Into the Shadows: Nonny's Writing Log

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Some things you don't expect to happen in a rewrite. I knew that I have to change a couple names in Stronger, because I started the prewriting for the book before I'd gotten together with my ex-fiance, when we were best friends, and I'd named the MC's cat and a minor character after him and his cat.

So here I am, trying to figure out what the fuck to name the little beast. And then ...

Satan.

What's bad? Cassandra would name her cat Satan. It'd piss off her parents, and that'd be a definite plus. And, well, the cat is a little devil. :P

*shakes head*

Of course, I'd have to have a book with a cat named Satan ...

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 8:10 AM

Well, I kind of started on the rewrite ... I resurrected the playlist, at least. Would you believe I actually had it saved on my computer, even after three years and three computers? *shakes head*

O'course, I discovered that I didn't have a good many of the songs anymore, so I had to go download, retag, and I added some new songs. It doesn't help that many of the songs hold visceral bittersweet memories for me. I was falling in love with my ex-fiance, going to college, and having problems with my family. It doesn't help matters that the fiance turned abusive and I left him over a year ago, I left college, left WA State, and I ended up leaving the writing community I was a member of then and forming Evolution.

*sighs*

So I'm going to go play NWN for awhile and see if I can get head cleared. Then I'll hit the rewrite. :)

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 6:05 AM

It's too early to be tired, damn it. Especially after I slept ten hours earlier this evening. Mrr.

Okay. It's about 3:30-ish, and I should still be up for awhile. I've got some stuff to do around Evolution, but after that ... I could write, but I should probably start working on the rewrite for Stronger than the Night. It's finished, but I need to do a one-pass rewrite, which, if I actually snap to it, I can probably finish in about two weeks.

... which means I need to stop procrastinating.

*whistles*

Okay, 'nuff of this. Off to post and edit. :)

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 3:25 AM

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Wrote 563 words in At the End of the World, the story I'm doing for MuseMuggers. Feeling rather shitty at the moment (had a really bad hypoglycemic attack earlier), so I think I'm going to go off and take a bath. We'll see how I feel afterwards; I may write more, or I may crawl off to bed. (Methinks it will be the latter, but who knows?)

Small snippet from the WIP:

"What is your business here?" Laesha, Archmage of Pyre Tower, shot an annoyed glance at the ruffian on her doorstep. He might've been handsome, were he not covered with dirt and grime, hair touseled with sea salt. His eyes caked near shut by the muck, she couldn't even tell their color.

The man stared back at her, rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his salt-stiffened, water-stained coat. It looked to be of better quality than someone such as him could possibly afford. Her lips quirked as suspicion rose. "Have ye been unaware of the storm, milady?"

"I have not." Did he think her an imbecile? No one could possibly have ignored the waves crashing against the island's high cliffs, nor the wind blasting against her tower's walls, and certainly not the lightning striking down trees which had stood untouched for centuries. Realization dawned on her. "You were out in the middle of that and survived?"

"Aye." He ducked his head in a nod. "I did. My crew did not."

She tightened her lips, lowering her head in an expression of sympathy. "I am sorry to hear of your loss, sirrah." Thunder rumbled across the sky and lightning crackled. Even though she did not trust this man, she couldn't just leave him at the mercy of the elements. Laesha extended her hand, beckoning. "Come. You have my hospitality until the storm passes."

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 6:02 AM

Saturday, May 28, 2005

If anyone would be interested, I'm going to be in Evolution's StormChat trying to get some writing done ... as I have a MuseMuggers piece to finish tonight, along with the rest of the character bio. So, if anyone would like to pop in for a Word War in a half hour, hour or so (or anytime tonight, really!!), I'll be there. :)

(Note: For those not already a member of Evolution, you'll have to register on the boards, but that takes less than five minutes. :P)

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 11:56 PM

Serrau's CharBio
1066 / 1000 (106.60%)

Took me three frickin' days, but I hit 1k ... and I'm still not finished with the bio. >_<

That said, I'm really liking Serrau. I mean, really liking. As in, "Dammit! I want one!" like. (And no, Morgan, that's not just because he's felinoid. :P)

... and, of course, I would get an idea for a story for MuseMuggers ... pirates, lady mages in towers, sex, destruction of the world ... hoo boy. My mind seems to be on overdrive recently. And I'm lovin' every minute of it. *grins*

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 10:05 AM

Friday, May 27, 2005

Serrau's CharBio
468 / 1000 (46.80%)

Almost at the halfway point ... ended up in a fairly heavy discussion with one of my sisters earlier resulting in much thought, so I didn't quite get as much done as I would've liked.

That said ... I'm feeling very good about it all. I've been making progress, which is more than I can say for the past several months. I've been feeling better physically, as well, which I am very glad for. So ... hopefully it'll stay this way. Because I'm sick of feeling like shit. :P

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 6:37 AM

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Serrau's CharBio
336 / 1000 (33.60%)

Taking a break to eat at the moment. Being hypoglycemic sucks.

