Archive for » April, 2008 «
So I’m sure you’re all wondering just what word N-laigh is from. Sitting on tenterhooks, right? Well, lets all give a hand to Miss Sarah because she guessed right with Enlighten! Yay!
With my fantasy WIP, I like to take a little more logical route for explaining things so in my world the stars are the gods. They are the ones that bestow the gifts onto the people in power who then filter those gifts moderately into the population. Why stars? Because you can actually see them. You look up, there they are. If you see a shooting star, that’s one star going to talk to another. A falling star, well, that star’s been really bad.
As I come here to fulfill my first meme of this blog, I come to read my comments and see that I’ve been tagged for another meme. Praying that they’re one and the same and I can kill two pterodactyls with one javelin, I click the link. Dammit. Different meme. That’s another one for the weekend. Granted I was supposed to do this one this past weekend but I completely forgot to check my blog feed for it. Dur. So to thwart the internet zombies, here it is–
The Book Meme-y Thing, which has been bestowed upon me by none other than The Bookshelf Muse, home of wonderful writing advice.
The Rules
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to your tagger once you’ve posted your 3 sentences.
I figured this would be a neat little way not only to introduce you to exactly what my fantasy (you know, the more I delve into the genre, the further from knowing just what kind of fantasy Diamond Crier actually is) is about but perhaps spark your own creative juices as well.
What I’ve done is I’ve taken a standard English word, could be anything. For example lets use “precious.” So I’ve taken the word “precious” and I want to include it in my novel but I want to make it more “fantasy.” Well, instead of making up completely different words that people would have no idea what the associations are, you create a new word out of the old one that, well, can be unrecognizable and people probably won’t know what you’re talking about when you use it. Eh, pratfalls. Minor things.
Remember how I said I was approached by an agent at the reading I did in San Francisco a couple posts back? Well, I finally got around to sending the woman an email at the beginning of the week (only took me a freakin’ month, oye), just to touch base and let her know what was going on. I informed her that I was nowhere near ready for an agent since my WIPs are in the first draft stage but that I’d be happy to send them to her once they’re ready. Also, after studying the site I realized that I’d be better suited to another agent within that agency (there are only 3 of them) since she works closely with fantasy. But, the agent said they’ll figure it out when the time comes.
And she said that less than a day after I sent the email. Talk about a fast turn around! I was so worried that she wouldn’t remember me but thankfully she did! I told her I’d send her emails every once in a while to let her know about my progress and all of that and she said that was fine. Yay! It’s always nice to know that I have agent interest in my work off of nothing more than a boob story. Hopefully I can live up to her expectations!
No, not another blog chain post. The post title is just relevant. I’ve officially released the site that’s hosting my online serial, Dawn, which can be found by going here–http://dawncreation.wordpress.com.
If you’re still unfamiliar with what a web serial actually is and haven’t visited any of the excellent stories listed on the Serial page in the sidebar, then I think you’re missing out. A web serial is usually an ongoing novel posted on the internet, usually on a blog, for people to read for free. It’s providing your written work to the public directly without any agents or publishers, printers or any middlemen really. They’re more closely centered in niche markets and they’re still relatively small in numbers compared to something like a web comic but with all of the media products surrounding downloadable books and such, it really isn’t much of a surprise that novels are going by the way of blogs. Think of it more in terms of traditional serials found in newspapers and magazines when they were still interested in the literary. Same concept except applied to the internet.
So it’s blog chain time again over at Absolute Write and being the masochist that I am, I’ve signed up yet again. Not that it’s painful to do a blog chain but considering how much I have on my plate, adding anything else threatens to crack it.
Gillian, the food lady that went before me, talked about fasts and fish allergies. I’m still trying to figure out how that relates to the theme of the chain, new beginnings, but I guess it relates back to rebooting which was talked about a few links back. To fast is to deny yourself something for an extended period of time then gorge once you can have it again. You purge (reboot) and gorge (repeat the vicious cycle). At least that’s my view of it, hence children giving up candy and swallowing whole Cadbury Creme Eggs on Easter. It makes sense.
Spring is in and of itself a new beginning. A new yearly beginning and my time of suffering. Right around the time the trees and shrubbery are starting anew, my eyes start to get itchy and the sneezes come in droves. Damn pollen, how reactive you make me. It’s starting earlier this year which sucks big time. Usually I don’t feel much until closer to May. Being the beginning of April, this is a sure fire sign that this year’s fresh start is going to make me suffer like a Red Sox fan with statistics (that would make more sense if I linked to the post but I’ll be reposting it here soon anyway, you’ll get it then).
I’ve finally just finished reading Thud! by Terry Pratchett and I have to say, for my second read fantasy novel, it was pretty damn good. Yeah, I know it’s been a while since my last “What I Read” post but just so you know, I don’t actually take this long to read a book. It’s a matter of getting the time between work, writing and websites to sit down and read a decent chunk of it at a time. If I get a chance to really get going in a book, it’ll take me all of three days to finish it if I’m enjoying it. Granted, at this point, I don’t have to force myself to read books I don’t like so yay for not having any more school to put me through that.
Anyway, on to Thud! In all honesty, please don’t hurt me, when I was first getting told to read books by Terry Pratchett, I thought he was a she. Hey, Terry’s a pretty androgynous name but I tend to make it more feminine as a default. My bad. But the only notion I had going into reading his book was that he’s funny. He’s certainly not the snort your soda type of funny but it’s a dry, British wit that if you don’t get the satire, you’re just not going to get it. I got it and thought some of his lines were absolutely hilarious. Tawneee’s nose going blort when she blew it tickled me in just the right way (but not that way, if you catch my drift).
