My apologies for the 3 weeks without new posts!
My very dear mother was ill and in the hospital for 17 days. She has now emerged from the ordeal to all the hard work that is necessary after one has been very ill, if one wishes to regain one’s strength.
I have a new post ready for this Friday, a flash fiction story entitled Read-Only Beauty. Get ready! 😀
“Serpent’s Foe” is my own contribution to Quantum Zoo.
She-lion
Born helpless with eyes shut
Her mother moves her cub to a new den
Often, lest scent build up
She-lion
Hunts for her pride while he-lion watches their young
Working with her sisters so cleverly
Stalking, that all may eat
She-lion
Rampant on the shield of might
Couchant in the sigil of cunning
Royal, hear her roar
– hieroglyphic inscription on the fragment
from a forgotten tomb
Abruptly she returned to herself.
Where had she been?
The desert spaces of a dream, hunting as a lioness should? She didn’t know. But this dim-lit vault looked different through waking eyes than dreaming ones.
Why didn’t they sweep the floors?
Sand lay on the flat stone expanse in patches of dusty sparkles. The whole complex cried out for a scouring. Rust coated the iron bars of the cages, from their tops, anchored in the sandstone ceiling, to their bases, sunk into rock. Dung decorated the corners.
And the carcass of her last meal rotted against the bars separating her from the jackal next door. That black-coated beast gnawed at the bloody remains, his snout poked through a gap.
Fah! She lifted her forepaw fastidiously to lick it clean.
Movement diagonally across the broad corridor caught her eye. Another feline – a cheetah, not a lion – paced.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Prowling restlessly.
This is no place for me and mine. I, who carry the sun in my eyes by night.
She was caged, she who was meant to be free.
Who had perpetrated this outrage?
She shifted the bulk of her feline body, feeling the press of the cool stone floor against her flank. She lay in the exact center of her square enclosure, avoiding the bars – cold and radiating evil.
She’d been hunting, surely. Before she woke to this zoo. Or was she dreaming now of her imprisonment?
In her earlier dream, the grey shades of moonless night had enfolded her.
Tall strands of sun-dried grasses rustled in the almost-not-there breeze, brushing against her pelt. The bass rumble of bullfrogs mingled with splashing sounds. A rank smell of river mud crept close to the ground, closer than she.
Fah!
Her limbs were made for crouching, for stalking, for lunging from cover.
The faint scent of her prey traced through the cool air rising off the Nile.
Not ibis. Not hippo. Not croc.
Something . . . tastier.
She lunged, hindquarters powering her forward, fore claws outstretched, ready to rend as she batted her meal to the ground.
Its nest lay empty – a trammeled area of matted reeds where the red deer had slept.
But not now.
Now it fled, zigzagging, its tail a flag in the night.
She gave chase. I will feast!
Nearer and nearer.
Her muscles bunched, then extended, driving her close.
The smell of the creature’s submission lent her strength, transforming the draining pain of her hunger into her pounce.
And then the very air lay empty.
Where . . . ?
No spoor on the mud. No scent on the breeze. No thud of panicked hooves in the ear.
Utterly gone.
From where would her feast come now?
Yet not all scent had vanished.
Behind her, a fresh aroma threaded the night: musty, dry, a whisper of fear.
She, the hunter, was hunted. The knowledge shivered through her empty belly.
All impulse to slacken her pace vanished as utterly as the deer. She raced onward, fleeing the riverbank, fleeing her pursuer.
What would hunt a lioness?
And toward what end?
Her breath came hot in her mouth and heaved her flanks. She was no horse, meant to race from river mouth to first falls. A sprint, not the marathon, was hers.
The mud grew dry and cracked under her paws, grew sandy.
She slackened her speed. Had she outrun that which chased her?
A rattle of the reeds behind galvanized her anew. Amon Ra! That she should come to this!
The desert sand provided easier running as she spurted for the Valley of the Kings.
I will escape my hunter and then defeat him. I, who protect the gods themselves, will do this.
The next moment she awoke. Or did she dream again? Which was it?
Gah! This confusion of sleeping and waking plagued her still. And another hunt failed! Her belly stabbed her.
She snarled.
The jackal, her neighbor, barked back and retreated to the far corner of his cage.
This is the dream, this underground place. I’ll close my eyes and wake where I belong!
Snarling again, she lowered her lids. The smells of the menagerie – her lioness nostrils could distinguish each one – would vanish like the red deer.
The dank, dirty water of the crocodile’s lagoon in the cage immediately opposite hers.
Begone!
The musk of the fox, asleep within a hollow log on the stone floor of its enclosure, next to the croc’s.
