In this week's #AccidentalGods#Podcast, author Stephen Markley opens the doors to The Deluge, his ground-breaking, world-changing Climate/MetaCrisis thriller
#PennedPossibilities 304 — How did your MC feel about friendships growing up? How do they feel about them now?
This one is easy. She was betrayed by a boy she thought was her soulmate at age eight. She distrusts friendship full stop.
She's learning how wrong she was now, and seems to be taking the advanced course in the subject with multiple boyfriends and people who intensely value and support her. Hearing someone loves her more than life itself, she of course commits herself to a deadly confrontation to save him, herself, and his attempted murderer.
The male lead is feeding chicken soup he made to the female MC who seems faint. He is trying to get her to rest. She likes his concern. He blows on the Asian-style spoon and she lets him feed her twice like a toddler, before taking his wrist.
I thought I wrote that she guides the spoon to her mouth.
What I actually unconsciously wrote was that she guided the spoon to his mouth
This is from a romance novel. Suddenly the electricity between the perspective couple is doubled, especially when it manages to get him to blush slightly.
So, I decided to listen to the chapter I keep on stalling on, while doing my morning stretches, setting my iPhone to read from #scrivener. I fixed a sentence, then finished the half-written sentence where I last stopped, then kept on writing the romantic soup and dragon magic scene. Sitting crosslegged on my exercise mat, legs falling asleep. 950 words latter I'm #writing about it on Mastodon.
This is turning out to be a book I'm not terribly excited about: The Dog Of The South by Charles Portis. The tone sort of reminds me of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but set in Texas and Mexico and without the hardcore drugs. Parts are funny, but mostly it kind of drags and I'm not sure what the point is. If I wasn't already more than halfway through, I'd probably add it to the DNF pile. #FridayReads#AmReading#Books#Fiction#Bookstodon@bookstodon
Did you know #scrivener lets you search your project for images? Neither did I. Check dropdown of the search (magnifying glass), select Images, and search!
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 03 — Does your work include pictures, maps or other custom graphics? Share your pics.
For my current WiP, I decided I could afford two covers (and actually paid for three). They depict two events from the story:
The very special glare a minor antagonist favors the main character with in a throne room when she subtly insults her.
The cliché embarrassing hot moment when one of the two love interests pushes the heroine/MC up against the wall, smacks arms to either side of her face, and kisses her deeply.
The novel /is/ a romance, amongst other things. Since I do my own titling, I'm including the untitled images in the relevant chapters.
In another novella with alternate covers that had little to do with the text, I did include in one chapter the artfully bloody piece of cover art, untitled of course. Yeah, he (the MC) uses a martial art that favors sharp edges.
For /reasons,/ I am not sharing any of these images. Sorry. However...
For one online fantasy novelette that had the vibe of a Theodore Sturgeon story, I bought a stock art image. It's of a katana amidst cherry blossoms. The MC is a seven year old Japanese girl sucked unwittingly into a fantasy world. Her misunderstanding of the semantics of the magic creates the sword, which she wields in the story. But it's her misunderstanding of the semantics (i.e., kid logic) that also defeats her antagonist... maybe. I used the art for the cover design. I've used crops of the image for emphasis and chapter breaks in this extra-long short story. See images.
(/Update: I learned my image posting service timed out my images. Thanks to this question, I am now repairing the story. I really need to host my own images.../)
I did include a map in a published book, as discussed in the linked Ch5 Nbr 13 reply to this prompt series. You're welcome to click the link (https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/111750589349655437) and favorite both posts. 😇
#PennedPossibilities 303 — Is your SC one to be haunted by adversity, or to use what they've gone through to become stronger?
