Monday, May 26, 2014

9 awkward moments with that office eye candy

1. Weird eye contact

When he walks past your table and you're secretly like
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But then he suddenly looks your way and you're like
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Wait ... is that a smile? Should I smile back?
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Too late.
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2. The water cooler walk

Is he heading for the water cooler now? Damn, I'm thirsty too.
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3. Facebook stalking

Nothing?! Why is he so mysterious?
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4. Lunch break

He's lunching at his table alone again! Should you ask him out for lunch?
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... Yeah, just a thought.

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5. At the cafeteria

Oh, shit. He's there getting lunch. Turn back or say hi?
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6. When you're lunching in


Do I have food down my shirt? Oh crap, please don't let him turn around when I'm wolfing down this chicken.
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7. At office parties

Some cake for you? Not you. You.
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8. Lift encounters

You're in the same lift as him! Enclosed space! BUT. He's with a friend and they're talking about some trip he just came back from. Should you join in or hope for this unending lift ride to end?



9. Klutz alert!

When you think you're all
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That's the moment you end up like this
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And he TOTALLY SAW.
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Crushes are much more effort than they're worth sometimes.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Flash fiction Friday - The Girl Who Couldn't Cry

Thanks, Yiruma.



***


The Girl Who Couldn't Cry



She shed glitter the way people shed tears, and she shed them for the same reason too.

People thought she never cried. Her face was an exquisite slab of polished marble, fair and rouged. But if ever there was a way to fathom what she was feeling, it was by watching for the trail of gold dust she left behind.

No one knew it but me and her mother, who used to dust her skin every night when she settled in the cushy, worn ottoman with a book she wanted her mother to read to her.

I would lean out the window and listen in. It was better than focusing on the conversation going on at home.

The stories were usually about girls with secret identities and abilities - girls who could fly, who turned into swans at night, girls who could speak the language of flowers and stars - and she listened to them with rapt, keen attention, as though she could figure out the answer to her condition in them.

I should have told her that there wasn't an answer to how special she was. But I wasn't any much older than her then and didn't know how to put that into words. By the time she got older, she had stopped believing in fairy tales and their happy endings, and there was nothing more I could say.


*


She bled glitter the way people bled pain, and she bled them for the same reason too.

I watched her roll up her jeans and kick off her shoes by the river the day after her mother's funeral. She stretched out her legs on the grass, the exposed parts of her skin glistening as they caught the late afternoon sunlight. All the while, her face was as smooth as porcelain and just as brittle, her eyes dry as baked earth and just as wanting.

She didn't respond when I joined her by the river, just sat watching the stream of water cresting over the ridges in the riverbed. I took her hand, feeling the specks tickling my palm. There was a world of words in that inch of space between us, and I imagined them floating like dust motes, illuminated by the light she gave off.

A while later, she leaned her head against my shoulder. "She said she was glad the last thing she saw was my light." She lifted her head and fixed her wide, heavy gaze on me. "Do you think she believed me when I said I was too?"

I drew a hand across her cheek, collecting her tears on my fingertips, if they could fall. "I think she'll only believe it when she sees it."


*


She walked in stardust the way no one else did, and it was my aim to make her see it as the wonder that it was.

No amount of pricking herself with a needle or watching the sappiest tear-jerkers, letting her heart get broken or trusting in the wrong person could evoke any tears. I would hold her hand and stretch out my legs next to her by the river, watching silently as the water washed away the dust on her feet.

The words finally tumbled out one day, hard as bricks, after I noticed a new bruise the colour of midnight on her pallid skin.

"Stop it. Just stop punishing yourself, will you? When are you going to see that there is more than one way to hurt? Why do you keep putting yourself through all this pain just to be like everyone else?"

Anger was an emotion reserved for normal people - people who could feel pain, who could cry and laugh and feel the burn of emotions. But there were some who couldn't cry, and some who could not feel rage.

