Haus of Rhi

Despite the fact that I'm an obsessive realist, I tend to focus (most of the time!) on the positive. This has been a good year. A year of changes (thanks, Chinese Metal Tiger) that haven't quite ended just yet (another six weeks) that have all proven to be for the better despite the difficulties they present.  A year of challenges, to the way I think. The way I see myself.  And my writing.  A year of new relationships -- friends, acquaintances, both personal and professional. I feel as if this single year has been the condensed version of a decade. Other times it has felt like it couldn't possibly end soon enough. I'm looking forward to the coming year (the Metal Rabbit), of peace and introspection as a time to engage more fully in my writing. There will be more to come. A lot more. This, this is just the beginning. I hope you enjoy taking this journey with me. Beginning the first week of January (to be posted on the 7th) the next Muse in the series will be Black. ...

Getting Konaton to sit down with me wasn't all that difficult. It was the conversation itself I found to be the most difficult. Not the most uncomfortable muse discussion I've had, by far, but short of a jackhammer and a pair of draft horses, I knew I wouldn't be getting anything more from him than he was feeling generous enough to give. Konaton and generous are antonyms in the New World Dictionary. I'm now convinced of it. Everything about him is dark, as he sits staring at me with a sullen expression from the opposite side of the living room. The hint of color covering his scalp in a shadow of fuzz. The circles smudged around his eyes. The complexion of his skin, too cafe au lait to pass for a tan, especially in the dead of winter. I tap my pen against the notebook with its carefully worded list of questions. I knew from the inception this wouldn't be easy.  Konaton jiggles a leg, solid black cargo pants bloused military-style into black Goretex boots. He ar...

There are as many techniques for successful productivity as a writer, as many schools of thought on the subject, as there are writers out there. Some writers insist that focusing on a single project, and devoting all your energies to it, is the best approach. The only approach to take. That dividing your energies between multiple projects lessens the quality of energies devoted to any one single writing project. Although there is some measure of truth in this philosophy, I don't adhere to it at all. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a story is walk away from it, let it rest, give your mind another project to work on, so that you can work through whatever block you're struggling with—on a subconscious level. The solution will come with time, when it's ready. At which point, the story will return to the top of the to-do list, ready to cooperate fully. Optimally. Personally, I adhere to the school of belief that when a writer has "block", it's the mind'...

I thought it might be best to start out slowly, with a character that isn't yet engaged in actively telling his story. Not that I haven't tried, of course. Konaton is ... not the chatty sort. As you'll no doubt get to see firsthand.  That's next week.    The origins alone, the sheer span of time it has taken me to get him even this far out of his shell, totally boggles my mind. I was trolling search engines, looking for names for secondary characters. Unique, but viable, spellings. I hate nonsense names, and I hate to arbitrarily just change the way something is spelled just for the sake of differentiation. Especially not without verifying any meaning or source it may have. There are so many cultures out there in the world, varied and rich, one tends to sometimes stumble upon unintentional meanings. From the US Geological Survey, Geographic Dictionary of Alaska. This name caught my eye, and immediately sparked a muse in my head. That photo in the Excerp...

Toward the goal of delving into the facets of the soldier's psyche, I've been wanting to watch the film "Restrepo" for some time. Limited theater engagements meant waiting until the movie released to dvd. It was a long wait, but well worth it. Ironic that, as with CSM Prosser's valiance being witnessed and recorded by embedded journalist Michael Yon in 2005 , and subsequently recognized and rewarded, Giunta's actions were likewise witnessed and recorded. The Sal Giunta Story from SebastianJunger/TimHetherington on Vimeo . Giunta makes a very valid statement in this interview. "Fuck you," he says. Every soldier he's served with, he explains, deserves the recognition for their service that he's received. I watched the movie, earlier today. Many poignant moments trapped on film, and no doubt I'll watch it many more times, to view them again and again. The movie isn't filled with graphic gun-fighting though. And that's not ...

I've the climactic scenes roughly outlined for the end of "Black". It's not making the actual writing of the words any easier. I have this *waves hands* vague mental concept of what's going to happen.  The main antagonists are coming front and center to the stage for the first time in the story... at the end. I don't know if this technique will work at ALL. Have you ever gone walking down a the line of a large television display? LED's have phenomenal contrast ratios. Beyond anything a standard LCD is capable of. And let's not even bother with standard Plasma. You look at the picture quality of one compared to the next. From 10k:1 contrast ratio, to 100k:1 in the LCD models. Big difference, right? The sharp image, the clarity. This is what the initial stages of writing is like. You get the detail, the greater focus. Yeah, this is great, it's beautiful. The quality of the colors excites the eye. Then walk on down the line to the LED models, and...

Nah, I'm not talking about snow. The torrential rains and temporary 60-degree weather (that dropped 30 degrees by nightfall) was bad enough. I cannot think of any other reason why I spent the past two days feeling, in turn, restless and lethargic. Trying to churn out 90 pages in two days is a monumental task, for me. Needless to say, it didn't happen. I did, however, manage to outline the remaining scenes for the plot. So I know what's going to happen now -- thank you, Black, for finally bothering to share that with me -- and all that remains is to flesh them out. And then maybe go back through and plug in a few scenes that got cut into other areas of the story. Because only two sex scenes? Damn that's sparse. No worries, that Steaming Couch Scene made the cut. Although I may need to fluff one in at the end, because as things stand the story will end without Black's gender being much clearer than mud, really. I think. Might need some beta feedback on that. It'...

The colors they see, I’ll never appreciate. Where I lost one sense, I gained another. The darkness others see, I’ve never known. And it’s made all the difference over the years. Few snipers are forcibly decommissioned – like bullets, you don’t dismantle them. You put them in the rifle and pull the trigger. They’re tools, meant to be used. Expended. Nobody cares much about the empty shell that hits the ground, so long as the bullet’s on target. One shot, one kill. The cool steel of the rifle feels alive beneath my touch. Not living and breathing, not like that. More like me. Chilled, dead and still inside. A corporeal manifestation of my soul, visible, tangible. Strictly functional, stripped down to the fundamentals, to the core of its being. Flat, unpolished, giving no surface for even the faint light of moon, stars, or stray beam of streetlight to refract off of. No scope – don’t need one, not with my vision. Just gets in the way. Can put flying metal through...