Begone!
The tainted rot of her own abandoned meal, the carcass pushed aside for the jackal to gnaw its bones through the bars.
Get them hence!
Where was the incense, pungent and resinous, wafted from the censors of her priests? Where the perfumes, dabbed on the pulse points of her priestesses? This was no fit abode for her!
My wrath will vanquish you, my captor. Oh, be afraid.
The friendlier, clean warmth of the cheetah pacing the cage on the other diagonal drew her eyes open again.
She flowed to her feet and approached the front of her own cage. The bars were cold, so cold. What would happen, if she touched them? Would she grow equally cold and dead? Turn to stone? Pass into sleep?
You! She demanded of the cheetah. How did you come here?
But only a third hissing snarl emerged from her mouth.
Sssr!
Who had done this to her? Taken her speech? Taken so much?
The cheetah ignored her hiss, turning abruptly at a cage corner to pace back the other way. Iron clanged on iron, and the cheetah gave the dry cough of her kind. Reaction, no doubt, to brushing the burning chill metal.
Fah! I am the sun carrier! These beasts will heed me! Say I so!
She glared at the cheetah. At the snorting bull beyond the jackal. At the mantling falcon in the cage at her other side. Its wings batted the still air – foomph, foomph – and then folded close. The scents of the menagerie swirled.
You must be my allies, my servants. Mine! To find the door from this place into the night, dark and clean.
Somehow she would compel them.
Without words, without power, without freedom.
My will shall suffice.
She retreated from her bars, lounged down to the sandy floor, and defiantly closed her eyes.
I shall awaken now.
And she did.
Blinking, she stared down at womanly arms. Hers. Stared further at the sheer linen shift rounded by breasts. Hers. Followed the fabric folded across her curving lap to the vivid green matting on the alabaster floor.
I am woman. Not feline.
* * *
To read more of “Serpent’s Foe,” pick up a copy of Quantum Zoo.
Amazon.com I Amazon UK I Amazon DE I Amazon ES
For more Quantum Zoo samples:
Demon Rising
Skipdrive
Echoes of Earth
A King in Exile
For a list of the 12 stories in Quantum Zoo, click here.
Quantum Zoo‘s book launch was very successful!
Within 24 hours, Quantum Zoo reached the top five on several of Amazon’s bestseller lists. And #1 on the Hot New Releases list!
Update: The sun has risen and set upon June 25, 2014. Our party began with the dawn and ended at midnight. I think we, the author hosts, had as much fun as our guests! Thank you to all who participated. 😀
To read excerpts from Quantum Zoo:
Serpent’s Foe
Demon Rising
Skipdrive
Echoes of Earth
A King in Exile
For a list of the 12 stories in Quantum Zoo, click here.
I visited the beach with my family and had a lovely time.
Waves, sand, sun, relaxed husband and happy children. It was perfect.
Then I arrived home to discover more than 2000 spam comments awaiting me on my blog. Two thousand! All advertisements for knock-off handbags, sunglasses, and shoes deposited by spam-bots. That’s more than 100 pages of spam. And each one has to be manually removed from the “comments pending” queue.
I’ve resisted implementing a “captcha” code here. I think they’re a pain for commenters. But something had to be done!
So I went searching for a captcha plug-in that would only appear the first time you comment on my blog.
The way it works is you’ll see a string of letters or letters and numbers in a window on your computer screen when you click the “post” button for your comment. The plug-in will ask you to type two of them into the window. Please do so and then click the “I’m human” button.
Your comment will then appear in my “pending comments” queue. I’ll click “approve,” and it will appear in the comments below the blog post.
The next time you post a comment, you won’t see the captcha screen and your comment will appear right away!
Email me, if that’s not the way it’s working for you, and I’ll try to fix it. Or I’ll try a different captcha plug-in.
Fingers crossed!
Update 9/6/2014: I’ve received no reports of difficulty posting from my commenters, so yay! And the captcha has saved me from 21,923 spams thus far. I think it’s working. 😀
For more about blogging:
Copyright Statement for My Website
Why Create a Site Map?
Slow Blogging and Other Variations
New Home Page
I saw this parody of a phone meeting when the Passive Guy featured it on his blog, The Passive Voice.
Made me chuckle so much I had to share it with you all. 😀
My husband – who works for a large international corporation, is home-based here at Casa Ney-Grimm, and attends many phone meeitngs – assures me that this video is true to life in every respect. 😉 He has witnessed all too many of the depicted incidents.
Last year I shared my adventures wrapping gifts with bandannas. Bandannas remain part of my repertoire, as do purchased cloth bags and larger swatches of cloth that I give neat edges with pinking shears.
