Saturday, December 21, 2013

Brink book two information


I haven't touched my first National Novel Writing Month story in years--not since I didn't get very far beyond the original 50k words for the challenge.  I wrote it back in November, 2011, completely from scratch.  New characters, new world, new everything.  I'd hoped it would be a way back into the writing I'd done during college and before, but, like I said, it didn't get very far.  It proved to me I could still write, however.
I started printing it off for a family member to read since he was incarcerated back in 2012, and recently received a letter from him (and a friend of his he'd been sharing it with) saying how much he liked reading my stories.  I hadn't sent him story pieces in a while because of my move and my printer refuses to be on speaking terms with my new computer.  I went home this week to do laundry in anticipation of bad weather, and borrowed my parents' printer to get the boys some more.
That led to me re-reading Brink as a whole.  I still feel it is definitely not my finest work (really, really not my best writing), but there's decent storyline there.  I got to looking around, and noticed I'd only posted the NaNoWriMo parts here, not the bit I'd written beyond (I actually have some of the ending written...somewhere...too).  I knew I'd posted the first part of book two somewhere, and found it on my LiveJournal.  Given I locked all of my LiveJournal posts due to someone telling me they were going to take my ideas for their classwork for examples, with or without my permission, no one is able to see them but me.
Given the guys' interest--interest and excitement over my work from readers is a huge part of inspiring me to continue to write, even on pieces I haven't touched in years or don't particularly like--I've been debating picking it up again.  So I've decided to post what little I still had from the original attempt.  To understand it, a reader will have to go back through the archives to the earlier posts (each is labeled) and read Book One, but it's a good way for me to keep tabs on my progress.  This way, too, if I get a system crash that takes out computer, thumb drive (it's on at least two), and external hard drive, I still have a copy.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

100 Words Challenge reminiscent review


Today I was feeling a touch nostalgic, and found an older file folder on my external of a challenge project I was doing with a friend and three of her friends back shortly after I graduated from college.  We started it November 2007 (I graduated in 2006).  My last addition was in June, 2011.  I was up to 82.  I have part of 83, Smoke, written somewhere, but never finished, as enthusiasm for the project had pretty much died off by then.  The challenge was: we came up with a list of 100 words, then had to write short story clips that embodied each of those particular words--100 total.  What we wound up with was a list of 102, as other words suggested themselves as we went along.  I did 82, and the next-nearest was my friend at just over 50.  On a whim tonight I decided to amble through my contributions; I had some good stuff in there, turns out.  It's been fun to go back.
Some of my stories were inspired by music, or games, or even events earlier in my life.  Some I used from other writing I'd done, because they just fit too well.
The project was great exercise, and I may eventually finish the list--only spirit, agony, war, strike, blindness, evil, psychotic, ancient, frustration, pity, soft, window, heaven, oppression, smoke, light, loss, differences, ripples, and natural to go.
I'm thinking of posting some of those old pieces here. Haven't decided which ones.  I will probably leave out the fan fiction ones...I love Transformers, and was writing a Generation One-loyal and -accurate story based on that old original '80s cartoon series.  I did a lot of fun little blurbs from it as words, but to enjoy them, you really had to be a Transformers geek like me.  Others ranged from my entire gamut of stories--science fiction and fantasy works I've been working on my entire life, and some that were spur-of-the-moment created just from the impressions a particular word left me.
I guess we'll see what comes of it.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Untitled Pre-NaNoWriMo 2012 fantasy prologue excerpt


     So I was rummaging about on my newest thumb drive to figure out what was on it, and I stumbled across something I began right before National Novel Writing Month last year (November 2012), as kind of the prologue to the story I intended to write for it.  I actually remember sitting in the upstairs break room at the greenhouse where I worked, on my last fifteen minute break of the day, toward the end of the season--the longest I'd ever worked there--and scribbling this down on a seed company's notepad.  Given they wound up keeping me into November, I didn't wind up actually taking part in NaNoWriMo 2012.  But this still remains, and I may eventually do something with it.  It's not even a complete scene, because that was all I could write in fifteen minutes by hand.  Had it been on computer, I would've been faster and gotten more down.


