The Christmas Gift

Margaret stood outside her sister’s door, taking a moment to admire the festive wreath on the door. Lizzie’s work, no doubt. Grace wouldn’t have thought of it herself, having spent years of George not liking a fuss at Christmas. But George had been gone for five years now, and it was nice to see a glimpse of the old Grace again. It made what she was about to do a little easier.

Gathering up her courage, she rapped briskly on the door. It only took a moment before it opened.

“Hello, Lizzie.” Lizzie was her twenty year old niece. “I hope I’m not interrupting, but I need to speak with your mother.”

“Mom and I were doing some Christmas decorating but we’ve stopped for a hot chocolate break. Come in and join us.”

Lizzie held the door open a little wider and Margaret stepped through, then followed the younger woman to the kitchen.

“Margaret,” Grace said, turning from the stove. “What a pleasant surprise.” She peered a little more closely at her sister. “You’re looking a little peeked. Is everything thing all right?”

“I—” Margaret stopped, then started again. “No, not really. I’ve something that’s been weighing on me for a number of years, and I need to get it off my chest.”

“I think I’ll run down to the store to get the butter for the shortbread,” Lizzie said, slipping out the door.

“Why don’t you sit down, Margaret.”

“I think I’d be better standing.” Margaret laid the manilla envelope she’d been carrying, on the table between them. “These belong to you. I’ve kept them all these years, and I’d no right to. I … I thought I was doing the right thing, that you’d be better off with George. By the time I realized it wasn’t my decision to make, it was too late.”

“Margaret, whatever are you talking about? What’s in the envelope?” Concerned, Grace reached out to her sister, but Margaret pulled back.

Tears in her eyes, Margaret said, “They’re letters from Liam. The first one came just before you married George. I—I—I’m sorry.”

Unable to face the shocked look on her sister’s face, Margaret turned and fled.


Grace sank slowly onto one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table, staring at the envelope as though it were a snake about to bite her. There wasn’t a day gone by in the last twenty years that she hadn’t thought about Liam McKenzie. She was still lost in thought when Lizzie returned with the butter.

“Mom? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Grace said. How many times had she wondered how things would have been different if she and Liam hadn’t quarrelled? How many times had she wished she’d swallowed her pride and gone to him? Too many to count.

Lizzie sat down opposite her. “What’s this?” She indicated the envelope.

“It’s … mail from a friend. It’s been coming to Margaret’s house and she saved it for me.”

“To Margaret’s house, why would it go there?”

Grace smiled faintly. “Because it used to be my house too. But that was a long time ago.”

“Well, aren’t you going to at least open it?”

“I don’t know if I should or not. I’m a little afraid of stirring up the past.” With a shake of her head, Grace pushed back from the table. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry. What do you say to ordering Chinese take-out for dinner?” She looked at her daughter earnestly, silently begging her to let the matter drop.

“Chinese would be great,” Lizzie said, letting the matter drop. At least for now.


The unsealed envelope was on the little roll top desk in the front parlour when Lizzie came downstairs in the morning. Unable to get the look on her mother’s face as she stared at it out of her mind, she tipped the contents onto the desk. There were more than a dozen smaller sealed envelopes.

Frowning, she put them in order by date. There were fifteen of them, one a year for fifteen years starting twenty years ago. The postmarks for the first five years were the same, but after that it was a different country each time, like the person started travelling. The sender’s name was Liam McKenzie. The wheels started turning in Lizzie’s brain.

She’d been looking for the perfect Christmas present for her mother, what could be more perfect than a man who’d cared enough to try and stay in touch. She put all but the last letter back in the envelope and left it as she found it on the desk. Then, calling up to her mother that she was running an errand, she headed for the library.

Lizzie had always enjoyed research, and by the end of the day she knew all kinds of things about Liam McKenzie. He had a degree in Engineering, which accounted for the first five letters being all sent from the same place, and then he’d joined the army. Five years ago he’d been wounded and ended up with a medical discharge. And one year ago, he’d moved back to this city.

