The Dream Thief...

...something new.

2010-03-01T17:13:00.000-06:00

Deeth Mahawksey

a sanguine, mild, nihilist demon. Filled with apathy until…

someone tries to summon him.

his nursemaid is kidnapped.

and he is framed for murder.

(or is he?)

Forced from his lair, he must break out of his comfortable life, forced to answer questions about what he is, what he is capable of, and what is truly important to him.

Break

2009-05-06T10:27:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the break-be back with more stories soon!

Book of Roses-Episode 4 part one "The 5 Curtains"

2009-04-28T08:03:00.001-05:00

Strega had not wandered far before she came to a doorway. However, there was no door only a thin curtain of light blue silk. Strega touched it and the curtain parted.

Behind it, she saw an immense room all painted and decorated with shades of blues and whites. As she stared at the aqua walls, frost painting appeared forming crystalline shapes. The floor looked as if it were made f thick ice but below her, through the cold glass she saw violet fish swimming about. Slowly she made her way across the strange room, past a dolphin fountain and through a fine spray of mist.

On the other side she spied a torch hanging from a wall. Near to it, another veil, this one made of woven green reeds. It too parted and she stepped through.

This room enclosed a garden. Tall trees with thin trunks and spiky leaves towered above. Yellow birds, their feathers glowing like the sun, flew through the air. The floor was carpeted with moss which sprung back after each soft step. In the ceiling, a small moon-shaped window was set and soft starlight filtered through. Where the crest of the moon fell, she found a third curtain, made of crystal and diamond beads. She peered through it, and saw herself staring back!

Book of Roses-Episode 3 "Boma Park"

2009-04-20T20:13:00.000-05:00

It was cool in the courtyard and Strega held her golden cloak tight about her. She wondered where the night would lead and stared up at the moon.

It is sometimes said that the moon drives people to do strange things and not even witches are immune to its madness. Strega shivered and C’zippa mistook the reflex as implying she was cold-which wasn’t it at all.

The two walked for a while then came upon Boma Park. Boma was a large green littered with benches and flowering trees. It was also the home to a number of satyrs; beings like fawns only more animal than man. They were content living in the wild not wearing any clothes and spending most of their time dancing, paying their flutes and sleeping.

As the young lovers entered the park a dozen or so satyrs skipped up to them, playing sweet little tunes on their pipes. C’zippa seemed shy but Strega enjoyed the creatures’ bouncy melodies. However the satyrs soon drifted off and she was left alone once again with the Prince.

Asking if she wished to sit down C’zippa motioned towards a bench. Strega sat and rested her head on his shoulder. He brushed aside her curls and bent to kiss her cheek. Strega turned her head to meet his lips with hers, a movement C’zippa had not expected. The two held the embrace then slowly released each other. C’zippa suddenly looked away, embarrassed it seemed. Strega wondered why. She thought it might be the moon.

She touched his soft cheek and brushed his smooth blond hair with the back of her hand. He caught it, then turned and laughed quietly. They rose and turned back to the palace.

Saying their goodnights Strega and C’zippa parted paths. The prince ascended the stairs to his room and Strega stayed by the door which lead back to her home. She paused, and then decided she was not yet ready to leave. It was late and all of the guests had gone. The palace was huge and she was quite sure she would not be noticed if she looked about for a bit.

Book of Roses-Episode 2 "Grand Ball of the Duljas"

2009-04-13T16:43:00.006-05:00

C’zippa gazed into Strega’s eyes, entranced by her beauty and charm. They rushed to the ballroom floor and performed as never before.

The music was the best in the land, for the Dulja’s employed only the greatest musicians. There was a beautiful centauress, an old dragonman, a dark elf and more. The strange interments they played had almost a wider variety than the players. For instance the dragonman played a strange stringed instrument. Each string was attached to a bell so that when the string was plucked, an eerie ringing accompanied it.

The song Strega and C’zippa danced to was a traditional festive song. As it played, the dancers followed a complex set of steps that included handclaps, spins and whistles. As the song reached a certain point paper dancers appeared and whirled about gracefully.

C’zippa saw nothing but Strega. He loved her madly and wanted very much to take her from the noisy, crowded ballroom and out into the moonlight were they could be alone. And so as the song ended, the two of them slipped out a side door and out into the courtyard.

Book of Roses-Episode 1 "La Strega"

2009-04-06T17:19:00.011-05:00

There once was, in a place where witches were only as good or bad as any other people, a young witch called La Strega. She lived not far from the Palace of the Duljas where young Prince C’zippa resided. Strega and C’zippa were in love but had yet to announce their marriage to the Prince’s family. Strega had no family and lived alone atop a cloud-high tower.

Once night, a blue moon night when magic coursed through the air, Strega was getting ready to go to the Royal Ball. Hurrying about the small tower room she glanced at her clock and, seeing she was already late, grabbed her fine golden cloak and scurried to her closet.

Strega’s closet was not a normal one. Being that she could use magic, she had cast the closet to be a portal between her room and Prince C’zippa’s palace. Nearing the door, she grasped the handle and threw it open.

A gust of warm sweet air hit her as she stepped lightly out of her room. Strega snapped her fingers and glitter-winged weave worms materialized in the air about her. They quickly gathered around her and knitted her a iridescent dress of mist and fine embroidered slippers. A white dove flew past, it’s wings barely touching her cheeks to apply a slight glow. She smiled as she made her way to a spiraling waterfall. Like a curtain of beads she stepped through the water, letting some of the drops gather around her dark silken hair in a wreath of pearls.

As she emerged on the other side she felt the wind and wonder of her magic transportation end and found herself in the Dulja’s royal ballroom.

Spotting young C’zippa, she went to him and, grasping his thin white hand, led him directly into a dance.

Question RE: Ambrosia-Ch.4-One Week Ago

2009-03-30T08:10:00.005-05:00

I have attached a new chapters to this post, but I'm not sure if I like it. As the story is going on, Emma is 15 and a bit of a looser. She will remain so for some time, but gain confidence in herself throughout the story. Please let me know what you think by leaving comments-thanks!

Chapter 4

~One Week Ago~

It was after a particularly unbearable day at school, and an equally agonizing evening at home that Emma was finally whisked away to another realm. She was of course, caught completely unprepared.

Not that she hadn’t been trying to escape reality for some time. The physical world she lived in on a day to day basis seemed at best, lame and at worst, outright torture. At 15, she couldn’t drive yet, didn’t have a cell phone, and didn’t really have many friends to call or visit even if she did. She lived in the country with her mom, dad, little sister Isabelle, and a menagerie of broken down horses, three legged dogs, unwanted cats and a mentally disabled goat named Bozar. Her mom was pushy, her dad was absent much of the time, her sister was a pain, which pretty much left Emma to hide in her room with her books, or out in the barn with the animals.

She loved animals. It was a statement “Doctor Mom” ridiculed her for. Emma really couldn’t stand to see the pain or suffering of living creatures; it made her ill. Her mom just so happened to be a veterinarian, which would have been great, if being a vet was anything like it was portrayed in Barbie commercials. Emma hated how kids always said they wanted to be veterinarians. They didn’t know what that was really like. What they really wanted was to have more pets. They didn’t want to set broken bones or induce vomiting or put animals to sleep. And she didn’t either; like most kids, she just wanted to pet animals and play with them and feed them treats.

Her mom was willing to give her a job at the vet office, but only if she was willing to stay put when the syringes came out. Emma wanted nothing to do with that. Although she was happy to nurse abandoned kittens or even clean out cages, she could no more give an animal a shot as she could cut off her own arm. “A little bit of unpleasantness is not the worst thing in the world,” her mom would explain as she stuck a yelping puppy with a hypodermic.

Emma said she didn’t need the money that bad.

Emma would have been surprised to hear that people thought she was at best, shy, and at worst, arrogant. She never saw herself as a quite person in part because she never realized how very little she really said to other people. She would not have been surprised to hear someone say she was “off in another world,” because honestly, that’s where she spent most of her time.

It was her father’s fault, though she didn’t blame him. She loved her father, even though he’d fallen into a routine of working early-morning and late-night shifts at his restaurant job, so she didn’t see him much any more. Still, she was proud that, growing up, he’d given her books instead of makeup, model horses instead of dolls, took her to concerts and movies instead of shopping. But in a way, it was his fault that she grew up angry and resentful towards the world around her that didn’t seem to reflect what she read about in stories or saw in films. Real life never seemed to begin “once upon a time” and didn’t usually end “happily ever after.”

This was never more obvious than it was during that fateful December day, right before winter break. It was the day that the one person she would have talked to and text messaged, if she’d had she the ability to, decided he didn’t want to talk to her anymore. It was the day Valentine broke up with her.

Valentine was in her grade; tall and gangly. She had seen him around, he was in her science class and, due to proximity and the mathematics of dividing the classroom into pairs for lab experiments, she’d actually got to be his partner a few times. She wasn’t sure why she liked him, he wasn’t abnormally funny and they certainly didn’t talk very much, but there was just something about him that made her warm and smiley.

“It was probably just his name I liked,” she thought later that night. Her misery had led her to go on a long, cold, lonely night-time walk, over the snow-covered yard, past the barn, out over the pasture and down the fence line that outlined her family’s property. She found that walking helped her think better, but unfortunately, all she could think about was Valentine.

Her mind traveled backwards in time, back to the day all of what, two weeks ago, when they’d first started going together. Valentine was standing in the lunch line, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, staring rather absently at the wall. Emma was at her locker getting her lunch bag when she noticed him. Acting on instinct and not letting herself think, for fear she’d talk herself out of it, she all but ran to get in line behind him.

“Hi,” she said. “What’s for lunch?”

“I’m getting a salad,” he said, looking at her with absolutely no expression on his face.

“Oh,” she said, realizing she had no reason to be in line since she held a crumpled grocery bag in her right hand. “I brought my lunch but I think I’ll get some supplementals.”

“Supplementals?”

“Add-ons. What goes well with bologna?”

“Yuck. You eat lunch meat?”

This reaction stunned her, and for a moment she was too embarrassed to speak. It wasn’t even what he said as much as it was the fact that he was actually talking back to her. They were, like, having a conversation. So that’s how it works! She went on. “It is meat, and I eat it for lunch. So I guess yes.”

“Bologna is not meat,” said Valentine. He had really big outstanding eyes. “It’s made of dissolved sheep heads. They drop leftover sheep heads in lye and that’s what they use to make the lunchmeat jell up.”

“Wow, I didn’t know that,” she said, looking at his lips. They were pale pink and narrow, like little kitty lips.

“You don’t have the kind with bits of cheese or olives in it do you?”

