And I Quote: Blargh...

Oof. So tired... Thursday and Friday providing some excellent gaming, and the accompanying bouts of mini-insomnia that always follow. Saturday was beautiful, despite the neighborhood cacaphony of power tools and chain saws that started before 8 AM. Later, though, Will started to feel a bit unwell, and that devolved quickly into "violently ill." I'm not sure whether it was a particularly potent stomach flu or food poisoning, but neither of us got much rest the last few days. He does seem to be doing much better, now, though.

I already told my boss I'm leaving if I start to feel ill. She didn't argue the point, even with all the deadlines.

One of my friends at work mentioned that hospitals are now required to treat uninsured patients and may alleviate some of the cost if you ask for a social worker or patient advocate when you go in. She thought this was a federal action, but I haven't been able to find any information on it, yet. I'll have to keep digging on that to see whether it's true.

Also in the realm of unpleasantness, I came to work today and nearly ran over some abortion protestors gathering on a street corner near campus. Happily, there are restraining orders in place so they'll be arrested if the trespass on campus property, but that doesn't mean they won't get as close as they possibly can. This group's members were carting around strollers and huge, garishly colored photo posters of aborted fetuses. If I were a child, those would probably give me nightmares ...

I wonder, if I were to stand on a street corner waving huge color posters of dead adults -- say, torture victims, or abuse victims, or victims of war -- at innocent bystanders, would the police be required to wave that off as a form of free speech, too?

In other news: Cher Mere posted on nightmares yesterday, and it occurs to me that those are the only dreams I ever remember. Hm. Maybe I should watch my blood sugar better, too? Except I don't mind these dreams, honestly. Even the most "normal" of my dreams have some mild creepiness to them, but for the most part, it's like participating in a surreal filming process, recording a nonstop movie as it's being made. There's always a slight sense of detachment to the proceedings so that even if I wake in the middle of pure awfulness, I may wake up crying if the dream was particularly sad, but I almost never wake up with any real sense of panic or fear or paranoia. Instead, I wake up thinking, "Damn, I have to figure out how to use that scene in a story..."

There was one notable exception to the rule that I can remember, though. June of '08 must have been a vivid month for dreams, judging by the number I wrote down. But this is the one that broke the rules for me:

The usual weirdness that plays out like a game of some kind -- trying to escape from someone, factions, gunfights, monsters, etc., but then there was a scene where I drove my car to a park at night, and took a space in a dimly lit parking lot. I had just turned my car off; this guy over in the next row in front of me was backing up his car, and he just glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw me sitting there in my space, getting ready to get out of the car. Everything stopped and shifted slightly, and he smiled this weird, sickly smile and stepped on the gas -- his car slammed into mine, and he just kept speeding up, pushing my car back toward the trees. He twisted around to look at me, growled "Get the fuck out!" -- which I could hear, even though he was in the other car -- and stomped on the gas. Just as I thought my car was going to slam into the trees, there was this weird jarring sensation and that jerk you do just before you hit the ground in a free-fall dream, and I was awake. My heart was pounding, I was close to hyperventilating, and I felt sick to my stomach. And I could smell gasoline and exhaust and that musty vinyl smell of the old car I'd been driving so strongly I gagged.

I laid there for a few minutes, totally freaked out and wide awake. It was around 3:30, and I could hear Will moving around upstairs -- I think I might've made some kind of noise that woke him up briefly. When I finally started to calm down, I realized I was incredibly pissed that that asshat had pushed me out of my own dream.

Oddly, I don't remember my black dog guardian being in that one, or if he was, I didn't write it down. Must've been his night off. ;)

Anyway. I'm itchy to write (must be the weather?) and have some good things going with game emails and such, but I want to get back to my stories, too. I hate being stuck like this, but I know this means I'm on the wrong track somehow, and just haven't figured out precisely what's wrong, yet. Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether the being stuck relates to getting bogged down in the current chapter, or my questioning whether I'm even tackling the story with the right main character. If it's the former, re-working some discovery elements in the story might fix the issue; if it's the latter ... I'll have to rewrite four chapters and my entire approach. And damn it, I like the semi-surreal narrative of the first chapter too much for that. Grr.

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Fröliche Walpurgisnacht!

Happy Beltaine ... Vapunaatto ... May Day Eve ... whatever you'd like to call it. I'd really love to attend a bonfire all-nighter sometime, but this year I'll be celebrating with a bonus Changeling session. That works for me, since I really shouldn't stay up until dawn if I have to come into work. Grr. I would so take the day off if it wasn't my assistant's last day with us.

