Stephanie O'Brien's Blog

A Free Excerpt from Catgirl Roommate

26/1/2016

I have something special for you today: a free excerpt from my upcoming book, Catgirl Roommate!

In this excerpt, you'll see the bizarre and hilarious first meeting between Sam, a responsible straight-arrow college student, and Nyla, a woman with the ears, tail and mind of a cat.

She's innocent, eccentric, and entirely opposed to wearing clothes. He's persnickety, shocked, and entirely freaked out.

Grab your free excerpt to watch the fun.

Click here to download the excerpt!

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Too Painful to be Funny? Or Does Slapstick Only Make it Better?

19/1/2016

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While editing the first part of Catgirl Roommate, I've run into an interesting question:

How many bad things can happen to a character before it stops being funny?

Wile E. Coyote: testing the limits of this question since 1949.

In the case of the hapless furball above, most of his pain is self-inflicted, so we're free to laugh at his fur-scorching, face-flattening antics without guilt.

But what about cases like straight-arrow college student Sam, whose suffering is caused by his innocently misbehaved catgirl roommate?

In many of the scenes I recently edited, Sam's pain was limited to exasperation and frustration, but there were a few instances when he actually got hurt. Not few enough, I soon concluded, which led me to alter several scenes to remove or soften the physical consequences of Nyla's shenanigans.

After all, we're supposed to be laughing at his minor misfortunes like the crowd of softcore sadists that we are, not cringing at his actual physical pain.

While contemplating the line between funny farces and the laughter-crushingly cringeworthy, I thought I'd get your opinion on the matter:

Where do you draw the line between hilarious misadventures, and stuff that's too painful to be funny?

Does it largely depend on the degree of the damage, whether it was self-inflicted and/or deserved, or some other factor I haven't mentioned?

I look forward to reading your comments.

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The First Draft of Catgirl Roommate is Finished!

12/1/2016

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Great news! The first draft of Catgirl Roommate is complete, and you can pre-order it at half price here!

Writing this story was a new and interesting experience for me. While Catgirl Roommate has some variation in its tone, it's mostly a lighthearted comedy, which is a mood I've visited in other books but never lived in for an entire novel.

As a result, the writing process became an unpredictable journey, with unexpected additions to the cast of characters, unplanned detours into new writing projects, and character development that was never in the original script.

Scenes went careening off-script and became better as a result, and I had moments when I wondered if what I was writing was funny at all, only to realize that I was already laughing.

When I thought I was almost finished writing, new scenes presented themselves and demanded to be written, and even now I still wonder if I'll be struck by inspiration for additional scenes while editing the book.

That is one aspect of writing slice-of-life that I'll admit I didn't see coming; there's often no clear end to the story, and there's almost always room for more.

With the initial writing phase (probably?) over, I've started editing the book. The pre-order discount is only available until the finished novel is released, so if you want to reserve your copy for just 99 cents, click the button below to get the details!

Click here to get the details!

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The Problem With "Strong Female Characters"

5/1/2016

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"Strong female character". For some people, it's a buzzword that indicates that a story is progressive, forward-thinking, and not sexist.

For others, it's symptomatic of a problem with writing female characters that has changed shape, but certainly hasn't gone away.

Personally, I like some strong female characters, and it's always nice to see the (often vastly outnumbered) women in the story holding their own.

But truly good storytelling demands more, and as this excellent article by Sophia McDougall makes clear, sometimes the pursuit of the Strong Female Character actually undermines the quality of not just the story, but our expectations of female characters themselves.

I especially liked her comments about the problem with some Strong Female Characters' exaggerated shows of "strength", and I definitely recommend that you click the button below and check it out!

Click here to read the article

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A Free Excerpt from Catgirl Roommate

Too Painful to be Funny? Or Does Slapstick Only Make it Better?

The First Draft of Catgirl Roommate is Finished!

The Problem With "Strong Female Characters"

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