"Tell me we both matter, don't we?"

I've been quite lax with this journal the last few weeks, partially because my brain's all over the show whenever it comes to doing much between feeding my face, going for long walks around Koombana Bay, reading trashy novels or writing my own. I think it's because I did feel guilty about not being about to keep up with Rule of Three, especially as I had an email today that made me all excited about it again. Oh, well, I should go and catch up on some stories and get involved in voting with those that were shortlisted. I also think the avoidance is helped by the fact that this journal is tired to a gmail account I don't use for anything else but this sort of malarkey, but while I was in the UK my smartphone picked up on the account and was always chirping to tell me when I had new comments. Usually I wouldn't notice until I came specifically to check, and since I've been in Australia I've been off the 3G network I was on and I haven't been often by, so...yes. Head in the sand, that's me. I'm rather good at it, too.

Still, I've been writing. It's almost NaNoWriMo time again, too -- and I am taking part, although I'm not doing it properly. I want to finish the first drafts of at least Greywater and Hibernaculum, and if things are going really well I might just have to give The Juniper Bones an all-mighty kick to go with it. I've been working on Greywater since Monday night or so, and currently it's slightly less than 140k and I just got to the end of chapter sixteen. Which isn't to say it's 140k to 16; there's probably fifty or sixty pages of text beyond what I've been writing up to, simply because I habitually write out of sequence. But when I get into this kind of mood I go right back to the beginning and write chronologically so that I can pull the threads into a proper weave. This was particularly important with this novel, as the first chapter existed while the next two didn't, and I really needed a better sense of the beginning to make the middle come together. And it is coming together, often in ways I didn't quite imagine. The characters are very alive to me right now, which I suppose can only be for the best. They're off doing things and behaving in ways I didn't expect -- I'm looking at you, Leylea and Sabin, and you know it -- and I can't complain because it just makes me feel as if the story is about real people...because real people often do things we don't expect, even when we later realise their behaviour is perfectly in line with their personality.

Still, Deniz left a comment on my last entry asking for snips, and as I am still quite pleased with this little (little?!) story, I thought I'd share some of what I've been up to. These two characters aren't a large part of Greywater -- in fact only Nan makes an appearance in that novel -- but they're a part of the larger story and they're becoming dearer to my heart by the day. Even though Nan told me the other day she wants guinea pigs because her parents farm them and then she climbed in a box with the First Lord Consul and the Ice Maiden of Aran Nomese and started a sing-along to the tune of I'm On A Boat. But I have to love her. Even if she seems to be turning into a female Bret McKenzie more and more with every passing day...

So, we have two little bits here -- the very beginning of the story, which doesn't actually have a proper title. I refer to it as Keep Calm (And Carry On) while the file is tea,dammit.docx, but it probably doesn't matter. I think the UK put tea on my brain and it's just not going away.

*****
 

It was silly, she thought sourly, that they would think a mere cup of tea would settle anyone after what had happened, least of all a Mydaraën. Not that she’d been shy about pointing that out – yet her suggestion of a rousing band and enough alcohol to sink seven ships had been summarily shot down and she had been installed in the little bedchamber far from the rest of the delegation.

With a pot of tea.

She did wonder if Alara would have been more amenable to her suggestions – for all Alara Feronza would generally appear to be the least amenable of the priggish lot of them, Nan knew that the woman would at least pretend to listen to her. But then she recalled how she had last seen her – covered in blood, her face that same perfect porcelain mask even as she meticulously cleansed her sword of all gore – and shuddered. She did not know the true Alara. She was beginning to doubt that even Alara herself knew.

*****

The next part comes much further in the story; though the story is from Nan's POV, it's really Alara's tale -- but it's about them both, because this is where knight and magian, forced to close proximity by the one they refer to as the grey wolf of Kerdenet, begin to realise they're quite comfortable where they are.

*****

“He told you that?” She cursed, loud and long, in the harsh-vowelled dialect of the far north-east. Only when she realised Alara had no idea of the exact meaning of what she said did she finally spit out: “Son of a whoremaster! Tell me his name, Al. I mean it. I’ll kill him myself.”

As you killed those men for me. Those words hung unspoken between them. But Alara simply shook her head, though Nan knew now she could not be as unmoved by her passion as she appeared to be. “Not now, Nan. Or at least, not yet. But yes, he came to me that night, said I could do the right thing and tell Rolande about us. My husband-to-be might then have been kind enough to simply break the contract and leave the dowry with my father. It would be harder, the Red Dog said, if I left it until the inevitable discovery in the bridal chamber.”

“I hope you told him where to shove it.”

“I punched him in the face, actually.”

“You…Alara.” Nan had no idea whether to laugh or cry. She settled on something between both. “Oh, gods, Al.”

Both of Alara’s hands wrapped around her now and she actually smiled, though it was tainted with sadness. “He told everyone it had been an accident. But several people knew he’d been speaking with me, and most people were aware that I was my twin’s equal in all ways. In the end I suppose I played into his hands, for if it had gone the way he wanted, Rolande could have pointed towards it as evidence of our previous association.”

“I still want to kill the bastard,” she seethed, linking her fingers tightly through the other woman’s. Her head still ached, but it seemed more important than maintaining the wards. “Tell me his name, honestly, I’ll tear him a new arsehole tomorrow. And again the next day, too.”

“Let me finish the story, Nan, please,” Alara chided, but though her smile had long gone Nan could hear faint amusement that faded only as she went on. “So, Rolande and I were married the next day with all the pomp and circumstance required.”

Nan’s eyes dropped downwards. She’d always noticed that Alara still wore her wedding rings. She’d never really looked at them, but Alara allowed her to turn the leftmost hand over, let her raise it to the light. The ruby in the ring closest to her heart was deep and bloody, the birthstone of her husband. The one on the outside held an amethyst in a delicate leaf setting. That was Alara’s own birthstone, deep violet with rainbows of every colour concealed within.

“That night, he came to me in the bridal chamber.” As she sighed Nan lowered her hand, pressed it close between the palms of both of her own. “He was very gentle. But I laid there like a rock, unmoving, and afterwards he said to me: was it so very bad, then?” She bowed her head. “And I cried.”

The admission, so utterly at odds with everything Nan had been taught of this peculiar woman, hung on the air like a condemned criminal kicking the gallows air. When she spoke again, Nan found her own voice strange, higher-pitched than normal. “He’d been with a woman before?” She swallowed hard, half-choked on her own fear. “Did he…know?”

“He knew. He never went into details – he was too much a gentleman to be as crass as all that. But he’d known women in his travels, and could be sure I was no virgin. But he also knew that my lack of response came not from a longing for a man I would no longer know, but from a fear that he would know me again.”

*****

Now, I probably ought to go back to working on Greywater, as tomorrow I should properly get out of the house and go for a drive to Margaret River or somthing. Even though I'm here to write, I suppose I need a proper break sometime...? 

Rule of Three Blog Fest: Part Two

 
I have to apologise upfront because I have so far been absolutely terrible at participating in the Rule of Three Blog Fest. ;_; Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last entry I made; this week I really need to get myself together and do some more wandering and commenting on other people entries, because honestly there's some fantastic stuff coming out of all of this!

My next entry also manages to be a bit of a rush job; last week I had just come back from Egypt, and this week I have just come back from a couple of days Oop North in York. Hilariously it's going to be evne stupider next week as I am going to Western Australia via Singapore on Wednesday; I've really managed to pick all the worst days for this, because travelling is cheaper during the week. Never mind, I am going to play better the next few days (although I'm spending the weekend in Suffolk, probably...).

In the end I did manage an entry for this week, although I am pushing the timing thing (it's seven in the evening on Thursday in London here, though I suspect my journal is still on New Zealand time anyway). I've got a few details to go with it after the continuation of the story. So...let's head back to Renaissance, shall we...?

SALVAGE

Part One: Flotsam
Part Two: Jetsam

She hits the ground hard, and for a moment she sees stars – but it is bright daylight, and the sun blinds her when she looks upward. There is no night sky here, save for that which has just fallen over her heart.

“Don’t even try to get up.” His voice is all that remains of him, the rest wreathed in shadow. “This is where you belong.”

“No, I—”

“It’s done. It’s over. I am through with you.”

“No, please—”

The slam of the carriage door steals the last of him away. The horses rear, and the wheels turn – then, they are gone.

The pain follows fast. Curling around her abdomen, she wants to weep for her loss. But she can feel the heat of the sun and knows it will be pointless; in the hours to come, she will scarcely have moisture enough to sustain herself, let alone the burden he has gifted her with.

