Some pictures that make me happy

The last time we were in the States, maybe a year ago or thereabouts, I took these pictures. This one is when Tom and I were in a grocery store. Have you ever seen a real litteral bananna hammock?

And then this was a pretty little herb garden at Edgefield that just made me smile.

I had breakfast at Edgefield and this just made me laugh. This guy just took off his shoes and was making himself at home at the restaurant.

I guess my mind has just been much on home lately.

I've got one for you

So I was just writing away today and accidentally set myself up for a joke. I thought I would share my most recent passage with you all. Ok, Bethany is my main character. I figure she's about 16. Samuel is her father and Wizard Toranes is the guy they've been traveling to see. Can anyone tell by the description who Toranes is loosly based on?

~~~~

“Please come in. Won’t you wait in the parlor while I go get my master?” the boy asked politely.

Bethany was suddenly glad that she’d had a bath last night. The parlor was about twice the size of the main room in her house with plenty of comfortable chairs and a large window that overlooked the lake. Bethany couldn’t remember seeing any large windows in the tower from the outside. There were warmly colored tapestries on the walls, a small table with various crystal decanters and glasses on it and several small book shelves. Bethany wasn’t sure it was alright to sit on such nice furniture after riding a horse all night. She was suddenly very conscious of the fact that her behind was probably covered in dust and horse hair. Instead, she crossed the room to the window and looked out, while trying unobtrusively to brush the dust off her bottom.

“Samuel! My dear lad! I’m so glad to see you! And this must be Bethany. My she is lovely. She must get that from her mother,” The old man was wearing a dark brown robe tied at the waist with a belt with stones and inscriptions on it. Over this he had a filthy apron. Wizard Toranes, as Bethany assumed this must be, was shorter than her father, with dark, almost black wavy hair, shot through with streaks of grey. On his pointy nose and below his bushy eyebrows perched a pair of glasses, behind which twinkled merry hazel eyes. His thin lips were pulled back in a joyful grin and as he reached up and opened his arms to embrace her father, Bethany saw that even for the wizard’s obvious age, his forearms still rippled with muscle.

“It’s alright, Toranes, you can admit that you think I’m a pretty man. I know you’ve always had tendencies, and I love you anyway,” her father jokingly retorted. They embraced each other heartily, laughing.

“Toranes, I want you to meet my Beth,” Samuel began. He beckoned to his daughter who suddenly found herself feeling timid and self-conscious. The young man who had greeted them at the door walked to the table with the decanters on it and began pouring some drinks. He had a little smile on his face as he brought a small crystal glass to each of them. He gestured for Bethany to have a seat, but the girl simply looked down at the glass.

“Please! Everyone have a seat. You must be exhausted. That’s a long trip, if memory serves,” the old wizard said as he took a chair himself. “Darren, please go see what you can’t find these two unfortunate waifs in the kitchen, won’t you?”

“Gladly, master,” the boy said warmly and left the room.

“Ah, that one was a find, I tell you. Such a willing student. And by his manners, you’d never guess at his common background. I’m very proud of him. Now, Miss Taslima, won’t you tell me about yourself?” Wizard Toranes and Samuel looked at her expectantly.

“I’m sorry sir, but my bottom is dirty,” Bethany stammered. She had simply meant that she didn’t want to sit on his nice furniture having horse hair all over her back side. She felt the blood rushing to her face as her father and the old man looked at each other and then roared in laughter. Bethany wondered if she could find a place to hide before she fainted from embarrassment.

“Well my dear, I assure you that I’ve had dirtier guests than you in my parlor. Please be at ease child. Why don't you sit here across from me so that I may see you better? We have much to talk about and I’d like to get introductions out of the way and some food in your belly before you fall asleep on your feet.

Bethany self-consciously dusted the rear of her pants off again and took the chair offered by the old man.

2/5 the way done!

My novel's word count now stands over 20K words! I'm pretty happy with the results so far, and though I haven't done my very best writing, I think it's also not my worst. I think the final draft will be about 10 times better than this, but I also think Maurer may kill me if I don't make with the excerpt too, so without further ado, here are the first few paragraphs of my novel as they currently stand.

Please remember, dear readers, that this is no time to encourage my inner editor back out from the room in which I have locked her safely away, so please refrain from any helpful suggestions about how to improve writing that has already been done. Once I'm finished, comments will be more than welcome, but if they were to come just now, it might slow down my progress and the story might suffer a bit. That said, here's the opening of possibly the greatest fantasy novel ever written:

Something sounded wrong. Bethany scoured the horizon for a clue as to what it might be. The late fall grape leaves were waving lazily in the breeze just below eye level. There was no ripple of inappropriate movement to betray an animal or a lurking stranger. The smell of burning leaves in the distance where her father was clearing chaff from the fields was a familiar one and always made her think of harvest festivals and cozy nights by a warm fire in the hearth. She could even hear her brother whistling while caring for the horses in the barn. Everything was as it should be.

Yet something was wrong. Bethany couldn’t suppress the chill that suddenly ran up her spine. She stood stock-still, like a deer that knew she had been spotted but hadn’t yet decided from which direction the danger might be approaching. All her senses strained as she desperately cast about for the source of her anxiety. Then she knew what was troubling her.

It was so intensely quiet. Her family’s farm was always a place of bustling activity. The squawk and flutter from the chickens, the lowing of the cows, the rowdy antics of the goats and their kids at play were all gone. In fact, the only sound she could hear was her brother in the barn. There wasn’t a snort or whicker from the horses in the barn. She felt a shadow draw over her heart in dread and she unconsciously hunkered down so her head was below the rows of unruly grape vines where she had been gathering the fruit for the wine-making to come next week.

Suddenly, the shadow that had clutched at her insides was manifest all around her as a nearly silent rustle passed overhead. The sound reminded her of when she and her brother had made kites as children and let them loose to soar in the spring winds. Only this sounded like a much, much bigger kite. When she imagined herself in one of her favorite day-dream roles as a sailor, she often tried to make herself hear the rush of the waves or a gull’s sad lonely cry or the snap of the giant sails overhead. This sounded exactly as she’d imagined those sails must sound.

The sense of dread deepened as she realized there was no way a ship would be here in the middle of the largest farming region in Ageron. The nearest body of water large enough to carry a ship would be weeks away to the West in the capitol city of Chancelus. It was a port city and she had dreamed her whole life of making a trip there with her father to see the urban sites and to scout for opportunities that might buy her way out of no-where’s-ville.

As the shadow passed overhead, she cowered for only a second or two. With a gulp, she brushed the cold sweat from her palms that had appeared the instant before she had heard the kite-sail sounds. Before she had gathered the courage to peek above the golden leaves above her, everything exploded into pandemonium at once. There was a rushing sound that reminded her of the sound the furnace made when Durn, the blacksmith, stoked the fire, then a shriek that split the air and nearly deafened her. Leaves fluttered down around her and as she watched one land on the rich, dark ground before her, the sounds of fear and confusion registered in her consciousness.

There was screaming: both humans and animals obviously caught in the throws of mortal terror. Someone or something was making a sound no living creature should make. There was a crackling and an acrid smell and the sound of creatures scrambling more than running to escape whatever this unseen horror was.

Bethany, half risen from her crouch under the vines, ducked back down as a second wave of fear came over her. Overhead she saw bits of wood and earth go hurtling by. She rose into a half-crouch after they’d passed and scrambled through the rows of vines to her left, trying to get a view of what was happening without having to raise her head. She was afraid of being vulnerable. Vulnerable to what she wasn’t sure. More flying debris?

The sounds of panic were more and more insistant. The wail of the thing making that horrible keening noise had taken on a hoarse weakness over the few seconds that had passed since chaos had descended. She heard the screeching sound again as the house and barn finally came within view.

The beast was bigger than her house. It was bigger than the barn! It was sleek and moved in ways she’d seen no other animal move before. It was sinuous, but moved too quickly and purposefully to resemble a snake. Despite it’s size, it was remarkably flexible and dexterous, but it in no way resembled the cats her family kept around the barn yard to keep away pests. It’s jaws were obviously powerful weapons of destruction, but remarkably elegant and expressive looking. Shocked beyond reason, she briefly considered going and asking the monster just what it thought it was doing and expected that it would likely be able to answer her. There was an intelligent cunning in the thing’s eyes.

Moments later, she came to herself and realized that he piteous creature making the inhuman sound, was human indeed. It was her brother. Auric was under the thing’s left-hind paw. One massive claw had punctured Auric’s right side and she could see what she hoped wasn’t a rib protruding. Auric’s blood had coated the grass and rocks on the ground around him and behind him as he had been drug several feet after having been impaled by the beast.

