Love As Thou Wilt

I've been contemplating love the last few days, mostly because what I've been writing? Deals in the tangled relationships of various characters. I was actually thinking the other day I should renew my lapsed membership to Romance Writers of New Zealand; I joined it sort of on a lark about three and a half years ago, and I say "lark" because I never considered myself to be a "romance" author. I tend to dabble in something like urban fantasy, although I obviously sidestep into outright fantasy as well.

With that said, I wouldn't consider myself a fantasy author either; I have no interest in the political maelstroms that most hard fantasy novels seem to deal in. For instance, the only reason I finished The Lord of the Rings the summer I was fourteen? I simply had nothing better to do. My family was camping in our habitual spot at Fraser's Domain and it was extremely pleasant to lie in the sun beside the river and read while listening to CDs, even though I had long since lost interest in the story itself. Finishing it became more a matter of honour than anything else, come to think of it. I had begun the book at the behest of my brother, older than me by two years; he wasn't really known to be much of a reader while I'd had a voracious appetite for books ever since I learned to read (curiously enough, I don't even remember learning how; I can remember learning to write, but my hazy memories of childhood always hold a memory of how to read the letters I couldn't write; I suspect this explains to some extent my peculiar pronounciation of some words and my bizarre default settings when it comes to phoenetically sounding out unfamiliar words). So, the fact that my brother, not the family reader, had read and loved this monster tome? Totally meant I had to do it, too. Although I almost gave up when, a few hundred pages from the end, my extended whānau and I sat down for a lengthy game of Trivial Pursuit that resulted in my receiving the entirely ironic question of: what else did Frodo lose, when he lost the One Ring? The question itself was bad enough, but I clapped my hands over my ears and said: "DON'T TELL ME, DON'T TELL ME!"

Naturally, they told me.

Still, despite the fact I only got to the end of the book in a blaze of grim fatality, it still amuses me to think that I had combined Tolkien, Enya and Central Otago in 1996, long before one Peter Jackson. Me: 1. World: 0.

So, yes, fantasy? Isn't really my thing, any more than romance is. Which isn't to say I can't read and enjoy them; for instance, I found Dune fascinating, though I won't read much beyond it, and I have a long-standing weakness for Nora Roberts, old-school Danielle Steel and those terrible, terrible Mills and Boon books you can chomp through in less than an afternoon. When I was younger I was arrogant enough to assume myself a literary writer, but these days? I think I've accepted what others have recognised in me for years: I'm a writer of character. Plots are a useful sideline in my work, but it's the characters that I write for.

So, this is where we come to the idea of love. It amuses me to no end that my first presumed publishing credit is going to be in an anthology of erotica, paranormal or no; I've never even had a boyfriend (long story, but in the end I'm going to claim conceit and say I'm like the immortal Sherlock Holmes; I simply am not interested in romance in relation to myself). I mean, I entered the story on a whim, not knowing a lot about Mitzi Szereto or her previous works, though I suspected my story would be far too vanilla for her requirements. In the end I did flesh out the two sex scenes to some extent at her request, but the process of editing left me with the understanding that she chose the story on the strength of its atmosphere more than anything else. We have H.P. Lovecraft to blame for this, I think -- I'm sure the man would turn in his grave, to think that a young female author of paranormal erotica is holding him up as her primary influence -- but we'll also blame Amnesia: The Dark Descent for that one. Oh god, that game. It makes grown men cry like little girls. I do love it so.

...this does remind me, actually, that I have to try and write some blatant horror for the Wily Writers' Halloween issue. Because I was exposed to Stephen King at far too young an age -- read side-by-side with Christopher Pike and R.L. Stein, no less -- when I was in my pre-teens and early teens? I wrote ridiculous amounts of gory horror. I have a lingering affection for the genre, to the point I still have a mostly-unwritten novel in my mind that involves pirates, lesbians and MOTHERFUCKING ZOMBIES, so...yeah. It'll happen. (And I'm sure Lovecraft would love me to do something with the courtly love of women while invoking his name, too. Ha!)

