Category Archives: Writing

Absolute Write January Blog Chain: Winter Nightmare

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orion_mk3 – http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to this month’s post)
MamaStrong – http://writingofme.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
pyrosama – http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Turndog-Millionaire – http://turndog-millionaire.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Alpha Echo – http://aprilplummer81.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
LilGreenBookworm – http://themayhemofwritingsahm-style.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Domoviye – http://lets-get-happy.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
writingismypassion – http://charityfaye.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
kimberlycreates – http://www.kimberlycreates.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Suzanne Seese – http://viewofsue.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Diana Rajchel – http://blog.dianarajchel.com/

1292304106709 - Android Phone shots of November blizzard

Ralph Pines – http://ralfast.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Alynza – http://www.alynzasmith.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Literateparakeet – http://lesliesillusions.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
in_one – http://quirkythomas.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Tomspy77 – http://thomaswillamspychalski.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Inkstrokes – http://drlong67.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
kiwiviktor81 – http://storygenerator.net/ (link to this month’s post)

For the AbsoluteWrite January Blog chain.

This is FICTION.

Minnesota is its own winter nightmare. Just being here tests the soul, forces you to face fear daily, and can make a quest out of an ordinary action like getting from a parked car to a workplace.

I am tempted to simply post a picture of what I see outside my window. I live in Minnesota. I don’t even live in the bad part of Minnesota, where there’s isolation, lousy wireless access and living conditions that swing halfway between bear hunting and bear hunting you. Even so, it’s life threatening at this time of year, a walk down the block can hobble you for life if you forget that second or third layer, and every year we lose some bodies to the cold. Anyone who lives in Minnesota, from the lifelong natives to the outlanders like me, retreats inward around January. Oh, we say it’s to detox from the holiday parties and because of the  new fiscal quarter. The truth is, it’s too cold to smell the death on the air, but we can still feel it. We retreat indoors and knit and write and fight with our loved ones, grieving for the people dying, people we don’t even know we’ve lost. Minnesotans are a cold lot, and they don’t welcome in strangers, often cleaving to the people they’ve known since high school with the occasional college exception thrown in. But while they refuse to acknowledge or include their outlanders, they still feel them, and on some level recognize them as part of the mass organism that forms this society of sunlight and snow.

1289667042198 - Android Phone shots of November blizzard

It’s been especially bad the last two years. The bad economy and police restrictions have pulled tighter, tighter, tighter every year – now some of the homeless can’t even rely on a garbage can fire, and every shelter has had to resort to a lottery system. Remember, the house always wins.

Especially when you don’t have a house.

I knew these things, just like I knew that the people standing out on street corners with signs saying things like “hungry, please help,” or “need money for the bus,” are, for the most part, really just gathering untraceable cash for things decidedly not food. Restaurants don’t lock their dumpsters in this city, and while giving someone shelter was sometimes too much to ask, people feed each other here. Even though the food shelves are getting wiped clean, and malnutrition abounds, no one is actually starving. No one who goes out on the street with a sign about it, anyway.

                                                                                                                      ***

The abandoned gas station just outside of northeast Minneapolis had clearly already had its tenants. One of the boarded-over windows hung out at a crazy angle: a scrawny kid or group of kids could easily climb inside. The pillaging opportunities were pretty good. While people evicted from homes were generally forced to take all their belongings with them, when a business goes under, all the flotsam usually gets left behind. Those television images of the disappointed business owner packing box after box right down to the fake plants in the lobby is fiction. The fake plants are left to molder until the rats eat it or the roaches make it a luxury resort. Kids would loot the place for 3.2 beer and candy; the enterprising (or addicted) might find uses I was better off not knowing for the over the counter cold medicines and caffeine packs marketed to truckers.

I went during the day, mostly just looking for a place to bury a jar – one of the byproducts of my spiritual practices – where the snow-minded natives of the area would not freak out. It had been my experience that the “mainstreamers” of Minnesota were among the most superstitious in the world; most found tarot cards terrifying (rather than cardboard) and explaining that I was burying a bottle of urine and nails because my neighbors imagined that I threatened them so I was using this superstition to counter the morass of superstition cast upon me, drawn from a religious culture that tromped on without outward verification, was just not going to fly if I had, say, elected to argue my tax dollars allowed me to bury the bottle by a tree in a public park. Best not to tweak the natives; they already got pretty damned hostile with any of us from foreign tribes.  While the park police had developed a sense of humor about me over the years, this situation was already too delicate for me to try to expand those limits.

I had a flashlight to peer inside, and a pipe that could double as a makeshift crowbar to poke around the property.  I’d already developed a plan if a passing police cruiser wanted to know what I was doing. I’d say I was “considering buying the property,” and that the  “real estate agent hadn’t returned my calls, so I was looking for myself.” I saw to it that I looked white, and dowdy, with the high-waisted mom jeans and a baggy t-shirt with no bra beneath.  I switched out my actual wedding ring for a faux-gold one I kept for situations where I wanted assumptions made about me to fall in a certain direction. My winter gloves would be enough protection from surface disease, although a rat could easily bite right through the cloth. I made a note to myself to avoid touching any rats.

None of the drivers on this edge of the city gave a damn, apparently. I managed to wiggle the board off and flash my light around with impunity. The interior was more or less as I’d predicted: the previous owners had left a lot of crap behind, and the broken cooler doors and candy wrappers dotting the floor showed where either drunk teenagers or desperate adults (or some combination) had descended on the place for its carrion. A flashed my light around the corners, and saw some predictable scurrying – mostly rats. Roaches needed a place with consistent heat and humidity, and the furnace was long dead at this place.

Someone had spray painted above the wall where signs extolled the pleasures dispensed in now long-gone coffee makers  (probably sold, one of the more expensive and financially salvageable items of a gas station shut-down) “Fuck the pigs!” I grimaced at that; it suggested that anyone I might encounter would be oppositional, defiant, looking for a fight. This was probably not a space I could share and use in peace.

Still, it looked like no one was there, and that would do fine. Chances are that anything I left here would go undisturbed forever. Abandoned establishments with gas lines didn’t get demolished as a general rule.

                                                                                                                      ***

I didn’t see it the first time, probably because on my first look there wasn’t enough air circulating to cause movement. And in the dead of winter, smell doesn’t play much of a role.

I came back with my reusable bag, filled with the things I figured I’d plant beneath one of the carts in the emptiest of the coolers. No one was likely to move one of those things for years.  That’s when I saw it, the slight swinging motion above the cash area from the corner of my eye. I turned to look. At first my brain did not fully report – or accept – the vision before me. Maybe it was just a banner that fell, gravity finally ripping away the plastic from the nail over years; perhaps a opossum adapted its lifestyle.

What registered first was the shoes.

Opossums don’t wear shoes.

At last, my mind put it together, and then all the details came in full force. It was a white man, well over six foot five. His feet were 12 inches off the ground. He hung by a sturdy cable, and as I allowed the flashlight to follow up from the track marks I could see on the inside of his arms all the way up to the ceiling, I could see where someone (him?) had punched holes in the ceiling to ensure there was proper length for someone of his height. The story told itself.

My flashlight drifted down again, over his face.

I knew his face. I knew it well.

We hadn’t spoken in six months. Six months ago, my confronting him about his alcoholism had caused him to throw me out of his life. Six months ago, he’d been afraid of needles.

And abandoned gas stations. Especially this one. I realized that I found it today because on some subconscious level, I specifically heard him mention it.

I gathered my bag and scrambled out, ignoring the skittering noises of the local rodentia. Of course I had to call the police. I did from my car, using my rehearsed lie about “possible property purchase” when I spoke.

A blizzard came up as I drove home, obscuring all but two feet of the road in front of me. The nightmare of last winter had become this winter’s bad dream.




My comments on the latest copyright fiasco and my own past foul-up

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This is prompted by a recent copyright violation scandal that Elysia Gallo has written about at the Llewellyn blog here and here.

There’s a popular – and dead wrong – interpretation of copyright that suggests even gifting someone a book you’ve already read constitutes copyright theft. Somehow this thinking gets associated/confused with the whole “I’ll post this entire work online so any stranger that hits my site can read it to” is somehow NOT copyright theft. This second assumption is ALSO dead wrong.

Before some folks get to quibbly and mansplainy, I’m going to remind you, I have a degree in mass communications. What in the hell do you think we talk about for four years? Punctuation? No, we talk about libel, slander, fair use, copyright, plagiarism and ethics. For most of us in those programs, those lessons do actually take.

Creativity blocker

creativity blocker: not creating your own stuff because of fear of rejection

*Why yes, my photography is better. Never have cared.

So, to clarify on the whole book piracy discussion:

1. A copyrighted material that you share only with people you know, in a person to person (not online, more or less) way is not a violation of copyright. So if you liked my Urban Herbal piece in the 2011 Witches’ Calendar, and you made a photocopy or scan to give you two of your apartment dwelling friends – i.e. only people you know directly – you are not in violation of copyright. Just as if you use Kindle Share to send to your lover or bestie or Mom – and not to every email in your account – you are well within legal bounds.

2. A copyrighted material not of your making that you post to your website without an email or letter of permission from the copyright holder is NOT legal. Think of copyright as someone else’s virginity: you don’t get to decide what strangers to share it with. That is the sovereign decision of the copyright holder. Anyone who makes a comment about people charging for their intellectual work being whores or whoring their religion will be deleted and banned for sheer trollish willful ignorance.

3. Fair use has no comparison for the above metaphor. You can quote and credit, and don’t even need to check in with the copyright holder – just don’t take the entire piece of work. In general, take 10% or less of that person’s work, and if it’s a song quote, just avoid it as the music industry is just plain stupid, backwards and self-defeating. I love it when people quote my work, and use it to launch off an entire original essay or exploration, or even to conclude, research, or consider.

For the record, I personally have no problem with derivative works based on what I write – I have a problem with outright copying. I have had my original material (poetry) spark fan fiction, and to me, that is awesome. Most authors do NOT feel this way.

This copyright fiasco has crossed my path before, back in the 90s, when someone decided to troll authors who agreed not to distribute content online not of their own making.  I was just thinking about it the other day when Llewellyn posted this notice about a website where someone had actually made entire pdfs of well-known Pagan books and posted them online. I have in the past fouled up myself: my first foray on the Internet was a page my then-boyfriend posted of all the original website material I had saved to a research account around 1997. While I did get either permission to use the material or a takedown order direct from the author (I approached the authors when I realized the seriousness of what I had done) I was getting hate mail about it long after my page had become 100% original content and links to original content; I eventually found a page accusing me of plagiarism and encouraging people to send me hate mail. Apparently the author of the public missive did NOT see fit to change her message when my content had changed in its entirety. Most people are intractable on issues where they are outright caught doing wrong; it’s just that horrifying to realize that you are the one in the wrong. I’m sure this person was operating on that assumption, and became equally intractable when I changed the game by changing my attitude.

There’s much more to be said about the entire issue of copyright, plagiarism, and the Pagan web. Especially since the Pagan subculture has developed a series of conflicting attitudes that have made us as a group rather maladaptive when the point of opting for this religious umbrella was often about the freedom to adapt to a changing world instead of upholding increasingly brittle dogma in lieu of spirituality.  There is more to this than “stop sharing copyrighted work with strangers.” The next part is also complicated, and I will speak on as I am called to: it is why we need to create, to brave our way outside of the Pagan boxes we’ve created (oh yes, the Emperor is damn well IN a box!) and to talk about how we actually suppress a great deal of creativity in the name of being “smart” and honoring the “shoulds” instead of allowing the Pagan universe to expand.

For now, my comment is “don’t share somebody else’s goodies with strangers until they say it’s OK to.” That even if you’re especially hard-up for some goodie-sharing. If that’s the case, do what teens and adults do, and make your own goodies to share.

 




About winning #nanowrimo

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I won Nanowrimo. My prizes? A victory lap, a funky digital badge, and a manuscript I need to leave I in a drawer for six months. It’s a good thing I have lots of other projects on deck, so much that I’m feeling all kinds of pressure lately. I’m OK with that, too – really.

The big lesson I learned from doing this work is as follows:

  • I can totally write 1700 words a day.
  • The principles of nanowrimo is true of all creative commitment: just keep showing up. You don’t need to feel it every day, you just need to be there. Needing the mood, inspiration, or ambience really is just an excuse to avoid doing the work part of true creative work. Creativity shows up on its own schedule, but by setting patterns you can get it to show up when you’re there, too.
  • Thank heavens for the rewrite process.

I do want to say that a year ago, I probably could not do 1700 words a day on a single piece that large. Now I easily can. I believe that sticking to the Artist’s Way series really did help me build those skills, by rearranging and removing those mental blocks and by showing me how to go about establishing the discipline I needed to do the work. This did not happen overnight. Just as building a 4 day a week gym habit has taken time, practice, and perseverance, writing 1700 words a day has taken practice, repetition, and making sure I gave myself absolutely no shit whatsoever when I “only” managed to write 500 words a day.

My experience writing this novel was brain-breaking, in part because I typically do take days off from writing on the weekends, and this time I had to skip that. The 50K goal in 30 days is a tough one. I don’t know if I will do this to myself next year, it all depends on what story speaks to me at that time. I’m not sure I would regularly do 50K words in a month – but I would totally do 1700 words per day. That I can do.




For #nanowrimo and #amwriting: the draft dimensions

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032311 091

I’m 30K into nanowrimo as I write this – I take days off here and there, and I did come down with a cold that mostly sucked my energy. I’m one of those writers that can’t write when I’m sick, or can only write minimally. That creative energy needs to go to healing work, after all.

The process has been enlightening. I can totally do 1700 words a day; it’s taken me a few years to build up to that, but now in terms of writing-fitness that many “reps” on a single project  is pretty reasonable. I’ve also come to deeply appreciate that the “writing 24/7″ idea is impossible – I need to feed my head. By that I does not mean acid-rock style head feeding. It means I need to get out and interact with humanity from time to time, and go see the artistic creations of others, and the creations of nature. It builds the place within that leaves me free to write. It fills a well. It matters, a lot.

So, in coming to understand the true value of #nanowrimo, I have also come to this epiphany about writing, and redrafts. It’s helping me understand my entire process.

Draft 1: I write for myself, and myself only.
Draft 2: I write for my intended audience.
Draft 3: I write for any editors, publishers, or beta readers/workshop feedback givers.
Draft 4: I write for my audience again.
Draft 5: I write for myself again.

Ideally, the end product packages and expresses my core vision in a way that people are able to well-receive it. That first draft is crucial, and it is also crucial that I not share it with anyone until I’m done. It’s about my time, and what I want to say. I will worry about what other people can receive in later drafts.




Permission-free delight

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Minneapolis Indie Expo 2011

The entire concept of permission in the creation of art brings out some … controversy. It also is a litmus test for who is a good person to work with, and who is not. The people that believe they should give you permission to create what you do are really about preventing creativity as much as possible – usually out of the incorrect belief that by quelling the work of others they can give themselves a competitive edge. While the creative arts is highly competitive, stunting others pretty much never does a damn thing for you. Yet when you encourage others, and point out not what a person does “wrong” but what you believe will make a work strong- you actually give yourself a competitive edge. How? By building allies, and by making yourself an ally. If you set aside the belief that your aesthetic is a stick by which to judge the work of others (it’s not, ever) you can suddenly find your world opening wide to a broad variety of delights. It’s OK to take pleasure in crude drawings, photocopied sheets and handcrafted stories. It’s OK that it’s not “professional.” The low-brow movement is how art in North America keeps its soul; without it, art would be as trapped and disastrous as the Vatican.

drawings and water color by RK Milholland of Something Positive

 

print from Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square

Today, I went to the Minneapolis Indie Expo and I absolutely loved it. It consisted of web comic artists and zine makers, all of whom work independently. Some make a living at it, some don’t. It became clear to me that quite a few people had traveled some ways to participate in the expo. I went because the artist for my favorite web comic – Something Positive – went. I got some drawings (squee!) including a robot watercolor that made Mike squeal with happy. I also got a kick-ass Dia de los Muertos print from Wapsi Square and got to thank Paul in person for the Fat Chic shout out he gave me yesterday.

Goodies obtained at the indie expo

While there, I discovered the danger and the wonder of such events: lots of super-affordable and accessible art and zines, leading to spending lots of money without really intending to. It was kind of awesome, and I came back with some awesome stuff.

The entire concept of indie art and comics is that you do NOT need to wait for approval. Nobody gave anyone present at the expo permission; each person just went ahead and did what they do. It allowed such wonders into the world as a crocheted UFO complete with a ladder it could let down, a deck of cards with surreal designs printed on each one (I proposed a few meanings, to the amusement of the creator) and some really badass plus-positive art.

It was cool. I would have stayed longer, but I was freezing my tuckus off. I did find myself tweaked that while it was roughly 50/50 in terms of the gender of the artists present, on the panels I attended each had one token female. On one of them, said female openly admitted she elbowed her way onto the panel. That was uncool – not that she had to use chutzpah, that’s normal, but that it was necessary to draw upon it at all. Then again, it was a perfect example of an artist not needing or seeking permission.




Limitations #nanowrimo #amwriting #artistsway

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Limitations #nanowrimo #amwriting #artistsway

The coffee shop had writers in it. Perhaps not wall-to-wall writers, but enough that it became clear that something literary lay in the unpolished wood floor, reaching upwards, calling out to those that create while questioning creation. At one table, a group of women discussed Nanowrimo, and talked about what it meant to be a “real writer.” It sounded like a couple of them had it wrong, what it meant, but it was obvious they were writing and not stopping each other from writing, so I turned my attention to my laptop. This was the second location that day where my tiny Lenovo refused to play nice with the wireless. At this point, I’d even veered off from Minneapolis into Saint Paul, down into one of the deeper byways beyond Harriet Island. I liked this place. I wanted to work here. While never married to atmosphere – I’ve written in moving cars and airplanes, on park benches, in grocery lines – I liked this place. It had the same seeding quality of Hard Times Café in Seward, minus the people in obvious drug withdrawal common to the place late at night. I had gone far out of my way to find this place, and I wanted to make a second home here. I wanted it to work.

I became chatty with the barista as she did her best to reset the router for me; I rarely speak so much to strangers on the first meeting, but I’d had a lot of coffee already, and I could already tell that this atmosphere influenced me. Something within the building, in its 19th century yellow ceiling and radiator-heated walls wanted me to come back, too. So it was urging me to talk, urging me to show the chit-chatty Diana some people never see in a decade.

“I’m just really frustrated,” I shared. “I’ve been tooling along on this nonfiction book, and so now I’m trying my hand at fiction, and it seems like one thing after another has gotten in its way.”

The barista looked back at me. “Maybe you’re only meant to write nonfiction.” It hangs in the air; she believes this, but I can see the lie of it, whispered in her ear. Writers frequent this place, and yes, so do their demons and bullshit.

“No, that’s not it,” I tell her. “This is just the crap and bugs that fly out whenever you make a change.”

She nods, and I discover that miraculously, my Dropbox program synced up before I left the house that day. While I did waste time trying to hop online, I could still work, and I made the most of what I could, closing my manuscript on Day 2 of Nanowrimo with a solid 4020 words, and a sense that yes, I am hearing this story more than I am telling it.

I could have taken the excuse she gave me, but instead I stayed true to my truth. I did not absorb the limitation she offered, although five years ago I would have gripped onto it tight.

Writers do this. Artists do this. People do this.

There’s a tendency to propose limitations for others; this differs from pointing them out. This is the idea of creating and instilling limits – it is artificial, a creativity blocking behavior, and is harm under the guise of support. We all have limits, and it’s part of our lives to discover them, test them, experiment with our ability to overcome them – or to incorporate them and make them boundaries that help structure the work we do. It is not our job to propose limits to one another, and yet this is what we do all too often.

We have this “there can be only one” mentality that has spread from religious outlook to this idea that every person has one identity, one ability, one true role in life. We face  aging with bitterness, under the assumptions that the roles fade, and then so do we, into nothingness at all. So many assume that there’s nothing that comes after, no new avenue to try, and there’s no use exploring the world again as we’ve seen what we’re going to see of it.

This is absolute crap.

 

photo by Diana Rajchel

 

I was asked once, when participating in a writer’s panel, “which one I would choose,” when I explained the multiple projects I had only recently seeded at the time. I countered, “Why do I have to choose one?”

No real answer came. There is no positive argument for monogamy when it comes to creative endeavors.

 

The show Boardwalk Empire, directed by Martin Scorcese and produced by Mark Wahlberg thrills me. It shows me my favorite era in history – the 1920s – with gritty realism and brilliance, made all the better by the presence of Steve Buscemi.  I share this show with friends eagerly; I consider it the best period drama on television right now, and I want to share in the delight and awe that the characters bring forth from within me.

One man I shared this with balked at the appearance of Mark Wahlberg in the production credits. “Marky Mark?” he spluttered. “The guy with the underwear?”

“He’s got some good production credits and is a decent actor,” I answered.

“But he’s Marky Mark!”

“So what, he can do only one thing with his life?”

“Yes!” he snapped back.

He ignored me when I asked, “Why?”

It seemed obvious to me that Mark Wahlberg’s lack of limits triggered some upset concerning this young man and the limits he had chosen for himself.

 

Authentic limits are boundaries that shape us. They give us guidelines, a framework to work within. They help us get things down. Deadlines are limits. Personal dislikes and disinterests are limits. Those things that we just don’t want to do are limits. We find them as we progress, as we write, as we explore. Those limits come from us, and only ourselves. Those limits are only true if discovered in discourse between our inner selves and our creative drive.

Anything coming from outside – other writers, teachers, baristas – those are manufactured limits. Certainly you can agree to cooperate with them. I for one wholeheartedly agree with the social process that establishes traffic safety. But they are not within me, and they do not define my capabilities or yours.




#nanowrimo – What story shall I tell first?

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I’ve decided I am doing Nanowrimo this year. Yes, this will be in addition to blogging and all the other stuff I do. I’m going to train myself to get up at 5 am again, even if it means taking melatonin at 6 pm. If anyone has a symbiotic kink that involves sleeping on my living room floor and making me coffee for around thirty days – awesome. I’ll have to clear it with my partner, of course, but I’m sure he could be persuaded if you threw in laundry duty.

The point of Nanowrimo is to get you writing a first draft – the idea being that 50,000 words gives you something you can then shape into a novel. The work happens in the rewriting, at least, it does for me.

I certainly have ideas piled up, and now, I need to pick one. Here are some possible novels I’m looking at:

1. (Most recently) A semi-shamanic tale involving animals in a zoo; I’m leaning away from this because the story in my head reads like an American Indian folktale, and while I don’t judge what I receive, I can’t completely escape how that would be received. I “heard” it so I’ll write it, sure, but that story may be a private circulation only deal.

2. The Scorpio Jones detective series – I’m thinking paranormal mystery/romance, with all kinds of fringe people. I think I mentioned the character Rawr and the 17 boyfriends, and Mike responds with enough chagrin that I almost have to write it.

3. Fuck it, let’s be jewel thieves! In college I tried following a soap opera to see what the hype was about, and got rather annoyed when the “reformed” thief led his girlfriend on a thief-style adventure. She gushed about how hard it must have been to reform, and I was completely disgusted that the writers did not see a great opportunity for her to say “Let’s do this together!”

4. Eminent Domain. Typical adult slacker, still lives at home with parents attached, and all of a sudden the home is going to be demolished. How much effort does he want to put into being lazy?

5. Zeus falls out of the sky, and it’s the job of the protagonist to get him back up there.

I have a start on #2 that doesn’t really grab me, and a start on #5 that reads like some of my moodier short fiction pieces.
I also have a novel I had socked back that’s about 25K words in, but I’m setting it aside because I’m still untangling it a bit. I know how I want it to end, but the trip there? I’m not sure what needs to happen along the way.




Divorcing a Real Witch has a publisher!

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I’ve been holding off on the BIG public announcement until everything was signed and I got the OK signal.

But… Divorcing a Real Witch is now signed with O Books under the Moon Books imprint.

So when’s it coming out?
I have to finish the book in 24 months; right now it’s on a late second draft stage, and there will be some time spent polishing it. Then ripping it apart and polishing it again during the editorial process.

What about the documentary?
The documentary will go forward, and I’m widening the scope to include people willing to do interviews over Skype. Please let me know if you’d like to be involved in its production. No, I don’t know a thing about videography, so at this point unsolicited advice is solicited.

Also, if you support this project, I do have a “here’s how you can help” email that will go out to you if you ask for it. If you want updates on when the book is available for order, there’s a mailing list box on the side of my main blog (livejournal and other feed proxy blogs, you’ll need to come to blog.dianarajchel.com directly.) Sign up, and I can email you when I’m doing workshops, when the book is available for pre-order and of course when the book is available in bookstores.

Note: we don’t know the official title yet, but it will probably have to change. The book will be released in US and UK markets, and while we may both speak speak the same language, we attach very different connotations to our word choices. There’s a cultural difference between how UK citizens react to the phrase “real witch” (as in “who is the real witch?”) and how US citizens react to “real witch” (as in “you’re not ALL imaginary?”/”rhymes with bitch.”) Chances are the title will have to change, and with any luck I can keep it to something that is just as attention-grabbing.


So how can I help right now/with as little personal effort as possible?
If you see the share bar below this post on the main blog, there’s a menu of places you can share this news socially. Twitter and Facebook, Reddit – you can even comment about it in your own blog. I just ask if you vilify me, you do so with accuracy and make sure you mention the book. Bring it up in conversation. Talk to me about it on my Amazon author page or my Goodreads author page.

So, there you have it – official word that this book will see print, and by a hand other than my own!




October Absolute Write Blog Chain: the Great Cat #absolutewrite

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The Louvre

This is fiction, for the October blog chain on AbsoluteWrite forum. This month’s prompt: Some Things Dark and Dangerous. Choose a word from this list of Lovecraftian words or this list of obscure words (or one from both if you’re feeling ambitious). Use your chosen word(s) to craft your post. It doesn’t have to be Lovecraftian or even horror, but it should be dark, or unsettling, or scary, or Halloweenish in general. Want to watch the horror unfold? Follow the links to more fearful things at the end of this entry.

My chosen words: Foetid1, and also arguably cat.

The antiquities wing of the Louvre had few guards. No one cared to steal a clay cracked clay pot from 1500 BCE, and so a uniformed guard dozed on a chair, unconcerned as to the activities taking place in the room. No one save myself remembered or cared about the tools made at the command of the Old Ones, nor did they want to gaze rapt upon the knives that proffered the first offerings, the bowls that caught the first blood. Most wished merely to gawk at the Mona Lisa and then buy T-shirts in the lesser of the souvenir shops that proclaimed their gawking accomplished.

This pattern of the mindless allowed me to lure my compatriot away from their frog-like masses.

We settled side by side in an overlook, our shoulders touching as we chatted in forbidden English. I allowed his patter to continue as I gazed upon the winged beasts, doomed to light their baleful glares only upon each other and the occasional stupid tourist for as long as western civilization persisted. Ignoramuses, not recognizing the holy guardians of the Great Consumer, profaned them every ten minutes or so, placing hands upon those mighty forelegs and posing for snapshots.

Robby’s obsession with my female form disrupted my reverie. “Who’s your dream boy?” he asked, his bright brown eyes turned toward me, showing the hint of madness that influences one who awaits great revelation. I opened my mouth to answer, and in my moment’s astonishment at such impertinence, a foetid smell burst upon us both, filling my throat as though a rotting coil slid inside my being.

We clung to the overlook as our bodies convulsed under the pounding waves of stench. I managed in the end to retain my repast but Robby did not, his vomit splattering onto the floor below. As though the contents of his stomach merited an offering, the smell of rot and boil disappeared as if it merely walked out of the room. Only the odors of our own refuse remained. A dripping sound drew my eyes back to the great cats snarling on the wall.

In the great cat’s mouth hung the head of a tourist, smirk still fixed in place, as the remaining fluid drained from his remaining neck. The savaged body lay in the middle of the floor, arms and legs askew. A growling rose from the edges of the room. The sound of crumbling rock filled me as the odor had, and at last, I witnessed the miracle I had awaited from the night I emerged from the sea and acquired the form of this young girl. The guardians of Shub-Niggurath lived and as the screams of their massacre echoed through the great halls, I allowed my smile to shine upon Robby, now crumpled on the floor. He already made a fine disciple. If he wanted to be a dream boy, I would gladly make him my messenger. Certainly, he would try to thwart me and in that struggle lay my victory.

I stepped over his prone form, to watch the first feast of the awakened guards. Praise be to the One Who Sleeps, the Guardians are Awake!

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orion_mk3 - http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com Sepulcher from the Non-Euclidean God-Essence
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  1. modern spelling fetid [↩]

Spellcasting Picture Book – gettin’ some lovin!

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The Spellcasting Picture Book is available in print on Amazon, as well as on Kindle, and is also available at Barnes and Noble in print and for Nook.

The Spellcasting Picture Book has been getting some lovin’ this week –
PaganWriters.com gave it a blurb, and on the same day a book review for it came out on Online Pagans Magazine.

Did I mention the review on Magickal Media?
“They say the word “inspired” means God-Breathed and I think that’s what happened with Diana. She simply opened herself up to the universe and then drew the messages as they came to her.” …I think that means the reviewer liked it!