Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 32

cucumberseed @ 2012-10-12T11:51:00

This morning, as I left, two of my neighborhood turkey vultures took to the roof of my house, the parent feeding the child.  It's a good thing I like vultures, else that might be a really bad omen.

Running is a Victory

FASTEST RUN EVER.

I'm'na die now.

cucumberseed @ 2012-10-09T22:09:00

Lisa M. Bradley  ( cafenowhere ) tagged me to answer ten questions about my current work-in-progress. What an exciting way to learn about forthcoming projects, like Rose Lembergs's ( rose_lemberg ) Bridgers and Mike Allen's ( time_shark ) The Black Fire Concerto! Here are my answers.

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing

What is the title of your book?

The Child in his Sword, which is totally a Kate Bush reference.


Where did the idea come from for the book?

Lots of places.  It started out as a junk-drawer short story that had too much in it.  I tried to write it as a novel and got nowhere with it until I had the chance to sit down and think about it.  The junk drawer had been organized, but a junk drawer it remains.


What genre does your book fall under?

Fantasy, but that's a cop-out, and I know it.  I call it fantasy because there's no scientific through-line from here to there, though it takes place in a patchwork retro-future of people from our world that involved, at one point, interplanetary travel.  Also, there is body horror.  ALL THE BODY HORROR.  The characters are young people, and there isn't a lot of language or really any sexual content, so I guess some poor bastard might want to make it YA, but refer back to ALL THE BODY HORROR.


Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

No.  For one, I don't work like that.  For another, oh god, no.


What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?

Erm... A crazy living weapon infects a bunch of kids and turns them into really super-defective living weapons in hopes that they will win a war.  I suck at one-sentence synopses.


Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I have to finish a whole draft before I worry about that.  That said, I'm going to try to go traditional about it.


How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

30000 words in a month, so far.


What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

Shade's Children by Garth Nix is probably the closest.  Maybe that one by that horrible Mormon guy (not the one running for president - the one who wrote that thing that time about kids in space that we all loved when we were 12).


Who or what inspired you to write this book?

This story is my demon.  It keeps coming back to haunt me and I accept that I will never be free of it until I finish it.  I am terrified of it, and I don't want to do it, but I don't really have any choice, and people who are important to me seem to like it, so, yeah.


What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

Monsters.  All sorts of monsters.  Armies of monsters.  Armies of tree monsters that spawn caterpillars that crawl in your throat, choke you and then hijack your oxygen-starved brain.  Big rotting Montauk-monster looking things that grow giant trilliums on their backs.  Monsters.


Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.

I linked to Lisa at the top. Now I'm tagging vg_ford , seyeh , and sovay (this has gone to almost everyone else I know - probably them too). Please talk about any creative project you're working on, be it short story, poem, novel, novella, anthology, collection--anything. It's a good exercise.

The Weirding of Westerly (PROMO POSTER!)

Originally posted by csecooney at The Weirding of Westerly (PROMO POSTER!)Thanks to my mother, Sita, for making this poster. COZ SHE ROCKS.
Thanks to my friend, Bek Huston, for lending us the image of Mr. H. Horseman, Esq.

Thanks to all the artist friends who have agreed to participate! Please share around! Get the word out!

Coming soon:

A sort of set-list.

Running is a Victory

And I managed 5K.  I don't want to discuss how long it took me, but I managed, no resting, no breaks, no walking and the last time I ran was in the spring sometime.  

I am ready to try this again.

cucumberseed @ 2012-09-28T09:58:00

Last three nights, dreams have been bad.  Not nightmares, nothing scary, just very bleak and depressing.  Nothing useful in them, unless I want some sort of alternate history where the bicycle was invented in the thirteenth century.  Which would be great kind of interesting if I could pull it off, but I can't.

The Yew's Embrace is live at Podcastle

This is a story of asakiyume 's that ran in Strange Horizons in 2011.**

And now it's been given podcast treatment over at Podcastle! Which is now in my little bug for listening. So excited!

"The Yew's Embrace," read by Stephanie Morris"

It's a ghost war revenge sibling ... it's a story, anyway.
(Yes I did just copypasta asakiyume 's entry, edit it a little, and put it up here.  But I really liked that story and I am excited to be listening to it.)

Posted without Comment or Context (or Honor or Humanity)

Nice going, you sketchass arachno-fondler

Pewp

The first 1800 words of "Viceroy" are sitting, without backup on a laptop with a corrupt boot sector. 

testing...

This is the field.  You see webs, but never spiders.  Only butterflies, buddleias and empty black suits with black ties tied around empty white shirts.

She was content in her body (I'm gonna leave my body), she was content being a memetic animal, made of self-conscious meat (moving up to higher ground).

Runners are always the ones who find the bodies, just like in the advertisement.  She ran, so she found a body.
Ran into the field, only to find herself.  Only to find herself twice.

The viceroy suits with wings for heads and black and orange frilled edges peeking out from their cuffs like little kid fingers in dress-up.

The Viceroy Suits.  Unified field.

She saw the dozen with orange blindfolds over their eyes running in the field.  One passed through a web without so much as shaking the dew off it.

Hermes in Acheron.  Hermes Psychopompos.  How often do I get to draw from the well?  
Herms; can't resist a dick joke.  Can't.

Once you had a demon lover who was almost eight feet tall.  He nearly killed you, but you found his bones and scattered them in the sunlight.  This also never happened.

A dybbuk is between memory and the dead, with fingers in the living.

If you cannot resist changing your past, how can your future resist changing you?

I'm gonna leave my body.
Moving up to higher ground.