Query for CONCEPTION-2013: Chum Unleashed-2

Dear Ms. Requin Reid,

Title: Conception-2013.

Word count: --,000.

Genre: Technofantasy.

Tagline. All stories are true.

PROTASIS.

Node. Agata "Gatie" Cairn, the white queen on the story's chessboard, finds it easier and easier to choose who to play for:

----- KADE warlords' badassery and trigger-happy attempts to "influence the influencer",
or
----- Rob Nolementar and his fellow Luminites whose agenda is just as selfish,

... as the need to choose throws her into a charmingly lethal vortex of causes and consequences.

The point. To preserve/tip the balance of the forces as the Last Battle plan fails by the end of Part 1. To prevent/restart the initiative for massive Earth resources stripping in Part 2.

(X) Major psychological setback punctuating the hard decisions Query Shark loves so much/ (Y) Luuuv as primordial choice-determining factor.  Pick one. Or both.

X. A caring and decent soul's forced loss of impartiality - "Luminites and KADE, all are my own, Rob, but you are protecting me from them!"

Y. Rob Nolementar is her lover, and they are quite crazy about each other, too.

Snarky aside. Yeah, you always find it kinda easy to choose sides... when both sides are asking for the same favor, but only one will obviously whack you afterwards so you won't change your mind.

Who I am. I know you do not require this section, but in classical queries you are supposed to take one paragraph to prove why you are qualified to be an author. So, who am I?

An alter egos convention - not to confuse with multiple personality disorder:

***** Multilingual Fox - speak five, understand three more languages, 16 years in the language services, still love it, although the fire is
embers for: translation | terminology | German and Italian | interpreting | proofreading | revision | management |  lexicology;
still burning hot for: structural linguistics |consulting | negotiator-jitsu | semiotics;
blazing ultra for: constructed languages. Valyrio Engosso Ydrassis?
***** Metatag Hag - when writing articles on social media management and marketing.
***** Lit&Lang Lyceum denizen turned International Business major. 
***** Czarina of Nerds - if ever there was one.
***** Oxford comma fan.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Anastasia Demetra Duchevski-Stratu
Phone:
E-mail:
Mailing address:

P.S. As long as you've read to this point...

The point where this joke of a query transforms into a joke of a synopsis.

------------------->>>>>>>>>>>>>.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<--------- that's the bugger.

Foreword i.e. extract from the future series promo

"With the acquisition of Oculus Rift by Facebook and the development of Project Morpheus by Sony, virtual reality is becoming less virtual and more of a reality.

"Virtual reality will surely transform life - our environment, energy, communications, politics and policies, law, security and defense, military, healthcare, our human rights and freedoms, our entertainment, our international trade and our consumership patterns - including the information we consume. I believe even the geopolitical map of our world will change in the foreseeable future.

"The Sol Vortex as the "true" story of a clash between the real and the imaginary, the objective and the subjective, the physical and the metaphysical - in short, between reality and virtuality, is bound to enrich our literature and philosophy.

"I believe the outreach of this story will take us to the next level in the vortex of our lives, taking us beyond pure pastime. Its motto, All stories are true, will become, for want of better words, truer than ever." Oleg Vorobiov, SEO Analyst and Sol Vortex beta tester

Intro quotes to support the case.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke.

"Technology has replaced God in the Western mind." John Clute, John Grant.

EPITASIS. 

Parties. Hoopla aficionados all.

Heroes. Crazy quilts of smartassity, romanticism, and vice-ridden humanness.

Sidekicks. His is as "soft" as a whore's heart. Hers - a whore, period. Both female. Well-balanced by another male who could outwit a kitsune werefox.

Villains/decision-makers. KADE warlords, the Luminanime cluster elite, and neutral Avguri.

Fifth column. Pheairras - the smartest people in the book. They choose to be big shark in the cold dark rather than small fish in the warm pish. And keep residence in the good clusters while working for the bad one, in line with any regular yuppie dream. 

Aloof and therefore assholeish balance-keepers: The Skydwellers and the Shadow Emperor.

Sources of conflict? A buttload of 'em.

1. The warlords are basically O.K. So what if they want to use Gatie in order to tweak the fates to their own benefit? Everybody wants a place in the sun, let alone in seven suns with lightwaves  convertible to currency.
2. The cluster elite disagrees. Also has different views re: whacking.
3. The Avguri play both sides against the middle. They are known bums who love to assert their awesomeness by methods from stupid to dangerous, which makes you wonder how they manage to climb so high with so few IQ points.
4. The balance-keepers do not fix unbroken things as a matter of principle.
5. Etc.

Where is this going on? On Earth and in the Sol Vortex, a body of realities in Devachan.

What the blazes is the Sol Vortex? The astral-physical system of seven-sun energy clusters Gatie invented. It is corporeal, populated with two conflicting groups, and she's kinda their Creatress. Bit of a god figure, only human with all ensuing snafu.

Smartypants alert and argument pro magical realism element.  (Yes, I do know the difference between Knowitallian and English, just like you do.) Devachan does exist. Or so H.P. Blavatsky has us believe. You can find Devachan on Wiki the Magically Real Free Encyclopedia, so the answer to #isthatathing is "yes".

In Sanskrit, Deva means "god" and chan means "dwelling". In a word, Devachan is virtual reality created by powers at various levels of cosmogony. Vladimir Vernadsky has a related concept, "noosphere", the mind sphere of Earth similar to biosphere or troposphere. Sigmund Freud would call it "yearning of Earth's superego". But Devachan sounds best.

What people think. Sy-fy nerds call it parallel reality. But Devachan is much more than a figment of sex-deprived imaginations, to which RealLife is an Error 404 server. As for actual science, to the mass market it is greater fantastics than Daenerys' bleedin' dragons.

Gatie has her own name for it. "Dreamdwell". She also calls Sol Vortex simply "The Vortex", because she is musical, and to her ear, solvortex sounds like the name of a toilet-cleaning spray brand.

What's the book gotta do with it? In Devachan, all the stories of all the authors are tangible objective realities, from Eddur to Gospel to Atlas Shrugged to Grand Theft Auto. The only way to keep them real, should the author pass into posterity i.e. croak, is to have someone else think about it - according to one of my leitmotifs, without minds or imaginations there are no stories or gods.

