stop. start. stutter.

I've been Gainfully Unemployed for about ten hours now, and it feels weird.

I've really been enjoying seeing what you guys think about the stuff I'm posting. (The one thing I wish Movable Type had was nesting comments with some way of notifying you guys if I reply. I promise I will start to get better about replying more often as I start to post more. Rest assured, lack of responses does not mean I don't appreciate the feedback.) One thing I've kinda mentioned, here and there, is that I plan on doing Friday Fiction -- I'll post at least one piece of writing or other creative work per week, and I'm going to try to do it on Fridays.

Some of them will be "flash fiction" type things -- sit down with a glimmer of a tiny idea, start at the beginning and go through to the end (often timed; I try to hold myself to under an hour on those), give it a light scrub-through and edit, and post. Sometimes I'll do more elaborate short stories, or pieces of even larger stuff, and I absolutely plan to give y'all a full and complete novel that will only be available on this website. (I need something to turn to when I get stuck on the other one.) So be sure to check back at least every weekend for new stuff. (And tell your friends. And your family. And your coworkers. My mom's already cheerfully showing this off to everyone she knows; moms are good like that.)

Meanwhile, the first novel-for-the-publishers has a tentative working title of Sixteen Tons. The way I've been summarizing it to people is: on the surface, it's a story about what happens after colonizing the moon and what happens when the people who live there decide they don't want to be doing this anymore. Deeper than that, though, it's a story about what it means to go crazy, about privacy and identity and Big Brother, about corporate responsibility and corporate abuses, about DNA and deception and loyalty and fear. I'm looking forward to getting to know the main characters and finding out what surprises they have in store for me.

This week, though, I've been concentrating on clearing up the last bits of leaving-work. And I've been eaten by Final Fantasy XII, since we finally have enough time to play it, and I'm treating myself with a few days of downtime before plunging headfirst into words, words, words. So I will attempt to get something up for you guys before the end of the weekend, and try to get onto a much better schedule by next week.

So, for those of you who are just joining us: I'm Denise. I write stuff. (Lots and lots and lots of stuff.) I'm two weeks away from quitting my dot.com job with Six Apart (makers of the software this blog runs on!) in order to write full-time. I'm a little bit excited and a little bit scared -- okay, a lot excited and a lot scared, but who's counting?

I spent the day working on the website -- including a good hour or so of "reload?"/"no dice" type troubleshooting with the Minion, who was testing in browsers I don't have available to me. (Props to the Minion, who figured out the problem.) Aside from the placeholder text in the main body, it's starting to look pretty good, I think. Take a gander!

I'm a real firm believer in the creative commons, in the digital gift economy, and in the ongoing conversation of the marketplace of ideas. I'll be writing things for the traditional publishing model, but I'll also be writing stuff here just for you guys. from ultra-short pieces to short stories to entire novels. I've already reprinted some old stuff I had lying around, and I'll be adding more. I'm going to try to do a weekly Flash Fiction Friday -- something posted every Friday at the very least. Most of my stuff will be released under a Creative Commons license, but I haven't quite decided what yet, so that's still up in the air. *g*

Syndicate me! The Atom feed for this blog is at http://www.denisemccune.com/blog/atom.xml (or add to your LiveJournal friends list: mccuneblog). If you want to comment here, you can use your TypeKey, LiveJournal, Vox, or OpenID login. I'm not allowing anonymous comments, just because of the spam problem.

So, here we go; let's call this the "beta test" of the blog and the website. Let your friends know! Spread the word! The more readers, the better ...