Haus of Rhi

Okay, so I didn't reach that 50k goal. But November was far from a loss. Red's story is sitting just past the halfway point. I have a solid framework of where it's going and how it's getting there. I just need to find the energy and inspiration to write it. And...that's not a thing that will happen this month. My momentum dies every year around this time. It's inevitable. I'm planning to reach the fin  for her story during the month of January. It was one of the projects on my "To Write" list for 2014. Or was that 2013. I don't recall. I've been sitting on it so long, if it had been plant life we'd be dealing with diamonds right about now. Actually, I think that particular analogy is best allocated to my old trunk novel, DC. Whose first volume has been lurking in a shadowy corner of my psyche for the past year, draft completed and just...waiting. For the time to be right. And soon, I think. First, though, I want to finish with R...

Today marks the halfway point for NanoWrimo. Bringing Red's story to life has not been an easy journey thus far, nor is the path likely to become more forgiving in the weeks to come. I've felt more like Frankenstein than a parent. Fashioning from the death, despair, and destruction a miracle of science, not some fresh gift of nature to be molded and formed like wet clay. Largely this is because the first portion of Red's story has lurked in the back of my mind like a ghost limb in the years since Blacker Than Black  came to fruition. She was there, loitering in the shadows, sharp gaze following every shift of inspiration, the ebb and flow of creative energies. Waiting for her time to come. And in the end, she isn't the one telling her story. The task of narrator falls to someone else. She approves of this in ways I cannot begin to describe. For her, it feels like a relief. The pressure has shifted. The performance anxiety no longer exists. She can breathe, and be...

Literal and figurative, mind. The past couple weeks have been rife with research, exploring and developing writing tools. Resurrecting old projects, that sat incomplete and untouched for too long, is a large contributor. Foremost on my mind lately has been Red's story, the sequel (of sorts) to Blacker Than Black.  Many of the dangling threads from the end of that tale have provided anchors and, if you will, belay lines, for the skeleton of what Red's story will become. It's been almost three years since I touched that 150k word tome. And I'm going to have to reread it because I never did finish fleshing out the timeline and character references as I intended. Red's character is very easy to slip into. It's the plot that, as usual, will offer the greatest obstacles for me. I lean heavily toward character-driven stories. But there's means, motive, and opportunity floating around like flotsam and jetsam and it needs addressed. And also, nothing in the live...

With a story as short as my piece "Blood & Peyote," I don't really feel comfortable actually offering an excerpt. Even a small one offers up too large a chunk. I've seen a few readers comment that they don't want to spoil the surprise and pleasure of reading the anthology when it comes out. So I've devised a substitute. It offers a bit of the mood, tone, and flavor of the story and the characters without divulging anything of the actual narrative. Behold, I give you the soundtrack to "Blood & Peyote." Each song was chosen to coincide with a specific scene and section. The exception is the twelve-minute "Blackfoot Fire" which is included for the sole intention of conveying something of Apisi Howling's culture, as well as his weight in the story. In the event that Spotify doesn't work for you, I've created an abridged Blood & Peyote from rhi.e on 8tracks Radio as well. There are a couple songs missing from...

Perfect porch perch weather is perfect. It's something I have to do every time I start a new project. The right atmosphere to encourage the muses. The right music for white noise. Rarely does the same music work for more than one project. This time, I couldn't even stay in the same genre of music. Perhaps because this project is in a different realm than my most recent works. It strays back into the universe of the Doctrine and Alliance, political foes constantly at each others' throats, though its cast of characters is entirely removed. It has no name just yet, and it's shaping up to meld together a couple ideas that had been gestating on the back burner. One based on a dream I had decades ago about the reclamation of a military base by the indigenous locals, and an unrelated story about a genetically modified assassin whose xeno-genetics overload its psyche--the ensuing bloodbath of a killing spree lands it in a maximum security intergalactic prison. It seems ...

