Climbed again. Five routes--three on the slab (two new and unrated, but 5.8 or so, I think--one had a tricky trick to it--and one 5.8 I've done before.) and that 5.8 from before. I also did a 5.6 that's reliably easy to practice my footwork on.

And now I have come home and my wrists are killing me, so I invented a drink.

I'm thinking of calling it a White Night, because it's a variant on the White Russian: cream, Chambord, and blueberry vodka.

Yes, I think I will make this again.

Okay, so I have a Torquere gift certificate up for grabs. Want it? Just drop me an email at KiernanKelly@KiernanKelly.com. I'll draw a name at random from the entries to win the certificate.

To be fair to everyone's time zone issues, let's give it twenty-four hours. You have until 6:30 p.m. EST tomorrow, November 12th, to enter. I'll post the winner tomorrow night.

Good luck!

Here's a glimpse into my mind as a writer...

Would a werewolf couple celebrate their silver anniversary?

If a werewolf is "mooned," does he shift?


It's stuff like this that keeps me up at night.

Here's a very naughty snippet from "The Mark of Cain." In this scene, Jax and Dakota are doing what they do best...rocking the mattress. Enjoy!



( Click for shapeshifter smut! )

I almost forgot to mention that, like the first book, this sequel also contains three (yes, THREE) short stories set in the same universe. In addition to the full novel, "The Mark of Cain," you also get "Stray," "Shifting Perspective," and "Catch of the Day" as bonus stories! Woo-hoo!

annnnnnnnnnnd I have now loafed the bread and set it to rise, roasted tomatillos and onions and chilis and garlic to make green chili to freeze, made and consumed ANOTHER pot of tea...

and written 1804 words, which brings me to the blessed number 10,010, or... a tenth of a book.

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of myself.

And Word knows "shibboleth." Just for the record.

Mean things: the kids a re fighting, Danilaw is trying to be a good leader, Godwin's Law.

10010 / 100000 words. 10% done!

And now I will listen to Morning Edition, bake that bread, eat something, and go climbing.

I admit freely that, while I'm not particularly a fan of sparkly vampires,  I am a tried and true member of Camp Jacob. I adore Taylor Lautner (and yes, it makes me feel a bit like a pedophile, since he's barely out of diapers), because...wow. That young man is some serious hotness right there. He's the only reason I'm planning to go to see New Moon when it releases. Shirtless shapeshifter? Oh, hell yes!

Here's the first excerpt of the day, a work-safe snippet from my newest release, Mark of Cain.

Blurb: 

Almost twenty years have passed since Cain, the formidable T-Rex shifter, and his Ultimate Predators attacked the Shifting Sands Ranch. Jax, Dakota, and the rest of the Pack have matured and prospered. A new generation of shifters have come into their own at the Ranch, not least of which are twins Tai and Mal, who give their uncles no end of sass, just like teenagers should. Life is good, but the peace they’ve enjoyed is about to be splintered.

Cain left behind more than just his mark on the lives of the folks at the Shifting Sands Ranch, and his twin legacies are vengeful, lethal, hungry, and headed for the Ranch, intent on finishing what Cain began.

What happens when the next generation of shifters collide just like their parents' did? Who will survive? Who will come out on top?

Find out in this exciting sequel to In Their Own Skins: Shifting Sands.

***

Good morning (well, it's morning for me, anyway)!  I'm as excited as a kid on Christmas morning because I've got a brand new book out today! It's the sequel to In Their Own Skins: Shifting Sands, and is called The Mark of Cain. It picks up twenty years after the first book ends, with a whole new generation of shfters, new threats, and new loves.



And hot m/m sex. Did I mention the sex?

I'll post an excerpt a little later on today, and hold a contest to win a Torquere gift certificate, and other random silliness.

First, here's a question: If you could be a shapeshifter, what animal would you be, and why?

813 words. 981 to goal.

Being reminded as I tap away this morning that some vast percentage of constructing a narrative is getting the transitions in the right places (even on a paragraph and sentence level) and the narrative energy and line of direction flowing. Getting the horses pulling in the right direction is only half of it. There have to be traces connecting them to the thing to be pulled.

Also, it's all about the goddamned verbs.

Thank you, to everyone who is or has served in the armed forces. I wish you well, and I wish for a day when you can all go home and raise cabbages.

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ dDy is not.

“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

“What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

“And all music is.”

             --Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut, 1973

So far today I have:

• taken the dog out and thrown his ball for him
• put away the massive tea shipment that arrived yesterday
• made tea
• drunk some of same
• slowly and mindfully eaten two thirds of a very good muffin (paying attention while eating good food: best meditation available!) (although I like to think other parts of me are enjoying the food even when the ego is checked out)
• washed a load of dishes
• kneaded two loaves of bread and put one in the freezer
• set the other one to rise

It's 7:35.

