I’m hoping it’s good and I’m trying to make it so. You aren’t a real writer if you only ever write in your head. So eventually I had to take the big step and step on insecure ground, exposing myself to failure and criticism – but mostly, to being disappointed in myself.

This morning, feeling like I was about to curl up in a corner and hyperventilate because I was so afraid of screwing things up, I re-read a pep talk I got on NaNoWriMo a few years back. It was by Neil Gaiman, because of course it was. And it started like this:

Dear NaNoWriMo Author,

By now you’re probably ready to give up. You’re past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You’re not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper. You’re in the middle, a little past the half-way point. The glamour has faded, the magic has gone[…] You don’t know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you’re pretty sure that […] it falls so painfully short that you’re pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

So true.

It turns out many writers have doubts. Including Neil Gaiman. Including 75% of the writers his editor knows. I assume that out of the rest of the 25%, you have at least 5% who think that they’re the best thing since Shakespeare and that perfection flows from their pens like lava out of the Vesuvius, cca. 79 AD.

So I got myself an Irish Coffee, which is basically coffee with whiskey in it. I rarely indulge in alcohol, but it’s fucking brilliant with anxiety. The amount of alcohol in an Irish Coffee is usually perfect: enough to lower my inhibitions, but not enough to make me think I’m funny or brilliant when I’m blatantly not.

I wrote.

I now have 1129 words of the 25th episode of Flight from Hell. And I’m in love with it again. Not because alcohol makes any novel idea looks pretty, but because I loosened up enough to remember why I love writing it.

The only thing I hate is that I write from a single character’s point of view and it’s frustrating not to know how to reveal others’ POVs as well. I know them, I know what they’re thinking, and Nakir is a bit clueless. But it’s not an insurmountable problem.

Last time I finished a season, I wrote an article called „12 episodes, 12 quotes” to entice people to check it out. But fuck it. I didn’t feel like advertising this time around. I’d rather celebrate, because it’s a fun novel and when I sent that first episode to the Big World Network last year, I had no idea that it would actually be a novel, and one people like reading, at that.

Working with the Big World Network

Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:20:34 +0000

Flight from Hell is well into its second season by now – the fourth episode is out today and episodes 5, 6 and 7 are ready for when their time will come. 8 has been written, 9 is being written.

And the one thing I keep saying this morning is that I have awesome publishers.

First of all, the reason why I decided to get a novel published with them is that I absolutely loved the concept. I come from the wonderful world of fanfiction, where you wait for a new episode and you text your friends things like „Holy fucking shit! Beside You in Time was just updated :-O It’s alive!” Or you run around and tell people in Canada that silverkytten updated, or that Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality just got a new episode.

Literature can be a domain where you eagerly wait for more, where you can get involved, speculate, hope for more. We’ve kind of lost that in the mainstream when serial novels stopped being published – but fanfiction, where the chapter is the default posting unit, brought the excitement back. The only problem being that many, many series lie abandoned, maybe never to be finished (such as some of my own, actually… hiatuses just keep growing)

The Big World Network publishes one chapter/episode per week, though, so you’re ensured against heartbreak of looking at series that will never be finished. And I love that. It’s brilliant.

And of course, they publish audio episodes as well. Which is lovely, I adore audiobooks.

But. Part 2 of the story of my love for the Big World Network is the unseen one: what happens behind the scenes. After all, sometimes the books that are published can be lovely and so can the concept, but when you end up working with the people who make the magic happen, you can feel like crap (I’ve been in that situation before).

The truth is: I absolutely love the BWN team from this point of view. I’ve been working with them for some months now and they are awesome.

Here, let me bullet point the neat stuff you don’t see from the outside:

They’re great with planning. They take their time to come up with solutions, set deadlines which allow for unforeseen delays and think things through before they act. They know the extent of their abilities, and they know what to expect of the average author. In other words, they don’t rely on optimism and improvisation to get things done – which is a nice change from some of the artistic teams I’ve been in. „Better early than on time” is a decent standard to function by, no? And you always have time to notice whether anything needs more work that way.
They’re transparent about what they do. We get team updates regularly, in which we find out what the Big World Network is planning: site changes, convention participation, events, plans for certain events, what is going on with other parts of the Big World Network. Technically, I don’t need to know some of that (e.g. changes in the way the site looks like), but it does make me feel like I’m welcomed into their home. Which is great. I get to know who I work for and what they do.
They listen. I’m a nitpicking sort of person, and a lot of people grumbled over how evil and criticizing I am (I don’t mean it in a bad way, though). But the BWN guys don’t grumble. They check, explain, fix, improve. Is there a typo anywhere on the site? It will be fixed. A broken link, an audio glitch, anything that falls under the category of „you missed a spot”? That spot will be checked ASAP. And I’ll get replies to things like „Have you tried selling your books with X, Y or Z?”
They also dialogue. Let’s hit the full spectrum of communication here: I can discuss the merits/downfalls of an idea concerning either the novel or the site with them and some solution/compromise will be reached. And they’re polite, nice and assume you’re (trying to be) the same as well (which really helps people like myself, who can put their foot in their mouth regularly).
They try new things: today they’re at a convention, tomorrow they’re finding people on the net who will promote them, yesterday they talked to some people about promoting your work for some time to come, at some point they will do something promotional and neat God knows where.
I should’ve mentioned this above, but it’s obvious from the way the site looks: they’re very skilled at what they do. Novel covers look great – and they look different. My banner is very different from Thralldom’s banner, which in its turn is very different from the banner for Billie vs the Unseen. Perhaps some are less impressive than others, but you can see a personality in them, professionalism. The same goes for editing: Amanda and Wendy (yes, I have two editors) find typos and problems easily, fix my convoluted sentences, tell me when something is wrong and, all in all, save my ass every once in awhile. And, of course, everything runs smoother than smooth on their side.

They make you feel like you’re part of the team and, overall, they make my life a bit more cheerful than I’d expected it to be. Which is why I’m writing this post.

And it isn’t just me saying it, either.

Flight from Hell – 12 episodes, 12 quotes

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 11:13:40 +0000

All of Season 1 of Flight from Hell has been written, edited, fixed and recorded and is steadily going online every Sunday on the Big World Network. Two episodes to go!

So. Flight from Hell is a supernatural/horror series set in Hell (hence the title). The reason is probably the sex – or the mindfuck.

Quotes:

Episode 1 -- „A dying angel, a strange magician human woman, and a carnivorous horse met in sex-Hell. If it was the beginning of a joke, Nakir couldn't wait to hear the punch line.”

Episode 2 -- „Sara was now as tall as a house, her eyes gold, her bared fangs shining in the light as if she were Hell itself. But if Nakir remembered them right, Madness and Ferocity had had a hundred times her strength and ferociousness. Still, not bad. Not bad. He could foresee not dying quite as fast now.”

Episode 3 -- „After the preliminaries of the conversation, Ashmedai was a trip down the rabbit hole. Probably the drug-induced kind of rabbit hole, but still. [..] The way he was still touching the maid-clad woman was both disturbing and as eye-catching as erotica written on dirty sheets by a naked writer with a cigarette between his lips and three-dollar whores serving as muses.”

Episode 4 -- „“Did the devils make this?” Sara asked. She had barely spoken since they'd come to the road. “It doesn't seem particularly Hellish.”

“I don't know. Legends say there was something in Hell before the Fall. They might have just discovered this. Or it might have built itself.”

Sara laughed. The sound echoed around them eerily and loudly, which probably displeased her because she stopped abruptly. “Roads with walls and towers don't build themselves, you know.”

“Here they do.”

Episode 5 -- „“I hate this place,” Sara mumbled. “Deeply. Profoundly. From the bottom of my bloody soul. I loathe it and despise it. I want to tear it into little pieces and throw them into a fire and feed the ashes to elephants. Then I want to kill the elephants and bomb their carcasses, then send their remains to the bottom of the ocean.”

Episode 6 -- „“What do you think he's doing inside?” Nakir asked.

