writing – Into the West

Weekly Serial Release

Set in the Year of our Lord 1337 war gripped Europe. The Holy Roman Emperor sent the Teutonic Knights to conquer Lithuania and Russia. England and France opened their Hundred Years War. Ottoman Turks stalked the moribund Byzantine Empire.

The second son of the Willard of Willardhof in Saxony received a new name and a quest, neither of which he particularly wanted.

In addition to helping one of my favorite authors proofread her final manuscript, I’m also assisting my favorite uncle to self-publish serially, two chapters per week, an award winning ebook he wrote. This past Wednesday I published the twentieth chapter of The Dragon and the Dove, which officially marks the halfway point of the book.

In addition to being an author, my uncle is also an accomplished artist and painted the cover art for The Dragon and the Dove, to which I added the book title and author name.

Cover art for The Dragon and the Dove, written and painted by the author, Ron Andrea

The second son of the Willard of Willardhof in Saxony received a new name and a quest, neither of which he particularly wanted.

Return each Wednesday for the next two chapters in The Dragon and the Dove. Only ten more weeks of suspense left.

Start reading Chapter One today.

Almost Summer

Where did May go? So much happened in May between work, home and family that the entire month slipped away without any kind of post here. June is starting at at the same “full speed ahead” tempo. I don’t know when I will have time to write any of it up and some of what’s going on in my life I’m reluctant to share in a public forum. Don’t be alarmed. None of it is ‘bad’ per se, just private.

With the weather becoming brighter, warmer and more summer like, Terry and I are spending evenings outside. Thunderstorms are forecast for later this week so perhaps I’ll spend that rainy afternoon and evening writing a post.

Stay well and take care.

On the 8th Day of Christmas

Happy New Year!

2020 started out strangely. Terry and I dozed off around nine o’clock New Year’s Eve but both of us woke back up after two o’clock New Year’s Morning. We both migrated back downstairs and dozed off again for another four or five hours. Ah the exciting life we lead!

I had promised Terry a breakfast of bacon and waffles. I put the bacon in the oven, and forgot to set a timer. Meanwhile, I continued drafting a newsletter for my local book club and lost track of time. I’m not sure how long I was editing, but I did eventually remember the baking bacon before it was reduced to charcoal.

Next I had to rearrange the kitchen counters a bit to make room to mix up a half batch of waffle dough from my King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook. In the process of shuffling items around I managed to drop and break a small measuring glass. This event foreshadowed how the rest of my morning evolved. Strike one!

Lost Leaf of Lorien

I listened to Chapter 9 “Flotsam and Jetsam” of Book Three of The Lord of the Rings (the unabridged audiobook of The Two Towers read by Rob Inglis) and I realized I made a grave mistake in my fanfiction story. I hadn’t been listening very long on my drive to work this morning when I heard the following conversation:

‘And here also is your brooch, Pippin,’ said Aragorn. ‘I have kept it safe, for it is a very precious thing.’
‘I know,’ said Pippin. ‘It was a wrench to let it go; but what else could I do?’
‘Nothing else,’ answered Aragorn. ‘One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters. You did rightly.’
Tolkien, J.R.R, The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 9 “Flotsam and Jetsam”

I immediately realized I had completely forgotten the return of the brooch to Pippin by Aragorn when they were reunited at the gates of Isengard. If I do decide to write a final draft of my Pippin short story, I will have to adjust it a bit to match the above.

Second Submitted Draft of My First FanFiction

Yesterday, I bravely supplied my first rough draft of my first ever fanfiction in a post about an interactive session I attended at MiddlMoot 2019. Today, I’m posting my second draft, and the one I submitted to be read and voted upon by the attendees of MiddleMoot.

20191019_072655 — First paragraph of second draft in my ‘better’ handwriting?

First Foray Into FanFiction

Nicole Evans preparing for her MiddleMoot 2019 session on FanFiction

On Saturday, October 12th, I attended my second MiddleMoot, hosted on the campus of Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo, Iowa. After the Welcome Address delivered by Robert Steed in the auditorium of Tama Hall, the first session I attended was a fascinating look at the theme of female grief as foresight and subcreation by Jude Bleile (more details forthcoming in a separate post). The following session I selected from the program was entitled “The Journey of FanFiction” presented by Nicole Evans, a fellow member of the Tolkien Society of Kansas City, a librarian, writer and blogger.

