In Evandar's sub-kingdom of Dakon-Bar (which translates to Dragon Wood in the ancient language of this sub-kingdom's people) is the forest of Dragonwood that covers the majority of the kingdom. In the center of the forest is a hill with a cavern entrance. This cavern stretches beneath much of the hill with a cleverly built and long forgotten second entrance at a gnarled and ancient oak tree known only as the Lonely Oak. The natural entrance of the caves is where a stream flows forth to a bog before winding away to meet with the larger Wyeck river that runs past the villages of Aldstone and Wyeck-on-the-Hill. (Both villages are well known for their mills. Wyeck-on-the-Hill is the site of one of Dakon-Bar's two substantial waterfalls.)
The Lonely Oak is featured in many stories of the region. It is said to be where Freyr Greenwood, lord of the forest host of elves, courted his bride Gerða. It is also said to be the tree where he laid to rest after being wounded in combat before mysteriously disappearing never to be seen again by his people or those of men. The Lonely Oak is also said to be the tree of the Grey Lady of the Forest, a benevolent spirit who lays claim upon the clanless folk of the forest and comes forth to advise the High King during times of great distress for the land. Some argue that the Grey Lady is a mortal woman and others argue the Grey Lady is some manner of magical being. Tales of the Grey Lady have seen a resurgence over the last several years since the rise of King Askemb.
The most prominent folk tale being shared is of how the Grey Lady brings a feast to the lost and the deserted before claiming them as her people. There are rumors of a powerful being within the forest that can be found within the cavern or at the Lonely Oak but none who have gone searching for them has returned.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Monday, July 30, 2018
Lo, the Writer emerges!
Dear Reader,
Camp NaNoWriMo is complete. I cheated a little bit and worked on three different things at the same time. The nice thing is that I finished up one story arc, have the beginnings of another work, and I'm about a third of the way into what was my main Camp project. The other two came about during bouts and fits of writer's block.
Book seven of the Umbrel Chronicles series remains stalled. This is because my children keep trying to read over my shoulder and that is not child friendly content. When they go back to school, I get back to work on it. I am having some bugs worked out of the process of getting books three and four out on the market. Life got busy and I haven't had a chance to order proofs yet. (I'm sorry, to everyone who tried the links and got nothing out of them, I'm trying to fix this.)
I am also working on digital copies of the first trilogy. After some experimentation and failures with some different works, it looks like I have to make some major format changes for the books in order to publish them digitally. This is much harder than it seems. Because I'm not very good with tech. Pen and paper, I'm fantastic. Needle and thread, even better. Ones and zeros, not so much (be it mathematically or digitally to be honest).
I'm getting back to work, though. Look for more content over the next few weeks. Thanks for sticking with me.
♥
Camp NaNoWriMo is complete. I cheated a little bit and worked on three different things at the same time. The nice thing is that I finished up one story arc, have the beginnings of another work, and I'm about a third of the way into what was my main Camp project. The other two came about during bouts and fits of writer's block.
Book seven of the Umbrel Chronicles series remains stalled. This is because my children keep trying to read over my shoulder and that is not child friendly content. When they go back to school, I get back to work on it. I am having some bugs worked out of the process of getting books three and four out on the market. Life got busy and I haven't had a chance to order proofs yet. (I'm sorry, to everyone who tried the links and got nothing out of them, I'm trying to fix this.)
I am also working on digital copies of the first trilogy. After some experimentation and failures with some different works, it looks like I have to make some major format changes for the books in order to publish them digitally. This is much harder than it seems. Because I'm not very good with tech. Pen and paper, I'm fantastic. Needle and thread, even better. Ones and zeros, not so much (be it mathematically or digitally to be honest).
I'm getting back to work, though. Look for more content over the next few weeks. Thanks for sticking with me.
♥
Friday, July 13, 2018
Something Science Fiction.
Dear Reader,
I took a break from the novel I'm writing to whip this up. Consider it a thank you for sticking with me. As Monty Python says, And Now For Something Entirely Different:
~*~*~*~*~*~
As she walked down the center of the corridor, Angel's boots clanked against the grid marked metal. If there were dust on those boots, it may have sifted down into the vent system's cleaning functional down draft. Considering that as ship captain, Angel was too high priority for the corporation to send her planet side, those boots were immaculate. It was dead watch hour. The previous captain slept during the final watch of the night. It was a luxury. Angel was up from the start of the final watch until the beginning of third watch. Constantly in motion, constantly at work and monitoring her ship and crew, Angel was said to be the epitome of the interstellar command's ideal captain.
It wasn't much of surprise. She was engineered for military type exercise. There was enough machine in the cyborg that she overcame the 3 second delay for human reflexes. There was enough code in her neural system that she spoke fluently with machines via the neural-link. The last captain was a wealthy human. He bought his position. Money did not make him adequate. Thus, when the corporation needed someone to retake control of the ship, they purchased Angel.
Now, Angel knew what her duty was. Command the ship and make sure that the heliosphere was secure. The sub-corona orbit should have rendered the equipment in her useless. She should have been laying on the deck seizing as the neural-link shut down. The ship should have been falling into the photosphere because there was no proper explanation for why it remained up. Angel wasn't the machine they wanted. The corporation considered this a failed mission when the previous captain refused the sub-corona orbit and went rogue. The hope was that Angel's system was enough to force past the previous captain's security measures to make the ship transmit data back before the catastrophic failure of the systems happened and the ship plunged into Sol, just as the last attempt did.
Angel, however, had her first real taste of freedom on ship. With out the security corps around her, with out the entire regiment running the Gauntlet in punishment for her defiance (which should have been eliminated by the programming), Angel could at last be somewhat human. It was all she had wanted. When she accessed the ship, she learned that the rumors of criminal's being used for revere uplink experimentation were true. A man whose name was Aeolus who was uploaded into the ship forcibly formed the ship's consciousness. Somehow, Aeolus was sane. The previous captain insisted the ship was defective, but it was Aeolus refusing his commands because they put the crew in danger.
Now, in the darkness of the dead watch, Angel walked the corridor of the ship with what some would have called a hallucination of Aeolus. Most nights, they said very little to each other via the neural-link. They simply were in each other's company. Aeolus was hesitant to dive into the sun. Angel had no desire to die as well. Thus, it was through the three year long journey to the sun from the point where she had boarded that they calculated an orbit that would keep the ship moving on the magnetic currents flowing over the star. Just barely within the sub-corona zone but high enough that the ship's shielding could keep systems running, they skated on the edge of death and gathered data.
The official report back was an overwhelming mass of data roughly organized. The corporation didn't know that Aeolus was once a scientist. They didn't know that his crime was committed long before the corporation's founding, of speaking a truth about the environment that leaders didn't want to hear. Once stasis systems were developed, Aeolus was placed in one. Irony that his own technology was used to imprison him didn't surprise Aeolus. He simply looked at his keepers who were placing him into the pod and said, "One day, I'll return. And a storm of all storms will be unleashed."
Aeolus was working on a stasis system to contain and sustain the stellar environment so that Sol did not swell to a giant star or collapse into a dwarf. It was the protoypes that got turned into prison systems where prisoners were trapped in a suspended animation state. As the systems became more advanced and things like the neural-link were developed, Aeolus was the first one lifted up out of suspended animation to have things tested on him. Aeolus knew exactly what Angel had gone through.
Now, trapped within a computer system, Aeolus sifted through data at a speed that was even greater than Angel could process. And he came to a conclusion that it was time to leave. The first cataclysmic eruption was about to happen. "Turn five degrees on the z axis and twelve on y," Angel said out loud, her voice echoing in the silence. The image of a forty year old man dressed in officer's rank garb with out insignia nodded. Angel looked over at him. "Are you sure this is it?" she asked.
"If my calculations are correct, we'll reach Earth in eight minutes. The CME will pass through the orbit path but not reach Earth. It will be at least one Juipter radius away from Luna. The sky will light with fire, but they won't be harmed. Then we have three days before the next ejection. Time enough to gather supplies and set our route," he answered. Angel looked down at her boots. Black ones, standard issue. In a half hour, they were about to be on Earth and then she was going to raid the seed vault at the Antartic before launching again in a desperate attempt to flee the shock wave of the beginnings of stellar collapse. If they were lucky, the sentient ship of eighteen souls, one cyborg, and a cat, would escape the Oort cloud with out damage and reach deep space to follow the route of the last interstellar traveler to move through the system to sanctuary on an M class planet.
"It is time, go to your quarters. All systems are secure. The crew are quartered and all hatches are battened down." Aeolus said, a trace of humor in his final statement. Angel looked over at him. "Storm's a brewin', cap'n." Aeolus said in his best imitation of the pirates of antiquity. Angel turned and entered her quarters. As she laid down in the stasis system pod, Aeolus set to the work of making sure that they were in correct orientation for their launch out of the sun. He laughed at the idea. For the first time in a hundred and fifty years, he felt almost human again. Down beneath that magneto-sphere, the star shuddered.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Musical inspiration:
The Way from Zack Hemsey
I took a break from the novel I'm writing to whip this up. Consider it a thank you for sticking with me. As Monty Python says, And Now For Something Entirely Different:
~*~*~*~*~*~
As she walked down the center of the corridor, Angel's boots clanked against the grid marked metal. If there were dust on those boots, it may have sifted down into the vent system's cleaning functional down draft. Considering that as ship captain, Angel was too high priority for the corporation to send her planet side, those boots were immaculate. It was dead watch hour. The previous captain slept during the final watch of the night. It was a luxury. Angel was up from the start of the final watch until the beginning of third watch. Constantly in motion, constantly at work and monitoring her ship and crew, Angel was said to be the epitome of the interstellar command's ideal captain.
It wasn't much of surprise. She was engineered for military type exercise. There was enough machine in the cyborg that she overcame the 3 second delay for human reflexes. There was enough code in her neural system that she spoke fluently with machines via the neural-link. The last captain was a wealthy human. He bought his position. Money did not make him adequate. Thus, when the corporation needed someone to retake control of the ship, they purchased Angel.
Now, Angel knew what her duty was. Command the ship and make sure that the heliosphere was secure. The sub-corona orbit should have rendered the equipment in her useless. She should have been laying on the deck seizing as the neural-link shut down. The ship should have been falling into the photosphere because there was no proper explanation for why it remained up. Angel wasn't the machine they wanted. The corporation considered this a failed mission when the previous captain refused the sub-corona orbit and went rogue. The hope was that Angel's system was enough to force past the previous captain's security measures to make the ship transmit data back before the catastrophic failure of the systems happened and the ship plunged into Sol, just as the last attempt did.
Angel, however, had her first real taste of freedom on ship. With out the security corps around her, with out the entire regiment running the Gauntlet in punishment for her defiance (which should have been eliminated by the programming), Angel could at last be somewhat human. It was all she had wanted. When she accessed the ship, she learned that the rumors of criminal's being used for revere uplink experimentation were true. A man whose name was Aeolus who was uploaded into the ship forcibly formed the ship's consciousness. Somehow, Aeolus was sane. The previous captain insisted the ship was defective, but it was Aeolus refusing his commands because they put the crew in danger.
Now, in the darkness of the dead watch, Angel walked the corridor of the ship with what some would have called a hallucination of Aeolus. Most nights, they said very little to each other via the neural-link. They simply were in each other's company. Aeolus was hesitant to dive into the sun. Angel had no desire to die as well. Thus, it was through the three year long journey to the sun from the point where she had boarded that they calculated an orbit that would keep the ship moving on the magnetic currents flowing over the star. Just barely within the sub-corona zone but high enough that the ship's shielding could keep systems running, they skated on the edge of death and gathered data.