And? And Rob must help Gatie write a bestselling "true story" of the Sol Vortex, namely, "The Skydwellers' Last Battle". If she manages, that fragile balance of forces will remain stable for a while. If he won't keep her alive, either before or after other Human minds start feeding the story with their imaginations... well, that is a different tale. And if either side contracts another writer to do their bidding, then... that is yet another "true story".

Cause-and-consequence dance. Just like Jack Lemmon tangoing as Daphne, consequence leads. 

• Rob takes a Link to Toronto and prepares the battle plan while building fame for his Luminite rock band,

as he finds that his voice, quite regular for an amateur Vortex Vagrant, on Earth can get him quite a bit of money and power;

• contacts The Chief, Gatie's boss, and arranges for their would-be-accidental encounter in Montreal, then

observes her and gradually falls for her over cappuccino at Books et Café and on park dates, while KADE Emissaries bite their nails in frustration - they were so close!

• watches over her and has his companions guard her house in Brossard, as

Gatie uploads her Sol Vortex drafts and notes to her little blog, having no idea that this fact will start a 10-story series avalanche,

• invites Gatie to vacation in Prague as the KADE threat reaches critical mass, where

he barely gets to tug her out of the paws of a KADE Emissary kidnapper and receives unexpected support from an incognito red-gold beam wielder

• dispatches her back home and goes to the Romanian Carpathians, where

he builds a barrier around a Link to prevent massive leakage of KADE Spawn and takes crap over mentagraphic comm lines from his father who doesn't want him to fall for the Creatress - for obvious reasons;

• finds Gatie in Montreal on a hospital bed with shattered leg bones after Ursi Pheairra had almost killed her in a pub toilet, then

finds the Pheairra and learns why she did it, then curses himself as she escapes;

• humors his girlfriend, and on the way to the Mont-Tremblant ski resort

a Mercedes minivan full of KADE jarheads showers them with black plasma balls, and Gatie's roommate Lena Holgersson is compelled to reveal her Luminite identity as Lenatireya Norui, Level 4 wielder of Odin's Whip, aka the incognito red-gold beam wielder;

• after getting intel from Lena that another Link was breached and the place is swarming with KADE Spawn, puts them on a flight to Greece, but while transferring in Paris,

Gatie is kidnapped and he goes crazy until his Ring of Togetherness points him to Archer's apartment where Gatie is recovering after bribing her way out with her own Ring and living hobo for a month;

• goes on European tour with his rock band (he finds his Vortex Vagrant hobby can make him a lot of money on Earth, you see), while

Gatie is writing the Skydwellers' Last Battle in the Greek island paradise and transitions from her idealist infatuation with Rob to normal mature person's love;

• comes back to make peace with Gatie and continues the tour with her, then, realizing he must take care of her future, sets up her meeting with her ex Austin while in St. Petersburg,

but the meeting is curt and quick as she rushes back, worrying and suspecting the truth because she can feel his powers ebbing away as prolonged stays under a single sun are harmful for his system used to the light of the Seven, then

CATASTROPHE. The Thickens Plotz on the way to culmination.

Cue explanation of how the blazes the two worlds connect. 

Links are a sort of access holes between layers of reality. Only they're not portals, like, bing-bang-boom, I'm in Star Trek, drinking lite beer with Mr. Spock on Enterprise! They are all located in highlands and mountainous areas where human presence is sparse, the risk of human-triggered disasters is low, and the air is rarefied.

The Links are in fact entrances to and exits from a complex four-dimensional structure (3-D + time) similar to a massive honeycomb and called mosaic time structure. Earthlings know it all about one particular Link - Shambhala in Tibet. Only they have no idea how to find it, which is not surprising in view of lack of information and their inability of thinking outside this particular box.

Also, they have no idea it's a Link. They think it's a place, a pocket in the fabric of reality, a hidden cave... They spawn miscellaneous B.S. theories, and after a soul-searching expedition to Annapurna with whores and blackjack, write long-ass books about their search of the arcane. What they are ignorant of is the first law and rule of the Transarcane Club: the speaker does not know, the knower does not speak.

All in all, there are seven Links connecting the Sol Vortex to Earth, and numerous others, at which point let me mention an

Important side effect.

All the doohickeys, bugaboos, whangdoodles from our favorite stories periodically sneak through Links to visit Earthlings,

a. -- inspiring myths, legends, and beliefs from Allah to Valhalla;
b. -- creating temporal mess, cause-and-consequence mess, just plain mess;
c. -- reincarnating as new humans;
d. -- taking over the world - I mean cats;
e. -- making Freud giggle in Devachan. Stephenie sleeps - Edward slips. Nuff said;
f. -- making psychiatrists filthy rich - imagine an innocent curious Vree crawling through a Link into a schizoid insomniac's bedroom. Ka-Jung!
g. -- being pretty much the answer to inane questions like "what inspired you to invent Quidditch, Ms. Rowling?"

O.K., back to our pressure-building.

--> Rob gets intel from Lena that someone is doing blood divination in Bucharest -->
--> makes a detour and sings at the Roman Arenas while -->
--> Gatie makes Rob's aide Sy drive her to wherever Lena is -->
--> Rob catches up and feels his jaw drop as he sees Gatie controlling the situation -->
--> by using Sciath Hannas, a purely Vortexian weapon -->
--> cue negotiations with K'Ramol and his lover Ursi Pheairra the Blood Divinatrix -->
--> who get their ass kicked and dispatched home as Rob opens the link -->
--> but as he prepares to close the Link and get into the copter, Gatie....

Culmination. Lovers separation alert!

>>...Gatie stops him and tells him to go home,
>> he refuses, because

he is a romantic hero and the genre requires him to trade trifles like power, title, and immortality for luuuv,

>> they sit down and talk,

and, incidentally, we find out why Lord K'Ramol was so calm and smug while delivering the standard last "you will pay for this" words, this cute little detail meaning that

>> KADE – the Kee-Axe Dark Empire – wants to colonize Earth and use its resources - solar energy, subsurface resources, weather, hydrosphere, biomass, blood of sentient beings etc.  - in order to leverage their positions in the new confrontation with LuAn <<

>> but never mind; she

>>loves him too much
>> to let him stay,
>> and she's the boss, so

>> he has no choice but to obey the Creatress.

