A void where nothing is determined, so all is chaos. Not Decided. Not like words on a page in indelible ink. Words graven. Words marked. Words that march, like great monoliths, across the whiteness and bring order.
My
own
personal
army
out
to
conquer
my
empire
one
page
at
a
time.
A whole world of my own governance. Ruled, not with iron but ink. Its every border demarked. It’s every law recorded and known. Such is my world. This world that I rule. A god among my creations. Their ending and beginning. Their maker and unmaker. I am.
Thanks to meighana for her help editing. See her awesome work here
Hello all, so based on feedback from a few awesome readers, I have sharpened up my novel synopsis, shown below. Please know that any comments are greatly appreciated. I can’t tell you how helpful any feedback is.
The temple was quick to call it a gift of prophesy, while such a gift was useful. Llani discovers that her ability is much less of a blessing when she’s spouting omens of death and destruction on the head of the high priest, Isak Tornin. Charged with blasphemy and named a false prophet, Llani discovers that the Goddess Jordaine is not done blessing her yet. With the Empire of Braeth facing a united army of the Western Hill Tribes for the first time in generations, many people are looking for favor in the eyes of the Goddess of War.
Does this seem more direct? Cleaner? I feel like someone without background could easily become lost in the paragraph’s details before.
It is my belief that progress happens when you hold yourself accountable to someone. Hello several virtual someones to whom I am now making a report on my progress.
Fleshing out my main villain- Isak- was the task I set for myself last update. This was a task that absolutely could not be put off and needed to happen before any further work was done.
In early versions I thought it was more unsettling if Llani didn’t know what he was doing so she and the reader got blindsided by his plans, however after reflection- Llani can still get blindsided, its actually more engaging and suspenseful if the audience watches the trap unfolding. In my opinion it’s going well. With more background on our baddie it is becoming clearer that he isn’t deranged and hateful just to be deranged and hateful.
He truly and wholeheartedly believes that Llani wants to bring lasting harm to the temple and the people of the city.
He believes that all sin must be expunged, in the old testament sense of things- If the right hand sins better to cut it off and all that.
He believes this for good reason. Sin that humans do not deal with tends to be smitten (smote?), by any god or gods who get peeved enough. Gods don’t have very accurate aim. It is directly conducive to living a long lifespan in a city that doesn’t get wiped off the map by the next natural disaster or conquering army, to ensure evil does not become large enough for one of the five gods to notice, get irritated with, and smite. This is particularly true when one serves the Goddess of war, who is incidentally known for deciding and meting out Heaven’s Justice.
D) Other, significantly less fanatical people agree with him for similar and different reasons and view Llani and what she represents with distrust and see the necessity of working to contain her influence.
In the midst of all this, I discovered a yawning hole in the plot that focuses on his first attempt to kill Llani.
I had decided that he would be partially successful, one of Llani’s closest allies- Cedes would be killed. And since she was going to die I sorta had her lie down and die. That was it, if she fought her death the audience didn’t see it. Her family was even accepting of the fact that Cedes was going to be sacrificed. The one to save the many.
Upon further reflection that is absolute bullshit for the character as an individual and the family as a group. Instead they are going to wreck shit up. It shall be glorious. Vendettas and hatred to last ten generations, and a mother figure’s decision that if no one will lift a finger to save her child she will watch the whole world burn and lay the ashes on Cede’s grave so her soul may rest easy. And striking the match. And stepping back. And staring into the eyes of the one who betrayed her loyalty, as every network of support he ever built on her and her families loyalty goes up like paper in a bonfire.
Yes. It shall be wonderful.
Stay tuned, my focus for the next update will be
Making the mother figure- Brenna more visibly vital, so her defection hurts more
Giving Cedes more screen time so the reader doesn’t want her to die
Making clearer that although the Prince’s foremost trait is Honor. (He always believes himself in the right, because technically he is. His every action is to uphold the Empire’s Justice.) His actions are still wrong, and a betrayal to those whom he owes loyalty, and there are consequences for betrayal.
It has more sharp teeth than any carnivore has a right to. Its haunches and shoulders are humped and packed with muscle. Large paws show large black claws that scratch the earth with each deliberate flex of those gray-black paws. The breath is putrid, pouring from between those great yellowed teeth in miasmic huffs.
It’s not going to be any of those that get you. It’s the fear. You’re frozen by it, because you’re prey and instinctually you know it. You heart is beating in your throat, in your ears, nigh coming out of your chest. It’s trying to get the most out of the time it has left. Conversely, your breath is stuck in your lungs; your swollen heart is blocking it. You can’t scream, you can’t cry, you can barely breathe. That’s probably best. This is the ultimate the predator, best to move as little as possible.
