Forever and For Always

We’re back to the NaNo novels today. In 2008 I hadn’t planned on doing NaNo because I was in school at the time and didn’t figure I’d be able to handle it. But on November 1st a name popped into my head – Treasure Beaumont. The story followed and I was off and running.

The story just seemed to download itself into my brain. It was amazing. Not only did I surpass the wordage goal, on the final day I had my best writing day ever with a whopping 8,000 words. The current word count of this novel is 73,600 words and it’ll probably be around 100,000 before I’m done.

Here’s the blurb I posted for this novel on the NaNo site:
Treasure Beaumont owns and operates a small trading vessel, for the most part staying out of trouble. But trouble finds her when she follows a lead on a profitable cargo and instead she's shot down over a remote planet where she's taken prisoner by a woman who calls herself Mistress Pain. But Trez isn't Mistress Pain's only captive, there's also the beautiful man with the mind of a child called Ape. Trez and Ape manage to escape from captivity, and begin a quest to find out who he really is. But can their love survive finding out the truth?

Yup, it’s a science fiction romance, with a little suspense and adventure thrown in for good measure. And here’s the way it all begins (unedited of course):

Trez Beaumont opened her eyes cautiously, unable to believe that she’d actually pulled it off. The ship was down, and it seemed to be in one piece.

“Was I born under a lucky star or what?” she said.

“Please restate question,” the onboard computer asked.

“Disregard. I wasn’t talking to you.” She flipped a switch on the console but the blast shield in front of her remained down. Flipping it back and forth several times didn’t help. Trez sat back with a sigh.

“Damage report.”

“Minor damage to–”

“Wait. Belay that order.” She kept forgetting that the upgraded computer took everything literally. Best to rephrase before it listed every little scratch and dent right down to the grass stains on the hull where they slid to a stop. “Just tell me if there’s any damage that will prevent us from lifting off of this rock.”

There was a pause. “Coolant leak in starboard stabilizer cell–”

“How bad a leak?”

“Leak is minor, however ninety-seven percent probability the stress of lift-off will rupture it.”

Trez relaxed in the pilot’s chair. Minor damage she could repair, it was the major stuff that would cause her trouble. “Okay, what else?”

“Minor stress fractures to hull. Electrical system undamaged but the batteries are depleted.”

“Shit. How long for the batteries to recharge?”

“Estimated recharge time, 48 to 54 hours.”

“Damn.” Trez drummed her fingers on the console. “Any idea what hit us?”

“We encountered an energy pulse field that drained the electricity from the ship.”

“Hmm. Was this field just sitting there and we passed through it, or was it directed at us?”

“Unknown.”

She sighed and unbuckled herself from the seat. Despite the rough landing, it didn’t appear she was damaged either. It could have been so much worse. Thank the gods she had the blast shield installed the last time the ship had been overhauled. A bead of sweat trickled down the neck of her flight suit.

“Computer, why is it getting so warm in here?”

“Life support is off-line.”

“Well get it back on-line!”

“Insufficient power to do so. Estimated time for life-support to be restored is ten hours.”

“Just peachy,” she muttered under her breath.

The cockpit, Trez never thought of it as large enough to call it a bridge even though it would comfortably hold four people, of the Azure seemed to close in on her. Ten hours wasn’t so bad. She’d gone without life support longer than that. Her breathing sped up and her heart began beating just a little faster.

“Computer, is the atmosphere outside the ship capable of sustaining life?”

“Affirmative.”

Well that was something, at least. Trez left the cockpit and headed for the aft stabilizers. Might as well get that fixed first.

The Azure was a medium sized trader class ship. It was a little big for just one person, but perfect for two or three. It had belonged to her family; Trez had grown up on this ship and knew it inside and out.

She ducked into the engine room for the repair kit and then unscrewed the panel over the maintenance shaft just outside the door. The repair kit came with shoulder straps, making it easier to bring it with her as she climbed the shaft. She was lucky she was small enough that both she and the kit on her back fit in the shaft. Her father had to go up the shaft first and then have someone pass the repair kit up to him.

It was only a few feet to the top of the shaft where it branched out. Trez followed the shaft to the starboard stabilizer and used the micro-analyzer to search for damage. There it was, right next to the injector coil. The computer wasn’t lying. If this had been left until she tried to take off it would have leaked all over the injector coil, which would have caused a chain reaction right down to the star drive.

