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.

"It's like being in charge of a special school on a day out!"

When I went to the Millbrook a couple months ago, I had dinner at the Millhouse -- and as I had gone away for some peace and quiet, I had taken a good chunk of the manuscript of The Neverboy in order to do some editing. At dinner, I entertained myself between courses with said manuscript. For the last three weeks, I've relived that dinner by having Saturday's lunch at a restaurant while reading and scribbling with my big red pen. I also did this in Wellington three weeks ago. It's actually really lovely, despite my ongoing problems with food and weight and whatnot. One place, too, is actually somewhere I regularly walk past on my weekend wanderings, so incorporating a stopover there into my walk -- and lengthening it afterwards -- was really very, very lovely, especially as I usually spend my walks mulling over characters and storylines.

So, this Saturday I toted the prologue of the forevergirl along to a pseudo-English pub and worked through that. It was an interesting exercise in that I knew the prologue really didn't make a lot of sense in the new context of the novel. When I wrote it last December, I had assumed I wouldn't be writing the actual novel for a long long time and was doing it mainly because it took place during Winter's Heart, which is sort of the closest Sarinian equivalent to Christmas (although it's more just a mid-winter festival of food and gifts; it's not strictly religious, but then for a lot of people these days Christmas is fairly damn secular anyway). Things have changed since then, of course -- not only did Arosek and Ryenn shoehorn themselves and their damnably complicated friendship into the novel, but the Dragon and its drug-fuelled dream-devouring dramas turned up out of bloomin' nowhere, and Alara recently informed me that Nan is going to be in this novel too. Nan. I'm terrified of Nan. I'll have to introduce you to her someday. When I'm not terrified of her. Which might be never, come to think of it. (...oh, God, iTunes is, like, reading my mind and playing me Gay Bar as I write about Nan. Shit. She's totally going to start that nuclear war, isn't she...?) But...yes. I had to rework the introduction before I could consider writing the first chapter, which I really need to do if I'm to stop Arosek and Ryenn running off with the whole damn book.

Er.

So, yes, that was lovely -- but then I came home and realised that I had two short stories that I really had to finish this weekend. One's something for a local short story competition, the other is part of a trade, which is something really quite interesting I'll talk about in a minute. But I have to mention the competition first. I always have incredible trouble writing for competitions -- partly it's because I have great trouble writing to order, but it's really the wordcount that tends to trip me the hell up. I'm still surprised Tea For Two didn't get banhammered for its incredible length, but then I think it got through on the strength of its atmosphere anyway. But yeah, this competition was for four thousand words; the current first draft is closer to 4.1k, but I can knock that down. I think. Ha. It's really very funny, though, how long it took me to write this story. It's not actually something I dreamed up for the competition, it's more that the competition finally gave me an excuse to write it. Even though I am riding very close to the deadline. (Which is Friday...) It was directly inspired by a song, actually, and when the competition is all over I think I'll go over the genesis and the development of the story. It'll be fun! (...I swear.) But the fact that I actually have something to enter is achievement enough, as I originally thought entries were due at the end of June and I was far too wrapped up in my zombie headstate to do a damn thing about it then.

...which reminds me, in a roundabout way, that I am still far too intrigued by one Kaworu Nagisa, which has led to the discovery of a tumblr that gives me ridiculous pleasure. I just couldn't resist something that included the description of "My hobbies are cooking and being sad." Oh, Shinji. I am a Bad Person, honest. But I just love this thing to pieces. For all it is obviously parody and satire, they really do nail Shinji's character.

But to get back on topic (topic? what topic?) I'll speak a bit about the other story I wrote this weekend -- I just finished the first draft, actually, and with any luck I'll be able to give it a decent edit tomorrow night and send it off to Neme-chan. It's my half of the trade I mentioned above, and it's been...an experience! Neme-chan is an artist over at deviantart I met via a friend from IRG (which is basically My Happy Place); I commissioned her a few times, and I've posted the results of those here a few times. She's really very, very talented and I adore her style. Because she was doing original characters for me, I ended up sending her snippets of stories involving said characters, and she enjoyed my writing style enough to offer up a trade idea -- she would draw something for me, and in return I would write something for her. We decided to do this quite a few weeks ago, but between her exams and holiday and my own wallowing in Cooking And Being Sad, we hadn't really got started on it until a couple of weeks back.

So, I got about fifteen hundred words done last weekend and figured I would plot out the rest properly this weekend, but then Neme-chan sent me my completed half and I freaked out completely. I was determined to stop dragging my heels and just write, no matter my mood, and...here we are. I can be really slow, you see, for all I am by nature a prolific writer. I mean, I wrote over a hundred thousand words last November. I could have written more. I just...have a bitch of an inner editor and therefore find it very hard to write at all some times. Or most times. But I was writing for someone, and I knew it was time to stop listening to the Inner Editor and just go for it.

It was a really interesting experience, as I've said. The characters I wrote for are original creations, and I am also unfamiliar with the world they were created for. Essentially I worried that I was totally God Moding the whole thing, but after a positive response to the opening I've totally let loose on the rest of it. I can but hope she likes it as much as I do the picture she sent me in return. ...to give you a visual, this is basically what I did when I opened the attachment in my email:

Daaaaaaw. No, honestly, I was gobsmacked. The two characters in question have been in my mind since I was twelve or thirteen or something, and though I never quite seem to finish their story, I am trying. Hibernaculum, the latest incarnation, is OH SO CLOSE. ...of course it needs to be edited the hell out of, but never mind. Having a draft is the first damn step, and it's further than I usually get, so...yes. But I figure I might as well close this entry with a little snippet of my bbz, and then you can see for yourself how talented Neme-chan really is. ...and while you do that, I will go hold myself to my end of the bargain. And pray that my dribble will make me as happy as did her scribble. <3

When she chanced a glance sideways she found him smiling, tremulous and quiet. He then reached forward, the touch of his fingertips light upon her cheek. “He said you weren’t beautiful, didn’t he?” Zurin mused, and though Luchandra thought she should have blushed, to hear him acknowledge so the fact he had seen the dance of the gods, she pushed it aside. She’d always known. He’d given her the lullaby. And then his smile deepened, sad and yet tinged with the faintest hope; it stirred her own even as he leaned back, shook his head. “But you are. You are so beautiful.”

“And you have more power than you know,” she whispered in return. “You saved me, then.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. You did.”

“If only we’d met under other circumstances.” Zurin tightened his hands on his knees, gave a short laugh. “Then I suppose under other circumstances, we never would have met.”

“Maybe not.” Luchandra looked again to the butterflies, wondered what warding power they had; surely they were from the East, the land of the air-goddess. She was not their patron. But then, their earth-god cared much for their protection any longer. “I wonder if it even matters, though.”

“It matters.” She turned, surprised by the sudden ferocity of his words – but the kiss shook her deeper. Though it felt very different to the pressure of the earth-god’s kiss when the fire-lady had blazed within her, lacked the taste of metal and snow, she still shuddered beneath it. Zurin drew back as if stung, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry.” And she could see he was, could see he was just as surprised by his actions as she. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean…!”

“I don’t mind,” she said softly. “I was just…surprised.”

“I still shouldn’t have.”

“Why not?” Bitterly she spoke, even as the memory of his swan-song sent a shiver down her spine. “They took their comfort. Why shouldn’t we have ours?”

Zurin stared at her, so long that she felt as though the world had stopped. “Do you really mean that?”

“Maybe we would have met no matter what.” She bit her lip, and then laughed, wild and careless. “Maybe this is what they talk about, in the stories, when they speak of destiny. It’s the world bending to the path of love and desire.”

He shook his head, but there was clear wonder in his gaze. “You can’t love me. We’ve only just met.”

She smiled. “And perhaps we’ll never meet again. Isn’t that why we should do this?”

For a moment, she thought he would draw back. Then he laughed, too, and for the first time she heard genuine joy in his voice.

“You’re mad, you know that?”

“I just like a good story,” she said, and reached for him. “You know…the kind with a happy ending?”

“This isn’t the ending.”

“We can still be happy,” she said against his lips. “If only for a little while.”

Words by me, picture by Neme-chan. <3

SAVE AND EXIT

I haven't been doing a lot of writing recently. My brain has really decided to go and throw a temper tantrum, and even though writing can be extremely therapeutic for me, I haven't been able to concentrate on it. It's getting to be late afternoon here and I haven't done any writing whatsoever, but I have managed to tidy my room and that...felt like a massive clear-out. I've had a lot of things on my mind, and doing this seems to have helped. We'll see, I guess?

One of my main procrastination tools the last couple of weeks has been watching walkthroughs of Amnesia: The Dark Descent; even though I swore I never would, I also ended up downloading it yesterday on Steam. I've officially played forty-five minutes and am so terrified I can't go on. Ha. Why is this relevant to my writing? I keep thinking, as I've said before, that I should write something Lovecraftian. But wandering around Brennenburg actually led to my brain inventing a history for the house that Anja and Ryennkar are raising their children in, and I think it is going to play a large role in the forevergirl. Actually, I am becoming more and more surprised by how big a part both Arosek and Ryenn are going to play in the entire novel. Huh.

Aside from that, I've been working on the editing of The Neverboy while working out on my stationary bike; I'm almost through the last two thirds of the book. Then I have to go back to the first ten chapters and fix that. I'm planning on printing it out and taking it with me on the plane rides to and from Wellington Monday next, if the volcanic ash doesn't ruin it first. I have to go up there to have biometrics done, which is going to take all of TEN MINUTES WTF. Ordinary I would have this done in Christchurch, but...Christchurch's CBD isn't really there anymore. Speaking of which, I live in a country of the most adorkable and charmingly insane people EVER. But yeah, I am thinking that the plane ride will give a good opportunity to just edit, and despite the fact I've had to go back to a very restricted diet because I am an idiot, I think I will have a nice lunch somewhere in the Wellington CBD and work on it then, too. We'll see. Quite what I am going to do with it when I am finished, we may never know. Perhaps I'll try to flog it to an agent when I get to London, I don't know.