“Abusing hair gel, inflating sex dolls, corrupting the innocent, waiting to see how long it will take us to realize we've been locked on the balcony. Do you really want my theories?””

Episode 7 -- „Heaven was cruel. It was something humans had never been told because they didn't need to know. Its particular branch of painful coldness never touched them directly.”

Episode 8 -- „“I loathe myself, and sing myself, and what I endure you shall endure,” she said. “Or how did it go?”

She'd gotten things wrong, as usual. She'd twisted them into something bad, cynical, filled with anger and hatred.”

Episode 9 -- „He placed his lips against Nakir's ear and whispered, “I want to fuck you into the wall, I want to have you struggling against me while you pant in pleasure, I want you to curse me the whole way and give me that disapproving, spiteful look when your hips buck against me. But until then, angel, I'll have to let you go.””

Episode 10 -- „“There's a dead human in my bed,” the pretty succubus who'd screamed announced to every single person inside in a high-pitched, hysterical tone. “She's awful. Oh, take it away, take it away!”

Episode 11 -- „Nakir would kill him. They both knew it. Any second now, the angel would end the priest's chants and there would be no more Gilbert.”

Episode 12 -- „Nakir opened his eyes and saw a tall ceiling decorated with wooden patterns. He wasn't in his own bed. He wasn't clothed. He wasn't alone. His lips were parched and tasted of blood.”

The mystery of the 1-star rating

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 19:57:27 +0000

Currently my rating for Flight from Hell over on the Big World Network is of 4.6/5 (with 9 votes cast). You can see it here. But not so long ago it was 4/5 (with 4 votes cast). Reverse it and try to figure out what the possible votes could be: 4*4 = 16, therefore the 4 votes amounted to 16.

Possibilities: 4 ratings of 4; 2 ratings of 5, 2 of 3; 3 ratings of 5, 1 of 1.

I’d already checked the rating before and it had been 5/5 with 2 votes, therefore only the latter two possibilities existed. But this is the internet where ratings of 3 are rare, so I was willing to bet that the last option was the correct option.

Three people had probably voted 5, one had voted 1.

Now, I’ve yet to see a bestseller with a perfect 5 and no book I love has ever lacked haters. I doubt that I will manage to enchant everybody like a mythical storyteller, so it was only a matter of time until that perfect 5 was marred by different opinions.

Still, a 1-star rating. Since the Big World Network more often has ratings than comments, there was nothing there to motivate the choice and I found that I really wanted to know why I got that one. Did the rater hate the premise? The choice of words? The pretentiousness, perhaps, the long sentences, the idea about Hell, the… well… What did the rater hate?

After all, knowing what they hate is a gateway into figuring out what they like, what they appreciate, what you do right and what you do wrong. It’s not just that they hate, it’s why they hate, and isn’t that fascinating and psychological and maybe you can use it sometime?

But I was most certainly never going to find out. So I figured I’d have to wait until the first bad review to be relieved of curiosity.

Luckily for me, my mother eventually said, „Ermmm, I was debating on whether I should tell you this.”

Me: „Yes?”

Mum: „I shared your novel on Facebook.”

Me: „Yeah…”

Mum: „And a friend clicked and she gave you a one-star rating.”

Me: „!!!!!!!!!”

Mum: „I’m sorry…”

Me: „Why? Why did she? She must’ve said.”

Mum: „Well, it’s stupid, really.”

Me: *dying to know the answer*

Mum: „She was looking for the ’like’ button, to share it with others on Facebook, but she only saw the stars and clicked on the first one and only realized her mistake later.”

Me: „…”

Mum: „Don’t be mad.”

Me: *bursts out laughing* „You have no idea how long I poked that rating, trying to figure out what had happened there. This is too damned funny.”

So, note to everybody out there who gets really weird ratings: sometimes, it’s really not about you 😀

Discussions on literature (consider us drunk)

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 19:07:49 +0000

Linda’s come over, all the way from the other side of the country. Which is really cool. And conversations are getting really weird. We were talking Flight from Hell and we got to incubi and succubi.

