The Week in Cat-Tales

Whew.  I got Reputation in place with the ePub format and new PDF.  It’s going to be better all around, but damn, it is going to be a lot of busywork.  The client’s better downshift for a couple months so I have time for the Everything Else of Cat-Tales besides the writing.  On the writing end, I got Chapter 2 released, and the response to that has been very gratifying.

I was particularly delighted to hear from a reader who recognized the homage to the UK series Hustle.

Any of you Americans who like the Timothy Hutton series Leverage, you might want to stop right here because if you ever saw Hustle, you would no longer find Leverage watchable.  Hustle chronicles the adventures of a crew of long con players in London.  They are real con artists in that they do it for profit, their own profit.  They con people who deserve it, but they’re seldom avenging a specific victim of their mark.  Leverage wallows so much in the terrible pain the marks have brought to people, it dampens the fun factor considerably.  Hustle also has no car chases, gun battles or big explosions.  It may come as a shock to US writers and producers that the elegance and fun of the con itself—not to mention the appeal of the characters—can carry a one hour show.  Guess what, it can, it does, and once you’ve had the good stuff, you’ll never be able to drink that swill again without knowing it’s swill.

Anyway, big fan of Hustle, and the “Riddler’s lost his mojo” element of Electron 29, as well as the Love Diamonds angle in Not My Kink are both loving homages to a show that gets that key ingredient that is as necessary for Catwoman as for a good heist movie: the fun of being bad and getting away with it.  Meow.

There was also a little something in Chapter 1 that is, not so much an homage, but an old-fashioned Cat-Tales commentary on a comics-related issue.  One of my email correspondents was SO CLOSE in saying one aspect of Bruce’s ranting on the plane had some significance outside the tale, but they didn’t guess what it was referring to.  I’m going to give him a little more time to get it, since it is also one of my “cleaning out the closet” bullet points, and I’d just as soon save them for another day.  I will say that, even though there’s a little subtext to the things Bruce said on the plane, that doesn’t mean they’re not relevant to the story.  But readers will learn more about which of those dots connect in Chapter 3.

Short entry today, new week, new month, lots to do.  Ciaomeow everybody!

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Capes, Bats, Cats, Covers… Not so much with The Closet

I certainly hoped to get in a quick comment on all the stuff that has been going on this summer which certainly warranted a purr or a scratch, but for which I didn’t have time.  A metaphorical closet-cleaning to match the physical one.  Unfortunately for my mental closet but fortunately for Cat-Tales, there has been – yet again – too much going on to bother with the knucklhead stuff.

1.  The new Cat-Tale: Electron 29 hit the cyberstands last week,  and as anyone who has written Edward Nigma will tell you, he doesn’t sit quietly in the back of your head waiting for you to finish other things before you start on his next chapter.  If you don’t start writing, he’ll start without you.  Meh.

2. Wanders Nowhere has released a new installment of his Dracula in Gotham fic Capes and Bats.  Much as I want to gush, you simply will not believe me.  Believe the forum: “This little tale created an imagery and gravitas in the first chapter that the graphic novel storytellers of Gotham have been trying to do for decades” “Gorgeous prose” “Masterful”.  ‘Nuff said.  Read it, just read it… in time for Halloween because we’re not done yet and… Whew… *fans self*  just read, trust me.

3. We’re getting ready to welcome a new artist into the fan art gallery, and that requires a little more work backstage than a busy girl could want in the midst of #1, 2, and 4.

4. EBOOKS!  Yes, the new ePub format is going to make mobile readers very happy and it’s also given me an opening to redo the printable pdfs and kindle documents so we have some consistency.  Win-win, but it’s the sort of thing where the first few will take a while, but taking the time to do them RIGHT will make everything go much smoother down the line.  In that spirit of doing it right, I want to give the individual story pdfs their own covers.  Right now, they use the square ones from the website and it’s okay but the images are not made for the medium and it shows.  Now, I don’t plan to do this for all the tales, but Cat-Tale #1 is, of course, a special case. So I have 4 possible covers up, and I am opening it up for a vote.  Please don’t worry about the words of the title “A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation.”  They will be placed better on the final image, whichever it is to be.  Just vote for your favorite image.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.