Not Never

Life has this little habit of distracting us from ourselves and our creative outlets.  At least, that’s what it does to me.  House buying, especially, seems to put its pinch on my writing (and any other creative endeavor, save perhaps day dreaming or decorating planning).

That said, looking at houses when you don’t need to pick one can inspire characters, worlds, even whole plots.  What would you all make from this place?  (a tip…  sometimes Realtor.com allows you to look up not only the present listings of homes but images from prior listings if you look for a home that has been recently sold…  try looking up your own home; you might be surprised at what you find)

House hunting (and all that it has involved, even down to having to UN-buy a home that wasn’t at we’d been lead to believe… on several levels) has pretty much taken all of my mental energy lately.  I have managed to keep up regular posts for the ROW80 blog and during some of the car rides between NY and NJ, I’ve caught up on my reading (presently 2/3s of the way through Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood), and get a bit of editing done as well as get partway through a beta read I’m doing for a fellow RWA member.

Not much else…  packing has slowed, cleaning has staggered…  barely clinging to life, and now we’re in the month of Mabee Birthdays, so if I spontaneously start talking about presents and/or deserts, please bear with me. At least the calories here are virtual ones.  😉

And now for my regular Wednesday offering, the bit you’ve all been waiting for…

a WIPpet!

Since I’ve only been able to get edits done lately and my goal has been to get some of my fanfiction posted online, today’s snippet comes from the Was Long Variation.  A short excerpt from ‘Listii’s POV, six paragraphs for the 6th of March.

He waited as Audric and Gillian reviewed the facilities. Should he call Ansi-Desorta and reserve a space at the pools, he wondered. He wasn’t up to dealing with a crowd today. In his arms, ‘Myyu leaned carelessly. The child giggled, playing one of those games that only young ones could understand with the girl, Flora.

Valistii smiled when she noticed his glance. The smile wasn’t meant solely to reassure her. He remembered another little girl of that age from long ago. He set his son down. “My arm’s tired, miska. Stay put and don’t touch anything.”

He went over to learn the consensus from his charges before he dwelt longer on how much the girl looked like Atyr had at five.

Loading DNA samples cred. Wikipedia Commons

“Will you need anything further of me?” he asked.

Audric looked up from where he’d been reviewing the isolation tanks, running his finger through the air by the touch pad. “I could wish the specs weren’t in Acarian, so I knew exactly how finely these can be calibrated, but otherwise this looks like it’ll do well. Do your people use a gel method—.” The man stopped himself short. “I’m sorry. I should probably wait and ask your technicians such things.”

‘Listii tried not to look annoyed, though he feared he did. It never failed to amaze him how his military station seemed to imply to so many that he had shit for brains. “We require acrylamide be used in an isolab. I already requested an assistant to help you there. Depending on your needs, agarose might suffice. Any electrophoresis will be handled by our techs. I confess some curiosity though. I thought you’d already tested these grafts.”

I really hope you enjoyed this excerpt.  If you’re interested in joining in, head over to the WIPpet linky and visit some our other awesome members. WIPpet Wednesdays are hosted by Emily Wrayburn at Letting the Voices Out.

Ideas of Beauty

Hello, Friends and Readerly Peeps!

Welcome to another installment of WIPpet Wednesday. This little bloghop started a by KL Schwengel a few years back. Here we share a small snippet of a WIP or Work in Progress for your pleasure. The number of words, sentences or paragraphs depends on the date… abstractly. We choose the amount we share based on what we called WIPpet Maths. Usually there is even some mathematical calculation involved. 🙂

But before I step into that, let me share a bit of my ROW80 progress:

• writing – some every day, but not always 750 words
• typing – two days of three
• blogging – on track
• exercise – need more
• house stuff – LOTS of mortgage paperwork and some packing

The rest of this month I need to focus more on house stuff—packing especially!—but just getting rid of things we won’t ever use too.  I can guarantee my writing  counts will be down, and I’m (mostly) O.K. with that.

WIPpet

I’m not using maths today for my WIPpet. Because it’s just before Valentine’s Day, just before that day commercial/public declarations of love, here’s a scene from March/Promenade (where I’m still trying to bring all my MCs together in one place) in a prelude to love. Perhaps… Or, it could be a I chose six rather long sentences (or three paragraphs) because the maths worked (2+1+3=6, 2+1=3 or 3). 😀

In this scene, ‘Listii has arrived to meet with Alanii in the summer barracks of the Royal Guard just before the men must head to the city outskirts and greet the returning troops coming in from the battlefields.

