Liz DeJesus's Blog, page 26

Someone Wicked

Huzzah!! Just finished my Someone Wicked story. I was hoping for 10k words but it currently sits prettily at 5,353 words. :)

This is how I'm feeling right now. :D

Dream Weaver by Su Williams ~ Excerpt

Prologue

Nick

Incorporeal I drift, camouflaged against the shimmering snow, no more than a sparkling flurry in the wind, dancing just on the precipice of light shielding me from her--and them. I am her aegis, her defense from the darkness that presses in on her from without, evil cloaked from her eyes. I feel her inner darkness’ pull on her; hear it call her name.Vivid images whose birth I cannot fathom--whether from within her heart, or tailored for her torment--still, after all these months accost her sleep and crush her soul. Yet, her screams tear the night and my heart less often than before. Surely, she is strong enough to endure some terror; no lifetime is without it. Such a gentle soul so tethered and weighted by so much loss, so much grief. I have mended what I can of her damaged mind without wholly purging her memories. At least I can dull her pain, callous her tender heart.I know the unwritten code: ‘There are mortals, and there are immortals, and never the twain shall meet.’ Still, I find myself here, hovering on the fringe of the woods just outside the halo of light that wreathes her home. And they haunt the darkness, hidden within the shadows. I sense them, though not how near. I shudder at the consequences if they discover my presence. They would kill her, or at the very least brutalize her--just because they are able, just for my torment, the fresh nightmare of her torture a delicacy on their lips as they devour my memory.They are changing, such aberrant evolutions we have found in their kind of late. Creatures so like us, spoken from the same heavenly breath, yet worlds apart. Their sustenance makes them monsters, even evil. They grow stronger pillaging the gifts of our kind and using them as their own and leave us worse than dead. For this cause, I feel powerless, mortal.She knows nothing of my world, few mortals do, and it is only because of a promise and her safety that I enter hers. I vowed to protect her at any cost, with my life if necessary. And something of her draws me in, her heart to mine. It wakens an ache, a passion that long ago I laid to rest, deep beneath the sodden earth, entombed in company of my mortal life.My heart aches with indecision. Should I go to her, risk her life perhaps to save it, or leave her be to strengthen from the terror?

