Back to Basics

Hooray, Thursday is here. That means it must be…

Well, okay, so I’m not on time today.

I took yesterday off for some (mostly) me-time. I think it helped. I’d been fighting a bit of a head-cold, and taking the break seems to have settled the sinuses nicely. A blessing when that happens.

Still, it is now beyond time for my ROW80 check-in and WIPpet Wednesday post. So in tradition with breaking tradition…

my ROW80 mini

Writing-wise this has been an incredible week. I confess, I haven’t always finished my StoryADay stories in a day (always within 24 hrs, but it seems I work best sleeping on them halfway through). That said, I’ve got a bunch of fun bits and pieces from in and out of my story world to explore further some day.

And… because the Boodle wants to share our stories at the same time, my plans for a Sunday PDF are being changed to a Friday post of stories. I may (still thinking on that) be posting them from my “name” blog. I won’t be posting everything. Some pieces I want to develop further. Some involve spoilers for the novels I’m working on now, and I don’t want to reveal too much too soon. I’ll try to share a line from everything.

Everything else is…  so/so.  I confess, I’ve made better friends with my inner-couch potato than is probably wise.  I haven’t even been Pokémon hunting as much.  Probably why the Boodle wants some “us-time” tonight…  I hope it doesn’t rain too soon.

The WIPpet

Today is a piece from a scratch piece I’ve been playing with to decompress. It started out a version of Courting the Swan Song that came to me after my characters all ganged up on me at once and said “It didn’t happen like that at all.” Basically, the original versions I’d been jotting down were too ‘nicey-nice’. To quote ‘Listii, “The brat weren’t capable of being as bad as all that.”

The Brat, in this case being, Alanii…

So, I started trying to incorporate this pieces they were telling me happened into my vision of their world. It was closer, and I find the combination of my creation and their reality a fun place to play. So, since I’ve been in a play and test things mood lately, I’m here to share eight small paragraphs from this new/old piece of CTSS:

“Did you have to tell Morvan about those idiots, ‘Listii?  You know what those hot heads are going to do, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Same as you, just more effectively.”

Visse glared at him. “I wouldn’t have tried to hurt them.”

“No. You’d have been hurt,” he said. “Lies like that need to be stopped–people who spread them must be too.”

“All you’ve done is make sure the lies get said behind closed doors, ‘Listii. You aren’t going to stop them from talking.”

He shrugged keeping his gaze straight ahead. “I’ve stopped those three.”

He was saved from more of her accusing looks by the welcome from the caller at the entrance to the slave stocks. He left his sister’s side just long enough to register for his bidding placard. The bag of bid chits he tied to his belt. Not that he didn’t trust his sister, but he knew full well that any troublemakers would think twice about trying something against him, where they might not be so smart regarding her.

They didn’t need to be kicked out of the market a second time for Vissellii gutting a man.

Hope you enjoyed that. Why not head over to the WIPpet linky and visit some our other awesome members now? Big cheers to Emily Witt for being our gracious hostess.

Arrangements

Since this is Sunday, that means ROW80 check-in time (at the bottom of the post, as usual).  It’s also Day 4 of StoryADay September.  So, yes…  another combination post.

First my StoryADay piece from yesterday (I was just not in the mood to post it yesterday evening).  This will be the last piece posted on its own.  From then on, I will be posting a PDF of the stories on Sundays only for people to see the weekly piece.  Daily check-ins are just not my thing.

Because I needed more insanity in my life

Today, however, I am posting Day 3’s Drabble (a story in 100 words). A little piece involving one of my favorite characters:

Edge slight right—not the shadow, just beyond. They watch shadows.

Wait.

One, two… a moment more, the last looks away, off in different directions… severing their connection. Gazing elsewhere, favoring the darkness. He’d already moved beyond the shadows separating them. In… close… nearer than any lover..

A fleeting caress against the neck, heat gushing, blood pounding. “Don’t cry.” He leaves for the next too soon. Swift turning to a last dance of souls, beauty in each others’ movements, matched power, stepping in, closer… a gasp cut short with a kiss, sweet, wet.

No tears.

Those were for the graves.

Row80 Check-in & Assessment

Since Wednesday, I’ve been…  getting my act together after not doing much of anything over our vacation week on Saranac Lake.  It’s not easy to start up writing when one has not done so for a week or so (especially when one was feeling somewhat blocked and over-stressed before taking that week off).  And in coming back there are all the daily tasks to catch up on…

It’s taken me a while to build back up to a pattern again.  I am getting there.