The wolf, it mocks me with its laughter. As a kid, I was a nerd. I loved learning, and the scholarly aspect of my formative education was far from a burden -- with the exception of that damned section on quantum mechanics during Physics 2AP my senior year. Anyway, I used to look forward to going back to school. It was a relief from the endless doldrums of summer, for one. Granted, I usually found plenty of time and energy to invest in writing, and going back to school sort of cramped that. And the actual interactions with my peers? No thanks, I could do without that. But all the school supplies. Notebooks, and pens, and erasers, and mechanical pencils...it was enough to make me drool. And yep, it's that time of year again. I really didn't intend to go buy anything. I seriously didn't. I'd splurged on a hoard of writing utensils earlier this spring, actually, and didn't need anything. Really. Plenty of space left in the notebooks I've got. I certainly d...

Releases October 13, 2014. So, it's now official enough for public knowledge: The military anthology for which I've completed a short story is slated for release in mid-October, just in time for GayRomLit, and has a confirmed title and cover art. I'm so excited. Mostly because I completed a story.  Yes, it's short, and I'm still doing some tweak editing, but thanks to my Magical Betas of Awesome, it has a solid ending that I don't loathe with every fiber of my being, as I do most endings that I write. The characters are ones that I enjoy immensely, and their entire squad is likely just as interesting too, come to think of it. I expect there will be more of tattooed, red-headed heathen Chartreuse Beaudrou and his battle buddy, Kainai medicine man Apisi Howling. No, neither of them look anything like that hairless, pale hot toddy on the cover there. But that's okay. He's doing his job quite well, too. I did my damnedest to keep their story "...

I forgot how exuberantly "puppy" actual puppies are capable of being. I was reminded, yesterday, when I was introduced rather unexpectedly to a yellow lab pup who was all legs and paws and bright blue eyes. I remembered, almost immediately, the entire pack of yellow labs my riding instructor kept at her ranch. They went everywhere together, it seemed, a teeming mass of golden tawniness, happy friendly energy bumbling everywhere, wet noses and slobbery tongues and solid bodies nudging enthusiastically into legs and knees and whatever else was within reach. This puppy was precisely like that, came barreling toward me with no bark of warning or malicious intent. Just a huge pile of happiness as though he could instantly detect that I was someone he wanted to sniff and lick and share his energy with. He came racing after me not once but on four separate instances, which thoroughly baffled his humans because he'd never done anything like it before. Ever. Ah, the innocent ...

As though winter isn't rough enough most of the time, this year Mercury went into retrograde for the entire month of February, and of course, oriented in Pisces. That's my constellation, the one that resonates with me the most--I'm technically an Aquarius/Pisces cusp, but when it comes to art, and writing, the Piscean in me comes to the fore. (The Aquarian side I save mostly for forced social interactions.) At any rate, February was a big fat bust. The most I managed to write on any given day was 100 words, when words came at all. Oftentimes just that much took hours to accomplish. Yet life is cyclic in so many ways, and Mercury relented at last. I could almost feel  the floodgate giving way, the surge of words scourging away the residue built up by weeks of frustration and headdesking. Of course, the parameters of my upbringing demanded this sort of pagan resonance receive disbelief and an "evil" label, so despite the years and distance between us, I still dou...

I was over at "Bitten By Books" for the two-year anniversary of Blacker Than Black  today. Talking about my muses, and hosting a $20 gift card contest. Contest ends at midnight on Saturday, February 1st. Please stop by to check out my interview, ask some awkward questions, and maybe enter the giveaway. (Hey, free stuff, right?) a Rafflecopter giveaway

It's come back to me, and I am so, so very relieved. Back in October, the anthology piece I was writing just...stalled out and died on me. I was struggling with the relational dynamics between the characters, how best to proceed with constructing a believable interplay that would engage some emotional investment from the audience. This project has been excruciating for me on a number of levels, but what I've struggled with most is the faint undertones of questionable consent. Not on a sexual level, but a relational one. The power play between the main characters, the dissonance that occurs. I still don't know if it will have a "satisfying" resolution. But then, I didn't go into this WIP with the expectation of a positive or even satisfying climax taking place. I think I've worked my way around to that much--a satisfying climax, as the case may be--but the resolution that takes place in its aftermath is unlikely to leave the audience with more than the b...