CHAPTER 1 Going Under

Night terrors stalk my sleep and haunt me through each day. I am never free. Macabre phantoms, twisted metal, flames and the sound of my parent’s screams, their cries for salvation. And I would give it--if I could, were the realm in which I live and the terrors in which they died equal.In time, my gasps for air and life abated. I learned to live without the press of suffocation on my lungs. At the least I was treading water with some hope of survival. But monsters strike even in the shallows, even when you’re feet from shore and almost standing on solid ground.The subtle bumps of a predator, like a shark in the deep, reawakened the terrors. And I lived in fear of the jaws ripping through me and dragging me under, lost again to the darkness of terror. The darkness that has nothing to do with light or sleep.I am Emari Sweet, sole survivor of a crash I was never in. The crash that claimed the lives of my beloved parents Zecharias and Jane Sweet. The crash that left me orphaned at 17. The crash I foresaw in the eyes of the State Trooper before the words formed on his tongue. Cold and hard, the words turned myblood to hardened steel and eviscerated me. My soul twisted and shredded.I lived with the terrors for many weeks after that. My best girl, Ivy, kept my body functioning, the basics for sustenance of life. She kept me Earthbound and alive when I’d rather have been neither. She guided me through an icy summer that tumbled into autumn like the leaves off a tree.Adrian Rovnikov, my father’s best friend, my shrink since the crash, brought me drugs--antidepressants. But they are only safe in the right hands. In mine, they are death. So, before I caused irreparable harm, the pills went the way of dead fish.Dreams of an angel with eyes of obsidian wound their way through the darkness until they finally displaced the terrors. His gentle hand calmed my writhing body, drew out the poison of the chimera, and guided me back to life. The dark-eyed angel faded as my darkness dawned into light. Yet, even when the terrors diminished, the torment hovered nearby, stalking my sanity, prepared to strike at any show of weakness.Winter’s chill cast a mantle of white over Spokane. Trees wore shimmering nacreous cloaks that rivaled the grandeur of their summer dress greens and fall’s autumnal oranges, reds and yellows. The city lay calm and peaceful under winter’s frigid embrace and my heart still ached under the frost of grief. I hid it from all but the most discerning eyes.The tumble of seasons brought more than cold; the real monster lurked in dark corners and phoned me at work, promised me pain and fear.
* * *
Daylight masquerades as dusk, the clouds heavy-laden with snow. An arctic blast extends its arm, balling its fist to bludgeon the car from the road. Brake lights flash a glaring red. The tires whir and whine on the frozen asphalt seeking elusive purchase. The wind flings the car across three frosted lanes. Panic twists my father’s face as the car fishtails out of control. His frantic hands, hands that can do anything, build anything, grapple uselessly at the wheel. My mother’s face is fear-white, her mouth a perfect ‘o’ that disappears beneath her small, stark hand. A wall of white emerges out of the flurry before the windshield, but not of snow. Cement. Massive and merciless. The shiny new sedan plows into the bridge abutment, lifting Mom’s side of the car into flight. Giant sparkling snowflakes of shattering glass fly into the air as the car rolls over and over. Metal screams and moans in protest. Finally settling on its top, the car slides across the icy black tarmac, a path of broken scattered pieces in its wake.Upside down, my mother’s pallid face appears at her window. Violent crimson drenches her hair, a severe contrast against her spectral skin. Her dazzling emerald green eyes, my own eyes staring back at me, implore for my help. Pounding hysterically, her knuckles split and bleed, smearing the window in a web of red. The roar of fire drowns her cries, flames that now return the light to the day, and vanquish the masquerade.Driven by panic, I plunge through the whirling eddies of snow. But I can’t get to them. I have no traction, my steps falter. I am prisoner to the freezing storm, powerless to save them; held at bay by the fireball that lights the grey gauzy day cotton-bright like summer, and sends seismic shockwaves that undulate the ground beneath me. Shrapnel of rocks and glass rain down upon me.Exhausted and useless, I collapse to my knees on the caustic, sub-zero ice. The acrid smell of smoke and gasoline grows heavy in the air, searing my throat and nostrils. Like a pin-hole camera, the light etches the panic and fear on my mother’s face onto my retinas and deep into my brain. The blaze scorches my eyes, bringing my tears to a boil. Searing heat and the horror of looking into the faces of my mother and father as the flames devour them forces me to look away. My body finally crumbles onto the cold freeway, in exhausted agony. I crush my ears with my hands to block out the maelstrom. Their haunting screams reverberate in my ears, echoes of the torment resounding throughout my body.The reality of my own screams awoke me. I bolted upright and clutched my head. My body trembled and rocked, soaked in sweat, as I manically searched for a thread of truth. My breath rasped from my raw lungs that thrashed against the smoke-that-wasn’t.Comforting gazes from my black and white movie monsters centered my thoughts. Bela Legosi, both Lon Chaneys, Boris Karloff and even Vlad Dracul himself, with his large round piercing eyes, crowded the walls of my black and white bedroom. Vlad was the only true monster there, but somehow I found a strange compassion for the man, given his tortured history. My glossy companions brought my heart an odd comfort.
* * *
