C: Centaur

A centaur is a creature from Greek mythology with a horse body and the torso, head, and arms of a man. They are also adopted by Roman mythology. Most centaurs are associated with wisdom and learning. They were also warriors and sometimes said to lead chariots into battle. A similar creature in Indian mythology is called a Kinnaras.


My favorite book with a centaur in it: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. The children are allowed to actually ride a centaur in this book. A very great honor indeed.

This fantastic centaur was drawn by my fantastic sister Hallel Tyler for your viewing pleasure

B: Banshee

Most of know banshees as faery women in Irish folk lore who wail, foretelling a death. The details, however, vary a lot depending on the particular story.

In the older legends a banshee heralds a death rather than foretells it so that family members far away can be warned before they are sent the official news. In some legends banshees are old hags and others beautiful young women or they can change between the two as they will. Sometimes a banshee is a ghost and sometimes a faery. Sometimes they wail in groups when someone important dies. In Scottish folk lore they are washer women who can be found washing the blood stained clothes of those who are about to die. They usually wear long robes and hoods in blacks, grays, or reds.

A: Avatar

No, I don't mean the blue people.

Or the amazingly cheesy anime series involving Ang, the last airbender.

I don't mean your RPG characters or the icon on your yahoo page either.

I mean the root for these uses of the word; a hindu gods' phyisical form on earth.

Most often the term refers to manifestations of Vishnu, the supreme God, coming to restore the earth to it's natural order. With that in mind you can see how the blue people movie got its title. A story about restoring the earth to ballence. Characters manifest themselves in a new form in order to inhabit the planet.

The Last Airbender probably follows the root the closest. Ang is the Avator of his world, incarnated in the form of a boy to restore ballance to the world.

Even RPG characters have some remnant of the root left. When the god Ganesha manifests on earth he is said to destroy demons.

As for yahoo . . . well it's representing you in the world of the internet where you, like the hindu gods, can't exist in your current form, but I don't know if forwarding those cat pictures to everyong you know really counts as restoring ballence to the universe.



p.s. It is not April Fools. Do not be warned of the coming mayem the day will bring.

Once Upon a Time . . .

Lately I have a had a lot of people ask me about the origins of certain legends and fairy tales. I've read (devoured) a great deal of such stories but I can't say I know the origins and details of every bit of folk lore ever told.

I want to though.

And so, I am planning a blog series starting in May (after the impending A-Z Challenge we will all {most} be absorbed in through April)about the origins of fairy tales. I will research what I can about about a new fairy tale each week and post what I find.

This will be fun! Let me know if there are any particular stories you would like me to cover.

I can tell you right now there aren't any actual original version. Not in the way there is an original Peter Pan or an Original Sherlock Holmes. Fairy Tales were originally told in taverns and around fires. Each telling was different. They drew elements from each other (what we might consider today an infringment of coppyrights) and developed with the times and people who told them. Stories traveled from region to region, mixing with each other, and gathering new life with each generation. Even the first written collections were only one man's copy of what he heard in the local villages. The stories had existed in many different versions for years before that depending on where, and by whom, they were told.

I could easily spend years trying to pin-point the origins of a single story but we'll see what I can uncover in a week. I'm looking forward to this! I hope you have a lot of fairy tale questions for me!

Manuscript Massacre and Why Editing is Like Piano Practice

I apologize for the absence the last couple weeks. I have been rather absorbed in the task of hacking my manuscript to bits and pieces.

It is a bit odd. I hated editing my last manuscript. Every time I had to cut out a clip of dialogue or a good description I would wince. No. I worked hard to make that. You can't just take it OUT.

"I can" my inner editor would reply "if it isn't helping the story."

Pout. Sulk. Threaten to use even more run on sentences and "ing" words. Finally relent and click delete.

But this time I've only been editing a couple of weeks and I've already cut out three whole scenes. And you know what? I don't miss them. Not a whit. They weren't bad but they were unneeded and bogged down the plot. I'm feeling rather ruthless with my words right now. Half the scenes I've kept in so far have been paired down quite a bit.

Slash. Stab. Parry. Watch the ink drip in little black blobs on the bottom of the page. The extra words fall away for stronger prose, better emphasis to the important parts of the story.

For me having a finished draft is a bit like struggling through a piece of sheet music for the first time. Yeah you have an idea of where your fingers have to go and where the difficult chords are but the piece is far from learned. And any good music teacher will tell you that playing it over and over straight through won't do you much good. You have to take it a few measures at a time, zone in on the trouble spots, and really learn the music phrase by phrase, before you can smooth it out as a finished piece.



So that's what I've been attempting. It's slow progress but progress. I can't wait to see it all fit together.

What is your editing process like?

Soooooooooooo Close

This is me and my manuscript right now.


I have somewhere between ten and fifteen pages left of draft one (my best estimate is twelve but you never know for sure) but unfortunately I won't have time to really work on it for a couple of days yet. I'm still a bit stunned though that I wrote the last hundred and fifty pages within the last two months. I have never and I mean NEVER written that fast in my life. Hopefully the writing isn't sloppier than usual but if it is that's what editing is for.

Well I'm off to return to my To Do List and try not to think about my beloved and currently estranged manuscript.

Happy writing my friends :D

True Love Ways (In Which I Gush Over Books)

One of the things I've decided I would do this year is shop at less big name corporate stores. It's been a slow weening process. Old habits are hard to break and I already know where all the bigger stores are. They can be so much more convienent but also less interesting and more like an asembly line so I'm working on it. Slowly, yes, but I'm working on it.

The hardest one, of course, has been staying away from Barnes and Nobles. I do know where a lot of little used bookstores are but they usually have limited hours and then there is that annoying fact that when new books come out they don't have them yet. Weeks pass. Months. And they STIL don't have them.

Sigh. Lament. Break down and drive to Barny's (see I even have an endearing nick name for them, how could I possibly stay away? The course of true love never did run smooth)

Or, as I managed to do this last weekend, take a slightly longer and more adventruous trip down to Mysterious Galaxy


If I read a lot of romance or memoir or something this store probably wouldn't do me much good, but considering that my main genre is and always will be fantasty, I can feel like a good virtuous hipster and drool over new books at the same time. Here is what this trip yielded:



Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier
--This one looks really good. If nothing else I will enjoy Marillier's stunning descriptions. She is such a beautiful world builder.

A Million Suns by Bev Revis
--The first book in this series, Across the Universe, simultamiously disturbed me and made me fall in love with it. I've been quite literally* dieing to know what happens next.

Snuff by Terry Pratchett
--It's Terry Pratchett. And it has Vimes in it. There is no way I'm not going to love it.

Drool.

Sigh.

Reach for covers, unable to decide which one.

Make a decison. Change it.

Remember that I've promised myself I would finsih draft one of my manuscript before reading any of them.

Oh yeah. My manuscript.

Lunge for my lap top and start typing as fast as I can.

So that's what I've been up to. How about you?


*Ok. Not litterally. It's a metaphor. But still.