L.J. McDonald - Fantasy Author

Ongoing

2012-03-02T18:51:00.003-05:00

The ebooks aren't ready. Heh. To be honest, I haven't started them. I have LORD OF WINTER at my agent for a read through and I'm letting ALPHABET SOUP sit before I edit it over. I don't foresee a lot of changes, but I want it to be as tight as possible before I put it into a form people can download. At least I can say the cover is done.

I have been working on things. I'm about 7,000 words or so into book four of my Cuckoo series, titled THE OMEGA (not sold yet). I'm also writing a novella titled CHILDE OF THE BLOODED MOON. Of late I usually have two pieces going. One being a typed novel, the other being a handwritten shorter piece.

I also just finished editing and submitted a novella called RUNES OF THE DAEMON to a friend who's starting up a new ebook publishing company called 4F. It should launch this summer, I believe. But I wrote a 16,000 word fantasy romance novella for him, with oodles of sex.

Here's the thing, and I guess I'll poll you guys about it. He's suggested that I use a pen name for this piece to differentiate it from my other writing, and I don't know if I want to for a whole lot of reasons. The point is, this is a romance story between a man and a male daemon and I get very graphic in the sex scenes.

I'd like to use my own name, but I don't want to run into anyone who's vehemently against that sort of thing for whatever reason and end up getting flamed or whatever. What is the common vote? I'll still have the piece listed on my website once it's out regardless, but should it be written by LJ McDonald or by Gwen Gerrard (my nom de plume of choice).

On another level, I'm really annoyed with myself that I'm even asking this. *sigh*

Here, have a painting.

Book Cover Idea -- Again...

2012-02-28T21:15:00.003-05:00

I...didn't like the second image. Gah. Here's attempt the third. Again, something totally different. Not quite done yet, but so far, I like this one the most.

Book cover idea

2012-02-25T09:20:00.001-05:00

I still hate the last image, but Jan gave some good advice in the comments and she gave me an idea. If there's one thing I can draw, it's animals.

Here's what I've got now. It's rough. I work digitally, so I do a rough scribble in one layer, then a sketch overtop that's still pretty loose on another, then a detailed drawing over both of those on a third layer. Then I paint that. This is at the stage of sketch. It's Claw and Rachel from V is for Victory. I've tried to incorporate both bear and cat, though at the moment he looks more cat than bear. He'll have very thick bear like fur in the painting. If it works. When I draw animals, I often use these schleich toys I collect as references. Makes it really easy to mix up different animals together to form a new one.

Any comments would be welcome.

I suppose I should include writing news, since this is a writing blog... >.> One of my books, FINDING THE CHOSEN, is being assessed at a major publishing company right now, so hopefully I'll soon have a sale.

Oh! By the way, there are three sylphs in the last picture. Honest.

I shouldn't be allowed near a book cover...

2012-02-24T19:26:00.002-05:00

This isn't really done because I HATE IT! Ahem... >.>

So far, this is all I've managed to mangle for a book cover for the Alphabet Soup free ebook. Comments/criticism/offers to do it for me are appreciated.

Z is for Zen

2012-02-23T18:29:00.002-05:00

The beautiful blonde woman sat cross legged on the grass in the garden, her hair tumbling down her back to the grass. She looked very peaceful and zen as she sat there, her eyes closed and her hands resting on her knees. She wore a simple linen dress that did nothing to hide her beauty, as well as a baby sling strapped so the infant was nestled against her chest.

Rolf leered at her from the edge of the grass. “She’s gorgeous,” he said. “I want her.”

Beside him, Lal nodded, but looked nervous. “What are you, mad? There are battle sylphs all over the Valley.”

“Not right here or right now,” Rolf said with a belch and a scratch of his gut. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with appreciating a beautiful lady. I’ll just go an’ make my acquaintance with her.”

“But she’s got a baby with her,” Lal protested. “She’s got to have someone already.”

“Nah, Gabralina’s single. Everyone knows that. She’s babysittin’.” Rolf smoothed back his greasy hair and hitched up his pants. “Watch an’ learn, boy. I’ll have her eatin’ out of my hand.”

Dubious, Lal watched as his friend sauntered over towards Gabralina. She blinked up at him as his shadow fell across her.

“Can I help you?”

“Hey, gorgeous,” he leered. “How about we go an’ get naked so we can get to know each other better?”

Gabralina recoiled. “I...uh, no, thank you.”

His grin widened. His teeth were hideous. “Come on, sweetheart, spend some time with a real man.”

He bent over her and the sling strapped to her chest exploded. Miniature black battler tentacles flailed out of every gap in the fabric, battering at the man, while hate as strong as a bit of dandelion fluff washed over him.

Howling, Rolf ran for his life, Lal chasing after him and wailing. The sound of a raspberry followed them both.

Gabralina stared after them and then looked down at the baby battle sylph. “Aww, Razz, you’re so clever,” she cooed. “Such a good baby, yes you are! Yes you are!”

Razz blinked up at his babysitter sleepily, blew a faint raspberry in reply, and jammed his tentacles into his mouth. Sucking on them and happy, he went back to sleep, ready as always for battle.

Y is for Yellow

2012-02-22T16:53:00.002-05:00

I can't believe this is all I could come up with for yellow....

“Yellow is the colour

Of your slinky tongue...”

“Tongues aren’t yellow,” Heyou said helpfully.

“Can tongues be slinky?” Dillon asked.

Blue sighed and tried again.

“Yellow is the colour

Of your tiny teeth.”

“I thought you wanted to write her a poem, not get her to murder you.”

Blue sighed and threw down his rather battered piece of parchment and quill. Both of them immediately fell over the side of the ledge the three battlers were sitting on. It was debatable which would get to the ground a hundred feet below first. Blue morosely watched them fall.

“Why does poetry have to be so hard?” he asked. “All I want to do is write her a loving poem about her favourite colour.”

“Maybe you’re putting too much effort into it,” Dillon said. “Why not just bring her something, like maybe yellow flowers?”

“Nuh uh. I’m not getting her anything she can turn around and hit me with.”

“Poetry’s easy,” Heyou assured him. “All you have to do is make it rhyme.” He stood up on the narrow ledge and cleared his throat.

“When I see you, lover,

I can barely hack

How yellow is the colour

Of the stripe upon my back.

It’s too bad you hate purple,

For that colour is the best

For I am such a pansy

And an utter wretched mess.”

Blue pushed him off the ledge.

“Well,” Dillon said after a long moment. “At least it rhymed.”

Blue shoved him off too.

X is for Xenolith

2012-02-20T10:51:00.002-05:00

The battlers were in the air, playing with the air and fire sylphs in the winds. Even the healer was out there, flitting around them all faster than they could react. Below them was a lake and the water sylphs tumbled in it, leaping into the air and crashing back down with fun loving splashes.

Stria stood on the hill overlooking the lake and watched. She appeared to be a small, mostly featureless mud creature, her head wide and flat, her mouth broad, her nose nonexistent. She watched the other sylphs do what she couldn’t and the earth elemental rubbed her hands together with a wide, toothy smile. She couldn’t fly through the air or swim in the water, but she’d never felt the lack.

Instead, she dove. The earth elemental fell forward and dropped into the ground as if it were no more solid than the water in the lake or even the air overhead. Blind but fully aware of the feel of stone against her mantle, she flew downwards, a long, sleek shape undulating through the gaps that formed the rocks as if they weren’t there.

The earth felt like returning home. Everything around her was right as she dropped down past layers of shale covered in earth, down to the bedrock and below, to deep stone that had never seen the surface and wouldn’t for thousands of years.

Stria kept dropping, letting the heart of the world pull her towards it and easing her travel. It would be harder to swim back up, but the depths so sweetly called for her.

She passed through the roof of a cavern that had no connection to the surface. She saw crystals in it, growths as large and strange as a madman’s dreams, and then she hit the floor of the cave and was falling happily through the stone again.

It wasn’t a single, solid piece. She dove through plates, feeling how they were sandwiched on top of each other and the different stones that made them up, all formed by varying processes that couldn’t help but fascinate her, and as she went down, she listened to the earth sing to her.

Stria laughed, singing back in the same rhythm with her own, small voice. There was so much more down here than there was on the entirety of the surface and she longed to explore it all, to dive until the rock around her became liquid, where the continents of the world floated on a sea of magma. She could feel that massive sea, but it was deep, deeper than she could go and return for, much as she loved it, she was an outsider here and the energies of the world wouldn’t sustain her. She needed her master for that and this was one place where he could never follow her.

She could, however, bring part of this world back to him, tokens of her love that he crafted into marbles for her as a token of his. Stria cast around for a trinket to bring back and there were so many. Finally, she settled on a rock that she easily slid loose from the bed it lay in. It was a simple, ordinary rock, but she could feel where an entirely different type of stone lay inside, a present waiting to be discovered.

With her prize in her grasp, Stria swam back up towards the surface of the world, leaving the endless depths and the singing of rock behind her. She surfaced, no longer sleek and fast, and stomped her slow way back to her master’s home. Hers too, she supposed, except where she’d just been felt more like home. Except for the fact that her master was here. Because of him, she’d always come back.

Stria opened the door and went inside, tracking dirt as she always did. Her master wasn’t back yet and she set the rock on the kitchen table. She felt tired, but it was a good tired. She looked at the ordinary rock she’d brought back and tapped it with her finger.

It split in two, revealing the other rock that had formed inside of this one so long ago, hiding inside it like a new life inside an egg. Stria ran her blunt fingers over the surface of the grapefruit sized diamond she’d found and went with a happy sigh to check on the status of her marbles.

Xenolith - a fragment of a rock inside another rock.

W is for Welcome

2012-02-18T08:34:00.002-05:00

Galway brought his family to the Valley in the summer, months later than he’d originally hoped, but he’d wanted them to have a house to come to in this place he wished for them to call home and it took that long to get one made. Given the sheer number of dwellings that needed to be built, it still would have been waiting if he hadn’t told Stria she could do whatever she wanted in its creation. The temptation had been too much for the earth sylph to resist and she’d made for him a house six times larger than anyone else’s on her own time. It was bizarre to the point of caricature, but he didn’t think his large family would mind moving out of their former, tiny little cottage and into it.

He went and got them, and the excitement at seeing the new house went a long way towards making up for the long winter and spring where his wife and children didn’t know if he were alive or dead. Iyala, however, had assured him that he would not be doing that to them ever again. Given the new position in the Valley’s Council that Galway had been offered, he was sure that was a promise he could keep.

“Dad, it’s so huge,” Nelson gasped, staring in amazement at the mushroom shaped monstrosity while his various younger brothers and sisters crowded around him. Half of them ran squealing to explore, the others looked more dubious.

A boy stood by the entrance to the house, hands in his pockets and watching all of them with bright-eyed interest. He was a beautiful lad, even in the plain tunic and pants he wore. Leon had suggested that they put the battle sylphs into uniforms so that people would be able to recognize them, but Galway was of the opinion that wasn’t necessary. He could tell what the lad was, though, he thought with a smirk, he hadn’t known when he first encountered him back in the woods.

Nelson and a few of the other boys saw Heyou and looked at him with the immediate suspicion of teenagers. Iyala did as well and glanced at her husband.

“Who is this?” she asked, with a tone to her voice that said she already knew the answer.

Galway smiled. “Meet your newest son.”

Iyala shook her head, but she was used to her husband bringing home foundlings and most of the youngsters running around them now were adopted. She loved them all and he didn’t think it would matter to her at all that Heyou was a battle sylph.

Nelson puffed up his chest and stalked towards his newest sibling, who was grinning back at him in a way guaranteed to make a boy want to fight to see who was the leader. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Heyou. Who are you?”

“Nelson. I’m the oldest so I’m in charge. You have to listen to me.” The younger boys watched, eager to see what happened.

Heyou grinned even wider and Galway could feel his delight through their bond. He hadn’t ordered Heyou not to hurt anyone, but he trusted the battler not to and he knew that Heyou was aware of that. “Nah.”

Nelson blustered, all indignant at the slight, and within seconds, he and Heyou were pummeling each other while the other boys circled them and shrieked encouragement.

Iyala sighed, leaning against her husband. “This does seem to be the sort of welcome we give, isn’t it?” she mused, sounding more than a bit amused.

Galway put an arm around her shoulder. “It is.” He chuckled. “Come, my dear. Let’s leave them to work it out amongst themselves. There’s something I should probably tell you about Heyou.”

V is for Victory

2012-02-15T18:29:00.002-05:00

Even after years of effort, most of the shale plains were still dead.

A slight smirk on her face, Rachel sauntered across the grey ground, shale sharp enough to cut bare feet crunching under her boots. She ignored the sound of it as much as she did the periodic grey bush, or the endlessly deep blue skies that stretched overhead toward the distant mountains. Instead she focused on the line of horses and riders on the road leading south from the Valley she’d been born in, all of them over a mile away and small. There were a lot of them. It was a large delegation, though of course it always was when the queen rode. Rachel made a very unladylike sound. They also moved too slowly when the queen rode.

A heavy footstep sounded, a massive form lumbering up behind the slim girl, and though he looked as though he was nothing less than a monster, with thick fur and heavy limbs, his body lethal and corded with muscle, Rachel leaned back against him, pressing her back against his warm fur while she reached up, her fingers scratching the thick skin of his heavy neck. He rumbled in contentment and a long, pink tongue kissed her arm.

Rachel smiled and turned towards him, burying her face in the long, blue fur of the creature, who was in the shape of something that was a mix of a cat and a bear and so large that her cheek pressed against his shoulder and his head towered over her. It didn’t matter what shape he took; she’d always know him because he’d been with her for as long as she’d been alive.

“That’s my Claw,” she cooed and heard his deep, rumbling purr. She scratched under his chin, working both her hands into the deep fur of the ruff beneath his broad, flat head, and moved them up to the small, upright ears. Pulling his big head down, she pressed her cheek against his.

Claw was her battle sylph, a shape-shifting spirit brought from another world and bound to her on her tenth birthday. For three years she’d been able to feel his emotions, and she felt his nervous happiness now at being out here with her, away from the protection of the rest of the hive. For her entire life before he was given to her, Rachel had been drilled on the importance of being gentle with Claw, of never forgetting the horrors he’d gone through before her birth, but she knew what he liked and as she reached up higher to massage his ears, his head bowing nearly to the ground to let her. Rachel leaned against him while she rubbed his ears, invoking more of that great purr.

“You want to run with me, don’t you?” she cooed, feeling his almost sleepy submission. She could just order him, but a co-conspirator was so much more fun than a servant.

Yes, he sent, his voice a whisper in her mind. Claw only spoke to her.

“You want to run with me all the way to the forest,” she continued, her hands still scratching. He started to tense and she hugged him with her entire body. “so you can pick apples from the trees for me. Don’t you, Claw?”

He hesitated, not wanting to disobey the order to stay near the convoy, but that order hadn’t come from the Queen, who he couldn’t disobey, but instead the lead battler, who theoretically he could. He didn’t like to, but Rachel had been convincing her battler to do things he didn’t want to since before he’d been bound to her.

“Imagine those trees, Claw,” she whispered. “All green with bright red apples. You know how much I love apples.”

He groaned and she knew she had him. Rachel grinned and pushed herself away from Claw, her long black hair swinging to the small of her back as she ran around to his side. Claw lifted a foreleg and she used it and a double-handful of clasped fur to pull herself up onto his back. His back was broad, well padded with bright blue fur, and she spread her legs to straddle him, grasping his fur again with both hands. A thrill of exhilaration filled her. Claw felt her emotions with his empathy and tossed his massive head up, snorting.

Rachel leaned over to his ear. “Run,” she whispered.

Claw ran, his talons digging into the ground and pushing him forward as he raced across the dismal ground, broken shale kicking up with every footstep. For all his size, he was incredibly fast and Rachel laughed in delight as her hair streamed behind her. Claw charged across the ground, muscles bunching underneath Rachel’s legs as he picked up speed, galloping parallel to the convoy on the road. They were still distant, but they’d been traveling for several days now and at the speed he was going, Claw would reach the border and the forests she longed to see in an hour. Rachel could hardly wait, even as she loved the feel of the wind in her face and the strength underneath her.

The Queen suggests that we rejoin the convoy, Claw told her, a bit uncertainly.

Rachel smirked. Her mother would never give Claw an order. She gave them rarely enough as it was, but to Claw? She considered him too fragile to command. To Rachel, Solie just didn’t know how to be a proper commander.

“Don’t you dare!” Rachel laughed, leaning over him, her face close enough to his fur to smell the battler. He always smelled faintly reminiscent of tall grasses and clean winds. “She can make me be all stuffy later. For now we’re having fun!” She slapped his neck, urging him to greater efforts, and with a sigh he redoubled his efforts. They flew across the sands, Rachel drinking down the adrenaline of it as surely as Claw fed off her energy to fuel his run.

Her mother wouldn’t order Claw, but over at the convoy Rachel disdained to ride with, someone broke free from them, heading on a trajectory that would intersect with her own.

“Faster!” Rachel shouted. Claw could outrun just about anything. Battler strength increased with age and he was older than more than half of the Valley’s flight.

Claw made a herculean effort, but it wasn’t a battle sylph running to catch them. Instead, a beautiful blonde woman rode a mare at an angle to cut them off, the white horse galloping across the shale towards them as though it wasn’t dangerous for an animal’s feet.

The moment Rachel grew close enough to recognize the woman, she knew the race was lost. Still, she pulled her lips back from her teeth in a snarl, refusing to give up. “Fly!” she shouted at her battler.

Obedient, Claw changed shape. In his natural form, he was a black cloud filled with lightning, with ball lightning for eyes and jagged lightning teeth. He could carry passengers inside of his mantle, but Rachel disdained riding that way. She couldn’t see anything and Claw knew her preferences.

His form flowed underneath her, fur shifting and becoming hard and scaly. The handfuls of fur she gripped turned into curved spikes jutting out of his shoulder blades, easy to grip, while massive wings erupted outwards, spreading to show thin sails of skin. His bulky head pushed outwards, his neck growing long and supple, and his entire body grew sleek and thin. Rachel pulled her knees up, her shins resting now along the length of his massive, reptilian wings.

Claw leaped into the air, his wings down sweeping and throwing him up as he did. Used to it, Rachel whooped as she felt the air pressing her down against his spine. Inspired by storybooks, the massive dragon flew into the air, his entire body still coloured a gorgeous, iridescent blue.

Below them, the ground grew tiny at a furious rate. The white horse reared, forelegs pawing at the air while the woman on her back looked upward, her hand shadowing her eyes, her hair blowing all around her. Rachel just laughed and waved as they flew past, still gaining altitude. She didn’t bother to shout anything. Anything she said would have just been lost in the roar of the wind and the heavy beating of Claw’s wings.

She’s coming, Claw told her, his mental voice clear in her mind.

Rachel looked back, one hand braced on Claw’s spine, the other gripping the spike he’d grown for her. She saw the woman and horse standing on the ground behind them, the more distant convoy still trudging along even farther back, and then the horse was changing. Annoyed, Rachel watched her turn into a pearlescent white dragonfly, her wings sparkling in the sun like the sun shining off a thousand sparkling droplets of a waterfall. She went straight up into the air, her master sitting just behind her head, and came after them.

I’ll never outrun her, Claw said.

“Well, try!” Rachel snapped, furious.

Claw did, his wings beating rapidly as he flew for the forests, his head stretched out before him and his long tail streaming behind, his legs held along his body. He put all the strength he had into it, but there was no outrunning Autumn. Battlers were quick, but Autumn was a healer sylph, halfway to metamorphosing into a queen before she crossed the gate, and she was fast. No one could outrun her when she put her mind to it.

Still, she had her master on her back, and Gabralina had to be at least as old as Rachel’s mother. Rachel started grinning. “Shake her loose!” she called to her battler, even as she leaned her body down against his, gripping the sides of his spine with her legs as tightly as she could while she hung onto the spikes. A moment later, the spikes changed to tentacles that wrapped around her forearms.

Claw barrel rolled and dove. The height he’d gained he shed in seconds and pulled up, rocketing along just above the grey surface of the plains before angling his wings into a sudden, warmer pocket of air and shooting back up into the air in a different direction.

Rachel laughed ecstatically, dimly aware that if Claw hadn’t secured her, she’d likely have been thrown off his back. It didn’t matter. The wind was roaring in her ears, deafening her until she couldn’t hear her own laughter, and her stomach was flip-flopping as she was pushed against him, then away as he turned abruptly, banking, then against him again as he leveled out. She didn’t understand physics, but she did understand adrenaline, and she loved this.

“Faster!” she shouted, almost forgetting about the healer and the woman chasing them.

I’m not sure I can go faster, Claw said, his voice mournful as he beat his wings furiously, climbing upwards at such an angle that Rachel hung along his back, his tentacles the only thing keeping her from falling along the length of his body and off. Rachel ignored his tone. She could feel his emotions and under all the nervousness and uncertainty, he was having fun. As long as she could keep him from thinking about after, when her mother inevitably gave one of her lectures, he might actually realize he was enjoying himself.

Claw climbed, until the air started to turn cold as winter around her and the ground was so far below them that even the convoy was next to invisible, everyone small as ants. Autumn followed them, her wings a blur as she climbed after them, gaining. Claw was barely moving at all, it seemed, going almost straight up but so slowly where the dragonfly could just hover and rise, following them.

“I said go faster,” Rachel hissed. His tentacles around her forearms were starting to ache and she couldn’t get any purchase with her feet.

I am, he protested, and then he turned over and dove.

Rachel gasped, her scream torn from her by the same wind that filled her eyes with tears she had to blink away just so that she could see. This was speed! Claw had his wings and legs tucked close to his body as he dove, the air roaring all around them. Rachel couldn’t hang on. Only Claw’s tentacles wrapped around her arms kept her from coming off him and even with them the rest of her body came off of his, and she felt weightless as she hung there, both of them plummeting towards the ground that was rising towards them so fast.

They blew past Autumn, racing past the healer and her master so fast that Rachel was barely able to acknowledge them before they were gone. She didn’t care anyway. This was exhilarating, better than she could have imagined, and she knew already she wanted Claw to do this with her again, so many times again.

I like this, Claw admitted shyly. It’s fun.

The ground was rocketing up towards them, the details of the rock and sand coming into focus with amazing speed. Rachel sucked in her breath, hard though it was to breathe at this speed, and then Claw angled his wings, the sail coming away from his body just enough, and they pulled up, their flight leveling out no more than fifty feet above the ground, and suddenly they were shooting along above it, still at that incredible speed, and Rachel was howling with excitement and laughter, her body still parallel to Claw’s, stretched out from their speed in her own flight.

The acrobatics Claw had taken had changed the direction they were flying in. Rachel barely had time to realize they weren’t heading in the direction of the forest anymore but towards the convoy with her mother in it before they were on it. She saw horses rearing and neighing in terror on the ground, their riders fighting to control them, while the black clouds of battle sylphs flew over them, roaring and getting out of her and Claw’s way as fast as they could. They nearly clipped one, and Rachel felt her own battler’s embarrassed misery at that. She only laughed.

“Head to the forests!” she shouted, though she wasn’t sure he could hear her past the roaring of the winds. They’d slowed a bit, but they were still moving with incredible speed. They’d be in there before her mother got her horse under control enough to even think about yelling at her.

Just when Rachel was sure of her victory, Autumn blew past them. She’d swapped her dragonfly form for a giant hawk, her wings long and pulled back, and she went by them so fast that the air itself exploded in a massive booming crash that even the greatest storm would have envied.

U is for Undone

2012-02-14T21:48:00.003-05:00

It's a complete accident that I ended up posting this on Valentine's Day. Heh. Hope you enjoy it!

Solie finished the week’s audience with a sigh, tired and restless for all that the audiences went well. It just felt as if she’d been doing nothing but meeting with people from within the Valley and without, listening to their entreaties and requirements and handing down her judgements. She didn’t mind the work. It was her duty and she accepted that, but sometimes it felt as if it were draining her and she only wanted to get away.

She walked to the back of the throne room, where a door was built flush with the wall and indistinguishable from it to those who didn’t know it was there. Her battle sylph guards followed her as she pushed on the side of the door and it opened smoothly and silently to show a corridor beyond, one kept clean and simple in contrast to the opulence of the throne room. It led to similarly simple offices belonging to her and the members of her Council. Opulence wasn’t a requirement back here, where the majority of the administration of the Valley was done. It was kept clean and spartan instead, with the walls themselves as angular as the earth sylphs could bring themselves to make them.

Solie didn’t pay more than a glance to the closed door into her office. She certainly had work to do, but definitely no desire. Not now. She felt itchy and uncomfortable, tight in her body and distracted. She frowned at the door and continued on, headed to the very end of the wide corridor, where a set of stairs led up.

Her guards left her at the bottom of the stairs. They accompanied her in the throne room and even in her office, as well as wherever she went outside, but she drew the line at them following her into her apartment without a very good reason. There was only one sylph allowed free range in there and Solie took the stairs two at a time, her skirts held up so she wouldn’t trip over them. Skirts weren’t mandatory in the Valley for women, but she liked the feel of them swirling around her legs.

Most of the time she did, at any rate. Now they felt constrictive and the minute the door at the top of the stairs closed behind her, Solie stripped off her robes of office, dropping them over the arm of a chair as she crossed the room, undoing the laces of her dress. It slithered down her body and off and she turned her head from side to side so she could feel the luxurious wealth of her red hair against the skin of her back while she undid the knot that closed the wrap which held her breasts. They came free with a sigh of relief and she pushed her smallclothes down and off as she headed towards the gardens, as bare as the day she was born.

Doors unique to the Valley in that they were made of pure glass led out onto the lush grass of her walled garden, the roses in full bloom and scenting the air as she took a deep breath and stretched her hands over her head, turning in place and feeling the soft breeze against her skin.

She felt the thud of Heyou’s boots hitting the ground near to her and completed her turn, her arms behind her head and her breasts outthrust as she smiled at her battler. She hadn’t needed to call him. He could feel her emotions as well as she did, regardless of the distance between them, and he’d known what she wanted.

He rose from his crouch, his eyes never leaving hers as he came towards her. Between the first and second step, he shifted to his cloud form, letting himself be intangible so that his clothing fell to the ground. Between the third and fourth, he was in human shape again, as naked as she, his length already erect and straining for her.

She stepped into his arms, feeling his arms go around her as his mouth dropped to press against hers. Her breasts pushed against him, and she felt the sudden burn of her need all the way down to the core of her sex.

She wanted to get away, wanted away from this place that she loved so much but that sometimes pushed her down with its needs and responsibilities. She wanted to be free, to be wild, to be able to let everything go.

Heyou understood, just as he’d always understood. He balanced her and supported her, but he was always her opposite, the wild thing that even she couldn’t tame. She’d have him no other way and she sighed as his arms went around her and her s curved about his neck. She didn’t have to tell him what she wanted. He knew.

Heyou’s mouth brushed kisses against the side of her throat, his hands flat and warm against her spine, and with a breath of a laugh, they were in the air, her battler carrying her up and away from her home and kingdom and sometimes, what felt to be her prison. He took his natural form to do so, but even as she lay within him in the darkness of his warmth, she felt his touch all around her, a hundred hands on her flesh that all belonged to him, all cherishing her.

They flew for a time, fast and high, and then he was descending, and as her heart leaped up into her throat at the feel of it, he shifted again, his arm around her waist and his long, dark hair tangling with her red, a shadow against her flame as he landed them both on the ground.

They were atop a plateau beyond the edge of the Shale Plains, surrounded by green with moss thick as a bed on the ground they stood upon. A warm breeze tickled across her bare skin and the music of the birds filled their ears, singing of love and life and want.

Solie pulled Heyou to her and kissed him again, his head tilted to the side and his mouth warm and wet against hers. She kept her eyes closed, her hands flat against his cheeks as she just kissed him, feeling every inch of his soft lips and the tip of his tongue slipping against hers. He drew her tongue into his mouth, sucking on it as he brought his hands up along her hips and side, to stroke the swell of her breasts and cup their weight, his thumbs curving to press against her hard nipples and send her rising up on her toes with a gasp. That broke the connection between their mouths and his arms wrapped around her, pulling her hard and fast against him, breast to chest, hip to hip, his mouth back where it belonged, pressed against hers.

His love flowed through her, and his lust, his utterly masculine desire for her that made the heart of her sex wet and aching for him. She twined her fingers through his long hair, her soft moans the only utterance she could make as she kept kissing him, not wanting to breathe unless it was through him. Not wanting to exist without him. His hands skimmed up her back again and suddenly she felt his energies flow over her, the barest edge of his power sparking across her skin.

The pleasure of it was incredible and her back arched as she cried out. He chuckled and moved his kisses to her neck, the same electricity sparking between his lips and her throat while his hands moved down her back to cup the firm globes of her backside, sparkling with energy that arched across the fine hairs on her skin and - oh gods - down to the lips of her arousal between her legs.

It was too much, not enough. She wanted more of this, she needed something else. He was close to her, his body flush with hers and his emotions deep in her mind, but he wasn’t close enough, not nearly.

Solie rose up on her toes and hooked her right leg around his body, pulling him against her as hard as she could while she gripped his head and continued with that wondrous, fiery kiss. That pressed the thick, satiny length of him hard against her pelvic bone, and with a groan, he pulled her up enough for it to slip in between the folds of her sex, find her, and pierce deep into the burning core of her.

Solie threw her head back and wailed as Heyou filled her. His breath stuttered against her neck and he pulled her close, his tongue laving the groove at the base of her neck above where her collarbone lay as he began to move, sliding slick wet and burning in and out of her.

It was phenomenal, a direct attack against the tension that had been building in her as she dealt with work and the frustrations that it brought. Heyou thrust into her and every rock of his hips sent a spike of pleasure both of them could feel in the core of her soul.

She felt his love too, his all consuming desire for her, his passion, his readiness to sacrifice everything he was to her, and that feeling only inflamed Solie’s passions higher. She clung to her lover, no longer able to tell whether she was herself or if she was him as his love and lust filled her as surely as his phallus did, one feeding the ache of her body, the other the needs of her soul.

They moved together, burning with heat, kissing, loving, and Solie felt the bliss in her coiling into a knot in her belly that drew in every last bit of tension, every doubt and random thought, everything in fact but her indomitable love for the being that held her, and then that knot undid itself and exploded outwards in a wave of pure pleasure that shocked her to her toes.

Solie cried out again, her entire body quivering, and Heyou held her through the wave of her climax, his hips moving against her once, twice, three more times before he followed her into pleasure that her empathy let her feel as a renewal of her own joy.

Exhausted and satiated, the two lovers slumped to the soft moss below them, a smile on both their lips as they pressed them together in another, lingering kiss.

I haven't forgotten about U

2012-02-13T20:55:00.000-05:00

I'm working on U, honest. It's turning out to be longer than I can do justice in one evening of writing, so U will be coming out later. Until then, I hope people are happy with a teaser.

By the way, I am paying attention to everyone's comments and suggestions, even the one about me providing the cover art for the novellas. I'm vaguely terrified at the concept, but I am considering it.

Right now, my focus is in finishing the Alphabet Soup. Then I have a novella I've sold to edit. Then I'll work on the alphabet soup free ebook. I'm sorely tempted to suggest that anyone who can do art provide pictures for it and I'll try and include them in the ebook. No recompense other than your name on it, of course.

Then I'll figure out what novellas to print. I still have to talk to my agent about it, but I would like to get a couple of pieces out. I'm almost resigned to the idea of writing a baby battler story for one and have told my brain to muse on ideas for it, but I do have an existing novella that I'd like to get out there, one titled LORD OF WINTER that I really like.

Just as I was typing this, I got a comment from a reader saying that she hopes I won't forget the sylph world as I try to get other works out there. I don't think I can. I never originally saw any books past THE BATTLE SYLPH. Then I figured THE SHATTERED SYLPH was it. And so on and so on... I have too many ideas to retire it completely, but I have other ideas as well, and the muse is a demanding bastard.

At any rate, I am writing (even if I did forget my power cord at work again. At least my brilliant husband got my powermac working again). Here's the teaser. And yes, as I promised, there's gonna be sex.

OoO

U is for Undone

Solie finished the week’s audience with a sigh, tired and restless for all the audiences had gone well. It just felt as if she’d been doing nothing but meeting with people from within the Valley and without, listening to their entreaties and requirements and handing down her judgements. She didn’t mind the work. It was her duty and she accepted that, but sometimes it felt as if it were draining her and she only wanted to get away.

She stepped into his arms, feeling his arms go around her as his mouth dropped to press against hers. Her breasts pushed against him, and she felt the sudden burn of her all the way down to the core of her sex.

Heyou understood, just as he’d always understood. He balanced her and supported her, but he was always her opposite, the wild thing that even she couldn’t tame. She’d have him no other way and she sighed as his arms went around her and her arms curved around his neck. She didn’t have to tell him what she wanted. He knew.

U's kinda slow....

2012-02-11T19:36:00.003-05:00

I did intend to write U today. I really did. Then I realized I forgot the power cord to one machine at work, I seem to have broken the other one (can't get it to boot) and I was out most of the day anyway. So argh, grr, snarl. I hadn't quite decided what to do with U anyway. It did occur to me that I haven't written any smut for the Alphabet Sylph Soup, so when it does come out, there's gonna be sex.

Anyone know how to get a mac powerbook that just thinks about turning on at the grey screen where the apple appears to get its finger out and actually boot? I did something dumb. It looked like it got stuck installing an update so I did a hard reboot. I shouldn't be allowed to touch machinery...

Here, have a painting. I'm quite proud of this one, and yes, this does mean I have a working computer, but I prefer to type on my laptop, rather than my big machine. I get to lounge in my comfy chair and get creative that way.

I am pondering on how you readers want more sylph stuff, or anything I write. If I tried self publishing a novella (not sylph) for about .99 cents as an experiment, would people read it? It would be an ebook of some sort.

Hi

2012-02-09T20:11:00.002-05:00

No U tonight. I know that the snippets are coming a bit more slowly, but my muse is being elusive and I'm working on other things. I also seem to be getting into more thoughtful concepts the farther I go and those are a bit harder to rattle out.

There is more coming, however. I definitely intend to finish the alphabet. Perhaps I'll even try and turn it into a free E-book when it's done. Would anyone want to see something like that?

T is for Temptation

2012-02-08T13:12:00.002-05:00

His love had died and he didn’t know how he’d ever get over it.

Nameless like everyone else in the hive, save the Queen and her consorts, he’d howled his grief essentially alone. His brothers had sympathized and comforted him as much as they could, but most didn’t really understand. Most of them held themselves pure while hoping for the love of the Queen. Only a few could find it in themselves to find affection and companionship with one of their own. Those who did find that understood what he’d lost, and clung to each other in desperate denial that it could happen to them.

He should have thought more that it would happen to him. He and his love were both battle sylphs. They took the fight straight into the crevices below the hive plateau, they hunted monsters in the darkness and up in the skies. They even ventured into the jungles on the flatlands, fighting against enemies that lived to destroy and consume them. Always there was the risk that one of them wouldn’t come back.

Why did it have to be him? Why did it have to be his sarcastic, opinionated, noble love that was killed? He’d have accepted a thousand deaths to see his love survive, but no. A moment of distraction when a beast he hadn’t seen leaped out of a fissure at him, a start of surprise as he was pushed out of the way by the being he loved most in the world, and suddenly he was alone.

It’ll get better, his brothers promised him. This is what we do. We fight and we die. There’s honour in it. He sacrificed himself for you.

Yes, he knew that. He knew it and he hated himself for it. It should have been him.

You’ll find someone else, they said. Maybe even the Queen will notice you!

Never. It would never happen. He was small and young and the Queen was known for growing bored and driving away even the mightiest of battlers once she was done with them. The only one who’d wanted him was gone now and he felt so painfully, horribly alone.

He started to avoid his brothers, finding the sight of them a painful reminder. He took to guarding the far end of the fields, talking to no one and wondering if this was to be his future now. This horrible sense of something missing that he didn’t know how to get back.

The misery wasn’t enough to make him miss seeing the gate.

It opened in the middle of one of the fields, hovering over the ground and humming, driving the elementals nearby away with its non-colour. He charged right in, flaring his hate in warning, but there was no life to it. It was something like a door instead and after he made sure it wasn’t about to attack or explode, he circled it instead, staring through it with growing fascination.

It led somewhere, someplace strange and closed in, like the inside of a hive, but there were no sylphs there. Right underneath the gate, he could sense the pattern of a female, something so like a Queen that it shocked him. An unbound Queen, which shocked him more.

His love’s cynical, suspicious, dead voice sounded in the back of his mind, bringing a familiar wave of pain that stopped his instinctive urge to dive through the gate.

Careful. Looks good enough to have something with teeth hiding behind it.

He hesitated, looking more closely, peering not just at her, so appealing but so different from what he’d lost, but also around her.

There was something there. Off to one side, nearly hidden, certainly easy to miss if he hadn’t been so cautious, there was a male presence. He felt the confidence, the courage, the strength, and the cynicism. Different indeed from the female, who reeked of fear and a desperation that drew at him terribly.

This male reminded him of his lover.

Ever after, he didn’t know what drew him through more. The woman tied down on the altar or the man behind her with the knife. He did go through, however, chasing something he had no words for, and the man’s arm came down, sealing his imprisonment with a single stab of the blade.

“Black!” the man shouted. “Your name is Black and you’re mine!”

Yes, Black thought, floating over the ruins and staring at him. Yes, he was.

S is for Secret

2012-02-06T20:01:00.003-05:00

Here's the sylph couple from the hive world again.

It was night, the skies lit by the dozen moons, the colours of the rivers of light that flowed above them sparkling with their faint greens, reds, and blues. It was nearly as bright as early morning, when only one of the three suns had risen, but still it was the most dangerous time for the hive. Predators were out in force, flying overhead or crawling up from the crevices and cracks in search of prey. Battle sylphs were out as well, fighting their nightly battles to protect everyone while the elementals, healers, and young stayed with the Queen inside the hive.

Most of the battle sylphs were outside fighting, the little water sylph thought with a bit of a giggle and even more of a guilty feeling. Up near the apex of the dome's roof, she nestled in a cavity underneath the thick, protective roof, close to one of the currently sealed exits. It was cool there, so far from the heart of the hive, but still she felt warmth pressed up against her back.

Shouldn't you be guarding? she asked, feeling guilty. She liked to have him there, but his duty. How could he turn his back on his duty? What would happen to them both if he were caught?

I am guarding, he answered her easily. Someone has to watch the entrance here to make sure nothing breaches it.

She looked over her shoulder at him through her many eyes. Aren't you supposed to guard it from the other side? she asked.

Well, yes, but then I wouldn't be able to snuggle with you.

She giggled and pressed back against him. His tentacles went around her, his bulk pressed against her back. It felt nice and she lay there contentedly for a time, just enjoying his presence. It was like but not like being with her sisters, all curled up together. He was definitely not a water sylph and he felt different against her, strong and forceful where her sisters were just damp. He seemed happy to be with her as well, but still, she found herself feeling guilt. He was a battle sylph, bound to protect and woo the Queen. She was a water sylph, neuter, and she knew that there were things she couldn't provide to him, desires she could feel in him but had no ability to feel herself.

Do you regret this? she whispered, despite her promises to herself that she'd stay silent. He'd remain with her until he left, she told herself. That was all she could wish for. It was just, despite all the things she couldn't do with him, she didn't want him to leave.

Regret what? Meeting you? He pressed closer against her, a warmth all along her side. How could I regret that?

Well, because I can’t be with you... the way the Queen would.

Ahh... He was quiet for a moment and then, unexpectedly, gave a snicker. You might not have noticed, but I don’t exactly have the Queen’s favour. I don’t think of you as a substitute and I’m happy with whatever you can give me.

Really? she said, happy and sad and wishing she could be more all at once.

Yes. It...it did bother me at first, but honestly, I realized I loved you. That goes a lot deeper than anything physical.

She leaned against him, the happiness outweighing her sorrow. I love you too.

A tentacle stroked the edge of her pattern. I’m glad. I’d trumpet it to the whole hive, but....

The Queen, she said.

The Queen, he repeated. The Queen, who had their absolute loyalties, but who was petty and jealous, and who would resent a battle sylph who found love with a water sylph, even if she never intended to touch him.

Our secret, she said.

He pulled her close. Our wonderful secret, he agreed.

R is for Ruined

2012-02-05T10:49:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Anonymous for breaking the block.

This insisted on being R. *sigh*

“Kal? I need you to move the barrels in the hay loft today.”

Kal paused in the midst of buttoning his blue and gold coat to look at his master. Nyla sat on the edge of the bed, running a comb through her long brown hair.

She was so pretty, he thought, as he always did. So frail, so delicate. He loved being with her, but his duty was clear.

“I can’t today. I’m on guard duty for the Queen.”

She put the comb down and looked up at him, a line forming in the middle of her brow. “Again? You’ve been guarding her all month.”

“It’s my turn,” Kal told her, fastening the last button at his throat as he bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “I have to go.”

“But I need you here,” she protested. “There’s so much to do to get ready for winter.”

“Winter’s weeks away,” he promised. “The Queen needs me. I’ll be back tonight.” He gave her a quick hug and went out the door. Nyla felt disgruntled but ultimately accepting, just as she always was, and he did have to go. The Queen was the Queen, after all. Battle sylphs were supposed to protect her. No one would ever want to hurt Nyla.

Outside, Kal shifted to his natural form, lightning flashing through his cloud body, and he took to the air, headed for the palace.

OoO

Kal stood with Blue at the back of Solie’s office, both of them conversing in silence while they guarded her. She didn’t pay much attention to them, busy writing with a quill on a piece of parchment. Some sort of missive to the leader of Eferem, he gathered. She’d been inside all day, but Kal didn’t mind the lack of action. He was a battler. He could stand there all day.

Are you going to the reading class tonight? Blue asked.

I suppose I should, Kal said. The Queen wanted them to all be educated, after all. Some sylphs took lessons with the human children during the day. Those who couldn’t join in took classes at night instead. They were more haphazard, being taught by sylphs instead of humans, but still worthwhile. I should spend some time with Nyla, though. She doesn’t like that I’m guarding the Queen so much right now.

Neither dos Casi, Blue agreed. I try to make up for it by bringing her flowers.

Does that work?

It did at first. Now she expects it. I need to figure out what I’m going to do when all the flowers are gone for winter.

Kal smirked, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. Solie’s quill scratched on the parchment. Maybe he should get some flowers for Nyla, just as an apology for leaving her alone so much lately.

In his mind, he was always aware of his master, their link constant, even with the distance between them. She felt busy to him in much the same way that Solie was busy, but with an overtone of physical effort. What was she doing, he wondered? Whatever it was, she felt at the limit of her strength. Was she trying to move those barrels in the hay loft by herself?

Kal shifted in place, his gaze on the back of Solie’s head. Blue looked at him sideways, his eyebrow quirked. What is it?

Nyla’s moving some barrels. They’re too heavy for her.

Huh. She should have waited for you.

Yeah. A tinge of guilt hit him. She shouldn’t do that, it’s what she had him for.

Solie sensed his emotions and looked curiously over her shoulder at him. “What is it?” she asked.

Kal opened his mouth to say it was nothing when everything changed. Nyla’s frustrated exertion changed abruptly to terror and then to pain and nothingness so fast that Kal only had time to go rigid with shock. The link between them, that precious bond between battle sylph and master, snapped.

He barely realized he was screaming, that he was shifting to his natural form and deserting his duty to shoot out the door, taking it off its hinges as he did. He saw without caring as Blue threw himself over the Queen, protecting her from Kal’s mad rush.

He crashed his way out of the palace, howling, as battlers rose up all over the Valley, bellowing as they responded to his screams. He ignored them, didn’t even see them, rushing instead for home. Home, where he should have been.

Kal reached the barn behind the cottage and shifted to human in the doorway, running to kneel next to the slight form sprawled on the floor with a low, agonized moan.

Nyla had fallen from the loft, right off the edge where they would toss hay down for the horses, and had broken her neck. She’d died instantly. How? How did this happen? Kal began to shake, pulling her up into his arms to cradle against him. He started to rock her, keening.

Something buzzed by his face and he looked up. A wasp buzzed past. There were more, dozens of them up in the air around the loft and suddenly he understood. Nyla had gone up there alone while he was off guarding the Queen, and while she was moving the barrels, she’d uncovered a wasp’s nest she hadn’t known was there. He hadn’t known. They’d swarmed her and she’d stumbled...

Kal howled and thrust a hand out and up. Energy boiled in his palm and exploded outwards. He took the entire roof of the barn and the loft off, vaporizing them and leaving a storm of splinters and cinders to rain around him where he knelt and rocked his master. Nyla, Nyla, Nyla...

A footstep sounded behind him and he heard Mace’s voice, rough with compassion. “The Queen is asking what’s happened,” he said.

The Queen. The miserable, now hated Queen he’d been protecting when he should have been with his master, with the woman who loved him. Pain and anger flooded through him and he felt ruined inside, as broken as the woman he held.

“Fuck the Queen,” he whispered and bowed his head over his lover.

Gah

2012-02-04T19:24:00.000-05:00

I still have no idea what R stands for.... S and T yes, R no.

Anyone have any suggestions for an R?

Here, have a painting while I slink away and feel guilty (well, not really, but still...).

Random Ramblings

2012-02-03T20:00:00.002-05:00

R is coming tomorrow as I'm tired, relaxed (thanks to half a bottle of wine that's leading to way too much backspacing), and both uninspired and unwilling to just belt something crappy out and post it. Long story short, I have no idea what R stands for. No, I'm not writing this out beforehand. when you see it is about two minutes after I finish it.

The half bottle of wine making my typing bad is being compounded by my cat sitting in my lap so I'm twisted in my seat and typing on the arm of my chair. Damn you, Fearless.

I appreciate everyone who likes the sylph soup series and is telling me so. I don't really go looking on the web for reviews as I'm a pansy assed wheenie who gets depressed when she reads a bad review, so I'm thrilled by your positive comments. First thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check my mail for comments. I must be in a different time zone from my readers because I seem to get most of my fan mail in the middle of the night.

When I'm not writing snippets, I'm slowly working my way through the fourth book of my unsold Cuckoo series, which, like all its predecessors, is like pulling teeth. I like it, but oy! is it fighting me.

No news on the publishing of the next two books of the sylph series, which are written. I know exactly why they haven't been bought and what's happening, but I won't say why. To do so would be a breach of confidentiality and I'm so much against that my totem animal is the chickadee. Suffice to say I have no bloody idea when they're coming out and I'm nearly as annoyed as all of you.

I'm trying to get other novels in other series published, as I refuse to only write books in one universe, but one thing I've learned is that the publishing industry is a glacial one. When I know anything, you will, but my agent is currently farming the following:

3 novel fantasy series
1 novel young adult
7 novel romantic fantasy series (that I haven't actually written yet. Unless said otherwise, the others are)
2 novel sylph continuation

I also have, that I haven't tossed at my agent for various reasons from "I should do a rewrite" to "I wrote it longhand and am too lazy to type it":

1 romantic fantasy novel
1 science fiction novel
1 half finished science fiction novel
about twenty short stories and novellas. I think. I'm too lazy to go and count them.

That's all I can think of right now. I'm going to go and wander onto Goodreads and add books to my 'to read' pile. The fact that Amazon.ca has so few books as kindle gives me the sad.

Happy Friday to everyone.

Q is for Questions

2012-02-02T20:29:00.002-05:00

She’d always worked in the far fields, the hive a distant growth against the side of the mountain while she did her work near the slopes that dove down into the gorges.

She’d never really considered herself to be different from any of the other water sylphs who worked near her. She was nameless, she was busy, she was happy and contented. She was well fed and had friends she giggled and gossiped with. She knew her place in the word and enjoyed it.

He was a battle sylph, a guard placed to scout the end of the field and watch for predators. He was there to protect all of them and she certainly had no problem with that. Just knowing he was near kept her relaxed, not worrying about what might crawl up out of one of the cracks in the ground.

Perhaps that gratitude was what made her start talking to him. It certainly wasn’t forbidden, but it was unusual for a water sylph to have anything resembling a regular conversation with a battle sylph. The breeds mostly kept to their own. Still, he sometimes looked lonely as he floated along the edge of the crops she tended, gazing towards the hive that his duty kept him from.

“Hello,” she said to him one day. He was so surprised that it delighted her and she resolved to keep doing it.

He didn’t react the second day she greeted him, or the third. He gave her the barest nod on the fourth. It wasn’t much of a reaction, but it pleased her and she kept doing it, greeting him in the most outlandishly silly ways she could think of. It gave her a bit of entertainment beyond endlessly tending the fields, but she didn’t think it had any effect on him until one day when he was floating past and she gave him a particularly high-pitched and cheerful hello. He stopped and rolled over in midair, regarding her with one ball lightning eye.

You’re silly, he told her.

Of course I am! she replied. He laughed.

From that moment, he would detour his route to make sure he passed her, even when she was far in the middle of the field, and it became a challenge to see which of them could call out their hello first.

They kept that tradition for seasons, while the crops grew and were harvested, planted and grown again. Every day, until he was the first thing she looked for when the suns rose and she left the huddle where she waited out the most dangerous hours of the night with her sisters.

On the latest morning of their tradition, she saw a black shape passing along the edge of the field, far away from her. She darted towards him, hoping to cut him off before he came looking for her, and crashed out of the rows of lush purple plants with her hello ready.

She was nearly obliterated by the battle sylph she startled. The strange battler. He reared back and yelled at her, calling her stupid.

She barely heard him. Where is he? she gasped.

What? Who?

The battle sylph who was here yesterday, she said frantically, and the day before. Where is he? Is he okay? A panic she’d never have expected filled her, confusing her. Why was she worried about a battle sylph? Battlers were fighters. Fighting and guarding was all they did. They didn’t need a single water sylph worrying about them.

The battle sylph obviously agreed as he looked at her as if he thought she were mad. He was sent with the gorge hunt teams, he admitted at last.

Why? she thought in horror. Why him? Why now?

Why did it matter?

He was a battle sylph. He fought and defended, he strove to be worthy of the Queen. She was a water elemental, passive and pacifistic. She took care of the growing crops the hive depended on. For all they lived in the same hive, they belonged to different worlds. So why did she feel as if the core of her had been torn out?

There were ten thousand sylphs in the hive, all speaking on the same hive line. There was so much noise that no one used it except when close together. There was no way that she could single out a single battle sylph, no matter how hard she tried.

What gorge? she wailed.

The battler was already turning to continue his rounds, uncaring of simple games and friendly hellos. The river drop, he said and was past her.

The river drop. Deep, twisting, dark. A channel down to the jungles below the mountain and a route for predators to climb up to the hive. She’d heard horror stories about it. There weren’t any fields nearby, even the Queen judging the risk too great for her sylphs. Battlers scoured it for danger constantly.

Battlers died in it frequently.

She found herself racing across the ground before she even understood what she was doing. She couldn’t fly the way that air and fire sylphs could, or healers and battlers. She could change shape, though, and dropped her usual rather amorphous form for something with many legs that galloped her across the ground.

No one stopped her. No one had ever considered they’d need to stop a water sylph from going into a gorge. She reached it and forced herself down into the dim light, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the rough ground, the dirt dampening from her nervousness.

She kept thinking of his laugh, and his surprise, and the sound of his voice when he said hello. All the conversations they’d had about so many different things. Secrets she never felt like talking about with her sisters. He’d told her secrets as well, admitting that he trusted her more than anyone else.

Now he was here, in the dark. She kept going down, listening and straining to sense his pattern as the shadows closed in and the temperature dropped. The gorge was wet and narrow, small rocks and pebbles shaking loose with every step she took.

She heard a hiss in the darkness and turned to see something segmented and luminous, long and skeletal, coming her way through a wide crack. It hissed with hunger, its pattern one of murder.

She squealed as it snarled and when it lunged for her, she leaped high into the air, over its head and down to the ground past it. She ran and heard it chasing, snarling and hungry.

She was going to die down here. That thing would catch her and devour her energy until nothing was left and all she could think about was that she’d never see the battler again. It felt so monumentally unfair.

A blast of destructive energy hit the predator. It exploded and she was thrown forward, tumbling over and over until something warm and dark caught her, something that flickered with friendly, welcoming lightning.

She looked up into the swirling eyes of her battle sylph.

Hello, she whispered.

Hello, he said back, his tentacles wrapped around her, leaving her feeling safe. I missed you.

She sighed and nestled against him, not questioning it. She’d missed him too.

P is for Pissed Off!

2012-02-01T21:54:00.001-05:00

They had his sisters!

The baby battler had returned to the fence after his latest attempt at finding food to discover everything he’d collected gone, along with his little sisters. He dropped the piglet he’d been carrying and the animal ran off, oinking, while he squealed and flailed and blew raspberries of pure hatred.

His sisters!

Furious, he reached through his pattern for them, and while he did find them, they were different somehow, changed. Their pattern was new and oddly unlike his. Something had been done to them.

Only he was allowed to do anything to them!

The baby turned with a squeaking roar and raced straight towards his sisters, flailing with the tentacles not jammed in his mouth and blowing raspberries as he went. He made no attempt at stealth but flew straight down the middle of the road, his aura arching out a whole foot around him while he thrashed around himself. He’d find them, he’d find who took them, he’d beat them all to death, and he’d save his sisters! Then he’d beat them for being so stupid as to get themselves caught when he wasn’t there to defend them!

He passed many of the two-legged animals as he went, blowing raspberries of warning at them as he passed. They respected the danger he represented, moving out of his path and making strange ha sounds that must have indicated fear. At the same time, they slapped their hands together to appease him or made high pitched squealing sounds. He kept going. He was a battle sylph. He was the most dangerous battle sylph in the world and there was nothing that would stop him now!

oOo

Dozens of feet above his head, fifty adult battlers floated together in a mass cloud and watched the baby racing to storm the palace.

There he goes, Dillon said. Does he really think he’s going to succeed? He’s a moron.

Well, technically, he is going to succeed, Heyou laughed, since we’re all under orders to let him.

He’s still an idiot.

Is he? said a larger battler floating above them all. How is he different from the rest of us? He’s attacking despite the unknowns of it, despite the odds and the danger. If it were us down there instead of him, would any of us act any different?

There was a moment of silence while the assembled battlers considered that and the squealing, tentacle sucking, raspberry blowing baby vanished inside the palace.

Finally, Blue sighed. Battle sylphs are stupid, he said.

oOo

The baby burst into a throne room, flailing and sucking in fury. The room was large and filled with echoes, bigger than even the egg chamber he’d hatched in. Ahead of him, he could see a single two-legger standing on a dais, other two-leggers off to either side, but at the single one’s feet was a basket that held his sisters.

Death! Destruction! Lots and lots of conquering! The baby uttered a shriek of challenge that turned into a raspberry and charged, racing straight up the runner to the dais, passing the pillars that held up the ceiling so far above. He’d kill her! He’d get his sisters back! Then he’d damn well get something to eat because he was hungry, and if his sisters didn’t like it, then tough!

He flew past a pillar and Autumn stepped out from behind it. She brushed her hand across his backside and immediately tied him into the hive line, just as she had his sisters.

Solie opened her arms and the stunned little battler crashed into them, mouth hanging open and tentacles dangling.

“Oh, you poor little baby!” she cooed, giving him a hug. “You’ve had just a horrible, horrible day, haven’t you?”

The baby blinked. Down in the basket, his sisters chirped greetings and the Queen smiled at him.

“Tthhpptt,” was all he managed to say before he fell asleep.

O is for Outrage

2012-01-31T08:02:00.000-05:00

The two baby sylphs lay in Autumn’s arms, peeping happily while the healer gently fed them wisps of Solie’s energy, edible to them now that they’d been brought into the hive.

“They’re so cute!” Solie squealed, overcome by the adorableness of the two while a half dozen other women crowded them and cooed. “How did they get here?”

“Through the gate,” Autumn said. “I dread to think what much have happened to their home hive to let them wander around on their own.”

“But how is it no one noticed them?”

Autumn smiled down at the two, who burbled at her. “Baby sylphs don’t have much of an aura. They’re easy to overlook. We keep them in nurseries inside the hive until they’re much older, to keep them out of trouble.”

“Well, they’re safe now,” Solie smiled. She’d make sure of it. They’d have to be very careful indeed picking masters for these two.

That thought reminded her of something. “How did they even manage to be in this world without masters?”

Autumn looked at her evenly. “Because they hadn’t tried to take any of the energy of this world in, so they weren’t really part of it. If they’d eaten anything, they would have been poisoned and rejected back into their own world. They’re lucky they’re picky eaters.”

Solie smiled and bent over the two. “You’re so clever! Yes, you are! Yes, you are!” The two babies squealed in happiness and she wriggled her nose at them and turned to regard two battle sylphs cowering against each other nearby, both of them covered in dirt and pie filling.

“I can’t believe you were going to kill them!” she snapped. “Thank the stars that Casi was there!” Casi smirked and Blue and Dillon cowered some more.

The Widow reached down to stroke a gnarled finger along the edge of the two’s bodies, her expression soft. “It’s amazing how much they managed to steal.”

Autumn looked down at the two, communicating with them. “It wasn’t them,” she said at last. “A battle sylph came with them. He’s the one who’s been trying to steal food for them.”

Mace had been standing nearby. At Autumn’s words, the big battler stiffened.

Battlers! he sent along the hive line. There is a foreign battle sylph invading our hive!

Roars started up around the Valley, battle sylphs rising in the air to hunt and kill their enemy. Autumn looked at Mace, one eyebrow raised.

“He’s from the same hatching as them,” she said. “Are you seriously going to raise the entire flight to track down and kill a baby less than a day old?”

Mace looked at her and at the other women, all of them glaring at him with thunderous outrage.

Battlers! he sent. Never mind.

Quick notice

2012-01-30T21:35:00.002-05:00

O will come tomorrow. It's been a long day. Sorry.

N is for Nag

2012-01-29T12:21:00.000-05:00

(Oy, it was hard to find a word that fit with today. Bleck. I really should focus on something other than baby battler and his sisters, but I'm afraid that someone will hit me if i don't finish his story. :p

Baby B isn't in this. However, his presence has been noticed at last.)

Blue walked desultorily down the road away from his master’s cottage, his hands shoved into the pockets of his pie-stained uniform. Sympathetic to his mission, his friend Dillon slouched beside him, looking more normal than usual, except for the collection of tails.

“Casi threw the pie at you, didn’t she?” Dillon asked.

Blue sighed. “It’s not my fault. She said ‘bring me my pies.’ Well, I found one of them right away, but was she happy? No.”

“Ah.” Dillon thought about Blue’s master. Given her temperament, he was just as glad that Moreena was his master. She was far more likely to cry than yell. He preferred the crying. Well, not really. There just seemed to be more hugging and less throwing involved with Moreena. “At least you were able to bring it back to her.”

“Yeah, but she wanted it in one piece. With less dirt.”

“Kind of picky, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Blue sighed. He should have known better, he supposed. He loved his Casi, but she was such a nag about some things. “I have to find the other pie. She said she wouldn’t sleep with me if I didn’t.”

Dillon shuddered in sympathetic horror. He couldn’t imagine a fate worse than that. “Maybe someone’s seen it,” he suggested and called along the hive line to his brothers.

Hey, has anyone seen a pie?

What do you need a pie for? came an immediate response.

I don’t need it, Dillon clarified. Blue does. It’s Casi. It was stolen and she threatened not to sleep with him if he didn’t bring it back.

No!

That’s horrible!

I’m sorry to hear that.

I thought you were still cut off from last month.

Blue hunched into himself. No, she forgave me for the sheets.

Really? Even after what happened with the pink dye and the chicken feathers?

Can we get back to the stolen pie? Blue whined. Casi’s nagging me. I really need to find it.

You know, I’m looking for stolen goods too. A basket of yarn.

You too? I’m hunting for some missing toys.

A whole bunch of lefthand socks here.

I’m looking for a cow.

Suddenly, Mace’s voice silenced them all. How many people are looking for stolen items? he demanded.

A chorous of ‘me’ and ‘I am’ and ‘I wanna blow up a thief too!’ sounded. Dillon and Blue looked at each other. “It’s an epidemic.”

“Why would anyone want to steal socks and cows and toys?” Dillon wondered.

“I dunno. Humans are weird.”

Battle sylphs! Mace boomed. We have a thief in the Valley! We will find them and destroy them!

Blue sighed as the cheering echoed. “Well, if it’s not just her, do you think Casi will be less angry?”

“It’s Casi. What do you think?”

“You’re right. I’m screwed.”

“I thought the whole threat was in how you weren’t going to be.”

They started trudging again, following the road as it curved around and away from Casi’s cottage. Blue glanced down at his feet and stopped. There was a pie sized drag mark in the dirt, a faint indentation that led away from the cottage, across the road, and away from the town.

Blue felt hope start to bloom in his chest. “Look! That’s got to be the pie!”

“Why would someone drag it?” Dillon wondered as his friend ran ahead, pumping his arms and jumping for joy as he shouted that he was going to get some. Finally, he shrugged. “Humans are weird,” he agreed and hurried after his friend.

oOo

Together, Blue and Dillon stared at the little patch of meadow that the town fence ran through. It was filled with spare socks, wood, toys, sacks of grain, manure, ladies undergarments, a bone comb, several stunned cats tangled in the yarn, and a cow.

They looked down at the sadly broken remains of what had once been a perfectly baked pie. The cow had stepped on it.

Um, Casi? Blue sent to his master. I found your pie.

oOo

Casi was unimpressed with their success.

“What’s wrong with you?” she screamed at Blue. “It’s a pie! How hard is it to keep someone from stealing a bloody pie?”

Blue kept his head down, shoulders hunched and apologizing profusely to the love of his life. Dillon kept his own mouth shut and stood back against the fence, trying not to attract her attention.

Something tickled at his senses. There was something hidden in the fence that was trying very hard to avoid his notice. Dillon blinked and hunched down, peering in through a crack to see a small gap where two tiny elemental sylphs huddled, staring at him in silent terror. They weren’t of the hive. Dillon snarled and lifted a hand, his palm glowing with destructive energy.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Casi snapped, distracted from her nagging.

“Couple of baby sylphs in here,” Dillon said. “I’m going to kill them.”

If Dillon had thought to ask him first, Blue could have warned him that using such words as ‘baby’ and ‘kill’ in the same context near Casi was a mistake.

M is for Moo

2012-01-28T18:11:00.001-05:00

The ungrateful little bitches still weren’t happy!

Half his tentacles shoved in his mouth and the other half flailing around him, the baby squealed in outrage at his sisters, both tucked in and comfortable in a gap inside a fence post. They squealed back at him, demanding he bring them something they could actually eat.

The baby screamed in absolute fury, beat at the outside of the fence post, and turned, racing away from the fence and, yet again, into that stinking, useless town. He’d destroy it. He’d raze it to the ground, burn it to ash, destroy it and everyone in it! Then he’d nap. Then he’d beat up his sisters.

Tired and hungry and frustrated, the baby went in another direction, ducking around and under things and going unnoticed by anyone other than the odd barking dog and a little girl standing beside her mother with her thumb in her mouth.

She sucked her thumb and stared at him.

He sucked his tentacles and stared at her.

Both their eyes started to cross. Finally, she pulled her thumb out of her mouth and stuck her tongue out at him. Happy with his victory, the baby blew a raspberry at her and continued on his way.

His irregular route took him to a barn. He flitted inside and into the shadows and studied a man seated on a stool and milking a cow. Was that food? The cow chewed contentedly as the man kept milking her while a cat sat nearby, ears up and tail lashing. The baby tensed, ready for more fighting, but the cat ignored him, staring at the man, who pointed a teat at it and squeezed. A squirt of milk leaped out and the cat caught it in its mouth.

Food! Finally, food! He’d take it, he’d bring it to his sisters, he’d get them to shut the hell up for a while, and he’d take a well earned nap. He was ready to attack, but before he could, the man stood and patted the cow’s side before walking out with the bucket. The cat followed him, hoping to get another taste.

Once they were gone, the baby lunged forward and up to the cow, which watched him with a placid expression. Eager, he grabbed one of its teats and yanked as hard as he could.

The cow, naturally, kicked him.

oOo

Bessy was a good cow.

She was always calm and gentle, always gave milk, and didn’t panic when the battle sylphs did strange things that usually seemed to involve mass destruction or sex. Or both. They didn’t pay any attention to her anyway. Not until now.

Bessy was used to being led around, but not like this. Now she walked slowly at the end of her lead, the other end of which was held by a small black cloud with pinpricks of light flickering in it. It had most of its tentacles jammed into its mouth and was grumbling and blowing raspberries as it towed her along, floating a few feet above the ground.

Bessy really wasn’t sure about this. She was used to humans with warm hands, not whatever this was. Still, being out of the barn meant grass, and when she saw a heavy thatch of green on the side of the road, she tossed her head and trotted towards it.

The baby battler shrieked as he was suddenly thrown up in the air and back, the cow dragging him on the ground behind her as she trotted over to the greenery and happily began to eat.

Flat on the ground behind her, the baby still hung onto the tether with one tentacle, the rest jammed into his mouth, and groaned. This really, really wasn’t worth it.

While the cow ate, he took another nap.

L is for Lift

2012-01-27T21:02:00.000-05:00

His sisters were impossible!

He’d brought them food. He had. He’d carried them blades of the green stuff that stuck out of the ground and the hard, splintery stuff that the whatever-they-weres with the two legs cut into pieces, and even the soft brown stuff that the four legged things dropped behind them. But no, none of that was good enough for his stuck up sisters.

Their indignant peeping chasing behind him, the baby battler headed back into the town. He hated this! He should be conquering the world right now! Hungry and frustrated, he shoved a half dozen tentacles into his mouth and sucked on them as he flitted around the cottages and between the slats of various fences. He’d find his sisters food, then he’d beat them to death with it for being annoying, then he’d take a nap, and then he’d take over the world.

His plan fully in mind, he was distracted by something large, black, and familiar appearing in the sky over him, headed rapidly towards the cottage he was approaching. A battle sylph! An enemy!

The baby raced after him, intent upon battle.

oOo

Blue headed eagerly to his master’s cottage. It had been hours since he’d touched her and he could feel Casi’s desire. She lusted desperately for him.

Okay, maybe she didn’t lust desperately for him, but she was filled with desire for his presence.

Okay, maybe she wasn’t filled with desire for him, but it was the lure of her needs that drew him from his duty to be with her.

Okay, maybe she wasn’t filled with desire for him at just this second, but she was never loathe to have a mid afternoon tumble.

Okay, maybe she was loathe, but she’d give in to some heartfelt begging, wouldn’t she? She had to. He hadn’t had sex since before breakfast!

He dove in through the open window of the kitchen, where she’d just set two pies on the windowsill to cool, and shifted shape to human. There he discovered to his delight that she was in fact willing to accept his advances.

Either that or she figured it was the quickest way to get rid of him for a while, but Blue wasn’t picky.

oOo

The baby battler followed Blue to the open window and rose up to peer between the two pies and see Blue and Casi doing something lewd right on top of the kitchen table. It seemed to involve a lot of writhing and moaning.

He had no idea what they were doing.

Well, he couldn’t attack now! Not when the other battler was already involved in combat. He blew a raspberry at them both that went ignored and let his attention drift to the two pies.

Food?

Was it food? It was smelly and hot and just the right size to whack a sister with! Ecstatic, the baby grabbed one of them with his tentacles - minus the ones he kept wedged in his mouth - and lifted it mightily off the windowsill.

He promptly plummeted pie first to the ground below.

A raspberry echoed up. Absorbed in each other, Blue and Casi didn’t notice.

Heavily pie stained, the baby floated back up, flaring his aura and sucking his tentacles. He glared at the second pie and braced himself better as he lifted it up and dropped down again. This time, however, he was ready and didn’t end up embedding himself in the middle of the thing. Blowing a raspberry in triumph, he sucked on his tentacles and started to drag the pie, tin and all, across the ground and back to his ungrateful sisters.

oOo

“That was wonderful,” Blue sighed, staring up at the ceiling.

“Easy for you to say,” Casi grumbled. “You don’t have a splinter in your butt.”

She didn’t sound mad, so Blue didn’t worry. His Casi was a woman of frequent moods after all. He continued to smile at the ceiling as she sat up on the table, grumbling, and looked towards her fresh baked pies.

Her scream nearly put him straight through the ceiling.

“My pies!” she shrieked. “Someone stole my pies!”

“Um,” Blue said, pretty sure this was about to become his fault.

Casi glared at him. “What kind of battle sylph are you? They stole my pies while you were five feet away!”

“I was distracted?”

Her face turned red with fury and then white in horror. He hadn’t realized a human could change colour that fast. “They...gods, what if they saw us? What if they saw me? I’m naked!”

“I’m sure they were overwhelmed by your beauty,” Blue assured her.

It was the wrong thing to say. “Get my pies!” she screamed.

Today

2012-01-26T21:23:00.000-05:00

There won't be any alphabet soup today as I'm too tired to put a good effort into it. It's been a long week. I've had a tire blow out on the highway, misplaced my wallet, and burned myself fumbling a cup of coffee. I am going to bed.

Tomorrow will be L for Lift and it will star everyone's apparently favourite baby battle sylph, who at least is having a worse day than I am. :p

BTW, I have an author account on Goodreads now. How the hell six sylph books got listed there I have no idea. The sixth one isn't even written!

I do desperately want a copy of the foreign language ones, even if the covers make no sense to me.

K is for Killer

2012-01-25T18:10:00.000-05:00

I didn't actually expect to get back to this little idiot so soon, but the next few letters actually fit.... so here he is again! The Deadliest Battle Sylph of them all (tm)

His sisters were hungry.

Wedged inside a crack in a thick fence post, the two elemental sylphs peeped demandingly at their brother. The baby battler roared and flailed his tentacles at the outside of the post, but they were insistent. They wanted food. They had no idea what qualified as food, but they still expected him to provide it. He didn’t know what qualified as food. That didn’t seem to matter either. They’d decided it was his duty to feed them and they would be happy with nothing less.

The baby battler blew a final raspberry at them both and turned, heading out on his quest for something edible. It was annoying. He was a battle sylph, he should be conquering this place, not acting as an errand sylph to a couple of whiners. The fact that he was hungry too was irrelevant. He was strong!

The baby headed unnoticed along the fence line and into the town, gliding along just above the ground and glaring out of the shadows he passed through at the various humans and animals. Were they food? He passed behind two men labouring to load a cart with sacks of grain, went around a pile of firewood, and behind a heavy barrel.

There, he came face to face with a beast of evil eye and sharp claw, easily as big as he was. For a second the baby froze, recognizing a fellow killer, and then with a roar of challenge, he hurled himself without hesitation into his very first combat.

One of the carters lifted his head. “What’s that noise?” he asked.

The other carter shrugged. “Cat fight.”

“One of those cats sounds sick.”

They kept on loading the cart.

He was triumphant! Victorious, the baby watched the tomcat leap up onto the barrel and proceed to lick itself as if it hadn’t just been defeated in glorious battle. The baby blew a raspberry at it and continued on his way, confident in his supremacy.

J is for Jeopardy

2012-01-24T13:12:00.001-05:00

(This is what I meant to post yesterday. Sort of. I wrote a short story in the Sylph world that I always liked, but I couldn't really sell it because it had spoilers for absolutely everything. Then I thought "Hey, I could chop it up and put some bits in here, cause I'm lazy that way". So I decided to do that, and discovered last night that I can't find the original file. I am pissed. I am also stubborn, so this is a rewrite, because there are parts of this I like.
If people like my *cough* hero and I find some more letters of the alphabet that are appropriate for his story, I'll put more snippets about him. If not, I'll just pretend today never happened....
All spoilers have been either removed or obscured to the point that I doubt anyone is really going to go 'hey!')

The hive was destroyed.

The walls had been breeched, the defenders slaughtered, the Queen broken out of her chamber and devoured. Fires from the battlers that tried to save it and her burned everywhere, billowing smoke that obscured the ruins and the monsters still scavenging through them.

Deep in the egg chamber, one sphere that had been overlooked by the hunters rocked back and forth. It wobbled out of the bed that held it and across the floor, fetching up against a rock before a black tentacle burst through the side with a spray of birthing fluid. It stretched out, triumphant and sure, and then flopped down as the owner took a nap.

While he slept, two more eggs near to it hatched, dropping an infant earth and water sylph to the ground. They lay there, peeping for someone to come and care for them. The only one that heard was the baby battler and with a furious struggle, he forced his way out of his egg and hovered over the two of them as if he hadn’t been sleeping on the job.

They peeped at him in hopeful hunger.

He blew a raspberry back at them.

Now what? The battler wasn’t sure, being only minutes old and a bit wobbly, but instinct said someone should be here. That obviously wasn’t working out so well and after a minute of staring around at the ruins, he reached the decision that if they just stayed where they were, someone would show up.

His sisters peeped at him again and shifted hungrily, blinking at their surroundings in growing fear. They started to back away towards a corridor that was less smoke filled and he flailed his tentacles at them, garbling in fury. He was the battler, he was the fearsome one. They would stay where they were because he was in charge.

Behind him, something reached in through the obscuring smoke and swept up a score of unhatched eggs, pulling them away to be devoured.

The two elemental sylphs shrieked and turned, fleeing up the corridor.

The battler blinked and started flailing in outrage. Didn’t they listen? They were staying here!

The roof fell in.

He blinked and turned around, looking at the carnage. He glared at it for a moment, then flailed his tentacles, blew a raspberry, and ran after his sisters.

He caught up to his sisters halfway up the corridor. Both of them were tiring already and he flailed at their backsides, driving them up the corridor despite their peeping protests. The corridor led to one of the breaches in the side of the hive and out into the flat croplands in front, now burning and destroyed. The flames were spreading out there and the smoke obscured everything, including the massive hunters that had conspired to bring down the hive.

The battler was starting to get the idea there was something wrong here. That made him feel afraid, and feeling afraid made him angry. So he flailed and squeaked and broadcast his absolute hatred in a circle a whole foot wide around himself as he chased his sisters across the fields. They peeped in protest and that just made him chase them harder, shrieking as loud as he could. They seemed to want to know where he was taking them.

How was he supposed to know? Wait, they weren’t supposed to question. He was the battler! He was meant to protect. He wasn’t supposed to get hung up on minor trivialities such as the fact that he couldn’t see anything through all the smoke and flame except for a glowing circular thing that had no colour he could name, not that he had words for anything.

There! They would go there! The battler hounded and beat his sisters towards the gate, squeaking and blowing raspberries, his tentacles flapping everywhere so hard that he nearly landed himself in the dirt.

The hunters heard. Still hungry, they turned towards the sound, feeling blind through the smoke to try and find the morsels, and all unknowing, the three baby sylphs fled for the gate, escaping through it before the closest could get to them. That monster felt through the gate for them, lashing on the other side, and yanked its tentacle back as a blast wave of pure destruction came through and the gate closed.

In the Summoning Chamber of Sylph Valley, while the humans ran around in a panic at what had almost come through their gate, the baby battler hid underneath a bench in the shadows, lying on top of his sisters, who were already asleep. He looked at the big battle sylph who’d just poured enough energy through the gate to turn the ground underneath it into glass and blew a raspberry.

He could take him, he thought.

Then he took another nap.

Arggghhh.....

2012-01-23T21:16:00.000-05:00

J has been delayed by virtue of having vanished off my computer and shoving a great big sign saying writer's block in its place. I've had a long day. I'll try and get J and K out tomorrow.

I is for Ignite

2012-01-22T17:34:00.002-05:00

They’d had to ask the earth sylphs to make the chamber, deep under the ground, and the air sylphs to feed air into it, and even the water sylphs to make sure it stayed dry, but it was theirs. None of them had ever had such a place before. One to call their own.

Ash followed her sisters down a shaft that let off the corridor near the queen’s throne room. It was only a foot wide, but that was more than they needed, and a dozen little balls of flame tumbled down the shaft, fire sylphs laughing and dancing as they tumbled down deep under the Valley.

At the bottom of the well was their chamber, that only fire sylphs came to. Ash sighed happily as she fell into it, joining the warmth of other sparks of light already there. Around them, the walls were shiny smooth and black from their heat and overhead were hundreds of openings, not just the one that they used to get in and out.They dotted the rock like mouths, shuttered off with metal plates.

The Queen says it’s time, Ash sent. The first storm of the winter is blowing in.

A miserable thought for the humans, an annoyance for the battlers, something to be avoided or played in by the other elementals, but for them? For the fire sylphs of Sylph Valley? It was time to burn.

They’d kept their heat low and the shutters closed for the summer, a sweet, quiet enjoyment of each other’s company, but now...

They came together, laughing still, balls of fire filled with the joy of their purpose, and together they ignited. Together they burned, and in their joy they flooded heat up through the ducts and into pipes underneath the Valley, keeping the entire town warm despite the winter.

Ah, Editing

2012-01-22T11:23:00.000-05:00

I was wandering the web and found these pictures. It looks like my red pen edits! Except I have better handwriting...

For those who get hung up on writing because what they write doesn't come out perfectly (I'm staring at YOU, Mia!) This is George Orwell's manuscript for 1984.

I found it on this site.

Some of my art

2012-01-21T19:17:00.000-05:00

I've updated the MY ART page on this blog if anyone is interested, and enabled comments at the bottom. Hopefully I won't end up regretting that. :D I have a link to my deviant art site there too, if anyone wants to see the rest of them or these ones at full size.

I've tried to say that some of them are for sale as prints three times and backspaced because it feels pretentious of me. Damn it! Some are up for sale! There, I said it! *hides*

Here, have a tree.

H is for Hatred

2012-01-21T18:50:00.000-05:00

(Okay, this one really is a tease....)

Thrall had stood at Alcor's side for decades while he waited for him to die.

Maybe he had another twenty years to be patient, perhaps only ten. It would certainly have been less if he weren't under direct orders to protect the King of Eferem from any direct attack. They came too, for Alcor was not a popular king, and each time they did, Thrall resented having to protect the corpulent waste of skin, just as he resented having to keep silent and not tell his master precisely what he thought of him, in extensive, thorough detail.

The only thing that he could do with any impunity was hate, and Thrall made of it a work of art. He threaded it into his aura and projected it, and as the years passed, he worked on the subtleties of his hatred, growing and nurturing it with infinite care. It was his masterpiece and Alcor didn't even realize what it was, just as he didn't know what he'd made the grand mistake of trapping all those years ago. Thrall would make sure that he regretted tricking him into coming here. He would make every last soul in Eferem regret it with their last dying breath.

Because of his hate for his master, he thrilled when the little battler killed the prince and escaped with his woman, for all the infant was weak and not of his hive. He luxuriated when the king's man turned traitor and joined the enemy. He rejoiced when Alcor's generals were slain and their battlers banished.

The rage those events flooded Alcor with, the fear and hate they caused him, were what finally gave Thrall his grand idea. He could wait as he had been for Alcor to die, doing nothing more than what he was commanded, or he could cause his master to be destroyed without ever even touching him. The choice was a simple one.

So Thrall the battle sylph stood at his master's side and overlaid the man with his hate, slowly, subtly, driving Alcor's own paranoia and hatred, patiently remaking his master into a madman bound for war, and Alcor had no idea it was happening. There was no way he could, after all.

Alcor had no idea what he had in what he thought was just another battle sylph.

And Thrall had no reason to feel anything other than hatred.

G is for Grass

2012-01-20T20:52:00.000-05:00

(I love the comments, by the way. First thing I do when I wake up is check my mail on my phone and every morning has been a good one. Thank you!)

G is for Grass

“Why can’t we put down anything pretty?” Shore asked. Her voice was a watery burble, so soft even her master could barely hear her.

With anyone else, Loren would have snapped for them to speak up, she wasn’t deaf. She smiled down at her little water sylph instead, even if the expression was a bit forced.

“I know. I’d rather be working on a real garden too, but it’s Solie’s orders.” She gave an exaggerated sigh, which the small sylph echoed.

She really would have preferred to be working on the gardens in the middle of the town. They were among the greatest in the world, a combination of her creativity and Shore’s abilities, and already people were coming to the Valley just to see them. She had so many ideas for how to make them even greater, but instead she was here, standing on the edge of a dead landscape of shale and dust that stretched to the horizon.

“I hate it out here,” she grumbled.

“Me too,” Shore said loyally.

Loren sighed again. There was no point in going back until she made at least a token effort. Solie would be asking, and for all she was so quiet and demure, the woman could make a person feel guilty beyond belief with just a disappointed look. Loren reached into one of the pouches on her belt and pulled out a single seed, so small that she had to squint to see it clearly. Shore looked up at her while she stared at it, her form shimmering water but otherwise exactly like a younger, smaller version of her master.

“Life to life,” Loren whispered to it, an incantation for only her and Shore’s ears. She tossed the seed down and Shore spread her hands in the air above it. Water flowed into the earth, dampening the grey soil and churning it, feeding it with Shore’s pattern while it pulled the seed down. Loren pulled some fertilizer out of a large sack she’d brought and threw it down to join the mix.

“Sprout to grow,” she said.

“Green is growth,” Shore squeaked.

“We make it so,” Loren returned.

“Live the earth,” Shore said.

“Love the soil,” Loren added.

“Grant here birth,” from Shore.

“Sweat of toil,” Loren finished

A hint of green pushed up through the dirt. Both of them bent down to examine it. A tiny, spring green blade of grass, barely poking up. It was the first greenery to touch the Shale Plains in centuries beyond count.

“One down,” Loren sighed and looked out towards the heavens. “Who knows how many billions to go.”

Shore grinned at her.

F is for Forever

2012-01-19T19:41:00.000-05:00

(F came REALLY close to stand for f*$%&^ing writer’s block, but I finally decided to throw this up. It’s a piece I wrote a while ago. It doesn’t fit anywhere and I wrote it for myself, but I thought someone might like it.)

Leon was dying.

It was the best time to accept it. After all, life in the Valley was good. Their lives were peaceful, their trade agreements with their neighbours both solid and lucrative. They’d expanded their borders, spreading from the original Valley and far out into the Shale Plains, replacing the dead ground that used to exist with rich, living farmlands. Humans and sylphs happily worked together, no one caring if a person was a man, a woman, or a sylph.

Eighty-one years old and tired, Leon Petrule looked up as the door to his office opened. He’d been working on reports, a half finished mug of willow tea steaming beside him. Five years or so earlier, he’d needed the tea only once a week. Now, as his hands cramped painfully around his writing quill, he needed to sip it all the time. He’d hidden the arthritis from his family, though he suspected Betha knew and he was pretty sure Lizzy did, if only because there was one person he couldn’t hide it from at all, and he would have told her.

His battle sylph Ril came in, glaring at his master while he did. Ril knew about Leon’s pain. He knew about the weakness and the weariness, the recurring pains in his chest and his arm. There was simply no way for Leon to hide it from him, but neither of them had spoken about it. If anything, the battle sylph had begun avoiding his master, though distance hadn’t been enough to stop Leon from feeling his tumult of emotions, both the rage and the worry. Forty-two years it had been since Ril was freed, another fifteen before that since Leon became his master, and even after fifty-seven years in the world, Ril looked the same as he had the day he first took human form. For him, looking at Leon must have been a constant reminder that his master’s health was failing. Leon missed having him around, but he hadn’t been surprised. Sylphs handled the mortality of their masters poorly and Ril needed to come to grips with the reality of Leon’s eventual passing on his own. Besides, Leon had known that Ril would come to him again when he was ready.

He’d also suspected that Ril wouldn’t come alone when he did, and Leon smiled, setting down his pen as the battler was followed by another sylph, this one female, her hair short against her head, her body beautiful and sleek. Where Ril was dressed in his formal uniform, she was garbed like any normal woman, choosing a dress with an embroidered apron over it.

"Good morning, Autumn," Leon said to her, rising painfully to greet the healer sylph. He couldn’t hide the pain he felt from her any more than he could from Ril, but he could stop himself from wincing when it hit him, crawling though his joints and up his left arm to his chest. "It's good to see you again. I'm afraid I don't have much time to give you today though. I'm quite busy."

"I cleared your schedule," Ril told him. "No one's coming."

Leon blinked, turning to him. Bringing the healer wasn’t a surprise, but Leon didn’t think it would take that long for her to block his pain. He’d seen her do it for others and in fact should have gone to her himself, if he hadn’t been so stubborn, as well as worried it would get back to his wife Betha. Autumn’s master Gabralina was a bit of a gossip and she often spent time at the house with Leon’s wife. More, on a very real level, Leon hadn’t wanted to see the healer. He knew he was dying. He didn’t need the look in Autumn’s eyes to confirm it. Nor did he want the temptation to ask her how long he had left. "You did?"

Ril nodded and started clearing away the items on Leon's desk, setting them on one of the side tables.

"What are you doing?" Leon asked. His battler’s emotions felt angry now, tense with fear. Ril moved a half dozen items, but when Leon took a step towards him, his hips throbbing from the arthritis, Ril snarled and swept the rest of them off the dark wood, letting them crash to the ground. The mug Leon had been sipping from shattered, spraying liquid everywhere. "Ril!"

"I need you to sleep now, Chancellor."

Leon had put Autumn out of his mind when Ril started clearing his desk. Once she spoke, he spun back towards her in surprise, just in time for her to lay her hand against his bearded cheek.

His legs went out from under him. His head sagged, his arms suddenly dead weights, and Leon fell towards the ground, only to feel Ril catch him, his arms warm around his body. "It's okay, Leon," Ril whispered. "Just let go."

Leon really didn't want to do that. His first thought was to tell them to stop whatever they were doing, but he couldn’t get an order out, desperately though he tried. He’d been hit too fast to do anything, and he realized that stopping him from giving an order had been part of their plan. All of the anger and stress Ril had been feeling over the last few weeks turned into sudden contentment and a very real sense of relief. Leon certainly didn’t share the emotion. His body was completely limp and his vision blurred, his mind fuzzing into sleep. He fought it desperately, using all of his fading will to hang onto consciousness, even as his battle sylph put his arms underneath him and lifted him up, cradling him as gently as a child before he laid him down on his own desk and Autumn started unbuttoning his tunic.

"Go to sleep," Ril whispered. "Trust me."

Skin was bared, Autumn laying her hands on his chest, and where she touched him, Leon started to burn. He still couldn't move, only a thread of consciousness hanging on, terrified and struggling, but Ril was still whispering for him to let go, massaging his temples now, and he felt the battle sylph lean over and kiss his forehead just before Leon gave in and did what he wanted.

Leon slept.

A long, dreamless time later, Leon woke up lying on the padded bench in the corner of his office, Ril's coat rolled up under his head and a blanket laid over him. His boots had been taken off and his feet rested on top of the arm.

He felt weak, barely able to open his eyes and sore everywhere. He felt in fact as if someone had been beating him and it took a long minute to remember what happened. Before he could, Ril was there, whispering reassurances as he lifted him up enough to sit behind him. Leon found himself elevated, his upper body resting against Ril's chest while the battler held a mug of lukewarm soup to his mouth. "Drink this."

Leon did, swallowing the soup in tiny sips. It was bland but good, mild in a mouth that seemed to have been shocked to absolute dryness. Never had Leon been so utterly exhausted and his eyes slid shut again while he drank, his hands lax in his lap.

"It was as hard as she said it would be," Ril groused. "You’re too old. Lizzy only took two hours. She had to work on you for more than sixteen. She says you'll be tired for a while." He paused, both of them realizing he was babbling. "We'll have to tell Betha you came down sick or something."

She said? Who? What? "What did you do to me?" Leon gasped. The rest of the words sank in and he struggled to sit up. "What did you do to Lizzy?"

Ril's free arm looped around him, holding him firm against the battler while he lifted the mug to his lips again. "Drink."

Leon drank, unable to resist, and a bit more strength flowed into him. He was remembering now, remembering Autumn and his own battle sylph attacking him.

"What have you done?" he demanded, with more than just a hint of command in his voice. A feeling of betrayal flickered in the back of his heart and Ril's arm tightened around him.

"I did what I had to," the battler told him. "Autumn's been studying humans for decades now. She started with her own master, wanting to keep her alive as long as she could.” He paused. “She’s made it so you won't get older. She can even make all the old parts get younger again, to a degree. It’s not easy and I don’t think a healer who isn’t half queen could manage it. She had to exhaust herself for you, you old idiot."

Leon froze, the implications of that too great for him to absorb yet as more than a sudden panic. Ril waited him out, holding the soup ready. "She can make everyone live forever?"

"Not everyone," Ril told him. "She won’t. Says it will mess up the balance. The queen agrees. But she did it for you, and for Lizzy. A few of the other sylph masters too. The ones who were young enough for her to be able to and who had souls flexible enough to accept the change, and where Autumn was worried the bond was too strong and their sylph wouldn't be able to deal with them... with them dying." He barely said the last word.

Leon's mind reeled again at the realization of just how worried his battler had been and Ril took the opportunity to feed him a bit more of the soup. Leon didn't even taste it. Why had he never sat the creature down and talked about this? He'd known he'd be outlived by Ril and his increasing pain during the last few months had only made it obvious that his life was slowing to an end. Yet they'd never talked about it and the feeling of betrayal vanished into the horror at the thought of how Ril would take losing him, especially if Autumn was willing to go to these lengths to prevent it. "Am I going to live forever?" he whispered.

"No." Ril sounded resentful. "We don't know yet how long any of you will live." He hesitated. "You didn't have enough time left for us to find out first."

Leon groaned, pain starting to stab through his back, and Ril adjusted himself behind him. Leon forced his eyes to open and stared at the pattern on the blanket covering him. He felt as if he’d been pummeled, but his joints no longer ached and his heart beat strongly and well. The reality of that hit him. He was going to live a lot longer than he’d thought when he dragged himself out of bed this morning. Would it be for decades? Centuries? Longer?

Betha! his mind screamed.

"How many," he swallowed. "How many are like this?"

"A dozen. Maybe a few more. Autumn only felt she knew enough to actually do it recently, but as I said, she won’t do many. It took a long time to convince her to save both you and Lizzy. Lizzy yes, but I had to fight for you. Your soul is flexible enough, but she was afraid you were already too old." He sounded like he felt a certain amount of resentment towards the healer for that. “Gabralina finally had to order her to do it.”

His eldest daughter would live. Leon felt joy at that, but what about his other daughters? Their children? His beautiful wife Betha? Was he supposed to watch them all grow old and die? "Why didn't you ask me?" he whispered, his eyes stinging and already knowing the answer. Why knock him out and just do it without even giving him the chance to protest? Why? Because if they hadn’t, he wouldn't have given up his human life. He wouldn't have agreed. He would have loved Ril to his dying breath, and he would have wanted to die in his arms, but he still would have died. Humans weren't meant to be immortal.

Ril was quiet for a moment before he set the soup down, and when he brought his hand back up, he wiped away the tears Leon hadn't realized he was shedding.

"You killed my queen," he said, and Leon shuddered as he deliberately tore an old wound wide open, flooding them both with an ancient pain. It came from both of them, born in the memory of a terrified young woman, tied down to an altar and staring up pleadingly at Leon before he plunged a dagger deep into her heart. Leon had thought that old regret long since put to rest, but it wasn't. Not for either of them. "You made her helpless and you killed her to force me to be your slave."

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

"You owe me a life," Ril told him. "Hers is gone, so I take yours. As much life as I can wring out of you, and I’ll keep you with me forever, until the stars fall out of the sky and this whole world dies around us both!"

Leon was crying, too weak to lift his hands to cover his face. He'd known battlers were possessive, for decades he'd known...

"Never leave me," Ril whispered in his ear, his breath tickling hair that had been thinning but would eventually regain its thickness and colour. "You and Lizzy both. I belong to you."

Just as Leon belonged to him, and yes, he did owe him a life. He’d owed him for a very long time now, and given the man he’d become, the only life he could ever consent to give in payment for his crimes was his own.

“It’ll be all right,” Ril told him. “I promise you it will.”

Ril carried him home then, wrapped in the blanket and going down back streets in the darkness so that no one in the Valley would see the Chancellor being carried in his battle sylph's arms and weeping most of the way like a child.

Betha was there when Ril carried him into the house, of course, and he proclaimed in the face of her dismay that Leon was sick and needed to rest. Both Betha and their youngest daughter Mia had been worried, frantically preparing the master bedroom for him while Ril carried him upstairs, but Lizzy had been there as well, so ageless and beautiful – as she always would be now - and she'd smiled knowingly at her father before he'd needed to close his eyes, too tired to speak.

Ril laid him down, brushing his lips over his forehead again when Betha wasn’t looking and straightening up, calm and collected once more, his aura happy. Of course he was. He didn't have to worry now about his oldest master leaving him. He nodded and left.

Betha bent over Leon, muttering to herself as she got his shirt and pants off and helped him into a pair of pajamas. "Foolish man," she told him. "If you felt yourself getting sick, why didn't you come home sooner? You're going to work yourself to death!"

She was still so beautiful, even with her face covered in wrinkles and her hair a pale grey. Leon reached up to cup her cheek and then pull her to him, wrapping her in a hug.

"What?" she gasped.

"Just let me hold you for a while," he whispered and after a moment she relented, lying down on the bed beside him and patiently letting him hold her for as long as he could.

E is for Eyeball

2012-01-18T12:31:00.002-05:00

Battle Sylphs were the perfect lovers.

Not that Moreena had anything to compare them by. She’d been a spinster for thirty years, until the Widow asked her if she’d be willing to be master to a battler. She’d leapt at the chance, even as she tried not to look too eager. She’d never had a lover before, not even a beau; not with her limp hair and unattractive features, with her too large nose and her too small chin and the freckles that covered her everywhere.

Battle sylphs didn’t care. They were kind, and protective, and supportive and oh, what lovers they made. What perfect, wondrous companions they were, never straying, never complaining, always there, always loving.

Moreena drifted into her cottage, feeling sensual and sexual in a way she never had in all the years she’d been alone. The years before Dillon came into her life. She could sense him in the bedroom and went in that direction, knowing he’d never deny her, that she didn’t have to even be shy around him, that he loved her for all her flaws. He was perfect.

Moreena opened the door to find herself facing a five foot wide, floating eyeball, its bloodshot, unblinking stare fixed on her while the nerve trailed underneath it, wagging like a tail. It gibbered something horrible and inhuman at her.

Moreena screamed, slammed the door, and ran.

Inside the room, Dillon stared at the door. He’d been quite happy with the new form. It took a lot of control to be something so unusual and solid that also floated in midair. He’d wanted to surprise Moreena.

She had no appreciation for talent, he thought with a sigh.

D is for Devotion

2012-01-17T08:47:00.002-05:00

(No, none of you have met these two yet, but this is also a spoiler for THE SHATTERED SYLPH, so if you haven’t read that, you might want to skip this one.)

Five-Eighty had been tending the fields when the Queen rose.

He and a half dozen other battle sylphs had been pacing their slow way through the rows of crops the lesser sylphs tended. Locked into their tall, green, mouthless forms, they looked for weeds to cut, pests to kill, thieves to destroy. The smell of the growing plants was rich in his nose, their leaves damp with the moisture the water sylphs sprayed them with. The earth was soft and dark underneath his clawed feet, so different from the endless sands just beyond the edge of the field.

For decades, he’d tended these fields. Since he was drawn through the gate by the lie of a woman to be his queen, he’d guarded them, silent and sad. Just one more battle sylph in a kingdom that held over seven hundred of them.

He was as shocked as any of the rest of them when he felt the Queen ascend, the pattern of her flowing into him and filling the empty place where his first Queen used to be, the place where the men here had staked their own claim, crippling him with their rules and commands. She washed all of that away, giving him back the gift of himself in a rush of emotions.

Rise! A battler’s voice cried. The lead battler, he realized. The battler of the Queen. Rise and destroy them! All their rules are gone, all of them!

Five-Eighty stared towards the city. He could see the battlers rising, hear the screaming and sense the fear of the humans. The other battlers with him leaped into the air, changing shape to those of dark clouds as they swept forward to join the battle.

They were free. Free to inflict vengeance, to destroy their oppressors. Entire buildings were falling and the floating island over the city being harried by hundreds of his brothers towards the ocean.

He could have revenge? He didn’t care. He only wanted one thing.

Five-Eighty leaped into the air, shifting his form from that horrid, green thing to a black cloud filled with lightning. He raced for the city, darting around the crashing ruins and the blasts of destruction fired by outraged battlers tasting their freedom. Air and fire sylphs swirled around him, frightened and wailing. Thousands of sylphs were headed for the edge of the city and the queen, moving through the air or along the ground.

Five-Eighty went the other way. He raced for one of the vents into the underground complex where the feeders were kept and slipped inside.

Thousands upon thousands of humans were trapped down there, held in cages with their tongues cut out, bonded to sylphs so as to act as their food supply. Each sylph had five of them, but Five-Eighty didn’t go to the ones that belonged to him. He went deeper instead, into levels of the pens that had been specifically forbidden to him before now. He passed signs of battle as he passed, but he didn’t care. He passed still trapped men yanking on the bars of their cages and soundlessly screaming and he didn’t slow.

He went into levels of the pens that were filled entirely with women, feeders made for the elemental sylphs, not the battlers. They were cowered and broken, sick and lost. He stopped there and focused, listening, feeling, trying to find...

A familiar scent came to him, one he hadn’t smelled in thirty years. Not since the day that the guards realized that a battler was in love with a concubine in the harem and took her away to be a feeder, forbidding him to ever see her again. For thirty years, she had never left his thoughts, and as his brothers wrecked their terrible revenge above, Five-Eighty raced towards her.

She huddled in her cage, her once glorious hair grey and tangled, her skin sagging and pale. Her face was covered with wrinkles and her eyes were filled with madness. Five-Eighty shifted to a human form and wrenched the door off the hinges, tossing it away as he took her unresisting into his arms. She didn’t react as he stroked her hair and kissed her cheek.

“Fareeda,” he whispered. “It’s me, it’s Five-Eighty. Do you remember, you used to call me Haru? I’m here, sweetheart.”

She didn’t react, but that was alright. “I’m here. I’ve come to take you home. I never forgot you.” He cradled her to him and felt her start to shiver, one hand rising to cling to him with feeble, desperate strength.

“I’m sorry it took so long, but I’m here. I’m finally here.”

C is for Cold

2012-01-16T18:57:00.000-05:00

(By the way, I really appreciate the comments on these snippets. Thanks)

It had been snowing all day, just as it had been snowing all week, and the cold was bitter.

Airi didn’t feel that. Cold didn’t mean anything to her, but the winds came from the northern glaciers and when they reached the bluff the community built its home inside, they swirled the snow in wild patterns she wouldn’t see again once they moved south in the spring.

Airi danced in the erratic winds, along with a half dozen other air sylphs, diving and darting over and around each other, and it was wonderful. Claw floated by, dark and ominous in his natural form while he guarded the bluff, and they swept around him in play. He flinched and darted away as the air sylphs laughed.

It was wonderful, so utterly glorious. She lost track of time until she finally noticed someone trudging his way through the thick snow, masked in a heavy fur cloak as he made his way to the edge of the bluff.

Airi left the other sylphs and darted down to him.What are you doing out here? she asked.

Devon peered up at her from out of the cowl of his cloak, squinting against the snow and with white already frosting his hair and beard.

“I c-came to k-keep you company,” he stammered.

Airi laughed in absolute delight and danced around her master.

B is for Blocks

2012-01-15T10:58:00.000-05:00

“No!”

Betha felt like tugging her hair in frustration. “Lizzy, you’re ten years old! You’re too old to be playing with blocks. You should give them to your little sisters.”

“No!” Lizzy shouted again, tears of rage in her eyes, and she shook her head vehemently. Betha found herself wishing her husband were here. Lizzy never misbehaved when Leon was around. A moment later, she steeled herself. She could deal with this without him.

“I never raised you to be so selfish, Lizzy Petrule.”

Lizzy shook her head again, her pigtails flying. “No! They can have all my dolls and the wooden rocking horse and even my paints, but not the blocks!”

Betha was startled. “You’d give all your other toys away? Just to keep some baby blocks? Why?”

Lizzy wiped her eyes. “They’re important to me,” was all she would say.

Betha would never understand this child. “Fine,” she snapped, wishing it didn’t feel as if she were giving in. “Keep the blocks, but you will share all your other toys, understand?”

“Yes, mama!” Lizzy cheered, all her tears gone as she hugged her mother. Betha sighed and hugged her back.

A door opened. “I’m home,” Leon called.

“Ril!” Lizzy shouted, tearing away from Betha and pounding down the hall to the front door. A few moments later she came back, having essentially ignored her father in favour of taking his red feathered hawk on her arm. Ril sat there with his sharp claws not even dimpling her skin and his vicious eyes locked on her face. She chattered to the battler non-stop as she headed for the stairs.

Leon came around the corner behind her and smiled as he saw his wife, his eyes flickering towards the girl while she headed upstairs. “It’s so nice to have a daughter’s love,” he laughed.

“Well, you certainly have mine,” she said and went to him.

Upstairs, Lizzy went to the nursery and to the corner that she’d sectioned off for her own with a hanging blanket and dire threats to her little sisters. She let Ril perch on top of an old, battered chair and dug out the blocks her mother had wanted her to give up. They were old and worn, the paint chipped and faded.

“Mama wanted me to give these away,” she said as she spread them out. “To my sisters. I talked her out of it, but I had to give up all my other toys.” She looked at him. “It was worth it. Do you think it’s worth it?”

The bird hopped down to the ground, his body shifting from side to side as he walked over to the blocks and used his curved beak to pull certain blocks to him and lay them in order.

ALWAYS, he spelled.

A is for Allowed

2012-01-14T12:37:00.000-05:00

(Here's hoping the typo faerie doesn't strike....)

Blue still couldn’t believe it was really true.

He was here, in this strange, harmless world, bound to a woman who felt like a Queen to him, and despite how there was a hive, he wasn’t nameless in it.

“We’re allowed to do whatever we want?” he asked, staring around at everything and still amazed by all of it.

“Yup,” Heyou said, grinning. “Anything.”

Blue turned his head to look at him. He felt light-headed, drunk, stunned. “We can belong to females of our own?”

“Absolutely. That’s one of the best parts.”

“And change shape to whatever we like?”

“Sure. I recommend ‘handsome man’. That one’s always popular. It’s way better than ‘giant eyeball’ or ‘multi-armed snake creature. Just ask Dillon.”

“And we don’t have to worry that the Queen will reject us?”

Heyou shook his head. “Solie would never do that.” He raised a finger. “Mind you, she won’t sleep with you. You have your own master now for that.”

“So we protect this valley now?”

“Yep.” Heyou was starting to look bored. “We really are free here, you know. We really are.”

“So I can kill any man I want?”

“Uh, no.” He frowned. “We’re not allowed to do that.” The grin returned. “But the rest of it makes up for it!”

Updates

2012-01-13T22:32:00.000-05:00

I've been working on a new book. THE OMEGA, which is the fourth and final book in my Cuckoo series (nope, not sold yet). I just passed 10,500 words on it.

I've also been working on the painting. I'm actually starting to be really happy with the results. There are certain expectations with the writing, but not with the art.

I was wandering the web and saw a writing challenger. Basically go through the alphabet, have each letter stand for a word and write a very short bit on that word.

Would anyone be interested if I did something like that for the Sylph universe and posted it on my blog?

Here, have a painting.

Internet wanderings

2011-12-31T14:07:00.000-05:00

Wow....suddenly I feel like I have no artistic talent whatsoever.... O.O

http://www.creaturesfromel.ca/index.html

I've tried sculpture work. I really have. I suck at it. I've never seen anything like this artist's work before. It just blows me away.

I love vacations

2011-12-31T13:54:00.000-05:00

One of the things I love about the military is they give you a lot of days for taking off on vacation. Except for when they call you in twice during your break, but that's another story.

I'm getting so much writing and painting done. I feel like I'm in a creative glut right now that I never want to end. I've finished editing FINDING THE CHOSEN. I've finished writing the first draft of THE REVENANT. I've started writing THE OMEGA (sequel to THE REVENANT). I've written about four novellas and short stories and am on the second draft of one that I'm selling to a friend who's starting up his own online publishing house. I've painted a lot. I've knitted a lot. I'm more than 2/3rds of the way through Asssassin's Creed II and nearly to season three of watching Xena on Netflix.

I don't want to go back to work. :D

Happy Holidays

2011-12-25T11:06:00.000-05:00

Happy holidays to all my readers! Whatever beliefs you hold, I hope you have a very good day.

In writing news, I've finally finished putting in the red pen edit changes for FINDING THE CHOSEN. That took the book from 93,000 words to 101,000 words. Now I read it over one more time and send it off to my betas.

For those who've forgotten, FINDING THE CHOSEN is the prelude for a massively long book I wrote a number of years ago titled HUNTING THE RAPTURE. My agent sent Hunting off to Del Rey to look at and they liked it, but they wanted me to A: Take this 200,00+ word book and make it shorter, and B: Take this flashback scene midway through the book, make it longer, and stick it at the start. Instead, I suggested that I take Hunting and split it into two novels and take the flashback scene and expand it into a new book. So by the end of it, I'll have FINDING THE CHOSEN, HUNTING THE RAPTURE, and BREAKING THE LIMITS. Hopefully my Christmas present will end up being Del Rey buying all three.

It was actually interesting going back to a world I created about ten or more years ago. If I didn't think making this change wouldn't improve the book, I wouldn't have done it, but as it is, I enjoyed the process a lot more than I originally thought I would.

BTW, have a painting. Merry whatever. :)

Books, books, and more books

2011-12-19T11:44:00.000-05:00

I was wandering the web and found this list. Apparently the BBC feels that most people will only have read six of the hundred books listed here.

Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.

Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So I've read thirty-three of them. Not too bad. I found myself wondering why some books made it and some didn't. What about Bambi? Or Jonathan Livingston Seagull? Or King of the Wind? I also kind of wonder if they don't know that The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is part of the Narnia Chronicles.

I notice I never did finish an Alexandre Dumas book...man, that guy's writing is dry...

I also see a list of books here I really need to give a looksie at. I so have the urge to read Oliver now.

Unclogging the mental log jam

2011-12-11T10:16:00.000-05:00

Right now, I'm writing a series I call The Cuckoo series. I'm on book three of four. No, I haven't sold it yet. I'm working on that.

Writing this series has been like pulling teeth. I think it's very good, but the plot has been fighting me like a rabid weasel. I had to put book one aside for six months until I figured out what to do with one of the plot points (the answer was toss it out and do something different).

Book two went quite easily, but book three turned into another slog at about the 85,000 word point. The other two are about 100,000, which left me with 15,000 words to decide what to do with this one jackass of a character that I needed to resolve before book four starts. I've been stuck at this point for about a month now and I've been dreading the thought that I was going to end up with another six months or more of writer's block on it. Or worse, that the whole thing would die on me.

This last week, I've been in Toronto for professional development with my coworkers. It was a good time. One of the seminars we attended, however, turned out to be a lot more relevant than I'd thought it would be. It was a seminar on creative thinking offered by the Fred Pryor Institute and taught by a woman named Glynis Devine, who was an awesome instructor. She taught us different ways of looking at a problem and finding a solution.

One of the techniques she taught us was to take a problem you're stuck on a solution for, like say a stalled plot line, and write down whatever you do know about it. The information you have, that is. Then write down what resolution you want. You do this right before your nightly ablutions, and then you go to bed. You literally sleep on it.

I forgot to do this the first night, but I did try it on the second. I know how I need the book to end, after all. I just hadn't figured out how to get there. That's normal for how I write. I know the beginning, I know the end, and I sort of discover the middle when I write.

At any rate, my phone died during the night, and I found out I'd slept in when my boss knocked on my hotel room door. This was our checkout day, so I had to frantically run around packing and trying to wake up and didn't think at all about my little experiment. Not until I was sitting in the car on the way back, reading a book on my kindle, and bemoaning the lack of coffee.

The plot for the book just dropped into my lap. Suddenly, I thought of something I hadn't considered before and the entire remainder of the book just came together. It was fantastic. I hauled out my Mac Air and typed on it until the battery died (forgot to charge it the night before too) and then I wrote in a notebook. Since I've been home, I've written 4000 words and it's flowing out of me as easily as anything else I've ever written, and it feels good.

My long, rambling point is, I highly recommend this as a technique to clear out a mental log jam. I know I'm certainly going to use it in future. Thank you, Glynis.

Ongoing as ever

2011-12-03T16:17:00.001-05:00

I've been working on typing in the red pen edit changes on one of my novels. This unfortunately gives me an absolute splitting headache, so the process takes forever. I have over 150 pages to go and my brain hurts.

So, I've been doing other writing and art. I've written several short stories in the last week or so (writing with a fountain pen on moleskine paper is to die for) and created some digital paintings. I'm using CS5 for it and I think I've found my painting medium.

I've tossed some of my pieces up onto My Art page, but here's my latest. I quite like it.

More Art

2011-11-25T23:10:00.000-05:00

I still have 224 pages or so of edit changes to type in my book. So here, have some art I did instead! *guilty look*

Another Blog Post giveaway

2011-11-25T13:34:00.002-05:00

Here's another blog giving away a copy of my book. http://annavivian.blogspot.com/2011/11/series-spotlight-giveaway-slyph.html
They draw the winner on the 25th if anyone wants to get in on the draw.

Blog Post and Giveaway.

2011-11-20T13:36:00.001-05:00

I'm being featured on another blog today. http://melissawatercolor.blogspot.com/2011/11/author-guest-post-lj-mcdonald-and.html They're giving away a copy of QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS to one lucky reader.

Thanks to Megan for setting this up for me.

The Writing Process

2011-11-06T19:34:00.000-05:00

I have a good friend who's also a writer. She's not published yet, but I think she has the talent to be. However, she hasn't finished a lot that she's started, because, as she explains it, she gets so hung up in going back to perfect what she's already written that she never gets to the ending.

I solve that problem by writing crap. I'm serious. Mostly. Only my husband sees the first draft of a novel when I'm working on it. Even my beta readers get spared that, because my first drafts are total drek. You see, the first draft is where I get the ideas out, play with the concepts, dredge my brain for the story and hork it up onto the computer screen. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? ;p

It's in the second draft where I start to get something worth inflicting on anyone other than the aforementioned husband (mine in sickness, health, and whacked out writing). I take my ruddy awful first draft, double-space it, and print it out so I can put it in a binder. Then I read it and fix stuff (usually after waiting a few weeks to give my brain a rest).

I call this my red pen edit, since I used to use a red pen for it. Now I have a gorgeous fountain pen that anyone who knows me in person knows I love way too much. I use turquoise blue ink with it that's wonderfully pretty and shows up really well against the black text of the print out.

I go through the entire book this way. I fix continuity errors, expand on scenes, repair horrid grammar, and rein in run on sentences that lasted for a page or more. This is where I make the book good. Well, I think I make it good.

Doing the edit on a print out is good for many reasons. For one, it lets me use THE PEN, but it also makes me tap into a different part of the brain than I use when I'm typing into a computer. There's a different feel to it, so it makes it easier for me to enrich the writing. Scenes that I got hung up on with the computer usually sort themselves out at this stage. It's also way easier on the eyes. I don't really have to look at what I'm typing. If I were to read a 300 page book on a computer screen, I'd start going blind.

Just because I'm me and feeling all extroverted tonight, here is a photo of my latest red pen edit, just to show how much editing I do. This isn't even one of the worst pages. On the left is the book page, obviously written all over. On the right is a piece of regular lined paper. When I want to add in something that I can't fit between two lines of text, I make a numbered reference on where it goes and write it on the lined paper. It works for me.

I guess the point I'm really trying to make here, to my friend and to anyone else who wants to write, is that you don't have to sit down and produce perfection with every word you type. Most of us can't do that. I know I can't. Just get the ideas out. You can always make them perfect later.

Some more art

2011-11-02T21:30:00.000-04:00

I've put a new picture on my Art page. This is what I play with when I'm not writing, or knitting, or killing people on my PS3.

This was painted on my Mac using a Cintiq tablet and Photoshop PS5.

Hey

2011-10-27T14:53:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone. Long time no type. I do have some things to actually blog about for once.

Thanks to this site, I've made a new friend named Megan, who loves my books and is now helping me promote them. This is awesome since I ~~hate with an overriding passion~~ am not very good at promoting myself. To that end, she's set up an actual author site for me on Facebook as well as a Twitter site. Anything I type into the Facebook wall will apparently go straight to Twitter. Once we figure out how, I'll have it linked here and maybe even figure out how to set it up so my blog posts appear on the Facebook page.

In other words, I've cracked the 90,000 word mark on a novel I'm writing as a prelude to another few books I have that I'm hoping to sell to Del Rey. It's called FINDING THE CHOSEN and I really hope it gets picked up.

I've also got someone - maybe - looking at picking up books 4 and 5 of the Sylph series.

Ebook Bundle opportunity

2011-10-14T19:50:00.001-04:00

Hey, for anyone who's interested, Dorchester has all three Sylph books available as E-book downloads on Sony from 14 October until 30 December. You can get all three for $11.97. Tell your ebook loving friends.

Sony

Wikispaces

2011-10-08T10:35:00.000-04:00

One of the things I find hard to do is remember all the little details of my characters. Stuff like how long their hair is, what weapon they like, how old they are. I can remember all the sordid details of their pasts, but those sort of trivia facts? Leon changed his age three times during the first draft of one of my novels.

I've tried all sorts of things to keep track. Cue cards, notebooks, spreadsheets. They don't work so well for me. However, I've now found something that actually seems to work. Wikispaces. It's, well, a wiki. You just go to www.wikispaces.com, sign up for an account, and put stuff in it. The joy of it is, you can click on a word you've typed, such as 'battler' and make an instant link to a new page by that name. Click the link and it'll ask you to make the page if you haven't already. Just type a link to the page you left and make it the same way. Fast, easy, I can update it whenever. I can access it on the internet so I can get to it whatever the machine I'm using, and I can even save it locally. I'm having fun with it.

Since I decided I would pay for an account, my wikispaces is private. It's not something anyone else would want to read anyway, I'd think. And it's chocked full of spoilers galore. Best part of it is, since it's all integrated, if you type a new name for a character in and make the link and click on it, you'll know immediately if it's a name you've used before, since it'll bring up the page you made earlier. No more reusing names without realizing it! There's, um, two different Autumns in two different series. And Blue has shown up so many times that I've given up and started doing it deliberately, just to see if anyone calls me on it down the road.

I don't know if wikispaces will work for everyone, but I know I'm certainly happy with it and I'm pimping it to all my author friends.

In writing news, I'm working on a novel that Del Rey is looking at. No promises yet on them buying it, but I have my toes crossed. No word yet on selling books four and five of the Sylph series, but I am happy that people seem to really like book three. That makes me very happy, especially given how it's not the standard sort of romantic fantasy novel. Thanks, everyone.

The Battle Sylph is going to be in a commercial

2011-09-08T18:08:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the efforts of Hannah Wolfson, the best promoter in the world at Dorchester, THE BATTLE SYLPH is going to be showing up in a Vorizon commercial for the new IPad 2. Its in the commercial below, at about the .13 second mark. It's in the shot where they show the IBooks bookshelf, and it's the second book in the second row. I'm still in shock. Yay!

In other news, I've posted the prologue for QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS on the Sylphs books page. Just to give people a taste for the book.

Thoughts behind covers

2011-08-26T10:45:00.000-04:00

On one of my earlier posts (Queen of the Sylphs cover on 2 Jun 11), a reader named Pam made a comment that she loved the cover, but wished that Solie had red hair in it, since she is a redhead. Very good point, Pam.

It's my fault that she doesn't. When Dorchester asked me if I had any thoughts for the cover, I suggested they use blue. My reasoning was, there's been a predominant colour tone on each of the books so far. There was black for the first, showing the direness of the situation. There was red for the second, showing the passion of the characters, and the blue is in the third as a sign of the sorrow. It's also a nod to Claw, who has blue hair and is a predominant character in this book. At least, that's my logic in looking at it.

BTW, the men at the bottom are just dropped in there, but I can't not look at them and name them. Left to right (starting with the one who has a face) they're Claw, Mace, Ril, Heyou, and Dillon. At least, I think they are. The two shadowy ones in the back are probably Wat and Blue.

Update

2011-08-19T09:25:00.000-04:00

I'm really bad at updating this...gah...I must become better at it.

Updates...a lot's been happening. For those who are interested:

QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS is through the editing process. I've read over the galley proof, which is a pdf of the book as it appears in print, and it's all good to go. A professional proofreader is also reading it, but my job is done unless they come back and go "hey, you did something really stupid here." This has happened to me...

I will be doing a blog tour to promote QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS in September. So right now I'm writing blog entries, answering interview questions, etc. It's been a lot of fun and a lot of work. Here's the schedule:

Monday 09/26: Lurv a la Mode
Tuesday 09/27: Parajunkee’s View

Wednesday 09/28: The Book Pushers

http://www.mybookishways.com/

Friday 09/30: Once Upon a Twilight

Saturday 10/1: Waiting for Faeries

Sunday 10/2: Finale at the Dorchester Community Blog!

Thursday 10/13: Fresh Fiction

This is definitely keeping me busy. Plus I get to check out all these websites. They're worth giving a look.

Otherwise, I'm just writing, writing, writing while my agent works on finding buyers. Apparently the summer is a slow time for book contracts as everyone is on vacation, so it should pick up soon.

I have a release date for Queen

2011-06-11T08:09:00.000-04:00

Apparently, if I'm reading this notice I found correctly, QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS will be released by Dorchester in both Trade, E-book format, and Audio on 6 September 2011.

They're also rereleasing my first two books in Trade format. So yay, a solid date!

That gives me two months for all the editing.... *cry*

At least I know what I'm doing this summer.

Plugging Along or: My muse is weird

2011-06-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned before, THE HOMUNCULUS, book two of my Cuckoo series, took forever to write. I started it in March of 2010 and didn't finish the first draft until May of this year. I think it's a pretty good book (I haven't actually read it yet. I don't read my work as I'm initially writing it. Kills my creativity for some reason) but it was like pulling teeth to get it.

Two days after that one was finished, I started typing book three of the series, THE REVENANT, where inspiration proves yet again that she's a fickle , as it's day 13 after I started and I've written just over 17,000 words and am on Chapter Five. And this is after I discovered some sort of massive bug with the new version of the word processing software I was using meant it wasn't actually saving anything and I lost 5000 words. That was a bad day when I figured that one out.

The is the sort of inspiration that I want, obviously. I much prefer to spew out a book than to fight with it. I don't know why this book is coming out so easily while the last one was a reluctant mule about it (book one, THE CUCKOO, came out at a decent speed, taking me four months for the first draft). It must be something about how it was a middle of the series book. I don't know for sure. Most of the Sylph books took progressively longer to write. Book four, HUNTER OF THE SYLPHS (which is still looking for a home and may just have one soon), took what seemed forever and was another molasses book, beat only by, what a surprise, THE HOMUNCULUS.

At least it's done now. Until the rewrite, anyway.

Queen of the Sylphs cover

2011-06-02T21:54:00.000-04:00

Look what I have. Isn't it pretty? I think this is my favourite of all the Sylph covers. It's done by Anne Cain.

I Finished!

2011-05-27T21:58:00.000-04:00

The first draft of THE HOMUNCULUS is finished! Woot! I started that bad boy on 1 Feb 2010. Gah.... But it's done now!

Tomorrow I start on THE REVENANT. Yippee!

Edits will wait until all three are done so I can work on them as a whole. Makes continuity easier to manage.

Another Update

2011-05-23T11:35:00.000-04:00

I've passed 90,000 words in The Homunculus. That's 10,000 words since my last post on 6 May, which is 17 days, which is an average of 588 words a day.

Wow, that sucks....

This book has been like pulling teeth. I'm enjoying the way it's turning out, but hoo, man, it's been fighting me! The Battle Sylph took me a month to write. I have no idea why (but I wish that always happened). Each successive Sylph book took longer to finish, to the point where book 4 took 9 months to write (book 4 does take place before book 5, but I wrote book 5 first).

I actually started writing The Homunculus on 1 Feb 2010. It REALLY fought me then until I had to put it aside for about 6 months or so until I figured out how to rework the plot. Good thing I didn't have a contract for it (still don't) as that would have really made me nervous.

My all time record for writing a book is for one called Hunting the Rapture. It's up at about a dozen houses right now for sale. It's 511 typed pages, over 200,000 words, and took me four years to write. That one was written back when I wrote everything out longhand.... took years to get me to actually type stuff straight into a computer, so I don't think that record will be broken....I hope.

Another update

2011-05-06T23:19:00.000-04:00

I've hit 80,000 words in The Humunculus! Yay!

I've also got ideas for the next series I'm going to write *sigh* that may go as many as seven books in length.

For anyone who is paying attention, I've finished playing with my site design of the most part and www.ljmcdonald.ca is just a splash page leading here. Much kudos to Starkite Works for helping me do this. I couldn't have done it without her.

Update

2011-04-13T12:56:00.001-04:00

In case anyone's noticed, the site's undergoing a lot of changes. A friend's helping me turn it into something more easily updatable and customizable than my old site.

In writing news, I'm 70,000 words into the first draft of THE HOMUNCULUS. 20-30k left to go, then on to book three. I haven't sold the series yet.

Also, I stuck a new artwork in the new My Artwork page.

And now for something completely different....

2011-03-26T12:19:00.000-04:00

I know it's nothing to do with writing, but I'm happy with it. This is the first (hopefully successful) attempt at creating art on my new cintiq drawing tablet. I had to fiddle with the colour calibration when I took it off the tablet and put it on my main computer screen, so hopefully she doesn't look oddly coloured to anyone.

I should probably go write something now...

Why Bees?

2011-03-10T12:02:00.000-05:00

I found myself chatting with Autumn Dawn recently, a very nice author who's over at http://www.authorautumndawn.blogspot.com/ and who gave THE BATTLE SYLPH a sweet little plug. She'd just got herself a new beehive and the idea of hives and queens in the sylph universe appealed to her. She asked me why I used that idea.

It's kind of hard to say what I was thinking when I came up with it. I've said before somewhere that the sylphs were inspired by bees and tengu and all sorts of stuff. I tend to play with concepts in my writing, even if I'm the only one who knows it, and I do recall that I brought in the bee idea because I wanted to explore the idea of power. I've read a lot of books, both good and bad, which have characters with immense power, and immense power over other people. That's great. But usually those with the greatest power end up with those they have power over going "Hey! Cut it out!" Look at all the books where the the protagonists are out to stop the evil king/god/demon/priest/whatever who's crushing their freedom. I can't think off the top of my head of any books where the characters are under that sort of absolute power and are perfectly fine with it. It would be a rare sylph indeed who didn't want to have a master/queen (*shifty look towards book six*) Anyway, bees are happy with the whole hive mentality, and I kind of liked that for the sylphs. It certainly wouldn't work in any universe - humans are notoriously bad at bee-like behaviour - but it worked in this one.

My website's fixed

2011-03-08T14:58:00.001-05:00

Yay, I figured it out, so it's not longer saying that Midwinter still is coming out at Christmas or that Queen is releasing in March. Sorry for everyone who was misled by that. I'm pondering doing an overhaul of the site's entire look, but I primarily want to use this blog for updating and make the other site as simple as possible.

I've also added a little widget thing at the bottom of each entry so people can click to give their thoughts on whatever I put out there. I thought it was kind of cute, though I may end up regretting adding the WTF? option....

I'm nominated!

2011-03-07T13:18:00.000-05:00

I got an email yesterday giving me some good news.

A Midwinter Fantasy has been nominated by TRR reviewers for Best in Anthology (Romance) for 2010 at The Romance Reviews (“TRR”), and

The Battle Sylph has been nominated by TRR reviewers for Best in Fantasy Romance for 2010 at The Romance Reviews (“TRR”).

Thanks for everyone who voted for me! I didn't expect to do even this well.

Where I am

2011-03-03T10:25:00.000-05:00

Barbaranramos commented on one of my posts about being happy to hear I'm writing book six of the Sylph series. I should give an update on all of that.

Books four and five of the Sylph series are written and edited. Dorchester gave me a contract to buy them back in September, but I turned it down. Much as I love my editor there, I'm not happy at their new publishing direction towards E-books only, followed by expensive trades. My agent is looking for a different house to publish them instead, who'll release them in paperback as well as e-format. Dorchester still owns the rights to the first three books though, and it's hard to sell the second half of a series to a publishing house when they can't get control of the first half.

So, THE SYLPH HUNTER and WAR OF THE SYLPHS aren't coming out anytime soon that I know of. DOOR TO THE SYLPHS is on hold for a couple of reasons. One is because it's coming out more as straight fantasy than romantic fantasy and another is because I'm not happy with it and have it in the mental simmer pot. The third reason is because I'm writing something else.

My agent, who is awesome, has two finished books of mine in her hands. HUNTING THE RAPTURE is straight fantasy and THE CLIFFS OF SHAKIRI is sci-fi young adult. Neither are romantic fantasy. I don't think of myself specifically as a romantic fantasy author, to be honest. But I do have a series that does have it as part of the storyline and is actually quite a bit steamier than the Sylph books, I think.

THE CUCKOO is written and has gone through a first edit and is in my agent's hands. I'm halfway through writing THE HOMUNCULUS and will follow it up with THE REVENANT. I'm hoping to sell all three at once and get the first drafts written so that I can edit them as a whole. Completely different universe from the Sylphs, different characters, different everything. Still fantasy, though.

So that's where I am, along with working a full time job that's getting a little crazy right now. I'm writing, but the release of the books themselves is completely out of my hands. I'm just trying to get through them and find a reliable beta reader. And fix the website. I know it's kinda outdated. I'm having problems logging in. Sorry.

Grand Opening!

2011-02-16T10:47:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone. The Romance Reviews website is having their Grand Opening throughout all of March and they have all sorts of prizes and other stuff to be won. I'm one of the featured authors on there and there'll be an ad for The Battle Sylph up. Apparently you can vote for your favourite books and authors. By voting, you guys can win prizes of gift certificates and books and the like. If you vote for me and I win, I get an advertising package to promote my books. Sort of a win/win scenario.

Just click on the picture above to go and visit their website.

http://www.theromancereviews.com

Just Touching Base

2011-01-09T08:57:00.000-05:00

Eek. Since I have people who seem to actually be reading this, I should probably put an update. I don't have much to say, mind you. I had a nice, quiet Christmas break that I enjoyed very much and am getting ready to go back to work tomorrow. That won't be so bad.

In the writing world, I'm plugging along as normal. I'm waiting for the first edits back of QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS, seeing what's happening with her two sequels, and just hit the 74k word mark for book six in the series, which has the very boring working title of DOOR TO THE SYLPHS. Not sure how long that one will be, but it's either going to be the longest book in the series or be split into book six and seven. Don't know at this point. I don't usually know where I'm going with a novel during the first draft anyway.

Once I finish that book, I'm going to write something in another universe. I have several to pick from, so it's just a matter of seeing which one sucks me in more when the time comes.

A Midwinter Fantasy in print form

2010-12-14T16:51:00.002-05:00

Well, I now know that the Trade edition of A MIDWINTER FANTASY will tentatively be available in bookstores in October 2011.

*sigh*

It is still available as an e-book, of course.

Playing with the website design

2010-12-11T16:00:00.000-05:00

I'm just playing around with the website design here, thanks to Blogger and its handy dandy do-it-for-you template features. I've added a few webpages here for the books. I do have my own site, but I find it really hard to update. It's a multi-step process that takes me forever to do, which is probably why it doesn't get updated much (or at all). Maybe I'll just set the URL to have a redirect to send it here to this blog and just have that as my site.

A Midwinter Fantasy available for the Kindle

2010-12-11T15:18:00.000-05:00

The anthology I'm in, A MIDWINTER FANTASY, is now available as an e-book for the kindle. You can get it on amazon.com, so yay for that at last.

I heard today that the hoped-for release date for QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS is September, 2011. That's all I know about that one at this point.

Review

2010-11-19T20:19:00.000-05:00

Today THE BATTLE SYLPH was listed by the Library Journal as one of the five best romance novels for all of 2010. Woohoo! I'm pretty happy about that.

The Library Journal

A Midwinter Fantasy release date

2010-11-17T12:06:00.002-05:00

I've been told the new release date for "A Midwinter Fantasy" in Ebook format is 23 Nov 10. So fingers crossed that this is the right date!

Rerelease

2010-10-25T14:52:00.000-04:00

More news. My books with Dorchester are going to cone out as ebooks first and then as trade. Still don't know when. That's old news. However, I have learned that the first two will be reissued as trade. No idea when or how much they'll cost.

I'm in the top five

2010-10-25T14:37:00.000-04:00

Today I received word from Library Journal that THE BATTLE SYLPH (which Library gave a starred review to in their February 15, 2010 issue) has been chosen a one of the FIVE best romances of the year; the full list will be published in their December 2010 issue.

Yay!! I'm really happy about it.

Oh wow

2010-10-13T10:31:00.000-04:00

I just found out today that my first three books are apparently going to be translated into German and sold in Germany. I so want an author's copy. :D

Hi

2010-09-22T15:06:00.000-04:00

I don't post to this page nearly often enough. I know I'm an author, but that doesn't mean I can ever think of what to say.

I do have some news, which I've been putting off saying much about because I honestly don't know all that much yet. I guess I can't really keep doing that though.

As some of you may know, Dorchester has changed their publishing format to one where they're going to release all their books as E-books and then, after about six months, release them as trade on a print-on-demand basis. This includes THE QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS and A MIDWINTER FANTASY. Right now, I don't know how this will affect the release dates for both books, but I do know I haven't receive the edit proofs for QUEEN yet (we fire them back and forth doing editing and scene rewrites about five times). So I don't know what will happen or when anything will actually appear for people to read.

I'm not going to get into how I feel about all of this because at the moment, I honestly don't know and likely no one would be interested anyway. I think I'm just in a holding pattern waiting to see, like a lot of Dorchester's other authors.

New Interview Up

2010-06-14T09:01:00.000-04:00

My guest interview at the Borders site is now up. You can read it here. http://bordersblog.com/trueromance/2010/06/14/guest-author-lj-mcdonald/ It's an interview about THE SHATTERED SYLPH, though they don't say that and they have pictures of both books up. Still, I like some of the answers I was able to give.

Queen of the Sylphs update

2010-06-08T14:21:00.001-04:00

For those are interested, the third book in the Sylph series has been moved so its release date is now in March 2011, instead of November 2010. I'm not sure why the change was made, but I'm sure it's all for the good in the long run.

Also, I'm going to be doing some guest blogging in July for http://www.tor.com/. Go give them a look. They've got some very nice content there. Hopefully I'll get one of my short stories up there as well.

Review-The Shattered Sylph

2010-05-20T17:52:00.000-04:00

I got a very nice review of THE SHATTERED SYLPH by Lynn Spencer on the All About Romance website. I have their permission to repost it here. Go check them out. They have a very nice site.

The Shattered Sylph

L.J. McDonald
April 2010, Fantasy Romance
Leisure Books, $7.99, 321 pages, Amazon ASIN 0843963239
Part of a series

Grade:	B+
Sensuality:	Warm

This review contains series spoilers.

I really enjoyed The Battle Sylph and as I read that book, there was one secondary character who rather haunted me. When I saw that The Shattered Sylph would be his book, I pounced on it. Though you'll need to read the first book in this series to understand what goes on in this one, both are well worth your time. In addition, if you haven't read The Battle Sylph, this review is full of spoilers for that book, so be warned!

Battle sylph Ril, our hero, is Tortured with a capital T after spending years bound unwillingly to his master Leon Petrule. Ultimately a decent man, Leon's ignorance and arrogance at the time of the binding blinded him to how this slavery ate at Ril. The two came to respect and even care for one another, though it took much for either master or sylph to admit it. However, Ril's great love has always been Leon's daughter Lizzy. Ril's love for Lizzy from the moment of her birth could easily be a creepy premise, but the author handles it well. During flashbacks to Lizzy's childhood in both books, Ril appears more protective and like an older brother to Lizzy than sexually attracted.

This book takes place six years after the preceding book. Lizzy is now an adult and Ril loves her dearly. However, the injuries he sustained years before in the action covered in The Battle Sylph weakened him severely and he believes himself unworthy of Lizzy. Even so, when Lizzy is kidnapped by slavers and taken to the distant land of Meridal, Ril joins her father on the quest to rescue her.

Lizzy's ordeals in Meridal are harrowing, and Ril himself goes through all manner of tortures there as well. It can be tough reading. Rather like the ancient Romans, the people of Meridal love their gladiatorial bouts and the battle sylphs enslaved by the Emperor provide sport for them. And to slake the battle sylphs' thirst for women, they have a harem of women available to them - a harem to which Lizzy is sold.

Ril's quest to find Lizzy and to rescue her from slavery makes for action-packed reading. There is also tender romance to be found amidst all the horrors. The novel has plenty of detail about Meridal and its society, but also has more of a romantic focus than the first. You get to see how Lizzy's love for Ril heals him and, while I would have liked to see more scenes between the two of them, the romance was strong enough to convince me of their happy ending.

At times, I almost felt like Ril and Lizzy had to face a few trials too many and some of the sylph humor was a little on the silly side for me. Still, I greatly enjoyed what I read and at times lost myself completely in this unique world the author has created. I enjoy fantasy and I enjoy romance (obviously), and this book marries the two well.

In addition to containing a page-turning fantasy story, both books in the series play with ideas involving gender and power in ways that intrigue me. The battle sylphs are as alpha a hero as anyone could wish. These guys can blast apart a room with a burst of energy and they're strong enough to provide near-complete protection for the women they cherish. However, in binding themselves to their heroines, the battle sylphs must willingly give these women a certain amount of power. The woman to whom a sylph is bound has the capacity to order the sylph to do things - and this is something that the female characters recognize and must consciously think about in terms of not abusing someone they love. The rules of this world set up a very interesting power balance between the genders and, while some of the world's rules may seem overly convenient, I did find myself thinking a lot about how relationships developed within this construct, how they could be twisted, and about how power was allocated.

If you enjoy fantasy romance and strong world-building, The Shattered Sylph should definitely go on your list. You'll need to read The Battle Sylph first, but since both are fantastic books, that's hardly a sacrifice.

-- Lynn Spencer

Upcoming stuff

2010-05-06T17:22:00.000-04:00

On 14 June, I'll have a blog on the Borders site. They were nice enough to ask me a bunch of questions that I've tried to answer. I'll be answering questions in the blog comments that day as well, so hopefully people are interested enough to go and visit their site.

In other news, I'm now doing the first revision of my upcoming novella "The Worth of a Sylph". It'll be featured in the upcoming anthology A MIDWINTER FANTASY, coming out for Christmas. This is where my editor has had his first comments/revision and I get to answer back with my changes, based on things he's suggested. Chris is really good at suggesting things that strengthen a story, so I'm having fun tweaking. Still has a few more back and forths to go though.

I have a new blog

2010-05-02T12:13:00.000-04:00

I've been having trouble lately with my blog. I don't write anything in it all that much, but I do want to be able to, and the one on my website wasn't working out. For one, no one could comment. For two, no one could subscribe and I haven't been able to get a mailing list that works either.

Theoretically, I should be able to post to this blog, which will hopefully tie in with my actually website, and people can comment and subscribe to it. Whenever I have something new coming out, such as a book, I will announce it here.

I'll see how this works. I've imported some, but not all of my original posts. I'll copy over what I think are the more interesting ones later, once I get this all figured out.