I also got very close to the Finishing Frenzy of The Juniper Bones a week or so back. I ended up falling out of the Zone before I really hit my stride, but I still got abour twenty or thirty thousand words and a partially-constructed End Game out of it. I'm hoping that once I finish this edit and a couple short stories and this trade that things will flow again. Speaking of which -- the trade. This is going to be interesting! I've never done anything like it before, and I am hoping that once I've had dinner tonight and finished this little bit of mostly-constructed fluff I can begin to sketch it out. More on that later, I suppose. Right now, I am freezing cold so I want to close all my curtains, leave the lights off, and scare myself stupid. Dammit, Daniel...

"...they make me dream (scream) their dreams (screams)..."

So, I spent the night away from home last night -- I drove a couple of hours up the road, trawled Queenstown for various tasty treats, and then had a two and a half hour spa treatment at the Millbrook. I then had a very delicious dinner at the Millhouse and spent the evening curled in a huge blanket before a faux fire watching children's movies.

...and within about two seconds of getting home, I was completely depressed all ove again. Joy. What does this have to do with writing, I hear you cry? Well, it's more to do with living your life in a way that gives you purpose and pleasure, I suppose, because right now? I'm not doing that at all. I loathe my job, and it's not even so much the work environment itself. It's just that I got this damn degree because it was the "safe and secure" thing to do. I was guaranteed a job, and therefore I was guaranteed an income. So, in theory, everything should come up roses? Only...it doesn't work that way.

Of course I don't believe I can just walk away from my life as is and spend it writing, all the while functioning under the delusion that just because I want it so badly, that this will lead to me making enough money from writing to live on. Because it won't happen that way. But I was sitting on the back porch of my little resort cottage-thing, overlooking the golf course and the mountains beyond with the second part of The Neverboy in front of me, and...I don't know. I was happy. I'm rarely happy. I mean, it could have been the spa treatment, or just the act of sleeping in a hotel room -- I love sleeping in hotel rooms -- but...yeah. Nothing changed, which is why I was so unhappy when I got back home, so...I need to change some things. Obviously.

Still, I have to admit that in retrospect, if someone in a fancy restaurant asks you if you're a food critic? YOU...SAY...YES! Ha. Because I was on my own, I took into the Millhouse a big slab of paper that was Neverboy, and I spent happy minutes between courses reading over writing I haven't seen in quite a few months. It scared the crap out of the people serving me, though -- two of them approached me with quiet awe to whisper the dreaded words are you a critic? I mustn't be as evil as I thought, because I instantly replied: "No, I'm just working, you're safe!" I could have got a free drink out of this, dammit. I mean, if I'm going to be a starving artist, I should start thinking of these things, yeah? ...but with that said, being a starving artist could be a good thing, as I've given myself an eating disorder and one of its manifestations is uncontrollable eating. Yet I totally didn't want to overeat this weekend. The only time it kicked in was when I left to come home. Argh.

But yes, re-reading Neverboy is proving a surprising pleasure, and it is probably helped by the fact that both movies I watched last night were kid's flicks. One was Up, which I've never seen before, and the other was Night At The Museum 2, which I have seen before, except it was on a flight between Osaka and Singapore and I probably missed large chunks of dialogue. I also spent a good deal of the movie goggling at Amy Adams and those tight, tight aviator pants. Er. Although my favourite bit of the whole movie is actually the ending, where Ahkmenrah gets all excited about the tablet until the kids totally shoot him down. He then tells them with the best expression on his face: "Actually, it doesn't do anything, it's just for decoration." I adore sarcasm, yes. I was introduced to Edmund Blackadder on Christmas Eve at the age of nine, I can't help it.

Still, watching that movie reminded me of one plot device I have hated for a very long time -- I'm not sure what tvtropes.org would call it (I'm scared to go look, I don't have hours of life to lose tonight), but I'd call it The Surrogate. It's that thing where the original character you've spent the movie/book/television series with is replaced by a clone of some description, and everyone accepts it as given that they'll be just the same. This can work -- the Doctor is a roundabout example, but maybe that's more a case of The Other Darrin at play, and besides, it accounts for what bothers me. The Doctor retains his memories across regenerations. Often, these clones? Don't. It's like a reset button, and considering I think people are entirely the sum of their memories -- and this is why the thought of Alzheimer's scares me stupid -- to have a character "reset" in this way...bothers the fuck out of me.

