Ever Bethany

Aloft in the Storm, as far as my lyrics and melody go, is very much in the common way of whatever semblance of style I have...

but my brother Dan, who is now finishing up his studies in Music Production, got a vision to do it more Symphonic Metal style instrumentally. And man.

Not only is that one of my fave genre styles, he really made this song sound good.

Go listen: Aloft in the Storm



I've had widget failure, trying to get you one that doesn't autoplay spam your F-List, but that didn't work out so you're going to have to go over there yoursefl...

"Milord Crown Prince has fallen in love with a frog," the Lower East Minister reported grimly.

This was not quite the truth.

"I swore I'd marry the frog if it could jump over the great old elm in the garden, because it claimed it had crossed over the top of the palace," the prince explained to his father, who was pinching the bridge of his nose again. "There's something wrong about that frog," he added darkly.

"Even aside from the fact that it was talking with you?" his younger brother Fenn asked.

"Obviously it was a magic frog," said Crown Prince Athel, attempting sarcasm. "But why it's taking my vow so seriously is quite a different thing."

"You'd think an educated adult of this day and age would know how to hold their tongue around magical creatures," remarked the king, "especially 'obvious' ones."

***


This is the opening of a story I finished today and read at writer's group. I scribbled out quick this week, because it was amusing, and I thought would be fun for everyone to hear. Seems it was!

There was a fearsome turnout of people there to pay their dues for the year, but once I got actually started my newly diagnosed stage fright wasn't so bad.  Getting few laughs toward the beginning are kind of key when you like to write funny stuff...and this one I tried to play to my strengths, as far as wit goes.

Fenn is actually the main character, and I secretly adore him. Without the "secret" part.

I am so happy to be writing by hand again.

It's been over a year, I think, since I was working on a novel manuscript by hand, and it's gotten a little less normative even before that.
It feels like returning to the writing I loved as a teen.



The tactile sense of accomplishment as pages slip past my hands in a silk rustle.
The ability to flip them backward and sense where what I'm looking for is, and stop it before my eyes really see the words.
Marking each page with a number, an inauguration that counts them off without my noticing.

Carrying it anywhere, and leaving it marked with coffee, bent corners from packing it into bags, the traces of beating the back of the pen on it when waiting for ideas.


It may seem weird to be so romantic about this silly process, but it's just what I love best. I'm also infatuated with this story--still in the honeymoon, really. Inclined to be silly about all sorts of things.


story summary: Abi or "Ace" is selected as a tournament Champion for her neighborhood in a friendly battle with another neighborhood's Champion "Jet". This is complicated by the past of gang-involvement she's trying to escape, and the peculiar abilities she's trying to hide.

[Saturn '45/8/22] by coffeehouseace

 

filter: personal

 

I met Jet today. My prediction he was hot is so right it isn't safe to go into detail on a public entry.

I never got more notice than Jet's comment, by the way. Mage Lord of Melody Square (a.k.a. in my family “Jeremy”) showed up on the doorstep just as I was drying my hair, around 9:00 am.

“I can't believe he would come to our door,” my mama said, looking down to the apartment house stairs where he was stepping up.

“I can,” I said.

I threw my towel over the hat-hooks and went down to intercept him.

 

( Read more... )

Up over 30,000 words, the latest section of which includes an emergency escape swing-set, doubling as a Korean boy-band, and intimidating fake weaponry.

Here's a snippet, where Freedom talks with some of the people who are interning at their school. Under the man who maintains and constantly updates the trap-filled Wood behind the gym. (Joey, Chelsea and Sienna are fellow students.)
_________________

“I don't know when I'm going to have the next chance to walk through your little wonderland," I said, "but the bits of it I could process the last time had me very impressed. Is the rain system permanent?”

“Oh yes,” said Clive. “That was here long before I arrived, anyway.”

“What about the Breadbox? We were in that one for a while...”

“We dug for that one,” said John. “And then planted the masking grass and so on. I was surprised it worked, though, with the first trigger, then the second trapping of two people. Glee knows his stuff all right.”

“You'll have to see if the veterans get fooled,” I said. “We're the perfect suckers for any of them. If it was a barb-wire fence I'd get right over it, but my trap sense is not so good yet.”

“Y'all from farm country?” Clive asked with a grin.

“You betcha,” I said, in my best redneck accent.

“Hey, you eat up, girl,” he said, apparently adopting me for my bob-wire skillz. “No use in exercising if it don't give you license to eat hearty.”

“Once I'm used to the exercise maybe it won't be so hard.”

Chelsea was looking unhappy. Maybe it was something personal, but Sienna also had an eyebrow raised.

“Sorry, did I come interrupt a conversation?” I asked.

“Not really,” said Joey.

“You're doing your job well,” Chelsea told me. “Filling the awkward silences.”

“Apparently, all those years keeping my stupid comments to myself were a mistake.”

John the Earnest laughed at this, and the other guys smiled.

“Maybe just a different one than you're making now,” Sienna muttered.

I may be getting set to write the Pirates Penance book/s, which feature revenant pirates, cursed pawn-shop inheritors, and the patron saint of poetic justice.

Anyway, I have some pre-writing here: a short "story":

 

( A Bet with the Patron Saint of Bookies )

So, I've just realized my writer's fantasy.
Okay, so the most potent one at this moment: it's a publishing-*unrelated fantasy.

To have someone whose opinion I respect sit down, and read through all of my short stories and tell me which ones are any good.
  I know. Beggarly. But there it is. The stuff of my dreams.



