Dear Reader,
I have a confession to make. I'm stuck. I am completely blocked on how to move forward any of my serial stories on here. I just stare at the page and go 'wut r werds?' until it's so painful I have to go do something else. I'm trying to get unstuck but it's not working so great. Give me a few weeks and hopefully, I'll claw my way out of this. While I could joke that I'm giving up serial stories for Lent, I'm not Catholic so I can't make that joke.
I apologize and ask your patience.
Dear Reader,
In case it isn't obvious, my week has been complete tumult and posting here has been difficult. Aside from the challenges of having the kids home from school on winter break (which I completely forgot about), I am waiting to hear back from the eye doctor just what exactly is wrong with my eyes and how much of a risk do I have for glaucoma? Tomorrow, I get to go to the blood draw station in the next town over to get my A1C tested in preparation for my diabetes follow up (maintenance?) visit with my family doctor. I've been playing phone tag with the care coordinator for my family doctor's office to get some questions about diabetes answered. The end result of getting ahold of her was more questions than answers and the distinct feeling that there is a massive communication gap between the two of us. It makes me think I should get a referral to a nutritionist, if my health insurance will even cover that.
I have been struggling to keep up with my daily writing that I do aside from blogging. My therapy journal is a mess. My daily journal is a mess. And we won't even talk about the state of my daily planner/household notebook. I am frustrated because all my effort just leads to me spinning my wheels right now. Heck, I haven't had time to do any reading really. I've got Gabino Inglesias's Zero Saints on my Kindle to read and I haven't gotten past the opening scene. (It was an awesome scene by the way.)
I got my non-fiction project done. I had everything all set up to publish through Lulu.com when it became apparent that Lulu.com is back up to their shenanigans. The front end of the site is real pretty. But it's not going well on the back end. They're messing with people's work and screwing up orders. So, now I'm working on trying to find another site I can publish through aside from KDP. I'm hoping to figure out something that is more flexible in format than KDP because I have other works that really would be better with a different binding than the glued soft cover that they offer. I was working with Lulu.com because they offered that wider range of binding formats and it's mildly vexing that they're falling back into bad habits that makes their business model not very user friendly (or consumer friendly).
Dear Reader,
I found my notebook! It was filled with illegible marginalia and large pictures of robots. The kids had decided they were going to help me be creative. I am attempting to decipher my notes beneath these things. It's a bit busy over here and I've got a child working on catching up on some missed work from the last few units in social studies. I may not be getting the updates for the Iron Lily or Dacia's War to you this week.
In other news, I found my old notes from the beginnings of that science fiction series that I've been doing in bits and pieces here. I am going to clean them up and try to move that side project along too. I'm almost done editing my side project. I expect that I will be caught up on that in the near future. Thursday there will be no post because that day is going to be utter chaos. But, hopefully next week will be more 'normal'.
Roses are one of my favorite flowers. I had to incorporate them somehow into the series. The rose berry bush looks like a regular rose bush except it is a little different.
Once pollenated, the rose berry bush doesn't lose its petals when it forms its berry. The berry is a sweet-tart flavor (like real rosehips) and is safe to eat. If you eat too many, it causes mild digestive issues (just like real rosehips). Rose berry can be used medicinally.
The petals can be infused into alcohol to make a mild aphrodisiac. The leaves can be used in tea to ease menstrual cramps. The berries can be used to ease menstrual cramps or induce labor, which gives this plant it's alternate name 'Birthwort'.
Dear Reader,
I forgot that the kids had their winter break this week. I'll try really hard to get a post up but goodness knows if I'll be able to accomplish that. Wish me luck.
Dear Reader,
I may suck at drawing maps, but I will be making a master list of locations described thus far. Also, I will be adding new locations that could be a good D&D setting for a dungeon crawl or other sort of campaign. I am going to attempt to draw up something vaguely map related for the settings that I am sharing with you to use in your tabletop games but I have to warn you it is going to be blocky and badly drawn. (I have graph paper to work with and I'll be color coding levels.) I have a love for tabletop gaming and for similar 'old school' role play games. The idea that one of my settings may be used by someone for a game is one that makes me really happy.
I will be posting the 'maps' (if you can call them that) as images and I will also try to figure out how to make a .pdf of the map with a full description of the setting. For example, if your players want to meet the wise dragon Gerða and be gifted with a magical weapon from her treasures, I will be drawing up a map of her warrens (known as Gerða's Hall). In with the .pdf of the map will be a description of the sort of things that one may find in Gerða's Hall, the persons one may encounter, and of Gerða herself in both her forms. If your players want to go on a campaign that takes them into Dacia and lets them battle the enemies of the Empire, I will be providing a description of a few battles with maps marking enemy locations and the terrain.
If you're a cartographer of sorts and interested in working with me on this project, that would be awesome. This is currently a labor of love and there isn't really any funding behind it. However, when the project is complete and all the documents are complied into one e-book, I will split the proceeds with you. Contact me and we can discuss the details, if you're interested. I know that artists and creative souls die from working for exposure. This is why I am giving my solemn word that I will work with you to figure out a fair business arrangement between us before all the eyes of the internet. Such an oath is serious business according to my faith. I can also help you get into contact with persons who are designing role play games that you might want to work with.
I confess, I did not get the chance to go through my notes. This week's installment is going to be delayed. I will try to get it typed up for you tomorrow. This business of editing a trio of manuscripts at the same time is eating my brain. I'm about half finished with the first manuscript. I just have one problem, I don't know what to title them. I know that the answer will sort itself out soon as I keep working.
After all, I've got 19 days to my deadline. That's plenty of time, right?
(Commence panic in 5... 4... 3... 2.. )
♥
I'll confess, I'd attempt painting some of these images but this paper is for dry mediums. Some of my next floral images are going to be of 'ordinary' plants, stuff that you would find on Earth in the sort of biome that the Seven Kingdoms of Evandar is located in. I am not going to say that my work is going to be remotely close to anything John Audubon did, but it will at least be recognizable. Because these 'ordinary' plants are part of what you will find in this world.
I must make an additional confession, I am awful at drawing animals. Except for birds. I can draw a pretty decent little Robin or Sparrow. But the fantastical things like dragons may as well be stick figures. Eventually, I will make the attempt. I just need to get better at things like drawing feet, claws, and hands. Also, head proportions are difficult. I promise, I will try to do that, but it is going to be later in the year after I have gotten back into the swing of drawing again. I may post occasional pictures of the meditation coloring pages I have begun doing to help manage my stress. But I will note that it's just my coloring in something someone else created.
Speaking of coloring in books, if you're looking for a really cool adult coloring book, check out the one based off of J.R.R. Tolkein's works. A friend of mine gifted it do me for Yule a few years back. It is beautifully illustrated and includes stuff like dot-to-dot pages. (Yes, there is a Smaug dot-to-dot page.) I'd give you the exact title and ISBN but the book is buried. At least I have enough of a path through my project room that I was able to get to some of my colored pencils. I'm amazed it hasn't collapsed into a black hole with the amount of stuff in there.
Dear Reader,
There's this mythical state of equilibrium between one's work and their life. I have yet to see anyone achieve it. I think it is something that happens only for the very wealthy, who live rather disconnected from reality on many levels to the point that they are entirely separate creatures in this world. For the rest of us, we have scheduling nightmares, sleepless nights, and early mornings where we're trying to squeeze in the time to do the Great Work of our lives. It is no wonder that many talented souls are laboring in anonymity when they barely have time to work.
The thing that works for me is a heavily regimented schedule. It starts in the morning with my attending household needs and breakfast. Then I jump into my journal work. After that I hit my blogging work. Following an hour of blogging work, I engage in what ever work I must do on my present manuscript in progress. (Book three of the side project has just finished the initial draft stage and I'm about to start revisions. Hopefully, I can get all three cleaned up and ready by my deadline which is the end of the month. Keep your fingers crossed for me. This is the first time I'm working on a deadline since college.)
