anachred

But this has been waiting for me to post it, forever.

Cultural note to make this more immediately comprehensible: in Japan, almost all stores you bag your own groceries. This is feasible, because they are on the Old World schedule of buying groceries every day or so. You can walk or bike with them easily that way.

Of course, though my mom happily converted, bringing home groceries for 7 was still rather a parade...


The Artist's Distraction



I so know that feeling, babe.

An a cappella production: completely stunning:



This is the kind of art that makes you wanna gnash your teeth, grab people by the throat and demand why they aren't participating in art, or at least ask that heart-breaking question:

If humans can make this, why do they devote so much to destruction?


But only because it is so amazing.
Good work, Slovenia!

It's raining pretty hard here: I don't think we had any plans for going out anyway (except for cooking out) but I'm kinda happy about it.

I finished the band break-up story last night, and am working on the one that opens:

“I won't keep that promise,” he said.
Bead ran her hand down the cow's warm, coarse-haired flank, drawing her bucket out slowly to not startle the animal.
“Oh?” she asked. “You'll let the Commons go hang, the people, the gardens, your barn? Just over the one thing they asked you for? Well. That's smart.”
“The one little thing they asked for was my daughter. In the enemy's war camp.”


I also want to spin up the rest of my Raven King's first ply. *squeee*

Etsy Finds II



what would a whisper look like Print (left)
by zuppaartista who is definitely doing her bit to bring a little more beauty into the world.

Dawn on the Water Necklace (right)
by aj1801aj who has some other stuff that is too classy for me, but I *wants*

Now, those are just beautiful things I'd love to have. Here's a real resource though, for your geeky jewelry needs:

From bunnylogic



Lego Tire Earrings (left)
Lego Clone Commander CUFFLINKS (center)
Rubik's Cube Necklace (right)

*LOVE*

On Friday, Jesse realized that the band was dead to him.
On Saturday, they were in Texas again and he got on the stage with an electric smile.

What was sickening was that it felt just the same as the last two years up there: it had been dead and he hadn't even known.

I posted this once a while ago and had to dig it up from the backlog when I decided to write the story yesterday. (It's tweaked for grammatical excellence, now.)

I haven't been writing anything much, which feels odd. I need to kick this Internet and coffee dependency, because I think I'm killing myself off slowly with them, in terms of writing. This morning my computer wasn't online and I went almost crazy, even though I was already ricocheting between a book, a spinning project*, and writing the story.

I am so not to be left to my own devices.

But, I will being Going to Work, Monday, which is fascinating and strange. (Not that I have a job, I've been called in to Dan's. But it may lead to one?) Maybe that will help my resolution? My constitutional fortitude must eventually pitch in and actually do the thing, though.


I'm de-junking my mind right now, and I'm a little more aware of Teh Crazeee. Sorry about that...


*Oh, the spinning project is a tribute to the Raven King. It's gonna be amazing. I hope.

For a Read-and-Knit-Along on A Midsummer Night's Dream, I created this yarn,
representing the character Puck, the Robin Goodfellow who is curiously sane
for the prankster fairy, in a play full of madness.

I have more pictures and rambling about this at my fiber blog.






In other news, I'm doing a copy-edit pass through Sheridan in Charade, the sequel to The Carnie's Con {Poisson}, and enjoying it a lot.

I did find one major bobble, though. Master Mandrake has a Sekrit Lab'ratory!

...and keeps Sherry locked out of the study earlier on, to do a procedure with chemicals.
I didn't know about the attic at the time, but I'm not sure how to fix the bobble. I like the revelation of the magician who loves science being where it is in the story. Right beat, if you know what I mean.

Maybe he'll just have to disappear to do it. Though that feels a little too easy. Dunno...

I've been working on my yarn business again lately.  This means time on Etsy,  (oh perilous place, and sly) and trying to network my way into sales.

I've discovered quite a few things to love along the way. Backfiring? I don't know... having things I want to buy, to motivate me to do better at selling isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Right?
Right?!


This is my latest listing: Under River Aracthus, titled after a scene in The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner.

I'd like to sell this so I can buy:
That Old Black Magic by ButterflyGirlDesigns
...even though I'm planning to create some very similar batts to make a Raven King yarn. (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell are neither of them the main interest in that book, you know.)

