Category Archives: Writing

Cici and the Curator

13 Tuesday Nov 2018

Posted by in NaNo, WIP, Writing

≈ 12 Comments

I meant to write a blog post yesterday, being as it was Monday and all, but I didn’t. (Obviously.)

I did, however, write 2468 words on my NaNo project. Per my usual daily word counts, it would have been an absolutely spectacular day — I consider myself doing okay anytime I break a thousand, doing well when I break 1500. However, on Sunday I wrote almost 2600, so yesterday wasn’t even the best day of the week. On November 4th, I wrote 3457, possibly making it my best day of all-time. (Not a sure thing, since I don’t generally track word count like this, but definitely close.)

In other words, my NaNo project is going well. I’m learning some interesting things along the way. Some of them feel like things I knew when I was writing fanfiction but forgot when I started writing for publication, namely 1) the person to amuse is me, and if someone else reads it someday and is also amused, that’s just icing on the cake and 2) get the story down, fix the words later, and if later never comes, so what?

But some of them are absolutely new to me. The most important of those is that choosing to go along with the story is so, so, so much more fun than demanding the story stick to the script. I had intentions for this story and multiple times now I’ve done something that three paragraphs or two pages later, I’ve had to say, “Oh, no, X won’t work, I screwed up.” In past projects, I would have gone back and fixed the problem or I would have deleted pages. Frequently, in past projects, I’ve gotten stuck for days at a time, finally decided that I was headed in the wrong direction, and deleted chapters or more. In this project, I keep saying, “I guess I’m headed someplace else,” and letting the story take me where it will. Obviously, I have no idea whether this project will ever even be readable by someone else, but I’m having enormously more fun writing it than I’ve had while writing in… well, years.

And yes, that does mean I’m questioning my life choices again. Writing is more fun when it’s for me than when I have to care about the people who are going to leave me one-star reviews and let me know they’re disappointed that I didn’t write a better book and tell me all the things I did wrong and suggest that I should have spent more time editing. Ha. I have to admit that specific review kind of made me laugh. Seriously. Seriously! I’m glad I believe in karma.

I haven’t gotten very far with said questioning, though. At best, it’s realizing that I’d rather not have money thoughts mixed up with story thoughts, but then realizing that I seriously don’t have time to worry about that this month. This month, I have 50,000 words to write. This month, I have an entire novel to finish. This month, I get to have fun with the words.

And so, a random snippet, because while the words are imperfect and flawed and a rough draft (blah-blah-blah, excuses), they’re mine and I love them.

(The story begins here.)

Cici and the Curator snippet:

“One?” Cici asked brightly. Human generic but something about his attire looked familiar, as if it were a uniform she ought to recognize.

“No, thank you.” He pronounced the words carefully.

Not a native speaker, then.

“I search for my captain,” the man said. “It is that I believe that she came here a few days ago.”

Cici’s heart stopped beating.

Not literally, of course. If it had literally stopped beating, she would have been dead. But it felt like it stopped beating, like every drop of blood in her veins froze in place.

“Oh?” she asked, keeping her voice as casual as possible. “We don’t allow guests to stay in the exhibit overnight.”

“No, of coss not.”

Not unexpectedly, it was the same slithery accent as the blue woman had. But this man looked nothing like the blue woman.

Cici felt almost indignant about that. If he’d been blue, if he’d had orange eyes, she might have had some warning. She would have known what to expect. She would have been prepared for trouble.

But this guy just looked like a guy. Well, maybe his skin was slightly purple-tinted and his eyes perhaps were more to the yellow than those of the average human being. Still, she wouldn’t have recognized him as related to the blue woman.

The man held up a picture. It was the blue woman.

“Can you tell me if she was here?”

To lie or not to lie, that was the question.

Cici licked her lips. “She was, yes.” She hoped she didn’t look anywhere near as nervous as she felt, but her skin was prickling like mad, and a dangerous heat was rising in her chest. “With two big dogs. Very big.”

“Yes!” The man flashed white teeth at her, looking delighted. “That is good news, very good news.”

“I didn’t let her in,” Cici said.

He deflated. “But no?”

She lifted a shoulder, looking apologetic. “The dogs, you see. We don’t allow pets in the galleries.”

“I see.” He frowned. “My captain, she is very…” He paused, seeming to search for the word. “Persistent.”

“She was, yes.” Cici didn’t say anything more. She let the silence stretch. Partially it was because she was trying very hard to channel her mother — no one in ten systems would dream of trying to interrogate her mother, she’d wither anyone who dared with a single look — but mostly it was because she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Not one.

Her brain was totally blank, except for thoughts of the dogs sleeping in the lunchbox practically under her feet.

Please let them keep sleeping. Please let them have had enough lunch. Please let them not hear a familiar voice and come out to investigate. Cici had no idea who she was begging for help, but every thought she was capable of having was running along the same lines: Please let the dogs be good.

Good? A sleepy voice said in her head. Guard? Work?

With each word, the voice got a little more alert.

