Why Does Love Do This To Me

For a variety of reasons, I've never been a fan of Valentine's Day. Partly it's connected to my birthday, which was yesterday; as you might have gathered from the entry yesterday, I spent most of the day wishing I was dead. Valentine's doesn't tend to help this feeling at all. Still, on Sunday I went to Isengard, as you can see above, and that cheered me up even before I went into the deep dark hell of birthday!depression. Mostly because I went by horse. I like riding horses. I also got to see the tree that Bean!Boromir died most dramatically under, as Sean Bean is wont to do. WILL THAT MAN EVER LIVE THROUGH ANYTHING, I ASK YOU.

At any rate, I had a terrible morning and was only cheered up when I got home and discovered that the three Valentine's commissions I'd ordered at the start of the month were waiting for me over at deviantart. I had sworn at the time I'd write some drabbles to go with them, so I've spent the last couple of hours writing them. I have three couples, and because I'm all for the Equal Opportunity Pairing, we have the pairings today in three flavours -- one male/female, one male/male, and one female/female. Although the male in the m/f pairing is admittedly bisexual leaning towards gay, not to mention one of the girls in the f/f pairing is probably by default straight, but is totally IT'S OKAY IF IT'S YOU for her partner. D'aw. (Actually, one of the males in the m/m pairing probably qualifies as something dangerously close to a Depraved Bisexual, while the other is actually functionally asexual. I never claimed this was a simple fluffy Valentine's thing, did I...?)

Now, all these pictures were done by the awesomely talented Kayla, who goes by the handle ThePlanPony at deviantart. Go and tell her how awesome she is, would you? BECAUSE SHE TOTALLY IS. Besides, she's still taking on more couple commissions for Valentine's this month. I'm tempted to get another few myself, so...if you have any characters of mine you'd like to see in a fluffy picture and drabble, gimme your suggestions. In the meantime, here's the story so far:

Ever Afters

Aleksandr still felt guilt for a lot of things. Key amongst them were the way he’d left his sister, and then he was constantly troubled by the way he couldn’t be sure he’d ever be able to love the paladin the way he knew the other man loved him. But as he stood in the window of their latest inn, his thoughts drifted to another, to a woman he so very rarely allowed himself to remember.

The silver moon was probably the reason why, he thought with dim melancholy. Its pale orb reminded him of her pallid colouring, of the way she had always seemed a shimmering silhouette against the dull reality of the world she’d been forced to live within. Though he’d not known of her true form for so long, he’d realised from the beginning that she was something different. Something more. A dream, perhaps. And all dreams by their very nature were fleeting.

His hand rose, the tips of his fingers pressing to his lips. For all he tried not to think of her often, he could so easily conjure up the memory of her kiss. Those pale lips had tasted of saltwater; had it been the remnants of her lost ocean home, or simply her tears? Aleksandr had never quite decided. And he’d never been given the opportunity to find out again. In the end he’d never even been able to hold her, not properly, not the way people did in stories. Though they’d been of a height, even with the effects of his own illness upon his body he’d known she’d have been light in his arms. She would have floated there, silent and perfect and real.

Aleksandr closed his eyes, pressed his forehead against the cool glass. It was perhaps better to remember her as she had been at the beginning, not at the end. The first night they’d met she had descended the stairs in the darkness, and then stepped out into the rain. Freshwater had dripped all over him from where it beaded upon her hair like pearls, and her long fingers had been so light as they’d traced the blue veins just below the surface of his skin.

He is dying, she had whispered, but now she was dead and he was alive, and he opened his eyes. The sword of the water-god hung limply in his hand. As he looked down at its iridescent weight his lips twisted into a grim smile. What kind of a hero could he ever claim to be, when he had left the maiden fair to die?

If he closed his eyes again, he could imagine instead the difference of their lives, if it had ended like the stories he’d loved as a child. In those legends the prince always saved the princess – and so often at the last minute, just as things seemed their most hopeless. He wouldn’t have just saved her life, either. In the prince’s house Alyria had been little more than a wraith, a lost lingering shadow. But if Aleksandr had been a true hero, he’d have found her scales, he’d have given them back to her. Then those pale eyes would have danced with the knowing mischief of a siren, and her lips would have pursed with promise and pleasure. She’d have been happy, the sea-song upon her lips spilling forth from deep within a heart that beat with the rhythm of the waves.

“We’d have been happy,” he whispered, and imagined his arms around her shoulders, her pale hair spiralling about his fingers. “I’d have saved you, and we would have been happy.”

His hand tightened about the sword, unknowing; with a sigh, he opened his eyes. The silver blade glinted in the moonlight, cool and smooth. It reminded him of the ice that had broken all across the lake the night she had died. The night her water-god had taken her home, and all because he hadn’t been enough of a prince to save her.

Turning from the window he slid the blade back into its invisible sheath, both winking from view. His paladin would be waiting for him below, and for all night had fallen Aleksandr knew the time for dreaming this evening was over.

He cast one look back to the lake, found it shimmering and silver and silent. Then, he nodded, and walked towards the door. That sad little story had finished, and there was another one yet to be written. He could but hope he’d learned enough to find this story the happy ending it deserved.

In Media Res

It might have been a difficult prospect, to find him – the reticent seneschal had been unable to tell Ryennkar anything more than “the youngest son is somewhere on the back of the estate.” Said estate comprised several hundred acres of both forested and open land. Yet as he exited the back gardens via one of the heavy gates in the high stone walls, he caught a flash of red up on the ridge and smiled.

While not an unobservant person by nature, Arosek had become so involved in his work that once he’d climbed the hill, Ryennkar found it all too easy to sneak up on him. Childish games were not generally his favoured indulgence, but with scarcely a second thought he went to his knees behind his oldest friend and placed his hands over his eyes.

Arosek stiffened, charcoal stopping dead halfway through the arc of one rich curve. Then, his hand relaxed; Ryennkar could feel a smile pressing his cheeks upward. “Ryenn?”

He raised an eyebrow, though he’d effectively blinded the other man. “How did you know it was me?” Pressing closer, his next words were a scarce whisper dropped into one ear. “I could have been anyone.”

Arosek gave a half-snort, far more amused than it was exasperated. “You’re not just anyone.”