She wasn't the only one surprised at my outburst.

She turned and walked away - quickly at first, before slowing to the pace of memories - oblivious to my calls. When I caught up to her, the apology sitting on my lips, she stopped and looked up at me. In her eyes was a telltale glimmer. She blinked, freeing a tear. I caught it with my thumb, then rubbed it away.

We didn't know if this was a fluke - her tears and my anger - or if it would ever happen again. But it was enough for us then, enough for her to feel the release of hurt and enough for me to feel the fire in my chest.

She didn't completely believe it yet that we could feel and cry like everyone else, but maybe she would when she saw it: the light on her skin that shone like tears.


***


Monday, May 19, 2014

yes to no-angst Mondays!

Funny how jaded you get the more the year wears on. It's May now and you realise you haven't really done anything to take you a step closer to your goals. All you've got for your efforts is:

A) a pile of rejection letters (even worse, agents who don't reply) for a story you miss writing and wish for people to read (the ache is real, people!),

B) no novel actually completed (I'm looking - glaring - at you, Neverland!),

C) a bunch of short stories you don't know what to do with to get started on your Shiny New Novel, which you haven't even started plotting

D) a completed novel you're unravelling (i.e. rewriting). Hopefully, you'll make it better. Hopefully, it'll be good enough for the literary agent who requested for a revise-and-resubmit. Hopefully, this will be the one that will get you published again.

But that's a big hope you're holding out on. And you don't know if all this time and effort you're putting into this is going to be worth anything at all eventually, or you're just wasting your time and you're actually not good enough to get published and you probably never will and sob sob self-pity I'm a loser I should just quit.


That was the reason for last Monday's post on writing quotes.

...

Okay, pity party over. Time for some happy!




I'm sorry, but once you get started on Harry Potter memes, there is no end to it.

Speaking of Harry Potter (no, I will never stop talking about it or loving it, so get with the programme or drop out), here's a compilation of all the times Harry was the Queen of Sass.

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One thing led to another (damn you, Buzzfeed!), and I came across this one on Supernatural (otherwise known as The Show That Broke My Heart), as told by someone who's never watched it:

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Castiel is the only badass who gets away with calling someone an assbutt while holding a Molotov cocktail ... okay, not quite.

Another Supernatural post caught my eye:

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Don't you just love it when good-looking people behave like dorks?


Okay okay, I'm done. Back to writing!


Have a lovely week, everyone! :0)

Friday, May 16, 2014

Flash Fiction Friday - Makeshift

Today, I discovered that the amazing dancing violinist Lindsey Stirling (from America's Got Talent) has a new album out. 'Tis a good day.

This track in particular, Roundtable Rival, stood out as I was wrote today's flash fiction:


Yup. THAT is Lindsey Stirling.

So with that, as well as this writing prompt,


here is this week's short story.



*



Makeshift



It was there in the dusky, dusty chamber of the abandoned building that they made camp. Settling by the missing clock face, where the only shaft of light managed to edge in past the rusted hands, they got to work.

Mietha's soldiers were trained for speed and accuracy, be it in battle or menial tasks like forging weapons. The best of them had had years of training in the sky children's primitive technology. This time, they had one more thing on their side: Earth magic. It was not quite as advanced as that of the sea children, but here on this island in the human world, they were able to acquire what they needed from the black market.

Now, they set up their equipment: glass bowls and tin canisters, sandalwood for accelerated kindling, and rows and rows of bones meant for more meticulous arrangement later.

Their exiled general had been stranded at the island for long enough. In times like this, ranks were a secondary consideration, hierarchy demolished. And if anyone thought it was madness to trust in the two girls who would help conceal them from the rest of the human world, none of them voiced their dissent.

There in the quiet isolation of the abandoned building, with its crumbling walls and splintered roof shutters that let in the faint moonlight, the renegade rebels worked at twice their regular speed, creating more bodies for their disguise, their deception ... never realising how close they came to being discovered by the white-tailed kite circling in the sky.