She should hate it, she knows. But it is not its fault. It asked for life no more than she asked for this death, and she supposes they are in this together and must muddle along the best they can. That is what allows her to push aside her fear and sit up.

She knows where they are, for all it is a place she knows only from vague stories. The fallen mining town had never had enough glamour even for ghost stories, and she herself had never thought to come here. It had been so far outside the sphere of her existence as to be in another universe. It had been nothing more than a place from his past.

It is most likely the reason why he put her there, too.

“Us,” she corrects, voice sudden in the silence. “Us.”

One palm lies flat on the ground, the other over her stomach as she pushes up. She grimaces; the fall had not been far, but it has jarred her. When she looks to the distance, she finds the carriage long gone. The dust settles, golden and dancing in the late afternoon light; it is much closer to the earth than stardust, for all its glittering colour.

She is not given to despair. But as she looks about, she realises suddenly that despite its name, she is the only new thing in Renaissance. The age of the town weighs it into insignificance, and it is a place of forgotten things.

“My name is Leidi,” she says, as if she is afraid she will soon not remember. And her fingers move into her palm.

“…but what shall I call you?”

There is no answer, at least not from the tiny spark of life deep in her belly. But even if there had been, she likely never would have heard it any more than she did the actual answer that did come.

“Hello.”

Leidi’s head has fallen forward, her thoughts adrift as a comet with no trajectory. But then the voice comes closer, and a cool hand anchors her again to the earth.

“Hello,” the voice says again, and Leidi looks up, like she’s heard the wind whispering her name. “I think I’ve been waiting for you.”

Prompt: Someone is killed, or almost killed/a relationship becomes complicated.
Word Count: 532
Main character: Leidi (supported by the as-yet unnamed man and woman from the first part).

Rule of Three Blog Fest: Part One

This is a bit of a rush job, I must admit, if only because I've just arrived back from Egypt this afternoon...and although I'd already written the first part of the story for this very post, once I got in my sister texted me and I ended up toddling back out into the wildlands of London to have dinner at one of my sister's beloved Michelin restaurants. Ha. Combined with the fact I haven't slept more than four hours a night save for one in the last nine, well...I apologise in advance for any dodginess in the story. And hopefully next week we'll get a more coherent entry out of me, too! ^_~

Salvage:

Part One

Flotsam

True love is not supposed to end like this, she thinks, and lays a hand upon the bore-riddled wood. It holds no answer for her. Nothing in this place does.

Yet I am here.

Rough gravel loosens her steps as she crosses what had been the main street, the midday sun as harsh upon her skin here as it would be far out into the Schiavona desert. When she tries to look up the light cuts through her hand yet stops at her eyes, blinding her; she is forced away with her head down.

When dawn had first broken, waking her from sleep, she had thought this perhaps a quiet kind of hell. It seemed only right, that the town where her passion had first flared would die, too, with the passing of her beloved. His presence had animated so much of the fading town, bringing hope to linger long in places where it had been thought to be lost forever.

There had been hope for her, too. Her father had come from beyond Assart to seek his fortune in a town nearly bled dry, but Renaissance had not been kind to him. She remembered well the day she had buried him. The sun had shone then. It always shone in Renaissance, even now, even when there was no-one left to see it.

I’m here. Then her eyes catch another fluttering broadsheet, the date half-erased by dust and sand, and she shakes her head.

I’m no-where.

Making another circle of the main street does not take long. Renaissance had never flourished, not even at the height of its mining glory. That glory had seemed a long time ago, even when she had first arrived; it is even longer now, if the grainy dates hold true. Which they do. She can pretend all she likes that they are too faded to read, but her daddy had always ensured his little girl learned her numbers and letters.

For all the good it did me. But she cannot resent him. He hadn’t meant to die, leaving her alone. He hadn’t meant for the magistrate’s son to fall in love with her. Above all, he hadn’t wanted the mine to fail and for Ferdinand to leave her here.

“Alone.” She forms the word, the first she has spoken aloud, with care. It carries no weight nor sound. If only she could have said the same for her own body when she had cast herself into the hollow womb of the closed-down mine.

It is unfair. She had thought it would end there. But she is here, again. The town has collapsed. There should be a sense of relief, revenge. It had ended her life, but in the end its own life had gone out too.

But it is still here. And so is she.

