I'm getting my ass kicked! I was quite enthused when I left this morning. Eat some Jackie's, do some writing, go to the library and do some more writing. It was going to be a productive day. I had compiled Imsikwatash's chapters into two short story documents, "The End of Bliss" (from his introduction to the murder of his wife by the apothecary) ( Read more... )

            It took a moment before Angelique realized the wagon had stopped. The Brinish highway was a marvel of ancient engineering. Its composition a mixture of granite, ash, and sand-concrete-not the individual stone cobbles of other inferior roads. But she still sat on a box within a covered wagon pulled by oxen. The constant jerk-and-roll ( Read more... )

Last week I printed out my manuscript to date. It was reinvigorating to see such a large stack of paper. Even though I'm only 1/3 of the way finished with the ms, the mountain of dead trees reminded me what I have accomplished so far. My intent was to use the printed chapters to separate out and reorder, kind of like note cards. Then I discovered ( Read more... )

I'm not sure what made me decide to do it, but rather than just bolding my chapter number and titles, I've actually been using the document styles and making them headers. This was an invaluable decision, I learned today, as I viewed my entire manuscript (nearly 300 pages) as an outline collapsed down just to the headers. I am able to move each of ( Read more... )

            The Brinish highway, a marvel of the ancient world, was smooth and even. The oxen marched south effortlessly, the road still wide enough for those travelers returning home to pass by unobstructed. Valis had been right about his teamsters. Every one a Skivendian, pagan worshippers of dead heroes, still protested leaving early. Each knew ( Read more... )

So, The PodgeCast took a lot of my time last week, but once Independence Day holiday came around, I started writing again. Reading so much has been both invigorating and distracting. I worried that it might have a negative impact on my writing (like when I was reading The Name of the Wind and found my writing went to shit while I was reading it). ( Read more... )

            Our Lady of the Northern Waters was second in majesty only to The Mount in Temple. The church had taken 1000 years to build and its center spire offered the only place in the Highlands with a view to every border of the parish. Bear had never seen the church up close before. Obviously, anyone traveling within a few days of Watertown ( Read more... )

            In the years after Rian was taken from his father and made a novitiate Friar, he ran up and down the Spear of the Lady, playing “Lion and the Heretic.” What Friar did not dream of advancing to such a position much less a twelve-year-old boy? Like bishops to abbots and the patriarch to bishops, the Lion held absolute authority over all ( Read more... )

Yesterday at both breakfast and dinner I could do nothing but writing. It's nice to have my brain working steadily again, but I have found one thing is consistent. When I'm writing, I eat out A LOT. I don't think I'm able to cook and write in the same evening. :) My blood pressure weeps ( Read more... )

            The world was cold now. In the time of her grandfather, the world was a marvelous place, warm and wonderful. That was forever and a day ago and now the world was cold. Angelique saw glimpses of the old world all around her, etched in the stone these people used for their icons. None of them knew it, of course. They had rewritten their ( Read more... )