One may ask, what about the afternoons? Well, during the afternoon, I have one blog that I make multiple posts to in an effort to draw attention to my tarot reading side gig. When I'm not typing up posts for that blog or reading cards for somebody, I am doing housework or crafting. I also am constantly thinking about what I am going to be writing next and making notes in my bullet journal. All of this, combined with some marathon writing sessions on the weekends when I am not doing tarot reading, serves to allow me to get my content up and out for people like you to read.
Sticking with this very strict schedule is hard for me. I have alternate versions of the schedule for different days when there are interruptions. There's my Monday to Friday ordinary day schedule that I described above. Then there is my Monday to Friday distance learning schedule that I spend more time in journal work as I am supervising my kids with their school work. And then I have my weekend schedule. It has been almost a month of working on this schedule and it's been somewhat successful.
Except for when a wrench gets thrown into the works and somebody has an appointment or there are errands to be run. In the event of something popping up to utterly throw my daily schedule into disarray, I give myself permission to step back away from the strict schedule and just do my best to try to get some of it done. Some days, like last Friday, I didn't get any blogging done because I was so busy running around doing other stuff. I don't try to separate my work and my life schedules.
I work to incorporate them into each other to allow for flexibility despite my need for regimentation in my day to be successful. If I have learned anything from 2020, it is that I need a real schedule to make real progress on anything. So, in 2021, I am organizing and pushing myself, even on my bad days, to stick with the schedule. The weekends are when I try to catch up on what I missed during the week and try to get the jump on what I need to do during the next week. It's a lot of work but doing things that way is getting results.
Because I have health conditions to monitor, a business I am running part-time, my writing work, and a household to manage, my day planner is the ultimate tool. I work for the redundancy department, so I also have bullet journals for my writing work and for my business reading tarot cards. I also note things up on the calendar hanging on the wall. It is about an hour worth of work at the end of the month to reconcile everything and get everything prepared for the next month. It used to be longer but Beloved printed off templates for me to use in my day planner. My bullet journals are very stripped down and Spartan in their organization. I thread topics and pages back to my day planner which is the center of this web of organization. It's like I have a murder wall in the form of a pile of notebooks.
Some people use digital tools to organize everything. I was using the calendar feature on my phone to monitor when bills had to get paid and such, but then I got a new phone and that information didn't port over. So, I'm back to putting it in my day planner and writing it on the wall calendar. My method of organizing everything is not going to work for every body. Not everyone has a pile of notebooks they can use. (I won a huge pile of notebooks a few years ago in a silent auction. I'm still working through it. And, of course, sometimes I see something cute that I pick up. I now own two llama themed notebooks that are adorable. I don't know what I'm going to use them for, but Beloved has called me a notebook addict.)
What ever method you use to organize and stay on top of your life's activities, careful organization and planning are they key to getting most of what you want to do done. Some people work better with regimented schedules and lists of what needs done. Other people work better with a free-form routine and a few notes about what's going on. In both cases, the common theme is they are taking charge of their time and making a point of using it as wisely as they can accomplish. As I stated in a previous post, if you plan things like they did for the storming of Normandy, you can get a world of things done with out it being in panic mode all the time. Make sure that you schedule time for breaks and time for when the schedule breaks down because of outside influences. Also, remember, life is for living. If your not taking time for things that give you pleasure, adjust your schedule so that you can do so. Because just grinding away with out any reward is going to wear down your soul.
Dear Reader,
The side project has eaten my life. This is not a bad thing. I am almost finished with the third iteration of the side project's draft stage. That means I am about to enter into edits on three novellas at the same time. And I have a nonfiction work that I am in the middle of editing too. Beloved helped a ton with editing work on the nonfiction project. I'm really lucky that he did that because it was in desperate need of help.
