Moving

Moving to my own website.

Come on over and check it out. 

Not that there's much stuff on it yet.  :P

Work in progress.  Story of my life 

November Writing Challenge

Oooh!  Also, I've written something for the Labyrinth again.  It's called Forgotten, and sees the return of Santi from Librarian.  

Almost there

In May 2013 I wrote a big chunk of Vert Glace while on holiday.  I think I finished the first draft in June.  Since then, I've fleshed out the world a lot more through writing about other characters in the same world (Sasha for example).  I've also had my dear friends tear my draft apart.  

And now, a year and a half later, it's finally back together again in one document.

All I have left to do is to go back over it and do one more edit pass (at least, that's how I break it down to myself so I don't hulk out and destroy this peaceful seaside town).  

I thought that I would be pleased and excited.  I thought that I would feel accomplished.

But here I am, sweating and insecure like the world's biggest dork.  I'm sure that in the next few weeks I'll be fighting procrastination like Samuel L Jackson fought those snakes on a plane.

Maybe after this last push I'll start to feel more like a phoenix rising out of the flames.

the mushroom is bigger than the steak

Two dodgy vans I've seen

So far, it's just co-incidence.  Let's hope that there's not a third...

Something I wrote half a lifetime ago

So here’s the first paragraph of the first story I ever finished.  Grade 8, woo.  I have underlined all the parts that made me cringe and laugh aloud. 

The alarm clock played an annoyingly cheerful tune.  A hand patted the bedside table, in attempt to find the source of the noise without any success.  A sleepy,  still half asleep head popped up with a groan.  With the help of sight, Toshepsilon was finally able to find the clock and switch off the annoying alarm.  The clock read 6:30 am.  Tosh wondered why his alarm clock was set to go off so early or at all.  It must have been someone that knew that when Tosh woke up, he wouldn’t go to sleep again until bed time.  The only name that popped up was C.J.  Only she could have done such an evil deed.  Still half asleep, Tosh dragged his tired body out of bed.  It was useless to try to fall asleep again now that he was half awake.  After a trip to the toilet and a shower, Tosh was more refreshed, although still a little annoyed at C.J, who was obviously the one who set the clock.  Since it was C.J was obviously the one that set the clock, Tosh decided that C.J probably had something official or important so he put on his uniform.  Then he dried his emerald green hair and tried to tame it.  Tosh’s hair was impossible, it flopped this way and that, sometimes getting in his eyes.  He had given up on gel and it was still too short to tie up.  Tosh put his red cloth band around his forehead as a sign that he had lost something great and dear to him. 

This is how I would write the scene now. 

The alarm clock’s cheerful tune was full of sadistic pleasure.  When the swatting of his groggy hand did not end the torture, Toshepsilon groaned and begrudgingly lifted his head to squint at the illuminated numbers. 

6:30am.

Never in a million years would he have set an alarm for this ungodly hour.  It must have been the work of Commander Jaramiteey.  The commander, known affectionately by her tight knit team as ‘CJ’, never did anything without purpose.  So if she set an early alarm for Tosh, he knew that he’d best get up. 

A shower worked wonders.

So did his uniform. 

The red bandanna wasn't part of the standard issue.  It tamed his grass-green hair, but that wasn't why he wore it.  

Red Moon

Religious nuts had been on the radio all afternoon, saying that it was the end of the world.  The scientist in me scoffed, but a niggly part of me felt excited by the utter conviction in their ranting. 

Dinner was uneventful.  I kept checking the clock, but time wasn’t passing by any faster.  If anything, each time I looked, it seemed to slow down a fraction more just to spite me.  Perhaps the world would end tonight.  Of boredom. 

I didn’t wash the dishes after I inhaled the food off them.  It’s a bad habit I’ve developed lately.  But I usually get them the next day, so I’ll wash them before I go to work.  That is, if the world hasn’t ended by then.

At 7:15pm a shadow fell across the full moon.  It wasn’t red.  It was maybe a little bit brown.  The real eclipse was still a bit over an hour away so I drifted back downstairs to waste some more time on the computer.  The whole affair was a bit anticlimactic so far.  Perhaps the earthquakes and the blood rain and the terrible trumpets of the angels of death would come later.