Linda: Do you remember how incubi and succubi used to be so rare in fiction? And now they’re all over the place.

Me: I swear to God I didn’t know Amanda had a series called Incubus before submitting to the Big World Network.

Linda: Speaking of Incubus. *fangirls* I really, really like it. It’s fun!!! But no, I mean, all over the place. Everywhere.

Me: Remember where vampires were a metaphor for sex?

Linda: Yeah.

Me: So we just decided to drop the metaphor part.

Linda: Remember that English lit class?!

Me: YES!!!! O_O

*flashback*

15-20 students are sitting around a table during a literature seminar.

Professor: So, how would you like to die? [note: In her defense, we were talking about Emily Dickinson]

Student: By incubus.

Class: *stupefied silence*

Linda: Do you know what an incubus is?!?!?!?!

Student: Yes. *confused*

Class: O_O *more stupefied silence*

Professor: *starts snickering*

Student: I want to die peacefully in my sleep.

Professor: *barely stops from laughing out loud*

Linda: *dramatically* But they suck your soul and drag you to hell!

[…]

Me: But do you remember that class in which a professor asked what the fuss about vampires was?

Linda: *falls over laughing*

*flashback*

Professor: What’s the fuss about vampires?

Student: [something-something metaphors, literature, symbolism]

Professor: No, I still don’t get it.

Annoyed student: They’re hot, sexy hunks used as sex metaphors!

Professor: Ooooooooooooh. I understand now! *gets wistful look*

[…]

Me: *checks her blog stats* OMG, somebody came from Google Plus! That place is alive!!!!!!!!1 This is the first time this happens. I should write a special ’thank you for sharing my post, single G+ actual user out there!'

[…]

Me: I never meant to put any actual gay stuff in Flight from Hell. Aside from Ashmedai-the-pansexual-devil being a threat in the background. I thought I could just skirt the issue constantly and have Nakir escape him over and over. Then I realized, Ashmedai would go for him in immoral, creepy ways. He totally would.

Linda: *does that dreamy thing fangirls do*

Me: And Nakir’s weak and confused and trying to play reverse psychology at one point and Ashmedai, well… „Lead us not into temptation, because we’ve already been there and proved we were abysmally bad at it.” [note: I have a thing for that ’lead us not into temptation’ saying recently]

Linda: *wiggles her eyebrows*

Me: Not that anything actually happens, mind you. Not really. Not beyond this one thing, this short, clothes-on thing which ends fast and makes the threat and Nakir’s confusion so much worse.

Linda: *does a sad face* I would love to see them together. Maybe all three of them. That would be fun.

Me: Bad idea in the text.

Linda: *puppy eyes* How about in the Alternate Universe Christmas Special?

Me: There is no Alternate Universe Christmas Special.

Linda: There could be. Hey, I knew this author who wrote fanfic of her own stories, ever thought of doing the same?

*conversation dives straight into the gutter*

[…]

Me: So sometimes, I look at the editors’ comments, and they’re, like, so confused, you know? Trying to solve that old question, which for once makes perfect sense: what did the author mean to say over here?

Linda: I only ever get giggles in the margins.

Me: I get confusion. What did the author mean?… And then the author shows up and says, no, no, no, wait! That’s not what I meant! Oh, crap. Let me change it. In chapter two, I had the devil say that thing, you know? *quotes from memory* „For that I, and not your husband, must be their father.” Except the first time I said it like crap and it was confusing. So when the editor modified it for clarity, there was this confused scene between the queen and the devil. He was like, „I won’t be your husband.” And she went, „Good, I’ve already got one of those.” And I went, „ooooh, wait, he was actually saying ‘I’ll be knocking you up myself’. Which is a bit different.”

[…]

Linda: I never thought I’d say this, but I am so happy to get rid of the romance subplot with my story. It didn’t work. At all. So right now I’ve taken the romance down and I’m adding a lot more crazy.

Me: Like?

Linda: Well, there’s a whole new plot with the Physics Department. Some klutzy students did some experiments and that’s why it’s… missing. Carmen goes off to search for the missing South Wing.

