We, soldiers of a different sort -

“We, Soldiers of a different sort,
We, wasters of ink and page,
We, warriors of words,
Masters of melancholy,
Harlots of the pen,
We bleed these volumes,
and expect only absolution.”
- Jarvis Black

Writing has been going... and going. I made an executive decision to get virtual TTT sessions going. TTT, for those not in the know, is a writing group that a few of us began back when I was a junior. The acronym stands for Triumvirate of Tea and Toast as we were originally a threesome who would get together in my kitchen, drink tea, and make extravagant toasts to our own greatness. Really it was a chance for us to get together and commiserate, read, and edit each other's work. Often it devolved into the sharing of internet memes and occasionally insane giggling fits induced by too many pixie stix. (I bought a ginormous package of them for NaNo that year, and they carried through for much of the year.)

The year after its inception, TTT gained some distinction. We assigned T-words to describe our different writing styles (Terror, Tragedy, and Tra La La - guess which one is mine?). We created ourselves a banner that hung proudly in my room and living room for two years, and which caused some grief when I left Worcester and had to leave it with the other two original members.

(Preserved forever in photographic form. Our Ts are all supposed to correspond to their meaning.)

This past year, we incorporated another person (unfortunately he's still T-less, but we did say he could be the floating tea pot above my head on the poster). And last semester all four of us blazed our way through National Novel Writing Month together because we are awesome like that. So it was a little sad this year with our newest member and me both moving away from Worcester. Terror and Tra La La will fortunately be living together for their final undergraduate year. But due to this minor diaspora, we decreed that having virtual TTT sessions was a must.

I've decided to commit myself to getting through the final edits for Wings of Destiny, my 2008 NaNo of paranormal romance genre proportions. Via virtual TTT this means getting an edit from my fellow writers for a chapter each week. This also means that I have to personally edit a chapter a week. Good kick in my butt, I'd say. I'm excited about this because I think it's going to be a lot like what William Tapply's Writing the Novel and Advanced Fiction Writing classes were (minus his awesome read-aloud of our work).

So I've got that going.

Face the Flames is still forging ahead. Slowly but surely. Chapter 8 is gonna be done in the next few weeks. And then there's only one more chapter in part one! Part Two is gonna be a hellacious ride, so I'm itching to get to it. Plus Terror and Tra La La make special guest appearances beginning in chapter 9. Whee.

And then there's the short story I signed up to write for Fantasy Big Bang.


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I'm writing a prequel to Creatures of the Wind, a novel of mine that is almost as old as Face the Flames. Yow. More about that as I write it.

That's where things stand in my writing world. Now if I could just get a job...

(No real reason for this other than my thinking that every writer should have a cat. This is Callie, my grandparents' calico. She's a sweetheart and absolutely loves to walk across my keyboard whenever I'm typing. ... of course, I have a quote for this.)

"A catless writer is almost inconcievable. It's a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys."
- Barbara Holland