But yes, there is a bit of an oddity in that I personally have no interest in romance in my own life, but I do focus a lot on it in my writing. Partly it's because the interactions of people are a keystone of their lives, but sometimes I wonder if fanfiction didn't play a part in it. I mean, I've been writing original fiction since I could write -- the first story I remember writing, I was five or so, and it was about worlds of lava with rainbow bridges and children who lived inside a sun -- but I dabbled in fanfiction from when I was about twelve until I was twenty-one or so. I didn't really understand what it was until I was sixteen or thereabouts, which is when the internet first struck my house asunder, but anyone who's read a could deal of fanfic will know that while gen is a valid and common category, it's all about the ship-sailing in the end. And although I'd learned quite a bit from reading far above my age level for all of my young life, I think my first real introduction to smut? Happened through the wonderful world of fanfiction.

Still, though...I've never mastered the art of smut. And I say that as someone about to be published in an erotica anthology. Ah, irony, my old friend...I have one of Mitzi's other anthologies around here somewhere, and though I haven't read all of it yet (I was distracted first by my Charlaine Harris marathon, and right now I'm on a Jacqueline Carey mission) I've read enough to think: "What on earth did she see in my work?" Not that I'm going to rock the boat by asking! ^_~ But, as I said, I read enough ship-fic for various OTPs I'd developed fixations on, and in the end I had to give it a whirl myself. But I discovered rather quickly that original or fanfic? I can't write PWP. Every time I tell a pair of characters to go and get it on, they...tell me a goddamned story.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in the greater scheme of story-telling. Every scene should be relevant to a story's development, and the fact that I often set out to write two thousand words of smut and end up with a ten thousand word short story that explains to me in detail a significant event in someone's past or a cultural idosyncracity or spawns an entire novel...I suppose it's useful? Although it can be irritating with it, ha. I believe The Simple Story, which I sampled a bit in the last entry, started out that way; I think I just wanted Araben and Aleksandr to have a tender moment, considering the rather ballsed-up state of their relationship at the time. And I'm fairly certain the next story I'm going to share a snippet from, Together We Will Live Forever, was the same -- I wanted to find out something about Otho and Círa, and considering he was sent to "seduce" her in the beginning, I figured the bedroom was a relevant place to explore their dealings with one another. Currently the story is unfinished at fifteen thousand words and deals strongly in the histories not only of Círa and Otho, but of Ryennkar Vassidenel and Arosek Asfiye, and in the complicated machination of the personal and political relationship of Cydrac Agrane and his Second, Andorin Osideros.


And all I wanted was some smut. Dammit.


Still, with that said? I suppose I can take some comfort -- and evil glee, yes -- in knowing that I did once write a "short" story about Círa and Otho that is mostly an extended sex scene...although it also goes a long way towards explaining their estrangement at the time Kit Eryntalla meets them both. Of course, Kit's story? Is a young adult novel and therefore will never have this scene included. It still amuses me to know that it exists, mind you...


However, let us move on to this little bitlet from Together We Will Live Forever. Like most of my short stories, the title is a placeholder and merely borrowed from a song I happened to associate with its writing. You can hear it here; Clint Mansell's score is the real reason I finally watched Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and this song? Will always make me cry. It's about life, it's about death, but mostly? It's about love. And in the end, no matter what turns of the worlds join and split them asunder, that is really what matters most in the relationship between Otho Calenta, Major in the Crimson Ruby Division Northern Armies, and Círa DeCameiron, Ice Maiden of Aran Nomese and Lady of Greywater.

Otho Calenta and Círa DeCameiron, as drawn by the lovely Neme-chan.

(extract from "Together We Will Live Forever," copyright  2011)

This time, he knew he did sleep. When he awoke some hours later, it was to find himself both cold and alone. In his haste to find her he cared nothing for his state of undress, thrusting the bedcurtains open to reveal the room beyond. A gasp escaped his lips, accompanied by a cool puff of air; whatever he had expected, it had not been what lay before him now.

Snow covered the room like a forgetful shroud. He knew what she was. He had never been able to forget it, had never even wanted to. But he had never seen her do this.

“Círa?”

There was no answer to his croaked question. Yet even as he spoke, he realised he could see her. Dawn had broken while he slept, filling the bedchamber with a dull grey light. It seemed that despite the silence, the wind having dropped, clouds still obscured the sky with glum serenity of purpose. The heavy draperies had been pulled back from the great windows, and there she stood: silhouetted against the glass, the plains, and the sea beyond them both.

“Círa?”

Still she did not answer. Struck with the uncomfortable feeling that she was not entirely ignoring him, Otho shifted uneasily upon the bed. He could remember all too well the way her eyes had looked only yesterday when she had been the Ice Maiden, that inhuman creature who rang the iron bells of Greywater to herald only death and darkness. It seemed that perhaps she had slipped behind the mask again, though a quiet corner of his mind did wonder if the woman who was his wife was not perhaps the true mask.

Either way, he would not leave her. He was not a man of broken promises.

Pushing back the heavy blankets he swore at the chill of the air upon his naked skin. Casting about for what remained of his clothes left him in rueful despair; aside from a few likely-looking lumps beneath the snow, there was no sign of his discarded uniform. With a sigh, he accepted that he was already looking at it.

Though he kept civilian clothes stored here in one of the great wardrobes, it was over the far side of the room, and the distance between bed and door was roughly the same as the distance separating him from his wife. With a shake of his head, he made his choice. Besides, he thought with some wry amusement, for all he knew it had snowed in there too. It seemed she was in the mood for such impossibilities.

After pulling one of the fleece blankets free of the oval bed, he draped it around his shoulders like he thought himself a Legate. With a gritting of his teeth he steeled himself for the thought of snow between his toes and pushed out of the bed. Though he’d sworn he wouldn’t, he cursed aloud – yet when he looked up, he saw that there had been no discernible movement from the silhouette at the window. Wriggling the complaining digits, he shrugged, struck out on his path. He figured he would forget about it soon enough. As soon as they went numb, at any rate.

As he began to shuffle through the snow on the floor, finding it came almost halfway up his calves at some points, he noted it was growing ever lighter. Day had chosen to make its mark upon the world, for all the grim prophecies of the previous morning, though the sky remained that dun grey; it hung motionless over the world, an unpainted and abandoned canvas.

Against that greyness, she shone, a blaze and white; the snow had settled about her in the fashion of a cloak, granting her its stark purity of colour. It rose from the ground like a cradling hand, wrapped around her entire. As he ventured to stand between her and the window, between snow and sea, he saw that actual stalactites dripped down from her hairline, framing her face like a drawn veil of shimmering diamond. Her eyes, though they did not blink, did not focus upon him, staring only outward; they had taken on the strange colour he had seen for the first time only yesterday. Again, he thought them to be so much like the furious northern seas, that place of the heaving white-tipped waves where the covetous northern god had claimed her for his own. But he Dreamed now, as did her true god-father of the West, and now Círa DeCameiron belonged only to herself.

“Círa?”

Her unmoving beauty, stark and pale, reminded him of the army of statues in her Chamber of Mirrors. Housed deep below the crooked pillars of the broken palace above, they were there as lovely and distant and uncanny as she was here. Yet though her sculptures were only ice, beneath her ice she was real. Otho had no idea how Círa awakened her golems. He had a good inkling of how to bring her back to life.

Still, he shifted, uncertain. His feet had begun to protest the frozen passage early on, but even now they hadn’t quite slipped out of the realm of sensation. He looked down to see their redness, and then sighed. He was not a man to shy from his duty, but in that moment, he paused. Though she was not frightening in this guise, not as she had been when he had stood before her when she had dressed in the pearls and damask of the Ice Maiden of the North Sea, it was unnerving to look into those eyes and feel them staring straight through him.

He’d never liked to think long on the fact that while his life was the fleeting moment of mere mortality, hers was an endless stretch of immortal time-keeping. As he looked to her then, he wondered if she was ever able to forget.

Turning slightly, he shared her view, raising an eyebrow to see what he found there. Strange, indeed to see the gardens of Greywater in this fashion: they had become a white plain, an alien landscape of drifts and mountains of snow despite the fact spring had come long ago with the awakening of the sun-bear in the Kaverlen Mountains. Though dawn had long since broken, no footsteps marred the pristine pathless world below. The smoke of early fires drifted from chimneys, both within the precincts of the palace and from the judicial city beyond, and he shivered. No fire had been lit at the heart of her chamber, and his feet were now almost numb through. Círa had never cared much for fire, and he had not held it against her; as a child of the earth-god, sworn opposite of the fire-lady of the South, his own nature demanded much the same. Still, he thought he knew enough to understand the soul-deep fire inside her actual heart.

And even when a traitorous voice inside whispered she has no heart he whispered back: so why can I hear it beating?

It was no childish fancy. When he placed his hand over the ice-box of her chest, for all her prenatural nature he felt its long, slow beat as he did his own. Yet even under his calm, strong touch, still she stared, and did not move. Dropping his hand, he let his eyes skip again to the curtain of snow over Aran Nomese. Strangely, he thought again of Kit Eryntalla, of the boy she had followed like he could save her from this. She’d never believed it of him, had never thought that Otho could save her from this enslavement as he’d promised, but she’d believed it of that boy. Perhaps, he mused, that was the reason why he had the odd feeling that Kit would have known how to wake her from this strange sleep.

In the end thinking of the young man was likely was gave him the notion. He’d never been curious of fairytales as a child, and his father certainly hadn’t chosen to read any to him. His mother had not either, but she had still told him of the power of legends and myth through the beauty and strength of her dance. Otho had learned the stories the same way, in the careful matching of step to beat, of emotion to note. In so many of those stories, one lover had awakened the other with a kiss.

“Well, what the hell?” he murmured. Draping the blanket carefully over his shoulders so it would not fall, he raised his hands to cradle her head and touched his lips to hers. It was hardly the most peculiar thing he had ever done in the name of love, and even before he drew back he had to think with wry amusement that it was unlikely to be the last.

*****

I apologise for any roughness in the work -- I only pieced it together earlier this evening, so it's very much a draft. I just adore Otho when he's struggling with recognising what his wife really is. I also apologise for the fact that aside from the fact they're both naked, apart from his blanket and her snow-cloak? There's not an iota of smut to be seen. Then again...that's just how I roll. Apparently. ^_~

Focus

So, I am back in New Zealand and writing-wise? I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked while I was on holiday, but with that said I was on holiday more or less because I am in the midst of a nervous breakdown and the fact that I have managed to go back to work for the last two days and not run screaming all over again, well. It's a victory? Ha.

But while I was away, I did do some writing and a lot of thinking, and it mostly all came down to that little elusive bugger of focus. I am easily distracted. I write many things simultaneously, both novel-length fiction and short stories, and as a consequence I rarely finish and submit anything. Because I've been in a bad place mentally these last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about two very ill-starred characters, but Arosek and Ryenn have ended up inspiring a lot of short fiction as well as their own novel-length epistolary thing. But while I was wandering the mangrove reserve in Bunbury every day it occured to me that both characters are now a firm part of the forevergirl, and because of this I've been thinking again about Greywater, and...yeah.

What did I manage to write in the end? A thousand words or so of Greywater, roughly five thousand words of a short story between Arosek and Ryenn called (as a placeholder) In Our Bedroom, After The War, and then I wrote out bits and pieces of four or five other short stories that came to mind. You see what I mean about focus? Some of it was inspired by news of a couple of competitions closing at the end of the month, so...yes. I don't know.

Still, in two days time? It is Easter. I should have had four days in the clear but I offered to come act as second pharmacist on Saturday morning, but it's only three and a half hours out of the long weekend. But what I have decided to do? Is use it to just write. I want twenty thousand more words in Greywater, and I want to finish both A Statue of Us (for the Wily Writer's superheroes competition) and Dream On (for the CONText competition). I'd also like to finish In Our Bedroom, too, mostly because it's a fairly telling moment in the relationship between Arosek and Ryenn. The reason why I like to write them when I'm depressed, I think, is because it just does not end well. But then, it's a bit debatable whether it ever went well one way or another anyway. And yet...they genuinely care about one another, and they need one another. They don't actually spend all that much time around each other once they leave school, and I think that contributes to my fascination with their interactions in later life. Every moment is charged with things unsaid, and it just fascinates me.

I've also been commissioning again, and when I got back from Australia I was delighted to find in my deviantart note box a message that Círa and Otho were done. And it's gorgeous; Neme-chan is unbelievably talent. <3 I have a version printed out and stuck on my wall already, though I will have to get a proper poster version done through snapfish at some point. And today, I got home from work to find that Ryenn and Arosek are done, too. So, to celebrate, I think I'll find a little snippet of the pair of them.


This little bit is from the novella that originally bore the title The Simple Story. It's actually told from the viewpoint of Aleksandr Zaloyo, a former Kearnian noble; he's telling his companion, a former Leiceynan hierophant, what he knows of Ryenn and Arosek, who lived about a hundred years before they did. Aleksandr's understanding of the convoluted history is interspersed with the real story, as the point of the novella? Was to show how the truth and the legends match and diverge. It's a mess, even though the first draft stands finished at twenty-two thousand words (!), but here's a little bit of it anyway. As I said, Arosek and Ryenn? Intrigue me because they are very different people. Arosek loves too much, whereas Ryenn doesn't love at all. But then the tragic thing is that each to each, they are the only ones who can draw the other from one another, if that makes any sense. Arosek can teach Ryenn how to love, but the flip side of that coin is the simple fact that only Ryenn can teach Arosek how to hate.

Though Ryennkar had been the one to be away for three weeks, he offered no explanation. When Arosek looked up to find him standing before him, a ghost come back to haunt the place of its birth, the silence had to be broken first by his strangled demand.

“Where were you?”

Ryennkar did not blink, taking his habitual place across from his friend; it was three hours beyond the time of the meeting Arosek had called upon his return to Erindel, yet he seemed relaxed, incurious in regards to Arosek’s growing agitation. “I apologise for my lateness, as well as for my unexpected absence. I was attending a funeral.”

“A…funeral.” The tense lines of his face deepened, but his dark eyes had widened with curiosity. He knew as well as anyone that the man had almost no family to speak of. “Whose funeral was it?”

“My wife’s.”

“She’s dead?!” Arosek found himself on his feet, directionless and bewildered. “You…why didn’t you say so earlier? I wouldn’t have called you back if I’d known!”

“There is work to be done,” he said smoothly, waving his hand at the abandoned seat, the stacks of paper at every place. “It’s not your concern.”

Arosek did not sit. For long moments of dim silence, lit only by guttering candles and punctuated by the sound of their breaths, he stared from the window of the meeting-room. The others he had called were long since gone, their business conducted without the benefit of Ryennkar Vassidenel, and Arosek Asfiye had never felt so alone.

“Why won’t you talk to me about her?” he whispered to the window.

“You didn’t need to know.” The chair creaked as he leaned backward, the dark robes rustling with a sound too agonisingly familiar. Arosek did not look back at him, not even when he added thoughtfully: “Not that it matters, not now. It is done.”

The coolness of those words made him turn, the words flying from his lips before he had even thought them. “Did you love her?”

Ryennkar’s smooth brow furrowed. “I don’t follow.”

“It’s a simple question.”He stalked across the room, his compact form all muscle and motion. He didn’t even know what she had looked like, not exactly – he’d never even met the unfortunate woman! – but he held a picture of her face in his head all the same. Knights and princes were not just the stuff of legend, though Arosek had never needed a white horse, only his hands and his voice. He slammed those same strong hands down on the table on Ryennkar’s right and demanded: “Did you love her?”

He blinked, looked down at the spectacle, but the bang had not made him so much as flinch. “Why are we discussing this?”

“Because I’m your friend. Your best friend.” He found himself shaking, his weight barely supported by his hands, but his voice was as strong and clear as it had ever been. “And I’ve never met your wife even though you’ve been married to her for four years, and now she’s dead and I never will! Does none of that strike you as strange?”

“No.” He arched an eyebrow at Arosek’s answering frown. “To both questions.”

Like a marionette whose strings had been rudely cut mid-performance, Arosek slid to the floor at Ryennkar’s side. His head was aching again. He’d thought three weeks of the rolling hills and great lake at Wendar would have been enough to erase the memory of the three dead men, but then he hadn’t reckoned with the sudden addition of Ryennkar Vassidenel’s poor dead wife.

He spoke only when a hand dropped to his shoulder, though he kept his eyes upon the faded pattern of the rug beneath his knees. “Why did you marry her?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The hand tightened, his touch of the other man’s skin cool even through their clothing. “You didn’t need to meet her.”

