Very angsty stuff. Sorry, y’all.
So, pygmymuse didn’t understand the concept of hunting in Vardin—more one of treasure hunting or hunting down than animal hunting. I went looking for an outsider to explain it to and Josh was so remarkably convenient.
In order to save their world, the mages of long ago plunged it into eternal night.
Now rare veins of quartz provide light, heat, and food to a dying world. And Rafael Grenfeld has just learned that the biggest quartz pillar of them all, the legendary Tower of Light, exists. Unfortunately, his informer died before revealing its location and he’s stuck in the hostile totalitarian state of Blackstone.
Desperate to find the Tower of Light for his people, Rafe forms an uneasy alliance with the mysterious and maddening Isabella. They’re not the only ones interested in the quartz. The Shadow, chief of the Blackstone secret police, is also hunting for it. As darkness-loving demons devour souls and dangerous magical artifacts resurface, Rafe must tap into the lost powers of the mages in order to find and secure the quartz—before his world is destroyed by famine and war.
Fire and Water by Allowyn Nyrti
For years, Enya Royston has hidden from herself and her abilities, fearing the destruction that always comes with using them. The others embraced their talents, but she turned away from them. Now, though, everything has changed, and their paths have twisted up together again, forcing them to reevaluate the choices they made and how they will go forward from here. The past stands ready to destroy them, and if it doesn’t get them, their enemies will.
So I'm behind on my reading. No surprise there. I've got a proofreading job, a few musical birthday/mother's day gifts to complete, and a job—besides the 365 Challenge and a remix exchange fanfic to write. En brief, the scribbler's busy.
What are you reading?
I did know what froze me up on writing my chaptered fanfics after a while, and it's weird to admit this, but here it is: they were too long.
When I realized it was going to take more than 100 chapters to wrap up some of those stories, my brain and muse froze up and it suddenly became very, very hard to keep writing. It was easier when I didn't realize that and could just scribble into the abyss, not knowing, not caring how many words it would take me to reach the end. I cannot tell you how liberating it is to not know.
And you know what? I think that's what happened to the Story from Inferno as well. I realized how much work and words were involved and almost got over it before my brain went too much, too much, too much—I'm scared.
Some writers write scared. It drives them, keeps them writing. I don't. Never have. Never have been able. Scared freezes up my brainpower and even if I know exactly what should come next, I don't write it. If I don't know what comes next, that suddenly becomes an ultra-handy excuse to let it go and hack away at something else while nibbling every now and then on the overwhelming, too long story. And I wonder why I've only ever finished one satisfactory novel. :shakes head ruefully at self:
There is no commitment to the abyss. It is like life, only visible one step at a time, and with infinite possibilities for continuing or coming to a satisfactory end. We live by moving forward. There is commitment once a story rears itself out of the abyss and shows its overall shape. Suddenly, I feel obliged to make the story fit that shape, reach that end satisfactorily. There's pressure.
I've been thinking about how to take that pressure back off. Cross your fingers for me or share your tips if you have any. It's time to throw a few stories back into the abyss.
So there's a couple of memes that I decided to edit into this: I'm going to post the first lines of all my WIP that have a complete draft but not a revision I like yet. Now to just get some edited!
"You have seven days. Live them."
Jaguar kneels over the small sleeping form of her young brother.
The Collector, Mavren, looked up from the counter when the tiny brass bell tinkled over his opening door.
Here in the land of the five cities, long before the king and the princes, the queen and the princesses, there was an emperor and empress and a little empressina.
Alya carefully creased speckless cream linen over the perfect white parchment of her letter—the way her mother taught her.
Rachelle waited until the restless aches dancing through her upper body were outright pain before she finally forced herself to quit making endless cups of coffee and fished a mottled green star out of the embossed pink tin she kept on the granite kitchen countertop.
Kirana pressed her hand tightly to the young boy's chest, her own chest feeling squeezed as life wrung out from between her fingers and into his body.
Word came at dawn of the newly outfitted military station in Westerfields, that vast uninhabited territory between Glaston and Edyll, both kingdoms cities.
Markus and Shellayne hated each other, but as the only arcana-keeper interns available, they were stuck closing the Library of All Knowledge.
Got any first lines to share?
I thought it might be fun to make them run across each other small, but I didn’t want them to recognize each other later, so new bit of canon: the girl was homeschooled. :grins:
She has never been beautiful. Ashen has never experienced being beautiful—until tonight.
A meme I did once a long time ago from the incomparable xenokattz:
Give me
a) a fandom/original world
b) a character/pairing
Then add any (or all) of the following
1) an image
2) a quote (but not in the same fandom)
3) Your battle cry
4) a recipe
First 10 prompts will get a strict drabble commentfic; that is, a 100 words very brief fic. No promises after 10 although I'll do my bestest.
So following along with Dean Wesley's Smith ghost novel was enlightening, but not entirely surprising. He wrote a 70,000 word book in 10 days.
I've written 4–6K fanfic chapters and short stories in 2–3 hrs, so I know it's possible, but there's that head of steam factor. I have it just as easy as he does when I write into the abyss. I'm not.
There are worlds I know so well inside and out that I can scribble off a piece of them in very little time at all. And some I know so well that I can't just keep on writing past the point I slid out of character voice. That I can't just plow ahead and change history when other stories in the canon have already established the point. That I can't just call a story done when it isn't because it's really just the first level of info I yanked out of a character's head but the details to make it make sense to someone else aren't there yet.
When I'm writing Vardin, Kingdoms and Thorn, Breath even, I'm not writing into an abyss. I'm writing into a world so full I sometimes bump up against the scenery. Nevertheless, that does not make me unproductive.
Within the last three weeks, while I was sick as all get out (and I say this not lightly, y'all; I was sick), I worked on three larger pieces: Dowse and Bleed, the prose version of "History Lesson on the Night Train," and what's shaping up to a novelette/novella size Vardin piece called "By Blood and by Land" about Llereya and Cayden and the whole history surrounding "Hunt the Mists." I've written more than 10,000 words while sick and in less than forty-five minutes a day. I don't feel bad about that.
It's easier when I'm not locked in though. Writing into the abyss is easy. You can make up any decisions on the fly and not worry about the consequences. Which is how I got the first mess of "Dowse and Bleed." That story flew out of my fingers.
The only problem is I was completely unfamiliar with writing mysteries of any kind (mysterious being a different case altogether), and so I hadn't a clue where I was going and let an awesome setup go anticlimactic with the tension draining out as I moved forward. The new version is better to me. It satisfies me because it's truer to the characters, but I had to take a whole break to get the case on straight in my head. (Thank you, in_the_blue!)
"The Alchemist" flew out of my fingers, written in less than three hours, took minimal edits, and it's my bar none bestseller that everybody likes. I like writing into the abyss. I just can't do it often because once that story's down, it tends to grow into a world in my all too fertile imagination.
Ah, well.
Thanks all for your patience as I recovered. See you soon with more stories.
John Henry saw a healer touch a dying child and the little girl walk away. Rhiannon de Alyón is a Vardin hunter with orders to ensure his silence. She failed to reckon the price she would have to pay to succeed.
A hunt gone wrong, a child’s uncontrollable power manifested, and a horror about to be unleashed. A young hunter, Pesheneh, must join her father and his team to rescue the child from capture and her nation’s secrets from being revealed.
Born in a land hidden and separated from the rest of Europe by the Barrier, Casal is caught between two sides of her heritage. Will she bind herself to the land as a Guardian—or do the dangerous work of the Hunters who cross the Barrier?
Three stories of hunters with fantastic powers and the Barrier between two worlds.
