Good morning, Readers!

If you cannot tell from the image and the title today, I have an obsession with a particular image.  It shows up over and over again in many of my works.  If you've read a lot of my stuff, you may have noticed this image that repeats over and over.  The image is this:

A lone masculine figure upon a stone throne.

It's there in Sky Road Walker, when we first meet the Seeker.  It's in The Dying God, the eponymous short story in my anthology The Dying God and Other Stories  It's the final image in the story.  It's in Soldier.  It's in my current WIP... for two different characters.  This image is in a lot of my works, and it's in my mind a great deal.  Like, a weirdly obsessive amount.

Putting aside the theory that there is some lonely being on a throne, who may or may not be as much made of stone as the throne upon which he sits, trying to reach out, I would really like to know why this image is so prominent in my mind.  I wonder what it is about it that makes it such a compelling motif for me.

In most iterations of this figure, it's always the same masculine figure; either wearing a stag skull helm, or possessing actual antlers.  That's not the case in Sky Road Walker, or Soldier and one of the characters in my current WIP, but in every other iteration, and most often in my imagination, it's some variant of the antlered man.

Now, I know where the antlered man comes from.  That's clearly derived from the pan-Celtic god Cernunnos.  I've been obsessed with Cernunnos since I began studying bronze and iron aged Celtic culture (in the academic sense).  I just find him one of the most interesting of the Celtic gods that we are aware of.  It's for the same reason I enjoy Samhain more than any other Celtic holiday we know of.

But the image of the lonely figure on the stone throne (usually in the dark, in a cavernous space) is a weird obsession I have that I have no provenance for.  Still, it's everywhere in my writing.  I wish I knew where it came from, and why I am so obsessed with that image.

But there we have it.  I am.

Fellow writers, are there any images in you head that repeated reveal themselves in your writing, like a strange motif that identifies a story as very much yours?  Readers, have you noticed something like that in other writers?  I'm really curious about it.  Let me know in the comments.

For now, however, I have a book to finish.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Excuse me a moment while I grumble about the weather.  I'm not impressed, April.  The freezing rain is a bit much.  Grumble.  Funnily enough, though the wind is blowing fiercely (also, what's up with all the gale force winds, Ottawa? I was literally pushed down the sidewalk), it's not the same cutting wind that nearly froze my cheeks solid Saturday.  That's nice.

The ice on the footpath is not nice.

And something about this kind of weather sets my migraines off.  I was miserable yesterday.  Less miserable today, though the migraine is still hovering behind my eyes.

​I managed to get up and go to the gym, though, so that's great.  It's also much needed as Tuesday at training killed my thighs so badly I couldn't walk for four days.  It was genuinely the worst pain I've been in for a long while, and it worried me a little.  Usually I can see some improvement in function by day 3.  Day 2 hurts the most, but day 3 usually has drastic improvements.  That was not the case, this time.  It wasn't until yesterday that I could walk down the stairs with only a twinge, and that was only after I ate food with a butt load of salt in it.  And here I thought I was trying to be healthy by cutting down on my salt intake.  Turns out, I needed more than I had.

It was so bad that I skipped the rest of training, both my own gym time and training with my kung fu school.

Grumble.

But it's all good now.  I can walk without much muscle pain, and I was at the gym this morning.  I should be back to normal by tomorrow.  That's good.

My week off writing has come to an end.  Soldier is in the hands of my second beta reader, and I have another manuscript left to finish.  Today I get back to it.  I haven't much left to write for this manuscript, and I should be finished in the next few weeks.  I say that, but I may not.  Fingers crossed, though.

So that's my plan for today.  I'm going to write some.  I'm aiming for two thousand words, but I'll be happy if I get fifteen hundred.  If I manage three thousand, I'm golden.

Two thousand is my goal.  Wish me luck!

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I have nothing to report, so I'm just going to complain about muscle pain, if you don't mind.  I mean, I'm going to even if you do mind.

OWIE!

My thighs haven't hurt this much since that beginning kickboxing class in which we spent a full half an hour bobbing and weaving (kinda ducking, but without bending over) to avoid incoming hooks.  That was ten odd years ago.

