Haus of Rhi

No, This Isn't A Cooking Blog, But...! Look at that chocolate babka with butterscotch chips. Sourdough . ON A PIZZA TRAY. I shit you not, I cooked it on a parchment lined pizza tray and it was almost too big. Next time I'll remember to split the dough in half and make it a reasonable size. As it was, I had to cut it in pizza wedges and store half of it in the freezer so it wouldn't go bad before I could eat it.  Alas, my pre-existing condition of carb addiction aside, the brain needs sugar to sustain it. Sugars are the only thing capable of moving through the brain's barrier or whatever. *waves hand* Science things. So I try not to judge myself too harshly, and I cook most of my carb craving satisfaction in my own kitchen (using sourdough) to keep it as healthy and preservative-free as possible. I tend to use almond milk and kefir a lot as well. (Hang the recipes, they're more like guidelines anyways.) Side Projects Are Great This lovely dragon-eye pillow has been b...

Once upon a time (stay with me here, because it was A Dark And Stormy Night, as well, let me tell you)... I sat down and wrote the beginnings to half a dozen stories, all set in the same world. A few of them had a single recurring character. One of them was set over two thousand years into the future from the others. 'Then' Me became concerned by the horror aspect of this latter story. I distinctly recall writing the scene where one of the characters calmly turns to the MC and says, "Run." And the MC doesn't immediately register what's going on. And then they look up and freak out and have an understandably visceral prey response to what they see, reek of fear from every pore, and bolt . Apparently between that scene and the schizophrenic high-functioning sociopathic serial killer human spliced with unknown alien genetics who's another of the POV characters, this story was just too much for the feeble psyche of 'Then' Me to tackle finishing. 'T...

For July, the Tarot Rebels Blog Hop focuses on the task of reading with a deck you've not previously used before. I had a few sitting around, actually, and I felt inspired to try each in turn. The exercise became quite revealing, both of the decks and of me as a reader and toward what sorts of decks I intuitively gravitate. For each deck, I employed a different spread, in each case one I'd not used previously. In hindsight, it's entirely plausible this created too many variables and adversely influenced my perceptions of the decks. Spiritual Task, Sevenfold Mystery My first attempt employed Place's Sevenfold Mystery. I'd acquired it for reasons wholly unrelated to actually using it, much like my Hermetic and Azathoth decks. Despite that, I've had others tell me it's a solid performer for them, so I decided to give it a chance. The spread is called Spiritual Tasks, but to be perfectly blunt here, I struggled to take the interpretation seriously be...

As promised, picspam! Sorted roughly by order of appearance (except for Traken down there at the bottom), here's the rest of the cast of characters in Piaffe. Some of them don't have much page time. Others have a much larger role than what is seen or claimed in this volume of the series. I had fun exploring these first two, because Neolus and Erryn are two of my favorite supporting characters. We'll see more of them. Can I say that without it being spoilery? I really like them. Willoughby, who plays Neolus, is of Ojibway from Whitesand First Nation and Jamaican descent. Thuy is a Vietnamese model. Also worth mentioning is that Jherrfaulken Torrente character about halfway down. He doesn't actually get page space, but he kind of steals it. And his presence and influence loom a bit. He never really had a face, until I stumbled on a photo shoot a while back, and then I couldn't see him as anyone else. I'm sure he won't mind. Everyone wants to be named ...

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...

I wanted to preface this impromptu discussion born of a stream of tweets churned out on my Twitter feed. This is not about inexperienced writers snubbing their noses at any sort of editorial effort on their work. This is about knowing the rules and knowing when to break them, and breaking them in a specific sort of way as an artistic technique. Let us not confuse the two, for we have all of us read unedited stories published on Smashwords or Lulu or Amazon that made our brains bleed with the urge to claw out our eyes. This is about the presence of prose poetry in fiction as a writing technique, and about how much of it is damaged or lost in translation through the course of the editorial stage of the publishing process. Prose poetry is a recognized form of art, in that it is  a recognized form of poetry . Sadly, it is not wholly recognized as a form of prose. Or at least, it is not recognized as a form of  fiction  prose. Had an interesting conversation about pro...

American Crow mobbing Red-tailed Hawk. Source: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/american_crow/id While driving yesterday, I saw three large crows circling above a winter-bare tree. They took turns dive-bombing at a dark shape in the branches. They were persistent, calculating, and energetic. Thankfully traffic was sparse enough to let me slow down a good bit as I got closer. That dark shape was a red-tailed hawk. It didn't seem terribly disturbed by the mobbing crows, but then, even bare the branches kept them from getting too close so it's possible they'd treed it out of the sky. This time of year, with no nests or juveniles to protect, it's rather curious to see crows being hostile. Defending hunting territorial lines, perhaps. Or did the hawk steal their roadkill, maybe? Or they were just being the intellectual assholes that's earned them notoriety in the avian world. All equally possible. Strange omens. It hasn't been that rough a winter, really. ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 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...

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'...

I spent a handful of my formative years in Kentucky. Rolling hills lush and green, thick with wildlife and the endless white fences of horse farms. And beneath those hills, I also learned, lurked some of the most majestic limestone caverns in the world. Frozen Niagara is a sight everyone should get to experience once. (I'll be geeky for a moment;  Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system in the world. There's a photo gallery there.)

So... update! Ah, this feels so strange. I've only been working on this WIP for, what, five weeks? (I suck at updating regularly, and it shows.) And while I haven't hit 50k yet, which would be like a NaNoWriMo all on my own and would be all kinds of impressive, it's sitting at 36k and feels like it might be the halfway point. Alas, alack, I really have no idea. But I've written roughly 10k in the week of vacation time I've had from the day job. For me, that's better than a good solid pace. Usually it goes slower than that. I even had some lagtime in there where absolutely nothing happened for a few days. I've tried pushing before, nothing good comes of it. Whatever I push ends up needing hacked and reworked. I've learned to let things stew until they feel right. It's what works for me. At best, I've only a tenuous and vague notion of where this is going and what will happen next. But then, that's a fitting description for how this ent...

I've been sneaking around a great deal lately, under the radar and such. I blame my betas. In the general course of perving #soldierporn on Tumblr around the beginning of September, I stumbled upon an inspiring photograph. While it's one I've seen before, my admiration for it has many layers. Mostly for the body language of the individuals who are the focal point. The communication taking place is decidedly...intimate, although that's not unusual for military types and even less so for battle buddies. I don't have a source or credit line for this photograph. I reblogged it on Tumblr with the simple caption of .... [Body Language.] There is undeniably a great deal of that going on there. Certainly a story wanting told. Or a few, because the story that *I* have pulled out of this photograph has been rather loosely translated and thoroughly removed from the assumptions one would make looking at it. On a seemingly unrelated note, I finally ran o...