It doesn’t matter that you are its evolutionary superior. It doesn’t matter that you can read and write, build tools, that yours is a brain that has the ability to build weapons that can wipe out thousands in a bright flash. Right here, right now the fact you have cognitive abilities that this creature can’t dream of is irrelevant. Here, the meaning of life is simple, survival of the fittest. You are a bald, naked, pink creature, with no claws and blunt teeth. Your muscles are weak and the way you walk exposes all your vital organs, neck, belly, throat.
You are Food.
Then it springs. You are dead in a simple crunch of teeth on fragile bone and cartilage.
But you were dead when it first caught you in its dull hungry gaze.
–G.A. Buba
Stripped Asiatic Hyena
Its been a busy week, will try to post more regularly
8:10 AM is seared into my eyelids by my phone screen.
I’m clocking 3 hours of sleep for the fourth night in a row and I feel like it.
Because Finals Week isn’t depressing enough, my phone pipes up with a very cheering reminder that it is in fact Friday the Thirteenth
Bad Things happen today, so I wear my lucky testing necklace, and I dress to kill, red lipstick, hair up.
Failure hurts less when you look good.
…
12:11 PM
The hollow pounding in my skull is probably what’s left of my analytical reasoning trying its damnedest to squeeze out of my head through my eye sockets. Lunch is a haze of leaning on someone’s shoulder, nodding my head at the appropriate points in the conversation while trying to simultaneously keep my eyes open and eat a decent meal before I walk home to my apartment.
…
1:12 PM
Rain… it is raining. Everything is cold and damp and I am entirely apathetic toward the situation. The apartment is dark and empty, but in the bed is a welcoming cocoon of blankets. No sooner am I face down, I am asleep.
…
2:13 PM
The ring of my phone is like a jolt of electricity straight to the heart and reflex has it at my ear before I register I am in fact awake.
“Hello?”
The silence on the other end is broken by a few choked breaths, and I can feel my throat closing. Nononononono…
“Baby?”
“Yeah, mama?”
“It’s grandpa… he passed away this morning.”
I hold my breath, waiting for it to start to hurt…but it doesn’t…I just feel numb.
Mama is sobbing on the line and I can’t think of a thing to say. My heart is in my throat. I want to deny it. He can’t be! I was there just last weekend!
“It’s alright though… the Alzheimer’s never got as bad as it could have. He was happy… at the end.”
I know! I was there! He remembered who I was and he asked me how my engineering classes were, and he sang karaoke after thanksgiving dinner, and he was so happy. He can’t be dead. A person can’t just die like that.
“The memorial service is Wednesday. I want you to concentrate on you finals. Don’t worry about this. Do good, and then come home.”
It’s hard to find something to say, “Alright mama, I will. I love you. I’ll be there soon. Bye,” it sounds so meaningless I almost wish I hadn’t said anything.
I can almost see her, red faced from crying, dark circles under her eyes, “OK, Baby, I love you, Bye.”
The line goes dead and I stare at it for a long while. Slowly, I crawl back under the covers and close my eyes.
…
3:14 PM
What do you do, when someone you’ve lived with for nine years is dead? Should I put a picture of him on Facebook “RIP Grandpa P. I will always—”
That seems to be what everyone else in the family has done.
Is there something wrong with me? I don’t want anybody else to know. I don’t want the page of single sentence blurbs, “Our prayers go out to—”
If I can just keep it quiet, where no one but me knows, no one will ask. If no one asks, I will not cry, and it won’t really be real. If I don’t cry none of it’s real and I can just be. numb.
…
4:15 PM
I’ve realized I don’t want to go home. If I go home everyone will be crying and sobbing and grieving… I am afraid I will stand there, dry eyed, face tingling, everything far far away, like I am now, and then they will know something is wrong with me.
I feel so strange, like I’m stuffed full of cotton balls, and all I want to do is sleep, but I can’t , there are finals and papers, and I can’t just shut down.
So I won’t and I don’t… but nothing seems real real.
Wednesday 1: 17 pm
The memorial service is like watching a funeral on television for a character who’s name you know but whose face you can’t recall. It’s not real. It really isn’t, until a slideshow starts to play and Dr. Antonio Penaloza’s voice, cracked with age, begins to sing. His voice fills up the tiny church as he belts out To God be the Glory, and I Will Always Love You at the top of his lungs. My eyes, dry till now are suddenly overrun with tears, too much to blink back though I try, slowly deep achy sobs drag themselves out of my chest, and I clutch my mother’s hand as my aunt presses tissues into my hand so I can contribute to the small mountain that is forming between the three of us.
–G.A. Buba
In memory of my Grandfather Dr. Antonio Penaloza who passed away on December 15th 2013. Loss is hard, we all deal with it in our own ways. Rest in peace grandpa. We miss you every day.
For when you need to believe in life after death G.A. Buba
So I’m a Writer. That’s what I tell people anyway when I’m not glaring daggers at hydraulic modeling software that’s decided, yes it really does want to crash for the seventh time this 9 hour working period, thanks for asking, also known as my day job.