“How do you know that?”

“I didn’t want you to meet her.” In one easy movement Ryennkar left his chair, dropping to one knee at his side. The long fingers moved upward, tilting Arosek’s face so that the grey eyes sought his, held them steady. “She’s gone now, Arosek. There’s no need to speak of her again.”And then he stood, a flurry of black and silver, and bowed his head. “I see that the meeting is already concluded. I apologise for my late appearance, but perhaps tomorrow would be a better time for us to discuss the matter in question. I will come to you upon the ninth hour.”

Arosek didn’t stand, pretending to admire the elaborate woodwork of the table leg. He didn’t want to watch the other man go, but a moment later he couldn’t bear not to.

“Ryenn?”

He turned from the door. “Yes?”

Looking at the other man, Arosek found himself wondering again how he could picture the face of a dead woman he’d never even known. “Did she love you?”

Ryennkar blinked. “I don’t know.” The slim shoulders rose and fell. “I never asked.” He closed the door then, and was gone.

The above picture is the commission of the two of them, done by the wonderful RaraHoWa; Arosek is the golden-blonde, Ryenn is the platinum blonde. As I said, it's about the fact that one loves, and the other does not...except when it comes to one another. Poor bastards. I really do love this picture; it actually reminds me a lot of this terrible letter exchange in the same story, where Arosek writes Ryenn a happy, casual, cheerful letter and gets the shortest, curtest, most formal note back in return. Honestly, the things I put my characters through...! And on that note I suppose I ought to get back to writing more of their story -- although to be honest, tonight I think I'll work on Greywater for a bit. The current wordcount is 44,294; I'm sure I can kick it well over forty-five thousand. ...well, once I've done some Zumba for the evening, anyway. I've also promised myself there will be NO BUYING OF PORTAL 2.

...yeah, we'll see how long THAT lasts...

Dawn

So, it's very early in the morning though it doesn't much feel like it to me -- it's ten past six and I've been awake since four, but I'm in a different timezone so it's not so strange. I'm basically just watching the sun come up; I need it to be a bit more light than this before I go and find some yoghurt and cereal for breakfast, as I want to eat it out on the balcony...

So, yes, I'm in Australia again. I didn't manage to do much writing on the plane, but I did think about characters and whatnot quite a bit. I realised I had forgotten all over again what exactly was going on in the latter parts of Greywater, but I've come to the conclusion that the new theory works better anyway. So, what I am hoping? Is to get maybe ten or twenty thousand words written of that while I'm here. I mean, I could sit on the balcony, or in the office, and there's lovely views of the sea, so...yeah. It's something that I need to do. Writing's always been my happy place, and I need a happy place rather like burning right now.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to at least a couple of things once I get home. We've got the Readers and Writers Alive! festival coming up in Southland, and I've already signed up for two workshops. One of them is more poetry-based than anything else, of course, but I figure any sort of lesson in critical reading of text? Is useful. Even though I'm not entirely sure it's a teachable skill. I did it very instinctively and very well at both high school and university, and I used to be driven to despair by my fellow students being unable to do the same. I just saw things; I could never explain to them how I did it. Because to me, the meaning or the nuance or whatever? Was just as clear to me as the words themselves. So, yeah, I would have been a terrible teacher.

I'm also signed up for dinner with a local author at my favourite local restaurant, which probably means I ought to go and read one of her books. Er. Actually, I was rather distressed during my runs between airports yesterday (I really had to hoof it from the domestic to the international terminal in Auckland) because none of the bookstores I went to? Had any Jacqueline Carey. Bastards. I was looking forward to devouring one of her books on the plane. Fortunately I found a Matthew Shardlake I hadn't already read instead, but...yeah. I've come to the conclusion, since reading a couple of Careys in the last week or so, that I am very similar to her in tone and style. And I like that. So...there's something to dream on, I guess.

