writing – Page 15

Happy Christmas, and CAT AND MOUSE

IMG_20151225_163835 Christmas Greetings from my house to yours!

If you’d like a bit of a different seasonal read, give Cat and Mouse a try. A fair chunk of it takes place in winter – there`s lots of snow to be had, and even [teeny tiny spoiler] a Winter Solstice Feast!

Here`s an excerpt from the scene when it first starts snowing:

By the time they were finished supper, the snow was already three inches deep, and the wind was picking up. Cat could hear the snowflakes hissing as they hit the inside of the chimney pipe.

“Ooh, cosy,” she said with a comfortable little shiver. “Nothing like a good warm fire on a cold evening! Is there going to be lots of snow, do you think?”

“Probably,” Guy said, “it’s usual this time of year. Only four more weeks to Solstice. There’s been years where I barely made it through the snow to get to the Solstice Feast.”

“Oh, yeah, the Feast! Is that like the Equinox Feast that we had in town in September?”

Guy laughed. “No, not quite–it’s about ten times as big. The hall is usually filled to overflowing. The Solstice Feasts are the biggest ones of the year; all of Ruph and the surrounding areas comes decked out in finery. Which reminds me, I need to look out my feast clothing; the mice had better not have got into it.”

“Feast clothing? You mean everyone dresses up? But,” Cat’s eyes were wide, “I don’t have anything to wear!” Then she laughed. “Listen to me! I don’t have anything to wear,” she repeated in a high-pitched, affected voice, wringing her hands theatrically and fluttering her eyelashes. “Oh deary me, whatever shall I do?”

Guy grinned. “I’m sure we can find something,” he said.

[…]

A sudden wind blast rattled the outside of the cottage, and howled around the corners.

“Whoa!” said Cat, “that was a big one! I’ve never actually heard wind whistling around a house before, I only read about it, but this one sure does whistle. What’s it looking like out there?” She went to peer out through the window. “I can’t even see anything out there, it’s blowing so much!” She stepped over to the cottage door, unlatched the hook, and pulled open the door a few inches. “Oy!” she called out, having to suddenly lean hard against the door as snow blew in through the crack. “That’s a humdinger of a storm, and it wants to come in!” The snow was whirling hard past the door, Cat could barely make out the trees on the other side of the clearing. Then Guy was behind her, helping her push the door shut, and latched it again. Cat brushed at the snow on the floor with her foot. “Is that an extra-bad storm, or is this normal?”

Not to give anything away, but aside from getting their fair share of snow, they sure know how to party in Ruph. Next to having a celebration myself, I love nothing so much as writing one for my characters. So if you haven’t read Cat and Mouse yet, go check it out!

And now I’m going back to munching goodies and drinking Glühwein (mulled wine), and I might just watch one of the movies I got for presents (Cinderella and Inside Out. Yup, kids’ movies. Your point is … ?).

Hope you have or had a lovely holiday season yourself, whatever festivity you celebrate! And if you don’t celebrate, poor you – I mean, umm, hope you had a great Bah Humbug Day, just the way you like it.

Life, the Universe, Christmas and Cat and Mouse. See you in the New Year!

News from the Writing Trenches, December Edition

IMG_20151210_194352 So, you know how back in September, I said that I was hoping to get Checkmate published by at least Christmas? Uh, yeah. Not gonna happen. I’m sorry…

I don’t actually know what happened there. Where did October go? I mean, I must have done something during that month – other than cook Thanksgiving turkey, and wrap up the last bit of garden, and throw a book birthday party for Seventh Son, and stuff like that. It feels like I’ve been busy non-stop…

And then, of course, after that, NaNoWriMo hit with a vengeance, and I got off on a completely different track. Instead of hanging out with Cat and Guy and Bibby in Ruph, I was off in an as-of-yet-unnamed world, spending time with Lyulf and Kalyana (at least that’s what she’s called right now – that might change, still) and Little Nameless (he won’t talk, so they can’t find out his name) and Old Nameless (who also refuses to give his name), all in pursuit of the mysterious silver bracelet that glows, sometimes. Which was all great fun, but didn’t really help Checkmate along any.

IMG_20151210_194149 So, I think I’m now at the point where I can slowly start breathing again, which does bode well for the progress of Checkmate and other writing projects. However, first I have to excavate my household from its NaNo-induced state of dire neglect, and play catch-up on the Christmas-preparations front. Not one cookie has been baked yet this season, barely any presents purchased (never mind hand-made), and as for Christmas cards – what Christmas cards? Ah well, I have two more weeks to do all that. TWO MORE WEEKS? Yikes, that’s not much time at all!

