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Boy Bride Chapter 8

  • Dec. 30th, 2009 at 9:41 PM

A/N: After a really, really long break, I have returned to writing. Here's chapter eight of Boy Bride. I think I've improved as a writer! Yay! ^__^

Title: Boy Bride
Fandom: Original
Genre: Romance, angst, drama, fantasy, mythology, humor.
Pairing: OMCxOMC
Rating: M
Author: Angel_Gospel (aka, TheLadyPendragon)
Disclaimer: Mine. Roar!
Warnings: Language, sexual content, violence, slash, relationship with a minor, mentions of mpreg, etc.
Summary: A gay prince, an unintentionally sexy foreigner, and the meddling Wizard who just wants them to get laid. Everyone else is just along for the ride. A fairy-tale unlike any you've ever read. MxM, Slash, Yaoi, Possible Mpreg.
 

--Prologue--Chapter One--Chapter Two--Chapter Three--Chapter Four--Chapter Five--Chapter Six--Chapter Seven--

As the noughties come to an end…

  • Dec. 30th, 2009 at 7:59 AM
The decade of the noughties is almost behind us. As we usher in the teenies, I find myself thinking about how much my life and the lives of those closest to me will change over the next ten years. 
 
Senior Management has worked so hard for the family.  I’m determined to make a success of myself, so that she can give up work.
 
My teenage boy, already more grown up than me in so many ways, will become a man. I’ve no doubt he will excel in whichever field he chooses.   Come 2020, he may be married.  Who knows? I may even be a grandad, though if you’re reading this, son, I’d rather you waited.
 
Then of course, I think of my beautiful daughters. They’ve already come so far since the curse of autism stole them from us. They know us now. They know our names – at least most of the time – and thank the Lord, they’re happy.   By the end of this next decade, they’ll be in their mid-twenties.  What will become of them? How much more of them can we get back?
 
All around the world, as these last hours of 2009 slip away, billions of people will contemplate their New Year resolutions. Some plan to quit smoking, or drinking, or get themselves fit. Many will decide to change how they treat other people, or how they treat themselves.
 
I have just one resolve, and it’s not for the year, it’s for the decade.  
 
I aim to carve out a career in writing, and I will succeed.  
 
How about you?
 
What’s your plan for the next ten years?



The Last Bottle (part IV), Chapter 2

  • Dec. 29th, 2009 at 9:52 PM

Chapter 2:  Willard Street, West Avenue, and Alfred Street

 

Nick Sparks was, most of his friends agreed, a very good-looking, generally congenial guy.  Obviously of Italian descent, he had brown hair, brown eyes, dark features, was just short of tall, and was thin but athletic; he dressed, like a typical young person of nineteen or twenty, in clothes mostly purchased from the mall.  His face was somewhat long and slightly angular, with prominent cheekbones and thin cheeks, though he did not appear gaunt.  His chin was very noticeably cleft.

 

Nick was also, most of his friends agreed, a little odd at times; but at the James School almost everyone was at least a little odd, and so this was usually overlooked.

 

 

Read more... )

 

Hospitals in Prague

  • Dec. 29th, 2009 at 8:04 PM
Hi everyone :)

At the moment I am revising an old story and I have some action that takes place in a hospital in Prague in 2002. The protagonist finds her critically injured companion in the area of the Strahov monastery and rushes him to the nearest hospital. What I'm trying (and failing) to work out is which would be the best hospital for her to take him to. I've been using google maps to try and pinpoint where all the hospitals are but, obviously, the information for most of them is in Czech and I can't understand a lot of it.

Some of the places that are flagged up when using google maps appear to be either private health clinics or university departments related to medicine. I'm really just looking for a typical hospital building which has sufficient grounds to accommodate a car chase out of the parking lot and which is on the west bank of the Vltava river, as near to the Strahov monastery as possible. If anyone who understands Czech or is simply knowledgeable about Prague could give me some help choosing a hospital I would really appreciate it. I don't mind using a bit of creative license to describe the interior of the building, but I'd really like to have a real world facility to refer to.

Many thanks!

British Upper-Class Drug Slang Circa 1996

  • Dec. 29th, 2009 at 9:49 AM
Hi all,

Can anyone tell me what the popular terms were for marijuana, heroin, and cocaine in Britain and/or the rest of English-speaking Europe circa 1996/1997? My character is a rock star from a wealthy family, so he would have been using what was considered the 'good stuff' of the era (i.e., powdered cocaine versus crack, high-quality heroin versus low).

Wiki, Google, and my f-list yielded several websites with international terms for different drugs, but nothing that was year-specific or class-specific. Thanks in advance for any help!

