Little Scribbles

DR: Daniel's Teaser

2010-08-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Characters, etc. belong to me. This is narrated to Daniel's POV and slight spoilers are contained, as it takes place AFTER Dark Redemption.

To clarify things. First, I never wanted to save the world. All I wanted was to make things better for those I care about. My family, my friends, even those kids at the Academy who pick on other students.

Second point of clarification. I never once dreamed we'd be in so much danger. It was a harmless simulation, designed to pass away the hours of the afternoon and procrastinate on a pile of homework from Ms. Turner's AP biology class. Maybe if I'd known we were going to almost be killed like that, I wouldn't have dragged Bridget along.

But what does one do when thrust into a situation where the fate of the world is at stake? What if you simply cannot do anything to make things better? At that point, do your choices even matter anymore? Contrary to popular belief, perhaps questions have no easy answers. Maybe the right answer is different from person to person and dependent on the situation.

Yet then again, maybe not. From the very beginning (even though I never read the books written by Ms. Adams), I knew that Synistra had to be evil and we, as the heroes, had to be the good guys. I have always known that the good guys have to win in the end, but when I was younger, I didn't understand why CJ was so hesitant. I think I do know why now; my time in Almendrim has taught me that evil never goes down without a fight. The good guys still win in the end, but it's never easy.

And maybe that's why I did what I did. I chose to do what was necessary to help the good guys defeat the evil guys in the end and no choice comes without sacrifice.

OT: Layout

2010-07-30T21:18:00.001-07:00

Just to let you know, the layout that I was using on this blog (and on my other blog) broke, so I am now using one of the default blogger templates. Let me know what you think.

Dark Redemption: Meet the Characters

2010-06-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

As the clock ticks and the time gets shorter and shorter, it is up to six teenagers to save two worlds. Six teenagers and one computer genius.

He never told them it would be easy, but even Seven McAllistair, head programmer for Nikolai Kwaitowski's corporation, had not foreseen these challenges. For one thing, all this was supposed to be a game... a harmless source of entertainment. But no one had counted on the entire system being tampered with, least of all him.

By far, sixteen-year-old avid gamer Jake Saunders was the most enthusiastic about testing out Return to Almendrim: Rise of Synistra, but as tensions grow thick and he finds himself responsible not only for his own well-being, but also the well-being of others, can the young knight who doesn't believe in nonsense, Thomas Winston rise to the occasion? Or will Jake allow his own emotions to cloud his ability to make decisions that could affect the fate of two worlds and billions of people?

At fourteen, Emily Merquet is easily the "baby" of the group, but she's far from inexperienced. Growing up with a brother and a sister who loved fantasy games, Emily decided to create Aviella Nims, a fire-breathing scout character. Although not involved in much combat, Emily has always enjoyed the scout's versatility in challenging situations where she has to solve puzzles. But a piece of the puzzle is missing and even the resourceful Avi can't seem to solve it. Will Emily let her inability to find more information jeopardise their ability to bring about the downfall of the Dark Mage?

Fifteen-year-old Natalie Chandler has always been creative... and a bit of a diva. So when Jake asks her who her character will be, she just smiles. After seeing what the rest of the group has picked, she decides to create her alternate persona as a half-Elf... with a secret past. Like her creator, Leah King has always been a star. But unlike the sparkleful girl, Leah has more than her share of hurt and shame to overcome. Will she be able to put the past behind her and give her all for the team? Or will the shining star fall short once again?

"You need a healer character?" Bridget Page listened carefully as the premise of the game was being explained to the five others who gathered in the circle. "Sure, I'll do it, I guess." She moved over to the computer console, where Seven patiently attached the cords to her arms, legs and torso, just as he'd done to Jake moments before. As Bridget closed her eyes, she saw the character creation screen and selected Healer. The game suggested that her character should be either a Human or a Dwarf and the blonde girl's mouth dropped open in amazement. There were so many choices! How was she ever going to choose just one? As a middle-aged human, Shaina faces many choices. It's obvious she respects Thomas, but when Vandimir leaves the group, does she follow him and make sure he stays out of trouble? Or should she stay loyal to Thomas and the others?

Seventeen-year-old Daniel Verity was always the quiet, model student, never doing anything out of the ordinary... until he decided to stop by Gale's Games one winter afternoon. When Mr. McAllistair explains the premise of the simulation to the teenagers, Daniel is instantly captivated and eagerly agrees to try it out. Thus, Joseph was born. As a mischivous gnome with the power to enter (and change) dreams people have, Joseph has quite the ability to wreak havoc. But one night while he and Vandimir are on their watch, he sees something that genuinely frightens him: a dark, hooded figure sitting in a seat of power. The morale of the group is already down and if he tells everyone else what he saw, it'll only make things worse. Will Joseph have the courage to stand up to the truth when questioned by the others? Or will he cower behind lies and illusions, like he's done in the past?

Alannah Sharpe, better known as Al, wasn't in this because she wanted to be. No, Jake had tricked her into testing this out and she's not pleased. Even less amused at the whole situation is Vandimir Silvermoon, a calloused Elven scholar who prefers to keep his nose in a book. As Vandimir begins to push others away from him, it becomes apparent that because of his choices, his task is the most difficult of all. When the Midnight Angel comes to visit and warns Vandimir that the fate of both worlds now rests in his hands, will Alannah swallow her pride and ask for help? Or will both worlds fall because she's too stubbourn to accept the help that's been offered?

As the fate of both worlds collides, will these six youths unite against the coming evil and rise to the occasion? Or will they fall into darkness, like many before them have?

Dark Redemption: Overview

2010-05-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

"Jake! Are you sure this is a good idea?" The sound of Alannah's hiss barely made it to the freckled boy's ears. Alannah, better known as Al, frowned and narrowed her eyes as she placed the bracelet around her left wrist.

"Have I ever steered you wrong?"

"This had better work!" She glared over at her best friend, who could only smile. This was the moment he'd been waiting years for, but Al wasn't so sure. Both teenagers closed their eyes and plunged into the darkness. Moments later, Jake opened his eyes and blinked.

"Uhm, Al?" He looked around for any sign of his best friend, but all he saw was a cloaked figure who was quite a bit taller than he was and obviously male. He turned towards the being. "I don't think we're in Gale's Games anymore..."

And so the adventure begins...

As the dynamic duo begins to travel the world of Almendrim, strange things begin to happen. There's a war brewing in Sininen over who's going to be the next ruler of the free world and there have been rumours in the East that an ancient magic is growing more and more powerful. Back in the "real world", things start to go awry and a young mage who possesses the ability to travel between planes tells Al and Jake that the fates of both worlds are intertwined. Even worse, Kwaitkowski's research manager told them that they only have a set amount of time in the virtual world. Can Al, Jake and the others find a way to stop this terrible force from being released and get back to their world before time runs out?

In this epic tale, you'll see a variety of old friends, such as Ashiaro, an experienced ranger; Eirhian, a jaded healer who has her own agenda; Mark, a young bounty hunter; Tem, a snarky mage who can control time; and Synistra, an ancient being with an insatiable desire to unlock the secrets of the past.

You'll also meet new characters, such as Ceryn, a young female assassin who's too pretty for her own good; Rochben, a knight who is committed to upholding justice... and of course Alannah, Jake and the rest of their friends and family.

Stay tuned for more information!

The Angel (a poem)

2010-03-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

This is just a poem I wrote this afternoon. I see no need to comment on the content. Too bad our poem for class is not a free poem; if it was, I would probably use this. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it.

The Angel

Torn in two and scattered
across the empty room
Broken pieces, abandoned
Because nobody cares.

Scenes of a struggle,
Fighting between friends.
Only sound made by
the ticking of the clock.

A tall girl slumped
against the far wall hides
her tear-stained face
from prying people.

A picture of an angel,
white wings spread wide,
ready to fly, to soar,
lies broken on the floor.

Friendship ripped to shreds is
an angel torn in two,
lying there, broken because
nobody picks up the pieces.

The White Knight, draft 1

2010-02-19T14:04:00.000-08:00

The White Knight

He launches himself over his allies,
Darts crookedly across the field
Surrounded by enemies, he retreats.

He calls out for assistance,
Now joined by a hooded man.
They launch their counter-assault.

Battle rages on and in the
End, few are left standing.
Black retaliates. White retreats.

King is protected by only his castle.
White makes his move, capturing
Black’s last competent defense.

Knight to f6. Check. Fails
to see the smallest soldier, who
Knifes him. He is killed.

The sacrifice is not in vain.
Cloaked figure to f5. King falls.
Checkmate. White wins.

Draft one of a poem due today for Creative Writing. I thought you might enjoy it...

Object Poem: Draft One

2010-02-10T16:41:00.001-08:00

We had to write a poem for an English class I am taking this semester and here is my first draft... I kind of like it, actually. The assignment was to write about an object and how it relates to yourself, so I chose my glasses. It was kind of amusing, seeing as how a few days ago, I lost them and I had to spend a day without them, which proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be.

I may or may not be updating this with changes, so we'll see how the editing process goes and I'll see what people have to say about it. There are a few people that I'd like to get critiques from before I do too much editing... but you can read it. Hope you enjoy!

Pieces of glass
surrounded by metal
fit firmly around my face.
They have become
attached, forever a part of
me.

Without them, I
cannot see the world
so clearly. The
light filters through
the optics and I can see.

This piece of metal,
plastic and glass changes
my vision.
Lines are no longer blurry
and colours are no longer
spots. With one addition,
I feel human
again.

I do hope you enjoyed this and I also apologise for not posting in quite awhile. I've been busy with classes and hopefully with this English class I'm taking, I'll actually be writing stuff worth posting and posting it.

Elisha's Staff

2009-12-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

Just a little piece about Elisha that I had a bit of fun writing. I hope you enjoy it and have a very merry Christmas!~

CRACK! As I held the handle of my katana, the blade snapped in two. Fear raced through my body and every muscle in my body tensed up all at once. Both my hands started shaking and I could feel all the colour drain from my face as I stared at the Nwalmiel. All my energy left my body and I felt sick, like I was going to throw up. With no strength left, I dropped to my hands and knees, what was left of my sword clattering to the stone ground.

"Get up." A voice that I'd never heard before in my life came from above me and I could feel myself pulled into a standing position by a hand that was a good deal larger and stronger than mine. "Hand me the sword." Since it was dark, I couldn't get a good look at the man's face, but he was a good deal taller than I am. Not that being taller than I am is that difficult. I did as I was told and he held Jordan's katana in his hands for long moment. "This must be returned to its rightful owner."

I slipped my dark blue cloak over my shoulders and turned to leave the room, but Jordan's voice grabbed my attention before I could take more than a step and a half. "Take my sword," he said. "You need it more than I do and it'll help you remember everything you've been taught. Laika will serve you well." He placed the katana and its sheath in my hands, gave me a pat on my shoulder and then turned and walked out of the room.

He held a plain wooden staff in his own calloused hands, with what appeared to be some sort of binding around the center. "This is no ordinary staff," he said, handing it to me. It felt heavy in my hands for the first few moments I held it, but it gradually got lighter. "It may look like nothing special, but its abilities are tied to your willpower. Keep yourself strong and focused and your staff will serve you well." He paused for a moment and I could see a faint blue light radiating from the stick I held in my left hand. "Keep it with you at all times. The Enemy will try to take it from you, but you must not let that happen. Now," here, he put his hands on my shoulders, "go in peace, my child."

The girl nodded and handed my staff back to me. "The Master gave it to you, didn't he?" she asked, the same smile that was on her lips dancing in those blue eyes of hers. I nodded. "You'll learn how to use it and don't even think about letting it go." Her own hand dropped down to touch the hilt of her sword. "The Enemy won't be able to do much against a weapon like that." She reached out and gave me a hug. "We'll talk later, alright?"

With one hand in my pocket and the other hand holding my staff, I set out from the courtyard of the castle and into the surrounding forest. Although it is sad every time I must leave, I'm sure that I'll be back to see both her and the Master again. But now, I must complete the mission that was given to me.

Meeting Allison

2009-12-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

The young bounty hunter crossed the room. It was rather crowded and he cared little for paying attention to the latest gossip, which Lin seemed to be the center of. Well, Lin and Naomi. Elisha's nose wrinkled slightly; he knew he would never understand the female mind and its need to speak incessently of all the latest happenings, including the arrival of a new informant for the Resistance.

"You ought to go greet her." Mark motioned to where Jordan was speaking to a small girl with short blonde hair. Or Elisha only assumed she was a girl by her unusually petite frame, but really, it was hard to tell from the fifty meters away that the two boys stood, just watching. "Eh, doesn't really matter one way or another. Looks like she's getting the royal treatment from Lin over there." A slight frown crossed Mark's face.

"Aye, maybe I should," Elisha answered, almost the exact same frown crossing his darker face. "Lin really needs to learn to treat newcomers with respect or there'll be no one left to help us." There was a slight pause and the grasp on his quarterstaff tightened until his knuckles were white. "And right now, we need all the good help we can get. There's no way Ran is going to let Lin go out and spy." Using the wooden stick for a bit of extra support, he half-limped to where Jordan was standing, talking to the new arrival. Mark followed partway in silence, then broke off to go talk to Ran.

As Elisha approached, Jordan turned around and nodded towards the shorter youth. "This is Allison, a new recruit," he held his hand out towards the girl. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go speak to Harcourt and Ran and I'll leave the two of you to get acquainted." Without waiting for Elisha to protest, Jordan turned around and let his long legs carry him effortlessly across the room.

The younger bounty hunter frowned to himself and winced slightly, still annoyed with himself for slipping down the riverbank when he, Naomi, Mark and Lin went out for a short excursion the week before. Another few days of limping around like this and then he knew he'd be back to normal before the end of the week, but the fourteen-year-old couldn't help feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prick up when he saw Lin and Mark sparring and he had to sit on the sidelines, just watching.

"What's your name, Darkie?" The girl looked up at him, meeting his dark hazel eyes with her own light brown ones. "I'm Allison, or that's what everyone calls me." She looked him over and he could feel a piercing stare. "You're not a very good fighter, are you?"

The very tips of Elisha's ears heated up and it felt like they were once again subjected to the hot desert summer afternoon. He had only been that far out of the town a few times, even though his ancestors were originally from the desert tribes to the east. "Why should I give you my name?" After a moment, Elisha met her piercing gaze with his own more subtle one. "You obviously haven't given me yours, at least not your real one."

"Then can I call you Darkie?" When Elisha shrugged, the girl perked up and bounced away, leaving the bounty hunter more confused than ever. By the time he turned around, Mark was standing behind him. The taller bounty hunter had picked up the habit of being able to sneak up quietly behind people; it especially annoyed Lin.

"You know I don't like giving out my name," Elisha's voice dropped down to a whisper. "To know another person's name is to hold power over them and it's not something I need to deal with right now, so don't even think about it."

Sigh. I really don't like how that piece turned out, but whatever. I think it would've been better (especially at the end) if it had been a first person narration to Elisha's POV. And just to let you know, "Darkie" is a rather derogative term used to refer to someone from the desert, but Elisha either doesn't know or doesn't care. Meh, I might as well let you read this...

Scene between Elisha and Mark

2009-12-02T12:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, wow... it's been over a month and a half since I posted here and I thoroughly blame real life stuff for getting in the way of writing. As a side note, remember some of the characters I mentioned earlier in this post? A brief scene between some of them came to mind earlier today and I just thought I'd share it with you...

Elisha glanced around the room briefly before turning back to Mark. All around them, bounty hunters went on their way, to and from their respective assignments. The sixteen-year-old could easily pick Lin out from the crowd, as well as his sister and Allison, who were both over flirting with some of the boys their age. His lips drew into a frown and he made a note to himself to speak to Naomi about the danger of a man's thoughts later.

"Hey," Mark's voice, as usual, was quiet. "You were thinking 'bout something, weren't you?"

"Yeah," Elisha nodded after a moment. Figuring out how he was going to explain everything to Naomi would have to wait until later. "But honestly, it's Lin I'm more concerned about. She's been acting all... wierd... lately, ever since Jordan left." It had been about two months since one of the most respected bounty hunters had just disappeared, leaving his sword in the hands of Elisha. When the youth had asked his senior where he was going, Jordan simply replied that it was a quest for something he called Veritas and that someday, he'd understand as well. No one had really understood, least of all Elisha and even as he tried to explain it to Lin, the words had refused to come. Jordan had abandoned them.

Mark shrugged and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "I wouldn't expect her to believe that Veritas even exists, you know what I mean?" His own dark eyes drifted over to where Lin was standing, obviously engaged in some sort of argument with Allison.

Elisha paused for a minute, then nodded. "Lin..." he sighed. "Lin's one of those people... she never believes anything that she can't see for herself. She's a good friend and more than a worthy adversary, but she doesn't stop to consider all the possibilities." There was a short pause as he turned to watch Allison flounce away in a huff and Lin smirk, turn the other direction and go about whatever business she had. Elisha didn't wonder for too long what had happened; he was pretty sure he'd hear all about it later, whether he wanted to or not. "Mark." The other youth looked over at Elisha. "Can I ask you a question?" When Mark nodded his approval, Elisha continued. "Do you believe in the existence of a spiritual realm?"

"Yes," the voice that replied was slow to speak. "I believe that I do." Mark removed his right hand from his pocket, revealing the time keeper that Elisha had loaned him earlier that month. "I guess you might call it blind faith 'cause I've never seen anything, but I've heard about it." There was a slight pause. "Remember that old story Ran told us once? The one about Echelon and how everyone banished him to the castle outside of town because they thought he was crazy?" Elisha nodded. "What Ran said makes me think that Echelon might not've been as crazy as they say. If he had actually seen Melekhiel, that would've explained a lot... and it would be a bit more reasonable, I think, to explain why Jordan left."

Elisha frowned slightly. "But you can't even feel it, can you?" At this point, I must pause and give a brief history lesson. In the beginning, there was a spiritual realm and there was a point when everyone could not only feel it, but experience it as one would savour the richness of a barbeque with friends and family on a warm summer afternoon. Over time, people began trying to explain everything and this ability to feel the supernatural was lost to all but a few who are known as the Shiniel, or in their language, the spirit-people.

Mark opened up the timekeeper. "Eh, it's the same thing as this," he answered. "I know that it works and it makes the work I do better and provides a logical explanation as to why I don't run late anymore." He closed the gadget back up and placed it in his pocket once again. "Now, Ran knows that I've always been late and now I'm not. What's the explanation he'll come up with?"

Elisha nodded. "I see," he replied. "Even though he doesn't know that you have my timekeeper, it's most likely he'll assume you've acquired one and learned how to use it properly. I suppose, in a sense, he has faith that you have a timekeeper."

"Maybe I am accepting this on faith, but you can't always know everything, eh?" Mark's gaze trailed off into the distance and for a long couple of minutes, he was staring out the window near the ceiling. "Even Jordan doesn't know everything and I'm pretty sure that's why he went to look for answers." Mark paused and shifted to a more comfortable position, now leaning up against the stone wall of the building. "I guess I can ask you the same thing."

"Sure," the other youth spoke. A quick glance flittered around the room and he turned his back towards the commotion. He lowered his voice to several notches quieter than what it normally was. "You already know that I am a Shiniel." There was a short pause and when Mark nodded, Elisha continued. "For me to deny the existence of a spiritual realm would be worse than Lin not believing in the existence of the physical." He sighed, turned back around so that he was only halfway facing Mark now. Out of the outermost reaches of his peripheral vision, he spotted Lin, who appeared to be arguing now with Ran. "I pity her. She really just doesn't get it, does she?" He forced a weak smile over at the taller youth, who shook his head. Elisha's hand reached down to touch the handle of his sword. "Perhaps it's for the better, then." Without waiting for a reply from Mark, he turned the rest of the way and began walking towards the door.

AN: Elisha and Mark live in a society and they're both bounty hunters. Lin is Elisha's partner and Naomi is Elisha's sister. Ran and Allison are also both part of the coalition of bounty hunters. Ran is a bit older than they are and Allison is a bit younger. She and Naomi are close friends. A bit more can be explained by reading my post about Echelon's Ring, which I linked for you up above.

Swim Lesson Blues: Megan's Fear

2009-10-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

Just something I wrote this afternoon. I guess I'll be continuing it a bit more later, but right now, I need to go get ready to meet a friend and then work on a project for class...

"I won't let you drown." Those five words had been repeated to what Sophia thought was at least the hundredth time as she watched Megan clutch onto the edge of the swimming pool, the young girl's blue eyes wide with terror. The fifteen-year-old let out an inner sigh. This was going to be more difficult than she thought.

When she'd first told Coach Abby that she'd be willing to help teach the younger kids how to swim, Sophia thought that she'd be working with the ones who could actually swim across the pool. She'd teach them how to dive and perfect their strokes enough so that they could join the regular swim team during the next season. But no. Instead of working with the older kids, she'd been shunted off to work with a four-year-old who wouldn't even put her face in the water, much less let go of the wall.

"Soapy!" The girl wailed. "I'm cold!" Despite the fact that she hated being called by this rather diminutive nickname, Sophia almost smiled when any of the little kids (many of whom could not make the f sound properly yet) addressed her by name. From across the pool, Sophia could hear Mei-ling praise her students. They were all supposed to be at the same level, but the kids that Mei-ling had were already doing backfloats with minimal support. Sophie scowled to herself. Go figure that she'd get stuck with the one girl in the entire swim program who was afraid of the water.

"You should move around, then," she answered. Truth was, standing here in the water that reached just above her midriff was getting boring and even she was starting to feel a bit chilled. For a moment, she was envious not only of Mei-ling, but also of James, who had been assigned to the diving class. Well, as a diver, he would have been naturally more suited to teach kids how to dive, but none of them were afraid of the water.

Thankfully, Sophia was saved by Coach Abby's whistle, signaling the end of the session. Still sobbing, Megan climbed out of the pool and her mom wrapped a fluffy towel that had a picture of the Disney princesses on it around her. With little to no effort, Sophia swam a rather sloppy version of freestyle over to the diving boards on the deep side of the pool, where all the other instructors had already gathered for a quick debriefing.

Before Abby could address the group, James swam over to where Sophia was treading water. "After Abby's done, I kinda need to talk to you." This comment was quiet enough so that even Mei-ling, who was chatting with Kaitlyn on the other side of Sophia couldn't hear. She nodded and then turned to wait for Abby's latest instructions.

tbc... this will definitely be getting more. I'm rather excited to see what James has to tell Sophia and how that will relate back to what she's been thinking about...

Bleh...

2009-10-09T09:30:00.001-07:00

I really, really need to stop being lazy and actually write something, probably with the trio. Maybe I'll do that this weekend or something. I'm also playing around with developing a few minor characters, as well, but I have no idea where I'll be bringing them into things. *shrugs* I really don't know right now. About all I do know is that I need to write something.

As far as my absence has been (it's been over a fortnight and I must apologise for that)... well, I've been really busy with stuff going on IRL. I am not sure when I will be able to upload anything new. Even if I do end up writing, chances are that it will be too personal to share it with anyone else.

Quest for Echelon's Ring

2009-09-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

So, I got an idea for a story and it's about a pair of bounty hunters (Elisha and Lin) who go on this quest to find a ring that belonged to one of the great historical figures of their land, a man named Echelon. I'll eventually end up posting the story here, so I'm not going to give you any spoilers, but a little glimpse into who's who and a teaser...

Elisha (No. 958): A nineteen-year-old bounty hunter who was raised on the streets who narrates this piece. He's an expert at things like picking locks, gathering information from strangers and is a pretty bright young adult. He is one of the Shieniel, who are people who have had some sort of encounter with the non-physical world. His choice weapon is a sword, though he rarely uses it. He also carries around exploding canisters and poisoned darts for ranged attacks.
Lin (No. 843): Elisha's eighteen-year-old partner, a fellow bounty hunter. Her expertise lies primarily in the physical aspects of the job and she's in really good physical shape. Before she became a bounty hunter, she was just an average citizen of the town and Elisha hints at the fact that she originally took an apprenticeship to help take care of Nemo, her younger brother. Her weapon of choice is a blast pistol and for close range, she usually fights unarmed.
Jordan: Identification number unknown. He was the bounty hunter who originally trained Elisha, but since then, he has left to go on a search for Veritas, or Ultimate Truth. It is revealed that the sword that Elisha now wields used to belong to Jordan and was probably given as a gift at their parting.
Mark: ID number unknown. A fellow bounty hunter and close acquaintance of Elisha. It is revealed that Elisha loaned him his "time-keeper" (basically a watch).

A few additional notes:
Veritas: Otherwise known as the Ultimate Truth. Only Shieniel can properly seek it and really only a few Shieniel are interested, as most believe it is a highly theoretical and not very practical area of interest.
Shieniel: People who have had some sort of encounter with the non-physical realm. They're often treated as outcasts to society, especially since people forget that there was a time when everyone was a Shieniel. Elisha and Jordan are both Shieniel.
Luaniel: People who have never encountered anything outside the physical realm. They make up about 95% of the current population. Lin and her family are Luaniel.
Echelon: Elisha explains this myth within the context of his narration, but Echelon was a town elder during the time where people were beginning to become Luaniel.
Melekhiel: a mysterious being. You'll find more out about him in Elisha's narration.

And... now for a teaser! This is just the first two paragraphs.

I don’t know what brought me here or even why I decided to stay. This whole place is a bit of a creepy castle, like the kind you read about in stories about medieval times with knights and princesses and dragons. To be honest, I never cared for much of that. No, I was always caught up in the practical aspects of life, like where I would find my next meal. Living on the streets is hard, even if you do happen to land a good paying job as a bounty hunter.

I didn’t always start out as a bounty hunter and I guess that’s not even what I really am. Not truly, anyhow. Jordan was the one who gave me this sword and taught me just about everything I know. He helped me get my first job, but since then, I’ve moved on. He helped me find my place in a society where everyone treats us badly because we are different. Actually, what am I spending time telling you this for? He doesn’t even come into the story that I’m about to tell you. In fact, I haven’t seen or spoken to Jordan in about three years. Last I heard, he went off on some quest for Ultimate Truth or, as he called it, Veritas. My story actually starts much later than that.

So there you have it. I think this story will actually get done pretty soon because I actually have a clear idea of where it's going.

Return of Digit Island!~

2009-09-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm thinking about resurrecting Digit Island yet again, albeit with some changes and some alterations to character histories so that they don't all know each other. <_<

Scene: An abandoned stone courtyard. The sun has gone down and there is a chill in the air. Two humanoid figures are facing one another. The taller one, clearly belonging to a male, is sitting and the shorter, standing a short distance away, hands on her hips.

"Are you sure these are the seven?" the female asked, her voice incredulously high, especially for her. "They look... weak."

The other figure spoke a few sharp words in his native tongue. "They are human, Tem," he replied, switching back over to common. "It is the will of the High Council that this be done and as part of your discipline-"

Before he could continue, the one addressed as Tem interrupted. "Yeah, yeah. I know," she narrowed her eyes. "I just don't think they'll be ready when the time comes. But don't say I didn't warn you."

The man stood up, taking some effort to push himself into a standing position. "Take the twins with you," he replied, his voice barely audible, even in the dead silence of the night. "They'll remind you not to lose faith in humanity... yet."

Enter Isaiah and Jeremiah Lewis, age 19.

"We're going to be late for classes!" Isaiah grabbed his bookbag and ran out the door, dragging his brother behind him. Today was the first day of classes at Veritas Academy and the older of the twins had his introduction to engineering class in less than five minutes. Jeremiah, as usual, was lagging behind.

"Just hold on... there's no need to rush," Jeremiah grabbed his notebook and managed to barely get his set of house keys out of the lock before he was yanked away. Another typical morning to another typical day, right? Wrong.

"Hey! You two. You're with me today." Isaiah frowned; he'd heard that familiar voice before and it always meant trouble was close behind. Before either of the brothers could say anything, they were whisked off to a campsite. Tem was up to her usual tricks again.

Meet the Chosen Seven:

SCOTT ADAMS, your average fifteen-year-old high school student from California who enjoys theater, hanging out with his friends and just generally having a good time,
SAMANTHA ADAMS, Scott's twin sister who is an avid storyteller and a caring friend,
NATHANIEL "NATE" WINTERS, Scott and Sam's fourteen-year-old cousin who is originally from New York who has an aptitude for technology and setting things on fire,
KIRAN SHASTHRI, one of Nate's best friends from school who wants to be a medical missionary when she grows up and is rarely seen without her flute,
MICHAEL LIU, a quiet fourteen-year-old with a mysterious past,
KEITH CHANDLER, a thirteen-year-old kid from eastern Washington who talks to inanimate objects and lastly,
EDWARD McALLISTAIR, a sixteen-year-old football player from Texas with a superiority complex to boot.

Together under Tem's instruction and the watchful eyes of Isaiah and Jeremiah Lewis, can these seven young teenagers work together to save Digit Island before it falls? Or will Tem's skepticism about the strength of humanity prove accurate once again?