“No, this is the good kind.” Then, trying to steer the conversation away from the humiliating contents of her lunch bag, she told him about the fact that her dad worked for a restaurant. She avoided the fact that he was a waiter and not head chef, but they moved through the lunch line smoothly, and she didn’t even have to buy anything. Valentine took his salad, which he heaped with cheese and croutons then slathered with ranch dressing, and they talked and walked across the lunchroom. They sat at an empty table, and kept talking.

And thus it began. There was hand-holding and hugging and passing notes between class and annoying glances from the teachers. They partnered up all the time in science, and left notes to each other scrawled on the desks when they shared a classroom, but in different periods.

Then the stupid jerk had to go and wreck it all. Stupid tall knobby idiot boy and all his dopiness. And they never even got to the kissing stage! Bastard.

Emma crunched her way along the fence line, caught up in her own thoughts. After she’d gotten home from school that night, she’d spent most of the evening in her room. She’d cried and prayed and wished and said every magical word she could think of to try and figure out how she was going to get him back. She scribbled letters asking forgiveness, asking him to please die, and finally reached the realization that she didn’t understand why he’d broken up with her, and she didn’t know what to do. She’d blurted out her problem at dinner. Her dad wasn’t there, as usual. Her sister laughed and her mother scolded her for being too young to have a boyfriend anyways. A lot of family support they’d been. One thing she was sure of, though. She’d never wanted to escape real life more than she did right now.

She kicked at the snow, unable to cry or do anything. She walked until the dark grew dense and the moon appeared above, full and fat. She trudged over the hill and farther down the fence line, distracted from her depression momentarily by the beauty of the moonlight, which pooled into bright puddles between every rolling hill.

Then she saw movement. Something was loping along the opposite fence line. She froze. It almost looked as though a snow bank had come to life and was lumbering across the field.

“That’s a big dog,” she thought as she watched it move. This animal was white as the snow, moving slowly yet in a determined path. Its long tail stretched straight out from its body, waving like a banner.

Emma was not frightened by strange animals in the least. Living in the country, strays and neighbor’s animals were always wandering in and around their land. But this was one she’d never seen it before. If she had, she knew she would have remembered it.

It perked its ears and turned its head towards her. Then the beast began to approach. It was the biggest dog Emma could imagine. She had a momentary vision of the animal curling its lip back in a snarl, but disregarded it almost immediately. Yes, it did have a narrow, fierce, lupine face, but its ears weren’t wolf-like. They were sort of half upright, with the silky tips flopped over. Actually, it looked rather silly.

The strange dog fixed on her seated itself in the snow less than six feet away. It turned its head to nibble an itch on its shoulder then looked back at her. Kind black eyes pierced the whiteness like two charcoal lumps in a frosty snowman face.

“Aw, look at you,” she smiled, and cautiously approached. The dog stuck its nose into the snow, snuffled around for a moment, then rolled onto its back, snaking back and forth scratching that itch. She held her hand out to the animal to sniff, but it was more interested in playing in the snow. She patted its side. “Good boy.”

The animal rolled to its feet, abruptly alert. Emma pulled back her hand and quickly stood up. The dog stood too, shook the snow from its white coat and looked around. It started to whine, as if it wanted to be anywhere but where it was. Backing away from the girl nervously, almost apologetically, it trotted a few steps.

“What is it?” Emma looked behind her. She heard the sound of wind, but the air about her was still. Odd. Then, a flash lit up everything within her view as bright as day. She blinked to adjust her eyes, only to see a faint orb of light encircle her and the dog.

“Was I just struck by lighting?” her confused brain asked, but that made no sense. Still, something had happened, for there was now a full circular glow enveloping the two of them. Her eyes met the dog’s. Its ears were back flat against its skull, and her heart jumped as it let out a low, long growl.

“Whoa, it’s okay,” she tried to keep her voice from wavering. She backed towards the edge of the circle of light, but the dog dashed past her, teeth barred. Strangely, the circle of whitish yellow light followed him like a spot light. Was there a plane shining the light down from above? Emma quickly glanced up but still saw no source. “What the hell is going on!” she cried and spun around.

And came nose to nose with the scariest thing she’d ever seen.

Well, nose to empty socket where a nose should have been. The thing was shaped like a human, standing on two legs, but its body looked like it was made of dead sticks held together with tar. It’s head was like a skull with gaping black holes instead of eyes. Behind it, there appeared to be more of them. Hundreds of them. They were oddly silent, swaying and writhing shadows. Then the thing in front seemed to unhinge its jaw and all Emma saw a mouth full of pointed shark-like teeth.

She screamed. The dog barked one short, sharp bark which seemed to startle the monstrous thing. Emma turned to run, but the giant dog jumped into her way, knocking her off balance. To keep herself from falling, she found herself grasping onto the scruff of its neck. The dog wheeled and leapt forward, and before she knew what was happening, it bolted forward, dragging her across the moon-dappled field.

She had no choice but to hold on for dear life. She tried to get her footing, to run next to the dog, but it was going too fast. She could do nothing but pull herself onto its back, or risk being left behind to face those devils. As the dog ran faster and faster, a storm of snow rose around them. She looked up and could see nothing but white, and before them, the painfully bright circle of the full moon. It seemed to be coming closer and closer, blinding. She buried her head in the dog’s fur, and the light enveloped them completely.

---

It was dark. She opened her eyes. Okay, that helped.

She sat up, for she was no longer on the back of the dog. She was on the ground, which smelled of moss and of earth. Her hand rose to her throat, and she sought the comfort of her good luck charm. Finding the necklace flopping half out of her quilted blue coat, she twisted the clasp around to the back and felt the familiar roundness of the pearl in her hand. Where the hell was she? Where was the dog? And what about those devil looking things?

Her brain worked feverishly hard to connect dots and calm her nerves. “I was just riding a dog. A giant dog. A dog as big as a bear. And we galloped across the meadow.” These thoughts did not help her much, and so, finding that she had nothing wrong with her other than a bruised butt, she decided to stand. She looked up and took a deep breath.

Above her a wide canopy of tree branches hung knitted together like finely woven cloth. Some of the trees were terribly tall, and gave off the aura of something so old and sacred that she shouldn't even be looking at them. They stretched up to what seemed heaven-heights. Some trees were short and gnarly, twisted, with branches reaching upwards like the fingers of an old man. Others were wispy thin, in movement even while standing still. But, strangely, none of the trees had leaves, and despite their odd way of tangling together into a dense mat that she couldn't even see the sky through, the area where Emma stood was not dark. Brightness surrounded her and the air seemed to sway and sparkle, like she viewed the forest through a wet pane of glass. It was unsettling, this strange glen.

“I must have been sleepwalked.” Her brain halfheartedly admitted defeat, as this was the only semi-sane explanation it could come up with. “I must have been dreaming, and I sleepwalked off to some strange forest. But why isn't there snow here?” She took another deep breath, to slow her fluttering heartbeat and clear her mind. The air was so sweet she didn't want to stop inhaling. It smelled like some amazing flower, something like honeysuckle and orange blossom, a fragrance that needed wide open spaces to fill. It was tinged with cut grass and honey. Emma felt her head grow light with the scent and sighed audibly.

“Maybe I'm dreaming now.” That actually seemed to be a more plausible idea. “Although I don't feel asleep. Everything looks so real, smells real,” she put her hand out to stroke the smooth white bark of a birch trunk. “It feels real, too.”

She walked, her eyes glazing over with the strange beauty of it. She felt dizzy. There was almost no underbrush, but there was also no path to follow, and the strange way the trees seemed to play with light and air around her made it difficult to tell if the forest was getting denser or if it was thinning out. She felt warm where she was, but as she moved in one direction, things got noticeably cooler.

The absence of sound was disconcerting. She could hear no birds, no traffic, no buzzing or humming of electric lights or insects. No plane flew overhead, no leaves rustled. The place was quite - silent like a temple or a church.

She was pretty certain she was drawing near the edge of the forest, for the chill was mounting. The pinky-orange glow seemed to fade to a resolute flat daytime light, and she saw, beyond the last line of trees, an open field of low grass. Then, almost as if she were pushed, she found herself outside the glen.

She looked around to get her bearings. Behind her was the forest she had just tumbled out of. But, strangely, it didn't appear to be any different than any other grove trees she had ever seen. She tried sticking her head between the trees only to see more branches and an amazing wall of brambles she was sure had not been there before.

Her head was spinning, and she credited it to whatever she’d been inhaling. The portion of forest she was in now was open, like a huge park. Bare trees stretched up into the light grey sky. The ground was covered with a carpet of half-rotted leaves and pine needles, along with stones and moss and tufts of various grasses. The texture of the landscape felt good to gaze upon, but at the same time, utterly unfamiliar.

Dell the Elf - a story scrap

2009-03-23T22:26:00.003-05:00

Dell the elf was pretty much a jerk. That’s most of what I remember of him from college. I met him on a late February day; a day when the snow had melted and refrozen so many time that it no longer looked like snow. Caked with sand and strewn upon the brown grass, it looked more like chunks of broken buildings. The temperature of the air had slithered up into the 40s and so my long winter coat had been set aside in favor of my blue quilted jacket. I was walking to class, alone in a crowd as usual, lost in thought-also as usual. I spent a lot of my college years wandering around in a haze, mindlessly day tripping in some fantasy world. Looking back now, I should have spent less time drugged out on pirate ships and pixie dust and more time fretting about things like whether my course work would lead me to the correct career path and doing stuff like joining the sailing club. Of course if I’d done that, I’d never have met Dell, and I wouldn’t be one of only three known Americans ever to travel “Over There” (I was the Student. The others were the Warrior, the Explorer and the Healer. More about them later.)

Dell was under a bridge. It was a pedestrian bridge which led from a walkway down a steep incline and into the Communications Hall building. I wasn’t looking for him or anything, which of course is the reason I could see him. I was actually momentarily distracted from the internal chaos of my head by a dirty pile of snow someone had modeled into the semblance of a snowman. It had caution tape wrapped around its neck for a scarf and wore a traffic cone hat.

Now, college kids are weird, and normally I probably would have glanced up and seen the figure and just kept walking, but Dell’s position under the bridge was just a little too perfect. Wedge a human up under the concrete where the walkway meets the hill and he would be crouched and bent and trying desperately to appear cool and affecting while lounging in a precarious and utterly pretentious pose. A human would also be in shadow, whereas Dell seemed to be lit from some unseen source.

And, weirder than weird, I instantly knew his name was Dell.

I stopped in my tracks and blurted out, “Dell? What are you doing here?”

He looked up. His face was dark skinned with large bright eyes, and his hair scrubby and short. His nose, mouth and chin were small though, giving him an unearthly almost alien appearance. He slid down the embankment calmly and shut the small book he’d been reading in my face.