But all of those options stem from the Japanese furoshiki or “bath spread.”
They first came into use in the Nara Era to bundle one’s clothes while bathing in the public baths. The technique was borrowed by merchants as a convenient way to transport their wares. And then the furoshiki became a decorative covering for a gift.
Modern-day Japan is reviving the furoshiki.
This video shows two ways to tie a furoshiki. The first is new to me! I’m tempted to re-wrap some of my already wrapped presents, because it looks so cool. 😀
http://youtu.be/6fhPumcPla0
Here’s a few more furoshiki techniques.
And one more video:
Have fun with it!
For more green living tips:
Great Soap & Etcetera Quest
Green Housekeeping
Bandanna Gift Wrap
Mira’s Corner is a nifty little blog chronicling the adventures of the inner journey and the many ways the inner world dovetails with the outer.
So why am I telling you about Mira’s Corner? (Beside the fact that it’s cool!)
Because Mira kindly hosted a guest post of mine last May, and I suspect many of my newest readers have never seen it. Now’s your chance, because I’m reproducing it here. 😀
Edited to add: I just tested the links to Mira’s blog and discovered that it is now a private site, not open to the public. She’s a neat lady who comments occasionally on The Passive Voice. Perhaps you can catch up with her there.
Mira let me know that memoir and humor are appropriate topics for her Corner. So I’m “speaking” as a raconteur, although my humor tends toward dry and understated, rather than laugh-out-loud. I bring with me a tale of big-city misadventure (sort of!) married to its alter ego, pastoral steampunk fantasy.
How, you may ask, do urban high jinx tango with bucolic shenanigans? Not an obvious mix!
I will tell you.
It becomes more comprehensible, if you understand that:
1) my tale touches both my real-world history as a would-have-been grad student and my fantasy novel, Troll-magic; and
2) it involves neither city streets nor woodland groves, but a bedroom in darkness and a stranger.
Have I got you interested yet? Grin!
I was twenty-three, proudly sporting an architecture degree, and looking to make a career switch to psychology. I know—pretty strange; an unpleasant encounter with a nude pin-up poster in the all-male architecture firm where I worked one summer re-routed my destiny.
I applied to clinical psych programs (where the profs found my architecture education hard to swallow). Rutgers invited me to interview. I was thrilled. An interview at a tough program means you have a chance of being accepted.
I burbled the good news to all my acquaintance, including the master of the dojo where I studied martial arts.
He said: “Rutgers is just across the river from New York City! You have to visit Eamon!”
Eamon (name changed to protect the . . . almost innocent) was my teacher’s teacher. He’d traveled to Okinawa, Japan, the origin point for the martial art we practiced, in his dedication to become great. He headed up his own dojo in New York. Naturally, I must take a lesson from my master’s master.
“He’s got an apartment right there in the city,” declared my teacher. “He’ll be delighted to put you up!”
The arrangements were simple. My teacher phoned his teacher. I participated in a follow-on conversation to learn details for driving and parking (both challenging elements of the Big Apple). All was set.
When the day of my interview arrived, I left Virginia before dawn, arrived at Rutgers in plenty of time, and participated in a completely boring dialog with my interviewer. She asked only the predictable questions. Why are you leaving architecture for psychology? Are you crazy? (Well, no, she didn’t ask that, but you get the idea!)
My more interesting conversation took place after an accidental encounter in the hall. I have neither memory nor idea of how I wound up talking with a psych professor who was not (alas) in the clinical program, but I’ll always remember what we talked about.
I’d been wondering how a person’s will to do something was translated at its most basic level from intention into action.
When I’m sipping tea (my beverage of choice) and I form the intention to bring the mug to my lips, what is it that bridges the gap between “I will do this” and actually doing it? I suspect that’s an unanswerable mystery, the same sort of question as “what is the meaning of life?” or “what came before the Big Bang?”
But it turned out this professor had been wondering the same thing! We had a great discussion. And I like to think he put in a good word for me when the admissions committee reviewed all the applicants for the final cut. (No, I never did make it to graduate school, but that’s another story!)
So what does all this have to do with the city and dark bedrooms? Well, it doesn’t. Mere prelude. 😀 Now I’ll get on to the meat of my tale.
I drove into New York utilizing the precepts culled from my big city acquaintance: floor the accelerator as soon as the light turns green and whenever there’s clear space in the lane ahead. It worked well for me as a new adult.
Adrenaline spike and elevated heartbeat? Pure amusement park fare.
I survived and arrived.
