Wednesday Writing Exercise: Character Opinion

Note: This exercise was originally written for About's (now defunct) Creative Writing for Teens website. Although it was aimed at teens wanting to get better at writing, I hope it will be useful for all writers.

Character Opinion: A Character Development Exercise

Instructions: If all your characters think exactly the same way you do, then they're not very well-rounded. Characters should appear to the reader to be real people, with their own histories, thoughts and opinions. In this exercise, we'll explore characters through their opinions of current events.

1. Choose a current event about which you have a strong opinion, or about which you've spent a lot of thinking.

2. Choose one of your characters. You might find it easiest to first do this exercise with a character whose opinion is very like your own, or with one whose opinion is very different. Or start with the character you know best.

3. Write a monologue or essay from that character's point of view, about your chosen current event. Write for as long as it takes for your character to express their opinion. Remember to write as if you were that character, or as if they were writing through you.

If they would be very straightforward about stating their thoughts, then be straightforward. If they would try to hide their real opinions, then do that. Let the character's voice take over.

4. Set what you've written aside for a few days (or longer, if you want). Read over it later. You should learn some interesting things about your character, which you may be able to use in a story.

5. Repeat the exercise as often as you like, with other characters. You could write one character each evening for a week, say, then read over them all when you've finished.

Notes: Even if your characters are in a fantasy world of your own construction, they can still have opinions on "real world" events. Write as if these characters were able to see into the real world--you can try pretending that our world is a television show, or play, or series of novels in their world, if you have trouble imagining them as aware of the real world as well as their own. In fact, you can even try this exercise if you are using real-life historical characters by imagining what they would have thought of life today.

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Creating Aliens and Fantastic Beings

Note: This exercise was originally written for About's (now defunct) Creative Writing for Teens website. Although it was aimed at teens wanting to get better at writing, I hope it will be useful for all writers.

Creating Aliens and Fantastic Beings: A Creature/Worldbuilding Exercise

Instructions: Try to do the entire exercise in one sitting. You may find this helps your thought processes or you may find it overwhelming; if the latter, take breaks between numbered sections, but don't let too much time pass before going on to the next. There are notes at the end that may help you better understand the focus and point of the exercise.

1. Write an essay about your alien/creature as if it really did exist. Make it the point of the essay to describe the being to someone who has perhaps heard of it, but does not know what it is. Hint: analogy is useful for description and perhaps also for some of the "how it works" stuff. Don't go into too much detail -- just enough to let the reader get a decent idea of the creature.

2. Make notes as if you were a scientist studying the creature. Point-form scientific observations on biology, habits, culture and so on work well. These are notes you are making for yourself -- other people don't need to comprehend them, but make sure you will later. Sketches and diagrams may be useful. Begin by ordering things logically or by category (physiology, appearance, etc.), but don't be too strict. New ideas will come to you later; just add them at the end.

3. Think about how this creature might fit into a story. Jot down some plot ideas. Is it a creature that will be discovered during the novel/story? Is it already an integral part of the setting that is well-known to your characters? Will your being be a main character? A secondary character? Just part of the scenery? Answering these questions will help you decide how detailed you must be in your creation.

4. Write down some thoughts/notes/descriptions on how this creature may have evolved (or been created). This can be just as useful for fantasy creatures as for science fictional aliens. How does the being interact with its environment today?

5. If the creature will play any kind of significant role in your story/novel, try writing a first-person passage -- perhaps a full scene (not necessarily one that will appear in the finished story/novel) -- from the point of view of a member of that species. Get inside your alien's head, see how it thinks as an individual, how its species thinks, how its perceptions differ from human ones and also how they are the same. Try to keep writing in character for a few pages.

Notes: One thing this exercise should do is get you thinking about your alien/creature in context rather than in isolation. Creatures exist in environments and co-exist with other creatures. So should yours. Different creatures think and act and live in different ways. Explore this and see how what you discover can affect your thinking about plot, setting and other characters.

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: The Big Idea

Note: This exercise was originally written for About's (now defunct) Creative Writing for Teens website. Although it was aimed at teens wanting to get better at writing, I hope it will be useful for all writers.

The Big Idea: An Exercise in What It’s All About 

Instructions: This is a fairly straightforward exercise, but one which requires much thought. You can do the whole thing in one sitting, but it might be better to work on it a little at a time. If you get inspired, keep going; if you need to stop and think, then take a break. You may even find that you have better results letting this stretch out over several days. Figure out as you go along what will work best. This exercise works best for novels, but it is possible to use it for short stories as well. Try it and see what happens. See the notes for an alternate way to use this exercise.

1. Assume you have decided "I want to write a novel," but you don't yet know what your novel is going to be about. Think about some of the ideas and problems that intrigue you and make a list, summarizing each idea in a sentence or two.

2. Take your favourites from the list and think about how each one could play out in a novel. You don't need to know all the details, just the overall idea, the big picture. What you are trying to get at is the essence of what the story is about, plus a few things that make your story unique. Make some notes, if you find it helps organize your thoughts.

3. Take the one idea that seems to have the most promise (though you can certainly do this exercise with as many of your ideas as you like) and write a one-paragraph description of the essence of the story. This may, as yet, be a bit vague about what will actually happen in the story.

For example (this is from my own work):

In a semi-nomadic barrenlands culture that accepts a magical landscape and ancient shapechanging beings as natural, if rare, a young woman strives to discover herself and her place in life. She loves the traditional culture of her people, but at the same time she chafes at its restraints. As she struggles for the freedom to be whoever she decides she must be, she also learns about duty -- to her family, her friends, her people and her land -- and about how she can balance that duty with her personal freedom. 

4. Expand this idea further, perhaps using your paragraph from #3 as an introductory paragraph. Incorporate more plot and character elements so someone reading your description would get some idea about whether or not they would want to read your novel. If you've come up with a title by now, use it. If you haven't got a title, it's a good idea to come up with a temporary or working title, in order to have something to call the novel. Remember that writing things down doesn't mean you have to do them, so if you haven't got things quite right, don't worry. You can always change things later.

For example:

In a semi-nomadic barrenlands culture that accepts a magical landscape and ancient shapechanging beings as natural, if rare, a young woman strives to discover herself and her place in life. She loves the traditional culture of her people, but at the same time she chafes at its restraints. As she struggles for the freedom to be whoever she decides she must be, she also learns about duty -- to her family, her friends, her people and her land -- and about how she can balance that duty with her personal freedom.  

White Foxes, Full Moon is the story of Maring Darkberry, one of the reindeer-herding people of the barrens. One night Maring, her brother Seri, and her friend Del spy on a group of Folk, ancient shapechanging beings. Both Maring and Seri also have a small amount of magic -- Seri can take the shape of a reindeer whenever he wishes, while Maring's shapechanging ability is confined to the three days of the full moon. Seri surrenders to the call of the Folk's magic and is stolen away. Now Maring and Del must find a way to get him back without violating the tenuous peace between the Herders and the Folk.  

In the process of rescuing Seri, Maring gains the gift of another shape from the Folk -- the shape of a red fox that she can take whenever she wishes by putting on a red fox skin. This gift gives her a freedom she has longed for, but, like many gifts from the Folk, it also carries a curse. The skin must be worn on a certain number of days in every month or the Folk will take Seri back again. Maring has gained freedom from the cycles of the moon, but she also has an added duty -- to her brother, that he may keep his freedom, and to her people, that they may continue to have peace with the Folk. In the end, Maring will learn who she is, what she wants, and where she fits in. 

