The Characters are Taking Over

Okay, it's very strange how you can be going one way and out of the blue one of your characters just decides to take off on their own little tangent. One of mine decided to single-handedly rewrite the story of King Arthur last night. I'm not sure that I agree with what she did but hey what can you do when you're characters take over your writing.

Games Vikings Play

Okay I'm doing some research and I found interesting stuff about games that Vikings play so of course I had to share!

First of all there is the lovely game of Hnefatafl. I'm sure someone out there can pronounce that! I'm fluent in Danish, which is a Nordic language, and I couldn't even venture a guess! Hnefatafl is a game similar to Chess but according to some of the sites I found on it, it's actually older. There are pieces and its played on a board with a grid. The pieces simulate a Viking Raid so there are pieces in the middle which someone is in charge of defending and four sets of pieces along the outside which someone else attacks with. Those good old Vikings! Surround and conquer!

Another game I found was Kubb I couldn't find anything but commercial websites about it so for all I know someone totally could have made it up just to make money, but according to their site its an outdoor game played by Vikings. Its a little like bowling or horseshoes.

Back to the Viking party...

One of Those Days...

Ever have those days when it seems like you do nothing but work and when you're done you've accomplished virtually nothing! I hate those days!!! They make me want to pull my hair out!

I did get several things marked off my To Do list though so I guess I must be accomplishing something.

Last night I got a few pages writen and I was having a bit of writers block. I hadn't written anything really since the in- laws were here. I hate when I get out of the swing and its tough to get back in. I wanna finish the scene tonight if I can. That will of course depend on my baby bear. We shall see.

Well back to real work now!

The Evil Yule Cat!

I'm doing some research for a scene I'm writing for Arrianna where the people of Sithein go and visit the dragon's for Yule. So I was looking up Ancient Viking Yule traditions and I'm finding some freaky stuff!

Like for instance...

The Yule Cat was a giant cat that came and ate people who were lazy and didn't get their work weaving done!

Now if you ask me that's just freaky!

Now back to work!

One More Found Alive in the Horrors!

Upon further cleaning up of my rose bed. I discovered one more poor pitiful rose clinging to life in the thigh high weeds. I managed to get all the weeds out of there and treated the rocks lining the outside of the bed with roundup and fertilized and treated the roses with something to kill bugs and rust. Hopefully they will appreciate my efforts and survive. Actually I think one of the roses might actually be a wild rose that sprouted out of the root. We'll see if its actually still a hybrid tea whenever it manages to bloom.

Poor roses!

I'm a Horrible Plant Mommy!!!

I planted a flower bed early this summer and then laid down mulch...I thought that meant that the weeds wouldn't grow back. How wrong I was! I didn't know that you had to lay down some kind of cloth down t keep the weeds from coming through!!! So Nicky kept me busy pretty much ALL summer and I ignored my poor flower bed until today. I went after it with the weed eater and my hands. Should have worn gloves too! I'm gonna regret that tommorrow. After I used up all the battery my sad little weed eater could give I started yanking weeds. I discovered that all but three of the poor roses I planted this spring (I think there were about 8) died. And one little sad Mr. Lincoln (red) rose was just clinging on to life despite having become food to whatever lived in that grass! I did as much as I could before Nicky started screaming. For some reason he gets just horrified when I'm outside and he can hear either the weed eater or the lawn mower. I think he thinks they are trying to eat me or something! So I'm going to try to finish tommorrow. I tell you I felt like a horrible person! The Roses will refer to this as the Summer of Doom if they make it through winter to tell the new ones I buy next spring.

I haven't gotten much done lately because I've had family from out of the country visiting, but I hope to get back to work soon. First, however, I've got ALOT of cleaning to do! We're adding a room on, which will be great when it's done, but until then it's kinda a pain. You have to navigate a deathtrap to get to the front door and the back door, which is where the new room is being added on is a three foot jump up to the door. Plus I have to get my bedroom where the circuit box is cleaned so that Jerry, our carpenter, can actually get to it because the bed is right in front of it! And I have to get Nicholai's room which has been a mess since we painted and put down new flooring because I put everything in there to get it out of the way. He sleeps in our room anyway so its not dire but Jerry has to take the window out of his room and get in to sheet rock. ARRRGHHHH Someday I swear I will have time again!

Reality Check...

Wow! I'd forgotten how really strangely my mind works when I'm writing. Like it keeps writing even though I'm not actually trying to. It doesn't do it when I'm editing just writing. I've written about 20 pages of Arrianna in the last few days, which is more than I've written in ages and actually enjoyed it. Seems like when I was getting my creative writing degree it was more work than pleasure. That on top of the fact that I passionately hate writing short fiction and knew they were going to just tear it apart anyway cause it wasn't all angsty and drug-filled. Well most of it wasn't. It's wonderful to be back in familiar worlds that I enjoy writing about.