It was meant to be. Now she just needed to find a way to bring them together. Of course that was assuming he was still interested.

“Well,” she said, standing up, “There’s only one way to find out.”


It was Christmas Eve and Lizzie and her mother were enjoying a quiet evening at home.

“Mom, I have a confession to make,” Lizzie said.

“Nothing too serious I hope,” Grace said with a smile.

Lizzie took a deep breath, but before she could speak there was a knock on the door.

“Whoever could that be?”

“It’s your Christmas present,” Lizzie said. “I hope you like it. Stay right here, I’ll get it.”

When she returned leading Liam McKenzie, she didn’t need to say anything. Her mother rose to her feet, one hand pressed to her heart and the look on her face was anything but displeased.

“Liam!”

“Gracie, you haven’t aged a day.”

Lizzie grinned. Her mother seemed to like her Christmas gift just fine.

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Okay, it’s not really. We had a little bit of snow on the weekend, but it warmed up again so it’s pretty much gone. *sigh*

But here are some more of my favorite Christmas videos to help with the Christmas Spirit.

A Tale of Two Carts

Organizing is what you do before you do something so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.
— A. A. Milne

Getting organized is a sign of self-respect.
— Gabrielle Bernstein

Organization isn’t about perfection; it’s about efficiency, reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money and improving your overall quality of life.
— Christina Scalise

Did I say I was feeling more writerly? Well I lied. At least for the past week I lied.

Last week I did a lot of shopping, I got my presents all wrapped, I got the tree up and decorated, did crafts with the grandbaby, and did pretty much everything except write, bog posts not withstanding.

Tis the season to be busy, fa la la la la, la la la la

My office has become the storage place for all things Christmas. It’s a little hard to get it organized when you’re buried in a sea of gift bags and tissue paper. I sit at my desk maybe once a day to check Facebook, maybe do a bit of surfing, and dream of the holidays being over so I can get serious about organizing the piles of books and papers all over the place.

One of the worst paper collectors is the stand beside my small filing cabinet. This stand is an old telephone stand I picked up at a thrift store. It has a basket on the top to hold my blank printer paper, and an overflowing basket on the bottom shelf that holds my papers to be shredded. I have my shredder sitting beside it, the idea being that I’d shred papers as I discard them. Which would be a great plan if I ever adhered to it.

Anyway, one of the ads that popped up during one of the games I’m fond of playing, was for this neat metal cart from Staples. It was about the same size as my telephone stand, but it had three shelves that had three inch sides to them. You know, like this one:

It came a LOT earlier than my confirmation email said it would, but I didn’t have time to put it together. Turns out, this was a good thing because a few days later I saw an ad for an even better cart. This one had baskets and a file drawer.

After hemming and hawing and measuring the available space, I went ahead and ordered it. It should be here tomorrow, but it’ll still have to wait until after Christmas before I have time to put it together.

The fact that this new cart is like, three times the cost of the other one it kind of a moot point for me. This one has a file drawer. And the baskets pull out like drawers. And because it’s made out of mesh, I can see what’s in what drawer.

Of course the down side to that is I can’t hide my chocolate in it, but hey, you can’t have everything. ;-)

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

This is going to sound weird, but I kind of miss writing all those flash stories for NaNo. In fact, Friday night I was missing it so much I started thinking ahead to next Christmas, and how I wanted to do a Christmas story advent calendar – a scene or page or something a day leading up to Christmas. So with this in mind, I started downloading Christmas story prompts. Nine pages of prompts.

Now I had in mind a longer story that I could serialize in the calendar, maybe a novella or novelette. But many of the prompts were geared to be really short, like flash or micro flash, and then I got the idea of doing a themed anthology of Christmas stories for next year’s book flood anthology.

What the heck has gotten into me, thinking so far ahead, getting all organized . . . I hope it sticks with me.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 992+518+1256=2,766
Total = 2,766 words

I managed to get all the blog posts up on time, which is a minor miracle in itself because last week was a busy week.

