Enigma in Entropy

Iron Eagle Redesign

Warts and All

The opening sequence to my NaNo novel, unedited, 'cause I'm- how do you say lazy, and make it sound like a good thing....?

PRELUDE

            There’s a woman sobbing at your husband’s grave.

You’ve never seen her before. You’d remember a woman like that, curvy from the candied amber waves of her hair to the brown sugar swell of her bosom, from the twin cherry roundness of pert derriere to the graceful sweep of ample lashes over eyes as blue as saltwater taffy. She is rocking back and forth with the force of her grief, and the heels of her expensive stilettos dig twin gouges in the freshly turned earth. You feel a momentary pang, followed by another: for a moment, you found yourself more wounded by the destruction of her shoes than you were by Caleb’s death.

Eagle Roughs (for Craig)

Just the iron eagle motif, with a few examples of how easy it is to alter the feel of the image by applying filters in Photoshop. I think I'm partial to the second and third, with my only concern being that the skull and barbed wire details will be lost in the simplification of the third. The final image will be hand-colored, so that will add a bit of texture. Open to suggestions!

Thass Alotta Words

Day two of NaNoWriMo, and it becomes ever more apparent: I cannot NOT edit. Seriously. There's a vindictive little critic living in my left ear, just a fraction of an inch beyond Q-tip range, who insists on having extensive debates about every little syllable. My writing buddies are breezing through the experiment, words piling up like the corpses of the valiantly slain, and I'm sitting on a measly 621 words, like an anxious mother hen afraid she's hatched a frog. I wrote an eight hundred word email last night without a second thought. The critic is not only belligerent, he's snobby, too. 

I guess it would be easier if I were writing a plot driven story. I don't know why I'm not; I have no shortage of ideas. I feel like I have something to say- something important (to me)- and it refuses to sit still long enough for me to sketch its portrait. I should probably take the recorder and talk it all out. I tend to be far less tetchy when I hear the words spoken aloud. For now, though, I think I'll take a little mental holiday and focus on something else. I have a couple of songs that could use final touches. I've got the Card project to finish- I mean, start (stupid Major Arcana!). And if all else fails, there's always turning pictures of myself into zombies, which is way, waaaay more fun than it ought to be.

Will Zombify for Brains.

All I Do Anymore is Make Websites

But this one is for a fella who makes zombies!

 I'm pretty stoked to be working on such a fun project- in truth, I'm stoked to be working on anything that isn't related to weddings, as that seems to be my lot in this business. Wedding sites are nice and all, but they seldom allow you to ponder the best method of highlighting the sheen of moonlight on clotted blood. It's very rewarding.

It's also exciting to have tangible evidence that my schooling is going to pay off. As frequently as I've dreamed lately of moving towards a more art-based approach to my education, and as determined as I've become to pursue film making in the long run, it's downright exhilarating to know that there's a market for the skills I already have. As Gawd is mah witness, Ah shall nevvah wait tables again!

In less Things-I'm-Doing and more Things-I'm-Going-to-be-Doing news, I signed up for NaNoWriMo last week (www.nanowrimo.org). That's right- I'm going to write a novel. A good 'un, too. This has definitely been the year of my doing, as opposed to my previous entire lifetime's worth of saying I'm going to do, so I really expect I'll see this thing through to the end. Fear not- I won't ask any of you to read it. I have no illusions as to its publishability. Most likely, it will go in a shoe box under the bed, there to languish in literary obscurity until some time after my death, when it shall be discovered, dusted off, and used to line the cages of posterity's pet birds. I can get behind that idea.

Cross-posting is for Losers, and People Named Katie

Last night, while he was sleeping, she climbed beneath his skin.

She hadn’t meant to do it.

She was lying with her ear pressed to his chest, the thunder of his heartbeat rattling in her skull like rocks inside a tin can. She tried to breathe him in, the slightly acrid smell of his well worn t-shirt, the underlying musk of his skin, imagined the scent expanding inside her lungs to fill the leaden hollow that had lately settled in the pit of her stomach. Experimentally, she slid a hand beneath the sharp ridge of his ribcage, walked her fingers softly down his stomach. She was surprised to feel the flesh yield with little resistance.

There was a brief moment of panic when the skin knit closed behind her. She hadn’t considered how he might feel if he awoke, whether he’d welcome the new closeness or resent it as intrusion. She’d thought only of the wonder of it, the novelty. She drifted through his bloodstream like a leaf on a lazy river, the crimson-tinted darkness warm and inviting. It tasted like memory, and she let his childhood melt slowly on her tongue. She tread lightly through the pale autumn morning of his insecurities, lost herself in the lemon jazz mists of daydream, marveled and grieved alike at her place in the shrine of his passions. She wrestled with his intellect, and retired confused and enlightened to the illusory shelter of his ego. His singularity was a persistent melody played on a myriad of instruments. It whispered, cajoled, and threatened; it rushed and boomed until her head spun and she feared the loss of self that might result from further sojourn in this strange new Eden. Weary and overwhelmed, she climbed into a passing exhalation and allowed a murmured sigh to restore her to her place outside of him.

The next morning, she hadn’t known what to say.

He was as much a stranger as ever. She’d tried to explain it to him, and he’d laughed, fondly, raised her chin and kissed her in the manner of a playful child. She’d let the subject drop, unsure of what it meant anyways, unconvinced that it mattered, ultimately. They went to the farmer’s market and he bought her a box of strawberries, and they’d eaten at the restaurant on the corner, the one he always chose on Sundays. It was all as ordinary as it could be, and yet- there was a nagging doubt in the back of her mind, a sense that she had misplaced something.

She was being silly.

But then, his eyes had always been brown before, hadn’t they?