Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 58

Motherfucking Pirates (Part 1)

Red Hull was queen of the motherfucking pirates, and any scallywag who
flew the Jolly Roger, they either swore their black soul to her or
they kept her movements at the top of their fucking minds every day
they lived and sailed.

The book of her sins was still only half the weight and length of the Book of Death, but it was the kind of reading that would strike the fucking reader blind, and even the devil wished her a long and healthy life while he shoveled coal in a fever to his fucking furnace to make the fires hot enough for her when she bothered to stop by.

Red Hull took one of the selfsame fucking devil’s very fingernails and hammered it straight into her black-moon sword, a right fucking beheader full five feet long and two hundred pounds if it was an ounce, made from a superior alloy of spite and malice. The wounds she carved, on the days when she felt cruel enough to not let them be instantly fatal, well, just imagine the devil just dug his fucking fingernail into your flesh and think on how that must feel.

Red Hull’s hair is black and shiny as the devil’s eyes and it trails behind her on the deck in a Medusa of rattling braids. Tied to the end of each is a bullet that tried to kill her and failed, and, when she fights, and she does pretty often, no fucking mistake, she can whip those braids around hard enough to pluck swords and pistols from her hands, if she doesn’t simply break their arms or hang them where they stand. They say a rival swordsman once stepped on one of those braids and caused it to pull free of her scalp. Now his teeth are braided into the lock she grew to replace it, and when she piles her hair atop her head like a crown, that’s the one that keeps the others in line.

Red Hull’s eyes can hypnotize her prey like a fucking snake, and yeah, I do expect you to have expected that. She can squint and freeze a deck load of bastards and make a battle go silent while she strolls down to take whatever she fucking pleases. Some people say she was born with the power, something that she got passed down to her on her mother’s side from the blood of Cain, and some people say she learned it in some blasphemous temple buried under tons of half-rotted vegetation in some distant foreign land. Whichever the story, that’s what she did to Quay when she found him on the beach that night, sitting and staring up at the moon; her row boats are all carved with spells that make them silent and christened by pressing their keels to the bodies of prisoners like feet to grapes for fucking wine, people, and he never heard her slip ashore. He never knew she was there until she drew his attention, and then it was too
late, poor, lovely Quay, he was caught and held.

[image error]wirewalking's house has decided to try and rot out from under her.  She writes amazing stories and makes really tasty cookies and caramels, and she is offering books  and baked goods to help defray the costs of, well, her house breaking.  She is offering them here



[image error]shadesong is still trying to fund the bionic upgrades to her poor clumsy kitty  who broke her arm recently.  Halfway there, but a new round of auctions is bound to go up here.



You can get to the table of contents for this story here.

Yup, I felt it too. #richmondearthquake

I hope everyone is safe and well.

Pirates for my Friends!

It seems that as time goes on, I do more and more fundraising for friends around here, which kind of speaks to the shitty times in which we live. 



wirewalking 's house has decided to try and rot out from under her.  She writes amazing stories and makes really tasty cookies and caramels, and she is offering books and baked goods to help defray the costs of, well, her house breaking.  She is offering them here



shadesong is still trying to fund the bionic upgrades to her poor clumsy kitty who broke her arm recently.  Halfway there, but a new round of auctions is bound to go up here .


I want to help my friends when they are in need, but I don't want to be tiresome about it.  So, here's the deal:


I'm going to let pirates raise money on my behalf.  Starting tomorrow, and every day until Gem defeats Red Hull (if she can) and gets Quay back (if that works), I'm giving you daily doses of MOTHERFUCKING PIRATES, starting from the beginning, revised (or composed, once I get that far) and every day, I will be linking to someone who needs (and deserves, for all the cool things they do) your support. 


I'm hoping the current projects I am pulling for will be funded before this is over, so anyone who donates can ask me to add someone else; because of the tricky background stuff that goes into this, I am only using this to help individuals, but if you've a friend in need, let me know.

And Cut Down a Moment Later #submissionsdontmatter

SOLD TO APEX!

Moar Liek Beneath Ceaseless Trees, Amiright? #submissionsdontmatter

King of Pine went to Beneath Ceaseless Skies.



We'll see if my Princess makes it to the border.

Meme! 30 degrees Starboard

This is a meme of questions.  First I answer some ones that sovay gave me.  Then you comment, and I give you some to answer.  Then I probably comment and you give me some and we get cool questions and answers out of the whole thing.


I will warn you, sovay set the bar high.





1. Which fictional language would you most like to be real?


I started thinking maybe Snow Crash Sumerian, but I don't think that anyone should have that kind of influence on people.  I think, perhaps the language of my Shokkal Mountain people, but that's pretty much the same deal, so I am going to have to go with Narn, at least the writing system, because I loved their holy texts.  This is one of those questions that I know, long about 4 this morning, when I get up to pee, the perfect answer will come to me.





