Haus of Rhi

Scrivener & 'ZeroDraft' side by side. Yes, more Scrivener porn. Yes, it does happen to be the Trunk Novel. There are pieces of it, character sketches and interactions, that are in my mind worth salvaging. At least insofar as they can serve as inspiration and/or catalyst for content I'm working on. Aerdin and his 'shadow blades' were a fascinating little piece I randomly muse-gasmed into existence. No real sheaths… they hide in the shadows of his aural energy, after a fashion. Completely out of sight, and feel, but within easy reach… though only for him. A little detail I don't want to lose in the rewrite. There are others. Like Aerdin's little 'battle of wills' face-off against Renji. Faulkon versus Idolon. Should be interesting in the rewrite… I'm looking forward to that particular scene. Just need to plot the outline far enough to determine where it's going to fit in. It feels like the dual POV in this story is going to revolv...

The Green Book. Obviously. I've not made any real big secret of the fact that my accumulation of wordcount has suffered a good bit in recent weeks/months. In general I've not been overly concerned about it. Not every book I write will come pouring out the way my co-write with Aleks did. 'Black' did, in its own way, but it was over the course of a few consecutive NanoWrimo events. And then it took some time to finish, and edit. I've been trying to draft a scene of a funeral rite for my fantasy novel. Jaedyn is 'burying' (I use the term very loosely) his father. The scene has been a potato chip stuck in my craw for weeks now. I sat out on the porch yesterday evening, and out of sheer desperation grabbed a notebook and pen. And wonder of wonders, words flowed. It was a relief, actually. Oh, words. On a page. On multiple pages, in fact. They're so beautiful. And the slide of a good pen on paper is … okay I'll say it. Sensual, in its own special ...

As in my fiftieth blog post, not a reflection of law enforcement confrontations or that annual celebration of older—further from birth, closer to death, whatever. I wanted this blog post to be a milestone of sorts, so I'd been giving it some thought. And I'm sitting here in the chaise lounge on my front porch, watching the dark clouds roll through, sporadic cloudbursts of rain interspersed with the spring-happy chirping of a hundred birds. And the rotor sound of the occasional Blackhawk. Contemplating the parallels and the bigger picture. The past few days have been a strange culmination of my writing lethargy as of late. Father of All Things was the reason this blog was born. The first steps into creating public visibility of myself, and while there's plenty of room for expansion, improvement and optimization here…this will do, for now. At heart, I'm a simple person. Despite my predilection for convoluted ramblings. This is my first foray into the nitty-gritty of...

There's a reason why there are a variety of publishers out there. They choose a cross-section of the consumers toward which to gear their reputation and marketing. Once established, a rare few are willing to bend the parameters within which they deem a book's concepts and sub-genres 'acceptable' to their business model. Ultimately, that's why a writer has to choose carefully a publishing house that fits  the book they've written. Let it never be said that one limits the content or parameters of what is written strictly to what sells . If it can be written, with quality and depth, it can be sold. Full stop. I spent many years frustrated by the limited content of quality stories on the market. The ones that venture into the darker shadows, that shed the skin of socio-cultural norms, and liberate the reader one eloquent word at a time. I recall thinking at one point, in frustration -- "Must I write every book I want to read?" Thankfully, I don...

Since, you know, diving into the shallow end is just downright fucking dumb. My week's break from writing has come to a close. Of course, this doesn't mean the distractions are gone just yet. It just means I'm not willing to be unproductive any longer. Life, & The Universe, often conspire against one, though. This is occurring today, in fact. I sit down to write, manage to crank out 750 words, and get slapped with ... drama. While ordinarily I wouldn't mind, I was kinda on a roll. Had my head in the game, chugging right along and ... train wreck. Moral of the story? Hey Rhi....next time, turn your cell phone OFF. Highly recommended. And now I'm off to try and get my head back into it. Jhez is giving me a hairy eyeball.

Beautiful weather. Finally. Even the thunderstorms are beautiful, to me. Something about the unharnessed power, the raw energy, inherent in the shift of seasons, draws me. And if the combination of damp and cool air didn't chill me to the bone, I'd sit out on the porch and watch them rage and batter against the constructs of humanity as though attempting to purge a disease from the land. Unfortunately for the writer in me, that energy doesn't translate directly to inspiration. That may be largely a result of increased distractions and complications being thrown my way in the past week. Or that could just be a convenient excuse for my inability to dredge up sufficient intrinsic motivation to sit down on my ass and type out the words. Although...I'm typing this. So for the time being, I'm using the (at least moderately legitimate) excuse that I'm filling my tank with energy and inspiration to be engaged at some later date (in the near future, one would hope/expe...

I guess I could blame it on the rain. Or one of a hundred other things. Like the fact that I seem to have lost my bottle of Fukitol pills. Or the fact that I nabbed a book to read--and managed to  pick a bittersweet romance that is just...pushing all the wrong buttons. Bad Rhi. The past couple days have been highly unproductive in terms of writing. I try to remind myself that this sort of thing happens. That the muses, and the inspiration, are like the tides (at least with me they are). Sometimes the surge is so strong I can't make myself stop writing. And then there are the days when there's just nothing there. It's not really that I can't see where the story is going. Sometimes I can and it still happens. It helps, some, having two different WIPs to divert my energies to. I work on one, and when the words won't come anymore, I switch--if I can remember to, that is. Writing story projects in tandem isn't something I'm accustomed to doing. It takes some...