Mad Dogs and Englishmen

FF.net being a pain, as always. The story upload is just as tempremental as ever. It took me the better part of five minutes to upload chapter 5 of Engraven. That little fic is finally finished and everything is primed for uploading 'Raistlin's Daughter'. I just hope I get more reviews than I did for the last chapter.

Job was exhausting, I'm not used to working until midnight, although the boss was nice and when she saw I was dropping and that there wasn't much more I could do to help (it would be just waiting until everyone left and then clearing up, and the clearing up bit I could learn tomorrow). I'll be going down there around six and it'll be a bit better since I won't have been on my feet for the previous few hours prior to that. Also, things are genrally quieter on Sundays and they close earlier too, so I might have some energy to spare when I go home.

Jedi Dave (the bloke I met at the Pride march) gave me an Interenet address for comparative lightsaber shopping, what can I say? Check it out here: www.fortress.uk.com

I've got to get myself one of those!

There was a great activity at the march yesterday, it was called 'Stamping out homophobia'. There was a big stretch of cloth on the ground and the idea was to draw around your foot and write down inside the footprint what you thought of the topic. I wrote "Slashers against homophobia!" and signed it "Skull Bearer".

And here's the last chapter of Engraven, ( Target Practice )

This refers to my beta of course, who has already finished beta-reading my Engraven interlude.

Myself, I'm in a bit of a block at the moment, nothing serious though. One idea for War Wizardry is rather than having one fic containing all the stories, I'll have a number of one-shots and short fics, that way when I want to stop writing them and move on to Chronicles it won't be too jarring.

Anyway, I've got a mini bunny for one of them, although I'll need to track down 'Dalamar the Dark', which is drifting around my bedroom somewhere. A little fic involving the dragonarmy attack on Silvanesti, and introducing Tramd o' the Dark, the body-stealing dwarf who Dalamar mashes in 'Dalamar the Dark'.

Haven't the foggiest where the book is though, so it'll take me a while to find. A dangerous hunt through forests of mouldering volumes where maddened dust bunnies prowl...

( Engraven Interlude )

Well, I'm back. It was fun in France and I filled out almost forty pages full of a variety of different ficlets and snippets for Ivory and Ebony. I don't know how many I'll actually use, but I had fun writing them. I do however have a very nice post-Chaos War fic lined up which I'm going to have a lot of fun in hammering out the details and writing.

It was hot in France, the main reason I wrote so much, I was too hot to do anything else. Got a nice suntan from lying out in the sun and a few scratches from swimming out to a rocky jetty. Not much sleep though, my room was an oven and I absolutly hate when that happens. I can never sleep.

At least we could jump into the sea to cool off, although the fine sand on the beach got everywhere, it's a miracle my discman's still working.

Grandmother now rather dotty, but hey, she's 83 so you have to make allowences. She's very open-minded for her age, didn't even blink when she found out what I was actually writing in my little notebook, she just went off on a long story about how nice gay people were, which could have been worse.

We spent the last night at my aunt's house, my cousin Helen's turned into a teenybopper (such a pity, she was showing such anti-social tendancies last time I saw her) and my other cousin Benoix was out unilt three AM, I never saw him but my dad did. He was going to get a drink and saw my cousin coming up the stairs. My cousin apparently said "Guess what? I won an electric saw!" to which my father replies "Great..." (he was half asleep).

The best part was that they had internet connection, but there was one downside... (dum dumdum dum DUM) French keyboards. They are nothing like English ones. It took me half an hour to find @. I had to wait until I got home to e-mail Chetwynd. I was disappointed because it looked like my beta reader still hadn't finished, but when I got home today I found that she had, so it's all cool.

The airport we left from today was hilarious, I've never seen such a small commercial airport. Dad has, but he's been to South America so that doesn't count. It was so small, when we were waiting for our luggage when we arrived we could see the men unloading it and throwing on the conveyor belt outside! As our bags took ages it was tempting to go out there, riffle through the bags and find ours, but we didn't. Today, we waiting for the airplane (the only airplane) in a room with was waiting room, baggage check, passport control, gift shop and restaurant! Wild.

So, here I am; jetlagged, bunny-bitten and slash crazed (what's different?), but still here.

Skull Bearer.

( And for the fans, here's chapter 4 of Engraven... )

Well, it appears that my fears about my beta were completely unfounded. I got back after a long tromp around Camden Lock to find she had finished reading through Chapter three and posted the corrections to me. Not that many actually, my grammer must be getting better, but I still cannot fathom when a semi-colon should be used.

Now she's getting on with the next two, and perhaps I'll be able to post up Chapter four on Monday before I leave.

Some bunny ideas taking shape for the snapshot fic, now tentativly titled 'War Wizardry' (Thank you Chetwynd), but nothing solid yet. I knew that reading Tale of the Lance would act as a motivator. Setting Chronicles aside for the moment, I don't want to tempt the bunny again.

( Engraven Chapter 3, Deep Remains )

Finally decided what to write to fit between Raistlin's Daughter and my still-unnamed version of Chronicles. If I tried to write down everyhting that happened to Raistlin and Dalamar in the five years they were wandering aroun the arse end of Ansalon I'd have a document longer than the ex-European Constitution, so I'm going to write snapshots of the five years; the fic I posted last will make a good starting point.

