• Who is this chick anyway?

Nova Terra

~ Just another way of stalling on my other writing

Nova Terra

Monthly Archives: February 2018

Please Nominate Tribe of Tiger!

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog, Fiction

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Tags

fantasy, Internet, Kindle, kitty books, life, NaNoWriMo, novels, publishing, science fiction, work, writing

If you like me, my writing, or even the abstract cause of Good Writing in general, please consider this!

Because I won NaNoWriMo last year, I got the chance to have an actual human being at Kindle look at my book and give me editorial feedback. To get this, I had to enter Tribe of Tiger (the most recent kitty book) in their Kindle Scout reader nomination program, and that’s why I’m pestering you today: PLEASE, go to this link and nominate my book. It’s just a few clicks. All told, it took my sister less than three minutes, and that was with me on the phone as she did it, which slowed things down.

Here’s the link. It includes the first two and a half chapters of the story–enjoy! (Story reading optional; you can download it onto your Kindle.)

There is a chance that this may actually get me professionally e-published, with an advance ($$$!) and everything. I’m crossing my crossable digits.

 

Looking for a Word

03 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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Tags

art, creativity, ecstasy, fun, gansai tambi, Japanese watercolor, life, music, religion, sex, watercolor, work, writing

(Just skim the two paragraphs of techie art neep if you’re not interested in paint. The essay proper begins below them.)

I just participated in a month-long journal challenge with a group of women artists, and Got Religion–I discovered a new medium! It’s Japanese watercolor, often called “gansai tambi” as that’s the ad blurb used by the manufacturer to describe them.  (It literally means something like “vibrant aesthetic.”) I majored in what I suppose I must now call Western watercolor in college, making full sheet (22×30″) color field paintings (think Rothko, only busier) and thinking I was having the time of my life. Then fast forward thirty years and here’s this stuff that made me squee when I unpacked it. (Disclosure: I had a $50 gift card from doing a survey, and went on Amazon. The 36 pan set, three water brushes, and another six-pan set of metallics left a buck and change on the card; YMMV.)

Part of my honeymoon joy is being forced once again to learn what stuff does–the great thing about the big abstracts I did as a kid is that it showed me pretty much every trick Western watercolor and its French cousin, gouache have up their sleeves. It’s a little like gouache, a little like either sort of tempera in consistency, and behaves on paper like nothing else I’ve found. The pigment is crazy thick and you need a lot of water to make it behave like . . . watercolor. Sigh . . .

Anyway, I whacked out a basic image to use as the Tribe of Tiger cover and came back to the computer because the sun was in my eyes. I noticed, almost as a by-the-way, that I was ecstatic. It was very much a body feeling–a combination of terrific sex, a filling breakfast, and a satisfactory trip to the loo. Oh, and the best coffee. I feel this way every time I make art I’m pleased with, and even when I’m depressed, it makes me feel at least some better, at the very least while I’m making something.

I thought to myself, “Weird. I guess sex is the closest many people get to ecstasy.” Maybe joy too. I don’t know how that makes me feel. Am I right? If so, am I being kind of snobby to feel a bit sorry for them? Or is this more about me being abnormally unimpressed with sex?

Don’t get me wrong–I’ve had some great sex. It just doesn’t hit the same spots as, say, the smell of oil paint, which makes me tremble and moan. I have similar reactions to music I like, which is to say, much of it, but maybe particularly early music (think Byrd and Tallis).

As for writing, the feeling is more subdued, possibly because I’m not getting as much sensory input, and it’s more draining. But I still come away from good sessions feeling like this is why I’ve been put on earth.

So what do y’all think? Especially other creatives–is it better than sex? Is it ecstasy? Or do we need a new word?

Nova Terra

just another way of stalling on my other writing

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Blogroll

  • Aaaand it's my brand new Patreon page! (Still being set up.)
  • All the Google Doodles
  • And there's even a Google Doodle store!
  • BBC has all these nifty all-about-you tests . . .
  • Free downloadable SF books! Good ones! Really! Legit even!
  • Help transcribe the New York Public Library's menus! Minimal effort required!
  • Lunar Calendar
  • My YouTube favorites, in case you're bored or curious
  • Places to increase your mellow
  • rathergood.com. Well, pretty darn good.
  • The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette. Really. Awesome.
  • The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody
  • The Onion interview with God, September 2001
  • Translate Japanese characters to Roman letters
  • Want a koan? Pick a koan. Any koan.
  • What people of X height look like at Y weight

Stupid Art! doh!

  • Graph Paper of the Gods
  • The Museum of Bad Art

Stupid Writing! doh!

  • By golly, this is a pretty darn good Inuit-family language vocab site!
  • Lunar Calendar
  • Random noun generator
  • Revised Standard Version
  • The Bible

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