Do read your old work.

Dear Reader,

I know a lot of people give writing advice. A number of them have told me over the years that I should not go back and re-read my old work. I am a rebel and ignored that advice. Honestly, while some of it was pretty bad... Ok, some of it was really awful compared to what I can do now, a lot of it was pretty good for where I was at at the time in my writing life.

I'm pretty sure that if I had a blog in 1996, it would look a lot worse than what I am writing now. I had less experience. But, for someone at that point in my life, I think it would have looked pretty good because I was writing all the time and focusing on trying to improve my skills all the time. I have kept all of my writing journals and all of my personal journals since I began journal writing. I'm only missing three out of approximately twenty five years of work. One was stolen. One was lost while moving and the third was destroyed right in front of me by someone who was angry with what I had written in it.

Why have I kept all of this stuff? There's a few reasons. One is I am honestly and legitimately terrified of dementia and losing my memories. That is part of why I started keeping a journal when I was a kid. I watched Alzheimer's disease destroy family members that I loved and it was terrifying. So, I started keeping a diary. That was the one that got destroyed because I was writing things that made someone angry. (Never leave your diary or personal journal out where someone who has a grudge can get into it. If you have no choice, put it somewhere that people can't tell which book it is. Alternate option, find creative hiding places.)

Another reason why I keep a journal is because it helps me process things happening in my life. My life has been complicated, tragic, and challenging at various times. My journal is a major tool for how I make sense of it all. I've used it as a therapeutic exercise to handle crisis and the fall out from crisis. As a person with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, my journal has been a really useful tool in tracking things like what trigger's flashbacks and getting to the heart of how to resolve the issues raised by the trauma.

Finally, I keep a journal because it is a place where I can experiment and grow with my writing style. This is what my writing journal is for. I confess, I have fallen out of practice from writing poetry and doing prompt writing. One of my goals for the new year is to get back into it. My old writing journals are a treasure trove of ideas. Some of them are just in need of a bit of polishing to be worthy of being shared with you. Others need some major overhaul and reconsideration. But, keeping a writing journal has been perhaps one of the most worthwhile parts of my writing life. It is where I have grown and experimented to grow some more.

If I never wrote another blog entry on writing, I would be satisfied with this one. Because the old refrain about 'never read your old work' is just plain wrong. Your old work is like a scrapbook of memories of where you have been in your journey as an author. It is a snapshot of what was going on in your life at the time you wrote it and it is special because you wrote it. Your work is special. It doesn't matter what medium it is in. It is special and valuable because you created it. 

Fountain pens, notebooks, and other fascinating things.

Dear Reader,

Please don't think I have forgotten about you. The holidays and influenza happened. At the same time. Right now, I'm the only one in the house who is upright and hale. I think they all caught it from me. But the last little while has been hectic and hairy. I have discovered that all of my calligraphy pen nibs are in a mint tin that I almost threw away in the midst of cleaning up the desk area in the living room. This was exciting and happy for me. Until I realized that I had thrown away the calligraphy pen barrels thinking that the pen nibs were gone. Then I found my dip pen nibs. Again, excitement to be dashed by my pen barrels being missing. (I have resolved to go to the art supply store and purchase a new dip pen to use in my sketching for the herbal/beastiary project. Ball point pens just are not working for me here.)

In the midst of holiday cleaning, I have uncovered yet more backstory and other notebooks. Thankfully, this was not all written in pencil therefore it is still legible. I even found some of my artwork that I had made to go with the very first version of the first book. The version that was actually a twenty page word document typed up while I was in seventh grade. Yeah, the artwork was pretty awful. To say the least, that got put into a safe place. I'm KEEPING this stuff because it'll be worth something someday.

Then there was the best holiday present that I have gotten this year. Beloved, seeing how distraught I was over the loss of my favorite fountain pen, bought me a beautiful steel fountain pen. He had it engraved 'My Inspiration'. The note he attached was very romantic. Going through my notebooks with this wonderful pen, I discovered that it does not get on well with cheap paper. Thus, my habit of using pencil in cheap notebooks is going to continue. This is getting used on editing manuscripts and my journal writing. Nothing but the best for this splendid pen.

It is my hope that the holidays have found you with the perfect gift in hand and tons of happiness. Or at least with good health and good cheer.

Cartographer wanted.

Dear Reader,

They say 'heavy is the head that wears the crown.' What they really should have said was 'full is the head that dreams up stories.' I am becoming increasingly exasperated with how afar afield I have gotten in my side writing from the main story lines of the Umbrel Chronicles. Not much of it is really ready to share just yet. But it is things like Dacia's War and the Iron Lily, side stories that take place in the world but are not directly related to the main story of the books.

I have been going through old notebooks and finding stories that I have written. I have so much material set in this world. It ranges from scenes of a few hundred words to almost a novella's worth of aborted attempts to work around plot problems. I feel like I am lost and wandering through the wilds of some other world. Unfortunately, there is no map. And I have the misfortune of being the native guide. It makes you, my fellow travelers through this little world, have a rather bumpy journey. For that I'd like to apologize.

As I am working on getting my life organized and everything ready for 2019, I have come to a few conclusions. One of them is that I am going to share some of the material from my old notebooks. Secondly, I am going to finish the Iron Lily and Dacia's War this up coming year and offer them complete as ebooks. You have been far too patient and I really need to get past my loathing of certain characters (like that uppity priestess of Julara who thinks she's better than the high priestess) to write the story. I will be returning to my schedule of posting updates to the serial stories on Tuesdays and Thursdays as of the first full week of January.

I will also be releasing ebooks over the next few months of the first trilogy in the series. I anticipate book four (which is a novella) being ready come spring. It will be released as both an ebook and a paperback. Book five is almost finished its round of edits. I hope to have it ready for release in autumn. By then, I think I will finally have finished the damn work on book seven so that I can get busy with editing that.

My plans for NaNoWriMo '19? Glad you asked, write book eight. Who knows, maybe I'll get luck and finish book seven over the next two months and get book eight done during Camp NaNoWriMo. Either way, next year two books are coming out in the Umbrel Chronicles, come hell or high water. Since I live on a hill, I expect that if Satan's knocking on my door, he's looking for a signed copy of both books. I'll have to remind him that he owes me a few months rent. That's prime real estate down there. It'd be a shame to have to kick the poor guy out over a few bucks.

By the power of Coffee...

Between coffee, Mucinex, and plenty of rest, I am finally starting to feel better. I have been looking over what I have written (what little it was) and decided that I was definitely feverish when I wrote it. Surrealism is great for some things, but not what I am working on right now. I have accepted the fact that I am likely not going to finish these two projects by the end of the month. That said, I am steadily making progress on getting my butt organized for next year.

I almost bought a new notebook to start a new writing bullet journal. I stopped myself when I looked at the massive pile of notebooks that I won last year at the spinning guild's silent auction. (I swear that the note said I was going to win 1 notebook not two tote bags FULL of notebooks. Beloved says I'm stocked for notebooks until Ragnarok. He might be right.) I have changed my relationship with my writing bullet journal over the last two years.

I started out trying to bullet and use it for EVERYTHING. Now, it's turned into a mess. If it were not for the fact that I don't want to throw it away because I'd feel guilty, I'd do just that. So, I'm going to stick a tab on there and draw up stuff for next year. I'm not doing too great on daily logging of my writing. So, I'm going to make some trackers to log when I make my blog posts. I'm also going to start doing one sentence summaries of blog posts. I feel like my blogs are a rambling mess after the last year.

I'd like to fix that for the up coming year. So, book seven of the Umbrel Chronicles may be delayed a month or two, but I'm going to get back to posting quality content again.

I have a little birdie...

I have a little birdie,
And her name is Enza.
I opened the window
And in flew Enza.

The above is a old rhyme that my grandparents taught me when I was a kid. It was one that was from when they were young and the Spanish Flu pandemic happened. I don't have the Spanish flu, but I do have the flu. It's sucking the energy right out of me. Words are not cooperating with me very well. I just kinda stare at the screen and try to think things up.

Writing when sick is hard. I want to get over this quickly so that I can move on to finishing these two projects by the end of the month.

Thoughts and Ramblings.

Dear Reader,

I could have put together a spectacular story for you today. My problem is I have been eyeballs deep in filing old papers. So much other stuff in life gets in the way of the Great Work that sometimes I question if I am focused on the wrong things. It's hard to write when you are getting pulled in a dozen directions at the same time. Hell, it's hard to meditate when you're getting pulled in a dozen directions at the same time. And meditation, technically, is sitting there and doing nothing but paying attention to your breathing (the form I'm specifically thinking of, that is).

Some days, I wonder if all of this is vanity and that I am just spitting into the wind. I have the old backhanded comments of yore come to mind where I was the laughing stock of my peers because I was always scribbling something in my notebooks in school. The polite insults of some of the adults in my life when I was young who thought that their wit would go over my head. (It didn't, and I still haven't forgiven them for it. I may have a petty streak or something because of that.) As I grew older and I was struggling to make even a living as a cashier at a tractor supply store in the middle of nowhere, the comments still happened. They cut deeper because now they included digs at the fact that I was working a part-time minimum wage job with a degree from a fairly well known women's university.

In my twenties, I was convinced that somehow, by some feat of supernatural will, I was going to have a writing career at forty and be teaching English at a local school. Here I am at 39, struggling to write and feeling like a failure today. But that's ok, because everyone has days like this. I'm not the only person out there who is trying and not succeeding yet at making 'real' money off of their writing. I'm not the only person out there whose life took some pretty sharp u-turns and their life plans had to change because of them. And there's the all important bit of wisdom someone dear told me when I was in the middle of dealing with one of those u-turns: Feelings are not Facts.