And it looks light enough to read on the balcony now, so I might go do that, have a long long walk around the mangrove boardwalk, and then come back to the apartment and talk to some of the voices in my head. Holidays? They're all good. ^_~

Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead

I can't speak for other writers, obviously, but I tend to find myself that there are bits and pieces of my own personality inherent in all the of the characters I write. Partly it's just a way of getting into their heads; I mean, I do find it ironic that one of my characters, by turns one of the most sane and insane of them all, is basically my sense of sarcasm run amok. (Hi, Morgan!!!) But then, it also comes through in other ways.

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of both my morning and my afternoon out walking. Some of those walks involved me wearing weights around my wrists; they're not particularly heavy weights, incidentally, but they are noticeable. And what they reminded me of? Was Círa DeCameiron, a character of mine who wanders in and out of various novels and short stories. Círa is an elemental of the old order, being that she was around in one form or another before the age of the four cardinal gods of my other world, but one of these gods imprisoned her in what would become the judicial city of Aran Nomese. He thought it was particularly amusing because he essentially made her into a god of death, when Círa's adoptive god-father is as pacifist as can be. But one symbol of her imprisonment are the three tone woven-metal bracelets that she always wears; gold and silver and bronze, all metals from the great mines of the North. You can't always see them, and to everyone else they don't feel or look particularly heavy -- they're in a Celtic-inspired pattern, finely wrought and very light. Except to Círa, they feel like lead weights. I think most of the time it's not obvious, but when she is actually tired they will drag on her...physically, mentally, spiritually. This is likely to become an issue in latter parts of Greywater, but first I really need to finish the first half of the damn novel...


I was thinking of Círa before the weights, mind you -- because one of my walks involved roaming around the largest park in the city, and it made me consider the details of the palace of Greywater. This is where Círa "lives" in Aran Nomese, but again it's a bad joke on Janerin's part; it's actually the deteriorating remains of a palace from the largest city of the water-god's sunken kingdom. Of course it doesn't sit properly in the earth-god's realm, not least of all because it was designed to run off massive aqueducts and be in harmony with the sea around it, but...walking amongst the tall pines in the park, wrapped in the alpaca shawl I found in my mother's closet, I thought of Círa walking in the overgrown gardens of the displaced palace. So...yeah. I have her on my mind right now. I'm not sure if that means I will really get to writing more of her novel, but we'll see.


As I said the other day, though, I also have Ryenn and Arosek on my mind. It's got to the point where I am working on getting a commission of the two of them, though I can't quite work out how I want to see them portrayed. It's not so much their appearances, because I know what they look like. I've draw both of them myself, although only Ryenn ever really came out the way I wanted him to; Arosek's a bit trickier, as while Ryenn's very much a strong and silent watchful type, Arosek's a creature of constant motion. Ryenn's beautiful because of how he is made; Arosek's beauty is much more dependant on the personality animating the person, if that makes any sense. He's nothing special just to look at, but the spirit behind his otherwise very plain and ordinary eyes? Makes him a force of nature. Whereas Ryenn is just...Ryenn, really. In my mind he's like the marble statues in the various annexes of the Louvre; beautiful, bold, and completely beyond the scope of ordinary mortals.


I did come to the conclusion while looking for reference pictures, mind you, that Ryenn reminds me somewhat of Benedict Cumberbatch. I drew that conclusion because I was looking for pictures of Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law from Sherlock Holmes, because there's a no-personal-space buddy-bromance vibe there and I thought that might give me ideas, but then I remembered Sherlock as done by the Beeb, looked up some pictures, and was amused by the fact that the physical contrast between Cumberbatch and Freeman? ...is how I see the physical contrast between Ryenn and Arosek. It's reversed, though, in the sense Arosek, the smaller and plainer of the two, is the forefront and animating force of the pairing. So, it didn't much help except for the fact I've developed a fascination with Benedict Cumberbatch. Although I had already kind of started down that road when I watched Sherlock the last time I was in Australia. Ha.

Still, there was one reference picture I'd saved to my harddrive for god knows what reason months back that I sent the artist, along with some others, and she's latched onto it. Which pleases me, in that I have long been fascinated by this particular picture. We'll see what comes of it eventually, I suppose. In the meantime I really ought to work on writing something. Ryenn and Arosek offer me several writing opportunities; both of them have their parts to play in Greywater, which would also allow me to play with Otho and Círa. Then I could work on The Forevergirl instead, which is the sequel to The Neverboy; I am not really sure how they play into that one, but certainly from what little I've been told already by Tara, Arosek's involved in this far more deeply than I realised at first.