2. What's the first music you ever bought for yourself?


It's either Peter Gabriel's So or Duran Duran's live album... Arena?  Arena.  I'm not sure which, though.  I got some hair metal for a while after those, but I came back to my senses.





3. What's the most recent food you've learned how to cook?


Last night I grated sweet potatoes, spiced tofu and garlic, fried it and threw it on rice.  It probably wants for cumin, but  it's still quite tasty (and high-yield) as it is.  The spiced tofu really adds a nice texture when it's grated, rather than the rubbery awfulness of it cubed. 


If it's a formal recipe, then sake-steamed chicken, which is delicious.



4. Sky burial or catacombs?


I can't countenance my remains taking up space that could be used for something else.  Also, I hate to see all this semi-toxic meat go to waste, and I like vultures.  The moment I'm done with it, it's all yours, guys.



5. What does your favorite color make you think of?


I'll let Jarboe answer that, since, lets face it, this is the song I think of.

























































aliseadae follows with these:





1) What is the first record you bought? Tape? CD? MP3? (Pick one, pick two, pick three, answer all, whatever you choose.)


The first music I bought was on cassette tape (be it Duran Duran or Peter Gabriel), my first CD was My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.  The first MP3 I ever purchased was... hm.  Looks like the Unrealeased Tracks for Hellraiser by coil, which I bought off some shady Russians.  I don't think I have ever purchased vinyl, though. 



2) Out of every place you have traveled, to which would you most like to return?


Hong Kong.  Love that city.  First city I ever went to alone and felt like I could hack urban life. 



3) What is a book you read as a child that you still re-read often?


Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn.


4) What fictional planet do you wish you could visit?


The world where The Dark Crystal took place.  It's sort of supported by the background text as a planet to which someone could (and the urSkeks did) travel to.  Otherwise, Eternia, since that is someplace that an American astronaut went to in continuity (He Man's mom) and the place is crazy-go-nuts.



5) Is there any instrument you wish you could play?


All of them.  But if one above all others... I like a lot of folk instruments, like the Swedish fiddle with the resonator strings, or the hurdy-gurdy, which can be used to do convincing gothic music and has a cool name.  Probably, in the end, the banjo, because of Blue Vervain.  Just as long as it wasn't Blue Vervain, because Big John Henry might be hard to please, but Guardian Kessay... she's a really bad boss.



So, yeah, comment and I will give you questions!

Run Blogging

Tried out a new route.  I like it, but it is not as long as I want it to be and I was soooooo sloooooooow today.  Still, I would like to work slowly up to 10K so I can work on doing 5 quickly.

Attack of the NEW SHINY

It all started when Aunt Beast got lured into the clutches of The Forest of Eyes and Teeth, and found, after 30 pages of interesting post-apocalyptic isolated forest community and cool premise, a parboiled, piebald YA romance.  I have not read the book, but I love the premise, and listening to Aunt Beast's experiences with the story, I was siezed with a fit of I-can-do-betterism.  The birth of writers everywhere, sure, but at this stage in the game, I know it's a trap (and, anyway, every time I've experienced it, it's never actually been true, not even when I read Ed Greenwood's Spellfire [in my defense I was 10 - my two trunk novels are better than that and I will never let them out, because]).


That's not where it started.  It started when csecooney got me onto Crow Kids.  Again. 


That's not where it started.  It started when Dora Goss read her Crow Man poem at Readercon.


That's not where it started.  It started when I tried writing urban fantasy set in Manchester Connecticut (CITY OF VILLAGE CHARM).


That's probably not where it started, either.  I seem to remember something benlehman did, asking for games about love, but all I could think of was two lovers walking in drifts of falling, edible pollen.


What do these things have in common?


Nothing.  Except.


I kind of want to make them into a story.  There's too much here for a short story, even the way I write.  There's too much here for a short story, especially the way I write.  From here, it looks like a novel.  Or a novella (DREAD).  I'm hoping, for the sake of anyone ever reading it that it is a novel.  You know, kind of like THE CHILD IN HIS NEVER GONNA BE FINISHED SWORD.


You know, kind of like MOTHERFUCKING PIRATES.


You know, kind of like HARE WATER.


You know, kind of like THE "WHOOPS WE ATE A GOD" STORY (actually, I think I could do that one as a short story...).


But still, here I am wondering how small an isolated human population can get and remain genetically viable.  Or what it would be like if that population was composed of two culturally and physically distinct groups of people who, at least at first, have pretty equal levels of social power.  I am going to need to know a lot more about the experience of biracial people, too.  A lot-lot more.  Also, what a plant would need to be like to float along in clouds and have edible pollen.  Yes, the story needs that. 



You know, this is not so bad.  This story, whatever it may be is going to require a lot of research.  Which I can do while writing other stuff.  YAY!

Bicycle

Short ride today, mostly just to keep the muscles remembering what they should be doing.



8 8 6 6 8 (36) Pushups today.

One Hit, One Miss #submissionsdontmatter

The wood-nymph carjacking flash has been bounced.  Back into the queue!