Just trying out the new cross-poster to see if it works.
Confessions of a Creataholic
Taking my victories where I can find them.
My folks are gone again, but while they were here my Mom let me tell her pretty much the entire Black Flag saga (at least as much as I know so far, some of the later stories don’t have much plot development done on them yet). Not only that, but my niece Tima sat there and listened to the entire session, *hours* and *hours* worth, of her own free will, with no ulterior reason to hang out and listen to me telling stories that I am aware of.
During the course of this epic storytelling session I realized that Bonnie Anne must have an excellent memory for the stuff people say to her, which should have been obvious from the way she keeps quoting things Silver says back at him, but somehow I didn’t ever make the connection before. That was a writerly thing that I was doing, not a characterly thing that she was doing… or so I thought. But she’s the only one who does do it, so it is a characterly thing.
A splash of color
Having mentioned colorful caves in a previous post, I thought I’d let y’all see what I meant.
These photos are not color-modified in any way. This is straight from the digital camera to you. (Click on thumbs to see larger versions.)
“The Crystal King” – 4 feet 10½ inches, 400+ pounds, 200,000+ years old
A bit relieved…
I showed/read Scent of Spring to my mother last night, and she loved it. Which was very heartening. Nobody in my household really cares for it that much — they laugh at the characters’ quips, but the story itself doesn’t interest them. And it’s not as plotty a sort of story as I usually do, so I have worried, on occasion, if it might be a little broken. But the story is quite insistent that it already has all the plot its ever going to have, so it’s very nice to know there is at least one person out there for whom it works exactly as it is.
I know one’s mother isn’t supposed to count as feedback because they alway love everything you do, or at least say as much, but she was crying — both in the sad way, in the middle, and in the “oh that’s so beautiful” way, at the end. Also, come to think of it, at Harchung’s ‘all this I loved’ speech, which is just lovely — and I say so even though I wrote it myself. Not very many of my heroes will let me write romantic speeches for them. (Although Mijahd, in the novella I just wrote, does recite some poetry, which was very fun for me — I haven’t had a chance to do that sort of thing since Cantata.)
Oops, better hire a burglar!
My parents arrived on friday night with three nieces in tow, so our household count is (for the next few days) 13.
Tents have been pitched in the backyard to contain the overflow.
Yesterday we all went on a nice little canoe trip down a nice quiet river with no white water whatsoever. But I haven’t done any river canoeing at all in a very long time, and it was nice (if somewhat wearing) to be able to dust off my skills.
Last night, once my mother was tired of cleaning my house for me, I snagged her for one of those nice conversations/discussions I like so much about the societies that I build for my fictional works, and why I build them the way I do, and how they relate to the real world, and all the fun little tidbits of real world information that I found when doing all the non-fiction reading that I do to provide my brain with imaginary society fodder, and so forth. I can go on about that sort of thing for days, especially if I have an interested and informed conversational partner who instead of listing in awe and telling me how clever/creative/knowlegeble I am, actually contributes their own theories, connections and tidbits of historical/cultural/scientific data.
It kept me up later than I really should have been up, though. ::rueful::
Footnote: Post title is a reference to The Hobbit.
Just general whatever
Boyd has been doing college shopping for our eldest, and as a result our household now has five working computers. We managed that once before, but it only lasted a few weeks. I sure hope we go for a longer run this time.
I have just finished the rough draft a story which I am currently calling “The Vizier’s Tale”. It clocked in at 18500-ish words, and is a romance set in a historical-ish setting that is not really middle/near eastern but is supposed to feel almost like it. I’m not 100% happy with that title, but previously I had no title at all, so now at least I can call it something. That title came about when I was nattering about the story to my daughter, and ended up explaining that in it, the Shah’s sinister and scheming advisor, is actually the hero.
Boyd has read a little bit of it and made comments, mostly on the order of “you seem to be rushing this”. :sigh: Perhaps that’s what I should have expected when I banged out that many words in less than a week?
Also this week the family visited the Ohio Caverns. Largest known cave complex in Ohio, apparently, but thats not saying much, and its famous not for it’s size, but for its color, which is, in fact, rather notable. Very pretty.
Black Flag Story List
I’m not cross-posting this, so probably no one will see it besides the bots and me. But I guess I just want a historical record, or something. In my last post I mentioned a new Black Flag story. How many Black Flag stories does that make? Well, I guess it depends on how you count them, but here is the run-down of the Black Flag stories my backbrain has ‘discovered’ so far.