This week has been full of weirdness, both good and bad. The bad: temper flares and spots of petty possessiveness, having the bus driver look right at me walking up to the door and then drive away, hearing the hateful messages left for my boss because some rightwing nutjobs feel the need to spew their venom about the President's impending visit, and oh, the big-ass prop-plane banner that's been circling campus for the last few days (an anti-abortion ad that's basically a ginormous picture of a 10-week fetus).

Also, I had to submit a proposal to "justify" hiring a student assistant to replace the one who's graduating. I was polite. But oh, the fury.

The good: the campus flowers are in full bloom, and they're loving the pleasant, drizzly rain we're having today. (So am I. It's a little chilly out, maybe, but it finally smells like spring.) Lilies of the Valley will be up soon. :) Oddly, I've been in an Otep mood the last few days. Not that I'm particularly angry anymore ... okay, maybe a little (I'm glaring at you, work. Yeah, you heard me.) ... but there's something a bit wild and terrifying and fierce in a Kali-Ma kind of way in all that power and fury. Some days, I just need a little of that fire.

Also good. No, scratch that. Also excellent: my brilliant and amazing friends. I'm riding one hell of a creative buzz today from all the insanely good stuff they've been writing.

It never ceases to amaze me how infectious your friends can be, for good or for ill. If you surround yourself with petty, high-maintenance, selfish people, it just tears your soul away, bite by bite. If you surround yourself with creative, cooperative, encouraging people, you just can't help but laugh and wonder why it took you so long to figure out the big secret.

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The Violet War -- book trailer

If you like modern mythic fiction, I highly suggest checking out Monica Valentinelli's free serial novel, The Violet War (Book 1 of the Argentum series). Monica recently posted a book trailer that gives you a good feel for the mood of the first book:

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Changeling fiction (short)

I'm currently in a NWoD Changeling game, which I am, in a word, loving. I've been playing with the GM and two of the players for a few years, now, and they are among my favorite people -- the excellent sort of gamers who are funny and horrifying and make me insanely jealous with their creativity on a regular basis. Added to this are two players (a couple) who are new to the group and seem to be fitting right in on all counts.

In any case, this is the sort of group that inspires vignettes and daydreams and plotting-when-I-should-be-working. It is the sort of group I wish on every gamer at least once in their lives.

For a peek at Black Annie, my Darkling/Gristlegrinder (mixed Kith/Seeming! the horror!), follow the breadcrumbs. All characters, settings, etc., belong to their respective creators, of course.



The window had been given a token cleaning, but no quick ammonia rubdown could hide the signs of age -- the panes were slightly warped by time and gravity, pooling downward at a glacier crawl, as old glass does. Annie absently traced the lines of a random flow, and stared out from her darkened room, first at the overgrown field, then further back, to the rough shape of the moon-silhouetted treeline beyond. The unseen presence of the creek pricked at her nerves; she shivered at the sudden flash of black water closing over her, and drew her hand back from the cool pane.

Stubbornly, she resisted the urge to turn away and instead set her eyes in the direction of the work shed, and the firepit marking Mr. Charlotte's grave. She hadn't really known the man, but he had helped them escape that place, and had arranged a place for them here. His purpose in that remained unclear, and yet ... his reward had been violence and a rough, efficient burial under the bottom half of an old oil drum.

It bothered her a little that she felt no sorrow, no guilt for being unable to save him, though a small voice at the back of her mind said she should. If she were human.

Annie wrapped her thin arms around herself at the chill that crept down her spine, and finally tore her gaze from the window. Quietly, she padded barefoot back to the lumpy mattress on the floor in the corner of the room, and stepped carefully into the center, where she folded herself down, cross-legged, and wrapped herself in the familiar warmth of her ragged hedge shawl.

Were they human anymore? Did it even matter? The question felt academic rather than the crisis of identity it ought to be. Or maybe she was just too used to being the outsider, that the implications had to swim a greater gulf to affect her.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and thought back, trying to conjure memories of Arcadia. Like a nightmare, her memory of that place had begun to fray at the edges, leaving her confused and skittish at times. She found that vexing, too -- a double-edged sword of respite, and the great, gaping unknown that would inevitably come back to haunt her.

After a few moments, she retrieved her sketchbook from its slot between the mattress and the wall, and patiently coaxed the mechanical pencil from the book's wire spine. The light here was dim at best, little more than diffused remnants of moonlight from the window, but more than enough for her sensitive eyes. She opened the sketchbook and turned slowly through the first few pages -- rough sketches of faces, both hideous and fair, that she no longer recognized, and names (she thought, or maybe places?) whose meanings had crumbled away.