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 9:37 AM

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

I just finished up a flash piece for one of Amme's Word of the Day prompts over at Evolution. Came in at 328 words, and I'm rather pleased with it. :)

Link is here for anyone who would like to read; warning, though, you'll have to be registered and logged in to view. :)

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 11:17 AM

I finished the character bio!!! Wheee!!!

Zenaya Kirador's CharBio
1306 / 1000 (130.60%)

I'm really rather pleased with how it came out. I learned a lot about the MC and her past, along with some worldbuilding information ... now I need to do the hero's, but I may let that one wait until tomorrow.

*squee!*

This would be more than I've written in ... well ... since I moved here, actually. And I managed to do this with a migraine, which makes me especially happy, because ... well, it's been a very long time since I'd actually done so. (I used to all the time, because there was a time period of about three or four months two years back where I would get a migraine almost every other day. Granted, I didn't know they were migraines then, because I don't get the visual disturbances--I get just about everything else, though ... nausea, light and sound sensitivity, general physical and emotional oversensitivity ...)

And I love my wonderful male. He brainstormed with me prior to working on the bio ... it's been a very, very long time since I had anyone I could brainstorm with on a regular basis. (Ex-fiance, before we got together IRL, actually ... after I moved in with him, brainstorming turned into something that he could use against me ... "I spent three hours discussing your WIP and now I'm emotionally exhausted and you don't care about me or my WIP at all"--that sort of thing after I'd spent quite literally days discussing his with him. *rolls eyes*)

I really did miss it. And ... *sigh* I've honestly always had trouble writing when I didn't have someone for a "writing buddy." I've had the same trouble the past couple years that I had before I joined a writer's group in the first place. Meh. Sucks. But oh well. Have male now. Have very willing male. Er, that sounds wrong. Gah. Male willing to writhe with me--write, for fuck's sake. Mreh.

Whee. Have I mentioned I have a tendency to babble when I'm up too long? Well, if you didn't know before, you do now. ;)

And I'm going to shit up now before I typo anything else.

Um. Right. See what I mean?

*hides*

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 10:30 AM

Okay, got the post for the Sex & Sexuality thread done. That was ... difficult.

And I'm staying up. So, hopefully, writing will happen tonight.

No, make that, writing will happen tonight. Dammit.

Oh! And see the nifty progress meter my male wrote!

Zenaya Kirador's CharBio
0 / 1000 (0%)

He's still working on it--this's beta version--but still ... *purrrrrrrrrrrrrrs*

There are serious advantages to having a geek male. ;)

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 4:28 AM

Mreh. 1gb of music categorised ... that only took about, oh, four hours. Granted, a good deal of it is stuff I'd lost in a Windows crash that's appropriate to the book, but still. Now I'm doing adminny-type things over at Evolution.

Wrote up the welcome post for the new Romantic Fiction board; now I'm working on the stickied post for the Sex & Sexuality thread. Trying to do that with a splitting headache is just ... fuuuuun.

*sigh*

I'd wanted to try to get some writing done tonight, but unless I consume massive amounts of caffeine (and sugar, musn't forget the sugar), I'll be snoozing in about an hour, hour and a halfish. Meh.

*debates*

Hmm.

*debates some more*

*wanders off to discuss with male type thing*

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 3:53 AM

Sunday, May 22, 2005

... or, I was going to write, until my computer decided to be a little fucking bitch. *growls*

*sighs*

At least I got a good portion of the playlist for that WIP worked up. The computer freezing and rebooting every, oh, 15 to 30 minutes really doesn't do much for my patience. >:(

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 4:46 AM

Okay. Dammit. I need to write. I have two plotbunnies--two!!!--and a book to rewrite, on top of that. So, I need to do some prewriting on one of the bunnies ... probably I'll work on the cat-people one, as that's calling me atm.

Romance between a felinoid warlord and a human tracker/ranger with both their peoples on the brink of war. Will be much fun. The idea actually came from a dream, which I typed up ...

In the dream, I was a human female in a Tudor-style village. My uncle, one of the Queen's lieutenants, came to me one day, and explained that the threat of the cat-people was increasing. They were raiding the villages, and they needed my help to scout out their locations.
I agreed, and went, in the middle of winter, over much snow. It was a very far ways from the village to the cat-people's land ... they lived by the ocean. I ended up on the beach; hundreds of the cat-people were gathered on the shore, and a tidal wave was coming in. I didn't know how to swim; it was forbidden to my people, the in-landers, because it was something the cat-people did. I figured best to take my chances with the cat-people and ran for them. I ended up with a mother and her cubs, and noticed that the ears were almost human ... hybrid.

