Back to the sword and board!

I gave Daemon a bit of a rest to keep working on my hard core fantasy series :)
Almost finished the first bit of 'Necrophile'! Stay tuned!

Oh and I filled up the little notebook that my friend gave me, I had to buy another one to write in whilst I'm on the way to and from work. Now all have to do it to copy the writing from the notebook to my computer... but it's so much hard work!

The Art of Self-Insertion

My Lovely lovely Bloodlust story has undergone a transformation!
Visit http://www.4shared.com/document/0tBy4uhk/part_1.html and tell me what you think!
I found the easiest way to combat my writers block was to write myself into the story! Little did I realise the dangers associated with that :/
Enjoy what I have so far!

Engineer

Tinka Berberry had seen many explosions in her life. There were bangs, echoing thumps, tiny pops and soundless puffs of smoke... and then there was this.

As a demolitions expert she knew exactly how much gunpowder had been in any particular explosion simply by the tone of the 'boom' (or 'puff'... depending on magnitude). A higher pitched bang indicated tightly packed smaller incendiary devices, whilst a lower sound would more often than not prove to be loose gunpowder in either a crate or a barrel.

This explosion was a series of 'boom's, instigated by 6 sharp 'crack's. These 'boom's and 'crack's were four crates of loose gunpowder, stacked – one on top of the three – with an Arcane Incendiary placed lightly on top like a glazed cherry on a high-powered birthday cake as a catalyst.

Each of these volatile multi-layered concoctions were placed in positions strategically engineered for total demolition. Nothing would be left in the Clockwerk City except rubble and the bodies of 6,422 Necrophile warriors – hopefully dead.

Like a finely tuned fireworks display, the explosions shot stone and rubble into the air, the Arcane Incendiaries firing so hot that the rising dust cloud was impaled with the trailing blaze of molten metal and rock like bright red shooting stars.

It was her best work. An order from the High Overspark himself; leave no foundation standing, no hallway unburied and no courtyard uncluttered... and she had done it in a record time of 2 hours and 16 minutes.

Tinka Berberry watched the Clockwerk City of Crankshaft explode like an overfilled balloon and wept, for she had just destroyed the only home she had ever known... and the halflings that had not been fast enough to run.

Time to buckle down.

Okay, no more procrastinating. I WILL finish 'Daemon' damnit!
Dad's prodding me into publishing a small anthology of everything that I've started over the years. It really hit me once I started going through my really old stuff. The sword and board epic fantasies that I'd stay up all night (all school night) writing. I mean, seriously, where'd all that energy and focus go?
So, now, I'm making a pledge to myself. I give myself until christmas this year to finish 'Daemon' in it's entirety. By that time my friend at work will have set up his binding business - meaning that I can employ one of his business partners to print at least 10 copies, get it bound by him and do the cover graphics myself. Hey presto! 1st edition copies of my book for christmas presents :D
Hmmm maybe I'll sign them too...

Listening to;
Help, I'm still Alive - Metric

OST coincidence or not?

Acquired the Clash of the Titans (2010) soundtrack from iTunes and had a little listen-through while I was working on Wicked Truth. Words just fell out of me! It was wonderful! I think I found my new inspiration tracks for this book :)
It was interesting too, the score was composed by Ramin Djwadi - who work as an assistant composer to Hans Zimmer on Pirates of the Carribean! You can actually hear some of the same elements, which was nice because its the bits from the PotC score that I really enjoyed; the soft drums keeping time with a lot of violin 8th notes working up and down. Most of all are the wonderful bits where the music swells with the brass section... it sounds... striving, if thats a way to put it. You can hear the epic struggle in the pieces.
Anyway, on that note I shall return to my writing. I HIGHLY recommend this soundtrack, even as a little background music. The music is beautiful :D

New story time!

