Oh, and also? Undine.

According to one website….

According to Paracelsus, when an Undine married a mortal and bore a child, the fusion of natural and supernatural resulted in her gaining a soul.

And the beloved Waterhouse’s interpretation of one.

This is all very interesting. I didn’t realize that he envisioned all the elements as female except for the earth elements (female salamanders, eh?). Most of Western society defaults earth as female due to ye olde Mother Nature and the classical Gaia.

Guess what gender my world is?

Perhaps due to the inclement weather, I found myself re-reading this article about the Terra Nova expedition that ultimately led to the death of Robert Falcon Scott and three members of his team in their push to be the first to get to the South Pole. Sadly, he died not on the trip there, but on the trip back.

It’s a bit macabre, I know, but I am fascinated by what drives people to venture out into sub-zero temperatures for something as elusive as a title.

I finally got to use “lascivious” in a sentence. Hurray!

That is all.

It seems as if I have to damage a finger once a year, and this time around I sprained the ring finger in my right hand. Two years ago I broke the ring finger in my left hand during a rousing game of screwdriver bowling. That’s where you bowl after drinking two or three screwdrivers. I prefer to call this exercise “drowling” or “OW GODDAMN IT I THINK I BROKE MY FINGER.” But I can’t deny I had a hell of a good time that night.

Anyway….

Chapter Eight is done, and it was a very wet chapter. Rain gets rained on, Myr gets cried on, and Kaiji gets flashed. Hurray for fiction!

On to Chapter Nine, and the arrival in Starmaiden. I expect Chapter Ten will start out with a bang, and from there we just need to get them to Defiance and then Serai where the umpire will decree them SEEEEE-AAAAAAFE!

…or will he? Ha ha! Foolish characters.

sit down in your favorite chair

and suffer in the dark

and watch them flicker

watch them flash

Chipped away some more at chapter eight. Up to page five. They’ll be in Starmaiden by the end of this section.

We are talking game design at work, which is very exciting. Somehow, my writing is picking up despite the fact that I am spending my days at work being super creative. The well is apparently not being plummed dry. Or I just have an excellent idea of where Myr and Rain are going.

…but I haven’t been to aikido since Monday, and that has me bummed. Work is keeping me from going. So is a sprained finger. Rats.

A drawing of Rain, done in Flash. I’ve been searching for Rain’s place in the story’s overall structure, and whipped out this:

Rain is the gentle one, the soul most unaccustomed to the rough hands of time and fate. She’s also a bit like driftwood. She allows herself to be tossed about, because she believes she has no control and because she is still a child. Unaccustomed to making choices, not yet ready to own her words.

This, of course, must change.

More and more I’m striving to find the pieces of me that are in the story, the truths I believe I’ve found in life. And, at the same time, I’m entertaining myself by wandering around a rain-soaked world with these people. They’re good company.

God I’m tired. Night.

I should be asleep, buuuut I’m not.

Finished Chapter Seven. On to Chapter Eight, where the villain of this book and (crosses fingers) the next will make his first show. Ought to be fun.

Things are progressing much more quickly in this version of the story. I expect I’ll hit the end of Act One by Chapter Fourteen, maybe sooner. Act Two is where I have not gone yet. Act Three (shorter than Acts One and Two) is just a misty part of my brain, but I do know how everything ends up.

I had an idea this evening for a type of musician whose form of magic is the ability to effect small pockets of reality at will. To be honest, this is not exactly a new concept, but the way I played with it in my brain was. I was thinking specifically of storytellers, and the control they have over our view of reality. Something I need to mull some more.

Aikido is something of the same, though it’s more about leading mind (and thus, body) then it is about changing your reality. Though I will say that being on the receiving end of some of John Eley-sensei’s technique can be a reality-bending experience.

Chipped away a little more at Chapter Seven. Unfortunately, I also went looking through Chaps. 3-6 for something, and caught myself editing. Bad Steph. Can’t do that for another few months.

We’re watching the unaired Firefly episodes here in Mooville, and the effect is intensely bittersweet. This is excellent western space opera fare that just proves the execs at Fox are COCKSUCKING MOTHERFUCKERS for having canceled it. Sorry, moms of Fox execs, but you should have raised your kids better. These are the bastards who not only killed Captain Tightpants’s series, they also sunk Family Guy. Then they make shows like Joe Millonaire or When Rabid D-List Fantasy Authors Attack. There ought to be retribution of some sort.

New project at work. It’s consuming my time and reminding me that I really ought to put down my years at Simu as part of my creative career. I am one industrious little monkey when I want to be.

I know once I finish Myr’s story that there are two others I want to write. Either Kitsu’s or a big time variation on the World Tree. In fact, it wouldn’t be the World Tree at all. Some of the same characters and ideas, but not all of them. Enh. We’ll see.

All I know is I am going to wind up writing hardboiled fantasy fiction at some point. The murder mystery lovin’ part of me just can’t pass up the opportunity.

Neat illustrations from A Song of Ice and Fire.

But dammit, I still haven’t read his books….

I’m back to nonfiction this week. I really wish I knew more about Zen.

Seven is along the way, now that I have someone to ask some of the questions Myr would ask if she could. Also went back and rubbed off some of the edges for the last two chapters.

I’m not doing that too much, though. The idea is just to get this done, I keep telling myself. No going back and nitpicking. Not yet.

Anyway, I think Seven will be done by Saturday, and I’ll be along with Eight hopefully by Sunday. If I’m lucky, my little group of travelers will be somewhere by next weekend.

dearest

the shadows I

live with

are numberless