It was only a few seconds work to seal the leak and wipe up what little fluid had spilled. Trez double checked to make sure the seal would hold, then retraced her way back out of the maintenance shaft. After reattaching the panel cover, she put the repair kit back in its usual place in the engine room before heading to her quarters.

Like most space rats, she kept the Azure in pristine condition - a place for everything and everything in its place. Trez’s quarters, however, were a different story. Where others might describe it as cluttered, she liked to think of it more as homey. It was the largest of the four cabins in the ship, the one that used to belong to her parents. At this point, however, even she could see it was somewhat of a mess.

Having nothing better to do, she picked up the dirty clothing scattered about, including a pair of dark blue skivvies belonging to the last man invited to share her bed. He hadn’t been particularly good looking, but he made up for it in the sack. Unfortunately, that had been about his only redeeming quality.

Wonders of the World – Introduction

After much deliberation, I finally decided on the Wonders of the World for my next non-fiction series. There is a plethora of lists of wonders – natural wonders, underwater wonders, engineering wonders, new wonders, city wonders, solar system wonders – to name but a few.

Seeing as I have a love of ancient history, I’m choosing to go with the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Scholars have debated for years over who compiled the first list of wonders – or as the Greeks called them, theamata, which translates as "things to be seen". It has been suggested that Callimachus of Cyrene drafted the list in the third century B.C. or Herodotus, who lived from around 484 to 425 B.C.

It’s generally agreed that Antipater, a Greek author living in the Phoenician port of Sidon came up with the original list in a poem where he lists the most remarkable creations of mankind:

I have gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon along which chariots may race, and on the Zeus by the banks of the Alpheus, I have seen the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Helios, the great man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids, and the gigantic tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to the clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the sun himself has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus.
– Antipater, Greek Anthology IX.58

Somewhere around the 8th century AD the walls of Babylon were dropped off the list, to be replaced by the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Of the original seven wonders, only the Great Pyramid still exists. The others are in unrecognizable ruins, and the Hanging Gardens might not even have existed at all. What we know about the wonders comes from written accounts of ancient tourists and modern archaeological research. Much of our information about the monuments is conjecture or questionable second hand accounts.

These monuments may not have physically stood the test of time, but they thrive in our imaginations as some of the most magnificent manmade structures of the ancient world.

the Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt.
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece.
the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
the Colossus of Rhodes.
the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt.

Join me next week when I start with the Great Pyramids of Giza.

A Brainy Idea

Sometimes I hate my brain. Like . . . when I’m trying to fall asleep and it just won’t shut down. And then I’m finally on the cusp of sleep and this SNI (shiny new idea) pops into my head and it won’t leave me alone until I grab the notebook and pen that I wisely keep at my bedside and write it down.

Like one night last week. Just as I’m about to fall asleep, this line pops into my head. A woman’s voice asks, “So, are you a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster too?” And just like that an idea for a story followed. Just what I need, another idea. At least it’s for a short story.

I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. I’d say it’s maybe because once you star winding down it sets your subconscious loose, but according to studies, you subconscious mind is most active when you first wake up. You’ve probably heard that if you don’t remember your dreams within the first minute or two of waking you won’t remember them at all, this is why.

Maybe I’m just an exception to the rule. All I know is, I’ve learned the value of keeping a notebook handy when I go to bed. Trust me, no matter how brilliant the idea you have while you’re drifting off, the best you can hope for if you don’t write it down is a vague recollection in the morning.

And remember how a couple of weeks ago I posted the beginning of my first (as yet unfinished) NaNo novel? Well now I keep getting ideas for it, too. And I mean good ideas. I have to keep fighting the urge to pull it out of mothballs and have at it again.

I have six or eight different versions of it on the go, but I keep thinking I could take what I’ve learned over the past 12 or 14 years and start it from scratch, making it into the novel it was meant to be.

But no, I’m supposed to be working on Knightsong. Never mind that I only have a vague notion of where it’s going, it’s the one I’m going to take with me to the writing retreat. I need to focus on getting this one finished first.

Shouldn’t I?

On the other hand, if Driving Into Forever is what my mind is set on, maybe I should just roll with it before my mind says, “Fine, if you’re not going to listen to me, let’s just stick to reading.” Knightsong is uncharted territory for me. Driving Into Forever is better thought out. AND I have a sequel to it waiting for the first book to be done, plus ideas for two more.

