Praesul and Cards

Warning: Image heavy post.

[edit 4/14: I removed the images, because the “business cards” are so far out of date. Additionally, I no longer rely on my fictitious city to host my characters and stories, though I do still appreciate its creation.]

I can’t really call them business cards, because they’re not for a ‘business’ but I got my business cards today! Inter-cut with the photos is a summary of Praesul, the fictitious USA-based city almost all of my realistic and urban fantasy stories are set in or around. Scroll to the bottom of the post for the map of Praesul.

Motherless Daughters (one)

At this point I feel a need to explain that I’ve posted the first 1,000 – 3,000 words of things I’ve written in the past year and a half or so, all crammed into the same notebook. I’ll be continuing this trend with other works, as a way to display the jack-of-all-trades (and master of nothing) approach I’ve had to writing genres for years. So far I’ve put up samples of: realistic fiction, science fiction, a semi-urban fantasy, and the following is high fantasy.

I’m not crazy about the opening segment, but it seemed like a straight forward way to introduce the reader to an important aspect of the culture. When I do get around to working on this story again, likely only a fragment of it will survive.

(1/?)

Geiphren closed his eyes and sank into the rhythms of his body, seeing the glow of the embers with his mind, sifting through them with his hand and no fear. He squeezed the power of flowing time on it and guided it to change, but before it was complete an unpleasant sting teased his attention.

Metrone (only)

(Author’s Note after content)

“Reverend, I need your help. Advice, maybe.”

“Certainly, Gavin.”

“My mother is dying.”

Alish/Zacharias (One)

Today a coworker asked me ‘how do you write?’ and my answer was simple and without thought: sometimes I put words together on the page, sometimes the words are already there and I am just uncovering them.

This story is not a current project, but I was flipping through an old notebook today and I think I will be working on it next. I am also going to be pulling together a WIP page, I think, and this will contribute. It has no title, so I currently identify it by its central characters. Have some sci-fi.

1/?

“Do you want these set up with one or two monitors, Mr. Jet?”

“Four, actually.” Arnie Jet couldn’t help a small smirk at the shocked look on the technician’s face. “Do you need to see my authorization?”

His smugness was almost palpable as the poor girl stammered a yes and he pressed his thumb to the scanner on her hand held systems communicator. While she carefully analyzed the parameters, he leaned against the desk they worked around and turned his attention to his own access and storage unit, pulling up the file on his current client.

Even a defense advocate as good as he was couldn’t usually get permission to run four memories at once; for one thing it required going through five different departments, could easily by contested as an unequal resource allocation and frankly wasn’t usually necessary. But he had resources for this client and he put them to good use. His pride and ambition drove him to desire acquittal for such a seemingly easy conviction.

Research

My current writing project, transiently titled Sever/Us, features a paramedic as the main character. Having no experience or knowledge of the medical field whatsoever, my fidelity to accuracy and authenticity demanded that I reach out to someone possessed of what I was not. In this modern era we are blessed with search engines and easily accessible online archives that can answer a multitude of questions covering, I think literally, anything an author could come up with.

Copy Editing 01/13/13

[edit 4/13] My career goal is to be a copy editor, and at present I am working primarily with original fiction purely to build my own experience. I am open to requests for light or heavy editing. Light is basic spelling, grammar and punctuation errors, typographical things that a spellchecker may miss. Heavy editing gets more into the content, how the story may be playing out, word usage, possibly fact checking. At present I am limiting files to up to ten pages due to other demands on my time; if I find I am able to complete a project with more speed than I think, I may extend an invitation to go over more of the project.

Below is a brief dissection of a project I provided heavy copy-editing on earlier this month:

Poetry

In general I am not one for poetry, writing or reading it, but every now and then a desire seizes me to attempt to convey a notion or concept in a short amount of space and time. The following is a small handful of examples from the past year or so.

Dirty Beauty – 07/29/11

Breaking In the Blog

Greetings and Salutations at this CST midnight hour.

About myself: I am an aspiring author, I have been writing as a passion for a verifiable decade now, but I’m rather an undisciplined sort, so it’s taken some time to get anywhere. Some aspects of my life have been coming together recently in a convenient fashion, not the least of which is actually completing a novel, helpfully driven by NaNoWriMo 2012. [edit 4/13]

About this blog: At present the intent is to chronicle my learning experience, share some content, and document successes and failures. What actually bears out is in fact unforeseeable. If you like my work and efforts, please share.

Thank you and enjoy.