Haus of Rhi

Or, Rhi's Nano-Adventure Begins. Terribly fascinating, the way these things happen. Since I initially began writing this MHT anthology short story, I'd been planning to hammer out the last of it during Nano and have done with it. I desperately want to do a story for this project and despite the obstacles that are arising, my plans to finish it have not changed. However, just as I sat down to write today I read a note from a reader asking about the potential for a sequel to "Blacker Than Black." And in the course of penning my response, Red woke up. No, no. Red didn't just "wake up." Red came roaring to life like a soldier shaken awake by incoming mortar sirens and impacts. It's a good thing that she and I are so familiar with one another or I might have backhanded her into Alpha Centauri. As things stand, however, my Nano-Adventure is off to a roaring, energetic start (which is how these things usually begin, is it not) with 3k already dumped...

My struggles with this current writing project have led me on an artistic journey the past few weeks. They've ranged from wood-burning projects to metaphysical reinforcements. It doesn't feel as though the creative energy is lacking this time. It is simply this powerful subject matter leaves me struggling with how best to evoke the emotions and response from the reader audience that I intend. Part of that is parsing free just what I intend. There are many times when I don't know for sure. Sandalwood malas. I think it's safe to say that each of us lives in a society or culture that has a number of forms of acceptable violence and aggression. It's called any number of things; discipline, punishment, a tradition of hazing, tenderizing the fresh meat. And really, it's a failure to communicate, right? Communication is a two-way channel along which we give and receive information. Transmission and reception; both parts carry equal import. Without it, frustration...

I am melancholy this evening. It grew from a mellow mood this morning when circumstances reminded me of the date. Silly mundane things like paying bills and doing my duty at the dayjob brought it to my attention. Today marked the twentieth anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu. Shughart and Gordon will never be unseated from their Throne of Badassery, at least not in my mind. A toast of blood from a writer's cluttered workspace. I spent much of my mental energy today recognizing all the small things, all the privileges, that are encompassed by living, and growing old, that are largely taken for granted. Be they irritations, or the flaring light of sunset, or the thousand shades of sunset as fall colors blush to life in a tree. Or Mike, who's learned a new trick of rolling over and now flops on the floor like a dead fish, without prompting, at the merest scent of bacon treats. And so I am melancholy, though grateful, and offer up a toast of blood (Bull's Blood, m...

Much like crows, vampires, and leprechauns, I am a writer easily distracted. Those distractions come in myriad forms, as strangely inconsistent as a menagerie of mythical creatures. (Mildly alliterated analogy unintentional.) On vacation for the past week, I spent my time doing things deliberately unrelated to writing, plotting, or creating. Especially no creating. Nothing that demanded creativity in the least. My brain needed a vacation as much as I did from the dayjob. The most creative things I did were: cook french toast (involving sourdough loaf and heavy whipping cream, seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and vanilla extract); carry on a detailed conversation analyzing the ethical implications of character choices in the third season of The Walking Dead; and go to the local RenFaire for a day--not in costume, for once--and make a few lewd comebacks in the bartender's general direction. Today, though, marks a week for easing back into the writing thing and striving fo...

There haven't been many instances for me to catch actual butterflies in the garden. There were three of them, the other day. All adults, two of them with colors so faded and wings so damaged and battered that I was astounded they were still flying. The one I recognized from a few days prior; that time, though, it had been alone. Guess it loved the bush so much it came back and brought its buddies. Took these with a faster shutter speed and the auto-focus function engaged (the default "sports" setting on my camera) because I'm terrible at gauging these sorts of things. It reminds me of when I was young and my parents would give me their camera to take family and group photos. It was an old Kodak, 39mm with a five inch manual lens. And I was a myopic adolescent without corrective lenses. Suffice it to say the photos were always blurry and messed up. "I can't tell if the camera is focused or not." It was one of the more supremely frustrat...

I'm not a terribly avid or educated gardener. Evidence of such: a few years ago I trimmed back the juniper outside my front door--and chopped off ALL the aged berries in the process. They ended up in the trash with the rest of the yard debris. I didn't know what they were until about six months later when I was looking for a way to use juniper in a natural herbal mixture for a very specific application. I was suitably horrified. Those berries take three years to form and mature. I'm hoping for my first crop later this fall. Most of the other plants in the ground at Haus of Rhi have been foisted upon me by the matriarchal Master Gardener among my close relations. Among that number are: a T-Rex variant hosta with these gigantic leaves that gets the daintiest little lavender flowers later in the year; a butterfly bush that has started to rival my juniper and cypress bushes for girth and height; and the most recent addition last fall, a deciduous bigleaf hydrangea that I cra...

I have this enormous TBR list, and I don't find much time to read anymore. Between the day job routine, writing projects, and general boring mundane stuff like finding time to eat, do yoga, and keep the house from looking like a landfill, reading is rather low in clout when it comes to prioritizing. It's taken me months to finish a single book, in fact. I've been reading Meyer's Into the Fire  since last fall when I received a complimentary hardback copy. In that time, I've added another five books to my pile. Meyer's book has left me with mixed feelings. I knew writing a review for this one would be difficult. Just reading it has been a roller coaster of emotions for me. Over the months, I've shared quotes from the book on #soldierporn [you can find them by scrolling through the Reading List tag, here ]. But even those don't convey what it evoked as I read it. I need to figure out how to describe the impact this writer and his story have, af...