Only just suppressing the flash of pleasure this proclamation brought with it, Ryennkar leaned over Arosek’s shoulder and gave his work a curious look. “I thought you’d stopped painting.”

“I’m not painting. I’m drawing.”

With a chuckle, Ryennkar arched deeper into the natural curvature of his friend’s spine. It had been too long, since the last time he’d allowed this. “Drawing so often leads to painting,” he murmured, and he felt Arosek’s smile dim, just a little.

“Not always.” He paused, and when he spoke again Ryennkar could remember the sadness he’d last seen in those dark eyes, all those months ago. “Just…sometimes. Maybe.”

The silence that fell between them was broken only by birdsong, by the soft rustle of the wind through the leaves of the Aekar Forest below. But they were up on the ridge, the forest and the house and entire world held at a distance. Pressed against Arosek’s back, Ryennkar’s chest rose and fell in rhythm with the other man’s shallow breathing. He still did not remove his hands from his eyes. “You didn’t even know I was coming,” he said, soft, and Arosek nodded.

“No.” Something like a smile felt to be returning to his wide mouth. “I’m glad to see you.”

“But you can’t see a thing.”

“I see enough.” Gently he pulled back, angling his body around. Ryennkar let him go, but before he could drop his right arm Arosek leaned back upon it. One hand rose to rest upon his chest, just over Ryennkar’s heart.

“I see you now,” Arosek whispered, sketchbook and charcoal slipping from his lap to vanish into the long fronds of the scented grass.

“So do I,” he murmured, and leaned forward to capture his lips. Sometimes a kiss was only always that. But as Ryennkar steadied himself, palm gathering charcoal dust while his fingertips brushed the sun-warmed grass, he thought that kissing could become something more. He’d always been good at talking Arosek into taking up his brush even after he’d laid it aside with the admonition that this was the very last time.

Best-Laid Plans

“I don’t see why we have to stay in a place like this.” Nan surveyed their surroundings with a critical eye, her brightly-coloured lips pressed into a plump and inviting frown. “Can’t we just stay in a little alehouse or something?”

Alara had to smother an entirely unlady-like grin. The other woman might insist her liking for the smaller and more intimate lodgings to be just because she enjoyed the easy camaraderie she could strike up with the owners, but Alara knew it was more that Nan had never felt the slightest bit comfortable with the trappings of the so-called higher classes. While she was content enough to watch Alara dress up – and had proved rather adept at getting Alara both in and out of even the most complicated high society gowns – she’d never accompanied her to any of those types of events without a great deal of cajoling. Occasionally it had even degenerated into outright bribery, though Alara had to ruefully admit she’d enjoyed those moments just as much as Nan herself clearly did.

“I wanted something a bit more relaxing, tonight,” she said instead, quite mild. “So I felt that these…charming…surroundings were entirely in order.”

Nan screwed up her small nose as she peered around the opulent room, noting the rich sofas and the ottoman set before the great picture window that faced the west. “I thought you had a dinner party, you said?” she asked, and crossed her arms; Alara had to regret the obstacle this presented to an otherwise quite lovely view. “Look, if it’s all the same to you, I might just go take a room in that little inn we saw back near the city walls. You can swing by and pick me up in the morning, yeah?”

After allowing the woman to get as far as the door, she spoke just one word. “Nan.”

“What?”

Ignoring Nan’s half-suspicious question, Alara crossed the room with an elegant stride, halting only when stood before the great red upholstered couch. Dropping her riding cloak, letting it pool upon the floor in a lazy fashion she rarely indulged in, she turned to take her seat. Beneath the cloak she still wore her preferred riding outfit. When she stood, the panels of the dress hung in demure lines from the wide belt, giving the illusion of a proper skirt. But when she reclined back in this way, crossing one long leg over the other, it split up both sides. Nan’s eyes widened, then focused upon the expanse of skin revealed between the mid-thigh height of her boots and her hip. Alara smiled, propped one hand behind her head; Nan’s eyes immediately leapt to her chest. Though her mouth opened, no sound came out. Alara chuckled, soft and knowing, and Nan gave her an accusing look.

“I…you said you had a very important dinner tonight.”

“Be a dear and lock the door, would you, Nan?” she asked, and licked her lips. “I do believe that dinner? Is already served.”

*****

So, that's me for the day. I suppose I should go and get some sleep before work in the morning. Joy! And I have to admit with some shame that these days, whenever I think of Nan and Alara? All I get in my head is this. Oh, dear...

Brevity Is The Soul Of Discretion

I really haven't made any effort thus far to make any goals for this year, writing-wise, which really says a lot for the fact I am absolutely useless at that sort of thing. I've lost all self-confidence for starters, but I just need to...work through it, I suppose. To that end I sucked it up and entered the Twitter-length fiction contest I mentioned the other day, against my own better judgement. Ha. I also had an interesting little experiment, because an email had come through from the kindly folk who run NaNoWriMo about Pitchpalooza.

In essence, this is just about pitching your NaNoWriMo novel to these people and hopefully winning a prize. The trick is that you have to do it in two hundred words. As you've heard from me already, brevity is not my forte. At all. So I took one look at the email, laughed, and said YEAH RIGHT.

Half an hour later I was furiously editing an attempt at a query letter for Greywater I had been working on in December or something. I'd given up at around three hundred and fifty words. So, I got to distilling, and I found...it's such an interesting exercise, and I really ought to try doing it for a lot of other things I've written. I love to write, obviously, but I'm freeform and highly indulgent. I don't really edit very well. But the Twitter fic and this two hundred word pitch taught me to be more selective about my words, cutting away the chaff and going for the evocative rather than the merely elaborate. It also gave me hope, that I'll be able to edit this first draft of Greywater down from 167k to at least 150k, if not lower. Because that is my goal, this year. Getting that to a submissible state and then submitting the hell out of it.

For posterity, here is the synopsis. In the meantime, I am tired from a long walk and I need some sleep. As usual. I'll probably just go back to talking to Arjit about his obsession with wielding the sword of a pacifist in a war said pacifist never wanted. Or so we were led to believe. Hmm.