‘Listii watched as Alanii slowly eased himself out from behind the small desk, barely disturbing the rolled ciphers that he’d been engrossed in reviewing only moments ago. ‘Listii couldn’t help but note the man’s fluid stride, the effortlessness to his movement. A mixture of observations, his own and all those ‘Listii had experienced second-hand, filled him. Ideas of beauty, images from men and women both as to what was desirable, what defined want…

Driven as he’d been by this strange Call, divinely inspired or not the opinions he’d experienced could not say for certain, ‘Listii felt a certain amount of satisfaction that if he had to be forever forsworn to a man from now on in place of the ‘tianei he’d shared with Atara, that at least Alanii was nearly as beautiful as she’d been.

From what little he’d gathered about the Heir’s feelings on the matter, Alanii wasn’t going to resent him for what Fate had forced them to be to each other, that there was even some admiration perhaps in the Heir’s eyes for what ‘Listii might be able to offer in such a relationship, that perhaps the Heir saw something beautiful in him as well….

If you enjoyed that, there’s more to be found.  Head on over to the WIPpet linky to visit some our other awesome members.  These days, WIPpet Wednesdays are hosted by Emily Wrayburn at Letting the Voices Out.

Like Ice

So…  I missed posting last week.  I really missed all posts last week.  The First Friday Photo post I made to my name blog?  I had that scheduled a week before.  I knew I’d be busy last week doing house shopping and planning our move; I simply had no concept of how much that process was going to take away my brain and ability to write and create.

I will say this much…  I feel like I have a blank slate mentally in some ways.  Things that I was obsessing over in my stories now just don’t seem to matter at all.  Maybe house shopping in New Jersey is the commercial equivalent of setting one’s manuscript in the drawer for three months?  😉

The good news about last week’s adventure?  We have a signed contract for a house.  It wasn’t the house we really wanted, and it wasn’t one of our top 18…  Through freezing rain and below freezing temperatures, our realtor  took us out to house after house, some that were much closer to what we wanted (only to find out the next day that someone had already bid on the place or that it had gone into foreclosure and we would need to wait months more than we had before the bank cleared it for sale…).  We even found a house filled with brand new carpets that squished and soaked our shoes when we entered it…  in the dark because there was no power on.

It was definitely an adventure, but for almost a week and a half, I’ve gotten almost nothing done on my goals.  I kept abreast of the ROW80 blog (mostly),  and I got a bit of my library reading done during the drive back from Jersey.  Diet was a disaster… as was exercise (getting in and out of the car and walking around properties doesn’t burn that many calories).  And my head was so full of house details, schools data, town ordinances and phone numbers that my poor characters couldn’t even snag my attention at night during dreams (when I did sleep).

I’ve started back into writing and chatting with my characters.  Mostly it’s been through reacquainting myself with the stuff they’ve already told me and asking for clarification on things.  Thank goodness they don’t seem to feel snubbed and have happily started sharing things already.  Then again, they’re a pretty awesome group who know what it means when “stuff just needs to be dealt with.”  ❤

That’s about all I have for my ROW80 check-in.  I do have a WIPpet for you, if you’re game to stay for a few more paragraphs.

WIPpet

Since all I’ve been able to get my head into is checking for typos and grammatical errors (creativity has been out the door), I give you seven small paragraphs from the story I’ve been doing that to, my crossover fanfiction The Dots.  I’m sorry there’s no lead in to this scene.  It’s just where I stopped off trying to edit things last night.

The intended day of their departure, Alanii awoke to silence. Next to him, Atyriia lay curled next to the rumpled, stuffed bear she’d been bringing to bed of late. He smiled for a moment, looking over her, with the blankets gathered about her shoulders, stolen from his side of the bed somewhere in the night.

He didn’t bother to gripe, knowing it would do little good. Besides, he was too curious as to what had caused her to join him. He brushed her cheek with a kiss. “Nassil?”

Her cheek felt like ice.

Alarmed by both the chill and her continued silence, Alanii mentally reached out his mind to hers.

Faint, momentary glimpses of her sleeping thoughts drifted past him. Drugged glimpses, a miasma of images, both comforting and horrific at once. He pulled away before he too was drawn into the drug’s pull.

She is alive. He allowed himself a moment to think of what he should do. A moment of delay…it could mean both of their lives.

Poison… He unwrapped her from the blankets to see if he could see the method of entry.

I hope you enjoyed that.  Interested in seeing more?  Head over to the WIPpet linky and visit some our other awesome members.  And if you’d like to join us for the WIPpet, just add your link to the linky.  Make sure your snippet follows one simple rule…  use the date somehow in your choice of word, sentences, paragraphs, theme, and you’re set.  We’d love to see you.

WIPpet Wednesdays are hosted by Emily Wrayburn at Letting the Voices Out.