15 Twenty-Nineth Beginning (Nanowrimo 2007) Organizing Aunt Sheila

[Welcome to the middle of a long conversation between and Aunt and the Niece she has never met and who has been sent by the family to "help orgainize." Do not read any part of this as if it were a completed story or you will be disappointed. In 2007, my strategy for Nanowrimo was to call my efforts 'literary' use that as an excuse to dump ideas and references that had been collecting in my mind and desk and files for years. I skipped linear progression.]

[I also skipped quotation marks and dialog tags. They may or may not go back. I kind of like the ambiguity.]

[Barbara has collected stacks of notes and is reading from them as she and her Aunt Sheila sit on a log in a meadow an undetermined distance away from nearby houses. Several of the notes have been about books that Aunt Sheila hasn't written.]

Okay – next one.  the Sleeping King.

I lost most of the pages on that one.  It’s based on the Princess and the Pea, loosely.  There’s a king who’s asleep.  A queen who is getting on with things.  A prince who needs a bride.  And a wizard, high-councellor, who sets off a spell to find the perfect wife for the kingdom.

But it turns out that the Prince is a romantic and the Bride is a blacksmith.  So the wizard tries to pull them both into fantasy story scenarios to fall in love.  She keeps resisting, because her common sense won’t let her fall in with the stupider parts of the romantic stories.

Like what.

Like the pea.  Anyone so delicate that they could feel a pea under seven feather quilts would die during labor. 

Barbara giggled.   You’re right.  She talked about being black and blue.  You wonder how she could have walked through the rain to the castle without dying, let alone giving birth in a castle with a dirt floor.

In the end, the Prince enters a monastery to write love poetry and the Wizard marries the Bride and takes over the kingdom in the queen’s name.  Everyone is happy.  The Brides mother comes and sets up a horse breeding program.  The wizard is finally able to leave the castle and go out to deal with the beaver problem that’s been plaguing the kingdom.  All is well.

Sounds like a comedy.

Yeah.  I think it’s kind of weak, too.  I started it a looooong time ago.

Oracle x 5

That’s a girl crosses through worlds to escape evil wizard tale.  She does it in a way that sends copies of her to five different worlds, so when the wizard tries to use his oracle to find her, he gets conflicting information.

The wizard is evil and gets it in the end.  The oracle does him in.  The oracle is in great pain and distress and wants to die, or maybe to be released.  But there’s not much of him left, so maybe dead is better.

Sounds gruesome.

It is.  The oracle part anyway.

There’s a lot of fill that’s needed.  Most of the characters so far work for the wizard.  There’s also a university that the girl ends up in, in each of the worlds.  She’s looking for power, to try to help her uncle (trying to help him is how she got mixed up with the wizard in the first place).  But she ends up going for power in five different ways.  It’s sort of an explore-your-major kind of story.

Oh,  Maybe I could help with some research for that.  I’m going to have to choose a major sometime soon.

That might be nice.

Stockton Story – Invasive Species

Horror story.  Takes off from the San Francisco Bay being the home of more invasive species that anywhere else on the planet.  Goes into aliens from space or other worlds, I’m not sure which, invading Stockton Channel and starting to harvest thoughts.

Eww.

You keep saying that.

Island California – Other.

Notes for the other six novels in the series.

And you’re off of that for now.

Don’t throw out the folder, if there is one.

There is and I won’t.  I’ll let you collect research in folders.

Big of you.

I know.

Blood Runs.  That horror, too?

Mystery.  I know someone who makes deliveries for the Delta Blood Bank.  He delivers blood and blood products to hospitals and brings donated blood back to the bank.  I just thought it was a neat title.

So you only have a title?

And the idea that there would be a lot of exposition about donating, storing, and using blood.

Ew.  Not a big ew, but ew.

Worldshore

Sword and Sorcery again.  Two different groups traveling who will come together to fulfill a prophecy.  One group is formed around some foretellers who took themselves into seclusion in the north to hone their skills and make ready for the prophecy.  The other group is centered around a charming idiot magic user with an inborn talent for magic.

The world will be undone.  I’m not sure how.  But it’s necessary to save it.

Snowflake Method. 

That’s someone’s outline system for writing books.  I’ve copied it out more than once, but never used it.

Fancy that.

Snark.  I’m getting peckish.  Could you hand me a sandwich?

Here. 

The Golden Notebook?

Books not read  isn’t there an author?

Nope.

Odd.  I’m sure I remember getting the name.  I may have the book, too.

I’ll look for it.

There are a couple of articles – one is Mothers for Rent and the other is Rent-a-Mom.  The second one was funny. 

I wrote the second one.  I’ll tell you more about is sometime.

There is what looks like a poem.  It goes:

speculate

walk on your
eyeballs
your nervous
joints held
wild

speculate
roll your lenses
like dice
to clatter
to your
risk

speculate
ramify
into
the fractals
farthest
limb

speculate

No name?

Nope.

Might be mine.  Needs work obviously.

Not so obvious.

Puzzlebark Inn

I finished that one.  I think I sent it out.  It wasn’t published.

I’ll read it later.  I know where it is.

There’s a poem about a girl letting a hawk go and “That is the way of flying, it wears no roads in the sky” twice.

That’s mine.  That one has a tune that goes with it.  Or a drumming chant.

There’s one with no title about a space ship that was pulled out of the sky by a glowing hand.

Still no title, and not written to the end.  It’s kind of embarrassing to describe.

Then embarrass me.  Didn’t someone say something about opening a vein?

Sheila held out her wrist and screwed her eyes shut.

Then she relaxed and collected her thoughts.

The scene that started it for me was one where a bunch of men, from different groups, were standing around a sword in a stone.  One finally faces down the others and starts to go first.  Then the old ship’s safety officer comes up, saying, no, no, you’ll wrench your back lifting that way.

She’s a middle aged, plump woman, but she has the authority of her office.  She demonstrates for everyone how to position their legs around the stone and lift with their knees.  When she pulls out the sword, there’s a tone, and a sunbeam.

You’re rolling your eyes while looking at me again.

And you deserve it.

I suppose.  I still like it, though.  And it’s only a short story.

I’ll flag it.

[The conversation and the organizing will continue later.