When Major Otho Calenta, on leave from active service, is summoned to the prison-city of Aran Nomese to convince a reclusive inmate to lead her once-lauded army into battle, he doesn’t know how he’s expected to achieve his goal. Not only is a she a centuries-old water elemental sorcerously imprisoned by the earth-god of his country, he knows already the bitter taste of crusades long since lost.

Raised from childhood to believe his duty is to take up his sword and protect the innocent, upon arrival at the broken-down palace of Greywater Otho feels obligated to attempt his mission. But between the peculiar machinations of the lupine Attorney-General of Lonan and his own troubled conscience, he sees little reason to incite a pacifist creature to murder. His reticence only grows when a prickly friendship mixes curiosity and craving between them.

Greywater is a novel set in a fantastical world where love and lust shadow a tale of loss and longing, where a soldier and a creature of ice and water meet on an unequal field to engage in the oldest battle: the one where you must learn to save yourself before you even dream of trying to save anyone else.

Losing The Game

 

I saw just before on another blog I follow that Deniz was interviewing a character, which I thought was rather an interesting little exercise. I didn't quite feel in the mood to attempt it myself today, but then I remembered that while I was NaNo-ing I found an old game on livejournal and decided to play it again with the characters from Greywater and its sequels. It's ever so slightly out of date already, because I've had a couple of subsequent epiphanies, but here it is for posterity. And because it always amuses me.

Incidentally, the character above is Nan; she gets short shrift in this meme because of her thing for llamas. And guinea pigs. She also wants to be a Sizzling Gypsy. Well, shit. ...so yeah, the way this works? You write out ten names of characters. Then you answer the questions. With any luck, HILARITY ENSUES.

...or not.

1. Derel Sabin, Warrant Officer and City Councillor at Southgate, Aran Nomese

2. Círa DeCameiron, Lady Greywater, Ice Maiden of Aran Nomese

3. Calden Larmenret, eldest son to Admiral Leyen Larmenret, Lord of Tiarenna

4. Ryennkar Vassidenel, Lord Rendran, Attorney-General of Lonan

5. Rýlea Denqual Calenta Dionallanata, Duchess of Mydaraë

6. Arosek Asfiye, Lesser Lord Wendar, First Lord Consul of Sarin

7. Kit Eryntalla, the Neverboy of the Crossroads of Yesret

8. Alara Feronza Ordrena, Lady of Lakenheath, Knight of Sai’Ona

9. Taryncíra Larmenret, daughter to Admiral Leyen Larmenret, Lord of Tiarenna

10. Otho Calenta, Major at Arris, named Hero of the Hellspring

11. Nantya Jerikak, Magian of the Spire

12. Cydrac Agrane, Fifth Lord Minister of Erindel

01. Who would make a better college professor, 6 (Arosek) or 11 (Nan)?

…er, Arosek. Hands down. Nan just…wouldn’t be the kind of person you’d leave teaching small children. And before you say “small children don’t go to college!” I’ve been to college. I’ve seen what happens to people who go to college. They turn back into small children, this time without adult supervision. Their plastic buckets are filled with cheap beer and when they play hide and seek it’s usually in other people’s bedrooms. Not to mention the Twister marathons and back-to-back cartoons the night before major exams.

…you know, I take some of that back. Nan would be a great college professor. It’s just her chosen subject would be cavy husbandry and llama guardage. Take that as you will.

02. Do you think 2 (Círa) is hot? How hot?

Ooh…that would be a rather large yes. My real-life image of Círa is based very heavily on Rachel Weisz, whom I think is one of the most gorgeous women in the world. Which I blame largely on Darren Aronofsky, as a matter of fact (although the director of The Constant Gardener has a lot to answer for, too). I also realised a while back something rather hilarious about Rachel; I don’t often give much of a damn for celebrity gossip, but I air-punched when I heard Rachel had married Daniel Craig. For ages I had no idea why I liked the idea so much. I then realised that while Daniel isn’t exactly Otho to my eyes (I lean more towards Clancy Brown OMFG THAT VOICE), he’s still more than close. It was like my brain’s favourite soldier/spirit OTP getting together in real life. Score.

03. 12 (Cydrac) sends 8 (Alara) on a mission. What is it, and does it succeed?

Hilariously, this almost makes sense; Cydrac is a government minister and Alara is a knight. It’s feasible, except for the fact ministers rarely deal in magic. The whole point of their prefect is to keep them away from it, actually. So, with that said…I’m not sure. About the only thing Cydrac would be hiring a sword for is to hunt down the murderer of his family, and given Cydrac knows who did it and would gain no satisfaction from that person’s death unless his own hand dealt the killing blow, well. Although if he told Alara the full story she’d quite cheerfully help him out to the bitter end, so there you go.

04. What is or would be 9 (Tara)'s favorite book?

She’s not a huge reader, our Tara. I’d say anything horsey. Our Tara loves her horsies. ^__^ Although that’s given me an idea; I think Arosek should give her a book. She’d treasure anything he gave her, whether she actually got around to reading it or not…

05. Would it make more sense for 2 (Círa) to swear fealty to 6 (Arosek), or the other way around?

Ooh, that’s a tricky one. Technically neither of them should be swearing fealty to anyone; Arosek’s job is to be neutral so that he can act as a justice to the whole world, and Círa is an imprisoned companion of the banished water-god, living under the shadow of the earth-father of the North. But…this is a funny question, as there’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever that had their circumstances been ever so slightly different, Arosek would have married Círa. In that respect, he’d have sworn his heart to her without caution nor regret, and she would have done the same for him.

As things stand in the real world (?), Arosek still has a deep sense of loyalty and responsibility towards Círa, and she feels an affection for him that goes deeper than she often cares to acknowledge. This in fact forms the crux of their rather tragic relationship, the end of which…will be written. You’ll just have to wait and see.

06. For some reason, 5 (Rýlea) is looking for a roommate. Should she share a studio apartment with 9 (Tara) or with 10 (Otho)?

…excuse me as I roll around laughing. Rýlea, being the only daughter of a very well-off landgrave and the eventual wife of a Duke, would hardly be looking for a roommate. Even if she was, she’d be unlikely to share with a thirteen year old girl (though not unwilling, I must say; Rýlea loves children, and she’d adore Tara…Tara, on the other hand, might be weirded out). I mean, if she lived with Tara, it would have to be a fostering situation of one kind or another. As I said, Rýlea would enjoy the company, but Tara…well. For all she’d have little interest in living like a lady, Mydaraë isn’t the most usual of fosterages. Give Tara a racing llama and she’d probably be in heaven.

