Apologies!

So I guess I was thrown for more of a loop then I thought, and as is usually the case with me, my weekend was rather busy.  I think part of the reason I dislike the chapter as it is right now is because it feels like its lacking some scenes, and it's also feeling like it needs a POV change.  (I've been doing it from Elmiryn's POV the whole time)

Here's a portion of what I have so far:

Elmiryn's hands still tingled with the feeling of her companion's throat in her hands, the pulse against her thumb, the light sheen of sweat that had made her palms cool when the air kissed it. Involuntarily, she imagined how the throat would hum under her hand if the girl could speak without impediment. Maybe it was indeed possible to catch sound by hand? To possess that voice and keep it as a pet, when the nights got cold and the hours long...it was such an enticing idea. Once it was in her possession, she could use it when she didn't feel like being herself.

Then moral sensibilities, stunted, but still present, objected.

Nyx had carried her unconscious body more than a mile, and had remained at her side when she was comatose--what kind of repayment was strangulation?

But those memories...those precious, vivid memories. They were so real to Elmiryn, moreso than the world she drifted through now. In them, she had felt connection; in them, she had a voice that carried sincerity.  

At seeing that these things were no longer hers to have, she had hollered for wine and drank half-a-bottle's worth with little pause. Then she vomited it all up, because she thought the wine was blood. She had tried to stand, and lost her balance. Nyx tried to keep her in bed but Elmiryn became agitated, wild-eyed, and asked why the covers were so dangerously heavy. 

That first day, she refused to lay in the bed. Instead, she sat in the corner on the floor and alternated between drinking rum and water. Food was repulsive to her. She thought the steak they gave her had pulsed in her mouth, and the rice felt like ants on her tongue.

I apologize guys.  Like I said, I just got really thrown for a loop.

Because twitter fails to illustrate...

...I'd just like to clarify (for those who follow my twitter account) that the past two days have been weighed down with economic troubles, family feuds, emotional breakdowns, medical bad news, and the looming fear that I may get sued or fired from my new job over a stupid misunderstanding.

There.  :)

Update will be up before Monday!  (I mean, why let some bad luck ruin a good thing?)

Oh yeah!

Whoops.  Forgot to post this here.  Did a drawing of Nyx in her new tunic a few days ago.  Nothing too grand.

Hope you guys enjoy the new chapter.  As I said in Twitter, I made a lot of last minute changes, so if you see something odd (grammatical or otherwise) just tell me so.

"Courier's Creed" by Gabriel Gadfly

I just got through writing up a review for "Courier's Creed", which is a pretty neat story for anyone into coming-of-age fantasy adventures.  As a fellow webnovelist, I enjoyed this alot.  Please check it out if you haven't already.

Hip Hip...

Hurray! I updated!

Am I short, or is this horse just too damn big...?

So hopefully some of you are still sticking around.  If not, I'd understand--a site that doesn't update just doesn't seem worth bothering with.  But I'd like to let you all know that I'm making efforts to resume work editing.  I'm also going to make an effort to resume the story.  Probably more effort for the latter considering the amount of time that has passed.

Gosh, so what the heck have I been up to!?  To be honest, not much...job hunting, like so many in America.  Making plans for community college.  Making books and journals from scratch.  Perhaps spending more creative energy than I should into LARPing (live-action-roleplaying).  I've also been healthily distracted by movies, games, books, boys and the silly messes they bring with them...

BUT!  (and this is one hell of a 'but', my friends) I've been making gradual progress over the last month in getting the next installment done.  It's sad that this couldn't have atleast happened BETWEEN adventures instead of near the tail-end of one.  Though I think I made some progress in my editing, and perhaps even improved my understanding of Nyx and Elle.

Now I'm not just blowing smoke up your asses.  Really, just see for yourself:

I was the defiler, there. The clumsy heathen whose ragged breath and befuddled feet made a mess of things. All around me was dead. I was a perversity whose future was mirrored in the gray stunted world. My trail was marked by the clouds of ash that came up into the air. These little clouds drifted a yard or two as swirls of currents that traced pale lines through the air, before they blanketed the corpses of animals. Milky eyes glared at me accusingly as I made my way.

Blood stained me. The quilted weave of my gambeson was tainted, the rips that marred it like wounds themselves. I could even feel a breeze in my left boot. The sole had begun to separate at the tip.

My muscles loathed me, and quivered beneath the strains of my commands, as if they had to remember that I was their master. When exhaustion sought to overcome me, I would kneel in the desolation and try to catch my breath. My eyes tunneled, and sweat dripped from the dip of my nose. In my arms, Elmiryn's lanky body barely seemed to fit into my grip. Her head was cradled against my bosom, eyes shut and her breath faint. Her eyes were red and raw, and her skin a terrible pale complexion. If I stared at her long enough, I thought I could make out her eye sockets shifting...but then it occured to me that it could just be a trick of my eyes.

All the while, in my head, things that were not mine prodded me. I saw battles, recalled feelings, felt sensations that were not mine--not even my counterpart's. Some of these things, these memories, were Elmiryn's, I knew...but I made an effort not to pay it any mind. It threatened me, revulted me. My head seemed barely capable handling two personas, how could I stand the memories of others, however feeble?

Every time I felt myself too enthralled with a particular thought, every time I felt myself come too close to empathizing with a memory, I moved. Forced myself forward in sloppy standard, like a drunkard startled out of his settlement. It worked, to some degree. I didn't drown in what wasn't mine. But still, things slipped through, and I kept returning to nagging details...

I'm going to put a big phat general disclaimer on that one.  It's subject to change and edits, as always.

