Early!

I'm updating a few days early this week because I'm not sure if I'll be able to make my normal Saturday update on account of graduation that day. That's right, folks, I'll finally have that BA in liberal studies with a concentration in writing that I've been claiming in my query letters (I figured with a  month or so left before graduation, I could basically say that I had a degree, right?). On top of the ceremony and subsequent celebrations, I'm also getting kicked out of the dorms, showing my parents around Anchorage and getting ready for a flight back to Colorado. Busy, busy, busy.

This week, I'm also going to skip an excerpt (though I assure you, I've been working very hard; I rewrote an entire chapter and, after months of mucking about in the Land of the Unmotivated, that was a very big deal), and talk about this article. For those who won't click on the link: basically, a high school English teacher was found to be writing and publishing erotica on the side. I, personally, am not a huge fan of erotica, but I fail to see how in the world it should affect this teacher's classroom. She didn't expose the students to it, use them in the book, or even talk about it until some parent found out and flipped. Doesn't a teacher have a right to her own life, too? I mean, they have homes and private space for a reason. Right? Okay, I can understand bringing a teacher under fire if he or she is having an affair with a student, or is dealing drugs to the students, or is a mass murderer or something, but for writing something she enjoys writing? And under a pseudonym, no less!

In all honesty, this kind of freaks me out. If I were to become a teacher for any reason (not likely, but let's roll with it), and some parent found out I write gay romance, could I be brought under fire for preaching homosexuality? Even if I only wrote on my own time, never talked about it with the students, never brought the school into it, etc. etc.? When did asking teachers to separate their school lives and their private lives become asking them to deny their private lives, their desires and goals, altogether? It just doesn't seem right to me.

Oljiru kovy.

Writing on Shadows

As of right now, I think I'm going to tweak this blog just a little bit to include excerpts of what I've written every week. Unless I have something really, really interesting to say (like, for instance, the last query event of April at WriteOnCon is on Monday, wish me luck!), or some other insight into the writing business. When it get closer to time for the conferences I'll be attending this year, I'll likely be writing a lot about those; but for the moment, things are slow enough to simply post bits and pieces of my work, thanks to graduation and moving and all that fun stuff.

So, a bit of what I've been working on. Last week, I went on a school trip to the Anchorage zoo, and we attended a seminar about wolves after our little tour. It got me really inspired to write something wolfish, but I wanted to steer clear of werewolves and simply writing from the wolf's perspective. So, I dug out the old idea I used for my National Novel Writing Month novel: inspired by Jungian psychology, every person in this world has a Shadow, an animal companion that is irrevocably tied to them. Similar to the concept in the His Dark Materials trilogy, except that the Shadows have a single shape from birth, and they don't speak a language their partners (called Sources) understand. Hopefully, I've made it different enough from Pullman, while still sticking to the Jungian concept of the shadow and the anima/animus.

Anyway, this story has no overarching plot yet, but here's a taste of the beginning:

A howl cut through the night like butter. Ketina’s round, furry ears perked as she raised her head and turned it in the direction of the sound. She sniffed at the cold night air, searching for anything at all to tell her how far away the pack was. She had known the moment they entered this wood that there was a wild pack here, but her Source just wouldn’t listen to her protests. After a moment, she lowered her head again  and nudged at the sleeping man beside her with her soft, gray muzzle. 

Emris swatted at her and rolled over. “Not morning yet. Go back to sleep.” 

She growled softly, deep in her throat, and nipped at the back of his neck. Another howl pierced the night and Ketina felt her thick fur bristle. If her Source wouldn’t wake on his own, she would drag him like a pup, if she had to. Her survival depended on his. And, even if she was a Shadow, she was a wolf, through and through. And she was rather fond of living. 

“Sleep,” Emris grumbled, jabbing his elbow into the wolf’s side. “Remember sleep?”

Ketina growled again and locked her jaws around the young man’s neck, refusing to let him fall back into slumber. She shook him gently, not afraid to let him feel the point on her teeth, even though the sensation of her own canines in the scruff of her neck was a little unnerving. She brushed it off as best she could, knowing it was a side effect of the bond between Shadow and Source. All that mattered now was getting out of this forest before the pack of wild wolves found them. If she was any other creature, there would not be such haste. But a single she-wolf encroaching on the territory of a pack could spell disaster.

Another Slow Week

Not much to say on the writing front this week. Again, packing and finishing up the semester seem to have made my words all dry up. I get restless every time I sit down to work, and it's tough pounding out at least a few paragraphs a day. Oh, well. I'm almost done.

I did get rewrite my query letter, though. That's always fun and exciting.

This week, your bit of fiction is the beginning of an old, old story that I'm reworking. Enjoy.

“Get down!” Ellianna T’fos shouted as she leapt from her hiding spot. She easily cleared the man’s head, landing heavily in the mulch. Dead leaves and debris scattered from the place her boots touched down. Without a moment of thought, she drew her sword to parry the  attack aimed at her head. Steel sang against steel. She moved one foot back a step to brace her against the force of the blow. Recovering quickly, she forced her attacker’s blade back at him and followed with a quick thrust at his gut. 