I also had some issues with Up, even though I enjoyed it. I just...couldn't always suspend my disbelief willingly. Which is perhaps ironic anyway, considering the movie is about a house that flies to South America beneath a bunch of helium balloons, but whatever. It hit every button on an emotional level, which made up somewhat for what I felt was a story filled with little holes. It leaked, you see, and kind of deflated by the end. But then again, it made me bawl twenty minutes in, and that's some powerful stuff. Also: ED ASNER. So much LOVE for that man. Which reminds me, I had a little flip-out when watching the first episode of Doctor Who's latest series earlier today, simply because Old!Canton was William Morgan Sheppard, and then Young!Canton was totally MARK Sheppard, and...that's just awesome. And off-topic. But still awesome. Father and son and both rock the casbah! <3

But yes. I didn't write all that much, but I read. And was amazed while I read, because not only had I forgotten a lot of this, but...I was reading stuff back and thinking: "Wow, I wrote this? That's unpossible!" And I had this feeling because it felt so good. Can't be a bad thing, yeah? I mean, considering my inner editor sounds one hell of a lot like Malcolm Tucker, you can imagine I'm not prone to singing my own praises. But I am completely in love with Alara Feronza, who is what we children of the internet refer to as a BAMF, and...yeah. I don't know. I really should edit this properly and consider sending it for editing/publication/something.

In the meantime, life, it does go on. I really just have to reconsider the path mine is on.

The World Says Hello

I keep saying that I want to work on and finish the first drafts of Hibernaculum and The Juniper Bones before I do anything else, but I just keep poking at Greywater with the proverbial Great Big Stick. This is both good and bad, in that any writing is good writing, but it's feeding my bad habit of Never Finishing Aught. And I do need to work on finishing things. I suppose half the trouble here is that Greywater is simply more manageable, at least when it comes to the idea of eventual publication. The Juniper Bones is very long -- probably it's going to hover around the 300k mark, even when finished and edited -- and Hibernaculum is rather strange. None of them are easily classified, at least when it comes to their genres and whatnot, but those two certainly sit outside the norm. Argh.

With that said, I suppose it's not as if Greywater really slots easily into any category. You could call it a romance, in its way, given it deals very strongly in the strange relationship between a Major and a long-imprisoned water elemental (yeah, yeah, I have Belle and Sebastian in my head with Me and the Major, and it's irritating as hell). But I doubt I could pass it off as a true romance novel, given that a) it's written from the male protagonist's POV and b) the romance actually isn't the full point of the story. I thought it was in the beginning, actually, but I'm starting to discover that it really isn't.

Come to think of it, I'm intrigued by my POV tendencies. I'm a girl -- probably fairly obvious -- but I have a serious tendency to write from a male POV. I don't know what that says about me. Am I brainwashed by my culture, a culture that tends to say the voice of the male is the most correct and therefore ought to be the most dominant? I really haven't any idea, I just know that the stories I wanted to write were just best told from the perspective of characters who happened to be male. Maybe it's because I really came into my own writing-wise through fanfiction, and I was -- and still am -- a slash fangirl. But I suppose that's a quandary for another day. Another day when I actually have something finished and worth publishing, anyway. (Although let us note, for posterity, that Tea For Two, my first published story, is told from the wife's viewpoint. Not that this makes her particularly happy, let me assure you. But then we can count that as a nice bit of irony considering Lovecraft, the main inspiration for the piece, wasn't exactly a bra-burning feminist crusader. Ha ha ha.)

Still, the point of the entry wasn't to lament the fact that I can't even write within the boundaries of the romance genre to save my life -- it's far more traditional to be either the female or the female/male voice, and the latter still tends to be skewered to the distaff side -- it was more to talk about meeting new characters. Because although I have had the basic story of Greywater in my mind for probably a couple of years now, I've never really understood the nuances of what was going on. Basically, I knew that it was how Otho had met Círa, and explained why they were not really on speaking terms during The Neverboy. I also knew it had a lot to do with the beginning of the unravelling of Ryennkar Vassidenel, and how this would eventually ruin the heart and soul of Arosek Asfiye. What I didn't know, as it turns out, is that Greywater is actually about how a soldier deals with the way war moves in ways he cannot control, and how this affects the way he lives his life even as he struggles to keep himself alive in order to do so.

If that makes the slightest bit of sense.

This is all just relevant to me, mind, because I met Rylea yesterday. I'd known of her before now, but I'd never actually met her. She's Otho's first wife, and I knew from the beginning that she exerts undue influence on his life still -- I mean, the novel opens with him almost toppling himself out a window over an unexpected letter from her -- but I hadn't really expected the depth of it. The conversation between them that I just wrote? Hurt. And it's beginning to bleed through into his interactions with Círa, and is shaping their relationship in ways I didn't expect. It's wonderful, and frustrating, and confusing as hell. I'm also not really sure that her name is Rylea; it's sort of a placeholder right now, but there's still a reason behind the name. ...why yes, I was thinking of R'lyeh. And given how much trouble Rylea is causing me right now, it's fair enough to assume that it wasn't inaccurately given.

