Might be a bit scarce; am working on revisions to THE DUCHESS.

I'm back! 500 words last night.

Our Dead

Stars that behold our world upon its way,
Pure legions camped upon the plains of night,
Mute watchful hosts of heaven, what must you say
When men destroy each other in their might?

Upon their deadly race each runner starts,
Nor one but will his brothers all outrun!
Ah, see their blood jet upward to the sun
Like living fountains refluent on our hearts.

--O dead divinely for so great a faith,
Help us, whose agony is but begun,
For bitterly we yield you up to death,
We who had dreamed that life and love were one.

--Anna de Noailles, née de Brancovan

Instead of fiction, I put a WWI reference book in my bag this morning. Vacation over.....

I haven't written since Monday evening, due to other committments that are eating this week's evenings. This morning, a mere three days after I had to stop, my brain began feeding me more story. It is well trained, my brain.

Also, I think letting the brain lie fallow every now and then helps. Even if the lying fallow isn't what you'd rather be doing.

A lovely review of Periphery, which has my story "Silver Skin." It's even mentioned in the review!

I joined Passionate Ink, the RWA chapter for erotic romance writers. At least, I sent in money, and am waiting for approval to join. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before that it would be a good way to virtually meet more colleagues before RWA National.

And soon I shall have revisions on The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover to work on. [waiting with bated breath]

I have cover flats for The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover!!!

Better still? I have an ISBN!

I'm REAL!!!

The Rainbow

(France, August 8th, 1916)

Watch the white dawn gleam,
To the thunder of hidden guns.
I hear the hot shells scream
Through skies as sweet as a dream
Where the silver dawn-break runs.
And stabbing of light
Scorches the virginal white.
But I feel in my being the old, high, sanctified thrill,
And I thank the gods that the dawn is beautiful still.

From death that hurtles by
I crouch in the trench day-long,
But up to a cloudless sky
From the ground where our dead men lie
A brown lark soars in song.
Through the tortured air,
Rent by the shrapnel's flare,
Over the troubleless dead he carols his fill,
And I thank the gods that the birds are beautiful still.

Where the parapet is low
And level with the eye
Poppies and cornflowers glow
And the corn sways to and fro
In a pattern against the sky.
The gold stalks hide
Bodies of men who died
Charging at dawn through the dew to be killed or to kill.
I thank the gods that the flowers are beautiful still.

When night falls dark we creep
In silence to our dead.
We dig a few feet deep
And leave them there to sleep--
But blood at night is red,
Yea, even at night,
And a dead man's face is white.
And I dry my hands, that are also trained to kill,
And I look at the stars--for the stars are beautiful still.

--Leslie Coulson

To R- at Anzac

You left your vineyards, dreaming of the vines in a dream land
And dim Italian cities where high cathedrals stand.
At Anzac in the evening, so many things we planned,
And now you sleep with comrades in the Anafarta sand.

There are men go gay to battle like the cavaliers to dance,
And some with happy dreamings like princes in romance,
And some men march unquestioning to where the answer lies,
The dawn that comes like darkness they meet with lover's eyes.

You heard the bugles call to arms, and like a storm men's cheers,
But veiled behind that music, you knew the women's tears.
You heard the Vikings singing in a rapture to the sea,
And passing clear beyond that song, the waves of Galilee.

You lived for peace and lived for war, you knew no little strife;
To conquer first, then help your foe, made music of your life.
And for the sake of those you led, you gave your life away,
As youth might fling a coin of gold upon a sunny day.

If Odin mustered Vikings, you would rule his pagan crew.
If Mary came to choose her knights, she'd hand her sword to you.
Men scattered in the wilderness, or crowded in the street,
Would choose you for their leader and glory in defeat.

You'd find a bridge to Lazarus, or any man in pain.
There are not many like you that I shall see again;
I do not grieve for you who laughed, and went into the shade,
I sorrow for the dream that's lost, Italian plans we made.

Good-bye! It's Armageddon. You will not prune your vine,
Nor taste the salt of channel winds, nor hear the singing Rhine.
You'll sleep with friends and enemies until the trumpet sounds,
And open are the thrones of kings, and all the Trojan mounds.

