Talanic

Okay. I figured some things out. I still think I need to rename her, as I keep slipping into patterns. In my previous book, almost every male wound up with a name starting with J until I caught myself and made a conscious effort to avoid it. In this book, I have Sam, Sherry and Sophie... My wife is putting me to shame. She's been managing over a thousand words a day in her novel. Won't let me look at it until she's done a round of editing.

I'll be honest. I'm not 100% sure where it may lead now. Sometimes the plan is boiling in my subconscious and I'm surprised when it comes forth. Sophie does not, in my current design, have any mystical or otherworldly aspects. Instead, she's one of Sam's tethers to the mortal realm; someone she's reluctant to leave behind to heed the call to adventure. She's also likely to play a role in a longer series, being the friend who will be around when those adventures bring Sam home from time to time, who helps her reconnect with the world she's missing. Also, there should be a second half of the chapter up tomorrow, which will link what's happened here into the other events of the novel.

Hey. Life sidetracked me from writing for a while but I'm working on Myth Taken again. I'm trying to add more to Sam's normal life - the lack of which feels like one of the story's major weaknesses. This extension occurs on Sunday night after Sam has returned home, but before Hewn's arrival at night. I particularly need critique for this chapter. The game in question is fictional and I'm uncertain if it's interesting enough (and comprehensible enough) to merit inclusion. I think it is appropriate in some senses - I want it to be clear that gaming is something that Sam has a passion for - but at the same time, it's not especially important to the plot so far.

Good evening, fellow historian/storyteller! I'll see what I can do (although I'm a little tired and might be slightly incoherent). I limit my focus to things that I can directly relate to my characters in a relevant manner. This is a stylistic choice; my writing in general tends to be kind of spartan, with little description. I look around, I craft my characters with enough to handle a ten minute summary of their lives, and I only dig deeper if I need to because things came up. For example. In my latest story, characters of myth turn out to be real people, some still alive in the modern day. One of them is Scheherazade. I looked for sources on her actual existence (turns out her appearance in Arabian Nights is a reference to a possibly-entirely-mythical Persian queen from about 400 BCE) and backed up. Instead of studying her directly, I took some broad strokes from the culture and the events of the time (if she existed, she would have been a Zoroastrian, and she would have lost her kingdom to Alexander the Great, for example) and worked that into her backstory. But that's character research, and I think you're more interested in setting research. As far as the second question goes, I think that actually writing the tale has to take precedence. I think that a good way to do it is to read a number of sources to the point that you've got a good grasp of what you're talking about, then only stop to research more if you run into a gap in your knowledge. The problem is that what you and I consider a good grasp is going to have a gap - remember, in a fictional tale, you're peddling an illusion, not crafting a bridge. Sometimes you need to stop for sanity's sake. I'm reminded of an article I read about a science fiction author who was lauded for coming up with a pidgin language that his characters referred to as 'Lingo' - sadly, I'm not aware of the actual work or the author's name. The author's response was that he'd made no more than a hundred or so words for the story; enough to give the impression that he'd made a full, real language. It worked, the readers loved it, and he didn't go insane trying to create rules of grammar for humans to follow ten thousand years in the future. And for your third question, I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to ask - I cheat by bringing the characters out of their time period and into either the modern era or realms of my own making.

Sorry it took so long to get back on my feet. Nothing big happened or anything, I've just been busy and my writing fell by the wayside. I was looking forward to the yearly ABNA contest, which wound up cancelled this year in favor of the new Kindle Scout program. Long story short, I need to edit this story and acquire a book cover. If I do so, I can submit to Kindle Scout. It could be a good thing, and competition is light right now (only twelve other fantasy/sci fi entries), so I'd like to try it. Obviously, time is of the essence, so my dawdling is coming back to bite me. I am considering starting a new thread for the posting / discussion of edits, but it's probably not necessary. Here's the first big section, largely rewritten, taken from the top:

Actually, I need to hurl myself back into that, and I'd been considering a post about it. Certain circumstances have come up - I need to acquire a cover and do the editing in order to submit for the Kindle Scout program before it gets too popular. Right now I'd only be competing with about a dozen other books, as opposed to thousands of others...