...I suppose I can but hope that now my mind is drifting towards the fascinations of non-Euclidian geometry, that my pet quantum mechanic Wills Penrose will speak up and get me back into The Juniper Bones before Rylea totally messes everything up. But knowing my luck, they'll just team up on me and make everything worse. I suppose that's just the hazard of the spec writer's profession...? ^_~

Musicians and Mathematicians

I decided the other day to have another couple of commissions done, because quite aside from the wonderful workshops of the other day, I respond particularly well to visual stimuli. And I've had Wills Penrose strutting around my head being difficult; it then struck me that Rachel's style would be suited to the image I was carrying of him. So, I poked Rachel for a picture of Wills, and while I was at it I decided that Natalia's lovely dreamy style would be brilliant for a picture of Tess and Lavinia. When I noted Natalia about this, she messaged me back and said that she'd forgotten the last time she'd done something for me that she owed me a sketch, so I took both and asked her to do a kind of matching set of Círa and Otho, like maybe you'd find in a locket? And what I got back...it's absolutely, ridiculously, stunningly wonderful. I will have to share it at some point, but it's inspired a lovely little bit of Greywater that I want to write first.

...but that inspiration is a bit annoying in that I had commissioned these pictures of Wills, Tess and Lavinia because I really want to finish The Juniper Bones sometime over the next month, rather than go back to picking through the pieces that are beginning to make up the plot proper of Greywater. Argh, this is my major issue -- focus. And I am having some serious thoughts on this front. In fact, I'm in the process of ditching my last university paper, and focusing on my writing is one reason in the "pro" column. It's not the only one, and frankly it's not even the most major one; in the end it comes down to the fact that my job and my home life have conspired so far this year to drive me almost to point of a nervous breakdown, and I haven't done any Japanese study since about a week before I ran away to Australia for the second time in two months. I am now so behind I doubt I can catch up -- actually, no, that's a lie. I know I could. I love the Japanese language and I have a rather remarkable capacity for retaining vast amounts of knowledge for short periods. I also understand a lot more than I realise (I was dancing last night to a Moby song and my iPod, being what it is, gave way to a Code Geass cast Q&A that I was actually half-listening to without realising what I was doing before I flipped it to another track that happened to be in English). But the fact is...for all I procrastinate, I haven't the time to focus on things properly. And it's the focus that's needed to make all this worthwhile.

So, dropping this paper? Would give me time to finish these drafts, to work more on Greywater (because frankly I am shipping Círa and Otho like a mad mofo), and to edit Neverboy. This can't help but be a good thing...? And I'd like to play more with Wills. I miss him. He's actually from People In Looking-Glass Houses, but being Tess's father he's wandered into The Juniper Bones and seems to have no intention of leaving. Which is...fine, I suppose, because I was always very fond of him. I just had to cackle when I got the note back from Rachel: I LOL at the coincidence of how I get a commission for an Edwardian time traveller when I had a dream about two Edwardian time travellers a week ago. I had to respond to that with "Oh, so rather than 'THE ZOMBIES ARE COMING!' it's 'THE EDWARDIAN TIME-TRAVELLERS ARE COMING!'" which rather amused Wills-in-my-head. He's not the type to eat brains, after all. He's much better suited to a cup of tea and a sit-down. Possibly with a tesseract and a bit of discussion on the Uncertainty Principle on the side. Oh, and some Rachmanikov. Can't forget the Rachmanikov.

So, yes, I can but hope to get some work on The Juniper Bones done this weekend; certainly Morgan and Eliot are chomping at the bit, wanting to have a bit of closure to their story. In that respect, it's possibly not for the best that I've re-released the pair of them on the experimental blog Down With The Author! I suppose that teaches me, for ever thinking I've got any control over these things. Ha. The only problem with this weekend, mind, is that I have a Mission of Mercy planned to Cromwell on Saturday, involving Dora the Explorer cupcakes. And small children. Oh, god. And as I said above, those sketches...well, Círa and Otho are now my desktop background, and I just keep wanting to write more to explore their relationship and their histories and their present and their future and...

...well. I suppose it's all good, because if I am this desperate to write it...hopefully that means that one day? Someone will be desperate to read it. <3 In the meantime, though, I really ought to cast my mind back to Cambridge in the nineteen-twenties. Incidentally, I have a Companion Cube sitting beside me and I can't help but think that even though it's not a tesseract, Wills would be quite amused by the Cube. Those voices in one's head, they do make for an interesting worldview. ^_~

Writing Different Worlds

So,  today I took advantage of the wonderful local arts festival and its wonderful Readers and Writers Alive! programme, and went to a workshop based around speculative fiction. I'm pretty sure I've said before that I don't really know what genre my writing properly falls into, but considering my tendencies towards the weird and the wacky, spec fic is definitely a place where my mind is at home. So, I was quite excited about this one (although to be honest, I've been excited about all the workshops I've ever been to through Dan Davin; the ones with Owen Marshall and Gavin Bishop particularly stand out as wonderful in my memory, and I still kick myself for not going to Helen Lowe's).

