Frequently Asked Questions
What do you mean by ‘real time’?
I mean that if the pirates attack at dawn, the tweet is sent at dawn. If nothing is happening (eg the pirates are asleep), there are no tweets until they wake up/do something interesting. It also means that some tweets will happen at odd hours of the night.
But. . . the time is wrong. Why?
The time zone is set to Jakarta – including sunrise, sunset, and weather. I live in Canberra (which is Jakarta plus three hours – making “dawn” 9:00am), but the setting of the story is a tropical island world much like Indonesia, where people are dark-skinned with black hair, and there’s no Winter (because it’s MY fantasy world). So it makes sense to make the real-world connection in Indonesia.
Who is the narrator?
The narrator’s name is Ulandin. He is a teenage ex-slave. His interview is here in this blog.
So he’s a guy then?
Yep.
Can I get the story on my phone?
Australian twitter doesn’t allow you to receive SMSes. But if you email your mobile number to me at fellissimo[at]hotmail.com, with the subject, “Phone Tweets”, then I will send them to your phone at the same time I release them on twitter. I can also send them to you in real-time via email if you email me with the subject, “Email Tweets”.
Why do you have two names?
It’s a crude ratings system – if a story is written by Louise Curtis, it’s PG or G. If it’s written by Felicity Bloomfield, it probably isn’t. Felicity Bloomfield is my main online personality, and my blog (mainly about the writing process and being mentally ill) is at felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com. This blog is all about the story.
How are you getting paid for this story?
I’m not. The whole idea is to get better-known as an author.
Have you been published?
I’ve sold about thirty short stories around the world (including some online), and sold one book (which I’m fairly sure was never produced). I am working on a number of books at the moment, most of which involve pirates.
What is it with you and pirates?
I wrote pirates into my young adult book “Stormhunter” and then realised I knew nothing about sailing. So I decided to “research” tall ships by travelling on the Young Endeavour sail training vessel. I’ve written an entire children’s trilogy since then, all with pirates in.
What’s the deal with the flashmob?
Because it’s a twitter “novel” (of about 3000 words) I had a book launch – of sorts. Instead of speeches and wine, we gathered at some local shops, then for half an hour whipped off our normal-person disguises and looked like pirates. You can see 1.30minutes of highlights by watching “Pirate Flashmob Canberra” on Youtube.com
*Add your questions in comments, and if I think they’re common enough I’ll edit them into the main post.
Companion to Day 2: Tricksy Pirates
If you’re wondering what the island looks like – look up. I based it off the island in the home page photo (although Sol and Ulandin’s perspective is rather different).
On to today’s topic.
Pirates were infamous for using their wits and sheer bravado as much as their cutlasses at times.
In 1719, Captain Rackham’s pirate ship was trapped by two more respectable vessels. He managed to last the day by sheltering behind an island, but the two respectable ships places themselves overnight in such a way that he couldn’t sail either forward or back. All the pirates could do was wait until dawn to be slaughtered.
What’s a pirate to do?
They left their ship empty and managed to take over one ship (the best of the three!) by climbing aboard in absolute silence, and taking over the whole thing without a single scream for help or alarm rung.
Then they quietly sailed it away.
The next day, the remaining good guys set the pirate’s ship on fire. Too bad it was empty – and their companions captured along with their VERY pretty boat.
Pirates win!
(This story is taken from the book, “A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates” by Captain Johnson – an obvious pseudonym – first released in 1724)
Companion to Day 1
Oh no! Captain Sol is barely alive and our main character is unconscious! What will happen next!?!
Some of my friends predicted the following:
Day 2
Dead.
Day 3
Still dead.
Day 4
Starting to bloat.
Twiction, flash, drabble, dribble, and hint fiction
Novels are tiring, partly because you have so much freedom – whole worlds to invent and so on. So every so often I take a holiday into the world of the weird. Stories without the letter ‘e’. Stories with just dialogue. Stories inspired by a picture. More often, I go to unusual lengths – unusually small lengths.
Twiction: twitter fiction (can be any length, but 140 characters at a time). Join my piratical twitter tale by clicking on the link at left (it’s located above the story so far – read upward from August 1).
Flash: 1000 or less words
Drabble: 100 or less words
Dribble: 50 or less words
Hint fiction: 25 or less words
Hint fiction also has the quality that’s it’s not MEANT to be a story – not meant to show the reader who the character is; not meant to have a beginning, middle and end. It’s just a moment – and all the rest is just hinted at. The creepiest story I’ve ever read was hint fiction, which you can find here with the title “Progress” (not suitable for children – but everything is implied, of course):
http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=78
There’s a really cool hint fiction competition getting run at the moment. Those who were at the flashmob yesterday would have read “Risk” which is one of my entries. If you want to know more, go here:
http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8
If you have an idea, the story is almost finished.
Flashmob: Report
I’ve just returned victorious from the bizarro launch of the twitter tale – a pirate flashmob at Lyneham local shops in Canberra.
I’ll upload some videos (much edited) tomorrow.
We had quite a number of midget pirates, and one girl who insisted on coming as a dragon. A cutlass-wielding dragon.
Picking on someone her own size
Our attempts at looking normal were going well until this girl and her mum showed up, when we gave up the game and turned pirate ten minutes early.
At least two video cameras were filming, and one was deliberately skulking about 100 metres away. My father-in-law spotted them (a three-person crew) and the most logical explanation (unless those fiendish ninjas had HEAVILY described their nunchucks) was that it was WIN television.
The crowd was about fifty people, as I’d hoped, with about three groups of people I didn’t know – so yay for advertising.
