What's Been Happening? Yup, Lots of STUFF!

It has been a while and I have been neglecting my blog terribly! So, so sorry for the lack of updates. As we all know life can get busy and crazy and unexpectedly weird...more on that later.

Here are a few important updates, firstly a release of another anthology. This one is from the Christchurch Writer's Guild and it's called SPECTRA! AND IT'S SO PRETTY!

It's a collection of stories poetry and art by us local Canterburians and is available in paperback and ebook, so check it out.

Second update: After finishing the first draft of Once Were Angels I have put the manuscript down for a while to get some distance. Since then I have been playing casually with two connected science fiction novel ideas. The first one is called Bring Back The Clowns, and the second is PTFO. If you are a gamer then the second title will probably stand out.

Finally my third update- related indirectly to above actually.
 The Prisoners Of War Clan.
Over the last few months my life took an unexpected turn when I met a group of online gamers.  We banded together and became the Prisoners of War battalion, captured entirely by the game Battlefield 1. As a group, we aim to foster a professional, safe and fun gaming community for all our members while supporting our elite forces as they enter the professional E-sports Arena. I'm proud to be involved and am extra proud to now call this once random bunch of New Zealanders and Australians friends. They are a phenomenal group of individuals.  PTFO is a novel that I will be dedicating to them and their awesomeness...

So this is us...




We will be live streaming future battle events, some of which my gaming  alter-ego Iced Donut NZ will be involved with, so subscribe and watch out for updates.

That's all for now.

Once Were Angels Part two

I promised a little more from my current WIP Once Were Angels.  This novel is becoming a little bit special. Yeah, I'm actually enjoying working through the revisions on the first half ( ha! there's two words not usually found together 'enjoying, and revisions'). I'm using Camp NaNoWriMo (starting April ) to  finish it up, then after a few more tidying sweeps-- Alpha readers! Anyway here's is a little more from OWA's draft files.

Excerpt


“This place is rather grand isn’t it? Prettyish. All a nice, big show.” She murmured, looking out the window toward the crystal-bright sun and the city basking in its light. Omega's ivory spires towered, aglow with radiant majesty almost as if they were seeking to outshine the sun itself.

“But what is it really like?” The question was a sideways avenue, to what she really wanted to know-- why would Odez ever want to leave this? But she left that question unspoken. The silence stretched a time until his almost muted answer cut the space between them. “It’s quite grand and its inhabitants quite blind to anything but its grandness."

The System of Worlds, as prescribed by the Archon-See,
rulers of Omega

“So they don’t care about us humans then?”


“They care to the extent that the System works and that Omega is safe.”


“The System?”


“It’s complicated.”


“I’m smart.”


“I’m sure you are.”


“You know I am.” She mused slowly, a half smile tripping across her lips.

“I should let them explain things to you then.”


“I don’t trust them.”

“You don’t trust me either.” Odez countered softly, his eyes suddenly a little bit darker, a little bit dangerous.


“No.” She whispered, “You got me there, Dez. But you seem the lesser of two evils right now.”


“You should sleep first.”

And right on cue her body responded to his words, like it was some sort of hypnotic suggestion. The resonance of his voice perhaps. Her eyelids felt sluggish and the pressure of her hands upon the window got heavier as she leaned into it. “Maybe you are right?”

As she turned away from the spectacle of Omega City she noticed the slump of Odez's shoulders, the darkening around his eyes. It was almost as if she was feeling his exhaustion rather than hers. She wasn’t the empathetic type, never had been, but then this connection (or whatever it was) was deeper than her own will, beyond her control. As they walked back into the bedroom, their shoulders brushed together and that accidental closeness seemed like the most natural thing in the world.


Those strings, she thought. I wonder if there’s any way to snip them before this gets complicated.

Goals for 2016

I finally got around to posting on 2016 goals. Thanks Judy L Mohr for encouraging me to be brave enough to declare them. 

So they are posted up on my art blog, reason being that they are broader creative goals rather than simply writing goals. I've tried to make them as realistic as possible because life will get crazy-busy with young ones, pending house renovations and caring for all our animals. I find if I put to much pressure on myself I encounter a strange form of hopeless indecision paralysis. "I have so much to do, but what do I do first?" *panics and promptly buries head in sand*.

Anyway check out the post on my art blog. Here's the link- Amuri Art: Goals for 2016 . I'll try my best to forge forward, one small step at a time. 

Across A Sea Of  Cloud by Jessica Colvin

At 5am When The Universe Talks.

I surfaced from an odd, bag of weary bones sleep this morning, my eyes fluttered open to darkness and silence. I lay there and wondered why I had woken so early, my wondering only broken by the occasional fitful turn. I think it was probably due to a pesky sinus-clogging cold which has left my teeth feeling loose and achy.
So I lay there for a time, one part of me adamantly wanting to go back to sleep, and the other part grumbling "not gonna happen", ache, groan, piss, moan. Then my mind became less webby and I started thinking about the day ahead.

Then some words appeared, drifting up from a dark dreamlike place. Strangely, this was the thing that got me up. Not the list of things I had to do before hustling the kids off to school, no those words which formed a rhythmic beat in my mind, the deepening pulse of a creative vein.

I wrote them down and saw that they were peculiar. They'd lost some of their rhythm once they solidified on the page. And I don't know exactly what they mean. Like a dream, the act of writing tends to boil things up from the subconscious. These words need to be worked over like some precious metal, the dross burned away and their meaning refined before they can be shared.

This little 5am epiphany got me to thinking about how much of my writing actually happens inside my head and interestingly how much of it still stays in there even after writing the first draft. It is a bit jumble up there in the old grey-matter. I have multiple worlds populated by multiple characters, many with very distinct voices, mannerisms, backstories. Isn't it any wonder that it takes so much time to sift through and refine the page-story to reflect the mind-story. Sometimes it feels like I'm chasing a ghost of a thing that doesn't really exist yet. And it sorta doesn't, but it does at the same time.  Does that make sense? I'm not sure that it does, but then again not everything about the creative process makes sense. *Mumbles* "it's all rather mysterious really."
Particularly those 5am wake-ups leading to the odd existential ramblings of a fictional but sentient universe.

So that was my morning.
How was yours?