He seemed much too tall to be an elf, but then I had to remind myself that elves were not, as Rankin Bass would like us to believe, little guys in green that make toys for Santa. They are a race spoken of in German stories that are usually portrayed as young, attractive forest folk. Dell wore a tight-fitting blue and black jerkin with a dark green vest and black leather pants. His boots were also black and looked like they were made of suede. He’s movements didn’t make a sound.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked. His voice was mellow and whispery and, well, fae.

“No,” I said, coming at least partially back to my senses. “I’m going to class. Sorry.” I hunched over and started walking away, deciding to just ignore the incident as my imagination running away from me.

I only took about four paces though, before a hole seemed to open up in the pavement in front of me. My heart skipped as I teetered on the edge for a split second. Other students didn’t even pay me heed and just walked straight on over the gaping blackness. Dell walked up behind me and I felt his hand touch me lightly on the back.

“Jump or be dumped, your choice.”

“No! I don’t want to go!” My mind was rather surprised at this reaction. Hadn’t I been wishing for years to be able to step through a door and escape the mundane world? Okay, this was a little scarier than a door, but here was my chance to travel to another world! Why would I hesitate? “Will I be able to come back?”

Dell rolled his eyes. “Yessss” he hissed, and shoved.

I wasn’t ready to go yet, though, and I swung around and dug my fingernails into his sleeve. “Wait! Don’t push me!” He was more than annoyed that I was not only holding onto him, but I had also thrown him off balance and he had to struggle to stay upright which broke his aura of perfection. “You promise you’ll answer all my questions?”

“Yeah yeah, whatever.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, now let go of me!” He tore his arm away from me and I fell backwards through the void.

Ambrosia-book1-ch.3

2009-03-18T20:18:00.002-05:00

Chapter 3

~Two Nights Ago~

He ran hard and fast. A stitch at his side was causing him to slow, but he pressed on. He knew he was still a good twenty lengths ahead of his pursuers. The dogs, however, were only ten away.

Nickabar shot through the dense woods, zigzagging forward to keep ahead and still confuse the trail. The baying hounds were coming closer, and behind them, the hoof beats of the riders. The feeling of panic did not overwhelm his thoughts, even as his foot landed splashing and slipping in a small stream. He had been in this sort of situation before.

Looking up, he leaped into the branches of a large tree and hung expertly upside down from its limb. Reaching into one of his vest’s many pockets, he unbuckled a small vial of powder. Flipping its top open, he dumped the contents onto the ground around the stream bank. Fine gray powder sprinkled down onto the wet leaves, dissolving almost instantly. Flipping himself back into the tree, he scrambled as well as any squirrel into the dark recluse of the shadows. He gasped once and held his breath.

In a flash, six low, lean figures appeared below him. That was not good; they’d been closer than he’d thought. The collars around their necks told him that they were trained thief trackers, hunters of the utmost breeding. He hadn’t taken that into account. He watched carefully, freezing every muscle and hoping that the dogs would not be immune to the crisroot powder he had used on the ground beneath him.

“We know you’re in there!” The deep voice made his heart skip as the two riders entered the forest glen. “If you give yourself up now and hand over the item, we promise you won’t be killed!”

“Sure,” he thought, “when lambs eat wolves you smooth talkers.”

The riders came into view, both mounted high on a pair of perfectly matched roan beauties. They reeked of nobility and the boy began to wonder what exactly he had gotten himself into. The dogs circled the area, confused. Some ran into each other, sneezing as they tried to follow the nonexistent tracks. Nickabar grinned to himself as he listened to the men muttering curses below.

“Call the dogs off; it’s another one of those gypsy tricks. The kid is gone, and so is your amulet.”

The second man swore loudly and cursed all gypsies. A look of disgust marred his well groomed face. Then he whistled to his dogs.

Even as they began to retreat, Nick didn’t trust them. He decided to stay in his treetop nest rather than risk being caught seeking a shelter for the night. It wasn’t the first time he’d slept like a bird, and he wedged himself into the cradle of two branches. Before drifting off, though, he fished around in another pocket and pulled out the palm-sized amulet. Turning it over in his hands, he let his thumb trace the spider web pattern on one side. Another empty magic item, of no practical value. Suddenly, a raven screamed loudly into his ear. Nick jumped and juggled the amulet, almost loosing it in the darkness. The bird took off as he stored the amulet back in his pocket. He watched the bird fly off silhouetted against the full moon.

Poll closed for 3/16/09

2009-03-16T20:33:00.003-05:00

The first poll is closed and there was one vote for Ambrosia! So read below for part 2, or click "Ambrosia" in the left column and read from the bottom up.

Please leave comments after Part 2, and thanks for your participation!

Ambrosia-book1-ch.2

2009-03-16T20:11:00.002-05:00

Chapter 2

~Fourteen Years Ago~

Jael hugged his skinny knees to his chest. The glaring sun had risen high into the sky but did not offer any warmth to the land or to the boy perched on the steps of the empty cottage. Jael was alone, numb almost to the point of not caring. At the same time, a spark burned within him with such a harsh intensity, he could barely contain it. Fury.

They had left him. He had known they would, deep in his heart he had known for some time. Yet he never really expected it would happen. He kept alive a hope that he would be forgiven, or somehow cured of his agonizing “disease”. Now he realized that they had given up on him. His mother and perfect baby brother, and probably his brother’s wayward father: that damn woodsman. If ever he caught them, he’d grab that brute’s pancake-sized hands and dance him around and around, setting his veins aflame. Or, better yet, he’d seize his fat, disgustingly sun-baked face and swing him around by the jowls, listening to him scream as his mind was ripped apart. Just imagining that made Jael giggle a little to himself.

“You.”

The word came out of nowhere, spoken in a hollow tone, as if the wind itself were talking. A shadow fell over Jael, and he raised his eyes to find a dark form towering over him. He started. The form was draped in a heavy cloak and backlit by the sun. He couldn't see the man’s face, but he shivered with renewed cold and something else.

“What?” Jael asked, not so frightened that he wasn’t embarrassed at the sound of his voice cracking.

“They left you.”

Before Jael could think up a reply, a gnarled hand shot out of the shadow and landed on his shoulder, and he felt the sweet relief he always did when someone made physical contact with him. He gasped and involuntarily tried to jerk away. The man did not pull his hand back in shock, though. Instead, the hand convulsed, and talon-like nails bit into his shoulder.

“My Lord,” said the man, “you are more powerful than I expected.”

Jael reached up and grabbed the man’s hand, spuriously to try and throw it off. It was warm, rough, alive. Jael felt like a drowned cat clawing its way out of a stream as he clung to the hand, terrified and confused. “Doesn’t it hurt you?” he choked.

The man took Jael’s other shoulder and roughly pulled the boy to his shaky feet. The throbbing in Jael’s temples dissapeared and warmth flooded his extremities. It had been ages since someone had stayed in contact with him for this long; no one had been able. It felt so good, so freeing, he could barely believe it. His mother hadn’t been able to touch him for any length of time, not even when he was a baby. He could only imagine it was because she couldn’t stand to feel what he felt every waking moment. It wasn’t just the physical pain of his joints and the ache behind his eyes, the confusion and anger affected him mentally, clouding his mind. When someone touched him, though, all that evaporated. He just hung there like a rag doll.

“Do you know what you are?” asked the man.

Jael nodded dully. “Monster.”

The man made a breathy sound that Jael decided must be laughter and said, “we are two of a kind then, you and I.” The man turned so that his face was toward the sun.

Jael stared at the man’s face and gulped. The bald head was speckled with brown spots. His deep-set eyes were like black pebbles, his chin, boney and pointed, and his mouth - it was inhuman. It stretched literally from ear to ear and was filled with row upon row of white, triangular teeth.

A demon.

Jael struggled, and the stranger let go. The demonic visage disappeared, and before him stood an old man in a heavy cape, with a normal-sized mouth and dark, knowing eyes. Jael stumbled back into the doorway of the cottage, grasping the door-jam as the pain came rushing back thought every sinew of muscle, stabbing shards of broken glass through his arms and legs and chest. He was filled with questions, filled with fear. He had felt relief from the curse that had haunted him since the day he’d been born, but at the hands of one who spoke with and controlled the evil spirits that waited, just below a thin layer of magic, to once again rule the Whorld. The most powerful of magic users. A Demonbayer.

“I'm not like you,” the boy cried out. “I’m not a demon!”

“There is nothing for you here,” the Demonbayer said with a wave of his hand. “You have nowhere to go. You have no one. You know why your mother left. Follow me, and I promise I will pass no judgments. Unlike the woodsman and his lot who will be here any moment. If you want them to put you out of your misery for good, then by all means stay.”

The man turned away from him and Jael felt words of protest die in his throat. He struggled to absorb all that the man had said. There was nothing left for him here, only loneliness and pain and, if the man spoke the truth, death. But what sort of life awaited him with a Demonbayer? The freedom to explore his new-found powers. And relief. And perhaps, answers to his many questions. Why had he been born like this? What had he done to deserve this misery? This man - this caller of demons - seemed to know more about him than anyone else ever had. The Demonbayer was not afraid, was not disgusted by him. In fact, he had come to Jael, to save him from his wretched life.

Jael uncurled his fingers from the wooden doorframe. The Demonbayer was walking away, across the small clearing and towards the dim forest beyond. Jael hesitated no more and dashed to his side. The Demonbayer reached out and put his arm around Jael’s shoulders. They walked away from the cottage, and Jael never looked back.

A ritually updated writing online experiment.

2009-03-09T22:42:00.001-05:00

Things they are a changing.

This blog is morphing into a repository for some of my story-bits. Please click on any of the stories listed at the left, then vote for which story you’d like to see more of and I will do my best to provide. I shy away from calling this project a “web-novel” or “wovel,” mainly because it’s such a horrible name. Also, I am working on a few different stories so I leave it up to you what I will work on next. Once the first poll ends, I may change the poll each week to ask which way a story might head-sort of like a large scale “Choose your own Adventure.”

The Adventures of Shannon Pasha-Book 1-start

2009-03-09T22:40:00.003-05:00

Chapter 1

“It’s the sun!” I yelled, hanging most-way out the open window of my all-but-parked on the freeway Plymouth Horizon. “It’s always there!” Exasperated, I shook my open hand, palm up, one more time at the long lazy line of cars stretched out ahead of me before letting it fall loudly against the side of the car. Heading East in the early morning, sun glare backups are common but to me, mind boggling. Hadn’t any of these people ever heard of sunglasses? I slurped coffee from my travel mug and, though a semi-karmic force, dribbled Columbian Roast down my front.

