Aaron cranked the handles of the arbalest with arms turned leaden by hours standing the garrison wall, the draw racheting back just that much slower every time. But at last the next bolt was in place and he raised his weapon again, loosed it down amongst the besiegers. Beside the line of men, lady Alana paced, pale eyes flashing fury and goad, pale hair haloed in the evening sunlight and crowned with the white and purple anemones that were the…
Once again, I’ve just posted the last installment of my most recent SSCS, and now it’s time to chat a bit about the story. If you’ve been unsure about this one and waiting to read it (you can start with the first installment here), maybe this post will pique your curiosity enough to give it a try. Or, if you read along and have thoughts about what you just read, maybe this will stir them around a little. Either way,…
This is a post about writing. Specifically, it is a post about how characters interact with the events of a story and how the two things inform each other. First, though, note the standard disclaimers about ‘writing advice’: Everybody writes differently. Everyone has different things that allow them to connect with the story that they are trying to tell and to then get it to manifest in words, and also different stories often require different approaches. Any ‘advice’ you might…
So, I was recently reading this very excellent post/lecture/essay by Brandon Sanderson about the innovations Tolkien made creating the genre of High Fantasy, when, near the end, he mentions an interaction he had once with the mother of one of his fans. Just after he had signed the daughter’s book, the mother stopped and asked him something like, ‘Not to be rude, but how do I get her to stop reading all of this fantasy drivel?’. Sanderson then goes on…
Well here is another cross-stitch I recently completed. It’s Lilly of the Woods, by Mirabilia Designs (whose designs I am indeed a bit obsessed with). First, here are a couple ‘glamour’ shots, and then after those I’ll show the sequence of how I stitched this. Here’s some of the stitching-in-progress (amongst my cluttered work area(s)): Also, sometimes the stark contrast of different colors trapped in the hoop just looks kind of nifty: And some close-ups of more-finished sweetness, with and…
Once again, I’d like to explore a little more of the idea that encountering an example of bad writing by someone else can actually provide an excellent opportunity to improve your own writing. (My previous discussion about this is here.) As a writer, it’s always important to read plenty, both for enjoyment (of course!) and to have a lot of examples to draw from of what sort of writing is to your taste. But when you come across something that…
I don’t really believe in ghosts. Or, more accurately, I think I believe that if ghosts exist, they do so in a way that’s just not relevant to me, that our worlds are completely separate, and that theirs does not affect mine. I’m pretty sure that’s what I believe. It can still be fun to indulge in a good ghost story on occasion. Especially around Halloween. Ghosts, and ghost stories, I think, have a way of connecting us very deeply…