The water came in, towards us, and the cat-people didn't move back ... it was coming up over the shore, and I thought that we were all going to drown. Then the cat-people combined magic; the water flowed over us like there was a shield protecting us.

When it passed, I tried to escape. I heard footsteps behind me, and I ran. The Warlord of the cat-people caught up with me and demanded to know why I was there. I explained ... and realised that having been there, I didn't want them dead like I had before. And, well, extreme lustage for the Warlord. He took me aside and told me that he did not have as much power as he wished, and that what I had heard was true; the cat-people had broken into dissent, with those that wished to live peacefully with the humans and others that wanted them dead. His son and the shaman were a member of the latter party.

We ended up having sex, and then heard the shaman and son coming up for us ... so we fled. He knew that they would smell my scent on him, so came with me; we ran into my uncle along the way, who captured him and took him back to the Queen. She wanted to kill him, but decided to let him return in a gesture of good will... in hopes of attaining peace.

It will most certainly change as I prewrite, but uthat's what I'm working with right now. :)

All righty ... off to take bath, then try and get some work done.

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 4:42 AM

I've been tagged by Gina! *grins*

Total number of books I own: Umm. *thinks* At this point, somewhere around 100 - 150? Maybe 200? I haven't actually gone in and counted recently. I didn't do much reading or book-buying when I was in Texas ... didn't have the peace of mind to do so. So the majority of what I have is from when I was back in Washington... although my male seems bound and determined to correct this. ;)

Last Book I Bought: Morgan and I very recently went on a book-buying spree; a used bookstore in Providence, RI, was having a 40% off sale. And then upon unpacking the books I'd brought from WA to do an inventory, I realised that I was missing a good number of books by Marion Zimmer Bradley ... as I scoured that bookshelf and the living room when I left TX, I'm guessing they probably fell into the box of my ex's books that one of my housemates took down and sold at the used bookstore for me. >_<

Last Book I Read: I just finished reading Hidden Truth by Dawn Cook, second in a series. It's a very good series, and as I don't normally like "light" fantasy ....

Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me: Mrr. *thinks* This is a tough question to answer because most of what I could list are serials! :P

The Black Jewels trilogy by Anne Bishop
These books have always affected me very profoundly... I read them first when I was fourteen, just before the last one came out. They're not light reading by any stretch of the imagination. An ongoing theme is the contrast between dark and light ... and what's really the darkness? I continue to find things every time I reread this trilogy that I missed priorly, which is unusual, to say the least.

The Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
While much of his work, to be honest, is primarily aimed at horny teenage boys, I've always loved these books; they've made me look very closely at my own beliefs and question what I'd been told was right. And, hell, any series in which God is voted out and replaced with a woman--a prostitute, no less!--just rocks for ballsyness. *grins*

The Forbidden Tower by Marion Zimmer Bradley
I think this probably has to be one of the first books I read that introduced the concept of polyamory and group relationships in a positive fashion. (No, I never actually read Heinlein--yes, I know, I was a poor, depriaved child. :P) Along with that, it deals very intimately with the magic system of the world, which further piqued my interest in magic. (I always was interested, even when I was conservative Christian and didn't want to admit it.)

The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce
These weren't the first of her books I read, but they're the ones I love the most. I've always had a weakness for the "girl must disguise herself as a male for x reason" plots, and this quartet is, quite honestly, the best; Tammy does not shy away from the important questions... like what a young girl does about menstruation and communal bathing while living as a page in a castle surrounded by men.

Writing the Breakout Novel (and companion workbook) by Donald Maass
And I really do have to put this here, because it's affected my writing in very profound, deep ways. While I had barely competant fiction before reading this book ... I think my fiction is very much the better for having read this and implemented his techniques.

Tagging: Anyone who wants to take this. :)

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 12:29 AM

Saturday, May 21, 2005

I hate writing opening posts. I bloody hate it. Then again, I don't think anyone particularly likes doing it.

Anyway ... most of y'all know me; if not, you should be able to figure it out fairly quickly by looking at my profile. ;)

So, I've been on LiveJournal for about two years after getting fed up with the way Google'd handled Blogger changes; why the hell did I decide to come back? It's not that I'm disappointed with LJ at all; I'm certainly keeping my account there. The one big problem I have with LJ is that it's a royal pain in the ass to customise your account at all. I can't figure out S2, nor can any of the programmers I know. That said, the ability to friends-lock and filter entries is certainly worth it.

Anyway, the main reason I created the account is that the majority of the chicks over at Romance Divas use Blogger, so I figured I'd come back and see if it'd gotten any better ... and I'm rather impressed, to be honest. Friends list capability would be nice, but since I use SharpReader, a feed aggregator, it's really not that big a deal.

So, pretty much, I'm probably going to use this blog for tracking writing progress and general thoughts on writing. Personal entries will be over at LiveJournal ... as will any long-term posting of WIPs, for reasons of publication rights. :)

See y'all around!

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 6:37 AM