Fantasy

2009-09-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a note that a friend of mine wrote on facebook in the form of a poem, talking about why she writes fantasy. This got me thinking about why I enjoy reading and writing fantasy literature. Since I am not nearly as creative as she is, my reasons will just take the form of a list.

Guys treat girls with respect. It's something that is surprisingly uncommon these days... the idea of chivalry and honour. But in most, if not all, fantasy stories, the leading guy is a firm believer in and follower of the code of chivalry. Girls are also tend to be less manipulative than they do in today's society.
A true sense of family and belonging. Even if it's not by birth, characters in fantasy stories generally act like family better than ones in realistic stories do. Take LotR, for example. What holds the fellowship together to the best of its ability is the power of friendship and teamwork. The goal wouldn't have been able to be accomplished by one character alone and each character has a place that they belong.
Responsibility of powers. Whether this involves magic (as many fantasy stories do) or the ability to kick some serious behind with a sword, fantasy stories explore the balance of having power and being responsible about it. Those who abuse their power get what's coming to them in the end and those who either refuse to be tempted by the power (think Aragorn's reaction to the Ring in LotR here... or Faramir's reaction in the books!) or accept it with responsibility to use it for good (ie, Gandalf or Elrond or Galadriel with their Elven rings) are rewarded.
Second chances, redemption and self-sacrifice. I don't know if this is true, but fantasy characters seem to mess up more than realistic characters would... or their mistakes hold much graver consequences. Through this, fantasy authors are able to explore themes like second chances (Pippin got at least one in LotR), redemption (Edmund's story in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and self-sacrifice for the sake of helping others (when Boromir died at the end of FotR or beginning of Two Towers, depending on whether you're following the movies or the books, respectively). You don't see that as clearly in realistic fiction.
Beauty of other cultures. Fantasy authors are able to address controversial issues like racism in a much less offensive way than realistic fiction authors would be able to. The deep-seated prejudice between the Elves and the Dwarves in Tolkien's stories could easily be applied to modern prejudices and show readers how foolish it is to judge people solely on an aspect of themselves over which they have no control.
In a highly materialistic, secular humanistic culture where there is little belief in what cannot be explained by science (or pseudoscience, as the case often is), to jump into a world where elves and dwarves, fauns and satyrs, talking beasts and trees that move exist is rather refreshing. To be able to enjoy a story like that allows for just a little bit of hope that some of it might be true... and thus opens a person up to the possibility of a supernatural.
The end. I have yet to come across a fantasy book where the bad guys win in the end. The bad guys always have to get what they deserve (usually in the form of death or some other humiliating punishment) and the good guys win, but rarely without some large sacrifice on their part (once again, this often involves character death). In the words of a young character of mine whose universe is at war, "we have to win in the end 'cause we're the good guys. And the good guys always win in the end, right?" He's able to sum things up much better than I can. This idea is very Judeo-Christian, as God will have the final victory.

And I think that just about wraps things up. These are the main reasons why I enjoy reading and writing fantasy as much as I do. Thanks for reading.

Silver Wings

2009-08-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

Just a little short something I wrote... you can make your guesses about who the characters are, if they are actually characters in my stories that you've met. You can also make your guess as to the gender and identity of the narrator. Anyhow, enjoy.

I cannot fly anymore. I used to have wings, but he took them away from me and broke them. I don't even want to think about it right now, but my mind cannot keep itself from thinking of him. I don't know his real name, so I shall just call him Chris. Ironic. I've always liked that name. But not this time. Because it reminds me of him. The man who took my wings away.

These wings were a gift a long time ago and I've just learned how to use them. I guess I was born with them, but I can't know for sure. As I discovered more about myself and the world around me, they just grew until they were large enough to support my weight. I learned how to fly. She was the one who taught me how to fly, to use these wings. It is because of her that I put forth the effort into practicing and it is because of her patience when she taught me and because of her compassionate love for me (even though I assure you I do not deserve it) that I was able to learn.

She was my only true friend when the world was full of enemies and a light to help find my way in the darkness of my mind. Don't assume that we didn't argue because that isn't true; we did argue... we even fought, exchanging bitter words with one another in the irrational heat of anger. But because of that, the bond of our friendship strengthened. She taught me that sometimes a smile can change someone's day for the better and that having words to say isn't really necessary. She instructed me in a different way of viewing the world and that the scientific method doesn't always provide the answer. But most important of all, she taught me how to fly.

But now she is gone. I will never see her again. And because I will never see her again, my wings are broken. As hard as I try, they will not work anymore. So Chris cut them off. It was very painful and I remember screaming. Not so much from the pain, but from realising that they are gon, never to return. I will never be able to fly again.

Perhaps it is possible to fly without wings, but I have been told that will be very difficult, if not impossible. This is what Chris told me. "Have hope," he said. But hope is something that does not exist. Not in a world without her and since she is gone forever, how can the world have hope? No, I do not think I will ever be able to fly again. Especially without my wings. My beautiful silver wings.

I want... no... I need my wings back. Without them, I cannot fly. And without the ability to fly, life is pointless.

Sam's Fantasy Epic

2009-08-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a story that Sam is writing and she lets Michael read later. I have vague ideas of some of the characters, but I don't know where the story is going.

Just to let you know, Sam is a huge fan of writers like Tolkien, so her stories have a definite fantasy flavour to them. Yes, there is magic in this story, but it is written in the spirit of Tolkien and Lewis.

Character List
Royal Family of Kumori~

King Richard: 53. Was once a fair and noble king. Now going slightly senile due to the effects of a magical illness he contracted as a child.
Queen Lauren: 42. Wants to marry off her children while her husband is still able to function. An adept hostess.
Prince Adam: 20. The eldest son and heir. Arrogant and slightly spoiled by his mother. Very handsome. Is overdue for an arranged marriage, but Queen Lauren cannot find any girl who will suit him.
Princess Emilia: 17. Middle child. Is jealous of her mother's attention to Adam. She enjoys dressing extravagantly. Likes Lucius Touchstone.
Princess Charity: 14. Youngest child. Friendly and takes a special liking towards Violette. Enjoys playing matchmaker. Original tamer of Luminas.

Residents of Kumori~

Violette: 16. A resourceful and hard-working girl originally from the kingdom of Thalmosse. From a noble family, she was one of the girls taken to be a possible wife for Prince Adam. Luminas now belongs to her. Olivia is her best friend and Quincy is her twin brother.
Olivia: 16. Vi's best friend and a fellow servant girl. A bit spacey at the best of times. She is an Outsider.
Lucius Touchstone: 18. A servant who is learning how to become a healer from Eirhian. He likes Emilia, but is a commoner.
Eirhian: Age unknown. A celestial Outsider who works as a healer. She used to be an assassin and is now training Lucius. Nioko belongs to her.
Nioko: A rather snarky imp who often takes the form of a snake and accompanies Eirhian wherever she goes.
Luminas: A playful imp who takes the form of a giant butterfly/moth.

Other characters~

Sir Keith Chandler: Early-to-mid 30s. A mysterious knight originally from the kingdom of Galoris. He rarely speaks, but he has been training Robert for at least a few years.
Elyora: Sir Keith's fiancee.
Robert Anderson: 15. Demonic outsider who accompanies Sir Keith on his expeditions. He's originally a commoner from the kingdom of Galoris.
Synistra: Age unknown. A demonic outsider who is a skilled user of magic. Resides in the kingdom of Sheol.
Quincy: 16. Violette's twin brother who is studying to be a performer in King Sebastian's court.
King Sebastian: The king of Thalmosse.

Kingdoms
Kumori
Thalmosse
Galoris
Sheol

Races
Humans: Your typical humans... normal, diverse, etc.
Outsiders: Any non-human humanoids. They're treated as second-class citizens in most areas. The children of outsiders will always be considered outsiders, even if they look human. There are two types: Celestial and Demonic. This doesn't necessarily have any say on whether the character is good or evil (as Robert, Synistra and Olivia are all the same type of Outsider); it merely comments on their appearance.
Imps/Faeries: Small creatures that usually take the form of animals or plants.

Magic and Other Stuff
Magic: Yes, this story has magic in it... both magic to heal (what Eirhian and Lucius use) and magic to hurt (like what Synistra uses). Magic users are generally Outsiders and therefore, treated as outcasts. It is an inherited ability, but must be developed with effort and much practice.
As an author, Sam is very much inspired by the world that Tolkien created, as well as a bit of CS Lewis. Both authors had magic in their stories (for Tolkien, it was primarily Saruman and Gandalf, and for Lewis, Aslan and Jadis) and it is not inherently evil. I think I'm going to make a blog post over on my other blog going into further detail with this, so I'll leave it that for now.

Letter of Forgiveness

2009-08-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

Just a little something I decided to write from one character to another. This takes place just a few months after high school graduation. For some reason, Sam has been bugging me to write more about her and Katie, which has been rather interesting, to say the least. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy.

August 6, 2007

Dear Katie,

I'm not sure why I'm writing this to you, but I felt like I needed to say something. Ever since I last saw you about two months ago, God has been putting it on my heart to tell you a number of things. So if you will please do me the honour of reading this letter, that would be appreciated.

First of all, I have been praying for healing. We're all broken people, but it is our brokenness that makes us beautiful in a way. I don't know if you know what I mean, so I'll just leave it at that. But things that are broken need to be fixed. What you did hurt me a lot and it hurt Michael and my brother, too. You must know that healing cannot happen until Forgiveness and Grace are present.

I have forgiven you for what you did. So has Scott. Even Michael has, though stubbourn he is to admit it. But in order for you to heal - for any of us to heal, really - you must forgive yourself.

I am not going to be falsely nice and tell you that forgiving you has not been difficult. On the contrary, it has been one of the more difficult tasks I have been faced with. I know what you did was very bad, but how much must one atone for past mistakes? How long does it have to be before it becomes a legalistic ritual rather than an act of heartfelt penance? How muchmust one pay to redeem herself from past transgressions? Although no action is without consequence (as Michael so often points out to me), I see no reason for a person to continually beat herself over the head for a past mistake.

Do not get me wrong here. I am not saying that atonement is unnecessary, but that it needs to be balanced out by Grace and Mercy. From them comes Forgiveness and when all three are present, together with Love, that is when healing can happen. It is a choice, one that must be made to accept forgiveness.

And so, I have chosen to extend my forgiveness to you. God has already forgiven you for what you have done and now it is my turn. I cannot force you to accept it, but I am giving it to you as a gift and I hope that you will accept.

Your Sister in Christ,
Samantha Christine Adams

Convo in the Cafeteria

2009-07-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

Just a brief scene between a few characters, narrated by someone who's observing them in the school cafeteria. I'll leave you to guessing what's going on, but it shouldn't be that hard to figure it out...

"May I ask you a question?" There was a short pause before the voice resumed. "Have you ever made a girl cry?"

The other youth turned around, suddenly no longer interested in his foot-long sub and he returned the half-eaten sandwich to his plate. "Sure... why'd'ya ask?" Unlike the other boy's tone, his was light-hearted and quite a bit higher in pitch.

"Oh, no reason." The response came quickly as the shorter boy set his chopsticks down on a napkin and frowned slightly.

"This is about my sister, isn't it?" The Asian boy nodded, so the other youth continued. "Well, with her, it'd be best not to try and hide behind anything." His glance shifted towards the window, where it settled for a long moment before turning back to his companion. "If you need to yell at her, then do it. She can take it a lot better than she lets on sometimes." He shoved a potato chip into his mouth.

"Really?" He narrowed his eyes slightly.

The taller youth nodded and took a few gulps of water to wash down his food. "You think I'd lie to you about this?" He let out a heavy sigh. "Chance are, if you made my sis cry, it wasn't you." He stood up and picked his tray up. Leaving the other boy to ponder the words that had just been spoken, he turned and headed out of the cafeteria...

Faramir's Song

2009-07-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

I took a chance to write a brief little song in honour of one of my favourite fictional characters of all-time. Inspiration for parts of it was taken from the scene in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, where Faramir and Eowyn are talking to each other in the Houses of Healing. Enjoy!

~~~~~

Your hand is reaching out
So I cannot deny
These feelings that are clear to me
And there's no reason why.

My heart, it tells me one thing
But I pretend I cannot hear
After all that we've been through
I just want to hold you near.

CHORUS
I want a hug to know you're sorry
A kiss to know you care
A smile when I see you next
To know that someone's there.
A hug to know you're sorry
A kiss to know you care
A smile when I see you next
To know that someone's there.

I see how much you're hurting;
I know how much you can love
All these things you hold inside you
Are gifts that come from above.

And so I ask you one thing
Promise me in return
That you'll be honest with me;
That is something you must learn.

Repeat Chorus

I, give you one thing
The chance to be set free
Take a chance to discover
Who you are meant to be.

I know I'm just a broken man
With not a lot to give
But my heart truly loves you
And just wants to see you live.

Repeat Chorus

Your smile is like fire
That burns my heart of stone
Your kindness is like the welcome
Of truly coming home.

So I'm asking you a question
And I hope you will reply
I really want to see you happy
But you make me want to cry.

Repeat Chorus

BRIDGE
Because I need to know
If you love me too
Because I need to know
That's why I'm asking you

Repeat Chorus x2

~~~~~

Actually, I have no idea where part of the inspiration came from. I was filling out an application for a job and all of a sudden, the chorus popped into my mind. As I continued writing the song, the scene in the third and final Lord of the Rings movie came to mind.

Anyhow, words are copyright me. With the exception of the chorus, I have no idea what the tune is supposed to be and I really don't have a way to share it with you, either. First of all, because I don't have a voice recording system. And second of all, because I can't sing.

Short Scene...

2009-07-16T13:03:00.000-07:00

Just a short piece I was thinking of. Maybe I'll write more later, maybe not...

"You can't just keep running away." A hand came to rest on Michael's shoulder and he quickly twisted around, causing Sam's hand and arm to fall to her side once again. He turned away and she took a deep breath and let out a sigh.

"Who's running?" Michael turned back around to face Samantha, his tone of voice rather snappish, especially for him. "I've come to accept things as they are, not look to how they should be." There was another long pause. "This needs to be done and I am the only one who can do it."

"But-" Sam started to say, tears forming in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Samantha," Michael cut her off before she could finish what she was about to say. "I must do it alone this time." Only a few moments later, he was gone; the sound of the door firmly shutting behind him echoed in Sam's ears.

-------

Sam went to the only place she knew of to think: the Reading Tree. The locally owned and operated bookshop had been a favourite place of hers to spend time and often, she would stop for coffee or tea in the little cafe. Zander, the owner, knew just about every customer by name. As soon as he saw Sam walk in, he called out to her.

"Usual for you today?" When Sam nodded, Zander went over to prepare the drink. Only moments later, he handed a steaming cup to Sam. As Sam reached into her wallet to pull out the two dollars and seventy-three cents, Zander shook his head. "Not today. That gentleman over there said he was expecting you to drop by."

Samantha frowned as she followed Zander's line of vision over to the far corner. At one of the other tables, she could see two Japanese girls talking, one of whom she immediately recognised as none other than Emiko Takahashi. What in all of tarnation was that girl doing at a bookshop? Sam wondered to herself. However, she was even more surprised when she saw the person to whom Zander was pointing.

In all honesty, she had expected someone like Hideaki Sato or Tyler Martin or even her brother, all of whom knew which drink she enjoyed, to be sitting at the table. Or Michael. Especially Michael. But she had to remind herself that they were no longer talking.

As she walked over, the man nodded his acknowledgement. "Miss Adams," his voice was slightly more acidic than Sam remembered, but it had been over a year since she'd last seen him. Sam took a deep breath and sat down.

Quick Update

2009-06-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

So, I just wanted to let you know where I've been recently. No, I haven't been writing much at all, at least nothing fictional and really not much worth reading. I've just gotten back into working on A Duel of Wits and am probably about a third of the way through part four. This part is far more difficult because at least two characters are in this scene and I'm not used to writing either of them! And Sharpe isn't making anything better, as he is not cooperating very well with me right now.

And as a completely random side-note that has nothing to do with writing, I didn't know that tone of voice could carry over the internet like it does. Actually, that doesn't surprise me too much. When I'm writing (yes, I'm going to tie this in!), characters all have very distinct voices and tones that they use and I can picture them talking when I'm writing things down. So it doesn't surprise me much that I can pick up on vocal intonation of real people in writing~

A Duel of Wits, Part Three

2009-06-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

Part Three of A Duel of Wits.

I finally was able to get internet access when I had my computer. Hoorah for taking the laptop down to campus and getting wi-fi at the library!!! So, here you go and I hope you enjoy this. =)

Part One // Part Two

Rated: G

Candace could have kicked herself in the shins for being that wrong. Nearly four and a half hours later, she walked into the staff break room with the sandwich she’d just purchased from the cafeteria. The rest of her morning had been unusually uneventful, other than having to warn Katie Myst and Ronald Flinn to stop talking during class. Come to think of it, even Emiko Takahashi had been more than well-behaved during class. As she entered the lounge, she spotted Shaun Ackerman conversing with Laura Clarkson and Hugh Avery in hushed tones. Not far away, Josiah Alton, the once biology teacher and now administrator, ate his lunch – a cup of soup – in determined silence.

Upon seeing Candace, Josiah motioned over towards her. Relieved to not feel compelled to enter into whatever gossip Laura was spreading, Candace took the seat next to Alton. After a moment of silence, she began to eat her lunch.

“Did you hear what Takahashi’s been planning?” The question from Josiah came as Candace took the first bite of her sandwich. The slightly older administrator smiled. “Go ahead and finish before you answer.”

It took a moment for Candace to swallow the bite she’d just taken. “I take it that you’ve talked to Peter about it?” When Josiah nodded, Candace continued, her voice indignant. “He’s just about the most selfish, arrogant jerk who’s ever lived and I don’t think he cares about anyone else, even that brat of a daughter of his!” In all truth, her heart ached for Emiko, but she refused to admit that aloud. The sophomore caused way more problems in classes than any other student.

Josiah set his soup spoon down and frowned slightly. “Have you talked to Sharpe yet?” There was a short pause. “He has just as much experience and rank as Shaun does and Peter seems to hold him in high esteem.”

Candace shook her head. “Peter said not to, so no.” The clipped tone of her voice told Alton that there was more to her words than she was saying. “And I don’t think he’ll be at the staff meeting later, either.” As succinctly as she could, she told Alton what had happened earlier.

“Unless Peter has something to say that Jedediah hasn’t heard before, I really doubt there’s any reason for him to attend the meeting, other than to help keep the peace.” A grim smirk played across Alton’s face and Candace noticed that Josiah was probably just about the only person she’d ever met who used Sharpe’s first name.

“To keep the peace,” Candace echoed. “If things go how I think they might, you’ll probably be the one doing most of that.” She glanced over at Hugh Avery, making eye contact with the pre-calculus teacher for a short moment before turning back to Alton. “You know most of the staff does not agree with either of us, but I doubt they would want the school closing, either.” She dropped the level of her voice down to a low whisper in an attempt to avoid being overheard. Avery glanced over in their direction, but continued in his own conversation.

Josiah nodded. “Becky already promised she’d support whatever decisions I made, provided that I do everything in my power to keep Maplewood operating and I already know where you stand on this... and where Shaun does.” He took a moment to glance over at Ackerman. “Hugh’s likely to go along with whatever Amy decides, as is Laura, though she’s a bit more easily persuaded.”

“And Takahashi’s damn good at getting people to like him.” Bile rose up in Candace’s throat and Avery turned to glance over at them. “And to listen to what he has to say.” She didn’t feel the need to explain herself... both she and Josiah had known Tetsuya since he had been a student of theirs and he’d changed very little over the years. In fact, Candace firmly held the belief that few people truly changed through the years, particularly those after a person graduated high school.

“That’s what I’m concerned about,” Josiah replied. “With the exceptions of us, Hugh, Shaun, Jedediah, Helen, Lynn, Anthony and Jason, we have a pretty young staff here. Amy’s still young, but she has a good head on her shoulders, as does Julia. I trust them to make the right decision for the students.” His smirk turned into a frown and he glanced towards Laura once more. She was still talking to Ackerman. Hugh Avery was nowhere to be seen and Alton assumed he left the staff lounge. “The rest... well, I’m not so sure.” He took another few bites of soup. “But it’ll all work out in the end, I suppose.”

“How can you be sure?” Much to Josiah’s chagrin, this question did not come from Candace Pruitt. While Alton and Candace had been speaking in hushed tones, Sharpe had entered the staff lounge and was now standing directly behind where Josiah sat. Hugh Avery took the empty seat on the opposite side of Candace.

“I just know,” Josiah glanced up to make eye contact with Sharpe. “Call it a result of faith; call it wishful thinking; call it whatever you want, but I just know everything will somehow work out. Even if it’s not in the way we expect.” He motioned for Sharpe to take a seat and the Latin teacher obliged and sat down. “How long have you been standing there, anyways?”

“Approximately ten minutes, which was sufficient time for me to know the entire contents of your conversation,” Sharpe admitted after a moment. “I walked in just after Candace mentioned Miss Takahashi.”

“So it’s true then?” Hugh Avery had turned towards Candace, choosing to engage her in conversation instead of actively listen to Sharpe make up a good excuse for eavesdropping. He was sure he’d hear about it later. “Tetsuya’s really trying to close the school down?”

Candace narrowed her eyes at the teacher who had once been one of her students. “Yes, but you’d better keep that voice of yours down,” she hissed. Years of teaching had made her far more imposing as an authority figure; anywhere else she probably would not be heeded, due to her small stature. “Peter doesn’t want anyone to know yet, not even the heads or the senior faculty members.”

Avery frowned. “So I guess I’d better pretend this never happened, eh?” Only the slight twinkle in his blue eyes contradicted his apparent seriousness towards the situation.

Candace gave one brief nod. “Josiah and I are the only ones who should,” here she emphasised this word, “know. However, both you and Sharpe and only God knows who all else do. So you’d best shut that mouth of yours, Avery.” It was rare for Candace to call any of the teachers – other than Sharpe – by surname only.

Sharpe nodded at what Josiah said. “I apologise, but as you know, I have sufficient motivation to be concerned, given the situation and who is involved,” his voice was lower than Candace’s voice had been earlier. “As should everyone else.” He paused for a moment and glanced around the room, his dark eyes settling their attention on the clock. “If you will excuse me, I have a few last-minute preparations I must make before class this afternoon. I must make my apologies that I shall be late to the meeting this afternoon, but Peter should start without me.” With that, he took his leave and exited the lounge.

The older teacher frowned. The scientific part of him was so curious to find out what prior engagements Sharpe had after school that would cause him to miss such an important meeting, but his common sense told him it was a bad idea to ask. If it was meant to be, he’d find out. But first, he had to get through the rest of the afternoon, including an appointment with Amy to meet the new IT manager for the school district.

tbc

Quick Updates

2009-06-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

So... I finished part three, but I don't have a USB device to bring it to a computer with internet access and therefore, it won't get posted until I do. Sorry about that. Until then, I shall tell you a few things I have realised about characters and writing in general, just to prove that I have not fallen off the face of this spinning planet.

1. Seven McAllistair used to attend Northpointe Academy, where he knew Aislynn Celeste, Rem and Seneca Argentium and Keith Chandler. He is now the IT manager for the school district and works with maitaining the Maplewood Academy webpage and other technological stuff.

2. Rembrandt Argentium and Aislynn Celeste knew each other quite well when they were still in school. In fact, they were in a relationship at one point, which Aislynn broke off for an unknown reason.

3. Tyler Martin and Victoria Chapel are Rule Enforcers (similar to hall monitors) at Maplewood. This is a bit surprising because normally, tenth graders aren't allowed. Apparently they really needed a few good members.

4. There's quite a bit more to Emiko than what meets the eye at first. Even more than I'd ever imagined.

5. Hugh Avery was one of the SATs (basically teacher's assistants) while in high school.

6. Candace calls just about everyone by their first name, except for Sharpe. Alton calls Sharpe by his first name. Hugh Avery also usually calls people by first name only, but Sharpe uses surnames for people.

Hmm... and I think that's all I wanted to share. Hopefully I'll have regular computer access within a week or so or I'll be able to find my USB so that I can upload stories. <_<

A Duel of Wits, Part Two

2009-06-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

Go read Part One if you haven't already done so. This is a continuation of the same storyline.

Characters: Sharpe, Michael, Emiko, Fellowship, Candace Pruitt, Peter Screwtape
Rated: G

“What was that all about?” The quiet query came from Tyler Martin and the tall African American boy sat back in his chair and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the black countertop. However, before Michael could answer, Sharpe re-entered the room, followed by an older-looking woman. There was a frown on her face and she was speaking in hushed tones to Sharpe.

“Yes, I am aware of that, Candace,” Sharpe’s voice was equally as quiet and Michael had to strain his ears to pick up even that much of their conversation over the sounds of Katie Myst talking excitedly to Kiran Shasthri, the latter choosing to ignore the perky cheerleader. “You must also remember that I have personal business to which to attend this afternoon.” Absently, he removed a small object from his pocket, gave it one glance and returned it to its original position.

Candace was frowning, her already thin lips pulled into a line. “Not that again, I hope.” Though she was at least a head shorter than Sharpe, her presence was imposing, especially as she glared at him through her spectacles, which were pushed down on the bridge of her nose. “Peter will not be pleased and that will not be beneficial for anyone involved.” She paid little attention to any of the students who were in the classroom, especially since most of them had gone back to their normal activities of passing notes and exchanging answers to the homework for Ackerman’s history class.

Sharpe nodded. “I understand, but I have obligations at four o’clock this afternoon.”

“What time will they be done?” Candace tapped her foot against the tiled floor a few times, an old habit of hers that she’d picked up from her roommate at university. Or maybe Priya had picked the habit up from her; Candace didn’t know and right now, it was not important.

The younger of the two shrugged. “I do not know,” he replied simply, his dark glance circling around the room before returning to Candace. “But as a teacher, I have given students my word that I will be present if I am needed.” There was an awkward pause and he turned back to face some of his homeroom students, making eye contact for a brief moment with Emiko Takahashi. “They need me more than Peter does. Now, if you will excuse me, we can talk about this later.” With that, he crossed over to the front of the room, leaving Candace standing near the door in the back.

The older woman frowned slightly, then walked out of the room, shaking her head. Getting Sharpe– and many of the other younger teachers– to come to these meetings was just about as bad as giving Saami (her cat) a bath. But this meeting was something that was absolutely necessary if they were ever going to resolve their differences and figure out how to save the school. A small muscle near the corner of her mouth twitched. Perhaps Maplewood was not meant to be saved, even by her. As Candace thought about it, it made her sad; the further she walked from the small classroom that Sharpe held his classes in, the more she realised that this might be the end of everything. All that she had worked for all these years might come crashing down, just because some of her co-workers were too immature to swallow their pride and just cooperate with one another. No, she could not let that happen. She would not.

Her resolve steadily increased and firmed itself until she walked into the building that held the offices. She searched her memory in an attempt to figure out why Peter was calling this assembly. Did it have something to do with the school board meeting that she had missed the week before? She knew something must have been said– by Testuya Takahashi, no doubt– and the teacher frowned to herself. Tetsuya had been one of her students back when he was in high school and the chemistry teacher was even the least bit surprised to find that the man had not changed. Before, he was the president of the Student Council; now, a politician who had much power over the school board of Maplewood Academy.

With each passing second, she could feel her heart pound in her chest. She had gone to meet Peter several times before, so why was today any different? She reached out to knock on the door, but it was already part-way open.

“Come in, Candace,” a nasal voice sounded from inside. The voice unmistakably belonged to Peter Screwtape, the principal of Maplewood Academy. “There’s some things we need to talk about before the staff meeting.”

Candace let herself into the rather spacious office that Peter had claimed for himself as soon as Mark Wheeler had vacated his position. “You know I had family obligations the night of the board meeting,” she began, but before she could continue, Peter held up his hand. After a few moments of standing near the doorway, Candace entered the room and took a seat, sitting perfectly upright in her chair. “But I hope that Mr. Takahashi hasn’t gotten his head turned upside-down yet.”

The corners of Peter’s lips turned up the smirk that Candace knew all too well. “Basically, yes,” he admitted. “You know how Tetsuya is, though. I seem to recall you mentioning that he was in your class when he was still a kid.”

The chemistry teacher nodded. She had been teaching at Maplewood for over a quarter of a century and she’d seen her fair share of students pass through the halls, easily learn the rules to name chemical compounds and several tricks to solving the mathematical problems associated with the physical sciences, but fail to learn what she’d termed as the important lessons of high school. “More stubborn than the rest of us put together,” Candace offered. Perhaps Peter didn’t need Sharpe, but Candace felt she did. The younger man always knew how to stand up to the principal.

Peter tilted his head downwards and it was a full minute and a half until he made eye contact with Candace again. “Candace, you must not tell any of the other teachers about this until the meeting, but Takahashi wants the school to close down.” As soon as those words came from Peter’s mouth, Candace paled. There was no possible way this day could get worse, was there?

tbc

Fact and Fiction

2009-05-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking about what I have in common with various fictional characters that I've written, both now and in the past. It's interesting to see how much a person's characters can say about said person because authors put a lot of themselves (and people they know) into their characters, whether they want to or not. Or even whether or not they realise it.

