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Sunday, November 20, 2016

Thanksgiving Break

Well. It's Thanksgiving! And with my regular day job giving me an entire week off, this is a great time for writing! Yay! It would be great for visiting with family too of course, but they are not close by.

I have been working on a winter anthology submission that is past deadline already. But work comes first. And my submission is having some issues as well. It's not flowing as easily as other stories have. I have all sorts of things going on, maybe too many things. But each time I work on it I come across and fix another plot/world issue. So there is progress, and it is good progress, but it is slow going. This winter story features magic of a highly unusual nature, even more unusual than usual!

One problem I ran into is that I changed some of the underlying world basics involved in the story, something that I don't like to do, but I had some good ideas that needed a bit of tweaking to be even better.

I feel too another issue I have is I still need to work on showing not saying. One key thing for this story is that one of the characters feels both happy and sad that his mother died.  How do I show that and not say it?  Here is one piece of the tale that I came up with on that angle:

Far to the southwest, August’s whole body jerked taut at a sudden, overwhelming ringing noise. He fell to the floor, twitching, the ancient document in his hands crumbling and tearing into pieces as his hands clenched with uncontrollable seizures. Tears welled in his eyes and his heart shattered into a million shards as the ringing sound grew louder and louder before passing through him and away. As the sound faded, August’s body went limp, his every muscle exhausted from the strain.



“No,” he whimpered softly, “No no no,” and then a final, almost unheard, “Yes.”

Another thing I am working on tonight is family dynamics. Between the sisters, between August and his aunts, etc...

Picture for today is of a woman. It has some of the feel for one of the sisters in my story. Now if it only had her changing into a fish that would be perfect!





Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Hyperion

08NOV16
I am reading Hyperion today, by Dan Simmons. I have tried to read it several times before and have never found the time nor inclination to finish reading it. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it is a science fiction story about a pilgrimage to a planet with a very mysterious being. So far it is a great read, though I am distracted by the fact of how much it reminds me of the Canterbury Tales.
One thing I do find fascinating is the idea of a Treeship, this massive, growing spaceship and the Templars who man it. The picture below is a cover illustration of a treeship.
The book is the first of several about the same universe. Written by a former teacher, it makes me wonder how my stories are affected by my teaching. Will I hide lessons in amongst the words as this teacher obviously did?
If you've read Hyperion, what are your thoughts about the book? What worked, what didn't work? I confess, that it is not my style at all. I really did like his introductions of the various characters as they sat for their first meal together. Good stuff that. His character development was great. Easy to see each one in my mind's eye.