Now, bunnies... *whistles*.... Here bunny bunny bunny....

Not that there's much hurry really, since I still have to recieve and post the last few chapters of Engraven and send off Raistlin's Daughter to be beta read (I know Miqeal read it through, but two opinions are better than one), not to mention that some bunnies are bound to bite while I'm in France, I even bought a little notebook to welcome them in. On idea is to write my own version of 'Raistlin and the Knight of Somnalia (damn, I hate spelling that. Blah! Stupid place, the knights deserve it, I curse you with a typo!)', it's an idea, albeit one that needs a bit of developing. One things for sure, they're not heading off to Langtree.

And as for Hope's End... The Mad Baron kept the army from flattening it, Immolatus got killed by Kit, and the Gold Dragon eggs have been dragged off to hatch lots and lots of baby Draconians...aww....

As for my Ivory and Ebony bunny, it's sulking. It still wants to head off to Chronicles but it can't refute my argument that to skip five years is a massive gap (hint hint Wiess and Hickman). So, it's sulking.

I just need a decent name for this installment, and if anyone is reading this (this means you Chetwynd) I would be very happy for ideas. 'Five years, the abridged version' just hasn't got the right ring to it.

Of well, again, I'll have plenty of time while in France. At least my Dad doesn't give a damn about slash, you gotta love open minded parents.

Skull Bearer.

Whoa, when the bunnies bite, do they bite! I actually finished Engraven then and there! Now the chappies are off to Dalamar Nightson to get beta-read and my plot bunny will be happy because I can finally move onto Chronicles! It's all good!

Not a bad bunch of chapters, if I say so myself, hard work of course, but each one flowed into the other so it was like I was writing one long chapter rather than a bunch of little ones.

I especially liked the part where Raistlin rants at Dalamar to stop trying to protect him. A damn good few lines and one of those bits I'm going to carry with me as an example of my best work, with bits like "Do you feel Brave now, Ice and Steel chapter Death and Disaster, and the soon to be posted 'Raistlin's Daughter'.

In fact, I've actually put in a little lead on into the last chapter of Engraven, linking it to 'Raistlin's Daughter', although only mysefl and Chetwynd will be able to see it as such until I post the fic up.

I'll post the chapter up as soon as they've been beta-ed, no point subjecting people to my dreadful grammar.

Skull Bearer.

I hate writer's block, and I've just hit a huge boulder's worth of it for Engraven. The bunny wants to move on to Chronicles already. "Enough muddling around!" It's shouting (betwixs gnawing on my left leg), "Drop Engraven, put up 'Raistlin's daughter and let's get on with the ACTION!"

As much as I agree, I'm ready to tackle Chronicles, I want to finish Engraven. The problem is I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm not sure whether to make this a purely action-base story where Raistlin and Dalamar discover the spell and fry goblins, or whether to play up Dalamar's reaction to Raistlin's Test.

I was planning the second to begin with, but now I think I'll regelate that to subtext and work on the adventure aspects. Our two mages will be tackling Draconians and all sorts of comers in a few years, they'd better get some practice!

I'm still toying with the spell, it's either going to be a ray-type or a cone. Maybe it's flexible and you can use it either as a powerful blast of energy or as a weaker (but larger) spread. Yeah, that sounds cool.

Note: it's pure magic, so elemental res. doesn't count. Since Dragonalnce is a D&D style setting, I'd be better off writing it as a Player's Handbook spell.

And a name, my minds stuck on 'Chronal Blast', but Chronal doesn't fit since the spell has nothing to do with time. _____ Blast then. Actually, since Raistlin and Dalamar have no idea what it's called and what it really does, maybe, they'll call it Chronal Blast? That might work.

Got the history down though, it's one of the primal spells of Krynn, "Destruction". The Gods hid it away to keep it from prying mortal hands setting up all kinds of wards and things to keep people out. Only after first the Cataclysm and then the more localised explosion of Zhaman, the wards have become pretty damaged, but now the Gods are waiting for mortals to find them again (all except Takhisis, and she's been too busy), they haven't had the chance to renew the wards. So the doors are hanging open, so to speak, and they've just let in the worst possible pair of treasure hunters!

 The tablet the spell is scribed on (all Epic spells are on tablets, they wouldn't be 'Epic' otherwise ;) ) has also been pretty cracked, but is unfortuanantly still legible, the power of the spell had kept the incantation is one piece, but the description is pretty wreaked. Raistlin and Dalamar work out that it's some sort of damaging spell, but the power of it escapes them.

Still unsure how to fit in the Legends bit, maybe Raistlin hikes down there one day and learns a bit more about the spell, of course, the wards wouldn't have faded so much, but Raistlin's more than powerful enough to blast his way through. That would be brilliant! I could describe the damage in Engraven, and in my version of Legends I could write about how they got to that state! Gotta love the river of time!

Okay, enough spolier stuff here, the block had effecively been demolished, bring it on Bunny!

Skull Bearer.

Finally able to upload next chapter of 'Engraven', and about time too. Had to first click on the bloody link, get a blank page, go to another webpage, then click back and finally the page comes out properly!

Ding ding.

( Moutain Pursuit )