A Little Bit of Magic

What feels like a long, long time ago, I wrote two little stories called "Lastborn" and "Facsimile". They were released on May 31, 2018 within the sci-fi anthologies Holding On By Our Fingertips and Infinite Dysmorphia by Kristell Ink/Grimbold Books. I won't give any specifics on the plots of the stories here since I don't want to be a spoiler, but I will say I'm proud of them and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Photograph by Aline de Nadai on Unsplash

I finally finished a project I began three years ago, and I'm in the last couple steps before publishing it. Rain Falls on Malora is a collection of eighteen short stories set within the world of The Malora Octet. Each story is told by a minor, non-narrator, or entirely new character from the series who hasn't been able to share their own version of events until now. The stories begin with the reveal of what happened to a certain missing character in Mayfly Requiem, cover the Echoes of Oblivion years and their aftermath, introduce you to a couple of Bethel's children who lived between the trilogies, and close with a narration by Sora Thula sixty years after Arrow of Entropy. I'm also including some original character illustrations, maps, family trees (this got way more complicated to draw out than I expected. Thanks, Bethel), a Volle-Common translation dictionary, and some recipes and poetry I created while working on the series.

I'm waiting on my print proof copy now so I can do final edits and fix any formatting errors. Hopefully I won't have too much trouble converting this file to an ebook. I'm excited to give this little treat to my long-time readers, some of whom inspired specific stories within this book. So, here's to the characters who finally get to tell the world their own versions of the truth: Mirren, Delora, Ariana, Summer, Sharo, Rastaban, Mirazen, Rain, Aurelien, Solace, Maple, Zoli, Ulali, Laira, Terali, Eliani, and Sora.

I hope to release Rain Falls on Malora in July. I'm in the process of moving to a different state, so between that and the setback I had with my repaired ulnar nerve earlier this year, I'm a little behind where I wanted to be. I had an ulnar nerve transposition in my right arm in September and I have some permanent damage from the hourglass constriction that lead to it, so I've had to modify how I type, hold a pen, cook, etc. It has been a long and painful process, but I'm getting there.

Photographs via Unsplash: Nathan Dumlao, Christian Holzinger, Christopher Campbell, Steve Halama,
Tess Nebula, Jing Ang, Ricardo Gomez Angel, Nate Reyfield, Aline de Nadai 

Oh, look at that! The weird things I do when on migraine meds... I wanted to make the chronological order of The Malora Octet a little more obvious and tie the entire series to Rain Falls on Malora visually, so I redid all of the ebook covers. I love seeing them all together. I've left the paperback covers alone since it takes more time to change them than I have right now. You can still find all eight books on Amazon.

Last, but very much not least...

I finished Faelost!

I'm also awaiting the arrival of the Faelost print proof. I like to use a print copy to do my final edits, and this one will take a little while. Why? It's long, 145,000 words, so it's by far my biggest book (Mayfly Requiem was *only* 130k). And, I have no idea what to write for the blurb without spoiling something major that happens just a few short chapters in. I'll have to think on that.

Faelost is the sequel to Cavelost, and it continues immediately where Cavelost left off, but it should work as a stand-alone story. It's told by Rin's second son, Tessen, who finds himself on an unwanted adventure following the hatching of his brother Shan's two stolen dragon eggs.

Oh wait, there's just a little bit more. I'm working on The Bacra Chronicles Book 3 now, Spellkeeper. I'm way into it and hoping I can keep up my momentum on it over the summer. Spellkeeper is the first time in over ten years that I've written a novel in third person (the last being the Echoes of Oblivion trilogy). There are four point-of-view characters for this book -- two from the previous books and two who are new. I'm not sure yet how many books The Bacra Chronicles will end up being, but as of now I know where books 4 and 5 need to go.

Time-Lost Again

I haven't been able to write much recently. It's not due to writer's block or lack of ideas. I'm just exhausted. I have ideas eating away at my mind, but no energy with which to resolve them. I had kidney stone surgery at the end of July and that flared up my narcolepsy to the point that I have trouble staying awake for more than a couple hours at a time. I had bilateral stones, so I had a second procedure, extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy - ESWL, on my other kidney last week. I don't think it worked (will find out next week), so I may be in for a second surgery. I needed a stent for the first one and that was a little traumatic, so the prospect of going through that again is keeping my focus wobbly. I'm time-lost for the moment and hoping this narcolepsy flare doesn't last too much longer.

I do feel a little productive though, due to something I wrote in May. My short story, "They", was published in a little anthology Possibilities Publishing Company put out yesterday. The book is available in both e-book and paperback, so get your copy in whichever format you prefer.

I feel the need to stay productive despite the surgeries and narcolepsy, so I've returned to an old hobby... drawing. I'm planning on including some of my artwork in Rain Falls on Malora. I'm also drawing a geeky coloring book unrelated to my books, but since it's fan art, I don't think I'll be able to publish that unless I figure out copyright for each of the books, TV shows, and movies I've drawn artwork for. You can see some of them on my Instagram, though.

I want to share with you coloring book-style pictures I've drawn of characters from the Malora Octet. I bought a set of art pens recently so this has been a fun new experiment.

Bethel Masiona and Saruza Starsinger. Bethel is always a pain to color
against complex backgrounds for reasons that are obvious if you've
 read the series.

Rain and Dawn. I may alter this into a cover for Rain Falls on Malora
if I end up including Rain's short story in the book.

Silvan and Mairen from Arrow of Entropy. I don't want to be a
spoiler so all I'll say is they're learning how to spar.

Ravaki and Safora from The Crystal Lattice. I'm not happy with their arm
positioning, but I love how the rest of the picture turned out.

This was inspired by Nira's letter to Azfadel in The Crystal Lattice.
It's amazing how just a couple lines reveal her postpartum depression.

Vile Sweetgum

My thought of the day:

I am glad I am intelligent enough to do my own research, come to my own conclusions, and not blindly believe everything I hear or read.

Unfortunately, I know too many people who get their news and information from a very narrow group of sources.  They repeat inane rhetoric like it is fact, and refuse to consider information from other sources because it is from a different point of view than they are comfortable with.  They would rather rely on biased and sensational media and personalities instead of facts and reason.  The worst are the Limbaugh/Beck disciples and the people who forward urban legends to everyone in their address books, proclaiming them fact while leaving their reality boxes packed up and languishing in a mold storage shed.  Face it, people, if you repeat nonsense to those of us who have even a remote grasp on logic and sense, we will assume you are moronic and nothing you say afterward will be taken seriously, even if it really is accurate.  Go read some books, get your news from multiple and diverse outlets, and please, for the love of pasta, please go check Snopes before you forward me anything else!

Anyway, enough of that for today.

Onward to my real nemesis, the thorny bane of my Friday afternoon...

Sweetgum.  Liquidambar styraciflua.  I have one of these hideous bastards on the edge of my property, though technically it belongs to my neighbors.  I'm normally as hippie-tree-hugger as one can get, but this tree is bad news.  We have an electric mower, so the gumballs don't cause too much of a problem with it, but that doesn't matter.  They invade everything and never seem to decompose.  They are vile and unforgivable.

We had a pretty nasty hail storm over the weekend.  Walnut sized ice plus high winds turned my poor car into a golfball.  The car is eleven years old now, so I don't really care about the dimples.  The big problem with the hail turned out to be the sweetgum tree.  Our driveway and our neighbors' are covered in twigs, leaf buds, and gumballs. 

I didn't realize how treacherous the steep incline of my driveway was until this afternoon.  I was carrying my toddler out to the car for a trip to the grocery store, when a gumball found its way under my right foot.  My ankle rolled out and my knee twisted and it took every bit of balance I had to keep my son's head from slamming into the door.  My knee aches and my ankle is swelling and tingly.  I know it is not a bad sprain at all, but it does scare me.  My right ankle was reconstructed nine years ago after a catastrophic fourth-degree sprain with bone fractures.  I had no soft tissue left intact on the outside of my ankle, so when I lifted my leg, my foot dropped straight down since there was nothing left to stabilize it.  That injury took 9 months for repair and recovery.

How did I do it?

I stepped on a frakking gumball and rolled my ankle.

I had a history of ankle sprains from nine years of coed soccer followed by four years of playing on my high school's varsity team.  I had loose and damaged ligaments, but that gumball did me in.  One step, and it sounded and felt like a gunshot going off inside my ankle.  With most of my ankle injuries, I my adrenaline kicked in so quickly that I felt nothing for hours afterward (I even played a double-header soccer game on a broken ankle, and never felt it until I took off my shinguards), but this was different.  This was agony, a firework being discharged in my leg.   A skilled orthopedic surgeon put it back together.  I have great stability in my ankle now, but I have permanent nerve damage.  I have tingling spots on my instep and I can't feel my last two toes at all.

Today was a brutal flashback, and thankfully, it only looks like there is a little damage and nothing that needs to be treated with anything other than rest.  My cartilage-free knee (the result of a horrific marching band injury and subsequent surgery), seems to be relatively uninjured, just a little sore.  Still, those gumballs are determined to obliterate my mobility and my sanity.

Curse you, vile sweetgum tree!  This war will not end until one of us falls!