anachred

Bethany Powell grew up with the marvelous and insidious opportunity to read books almost all day. Mealtimes would have been a hateful event if she weren't also rather fond of food. As her primary talents seem to be music, creating fake histories, and organizing parties she decided to pursue a career related to the only one she is consistently motivated to do: write fantasy

( In Case of Friending, Press [This]  )

Because it's always appropriate to judge a person by their bookshelves...

( Cut for Blatant Cover Images )

Etsy Buy Handmade gossamersong

Meet Fangorn:
(200+ yards, on Etsy as Eaves of Fangorn)

In reality somewhat darker than this, and with more greens than this shews, it was just manifestly Treebeard and his shadowed, ancient domain. (I've been reading Two Towers to the kidlings.)

"It reminds me, somehow of the old room in the Great Place of the Tooks...where the furniture has never been moved or changed for generations. ... But that is nothing to the old feeling of this wood. Look at all those weeping, trailing beards and whiskers of lichen! And most of the trees seem to be half covered with ragged dry leaves that have never fallen. Untidy."


I have a Howl yarn in the works--I just need to card up the fiber (it will resemble the skein above a little...) to spin the second strand.

~ GossamerSong Fiber Arts, empowering the inner geek of wool yarns ~

Dan and I will be participating at Open Mic Night at Cappuccino Corner tonight (in Claremore), 7pm!

Plan to debut Crow Road and my Sherwood song.


I don't know if anyone on my friends list is at all interested, but thought  I'd put it out there. ^_^

I have a new song!

I may have posted the lyrics to this somewhere you've seen it--it's an autumn travel song. I'm really happy with the lyrics: I feel like they verge on real poetry. Doing the vocals recording I also felt like I got deep into the song and finally sang really well, too.

Crow Road (click to listen, see full info)

Slowly all the leaves fall from the oaks

A burnished nutshell brown

The wind sings sharp and the note is cold

It makes an uncanny round

 

I'm going up the crow road

Through the wastes and wood

I'm following the flight of crow

And step where no man's stood

 

 

( more of the lyric )

This image is one of those that is just precarious enough,
with a tension just in the expressions that are at slight odds
(drama--romance, see even in pictures...) that it makes me
want to stare.

And it's on Etsy, advertising the feather ornament in her hair,
by charmschooldesign which is probably not strictly legal,
since the image is taken from a movie. ("Brick")
But in terms of capturing interest?

*Brilliant.*





I have a geek-love on Etsy post in the makings, some day I don't have 5 other things I'm posting about. Goblin King yarn? Bring. It. On.

This treasury expires tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) but it's awesome, so if you have a minute before then:

The Librarian

The Etsy Treasury is a collection of items by different sellers put together by an Etsy member: they're temporary to make room for the next person who wants to put them up.

If done with a new theme and an eye for aesthetic, they can be spectacular...

Today the whole first chapter of Ozark Hoodlums is up!

RECAP: this is my Robin Hood retelling, set after the Industrial America crashes. I am posting it as an online serial, at ozark_hoodlums

Teaser:

Riley was used to having hunters cut across their land, so when a boy with a sun-burnt nose and frizzed-out curly hair came squirming out of the bush, a pistol held out in front of him, she was going to ask what he was after, groundhogs? She hesitated because of the expression on his face. Then he walked toward her, barrel extended in her direction, and the humor of it died.

“Look, you need to come with me,” he said.
She stood up slowly.
“What?”
“Get up, and walk toward the pond.”
“Please,” she said, panicking. “I don’t even know you. What do you want?”
“Listen, I need you to just come with me. I’m in trouble, I need safe-passage. No one’s going to hurt me if I have you, and I have to get out of here. I’m not going to touch you.”

This was ridiculous—not “touching” someone had to include not pointing guns at their head. She went, though. What else could she do?

He looked scared himself.

Read On...


Housekeeping 401

( a humorous letter on taking over the housekeeping & homeschooling )


ETA:


This is one half of Mirkwood. The two plys are now done, ready to be put together...

1.  

You'd probably be appalled if you knew what a high getting mail gives me. Sending it gives me a pretty good buzz, too. Anyway, today I got a good, long letter from a friend *and* a BookMooch arrival, after sending off a yarn.

Also, I can't imagine anything more gratifying than having people like the stuff you make enough to give money for it.


Genie's Wish, off to make it big now. ^_^

Crafty Update:  The latest JS&MN yarn, which was tentatively called Childremass...has become a Mirkwood.
These things happen.

Scribbly Update: I think I almost have it, this cadence of the Island, this way of their talking.
Malachi's POV was hazy to me until I stopped to find it, and unknown voice is never good in a book of mine.



The FAVORITE BOOK 1ST LINE meme

1. Pick 10 of your favorite books or series'.
2. Post the first sentence of each book. (If one sentence seems too short, post two or three!)
3. Let everyone try to guess the titles and authors of your books

My own notes: some of these will be shamefully easy (at least, in light of who reads this blog). I've paired these so if you want an extra challenge, you can tell me what correlation they have. Some of them are more amorphous correlations, containing various links, and all are acceptable. The first one, though, I have something very specific in mind, and it may be a bit tough if you don't know one or the other... ;) Good luck!

 

1. Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

2. The temperature of the room dropped fast. Ice formed on the curtains and crusted thickly around the lights in the ceiling. The glowing filaments in each bulb shrank and dimmed, while the candles that sprang from every available surface like toadstools had their wicks snuffed out.

( The Other 8 are under this Elegant & Finely Crafted Link )

Sesshoumaru - Sword of Resurrection

  



Maid Marian's Kirtle or Trysting in Sherwood...



Both up at GossamerSong...

fabricalchemist  made me this!



And for giggles, here's one of my favorite yarns at it's new home...with friend:



They match. papermonkeyknits.blogspot.com is Mommy's very pretty craft blog.
I will be stalking it for glimpses of what this little fellow becomes...

The yarn. Not the cat.
All bets are off on cats.

Here's Under River Arachthus as a cowl...the variation came out so pretty.

m_stiefvater   has a great post on why reading YA is in no way a "teens only" domain: The Relevance of YA to Non-Teens

(Maggie's book Shiver, sequel to Lament, debuted at #9 on the NYT Bestseller List this week, fyi.)

She pretty much sums up why I avoid most "normal" (adult-geared) fiction, and embrace even good picture books in my reading diet. And articulates it better than I have been able to so far.


...I mean, the "why" besides the obvious fetish for toy cars and Wonka-type worlds.




Speaking of bright colors...
I'm writing a synopsis for Poisson today. I like writing them, even though they tend to emerge at a snail's pace.

One of the short-list agents requires them, and there's another who may. So. I'm not quite ready to ship pieces of my heart into the wide world just yet.

Also colorful, look at what I got in my Ravelry "Folklore and Fairytales" group swap:


The roving and book are both more awesome than they look. You'll hear more from me later...

I love reading comics where when it goes to a kiss-approach you think, "This can't possibly go well..."

Just because you know it *has* to be interrupted, usually disastrously.
Plus, also, I Approve of Gilgamesh growing fangs.



...BTW,
I'm having a free-shipping sale on my yarn.
Heat Wave Retail Therapy! @ GOSSAMERSONG

Tell your friends. Especially if they use yarn. ^_^



I sold my Raven King yarn, not a week after uploading. Which is AWESOME, but I will miss it. my post about it
I probably shouldn't be so loving toward these things.

My list of hopeful projects (geekiness ensues!) is also at that blog.
Sesshoumaru may be born as a batt tomorrow...

Also, Thornmallow, from this book par excellance:

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.

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.)