Me: You have a vanishing university.

Linda: Pretty much. Oh, and I have to figure out how to put in the vampire bounty hunter. Because I said there would be one – and there will be, dammit.

Flight from Hell – episode 3

Sun, 18 Aug 2013 15:47:36 +0000

Episode three – the final free episode – of Flight from Hell is out.

Quote:

The way he was still touching the maid-clad woman was both disturbing and as eye-catching as erotica written on dirty sheets by a naked writer with a cigarette between his lips and three-dollar whores serving as muses.

Warning: There’s a lot of sex-related stuff in this one (sex Hell, duh). And probably disturbing stuff as well (although I’m sure slash fans and fetishists will enjoy it). If you’re repelled, try to remember that Ashmedai is a sex devil and acts accordingly. If you’re one of the slash fans, please try to remember that Ashmedai is a sex devil and Nakir acts accordingly.

(I’ve been dying to say that since forever)

Read it here.

Flight from Hell – episode 2

Sun, 11 Aug 2013 18:09:10 +0000

A reminder that the new episode is out and that it’s free to read and free to listen to.

Quote:

[H]e leaned his sword against the warm, reddish stone and it occurred to him that the image created was beautiful in a simple, elegant way. When his sword would drop and his blood would seep into the reddish ground, that would be beautiful, too.

Read it here.

Flight from Hell – episode 1

Sun, 04 Aug 2013 13:46:13 +0000

The first episode of „Flight from Hell” is out!

A dying angel, a strange magician human woman, and a carnivorous horse met in sex-Hell. If this was the beginning of a joke, Nakir couldn't wait to hear the punchline.

Check it out on the Big World Network website!

New episode every Sunday, first three episodes free – look for Roxana Kiril 😉

Audio version also available (read by yours truly)

(genre: Horror/Supernatural; rating: 18+)

Presenting: Flight from Hell by Roxana Kiril (coming next week)

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 19:44:37 +0000

My novel is nearly here. Just a bit over a week and, on August 4th, the first chapter/episode will be launched on the Big World Network.

Until then, I’ll be procrastinating with you and sharing little tidbits. Let’s see… where to start, what to say…

About 9 years ago I realized being a writer was an option.

Picture it: somewhere in Transylvania, there is a village. It has a castle (a very tiny castle) and the castle has a domain. It isn’t much of a domain, but there’s a forest that’s been tamed into a park (or a park that went wild and became a forest). And there’s a lake. It’s a small lake, but everything else is tiny, so why not. And on the lake, there is a very small island. And on the island there’s a table with two benches, all covered by a roof. They’re painted in yellow. Around the table there’s around 10 people. They’re writers.

Wellll, the ‘writers’ claim is dubious. I think one or two actually wrote on a regular basis. I certainly did not. But for all intents and purposes, on that occasion they were writers. Because it was a writing workshop and the people who attend those and scribble are writers, no?

So the workshop coordinator asked me: „What sort of stories do you want to write?”

I said, „Children’s books.”

Give me some slack. I was 16. No, I didn’t want to write for a younger audience. I just wasn’t aware that ‘fantasy’ was its own genre. I knew, what?… The Chronicles of Narnia, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland. I wasn’t aware you could write this sort of stuff for, you know, adults. For all of its reputation with vampires and werewolves, Transylvania wasn’t really brimming over with knowledge of this sort of literature. (and I don’t remember if I had even heard of the mysterious ‘anime’ and ‘manga’)

Fast-forward nine years. I’m still writing what I thought back then that I’d be writing, except now I know what it’s called. It’s called fantasy. Except, when I wasn’t paying attention, they went ahead and made up this new category they called ‘supernatural’, so yeah…

Flight from Hell is (apparently) a supernatural story. It’s got an angel. It’s got devils. It’s got Hell and a werewolf and incubi and succubi. And that little ‘18’ in the corner stands for ‘You have to be 18 to read this’. So much for children’s books.