I may feel like I'm a failure. But I am still writing. I may feel like a failure, but I have a happy and stable marriage. I may feel like a failure but I am raising two wonderful and relatively well behaved boys with my husband. I may feel like a failure, but I have that college degree I use everyday when my kids start asking awkward questions. (We haven't gotten to the talk about reproduction yet, but it is looming in the near future.) I may feel like a failure, but I have written twelve books. 

I just need to remember, even though I feel like a failure because I don't have a big publishing contract and I am not making money yet off of my writing, I am not a failure. Because failure means giving up. Failure means not even making the attempt because someone else told you that you couldn't do it. Failure is letting others define your limits for you.

Like Thomas Edison, I may not have made that light bulb work on the first try, but I have discovered hundreds of other light bulb designs in the process and learned a lot.

Wait! What happened to my plot?!

Dear Reader,

My characters have changed my plot line. I feel like I'm writing complete garbage and what I'm doing it little better than word vomit. I had a very detailed and organized plot line. It was set up to cover this book and the next. Now I'm working off of things that were planned to happen two books later and my plot map is useless. I have no idea what I'm doing. My current mood right now is:

Where as my characters are going:

Halp.

Book Review: The Book of Shadows

Title: The Book of Shadows
Author: James Reese
Publisher: Harper Collins Date: Dec. 2002

I read this a few years ago and the lush imagery of this author's settings and character descriptions still haunts me. James Reese is a *master* of describing such things. It may sound a little odd of me, a Tolkeine-phile, to place such a title upon an author other then my favorite, but Mr. Reese well deserves it.

The Book of Shadows is the first of apparently a series about a young hermaphrodite witch called Herculine. The story of Herculine is described with elegant detail and fine craftsmanship. A highly readable work that drops the reader into a 17/18th century world of sensual horror and burgeoning madness. Some folks have compared Mr. Reese's work to Anne Rice's or Laurell K. Hamilton's. I think it would be better to compare it to Jacqueline Carey's luminous and yet dark novels of sensuality, betrayal, and violence.

I highly recommend this book. If you're looking for actual information about witchcraft, forget it. If you're looking for an amazingly good read, however, that can just suck you in for hours, pick this book up. It's well worth it.

Originally Published: 2/22/2007

Book Review: Flags of Our Fathers

Title: Flags of Our Fathers
Author: James Bradley
Publisher: Bantam Books Date: May 2, 2002

This was probably one of the hardest books I've read in a long time.

Emotionally, it felt like I was hit with a hammer right in the gut. A sledge hammer, to be precise. As a person with a sibling in the military, reading the account of the battle of Iwo Jima was a sobering and harrowing thing. I found myself on the verge of tears as I read about how the brave men who fought that month long battle suffered.

It drive home quite clearly, in my less then humble opinion, that the current military engagements are nothing like what happened in World War II. Unless it is compared to the battle of Iwo Jima alone. This battle, in all of it's tactical nightmare-ish glory (I use the term 'glory' loosely.), can be a spectacular metaphore for the horror that is the meat-grinder of the current war.

Bad intelligence, poor initial execution, an overly early declaration of victory, and a misrepresentation of the combat by the press at large marked the events surrounding the battle known for a single image. It is tragic that it is so visibly evident as being present in the current military conflict.

All of this said, Flags of Our Fathers is an amazingly well written book. The language is very accessible and easy to follow. The story presented is well layed out. It is obvious that this was a labor of love for the author and a tribute to the life of his father. I highly recommend this book, even as it is emotionally challenging to read it.

Originally published: 2/16/2007

Book Review: City of God (book 7)

Chpt. 1 - 5
Augustine apologizes for possibly writing for a target audience lower then his readers in chapter one. Chapter two, three and four were discussing how the "common" gods co-mingled with the "superior" gods. Augustine notes how the "common" gosd have less stories of license and ill repute. In chapter five, Augustine revisits Varro's opinon of God as teh soul of the world.

Chpt. 6 - 10
Chapter six is a continuation of chapter five. Chapter seven discusses Janus and Terminus. Augustine argues that death is both a beginning and ending. As such, Augustine says that Janus and Terminus must be the same. Chapter eight discusses Janus in more detail. Janus argues that he is the fate of the world, Augustine repudiates this. Chapter eight is a comparison between Janus and Jove. It seems that Janus and Jove are popular foci for worship by Augustine's comtemporaries. Augustine seems to believe taht Janus is the preferrible option of the two. Chapter nine discusses this as well. Chapter ten questions if Janus or Jove should be distinguised as separate or not.

Chpt. 11 - 14
Chapter eleven states that all surnames of Jove refered to him as one diety. Augustine argues this is a mutually exclusive thing, where Jove can not be in charge of X at the same time as god Z is incharge of it. [...]

Chapter twelve is full of yet more of Augustine's scathing sarcasm. He discusses Jove's title of coin with the apparently popular argument of how he can do all things. Augustine confronts this with the argument of how the wealthy worry about losing or acquiring more wealth, where as the poor are not troubled with it. He concludes with welath lies in wisdom as coming from God. Chapters thirteen and fourteen continue the previous arguments. Essentually, he is using the physical principle of the conservation of matter with respect to dieties and their realm of influence.

Ch. 15 - 20

Chapter fifteen decries the description of stars as gods to be foolishness. Confusing the created with the creator perhaps? Chapter sisteen continues the argument but with the assignment of deities to things like water, mountains, etc. Chapter seventeen does this as well. Chapter eighteen argues that Varro states that the gods are ambiguious. It leads me to question if Varro would agree with Augustine's argument of people confusing the object with creator. In chapter nineteen, Augustine' statement that paganisim is a result of ignorance and the deception of the masses for socio-political gain. Augustine then applies this argument to the worship of Saturn and Ceres in chapter twenty. [It is facinating that Augustine's statements are echoed many generations by Karl Marx with respect to all forms of religion.]

Chpt. 21 - 25
Chapter twenty one takes the arguments of the last chapter and adds a dimension. Augusine examines Bacchus's worship and states that it is forced debauchery compounding the deceptions of the earlier argument. Augustine argues in chapter twenty two the same of the worship of Neptune. Chapter twenty three and twenty four discuss the pagan view of the earth. Augustine seems to be arguing again a violation of the conservation and for an identity crisis for the gods. Augustine touches briefly on the matter of eunchs in the service of the earth cult. He notes rather bitterly in the conclusion of chapter twenty four and in all of chapter twenty five how an eunch is a worthless example of fertility because of their sterility.

Chpt. 26 - 30
Chapter twenty six is an invecting against the worship of the earth cults. Chapter twenty seven is an argument that "natural" philosophy is a "false hope" of the true way. Augustine uses this to support his argument in chapter twenty eight that Varro doesn't have a leg to stand on. Chapter twenty nine shows the flaws taht Augustien sees. Mainly this is that people are confusing the object with the creator. Chapter thirty cautions us to remember that God is separate from creation and acts thru his intermediatries and will.

Ch. 31 - 35
Augustine's invective against philosophy is impressive. As he proceeds through the remainder of book seven and thru books eight and nine, Augustine tears down the popular classes of philosophy from his era.

Book seven predominantly concerns itself with the confusing of the object with the creator. It discusses the errors that proceed from this stance:
- The qualities ascribed to the parts of the world as holy/divine (nature deities) are actuality qualities of God.
- The multiplicity of nature gods results in confusion as to the reign/power of these gods.
- The overlapping associations of power suggest a unifying deitie that reigns/has power ofer the whole.
- The variety between the standard for "good" between worship, priests, and philosophers is a result of multiple gods.
Augustine's argument against "natural philosophy" as described by Varro is summarized by the following:

The powers associated with the nature gods are the property and qualities of one god. This god is good. The confusion of good and the profanity attending the nature gods is due to the deception of men by devils.

Originally Published: 11/4/2006 (All content is original to the initial post, including the horrible spelling.)

Books update.

Dear Reader,

Aside from spamming you with NaNoWriMo/NaBloPoMo content, I figured I'd take a moment to let you know how things are going on the book writing front. I have officially been cheating at NaNoWriMo this year. I have been spending my time trying to get things caught up and finished. I finished two nonfiction works earlier this month. Now I'm working on book seven of the Umbrel Chronicles. I've hit some vexing situations here with this manuscript.

I had written out a nicely detailed plot map. Now everything has gone off the rails. New gods have introduced themselves into the story long before they were supposed to show up on scene. Old characters that were just supposed to be random filler to advance the plot are turning into important support characters. And I am getting frustrated because none of my characters are doing what they're supposed to be doing according to the plot I had planned out.

My characters did what characters will do and took on a life of their own. Again. Here's hoping that the story doesn't turn out to be garbage after the editing process. Right now, I feel like I'm writing with out a net. It is mildly nerve wracking.

Aside from this, I am increasingly vexed with the self publishing process. I am clearly not doing something right in my efforts to convert files to a format friendly to ebook format. I'd hire someone to help me if I had the funds, instead I will hammer away at this until I figure out what in the nine levels of Dante's hell I am doing. Given the weather, I think I am heading down towards the ninth level.

What is your writing play list?

Here's what's on mine right now:

As It Fades from VNV Nation
Prelude from Rob Dougan
Dreamer from Epic Soul Factory
Gortoz A Ran (Theme from Black Hawk Down)
Forgotten Mountain from Mayrain
Silent Flight, Sleeping Dawn from MONO

What is inspiring your work? Any suggestions for me to add to my play list?