*sigh*

Sometimes I really hate the way my brain works.

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Wordage Report

New Words:
Blog Posts – 672+369+362+486=1,889
Total = 1889

I’m down about 1,400 words from last week’s total which is especially disappointing because the only words I wrote were on blog posts – no fictional words at all. I may have added a few words to Blood Ties whilst editing, but not enough to take note of and they were probably balanced by the number I deleted.

Editing:
6 hours on Blood Ties. Looks like I’m picking up speed. About time, isn’t it?

Publishing:
None. And I still haven’t heard back about the last story I sent out.

What I’m Reading:
Once again, this is where most of my time went. And I fully admit that it involved a couple of late nights where I read until my eyes burned.

I finished the Chosen. by J.R. Ward and went on to read Blood Fury, the Thief, Prisoner of Night and the Savior. Now I’m currently reading Blood Truth. I really have to slow down (and you can see how that went last week) because I only have three books to go before I have to wait for the one still on order to be delivered, then there’s only one left until I’m done. The next one comes out in April, but sorry/not sorry I’m not buying it in hardback, I’ll wait until it’s available in paperback, thankyouverymuch. And if I can’t extract myself from the BDB universe while I wait, I might just have to go back and start the series from book one again.

Goals

Last week’s goals were again pretty much a bust. No words on anything except blog posts, no outlining, no organizing. I did get some editing done on Blood Ties at least, so there’s that.

My goal for this week is to stop messing around and get myself back on track. Sooner or later I’m going to be out of books to read and then where will I be? So. On that note, I want to:
1. Spend more time in my office and less on the couch.
2. Keep up the edits on Blood Ties.
3. Limit my reading time.

Baby steps perhaps, but hopefully steps in the right direction

Renovation in the Time of Covid

This week would have been the week my poetry group met so we could share some poetry. Unfortunately, Ontario is still on lock down so we couldn’t meet in person. There was a zoom meeting, which I wasn’t able to participate in because I can’t get the camera in my lap top to work. Guess I did too good a job disabling it when I set this computer up.

Anyway, I’m kind of bummed I couldn’t because the “poemwork” for the month was a challenge to write a Xenolith. What’s a Xenolith you ask? It’s a poetry form I created several years ago. It has 15 lines – 7 of them have 12 syllables per line, 8 of them have 8 syllables per line. You can separate the 7 lines from the 8 lines and have two, separate, shorter poems, but put them together and you have a poem within a poem, or a Xenolith.

You can find a longer explanation about it  HERE or you can do a Google search for Xenolith poetry form. How cool is that that it’s feature on other poetry sites? To be honest, I think my original Xenolith was a little smoother, but after much tweaking, this one isn’t bad.

And yes, those rocks below are Xenoliths - a rock within another rock (which is where I got the idea for the poetry form from).

Renovation in the Time of Covid

Our kitchen is a mess and needs to be redone
A subtle thing, how it began
Plans were made, deposit down, this should be real fun
A global challenge was not planned
Empty cupboards, empty shelves, fill bins by the ton
Panic shopping, growing unease
With shortages, stay at home please
Some days we think the contractor will never come
The schools all close, your business too
Wear a mask and stand in a queue
Boxes fill our living room – it’s no longer fun
Vaccines arrive, still numbers rise
Out of stock and back orders leave us rather stunned
This lock down will save many lives
It looks as though our kitchen never will be done


12 syllable mono rhyme – the renovation

Our kitchen is a mess and needs to be redone
Plans were made, deposit down, this should be real fun
Empty cupboards, empty shelves, fill bins by the ton
Some days we think the contractor will never come
Boxes fill our living room – it’s no longer fun
Out of stock and back orders leave us rather stunned
It looks as though our kitchen never will be done

8 syllable rhyming couplets – the Covid

A subtle thing, how it began
A global challenge was not planned
Panic shopping, growing unease
With shortages, stay at home please
The schools all close, your business too
Wear a mask and stand in a queue
Vaccines arrive, still numbers rise
This lock down will save many lives.

