Myth, the Universe, and Everything

I started last week so well! Alas, life is busy busy busy.

I had stuff to write about, but it'll have to wait, as today is another busy day, with our Crossover Mythic Greece / Viking Saga game this afternoon, as well as a multitude of errands, and more copyediting than you can bat an eye at.

First, from last week's contest, congrats to Beverly Gordon! She's our Happy Hour of the Damned winner. Thanks to everyone who entered.

Now, for this week's contest: post your answer by Friday -- it's short by a day, but I'll try to announce on Saturday next week. This week's winner gets a copy of Angels' Blood by Nalini Singh.

So, while pondering Loki for the Viking Saga game, I thought, wow, he'd have a great twitter account. Imagine if you will:

@AesirLoki: OMG, they're throwing stuff at Baldur again. Get over it.
@AesirLoki: Srsly, I'm going to kill that kid.
@AesirLoki: So, just talked to mistletoe...

I read Blue Milk Special, a Star Wars parody web comic, and they have a gimmick for Leia that she's a twitter fiend. Most of the characters from Questionable Content actually do have twitter feeds. It's a great concept.

If you could pick a mythological figure or a fictional character to follow on twitter, who would it be? Bonus: I'll count you as two entries if you post three sample twitter entries for your choice!

I use Google Chrome here at home, and about 50% of my bookmarks bar is Web comics that I read (followed by blogs, followed by a few links for my freelance work). So it's amazing that I forget about MySpace Dark Horse Presents -- which is currently featuring not only a Buffy-verse comic by the fabulous Jackie Kessler, but is also featuring part 2 of a new series by Mark Crilley, who you might remember I raved about back when I reviewed Miki Falls for School Library Journal. The story, Brody's Ghost, which appeared in the last issue of MySpace Dark Horse Presents with part one is Crilley's new project, and is scheduled to be a six-volume Dark Horse series. Sign me up!

I feel like I've been getting by mostly on links lately -- in part that's because I've been so busy with the whole work/other work/pregnancy classes & appointments schedule that I don't have much brain for blogging. As it is, I think we are officially done with our pre-baby purchases as of today -- everything we don't already have can wait until later (except maybe some minor, medicine-chest type things we have on a list in a folder somewhere that's surely in the house, but is not where I looked for it before our shopping trip). Bug is growing so big that I have no idea where she's got left to expand -- the doctor at my appointment last week guestimated she's already at seven pounds five ounces, and she's still supposedly got three and a half weeks left before she's due.

I know I posted about my grandmother's rainbows here. I don't remember if I posted that I did get two prisms from Twostripe for Christmas, and they've been giving me rainbows nearly every morning. Lately, I've been making sure that Bug gets in on the rainbow action:



And that's life around here lately. There have been a few great mythic D&D games (featuring one in which I made a character Originally Participate, Barfieldians -- so. much. fun! in the evil DM sort of way), and I'll try to write a little bit more about those in the future.

This may seem a complete tangent from my last post (and it sort of is), but it's come up several times in conversation recently, and I suspect it has to do a bit with training your thinking, so it's vaguely relevant. One of the things I have trouble with as a writer and as a freelancer is self-motivation. People who work for themselves have to be very self-motivated in order to accomplish anything, and figuring out how to find that motivation and drive can be a struggle. I suspect that anyone who works alone has to deal with the same thing, as humans need interaction (we're social creatures) to keep our spirits (and thus our motivation) at high levels. We have to train ourselves to find motivation in unexpected places, since the usual community routes aren't open to us.

One of the ways I'm finding compelling recently is having the benefit of mutual admiration. I've spread out my writing projects among a bunch of different people and groups, so I'm not hitting up the same folks for motivation all the time. In addition, I'm surrounding myself with people who are, in short, brilliant. An old saying (or at least a repeated one here) is that "excellence recognizes brilliance." I've long known that while I'm pretty good at a pretty wide variety of things, I'm rarely the best at any of it. (Some of this comes from being related to extremely talented people and surrounding myself with incredibly smart friends --and vice versa.) I strive for excellence, but really appreciate it when the brilliant folks show up in my life -- and better yet, are interested in the stuff that I'm doing. There are few things so satisfying as having someone who you admire creatively asking for more of what you're up to.

Today was a great day for remembering this. Not only do I have an e-mail from one of the Substraters in my inbox, asking when he'll get to see some more of the new super-secret (super-drafty) new novel that may or may not become anything more than a first chapter, but I was up visiting students at Simon's Rock. The purpose of the trip was to become acquainted with the students who will be going to England in May, but it also served as a brain refresher. The myth students are usually a clever bunch, and this group is no exception. The ideas they were throwing around -- and catching, and tossing back -- were just delightful to witness. (The discussion was of Barfield's Saving the Appearances, and the refresher on those ideas was also a motivator for me to get back to Breakfast with Barfield -- and then move onto the Mabinogion, so I can keep up when we're abroad.) After class, I spent some time with the students I've traveled with before, just chatting and catching up, and then went out to dinner with Mark Vecchio. All in all, it was a wonderful day of feeling appreciated by people who amaze and challenge me, and that's just the sort of day that can fuel my motivation for a long time to come.

Perhaps tomorrow, I'll even get back on track with guest blogs and posting here more regularly. But I'm off to ICon on Long Island tomorrow, and up to Boston for Mythic Greece on Sunday, so my best intentions may have to wait 'til next week.

We're a week into the New Year, and I haven't really put together a list of resolutions. I'm not sure that I will. I do have a goal of forming an actual spiritual practice (rather than a haphazard spiritual observance). The same is true of my writing. I think I lost track of my apprenticeship somewhere along the way and need to get back on the right path.

But 2009 is looking pretty exciting for a number of reasons. Here's some of what's coming up:

1) Substrate. This is my new, semi-local writing group! Since we're based out of New Haven, it's very local to me, but some of the writers will be coming from Boston and D.C., so it'll be a trek. Luckily, New Haven is an old stomping ground for everyone but me (as the person who has spent the least amount of time living here on Connecticut's shoreline, or so I believe), so the writing group meetings can be combined with other events as well. Like, say, D&D games.

2) Baeg Tobar. I've gotten involved with BT again, and am very excited to be working with Scott and Jeremy and Daniel and the BT crew. There are some amazing things in store for the site this year, including serial fiction, short stories, and a regularly updating web comic.

3) England. I've been invited to be the TA/driver/chaperon for the Simon's Rock England Trip in May of this year. The last time I was in England was 2003, when my sister and I went on our (now infamous, I'm sure) Isle of Man trip, where we were attacked by gulls and almost fell into the Chasms. (I exaggerate only slightly.) We'd begun the trip in England, and we stayed in Glastonbury for a good chunk of it. I am very excited to return, and hope to become reacquainted with Geoffrey and Pat Ashe. I've fallen out of touch with the Arthurian scholar and his wife in recent years, and am looking forward to seeing them again.

4) Getting past 1st level. My Mythic Greece players, with the exception of the one who is currently nannying in England (and so hasn't made the past few sessions) are all second level. Also, I got a GM medal at Worlds Apart for running sessions there. (They were shocked with how excited I was with a little virtual medal, but I am constantly in awe of how well we're treated there. They are good people, and if you're near Pioneer Valley and in need of a game store, they should be your go-to point.)

5) Since it's up on the site, I think it's fair to announce that my LFR module, "Head above Water," is premiering at DDXP this year. I won't be going to Fort Wayne to usher it into the world, but I'm really excited to have it given such an excellent spot to begin play!

6) Dogs in the Vineyard. The old Dogs game is coming to a close, and the new Dogs game is ramping up. There are fun times waiting to happen.

7) Another Shoreline summer. There will be sailing, there will be beach cook outs, there will probably be grill outs in our new back yard. (We moved in December.) I may be dreaming in advance about sunshine, but man am I looking forward to beach weather!

