Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Another Process Post

This is another post about the process I'm using to finish up PHAT FAIRY. It will not interest you unless you are one of the people who like process posts.

Read more... )

The book has ended up much stronger as a result of this pass and I'd like to think everything makes sense now in what is essentially a third draft. I guess we'll see.

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Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Sneak Peek of Phat Fairy

Every day, my best friend Leeloo complains about the cafeteria food. And she's not wrong. Everybody hates the cafeteria food. But she's just way too descriptive. It puts you off eating anything. I was trying to ignore her, fishing through my locker.

"...Babysnot soup, also known as "potato." More like the paste you used to eat in kindergarten. Are you listening, Chris?"

I could barely hear her over the hall noise. Everyone was changing classes, rushing to fourth period, jostling and talking. The school didn't run the air-conditioning unless it was over 90 outside, and so the air was hot and oppressive. An arm's-length away from me, Bruce Fuson was leaning against the wall, music dribbling from the earbuds half-hidden by the sweaty strands of his hair, staring off into space. It was that new Fairy band, Pixeldust.

"Speak for yourself," I said. "I never ate paste."

On the other side of me, Karen Sassano sniffed meaningfully and said, not really under her breath, "That'd be a change, something you didn't eat."

Karen's a size 4 and I think three of her could fit inside my jeans. What she lacks in size, she makes up for in mean.

I ignored her. "I tell you what," I said to Leeloo, "I heard about a way to sneak out for lunch. Two seniors were talking about it."
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Yesterday's Problem

To those following yesterday, OpenOffice was indeed an easier fix. Got the laptop shipped off yesterday so once it arrives, she won't have to go to the library to check her e-mail anymore (her machine died in what sounds like a pretty non-recoverable way, alas.)

The crab apples trees down the street are -just- starting to blossom. In a few days we'll have those little wind swirls of pink petals that look so lovely.

Working away on Phat Fairy again today and will post an excerpt if something presents itself as particularly excerptable. I am happy to find I've got this plot-shape thing down better this time, or at least am laboring under that delusion.

Check out our classic reprint, Miss Cubbidge's Dragon of Romance, on Fantasy Magazine and please leave a comment if you get the chance!

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Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Excerpt from Phat Fairy (still very rough)

The next morning I could barely drag myself out of bed. It was not so much that the day was grey, a rainy drizzle intensifying into downpour that dragged my spirits to the ground. I felt lumpy and miserable, full of uncomfortable aches and pains to go with my spiritual ache.
Everything was grey. The clouds that roiled overhead were gun-metal grey, ominous and threatening as a car horn at close range.
Even so, I found it difficult to care. I dragged myself out of bed without bothering to make the bed behind me, and wandered over to the window. My feet felt unfamiliar and as though they were no longer a part of me, as though they might head off down the Road of their own accord at any moment. As though they were independent, capable of thought more rational than my own erratic nature might provide. I flushed at the thought.
Even in my reveries, I was inferior, this time to simple body parts.
I put my palms down on the windowsill and pushed against the smooth cool surface. I rested my shoulders and forearms, as much of my skin as I possibly could, against the cool, silvery glass, fog-shrouded and beaded with drops of condensed moisture, clumped with cobwebs in the corners.
Bink.
Something hurled itself, fast as lightning crackling, against the glass, a solid pebbly impact that sounded like a musical instrument’s note, a glass piano, perhaps, or a triangle. I shuddered away from the glass, seeing nothing but the swirl of cloud against it. Then something purple, humming bird wings, wasp-stinger and clutching mandibles, angry hornet buzz that frightened me on some deep level, instinctive as a Neanderthal pissing.
Happily I didn’t follow suit.
Instead I backed away from the glass, looking at the wasp. Another joined it, and then anther and another and another until at least a dozen hovered there like irate jewels.
Faced with that, it was harder to be depressed, even though I could feel the emotion, as deeply plunging as any Pit, yawning just to the side of my attention. But I turned away, trusting to the sturdiness of the Palace’s glass.
The buzzing and impacts behind me grew furious. For a moment, I thought that I had made a terrible mistake, for which I would be stung when the glass inevitably shattered.
But despite the terrible fear riding my spine, the wasps did not break through. I walked away, across the chamber towards the door. Behind it I cold hear a conversation, and for a moment I put my ear to the door and listened, despite the buzzing of the wasps at the window far behind me.
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Friday, March 20th, 2009

Excerpt from Phat Fairy (still very rough)

(somewhere towards the late middle)

The sun rose, filtering through the (towering) cedars all around me, and the air was full of green smells. The wind rustled with a predatory beat in the underbrush. Sunlight edged the mountains. In the empty space where two dipped to meet, a fist-sized blaze illuminated the further pines.
I pushed forward to kneel beside Leeloo. I felt her throat and her pulse beat there steadily, despite her stillness. Her hands were cold — I tugged off my mittens and put them on hers, first holding each hand between my own, rubbing it and holding it to my lips to blow on it, trying to warm them. I strained to listen, but only heard the wind in the trees, the distant chuckle of water.
There was something white, high in the cedars, shimmering in the green-shrouded dark.
I squinted upward, shivering. It seemed too warm for snow to linger in the boughs. The blotches of white, like moss, like lichen — were they ghosts? Some demonic fire? What were the limits of this world?
The sun crept forward, and dawn overtook the world, light dancing in the cedars.
They were butterflies, white butterflies, clinging en masse in between the green fans of leaves. Beautiful. For a still moment I stared upwards. I wished I had a camera, but it would have been one of those pictures that simply couldn’t turn out, impossible to catch the light, the significance, the utter perfectness of it.
A bird chirped somewhere and all the butterflies stirred at once.
That should have been even more beautiful but somehow it wasn’t. It was as chilling as a bit of ice dropped down the back.  Because there was an alertness to it, an edge as sharp as any claw, that did not say prey.
I shook Leeloo’s shoulder but she didn’t stir. “This would be a really good time for you to wake up,” I said.
The butterflies fluttered into the air at the sound of my voice.
I didn’t say it aloud, but I certainly thought it. Oh shit.

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Saturday, November 8th, 2008

see my ships a-sailing

A rainy Saturday morning  -- I'm about to get some writing on Phat Fairy in before heading off for a writing group afternoon. I need to stop and think out some things about the plotline before I go too much further.

Birthday #45 coming up next weekend. HOLY COW HOW DID I GET HERE? I figure with any luck and some preventative maintenance that puts me at about halfway through (maternal grandmother just passed 97). As always with these sporadic moments of assessment, I resolve to take better care of myself, to walk every day, to mediate, to do the dishes daily, to keep up on e-mail and be better about telling my friends how much I appreciate and love them. It's always an uphill climb, for I am a bad, lazy creature at the bone.

I have been reading a lot of urban fantasy this year and have found what I think is my very favorite so far, Lilith Saintcrow's books.  Finished Working for the Devil last night, Night Shift a couple of days ago, and I've got three more stacked on the reading shelf. Thank you, [info]pauljessup , for mentioning them.

Wayne is torn this weekend: football, Fallout 3, or a judicious mixture of the two? I suspect it will be door #3.

P.S. I like this photo.
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