Lovin' the Language Blogfest!

Today's special Monday post is brought to you by Jolene Perry's Lovin' the Language Blogfest!

I was psyched when I found out about this because I, too, am a lover of language. Beautiful writing - like really lovely, oh-that-could-be-poetry writing - takes my breath away. It pushes all my writerly readerly buttons. In fact, if you saw my Favorite Books blogfest post, you'll see part of why I love From the Dust Returned and The Last Unicorn so much is because the language sings. It does things I can only hope to aspire to.

So yeah, I love the language.

Here are the super flexible blogfest rules:

Pick any five lines (yes, it can be a few short lines that roll together. That's okay, and is probably what I'll do) from one of your WIPs. If you're feeling shy, and don't want to share from your own work, share from something you LOVE.

On June 27th (a dreaded Monday post) you can toss up some of your favorite lines - you know - the ones that make you want to jump up from your computer and raise your hands in the air when you get them down, or the ones that make you laugh, smile, or cry each time you read them.

Jolene herself confesses to being something of a blogfest rule-breaker. So, in honor of that spirit, I'm going to be breaking some rules myself this time around.

Instead of lines from 1 WIP, I'm sharing lines from a few. Why? Well, the current WIP has a few good ones here and there, but I have a few from others that I like better. :)

Here's a random sampling of some of my favorite lines from WIPs.

[From something old...]
1) It was a beautiful, delicate thing made of interlocked gears and fine coiled wire all encased in glass. Luminescent spell-fluid glowed within its small chambers, ready to be activated, and in the darkness, it seemed to the man as if he were holding a star.

2) Her memory was long, and the ghosts kept there stirred as she lost herself in the brushstrokes.

She could touch those flowers and be devoured with them by the pressing, encompassing dark.

[From something new...]
3) The girl cocks her head like a bird, pouting her lips at him. They are stained the reddish black of elderberries. “I know you in the sweetness of my marrow, the aching of my bones.”

[From Alz & my current WIP]

4) [Alz] "How far is the Bellows from here?"
The guard looked Cameron up and down.
"A good few miles," the guard replied. "You'll want to take a coach."
"Or I could walk," said Cameron.
"Aye, you could," said the guard, "and end up robbed blind and naked on the roadside."
"That bad, eh?" said Cameron.
"Maybe worse. Depends on the time of day." The guard squinted up at the sky, now a pale blue streaked with white cloudy wisps and the sun rising toward zenith. "Probably just robbed blind, roundabout now. Could end up dead, though, if you swagger through the Bellows flashing a sword around like that."

5) [Krispy] He cut a stark figure against the faded landscape like the first inked letter on a penciled page.


That's that! Thanks Jolene for having this fab idea, and thank YOU for reading!

Care to share a line or two (of yours or someone else's) in the comments? (That is if you're not already doing the blogfest) If you are doing the blogfest, let me know and I'll be sure to stop by!

See you Wednesday!

Teaser Thursday

Talk of NaNoWriMo is popping up everywhere lately. This post was going to be about that very topic, but I'm switching it up with a Teaser THURSDAY. I'm also tired and my brain is too preoccupied for writing an actual NaNoWriMo post.

So despite my distraction, I've been working on that new short (it's not very horror-ish) and finally making good use of my moleskine notebook. It was within those sporadically used pages that I found a snippet of a poem or something that I scribbled last year. If I recall correctly, I think it has something to do with the in-universe folklore of my NaNo project from last year.

So for your viewing pleasure, some lines:


She sits upon her sliver of moon,
tossing comets that trail...
Golden dust
from her hands.

Hoping to catch celestial fish,
she casts these
Glittering lines and
in the dark
It rains stars.


Have you found any interesting snippets lately? What random side things do you do to world-build? Can you rec me some good poetry?

See you lovely peeps on Friday for Randomosity. Stay warm and dry (it's cold and rainy here)!