So, if you could bear with me while I think on paper (erm... or on the keyboard?), that would be very much appreciated.

Scott Adams: Not much, but I do know that Scott's sense of direction is horrible. It's kind of a running joke between their group of friends that he would get lost on the way to school if it wasn't for his sister or Michael. To make matters more interesting, he also plays the navigator character, Lt. Quincy, in their VBS (Vacation Bible School) skits.
Samantha Adams: Most obvious would be her love of writing. She usually carries around her notebook with her and is constantly doodling ideas down in it. It's pretty rare she lets anyone else look at her unfinished works, too (usually only Michael and occasionally Scott, depending on Sam's mood). The other thing I've noticed that is similar between Sam and me is that we both hate seeing people close to us suffer. I'm not sure I need to say more about that.

Oddly enough, that's all I feel like doing right now. Maybe I'll come back and figure out more characters later, but for now... well, I should go back to sleep; I stayed up until after 2AM last night/this morning talking to a friend.

Character Theme Songs

2009-05-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday my sister and I were talking about character theme songs. I was thinking about some of my characters and what theme songs they would have. So... here goes nothing! Oh, and some of these characters have more than one song.

Scott Adams

"Gibberish" by Relient K
Reason? It just fits him. Plus, my roommate made me sit down and listen to the song and one of the first things I thought of was how well it would fit Scott.
Lyrics
Youtube

Samantha Adams

"Friends" by Michael W. Smith
Reason? In one of my earliest stories, my characters were all going off to college at different schools. Sam gave Michael a CD with this song on it and told him that he'd better listen to it.
Lyrics
Youtube
"Shine" by Newsboys
Reason? It's a little off the norm (like Sam), but it talks about being a witness with your actions.
Lyrics
Youtube

Emiko Takahashi

"Always Have, Always Will" by Avalon
Reason? There are parts in her life that she really does want to obey and do what she ought to do, but there are also parts in her life where she rebels against her father and/or against common sense. This song talks about the story of the prodigal son.
Lyrics
Youtube (Disclaimer: There were only about 2 videos for this song. I chose the one that fits Emiko better.)

Johannah Liu

"Does Anybody Hear Her?" by Casting Crowns
Reason? Fits her perfectly. I don't think I need to say more because her story comes out in Snapshots. This is also one of my favorite songs.
Lyrics
Youtube

Kiran Shasthri

"Jesus Freak" by dcTalk
Reason? The line "I don't really care if they label me a Jesus Freak" really shows how she lives her life. She's not afraid to talk about anything relating to Christianity... no matter what situation she finds herself in.
Lyrics
Youtube

Sharpe

"Stained Glass Masquerade" by Casting Crowns
Reason? I have a whole playlist dedicated to him, but this song is the one that's been standing out in my mind. This is one of the two main reasons why he refuses to go back to church (though he eventually breaks his promise).
Lyrics
Youtube
Other songs on this particular playlist that I think fit him pretty well are "In the End" (Linkin Park), "Everybody's Fool" (Evanescence) and "Facade" (Jerkyll and Hyde soundtrack). I'm not linking to any of these; if you want to read the lyrics or hear the songs, you're going to have to look them up for yourself. Sorry.

Nate Winters

"Fireproof" by Pillar
Reason? Inside joke with Nate and I couldn't resist. One thing that you must know about Nate is that he has always been a bit of a pyromaniac. Musical style of this song also fits
Lyrics
Youtube

Callisto Verity

"The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World
Reason? She's usually looked down upon by being too young for whatever she tries to do and spends her life living in the shadows of the "big kids".
Lyrics
Youtube

These are just a few songs that remind me of my characters. I'd really like to get a better list together someday. I'm still trying to find good ones for characters like Michael, Hideaki and several other additional characters from my list of characters who are more prominent.

Character List: Once Upon an AU

2009-05-22T17:44:00.001-07:00

So, there are quite a few characters in Once Upon an Alternate Universe, so I thought I should organise a list and show them to you, along with a bit of connection so that you can know who's who when you're reading.

There are more students, family and staff members (as well as other characters) in this story, but here is a bit of an outline of a few important ones.

Just a brief note about student alliances...
Fellowship: Fully dubbed as the "fellowship of misfits" by Evan Saunders, this group includes Saunders, Tyler Martin, Michael Liu, Scott and Samantha Adams, Marie Wilson and most recently, Kiran Shasthri.
Comrades: Unofficial name (again, given by Saunders) for the group that follows Emiko Takahashi around. Emiko Takahashi, Tatiana Valdez, Katie Myst, Ricardo Martinez, Ron Flinn. There are more...

Maplewood Students, circa 2005
Michael Liu: A fairly level-headed sophomore at Maplewood Academy. Provides a voice of reason for his friends. Member of the Fellowship.
Samantha Adams: One of Michael's two best friends who would do just about anything to help one of her friends if they needed her. One of the best students in their sophomore class. Fellowship.
Scott Adams: Samantha's younger twin brother whose plans (or lack thereof) get him and his friends into a whole lot of trouble sometimes. Fellowship.
Evan Saunders: Future class valedictorian at Maplewood Academy. Though bossy at times, he generally means well. Fellowship... and the one who gave them their name. Often just called by his last name.
Tyler Martin: Athlete and all-around nice guy. He and Saunders are best friends. Known for being one of the few Christians on Maplewood's athletic teams. Also a member of the Fellowship.
Marie Wilson: A fairly quiet friend of Samantha's whose aspirations are to work with special needs students. Fellowship.
Kiran Shasthri: The exchange student living at the Liu's house for the semester. Outspoken about what she belives, but sincere. Newest member of the Fellowship.
Emiko Takahashi: Archrival of the Fellowship (especially Evan Saunders). Slightly spoiled daughter of Tetsuya Takahashi. Knows Hideaki Sato from Japanese school. Comrade.
Katie Myst: Close acquaintance of Emiko Takahashi. Blonde cheerleader. Peppy past the point of annoyance and seems to have something particularly against Samantha. Comrade.
Tatiana Valdez: Emiko's sidekick who is always seen with her. Enjoys gossipping.
Victoria Chapel: Evan Saunders' girlfriend who is very involved in music and theater. On good terms with almost everyone. No alliance.
Julianna Miller: Shaun Ackerman's niece and a close friend to Katie Myst. Was dating Scott Adams for a few months during their freshmen year.
Hideaki Sato: Transfer student to Maplewood Academy who happens to know Emiko Takahashi from Japanese school.
Kyle Wilson: Marie's older brother who is in eleventh grade. Plays sports and is a close friend (and fellow Christian Athlete) to Tyler Martin. Has been dating Kathryn Saunders for over a year.
Kathryn Saunders: Evan's older sister who enjoys cheerleading. Is dating Kyle Wilson. Gets along with Katie Myst, but thinks that the situations that Katie gets herself into are immature.

Staff Members at Maplewood, circa 2005
Jedediah Sharpe: Former chemistry teacher at Maplewood. Graduated Maplewood in 1988. Now teaches Latin and AP chemistry. Tough taskmaster and difficult man to get along with and tends to be disliked by most of his students. Runs the Chess Club and Forum Philosophorum.
Candace Pruitt: Chemistry teacher at Maplewood. She has been teaching there since at least 1980. Strict, but fair. Helps out running the chess club.
Shaun Ackerman: History teacher at Maplewood and a Maplewood graduate in 1987. Outspokenly Catholic, highly energetic and loved by almost all of his students. Uncle to Julianna Miller.
Peter Screwtape: Principal of Maplewood Academy who has been working there since 1995. Named after two of CS Lewis' characters.
Hugh Avery: Former physics and now math teacher at Maplewood. Graduated in 1983. One of the few teachers who gets along well with Sharpe. Hosts Operation Numbers, the math club.
Josiah Alton: Administrator at Maplewood and former biology teacher. He has been teaching there nearly as long as Candace Pruitt has and they are close friends. Surrogate father to Sharpe. Father to Jennie Alton.
Laura Clarkson: Young biology teacher at Maplewood who recently moved from Texas to California. Talkative.
Anthony Wilson: Physics teacher at Maplewood. Single father to Kyle, Marie and their three younger siblings. Hosts the Film club. Enjoys having a lot of fun with his students. Addicted to movies and coffee.
Aislynn Celeste: The young math teacher at Maplewood who graduated from Northpointe in 2001. Older cousin to Keith Chandler.
Seven McAllistair: The IT worker for several of the local private schools. Recent college graduate. Expert with computers and anything technical.
Amy Kerrington: Technology teacher at Maplewood. Works closely with Seven McAllistair whenever he comes to the school.
Rem Argentium: A young history teacher. Enjoys art and is quite good at it. Younger brother to Seneca Argentium and a graduate of Northpointe. Former classmate of Aislynn Celeste. Quiet.

Family Members
Jonathan and Mei-lani Liu: Michael's parents who are hosting Kiran Shasthri for the semester. Jonathan graduated from Maplewood in 1985.
Tetsuya Takahashi: Emiko's father and a local politician. Maplewood graduate in 1988. Archrival of Sharpe.
Jennie Alton: Eldest daughter to Josiah and Sherry Alton. Mentor to Marie Wilson. She is working on getting her master's degree so she can work with special needs students.
Priya Shasthri: Kiran's aunt who is a professor of physics at a local university. She was Sharpe's university advisor.
Stephanie Rei: Emiko's mother. Divorced from Tetsuya Takahashi. Mother to Hana Rei. Lives in the UK with her younger daughter.
Seneca Argentium: Rem's slightly older sister who does research at Nicholae Kwaitkowski Labs, Inc.

Other Characters
Ming-yue Tam: Kiran's best friend from back home at Melanthios.
Nate Winters: Scott and Samantha's cousin who also attends Melanthios and is a good friend of Kiran's. Enjoys playing with fire and technical stuff.
Keith Chandler: Chess champion from Northpointe Academy and younger cousin to Aislynn Celeste.
Hana Rei: Emiko's younger and estranged sister who lives in the UK and attends Alcantha. She is genuine and sincere. Her best friend is Callisto Verity.
Callisto Verity: Hana's best friend and the chess champion from Alcantha. Enjoys getting into arguments and is very competitive. Thirteen-years-old.
Donovan Isaacs: A slightly crazy student at Alcantha who is the same age as the Fellowship. He goes to church with Hana's family on a regular basis.
Sophia McAllistair: Cousin to Seven McAllistair and the same age as Nate Winters. Lives just outside of Phoenix, Arizona with her family.

Alternate Universe

2009-05-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

So... last night I was thinking about the alternate universe and here are a few things I've come up with.

1. Maplewood Academy is still in existence. A few of the teachers from Maplewood are still there (ie, Candace Pruitt, Josiah Alton). Yes, they were characters at RHS, so that's not too odd.

This presents a bit of a problem, as Maplewood required Latin for all its students. There is no Latin teacher at RHS (he retired around 1990, which is about fifteen years before Once Upon an AU takes place).
My solution? Well, we know that Sharpe is fluent in Latin (and took at least three years of it in university). I'd like to get him teaching Latin. But that would leave us without a chemistry teacher at RHS, right? Wrong. Both Candace Pruitt and Josiah Alton are definitely capable of teaching science classes. Candace used to be the chemistry teacher at Maplewood (in the CU), whereas Josiah taught biology. Neither of them really teach anymore by the time the RHS stories take place. Candace is working in the office as the vice-principal and Josiah works with other administration stuff... and occasionally substitutes for other teachers.

2. Hideaki needs to transfer to Maplewood partway through the year. He can't be there in the beginning, but he has to come into the storyline somehow.

If he does end up staying with the Liu family, this could potentially be interesting. This takes place their sophomore year of high school, which would mean that Kiran is staying with Michael's family. If Hideaki joined them, there would be seven kids in the house; that's quite a lot!
If this was not AU, this could cause some potential problems with the general timeline of the other stories. Hideaki isn't supposed to get to know anyone in the fellowship (Michael, Scott, Sam, etc.) until the end of their junior year. However, he does know Emiko quite well by that point.

3. Keith Chandler, Aislynn Celeste, Rem Argentium and Seven McAllistair?

I need to figure out some way to bring these four characters in. Aislynn helps Hugh Avery run the after-school math program at RHS, so she'd probably do something similar at Maplewood. I was thinking that Rem Argentium is the new history teacher. I am not so sure about Seven and what he could do, other than he could potentially come in and fix computers or something like that. And... Keith. I have no idea where he's going to come in. Same thing with some of the Alcanthan students (ie, Callisto Verity, Hana Rei and Donovan Isaacs... and some of their friends).

4. Since this is the AU, then I can give my characters cool powers... maybe. Or maybe not. *shrugs* I've been debating back and forth with that for quite some time and weighing the pros against the cons of the situation.

I already know that Seven has a photographic memory, but that's not too special. And he's always had that; it was part of his original character concept. I'll have to figure out how "realistic" I want to make it. The more realistic it ends up being, the fewer characters who are able to do crazy things will be running around. Though a certain character still needs the ability to disguise herself extremely well...

And those are just a few of the things I've been thinking of recently. Hopefully this piece might actually get written for once, instead of just sitting there with nothing to do. But it'll all depend on how much I figure out about this particular version of the AU I want to build.

A Duel of Wits, Part One

2009-05-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

I really needed to write something... and preferably a piece when I wasn't being particularly nice to any of my characters. I'm thinking this gets worse before it actually gets better and you get to see a little bit of Michael's interactions with Emiko here. And Sharpe (as always) is awesome.

This takes place a few weeks into their sophomore year of high school (September 2004) because Kiran Shasthri is around and it's specifically stated that this happens in September because it's still warm.

Characters: Sharpe, Michael, Emiko, Samantha, Scott, others by mention
Word Count: 1000
Rating: G
Summary: Michael and Emiko have to figure out a way to resolve their differences.

Sharpe’s lips narrowed as he sneered. One hand was clenched around an Earlenmeyer flask with a pale green liquid filled nearly to the brim and the other hand was loosely fingering a long stick. He whipped the stick up against the chalkboard, scattering chalk dust throughout the classroom. Several students gasped. No one said anything; it was silent with the exception of a beaker full of bubbling liquid in the back fume hood.

Out of everyone in the room, both Emiko Takahashi and Michael Liu seemed to be the only ones who even remained slightly calm after seeing Sharpe’s reaction, and neither of them for a good reason. Kiran Shasthri was sitting in the back corner of the room, her eyes wide with fear; Samantha’s eyes were gently closed, showing a resolved expression on her face. But it was obvious she was angry… and obviously so. Scott gritted his teeth together and clenched his right hand into a tight fist. Whatever was about to happen was not going to be good and he knew it. He had known his best friend long enough to know when something was going on and Emiko was better than just about anyone else at irking any one of them in the homeroom of twenty people. And today, she was at the top of her game.

“Miss Takahashi.” Sharpe’s words were cold as they cut through the air, even amidst the warmth of the air that September morning. Emiko glanced up at him, a nauseating smirk playing on her face. Michael’s steady glance shifted towards Sharpe, then back to Emiko as quickly as it had left. “Mr. Liu.” It was now that the Asian boy frowned slightly. “A word with both of you. Outside. Now.” He motioned to the door that led into the nearest hallway and turned to pace towards it.

Emiko smirked at Michael. “Look who’s in trouble now,” she commented, careful to keep her voice low enough so that Sharpe wouldn’t easily be able to hear. After shooting a feeble smile over at Scott, Michael turned to leave and follow Sharpe. Scott felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. It was not very often he believed in what his sister often called a sixth sense, but the sophomore was sure that this was one of those times he did. And this sixth sense was yelling at him to do something. Because it just wasn’t fair.

It hadn’t been Michael’s fault… nor had it been Emiko’s. It had all happened so fast that even Scott had possessed some difficulty keeping up and knowing exactly what had come to pass. One moment, Michael was swapping history notes and talking about chess strategies with Evan Saunders and the next moment, it was like Michael and Emiko were in some sort of stalemate, Sharpe looking on with a sinister expression of both intrigue and loathing in his eyes. Only one thing had been said and Scott hadn’t been paying enough attention to tell what that something was. And now, all three of them were outside, except for Saunders, who was now passing notes back and forth with Victoria Chapel.

“You think they’ll be okay?” Scott leaned over and placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. It was rare to see Scott devote even most of his attention to one person or one thing; often Michael had commented that Scott could easily be quite a bit more brilliant if he’d only learn to concentrate on one thing at a time. The younger twin had always brushed his friend’s remark off without even as a second thought.

Sam nodded. “They have to be,” she replied, her rough voice hardly even a whisper. “It’s out of our hands now and the best we can do is trust that Sharpe won’t let either of them react.” There was a short pause and Sam waited for the conversation between Kiran and Tyler to resume before she continued. “And that he won’t bait either of them in the process.” She shifted in her seat so that she could see outside, but Sharpe’s back was turned towards the window; she couldn’t see his face at all.

“Mr. Liu, I have given you plenty of chance to explain yourself, yet you have chosen not to take advantage of this.” Sharpe’s voice was considerably lower in volume, but higher in pitch than was normal for him. “Same for you, Miss Takahashi.” His voice dropped to a hiss as he spoke Emiko’s name. “Perhaps both of you should come up with a way to solve your problems without creating as much of a commotion in my classroom.” One of his eyebrows arched slightly.

Emiko met Sharpe’s steady gaze with a smirk. “How about a duel of wits?” A smile still playing on the corners of her lips, she turned towards Michael. “Well?”

The Asian boy thought for a long moment, then nodded. “Name your terms,” he replied, his voice slightly tentative.

“Ackerman’s classroom, after school.” She glanced up at Sharpe for a moment, but he said nothing. “You bring one of your friends and I’ll bring one of mine. Other than that, we both come alone.” There was the slightest pause. “Agreed?” She stuck her right hand out and twirled a long strand of dark hair around the fingers of her left hand.

Michael reached to shake Emiko’s hand, a showing a slight wince as he made skin contact with her. “Agreed, but we allow Mr. Sharpe to be present, as well.”

The girl smirked. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” She let go of Michael’s hand and dropped her voice to a low whisper. “Four o’clock. See you then.” With that, she turned and flounced back into the classroom, leaving Michael to wonder what he had gotten himself into. But he would have to wait and see. Right now, it was Emiko’s turn and it was little use to predict what she was planning to do next. He’d just have to sit and wait it out.

tbc

KC

2009-05-09T06:41:00.000-07:00

So... I finally figured out where Keith comes from and how he's connected to the rest of what I've written thus far. That requires a little bit of background info, though.

In the chess story I am planning out, various students at RHS are competing for the top slot in the school, but I've never really said what that means. Whoever wins the RHS final match will meet the school champion from Northpointe Academy. The Northpointe champion is Keith Chandler.

This actually makes a lot of sense because he's told me that he knows Rem Argentium (who graduated from Northpointe) and I know he's related to Aislynn. She tends to mimic other people's physical looks and mannerisms, but he does that with personality and quirks, so it would make sense if they're related.

The champion between RHS and Northpointe will then go onto play against the champion of the Alcantha vs. Melanthios match. Hmm... this makes me wonder if Callisto is going to show up somewhere because both she and Hana (Emiko's half-sister) go to Alcantha. I don't know yet.

But I was sitting at some meal over the past couple of days when I realised where KC comes in. It was totally wierd because I did not know that before. Yes, most people call him KC.

I still don't know where Seven McAllistair comes into all of this. I know he's really good with computers and it wouldn't surprise me if he had also gone to Northpointe at one point or another. Northpointe is located in British Columbia, Canada; it's a magnet school for the gifted and talented, especially those who live up north and on the western half of the USA. Melanthios works the same way for those who live on the East Coast and Alcantha is similar for those who live in (or around) the UK.

Hoorah for random new characters and the fact that they actually fit into the story!!!

Checkmate!

2009-05-08T14:38:00.001-07:00

So, I was playing chess last night with a friend of mine and an idea came to me. Chess has an important place in almost everything that I write, so I was thinking about bringing it in one major time and uniting a lot of my characters, especially those from the younger generation.

Later, I should probably get out my chess set and actually play out various games or something.

Scene: The Intrascholastic Chess Tournament
Universe: Alternate Universe
Location: Riverdale High School gymnasium
Finalists: Michael Liu, Emiko Takahashi, Evan Saunders, Hideaki Sato
Coach: Sharpe

Four advance to the finals.
Going into finals (by points scored):
First Place: Hideaki Sato (x)
Second Place: Michael Liu (x-5)
Third Place: Evan Saunders (x-7)
Fourth Place: Emiko Takahashi (x-8)
Whoever wins a game will advance to the next round.
X is an arbitrary positive integer.

First Round:
Evan Saunders (white) vs. Emiko Takahashi (black)
Verdict: Emiko ends up beating Evan Saunders. Her strategy is to develop her pawns and bishops, whereas Evan plays heavily with knights, rooks and often his queen. At the end of the game, one of Emiko's pawns reaches the end of the board and turns into a queen, forcing checkmate and ending the game.

Second Round:
Michael Liu (white) vs. Emiko Takahashi (black)
Verdict: Midway though the game, Michael checks Emiko's king with one of his rooks. Her queen captures the rook (eliminating the threat), but one of Michael's knights captures Emiko's queen. A few moves later, he lost his queen to one of Emiko's bishops. At the end of the game, Emiko has a bishop and a knight, while Michael has a rook and two bishops out on the board. You can probably guess how this ends.

Third Round:
Michael Liu (white) vs. Hideaki Sato (black)
Verdict: Unknown. None of the characters will tell me what happened yet, which makes me think it ends in a stalemate.

In other news (which is completely off-topic!), I came up with a new character idea. I don't know what he's like or where he fits into the story, but here's what I have of him so far...

Name: Keith Chandler (aka KC)
Age: 15
Race: Human (at least, he'd better be!)
Gender: Male
Appearance: Straight hair that is long enough to be tied back into a pony-tail (slightly longer than shoulder-length). Always wears a scarf and gloves of some type. Usually wears either regular glasses or sunglasses.
Quirks: Tends to adopt mannerisms of people he is around. Doesn't wear a watch, but can tell the time within a minute.
Pets: Lewis, a gold dust day gecko (rather on the larger side)

Other than that, I really don't know anything about him yet. There is definitely a chance that he knows Rem Argentium, which would tie him into Once Upon an AU. But I really don't know for sure yet. KC's brand-new, so there are still a lot of mysteries about him that I don't yet know.

But he's a character who knows a heck of a lot more than he's saying, which is really starting to irk me!

Edited to Add: I know where KC comes in. And I know what happens at the end of the RHS chess tournament. Hideaki doesn't want to participate in the Interscholastic Chess Championship, so he forfeits to Michael. Michael doesn't want to do it, either; he just wanted to see whether or not he could beat Hideaki. So Emiko ends up playing. And I think I'm going to let Sharpe narrate this piece, even if it's from a third-person POV.

Once Upon an AU- Ideas

2009-04-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Since this is an alternate universe piece, I thought I'd play around with history a bit and change a few things. Some of them are major things.

1. The main characters (Michael, Scott, Sam, Emiko, etc.) all go to Maplewood Academy, which is still in existence. But it won't be if Tetsuya Takahashi has anything to say about it. He wants it torn down because all he sees is corruption within its walls. Unfortunately, he doesn't know anything about the coalition of the four schools... or of the prophecy.

2. In the middle of the story, Hideaki transfers to Maplewood and stays with Michael's family for the rest of the school year. This is their junior year of high school, so the year after Kiran comes to stay with the Liu family.

3. This hasn't been firmly decided on in the regular universe, but for this piece, Emiko and Hana are full sisters. Tetsuya and Stephanie split up after Stephanie was pregnant with Hana. Hana and Emiko have still never met face-to-face.

4. General storyline with all the other characters is still the same. Sharpe is still acting as double agent (he'll never get away from that role!). Ackerman still gets killed at the beginning. They still need a new history teacher to replace him. Rem Argentium is his new replacement. Aislynn Celeste is still the young math teacher under the tutelege of Hugh Avery. Seven McAllistair is still the person who comes in and repairs the computers.

Because of this, well... at Maplewood, school uniforms were required. I'm assuming they'd still be required now. So students have to wear uniforms. Teachers have to wear something similar to uniforms. That will make things interesting...

Emiko tugged on her tie and gritted her teeth. Not only did she have to wear khaki pants (Merlin forbid she wear a skirt!) and a black polo shirt, but she had to wear a burgandy jacket and a ghastly burgandy and silver striped tie to boot. Why couldn't she have gone to some public school instead of a place with a dress code stricter than just about any other institution and a whole bunch of prep kids on top of that? The girl sighed. At least her best friend was transferring here for the rest of the year. Rumor had it that he'd been kicked out his old school, so his uncle and aunt decided to send him here instead. To Maplewood Academy. Home of the Uber Geeks.

Emiko's talking about Hideaki... and the "uber geeks" is mostly a reference to Saunders. Yes, I am bored. Insanely bored. And I got this idea during class today and had to come back to scribble it down. It's not good yet.

Cold Ramen Noodles

2009-04-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

It just occurred to me how little I have actually been writing over the past few weeks and how much I should really be updating this on a more regular basis... and so, for a treat, I have a quick scene between Hideaki and Emiko. Yeah, they're both awesome.

This isn't meant to be deep or anything. It was just an idea that came to me earlier today and it was kind of cute. They're supposed to be in sixth grade or so.

MPAA Rating: G
Characters: Hideaki, Emiko, others by mention
Timeline: 2001-ish? Sometime after Hideaki is adopted by his dad and Uncle Joe, but apparently before he knows how to cook anything really worth eating...

"Well, we really don't have much to eat around here..." Hideaki offered a weak smile as he finished pulling a few items out of the cupboard. "And we really don't have many clean dishes, either." As Emiko watched him, it was pretty obvious to her that her friend's smile was forced. Unlike her family, which was rich enough to hire someone to do the cooking and cleaning- not that Emiko cared for Ashley, the latest in a line of housekeepers/nannies- Hideaki had always had a list of chores to do on his own. "And Dad won't let me make anything but Ramen noodles and popcorn, so what'dya want?"

Emiko shrugged. She was just glad to get out of her own house, as her father was busy with his campaign. Thankfully, Ashley had agreed to shuttle Emiko wherever she needed or wanted to go over the summer, so the sixth grader wasn't stuck at home all summer when Tetsuya was at the office trying to pass legislation. Or she wouldn't have even been here; San Francisco was a long drive from her home in San Jose. "How 'bout Ramen noodles?"

Hideaki pulled out a microwave pot and two bowls. One thing that they most certainly had a surplus of around the pantry was Ramen noodles. He was slightly less than graceful as he filled the pot about halfway with water and carried it over to the microwave and Emiko could hardly help but smile. Neither of the kids was known for being particularly graceful, but she was pretty sure she could have carried the dishes over from the sink to the microwave without almost spilling half the water.

"I'm gonna make yours first 'cause we only have one pot." Hideaki pressed a button and the microwave started. When Emiko opened her mouth to argue that Hideaki needed to eat more than she did- which she knew was true, as he'd admitted to not eating breakfast that morning and Ashley had insisted that Emiko finish an entire bowl of oatmeal, half an omelet and freshly cut fruit before leaving the house- but Hideaki smiled. "You're the guest and it'd be rude for me to make my food first," he replied. Such was always the case; Hideaki usually thought of everyone else before he thought of himself.

A few minutes later, Hideaki pulled the pot out of the microwave and poured the soup and noodles into one of the plastic bowls that he'd set aside for Emiko. As she watched him, she noticed that the liquid was hardly close to letting off steam. But she knew it would still need to cool down before she ate it; she could remember one of her father's friend's words of caution around hot foods. She had been about nine years of age at the time.

Ashley had just left for the evening and Emiko was sitting down to a delicious supper of spaghetti noodles with tomato sauce. Tetsuya was working on a speech for his re-election in the den and a friend- or at least she assumed this was a friend of her father's- was watching and providing careful critique. When her father had finished speaking, the other man said a few words and followed Takahashi into the dining room, where Emiko sat. Tetsuya had taken little notice of his daughter, but the stranger leaned over to Emiko. "Be careful. It's still hot and your father would not want to see you burn yourself," he hissed in her ear before exiting out the front door.

She'd only seen the stranger once or twice since then and hadn't ever heard him talk before, but she was always careful around hot foods. The girl took a pair of chopsticks and stirred the noodles around absently, all the while watching her friend. "Hey, go ahead and eat before your noodles get cold," he glanced back at her, momentarily taking his focus off the microwave. "I can wait." Emiko wanted to protest, but Hideaki smiled over at her. It's so like him, she thought to herself. He always thinks of everyone else before him... even me. And I don't deserve it. She closed her eyes for a moment. I don't deserve his friendship and he deserves a lot better than mine. She didn't even notice that the microwave had beeped and Hideaki walked over to where she was sitting.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. After a moment, Emiko looked up at him and nodded. "You sure?" The girl bit her lips together to keep from crying- she'd always been taught not to show weakness- and nodded once again. There was a short silence that was building up and this made Hideaki uncomfortable enough to squirm. "Hey, your noodles are getting cold."