I am going to be moving to working on book seven in the evenings soon. My hope is that I can finish up the final third of that book and get started on eight next. I know exactly how I want book eight to go. It is so incredibly clear in my head that it feels like how I felt when I first started writing this series. I can just about see the scenes in cinematic form and almost hear the dialogue.
Book eight is going to be fun to write because it is going to be a complete change from the past seven books. Book eight is going to focus on one character and a single plot line. Y'all might find that a refreshing change after having to use a murder wall to track what is going on with your favorite characters. Book nine is going to be the same way but with a different character. And I am really excited about both of them because I can finally do some of the cool stuff that I had planned from the very beginning of the series. (Like just what was going on with that lightning bolt that struck down the deamoness in the middle of a snowstorm at night? That question gets answered in book nine.)
Dear Reader,
I had this mad idea that I was going to draw a few maps of the cities and towns that I have described here. It was a glorious failure. I will confess, the attempts were consigned to the burn bag. They'll see the light of day before a match is put to them and they're sent to the great beyond. As I delve into the prospect of making things like maps and other artwork surrounding my books, I am realizing that I have tons of ideas but my execution is wanting. I can fully appreciate the artists who go at it full time working this stuff up for other authors.
I, however, can't afford an artist for this sort of work so I am occasionally taking shots at doing it myself. This experiment was a failure. Perhaps my problem was I was using grid ruled paper. Perhaps my problem is I didn't have a t-square and a compass. I have a minimal amount of art supplies because my crafting hobbies focused over the last decade on the fiber arts. I want to channel my inner dungeon master and make maps that could be used for a session of D&D but it is not working very well.
So, I think I'm going to stick to giving you detailed descriptions until I get enough experience under my belt that I can make a simple map. My old notebook from way back at the beginning of attempting to write up all my ideas for this series (The Umbrel Chronicles) has a map in it. It's cartoonish and badly drawn. I tried to go back to it and clean it up. The results were just ugly. Perhaps when I have a bit more cash flow, I'll find an artist who can make me a couple of maps. I don't know.
I do know, these books would be a lot more interactive and interesting with a map of the major journeys the main characters have taken on the flyleaf pages and some flavor images of cities in the midst of the sections detailing adventures in them. That, however, is beyond my ability right now and that makes me a bit sad. So, I'm going to go back to drawing plants (hopefully in bigger scale and quantity) over the next few months. As I get pictures done, I will share them. And, when I next attempt to draw a map, I will post my badly done work to give you a vague idea of what these places look like when mapped out.
I knew I should have taken a technical drawing class at college. Too bad I ran out of time for that. I guess I just learn it the old fashioned way, through a lot of trial and error.
Al-Uzza did not sleep well. The cold, rocky ground beneath her pallet beside the brazier remained cold and unyielding. It reminded her too much of her time as an acolyte under the harsh hand of the librarian who trained her. Through the night, she woke to the sound of the wind whistling around the tent and what felt to be the unnatural stillness of the night. Life within the largest city of the empire had made her forget what it was like in the wilds. It was a life that was pure luxury compared to what she was enduring at the moment, in her opinion.
Al-Uzza found her way to her feet in the deeps of night. Iona was resting beside the other brazier as Althos sat guard at the door. He held in his left had a bit of rope with a series of knots on it. Softly, he muttered his vigil prayers to Ashur. When Al-Uzza woke, he noted it but did not stir. His gaze was fixed at some point in the middle of the space of the enclosure. Though he was chanting, Althos was listening intently to the sounds outside of the tent even as he kept watch over the priestess and nun.
The vague noises of the encampment at night were quiet and suggesting that those who could rest were doing so. He had looked at the map that Iona had carried and estimated that they'd be through the pass by late afternoon. He didn't like the prospect of taking horses up a mountain but the insistence that they were trained for it made his argument moot. Althos felt somewhat grumpy with the entire situation.