One thing that helped me get my groove back was an awesome music playlist...which I worked tirelessly to perfect over the course of four days.  Some of the songs I chose on the basis of mood, subject matter, and style.  Clearly, some of those songs seem out of place (Nirvana, what?) but some of them reminded me of things completely relevant.  I avoided songs that just sounded cool or catchy.  I had other playlists for that.  This one was put together with a goal.  There's an art to getting the chemistry of music just right.  For the curious birdies, here's my playlist, in order--plus three songs from the list to hear:

1.  "The Creep Out" by The Dandy Warhols
2.  "Love is an Unfamilar Name" by The Duke Spirit
3.  "Joker & The Thief" by Wolfmother
4.  "The Devil In The Kitchen" by Ashley MacIsaac
5.  "Psycho" by Puddle of Mudd
6.  "So I need some fine wine, and you, you need to be nicer" by The Cardigans
7.  "Strange And Beautiful (I'll Put A Spell On You)" by Aqualung
8.  "First Love" by Adele 
9.  "The Cave" by Jorane
10.  "La princesa Dolça de Provença" by Trobar de Morte
11.  "Wake the Dead" by A Perfect Circle
12.  "Natural Blues" by Moby
13.  "Face in a Cloud" by Audio Bullys
14.  "Bottom Of The Lake" by The Builders And The Butchers
15.  "All Apologies" by Nirvana
16.  "The Hollow" by A Perfect Circle
17.  "Here Come the Bastards" by Primus
18.  "The Rage" by Judas Priest
19.  "The Trooper" by Iron Maiden
20.  "Jack Of Diamonds" by Sonic Syndicate
21.  "War?" by System Of A Down 
22.  "I Disappear (Metallica Goth Remix)" by Public
23.  "Wildcat" by Ratatat
24.  "May Day" by Unkle (featuring The Duke Spirit)
25.  "My Own Dirge" by Sxip Shirey

"The Cave" by Jorane

This one made me think a lot about Nyx and an important moment in her past...which you'll all be familiar with soon enough.

"The Trooper" by Iron Maiden

This one makes me think alot of Elmiryn and the battles she's experienced...but it also made me think of the time Nyx snuck to a battlefield when she was young and saw the dead and dying.

"So I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer" by The Cardigans

Elmiryn's drinking habits. Easy.

Okay, that's all the chatter I've got left in me. With luck, I'll get this chapter up before another month goes by. (no, really, I'm trying for this Friday.) Till next time, remember to check twitter and the RSS feed for updates!

EDIT:  Wow, I sound like a grade schooler giving automatic answers..."This story made me think of the, uh, stuff that was...y'know, important."  It's almost midnight, I'm allowed some ineloquence, darnit!  Oh, but I meant to pip in that the embed players are being a little weird, so if they aren't working for you, just try reloading the page...or going here, where coincidentally I have two more songs to listen to--  http://soundcloud.com/cajeck

Going to my happy place.

WHEN IN DOUBT, SCREAM AND SHOUT.

As unadmirable as it may sound, I just nearly broke my $1700 laptop in a sudden fit of rage that had me slamming my fist into the walls and screaming all seven deadly words irascibly. I had to take a cold shower to calm down. Now I just feel dejected.

You see, I just lost about an hour-and-a-half's worth of writing to an accidental keystroke that took me away from the Blogger post editor. The real issue wasn't even that. It was that the auto-save feature, for whatever reason, failed to do its job. So the two new scenes, the new dialogue, and the grammatical and editorial changes for Chapter 2.3 have all been lost.

Frustration, as many writers will say, is understandable in this situation. "What you really need to do," they'll tell you, "Is think about it in a positive light. You can rewrite whatever you did, and perhaps even better." I've had this happen to me before, so I know this. I've lost more work to silly screw-ups like this in the past.

It still sucks though.

Anyway, I apologize that this is all taking so long. I forgot how long it can take to put edits into effect, even with notes in hand. I guess part of the reason I'm so determined to get this done first is so that I can create a stronger base to build off of when I move to finish "Tributaries". Generally, writers wait till a work is finished before editing the whole thing, but I think it'll be better if I do things this way. My issue is that, despite having an outline and notes and all that nonsense, I still tend to write solely with the last chapter in mind.

Now this may not sound bad, but just imagine it like building a jenga tower. Each level has a piece missing, and you place pieces with consideration to those gaps. But as you build, you only take into account the level you are building off of. So as you go further up, the tower starts to tilt more and more to the side, until it falls over. I really was feeling like the paths of Nyx and Elmiryn's character were beginning to stray a little from how I introduced them and how I intended them to be. The same went for their adventure.

Bottom line: I felt like I was losing perspective, so I wanted to regain that before I went on toward the finale.

To me this is extremely important. So important that I'm willing to put the story on hiatus for a while. I'm tempted to do fillers and/or side stories in the meantime. Maybe post up excerpts from the book Tobias gave Nyx, or do abstract 'backstage' skits with the characters in the story. I'm not really sure. These won't be posted on a regular schedule and they likely won't be long pieces. If I can get the help, I might ask a guest writer to share their work on the site.

So will there be an update Friday? Probably not. Maybe a filler, but it'll be posted on THIS blog, under the appropriate category.

I'm feeling a bit better. Writing this post was a little cathartic. I'll stop now, as I have to go get ready for a lunch meeting, but know that I'll resume work (maybe not today) and the story will continue.

Till the next update, hope everyone takes care. I'll leave you all with a colored pencil drawing I did while I was in Panama. My only wish was that I didn't do it on lined paper.