This blog was started not only as a place to put my short stories, occasional poetry, food rants, and travel writing, but as a place to log progress made on my novel. It’s been an ongoing project for about five or six years now, which is back on the front burner after an editor friend took a hack at the first finalized rough draft last summer. The work of my youth was callously hacked it in to two books and I was bluntly told do a full rewrite of the first half of the first book which seemed as though it’d been written by a histrionic and verbose teen who thought concision was for pussies. Which, in her defense, it had.
If you ever want true conformation that you’re writing’s improved go take a gander at something you wrote five years ago. I dare you. If you’re lucky it won’t be something integral to an ongoing project and you can wince and laugh a bit to yourself about adverb usage and the all too seductive ellipse and move on. If you’re not lucky then we should chat about revamping a story that appealed to teenaged-you into something now-you wants to have their name publically attached to. But that’s neither here nor there. At present, I have two nearly completed novels each with a full story arch, a batch of memorable characters that hardly seem anything like the people that sixteen year old me thought up and a lot of loose ends and things to improve on bulleted in a dog eared notebook.
Here are some of the highlights that I’m going to focus my energy on this month:
Isak, our villain with a capital V. Why are we afraid of him? What can he do, in concrete detail that makes him dangerous to cross. It is said but not shown. We almost never see him, he always just pops in with his newest scheme without warning.
Show what happens to people who cross him
Show what happened to Marcella
Show his power over the lesser of the other 5 temples
Suggestions, comments, and good thoughts sent in my general direction are appreciated. Here’s my story pitch again for anyone interested.
The temple was quick to call it a gift of prophesy, while such a gift was useful. Llani discovers that her ability is much less of a blessing when she’s spouting omens of death and destruction on the head of the high priest, Isak Tornin. But even charged with blasphemy and named a false prophet, fallen from grace, the Goddess Jordaine, High Lady of the Heavens, is not done blessing Llani yet. After all, with the Empire of Braeth facing a war with the western hill tribes come summer, many people are looking for favor in the eyes of the Goddess of War.
Long fingers spread, examine, and manipulate the gossamer threads. They often pause, simply feeling out the texture of a single fiber. When they move it is with utmost care and deliberation. A twist here, an artful coil there, several threads woven to create an intricate braid, which then winds its way across the board bisecting hundreds of other threads, some which join the plait, others continuing on without much deviation, despite the meeting. Often, very often, one long, graceful hand will drop away from the forest of threads and returning will bear a small knife. A single thread, or occasionally several, will be separated from the rest, those long fingers will pull them taunt, and snip.
Painless.
From that stump a new thread of a different shade will be seamlessly connected and the web will again be ready to work a pattern.
Behind the woman who ties her knots upon the floor of the chamber, a room so vast its far reaches vanish in shadow, lies deep pools and swaths of the great tapestry. Its luxurious folds lay in vast mounds around the frame. It runs in unruly paths around the legs of the three legged stool. It piles in drifts against one edge of the loom. It wraps about the ankles of the weaver. So that it is good the maker does not plan on leaving the craft. Its valleys and mounds vanish outside the pool of light cast by two lanterns, one before the loom, and one behind, to illuminate the labor.
Swift hands continue their work, never ceasing. They do not know when they will at last rest. They have not tired of their toil, and do not yet know when the ache of the joints and the press of the threads will no longer fit the hand which took up the task. On they labor, late, late, late, upon a hundred thousand filaments at the finger tip, each just begging to be given a fate. Colors blending seamlessly, patterns seem to bend before the eye as if one who stares too hard they will lose sight of the design altogether. The hands do not know the pattern that will come. They do not know which strands must be removed and what new tones will become a part of the work. The hands of the maker and unmaker, substantiate the design of the one, who sees the whole pattern, and only in the instant before understands what is to come.
Here it lies every story ever told, every life ever lived. Here it lies every life and story unborn and yet to live. Here it lies the weaver, the watcher. Here it lies the room, two lamps, a stool, and of course…
the world.
–G.A. Buba
I never imagined God as an old bearded white man in a robe
So for anyone interested here’s the quick pitch for my novel, And They Called Her Stormbringer.
The temple was quick to call it a “gift of prophesy”, while such a gift was useful. Llani discovers that her ability is much less of a blessing when she’s spouting omens of death and destruction on the head of the high priest, Isak Tornin. But even charged with blasphemy and named a false prophet, fallen from grace, the Goddess Jordaine, High Lady of the Heavens, is not done blessing Llani yet. After all, with the Empire of Braeth facing a war with the western hill tribes come summer, many people are looking for favor in the eyes of the Goddess of War.
Does this seem interesting? Would you like to know more? I have issues talking about my novel, I’ve been writing practice pitches. Feedback is appreciated. I much prefer shoving my writing under someone’s nose and going:
Me: “Read.”