No guard, Cici said, trying to keep her mental voice calm and soothing. Sleep.

Sleep. Cici could practically hear the dog’s mental yawn.

Sleep, Cici repeated.

Meanwhile, with her actual voice, she was completely silent.

The man in front of her was moving his lips, soundlessly, and then he said, “Tell me what happened.”

Cici could almost see the waft of purple magic that flowed from him like air. It reached her and hesitated, flowing up and over her.

She didn’t change her expression, but her panic hardened into annoyance.

Magic? On her? How rude!

It was probably a truth-telling spell, or maybe a total-recall spell with a nudge of persuasion to force her to talk, but what kind of person used mind magic on a total stranger without permission?

She was tempted to turn him into a toad. Very tempted.

But that would just be doubling her problems.

In related news, in my spare time I’ve been having fun with cover designs. 🙂

So far, so good

05 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in NaNo, Photography

≈ 9 Comments

I’m currently staying in my friend C’s driveway: it’s a comfortable and familiar driveway, so I’m not exactly taking a lot of pictures. I decided to start this post, therefore with a throwback photo from some other November 4th. The only photo I’ve ever taken on November 4th (at least in the era from which I have photos stored on my computer) was of the tree that I had two photos of in my last post.

another autum color photo

The same old tree

I thought that was really interesting and kind of cool, and then I realized… today’s not November 4th, it’s the 5th. Oh, well, it’s still a pretty picture of a tree. And in answer to a previous question, I have no idea what kind of tree it is. I hope it manages to survive Pennsylvania’s lanternfly invasion, though. Those bugs were absolutely everywhere when I left PA.

So far, NaNoWriMo is going well for me. My story may make no sense when I’m done, but it’s quite fun and I’m enjoying the serendipity of discovery writing. I resolved when I started that I would never backtrack, no revisions along the way. No such thing as a bad direction (with the exception of my “delete the last three paragraphs” die roll.) Twice already — in the first five days! — I’ve discovered that I’m headed down a path that wasn’t where I meant to go. Instead of “fixing” it, I’ve played along. Honestly, that is so much more fun than revising. A thing to remember for the future, perhaps.

I was going to give you a snippet, because I am amusing myself, but one of my other new NaNo principles is no rereading what I’ve written and it’s hard to find a snippet without reading. Also, a lot of the parts that are most amusing to me are either spoilers or require context. So I will spare you a snippet. But now I will get back to writing, because I’m still aiming to write at least another 1000 words today — along with laundry and dishwashing and cooking prep and a shower and dinner with a friend. My clock is ticking fast!

My NaNoWriMo Game

30 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by in NaNo, Writing

≈ 10 Comments

I would find it hard to believe that I have a reader who hasn’t heard of NaNoWriMo, but just in case, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every November, a few hundred thousand people set out to write a 50,000 word novel. There are meet-ups and pep talks and social events, word count trackers and message boards, and rumor has it that at least 9 New York Times best-sellers got their start as a NaNo project, The Night Circus, Water for Elephants, and Fangirl among them.

Every November when I set out to join the NaNo crowd, I… freeze. I immediately lose all ability to write a coherent sentence and all inclination to sit at my keyboard. I did manage to write 50,000 words one year, but mostly it was journal-style writing about my inability to write. It was definitely not fiction. The last couple years I haven’t even bothered to try, because I had better things to do than sit around hating myself. Feeling like a failure is not my favorite life experience.

But this year, I’m going to try again. Not because I like sitting around hating myself, but because I need to break through my self-editing obsession. I’ve been working on Fen, but I haven’t even made it out of the first chapter yet. It’s not how I want to write.

I wrote A Lonely Magic in a mad gush of writing joy — I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I wrote the first draft in six weeks, constantly lunging to my keyboard for just a few more lines. I remember getting up in the middle of dinner with promises to be right back, because I just had to get the perfect sentence down before I forgot it. It was completely fun. I want that again. And I’m thinking that NaNo might be a way to find it although obviously, not the way I’ve done it in the past, because that didn’t work.

So here’s the new plan: I’m going to start with a project that has lots of scope for imaginative craziness. Right now the three options are 1) an inter-galactic adventure about a museum of mysterious artifacts, with a magic heroine; 2) a post-apocalyptic magical world with a reluctant adventurer heroine; 3) Fen without worrying about continuity, logic, world-building or characterization, just writing as fast and as fun as I can. Today, I’m leaning toward the first of those options, but I’ll make the decision on Thursday.

Meanwhile, here’s the game. Every time I get stuck, I’m going to set a timer. If I hit ten minutes on the timer without managing to make any progress, I’m going to roll a 20-sided die. (Unless an actual die comes my way in the next few days, I’ll use a online dice-roll generator.) I will then write according to the below instructions.