So you’ll excuse me if I sign off now.
Life, the Universe, and, umm, I dunno – where’s my to-do list? [rushes off frantically to check the state of the baking supplies in the cupboard…]

Cat Taffy and Other Randomness

IMG_20151201_121726 Johnny melted on the old couch in front of the fire, and pulled himself out into a long string of kittycat taffy (honestly, he’s not dead, just stretched out on his back). What is it with cats and heat? Both of ours will curl up in the warmest spot they can find (or stretch out in it, as it were), and as they don’t really like each other very much, there’s frequently a bit of “Nya nya, I got the spot by the fire first!” going on. I tell them to cut out the bickering, but they don’t listen to me.

IMG_20151201_134831 Steve has been feeling a bit neglected lately, what with me having my head in NaNoWriMo and all. And, oh, yeah, I won! Meaning I got my 50,000 words written. The story isn’t quite finished yet, but it won’t take a whole lot more. Anyway, so here’s Steve guarding my new dictionaries. The Canadian Oxford one is a humdinger of a tome – the nitpicker’s self-defense weapon: “You want to disagree with me about the spelling of ‘colour’? Well, take that, you ignorant!” [Whap, bang…]

And to wrap up today’s round-up of randomness, here’s the lovely NaNoWriMo poster I won at the kick-off meeting we had back at the end of October. IMG_20151023_092957 (1) Do you know that it’s really hard to write “wrap-up randomness” without either dropping the w from “wrap” or adding a spare one on “random”? I had that problem a lot with my NaNo novel. The phrase “the arm ring on his wrist” occurs in it a lot (far too often, in fact – I’ll have to take the machete to it when it comes to editing), and almost every time, I ended up typing “the arm wring”.

Enough drivelling for today (and that’s “drivelling” with two l’s, not one, thank you very much. I’ve got ten pounds worth of dictionaries to back up that point).

Life, the Universe, Cat Taffy and Other Randomness. Tell Steve to stop glaring at me.

You Owe It To The Story, Or: A NaNoWriMo About-Face

I did a complete about-face yesterday. You know how I was going to write Star Bright, the fourth book in the Septimus Series, for NaNoWriMo this year? Yeah, well, I don’t think I will.

To date, the story stands at about 12,000 words – that’s from Camp NaNoWriMo this spring, and about 3.5k words earlier this week. But I found that the going got really tough. NaNo lore has it that Week 2 is the worst week of NaNo, but I haven’t found that. The last few years I’ve found the first week the hardest. It’s like walking through molasses, like chewing on that tough piece of pizza crust that really doesn’t taste good any more – you get the idea. I just wasn’t enjoying it.

So there I was yesterday, staring at the 300 words I’d written that day, and really not wanting to carry on with it. That’s right, I didn’t want to – it felt like a chore. And that’s silly. NaNoWriMo a chore? That’s completely against the rules. Actually, this is NaNo – forget rules. It’s against the spirit of the thing.

And there was another thing. My good friend E. L. Bates just published a blog post on why she’s not doing NaNo this year, and there was one sentence in there that pinpointed exactly the issue I was having. She said that, among other things, we need to “be[] responsible to the story itself by not rushing it”.

And that’s exactly what is the case with Star Bright for me right now. I was feeling rushed, pressured to produce word count – and I was failing the story in that. I care about that story. This needs to turn out, it needs to be a good story. This is about Cat, and Guy, and the kids, and a couple of whole new characters called Jamie and Daarshan whom I’m becoming quite fond of, and if I rush their story, I’ll be doing them a disfavour.

So I’m not going to do word sprints and insert random instances of the word “piano” in the text (which was one of the fun games we played at a recent NaNo event), because there are no pianos in Ruph. I need to write Star Bright properly, take my time over it, without letting the spectre of a NaNo fail scare me into filling the page with drivel.

But I still want to do NaNo. I still want to participate in the madness of cranking out words, of commiserating with my fellow Wrimos on the difficulty of finding the next thing to write, of watching each others’ wordcounts rise (there’s nothing so thrilling as watching the progress of the little blue bar below your profile picture on the NaNo site – and when it suddenly turns purple, because you’ve passed the 50k mark, WHOOT!! There’s nothing like it!) and cheering each others’ heroic efforts.

IMG_20151106_120153 — Steve approves (that’s his approving face).

So you know what I did? I started from scratch. I opened up a new Scrivener file, named it “Nano ’15”, and started typing at random.

“The autumn mist hung thickly in the meadows by the river.”