>>cue tearjerking

>>goodbye

>>forever!

Part 2. Wow, this next section is so traditional! Well, I'm fighting a cold today and all I can muster are body fluid jokes; but I don't make those unless I must. Anyway.

Part 2 is based on bona fide resources on Ancient Maya I unearthed during the research phase.

~~~ After Ascension from Ariser to Exceller i.e. Cluster 3 to Cluster 4 resident, and six months in a hell-on-wheels training base, Rob goes on related new mission avec sidekicks and new character.

The golden thread of this part is the Mayan Calendar. Rob, Lena, Xellevar, and Kyone, an officer from Cluster 7, accompanied by several Luminite soldiers, transcend through the mosaic time structure or the honeycomb to a certain point in Earth's timeline. Yes, they can use the honeycomb structure to move along cells and end up in any moment of recorded Earth history... only in Gatie's present or past, of course.

They go back thousands of years and present themselves as the infamous Four Jaguars to the Ancient Maya. They are infamous because they destroyed the tribe of  giants who allegedly populated Earth and threatened humans in the Jaguars' epoch. The Jaguars also give the Maya knowledge about time cycles.

Their goal is to inform the Maya of the end of the world as a helluva scary thing i.e. the KADE invasion which, if successful, would strip Earth down to the last bit of resource. If it happens, Devachan will die, too, because without minds and imaginations there are no stories or gods.

KADE warlords don't know and don't care. They are environmentally and culturally preconditioned to think about now and here, and after us the flood.

Rob and his companions jump back to early 2013 to test the results of their mission.

They see that the Mayan Calendar became a lame joke. Any version of the world ending causes nothing but "fail!" and "facepalm" reactions, eschatology is a pseudo science, and the alleged December 2012 end-of-the-world turned out to be a widely publicized media circus.

The entire mission failed because some dunderhead (or Pheairra) in the Cluster 7 Kyl-anarin HQ decoded/encoded the Mayan and Luminite words and numbers wrongly. He also told the Jaguars' team the due Doomsday date was in December 2012, when it should be January 2015 - the year when KADE, according to the forecasts, goes from covert, intel, and infiltration ops to full-blown military deployment revealing themselves to Humans.

Desperate to fulfill their mission by all means, the team starts thinking. Xellevar has an idea: jump back home, slide through the time honeycomb, visit the Apostle John on Patmos, and help him warn the humans about the Apocalypse.

Only John, who turned out to be a drunken dirty goat herd very much like the one depicted in Burdened by Evil, understood... what he understood.

Rob's team hoped to change the text he wrote, to make the warning more clear, but didn't make it. The time was up, and the feces-hitting-the-ventilator escalation of the conflict back home on Earth circa now and in the Vortex required their presence.

And the Biblical text ended up being what it is... due to their involvement exactly.

Rob returns to his home city of Wilwarin for some R&R because he is the one who suffered the most psychological damage after the giants genocide. Kyone goes back to HQ in Cluster 7. Lena and Xellevar remain on Earth to keep an eye on KADE Emissaries, and develop a love-and-hate relationship in the meanwhile.

~~~ Gatie commandeers one of her exes to entertain her in bed as she's busy training hard with shurikens and writing her boo-hoo-memoir, having no idea about the surprises I have in stock for her. Her brief interlude with Austin is depicted in the message to Rob from Lena.

Epilogue. The Earth governments ignore the situation not because they are cookie-cutter morons - oh, the beloved stupid CIA officer trope! They just don't know what to make of disappearing corn fields (biomass), and do not care for disappearing Romanian Gypsy homeless children (blood divination). And how on earth can one distinguish Vortexians? Arrest people because they are beautiful? Or institute no-makeup policies to make KADE scaly skin be distinguishable at first sight?

Also, the conflicting parties of the Vortex are preparing for war on several fronts, which is kinda stupid, but even the best were known to do it.


Whoa! More cruxes - Gatie's perspective

```````What do you do when you move on, try to forget, start building another relationship, intimate if not romantic, and then you see again the one to whom you had given your Ring of Togetherness? And now - after forever is over - you would be ready to give it to him again, if only they weren't locked in a high-security safe box in Cluster 7 of the Vortex?