Tara, however, would always be miles better for Rýlea than Otho. Rýlea and Otho were married, very happily so, until Rýlea decided that Otho wouldn’t be a good husband in the long term because of his work. So she divorced him. Otho never got over it. In a way, Rýlea never did either. This is one of the major threads of Greywater, so…yeah. Um. Not a good idea, putting those two in the same building and asking them to play house, oh, no…

07. 2 (Círa), 7 (Kit) and 12 (Cydrac) have dinner together. Where do they go, and what do they discuss?

Círa and Kit are old friends. They’d probably be swapping stories about asshole Attorney-Generals and voyages to the ends of the world before you know it. Cydrac and Círa also know each other very well and would talk about polite matters of state and current government policy (!), but I’m not sure how Kit and Cydrac would take to one another. Cydrac’s in his early forties and his son would have been about Kit’s age, had he lived…and Kit’s got an automatic jealousy-switch that gets kicked on whenever Círa shows interest in an attractive older man (mostly because she so rarely bothers). So…it could be an interesting little discussion. They’d almost be competing for her attention though while Kit sulks Cydrac would just be politely bewildered, and Círa would just roll her eyes and eventually announce THIS IS WHY I CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS, ISN’T IT.

08. 3 (Cal) challenges 10 (Otho) to a duel. What happens?

Candy happens. AND HILARITY ENSUES. Cal’s thirteen, Otho’s thirty-four. And a Major in the Northern Armies. Then again, Cal’s an absolute headcase and would quite cheerfully challenge Otho to a duel with SHEBERT STICKS and then they’d end up in the fountain and there would be BUBBLES and then Círa would get frustrated and there would be ICE and probably Nan would come riding in on a giant llama with CAVIES FOR EVERYONE.

But the candy’s the important part. I swear.

09. If 1 (Sabin) stole 8 (Alara)'s most precious possession, how would she get it back?

Firstly, the day Sabin attempts to steal something from somebody (who doesn’t deserve it), the world will end. Secondly, Alara’s most precious possession is Nan Jerikak, who would probably adore being stolen and in the end Sabin would tie her up, stuff her into a box filled with strawpeople and bind it up all neatly with brown paper and string and send her straight back to Alara with a referral to a thought-weaver with a very good record in the field of Mydaraën blood-insanity.

Alara would then rip it up, let Nan out, and kiss her silly. Aw.

Two days later Nan would be back on Sabin’s doorstep with a big grin saying CAN WE DO THAT AGAIN?!

Four days after that, Sabin would be experiencing firsthand the intricacies of self-sectioning at the thought-weaver’s guild. But he’d have the paperwork in order first. Naturally.

10. Suggest a title for a story in which 7 (Kit) and 12 (Cydrac) both attain what they most desire.

“Heating the Winter and Felling the Spring: How one mild-mannered government minister avenged his family in a bloodbath in the Fields of Gold and a thirteen year old boy married an ageless water-spirit beneath the Iron Bells of Greywater with the Dark Horseman officiating. …you only wish we were kidding.”

11. What kind of plot device would you use if you wanted 4 (Ryenn) and 1 (Sabin) to work together?

THERE IS NO PLOT DEVICE IN THE WORLD. Even I don’t know exactly what Ryenn did to Sabin, but he’s biding his time. …geez, I am going to have to bug the hell out of Sabin on this front one day. I used to think Sabin disliked him because a) Ryenn has a habit of turning up in Aran Nomese without notice and expecting people to fall at his feet with whatever information he wants and b) while Ryenn is capable of charming most people’s socks off, with some people he just doesn’t bother. I always figured Sabin was just one of those people. From what he casually said to Otho towards the end of Greywater, however…um. I’m not so sure anymore. …BASTARD.

12. If 7 (Kit) visited you for the weekend, how would you get along?

Pretty well…I think. Kit’s essentially a projection of my nephew, so I imagine we’d go horse-riding with Calden and play with foxes and climb trees and then the boys would laugh their asses off because I’d fall out of said trees and crack my skull open and you know. GOOD. TIMES.

13. If you could command 3 (Cal) to perform any one task or service for you, what would it be?

…oh, well, that’s easy. GIVE ME YOUR ORRERY, KID. LIKE, NOW. AND FOREVER. …seriously now, while there are any number of things in my novels I would love to get my grubby fingers on, that orrery is number one on the list. I imagine most authors have a vague day-dream of having their books made into movies and television serials and visiting the set and covertly making off with some beloved prop, but me being me…I have to pick the one thing that would require a Mack truck, a crane and sixteen strapping young men and ABSOLUT COVER OF DARKNESS to acquire. …I also imagine I’d need a wrecking ball to get it into my attic. Gah.

14. Does anyone on your friends list write or draw 11 (Nan)?

This is a livejournal-based meme from way back when, so there’s no flist involved here. So, no. But I had a commission done of Nan AND I LOVES IT SO. Rara is awesomesauce, no doubt about. <3

...incidentally, since I did this in November, Neme-chan did me an adorable sketch of a squishy!Nan, which I ended up colouring for teh lulz. Observe:

15. If 2 (Círa) had to choose sides between 4 (Ryenn) and 5 (Rýlea), which would it be?

These are getting so hilariously accurate, I start to think I set myself up. Wow. O_o Well, Ryenn makes her life a misery. Rýlea is her husband’s still-beloved first wife. …Rýlea, hands down. For all her faults, Rýlea has a soul. Also, Ryenn keeps trying to annex Arosek’s life, and this makes Círa very. Angry. INDEED.