*


The Raptor, second in command to the missing prince of the renegade army, was having no luck with the bloodstone. After shifting into her human form and settling into a decrepit red-bricked building for more privacy, she had spent the better part of the hour trying to exhume the magic within the stone.

But the stone had a will of its own, and it was not relinquishing its secrets, no matter how she strained over it.

The Raptor -- or Kivyn, as she was more commonly known among her kite family -- flung the bloodstone across the room. It made a resonant clatter in the drafty, hollow quarters.

Curse these humans and their crude magic! How barbaric, how elementary -- and not to mention messy -- to use blood for magic.

It struck her as ironic that a Raptor, notorious for her ability to shred her enemies with her claws and blind them with her beak, would find something barbaric.

Time was running out for her. The monarchy was disintegrating back home, and the soldiers were rebelling. If she couldn't find the crown prince, then the very least she could do was restore some order. 

But prince or not, she couldn't leave this world without Eylar. She didn't know what he was to her, but she knew he was the only person she had ever trusted and cared for. And she would be damned if she let this world steal him away.


*


The rebel renegades froze at the sound of the clatter, the blood slowing in their veins. They were so close -- it would be a terrible shame if they were forced to abandon their near-complete work now. 

With renewed intensity, they completed the ritual. The sisters would be here soon, but first the soldiers had to get used to their new flesh, and learn to shift in and out with relative ease. It was tricky to grasp the intricacies of shifting -- the best of them took weeks -- but now they were to master their new bodies in the space of hours.

This rescue mission was doomed from the start, but they had to take whatever chance they had to steal their general back from the forgotten coast of Bastiron before the new emperor could recruit her -- recruit being a far kinder term than what he would actually do.

This slaughter campaign was not for them, nor was annihilating the sea kingdom. What they would fight for, however, was the restoration of the old civilisation, the one that was now buried under this avalanche of hate and jealousy and fear.


*


When the rebel soldiers each stripped off their worn, battered bodies and stepped into their new flesh, so too did the Raptor shift into her creature self before taking off into the night in search of the blood she needed.

So opposing in their causes, but so similar in their execution. Chance was a concept often scorned by the renegades. But here they were, stepping into a makeshift life and taking all the chances they could to save their mangled home.


Monday, May 12, 2014

12 favorite quotes on writing and stories

1. Jodi Picoult


2. Neil Gaiman




3. Guillermo Del Toro on monsters in fairy tales:

“In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but also they need to represent, much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being human: aging, decay, darkness and so forth. And I believe that monsters originally, when we were cavemen and you know, sitting around a fire, we needed to explain the birth of the sun and the death of the moon and the phases of the moon and rain and thunder. And we invented creatures that made sense of the world: a serpent that ate the sun, a creature that ate the moon, a man in the moon living there, things like that. And as we became more and more sophisticated and created sort of a social structure, the real enigmas started not to be outside. The rain and the thunder were logical now. But the real enigmas became social. All those impulses that we were repressing: cannibalism, murder, these things needed an explanation. The sex drive, the need to hunt, the need to kill, these things then became personified in monsters. Werewolves, vampires, ogres, this and that. I feel that monsters are here in our world to help us understand it. They are an essential part of a fable.”


4. Laini Taylor

by Jim di Bartolo, Laini's illustrator husband

"Be an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy-washy, polite, drinking-tea-with-your-pinkie-sticking-out stuff. It’s who you want to be, your most powerful self. Write your books. Finish them, then make them better. Find the way. No one will make this dream come true for you but you."
(Read the full article here!)


5. Toni Morrison


6. George R. R. Martin

by Dan Elijah G. Fajardo

"Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? 
"We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La."


7. Rilke


8. And here's Snoopy, the voice of every aspiring writer.



9. Einstein



And finally,

10.



Any other brilliant quotes I missed out?