Prompt Thursday.

It's still NaBloPoMo. I'm still behind. But here's some prompts if you're playing along too. (It is also perfectly fair to post memes and call it done.)

1. The worst pet name in the world is ...
2. Musical pet peeves
3. If you were a color, what color would you be?

For my fellow NaNoWriMo challengers, here's a prompt for you to work into your story:

Your main character is snowed in with the primary antagonist. They can't kill each other because they have to find away to work together to survive the conditions. What do they do?

Excelsior ad infinitum.

Dear Reader,

If you are a nerd like me, the recent death of Stan Lee may have you feeling dismayed. Mr. Lee's work inspired countless artists and authors around the world. His work was passionate and filled with life. From all accounts, Mr. Lee was a gentleman and a great friend to his fans. I aspire to be half as influential and inspirational as Stan Lee. As much as we may argue if the movies were better than the comic books and quibble over which character is better, I think we can all agree that the real hero was Stan Lee and his infinite genius.

He created characters and stories that excelled at both entertaining us and informing us as to something about the human condition. His work tackled cultural issues with as much vigor as they entertained us. It is my sincerest hope that what ever afterlife Mr. Lee is welcomed to, he is greeted with as much joy and has as much joy as he has given the world with his life's work.

Excelsior ad infinitum.

Slogging along.

Dear Reader,

I don't know how the nonfiction authors do it. This is exhausting work. And yet, there are nonfiction authors who churn out a book in a couple of weeks. Yeah, that's right. Less than a month. This thing I'm working on right now, I started about three years ago. I got stuck and put it down for about a year. Because I kept fact checking and fact checking, even after I had finished my research. Perhaps the problem is I am anxious about getting this right. Perhaps the problem is that I am just anxious about branching out into new to me genres.

I have been struggling but I am almost at my goal. I'm currently at 46.9K words. My goal is 50. If I was writing straight up fiction, I could have hit that in the last two days. I'll be honest, I have spent way more time double and triple checking facts this week on my nonfiction projects than I have spent writing. I will confess, I had written out notes and an outline for both projects. For one, those went missing. Which one was it? Yep, the big project. It's been a nail biter for me because I want to get everything right. I feel like I'm revisiting college and working on a final term paper.

Still, I'm working hard to do my best here. And that's all anybody can ask of you, right. When I picked this thing back up to work on it, by the way, it was at 39K. Averaging around two thousand words a day is on track for NaNoWriMo counting, but I know I could do better if I could just stop being so anxious about this. The worst part here is the fact that I'm writing on a topic that I have blogged about extensively on another blog of mine for the better part of three years. I've probably written two and a half books worth of material through all of those blog posts. But making a novel length book on the topic has me half panicked I'm going to mess it all up.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I have an anxiety problem. Can you tell it effects my writing?

The Iron Lily: Part 19 - Guest in the Fair House

Halthor looked at the apples sitting in the bowl. "Are they tart?" he asked. The woman in blue looked at the apples and shook her head. "Why are they so big? What do you do with them?" He knew something of cider making because he and Alaric had to build a new cider press for the king's steward's son. The juice of the small apples that were dumped into the press by bucket full was so tart that it was nearly bitter. Alaric laughed when Halthor was duped into trying a taste of the freshest cider in Starhaven, raw tart apple juice. That was when Olren explained that the cider had to go hard for the flavor to improve.


Halthor was caught in the happy memory long enough that he missed at first what his hostess had to say. He realized that he was going to be confused anyways as she spoke of something called 'grafting'. Still, it was pleasant enough to listen to the beautiful elf-woman talk. There was a soothing, musical quality to her voice that put the voices calling out beyond the door to shame. Halthor leaned his head against his left fist as he propped his arm on the table and just looked at the Blue Lady.



She stopped speaking and looked at Halthor. He looked weary. The red haired man had a long voyage ahead of him still. His blue-green eyes had a far off look in them, as though he was thinking about something. His red hair was tangled but he wasn't filthy. He just looked like a man who had a very long day outdoors. The elf-woman folded her hands before herself. It had been a very long time since she had company. She lived alone at the glade where as her people moved northward into the high mountain forests. The rolling hills reminded her of their old home to the east. Looking at Halthor, she realized that she was lonely and this was why she was prating on about apple orchards.



She turned her gaze back to the food before her. With her eating knife, she began to carve the bird apart. The goose was as tender as it could have been. It was perfectly cooked, as was proper for her magic cook pot could do so with any food she put in it. The pot was a gift from her elder brother's wife who foresaw the journey west. She thought of Alyrin who passed her by upon the elfin green way. Her sister had a dear and deep love for the people of this land. The Blue Lady wore a solemn expression as she carved the goose. Then she set her eating knife down beside her bowl and dipped her fingers into a small bowl of water before drying them on a linen towel embroidered with a band of blue flowers.



"The Fair House has not had a guest in a hundred years. To my people it is but a passing sigh in life, but it is a long time to be alone," she finally said as Halthor immediately became attentive as her demeanor changed and through her silence, and now watched her earnestly. "My sister moves amongst men freely, skilled in the arts of disguise and secure in her power," the Blue Lady continued, "I have remained here waiting as she asked me. When our people went north, we stayed behind. Alyrin felt that your people needed a guide. I could not help but heed the call of the land. The waters sang to me. It was a song I had not heard before. They continue to sing to me, different songs every day. In return, I care for them. Alyrin the builder fashioned my brother's hall away in our homeland. She built this house for me. Alyrin's kindness I have never forgotten."



Halthor looked at the contents of the cottage with new eyes. He saw that each stone was laid in place upon bare stone, yet there was no gap for the wind to whistle in. The furniture was carved and joined together with skill beyond what he had seen under Alaric, who had been master builder of the guild for at least as long as Halthor had been under his care. Great pieces like the chair he had sat in earlier were carved from but one enormous bit of wood. As he inspected them more closely, he realized that all of the wooden objects in the cottage could have been disassembled and put together to make a single tree. Halthor turned his gaze back to the elf-woman sitting across the table from him. "Alyrin chose you for your craft and Father chose you for your heart," the Blue Lady said quietly, "I know not why you were sent to me."

Another day, more words to vomit.

And that, dear Reader, is the mantra of NaNoWriMo (and NaBloPoMo to some extent). What's the point to all of this word vomit? To get as many ideas down as possible. Cleaning it up into a workable text comes later. A rough draft is precisely that, rough. There is going to be a lot of stuff that when you come back to the manuscript is just bloat and needs to be cut down. There is also going to be a lot of stuff that needs to have more detail filled in. This makes up for however much you need to cut out of your manuscript in the editing process, trust me.

Just pour it all out on the page. No matter how undignified it may feel. Sometimes your best work comes out of what felt like it was complete garbage.

Suddenly a wild meme appears! Roll for initiative.

I just finished the project I started to cheat on NaNoWriMo. It's barely a novella length, but I made it. Now to work on the next project, finishing the Psychic's Handbook that I've been stalled on for FOREVER. It's like I should have seen the ending of that one coming or something, right?

What's YOUR word count?

Hi there,

If you started early and are a cheater, like me, I bet you've got a great word count already. If you just started today, I bet you have a great word count already. If you are starting in the next five minutes, I know you'll have a great word count.

Because a word count of one is fantastic when you're just starting. A word count of two is even more awesome. String together a few sentences and paragraphs and you've got a lovely beginning. All words count, even the ones you want to delete. So don't delete them. Use strike through font but keep the words. This month is about slapping all of the ideas up on the page. Don't worry about what ones stick, just keep throwing ideas.

Kinda like water balloons at a target. If you throw a massive barrage, you'll hit that target at some point by sheer numbers. :)

Oh crap, It's NANOWRIMO & NANOBLOPOMO! AND A TOMATO!

Dear Reader,

I completely forgot about blog and other writing prompts.

Here's your three prompts for today!

1. Spoiled Food
2. "The best way to tell a lie is to tel the truth, the carefully edited truth."

3. Verbal pet peeves

Good luck writing! ♥

Wednesday Rambling (On Thursday)

Dear Reader,

It is surreal to sit here at the beginning of NaNoWriMo and have it be yet another year with out Stargazer around. She was the reason why I got started with NaNoWriMo. She would do a dual NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo every year. I miss her dearly and keep finding myself thinking what would she think about my project this year.

I have the thing I started last month, because I'm a NaNo practicalist, I have two small children who have a vacation from school in the middle of NaNo. You're just plain silly if you think I'm not starting early to work around that and stuff like orthodontist appointments. November is going to be a busy month on the domestic side of the ledger, which is why I started back in mid October. It is going to be a small novella and I'm approximately at the halfway point. I'm feeling confident I can have this thing done by mid month and still get a good whack at book seven, maybe even finish it.

Halthor's journey continues later this evening. I've been sick with a cold and trying to catch up on everything. As Beloved said, " 'tis the season for sneezing". At least I got the flu shot last week. *knocks wood* Here's hoping no one in my household comes down with it. If my luck goes like last year, I'll catch the other strain of the flu that is going around that there isn't a vaccine for. Which means I'll be writing whilst wrapped up in blankets with extra amounts of hot tea on hand.

Locales: Review!

Dear Reader,

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm planning on posting more content going forward. The locale feature of the blog talks about different settings in the books I'm writing. Some of them are general and some of them are specific places. My earlier work on locations in here was pretty general. I'm trying to get more specific and hope to have a few maps up for you to view. As I know absolutely nothing about map making, you'll have to give me a few months to figure this stuff out.

