Haus of Rhi

The Writer's Tool: The Eclipse Tarot This month was a fortuitous one for me to get to know my Eclipse Tarot. I created the deck with the intent of using it as a writing tool, exclusively. Yet I still needed to spend some time getting to know it, to grasp the nuances of its voice, the currents of its energies, in order to successfully and efficiently employ it for its purpose. After all, any craftsman must invest the time in familiarizing himself with a new tool before setting its edge to precious raw material. Tarot Rebels' August Challenge employed a series of questions, one each day for the duration of the month. Silly questions like, what restaurant would you prefer, what kind of pet would you have, what's your musical taste, that on the surface seem flippant and out of place. Yet through the course of the month I found my way to hearing this deck's voice, to understanding its insecurities and immaturity. It doesn't mind clutter, for instance, understand...

Trionfi Della Luna, daily spread. Belief systems are usually instilled foundationally from a very young age. Mine certainly were. It took me a great deal of time and willpower to buck them, to find something I wanted to believe in, to figure out just what I believed as opposed to what I'd been told to, programmed to, and brainwashed to believe. These days, I like to think I have a solid foundational structure to what I believe, but there's a great deal overlaying that, and it's really subject to change with little to no notice whatsoever. I like to renovate. I like to try out new ideas and concepts before I disregard them entirely. Sometimes they're too similar to the constructs I razed in my twenties for me to even be remotely interested in them. When it comes to tarot, for me it's about exploring my precognitive tendencies, my divinatory abilities, and opening up the creative outlets and process. I keep anything akin to religious derivative out of my inte...

The Dark Arcana tarot playing cards. Aprils' Tarot Rebels Blog Hop is about the Make Or Break cards in a deck. The volatile relationships we have with archetypes are what shapes our intuitive responses to the imagery we experience in the tarot deck. For me, there have always been a few cards that have the power to make me totally fall in love with a deck -- or completely kill any chance of me being able to work with it. They're also the archetypes I struggle with most in my personal life and spiritual journey. The Emperor is the first. It's a card of Fire, of harsh rulership, of intellect and logical detachment. While those are theoretically aspects to which I relate well internally, it's the external that I have difficulty relating. And so the attitude, body language, and presentation of this dominant persona is crucial. It's like putting my finger against the thrumming pulse of the deck as it tightens its fist. This is its hard side, and if presented t...

Deviant Moon extras, taking a walk on the wild side. This month's Tarot Rebels Blog Hop topic is about reading tarot card reversals, and why I choose not to employ reversals in my practice. And yes, it is directly related to my philosophies of magic-working and pagan belief system. Not that I adhere to a specific system of singular construction. I'm an eclectic, a spiritualist of indeterminate path. But the fact remains that I've spent much of my adult life hypersensitive to the energies of others. I adhere to the belief that attitude, outlook, intent, and focus have as much influence on events, choices, and those around us as the gravity holding us to terra firma. I expend a great deal of effort maintaining a deliberate focus on the positive aspects that can be found in any given situation, and the positive options and advantages that I can find for both myself and others. I approach tarot reading with this same frame of mind. In such a perspective, there's no...

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 ...

The Sacred Manda Grove It was in drafting a spiritual system for Piaffe's world that trees became a major player. I didn't want there to be religious structure, per se, but I did want to create a measure of spirituality in the form of respect for the planet and all its inhabitants. A sharing of resources and space. Filtered Sunlight Because their language system is heavily Latinus influenced, I opted to transform Gaia into Ommat, literally "all things are," from om mat , which means "mother of all." She began not so much a specific goddess entity as she is a communion with nature. The sacred groves were space set aside for rites in which the dead were returned to the earth, the final embrace. I was in the throes of working these details back into the story, trolling the internet for images of what these groves might look like. How old were they? What kind of trees were mandas, beyond being old, dense, and dark? That was when my longtime friend Am...

(L to R) Mary-el, Lumina, and Deviant Moon tarots. Love's a state of mind. "This is the story of an old Welsh witch." Do you know that song? In the society and time from which tarot originated (to our best estimations), arranged marriages were a norm. Marriage was a contract for political or financial gain. Lovers were an expense, a luxury, a potential weakness for exploitation, an opportunity to further one's interest, garner favor, and increase power. The Lovers is a card associated with the element of air. I also associate this card with Gemini, the Twins, as well as Yin and Yang. I see it as an allusion to balances of power between myself and others, about power plays and relationships and connections, none of them necessarily romantic or sexual. This card speaks to me of othila  and ehwaz , of group souls, and links between people -- the ancestral connection, the collective unconscious.

It's official. You can now pre-order my next book. It's slotted for a release date of February 20th, and what's more, it'll be available in paperback as well as digital format for those of you who've expressed interest. This is the first in a series, and while I'll try very hard not to be Robert Jordan or GRRM, I can't very well make any hard promises. Because as George recently said, years from now it won't be the wait for the next book that everyone talks about, but how good it is, and that's ultimately what I'm striving for. Not perfection per se (I realize it's an unreasonable and I'm working on that) but the best artistic effort that I'm capable of, given where I am right now. It's a journey. Let's see where it takes us. It's (finally) one I want to share with all of you. Keep an eye on my website, or better yet sign up for my newsletter, as I'll be sharing a free excerpt in the week before release.

