The Aspiring Bard

Yellow square of lamplight Beckons me No curtains here To block the homing beam

I justified the bringing along of my massive laptop on vacation by churning out another chapter of God of Wind and Fire . I'm still in, what I refer to as, 'the messy middle'. It is still not particularly pretty, tidy, or even always very much fun. But the only way to get out of the middle is to keep moving forward. So here I am. Anyway, I've recently come to two conclusions: 1. I really love writing sibling dialogue. 2. I should become a better artist so that I can make my own concept art. Do you know how nearly impossibly it is to find Mongolian-inspired artwork? And then try to narrow that down to Mongolian-inspired artwork that works with the mood and theme of the story... Agh! Visuals are very helpful for me, but in lieu of suitable artwork to get the creative gears in motion, I've been listening to Mongolian music, of which YouTube thankfully has a pretty good supply. Yay! Anyway, here's some of the aforementioned...

God of moon, God of sun, Lord of creation Singular and vast, That is yet mere nothingness to You, Light my darkness, Shield me from the scorching desert day, Surround  me with the greatness That You are. 

I decided to jump into the tail-end of a link up that I found over at Paper Fury , and celebrate my resolution of plot problems by talking a little bit about God of Wind and Fire . Enjoy! What inspired the idea for your novel, and how long have you had the idea? It was 2013 or '14 when I fist saw the picture of the woman who would one day become Altan. It was titled, simply, 'Israeli woman with dreads' and try though I have, I haven't found any more information about her. She isn't really what most people would consider beautiful, but she's intense and definitely compelling, and after my first look at her, I knew I wanted to write a story about her. So I started playing around with a couple of settings I thought that I could place her in, and assembled a cast of characters to accompany her. Then one day, as I was listening to one of my favorite Mongolian bands and looking at the images I'd assembled, the two ideas merged, and God ...

I just realized that my last post on this blog was written in July, and the last God of Wind and Fire post is from way back in April.  Ooops. The truth is, that living takes up so much of my mental capacity that I don't seem to have much space for anything else. All of my writing went on hold because I knew there were certain plot problems that were keeping me from pressing onward, and I just didn't have the space to sit down, figure out what they were, how to resolve them, and how to move on. It took nearly a week of quiet and calm before my mind got out of survival mode and started being creative again.  During that period of time, I've learned a couple of things:  If someone who knows you well tells you that you really should find a way to get back to being creative, you should definitely listen. Your sanity...and your fictional characters...will thank you. I have, potentially, the best beta-reader in my sister, Carrie. She doesn't tell me that my...

Last month's hare-brained scheme turned out as somewhat of a success. Quite a few folks seem to have enjoyed the story, and I even got one other participant, which was hugely exciting! So why not keep a good thing going, eh? Here are a couple more randomly paired photos from my vast collection of Inspirational Things. I'm curious to see what I'll come up with. And I'd like to see what you come up with, too, so please drop your link below .

Hunsay The air was fresher , up there on the rooftop and the clangorous, grimy old city below was almost beautiful; dipped in sunset orange and hung about with smoky shadows. I swept over the familiar silhouette of spires and chimneys to a profile even more well-known, but infinitely more interesting. I studied the way the highlights fell across her decisive nose and rounded her chin and the delicate fan of her downturned lashes, remembering the fairy child of the irrecoverably distant past. She had been a slight, wise-eyed wisp of a thing surrounded by a cloud of wind-tangled yellow hair. I smiled, noting that the hair, at least, had stayed the same. She opened her eyes and, seeing the remains of the smile lingering on my face, answered it with one of her own.  "What're you thinking about?" She asked. I shrugged my shoulders against the sun-warmed brick of the wall.  "The olden days, I guess." Her smile widened, pushing asid...