I am about to yoga, shower, dress, put my wrist braces on and write at least six pages.

I think I may need to sleep all afternoon, or the virtue around here just might rise to toxic levels. Or possibly that was all a catwax of epic proportions.

...but the cats are so shiny now. And if I hadn't made bread there would be nothing for supper!

I decided to hurl myself off overhangs today, on the theory that if I not getting lighter, I had bloody better well start getting stronger. So, two attempts at a 5.8 on the 45-foot wall (second time I made about 30 feet of it, but you know, the damned thing is so overhung that when you come off you don't get back on) and then I sent an overhung 5.7 I've done before. As a reward, I decided I was going to do something I had never tried, which I thought was probably too hard for me. A 5.8 in the front corner, with a little roof over it.

Reader, I sent it.

I expected it to be brutal and crimpy and awful at the bottom, but really it was lovely--all balance and technique, and moving your feet around, and your hands are mostly just there to give you things to balance on. Apparently, I climb better than I realized, because I just floated up it.

I fell off scads trying to get over the roof, though. Don't worry. *g*

Going back tomorrow. We'll see if I have any juice.

Foxfire (Trickster's Game #3) (2009)
Written by: Barbara Campbell
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Pages: 628 (Mass Market Paperback)

I might have been late reading Bloodstone, but considering the third and final volume in the Tickster's Game trilogy was just released this year, I feel like I'm on top of things! Finishing this trilogy is just another baby-step in my personal goal of catching up on and completing the serials I've got on my shelves. One down. SO MANY MORE to go.

The premise: taken from the author's website, because I'm evil like that: On the bleak northern moors, Darak and his family begin a new life, free from the prejudices of their tribe and the looming threat of the Zherosi. But their past continues to haunt them, and choices made years ago threaten their future as surely as the armies that raze their forests.

As rebellion spreads and the tribes fight for survival, a new force enters the game--Rigat, the youngest son of Darak and Griane. Gifted with magic far greater than Keirith’s, Rigat is the only one who might be able to save his people. Aided by the Trickster, he embarks on a dangerous game of deception that will determine the future of the children of the Oak and Holly--and the fate of the gods they worship.

Review style: if I'd reviewed this book sooner (sorry folks, I've been distracted), you would've gotten far more in-depth. Instead, you're gonna get something stream-of-conscious that has the POTENTIAL of going in-depth, but may or may not get there. Spoilers? Yes, because it's the end of the trilogy and I want to talk about how that makes me feel. :)

( FOXFIRE: spoilers )

My Rating

Give It Away: which is a hard rating for me to give. Because I sort of know the author, and I really, really, REALLY like the author. And I'll be honest: I couldn't have written something like this, so I applaud that she was able to write an epic fantasy trilogy with such detail and description and well-realized characters. It's her "first" effort, and as a writer, it's not a stretch at all to say that Campbell's got potential, and I'm really, really, REALLY looking forward to her future books. I want to see what else she's capable of, and based on what I've read so far, I think she's capable of a lot.

That said, the trilogy's final installment didn't satisfy me the way I'd hoped, but I think that's in part due to my own personal bias when it comes to reading fiction. And an important note: Heartwood, the first book, is essentially a stand-alone. You can read the second book, Bloodstone, without reading Heartwood (though you'll miss important character-building stuff), but you cannot, absolutely CANNOT, read the third and final installment, Foxfire, without having read at least Bloodstone.

Should you give the trilogy a shot? Heartwood remains my favorite of the trilogy. I love Campbell's focus on tribal people, as that's not something I've seen often in epic fantasy unless it's to vilify them. And the latter conflict between the tribal people and the Mediterranean-like peoples is also compelling--again, it's something I haven't personally seen all that often in fantasy, so I was happy for something different. And again, Campbell does a great job with setting and world-building. It's just that the trilogy didn't resolve on the emotional note that I wished, and I'm happy to acknowledge that may be more my fault than the author's. If you're interested, I'd say you should start with Heartwood, especially since it can be read as a stand-alone.

Cover Commentary: in terms of design? I think this is my favorite cover. First off, it LOOKS like the type of fantasy novel it is. Something magical, something in which reality may not be what it appears to be. And it features the Trickster! Yay for Fellgair! My only complaint about the cover is the font choice and style for Campbell's name. It looks too PhotoShop-y with the glowing letters. And I am sorry that they changed the overall design, because now the covers don't match at all. However, I still stand by my assessment that Bloodstone looked too sword-and-sorcery, and Heartwood, while my favorite from an artistic standpoint, looked too much like a romance novel. But that's me. :) This cover is green, and green makes me happy. :)

While I was melting butter for the muffins (Chaz's blueberry muffin recipe, modified for orange-cranberry-walnut whole wheat muffins (1) (2)) the microwave attempted to immolate itself.