Superstitions XIV – Odds ‘N Ends

One of our most enduring superstitions is making a wish and blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. If you can blow them all out in one breath, your wish will come true. The ancient Greeks would bake round honey cake and top it with candles, symbolizing the moon, as an offering to the goddess Artemis when they wished her favour. It was believed the lingering smoke would carry wishes to the gods as it rose in the air.

You should never place two mirrors facing each other. The infinite reflections are pretty cool, but facing mirrors open a doorway for the devil.

Never give a blade as a gift as it will sever your relationship. If you receive a knife, or even a pair of scissors, as a gift, you need to give the giver a coin in return.

Going home directly after a funeral will invite a bad spirit to tag along and enter your home. You should make a stop at a restaurant or store along the way, just in case.

Whistling indoors is thought to summon demons.

Greek mythology has it that if you toast with a cup of water you’re actually wishing death upon the people you’re drinking with.

It’s bad luck to place someone’s shoes on a table as it used to be of the ways of letting the family know they had passed away. .

The Egyptians believe that if you see or hear an owl it means terrible news is coming. The Italians, however, believe that an owl in your house means someone is going to die.

Wedding bells are meant to ward off evil spirits who might try and ruin the marriage.

Singing at the dinner table means you’re singing to the devil for your food.

Some people hold their breath when they pass a cemetery, but you should actually tuck your thumbs in to protect your parents from death.

Be careful not to step on a manhole that has the letter A on it or it will bring you a broken heart and bad luck.

Never cut your nails after the sun goes down – it can cause premature death.

Binging is Not Just For Netflix

There comes a time when you have to face the truth, and my truth is that I can no longer blame the weather and/or the pandemic for my lack of progress. Now I can blame J.R. Ward. LOL

Okay, not really. If I hadn’t fallen behind in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series to begin with, I wouldn’t be feeling the urge to binge read to catch up now. It’s kind of reminiscent of my binge reading last year, isn’t it?

As you may recall, last year I started out on the Argeneau Vampire series by Lynsay Sands, and when I ran out of them I went on a Nora Roberts binge. Wow she’s written a lot of books, and thanks to shopping on Indigo online, I now own most of them. In trade sized paperback no less.

It took me until about August before my interest in Nora’s books began to wane (she does write a nice variety so they’re not all the same). In fact, I still have a few unread ones in my stack. Then I went on a Charles de Lint kick, re-reading most of my collection of his books, with several Alice Hoffman books thrown in at random. FYI Magic Lessons is so much better than Practical Magic, which I probably would have enjoyed more if I hadn’t seen the movie first.

I’ve got eight more books in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series to go, and after that it’s anyone’s guess what I’ll be binging on. Maybe Katie MacAlister – I have most of both her vampire series and her dragon series.

Most people prefer to binge watching television or videos, but with me it’s books. That’s not to say I haven’t done my fair share of binge watching Stranger Things, or Game of Thrones, or disaster movies, but nothing makes me happier than a stack of books and uninterrupted time to read them.

What about you? Binge watching or binge reading?

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Wordage Report

New Words:
Blood Ties – 620
Blog Posts – 616+408+693+988=2,695
Total = 3315

When you see the numbers for the blog posts, you might be fooled into thinking I made most of my “write 500 words a day” goal from last week. But although in the one sense it’s nice to see some actual numbers, I actually meant new fictional words, so only the words on Blood Ties count.

And alas I did no freewriting last week because I was too busy reading.

Editing:
2 hours and 35 minutes on Blood Ties

Publishing:
None

What I’m Reading:
Once again, this was my strong suit for the week. I didn’t get much further on the Kindle, but I really went to town on the tree books.

I finished the Shadows. by J.R. Ward (so sad!) and went on to read Blood Kiss, the Beast, and Blood Vow. Now I’m currently reading the Chosen and trying to go a little more slowly so I don’t spend the majority of my writing time reading instead.

Goals

Last week’s goals were kind of a bust. The daily words, editing, and reading should be a given if I’m seriously trying to get into a routine, so the only real goal was the submitting a story or poem for publishing, which I didn’t even really give a thought to.

Maybe I need to start smaller. Instead of four goals, I have just one, doable goal. Get an outline of some kind drawn up for Knightsong so I can start making some progress on it. This was the book beginning I was originally going to take to the Spring Thaw writer’s retreat in spring of 2020. The current date it’s been rescheduled for is October 2021 – it would be really nice to have the first draft finished by then, don’t you think?

Let’s get writing.

Driving Into Forever

I kind of had fun sharing an excerpt one of my former NaNos and I thought why not do it again? And seeing as I’ve participated in NaNo 13 times, I have potentially 13 weeks worth of excerpts. Actually, I have 15, if you count the two novels I started, then abadoned, before going on to win with something else.

So, going back to the beginning, today’s offering is from Driving Into Forever, which was my first attempt (and only failure) at NaNo in 2006. The story was done in 35,000 words and although the idea was solid enough, the execution was pretty iffy.

The problem was my main character, Hannah. I was pretty meh about her and it showed. I’ve since tried to rewrite it several times, but in the long run I’ve only made things worse. I haven’t given up on it though, and one of these days I hope to get it right.

This scene isn’t quite the beginning, but it’s close. The main character, Hannah, is returning home after spending the night at her friend Sara’s. They’re in a local orchestra together and went out drinking after practice. The rest is kind of self-explanatory.

The fog wasn’t as bad at street level as it looked from above. The air was still cold though, and very damp. She hummed the piece they’d been practicing last night as she walked back to her car. It was a new piece and a little more challenging than they usually tried.

Her rag top jeep looked out of place in the parking lot, parked between a brand new Lexus and last year’s Mercedes. Old and beat up it might be, but Hannah would take her jeep over a new car any time. It was one hundred percent reliable, starting no matter what the weather conditions. Old enough to get great gas mileage, it was also built sturdy enough to take the abuse the drive to her house dished out. But the best part of all was the kick-ass stereo system the kid she bought it from had installed, complete with CD player.

She tossed her flute case on top of the pile of CDs on the passenger seat and backed carefully out of the parking space. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the way out of the city, nor was highway 37 busy. Hannah hadn’t lied when she said she loved driving in the fog, especially when the traffic was light. The highway went up and down like a roller coaster. When she was on top of a hill it was like she was by herself on top of the world and when she drove back down into the mist it was like driving into forever.

Chopin was blaring from the stereo speakers as she turned onto the road to the causeway. The road was nowhere near as bad as Sara claimed. It might not be paved, but it was kept in very good repair. The wealthy home owners at the end of the causeway saw to that. And the causeway itself was only half a mile long, tops.

Hannah had inherited her house from her favorite Aunt, a retired music teacher from whom she also inherited her love of music. It was a raised bungalow with a wrap-around deck and a hundred and thirty-five feet of frontage on the lake. There were only a dozen or so houses on the island, set amongst the trees, all meant to be permanent homes. Most of the other owners, however, went south for the winter.

The fog was denser here than on the highway but Hannah drove confidently. This stretch of road was pretty much straight to the causeway. There was a yellow, greenish cast to the fog, reminding Hannah of the miasma that the swamp gave off on early, hot summer mornings. It was starting to give her the creeps. She shivered and turned the stereo up a notch.

More than ever Hannah was grateful she was in her jeep. The fog was getting denser, even though she was driving through the woods, and the colour was deepening. They must have gotten snow out here last night, it didn’t feel like she was driving on gravel anymore. At least she knew she was still on the road. The trees were dense enough that if she’d left the road she’d have hit something by now.

Hannah checked the speedometer and let up on the gas. She was already going slower than she usually drove, but it still felt too fast. The tires didn’t feel like they were getting any traction and she seemed to be accelerating. The fog was all around her, Hannah took her foot of the gas altogether and started braking. Chopin gave way to Mozart but for the first time the music failed to soothe her.

It was impossible, but she was picking up speed. Hannah turned the four-way flashers on and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Shapes started to form in front of her, too indistinct to make out. Shrubs? trees? buildings? There was a lurch and suddenly the ground was solid again but rough and uneven.

Why did she have the sensation of going downhill, there wasn’t a hill for miles around here. The fog thinned out just enough for Hannah to see she was indeed going downhill at an impossible speed and angle. The sparse brush she ploughed through did little to slow her down. She wrenched the steering wheel left, then sharply right, trying to avoid the trees that seemed to jump out in front of her.

Finally came the tree she couldn’t avoid and she hit it dead on. The impact snapped her forward, then back but the seatbelt held. The jeep’s engine stalled, but the four-way flashers blinked regularly and the CD player played on. Nothing else moved as the eerie mist began filling the car.