In tag surfing, to kind of see how my items are comparing, and who is doing similar things, I come across the greatest random geek stuff. (That tag is "geekery".)

Fawkes, fiery handspun by msfledermaus

Mallorn, which you can see here, by Authentic Fiction

This one's no longer available, but it's name/color combo was PERFECT.
Bert and Ernie by Ethical Threads



GuttersnipeYarn for sure does not need *my* press, but how awesome is she? Let me count the ways:

~ She does "Costume Flick" yarns. This means... Austen characters. She has a Wickham yarn. She has a Harriet Smith yarn.
Yes, this is fabulous, and my envy is part awe.
~ She also has a whole Sweeney Todd category, which is awesome because the color scheme of the movie was, from what I can tell without watching it. ^_^
~ She does Steampunk yarn with Stuff to put in.



Lydia Bennett, Violets Between the Cobblestones, and Glitzy Sweeney, respectively.



I think I'm going to have to postpone my non-yarn favorites sharing until another time, but look forward to it. There's photography, jewelry, and...Lego Wizard keychains.

 Just an odd picture--more gorgeous
full size of course.

I'm too psyched about the trip.
I think I am failing to use my Internet
responsibly....fortunately I'm the
only one I'm making look dumb.

So you get a picture.
I can't write today anyway.

I am printing a new version of The Carnie's Conspiracy!

This has new material, which significantly changes the feel without being a reconstruction. I hope it will fly.

This story has been a comparative pleasure to work on.
It may just be that the other projects I've tried to revise have been Purgatory, but it's nice to actually be *capable* to edit what I need to, and think I've accomplished something. (Yes, World Dom. 101, I AM looking at you.)


And I've remembered an idea that would fit in the same vein of MG quasi-fantasy that I could begin, as a follow-up.

Gentlemen of Fortune?
It involves a boy expiating his pawn-shop-owning ancestors' sins by helping The Pirates atone for theirs.
Burying gold in wild locales was actually a rite to avert the wrath of their god, see.
But it was only temporary...

I need to dig out the journals again, to find where I had bits of world-building, etc. Because I had some, but that was probably years ago now...


(This is actually one of the fun parts, the flipping through my random journals...)

New story I'm working on:


“I won't keep that promise,” he said.

Bead ran her hand down the cow's warm, coarse-haired flank, drawing her bucket out slowly to not startle the animal.

“Oh?” she asked. “You'll let the Commons go hang, the people, the gardens, your barn? Just over the one thing they asked you for? Well. That's smart.”

“The one little thing they asked for was my daughter. In the enemy's war camp.”

 

I think yesterday I had burned through all my nervous energy becoming a submissions fiend, and was left just with the nerves.

Today I have no desire to see Bora Bora, especially not with a stranger.
Instead, I sent a story out for the...nine, tenth time. Wore a baseball hat for the first time in probably 7 years. Started typing in the new scene for The Carnie's Conspiracy.

Do you think it's too early to start actually packing for the trip next Friday?

>,<

(You would not believe the ratio on pictures of me:me travelling)


For Your Entertainment Value:

Editing Letter --a song that not only lampoons the agonies of  revisions, but also music videos in general. (Or at least, in my eyes, it does.)
   ~via Janet Reid?


And, tomorrow night at Cappaccino Corner is Open Mic Night. I'll be there, singing!



Like-a-this.

INTERNE~T, YOU ARE BO~RING ME~...

This is obviously a plan to thwart me in wasting a perfectly good work day.
*~curses~*
It is about this time in the Virtual Reality lifecycle that I have the overwhelming desire to start a new blog.
And have a name for it.

(You *do* realize it is nigh on impossible to not do things once you have the right name.)


THIS MAY BE MORE SERIOUS THAN YOU REALIZE

And this restlessness is manifesting as a Hydra: I also think of changing my own name,  (on Facebook, at least). Of marrying money and moving to Bora Bora.
{Not really the marrying part. Though I'm always open to negotiation.)

I probably should be keeping a record of this Rolling Stone Syndrome (I mean in real life, too). It may be interesting to see how long my internal clock thinks my world should change.
My average on duration-of-residence is going up the longer I stay in OK, but it's still much less than two years.

15:23. Yup. That may be a few higher on the moves side than is accurate, but *only* a few.