I was going to answer only stronger, but because it is true, I'll answer haunted. She calls him /The Monster,/ and he savaged her, but from that experience she learned she could fight, and win, and never be chattel again. She refers to The Monster often, comparing her current actions to that paradigm of evil, and sometimes finding herself wanting. She's not what is often called /good./ Those who know her say she has a death wish. Once, when she thought she'd murdered in an act of enraged vengeance, she tried to stab herself at the source of her magic in her guilt. She's since then experienced and reacted to other things. Bad, things. She remembers. When she encounters situations in the current work that remind her of how she became stronger, they haunt her as she fights to make surviving her past worthwhile to those she helps in the present.
#WordWeavers 2405.02 — What are your MC’s living conditions like? Are they better or worse than average?
Wow, this question! A bit of background: I wrote the original novella, then wrote a prequel novel based on the history in the first story, then retconned the novella, worsened the situation and followed it with new events to make it a novel, /then/ wrote the sequel. It's her life story, now.
In this last story, the answer to this question is the running joke. The new work takes place over three days. She starts having been living with a fellow student, an ever-seeking-male-companionship elite who months ago offered her a free roommate situation—so long as the MC slept with her in the same bed (and her new roommate only sleeps well being held). The next day it's the couch after the MC is reunited with a former coworker (bodyguard) whom she introduces to her elite roommate. They hit it off. Noisily. All night long! The next night, not wanting a repeat performance, she connives to spend a (satisfying) night with her new boyfriend in "palatial" digs in the Residency where the main antagonist lives, but is currently out on a military adventure. Having reconciled with a childhood friend, the subsequent night she ends up on his bed, in a Residency guest suite, sleeping with him and a pile of thaumaturgy books they nerded out over. She regrets not having had more fun with him, but he's too sweet and obviously not ready for that. The next day, she's fighting for her life in a hospital.
Her living conditions are way above average, arguably superior.
Previous Living Conditions
Born in a nice house in an obscure village
Raised in a newly built mansion for a newly titled elite (her)
Homeless for months, having run away, living in encampments and wandering the east coast
Big city hostel for over a year
Gangland trainer's nice apartment with separate beds
Boarding house with aspects of a brothel, where she must defend herself
Leased a one room dance studio where she sleeps on a mat between a wall of open windows and a wall of mirrors, having no need of further furniture
A series of high line hotel and mansion rooms owned the Doña she works for
As for the homelessness, she was moving around without money while hiding her identity, and rarely stayed long. The worst was trying to sleep under eaves in the city during storms; she didn't always have a tent. Regardless, it qualifies as below average living conditions for a total of about a year. It did focus her like of asceticism.
It was warm out today, one of the first really warm days we’ve had this summer. I was walking up 14th St NW and noticed a vehicle in the bus lane.
“I think I’ll take the bus the rest of the way’, I thought.
I got into the vehicle and greeted the driver politely. The air conditioning was a great relief. I didn’t see a place to tap my Metro card but maybe the reader was broken.
“What the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] are you doing in my car?” The driver said, rudely.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “I think you’re mistaken. See the red paint underneath us? This is a bus lane, so this must be the bus.”
Am I the only one who regularly fantasizes about this? It’s normal, right?
A new month means a new @InterzoneMag - and I couldn't have hoped for better weather to sit down with what looks to be another cracking issue of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, and more.
If you fancy being on the receiving end yourself*, in DRM-free ePub format, subscriptions are available on the Interzone site!
#PennedPossibilities 302 — What is the one thing your SC desires most in the world?
Caramello, aka Caramel-eyes, né [unpronounceable polysyllabic tropical islander name], is the last son of the Chieftain. He is the last in the succession. He's been "exiled" to the Endless Island (the mainland) to avoid his siblings after his father is murdered. What he desires most is to be forgotten. No scratch that. What he desires the most is that his mother, the Chieftain's second wife, survive what he fears is going on right now...
#WordWeavers 2405.01 — Introduce your setting as if it’s a character in your story.
