-
A long string of sharp sounds
A continuation from Sunday:
“Why would you think that?” He enunciates each word slowly.
Joshua sighs. “Oh, stop that. I’m drunk, not stupid. You missed our meeting time. I went to your place and found… A lot of blood and guts in the living room and… Tsubasa – or however you pronounce that dog’s name – with a knife in her heart. I- I tried calling you but then I found your phone…shattered and also covered in blood. What the hell was I supposed to think?”
Dominic lets out a long string of sharp sounds that grate at Joshua’s ears. He strongly suspects that his friend is swearing in a language so dead that the world has forgotten its name, if ever had one. “Let’s get out of here, we’re drawing attention.”
Joshua glances around and doesn’t see anyone whatsoever looking at them. He doesn’t argue, though. He follows Dominic to his car, climbs in, and sits silent for several minutes as they pull out of the tiny parking lot and onto the road.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Dominic says suddenly, tone uncharacteristically soft, “and that you thought you were alone in this.”
-
The Way of Attrition: Chapter Five
Finally posting Chapter 5 of my novel. Other chapters are here:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4Chapter 5
We return to the Shelter once my conscience gets the best of me. I leave our reentry to autopilot and all goes as planned.
<Back to the house?> Carson asks on our exiting to an empty room, the ceiling already back in place.
It’s still but that won’t last. <Or as far as we make it.>
He shoots me a quizzical glance. Before I can elaborate, Davonte and several others – the Council, I realize with some surprise – enter. It’s a crowded fit for such a small space. I resist the urge to quip about a road trip.
Davonte is all in black except the yellow sapphire pendant that makes me look at her eyes, ablaze with that fury I know so well. Face rigid, she advances, flinging an avalanche of anger. It hurls into me with such force that I stagger back and gasp, temples pounding. Carson remains steady. Not a loss of control then. A focused explosion, the equivalent to a punch.
<Explain yourself,> she commands icily.
<It’s my fault,> Carson interjects. <I wanted to collect my mom’s Imprint and Eyan helped me.>
<As admirable as that motive is, it does not excuse attacking a fellow Chosen, stealing this Shelter’s only ship, and risking that ship’s destruction, or worse, capture by the DOH!>
Each word is a pulse of pain. I wince, grateful
-
It’s not like he was made to hug
I updated the design of my non-blog website over the weekend. Responsive design makes images wonky to deal with and I’m still figuring out the best way to handle them, but I figured I can tweak them as I feel like it.
Joshua runs at Dominic and hugs him as soon as Dominic walks into the bar.
“Er…” Dominic flounders awkwardly, arms splayed. His hands spasm into fists before he forcefully relaxes them and pats Joshua on the back a couple of times.
Joshua pulls away, rolling his eyes. “Fucking figures. Thousands of years pretending to be human and you don’t even know how to hug properly.”
“How drunk are you?” Dominic demands, sidestepping that observation. It’s not like he was made to hug. The reek of alcohol covers the human.
“Eh,” Joshua shrugs. “Lost track.”
“‘Fucking figures,’” Dominic retorts icily. “Warlock assassins are on our asses and you get drunk.”
“I thought you were dead,” Joshua states bluntly. “So, yeah, I’m drunk.”
-
Don’t look at me like that
A continuation of yesterday:
“But… But then, you would have been the only-”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know a human could live off of just vampire blood.”
“I wouldn’t call what I was doing ‘living.’ I survived. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m okay. It’s a real paradigm shift, makes you really appreciate having food to eat and water to drink.”
“And the vampire blood?”
“I’m tapering off.”
-
How do you think we survived?
The Good Omens mini series has made me so happy. Aziraphale and Crowley were my favorites in the book but they absolutely make the whole show for me.
This is completely unrelated to the above:
“I can’t believe you’re addicted to vampire blood.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, really? Your hands are shaking why then?”
“There was nothing on that planet! There were no animals, no people, no edible plants. No food of any kind. We were trapped there for almost six months. How do you think we survived?”
-
No one else is living your life
“You don’t have to do it, you know.”
“It?”
“Anything anyone is telling you to do. You can tell them to fuck off or whatever more polite thing you’d come up with. No one else is living your life.”
Just a reminder.
-
“Beautiful”
This is the first paragraph of my novel the Other Side, of which I posted an excerpt a while back:
My name is Taia Marie Eaton. I am 23 years old. A graduate of UCLA. A planner. A dreamer. A teacher. A student. A woman of creativity. I am multifaceted and always changing. Contradictory. Flawed. I am things I like and things I dislike. Intelligent. Questioning. Beautiful. At times, selfish. Doubtful. Complacent. Always striving to give. To ask. To be. To try. To improve.
I generally think the novel has a really good premise that I did the most obvious possible thing with. Just the fact that a romantic love story is important to it is proof of how much my writing preferences have changed. If I were to rewrite it now, the closest thing it would get to having a romantic love story would be for the main character to be in a happy relationship that adds no drama to the novel at all.
What really strikes me about this paragraph now is that she knows she’s beautiful. So while it may have a love story, at least it doesn’t involve the cliched protagonist who doesn’t think she’s beautiful and doesn’t expect any guy to ever think she is. So that’s a win for past me.
-
Welcome home (again)
Today I watched the series finale of Star Trek Voyager. Aside from a stray episode here and there, I hadn’t watched Voyager since it finished airing and I must say that rewatching it has been a lot of fun. I remembered all the broad strokes but for many episodes it was like watching them again for the first time. As a Trekkie, that’s a treat.
So, 18 years and 30 days later, welcome home (again), Voyager.
Erika out.
(I don’t own the picture, it’s a publicity photo for season 7.)
-
Enough to fill all the minutes
Necessity keeps me going. Necessity always does. I’m a doctor. When people are hurt I have to help them. There is no other way for me. It almost makes it easy. Or at least simple. I don’t have to think about anything other than the patient, their vitals, their treatment. And when I’m done with one patient there’s another. Enough to fill all the minutes. So I let them.
-
Hollow and too loud
Today did not go as planned. Sometimes I wonder why we even make plans.
Regardless, I’ve succeeded in going to bed at 9:30pm the last couple nights and plan to do so again tonight. Hopefully I can keep that up for the next week or so and then work on moving it up to 9:00pm.
I think my thyroid medication may need to be adjusted. I’ve had a harder and harder time getting up in the mornings and have been waking groggier than usual. My next appointment with my endocrinologist is Monday so we’ll see.
Here’s a First Sentence:
The chime sounds hollow and too loud. It doesn’t make sense for it to be both. Maybe it’s neither. I don’t know. Nothing makes sense right now.
The picture is of me and my dog, Darcy. I think we’re very aligned in how sedate we’re feeling at the moment.
