Brain Droppings

(artwork by Adam F. Watkins… and cribbed from a Google image search.)

This little ditty sprang from the diseased imaginings of my beloved husband. (Yes, he is just as insane as I am.)

I’ve been havin’ rum and onions;

And mate, my farts do stank.

I guess that that’s why half the crew

Wants to walk the plank.

The others told the Cap’n

That I need to be keelhauled;

Because when I farted,

Half the men went bald.

I may not have gotten that word for word. It was an impromptu thing, the source of which is best not investigated too closely. We don’t want to provoke it.

Time For the Real Work to Begin

First, meet Arnold and Jack, just granted their faces this afternoon. Although you can’t see it in this photo, Arnold has a smooshed-in face and a crease-like scar running through his squinty eye.

I received the editing notes from my editor today for Hell’s Dodo. I will look over them and get started on the changes and revisions this week. There is one scene that I will be deleting per request, although the event will remain in the story. The scene is not vital to the plot. In fact, I’ve been toying with editing it out ever since I wrote it. It is a rather disturbing, graphically violent torture scene. The only reason I even plan on leaving the event in the story is to explain a character’s behavior toward another character later on.

I’ve been planning to add a “free reads” section to this blog. I will probably do this over the Fall and Winter months. It will include the Once Upon a Tide sections from the Waves of Darkness series, excerpts I’ve used at convention readings, deleted scenes, and other short works (eventually).

Arachnophobes, do not read past this point. You have been warned.

Found this beauty hanging out next to my porch chair today.

She’s about the size of my thumbnail (not counting her leg span), and her web anchors ran from the porch roof to the porch deck. Thankfully, she didn’t attach it to my chair. I didn’t want to disturb her. It has been unusually warm this past week, which probably explains her presence. The cooler temperatures due this week will probably drive her back into hiding. Meanwhile, she can have all the flies she can catch.

Everyone have a safe, happy, spooky Halloween.

Unusual Sighting

This morning, on the way to get a newspaper, I spotted three deer in a neighbor’s yard. At first, I thought it was a buck and two does. He looked to be about an eight-point. They turned and ran a short distance then turned back to look at my vehicle as I drove past slowly.

It was three bucks together. Beside the eight-point, there was a four-point and a spike (yearling buck with only single point, unbranched antlers). The quality of the light had rendered the smaller bucks’ antlers nearly invisible at first.

At this time of year, seeing bucks together and not fighting for a harem is a rare sight indeed. They made quite an impressive sight.

And So It Begins…

The plotting out of Maelstrom of Fate has been completed. I have 9 handwritten pages of plot points and notes to guide me on this voyage. I’ve decided not to assign chapter numbers to these. When I did that for Hell’s Dodo and The Daedalus Enigma it rarely worked according to plan. Sometimes a point I’d assigned to one chapter spread out over two or more, while separate chapter assignments got melded into one.

Even in plotting, scenes I thought wouldn’t take place until near the end of the book moved closer to the middle.

There is also the element of surprise to deal with. Throughout the writing of this book series, there have been scenes and actions I didn’t know about until I was in the middle of writing them, or the characters let me know about them. They have not always been straightforward about this, either. For instance: in the second book, Lady Carpathia was supposed to kill Commander Turlington. Instead, she spared his life and made him a sort of pet. It was not until writing book six that I learned what her ultimate purpose for defying me on this was.

This has been and continues to be a fun journey with Viktor and his crew. I hope that you, my readers, find it just as enjoyable.

Upcoming Book Release!

Hell’s Dodo has been pushed back a couple of weeks. Rather than a Halloween release, it will have a mid-November release date.

You have been warned. 

The Beginning of the End… or is it?

I’ve finished my reading break and started plotting Maelstrom of Fate (book 7 of the Waves of Darkness series). I’d originally planned this to be the final book of the series. I am still debating whether to make the follow-up story arc a series or a single novel. I’ve been chronicling Viktor’s adventures since 2006. (I was writing the third book, Silent Fathoms, when I finally got a publisher.) Part of me doesn’t want to break from these characters, but I do have other projects I’d like to devote more time to.

The Adventures of Pigg and Woolfe, a Steampunk serial adventure based loosely on The Three Little Pigs, comes immediately to mind. I would also like to revisit and hopefully finish A Dream of Water, a stand-alone fantasy novel based on a very detailed dream I had a few years ago. I had planned for this one to be YA, but that’s just not happening; my psyche is too dark to keep it “clean.”

Meanwhile, two weeks ago I saw Christmas trees and decorations being put out for sale just across the aisle from Halloween stuff at my local Kmart.

Seriously.