The official report back was an overwhelming mass of data roughly organized. The corporation didn't know that Aeolus was once a scientist. They didn't know that his crime was committed long before the corporation's founding, of speaking a truth about the environment that leaders didn't want to hear. Once stasis systems were developed, Aeolus was placed in one. Irony that his own technology was used to imprison him didn't surprise Aeolus. He simply looked at his keepers who were placing him into the pod and said, "One day, I'll return. And a storm of all storms will be unleashed."
Aeolus was working on a stasis system to contain and sustain the stellar environment so that Sol did not swell to a giant star or collapse into a dwarf. It was the protoypes that got turned into prison systems where prisoners were trapped in a suspended animation state. As the systems became more advanced and things like the neural-link were developed, Aeolus was the first one lifted up out of suspended animation to have things tested on him. Aeolus knew exactly what Angel had gone through.
Now, trapped within a computer system, Aeolus sifted through data at a speed that was even greater than Angel could process. And he came to a conclusion that it was time to leave. The first cataclysmic eruption was about to happen. "Turn five degrees on the z axis and twelve on y," Angel said out loud, her voice echoing in the silence. The image of a forty year old man dressed in officer's rank garb with out insignia nodded. Angel looked over at him. "Are you sure this is it?" she asked.
"If my calculations are correct, we'll reach Earth in eight minutes. The CME will pass through the orbit path but not reach Earth. It will be at least one Juipter radius away from Luna. The sky will light with fire, but they won't be harmed. Then we have three days before the next ejection. Time enough to gather supplies and set our route," he answered. Angel looked down at her boots. Black ones, standard issue. In a half hour, they were about to be on Earth and then she was going to raid the seed vault at the Antartic before launching again in a desperate attempt to flee the shock wave of the beginnings of stellar collapse. If they were lucky, the sentient ship of eighteen souls, one cyborg, and a cat, would escape the Oort cloud with out damage and reach deep space to follow the route of the last interstellar traveler to move through the system to sanctuary on an M class planet.
"It is time, go to your quarters. All systems are secure. The crew are quartered and all hatches are battened down." Aeolus said, a trace of humor in his final statement. Angel looked over at him. "Storm's a brewin', cap'n." Aeolus said in his best imitation of the pirates of antiquity. Angel turned and entered her quarters. As she laid down in the stasis system pod, Aeolus set to the work of making sure that they were in correct orientation for their launch out of the sun. He laughed at the idea. For the first time in a hundred and fifty years, he felt almost human again. Down beneath that magneto-sphere, the star shuddered.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Musical inspiration:
The Way from Zack Hemsey
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Camp NaNoWriMo: Day 10
Dear Reader,
It is day ten of the campaign. Rations are running low. The enemy forces have attempted sabotage and distraction at an increasing rate. Fortunately, the schoolmaster's brigade is keeping them at bay for a few hours a day. When they slip free from the schoolmaster's forces, the small army are particularly ferocious. It is only by bribing them with our rations that we can achieve a temporary truce. Said bribery must happen on a regular basis or they begin audio warfare. The chants of "Mom, we're hungry!" are slowly robbing me of my sanity. Thankfully, the reinforcements arrive near dusk and the enemy is held off by the forces of the father and then sleep claims them.
Please, pray for me. I am three days behind the main force. I believe the enemy can tell my weaknesses and are attempting to use them against me. Adorable children are my bane, dear friend. I shall send my next missive as soon as I reach 15K.
Regards,
Deb
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Prompts for the week:
Your most hilarious incident involving spoiled food.
Anon. quote ~ The best way to tell a lie is to tell the truth ... carefully edited truth.
If you were Jack Bauer for a day, you would ... (Insert any other action hero if you didn't watch 24.)
Your verbal pet peeves?
Rules your children follow in public places but not at home.
It is day ten of the campaign. Rations are running low. The enemy forces have attempted sabotage and distraction at an increasing rate. Fortunately, the schoolmaster's brigade is keeping them at bay for a few hours a day. When they slip free from the schoolmaster's forces, the small army are particularly ferocious. It is only by bribing them with our rations that we can achieve a temporary truce. Said bribery must happen on a regular basis or they begin audio warfare. The chants of "Mom, we're hungry!" are slowly robbing me of my sanity. Thankfully, the reinforcements arrive near dusk and the enemy is held off by the forces of the father and then sleep claims them.