“I should just wear a bib.” I thought. I held the mug between my knees, since the 1989 Horizon is from a pre-cupholder era, and dabbed unhelpfully at the coffee stain with an errant napkin. “Actually, I just shouldn’t be drinking coffee at all. It’s and addiction and it shows weakness of the character and is bad for my breath and teeth and what else, heart? And it destroys the rain forest and fuels the conglomony of Maxwell House. From now on, I am just going to buy fair trade, organic, locally roasted, bird friendly peace-coffee.” Giving up on the brown stain drying neatly in the center of my light-blue polo shirt, I inched the car, Christened “Dante,” forward.

I tried not to look at the clock. I rarely wore a watch but had placed a sticky-backed travel clock on the dash in such a way that it was obscured by the steering wheel. Of course everything in the Horizon was obscured by the steering wheel unless you were a seven foot tall hunchback. But my wavering eye strayed and I saw it was nineteen minutes after.

God, I was going to be late again. Working at a Zoo was not all it was cracked up to be.

Chip was going to be furious, and I still had to stop for the damn donuts. I cranked up the volume on my radio, blasting Kiante’s “Morning Cutlery” college radio show so loud the mesh covered speakers rattled irritably. Loud music was like Prozac. When one didn’t have money, clean clothes, air conditioning or donuts, one still had the ability to blast loud punk music to rattle the hatchback windows.

The music mellowed my mood and I slipped into the Zen of stop and go traffic: clutch, break, first gear, release break, clutch, gas, OM. What a modern mantra. Sighing, I slipped from fury into “the Zone,” driving like automatic writing the path I take to work each day, drifting towards the exit lane as my turn off approached.

I let my mind wander and started brainstorming what b-roll Chip and his Channel 6 production crew might shoot for the weekly kids television show, “You Belong At the Zoo” (dissatisfactorily abbreviated YBATZ) Granted, I should have had the schedule all written out, typed in Courier 14 point double-spaced, double-sided, but YBATZ was no Sesame Street. Hell, it wasn’t even as well produced as “Cooking with Mr. Food”. It usually consisted of Shannon pitching interesting and educational stories to Chip, and Chip replying “what else do you got?”

When I finally pulled into the employee parking lot and spied Chip’s Channel 6 van, I realized I’d forgotten the donuts. “Shit.”

But then she saw something odd. Not only was Chip’s big white van in the lot, but Channel 10 and 12 were there as well. The only time more than one news crew made it out to the Onami Zoo was when there was a birth or severe weather (one of those “what do you do with the animals on a hot day” fluff pieces).

Telove-prolog

2009-03-09T22:36:00.003-05:00

Prolog

Kabris waited as if suspended in a dream. Long, narrow legs folded beneath him, his cape hanging limply at his shoulders. He was a great bird in hibernation. He drew slow and constant breaths. It was the only movement - the gentle in and out of his chest - that proved he was alive. Behind his closed eyes, behind the darkness of his trance, he was deep in concentrated thought. And all of his thoughts were concentrated on Match. The One-who-would-surpass, his equal in power, even while only half his age. The One-who-would-surpass, the dark eyes of his nightmares. The One-who-would-surpass, the one thing that kept Kabris alive. His chest rose and fell, the slim hands folded across bended knees. Sickly thin from the fast, paper white from the immeasurable time spent underground. Kabris used his mind to keep the constant vigil, knowing that someday, the young untrained mind of the One-who-would-surpass would give him the extra energy he needed to break from his tomb. He only knew what he expected, he only knew what he had dreamed of and imagined for all the days that added to months which added to years that Kabris had sat. He had spent the first while conditioning his body, breaking what natural barriers he could with magic or willpower. He had overcome the need for strength, he had overcome the need for little more than token nutrition taken mostly from the air. He breathed in. He breathed out. He reduced the need for movement, and devoted all of his energy to the search, the hope, the dream, and the knowledge that Match would be presented to him.

Then a flicker. Only light, like a moth wing. A touch that the untrained would surely ignore. Kabris’ eyes sprung open, pupils wide to almost complete blackness. He had felt it. And he knew it. Match, the Nightflame, the One. But Kabris had other plans. He knew his role in the life of the young prophet, knew his destiny as a teacher to the greatest being that would ever be born of the small planet Telove. But Kabris had decided, in the years of banishment, not to let Match surpass him. He knew that if he could hold him in check, the power of the boy would become his own. And he knew that when this happened, all the years alone and patient to the point of madness, would be worth it.

When he had descended, been forced into the cave, he had been a Nightflame himself. But as he now unfolded his tall thin form, he was reborn. He felt the trembling of life and energy and the flow of power from the untrained soul of Match Nightflame through the soil and rock above him. The opportunity was now upon him. No need for elaborate spells or gestures, Kabris used the power of his mind to wrap around the needed strength and use it to overcome the barriers that had been placed centuries ago on the cave to keep him contained. It was easy as stroking a kitten.

He rose through stone without so much as disrupting a particle. Up though the ground, he winced and smiled as the sunlight hit his pale skin, his crystal blue eyes. He truly was reborn, in the white and glaring gaze of the benevolent Gaithperia. He was no longer a Nightflame. He was now a Whiteflare.

Candleboy-first start

2009-03-09T22:32:00.004-05:00

First start..

I won’t live to see 20. That’s what the doctors say. My body is hot to the touch. My blood could boil at any minute.

I don’t have a home, but I live with many people. Just not all at the same time. Nick is one of the people I live with. He’s 28. He runs a hole-in-the-wall bookstore on 3rd street. I don’t think it even has a name. It just has “Bookstore” painted on the side of the building that we all live in. It’s not a dirty bookstore, either. It’s that actual real bookstore that keeps old, rare copies of Shakespeare and Homer and has sections on Metaphysics, History and Art. Nick loves me. I do not love him. Not like that.

Tansy is a girl. She has huge tattoos of waterfalls on her back and black tribal bands on both her arms, but you can still see the scars. Tansy is 22 and works at a bar. She lives in an apartment with Sean.

Sean is Irish. He steals.

Tamora is a witch. She and her brother Naytan live together and practice their rituals on the ever-changing array of ladies that work this part of the city. I don’t know what kind of rituals they practice.

My Father died in a house fire I set. My Mother ran away after he died and I ran in the other direction. I lived with an uncle for a while here in the city until my Mom sent me a letter. Then I got lost in the city and was never found.

I’ve had that damn letter from Mom for so long. Then one night, it was raining and my body was steaming and sirens were wailing in the background and I decided to burn Mom’s letter.

I didn’t know if I felt freedom or despair as I watched the corners of the paper turn black in my hands. I didn’t want to feel anything. I wanted to cry and to scream. But all I did was watch the corners of the paper turn black.

Then Tansy found me and told me that Nick was dead.

It was raining, and the air was dense with wet hot dogs, wet hot dog venders, gas, oil, vinyl. Wet cats, drenched anthills, garbage and the faint smell of sulfur.

Rain is nice, I decided. I like the way it makes me feel. How everyone else must feel. Lucky bastards. Not that I’m bitter. The fact that a lot of people have it easier than I do doesn’t make me bitter. Going through life as a medical hazard that could spontaneously combust at any moment isn’t enough. Just because my projected life span is less than 30 years. It’s not the length of one’s life that counts, it’s what one does with the intervening time that counts, right?

I was just thinking it would be a good time to go and see Nick. He misses me. I know. I’ve never been in love. I should word that better, I never let myself fall in love. I have enough to deal with.

But Nick does love me, I’m afraid. I’ve tried reason and I’ve tried renunciation. Now I just let him do whatever - he can watch me, he can hold my hand if it makes him happy. But he knows about me, and he knows my days are numbered. And though he doesn’t think I know, he keeps one of those candles in a Jesus jar burning next to that old picture of me.

Candleboy-second start

2009-03-09T22:27:00.002-05:00

It was raining, and the air was dense with wet hot dogs, wet hot dog venders, gas, oil, vinyl. Wet cats, drenched anthills, garbage and the faint smell of sulfur.

Rain is nice. I like the way it makes me feel. My body steamed as the droplets of fine mist hit my hands and evaporated. Sirens were wailing in the background and I decided to burn Mom’s letter.

I watched the corners of the paper turn black in my hands. I didn’t want to feel anything. Freedom, despair. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or scream. All I did was watch the corners of the paper turn black.

I’ve had that damn letter from Mom for so long. Ever since I got lost in this city. Ever since the arson investigation ended and I was cleared. Legally, my name may have been cleared, but my conscience wasn’t. I knew I killed him.

I was just thinking it would be a good time to go and see Nick. He misses me. I know. I’ve never been in love. I should word that better, I never let myself fall in love. I have enough to deal with.
But Nick does love me, I’m afraid. I’ve tried reason and I’ve tried renunciation. Now I just let him do whatever - he can watch me, he can hold my hand if it makes him happy. But he knows about me, and he knows my days are numbered. And though he doesn’t think I know, he keeps one of those candles in a Jesus jar burning next to that old picture of me.

I won’t live to see 20. That’s what the doctors say. My body is hot to the touch. My blood could boil at any minute.

I walked towards the building we Tansy is a girl. She has huge tattoos of waterfalls and black tribal bands on both her arms, but you can still see the scars. Tansy is 22 and works at a bar. She lives in an apartment with Sean.

Sean is Irish. He steals.

Tamora is a witch. She and her brother Naytan live together and practice their rituals on the ever-changing array of ladies that work this part of the city. I don’t know what kind of rituals they practice.

My Father died in a house fire I set. My Mother ran away after he died and I ran in the other direction. I lived with an uncle for a while here in the city until my Mom sent me a letter. Then I got lost in the city and was never found.

I’ve had that damn letter from Mom for so long. Then one night, it was raining and my body was steaming and sirens were wailing in the background and I decided to burn Mom’s letter.

I didn’t know if I felt freedom or despair as I watched the corners of the paper turn black in my hands. I didn’t want to feel anything. I wanted to cry and to scream. But all I did was watch the corners of the paper turn black.

Then Tansy found me and told me that Nick was dead.

Nick rans a hole-in-the-wall bookstore on 3rd street that didn’t even have a name. It just has “Bookstore” painted on the side of the building that we all live in. It’s not a dirty bookstore, either. It’s that actual real bookstore that keeps old, rare copies of Shakespeare and Homer and has sections on Metaphysics, History and Art. Nick loves me. I do not love him.

2009-01-23T10:41:00.001-06:00

Emma's mom is too strict.
(She's actually a magical Dreamkin in disguise!)
Her dad is lazy.
(He's a former thief who stole the most important item in all of Ambrosia!)
Her little sister is annoying.
(Well... she is!)

And Emma just wants to escape them all.
(But when she does, she finds out the fantasy world she escapes to is just as complex and even more dangerous than she ever imagined!)

