Category Archives: Journal

The Week from Inferno

Working... Working...

And lots of writing left to do. I know where I'm going with "Dowse and Bleed" now, and I have the next four or five challenge stories in the percolator, but I took some time out yesterday to read Rabia Gale's Mourning Cloak.

Wow. A quick and engrossing read. Kato is a man who thinks he's failed his god and his destiny and discovers that the seer aiding him saved him from failing his world. When Kato goes on a mission to rescue his captured wife, whom he thought deceased, he gets an opportunity to put the world to rights. A powerful story of how the right way may be beyond our understanding, and the path to redemption may be the path we thought led to perdition. Lovely, lovely, and I'm not doing it half enough justice.

Any good reads lately? How's the writing coming?

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Today's Favorites Inflicted: Snippets and Recs and Hugs

I'm feeling Christmassy (and sleepy and too sleepy and more than a little ready for significantly less stress), but today, I feel like sharing some of my favorite things around the web and my world.

Rabia Gale posted a lovely little rec post for her guest post about "The Lone Woman," a sale on Rainbird, which I love, and one of the most important indie publishing/writing articles I've lately read.

The lovely xenokattz is offering New Year/Ephiphany fanthings and prompting from holiday music and video.

I'm sending out Christmas cards this year, as soon as I can prop open my brain cells enough to do it.

And today, I unearthed this snippet, discovering anew how much I liked it:

Arienne stood upon the balcony of the Household of Vishet, looking toward the port and the golden edge of the sunset glow. About her neck hung a heavy chain of Vardin silver and the five sapphire links at its heart. Her bare fingers pressed into the stone frame. Her eyes took in the breadth of her city, to her the nation.

"I cannot do this alone," she said suddenly in a quiet voice.

There was no answer behind her in the royal chamber. Her guard and servant, bound to her in all the ways that did not matter, stood there near the wall. He would never be parted from her, even in this most intimate and fearful of moments. But he did not speak. He could not offer her comfort.

The princess glanced down and touched the silver and sapphire chains. Her gaze fell further, to the bare back of her right wrist. Slowly, she clenched the hand, knowing the weight soon to settle there.

Heavily, she whirled about in her heavy skirts and turned toward the guard in his uniform, even darker than her own. His eyes were averted.

"Where is Cayden?" she asked. It was not a question expected of her.

But the guard's eyes closed and she saw his jaw tighten in concentration. A moment, his eyes opened; he looked at her, saw her. "He is coming."

Arienne studied him, impassive in expression if not within her heart. She nodded royal acknowledgment and turned away. "When he arrives, leave us." She laid both her palms against the rail and returned her study to the city. It would be her only burden now.

Vardin.

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Vishata: Beginnings, Sketching, and the Writing Process

Story of the Day

Today was a day of beginnings—the Vardin kind, the kind that will hopefully start a new way of living my world.

On the mundane fronts, I had a job interview today, a job interview yesterday, and a very busy life trying to get thank you and Christmas cards written. Turns out that I'm behind on everything, especially reading other people's books, but I'm hopeful that come January, I will be gainfully employed and financially independent. Yay.

On the writerly front, I was talking (f-locked) to trovia and also to Kira Butler about sketching and layering as a writing process.

I write it as if it's fanfiction, as if everyone in the world knows exactly what I'm saying, then on the next layer, I really think of the ambience and context from my character's POV and layer in more and anything I think must be understood by the reader, then last I really think of the uninitiated reader and tuck in all the necessaries to help them along. Ship to beta, go back and layer in with answers to all her questions.

It got me to thinking, and I decided to do something I hadn't thought of before, hadn't dreamed of—just. write. the. story. down.

Forget the fancy words, the narrative, the dialogue, the beautiful scenes; just get it down! It's a lump of telling just now, split into paragraphs at the appropriate junctures with the occasional nugget of real written story begun. I'm not incorporating the mess of material already written because it bogs me down getting the whole big picture on paper. When it's finally down, we can layer from there.