Ninety minutes later, I sat in Adrian’s office and debated with myself just how much to tell him. I didn’t need the ‘Emari, you should come stay with us’ lecture again. I’d proved to the Spokane Courts that I was capable in every way to be considered an adult, and was granted emancipation.“Nightmares again?” Adrian asked.“Ya think?” I wasn’t being disrespectful. We were just beyond fluff and formality.“Any idea what the stress trigger is this time?”“Um…” I squirmed against the soft red leather of his couch. “There’s this guy…”A small conspiratorial smile crept onto Adrian’s face while I paused, contemplating.“Uh, no. I mean a bad guy. He’s calling me. At work. Like phone stalking me.” I hated admitting even this little bit to him, but most of the time his psycho-babble really did help.Adrian leaned across the desk. His eyes narrowed and deep canyons grooved his forehead. “And just what is being done to stop him?”Great! Just what I need. ‘Protective-daddy’ mode.“It’s all good.” I waved him down. “My friend, Jesse, escorts me to and from my car every day and Collin keeps one of the Loss Prevention guys in the department as much as he can.” Despite playing it off as no big deal to Adrian, a cold uneasiness squirmed through me like night crawlers.“Is he only calling you at work?” The Doc was in full-on interrogation mode now.“Yes. Only at work. But it’s weird. It’s like he’s watching me but the LP guys never find anyone.”“Tell me you’ve called the police.”“Sure, sure. Nothing the cops can do unless the guy actually kills me or something, though.”Adrian sat back in his chair with a harrumph of frustration, the ‘daddy-look’ still plastered on his face. “Emari…”“Adrian. Don’t even start.”“Then why are you here?” he retorted.“The night terrors? You’re supposed to say a bunch of ‘shrinky’ kinds of things to make me feel better.”So he did. And when he was done, he walked me to the door. He gave me the usual ‘be careful’ and ‘buckle up for safety’ speech; something he and Dad must’ve gone to school together to learn.Then he gave me his best fatherly hug. I had to admit, his arms truly did feel like the safest place in the world.“See you for Thanksgiving?” he asked.“Sure, Uncle Adrian. Kiss Celeste and the kids for me.” He wasn’t really my uncle. Just my father’s closest friend in the world.“Of course. See you then, Emari.”“See ya.”I shambled into work after my meeting with Adrian. Ivy saw me for the zombie I was, so in contrast to her perky pixiness. Her ornery smile wavered as I drew nearer but she reined it in. She’d given up months ago with the ‘you look like hell’ comments. Visine and Covergirl couldn’t wreak miracles that big. She opened her arms and I stepped inside.“You okay?” she whispered.I stepped out of her embrace. “Sure, sure,” I said with a grin, and a quote from one of our favorite books. The marbled blue of her eyes softened into limpid pools, so vast any guy could swim in them. I tucked a wisp of her soft brown hair behind her ear. “Let’s get to work.”She pinched my arm playfully as she released me. “Collin’s got LP scheduled in an hour, but Blake came early, off the clock,” she informed me as we sorted children’s clothing to reshelf. “Jess’s gonna be pissed you didn’t wait for him.”Jesse DeLaRosa was the closest thing to a real life Prince Charming in my world. He was instantly likeable, flirtatious in the sweetest way, easy at being a fast friend, faultlessly kindhearted. His ingenuous smile lit up any room, a constant feature that graced his lightly bronzed face. He sang or whistled while he worked, no matter how mundane or dirty the job, a lingering accent, from his days as a child in Puerto Rico colored his speech. He was a couple of years older than Ivy and me, but he clicked with our dorkiness and we’d become best friends. He’d taken it upon himself to be my daily escort--even on his days off.“He’ll get over it,” I told her, but inwardly I hoped he wasn’t too mad at me.Every time the phone rang, it jangled our nerves. Ivy’s hand lashed out with the speed of a viper toprotect me from innocuous callers.“You can’t field all of the calls, Ives,” I said after the fourth call.“I can try,” she replied with a smug half smile.The stalker wouldn’t call with Ivy present, and we both knew it. He would wait until she went on break, as though he had a bird’s nest in the middle of the department. He wanted me alone, separated from the pack, vulnerable.Ivy reluctantly took her break and Blake haunted the racks. Despite my anticipation, adrenalin shot through me like an ice river and my heart banged against my ribcage when the phone rang. I watched Ivy’s shadow disappear from sight as I reached a quivering hand to the phone.“Children’s Department,” I choked out. Collin instructed us not to give our names until this ‘situation’ was resolved.“I see you,” the voice purred gruffly. I envisioned a lion crouched in tall grass. Rigid, poised for attack. His words were soft and succinct, as though masking something from me, but the smooth lacquered surface didn’t camouflage the menace that roiled underneath--like the delicate crust of cooled lava veiling the molten lake beneath.Blake’s eyes locked on my face as he lurched away from a rack of boy’s jeans. They followed the silent nod of my head. The muscles of his line-backer physique hardened as he prowled the department.“I’m sorry. What was that?” I delayed. My voice quivered with anger, to my dismay. I wasn’t scared. I was pissed. But I knew he would read it as fear--just what he wanted.“Your rent-a-cop won’t catch me.” The lion’s throaty warning growl. His voice turned acerbic, his need to induce fear sparked electrically through the phone. “Nah. He’s not even a rent-a-cop. Not even a pathetic mall cop. Just some punk kid they hired to baby-sit the store.”Baby-sit? Either this guy’s full of crap or he’s freakin’ huge. I was betting on full of crap.He chortled at my unease, and I heard something familiar but untouchable in his voice. Like I knew him from somewhere--and that pissed me off even more. “What the hell do you want?” I demanded.“Just you,” he said slowly. He sniggered again with a ghoulish glee and the line went dead.“Damn it!” I slammed the phone down and turned with a start. A customer, a woman with a little boy about five glared at me with righteous indignation. “Oh. I’m so sorry. I just…it was…there was this guy.”She harrumphed and stormed away, towing the boy in her sanctimonious wake. No doubt to complain to my manager.So. Let her.Blake shuffled up to the quad, what we associates at Cash’s Department Store called our customer service desks. “Sorry, Em. No luck.” He looked every bit the defeated athlete, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets making his shoulders and arms bulge.“It’s all good. He’ll get bored eventually and go away.” I hope.