    1) Switch the point-of-view to another character
    2) Write an unexpected sound and the characters’ reactions to it. How does it change the scene?
    3) How can the POV character say “yes, and…”? Write that.
    4) Immediately make the challenge facing the POV character more difficult. (The challenge can either be the overall story challenge or something in the current scene.)
    5) Write an Aha! moment for any character, a moment of discovery or inspiration, within the current scene.
    6) Some detail of a character’s past is important in how they’re perceiving the current situation: fill in the details.
    7) What does the POV character believe a non-POV character thinks/feels/believes in this moment, and how are they reading it/perceiving it? (Body language, voice, actions?). Write it.
    8) Give the POV character a reason to laugh. (What might make the POV character laugh in the current moment?)
    9) The POV character smells something: what is it and what does it mean to her?
    10) An object in the setting matters: what is it, what does it look like, how did it get there, why is it important?
    11) Reveal a clue to someone’s secret without giving the secret away. Might require giving your characters some secrets.
    12) An animal enters the scene. Plot bunny!
    13) Add a physical detail (or two or three) to make the setting more vivid.
    14) A character has a question: what is it?
    15) Delete the last three paragraphs and take the story in a different direction.
    16) Write one line to end the scene, add a break, start again in a new setting/time.
    17) Give the character a physical want or need — hunger, sore feet, thirst, need to pee, aches and pains, oncoming cold, allergies, tired, etc. — and help them resolve it.
    18) Go to chaoticshiny.com and use a random generator to create something story-appropriate and add it to the story. (A monster, an artifact, a character, a setting… whatever would help with the stuck-ness.)
    19) Ninjas hop out of the closet — probably not literal ones. But write something that forces your characters to move. Bonus point if the movement includes a fight.
    20) Go eat some chocolate. If necessary, go to the store and buy the chocolate first. Then give your POV character an equivalent treat, whatever would make her as happy as that chocolate is going to make you.

Yes, I had fun inventing these yesterday. I also read a lot of blog posts about writer’s block, most of which were annoying. It’s astonishing to me how many people think you can cure writer’s block by taking a walk or reading a book or doing something other than writing. Personally, that doesn’t work for me at all. The only way I know to cure writer’s block is to write. But I’m hoping that this game gives me a way to focus the words I’m trying to write when I’m having trouble coming up with them. I’m also hoping that I roll a lot of 20s and not so many 15s. Or 3s, for that matter, which feels like a hard one. But I will, of course, keep you posted!

And if you’re participating in NaNo yourself and want to be my writing buddy — although I just discovered that I’ve had messages in my NaNo mail since 2015, oops — I’m Wyndes on the NaNo boards. Looking forward to a playful and fun writing month!

Crooked River State Park

29 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by in Campground, Personal, Reviews, Travel, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

The sky at Crooked River State Park, Georgia

The sky at Crooked River State Park, Georgia

In winter, days last longer in the south. In my head, I’ve known that for a long time. Alaska & Scandinavia = dark all day in the winter = duh. But in the past few days, I’ve really noticed the difference.

But let’s start at the beginning: I was staying in PA to watch my niece play Piglet in her school production of Winnie-the-Pooh, but I had one eye on the weather report and I was getting increasingly nervous. It sounded like it might be bad, and definitely not driving weather. I didn’t want to miss the play, though, so I took my chances and stayed.

It was the right call. The play was fantastic, and kinda crazy. The story is that Kanga is coming to the forest and all the other animals are scared of her because she insists on baths and medicine. I can see that in some version of this story, it’s about not being afraid of the unknown and maybe even understanding that baths and medicine are good for you. But in this version of the play (dialogue unchanged, merely a matter of delivery), it’s about child abuse and kidnapping and revenge. At one point, Rabbit is offering Roo candy in order to kidnap him so they can blackmail Kanga into giving up Piglet who has already been kidnapped and is being tortured… who knew Winnie-the-Pooh was such a psychopathic story?! But it really was all about the delivery. M played Piglet, which I had assumed would be a minor part, but it was not, and she was terrific. Her expressions in the scene where Kanga is forcibly giving her a bath were hysterical. I laughed so hard I worried I was being disruptive. I’m so glad I stuck around to see it.

The next day I braved the rain and started to drive. My tentative plan was to make it to a campground around the Virginia/North Carolina border and stay there for a few days. The weather did not cooperate. Neither did the traffic. As is the way of traffic in the rain, a major accident closed the entire highway for a while and probably added a solid two hours to my journey. I managed to view it as an adventure, getting off the highway and roaming around side streets at 25MPH, and obviously, my day was a hell of a lot better than that of the people involved in the accident, but still…

After I made it through the traffic jam, I stopped at CostCo for gas and snacks and bought myself, among other things, an LL Bean winter coat for $40. It rolls up and fits into a small sack like a tiny sleeping bag. I suspect it makes me look like a plump eggplant, but that’s okay, I was a warm plump eggplant! And I’m going to need it again within a few months, I think.

Eventually I wound up at a noisy Walmart in Virginia, not sleeping, but at least not driving. The next morning, I considered simply driving to the campground I’d intended to reach on the first day, but it was cold and gray and it seemed pointless. Why would I want to camp in cold, gray misery? Instead, I resolved that I would keep driving until I reached 70 degree weather and sunshine.

