Archive | October 2013
On This Date: Addergoole Drabbles of Niassa
October 16, 2004
College was weird.
The classes were alternately harder than anything at Addergoole and easier, her teachers were strange and at the same time more professional and less, and her classmates were so /young/ it hurt.
But Niassa had lost that argument, so through Intro to Psych she sat, dreaming of fighting dragons.
October 16, 2013
She couldn’t really fly with the things she’d gotten in lieu of wings.
But on the back of a dragon, a sword between its shoulderblades and a garrote around its neck… then, then Niassa was flying, higher and higher into the air.
She didn’t think about the fall, not yet. Not until it came.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/581356.html. You can comment here or there.
Kitty, kitty, kitty, a story for my Real World Prompts
To ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clare_dragonfly‘s prompt: Collecting more and more cats
It started with the one cat.
Jenny was working four ten-hour days a week, which meant she wasn’t really home enough for a dog. But she was in a new city, in a strange neighborhood, and when she was home, she was home for days at a time, and it was lonely.
So she got a cat, a black kitten from the shelter with a kink to one ear. She named him Sable, and he and she became close friends.
But the work hours turned into 12-hour workdays, and Sable was lonely at home. So Jenny bought Azure, another rescue from the pound, grey tabby with a missing tail-tip.
Two’s enough, she told herself. Two’s fine. But then there was this kitty mewing on the front step of her apartment, so into a cage when the skinny orange thing, and to the vet. The pound would have destroyed the kitten, so Flame came home with Jenny.
Three was more than enough for her small apartment, so she started looking for a bigger place. More responsibility at work had come with a raise and then another one, but it also meant she was working sixty-hour weeks. She didn’t have time for socialization; she came home and petted the cats while she watched TV until she fell asleep.
The bigger place came with a cat the owner couldn’t take with him. Well, this place had a whole second bedroom and bathroom, so of course Pearl could stay. And then a co-worker was moving, begging someone to take care of their favorite cat, and it already had a color name, so Charcoal came home to meet the clan.
When she found herself picking up Ice, Jenny realized she needed a bigger place. She bought a little farm out on the edge of town, and paid a college boy to feed the cats on days she couldn’t make it home, and mow the lawn and rake and shovel. He wasn’t an unattractive boy, either…
…and she was living on a farm, so people dumped cats there when they couldn’t handle them anymore. Ember. Chestnut. Splatter. Carrot.
…and the boy, whose name was Cordovan, which went perfectly with his hair.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/580953.html. You can comment here or there.
Icon Days
itsamellama is hosting an Icon Day!
itsamellama drew
Ahouva
Llew
and an Eluned that I have not yet posted because I need to renew my account.
mousibaldq is hosting a pet/animal icon day!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/580752.html. You can comment here or there.
Getting Ahead of Myself: Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Saydri
Saydri – (SAY-dree)(thnidu?)
15 years old
Male
Saydri is a blonde, as the far South people still tend to be – his hair is sandy blonde, his eyes are blue, and his skin is tanned, but still paler than either of the other two. He’s build tall and broad, but hasn’t really grown into it yet; he has big hands and big feet, but his body doesn’t have the breadth of chest yet that it probably will. He stands almost a head taller than the two girls.
He has the long, almost-pointed-seeming nose that’s common in ethnically Bitrani people, and thin, pale eyebrows that almost vanish into his skin
He grew up in a rather fanatical household, deep in the South, where rebellion is still a whispered idea. His family is very deeply religious, in the old form that is not practiced anywhere else, and they speak Bitrani, which has fallen from use everywhere else on the continent.
He’s quiet, shy-seeming, with a fiery temper that boils just under the surface and will erupt at the oddest provocation.
He was “chosen” for the school by a government project that seeks to make sure Calenyen ideas are percolated through the youth of the whole country, and he does not particularly want to be here.
He needs to learn to control his temper, to find a balancing point between his faith, his nationalism, and the reality of the world he lives in. He will struggle with the education and the language and find his own identity.
Also, there will be clothing shenanigans.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/580503.html. You can comment here or there.
Cynara: Her Second Year
Tenth in a series of character-building vignettes following a bunch of characters through their time at Addergoole & beyond.
Cynara’s First Year Vignette is here.
Year 7 of the Addergoole School; September
Cya had spent most of the summer walking, hitch-hiking, wandering around. Her father had been meant to pick her up at the airport, but he hadn’t, so she’d decided to make a months-long trip of getting back to Addergoole.
It had taken the whole summer of that to clear out the empty spot in her chest, and even that hadn’t really worked. Dysmas was gone. He’d walked away with barely a second glance. Dysmas was gone. It hadn’t even surprised her when her father didn’t show up, after that.
She didn’t feel so achey anymore, but there was still this feeling as if there was something missing. She limped into school, ignoring Luke’s irritated growls. So she’d walked back. So what? So she’d managed to time it so she met a handsome new student at the airport. So what? It was generally considered cheat, she knew… but everyone at Addergoole cheated (And he really was quite handsome).
Dysmas was gone. The loss hit her all over again as she looked at the niche where he’d sometimes snacked on her, the halls where they’d had classes, the stairs down to his suite. He was gone.
She sat on the stairs until her breath came back. He’d been using her, of course. Using and manipulating. He’d been drinking her blood for a year. He’d treated her like an employee at the best of times.
And he was gone, and she missed him. She didn’t want to think about that one too much, and yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Cya!”
“Cya, honey! You made it!”
She looked up, only then realizing she’d been looking at her knees.
“We got the suite!”
Bearing down on her were… were Boom. Were Howard and Zita and Leofric. Smiling. All of them, smiling.
Were her crew.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/580245.html. You can comment here or there.
While I’m At it…
While I’m on market research – there’s that other serial
I’m working on a serial set in the Steam era of Calenta/Reiassan. It’s going to be a non-kinky setting with, I think/hope, a feel like the fantasy novels I enjoyed reading in my teens: coming of age and self-exploration set against grand villains and daring exploits.
What three things would you MOST like to see in such a story?
What three things would you LEAST like to see?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/580038.html. You can comment here or there.
Current Long-Form Story (50K+plus words) Projects
Current Long-Form Story (50K+plus words) Projects
| Working Title | Description | Progress |
| Steam!Reiassan | YA-style* serial following three new students through their school adventures | Main characters developed |
| Missing Orders | Addergoole, second gen – Fernley’s biggest problem should not be his orders vanishing | 46000 out of 52-54000 words |
| Rin & Girey | An Army healer brings the Prince of a defeated nation home with her, across difficult terrain | 16000 out of 50-52000 words |
| Addergoole Rewrite | Rewriting books one and two of the Addergoole series | outlined |
| Kinky Fantasy | A kinky serial set in a fantasy setting of some sort. | Market Research stage |
| Prisoners 16&23 | Kink/kidnapping/dehumanization serial | stalled at 7k words |
| Tea and Space | "trying to drink tea while being dragged to strange adventures" | conception stage |
* which is not to say YA**
** although this story will be written far more all-ages than, say, Addergoole
One of the three with no wordcount listed will be my Nano project.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/579760.html. You can comment here or there.
Preliminary market research
If I were to write a Completely Different sort of sexy/kinky fantasy serial (Separate from Steam-Goats, promise), what are the top three things you’d like to see in such a serial?
What would you LEAST want to see in that story?
What setting would you like for such a story?
If your answer is “but I wouldn’t read erotic serials,” that’s okay, too.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/579406.html. You can comment here or there.
One Year Ago / Hello Tradition, a story of Addergoole Yr 12
After Goodbye Tradition.
Beckett also has an appearance in Don’t Cry, Baby; Leithe also shows up in A New year, a New… Who?.
http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/407350.html
Beckett spent a week trying to pretend he wasn’t sulking, and another week trying hard to ignore the questions. None of them were polite. Some of them were just insulting.
“So, Mirella cut you free?”
“So, you couldn’t hack it as a Keptie?”
“So, you’re in the market now?”
So, so, so. No, no, no. Beckett didn’t feel free. He didn’t feel like he’d failed. He felt, more than anything… angry.
“I wish…” But life didn’t work that way.
“What do you wish? Maybe I can make it come true.”
He knew Leithe. He shared a couple classes with her; more importantly, Mirella had declared her utterly and completely off-limits. She was petite, lovely, and looked nothing at all like Mirella.
“I’m not sure.” Beckett shrugged. Pretty girls didn’t generally talk to him – part of why he’d been such a sucker for Mirella. “I wish she’d either never Kept me or never released me, I guess.”
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” She tilted her head and frowned at him. “When it breaks, the bond? It makes you feel like everything is going sideways.”
It did. Beckett nodded cautiously.
“And it makes you feel empty.”
“You’ve been Kept?” It was a stupid question, but he was good at those. Everyone was Kept eventually.
“I did my time. You got off easy, some people would say.”
“Being hers… it wasn’t bad.” He’d felt like he’d been worth something. “Not being anyone’s kind of sucks.”
“Well, there’s always the alternative.”
Beckett swallowed. Even HE could pick up what she was offering. But was that somewhere he wanted to be?
“Think about it?” Leithe tilted her head again. She was smiling; she had a pretty smile. “And if not that… well, come talk anyway. Having friends around here is helpful.”
“Friends.” Beckett swallowed. Friends, he could do. “Okay. Uh. Friends.”
Mirella had cut him free. For the first time, free didn’t feel like falling.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/579306.html. You can comment here or there.