That’s the beginning sentence. And off I went, producing more words in the space of an hour than I had in four or five before. I have no idea where this story is going – at the moment, it’s got no title, no plot, a whole bunch of mist in the river meadows, a protagonist (whose name I can’t even remember just now – the file’s not open), and a mysterious silver bracelet with interesting decorations on it.

I have no idea if I’ll finish NaNoWriMo with it this year – I’m already five days behind with my word count. But you know what? I’m excited about this story. I don’t know what’s going to happen, so I have to keep writing to find out. It might, in fact, be complete drivel. It might have a piano in it somewhere, although I doubt it. It might never see the light of day in a published version. But for now, I’m going to enjoy myself writing it. And I’m going to leave Star Bright for a time when I can give it the attention it deserves – because I owe it to the story.

Life, the Universe, and a NaNoWriMo About-Face. Now what exactly is it about that silver bracelet?

Book Birthday Party 4, the Wrap-up

Aaaand the party is over. It’s time to wave goodbye to the guests, drink up the dregs of the punch (cheers!), put the leftover chip dip in the fridge, collect the streamers, and sweep up the confetti. It was a great Book Birthday Party – one more time, Happy Birthday, Seventh Son!

I did promise to reveal the winner of our big draw today, didn’t I? Never let it be said I don’t make good on my promises. So, without further ado, here is the lucky person who won a free print copy of Seventh Son (DRRRRUMMMMM RRRRRROLLLLLL……):

It’s CANDY C.!!!

Congratulations, Candy! Your book will hit the Trusty Post Office ASAP.

And thank you so much to everyone else who entered the Rafflecopter Contest. It was fun – I’d never done one of those before, but now that I figured out how easy it is, we might have a draw more often. Parties are always good, no?

So, once we get over our junk food hangover, it’s time to get back to daily life. But actually, I’m winding up for the next big effort – NaNoWriMo is just around the corner! In a sense, that’s actually Seventh Son‘s real birthday: it was November 1st, 2011, that I first went into labour with – uh, sorry – started typing the first lines of the story.

I wonder how far we’ll get with Seventh Son‘s little brother, this year? Well, not little brother – Jamie is more like another kid, not a brother. He sort of just drops in on the family in Ruph, quite unexpectedly (for himself and them), after he’s had a few drinks (and then a few more), swallows the red pill his friend gives him, and then wishes on the star in the strange blue stone…

Got your attention? Good. You’ll find out all about Jamie… eventually, once I know what’s happening in his life myself.

That’s Life, the Universe, and A Book Birthday Party All Finished. Thanks for coming!

Book Birthday Round 3, or: Adrenaline

Slowly, the adrenaline is ebbing out of my body. I’ve just come back from the local high school, where I gave a pep talk to the Creative Writing class on NaNoWriMo – which, of course, is coming up in just ten days. The youngest Offspring happens to be a student in that class, and I know the teacher because she used to be the elementary school librarian before moving to the high school; I helped out running Scholastic Book Fairs a time or two (being a book addict, that’s like peddling dope to kids, trying to get them hooked – muahahahah!). I’d been telling her about my books – Happy Birthday, Seventh Son! – and offered to talk to the class about self-publishing, but as it turns out, she’d just had an author in, doing that very thing. However, she was interested in getting the kids into NaNoWriMo. So off I went, armed with a copy each of Seventh Son and Cat and Mouse to show them what can come out of participating in NaNoWriMo, and I gave them that talk.

IMG_20151021_103859 — Steve on an adrenaline rush [Bzzzzzt!]. It made him stand on his head. On my book, no less.

My nerves are still jangling. They’re slowly settling down, but periodically I get a little jolt again – you know, like those cartoon characters being zapped by a live wire. [Bzzzzzzt! I sounded like a fool, didn’t I?] I don’t mind public speaking, not even in front of a class of high school students, if I know what I’m talking about [Bzzzzzt! I took far too long!], but it creates a massive adrenaline rush. [Bzzzzzt! I talked way too much about myself, and not nearly enough about NaNo!] And then my nerves have to settle down again afterwards. If it was suppertime, I’d just have a nice glass of wine [Bzzzzt! What’d I say that for?], that would do the trick, but seeing as it’s only 10:30 in the morning, an also-very-nice cup of tea will have to do (rooibos, not mintbrew, in this case). [Bzzzzt!]

Well, I hope I put the NaNo bug in some of the kids’ ears. If one or two of them go to the NaNo page to sign up, and it maybe gets a young novelist started on their path [Bzzzzzt! I never told them about last year’s grad who’d mentioned winning NaNo twice!], it’ll have been well worth the adrenaline zaps. Just think, how fitting that it took place during Seventh Son‘s birthday week!