5. Now you've got a good basic direction for a novel. If you're happy with what you've come up with, go ahead and write the whole thing. If it isn't something you really want to work on, set it aside and try again, or edit it further. Chances are, many of the details will change as you write the novel based on your "Big Idea," but the core thing that it is about will probably stay much the same (though you may find even that changes by the end). I'm currently half-way through the novel summarized in #3 and #4, and the plot has expanded twice -- the second time by about ten chapters worth of material -- but the Big Idea is still pretty much the same.

Notes: This exercise was based on one I did in a third-year university writing workshop with instructor Peter Such. It's intended to get you thinking about stories and the kinds of things you might want to write about, but it is possible to do the exercise in reverse. In that case, you'd take a novel already written and write a paragraph about it. Take the essential characteristics and plot elements and perhaps some of the thematic elements to write your summary. This is the kind of thing you might come up with if you had to answer the question "What is this novel about?" Try this with novels by other authors to see how well (or not) a story can be described in a short blurb. Genre stories tend to be easier to summarize.

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: 5 Senses

Note: This exercise was originally written for About's (now defunct) Creative Writing for Teens website. Although it was aimed at teens wanting to get better at writing, I hope it will be useful for all writers.

Writing the 5 Senses: A Description Exercise

Instructions: Writers, especially those with less experience, often concentrate on visual detail when writing descriptions. The following exercise is cumulative, adding a new kind of sensory detail with each step.

1. Write a paragraph or so describing a place (either one you know well, or one you've made up). Use only visual details. In other words, describe only what a person would see if they went to that place. Include enough information for a reader to be able to visualize the setting.

2. Rewrite or revise your description from step 1, inserting details of sound. You should end up with a description that allows a reader to both visualize the setting, and imagine what it sounds like there.

3. Rewrite or revise your description from step 2, inserting details of smell. Consider what the objects in the setting might smell like, as well as the air in general. Your result should be a passage allowing a reader to visualize the setting, and imagine the sounds and smells there.

4. Rewrite or revise your description from step 3, inserting details of taste. This can be as simple as the taste of the air in an open mouth, or as complex as your narrator sitting down to a feast. Aim for a piece that allows the reader to imagine the place in terms of visual detail, plus sound, smell and taste.

5. Rewrite or revise your description from step 4, inserting details of touch. These can include what things actually feel like to the touch (in which case you'll need to add in some action to allow your narrator to touch things), what things look like they'd feel like, and other details such as the feeling of a breeze on the skin. Remember that touch can include sensations like temperature, texture, pressure and more. Give your reader some sense of what it is like to be physically present in that setting in addition to the visual, sound, smell and taste details.

6. When you've finished step 5, you'll probably have much more detail that you'd ever need in a descriptive passage. Set aside your description for a moment and decide what you want to convey. Is your piece intended to set a mood? To give a deep sense of place? To serve merely as a background? Assume, for now, that you are trying to build a sense of place that will make your setting really come alive for the reader. Make a list of all the essential details of that place, the things that make it unique--that place rather than any place. Add to your list the details that give flavour to the place, even if they don't make it completely unique; and add those details that you just really like, for whatever reason.

7. Go back to your description from step 5 and use your list of important details from step 6 to edit your passage. Concentrate on using the right details and removing the ones that don't really matter.

Notes: The aim of this exercise is to remind you that you have five senses you can use in your descriptive passages. If you're not making use of them all (or at least most of them), then you're neglecting a potentially useful tool. Try this exercise every now and then as a reminder, and do it with different settings. The detail you decide to keep in step 7 will likely be different for different settings, or even for the same setting when you're trying to create a different mood. Play around in step 7 and see how changing the details you keep or cut changes the whole feel of the piece.

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Writing Wednesday: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo starts in a few days, and I'm planning to do it again this year. I'll be writing the next Others book (unless I change my mind at the last minute). In the meantime, I'm working on a story -- maybe a novelette or novella -- about a big old museum on the odd people who work there. I was hoping to have that done by the end of October, but with only a few days left, and one full 8-hour shift at the video game store (I usually do 3 or 4 hour shifts as a part-timer), plus a variety of errands and a dog to entertain, I don't think that will happen.

So I'll be trying to finish "The Curator's Tale" (working title, and probably won't stick), while also starting Koldun (book 4 of the Others series). This could be disastrous, because I also have a lot to do throughout November for the Halifax Crafters winter market, and I'll be getting more hours at the video game store because of the holidays. And I'll be looking for a regular freelance gig to replace my About YA Books writing, when ends at the end of this month.

In related news, my novelette "Ichneumon" (under my Nic Silver pen name) is now free on all the Amazons and will be until the end of day on Halloween. It's a creepy story and not for everyone, but if you like that sort of thing, here are the links:

Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Amazon UK
Amazon Australia
Amazon India
Amazon Germany
Amazon France
Amazon Spain
Amazon Italy
Amazon Japan
Amazon Brazil
Amazon Mexico

Remember that you don't need an actual Kindle to read Kindle books -- most devices these days have a Kindle app that works just as well (you just have to buy through the website and not through the app). But if you have a Nook or a Kobo, let me know and I can send you an epub version.

Now I need to get at those errands so I can do some writing this afternoon.

Writing Wednesday: End of an Era

Okay, maybe "end of an era" is a tad hyperbolic, but it kind of feels like it. As some of you may know, I've been a freelance writer for many years, and my main gig, the one I could always count on, was writing for About.com. Over the years, the pay has ranged from pretty good to pretty bad, depending on the contract (there were quite a few different ones, using different ways to calculate monthly compensation) and how much web traffic I was able to generate for my articles and reviews. But I always got something for my work.

I started writing for About way back in ... er ... 2001, I think. I took on the Creative Writing for Teens site, and did a lot of work I'm really proud of (some of which I hope to edit and re-use at some point in the not-too-distant future). In 2005 the PlayStation Portable site became available, and since I was feeling a little burned out writing about writing, and had been reviewing games part time anyway, I applied. It was a brand new site, and I built it from scratch. It was fun. But if you play videogames, you know the PSP was never the success Sony had hoped, and it wasn't too long before people just weren't reading about it -- or its follow up, the PS Vita -- any more. Lucky for me, the Young Adult Books site was created in 2012, right when I was feeling most discouraged about the future of the PSP site. I applied, and got it, and once again, I built the site from nothing.

It's been tremendous fun reading, reviewing, and writing about YA books. But my contract comes up for renewal at the end of this month. About has a new (ish) owner, and I knew the contract was going to change. I expected I'd be making less money until -- one hoped -- I could build more traffic. I didn't expect my contract to not be renewed at all.

But, hey, "expect the unexpected" and all that. I'm writing for About YA Books until October 31, and then that's it. I could speculate about why my contract isn't being renewed, but I won't. About.com was good to me for 13 years or so. I'll probably apply to write for another one of their sites, though I don't expect to get the job. But you never know. I may not have a huge socila media presence (yet), but I can sling words.

In the meantime, if anyone is looking for a writer -- I know lots about books, writing, assorted forms of art, comics, videogames, nature, and all sorts of miscellanous stuff -- let me know. I'm going to need the work.

Writing Wednesday: Plugging Away

I'm still not back to my regular writing output, but I'm determined not to stress about it anymore (dertermined, dammit!). I have been slowly working away at a story--a novella, maybe--that's going well. I'm enoying the main character and the setting, and thinking that it may be a recurring series, probably with different charaters in the same setting. Kind of like what I have planned for my Wonder Island stories (the first one, Ichneumon--the title of which I may change since it says nothing about the story if you don't know what it means--is available at the usual ebook outlets (no link at the moment, as Blogger for iPad won't let me add links)).