He hated snow. Having traveled to all the far corners of the empire, the warrior monk hated the North the most. The lowlands were picturesque but the highlands were always cold to him. Dressed in the heavier clothing of the mountain people and sitting within the tent for the Lady Al-Uzza, priestess of Julara and emissary of the Empress, Althos figured he'd have been warmer. But a cold draft snuck under the edges of the tent to curl about him as he sat near the door flap. He had a heavy cloak wrapped around him but even that did little to make him feel truly warm.
Al-Uzza looked over at Althos. "How long is it until daylight?" she asked, stretching her hands towards the brazier near her.
"It is the fourth watch of the night. Dawn comes soon. I see you did not rest well. You were fitful and nearly rolled into the brazier at one point," Althos answered in his gravelly voice. Al-Uzza looked over at him. "What did you dream of, my Lady?" he asked solemnly, "It has long been held that our dreams are where the gods speak to us. It may be that Julara has given you some knowledge about what we are facing."
Al-Uzza scoffed. "It is more likely indigestion from those biscuits," she said, "My dreams made no sense." Althos tipped his head slightly to the left as he looked up at Al-Uzza. The big woman seemed larger by the light of the brazier. Her sense of presence suddenly was imposing and Althos felt a chill go down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold weather. Al-Uzza was changing. It was a slow transformation but she was moving from the luxury obsessed chief librarian to something more.
"Lady Al-Uzza of the North, your city awaits you under siege. Your sleep on the eve of coming into sight of that land may speak of portents. I am not merely a foot soldier in Ashur's army. I too have been trained to read the sand mirror. I was taught to read the earth and the sky for signs. As a boy, I was explaining how dreams had meaning to adults. That was why the brothers militant came and took me from my parents. Word had come to them from my village that I had the knowledge of a grown man at the age of ten winters. Speak, my Lady. I shall read the signs for you and tell you what awaits us today."
Al-Uzza considered what Althos said. She hadn't realized that the monk was something of a seer. It made sense, however, considering that they had been sent with a sand mirror. There had to be a seer to read it properly. "I dreamt of two birds. They fought in the air above me. One had great black wings and one was golden. The golden bird struck the black one from above and blood streamed down to fall over my face, more blood than was ever in any bird. And yet, I was not blinded. I could see clearly how the the black bird flew away with a trail of blood falling to the earth behind it as the golden bird wheeled around in the sky over me. So, tell me, monk, what would that mean to you?" she cautiously said.
"The gods are at war. Ashur strikes at the foreign god. The blood of that god shall fall upon you as they retreat away from the empire. You shall see the path to that god's lands and the way through their lies. But it will come with a heavy cost. Ashur's blessing, however, shall remain upon you," Althos said.
"You speak of Ashur's blessing but I am a daughter of Julara, not Ashur," Al-Uzza said warily. Althos looked up at her.
"You are changing," Althos said, "This land changes people. Some it drives mad. Others it drives deeper into themselves. Ashur's hand lies upon you and is shaping you for what is to come. The blood of the alien god will wash away the blessing of Julara, leaving behind only Ashur's will. It may have been better that you were forgotten in the library, my Lady. Your ambition is bringing you to a place you will never return from, even as you go back to the imperial city. Ashur has daughters. They are anointed in blood, not water. He lays claim to you. War comes with you, my Lady, and your hand shall bear a sword."
Dear Reader,
I am working on compiling a page with links to all of the exotic plants and wee beasties that I have in my stories. It's going to be a bit of slow going because there's a good amount of material here. But, once I get that all catalogued for you, you can review the whole list at your leisure. I am also working on more sketches.
While you're waiting for new material for this segment, take a peek at an embroidery project that I've been working on during the pandemic. It's a sampler, which means every element has a different stitch used. I can't recall for the life of me what the thread count is on the fabric (and there's no way I am getting out a ruler to count them). It was just some cloth that I had left over from a previous embroidery project. I messed up the quote, but still captured the spirit of it all.
