Passed 40,000 words on the novel today.

You know, it really does seem like there’s a book in there somewhere.

And for the first time, I’ve pulled in a character from Emerald House Rising. Yes, it IS a sequel!

I honestly thought I would never get out of Chapter 8 alive. I have been trying to fight my way through it for MONTHS.

With each book, I have had at least one chapter where everything screeched to a stop, and I had no idea why. The odd thing was that looking back at those chapters now, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with them, nor is there any hint of whatever-it-was that made everything grind to a halt.

But this collage celebrates that I finally finished the fricking chapter (it ended, literally, with a spectacular explosion of magical fireworks) and sent it off to my writing group.

They judged it a breathtaking success and are gratifyingly agog to find out what happens next.

This was a fun collage to make. It has four separate layers, and I'm pleased that I continue to improve my technical skills.

Image description: A woman (Peg) faces the camera, seated in a wing chair in a living room, looking at the screen of her open laptop. Fireworks shooting out of the laptop screen wash over her face, but rather than looking perturbed, she looks rather pleased with herself.

New Chapter



Click on the links to see the 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

I tried to do a collage today and it wouldn't come together.

That happens sometimes.

My process: sometime around Wednesday, I start thinking, "What has this week been about? What has been at the top of my mind?" Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes it isn't.

Sometimes I just don't want to do whatever the week is about.

And sometimes, I just don't have a clue.

I've really been at a low ebb this week. It's been the weather, and the physical fatigue from shoveling, and the worry about all the stuff I haven't been getting done, and the regular ongoing fucking sleep disorder.

Anyway, as I said: I started to do a collage, and it just wouldn't jell. I couldn't find the right images, and I didn't like the tone of the idea anyway. Uncharacteristically, after wrestling with it for about an hour, I deleted all the images in a fit of temper.

I thought: actually, I've had several other ideas for the collage of the week. Maybe I could do one of those other cards?

Then it occurred to me that it might be interesting, whenever I post a collage, to list all the ideas that didn't quite make the cut. Sometimes, I'll note, I get back to one of those ideas later, and turn it into a future collage, after I've mulled over the idea enough.

And THEN it occurred to me: why not make a card about all the ideas this card isn't about? Why not make a card about all the rejected ideas?

So: this is a collage about all the collages I DIDN'T make this week:

•Golddigger (a private joke between Eric and myself)
•Plants
•Molasses
•Shame
•Depression
•Novelist
•Inflation

Rejects



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

This one will seem a little odd, because I am not going to explain it fully. In fact, it won't make a lot of sense to you if you aren't in my critique group and familiar with my novel as I've written it so far.

I'd mentioned that I'm 20,000 words plus into a book I'd started over twenty years ago. One thing I've often remarked about my writing process is that I am the opposite of what is called a "pantser," i.e., someone who writes by the seat of the pants. I have to figure out something/know where it is going before I can write it. Sorry, those of you who are good at writing exploratory drafts; I am just not that way.

Okay, the next is going to be a bit purposely vague:

Through great effort, picking up from where I left off twenty years ago, I had inched forward enough to finish a new chapter five, and then...I was floundering around, trying to come up with an idea for something that would subvert the rules I had set down for magic in my first book, but still not violate the spirit of what I was trying to do. I planned to introduce some cross-cultural experiences and I wanted to introduce, if you will, a new cultural metaphor, a different way of seeing the world, which could apply to the magical system I set up in the last book, but have it work in an entirely different way.

So I started googling cultural metaphors, and I won't rehash the way my thread of thought unspooled, exactly. But it suddenly occurred to me that the four characters I have been thinking about for over two decades embody--in the story, and in their characters--the entities of Fire, Air, Earth, & Water. And this raises aaaaaaalllllll sorts of possibilities about how the magical system will work, with a cross-cultural twist.

It's weird to be overwhelmingly seized by an idea in the creative process that seems so key, so breathtakingly important--but I can't quite explain it, because my thoughts about are still so incoate. But I think it will really work, and it will help, I think, with structuring the book. And since "structuring a book," i.e., plot, is always the area that I feel the weakest, this is very encouraging, and definitely gives me more hope that I will actually manage to someday finish this book.

I've been rather shy about talking about them (I think one reason the Ice Palace book failed was that I made the mistake about talking too much about it online). But this is a big enough step forward, that I think I can take the risk of introducing you to my four main characters. The costumes aren't right, but ignore that: you'll get an idea of my feel for Falco (Fire), Reynardo (Air), Tavia (Earth), and Elodie (Water).

Tavia and Elodie are twin sisters, and I was perplexed about how to find images for them. But then it suddenly occurred to me: Elodie is a bit crispy about being a twin, and she chopped her hair off to distinguish herself from Tavia. So I googled "Haircut makeover long hair to short hair" and came up with these two images. Am rather smug about that.

The symbols over Falco (upper left), Reynardo (upper right--the original character I started with twenty years ago), Tavia (lower left) and Elodie (lower right) are the Hellenic symbols for, respectively, Fire, Air, Earth, and Water.