Teaser Tuesday: Siblings

Welcome back from the long weekend for those of you who celebrated Labor Day! Nothing like a 3-day weekend to rejuvenate the mind and body. I think we should have 3 day weekends at least once a month. Other countries have siestas and tea time and other sorts of afternoon breaks! Can't we come to a compromise and have a 3-day weekend once every couple of weeks?

Ah, wishful thinking. How were your weekends, by the by?

In any case, I will be a busy bee this week, trying to make my most pressing deadlines and getting down to the dread business of packing (I hate packing). The sister is flying off to NYC before I do, so I can't mooch off her superior packing abilities. SIGH.

But I will probably get in a Randomosity post on Friday, and then everything's up in the air because I will be on the East Coast indulging in frolicsome revelries.

So in honor of down time and chillaxing with siblings, I give you my very first Teaser Tuesday post. Wrote it last week on a whim and rediscovered two characters I barely ever wrote before. I remembered how much I liked them.

Have you ever forgotten about a character or story only to rediscover them again? Did you pick that story back up after?

Snippet written from the following prompt from Toasted Cheese.

Use the following words: bored, useless, together, little, stars.
*

On nights when the weather permitted it, Sybil knew she could find her brother on the roof. Sol liked to lie on his back and stare into the darkened sky for hours. She always wondered what it was he thought about when he did that, but she didn't feel it was right to ask. Like it would be an invasion of his privacy, even though she knew he wouldn't mind her asking.

As expected, she found him there tonight, his arms crossed behind his head, eyes on the little pinpricks of light. He didn't take his gaze away when she sat down next to him and ruffled his dark hair. Instead, he said, "I wish there were more of them. I wish they looked like they did in the pictures, a whole shining white ribbon."

"You only get that stuff out in like the desert or something."

"I know. I just wish, you know?" He was silent for a moment, and then he turned to her. His eyes were the color of charcoal, unreadable. "Were you bored or something? You never come up here."

Sybil shrugged. "Eh, sort of. I kind of felt useless downstairs, sitting in a room all by my lonesome."

"No TV?"

"Just the usual crap."

"You'll be bored here too," he said and went back to looking skyward.

"I know."

With a sigh, Sybil stretched her legs out and lay down next to him. The roof was hard against her back, and she wondered how Sol could spend hours up here lying on something so uncomfortable. The bowl of the sky curved over them, trapping the lights and sounds of the city under its dome. It was the perfect weather for stargazing - cloudless and clear. If it weren't for the light pollution from everything around them, Sybil imagined they'd be treated to quite a sight. As it was, she only saw a few glittering points far, far in the deepest of the blues.

"Hey," she said. "What do you see up there anyway? What are you looking for?"

He didn't answer her for a while, and she didn't push him. Sol kept a lot of things to himself, and maybe he didn't want to say anything. She was used to that by now - his silence and his secrecy. It didn't bother her as much as it used to because she knew he didn't mean anything by it, and out of everyone, she was the person he trusted the most. He would tell her in his own time.

"It makes me feel like I'm not alone," he said. "Like there's something out there like me, bigger than me."

Sybil rolled onto her side, propping herself up on an elbow to peer down at him. His face was expressionless, and his skin was an eerie shade of pale in the relative darkness. She could tell his mind was far away from this rooftop where they were together, searching the galaxies flung wide above their heads. Slowly, Sybil reached her free hand over and flicked the tip of his nose. Sol started, shaking his head and staring at her in surprise.

"You aren't alone, stupid," she said, poking him in the cheek for good measure. Then she settled back down and pointed up at the stars. "Look, if you connect those ones, they make a lobster."

"I think it's supposed to be a crab," he said, sounding a little confused.

"How does that look anything like a crab? It's a lobster. It's got a tail."

She heard the rustle of fabric as her brother shifted his position and felt his hand wrap around hers. His skin was ice cold. This too she was used to, so she didn't flinch from his touch. He only held her hand briefly before he let go, but it was enough to make her smile.