It didn’t happen. Instead, I spent another night at a Walmart parking lot. It was a longer day, because I stopped when it got dark, but it got dark later, followed by another sleepless night. I’m not anxious about parking lots the way I used to be. I don’t lie awake worrying about every strange sound. But at the very best of times, I’m not a great sleeper, and strange noises wake me up. Parking lots are filled with strange noises.

By Sunday morning, I was feeling exhausted and unwell. I walked Z around the parking lot, made myself some coffee and breakfast, and considered the miles. Another six hours of driving would get me to a driveway in Florida, at which point what I would really want to do would be to crawl into bed and take a nap for a day or two. Or I could take a break, stop at a campground, have a day or two to rest, clean out the tanks, do some organizing, get the van ready for another couple weeks of driveway days. The campground won.

So this morning I am at Crooked River State Park, in Georgia. It’s a nice campground, huge sites, with plenty of space between them. The landscape reminds me very much of Florida, with lots of scrubs pines and palmettos. I’ve seen the river, but only from a distance, but Z and I had a nice stroll this morning around the campground, the mini-golf course and playground. My one real negative about this campground is that Georgia State Parks are comparatively expensive: I’m paying almost $40/night for a water-electric site and if I’d been willing to drive another hour (and possibly had made a reservation ahead of time), I could get an equivalently nice site, possibly even nicer, for $24 night. Florida State Parks are a much better deal. And since this park is so much like a Florida park… shrug. But it’s a convenient stop for me and just for a couple of nights, so it felt worth it.

Yesterday I dumped the tanks and rinsed them out, and one of today’s goals is to fill them again, so that they can have an almost clean flush when I leave tomorrow. Also on my agenda: washing lots of dishes, defrosting the freezer, showering, sweeping, and appreciating the sunshine. Lots of appreciating the sunshine and warmth, I hope. It’s supposed to go up to 80 today, which would have annoyed me a couple of months ago, but which is going to feel very pleasant today.

Also on the agenda, doing some real writing. I’m thinking about doing a NaNoWriMo project this year. I’ve never succeeded at NaNo — the pressure freezes me up immediately — but I feel like it might be really fun to spend a month writing something with no goals, no agenda, but just trying to let the words pour out. I haven’t decided yet, because obviously, I’m currently working on projects that are “real,” ie, intended for eventual publication, and from a life perspective, I need to start doing things that will earn me money eventually. On the other hand, from a life perspective, maybe I should be working on maximizing the fun I have from writing for a while?

At any rate, NaNo starts on Thursday and one of my ideas for how I might make it work for me is to have a list of questions that I can use every time I get stuck on my story. Like story prompts, but for within a story. Maybe even a numbered list to go with rolling dice. Get stuck, roll the dice, use the idea. So examples of ideas — #2: what can the POV character smell right now and what does it mean to her? No #1, because obviously, with two six-sided dice, you never roll 1. But maybe I should get a RPG die instead, because also with two six-sided dice, your odds of some numbers come up more than others. Two and twelve are a lot less likely than six and seven. And talk about getting lost in the weeds! I need to make my list first, and then I can worry about how I will use it.

But for my fellow writers who might be reading this, if you have ideas about questions, please share them!

Mine so far:
1) What does the POV character smell and what does it mean to her?
2) What is an unexpected sound that would change the scene?
3) How can the character say “yes, and…”?
4) How can the challenge facing the character be immediately made more difficult?
5) What would an Aha! moment look like for the character right now?
6) How is some detail of the character’s past important in how they’re perceiving the current situation?
7) How does the POV character read/understand what a non-POV sees, believes, or feels in the situation?

I don’t know whether this will work. Like I said, I’m lousy at NaNo. But it feels like it might be fun to try. I also have absolutely no idea where or what my story is. I feel like if I start a new Tassamara story or work on Fen, I’m already constraining myself to worlds and characters and rules already created. But maybe that story snippet I posted the other day would be a fun project to keep going with. At any rate, I should stop writing this blog post, and start some of the other things on my list. I can think more about it while I wash dishes!

More reading than writing

22 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by in Books, Pennsylvania, Randomness, RV, Writing

≈ 7 Comments

I told my brother this morning that today should be the day I start south. And then, thoughtfully, that yesterday probably should have been. It is cold in Pennsylvania right now and I am so underprepared for cold weather. The van is quite cozy — its heater works beautifully — but bundling up in a multitude of layers every time I step outside is a PITA.

This is why people own winter coats.

I, however, do not own a winter coat and while I could buy one, of course, I haven’t wanted a mostly useless object cluttering up the van. I’m probably going to have to reconsider that position in the next few months, though. I’m not sure yet what this winter is going to bring — possibly a lot more driving hours than I will actually appreciate — but a winter coat might become a necessity.