Its just that...

Well the world follows me out of the book to be quite frank. I was driving home from the Applefest this weekend and the trees on the mountains were just starting to change and I was thinking. "Jeez, it's pretty but its going to take forever to get over that mountain in this carriage." At the time I was writing a long trip. Then I was like, "Uh no its not, stupid, this is a car not a carriage!"

I also go through personality shifts depending on the character I'm writing about. Dana is strong willed but painfully polite. Arrianna is...how to explain it. I wouldn't say she is weak by any stretch of the imagination, but she doesn't fight back against everything the world throws at her nearly as hard as she should, and she is witty with a tendency to be a little rude. Let's hope no one slaps me for being a smartass while I'm working on this book.

I'm planning on starting final run through of edits for Dana next weekish. We shall see how it goes.

Woo Pig!

O Lord! It's hard to be humble.
When you're perfect in everyway.
I can't wait to look in the mirror.
I get better lookin' each day.
To know me is to love me.
I must be one heck of a fan.
Oh, lord! It's hard to be humble.
When you're an Arkansas Razorback Fan!
GO HOGS!!!

Okay I'm better now! We had a great game today so I'm still excited! We beat number two in the nation, Auburn! Yay us!!! And we didn't just beat them! We beat them soundly!

After the game we went to Applefest and then to a party for work. So it's been a darn busy day! I'm just settled down now to do some writing. That is if Nicky stays asleep so that I can. He was pretty tuckered out from all of the partying.

Back to working on Arrianna. I'm writing a fight scene and those always make me slightly uncomfortable. I don't fight...well not ussually...So its kinda difficult. Hmmm...I don't drink blood either. Why does it not bug me to write those scenes. That's got to be something that a pshycologist could pick apart. :D

Pass your Plate and Vampire Goodies

First the Vampire Goodies! As a way of clearing my palate from my Dana revisions to prepare my self for the absolute final after that I'm sending you to the publisher revisions, I've been reading the next book that comes after Dana. Click Me for a teaser of Arrianna Penndragon. It’s not quite finished yet and it’s been a LONG time since I've worked on it so I was trying to get in the mood to finish the outline. I'm totally digging it. I can't stop reading when I'm supposed to be going to sleep. Arrogant? It's not meant to be...but I just love vampire stories! Especially right now cause I'm totally Dragon saturated. There are dragons in this one too though. They do a great deal of interacting in these stories.

So on to Pass Your Plate...

Lishy and I went to this store, where they have all the ingredients and everything ready for you and you put together meals that you can take home and freeze. We did the Split 10 deal and got a free meal because it's their grand opening special. You basically fix a dinner for 4-6 people and then split it which is just enough for our families. So we walked out of there with 22 nights worth of meals for only 175 with tax. Plus they are not unhealthy at all. Don't get me wrong if you're on a 1000 calorie a day diet this is probably not for you, but they are a healthy sensible dinner in the words of the Slim-Fast folks.

It was supposed to take an hour and a half...

We walked out of there after 3 hours!!!!!

What does that say about us?!?!?! Okay so we're slow, bite me. But we had fun doing it!!!

There are stations for each recipe, and you mix up your meal and then pop it in the fridge.

At the very first station...I'm all gettin’ in to the grove and KERPLOP down goes the chicken broth all over the floor!!! I'm so lame! So the poor helper guy had to come clean it up for me. He was really nice about it though. They are cool they don't hover over you, but they are there to help you if you're having issues shall we say? Kinda like I was when I made the salmon croquettes. I dunno if y’all have had salmon croquettes but they are supposed to be pretty solid. I have NO idea what I did to mine but they were about the consistency of lumpy mayonnaise. We added some more bread crumbs and that helped a little but I dunno how great they are going to be.

One thing that annoyed me a little was that they had no latex-free gloves. I'm allergic to latex so my hands were hurting by the time I finished all the stations that had chicken. You're required to wear gloves for those. Ironically however you don't have to wear them for the stations with eggs. There is salmonella in eggs too! But I can forgive them. They are just starting the business I'm sure they'll get some latex free gloves. I intend to put it in the suggestion box.

I hope the food is delicious! It looks realllly good. If it is we are SO doing this every month. I have a baby and a job and with my writing that doesn't leave much time for cooking.

Oh one more thing!!!! They were playing Christian music. The thing is I didn't even notice until I heard Love Shack come on and started grovin'! Then the words were....wrong. It was in fact not Love Shack but Meshach... Lets just say it was ...unique.

Well I'm off to read more Arrianna! Enjoy your evenings!