#PennedPossibilities 315 — What smells remind your MC of their childhood? CW: Food, gross.
Two stories, two MCs, two very different answers...
Devil-girl:
She was not ever particularly copasetic with her elevation from middle class to atmospheric. When she found herself having mistreated a servant, threatening their livelihood, her autistic construction of empathy as in /I'm living in her shoes and this is fear/ kicked in. She worked hard from that moment on to /be/ with anyone humbly, and the servants kept her secret of visiting in their quarters or at the homes safe. (Actually, not entirely as the servant-mistake was one of her guardian's "lessons," but let's ignore that.) What she came to adore was a peasant bread that represented in her head getting away from all her responsibilities. Buttery, cinnamony, yeasty, with lots of honey and chopped up pumpkin. Passing by an open bakery door will often remind her of simpler times.
Wintereyes:
She doesn't remember a lot before her gift manifested at age 7. The going theory is that it broke something in her head. Farm smells, flowers, even fields of corn, elicit nothing, though she visits her birth parents' land claim regularly when the Blue Feather's pack hunting grounds shift to that part of the Fell Woods. Her mother's cooking in her kitchen, usually fresh venison or rabbit Wintereyes caught, is simply human food. How she survived going off with a wolf pack at that young age is a tale I should pursue at some point. The fact is that she did. Survive. And well. The smells of a fresh kill, laced with steaming iron scent, does make her remember becoming wild and first running free. It also reminds her of the other smells associated with recent death, some quite noisome. There's a thrill there, even if in the beginning she was barely surviving on too rich organ meat her teeth could chew, or when the alpha wasn't kind, meat Mother Wolf chewed for her. That was a special smell she remembers fondly. Her brother—a hunter that the wolves soon tolerated so long as he didn't visit often—taught her to make fire and to cook meat. The half-burned smell of meat dropped into a wood fire still makes her mouth water, even as it dredges up memories of reaching into a fire and burns, and of ashes and charcoaled fat, which ground in her teeth like soft sand. She became a much more skillful campfire cook out of necessity.
Oh, one other smell: Wet wolf (which is identical to wet dog), because while a wolf could keep themself "clean" with their tongue, the result of a human attending a kill, skin caked with ground-in dirt, sweat, and later ash, was more than the sensitive noses of her pack could stand. They often chased her into streams. She splashed them back, of course!
Following my review of issue 1 from earlier in the week, here’s one for The Savage Sword of Conan #2. Conan shows a different side of his personality and the Solomon Kane story gears up for the finale.
The author that brought you Troll Song and Forgotten Legends now offers you the chance to read the third book in the The Wizard's Scion: The Third Wish.
This book is so intriguing and it is on the very top of my TBR to be my next read. Expect a review next week or so 😁 I am totally in love with the cover, especially all these purple tones.
#PennedPossibilities 314 — Has your MC ever felt as though they were reborn in the mental / emotional sense?
In the current story, she experiences a mental breakdown when events crush her worldview completely. [Spoilers, so you'll have to take my word on this.] Her understanding of what was evil, wrong. Her understanding of the trustworthiness of people, wrong. The goals she set to fix the magic that she saw as ruining others' lives... evil.
She's doesn't quite accept the latter. However, she finds it very weird to face the people around her without a deep down feeling that they will someday betray her.
Happy #WebComicDay! Looks like we're sharing process today. Our patrons get a full-featured breakdown of each page, but on this most venerable of occassions, here's a compressed look at one we like a lot—RS159!
Another beautifully written entry into the Singing Hills cycle, but departing from the previous books' structural devices... or does it asks @chloroform_tea
Hooray! My romantic fantasy Thornbound (full of both fae and human perils) is on sale for 99c/99p this week as part of the Return to the Realm sale, along with books by Intisar Khanani, Tansy Rayner Roberts , Rosalie Oaks , Charlotte English & more!
PS: Thornbound is officially Volume 2 in The Harwood Spellbook and Cassandra Harwood's second adventure, but you can absolutely jump into the series with this book. :)
#WordWeavers 2405.12 — Who is the best friend in your story?
The MC is incapable of seeing that it is her.
For most of her story arc, she's suspicious of making friends having been a prizefighter and then working in the mob. She's also somewhat autistic, but trained to deal with people. The problem is that when she's amongst people, working with them, even the baddies, she's the type that gets the job done, teaches those that need teaching how to get the job done, and will always protect her teammates and subordinates, taking responsibility. You don't get in her face, however; certainly only once, anyway. Strangely or not so strangely, those in her orbit see her as a leader and personable. (All she wants is to go home to be alone with her books, but she'd never complain.) She goes along with it when others are friendly with her, not really knowing how to say no and understanding this was what she was trained to do.
To say she's well liked is an understatement. Not many people support you as she does, or will straighten you out and make you fly right when things are bad for you. She saves one marriage by punching the husband in the nose. She's there for others. She'll enjoy a meal with you if that's what you need and listen to you vent. At least one guy has a crush on her. Others fight for her. Some will risk their life for her...
#PennedPossibilities 313 — Is your MC or SC one to confess romantic feelings early on, or to conceal them for long periods of time?
It's hard to know for sure. She has worked in a world were such attactions are a tool to control others, and she's controlled others with them. Having transitioned from being a criminal to operating in a similar capacity on the other side of the law, she ended up tailing a snobbish dandy... who went on, after various provocations, to being someone quite different than his affectations indicated. She thought to pin him in a wrestling hold to get information out of him, but he threw her off and she fought him only to a draw (not easy for anyone to do since she's a former prizefighter). When later that day she got him to drop his façade, she found him actually adorably vulnerable. Not really knowing her own reactions, she obsessively took him from dinner, to dancing, to... um... dessert in one evening.
Well, that's done. First draft of the hard chapter, the one I kept on sticking on for these last few months. Complete! 5,500 words. Wintereyes even surprise kissed him! It is a romance after all... The rest of the novella ought be much easier.
A little late to the party, but my review of Titan Comics’ The Savage Sword of Conan #1 just went up at Grimdark Magazine. The new black-and-white Conan magazine is off to a good start!
Zuletzt beendet: "Last of the Talons" von @sophiekimwrites - #BeautyandtheBeast meets Joe Black in #Fantasy#Asia. Hat etwas gedauert bis ich es nicht mehr zugunsten anderer Formate (eBook, Print) beiseite gelegt sondern fertig hören wollte. Nach etwa der Hälfte, um genau zu sein. 3/5 Sternen 🌟🌟🌟 - okay, kann man lesen, die zweite Hälfte ist 4/5. #Bookstodon#Fantasyromane#Rezension@bookstodon@buchstodon
"Révélation les ailes du destin" et "Celestia l'enfant des limbes" vous plongent dans des univers fantastiques et SF où l'occultisme, l'acceptation de soi, le courage et l’amour familial sont au cœur de l'intrigue.
A group of Sitters propose an alliance with the Black Tower for mutual defense against the Forsaken and the armies of the Dark. When you first read about this alliance, what did you think the implications would be?