Here's a recap of all previous posts regarding locations. Some of them may look familiar if you have been reading the serial stories Dacia's War and The Iron Lily. There will be more about random locations in the world and major sites of the books (and the back story) going forward. My plan is to cover as much as I can. As I have said, this is my sandbox but I invite others to come play with their original characters.

Flora et Fauna: Review!

Dear Reader,

In the coming  month, I will be posting prompts. I'm also going to attempt to get back to posting content that's more than a weekly update on how my NaNoWriMo project is going. In case you missed it or you're curious what this 'section' of my blog is about, the Flora et Fauna posts talk about the lifeforms you can find in the world of Evandar. I have a side project that is currently stalled to make an herbal/bestiary featuring the plants of the world. I'm going to make it a priority to draw pictures for it on a weekly basis.

Here's a link to everything I've got up so far. I also cover my world building approach. Hence why I have so much stuff about plants and what not. I'm one of those writers who build worlds as well as just tell a story. And I encourage other people to join me in my sandbox with their own original characters. Fun should be shared and most of this stuff is fun for me.

Writing is painful at times. But it doesn't have to be.

Dear Reader,

It is something they don't tell you. Writing is painful at times. Here's the thing, writers are not supposed to be tortured artists. No artist is supposed to be tortured. Writing is difficult and requires a lot of effort. It can be exhausting. But if it is torment, stop and look at what is going wrong in the process.

Sometimes, you may be like me and getting in your own way. I have an anxiety issue and I tend to stumble over my own feet (literally and figuratively, but the literal part is just because I'm clumsy). In my anxiety, I go back to my research over and over again with this obsessive need to make sure that everything is perfect. It's exhausting and painful. There's only so many times you can look at the same facts and say "Yep, that's accurate."

Creativity is like sex. If you are doing it right, it is a lot of work and ends with a lot of pleasure. (No one mentions how much work sex is, but it is work. One of the reasons why they say it counts as exercise.) Sometimes, it is a lot of work and it is challenging. That's like trying a different position and such. It is when it hurts that you have to stop and say "Wait, something isn't working properly here." Even a masochist has limits and has to say "Stop, this isn't working."

So, what do you do when writing is painful?

1. Take a break. Maybe you've been working too hard.
2. Re-write your work from your last save point.
3. Work on a different project for a little bit.
4. Do something completely different if you're stuck. (Coloring books count!)
5. Edit your outline and look for what is missing.
6. Review your notes and look for what is missing.
7. TAKE A BREAK. (Drink a nice cup of tea!)
8. Do something boring and mundane (like wash the dishes after having that cup of tea).
9. Read your own work out loud to a disinterested third party (a lamp counts.)
10. Stop writing for a time and do something completely different for a set period of time.

Deamon's Kiss (pt. 4) (NSFW)

This is erotic horror. This is NSFW. Read at your discretion.


He lifted his head, licking her blood from his lips like an animal. His pointed, almost canine looking teeth made the smile he gave her horrifying. Astrid inwardly begged the gods to rescue her from her situation. She closed her eyes, finding this was the extent of the control she had over her body. She dove deep within herself as he laughed softly.

Astrid attempted to put her mind to focus on moving through the sword forms that her father had taught her, that she drilled herself on each morning. She had very nearly succeeded in separating her awareness from that of her body when the terrible, terrible cold that wreathed them suddenly stormed through her awareness. She opened her eyes to see her dark haired 'husband' shift his attention from herself to a blond haired man walking through the frozen forms towards them.

Astrid dared to hope that it was a savior coming. The blond man looked down at the pair with a dispassionate look on his face. He delivered a savage kick into the ribs of the man over her. As he rolled off of her, the man snarled at the interloper, who drew the sword at his side. The cold, unnaturally black metal seemed to steal the light from about it, somehow making the environment become dimmer. "Go Byroniac," the blond man said, "Leave this place."

Byroniac rose up to his hands and knees, giving his brother a dire look. "She's mine," he hissed, "Mine, Maigren." Maigren turns his cool gaze to Astrid, watching as her skin turned mottled and her lips moved towards an almost orchid color from the cold. Byroniac reached to pull Astrid over towards him when Maigren moved. Burning fluid splashed across Astrid's chest as Byroniac's hand fell to the ground. The wounded deamon howled.

"Not any more," Maigren said, stepping forward. Byroniac scrambled back away from his elder brother. As the elder made ready to bring his weapon to bear again, the younger made his way to his feet and retreated. Maigren sheathed his blood dewed blade and took the cloak off of his shoulders. Carefully, he helped Astrid to her feet and wrapped the heavy, fur lined fabric about her. Astrid shuddered in the chill, noting that the blood that had come from Byroniac's wounds was liquid still despite the bone gnawing cold.

"Come," the deamon prince said, "your place is with me now." Astrid allowed Maigren to gather her close, allowing the first of her sobs to escape. As the Maid began to weep against his shoulder, the deamon prince allowed himself a smile. His plan to capture this prize had gone far better then he had anticipated.

~ Fin ~

Wednesday Rambling

Dear Reader,

I've transitioned from writing the manuscript by hand to typing it because the notebook is literally falling apart as I have been working in it. I have discovered that in the course of three days writing by hand, I can write approximately five thousand words. I'm of mixed feelings about this. I am highly annoyed by the fact that I am redoing work I had already finished, but I can't just start writing where I stopped in the notebook. It's a minor hiccup in the whole process but it has me highly annoyed.

I'm not pleased that the serial stories are a bit stalled right now. I wanted to move them along a bit more but the Iron Lily is plodding along slowly and I've hit a wall with Dacia's war. Al-Uzza is a terrible person but I'm unsure how to demonstrate that because she's not a violently awful human being. I lost my notes when the desktop computer died yesterday. On one hand, I'm glad that it was just a outline of a few character notes that I can mostly remember. On the other hand, I'm annoyed that I can't use the desktop computer as a backup storage device for my plethora of documents.

I haven't done any sketches or drawings recently. If I haven't been writing, I have been doing housework. If I am not doing housework, I am working on presents for the holidays. I have one sweater finished, another about a quarter of the way done, and a blanket that I'm currently working on adding to. It's the blanket that is the hard part because one round takes an hour of crochet. This thing is big.

I'm working again on book seven of the Umbrel Chronicles. I'm trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with the formatting for the first trilogy that I can't get it up as ebooks right now. I'm tempted to download somebody's template and just start to copy-paste until the whole book is reformatted into something that will actually upload properly. That, however, would be a lot of cut and paste. Book four will be out as a novella. I'm only going to release it as a paperback because of how much difficulty I'm having getting things sorted out right now. Sometime in the future I'll have everything out as ebooks. I hope.

Tomorrow is the last installment of the Deamon's Kiss. Still NSFW but if you read the other three installment's you're already aware of that.

Iron Lily: Part 18 – Sanctuary

The wind began to howl outside and Halthor looked uneasily at the door. "The shadow riders will not reach you in here. Even if I opened the door wide and stood aside, they could not enter. My home is inviolate and a place of sanctuary," the elf woman said as she checked on her bubbling pot of broth. "You have gained three days of travel by one walking the ancient paths. It is only right that you spend at least one of them in rest. The journey from Starhaven has been hard upon you. Tell me, does Elrian still sit upon the throne or has the unrest stirred up by the priests of the defiler reached the crown?"

"The king of Ranyth is the son of Elrian, Hogarth and he is an old man now. He is child less and has yet to publically declare an heir. He is sending me to count Olerand with this gem and nothing else," Halthor answered. The elf woman nodded her head slightly. "The black priests move through the kingdom stirring up trouble left and right. King Hogarth refuses to ban them, saying they are holy men, but the priests of Sigurt are beginning to vanish in the night. King Hogarth and the high priest Orian have argued bitterly in the chamber that Alaric and I were building for the king. Something about the actions of men are a reflection of the actions of gods. I don't know much about it, I spent my time on wood work."

The blond haired woman dressed in blue gestured towards her table where Halthor found a generous array of food before him as fine as would have been served at the king's own board. A stool sat beside the table. Halthor eyed it with some uncertainty. It was not as stable as he would have prefered but the other choice was to stand, for the fireside chair was too heavy for him to move. As he lowered himself to the three legged stool, he discovered it was more sturdy than it had looked. A bowl of steaming broth sat before him with a small round loaf of bread. Between he and his hostess was a roast bird of some kind glistening with juices. And a small bowl of apples sat on the table in a curious shade of yellow and red that he had never seen before, much larger than the ones he knew were put through the press for cider.

A cup carved from stone sat beside the bowl made from pottery filled with water so clean and clear that it shimmered in the light, which he only had seen rarely in the city of Starhaven. For the wells of Starhaven had a suggestion of iron in the water and in high summer a faint tinge of red to them. The Sweetwater was fouled by the city's sewer and no one dared to draw water from it. The pure streams that he could have found on his journey were covered in snow and ice. Thus, it was in the home of the keeper of the rivers and streams of the forests of central Ranyth that he experienced truly clean water for the first time. He sipped it like it was wine and marveled. There was no taste of iron or anything else in it. It had no scent of any kind to it. And in some way, it seemed almost sweet to him. "You say this is water, but it is unlike any water I have ever known," Halthor said. The elf-woman waved a dismissive hand.

"Water is water. The problem is what you put into it," she answered. Halthor looked at her curiously. "If the water is not fouled, drawn from the ocean, or tainted ground, you can drink it. You must clean the water if it is drawn from unclean sources. I would teach you this, but you can not stay long enough to learn how. Perhaps you shall return, Builder, and I will teach you another thing to build for the good of men."