Please, pray for me. I am three days behind the main force. I believe the enemy can tell my weaknesses and are attempting to use them against me. Adorable children are my bane, dear friend. I shall send my next missive as soon as I reach 15K.
Regards,
Deb
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Prompts for the week:
Your most hilarious incident involving spoiled food.
Anon. quote ~ The best way to tell a lie is to tell the truth ... carefully edited truth.
If you were Jack Bauer for a day, you would ... (Insert any other action hero if you didn't watch 24.)
Your verbal pet peeves?
Rules your children follow in public places but not at home.
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Taking a break from writing, to write some more.
Gentle Reader,
I am presently working on writing a book. I've managed to write myself into a corner. Thus, I am posting here to give you all an update on how things are going. My doctors have made some adjustments to the medications I am taking. Fortunately, my mercurial health insurance company agreed to go along with these changes. As such, I am on the path to better health.
The diabetes thing is still very much a work in progress. My blood sugar numbers are beginning to come into the range of 'normal' as long as I maintain my strict dietary protocol. I have lost a significant amount of weight in the process of it all. My general practitioner is of the opinion that there may need to be further medication adjustments made. I see him in a month and a half to assess what progress has been made. It is a struggle that I refuse to lose. I simply can not accept the idea that I'm going to lose my health and welfare because my pancreas is not working properly. I know of many diabetic people who are healthy and manage their condition well. It is my goal to be among them.
My depression is much improved with the help of my psychiatrist. Having a doctor that actually listens to me is a wondrous thing. I am not going to say I am entirely past the depressive episode, but I think once I adjust to the new medication situation I will be. Just another week or so. I know that I am improving because I am writing again and I have a little less despair over everything. I am a touch stumped on how to proceed forward with this blog. I have a poll that you can take that would help me out a great deal.
We are currently dealing with oppressive heat and humidity. Fortunately, I haven't been a ball of pain due to migraines. I'm not sure if that will happen when the front finally comes through and the heat wave breaks. Still, things are improving to the point that I am able to see clearly with out my glasses for the most part and I can keep up with my busy children (and almost as busy husband). This is a huge improvement over where I was at just a month ago. Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers. I am sure they helped as much as the assistance of my care providers.
Yours in gratitude,
Deb
I am presently working on writing a book. I've managed to write myself into a corner. Thus, I am posting here to give you all an update on how things are going. My doctors have made some adjustments to the medications I am taking. Fortunately, my mercurial health insurance company agreed to go along with these changes. As such, I am on the path to better health.
The diabetes thing is still very much a work in progress. My blood sugar numbers are beginning to come into the range of 'normal' as long as I maintain my strict dietary protocol. I have lost a significant amount of weight in the process of it all. My general practitioner is of the opinion that there may need to be further medication adjustments made. I see him in a month and a half to assess what progress has been made. It is a struggle that I refuse to lose. I simply can not accept the idea that I'm going to lose my health and welfare because my pancreas is not working properly. I know of many diabetic people who are healthy and manage their condition well. It is my goal to be among them.
My depression is much improved with the help of my psychiatrist. Having a doctor that actually listens to me is a wondrous thing. I am not going to say I am entirely past the depressive episode, but I think once I adjust to the new medication situation I will be. Just another week or so. I know that I am improving because I am writing again and I have a little less despair over everything. I am a touch stumped on how to proceed forward with this blog. I have a poll that you can take that would help me out a great deal.
We are currently dealing with oppressive heat and humidity. Fortunately, I haven't been a ball of pain due to migraines. I'm not sure if that will happen when the front finally comes through and the heat wave breaks. Still, things are improving to the point that I am able to see clearly with out my glasses for the most part and I can keep up with my busy children (and almost as busy husband). This is a huge improvement over where I was at just a month ago. Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers. I am sure they helped as much as the assistance of my care providers.
Yours in gratitude,
Deb
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