Haus of Rhi

I'm thrilled to be taking part in the very first International Tarot Day Blog Hop. For Strength, I've chosen to share an excerpt from my in-progress sequel to Fragile Bond, a military scifi featuring a sapient alien species of bipedal humanoid felines, and a population of humans traveling the stars. XI, Strength. Wildwood (L) and Mary-el (R) tarot decks. "I'm concerned, Zachary. Maybe this isn't such a great idea after all." Cirrus slowed to a halt, his words echoing in my head as his voice rumbled at so low a register it resonated through my breastbone. His whisper didn't bounce off the walls though, unlike the soft thump of our footsteps in perfect cadence. I turned back to grab his arm and drag him in my wake, second thoughts be damned. My fingers slid along the fine white and black stripes of hair on his forearms, and I tightened my grip, finally catching hold of his wrist. "I refuse to let you back out of this at the last possib...

Is 2016 over yet? It isn't!?.... Fine then. I know I'm not alone in saying it, but it's been an extremely rough year. For all of us. I've struggled to find creative energy and inspiration for the greater part of this year. I've shown up, and I've been writing, but it's all been of a non-fiction nature. Tarot studies, shadow work. I haven't shirked my daily spreads, and sitting down to do that each morning, and the associated writing, is admittedly a huge part of what's kept me going long enough for the juices to start flowing again. The trigger point that tipped me back into writing earlier last week was an album that Aleks shared on Facebook -- the soundtrack from a video game, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst. Never mind that the character on the game cover looks suspiciously like a muse of mine, from a futuristic spec-fic I've been toying with, which will likely be my next-year project. Image link takes you to the full soundtrack on Youtu...

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 ...

I've spent the past few weeks under the radar for various reasons, but edits have had a great deal to do with it. Trapped between the grindstones this month, a novella that has a relatively shallow past with me. It hasn't been around all that long, I didn't play around with it much before I just churned it out. That's not my modus operandi, to be blunt. I don't do my best work that way. Thus, the edits are exhaustive, and have resulted in the story's growth, on a number of levels. Yeah, the word count swelled with every page I edited. But it was more than just fluff. In fact, a good bit of my efforts have involved cutting back and tightening the prose where I can. And yet the length increases. I think this quote from Stephen King doesn't just apply from a reader's perspective. As an artist, writing is much like any other medium. Some stories aren't just all there from inception, adhering to the predetermined outline. Certainly mine are no...

Camp Nano had actually been chugging along reasonably well through the middle of the month. Halfway through June, I managed to stay on track and broke the 25k barrier only a day or so late. And I did hit 50k... for the year. The irony is that, well, the day I broke the halfway mark? I received an email from my Riptide editor. Yep. I am wading through edits, my focus on a completely different project. And switching gears between them doesn't happen easily enough for me to try finishing out the month goal of 50k. Especially not when all my creative energy is going into polishing. It takes a lot of elbow grease. Can I count the 2k+ that I've added in the edits? So! August Camp Nano it is, then! I'll take the year-milestone of 50k as a technical victory, putting me at the halfway point for that. I set an annual goal of 100k for this year for a couple reasons -- the greatest being a matter of quality over quantity, but editing processes contributed heavily as well. I knew ...