2007-11-17T17:51:00.000-06:00

Yes, well, need to update. Sufficed to say, this project has not gone away. If anything, the residents of Ambrosia have gained strength and are insisting that I finish their story before allowing me to move onto more fiscally responsible projects. I need a big white board to map out the plot I think. That, and I want to adopt the "band-aid" mentality of writing - just rip it off. It has been one year since Write A Novel In A Month month, and I can't say I'm that much closer to having a finished project. Oh well.

Ambrosia-book1-ch.1

2007-06-16T11:47:00.003-05:00

Chapter 1

~ Day Two ~

Emma crouched in the cold, distracted from the wonders of being in the Dream Kingdom by her own stench. “I stink,” she thought. “I think I smell worse than I have ever smelled before. I smell like old rotten onions.” Despite the cool air, flies buzzed annoyingly over the brushy undergrowth where Emma and her tall, dark companion, Ian, had taken cover. He smelled like a wet dog. She shivered and hugged her shoulders. Out of habit, she brought her fingertips up to her mouth to nibble, but luckily glanced down at them first. “Look at my nails!” she thought, “Ew, they’re all black underneath. What I wouldn’t give to just wash my hands in warm soapy water.” She smiled in spite of herself and closed her eyes. “And a bath! A nice, hot bath.” The wind picked up just then, and Emma shivered. She tucked her nose into the front of her jacket. Her voice muffled by the fabric she said aloud, “this sucks.”

“Quiet,” Ian hissed through clenched teeth. Her guide in this new strange world was in his mid-twenties, handsome, and had all the charm and personality of hemorrhoid – a pain in the butt who was quick to irritate. Dressed in black leather and fur, like some reject from a renaissance fair, he was hunched over, starring hawk-eyed through the dense yet leafless branches of the bushes off into the distance.

She popped her nose out of her jacket and whispered back, “I don’t even know what I’m doing here! I don’t know who you’re fighting or how or why! All I know is that I am sick of smelling like a hamburger!”

“Then shut up and stop thinking,” Ian said, not looking at her.

“Jerk,” she thought, and decided to chew her nails regardless.

To pass the time, she took stock of her situation, from the ground up. “My toes are frozen, my socks haven’t been changed for days, my shoes are muddy, I’m wearing the only pair of jeans I have here and the knees are stained and if I knew I was going to end up in another world, I’d have worn my good jeans and not these stupid old ones. I’m not even going to think about my underwear!”

To her right, she heard a twig snap. She gasped and looked at Ian, who had not moved.

“Squirrel,” he said.

Emma though, “whatever Mr. I’m-so-cool. So you can hear the difference between a squirrel rustling through the branches, and those nasty whatever-they-ares.” She shivered, remembering her encounter back home in the dead of night with the dark beasts, all claws and teeth and bones held together by swaths of leathery skin. She felt a chill pass over her, and the fact that she was very far from home hit her as it had a few times since she’d arrived in this world Ian called Ambrosia. It was a sickening, scary sadness that formed a lump in her throat. And it made her reach for the silky chain she wore around her neck. She tugged it out from beneath her shirt so she could clutch the single teardrop-shaped pearl her father had given her as a good luck charm years before. She did it almost unconsciously, in the same way she threw the necklace over her head every morning without even thinking about it. She rolled the pearl between her fingertips; it was just a silly old piece of costume jewelry he’d picked up somewhere. At least that is what she’d thought.

“What are you doing with that?” Ian broke the silence and slapped Emma’s hand over the pearl. “Put that away! Even just agitating it could alert evil forces to the fact that we’re here.”

“Sorry,” she said, trying to seem unconcerned, but she hastened to tuck the necklace back under her shirt, laying it against her skin as Ian had told her to. Apparently she was the necklace’s Possessor, whatever that meant. According to Ian, it was only safe when it was touching her. It didn’t feel like anything special, though. It didn’t look magical. “But for some reason, Ian seems to think it’s some sort of icon. Something that’s going to help heal this muddy, cold, leafless land. How? Why me? And where the hell did my dad get a magical necklace?”

“There.” Ian’s whisper was tense.

Emma looked up. There was movement, and even she could see it was something bigger than a squirrel that was coming out of the enchanted forest known as the Visionary. “What is it? Is it one of the demons? What am I suppose to do?”

Beside her, Ian said, “hold on.” He had both hands on the fur-lined edge of his hood and pulled it up, completely covering his face.

“No wait,” Emma said in a panic, but her companion had already begun his transformation. “We don’t even know what it is!”

She looked away from the black, melting form of Ian, back out towards the Visionary. Something very familiar stepped from the trees, and her heart sank. “Oh no! What the? Ian, no! Wait!” She turned back to see a huge black stallion standing where Ian had been. The horse tossed its head, ready to crash through the brush.

“No! Can’t you see?” Emma said, standing up and feeling the pins and needles in her legs from crouching in one position for too long. “Wait!”

But the horse hesitated just for one moment, and Emma knew that if she didn’t climb onto his back, she’d have no chance of stopping him. So she entangled her fingers into his mane and threw her leg over his broad side. Before she could even settle herself, he pounded forward towards the thief.

2007-05-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, this blog has confiscated by the Queen of the Unknown, Mr. Jael Merripen (hey, if Ambrosia is a Kingdom ruled by a Prince, then my little domicile can be ruled by a male queen!!!!!!) All of you just go about your business, oblivious as usual to what is stirring right under you noses, beneath the thin skin of reality. Yup. Don't mind those eyes staring at you from under the bed, or that flash of movement you see out of the corner of your eye. It's nothing. Not demons waiting to pounce and devour you or nothing. Nope. Don't think you heard anything in the other room or anything. Best you don't go "check it out."

Ah my, this keyboard is a trial. Give me the quill of any large fowl that takes its route over the Unknown and a jar of dark red ink any day. Even the feather of a poppinjay's own angel wings would work better (but they do so hurt when I pluck them!)

I would like to say, I do at times miss the olden days. When I lived outside of this stagnant wasteland and was able to stalk Dreamkins like the most pompous game, training with dear old Asean, cursing the damned Goddess for her games and wondering where in the bloody world that Pearl went to. Now my days are spent feasting on fungus, drinking Unknown wine (the secret ingredient is fungus!) and oh yes, planning my revenge on everything! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

Oh I am so glad I got in a bout of manic laughter! Now let's see, what other villain-y stereotypes I can evoke. Obviously this all stems from my relationship with my mother. We all have mother-issues, don't we? Especially those of us born with half a soul. Do you know what a pain that is? Literally - it hurts! So much so that as a baby I just cried and cried. Add to that the fact that the soul is in a constant search for wholeness, and so whenever it comes in contact with another, it pulls and pulls, trying to make itself whole again. Well, that's a great relief to me, but rather a reflexive problem for the person I am touching. So yes, mother dear and I did not have the closeness usually associated with such a relationship.

I also hate my brother. Mainly because he's perfect in every way - right down to having not only both halves of his soul in-tact, but in the fact that he is what I was meant to be - a DreamKin. Oh yes, he is able to change fully into a cute little puppy, a noble owl or a fearsome warhorse just by melting into its form like a showy young pile of black goo. Bastard.

And let us not talk about my stepfather. Bad things happened to him, and I can't say I have any regrets that he was made of a meat found to be a delicacy by demons.

But as I stated, that was a long time agone. (Ooh think I just made a new word! Agone - how olde tyme does that sound? Very fanciful and nice, I think I shall use it again in the future.) I am over my whole feeding-families-to-demons phase. Now I'm really just trying to get a little relief while enjoying the quiet solitude of my confinement. Is there anything wrong with enlisting an underground army of the young in order to put the Whorld back the way it was before we all got here? Very noble if you ask me, to be loyal to those that have come before. To recall the days when good old Nyuben was creating the place I now call home, while his annoyingly immaculate brother brought into creation that stupid forest. What was he thinking!? A forest that isn't really a forest, that brings magic to this land from another? Well of course you are going to have people learn to use magic for their own gain - its in their survival nature to do so. Anyway, he's the one that screwed it all up. That darn Nickabar. Id love to have a drink with Nyuben; I think we'd have a lot in comon. If only he wasn't so dead.

Anyway, must tootle off now. Things to do, people to harass, children to intimidate, moldy wine to drink. Oh, one last thing; I have a feeling that someone, perhaps a girl-someone, perhaps in the possession of that Pearl I spoke of earlier, may be coming to try and rain on my parade. Please, if you happen to see her, try your best to detain her. I have a lot riding on this, and the last thing I need is some curly-haired fifteen year old other-worlder stumbling around with some sort of oracle of the Goddess coming in and falling in love with me or something. Would muck up the whole system.

Blowing you all Kisses (except any woodsmen out there - you get a big crackly hug!)

~ Jael M.

2007-04-28T15:20:00.001-05:00

Written 3/15/07

Okay. Have not blogged in a bit. But I just realized something. For some time, I have wondered if I am just dense. So many times I accept things at face value, and find it easier to just roll with it. I mean, so often I am faced with a problem and, rather than solve it by looking at it from a new and different perspective, I just find a way to live or work around it. I have been wondering if this means I am stupid; like I can’t think of solutions. Well, I was just writing (don’t let anyone ever tell you writing is a waste of time! you learn the most amazing things) and my character admits that she sees things out of the corner of her eye all the time. One could easily explain this away as a peripheral reflection, a trick of the light, a flutter of one’s hair in the wind. My character always just says “must be fairies.” I am this way with certain things. Rather than trying my darndest to understand some things, I usually find it so much easier (and more calming) to chalk it up to magic. I will never be a professor, or engineer, or great leader this way, but I will be much more fanciful and interesting (and will continue to admire and loath people who aren’t so distracted by such things.)

So yes, for all of March I have been very diligently working on my novel every Tuesday and Thursday. OMG – what a mess. I have FINALLY moved out of the real-world, and have come to the conclusion that, at least for the next version, I will probably cut all of what I have written OUT. It is not really part of the story. It is good for me to know what comes before the story actually starts, but it really has no point as far as plot goes. If it turns out I need to reference things as things progress then yes, I will probably add parts back in. But as of right now, that’s the plan.

And god I’m hungry for Mexican food!

2007-01-27T09:41:00.001-06:00

Is it just me or does that deer have some wolf-like qualities?

Tallest horse in Britain - Crackers.

2007-01-23T09:17:00.000-06:00

I feel like such a bad writers-group member! I had exactly one thing to share two weeks ago, and have been rewriting the same chapters over and over again since then. Well, you will all be happy to know that I have FINALLY moved on to Ch. 3! I will not tell you how many chapters the final book has, because, well, I don't want to think about it.

And it is rewriting, not just editing. The pile of crap I wrote in November is really just starting material. I described it as a big tangle of yarn. I think it will eventually knit itself into a book, but there are a lot of really knotted sections that need to be smoothed out. I mean, at first I had my main character's Mom give her a ribbon to protect her from the fairies, then I had her Dad give her a nickel, then a talisman, and now... well, I can't tell you because hopefully this gift will stick.

