Holiday Cards

You know it's that time of year and you know I love giving out cards.
If you want a card from me just let me know here (or PM the address, I'm good with either). I'll be screening the responses (and should probably learn how to use that slick thing fireun had).

Also let me know if you're okay with religious ones, prefer something more general holiday related (I might even have a few Hannukah cards running around if you want those) or if you have no preference.

It's okay if you can't give one in return. You can always slap a holiday pic into my inbox and I'm happy (and you could probably even find Yule ones that way!). Besides I owe a lot of you for all the wonderful birthday cards you sent Grandma for her 99th birthday (btw she's doing much better now).

Writerly Ways

But before I get into that, let me say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to helliongoddess & masqthephlsphr. I hope you ladies had a great day.

And in somber news Fire on OU’s campus This is right where I was going to be last night. I planned to have dinner at Jackie O's (for anyone who read my novella freebie this summer, this is the bar in that) then go to the diner. It looks like that whole chunk of the block burnt badly and people were hurt and OU students displaced. It's very sad.


And now for the writerly ways otherwise known as 'please someone get me a live trap for all the wild plot bunnies.'

What is it about being on a deadline for one project that brings these things out of the wilderness of your subconscious? Surely I'm not alone in this right? I'm trying to get Luc and Arrigo on track but in the back of my mind are all these NEW characters frolicking around with total disregard for my deadline or for all the other stories I have before them.

Two of the loudest are these (one even has some names attached)

- Centuries ago this city-state was under a magically siege. They build into the caves to hide but now the only things in the underground are pretty much what's in the abandoned subway lines of many cities, the poor, the homeless and the criminal. Above something is brewing again. One forward thinking army captain goes underground looking for a) cannon fodder, because let's be honest, they would do that especially if they could harness people they see as mildly criminal but useful and b) anyone with innate magical powers.

He finds one young man with the promise as a mage (and a thief but that's another story). He can barely communicate with him at first thanks to the very thick slang spoken in the underground. This character I haven't named yet but I was informed by someone who had been looking out for him (a professor/archaeologist who studies the old ruins down there) that his name means 'nobody' in the old tongue. I figure this one is for the m/m market and he'll end up with the captain and will end up with some friends, a female mage and a male healer. I have several scenes in my head for this but no real plot yet.

And the other wouldn't let me alone all last night or this morning (I woke up and laid in bed thinking about it for what I thought was 15 minutes but was an hour and twenty...oops.)

It wants to be faux Vikings. Really? I've never had that much interest in Vikings. Their history and myths are fascinating but I've never really wrote them. Not only that one of the main characters is a berserker...okay then. WTF brain? Basic idea he was obtained in a raid as a kid after his diplomatic dad is killed (I'm picturing them more like the Italians of the group). He was kept as a boy toy by the leader. The leader's brother takes over the boy's care and trains his slave to fight mostly so he can take out his brother. So the young man is basically a berserker at the end of an iron chain.

This group of 'Vikings' seeks to reestablish an alliance with the southern group against a worse enemy. Berserker is reunited with a family who doesn't know what to make of him and introduced to the other two main characters, a woman who's good with lightning strike weather magic and one of the excess princes whose magic is flame based (for now, I'm open to suggestions for war-enhancing magic). I was thinking it would be a very open partnership (and open as to whether or not they're a trio) I was thinking of just writing this sans sex (and adding it in if it goes nowhere because this could go either way).

Thoughts? Bunny slaying magic?

yearly word count -

97496 / 125000
(78%)