First Page Blogfest

This is my entry into the first page Blogfest. I've been doing stuff from my WIP, but this is from one of my Company of Him books and it's a WIP too that I've hit a block on. It's about a girl in Honolulu who is blind but has prophetic visions. It's called, "You Come To My Senses."

Not all animals are born with their eyes open.

Rabbits are born into the world without sight, hearing, and hair. They are completely dependent on their mother. They are helpless. They stay in their nest and wait for their mother to return with food. Hares are born with their eyes open and with both hearing and hair. They move around from birth and can flee if danger presents itself. So, of the two… which is more likely to be frightened if startled?
You’d find it difficult to scare a baby rabbit. It has not yet learned to fear.

I was born with my eyes open, but it wasn’t until I lost my sight that I started to see.

As I awake, the flurries I sensed settle in my mind. The shadows form faces and objects which speak to me. I sit up and I can hear Hau as he rumbles into my room to wake me.

“Aloha, Hau,” I said as he licked my hand. “Is Cal already in?” Hau pushes his nose against my hand.

“I’m here. I’m here, Island Princess,” Cal said as he came in. He was pretending to be grumpy. He does this every morning. “You need to put some clothes on, Kai,” he admonishes as he sets a tray near my bed.

I could smell sweet, sugared rice and pineapple.

I laughed at him and said, “Why, Cal? I can’t see that I’m not wearing clothing.”

“Well, I can, and I have no desire to see you wandering about in your underwear.”
I can sense the air move around him as he moves around the room. “What would your parents say if they saw you like this?” he asked.

“They’d ask me how it feels to be alive and aboveground,” I said as I stretched. “My parents are dead and we will not speak of them today, Cal.”

“Yes, Miss Kai,” he says. “I’ll set out your clothing. What will you be wearing today?”

I crossed my legs on top of the comforter. “Today, I will take Hau on a walk and we will find a man with dark hair and dark eyes who has come to live on the island recently. He is running from something, but it has found him.”

Fine... I don't know why I bother...

I posted a sketch... a real sketch and I got no comments aside from people wondering if he was naked or not. Well, anyway... it's the human/gargoyle body... and he is pretty hot. Let's see if this is considered artistic by some of you....

Naked Gargoyles


The sketch has been modified and it's in a separate blog due to its adult content. Yes, he is now naked--be aware. This may not be safe for at work--depending on how your work feels about sketched naked gargoyles. (Sounds like a good email topic for you to send to HR.)

Oh the horror... the horror....

*roll eyes* There have been some suggestions *cough* Diana *cough* that the gargoyle below is naked and possibly naughty. Above is the uncropped version... where hopefully you can tell he is indeed wearing pants and his hand is TO THE SIDE and holding him onto the roof.

(GEEZ!!! Some people have dirty minds when it comes to gargoyle/human hybrids.)

(Although... if I had drawn him with no pants on... and with the connection to stone gargoyles... a lot of really dirty puns came to mind.)

WIP that Muse--The Challenge Accepted

So, Juliette and I were chatting on Twitter and a discussion about Metallica quickly shifted into a cage match between whose muse could beat up whose muse.

Say what?

I'm pretty sure it was mostly me. Juliette is somewhat normal and does normal things for a living. Anyway, so we're both posting excerpts from our muses' most recent efforts (ie our Work In Progress.) I started a really strange story last Friday.

It's a YA, but might end up being a horror. It's so hard to tell really. (Yeah, be afraid... be very afraid.) It deals with a guy named Gris who is a Draconian Watcher and turns into what resembles a gargoyle in order to control the darkness and destroy these wraith things called Shades. (The picture above is one I drew as a reference today. The kids say it looks nothing like a gargoyle.) A girl in the town is being bedeviled by these Shades and he tries to figure out why. (Her name is Piper, and she has OCD and bad things happen to her... and she is worried she is doing them while sleep-walking.) So, this WIP is at 25K and it's a first person with alternating POV from Gris and Piper.

Per the challenge, we're supposed to post 500 words and see whose muse is beefier and ready to rumble in this cage match.

So, two muse enter... one muse leaves. Here ya go, Juliette, hit me with your best shot.

This is "Shades of Obsession" and Gris is talking to his cousin Danny after visiting Piper's room that night and cleaning it of Shades. He is talking about what it's like being a Watcher.