Eventually, she came to a drawing of two knights fighting amongst what looked like scattering sheets of paper. Below the sketch was a carefully printed label: "Dretchen and Alabaster." The drawing itself was somewhat rough and stylized; she recognized the resemblance to Evan in the first figure. Well ... the new Evan, anyway. As for the second figure, the white knight, there was a fury in his visage that reminded her of ... someone. The impressions invoked by this sketch had lingered longer and more intensely than the others, though even they had begun to dull. Judging by the state of the page, this scene had obviously been important to her. As important as the scraps in her pocket, maybe -- she had filled the margins with strange scribbles and descriptives: glass, steel, screams, blood, pages, hope, fury, falling (this with an arrow copied over and over, stretching to the bottom of the page, that even now somehow managed to make her stomach lurch), ashes and ashes and blood and drowning [again].

Evan. Randall. Charlotte. ---> Wayward <--- These four, circled in thick, insistent strokes pressed hard channels into the paper. Other, less intelligible words and phrases she couldn't quite make out filled in the gaps here and there, surrounding the names in confused spirals where she had continued to scribble until she'd passed out from exhaustion. Annie traced the tracks of pencil indentations with the thin pad of her forefinger and automatically reached to ease the page out of the sketchbook, to fold and tuck away into one of her many pockets, or knot into the weave of her shawl. As the sound of tearing paper registered, she realized what she was doing and stopped herself. Agitated at having torn the precious page, she smoothed it again and again with thin fingers, careful to hold up thick black nails just so, so they wouldn't catch the paper. Then gently, deliberately, she turned the page. On the next sheet, she had carefully taped one of the precious remaining squares of paper from the scrap of cloth in her deep, patched pockets; a small black and white photo of Evan and Randall, torn from the battered old yearbook -- stained, faded, crumpled and worn until soft to the touch. There were others, but she kept those hidden away, afraid even now to lose the surviving scraps. Annie brushed the photo tentatively with her fingertips, and felt tension ease from her spine at the familiar texture. She wondered how many times she had touched these pieces for reassurance, and wondered, too, what Evan must have thought of her keeping the sad little scraps ... what he would say if he knew she still had them. She felt her pale cheeks burn, and reflexively pulled the shawl up to veil her face. She didn't care so much if he knew about the crush she'd had on him in high school. The crush she still had, even though her blood went cold and still whenever the dragon flared. The real truth was more embarrassing, if that were possible; in Arcadia, there hadn't been enough Annie to hold on to. She'd needed something real, something important, to give herself a grounding point: find Evan and Randall, and escape. They were far more solid than she was, it was as simple as that. The times she'd lost sight of that goal ...

Annie cut herself off from that line of thought. She wasn't quite ready to believe it was over, that she wouldn't be dragged back to the Endless Dark. And ... with Evan here, in this place, and no guarantee she'd even end up in the same world as Randall, she'd have no anchor, this time.

And no Mr. Charlotte to come find her.

And that thought terrified her.

Silent, she forced herself to study the picture, to focus on something real, as she must have done hundreds of times before. Randall ... yes, she could see him reflected, now, in the other figure on the previous page. It was odd -- the resemblance was mostly in the eyes; something angry and crystalline that remained unchanged. Evan, though ... the smiling, relaxed teenager in the photo bore only a surface resemblance to the dragon who had returned with her from Arcadia. Here, she finally felt the slow creep of failure that had eluded her earlier. If I had been quicker, or more clever ... If I had found them sooner ... If I had confronted them separately instead of together ...

If only. But I wasn't. I didn't. No way to know, now, in any case.

What was done was done; no sense in making poisoned wishes, no matter how much she hated what was.

A long, thin hand slid out from the shawl and carefully turned the page again.

A blank sheet. She had woken early this morning, before the sun, and had tried to draw one of her new companions -- the cute one, the ogre-girl who called herself Toy. For some reason, she had known even before she'd started that the pencil wouldn't move the way she wanted it to. She wasn't sure whether the hesitation came of some sort of superstition, or a geas, or simply from her own fear of committing the image to paper. Of making it real.

Annie stared at the blank page, motionless and silent, until she lost the moonlight and only the feeble glow of ambient night filtered in through the window. And still, that was more than enough.

Finally, a face came to her, and she set her pencil to paper. She was rusty, yes, and the sketch was rougher than it ought to have been, but in the end, she looked into the exhausted eyes of Mr. Charlotte and nodded, satisfied. If nothing else, he deserved to be real.

Tired, now, she closed the sketchpad and worked the plastic pencil into the spine, then re-set the book in its place between the mattress and the wall. She eased herself backward, set her back against the corner of the room, and shifted from crossed legs to knees tucked tightly against her chest. She drew her bare feet into the protection of the shawl.

And then Black Annie -- Gentile Annie, the children would whisper in their prayers, when they didn't want to offend the darkness -- pulled the black shawl over and around to cover her face, and slept.

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