"What is it?"

"It's a good luck charm."

"But what is it?"

He tucked her covers in tightly around her body and kissed her forehead. "Don't try too hard to figure it out, love. That's what makes the magic disappear."

2007-01-14T12:45:00.000-06:00

Chapters: When I'm reading a book, I like medium-length-to-short chapters. That way I can always convince myself, "just one more chapter and then I'll go to sleep." I like the lengths to be varied so that some times I can't make it to the end.

When I'm writing (up until the point that I realized this just now) I have had chapters that are more like sections - like 50 pages! I felt like I was "cheating" to have short chapters. (???)

Other things that make me feel this way (I may have mentioned this before) include letters, some forms of flashbacks, diary entries, switching between two character perspectives (meanwhile, back at the ranch:) , and using italics and parenthesis. I have also gone back and forth on the idea of a prolog.

Well, in the interest of broadening my horizons, I just took my prolog, which is also a flashback from another character's perspective, and have made it into a short chapter. So there, muse! What do you think of that???

P.S. My muse is one of the Little Lords of Chaos who floats around on a cloud giving me both good and bad advice, both constructive and destructive criticism, and I rather hate him.

2007-01-14T12:14:00.000-06:00

Writing is so weird.

I have been rehashing the beginning of my novel this whole week, to the point that I should be serving it for breakfast with two eggs and a slice of wheat toast. And although I can't say that it will stay the same between now and two minutes from now, as I read it this morning, it is looking SO GOOD! Like, "oh, so that's how it fits, okay. Now I can move on to the stuff I actually want to write."

2007-01-11T09:14:00.000-06:00

Two internet searches I did while writing today: WWII and Childhood Development.

I don't think I can write this story set in the 40s. There was just too much going on. Reading the article made me think 1. Boy I didn't learn much about this in school and 2. Man, the reason we're living in the world we are living in now is mostly due to stuff that happened during that war.

I want to see Pan's Labyrinth.

Sidenote: woke up at 5 a.m. completely alert. Just now getting warm. I read some of the lame-ass Organic magazine I get, and two articles were about strange pains caused by stress. One was quite interesting about some 5000 year old healing program from India that made me crave oatmeal (which I am eating now, embellished with blackberries I froze last summer) and the other one had "tips" like, "When you are angry or overwhelmed, say to yourself, 'I am breathing through my nose.'"

Okay, so I'm a new-age weirdo and all, but that sounds hilarious to me. In fact, the article itself started to make me feel angry since at that moment, in the dead of the freezing cold winter morning, my nose was so stuffed up, I couldn't breath through it!

2007-01-09T08:42:00.000-06:00

Enough of this chitter chatter. Back to work!

I did a bit of editing at the beginning of December, then forced myself to stop and gave myself the luxury of writing a fun little romantic piece of Christmas fluff. I returned from vacation on Jan. 2 and edited about five pages that first week, mostly at night and on the weekend. This is the first morning I have forced my grumpy self to get up instead of hitting the snooze for that "awe gee Mom, just one more minute!" hedonistic pleasure of staying in bed.

It helps that there is another writer in the house who not only has forced me to have something ready to discuss on Sundays, but who also may be substitute teaching soon and therefore I will not be the only one needing to jump in the shower at around 7 a.m. each morning. Therefore, I need to get up earlier, get my s**t done, and plop myself down in front of this computer if I am expecting any amount of roommatial bliss.

...or if I'm ever expecting to get this novel done, for that matter.

2006-12-01T22:33:00.000-06:00

A few more typos for fun and enjoyment:

"She toot to her room directly "
instead of
"She took to her room directly"

Ug. This was written in the heat of things last night. I'll leave you to figure this one out...
"Finallu, she found herself colose enought to examine the strangenes of the palace walls with a sort of wonder usaully reseved for her favorte storeis."

Then, suddenly I could speak Celtic!
"It slowly mekted fromteh outside in."
instead of
"It slowly melted from the outside in."

BTW, I invented the words tehy and teh. My brain just can't fire synopses fast enough to get "they" and "the" to spell correctly. I also misspelled "of" a number of times as "ove" or "fo."

2006-12-01T22:32:00.000-06:00

Oh sorry! Final word count = 50,216

2006-12-01T21:46:00.000-06:00

Okay, I must admit that I was really scared when I found out that I still had to write 5,000 words on the last day to make it. But to be honest, it was some of the best time writing I had had since the first of the month!

And I promised an excerpt so here you go (remember, these are freshly-borne and subject, in fact, expected to change):

"I see you!" Emma crowed, and leaped after Nick, who laughed again and ran. She was amazed at his speed, and by the way he effortlessly darted behind trees that hid him in such a way that she missed his twists and turns when he scampered off and angled in another direction. And at first, it was almost a splendid game of tag. But the she felt the trees closing in on her again, and she remembered the bird man and the melting horse and the almost- glimpsed fairy and she stopped in her tracks. And she did something she rarely did. She started to bawl.

She just stood there for a moment, totally enveloped by a feeling of madness. "I must be crazy. I must be running around in the woods like a moron. I'll bet no one else can see Nick but me."

The boy in question swung upside-down from a tree just then, his arms crossed over his chest and his cape hanging almost to the ground. He suspended himself next to Emma, and in a concerned tone asked, "Hey, what's the matter?"

She sniffed and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. "Don't ask stupid questions." She said, hiccoughing a little and trying to compose herself.

"I'm sorry. Don't cry. Look," he uncrossed his hands and swung back and forth, monkey- like. "Emma, come on. Look!" She turned and looked at him as he made a goofy face.

My hallucinations are trying to cheer me up. She thought, then saw something shiny slip from one of Nick;s many pockets. "Whoops, " he said, and executed a perfect backwards somersault out of the tree, a move Emma completely missed as she bent to pick up the thing form the forest floor."

I just like the idea of her hallucinations trying to cheer her, and the fact that she totally missed Nick's acrobatics.

2006-12-01T00:43:00.000-06:00

You've Won!

Dear Novelist,

You did it.

Despite everything else going on in your busy life, you managed to pull off the creative coup of writing a 50,000-word novel in just one month.

When the going got tough, you got typing, and in four weeks, you built vast worlds and set them in motion. You created characters; quirky, interesting, passionate souls with lives and loves and ambitions as great as yours. You stuck it out through the notoriously difficult middle stretch, and pressed onward as 80% of your fellow writers dropped out around you.

And now look at you: A NaNoWriMo winner. And the owner of a brand-new, potential-filled manuscript. It's an amazing accomplishment, and we're proud to have had you writing with us this year.

Now we leave you to head off to your celebration (or nap, as the case may be).

2006-12-01T00:02:00.000-06:00

49,136 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Easy Peasy... man, I'm icing my wrists tonight.

Two hours and counting. Promise at least a few writing samples when this is all over (along with a few of my favorite typos -- "She had her hair tied back in a sort of flippy poop thing with a stick jabbed through the middle to secure it, but mighty tendrils still escaped and bounced annoyingly in her eyes." instead of "...flippy loop thing" )

2006-11-30T22:23:00.000-06:00

47,028

I can do this!!!

2006-11-30T20:37:00.000-06:00

Okay.

Sink or swim.

I am full of Dave Thomas Delights (read: Wendy's #2 w/ Mr. Pibb.)

Andreas V. in the diskman.

Let's do this thing.

2006-11-30T18:59:00.000-06:00

45083

holy bannana nutballs

2006-11-29T12:08:00.000-06:00

Shiesh. Bad me for not updating. Oh well, I really have not had the time. In case you wanna hear my sob - Monday (11/27) I came into work early and left late in order to catch up with stuff missed over Thanksgiving and also to prepare for a major project that happens today (Wed.) I was totally whipped after the driving and eating and visiting family this weekend, and so I didn't wake up early enough for typing in the a.m. and I went to bed at 8 p.m. I had no food, and so had to shop last night (Tues.). We had people over last night, so couldn't work in the livingroom. My bedroom torn apart for painting, in order to make my closet not the dankest hole in the house, so not conducive for writing in there either. Oh, add to this the fact that the cats have decided not to let me sleep a full night through, angry I suppose at us for leaving them for 4 days, and you have a series of unfortunate events that sadly does not lead to Emma battling Count Olik, but instead, to Emma sitting on her ass for a few days.

I am still retyping my hard copy stuff to soft, so should have word count soon. Looking forward to writing tonight and tomorrow and getting my 50,000 words. I hope.

2006-11-26T12:34:00.000-06:00

Sunday - Back on line.

I really don't even think I ate that much for Thanksgiving, but man, my metabolism must have shifted because I have averaged about one meal a day plus snacks since Thursday night.

I thought about the story constantly through Tgiving vacation. Which was haunting but good, since I came up with some more answers that will shepard my story along. I realize that I never had that huge a handle on my world (it's, y'know, faerie. Where the fairies live...right?) And I don't have much time while writing 2000 words of story each day to world build (not that I didn't fudge and stick in some character specs and count them as actual words.) Anyway, soon it will all be over and I can start to actual work on the story and plot and so on and so forth.

Will upload word count after I transfer handwritten stuff.

*** UPDATE ***
Word count = 39,570

Curses! Why couldn't I break the 40K mark??? (and why is "K" the abbreviation for "thousand" when the Roman numeral is "M"? Stupid.)

2006-11-26T11:52:00.001-06:00

Written offline - Saturday 11/25/2006

How in the world to people write offline on notebook paper and then enter the words into the computer? Is it better on your eyes to work on paper and then spend a smaller amount of time putting stuff into the computer file?

37,337

Outlined some yesterday. Still haven't got it all figured out. In the mean time I have listened to the books on tape "The Goose Girl," "The Tale of Desperaux," "Shadow Spinner," and "Ella Enchanted." It really does help to keep reading to find stuff out about writing. And books on tape are about the only way I can fit it into my schedule.

Written offline - Friday 11/24/2006

Still full from last night. Ug.

36,734

Getting into the nitty gritty and things are getting as hard to pin down as whipped cream. Emma's just barreling along, tripping over characters here and there. I want to do some outlining to day if I can.

2006-11-26T10:54:00.000-06:00

Written offline - Thanksgiving!

Only got about 250 words down before food coma overtook me. Saw some Ambrosial trees as we crossed the Siskiyou.

2006-11-22T10:00:00.000-06:00

P.S. Villain appeared. Did not plan it. He just showed up to say "hi" when Emma enters the dream world.

2006-11-22T09:41:00.000-06:00

I added a short, rough sample below. Thought one was due, and it does a pretty good job of summarizing at least how the first part of the story goes.

35, 114!!

Yay.