8) A million things to read. Moving made me consolidate my TBR pile--the ones I've actually *purchased* and not just added to the list in my head. I'd take a picture, but it's a bit embarrassing. Add to that the number of awesome authors with books coming out this year (or just released): frost_light, melissa_writing, ilona_andrews, sartorias, jimhines, Carrie Vaughn, rkvincent, blue_succubus, antonstrout, amanda_marrone, jenlyn_b, m_stiefvater, mdhenry, nalini_singh... all of them on my Must Be Read list. (And that's just with what I know from livejournals or can back up with Amazon research. Heck, that's mostly for the first six months of this year.)

So, yes, 2009 is looking up. I know, I'm probably one of the few people in the world who is sad to see 2008 go, but it was a good year for me, as far as my short stories getting published, and I'm pretty pleased with it on retrospect. But, as they say, onward and upward!

I realized today, as I talked with one of my early readers (one of my Mythic Greece players who was kind enough to actually read and think about some very drafty chapters of what I hope becomes the Blackstone Academy novel), that the people in the Blackstone Academy novels are people I can gossip about. Some of them, in particular the professors, appeared in early drafts of a story (called "the Janie story" because I didn't have a title for it) that I intended to write about a young woman leaving to go to college early and discovering that her college was actually a school to train magic users. Some of those same concepts came over into the Blackstone Academy, and some of the characters came along as well. But instead of doing a tale about the incarnation of the person who would be the villain of the Age as the World Age shifted (something I may still experiment with, but not in this book), I decided to do something that drew more on local history and less on cosmic forces at work.

But some of those back story elements are still there. One of the main professors has brought along all the baggage he originally had in the other plot, though I suspect none of it will ever come out in the Blackstone Academy novel. It's all in the back of my mind, though, and until I discover whether or not it's true in this incarnation, I can gossip about the past as though I'm certain. This is what happened. This is what formed this character.

I've always loved reading blog posts where authors gossip about their characters--or answer reader questions about what happened next/before/between. (sartorias is wonderful at this--she knows so much more about her characters than there is room for in her novels!) But before today, I hadn't ever had the experience where my characters could be gossiped about, and I'm excited to think that I have characters with that kind of back story, that kind of past living in my head.

October is my favorite month, so I'm a little sheepish that I entirely missed it here at livejournal. We managed to fill our social schedule to the gills and then collapse thereafter because we were quite exhausted with the hullaballoo, and as I'm sure many of you lj users know, once you stop blogging, getting back in the habit is a challenge.

But here I am, back in action. Over the past month I have (in no particular order):

* turned 29
* applied for a grant for my library
* applied for a grant for myself
* turned in my first ever history article
* had a visit from first-reader Arielle
* had a birthday party, complete with red velvet cake
* had a murder mystery party
* played some role playing games
* worked on writing assignments
* read most of The Immortals series by Joy Nash, Robin Popp, and Jennifer Ashley
* gone to a wedding
* gone to a Halloween party as Death from the Sandman (see below)
* cut my hair
* visited urgent care only once (much better than last month where I was in and out)
* had a cold
* watched The Muppet Movie
* actually relaxed a little bit
* missed a deadline on an essay that I'll be getting to fellow lj user randyhoyt in the next few days :)
* watched Ironman with friends
* watched Hero with friends who are also LotRO pushers
* run the second session of my 4e Mythic Greece game
* voted
* read a really cute article in PW about a fifth grade class's votes for literary characters
* played through Knights of the Old Republic again
* various and sundry other things that I'm forgetting off the top of my head

Also, on a completely different note, the area behind my apartment today, usually a parking lot, looked like a wuxia movie set. The ground is covered in yellow leaves, which are the same color as the trees from which they fell. I was ready for someone to do some wushu in my yard, just because the colors were perfect.

And now, me as Death:



I hope you've all had a good month! I'll be catching up on blogs slowly, so if I missed a big life change for anyone, I'm very sorry. I'm sure I'll catch on as blog posts continue.