After a long moment, Emiko smiled gently at him, but it was a forced smile. "I was waiting for your food to be done," she answered.

"You know you didn't hafta do that."

Emiko nodded. "Yeah, I know..." her voice trailed off slightly. "But it's no fun to eat alone. And besides, I like them better cold." This time her smile was genuine. The girl picked up her chopsticks and took a bite of cold ramen noodles. And she couldn't have been happier.

Music?

2009-04-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

One thing I've noticed when writing is that certain characters have music they want me to listen to when I write them. Normally, I listen to either classical or soundtrack or something else that's primarily instrumental when I write, but when I'm trying to write certain characters, I've found that certain music works best for them. For example, I've found it nearly impossible to write Sharpe and listen to music that's explicitly Christian. In fact, I even have a playlist of songs I listen to while I write him (mostly consisting of alternative music and some soundtrack).

Quick Update

2009-04-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

I've just decided that I have a new pet character: Professor Shasthri. I would really like to figure out more about her, but I'm not sure how I will go about doing that. I also want to continue writing an interaction between her and Sharpe, as they play off of each other quite nicely. But Sharpe is being stubborn and not letting me write him at the moment, so that may be easier said than done.

Yes, I realize it has been almost two weeks since I last wrote here, but I haven't had much of a muse as far as writing goes and I've decided that it's not worth forcing myself to write anything of consequence at the moment.

A Little about Emiko

2009-04-02T04:53:00.000-07:00

First thing, in honor of April Fools Day (which was yesterday), A Good Idea? is a piece I wrote back in 2007.

In more serious business (which isn't the reason why I'm up at this hour), but I've been thinking a lot about Emiko Takahashi recently... most specifically how she gets along with her fellow classmates and the teachers at RHS, as well as her parents and half-sister.

Scott Adams: No one in the fellowship likes Emiko Takahashi and Scott especially dislikes her. Because of his social status, he has a difficult time. He could easily be a member of the popular crowd, so he feels like he has to give Emiko a chance because of this, but he also knows that none of his friends feel the same way towards her. Scott's attitude is such that he often believes the best in people, unless they give him a really good reason to believe otherwise. So he can't help extending that to Emiko... to some extent. However, he gets really angry with her when she bullies his friends.
Samantha Adams: Out of everyone in the fellowship, Sam harbors an especially strong dislike (bordering on hate) towards Emiko. She just can't seem to accept the fact that Emiko just might become part of their group later on and she doesn't see why Michael puts up with Emiko.
Evan Saunders: It's said that the only person who has gotten into a physical fight with Emiko Takahashi and actually won was Evan Saunders. Evan hates the fact that Emiko likes picking on his friends (and on the other students) and he'll stand up to her, even when no one else will.
Hideaki Sato: Hideaki is probably Emiko's only real friend. The two of them met at Japanese school and he'll do almost anything for her and she for him. Hideaki was the one who originally taught Emiko how to play chess and he's one of the few people she actually respects. Much later in the storyline, they end up dating.
Tetsuya Takahashi: The relationship that Tetsuya has with his only daughter is rocky at the best of times. He tends to be very controlling of those around him and Emiko is no exception. However, what he soesn't take into account is that Emiko is very much like her mother and rebellious at the core. This drives Tetsuya and his daughter apart even further, leading to severe consequences for everyone involved.
Katie Myst: Katie is originally a character from the AU. She's one of the cheerleaders and hangs with the popular crowd. She knows Tyler by association (and knows he's a Christian) and has a crush on Michael. Surprisingly, Katie and Emiko don't get along very well. While Katie is very perky, Emiko hangs with the almost punk kids within the popular crowd. They argue constantly when they're forced to work together. However, both have adopted the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my ~~friend~~ ally". Katie is able to make the fellowship miserable in ways that Emiko never could... or would.
Sharpe: Sharpe and Emiko have a very interesting relationship and this is mostly because of what happened between Sharpe and Tetsuya when they were in school and because of the AU. For some reason (this differs whether the story is AU or not), Sharpe feels it necessary to keep an eye out for Emiko. He does this quite well, but he enjoys seeing how she will react if he does certain things. As with most things, this goes both ways and Emiko constantly pushes Sharpe. Things really start to go downhill when Michael tells Sharpe that Hideaki and Emiko are dating.
Michael Liu: I'm really not sure how Michael relates to Emiko. He doesn't particularly like her, but he doesn't harbor a strong dislike towards her, either... at least not outwardly. Michael is the kind of person who will stand up for what he believes, but he also won't argue if he doesn't think it will do any good. This is probably why he doesn't argue much with Emiko. Oddly enough, there is some amount of mutual respect between the two, but to anyone who knows them, it is more like a stalemate. Emiko knows she'll be in major trouble if she crosses the line with Michael and he knows the same thing about her. But when Hideaki and Emiko start dating, everything changes.

NB: The whole Hideaki/Emiko story doesn't take place until the fellowship are all college students. Michael basically flips out at Hideaki (they're roommates at the time). Michael's having a hard time with this and needs to talk to someone and for some reason, he doesn't want to talk to his parents. Since he's not talking to Samantha and Scott's studying abroad, the next most logical choice is Sharpe.

A Tale of Two Qs

2009-03-28T13:53:00.001-07:00

One of my biggest pet peeves in writing is the idea of a word count. "In order for us to even read what you've written, your piece needs to be a certain length." For some reason, that doesn't seem to cut it. One of the marks of a good writer is being able to balance out quality vs. quantity.

According to Merriam-Webster.com, quantity is defined as the "total amount or number" and originally comes from the Latin quantus, meaning "how much" or "how many". This is a measure of amount and can easily be counted. Quantity talks about word count, page count... how much a person has written. On the other hand, quality is the measurement of how good something is. It is defined as the "degree of excellence" or "superiority of kind" and comes from the Latin qualis, meaning "of what kind".

Imagine these as graphs. Along the y-axis, you have quantity. Along the x-axis, quality is plotted. Find the area under the curve (hoorah for calculus!) and you'll have some measure of how good the piece is, right? Think of that scene in Dead Poet's Society where the teacher is talking about poetry if you don't get what I'm talking about.

Now, some writers have a very high quantity score, but a low quality score. For example, the guy who wrote Moby Dick. A high number multiplied by a low number usually gives a medium number (ie on a 1-10 scale, 2x10=20). For the sake of our purposes, let's make a rule that the factors can't add to more than 12. An author with a higher quality score and a lower quantity score would have a similar result (10x2=20). The best result with the restrictions we've applied is to even out the numbers and make the factors as close to equal as possible, or have 6x6=36. This would seem to imply that a balance between quality and quantity is the most useful.

But is this really the case? To some extent, yes. Both quality and quantity are important, but rather than having them work against each other, it's best to have good quality. Having good quality will undoubtedly lead to some increase in quantity. The point I'm trying to make? That quality >> quantity.

The verdict? Don't worry about how much you write. Instead, pay attention to the details and little gems that make the quality of the writing higher. Usually length will follow, but don't force yourself to write with lots of words unless you have to.

Write more?

2009-03-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

I have discovered that I really need to write more, specifically from Snapshots, chapter six. I really need to figure out exactly what happens to Priya Shasthri and how that affects Sharpe and Michael and the conversation they have. I need to figure out if Priya would take Michael home... that is how he would get back home that night because Sharpe doesn't really drive (he doesn't have a car) and it's too late for Michael to walk home (silly thing called curfew that they have).

But it'll have to wait until the end of the chapter to decide because Priya's explanation is going to take awhile. I think I shall go take some time to write now, especially now that I do not have to worry about classes and all of that this week!

Shiny New Character!

2009-03-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

Introducing brand-new, shiny character! I got an idea for a story when I was sitting in CORE lecture and this character won't leave, so I figured I should write a little bit down about him.

Tarachand doesn't exactly live in our world. Instead, he lives in Almedrim (Seleweno, Sininen, to be mroe exact) and he's a member of a monastic community. He's about seventeen years of age and has been living there for about a dozen years.

Their culture is very different from ours. They count the years by solstices and the way the twin moons align in the sky. The monastery is dedicated to a monotheistic religion, worshipping Anilfirin (Elven name). The Tamesians are the ethnic people from which the Winged Raiders com.

Character Name: Tarachand Paras (“Tarachand” is Sanskrit for “star”, “Paras” is Sanskrit for “touchstone”.) I do really enjoy using Sanskrit names.

Birth Date: Morning after Winter Solstice. Lunn and Carn were aligned (during Solstice, they are only aligned every third Solstice). He is currently about seventeen.

Place of Birth: Sobotaj, Sininen. This is one of the southeastern most communities and it is under the constant threat of war from the Dark Elves and raids by the Winged Raiders.

Residence: Monastery of Anilfirin in Seleweno, about twenty miles north of Cynelic

Race: Human, possibly tainted by Tamesian blood somewhere up the line.

Height: Five foot, ten inches.

Weight: ~150 pounds

Clothing Sizes / Styles: He tends to wear loose clothing and mostly long robes, which is what everyone wears at the monastery. When he has his choice, he will remove his outer robes, preferring a simple tunic and pants instead. His clothing is well-worn and patched in many places and with all sorts of colours of cloth.

Hair Color: Almost black. He is from the south eastern region of Sininen and they tend to be darker.

Hair Length: Straight and long enough to pull back into a ponytail. He tends to braid it at night so that it will not tangle.

Eye Color: Dark with golden flecks around the rim, signifying that he has Tamesian blood in him and is an outcast because of that.

Handedness: Right-handed. Everyone in their monastery has been forced to be right-handed, at least to write and eat.

Jewelry: None. No jewelry is allowed at the monastery.

General Appearance: Tarachand is of approximately average height, weight and build for a young human male. His dark hair reaches down well past his shoulders and is fairly fine. He often keeps this tied back. His skin is pale compared to his family, but naturally darker than the others at the monastery and it has a slightly jaundiced tint, due to the small bit of Tamesian heritage he has.
The clothing he wears is worn and tattered around the edges. His hands are perpetually covered in ink stains and often, he will walk around the monastery without shoes on, especially during the summer.

Relationship with Family: Tarachand doesn’t really know his real family because he was dropped off at the monastery when he was a small child to be placed under the care of Ahbahs Nirav (the Abbot). He considers Nirav to be a father to him and their relationship is very close.

Key Family / Relatives: Ahbahs Nirav

Relationship with Friends: Jahangir is one of the other members of the monastery. He is almost heretical for his beliefs and enjoys questioning the practices of the others. He is somewhat rash in his ways and stands up for what he thinks is right. One way that he dissents from the main group is that he believes that there is beauty in everything, not just in the culture of the monastery. Seeing truth and beauty in the pagan beliefs is more than enough to put him at odds with Tarachand, who has grown up believing everything that Nirav has told him to be true.
~Ellywn is a female wanderer who has settled down for a short time just outside of the monastery. Originally from Cynelic, she was taken in by Elven adoptive parents (their own children had long since left home) when she was a child after her parents died of the plague (similar to influenza). When she was sixteen, she left home and has been travelling since then. She is fairly caring, though she recognizes that life can be stripped away from people in an instant, so she tends not to form emotional bonds to people easily.
~Ahbahs Nirav, or simply Nirav, is the Abbot of the monastery. He is about eighty-five years of age as humans reckon time and he has cared for Tarachand since the boy was young. As the head of the monastery, he is in-charge of and responsible for everything that goes on there. He adheres strongly to the old traditions, even if they are considered out-of-date by some of the other members. To him, there is no excuse to deviate from the law and if you do, strict punishments are to follow. However, if one follows the law, Nirav is very kind and benevolent. He prefers to teach by example, rather than speaking. There are weeks where he will only speak while in prayer to Anilfirin.

Key Friends: Jahangir, Nirav, Ellwyn

Educational History: Tarachand was schooled at the monastery since he was a young boy. He learned to read and write and the basics of mathematics. When he was twelve, he began his training as a scribe. Because he is a scribe, he has learned how to read Common and Elven, the two main written languages of Almendrim.

Work History: Scribe training from the time he was twelve until he turned fifteen. He has been a scribe at the monastery since then.

Skills: Cooking, planting, harvesting, mending, transcribing the ancient manuscripts

Bad Habits / Vices: Vanity. Despite not being able to own very much (monastery rules), he really cares about how he looks... most of the time. He is very proud of his hair, but hates his eyes.

Quirks: He tends to bite his lips together when he’s focusing really hard on something or occasionally when he is working.

Best Qualities: Follows the rules, contemplative, emotionally and mentally stable, a good worker

Worst Qualities: People pleaser, vain

Key Childhood Experiences: Not remembering his family and being dropped off at the monastery when he was about five-years-old.

Key Teenage Experiences: Meeting Ellwyn, scribe training.

Sexual Background: Everyone entering the monastery has to take a vow of celibacy, which may only be broken if said person leaves the monastery.

Personal Goals: To be able to belong somewhere and be accepted by people. Because of this, he is a people-pleaser.

Morality / Ethics: Tarachand is legalistic about following the rules of the monastery, as he was raised there. When he meets Ellwyn and begins wondering if the solitary life is right for him, he feels bad for questioning what he’s been taught all his life. Tarachand is religious and worships Anilfirin.

Style of Speech: Not as formal as Nirav, but more formal than an average human of Almendrim would speak and quite a bit more formal than a human of the Shadowlands (ie, our world) would normally talk.

Other Important Details: Other than the fact he’s a brand-new fantasy character? Really nothing.

Update

2009-03-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm awake and have nothing better to do, so I might as well blog. I haven't been able to knit, so I've been writing in my free time instead. Most of it is for a story that I'm working on with a friend over instant messenger. It's really starting to get interesting because there are a lot of potential issues that could come up and last night, we were talking about the issue of racism as it applies to a fantasy setting. Not usually the best path to take, but I do have a character who is racist, and perhaps almost for a justified reason. She takes it way too far and it is wrong, but considering the fact that her people have been at war and she hasn't had the most ideal life, she could be doing a lot worse than she is.

But that's really not what I intended to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was the idea of looking back on stuff that I've written over the past year or two and seeing how far I've come. One thing (in writing or in life) is that it's hard to make a judgement on that when you're in the middle of a situation. You really have to step back and make an observation.

I've even been looking back at Snapshots, which isn't necessarily the best embodiment of this. I was re-reading over some of what I have written and in the second chapter, only the very ending is strong. Chapter three, which was written in April of 2008, is mediocre. Really, only chapters one (because it was the first), four and what I've written so far of six are what I would consider really good. Chapter five is decent, especially towards the end. I've started to learn how to weave description in with dialogue, which is a most excellent thing.

I think I should work some on chapter six over spring break. But for now, I should probably go to bed and try to get at least couple more hours of sleep before morning really comes.

Slightly OT: Words and their Meanings

2009-03-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

It just came to mind that so many of our English words come from other languages and if we took time to learn bits and pieces of these other languages, how much would our vocabulary (and grammar) increase and become improved?

Through studying Latin last year, I have come to know more about the English language, including the proper uses of who and whom. (The words that I still get confused are affect and effect...) My vocabulary has also increased, though I'm not sure if that's always so readily apparent. But one thing that I've realized about myself is that I learn words by their roots in other languages, most obviously Latin and Greek.

Recently, I've had at least two duh moments when I've come to realize definitions of words and how they're connected. Allow me to explain. Firstly was the word diagnosis. Pretty easy, right? Did you know that it's Greek origin and comes from the same root that the word agnostic comes from? The root gnosis means knowledge, making agnostic to mean without knowledge. This would make sense because agnostics believe that we cannot know for sure about whether or not God is out there. Second duh moment was being told that confidence comes from the Latin roots for con (with) and fidere (to trust). Having studied some Latin, I probably should've realized that.

But what does this have to do with writing? Nothing much in particular, other than noting the fact that some of my characters are bilingual and some of them would pick up on meanings of words like that. I know Sharpe definitely would and possibly characters like Donovan Isaacs or Aislynn Celeste, both of whom speak English and at least one other language fluently (Donovan's fluent in English, Spanish and knows a few words and phrases in French and Aislynn's more than fluent in French).

That is all for now, as I need to go eat breakfast before the day really gets started.

Speculation?

2009-02-28T19:20:00.000-08:00

So, I've been thinking a lot about Sharpe's character as of late, so that has been quite interesting. One thing that I've figured out about him (indirectly) is that he and Stephanie Rei knew each other primarily through Jennie Alton, as Stephanie and Jennie were friends while they were in school. So Sharpe was the one who delivered Emiko's Christmas present to her (in this piece). Emiko is fourteen and in ninth grade (her birthday isn't until April), so she would've recognized Sharpe's voice as being familiar.

Also, there should be some reason why he was at the church on Christmas Eve... of all times and places. One would think that Sharpe would rather go on Easter Sunday or just some random day, but not Christmas Eve, mostly because of his history. In fact, in the narration of this piece, it is stated that he does not want to go on Christmas Eve. So why does he?

For this, I can think of only two reasons. One is that someone would have had to force him to go. Since he is an adult and responsible for his own actions, that doesn't seem likely. Plus, he hadn't been to church since high school (when he was living with the Altons) and even then, he didn't go very often.

The other reason that comes to mind is that something in him was drawing him to the service. I don't know what was said or what in that particular service went on other than what Michael is thinking to himself. I would love to know what exactly drew Sharpe to go to church and what drew him to go there on Christmas Eve. Because something did. It honestly doesn't surprise me that he chose to go to the church where Jonathan is a pastor. Since he's had quite a few run-ins with people who are hypocrites, it's kind of really important for him to be somewhere that there aren't as many (if any at all!). And I think he knows that the church that Jonathan works at and that the Altons go to is probably safer than elsewhere.

But there's something that draws my curiousity towards Sharpe. There's so much about him that I don't know yet, even if he is one of my most well-developed characters. I'd love to know if he has read any CS Lewis (one of the most amazing people who has ever lived, by the way!) because I think if Sharpe read anything religious, he would be more likely to read Lewis than anything else. Especially given what I know about CS Lewis from reading a biography on him.

Those are just my thoughts right now. Good night.

Joint Story Characters

2009-02-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

So, one of my friends and I decided that we should write a story together and we were each pulling characters from other things we'd written. I haven't actually written a lot of these characters very much or recently, but it should be interesting.

Lucius is from a piece that never really got off the ground. We needed a captain for the ship and he'd make a good one. Original character concept for him was medical, but I think captain fits him better... honestly. Janus is... uhm, interesting, to say the least. His real name isn't widely known, so he's usually called Janus by everyone else. I've written Kiran before quite a bit and I'm getting comfortable with her. Nate hasn't been around much recently, but he's an old character of mine and was originally in a fantasy story. Aislynn is orginally from the alternate universe... and she was originally Canadian. And Seven... well, Seven is just plain wierd. He comes from Seattle, Washington, but about 100-200 years into the future.

Lucius Touchstone

Lucius is the captain of the ship. He appears to be of northern European descent, of medium height and have rather paled features. He prefers to dress in casual clothing instead of the uniform and he holds a special hatred for dress clothing. He has an athletic build.
He is usually patient with the other members of the crew and is easy-going, but he does have his limits. There are a few rules that are his pet peeves around the ship and if you follow those, you’re good. He is celibate, but enjoys flirting. He also enjoys having a drink every now and then, though (according to Janus) he drinks too much.
Lucius possesses the ability to pass through solid objects. In other words, he can walk through walls and whatever else pleases his fancy. Since he has the tendency to run late for meetings, this can come in extremely handy at times. Originally, he was trained at helm/navigation controls.

Touchstone squirmed as he tried to sit patiently in the dress uniform. Whoever had made these things must have wanted the officers to be as uncomfortable as possible. His hair was neatly combed back and everything looked nice. He glanced at the time-keeper in the room on the star base. It read 2103 STT, which meant it was approximately 9:00 PM, standard Terran (Earth) time. He sighed; the dinner had started four hours ago. Even his patience was starting to run low and the Admiral had not yet given her speech.
“Hey, light beam,” a voice whispered over towards him. Only one person would have called him that: Lucius turned to see Maria Hernandez, the head of the science team on the SS Dreamer – the ship that had been forced to retire from service – lean over towards where he was sitting. He nodded a quick acknowledgement. “Just thought I’d let you know that it was fun serving with you. Ana’s going to miss seeing you.”
Lucius smiled as he thought of Maria’s four-year-old daughter. He had taken a liking to the little girl during their two year mission. Things would not be the same on the new ship he was going to be assigned to. For one thing, the SS Dreamer had primarily been a science research vessel, so most of the crew members aboard were devoted to the sciences, with minimal staffing in other areas. He had been the chief medical officer and the third officer – the person who usually commanded when both the captain and the first officer were detained.
The new assignment would be on the SS Veritas, which was an investigation ship. Touchstone would have frowned, but didn’t want to give Admiral Preston – Junior Admiral as though she may be – even the slightest hint that he was frowning at her speech.
“And, lastly,” Lucius breathed a sigh of relief; the Admiral was almost finished with her long-winded speech, “I would like to congratulate Commander Lucius Touchstone, who will be the First Officer of the SS Veritas.” There was applause coming from all over the room. Lucius gasped, completely shocked that he had been named as the first officer. Surely there were others with more experience than he had. “Congratulations, Commander.”
It was a full hour later when Lucius finally arrived back at the quarters he was staying in at the star base. He had started to undress when he heard a buzz that indicated someone was outside his door, waiting to see him. He slipped a grey t-shirt over his bare chest. “Come in.”
The admiral entered, still dressed as formally as ever. “I just wanted to offer my congrats, Luc,” she said with a smile. “There’s a full report coming later, but you won’t be leaving for another week. Perhaps we can get together for some coffee and chat for awhile?” The admiral’s overall demeanour had changed drastically from her formal self.
Lucius thought for a moment and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, suddenly thinking it odd that he had so many nicknames. “How about tomorrow, Sarah?” He returned the first name address just as Admiral Preston had given it, though there was a sudden clip to the tone that was unusual for him. Admiral Sarah Preston agreed. The two would meet the next day. They had so much to talk about; the cousins hadn’t seen each other since before Lucius had begun medical school. But talking could wait until later; right now, all Lucius wanted to do was catch up on some well-needed sleep.

Ophiuchus “Janus” Dylan

Orphiuchus Dylan is much better known as Janus around the crew. This is because no one knew his real name for the longest time. Occasionally, he will be called by his surname, Dylan. As an inhabitant of the desert planet, Janus’ darker skin tone helps protect him from the sun. He also has dark hair and dark eyes and is taller and thinner than an average human. He is never seen in anything not covering his arms and legs; even when he does medical exams, he usually leaves his sleeves pulled down all the way. He is used to a warmer, drier climate and gets chilled easily on the ship.
Janus is fairly anti-social and has a rather snappish bedside manner. He is easily annoyed, but slow to anger. He believes that knowing is better than not knowing and will tell his patients exactly what is going on, even if they do not want to hear. When annoyed, he gets very blunt in his mannerisms. He keeps most of his personal life hidden from the other crew members. He is a brilliant man, but difficult to work with for most people. Despite being a doctor, he tends to neglect his own physical and mental health at times.
On the ship, Janus is basically in charge of everything medical-related. He is not the ship’s counselor (that job falls to Danielle, as she is empathetic). He performs check-ups and has the power to authorize incompetence for medical reasons. He doesn’t usually fight physically, but rather chooses to heal or use his powers for defense. He is telekinetic, meaning he can move objects with his mind. He is also weakly telepathic, but he hates using this unless it’s necessary.

Janus frowned to himself, making a careful note of where each object had been laid out by the previous chief medical officer on board the ship. Whoever it had been obviously lacked any apparent reason for arranging the instruments as such. Gritting his teeth together in annoyance, he set to work, arranging things as he saw fit. With a wave of one hand – this was unnecessary – he moved the main computer monitor over to the opposite side of the room. A good doctor should be able to operate without all this fancy equipment; people from the city were ridiculously spoiled.
Just as he was finishing up, the door leading to sickbay from the main corridor opened up with a whoosh and Janus turned around. He still had not figured out how to lock the doors around here. In walked Seneca Argentium, one of the young science trainees who worked under Tiffany Aigel, one of the crew members for whom Janus held a decent amount of respect.
“Ensign.” Janus’ greeting was curt and he stood up in a less-than-graceful motion. He locked eyes with Seneca for a moment. She had absolutely no ability to hide her thoughts; even a weak telepath could easily pick up on what she was about to say. “Aigel sent you down here. Tell her things are all working.” Likely Aigel would come down later and check things out for herself... or Touchstone would. Or he might send Seylem or McAllistair. The lab tech was about to protest, but she left the room and Janus was left to his own company again. This was just how he liked it. So why had he signed up for this, again?

Kiran Shasthri

Kiran is on the shorter side of average, but still within normal height and weight range for a human. She has very dark hair, dark skin and eyes that look almost black. Her hair reaches down just past her shoulders and she usually ties it back with a bright hair tie. When not in uniform, she can be seen wearing brightly colored clothing. She also has her ears pierced.
Kiran is emotional, caring and fairly confident most of the time. She loves her friends and family more than anything else in the world. Amongst the members of the Squad, she’s fairly talkative and good at offering ideas... and asking them if they’re sure something will work. She has a fairly scientific mind and she would have gone into medical training, were it not for the discrimination on her home planet against elementalists becoming doctors. She is also known for her occasional sarcastic humor that creeps into the conversation at unexpected moments and for carrying her flute around almost everywhere with her.
As a member of the Investigation Squad, Kiran works to help uncover the mysteries of anything that might have gone wrong on the planets they visit and help fix things. She is also a dual elementalist, controlling light and dark. Light is more dominant and takes the form of a light ray radiating from her left hand and occasionally a sphere floating in mid-air. She can also bend light rays. Darkness is harder for her to control and it manifests itself in a shadow cloud coming from her right hand. She cannot create light or dark.

Fifteen-year-old Kiran Shasthri awoke with a start to the sound of her bedroom door opening. She blinked a few times and pulled a few strands of dark hair out of her face before sitting up. Much to her chagrin, it was Ming-yue Tam, her best friend and roommate, who had woken her – and Shelby and Monica, the two other girls in their room – up.
“You’ll never guess!” Ming grinned, plopping down on her bed. Kiran rolled her eyes and jumped off the top bunk, landing on her feet with a soft thud.
“What happened this time?” Kiran groaned. Leave it to Ming to be awake at this unearthly hour. Granted, Kiran knew that her best friend didn’t sleep; it was part of her mutation. The two girls had met when Kiran first started attending Melanthios Academy about a year and a half ago.
“You got a letter,” Ming replied, handing Kiran an envelope. It was addressed in perfect script and old-fashioned lettering, complete with a seal and a mysterious logo.
Kiran pulled her dark hair back and arched an eyebrow, taking the envelope from her friend. After examining it carefully for a trap, as they had been taught to do, she opened it carefully. “Our esteemed science professor is going to have my corpse as the next anatomy specimen,” she muttered under her breath.
Dear Kiran “Yin-Yang” Shasthri,
Your presence has been requested at a celebration. Please come to my house on December the second. The address is enclosed.
Sincerely,
Mr. W
Ming snatched the letter from Kiran’s head and skimmed it quickly. “So?” she asked, the pitch of her voice rising nearly an octave. “You going or not?”
Kiran frowned. She hadn’t been away from the Academy since she came, with the exception of going home briefly last Christmas. She was one of the fortunate ones. Most of the students were run-aways and outcasts from their own families. At least she still had a family who cared about her enough to want to do what was best for her. And as much as she fought with her older brother, Ekram, they were still close.
“We have a biology exam later today,” Kiran pointed out. “And band rehearsal after that.” She was one of the flutists in the band at their school. “And like I said, I’ll probably be the next cadaver if I leave.”
Ming shook her head. “So, if anything happens, just use your powers. How bad can it be?”
Kiran sighed. “Ming,” she began, carefully considering what she was going to say. Her best friend was one of the few recipients of her outbursts; she was usually pretty calm, but this was something she felt strongly about. “I believe that we were given our powers to help other people, not to make personal gains and certainly not to hurt other people. It’s what Dad was always trying to tell us when we were younger, but before I came here, I never really heard what he was saying.”
Kiran paused for a minute to observe Ming’s reaction. “It’s one of the things I’ve learned since coming here,” she continued. “Not only from the professors, but from you and George as well. I used to always be afraid of what my powers would do, but now I’m not, thanks to you guys.” George was a friend of theirs at school. She smiled slightly. Her power to turn herself and whatever she was touching invisible or into a shadow or beam of light had manifested itself when she was at school one day, nearly hurting one of her classmates. “I can’t go.”
Ming groaned. “Aww,” she pleaded. “That’s just the reason why you have to!” A sly smile crossed her face. “Or I’ll ask the Professor to use an alternate means of convincing you.” She grinned. “Sheesh, take your flute and books with you. Study while you’re there and you can’t miss anything too important here!”
Kiran arched her eyebrows as she stood up, put on a comfortable shirt and leggings and wrapped her blue and purple sari around her. She knew that she shouldn’t be leaving – not with the biology lab later that afternoon – but her curiosity wouldn’t leave. She just had to know who this mysterious Mr. W was and what he wanted.

