NaNoWriMo Book Covers

Here are my imaginary book covers for past years' NaNoWriMo novels, along with a brief storyline. All images and statemets are copyright by the author. 

2014 - Troubadour’s Test 

The troubadour Sir Loriano of Vayne must deal with corruption and deceit in the wealthy city of Candelei in order to save a drug dealer’s sheltered daughter from an exploitive marriage and release Lady Tora from the Women’s Quarters so they can continue their quest to the drakken mountain. 

2012 - City of Gold 

On a quest to the drakken mountain the troubadour Loriano of Vayne and Tora are out of funds when they reach the City of Gold, Candelei. Corvid, a wealthy merchant, hires Loriano to perform at a banquet celebrating his daughter Rose’s betrothal to Lord Landris Dalmar, brother to the evil Lord Gervane. When Tora hears the names, she faints and is taken into the Women’s Quarters. 

2010 - Troubadour Quest 

Sir Loriano of Vayne and the herbalist witch Tora cross the empty lands of Miratan together to reach the City of Gold, Candelei, on the way to the drakken mountain. They must avoid the fanatical Speakers of Light and Lord Gervane Dalmar’s witch hunters. 

2008 - Sacred Mountain 

Karié and other new Chosen adjust to life in the mountaintop community. During their initiation to the Creation of Life, Barok, carried away, forces himself on Napisti, who screams and falls into a deep trance from which she can’t be awakened. Under the High Priestess’s guidance, Karié, who enjoyed her initiation, follows Napisti into the vision and leads her back into the world, but Napisti cannot face a sexual relationship, one duty of Zophra’s Chosen. 

2005 - Sacrifice! 

Karié, 14 years old, reluctantly journeys to the Sacred Mountain to present herself to the goddess Zophra for Choosing. Among the 14 applicants are Napisti, believed to become the next High Priestess, Prince Barok, and the commoner Maran. Karié wants to live in the world, but at her Presentation at age 7, the goddess clearly favored her. 

NaNoWriMo is coming...

One of my favorite things to do is NaNoWriMo. For one thing, it's a darned good way to whack out a first draft. I, the compulsive over-editor, get to throw it all aside and BLURT! I get a kick out of the forums, going to an occasional write-in (hardly anyone gets much writing done), and posting that frustratingly small number of new words. Some days my keyboard slogs uphill through warm butter; other days it sprouts wings and words dance onto the screen. Life interferes, dammit! My husband, the cat, a friend, need... Just when the plot is hopelessly dead and entangled there appear passages of absolutely golden prose. Which trickle out into a swell floop. And there's the last frantic push, after which I mentally collapse in a sweating little heap.
This year I "ought to" do the next section of Loriano's story, but I'm returning to my beloved Ancient World to continue the story of Karie the last true High Priestess with Speaker of Visions.
*The woman on the cover is not Karié; she is High Priestess Alina, who appeared in a Journal Workshop meditation exercise and told me to "Write! Or Else...!" 

Flash and Drives

The word "Flash" is something of a misnomer when connected with "drive."  
     Last fall I got a cute little blue and silver flash drive in my goodie bag at a writers' retreat. I’d been saving mine for a worthy project, and last night I found one. After I copied stuff onto it from my desktop, my Macbook Air wouldn’t even acknowledge its existence. Furthermore when I removed it from the USB port, my whole Documents file was empty!!! I restored old files up through this March with an old red plastic flash drive and wasn’t quite as unhappy. 

     On that note, I went to bed. 

     This morning I determined to nail the sucker! “Something” probably happened when I tried to “restore” backups from my desktop’s Time Machine’s Seagate drive onto the Air last Sunday--as a way of moving files. There is a neat and elegant way to do it that I couldn’t remember and ended up throwing up my hands. After futzing for 3/4 hr. I determined that the “new” blue and silver drive was a dud. Neither computer would admit to its existence. I tried using Disk Utility/Verify Disk—nada. The old cheapo red flash drive works like a charm. Thinking I may have accidently deleted all my Air's Documents, I looked in the Trash. Nada. I restored a few more files with the old Flash drive and played around with the Air. 

     It blinked—and all my lost files appeared in place! 

     Thank you, Deus ex Machina also known as God of the Machine. 

Yet Another Sunny Day - Breakthrough!

In Memoriam - Blackitty

     We will be glad of all this sunshine when el nino hits.
     Just 'cause I haven't been posting doesn't mean I've been idle. I've written something nearly every day, even if it's just a sentence or two. A family member's health problems have required nearly all my time and wiped me out. And I've had to handle it without the comfort of a warm kitty. Our beautiful big sweetheart disappeared one morning 3-4 months ago.
     It's taken me 2 1/2 weeks to recharge my energies, and the chapters I was working on didn't help. My hero was trying to overcome drug addiction, and some not-so-nice folks strapped him to a bed. To write this passage, from his point of view, I had to live through my feelings after a bad fall--lying in the ER, endless waiting, nobody coming, morphine, helplessness, weird dreams, surgery, a rehab facility, inability to move... I dreaded writing it and could only manage a short paragraph or two a day. My trusty line editor said I'd done a good job. Now my hero is back on his feet, confronting enemies, and taking steps to move on.
     Today I had a huge breakthrough!
     While tinkering around with dates and moon phases in the World of Elakand calendars and timelines a bunch of plot lines wriggled into place and I was able to outline the last six chapters of my novel (working title: Troubadour's Quest; probably will end up as The Dark Lady's Troubadour).