Elements



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

Today, for the first time in over twenty years, I sent out a short story for an editor’s consideration. It’s almost humorous how proud of myself I feel.

The story is called “The Hall of the Muses.” I wrote it in the hopes that Greg Ketter would take it for his anthology on bookstores (eventually published as Shelf Life), but Greg decided to pass on the story. I always thought it deserved a home, though, so I had a few writing friends take a look at it to suggest markets. And today, I sent it off. Given recent events in Minneapolis, it feels oddly topical.

Good heavens, I feel old. The last time I sent out a short story, I had to send it on the mail and include an SASE.

I will be reading the story aloud at a meeting of the Rivendell discussion group this Saturday (via Zoom). It’s one of the “Readings From Rivendell” series, so there will be other readers. Check out the invite on Facebook here to learn more. (Edited to add: I dunno why that Facebook hyperlink isn't working, but here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/events/736244700529880/).

I'm pretty excited about this author appearance, which is part of the leadup to Gaylaxicon, which I will be attending. I am really looking forward to meeting Gregory Maguire.

Not ready to share yet, as things are happening behind the scenes, but...

I had a domain name twenty years ago that I let lapse when I stopped writing. I looked at acquiring it again, but infuriatingly, a holding company in Bermuda (I ask you) snapped it up and sat on it--I guess they hoped I would cough up money to buy it back.

I refused to pony up, but I kept checking. And now, after ten years, it finally became available.

I bought it.

I have to build an author's website, but I hope that relatively soon pegkerr.com will be open for business again. I will let you know when it goes live.

I've been reading a lot for escape lately, but reading has been difficult. I've had bad luck with a crappy succession of mindless escape fiction I've been taking out of the library, so I went out on the internet looking for fanfiction.

I was in the mood for some Éomer/Lothíriel, which is generally my preferred pairing in the LOTR universe. I like Éomer as a character, because he is quite well-rounded and has an extremely interesting background. He's heroic, but he's human, too. He shows the full gamut of human emotion. Unlike the more saintly Aragorn, Éomer has a temper which has at times altered the course of his character arc.

We know, from Tolkien's afterward, that he married Princess Lothíriel of Dol Amoth, and we know at least a little about her family, but Tolkien (to the best of my knowlege) never brough Lothíriel onstage. This is catnip for fanfiction writers: a pairing with one incredibly interesting, appealing character (Éomer) and another who is more or less a blank slate, so they can build a very wide range of stories. But Lothíriel's situation is interesting, as little we know about her, too: she is coming to a new culture, learning an entirely different language, and it's a great device for the reader: as Lothíriel learns about Rohan, the readers learn about it, too. And the culture of the Riddermark is extremely interesting, not just standard medieval fantasy.

The great risk, of course, is turning Lothíriel into a Mary-Sue character. I haven't run much into that, however, because the Éomer/Lothíriel pairing is one of the rarer ones due to the fact that the courtship and wedding and indeed the entire relationship happens after the book ends, off-stage, and so the more clumsy beginning fanfiction writers may not even KNOW about the pairing. On the contrary, the few who do write it are steeped in Tolkien's lore, and I think, better writers.

Two of the prominent writers I've enjoyed the most are Lady Bluejay and Lialathuveril, both of whom have returned to the pairing again and again, writing some impressive, novel-length works. They have played with a number of questions: was it an arranged marriage or a love match? Or was it an arranged marriage which turned into a love match? Or was it an unhappy marriage? What is Rohan like? What sort of role does Lothíriel have in her new home? What does she discover about the different role of women in her original home by the sea as opposed to her adopted home?

Deandra writes Éomer/Lothíriel, too, and she's quite prolific but her works are generally shorter, and not, I think, quite as richly complex.

However: as I said, I went out on the internet looking for more (since it's a rarer pairing it's hard to find new stuff) and I ran across a story and author I'd never encountered before. I must say I think it's one of the strongest fanfiction stories I've ever read. It's REALLY different than the standard Éomer/Lothíriel story, which often concentrates on how they met, how they fell in love, and how did Lothíriel adjust to Rohan.

I've seen some Éomer/Lothíriel stories that deal with Haradian characters (generally they're cast as villains), but I've NEVER seen a Éomer/Lothíriel story which takes place partly IN Harad. Éomer and Lothíriel spend almost the entire story apart, but they are learning about each other and their relationship is changing, even so. It examines big, big questions which seemed to me particularly timely, considering the goddawful news out of the Middle East: what is justice? How does a nation recover from war? What should you do when you encounter your enemy afterwards--if you win OR if you lose? What are the moral justifications for going to war? There was what (I thought) was a really surprising twist toward the end, and the ending itself was absolutely stunning.

I'd really love to get your reactions. The story is In His Face A Shining Light and it's by Carryon14.

For my friends who are authors:

Everything you need to know about ebook distribution is free ebook TODAY.