There must have been dinner in there somewhere, but my memory skips to the class in Eamon’s dojo.
Honestly, it was just like class in my own teacher’s dojo: same routines, same exercises, same types of feedback. Intriguing to meet different personalities in the students and the teacher, sure, but hardly worth heading into NYC rather than home.
One sole difference stood out. In Virginia, class started at 7 p.m. and finished at 9:30 p.m. In New York, class started at 9 p.m. and ended shortly before midnight! Late city hours. Eamon’s day wasn’t done even then.
He ushered me into his apartment, showed me the guest room that would be mine, bade me goodnight, and departed to the rest of his evening. Okay.
I showered, grabbed PJ’s, read a little to unwind, turned out the light, and went to sleep. We’re finally getting to that dark bedroom!
I roused some time later to feel the far side of the bed dipping as someone climbed in.
I froze, even as my heart started to hammer.
I suppose he wasn’t a complete stranger. I knew it was Eamon, who I’d first met that day. But what on earth was I supposed to do? He was a fifty-gazillion black belt, and I was utterly alone in a big city where I knew no one.
I froze, and I stayed frozen. Waiting to see what would happen next.
What did happen?
Utterly nothing!
Eamon settled in on his side of the bed, never getting anywhere near me. (The bed was immense, bigger than a king.) He never spoke. I didn’t either. I don’t know how long I lay there in fear, waiting, waiting . . . but eventually I fell asleep.
In the morning, Eamon was gone—gone from the bedroom, gone from the apartment. I dressed, quickly packed, summoned my car from the garage, and drove all the way back to Virginia.
I don’t know why Eamon didn’t explain that his apartment possessed only one bedroom. (He didn’t give me a tour, and the layout wasn’t obvious, so I hadn’t guessed it on my own.) Why didn’t he offer me the living room couch? Or take it himself, if he felt inclined toward graciousness?
I never told anyone what had happened. I’d taken no harm. That was enough.
But when I wrote Troll-magic and arrived at the moment where Lorelin awakens in darkness, in the bedroom of an enchanted underground palace, to feel some stranger climbing in on the opposite side of the bed . . . well!
The the scene almost wrote itself. I’d lived it, after all!
Have you ever experienced what should have been danger, but (miraculously) wasn’t? Did you wish you’d handled it differently? Or were you satisfied with your choices? I remain befuddled by my own pseudo-escape. To this day, thirty years later, I’m not quite sure what to make of my NYC adventure. But I loved putting the scene into my story!
Troll-magic is available as an ebook.
Amazon I B&N I iTunes I Kobo I OverDrive I Smashwords
Or available as a trade paperback from:
Amazon I B&N I Book Depository I Fishpond
Mysterious Galaxy Books I Powell’s Books
Or you may order it from your local bookstore!
ISBN-10: 1977600166
ISBN-13: 978-1977600165
For more about Troll-magic, see:
Bazinthiad’s Fashions
Magic in the North-lands
Radices and Arcs
Character Interview: Lorelin
What Happened to Bazel?
For more author memoir, see:
Waterfall and Fairytale
Writer’s Journey
Three cheers! Skies of Navarys is available from all the e-tailers at last! (Kobo took a while to have the book go live. Not sure why.) But here it is, the very first tale about the lodestones of old and how they came to be.
Two friends. Two ways of approaching life. One dilemma.
Liliyah studies energea as all thirteen-year-olds in Navarys do, devoting her mornings to mastering the music that controls her magic. Afternoons, she hobnobs with the artisan crafters and shopkeepers who built the island city-state into the trade capital of the world.
Her friend Mago faces struggles unsuspected by carefree Liliyah. His father, a renowned inventor, succombs to irrational flashes of rage. His mother holds a lethal secret close.
When a royal geomancer announces that the goddess Evaia shrugs, every citizen on the island springs to action. Disaster waits on no one’s leisure! Amidst the uproar, the aeromancer Palujon steals Mago’s father’s latest invention: unique lodestones with the potential to revolutionize life as the Navareans know it.
Mago discovers the theft and vows to make good his father’s loss. But Liliyah questions Palujon’s motives. Why would a man of his stature break the law? Is he truly a rogue?
Two friends. Two answers. Life and death hang on their choices.
All seven electronic bookstores:
Amazon I B&N I Diesel I iTunes I Kobo I Smashwords I Sony
Twenty-five years ago, a fairy tale saved … well, what did it save?
Lives?
Possibly. The danger was real.
Two little girls from their terror? Yes, definitely.
Me with the challenge of removing two children from risk as swiftly as possible without becoming a shrew? Indeed!
So how did this fairy tale salvation come to pass?