Anyway, "The Curator of Improbable Fossils" is somewhere under half finished. As I got closer to what I thought was the end, I realized it might work better as an alternating viewpoint story, since there are things I can't address properly from the one point of view. So I've written most of the Curator's part of the story, and now I'm transferring it out of my handwritten notebook (I don't always hand-write, but I find it helps me get un-stuck sometimes because it seems much less permanent, like I don't have to get it right).

Next, I'll write the Librarian's point of view (and maybe even type it directly into the word processor, since the Librarian is a rather more modern character than the stuffy Curator). Finally, I'll write the end. I don't know yet if the concluding parts will be alternating viewpoints, or from one or the other's point of view, or from something more omnipotent. I hope I'll know by the time I get that far.

Writing Wednesday: Back on Track… ish

Just before I sat down to write this, I found out that I got the part-time retail job I applied for. It means I'm likely to have less time for writing and drawing unless I sacrifice something else. And since I'm determined to keep writing fiction and making comics, it may be this blog that suffers. But it's only a part time job, at least for now, so maybe I'll be able to keep juggling everything else. At any rate, it'll mean being able to pay the bills every month, which is a huge relief.

But not all is lost. I've managed to write a couple more parts of the odd story I started, so I'm up to about 3500 words (hand-written, so my estimate is probably a little low). It's not a prodigious amount, but it feels good. And I'm excited to see what happens to my characters.

I've also been working on a little mini-comic or zine, with monsters reconstructed from fossils -- based on the idea that ancient peoples interpreted huge fossil bones as giants and dragons. It's pretty fun, and silly, and I hope people will like it. And of course, I'm slowly pecking away at the dragon faux natural history book. I've set a goal of November for having that done, but there are a lot of illustrations yet to do, so we'll see.

And, as if I don't have enough to do, I'm tossing around the idea of doing an occasional webcomic about being an almost-middle-aged woman working at a mall video game store. I'll have to see if I have anything interesting or funny to share from the experience first, I guess.

Writing Wednesday: Nothing to See Here

How the heck is it Wednesday again already? Have I finally reached the age when time seems to kick into fast forward? Wait, slow down!

Er, anyway… I'm essentially still where I was last week. I've been trying to get myself back onto something resembling a schedule and am making slow progress. But those stories are building up in my head and if I don't get them written soon my brain will explode. Or at least that's what it feels like.

I did at least pull out all the pages of my comic Fey that I have done so I can assess where to go with that next. I'm going to have to start re-scanning and re-lettering the rest of the pages soon, as I've almost reached the end of chapter one. And, a handful more pages to draw and chapter three will be ready to scan and letter, too.

So yeah. Not much done, but I think I'm slowly crawling out of the hole of non-productivity. Or at least I hope so.

Writing Wednesday: Dealing

So, there's been a certain amount of crap going on in my life lately. Things mostly beyond my control, but things I still have to deal with. Eventually, maybe, I'll write about what those things are, but for now I'll just say they're making it really hard for me to focus or get much more done beyond the absolute basics I need to do for my various jobs.

But not all is doom and gloom. Even though I'm worn out with the crap-dealing-with, and my brain is a little scattered, I've actually written a little. Not a lot, and I still have a ways to go to get back on track. But I did manage to start a new story -- maybe a long short story, maybe a novella. It's probably not a novel, but I'm not really far enough into it yet to know.

It's a story, or one of a series of stories, that I've been thinking about for a while. It'll most likely appear under my "Nic Silver" pen name, not because it has lots of sex like my other Nic Silver books, but because it feels more like a Nic Silver story. Which is to say, dark and weird. Probably.

I also managed, finally, to get started on the next "Others" novel (also written as Nic Silver). It's only half a chapter, but it's a start and it gives me a vague direction to head in. I think I have less of an idea where this book is going than I did for the previous books, which might be why it's taken so long to get to it.

And, not writing, but related, because it's for a book I'm working on (which I will also write the text for), I've managed to finish some more dragon illustrations and get started on a couple others, which is why there are dragon pictures decorating this post. I'll make the finished ones (well, mostly finished -- they will eventually have hand-written text on them) available as prints in a few places online soon.

So yeah. Dealing with crap, but still dragging one foot after the other. I'm too damn stubborn to ever give up.

Writing Wednesday: Something From the Future (or the Past)

The next book I write is probably going to be book four of my urban fantasy series by alter ego Nic Silver. Though probably I should also finish Reindeer Girl. And since someone actually asked for it about a million years ago, there's the sequel to A Madness of Kentaurs to do.

But at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future, I have an old project to get back to. It's one that I wrote the opening paragraphs to sometime in the distant mists of the past (er… the mid-90s, maybe? the early-00s?). I came across it looking for something else about a year ago, and it made me laugh. In a good way. And then I set it aside again to work on other things.

The main character is an archaeology PhD student named Grace Cowell (Gray for short), and I intended it to be a mystery novel, set in southern Alberta where I did my field school (which wasn't that long ago at the time I started thinking about this book, but is rather a very long time ago now). I had some fun notions about the plot, but no experience writing a mystery.

I still have no experience writing mystery novels, but I do have a lot more experience reading them. But I think I may also add some adventure novel elements -- maybe not to this book, but I have some ideas for the next one in the series. Because, naturally, all my short story ideas turn into novels, and my novel ideas turn into series. Sigh.

Anyway, here's the opening for Reading the Bones, an archaeological mystery-adventure, which I might get started on before the year is out. Or not.

***

“Consulting the oracle?”

Grace Cowell looked up to see the jolly, bearded face of her thesis supervisor grinning at her. Professor Ray James straightened his stocky frame from where he’d been leaning against the doorway, and stepped into the room.

Gray looked back down at the array of bones on the black-topped table. “Apparently, I’ll have an exciting adventure this summer, and meet a short, dark and handsome stranger,” she said.

“Short, dark and handsome?”

Gray held up one of the bones as an exhibit. “Absolutely,” she said, schooling her voice to mock-oracular seriousness. “The healed fracture in this ursid phalanx is unmistakably indicative of short stature.”

The professor laughed and took the slender bone. It looked very much like a human finger bone, unless one knew what to look for. “So many big words,” he said, “from such a small object.”

“I keep hoping that if I make the summer sound grand and important, it will be. Or at least that it won’t be dull.”

Ray grunted. “These are the bones from Devon Island?” he asked.

Gray nodded and absently spread the jumble out more on the table. “Yup,” she said. “And instead of heading to the frozen north, the land of the midnight sun, etcetera, etcetera, to dig up more material for my dissertation, I’ll be going to hot, sticky southern Alberta to supervise bored field school students digging up cow bones and rusty nails.”

“And bits of broken glass,” Ray said. “Don’t forget the bits of broken glass.”

“Thanks so much for the reminder,” Gray said, resting her chin on her hand and her elbow on the table. She sighed. “Bits of broken glass. I hate historic archaeology.”

“If you want,” Ray said, handing her the bear bone. “I can tell Simon to find someone else to assist with the field school.” He tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile behind his beard.

“No,” said Gray. “I said I’d do it. I have to do something this summer, and historic archaeology is better than no archaeology. Besides, this field school gig pays.”

“You’ll have fun,” Ray said. “Not all students are bored. Or boring.”

Gray made a doubtful noise.

“And even if you don’t meet a short, dark and handsome stranger, at least you won’t have to live in a tent and worry about being eaten by a polar bear.”

“I suppose,” said Gray. “Though I don’t relish driving down to the ranch every day.”

