I have just watched this vid on John Cleese speaking on creativity, it is a bit old now (1991 I believe) but I have only discovered it myself - infact, it was sent to me by my very creative cousin, Josh Lock: electronic music of all kinds and photographer with a true eye.
Very helpful to hear creativity described in such a cogent way; I hope it helps me write on.
A link out of the silence...
Hello everyone, your friendly neighbourhood imposter-author here.
(ref: previous post - thank you to everyone who commented, I do read your comments, laugh, smirk, nod my head with paternal sagacity at them all.)
Just a quick post to point you all to an excellent article over at Lobster & Canary where fellow author, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, waxes wise upon Mister Mervyn Peake and a more southern fantastical tradition. I am finding it very helpful (I speak in present tense for its help is still with me) in remembering that with all my Tolkienesque desire to make the Half-Continent firm (hello explicariums!!!), it was always intended to be also grotesque, a place where caricature is its normal - I had forgotten this. So Thank you Mister Rabuzzi, for reminding me of my first love, as it were.
(You might notice that this humble imposter is also mentioned in the article, which is in truth not why I recommend it to you, but because it is a subject so close to my heart: for Peake is the reason we even have the Half-Continent at all, that we are even communing, you and I)
(ref: previous post - thank you to everyone who commented, I do read your comments, laugh, smirk, nod my head with paternal sagacity at them all.)
Just a quick post to point you all to an excellent article over at Lobster & Canary where fellow author, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, waxes wise upon Mister Mervyn Peake and a more southern fantastical tradition. I am finding it very helpful (I speak in present tense for its help is still with me) in remembering that with all my Tolkienesque desire to make the Half-Continent firm (hello explicariums!!!), it was always intended to be also grotesque, a place where caricature is its normal - I had forgotten this. So Thank you Mister Rabuzzi, for reminding me of my first love, as it were.
(You might notice that this humble imposter is also mentioned in the article, which is in truth not why I recommend it to you, but because it is a subject so close to my heart: for Peake is the reason we even have the Half-Continent at all, that we are even communing, you and I)
Time to confess: it seems I am not the author of MBT after all...
Well, it appears that I am not the writer of the Monster-Blood Tattoo / The Foundling's Tale series after all.
Apparently - if you can credit it - it was THIS person!
It seems I have been tricking you all along - either that or I look remarkably like Michaela Conlin of the TV show Bones.
Maybe this is why I do not post upon this blog as often as would be good to do!
*Just for the record: I AM the author of Monster-Blood Tattoo / The Foundling's Tale series, what this other person is on about eludes me entirely - some form of online role-play perhaps? Anyone else got any idea?
Also, thankyou to all of you gave an opinion about the two word choices for rams: I will be using both: Achmë for an over-gunned frigate, Lyonne (I agree that this is a better spelling) for an older standard gunned frigate... though Scion also is a rather good name... Hmmm...
I do not mind at all of the Looney Tunes association of Achmë one bit - that is part of the fun of the whole process: taking s well used/context specific word and giving it a new handle to hook on to. Think on it: I gave a major character the name of an entire continent and managed to get away with that :D
Apparently - if you can credit it - it was THIS person!
It seems I have been tricking you all along - either that or I look remarkably like Michaela Conlin of the TV show Bones.
Maybe this is why I do not post upon this blog as often as would be good to do!
*Just for the record: I AM the author of Monster-Blood Tattoo / The Foundling's Tale series, what this other person is on about eludes me entirely - some form of online role-play perhaps? Anyone else got any idea?
Also, thankyou to all of you gave an opinion about the two word choices for rams: I will be using both: Achmë for an over-gunned frigate, Lyonne (I agree that this is a better spelling) for an older standard gunned frigate... though Scion also is a rather good name... Hmmm...
I do not mind at all of the Looney Tunes association of Achmë one bit - that is part of the fun of the whole process: taking s well used/context specific word and giving it a new handle to hook on to. Think on it: I gave a major character the name of an entire continent and managed to get away with that :D
Ok, quick poll...
Ok, quick poll: which sounds like the stronger vessel?