When women's tears are rainbows then, that shine across the sky,
And swords are raised in last salute, to a comrade enemy,
And what men fought and failed for, or what men strove and won,
Are like forgotten shadows, and clouds that hid the sun.

--Aubrey Herbert

The workshop schedule for RWA National is now online, so I went through and picked ones I'd like to attend, choosing "useful" over "interesting but not relevant." Then I examined my tentative schedule, and signed up for a single volunteer session, helping to set up for lunch on Thursday. That should be fun, and I'll get to meet some other volunteers.

Worth noting: if I really don't feel like writing, and start to write and keep having to delete and start over, I can still accomplish something. Sometimes, switching to a scene on which I feel more confident is the answer.

It looks like I'll have revisions for the Duchess novel in early May, which means at that point I'll have to drop the werewolf manuscript to complete edits for the beginning of June. I had a hope of finishing a draft of the current manuscript by the end of May, but now I don't expect to be able to manage that. Oh, well, life will go on. And the Duchess will be that much closer to publication!

I'm carving out more time for writing where I can. I already had given up watching television and DVDs. Soon choir will be over for the year, and I'll have an extra evening per week to work. And I've been scheduling meals with friends and the like for evenings when I was pretty sure I wouldn't be writing anyway. The main lack I feel is time to be silent, alone, and doing practically nothing. I do manage to get some reading done, usually weekend afternoons when my brain is empty from my morning writing session, and won't be fully operational again until the evening.

Revisions will be a nice break, I think; a different kind of mental effort than pounding out a zero draft. I like to edit. I will have to remember that.

I was reading in a forum about story hooks.

My thought on hooks is that sometimes they are way too hooky, if that makes any sense. If I start reading and the first sentence seems twee or cutesy, it makes me fear the rest of the novel will be the same.

I also don't like opening sentences that are too long and descriptive; if I have to stop and parse it, and memorize those character names which may or may not be important later, I might put the book down.

What I want as a reader is to be pulled to the second sentence. For me, the first sentence doesn't have to be a whale-sized hook. A gentle tug is enough. Then another tug. Then another, until the story closes over my head.

There's something about being past 50,000 words in a manuscript that makes it seem so much more real. With that much text, I'm getting a good idea of my themes and starting to get ways to reinforce them. I've got a good idea of the characters and how they work into the themes and vice versa, or however it works. And I'm beginning to get an idea of how the pacing might work in the novel as a whole--probably a wrong idea, but an idea all the same. Best of all, it feels like an accomplishment to pass 50,000 words, because it is.

The Tale of an Erotica Writer Part Two, also at Circlet Press, on making your stories stand out from the crowd.

I'm spending the next four days on a writing binge, which means no internet for the duration. I'm a bit over half done with my draft right now, and am hoping for 10K or so words out of this time.

I have an article online here at the Circlet Press website, entitled "The Tale of an Erotica Writer." Part two will appear on Thursday.

I've noticed that when I'm pushing, as opposed to when I have all the time I want, I don't wait for scenes to come to me (scene defined as something with action and dialogue), but write in a more narrative style, describing what happened. Still in pov, but not really what I want. Most of that stuff will be expanded into actual scenes--show, rather than tell--once I get to revisions. But right now, getting the ideas down seems more important, and I think will help me in imagining the scenes themselves. And I have more time to decide what needs to be shown, and what can be simply told.

I think I'm going to move the wordcount bar down to 80,000 for the zero draft. A lot of this narrative will take up more space when it's in scene form, and I don't want to overshoot. So if I'm aiming for 80K, and I'm almost at 43K, then I'm halfway done! And I should have time for at least one revision pass, if I can keep up the pace.

Retreat

Broken, bewildered by the long retreat
Across the stifling leagues of southern plain,
Across the scorching leagues of trampled grain,
Half-stunned, half-blinded, by the trudge of feet
And dusty smother of the August
He dreamt of flowers in an English lane,
Of hedgerow flowers glistening after rain--
All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet.

All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet--
The innocent names kept up a cool refrain--
All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet,
Chiming and tinkling in his aching brain,
Until he babbled like a child again—
"All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet."

--Wilfrid Wilson Gibson