The main characters are Nakir (an angel I stole from the Muslim tradition) and Sara (woman of infamous kick-ass-ery). At the beginning of episode 1 they’re standing in the Hell of succubi and incubi, led by the devil Ashmedai. Nakir, the angel questioning the faith of the dead in their graves, questioned his own role and the justice of God. He never found his way back up to Heaven. And Sara… she tried to bring someone back from the dead. Needless to say, she failed and suffered the consequences.

I enjoy writing every second of it, from the action scenes to the disturbing imagery. But I won’t spoil that.

Just a teaser of what the novel feels like. If both Nakir and Sara had songs that represented them, they’d be something like this:

Sara’s would be „Our Solemn Hour” by Within Temptation:

Because she thinks of herself as larger than life, strong, exploding with energy and fighting spirit. And there must be a woman doing amazing things with her voice in there. She has something about her that’s questioning, confrontational, rebelling – and screaming in Latin and English while comparing herself with Winston Churchill in stressful situations is not entirely out of the question. Definitely prone to thinking of herself in mythic terms.

Lyrics best fitting her:

Is the heart of stone, no empathy inside?
[…]
If we can’t restrain the beast which dwells inside
it will find it’s way somehow, somewhere in time
Will we remember all of the suffering
Cause if we fail it will be in vain

On the other hand, Nakir:

Entirely different sort of beast. Mellow, confused, tired, wary. Uncertain of anything, not much into struggling with fate. Asking himself questions, but finding no answers. And if he dies, well, he’s going to die wishing he didn’t die. He likes thinking the universe has some sort of harmony and order – even if he resents being kicked out of that order.

He carries burdens and fears – and the deep, deep thought that he deserves it all. Even if he doesn’t want it. Closer to resignation than desire to escape.

Lyrics for him:

Been a long road to follow,
Been there and gone tomorrow,
[…]
Is somebody there beyond these heavy aching feet?
Still the road keeps on telling me to go on…

Something is pulling me
I feel the gravity of it all

Both neat songs, but they don’t fit. And that’s why this story might be supernatural, and apparently it’s horror, but nobody ever suggested it should also be romance.

Teeheheeheee! Varianta audio de la roman sună bine.

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 13:55:04 +0000

Deci, deci, deci! Romanul meu (Flight from Hell, pe monitoare din 4 august :P) o să aibă și o variantă audio. Citită de mine, că de ce nu (între noi fie vorba, momentan îmi urăsc vocea și accentul în engleză. Vocea din inerție, accentul pentru că citesc mult mai puține r-uri decât există în text. „Dă scai uăz ă daacă șeid ăf red, tingin toods dă cală ăf crasted blad.”)

Așa. Nu e cea mai splendidă citire evă, dar merge destul de bine (o prietenă pe care aici o voi numi Linda pentru că altfel face colecție de nume și pseudonime, spune că e mișto. editoarea e de aceeași părere). Chestia care îmi place e că mi-au pus niște muzică la început și la final de capitol – o melodie întunecată, lentă, în care ți se pare că auzi tobe în caverne și lupii te urmăresc din spatele zidurilor. E perfectă 😀

În curând o să am și o copertă (mi-au arătat deja o variantă, dar încă e în lucru).

Am deja 2 capitole care au trecut prin piguleala editorială, 2 care așteaptă la coadă și scriu de zor la capitolul, pentru că mă prind termenele-limită din urmă.

"Flight from Hell" on August 4th

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:01:45 +0000

Just a short announcement: my novel, „Flight from Hell” will be launched on the 4th of August on the Big World Network. Keep an eye out for Roxana Kiril 😉

The genre(s): Horror/Supernatural.
Rating: 18+. Apparently I can’t write stuff for a general audience even if I try. Not that I was particularly trying to.

The first episode (chapter) will be available for free. After that, reading is subscription-based, but the subscription is barely $3. And you can get the audio version as well. I’ll be reading it (I’m not that bad).

When the novel’s all said and done, it’ll (probably) be gathered into a volume and sold as paperback, audio and full electronic version, in some sort of pricing combos.

Yeah… Not feeling up to writing anything more fascinating in this blog post right now. So laterz.