Thank you to everyone who participated in the HAHAT blog hop, and especially those who stopped by and took the time to engage in some conversation about personal identity. The winner of my HAHAT giveaway is... Andrew J. Peters! Please contact me at rhianon.etzweiler@gmail.com with a valid email address for your copy of "Blacker Than Black." If I don't hear from you within 24 hours, I'll select an alternate recipient.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Haus of Rhi! Today we're joining in on a blog hop that's raising awareness about a very important subject. Today we're all dedicating blogspace in recognition of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia . And Haus of Rhi is joining in. This week I'll be giving away an ebook copy of "Blacker Than Black." Leave a meaningful comment on this post with a valid email address before midnight on May 27th to enter the drawing. Each comment will be counted as a separate entry (so if you leave more than one comment, each one will be a separate drawing entry). One winner will be selected via randomizer and announced here at Haus of Rhi on May 28th. It's about time. It's about losing the labels that discriminate and delineate. It's about accepting that not everyone's identity will fall neatly within the definitions you create in your unique perspective. It's about realizing that you have t...

April's editing pass went better than I expected it to. Cleaning up prose and addressing a couple consistency issues I stumbled upon, that was the worst of it. Since Piaffe  sits at 80k it was no small task, but thank fuck I can call it done. Done enough that I need a break before tackling the completion of Levade , the second volume. I know I struggle with writing short stories, or even shortER stories, but really, there comes a time when one must stop and breathe or it becomes downright arduous. So, with that first volume of Dancing Circles  wrapped up rather neatly, I'm shifting on to the second project on my 2013 To-Do List. Finishing a half-complete project, Fang and Fire.

I should make an update, shouldn't I? Especially since it's been over a month since my last post, and my self-imposed deadline has expired. I bought seed starter kits and entirely too many packets of seeds, all of them the same thing: sage. I decided, back at the beginning of March, that since I buy so much of it to dry and burn, that I should really just grow my own. My seeds are actually sprouting! I have a tray of them in the kitchen window, and they are happily doing their thing. The packet said they needed to germinate for a few weeks, so imagine my surprise when I noticed them popping out after only a week. I will have a LOT of sage to plant outside in May. If I don't manage to kill the seedlings somehow, between now and then. I'm not ruling it out. After all, I do have a black thumb, haha. On to the latest writing news. That last push through the end of March actually went well. I won't pretend that I'm exorbitantly satisfied with the current state...

I was strolling along quite innocently through this forest of a story, rather certain that I had all the characters figured out. Or that I was in the very least intimately familiar with all of them. After all, this WIP I'm working on currently...this one has been with me for decades, not just years. I know this forest well. We've forged a few new trails over our time together, but the views are much better along these newer routes. I'd finally reached a place in my journey as a writer where all the pieces had begun coming together. An awareness of self that let me truly see what the story had been whispering all along. So not really expecting any surprise confessions from characters, right? Dude, come on. I've known y'all longer than anyone except my siblings for fuck's sake. Nope, they've managed to catch me completely off guard. And all the sudden I'm tackling a character who's physically abusing their significant other--because it's the mos...

The winner of the "Fragile Bond" promo tour giveaway contest is.... Nikyta J.! Congrats! Watch your email inbox, I'll respond to your winning entry with a request for postal address. And a warm thanks to all of you who followed along on the tour!

It's here! Starting on Monday, I'll be tromping about for guest appearances at various blogs to pimp out Marc and Hamm. And the book bling from f.Inguz, which you'll have a chance to win. A gorgeous little bookmark trinket. The contest will close on Sunday, 24 Feb, and the winner will be announced here at Haus of Rhi next Monday. The full list of promo appearances is here on my website , starting with Cup O' Porn on release day, where the complete details of the contest will be available. Along with some porn, of course. I'd also like to take a moment to thank the #soldierporn followers who are now four thousand strong. Curating it has kept me going strong through a number of dry spells with my writing over the past eighteen months or so since I started it (#soldierporn turns two in June). It's kept me focused and researching instead of getting lost in fruitless procrastination when the muses are uncooperative. And I'm grateful to everyone who'...

The sun was actually out the other day. Not in that dreary-gray winter sky overcast sort of way, but like that new neighbor who seems fascinating and friendly at first and quickly becomes annoying with the late partying and still managing to be up at the ass-crack of dawn on your days off. As though the sun's giving fair warning that we'll be sick to death of it in six months. However, it's winter right now (though the thermometer totally had me fooled today) and so when the sun was out, I opened all the curtains and let it come streaming through the living room window. I was not the sole beneficiary. Because it seems as though my wonderful writing mascot, Iron Mike, has developed some decidedly feline tendencies. I mean, yesterday I surprised him when I came home from work at an abnormal time. Surprised him so badly that he fell out of his bed into his food bowl , and scattered dry dog food across the kitchen floor. How'd he manage that? Well, his bed might actu...

The holidays and I have had a hardcore love/hate relationship for many years, so I tend to stay low-key from All Hallow's Eve through the beginning of the year. Sometimes it strikes an ennui in me that causes a creative lag. Not this time. It seems I've surrounded myself with enough protective energy and positive thoughts to ward off the worst of it. This beauty here is part of that! No, I didn't even wait until Yule to open my present, either. (Rhi must really learn to turn the date-stamp off on the camera so that it's easier to falsify improprieties such as this.) Bronze Dragonscale It's always a struggle for me to find pieces of jewelry I'll willingly wear. Naturally, this means the probability of finding things I don't ever want to take off is virtually negligible. Yeah well...I'm totally besotted. Meet my new beau; the dragonscale is inextricably adhered to my wrist. I'm even sleeping with it on. I've always preferred silver over ...