Anyway, today's workshop was with Tim Jones, who was a Southland local for a while there but now lives in Wellington; I can hardly hold it against him, mind you, considering the fact that I myself am a bit of a Wellingtonian at heart. (Although how anyone could hold anything against a place that produces things like this, I don't know. I myself have a vague dream of living one day in Paekakariki, at least partly because saying it is hilarious...whether it's proper or Paekok. Ha!) We spent the workshop chatting about speculative fiction, did a couple of little exercises, and then ended with a discussion about publishing. That's definitely something I need to start focusing on, although then again I need to start finishing things first! Although with that said, Tim said that Young Adult is the genre most likely to be published by New Zealand houses, so I suppose I should really look again at the draft of The Neverboy. It's been sitting around long enough now that I can look at it semi-sensibly, so...

In the meantime, there's always Hibernaculum and The Juniper Bones to finish, and then consider trying for an agent either in Australia, the States or the UK. And I suppose there's always For What We Drown, too, but that manuscript has a gaping hole in it at the moment. The first half of the book, I think, is fine; it just needs a futher round of edits to make it tighter. The second half is a mess. I basically chopped the first three chapters to pieces and started putting it back together, and then gave up. It also requires major editing throughout because I confused myself so much in terms of the world-building of Julia's home, and...yeah. It lost momentum and cohesion fairly early on. I still think it's an interesting story and in theory it ought to be salvagable, but...yeah. It depends on my mood, somewhat. I suppose, too, it's more likely to be picked up in New Zealand than anywhere else being that its first half is set primarily in Te Anau, but we'll see.

I really enjoyed the workshop, though. It had probably the best turnout I've seen for any workshop here in good ol' Invervegas, and the people were fun. I really hope a couple of them will come to the Chapter I meeting tomorrow night. I need to make some cupcakes for that, actually. Ah, cupcakes, my old foe...

But back to the workshop -- the two writing exercises were interesting, both in the writing and then in hearing what other people did. The first was just a warm-up from a prompt, and I rather liked what I came up with in the fifteen minutes or so. Strangely, for me, it was basically a finished piece. I have no idea how many words it was, but anything less than five thousand words is a miracle on my part. I think I will have to type it out and play with it, keep it for some future submission or endeavour or whatever. The second was a bit less successful; we were just writing to show how the world was different in the story. I ended up writing something from the point of view of one of the handmaidens of the Queen of Nylurea, but I actually started, info-dumped, and then started again. That do-over, though, was quite useful for me in that it did help me examine what I was doing and how it didn't work that first time around. I would like to finish it at some point, mostly because it gives me an insight into the Nylurean culture. I'm far more familiar with Sarinian culture, as it's primarily Sarinese characters that I write, but of course there are Nylureans present in most of the stories. And I'm still fascinated by Jeramie and his love for the once-queen Kiriana, so understanding more about how she grew up...is always useful.

I never did finish those short stories for submission this month, though. I was inspired during one of my walks today, however; I think I'll try for next month's Wily Writers submission, which is to do with post-apocalyptic worlds. I've got the song Pretend The World Has Ended stuck in my head, and there's definitely a story there. I'm just not sure which world it's set in. I think it's an entirely new one, to be honest; that's a little terrifying. Maybe it's the crimson moon? Certainly thanks to Henryk Górecki and Lamb the once-opal moon has a terrible and tragic history. It seems maybe the crimson does, too.

In the meantime, I think I shall try and stop eating this evening -- I'm in the midst of a food binge, unfortunately -- and write instead. I think The Juniper Bones might be calling my name; Morgan seems to be having a temper tantrum about something. Or maybe I am just thinking ahead to the poetry workshop tomorrow. The section of TJB that I am working on now is named the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew, and opens with a nice little extract from Ash Wednesday. It's the bit with the juniper tree and its bones, even! But even then, maybe that's not it; I was thinking at the workshop today that I need to go back to the CompuServe forum and spend more time there, and I was reminded of how I had shared some little bits of this novel with them and received such support. There's little bits of poetry scattered throughout my prose, given the way I write, and especially when Eliot is thinking of Lavinia...oh, yes. So I suppose we'll end with a little of that, shall we?

The warmth of her had become as familiar as the sound of the sea, as the rhythm of the waves against the stone waterways of the city from whence he had come. Though he had never been a creature of the water, in that place it had become the touchstone of this life. Yet, in the city of marble and light, he found his rest and his sanctuary instead in the nearness of her flesh, the openness of her heart, the touch of her spirit against his. It did not matter, that he had not been born here, that this was her city. By his very nature, he should never have a home – and then the sacrifice of the widow had rendered her as homeless as he, save for the asylum of one another.

It was enough.

With the careful hand of a musician, he traced a line from the curve of her jaw down to the hollow at the base of her throat, coming to rest upon the delicate collarbone above the beat of her heart. No, this place had never been his home, and now it would never be hers again. Yet she never showed him that she mourned the loss of her human life, and for all she sometimes worried aloud about when this life was done how they should meet again in the next, he knew that she did not regret it any more than he ever could. Of course she missed the widow, worried for her peace and her soul – but Vincenzio had leaned over the other woman’s body and seen at last the peace on her face as she died for the final time. In a strange way, for a moment he had almost envied her. Then he had turned to find Lavinia standing there, his bride and his wife, and he had felt no more regrets.