Anyway, despite the cold, I’m not heading south yet. My niece is in her school play, opening night this Thursday, and I’m going to stick around long enough to see her perform. I’d be tempted to stick around for Halloween, too — she’s going to be some sort of skeleton pirate, and the preliminary make-up experiments have been impressively horrifying while also cute as anything — but it’s too cold and I have too much to do in Florida.

Also, I’ve gone over three weeks without dumping the tanks, and that’s too long. I’ll be staying inside the house for the next couple of days, partially because of the cold but mostly because I’ve hit the point where I really, truly, positively can’t use the toilet again until I dump the black tank, so it is definitely time to find myself a campground. I told my dad yesterday that the details of my future home fantasies were narrowing down to “running water.” Sure, a room with a view, nearby yoga, affordable cost-of-living, those are all nice. But running water is glorious.

Also, yesterday, I ordered a 50-pod pack of black-tank sanitizer pods from Amazon. Given that I can and often do go about two weeks without dumping the tanks, and I still have four or five pods left from the pack I’ve been using, that means I’ve got about two years worth of black-tank sanitizing ahead of me. My shopping subconscious possibly knows more about my future home plans than my conscious mind is willing to admit to.

Writing has been going horribly badly of late. I hate every word I write. Some of that is author love. I read The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne a couple of weeks ago. Someone online said that it was their favorite book of all time, their comfort read, so I checked it out from the library. It sat on my Libby bookshelf for over two weeks, because I don’t read much historical romance and I was dubious at best. Finally, when I had only a couple of days left, I started to read. A few chapters in, I was hating it, almost on the verge of giving up, when suddenly, there was a twist. A really good, really fun, totally implausible but super cool twist. I gobbled down the rest of the book, reached the end, started over again while trying to read more slowly, reached the end, and started over again! Not often that I read a book three times in a row.

I actually still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. It definitely wouldn’t make it onto my favorite book ever list or even anywhere close, largely because the sex is… well, pre-#metoo, if that’s sufficient explanation. But the writing was still fantastic, even if the romance was a prime example of questionable consent issues. But I promptly put all the rest of her books on hold at the library. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, while I was waiting, Amazon sent me a gift card, and I didn’t hesitate. (Incidentally, The Spymaster’s Lady is $2.99 on Kindle at the moment, so if you do like historical romance, it’s a deal.) So over the course of the past ten days or so, I’ve read all of Joanna Bourne’s books.

For a little while, they sunk me into the depths of despair. She’s an incredible writer — her plots are completely fun, with levels of implausibility that you just don’t care about at all. Seriously, lost heiresses, spy schools, amnesia, they’ve got it all. But she sets them in worlds with so many vivid, concrete, sensory details that they feel real. Then she adds smart characters who actually behave like smart people (most of them anyway); language and metaphors that fit the point of view; and a sense of wry humor. They made me want to give up on being a writer entirely.

Then, fortunately, I think, I read her very first book, which was not available at my library but was available at Amazon. The most important thing to know about that book is that it was originally published in 1983. The second most important to know about it is that you really, really, really don’t want to read it as an example of her writing. Probably, you really don’t want to read it at all. I’m actually a little surprised that she let it be re-issued. But it comforted me. I will not give up on being a writer quite yet.

And that does mean I should get back to it. At about 5:30 this morning, I had an idea about where I’d gone wrong with Fen, and why I was so stuck. I knew, knew, knew that I should get up and open my computer and write it down, but it was so cozy in my nest of blankets. I promised myself I’d remember it. Ha. But maybe when I stare at the file for a while, it will come back to me.

Off I go to stare.

Unrelated to anything…

12 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by in Randomness, WIP, Writing

≈ 5 Comments

Ilona Andrews had some great writing advice yesterday, of which my favorite line was Just write cool stuff to amuse yourself. And don’t look back until you are done.”

Today, I set out to follow said advice, which meant closing the two Scrivener files that I’ve been working on (which have not been amusing me) and looking for a file that I haven’t opened in a while, called something like Random Fiction. I should probably have just created a new file, because I wound up reading old story fragments instead of writing. I have a lot of story fragments. Trunk books, some people call them.

And you know, I was going to write something about common themes, things that must matter to me because they keep showing up in my random fiction words, but instead I think I’ll offer up another snippet and then go back to writing some more of those random words. I will just say, though, that it’s pretty clear to me that eventually I’m going to write a book with time travel in it.

A snippet…

Grace put her head in her hands. She could solve this problem. Of course she could. There was always a solution. She just had to think it through.

But her stomach felt like rocks had settled in it and her throat felt tight.

“I’m sorry to bother you, miss, but…”

Grace straightened so quickly that she nearly knocked the cup the old woman was extending toward her out of her hand.

The woman pulled it back quickly, but extended it again as soon as Grace was still. “I believe you might need this.”

“Need it?”

“Yes.” The old woman’s eyes were kind, her voice soothing. “It will help you.”

