#PennedPossibilities 326 — Do any of your characters have a favorite place that they've ever visited?
Characters in both "Bayou Fire" and "Pompeii Fire," as well as my current #wip, are travel writers. I've never really considered whether they have a favorite place that they've visited, if I'm honest ... but I suspect sentimental attachments to particular spots all the same. #nospoilers
Freya loves the glass coral reefs that line the coast of the Enta province. They're full of nearly invisible, shiny ghost fish that are equally fascinated by her.
Cedric adores the caves in the Enta celest forest. He loves the echo of his voice in there because it sounds like his twin brother.
Sabre is very fond of the secret spot on the roof of Solitra palace, which he discovered with his cousin, especially at night.
#PennedPossibilities 326 — Do any of your characters have a favorite place that they've ever visited?
Since I shared the cover of Connor's story yesterday, I'll pivot to him. (I'm sure you're all tired of Sun, anyway.)
Yes, Connor loves the area around Wilmington, NC, where he grew up. The bayous and swamps, the rivers and forests, they are what he considers home. And he loves returning to them.
#pennedpossibilities 326 — Do any of your characters have a favorite place that they've ever visited?
Constantinople will remain a magical city for both Max and Katja. It's bigger and richer than anything they've ever seen.
Doesn't mean they'll ever go back, though 😜
#PennedPossibilities 326 — Do any of your characters have a favorite place that they've ever visited?
Yes, they all have places they like more, or a special place they wish they could return to. It is a perfect opportunity to show the character when they are content, happy and calm. The reader, I think, need to see the characters when they are at their best too. Not only jump from one action scene to another, you need to stop and smell the roses too.
#PennedPossibilities 326 — Do any of your characters have a favorite place that they've ever visited?
I'm sure they all have somewhere, but I've never asked.
For the devil-girl, it's doubtlessly any library she's visited. She'd sleep in the stacks were she allowed. It could also be Silver's Gym where she trained for and became a champion mixed magical martial arts prizefighter—and achieved her first K.O. Brings back fond memories. Despite the athletic funk and the muscle nerds overflowing with testosterone and attitude.
Wintereyes loves her Fell Woods and running with the wolves, However, this happened in the last chapter and it feels like her recalling a favorite place?
Recessed radiance light lit [a ceiling with] a painted dusk sky full of fluffy clouds lit by a recently set sun. The cloud shadows and the orange, pink, and purples felt as if the painter had somehow captured an instant of time and transported it above me.
I'd stopped so abruptly, Caramello had to dodge, nudging my left shoulder. I caught him reflexively, grabbing his shirt to keep my balance, saying, "I've lain in the meadows at Streams End, staring up at skies like this. I like."
#PennedPossibilities 325 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life and change its course of events, which day would you choose?
[Adds to my response for the SC in 324. —R.S.]
Let's see. Relive a day and change it? Hmmm.
The day I told my parents that I wanted to haul furniture and machinery as a living? Basically, become a mover? The day they reacted badly, grounded me, starting nagging me about school, wouldn't let me fly anything for my friends that weighed more than a few books—or airtaxi anyone—started telling me I was weak in the head? The day I ruined my childhood?
Yeah, I'd keep my enthusiasms and dreams to myself, could I rewrite history.
Or maybe it would be that day that I threw a brick through the Moving Guild's window. Wouldn't let any company hire a woman. Okay, I turned over all the parked moving vans. For the record, only one rolled down a hill. Hmmm...
#PennedPossibilities 324 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life without changing anything that happened, which day would you choose? Tootfic: Reframing the Experience
[When my SC says armor, it's really a weightless magical exoskeleton that melds with her body. It looks like blackened bones, because it is. —R.S.]
Oh, there's plenty of days I'd relive unchanged. Like the day I fledged, when I first flew on my own. Or the day learned the thrill of hauling things through the sky. Both good events in a rather dull and awful childhood that turned to cinders when my parents disapproved of the way I wanted to live my life. Said I aimed for the dirt not the sky. Maybe they weren't so dumb—I ended up badly, flying messages for a crime boss over a dozen years. But, then, there was that day last week...
I've told you a few times how I ended up with the armor and a new job training as a pretorian, you know, having faced down the greatest thaumaturge who ever lived, having nearly killed her. Impressed her.
I thought.
Well, my drill instructor was training me that dawn. I wore the armor. The thaumaturge dove at me, full speed. She's a monster flier, taller, more massive, immortal. I jumped into the sky. Fled.
She followed.
Though the armor let me fly like a sparrow, change direction in a heartbeat, and take a thumping only slightly changing my course, it had been her armor once. She kept appearing before me, striking at my face or heart, sending me into spins toward the ground, stalling me out, almost panicking me into flying into trees or buildings. For all her mass and the inertia that implies, I barely avoided her, half the time with her cackling at my barrel rolls or dives that sent down feathers flying. She had muscle; I tired despite the armor until I thought my heart would burst from my chest, at which point a flyby pitched me into the ground.
I skid across the running track on my belly right up to my instructor. I don't know how I didn't break a wing or my neck. Ok, I do: The Armor.
She landed beside me with a loud thump. She wasn't even winded! She told him, "She lacks stamina. Train her harder."
She leaned down until her face was in my face. I smelled maple syrup on her breath. She said, "You need to use the magic in the armor. There's a class at first bell in the Ivory building, room B7. Shower and be there ON TIME."
I have wings.
I don't do magic.
