Nothing to Say....

I haven't posted in awhile. Basically, nothing to say. I'm waiting to see how the election and the stock market do, and writing.

Here's a snippet of what I'm currently working on.

Please don't quote or post elsewhere, first draft.

Deyna opened the door, and a bell rang somewhere in the back of the shop. Except for a couple of comfortable-looking chairs and a table, the front was empty. She let the door swing shut and stood without moving.

Motion from the back of the room caught her gaze. A curtain swung in the draft created by opening the front door.

“You can come out, Morion Grey Cloak,” Deyna said. “I know you’re there.”

Some indeterminate thumps sounded. Deyna felt a twitch of amazement. Morion entered the room on crutches, dragging a useless left leg behind him.

She shook off the amazement and held up the knife. “Yours?”

“Mine,” he acknowledged.

“Why?”

His deep-set eyes surveyed her. “Right to the point. I like that. I had to make sure you came here and that you’d need my help.”

“Why in the name of the Great God didn’t you just ask?”

“Because you’d never have agreed,” he said, and gave her a faint smile.

That smile made her uneasy. His next words confirmed it.

“I need you to kill a stone dragon.”

How the Current Economic Crisis is Like Jenga...

Remember that game? You build a tower with wooden pieces, and then try to remove pieces without the whole thing tumbling to the ground.

To understand the current Wall Street fiasco, imagine that derivative investments were those wooden pieces--remove the wrong piece and the whole tower comes crashing down.

Well, remove subprime mortgages from the picture--something which many of the so-called brilliant lights in Wall Street used to build their towering investment edifices--and you can see that collapse was inevitable.

If no one is buying subprimes, that particular wooden piece is removed from the game. Ergo, boom! Who couldn't have seen that coming? Apparently most of Wall Street's analysts.

Simplified explanation? You bet. However, if Wall Street investors had stuck to simpler, time-tested and tried stuff, we wouldn't have to be bailing their asses out with taxpayer money.

How time flies... Friday Snippet, September 12, 2008

I haven't posted in awhile, I see. I'm plotting. Trying to come up with scenes for the story I want to write as a part of the How to Think Sideways course.

There's so much in Holly's course, it would be difficult to convey it all, but the highlight for me so far has been the Sentence. Once I figured out that doing the Sentence correctly builds in all the conflict I need in a scene, it was like coming out of a dark room into daylight. Oh, yeah! That works! If I take nothing else away from this course, THAT will be worth the whole enchilada.

I started writing a story that's modeled after my childhood role-model Andre Norton. I think I caught the flavor of her technique--

Brief snippet--- please don't repost or quote without permission--the usual.

Jetan found Berek’s cruiser buried nose-first in the snow and ice. He stopped, hand on his holstered pistol, and looked for signs of life.

The cruiser lay, silent and broken and – empty? Had Berek survived what must have been a terrific crash?

Jetan would not be surprised. Berek had managed to survive worse and emerge from hiding just as the Academy considered him safely dead.

He triggered his communicator. “I found the cruiser. I’m going in.”

The communicator blipped. “Careful, Jetan. Berek’s been known to set booby traps.” Zed’s voice came over as tiny and distorted on the communicator’s speaker.

Jetan wasted a second trying to modulate the frequency. Something on this fierce, savage world interfered with the unit.

He stowed the communicator and drew his pistol. Moving slowly and carefully, his glance darting among the wreckage, Jetan approached the damaged cruiser.

Struggling, and Friday Snippet, August 22, 2008

Hmmm. Hit a road block on How to Think Sideways. I'm having trouble with my protagonist--figuring out what she wants, how she works--and I'm having this sinking feeling this may be my problem area. Or maybe it's a good thing that I've pinpointed the problem--thing is, I'm not sure how to fix it yet.

Brief Friday snippet. First draft only--please don't quote or repost elsewhere.

In the days when the world was new and djinn still called the deserts their homes, there arose a warrior so pure, so true that even the Emperor, whose life the warrior would have given his own to protect, grew jealous.

"Gaji will become Emperor in my place," the Emperor said in his heart. "I will destroy him."

So the Emperor confiscated Gaji's lands and worldly goods, and sent him to a far land to subdue the infidels with only what he could carry.

Gaji, pure and true and lacking any deceit in his heart, thanked the Emperor for his attention, promised to always honor the Empire in word and deed, and made the far land his new home.