Grace’s eyes narrowed. “Help me how?” Her tone was unfriendly. The old woman might seem innocent enough, but Grace didn’t know her. And she had no reason to trust strangers. Not here.

The cup was a simple thing; plain white, but sturdy. The liquid inside it was a murky brown. The old woman pushed it a couple inches closer to Grace. “A warm drink always helps, doesn’t it?”

“Why do you think I need help?” Grace asked, but her hand lifted to take the cup.

“Oh, my dear.” The woman chuckled as she released the cup into Grace’s hand. “That man with you?”

“My father.” Grace stared into the depths of the liquid. It was dense, absorbing the light. She took a sniff. Nothing she recognized. Not floral, not fruity.

“He wasn’t exactly quiet,” the woman said. “Why I bet everyone on the square heard him scolding you. Not to mention your arrival. It was rather loud.”

“Was it?” Grace’s hand tightened on the cup. She could feel the heat of the drink through the smooth material. It felt nice against her palm. Comforting.

“Quite loud,” the woman confirmed. “Like an explosion. And then all that smoke. A bit messy, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t really have much to do with it,” Grace admitted. “That was all him.”

She looked around her. She hadn’t paid much attention to where her father had dumped her. He’d been angry enough that she’d been focused on him.

It wasn’t even her fault. Not really. Oh, sure, she had let that adventurer into the castle, but it had been cold outside. She couldn’t just let him freeze, could she?

Well, she could have. And she should have. But she’d been bored silly. It felt like winter had gone on forever and she’d been so sick of the snow and its eternal sameness. A stranger showing up had been a change.

And she hadn’t let him in because he was cute. Her father had been totally wrong about that. Sure, the adventurer was cute — Sam, his name was Sam. Sam was cute but it was not like Grace had known that when she let him in. He’d been all bundled up in layers and layers of winter clothes. She’d only discovered that he was cute when he’d warmed up enough to shed a few of his coats.

And it was so not her fault that Sam had gone exploring after she’d let him use the bathroom. What should she have done? Told him to pee in the corner, like he was a dog that wasn’t housebroken? Her father wouldn’t have appreciated that, either.

And how could she have anticipated that Sam would find the library? Well, maybe she could have predicted that. It was only two doors away from the bathroom, after all, and when she’d shown him where the bathroom was, the door to the library had been open, with the giant Book of Days open on a pedestal in the middle of the room. Maybe she could have guessed that it would look too interesting to resist.

Still, she hadn’t planned on letting Sam read the Book of Days. It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t like she’d done anything wrong on purpose. She hadn’t deliberately disobeyed her father. She knew she wasn’t allowed to touch the book. And she hadn’t! Letting Sam touch it, well, her father had never explicitly told her that no one was allowed to read the book. Sure, maybe she could have extrapolated that if she wasn’t allowed to touch it, no guests would be allowed to touch it either.

But it’s not like they ever had any guests.

Really, it was her father’s fault. If he’d invited people to the castle now and then, like a civilized wizard, then maybe she would have known the rules for visitors.

But now this. She was sitting on the edge of a fountain in the middle of what looked like a major tourist trap. Cute little houses, cute little shops. It must be one of those historic recreation places. Like a Renaissance Faire, only not.

But as Grace spotted people peering out of windows at her, the rocks in her stomach sank even lower. The people didn’t look right.

Well, they didn’t look too wrong. Not like aliens or anything. They were normal people. But they didn’t look like the cheerful shopkeepers of a highly profitable, vacation destination. They looked like… shopkeepers of a small town in the middle of nowhere.

In the middle of no-when.

“What year is it?” she asked the old woman.

“Year? What do you mean?” The old woman looked confused.

“Year? Like, um, year of our lord, something or other, like that?”

“I don’t know what you mean, child. Perhaps you should speak to the priest?”

Grace bit her lip. Uh-oh. This was very bad news.

“Except…” The woman cleared her throat. Her glance around the square was almost a glare. “Except you might not want to do that.”

Grace followed her gaze. There weren’t lots of people, just a few. A sturdy man with a big red nose wearing a heavy apron, stained with splatters that looked like blood. A woman, hair pulled stringently back, wearing a less heavy apron sprinkled with flour. A lanky kid, taller than the woman, leaning over her shoulder. An old man, perched on a stump by a door…

Per request…

08 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by in A Precarious Magic, Writing

≈ 9 Comments

Alice asked, I’m delivering. 🙂

Zelda looking incredibly awkward

Zelda looking incredibly awkward

In the live version of this photo, Zelda is shaking herself off after having gotten wet in the splash from the ocean. But somehow the picture that the computer decided should represent the entire series of photos is this one, where she looks… well, ridiculous, to be honest. My dog is not often ungainly, but she is definitely charmingly ungainly here.

And the other thing that Alice asked for:

Fuck.

The eyes of the dead fish staring up at her looked reproachful.

Fen scowled down at it. In her runaway days, she’d gone dumpster diving, chowing down on half-eaten burgers without even blinking. Food was food when you were hungry.

But she wasn’t hungry enough for eyes.