DREAM WEAVER is now only .99 on Amazon. A story of mind-benders & breakers. Are your memories your own?

Su Williams Blog Tour

INSPIRATION
When Liz asked me to write a guest post, I had no idea what to write about. ‘Write about your inspiration,’ she says. Ugh. ‘Make it like a top 10 reasons I write list,’ she says. Double ugh!So I sat down and tried to write a comical Top 10 List of What Inspires Me! Yeah-no. I ended up writing character descriptions for each of my main characters. Don’t ask. I have no idea how one evolved into the other.Then genius hit me. Okay, maybe not genius. Maybe…well…inspiration! Can you see the penumbra of glorified light and hear the angels sing? No? Just me? Well, I decided to do something that we used to do in Sunday school to help the kids remember their lessons. So now…I hope to INSPIRE you.

INSPIRE
Inspire is really a great word. There are so many other great words that describe inspire. I navigated to one of my favorite writing websites: Thesaurus.com. I do so love Thesaurus.com. I keep it open ALL the time while I’m writing. If my brain gets stuck on a mundane word, I can flip over to Thesaurus.com and find another word. A bigger word. A stronger word. A bolder word. And occasionally, that new word will inspire another thought I hadn’t thunk of before.

I-N-S-P-I-R-E

I…….To INSPIRE someone means to INFECT another. If you think about nasty germs, that cause nasty diseases, you don’t want to become infected with that. Yuck! But, what if your words could infect your reader? What is it that you want to infect them with? Love? Happiness? Melancholy? FEAR? I love to use words that INFLAME my readers; a story that INFUSES them with emotion or the belief in a newfound race of immortals.N…..Now, there aren’t many ‘N’ words that explain INSPIRE. But one of them is NEEDLE. It means to provoke. I get a picture of a bull fighter waving his red cape to provoke the bull in my mind. As writers, we need more than a red cape. We need crimson billows of satin that snap in the wind like a pennant. That will NEEDLE that bull.S……What do you do when you want someone else to come around to your way of thinking? You want to SWAY the way they believe. You use your knowledge and abilities to convince them that this planet truly has two moons and its sky is purple. We use our words to SWAY people into believing the reality of our story.P……When a person is inspired they tend to sit around and do nothing. No. An inspired person gets up and PRODUCES something. Sometimes need inspires creativity. Sometimes, that creativity produces an answer to a need. Dang. I’m getting all intellectual here.I…….The word INSPIRIT means to give energy or courage to somebody. I’ve been asked a few times, what authors inspire me. There are authors whose stories encouraged me to write in the first place. And there are others who instilled me with energy to make my stories better.R……Sometimes, being inspired REVEALS something to us about ourselves or someone or something else that we didn’t know before. It may reveal to us that we are capable of writing that book, that story, that poem.E……Inspiration EMBOLDENS us to step out of the norm. It ENKINDLES our hearts to believe, not only in our stories, but in ourselves.More great words that mean INSPIRE:Animate, excite, exhilarate, fire up, galvanize, hearten, influence, inform, motivate, trigger, urgeWow! Those are all great words.So, here’s a list of authors that inspire me:I LOVE vivid, original imagery. I love it when writing is beautiful and poetic and heart-wrenching. The authors that I believe do this for me are Lisa McMann, Maggie Stiefvater, Annette Curtis Klaus and Richelle Mead.
Liz, thank you so much for hosting me on your blog. I hope you enjoyed my little rant.  Thank you for your inspiration to tell a great story and make it the best it can be.
And as always,
Dare to Dream!
Su



My BUY links:Amazon (paperback and Kindle)Barnes & Noble (Nook)CreateSpace.com
Contact me links:
Dream-Weaver-Novels/Facebook
DreamWeaverNovels.com
Dream Weaver Novels Blog

Fairy Tale Friday

Today's edition of Fairy Tale Friday will be about the story One Eye, Two Eyes and Three Eyes. I read the story a long time ago in my Brother's Grimm book and didn't think much of it after I finished reading it. Then a few months ago I read about this author named Michelle Davidson Argyle on Marissa Meyer's blog and decided to give her book a try.


Official blurb:

What happened after Cinderella married her prince? How did the evil sorceress in Sleeping Beauty turn evil in the first place? Discover these stories and a world filled with magic, forbidden love, elves, sprites, dragons, and the most powerful creatures of all— the fairies —in Bonded, a collection of three fairy tale inspired novellas.

CINDERS: A Cinderella sequel. Money can’t buy love, but magic isn’t a sure bet either. Cinderella, now officially a princess, finds royal life is not what she once dreamed. When a mysterious elf from her past stirs up long-suppressed passion, Cinderella begins to wonder if there really is love beneath the spell that captured her husband’s heart. But undoing magic can be harder than casting the initial spell, and the results are even less predictable.

THIRDS: A retelling of the Grimm’s fairy tale, One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes. Issina is surrounded by magic, yet none of it belongs to her. Despised and abused by her mother and sisters, she finds comfort when she meets the beautiful elves living in the nearby woods. The elves want to help her discover her own magic, but it’s not the kind of power she hoped for, and she learns there is more to magic than getting what you want.

SCALES: A Sleeping Beauty prequel. The sun never sets in the realm of the fairies. When the young fairy Serina looks into her sister’s eyes, she sees darkness for the first time. After her mother is murdered, Serina defies fairy law to follow her sister to the human realm. There she discovers the strength of a bond, the weight of a promise, and the darkness in her own heart.

Definitely check it out. It's an amazing book. :D

Anyway back to One Eye, Two Eyes and Three Eyes. Here's what I found on wikipedia. Definitely worth a read. :D

A woman had three daughters: The eldest had one eye in the middle of her forehead, the second had two eyes like ordinary people, the third had three eyes; two on the sides of her head and a third in the middle of her forehead. Her mother and sisters scorned Little Two Eyes because she was like other people and treated her badly, leaving her only their leftovers to eat.

One day Little Two Eyes was sent to the field to tend to the goat, she sat down and cried as she had been given so little to eat and when she looked up a woman was standing beside her. The woman asked her why she was crying. Little Two Eyes explained and the wise woman told her to say to the goat

little goat
if you are able
pray deck out my table

A beautifully spread table would stand before her, and Little Two Eyes could eat as much as she wanted. The woman then told Little Two Eyes that when she had had enough to eat she simply had to say

Little goat,
when you're able
remove my table

and the table would vanish. The wise woman then left and Little Two Eyes spoke the words the woman had told her would summon the table, and to her surprise there it stood. Little Two Eyes ate until she was full and said the words the woman told her would make the table disappear, and immediately it was all gone. Little Two Eyes returned home in the evening and found the plate of leftovers her sisters had left for her, but she did not touch it.

The next day she went out again with the goat and left the scraps given to her, after a time her sisters began to notice this and told their mother. So Little One Eye was sent to go with Little Two Eyes when she drove the goat to pasture to see if someone was giving her food and drink. Little Two Eyes suspected this was the reason Little One Eye was accompanying her and so sang Little One Eye a song to make her one eye fall asleep. Little Two Eyes then summoned the table and ate as before. On returning home Little One Eye told her mother that the fresh air made her so tired she fell asleep and that was why she did not see what Little Two Eyes had done, so the next day the mother sent Little Three Eyes to watch Little Two eyes when she went out with the goat. Little Two Eyes suspected that Little Three Eyes had been sent to watch her and so meant to sing her song to make her three eyes fall asleep but instead she sang a song to only make two of her eyes fall asleep. Little Three Eyes shut her third eye though it was still awake so when Little Two Eyes thought her sister was fast asleep she said the rhyme and ate and drank from the little table though all the while Little Three Eyes blinked her eye and watched. When they returned home Little Three Eyes told her mother what she had seen. Her mother then, in rage that Little Two Eyes thought to live better than her family, fetched a knife and killed the goat.

Little Two Eyes sat in the meadow and cried having seen what her mother had done. Just as before when she looked up the wise woman stood beside her and asked why she wept. Little Two Eyes explained and the wise woman told her to bury the heart of the goat as it would bring her luck. Little Two Eyes asked her sisters if she might have the goat's heart and nothing more. They laughed and told her she could have it. That evening Little Two Eyes buried the heart before the door just as the wise woman had told her and the next morning there, where she had buried the heart, stood a beautiful tree which had leaves of silver and fruit of gold growing on it.

The mother told Little One Eye to climb the tree and break off some fruit, but as Little One Eye tried to take hold of one of the golden apples the bough sprang out of her hands. This happened every time she reached for it. The mother then told Little Three Eyes to climb the tree and break off some fruit since with her three eyes she could see much better than Little One Eye. Little Three Eyes was no more successful than her older sister and at last the mother climbed up and tried in vain to break off a single piece of fruit. Little Two Eyes then volunteered to try. Her sisters told her that she would not succeed with her two eyes. To their great surprise Little Two Eyes managed to pluck off a whole apronful of the golden fruit, and her mother took them from her. But instead of treating Little Two Eyes better, her sisters and mother were jealous that only she could pick the golden fruit and were even more unkind than before.