Friday, May 09, 2014

Flash Fiction Friday - Dream Kingdom

I don't know if this should be considered flash fiction, since it's longer than 1,000 words. Maybe it should be "what the hell am I writing" fiction, except it's not an official genre yet.

Anyway, done with this. Back to Blood Promise. Have a good weekend! :0)


*



Dream Kingdom



No one else saw the palace in the reflection. Which didn't surprise me as much as it should have.  I was used to being privy to the secrets of the world – I paid attention to it, and in return it let me see its hidden beauty, listen to its favourite songs, and dream its magical dreams.

When I first told Josie about the palace I saw on that rainy day, I hadn't even expected her to believe me. But she only said, “Show me,” with that dire look in her eyes that meant I had better not let her down.

I did, though. I didn't mean to, but I did. Even when I pointed hard at the image in the water – it’s just right there, can’t you see it? – and even when she scrunched up her face and glared at it like it was offending her by not appearing, all she saw was a smooth blank puddle and on it, the light scattered by a recent storm.

She didn't see the glimmer and gloss of the high glass windows as the sun slid across the sky, the iridescent lights the palace walls gave off, the weird clouds of mist that danced around the palace and entangled themselves with the spires, or the great birds that roosted atop the clock tower, which housed not a clock but a constantly shifting map of the stars. I knew they shifted because I had observed them long enough, days and weeks and months of staring at reflective surface – a mirror, a puddle of water, a window.

Josie always said I was good at building castles in the sky.

But this was no daydream. If only I could convince Josie so! But people find it hard to believe the things they can’t see. And they find it hard to accept the things they don’t believe in.


*


When I finally managed to enter the palace, it was only in a dream. By then, it was obvious this palace wanted to stay hidden, so I was almost unsurprised to see it in my dream.

It was hard to look at the palace directly at first. Not only was it too big for the scope of my vision, every inch of the palace was covered in precious stones – dazzling diamonds, lush emeralds and sapphires and rubies fat and red as crystallised blood – that broke the sunlight into iridescent shards.

There were the giant birds going about their slow, lazy circles in the air. Guards, I soon realised. They were not ordinary birds: their wings could span as wide as building heights and shrink to an arm’s length, and in their eyes was a canniness that was more human than bird, more thinker than soldier.

The palace was rich not because of the jewels and stones its walls were encrusted with, or the gilded marble floors that gave off its own music when you tread across the high-vaulted halls. It was rich with the scent of some exotic bloom I had never before encountered, the mellifluous voices that broke into song the moment I pushed open the doors to the hall, and the splash of pastel-coloured lights everywhere.

The palace was alive, and it had a mind of its own. It had ideas on where to take you, sliding around freely as though in mid-air, so that you tumbled down hallways and bustled through doors. Deeper and deeper you went into its heart.

And then what? More birds?

As it turned out, it was a queen.

There in the heart of the labyrinth she sat, on a burnished dais. Her crown was spiked with crystals against the scarlet and ebony headpiece that fanned out behind her head. Her robe, a crimson river that flowed from her shoulder down the steps, was matted with dust. She looked like a mannequin in a store – an exquisite display in a glass case – but there was something strangely, keenly, alive about her, as though she was silently observing you the way the palace was.

I kept waiting for her to open her eyes or acknowledge me, but no amount of throat clearing or greeting could rouse her. It was like she was trapped, waiting, in that dormant state.

“She won’t wake,” came a voice, no louder than a whisper in my ear, making me cry out in surprise. My voice bounced off the high walls.

In spite of myself, I said, “Not ever?”

“Not until the sea children cease their petty games and release us from this spell. Whoever heard of a palace cast adrift from its kingdom?”

I had no idea where this was leading to, or where it even started, but I tried to offer the best suggestion I could think of. “So talk to them. Can the sea children be made to see reason?”

“You won’t be able find them even with reason on your side. They've disappeared. They've all disappeared. And now the queen is in limbo, as is the fate of all her people.”