Outside the wind grew loud and Halthor could nearly swear he heard voices in it. "I was waiting for them to arrive," the elf-woman sighed, "They travel faster than men because they ride the winds. They're an annoyance. A menace to good and decent people. And tragic souls that have become trapped between worlds who vent their fury upon the living." She began to eat her soup as Halthor tried to ignore the sound of a voice pleading for entrance.

"Can you send them beyond to where their souls would have peace?" Halthor asked. The elf-woman shook her head. She gestured at the food before them and Halthor resumed eating.

"Only a necromancer can do that," she answered, "But all of the necromancers I have ever known were more interested in trapping the souls to do their bidding. I doubt there is one who does not serve the darkness. All of them seem to be tangled up in the Defliler's work. If there were but one who was not, I am sure they are hiding so that the others do not come and destroy them for freeing the damned from their tragic fate."

Eyeballs deep in work.

Dear Reader,

Somehow, I got a bit off track over the last few weeks. As a result, I am eyeballs deep in work ranging from sorting out and putting away summer clothes to filing paperwork to working on my manuscript (complete with correcting yet more research errors). I am getting frustrated. I am starting to think that writing this manuscript out by hand is a bad idea. At the same time, I am 1/5th of the way through the notebook.

I'm just very displeased that I'm not farther along right now on everything. I'm procrastinating on a sink full of dirty dishes right now to complain about being busy. At the same time, things are looking up. It is starting to look like my blood sugar issues are headed in the right direction as is my other health issues. My boys are starting to get more involved socially at school and are doing well so far in their classes. My eldest just brought home a story he wrote where his father was the hero and saved people from a big scary problem. It is appropriately adorable hero worship.

This week is shaping up to be very busy. I'm quite possibly going to just be updating the Iron Lily serial and posting the final installment of the Deamon's Kiss. I hope that this is not what November is going to be like, because I want to blog more again. It's just been hard to make time.

Deamon's Kiss (pt 3) (NSFW)

This is erotic horror. This is NSFW. Read at your discretion.



Astrid inwardly screamed in rage as the man before her ran his hand lightly over her cheek. She struggled against the urge to sigh in pleasure as that touch moved down past her ear to dance along the column of her throat. Her resistance to his magic manifested as a strangled groan. He gave a soft chuckle of amusement.

"Yes," he purred as he moved forward. Astrid leaned back as the one who had defeated her pressed her back on her heels. Slowly, they settled on the cold, hard ground as though it were a soft feather bed. His body, the body that had delighted her so much the night before, pressed her down to that terribly hard, frozen ground. The ice beneath her burned against her skin, but Astrid didn't feel it.

The heat of his magic and of his touch intensified as he lowered his mouth to hers. Astrid's body moved of its own will, her hands grasping at his clothes to pull him closer even as she arched up to meet him. Waves of pleasure rolled over her, pushing her deeper into her mind as he broke the kiss and nuzzled her throat. He bared his teeth and set them lightly against either side of her windpipe. Slowly, he closed them against the delicate flesh of her neck.

Panic flared up briefly and Astrid drew in a shuddering gasp. Her hands pressed against his chest as she, for a brief moment won control of her body. He took hold of her wrists and pinned them down to either side of her shoulders. He gave a low, feral growl and Astrid felt those teeth at her throat subtly change to something more pointed, almost canine.

Astrid was convinced that her 'husband' was about to tear her throat out but then the magic rolled over her and her body went from tense and ready to fight to soft and yielding. Those pointed teeth moved away from her throat and closed over where her neck met her shoulder. Though there was the rough fabric of her tunic between his teeth and her shoulder, Astrid could feel those ominous points pressing threateningly against her flesh.

She shuddered in pure arousal as they slowly pressed harder against her. The line between arousal and pain was crossed but Astrid was helpless to do anything about it. Inwardly, she screamed and did her best to force herself to bring her knee up into his groin. Instead, her thighs parted as a sensual moan escaped her. Again, he growled.

Astrid's body shuddered hard as his unnaturally sharp teeth broke the skin. It was as though she had an orgasm but there was no pleasure with it. His hands moved down her forearms and along the insides of her upper arms to where her ribs began. He dug his fingers into the sensitive flesh near her armpits and despite the sharp pain that lashed at her, she shuddered again.

Slowly, he dragged his nails down her sides. When he reached her waist, he began to gather handfuls of fabric and pull the tunic up. He leaned back, pulling her upright with a hand gripping the neck of her tunic and a hand gripping the bottom hem. He looked at her for a moment. While her face had the drugged look of pleasure that she had worn the night before when he had undressed her and covered her with tiny love bites, her eyes burned with rage and terror.

He smiled and pulled the knife he wore at his side free from its sheath. The metal was black as night and seemed to absorb the light as he brought it before her eyes. He let go of her and smiled as she fell back limply to the ground, striking her head hard. Where she normally would have cried out in pain and reached a hand up to touch where she hit her head, Astrid found herself giving a sensual noise and her body squirming with apparent pleasure. Her 'lover' brought his strange knife to the edge of her tunic.

The fabric parted easily with not even a whisper of sound. He opened the cut halves of her tunic like a book. Beneath where he had passed with his knife, a long, thin line was scored into her skin, even though he had not touched it. Carefully, he brought the tip of the knife down and Astrid screamed as bitter, burning cold poured down from that metal into where it rested against her flesh. The pain was so potent that it ripped through the spell and Astrid's body reacted.

She tried to shrink away from the metal against her skin but the unyielding ground did not let her. He smiled as she brought her arms up to try to push him away from her.  Over her right breast, he drew a thin line and Astrid's initial scream turned into a long keening wail of agony. She beat her fists against the cold, hard ground, disoriented by the pain. Slowly, he scored a series of other lines into her skin, drawing a sigil of some sort upon her.

Astrid had moved from rage to despair. Her body, in the grips of the spell, shuddered with successive climaxes even as the pain left her screaming in raw agony. His drawing complete, he set the knife aside and dipped his head. His tongue rasped over the intricate lines and pleasure rolled over her again. Astrid's screams dropped down into low, guttural moans as his mouth wandered over the region of her right breast.

Book review stuff.

Dear Reader,

I am taking the liberty of posting old book reviews and reading notes. I have decided to keep the reading blog, but I have a backlog of material to update there. I also feel like I want to share what I have read so that you can get some kind of an idea about what I have as background research for what I have been putting together.

I currently am reading Neverwhere from Neil Gaiman. I am literally only a few pages into the story. It's been busy over here and I haven't had much time for reading. As I get into the book, I'll share some of my thoughts about it in my book review and reading notes posts.

♥

Book Review: The City of God - Book 6

Ch. 1 - 5
Chapter one discusses what seems to be the over conpartmentalization of divinity. Augustine argues the foolishness of requests outside the scope of a given deity's pervue. Chapter two discusses Verro's apparent opinion of the gods. Augustine presents the argument that the gods are less worthen then humanity, though Varro does not state that. Chapter three is Augustine's proof thru an examination of the order of Varro's works. Augustine notes the initial texts from Varro discusses humanity. This seems to be, to Augustien, an indication of the Roman worship was an outgrowth of human invention, not inspired by true divinity. Chapter four is a continuation of this line of argument. Chapter five then discusses Varro's distinctions of divnity. Augustine proceeds to question these distinctions, arguing that they are indistinguishable because they all have the same general traits. On the whole, this is difficult to read because I am not familiar with the writings of Varro. I am quickly becoming of the opinion I will need to become acquatined with it if I want to have an easier time of reading this.

Ch. 6 - 10
Chapter six opens with Augustine criticising Varro for his fears of offending the public when Varro states that matters of divinity are separate from human politics. Augustien criticizes the "fable" based and poltical based views of the gods as two parts of the same lie. His criticisim is rather lengthy. Augustine also questions the validity of Varro's natural deity. Chapter eight is a criticism of the panentheistic view, apparently the same as Varro's natural deities, if the contect of this is correct. Chapter seven proposes that the divinity of the fables and politcal are the same, essental a expansion on the argument of chapter six. Chapter ten is a comparison between Seneca and Varro. Seneca is reported to be object to the political promotion of religion where Varro objects to pantheisim. Augustine seems to feel that both are waise to object to these things, but fools accept the other arguments.

Ch. 11 - 12
Chapter eleven reports Seneca's opinion of the Jews. Augustine finds the Jews included in Seneca's invective against supersitition. Augustine's tones are ambivalent towards Seneca. His ambivilance seems more vavorable then the apparent hostility towards Varro. Chapter twelve, Augustien states that his earlier arguments prove how the pagan gods are not givers of true happiness or eternal life.

Originally published: 8/25/06

Book Review: The City of God - Book 5

Ch. 1 - 5
In this chapter (1) Augustine says that it is foolish to belive that fortune or astrology as any role in the rise of or fall of Nations, people or anything else. He says that it is especially foolish to blame problems on how the skies were at the time. Chapter two argues that two (or more) people born under the same sign can not be twins. Chapter three introduces Nigrdius's argument of the potter's wheel (see pg. 147). Chapter four proceeds to shatter the potter's wheel argument. At the heart of the potter's wheel vs. twins argument is a question. Does the positions of the stars at one's birth/conception determine their nature, and if this is true, does it mean that two people born under the same sign have identical qualities and fates?

Augustine uses Esau and Jacob to shatter this. He argues they were not only born under the same sign but at the same time. They were of opposite temperments and qualities. There was no natural affinity, as some astrologers argue there would be. Chapter five, an argument that the astrologers (called mathemeaticians) are vain. He shows how the evidence continually fails to support the astrologers arguments of astrological twins or of a stellar basis for predestination. Prognostication on the basis of astrology has coincidental successes but these are vastly out weighed by the repeated failures.

