NaNoWriMo and Jinglemas and Legends, oh my · 7:53pm Nov 13th, 2018
Salut, a'. Wee report for anyone wondering if I was doing anything past the veil of radio silence, a wee bit of coaxing in the direction of a cool collab, and a wee snippit related to the first item.
First things first, I've been doing NaNoWriMo for the first time! I've not been doing it well, admittedly — it's unlikely I'll clear the novel word count by the end of the month, and a shiny new expansion for Crusader Kings is unlikely to be the greatest asset to my productivity either. But it's definitely been good for me to force myself to sit down and jot at least a few hundred words each day. It's been too easy to let evening after evening lapse without inflicting more words on the world, and this was a productive wee shot in the arm I badly needed. If I can keep the habit up after November, all the better.
That might beg the question of what I'm actually doing with this terrible newfound work ethic. A Treasures sequel is what, tentatively entitled Legends. If you liked that story, which featured a wee Daring Do's first adventure in ancient Antlertean ruins, and you'd like to see her continued exploits three years down the line, it should satisfy on that front. If you want a closer look at the Palaververse, especially the not-Scotland-honest lands of Corva and the gonne-slinging corvids therein, it should do nicely. And if both of those qualities appeal, you're exactly the sort of madperson I like, and I hope Legends'll placate you.
Caveats apply, of course. Legends almost certainly shan't be done by the end of November or likely even the end of the year, and even when done, it'll have to be checked and edited to heck and back and have more bonny cover art commissioned for it. Expect it sometime next year, for broad uses of the term 'sometime'. But I'm determined to finish it, and I've slipped in a wee snippet at the bottom of this post from what's been written so far.
One reason it shan't be done by the end of year is Jinglemas, and if you missed that last year, do give it a look-in now. It's a holiday-themed collab, with every participating author being randomly assigned another, and penning (and having penned) a suitably festive story featuring a preferred character. It's what prompted The First Stitch into existence, it got me The Legend of Santa Claws, and it was all-round a lovely thing to participate in. If you've not already joined and you're intrigued, check out the rules and procedure here and sign up before the end of the month. The more, the merrier.
But enough blethering. I promised a Legends snippet at some point in all that. Let no-one say I don't occasionally deliver.
Daring looked up at the aeroport’s long and lofty notice-board. It hung from the high ceiling, a long rectangle of brass-framed glass, lit from behind by a steady white glow from some unknown alchemy, and with the names and times and destinations of airships written all over it. A thin walkway ran around it, and in a platform that jutted out from one end, a donkey jenny slouched on a bench and read a book, a speaking-tube by her right ear. Every so often, the tube would burble, and she’d rise, scoop up a marker pen and cloth, and make a circuit of the board to rub out and amend whatever needed amending in a surprisingly quick hoof.
For the last while, she’d been kept idle while a griffon and a pegasus carefully wiggled out the old pane of alchemical glass, which had picked up a mysterious pink tint, and replaced it with another. Below, the crowd of would-be passengers grew restless below. But now the repairbeings seemed to have finished, and as they flew off, the speaking tube squealed, and the jenny got up, stretched, and then cantered around the board, pen in mouth. Airship names curled into existence in her wake.
“The … What’s A Piloting License?, calling at … Cromlech Taur.” Dad clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Not ours.”
“Top Of The World, Ma, bound for Marephis via Tabuck.” Gamfer stood with a generous amount of space on all sides, and the old magpie watched the jenny work. “Even less ours.”
“Why do donkeys name their ships like that?” Daring asked.
“Some things in the world, poppet, are beyond mortal wit. That’s the Flies Like An Eagle, Falls Like A Brick bound for … Eweboea. Ovarn, but not the city in Ovarn we need.”
“Seriously, why?” As the crowd around them shifted and sections of its began trickling towards their departure towers, Daring shifted atop Dad and grumbled to herself. The donkeys didn’t seem to take this sort of thing as seriously as they ought to. If she’d had an airship of her own, she’d have called it something cool and adventure-y. Like Sparrowhawk, or Lightning Strike. Admittedly, there was already a Wonderbolt called Lightning Strike, but Daring doubted he’d mind. But the point stood. She wouldn’t call it something like —
“...the Beep Beep, I’m A Cloud, headed for … och, Canterlot. Nae use, unless you’re bored of my company already and wanting tae head home.”
Like that. Daring squinted up the board, willing the jenny to write something proper. And which would take them a step closer to Corva, at least.
The jenny defiantly wrote No, Your Name Lacks Gravitas : Al-Antelus : Tower 4 at 14:00.
Daring grumbled into Dad’s tricorn, convinced the donkeys were doing this on purpose.
Well, this promises to be interesting, especially since Gamfer appears to be the least hostile corvid you've ever written. Also, based on the evidence, I get the sense that donkey ship names work similarly to photos at the DMV; they record them when you least expect it, and at the worst possible time.
4967861
Glad you're interested! There'll be plenty of corvids corviding about, with many points on the hostility spectrum represented. Gamfer tilts towards quite a different end from Cranreuch.
Donkey ship names are steeped in mystery and the whimsy of their captains, and owe far too much to the Culture.
4967868
Loved the "lack of gravitas" joke there.
Hah, nice. :D
I did not know Treasures existed. This is a wonderful day.
It got even better.
4967873
If Iain M. Banks were to rise from his grave with the express purpose of slapping me around the head for not coming up with my own material, it'd be the least I deserve.
4967881
Glad you approve! Hopefully it'll turn out nice.
4967882
Glad to have imparted knowledge of it! It's a story I'm fond of having written
A sequel involving the corvids could only make me fonder.
So exciting for Legends. As soon as I read the first two words of your post, I was thinking "we need this guy to write more stories with Scottish words in them, if I have to convince him that Canterlot High School is like Hogwarts and Inverness-adjacent, so be it."
And then I find out a paragraph later that Legends will be set in Not-Orkney!
4967989
Hah, one of the central corvid clans'll be exceedingly Not-Orkney. Names taken from Orcadian dialect, chambered cairns, more Viking-y than the mainlander corvids, gratuitous use of the word 'peedie', the whole works.
4968000
What are these words, and what do they mean? I demand that this continued Scottish rebellion against the rule of the English language cease immediately.
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That's Orcadian, you silly sassenach goose, not Scots. Orkney is a fey and unco and marvellous place apart, and I suspect it resents being politically tethered to Scotland when it could be getting in touch with its Viking side.
Means 'wee', by the by.
Which in turn means 'small'.
4968864
I demand that this continued Orcadian rebellion against the rule of the Scottish and the English by proxy cease immediately.
4968865
Just for that cheek, we're letting Orkney off the leash and aiming it at you. Hope you liked the last Danelaw, because the Orklaw'll be much the same, but more.
4968885
Go ahead. It's not like they can make London any worse.