Hynovian Launch Party

The Hynovia Launch party was the perfect end of summer evening.  I’d had some trouble coming up with decorations, until I found some lovely Indian bedspreads in golds and reds and browns.  After that it was pretty easy to hang lanterns, pin up my sister’s sari fabric and transform our living room into a cozy salon full of warm late summery/early autumnal colors.  Our usual star lanterns fit right in.  One of my guests even loaned me a lovely Turkish coffee set for decoration:

We didn’t use it – well, except for our littlest guest, Ellie, who discovered that the goblets were fun to teethe on.

The menu came out wonderful – lots of bright flavors – as well as very pretty.  The Nut and Feta balls were a big hit and I have not forgotten that folks wanted the recipe.  I plan to make them again next week and post the recipe and photos up here.

In addition to the feast, we read the Hynovian short story "Azura of Carantia" and my sister did henna tattoos on those who wanted them.

Here are some more photos of the guests, the food and the decorations:

Spring has Sprung and So Have I...

... or is that just the coffee?


I feel like I am on a roll right now.  This week I have started my next country, Hynovia, and its accompanying story.  Hynovia is in the south-east of Idhua and has close ties to Eonia, so there is already some information about it from the work I have done on its neighbor.  The story is just an idea right now, but I am going to explore someone turning down the “great opportunity.”  This came from musing on the way in which our culture has a narrative that if someone has a talent or opportunity that will make them rich, famous or powerful then it should be grabbed with both hands.  Likewise, the story more often told is the young person who wants to leave home and claim their gifts.  While I don’t have a problem with ambition or exploration, I want to acknowledge that there is also value in the person who decides that love of what they have is enough, that they don’t need to do great deeds or have great acclaim.


Besides the new country, I’ve been editing The Summer Valley, which I have decided is pretty good as it is and I just need to get over being neurotic about presenting it to a big launch party in June.  I am also pursuing an idea of asking some of the other guests at the launch party to perform music or poetry and so to make the evening a literary and musical celebration.  To this end I have begun to make arrangements with Dusty Stings to rent a harp for my friend E.  She can’t bring her harp up to Seattle with her, but she and I are both eager for her to play at the party.


I have also been thinking about decorations and the menu, which is a bit early I know, but this is a big one!  I am thinking of a five to seven course feast, leaning heavily on the fresh produce that will be coming into season in June: asparagus, peas, and strawberries.  This week I am going to make and freeze Meyer Lemon Curd so that I can make Meyer Lemon Cream Puffs as one of the desserts.


Besides all the excitement in writing and party planning, Norwescon is coming up next week.  I am going with artist Sara Twitty who will have a display in the art show – so if you’re going to be there, head to the Gallery sometime to check out her work!

Aricadan Launch Party

We had a lovely time last Sunday at the Aricedian Launch party.  The theme of the decorations was a still room – drawing on the story “Blackfoil” which was read following the dinner.  A few weeks ago I raided the P-patch were I have a garden and gathered a collection of herbs to hang against the wall: rosemary, thyme, mint, lemon balm, fever-few, parsley and red spray roses which I bought since there not blooming up here in the Pacific NW yet.  The day before I bought more roses and some ivory stock and made posies with all sorts of things from the P-patch and my neighborhood, including calendula, miniature daffodils, mustard and broccoli flowers, fava bean shoots, clover, mints and feverfew, fennel sprigs and a few things I wasn't sure what they were besides pretty!  I thought the overall effect was quite lovely and the guests agreed.

The guests were the usual suspects with a new addition: Baby Ellie!  Last launch party was the day before she was born – I think I wrote then that it was astonishing to see pictures of her at the hospital and to realize that she had been at the Tav’urisk party the night before still in utero.  She was a great guest for Ariceda – she even dressed up in her grandmother’s white linen baby dress for the occasion.

We had a rustic springtime menu that included pasties with herbs and mushrooms; greens, beets and peppered chevre; lettuce tansie; a salad of greens, radishes, cucumbers and herbs with violets and calendula petals; delicious Struen bread from Grateful Bread and Ladysmith cheese with chives from SamishBay Cheese; and a strawberry-rhubarb galette with honeyed cream – which was really delicious if I say so myself.  

Finished Orin

I have finished both the entry and the rough draft of the short story for my next country: Orin.  The short story, titled “The Summer Valley” is being read by my kind and generous beta reader, M, whom I hope will not be quite as despairing about it as I have been feeling.  The reason I am being gloomy about it is that the launch party for Orin is set for June and it is going to be a big one.  My mom, my dear friend E, and my sister’s boyfriend are all going to be up from CA to see my sister graduate and will be here for the party.  In addition, when I sent out a “save this date” invitation I had a lot of positive responses, a number from people who will be coming for the first time.  So it’s not that I don’t like “The Summer Valley” but rather that I have been feeling that it should somehow be extra special for an extra big party with VIPs.