“You’ll be able to bathe more than once a week. In a real bathtub.”


 “There is that.” Gray sighed and began to pack the bones she’d been examining back in their box. She might not get back to her dissertation work until the summer was over. “There is that.”

Pet Peeve: The Dreaded Apostrophe

Pretty much anyone who uses words for a living has pet peeves. Most of mine have to do with the eroding of precision by the common misuse of words with similar meanings -- theory instead of hypothesis, for example, or jealous when the correct word is envious. Mostly I try to just ignore them, or else I'd go crazy with irritation. And besides, I can't stop language from changing. It's sad when precision and nuance is lost, but languages are living things, and common usage changes them.

But when to use an apostrophe, and when not to, is really a super simple thing, and yet it confuses so many people. Apostrophes mean possession, many people think, so they add an apostrophe to its or hers. Shudder.

Actually, the simple truth is: Apostrophes are used for contractions.

That's it. That's all. Apostrophes never pluralize and they never indicate possession. Now wait a minute, you might be thinking. Because there are times when you need to use an apostrophe with a possessive, and times when it might be acceptable to use one with a plural. For the first: it's not because it's a possessive, it's because it's a contraction. And for the second: it might be acceptable, but it isn't correct.

So, the simple rule for apostrophes again: Use an apostrophe only when your word is a contraction.

Before I get to how that works with those pesky possessives that happen to have apostrophes, here's an essay I wrote a million years ago when I was in charge of the About.com Creative Writing for Teens site (as I said last week, it no longer exists, though you may find parts of it archived -- or plagiarized -- here and there on the web).

---

Which Word: Plurals, Possessives, and Contractions

More Than One

Most nouns are made plural simply by adding s (or es if the word already ends in s or sh). So more than one dog are dogs, one horse plus another horse makes two horses, and you can be in one skirmish or several skirmishes. Then there are the irregular plurals like mouse becoming mice and knife knives, but that doesn't concern us here. The point to remember is that when you add s to make a plural, you add only the s, never apostrophe-s. So dogs is always dogs and never dog's if you're talking about more than one dog.

But That Is Mine

Nouns are made possessive by adding s also. This is why people get confused. But it doesn't have to be confusing if you remember that to make a noun possessive you add apostrophe-s, and not just s all by itself. So to say that a bone belongs to a dog, you say that it is the dog's bone. A horse that belongs to Jonathan is Jonathan's horse. And so on.

But then what do you do if the noun or name ends with s already? There are two possibilities. One is to go ahead and add apostrophe-s after the s that is already there. The other is to just add an apostrophe. So you could say that a car belonging to Seumas is Seumas's car, or that it is Seumas' car. Adding both the apostrophe and the s is generally considered more correct, though either option is acceptable. The same two possibilities are available when making a plural noun possessive. You could say the dogs' bone or the dogs's bone in order to indicate a bone belonging to several dogs. To talk about the house where the Joneses live (more than one person with the last name Jones), you would say the Joneses's house or the Joneses' house. Writers usually use whichever is most like the way someone reading aloud would pronounce it; so a writer would probably write Seumas's car but the dogs' bone and the Joneses' house.

More Apostrophe-ses

Another place you get that old apostrophe-s is when you contract two words into one word (known as a contraction). Contractions don't always involve ses, of course; don't and isn't are contractions. But it's the ses that get confusing. All you need to remember is: in a contraction, the s always stands for another word (usually is, but sometimes other words like us). So that dog is running can become that dog's running and let us go swimming becomes let's go swimming.

Those Pesky Possessive Pronouns

Another source of confusion is possessive pronouns. Pronouns are words that stand in for nouns, like me, you, she, it, us and so on. Unlike other nouns, pronouns never use apostrophe-s to become plural; they have their own special plural forms. To show possession, the dog that belongs to me becomes my dog; the dog is mine. So you get the forms me my mine, you your yours, he his his, she her hers, us our ours, it its its. The word its seems to give people the most trouble. The key is this: its is a possessive pronoun (possessive pronouns don't use apostrophes); it's is short for it is.

When Plurals Are Allowed Apostrophes

Now I've already said that plurals never use apostrophes, and I stand by that, but some publications (and web sites) require the use of apostrophes in plural forms in special situations (and only in special situations). Those situations are ones where the s that makes the word plural might be confused with part of the word itself, in acronyms or abbreviations, and with numbers. So some newspapers, for example, specify that you must write how-to's rather than how-tos, CD's instead of CDs, and the 1990's rather than the 1990s. Personally, I think people are smart enough not to need those apostrophes, but if it makes the difference between selling an article and not selling one, I'll put the silly things in.

How To Keep It All Straight

That seems like an awful lot of detail to remember, but it's all logical if you stop to think about it. But to make it a little easier, just remember these rules:

• Nouns become plural with s or es (unless they're irregular), and never use apostrophes (except in some publications where some words, acronyms/abbreviations and numbers are required to have them).
• Nouns, including plural nouns (but not pronouns), become possessive with apostrophe-s (or sometimes with just apostrophe).
• Pronouns have special possessive forms and so do not use apostrophes.
• Contractions always use apostrophes to indicate that part of the word has been taken out to shorten it.

And that's it. Remember those four points, and you'll always know if you need to say its or it's, the dogs or the dog's.

---

In the million years since I wrote that article -- which I mostly still agree with -- I learned why it that possessive nouns use apostrophes, and it makes everything so much simpler. I think if they would just teach that one little bit of the history of English in school, a lot of people would never be confused about apostrophes. And if I'd known it when I wrote that article, I could have simplified my final list to:

• Only contractions use apostrophes.

Because the reason possessive nouns require apostrophes is because they are also contractions.

Once upon a time, in order to make a noun possessive, you have to make it awhile phrase. So to say that George owned this book, you'd write: George, his book. And, as language change, that phrase became one the was more conveniently shortened, contracted to George's book. In other words, George's is a contraction of George, his.

So how come we don't use Emily'r instead of Emily, her? I imagine it's partly because it's unpronounceable, but also because the default gender in the English language has long been male. (I won't say it always was, because there was a time when English -- or that which English evolved from (I don't recall the details and I'm too lazy to look it up) -- had a different set of pronouns).

So there you go. Apostrophes are only used for contractions, and possessives only have apostrophes if they are also contractions.

Writing Wednesday: Stalled, and Practical Musekeeping

Since I started a (hopefully regular) Saturday post called "Stamp Saturday" I figured why not make Wednesday about writing. Since, you know, "writing" and "Wednesday" both start with "w."Or something. Plus, some people come here to read about writing, and some about art/craft, and some about whatever else happens to fall out of my brain. So on Wednesdays, I'll try to say something meaningful about writing.

So. I haven't been writing much lately, except for necessary work things. My fiction writing has been completely stalled. Why? I don't know. I don't actually believe in writer's block; I know all I really need to do is sit down and start typing. But I haven't. Fear, maybe? Loss of enthusiasm because nobody has noticed that I've written anything? Maybe, and maybe. Or maybe it's because I'm a little contrary by nature (subtly -- most people would probably find me accommodating rather than contrary) and the more I berate myself for not writing, the less likely I am to write.

