Author: OneTrueStudent

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CO ride

This state is magnificent.

I wanted to get out of the apartment, so I went twenty minutes west and up Lookout Mountain. The Ute tribe used the mountain as a lookout over the plains, though I don’t know how strong a connection between them and the name is. I saw Denver wavering below, a city in rows. Beyond the lights the prairies are dark, so Denver always looks like the edge of the world, a city built to the horizon and stacked up against the dome of the sky.

It’s a lovely place. Makes me delighted to live here.

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Immersion

One of my favorite things in the world is getting so into a scene I’m surprised when I realize it isn’t the real world. I just wrote a thunderstorm, and I’m surprised and disappointed to find it’s a beautiful night.

Ahead a chapter on the Nine. Had a lot of fun with this one.

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Redwall

I finished Redwall, the one about the mice. It can be found on Goodreads or on Amazon.

I’m not very good at providing feedback or reviews, and as such am going to practice. So imagine this is directed to a hypothetical Mr Jacques or you, the reader, have just published Redwall.

Give me a million dollars, please.

Okay, but seriously.

The basic idea behind Redwall is its biggest draw, the interest in animals doing human things. Within that idea Redwall has great success. The attraction is that if you, the reader, want to read about animals doing things, the book rewards that interest. Moreso than a lot of other works on similar themes, the book is interested in animals doing things. There’s energy in there, and if you want to have your enthusiasm matched, Redwall does so with a willful lack of self-awareness that becomes confidence. The book trusts you too want to read about animals with people problems, and is a little more excited about them than it needs to be. It’s welcoming in that way. It invites you in, shows you the cards, and lets you wonder how they’re to be played out.

It’s a lot more brutal than I expected. Mice, rats, and forest creatures get killed. They get killed in natural ways; they get killed by cruelty, but they die and Redwall pulls few punches. No one really expects the mains to die, but otherwise, it is varmint season at Redwall Abbey. Not only miscellaneous rats, but named characters. I wasn’t expecting that, and was surprised at how well it worked on a kid’s book.

It is a kid’s book, or at least young adult. The writing is aimed young. The same enthusiasm which makes the book welcoming adds a level of roughness, a defiance of polish, that makes the energy authentic. I get the impression Jacques really liked the story and had a ton of fun writing it.

Having said all that, I don’t quite know if I liked it or not. I obviously liked it enough, because I tore through it in a few busy days. But I’m not sure about it. It’s a good book to have read, and I’m pleased it’s in my headspace.

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Colorado Mountains

I want to ride the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway and set out this morning to see what I could do.

I got cold. That’s what I could do.

It’s an amazing ride. Even in cold misery, that was obvious. From Rt 6 and up 119, taking a few detours onto gravel roads, the scenery was incredible for right outside town. There’s fun stuff of there calling my name, but until it warms up twenty or thirty degrees, it’s going straight to voicemail.

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Status

I’ve had a lot of problems blogging recently. Getting the Nine out the door on Sundays and Wednesdays is fairly difficult and working DM in the background consumes a lot of my free energy. The Nine needs more dragons.

I’m reading Redwall, which I’ve meant to start for a while. It’s good. I’ve also got Neverwhere on deck. I read Neverwhere years ago but don’t remember it much. At the time I was underwhelmed, but people whose opinions on books I trust have raved about it. I might not have read it closely or perhaps was otherwise distracted, so it’s worth a second look. Besides, all books are free at the library, so I can’t afford not to read it, right?

It’s motorcycle weather again. I’m hoping to put some miles down this weekend.

Take care, everyone.

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Monday

Happy Monday, world!

If you’re a reader, either of my work or not, thank you! Good luck.

If you’re a writer and struggling, keep going! Ask for help if you need it, and I’m rooting for you, hoping you’re rooting for me.

If you’re neither, you still have struggles, dreams, and ambition. Do everything you can and be amazed at how much more that is than you expected.

Luck is preparation meeting coincidence.

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Process

My writing process is me, terribly sleep deprived, slamming unhealthy supplements while I open tabs of Firefox and make myself close them before I look at crap. Then I make jokes no one gets and somewhere a tragedy happens that makes it seem like I’m laughing at dead people. Seriously, the world is convergent. I laugh at a rabbit getting booped, and twenty minutes later the Russian Rabbit Apartment Complex goes up in flames with two hundred dead.

I miss my books; I miss my bed; I want a dog. Happy St Patrick’s Day.

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Site

I did some backend work today. Everything should be up and running. There are no more new user registrations, as they all seemed to be spam.

I live on a 6.5 day week, and I’m doing Gerard next in the Nine. Given I write with the linearity squirrels run across roadways, expect a four chapter digression on Amber’s dental care scene, and illegal flouride-based shadow raves. Follow your dreams, child. Follow your dreams because they stole my money.

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Character Build: Tatianna

Who is she?

Tatianna is a created person out of shadow. She was Ledes’s last painting, a full-sized portrait of Atiana, a dead woman he bore unrequited love for. She was his Atiana as he saw her, perfect, dark, and beautiful. The creation of the painting and the drugs killed him.

Melies conjured her. Tatianna gained some knowledge from Ledes, her painter, including language and rough social norms, and some knowledge from Melies, including the basics of conjuration. She was given to Julian as a gift, and he wanted more, instructing her to remain with Melies and learn more conjuration. After teaching her, Melies took her on the pathways to Amber and gifted her to Julian again.

The shadow-magic conjuration of Tenthet did not work in Amber, and the conjuration failed. She fled Melies and Julian, and arrived in Amber alone. By her narrative appearance she is almost broke, and an accessory to robbery and possibly murder. It is unknown if she and Obrecht killed people.

What does she want?

1) A sense of self-worth and power over her own outcomes. Melies didn’t see her as a thing, Ledes created her as personal erotica, and Julian cared little for creatures of shadow. All her decisions were made for her until she fled in the forests of Arden. She wants self-determination as well as to be a person.

2) To be recognized as powerful

3) To live

Why can’t she have it?

1) She’s broke. Poverty cares nothing for who you are. She doesn’t have the money to buy a better life.

1a) Her conjuration doesn’t work in Amber. It’s the only thing she knew how to do in Tenthet and one of two sources of her power up until arriving in Arden. It doesn’t work any more. (The other source of power, sexuality, is somewhat less than she thought because there are a lot of beautiful women in Amber, more in shadow, and the people with true power, the scions of Oberon, aren’t limited by what’s around. Julian specifically includes a bolded asterisk.)

2) Shadow conjuration doesn’t work in Amber, and she isn’t of the blood.

3) Bleys is chasing her for her ring.

The Nine at AO3 Nine for Mortal Man Doomed to Die

I take commas out of titles. In JRRT’s original poem there was a comma. I know. I took it out.