“Does your fish displease you, love?” The queen gestured to the platter in front of them. “Shall you try something else? The sea cucumber is delightful this evening.”

Fen averted her gaze from the platter and plastered a smile on her face. “No, no, this is fine, thank you.”

The platter contained… creatures. Snails in their shells; open flat shells holding gray slimy goop; white tubes with dangling tentacles; slices of a bumpy yellow flesh that looked squishy; curved pink bodies with teeny tiny legs and antennae.

Sea bugs, basically.

Even eyes were better than eating sea bugs.

When Fen had been invited to the formal banquet celebrating the opening night of the Great Council, she’d pictured something medieval—gray stone walls and long wooden tables with the queen on her throne at the head of the room. Or maybe she’d been imagining Hogwarts. Either way, she’d been impossibly far from the truth.

Instead she sat under the star-sprinkled twilight sky, in a garden lit by thousands of tiny floating lights. Tables were placed under the trees, in nooks and alcoves created by hanging vines and waterfalls, while winding paths led from one grove to the next. People flowed along the paths, waiters in blue and silver with platters of food hoisted high scurrying between the strolling Sia Maran elite in their most glorious attire. In the background, music played, tendrils of melody winding around the rhythm of waves.

And behind them, in a view that Fen was trying hard not to think about, the ocean loomed, up, up and up. It would have been beautiful — it was beautiful — except that nothing at all seemed to separate the garden from the overwhelming weight of seawater next to it.

The water wasn’t the worst part, though.

The company was as terrifying, and much closer. Somehow, she’d wound up seated between Her Royal Majesty, Queen Ellinora of Syl Var, and the Lady Cyntha, Mother of House Del Mar.

The queen wasn’t so bad, apart from being, you know, a queen. But Lady Cyntha was beautiful and elegant and powerful and stern. And she called Fen, ‘Lady Felicia.’

Lady Felicia!

Sitting next to Lady Cyntha while staring at a dead fish felt a lot like a bad dream, the kind where you were naked in math class and desperately needed to pee but couldn’t find a toilet. Oh, and you’d forgotten to study for the final exam that was happening at exactly that moment.

“Breathe,” a voice—chocolate and honey, warm and smooth, the sound resonating deep within her bones—whispered in her ear as Kaio leaned forward and refilled her goblet.

Obediently, Fen took a breath.

And then she frowned at him. What was he doing here?

I would say, “Your wish is my command,” but you know, I think we both probably wish that I was writing a lot faster! So that would be a lie. But I hope the snippet is at least evidence that Fen will be back someday soon!

One month, post Grace

14 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by in Randomness, Reviews, Writing, Zelda

≈ 13 Comments

Grace released a month ago.

I thought I had thoughts about that, but now I’ve been staring at a blank screen for twenty minutes, so maybe I don’t. But if you’ve read Grace, and you want to read an extra scene from it, I hid one up in the Scribbles section. Click the link or check the menu at the top of the site.

I try not to read reviews, because I don’t need other people’s critical voices in my head — my own critical voice is loud enough. But I glanced at Goodreads and was pleased to see some of the more negative (but thoughtful) reviews there. I really liked the one that said Grace gets short-changed in her own romance. So true, so true! I’m also really glad that there are more positive reviews than negative, of course. 🙂

But reviews aren’t meant for authors, they’re meant for other readers, to help them find books, so this is your one-and-only nudge from me — if you’d like to help other readers find my books, writing a review really helps. Of course, you might not want to help other readers find my books and that’s totally fair. You might not even read my books! You might be here hoping to find out what I think about Nova Scotia, or what I’m cooking in the van lately, or even just to see cute dog pictures. She is a very cute dog, after all.

Short answers: Nova Scotia is beautiful, still stuck on quinoa bowls; and yes, she is cute.

Cute dog in front of van with water in background

The view from the van window is stunning. I’ve only been in this site for one night, but I never want to leave.

Harvest Hosts

07 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by in Food, Travel, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

barn picture

I heard roosters crowing when I took Zelda for her morning walk, and saw cows in a distant field, plus lots of forest, and a beautiful red dirt road. Also a patch of sunflowers and a lovely expanse of Queen Anne’s lace, which I am sadly quite allergic to. I’ve retreated inside the van with my congestion and itchy eyes, but it’s another beautiful day on Prince Edward Island. Tons of mosquitoes, though — I hope my immunity to them kicks in again soon, because they’re ferocious here.

Yesterday I took the van to an RV service place in Charlottetown and got the leaking toilet fixed. Yay! The guy doing the job grumbled about the last repair — I think the guy in Montana didn’t fix the leak, just put a clamp over it — but my plastic parts have now been replaced with brass parts and so that should hold me for a while. I hope, anyway. Today I’m headed off to get the oil changed, the brake fluid levels checked (the light has flickered on a couple of times), and the tires rotated. Yes, dealing with the practicalities of van life!