But not writing does weird things to my brain. I feel strange and wrong in ways I can't really describe, and which don't really have a source. Except I only feel this way when I'm not writing. So I obviously need to get writing again. And I find myself remembering an article I wrote a million years ago, when I was in charge of the Creative Writing for Teens website at About.com (don't go looking for it; it no longer exists and you'll be redirected to the Fiction Writing site). I re-published it more recently on one of those content sites (Suite 101 maybe? Associated Content? I can't remember) when I was trying to see if I could get more writing work (I concluded those sites aren't really worth the effort). Apparently, it got picked up by "Yahoo Voices" which I have apparently been part of since 2009, though I don't recall signing up. I might have done, and forgotten. It's the sort of thing I would do. More likely, Yahoo bought out whichever content site it was I had written it for, and transferred me and some of my content over. Anyway, here is "Practical Musekeeping" which may or may not help with writer's block…

Practical Musekeeping

The Role of Inspiration in Writing

You've heard the old saying that something is "one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration" (or, as Marion Zimmer Bradley put it, "ten percent inspiration or talent, and ninety percent hard work"). It's true for writing, too, but that isn't to say that inspiration -- the Muse -- has no role in writing.

Getting inspiration, finding your Muse, is important, but it's even more important to know that you can't just sit around waiting for a Muse to show up. Muses aren't interested in writers who sit around not writing, Muses are interested in working writers, writers struggling to find the words to express their own vision of the world. Become one of those writers and soon enough you'll have a Muse whispering story ideas and perfect phrases into your ear as you write.

Feeding the Muse

As Ray Bradbury pointed out, it is necessary to offer a Muse sustenance before you can expect one to come to you.

It may seem a little silly to feed something you haven't got yet, but it works. If you really are meant to be a creative writer, you've probably already got a Muse hanging around, waiting for an invitation. Offer her something tasty and she may just let you see her.

So what do you feed a Muse? All sorts of things, really, but primarily experience. But before you get dismayed, thinking you're young and haven't got much experience to offer, you should know that experience comes in many forms. You're alive, so you've had experience. You've felt things, done things and learned things. And you've read things.

To provide your Muse with plenty to eat, go places and do things, but most of all, read. Read everything. Read poetry (even if you think you don't like poetry; sometimes you have to do things because they are good for you). Read non-fiction; that's where odd ideas come from. Read fiction. Read in and outside your genre. Read classic literature (it's good for you). Read junk (it's tasty). All these things will be filtered through your own perceptions to feed your Muse.

Enticing Your Muse

Once you've attracted a Muse (or discovered one you already had), you'll need to get her to come out and play now and then, to help you with your writing (exercise is very good for Muses). To do this you must sit down and get to work. Write something, anything. Don't wait for the Muse to tap you on the shoulder and tell you to get working; Muses are basically lazy and won't bother very often. But once you're stringing words together, your Muse will get curious. She'll think, "There's a better way to say that," and then she'll come out and tell you what it is.

Remember also that Muses are shy, so don't try to force her out. Just go about writing that poem or story, and let her venture out on her own. She will, and the more often you entice her out, the more easily she'll arrive next time.

Do Not Neglect Your Muse

The worst thing possible for a Muse is neglect. If you ignore her by ignoring your writing, she'll go away and it can be very difficult to get her to come back (not impossible, though). If you don't keep feeding her with new experiences and new things to read, she'll begin to repeat herself and you find you write the same boring stuff over and over. Be attentive to your Muse, fulfill her needs and she'll help you with your writing for the rest of your life.

Further Reading on Musekeeping

If you don't feel quite ready to accept the responsibility for keeping your own Muse, try reading some of these fine publications. You can never have too much information, though Musekeeping is really quite a simple and natural process.

Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity by Ray Bradbury (Bantam Books, 1990) contains the very useful essay "How to Keep and Feed a Muse (and was the main inspiration for my article). "It isn't easy," Bradbury writes. "Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try hardest, scare it off into the woods."

"Waiting for Inspiration?" Ha! is a short but useful commentary on Inspiration (another name for the Muse) by Beth Mende Conny. (Note: this used to be available online, but I can't find it anymore. If anyone finds a link, please send it along and I'll update.)

Things Accomplished This Week

I'm afraid this week's post isn't going to be very exciting. Just a list of stuff I wrote and published this week. I'll probably, eventually, do a separate weekly update post at the end of the week and put up something more interesting on Wednesdays. But I'm lacking in sleep this week, so this is all you get.

• Review of See Jane Run by Hannah Jayne
• Review of Witch Finder by Ruth Warburton
• New chapter of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective @JukePopSerials
• New page of Fey (actually an old page, but new in this current re-launch)

I've also thumbnailed and pencilled the next four pages of Fey, but haven't quite managed to get them inked yet.

I've also been reading a lot, and I'm thinking of keeping track of what I've read again in a new 50 Books challenge. Except since I know I'm going to read more than 50 YA books this year, on account of work, I'll aim for 50 YA books, 50 adult fiction, 50 non-fiction, and 50 graphic novels. That's only a little more than I've managed in previous years. Sure, maybe it will be too much, but I'm more curious about how many I'll get to than in actually hitting the goal.

So, here's what I've read so far:

YA Books

1. See Jane Run by Hannah Jayne
2. Witch Finder by Ruth Warburton

Non-Fiction

1. Artists on Comics Art edited by Mark Salisbury
2. Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe by John Bell

Graphic Novels

1. The Tomorrow Girl and Other Stories by Aaron Diaz (aka Dresden Codak)
2. The Replacement God by Zander Cannon

Hunh. Six books in one week. That's kind of a lot.

And that's it for now. I'll try for something more exciting next week.

Goals and Such

I don't really like New Year's resolutions. I always figure if you want to do something, resolve to do it right there and then. Don't save up all your promises-of-things-you'll-do for one big day. That seems like a recipe for failure to me (though there can be success in failure, too). However, this arbitrary counting of time we call a year (OK, not entirely arbitrary, but how many people really think about what it is we base the length of a year on?) can be useful for stopping to take stock.

Last year, I didn't do as well as I hoped with my goals. I had planned to have a lot more writing done and available for people to read, but I got derailed pretty early on, and I'm not even sure why. I did manage to write (or finish) three novels (two shortish YAs and one somewhat longer adult novel), so really that's not so bad. And I drew some dragons, made some books, got a die-cutter and expanded my card-making repertoire.

But this year, I'm not going to focus on what I didn't get done last year. Well, I am, sort of, but not really. Actually, I'm going to work on some much older things in addition to trying to write more new things.

Old Things to Work On

(Note that I didn't say "Old Things to Finish." I hope to finish them, but if I don't, that's OK. At least I will have more done than I did before).

This Blog. I'm going to aim for a regular weekly post again this year. This is the first one. I won't give myself any soft of word count goal. Just one post a week, even if it's just a picture or a favourite quote.

My Comic. A million years ago, I started an urban fantasy comic -- a webcomic in the sense that I intended to first make it available on the web, though except for lettering, it's all drawn the old-fashioned way and ultimately I want it in print. I worked on it off and on over the years, a little here, a little there. It takes me a really really long time to draw.

Then, in 2004, just before I moved to Nova Scotia, I decided to re-draw everything I had already done to fix it. And I did. Every week a new page, and I even kept going after I finished re-drawing. I made it to the middle of issue 3 (around 50-something pages) and then, for reasons I no longer recall, I stopped. I even still had a few more pages planned out.

So now, ten years later, I'm going to have another go at it. I still love my characters, and it's still a story I want to get to the end of. But I'm not going to re-draw it again, even though it's old art and I might be able to draw it better (and looking back, I really shouldn't have bothered re-drawing it last time; I should have put the energy into making new pages). If I still have all my old files, and I can figure out WordPress well enough to make it do what I need, I might even have the first page up today. I'm going to start from the very beginning, one page a week to start, and while old pages are going up, I'll work on new ones. We'll see how far I get this time. I'd like to at least get to the end of the current storyline.