My newest irritating story flitting about my head finally got put to text during my road trip to Melbourne this past week. A friend gave me a notebook for my birthday to write in whilst in the car, which definitely came in handy :P
So my newest endeavor revolves around the Tuatha De Danann - 'Peoples of the Goddess Danu'. In my particular case; Irish faeries. It's got little bits of Samhain and Beltane law with a bit of Green Man legends and all manner of funky bits of folklore like a Sheela na Gig, fairy raths and a secret underwater Crannog.
I love Irish fae-lore to bits.
The only thing is I want to try and keep is as believeable as possible. I mean it's nothing like my Briar Rose sequence (which, by the way, can be found here. Chapter 1 :D) which is all magic and fairies and stuff. Wicked Truth is more folk-lore mystery that's got you goin 'is it or isn't it?'... kinda like Sherlock Holmes when you think the bad dude is a warlock, but really he isn't.
The only task now is to type it out from my notes. I got about the first 3 chapters and a bit done :) not bad for 20 hours work!
Hmmm I also wouldn't mind doing a little list of my leading males, for comparison. I don't wanna start making them all the same. That's the thing I hated about Stephanie Meyers books Twilight and Wanderer. Melanie and Bella have almost no behavioral differences, and you can draw lines between Jacob/Ian and Edward/(the dude melanie's in love with). I want them all to be somewhat different.
So Daemon is a half-Japanese grump who walks with a limp, has a scar from cheek to chin (on such a perfect face! /sob) and is a general badass with 2 guns and a wazikashi blade. Pale, black hair to his jaw and muscled like an AFL player.
Taliesin is a 2000-something year old War-mage who uses blood-sacrifices, charms and a wand to blow people to bits. He also can drain people's life-energy by touching them directly. He's got dark-tanned skin and loooong black hair to his waist... plus long pointy ears and fangs :)
Dominic is half-arab, half-irish (don't ask me how it works, but it does) doctor of Religious Symbology pertaining to European ancient history. Also a descendant of the Fir Bolg people, after the run-in with the Ifreet (fire-demon) he shows certain Jinniyeh aspects (i.e. Keylee has a vision of him disappearing in smoke etc.)
Gotta read up a little more on my Arab folk-lore though for that one -.-
Anyways, till next time!

Random Nerd moment

I work at a digital print shop for Harvey Norman that prints all of the lovely high-quality photobooks and canvases you order from Harvey Norman Photocenters around Australia. So if you've got one of these recently there's a good chance I've either bound it, trimmed it, printed it, covered it, stapled it or packed it.
So one of the machines I operate at work is a Horizen HT-30 Robotic Trimmer. It cuts the photobooks to fit nicely in their hard or soft covers. It's like a huge machine from Willy Wonka's chocolate factory O.o




<------ It makes very cool 'whirr', 'phoosh' and 'cha-bang!' sounds XD



I was using it yesterday and one of the guys was with me, showing me the finer details of operating it, when we started to talk about how it works. Yeah hydraulics to power the 1kg blade etc etc... but what caught my attention was the tiny tiny motors it uses to make the precise measurements and cuts. I mean it can cut to like a 1/4 of a mm accurately! It uses these funky little motors called 'Servo Motors'.



This is what it looks like when u rip it apart. ---------------->



They turn particular angles according to the length of electrical pulses they get.
So to keep it in a 'neutral' position requires a pulse of 1.50 milliseconds. Anything less than this will turn it accordingly counter clockwise (I think, or I might have it back to front) and anything more will turn it clockwise.

So you can program pulses to turn them in whatever degree u like, maybe attach a robotic arm to the end and you have... well a funny-looking thing that can pick things up and drop them a little bit away.
So you program software to release timed pulses - like a macro in WoW - one pulse to activate the robotic 'clamp' (I think it'd work by completing the circuit... I haven't done electronics since primary school -.-) to pick up ... a coffee cup or something. Then a pulse of 1.75ms to turn the motor from 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock and another pulse to release the 'clamp' and a 1.5ms pulse to return it to neutral. (Most servo motors, I've read, only work within 180 degrees.)
These little things are the same type of motor in remote-controlled cars! Very cool :) I dunno why I found this so interesting... maybe cause I had a light-bulb moment where I suddenly understood exactly how a little part of something worked.
At least in my head I get it :s


Oh and I discovered the trimmer is technically classed as a 'Robot', though I doubt it will be plotting any plans for world domination soon...