“Great Uncle Critch said it was like being a God,” Danny said. He said it defensively. Like I should give him something to be jealous of. He wanted to be jealous.

“Have you ever seen a Shade?” I asked. No, he hadn’t. I knew that, but I needed to make a point.

“No.” He shrugged and sneered slightly. “They look like a ghost, right?”

“My dad said they used to call them bog men. They glow green and have no lower bodies unless they’re poulter-geisting it. Their eyes are black, so black that it seems beyond anything you’ve ever seen. They’ll climb on top of you and your bones ache with the cold of their hollow souls. They open their blood red mouths and inhale your memories. That’s why they hang around old people so much. They don’t need them. They just want something that you have.”

“But you get rid of them,” he said. His eyes looked glazed and intense. He was getting the full explanation. Most of the other Watchers didn’t share this much with non-Watchers.

I held up my hand and concentrated on my fingers. The sharp, black, two-inch talons slid out. It was hard to prevent the rest of the transform, but his mom would have my head if she heard of even this much. “If I can’t convince them to leave, I reach into their chests and yank out their hearts.”

I heard him swallow, a loud gulp in the darkness I controlled. He probably didn’t know about that part. It felt heavy and woolen around me and I could twist it around any lights and wink them out. I could hide in it. I could push it against Shades so they left until I was ready to deal with them.

There were so many in this town—too many for just me, but I hated to drag Dad down here. I had some pride, after all. The idea popped into my head just then. Danny wanted to feel the weight of being a Draconian Watcher. Alrighty then, Danny Boy.

“So, Uncle Critch may have felt like a God but he was dealing with the damned devil every day… for the rest of his life.” I enunciated each word. When I saw the shiver run through him that had nothing to do with the cold, I added, “There are so many Shades that I’ll probably need your help, Danny. Can I count on you to help me?”

It’d be like having a side-kick or a minion. I’d always wanted a minion.

“Yeah, sure.” He nodded. “Are we going to kill people too? Great Uncle Critch said….”

“NO!” Geez, what kind of crap had Critch been spreading? Probably came out after one of those Thanksgiving dinners when someone hadn’t switched Crazy Uncle Critch to water half-way through. “We don’t kill people!” I shook my hand until the talons went away.

“Never?”

Okay, my minion was a bit twisted if he was disappointed we wouldn’t be killing people.

“I’d be okay with that,” he said.

Holy geez… maybe I was really glad that the birthright had fallen to me.

“Uncle Critch said it wasn’t something you bragged about but sometimes it was just something you had to do. It was the only way. If a person got swarmed by them and they ate their brains.” Danny made a sucking sound while gesturing away from his ear with his hand.

Uncle Critch had killed people that Shades had driven mad?

“I figure that Piper is already there, so if we need to kill her….”

“Holy hell!” I shouted, possibly louder than necessary. “We’re not killing Piper.”

Danny grimaced and scowled. “You’re sure? Your dad probably would… you know, to save her,” he muttered.

I slid a hand across my eyes, blocking Danny and his disappointed face from my view. I needed a moment. “My dad wouldn’t, because it wouldn’t be saving her. It’d be killing her.”

“Well, whatever,” he said.

We’d need to revisit this topic.

Hunger Games Book club meeting

I have a book club meeting tonight. I've organized it but conned a friend into holding it at her house.

So, we're discussing The Hunger Games, and I made it a potluck BYOB (Bring your own bread) to go with our discussion. I'm not sure how many will show up. I picked Hunger Games because some had probably already read it. (I really liked it, btw.)

Here are the discussion questions I came up with (Some were taken or paraphrased from Scholastic's site):

1. How does Katniss feel about the country of Panem? Does she feel as strongly as Gale?

2. How do Katniss’s relationships define her personality? How does her early encounter with Peeta affect their relationship after they are chosen as tributes?

3. How are the "career tributes" different from the others? Which were more tragic—the tributes that had been raised to believe there was honor in killing others in the games, or those that were fighting to stay alive by receiving supplies through their entries into the draw?

4. When Peeta declares his love for Katniss in the interview, does he really mean it or did Haymitch create the "star-crossed lovers" story?

5. Before the Games start, Peeta tells Katniss, "I want to die as myself… I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not." Is he able to stay true to himself during the Games?

6. What are the most important skills Katniss has for staying alive - her knowledge of nature? - her skill with bow and arrow? - her trapping ability?

