Hiya Turkey!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

NaNo updates will resume shortly.

Holy Damson, Batman!

Remember I said there was still knitting? Well, there is. But right now, you get pictures of blocking. (Because I haven’t taken picture of the knitting.)

This is Damson, all pinned out and drying. Looks a bt bat-like, doesn’t it?

I can’t wait to wear it. I’m thinking Thanksgiving, to my grandmother’s house. The one who taught me how to knit. Seems appropriate.

NaNo 2009 Update: Day 24; now with cat pictures!

NaNo Day 24

Daily Words: 2,841
Total Actual WC: 40,307
TOTAL WC GOAL: 40,008

Yay! Back on track again. And the sprained wrist gets better daily. Double yay!

Hey, I have an idea. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a couple of cat pictures. (Not my cat. But still.)

Snippet:

“No, Brooke – damn!” Alex started forward as Brooke took off running. “Get back here!”

“Cliff, don’t leave me again! I’m coming, I’ll follow you, just please slow down!”

No longer even attempting to keep her horse moving forward as she watched the drama before her, Sheila looked from Alex, to Brooke, and then a few yards in front of them, and saw what Alex had already seen. Her heart froze in her chest as she knew what would happen if Alex couldn’t get to the girl in time. Samuel, still on horseback, trotted forward, but slowly, as if he wanted his horse to have plenty of time deciding where to put each step.

Sheila didn’t blame him. Not when the lot of them were headed straight for the edge of a cliff.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

This is Abby. She’s a cat I’m cat-sitting this week. Very cute. About 4 months old, and into everything.

Even my bath. Once it got high enough she kept drinking from it. Silly cat.

NaNo 2009 Update: Day 23

NaNo Day 23

Daily Words: 1,322
Total Actual WC: 37,466
TOTAL WC GOAL: 38,341

Still favoring the wrist, but it seems to be doing mostly okay. (Also, I had a prior commitment tonight that meant the only words I got were ones written while I had nothing else to do at work.) And the knitting is not doing much to make the wrist worse. I hope.

Snippet:

A quick glance at Brooke, however, told Sheila that this wasn‘t good enough. It seemed meandering south wasn‘t good enough; they would actually have to veer sharply for the girl to be satisfied. As if there‘s much chance of finding Cliff if he got lost in that fog. They‘ve already said that no one who‘s gone in has ever come out.

A chill ran up her back as she realized why Brooke had taken such an interest in her when she was obviously less help out here than any of the others.

No one had ever come out of the fog – except Sheila.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo 2009 Update: Day 22

NaNo Day 22

Daily Words: 1,631
Total Actual WC: 36,144
TOTAL WC GOAL: 36,674

The wrist is better than it was. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

There is still knitting. If you’re lucky, I’ll have the time and energy one of these days soon to take pictures and post them.

Snippet:

Sheila looked up, her eyes following Brooke’s outstretched hand to a wide stretch of green meadow split down the middle by a wide river. The water flowed fairly fast, as far as she could tell, and looking to her right she could see why: there was a waterfall only about a mile away.

Everything looked normal and peaceful, like the type of place you’d bring a picnic lunch on a summer afternoon.

Except it was fall. And the flowers in the meadow were just budding, as if ready for spring.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo 2009 Update: Day 21

NaNo Day 21

Daily Words: 2,221
Total Actual WC: 34,514
TOTAL WC GOAL: 35,007

I’ve been writing, but have been forgetting to record it properly. So, here’s the best I can do – today’s count. I’m not sure how much of the rest of it is from yesterday, and how much the day before.

Also: I tweaked my wrist earlier today. So I didn’t get as much written as I had planned/hoped. I’m hoping it heals in my sleep and is all better for tomorrow.

(Oh – and yes. Sock knitters will recognize one of the names in this snippet. I needed the name of a barony that sounded like it could be pseudo-medieval-England, and guess what book was lying around providing inspiration? )

Snippet:

“That is all anyone knows.” Ariane’s normally even voice caught as she spoke. “There was trouble brewing for months, with a few disappearances and suspected deaths, and no obvious way to stop it. And then one day, it just stopped. That was the very day –” Her voice broke and she shook her head, unable to continue.

The others all seemed to understand her reference anyway, dropping their gazes to their food, and staying silent. All except Sheila, who was horribly confused.

“The day that what?” she asked at last, unable to combat either the heavy silence or the curiosity eating at her.

“Can’t you guess?” Alex said softly, meeting her eyes for the first time since they’d gotten back from exploring. “Is there no subject that we’ve been talking around ever since we came here?”

“No.” She maintained eye contact as she shook her head, trying to read the answer in his eyes.

“That day,” Rupert said in a voice completely devoid of emotion, “was the day she died. Melissa of Bordhi. My mother.”

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

Forgotten Friday Snippet

Um… oops. I spent last night reading instead of writing. And then I forgot to schedule a Snippet. I know, we need downtime sometimes. But it seems I’ve been doing a lot of bouncing between “really on” and “really off”. Going from 2500+ words in a day, to only a couple hundred. Ah well. I *am* still writing every day, and that is what matters most to me.

Speaking of writing, I’m going to get back to it. Here’s a snippet. (Sheila’s learning how to do magick — Duncan is having her extinguish a candle.) I’ll post stats when I’m home and have access to them.

“That was odd,” she said. “I couldn’t see the magick at all until you touched my hand. I wonder, now that I know it works, if I could do it without seeing it?” She didn’t say it, but it would be pointless to learn spells but only be able to use them when she was touching him. Besides – if the magick didn’t work when they weren’t touching, she didn’t need to learn it at all: just be careful not to touch him.