``````Moreover, what to do when you feel guilty for rushing to jump into bed with your ex? While the One came back so hardened by six months of training in a high-intensity war camp in Cluster 4 and a high-risk related mission, you barely recognize him as he is physically and psychologically a new man?

``````` Finally, how can you, aided only by a little gang of Luminites,  stop the forces of an Empire slithering through Links to Earth? Will you be able to leverage their only hope for a fighting chance - the bottleneck quality of the Links?

Bottom line rub. The power of imagination, blah-blah; the power of choice and the power of belief, nah-nah; the power of togetherness and the power of goodbye, yadda-yadda.

Next, please! Hi, Janet, would you like more series potential with your chumburger and French (writer) fries?

Sample text.

--- sample text here --- from Three Men in a Band

P.S. The source, or should I say "The Fountainhead"? I've self-published Gatie's boo-hoo-memoir as a separate book, because, technically, it's not part of the Sol Vortex 2013-2015 story arc. It is called The True Story of the Vortex. The Conception Files. It is a 159,000-word first-person POV memoir of Gatie covering the events between meeting Rob and saying goodbye by the Link on the Muresh dam, as summarized by Rob in Part 1 of CONCEPTION-2013. Its place on the timeline is 2010. The book is available electronically or as print-on-demand... pretty much everywhere.

Gatie's memoir serves as intro for the Sol Vortex 2013-2015 story arc and each separate installments' arcs. It completes rather than starts the series. This was just fine for the structure I had in mind during the - for want of a better word - conception of the series.  My paragon of perfect structure is Babylon-5 - the comparison is appropriate because its genre is TV novel in the first place. Five minor story arcs united within one major story arc. The prequel and the lateral stories are outside but related to the major story arc.

#Ferguson

Conception. Off the Hook. Fragment

‘No way!’ Rosemary was beyond herself with excitement and incredulous bewilderment. ‘No effing way! That total HOTTIE Rob Florin performing at… at your OFFICE! Gosh, this is the first time I’m jealous of your job, Gatie… The T’s. Do you have any idea how big they are?’

‘Actually, no, I don’t,’ I said, arranging a bouquet of dahlias in a thin tall vase.

I traced the sparkling facets with my fingers and sighed. It was a sparkling night, too. That Saturday night when we talked for a couple of hours without noticing anything or anyone around. I for one didn’t.

I also had no idea how big a celebrity he was, until now when Rose, red in the face, was positively bursting with excitement at this news.

‘No, I mean… well,’ she said, taking the lighter flame to her cigarette with trembling hands. I paused to look at her.

‘Rose, are you OK?’

‘No, I mean, Baristacrat is great, of course, but it’s no Madison Square Garden, and it’s just one big mystery, and I’ll never forgive you for not inviting me last Saturday…’

‘I told you already,’ I said, exasperated. ‘I had no idea who they were!’

‘Still won’t,’ said Rosemary. ‘Forgive you. To think I’d miss such a thing… being in one room with Rob. Arrgh,’ she groaned.

‘Did they really perform at the Madison?’ I asked, interested.

‘He – they – are about to. Before embarking on a world tour, in April or something like that.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘You’d know that if you didn’t shun TV like the plague, and knew all the hot bands like a regular gal.’

‘I hate TV,’ I said. ‘And I thought we all agreed I was not a normal girl.’

‘I said “regular”, not “normal”,’ answered my friend, twisting one of her black ringlets around the index finger of her cigarette-free hand.

‘How unusual of you,’ I retorted sarcastically.

‘Gatie, you are normal, but you have very weird habits for a twenty-first century person. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether you come from a past age or a very future one.’

‘You can’t say “very future”, it doesn’t have comparative degrees,’ I corrected her absentmindedly.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Rosemary with emphasis, then continued, rather inconsequentially, ‘now tell me, tell me everything… what's he like?’

‘Surprisingly smart, for a pop singer.’

‘Oh God,’ she roared. ‘Typical you. Do me a favor, OK? Rethink your male priorities.’

I shrugged. My dahlias were still unsatisfactorily arranged, so I started over.

‘Come on. Tell me. Is he really as gorgeous as in his videos?’

‘Better,’ I sighed. ‘Although I’ve never seen his videos, so I can’t talk.’

‘Never? Why, you’re in for a treat.’

She rushed away to get her laptop, while I plucked at the petals of a discarded purple dahlia. He'll call me, he'll call me not... Yeah. He's probably too busy with sex and rock-and roll, drugs being something we both disapproved of, as I found out that sparkling Saturday night. Yeah...

The bitter mix of dahlia scent matched my mood.

Rose dashed back into the kitchen, her laptop under her arm. ‘Look,’ she said as she typed ‘The Trespassers Out of Looking-Glass’ in the YouTube search bar.

And there he was, with his band on the backdrop, not doing much, just singing, propped on a high stool, his long legs stretched relaxedly, his usual garage glamour look firmly in place, minus the sunglasses.

The camera could not convey the way his blue eyes shined. He smiled, it seemed to me, a little ironically, as if amused with his own simplicity and aloofness causing such mayhem in girls’ (and some boys’) hearts all over the world.

But the scenes in-between band shots…

‘Wow,’ I breathed out. ‘It’s beautiful.’

The video storyline was about that very Alice and her adventures in the wonderland of Harlem, done in anime style. Yet it had such expressiveness, such finesse of color and emotion I would never expect to find in the anime genre.

‘See?’ said Rose, looking at the screen dreamily.

‘Yeah,’ I answered, dreamy myself, then shook my head, realizing how goofy we probably looked.
‘At least it’s not Hentai.’

Rose giggled. ‘He’s too classy for Hentai.’

‘Look, they actually don’t have those big bug eyes I hate so much in anime.’

‘Forget anime, you nerd! You had this totally amazing man at arm’s length and all you can say he’s smart. Hell, everyone knows that,’ she added, hitting the “pause” button. ‘I mean, listen to his lyrics, they’re actually his, and you surely know what I mean.’

I did. Those songs were no moon and June stuff.

She’s a superstar of triple X

Shot by no one in the labyrinth of Harlem

Dirty angel living to the max

Called “you bitch” but never called “my darling”

‘Why is he in town, anyway?’ asked Rose, her eyes on the screen.

‘Came to perform at Bookends, obviously, why else?’ I said acidly. ‘In fact, he told me he actually lives here. Well, of course, where he really lives is hotel rooms, with touring and stuff, but his place is here. Île Bizard, no more no less.’

Rose whistled.

‘What, did you expect him to be poor?’

‘No, but… I wonder why he even bothered buying a house here…’

‘I didn’t ask. But he told me he does a lot of Hollywood, too, so… well… it is really weird. Just as you said. The T’s performing at a little arty café. Highly unlikely.’

She nodded thoughtfully.

And then I said, surprising myself in the first place: ‘Can you hit replay, please? I just…’

‘Oh, come on!’ laughed Rosemary. ‘He’s got you, I can see that. And who can blame you? He’s walking sex.’

‘And you’re a hetaera.’

‘Whooo?’

‘Ancient Greek for priestess of love for sale.’

‘For sale my ass,’ snorted Rose.

‘What an unconventional sentence structure for you.  And you missed the verb.’

‘Oh, one of these days...’

‘Hit that PLAY button already!’

She snickered and hit the “replay” button. This time, watching him intently, I noticed an unusual tattoo on the right side, at the base of his neck, just above his collarbone.