We had lollies left over 🙂
These are DINOSAUR pirates (yes, that's what they're doing. No, I don't know why).
Pirates Required
Amazingly*, the flashmob is on tomorrow!
(*Not that amazing if you subscribe to the time-space continuum.)
Who wants to help hand out free lollies (you’ll need to be someone I know and trust) and/or short-short stories?
Please bring digital cameras for still photos to send to various media.
I’d like someone to come with a video camera – all flashmobs should be recorded, since they’re basically performance art (although you’ll need to check with parents if you’re filming kids).
How to spot me on the day (eg to check who are the okay people to take lollies from): 175cm in heels, black corset, green lacey wrap, full-length red skirt. Probably shivering (also probably wearing a loose white undershirt). I will be there from about 1:00pm.
I’ll be handing out eyepatches etc to anyone who asks.
See ye on the morrow!
The details:
Lyneham shops (Canberra) outside Tillies and the bookshop.
Be piratical from: 2:00-2:30pm (ideally showing up disguised as a normal person beforehand for maximum effect).
Enjoy lollies, short-short stories, conversation (piratical or otherwise), the bookshop, and the two neighbouring cafes as long as you like!
One example of how it's done
I survived Year Five (and also Year Six)
Today I visited a primary school and took over two Year 5/6 classes for about an hour each. I met Aiden, Riley, Andrea, Nathan and many others.
Teaching is a little bit like getting executed and a little bit like having God-like powers. The combination is confusing, to say the least.
The kids were startlingly responsive, and I enjoyed myself. I think they did too. It’ll be interesting to see if any of them start following me on twitter over the next few days (or comment on this!)
I had them write character sheets and story outlines. The influence of “Twilight” was clear by the large numbers of vampires, and of very emo immortals. I had this conversation a few times:
“Your character sounds interesting. So what makes him happy?”
“Nothing.”
“Does he enjoy anything?”
“No.”
“So. . . he’s trying to be happy?”
“No. Not really.”
—————-
Clearly Edward Cullen, yes?
A lot of the story ideas were BRILLIANT. In one class, we had a character who could fly. Her problems were that (a) She couldn’t stop – even when she slept (b) SHE WAS CONTAGIOUS! (I am definitely stealing that idea.)
In another class, our character had psychokinetic powers (since when do kids know what that word means?) They gave him the problem that whenever he used his powers, he fainted. What a great problem!
Conclusion
Pirates: 1
Ninjas: 0
Oh! I almost forgot! It’s just two days until the pirate flashmob this Saturday.
How to join: show up at the Lyneham shops (outside the second-hand bookshop) at 2:00-2:30pm this Saturday in a pirate outfit (or just show up, and I’ll give ye an eyepatch). Bring your friends!
The Fear
I love the old farmer’s idea of how to get things done when you’re scared of them: “Throw your hat over the fence.” There’s a metaphorical dog on the other side of the fence, but you’re determined – so you throw your hat over. Then you have to face the dog to get your hat back.
My hat’s thrown.
So far I’m committed to teach short story writing at four different Canberra schools. I’ve advertised a flashmob on radio, in newspapers, and (hopefully) it will end up being on TV (particularly if people show up). I have over a hundred followers on twitter, and more who will be following the story on my twittertales.wordpress.com blog or elsewhere.
Scared now.
Meh.
PS Not following me yet? Join twitter (it won’t spam you – not even with my story) at:
http://twitter.com/Louise_Curtis_ (you have to manually add the underline at the end due to computer and/or my own stupidity)
Why I owe Johnny Depp a favour
This is an email I sent to my sister very very late at night on the third Saturday in September, 2007 (cut for length/sense/name-changing, but otherwise untouched):
What red-blooded man could resist?
Gettin Religious on ya
Becoming mentally ill is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me – single-handedly killing my independence, many relationships, and sucking away my ability to feel happiness even when things are going well – but it’s also the best. Being mentally ill stopped me moving permanently to Indonesia as a volunteer aid worker. I think that’s wonderful.
But.
I hold to the theory that God often uses sickness to either slow down his humans or communicate something we’re particularly thick at grasping. This is definitely one of those times – becoming mentally ill was, I think, the equivalent of six-foot neon lights in the heavens spelling out, “YOU ARE NOT CALLED TO INDONESIA. DO NOT GO.”
Which is great, since I think I mostly wanted to go to prove myself “worthwhile” (who me? Issues?) But it’s also kind of. . . rude. I was willing to lay down my life – literally if necessary – and God said NO?!? Doesn’t he want my help?
Yep, contrariness. I know. But it hurts all the same. It also hurts that I’ve GOT the no-go message by now but I’m still suffering. I feel like God’s useless cousin – he doesn’t hate me, but I don’t help him in any way, so he just leaves me miserably sitting in the corner.
A few days ago my husband and I were reading the Bible (but no! but yes!) and he blithely read (from John chapter nine, NIV):
As [Jesus] went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither the man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
———-
This exploded inside my head.
Blindness then was similar to mental illness now – it’s socially disastrous, and leaves you completely dependent on others. This guy was blind from birth – that’s a long time and a lot of suffering. But Jesus clearly states here that it’s no-one’s fault, and that there IS a purpose after all.
In this context, the guy is healed and there’s a furore (the blind guy is deeply sarcastic and the chapter is very funny) and a great Bible story as a result. I suspect I’ll never truly recover from my illness (we’ll see!) but the idea of illness/suffering serving a purpose for God is enough for me to feel less ashamed.
Dunno what the purpose of my ongoing illness IS, and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen this life for myself, but I was willing to risk getting martyred for God, so this is nothin’.
Helping package food for refugees after an earthquake
Felicity Banks 