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Nawyn
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Name: Liz
Country: United States
State: Pennsylvania
Metro: Philadelphia
Gender: Female
Interests: Love: acting, writing, sewing, reading
Like: watching movies (good ones)
Obsessed With: LOTR, chocolate
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
11/21/2004
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| Just this afternoon, at a wonderful lunch at the Kershners', I got an idea for a book. A setting, really. Michael (he plays Romeo in the "Romeo and Juliet" I'm in this summer) was talking about spending some time in Prague, which he said is DEAD until about 9 and then roars to life.
So I thought: What an AMAZING place to set a fantasy!
It nagged at me all day, and just now I sat down and wrote out a plot summary for what I'm not-so-tentatively calling "Shadow's Princess," about a grubby thief plucked from the catacombs of the city of Shadow by her aristocrat maternal grandmother and used ruthlessly in said grandmother's plan to take control of the city. I'm getting NaNoWriMo-type excited over this thing, and I can hardly wait to start working on it!
Plus I've found some WONDERFUL names for these people. Manx names are freakin' genius - I think my favorite is Ealisaid, for (surprise, surprise) Elizabeth. Is that a great name, or is that a great name? I LOVE it. So Shadow/New Ederin is going to sound rather Manx-ish. I'm tweaking the names a little - my heroine's name is Moiri, from Moirrey, and my villain's is Margiod, from Margaid - but I simply love them, so I'm obviously not tinkering with them too much. Basque names are quite marvelous as well. I'm going to try to use Manx-ish names for native Shadowers, and Basque names for the nobility.
And because she looks pretty damn close to what I was imagining, here's a picture of how Moiri looks to me at the moment, courtesy of the impossibly talented John William Waterhouse:
Moiri
She's Flora, obviously. The one in purple and red. The look on her face is just perfect: she's got that unspeakably beautiful Waterhouse-girl look, but there's a wonderful edge to her expression. She looks independent, curious, unafraid, and far more earthly than I'm used to seeing Waterhouse's women look. She compares in my mind to The Lady Clare, which I love because (again) she's lovely, but very real, and very much a creature of this flawed world.
Plus, this girl just does not look like someone you want to mess around with. Zephyrs notwithstanding.
And because I went looking for her and she was simply perfect, here for your added viewing pleasure is Margiod, Moiri's grandmother and nemesis.
Margiod
In the book, of course, she's a human, not the angel of death. But take a look at that angel. She clearly thinks well of herself, and she's undeniably well born. But she's so cold, so ruthless. She'd stop at nothing to get what she wanted. That's EXACTLY the look I want for Margiod. Intriguing and unnerving at the same time.
GOD, I love Illusions Gallery. | | |
| Ho. Ly. Crap.
I'M DONE!!!!!!!!!!
Keeper of the Emerald is FINISHED!!!!!! I have written the final words! The first book in the whole damn quartet is, after two years, DONE!!!!!
It was kind of incredible. Obviously it didn't work, NaNoing it. In fact, I barely got anything written on it during November (I blame my total exhaustion from the wonderful "Measure for Measure"), and I dropped it come December feeling like the ending I'd set up was horrifically contrived, my own rules of magic had trapped me, and I simply didn't have the energy to go back and redo it.
Yesterday (I kid you not - YESTERDAY) I reopened the document, scrolled down to the end -
And I knew what would happen. I saw the entire climax spread out in front of me, complete with every necessary plot element I'd set up, but uncontrived, magically feasible, somewhat horrifying (as regards the outcome), and - well - as perfect as I could have wanted it. I wrote until 4 in the morning to finish the climax. I couldn't STOP writing. And I wrote the last chapter today. Just now.
YYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And now...on to Book Two... 
Oh, by the way...it's 217 pages long...  | | |
| Sooo...12 days into NaNo and I'm far more behind than I'd like to be. (And don't get me started on my schoolwork - thank God it's almost Thanksgiving break!) Ideally, I'd be well over 10k - at the time of this writing, I have 9,885. Ouch. Not impossible, just...ouch.
So that's the bad news. The GOOD news (about time) is that I'm FINALLY nearing the end of KotE! The last section has begun - the finale, the climax, the Big Battle At The End, whatever you want to call it. It's coming, it's really and truly visible on the horizon. And for the first time in, I guess, a year, I know what's going to happen. It's a bit different from what I originally planned, but I think it'll work. I don't want to set goals for when it'll happen - I don't want to rush this part, I just want to write it. But TRUST ME, I will whoop and cheer to the skies when I write the last words!
P.S. The document is now over 200 pages. And it's the first book in a quartet. I think I've created a monster... :) | | |
| I LIVE!!!!
Or at least, I live here during NaNo season. ;)
Now that the play is over ("Measure for Measure" - I was Isabella, and 'twas wonderful!), I actually have time to think about NaNo. And not a minute too soon, considering that it's, um, kind of November already. Especially because I still haven't finished Keeper of the Emerald, whose sequel, Bearer of the Sapphire, I was planning to write this month.
BUT! I have a plan. I'll just add the end of Keeper of the Emerald, however many words that turns out to be, to my final NaNo word count. That way I'll have extra motivation to FINISH the damn thing. (It's been a year, after all.) And the end really is in sight, which is even better. I've gotten them to Erilon, the island where most of the remaining First population lives, and I've slipped in a bit of unease, which will of course burst into full-blown havoc by the end.
We shall see how it all turns out...
I must confess, though, I'm rather keen on starting Bearer of the Sapphire. Marrach's a fun guy, and I can't WAIT to pit him against Mirasi and watch the fireworks! It really is going to be rather pyrotechnic - he doesn't take crap from anyone, not even Serrav, who's four years older than him and has saved his butt on numerous occasions, and Mirasi's both mischievous and no-nonsense, so the two of them... oy. But fun oy! Oh, the love lives of Our Heroes. Yalanna and Serrav are kind of "Pride and Prejudice"-esque - the attraction's been there from the start, but they've had to go through an entire book of verbal sparring and why-the-hell-should-I-trust-you-with-my-life moments. (Sorry about that, you two.) Marrach and Mirasi - what I'm hoping for there is this instant chemistry, but he's much more interested than she is. Plus she's the one who knows everything he needs to know, from survival tips to how to extract the Sapphire, and he's trying to learn all that and woo her at the same time. Jarven and Elasia will be, I think, the most poignant couple. I'm going to do even worse by them than I did by Yalanna and Serrav. Not only will she fall head over heels from the moment she sees him, but he's going to have the hots for her sister (against his own better judgment) for a good portion of the book, and I'm planning to write their relationship as a wow-that-came-so-close-to-not-happening thing. Plus the added angst of her father trying to kill him and everything. Tulis is too young as yet to meet the love of her life. She's only thirteen. Granted, Jarven's only going to be sixteen when he meets Elasia, but still. Tulis is also the most emotionally fragile of the Berenathim. She'll take a good long while before she trusts anyone outside her family with her heart.
Woo... long ramble. But now I'm even more psyched for NaNo! | | |
| And now, I realize that my shiny new plot has tied me up in knots.
WHO IS THE VILLAIN??????
The villain I want is Renvir - the usurper, the careless murderer, the grudgeholder extraordinaire. But he kind of vanishes in my new plot for KOTE, and the First emerge as the serious powers to be fought. It reminds me of Tanith Lee's Claidi Journals, where you think the Wolf Tower guys are the Eeeevil People, and it turns out that the true twisted genius was the presumed-dead Ustareth. (Who then turns out to be not so eeeevil after all...but I digress.)
Unless...suppose Renvir somehow knows the plans of the First? (Through the Ruby, manipulated by his younger brother Surich.) He, understandably, would not want the Berenathim to master the Emerald, overthrow him, and reinstate the First in Arrin. So not only would he pursue the living daylights out of Our Heroes (making them all the more eager to trust the corrupt First), but he could even be on hand for the climactic fight for the Emerald, in a desperate attempt to destroy the First and the Berenathim. If he DID destroy the First on Erilon (leaving only the First settlement on Senthir), that would actually be good for plot development: not only would Yalanna have no repository of knowledge on how to USE the darn Emerald, Our Heroes could all revile him a little more for the genocide of killing the First.
And then, of course, they'd have to split up. Yalanna (and Serrav, whoopee!) would stay on Erilon, where the Emerald is most powerful, but Marrach, Jarven and Tulis would have to go back to Arrin to make Renvir's job of locating them a little harder. Marrach anyway, since he's going to spend "Bearer of the Sapphire" poking around the Far Corners with Mirasi. He could send Jarven and Tulis back to Erilon...force Tulis to be more self-reliant, force Jarven to learn to deal with people...
YAAAAAAAY! Problem solved!!! | | |
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