One day a Knight came riding along. Little One Eye and Little Three Eyes pushed Little Two Eyes under an empty cask nearby so the Knight would not see her. The Knight stopped to admire the beautiful tree and asked who it belonged to, saying that whoever would give him a twig from the tree could have whatever they wanted. The two sisters told him that the tree belonged to them and that they would certainly break a twig off for him. But just as before the twigs and fruit bent away from their hands whenever they got close. The Knight exclaimed that it was odd that the owners of the tree could not break anything from it, yet the sisters insisted the tree was theirs. Little Two Eyes, who was still hidden under the empty cask, rolled a couple of golden apples to the Knight's feet. When the Knight asked where the apples had come from, the two sisters confessed they had another sister but she had been hidden away because she had two eyes like normal people. The Knight demanded to see Little Two Eyes who came happily from under the cask and told the Knight that the tree was indeed hers. So Little Two Eyes climbed up the tree and broke off a small branch with its silver leaves and golden fruit with ease and gave it to the Knight. The Knight proceeded to ask Little Two Eyes what she would like, as she was entitled to whatever she wanted. Little Two Eyes asked to be taken away from the suffering she had at the hands of her mother and sisters. So the Knight lifted Little Two Eyes onto his horse and took her to live at his father's castle. There he treated her to beautiful clothes and food and drink. They fell in love and he married her.

The two sisters believed that they were lucky to have kept the beautiful tree as Little Two Eyes and the Knight first set off for the castle but, to their dismay, the very next morning they awoke to find that the tree had vanished. When Little Two Eyes woke and looked out her window she saw, with delight, that the tree had grown outside the castle.

When two poor women came to the castle to beg one day, Little Two Eyes looked at them and realised that they were her sisters. Little Two Eyes took them in and made them welcome. The sisters then repented of ever having been so mean to their sister.

Family Portrait by ~jurinova on deviantART

Someone Wicked

Titania by ~katarinea on deviantART




4263 / 10000 words. 43% done!

Schedule

I'm going to give you a sneak peek into my daily routine and you'll see when I get my writing done. This is what usually happens on a typical day.

4:00 AM My youngest son Peter is teething, so he wakes up between 3:00 and 4:00 am because he needs cuddles, a bottle and a diaper change. And so my day begins.

Lucky for me he went to back to sleep fairly quickly this morning. Other days he stays up an extra hour because the teething tablets don't do anything for him.

4:30 AM Toss and turn a bit and finally get back to sleep.

8:36 AM I'm actually awake. My sons are still asleep so I sneak into the study, check my email, write to my editor about Glass Frost. Submit my horror novel to Indie Gypsy (who by the way is super excited about the ms) and look over my WIP Decode after a quick breakfast of Honey Nut Cheerios. I've decided to change it from 3rd person (limited) to 1st person. Lucky for me I've only written 22 pages worth so it's not that bad....still annoying but not horrible.

9:15 AM My children begin to stir. Peter is the first one to wake up. Change his diaper and give him some breakfast.

9:37 AM Mason takes forever and a day to wake up.But he finally gets up, sits on the potty, has breakfast and watches cartoons.

9:45 AM I sit with them in the living room watching Super Why and thinking about what is going to happen to Bianca in the third book I'm also working on. Jot down a few notes here and there but nothing to write home about. I bring my netbook to the living room and check facebook off and on most of the morning. I also play My Little Pony on my cellphone. Sigh. I love that game.


For the record....my little town looks nothing like this. :) It's a giant hot mess.



11:45 AM Start getting ready to take Mason to school. I have to leave the house at 12:30 so I can get there in time and get a good spot on the line. :) If you're a mommy to preschool aged children then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

12:32 PM Kids are in the car, back pack is packed, snack is in the lunch box and we're ready to go. Oh yeah, I toss my notebook in the car just in case.

12:40 PM I'm in the school parking lot a little early but that's okay. Peter is asleep in the car seat and Mason is playing with his sunglasses while we wait in the car. I take my notebook and write. It's probably a hot mess and only makes sense to me, but hey at least I'm working on something. I manage to get about 5-7 minutes worth of writing in, which turns out to be only 3/4 of a page. It feels like it should be more. :/

1:08 PM I'm back home with a still sleeping Peter and my lunch. I carefully put Peter in his crib and hope he stays asleep for at least an hour. I eat my lunch and then head into the study to work. Not much inspiration at the moment so I spend the next hour and a half emailing reviewers and ask them if they would be interested in reading and reviewing First Frost.

2:40 PM Time to go get Mason. Peter is still asleep, so I gently nudge him awake. Change his diaper, pack a bottle for the trip and toss my notebook in the car.

2:50 PM On the road to go pick up Mason from school.

3:05 PM In the school parking lot waiting for Mason. Take those five minutes and look over my notes and manuscript. A few edits here and there but still nothing really good.

3:15 PM Mason's in the car...now it's time to go pick up my nephews at their school.

3:20 PM In the school parking lot waiting for my nephews. I take out my notebook once more and write. This time I actually manage to write two pages worth! Yey!!!

3:40 PM My nephews are in the car. Finally time to go home.