Nathaniel “Nate” Winters

Nate has bright red hair, pale skin and freckles all over his face and body. He’s a little taller than average in height and the only thing that stands out significantly is his bright hair. He also has green eyes. When not dressed in uniform, Nate often wears jeans and a solid colored t-shirt.
In personality, Nate is very quick to react to anything and everything. He’s generally good around people and well-liked by his peers, though he does have a temper. He can be incredibly charming one moment, but yelling at the other members of the Squad the next. He is – and always has been – fascinated by all things technological.
Nate is also a member of the Investigation Squad and has the ability to control fire. He cannot create fire, so he must have a constant source of flame with him (usually in the form of an old lighter he carries around with him).

“That’s the last time you’re put in charge of the computer club, young sir!” An angry voice pierced through the disgustingly wet air of New York City. Nate could feel his freckled skin grow nearly the same color as his red-orange hair and he sank into his chair.
“Sorry, sir,” Nate muttered under his breath. So far, this was the second time during this summer that his foolishness had caused trouble, but who was counting? The first time was creating a computer program that was able to solve math and science problems by simply being told. This time was for creating a program that judged art and had poorly judged the skills of their school art teacher.
“Now, kindly take your things and go home,” the supervising teacher ordered, pointing a long, bony finger towards the door.
Nate picked up his backpack and could feel his heart sinking further and further down. Frances, a close friend of his, excused herself, telling the teacher that she needed to go home to take care of her baby brother. She met up with Nate in the halls outside.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, shifting her books to a more comfortable position as they walked through the streets of NYC together. She and Nate lived in the same apartment building and always walked to and from school together.
“Nothing,” Nate said, narrowing his eyes. He could still feel that envelope in his pocket. Frances frowned and Nate regretted that they were such close friends.
“Okay.” He dug the envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Frances. She read the writing on the paper inside and smiled.
Attention: Nathaniel Winters
Your attendance has been requested at Camp Aestas. You will leave tomorrow morning from the New York airport. Please see the list of items to bring.
Cordially,
Mr. Docens
“Isn’t that good? At least you won’t have Mr. Frost mad at you for the rest of the summer,” she offered.
“Whatev,” he muttered. But he knew he had to go, partially because only ten people had been accepted. It wasn’t like there were going to be a hundred kids and he wouldn’t be missed; he had the odd feeling that this was something important, unlike all those e-mails he’d received in his inbox before he finished writing the program to weed out spam messages and installed it.

Aislynn Celeste

Aislynn is a shapeshifter, so her appearance tends to vary based on whatever mood she finds herself in. She’s slightly less than five feet tall and naturally has blonde hair that’s short and blue eyes and light skin with a few freckles. She likes to dress in casual clothing whenever she has the chance, which consists of skirts and blouses. She has a tattoo on her shoulder, but often uses her powers to disguise this into her skin.
At a first glance, Aislynn is fairly happy-go-lucky. She often smiles when she works and spends time getting to know her fellow crew members. She is incredibly talkative and enjoys discussing various subjects, whether they be personal or academic in matter. Speaking of academics, her favourite subject in school was mathematics. On a closer examination, one will find out that Aislynn has always hid the deepest of her emotions from other people and she will often go into her room and start crying for no apparent reason.
Aislynn is fresh out of the academy and works at the helm and navigation controls.

It had been the first time Aislynn stepped into the Dance Hall since she had taken waltz lessons when she was in her fourth year as a student here. Having declined Justin's invitation to go during their final year, she had not come here at all that fall, winter or spring and the young professor sighed. Around her were beautiful pictures and the ceiling had been painted to look like a faerie tale castle. Like she was home once again where she truly belonged.
She laced up her dance shoes moved out onto the hardwood floor. As she closed her eyes, she felt like she was her father’s little girl once again, that her dad would come home after a long day of work and ask her how her dance lessons with Madame Barnes went. She would smile, giggle and show him how they learned to point their toes or spin around in circles. Her mother would not smile, but Demetry... Demetry would pick her up and twirl her around in his arms, lifting her high enough to touch the sky. She was his little princess.
And then it all changed when Demetry didn’t come home from work one night. Aislynn could barely remember, but she remembered Clarissa screaming at the government official who came around to their house... then her mother started crying, objects started getting thrown and eventually things got so bad she went to live with her grandparents. She was no longer her daddy’s little princess. Aislynn spun into a pirouette and as she made her second revolution, she spotted someone standing in the doorway out of the fleeting glance of her peripheral vision.
As soon as she could get both feet back on the ground, she turned to see who had been lurking in the doorway. The professor turned and could feel her cheeks glowing red as she found herself looking into the face of Nicholas Gunner. “Oh!” She glanced around, hoping that the other professor wasn’t taken aback by her horrible dance skills. “I’m sorry about that... did you want to come in and dance?” There was a short pause as she looked at him, still unsure of what to say.

Septimus “Seven” McAllistair

In appearance, Seven is of average height and average build. Nothing seems atypical about him at a first glance. He has pale skin that often carries a jaundiced tinge and non-descript brown hair. Glasses cover his orange-grey eyes. He often wears clothing that does not appear to be well-kept, a result of growing up in a lower-class family and getting used to dressing as he does. He cares little about his appearance or how he comes off to people.
Seven is probably one of the most awkward, unemotional people you would ever meet. This is largely due to the fact that he has a computer chip implanted in his brain and has since he was a young child, the result of a scientific experiment. He is naturally good with facts and uncomfortable with what he doesn’t know. He is also uncomfortable around people and their emotions.
He possesses a naturally photographic memory, but due to scientific research when he was younger, he has a computer chip implanted in his brain, which allows him to control computers with a single thought or to teleport himself (and occasionally others) through a computer network. Seven works tactical on the ship, but can also help out in engineering if need be.

He logged off of his computer and told it to shut down. Normal people would have needed to push buttons on their computers to do such a thing or at least speak to the machine, as technology had advanced enough for the newest computers to take verbal commands, but all he needed to do was think at the machine and it would do his will. The adolescent’s grey eyes stared at the blank screen curiously, as if he wished he would have persevered at that last project he was working on; he needed to crack that code.
With a slight frown on his face, he ordered his computer back on. This particular code was much trickier than any of the ones he had worked with before and the fourteen-year-old’s lips thinned in sheer determination, the one human emotion he could still feel thoroughly and with the intensity of any normal person. Septimus was well aware that he could be over-analyzing the situation, but perhaps he was wrong.
The boy flexed his hands and pulled the knitted fingerless gloves back onto his wrists. These blue garments had been his latest project, along with perfecting the latest violin piece his mother had chosen for him to learn. His glasses reflected the rows and rows of letters, numbers and various colors that littered the screen of the computers. With one thought, all the numbers were put in bold font and the letters in italics.
Seven stroked the side of his head. Brilliant. With another thought, the numbers had disappeared and the letters rearranged themselves to reveal the message, which read McAllistair: Meet me at the South End of the computer labs at the University tomorrow at precisely 17:45. I have something to give you. If you are not there at the designated time, you will not see me. He had solved the code; now all he had to do was find out the identity of the mysterious sender.

NB: Neither Justin nor Nicholas Gunner belong to me. Danielle also does not belong to me, nor does Aigel or Seylem. All the other characters do. This list of characters is for a story that one of my friends and I are writing together, so it should be interesting.

Writing and Life

2009-02-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

I am just writing because I think I will go crazy if I don't. I have been forced to go be social for the past few days rather than sitting in my room and knitting and watching movies and doing homework, so last night, I spent quite a bit of time talking to one of my friends who also writes. It always makes me really happy whenever I meet someone else who enjoys writing.

It's interesting that I write more characters who are guys. I think I'm more comfortable writing guys than girls to be honest. Not that I don't have female characters, but they just aren't as well developed or prominent. My friend (who is a guy) writes way more female characters. And then I suggested we should write together sometime. It's very different writing with another person compared to writing with only yourself. I doubt I'd be writing Sharpe in such a situation - haha. No really. He's difficult enough to write in a normal situation and he still has a strong enough personality that I can't always write him well (which is frustrating). I need to learn to be more consistent with such an awesome character like Sharpe.

Now that I've written a little bit, I should really get going on my paper (which HAS to be typed). That'll be interesting. Well, and the fact I'm supposed to work on my chemistry lab during the time that I have small group tonight. Bleh.

Character Feature: Sharpe

2009-02-18T06:31:00.000-08:00

Just to let you know, I will be finishing this when I am able to type more proficiently, which may or may not be anytime soon. I was going to release this on Thursday, which would be Sharpe's thirty-ninth birthday, but I decided to release what I had earlier.

This picture was drawn by leedom111. The artwork
belongs to her, not to me.

Full Name: Jedediah Victor Sharpe
Date of Birth: February 19, 1970
Birth Family: Gabriel (father), Amanda (mother), Michael Hosea (older brother)
Adopted Family: Josiah and Sherry Alton, Jennie and Mandie (younger sisters)
Place of Birth: New Jersey, USA
Place of Residence: Riverdale, CA. A small apartment (313B Janus Avenue) close to RHS.

High School: Maplewood Academy
Year of Graduation: 1988
Extracurricular Activities: Interscholastic Chess Team, Students Assisting Teachers (SAT)
Faculty Advisor: Candace Pruitt

University: Silicon Valley Institute of Higher Learning (in San Jose, CA)
Years Attended: Fall 1988-Spring 1994
Academic Degrees: BS in Chemistry, Minors in Biology and Physics, Masters in Chemistry
Faculty Advisor: Priya Shasthri, PhD
Extracurricular Activities: Research, Tutoring underdivision students

Former Jobs Held: Research Associate at Kwaitkowski Laboratories International
Current Employment: Chemistry teacher at Riverdale High School, head of the science department, homeroom instructor
Current Employer: Peter Screwtape
Extracurricular Activities Led: Forum Philosophorum (aka Debate Club) with Shaun Ackerman, Interscholastic Chess Team with Candace Pruitt

Series Connections: Maplewood, Riverdale
Allies: Candace Pruitt, Josiah Alton (despite disagreeing most of the time), Jennie Alton, Jonathan Liu, Shaun Ackerman, Hugh Avery, Amy Kerrington
Enemies: Tetsuya Takahashi, Kiyoshi Sato, Laura Clarkson, Peter Screwtape
It's Complicated: Michael Liu, Emiko Takahashi

Stories:
Snapshots Through Time: Chapter One: The Leather Book; Chapter Three: A History Lesson; Chapter Four: Sharpe's Dark Secret; Chapter Five: The Eleventh Hour
Maplewood Chronicles: Making the Squad; Maplewood Chronicles 2; Seeking Solace
University Days: Just Alright
Riverdale and Beyond: A Christmas to Remember; A Good Idea; Substitute Teacher; A Sophomore Saga; Annoyance; Jellyfish; The Dance; Bombing?; Just Another Ordinary Day

Character Connections:
Tetsuya Takahashi: Tetsuya Takahashi and Sharpe went to school together. They were in the same homeroom when they were students at Maplewood (Snapshots, ch1) and were both part of the Interscholastic Chess team (Snapshots, ch5). Sometime during the first month of school, Sharpe made a snide comment at Tetsuya's expense. Takahashi retaliated and things only got worse from there. They have never gotten along with one another and they will never get along with each other, either. However, at the end of their senior year, something of a most curious nature happened. On their day of graduation, Sharpe slipped an old chess piece into Takahashi's hand with a short note. Since then, they have been civil to one another, but barely so. It is only a matter of time until things explode in their faces and something very bad happens.
Candace Pruitt: Candace was Sharpe's high school chemistry teacher and the person who originally recommended him for the SAT program (see above). She was also the faculty sponsor for the chess team. Although strict, Candace has a good understanding of people and she is willing to take chances in order to get the job done. This has saved Sharpe on a number of occasions, most notably when she hired him as the physical sciences teacher at RHS for the 2000-2001 school year. Their relationship mostly consists of mutual respect mixed with a bit of annoyance.
Shaun Ackerman: If you didn't already know this, Shaun Ackerman is the history teacher at RHS and is incredibly religious. He and Sharpe have been acquainted with one another since high school because Shaun graduated in 1987. Shaun also co-runs the Debate Club with Sharpe; having two people who are extremely polarized in opposite directions may not have been the best choice on Candace's part when she asked both of them to be staff advisors. They seem to interact in a similar manner as Captain Picard and Q (on Star Trek: TNG) do. Despite all of this, there is a mutual respect. When Shaun is killed at the beginning of Once Upon an Alternate Universe, Sharpe is both upset and regretful.
Laura Clarkson: Sharpe and Laura have a love-hate relationship taken to the extreme. She's the biology teacher at RHS and originally from Texas. He is her boss and they are both able to figure out every possible way to irk the other. She finds out he is afraid of jellyfish when he is helping her prepare for one of her labs and she (innocently) asks him if he wants to go to the staff Valentine's Day party.
Hugh Avery:
Jennie Alton:
Jonathan Liu:
Hideaki Sato:
Michael Liu:
Emiko Takahashi:
Kiyoshi Sato:
Rose McGonigall: Rose was probably Sharpe's only close friend in high school.
Peter Screwtape:
Priya Shasthri:

Background:

Personality:

Physical Appearance:

to be finished at a later date

Happy Late Valentine's Day...

2009-02-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

Quick VD musing here, so please bear with me. I don't normally write anything romance and for a very good reason, but I'm bored AND I finished 40 chapters of Genesis AND I finished my homework for math class, so here goes nothing.

Michael glanced over at the girl and shook his head. "You deserve better than what I could give you." He was quiet for a long moment and did not meet her eyes. Instead, he stared down at the tiled floor, counting the brown specks on one of the linoleum blocks.

The girl crossed the room towards where Michael sat on the couch and plopped down next to him, taking little notice of his personal space. She was one of the few people who had always been able to do this to him without making him too uncomfortable and right now, she chose to take advantage of that. As most girls would do. Sam turned towards him and for a moment, she hesitated before setting her hands on his shoulders. She had always believed that physical touch was a most excellent way of expressing affection and many times, her brother had playfully referred to her as a cuddler.

"Michael?" One of Sam's finger's flicked a strand of Michael's hair. "This isn't about them." She was, of course, referring to Hideaki and Emiko, who had been seeing one another seriously for the past four years. Sam suspected the only reason why they weren't married yet was because of certain objections voiced by several people. "And before you start again, my opinion counts for something."

The young man opened his mouth to protest, about to give Samantha a lecture about how the rights of women hadn't always been to have a say in the affairs of others... or of themselves. But he already knew what she would say. This was twenty-first century America, not some country in the Middle East or two hundred years ago.

"And who's to say that I deserve better than you? What if I don't want that?" She glanced at the calendar, which read February 19, 2015. It had been almost four years since she'd finished college and most of her classmates and friends - her brother included - were already married. So why had she waited? For a long time, she had thought about her decision, even seeking counsel from the most unlikely of sources. Her high school self would have scoffed at her older persona asking for help like she had, but Sam had been desperate and she wanted an opinion other than that of her twin. As much as she respected him, she disagreed wholeheartedly when Scott told her that Michael wasn't coming back. And she had been right, hadn't she?

There was a long pause where Michael watched Sam carefully, as if trying to figure out what to say to her. He was quiet during the entire time; the only sound in the room came from the second hand of the clock keeping track of the moments that passed.

I can't even bring myself to finish this right now. Okay. There is a very good reason why I don't write romance. Now you've seen why. Please don't bug me to write it again.

Snapshots Musings?

2009-02-08T20:16:00.001-08:00

So, I was thinking a little more about where I'm taking Snapshots. At the end of chapter five, Dr. Priya Shasthri shows up at Sharpe's apartment. Chapter six will be spent with her, Michael and Sharpe conversing in some sort of manner that is yet to be determined. One thing I've found out about Sharpe is that he doesn't always react the way I think he will, so that should be interesting to write. But it ends with Dr. Shasthri leaving.

Earlier I was wondering how Michael would get back home (or if he would). The logical way would be for Professor Shasthri to give him a ride back to his house, thus leaving Sharpe alone at night. But when she's driving back, I'm not sure if she should talk to Michael at all. Like if he asks her any questions, I don't know if she would answer him. I guess that would depend on what happens earlier in chapter six, which is still yet to be written.

I'm thinking Michael would mostly play the part of an observer and I'm pretty sure I want to skew the narration more to his POV for most of the conversation. I don't imagine him taking explicit part in what's going on, but he should be more of an observer and commentator. I'm not doing first-person POV for this, but rather shifting the narration ever so slightly to include more of Michael's thoughts and his biases. I've shifted POV slightly throughout all the chapters. Like in chapter 1, most of it was Sharpe (though some of Michael). Chapter two was Michael's POV. Chapter three shifted quite a bit. Chapter four was Sharpe and the fifth chapter was mostly Michael's POV, though the omnicient narrator claims the ability to change it whenever she desires!

Not really, but still. I do need to write some, because I miss it so much. It makes me sad. And... I really want to delve deeper into that piece I wrote with Sharpe. There's something that happened to him that he's not saying and I want to know what that is and if he ever tells anyone. I would also love to go into and explore a philosophy class from Sharpe's POV, which will be a huge challenge... not only because I've never done anything of that sort before, but also because out of all my characters, Sharpe is the most complicated and we don't exactly see eye-to-eye, though I think I can understand where he's coming from.

Brief Snippet?

2009-02-04T18:34:00.000-08:00

So... my roommate and I were talking last night about characters and such and something struck me that I really hadn't thought of before. Sharpe is a lot more rough (for lack of something better to call him) towards Michael than he is towards Hideaki... or even really anyone else. The thing is that he knows Michael can handle it and Hideaki can't as well as Michael can. Plus, if Michael's going to grow as a person, he needs to be pushed and Sharpe realizes that.

Sharpe's pretty unique amongst my characters, I think. He possesses the unique ability to read people insanely well, but it's a learned skill for him. I don't remember whom he's talking to at this point (possibly Hugh Avery), but he remarks that he has always been a loner and studies people in order to learn more about them. This implies that his ability to read people hasn't always been as good as it is now. Well... or if you read anything about him when he's younger, you can find out that's true. Sharpe's just wierd.

But that wasn't what I wanted to talk about right now... I wanted to talk about something that happens later in Snapshots. And yes, there are spoilers here. So, Sharpe is spending time with both Michael and Jonathan Liu and when all is said and done, Michael has heard some things that he would have really rather not heard... and that Jon's not sure Michael should have been told yet. So Michael basically runs away (unlike Scott, Michael has a good sense of direction, so getting lost isn't an issue).

The door slammed shut and Jon turned to leave. He had to follow Michael... he had to go after his son. This never should have happened. Michael was too young to know all of this. Even though Michael was a good sixteen years of age, Jon would never have expected his own mistakes to weigh so heavily on his son.

Sharpe placed a hand on Jon's shoulder, stopping the older man in his steps and holding him back."Let him go. He needs to take care of this on his own." There was a certain gravity to Sharpe's voice that could not be mistaken for anything other than concern. "There is nothing we can do for him now." He was aware that those words sounded insensitive, cruel even, but he had to say them.

"What'd we do wrong?" Jon's voice was doubtful, questioning. He glanced up at Sharpe and their eyes met for a long moment.

Sharpe could only shake his head. "Nothing," he replied in a near whisper. "He needs to work this out on his own and there is nothing you could have done that would have made this any easier." The lines on his face creased as his thin lips drew into a frown. "He will come back, but please, do not go after him... not now."

Not only is Michael going to get it when he gets back, but apparently Sharpe knows him better than anyone thought was the case. Michael does come back... it just takes awhile.

But that is it for now. I just thought I should update this... and actually write something for once. I am still working on chapter six.

Voices of Characters

2009-01-31T13:30:00.001-08:00

While I was working on Snapshots, I kept thinking about little random character details... specifically what their voices should sound like. I have never given it much thought, but many of my characters have voices like people I know.

Take Callisto, for example. She has always sounded like my younger sister (not the youngest) with a British accent because she lives in the UK and always has. Scott has always had a voice like one of my former classmates who is well-liked by pretty much everyone he meets. Sam has always had a voice similar to one of my former classmates, as well. If Marie ever talked, she would sound a little bit to me like my friend Jenny does. Out of my long-standing characters, Michael's voice was a bit harder to pin down. It was only recently that I figured out that Michael sounds a little bit like my friend Dan, at least in my head. Like his voice in general. Okay, granted that Michael does have a touch of an accent and he can slip in and out of accents fairly easily, but still...

Perhaps the most important and most difficult character to pin down, however, has been Sharpe. In my mind, his voice has never been particularly loud, but there is a distinct tone to it. Michael describes his voice as almost hissing (Sophomore Saga). By the unbiased narrator (haha), Sharpe's voice usually gets described as calculating, dripping with sarcasm, not particularly deep, snappish and clipped when he's annoyed, sickly sardonic, cold, caustic (more alkaline than acidic) and having a slight drawl. I'm not sure what kind of voice that would produce, but it would be an interesting one.

Brief Comments on Previous Piece

2009-01-28T17:07:00.000-08:00

I noticed a few things when I was writing the piece I shared. These are in no particular order.

Sharpe clips the end of his sentences short when he's annoyed. Michael also does this on a number of occasions, particularly with the twins.
Sharpe breaks the promise he made to himself. Not just once, but twice. In canon. The first time is in A Christmas to Remember. Second time is when the fellowship et al is all grown up... well, they're in university.
The Altons live on Chestnut Avenue, which is the same street that the Liu family, the Adams family and the Johnsons live on.
Sharpe dislikes his middle name, but he hates his first name.
I kind of skipped through most of Sharpe's background in an attempt to get the story idea finished.
There seems to be a common idea of "explaining things" in what I write.
I really like naming my fictional characters after people... well sometimes. A lot of them share names with other literary characters (I should make an entry about names sometime).
I don't edit for continuity or making sense when I write things late at night.
I also noticed I listen to certain music when I am writing different characters.

But yeah. Now I need to go back and edit that piece for continuity and stylistics. Bleh. And work on chapter six of Snapshots, which has been started. I ended up deciding to go watch Star Wars last night with friends instead of writing (and then I came back and wrote half a page), so it was all good.

Just Alright - A Brief Writing Piece

2009-01-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

I just got an idea for a scene between Sharpe and Dr. Shasthri, so I think I am going to try to write at least some. I don't know how good it will be, but here goes...

MPAA Rating: G
Word Count: 1682
Characters: Priya Shasthri, Sharpe, others by mention
Summary: Takes place right after this... Sharpe has an interesting conversation with one of his professors.
Warnings: Controversial content by the name of religion. Either deal with it or don't read it.

The teenager glanced up, still keeping his hands folded tightly, his fingers almost white from lack of circulation. He had not meant to stay this late, but he had no family... at least none that would be worried about him or wonder why he wasn't at home. Sure, it was the day before Thanksgiving and almost everyone else on campus had gone home for the long weekend, but despite the Altons' kindness and hospitality, their small house on Chestnut Avenue still didn't feel like home to him. It never had.

"Victor?" Dr. Shasthri leaned over next to the teenager. Despite the fact that the boy's student identification read an entirely different name, Priya Shasthri knew quite well that when someone requested to be called something, it was a wise idea to comply. She knew Sharpe went by his middle name... and had since at least the beginning of his freshman year. The professor seriously doubted whether anyone other than a few of the faculty members and the teenager's family even knew his first name. "Listen, I don't want to disturb you, but don't you have anywhere to go?" Even she had something to do tomorrow; she had signed up on the volunteer list to help feed homeless people when their pastor had passed it around the church congregation.

Sharpe's dark eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "I have a paper for Frasier's toxicology class that I am going to finish writing tomorrow." He had already done nearly all the research for that project; now all that was left was writing the eight-paged paper, something he had chosen to put off all semester.

Priya frowned and shifted her weight to a more comfortable position, letting her shoulder bag drop to the ground. Inside, she was carrying the weight equivalent of at least three text books. Something told her that prying was a bad idea around Sharpe; the university sophomore had been more than secretive over the past year that she had gotten to know him. But like anyone else, she was curious. "Do you not have anywhere to go? Doesn't your family live nearby or anything?" She could have kicked herself in the shins for that comment; as soon as she had spoken, Sharpe's face paled to the color of parchment.

The teenager bit the end of his tongue, almost hard enough to draw blood. Yes, his family did live near... well, as much as he could call them family. "Not particularly," he lied. The Altons had chosen to go down to San Diego for the break; they had left that morning and were now in southern California, visiting people Sharpe had only met once and honestly could care less about.

Dr. Shasthri sat down on the linoleum floor, thankful she had chosen to wear jeans to work that day instead of a skirt. There was so much she understood, yet so much she had no idea about at all. For a long moment, she studied the quiet student who had proved himself to be an enigma. She had been told that she was good at reading people and she decided to put this theory to practice. As she looked into his dark eyes, he glanced away, resortng to counting the speckled dots on the floor. Her glance followed down to his hands. Scars. Somehow, this didn't surprise her much. There was a short pause. "Well, you're more than welcome to come and join us. We're helping serve homeless people at the church."

Sharpe stood up with such quickness that surprised Professor Shasthri. She had never seen anyone who was not an athlete move so quickly. She watched as Sharpe recoiled into the shadows that were provided by the stairwell. "No!" This was spoken with more force than he had ever used around an authority figure before, other than perhaps Alton. Josiah Alton had heard him yell before, but few other adults had. The back of his fist hit the wall just hard enough to cause redness. There would probably be a bruise there tomorrow.

"I..." The professor was nearly speechless. She knew not everyone at the school was religious - in fact, she was one of three professors in the greater sciences department who held Judeo-Christian beliefs - but she had never imagined anyone getting so upset at the mention of a church. "I'm sorry." Those were the first words that came out of her mouth. "I didn't mean any offense." Priya thought for a moment. She had taken a lot of flack from her co-workers whenever the subject of religion came up. As if being both a woman and an ethnic minority in the sciences wasn't enough. The professor had learned not to take offense at anything that was said.

"I don't take any offense, but I can't." There was a certain aspect to Sharpe's voice that Priya had never heard before. Normally, the sophomore was quiet and his reactions were measured and composed carefully. He hadn't been inside a church building since before he graduated high school... not even on Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday. Especially not Christmas Eve. He could not go back. Not now or ever again. He had promised himself never to set foot in a church building as long as he lived and the young man intended on following through. A promise was a promise, even if it was only to yourself, right?

Dr. Shasthri glanced over at him, but decided not to press... for information or otherwise. If Sharpe was going to tell her what was going on, it would have to be his own choice, not her pressuring him to do anything. "Are you sure everything is alright?"

Sharpe nodded. "Fine. Just perfect." Sarcasm was dripping from his voice and Professor Shasthri caught that and frowned, her thin lips drawing together. Sharpe moved forward slightly and clasped his hands behind his back.

Before she could stop herself, Professor Shasthri decided to take a chance and ask a question that she would probably regret later. "You don't like anything that has to do with religion, do you?" Her question was innocent enough and her voice, non-accusing. It was the same tone she frequently used in the classroom or talking individually with her students.

"Religion is stupid." As the three-word response came, Priya couldn't have been more surprised. She was used to him being far more eloquent or at least less blunt. However, she had to agree with him... to a certain extent. Religion for the sake of religion - as she had pointed out so often to Lewis from the philosophy department, with whom she enjoyed long talks over coffee - was pointless.

Although common sense told her not to, she decided to press. Part of her inner core told her that she was closer to getting the young student to talk than anyone else had been, but Shasthri knew she would have to tread carefully. Amongst the general population, topics including religion were deemed as controversial at best. Even though she and Frank had talked extensively on the subject, both were respectful adults, capable of civil conversation, despite not always agreeing on any particular subject. "Perhaps it is..." These words were more of a muse to herself and a ploy to get Sharpe to explain his comment. "But surely anyone who dislikes religion must have a reason." As a scientist, she held to the philosophy of having some reason for every decision she made, no matter whether her reasons were logically oriented or not.

Sharpe was quiet for a long moment and his long fingers ran along one of his scars on his right hand and up his arm a few inches. "I don't hate religion. I hate Him." The last word he spoke was emphasized and the teenager nodded towards the ceiling. Sharpe's voice had lost its previously present sarcasm.

Dr. Shasthri glanced up at Sharpe. For the past several minutes, he had been standing and she, sitting. She nodded towards him and he sat down, leveling her with his dark gaze. Priya was quiet for a long moment. "If you don't mind me asking," there was a short pause as she studied him and she leaned forward, supporting herself with her hand, "please do explain." Not only had she assumed he was non-religious, but she was aware that at least one of the other faculty members was under the impression that Sharpe was an atheist. It didn't bother her one bit, but something in her said that there was more to him than what met the eye. Such was the way with everyone.

"Explain what?"