EDITING:
Oh, seriously. Did you miss the part where I said it was a busy week? I did have to edit Friday’s story, but that’s as far as it goes.

WHAT I’M READING:
One of the days last week was so grey and dismal and warm, that I plunked myself in my recliner and finished reading Treasured Find, by Nancy Corrigan, on my Kindle. Although I had a slight problem with the hero’s domineering personality, it was just part of the kind of shifter he was, and didn’t detract from the story itself. This is going to go on the list of books I want to get the rest of the series in when I get a new Kindle.

GOALS
The blog posts were done, and up on time, so I guess that means I did better. My over all total word count for blog posts was up, anyway.

Elemental Spirit is still in mothballs, and realistically it’s going to stay there until after Christmas at least.

Doing a freefall exercise to start my day seems like a good idea in theory, but the truth of the matter is by the time I remember I was going to do that my morning is pretty much gone. Maybe it’ll go better once I get the office organized again.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Start planning ahead for next year.
2. Get my office organized.
3. Make time to write.

Write on.

Photos

The plan going forward was to do a five to ten minute freewriting session to start each day, and then use the best of them here, for my Fiction Fridays. Obviously that didn’t happen. So instead you’re getting NaNo story #29.

Prompt: You get back to your studio to develop pictures from the hour you just spent in the park. All of the pictures turn out well, except for a select few. In six photographs, there is a man in the frame. Something seems slightly off, and rather strange about each picture. Who is he and what is weird about the photographs?

I stared down at the proofs I’d just developed and frowned. There was nothing wrong with them, but they weren’t what I wanted. While working as a freelance photographer could be rewarding, it could also be very frustrating.

I cut the power to my light board and sat back with a sigh. Of the twenty-four pictures, probably twenty of them could be used as stock photos. And let’s face it, stock photos were my bread and butter. Taking pictures of the ordinary, the mundane, was big business.

Too bad I couldn’t be content with that. I wanted something spectacular, something different, something that set me apart from the crowd. That’s why I was using a film camera when everyone else was making the switch to digital.

The others can have their photo shop and digital manipulations, I’d stick to my dark room and chemical washes, my light board and enlarger. I enjoyed the hands on process of developing the film, transferring the photos to the paper in the chemical bath, hanging them on a line to dry. It was fulfilling in a way digital couldn’t hope to be.

With digital you can take as many pictures as you want, without having to worry about wasting film. Or worse, running out of it. The processing is all done electronically. No worries about making sure the developer did its job correctly, no fear of the chemicals becoming tainted and ruining a roll of film. Digital pictures can be manipulated and tweeked online. There was no art to it. No soul.

I made myself a sandwich, one of the perks of working at home, and sat on the couch to think while I ate. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the pictures in the National Geographic magazine my father subscribed to. I loved the pictures. The city streets that showed the light and movement, a slice of life in the fast lane. The sweeping panoramic swath of a desert, the sand shifting in the wind that swept across the top of the dunes.

Then there was the shot of a redwood, taken from the ground and looking up into the canopy, the sun dappling through the leaves. The tropical rainforests with its denizens lurking within. The full page of a snarling tiger with its fierce eyes and aggressive attitude. The shots of the stars filling a night sky, the moon so bright.

But my favorite pictures were those of the people. The child on the tundra, sleeping with its head resting against a caribou. The face of the coal miner, streaked black with coal dust. The old woman on the Isle of Skye, hanging out her laundry in a brisk wind. The smiling, coffee skinned girl, shyly offering a handful of hand made jewelry. The sheik looking out of place in a high rise office.

My childhood dream had been to become a great photographer and go to work for National Geographic. My first camera was a simple point and click I received for Christmas one year. Every penny of my allowance went to film and film processing. When I started high school I was given my first standard reflex lens camera, a Nikon that became my prized possession. I joined the camera club and learned how to develop film. I got a part time job in a department store photo department.

