The Blue Mosque

My sister and I visited Greece and Turkey in 1992. This picture was taken by my sister of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.

I use pictures as writing prompts, sometimes, and this one lead to this passage from Lawgiver:

The guard led us into a vast hall. Great pillars rose from the floor to the ceiling, but the garden remained in islands of green. Light spilled everywhere, through windows in the ceiling high over our heads. "Is this the temple?" Daman whispered to Talleth.

"No," he hissed. "This is Grishon's court. The temple is half this size, but filled with windows. It fits Anath, but Grishon is ridiculously proud of his cavern."

I smiled slightly. "Is that what they call it?"

Have a good week all.

Monday Update

Happy Monday.

With Lawgiver out to beta readers, I've picked up Shake Down again. That's the paranormal thriller with the young woman who feels earthquakes before they happen.

I like what I've got so far (about 35K), but there's a whole subplot thread that I've avoided working on. And the story really needs it.

I think the paranormal part is pretty good and I'm liking the romantic subplot. The MC, Lani Martin, works for the army, even though she's a civilian. The base is on a list of potential closures and she's working with the Colonel to create a Rapid Response Team to get to Natural disasters as quickly as possible.

The base-closing thread is what I need to work on. It's just really strange to pull off the editing/revising hat and put back on the plotting, story-thread hat. But you've got to start somewhere.

The picture above is from a trip I took to Alaska with my family three years ago. The flower is fireweed and it got its name because its the first plant to grow after a forest fire clears out an area. 'Cause that sort of what it feels like to pick Shake Down up again - like I'm starting fresh.

The Progress in WiP (Work in Progress)

There are times when I want to get better. Now.

And I'm not alone. A lot of people get frustrated when they don't improve as quickly as they want to. Part of the problem is that once we start to improve, we can see how much we need to improve. (Okay, how much I need to improve.) The mountain looks taller, harder to climb. And I didn't even think to look up.

But that's looking forward, and it can be daunting, especially if we've got ambitions to be really good/ great writers.

But when you're on the mountain, you can also look down, to see how far you've come. This week, I finished one project and sent it to my beta readers. So, I opened up another project I wanted to work on – Shake Down, my paranormal thriller.

And I can see where I've grown as a writer, from editing Lawgiver. I want to totally rewrite Shake Down, or parts of it. And I will.

The point is that I've progressed, through work and practice and I've climbed further up the mountain. So often, it's a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, making small steps of progress.

Every once in a while, look down the mountain and see how far you've come. It makes the summit seem a little closer.

Sunset

Sometimes, you do the unexpected when you are writing a novel. Last week, as I was working on the latest iteration of Lawgiver, I realized that I needed to write a poem. I don't usually write poems.

But that's what the character needed to translate, so that's what I had to write.

This is a picture of a sunset taken at the door to my condo - run through Photoshop.

So, here's the snippet from Lawgiver:

"It's a poem, probably for the person in the crypt. And I'm also a translator, so I figured that I'd take an hour or two to work on it." With a smile, she settled at the table and lifted the parchment out, carefully.

The sun has set for me.

The last light has graced the world

And you are gone.

The breeze whispers through the trees,

The river rushes past.

And you are gone.

Our children cry

Their children sleep in peace

The stars wink into the dark.

And you are gone.

Su had to stop there, putting the parchment back into the box and closing the lid. She blinked back the tears and blew her nose.

Monday Update

Because at least one friend has complained that I have abandoned blogging, I'm going to try to blog more. Monday updates, Wednesday images, Friday/weekend Writerly musings.

And being that this is a Monday - an update.

Over the weekend, I finally finished this draft of Lawgiver and formatted it for beta readers. Part of the motivation was a coupon for a free proof copy from Lulu.com that expired last night - so I got to play with cover art as well. I had fun with the art stuff.

I also formatted it for Nook - ePub format - to send to at least some of my betas. Took a little doing and getting familiar with Calibre. But I'm convinced that it's legible.

That's the monday update - Hope everyone has a good week.

What have you been up to?

Also found on www.suelder.livejournal.com

SteamPunk - What Defines a Genre?

One of the stories that I'm working on - researching, right now - is a steampunk legend called Golem.

But what makes it steampunk?

Set in Victorian times? It's set in 1905, but in Odessa, Russia, not part of the British Empire.

New-fangled Tech? Yes, the MMC is a jeweler and he makes little clockwork insects. It's also in the Industrial Revolution.

Magic? Heck yeah. I'm researching Kaballah magic as part of this.

But a friend and I were discussing this in chat this afternoon and that doesn't really address the "punk" in steampunk.

The jist of our discussion was that steampunk isn't purely escapist - it may not be all dark, but there's a dark side to it. The RDJr. Sherlock Holmes showed the gritty bits of London, for example. And there are classes and class tensions in steampunk, unlike, say... Regency Romance (my friend's example).

Steampunk does not really pretend to be literature, but it's more than escapist fantasy. It addresses social issues, or the best tend to. Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series deals with very disparate creatures living together in civility and how hard that is. Meljean Brook's The Iron Duke deals with winning freedom from oppression and how, even whe they're free, it's not easy. There are still consequences.

All of this is making me want to work on that steampunk story set in Odessa, before the Soviet revolution. But first, I need to get this other story ready for my betas.

What steampunk have you read? How would you define the steampunk genre?

Photo: A Steampunk Pendant by Vaughn & Sean Saball Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license/by Vaughn & Sean Saball

Slinking back into Blogging

I've shamefully ignored all sorts of blogging, both here and at LiveJournal. And a friend yelled at me, because that's how she kept up with my life.

I've been thinking about web presence and what attracts me to a blog - what keeps me coming back. But also what I get from blogging.

So, I'll try to blog more often. I'll even try to keep to some sort of schedule.

Mondays - updates. Personal, writing, whatever.

Wednesdays - Photos and images. Mine, no one else's

Friday/Weekend - Musings. Writerly, Bloggerly, Technical, whatever

Interspersed, there will be snippets. I like snippets.

Happy Writing everyone!