She knew she should have been expecting a question in return. She had seen this strategy before, mostly in students who preferred not to talk about a certain subject. They would ask questions in response to questions or try to change the subject; some were better at it than others were. "Your esteemed philosophy professor seems to think that you are an atheist." She was speaking of none other than Dr. Lewis.

Sharpe's eyes narrowed so much that he looked like he was squinting at something. "That is illogical." His lips drew together into a thin frown and he sunk to the floor, leaning his back up against the brick wall. "It's impossible to be angry at someone if you don't believe that person even exists." In the back of his mind, he was pretty sure there was a God somewhere, but he was sincerely doubtful that God was anywhere near caring. His life had taught him that this was most likely the case.

Dr. Shasthri nodded. She was about to say something, but she stopped herself as she caught a glimpse of something shiny in Sharpe's eye. Maybe it was the way the light from the lamp post outside was hitting his face, but she doubted it. "Are you alright?" She almost reached out to put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but decided against it.

Sharpe shrugged. "I will be." He was always alright. Never great, rarely horrible. Just alright. He always would be.

NB: Yes, Frank Lewis is named partially after one of my favourite all-time authors... and after one of the characters he wrote. But these characters belong to me, despite whatever namesakes they might have. And the Altons live on Chestnut Avenue, too (same street that the Lius live on... and the Adamses and the Johnsons).
Another interesting thing to note is that Kiran makes a similar comment about one of her teachers... that their "esteemed science professor will have her corpse as the next anatomy specimen" if she left school without permission.

Eirian's Tale

2009-01-26T14:02:00.000-08:00

I need to write more... unfortunately, I want to write something that probably wouldn't happen in the realistic stories I have going, so it might be time to bring out Eirian...

Eirian's an Annuviel, or a winged being similar in most ways to an Elf. Except that they're shorter and they have very large wings. And they can fly. She's from the same clan as Quayle (Xanthus), which means her wings are silvery-white. Her hair is also pretty light and her eyes are silvery-purple, which is characteristic of those descended from the Elder Tribe (Kai and Ismet are not descendents of the Elder Tribe). Those of the Elder Tribe are usually taller than other Annuviels; it is rare for an Annuviel to be taller than five feet.

Most Annuviels have a love of life and all things that grow or breathe, though they tend to be quite xenophobic. They're secretive folk and don't like outsiders. Eirian may not be xenophobic, but she is incredibly prejudiced. To her, humans are alright (she lived with them for quite a few years), but she hates the Dark Elves... or anyone who might be descended from them. She's also incredibly masochistic, as lying causes physical pain for the Annuviels. Some have learned to ignore the pain (like Quayle) and others have learned to like it, but most just don't lie. At all. Eirian actually likes it.

So here's a little something I wrote with her in it. Yes, it's fantasy. It takes place in Almendrim, which is the fantasy land I created. It's kind of your general fantasy land, not completely unlike Middle-earth, though there are more races... and talking animals.

MPAA Rating: G
Word Count: 438

“With all due respect, I must object.” Eirian’s voice was raised quite a bit more than anyone had heard before and she stood up. She and an unidentified human male were in the highest tower at the castle in Cynelic. They had been discussing important matters for nearly three hours; every time the man offered a proposition, the younger female refused. Time after time, arguments started again until at last, Eirian felt like she had enough.

Grey eyes darted to glance out the window, the only portal into the outside world from the Tower. The sun was ready to set and within hours, the twin moons – Lunn and Carn – would appear. The Annuviel felt sick to her stomach; she knew what happened when the moons would align as they would tonight. Far off into the distance, she could already hear the chanting and she thought she saw a flicker of flame out of the corner of her peripheral vision. Another raid. Not even the most foul words in her native tongue of Archia would suit for the moment and she swore under her breath in the common speech.

“Consider it.” The man’s voice was insistent and even Eirian couldn’t ignore the pleading tone that was infused so deeply into his emotions. His offers were tempting; she could do as he asked and still gain revenge upon at least one of the enemy simultaneously. The corner of her eye twitched and there was a brief flash of a devious smile; her ears pricked back and she met the man’s eyes after a brief moment of recovery.

“Alright then, I shall.” There was a slight smirk playing onto her face as she thought through what he had said. A hiss came from inside the shoulder bag she was carrying and a teal head popped out. Nioko glared at the man, suspicion shining through his sulfur-colored eyes. Though the moons would align tonight, there would be no more Annuviel blood spilt over senseless raids by the enemy. She now had the means she needed to exact her revenge.

Little did she know, one action of hers would set off a chain reaction that would involve a major political crisis and another betrayal in her life. Nor was she aware that during the next few months, she would come to discover with whom her true allegiance rested. All she understood was that she had been given a task and she would carry it out like every other time, only placing her signature twist on the assignment.

Instead of deterring the company, she would find them and kill him.

Nioko is her pet snake. The unidentified human male is the Duke, who happens to be a high official in the King's Court. Lunn and Carn are the names of the twin moons that orbit Praesodyn, which is the name of the world that Almendrim (the country) is located on. Cynelic is the capital of the human kingdom. Archia is the name of the Annuviels' native tongue, which is virtually impossible for a non-Annuviel to learn (though some Elves have picked up decent portions of it). Eirian's basically a hired assassin at this point.

Dead Characters?

2009-01-25T18:15:00.001-08:00

Well... let us hope that none of my fictional characters wind up dead before the end of Snapshots. No seriously... with Sharpe surrounded by one person whom he doesn't like and having the other person in the room be the only person who can make him feel incompetent... well, let's just hope that no one dies. And I'm planning to work in a flashback between Sharpe and Takahashi. Yes, another one of those... only this one would beg the question of what the chess piece means.

Yes, in case you hadn't figured out (or I haven't told you - haha), chess has an important theme in Snapshots... and in just about whatever else I write. And Takahashi has one of the chess pieces... so does one of my characters who is very much dead.

Also, Dr. Shasthri has the rare ability to make Sharpe feel incompetent. I think this is probably something going back to when he was a student at university, seeing as how she was one of his professors. Not that she deliberately makes him feel stupid...

Seven Secret Statements

2009-01-21T06:38:00.000-08:00

So, Rae had a journal entry up on DA, which made me think about my characters a little bit... what would they say about each other if they knew no one would find out? Wanting to put my signature twist on one of the tagged things (even though I wasn't one of the ones tagged), I have decided to do it to the POV of one of my characters, circa 2010. Yes, this is in the future.

Feel free to guess who is saying these or about whom these statements are made. They are fictional characters, not real people. These statements are all made by the same character, just to let you know. I'm only doing seven of them because I intend to take another character and do several later on (when I have more time and a brain that's actually thinking straight).

1. I used to really not know what you were thinking. Ever... but over time, we've grown closer. You're my best man and I can't count all the times we've spent talking. We would always get into trouble together... you and I. I still don't know what you're thinking half the time and whenever I do, I don't think I want to know.

2. The first time we met, you started talking so fast that I could hardly keep up with what you were saying. We've had some interesting times together and I've come to love you like a sister. All those times I've yelled at you and you at me, well... let's just leave that behind us now. You're such a caring person and it's evident to me that you do mean well.

3. I'm not sure there's much to say, other than the fact that you really hurt us. Especially the others and you know who I'm talking about. Why'd you have to go and betray us like that? I can't really hate you, but I'm sorry... you are no longer a friend of mine.

4. I guess this is it, old friend. There are times you've been a jerk, but you're a good guy. I'll miss all those chess games and having to drag you and Quincy out of trouble. You have been and always will be my friend.

5. For the first six years of knowing you, I wanted you dead. But now, I'm not so sure. I've seen a miraculous change in you and I like what I've been seeing. You've grown into a beautiful woman and it's such a change from that insecure puppet you once were. Face it, anyone who makes fun of a teacher like that is insecure. I still don't like you and it's pretty obvious you don't like me, but who are we to argue with ambar bringing two people together? (ambar = Elvish word for fate)

6. Words cannot express what our friendship has meant to me all these years. We've been close friends since I can remember and we've talked about things ranging from what actually incited the debate that ended Forum Philosophorum to what Bilbo meant when he gave the line of "liking you less than half as well as you deserve" in Lord of the Rings and everything in-between. You are very much like a dear sister to me... and much more.

7. I still don't know what to think of you. You've been nothing short of a conundrum since we met and you've only explained yourself a few times... and that's always made more riddles. You've proven yourself time and time again, but I still can't help but question your loyalty. Maybe it's just me, though; the others don't seem to wonder too much. Even through everything, I've always felt like you were watching out for other people. I would like to know if you are, but I don't think you'll tell me. Truth is a double-edged sword and I do hope you are careful of that.

Most of these should be pretty easy, provided that you know my characters.

Slightly OT: New Website!

2009-01-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

So, this is slightly off-topic, but I'm going to write it here anyways because it pertains to writing. I just got a new website! Originally, I was only looking for somewhere to link to longer works or works that had more mature ratings, but I like the way it looks. I have a few of my older pieces up, as well as chapters one through five of Snapshots. I'll still be writing here regularly, but that'll be the place where I post finished, longer works... and I'll post a summary and link over here when those get done.

Good times, eh?

Snapshots Chapter Five: The Eleventh Hour

2009-01-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I've finally got the fifth chapter finished and typed up. Since I had to put a warning up on DA about it, I decided to put it here in case anyone wanted to read it who isn't a member on DA. Just make sure you read the other chapters before this one...

Chapter One: The Leather Book
Chapter Two: Deliberate Ambiguity
Chapter Three: A History Lesson
Chapter Four: Sharpe's Dark Secret

MPAA Rating: Mild PG-13 for character death by suicide.
Characters: Sharpe, Jonathan Liu, Michael Liu, Jennie Alton, others
Word Count: 4920
Summary: The fifth chapter in Snapshots...

A boy sat at the top of the stairwell, unable to believe what he had just heard. Had his ears betrayed him? Or had what he thought had happened actually come to pass? Either way, Michael realized that someone had some explaining to do and for once, that someone was not his best friend. He slumped down and let his head fall to the more comfortable position of resting on his arms as he tried to ignore whispers from his parents that were coming from downstairs.

When he finally could not handle things anymore, he jumped up. This merited the attention of both his parents, as Jon exchanged nervous glances with his wife. He was just starting up the stairs when Michael turned and bolted in the direction of the school room, grabbing a blue and grey stuffed animal as he passed by the room he and Andy shared. Andy, who was still patiently working on transposing music, paid his older brother little or no attention.

The door to the school room would have slammed shut had Jon not arrived in time to prevent that from happening. As he glanced down at his son, he saw the face and body of a livid teenager. Michael’s normally pale cheeks were red and his eyes narrowed in anger. One hand was clenched into a fist at his side and the other was holding the stuffed manta ray by one of its pectoral fins.

“Michael, please,” Mr. Liu held one of his hands up in the air in a placating gesture. Ironically enough, this was the same stance that Michael often assumed when mediating arguments between Scott and Samantha Adams. “Just listen to me.”

Michael hardly moved a muscle. For nearly five minutes, he stood there, rarely blinking and barely breathing. There was a tension mounting in the air, but Michael outwardly appeared immune to it. Silence prevailed for that period of time until he finally spoke. “Why was he here?” His voice was perfectly calm, but serious and almost deadly.

Jon drew in a sharp breath of air. “Please, Michael,” he began. “Let’s both go downstairs, have some tea and I’ll answer your questions, okay?” He sent up a silent prayer that Michael would oblige. The boy considered for a brief moment, but nodded and followed his father out of the schoolroom, still holding the poor manta ray in one hand.

Once Jon had poured both himself and Michael tea, he sat down on the couch. Michael was sitting in the chair that Sharpe had occupied only moments before, wrapped up in a flannel blanket that rested on the back. He showed little interest in the cup of tea; instead it sat on a coaster on the coffee table in the center of the living room.

Jon sighed. He knew he would have to take the initiative; if Michael did, accusations would follow. He could see into his son’s eyes that the boy was a simmering combination of angry, hurt, upset, confused and frustrated. This was a dangerous combination in almost any human, but especially someone who kept so many of his emotions typically hidden. “Mr. Sharpe decided to come by to make sure you and Sam arrived home safely.” At this statement made by his father, Michael arched an eyebrow. So Sharpe had been following them earlier. “He wanted to catch up on old times for awhile, so that’s what we were doing. We went to high school together.”

Michael leaned back, clearly unimpressed. “He mentioned that,” he replied in a non-committal voice. “Several times, in fact.” There was a short pause and Michael’s fingers ran along the seam of the blanket. “Why was he here? I know Mom gave him dinner.” Although the Liu family was gracious to their guests, Michael hadn’t expected his mother to feed Mr. Sharpe dinner.

Mr. Liu frowned slightly. “Just how much did you hear?” He took a sip of his tea and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and folding his hands together.

Michael shrugged. “Enough to know what happened.” His voice was level and calculating as he spoke, as if he was testing to see how his father would react before he said anything else. “After so long, I thought you or Mom would’ve realized that I often pretend to sleep.”

Jon’s glance fell to the ground suddenly. “Michael, please tell me exactly how much you heard.” His voice was level as he matched that of his son, but there was a deep pleading undertone within his emotional signature that betrayed him. He was very uneasy of what would happen next and this frightened him.

Michael hardly wished to respond and he kept fiddling with the blanket in his hands. “I know that Mr. Sharpe gave you something that he intended for me to have. And yes, I heard almost everything.” An eyebrow quirked upwards as Jon’s face paled slightly.

Jon, who was still almost white, pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Michael. It was slightly wrinkled along the corners, but Michael ripped it open and removed the piece of paper inside. It was a handwritten note and probably the handwriting of a teenager, he guessed, and transcribed onto spiral-bound notebook paper.

[[Michael, if you’re reading this, please don’t shoot the messenger. He’s only doing it on my request and that’s it. If you want to send a reply, please trust him to get it to me. But that’s not what I was going to talk about anyways. I really wanted to you to know that Sharpe’s a good guy and I’d like to invite you to visit me sometime. Maybe pick up a game of chess? He mentioned that you play... so do I! Or just hang out... or whatever. It doesn’t really matter to me.

I wish I knew how to say this to you, but you’ve really been a good friend to me. All the times we’ve talked and Sharpe’s told me that you really do care about your friends. I’ve never heard him say that about anyone else, except probably your dad. He’s a good guy, too, I think. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a hunch he knows more than he says he does.

Which is why I’m actually writing to you. He really has a soft spot for some of his students and I’d like to ask you a favor. Has he told you anything about a guy called Kiyoshi Sato? I know they used to know each other. I asked Sharpe last time, but he wouldn’t say anything more. Weird, huh? That and his family are the only things he never talks about.

You probably won’t trust me on this. Sharpe told me to put proof in the envelope. Silly guy. But there’s the camp pic of you, the twins and red-head down at the archery range. The flash that he thought was lightening was my camera. Sorry ‘bout that... and thanks.

I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Signed, The Black Rook]]

Michael read the letter once and then again. One of his hands held the picture. Surely enough, the photograph clearly showed Scott and Nate arguing in the background. Sam was preparing to shoot the arrow and Michael had been standing next to the two cousins, deciding whether or not to watch them argue or to step in and play peacekeeper.

“Michael,” Mr. Liu’s voice was clear. “Mr. Sharpe was very insistent that you had that. In fact, he was sure you needed it. I don’t know why; you’d have to ask him.” He glanced down at his son. Michael’s face was carefully crafted into that same stoic expression he had nearly mastered that revealed almost none of his feelings. The only sound coming from the living room was the soft chime that signalled that it was 10:30 PM. Upon hearing the chime, Michael jumped up. “What’s–” Mr. Liu started to ask, but Michael cut him off before he could say anything.

“I... I need to go somewhere.” Michael threw the blanket back down on the chair. Because he had not actually gone to bed yet, he was still wearing the same clothing he wore at school: a blue turtleneck and slacks. He slipped on his tennis shoes that were lying on the floor next to the front door over the socks he wore. He also grabed his long trench coat and shoved the letter and picture into a pocket. He shut the door before his father could stop him and he was gone.

---------

“Who is it?” A voice called from inside and a girl opened up the door just a crack. The girl was easily a few years older than Michael was and she sported a casual purple sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers. Her long brown hair was pulled back loosely into a braid. “Oh, hi Michael! I... uhm, didn’t expect you here so late, but please, come in.” She smiled and moved to the side, allowing Michael entrance to the house.

Michael followed Jennie into the living room. The house was remarkably like his own in so many ways. Plush blue carpet covered the floor of the room in which they stood and a few chairs and the couch had been arranged around the room in roughly an elliptical shape. Jennie took a seat, but Michael remained on his feet, far too uneasy to sit down and stay still.

“Michael, you okay?” Jennie glanced over at him. “I’ve never seen you out this late.” Even at church functions, Michael had been well-known amongst his peers for getting home at a reasonable hour.

Michael shrugged. “I need to talk to Mr. Sharpe,” he stated after a moment. His voice was shaky; he was still pacing back and forth along the carpet. He clasped his hands behind his back and stopped for a moment.

Jennie placed her hands on her left knee. “Okay... let me know why you need to see my brother,” she replied, her voice equally as apprehensive as Michael’s had been. She was not concerned that Sharpe would be asleep; it was still early enough that the thought passed through her mind. She was well-aware of the fact that her older brother stayed awake far into the night on a regular basis.

Michael’s hands came unclasped. “He... he said something to me and I wanted to ask him what it meant.” There was a short pause. “It’s Latin and I need to ask him about the translation.”

Jennie opened her mouth slightly. “Let me call him and see what he says,” she answered. “While you’re waiting, we made cookies this afternoon if you want some.” She spent part of her time working at Riverdale High and many of her afternoons were spent volunteering at the community center with kids who had special needs. Fridays were usually devoted to fun projects, like cooking. Apparently more cookies had been made than they were able to eat or take home.

“No thanks,” Michael shook his head. Between dinner and the odd things that had happened that day, he was hardly hungry anymore. After a moment, Jennie grabbed the telephone and took it into the other room. Michael drew his lips into a tight frown. Very few things were running through his mind and the only main thing was concerning Mr. Sharpe. Nearly five minutes later, Jennie emerged from the kitchen.

“My brother agreed to let you come over,” Jennie smiled, holding the phone loosely in her right hand. “I’d walk you over myself, but Mom and Dad want me home.” She wrote and address on a piece of paper and sketched out a quick street diagram. “This is what he told me to do, so here. I trust your ability to follow directions is better than Scott’s?” She smiled slightly and handed the paper to Michael.

Michael nodded. Scott was the kind of person who would get lost giving instructions from his house to school, despite the fact that it was only three streets away and the trio had been going to Riverdale for over two years. Michael glanced down at the paper. The address read 313 B Janus Avenue. With a split second thought, Michael knew exactly where that apartment complex was located; it was only a short distance from Riverdale High. In fact, Tyler Martin had used to live in the same complex with his mom and younger sister Emily until they had moved just a few months before.

As he walked down Chestnut Avenue, the wind whipped around his body, blowing his coat in all directions. The boy pulled in closer into his body as he kept putting one foot in front of the other. His dark eyes blinked a couple of times as he made his way down the street. It would be a long walk; that much he was certain of.

While he was walking, he contemplated the letter he had received. He was certain he knew the person who had sent it. Perhaps it had been someone from Sola Scriptura, the summer Bible camp that he, the twins, their cousin Nate, Tyler Martin, Marie Wilson and Kiran Shasthri had all attended the summer before their sophomore year. It had been a wonderful time. Michael had made some close friends that summer, like Nate Winters and Hideaki Sato and Kiran Shasthri, who had later stayed with the Liu family for a semester as an exchange student. All the teenagers spent time not only in worship, but also intense Bible study. The smaller group that Michael had been in had studied Job. As memories of Sola flooded his mind, he smiled; maybe the walk did not feel so long after all.

The apartments on Janus Avenue were not far from Riverdale High. Michael kept walking along as he realized that it made sense for Sharpe to live there if, as he said, he did not own a car. It would take Michael approximately five minutes to walk from the apartments to Riverdale; he assumed it would take Sharpe slightly less than that based on the fact that the chemistry teacher had much longer legs than he. The teenager entered the apartment complex and wandered around for a few moments. It was a nice feeling to walk around in peace... the lonely atmosphere contrasted with his home, which was ever bustling with people.

After about ten minutes of walking, he came to realize that the A apartments were on the first floor and the B apartments were on the second. He sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair, eyes darting around into the distance. He came upon the apartment marked 313A and his glance shifted upwards to the heavens. For just a moment, he marveled at the majesty of all that was happening. Despite the foul weather, the night sky was absolutely amazing: he could see the small flecks of light that were really stars, all of them many light years away. Though he couldn’t find any of the constellations, he knew that the closest star other than the sun was approximately four light years away. A gentle smile touched his lips; the heavens had not yet seemed this close to him since he and a small group of friends had gone star gazing at Sola.

[“Isn’t that amazing?” One of the teenagers marveled as he looked up at the night sky. The moon was only a small sliver that night. “Hey Michael, look up there. The Big Dipper... or Ursa Major as Dad calls it.”

“Hmm?” Michael arched an eyebrow towards the other boy. He had been counting specks of light for the past few minutes. “What did you say again?”

Hideaki smiled. “The only vacation Dad took me on was camping and we spent lots of time watching stars.” His dark eyes lit up and he held his hands out to get them warmed up by the fire that was barely smoldering. “They’re so far away... Alpha Centauri’s the closest and we can’t even see it here.”]

Michael cherished that memory – like all the others – that he received from Sola and he smiled. It gave him both the strength and courage to climb the stairs to Sharpe’s apartment. His hand hesitated when he reached to knock on the door. He couldn’t follow through. As much as he was curious about what Sharpe had said to him and how he got the letter, the sensible part of Michael’s mind urged him to give up right then.

He would have left had the door not opened right at that moment. “Mr. Liu, I presume.” Long fingers opened the door from the inside as the cold voice spoke. So many times had Michael heard this voice; to him it sounded both caustic and slippery, like one of the alkaline bases they used in the chemistry lab. “Come in. We have been expecting you.”

---------

Light streamed from the inside of the small apartment as Michael blinked a few times. He could hardly believe he was in the apartment complex, much less that he was entering the room. The man ushered him inside quickly and firmly shut the door, not allowing the wind to enter or to exert chaos upon the sparsely decorated room. Michael followed Mr. Sharpe inside and removed his tennis shoes, setting them beside the door. As he looked around, he took in every detail he could. The walls were a light grey and the thinning carpet was dark green.

“Sit.” Sharpe motioned towards a computer office chair. There was a grey striped cat sitting in the seat. As Michael began to sit, the cat lazily jumped down and pranced across the carpet and into the kitchen. “Nernst is hardly used to anyone being here.” Sharpe followed the cat across the room and allowed his long legs to carry him towards the dining room with little effort. “As am I.” He grabbed two ceramic mugs and brought them to the living room, offering one to Michael, who gladly accepted.

Michael swished the contents of the mug around and smelled the liquid. It was a smell he would recognize almost anywhere and it belonged to Jennie and Mandie’s apple cider. Every Sunday during the cold weather, Jennie would make it for the kids in the youth group at church. He silently gave thanks for something familiar around here; the whole day had just been too odd for him. The boy was pensive for a moment as he saw, waiting for the steaming liquid to cool. Apparently the contents of Sharpe’s mug were less hot because the chemistry teacher was able to drink. There was an awkward silence that built up inside the room. Michael was contemplating how the day had begun by walking out of homerooms and letting the door slam behind him. The series of events that followed had led to this: being out of his house after curfew hours and sitting in the apartment of the very teacher he had been determined to hate earlier that day.

“When my sister called, she said that you had a question that you needed to ask me,” Sharpe’s voice had the slightest hint of a drawl, which Michael had never noticed before. The middle-aged man set his half-emptied mug down on the small table near his own chair.

Michael nodded. “Who’s Kiyoshi Sato and what does he have to do with me?” Michael’s eyes narrowed. This was a good question to begin with and he was well-aware of the fact that Sharpe was probably going to avoid fully answering his question; he had overheard just enough of the conversation before.

Sharpe folded his hands and took a deep breath. The ambient lighting, though dim, still seemed bright on his eyes. He resolved to fix that, but it would have to wait until later. “Kiyoshi Sato was a classmate of mine when we were in high school,” Sharpe began. He chose his words carefully; now was neither the time nor the place to speak more than was necessary. “He and Emiko Takahashi’s father were close friends. They happened to be in the same year that I was and both delighted in giving a certain amount of grief to their classmates.” Sharpe’s angular nose wrinkled ever-so-slightly at the very tip. “Your father and your aunt were both acquainted with him. Why do you care to know?” Sharpe arched an eyebrow, choosing to ignore Nernst, who had pranced back into the living room and was now rubbing up against Michael’s leg.

Michael shrugged and his glance dropped to the cat. “It’s just something I was thinking about., that’s all.” Michael was lying through his teeth and he knew it. He was also aware that Sharpe probably knew this, but he didn’t care. “Could I pet him?” He glanced down at Nernst, suddenly changing the subject.

Sharpe frowned slightly. “If he lets you, then you may pet him.” He watched as Michael bent down and Nernst jumped into the youth’s lap. The man took a long sip and set the mug back down. “That is not everything you were going to say, was it?”

Michael shook his head. “Is Mr. Sato still alive?” He stopped paying attention to the striped feline long enough to ask the question. After remembering the crumpled paper in his jacket pocket, he resolved to inquire about the contents of that later.

“No,” Sharpe let out a sigh. “He died sixteen years ago as a direct result of a decision he made.” Sharpe’s voice was about half an octave lower than it normally was.

[Sharpe was silent as he moved through the alley way. It was a dark and cloudy day in the middle of March, much like what one would expect to find in Seattle, not the sunny Bay Area in California. He had nothing better to do; there were no assignments due for any of the classes the college junior was taking. Even Dr. Shasthri – a difficult professor if he’d ever encountered one – had not assigned homework for the advanced thermodynamics class she taught.

This may have not been the best idea he had, but the twenty-one-year-old decided to duck into an abandoned alleyway. He hardly had reason for doing this, except that a police car was about half a block from where he stood; he did not want more of a headache than he already had from the sirens and flashing lights of emergency vehicles. In the shadows, he saw something that would make his headache much worse: Kiyoshi Sato. Sato’s narrow features had grown even narrower in the past year and a half since Sharpe had seen him last.

He heard a cry coming from the basket that Sato held under one arm and he gasped aloud, barely reaching his hand up in time to muffle the sound. It was the cry of a small child. He’d heard it once before, many years ago when he was in the hospital for his own surgery, but he’d paid little attention then.

“What’re you doing here, coward?” Sato’s scathing voice addressed Sharpe. “I know you’re here, so y’might as well show yourself.” Sato set the basket down on the ground next to an old trash bin and turned around, looking for Sharpe to appear.

Sharpe decided to step out from the shadows. “Ah, Sato,” his voice was sickly sardonic as he answered Sato’s accusations. “And who is the coward this time? Impregnating a girl three years younger than you? Running away so you don’t have to face her parents? Taking one of the children with you?” He paused for a moment, pointing a long stick at the ratty basket and the torn blanket that draped over its edges. “And who was the true coward before? Bullying someone who’s half your size? Insisting that the fight is five-to-one? Now, if I were you, I’d put that knife down on the ground. Oh yes, I know you’ve got a knife in your pocket…” Sharpe nodded towards the front right pocket of Sato’s jeans.

Sato seethed though his clenched teeth. “You…” he hissed. This was followed by a string of expletives. “I don’t have time for this!” He removed the knife from the pocket of his jeans, opened it up and thought for a moment, debating at whether to lunge at Sharpe or to slit his own throat open. He decided on the latter. He brought the knife up to his own carotid artery. Sharpe stood frozen, unable to do anything. Instead of going through with his plans, Sato used his knife to slice the side of his neck. He screamed out in pain and fell to the ground.

Sharpe hurried over and held his – former – enemy in his arms. “Here,” he said, holding up a vial to Sato’s mouth. “It’ll work faster… and not be as painful.” The contents of the vial were poisonous, but it would allow Sato to die without so much pain. After all, that was what he obviously wanted. Sharpe knew Sato was a coward; what about the infant? However, Sato’s breathing stopped just before he swallowed the substance.

As soon as he had realized what happened, Sharpe wove his way around the trash cans to reach the infant. He immediately noticed an envelope in the basket. Opening it up, his dark eyes skimmed the contents.

[Attention: J. Victor Sharpe
If I am to die here and today, please take the child into your care. His name is Hideaki.
K. Sato]

The date and a signature were placed on the side of the note and Sharpe frowned, his lips drawing themselves into a thin line. As carefully as he could, he picked up the basket. The young child inside was about a year old and looked almost exactly like his father did. Sharpe knew he couldn’t bear to look at the youth every day for the rest of his life. It would bring back too many memories of being teased and pushed down into the mud day after day. Even if the boy stayed with the Altons – Sharpe was sure Josiah and Sherry would take him in – the memories were still too strong.

He shook his head. He would have to take the boy into a foster care center instead. With that choice being made, he set off towards home, carrying the basket under his arm.]