I took chemistry in high school to better understand the developing process of my films. And then I won a scholarship so I could pursue my dream to become a professional photography. I learned about F-stops and spectrums and shutter speeds. I learned theory and composition. I learned about what settings to use for which situations. But the one thing I didn’t learn, was my niche.

This was getting me no where. I got up and brushed the crumbs away. Maybe I’d try my luck at that park near the cemetery. The park was small, but picturesque, and it attracted a variety of people. I’d take a handful of release forms, just in case.

I started with some general shots – the fountain, the dark space in the trees where the path along the river started, the playground, currently empty. I found a cluster of daffodils and took close-ups of them from many different angles. Flowers were always a big seller.

I spent over an hour at the park. I felt like I got a few good shots, but not the shot I was looking for. I was discouraged enough that I waited until the following day before developing the film. I put the negatives up on my light board and used the magnifying glass to look at each shot in turn.

As stock photos went, most of them were perfect. The daffodils in particular stood out for me. I’d have no problem at all selling them. I looked at the ones of the fountain and frowned. Most of them were fine, but two of them had some kind of white smudge on them. I didn’t think it was a glare from the sun, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I found the same kind of smudge on a couple of shots of the entrance to the path, and on the playground. Very strange.

I wasn’t able to make out much detail with just the magnifying glass, so I took the film to my dark room for printing. For now, I only printed the six pictures with the smudge on them. I wanted a chance to examine them more closely.

While I waited for the prints to dry, I tried to think of what that smudge might be. A wisp of smoke? But then why didn’t it show up in the rest of the pictures, and how was it the same in all six pictures with their different locations? That reasoning ruled out a glare of sunlight as well. Sunlight would have looked different in the different places. And I doubted very much it was a fault in the lens. The rest of the pictures were clear.

The timer went off and I picked up the prints and took them out to where the light was better. The smudges were more distinct, vaguely man shaped. I stared at them in astonishment. They looked . . . for all the world they looked like ghosts.

I sat back and thought about this. I didn’t understand it, but it was what I called a happy accident. Maybe it was the proximity to the cemetery that caused this phenomenon. What if I’d actually taken pictures of real ghosts?

Next time, I’d go to the cemetery itself. Maybe I’ve found my niche at last.

Counting Down

The closer to Christmas we get, the more our temperatures seem to go up. *sigh*

I don’t know about you, but I need some serious Christmas music to get me into the spirt of the season.

Singlemindedness

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.
— P. J. Abdul Kalam

You want something? Go get it with single-minded devotion.
— Reggie Lee

Success in any endeavor requires single-minded attention to detail and total concentration.
— Willie Sutton

Yes, singlemindedness is a real word, I know because Word didn’t underline it. LOL

It’s been a week, I tell you what. The weather was really crappy, which means my energy was low and my to-do list was high.

This year’s book flood anthology was a lot more work than I expected. I thought I’d do something a little different this year and use the freewriting I did a couple of years ago when a friend and I would get together once a week to write. So I dug the stories out, cleaned them up a bit, and thought I was done. And I would have been, except for the fact that I’d already used half of them in last year’s anthology.

*sigh*

I have a folder for my short fiction, and in it I have sub-folders for things like flash stories, sudden stories, micro stories, prompts, etc. and that’s about as far as the organization of them goes. So . . . I created a couple more sub folders, these ones for my book flood anthologies, and I moved all the stories I’ve used for them into the appropriate folder.

I don’t know why I didn’t do this before, it just kind of slipped my organizational mind. I think part of it was that I figured I might work on these stories some day and try to sell them or something, and I didn’t want them hidden away. But honestly, I can find them just as easily in the book flood folders.

Anyway, this meant I needed to find other prompt stories to flesh out my anthology. Which after much deliberation, I did. And it occurred to me, pretty much all my flash or less stories have been written from prompts. The longer stories come to me in the weird and wonderful way that novel ideas do, but the really short stuff I usually get from prompts.