16. What might 10 (Otho) shout while charging into battle?

Oh, Christ, this is a weird one. Otho is a major, so he does, in fact, charge into battle. I don’t think he’s a talker, mind you. For all Otho often can’t keep his mouth shut off the field, I think he’s one of those terrifying quiet types when he’s actually fighting. It’s just when he thinks he’s about to get killed that he gets mouthy…

17. If you chose a song to represent 8 (Alara), which song would you choose?

Portishead, Requiem for Anna (Un Jour Comme Un Autre – Anna).  I’m still trying to figure this one out, but for some reason it’s there in my head. I suspect it’s the lead singer’s voice, and the fact that the song appears to be about someone pretending that the world is just the same even when it’s clearly not. Alara is like that. She is a Knight of Sai’Ona, something a woman must never be, and so she does it while dressing and behaving almost as a complete lady. Because she has to. Um.

 
18. 1 (Sabin), 6 (Arosek), and 12 (Cydrac) are having dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. There is only one scallion pancake left, and they all reach for it at the same time. Who gets to eat it?

Arosek. But only after the most painfully protracted period of polite debate you can imagine. Again I feel like I’ve been set up, because all three of them are polite to a fault. Sabin simply wouldn’t go near it. Cydrac would offer it to Arosek, being he’s First Consul. …actually, I told a lie. Arosek would eventually take it, but he’d offer it to everyone in the whole restaurant before even considering eating it himself. Some snot-nosed kid probably got it in the end. Either that or he’d stick it in his pocket and feed it to the first stray guinea pig he noticed on the street. (DON’T ASK YOU’LL GET NAN STARTED AGAIN.)

19. What might be a good pick-up line for 2 (Círa) to use on 10 (Otho)?

HOLY FUCK SET-UP. Basically she could say: “Baby, it’s business time!” and he’d be in there. O_o It’s a bit more complicated in the beginning, mind you. I believe the first time she said something about not wanting things to be make-believe any more. Take that as you will.

20. What would 5 (Rýlea) most likely be arrested for?

Ha ha ha. ARREST. RYLEA. Really? REALLY? …probably picking flowers from somebody else’s garden. But she’s so pretty she could just put them in her hair and they’d say OH THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE LOOK AT THE PRETTY!!! and she’d get off scot-free. With even more flowers. And even scot-freer.

21. What is 6 (Arosek)'s secret?

He’s never married for two reasons: first of all, he doesn’t naturally tend well towards sex and intimacy of that sort. He loves everyone. Loving one person (or at least, setting aside the time to devote himself to maintaining any sort of deeply intimate relationship) goes completely against the grain of his personality. Things kind of went wrong when he was seventeen, though; his best friend seduced him and Arosek fell mostly in love and was consequently never able to reconcile himself to either his default factory setting or to a happy medium. His deepest shame is that he still can’t let his friend go even after said friend goes and gets married (TWICE). Though in all fairness this supposed friend is really jerking him around. …jerk.

22. If 11 (Nan) and 9 (Tara) were racing to a destination, who would get there first?

Depends. If it was a fair-run horse race, Tara all the way. Bring in the guard-llamas and the cavies, however, and Nan’s gonna win hands down.

23. If you had to walk home through a bad neighbourhood late at night, would you feel safer in the company of 7 (Kit) or 8 (Alara)?

Sorry, Kit. Alara all the way. Kit’s a thirteen year old boy (albeit a very unusual thirteen year old boy), but Alara has been trained to the sword from babyhood and then went and became a Knight of Sai’Ona against all known law and tradition AND KICKED ARSE TO DO SO. The woman’s one hell of a BAMF. And she looks like Vivien Leigh. I am so down with this.

24. 1 (Sabin) and 9 (Tara) reluctantly team up to save the world from the threat posed by 4 (Ryenn)'s sinister secret organization. 11 (Nan) volunteers to help them, but it is later discovered that she is actually a spy for 4 (Ryenn). Meanwhile, 4 (Ryenn) has kidnapped 12 (Cydrac) in an attempt to force their surrender. Following the wise advice of 5 (Rýlea), they seek out 3 (Calden), who gives them what they need to complete their quest. What title would you give this fic?

JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK. Some of this works – because Tara spends her time trying to foil Ryenn, Cal is her brother, Nan once worked for Ryenn, Sabin also hates Ryenn and Cydrac might have his uses. But it’s still crack, because Tara’s thirteen, Sabin’s a desk-jockey and Rýlea’s main interests in life include kittens, pancakes and putting pretty flower crowns on her My Little Cavy collection. Hmm. I can see it starting out like a “Spy Kids” flick and ending up more like “Kick-Ass.” So let’s call it “A Series of Unfortunate Events Wherein The Guinea Pigs Take Over The World (We Still Don’t Know Where They Came Fro….NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! GODDAMMIT, NAN!)”

If I Could Turn Back Time

The first time I walked into the Raphael room at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington, I just about had a fit because it was huge, empty, and beautiful. I have a thing for grand stately rooms, particularly when I feel like I have it to myself (you may note in entry before this one, there is a picture of the larger temple at Abu Simbel with no people in front of it; I took that, and my good god it was amazing to be able to do so). The next time I saw the Raphael room I figured it wouldn't get any better than the first hit, so to speak. HOW WRONG I WAS. They'd installed what you see above: a giant couch. That's not even the half of it. You could walk into this room, kick off your shoes, and loll around in the presence of masterpieces.

There's a reason why I'm babbling on about this, believe it or not, but I'll get to it in a minute. The entry is really supposed to point out that I've "finished" NaNo, or at least I've achieved some of what I set out to do. I have first drafts of Hibernaculum and Greywater finished, I have a random beautiful and terrifying scene between Ryenn and Arosek written, I have a roughly 7k short story about SPARKLY EVIL BLOOD FAE, and as of today I have 50k on the manuscript of Kaverlen Falls, which I just started last week. I'm hoping to finish a draft of the 6k short story The Blacksmith's Daughter tomorrow, and...the official wordcount so far is 154,256.

I'm still having something of a crisis. I just don't know if I'm a good writer. It's a mental thing, as in I'm a complete mentalist, but now that I have spent almost six weeks in Australia writing my heart, eyes, and wrists out, I'm terrified there's nothing to show for it. Which is blatant lies judging by the prodigious output I've managed, but then I tend to bury my head in my hands and wail BUT IT'S ALL CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP an awful lot. [rolls eyes] I don't know.