He wore a black shirt and denim jeans in the video. And right in the next scene… the signature scarf was back in place.

I wondered why. Why hide such an item from the general public?

As for the tattoo, it was weird. Obviously a signifier; it meant something. But it wasn't a hieroglyph, or a rune, or a Celtic symbol. It had elements of all three, probably, but it mostly reminded me of the crisscrossing lines and dots on a computer wafer. It looked kind of cool, actually. Why was he hiding it?

Rosemary sighed lustfully, and I flinched out of my reverie. He was a dream, he was. It was then when I realized why people fall in love with TV faces.

They’re all real people at the end of the day, actually.

‘So, what else did you talk about?’ Rose asked, getting up to put a new pot of coffee on the stove. ‘I mean, how did you make it through the conversation, you being… well, you? I am as far from shy as ever a person can be, but I think I’d freaking lose it in the situation… just stay there and gape. Probably with side effects like unfocused eyes and minor drooling.’

‘Must say, we started quite unusually,’ I admitted. ‘I bullied him.’

‘You WHAT?’

So I told her the story. About the drunk Orc, me being unusually nervous and irritable, with no obvious reason, and finally, getting to talk to him as if we were ancientest friends.

Rose listened without a single interruption, sipping her coffee, then said, ‘You like him. Maybe even acquired a crush on him, I daresay.’

‘I didn’t!’ I said indignantly. ‘I’m not thirteen years old, for heaven’s sake! To fall in love with a celebrity? Moi? Just because he turned out to have a brain?’

***

This is a fragment of my previous novel, "Conception". It was published under the title "The True Story of the Vortex. The Conception Files" a couple of years ago, but I am back to rewriting it... every time the deliciously imperfect characters of "Caelin" tire me, I am back to the snarky but romantic Gate and Rob, Rose, Lena, my beloved villain Lord K'Ramol and my other children of the SunVortex. Enjoy!

Unhappy Endings - Will Amazon Control Our Reading?

UPDATE: This text is published as a guest post on FightToWrite. FTW is an outpost of writer self-affirmation and pride, welcoming everyone who believes that the word is a sword. The commander is Ace Baker, my fellow Canadian author, who knows what it takes to fight for a dream. 

***

This article by Chris Abouzeid caused quite a stir in my head. Actually, I was infuriated as I pictured the prospect.

Article intro and my own comment/rant below:

Chris:

"If you’re using a Kindle to read ebooks, Amazon already knows a lot about you. They know you bought all the 50 Shades of Grey books. They know how quickly or slowly you read them. They know on which page you got bored and stopped reading, or which passages you highlighted for further “investigation.” In fact, at any given moment, publishers and big retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble are trying to gather as much data about you as they can—and they’re succeeding.

Unfortunately, it’s not a one way street. Not only can they keep track of what you’re reading. They can also control what you get to read. Violate the terms of agreement for that copy of Capital in the 21st Century? Poof! It’s gone from your library. Something funny going on with your account? Zap! Your entire library is gone. Yes, Amazon can delete things from your Kindle. And they can push ads onto your Kindle—whether you want them there or not.

So with all this data flowing back and forth, doesn’t it seem like the next logical step will be for publishers and retailers to control what’s in the books themselves? Ebooks won’t just be digital text anymore. They’ll be smart ebooks. Everything about smart ebooks will be mutable. And everything inside them will be for sale.

Me:

Great. That’s taking the concept of fanfic a bit too far. Authors having no control over their canon of stories after they are published? It’s like someone would ship my kid to the hospital and perform surgery on him without even calling me first.

OK, as a reader, if I cross some contractually established line, be my guest, delete my Kindle library – I personally prefer hardcopy anyway!

But as an author, I will not tolerate Amazon and its likes fobbing off consumer-customized versions of what we so painstakingly create and therefore want to offer in unadulterated form to our readers.

And what happens after I die? Join Charlotte Brontё in a jolly turning-over-in-our-graves session? Dominatrix Jane Eyre my bass! (this is just a fish-themed euphemism - you know what I mean!)

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn't this little Geschaft be out of line in terms of copyright law? I’m no specialist, but here’s what my research of copyright violation for rookies yielded:

“Even if you rewrite someone else’s work, it can still be a copyright violation. For example, spinning a copyrighted article or making minor word changes to someone else’s story could still run afoul of copyright laws. If you take a concept from someone else’s work — such as a business idea or character — and then use that material for your business, this could be a violation of copyright laws. Whether or not it’s a violation will depend on how closely you copied someone else’s concept and whether you had permission.” (c) Houston Chronicle

To my innocent non-lawyer eyes, this is violation of the letter of the law if not of its spirit. And I sure as Hades wouldn't give permission to tailor my stories in the framework of such glorified pandering. OK, when an author creates a universe, there are levels of control over the story, from canon to fanfic… but all this fits into the copyright law landscape presently.

Orwellian bugaboos or not, we still have a little power to fight dystopian influences on our lives. If this prospect will become reality, it will call for a major revolution in copyright law. And everyone should be on that barricade – from authors and jurists to mommies who want their 50 shades 100% grey without any B.S. palette changes by Amazon.

And If you’re under 18 and reading an Awakeners novel at night under your blanket, you will most definitely prefer the artwork in line with the original underpants policy of the book.

Be Quirky and Unique, Like Everybody Else

I came across a job posting today. They were looking for someone who could write quirky and unique blog posts - for low or no pay, mind you. Hey, it's not surprising the world is full of wannabe writers who hope to make a living with pen and paper - not being stationery sellers thereat.

Still, I doubt a writer would give up The Dream even after finding out that $11,000 per year is the revenue the legendary average author allegedly receives. So 90% of us are ready to dish out "treasures of the mind" for free in our little blogs, dedicating the rest of our time to writing utter tosh - and then Polishing it to the state... of tosz. The rest worship the Muse Royaltinia and shop for real estate.

Anyway, it got me thinking: when a recruiter hires you for a writing gig, how exactly does he or she measure your level of quirkiness and uniqueness? It's not a language or computer skill... and isn't everyone unique even when their writing is totally mediocre? Mathematically speaking?

I guess it's all a matter of taste, just like that mythical "voice" Janet Reid likes to bring up so insistently in her Query Shark blog. What exactly the "voice" is, nobody knows, so I guess we can file it under the heading of "uniqueness".

But one of the greats once said: "The moment you start writing to match a trend, you lose your voice".

So I guess the content we consume these days is mostly voiceless. Because there's no life outside trends.

Influencer Marketing 101. Operate Your Influencer Network. Rules 4-5

Rule 4. In time, invest in a good influencer relations management software suite