Once I had my stories picked out I didn’t want to just throw them together willy nilly, so I made an attempt at grouping them together. Then I decided to get all fancy and adding title pages for each section. Kind of makes the anthology a little more cohesive.

And, of course, I had to format the whole thing. The font size had to be just right because when you print as a booklet, the pages shrink down. The space between lines took a bit of trial and error too. Single space (like this is) was too close together, but space and a half seemed too far apart. Eventually I found the “line spacing options” in Word, which gave me a just right option.

Because I numbered the pages, I ended up with three documents to print for each book – the section title pages, the index page and introduction, and the book itself. I didn’t want numbers on the other pages so it was easier to just print them out separately than to try and figure out how to suppress page numbers. The section pages were done in columns and could be printed normally, but the index and introduction were printed in booklet form, which is why it wasn't all printed as one document. I still haven’t figured out how to reduce the space at the top and bottom of the page, but it’s not enough to worry me too much.

Then I discovered, when doing a test print run, that the print menu attached to Word 2019 is very different from the one attached to Word 2007. Namely, it does not allow me to print in booklet form. Oh, I’m sure you can format your document for booklet in Word 2019, but it’s a lot easier to do it from the print menu.

It took longer than I had hoped for, but the anthology is done. And I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

Next year’s mission it to start on it earlier.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 984+495+1,134=2,613
Total = 2,613 words

Hey, at least I got the blog posts done. I think I’m kinda done with the spice thing, so it’s just as well I remembered it’s December and I usually run Christmas videos during the holidays.

EDITING:
Other than some light editing on the stories included in the book flood anthology, I didn’t do any editing. This is a really busy time of year so what extra time I had was spent on the anthology.

WHAT I’M READING:
No reading, Christmas shopping and book flood anthology sucked up all my time.

GOALS
Well, I don’t know that I did better on my blog posts. I got them done, but not all of them up on time. I’ve given up on the spice thing in favor of Christmas videos. I may, or may not finish the spices in the new year. Or I might just move on to a series on herbs.

Elemental Spirit is still in the mothballs, but I’ll finish binding the anthologies today, so I’m sure to have time next week to get started on the editing.

Finally, a goal that’s been met! I got the book flood anthology done.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Do better on the blog posts.
2. Start the edits on An Elemental Spirit.
3. Start doing a freefall exercise every day.

Write on.

Vampire

This was actually Story #2 from my NaNo adventure and in the process of editing I cut about a thousand words from it. I may redo this story at a later time and add back in some more relevant details, but the words I cut were pretty superfluous.

Prompt: Go over to your bookshelf, close your eyes, and pick up the first book you touch. Open the book to a random page, read the first full sentence on that page, and use it as the inspiration for a story or scene. Please include the original line at the beginning or end of your response. The book I touched was an anthology by Somerset Maugham, and the sentence comes from the story, The Death of Ivan Ilych.

While she was kissing him he hated her from the bottom of his soul and with difficulty refrained from pushing her away. But he had a job to do, and pretending he cared for her was part of it. He poured himself into the kiss when what he really wanted to do was sanitize his whole body, from the inside out.

“There now, darling. That should hold me until I get back.” She ran a hand suggestively down his body and he hoped she took his shiver for excitement, not revulsion.

With a swirl of her cloying perfume, she was gone, leaving him alone in the opulent sitting room. Sighing with relief, he went over to stare into the fire that he’d laid in the fireplace not two hours earlier. It was still burning well, but he stabbed at it with the poker anyway, imagining he was stabbing her.

Knowing he was being watched, he sighed again and strove to look sad that she’d left him alone. Going over to the drink cart, he poured himself a shot of twenty-year-old Scotch whiskey – one of the few perks of the job. Tossing it back, he enjoyed the burn on its way down and then poured another.

Taking his time with the second drink, he wandered over to the French doors and looked out at the estate gardens. A flash of something in the tree line caught his eye. He frowned as the flash repeated. Sipping his drink, he opened the French doors and stepped nonchalantly through.