Since it's Thursday, and I don't know what to do with you, here, have a little flash fiction.
(You do know this will be bad, right?
And what if I tell you it's a complete rip-off, which is how all my tributes to things end up?
But at least it's short? 1147 words only!)
It no longer has even that recommendation. It is now only less bad. And much less than 2000 words.
Sorry, snoozers.


PS: this is not real fan-fiction. It is an example of how much I canNOT do fan-fiction. Because I have rename people and rework set-ups, and borrow lightly to expand in strange directions.


*just had an odd moment where the world "publishing" felt the same to me as it did before I got so inured to hearing it all the time, seeing it in everything I read. Funny.

Guess who is mighty? And hath finished Silas Escapes?

You are so very clever. You deserve a prize.

A not-so-Poisson snippet: (The Not-Batman project, which is not going anywhere for a while yet, right, Not-Batman?)
( Best read with a mild Boston accent... )


I don't have a final word-count for The First Sequel, yet, since I haven't yet mustered my might to finish typing it. But there will be that eventually. After all, A Charade By Sheridan is going to be adding onto it's wordiness. Go Sherry!

This one will be like so:

*Charade by Sheridan* picks up at the end of *The Carnie's Conspiracy*, when Molly's younger brother is introduced to his magician tutor to start his education as one. Just as he's growing accustomed to frustrating work and being quiet in the big, dusty townhouse, Sheridan finds out the master is being pressured into work against Mr. Poisson--whoever he's pretending to be at the moment. Sheridan knows his master doesn't want to succeed in the sabotage, and so begins a long interchange of pretense. Master Mandrake teaches Sherry how to counter each move he make,s while speaking as if to say the opposite--and Sherry struggles to put it to practice and have his work attributed to Mr. Poisson. Can a boy long out of pick-pocket form sneak such magic and parse out what's under everything his tutor says?

ETA: I just got mail from Jonathan Stroud. *throb*
I love this part of NaNo...somehow YA fantasy authors are really game for being guest pep-talkers!

Also, I love November evenings like this:



6256 and into chapter three.
I better get to the plot soon, huh? That's a fourth of the way in...
Poisson's grandmother is enlivening it quite a bit so today's slog moved quicker.

Here, have a bit:
(Silas has just got out of prison, with help of a Siamese cat)

“Love,” said his grandmother, “try leaving the place, and see how you're set a'right. I'll just burn the coverlet when you've done.”

“Roll it up for a pillow and I'll be snug. Wood may look as flat as a stone floor, but I'll vow it's softer.”

“My poor lad. Here, lie on this old quilt, I've had a mind to give it to the slum-children recent, anyway, since your grandfather came by it through his grandma, and it's only laziness that's kept me from making up a new one.”

“Bless you,” Silas said, lying down.

 

She'd lit a candle to find the bedding, and now her eye fell on his foot.

“And just what have you speared yourself on, scapegallows?”

“I was attacked by a screwdriver,” Silas said.

( Granny Physicks Silas )

 

I'm rebuilding my bookmarks.
It's shocking how few things I really NEED to have links ready to.
In reward for circumspection, I may just go find the Girl Genius site...

ETA: Snippet of Poisson

Words of Poisson: 22,000

Newest Title Idea: Carnies for Her Majesty ("Plans of Poisson" series)

Grandiose Shemes of the Week:
 I want to finish this. I can do it easy in a week's worth of free days, but I'm going to try for the next two days as well.

I think this is going to end up about 25,000 words, which I like the sound of. I don't know if I can squeeze two more chapter breaks in there, but it would bring me up to 8...which just would seem more decent a number, though short of 10. (If I cared enough I could shift a few chapters back, but you know, that's just ridiculous.)

Also, I'm thinking about keeping an eye out for Poisson costuming pieces. After all, if you have fan-art, you are a fandom, right? Which makes dressing as your own character only _mostly_ lame.

And it's only fair that I share a recent bit with you.

 

( In Which Molly is Costuming for her Show )

It's Stat Time Again    Because all the Cool Elevenses VPs are doing it

And this time it's fancy--I've been pulling out submissions information from my Progress spreadsheet, just to see it isolated in a clearer format. I'm...rather impressed, actually.

Rejections: 10 (14 pieces, multis for poetry) but see this?
FORM Rejections: 5   
(which until I pulled this info out I hadn't realized were so disparate--all story submissions are in this category, sadly)
Submission Points : 13
(including pending responses for year so far)
Over Last Year's Score: 11
Outstanding Invitations to Submit More: 3
(Woefully for speculative poetry, which I started to actually write yesterday, luckily two for when submissions reopen a while from now)

Poisson Points:  69 pages  5th Chapter of 8~10

First Lines:    (with cheats)
Poisson:

Mr. Poisson was the most dangerous man of Muldable City. His wardrobe being all in hues of magenta was not generally seen as funny.

Between Brothers:

Desty looked out the window of his friend's apartment over the city—the frost and fire of evening, in this season of short days, was brilliant. He felt a forgotten valediction on the magic he worked with, dry and business-like, every day.

The Leighle:

Caer paused at the door of his office at encampment and watched the Leighle. She was at work on a battle-map spread on the floor boards, intent as ever, but looking pallid.

Deadside Beat:

A billboard stood, neglected, on the fringe of Untown's Deadside but facing into Liveside: "Kills for Less--Hardhome Hitstrikers".

 Every time she thought of it, Morgan Hardhome's teeth went on edge.

And right now I'm reworking Beastly--again. The first line is tentatively:

The light of midmorning blinded Jen as she threw open the door.

Boy. None of these are snappy at ALL.
Except Mr. Poisson. He is an exception to everything. (Except being talked up. He takes no exception to that.)