Hapless Friend: “But what am I reading?”
Me: “Doesn’t matter, just read.”
—G.A. Buba
Check the new pen I got, its Japanese and has a warning label on it in itsy bitsy print. “Retract after use.” I love nice pens, particularly pens concerned you might harm yourself with themselves enough to post neat little warnings
The last thirty minutes of a six hour drive is always the longest. Every pothole looks familiar. You know how to drive these roads at night, in the rain, with headlights shining in your face, half asleep or half drunk. This is so close to home you can taste it. Your mind is already leaps and bounds ahead, and it’s like no time has passed at all.
You’ll pull in the drive and tumble out into the cold, and tell everyone all about school and the friends and the guy you just met, but he seems so nice…
And that’s when it hurts. It’s sudden, like a fist to the gut, like all the air’s been sucked out of the car and replaced with bleach. You can’t miss people constantly that would be crippling. So you don’t. You forget. You pretend that home is exactly like it was when you lived there every day… except it’s not.
The house that looks so familiar will be cold and empty and full of stale air, most of the innards that made it home, pictures, dirty clothes, things that indicate the presence of people are gone, packed into neat little boxes stacked in unused rooms, or brought with them halfway around the world. Most of the pets have been given away to friends and neighbors, who can care for them better while the family is abroad.
It’s so…so stupid that for a minute you let yourself think you were going HOME. Because you’re not, it’s not home anymore. Home is family. Home is the smell of Dad’s cooking, the cat petting himself on your shins, and everyone’s shoes spread out in a blast pattern from the back door. All those things have picked up and moved across the Atlantic. You’re really just driving to a particularly familiar storage closet that holds your winter clothing. You shouldn’t have let yourself get excited for that.
–G.A. Buba
Driving home
It’s hard to go home when you know nothing will be the same
This is the graveyard shift, the long hours after Dad’s finally too exhausted to drive in the wee hours of the morning until they stop for breakfast at ten. Everyone is asleep. My sister barely lasted thirty minutes awake before she knocked out, feet leaving foggy imprints on the windshield, tucked under a blanket stolen from the parents in the back. The Bobcat, or the Coyote or some other tiny country station is buzzing static as I drive further from Amarillo. The roads a grey swath under yellow headlights, and the only thing I’ve seen in miles is eighteen wheelers blinding me with their headlights as they go barreling north the other way on this tiny two lane highway.
Seven exits after the red light on the dash pings a strident warning, the yellow glow of a Love’s sign pops up beside the next overpass. I exit pulling in under those too bright white lights, and my sister makes a muted protest. The door comes open with a rush of cold. It’s a matter of minutes ever more tedious minutes to get the tank filling. It’s one of those that have to be depressed by hand, and 16 gallons seems ever so long, and the smell of gasoline is doing odd things in the cold that is burning her fingers.
Thankfully a run quick run indoors offers climate control. Finally the real reason for insanely large gas station cups is revealed. Coffee. Large, and more a vector by which to imbibe cream and sugar. It runs hot through her veins and the remainder of the night is spent in a pleasant buzz of caffeine and jittery fingers on the wheel tapping out to old country classics she hasn’t heard in years but hey—Thank God and Greyhound She’s Gone!
G.A. Buba
Coffee and country make for the best company on late night drives
Start with ripe peaches, so soft your fingertips bruise them as you lift them out of the paper sack from the roadside stand. Find a big pot and blanch them till their fuzzed, dusky skins are all bright orange and sunset red. Take a moment to hold chilled blanched peaches in your hand, remember the skin soft as wet velvet, and that smell like sunshine and syrup filling up the kitchen. Peel them and make a stack, sticky sweet and blushing, smooth as blown glass bubbles.
For the filling brown sugar and a little bit of molasses. Mix in the lemon juice last and let the lemon oils from the bright dimpled skin stay on your hands, grandma always said it would make your skin soft. Sprinkle in cinnamon and nutmeg and breath in as you mix, let the smell of nutmeg bite at the back of your throat.
Pit your peaches, remember the difference between the smooth orangey outsides and the bloody veins at the center. Get sticky, yellow juice all down to your elbows. Lick it off when no one’s looking. Mix the fruit into the spices with your hands, you’ll thank me when you get to taste the peach syrup lining your palms.
Add an extra three tablespoons of butter to the crust because diets are stupid anyway. Pour a dash of vanilla extract because you’re feeling decadent. Bake until peaches are bubbling through a flaky brown crust and the whole house smells like cinnamon. Enjoy with vanilla ice cream melted on top, make sure it’s the same brand of vanilla your mom bought for hot summer days, because trust me it will taste better than the $12 container that hardly holds 6 oz but has “real Mexican vanilla beans”.
G.A. Buba 