Orin is a country which spans a temperate and Mediterranean climate – in the north above the Idessa Mountains it is cooler and wetter, though it rarely snows, while in the south there are vineyards and orange and lemon orchards.  It was limping along a bit until I decided that they needed a legendary king to focus on with both their history and their legends and folk-lore.  I glanced over the Arthurian and Carolingian cycles, not only for inspiration, but also as an example of how such bodies of literature and legend work on a patriotic consciousness.


Here is the current map of Idhua: It is entirely coincidental that I have been working on the purple countries.  Apparently, I colored a number of the countries which were settled earliest (which is my criteria) purple without planning it.

Ghost of a Rose

After spending most of the week flailing around trying to come up with an idea for my next short story, I just managed to write 2000 words in two hours.  I had the idea on Wednesday at work, let it marinate yesterday and it’s been bubbling out this morning.  What’s it about?  The Forest, young love, old love, summer time, an enchanted valley.  I wasn’t consciously thinking of the Blackmore’s Night song “Ghost of a Rose,” when I scribbled the outline at work, but it is surprisingly appropriate.  Since E was the one who gave me that song years ago, this one will be for you, my fellow Philomythus.

North Seattle SciFi and Fantasy Writers

Last Sunday I went to the North Seattle SciFi and Fantasy Writers Meetup.  It was a really great experience.  Well, great besides the fact that I went to the Greenlake Chocolati Café, before realizing it was at the Greenwood Chocolati Café and so was late and flustered.  Once I got there, the group was very welcoming.  They all gave very useful feedback on my short story “Catkin.” Some of their suggestions were particularly helpful, because they will make the story more understandable to someone who is not familiar with my world, Idhua.  The blind spot of  my current readers – my mom, my sister and a few close friends – is that they know a lot about my world from all the stories and ideas I have bounced off of them.

The pieces I read from the other writers in the Meetup group were really good too, and it was a pleasure to read and critique them.  Hopefully some of the suggestions I made were as useful to them as theirs were for “Catkin.”

The group holds meetings every two weeks – which may be a little much for me, at least right now – but I do plan on going back.  It is invigorating to read and discuss works in progress with other authors in my genre and I would like to make more connections to the speculative fiction community here in Seattle.

On Writing Short Stories - Part 1

In the process of learning to write short-stories I have learned – or, perhaps, relearned – that I have a tendency to be verbose.  I think it is partially instinctive, as I have always had a love for completeness.  It is not enough to know the bones of the story: I want to know what they ate and how they made paint or glue or how their language evolved, and what happened in the places they left behind.  The trick that I am starting to learn is that all of that can be explored, but the story is the network of moments within it that fit together in one tight, sleek shape.  I hope that in time I will be able to shorten the process – rather than writing the 20,000 word version, then the 12,000, then the 9,000 and then finally the 7,500, I will be able to hold the 20,000 version in my head while I write the 9,000 version and then edit it down.


The other reason I tend toward wordiness is from academic writing.  Somehow, when I was receiving my training, there was much more emphasis on achieving the page number than on saying everything that needs to be said elegantly and succinctly.  In retrospect I wish I had had a teacher who was skilled in teaching how to define a topic that is the right size for that 25 page paper while being concise.  I have had a lot of good teachers over the years, but as I think about it, very few good writing teachers.


At any rate, I am rewriting and editing five stories at the moment.  While I am nearly done with Tav’uran, I have decided that I am not going to start the next country until I have at least two, if not three, of the current stories polished up to the point I feel I can start submitting them for publication.

Submit to The Amber Grimoire

The online Fantasy Journal, which I started last year with my writing group and some other friends, is looking for submissions for our next issue.  The deadline is March 1 and the theme for the Summer Issue is “The Wild Wood.”  We are looking for poetry, short stories, art and book reviews.  Go to Submissions for more information or check out our first issue "Genesis."

Finished Eonia

  This week I finished my fourth country "encyclopedia" entry and short story.  The country is called Eonia and is based loosely on Greek and other ancient Mediterranean cultures.  The rough draft of the short story "The Amulet of Aranos" has taken me longer than I would have liked, mostly because I wrote it going in one direction and then when I shared it with my lovely writing group, Phantasme, the ladies there pointed out the direction that I should be going, or I seemed to want to go.  Of course they were right, so I went back and did a massive rewrite, and then a less massive rewrite, and am finally ready to share it with them again.
  I will be continuing to edit and refine "The Amulet of Aranos" but I am also going to begin my next country next week.  It is a north-eastern country in Idhua - just about directly across the continent from the first country I did, Lendhlay.  It is as yet nameless; I had a name for it that no longer fits, so I am going to have to think about that for a while.  Here is a map of Idhua with the finished countries shaded in: