Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 43

By popular demand, more from Kustennin for #Wippet Wednesday!

Ok, I admit, “popular” is a bit exaggerated — I think it was a sum total of one person who wanted to see Kustennin again. But I’m an obliging soul (sometimes), and one is enough of a demand for me. So in honor of the date, 9-18, here are nine short paragraphs from page eighteen of A Wasted Land. In this scene, Kustennin is at the horse fair of Durnovaria to try to find some likely mounts for their mobile troops, the basis of much of the British military success in the previous Pendragon book...

Back to A Wasted Land, and another #WIPpet Wednesday

After getting Chameleon in a Mirror off to my beta readers last week, I returned to A Wasted Land. First, in order to get may head back into the project, I did some editing of scenes leading up to where I left off. As a result, the added word count is modest: 2,000 new words to Kustennin’s story. The ongoing, long-term translation is also keeping me pretty busy. More on that eventually, since it’s also an indie experiment, but not today. It’s late now in Central Europe, and I don’t have enoug...

Excerpt from “Chameleon in a Mirror” for #WIPpet Wednesday

I finished the read-through / editing pass of Chameleon in a Mirror yesterday, but it was late, and I didn’t have any brain cells left for contacting my beta readers. I did that just now.

I did a complete overhaul of the novel earlier this year and sent it to a writing buddy for a critique exchange, but he became a brand new daddy last year, and he’s pretty swamped, so it’s back to the drawing board. Since it had been several months since I’d last looked at it, I figured I could read it with...

The 8 Hour Ebook Challenge: The Destruction of Ys

I allowed myself to get a little distracted from my to-do list the last couple of days. When I was reading some discussions on the KBoards on Monday, I learned about a challenge Joe Konrath had posted on his blog and that a lot of KBers were taking him up on. The basic idea is to write, format, create the cover, and publish an e-book in under eight hours.

It sounded tough, but not completely impossible, so I figured I’d give it a try. At first, I was playing with the idea of writing a short s...

Cover edits for Chameleon in a Mirror — and some bad publicity for Yseult

Before I get on to my updates, I need a little hand-holding here. One of the covers that my cover artist proposed for Yseult — and which was never used — has showed up on the site “WTF Bad Fantasy Covers” with the following comment:

Nice to see that peroxide blonde dates back so far!

(I’m guessing this is based on Tristan and Isolde. The best part of the doomed romance poetry about them is that the dying Tristan literally hugs Isolde to death. She did ask him to, though, so it’s romantic, or s...

Another excerpt from A Wasted Land (for #WIPpet Wednesday)

It’s my first chance to play #WIPpet Wednesday again since returning from vacation. This time, I give you 8 paragraphs from page 21 (8/21). In this scene, Celemon has just learned that her betrothed is accused of getting another woman pregnant.

She wanted to scream and scratch Aurelius’ eyes out, wanted to cry and run away, wanted to do something, anything, about the hotness in her chest and the pain and anger closing her throat. Instead, she took courage from Kustennin’s steady gaze, saw his...

On the joys of brainstorming and traveling

In the last few weeks, I’ve made very little progress on my fiction. As those of you who have been keeping up with my blog know, I was in Iceland for almost a week, and in the US traveling and visiting family for over two weeks. When I left, I’d been thinking I might be able to find time in the evenings to write, but that didn’t happen often. During our trip, I got a whopping 1100 new words written on A Wasted Land. Most of what I was writing consisted of travel reports about our Iceland trip...

Iceland, Days 5 & 6: From Glaumbaer to Gunnuhver

Day 5: Ringroad back to Reykjavik and Glaumbaer

After the late night the day before, we got off to a slow start on our last full day in Iceland. Our first stop was the turf houses at Glaumbaer, an open air museum consisting of some traditional Icelandic buildings which were once a farm. Wood was scarce in Iceland, and in historical times, the most common construction method was to make the walls out of turf. Only the fronts, the windows, and interior details were of wood.

Also in Glaumbaer is...

Iceland, Day 4: Dettifoss and Whale Watching

Our first goal of the day was some falls east of Lake Myvatn, Dettifoss and Sellfoss. On our way there, though, we noticed a tour bus turning in at a little side road. When we saw the brown sign, we decided to follow it. We ended up at some springs in caves below a rift, Gjrotagja. The hot springs in the caves were a popular bathing site until some eruptions at nearby Krafla raised the temperatures too hot for comfort. The waters have cooled down again now, but bathing is still no longer allo...

Iceland, Day 3: Gothafoss and Myvatn National Park

The reason we chose to stay in Akureyri was how close it was to several impressive waterfalls as well as to Myvatn National Park, sites we picked as particularly interesting after a little research into the sights of Iceland. It would have been nice to stay closer to the park, but online at least there wasn’t anything left to be had when I finally got around to booking our stay. Chris ended up doing a lot of driving back and forth, but at least it was never night.

Our first destination from A...