Ch. 6 - 10
Chapter six flouts the concept of astrological twins by adding fraternal twins into the mix. Chapter secen argues that like auguaries of auspicious days based on astrology is useless. He makes it sound like a complaint about weather casters. The tone aside, he presents an argument that it is a foolish practice. Chapter eight is a conter argument to fate as viewed by astrology. It argues that fate is dependent upon God's will, that contemporaries of the learned astrologers even recognized this. Chapter nine is a discussion of predetermanisim, among other things.

Augustine seems to argue that men can not have foreknowledge of circumstance unless by divine will. He argues that God is moniscent and therefore has foreknowledge. But, this foreknowledge does not preclude free will for man. And by virtue of man's free will, our lives are not predestined. It sets up a fucntionally self-contradicting statement. The omniscence would not be true if a limitation was placed on God's ability to forsee the future. But the ultimate knowledge of all actions and choices, doesn't it force the issue of predetermanisim? Augustine seems to circle the issue and then drop it with out any real discussion. The logical part of my brain says there is a way to state that predeterminism is false in this setting, but I can not find a way that is not self-contradicting. My heart accepts this, as does my mind. I just struggle for the logic to express it. I suppose it is a matter of faith and must be accepted as such.

Well, I spoke too soon in my commentary on chapter nine. Chapter ten is a discussion of free will; but in a round-about way. It first addresses the proverbial "Can God make a rock so heavy that God, who is all powerful, can not lift it?" That argument's response always seems to be a double negative. Or is self-contradicting or circular. And the logistical flaw is passed down to any argument built off of it. In this case, man being responsible for man's sins and actions. A Chinese fingertrap in words. These always fustrate me. Of course, I was always the one who tried to pull their finger out first.

Ch. 11 - 15
Chapter eleven is a praise of God's provision for life. Chapter twelve is an explination of Roman successes when not due to the worship of God. Augustine seems to argue that the persuit of liberty, justice and good conduct is that reason. Essentially stating if you're good, God rewards you, even if you don't worship God, despite your flaws. Augustine's quote of Cato (pg. 162, lines. 16 - 26) are true of our Republic. A good quote for Dan's website. Chapter thirteen argues the wise do not seek glory. Augustien takes ambition in the sense of seeking glory. He also says that the only bnefit one gains from this is that their efforts are spent on seeking glory, rather then other vices. Chapter fourteen is a warning to seek God's glory, not man's. Chapter fifteen is a statement that the virtuious Romans were rewarded by God.

Ch. 16 - 20
Chapter sixteen states that the examples set by the virtuious Romans should be followed by Christians. Chapter seventeen discusses the "fruits of the Roman's wars." Augustine opens by discussing the disparity between the laws of the Romans for thmselves and the rest of the empire. A fact I must look up or conferr with MaryKate about. I didn't know that there was a legal disparity as well as a social disparity. Augustine then discusses the social disparity. Both discussions note only injustice came from them. It seems the argument this chapter ultimately makes is that equality in law and social standing is morally correct and desireable. And that this is the status of a folower of Jesus in his Kingdom.

Chapter eighteen is a warning to the Christians against boasting or seeking earthly glory for their actions for the faith. Augustine shows how the actions, while good and/or heroic, are nothing new. Augustine's views on the Jewish subjgation by the Romans is not surprising (pg. 171, lines 1-9). Chapter ninteen opens with an effort to distinguish a desire for glorly and the desire to rule. The distinction seems to be between the quest for public power and the desire to be of public service. This distinction then becomes blurred as Augustien points out hypocrites. And the chapter ends with an admonishment to remember all rulers are in power by divine appointment, for a fixed period known only to God. Chapter twenty is an argument that virtues are not in service to base things like pleasure or vainglory but in service to God.

Ch. 21 - 25
Chapter twenty one is another reminder that God determines who is in power. Chapter twenty two continues the theme with the outcome of wars. Chapter twenty three recounts the fall of a pagan Goth King. Augustien argues this was an example and a warning for the pagan Romans. Chapter twenty four states the reasons why a Christian emperor would be deemed as happy. This is followed in chapter twenty five by the example of Constantine.

Ch. 26 - 28
Chapter twenty six continues the theme of the last chapter. The example used here is Theodosius. Given what I know of Roman history, Augusitine is painting an overly rosy picture of Theodosius. Chapter twenty seven is commentary on reported counter arguments being published in response to Augustine's previous works. Agustine effectively says these counter arguments are those of fools and teh ones who consider making them should look wise rather then prove their foolishness.

Originally published: 8/25/06

Book Review: The City of God - Book 4

Ch 1 - 5
Chapters one and two are summaries of the last two books. Chapter three argues that the happy and wise people can not truly say it is due to human action. Augustine argues that true happiness is not going to be accompanied by worries that one's wealth or livelyhood is going to be snatched away. Augustine contends that the true source of hapiness is faith, utter honesty, and love. All of these being a grace from God. Chapter four continues this argument. Augustine states that cravings and vices make men and nations miserable slaves.

Augustine compares these people to being theives. The fear of retribution and the loss of their gain clouds any joy they have. Augustine portrays nations as vast conferacy of theives and relates an interesting anecdote about Alexander the Great and a pirate (see pgs. 117-118). In chapter five, Augustine notes the general confusion of power won by terrorizing people (thieves?) and power won thru lawful conduct. Augustines describes the way that people of the former mode generally abused their people until they were overthrown. Also, how there was generally decadance and a lavacious life of license by these "thieves" in power. Again, this sounds disturbingly familiar.

Ch. 6 - 10
Chapter six gives an account of Ninus, who was reputed to be the father of empire building. An Assyrian, he broke the peace with his neighbor nations and built an empire. Augustine argues that all the motivations for empire building are some form of theivery. Augustine then proceeds to question the validity of the gods that permitted this in chapters seven thru eight. Augustine questions if the gods switched allegiances, there by allowing the conquest of the empires. He also asks what of the gods of the conquered. Augustine then looks from the empires that preceeded the Roman one to Rome. He asks the same question and then addresses a popular theory that the Romans truly worshipped one god, Jove, under an array of names and guises. In chapters nine and ten, he gives example of this theory and argues this is a self contradicting concept.

Ch. 11 - 15
Chapter eleven continues the arguments of chapter nine and ten. Augustine then relates the theory that all the world is God's body and the soul is God. He voices deep distress at the concept of comitting the murder of God by killing an animal or that one would literally be treading God underfoot. Augustine states this shames him to speak of it. Chapter thirteen continues this argument. He presents this as an irreconcilible paradox. Augustine questions in chapter fourteen if so many abstract concepts are deified, why is not soverignty. Augustine argues that the mere expansion of a kingdom due to no desire other then growth is commendable in the light of nations acting in accord with neighbors and are reluctant to war with those who have not wronged them. Augustine seems to argue in chapter fifteen that honest and upright people should not be empire building.

Ch 16 - 20
Chapter sixteen, Augustine argues that there was no obesayance to Quiet (goddess of Rest, as per his argument) by the Romans. He seems to state that this was due to ignorance of Christ. Augustine then argues Victory is not a goddess but a servant of God. He continues to say it is absurd to argue that Victory is a goddess. Chapter eighteen continues the premise of seventeen, but looking at Felicity and Fortuna. Felicity is argues as a servant like Victory. Fortuna's fickle nature is viewed as opposed to being a god in Augustine's eyes. Chapter ninteen continues the discussion of Fortuna as a goddess or not. Chapter twenty explains how these things, as well as virtue and faith are not gods. Augustine explains how they are gifts from God.

Ch 21 - 25
Chapter twenty one continues the arguments of chapter twenty. Chapter twenty two contends that Varro did the Romans a disservice by introducing multiple gods to them. Augustine contends in chapter twenty three that all beneficial things are a result of divine gift. Happiness is a result and a component of moral action. Augustine argues that if anything would be argued as a divinity, it would be felicity. Chapter twenty four is a serise of ruminations about why god's gifts are viewed as gods in themselves. Augustine seems to be arguing that it was confusing the gift with the giver. Chapter twenty-five is arguing that many worshipped God in advertantly, as the giver of felicity.

Ch. 26 - 30
Augustine argues that the plays performed by the Romas for their false gods were extorted. The account of Titus Latinus being afflicted with suffering to make the play happen. Chapter twenty seven is a discussion of the types of gods that the Roman philosopher Scaevola argued were taught by authors. This philosopher argued that the gods of the poets were fictitious. He argued the gods of the philosophers were self-contradictory and abstractions of the absurd. he stated that the gods of the princes of the cities (i.e. Varro) were political pandering and to be refuted as such. Scaevola, who was also a high priest, argues that the gods were beyond human attributes and hungers, and non-corporeal. He argues the worship of these gods by the common Latin/pagan are due to the delusion of these people by aforementioned figures. Chapter twenty eight questions if said worship was of any positive value. Such questioning concludes that it was useless. Chapter twenty nine focuses on the impact of this worship. Effectively, this chapter continues the argument that said worship was useless. Chapter thirty appears to continue and then conclude the earlier argument by stating (in effect) that Christians are wise, for the worship of God, not stones and christians are in a better state of affairs due to a firm rooting in truth.