[/Well, I decided to jump ahead in the WiP and write what might be the start of the next chapter. The title may be named:You Have Mail. Pardon the Dickensian texture; this is a first draft. —RS/]
I never expected a human habitation to feel as protective as my dorm room did. Sure, my lodgepole tent protected me through the blizzardy winters in the Fell Wood, as it did the wolf pack that had adopted me. I provided the tent, though. I repaired it, stored it, and raised it year after year. I maintained the cooking fire for all the wolves and cubs. It was I who was being protective, not it—or so it felt.
My dorm room wanted me to know that for the next few years, at least, it existed solely to protect /me,/ to comfort /me./ Increasingly, it did so as I added memories. Mother Wolf and I used one of the two small beds, the left one, piled with fuzzy brown blankets as needed or clothed with luxurious white cotton sheets that felt cool against cheek or jowl. Since I was tasked with the cleaning instead of the dorm servants, my room smelled of us, faintly of yeast, sweat, and a wolf that occasionally hunted rabbits but favored the cafeteria's pasture-beast stew.
The little red iron stove kept us warm through winter; the room's wood panel walls kept us shaded from the hot summer sun. It lovingly provided a rare enclosure—almost like walking within the orange and white rock walls of the slot canyons of the south woods—creating a remarkable silence in a land of noisy humans and huffing machines. This and its soft radiant cloud-light ceiling made me feel... what? Swaddled? Like being /home,/ as my parents would have used the word back on the farm when I was a child. My spirit books, fashion magazines, and papers cluttered the worn ink-stained blond pine desk. I ran my bare feet over the oval tapestry rug letting the patterns of wands and dryad trees caress my toes. My skin stuck to the cushy tan leather chair as I stood, but I knew that was it hugging me.
Situated to the rear of the building on the first floor, the casement window at the end of the rectangular space opened to the clay roof of a shed. Crisp autumn breezes fluttered the gauzy drapes as I looked out at the barrier forest beyond the stables, lit by the setting sun. The window conveniently allowed Mother Wolf to jump up, as she did right now, and clatter into the room as she pleased. She greeted me with an ever-wet red tongue on my face and backside. (A white wolf opening the front door of the women's dorm, with a key in her mouth, and walking in always frightened at least one student or professor. People called me their Wild Woman, but still never got used to the implications of the name.)
Best of all, as the special guest of Her Highness, nobody dared inspect my room. Everyone knocked, no exceptions. Wolf inside, right? Framed pictures of my boyfriend hung suspended by single powder blue silk ribbons, and they were /very/ inappropriate. Looking at him warmed me deeply, reminding me of being /us,/ together—so I didn't care that my foolish "civilized" human brethren might think. People existed to enjoy themselves, regardless of what nosy people might say. This room supported me as I lived here, trapped in the Townships because circumstance required me to learn to be "more human" as Her Highness was fond of saying. My little supportive enclave encouraged me to be me, and allowed me to dress or not dress as I pleased behind its closed oaken door.
When the House Mother knocked, I simply threw on a dressing gown. I turned the pictures around before answering—to be respectful. It tickled me that she never asked why I always smiled when I opened the door.
A YOUNG WOMAN ON THE THRESHOLD between student and adult, between her early childhood in China and her life in Canada, and even between English and Mandarin, is haunted by memory and her younger self as her mother drifts into illness. B PLUS
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9: The Writing Duds of May Nbr 01 — OMG! What happened to your MC's parents?
Well, after nearly 300K of story, you'd think I'd have noticed a minor plot hole, but noooo. I'll retcon if necessary in later stories what the public knew versus what the MC said in the stories (which would be secret). Background: MC's mother was an international singer and theatre actor; her father is her manager.
Publicly, while on an overseas musical tour, the pair were on a privately chartered day cruise when their small ship got caught in tropical squall (shades of Gilligan's Isle). Wreckage was reported as found, but no bodies.