For now, after I've done preliminary research before actually trying software products, my personal favorite in terms of influencer relationship management is Traackr. It focuses on nurturing relationships rather than capitalizing on them. All in all, a business tool with a human face. I will dedicate a separate IM 101 chapter to its features, but in terms of impact-measuring tools, let me just say this: Traackr measures reach, relevance, and resonance.

Metatag Hag: Next week, I will get a demo and do a test drive of Traackr's platform. Then, we will discuss it in more detail, but for now, from what I have gotten from their guides and manuals, theirs is a very thorough yet user-friendly approach to influencer relations management. For now, though, if you want to do your homework, follow the link above and download Traackr's free guides and ebooks. To rephrase a well-known school song, there's a lot of interesting stuff worthy of filling your head.


For instance, here is a quote from their Guide to Influencer Marketing:

In this highly social web, information travels like waves. These waves are created by people who generate content and build followings. A subset of these people create stronger waves than others. These wavemakers drive their audiences to believe, buy and care. So, what makes someone a wavemaker? Influence. 

Of course, the analogy seems accurate, but we always have to be careful with analogies. As you know, many things create many different waves. It can be a small stone (but, say, dropped from a high altitude), or it can be a tsunami reaching across oceans.

One should always have different approaches to things different in their nature. That is why my focus is mostly on influencer psychology - we have to understand how small stones work and what kind of butterfly wing's flutter it takes to stir a hurricane.

Re: influencer relations management software suites. There is also Onalytica, but it's way too serious for an individual - it's all about math and stats, brand awareness, sales conversions... it's worth spending money on it if you have a start-up or if you want to revamp your small business.

I'm telling you about all these corporate solutions also to point your attention to the fact that they offer lots of free ebooks and white papers, which is pure informational gold delivered to you on a platter. They also have blogs worth reading.

Metatag Hag: Yeah. You can start reading without wasting time on pawing through huge amounts of information online, 90% of which can be interesting but irrelevant or downright wrong. Or too complicated, but you have me and Anastasia to bring it to you simply.

Rule 5. Watch your presentation

Let us reiterate that the individual approach and the corporate approach have tangencies but are not the same thing. Corporations depend on buyer's decision a lot. You, as a young talent looking to be "adopted" by a corp, must also "sell yourself". But seeing as you're selling your current results AND, to a great extent, your potential/your future ability to create more product with high purchasing power, you must focus more on presenting yourself correctly rather than on pushing your "homemade" product at each and every corner. From the consumer's point of view, people prefer to consume something endorsed by a big name and loyal followers.

Metatag Hag: Of course, you can take a leaf out of Hugh Howie's book and become "the poster boy/girl" of your own niche or go indie, no one is stopping you. But trust me, now that you are still alone, you cannot build a brand. First of all, you need a team for that. Unless you are a web designer, but then, if you are one, you've probably found your niche. And if you are an aspiring songwriter to boot, you probably built your own site. But even if you're King Versatile, you as an individual cannot replace a team, even if you have a small niche brand in mind. 

But if you built a team of enthusiasts who are also the specialists you need, well, kudos and good luck! We'll write Project Management for Rookies for you next.

Be careful to present yourself well to top influencers and on building relationships with various influencers function of their psychology. Trust me, agents and headhunters keep their eyes peeled for hens who can lay golden eggs, so focus on:

- honing your skills,
- enhancing your potential,
- learning from peers and stars,
- improving your demo product,
- and presenting all this in the right light to your network of influencers.

As I said before, review and rethink what you said from time to time, and if you feel it was inappropriate or plain stupid, go back and delete it.

Among other things, focus on posting top quality content on your blog. If you cannot come up with something really interesting every day, post some of your old texts that seem good, quote some classics that have a tangency to what you do. Just keep it buzzing.

Metatag Hag: As for your Twitter account, keep in mind that you never know who may see what you chirrup about. And it's not so difficult to shine on Twitter where
- 80% is advertising;
- 10% are quoted platitudes and banalities no one really cares for, although they're all supposed to make you "learn";
- 9% is other various cr... er, I mean, content;
- 1% are things worth Retweeting and the occasional Keats line.

To be continued...

Thank you!

Anastasia Stratu and The Metatag Hag

Influencer Marketing 101. Operate Your Influencer Network. Rule 3

Rule 3. Do not rely too much on stats and indicators to measure your own and your top influencers' level of impact

First of all, you as an individual and not a corp don't  need sophisticated expensive tools to make an in-depth analysis of your outreach. You only need basic indicators like those the Facebook pages or Blogger tools offer - numbers of pageviews/hits on your blog/site, number of people talking about you, number of likes. Also, Twitter will send you weekly reports on your stats - views, numbers of new followers, and what Tweets got people talking about you.

Metatag Hag: We discussed before the uncertain nature of likes/favorites' importance for the spreading of your network, but let me reiterate my opinion again: every like/favorite matters, especially if it's by a Level 2 influencer. It means attention, it means a chance to be remembered.

HootSuite is connected to a certain indicator - The Klout Score. If you're a social media nerd, you probably say a prayer to the Klout gods every night, but if you're my target rookie, you'll probably be interested.

It measures an influencer's importance on a scale from 0 to 100. But it is not an absolute truth. Some followers/followees who will come into your field of vision will have a zero score even if their name or occupation means something to you; some will have a high score even if you never heard about him/her.

My advice is to pay attention to this number, but not to worship it religiously. First, not everyone is registered on Klout. There are many great personalities to watch with just a "--" in the place where their Klout score should be. And even if he/she has a low Klout score, but is a peer, like a fellow screen writer or freelance game developer, with their own influencer network and fan base, I recommend following them and including them in your influencer relations.

Also, in later chapters we will discuss in more detail the tweet-to-follower ratio with real-life case studies.

Let me give a brief explanation here. In time, a very high number of followers can give you a very high Klout score, even if you do not have mountain top sitter ambitions and are living happily ever after avec family, job, cat/dog and hobby. You just happen to be an interesting and successful person - and no wonder; there are no other persons today. The XXIst century belongs to 7 billion interesting, unusual, outstanding people.