My Serials. I've have two serial novels on JukePop Serials, both of which have been neglected, due to the mysterious derailment of 2013. One of them -- the one I write as Calliope Strange -- is actually finished. I just haven't posted it all. For that one, I'll put up at least one chapter a week until it's done. The other one, Reindeer Girl, is not finished, but it will be. It was meant to be a way of finishing a book I started a while back, and a way to get me writing regularly. It can still be those things. Maybe I'll manage once a week, but if I can at least get going on it again, however slowly, I'll be pleased.

Other. I'm sure there are other old things I'll revisit through the year, but for now, these will do.

New Things Ahead

Dragons. This isn't entirely new, of course, as it's something I started working on on 2013, but this year I want to make it a major focus. A couple of days ago, I made a Scrivener file for it so I can start working on the text, and yesterday I had another stab at a dragon illustration that's been kicking my butt. I still didn't get it, but I got closer. This is my fun thing, the thing I'm making entirely for myself, but I'll share it, and maybe others will like it, too.

Fiction. There are always too many novels in my head, but this year I'd like to see if I can write one or two more Others novels (as Nic Silver). There are two more I know I need to write for sure. One is what happens to Evgeny while Su is in Germany, and the other is the continuation of Su's quest to find out what happened to her little sister. Also, I'd like to get working on the next Kentaurs novel, which I had intended to write over the summer. And eventually, though perhaps not this year, we'll have to find out what the heck is going to happen to Dubhghall and Maddy after the events of Dark Stranger.

Publishing. I need to get White Raven Press back on track, starting with a new website. I have a handful of novels and collections to get into print, and one to put up digital. Maybe two, but Deer Mouse is an experiment in submitting to a traditional publisher, so I'll have to wait till I hear back.

Painting. Last year I bought some exciting new art supplies, and promptly had no time to play with them. So this year, that's what I'll do. Play. Learn some things. I have a selection of casein paints, and I've already prepped a whole pile of boards to paint on. Maybe something will come of it, or maybe I'll just have fun. Either is good.

Craft. My goals here are just to keep on making stuff, and make more of an effort to market and get work into stores. I hope to do more hand-papermaking, so likely I'll have more cards printed on my own paper, and probably more linocuts rather than polymer letterpress. But again, we'll see how it goes. Also, I plan to play around with more 3D sculptures using die-cut elements. My first batch of dragons came out well, and were well-received. Also, they were great fun to design.

Photography. Some of you may know I studied photography (as well as printmaking, design, and book arts) in art school. I haven't done a lot of photo recently, asked from snaps to sort of visually journal things I see. I have some ideas for projects tumbling around in my head, but I just upgraded my iPhone, and I got a set of Olloclip macro lenses for Christmas (I had their 3-in-1 macro/wide angle/fish eye for my old phone, and will probably pick up the one for my current phone eventually), so I think I'm going to focus on shooting iPhone pictures. No pressure on myself to make great pictures, just something fun. And if they start turning out well, maybe I'll get more serious.

More…

I'm sure there were more things I was going to say, but I've gone on way longer than I meant to, so I'll stop. Basically, I plan to have fun this year, and finish more things -- some old, some new. The only way I can fail is if I stop writing/drawing/crafting completely, and that's pretty unlikely.

All Hallows' Read: Free Halloween Short Story!

So apparently this is my 1000th post on this here blog, so I felt like I should do something significant. Also, it's Halloween -- my favorite holiday -- and I just finished writing a haunted-house YA short story. So, since no one ever comes to my house in the woods for candy, I'm giving you all a story.

FEAR

It started as a dare.

It always started as a dare. They knew, the other kids, that Brigid -- as standoffish as she was -- could never refuse a dare. Not a really good one.

It was such a cliché, too. A big old abandoned house on the edge of the woods that everyone said was haunted. Go inside, spend the night, we dare you. At first, Brigid had tried to be smart, to refuse the dare, to mock the other kids about how stupid it was. Sometimes that worked.

I'm not going to eat a worm, that's just stupid. That time it had worked. The other kids agreed it was dumb and they just wanted to see her do something gross. So she picked her nose at them, and they went away. 

She didn't tell anyone, not even the teddy bear that still stood sentinel next to her pillow every night even though she was sixteen now and supposed to be above that sort of thing, but later when she was all alone, she had eaten a worm, just to see what it was like. She washed it first, and she couldn't bear to bite down on its wriggling pink body, so she had swallowed it whole. And then she felt bad for days after -- sometimes she still felt bad, remembering -- that she had eaten something living without first putting it out of its misery.

It hadn't tasted like much.

But this, this dare wouldn't go away. Come on, scaredy cat, we dare you. That was the second dare. Brigid was not afraid of very many things, except being mocked. She hated being mocked. Big old houses didn't scare her at all. In fact, she had already been inside, several times. Just not at night. Not all night. Brigid hated people implying she was afraid of anything.

I'm not going to kiss another girl. That time, that one time, the dare hadn't worked. She looked at the girl they wanted her to kiss -- a petite redhead new to the popular group, who'd do anything to win their approval -- and she felt heat spread through her belly. And then fear. Terror that if she kissed that pretty mouth, that girl, she'd like it. And worse, that everyone would know she'd liked it. That time, they hadn't dared her again, and the redhead looked relieved.

Later on, she couldn't even look at her teddy bear, and she forced herself to think about kissing the cutest boy on the soccer team, so she wouldn't think about kissing the redheaded girl.

But this dare was different. Scaredy cat, they said. She tried to refuse again. She even told them she'd gone inside the old house before, but no one had seen it, so no one believed her.

You are scared, they said. We triple-dog-dare you to spend the night in there. And that's what did it. Not the triple-dog-dare itself, but the three dares in a row. Brigid tried not to be superstitious. Magic wasn't real. But things in threes would still get her. If something didn't work in three tries, she gave up. When something bad happened, she couldn't relax until a second and a third bad thing happened. And if she was dared to so something three times, she couldn't refuse.

And that's why Brigid Rourke, newly turned sixteen, shimmied down the tree outside her bedroom window after her parents had gone to bed Saturday night and crept through the dimly-lit suburban streets to the very edge of the forest, where a huge Victorian mansion lurked invisibly behind an overgrown hedge. 

She stood at the end of the long, weedy driveway, her flashlight looking feeble against the blackness of the treeshadows, and waited. One of the kids who had dared her was supposed to meet her here at midnight, to make sure she went in. Then the others -- they claimed -- would take it in shifts to watch the house to make sure she didn't sneak back out before dawn. When the sun rose, they said, they would consider the dare fulfilled and she could go back to her teenagerly duties of sleeping until afternoon on Sunday.

When they arrived, the other kids were a giggling, shhh-ing mass, shoving each other out into the street and whispering so loudly they might as well have been yelling. Brigid waited until the last moment to step out of the shadows of the driveway, and was rewarded by a shriek from one of the few girls in the group. She scratched her nose to hide her smirk.

"We didn't think you'd show," said one of the boys, the biggest, the one who had been first to voice the dare.

"Yeah," echoed several of the others. "We thought you'd be too chicken."

"Well, I'm here," said Brigid. She stood straight. She was taller than most of them, even the boys, and this way she could look down her nose at them. She'd never be popular or well-liked, nor did she especially want to be, but being able to look down at them was better, anyway.