And now my nerves are calming down, the zaps are getting fewer and farther apart [bzzt!], and it’s time to get on with the rest of my day. Incidentally, speaking of said Seventh Son‘s birthday week, you can still get the ebook on sale and enter the draw for a hardcopy. Go do that thing!

Life, the Universe, and [bzzt!] Adrenaline Zaps. Happy Birthday, Seventh Son!

Mintbrew, or: Book Birthday Bash, Round 2

Just thought I’d share a couple of pictures from yesterday’s Book Birthday Party. Apart from eating and drinking, we mostly spent it on the couch, reading – I mean, how else do you celebrate a book birthday?

Of course, the drink of choice was mintbrew, out of hand-thrown pottery mugs. What’s mintbrew, you ask? Here:

The beginning of Chapter 10:

‘When Cat came back out of the bathroom half an hour later, trying to untangle her hair with her fingers, the kitchen smelled deliciously of hot soup and something tangy and clean that got up into Cat’s nose in a rather pleasant way.

“Would you like a cup of mintbrew?” asked Ouska, gesturing at a round-bellied teapot sitting on the deal table.

“Mintbrew? Like tea, you mean? I’d love some!” Now Cat knew what that lovely sinus-clearing smell was.’

And here’s another bit from later in the book:

From Chapter 17:

‘The kettle in the fire was starting to make hissing and bubbling noises, and steam was rising from its spout. Guy took the poker and swung the fireplace crane outward with the hook on the end of the tool. One of his squat brown teapots was waiting on the hearth. He threw in a handful of dry crumbly green leaves from a round pottery jar and filled it up with boiling water. Sharp, fragrantly minty steam rose into the air. Cat sniffed.

“Hmm, that smells good.”

Bibby got a mug of milk from the pitcher on the shelf, and the two adults enjoyed their tea. (Mintbrew, Cat mentally corrected herself. Mintbrew, and hedge pig, and—and marriage chain. And wisewoman. She was beginning to speak the language of this place.)’

If you’re wondering what the deal is with a marriage chain or a wisewoman, you’ll just have to read the book. And you can do so all week by getting the ebook on discount – links to vendors are here – or, even better, entering the draw for a print copy! All you have to do for that is follow my blog and let me know about it, so if you subscribed a long time ago, that still qualifies.

I’d share a piece of cake with you, but there isn’t much left. It was buttercream with strawberry filling, I’m afraid – not much of a chance of that staying around long. And the book blew out the candle – honest, it did! I waved it at the candle and that blew out the flame. My family says I’m weird.

Life, the Universe, and a Book Birthday Bash. Would you care for another cup of mintbrew?

September News From the Writing Trenches

Just thought I’d update you on what’s going on on the writing front.

For one, Steve & I are in the process of moving house – or rather, office: we’re still in the same house, just two floors down. My Man and I decided that since we both work from home, it’s a little silly to communicate via Googletalk in the course of the day and hardly actually speak to each other, so we’re trying office-sharing. Not sure yet how well it’ll work – I might feel an urgent need for a door to close once in a while (a la “A Room of One’s Own”), especially while cooking up plots and trying to get them down in writing. However, for the time being, it seems to be functional. Here’s Steve with my temporary setup. (Might I draw your attention to my elegant monitor stand? It’s got class. And yes, it would still work, if it were hooked up to a TV. Retro hasn’t got anything on me.)

And speaking of cooking up plots, you know how I’ve been promising you a third Septimus book for a while now? Yes, that’s still coming. It’s in the works as we speak. In case you hadn’t heard, the title is Checkmate, and it prominently features a chess game – a rather special one, at that. Not to give you any spoilers, but this ain’t your ordinary ‘move-little-people-around-a-checkerboard’ type thing. Oh, sure, that too, but just what happens when those little people are moved…

Now, the thing is that I don’t actually play chess – I barely know how the pieces move. So I turned to the aforesaid Man, and he helped design some chess moves for me that would work. Here’s his game design and the little chess board I used to recreate it, so I could get it all straight in my head to work it into the story:

And now I’m in the process of picking on the little nitty-gritty details and finalizing things – you know, spelling, punctuation, that sort of thing. I’m not going to give you an actual date for when Checkmate is going to make its appearance, because I need more stress like I need a hole in the head. But I do hope to get this book out before Christmas, at least.

Until further notice, that was Life, the Universe, and News From the Writing Trenches. Look out for Checkmate soon!

