The Girdle of Melian

Round of Words in 80 Days, round 3!

My goals for this round: don't slack off! Edit something, anything.

Currently, I have four contender projects:

Captive of the Sea, research and yet another round of edits. Maybe on paper?!

Blackbird's Song, short story to be entered in the Surrey International Writer's Conference contest

At Bertram's Hotel (working title), WWII spy story to be edited on screen. I could at least fill in the missing scenes...

Rome, Rhymes, and Risk (or Verse, Venice, and Viziers): Possibly to become a screenplay?

And the July writing exercise will be posted on thelitforum soon...

June's exercise was bedroom scenes, in the dark.
Here's mine, featuring Christianne and Rory from The Charm of Time. This is Christianne's pov. She and Rory have been together for a couple of years and have an 8-month-old baby. Christianne is a three-year cancer survivor. (All this to explain some of the comments she makes.):

(Warning: They go all the way! I'll…

oday is Insecure Writer's Support Group Day!


This month's question: There have been many industry changes in the last decade, so what are some changes you would like to see happen in the next decade?

That's a difficult question to answer! Greater transparency in the financial aspects of publishing would be nice. Better ways of handling authors who are self-published and traditionally published at the same time.
Some way of providing a bit more commentary from agents to authors on rejections would be a bonus, especially for those rejections that are solely based on not having a current market or easily identifiable genre. It would be a great help to know whether one was being rejected based on marketing or on the writing quality!

The awesome co-hosts for the 1 July posting of the IWSG are Jenni Enzor, Beth Camp, Liesbet, Tyrean Martinson, and Sandra Cox!

Today is also Canada Day!

Just in time, Jemi Fraser has some new releases, coming on 21 July: the Bloo Moose romances!
And …

whole lotta books!

Just for fun, here are all the books from the last week that I'm adding to my Books Read list below:



The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien: The Places That Inspired Middle-Earth by John Garth


White Nights by Dostoyevsky (reread)


Notes From Underground by Dostoyevsky (reread)


The Silmarillion: A Brief Account of the Book and Its Making by Christopher Tolkien (essay)

Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie (reread)

Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer (the UK edition)


Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective by Donald J Sobol (reread)


Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Secret Pitch by Donald J Sobol (reread)


Captain Scott's Biscuit by Thomas Keneally (essay about Antartica)


The Lovecraft Circle and the Inklings: The “Mythopoeic Gift” of H. P. Lovecraft by Dale Nelson (essay)


Muted: A short story in verse by Jessica Bell (poem, natch)


I also read The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton the week before last!


And…

iscellaneous!

emembering Binyavanga Wainaina.

Round of Words in 80 Days: Still a few weeks to go in Round 2. My main goal was to keep going on research for Captive of the Sea. This is...not happening. I wrote more of the epilogue as part of the May writing exercise on thelitforum.

Otherwise, I've been working on assignments for school, and knitting some more!

nitting!

I had a few moments to tidy up my bookshelf of pattern books and printed patterns, and found a couple of good things. Testing a hat... I didn't quite get the resizing right, so it became another baby hat!


Pumpkin!

Wristies!
Who's got a problem?
The first blanket I ever knit! I made so many of these back in the day. it's a really soothing pattern to work on.
The scarf pattern I got when I once purchased wool at a church fair! My knitting blog is named after this pattern!

Have you found a memento or other interesting photograph or artefact lately?

ive hundred word short story!


Last month's writing exercise on thelitforum was to write a story!

"For this challenge, the goal is to compose a complete short story (500 words or less) over the course of 5 weeks... Each week, you’ll be given six, randomly-generated prompt words, five of which are to be incorporated into that week’s submission of your story... For each week’s submission, you can only add a maximum of 100 words, which includes the prompt words.

The story structure of what to generate with the prompt words each week is as follows:

Week 1: Intro of setting/characters/inciting incident
Week 2: Act I – Rising action, development of conflict
Week 3: Act II – Twists and Reversals
Week 4: Act III – Climax and resolution
Week 5: Denouement

As you can see, this challenge incorporates tight word-count editing and storytelling, as well as flexibility (might be forced to think outside of the box to incorporate the prompts)."
Here are the prompts we had to use:

Week 1 pr…

t's Insecure Writer's Support Group Day!



Interesting question for this month:

Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work?
I've got two to share!

The two main characters from Out of the Water, which takes place in the 15th century, were named after my grandparents. I masked the names when I gave the book to my mother to read!

Here's one about Summer Fire, which is available now through Carina Press and on Amazon!:

"You know how it is with Canadians. We come alive in the summer."

Ayse had resigned herself to an interesting—but in the end unromantic—trip visiting family in Istanbul. Great-aunts, touristy sites and endless meals…until she meets fellow doctor Hakan.
All tanned skin and defined muscle under his polo shirt, his kisses cut off her breath, making her dizzy. His every touch is a thrill.
Ayse wants all of Hakan at once. His sweet mouth, the heat of his body against hers, their heartbeats slowing toget…

odge Podge No. 10!

I've passed 1200 posts! Normally I'd have some sort of contest for this... I'll have to think about something fun. An art contest? A story contest?

Visit Faded Page for thousands of free books in the public domain!


Here are all the artists and creators I support on Patreon:
Amanda Palmer music
Alice Fraser comedy and interviews
Jenny Dolfen art (including Tolkien-related art)
Jherek Bischoff music
Knitty knitting magazine
Monica Byrne writing
The Prancing Pony Tolkien-related podcast


Knitting and baking from the last week or so:

Baby hat!


Baby blanket! This one is in progress. I need to find a flannel backing for it.


The first time I have made this kind of cake. I haven't separated eggs in a long time. It came out perfectly! If anyone wants, I can share the recipe in English.


I made ice cream! I cup milk, some chopped up chocolate, and a spoonful of sugar (I used maple syrup sugar) in a bag; put this bag in another bag with ice and half a cup of salt, and shake unt…