So Deliberate

It’s a bloghop!

Good morning, and welcome to my eighth installment for the Weekend Writing Warriors bloghop. Want to join in? Here are the rules:

• Add your name and genre(s) to the most recent post on the WeWriWa site
• Post a link to the WeWriWa site on your blog/Sunday post
• Keep your excerpt 10 sentences or less (8-10, no more!)
• Visit other WeWriWa authors and experience their work

(Find a complete set on the WeWriWa page as well as links to pages of all the authors involved. Check it out.)

---

Today’s excerpt from the Was Long Variation is slightly NSFW…  perhaps a PG13 rating.  As I intend to return to Courting the Swan Song in the next week for my WeWriWa posts, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to end on a bit of a bang.  😀

Salty, sweet, tender… He kissed her tears; he murmured assurances he didn’t believe. He needed to hear them. Her heart pounded so–he felt her blood move beneath her skin. Or perhaps it was his. He and She merged, writhed, as they drew together into a nest of sheets torn from the bed. Her fingertips lingered in their journey along his neck and shoulders; his danced through the laces of her bedgown. Her breath was hot, her voice gruff and harsh. He felt her quiver where they touched, knew before he made a move whether it would please her, knew what pressure to use, when to let go… And so strong, so deliberate were her own caresses, he knew she sensed the same from him.

Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed this snippet from the Was Long Variation for a time.  Coming up for WIPpet Wednesday, please enjoy an excerpt sample from Courting the Swan Song.

Has anyone else participated in either the JuNoWriMo and/or Ready. Set WRITE! challenges?  How did you month go?  Are you racing to the finish line for the JuNo?  Have you met your goals for Ready. Set WRITE! consistently?

Finally?

It’s time for the final ROW80 check-in of Round 2.  Let’s hear it for a successful Round of Words!

Hip, Hip….

*crickets*

Actually it wasn’t all bad.  While I didn’t always achieve my goals, I did meet a number of them.  And I learned a lot about things I like to do, and how I was sabotaging things I loved doing with things I felt I needed to do.

For example:  I loved trying MOOCs and learning new thing, and for the last few years, I was taking them and having a blast.  I didn’t always finish the classes I signed up for (and none of them on time), but I picked at every one I did and worked at my pace.  And it was wonderful.

Beware of …
(cred swissbanana)

Then…  I started teaching and felt I needed to keep adding to my skill set to be a better mentor and resource for my students.  And…  *steadily increasing whistling sounds… ending in a WHOMP*  Not only did I fall out of the wagon, but down the slide of the canyon wall we were racing next to.  Yeah…  it wasn’t fun anymore.  It wasn’t for me, and…  it was for a place (and several people) I’d begun to resent for their constantly increasing expectations of my performance (no, not the people I actually worked with daily).

So…  was this the best, most productive Round of Words?  Actually I think it was problably the most productive one I’ve ever had.  It just doesn’t show in the numbers.

• Writing — over the round I averaged 823 words a day on my story (65842 actually) and countless others on blogging; if anything, I think blogging has taken most of creative output lately.  I don’t like that part of all this reporting, and I’m testing out ways to streamline that process.
• Time with characters/storyworld — I’d made amazing progress here, having fun with my characters, talking with them about their bunions and chatting over campfires as they endured their travels and dealt with annoying relatives, bandits and lovers…  but these last two weeks?  Poor Alanii’s been hanging out at the bottom of a canyon mid-avalanche for almost a week now, ‘Listii is passed out on the training hall floor from a psychic-backlash, and Atyr just realized the woman she was struggling with is dead (and she doesn’t know how).  I really need to spend some time with these folks, don’t you?
• Pushups/general fitness — Inconsistent is the only way to score this goal…  I certainly didn’t do something every day.  Most days I was active in some way, but I’m still abysmal with my push-ups, and despite my best efforts, I still struggle with the two-hour run of karate and then weapons class on Saturday.  The knee does not like me then.  Not at all…
• Camera time daily — I started this goal a bit late in the Round, but I have stayed with it, and have even created an awesome (imho) mini blog-hop called the First Friday Photo via my ‘name’ blog The Garden of Delights.  Check it out!  Also, new sign-ins start tomorrow so we can actually have our posts ready for the First Friday (especially with the 4th of July in the US happening)
• French and German daily 10 minutes — most of the time I’ve stayed on top of this.  I missed a day here and there, and once I missed a week…  but in general I did great with this.  At the beginning of the round, I was doing Italian, Irish, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Danish and Japanese for my Mixed Language Arts class in 10min spurts throughout a day.  This lasted about two and a half months before I just could not maintain that pace anymore…  especially when it seemed my students weren’t putting in even half that effort.  Feeling like your efforts are going for nothing or aren’t at all appreciated can be brutal on achievement
• MOOCs — I made a good start at the beginning of the round, but as soon as I made this a ‘goal’, I fell hard.  The fall I don’t think was so much related to setting a goal however as the gradual decline of satisfaction in the work world I was trying to justify my attachment to MOOCs to.  In other words…  the next MOOCs I sign up for, I’m signing up for because I want to learn something, not because I think I need to do it to help and support others.

And that’s my ROWnd 2.  How was yours?  Do you plan on participating in Round 3?  Haven’t made you mind up yet?  New to a Round of Words?  If so, check out our blog.  We’re an awesome bunch, as you discover by checking out all the cool folks at this week’s linky.

 

What He Saw

As this is the last WIPpet of June (and I’ll be done with the madness that is JuNoWriMo by next week), I’ll give you all a choice:

• more Was Long Variation
• bring back The Swan Song Series
• We Want Something Else!

For now though, it’s the Was Long Variation.  We’re still in Kieri’s head here (remember how I said he was the only one who knew that?  Tiiran is the alias he’s been using).  The “she” is Atyr.

WIPpet Maths:
Simple ones today 6-24+20-15 =23; 2+3 = 5  shortish paragraphs

Tiiran spent most of the meal watching the woman. He tried to convince himself that he needed to figure her out before the group of them got into trouble. It wasn’t as if Jayce would be his usual cautious self around her.

But the truth was she enticed him in a dangerously familiar way. He watched her, knowing he was watching her and wanting to do more than watch, yet wishing he wasn’t. So distracted did he allow himself to become that Jayce and Keith were able to spike his coffee with something bitter. Drawn from his reverie, he gagged. After failing to settle his reflexes, he staggered toward the bathroom.

He wondered if the queen had noticed the wink that Jayce and Keith shared, and extending his talent recklessly, kept his Sight on the room. His talent-enhanced vision saw the woman’s gaze flash from youth to youth knowingly, her pursed lips and the restrained sigh.

Then as he was already withdrawing his Sight, he Saw the woman’s gaze lock with his own. For a moment his mind was held while her blue eyes filled his vision. He jerked back, almost clawing himself free. When he found the release of his own body, he slumped against the toilet. Reaction set in. He clutched the icy porcelain and threw up all he’d eaten all day.

He’d have to be more careful. A lot more careful….

Have you checked out  the WIPpet linky?   You can find more awesome snippets there to read.  Have fun, enjoy…  and come back next week for more!    Thank you,  KLSchwengel, for hosting our writerly silliness. 😀

And…  because it’s fun: