Four Days In!

So normally I would post on the first day my word count with an excerpt of what I'd written so far. I didn't have the internet yet on the first day, so that didn't happen, and I kind of forgot until now. :D

So interesting things about my NaNovel so far. When I started it at midnight, it suddenly decided that it wanted to be told from first person. I've never done that before, I always write third person with multiple perspectives, which is not going to happen here. It'll be fun to see how this works out.

In a desperate attempt to find a name for my characters, I searched all those name meaning websites for a cool name and none of them seemed to work and my character hated them all and I finally just told him to shut up, you're Roy from now on! So he's Roy. And the other is Dan, Dan was less argumentative about his name as well, but none of them were as good about it as Ari was. Ari was the first name I thought up for her, she loved it, and it stayed. This has reflected her personality I think so far in my novel.

Sometimes browsing the NaNo forums can be dangerous. I hadn't really planned far enough for anything bad to happen in my novel, but then someone in the forums was asking for ideas about something terrible to happen in their novel, I shouted out an idea, and then I realized that I loved that idea and am trying to find a way to implement it into my novel. Those poor characters. I'm not sure if I will do this, or if something else will happen, or if it will just be sunshine and lollipops the whole time, but I don't really want it to be the latter. My bad guys need something to do, and they love that first idea that I had.

I really should be writing my novel instead of this. Especially since I have been issued a challenge to have a higher word count than the person challenging me by Monday. I just need a sledgehammer to get past this minor barrier of a writing block (just a tiny one) and I'm good to go.

Just About Two More Days

NaNoWriMo is nearly upon us! I am super excited and quite scared actually. This is the least prepared I've ever been for a NaNo. Even in the first year when i didn't do any paper planning (I didn't jot down any notes) I still knew more about that story than I know about this one! Last year I had a similar scare in that a few weeks before it started I didn't know what to write, but once I found out what I was to write, I made pages and pages of notes. This year I have a concept, some dragons (always important), and maybe the first chapter vaguely outlined in my head.

Now I blame my general unpreparedness on everything that's been happening in the past month, a month I usually reserve for NaNo preparing. Foreclosure is my new least favorite word. Its gotten me down in the dumps, a mind frame that I am generally unfamiliar with. Then, to add to that, I've been all sorts of sick this week, and sometimes being sick gives me a great excuse to stay up and write ("Why aren't you sleeping?" "I can't sleep, I'm sick!") this time we've also been moving all of our stuff out while I've been sick. And this is probably only half of whats been on my mind! Needless to say, my NaNo Novel has been taking a back seat in a month where it is supposed to be driving.

Okay, that's enough crying. I usually get the pre-NaNo jitters. Two years ago it was the "omigosh I've never done this before am I crazy?!" jitters. Last year it was the "My plot is paper thin and I don't have nearly enough in it to fill up 50,000 words, I'm going to fail so bad!" jitters. This year its the "Oh crap, I haven't planned my Novel nearly enough! What am I going to do?" jitters.

I haven't had as much time to plan this novel as I might want. This is bad, but not word count threatening. I have proven in times past that I can fly by the seat of my pants, and often doing stuff like that adds great bonuses to my word count. So take that jitters! I strike you down with my sword of confidence and past experience! BWA HA HA!

I feel better now.

The Devil's Runner Chapter 2

So I know that its almost NaNoWriMo, but I wanted to get this little bit done before that started. And yes, all other Devil's Runner posts are part of chapter one, this post is the start of chapter 2. An interesting note, while I am usually a planner, The Devil's Runner has been completely by the seat of my pants. No planning has been done with this story so far, and I still don't really know who this Jenna girl is.

~

Jenna could tell immediately that something was wrong. She was comfortable for one thing. She normally woke on a cold stone floor; this was most definitely a mattress. That was another thing; she was warm instead of cold. Wonderfully warm. There was a wool blanket covering her. Jenna almost laughed at herself. She had become so accustomed to her cell that not being in it felt wrong.

Jenna’s eyes shot open. She wasn’t in her cell?! She slowly sat up; looking at the room she was in. It was a humble room with sparse furnishings, only a little desk in it besides the bed she was in. What really caught her attention was the window. She could see outside. It was so beautiful. She could see a little meadow out of her window and there were scattered flowers and what looked like a rabbit. Jenna turned her head and jumped as she saw an older woman staring at her.

“Up and about are we? Its about time, you’ve been sleeping there for hours and hours. I was getting worried I was.” The woman said.

Jenna found she couldn’t speak. She had no idea where she was or how she had gotten here or who this woman was and she found that she was terrified. She tried to remember what had happened, but she had done almost nothing but sit in her cell for so long that that was all she could remember.

“You’re a curious one child, I’ll tell you that. I’ll go and get you father and tell him you’ve finally awoken,” the woman said before standing and leaving the room.

Her father? How could that be possible? Hadn’t her father died the day she was captured? She was sure of it. Then what was going on? She didn’t think she was dreaming, she had never gotten a sound enough sleep in her cell to allow for it. So what was going on? Before she could really wonder and start to panic about her situation, the door opened.

“Finally awake are you? I suspect you really needed that sleep after what you went through.” The man in the door said.

It was that Devil’s Runner person. That’s right; he had tried to rescue her. He had succeeded at it apparently. Jenna almost stopped breathing at the thought. Could it really be true? Was she truly free of that terrible place? It was so hard to believe.

Poking his head into the room, the man who had carried her in the prison looked in and asked, “Is she alright?”

“Come and see for yourself,” the Devil’s Runner said.

The man walked in and shut the door behind him. “Are you alright miss? You seemed awful scared back in that pri-”

The Devil’s Runner put his hand over the man’s mouth before he could finish speaking. “That’s a secret remember? We’re a travelling family, not prison escapees.”

The man nodded and the Devil’s Runner removed his hand. “Sorry, I’m not quite used to that. Anyway, are you feeling well?” he asked Jenna.

Jenna was free! Of course she was feeling well. She could ever remember being this happy. Tears started streaming down her face even as she nodded a yes.

“Oh, why are you crying? Don’t be sad,” the man said.

“I believe that those are tears of joy, Dmitri,” the Devil’s Runner said.

“Really? Oh, well that’s good then!” Dmitri said.

So his name was Dmitri. Jenna finally knew what to call him. Through her tears she found herself staring at him and looked away with a hiccup. How did that always happen when she looked at him? “So tell us miss, what’s your name? We’re all quite curious,” the Devil’s Runner said.

Jenna opened her mouth, but then closed it again. She couldn’t speak, her voice was gone. She hadn’t spoken for so long, could that be why she couldn’t speak now? Jenna tried again, but nothing came out. She wanted to speak; she wanted to tell Dmitri her name and wanted to speak with him. Her tears stopped being tears of joy.

“She can’t speak,” Dmitri said softly. “Why can’t she speak, how are we going to find out where to take her if she can’t tell us?”

“Calm down,” the Devil’s Runner said as he unexpectedly left the room.

Jenna and Dmitri watched him go and then turned back to look at each other. They stared for a few seconds before quickly looking away, both blushing. Jenna wished she could speak; it would make this whole thing so much easier. She also wanted to learn more about this Dmitri.

The Devil’s Runner walked back in holding a quill, a bottle of ink, and some parchment and handed them to Jenna. “I assume that you can at least write?” the Devil’s Runner asked.

Jenna could remember how to do that, she was certain. She dipped the quill in the ink and started to write on the parchment. Her hand was shaky and her handwriting was worse of because of that, but she thought it at least legible. Jenna finished and showed them what she had written.

“What in the- what is this?” Dmitri asked, reducing Jenna’s self esteem by just a little.

The Devil’s Runner took the parchment and studied it a bit before laughing. “You’ve written this in High Rountasian. Haven’t you been paying attention to what language we’re speaking?”

Jenna had of course realized what they were speaking, Lower Gaddle-Speak, she had just written in her native language without really thinking was all. She had thought that everyone could read that language, she was apparently wrong. She motioned for the parchment back, but the Devil’s Runner shooed her hand away, “I can still read it lass. So your name is Jenna then?”

Jenna nodded and noted that Dmitri mouthed the word to himself. She motioned for the parchment back, intending to use it to ask some of the many burning questions that had plagued her since waking, but the Devil’s Runner shooed her hand away again.

“So, if you can understand us, and write in another language, then you’re definitely bilingual. That is a rare trait even among the high born,” the Devil’s Runner said. Jenna noticed a glint in his eye, and suddenly wondered why he was called the Devil’s Runner. “You must be a very important person indeed.”

The Devil’s Runner handed her the parchment back and she immediately started writing again, this time making sure to write in the correct language. She wanted to ask about them, but didn’t want to seem rude to her rescuers and asked instead what had happened and where they were before handing the parchment back to them.

The Devil’s Runner looked annoyed. “I was going to ask you something, but you finished writing your questions before I could ask mine. No matter, what happened is that this young man,” he motioned towards Dmitri, “was arrested and imprisoned for crimes that I committed in the Fortress Prison, which isn’t a fortress at all, and was locked away in the same cell block as you, lucky for you, since I was feeling generous enough to rescue everyone in that hallway. I broke you all out, it being made a bit more difficult with your hysterics, and we travelled to the nearest inn, which was still very far away, and have been waiting for you to wake before continuing. We are in the Deserts Reprieve, an Inn in a little village in Gaddlemont.”

Jenna had listened with growing horror. Not only had these people not come to rescue her, something she had assumed from the beginning, but they were criminals. But worse than all that, she was in Gaddlemont, a terrible and treacherous country that was more than one thousand miles from her home in Rountasia. Jenna slowly fainted.

NaNoWriMo's 10 rules and regulations (aka Commandments)

Some post on the NaNo forums talks about our own personal 10 commandments for NaNoWriMo. So yes, I'm stealing ideas twice over with this post :D

NUMBER 1!
Thou shalt not stare at the page for any longer than five minutes without putting words upon it! It mattereth not if those words are utter nonsense, just so long as they are written.

NUMBER 2!
Thou shalt be encouraging towards, and only slightly competitive against, those who are also participating in the National Novel Writing Month.

NUMBER 3!
Thou shalt not take a week long break like thou has wont to do in past Nation Novel Writing Month excursions. Such breaks only serve to add stress and a mad scrambling nearer to the end of the month. Seriously, don't.

NUMBER 4!
Thou shalt remember that there exist other persons in thy household who likely will wish to converse with thee and in turn inquire into thy writings. Thou shalt not ignore these persons, and often their advice on thy novel with be highly valuable.

NUMBER 5!
Thou hast a canine companion that requires sustenance just as much as thee. Thou shalt feed thy canine and also take it outdoors for walks.

NUMBER 6!
Thou shalt not be afraid to kill a character. Thou must remember that three character are essential and should still be alive at the end of thy novel, but all the rest may be treated as cannon fodder as thou seest fit.

NUMBER 7!
Thou shalt avoid that loud and overly large PlayStation 3 that is in thy possession until thou hast gone above and beyond thy word count goal. The same goes for the Wii. Thou shalt not give unto me that look.

NUMBER 8!
Thou shalt remember to remove thy flash drive from the computer upon finishing thy writing. Thou dost not want a repeat of prior incidents.

NUMBER 9!
Thou shalt not forget other personal goals that still bear great importance, even if thou art participating in National Novel Writing Month. Remember, time is quickly disappearing.

NUMBER 10!
Thou shalt write a remarkable novel, even if it needs polishing after the month is over.

That was funner than I expected.

Dragons in The Dragon Ambassador

I wasn't paying attention to the world around me today because I was tired, and while I was zoning out, an idea came to mind, and from that idea, I solved a lot of the problems I had with my novel. These are some of the notes I've made so far for The Dragon Ambassador.

Every magical race has a defining characteristic and an antithesis race. The antithesis race’s defining characteristic is the opposite of the other race. An example would be that Dragon’s characteristic is courage, thus their antithesis, the Shadow Serpent, are creatures of fear. In general, there is a race with a good characteristic and a race with an evil characteristic. There are exceptions, like Elves, who are creatures of boredom, and their antitheses, the Sugar Imps, who are creatures of Excitement, neither of which are evil.

Dragons:
Antitheses to Shadow Serpents, Dragons are beings of courage. They will never run from any situation and will often charge headfirst into them. Since they are huge fire breathing lizards, this caused some misunderstandings and humans came to fear dragons. They can only communicate with other beings that have an equal measure of courage, something that is very rare, and so they had almost no way to communicate with the people who were hunting them down. Often, if there was a human courageous enough, they would be hunting dragons instead of trying to listen to them. Hunted nearly to extinction, they went into hiding until there came a day that an ambassador could be found to speak for them.

Shadow Serpents:
Antitheses to Dragons, Shadow Serpents are beings of fear. They are constantly in hiding from the rest of the world. They stick primarily to the shadows, and as such, their eye sight has diminished, but their other senses have increased. They magically hold shadows to themselves, so that if they should venture into the light, they are surrounded in blackness and no real detail about them can be seen. They are shaped similar to dragons, but it is unknown how far the similarities go. Because of their extreme fear of everything surrounding them, they have developed a hatred for most things, but they are too scared to do anything about it.

Things to Figure Out Before NaNo

So, before NaNoWriMo there are quite a few things I need to figure out about The Dragon Ambassador. Perhaps writing out a list will help me come up with a solution to these problems.

~I need to decide if this will be a more Modern Day Fantasy (like Fablehaven) or if I should create my own Fantasy world like I usually do. At first I was going to do the modern fantasy, but I really like making my own fantasy world. The problem with that is that its time consuming. But still fun.

~I need to finalize the dragons in my story. In every story I write with dragons, they are different, and that is one reason I like writing them, I can always do something new with them. So I need to figure out how my dragons work in this.

~I need to figure out what other fantasy/mythological creatures will be in this story. I know a few, but its good to know what my world consists of.

~I need to name my characters. Always hardest part for me.

~I need a conflict. Right now this is still just an idea with no real plot. Plots are quite important.

~With conflict, I need antagonists. Someone eval must be present to mess things up for my good guys.

~I need to decide on the point of view. My options are having it all from the point of view of one very important character, or splitting it between three very important characters. I've never done a story with just one view point and I want to try, but I'm not sure if this story will allow it.

Thats a pretty good list. I'mma stare at it now and think about it for a while. I'll update this later with a post about my Dragons when I'm done shaping them.

NaNoWriMo 2010!

I know this is my second post today, but no one really pays attention to my book list and this is important. I just realized that its almost November. That means its almost National Novel Writing Month. This will be my third NaNo and I decided long ago what I will be writing. It's called at the moment The Dragon Ambassador. I'll post a few more posts later on about some of my plans for it. Why not now? Well become I haven't really formalized any plans in my head yet :)

Books Read in 2010: Dhampir Keep

Two more books to add to my list which isn't as big as I want it to be. I need to get on this.

Far World: Water Keep

For World tells the story of Markus and Kyja, who come from Earth and Far World respectively. Far World is a magical place that is full of talking animals and all sorts of other magical things like wizards and terrible monsters. Kyja is a girl without magic in a world where everyone has magic and Markus is a talented crippled child with some interesting abilities. The Dark Circle is after them both for reasons unknown to them and they end up running from them together. They eventually decide to go to a place called Water Keep to ask for help against the Dark Circle.

This was a fun book, easy to read, and an interesting adventure. There was a creature in it that could pass for an ice dragon (but wasn't) so that made me happy. My only real complaint with this book was that the chapters were so incredibly short. I read a chapter and then go to the next book when I read multiple books at once, and that means I would only read one page of this book before moving on, and that was annoying. The largest chapter was probably only five pages, most being only one or two. Other than that it was a good book and I can recommend picking it up.

Dhampir:

Remember the post where I poked fun at Twilight? This is the book that inspired that post. This is a book about vampires that are actually vampires! They kill things, drink blood, make undead servants, and are generally bad guys. The main character is Magiere, who hunts vampires for a living, at least, that's what she wants you to believe. She has a half-elf partner, Leesil who helps her "hunt" vamps. She is, however, tired of tricking villagers, and wants to lead an honest life, and so heads to a coast town to buy a bar. Little does she know that real vampires are waiting there for her.

This is an awesome book. I loved it. I also hated the covers. Not for the artwork, which was really cool, but because they spoil one of the biggest plot twists in the book. This plot twist is something you don't learn in the book until more than halfway in, though you will have suspected it, you don't learn the truth until then. But the cover just comes out and tells you. That pissed me off. I knew what was coming the whole time and I didn't get to be surprised by or go "I KNEW IT!" to the big reveal. So if you read this book, don't look at the front cover at all, nor should you read the synopsis on the back if you don't want to be spoiled. Let someone tape over the spoilers for you or something.

And yes, you really should read this book.

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven
The Third Sign
Throne of Jade
The Lighting Thief
Howl's Moving Castle
Sea of Monsters
Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star
The First King of Shannara
Inkheart
The Great Hunt
FableHaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague
Far World: Water Keep
Dhampir

The Devil's Runner Part 4

“Now, which one of you was mistaken for me?”

Dmitri raised his hand, unable to find his voice in front of the Devil’s Runner. He couldn’t believe that the Devil’s Runner was actually standing before him and not only that, but was saving him from this awful prison. Dmitri hadn’t been here all that long, but it didn’t take long to get sick of this place.

The Devil’s Runner seemed to be appraising Dmitri before saying “I think you’ve been here the least amount of time, can you carry her while I lead you all to safety?”

Dmitri nodded and the Devil’s Runner handed him the woman he had been carrying. Dmitri was startled to see that she looked younger than him. She seemed frightened, so Dmitri tried to be as gentle as he could with her. She was far too light to be healthy. He couldn’t imagine how long she would have had to be here to get into this condition, and she was already so young. Why would someone so young be imprisoned? She refused to look at him and still seemed so scared. Now that the Devil’s Runner was farther ahead, Dmitri found his voice again. “Don’t be scared miss; don’t you know who it is that’s rescuing us? It’s the Devil’s Runner! No one is better than him!”

The girl looked up at him then and hiccupped. Dmitri looked into her eyes for the first time and lost himself in them. He hadn’t ever seen eyes so blue. She blushed and looked away; breaking the trance she had trapped him in. “My but you’re a pretty girl miss,” he said, almost surprising himself at his boldness and making the girl blush more.

The group started moving forward, lead by the Devil’s Runner. He explained that even though he had been able to sneak in, he couldn’t sneak such a large group out, especially when one of them seemed unable to walk, so, he would fight his way out. It would leave a better impression that way he said. None of the ones getting rescued actually saw any of the fighting, as the Devil’s Runner would tell them to wait before running off. He would call to them to follow and then they would see only the aftermath. Sometimes the Devil’s Runner would run behind them and they would hear fighting before he returned.

“The whole place is likely on alert now,” the Devil’s Runner said. “All of you keep as quiet as possible. I need to be able to hear everything.”

All of the escapees became as silent as they could except one. The girl Dmitri was holding was crying and it was steadily getting louder. The Devil’s Runner motioned to Dmitri to keep her quiet, but Dmitri didn’t know what to do. He did the only thing he could do and said, “Please don’t cry miss.”

She stopped suddenly, as if surprised by what he said, but then it got a lot worse. She started shaking and her breathing got faster and shorter. Dmitri was so surprised that he almost dropped her, which of course made it worse. “I think she’s sick!” Dmitri said.

The Devil’s Runner ran toward them and laid his hand on her shoulder, trying to asses the situation, but she started panicking and fighting at Dmitri and the Devil’s Runner. She was very weak, so she couldn’t do any real harm, but she was making a lot of noise. She was becoming hysterical. The Devil’s Runner pulled something out from a hidden pocket that looked like a needle, but before he could do anything with it she passed out.

“Almost more trouble than she’s worth,” the Devil’s Runner said. “Now if only I knew what she was worth, I might be more inclined to make all of this trouble.”

Dmitri wanted to ask the Devil’s Runner what he meant, but a group of guards burst onto the scene, drawn by the girls screaming. The Devil’s Runner sighed and pulled out a blade from his belt. “I had hoped to avoid fighting in front of all of you, mostly because I don’t like anyone to see my style until its too late. Hopefully, I’ll never fight any of you,” he said.

Dmitri stood transfixed as the Devil’s Runner took out all of the guardsmen. He looked like he was getting on in years, but he fought circles around them with nothing but a short blade. Many of the guards fell even without getting hit by his blade. Dmitri couldn’t tell how, but he suspected it had something to do with the needle that the Devil’s Runner had pulled out earlier. It wasn’t long before the guards were all down and the Devil’s Runner was leading them again, his earlier admonition repeated to be as silent as possible.

There were several times when the Devil’s Runner would stop everyone and have them wait, though none of them could tell exactly why. He would have them back up, or he would have them speed up, only to halt suddenly. The Devil’s Runner had to battle twice more before they got near enough to the entrance to see natural sunlight.

The Devil’s Runner had them stop near a turn in the tunnel. He held up his finger to his mouth, again reminding them to be silent, and slowly looked past the corner. He quickly looked back smiling in a way that made Dmitri’s skin crawl. “I came here expecting a challenge and they aim to give me one,” the Devil’s Runner whispered. “All the guards that I haven’t already taken care of have been gathered at the entrance. That’s more men than I’ve ever faced.”

Dmitri wondered if he should be worried, but the smile on the face of the Devil’s Runner quelled his worry. Mush to everyone’s surprise, the Devil’s Runner began scaling the wall and was soon near the roof of the cave. At the shocked faces of the prisoners, he just winked and then crawled across the ceiling, apparently out of sight of the guardsmen. Soon there was a commotion around the corner. Many of the guards started shouting things like “Show yourself!” and “Where is that demon?!”

After a few more moments of commotion they all heard the voice of the Devil’s Runner say, “I am the Devil’s Runner! Did you really believe that you had caught me? Did you think that you could hold me? I am here to break the one you mistook for me out of this hole! All who stand in my way will know the power of the Devil’s Runner!”

Several guards ran right past the prisoners, too scared to notice them. The commotion got worse and many guards started yelling in terror. Dmitri got too curious and sneaked a peak around the corner. There were a lot more guards than Dmitri thought, though a good deal were on the ground. A few of the guards seemed to be going mad, attacking the others, yelling in an insane way. Dmitri looked up to see if he could see the Devil’s Runner was still on the ceiling, but he couldn’t see him anywhere. More and more guards dropped to the floor, and more went crazy and started attacking other guards as the first ones to go mad fell. After a long and terrible battle, all of the guards were on the floor but one, who was panting where he stood. He looked back right at Dmitri, causing him no small fright, but then took of his helmet revealing that he was the Devil’s Runner himself. “Well, that was certainly fun. Now come on you lot, we’ve still got a long way to any sort of civilization.”

The Devil's Runner Part 3

“I am known by many names, most notoriously The Devil’s Runner. I am here to set you free, the door is unlocked, and I will clear the way ahead.”

It took a while for Jenna to understand just what she heard. It had been so long since anyone had spoken to her. A small part of her old self tried to bubble to the surface, someone was here to save her! But after being hopeless for so long, that small piece of hope quickly died away. It is just the guards playing another trick. They enjoy your suffering and wish to give you some small sense of hope, just to steal it away again. Jenna wouldn’t fall for it though. She just stared up at the sun and did her best to stop thinking.

“Are you okay? Do you need my help?”

Again with their trickery?! Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? Why must they torture her so? But then something incredible happened. It was more than Jenna could bear. The man who had spoken stood before and waved his hand, trying to get a reaction from her. Jenna saw that he didn’t wear a guard’s uniform, and there was kindness in his eyes. He reminded her of her father. Thoughts of her father only filled her with bitterness though and she quickly looked away.

“My word, how long have you been here?”

Jenna couldn’t take it anymore. It hurt too much to hope that she would be free, that the monotony of her life would be over. It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be real. She couldn’t stand it anymore and she looked away, closing her eyes against the tears that suddenly started flowing. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she cried. She thought that her tears had dried up long ago.

“Don’t worry; I’m going to take you away from here.”

Jenna almost wanted to scream at him. She had given up long ago, and now he offered her life, but it was futile! Nobody ever escaped this place! No one had ever been rescued! Don’t worry? She had given up worrying so long ago, now he would come here, try and give her hope and expect her not to worry? But she wouldn’t worry. She knew that they weren’t going to escape. He would try, but he would get caught and end up in a cell just like her.

She didn’t have the energy to protest so she allowed him to pick her up. Jenna hadn’t felt the touch of another person in so long that it shocked her. She found herself suddenly afraid. She didn’t like being touched. When had that happened? She hadn’t ever minded it before. She remembered how loving she used to be, all the embraces she shared with her family, but then she turned her thoughts away from that, and tried her best not to panic at the touch of another person.

She had been so surprised that she didn’t hear what her so called rescuer was saying, but suddenly she was being handed off to someone else. This person’s touch was gentler, but it still scared her. She wanted to look up and see who it was that was holding her, but she was too frightened.

“Don’t be scared miss; don’t you know who it is that’s rescuing us? It’s the Devil’s Runner! No one is better than him!”

Jenna had never heard of the Devil’s Runner, or if she had she could not remember, so that offered little comfort. What did comfort her was the voice of the person speaking. It was such a calm, quiet voice. Despite being in this terrible place, his voice wasn’t hopeless or filled with despair or anything negative. She looked up at him and hiccuped. It had been a long time since she had seen another person, so perhaps that clouded her judgment, but he was the best looking man she could ever remember seeing. She was suddenly aware that she must look absolutely terrible. Her hair was an absolute mess, she hadn’t combed it in who knows how long, and her cheeks were likely sunken and unattractive.

“My but you’re a pretty girl miss,” the man said, bringing an emotion to Jenna that she never thought she would feel, even before she was imprisoned, embarrassment. She quickly looked away.

Their rescuer, this Devil’s Runner person, was giving instructions to the small group of people that Jenna only just noticed she was surrounded by. She didn’t like being around so many people, and she was still very uncomfortable at the touch of the man holding her, despite his face and voice. Jenna didn’t pay attention to the instructions; she tried most of all not to get her hopes up. They wouldn’t make it out. The other prisoners had to know that. Why were they acting like this would work? Jenna sunk into herself and tried not to think about escaping or the man holding her. It was very difficult for her to do.

They started moving at a slow pace, their rescuer going on ahead and leaving a trail for them to follow. The trail consisted of unconscious guards most of the time. They were never out of the Devil’s Runner’s sight for long. He would go ahead, there would be some grunting noises and perhaps a shout, then he would return and check on things behind them, followed by more grunts and shouts.

Jenna didn’t want to allow herself to feel the hope that was bubbling up inside her. It would hurt that much more when they got caught and she knew that that was going to happen eventually. She couldn’t allow herself to feel, to hope, to get excited. All that there was in the world was her fear of the man holding her. If she could just focus on that, then things would be okay.

“Please don’t cry miss,” the man holding her said.

Jenna hadn’t been aware that she was crying, but now that he mentioned it, she could hear her own sobbing. Despite all her trying not to, she had allowed her self to hope, but had already given up again. She suddenly felt so empty inside, and each tear was making her more and more empty. Her fear of the man holding her intensified suddenly and she started shaking. Her breathing was getting faster and faster and she felt like she still wasn’t getting enough air. Why was it so hard to breathe?

“I think she’s sick!” the man holding her said, though she hardly noticed.

Their rescuer put his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm her down, but that just made things worse. She didn’t have much strength, but she used every ounce of it to fight the people holding her. She could think straight anymore. Her only thought was one of panic. Who where these people touching her?! Why wouldn’t they just put her down?! What were they going do to do her?!

Jenna used up all of her strength fighting against her captors, which wasn’t much and found that her vision was fading. She was so exhausted. She finally gave up and passed out in the arms of a stranger.

~

This is all I've written of Devil's Runner so far. I'm still not to sure about that title, but it'll do for now. What think ye?

The Devil's Runner Part 2

Garret considered himself a master thief. It didn’t take long for authorities to make it official. The authorities of course didn’t know that his name was Garret, or anything else about him, just that someone was really good at taking things that didn’t belong to him. He was known by a different name wherever he went, but his favorite was definitely ‘The Devil’s Runner.”

Garret got so good at thievery that it was starting to become boring to him. He actually had decided to retire on the riches that he had stolen, for he had stolen a lot, when he heard the news that he had been caught and sent to the Fortress Prison. He of course hadn’t actually been caught, but people apparently thought that he had been. He figured that they caught someone they suspected near enough to the time that he had stopped thieving and figured that since the thieving stopped that they had caught the right guy.

At first, Garret had laughed at his good fortune. He was completely free and would never have to worry about his past catching up to him. His supposed capture was the talk of the town that he retired to, but so also was the topic of the Fortress Prison. The Fortress Prison was apparently where the worst criminals and enemies of state were sent. The lucky ones were sentenced to death, while the unlucky ones were doomed to forever rot there, for it was said that those who enter never return. Garret heard many terrible rumors about the place that whoever had been mistaken for him had been sent.

Garret did his best to ignore the rumors. He had no need to bother himself with them, no reason to feel guilty. Yet he did, though he fiercely denied it. He wouldn’t admit that someone suffering so much for what he did bothered him, but it did. He found that his retired life irritated him to no end, his irritation peaking whenever he heard his new neighbors speaking about his capture and supposed torture.

Convincing himself that he was just more bored with retirement than with his life of thievery, Garret set out for what he promised himself was his final job. There was nothing that Garret couldn’t sneak into, nothing that Garret couldn’t take, no prison that Garret couldn’t bust a prisoner out of, and the fact that everyone assumed that he had been captured in a place that no one ever left was insulting, and so he set out to the Fortress Prison to free himself and pilfer anything that he found there that tickled his fancy, just to show that it wasn’t impossible to steal from or break out of this place, and that it was impossible to hold him, even if it wasn’t him that was being held.

Garret had to do a lot of information gathering. None of the common class knew just where the Fortress Prison was, so Garret had to sneak into some very high ranking peoples homes, again, and look through their records and listen to their conversations. Eventually he found out why Fortress Prison was so well hidden and where it was. It wasn’t a fortress at all; it was called that to throw off people who were looking for it. It was actually an enormous cave system. After gathering all the information that he needed, Garret headed for the caves, confident that this job would be simple.

The entrance wasn’t guarded by men in uniforms, that would only draw attention the place, it was instead guarded by several official signs that stated how deadly the cave was. The first sign of guards was deeper into the cave, before the path could split. Anyone foolish enough to ignore the warning signs either knew too much or would soon and all who entered were then imprisoned.

Garret found that getting past these guards was simple. Not only did they not expect anyone to enter, but if they did they usually weren’t masterfully concealing themselves. There were patrols and seemingly random guard postings along the way, but Garret had already memorized the patterns long before he actually set foot in the cave. He had located the cell where he was supposed to be imprisoned. This was the first time that Garret used any force. He figured if he was going to bust himself out, he would do it in a way that everyone would remember. The Devil’s Runner was impossible to hold for any length of time, and there would even be rumors that they had gotten the wrong guy and the real one had set the wrongfully accused free. All started and spread by Garret of course.

The cell that Garret was looking for was very deep into the prison. It was supposedly where they kept all the most dangerous prisoners. There were five guards in that hall, one for each cell, and Garret would have to take them all out before he could rescue himself. Taking them out would be simple. He had a special poison that rendered one unconscious for hours that he had tipped several pins with. He ran through the corridor, sticking the guards with pins. They were down before they knew what was happening. He then unlocked every door in the corridor and whispered inside, “I am known by many names, most notoriously The Devil’s Runner. I am here to set you free, the door is unlocked, and I will clear the way ahead.”

Soon a haggard group of people stood before him. This would be the most challenging part. These people were unable to fight or defend themselves, so he would have to protect them on the way out. But something was off. There were only four prisoners standing before him, and there were five cells that were being guarded. Garret looked through the cells until he found one that contained a terribly thin girl staring up at a patch of sunlight that had filtered through the roof of the cave. She was alive, but perhaps too weak too move. “Are you okay? Do you need my help?”

The girl didn’t respond at all. She just continued staring at the ceiling. Perhaps she couldn’t hear anything? Garret moved closer to her and waved his hand in front of her face. She briefly moved her eyes to look at him but then stared back up at the ceiling. Garret almost gasped when he saw her eyes. He had seen it somewhat in the other prisoners, that nearly soulless look, that complete hopelessness, but it was much worse in this poor girl. “My word, how long have you been here?” Garret asked.

She didn’t answer him; she just closed her eyes and moved her head away. She didn’t try to fight back the tears. “Don’t worry, I’m going to take you away from here,” Garret said.

Garret picked her up and walked out of her cell. There was still no sign of any guards coming, but Garret was sure it wouldn’t be long now. Garret turned to the group of people he intended to rescue. “Now, which one of you was mistaken for me?”

A lad much too young raised his hand. Garret wanted to be offended, being mistaken for that kid. It wasn’t his fault though; he was probably just really unlucky. “I think you’ve been here the least amount of time, can you carry her while I lead you all to safety?” Garret asked him.

The young man nodded and Garret carefully handed to poor girl to him. The girl weighed almost nothing, but this kid didn’t look to hot himself. He was able to easily carry her though and they set off.

The Devil's Runner

My flash drive is temporarily unavailable, so I cannot continue any of my current projects but I also really wanted to write something. So I started something new. The title won;t make sense in this post, but it will in my next one. Also, this first post will be somewhat depressing.

~~

Jenna’s days had become very routine over the last five years. Everyday she would awaken from a dreadful sleep, finding that she was still in her cell. She would then wait to see if the guards remembered to bring her breakfast, usually it didn’t bother her either way, going hungry was often preferable to eating what they gave her, though she knew that she had to keep herself going and so she made sure that she didn’t starve. Then, she would wait for the sun to peek through the small holes in the roof. This would signal midday as the sun usually poked through around lunchtime (when they remembered it). It was also the only small comfort that Jenna received. The sun was still there, the world continued on without her, there was always another day.

The sunlight only lasted a few hours at most, but Jenna did her best to take advantage of it. During the first year of her confinement, she would try to catch glimpses of the sky and the sun and plan her daring escape or imagine her heroic rescue. She at first had several plans running all at once. Make the guard fall in love with her, go on a hunger strike, chip away at the walls, and become thin enough to slip through the bars were all plans that had been going on in the first few years. The guards never guarded her for more than a week at a time and she was forbidden from speaking to them, they would force feed her if they noticed that she hadn’t eaten the food that they occasionally remembered to give her, they were sure to take away anything that she might use to chip the walls away, and no matter how thin she became, her hips were never going to fit through those bars.

After the sun passed away from sight, taking away her scant source of light, Jenna would again simply wait to be fed again, and then try to fall asleep. At first, she was very hopeful that she would get rescued soon or that she would succeed in escaping. She didn’t notice it at first, but her hope shrank a little each day. Those days turned to months, and those months turned to years, and eventually she realized that she had given up. She wasn’t ever going to get out, and no one was coming for her. Her days had become a routine built by years of sitting and rotting in a cell deep in a cave.

She hated herself for losing hope, and she hated herself for falling into a routine, but it had been so long, and she was so tired of trying to maintain a false hope that she just let herself hate. Hating was easier than hoping, easier than waking up each morning disappointed that nobody had come for her. The only reason that she watched the sunlight anymore was because it was a part of her routine. She no longer thought of it as a hopeful sign that the world was still out there. She didn’t want to be reminded of the world that had given up on her. Jenna was slowly losing her sense of self down in these pits, and she hated that she no longer cared.

And so it was, five years and three months after being captured, that Jenna, whose only sense of self left was one of loathing, didn’t allow herself to grasp the hope that stealthily snuck into the cave prison. It is a good thing for her that the hope that entered the prison was very inquisitive.

~~

I've already written a bit more for this, so you can expect another post soon.

Books Read in 2010: The Great Fablehaven Hunt

Before I start, I need to mention that I forgot to mention a book that I had read, that being Sea of Monsters, the sequel to The Lightning Thief. I feel bad about forgetting it, and it has been added to the list after Howl's Moving Castle, and it will make this post add three books to the list.

Sea of Monsters
The Sequel to the lightning Thief, in this book we find Percy Jackson trying to survive a normal school (normal for him being what he is [a demigod]). It doesn't go well as it is attacked by monsters and Percy must get to the safety of Half-blood hill, where he discovers something awful that will affect the rest of the book and his quest.

I've already said that I love reading about mythology, and so I loved this book. It was a good follow up to the first one and made the situation regarding Percy's birth a little more ominous by the end. I also need to get a hold of the next three books somehow.


The Wheel of Time Book 2: The Great Hunt
These are huge books! The Wheel of Time is a classic series that is still going on, written by Robert Jordan and now Brandon Sanderson. The plot is so very very complicated to try and explain, especially starting at the second book, so I won't really try, I'll just say that yes, there is a dragon in this book (though a very different type of dragon).

These books take a long time for me to read. They are good books and enjoyable, but it seems that I have little interest to keep picking them up until about the second half when I find that I can't put them down. That's about 300 pages of dragging my feet to get to the good parts (and the good parts are really good parts, I must say) which is one reason I started reading 6 books at once, so that I would have something to motivate me through the first half of the book. I'm not trying to say that the first half of the books are terribly boring, a lot happens in them, they just didn't do it for me.


Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague
Yay Fablehaven! I'm really liking these books. And the best part? This one had dragons! Yay!

Okay, so this is the third book, and it takes place almost right after the second one. The ending of the second was filled with a startling discovery, and we spend a good deal of the third book investigating that discovery as it will shape the future of the Fablehaven books. We learn more about Kendra and her still pretty new abilities, and Seth becomes a much more important character.

Something awful is happening in Fablehaven (as hinted in the title), something far worse than ever before, that could destroy Fablehaven forever. But first, we'll take a side trip to another preserve that has a dragon on it! Sweet!

I'm thinking you should all read this book!

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven
The Third Sign
Throne of Jade
The Lighting Thief
Howl's Moving Castle
Sea of Monsters
Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star
The First King of Shannara
Inkheart
The Great Hunt
FableHaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague

Oh, and I guess you could go look at this.

Prompt 1

Prompt: An ancient unicorn accidentally wakes up cerberus and unleashes him on the world.

bonus points if you include any mention of non-greek deities.

Uloneus stood at the gates of the underworld, standing out like a sore thumb. Everything here was black and dark, and smelled of death, while Uloneus was pure white and standing near him made one feel invigorated. Uloneus stood to the side of the gates, watching the poor lost souls filter through it. He somewhat hoped that his presence would help through what was coming next.

That was not why Uloneus was here though. He wasn’t dead either, like all of those other souls. Uloneus was on a rescue mission. Usually, no one went to the underworld unless they had died, and they never came back afterwards either. This situation was different. Uloneus’s granddaughter was still alive, and being held captive here by Hades.

The way Uloneus understood it, Hades wife had asked for a unicorn so that she wouldn’t feel so dreary down in the underworld, and so Hades went after the first unicorn he could find, Uloneus’s granddaughter, and stole her into the underworld. Normally, to capture a Unicorn, one needs to be a virgin. Hades was no virgin, so Uloneus still didn’t know how it had happened, but he suspected that Hades had done something unjust to capture her. Uloneus was an ancient and well respected unicorn, so he was able to obtain an audience with Zeus after waiting for some time.

Zeus heard his plea, but told Uloneus that he was unable to do anything about it. Zeus’ domain was the sky, he had no power over the underworld, and he knew that Hades would deny any unjust activities and that he wouldn’t give her back.

So, feeling almost completely helpless, Uloneus decided that he would go into the underworld himself and offer to take his Granddaughters place. This was all well and good until he found himself at the underworld. There, he hesitated. He stood there for a long time, just watching the dead shuffle through the gates. Uloneus almost went back, but he thought of the shame he would feel upon telling his family that he had failed, and decided that he must go forward.

He stepped past the gate, not looking back for fear of turning around. This wasn’t so bad, he thought, just a line of the dead, and himself, heading towards judgment. That was when he heard the growling. Uloneus stopped and looked up. He saw three pairs of eyes staring down at him, all belonging to the same creature. Uloneus had forgotten about Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld.

Except its impossible to capture a unicorn without a virgin, so Uloneus was fairly sure that he could escape the hound. Cerberus snapped at Uloneus, but almost on instinct Uloneus was able to maneuver out of the way. Uloneus tried to run deeper into the underworld, but was blocked by Cerberus, who continues to bite at and miss him. This went on for a long time before Uloneus decided that he should return again with a better plan. He turned and tried to leave, but was pushed against by the throngs of the dead. Cerberus, chased after him, not being bothered by the dead, but also not wanting to bite at him, as Cerberus would only eat live meat, and Uloneus was surrounded by the dead.

“What is all the commotion!?” A horrible voice said.

Uloneus looked back and saw Hades approaching. Hades saw Uloneus and smiled. “Another one? And it’s trying to get away? That won’t do!”

Uloneus had passed through the gates but stopped at the River Styx. The ferryman had agreed to take him across the first time, but wasn’t there now to take him back, and even if he were, he probably wouldn’t have done it. “After it Cerberus!” Hades yelled, cutting the chain around its three heads.

Cerberus launched itself after Uloneus. Uloneus froze with fear, but the moment Cerberus was upon him, Uloneus found himself jumping over the river. The River Styx seemed endless, but almost magically, Uloneus jumped the whole thing. Cerberus could not catch him, even if he was backed into a corner like that. Uloneus thought he was safe, but he turned back and saw Cerberus swimming towards him. Cerberus was actually swimming the River Styx. Uloneus hadn’t thought that was possible.

And so Uloneus had continues running, with Cerberus chasing after him. Even after he shouldn’t have been able to run any more, he kept going, because he was a unicorn, and not even Cerberus would be able to catch him.

Uloneus finally collapsed. Chest heaving, he looked behind him and saw Cerberus sniffing the air. It had given up on Uloneus, but that was because there was much better and easier prey here. They were back in the mortal world. Uloneus suddenly realized what he had done. He had brought Cerberus to the world of the living, where, left unchecked, he would devour all living things in his path.

Cerberus was about ready to bound off in search of living food, but a thunderbolt landed in front of it. Where the thunderbolt had landed, stood Thor. “You have gotten yourself into a terrible mess this time Uloneus,” Thor said. “If you wished to rescue your granddaughter, you could have always come to me for assistance.”

“It was a Greek matter,” Uloneus stammered, “I didn’t thing it appropriate.”

Thor huffed, “Hmph! The Greeks! If you were wronged, it does not matter who wronged you!”

“Won’t Zeus get mad at you for interfereing?” Uloneus said.

“You leave Zeus to me, I know how to handle him, he’s not as scary as he seems,” Thor said, raising his hammer as a lightning bolt, one of Zeus’ this time, hit it, the hammer acting as a lightning rod.

Cerberus, through all of this, had been attacking Thor, to no avail. Thor had been holding back the hellhound with a massive wind. Thor stopped the wind; his talk with Uloneus finished, and faced Cerberus. “Come on then you great beast, let us do battle!”

~~

This prompt made me giggle as I wrote it. "Ancient and well respected Unicorn." XD

I chose Thor as the non Greek god for this one reason:

Poking Fun at Twilight

One of my friends let me borrow a book about Vampires that was written back when vampires were cool (before Twilight). Whilst reading, I decided that I should write a story about a traditional vampire who reads Twilight. This is the result:

~

At first, the differences were awesome. After that book came out, Gary could just tell them he was a vampire, and they would practically beg him to suck their blood. Before it would take a lot of subtlety and lots of time, keeping his vampirism a secret until the last, their last, minute. Now he could just show them that his fangs weren’t fake and that was that. Life had significantly improved in his opinion, though he wasn’t sure why. Then one of his victims asked him to step into the sun so she could see him sparkle. She was devastated to find that real vampires don’t sparkle. She almost didn’t let him bite her, almost.

It really shouldn’t have bothered Gary, that some girl seemed to think that Vampires sparkle, but it did. There was nothing in any mythos that he could remember that even remotely suggested sparkling. It didn’t take long to find out where the idea had originated. That book. Gary had wanted to vomit upon reading it, all the horrible things it made vampires out to be. He could handle certain things about it, but sparkling in sunlight?

It became no fun after that. He would only go after someone when he was really, really thirsty. It was almost unbearable when they got sooooo excited about him being a vampire, asking him to stand in the sun and if he was a vegetarian vampire like the ones in the book. It did give him some satisfaction when he said no, and to see fear flash across their eyes, but it didn’t last long and they quickly started asking questions again, probably thinking that they would get more time to ask after he had so graciously turned them. He never expressly told them that he was going to turn them; they just assumed that that was his intention, since vampires were such loving and understanding creatures with hearts and eyes of gold.

This was the second time that a mere book had changed everything for vampires. The first was of course Dracula. How Bram Stoker ever found out so many of their secrets was any vampires guess, but it made the job a lot harder. Suddenly everyone noticed that you never went out at night, or that you were “allergic” to garlic. It took a while before the repercussions of that book died down, and then this one happened. Now vampires sparkle and drink animal blood because they didn’t want to hurt their human friends!

Gary found that the only way that it could be fun is if his victim hadn’t read, or hadn’t liked the book. That brought back the old challenge of it, that made it fun again, and he never had that dirty feeling afterwards. But girls who didn’t like the book were pretty rare, and Gary didn’t want to exhaust the supply, so he had to kill them sparingly, though he always took note once he found one of them. Unfortunately, Gary hadn’t found any in the area he was currently in, so he would have to make due with the usual.

~

I'm not sure if I'll ever seriously work on this, I just thought it was silly. I have two more characters in mind, a typical girl who read (and practically worships) Twilight, and a Vampire Hunter who's job got a lot more difficult since Twilight came out.

Books Read in 2010: Three of 'em

I tend to forget to update this list when I finish a book. There are three to add and I'm hoping that I'm not forgetting any. Its hard to keep track sometimes when trying to read six books at once. I have been unable to find the sequels to Howl's Moving Castle, so these books won't be those.

Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star

The Sequel to Fablehaven, the Rise of the Evening Star continues the story of Kendra and Seth and their adventures at Fablehaven. The Society of the Evening Star (the bad guys) are causing all sorts of trouble at Fablehaven, having found their way into the preserve. Frog demons and Revenant zombies are only the most noticeable problems that Kendra and Seth must deal with, as Fablehaven goes under attack by the society.

Its actually been a while since I finished this, and I am well into the third book now, which had me confused as to which events happened in which book. I think I've got it all sorted out in my head though. Also, this book was very lacking in dragons.

A very good sequel to a very good book. It had a cliffhanger ending of sorts, and I was very glad that I could immediately start the next book. Definitely check out the Fablehaven books.

The First King of Shannara

I think I spelled that right. I've actually had this book for years and actually got about halfway through it, and stopped for whatever reason. That was a bad idea. I loved this book.

Set as a prequel to The Sword of Shannara, the First King takes place nearly 400 years (I think) before the events of The Sword. We follow the Druid Bremen and his friends as they desperately scramble to stop the Warlock Lord from overrunning the world. The Warlock Lord is a very real threat that has gone almost undetected because all of the races have secluded themselves, thus allowing him to gain immeasurable power, almost undetected. The only one who knows about him is Bremen, and he must do all he can to convince the world of this threat before it is too late.

So this book is awesome and very suspenseful. Bremen's task seems completely hopeless and it is fun to watch him slowly succeed, even though things don't go how he would have liked them to. Unfortunately, this book also lacked dragons, but it made up that by being awesome all by itself.

Inkheart

This is a book about people who really like books. Yay #1. Every chapter starts with a heading that is an excerpt from another classic book. Yay#2. One of the characters can read characters out of books and does so with a few classic books. Yay#3. Yes I liked this book a lot.

Meggie loves books. She got this love of books from her father, who fixes books for his job. Their house is filled with piles and piles of books with almost not enough room for them all. Meggie's peaceful life is shattered as an old acquaintance, calling himself Dustfinger, shows up on their doorstep. Meggie's father, Mo, in order to protect Meggie from their past, tries to run from it, but it catches up to them quickly. The evil Capricorn has found Mo at last, and he doesn't intend to let him slip away this time.

This book also didn't have any dragons (three is a row?!) but that was okay because of the Yays mentioned above, and the general awesomeness the this book is saturated in. There is good potential for dragons though, since the author of the book has written about dragons in the past and there are two more books in the series. One can hope.

If you like books, you should read this. This book was written for people who like books (a lot of books are, but this one especially). I must now get my hands on the sequels.

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven
The Third Sign
Throne of Jade
The Lighting Thief
Howl's Moving Castle
Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star
The First King of Shannara
Inkheart

I still haven't written that much, but there is something that I want to write that I might post here if I get around to it.

More Fablehaven Dragons!

So you may remember a post I did where I was excited about the first Fablehaven book talking about dragons. Or you may not, that's okay too. That isn't important, what is important is that in the third Fablehaven book, dragons are much more prevalent.

There was nothing about them in the second book unfortunately, but in the third book they are important and this makes me happy. They even introduced dragon tamers, which also makes me happy.

What is even better is that the next book is supposed to focus even more on dragons, since dragon is in the title.

I Need to Write More

I suck at consistently writing. I think through the whole summer that I mayhaps wrote half a chapter. That half a chapter felt really good once I had written it, but as a whole, I suck. I blame the summer. I used to love summer because no school, but now it sucks. I don't like warm weather.

Despite not writing, I have been thinking a lot, and thinking is an important part of the writing process (its just also important to go past that part.) I've created a new folder in my flash drive called Ideas because of all the thinking I've been doing. I have three files in it now. One is a sentence that would be fun to open on, one is an entire series that I wish to write someday, and the other is something that I thought up whilst reading the third Fablehaven book. The two story ideas both include dragons. Theres a shocker. One has a man who was a dragon, cursed to take human form (but that's a spoiler), and the other has an Ambassador to the Dragons who is some kid of a yet unknown age.

Hopefully, these ideas and all my thinking will lead to a huge writing burst when the weather stops trying to melt my brain at all times. I'm currently in my sister's house, which is very south, and I would be unable to write this if not for her glorious AC. I might maybe get some writing done whilst I am here. That would be fun times.

Edit: After I finished the above and hit submit I realized that I hadn't written an idea down yet. So there are now four files in my idea folder. Something about guilds and mages or something.

Books Read in 2010: Howl's Moving Castle (!!)

So I was at my friends house and I discovered that he just casually happened to have a copy of the book Howl's Moving Castle. WHAT!!!??? I was made to wonder if he had ever truly been my friend at all, having that book and never telling me about it, when he told me that his sister was borrowing it from one of her friends. He also said that her sister was soon going to give it back to her friend. I didn't have to say much, I just stared hungrily at the book, when he went to ask his sister if he could read it before she gave it back. She said yes and he handed me the book and I sped off on my bike cackling like a madman (that last part might have been all in my head).

Needless to say, I was on a deadline and couldn't read this book as well as the six other books I'm reading simultaneously, so I ate it all in a few days time and only just finished. So on with the show then.

Howl's Moving Castle

I was afraid that after reading this book I would no longer be able to watch the movie. This always happens after I read a book. The movies that are based off of them try their very best to get as much of the book in as accurately as possible and they always fail (in my opinion). Not so with Howl's Moving Castle.

The movie basically takes most of the characters, and a few of the plot points (Sophie becoming a hag for one) and creates an entirely new story. At first this wasn't very apparent, and so I kept expecting things to happen because I've watched that movie so many times. I soon realized my error and found that I was reading a very different story than the movie portrayed. At first this was somewhat annoying, but then I was excited, because I hate spoilers anyway and now I didn't really have any.

A bit more on the differences between the book and movie. In the movie, the setting is very Steam Punk, the book is more pure fantasy (but with a surprise in the middle that got me excited). In the movie, the Suliman is an old woman, but in the book, he's a dude. They have the same role though (Royal Magician). In the movie, Howl's Apprentice's name is Markl. In the book is Micheal. I found this interesting. I think it is because Micheal transliterated to Markl when the book was translated to Japanese. Perhaps.

Okay, enough of that, more on the book. The glorious, glorious book. In the land Ingary, being born the eldest of three is considered a great misfortune. It is said that the eldest of three will fail at finding their fortune. Sophie has taken this to be a fact of her life, and so she never even tries. She pretty much runs her Father's hat shop, and never tries to do anything for herself, while her two younger sisters sneakily chase their dreams. Sophie is compelled to seek her fortune when the Witch of the Waste shows up and curses her to become an old woman. Sophie doesn't wish for her family to see her as an old woman and so she leaves and ends up and the back door of the dreaded Wizard Howl who lives in an enchanted moving castle. Lots of magic and adventure and tantrums ensue.

This is one of those books where after I finished it, I had to run and tell (rant to) someone about it. The only problem was that it was midnight when I finished. So I came here to tell the internet. Oh my goodness I loved this book. You have to read it carefully, elsewise you might miss key details. It seemed to me as I read it that most little details are important, and they were. You may have to go back and find a certain paragraph or two and reread it to fully understand something that just happened. I was okay with this, and I found the book was worth it.

Guess what? There are two more! There are two more books about Howl and perhaps his castle. They are called Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways. I fully intend to seek them out and devour them. The fact that I don't just have them at the ready is making me furious! I shall have to visit the library tomorrow...er- today, since its past midnight now.

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven
The Third Sign
Throne of Jade
The Lighting Thief
Howl's Moving Castle

If those next two books are at the library, you can expect them to be added the the list shortly.

Books Read in 2010: Dragon Thiefs

I was supposed to update this a long time ago, as I finished these books a long time ago. I am a champion procrastinator. Anyway!

Throne of Jade

This is a book about dragons! Automatic +1 awesome. Throne of Jade is the Sequel to His Majesty's Dragon and takes place during the Napoleon Wars. England and France are at war because Napoleon is being Napoleon, and instead of just fighting on land and sea, they also fight in the air with dragons! There's another +1 awesome.

The main dragon is called Temeraire and I'm sure that I've never pronounced that correctly. His captain is Laurence who was a ship captain before Temeraire hatched, and was then thrust into the air force. I think Laurence is a pretty cool guy, eh slays Frenchmen and doesn't afraid of anything. (Obscure Internet references FTW!)

The main conflict is that Temeraire is a super rare Chinese dragon and the Chinese want him back. Temeraire doesn't want to go back, and this causes problems.

This book was awesome and had tons of dragons (+1 awesome) and I was speaking in an English accent for weeks after reading it. If you like history and if you like dragons, you should totally read this. NEXT BOOK!

The Lightning Thief

While this doesn't have any dragons, it does have a lot of Greek Mythology. Like, if everything in Greek Mythology was true and what that would mean for today. Basically the main character is a demi-god and for a good part of the story he is trying to find out who is father is. He is eventually given a quest to stop a looming war by finding something that was stolen from Zeus. Hades is the primary suspect and so they head for the underworld and have lots of adventures on the way.

I'm a total nerd, and whilst reading this I had to look up Greek Mythology to better understand who the characters were and what their stories are. This made my inner nerd giddy. Yay for being a nerd!

If you find Greek Mythology interesting, you should totally read this series. Highly recommended.

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven
The Third Sign
Throne of Jade
The Lighting Thief

I'll have more to add soon. I'm reading six books at once, so it takes some time to finish them. Hopefully I'll actually add them when I finish instead of waiting for weeks.

Midnight's Knife

So a friend just asked me for a name for a squad and after some non serious suggestions I said Midnight's Knife. She eventually chose something else, but I kind of like the name and now I'll write it down so that I won't forget it.

~.~

It was pitch black out, the moon and stars covered by clouds. The city usually had lamp lights for night's like this, but none were shining on this night. That was a warning, telling the inhabitants of the city not to leave their homes, because terrible things were going to happen. Someone had been marked by Midnight for death, and if someone went out on a night like this, Midnight might mark them as well.

Most people in the city didn't know who Midnight was, they just knew that on terribly dark nights that people who left their homes died. The deaths were always different. They seemed to be random. The people knew, however, that all of the deaths were connected to the nights were impossibly dark.

Roy Falcon, captain of the city guard, perhaps knew the most about what really happened. This was because he had been marked by Midnight, was fated to die by Midnight's Knife. He knew that a group called Midnight's Knife was behind the killings, but the group was notoriously hard to track down. He was one of the only people who knew about them, and it had to stay that way, because when you learn of their existence, you either become marked, or you become a Knife for Midnight.

Captain Falcon's mark was on his back. He had gotten it as a young boy. He had been lucky then, or the Knife pursuing him had just been terribly unskilled. He went out on every night like this, to try and stop Midnight's Knife from killing, hoping to draw them towards him and distracting them from their target, hoping to catch them or die trying. He had caught several of them, but they were always dead by morning, going from a Knife to a Mark.

Roy was patrolling the streets, the only who ever did on nights like this. Someone was going to be murdered this night, and he was going to make sure it wasn't whoever it was that just got marked.

"Roy, Roy, Roy, you are much to predictable," A voice said from above.

Roy recognized that voice. It was a Knife that he had encountered many times before. "If I wasn't, we would never meet up now would we?" Roy said.

"Were you hoping to save some poor innocent soul tonight? Were you hoping to save someone from being marked?" The Knife asked.

"Don't I always?" Roy said.

"You're out of luck Roy, because tonight, you're our target," the Knife said.

"Oh please, do you think that this is the first time I've been the target, I've been doing this a lot longer than you have son," Roy said.

The Knife screamed. "I told you! I'm no longer your son! Midnight is the only parent I have now!"

With that, the Knife, Roy's own son, jumped from his hidden perch toward Roy, knife in hand, with the intent to kill his father and sever the ties he had with him so that Midnight would more fully accept him. Roy had been expecting this of course, he had taught the boy how to fight in the first place after all. Roy sidestepped the boy's knife and punched him hard in the face.

~0~

Okay, I know, you don't have to point out the Captain Falcon thing. Lets just say its kind of late and I had the giggles. This is why I ended it with him punching something. It was hard not to write FALCON PAWNCH!

Well this was fun. I haven't written in far too long thanks to a horrible writer's block that had been chewing relentlessly on my nose, distracting me from writing. I think it finally gave up :D

Books Read in 2010: The Third Sign

So I was wrong, Lightning Thief had more chapters than I thought. I finished the book The Third Sign and will finish another before Lightning Thief. Also, I recently got the second and third Fablehaven books :D

The Third Sign

The author of this book said that he took his inspiration from The Lord of The Rings. This does not mean that he copied it, though, his book is very unique and tells its own story. The book takes place in Klune, a nation that in under constant attack by evil forces, but is protected by the race of Arlics. The Arlics aren't sure that they want to continue protecting Klune though and this causes a lot of tension as the people start to fear that their borders will be left unguarded. This seems to be the least of their problems as an ancient prophecy seems to be coming to pass that could spell the destruction of the world.

I really liked this book. There aren't enough epic fantasies anymore, and this helps fill the gap. I actually enjoyed this book more than LotR, and I can't wait for the next one to come out. I totally recommend this book to all.

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven
The Third Sign

Books read in 2010: Demon's Lexicon and Fablehaven

I've decided to keep track of all the books I've read in 2010. Its already march and I've only read two -_- so I'm off to a slow start.

I got a bunch of books for Christmas and have been reading them all simultaneously. I would read one chapter, then switch to the next. This ensures that the books last longer and I don't swallow them whole in one day like I usually do. I like this.

Yesterday (or the day before) I finished The Demon's Lexicon, shortly followed by Fablehaven. I'll talk briefly about each.

The Demon's Lexicon:

Nick and his brother Alan live a life in hiding from evil magicians. Their mother stole a powerful amulet from the magician known as Black Arthur and now all the other magicians in London are after it. Everything is relatively fine until Alan gets a demon's mark that can only be removed by the blood of a magician. Now the hunted must become the hunters.

I think I just summarized the summary :P The story is told from the perspective of Nick, who is a very interesting character. Saying too much about him will give away the ending, but I'll just say that Nick learns a lot about his family as the story progresses. This is a great young adult book, and I recommend it highly.

Fablehaven:

I've made a few posts about this already, but now I can talk more about it since I've finished. :D As much as I don't like to admit it, this book is basically about fairies. Not completely about them, but they do play a big role throughout the book. Kendra and Seth are visiting their grandparents preserve and soon discover that it is a magical preserve that holds all the magical creatures of myth and lore. Like fairies. There are a lot more than fairies though. Many, if not all, of the creatures in the preserve are dangerous if you don't abide by the rules of the place. Since one of the characters is about 12 years old, a lot of rules get broken.

So yes, there are fairies, but there are also trolls and demons and imps and stuff. And the fairies aren't even that bad, especially near the end of the book. There are a few more books in the series and one of the covers has dragons. I wish to read them and get to the dragons and to enjoy all the other things that will happen in between, since the possibilities are limitless. You should totally read this if you already haven't.

I'm almost done with a few more books, so you can expect more posts soon. Next will likely be Lightning Thief.

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven

Fantasy Mythology

One of the reasons I like writing fantasy is because I can create a completely new world, and then I can come up with how it was made, how the people in the world believe it was made, and how similar or different those two things are.

I like mythology in general. I mostly realized this because of The Lightning Thief which I am currently reading, which is all about Greek mythology. For Skies of Fire I knew what the people believed in, but I didn't really know what actually happened until recently in my writings when a plot twist surprised me and in order for that twist to make sense, I realized that I needed to know how this world was made, and by who, and a few minor events since then. This was fun. Even if most of it won't make it into the story, I still enjoyed thinking it up. It makes the world I made feel more real to me.

I'm also reading a book called "The Third Sign." In the first couple of chapters, a good deal of the worlds mythology is explained and revealed, and I loved it. It was interesting and unique and I liked learning about the world that I'm exploring through the pages.

Yes, I realize that I'm a nerd.

On a note about Fablehaven: I just read the chapter in it called "Inside the Barn." It was probably the weirdest chapter I've ever read in any book. I was like this while reading it O.o Not to say that its a bad book or that I'm giving up on it, its just weird is all. I'll talk more about it when I finish.

AH HA!

Number of pages it took for Fablehaven to include the word Dragon: 169

Sorry, I know this is a silly post, but I was just waiting for that. +1 awesome point for Fablehaven. Now what would really be something is if there was an actual dragon, and not just someone talking about dragons.

Dragonhounds

Generally after reading a book about dragons, I have dragons on the brain for a good while. I had just finished a chapter in one of my dragon books (Throne of Jade) and thus had dragons on the mind. I was with my dog and recalled that he was named for a dragon (Falcore from Never Ending Story) and this idea popped into my head. If I don't write it somewhere it will leave me, and I might as well put it here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Keith followed his guide into the rebels camp, noting how disastrously organized it was. If this place was attacked, even by a small force, it would be decimated, and the fact that he had found it so easily suggested that Lord Graslin probably knew of this place and was biding his time, letting the rebels hope before he tore them to pieces. Hopefully he would be able to change the circumstances here before it was too late.

There was some barking up ahead and a few enormous dogs started running for Keith's guide. Keith had never seen dogs of such size before, and as they got nearer he began to doubt that they were dogs at all.

"Falcore, Tempest!" Keith's guide shouted as the beasts neared.

Keith had no idea what to think of these beasts. They had the shape of dogs, yet instead of fur, they had scales. Their eyes were not reptile eyes however, and looked like dog eyes. There were stubs on their shoulders that looked as if they might have once been wings. Their tails wagged like a dogs and they barked like dogs, but they were definitely not dogs!

"What...?" was all Keith managed to say.

"What's the matter? You've never seen a dragonhound before? That's not surprising, they're a rare breed," Keith's guide said.

Dragon...hounds?" Keith asked. This revelation only brought more questions.

"Yep, you see a few decades or so ago, there was a wizard who knew that his dogs were nearing the end of their lives. His dogs were his only companions, so in order to elongate their lives, he magically infused them with dragon blood. This definitely made them live longer, and had a few side effects that he wasn't expecting. We have that with a few more years of proper breeding that we can make those stubs on their backs become full wings, wouldn't that be something?"

"Its definitely something alright," Keith agreed, unable to look away from the dragonhounds.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Perhaps I am a bit too obsessed with dragons?

I'm not sure what I'll do with this. I already am writing to many things at the moment, so perhaps this will stay in the archives until I can finish a few of them. Who knows. Also, it already sounds incredibly cliche, what with the rebellion, and the evil lord who knows where they are but is confident enough in his awesome to let them think they have a chance (ultimately leading to his demise). So if I do ever make something more of this, I'll have to work to make it any good. But this is true for any story.

Guys don't read?

So I was catching up on all the blog posts that I missed during NaNo and the holidays when I read this post, which discusses the problem of too few guy readers and why perhaps that is.

I'll be honest, I didn't even realize this was an issue until just before Christmas. After all, I'm a guy, I read A LOT, my friends are guys who read, and the first book blog I ever read was by a guy. But then I found myself in Wal*Mart with $20 with which to buy things, so I headed to the book section. I, for one of the first times ever, had a hard time finding a book I wanted to read. It seemed like EVERY book in that section was aimed at females. D:

Now, I think the reason I never noticed this before is because I usually know what I want before I go to buy, and I tend to buy from Amazon or B&N and not so much at stores.

My younger brother was only interested in Video Games and was feeling very impatient with me as I struggled to find a book to get so I also felt rushed. Perhaps if I had had more time to browse the books I would have found that more of them would have interested me, but I didn't have time, I was judging almost entirely on book covers (a horrible sin, I know) and most of them looked full of flowers and fairies and other such things and so I passed over them because it was obvious who they were geared toward and it surely wasn't me!

Finally I found a little area that had fantasy and I cried tears of joy. More like I fell to the floor to get a better look as they were very low to the ground. And even then most of them looked girly. Thankfully one cover caught my eyes, it had a dragon on it, or four, or a four headed dragon. Either way, dragons, I was happy. But it was a book four :( So I looked for book one of the series and to my unspeakable horror, book one's cover was filled with fairies! How could fairies become dragons? Luckily I noticed the blurb, it was a blurb by Christopher Paolini (you know, the guy who writes those books about DRAGONS?). The blurb said that it was one of the most enjoyable fantasies that he had ever read. This sold it for me. He is one of my favorite authors (because he writes about dragons, seriously, that's all you have to do and you will likely have my undying devotion) so I picked up the book. What book was it? Fablehaven. I hear its pretty popular no?

I had money for more books, so I looked for more. I saw a cover with a guy on it holding a sword :D called The Lightning Thief so I snatched it up, and then I saw Inkheart which one of my friends (who is a guy) recommended, so I grabbed that one also. Yay for three new books, of which I am currently devouring, and they are tasty.

What that? What's my point? I dunno, perhaps that I just discovered that something is very wrong with publishing today (besides that it needs more dragons, but no matter how many it produces I shall not be satisfied). Perhaps to say that while it is a problem, it isn't exactly all that bad as I could still find books that interested me, even if two of them have girl MCs and one had fairies on the cover. Perhaps it's been to long since I just discussed something here and I wanted to. I dunno, what I do know is that I'mma go write more Skies of Fire, I've been neglecting the poor thing since November.