Vlog excerpt: Not Another Bard's Tale

Today, we have a special treat. Elena over at You're write. Except when you're Rong, has posted a vlog excerpt of my WIP, Not Another Bard's Tale.

Lying about defeating a dragon will come back to bite you, literally.

Bruce Gawain, knight of questionable reknown, sets off to the wall of Nok to retrieve a stolen jewel and free a village from a hungry dragon's fury. In order to finance his quest, Bruce travels with the sword-brearing Olga and her curvaceous sister, Svety, chosen one of the Sheep God. They journey to Gambreland to stake out prospective locations for Svety's Holy Mutton serving Inns, save the country by reuiniting an over-achieving Evil Overlord with his long lost son, and find the dragon's stolen treasure before it eats everyone in the village.

This NaNo Novel from 2008 is the product of my efforts to have fun with as many of the items from The Fantasy Novelist's Exam as possible with the intent to end up with a coherent story. As you see by the WIP status, that's still up for debate, but I had a darn good time writing it.

Elena did a great job picking up on the silly humor of the piece. I hope you enjoy the opening scene.


If you'd like to see your excerpt brought to life, fly your dragon over to Elena's blog.

When the angels don't sing

After a reasonably productive week of tweaking two of my short stories and sending them into submission land, I'm gearing up to get the next two ready to go. Seems I've gotten a bit lax with my submission juggling. More like I dropped all the balls and let them gather a warm coat of dust.

In wandering over one of these dusty short stories, I discovered that it just didn't quite click for me. Something isn't quite there yet. It's been through a brief round of critiquing and it was sent out into the wide world twice, but found its way back home. Darn you, trail of bread crumbs!

I like this story. It was something different for me, as I tend to write more male pov and its one of my very few fantasy shorts. I've edited, revised, tweaked, reread ten times but that certain angels singing 'Yes, this is it!' feeling I get when I'm ready to send a story out is eluding me. I'm hoping my wonderful critique group can point me in the right direction.

Children of the Leaves - When Hemina's body and her tree dwelling people are attacked by a God in need of a phsyical form, she finds that her Goddess is missing and someone has to take up the slack.

Special Guest: Chrystalla Thoma

I am very excited to announce that we have a special guest today! All the way from Cyprus, please welcome author, Chrystalla Thoma.

Jean: Hi Chrystalla. Welcome. Can you tell us a few things about yourself?

Chrys: Well, I’m Greek. *allows time for the appropriate bouzouki music to start playing and handsome Greek men to dance and smash plates* I come from Cyprus, an island in the Eastern Mediterranean, right underneath Turkey, above Egypt, and next to Syria and Lebanon. Which makes for an interesting culinary and musical culture – oriental pop, rock and Greek music, mousaka and taramosalata and hummus!

Jean: The closest I get to anything Greek is the occasional gyro or baklava binge, but handsome, plate-breaking men sounds very enticing.

Most authors love cats and live in remote houses. Are you like that, too?

Chrys: I own no cats and no house – but I do have a hybrid energy car (a Toyota Prius)! I possess herds of wild books that graze on my shelves and floor, and I’m married to the best husband in the whole world, imported from the tropics of Costa Rica. *waves at Carlos* I have lived for some years in France, England and Germany, and am now immune to foreign (i.e. non Greek) cooking. *g* As a world traveler, I am definitely a typical author.

Jean: Excuse me a moment while I protect my discarded characters from your wandering herd of wild books. While I do that, why don't you tell me about your upcoming book?

Chrys: “Dioscuri” is a modern, urban fantasy version of the ancient Greek myth. Dioscuri was the name given to the twin brothers Kastor and Polydeukes, Zeus’ sons with Leda, one of whom is mortal and the other immortal. Zeus mated with Leda in the form of a swan and she gave birth to two eggs. When they cracked, the Dioscuri emerged, along with Helen the Beautiful, the very same who allegedly caused the downfall of Troy…

Jean: I see. Break the eggs to make a story… Where is the story set? What happens?

Chrys: The ancient gods have woken again in Athens, and there is war. The two brothers fight against the monsters. When the mortal brother, Kastor, dies in battle, his immortal sibling Polydeukes takes things in his own hands and makes a dark deal with the Underworld. A deal Zeus will sooner or later discover and all hell will break loose.

Jean: *shudder* I've studied enough Greek Mythology to know that deceiving Zeus is never a good idea. Where can people learn more about you and your work?

Chrys: “Dioscuri” is coming out with MuseItUp Publishing in March 2011. You can find me and my stories here: http://museituppublishing.com/musepub/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=91&Itemid=82

You can follow my ramblings about Greekness and mythology and about my stories here:
http://chrystallathoma.wordpress.com/

Thank you for having me here!

Jean: Of course, anytime! My host of discarded characters thanks you for not stepping on them during your visit.

If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading any of Chrystalla’s work, head on over to her blog and get started. My personal favorite is World of Shells. I think of that story every time I look at my daughter's hermit crabs.

Thank you for visiting, Chrystalla. Keep those great stories coming!

Relaxing

Yes, yes, I'm writing and all that, but I'm also trying to relax more this year. You know, keeping that crazy superwoman six feet underground. So far, I've been fairly sucessful.

I've found joy in critiquing again. After a thousand some crits in three years, I was getting a smidge burnt out. I stepped back last October and took a few months off. That felt darn good. Now, I'm getting back into sharing the writing wealth, reading some great stories, flogging people with rubber ducks (its a long story) and meeting writers I've not worked with before. So far, I've avoided overcommiting myself in that regard. So far.

Writing has been slow, but I've just about go my second short ready to spring into submissionland. Which is good, since that one has a January 30th cut off. Novel work is on hold at the moment during operation re-freakin-lax.

So what the heck have I been doing? Watching tv. I don't do that very often, but my evil husband signed us up for Netflix. Evil Netflix has full seasons of my favorite, long-lost tv shows. Call it reenergizing the creative juices.

My mornings are filled with episodes of Stargate Atlantis. Evening brings an episodes of Earth 2 shared with my children, which is perfect for introducing kids to Sci-fi--very famly friendly compared to much of what is out there currently. Next up in the queue: FarScape.

What a better thing to share with my kids, than my love of sci-fi tv? I have to bring them over to the geek side before they get too exicited by friends and teen stuff. I don't have much time left.

What are your favorite sci-fi shows?

Only ten days left!

All this month, Elena over at Your Write. Except when your Rong, is holding contest wherein you must write a 100 word sentence in the hopes of winning $100. The amount of the prize depends on the number of participants.

So far we're all in the running for $24. Come on people. Someone wants to win big. Join us. You know you want to spew out a hundred word monster setence too!

Check out the link above for all the current entries and visit some great writer's blogs. You just might find some new procrastination destinations... err... blogs to follow.

My 100 word offering:

Gentle blue waves lapped against Ciralia’s pale shoulders as she fluttered her long, slender arms around her in order to maintain her view of the great wooden ship with its crew of dirty, land-dwelling, dark-skinned men who were running to and fro with buckets on long ropes, throwing water on the bright orange fires that licked hungrily at the sun-drenched timbers, spreading and growing faster as if mocking their futile efforts, and she smiled knowing that their beautiful white bones would soon adorn her underwater kingdom far below the glittering surface that men foolishly claimed as part of their realm.