I came across this post about writing what is unreal but true, and it reminded me of a Waterjewel saying: "Some things are real but not true, and some things are true but not real."  It's about the different between material things (which can be solid but wrong) and immaterial things (which can be honest but not manifest).  If the body and soul don ( Read more... )

While chatting with friends, I had reason to lay out a bit of history. For a long time, my main fantasy world was a place called Hallelaine, and on its southern continent was a desert called the Whispering Sands. It had a bunch of cultures all flung together, some more functional than others.

Once upon a time in the Whispering Sands desert, there ( Read more... )

This poem came out of the December 4, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from catsittingstill.  It has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette.  This is a poem of the Whispering Sands desert, one of my established settings.

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This poem fills another square on my card for the
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Here's a wonderful little collage post about "The Best of Enemies." I love the sizzling chemistry between hero and villain.

My desert language Seshaa has some vocabulary for this ...

duush  (noun) - This one is quite exclusively a bandit concept, not known either in Waterjewel nor in decadent regions, and the closest English equivalent is “best ( Read more... )

This poem came out of the November 1, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from janetmiles.  It was sponsored by Shirley Barrette and Anthony Barrette.  The setting is the Whispering Sands desert in my main fantasy world, Hallelaine; and the language in question is called Seshaa, which means roughly "the voice of the desert" or "the sound of ( Read more... )

This poem came out of the May 11, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from zyngasvryka.  It was sponsored by laffingkat as part of the 2010 Holiday Poetry Sale.  Season's greetings to all, and many thanks!

zyngasvryka asked about getting students too tired to make mistakes.  That happens to be one of the favored teaching methods in Waterjewel, so I pounced on it ( Read more... )

This poem came out of the November 2, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from siliconshaman and sponsored by fayanora.  The poem comes from one of my fantasy settings, the Whispering Sands desert, where the Bone Horse is one of the messengers of death.

The Pear Gate
-- a Whispering Sands khazal

There is a door that cannot be seen from this side of life ( Read more... )

I came across this fascinating article today, "The Politics of the Desert Romance."  Now of course that title has to grab my attention, because one of my all-time favorite settings is the Whispering Sands desert.  This setting shares a lot with our Middle Eastern cultures (historic and modern) but there are enough fundamental differences that it ( Read more... )

This poem came out of the August 3, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired and sponsored by marina_bonomi.  Like " Shadow Staves," this poem touches on my desert, the Whispering Sands -- and this time you get to see the kind of omens written by that literate land.  A couple words of Seshaa vocabulary appear after the poem itself.

Piraan- a Whispering Sands ( Read more... )