20191012_104747 — Fellow TSoKC members Ross and Robbie visit with Corey Olsen prior to Nicole’s presentation

Nicole spoke briefly about the history of fanfiction, even citing examples from her adolescence (over 12,000 on one site alone but who’s counting?) and explained the interactive nature of her session. We, the audience, would select five pieces of a story puzzle that we then would assemble creatively into a short fanfiction story. We could then enter our story into a pool to be read and voted on by attendees for a prize to be awarded at the end of the conference.

The five elements we would drew were Character, Object, Setting, Plot and First Lines. The photo below displays my drawing. We had approximately thirty minutes to compose our tales. We were to underline each item as we used it in our story so the readers/judges could confirm we had used all five.

Corey Olsen would write fanfiction using Odo as a character, the Arkenstone for an object, Mordor as a setting, sneaking into the Council of Elrond for a plot and start off with a first line of ‘I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.’
Audience Participation, The Journey of FanFiction

Welcome to the New Home for My Blog!

For the last nine years, my blog, Misty Midwest Mossiness, has languished as a ‘free’ site hosted at WordPress.com. That ‘free’ came with a slight headache, which eventually morphed into a migraine. My ability to host for ‘free’ meant being saddled with advertisements, the content of which I could not control.

I took a huge leap this week and dived into the Digital Ocean. I’ve created a couple of droplets, their term for virtual machines hosted in their cloud. I created this new home using one of their prefab Droplets in their Marketplace. I did have to buy a new domain name, mostly because I didn’t want to mess up and re-configure my existing domain name just yet. My new domain name – hennethannun.net – which reflects my ongoing love for all things Tolkien and sunsets. For more information about Henneth Annûn visit this brief article at the TolkienGateway.

I was able to export my blog (overnight) from WordPress.com and import it this morning in just a few minutes. I will leave the old blog in place for the rest of the year and monitor this new blog home to see if this is cost effective and won’t break my pocketbook.

I will be adjusting the look-and-feel of this new blog – rebranded as “Into the West” – over the next few days. Let me know what you think.

How an independent bookstore took on anti-feminist trolls and won | Books | The Guardian

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/27/how-an-independent-bookstore-took-on-anti-feminist-trolls-and-won

Great article to read first thing in the morning. Solidarity in the feminist trenches with wit and humor.

It this statement by the author under attack which rang especially true for me:

Speaking of the difficulties feminists face when trying to get their message across, Ford said: “It’s tedious and exhausting to deal with a daily onslaught of abuse and paranoia from angry men and their terrified cohorts. It’s impossible to have logical conversations with them because they don’t care about facts, only about how they feel about those facts.”

WorldCon Withdrawals

Despite what my husband thinks, I have not over-dosed on science fiction since last Wednesday when the 74th World Science Fiction Convention (commonly referred to as WorldCon) arrived for the second time in Kansas City, Missouri. MidAmeriCon II ended yesterday and of course the highlight of those five days was the Hugo Awards Ceremony held Saturday evening.

In fact, I sincerely hoped when I woke up this morning it wouldn’t be to the harsh reality of a Monday morning workday. Ah, but life is cruel and the alternate dimension I’d enjoyed for five days evaporated into the dreary doldrums of gainful employment. Well, not completely dreary. Perhaps dreaded would be more like it, since I knew I’d be walking into some ‘hot potatoes’ once I strapped myself to my desk.

Continue reading “WorldCon Withdrawals”

Writer’s Shift – L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

This time around it’s Modesitt’s thoughts on how the publishing industry has changed over the last forty years. Yes, he’s been cranking out great books since before my eldest son was born.

Over the past few years I’ve been asked how the field of writing has changed since I was first published, a question I suspect comes up because I’ve managed to stay published for a long enough time that I might have some perspective on any possible changes affecting writers, in particular. Some of the changes…

via Writers’ Shift — L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website

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