OF ALL THE NEUROSES, IT HAD TO BE THIS ONE

It's probably slightly less than 6 mos., the psyche throwing up a probe, to feel out the environs, to check whether a change is in the air. If not, it goes back to sleep, and I am left with restless energy that wants me to become a warrior monk in the middle 1300s, or something.

I begin to wonder if Providence is out to keep me from playing to type. I'm pretty sure no one would instinctively peg me for an itchy-feet impulsive type, and yet...

It just occurred to me to make a list of all the times I've bolted for Elsewhere since moving to OK.
Aaaand, evidence has it that I've enabled myself to throw bait to my wanderlust about every 6 months.
weird.



I feel wicked guilty, wanting to be Elsewhere. I like working for Conestoga, I love the writer's group I go to, I am devoted to the library I go to with a passion that probably embarrasses people with less natural dumb enthusiasm. But it's driving me crazy.

I know, you didn't sign up to be my Nomadicism Support Group. It's okay, it comes with the package deal.

This is a little banner for my Etsy shop gossamersong, now boasting
7 items, from a "technicolor kittens" Umbridge skein to the Spirited
Away Haku yarn and my Very Pink tribute to the Nutcracker.

Yes, I am striving to make the shop a Guess-The-Fandom Extravanganza!
why do you ask?

(I am inordinately proud of how those three central photos go together.
I am less proud, but at least relieved to be actually working on this again.)



Speaking of work, I submitted 3 poems and a story (two for the first time)
to various places today.

I am less industriously writing a completely new scene for Carnie's Con,
in which Poisson has Molly burgle back a letter. Her only condition is to
not have to go in through a coal-hatch. (Do you know about coal hatches?)

I have up a new post about my yarn at Gossamer Song, my fiber blog, on my yarns

in Black and White.

It would be fun to acquire more of this particular fleece and then do touches of red like those photographs... (the ones my icon is modeled after).
I need to spin more!

(Come to think of it, I'm working on a batt that's a parallel, except with pink, not red. It's gorgeous, yes.)

So, I've just realized my writer's fantasy.
Okay, so the most potent one at this moment: it's a publishing-*unrelated fantasy.

To have someone whose opinion I respect sit down, and read through all of my short stories and tell me which ones are any good.
  I know. Beggarly. But there it is. The stuff of my dreams.



Since it's Thursday, and I don't know what to do with you, here, have a little flash fiction.
(You do know this will be bad, right?
And what if I tell you it's a complete rip-off, which is how all my tributes to things end up?
But at least it's short? 1147 words only!)
It no longer has even that recommendation. It is now only less bad. And much less than 2000 words.
Sorry, snoozers.


PS: this is not real fan-fiction. It is an example of how much I canNOT do fan-fiction. Because I have rename people and rework set-ups, and borrow lightly to expand in strange directions.


*just had an odd moment where the world "publishing" felt the same to me as it did before I got so inured to hearing it all the time, seeing it in everything I read. Funny.

So it's been precisely a month since Conestoga. I am putting up pictures of that, supplemented with some I took while figuring out my Asian cowpunk costume.



( A few more... )


Well, these photos aren't going to make my name as a photographer, and the costume looked about as undecided as it sounds, but...I have no regrets!



the composition of this photo was mostly accidental, but humorous all the same.

Curses. The sequel isn't even available for preorder yet...  ____Ah! Good news. Her site announces it's to come out in August. ::dance::
Oh, right. Review?

The only other book I've read by Jane Lindskold was Child of the Rainless Year, in which I discovered that excellent writing could indeed compel one to read a story otherwise not Your Thing.
Listen to this:

Albert Yu scattered the mah-jong tiles with restless hands, not liking what they were showing him. They clattered softly against each other, sparrow-voiced protest against this rough handling.


A stunningly pretty first paragraph in a beautifully written book.

Honestly, the only issue I had with the book at all was that sometimes the backstory delivery was wooden Dialogue, instead of people talking. But this is an area I'm particularly sensitive. It was never bad writing, just not as fluid as the rest of the writing, which obviously sets the bar unnaturally high. ^_^

I mean, the only problem besides that I resent coming across a new series and falling in love when most of the books aren't written yet.

I'm sad about a few things right now...
genuinely sad in little ways, not depressed.
It's odd to be used to mild depression and have to think, to recognize sadness. We don't respect sadness as a culture. That's twisted.