3:55 PM Finally home and surprise! My sister in law left work early and takes my nephews home. :) So now I won't have 4 crazy children running around my house. :)

4:40 PM Hubby comes home. Time to start dinner. Depending on what I'm cooking I'll bring my notebook into the kitchen with me and I'll have a chance to jot down a few notes here and there while dinner is burning cooking. :) Sometimes I'm lucky and I'll get 3-4 pages worth. Other nights I get nothing. But the only thing that matters is that I was able to squeeze some time in there for myself.

5-ish PM Everyone sits down and eats dinner.

5:30 - 8PM Feed Mason his dinner (he has a feeding disorder so this is often a two man job). Feed Peter. Bathe the boys. Change poopy diapers, convince Mason to sit in the potty. Wash dishes, fold laundry (talk to my characters while doing menial chores), try not to step on Legos and cars that are on the floor hellbent on destroying my feet. And somehow get enough quiet time for me to take a shower (often times my only alone time in the entire day).

8PM- 10PM Watch TV. I'm a big fan of shows like Community, Parks and Rec, Once Upon a Time, Smash, and Doctor Who. So I'll make time to watch all my favorite shows or catch up on the ones I missed. Or watch Cars, Cars 2 and Blue's Room or Blue's Clues for the millionth time. If this is the case then I'm definitely writing while my kids are engrossed in the movie.

10PM Kids have finally calmed down enough that I can put them to bed with little protest.

Sometimes I'll stay up until midnight to write but if I don't have anything in particular that I need to work on then I finally get to sit down and talk to my hubby and just let out a sigh of relief that we have survived yet another day in this crazy little house. Then off to bed and do it all over again the next day.

*Note: Took me six days to write this blog post. LOL This is what happened on Wednesday. :/

Fairy Tale Friday

If like me you watched The Little Mermaid in the late 80's and early 90's then all you remember is a red head in a seashell bikini top singing 'under the sea' and trying to win the handsome prince without her beautiful voice. And Disney's version has a very happy ending...at least when you compare it to the original version.

Sadly the original version of The Little Mermaid doesn't have a happy ending for the main character. :/ Even part of the middle is kinda grimm. Every step she takes (after she's transformed into a human girl) causes her to have sharp pains. And then the prince ends up marrying someone else! WTF? Not cool on so many levels. Anyway the little mermaid is given a choice in the end, she can kill him on his wedding night and live, or she can die and become part of the air. The little mermaid was still in love with her prince in spite of everything so she dies in the end.

Yeah...big difference between a wedding on a boat with her father King Triton (who created a rainbow with his trident) and Ariel and Prince Eric sail off into the sunset. Yeah....that's not the way it really happened.

Anyway here's the version I found on wikipedia:

The Little Mermaid dwells in an underwater kingdom with her father (the sea king), her grandmother, and her five sisters. Her five sisters are each born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she is permitted to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and when the sisters become old enough, each of them visits the upper world every year. As each of them returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their various descriptions of the surface and of human beings.
When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she rises up to the surface, sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance. A great storm hits, and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from nearly drowning. She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here she waits until a young girl from the temple finds him. The prince never sees the Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid asks her grandmother if humans can live forever if they could breathe under water. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than merfolks' 300 years, but that when mermaids die they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in Heaven. The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, eventually visits the Sea Witch, who sells her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue (as the Little Mermaid has the most enchanting voice in the world). The Sea Witch warns, however, that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea. Drinking the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her, yet when she recovers she will have two beautiful legs, and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. However, it will constantly feel like she is walking on sharp swords hard enough to make her feet bleed most terribly. In addition, she will only obtain a soul if she finds true love's kiss and if the prince loves her and marries her, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die brokenhearted and disintegrate into sea foam.
The Little Mermaid drinks the potion and meets the prince, who is mesmerised by her beauty and grace even though she is mute. Most of all he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite her suffering excruciating pain. When the prince's father orders his son to marry the neighboring king's daughter, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, who he believes rescued him. It turns out that the princess is the temple girl, who had been sent to the temple to be educated. The prince loves her, and the wedding is announced.
The prince and princess marry, and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up and of all the pain she has suffered. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters bring her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife and lets his blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid again, all her suffering will end, and she will live out her full life.
However the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride, and she throws herself into the sea as dawn breaks. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the sun; she has turned into a spirit, a daughter of the air. The other daughters tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to obtain an immortal soul. She will earn her own soul by doing good deeds and she will eventually rise up into the kingdom of God.




little mermaid by ~Chaotic-Muffin on deviantART


The Little Mermaid by ~cillabub on deviantART


The Little Mermaid by *jeffsimpsonkh on deviantART

Decode

autumn girl by ~bobstrong on deviantART





5033 / 50000 words. 10% done!