And then, I suppose, there's The Simple Story. This is an interesting concept, for me, and I haven't really decided how to play it. Basically it's the tale of Ryenn and Arosek's messed up attempt at living their lives, but they're not really the ones telling it. Instead it's a collection of short stories, vignettes and outright novellas that act as a sort of...complex history, I guess. It's different characters relating what they know about these historical figures, and it's come about because I tend to write short stories about those two from varying points of view. And then I realised I could draw them together into a kind of compilation. I'm still debating how to do this, but I already have several stories in progress -- there's Círa and Otho after the execution, Aleksandr telling Araben about his country's most infamous traitors, the thrice-great grand-daughter finding the pictures (and toys) in the attic of her grand old family, Kit and what he saw the day he found Ryenn in the Chamber of Mirrors beneath the palace at Greywater...yeah. And over the last two days, my long walks have yielded two more ideas -- the hedgehog story, and then the superheroes story which I will also partly blame on Regina Spektor.

...speaking of songs, there's another one I keep thinking of whenever these two come to mind. Stars, with Your Ex-Lover Is Dead. I think this is twofold; firstly it's the refrain at the beginning. When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire. And then, the first verses...it's a man talking of how he runs into an old girlfriend when they're unwittingly "introduced" by a friend of a friend. He speaks of how they catch a taxi for an awkward silent drive across the city...it's just how it ends: and all of that time you thought I was sad/I was trying to remember your name.

Just...ouch. I suppose it doesn't help that the song also does a neat thing later, where you can take something two ways. I'm not sorry I met you/I'm not sorry it's over/I'm not sorry/There's nothing to say. You could do that last bit two ways, as I said, and the song does both: I'm not sorry it's over, there's nothing to say as opposed to I'm not sorry it's over; there's nothing to say. Ah, the little tricks grammar can play on our emotions, yes? And I keep thinking of Arosek and Ryenn in their last moments, and I wonder which way it went for each of them. I think it's also because I realised at last why they fit together so well, and yet can't ever remain anywhere near one other. They're poles, really: Ryenn is the cliché in that he's not the kind of man who loves anyone, but Arosek is his polar opposite...he's incapable of not loving someone. And that's another story I know I need to write...Anja's recognition of this. Because I know Anja saw it...Ryenn didn't know how to love Arosek his whole life. And at the end, Arosek didn't know how not to love Ryenn, despite everything that happened.

And as they say, when there's nothing left to burn...

April's Fool

So, we come into the fourth month of the year and I am very, very behind in my blogging. In fact, I am very, very behind in my writing in general. I'm not going to bore you with the details of my drama-rama life, but suffice it to say...my mind, it is not in a good place at all right now.

However, I have decided to take ten days off from work and on Tuesday I am jetting off back to Australia for another holiday. It's a mental health thing, really, but I am hoping to use at least a few days to begin to get back into some writing. There's a short story that came to mind last week I have decided I must write, not to mention there is at least one short story (Lies In The Land) I want to finish even if it does my bloody head in. It's been in there for well over a year, after all.

I just find it curious, however, that whenever I get into this state of mind, two characters tend to come wandering in to stare at me. I have characters wandering in and out of my head all the time, of course, but for whatever reason? Arosek and Ryenn only turn up when I am particularly down or confused or frustrated. I think it's likely because their history is down, confused and frustrated as well. I keep meaning to untangle it, but I never ever do. Maybe that's something for the long plane ride to Perth.

In the meantime, however, I cut things very, very fine but did actually manage to enter the Wily Writers' Spec Fic NZ competition earlier this evening. I've also received word about the release date of Red Velvet and Absinthe, which is still very surreal. Something I have written is going to be available to purchase on Amazon.com! Somehow, that's just very, very crazy to my mind. I keep waiting to be told it's not real, that it was all a terrible mistake.

So, yes, well, life does go on. Hopefully my next entry will be a bit more sensible. In the meantime, I think it's back to sleep for me; Arosek and Ryenn have a dream scheduled for me, I'm fairly certain, so best I go and listen to them...