         He woke to darkness and the sounds of unbridled chaos around him.  The darkness he knew; those possessing magic of any strength were born blind.  Chaos, too, had become intimately familiar over the span of…how long now?  Days?  Weeks?  It had become a companion following his abduction by mage hunters in Nordren, along with their palpable hatred and the abuses they eagerly supplied.  He’d never caused trouble, nor had he heard of the fanatics who had taken him.  Judging from the agonized screams he had heard over the span of his imprisonment, he wasn’t their first victim.
         The chaos he heard now was of a different sort, one that told him he was one of their last.
         The sounds were not of torture or beatings or misery, but of the sharp clash of steel on steel, arrows thudding, and battle cries.  His captors had become the victims of someone else.
         And it appeared they were just as helpless against this sudden threat as he and his fellows were against them.  He almost felt sorry for them.
         He had become familiar with the sounds of combat from time spent on Fort Nordren’s practice fields.  As a boy, he’d been drawn to the Guard as they ran through drills.  He knew from sound alone the skill of a combatant.  This group—there were too many, friend and foe, to distinguish the number of the attacking party—were not battle masters, but they were certainly well-trained and worked as a cohesive unit.
         The din abruptly died down, the lull filled with heavy breathing and the shifting of weight.  He could smell the thick coppery tang of spilled blood, and the sharp taint of ozone that suggested at least one of the newcomers was a mage.
         “That’s the last of them,” one of them said into the quiet—a male.  His statement was followed by the sound of a blade being flicked clean of blood and homed.
         “Anyone hurt?”  The second speaker was a woman.
         A chorus of noncommittal grunts and denials answered her as more weapons were sheathed.  He counted no more than six.
         “Dorr, Ranvel, check the cells for survivors,” the first voice said.  “Find any more of these fools” the sound of a boot striking flesh “—kill them.”
         “None deserve it more,” another voice, another male, answered.  His tone was deeper and held gravel compared to the first’s.
         “Just be quick and clean,” the first said with a heavy sigh of familiarity of the second male’s habits.  “We’re not like them.  Don’t string it out.”
         “Should,” the second male stated.  “Only fitting.”
         “Eye for an eye and everyone would be blind,” the woman spoke again.  “Or, in your case, Dorr, dead.”
         The second male, Dorr, grunted and tromped away; from his heavy tread, he had to be a big man.  He was followed by a lighter but still heavy series of footfalls.
         The woman sighed.  “Should I go with him and talk him down?”
         “No.  He may like warmongering, but he’ll obey orders.”
         “He’s right, you know, peace-keeper,” a new voice, another male, stated.  His voice was as grating as the one called Dorr’s.  “Don’t pretend you believe otherwise.”
         She did not reply to his barb.
         “What about that one?” the first male asked.  “He dead too?”
         Fingers touched his throat; surprised, he flinched.  He’d not heard anyone approach.
         “No.”  The voice belonged to the one who called the woman a peace-keeper.  “That can be remedied, if you wish.”
         “Galen, stop.”  The woman, again, this time with steel in her voice.  “Look at him—he’s shivering.”
         “He’s a mage,” the first said.  “Probably one of those taken from Nordren or Galar.”
         “Not a good sign,” the woman agreed.  “Doesn’t bode well if the cult has spread this far.”
         “Cult?” he could barely rasp out the word through the rawness of his throat; he hadn’t been able to scream in a long time.  The voice that came out couldn’t be his own.
         “Galen, check him over.  Make sure they didn’t do something irreversible.”
         Galen grunted and he felt strong hands run over him, expertly checking for broken bones and internal injuries.
         “Got a name?” Galen asked while he worked.
         “Vash.”
         “What kind of a name is that?  Sounds like a sneeze.”
         He tried again.  “Jason…Vash.”
         Galen snorted.  “Still sounds ugly.”
         “Galen!”  The woman didn’t sound amused.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Sorry about the long time away.

That should change now--new living arrangements, new job, new computer...lots of fresh things.  Now that I've got my life somewhat in better order and status, an internet-attached computer, and access to my music, I believe I can start writing again.  Most of my work was on my beast of an external hard drive, inaccessible for about two years.

Hopefully inspiration will take over and I can start posting bits and pieces of things here again.

Stay tuned!