Haus of Rhi

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 have a number of "tools" I use to focus my energies on developing the plot and characters of a story arc. Scrivener is one of them. I honestly don't know where I would be without it--no, that's a lie. I'd still be one clusterfuck of a disorganized writer who trembled in fear at the thought of forming an outline. Not that I really "form" one in advance of writing. But I get a general concept in my head, and though it is often too ethereal to go down on paper or screen, it's there and Scrivener is great for creating a visual of the outline forming as I write. I am learning to see where I need to pick up the pace, and where I can spend some time drawing things out. [Side note to any of my betas who are reading this (ahem, especially you, sis, since you dabble in tarot): please do not freak out or hyperventilate.]

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...

This one is safe, I swear. The weather was beautiful Tuesday afternoon, the sky a clear vivid blue. The temperature was perfect and a brisk breeze was blowing. I had a short dayjob shift thanks to my inability to say "no" when they asked me to work a release event Monday night. And so I got home at the perfect time to snap some pictures...

So. Umm. This happened yesterday... And I decided it was the perfect thing to share on a Monday morning. You should probably set your morning coffee down--and swallow--before you click past the break.

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...