It all started at Crabtree Falls.
The falls form an amazing series of cascades down a precipitous mountainside in Virginia’s Blue Ridge. The sheerest curtain of water, a drop of 400 feet, occurs at the very top where the stream hits the brink. White water and smaller cascades spurt from a second fall below the first one’s landing pool and then gentle to become a bright race flowing downhill fast.
The hike to the top is quite a climb. Possessing numerous hairpin turns, the path is ladder-like in spots and very steep everywhere else.
A dear college friend of mine – we’ll call her Aliana, to protect her privacy – invited me to visit the falls along with Eillis and Beatice, the two young daughters of her fiancé. (More aliases. :D)
It was spring, and the woodlands displayed delicate beauty: trees leafed out in pale green, shy flowers tucked between remnant drifts of autumnal fallen foliage, and the lace of the tumbling stream sluicing toward the valley floor.
Eillis was only four and “Bea,” just eight, but they were experienced hikers, accustomed to long walks and vigorous exercise with their outdoorsman father. I heard none of “I’m tired” or “I want to go home now” or “Are we there yet?” No, the girls were enjoying the climb as much as Aliana and I were. Young, strong legs on all of us!
The top, after two hours of ascent, was glorious! The stream ran swiftly, but smoothly through sparsely spaced saplings and then out across a grassy open space to rocks. Next, the brink! And the plunge to the pool below. The view from the grassy glade showcased the ridge on the other side of the valley, a panorama that delighted my unexplored inner landscape painter. The vignette at the base of the falls was harder to appreciate. Access for the trail wasn’t possible (and leaving the trail, not safe), so we peered up past a secondary fall to glimpse the primary one. I think we hiked the path between the two vantage points several times to enjoy their differing magic!
It was hard to leave. We lingered at the brink, awed by its abruptness. As we deliberated pressing all the way up the gentle slope to the crest, a dark cloud boiled over the ridge.
Ah, yes. Traditional weather in the mountains of Virginia. Clear, blue, and sunny on one side of the ridge, pouring rain on the other.
This cloud wasn’t dropping rain, but it had an ominous look: pale gray on its edges, darkest gray, almost black, in the main mass, and an ugly yellow halo.
Aliana and I turned as one to retrace our steps, herding the girls with us. We made it past the base of the falls before the first raindrops arrived. We traversed two hairpin turns more before the first lightning strike flashed and crashed.
Eillis whimpered, and Aliana swept her up in a swift hug. But four years old is too big for carrying down a mountain. And Bea had stopped dead, white-eyed.
Another bolt of lightning stabbed down a short way off in the woods. We stood in danger of being struck. We needed to get down off that mountain! Fast!
“Have you ever heard the story of the twelve dancing princesses?” I asked.
Two heads shook from side to side. No, they hadn’t.
“It’s a good one! Would you like me to tell it while we walk?”
Two nods.
Eillis had relaxed enough that we could shift her around to piggyback. And Bea grabbed my hand when I offered it.
Then we ran. (I know. That carries risk too. Young ankles!)
Introducing the mystery of the twelve pairs of tattered dancing slippers got us another three hairpin turns downhill.
The youngest son seeking his fortune – meeting an old wisewoman with two magical seeds and good advice – took us to the third cascade in the rushing stream.
The fortune-seeking youth acquiring a spot as gardener on the castle grounds, using the magical bay laurel plants to garb himself as a prince, and then invisibly following the twelve princesses through enchanted forests of copper, silver, and gold ushered us to the rolicking brook on its gentler slope, along with the long-delayed downpour.
The lightning strikes stayed behind us on the upper slopes and we arrived at our vehicle safe, but soaking wet. A bedraggled blanket partially dried Eillis and Bea. Once the car engine warmed up, we cranked the heat on high.
The drive to the girls’ cabin took just the right amount of time. I told of the underground crystal palace and the ball there, then the two additional nights when the gardener boy followed the princesses to their secret revels.
As we turned into the cabin driveway, the rain stopped, and I was ready to intone the words: “They lived happily ever after!”
Our adventure was complete.
Have you ever been caught in a thunderstorm on a mountain or other exposed situation? How did you make it to safety? Any story telling involved?
Warning: If you ever hike Crabtree Falls yourself, please do not try to reach the vantage point shown in the first photo on this post. It’s lethally dangerous. “Forest Wander” (the photographer) was lucky. Many other intrepid hikers have not been. Twenty-eight people died – one just last month – when they left the trail and climbed too close to the falls. Don’t be a casualty!
For more memoir, see:
Writer’s Journey
Visitor’s Surprise