What the wealthy were doing during 1930s

  • Dec. 28th, 2009 at 7:32 PM
SO, I've looked in the  tags and my google fu is failing me. Even the Wikipedia page on Rocerfeller is very scarce on how the great depression affected the wealthy, especially Manhattan high society. The Rockerfellers, the Firestones.. What did they have to sacrifice? Were there less people invited to Fiorello LaGuardia's dinner parties?

There is quite alot about the hoovervilles and the soup lines, but where can I find out what happened to the creme de la creme?


Thanks in advance!!

Tags:

Using feathers in clothing

  • Dec. 28th, 2009 at 8:19 PM
This has come up twice now in fantasy settings I've been working on. O.o

So if you have very little in the way of natural resources, but one of the resources you DO have in relative abundance is feathers (pigeon and occasionally chicken feathers in the one setting, a much wider variety of birds in the other), what might you do with them? Any way to spin them and turn them into cloth? Or maybe use them whole in some way for warmth? These people don't have room to grow flax or hemp or cotton and certainly don't have room to graze sheep or goats. One setting does have domesticated rabbits and the other has occasional skins from animals hunted in the Extremely Dangerous Place, so I've got backup clothing sources, but if they CAN do anything with the feathers they have, they WILL.

If it matters, both settings have rather ubiquitous but very limited magic.



googling "feather spinning" and "feather cloth" did not find me any useful results, and I haven't seen anything about feathers as a fibre source on handspinning-related websites. If nobody has a clue I may just go buy or collect some feathers and dig out my drop spindle and see if I can make it work somehow. Heck, I might do that anyway.

A year in blogging (sort of)

  • Dec. 29th, 2009 at 9:30 AM
Knowing how many visitors you get, and which page they enter your blog through, is a great way to keep track of your journal’s readership. It’s also useful to know which posts are more popular than others – something you can’t always tell from the number of comments – so that you can plan your posts accordingly.   I use Sitemeter to tell me this information. 
 
I went through my records to pick out the journal entries which received the most number of direct visitors in each month of 2009.  Here they are in reverse month order:   
 
The Meager Puddle of Light Awards: Best Opening Line – And the nominations are…
Posted on December 2nd 2009, the final vote to select the Puddle winner for Best Opening Line was the second highest ranked page on my journal this year. 
 
What would lower your opinion of a fellow blogger?
Posted on November 18th, as part of my research for The Fine Art of Self-Promotion series, this poll was my most visited page of 2009. 
 
Guest blog by writer and two-time Puddle winner, Barbara A. Barnett
Posted on October 29th, [info]babarnett ’s guest post ‘How Being a Theater Geek Has Improved My Writing’ was a big hit. 
 
Why writers should leave Dan Brown alone 
I don’t often vent online, but the spiteful mockery of Dan Brown got me upset enough to post this on September 26th. Maybe I should get cranky more often. 
 
“You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” 
Posted on August 19th, this was the first time my comment count hit the 100 mark 
 
The Critiquee’s Charter 
Inspired by an entry on [info]amy34 ’s journal, this July 22nd post, advising people on how to behave while listening to a critique, is one of my personal favorites of the year.  
 
Ask not what your writing group can do for you…   
On June 25th, after reading about [info]j_cheney ’s bad experience at an RWA meeting, I posted this tip list for people in writing groups. It also marks one of my old gran’s first appearances here on my journal. 
  
Ten important truths every writer should know. 
I was worried I might come off as big-headed when I posted this list on May 28th, hence the disclaimer at the bottom of the post.
 
I only started using Sitemeter in May, so I have no way of telling which posts got the most direct visits in the first four months of the year, but if you’re interested, here’s a link to my first ever entry (on January 11), Welcome to the journal - it gets worse here everyday (so do the puns).   It’s notable only for the fact that my friend from the Garden State Horror Writers, dqg_neal, took the time to add my very first comment on LJ – for which I’m extremely grateful. 
 
How about you?
 
What were your most visited blog posts of 2009? 

Lower class booze in Wales

  • Dec. 27th, 2009 at 5:51 PM
So -

I wasn't getting any love in a more spesific comm and I'm on a short turn around so I turn to you, LJ, for your collective wisdom.

I've searched for 'poor man's booze/drink Wales' but not gotten anything modern or 'regular' (as opposed to ceremonial etc).

The question is: if you were a Welsh man from a lower class family, Estate living type family, and you were in a pub drinking hard alcohol - what would you drink that would give away your lower class/estate origins? This is set in the modern day so of zuma or some artifical drink would be the tell, that's okay too, but I'd prefer, if possible, a classic or old-fashioned type of hard liquor.

My first thought was gin, as that's the poor man's drink in the US but ... Wales is not the US.

I need it not to be beer/wine (soft alcohol).