This is not a tragedy, as said microwave was left behind by the last inhabitants of this residence, and it's old enough that it has rotary dials and wood-grain.

But I am glad I didn't bother cleaning it today.

---

(1)If it's good with orange extract, it will be REALLY good with orange extract, Cointreau, orange juice, and bitter orange peel. Right?

(2) Yuppie wand blender is good for pulverising the cranberries into the yogurt. I thought they would be a bit much, whole.

So the thing about the steampunk aesthetic that everybody's talking about: it's weird to me, like watching a band you've loved for years get popular.

Maybe I've just been writing steampunky stuff for too long now (I think I started AtWS in 1993 or 1994, and the idea for the city of Eiledon dates back way before that), but it seems to me that the aesthetic roots here have been around for a long time. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, of course, but we've been mining that field for a long, long time. Castle Falkenstein and Brisco County, not to mention the venerable The Wild Wild West. (Non-Will-Smith edition, although I am a Giant Spider In The Third Act apologist.)

There's a whole world of Beyond Thunderdome postapocalyptica in the grunginess of it, but the color scheme is different, resulting in brown leather and brass fittings instead of black leather and tattered chainmail. (Seriously, run Master Blaster through a couple of filters and see what you get...)

Which is not to say the steampunk thing isn't cool. I've been playing with technofantasy since I was in high school. I'm pleased to see it finally becoming an overnight success, after twenty or thirty years of obscurity. And besides, it's nifty looking.

...Maybe it's just what happens when kids who grew up on Krull and Labyrinth get jobs and money and a little bit of time on their hands.

Or maybe we just finally figured out how to run the 80s through Photoshop to achieve a sepia tone

I do think it's interesting how trends and fashions work. They're a way of skinning reality, of creating an aesthetic that reflects a worldview and vice versa. Time periods look like themselves, and there are all sorts of visual cues there as to what's important and what's the focus in any given era. I find it all intensely cool...

Breaking news--

Mass market paperback Trade hardcover* edition of METAtropolis. Or however you capitalize that.

*Yeah, I don't even know what paperwork I'm signing. I'm writing a book.

2184 words on Grail since 7 am, and I'm calling it a good day's work. If I can keep up an average rate of at least six pages a day, I will be done by early January. Which gives me time to revise the horrid steaming mess that is The White City, and then, once truepenny wraps up her current extravaganza, get pushing on A Reckoning of Men in time to have it done for the summer deadline--which leaves me some time to write The Steles of the Sky.

Oh, yeah, and there's all that Shadow Unit due between now and then.

If I seem like I'm not around much on the internets or for social obligations, that would be why.

Grail is persisting in being sort of interesting to write. Today, it pitched a fit at me and drew a line in the sand structurally, telling me (in essence) that I can't make it skip ahead in the narrative to kill some time for sub-lightspeed-travel, thank you very much, and I can just suck it up and write that part of the book. Which part of the book doesn't currently seem to have much bearing on what I thought was the main plot arc, but I am pretty sure than when my right-brain plants its feet like this, it's usually on to something, and all the left-brain can do is go along with the program and quit whining about why?

So today was nine pages of backstory I hadn't been expecting to write. But it's wordcount, and go me.

I think I've sort of learned to go with the flow and stop trying to microsteer so much. Maybe I'm actually learning to write! Stranger things have happened.

Mean things: loneliness of command, nobody wants to believe that Tristen isn't a war criminal any more, Daddy issues, privation, Balkanization, civil war, religious baggage.

8206 / 100000 words. 8% done!

---

Oh, yeah, incidentally, I know elizabethbear.com and shadowunit.org are hosed. It seems to be an ISP problem. Hopefully it will be fixed before too long.

I slipped a bit yesterday. About 500 words and because I expected to make my count later, I didn't enter it on the site. It was a day for clearing my head and then family obligations ate up my time. Shopped at Target and the get-up-and-out was actually just what I needed. Now, back to my fairy tale and if it stays stuck, I shall move on to a different story. Though, really, I want to put this one to bed. I started it almost 4 years ago. The ideas and plot kept waffling on me. The ending came to me this time and now I just need to write to that direction instead of wandering about in the wilderness.

I was IM'ing with an old friend in the evening and The Dude wanted me to cut and paste the conversation into my current rough draft for word count. He said it counted as dialog. Right. Nothing at all to do with suns, moons, or Rubys. I did not do that. Those 500 words were legit draft verbiage.

Frog Out