Very Little, and WiPpet Wednesday

Incredibly quiet week this week, still with absolutely no writing but a fair chunk to think about.  I've managed to mislay my notebook with all my notes for The Rose Queen, which is incredibly irritating.  It's in the house somewhere, but quite where that somewhere is is presently a mystery.  I thought I'd found it once, but nope.

You'd never think a notebook with a sodding great rose on the front would be so hard to find.  All my notes have gone on some of the paper between my keyboard and my tablet instead.  One day I might even buy one of those jotter/blotter things instead.

I finished Dangan Ronpa (the murder mystery type game I've been playing) on the PS Vita, which adds to my total of games finished this year and brings it up to a total of 3, as I finished the PC puzzle game The Room as well.  I recommend both vastly, though the PC game is probably a bit more accessible--and a fantastic mental workout.  I had to take time out to think on some puzzles and I've not had to do that in a game for a pretty long time.  The sequel for that's not out yet though, augh...

I've now got Dangan Ronpa 2 to finish (it arrived today!) which I'm looking forwards to, and a shiny (nearly) new book on the history and techniques of mediæval calligraphy as well as a neat leather-bound notebook to practice in, with filofax-type pages which I ordered at the same time as DR1 and arrived today.

I think I've come to a decision about my writing that makes me happy, so hopefully soon I'll be able to carry on with projects again.  Especially since things I need to work on seem to be growing.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a blog hop chaired by the very awesome K. L. Schwengel, where the participants share snippets, which coincide with the date in some way, from their works in progress.  You can find other participants and join in yourself here.

Having flicked back in time to before Fayth found the Rose Queen last week, we're now hurtling forwards again to after, and quite why that section was so pertinent.  So... sorry, but that same creepy idiot from last week is about to make a re-occurrence and I've got nothing sweet to offset it with.  

Well... no, that's not quite true; there's a very little something at the end that I wrote at the same time as the delivery guy, but it's a l'il spoilery so if you can't see where the story is going, then avoid that.

As today is the 25th of February, 25+2 is 27, so 27 sentences, as ever, unedited.

“Where the hell are you taking him?”

Maybe not all the crew took to the training so well; Fayth stared at the sneering crewman with what he hoped was an appropriate level of disdain.  “Captain wants to see him.”

The sneer shifted into an unpleasant grin that flashed recognition through Fayth’s brain: the man he’d walked into before.  The one who’d considered consent an optional extra.  “Really?”  Fayth prepared himself to interrupt, to argue, but the man hadn’t finished: “took him long enough.  Thought he’d have wanted to see him a month ago.  Still, maybe he was waiting ’til it was more appropriate to sample the wares, eh?”  And with that, he leered openly at the Rose Queen.

“Who knows?”  Fayth said mildly, wishing he could plant his fist in this moron’s face.  “I didn’t want to ask.”

“Mm,” he agreed.  “Never a good idea.  Hey...”  With that, his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, “you think you could let me borrow him for ten minutes?”

“Who, the captain?”  Fayth feigned ignorance.  “I’m pretty sure he’ll be free after I’m done.”  It wasn’t entirely a lie...

“You know what I mean.”  The crewman stared openly at the Rose Queen, licking his lips as his eyes travelled the length of the dark-haired man’s body.  “Okay, five if you think ten’ll hold you up too long.  There’s still plenty we can do in five minutes—”

How Fayth resisted the urge to puke, he had no idea.  “No, really, we can’t wait—”

“—I don’t talk to strangers,” the Rose Queen said, staring pointedly in the opposite direction to the crewman.

Oh RQ.  There's a time for having balls, and that was probably not it.

The teeny-tiny snippet I promised?  Well, I did say it was very little, and very spoilery...  In my mind, this is after the main story, and Fayth has come home late, flopped into bed and irritated his sleeping partner... though there are ways to assuage that, and Fayth is very familiar with them.

Fayth grinned.  “You’re purring.”
“Am not,” RQ huffed
“Are too.”
“...Maybe just a little.”

See?  Tiny.

Pinup Boy Sunday - Corliss

Today's pin-up is Corliss Baenan, mercenary, head of security and current punching-bag from The Rose Queen.

Taken on as the head of the Orenda's security with the specific task of guarding the Rose Queen, Corliss managed to screw up spectacularly, losing not only the Rose Queen's trust, but the man himself.  So much for good intentions.

Tasked by his Captain with retrieving him, Corliss discovers his adversary might be a little quicker-witted than expected—and even if he wasn't, RQ has his own opinions on the matter .  If Corliss is to have a hope of fulfilling his job and avoid being unceremoniously dumped back into his past life he might just have to join forces with a man he hates to protect his target, because if he can't he might just lose everything...

Snippets and WiPpets

So I've been kind of badly behaved this week*.  Though I've not written anything I've still rewarded myself for it.  Well... not rewarded, exactly, and not exactly for that, but the upshot is, to distract myself from the fact words mostly seem like a forlorn hope I've treated myself.

I've wanted a Playstation Vita for a while, despite not being the biggest fan of Sony as a company and having never owned any kind of Playstation in the past.  It wasn't the price of the console or the games that put me off either, but the extortionate cost of the proprietary memory cards.  But since the price of them doesn't look to be changing much, now seemed as good a time as any.

As a result, I find myself with a surprisingly nice handheld console, more games for it than I had a week after buying my 3DS, and something to retreat into when my brain wants to escape.  In short, I'm enjoying it a lot.

It's also been a good week stationery-wise.  I saw this calligraphy / stamp set when I ordered the games and couldn't resist.  The box is very attractive and I'm not going to say no to another nib, dip pen and bottle of ink.  The paper base comes out and it has a velvet inner so I'm probably going to keep my other pen and nibs in there as well.

Today also heralds the arrival of my new Lamy Al-Star in Copperorange (their name for it, not mine) along with two extra nibs (one F black, one calligraphy) and a bottle of Ocean Blue J. Herbin 1670 ink with actual gold flakes.  I'd intended to use it with dip nibs but I might just look at the pretty bottle instead...

And when I say I've not written anything, that's not entirely true.  The Vita, its memory card and a wired Xbox 360 controller (not for my Xbox, ironically enough, but my PC) were all dispatched from Amazon on the same day, but in three separate packages (bear with me).  Last month K. S. Norton wrote something about "the what-if scenes of life".  I don't really get them in relation to family life, but I do get random story snippets that relate to absolutely nothing, and as such I usually ignore them.  This time, however, faced with the sudden, abrupt idea that it'd be incredibly embarrassing to mess up and deliver each item separately, I did my best to pin it down.  At around 1am.  ...It may not entirely make sense but hey, for once I actually managed to write something.  And you're getting it right here, or I'll end up forgetting all about it.

He stared down at the package in his hands.  One package.  One last package and his round would be done.  But why did it have to be here?  Of all the places...

Nothing for it.  Heart in his mouth, he knocked on the door.

Wide eyes greeted him.  Wide brown eyes and a tentative smile.  "Yes?  Can I help you... again?"

He proffered the package, squinting against the expected tirade.  "Your delivery, sir.  Your last delivery." 

The expected tirade didn't materialise.  When he looked up, the tentative smile had become a full-blown grin.  "My third one today.  I am lucky.  Or... did you just not arrange your deliveries properly?" 

He again cursed his stupidity for telling his coworker about the handsome young man on his round who always opened the door with such cheerfulness.  "I..." 

The man leaned in to take the package and simply didn't move from there.  His breath tickled his lips.  "Or would it just be easier to give you my phone number?" 

His heart skipped a beat; he didn't let go of the box.  "I could... warn you about deliveries beforehand..." 

The grin widened.  "How about you warn me of the delivery I really want.  Say yourself, at six o'clock?" 

Phrased like that, how could he refuse?  After all, he'd always been told the customer was always right...

And that's not even today's WiP.

Oh, and there was a very short exchange between Fayth and RQ too, but you'd have to ask nicely for that one.

* I've started to notice that my weeks no longer run from Monday to Sunday, but from Wednesday to Wednesday...  Don't know whether to be amused or worried.

WiPpet Wednesday

First off, WiPpet Wednesday is K. L. Schwengel's fantastic idea, a blog hop where participants post sections of their works in progress and relate it to the date.  You can read the other posts (which are always brilliant) and take part yourself over here.

What with The Rose Queen not being originally intended to be my main canon, so to speak, I've run into a bit of a problem.  There's the snippet I want to post, which makes no sense without context you didn't get, and there's the context, which is from the first chapter and thus isn't in chronological order.

In the end, since it explains both what was going on with RQ when Fayth arrived as well as just why he's so lost the second he leaves the habitat again, we're flicking back to Chapter One.  Sorry about that.  Normal(ish) service will be resumed next week.

Since it's the 18th February 2015, this is 1+8 for a total of 9 paragraphs and has a profanity and content warning.  Fayth has just arrived on the ship and is trying to blend in with the crew while he finds his way toward the habitat, though not all the crew seem worth blending in with.

It was a fucking rabbit warren.  He’d expected neat, straight corridors that mirrored the rigid, austere lines of the ship, but no.  Someone had decided that twists and turns were the way to go, and just when he thought he was heading towards the habitat he realised he was off in completely the wrong direction for the fifth or sixth time.  For all of its massive size, the giant dome seemed to be the last place they wanted anyone to go, and it had taken him an embarrassing twenty minutes to reach this conclusion while spectacularly failing to reach the dome itself.  In desperation he swung around a corner into the crew quarters, and straight into a group of men huddled around a single small screen.

“Sorry,” Fayth said, as nonchalantly as possible despite his pounding heart.  Shit, worst possible timing; all it’d take was one person to notice he’d never been there before...

The expected anger never materialised.  It was all the injured party could do to lift his eyes from the screen.  “No problem, mate.”

Fayth shrugged and resumed padding down the corridor while the men resumed their conversation.  “I always figured ‘Ice Queen’ was a better name,” one said, snorting back a laugh, “but shit, looks like I was way off the mark there.”

Pausing ostensibly to look at a overstuffed noticeboard, Fayth suddenly found their inane conversation the most interesting thing in the universe.

“No kidding.”  The second whistled appreciatively, never taking his eyes from the flickering display.  “Certainly opened up for him.”

“They’re not speaking now, but it’s not stopping everyone else having a go,” the first said.  “Maybe even you’ve got a chance.”

“Chance?”  The third said, licking his lips.  “From what I hear, all you gotta do is ask and you’ll receive.”

“Ask?”  This time the first speaker’s laugh was ugly; Fayth crushed the urge to stride over and punch him.  “I don’t remember saying anything about asking.”

A Grand Chorus of Silence. Also, WiPpet Wednesday

First off, everyone, thank you all for the kind comments.  I'm really sorry I haven't replied, but (while it's no excuse) I was just much happier being able to enjoy all your successes on your blogs instead...  I promise I'll try to reply to them soon.

I've run into a slight problem.  Although the idea of actually writing still makes me queasy and brings me out in a cold sweat (never a good sign...), my characters are conspiring against me, and considering one of those characters is Fayth...  And although you've not met the other, though technically you should have and I just skirted over his initial introduction (but don't worry—not that anyone has been—when he becomes relevant I'm sure I'll find some obscure maths for his introduction), he's just spent half the week making his presence known in my head.

And it's not fair.  <insert echoing howl of fury here>

Actually, less of the fair, it's more frustrating.  This character was only supposed to be a footnote, a handy source of clothes, but turned up again in the third chapter and then insisted—after I finished chapter eight, obviously—that he needed a chapter to himself, and that obviously had to be a new chapter four.  And some other stuff.  And now he won't get the hell out my plot again.

Not to change the subject (however much it looks like it), but last year I bought Machinae Supremacy's brilliant concept album Phantom Shadow.  One of the songs, The Villain of this Story, inveigled its way into my head the other day without my even listening to it and I'd always thought it suited Corliss (the troublesome character), so I loaded it and all the actual song (not the exposition) tracks onto my music player.  And now he won't shut up.

Machinae Supremacy - Perfect Dark

Well, it's some of them, anyway

So while I've written a grand total of 0 since last week (technically -2 according to Scrivener, as I finally lost my temper with a couple of sentences and rejigged them despite swearing I'd only highlight and leave for later), Fayth and Corliss are presently engaged in working out how to deal with the situation they've been left with at the start of chapter twelve and what I want apparently doesn't matter at all.

Incidentally, Corliss decided that Perfect Dark suited him much better, so in order to give my hands something to do I spent a lot of time listening to it and then wrote out the lyrics using a mediæval English style.  I might not have written fiction, but I'm at least improving on speed.  It only took maybe two hours... but at least I avoided typos.

WiPpet Wednesday

As always, much love and thanks to K. L. Schwengel who graciously hosts our work-in-progress blog hop.  If it looks fun, you can look at the other participants and sign up over here.

Today is the 11th February 2015, so I'm going to try to get a little creative here.  Or I'm going to butcher the date in order to get my own way, whichever way you prefer to think of it.  11 = 1+1 = 2.  2+2 = 4.  So for the 11th of the 2nd month, you're getting four paragraphs from chapter two.

This (as ever, unedited) section leads straight on from last week's, where Fayth found the Rose Queen and convinced him to leave with him.  Not that it's that easy, of course.

Fayth dropped his hand to the pocket not stuffed full with Matthew’s hackpad, nonchalantly withdrawing one of the metallic cords he’d brought for restraint purposes.  The sleeping guard in the cupboard was wearing half of his supply; he’d have to retrieve it before they left.  Assuming he had time.  He’d already spent longer here than he’d intended; they might be lazy, but they couldn’t be that blind.

Without a word, the Rose Queen held both wrists out to him, palms together.

He couldn’t help raising an eyebrow as he bound the cord around the thin joints, but the Rose Queen looked away, eyes hooded.  There’d be no answers forthcoming.  Suited Fayth just fine.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask the question.  Taking a firm—but not too firm, he saw how the Rose Queen was favouring his elbow—hold of his shoulder, Fayth led him towards the door while keeping an eye out for any curious crewmembers.  The habitat might look deserted, but it could easily mean that klaxons would sound and all hell would descend upon them the minute he led his quarry into the corridor.

Now the hackpad had an idea of what it was doing, it opened the door with a gentle hiss only a second after Fayth pressed it to the panel.  From the corner of his eye he could see the Rose Queen try to watch what he was doing without giving an outward appearance of interest; it would be comical if it didn’t seem quite so sad.  Then they were through and into the corridor, and Fayth realised that here was where the real difficulty began, because he’d be damned if he could remember his way back.

So y'know that sleeping guard?  Yeah.  Also, Matthew?  He'll become relevant too later.  He's another that likes to shoehorn his way into stories.

WiPpet Wednesday

It's fair to say I've done sod-all this week.

Well, no, that's not entirely true.  I've written 281 words.

I've fended off my depression plenty of times before but I've been feeling it gnawing at the edges of my consciousness and right now, on top of still being ill, I've not been able to deal with it.  I hate it.  I know it's there, a floating black cloud, but it makes me feel like a fraud on every level.  Not only does it remind me how incredibly futile everything I do is and how little any of it actually matters—and all the rest of it—but even feeling like that makes me feel like I shouldn't be feeling it.  That it's all just some massive ploy.  Despite the fact I think this is the first time I've actually written about it.

So every time I've sat down to write, I've ended up doing other stuff instead.  I've found a Commodore 64 emulator and have been playing digital versions of games we already have (without having to wait anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour for the game to load) and am now significantly better at Flip & Flop than I was as a child—which isn't hard.  I've been reading, and the book I'm on is significantly better once I got past the first chapter.  And I've been practicing calligraphy and general dip pen work since I found that Rhodia notebooks work just as well with dip pens as they do with fountain pens.

Unfortunately, you can see the extent of my attention span perfectly right at the end there.  (Autumn Oak is the name of that ink and the lyrics are courtesy of a few FiXT artists.)

I guess I'll get over it eventually.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is K.L. Schwengel's work-in-progress blog hop.  You can find other authors and sign up for yourself just here.

Well, it's the start of a new month.  Based on the abysmal performance above, you're getting another bit of The Rose Queen instead.

Generic maths.  It's the 4th February, so you're getting four unedited paragraphs from chapter 2, following hot on the heels of the last section.  (Basically, you're getting the stuff I enjoyed writing.)

“Before I go with you,” the Rose Queen said quietly, catching Fayth’s hand, “tell me why I should trust you.”

His touch was soft, his skin cool and smooth, and Fayth really wished that he could stop imagining what they’d feel like touching his chest, his hips, his—  He swallowed and carefully prised the Rose Queen’s fingers away.  “I can’t tell you that.  I can tell you that I’m Admiral Fayth, and I can tell you that it’s taken me a year to find you, but tell you why you should trust me?”  He quashed his rampant imagination and laughed.  “You’re probably better off not doing that.”

But dear God those eyes were amazing as they stared at him, weighing and assessing.  How could one man’s eyes be such an incredible colour?  When the Rose Queen nodded once, as much to himself as to Fayth, it took Fayth a moment to realise that he was agreeing.  Agreeing to go with him.

The return journey was going to feel like an age.

Poor Fayth.  Cursed with an overactive imagination. 

Pinup Boy Sunday - Alex

Today's pin-up is Alex, former antagonist and now slightly unexpected main character from Radial and my occasionally-ongoing webseries Unravel.

The acerbic Alex started out life as a guinea pig in a semi-governmental facility, passed along—he supposes by his parents—due to his paranormal abilities and odd personality.  From there, he moved through the Academy to graduate at 18 and take his place working for the same shadowy organisation, cataloguing others like himself and 'claiming' those signed over to them for experimentation.  (And indulging in a lot of alcohol and casual sex along the way.)

One of those was Milos, and because the damn alfa survived his procedure, Alex is stuck with him.  But it did turn out that Milos had more uses beyond clawing his opponents and spectacularly failing to hit him during sparring lessons—though the same can't be said for the floor.

Not that he can work out how casual, grudging and somewhat blackmailed sex ended up in what seems to be an actual relationship, or why it seems so natural to share Milos's bed...  but it does make getting laid a lot easier.

Not that they really need a bed for that.  The car'll do just fine.  Or their office; the gym; behind the bar.  Or the kitchen, or alleyways, or...