The First Ever Markmasters Trilogy Cosplay Ever (Ever)!

Sonja Carter and Dee G. are two lovely ladies I became acquainted with through cosplay. You may remember Sonja as the lovely lady who took the pictures of my friends and I in our Suckerpunch costumes at Dragon*Con 2011. She is SoulFire Photography, and she is amazing and generous.

Dee is not only absolutely gorgeous, but one of the most fabulous cosplayers I've ever met. (Seriously, go look at her Facebook fan page and you will be amazed.)

In early drafts, Arianna wore a white dress at her Ceremony of Womanhood, where her hair was revealed to everyone (including herself) for the first time. The white dress is a single line in the new opening, but you can get a sense of how I eternally picture Arianna from Alukale (a mysterious observer at her ceremony):

The crowd hushed, and the silvery keen of a bell hung across them like ice--the time had come. The four handmaidens reached for the headdress, and the princess's hands clenched in her heavy white skirts. It took all four women to lift the fan of silk and gems. 

A heavy rush of ebony tumbled down the girl's thin shoulders, catching on the beaded bodice of her dress. 

A flicker of pride tugged Alukale’s lips as his brother's descendant stared at her waist-length black hair, as though she were unable to comprehend it. In a few years she would be lovely as the Maiden Moon. Her foreign father had given her his obsidian hair, and if Alukale were to guess, all that makeup covered skin tinted with Danaian gold. That, at least, was lucky -- a princess needed to be unique.

In my head, Arianna is always wearing a white dress, and she always has her waist-length black hair down.

So when I saw Dee post a progress picture of her Princess Garnet (Final Fantasy IX) cosplay dress, I immediately typed a frantic, typo-ridden plea for her to take pictures in it before she painted on the ivy.

Within days, Dee and Sonja had sent me an entire picasa folder FILLED with pictures of PRINCESS ARIANNA OF RIZELLEN DEE.

I'mma have to make a new cover.

AND NOW, IT'S TIME FOR ARIANNA PICSPAM!

Dee, looking so very much like Princess Arianna.

Arianna heading out to the stables to ride Star, because royalty doesn't think about silly things like getting white dresses covered in horse hair. Also, this is such a gorgeously framed and lit picture. Sonja is awesome.

This, on the other hand, reminds me of Arianna at the end of the first book, full of determination and a newfound understanding of her own power.

"She spun around, her silk mourning gown snapping at her ankles, ebony shards clicking in her loose hair as purpose drove the anger and sadness into the back of her heart. She would pull them back out later, probably, when she tried to sleep and sleep would not come, but the Princess of Rizellen could not revel in grief just yet. She had to act, and to act, she needed to have a clear goal. "

Reminds me of the cover for Ruins of Ambrai! Which means I love it.

This picture is perfect BECAUSE of the unfinished hem. It looks like Ari has been running around. :) Have I mentioned that Dee is gorgeous?

This is pretty much exactly how I envision Arianna at the beginning of book one, when she's still so naive, and has no idea of her own strengths.

There's no longer a scene with Arianna in the garden, though there used to be. Maybe I'll just stuff her in a white dress again in book two, just so I can have an excuse to say this picture is totally canon.

I couldn't not put this picture in. Dee's smile is so natural and so beautiful here, and there needs to be more Smiling!Ari

Book II. Thinking about a certain missing slave boy...

Just the right amount of mischief in that smile. Princess Arianna has quite a reputation for listening at doors, and her extremely accurate aim with tossed teacups.

The hills are alive~

Have you or your friends ever cosplayed original characters? Who? Pictures? Links? Have you ever cosplayed a character from a book?

A Manuscript's Journey - Part II

In case you missed the first part, this is where I tell the story of completing my first book...

GET A LIFE

6-inch platforms, books, chair...still, I could barely reach the ceiling.

My freshman year in university, my roommate, Jennifer and I had a whiteboard on the front of our door. When it wasn't covered in acidic orange Halloween cobwebs, people often left messages there. We wrote down some of the things we'd be doing that day, as well as giving updates on some of our projects.