Oh man, though, what a mess my manuscript is. I use an ergonomic keyboard at work (the kind that's folded in the middle), I have a full-sized wireless keyboard at home, and then I have my laptop keyboard. Between making my hands dance over all those different layouts, I'm lucky if every third word comes out to be what I want it to. And that is not even taking into account the fact that I am the world's worst speller. No one will steal my story, cuz it's written in code!

imediantly = immediately (spelling)
scracht = scratch (fast typing mistake)
wouldn = sound (???)
hight = height
knwo = know
vaugly = vaguely
impliments = implements
Porage, grule? = Porridge, gruel (ha!)

Oh my god, and so many more (those were just from a few paragraphs I wrote today.)
Those of you who can spell, are you cringing right now???

2006-11-22T09:07:00.000-06:00

"I don't know," the gypsy boy shrugged. "What is Earthin like?"

"It's horrible," Emma heard the words slip from her lips before she even had a chance to think about them. It was her stock response whenever anyone ever asked her about her life.

"Why? What's so bad about it?"

"I have to go to school every day with people I hate to learn things I don't care about," she started.

"Me too," Nick said.

"I live out in the middle of nowhere and my mother never lets me have any fun or go to town or spend any money."

"Mine too."

"Where are we going?" Emma grumbled, changing the subject.

2006-11-22T08:22:00.000-06:00

My signature on NaNoWriMo.org (it cuts off on the page, so I thought I'd post it in full here):

Title: "The Dream Thief"
Genre: Fantasy
Theme: Have courage in the face of failure (coming-of-age adventure)
# of times main character has tried to flee reality for faerie: 3
# of times it actually worked: 0
How the MC finally gets there: on the back of a shape changing dog
# of royal families slaughtered: 3/4ths
# of demons as secondary characters: 1
# of angsty princes: 1
# of sibling relationships that have a lot to do with the plot: at last count, 3
# of forests in the dream kingdom of Ambrosia: 3
# of bottomless impasses on the way to the dark magic reside of the Unknown: 1 (but isn't one enough?)

2006-11-21T20:13:00.000-06:00

Every second of my day, except for those spent hugging my boyfriend or petting my cats, could be better spent writing.

I really was not happy with my efforts yesterday, so I drove to work without turning on the radio and let the alpah-waves lap away at my brain. When I arrived, I was inspired to write 1,257 words on what the moon pearl does, why Ambrosia is ruled by a prince (not a king) where the horrible, disgusting Sithwith, the demon cartographer and scribe who is chained to his library desk in the dungeon of the palace, came from.

Oh, it all fit together. I am so happy!

(edit) Total by end of day = 33,720

2006-11-20T08:50:00.000-06:00

I took the day off yesterday. I didn't really plan it, it just happened.

32,023

Like pulling teeth. There is no way the full story will be done at the end of November, or in 50,000 but I will have 50,000 words at the end of November. Get that? The little things really slow you down - should Emma rescue Nick? Should Nick rescue Emma? I mean both versions have their merits, but when faced with a simple question like that, I hunch my shoulders and stare stupidly at the screen. Duh. I dunno.

Why has my antagonist not appeared yet? Well, everyone antagonizes Emma - I mean the villain. I think I like him so much I'm afraid to start writing about him, for fear that he'll turn out to be an uncharismatic wet blanket. Which is exactly the opposite of what he is in my head... hm. Maybe tomorrow.

2006-11-18T01:08:00.000-06:00

[huff huff] finally going to post on time!

30,545

Ow, my wrist.

As I stated in my last entry, I found two old "dot-matrix" printed copies of "false starts" of this story. One was called "Searer of Souls" and had Emma as a goathearder's daughter who had been summoned by the prince to the palace. She had a magic-born guardian named Alassi that looked like a big walking armadillo with a beak. I am sorry to see that there is no need of him in the story - he's what shut that first try down after about 8,000 words. I didn't know where he came from or where he'd go once she reached the palace. Too bad, so sad. He worked really well in the scene he was in.

The other version also didn't work, for various reasons. In it, goathearding Emma had a brother, and it was known that she was found as a baby at the edge of the Visionary Forest (i.e. she was originally from Earth). After she and brother are attacked, a dreamkin comes to their rescue, but is reall y there to collect Emma and take her to the prince. Some scenes worked really well and I think I'll incorporate them into this version, but I didn't like the character of the prince, or Iandrew, the dreamkin (for a while I couldn't decide if he was young and stupid, old and severe, if he was a page, a soldier, or what). The dreamkins in general have always given me problems. Imagine ninjas that can change into dogs, horses and birds. Who controls them? How are they trained? Who do they serve and why? It's coming together in this version, but I still have a lot to work on.

...and damn, it's past midnight again. Oh well.

2006-11-17T10:17:00.000-06:00

Written late 11/16/2006
Ga! Why can't I ever get these things posted in time???

28,447

I am lacing bits of my story together, so it is harder to do the "3 pages or 2000 words" goal. Mainly because that means I have to do math :-P

I dug out some old versions of my story, parts of which I want to use in this version. They are on that old perforated printer paper with the holes on the side! I don't even have them electronically anymore (perhaps on floppy disk somewheres). And more than I ever thought is hand written. I gotta make some backup copies just to have on hand, but some of the ink is so light, I don't even know if it will photocopy - certainly not well.

This story has waited a long time to see the light of day. I hope I can do it some justice.

2006-11-16T09:55:00.000-06:00

Written late 11/15/2006

Setting up Christmas and Thanksgiving vacation plans, staying in touch with friends and family, budgeting, preparing for my volunteer meeting on Saturday, reading, visiting the post office, the library, listening to books on tape, sleeping, eating, cooking, cleaning, watching t.v., playing on line. Hell, why is there so much to do?

27,160

Okay.
She's in Ambrosia (the "fantasy world")
Now what?

I know that I can "remember" all the rules if I try hard enough (I wrote them for godsake - or will write them...) : Who are the dreamkins? How does the "real world" effect and be effected by Ambrosia? How is Ambrosia showing signs of being sapped of magic? I think I know all this stuff. I know I know it (somewhere.)

2006-11-15T00:13:00.000-06:00

I actually feel pretty good today. Knock on wood.

24,443

Still frustrated with the starting and stopping nature of this story. I see through the inky mess the outline of some semblance of story.

Emma has tried three times to flee the real world for faerie. Now, at age fifteen, the last thing she ever expects is for the "fourth time to be the charm." But that is exactly what happens, and like it or not, she is whisked away by a magical beast to the dream kingdom of Ambrosia. Will she accept the task given to her by the prince to find the thief who is stealing the lifeblood of the land? Does she really have a choice?

2006-11-14T12:05:00.000-06:00

Written late - Monday the 13th

Pleh.

22,080

I FORCED myself to write 2000 words, but it was excruciating. Not only did I totally sleep like a zombie through my morning writing hours, but I had to do some shopping at night, then ate some soup I'd let sit out all day (was supposed to have been my lunch) and watched Battlestar with some friends. Finally made it to the sanctuary of my room where I pounded out yet another sloppy day of junk.

I look back over what I've written (bad bad bad) and am like, this stupid story starts three times, and I'm still doing what I do all the time, which is jump around to scenes I like to write about without any real conscience regard for what that scene has to do with the rest of the story! It's annoying (like the scene I quoted below -- I like it, I had fun writing it, but what does it have to do with the story?) Gah.

2006-11-12T09:13:00.000-06:00

20,082!!!

Twenty-thousand mark!
(I apologize to those of you who can't see the little dancing gif.)

I am liking a lot of what I have written, which is surprising to me. I am especially surprised that one of the characters I have no real attachment to was just in an interesting / funny scene that really worked for me. Go figure. Work forever on Miss Main Character and still don't feel that comfortable with her, and type for a few hours about Joe Shmo Dreamkin and have a fantastic result.

I've held off posting any clips thus far, but here is a taste of what I've been working on:

“Greetings Kin,” Kane said, leaning on the bar. His black eyes sparkled, and Ian knew it was because the bets always rose when a Kin came to fight. “Your health well today?”

“All the better now that I’m here.” He took a large swig from his mug. The cider was sharp and strong. “What’s the outlook?”

“Mmm,” Kane rubbed his bristly chin. “Word has it that a shipload of sailors is coming this way. Should be some easy battles against sea-legged southerners.” He smiled a gummy grin at Ian, who drained the mug and set it down.

“Nothing harder than that? I’m disappointed in you. When are we going to have a bear like that Nrrokian in here again?”

The Nrrokian was a long-running joke between the men. One of Ian’s first battles had been against a huge, nasty brute that smelled of skunk and fought like a wild animal. When Ian finally felt he had prevailed, it turned out that the Nrrokian had just fallen into a drunken daze and was up again after a brief nap. Only during round two, when his opponent’s shirt was accidentally torn off did Ian realize he was fighting a female.

Kane gurgled a laugh. “No Nrrokians.”

2006-11-12T08:46:00.000-06:00

Written late 11/11/2006

Hey everybody! I went to the Doctor! I'm fine! But I still feel like crap. And actually, I am waiting on some more tests, but truth be told, I think I'm just stressed (about a lot of things besides finishing my novel in a month. I just didn't realize it), and I've been spending too much time in front of the computer screen (I have heard that laptop displays don't have the kind of radiation coming off of them that other monitors do, but I'm sure it's still not good for you.) Anywho -

Word count thus far: 16,252

My last entry was so short, and my word count hadn't increased that much. Just FYI, I added a prolog and decided that 20,000 words should take place in the real world, 20,000 in the fantasy world, and then, I dunno, 10,000 in some sort of combination / resolution 3rd act thingy. I need to go back to my theater notebooks and look up that structure again. Today I fudged and started writing in the fantasy world, even tho my main character isn't there yet. I'm sheepishly skipping ahead with the *** more stuff happens here *** filler line.

Baaaaa.

2006-11-11T19:30:00.000-06:00

Written late - 11/10/2006

Horrible night with no sleep, awoke with shooting pain down my arm. Went to doctor and had to work late to cover the extra time, and went to bed early with a headache.

13,066

Real life is a Mire.

2006-11-09T09:59:00.000-06:00

Skipped my first full day of writing yesterday.

Why? I had a restless night on Tuesday and awoke too late to be of any use. Then, after work, I talked on the phone for a time, waited for the landlady to come by (she didn't and so I had to call and reschedule), and I walked to the store to pick up milk and sympathy cards. In other words, mundane life intervened.

Word count = 12,053

I read something over again and cannot remember writing it. "A horse as black as an ancient shadow." I don't know if it's any good. But it's kind of spooky not to remember coming up with it.

2006-11-08T10:06:00.000-06:00

Written late 11/07/2006

Today I could not get out of bed. I feel the rain that is forever showering down on this land to be washing the nutrients of everything away and churning up dead dirt and dying leaves. It is not nice (although I like it when it gets too dark to see.)