It takes bravery and courage to move forward through life. Over and through and under and around all the obstacles and resistance rising up to thwart us. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important. - Theodore Roosevelt  Confronting fears and pushing forward despite them takes strength. I like to think the Fool isn't unaware of the cliff before them, or the precipice of unknown. Instead, they're choosing to focus on the possibilities, the positive, and the potential gain of flight. They've stopped second guessing. They've stopped doubting. They've stopped asking "what if" and decided to find out what they're capable of. "The Fool's Journey" is often described as the parallel of "The Hero's Journey" which most avid readers would agree is a staple framework for the majority of literature out there, as well as movies. But as the calendar turns and offers an opportuni...

(From L: Mary-el, Arcana, Lumina, Darkana, Wooden) The Wheel of Fortune in the traditional tarot structure is customarily portrayed as a wheel construct or form. The cyclic nature of life, of seasons, the constancy of only one thing -- change -- is inherent in this card's meaning and interpretation. For me personally, this card evokes a theme introduced early in life while still beneath the influence of religious upbringing. And despite the deviation of my spiritual path away from those teachings, I find that some truths are simply universal and cannot be claimed, contained, or constrained by any particular faith or path. In Hinduism, it is dharma, the principle of cosmic order. In the West, it is Ecclesiastes 3, written by Solomon, recognized as a king of Israel by both Muslims and Judeo-Christians. There is a time and a place for everything, a season for everything under the sun. The Wheel: Fortuna, the heartless and unbiased goddess of Luck and Chance. The Orbweav...

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 have been trying to stay unplugged today. My writing related efforts have been limited to WIP research in the form of a series of tarot spreads that demanded exhaustive interpretation. Not that it was much of a demand; I looked at the cards and the meaning just flowed from me onto the pages, fitting into the characters and their situation and struggles as easily as though I'd deliberately chosen which cards went where. It's going to fill the last pages in the first giveaway notebook, and begin the second with another. Fang & Fire, Animal & Element I'm saving a blank page at the end to write a personalized note to whomever the recipient ends up being. This journal is very much a collection of tarot spreads, interpretations, discussions of the finer points of the main characters, exploration into their deeper motivations, and a smattering of raw, unedited prose -- scenes that may or may not end up in the final version of the novel when it's published. Plus...

This month marks the fifth birthday of my muse, Black, from "Blacker Than Black." It was in the early fall of 2006 when I found a submissions-call for an anthology with a "Red Light District" theme. A fellow writer had challenged me to write something new and different, completely removed from anything I'd done before. Up until that time the bulk of my writing revolved around an epic fantasy which, these days, I fondly call the Trunk Novel . Okay, I remember thinking. Something completely different. The wheels churned in my head, as I visualized the divergences and extrapolated.

Mike is my character from the soon-to-be-released 'Dark Edge of Honor.' I’ve been acquainted with a number of different veterans and soldiers through the years, but there was one specifically—a person I don’t know, and never met—that sparked the beginnings of this story and was the avatar of the spirit behind him. Late in 2009, I stumbled rather deliberately upon the website of photojournalist Michael Yon and delved into the dispatches from his 2005 embed with deployed troops in Iraq. One of them stopped me in my tracks. Entitled “Gates of Fire,” (click here for the link to Yon's full dispatch) it recounted an incident involving the Deuce Four’s Lt. Colonel Kurilla and Command Sergeant Major Prosser which Yon witnessed, camera in hand.

The only parts worth saving from what I've worked through thus far are the intangibles, the world-building. And even that, I've had to revamp substantially. Yes, this is the Notorious Story, the one I've been working through, endless revisions and rewrites, for the past two decades.  Because there's a story worth telling in it, and it only needed my maturation as a writer to tell it correctly. And through all that, I've refused to give up on it entirely. Could not bring myself to discard the gem at the center, that deserved more than I was, until now, capable of giving it.

But for good reasons! I swear! Black's "Meet The Muse" interview is on hold, for the moment. Mostly because I have someone who would like to perform the interview, and the prospect of sinking into character for the conversation is a great idea. I'm eager to try it and see what comes of that approach. And finding the time for that...well. It's going to have to wait a little bit. The line edits for FOAT came in a couple days ago, and everything is taking a back seat to getting a handle on this. Getting it under control, making sure the alterations that need done are plotted and manageable, and making time to schedule the tandem writes with my partner in crime. Those things have priority. I'm discovering that I'm one of those writers who can have many active projects on my desk, but can only work on one of them at a time. It was that way with the trunked novel. It was that way during Black's formative years. And it was that way with FOAT. Each proj...

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...

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...

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...