I showered though, once my legs stopped shaking. I slunk into the class still half-frightened out of my wits. My new friend was there, the curse breaker, a former prizefighter, the one I'd fought beside against Her, that ended up with me getting the armor. It was some sort of advanced special Ed class for mages. I suddenly felt totally inadequate and I cried. Me. At the age of 27, I cried telling her my story, pointing to my purpling bruises, complaining that had She gotten in a good strike She would have caved in my rib cage.
My friend was having none of it. She said, "You're a day angel who just went ten minutes fighting Her. Somehow, you're still alive."
I hadn't thought about it that way. I later learned the word, "Reframing."
The instructor came in with a truckload of tomes and grimoires. She had prepared him for me. He gave me a magic primer. I knew it was a primer because it had PICTURES of youngsters playing. Despite the stares of the other students, I read the book.
Half hour later, I got the armor to glow dull red, like iron out of a forge. Truly. Awesome. Didn't know what it did except look intimidating, but still...
Awesome.
I felt my heart grow large in my chest, and it struck me. Someone (okay, the ruler of the nation) wanted me for who I was and who I could become, and because I was capable. She wanted me to aim for the sky. My new friend supported me and pushed me forward. I liked this, who I was, what I was finding I could be, could become.
And.
Oddly.
I realized, for what it was worth, my parents would approve. (And flap them if they didn't!)
#pennedpossibilities 324 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life without changing anything that happened, which day would you choose?
Max: Uhm. Not sure I've had such a day yet. Well, maybe the day Katja lost her patience with me at my mother's house.
That day was... noteworthy. smirks
#PennedPossibilities#Writing 324 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life without changing anything that happened, which day would you choose?
The day we got back from Aokigahara. We had rescued Kao. Which probably wouldn't have happened without my help. So I felt proud of myself. We stopped at a Love Hotel because Shiro wanted to do something vanilla. As if that woman could do anything vanilla. But I'm not going to spoil the story. If you want to find out what those two did you will have to watch, I mean read it yourself.
#pennedpossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
I believe it was Marion Zimmer Bradley who said something like writing is 10% talent and 90% practice (or 20% and 80%?).
Anyway, I remembered that. And though I felt I sucked when I started, I kept on writing for fun, and now people who have never met me give my stories 4-5 stars.
#PennedPossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
Write what you enjoy.
I've followed that for all my writing life. The few times I tried to write for the market, it didn't work - I either didn't finish the book or it twisted away from the idea.
I do try to hit both - and the (relative) success of my Wolf Shifter series shows that I can make it happen, to a degree. (My Shifters are not spicy and don't have Alphas...)
#PennedPossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
An Australian author, Lucy Sussex, told us at Clarion West 1998 to be shameless in promoting ourselves. Being a shy person, networking and promotion has been a heavy lift, but I'm working on it and I know it's going to help. Mastodon: ☑️
About a month ago I kind of disappeared from this place. Some personal and family problems threw me out of the writing headspace and keep me busy. Patience is required of which I don't have much. Nothing dangerous though, don't worry. I'm slowly getting back into the writing, at least with microfic.
I think I'll be back in June with a different story, more gritty, fitting my mood. 😉
Eventually I'll find the energy to interact here again.
#pennedpossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
Don't switch POV in a scene.
Cocky young me thought, pffff, I can do that, who cares!
It took me weeks later on to fix the issue after I realized what that does to the reader.
#PennedPossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
I probably should have learned about writing blurbs a lot earlier. Also should have started building a good newsletter list years ago...
But I cannot change the past.
I can only change what I do now, and I'm working to make those parts of my author business better.
#PennedPossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
Advice: Don't only write novels. Write lots of shorter pieces.
When I started I saw that you could only make a living if you sold novels, so I wrote novels. That completely discounted the fabulous practice you get completing lots of smaller stories. Completing a novel takes lots of time and there's a mounting anxiety that in the end the plot will fail or no publisher will be interested. Yeah, true with short fiction, but the investment is far lower (or should be if you're doing it right). There used to be lots of magazines you could sell short fiction to... for pennies a word, but it was something, and it offered a chance to build a brand name and a following. Such notoriety could help you sell novels, too.
#PennedPossibilities#Writing 321 — Did your SC once admire their parents? Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?
No, no, and no.
The narrative characters in two out of three of my books do at the start. SC nope. Their feelings range from hatred to disdain. Family of choice is a big theme in my books. The family we pick because the ones we come from are less than ideal.
#PennedPossibilities 321 — Did your SC once admire their parents? Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?
Laisal admired her parents - patient, caring, strong members of their community. She also admired the Priests and was very happy when she was allowed to become one - hoping to help the entire nation.
Today, she knows that the glowing image of the Priests was nothing but a lie, based on exploiting children.
Did your SC once admire their parents?
(Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?)
Darlene did admire her parents, especially her Father. He was the inly man who could provide the townsmen with all the needed necessities for their life, and never took advantage of that.
But this changed at once right after… (way too many spoilers here) …and it never changed back to how it was before.
#PennedPossibilities 321 — Did your SC once admire their parents? Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?
Caramello admired his mother. He felt loved growing up despite a difficult situation with hostile step siblings and a status as the youngest child of the chieftain that kept children his age away. The chieftain took her as a second wife because he needed help ruling Crab Island; his first wife, though she gave him many children, had him on disaster patrol keeping her from ruining things. The business marriage required a child, Caramello. His mother did everything to protect him while she worked, saw he had a good life and a real childhood, ensured trades folk trained him in fishing and sailing (he admired them, too), and the mainland traders schooled him in letters and numbers. She saw him safely away on the mainland when it looked like a succession bloodbath might start between his siblings. Today, he misses her a lot, and fears the next letter he might receive via ship.