Speaking of crap, my mother forced me to go see the latest Twilight movie with her the other day; I already felt ill before we got there, and the patented SPINNY CAMERA ANGLES OF DOOM meant halfway through the damn thing I had to dig into my purse and find two paracetamol and five mg of prochlorperazine. And I still felt so ill I had to keep my eyes closed for ten minutes. I didn't even eat my popcorn, and I have an eating disorder. (Maybe I should just spend my life locked in a room with Stephanie Meyer. I can almost guarantee I'd never want to eat again if all I had for stimulation was her books and those damn movies.) At one stage in the movie I even facepalmed. I literally facepalmed. Here, have a visual aid:

And I don't even like Star Trek, either. (DENNY CRANE!) I don't even remember what it was that made me do it. There were a lot of things that upset me about that movie. Principally, though, I was deeply disturbed by the power balance in Bella and Edward's relationship. I could only stomach it by entertaining the private theory that Bella is in fact an anguisette (thank you for the sanity switch, Jacqueline Carey). Because otherwise I'd just have to go with my initial gut feeling, which was that Bella is a good and dutiful housewife-to-be who marries at eighteen, justifies her husband's violence against her with "he can't help himself" and "it's proof of how much he loves me" and when her unborn baby threatens the mental health of her friends and family and also her own life, she justifies allowing herself to die by the thought her worth as a wife is only to act as a human incubator.

Also, there was a huge-ass fight between vampires and werewolves and NO BLOOD WAS SHED WHATSOEVER. I miss Alucard. I miss him a lot. ...I guess I just like my abominations Eldritch, not Edward.

The thing is, though, that I really ought to be careful what I complain about. I readily admit I can't and won't ever understand Twilight. But I will open myself to mockery by admitting the other day I noticed a movie about to play on FoxTel and promptly recorded it. And later watched it while kicking my feet in glee. I know most people pan the damn thing, but in my opinion it's so bad it's hilarious. ...sorry. ^_~

But I think I'm in a melancholy mood anyway because I finally finished reading the full text of the old story I had been writing all those years ago with an older friend, and...while I was wincing at the writing at the beginning, by the end I was utterly absorbed in the world we had created and the story we were weaving to the point I couldn't work out who wrote what. It's also been so long since I paid any lasting attention to the characters or the story that I'd forgotten so much of what we had written and what we had planned, and now that I am at the end of it...the sense of loss is immense. Not just for the story itself, but for the friendship that created it. I ache to read more of it, as much as I ache to write to my old friend and see where life has taken her now.

I thought of the V&A above for several reasons. I mean, museums are places of memory. You walk in the door and you are taken back to places that existed long ago -- so long ago, in some cases, that we can't even be quite sure they did exist. We can guess, but we're never going to know what those lives were like. There's a terrible sadness, in that. And I get a similar sadness from unfinished stories, especially one like this. So much potential, just rotting away on my harddrive. It feels like a betrayal, that even I forgot them. Part of me just wants to turn around and write to my old friend and beg her to tell me that she didn't forget, because if we both did...it seems so unfair.

But then, I also thought of the V&A because of that giant couch. It's not the first whimsical thing I've found in a London museum; I was most enchanted by the Super Fun Happy Slide! installation I discovered one dreary December at the Tate Modern, but then you expect that kind of malarkey at the Tate Modern. Not so at Victoria's digs. I love that museum for many reasons, and I walk in there feeling like it's one of the great and airy palaces of my imagination, stately and elegant and real. And then...I find a giant couch in my favourite room.

The emperor of the story I forgot, he came to his royal title at the age of eighteen after having been raised a commoner. It was always a running joke in the writing process that Dion would one day do something daft like fill the Emperor's Bathchambers with rainbow bubbles and a thousand rubber duckies, or that he'd draw a hopscotch grid on the approach to the Shining Throne and refuse to hold court unless all assembled gave him a round. He's the kind of person who'd insist on beanbags for state assemblies. TAnd this room, in this beautiful and elegant museum...had a giant couch specifically designed for lolling. Dion would have loved this room.

I wish I hadn't forgotten. In some ways, though, I almost wish I hadn't remembered.

Winning On A Mere Technicality

Admittedly I am always a bit of a spaz when it comes to writing, and NaNoWriMo can only make that tendency worse. But I am falling off the deep end all over again. I've already bemoaned the fact that I've all but given up on finishing the third of the three novels I set myself to completing and have instead gone haring off on a sequel to the first one I finished, and...well, the wordcount on that little beauty is currently about 22k. I've decided that there's still seven days of NaNo to go so we might as well make a mini NaNo for that and have at least 50k on it before November's gone.

...I am so brilliant.

GAH.

I do have to admit, mind you, that I have been playing about still with a short story that makes up the prologue of this novel, and I haven't counted a word of it towards NaNo yet. And it's about 4.5k right now, from memory. If I would just stop procrastinating I would be able to finish its draft this evening. But I'm procrastinating. For some reason I am utterly and irretrievably in love with the Ambassador of Xoan and his unholy lust for croquembouche (...you DON'T want to know) and when I've managed to drag myself away from that archive I've been rereading a huge epic fic I wrote with a friend when we were in our later years of high school/first years of university. Oh, the good times keep on rolling.

Still, I am managing to write; I clocked up 5k for Kaverlen Falls today, even though I've been shrieking at the characters while doing so. One character in particular took offense at something I noticed the other day. I've mentioned before a growing fascination for the HBO series A Game of Thrones and I've got through the first two novels of A Song of Ice and Fire so far this month. This neat little graphic struck me as interesting as one of my writing groups and I had been exchanging emails about character alignment:

While looking at this, I realised that I had a couple of squares I couldn't fill with characters appearing in the Greywater/Kaverlen Falls/Neverboy/Forevergirl/Simple Story saga, and I got cross. Unfortunately some of the little voices in my head were "listening" to my ranting, and one of them's gone and EXPLODED all over everything in the form of chaotic evil. I just...yeah. I don't know. I suppose I got what I deserved, but...um.

Otherwise, that should be enough whining for the evening. The first picture in this entry is from Ephesus, and I was looking at my pictures from this ruined city last night as I worked on the short story featuring the cursed and broken coty of Dan'Mara. I really ought to go and finish the damn thing. So...here's to history and the hell it can raise in the present?

Cheers!

Slow and Steady...?

