anachred

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 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...)

I am doing line-edits on Aolon.
On the opening of the first volume, to be exact.
Which has a syntax of the comparative fluidity and clarity of oak planks. My effort to create something better resembles sawing said plank with a butter knife.

Not impossible, no. More hopeful still if I have exaggerated slightly, and the butter knife is actual a steel dinner knife. (Not steak knife, though.)

Still, I'm looking at emptying the Caspian Sea by the teaspoon here, to go for a fresh metaphor that still involves cutlery.

(Yes, that feeling. Thank you, Sophie.)

It's cut and dried work, though. Good for the early morning to get my brain running. Rather than trying to think through structural reworking that involves new material, which I find more like trying to carve hard glass. Especially the shattering part...

It's just the density of it that I had to whinge about.
I'm breaking it up by peeking at a later volume which was less maladjusted, and only needs little detail work. \(I think it may have huge structural issues, but I'm not borrowing trouble.)


Meanwhile, the not-quite-fanfic story continues apace, and I'm almost done with the first draft of the Con's signs for taping by doors. Mighty, yes!

Rewriting.

Now THIS feels like beating my brains out on the keyboard.

I rarely have it feel this hard when I'm writing, and I guess I'm lucky. When I'm rewriting short stories it doesn't always feel like pushing through an invisible wall of the consitency of that tacky glue with only the strength of my thoughts. (My thoughts are neither sharp, nor Hurcules. This is not much fun.)


But I needed to do this. I've known it and have been neatly dodging the issue in most of the book. Or just working up to it. Yeah, that's a more positive take, and likely as accurate. >,<


I did a little work on cleaning up tags but didn't tackle any of the biggies. Still not sure if I'm going to have a tag-bar longer than my posts on the front page, but we'll see.

Back to rewriting, there is a sort of exhilaration when you cut to the quick and start rebuilding something that fits the real vision of the story.
But still, brains would be leaking out my ears if I weren't taking copious breaks.
Maybe I'll get better at this? The blogging of Veteran Authors does not offer much hope on this, though...

These are the sort of things you create and try not to think about what profound throughts you could have been thinking if you'd resisted the urge...
Guess the tributes!       [not really. spare yourself the "What If?" agonies of wasted time.]

Rainbows on bubbles and great winged horses
Snowdays with Tumnus and werewolf keen noses
Gamboling kitsune, sly leprechauns
My favorite illusions, once seen and they're gone

Kings born in exile with old broken sabres
Changelings and deep wells and candles and prayers
Angry steep mountains with snow to hunt dwarves
Mad wives in attics and those fey secret drawers

Time full of wrinkles, impossible heroes
Wrestling with Grendel and magical bureaus
Avatars running from demigod des'ny
My fav'rite illusions are running away with me.

Alphabets forming from thornbush and briars
Phookas that prefer to ride on two tires
Redheads, tea, dragons, elves, shoes, steel, owls, rain
Here let me tell you my favorites again...


Hint: I cheated.

So, this instead of finishing another major edit on Beastly. I will scoping out new guinea pigs predictably later than I like and sooner than is good for you.

Today I got it together to start a new document on my computer.

It is Portentious. It is Fraught with Danger. It is Courageous and Bold.

It is...
    Chapter Four, starting on page 69 of my manuscript, destined to be The True Beginning.

Or so I am deliberating the possibility of making it. It means actual new writing. I'm not probably going to do that today, but I've looked at the first page or so, to know what I need to work with. I've copied over a significant chunk into which I need to subtly retrace 70 pages worth of world building, establishment of character, and Pivotal Plot Establishment.

To end on an upswing:
    What a relief!          I get to liking the idea more and more as I think about it. I knew it, I knew it!