Just for fun. This is one of my stories from a couple years ago that I felt like revisiting today. It was for an anthology that - sadly - didn't really get off the ground. ***** They say that one in three people got hit by the Wave. I disagree on two counts. First, I think that the percentage was higher than that. Second, I prefer to think of us – the ones who changed – as surfing on the Wave, while everyone else constitutes the people who got hit by it. Although, I do have a job that exposes me to Wavers on a regular basis. My estimates could be skewed – I know what you're thinking. No, really. I know what you're thinking. That's what I do. My name's Ally, and I'm a telepath. Okay, that's not my real name. I'm not using any real names here. Not of my job, or my boss, or anything. It would invite trouble. I mean, sure, you could try to get a SN to track down where my story hit the web, but odds are very good that he has a little stubling saying “Hello World!” in our daycare's computers. You heard me right. I work for a daycare. I'll call it “Little Monsters,” because we specifically cater to Wavers. Sentient networks, werewolves, robots, tentacle beasts, dragons, hecatoncheres, kappa, harpies, cyclopi, orcs, and plain old humans – if we can get it him/her/it in the door, we'll take care of him/her/it. It's what we do. I'm the receptionist. At least, that's my official duty. Part of it. See, as far as telepaths go, I'm a pretty decent one – at least an 8, if you use the Hauptmann scale, but only a 3 on the Stanley Precog. I may be sitting at the front desk (well, I'm not right now – I need peace and quiet if I'm going to concentrate enough to write) but I'm also monitoring everyone within a quarter mile radius. There've been a few threats against us in the past, and more than once, people have come up trying to make trouble. We've even been attacked a couple times. One guy came up with a bunch of silver knives...but I'm getting ahead of myself. I often do when thinking about threats to the kids – that's usually how my precog manifests. We have a lot of precautions in place, both to protect the kids from the outside and from each other. There's wolfsbane in the medical kits, holy water, neosporin...anything useful for healing or shaking off an inherent curse. There's antivenom for every type of kid we have, and an enchanted mirror for when Janice has to take off her veil. Thankfully, that doesn't happen often. Anyway. Austin's the boss. The whole thing was his idea. I think it was a way for him to tell Janice that he still loved her, even after the Wave. See, she's surfing it now, but him...well, he's why I think the estimate is off. She became what people often call a medusa. The term's wrong. Medusa's a specific example of a creature called a gorgon. Just try telling people that and it's as if you tried glue-on ear tips and are calling yourself Galadriel. Nobody cares, but I digress. They were engaged when the Wave hit, and suddenly she can turn people to stone with a look. It's worse than it sounds, though; the snakes that make up her hair are venomous, and she can't control them. Or not well enough yet. And there's other nasty surprises in a gorgon's body. They're married now, even though he has scars – hidden by the hairline – where those snakes bit him. He's devoted to her, but can barely touch her safely. As I said, I think that's why he devotes himself to the kids. Nearly every child here is a second-gen Waver, and he adores them. I can assure you, it's genuine affection. But it goes beyond that. He went out of his way to hire Wavers, too. After I came out of the braincase, I couldn't land a job for rust. More, laws got passed that more or less outlawed any ways that I might profit off of my powers. The cops didn't need another lie detector, the Skeptic's Association had already awarded the million dollars, and I couldn't fish for stock tips or other 'buried treasures'. Austin kept me from starving. And he hired Nicky. Nicky's our first line of defense for getting the kids to play nice with each other, and our last line of defense for outside threats. His Waveform has just enough innate psi that I can broadcast to him if there's a problem; we make a great team, even if he's only able to work the later hours. He's seventeen; this is his first job, and the wave hit when he was five. He's a great kid, or semblance of one. But who else in the world would hire a vampire that looks like he's in kindergarten? There's a few others, but Nicky, Austin, Janice and I are the ones who're probably going to stay for the rest of our lives. If we can. I might not be able to... It can be hard work. And I'm not referring to the time that Justin, Aaron, Timmy, Larry, Pete, Alphonse and Ricky managed to climb inside the walls. Coaxing a four-year-old hydra out of an air duct may have been the most awkward three hours of my life. No, the hard times are when people are getting hurt. Like the guy with the knives. He came in and he was wearing something that blocked me from reading him. It was a red flag. Walking into a daycare center wearing a mind shield is like waiting in line at a bank while wearing a trenchcoat and a ski mask. I alerted Nicky – but it was daytime, and he couldn't come to the lobby. The guy had pulled a knife when Austin burst in and ploughed straight into him. Austin's mind – you won't understand unless you're a telepath and even then you probably won't unless you encounter someone like him – his mind was golden. Like he was seeing everything perfectly clearly and knew what to do. The guy was down before anything happened; it was incredible. I've only seen Austin go golden like that one other time. There was a little troll kid here, named Sven. It's a daycare center; you watch for certain signs on the kids. Bruises, bloody noses, and ways they act – and think – around adults. Well, Sven had none of the physical signs but all of the behavioral ones. I could read him well enough to figure it out. Trolls heal fast. Really, really fast. Fast enough that we'd never find physical signs of abuse, so long as his bones didn't get broken and heal wrong. I took Austin into the business office and told him what I'd learned. He went gold again, and didn't stop all the rest of the day. I knew where he was going that night and I was scared for him, but I knew I couldn't stop him. I don't know exactly how Austin got Pete's father to confess to the police. I've tried not to read too much off of Austin about what he did; suffice to say that regeneration can be a double-edged sword, and dislocated limbs leave no marks on a full-grown troll. What I did look into, though, was how Austin managed to do it. He's not a Waver. He's just a human (or so he – and everyone else – thinks) and he wasn't in the military. Never studied martial arts or street fighting. He's in great physical shape but I've confirmed that he doesn't actually set aside time for exercise. I thought he might be a superhero Waver for a while, but I think I finally figured it out. The final clue was that the table in the business office is round. Now, I've never been a student of great literature or anything, but once I had the idea, I studied up on the concept. He's in a tragic romance, guards the innocent with the strength of a pure heart and force of arms, and knows a monster when he sees one. He's a Waver all right; his Waveform is a Hero. Not a superhero, a Hero. Possibly the archetype itself. There's certified mad scientists walking around, wizards and the like, why wouldn't there be Heroes? Specifically, I'm afraid that he's like Lancelot. And if he is, then would that make Janice his Guinevere or would it be someone else? Could it be me? Because sure as hell, I love him. And if I stay around, he might love me. And even though I think he's a Hero, I know he's not perfect; if I, knowing what I think I know, would give into temptation, he might too – and betraying Janice would destroy him. The only thing that keeps me from leaving to prevent that is that I don't know that I'm his Guinevere. The stories might just be stories; he might just be a really good man. I might be thinking too much, trying to make him a Waver when he isn't. Or someone else might be his Guinevere. I'm keeping my mind open to spot her. If I do, the moment I know who she is, Nicky and I will be visiting her with a baseball bat.

Official end, as of 12/16. Sorry it took so long. I think it's a good leave-off point for the story between books. My next big goal is to finish editing. I had a second post of that mostly ready a few days ago, but the browser went down and I lost my comments. Will try again.

Sorry it took me so long to come back - I really enjoy this, but there's been some things going on. I'll put that at the end. Also, for clarity of reading, would it be better to have my notes immediately after a sentence, or kept until after paragraph or section ends? Right now I'm mixing and matching. Also, I'll give a clear indication when I'm editing things. If I ask a question in those notes, it's half to myself, but if you come up with a good answer, I'd love to hear it. Edits: Section 1, Part 1: Stuck in Story So, what's been going on? Five months ago, my dentist (well, the hygienist) diagnosed me with periodontal disease and recommended a $2,000 (plus more for painkillers and antibiotics) planing and scaling procedure. That's a bill I can't pay; they offered me financing but my car had just failed, necessitating the purchase of another; i was carrying as much debt as was safe, so I put it off, living in dread of losing my teeth. A month ago, I had a checkup, where the hygienist reported that the disease was progressing and I was going to be in bigger trouble if I let it sit. She scheduled the procedure for February; my tax return would get eaten by it, but I'd at least be able to do it. She also performed a polish and fluoride rinse to stave things off. Two weeks ago, I did some more research on everything. Polishes and fluoride rinses have nothing to do with periodontal disease, and the average cost of planing and scaling is $250. That's per quadrant of the mouth, so it could reach $1,000 if my entire mouth was rotten, but honestly I was also suspicious by that point, as I had no symptoms - no bleeding from my gums during flossing (except by one tooth that I'd had a procedure on in February), no looseness, no discharge, no swelling - other than the ones that the hygienist had identified, which were conveniently ones that I didn't have the tools to check myself. Yesterday, I met with a specialist for an official second opinion. I do not have periodontal disease. I have a couple minor spots of gingivitis and he'd like to see me in six months, but I am in no danger of having my teeth fall out. He even took x-rays and showed that no bone loss was occurring - all of this in direct contradiction to what my dentist told me. I'm somewhat upset, but no longer terrified, and have to consider what course of action to take regarding my former dentist.

Just an update. So far I've worked out one more chapter that I'm probably scrubbing entirely due to redundancy and pacing; its events will probably occur, just as a 'and last night, this happened' kind of thing. I've gone through a couple pages of editing, and now I have a question: would it be kosher for me to post my edited pages? I'd include thoughts on the changes I'm making and would be interested in what others might have to say.

12/4 - 420 words. Starting to get tired of resting on my laurels and looking to avoid losing the momentum I've built up.

Day 31: 1224 words.

FINAL DAY: Evening. 659 words. 50,040 words in the month of November. And in answer to your question... ^^^^ Not story, but something to read. Color added to distinguish it from my signature, as I think it might be missed.

Afternoon. 814 words. 49365 done. 635 left. Also amusing is that we're close to 1,000 views.

FINAL DAY. 780 words here. I hate to leave with a scene half done, but...

November 29th, evening. 948 words.

I figured I might have to explain... Momotaro deals with the residents of Pandemonium so much that he figured out how to fool them into no longer being a threat. They don't follow any rules of logic - so he went to them with a treaty he'd written, saying, "Hey, guys, I surrender. Be generous in your victory, okay?" From that treaty, which has enough absurdity to get the creatures of Pandemonium nodding and agreeing, Momotaro got them to appoint him as the final arbiter for any interaction between them and the mortal realm. If they screw up, they have to go to one of his friends and buy him a snack at any price, no matter how exorbitant. If he messes up, he has to do the same, but it's his friend setting the price - and he still gets to eat the snack. Additionally, he's the only one who gets to decide which of the monsters of Pandemonium get to eat people. Fun fact: No creature that actually does eat people has ever actually acquired a license. And yes, that means I probably have to make it clearer. Or place the interlude after the treaty winds up referenced in the normal flow of the story.

I pronounced it somewhere between NUCK-la-vee or NACK-la-ve. I think pronunciation is a little hazy with it; it's considered by some to be the origin of calling the devil 'Old Nick' as well. Scheherazade gets pronounced "Sha-hair-a-ZOD". I promised my wife that there would be no "Kneel before Scheherazade!" moment in the writing, though. Interlude: Pandemonium. 567 words. EDIT: Wait, wait. I mentioned the tribute but didn't specify it. Need to add to this. EDIT2: Updated.

November 28th, night. 828 words. I no longer fear that I won't finish NaNoWriMo; unless something bad happens I should have it down.

November 28th, afternoon. 1527 words.

November 27th, evening. 985 words. I may or may not have another update for tonight; will write what I can and probably roll it into tomorrow morning's total. Hope everyone who celebrated it had a happy Thanksgiving.

I have made no canon decision on Shakespeare; right now, assume that he just happened to have sources and made his own stories up from there. Once the editing phase begins, a lot of this is going to change, as my wife's degree included a focus on fairy tales and Arthurian legend. She'll be helping me make it a bit more authentic. November 27th, early afternoon: 510 words.

Guess what? INTERLUDE: 1452 words.

November 26th, morning. 1017 words. 40,954 words total written, quota for end-of-day is 43,333. I'm feeling a lot better today, and am not out of the running yet.

November 25th, early evening. 694 words. I'm ending the month in as much pain as I started it in. I'm (possibly) sick, exhausted, and have some kind of wrist trouble. I'm not entirely certain that I'll actually finish NaNoWriMo anymore. I feel like the quality of chapter is dropping and I'm scrambling to keep up.