August 2018

Heat WAve 2018

The past month's extreme heat, by Vancouver Island standards, has been playing havoc with my ability to concentrate on either my writing or my editing. It has also been playing havoc with our British Columbia forests. A haze of forest fire smoke has been covering the sky for the past couple of weeks, which carries its own problems. It didn't help that I always find my attention getting derailed during the televised coverage of Wimbledon. I watch very few sports, but Tennis happens to be one of them. This month's excerpt contains one of the times I have a deity showing that he or she is not truly omniscient as Unicorn makes several mistakes when telling Feline about the creation of the Skethrylln, a group of parapsychologists from another galaxy. This is actually setting up the introduction of both a Skethryll and Sapphire, a High Sorcerer of Blue-Stone's from the world Unicorn speaks about and who was truly responsible for the planting of evil in that other galaxy's measurable power. The two become stronger throughout the book culminating in the events at the end. I am currently writing Sapphire's own series, which starts with the actual events of the tale Unicorn tells Feline in the excerpt from chapter three of Separated Soul.   I have also started posting of few of the design sketches I made in 1997-2000 when I began writing both the Moon Child Memoirs series and the Ellfaerran Diaries series. For those who are wondering, Sapphire's home country was named Ellfaera and at least one of the survivors of that ancient world was smuggled into the Trader people (whom I based on the Beaker People) to become a very influential part of the culture of the Jewelled Isles and he brought with him the name of his lost people. It was eventually taken by his adopted people and shortened upon amalgamation with the Burrowers, who were based on the Wind Hill people. The name changed from Ellfaer to Ellf, something the Skethryll in Separated Soul clues in on and which feeds him obsession with finding Feline.  
   During this unfortunate heat wave I have spent more time reading my Alan Dean Foster and Andre Norton collections than writing my own books. Both were influential in the forming of my mind and imagination as I began collecting and reading their books when I was nine. I also peeked at the newest J.K. Rowling fantasy film trailer and got quite a giggle as those black cat creatures reminded me so much of Andre Norton's Eet from her Murdock Jern series. I think they may have been playing in the same Beastiary texts. I know Andre Norton had a love of using the Ancient Egyptian Beastiaries in her Sci-Fi novels, which is probably where Eet came from.  I know that J.K. Rowling's novels have shown a fairly strong knowledge of medieval Beastiaries, so it is likely that they both used the same legendary creature from ancient mythology as the basis of their creations. Yes, I have read the Harry Potter books and both watched and thoroughly enjoyed Fantastic Beasts. I also read all of Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's novels and translated works and I read David and Leigh Eddings' Fantasy novels, with a few of Anne McCaffery's for a change of pace, but I don't read that many authors in my chosen genre, probably because I tend to follow David Eddings' advice about that.
​Most of the time I read Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, Geoffrey Chaucer, (untranslated. Translations are for language wimps,) William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Donna Andrews with the occasional Nora Roberts or Jayne Ann Krentz thrown in for a giggle. I also tend to lighten my reading with either a Belgian graphic novel by Peyo, a French one by Uderzo and Goscinney, the odd Weregeek by homegrown Alina Pete, or just some vaguely political humor from Berke Breathed's Bloom County or the classic 50's, 60's &70's humor of Len Norris. Foot Rot Flats from New Zealand and Peanuts from Charles M. Shultz add more than just a few giggles to the mix. Basically my reading is eclectic, which I believe widens the imagination of any writer. It can't hurt, especially when you spend so much time with your nose buried in Anthropology texts on Pre-Celtic British Isles and mythology texts from around the world. Peanuts is a great antidote to reading about the Aztec and Mayan myths and rituals, believe me on that! Never read about either of those two before a meal, you won't touch a bite if you do.