Adventure: Escape from Wordpress

After reading a Self-Publishing digest about Wordpress websites I figured I’d check it out and look at examples of their services. One of these years I ought to get a website in addition to my blog. So I typed in wordpress.com and with a click of the cursor I discovered that my first name was unacceptable (they don’t love me) and my last name belonged to somebody else (I’ve been kidnapped!). I was then told I had to choose a theme. What theme? What is a theme? Why? Just viewing themes threatened to entangle me in a thorn forest of inappropriate alternatives--and cost me money. I just want to SEE the *&^% things! And furthermore they are sending me an e-mail to confirm my setup. No-o-o-o! All I have to hit Reply when it arrives to confirm my account. But I don't want an account! Aha! (rub hands together) I can abort the whole fiasco and delete the e-mail. However, if I do so will some fragments of ME hang forever on their website like bits of my soul left in purgatory when the rest has moved on?

I did the sensible thing and contacted SUPPORT. It took “chats” with 3-4 different techs to find where I have to go to hit DELETE for my account. That being done, I checked my e-mail and nothing  had come from Wordpress, Confirmation or otherwise, so I presume I am off the hook. Whew!

{Drumroll and trumpets} 

Too much of a good thing

     My writing has been creeping along slower than a seasick snail. (Love the alliteration!) It's been a period of staring at the screen and writing and rewriting the same paragraphs over and over and feeling guilty for not progressing on the book. A few days ago I realized that my hero and heroine are confined in a place of utter luxury, unable to go anywhere, and all their needs and wants are fulfilled. It's a stasis where they have no motivation to change or move ahead. In other words, death for the story. In writing this, I see that I have to introduce an element of discomfort and danger to bring about  progress so I can finish it ...
     And so it goes in our lives. Without some problems, without a sense of "want"(ing) to motivate us, we go nowhere...

Life and lessons...

Just because I haven't posted doesn't mean I'm inactive. I've been dealing with taxes, loss of our beloved Blackitty, repairs to the house, and a full e-mail Inbox demanding attention. I wrote a guest blog on Persistence that turned into a nostalgia trip into my past. I also write something on my work in progress (Troubadour's Quest) every day, even if it's only for 10 minutes, and I'm polishing an Ancient World story I wrote many years ago about one of my favorite characters, Karie, the last true High Priestess. I hope to publish that as a stand-alone. Every month I get out the Monterey Bay Fiction Writers newsletter.

~*~

My favorite sweater is falling apart. The design came to me in a meditation during a journal retreat in the early '90s. Using a basic cardigan pattern, I put the design onto graph paper, one square per stitch, and selected the yarns from a lovely knitting shop that has since gone out of business. They had most of the yarns in stock but the basic color, an aqua blue, came from an Italian company. The shop owner ordered it from the U. S. distributor but when the order didn't come for over a month she followed up--many times. After 3-4 months we gave up, I got different yarn and knit a different sweater. Six months later the shop owner had to phone the distributor about another matter and, out of curiosity, asked what happened with that order. Turns out that the manufacturer had gone out of business and mine was the last lot produced. The distributor checked around and found my yarn--in the desk drawer of an employee who "no longer works for us." So I got the yarn and knit the sweater.
       I had to re-knit the sleeves 10 years ago when some helpful person put that "dirty sweater" in the washing machine (never, ever ever put a hand-knit sweater of different wools in a washing machine!!) and I used blue acrylic for the elbows. Now the front bands are unraveled, there are holes around the leaves on the front, the neck is stretched out of shape... Even so I wear it all the time, it's perfect over my shoulders on a cool morning or under a light jacket.
      While researching what fabrics and fibers my priestess heroine would wear in a high mountain religious community I came across Alpaca. It sounded wonderful--soft, lightweight, durable, warm. Fearing I'd have to go to Peru or Ecuador to get some, I rolled into a knit shop and asked the owner: "Do you happen to have Alpaca?" She pointed to the wall behind me--full of the most luscious, yummy colors. Very hard to choose. It's designed for large needles so I can have my new sweater faster.

Calendar of Paintings

What to give far-flung family members for the holidays?
This year I got a discount coupon from a company where you can design postal cards, business cards, mugs, T-shirts, etc. For kicks I put together a calendar of some of my paintings from the 1960s. In doing so, I realized how many themes from those paintings have appeared in my stories. The calendars just came and they're rather nice, except for a blooper where the photo of one painting (Summer & Strawberries) was poor quality, so I had to substitute another (Virgin Mary) and forgot to change the caption.
Maybe these calendars will some day be as valuable as the postage stamps with the airplanes printed upside down.