First Frost giveaway!

To celebrate reaching 500 likes on my First Frost facebook page I've decided to have a little giveaway just for fun. Starts tomorrow and will go on til May 22nd. :)

Good luck!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fairy Tale Friday

I think everyone loves the story of Little Red Riding Hood...or at least holds some fascination for the little girl that strayed from the path and faced the Big Bad Wolf all by herself. He reappears in a lot of other fairy tales, The Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and a few others that I can't remember right now. I think the Wolf is supposed to represent temptation, darkness and greed. And in my opinion I think Red Riding Hood liked that about the Wolf. Why else would she have strayed from the path? I think everyone goes through that phase in life as one point or another. Wanting to see what's going on off the trusty path. What's lurking in the darkness? But that's just my humble opinion, that's what I get out of the story. Again...maybe that's why people are so fascinated by the fairy tale.

There are several versions of this story, personally I prefer the Brothers Grimm version. :)

Here's what I got from wikipedia:

[image error] Little Red Riding Hood, illustrated in a 1927 story anthology

The story revolves around a girl called Little Red Riding Hood, after the red hooded cape/cloak (in Perrault's fairytale) or simple cap (in the Grimms'version called Little Red-Cap) she wears. The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her sickly grandmother (grape juice and banana bread, or wine and cake depending on the translation). In the Grimms' version at least, she had the order from her mother to stay strictly on the path.

A mean wolf wants to eat the girl, and the food in the basket. He secretly stalks her behind trees and bushes and shrubs and patches of little grass and patches of tall grass. He approaches Little Red Riding Hood and she naïvely tells him where she is going. He suggests the girl pick some flowers, which she does. In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl. He swallows the grandmother whole, (in some stories, he locks her in the closet), and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandma.

When the girl arrives, she notices that her grandmother looks very strange. Little Red then says, "What a deep voice you have," ("The better to greet you with"), "Goodness, what big eyes you have," ("The better to see you with") "And what big hands you have!" ("The better to hug/grab you with"), and lastly, "What a big mouth you have," ("The better to eat you with!") at which point the wolf jumps out of bed, and swallows her up too. Then he falls fast asleep.

A lumberjack (with the Brothers Grimm, and always in German tradition, a hunter), however, comes to the rescue and with his axe cuts open the wolf, who had fallen asleep. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. They fill the wolf's body with heavy stones. The wolf awakens and tries to flee, but the stones cause him to collapse and die. (Sanitized versions of the story have the grandmother shut in the closet instead of eaten, and some have Little Red Riding Hood saved by the lumberjack as the wolf advances on her, rather than after she is eaten).[4]

The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no written versions are as old as that. Specifically, the tale parallels how an innocent victim can be taken in and controlled by a criminal mentality, therefore, facilitating further subjection of a crime or harm against a vulnerable victim through mischievous criminal intent by removing the victim from a familiar or "safe" public location - facilitating the crime in an effort to isolate the victim by drawing her to another location "away from the public eye" where the criminal entity has complete control over the victim.

It also warns about the dangers of not obeying the mother (at least in the Grimms' version).

Brothers Grimm [image error] Wilhelm (left) and Jacob Grimm (right) from an 1855 painting by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann.

In the 19th century two separate German versions were retold to Jacob Grimm and his younger brother Wilhelm Grimm, known as the Brothers Grimm, the first by Jeanette Hassenpflug (1791–1860) and the second by Marie Hassenpflug (1788–1856). The brothers turned the first version to the main body of the story and the second into a sequel of it. The story as Rotkäppchen was included in the first edition of their collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen(Children's and Household Tales (1812)).[14]

The earlier parts of the tale agree so closely with Perrault's variant that it is almost certainly the source of the tale.[15] However, they modified the ending; this version had the little girl and her grandmother saved by a huntsman who was after the wolf's skin; this ending is identical to that in the taleThe Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, which appears to be the source.[16]

The second part featured the girl and her grandmother trapping and killing another wolf, this time anticipating his moves based on their experience with the previous one. The girl did not leave the path when the wolf spoke to her, her grandmother locked the door to keep it out, and when the wolf lurked, the grandmother had Little Red Riding Hood put a trough under the chimney and fill it with water that sausages had been cooked in; the smell lured the wolf down, and it drowned.[17]

The Brothers further revised the story in later editions and it reached the above mentioned final and better known version in the 1857 edition of their work.[18] It is notably tamer than the older stories which contained darker themes.

Little Red Riding Hood by *wicked-fairytale on deviantART



Red Riding Hood by *mikemaihack on deviantART