Crier's Tower
I have done jack in keeping up with my website during my school break. Other obligations interfered. I am a terrible webmaster ... of my own website, anyway.
As always, I am hoping to make progress around here. I suppose that updating my sidebar is a positive start!
Magic and Mechanica is out from Ricasso Press! And I'm in it!
My short story "Cogs" has been published in this anthology, which centers on speculative fiction about "piston-driven fantasy and industrial sorcery." "Cogs" is about a heroine's attempt to reclaim her people's humanity in a world overrun by machines. Magic and Mechanica is available from the Ricasso Press Bookstore or on Amazon.com.
New in the Library:
The Message. Valinor has been left in darkness, and Finarfin is the new king of the Noldor. One night, he awakens with a strange vision: Someone has died in Middle-earth--but who?
New on the Heretic Loremaster:
Move over Fëanor . . . Some thoughts on Fëanor's jewelry choices and the larger lessons they suggest about how to read The Silmarillion.
I Need to Rant. On the notion that slash is a disgrace to Tolkien's world.
Inferior Writing? On Chicklit, Fantasy, and Mary Sue. Why do we put down certain genres of writing? Is there anything anti-woman about those we choose to scorn?
Dispatches from Other Lands:
I'm on Facebook. OMG yes really.
You can find me now on FanLore!
And my obsession du jour is Delicious: Check out what I'm reading and researching here.
What I'm Reading ...
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Beyond These Borders
There is a whole world beyond the Midhavens, begging for exploration. Herein lies a list of places where I have hung my banner on occasion--even flown it proudly--else found friendly company willing to share a song and a cup of wine.
Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Dedicated to studying and writing about J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, I founded the SWG as a place for discussion, fellowship, and the celebration of creativity.
Hundrede Artes. Here I document my progress as I attempt to create one hundred pieces of medieval-inspired artwork in seven years.
The (Cyber) Bag of Weasels. This was my first online home and, today, serves as my personal journal.
Seven Falls
But Melkor also was there, and he came to the house of Fëanor, and there he slew Finwë King of the Noldor before his doors, and spilled the first blood in the Blessed Realm; for Finwë alone had not fled from the horror of the Dark.
…
Fall seven times.
Stand up eight.
…
Ah, with such vigor you pronounce my fall!
Lift your eyes and vow to drive me into dark!
You strike me low and I am slow to rise;
I let your eyes linger long on my blood.
Deep within you this delusion I plant:
Slain I may be by a faint-hearted king!
But what a noble beneficent king!
You believe that yet? Oh, so far to fall!
By fastidious workings, I did plant
In your people's hearts desire for the dark,
Feral, forgott'n lust for the taste of blood.
Dare strike me again! Laughing, I will rise.
In Fëanor's heart, already did I rise;
In Fingolfin's too, fair Noldorin king.
My name pounds in your gentle last-born's blood!
Till I am needless to fulfill your fall
(But how I want to watch your eyes go dark!)
As brother fights brother to brother supplant.
Remember how Yavanna did trees plant
That, on the horizon, made pale light rise?
See now: the horizon roils with dark!
Think you such power shall be quell'd by a king
Whose full might it takes to bring my fourth fall?
Whose bubbling breaths bring the taste of his blood?
In whom fatigue moans with each beat of his blood?
Teeth bared with joy, loosely my feet I plant,
Intentionally, let him force my fall.
Intentionally, even faster I rise!
Till certainty dims the eyes of the king;
Extinguish'd their light with hastening dark.
Our shadows strive against deepening dark
Till I fall the sixth time, slipped in his blood
And rise, laughing, to hear the curse of the king:
"No growing things can your barren hands plant.
Nothing alive from you ever will rise."
Swing, little king! I am waiting to fall!
At my seventh fall, I rise, reap the dark
From a seed fed with lies and blood: I RISE!
Plant my sword in the body of a king.
The first quote comes from The Silmarillion, "Of the Flight of the Noldor." The second quote is a Japanese proverb.