I needed the rails to make it down the stairs this morning.

I hobbled around like a twit to and from the buses.  I needed help to disembark a bus.

It's bad, folks.  Really bad.

I was supposed to run this morning.  That didn't happen.  I went on the elliptical instead and didn't go very fast or have the resistance up very high.  Last night, I tore the place apart looking for my Rub A535 and couldn't find it.

So, today, as part of my day off writing stuff, I'll be spending a good amount of time trying to massage the lactic acid out of my thigh muscles and hoping that it gets my legs working well enough for more torture tonight.  Fingers crossed.

Reasons for having a significant other: they can massage sore thighs for you while you nap/game/read.  Honestly, it's the only reason I'd consider at the moment.

Happily, my brain is getting put back together, though I'm continually mashing it up with Welsh lessons.  One day, though, I hope to be able to listen to Radio Cymru and understand absolutely everything.

For now, I'm going to massage my thighs while biting down on a stick to prevent myself from screaming.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Well, I finished editing Soldier yesterday.  I am ahead of schedule on that score, so... yay!

Because I am ahead of schedule, I will be giving myself the rest of the week off before starting to finish the WIP I have currently that needs finishing.

Not today, though.  Or tomorrow.  Or Friday.  Those days will be spent vegging out and letting my brain put itself right again.  Honestly, editing scrambles my brain so much, especially if the edits are done in-text (which they usually are).  It takes a lot of my brain power to unscramble what I'm seeing, and then incorporate them or versions of them into the next draft.

I'm not complaining, mind.  I'm just saying my brain doesn't work well!

Anyway, I'm giving myself a holiday before I start writing again.

Which is probably a good thing, as I hurt a lot today.

We spent the majority of kung fu training doing legs sweeps, and all that standing up and crouching down has my thighs crying today.  Walking is... interesting.

I should have packed my Rub A535.  Oh well!

Well, I'm off to stare blankly at a wall for a while.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Yesterday I found out that the Welsh language podcast thingy I'm using to learn the language (and honestly, they make it so easy.  I highly recommend it.  The site you're looking for, if you want to learn, is saysomethingin.com. They have more languages than Welsh. Really wishing they'd do something in French.  I love their teaching style. It works for me) has an app.

I immediately downloaded it and restarted the lessons yet again.  On the bright side, I really know a few phrases extremely well.  The goal is to finish all of the 25 free lessons (finally) and, if I can afford it, continue on with the rest.  It's a great app, and it will really help with my time management.  I can now learn Welsh during my commute to and from work, and that means that once I sit down at my desk, I have more time for writing.

Speaking of writing, I edited another five chapters yesterday, and will hopefully hit another five today. I'm trundling along at a good speed.  That's nice.

I really need to be getting back to editing.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

No, I didn't fall asleep on my keyboard (Jim...).

I'm just picking up my Welsh lessons again.

It's astounding to me how easily I can recall the phrases I've learnt.  As an added bonus, I'm listening to Radio Cymru to improve my listening comprehension, and it is bizarre how my brain picks up on certain words.  They'd literally jump out at me as being meaningful in a sea of gibberish.  I was frustrated with how little I could comprehend in actuality.

In French, I may not understand the majority of the words spoken, but I can generally understand what the conversation is about.  Not so in Welsh (yet).  I get individual words, but have absolutely no understanding of what is going on.

I did enjoy one song, though, which appeared to be a grocery list, because there was frequent talk of milk and bread.  It both confused and amused me.

In writing news, ​I'm still editing.  I have a ways to go yet, but I should be done by the end of next week.  That will be nice.  Then I can get back to writing my other book, which will be nicer.

Then I can edit that book, which is less nice.  Then I can send it off to my first beta reader, and get started on book two.

But none of that is going to happen if I continue to blather on here.  So I'm off.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I'm still neck deep in editing Soldier.  So here is the latest episode of Nights at the Round Table.

WARNING: The audio got a little peaky.  That's my fault.  You may want to skip the headphones for this.

Ciao!