Guest Post: Baby Groot Interviews A.M. Offenwanger

I did a guest post! Baby Groot, who is Kate M. Colby’s writing mascot, interviewed me. Honest, he did! Ask Steve, he was there.

Medieval Marriage, or, I Thought I Just Made That Up

The things you find out…

I was watching a really cool BBC documentary yesterday called Medieval Lives: Birth, Marriage, Death. Specifically, this one was episode 2, “A Good Marriage” (at the moment you can watch it here, although it might not stay up forever. Canadians can also stream it off Knowledge Network, which is what I did). And I learned something really interesting: up until the 12th Century in Europe, all it took to get married was for two people to make a commitment to each other. That’s right, you just said to each other: “I take you as my husband” and “I take you as my wife”, and bingo, you were married. It could be anywhere – a pub, a hedgerow, a cottage…

And I was sitting there, watching this, and started to sputter: “That, that, that – I made that up for Seventh Son!! That’s my idea! And it was actually real!!” The marriage customs of Ruph, the place where Cat and Guy live, are exactly that: they say “I marry you,” and that’s it, they’re hitched. But I just made that up – and now it turns out it was exactly like that in medieval Europe! I had no idea. It’s kind of cool when you find that your fiction inadvertently copies reality.

So, yes, according to that documentary, the meaning of marriage was two people committing to each other. They didn’t even need witnesses, although if you had some, that helped if the marriage was ever contested (by your spouse who wanted to get out, or by anyone else, say, your parents because they wanted to hitch you to someone with more money). If you had witnesses, your friends John, Joan, Robert and Roberta could confirm that the Thursday after Whitsun, you (Joseph) and your sweetheart Margaret had pledged your troth at the Blue Hare in front of all of them (after you’d quaffed about five pints of ale each, Margaret’s eyes had sparkled exceptionally bright, so you figured it might be a good idea to officially tie the knot. Fortunately, John and Joan had only had about two pints each, so they have a clearer memory of the event than you do). And that was entirely legal.

It was only from the 12th century onwards that the church figured it should put a bit more of a control on this marrying gig, so they could keep tabs on folks a little better. However, it really was just an extension of the old custom, with the priest serving as the witness and delivering God’s blessing on the union. Legally, it was still the same thing; the priest didn’t have any actual powers – the marriage was in the vows, not in the priest’s role or a legal document. (Apparently, also, the marriage – the spoken “I take thee…” commitment – took place outside the church, in the porch, so the couple was already married by the time they crossed the threshold into the church for the blessing service).

So then I got to thinking: it’s almost like we’ve come full circle again in this day and age. From where I sit, it looks like that in the Western world, a large proportion of marriage-like relationships take place on an informal basis – two people make a commitment to each other, they move in together, and they’re a couple. In the most telling phrase, they’re in a common law marriage. All it takes is a commitment.

The one great, big, ginormous difference between medieval marriage customs and ours today, though, is not the way marriages are contracted – formally or informally, common law or regulatory law. It’s the fact that today, marriages can be un-contracted. If the common law marriage doesn’t work out, you just move your stuff out of your girlfriend’s house; if the formal law one goes sour, you go to divorce court, and (at least in Canada) after a year you can start all over again with someone else. That, in the Middle Ages, was very much not happening. A marriage was a marriage, whether contracted in a hedgerow with just the sparrows and the odd bunny rabbit as witnesses, or in Westminster Abbey with the Archbishop of Canterbury presiding. And they took that “til death do us part” thing deadly serious. The only way you could ever get out of a marriage while your spouse was alive was to establish that it hadn’t actually taken place – get it annulled, in other words. Didn’t matter if your wife turned out to be a vicious shrew or your husband a jerk who knocked you about; if you’d slept together (proof positive: children), you were stuck with them for good.

I have to say, I prefer our way of doing things today. Divorce sucks, but at least it means you’re not permanently trapped in a relationship you contracted in the heat of the moment (see “five pints of ale”, above). Could you imagine if you were bound for life to your first boyfriend, the one you thought you couldn’t live without and swore eternal faithfulness to back in grade 10? Urgh, yeah. Mind you, “for life” in the Middle Ages was a considerably shorter time period than it is today. But still.

Incidentally, I hadn’t considered it before, but I do think that in spite of their medieval marriage style, the people of Ruph do have divorce as a last-resort option. It hasn’t come up yet in my stories, but it might, some day. I wouldn’t want anyone to be stuck in a horrible relationship, you know? But I’m sure they’ll think long and hard about it before they call it quits. People are like that in Ruph.

Life, the Universe, and Marriage. The things you find out…