Soon, so well had Gaji performed his duty to the Empire, that stories of his bravery and exploits reached the Emperor's ear.

To Cluster, Or Not to Cluster...Friday Snippet, August 15, 2008

One of the things we're doing in Holly's How to Think Sideways class is clustering. I've never been a big clustering fan---but since the whole class hinges on it, I started thinking about it.

In a way, clustering is like free writing. You don't censor what you put down, you just put it down. I've done sets of free writing before and have no difficulty, so really, what the heck is my problem with clustering? Is it the graphical nature of it? Does it seem more rather than less restrictive to me? Maybe. In any case, I've set aside my discontent with it, and did the exercise on the six questions. More later on how it worked to generate story ideas.

A tiny snippet of what I'm working on lately: First draft, please do not quote or post elsewhere

The first thing Mia remembered her father telling her was that her mother abandoned her.

This meant nothing to Mia. Never knowing a mother, she did not miss having one. When the village children pitied and shunned her, she became aware of a lack of maternal presence in her life, and wondered about her mother—who she was, why she’d abandoned her daughter.

At her seventh birthday, with no cake and no presents, Mia asked her father about her mother.

Her father flew into a rage, stomping around the room and throwing things.

“Don’t ask me about her! Don’t ask me about her!” he shouted, and shoved his face close to hers, hair standing on end where he’d clutched it. “A fickle creature, heart as insubstantial as a feather!” he raged. “But I was more clever than she! I never told her my name.”

“What do you mean, Father?” Mia asked.

But her father shut his mouth tight and left the house in a hurry. When he returned, he wouldn’t respond to any of her questions. Mia eventually stopped asking.

Deep Into It -- Friday, August 8, 2008

Look at all those eights up there! Would have been more, but I kept to my date format. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Emerson *sigh*

I'm deep into Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways class. As such, I've been writing material for the class. I have to say I'm liking it so far. The course is just as much about philosophy as it is about writing.

And, since it's Friday, here's a really brief snippet for you:

Anita Chavez knew the gunslinger rode to town long before he arrived. The peculiar smell of death assailed her nostrils, as it always did when she encountered those who lived by violence. And yet, a tangy odor she couldn’t identify mingled with the scent of death. Most reeked of carrion and old blood, but the gunslinger presented a different mix.

Voila! Tricked out Deck! Friday Snippet, July 25, 2008

And here is the finished project. Presto, chango.

Below is a snippet from a short I'm working on. Artemis Hancock is a gunslinger. The narrator--well, is something a little different. First draft--may change, please do not quote or repost. Thanks, and enjoy!

And I understood something about Artemis Hancock I hadn’t understood before. He had a purpose. That purpose might be the only thing keeping him sane. I gave that piece of data to the Keeper, not willing to risk losing a fact that would take me one step closer to fulfilling the terms of my punishment and returning home.

When he curled up in his blanket, I waited for sleep to take him. I dropped the girl’s aspect. Without the need to alter his perception, I could be myself.

I padded away from the campfire’s light. The desert night enfolded me in cool velvet, yet carried the sounds of scurrying creatures and the occasional snap of rocks losing the heat of the day. Somewhere in the distance, a creature sang its mournful loneliness to the stars. Coyote, scavenger, the Keeper supplied, but I had heard the sound numerous times and even caught glimpses of the slinking creature in the twilight hours.

I did not fear scavengers, or even the predators that walked this desert. My scent usually deterred anything that crossed my path. If not, my teeth and claws could take care of the rest. If anyone on this planet saw my true form, I would have been shot on sight. Or perhaps burned at the stake.

Stoneriver Valley up close did not impress me any more than it had at a distance. The town crouched in the darkness like some fantastic, sleeping beast on the desert floor. I could smell the fear that lay, pall-like, over the place. But here—here in this tiny collection of sticks where people huddled in the darkness with their fears of the unseen and the unknown—lay the answer to the riddle of Artemis Hancock.

The town had been laid out in a kind of crude cross shape, with the main dirt road serving as the shank of the cross. As I passed the buildings that lined this shank, I caught a familiar whiff. In my travels with Artemis, I had smelled the sourness of beer before.

I paused in front of the tavern. At this time of early morning, even the tavern was dark and silent. With the coming of daylight, that would change. The people would creep from their hiding places and find their courage in the bottles that lined the tavern shelves.