Ah, racing turtles -- although calling my NaNo progress "turtling" rather depends on how you look at it, considering the wordcount. But I have become an absolute rebel and am still not writing The Juniper Bones like I'm supposed to be; rather I'm about 13k into the sequel of Greywater, which seems to have titled itself Kaverlen Falls even though a) I wasn't aware there WAS a waterfall at Kaverlen and b) I haven't got a clue why the characters would end up there anyway. So go figure.

I'm having a right ol' interesting time with this, mind you. Mostly it's because I haven't a clue where the story is going...well, I do, that's a slight lie. I wrote a YA adult recently called The Neverboy, and Kaverlen Falls involves that storyline to some extent as Cira, the main character of KF, is a companion of the main character of Nb. Meaning I now get to tell certain parts of Nb from an entirely different point of view. This is going to b fun. It also mixes up the story a bit, because Cira isn't present for the first twelve chapters of Nb anyway, and they also part ways towards the end for a bit. So, it's not like KF tells the same story only from Cira's viewpoint. It's her own story entirely, and I am not entirely sure where it begins and ends.

...well, okay, another lie: I know where it starts. Or I do now, anyway. I started writing a short story the other day for my own amusement about blood fae for no good reason, and as it turns out...it's the prologue to KF. And in the first chapter of KF a legendary character who was offhandedly mentioned maybe twice is now apparently a major influence on Cira's early life at Greywater. So now I am all O_o WTF OTZ because...I did not expect that. At all. Not to mention Cydrac Agrane strolled into the first chapter waving his hands about something I didn't know about, and now Nan Jerikak has announced she wants to play My Little Cavy with Alara, and I...what. What.

I love NaNo. Although sometimes I get the feeling it kind of hates my guts. Here, have a .gif that explains my relationship with NaNoWriMo a thousand times better than I ever could with words:

Speaking of writing things from other POVs, I also had a strange experience while writing the scene between Nan and Cira. I'll actually put a snippet of it here so you can see what I mean upfront.

*****

At first she was silent, and Círa glanced back to see she had furrowed her brow. It might have been a mistake to ask Nantya; she was young and no real ranking magian – but she had already been given in service to the Attorney-General of Lonan at least once. Another moment of thought later and Nantya shook her head, the dark curls of her hair dancing beneath the scarf she had tied over half her head.

“I don’t know what it is, if that’s what you wanna know.” She peered at Círa, pale eyes very curious. “Is your Lady Maiden worried about him? ‘cause I don’t think she should be, really. I doubt Mister Wolf is gonna bother her again, after the flak he copped from the First Consul over it all.”

“What flak?”

Nantya blinked at her sharp tone. “Oh, it was flak, all right. I mean, it’s not like I saw anything, but I heard some of it. He summoned Lord Rendran to him at the beginning of the winter, after the mourning-month for his little girl. I got a call up there myself, ‘cause I was with him in Aran Nomese when it all went to pot. It was all very civilised, mind, or at least it was supposed to be – just a discussion about how things would be, what with Mister Wolf’s privileges at the palace being revoked. But…”

Círa frowned. Not one word of this had ever reached her ears before now. “But what?”

Nantya shrugged, but it seemed more bewildered than nonchalant. “I don’t rightly know, not for sure. But I was down in the glasshouse, these huge big offices under the First Consul’s chambers where all his pages and assistants and things work. There were raised voices, then thumping, and this huge crash…and then they really started yelling at each other.”

“The First Consul was shouting?”

“He was really angry. Not that any of us could really hear what he was saying.” She seemed just as disbelieving as Círa herself. “The Attorney-General came out first. You could see he was furious, too, but he wasn’t shouting anymore. He just came down those stairs and stood there, looking at all of us like not a one of us was really there.” Shaking her head, she had to take an audible breath before continuing. “Then Lord Consul Asfiye came down. You could tell he was upset, but he was…not like he usually is. He was just…pale as a ghost, but he could have been made of marble. I’ve never seen him like it. No smiles, eyes dull as dishwater.”

Círa didn’t bother to hide her shudder. “I can’t imagine it.”

“Me neither -- if I hadn’t seen it.” Again she shook her head, like she was trying to clear it of a mountain of llama wool, and Círa began to understand why no word of this strange discussion had ever reached her ears. “He asked Lord Rendran, polite as you please, to come back with him. And they went up. No-one heard anything else strange upstairs, and when they came back the First Consul was all smiles and the Attorney-General charmed his way through the whole office, but…I’ll never forget it, the way they looked then.” Her small fingers, hidden in her black kid gloves, clenched into sudden fists. “They said the great window was what smashed. Someone had put a paperweight through it.”

“The Attorney-General, surely,” Círa said, faint, and Nantya only shook her head.

“I dunno. I just...I dunno.”

The clear reluctance to commit to anything sent a shiver down Círa’s spine, but she covered it with a blithe smile. “So you haven’t talked about this to anyone, have you?”

Nantya’s eyes, coloured that strange pale green more common to those born of the fire-lady, held more solemnity than a grave. “No. I haven’t.”

Círa swallowed hard. More secrets had risen to wind their coils about the life of the First Consul, and she did not like it at all. Arosek, what are you doing? she thought, but all she had before her was the troubled small face of the magian.   

*****

Now, it probably seems quite pedestrian, I know, but the point is -- I had to know exactly what the argument between Ryennkar and Arosek was. Do other people do this a lot? I do it upon occasion; for instance in The Neverboy Cira and Otho quite obviously have a history they are not going to discuss in front of Kit, who is a thirteen year old boy. So I went and wrote out the scene where they thrash out some out demons (and yes, it involved sex, but even that wasn't why it couldn't ever be in the main body of the story). As it so happens this scene will now end up in Kaverlen Falls, but...yeah. Roughly 2.5k later I had an "extra" scene I called Close Every Door for a lark (damn you, Andrew Lloyd Webber!). It can't ever fit in Kaverlen Falls given the POV, but...I had to write it, because I really needed to know exactly what passed between them. But then again I did the same again in Greywater because I knew that Arosek and Ryenn had also had an "altercation" of a sort between the time when Otho first returned from Alkirn and then when Otho returned to Greywater. Again, neither Cira nor Otho could possibly have been privy to these conversations, but they have a major impact on their lives, and...yeah. Dammit. I hate having all these lovely words AND NO-WHERE TO PUT THEM.