Jennifer was an interior architecture major, and usually noted when she'd be in the studio (which was usually). I was usually in the coffeeshop, but kept a running word-count for my book. Occasionally, people would comment on the word-count, though usually it was just how I kept myself honest with progress.

Then one day, after a particularly productive weekend, someone wrote "Get a life!" on the board, with an arrow pointing to my word-count.

I didn't take it seriously, of course, but "getting a life" did halt me in my writing progress somewhat, and probably in a good way. I was making new friends, getting involved in different activities, riding my bike to the park on campus, and spending more time talking at the coffeeshop than writing. The girls across the hall and I had costume tea parties in the middle of the hall. I got second-place in Dormitory Survivor. I completed my Undergraduate Honors.

It was a great time for me, socially, but my relative progress on word-count suffered.

 I wrote a lot that year, but it wasn't always on The Mark of Flight. I wrote a lot for school (both fiction and schoolwork), was heavily involved in an online RP forum, and wrote quite a bit of fanfiction. It wasn't until the following summer that I actually made real progress.

THE PRINCESS IN THE TOWER

Rural, but comfy!

The Summer between my freshman and sophomore years was miserable. My parents had moved from the city where I'd spent most of my life to the rural county about an hour and a half east, where we had a family farm. I'd never lived there, but my parents had spent the previous three years renovating a tobacco barn into a livable (and quite comfortable) home, so it was obviously where I would be spending my summer.

I knew no one.

It felt a lot like I was the princess in the tower, stuck without a way to get back to everything that was familiar. Occasionally, my knight in shining armor (read: Adryn) would come rescue me from isolation, but not quite often enough to keep me sane. Also, my trusty Gateway desktop was dying a slow and terrible death, and I wanted something more portable, so that I could take it with me to the coffeeshop. I managed to get a job as a server at a local sports bar, where I wore cheerleading shorts and wasn't allowed to write anything down. I was 19, which meant I also didn't know the first thing about alcohol.

Imagine my surprise the first time some guy asked me for a blow job in front of his date. Pro tip: it's a type of shot.

So, because of my bad memory and relative lack of expertise, I was relegated to the afternoon shifts. This meant I made crappy tips...but I had a lot of time to write. At first I wrote on napkins. I have about three chapters (original chapters 9, 10, and 11) all written out on napkins, receipts, and tiny note-pads.

Photographic evidence!

By the time the summer was over, I had a new laptop, 75,000-ish words, and a healing cut near my ear from where a drunken Good Ol' Boy chucked his shot-glass into my full bus bin from about 10 feet away.

Awesome aim, to be sure. Awesome judgement? Not so much. It shattered a martini glass, which flew up and cut my face. Small town - no one got in trouble.

THE WORD-COUNT WAGER

Sophomore year went much the same as my freshman year, except I didn't manage to take the writing workshop classes. After a disastrous attempt to double major in music and English, I had a lot of credits to make up for. My GPA was limping off the honor-roll, which irritated the crap out of me. Also, I had to take a math class (just shoot me).

Some time the previous year, I had bowed to the undeniable fact that the single-book-of-epic-proportions I had at first envisioned was going to need splitting up. I'd immediately decided on a duology, but after a few more months, I was slowly beginning to understand my own ratio of plot-point to word-count. Two books wasn't going to be enough; I was going to have to write a trilogy.

Luckily, there were natural breaks in the story arc for three books...and one of them wasn't too far off. Maybe it was suddenly, maybe it was totally by accident, and maybe it didn't really count in my head...but I was really close to finishing a book.

That's when Skrybbi made me a deal: if I could finish the first book of what I was now calling The Markmasters Trilogy by the end of the summer, she'd buy me Indian food. If I couldn't, I'd treat her.

So I drove myself toward the end of my book. For the first time, I didn't let myself look back, I didn't let myself edit. I didn't let myself post the chapters onto the online forum and then sit there, not writing another word until I got a response. I wrote like a madwoman, and by the end of summer, I wrote the last line:

"The last thing Shiro saw when he glanced over his shoulder was the painting of the Apprentice, whose green eyes followed him until the great maw snapped shut, closing him into darkness."

Then I got my Indian food.