I am sad.
A professor with a huge influence over me, and my best friends, and my mother and people who never heard his name died the other day.
He has thrown off a lot of suffering in body, but also took with him a brilliant mind, sparklingly clear and acute to the end.
We miss him.

I am sad.
My friend Justice, who is tiny but still a person, and one I love very much, is not going to be with me every day anymore. A more convenient babysitter has come up. I may be needed to fill in, it may be it stops working out.
But I know enough of saying goodbye to not deny that I will miss him.

I am sad:
I have discovered a wound, and though it is old, I am feeling the hurt for myself back then. I am stitching my scar-coat with honest tears that don't burn so much if I don't try to push them back.

And I am allowed to be sad.
You are, too.



And, I am *not* sorry if I am embarrassing you. You're allowed to be embarrassed as much as sad. And I will not feel guilty for it.
If, however, you need some other way to relate to me, I wrote a much less maudlin poem the other day open for critique:
My Almost-Functional Steam Engine Mind

I'm psyched about Dull Boy, by Sarah Cross, even if I actually have to buy it, for many reasons.
Two, however, I shall list here:

1) It sounds like a great superhero teen story
2) It does not sound like my current superhero teen story.

I am doing my best to win it, however, while also hoping hard the library orders some. (Hey, the library can buy more copies than I can...)

Diana Peterfruend (of the scary unicorns, I believe? I also need to wish that into the library) is having a give-away of copies that involves a mandate to use this site's Prime Procrastination Device, to which we geeky writers say, "I'll take it!"



I am inordinately proud of this ensemble. (Click to see it in fine detail!)
Plus, I am actually surprisingly not-bad with firearms if I don't over think it.

Introducing Redd "Precise" Harmony, Sharpshooter At Large/Minister Without Portfolio/Supervillain Stepchild
While not determined to be genius or biological mutation, her mastery of firearms is only overshadowed by her taste for the bizarre and arcane. Rumor claims her stepmother/mad-scientist/Wise Old Mentor subjected her to mutative therapies as a child to create the UltraMinion. Redd has neither confirmed nor plausibly denied this story, maintaining that she just shoot things that she has to shoot.

With her modified crossbow.

Thousands of Hot Asian Chicks are Looking for a Guy Just like Me!

Sorry. Just thought I'd share that.





Okay, my Reprobate friends of sounis  were recommending this, as well as The Book Thief, and I think since they titles muddled in my head, I never gave it a second look. (The Book Thief has always sounded too serious for the reading mood I was in.)

This is awesome. I wish my reading attention span wasn't shot to pieces by reading all the shoujo. Whoops...
(Actually. It was never that good for much anyway.)

But speaking of that...
This comic competes with few others for sheer beauty and strength.

The Voice Blooms Red (Akaku Saku Koe)

With the manhwa (Korean comics) that are really fetching to me, it shares a sort of stillness.
Technically, it's the dialogue:panel ratio--so many more silent panels rely on the art to tell a story rather than just talk. But it's artful.

(Here there was a really cool page that was disabled. Have a cover thumbnail instead.)





It's like the Hayao Miyazaki films of the comics world, in a way.

The Voice Blooms Red (my title translation) is a mystery/special police forces/and terribly understated romance manga.
It is two volumes, I don't think they've been translated except by fans. The translation job is not bad. The story itself has psychic depth. And the creator's comments at the end made it even more interesting to reflect on.

I've read the whole thing--brilliant to the end.
 Unreservedly recommended.

Not-So-Birthday Present Unexpected Success!

When my bro told me he was D.O.N.E. working on our Lord of the Rings fan music, I understood. I just thought there was plenty of room in the project...
Yesterday, though, he came home with an idea for a revamp of our Ents song. The improved version gave me chills.

Entmarch

Best played with bass boost!
Seriously, this made me see that scene of the Entmoot moving out to wreak havoc on Isengard so strong.
And it rocketed to #40 on Soundclick's Goth Rock list...out of 4000, so not a huge deal, but someone's listened to it, right?

So I'm not just plugging my own band, here:

Indie Music Recommendation of the Day:

Heather Dale, whose Arthuriana themed songs I link below because they are great. (If you like, I also recommend her song "Exile")
Mordred's Lullaby
Kingsword


As a third topic,
My Birthday Wish for this Year:
Let's go with...starting to seem like I'm in my 20s to people.
Or at least close, like 18-19.


We can dream, right?