He barely managed to knock her blade aside in time. 

“This really isn’t—” The man behind her, who had been the target of the attack, spoke in a soft, pleading voice. Until the attacker’s dagger landed in the tree behind him, inches from his hooded head. 

“Shut up,” Ellianna hissed, ducking a blow aimed at her head. She rolled into her opponent’s guard and drove her blade up, into his stomach. If he was what she thought he was, her strike would do nothing but slow him down. Worth a shot, at least. True to her instinct, the man simply staggered back, cursing. She felt a sharp tug at her chest, the center of the magic that kept her alive, as the wound in his stomach knitted itself together again. So he was an Andra, after all. Damn it. That would make things much more difficult.

Excerpt

This week has been up and down writing-wise. Packing and finishing up my last year of college apparently tends to make me less motivated to work on the things I really want to get done. Like finishing up the rework of Savior so I can start querying again. Oh, well. Life is silly like that.

To make up for the fact that I don't have much to say today, I present you with a bit of a story that may or may not go anywhere. I began this tale for my senior project and re-imagined it a bit to fit into the "Tarot Stories" series. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this snippet of a dragon story.

Scales hissed across the stone floor. Initaveske strode slowly, deliberately, toward the mouth of her cave, her long, white tail dragging on the ground behind her. Her milky eyes fixed on the oval of sunlight that was the entrance to her little home, despite the fact that she had not seen in hundreds of years. Even by dracenian standards, she was old. Ancient, even.

And this would be her last day.

She reached the tepid warmth of the mountain sunlight and turned instinctively to the right. Just outside the cave entrance perched a small ledge, only large enough for a clutch of three dracenian eggs. All three were as snow-white as the old dracen beside them, each one shuddering at its own pace as the hatchling inside struggled to free itself.

Initaveske pressed her warm, scaly nose to the nearest of the eggs, feeling her offspring’s heartbeat through her nostrils. This one would be strong. Good. Her last clutch would not fail her. She puffed a breath of hot air onto the egg and moved onto the next one, gently rolling it over to feel the heartbeat of this second hatchling. A quick, hard thrumming. Another leader.

She had to crane her neck over the makeshift nest to reach the last of the eggs. Her nose gently turned it over and over, searching for a sign of life. Finally, she felt it: a soft, fluttering heartbeat, irregular and gentle. She snorted in surprise, jerking her head back. The great wings on her back twitched, shedding a few snowy feathers down into the canyon. In all her fifty broods, she had never encountered a hatchling with a heartbeat like that. Irregular hatchlings existed, of course, but her bloodline had never produced anything except the strongest. Those with weaker hearts in the egg generally became a traitor, an exile, a disgrace. Very few managed to remain within the clan.

She could end it now, before it hatched, and save her line the humiliation. Push the egg out of the nest; let it plummet to the canyon floor as so many others had done. It would be the honorable thing to do. But the rhythm had been so fragile, so delicate. In her heart, she knew fragility was not a thing any dracen could possess if he wished to live, but she had grown sentimental in her own age. Delicacy was so rare that it was beautiful. 

Metamorphosing Queries

Ever have one of those days when you just have to wonder where your life is going? I'm there. In a good way, though. I'm graduating in a month; I have a full manuscript that really only needs some minor editing to be finished again; I have several short stories I can fix up and try to submit to various magazines and anthologies; I'm heading back to Colorado soon. And, yet, I still have no idea if/where/when I can get a job. Oh, well. I shan't mope about that here.

This space is for writing and arts and creative things. Like Metamorphoses. I don't think I mentioned it here previously, but I'm currently in the play, as "Eurydice and others." For those unfamiliar with it, Metamorphoses is a one-act play written by Mary Zimmerman, based on the writings of Ovid. In other words, it's all about Greek myths. The big brouhaha of the show is that it was originally produced with a pool of water on stage, so our director decided he wanted to do the same thing. It turned out all right, but it's been a bit of a hassle and I won't say I'm not happy to see the last of it. Overall, though, it was a wonderful experience. If you get the chance to see a version of it and are at all interested in mythology or different types of theatre, please do so.

And now onto the writerly update of the week: WriteOnCon is my new favorite website ever. Q&A sessions with agents, query letter critiques, an online conference in the fall; what more could you want? This month, there are three literary agents going through query letters and saying whether they would request pages or not, and their reasoning. Not only is it absolutely wonderful of them to give their time like that, but it is also much more useful for us, the authors, than a form rejection. At least, I think so. The thing that bothers me about form rejection letters is not knowing why the agent didn't want my work. I understand completely that they're very busy people and they don't have time to personally comment on everything, but it's also a bit confusing not to know whether it was a poorly constructed query letter, an unappealing premise, or simply the wrong time to query. So having someone comment on my letter will at least confirm whether or not I need to rework my pitch, in addition to fixing up bits of the manuscript. I'm looking forward to it.

Onward! To the senior project presentation and graduation!

Oljiru kovy.