And something has changed.

She begins another circuit of the main street, adrift and alone. In this state she can do nothing but watch. And wait.

She does not think she need wait long.

*****

This entry is part of the Rule of Three Blog Fest; please see this page for details and to read the entries of the other talented authors taking part!

Goals, Tries and Having Something To Score

 

At the start of the year I’m sure I made some sort of goal post in this blog, but I really have the memory of a goldfish. I’m not sure that it matters, anyway, but I was thinking that I should sit down and work out what I need to achieve over the next few months. I turn thirty in February, and aside from having a fit about where I want to spend my birthday – I’m leaning towards Peru, although I was having thoughts of camping in South Africa – I want to be seriously dedicated to my writing to a point I can see it as a viable part of my career. I don’t think I have the necessary talent or ability or pure dumb luck to make a living off writing, but I’d like to be able to go back to being a pharmacist but kick back my hours a bit. Four days a week instead of five, or something. But I’ll get to that part in a minute.

I am the queen of unfinished novels. But I do have two that are finished. I’m not really up for submitting either to an agent, however. The first, an urban fantasy romance, has a very solid and interesting first half and completely turns to lumpy scorched custard by the second chapter of the second half. Bollocks. I can rewrite it, and I know that at some point I will. I just don’t think it’s where I want to start my publishing career. The other novel was intended as a children’s book, then a young adult novella, and now…it’s still about thirteen year old kids, but it’s a kid’s book the way Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is a kid’s series. Kids could read it, sure. I know I’d have read it. But then I was reading bodice rippers and Stephen King at the age of ten, so I don’t think I’m the best judge of reading material suited to age, here. So, I’ve set that aside for the meantime even though I am on and off working on its direct sequel.

This leaves me with four options for my first punt on an agent, none of which are fully complete. The first is Greywater, and this really is the best option save for the fact it’s straight-up fantasy. I think I’m going to have to go waaaaay outside the New Zealand channels here, though I am aware thanks to SpecFicNZ that I’m by no means alone here. It just depends on how hard I want to hit. I’m fairly certain I can get somewhere with this, but we’ll see. The current manuscript is at 112k and is maybe twenty or thirty thousand words off a first draft, after which I can tidy.

The other three options are more complicated. People In Looking-Glass Houses is easily the most marketable idea I’ve got – it’s also an urban fantasy romance – but while I wrote a good deal of it back in 2002/2003, the characters have changed a lot to suit the canon of the world it edges up against, and I’ve decided most of what was written ought to be scrapped or reappropriated. Writing it would take a lot of time over the next few months. I may have that time, but I’m not sure. I will write this story at some point, I’m just not sure how soon is now, or something to that effect. Ha.

Hibernaculum is a tricky one. I love these characters, and I love their story – two of the centrals are my first true OTP, and the novel is nearly finished. Maybe twenty thousand words out, too; I drag my heels with it because it’s a complex ending and I’m a moron. But not only is it also fantasy, it involves one of the other central characters getting into a very complicated relationship with another man and therefore might be hard to market. I’m not sure on that front; it would depend on the publisher. And I suppose I oughtn’t to care considering a) I won a competition last month with a short story with clear elements of homoeroticism and b) my first print publication was with a light erotica story, het or no, and…er. Yeah.

My other novel-in-progress is never going to be a publisher’s choice, mind you. But how much I want to finish it! ^_~ The Juniper Bones is my baby. And of everything I write and share, it’s the one that’s generated the most interest. But not only is it ungodly long in its current form, it just involves so many difficult things that I suspect a publisher would rather just shove me off into Charybdis with that barge pole rather than use it as a debut novel. Ha. Yet every time I open one of the associated files or look at some of the commissions I’ve had done, I end in hysterics. I love those characters, and I love that story. So hard. And I want to share it in its fullness with people, and not just because Morgan will one day give me that partial lobotomy she’s been promising if I don’t.