I got caught up in reading some article about the Great Barrier Reef and almost missed the 8:30 mark.  At 8:32pm I raced back up stairs.  For a moment, there was nothing in the sky.  Then the clouds must have parted, or the Earth must have shifted a fraction, for there it was.

I slid the glass aside and stepped out onto the balcony.  The red moon looked like a bit of loose flesh in the sky.  The sight was both grand and disappointing, like finding out that the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist but you can still eat chocolate eggs every year at Easter.  In that moment, I felt completely affirmed.  ‘The world is everything and that is the case.’

The Earth shifted again, and the red glowed brighter.  As the soft rays of light fell upon me, I felt myself change.  Anger.  Lust.  Madness.  The sky upended itself, tipping power through me like a waterfall through a straw.  It washed away my twenty-something years of history and replaced it with a raw and timeless need. 

My last coherent thought was that they were right.  Damn it, those fanatics had been right all along.  The world would end, and it would be my doing. 

Mascot potplant

My partner said I should give it a name.  So I called it...

SQUALT CHOMONDELEY

so now me and Squalt hang out like super bros while I work.

About the day that I had...

Yes, I am still writing.

Yes, I have managed to contract yet another viral illness, this time from a real estate agent who I will not be buying a house from.

Yes, I am still plodding along with my six day work week.

Yes, yes, I am still insane in the membrane.



Something cool happened today.  After organizing for cleaners to pick up my keys at work, I skipped along in the happy knowledge that I had handed off one of my least favourite chores...

...only to be told that the room I would be facilitating my group in the dirtiest room of the building.  Now, I'm pretty chillaxed with grubbiness.  I wash my hands after I toilet, like any other decent human being, but I've always said that mess is a sign of activity.

But even I balked at this room.  So there I was, sweating in my snazzy work shirt as I vacuumed the floor and sprayed down the tables.  I have a bad back, so I can already hear my partner chiding me for doing this.

It was all worth it, of course, because then I got to have these amazing conversations with people.

We talked about how pain in life is inevitable, and why people suffer.

We spoke about politics and sports and chickens.

We ate chocolate and basked in poignant silences.

This made me realize (though, I've always known it, I suppose) that I will do whatever it takes to create meaningful experiences for my clients.  Even if I have to spend ten minutes picking up wrappers of the floor.  Even if I have to deviate from the textbook and all the material I've prepared.  Whatever it takes, it's important for people to feel like actual people, like actual human beings.  Not just a number, a box on a checklist, or some success story that gets circulated around the company so we can all pat ourselves on the back or whatever.

To be respected.  To be heard.  To speak.  To listen.  To accept that others are different, and that they have different opinions, and you don't have to agree, but that's ok.  To make plans.  To strive for something in an imperfect, random world.  To feel without shame.

Yeah, thinking back, it was a great day.

Anime in October

Imagine my excitement when I heard that the dude who wrote the Full Metal Panic series has another light novel that's being made into an anime!

I don't know much about Amagi Brilliant Park, but from the trailers, it looks off-the-walls crazy, which is great.  

I could read it and find out more...

...

...

...

But that might ruin the anime for me.  I don't want to be one of those hipsters who get to the end of he episode, sigh, and say, "the book was so much better than the movie."

August entry

Whoever said that stories are never finished, they're just abandoned, well...

I have abandoned The End of a Stormy Night on fictionpress, and I'm not looking at it again!  ...until at least tomorrow.  I know it needs to be edited more and what not.  It's odd dabbling in a genre that you know nothing about.  That's not to say that I write flawlessly in any genre, but gothic has never been on my to-do list.  But pride's a funny thing.  It would have become a broody angry thing if I hadn't written something for the August writing contest.  I'm not expecting to win this time round, but I'm not going home until someone hands me an 'I Participate in a Race!' ribbon.  

I actually forgot to mention that I saw Guardians of the Galaxy a while back.  For future reference, if any movie adaptions of mainstream comic books come out, especially DC (which I know Guardians isn't...), just assume I've seen it.  I mention this movie in particular because I'm listening to all the 70's songs on it's soundtrack right now.  :)  It's the first time I've actually listen listened to the Pina Colada song.  Scandalous.