Still, he thought of the place he had rested for so long, in that world now denied him. Despite being aligned with the watchtowers of the south, with the element of fire, he had been most easily summoned in an unremarkable grove of trees deep in the northern mountains. Even in his new life, he could not explain why.  There had been other ways, other places where his spirit could be invoked. But he had liked those trees. He mourned still the loss of the star-lake, the heavy scent of the silver leaves, and the silent watchfulness of the Menhir to the distant centre of the world.

“What are you thinking of?”

Startled, he looked upward to meet the sleepy gaze of her blue eyes. He had not noticed her awakening. “The place from whence I came,” he murmured, and leaned forward to press a kiss to the skin where his fingers had lingered. Already her eyes flared, dark with desire, though she had barely escaped from her dreams.

“Do you miss it?” she asked, gentle as the memory of the sea. He sighed.

“In a way.”

“Will you ever see it again, do you think?”

“Perhaps.” He did not think so, for he remembered well the dark day of the Ending, when he and all of his kin had either been sent from the world, or enslaved to those it had been given to. Though those gods had by rumour lost that influence long since, he still did not think his own kind would ever have what had been theirs once more. He could not bring himself to say her name, to bring her into their marriage bed, but he suspected that had been the reason why the widow had no longer wished to live. Their purpose had been taken from them, and filled with so little in return. But he had found a new purpose, and he leaned close to again press his lips against the rhythmic centre of her eternal life.

“It was a strange world,” he said finally, and then looked up at her with gentle trust. “But that world is gone. And here I am.”

“And I am glad for it.” Her voice was suffused with rich pleasure as she tilted her head upward, brushed her lips over the brief stubble upon his chin. “But…could we go there?”

“I do not know.” His brow creased; he had not expected her to ever want such a thing. “Do you wish it?”

“Only if you do.”

The memory of trees was like a brand upon his mind. It was true – he did want it. Though the world had changed, had gone on without him, he could not help but wonder if those trees still reached for the sky in the shadow of the great Kaverlen mountains that had sulked upon the horizon since time immemorial. It would have been years since their Ending, but the trees had been touched by his own immortality. And even should they have at last curled in upon themselves, helpless before the grinding mill of time itself, their children would have sprung from their gravewood and reached for the same stars that had once been the jewels in their parents’ silver crowns.

“Shall I take you?” he asked, and touched a chaste kiss upon her forehead. But when he rose above her again, her grin had become wicked, a promise of a world in which no sin existed, save for the denial of love and the beauty it wrought deep in the fabric of their very beings.

“Take me, husband,” she whispered, and reached for him.

He started – but a smile swiftly followed on its heels. As he leaned forward into her touch, he thought ruefully upon her capacity to surprise him still. But then, it was only ever in all the best ways.

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...

Submission: The Last Frontier

It's been a while since my last blog entry, whoops. Of course I can blame Christmas, and to be honest though I had intended to spend today writing my Boxing Day Sale Orgy and then just in general feeling really exhausted after yesterday...meant that not very much was accomplished today. And the next couple of days won't be any better, as tomorrow I intend to mainline True Blood's first season, and on Tuesday I am going to amuse myself with Baking Experiments. On Wednesday I'll be back at work! But never mind; even though the food I ate yesterday has left me quite ill today (I slept very badly last night), I have got something done.

So, the scary thing for me at the moment is actually submitting things. The local competition closed entries on Christmas Eve, so I submitted the two pieces on the 23rd to be safe. I won't hear about it for ages and I fully expect to hear nothing for either, but...I actually submitted comething. \o/ That's...a pretty big deal, for me. Then, on Christmas Day, I got a couple emails from people who'd been reading Tea For Two for me, so the writing I've done today involved reworking that. I've since formatted and spell-checked it in American English, so...it's basically ready to be submitted. I think I'll do it tomorrow. Just...bite the bullet and go for it. Again, I don't expect anything from it, but submitting anything is a terrifying experience for me. The rejection's really the least of it, but...yes.

Otherwise, I have been trying to finish the prologue of the forevergirl since Christmas Eve, being that it was a sort of pseudo-Christmas thing, being set during the Sarinian mid-winter festival. I failed at finishing it until about half an hour ago. Now it is done! ...rough as hell, of course, but it exists and that's always something. I really need to go back to editing The Neverboy now, but...yeah. My wordcount, writing-wise, has been right down the last couple of weeks. But then...Christmas, yeah? I am thinking I will do some more proper writing over New Year, but even before then I have a couple of stories I dug out today with the intention of re-jigging slightly so I can do two or three more submissions before the end of the year. One is a very curious story I wrote years ago, and I don't know that it will work at all, being that it's essentially about sexual abuse. Not that it's graphic, or anything, because the character in question dissociates himself from the entire experience, but...yeah. It made me cry when I wrote it. Which was about six years ago, now. A quick re-read shows it up for being quite rough and amateur in places, but I'd like to tidy it up a little. There's also a funny little Aidan Jannock story, and Aidan...showed up during NaNo, so I think it would be worth a re-work, too. The third is a prequel of sorts to The Neverboy, and is about Leyen's marriage to Eleni, so...we'll see, I guess. I was going to mess about with them tonight, but I seriously got about five hours sleep last night so I think a shower and an early night is in order.