Vardin Word of the Day

vishata | vishahta [ vi SHAH tah ] or [ vi SHAH tuh ] from v-sh-t (etym. Old Vardin)

ht. n. #p. 1. originating historical events, usually presented in a series or set of stories; 2. the set of records detailing the stories of the founding members of the Houses of Vardin.

vishata, hunter plural, the happenings which cause or originate a particular period of time, usually the present era.. s. vashet, pl. vishata. [from Old Vardin, v-sh-t.]

Written Work of the Day

Yesterday, I began work on sketching out The Rothnen Cycle. It's a sketch, not an outline or a draft in the traditional sense, though it will be once that sketch is fleshed out, so I arbitrarily set 120,000 words as the book word count goal (this is perhaps an understatement), and I will be regularly posting progress counts (unless you all announce that you would rather I not, in which case, I'll throw them on a page somewhere—like my sidebar—instead).

1369/120000 words. 1.1% done.

And a scribble for good measure:

It was a late wind—too blustery, too wintry for the turning of spring to summer. Keisleh closed her mouth against the cold, ragged tickle it left in the back of her throat.

Rec of the Day

So M.C.A. Hogarth has a Pinterest at last!

M.C.A. Hogarth on PinterestAnything new going on with your muse or writing process? Any special things you've read or places you've visited?

Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

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So... In Other Unrelated Confessional News

I have loved being off of Twitter. I'm not sure I'm going to really do a lot on it besides reenable crossposting when I'm ready. I love not worrying about it, not getting distracted by it, though I've found a lot of people and learned a lot from it. I guess that makes me a

Social Media Dropout

Oh, well.

I also have temporarily reneged on further work on the Ficlet o'Clock pieces—and my Heinlein Challenge work. NaNo is enough for me and I've pretty much settled on the lite version of 800 words a day. I just have too much else going on right now to do otherwise. I guess that makes me a

Realistic Non-Overachiever

I've been an Unrealistic Overachiever for enough of my life to breathe a sigh of relief at the change.

In Other News...

Gone Hunting, the collection, and a bunch of shorts have been ready to put into print for a while now, but I haven't had time to wrap up the formatting and mess of getting them published. In a way that bothers me because nothing new is entering the pipeline to turn into an income stream. But I cannot tell you how much I desparately would like to finish. writing. a. novella. Seriously.

Unrelated Skippable Political Note

And I voted. Early. It bothers me a lot to hear photo ID is supposed to suppress voting. It bothers me more to hear people talking about this effort to stop Democratic voters and steal the election through measures against "nonexistent voter fraud." I say this as an independent with conservative leanings. Why? Because both parties have perpetrated voter fraud in their long and mixed-bag history. Both parties are preparing to battle this out legally if they don't get their way. Claiming that everything wrong with voting is due to Republican conspiracy is partisan, just like it was when Republicans claimed the same of Democrats last cycle.

Please, just vote. Vote for the candidate you believe in and the path you want America to take. But please stop bashing each other. Please?

What's on your docket?

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Help Me Choose a Book for NaNoWriMo?

So, I've been wondering if I can pull off finishing a full-length book (novella, novel, who cares), and then Nano rolls around. Brilliant! But now I have to pick one.

City of Glass

A serialized novel about glass, nanotech, and space. The women of the Alliance seem bound by the world they live in: space ships and colonies, schools and councils, the cities of glass and steel. What happens when the glass cracks?

Storm

A family she never knew, a lover she never wanted, a power she never dreamed of.

Alexia Henry knows her father is remarried, but it comes as a surprise when he takes her on his journey to explore a mysterious phenomenon in the French Pyrenees that may lead to her mother’s homeland. Dreams comes to life, long-forgotten stories become reality, and the only way to Vardin is through the storm.

Either? Neither? Something else you've been wanting me to write?

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The Newly-Read Meme

While work is occuring in the backend and hidden corners of the website, it's not very visible yet (ah! the coding requirements!), so here's something to chew on while regular posting is down.

From likeadeuce:

So this is a meme that [personal profile] romantical brought in from tumblr, and I'm happy to play the traditional way, which is, "Pick a number and I'll tell you. . ." but I also kind of want to play it like the Newlywed Game -- the Old-Flist Game. So, if you want to ask me a number I'll answer, but if you want to pick a number/numbers and tell me what you think my answer is/should be, that also sounds like fun.