Ch. 31 - 34
Chapter thirty one continues the first semi-positive statement re: Varro that I've seen. Augustine seems to argue that Varro held that the decadance and decay of society was due to the idol worship of the Romans rather then the worship of the Gods. Varro also contended that the Gods were part of a soul that governed the world. Varro is praised for these statements and the exhortion of the romans to adore their gods religeously. Augustine says that Varro was quite close to the truth and he regrets that social forces in Rome prohibited the dissemination of those ideas. Chapter thirty-two states that the continuance of native religions/sublimation of them into Roman faith was a political trick. Chapter thirty three argues that God has determined how long a nation will last. (Augustine is a predetermined?) Chapter thirty four upholds the Jews as a nation of example to follow (when they adhered to God's laws). Augustines states all that they had from God with out a need for a multitude of other item specific gods. Augustien notes that it was only the breaking from God's laws that they suffered. Augustine argues that the Jewish diaspora is fulfilling God's promice to the Jews of the destruction of false Gods.

Originally published: 8/25/2006

The Iron Lily - Part 17: The Blue Lady

Halthor, upon his pony, followed the woman in blue along the path as the dog pranced beside her. The dog gave a cheerful sounding yip and the woman looked down at the dog. "I see," she said, "And what happened?" The dog yipped and then growled. Halthor shook his head at the sight of a person conversing with a dog. He recalled his own annoyed mutterances at the animal earlier in the day but honestly thought someone would be half mad to think that the dog of all animals could understand anything more than basic commands.

"Elwis thinks you're a bit of a buffoon but good hearted," the woman who named herself Blue Lady said with a chuckle. "He also thinks that your better with the hammer than the axe. I know nothing about the former but if you are the one who was prophecied to come, then the hammer was waiting for you all this time." Halthor gave the dog an annoyed look. Apparently the dog had a name and somehow this unearthly woman who shone beneath the dim shadows of the trees knew it, knew the dog's low opinion of him, and more about this prophecy he was stuck in.

"My Lady," he said in his most courteous tone of voice, "If the hammer was waiting for me, for whom is the axe waiting for? And what is this prophecy? Prophecies are dangerous things to be caught up in." Her blond hair shone and she seemed untouched by the cold, though she wore but summer weight clothes. Halthor on the other hand was shivering from the cold, annoyed with the wind whistling past his ears and thankful that at least his beard kept his face somewhat warm when the wind wasn't in his face. "I have come a long way and have farther to go. Ancient evil hunts me and I am in danger beyond any I have ever known. My only kinsman is dead. Aside from the dog ... Aside from Elwis and this pony, I have no allies that I know of except for those whom the gods put on my path," he continued, trying to keep his frustration out of his voice, "Pray, tell me what I must know to complete this quest and return home."

The Blue Lady stopped walking and turned to look at him. She suddenly seemed more intimidating despite her deceptively small build. Perhaps it was the pale blue light that shone in her eyes. Perhaps it was the stern expression on her face. Either way, Halthor suddenly wondered if he had made a grave mistake. "Halthor, son of Alaric the builder and Sigrid the fair, you have no home but that which the gods give you," she said, "You shall have no home but that which the high ones give until you complete your quest. The soul eaters pursue you to steal the shard you carry. You shall gaurd it with your life until it is given into the hands of Count Olerand and it is passed unto his heir and then the child born to bear it."

Halthor reined up short when she stopped walking. The pony tossed its head and whickered. It was the first noise it had made since morning. The Blue Lady looked at it severely. "He must know if he is to carry it to the correct person. Failure means the end of ages for it is among the last of the soul shards in the world," she said sternly as though correcting an errant servant. The dog whined and she looked down at the dog. Her expression softened. "I know, you have both waited long for him. I know he is not the hero you expected. But he is the one who Father had chosen."

"The last child of my Father shall be born at the close of this age. She will reunite the soul shard with the great shard of the world that should have been," the Blue Lady explained, "You are but a pawn in Father's plan against the Defiler. I am only a guide. I would pity you for your place in this, but greater things await you than you would have had if you remained in Starhaven." Halthor looked up at the trees. The wind moaned and sighed through the high branches of the evergreens. A holly tree with berries blood bright shook its branches in a hard gust. "Come, we have not much farther to go," the elf-woman said. Halthor stared at her as she walked several steps forward on the path.

"You are one of the Good Folk," he said. The Blue Lady rolled her cornflower blue eyes and gave him an exasperated look. Somewhere a wolf howled and Halthor's awe of the fact that he had met a second demigod was overshadowed by a desire to find safety. Halthor looked over his shoulder to see if the place they started from was still visible behind them, suddenly concerned that one of the shadow creatures may have found his path. He stared with amazement when he saw hills rolling away behind him and no sign of the wood he had begun on the evergreen path in. He was instead at the edge of a clearing on the top of a high hill where he saw a river winding between the lower hills below and a smudge at the riverside where smoke arose. "Is that Weck-in-Wood?" he asked quietly.

The Blue Lady took hold of the pony's bridle and urged it forward upon the path again. Suddenly, a road lined with evergreens of every kind surrounded him. "Do not go off the path," she said sharply. "I shall take the lead and guide you. The hour of dusk is drawing near. Even upon the trodden paths, you are not safe from the soul hunters." Halthor sat meekly upon the pony as his guide lead him forward what seemed only a few dozen footfalls. She stopped and there before them was a glade at the edge of another forest. A traveler's rest was there but it was not like the others he had seen. Where the others had been built of wood, this was built of stone. A sturdy wooden door was at the entrance, not a mere flap of leather to be pegged down against the wind. On the leeward side of the building was a pile of wood. Dusk was beginning to fall and the sky had just begun to take on the faint orange that heralded the rose of twilight.

"Quickly, you haven't much time," the woman with blond hair and dressed for summer said as she looked about them. Halthor dismounted and began to take his belongings off of the pony. "No," the elf-woman commanded, "Wood. Fetch wood and start a fire. I will bring these in." Halthor walked up to the pile of wood and pulled out a hefty armload. As he muscled it into the traveler's rest, he saw that the building could have been someone's cottage if one actually lived in the deep wood. He knelt at the cold fireplace and started stacking wood to make a fire. As he fussed with his tinderbox, the Blue Lady carried in some of his goods. It was once he actually had gotten a fire successfully started that he turned away. The last of twilight was beginning to fade from the sky.

He picked up a burning brand to carry as a torch to bear in more wood when the woman in blue stopped him. "The fire will burn until dawn. The hearth fire of my home does not go out when I am in it," she said. Halthor stared at her. He mutely replaced the wood back on the fire and sat down on the chair that was carved in one piece from a massive chunk of wood. "The spring where the river begins is in this glade. I have hidden it, but it is here. You will not want for water, or food. Like you, I eat." She then stood and got down an iron pot from a shelf that it rightly shouldn't have been sitting upon with more ease than Halthor expected. As the Blue Lady went from crock to crock she took a bit of this and that. She dropped items into her pot and then set it over the fire. "Good pot, boil a bit and make us a bite," she commanded the pot.

To Halthor's amazement, the pot was suddenly seething with a roiling boil and the savory smell of stew arose from it. "That'll be ready in a minute. I'm afraid I haven't wine. Sweet water, however, I have aplently." Halthor looked at the woman standing fireside. For a moment, he felt as he did when he was a small child sitting by his mother. The golden haired woman seemed talled for a moment and he felt a brief sense of a child's security of being home. The moment was fleeting and when it passed, Halthor closed his eyes against the sudden tears that threatened. The elf-woman gave no sign of noticing Halthor's moment of confusing memory and present time as she bustled about setting the small table for their meal.

Deamon's Kiss (pt. 2) (NSFW)

This is erotic horror. This is not safe for work. Read at your discretion.

That moment when ...

My day today!

Dear Reader,

I don't know if it has happened to you but ever get so caught up working on one thing that you totally forget to work on the other things? Yeah, that was today. I started my NaNoWriMo project early because I clearly anticipate the second half of November being chaos. I suppose that makes me a NaNo rebel, or a cheater. I'm not sure and I'm not going to worry about it (or word count). I'm writing a novella length book out by hand again.

Last NaNoWriMo, I started a novel by hand but didn't finish it. I wound up finishing the thing out last spring, sort of. I've got more to add to it and I picked up another two notebooks. Today, I lost a significant portion of my writing time to fixing research mistakes. I like to have my references correct, thank you very much. No casual citations here, my friend. (Seriously, when I'm working on non-fiction, all of my habits from writing papers in college come back. Right down to making the bulleted outline so detailed that I'm writing the paper as bullet points. I had an instructor ask me why I was turning in a rough draft with bad punctuation when they asked for an outline. They were gobsmacked when I explained that was my outline. I then proceeded to turn it into a 100 page paper. Aced the course.)

I have some mild cramping in my hand from writing all day but I don't mind it much. It was the neck cramp from being bent over a book all day that got me. I forgot how bad my posture gets when I start writing by hand on a desk that is slightly too low. Time to clear of space at the real desk and get to work tomorrow on it all. That said, I'll post the next bit for Halthor tomorrow.

The scheduled post is going to go live as of midnight. Friendly reminder, that post is erotic horror and NOT safe for work or children. I would start listing triggers but this thing is full of them and the list would probably be as long as this post. Let's just say if you are a survivor of assault, sexual assault, or psychological abuse, you should skip the serial story The Deamon's Kiss. I wrote it as an attempt to process my own experiences of trauma. It is part of the reason why I write horror, to make sense of what happened to me.

Delayed post.

Dear Reader,

If you were looking for the second half of Halthor's meeting the Daughter of the Woods, you'll have to check back in tomorrow. Today was a day of pure chaos. I blame the fact that I actually got stuff done over the weekend and when the kids had their four days off from school (counting the weekend). Tomorrow, I aim to have the rest of that up as well as something special of an update for how the other books are going. Right now, I have some work for NaNoWriMo to do.