Achmë
or
Lyon
Cheers very much for your thoughts :)
Well, how are the dice making projects coming along?
Well, how are the dice making projects coming along? Better than my blogging frequency, I hope :)
Once again it is well overdue for me to post.
Exciting news (I hope) is that I am working on two books at the moment: one an edit/rewrite of The Corsers' Hinge to (again, I hope) be released as a stand alone novella, complete with maps, illustrations, a brief explicarium and other appendical (not a real word) matter. Do people want to see this? If it happens it is more likely to come out first.
The second is a proper novel that the more I work on it, the more I feel might stretch out into the usual fat, multi-volume "epic" (for want of a better word) I found myself stumbling into with MBT. It will not (as I might have said before... or was that just in a dream...?) be about Rossamünd and Europe this time around, but I hope you are going to really like the new fellow in the spot light (as it were) - he really takes up where dear little Rosey left off.
This is all what I would like but it is yet to be accepted/approved/green lit/let come into exiatence so prayers/good wishes/positive quantum flow all appreciated.
This does not mean I have abandoned the Branden Rose or her little man, just that I am trying out the Half-Continent from a different point of view. This is actually a significant element of the overall thesis of the Half-Continent: that it came well before I had any concept of specific characters and contains stories from many different points of view yet they are all interconnected - not so much sequel spin-offs but distinct folk who overlap in what I hope are conceivably realistic ways. For example, the protagonist for this new tale plays a very tiny role in Factotum, just as a teaser.
As for Duchess-in-Waiting of Naimes and Rosey-me-lad, well, Lord willing we shall see where they are at again in the future.
And in answer to you request, Master Come Lately, here be a map showing the rough political boundaries of the Sundergird. Such things are necessarily vague in a land without satellite imaging/modern political wrangling and all such modern/our-world stuff that makes out own maps so punctiliously delineated. I hope you like, and more importantly it helps you-all over there at the Forum.
The tabs, Madam Blackwood, are those Post-It [TM] tabs you buy at your local stationer, and I have used different colours depending which book I writing (yellow-green = Foundling, pink = Lamplighter, sky blue = Factotum, dark blue = navy/newest stories... its getting vague, be good to clarify to myself once more) marking a large number of my notebooks in this way at all the pertinent entries for each story as I find them: I sit on my couch and trawl a notebook for anything I might need to know for that current tale, typically scribbling on the tab what the entry it flags is about.
Ahh, Master Alyosha, as always you make my day(s): Pococo is actually Italian for "freckles" - I use Italian/Spanish for localised colloquialism of Tutin which one can especially encounter in such areas like western Seat, Tuscanin and across to Catalain.
Hello, hello Troubadour! Wonderful to hear about you project - apologies for the lack of a more full depiction of troubardiers. Perhaps Appendix 2 of Factotum gives some idea, just add the sash as shown in Appendix 3 Factotum around the back. And now I am going to be a drag/punctilious pain-in-the-rear and offer that the proper spelling is troubardier - the concept being that they are soldiers (the "~ier" bit) who wear proofing/armour (the "~bard~" bit) that is fully protecting (the "trou~" or "true" bit) *please don't punch me* Will you be showing us you wondrous work when it is done? Can it be seen in its incomplete state at all? If need more keep asking.
An art book, huh, Emily Odenwald? Well, I reckon this will be worth doing once I have a bit more "art" under me belt. MBT is just one story and I hope I have a few more in me to tell on the Half-Continent yet, a body of work from which a selection of "art" (appendices, illustrations, maps etc) would be selected. As for manga/graphic novel - sweet! If I was to do such a thing, to stave off boredom I think I would tell an entirely new story.
And yes, dear dear Portals old blog-friend, until the conquest by the Tutelarchs and then re-conquest by their descendants/heirs the Tutins, the Soutlands were a collection of independent city-states warring and combining as political need moved. The Germanic names shows the influence of crossing cultures, of Gottish people coming over the Pontus Canis to dwell in the Soutlands.
Well, a long blog makes up for a long pause.
I hope you are all well.
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