He worked his way casually in the general direction of the flash. A bend in the path and he was out of sight of the house, but not of the watchers. He knew there were cameras in the woods too. Whoever was out here was playing a dangerous game, for both of them.

“Has she tasted you yet?” a voice whispered from the underbrush.

He paused, as though taking a rest, and answered quietly, with the minimal amount of movement of his lips. “Yes, just a taste though. She seems distracted.”

“No, she’s just taking her time. Pretend to tie your shoe,” the voice ordered. “Set your drink down beside this tree so you can use both hands.”

He did as he was instructed, taking his time as he fumbled with his shoe. It didn’t surprise him in the least when the liquid in his drink jostled, then stilled again.

“The serum’s perfected?” he asked under his breath.

“Yes. Bon appetite.”

He rose, bringing his drink with him, and casually circled back towards the house. Pausing in the rose garden, he tossed back the rest of his drink, managing to keep his face expressionless despite the bitter taste the serum imparted. A hint of a smile hovered over his lips as he felt it coursing through his system. It was only a matter of time now.

He could feel it changing his blood to something deadly, and it made him happy. His family had been killed by the queen’s vampires, although she had no idea. Not that she would have cared even if she did, other than the fact she wouldn’t have trusted him enough to get close to her.

He thought about indulging in another scotch while he waiting for her to return, to bolster his courage for what lay ahead, but he wanted to face her with a clear head. He knew she was getting tired of him, and exactly how their special night was to end tonight. He knew he should be scared, but what he was he was feeling was a profound sense of relief.

There was a noise in the hall and he braced himself. She was back.

“Hello, darling,” the queen said, sweeping into the room. “Did you miss me?”

“Always,” he said, smiling at her.

“Would you like something to eat? I know you humans gain your energy from food.”

“All I need is you,” he said, rising to his feet and going to her. “I burn for you.”

“Well,” she said, pleased. “Then you shall have me.”

Without further ado she led the way out of the room and up the stairs to her opulent bed chamber. “I’ll just call the maid, shall I?”

“Let me be your maid,” he said earnestly. “This is a special night, after all.”

“You almost make me want to keep you,” she said, smiling indulgently. “Shall I make you one of us?”

“As milady wishes,” he said, undoing the buttons on the back of her gown slowly, to prolong things. She preferred to wear old-fashioned dresses with many buttons and flounces. As he worked his way through the many layers, he murmured endearments and compliments, touching and stroking as he went.

“Yes,” she said on a gasp. “Perhaps I shall make you one of us.”

“Whatever pleases milady.”

“What pleases me right now is to take you,” she said. She pushed him down onto the bed, ripping away his clothing, and then mounted him.

“Yes!” she hissed, fangs showing. She rode him fast and furiously.

“Take me, take me now!” he demanded, just as he was about to climax. He turned his head to bare his throat to her.

She hissed, jaws open wide to show her fangs, then sank her teeth into his neck. He felt the sharp pain of her bite, then a pulling sensation as she began to drain his blood. When he felt her start and begin to falter, he held her head in place, as if he could force her to keep drinking his tainted blood.

“What have you done to me,” she demanded, pulling back.

“You don’t look so good, darling,” he mocked. She was no longer young, and her beauty was fading.

“What have you done to me?” she repeated. She pulled completely away from him, trying to rise from the bed but having trouble doing so.

“Only what you deserve,” he said, sitting up, oblivious to the blood trickling down his throat.

She fell off the bed, writhing on the floor as his tainted blood coursed through her. “I am the queen!” she said, voice cracking. “I am supposed to live forever.”

“Nothing lives forever,” he said dispassionately, looking down on her as she began to age rapidly. “Not vampires, and not humans.”

As she turned to dust he lay back with a sigh and closed his eyes.

Happy Wednesday

As you may have noticed, I didn’t manage a spice post last week. What can I say? Time got away from me. December is a busy month for me, and I don’t necessarily mean writing wise. I have a lot on my plate right now so I’m going to suspend the spice posts until after the new year.