Word count 10,600 (broke 10,000 - yaah!)

One week has gone by. Although I am behind (should be at 14,000 words I guess,) I have 17 pages and I would say a good idea of where the story is going. I also got a chance to start constructing a "pitch," distilling the ideas down to one or two sentences and then expanding on them if someone seems interested.

Ergonomically, though, I'm a wreck.

2006-11-07T10:06:00.000-06:00

11/06/2006 - written late

First Monday. I feel it. I think I pinched a nerve. I don't feel well.

9,881

I can't believe I haven't cracked 10,000. This morning I didn't start where I left off, but at the beginning again and added two or so pages that way. Then I wrote at night as well until my laptop battery gave out. I am trying to find out how much of a story I want / need before the journey to the "other world" begins. And yes, I have been sorta patterning my plot against Joseph Campbell's archetypes.

My arm hurts.

2006-11-05T13:59:00.000-06:00

Back at home now. A greasy rain is falling outside, and I hear it is to continue for many months. The inside is not all that inviting either.

Word count to date = 8,009

Another day of pattering down many many words that lead in circles. Today I questioned the time in which I start my story. I had for the most part assumed it would start in the near-modern times and that the fantasy world that my character journeys to would be rather medieval. I have gone back and forth with questions about how women are perceived in my fantasy world, and I many times imagine my main character in a dress. Well, no girl in modern times wears dresses. So today I toyed with the idea of having her start from the 1940 or so, a very female-centric time to be living it (many men off to war). This would also set up the feelings of war within her and ready her to accept them when she entertains the problems in the fantasy world. Huh. I need to go to an antique shop and pick up a 1940s yearbook...

2006-11-04T20:31:00.000-06:00

Still on birthday vacation and the place we're staying at serves a lot of horrible food. I couldn't even figure out last night, as we ate the slop, what in the world the "beef and vegetable barley soup" tasted so awfully of - rotten celery? I got a lousy Caesar salad (just limp lettuce on a plate with stale croutons, a slice of gummy garlic bread and some lackadaisical dressing with cheese), a cup of gritty clam chowder (which, I will admit, at least tasted as I expected it to) and a bowl of the aforementioned beef-free beef and vegetable soup. Total bill was over $20!!

Word count to date = 5,903

Things are inching along like a worm though compost. Slimy, unpleasant, eating up garbage and pooping out dirt which, at least, can be used to grow something pleasant. Man, that metaphor is more apt than I expected. I should call this blog "The Merry Exploits of a Garbage Writer."

I did an anagram of my name to pass the time. I came up with "Has a trash bar," or "Shat a bra rash." Ha. I like the first one..

2006-11-04T20:30:00.000-06:00

11/03/2006 (written offline to be uploaded latter)

Today is the day after my birthday. Slight headache from staying up too late reading Eragon in bad light.

Total word count 3,933.

I would like to get it over 4000 today, or write another three pages if I have the time. The problem is, I am away from home and typing on an unfamiliar keyboard and so the words aren't coming as easily or as comfortably. I wrote a whole lot more garbage today, regressed my main character back to age 15 and burned down a school. Don't you love it when your story runs away from you?

2006-11-02T09:43:00.000-06:00

ARG! I gotta get to work (that is, my day job!)

2500+ words total now.

Most of what I wrote today was important, but will most likely be trashed. I was struggling with the age of my main character. Nine is too young, I am sick of stories about 13 year olds, and 17 seems too old... I realized that the reason most stories are written with protags at puberty is because at that time, besides being totally messed up by hormones, people haven't been given the rights to make their own choices yet. By age 16 or 17, they have pretty much made up their minds (even if they don't realize it) about what they want to do and what they believe in. So I ended up going with the older age. Plus I want her to have a romance, and 13-year-olds getting it on is just icky.

2006-11-01T11:10:00.000-06:00

Greetings! This is a journal of my efforts and my life during National Novel Writer's Month. Yay. One month, 30 days (why did they pick such a short month?), 50,000 words (which, I hear, isn’t even that long a novel).

Day one.

1400 word.

So far so good.

Once upon a time, my auntie Jean gave me "Arrows of the Queen" by Mercedes Lackey for my 13th birthday. I devoured that book, and the others in the Valdemar series. I didn't like all of them (and actually now, I’m not very interested in rereading them!) but they all held my attention in one way or another, and in such a fashion that I longed to write a story (or trilogy) of my own. At that time, I started forming scenes in my mind, and by age 17, I had started laying down characters and stories and trying to tie it all together.

My plot is a tenuous thread made of old, fragile material that stretches and twists and tangles in the wind. It has snapped a few times, and I have worked to knit it back together or tie it to other threads branching out in many different directions. It is my hope that, by the end of this month, it shall be a hearty rope, binding my ideas in one cohesive story.

A worthy and noble thing to work for. We’ll see if I can do it…

My cabin was 7x7 foot square.

2006-10-31T23:59:00.002-06:00

My cabin was 7x7 foot square. People in jail get more room.. It was empty of pretty much everything and the walls were pink. If anything would make me nuts, that would. I was allowed a cup for water, a cup for pencils and pens, paper, stapler and the like. There was a desk and a chair with wheels. There was a ceiling fan with a bare bulb, a brown earthen jug of water. There was an outhouse out back. That was about it.

The whole idea was to lock us in, deliver food to us when necessary along with a basin of water every day for general clean up. We were allowed to leave for a one-hour walk down to the shore. We would set our dirty dishes outside the curtains of our front door when we were done with them. Oh, there was a rug on the floor for sleeping. And we were allowed one suitcase (or cardboard box in my case) with reference books in our native language.

I had brought my laptop, a small cheep, outdated thing that had been a backhanded love token. It wasn’t really mine, but it was acquired with me in mind, not so much with thoughts of my well being, but with the idea that a mollified girlfriend makes a happy boyfriend. Funny, we use to not think of each other in those terms. Where we were sweethearts…

Yes, well, the laptop. They wanted to take it, “they” being two large piles of tannish flesh with beady eyes, huge biceps and laser guns at their belts. They said that I was to write longhand. “I work better on the computer,” I countered, “I need to create with both hands.” Then they were going to wipe the computer of everything but the very barest of word processing programs. That one was a little tougher to counter. “I have research and a dictionary and a thesaurus on there. Please, take any other programs you need off it, but I need the dictionary.” They agreed, but said I had to leave my little cardboard box of stuff behind then. Since the dictionary feature was built into my favorite word processor, I agreed. I could come and get it later anyway.

When I stepped into the cabin, I realized I had a problem. There was no electricity, no place to plug in the laptop. It had a battery but it had a finite amount of power, say three hours or so. My escorts started laughing uproariously at my plight and broke a few pencils in half before they left. I tried my best to look crestfallen.

Of course when the curtains fell shut behind them, I immediately set to work. My eyes unfocused – actually, they were focused on something passed the point in the air before me. I saw the drawstring with the back reflection of my eye and reached out. My hands disappeared into space for a second as I turned that small bit of air inside out to reveal the bottomless backpack. It appeared to be made of brown canvas but there were no stitches visible on its pockets, straps or body. It was a medium sized pack, just right to contain a black hole.

I opened it up and started taking out my things. Books including the Dakotah Sioux Indian Dictionary by Paul War Cloud, The New Goat Handbook by Ulrich Jaudas, Byron’s selected poems, and Michael Ende’s Never-ending Story (which, though it is only 377 pages long, goes on forever starting on page 27). Pictures by Van Gogh, a diagram of the Amistad, photos by my sister and movie stills of Wayne’s World and My Neighbor Totoro. It began to thunder outside as I brought in files and stamps and Buddhist statues and a telephone table, Christmas lights and the United States flag. Other comforting memorabilia added to the coziness of the place – an old stuffed dog named Cocoa, a mobile, candles, incense, a hammock, and a box of chocolates. Finally, I pulled my cardboard box out and the end of an extension cord. I plugged in my laptop and popped in a DVD.

Just in time, my breakfast arrived. It was a mushroom and cheese French omelet with one slice of toast slathered in butter. I pulled a coffee maker from my backpack and set it to perking a cup of Organic Peruvian. I settled back in the rolling chair and watched an episode of Gate Keepers.

When it actually was time to get to work, at around 1:10 p.m. I put in a CD of Andreas Vollenhimer. My first assignment was a pirate yarn. I also was expected to finish a children’s story about a tree, another about my friend Coyote, and polish up the second draft of a humor essay I had written in desperation a while back.

I started to do my research, pawing through the old files of notebook paper, drawings torn from sketchbooks, and broken glass from, I supposed, when the cover fell off the bare bulb of the ceiling fan whirring above my head. I didn’t suppose, I knew, actually. The rain outside came and left again.

It was two o’clock when he arrived. He appeared behind me, his bright blue eyes gnawing into the back of my head. His arms were folded over his beautiful soft white vest, which fit tightly over his slender chest. I didn’t need to turn around to know this detail, he was my creation. He always looked exactly as I envisioned him.

“So, are you killing me again?” he asked. His tone was smooth, and not at all as accusing as it should have been. I had killed him… a number of times. I threw him into the Impasse, the chasm between the Unknown and the dream country of Ambrosia. I had locked him away in a dungeon, and then confronted him with his highly successful younger brother. If anybody does, writers believe in reincarnation, we do it all the time. And when he was reincarnated in the form of Kabris, I killed him again, trapping him with the mold spores in an underground cave, and again when Match Firelight, Our Dark Prince, used the lessons he learned from his mentor against him.

Jael wasn’t his first incantation – there had been Jonathan and Ligion and Clutch and Ghelic before him – but he was by far my favorite.

“Nope, I’m working on a pirate story.” I said, typing away furiously as if to kill the keys. I really was working. Sure, I had farted away the first few hours decorating and watching movies, but I was in the zone now. I was typing hard and fast, narrowing in like a sharpshooter at the target. I was feeling the bull’s-eye. But I was working, I was creating. Jael was just buckshot.

“I have a story to tell you,” he said, and I could hear the drifting movement of his garments. I was suddenly very young and tired. I wanted to just lay my head down on the keyboard and let his words guide me into sleep. My wrists grew heavy, and my words started to slow to a garbled stupor.

“No,” I thought at him. “Get lost, I can’t deal with you now.” I don’t think I have ever told him to get lost. He is my friend, my companion, wherever I go he is. Some people say that the only one you can count on is yourself. You can count on all kinds of people if you make them up. Telling Jael to go away was like telling myself to leave me alone. Well, maybe at times, that’s useful. Like now, as I tried to set myself aside and come up with characters so unlike myself it was like I were trying to write in a foreign language I had never heard. How do I get inside a fat, bald, male bureaucrats living in the 1700s?