...and I would snippet part of the scene here, but it's dodgy as hell. So I won't. I'll just go back to sulking and writing some more. In closing, here's another .gif; once again it explains the relationship between me and NaNo in very succinct terms. But I'll let you guess which of us is which. ^_~



The Beat Goes On

November is still here, and my brain is...mostly still present as well, so I thought I probably ought to update on the NaNo-progress. I am being very contrary mary in my writing right now, although I am still going on with it. Just...not the way I planned. Ha. But then NaNo seems to be very much about grabbing the seat of your pants and holding tight as you run along with it, so here we go.

Technically I am still supposed to be working on The Juniper Bones; it's probably not that far from a complete first draft (say, maybe twenty thousand words) but my brain is just not co-operating with me. It's a complex ending, of course, but I just can't seem to concentrate on it. Whenever I do I just procrastinate worse than ever before, and after a less than productive week I finally surrendered on Thursday night.

The first novel I had been working on after getting here was Greywater, and while writing both Hibernaculum and The Juniper Bones I ended up missing the characters in that dreadfully. On Thursday night I was particularly troubled by the loss of Arosek and Ryennkar, and was reminded that while in airports from New Zealand to the US to Canada to London to Turkey and then on a wee boat upon the Med, I had been writing a couple of stories detailing a very important chance in their relationship when they were teenagers. I'd started typing it out sometime in London and never got around to finishing it, even though I had typed out other stuff I'd written in a couple of different coffeeshops in York. So, I decided if I was just going to sit and stare at The Juniper Bones and not type anything I might as well get my shit together and type out stuff I'd already written for a .doc I'd called Night of the Long Grass.

The story was never finished in longhand, despite the long hours in airports and those beautiful days in Turkey (although in the case of Turkey this may be because I was often distracted by delicious food and the lure of swimming in beautiful blue waters filled with ANCHORFISH!). After I finished typing out what did exist, I ended up finishing it. And of course it didn't kill my fascination with the characters, it only made it worse. So while yesterday very little writing was done -- I had to drive to Perth, which was an experience; I've never driven a freeway in my life and spent most of it wanting to scream out the window I DRIVE BETTER THAN YOU AND I'VE NEVER EVEN DONE THIS BEFORE! -- today I ended up opening a file that contained a few scribbles of the direct sequel to Greywater. Roughly seven thousand words later...

So, yes, it's been an odd few days. I've also been sketching out the bones of two other short stories to the tune of three or four thousand words I haven't counted towards NaNo yet, and one of those stories is actually most likely the prologue of Kaverlen Falls. So, I am keeping on keeping on, despite a rather unproductive week. I did manage to reward myself for the first couple of weeks, at least; I went horse-riding on Tuesday and got wrapped in seaweed on Wednesday. The horse-riding was an absolutely wonderful experience; I did it partly because I'd been on a camel and a donkey in Egypt and had forgotten what a horse felt like, and also because a lot of my fantasy-tilted writing involves riding horses which I remember so little about. But despite the terrible weather of the last few weeks in Bunbury, it was a beautiful sunny day for us to ride through the fields and see kangaroos, emus...AND COWS. I like cows. Go the research, I say. ^_~

At any rate, I should go spend a few more hours with the kids. <3 But just for amusement, here's one of my favourite places in York. I wrote about Arosek and Ryenn in this most beautiful of beautiful cities, and this place in particular inspired me to commission of drawing of the pair of them. It's all good.

Shopping Cart Of Love

...yes, that is a shopping trolley on a beach. I can look at said beach if I get up from the dining room table and go stare out the kitchen windows in the direction of the lighthouse. It kind of represents my brain, actually: empty and shadowed and mired in sand.

I've been having an interesting time of it. As you can see I haven't been doing the NaNo updates, but that's a long story. Mostly it boils down to the fact that the other day I wanted to RAGEQUIT the whole thing. This video kind of explains that desire in a succinct little comment right at the end, although the rest of it is good for a laugh. And by Christ I've been needing a laugh.

Yes, yes, it's more Amnesia. Actually the stupid game saved my sanity somewhat, because on Monday I just couldn't write at all. ...well, I lie, I wrote nine hundred and thirty four words. And waited for inevitable RAGEQUIT. In the end I slept for thirteen hours, got up on Tuesday, and got on with it. Today is Wednesday and I have 55,547 words for NaNoWriMo and a completed first draft of Hibernaculum. It's a terrible first draft, but it exists. And I started writing this version of the story back in 2005 or 2004 or something. So, screw it. It's done. I can fix it later. It's done.

I am always terrified of waking up one day to discover I am a terrible writer. This is generally why I give up halfway through a novel, and why I rarely submit things. Hibernaculum has been bothering me for so long that finishing it really took it out of me, and I just couldn't see it happening. Well, here I am. And I did it mainly by promising myself that once I was done with it, before I returned to The Juniper Bones (a terrifying prospect for a myriad of other reasons), that I could indulge the Lovecraftian muse awakened by Amnesia and write a horrible story about evil fae. So, that is going to be my day tomorrow. I also have the urge to finish a story I started writing way back in early...2010? It could even have been 2009, I'm not sure. It seems suitable, considering the story was inspired by Fly My Pretties and I finished Hibernaculum right on the end of this beautiful song.

So, for posterity, here is the daily NaNo breakdown:

GREYWATER -- 153,732

01/11 - 157,787 (4055)
02/11 - 166,457 (8670/12,725)

HIBERNACULUM -- 187,374

03/11 - 192,376 (5002/17,727)
04/11 - 196,406 (4030/21,757)
05/11 - 202,421 (6015/27,772)
06/11 - 211,707 (9286/37,058)
07/11 - 212,641 (934/37,992)
08/11 - 223,863 (11,222/49,214)
09/11 - 230,196 (6,333/55,547)

Incidentally from the time I arrived here in Australia before NaNo I added 47,882 words to Greywater and I also wrote that ten thousand word story for Alara and Nan. I think I wrote something else. I don't even remember anymore.

...yeah, no wonder my brain is fried. Too bad Dr. Morgan will see me now. O_o