7. Why does Peeta join with the Career Tributes in the beginning of the Games? Why do they accept him when they start hunting as a group? Why do groups form in the beginning when they know only one of them will be able to survive?

8. What makes Katniss and Rue trust each other to become partners? What does Katniss gain from this friendship besides companionship?

9. Discuss the ways in which the Gamemakers control the environment and "entertainment" value of the Games. Does knowing that she is on live TV make Katniss behave differently than she would otherwise?

10. When does Katniss first realize that Peeta does care for her and is trying to keep her alive? When does she realize her own feelings for him? Are they actually in love?

11. What did you think of the contradiction that Katniss lived in a futuristic society but spent her days hunting primitively with a bow and arrow? Once the games began, did you occasionally forget that this book was set far in the future?

12. Reality TV has been a part of the entertainment world since the early days of television (with shows such as Candid Camera and the Miss America Pageant), but in the 21st century there has been a tremendous growth of competitive shows and survival shows. Discuss this phenomenon with respect to The Hunger Games. What other aspects of our popular culture do you see reflected in this story?

13. How did you feel when the first tribute was killed? When Rue died? When Katniss realized the wolves were the fallen tributes?

14. When do you think Katniss began to see a greater point to the games than just staying alive?

15. What minor characters played major roles in shaping Katniss’s view of the government… of herself? The Avox? Cinna? Her mother? Thresh?

16. Why did Katniss seem blind to the feeling of some around her especially Peeta? Was it her upbringing or that she couldn’t imagine a future where her children would be sacrificed to the Hunger Games?

17. What other books is The Hunger Games similar to?

18. This book is considered a dystopian (a vision of a society, often futuristic, characterized by human misery. Often the individual’s rights and needs are sacrificed to the benefit of government or what is considered right for the greater or moral good.) What past societies or governments have shared the brutality seen in Panem?

19. Why did the ruling class hold so much power in Panem? What signs of dissidence were shown throughout the book?

20. As this is a trilogy, do you think the trilogy will end with the fall of the Capitol? Who do you believe Katniss will choose in the final book—Peeta or Gale?

Lycra Suits

T's lycra suits arrived, so he wore them over the weekend. Today was the first Monday in a while that he didn't fight going to school. When he gets home, we'll put him back in a lycra suit. (They provide joint compression and deep pressure... which is what T needs when manic and when his body awareness is low.) He's even been sleeping in them. It's made a huge difference and I'm glad the Husband got a bonus so that we could afford to buy T lycra suits.

B is doing okay. She has been really emotional lately, but she is developing more of a personality also. She says things sometimes that are so typical. I'm not sure if they're "learned" responses from her peers, or spontaneous, but it doesn't matter, I guess.

I'm doing okay... sometimes. I've been dealing with a migraine since Saturday, and I taught a lesson in church yesterday. I have book club this week. (I'm not doing that book club that seems obsessed with historical fiction.) I need to finish reading the Hunger Games for book club on Thursday. I've got a lot of cleaning to get done. That'll be this week. I haven't been in writer mode as much lately. I think it's the stress from T's needs, but I dropped back on one of my OCD meds just in case. It's weird to think that I need my obsessions, but there you go. I do.

I need to go deal with this migraine and do some laundry.

Happy Monday, everyone.

Therapy Room Pictures

I took a few quick photos of the therapy room with my iphone while I was up there with T just now. In this picture, T is up in the maroon lycra hammock that is hanging from the ceiling. You can see their newest circular swing in the background. There is an ikea teardrop swing up front, and a platform swing off to the side. There are five or six hammocks of various materials hanging from the ceiling for T to climb through. Some are overlapped in layers and some he must crawl across. You can see some of the boards up there on the ceiling, but you can't see any of the hooks attacked to them. They're interspersed across the boards and the swings and hammocks are all on heavy-duty carabiners.

Here is T on his latest favorite swing. He can get a good spin on it and he uses his legs to push off the wall. There is a mattress in back of him that his sometimes dives onto from the hammocks or the swing.

The ballpit is off to the side there with all of the balls in it.

In the corner next to the ball pit (out of sight) is a full hamper of the beanie babies that were in the ball pit before. I'm sitting on a giant crash pad--a gigantic bean bag filled with foam. I'll have to take more pictures when I have a little more time. I can probably get better shots of the whole place in the right light. Anyway.... This is where I've been spending hour upon hour every day lately.