I had also contemplated colouring with my Copics today, as when I was writing the bulk of this prologue the other day I got quite distracted by Eleni's chosen headdress. She wears varying forms of what is essentially a lace mantilla, which is by society's standards desperately old-fashioned. But she's fiercely proud of her Fynastran heritage and forces her daughter to do the same, even though Tara doesn't much care to be used in that way. I started looking up pictures of mantillas for visual stimulation, and then I ended up drawing a quick sketch of Tara and then Eleni in their veils. I considered colouring them today, but...I've barely managed to keep up with the writing as it is, ha. Maybe over New Year, then? Hee. But yes, this coming year...I need to keep making the effort to finish, and to submit. And if I can tame The Neverboy into a proper novel, then...it's time to start bothering agents. That's scary.

But for now...I need to write. Here's a little of what I was working on, anyway. It's...different to how I usually write, in that it's supposed to be a bit more succinct, but even then...I still do go on and on. ^_~

*****

Sighing, she shook her head, the fine lace of her veil falling across one cheek. She pushed it impatiently back. “I don’t want to go anyway. I’ll just stay here. Tell Mama I’ll be fine.”

In the silence that followed, for a moment Tara dared to believe that he’d actually listened to her. Then she turned and saw his dark eyes staring at her, incredulous.

“I can’t leave you here by yourself!” he said, and she sighed, impatient.

“Why not? I’m almost eleven. I’ll be fine.” Drawing the long veil back over her shoulders so he couldn’t see her face, she scowled fiercely. “I can look after myself.”

“Mama would kill me!” No, she wouldn’t, Tara thought sourly, but he didn’t stop. “And it would be rude; Lady Waleran’s expecting us, and we’re already so late!”

“You don’t care about being rude anymore than I do, no matter what Mama thinks,” Tara replied, and she looked down at the fine weave of her lace mantilla. She hated wearing them, they were so old-fashioned and made her look like a little china doll. But her mother insisted, and before he left, her father always made her promise to mind your mother, won’t you, Tara? “Besides, it’s not like she’s really royalty anymore anyway. Why do we have to keep pretending like she is? It’s just blood, and old blood at that. The kings and queens have been gone for hundreds of years. Why should we pretend like it still matters?”

“Do I have to drag you?”

“You couldn’t do it.” But Tara was certain she’d lost anyway. There was no real reason to stay here in the artisan’s alley of the marketplace, but still she sighed. The bustle and the crush of the marketplace was infinitely preferable over the thought of the dreary high-ceiled parlour that awaited them at Lady Waleran’s townhouse. Though it would be decorated for the mid-winter festival, with great boughs of berries and fragrant leaves, the whole house scented with delicious spices and herbs, and scattered with lamps made of jewels and gold, it didn’t really appeal. Tara had always preferred the Sun-Bear’s Awakening festival, at the end of winter. No gifts would be given nor received then, of course, but it signalled the turn of the seasons. Tara couldn’t wait. She was sick of winter. When it ended, her father would be home, if only for a little while.

Take me with you, Papa, she thought as she let her brother wind an arm definitely though hers, locking them together. I know I’m just a girl, but in the South, the girls are warrior-born. They do what they want. If you let me, I could, too.

Without another word Calden began to expertly weave through the crowds, unerring and fleetfooted. She let herself be pulled in his wake, her mantilla fluttering behind her like the delicate feathers of a baby bird. There were so many people, and she looked around in half-curiosity as her brother pulled her along. The scents of holiday food were strong in the air, sharing space with the vague panic of last minute shopping. The festival’s greatest height would occur the next day, though today there were still shows already on the raised stages and platforms about the plazas. Her feet picked up the rhythm of one song, lost it as Calden pulled her along, and away.

They wouldn’t see any of those shows tomorrow, either in the morning, the afternoon, or during the great shadow-raising of the evening. Their family always kept to the house, for they would have a steady stream of guests and tenants all day. Much as she liked the people here, Tara hated Winter’s Heart at Tiarenna, whether or father was there or not. Her mother always dressed her like a doll in silver and white. Hidden beneath her veil, she always felt that while her mother looked a queen, she only looked like death. As far as she was concerned she never needed to be there. She was just the daughter of the Lord and Lady of Tiarenna: too young to be part of adult conversations, and too young to be courted. She was just a doll, pretty and useless, and suddenly she had never been so very tired of it all.

*****