“I don’t understand.” By now, I was half yearning to leave this dream.

But the palace was not letting me out of its thrall until it had made its point. “You have to find the sea children. Save us, save our queen.”

“But I don’t know how to.”

The desperation in the air came in waves. First as a shrieking wind that ripped through the hall, then as a tectonic disturbance.

As I cried my apologies, the ground juddered beneath my feet. My arms flailed for balance, but I only tumbled to the ground, then rolled across it and slammed against the wall as the palace continued to rock in fury.

“Find the sea children,” it implored. “Save us.”

The light outside had dimmed to a sickly shade of yellow, and a frosty draft swirled around the hall. Gone were the music, the kaleidoscope of colours, and the warm sunlight streaming in through the windows. I saw this cold marble and glass palace for what it truly was: encrusted in jewels but bereft and barren.

“Find the sea children. Save our queen.”


*


When I opened my eyes again, there was only Josie’s face hovering above mine. Her breath, shallow and hot, fanned my face.

“Melly!” she cried, gripping me by the shoulders. She gave me a violent shake that jolted me wide awake.

“We have to find the sea children,” was all I said as I struggled to catch my breath. “We have to save the queen!”

Josie’s grip went slack. “How did you know about the sea children?”



*


(To be continued??)

Monday, May 05, 2014

Monday link salad

A post full of random stuff today:

Funny fashion memes. Anna Wintour meets Mean Girls, anyone? Also:



*

Strange things people found in walls. Money and shoes, I get (sort of), but fingernail clippings and hair?

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*

This old post from ex literary agent (now author), Nathan Bransford that offers a really useful tip for figuring out your novel: creating one-sentence, one-paragraph, and two-paragraph pitches.
A query is basically a two paragraph pitch with some query-related detail. But sometimes you'll want to use a one sentence pitch (for a bio, if you're into that whole brevity thing), or a one paragraph pitch (for briefly describing in real life conversation when you don't want someone's eyes to glaze over). 
My feeling: get it all out of the way at once. Save yourself the headache and come up with a one sentence, one paragraph, and two paragraph pitch before you even start to query. Then: practice and memorize your pitches. You never know when you're going to need them.

Speaking from experience, it really does help to have a pitch ready even before you plunge into the novel. You get a clearer sense of where your story is going, what the conflict is, and what the stakes are. You also get to pare down your character to his/her most basic trait, the one that defines her and her actions, and the one that you as a writer set out to change by the end of the story.

I should have done that for Neverland. (Actually, I should have done that for all my novels.) Maybe then I wouldn't have gotten stuck.


*


Also, I've started blogging for work.



One of the plus points of working for an online fashion retailer is that I get to fangirl over fashion trends and celebrity styles unabashedly in the name of work and write about them. Is this the marrying of two loves?

I've written quite a number of these articles so far, but the team is selective about what goes on the blog, and when. Here is one article I wrote about "must-have tops". 

Of course, they're not really must-haves -- people just write that to get you to read the article ;0)


*


Blood Promise, otherwise known as The Manuscript That Will Not Yield, is in the midst of some radical changes right now. I intend to rip out the awful saggy middle and whip it into something that will put Victoria's Secret models to shame ... 

Okay, that's quite a mean feat. I mean, it'll be really hard to top this:

Favourite VS angel ever, Doutzen Kroes.

But it's okay. Because I HAVE A PLAN NOW. So let's do this.

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In the meantime, I will heed this advice.

And this: 



And keep happy with these:

from allthingsshabbyandbeautiful.tumblr.com

Peter Pan quote

Oh, stop. What are you trying to do to me?!

by Gelrev Ongbico

The view from the pier yesterday

Also, I'm really loving D&E's new album. Aside from When You Cry, which I shared in an earlier post, this song, Teenage Queen, is another favourite. So catchy and upbeat!



And on that note, have a great week, everyone! :0)