So, here's an example: in 3 years, 270K Tweets brought you 170K followers, while you yourself follow 167K. You state in your presentation line that you have enough success for two lifetimes obtained with talent, hard work and luck. This is a very good slogan for a life, although I went as far as to Google search results page 3 and found nothing. Only numerous social network accounts and no info re: what exactly made you successful. You also have a witty mind, an eye for hot news, and self-deprecatory humor that made The Metatag Hag chuckle, and that's saying something! Your name is Ku Veo. Your Klout Score? 67.

This is a classic example of a person who made herself a social media star - ranked 13,670th most followed in the world by Twitaholic. Out of three billion - the estimated number of Internet users by late 2014? Huge. She only needed a bunch of free accounts, a cute GIF for a profile photo, and interesting things to say and repost. The things that indicates Ku Veo is a consumer, not a creator, is a) the lack of information on what she does, of course, and b) her follower-to-followee ratio approaches 1.

In the follower-to-followee ratio case, the closer you are to 0, the more of a big deal you are. Compare: Katy Perry, ranked No.1 on Twittaholic, is followed by 54.7M, but follows only 150 people. Ms. Perry's Klout score? 89.

Metatag Hag: Conclusion - see? These ratings and scores are not the Gospel. According to the Klout, Ms. Veo's influencer footprint is almost as serious as Ms. Perry's. Yet if we arrange them by Levels, Ms. Perry is over there on top, while Ms. Veo is... well, if you follow each other on Twitter, she is firmly between level 2 and 3 and a potential shouter-outer. If you found out about her from me... well, still befriend her for her sheer followers base.

As for scores and indicators, a high-ranking nerd resource put it very well: Klout doesn't know Tolkien, and why care you should?

As I was researching the matter, I came across a very interesting site owned by @MeredithSoleau, who wrote in one of her blog entries that Klout was bulls**t . Evidently, Ms. Soleau does not really believe what she said, because in her Hire Me section, she states that her own Klout score is 13 points higher than Matt Damon's and that she's very proud of that fact. Of course, Ms. Soleau and Mr. Damon can both exert influence, but with their respective resonances... and on their respective levels of that upturned pyramid you remember from Building Your Influencer Network Part 1. We will discuss horizontal influence and vertical influence later.

Metatag Hag: I've just found out about Meredith Soleau today. She is a worthy example, of course, and I am glad I found her site. But Warren Buffett, my own model of billionaires with human faces - him I've admired since I was an international business undergrad, and two years ago, his Klout score was... 31. Of course, this fact caused a massive wave of brick defecation (glorified urban slang for "violent reaction"), things were urgently brought up to date, and now Mr. Buffett has a well-deserved 89. This only proves my point. Pay attention, but don't join the Klout worshipers. It's a sect. Just kidding.

To be continued...

Thank you!

Anastasia Stratu and The Metatag Hag

Influencer Marketing 101 - Operate Your Influencer Network. Rule 2

Dear reader,

Today, we continue discussing your influencer network, namely, the social media platforms.

Rule 2. Optimize the social media platforms inside your influencer network

As you will grow as an influencer and a public persona, your presence on the social media arena will grow to a hundred social media networks. You will be able to afford a proprietary social media management platform and your own social media coordinator. But while you're still working on building your presence - and on honing your talent, which, if I may add, should take the lion's share of your time - just link your existing four or five accounts together. It will work just fine. You'll only need to hang out in one of them.

For instance, my own Twitter and Facebook accounts are only closed when I write. For the rest of my waking hours, they're on the background of my life, and every time something interesting, witty, or simply worth sharing comes to my mind, I'm there chirruping about it. I'm not much of a photographer - word is my sword. I add the occasional photo or infographic to illustrate my point, but I use free stock images - always mentioning the author, of course. I don't waste my time creating content that is not my specialization.

Metatag Hag: And one more time for the cheap seats in the back! I know it's an old adage, but Tweeting about what you ate and who you met is a) old b) ineffective. People don't care - unless you're Beyoncé. In a later installment of the IM 101, we will talk about types of top influencer psychology, including celebrities whose flow of mundane happenings is treated like gold by their fans, but we're not there yet.

And I can't say it often enough: be relevant to your own positioning. If you're a musician, 90% of your talk should be related to the industry and what you can do for it - in line with the respective trends and accompanied by the relevant hashtags. Etc. Leave the rest for your personal accounts - if, after reading three chapters of IM 101, you still think you have time for those!

Also, if you have an Instagram or Pinterest account, and something curious gets into your field of vision, click on! Just don't do cats/flowers/food/your own beautiful body parts - the nets are so full of it, it's almost bad form. Filter everything you photograph through these four filters:

- interesting;
- unusual;
- funny;
- worth sharing.

Of course, in my book, there is an exception to every rule, including personal comments and observations. If you insist on informing the world that you're going to eat lunch or go for a walk, a) make it funny or witty b) connect it to a trend, a current affair, and a hashtag, and do it smartly, not just for the sake of hashtagging a bunch of random words.

For example, once I saw someone Tweeting about drinking their morning coffee, and I responded with a little interjection poem - on a personal note, yes, I love writing interjection poetry:

A Friday of an Office Shrimp (this is my euphemism for "office rat" because I find the word "rat" offensive)

Yawn-vrumm-gulp-gulp!
Click-click-click!
Click-click-click!
Nom-nom!
Click-click!
Vrumm-yikes-vrumm-vrumm!
Yee-ha-ya-hoo! Umtz-umtz-umtz! Clink!
Ooph-ooph!
Ooph-ooph!
Yea!
Zzzz....

The person did not react, but other people did, so I made it one of my staples. I add the #poetry hashtags, and post it from time to time - with variations, of course... I try never to repeat myself. I even changed the poem for this chapter, although I'm sure you never heard it.

Sometimes people react, even if it's just a smile, sometimes it's just a Tweet in the Wilderness. My advice is to do the same - make people smile, no matter what medium you use to dress up your ideas. Moreover, make influencers smile. People will associate your name with smiling, and that is a very, very good thing.

Metatag Hag: Even if you think we wandered away from our topic of tools, we didn't. Your wittiness and sense of humor must shine through everything you do. They are your tools as well, even if you photograph cats or write a blog about blue orchids.


Incidentally, HootSuite is good for saving templates, that is, old but good messages you may want to recycle some day. I personally rely on my memory, and social media accounts normally contain archives of whatever you say or post. As for memory, which is also an important tool, you can rely on it only to a certain extent.

Metatag Hag: Right. When the numbers of persons and personalities in your network will reach thousands, trust me, you will have more than enough on your mind, if you're serious about promoting your talent.

If you're present in at least top five, it's enough to build your influencer network. Larger presences are needed in the next phases when your fandom must gain momentum... but that's different.

To be continued...