I'll be attempting NaBloPoMo at the same time as NaNoWriMo. It may be a little bit cracked up for me to try it but I've already got my papers saying I'm crazy so why not?

Flora et Fauna: Who eats who?

Dear Reader,

World building is easy after you've decided that you have a world to build in, right? Just slap some characters in there and you're set. One problem, somewhere in the story, they have to eat. You can have characters running, jumping, and sword fighting on some monstrously terrifying precipice. But there is going to be down time between scenes of epic battles. Some of those down time scenes are going to include mundane details like food. As strange as this sounds, food can be an important element of your story line.

What's Game of Thrones with out that mysterious stew known as 'bowl of brown'? What's the entire Lord of the Rings with out lembas? A story that loses some of its hold on the reader because reality can only be suspended so far. And the question of food doesn't just mean you have to keep reality consistent within your book, it also asks what motivates the big monsters in your story. Seeking food and the basics needed to survive can make your story have depth and add interesting subplots. (Gollum tossing the lembas off the cliff and sprinkling crumbs on Samwise Gamgee, anyone?)

Honestly, having a rampaging dragon because they're hangry is far more disturbing than a rampaging dragon because it is Tuesday in the third week of October. How do you appease a gigantic fire breathing creature that is as prone to roast and eat you as it may be to verbally pin your ears back for daring to wear its least favorite color when you came to call? We have all experienced hangry at some point in time. It's a mild form of insanity that can be taken to horrific scale with a little bit of clever writing.

So, when you're doing your world building, pause a moment to consider the food chain. Because it can prove a really nifty bit of backstory plot development and something to draw on when you hit a snag in writing.

Craft of Writing: Stare at the Page/Screen FOREVER

Dear Reader,

You know that special feeling. The one when you sit down to a blank piece of paper with a pen in hand convinced you've got nothing at all to say. So you sit there and stare at it for what feels like an eternity. Maybe you write a few lines about how you have nothing to say, not a damn thing at all for inspiration.

I am pretty sure it was Sinclair Lewis who was the wit that said the trick to writing a novel was staring at the page until drops of blood formed on your forehead and then staring some more.

Some of the hardest days writing are the days where it feels like a chore. Some of the hardest days writing are the days where all you can think of is your grocery list and where the hell did you put your good socks, because you're sick of the ones with the holes in them. Even if you write one line, however, it is still a good day. Because you showed up to make the attempt. And even if you didn't get one line down, you still showed up to make the attempt.

I give myself a minimum of fifteen minutes to try to make something work on paper. If I can't get farther than a few bullet points of ideas, I take a break. Then I try again later, because inspiration may happen while I'm in the middle of washing a ton of dishes. (Because OF COURSE it happens while you're elbows deep in mucky dishwater with a wash rag in hand and your computer charging in the other room!)

It helps me to remember that none of us, not even the EXPERTS!!!1!elventyone really know what we're doing until we're done writing the damn manuscript. And that manuscript isn't actually done until we're finished with all the editing and revisions. So no one knows what in hell is going on in the entire writing process until the manuscript itself magically decides it is finished. It's reassuring to know that we are all THIS GUY:

Book Review: The City of God - Book 3

Ch. 1 - 5
Chapter one and two recount book two. Chapters three through five continue the argument of how the pagan gods are false, adding their capricious infliction of punishment for indiscretions. Augustine also presents the god engendered hero as a publicity act to better a town, city or nation's image.

Ch. 6 - 10
This is a slow and tiresom reading. All that Augustine appears to be saying is how false the pagan gods are.

Ch. 11 - 15
Augustine's exposition on the false nature of the pagan gods wavers to a discussion of Roman amorality going back to the founding of the city. He upholds the patricides and fratricides of the early kings, including Romulus. He also states that the deification of Romulus was to cover up not only his indescretions but also the murder of Romulus by the Senate.

Ch. 16 - 20
In these chapters, Augustine relates the damage done by the internicene struggles of the Counsels. He also shows how Rome's allys faired during various wars. Augustine shows not only the general state of disreputable dealings within Rome but also how Rome's amoral internal politics created breakdowns in foregin affairs. Augustine also presents these problems as proof to the non-existance or malevolence of the Roman gods. He takes a brief glance at the fall of Troy, the theoretical ancestory city of Rome, to show the same malevolence is a standing issue.

Augustine's argument appears to be that these gods are failing their worshippers by their apparent refusal to inerviene in the various problems or to punish the parties responcible for the transgressions theat lead to the problems. Much of Augustine's discription make me think of the current state of affairs in the politics of the United States. While we're not so corrupt as to have our political opponent executed or exiled, it is almost a duplicate of the social ailments of the Roman empire. A rather concept when one takes a hard look at it.

Ch. 21 - 25
In these chapters, Augustine continues his catalog of Roman impropriety and the mifortune that followed. Augustine also notes the apparent incongruity between professing homage to the goddess Concordia while embracing discord as their way of life.

Ch. 26 - 30
Slave's war = uprising lead by the Gladiators?

Augustine describes the various civil wars. He even compares the barbarian warfare to the Romans. The barbarians came out looking better.

Ch. 31
Augustine declares teh people who blame Christians for the past misery to be fools. He also suggests that the misfortunes are perhaps God's punishment to them.

Originally published: 8/24/06

Book Review: The City of God - Book 2

Ch. 1
Augustine seems to refuse to make the text simpler then it is due to the fact that this is as simple as he can make it.

Ch. 2
A reiteration/summary of Book 1.

Ch. 3
Augustine argues that the suffering of the Roman pagans are due to idolitry, not the presence of Christians.

Ch. 4
Augustine hilights the flaws of the pagans where not amended by their false gods. He argues the Romans were decieved by spirits of evil to believe those devils were gods.

Ch. 5
Augustine argues the virtious of the pagans would not want to riblad and/or obscene behaviours used in obesayance to the pagan gods to be used to honor their own mothers. Augustines ays the rites of the mother of the pagan gods are a good example of this. He proceeds to show how this goddess abased good men and her sacrifices were such to offend good men in any other setting.

Ch. 6
Augustine argues the capricious nature of the pagan gods is a proof of their disregard of their worshippers.

Ch. 7
the vices of the pagan gods are a stronger example of the society's accepcted behavior rather then the wisdom of philosophers. The works of the philosophers lack the "divine" authority of the examples given and Christ's teachings. Augustines notes many pagans use the examples of the pagan gods as an excuse for their misbehaviors.

Ch. 8
In this as well as many other chapter I've read thus far, Augustine argues how the practices of the sacred and the secular plays were hot beds of impropriety. Augustine notes particularly in this chapter that the celebration of the flaws of the pagan gods were a source of approval. Augustine says that if these gods were examples of proper behavior, they'd have been offended by the improprieties and culumnities associated with themselves. He then says that these gods obviously are not offended because they hadn't punished their followers.

Ch. 9
Augustine notes the Greeks allowed the comedians to mock any and everybody. The Romans didn't allow such a liberal toung, placing prohibitions on slander. Augustine seems to be presenting this as a double standard.

Ch. 10 - 15
This is a continuation of an argument against the glorification of unwholesome deeds. Augustine appears to also be saying that the actors and comedians who were the driving force of the plays (sacred and secular) are people of questionable character. The Greeks assumed that because the Gods required the acts for the sake of respectable worship, then the parties associated with them are respectable individuals. The romans acknowledged the apparent necessity of the actions, they found the actions objectionable and the parties associated.

Augustine then proceeds to state that if the actions are to be objected to, then the Gods requiring them must be as well. He argues these objectionable gods are false. Proceeding to state that some are mearly glorification of vanity, elevating men to the status of gods complete with the flaws.

Ch. 16 - 20
The earlier discussion leads into a recounting of the ignoble history of Rome, in brief. Augustine states this proves that the tempestious problems of Rome are rooted in their own actions and are a long standing problem from before even teh conception of Christ. This is a rebuttal to what apparently is a common proverb of the time: "It won't rain because of the Christian."

Augustine states in the midst of recounting this history that an acclaimed historian stated that Romans were honest and virtuous by naturea s well as habit. He proceeds to show the "virtue" of the Romans throught this recounted history. Augustine sets this in relation to the example of their Gods and demi-gods. He says the laws of Rome and the expectations for virtue are not a result of good guidance from the gods. if they were, then they'd be good gods giving good examples and honored by honorable conduct. He upholds Christ's example and the expectation for worship and behavior by God's followers. Augustine then says the foolish will remain foolish and cling to their ways. He expresses contempt for them and their ways.

Ch. 21 - 25
It is possible to say that Augustine's argument is that the Roman Gods permitted, assisted and encouraged the impropriety of various individuals.

Ch. 26 - 29
Augustine exhorts the Romans to reject impropriety, extravagance and avariceness. He also calls them to reject paganism, saying it is a doorway of evil. Augustine notes a trend of keeping wholesome and good things as secrets and hidden. He suggests some sense of shame for good things. Augustine notes a welath of headonism and ribaldry, even a public celebration of the amoral. Augustine seems to point at paganism as the root of this behavior.

Summary:
Book one is a discussion of Rome's fall from an apologistic Christan standpoint. It also is a discussion of war and it's effects. Book two argues the fall of Rome was due to amoral behavior and life style. Augustine places the blame on Roman paganism, stating that the Roman gods are not truly gods but devils. Augustine's logic is that gods provide good examples for their people to provide for their well being and attend to their people during times of need.

Originally published: 8/24/06