I’m very excited for the upcoming treasure hunt, details to be spelled out here on the 22nd, so be sure to check back if you want to play. To be fair to everyone else who has been wonderful about participating, here are my answers to the same questions:
1) Who are your favorite speculative fiction writers?
Recent favorites: Allison Baird, Brandon Mull, Suzanne Collins, Cornelia Funke, and David Weber.
2) Write a two or three sentence writing prompt to inspire your readers today. (Encourage them to post their responses in your comments section.)
You stand in the middle of a long hallway. There is a door at either end. You don’t remember which door you came in at but you know you can’t exit the way you entered or else someone you love will be killed. There are no windows but a skylight spans the length of the hallway, the trouble is it’s two stories above where you stand.
3) List three favorite industry blogs/websites that you've found helpful.
Take a gander up at the tab labeled Spotlighted Blogs.
4) Give us the low-down on your main character (or one of your main characters) in the story you're working on right now, regardless if it's finished or not. Describe his/her personality, situation, and what his/her biggest problem/obstacle is.
MC (still working on the name) is hard working, eager to please, yet shy and unassertive socially. She’s been a charity drudge for old friends of her family since she was a child and either pitied or looked down upon by people in her community. That is until someone maliciously sets fire to her benefactors’ outbuildings and she gets the blame. She’s driven into exile, amid a host of freakish outcasts with magical abilities and a dim view of the outside world. Now she is forced to make a new life for herself, make friends and allies, face a formidable threat that has been stalking her since she was a child, and above all, she finds out her body is changing in frightening ways, unlike anything her world has seen before. (And I bet no one can guess how!)
5) What are your favorite speculative fiction movies from the last five years?
Thor, The Sorceror’s Apprentice, Tangled, Star Trek (the reboot), The Adventures of Merlin (TV show, not a movie), Megamind (the movie I expected to hate and turned out to love.)
6) If you were suddenly thrown into another world where magic existed, what is something from the real world you'd want to take with you? (Limitations apply on energy sources and such.)
A good pair of sunglasses, a mirror, and a generous hygiene kit.
7) List the first type of these things you think of:
a) color: blueb) number: 14c) made-up name: Drostangead) an adjective: harry
Happy Blog Anniversary, Joyce! :)
ReplyDeleteTangled, wasn't it swell?
ReplyDeleteHappy Anniversary!
Happy Anniversary, Clipper!
ReplyDeleteA character description based on your four answers. I hope you enjoy.
ReplyDeleteDrostangea fanned her fragile blue wings. At fourteen inches tall, she was tall for a fairy though way to short for a dragon. The other full-blood fairies harried her because of her mixed heritage, shunning and cutting her off from the fairy games. But Drostangea would show them. She was the only fairy with a tail and spines down her back.
Needle-sharp teeth were hidden by a perfect rosebud mouth. Long curling fair hair, alabaster skin, and big innocent eyes concealed her predatory nature. The victor’s Ring of Posies would be hers. Just wait until they found out the hard way she’d gotten her flame.
Deliciously deceptive description, Michelle. =) I really like the part about a tail and spines.
ReplyDeleteOh, man, that is a DEVIOUS prompt. Choices, choices! I think I'll stick with the fun 2nd person you've got going.
ReplyDeleteAs always, the first stage is denial.
No, you think. No, this can't be happening to me. I will wake up, and I'll realize this was all a terrible dream.
But as the sky darkens above, slipping shadows down the slanted walls, you realize you are well and truly stuck. And the gnaw of hunger does nothing to reassure you.
As always, the second stage is anger.
Why? you scream. Why? you despair. There is no measure for the cup of steaming rage that is your heart; it is bottomless and spilling over. Lead bubbles in your stomach. You already worked so hard to save your older brother's life... and now, if you choose the wrong door, it will all have been for nothing.
The rules on the wall seem written not in red ink, but in blood. Choose wisely, they say to you, taunting, mocking. Choose wisely. As if you ever had the luxury of choosing foolishly.
As always, you speak to yourself third. --God!-- you scream to that thin pane of glass above, beyond which the hovercrafts zoom. --Make them notice me!-- you plead. --If only they notice me I will never doubt you, I will praise your name, I will tear down that blasphemous painting in my living room---
Perhaps you shall never see your living room again. Perhaps this is your dying room.
As always, the crying comes fourth. You curl up in one of the corners. You wish you could burrow through the wall, and you try, and your nails crack and bleed and you slash them onto the unoffensive beige carpet. They leave a crimson brand where they touch.
And of course, as always, last comes the acceptance. But this is different from before. This is different from the time you hung your head before they shot your father, the time you sank to your knees and watched as they gassed your mother. You will not let him die. You will not let your brother die.
This time, you will accept that you are done with conciliation.
There is always another choice.
You rip your clothes from your skin. You tie strips from them and twist them until they are a rope thirty feet long.
You tug off your heavy, clunky shoes and wind the rope through them and throw those shoes skyward -
your projectile kisses that grey sky above
the glass shatters and rains upon you
you cower, cower, duck for cover
When the chaos has quietened, You pick up shards of glass and gouge footholds into the wall.
You pull on the rope. Your shoes fall back down, and you throw them and throw them until they wind around that metal strut high above.
One yank.
It holds.
You climb.
You will never give in again.
Drostangea was named half for her father, a grower of hydrangeas, and her mother, a member of the royal Drostaq line. Such a union, after all, was not to be forgotten. Daily, her name reminded her of her mixed heritage.
She never went without her weapon, a pair of blue shears, when her father educated her about the floral arts. And when her mother dictated that she should be a knight, she picked up the art of swordplay, a blue blade gripped in her fist. She would grow to be the finest florist in the land - and the only florist ever to join the Crusader's Fourteen. In keeping with her calm father and competent mother, none of these duties harried her.
The only thing, in fact, that ever disturbed Drostangea was the fact that a boy named Areb wouldn't leave her the hell alone. Drostangea did not like people, did not like society, and did not like partnership.
And she certainly did not like Areb. She did not like his masterful swordplay or his doubly masterful wordplay; she did not like matching wits or blades with him; she did not like his eyes that were the blue of her shears.
She wanted him to leave her alone.
Thanks for the fun, Clipper! also YESSSS MEGAMIND. *hem*