On the short story front, I want to keep poking away at various markets. Wily Writers has a call for submission for a young adult post-apocalyptic short story that I have a solid idea for; its due date is the end of October, so I can swing it. Yesterday I also ran across this blog fest that sounds fascinating, and I’m fairly certain I will be signing up later today because the fact the first submission sits so well with the dates of my trip to Egypt next week…it seems a sign, to me. So we’ll run with it. Besides, I’ve really got to get back to networking and sharing with other writers. One thing I regret about leaving New Zealand is the loss of my writing groups, and I’ve been really slack about spending time on the wonderful and wondrous CompuServe Readers and Writers forum. So, writing and reading stories for a joint Blog Fest universe sounds like a hell of a way to meet new writers…

Speaking of blogs, I have a few links that I got from CompuServe the other day, relevant to our interests. They’re about writing a query and then a synopsis, and even though I am not at that stage yet they’re actually very useful links for someone like me. Because I have problems with focus and structure. But I was so happy to see that Greywater fit very well into the basic synopsis template, and after writing a test query for the novel I feel that writing a synopsis in that format actually might help me a lot with finishing the novel. So, we’ll see? I would do it today, but I want to go to the Museum of London, and I have no idea how much longer I’ll be in town…

Which brings me to my next thought – I have an opportunity. It occurred to me last Friday as I was sitting in St. James Park that I could go back to Western Australia and just…write. I’m not Australian – GOD, I’m not Australian! – but my father is on a project near Perth and my parents live in a lovely seaview apartment with three bedrooms, one of which doubles as an office. I’ve been to see them twice there over the last year, and it’s a lovely place (which I’m not saying just because Margaret River has the best goddamned nougat IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, nuh-uh). I remember thinking the second time in particular how nice it would be, to marry an engineer and live a life where I could get up at six in the morning, have breakfast, do Zumba, go for a walk for an hour around the mangroves then return home for a day of writing. It struck me at the park that I could actually do this, if only for three or four weeks. I floated the idea to my mother, asking if I could stay in order to write if I contributed to the bills, and she green-lighted it. So…I’m not sure. I came to the UK with the intent of living and working here for a bit, but it’s not really as I’d thought it would be. I do love London; I had no real feelings towards the city the first time I saw it in 2006, but it’s grown on me. I’m just not sure I want to live here – or in the UK – after all. It feels like a step back, to the life that I both loved and hated four years ago. And I want to move forward as a writer, not go back to the world pharmacy. I can do my job, and do it well, but I need something more than that to keep me going. I have to be honest with myself about that, otherwise it's just not fair to any of us.

So, that’s my decision. It’s a bloody difficult one. I keep reminding myself that not every writer gets this sort of opportunity, and considering I have no real ties to anywhere, I should take it. And once I’ve had that sabbatical, I can return to New Zealand (maybe via Cambodia, ha) and move back to Wellington. There, I can get a full-time pharmacist position with my finished novel(s) tucked safely under my arm. Maybe then I can go back to the nine-to-five knowing I have a way of altering my own destiny, so to speak.

I’m scared as hell. I suppose that’s the way the cookie crumbles. But when I was looking something up about The Juniper Bones the other day I found a little file I’d made last year during NaNoWriMo in which I’d kept some of the feedback I’d received from the fantastic individuals at the CompuServe forum, and things like this just brought and still bring tears to my eyes:

When I read your writing, it makes me want more. I don't want to stop. And then I get to the end, and my brain is like a little puppy, all kind of like, where's the rest? What comes next? Huh? Huh? You have an absolutely stunning talent, you know. Your characters are beautifully put together, your story is compelling and mysterious- there's no question at all I'll be buying this off the shelf at a bookstore within a couple of years, and I'll just have to twitch impatiently and hang out for snippets until then.

I need to remind myself that I can write, and that I must write, if only for my own sanity. My sister keeps watching Dragon’s Den, and last night they were talking about how pitches need passion, because no company is going to succeed unless the person wants it enough to spend so much time with it. I could say the same of my writing. I love doing it. I want to do it. I just need to believe. And I was giddy yesterday to finally have run across a review of Red Velvet and Absinthe that mentioned me by name; while I’ve seen a lot of positive feedback about the collection as a whole, I’ve been craving something personal whether good or bad. And this…yes.

Tea For Two is a heart wrenching story that had this reader on the verge of tears. The poignancy of this love story and the loss that the two main characters suffer is so tenderly written, making the whole scenario come alive before your very eyes. Congratulations Ms. Buckingham for a truly tremendous and well thought out short story.

I can do this. I can, I can! So…here we go. Although as I said, it’s half-nine in the morning here in ol’ London Town and I might go out. I need to make the most of the city while I’m here, because I suspect I may have to leave her soon. We’ll see.