ETA: Thanks everyone! It sounds like the best bet is to go with the 'house' brand of either whisky or vodka. I'll probably use vodka since another character is drinking whisky.

ETA 2: Wow! A lot of variety in the response. Clearly not a simple answer to this question. Because of the details of the scene, I'm still going with house vodka - the character is trying not to reveal his background and it seems like cheap beer would, but buying spirits could pass as an attempt to look more posh than he is. Money is not an issue.

Thanks!

Blindness in one eye

  • Dec. 27th, 2009 at 1:44 PM
I'm not sure -where- this story will be set -- probably the U.K. -- but it's in our current time period.

If someone is blind in one eye, is it possible that the eye would look completely normal, and exactly like the other eye? Is there a cause of blindness that would not affect the appearance of the eye? (Or at least, affect it only very slightly)

Would it be possible for the fake/blind eye to move in coordination with the other eye?

How would the blindness in one eye affect the vision in the other eye?
Would the person be able to, say, shoot a gun with accuracy? Would he be able to drive?
This year, I’ve read a lot more short fiction than usual. Aside from critique groups, magazines like Space And Time, or anthologies like Writers of the Future, I’ve read hundreds of stories online, which is where I came across Manna From Heaven, by Paul A. Freeman, my personal favorite of 2009.
 
It was published in Every Day Fiction.  As the name suggests, EDF posts a new piece of fiction (up to 1,000 words) on their website every day - they even email a free copy to their subscribers each morning.

Manna From Heaven is flash fiction, but even though it’s less than a thousand words, it packs a wallop. I thoroughly recommend it. 
 
How about you?
 
What’s the best short story you’ve read this year? 

 

Question

  • Dec. 28th, 2009 at 12:04 AM
So I'm writing my first synopsis and it has my brain log jammed.  I don't know  what the heck I'm doing. I have searched for examples other than tips (i.e., first paragraph do this . . .).  I'm so visual in nature I need a concrete example to spring board my own ideas.  I have gone to Story Sensei and searched agent blogs, but have come up empty.  Help! Websites. Books.  I'm open.  Feed me Seymour!!!

Charitable Organization for Circus Performers

  • Dec. 26th, 2009 at 11:24 PM
Googled: Financial Aid, circus performers; charities, circus performers; circus arts charity, circus arts foundation

Setting: United States 1988-2005

I'm writing a Batman fanfiction spinning out of a canon event from 1988, but given that time moves a lot more slowly within comics continuity,I'm thinking that the setting is more like '5 years before the present'.

Is there any national charitable organization in the USA that looks to help retired/injured/disabled circus performers? If there isn't, I can invent one, but if there is, I'd rather use the real name. (Basically Dick Grayson decides that in lieu of a Christmas present he'd like a donation to be made to this organization.)

Thanks!

The Last Bottle (part III)

  • Dec. 27th, 2009 at 12:39 PM
The coffee shop in which we had been sitting was a dimly lit kind of place with all kinds of pretentious art crap cluttering the walls. I’m sure that at any given moment, one could easily find a patron there who enjoys the kind of garbage I’m asking you to read. I can say with some certainty, however, that finding a Nicholas Sparks lover there would be very unusual. It was not the sort of place someone who reads Nicholas Sparks would sit and read Nicholas Sparks. That would be embarrassing in such a hip and intellectual place as the coffee shop.

Read more... )

Slightly delayed due to Christmas celebrations, here’s my selection of interesting (and sometimes amusing) posts about writing from the last week: 

 
[The sweet little old lady in these two videos reminds me of my old gran] 
[info]theladywolf    
 
How to avoid using the WRONG cliché
[info]peadarog    
 
The Publishing Lottery and Other Insults 
[info]jimhines    
 
Diversification: Expanding Your Writing Repertoire 
[info]a_r_williams    
 
Are Booksignings Worth it? 
[info]jimhines    
 
Self-Editing: One Final Chore (Patricia Stoltey)  
 
Editing, How I Love Thee. Let Me Count The Ways… 
[info]tracy_d74    
 
an alphabet of names 
[info]marycatelli 

If you have a particular favorite among these, please let the author know (and me too, if you have time).  Also, if you've a link to a great post that isn't here, feel free to share.
 

question

  • Dec. 26th, 2009 at 8:27 PM
So, I have been writing an outline/ key scenes for a graphic novel. It is a sci fi adventure that takes place in 1930's dustbowl. I had some questions about research.

1.) How in depth do you all go into for research. I mean should I be a stickler or can I bend the rules a bit and make things not so historically accurate?

2.) what is a good resource about writing and letting your audience know it is in a certain time period without starting the first chapter, "It was a cold morning in the fall of 1932."

Thanks in advance!

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