Duncan relit the candle between one blink of the eye and the next, and while she was jealous of the ease with which he accessed the magick, she would still rather be out exploring than stuck inside staring at fire.

Imagining instead of actually seeing the neon she’d seen before, Sheila mentally went through the same process she’d just finished. Her imagined neon flame turned into chartreuse, then canary yellow. When she’d imagined the flame going out altogether, she blinked and allowed herself to actually look at the candle again.

It was still lit.

Reaching out, she touched Duncan’s hand. Instantly, the colors reappeared. This time, she took the flame down to nothingness in half the time it had taken her before. When she let go of him and looked again, the flame was out.

“Damn.” She sighed, but smiled up at him. “I guess that’s not going to work.” It might be frustrating, but there was no sense in taking it out on him.

“This is not the only time I’ve heard of a magick-user having difficulty accessing their powers,” he said. “In many cases, when the faery blood is diluted sufficiently, the powers are weakened, or inconsistent.”

“So I’m diluted?”

“I did not say that. It could be because you are not truly of this world.”

Yeah, that sounds much better than my explanation. “So, does that mean we don’t have to worry about me doing magick accidentally?” She smiled again, expecting him to agree and tell her that, since she obviously couldn’t cause accidental magickal difficulties, there was no need to train her past what she wanted to learn.

“No. Actually, it means we have to worry more.”

Sheila’s face fell. “More?”

“Yes. You see, something happened in camp that night. It was not just coincidence that we were attacked when you had been thinking it was too quiet.” He frowned, though not at her. “I should have known then — that flicker I saw happened every time you looked at the forest. And it was the same color as your aura.”

“But if I can’t do magick without touching you, how could I have accidentally called up bandits?”

“Your instincts know how to call magick. It is your mind that does not — and that is what we need to work on.”

Sighing, she settled in for more lessons. This was going to be a long day, if she had to spend all of it staring at candles.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy or reprint/repost without permission, etc.

NaNo 2009 Update: Days 17 & 18

NaNo Day 17

Daily Words: 963
Total Actual WC: 26,892
TOTAL WC GOAL: 28,339

NaNo Day 18

Daily Words: 3,471
Total Actual WC: 30,363
TOTAL WC GOAL: 30,006

So, my word count output today was about what I hoped, but I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to accomplish it. I’m glad I did! Broke 30K right on schedule! Hooray!

In other story news, I came up with some fun back-story and motivation for my MC (main character, not Emcee). Some of it is below. Other bits of it will be held back to make the antagonist (one of them) deeper, more believable. Also because it’s better to dole out bits of back-story in pieces, not all at once.

Snippet:

Sheila had followed the old adage of “write what you know“ and started a story about a young woman who, unsatisfied with her life, had set out to make her way in the world and ended up confronted with obstacles in her path.

As a new writer, she didn‘t know much about the importance of backstory. She‘d given this woman – Melissa, or Liss, she‘d named her – a small family back home, a husband and kid. She had noble blood, a headstrong spirit, and good looks. That was all Sheila had bothered with. No photo to work from so that Liss stayed the same each time she was described. No notes on where the “headstrong spirit“ came from, or even how she exhibited said spirit. No names for her husband or child.

Even the obstacles Melissa faced were vague. Shadowy omens, bumps in the night, that sort of thing. She was going to overcome them at the end, and find a way to have both her new life and her family back. Sheila had the whole thing planned out, down to the tears on the husband‘s face as Liss appeared in the doorway.

But then something unplanned had happened: Melissa had died.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo 2009 Update: Day 16

NaNo Day 16

Daily Words: 2,663
Total Actual WC: 25,929
TOTAL WC GOAL: 26,672

Catching up on the words after a weekend of headaches… (My head feels much better now, thanks! And the word count for the day is proof of that.)

Snippet:

Unlike many of her peers, Sheila had never been the type to claim that a certain plot point happened “because the character made it happen” or that something she’d planned wasn’t written “because the character wouldn’t let me.” That was stupid. The author was the one in charge. Yes, certain characters were well developed enough that you could tell what they would do in a given situation without having to plan it, but they were still characters. Created by the author.

And the author was in chrage.

That was a laugh. She was so not in charge right now.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.

NaNo 2009 Update: Days 14 & 15

NaNo Day 14

Daily Words: 382
Total Actual WC: 22,054
TOTAL WC GOAL: 23,338

NaNo Day 15

Daily Words: 1,212
Total Actual WC: 23,226
TOTAL WC GOAL: 25,005

Well, I’m a bit behind again now, but the headache I had this weekend really had me out of things. I spent a large chunk of Sunday napping because it was the only way I could get my head to stop pounding. Ah well. I’m not so far behind I can’t make it up.

Snippet:

“What were you thinking of, just before the attacks?” Duncan asked, his eyes fixed on Sheila’s.

She found she couldn’t look away, no mater how hard she tried.

“What was it?” he asked again, his voice losing nearly all of the musical quality she liked so much.

“I was thinking how calm and quiet it was,” she said, speaking in a whisper so soft he had to lean forward to hear her. “Too quiet.”

He sat back on his heels, skimming his gaze over her once more. When he spoke again, his voice was back to its usual lyrical tone, though it also held a trace of sarcasm she hadn’t heard there before.

“Do us all a favor… don’t ever think that again.”

He had a smile on his face, but it was a stretched smile, forced. She didn’t think he was joking.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.