Richer and cleverer than everyone else

I just realized that I get most of my reading/writing done when I'm sick or injured.  This time, it's sickness.  I don't know what that says about me.  I'm sitting here at 8pm at night, wrapped in a blanket like a granny and falling asleep.  I often wonder if this is what old age feels like.  I must be old.  I feel old.

Enough.  I'm not here to talk about how old I am.  I'm here to tell you about the bookbone I have for The Gentleman Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch. Scott's world is an amazing word wizard who has build an amazing word world.  The cities, the religions, the calendar, the food (the everything)...  all this is fed to you with the most delicious words.  Oh, and the insults.  Who could forget about all the awesome insults? The books are worth it for the education in new and exciting ways to insult people.  The story is told in snippets of the 'present' and the past that intertwine in ways that are nostalgic and meaningful.  The storytelling is very clever.

Here are my thoughts per book:

Book 1:  Gentlemen Bastards are suave as hell
Locke Lamora is a name that just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it?  For the first third of this book, you just get sucked into how smoothly everything is going.  When you think you know what game Locke and his crew are playing... well, you don't know anything!!!!! Then of course, things take hilarious and horrifying turns.

Book 2:  Gentlemen Bastards are Oceans 11  AND Swashbucking Pirates
After reading the first book, I was a bit skeptical about the second, given that it was set on the high seas.  How do city thieves fair against the waves?  Magnificently.  Not only are there plenty of laugh out loud moments, you also somehow manage to pick up some fun language and traditions (much of it fictional) concerning sailing.  I am never setting foot on a boat again without feeling the need to bring a cat with me.  And I don't even like cats.

One thing that is worth noting is that this book treats women pretty well.  When you've read enough fantasy books, you just get use to the absence of women in the backdrop of the world.  Scott's bringing back the ladies, which deserves two thumbs up.

Book 3:  A Plot:  Gentlemen Bastards do Karthain, B Plot: Gentleman Bastards put on a play
If you're not into watching a man trip over again and again and again because of his lady love, fear not, for this book is really two in one (and the second story has much less romance in it than the other part... that is, if you can call it romance and not outright punishment).  It was great to have the twins of the group back in the picture - their departure was greatly mourned.

Book 4 is slated to come out this year.  I can't wait.

4 days till deadline

August contest entry is coming along swimmingly.

Ok, I lie.  But it has those arm floaters on, and it's floating in the kiddy pool.

What I mean to say is that I've made a start.

It's just that when my brain is this confuzzled from the flu (yes, yes, yet another one), I keep getting distracted with 'research' on the internet.  Gothic isn't something I'm overly familiar with, and even though I've crammed a number of trademarkedly 'gothic' elements into the story, it just isn't working that well.  I want to write something that's like The Hound of the Baskervilles.  What I am actually writing is a sad excuse for a fairytale that makes the Brothers Grimm turn in their graves.

The most interesting part of my life at the moment (apart from my beautiful, smart, caring, generous partner, of course...) is reading through the Locke Lamora books.  I'm 3/4 though the third one - Republic of Thieves, and I'm pretty sure the fourth isn't out yet.  There is no sound of appreciation in this world that adequately describes how much I like reading these books and how much Scott Lynch's words are blowing my mind.

...I will hopefully have the gothic contest piece finished by the end of the week.

This is why editing for Wolfie is so much fun

My reliance on Google continues

I've been preaching time management for years, but my own waxes and wanes.  Upon reading some advice from another writer, I've started keeping a bit of a schedule/record of my days.  So basically, I plan  my week in advance, and it's depressing to see that a large chunk of my day - the majority of my waking hours in fact - is spent on work and work related activities (such as traveling to work).  From this, I've discovered that on afternoons when I'm not tutoring students (which technically counts as work too... damn it!), reluctantly catching up on chores, or having religious types talk at me, I have between 1 and 3 hours to write. 

:)

And not a day have I kept to plan, but you know what, just having activities planned makes me more productive.   I would have never remembered to wash and hang up my clothes if I hadn't blocked out time for that on my precious Google calendar.  I wouldn't have finished betaing Val's story.  I wouldn't have worked on Woodsman at all.

So the point is, that while things don't always go to plan, planning has made me more productive.  Funny that.  Hopefully I can sustain it.