~~~

Ok, so there's the first part of the first chapter. I hope you enjoyed the teaser!

Dear Girl,

I have soundly thumped your first challenge on the noggin and you shall find it at the bottom of the list of challenges now with the word, 'CONQUORED' next to it. Because I conquored it. Yes. I did.

And way early too. I guess I have more time to write than I would have thought. My characters are doing things as well, which is great. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'll have an entire story by the time I hit 50,000 words. So I suspect that toward the end I'll fudge some of the details to get the story in there and then go back and actually write those details into my second draft. This is good, because I suspect that your average fantasy novel is probably closer to 150,000 words I bet. So I'll still have plenty of story that needs to be fleshed out to make it truly readable. At this point, I've left out large chunks of fight scenes and traveling time and I'm sure I'll stick some interesting bits in there later.

Anyway, I've also started a writing class for college. Fortunately, I like writing. Unfortunately, it's technical writing, so it's basically the evil twin of noveling. I figure the more words I put on pages right now, the better though, so that's the method behind that madness.

Tom's bought our tickets for our upcoming trip with Mom and Dad to Ireland. Boy, is that going to be exciting! Tom took me there for our honeymoon, which had always been my dream and now we get to go see some of our favorite parts again and see a few things we missed the first time. Now THAT is going to be some good pics and videos. We're not going until summer, so it's still a way off. Will keep everyone posted though!

Well, now that I've exulted and complained, I have a plot point that I'd like to flesh out. I thought I'd hit you guys up for help. So here are two questions. If anyone would like to contribute, I promise to mention you when I'm interviewed on Larry King Live or at your SciFi convention book signing.

1) What could make you turn to the dark side?

2) What might make you angry enough that you would consider killing someone's child?

I know! They're totally dark questions. I myself am a pretty light-hearted individual, so that's why I'm having a difficult time with motivations. Like I said, hook a sister up with something truly sinister or sad and I'll be sure you're mentioned whenever I get questions from adoring audiences and fanboys.

Daywalker

"Then out of curiosity, boredom, who knows what, I left the old world and came back to my America. And there, a mechanical wonder allowed me to see the sun rise for the first time in two hundred years. And what sunrises, seen as the human eye could never see them: silver at first, then, as the years progressed, in tones of purple, red, and my long lost blue. " - Louis, Interview with the Vampire.

So I'm back on days, and it's already had an effect on my mood. For those of you eagerly awaiting a posting, etc, I apologize. Something happened with some very large fibre connections and the whole region has been having problems with internet connectivity.

Anyway, the book is coming along. I've hit the point in the story arc where something should really be happening, and I'm sorta stalled. So far, I've written several people from my real life into the story and that's been really fun as well as some crazy made up characters, but now I have to figure out what in the heck the ninjas are doing in the operating room. :) Just kidding, but it sorta feels that way. Apparently, that's normal, so I'm just going to let my charactes wander around a bit, maybe throw some nasty situations at them and see what they do about it. ACTION!