The farm — and I can’t remember whether we’re allowed to be specific when it’s a Harvest Hosts spot, but if you’re a Harvest Hosts member, you’ll know which farm it is, because it’s the only one on Prince Edward Island — doesn’t have a store, so I handed S., the farmer, some money and said, “Feed me.” LOL. More or less, anyway. He gave me bacon, eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, and a zucchini and I really feel like I should pull out the frying pan and do a giant UK-style fry-up. (Harvest Hosts, for those who don’t know it, is an annual membership service that connects users with farms, wineries, museums, and an assortment of other places where you can park for free for the night. The expectation is that you pay by shopping in their stores.)

We had a great conversation about cooking, too. S teaches cooking classes, specifically (today at least) slow cooker classes where you prep the food ahead of time for a week’s worth of meals. It made me want to cook some complicated things in my slow-cooker, instead of just a week’s worth of quinoa. But the weather is supposed to be colder for the next couple of days, so I’m hoping to grab the opportunity to use my oven a few times: roasted vegetables, granola, etc.

Hmm, this is turning out to be a food-driven post, which is probably because I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. I should get on that! I was going to write about writing — or not writing, as the case has been for a couple of days — but I’ll hold that thought until later.

But in a comment on another blog, I described myself as “flailing.” I worked on Grace for such a long time that I sort of feel like Sisyphus, having reached the top of the hill and having the boulder NOT roll back down again. I’ve been appreciating life without the boulder, but every time I start writing, I start to fall into the trap of treating the words like a boulder instead of the beach ball they ought to be. And that’s a metaphor that might not make sense to anyone but me, but I’m leaving it because it’s a perfect reminder to me of what I’m striving for. Words like beach balls, light and bouncy and playful!

Camping des Voltigeurs, Drummondville, Quebec

23 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by in Campground, Randomness, Travel, Vanlife, Writing

≈ 14 Comments

I dreamed last night that the campsite I’m in turned to solid mud in the rain, two inches deep, and that Zelda ran out of the van door and straight into the mud, sinking in and leaving footprints all over it. I immediately objected, super frustrated because even though I’m supposed to have water at this campsite, it’s not at all clear to me where I find said water. There’s no hook-up within reach, not unless I had incredibly long hoses. No hook-up that’s obvious, anyway.

So she was muddy and I was upset, because I knew I’d never get her clean, and there was going to be mud all over the van, and although I’ve gotten used to being dirty, I’ve never really accepted it. I still hate it, especially when the van is dirty and it feels like there’s no escape from the dirt.

And then I woke up and it hadn’t rained, the sun was shining and there was no mud. Isn’t it strange how happy one can feel about something that one would totally have taken for granted in other circumstances? Without that dream, it would never have occurred to me to be glad that the ground was solid. I would have been mentally grumbling about the traffic — my campsite is across from a busy road, so even though there’s a line of trees mostly blocking the road from view, I’m again listening to a lot of traffic noises. But I don’t mind now, because at least it’s not traffic noises in the mud.

The part about the water is true, though. When I got here yesterday, I was mystified, but also much too tired after a really long day of driving to deal with going back up to the front and finding someone to help me. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. There are plenty of empty spaces, so I could go talk to someone at the front and maybe move to another site, but I could also just go without water hook-ups for a few days.

I’ve gotten pretty good at coping with water scarcity from all my driveway camping — water hook-ups are more of a luxury than a necessity for me — but I’m paying for the water so I sort of feel like I should have it. Paying a lot, too — provincial parks in Canada are not cheap, even with the exchange rate. On the other hand, I’m tired and unmotivated and don’t speak French. For the moment at least, I think I will survive without water.

But I will survive without water in Quebec! Where people speak French! Yesterday’s French adventures included a confusing stop at a gas station where the pump didn’t work and the messages on the screen were all in French, and then a confusing stop at a CostCo where my debit card didn’t work. In both places, the cashiers spoke perfect English once I made my confusion clear, so it’s not like I faced any true challenges, but it was rather fun. I like feeling lost in another country. It adds another layer to being tired, though — when I finally made it to my campsite, I really just didn’t have the energy left to have another confusing encounter.

A campsite with trees, a car going by, electric wires overhead and much dirt ground.

My campsite. Electric wires and traffic, but no mud!

I believe that this campground is next to an historic Quebec village. No dogs allowed, but I might leave Z in the van for a while and go wander around for a while. I’d feel okay about doing that, because it was 53 degrees this morning and is still only in the 60s. 53! I was too cold to get out of bed, because it hadn’t remotely occurred to me that I might want to run the heat. But it makes me really happy to be so chilly. Autumn is on its way, yay! I love Serenity, but I love her best when she’s not an oven.

But before I do that, I’m going to write for a while. Real words. Fiction words. Yesterday’s long drive (pretty close to eight hours, including two stops for gas, one dog walk, and one quick CostCo visit for Canadian blueberries) was rich with imaginings. My only problem is that I had good ideas for so many stories that I’m not even sure where to begin. It’s a lovely problem to have.