In a blink of an eye, it's suddenly the middle of August.  My year goal of having a manuscript ready for querying is not going as planned.  I haven't finished my second draft yet.  Hopefully by the end of September I will have beaten a path of order through the wild forest of chaos.

Potato baby.

One of my friends gave birth yesterday.  Now there is one more human being on this planet.  Horray.  Life is a miracle.  He kinda looks like a potato at the moment.  Miracle potato.

Wow, it's already six days into August.  Time flies when you're sick and exhausted.  :)  I thought I'd do something useful with myself tonight, so  I edited and posted another chapter of Shadechasers.  Not as impressive as... you know... giving birth.  But yeah.

Home is where the plane takes me

I've fixed the zipper to my bag, and I feel like Macgyver.  The trip to the city this month was quite eventful, and my bag is full to bursting, which means that this is the king of bad timing for broken zippers.

And perfect timing for an awesome feat of mind over matter.

Still trying to recover from a lingering malaise that comes along with maybe-a-bacterial-maybe-a-viral-infection.  I'm blogging as I wait for the powers that be to announce that boarding for my flight has begun because staying awake is preferable to sleeping when waiting for a plane.

Red Seas Under Red Skies.

This is the second book in the Locke Lamora/Gentlemen Bastards series.  Needless to say, I did finish the first book.  It was definitely an excellent book, at least a 9/10.  I'm going to finish the other two books that are out in the series, and then I will do my review thing (with the usual caveat in place, that is, if things aren't too devastating at the end.  I'm hoping the main character will have the last laugh, given how brutal the second part of the first book was).

Writing wise, I've been a super slacker.  I've got 2 stories I'm suppose to be betaing, and I'm late to finish writing one.  So not sure if there's going to be any activity on the creative front from me for the next few weeks, except maybe participation in a Labyrinth contest, if Fyloe sets one.  Four days in and it looks like it's going to be a slow month.  :) 

Dreaming of the weekend

Last night I stayed up too late reading book.  It left me absolutely buggered today.  Luckily, no one noticed.

I need a new inspiration poster.  It will feature a picture of two minute noodles.  It will read:  Dinner.  Some nights I just don't want to cook it.

I've now got all the episodes of Natsume Yuujinchou that there ever was.  Who ever thought to make a slice of life anime feature a boy who can see spirits?  Good stuff.

This weekend I am having some peeps come over and we're going to do a weekend of D&D because that's what city friends do when they drive 4 hours to a seaside town known for it's close-encounter whale watching and calm, pristine beaches.  I'm excited, but I wonder if my house is equip to host guests.  I've got enough beds, I think.  But not enough seats.  Don't look too closely - there's no logic there.

I'm also thinking about entering the July Labyrinth Writing Contest.

A New Book

And now I'm reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.  Same rules apply - if not completely depressing,  I shall review!  It's pretty kick-ass so far.

And still, it snows.

I think I've done my back again.  Heatpack for the win.  Man, I'm getting old.

I said something about reviewing the Children of the Black Sun series if I got the the end and it wasn't completely depressing, I'd write about it.  And guess what?  It wasn't depressing (aka not everyone dies).

Winter Be My Shield, the first book, was everything that the shopgirl at Dymocks promised.  Action, adventure, gritty magic, and a female lead whose main purpose is more than just the canvas for a which-boy-will-i-pick dilemma.  Definitely recommended reading - Jo does a great job at creating a winter wonderland (the word 'wonderland' is probably misleading here because the land is pretty damn harsh).  This would be my favourite book in the series.

Second book, Black Sun Light My Way, takes a bit of a detour into what I have crudely summarized as 'torture games', which is not my favourite bedtime reading.  But then again, what else to expect from a title that references a black sun?

North Star Guide Me Home has more cheer aloud moments (which I am all for) and the magic really starts getting cool.  The books introduce a really interesting conceptualization of family and romantic relationships.  It made me squirm in 1 and 2, and I didn't quite get it until this third installment.  Then it was all 'awwww' and fuzzy wuzzies.

The scene stealer of the series is a blood mage called Rasten who is pretty hardline evil, but endears himself by being the most forthright, takes-no-shit character of the series.  If I had to dislike something about the book, it would be (without giving anything away too much) that there were too many babies.