But never fear! I have something else in mind to keep you entertained on Wednesdays. Traditionally, this is the time of year I post Christmas music videos. So here you go with the first batch. Hope you enjoy.

You have to be a certain age to remember this one from 1984, Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas.




Mariah Carey does it with style, with All I Want For Christmas.




Nothing beats the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby. And you can sing along, too.




Best version of Feliz Navidad I’ve seen yet!

Moving Forward

The only thing a person can ever really do is keep moving forward. Take that big leap forward without hesitation, without once looking back. Simply forget the past and forge toward the future.
— Alyson Noel

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.
— Napoleon Bonaparte

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.
— Kahlil Gibran

NaNoWriMo ended just in the nick of time. Saturday (last week) my NaNo Mojo started wearing off, so the last few stories were a real struggle. But I did it, 30 stories in 30 days. A grand total of 65,846 words for the month. Whew!

The shortest story I wrote was 1,402 words, and the longest was 2,828 words. All but the last were written from prompts from Writer’s Digest. My two favorite stories are the first one and the last one. The first one changed its direction when I was about halfway through it, so I’ll be doing some changes to the beginning so it makes better sense.

The last one, however…I knew how I wanted it to go, but I was running out of time and a couple of the key points of the story eluded me. So I came up with an alternate ending, which is okay but not what the story is going to ultimately be once I figure out the motive for murder. Or maybe I’ll leave the ending it has now, which is kind of a happy ending but not the love story I intended.

Would I do a story a day for another NaNo? You bet I would! BUT I would plan ahead. I still like my themed anthology idea, but I would want a solid idea for each of the 30 stories beforehand. And I had another idea for a themed anthology, which would also require pre-planning.

There were a few times when I struggled with one prompt, finally give up and pick a different one, only to go back to the first one on a different day. And I have about three stories that never got past 200 words that have been consigned to my idea file. Sometimes they just required too much thinking about.

It felt a little strange on Wednesday to not be thinking of the next story. I was going to take the day off but I started feeling antsy and started going over some options for this year’s book flood anthology. Then I started writing a poem for Friday’s post. Thursday, I finished the poem, which I think is the best Sestina I’ve ever written. Friday, I read my reward book (the book I picked up in October to reward myself after NaNo). The Saturday I started putting together my book flood anthology.

Now you may be wondering what’s wrong with all that. Well, I’ll tell you because it’s part of the magic of this year’s NaNo. Normally after a NaNo that’s pretty much it for the rest of the year. I usually even scale back on the blog posts, never mind any other writing or editing. This year I just seem to want to keep up the momentum. It’s downright weird!

AND as soon as the book flood anthology is done, I want to dive right in on the rewrites of An Elemental Spirit. And yeah, it does need to be rewritten, not just edited. The plan is to print off what I have, then delete the thing and start from scratch using the print out as a guide. Yes, it’s that bad.

Finally, I’m back to feeling like a writer again. :-D

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

NEW WORDS:
Flash anthology – 5,952
Blog Posts – 1060+737+833=2,630
Total = 8,582 words

Well, I did warn you to expect a drop in words going forward. Almost 6,000 words for the flash anthology is pretty good, considering I only had three stories to go. But my over all total would have been better if I’d done my spice post last week.

EDITING:
Started editing some pieces for the book flood anthology.

WHAT I’M READING:
I finished reading Local Hero and All I Want For Christmas by Nora Roberts rather quickly as it was a yucky week weather-wise, and I felt more like reading than writing. But I waited until after NaNo to read my reward book, Mile High With A Vampire, by Lynsay Sands.

I finished Fated Mates, by Alicia Montgomery and guessed right as to why the heroine was eating so much. LOL Now I’m starting Treasured Find by Nancy Corrigan. How about that? I remembered to write it down this time. LOL

GOALS
I completed my goal of finishing 30 stories in 30 days for NaNoWriMo – go me! Now I just have to edit those suckers. LOL

Apparently I must do better when under pressure. The spice post did not get written last week. In my defense, I had a busy weekend, which is when I usually do my research, and Monday and Tuesday weren’t much better. I focused on getting my stories done, and I have no regrets in that department.