Why I Can't Finish Good Books



 Okay, so the title is a little misleading--I can finish good books (and usually do), but I have this odd tendency to get a few chapters into a fantastically written book and dive for my computer. Rather than respond to a bit of gorgeous detail or cleverly-wrought exposition with "OMG, I must read more!" I respond by diving for my computer, sending anything in my way flying: coffee-tables, chairs, vacuum cleaners, stuffed monkeys, my roommate...
The cats, sensing imminent peril, are usually good at getting out of the way.

I've had a friend describe this as "Like trying to stop peeing mid-stream!" He simply can't put a book down when it's that good.

Does anyone else do this? It can't just be me. I imagine a seamstress walking by shop windows and seeing a gorgeous dress with lots of pin-tucks. Rather than purchasing the dress, the seamstress rushes home to make something with pin-tucks in it. Then, proud of her achievement, she says: "LOOK at my pin-tucks! LOOK AT THEM."

Now, I'm not saying I go and write something that's exactly like what I've just read, but that competative side of me comes out and I have to get to work immediately. I have to keep writing, keep improving, so someday maybe I can be that good.

The main reason I'm writing this is because I've been having a hard time getting through Sabriel, by Garth Nix. I'm loving it, and that's partly why. I consistently get about a half a chapter (sometimes only a few pages) before I have to put it down and write something. His ability to translate seemingly-insignificant detail into something that not only enriches the reader's sense of Sabriel's world, abilities, or fears but also usually furthers the plot just astounds me. I adore detail, but I often don't have a reason for putting it in beyond "that's how I see it in my head".

At the moment, I'm also working on Finnikin of the Rock, Graceling, Dragonflight, and Red Seas under Red Sky. Dragonflight is one I'm re-reading to observe worldbuilding techniques (Anne McCaffrey is a master of this) and Red Seas Under Red Sky is the sequel to one of my favorite books of all time. I'm waiting till I have an uninterruptable weekend to read it, though. Finnikin of the Rock and Graceling were both recommended to me because the genre and character ages are similar to The Mark of Flight.

Chatterbox: Do you ever get inspired to write because of a good book? Can you stop reading a good book for any reason? Can you stop peeing mid-stream? What are you reading now, and why?

It's Gently-Wafting Curtains for me...

Well, it's the 26th and I'm not quite at the half-way point on revising "The Mark of Flight". There's no way I'm going to achieve the goals I set for myself in this post, so I'm going to have to bear the consequences.

Now, I could just skim through the rest of MoF, half-ass the first lesson on HELLHOUND, and send out a bunch of queries for a manuscript that isn't quite ready, but everyone knows I'm not going to do that. I've invested too much time in both of these stories to give them anything but my best.

With MoF, I realized there are two scenes that need a bit of rewriting now that I've changed the beginning. I'm also a little concerned with how the relationships of the three main characters appear by the half-way point, when they've all gotten split up. I don't know if they've spent enough time together to care about each other yet, or if they even need to care about each other. Duty and guilt is enough to fuel most of the forward action, and the relationships can develop later on.

I decided it was time to get some professional help. (For my manuscript, shut up!) I've contacted a freelance editor I found linked on another author's site and am waiting for a quote and sample. Apparently, her novel edits can be as low as $200, which is really reasonable considering some of her clients have recently been picked up by agents. So yes. As soon as I rewrite those little bits I need for continuity, I'm hoping to ship it off to someone who can take a look at it from an outsider's POV and give me some good advice.

I haven't started on HELLHOUND yet, but I've been brainstorming some great revisions for it, which involve playing laser-tag for the first time since high school. Anyway, I don't want to rush through either revision just to avoid my punishment, so I guess you guys will get to see me torturing myself with the New Moon movie. At least there will be booze involved.

I need a "Team Buffy" tee-shirt.

Sunday Sample #3 - The Mark of Flight

Last week, I shared the opening of my contemporary fantasy, Hellhound. This week, I would like to share the prologue of "The Mark of Flight", book one of The Markmasters Trilogy.