1: Flag in Flames (the original, starring Bonnie Anne, Silver and Blood)
Pirate’s Grace (Non main-line story immediately following 1. Starring Grace, a ‘walk-on’ in 1 never mentioned by name.)
Mantis (Fairly main-line, but only a short.)
(As of yet unnamed possible comic/adventure series featuring the “totally un-canon” adventures of the Talon Five.)
Space Spawn (Non main-line story starting just before 2 starts, starring the daughter of a minor character from 1.)
2: Blood Price (Bellamie’s Story.)
3: Dominion (Turner’s Story.)
4: Ghost in the Clockwork (Ghost’s Story.)
5: Soul of a Talon (Morgan’s Story.)
(May possibly need something here to complete 4?)
(Possible spin-off drama/adventure series about Morgan and Kidd.)
6: Beyond the Deep (Lock’s Story. Also Bator.)
7: Child of Terror (Jinsun’s Story.)
8: Crimson Seas (Toralyn’s Story)
9: (Arouj and Kheyr’s story.)
10: (G’s Younger Son’s story — thus implying that there is an older son who might also have a story.)
I also have had some interest expressed in Moracey Talon, and he is one of my favorite characters, and I certainly have enough story material to work with… BUT, if I tell a prequel story about him, I don’t know how I could give it a happy, or even generally trending upward, ending. Sigh.
Message to backbrain: I really wouldn’t mind, really I wouldn’t, if this list did not get any longer between now and the release of the first story. Couldn’t you put in some work on Sails of Everwind instead? I am a third of the way through writing that one and I still have only the vaguest of clues as to what is going on.
A writer’s brain is a maze of twisty passages?
About a week ago we invited a family from church over for homemade pizza, and they were kind enough to pretend an interest in our creative projects. So I got a chance to natter on about what I was doing, and see that typical bemused and confused expression when I said (in reference to the “Character Interviews” up as extras on the Black Flag page) that “I didn’t know Blood was going to say that”. The young lady I was talking to blinked, and said “Wait… what? Isn’t he your character?” “Yes.” “And you were writing his answers yourself?” “Yes. I knew what the answer to the question was, the answer is ‘red’. But he didn’t say ‘red’, he said ‘none of your business.’ I didn’t know he was going to say that.” “?!?!?”
Well, if the non-writers find that one confusing, how about this one:
I have been working on the first Black Flag story for three years now. I’ve had the script written for over two years. I’ve done about two thirds of the artwork. (And I’ve written the scripts for two sequels.)
I only just realized that one of my male leads is incapable of lying.
His story is already written. I know how he acts. I knew when he didn’t want to answer a question, he would evade it… usually with a counter question. But I didn’t really notice that “no lies” was what that behavior boiled down to, until, while discussing the story with my husband the subject of lying came up and I noted that he wasn’t good at it. “He can’t lie at all,” my husband responded.
Oh, yeah. So he can’t.
…and in other news, last night my brain coughed up yet another Black Flag sequel. Somebody shoot me.
That didn’t work either
My latest attempt to prevent the fourth Black Flag story from completely taking over my brain, was to try watching trailers for up-coming movies, hoping that would give my story fabulator something else to think about (since space ship construction obviously isn’t enough to keep it busy).
…so now the theater in my head is running a trailer for a live-action movie version of Black Flag IV: Ghost in the Clockwork.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaarg!
I would just give up and write the script already, except that there are another six or seven more where that one came from, so all I will be doing is trading in four for five and then five for six and then six for seven, etc, etc. I refuse to get so caught up in envisioning sequels that I never get the first one finished. Grumble.
Most people wouldn’t consider four occupants an empty house…
… but with my three older girls off at camp, the place seems a lot quieter than I am used to.
This also means that I was the one who took my two youngest to their library summer reading program special event (a magic show) yesterday, instead of being able to delegate that task. I spent enough time on my feet that I started feeling woozy and I guess it showed, because I got a concerned “are you okay” from a passer by. At this point I kind of clued into the fact that remaining upright was a bad idea if I was going to be driving home afterwards. I grabbed a random mystery, and took it over to the YA section where there are beanbag chairs that are more beanbag and less chair… the perfect excuse to put my head roughly on the same level as my knees.
Unfortunately I couldn’t tolerate the amount of pointless visual detail provided by the author, and I had to get up again and exchange books. :rueful:
Pretty much all I got done for the rest of yesterday was scanning and prepping the latest chapter worth of Scent of Spring pencils. But at least that means I am not behind on that particular task for the first time in months. 🙂