• CRAFT
  • Goal: spend ~three hours a week delving into writing craft related learning
  • Progress: if I managed an hour, I’d be surprised
  • Goal: Hand-write new words daily! (the Five Sentences thingie)
  • Progress: Success!
  • Goal: typing two pages a day of old notebooks into the computer
  • Progress: nada
• SOCIAL
  • Goal: maintain local critique group submission of excerpts and critiques during non-NaNoWriMo months
  • Progress: I owe some work, and a submission
  • Goal: return to regular posting in the WIPpet and WeWriWa blog hops
  • Progress: I managed a WIPpet, but since I jumped into the StoryADay challenge, I am going to (once again) postpone my rejoining the WeWriWa crew
  • Goal: sponsor duties for the ROW80 twice a week
  • Progress: I’m on track for this week.  I need to catch up with the week I missed for vacation
• PERSONAL
  • Goal: Explore my creative side daily
  • Progress: not really…  more I’ve been practicing avoidance
  • Goal: Daily languages (except Sundays)
  • Progress: I didn’t do much while camping, but I’m back on track now
  • Goal: daily exercise amounting to a minimum of 30 minutes a day
  • Progress: even though I’ve been channeling my inner couch potato more than not, I reached my minimum; I’m content
• Temporary! Goal: StoryADay September
• Progress: On track, even if I haven’t posted everything; the goal is to write the story, not necessarily post one, daily

And…  lastly a cheer for a wonderful husband:

This wonderful man does this…

So I can get shots like this…

And this

Dancers: StADaSept #2

Because I needed more insanity in my life

I couldn’t do much earlier today.  Bleh!  Migraine time…  It would have to be the second day of an event.  Well…  an afternoon nap later, maybe I came up with something using the day #2 prompt: the Fourth Grade Spelling List

“Mayor! Another round for my friends!”

The barkeep wiped his hands on his apron and shuffled over to the back shelves near his moneybox where he kept the taller flagons hanging on hooks over the day’s casks. A good day if they paid him, since he’d already called his sons in from the kitchen to help him raise a new cask into the wooden framework that held it up to the wall. A nice bit of creative woodcraft and he was the man who’d come up with the idea to the envy of all the other local innkeepers.

T’were a simple enough thing too. Just a wooden frame slightly smaller than the shelf that lowered around the casks once they were settled on the shelf, holding them in place. So simple, sometimes he wondered how he’d been the only one to come up with it. But as he patted the worn wood with its smoothed grain and slightly sticky finish from the years of dripped wine and ale and greasy palms.., Their loss, his gain.

Soldiers on a holiday … Hopefully that young buck of lordling they were escorting was as good for his debts as he seemed to be to his men. A common touch, and for such a handsome lad. Mayor frowned to himself as he watched the young man offer to dance with one of the maids, bowing low and asking for her hand like she were some lady of the state worthy of such honors. Fool boy… not that he could blame the lad. Della was a looker if one didn’t listen to the stories the maids did relay amongst themselves.

Then, if she were as wrong as they said, she hid it well, he mussed. No shuffling feet, no missteps for her. As Delta laughingly accepted the lordling’s hand, Mayor remembered days when Saninsi and he kicked up their heels on a tavern floor or two in their own youth.

As he leaned over to fill the first flagon, he saw Saninsi smile at him in the silvered glass that he’d placed behind the casks to watch the goings on in the common room. He told himself not to worry. Things were usually better when there were soldiers in residence, provided their lord was one of the local ones…

He didn’t know this young scamp though, and the lad’s willingness to fraternize with his men didn’t bode well. Too common to have the money he’d need for this tab his men and he were growing.

Mayor tried to smile back at his wife, tried to not show how worried he was. No sense in getting her in a state. She was a good woman, but even the finest would fall in a tizzy and remain that way half the night if she thought her home or family might be in danger. He nodded as she set down the pail of sand for the men’s pipes and ash by the door to the outer rooms. A good woman… even still had the slender waist of a girl half her age.

He stood up and placed the flagon on the bar counter, watching as Della and her lordling swung about the hard oak floor, airplaning among the crowd with laughing smiles on their faces.

As he lowered down the next flagon to fill, he decided, once this round was filled, to ask his Saninsi if she’d dance with him too.

It had been too long.

I like it actually. I don’t think it would have come off so well if I’d tried to write it from Alanii’s POV. I considered doing that (actually the bar scene is supposed to be from Val’s POV).

A bit too much blather about the man’s bar and the design of the place… I had no real sense of how to get started here. Played it a bit too much by ear I guess. But it seems to have worked out,at least one of the pieces of his character came through because of that fumbling start. I got a sense of his pride and his humility at the same time, his awareness of how he saw himself in the scheme of things, how he viewed his custom and his competitors. And what he feared…

I hope he enjoys his dance.