“Yet that holds little concern for either of us now, Mr. Liu,” Sharpe’s voice had reverted back to its typically cold tone. “And tomorrow, things will be made clearer.” An eyebrow arched upwards as his hands clasped the warm mug.

Michael glared at the older man defiantly for several moments. Down the hall, the clock ticked and Nernst rubbed his head against the side of the chair. “Alright...” Getting Sharpe to answer his inquiries about this Kiyoshi Sato was clearly not working, so he decided to take another route. “You went to high school with Emiko Takahashi’s father, didn’t you?” This question was merely one of curiosity; earlier Sharpe had mentioned Takahashi being a bully.

Sharpe set the mug down on the table that was at the left side of his chair without regard to use a coaster of any sorts. “We were both on the interscholastic chess team.” Absently, Sharpe reached into his pocket and pulled out an old chess piece. It was carved from a wood that looked that almost black in the dimmed lighting of the room and judging by the general shape and the cross on the top of it, Michael assumed it was a king. After a moment of twiddling it in his thin fingers, Sharpe placed the piece back into the pocket of his pants. Maybe it had been too long since he played a game of chess... that is, played and lost a good game. “If you had been listening to what I said earlier, you would have been able to deduce that.” He glanced over at Michael, observing the Asian boy with a dark glance. “I know you are brighter than people–” The last bit of Sharpe’s sentence was cut off by the ring of the doorbell.

“Excuse me for a moment.” Sharpe pushed himself into a standing position with quite a bit more effort than Michael would have expected for someone with his scrawny stature. Soundlessly mouthing words, he made his way towards the door, limping ever so slightly. The Asian boy noted the anomaly. He had never seen Sharpe limp before or if he had, Michael had never actively noticed it before.

As Sharpe opened up the door, his normally darker skin paled to the color of light parchment. A woman in her early fifties stood outside the door, wearing an oversized travel coat. From the inside of the apartment, Michael could see that her skin was dark and the only remarkable aspect of her appearance – other than the fact that she looked somehow familiar – was a blue and purple cloth wrapped loosely around her head, neck and shoulders.

tbc in chapter six...

Substitute Teacher, Part I

2009-01-15T21:06:00.000-08:00

In Snapshots (chapter one), I make the reference that Sharpe was out of school and missed a staff meeting. Here's what happened on the day he was sick...

MPAA Rating: Mild PG for language
Characters: Sharpe, Alton, later on this will include the usual culprits surrounding RHS including staff and students alike...
Word Count: 699
Summary: Right before Snapshots Through Time, Sharpe is forced to stay home sick and chaos ensues as there is a different substitute for each class. There's also the issue of the staff meeting after school...

Sharpe tried to stand up but only a moment later he was sitting back down, the tips of his fingers resting gently on the side of his head. The side of his head was throbbing and if he did not lie down, it would only get worse. He should be leaving for school in less than ten minutes, but the thirty-some-odd-year-old man sincerely doubted he would make it in today. He bit his tongue slightly in an attempt to concentrate better and figure out the last time he had been absent from classes. It had only happened a few times since his university days; the chemistry teacher did not get sick easily and nor was he one to stay home if he knew he was not contagious.

“Damn.” Sharpe leaned back and fell onto the bed, letting his head hit the mound of floppy pillows he had set up. He had no choice other than to call Josiah Alton and request a substitute teacher be sent in. In all the years he had been teaching at the school, he had only been absent a grand total of twice. Once was an incident involving a close acquaintance from high school and the other time, Josiah Alton had insisted upon him staying home. Unless he was contagious or somehow a danger to other people, Sharpe adamantly refused to get someone else to teach his classes.

In his mind, few people were competent enough. Surely Josiah Alton would be able to handle the material, as would Laura Clarkson, but could either of them keep his classes in order the way he did? Likewise, Hugh Avery had a firm grasp on the thermodynamic principles he was covering in his sophomore chemistry class... and he could supervise the AP lab. The few people who Sharpe viewed as able to discipline his classes would likely not understand the subject material; he put some level of trust in Shaun Ackerman to keep classes in order. There was a strong doubt in Sharpe’s mind that the history teacher knew about enthaply and entropy and how to explain that to a bunch of sophomores and juniors.

He managed to sit up enough to reach for the phone and dialed the Josiah Alton’s cell phone number. When he placed the phone within a few inches of his ear, he was greeted with Josiah’s warm, but level voice. “What’s going on?” Josiah seemed surprised to be receiving a call from Sharpe.

“Could you find a substitute for me?” Sharpe would have spoken more formally and completed his thought, but he was having a hard enough time thinking right then; he did not see it necessary to maintain his usual sense of dignity. Around him, the dim lights in his apartment flickered a couple of times and he made a mental note to have them fixed as soon as he could manage to climb up on the ladder. As if that would be happening any time soon.

“Sure. Everything alright over there?” There was a certain pause in Josiah’s voice that conveyed his concern. He knew it was unlike Sharpe to miss school for anything; the current chemistry teacher had been like that even as a teenager.

“Fine.” Sharpe clipped his answer into a one-word response; to anyone who had met him before, it would be blatantly obvious he was lying, but right now, he could hardly care.

On the other side of the line, Josiah scribbled a quick note down on a piece of paper and frowned. “If you’re sure...” With his other hand, he stroked his salt-and-pepper colored beard a few times. He knew Jedediah wasn’t likely to take care of himself very well; after all, he and Sherry had raised Sharpe from the time he was fourteen onwards. “If you need anything, call Sherry. And I mean it.” Alton found that his sentences were truncated also. After that thought, Alton hung up the phone.

Sharpe set the phone down on the receiver and climbed back into bed, rubbing his left temple. It would be best if he could rest; he could already tell that today would be a very long day.

Whom Should I Pick On Next?

2009-01-14T21:46:00.000-08:00

I've decided that I like my fictional characters a lot better than real people right now because I can tell my fictional characters to shut up and that will not have any consequences irl. I can torture my fictional characters for my own pleasure and get away with it. Let's see... who to pick on next? >.>

Brief Snapshots Update

2009-01-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

So, I've worked on continuing on Snapshots. I decided to combine chapters five and six into one chapter because they're both short and they flow together with only a few quick edits. I finished the chapter and hopefully I'll get it typed up and edited so that it makes sense.

Yes, it will be rated between PG and PG-13 for one of the flashback sequences. Everything else is pretty mild as far as rating would be concerned, so that's a relief. I'm really excited to be working on this again because in this chapter (and in the next one), you find out a lot about what Sharpe was like when he was younger.

Which means I need to write another side piece with him and Dr. Shasthri first, just to see how they interact and their history. I was walking around campus earlier tonight because I needed to think (big novelty there, eh?) and a scene kept playing through my head. Sharpe was talking with (or yelling at?) someone, so maybe I'll just write that scene. That someone could have easily been one of two people and one of those is Priya Shasthri. The other person it could have been is Alton, but I doubt it. I don't think Sharpe would get upset enough to yell at Alton.

But I need to re-write the prologue sequence I drafted awhile back and work that into one of the flashbacks (which earns it at least a PG rating). And I also found out something interesting about Tetsuya Takahashi. He and Sharpe were on the Interscholastic Chess Team together in high school for at least a little while... or that's what Sharpe says.

Character Featurette: Callisto Verity

2009-01-09T13:01:00.000-08:00

Through the rest of this year, I will be going and making mini-character Featurettes for characters whose birthdays fall on a particular date. For the sake of some of my characters who happen to be twins, I may have one character featured on their birthday and the other featured the day after or something.

So today's character to be featured is Callisto Verity.

Full Name: Callisto Jasmine Verity
DOB: January 9, 1993 (Most of my stories take place ~2004, where she would be about thirteen years of age.)
Family: Damien Verity (Father), Nora (nee Wallace) Verity (mother), Ali and Lara Verity (sisters), Daniel Verity (brother)
Place of Birth: England
Place of Residence: England

Series: Alcantha
Character Connections and Relationships:
Ali Verity: Ali is her (younger) twin sister and the two of them get along passingly. Ali's a lot more outgoing and girly than Callisto is.
Emrick Page: Emrick's one of Callisto's best friends. He comes from a wealthy family and Callisto, Ali and Hana often go over to his house to hang out over the summer. He is the fourth of six brothers and sisters.
Hana Rei: Not only is she Callisto's best friend, but she's also Emiko Takahashi's half-sister. For every bit that Callisto is argumentative, Hana is sincere and apologetic.
Donovan Isaacs: Donovan's three years older than Callisto and is the cousin of Emrick Page. He and Callisto have a mutual dislike for one another.

General Info: Callisto is quite pugnatious and she tends to get into arguments a lot with other people. She also studies quite hard and frequently has a book with her when she's not surrounded by them. But she's not your most well-behaved teenager... she tends to break some of the rules at Alcantha, just to see if she can get away with doing that, something that lands her into a whole load of trouble with the Monitors.

She originated in the AU, so she's not quite... normal, shall we say? Like her hair is naturally lightish brown, but it was dyed purple on accident. She's also at that stage in her life (during the main stories) where she alternates between thinking that "boys are cute" and the "boys are icky and nasty and have cooties". So she's interesting in that aspect, as well.

I'm really not sure what else to say about Callisto other than she's just plain wierd. If you have any questions about her, you can ask and I'll try to answer them, I suppose.

Last of the Hollidailies

2009-01-06T14:03:00.000-08:00

So today is the last day of Hollidailies, which is kind of a sad thing. I've been writing a lot more commentary than I'm used to and I think I've actually been writing a little more than I usually do. Last night when I was in bed, I had the most random idea for a story, so I think when I finish Snapshots, I shall write it. The idea was basically what would happen if Michael went for a walk on Christmas day and happened to run into Sharpe. I don't know what it is with writing those two characters together in scenes; I should've figured out by now that it doesn't work very well.

Outside my window, it looks like Narnia. No really, there's snow and icicles everywhere! And... I'm sick, so I might not be posting here for a few days. :(

More Snapshots Updates

2009-01-05T14:26:00.001-08:00

So not only does Dr. Shasthri come into Snapshots, but other previously AU characters come into her encounters, as well. Like Seneca Argentium, who is a research assistant at the labs owned by Nicholae Kwaitkowski. Seneca's... interesting... for lack of something better to call her. Sharpe used to work at one of Kwaitkowski's research labs before he was fired, so that's the connection... and now Seneca works there and she's the one who helps Dr. Shasthri. Not that she was there when Sharpe was, but she is very much involved in the gossip that happens around the workplace.

I've also established the residence Dr. Shasthri goes to... and who lives there. I'm happy about that because I've sent Dr. Shasthri there and she just arrived, so we'll see how that encounter actually pans out when it gets written. Luckily, she isn't super-suspicious about people or this wouldn't work. I love writing new characters because you can manipulate them to do whatever you want until they start to get personalities of their own.

Major change of topic here... as far as Once Upon an AU goes, I still want to know what Ackerman knows! Obviously he knows something that will upset Peter's regime at RHS (and that's what gets him killed), but I really want to know what that something is!

Snapshots Update

2009-01-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

I finally figured out where I think I want to go with Snapshots and it's great because it'll tie into the chess story I've been playing with in the back of my mind for quite some time.

Chess is kind of a recurring theme throughout my stories. Hideaki Sato is known online as the black rook, Sharpe was the Interscholastic Chess Champion for three (out of four) years in high school and it's quite often that the fellowship members are seen playing chess while hanging out. Usually it's Michael and Evan... and sometimes Tyler. It's also stated that Hideaki teaches Emiko how to play chess.

So that got me thinking... how do I bring this theme into Snapshots? This morning, I came up with a logical answer and it answers two of my questions at once! The other question was (of course) what is Dr. Shasthri doing at Sharpe's apartment at some unearthly hour?

I figured that the only reasonable answer was that she needed him for some reason. Most likely, he had requested something from her before he graduated and left university. I decided to run with this idea... with no thoughts as to what he had asked her for. This morning, I got my answer: a chess piece.

When he was a student at Maplewood, Sharpe bought a used chess set at a garage sale. A few of the pieces were missing when he originally bought it, amongst them a white queen. Somehow, Dr. Shasthri is able to find the person who sold Sharpe the chess set (something I don't want to reveal until later, as major spoilers are contained within) and he was able to find some of the missing pieces. Originally, only the white queen and two black pawns were missing, but I am changing that so it was the white queen, a black pawn and one of the black rooks.

So she is able to get this and the man is fairly reasonable. He claims he would deliver it himself, but he doesn't remember to whom he sold the set or how to contact said person when Dr. Shasthri tells him. Now that she has the piece Sharpe requested, she's tried to hunt him down. He doesn't leave a forwarding address or anything when he leaves university, so she has to go see where he applied for work and then contact them. By some amazing coincidence, she talks to her niece on the telephone and Kiran gives her the necessary information she's been missing all along: where Sharpe works. From that, she is able to find out where he lives fairly easily.

And thus she shows up at his apartment at an unearthly hour. She would have come earlier, but she was hosting dinner and a movie for some of her chemistry and physics students.

Now I know and all is good with the world. Okay, not really, but Snapshots is back on. I also happen to know who gets which chess piece, so that should be fun to work with. As to be expected, Takahashi still holds the white king; that wouldn't change. I've modified it around a little bit according to what happens in Once Upon an AU and some of the other brief stuff I've written since originally thinking of the idea. ^_^

Character Featurette: Seven McAllistair

2009-01-03T15:11:00.000-08:00

I fail at posting when I'm at home. Anyhow, I thought I'd do a brief character feature because it is someone's birthday today! Apart from being JRR Tolkien's birthday, it is also Septimus (AKA Seven) McAllistair's birthday. So happy birthday to him. I sound so wierd, saying happy birthday to someone who doesn't even exist. Seriously.

I don't know a lot about Seven, but here's what I do know. He was born to William and Clarissa McAllistair as the seventh of eight children. William is a professor of classical studies (Latin and Greek) at WSU in Seattle. Clarissa teaches music and plays in the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. His family isn't particularly rich, but they have enough to live on. Seven went to the local public schools throughout primary and secondary schooling.

Nothing about Seven's appearance stands out as particularly unusual, except for his eyes. He has slightly paled skin (due to being inside all day) and straight hair the color of light mud. His eyes are a sort of grey-orange color; the closest natural color one can describe them as is amber. He usually dresses in hand-me-down clothing and he almost always wears a pair of black fingerless gloves he knit himself. Yes, he does knit.

I'm still trying to pin down Seven's personality. On one hand, you see a geek. He's kind of... awkward, for lack of something better to call him. He's that geeky kid who knows the answer to literally every question a teacher asks (having a photographic memory kind of helps!). His speech is so incredibily stilted that it isn't funny anymore. He doesn't use contractions. At all. On the flip side, he believes in using any means necessary to achieve what he needs. So he could be pretending to be kind of clueless and awkward, but I really don't know... I guess the only way to answer that would be to write him more!

His hobbies and activities include knitting, lots of computer work, violin, tech work for local stage productions and lurking in the library behind a really BIG book.

Lastly, a quote that I think does exemplify Seven's attitude, specifically towards his moral compass... "Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." It's an Isaac Asimov quote, but it does fit Seven...

Snapshots, a Brief Scene and Seven...

2009-01-01T21:26:00.001-08:00

I finally figured out the catalyst I need for Snapshots because Michael and Sharpe have been sitting there for the longest of times and it's getting more than awkward. So, someone's going to knock on the door to Sharpe's apartment... and I know who that someone is!

I've also been toying around with the idea of writing a scene between Sharpe and probably Michael where Sharpe tells Michael to choose his words carefully because they are as influential as one's friends. And then, Michael could snap back at Sharpe about how he thinks Sharpe doesn't choose his own friends carefully enough. Sharpe would totally hate that. He chooses his allies strategically. Sometimes, it's based on duty (like Tem... long story there) and sometimes it's more personal, like how he chooses to cooperate well with Amy Kerrington.

Seven McAllistair's character has also recently intrigued me. He grew up in Seattle with six older siblings and one younger one. His father is a professor of classics (like Greek and Latin, but especially Latin) at WSU (the one in Seattle) and his mom is a music teacher. He is somehow related to Sophia McAllistair (probably cousins or something), but they've never met. This much is about all I know for sure about his character background and there's so much I haven't explored with his character yet. He's kind of wierd... I mean, he has amber-grey eyes that look almost orange. Yes, that's natural for him.

Resolutions

2008-12-31T23:13:00.000-08:00

I suppose I should really update this today, so I'll blog about New Year's Resolutions. But since this is a writing journal, then they are going to be related to writing.

1. Write on a regular basis. That includes updating here at least twice a week once Hollidailies is over and working as often as I can (with schoolwork and everything else) on other ongoing writing projects.

2. Get to know some of my minor characters better and their relationships. I'd really like to focus more on Emiko Takahashi... because she's important.

3. Finish at least one large piece (either Snapshots or Once Upon an Alternate Universe or the chess story I've been thinking about). Snapshots would likely be easiest because I've already written a lot of that.

4. Finish the short-term projects I have. This includes the piece where Kiran comes to stay at the Liu house (and gets involved with the debate club), the Christmas Eve story I've been sort of working on, the incident where Wilson is teaching a physics class and decides to use a rather interesting method to keep his students awake and the more recent piece with Hideaki and Emiko.

5. Delve deeper into the relationships that first generation has (or had). I'd love to write a piece with the Maplewood students. And not just a short piece that's a page long, but something real.

6. This may be the wierdest one of them all, but I'd like to find a fellow writer whom I can critique and who will critique me (well, my writing).

7. Just because seven is a much nicer number than six, I'd like to develop Seven McAllistair a bit more as a character and find out where he fits in... if he does. By extension, same kind of idea with Aislynn Celeste.

And those are my New Year's Writing Resolutions. Happy 2009, everyone!

New Year's Eve Party

2008-12-30T08:41:00.000-08:00

To make up for my patheticness at posting yesterday (I was trying to do five different things at once and I was a bit distracted), I'll write something for you today.

First off, a little bit of background information. I wanted my characters to have a (slightly disastrous) game of truth or dare at a New Year's Eve party at the Liu's house. So the characters present would be Michael's parents (duh), Mr. and Mrs. Adams, Hideaki's dad, Wilson, Tyler's mom, Nate's parents and maybe others. Oh, and Sharpe because Jon invited him over and for some reason, he agreed to come. Younger people present would have to include Michael, Scott, Sam, Evan, Tyler, Marie, Hideaki, Emiko, Kiran and Nate. Wouldn't that be a fun group?

So the extended fellowship goes into the other room. They've each had a little bit to drink (they're all at least 21, so no big deal) and the door between the room they're in and the room the adults are in is about half opened. Someone (Saunders?) suggests they play a game of truth or dare. Needless to say, neither Michael nor Sam is particularly excited about that proposition and Tyler's being cautious (as always). But they make a few rules and the game gets underway... needless to say, it'll be interesting.

No really. I'm just deciding how to narrate this piece before I start in on it. I could do the same third person narration I usually do or I could do first person. If I did first person, the most logical choice would be first person to Michael's POV. More amusing would be first person to Sharpe's POV, as he realizes that something is going on and he goes to stand by the door between the rooms. But none of the younger people can know he's there... or if Michael (or Sam) figures it out, neither can say anything to anyone else.

And this brings me to where I was meaning to go... to share something that I wrote with you guys. It was too late last night to post it here, so here it is today. Enjoy! This piece is actually going to be rated PG by the time I'm done with it, but this particular section is harmless. Trust me. Okay, it's just a short little paragraph-length teaser, but still. I actually wrote something. >.>

MPAA Rating: G
Characters: Michael, Emiko, Evan Saunders, others are present.
Word Count: 134

Michael stopped before he said anything and put a hand on Emiko's shoulder. Such an uncharacteristic motion for him. With a firm grasp, he pulled the Japanese girl closer to him and when she was facing him, her face only centimeters away from his, he gave her one look and hissed a few words in her left ear. "Don't even consider it" was all he said. Those words were meant for her alone to hear. He let his hand drop down to his side and quickly turned and paced out of the room. If she went through with Saunders' proposition, that would probably be just about the stupidest thing she'd ever done. Which is quite the accomplishment for her, he thought, the bitter taste of bile rising up in the back of his throat.

tbc.

Randomness yet again...

2008-12-29T21:17:00.001-08:00

So I spent most of the afternoon watching Prince Caspian (the movie) instead of writing like I told myself I wanted to. While not comparing it to the book, it was a well-done movie. Which got me thinking... oftentimes when I write, I'll imagine my characters to be in a movie of sorts and just write down what I see... and sometimes what they're feeling (if I can manage that - ha!).

If my books were ever made into movies, I wonder who would get cast as my different characters. Like I said before, I definitely imagine Johnny Depp playing Siyamak (who is seriously a creep). Usually I just imagine people I know looking like my different characters, actually. But that wasn't what I was going to talk about.

What I was going to talk about today was I am completely not sure. No seriously. I have no attention span right now. But what I need to do is figure out the relationships within the first generation and continue this piece before I work more on the Christmas Eve Story and eventually Once Upon an AU.

10 Random Facts Game!

2008-12-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

So on Facebook, I was tagged in a note to post random facts about myself. Just because I can, I decided to switch it around and do it for one of my characters. This time, it's a guessing game! There are ten clues per character. All five are known characters and four out of the five are quite well known.

Character One

I work part-time at a school.
My grandmother came from Poland when she was a girl and she loves to cook the most delicious foods for me when I go visit!
Although I don't remember Dad, he was the one who named me.
No one except my family knows this, but I have a younger sister. I've only seen her a few times and haven't seen her at all in the past ten years, but I know she's still alive. I really want to meet her again someday.
Most of the students I teach are taller than I am. It isn't that hard if you aren't even five feet!
I used to be afraid of toasters, of all things!
I almost always wear skirts and blouses and rarely wear jeans.
I'm actually not from the USA. I was born and raised in Canada.
I speak fluent French and English and sometimes I'll switch back and forth! Like now! *starts speaking in rapid French*
I absolutely love mathmatics.

Character Two

Although I'm most well-known for playing basketball and football, I'm also on the school swim team.
We - Kyle and I - lead prayers before and after games at school with other Christian athletes.
I'm probably the only African American person in these stories. Well, me and my family. But I'm the only prominent one.
My favorite class is history and my favorite historical period is the Industrial Revolution.
I live in an apartment with my sister, our mom and Aunt Dolores.
My favorite thing to do on the weekends is hang out with my friends and do whatever they're doing, as long as they try to get into trouble!
My middle name is the same name as one of the prophets in the Bible.
My birthday is May 22nd, which is unfortunately, about a week before finals. At least it isn't during finals week!
I really actually don't like ice cream all that much.
I like most of the books we're forced to read for school.

Character Three

I'm fluent in both English and Spanish... and I know a few random words in French and Italian.
I have a pet named after a book character.
My least favorite board game is Monopoly.
I spend a lot of time with my cousins. Whether that's good or bad is anyone's best guess!
Though I'm not really a vegetarian, I usually don't eat a lot of meat stuff. I just don't like the way it tastes and I never have.
Both my older sister and I are adopted.
I'm probably one of the craziest people you'll ever meet! Or at least Callisto seems to think that.
I go to a boarding school in the UK that requires a school uniform.
I love drawing in the margins of my notes during class.
My family celebrates Las Posadas in the days just before Christmas, but we don't celebrate Thanksgiving.

Character Four

I'm learning Japanese. Unfortunately.
I have a single tatoo on my left shoulder and five piercings, all in my ears.
I used to take dance classes.
I tend to hang out with the cheerleaders at school half the time and the "bad kids" the other half.
I hate my homeroom teacher, but who doesn't?
My best friend taught me how to play chess.
I kind of have a crush on my best friend.
I have a half-sister I've never met, but we've talked before.
I moved four times before I was in junior high.
I love thunderstorms, especially when the electricity goes out.

Character Five

I was partially named after a book character, of all people.
I enjoy drinking coffee when I can, though I rarely do.
I was offered a job twice by the same person.
One of my most used endgame strategies is queen sacrifice.
I am left-handed.
I can read music written in the alto clef.
I am fluent in two different languages, one of which is uncommon.
I share my birthday with a famous chemist/physicist.
I was homeschooled for about a semester in junior high.
The first prom I went to was one that I chaperoned.

I'll post the answers sometime later this week, most likely. Best of luck! I'll also finish tagging with characters (where applicable) once I post the answers. I don't want to give it away.

If you're interested in the answers, they can be found here.

Maplewood Relationships?

2008-12-27T09:49:00.000-08:00

I'm really needing to figure out how the characters in first generation at Maplewood get along with one another before I continue with whatever else I am writing. Like the fact of how Shaun Ackerman and Stephanie Rei both fit into the picture.

Shaun Ackerman is a graduate in the class of 1987, a year a head of Takahashi, et al. Given Maplewood's small size, they would have known each other when they were students. Same thing goes for Sharpe and Ackerman. It's known that Sharpe and Ackerman don't get along very well when they're adults, but this could be attributed to a conflict of ideologies and personalities. Shaun's very outgoing and scatterbrained. Sharpe is introverted and deliberate. (Think Q and Captain Picard here and you'll get the general idea!) Ackerman is also very strongly Catholic and he is outspoken about being so. While Sharpe doesn't necessarily have anything against the idea of Christianity (or Catholicism), the fact that Shaun is a bit pious grates on his nerves. Same thing with Kiran, actually.

I'm not sure what came to pass between Ackerman and Takahashi. If I can figure that out, I'll be able to figure out whether or not Takahashi had motive for ordering a certain person to kill Ackerman at the beginning of Once Upon an AU. If not, then I'll have to resort to using Peter Screwtape, which would be a little bit annoying. Okay, that would be more than annoying because he's a power player in most everything else and that role gets old quickly.

Second character I need to fit in is Stephanie Rei, Emiko and Hana's mother. She did go to Maplewood and she is friends with Sharpe. That much I do know. She's either a year ahead or a year behind the main group of students, making her the same age as Shaun Ackerman (and Emily Royal, who is Evan Saunders' aunt) or putting her in the graduating class of 1989. She needs to be close enough in age to know the main characters fairly well if everything is going to work out with Takahashi and Sharpe and all that. If she's the same grade as Ackerman, that might come into the storyline somehow.

In Once Upon an AU, I have a character who is a hired assassin. I'm not going to tell you guys who it is yet and only that it's not Sharpe. Sharpe couldn't do that. Anyhow, said person basically has their hands tied and can't do anything but follow orders at the moment. It'll be interesting to write, to say the least.

Christmas Story Commentary and Other Stuff

2008-12-26T21:13:00.000-08:00

I spent another day knitting instead of writing, which is unfortunate for my sadly failing writing skills, but it's all good. I've decided on a few things in response to the Christmas Eve story. Sharpe does have a good idea of what was in the package for Emiko. If he did, why does he deliver it? To answer this, I need to do a little background information on Sharpe and a little bit more on how he and Takahashi know each other.

Sharpe's thoughts on religion are different than those of most of my other characters. He does know what he believes. He grew up in a Christian home, so he has been to church. However, right now, he is extremely angry at God for a multiple number of reasons (which I don't feel like going into right now) and he hasn't really been to church since he was a teenager. He still holds many of the same ethical principles as are taught in the Judeo-Christian belief system. His anger is directed first and foremost at God and secondly at people who call themselves Christians but don't act as such.

Takahashi, on the other hand, is adamantly against any type of organized religion, whether it be Christianity, Judiasm, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, dancing around a campfire and worshipping the sun... need I go on? He would do anything and everything in his power to prevent Emiko from getting the copy of the Bible that Stephanie sent.

If I may digress for a moment, Sharpe and Takahashi don't get along at all. They met at the beginning of ninth grade as students at Maplewood Academy and Sharpe said something he shouldn't have said to Tetsuya. Things escalated from there. When they're adults, they are coldly civil to one another.

Back to the point here. Sharpe's going to do almost anything he can in order to make Takahashi angry. He is fairly neutral towards the idea of Christianity, so ensuring that Emiko gets the Bible that Stephanie sent would be a perfect way to do just that.

This leads me to believe that Sharpe and Stephanie would have been friends... or they would have known each other somehow. Given that Stephanie used to be married to Tetsuya (they're now divorced), it was probable she was a student at Maplewood. She would have been at least a year younger than the main group... or perhaps the year ahead of them (same year as Shaun Ackerman). I need to think a little more about how they know each other. Likely either she and Sharpe are good friends (and kept their friendship up throughout the years, which would be a bit odd for Sharpe) or he owes her something and there's a story waiting behind that.

So instead of writing, I was trying to knit a sock. But maybe tomorrow I'll write more. I'm not sure. I still need to figure out where the other Christmas story (the one with Michael and Kiran at the church) is going. It'll be interesting...

Quick Update, Christmas, Knitting, Quotes...

2008-12-25T22:28:00.000-08:00

Since I have been failing so badly to post with anything relating to writing lately (and that's what this blog is about!!!), I feel bad for not continuing my Christmas Eve story today. Yay for writer's block and being sick. Not. I've been knitting like a crazy person over the past few days in a pathetic attempt to get Christmas gifts done by Christmas and today I taught my sister how to knit.