I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do going forward, but I think I’m going to refine it and start in the new year.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Do better on the blog posts.
2. Pull Elemental Spirit out of the mothballs and start editing.
3. Work on this year’s book flood book.


Write on.

Eternity’s Desire

In 2009 I participated in the Writer’s Digest PAD Challenge – writing a poem a day from prompts they provided for the 30 days of April. What is it with me and these 30 day challenges, eh?

Anyway, one of the prompts we were given was to write a Sestina. Well, I’d never heard of this form before, and quite frankly, when I looked at it I wished I never had. There’s no rhyme, no syllable count, but there is a strict pattern to it. But I persevered and it set me on the path of my love of forms.

The Sestina was invented by a French troubadour named Arnaut Daniel. The troubadours first appeared in southern France in the twelfth century. Their name is extracted from the verb trobar, meaning "to invent or compose verse." They were famous, celebrated, much in fashion, and eventually very influential on the European poetry of the next few centuries. They sang - their poems were always accompanied by music - for French nobles such as the Duke of Aquitaine and the Count of Poitiers, and competed with one another to produce the wittiest, most elaborate, most difficult styles.

The Sestina was one of several forms in the complex, elaborate, and difficult closed style called trobar clus. It consists of 39 lines divided into 6 sestets and one triplet, called the envoi. It is normally unrhymed - instead, the six end words of the first stanza are picked up and reused as the end words of the following stanzas in a specific order. In the envoi, one end word is buried in each line, and one is at the end of each line.

Lines may be of any length, although their length is usually consistent in a single poem. The six words that end each of the lines of the first stanza are repeated in a different order at the end of lines in each of the subsequent five stanzas. The particular pattern is given below. (This kind of recurrent pattern is "lexical repetition".)

The pattern of word repetition is as follows, where the words that end the lines of the first sestet are represented by the numbers "1 2 3 4 5 6":

1 2 3 4 5 6 - End words of lines in first sestet.
6 1 5 2 4 3 - End words of lines in second sestet.
3 6 4 1 2 5 - End words of lines in third sestet.
5 3 2 6 1 4 - End words of lines in fourth sestet.
4 5 1 3 6 2 - End words of lines in fifth sestet.
2 4 6 5 3 1 - End words of lines in sixth sestet.
Three line envoi using end words in the middle and end of each line

Possible formats for the envoi are:
1-2, 3-4, 5-6
1-4, 2-5, 3-6
6-2, 1-4, 5-3
or 6-5, 2-4, 3-1

And here’s the example I wrote to help you understand the form. This is only the fourth Sestina I’ve ever written, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. :-)

The words I used are:
1 Eternity 2 Desire 3 Moon 4 Lies 5 Regret 6 Ashes


Eternity’s Desire

You pledged me an eternity
Your eyes full of desire
But in the light of the full moon
I could see your words were lies
Spoken without regret
And our love turned to ashes

In my mouth, the taste of ashes
When I think of you and eternity
And if I have any regret
It’s the wasted desire
I felt for the lies
Spoken under the moon

I bathe in the light of the moon
As the world around me turns to ashes
And I feel like I’m buried in lies
That have built up over an eternity
Disguised as eternal desire
That does nothing but fill me with regret

A life that’s filled with regret
Stays in the shadow of the moon.
Knowing nothing of desire
The soul is covered in ashes
As the winding of eternity
Conceals humanity’s lies

I feel surrounded by your lies
But believe you’ll be the one to regret
Missing your chance at eternity
Blessed by the sanctified moon.
Instead you’ll have nothing but ashes
Where once there was desire

I will find a new desire
One unsullied by lies
Like the phoenix rise from the ashes
With nothing left to regret
And dance in the light of the moon
As I take my place in eternity

I live eternity with my heart’s desire
A blessed moon erasing lies
And all regrets are burned to ashes.