At their private funeral, the ruler of the nation posthumously named the MC's parents as heroes of the nation. Her mother was a powerful thaumaturge and together they were spies. They'd "died" on a mission that saved uncounted lives.The MC wasn't yet five years old and blames the ruler for their death. How the ruler treats the MC at the funeral (spoilers) cements her in the MC's mind as the main antagonist.
Revealed a decade later, intelligence indicates that the MC's father was captured by a hostile nation and is being kept as a bargaining chip against invasion. That the MC might get the opportunity to rescue him is part of the reason the MC has made a deal with the main antagonist in the most recent novel.
As part of the reveal of the father above, her mother is thought to have received a severe head injury, but used her magic to escape anyway. Her whereabouts are unknown. Not canon until I use it is that the MC's mother can magically put herself elsewhen (future) and elsewhere. This part is substantiated in the Reluctance version of the character in that the civilization has achieved interstellar travel. How you ask? Spoilers. Regardless, elsewhere could be anywhere.
#WordWeavers 2404.30 — Does your MC have any pets? If so, what are they?
/Pets/ is a bad word for Wintereyes. It's the word the very irritating Thaumaturgy Dean uses whenever one of her wolf family makes themself seen on campus, as in, "They're frightening the other students!" She's human, but doesn't understand the term (upbringing). To her they're beasts that humans keep around that are neither food nor work for them, which makes them subject to unpredictable human whim. She "befriends" beasts, but that's a totally different thing...
Wintereyes has little experience beyond the most basic of basics, though she's fairly expert with footwear, having built her own. She really wants to get it right so she can ensure she can fade into the background and not be noticed—but failed big time her first day in the Townships. She's shy. Being shy doesn't mean she doesn't want to communicate; it doesn't help that she fears babbling in this aspect of human language. There's so much to learn! In her drawing class, she's concentrating on fashion though it seems like an advanced language course at the moment!
#WordWeavers 2404.29 — Who's feeling shame in your story? Is it justified?
/It's'a [#brainfog#fibromyalgia day, but I'm gonna write this to get something out. Hoping it's coherent. —RS/]
This question made me think hard for quite awhile until I—like an artist or a photographer deciphering how shadow defines volume and dimension—saw /negative space/ in a story... where something wasn't. Emptiness.
Wintereyes /doesn't/ feel #shame, and I'm realizing this is an #emotion with which I can make a #feminist point in my story. Whilst shame is IMHO used more often to control women than it is men, it is both incidious and /learned./ Shame is a combination of built-in emotions programmed into a person to make a person self-punish for "wrong" behavior even if it's secret; it's related to, but not the same as guilt.
Wintereyes was raised by wolves, but not until she was 7 when her "gift" caused her to seek a second set of parents. Her early childhood will require investigation in another story, but I'm pretty sure her human parents didn't teach her the emotion; it's not that she forgot. Forced to live again amongst humans over a decade later, to become more human, people's behavior baffles her. Late in the story, when she's asked to disrobe by stylist at a modeling shoot, and does without a thought, the stylist observes, "You don't feel shame, do you?" This is where Wintereyes will go off like a firecracker, and it should be very interesting.
The stylist may actually feel ashamed...
The author is [#actuallyautistic and retains copyright (c)2024 R..S.]
Book 30, 2024: Dark Lustre, fifth instalment - Roy Wilkinson
The penultimate volume of this story sees Tommy Quantox dice with death at Berchtesgaden, while The Countess Marie-José de la Barre d’Erquelines Hextet play a gig with Die Leeren Dosen, a four-strong female band that perform instrumental versions of Can songs. #Books#Reading#Fiction#SeaPower#Music@bookstodon
I forgot to post that I was reading The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose. This is the sequel to The Maid that I read previously. I liked this book better than the first one, maybe because I knew what to expect from Molly and the other hotel staff. Another thing I liked about this book was how it switched from Molly’s perspective in present day to her memories of her childhood. It added a lot of background and context that I found necessary for the development of the book’s plot.