Thank you!

Anastasia Stratu and The Metatag Hag

Dear Stephen King, Having a Boyfriend IS Important, not to Mention a Good "First Time"

Although Stephen King says jokingly that Twilight is about the importance of having a boyfriend, and I'm no fan of glittering vampires myself, the role of the first boyfriend in a young woman's life cannot be underestimated.

Caelin’s Awakener mission - teaching a young woman to receive and give pleasure - can have great resonance in a society where many first times  a) are happening too early and b) often turn into botched starts of an unhealthy attitude to sex and a life full of wrong beliefs.

When we are ready and willing to fall in love, our emotional, non-material, empyrean self – the archetype of the Faerie self – is just the soul using the body's ability to give and receive pleasure in order to take the leap in its yearning for love.

So the soul is just rushing headlong to take the leap and dive into that elevating, purifying, enflaming and life-changing opportunity to truly know and care for someone – the feeling that makes senses sharper and colors brighter, that flings us into the heavens, that makes us "hear Puccini in our heads"…

We humans call this love.

Any Awakener man i.e. a more experienced man who initiates his partner into womanhood, knows that it takes only some gentle physical contact, patience and kindness, in order to train a young female body to react the right way. 

Also, it is important to start it with an older, more experienced partner – I’m talking 2-3 years older, not a peer who doesn’t know shit and distorts her sexuality for her entire life with ineptitude, disgusting sweaty fumbling, and pain-causing on a back seat of a car.

It takes a more or less experienced young man to understand the fear of losing virginity to the core and, well, to do everything Caelin does :) As for making men out of boys, Awakener women exist and existed for centuries, specifically for that purpose.

Again, when they made the myth of the Flier, they didn't know biochemistry or sex education, so they made up the faerie Flier prince to highlight the importance of this passage from girlhood to womanhood.

In my story, as it happens many times in life, the Awakener will fall in love with the Awoken. My characters will not only tumble in bed; they will talk and laugh together, and become friends, and he will be her protector and she his inspiration, and separation and trials will give their love story a bittersweet note.

And there will be a happy end... of sorts :)

Influencer Marketing 101 - Operate Your Influencer Network. Rule 1

Dear reader,

Today, the Metatag Hag and I would like to talk about the tools that will help you operate your influencer network on your way to your a mountain top sitter chair. This will not be a list of analytic apps or a rating of software products - you can find a wide array of those online, well-described and explaining what to do with them. I don't think apps will help you be a one-of-a-kind, highly sought-after product creator. They can only help you optimize your work. When I say tools, I mean the things that will help you get the most out of the influencer network you started building.

By the way, don't think influencer network building is a process limited in time. Once you started, you have to dedicate time and efforts to your old and new influencers all the time. And when you have many, this must be part of your daily routine.

Metatag Hag: For instance, I just Followed a gluten-free network. It has a great follower-to-followee ratio, and who knows? Maybe someday, one of those 12 thousand gluten-shy people will buy this book. God works in mysterious ways, while the ways of social networks can be put to your service.

I will mention a few software products, though, as actual parts of your influencer relations' toolbox.

We will be discussing all sorts of instruments in that toolbox, from personal qualities you need to enhance, to impact measurement tools, presentation and reputation-building, the content you create and distribute as you promote yourself, and  many others.

First and foremost, there is:

Rule 1. The personal approach: do not entrust a machine with something you can do by yourself. For instance, Michael Hyatt, a notable public speaker and leadership expert, recommends this:

"Don’t use an auto-responder. I used to use SocialOomph to thank everyone who followed me and provide a link to my “Beginner’s Guide to Twitter.” I thought I was being courteous and helpful. As it turns out, I was being annoying. This is just more clutter in people’s Twitter inbox. Avoid it."

My point exactly. SocialOomph may be good when you, say, have a quirky greeting you send out every morning. It is also more convenient for auto-scheduling messages than HootSuite, but do you really want to annoy people with the same robotic messages, day after day? I personally use it to do a little one-day-per-week shout-out about my new book or article, every two-three hours, but no more than that.

It's particularly annoying when a certain account spews out a pageful of Tweets - granted, one of them is bound to get your attention, but normally, this automatically makes you want to reach for the "Unfollow" button. Who knows what important Tweet they could bury? I Follow two such spewers, so I know how it feels, and the only reason I don't Unfollow them - please don't laugh - is that both accounts are SEO firms. They also follow me, which is important in my case. So I just sigh and switch windows when I see a spew-out.

Metatag Hag: I also get to read a couple of those spew Tweets, but what's the point? I don't have time to follow links to detailed reasons that make brain tumors more common in men. And if I consumed content for needs other than research, I'd Unfollow everything that annoys me. Just like so many of us do, otherwise we'd drown in seas of information useless to us.

(For those of you who need a bit of explaining on SEO: it's search engine optimization. Plainly put, it's an entire industry dedicated to making your site appear on the 1st page of Google results - and having your ads bring more customers, too). As a friend's friend who works at Media Experts says, "I make those annoying little ads you see on Google."

In a word: don't be a robot. Be spontaneous, be original, modify your signature or staple Tweets/posts. Imagine someone, a top influencer maybe,  who's curious enough to click on your Tweets archive and sees a row of identical messages! There are myriads of such wannabes online, who load their Tweets with "please listen to my songs" or "check out my videos" repeated with the insistence and frequency of a woodpecker torturing a tree.

Don't be Woody. Be Tweety - talkative but demure, and so charming people just stop and stare!

 Always answer with personalized messages even when you receive the standard automated "hi, thanks for following, please like my Facebook page".

Metatag Hag: Right, it can annoy the wits out of you. But hey, you ain't wearing no crown yet, so don't be too proud. Haul butt to the respective page and like it even if it kills you! Then respond with something like "I just liked your page, my name on Facebok is, say, Metatag Hag", if it differs from your Twitter name. Then include the link to your own page. Granted, you'll probably never get your favor returned, but at least you won't look like a pushy door-to-door marketer. Again: you're not hunting followers, you're hunting influencers.

And when you respond in a nice and polite manner, complimenting the other as you go, you won't even have to do the asking - the link is an implied invitation to repeat the nice thing you just did for your fellow influencer. 

That's right - fellow. Never forget you are an influencer, too. And re: "probably never return the favor", my own statistics say that four likes render you one "back-like". 

To be continued...

Thank you!

Anastasia Stratu and The Metatag Hag