"So go on in," said one of the girls. Not the one who had shrieked. This one had perfect blonde hair that she straightened with a flat iron. Once, she had teased Brigid about her long black hair, inherited from her Japanese mother, but secretly -- Brigid believed -- the girl was jealous. It was around then that the other girl had started wearing her own hair loose, letting the stylish haircut grow out.

"I'm going," said Brigid, and turned her back on the others. She didn't bother to count them. The number of kids in the popular crowd changed from day to day as members of the core group befriended or unfriended other kids at school. Brigid had never been so chosen, and didn't want to be. Her mother said she was afraid she might like being popular, that she didn't want to lose what made her different. Brigid thought it was more that she didn't want to be like them, shallow and boring.

"We'll be waiting for you at sunrise," called the tallest boy. "And we'll be watching, so don't try to sneak away."

Without turning, Brigid held up her middle finger in their direction. She didn't care if they could see it in the dark or not, just doing it felt satisfying. If she'd done such a thing at school, or even during the day when she wasn't heading for the door of a haunted house, she'd be sure to get hit for her troubles, or shoved and hair-pulled, nasty rumours spread about her at school.

But here, right now, she wasn't afraid. None of them were going to spend the night in the house.

She walked up to the front door, turned the knob, and opened it. She was a little surprised to find the door unlocked. When she'd snuck in before, she had had to climb through a basement window, and cut her palm on the glass. A flicker of uneasiness crept up her spine, but she pushed it away and stepped inside, aiming her flashlight at the floor to look for rotten spots.

The house had been empty for as long as Brigid could remember, but her parents said it had been lived in not so many years ago. A rich lady had lived here, but then suddenly packed up and left one day, without telling anyone why she was leaving or where she was going. She hadn't been very friendly with the neighbours anyway, but her staff had been mostly local. They're the ones who had started the stories about ghosts.

They said the rich lady had killed someone and buried him in the basement, and he had come back to haunt her. But they also said the house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground. And that the rich lady's grandparents had died in the house, and a servant hanged himself, and half a dozen other unlikely stories. The only thing they agreed on was ghosts.

Brigid pulled the door closed behind her, shutting out the wind. The house was so far from the street, and so sheltered by trees, that very little outside light made it through the grimy windows with their ancient, rotted drapes. She shone the light around, picking out the hulks of abandoned furniture, the fireplace mantel, swaths of cobwebs, dust.

When she'd come here before, she had hoped to find some treasure, a knickknack or a forgotten bit of jewellery, but except for the furniture and some of the larger cooking implements in the kitchen, it seemed the rich lady had packed very thoroughly. She hadn't gone upstairs, though; the staircase looked too rotten to support a cat's weight, let alone a teenaged girl's.

The furniture was too damp and unpleasant-looking to sit on, so Brigid headed for the fireplace. It had a broad stone hearth and a pretty carved wooden surround with a cast-iron decorative cover. The stone wouldn't be comfortable to sit on all night, but it was off the floor and solid. She brushed a spot clear of dust and settled down to wait. She switched off her flashlight to save batteries, but fished a handful of candles out of her pocket and lit them, melting the bottom of each on one of the others just enough to stick it to the hearthstones. Then she got a book out of her other pocket. The candles gave her just enough light to read by and it was going to be a long night.

She had only made it through half a chapter when she realized that a book about a girl who finds a doorway into another world -- a darker, scarier world than her home -- was perhaps not the best choice of reading for spending a night in a supposedly haunted house. Every little creak and rustle drew Brigid's attention from the story, and got her thoughts turning to ghosts and bodies in the basement.

By the time she reached the last page of the chapter, Brigid realized than one of the noises wasn't the wind batting at the leaves or the old timbers of the house settling. Just a mouse, she told herself. Hopefully a mouse and not a rat. Not that she was afraid of rodents of any size, but a rat was bigger and, she supposed, more likely to bite.

It was a faint scraping in the basement that she heard. Shhk, shhk, shhk. The basement, where there was supposed to be a dead body buried, though Brigid hadn't seen any signs of a grave the times she'd climbed through the basement window to poke around in daylight. It would be a skeleton by now, wouldn't it? How long had it been buried there? Since before Brigid was born, at least. Surely it would be just a skeleton by now. 

Brigid wasn't afraid of skeletons. Silly to be frightened of something you had under your own skin. She even had a little skull of a rabbit she'd found in the woods, hidden in her closet. It had been on her dresser until her mother had told her to throw it away.

Shhk, shhk, shhk. The sound was louder now. Could a mouse make that much noise? Could a rat? Shhk. What would a old skeleton sound like, dragging its dry foot bones across the floor?

A raccoon. Or a skunk. That must be it. Hopefully not a skunk, though.

Brigid turned pointedly back to her book. She began to read the next page, but realized she didn't really remember anything from the whole last chapter. She'd been too distracted by the noise. Shhk. 

Then silence. Brigid sat tensely on the stone hearth, listening as hard as she could. Wind rustled the leaves outside, and somewhere upstairs a branch scraped against the side of the house. Beams and floors creaked quietly as the changing humidity made the wood shift. A tiny scraping behind the cast iron fireplace cover was certainly a mouse.

Brigid let her breath out slowly. Whatever it was must be gone. She turned back to her book. This time she managed to read three whole chapters before she heard another noise that didn't fit.

Creaking this time, and not just the house settling or a tree bending outside in the rising wind. It came from the basement again, but this time it was the stairs. Brigid stood up without thinking, clutching her book in both hands. Something was coming up the stairs.

For long moments she stood frozen in place, straining to hear, to tell from the sounds exactly what was coming up the basement stairs. A skeleton? Would a decades-old bunch of dry bones weigh enough to make those massive old steps groan?

They came slowly, the noises, the footsteps, if that's what they were. Like sneaking. 

Then the basement door moaned on tarnished and bent old hinges and Brigid jumped, and dropped her book and almost shrieked.

Almost, but she managed to stop herself. She also -- just barely -- stopped herself from turning and fleeing across the big old room and out the front door. She did not believe in ghosts, or skeletons that walked, or haunted houses. She made her self bend and pick up the book, made herself sit back down on the stone and look at the words, and when the soft shuffle of footsteps reached the door to the parlour where she waited, she made herself glance nonchalantly up from her reading and raised her eyebrows in question.

Then she almost jumped and shrieked again before she realized that the apparition in the doorway was not a zombie or a ghost, but another girl, close to her own age. The girl was pale enough for a ghost, and dressed in what looked like tattered rags at first glance, and she stared at Brigid with huge dark eyes.

But as they stared at each other across the room, Brigid could see that the girl's clothes had been deliberately cut and torn and stitched back together in a way that made them look like a costume from a dark fairy tale. She wished she dared wear something like that, instead of the standard jeans and tee shirt that every other teenager wore, except the popular and fashionable girls.

Finally, the other girl spoke. "Holy hell," she said, in a voice lower than a girl's usually was, and with just a trace of unidentifiable accent. "I though you were spook." Then she smiled, and her grin showed slightly crooked teeth and dimples. Except for the layers of skirts and the length of her wild, multi-hued hair, Brigid might have thought the other girl was a boy.

"And I thought you were a skeleton," said Brigid, smiling back. "Or maybe a zombie."

"What are you even doing here?"

"What are you doing here?"

The other girl frowned slightly, then shrugged. "I'm just passing through, and this old house seemed like a better place to sleep a few days than under a bush."

"Don't you have parents?"

"Somewhere."

Brigid waited, but the other girl didn't elaborate. "I got dared to spend the night here," she finally said. "I don't really believe the stories, and anyway I've been inside before, so it's no big deal."

"There's stories?"