Did you know that one of my characters knits? Yes, Septimus McAllistair (though almost everyone just calls him Seven) does and he's quite good at it. He has a pair of black fingerless gloves he's made himself that he always wears. He's also kind of a computer geek and he's really smart. No wonder he gets teased a lot. Marie Wilson knows how to crochet and I'm guessing she's taught most of her friends how to do that also. Sam, Tyler and Michael probably both know how... Sam and Tyler just because they're willing to go along with whatever is happening and Michael because he is quite artistic.

And this last little bit is kind of completely random (my thought patterns are not linear, in case you haven't already noticed!), but most of my characters are somehow interconnected. There is some way that Sharpe knows Stephanie Rei (see this entry) because despite the fact it's not explicitly mentioned, that is Sharpe. He was the one who delivered the package... but he has no idea about its contents. My guess is that Stephanie contacted him and told him that she had something that was really important that it get to Emiko... and that Tetsuya wouldn't like his daughter having it. Which is rather true.

So yeah... I guess that's all I have to say tonight. Let me end with a quick CS Lewis quote this time. It has nothing to do with writing. "The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God." ~CS Lewis

And God bless us, everyone! Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, All!

2008-12-24T21:19:00.000-08:00

I just thought I would say Merry Christmas to everyone!

Due to having family things going on today and tomorrow, I don't have time to make a decent entry here. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day, I'll have time to finish the Christmas Eve story... and let you know what happens to Kiran, Michael and everyone else. And why Sharpe is at the church!

To finish off, a Bible verse. "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." ~Isaiah 9:6

Take care, all and have a very Merry Christmas!
~Elizabeth

Short Post Today...

2008-12-23T20:01:00.001-08:00

Yet another half-effort entry in this journal because I'm pressed for time trying to finish Christmas presents and all that before tomorrow... hopefully I'll get more done in the actual story later on this week. Sorry it won't be done before then.

But I know who kills Shaun Ackerman!!!!! In the Once Upon an Alternate Universe piece, I mean. Not in the real world or anything like that. Hideaki sees Ackerman get shot, but doesn't know who did it. Sharpe has a pretty good idea of what's going on, but he'd never say anything unless he's certain. No one else knows what's going on... not even Candace.

And I am enjoying myself greatly right now. Plotting is so much fun! Especially plotting whilst procrastinating on finishing up Christmas presents. Alas, I'll just work on them tomorrow, right?

Christmas Traditions

2008-12-22T17:56:00.000-08:00

Well, thinking about the holiday season that is coming up on us (and that Hanukkah already started for anyone who didn't know that), I've always wondered what some of my fictional characters do for the holidays. So I've compiled a short list of some of their traditions...

Liu Family: Since Jonathan is a pastor at the local church, all five of the Liu children are always somehow involved in the annual Christmas Eve service. Usually Andy will play his violin, Michael will occasionally work backstage (depending on the year) and Elizabeth and Cassandra are in the choir. After the Christmas Eve service is over, their family will go home and get ready for bed. In the morning, Johannah Liu (Jonathan's younger sister) will come over and they will read the Bible story as a family. Then, they'll open presents. In the afternoon and evening, they'll make a large dinner.

Adams Family: Scott and Sam's family spends Christmas in a similar way that Michael's family does, but after the Christmas Eve service at their church is over, they go over to their uncle's house (their uncle is Shaun Ackerman) and their whole family attends Midnight Mass. On Christmas, both Shaun Ackerman and Julianna Miller (Shaun's niece - I'm not sure how she's related to Scott and Sam quite yet) come over and they all spend Christmas together.

Sharpe: Except for the Christmas Eve story that I'm working on, Sharpe really doesn't celebrate Christmas. Sometimes he will go over to the Alton's house; other times he will just stay home and work on what needs to be done as if it's any other day.

Donovan Isaacs: Donovan's kind of an interesting case because he goes to school abroad as a high schooler. Sometimes his parents will come over from America to England to visit for the holidays and he'll go to church with them. Other times, he'll go to church with Stephanie and Hana Rei (Emiko's mom and half-sister) on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, Lucy (his second to youngest cousin... there's six of them!) will wake them up and they'll all open presents. That afternoon, usually Uncle Edmund will take him, Connor, Steven and Emrick out to the movies while Aunt Alexandria, Lucy, Sarah and Beatrice stay home and cook the meal.

I really wish I could know how my other characters celebrate the holidays. Hugh Avery is Jewish, so he celebrates Hanukkah. Aislynn Celeste celebrates Christmas with an interesting mix of French and Polish traditions that she learned from her grandparents by whom she was raised. Kiran would go home for Christmas and spend it with her parents, except for the story I'm working on right now (her parents are on a missions trip) where she spends Christmas with her aunt.

P.S. Oddly enough, I spend more time at my computer when I'm at school than when I'm at home. Isn't that wierd?

Emiko's Christmas: One Shot

2008-12-21T10:46:00.000-08:00

I just thought I would take a break from the Christmas Eve story and write something with Emiko in it instead. Mr. Isaacs is the father of Donovan Isaacs (cousin of one of Hana Rei's classmates at school).

MPAA Rating: G
Characters: Emiko Takahashi, Tetsuya Takahashi, Stephanie Rei (Emiko's mother), unknown man, others by mention
Word Count: 536
Summary: Emiko reflects on Christmas and gets a mysterious visitor.

"Hey Mom, it's me. Emiko." For the hundredth time, she couldn't bring herself to pick up the telephone and call her own mother. Dad had already told her it was okay. It was Christmas after all, but the fourteen-year-old couldn't.

"Call her. She wants to hear from you, Miko." He had told her as he handed her the telephone attatched to the wall. Miko was her Dad's pet name for her, something that only he was allowed to call her. Tetsuya bit both of his lips together. It was him that Stephanie didn't want to hear from. Without waiting for his daughter to ask, he left the room, leaving her in privacy. Things would be better this way.

Five minutes passed and Emiko slid her polished fingernails along the plastic of the receiver. Five minutes quickly turned into ten and ten turned into fifteen until she heard a knock at the door. "Go away, Dad." A single tear dripped from her eye and fell onto her desk, splattering onto her laptop computer. "I don't wanna talk."

"I am not your father, Emiko." The voice came from the other side of the door. The voice obviously belonged to a man, but it wasn't quite deep enough to be her father's. And it was too quiet. "I just wanted to leave you something. You can call your mother now. Merry Christmas." Before Emiko could open the door, the person was gone. She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, reached down for the present, which was wrapped in purple and black wrapping paper and took it inside her room.

As she tore open the paper, a typed note on a single sheet of paper fell out onto her floor. She picked it up and read what was written. Dearest Emiko, Turn to page 1085 and read the story that is recorded in Luke chapter 15, verses 11 through 32. You will find a story about two brothers and their father in this passage; Mr. Isaacs shared it with us last month at church. I love you very much and we pray for you every day. Please take care of yourself and your father. Merry Christmas. Love, Mom and Hana.

Emiko flipped open the hardcovered book to page 1085 and began to read. It was a rather interesting story about two brothers, one of whom ran away from home and when he went back, he wanted to be a servant in the house of his father. At the end, the father welcomed him back as a son. Emiko read the story three times through, but even at the end, she still didn't understand why the dad had done that. Surely if she'd done that to her own father, he wouldn't have forgiven her, would he? The kid had just wasted all of his dad's money! This didn't make sense; she needed time to think about it more.

With a sigh, she picked up the phone receiver and dialed the number to her mom's house. "Hey, Mom, Hana? It's me, Emiko. Merry Christmas. If you get the chance, call back, okay? There's some stuff I'd like to ask you. I'll talk to you later." With a gentle, but firm motion, she hung the phone back up.

Christmas Eve, Part IV

2008-12-20T15:22:00.000-08:00

Go read Part One, Part Two and Part Three (in that order) before you read this if you haven't already. It'll make more sense that way. Characters and setting are still the same as before.

In other news, I'm still working on Christmas presents. Yay... or not. I'd rather be writing, but such is life, I suppose. This piece is actually going to turn out interestingly...

MPAA Rating: G
Characters: Michael, Kiran, Sharpe
Word Count: 277

As soon as he heard the voice, his head snapped up. He hadn’t heard it in probably fifteen or more years, yet the particular accent it held was ingrained forever in his mind. Such was his way with people; he remembered them by certain quirks they possessed. In her case, it was her unusual voice and the peculiar intonations she used. Slowly, he pushed himself into a standing position, grasping at the alter railing to aid his balance.

“What’s he doing here?” he could hear the harsh whisper coming from the opposite side of the room, despite the fact that there were other intermingled voices. The boy’s voice rose up over the others. “You didn’t invite him here, did you?” His hands were folded across his chest and Sharpe could see him leaning forward, nearly standing on his toes.

Kiran’s mouth dropped open slightly and she didn’t speak for several seconds. “Why would –?” she started, but she did not finish her thought. Instead, she turned around and flounced off towards where her aunt stood. Sharpe’s dark eyes watched for Michael’s reaction. Michael started after Kiran, but stopped after a few steps and then turned towards the front of the church. “What’s going on here, Michael?” Kiran's voice sounded both hurt and confused at the same time.

For a long moment, Kiran waiting for an answer and for that moment, Michael locked eyes with Sharpe. Sharpe’s narrow-eyed gaze was probing and Michael’s was quietly defiant. The Asian boy licked his top lip slightly. Seconds ticked on until a faint whisper reached her ears. “I don’t know.”

tbc.

Quick Update

2008-12-19T21:17:00.000-08:00

I won't be writing any more of the Christmas Eve story tonight (unfortunately), but I wanted to talk some about what I've noticed about my characters and how stories flow... something that came to mind as I was drafting the next piece in a word document. I'll probably finish that and get it uploaded tomorrow or Sunday or something like that. And this was because I was working on Christmas presents and then I got busy with some other stuff. Like socks.

Anyhow... in the Christmas Eve piece, the main character is technically Sharpe, though it changes POV several times. When I was writing Sharpe's parts, they were a lot more reflective and less rushed. There hasn't been any dialogue with him; no one knows for sure what he's thinking and people certainly know less of what he's saying.

When I've been writing Michael (and Kiran), there is a lot more dialogue and the story actually moves along. But it loses some of the individual touch and reflection that Sharpe brings along. Kiran's nearly as talkative as Scott is.

And to go read where Kiran first meets the group, read this story. She also meets Sharpe later on in that piece; I haven't written it yet. You get a bit of Michael's narration in that piece. Just so you know... Riverdale's mascot is a knight, Michael (and Scott and Sam) all live on Chestnut Avenue, Sam wasn't talking about Evan Saunders... Scott has no sense of direction whatsoever, Ackerman got fired and re-hired over the summer thanks to something that happened with Sharpe (that'll be fun to write!), and Victoria Chapel and Evan Saunders date throughout high school. Oh, and Sharpe's favorite color is purple.

I can't wait to write more of that and I'll be bringing in the idea of the Debate Club and a plot idea for writing that. It should be fun. And I can't wait to write about why Ackerman was fired and how he got rehired over the course of about two months. Silly administration...

Christmas Eve, Part III

2008-12-18T11:22:00.001-08:00

Once again, this is a continuation of what I've been writing. Go back and read the other pieces first if you haven't already done so.

MPAA Rating: G
Characters: Michael Liu, Kiran Shasthri, Priya Shasthri, others by mention
Word Count: 344

“I’m staying with Aunt Priya over break. Mom and Dad’re still in India.” The matter-of-fact voice explained before Michael could even begin speaking. “She doesn’t live far from here, so she said it’d be alright if we went here for Christmas Eve service instead of her church.” The girl pushed a long strand of dark hair behind one of her ears and she bounced slightly on her toes, no doubt having the extra energy from sitting still in the pews for so long. The Christmas Eve service was nearly twice as long as those on Sunday mornings.

While Kiran was talking, Michael nodded absently. He had grown used to her chatter during the semester and a half she stayed with the Liu family as an exchange student during his sophomore year. For a moment, his thoughts drifted over back towards Sharpe. First seeing him here, then Kiran. What was going on with that? Was there something he didn’t know about? Seeing Kiran at a church wasn’t a strange idea to him; she had cheerfully gone with the Liu family every Sunday while she was at their house, except for the time she had come down with a nasty case of the flu.

“Well, maybe we can do something together. You, me, Scott, Sam and Nate.” Kiran kept talking and Michael was about to excuse himself when he saw an woman who looked like an older, thinner version of Kiran standing on the opposite side of the corridor, waving towards her niece. Michael smiled slightly towards Dr. Shasthri; he had met her once or twice before.

“Kiran!” As Priya Shasthri called towards her niece, Michael’s dark eyes caught a movement out of the corner of his peripheral vision. A head jerked up in a quick motion and Michael turned from Kiran to the shadowy figure and back to Kiran again, eyeing the girl suspiciously. He licked his top lip with his tongue. Surely there was something going on here and he wanted to know what that something was.

tbc.

AU Characters

2008-12-17T18:17:00.001-08:00

So some of my characters have originated in the alternate universe and others haven't made their way into the regular universe yet, but Tem was originally an AU character. It's kind of futuristic stuff.

Tem is a time-traveler and she can basically travel through time. Well, she used to be able to do that until Calanon got furious with her for trying to go back and change something in history. She allows Isaiah and Jeremiah Lewis to time-travel with her and sends them all over the place.

Isaiah and Jeremiah Lewis are actually human. None of these other characters are... anyways. They've been anywhere and everywhere in history that I can think of and that's mostly thanks to Tem. They're orphans whose parents were killed in a horrible lab accident. Isaiah's a lot more outgoing than his brother is. Jeremiah's quiet, but very knowledgeable.

Siyamak's a creep. He reminds me of the Child Catcher on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or of Johnny Depp's version of Willy Wonka. Or really of anything I've seen Johnny Depp as... which is really only one thing, but whatever. Anyways, in his past, he did something incredibly stupid in a fit of rash decision making and he's running away from that. The only one who knows what it is is Kana.

Kana is Siyamak's own worst nightmare. She found out about what he did and she won't let him forget it... and he's holding one of her secrets. So they're constantly at one another's throats about something. She's alright for writing a girl, but she can be a little bit annoying... and a bit of a know-it-all at times. In fact, she reminds me a little bit of Callisto. Sort of.

Hal's the guy who keeps everyone together. He has no idea what Siyamak did or of what Kana's secret is, but he manages to keep Kana alive and Siyamak at least partway sane. Or as sane as one with a horribly tortured past can be. Hal actually has a halfway decent life.

I'm thinking that if I want to write a futuristic dystopian type story, these characters will be the ones to look into using. Them and the rest of the Feconi Order... and lots of other of the AU characters. I'm really not sure and right now I'm just rambling. Hopefully I'll figure out what's going on with the Christmas Eve story later so that I can write more for you guys to read tomorrow or this weekend sometime. That should be fun.

Good night.

Christmas Eve Story Background

2008-12-16T21:36:00.000-08:00

I don't really have a lot of time to write something decent, so I'll just give a little background on the Christmas Eve story that I've been working on. Plus, we've had storms and our power at home was out all this morning and I was not necessarily here this evening or I would've blogged earlier.

Anyhow, it takes place in December of 2008, which means that the Fellowship et al have been out of high school for about a year and a half. They're all sophomores in college. Kiran Shasthri, Nate Winters and Danny Turner are all freshmen, though Kiran probably has close to sophomore credit as far as her classes go. Ellie Johnson is a senior in high school and Andy and Elizabeth Liu are juniors. Cassandra is (probably) in eighth grade, though I'm not 100% sure.

It's been twenty-five years since Sharpe was in eighth grade, making him now nearly thirty-nine years of age (he'll be thirty-nine in the middle of February 2009, as his year of birth is 1970).

In other news, this is a little bit random, but I really want to write something futuristic/dystopian with Seven and Tem and Aislynn and Kana and Siyamak and all those other characters. Well, maybe not Aislynn, but definitely Seven because he comes from an alternate universe where science and technology are basically worshipped. That has real potential to turn into something interesting. And I'd love to include Tem because she randomly pops up in the most inopportune places at the most inconvenient times. And Kana and Siyamak because they're two of Tem's original AU counterparts and they're just fun to write. Siyamak's a bit of a creep, though...

Christmas Eve, Part II

2008-12-15T18:00:00.000-08:00

Go read this post first if you haven't already, as this entry is a continuation of that and it won't make any sense otherwise. Okay?

Yes, Michael et al are all sophomores in university. Ellie Johnson is a senior in high school and Danny's a freshman at university.

MPAA Rating: G
Characters: Michael, "unknown girl", several people by mention
Word Count: 402

That was the last of the playing he felt like doing that night and he set the violin carefully in its case, cleaned the remainder of the rosin off with the soft cloth that came with the instrument and strapped the handle firmly in place. Fingers that were plenty agile snapped the case shut and he carried it out of the backstage area and down the corridor, walking in a straight line towards the main area of the church. His eyes scanned the area for signs of Scott or Samantha Adams, but neither of the twins was anywhere to be found. Nor was Ellie Johnson, Danny Turner or either of the Feliz brothers, for that matter. They had all probably gone home for the night and for a good reason. Tomorrow was Christmas.

Quietly, he hummed a few measures of O Little Town of Bethlehem to himself as he walked towards the front of the church. He had spent hours preparing for the Christmas Eve service, just as everyone else in the youth group did, but somehow, he felt that this was somehow more special to him than it was to anyone else. The rehearsals had gone over well, but tonight, there seemed to be a certain peace in the air. Even Ellie Johnson and Danny Turner - who were constantly at each other's throats about one thing or another - stopped arguing long enough to deliver their lines flawlessly.

Oh yes, it had been nearly perfect. Except for him. Halfway through the duet he was playing with Andy, he had noticed a familiar face in the outskirts of the crowded pews. It had been several moments later when he placed the face; he wasn't good at putting names to faces, especially out of context. And this man was the last person Michael would expect to see in a church. His ears pricked back at the mere thought.

"Hey! There you are!" A voice from scarcely five feet behind him called out. The voice obviously belonged to a girl and it had been one that grated on his nerves for weeks on end at one point a few years prior. Forgetting all about Sharpe and what he could possibly be doing at a church, Michael spun around and came face to face with the other person he least wanted to see at this point.

This was going to be one long night.

tbc... this is just starting to get interesting...

Dystopian Society Novels and Banned Books?

2008-12-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

I'm just going to warn you in advance that this might be a little controversial. So if you don't like that, don't read on. Okay? Consider yourself warned.

As I was at a swim meet today and didn't actually have time to write much of anything as far as my own fiction goes, I'll be talking a little about books again. Some of my favorite novels have been the dystopian books, like Orwell's 1984 or Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies by Golding. Oddly enough, according to the list of banned books and authors, many authors of these novels (and other such excellent novels) either are or have been banned for some reason in some place around the USA. In fact, some of these have been required reading for school classes.

As an author, I don't necessarily invite debate into what I write, but I don't shy away from plot points just because they could be touchy subjects. Most of my characters tend not to swear too much (one of the main themes I've noticed in the "banned books" list) and I don't write past PG-13. My plot lines have elements of dystopian societies in them (or at least Once Upon an Alternate Universe will - think weird combination of influence from The Phantom Tollbooth, Animal Farm or just about any other dystopian society idea and CS Lewis - just because his writing is made of pure awesomeness and he's one of my favorite all time authors - and you'll be spot on). But I digress.

Honestly, if you don't want to read a certain book, no one is forcing you to read them. I don't think they should require such authors to always be read for school... we seemed to read an abundance of the dystopian and other weird books in high school English classes (but Edgar Allen Poe's stuff was freakier than anything like Animal Farm or Farenheit 451!)... and parents should be cautioned before letting their kids read whatever they want (except for Tetsuya Takahashi because he doesn't care what Emiko does). But books shouldn't be banned from public libraries just because of controversial issues; people just need to be aware of what they read.

Any thoughts?

Story Review: The Crush

2008-12-13T04:16:00.000-08:00

Since between traveling home (yays!) and live in general I don't have time to write anything new today, I'm going to direct you to a piece I've read recently. It was written by my sister, Manwathiel, and I've really enjoyed reading it. It's very much teen chic reading, so if you really can't stand that genre, I wouldn't necessarily advise you to read it. ^_~

MPAA Rating: G

The Crush
Prologue
Chapter One, Part One
Chapter One, Part Two
Epilogue

Short Critique: To be honest, she's improved quite a lot since I've really read what she's written (as I tend not to read too much fan fiction). I really enjoyed the characterization differences between Emily and Annie... and contrasting each of them with Mai. It was fun - and cute - to read.

Dialogue is a bit stilted and formal (especially for teenagers), but it's pretty obvious she's working on it. Plus it's a little difficult to go from writing Tolkien's Elves to modern day American teenagers without some level of difficulty in adjusting to mannerisms and verbal quirks.

All in all, it was good and I'd like to know what happens next, especially in regards to Damien. I'd love to see his character get developed more... and to see what happens between Emily and Tiffany.

So that's my review. Take it with a bit of sodium chloride as you see fit and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Lost Chess Pieces, Part 2

2008-12-12T10:49:00.001-08:00

I'm stress writing right now, so this may not make a whole lot of sense. I'm just going to warn you in advance... just in case you'd rather not read on. But we finished exams and then it's home for me tomorrow.

Onto the actual writing portion and continuing sort of where I left off with the chess idea...

MPAA Rating: G
Characters: Hideaki, Emiko Takahashi
Word Count: 497
Warning: Mild swearing. Once again, it's Emiko...

Buzzzzzz. Buzzzzzz. Buzzzzzz. Hideaki's cell phone vibrated its way off the table and onto the hardwood floor of the San Rafael apartment he was living in with his dad and Uncle Joe. For the last three hours, he had been trying to do the homework Mr. Umeki assigned, but it was no use. He could translate from Japanese to English just fine, but going the other way still confused him, even after years of studying the language and the culture on Saturday mornings. He ran a hand along the line his bandana made until it reached the tight knot tied in the back of his head. Right now, his writing looked like knots to him. Time to take a break and see who had called. It was probably a wrong number again - he seemed to get a lot of those - but it wouldn't hurt to check. Oddly enough, she hadn't left a message; he frowned.

Emiko usually left messages, unless something was really wrong. Last time she'd called and not left a message was when her dad's political campaign went horribly awry and he'd ended up throwing her out of the house for the night in a fit of rage. She had ended up spending the night at his house... and the rest of the weekend. And that was when he had taught her how to play chess. That had been about a year ago and he smiled fondly at the thought as he pushed the redial button and waited for an answer.

"What the hell's going on with you?" The shrill voice came from the opposite side of the phone line and Hideaki winced, nearly dropping the phone onto the messy floor of his bedroom. Well, that answered his question. He could feel the heat rising to his cheeks and there was an awkward silence in which neither party spoke.

"I... uhm..." Hideaki frowned and picked up an old wooden chess piece, this one a black rook. It had been given to him by a friend and absently, he twiddled it in the forefingers of his right hand as he held the phone to his left ear. "You were the one who called me." Sometimes stating the simple truth was the best. "Hey, maybe you should come over or somethin'." He could hear the clicking of fingernails against something hard on the other side of the phone as he awaited an answer.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever. I'll be there in half an hour." Emiko grabbed her car keys and slammed the door shut, not even bothering to leave a note for her father. He wouldn't ask where she was; he never did. Despite the fact that it would be nearly an hour drive in commute traffic from her San Jose home, Emiko automatically halved the time it took. "Bye." Without waiting for Hideaki to answer, she flipped the phone shut and dropped it into her purse, climbed into the car and sped down the street.

Emiko's Lost Chess Piece

2008-12-12T06:18:00.000-08:00

I have such bad writer's block right now... it's not even funny. My brain is completely dead from yesterday's physics exam. Anyhow, onto something more interesting than my rambling about real life before I bore you all with complaining about exams, the weather and just about anything else I can think of.

This is a little snippet of the chess piece I've been planning out. Yes, there's a greater theme than just Emiko going on. It actually has more to do with her father and with the rest of first generation (like Sharpe) than with Emiko, but I just felt like writing Emiko today.

MPAA Rating: G
Character: Emiko Takahashi
Word Count: 268
Warning: Very mild swearing (one word... it's Emiko's POV)
Timeline: May 2006, so during their junior year of high school

It was lost. She had looked around her entire room for it, torn everything apart and thrown her clothes across the floor in an effort to find the missing piece of wood. To anyone else, it wouldn't be anything special; it shouldn't have even been special to her, but she had found it in her backpack after school about a week ago and had taken a liking to it. The Japanese girl couldn't explain it. Her father's expression was unfathomable when she'd shown him the trinket.

But now it was gone and she couldn't find it. Damn. The girl kicked her soccer ball across the room, hitting the door. Was it really gone? Where was it? More importantly, where had the bishop come from and who had given it to her? She licked her top lip, a nervous habit she'd developed over the past few years. She only knew of one person who knew how to play chess: her friend from Japanese school. She didn't even know how to play. Slowly, she picked up her cell phone, went to her contacts list and dialed his number.

Ring. Ring. Ring. "Hey, you've reached me. Obviously I'm not here right now. Leave a message and I'll call you back, okay?" She got the answering machine. Emiko's eyes narrowed and she clenched her teeth in disguist. It figured that the one person in the world who might be able to help her would be out of reach. Without leaving a message, she shut the phone. It was no use. She'd have to do this on her own, just like everything else.

tbc?

Sharpe's Relationships - Adults

2008-12-11T00:34:00.000-08:00

These are just a few of the relationships Sharpe has... I just felt like outlining a few for you guys. Hopefully you already know who these characters are, but I provided brief notes on who's who. All these characters are adults during the RHS-timeline; maybe in another entry I'll look through various interactions with students.

Candace Pruitt: Candace was Sharpe’s high school chemistry teacher and she’s now the vice principal at RHS, where Sharpe teaches chemistry.
The relationship between Candace and Sharpe went from being the typical “faculty member being fed up with student” mixed with a little bit of respect to more of a friendship between equals. Candace was originally the one who got Sharpe involved in the SAT (students assisting teachers) program at Maplewood and she was the one who pulled a few strings to get Peter to hire him, despite his less than satisfactory record.

Jennie Alton: Jennie is Sharpe’s “little sister”. She works part-time at Maplewood and is a continuing studies student in the evening.
Jennie and Sharpe have an extremely close relationship and she knows more about him than probably anyone else does. He refers to her as his sister (and she calls him “her brother”), even though they are not biologically related. Their friendship is closer than that of Sharpe and Mandie.

Laura Clarkson: Laura is the biology teacher who is originally from Texas. She appears to have a crush on Sharpe, which he doesn’t return.
Laura and Sharpe really have a love-hate relationship. He hired her because they needed a biology teacher who was at least halfway competent (Josiah Alton was moving to administration) and Laura has always been curious about Sharpe. Somewhere along the line, the curiosity turned into a one-sided romance. I’m still not sure what’s going on there; it’s a storyline that I really haven’t explored much yet.

Shaun Ackerman: Shaun is the PhD. history teacher at RHS who especially enjoys causing controversy in his classrooms. He graduated from Maplewood in 1987.
Interactions between Ackerman and Sharpe are, if nothing else, fun to write. They are also incredibly difficult because they interact like Captain Picard and Q from Star Trek TNG do. Not only do they co-run the Debate Club (that must be interesting), but my suspicion is that they knew each other when they were students at Maplewood. Ackerman is incredibly religious and Sharpe is... not.

Hugh Avery: Hugh is the math teacher (and former physics teacher) who is friendly and personable. He graduated from Maplewood in 1983.
Hugh Avery is friends with everyone on the staff team, but he’s one of the few staff members who actually chooses to interact with Sharpe (versus a forced interaction). He and Sharpe became friends during the 2000-2001 school year and since then, they have been playing a series of (harmless) practical jokes on one another. Not that anyone would believe Avery if he said anything...

Jonathan Liu: Jon is Michael’s dad who graduated Maplewood in 1985 and is a pastor at the local church.
Jon sort of served as a casual mentor to Sharpe while they were in high school (during Sharpe’s freshman year). In essence, they lost contact for several years (more of this is detailed in Snapshots), but now that Michael is a student in Sharpe’s homeroom...

Tetsuya Takahashi: Sharpe’s former classmate, now a local politician and a member of the school board.
I should dedicate an entire entry to what’s happened between Sharpe and Takahashi, but in short, they went to school together. They were in the same homeroom. Sharpe made a snide remark at Takahashi’s expense and Takahashi took offence; things just escalated from there. Now, they are coldly civil to one another and Emiko Takahashi is in Sharpe’s homeroom so things are about to get interesting again...

Aislynn Celeste: Aislynn is the graduate student who works with Hugh Avery in the after school math program, Operation Numbers.
Aislynn and Sharpe confuse one another... they're both a lot more alike than either knows and yet they won't be finding that out the easy way. I'm really looking forward to writing more interactions between them because Aislynn's curious as anything about other people (naturally this extends to Sharpe) and Sharpe is puzzled by Aislynn, especially after observing how she interacts with Hugh Avery.