They had known him once, that woman in the teetering headdress, that courtier smoothing his brocade doublet, and that young man in the stained smock. Once, Alukale would have inspired more than a measuring glance or fluttered fan; his face alone would have been enough introduction to any keep from these castle gates to the Centoreinian border. Now it was his name that was known, but not his face. A pity, but at least he didn’t have to cover it. The early summer sun bearing down on his shoulders made the prospect of donning a hood a matter to avoid at all costs, and none of the ceremony-goers in the packed courtyard were even looking.

Their attention was trained on the girl descending the stairs, her arms spread slightly for balance as four gray-clad handmaidens helped her step-after-step. She probably wouldn’t have needed the help if not for the ridiculous headdress that towered well over her head. Its spires glittered in the sun, concealing the hair that would be revealed to all the court in just a few moments. Alukale shook his head in pity—despite the smile on her heavily-powdered face, her magenta aura pulsed like the heart of a hummingbird. To this day, he still did not understand why a girl couldn’t be the first to see her own hair, and he had watched them stuff it into coifs and wraps and caps for five-hundred years.

He shaded his eyes with one hand, the other perched on his sword-heavy hip, and gazed up at the gray battlements, at the royal family’s red and white standard snapping from the bastions. Then the dreaded specter of memory rose, a sickly dream adorning the modern castle in the raiment of his time.

Alukale had left this very courtyard five-hundred years ago, sick with grief, with rage, and ready to tear apart the world itself with his hands, or with his Magic if he could, if only it would stop the war. If only it would bring back what he had lost. But a handful of lifetimes had passed, and he had accomplished neither. Now, the sight of the castle rekindled feelings he had never wanted to face again, scenes he had never wanted to relive. Despite the changes wrought by time and foolishness, it was too familiar.

In the place of steel-latticed oak doors stood a gate of slender pikes, glistening with a web of silver ivy. Such a confection wouldn’t even stop a breeze, let alone an invading army. The keep was no longer a bastion for the people if the enemy were to breach the city’s walls. A few decades of peace and the people of Rizellen thought the war was over.

Alukale snorted. He had felt this ignorant excitement once, and the people of Rizellen would soon discover how wrong they were. Peace had made his country soft, and they would suffer for that weakness. He resisted the urge to leap onto the stairs and call this country that had once been his back to arms and take command of the future once again.

But he could not. She had forbidden interference, and Alukale was discovering that it was the hardest thing she had ever asked of him, and she had asked many things. He had taught, protected, even killed for her; he had shown the ruthlessness she could not, and had been the strength she lacked. And now she wanted him to stand aside.

The crowd hushed, and the piercing keen of a bell silvered the air, hanging across the crowd like ice. The time had come.

The four handmaidens reached for the headdress, and the princess’s hands clenched in her skirts. She didn’t look fourteen, sprite-like as she was, but Alukale knew better than anyone about the discrepancy of age and appearance. It took all four gray-clad women to lift, arms straining, the confection of silver and gems from the girl’s head. A heavy rush of ebony tumbled down the girl’s thin shoulders, and Alukale felt a small flicker of pride tugging his lips as his brother’s descendant shook out a glorious fall of black hair, waist-length and lustrous.

She would be the first Princess of Rizellen to have black hair; her foreign father had given her his coloring, and that was no shame, for a princess needed to be unique.

A groan nearby drew his attention, and Alukale glanced at the girl who had made the noise—unremarkable face, dressed in drab clothing let out at the seams. Her short-cropped hair told him that this girl had not possessed a set of handmaidens to care for her tresses before she turned fourteen. She spotted him looking and flushed, and he hoped she felt some shame in having wished for the princess’s bad luck.

Alukale looked back to the dais, jaw clenched. Princess Arianna would have bad luck enough without having the noblewoman’s curse of bad hair as well. At least the Sisters had blessed her with that much.

“You, boy!” A Warsman in heavy chainmail shoved through the crowd towards Alukale, his blue tabard bright among the peasants’ dull ensembles. “No swords in the bailey!”

“I was just taking my leave,” Alukale said, slipping between the men and women like water. He turned his back to the ceremony, clenching his teeth against the thought that he could do something—right now—to change the course of the future, and he was walking away. But no, he was lucky Lenis had let him come at all, for he knew she had seen a future where he had not controlled himself.

There would be a day when he gave in to that temptation, but it was not today. Today, he had other matters to attend.