Blog, 3/16/2012
As you might have noticed, I’m kind of waning out on posting blogs on their own page. I think it’s easy enough for people to find what they want with the search bar, and it’s annoying to keep posting the same stuff in two different places. But I like the fact that it shows up on the main page, so you can see when the ol’ blag has been updated.
We have a new cat in the house–a kitten, actually. His name is Shawn and he’s four months old. My mom thinks he was dumped in the shelter by a breeder who didn’t want him, and he’s a Turkish Angora breed. I have to say, the cat looks exactly like the pictures she’s pulling up. It’s freaky.
We already have one rescue cat who turned out to be a rare breed: Jake, the Egyptian Mau, whose coat has a breed-specific quality to it. Egyptian Maus have spots and stripes, but only on the tips of their fur. When you brush the fur back, it’s one color underneath. They also have pretty gooseberry green eyes if they’re bred right (Jake does) and kind of Egyptian-looking markings around their eyes.
Turkish Angoras have fluffy tails, tufty ears, and like water. Shawn fits all of those. Why does my mom keep ending up with rare cats at random? Who knows. Maybe she just recognizes them better than most people because she used to be a cat breeder.
Anyway, I’ve been working on editing Phoenix and it’s coming along pretty quickly–there aren’t so many things marked KILL IT WITH FIRE like usual. I have some new ideas, but I’m not sure whether I want to work them into one novel or two. I have starts for two, but I’m not sure if I’ll use them.
First, Fenna and Corid.
Fenna–a blonde eleven-year-old girl, librarian’s apprentice who hates her master, prefers the inventor dude a floor below. Lives in a castle.
Corid–Actually a pseudonym, her real name is Corona Caelum; she’s a princess with a thing for politics. I haven’t totally decided what her royalty/nobility status is (maybe she’s just a high-ranking noble), but it seems kinda cliche to have a smart princess in disguise. She needs a dirty secret. Maybe she’s a werewolf like Sergeant Angua from Discworld. …Nah. Twilight ruined that one. Maybe her father was an usurper. Oooooooh!
They live in a complicated political system. Fenna belongs to the Dog empire, and Corid to the Beetle kingdom. Apart from those two, there are the Cats, led by a dictator because of their war, the Bear empire (who are dominating warmongers), the Foxes, who are nasty too but keep to themselves, the Rabbits, who are weak and have bad resources (and treaties with the Dogs), and the Birds. The Birds are a band of extremely intelligent spellwriters, but are no match for the Bears, who are taking over. But they’re still important, because they’re coming out with new technology and magic all the time, and it’s advancement for the rest of the world.
So Corona has this idea in her head that she needs to figure out a way to protect the Birds, but she isn’t planning on doing it singlehandedly. She figures that the Dogs are probably the most politically reasonable group, but the only person in the Dog empire that she knows personally is Fenna’s favorite inventor. But he can’t go with her… so he offers to kind of push Fenna towards going with Corona instead.
Fenna’s job as apprentice librarian isn’t much fun–it’s strenuous work, with an old guy breathing down her neck while she tries to copy books. So, of course, she ends up going along.
Corona is also a mage. Her main mode of transport is a small smoke-colored dragon, who she got by setting up a dragon trap described in a book and treating it well until it was loyal to her.
So Corona takes her dragon and Fenna and tries to strike up a rebellion with the Foxes, who are nearer to the Birds than either the Beetles or Dogs. Then she travels to the Birds to gauge their potential for a fight–they’re pretty useless. She tries the same rebellion deal with the Cats, with the Rabbits, even with the group of nymphs who lives north of the Beetle kingdom. Nothing works.
Then a small party of rebels in the Rabbit tribe manage to corner some important Bear generals. In a last-ditch effort, Corona tries diplomacy with the Bears themselves. Suddenly realizing that the rest of the world is against them–including the Beetles, who are powerful–the Bears agree to retreat their troops from Bird territory and to stop any aggressive moves until diplomacy between the Bears and the Beetles works out.
The Bears have learned to respect the Beetles since their last three wars lasted several decades apiece and ended in bloody stalemate. They’re not fond of each other. Kinda like France and England in the old days.
Then Corona sends word to Emperor Mentker of the Dogs that the Bears have retreated for a while and he and she have a certain amount of time to round up as many troops as possible, quietly, while Corona’s father buys them time negotiating and keeping the Bear emperor as drunk as possible.
Their bluff works, and the Bears are forced back into their own territory to stay.
————-
Then I have another idea that I’ve been sitting on for a while.
How the Agency got started.
I’m kind of dragon-rider crazy right now. Not sure why. But these are the characters I’ve got…
Anatola, the gold dragon who shows up at the Maine Agency base in Phoenix. Except that right now she’s just ten months old and can’t even flame yet.
Rhenna, Anatola’s keeper–an eleven-year-old girl with brown hair, a round face, and an older brother who really wants to keep the fact that his sister has a pet dragon a secret. Their little farming village in the woods isn’t very fond of dragons.
Luke, a fifteen-year-old guy. Black hair, pretty tall, uses a bow. Oh, and he’s a mage. And before you guys start jumping in and declaring that this is an Eragon ripoff because I have a dragon and a fifteen-year-old guy who uses a bow… shut up.
Rhenna gets spotted with Anatola as she teaches the dragon to catch fish out of a stream. Luke and Rhenna have to run away before they’re butchered for bringing a dragon into the village. They leave a note for their trader uncle (who left when the snow melted so he could get some more supplies) and flee the village.
Rhenna starts lamenting the fact that there’s no safe place for well-behaved dragons and mages who aren’t jerks, and nobody to do anything about the nasty dragons and the mages who are jerks. Luke figures they have nothing better to do, so they head to the next town with Anatola perched on Rhenna’s shoulder.
Anyway, I think this’ll just be meeting a bunch of odd people who join Luke and Rhenna, a bunch of bad guys who think Rhenna’s group is plotting something, and Rhenna, Anatola and their group doing what it takes to be relaxed and happy. Well, until Luke points out that Rhenna also mentions in the group goals she wrote up that she was planning on doing something about the people who don’t want them to be relaxed and happy in their own little group. And when they start fighting, they get better fighters joining. Et cetera.
I haven’t worked this one out totally yet. But I need to do some explanation of how the Agency got started. Sometime. This idea seems like it could easily get pegged as an Eragon ripoff, though. You know? Even though it’s about something totally different. It’s like… if you write about a magic school, your book is instantly “like Harry Potter.”
I had a dream the other night that was really weird. It was… it was about this Volkswagon Beetle and who it belonged to… there was one girl who had it but it really belonged to this other girl. And the girl it belonged to and her friend, who is a boy about her age (early twenties)… they were being chased by bad guys for some reason. And the girl got chased through a WalMart and there was this big black border collie who started attacking the people who were tailing her. It was so big, it looked like a gorilla. Even though she knew it wasn’t a gorilla attacking the people, she told the store clerks that it was a gorilla attacking one of their customers, so that the clerks would get in the bad guys’ way. The first question out of the clerks’ mouths was “Is is a male or female gorilla?” She said it was male and ran out to meet her friend. And then they got chased through a museum and the girl climbed up the outside of the museum and jumped off, and it turned out she had angel wings…
Yeah.
I’ve got to write something with an angel-winged girl in it soon. Don’t know why. But there you go.
Anyway… it’s late, so I’d better go.
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 17th, 2012 at 12:51 am and is filed under My Stuff, of course. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