So Brigid found herself telling the other girl all the tales she could remember about the old house, and in the process discovered she remembered a few more. A servant was supposed to have cut her wrists herself in the attic bath, and another jumped from a third floor window. Someone else murdered a cheating lover. All the stories were full of spurned love, or unrequited love, or jealous rages.

"Either a lot of people died here, or else no one really ever knew why this house was haunted," said the other girl, finally.

"I don't think it's haunted at all," said Brigid. "I think people just like to scare themselves. Or have something more interesting to say than they spent the day cleaning up after a rich old lady."

"You don't believe in ghosts?" said the other girl.

"I already said that," said Brigid. "You do?"

"Sometimes."

Then they just sat for a little while, side-by-side on the hearthstones, listening to the wind and the leaves and the house.

"What's your name?" the girl asked.

"Brigid. What's yours?"

"Day."

"Like daylight? Were your parents tree huggers?" As soon as the words came out, Brigid wanted to kick herself. As a girl who looked mostly Japanese but who had a very Irish name, she knew what it was like to have your name made fun of. "Sorry," she said.

Day shrugged. "My parents were... are fundamentalist Christians. They named me David. I chose Day." She -- or he? -- looked Brigid steady in the eye, chin titled up stubbornly, as if daring her to make more fun.

Brigid wasn't sure what to think. She wasn't surprised that Day was a boy under those skirts. His voice and face were boyish enough. But she knew that at her school a boy dressing like that would be hounded mercilessly. Then again, at her school a boy who wanted to dress in girl's clothes would probably never dare in the first place.

Finally she thought of something to say that might not be thought offensive. "Are you... Do you want to be a girl?" On second thought, that probably was offensive.

"I am a girl," Day said, nostrils flaring. Then she looked down at her hands and Brigid noticed how tightly they were clasped together. "I don't even know why I told you my parents called me David. If I hadn't said you'd never have known."

Again, Brigid wasn't sure what to say. She floundered for words to express that she didn't care if Day was a girl or a boy, that she could be whatever she wanted and Brigid wouldn't judge, but before she could get the words out, Day said, "Anyway, I don't care what you think. I am who I am and if you don't like it, you can fu--"

Her words were cut off by a loud crash from upstairs and both girls jumped to their feet. To her surprise, Brigid discovered they were holding hands, as if a physical connection could stave off fear. And maybe it could. She felt Day start to tug her hand away and tightened her grip; the other girl relaxed.

"You are who you are," Brigid said quietly, not sure what to think about the way heat spread up from their connected hands into her belly and fluttered there like electrified insects. "I am who I am. But what I wonder is, who is up there crashing around?"

"Or what is up there," said Day, in a whisper so soft Brigid could barely hear it.

They looked at each other. "Do we run, or do we go look?" said Day. Her hand tightened on Brigid's, then relaxed, but didn't let go.

"I don't believe in ghosts," replied Brigid.

"I do," said Day. "But even if it isn't ghosts, it could be a murder, or a thief, or a... something worse."

"Something worse than a murderer?"

"Think about it." Day shifted a little closer and Brigid felt warm where they almost touched. She'd never felt this way about a girl before, she told herself, pushing memories of the redhead aside. Was it because this girl was born a boy? Or was it one of those things where danger brings people closer in unexpected ways? Because now that Day mentioned it, Brigid could think of quite a few things worse than a murderer, or even a murderous ghost.

"If we run, I lose the dare," she said. There had been silence from upstairs after the crash, but now there was windy, whispery sound. Like loud breathing.

"Did you promise something, if you lose?'

"No."

"So you don't really lose anything."

"Only the respect of some kids I don't care about."

"You want to run, then?" Day was edging away from the stairs to the second floor, but not towards the front door. Instead, she was aiming for the basement door.

"No." Brigid stared at the darkness where the heavy wood of the old main stair lurked, hardly lit at all from the flickering candles on the hearthstones. "I have my own self-respect to lose, too."

"You won't care much about self-respect if it turns out to be an axe-murderer."

"Or a zombie," said Brigid, and they grinned at each other. Until the breathing got too loud to ignore. Then they stared at each other with wide eyes.

"So?" said Day.

"We go look?" said Brigid.

"We go look." Then Day leaned over and kissed Brigid on the mouth, softly at first, then more insistent. For just an instant, Brigid almost pulled away. Then she thought, I can kiss whoever I want. Who cares what anyone thinks? And she let her lips part against Day's, felt the heat and softness of the  other girl's mouth, then a sudden tingle of want as Day slipped her tongue into Brigid's mouth.

It could have gone on forever, that kiss, but another crash upstairs jerked them apart. They stared into each other's eyes.

"Let's go," said Day softly, and Brigid nodded. Whatever happened upstairs, whether it was a murderer lurking, or a ghoul, or just a raccoon looking for a place to have its babies, everything would be OK. It would have to be, because Brigid was determined to kiss Day again. And again. And maybe again after that. And she didn't care who knew. She didn't care if Day was a boy or a girl or something else entirely. She wouldn't ever let fear tell her what to do.

OK, Yet Another Cover Post

No blurb written yet, but I'm working my way towards finishing the edits on Dark Stranger, so I made a cover for it. I wanted it to match Milk Sister, since it's the sequel (even though Milk Sister was originally written as a stand-alone novel, one character wouldn't get out of my head and kept insisting I ought to tell his story, too). Here's the cover for Milk Sister:

If you click to see if bigger, you can see the lovely leather... The background image is an actual book that I bound a few years ago (it's a K-118 binding, for you bookbinders out there), and that's pretty close to the actual colour of the leather. The fairies are excerpted from an intaglio print, also from a few years ago.

I knew I wanted Dark Stranger to be blue. No real reason, it just seemed right. SoI used Photoshop to make the same book image blue, re-did the typography to more-or-less match, and then had to find an image to use. Like I said, I wanted the covers to go together, so it made sense to excerpt another old intaglio of mine.

There aren't really any moths in the story, but books are kind of important (in a roundabout sort of way), so I guess it works. It's more about the feel, anyway (and the fairies in Milk Sister aren't the tiny winged kind, either, so ... yeah).

Dark Stranger should be up for pre-order in the next few weeks.

One More Cover Post

I decided that while I liked the covers with just the art, there really needed to be some indication of genre, so I added silhouettes. I've only done the first three, since I haven't written the rest yet. (I'm also adding links to Amazon and Smashwords, just in case... you know, you might want to buy one -- they're also available from Kobo, the iBookstore, Sony, Barnes & Noble, the other Amazons, and a few smaller places.)

Vixen (The Others #1)

buy from: Amazon | Smashwords | Paperback

Hexen (The Others #2)

buy from: Amazon | Smashwords

Familiar (The Others #3)

buy from: Smashwords (pre-order)

Future Others Series Covers

Familiar: Cover and Blurb

She's rescued her lover twice, once from imprisonment and once from a demon.

Can she save herself from her own nature?

To save Evgeny, Su had to allow herself to be bound to her hexen best friend Alex as a witch's familiar. They meant to reverse the spell as soon as Ev was safe, but it turns out a familiar binding is for life -- or even beyond if the familiar is a hexenfuchs like Su.

As the binding draws tighter, like a leash around Su's throat, she and Alex travel to Germany to search for a solution in Alex's hexen ancestry.

But half of Su's ancestry is German, too, and their destination is right in the heart of hexenfuchs territory. Su and Alex are joined by much more than a familiar binding, it seems -- they're bound by a destiny that keeps repeating, trapping witch and familiar in the same tragic events.

Good thing Su doesn't believe in destiny.