1. The meaning behind my URL/LJ name/etc
2. Weakness
3. Why I love my bestfriend
4. Last time I cried and why

The last time I cried was a few days ago. Just a little bit, but noticeable to myself. Sometimes the stress just catches up with you, when you're feeling too sick and tired to do what you have to do and the bills hit your bank account with or without you and you realize you're just really, really screwed.

Then I took a deep breath and remembered that God loves me and has a plan, even if I can't see it yet. I've been in worse places than this one. I stopped crying.

5. Piercings I have
6. Favorite Band
7. Biggest turn off(s)
8. Top 5 (insert subject)

Top 5 Poems

Back when I was in the fourth grade, one of those little book catalog circulars went around the class, and I ordered 100 Best-Loved Poems, edited by Philip Smith, for one dollar. A love affair began, with many of my favorites still being from this book.

  • "Lucifer in Starlight" by George Meredith
  • "The Children's Hour" by William Wadsworth Longfellow
  • "The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy
  • "Abou Ben Adhem" by Leigh Hunt
  • "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by e. e. cummings

Odd selections, these. I have so many I have dog-eared and reread and love and recite and weave into my writings and my fanfiction. I love poetry, but there's something about these ones. They resonate, especially the first three and, more oddly still, the last. But the fourth, once read, is never forgotten.

And ah, I give away my Christian bent with these. I love them all.

9. Tattoos I want
10. Biggest turn on(s)
11. Age
12. Ideas of a perfect date
13. Life goal(s)
14. Piercings I want
15. Relationship status
16. Favorite movie

Hoosiers was one of my mother's movies. It was still in the days of VHS and had the blue chucks on the front. I loved that movie. Loved Jimmy. Loved the small town vibe. Loved the details and nuances, even if I didn't understand half of it at my age (I was really just a kid, after all). Then I got older and started visiting the library and there was Hoosiers on DVD with the new case and I just grabbed it. I checked it out and rechecked it out until I hit my cap, then waited and did it again. I watched it over and over and over while I was writing, on my lunch breaks, whenever I got a chance. I love the dialogue especially in some of those scenes, rich and delightful to a lover of words and dialects. And the basketball... You could cast so much of it in gold.

Other movies in a similar category which bring warmth to my heart (even if they can't beat out my favorite) are Believe in Me and The Perfect Game.

17. A fact about my life
18. Phobia
19. Middle name
20. anything you want to ask

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The New — Blogging Beyond the Comfort Zone

How many times do I reinvent myself? I try this and that and fail and succeed, then hack away at it again. Anyone who has been following my Twitter feed may have noticed my struggles with striking the right balance for City of Glass, creating a beautiful online journal and blog aimed more at my readers than my fellow writers, and deciding how to earn an income from my fiction when I simply do not finish novels at the pace of those chunking up the change in independent publishing.

The truth is, I have been afraid, so very afraid, that I have been doing the wrong thing, even while moving forward on projects unrelated to Liana Mir and that I cannot discuss here. But these things take time and understanding.

The goal of this post is to sort through some of the things I have been struggling with, experiencing, and what they mean. In particular, this is where I come to grips with what this blog is about, what I want to be, and embracing the new. Continue reading

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Black Blossom by M.C.A. Hogarth: the Book, the Project, the Review

I have favorites: favorite books, favorite stories, favorite styles. M.C.A. Hogarth hits my sweet spots over and over—characters, worldbuilding, and immersiveness. One of my little secrets is that some of my favorite books of all time are the Anne of Green Gables books, Emma, and Jane Eyre. In short, these classics are novels of manners, in addition to whatever other genre a guy or gal might like to attach.

Black Blossom on Kickstarter
Enter Black Blossom. I first discovered this book directly after finishing Emma for the first time and enshrining it instantly on my top ten list of favorite books. I had just learned the phrase, novel of manners. And then here is this book, this web serial, called a fantasy of manners. Nothing could have stopped me from embarking on this book at that point. Fantasy and science fiction have been my bedfellows ever since I graduated from fairy tales. Black Blossom promised to combine all of my eclectic sweet spots, and it did not disappoint. Continue reading

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