NaNoWriMo: The Quest

[Recent Microfiction]

“B-But you’re dead!” He cowered. She furrowed her eyebrows and slapped him across the face. “Get it together, Al!”

***

He fights so fluidly. No hesitation. Did the romance of flesh and metal poison him? I long for his forgiveness, Dr. D.

***

“You alright, lass?” I nod, catching sight of the black rag flapping on the mast. Jolly Roger. I should have drowned.

***

“Can ya please control yer kid?” The young woman shrieked at me. Mimi stomped. “I am not a child! I am 400 years old!”

***

She shrugged. “As much as I want to, I can’t take all of the glory. You just couldn’t resist Brooding Pretty-Boy.”

_______________________

NaNoWriMo.

It’s coming!

(And I’m pretty excited.)

My piece, Chaos Standard is coming along. Check out my synopsis! (It’s slightly vague and tentative.)

I’m also searching for some writing buddies who are involved in shades of the fantasy genre, and are going to take their writing seriously (as in, no unusual appearances by ninjas and rainbow-unicorns to make up for words at zero-hour!). I’m all for light-hearted adventure pieces, though! If you’re particular, Standard is sort of an epic-fantasy sword-and-magic-storm. A bit darkish in mood and atmosphere (literally), but there’ll be good times and warm moments. I may not be able to respond to emails on a daily basis due to my occupation as a college student, but I can throw some hellos/updates/links via Twitter.

If you’re interested, you can nanomail my profile, warriorcomplex (in link above), or leave me a message in the comments or from the “Contact RNR” page.

But anywhoo, regardless of who’s with/not with me, I’m still rolling, hehe.

 

Overmusing on Twitter: Seasons in Westeros & Kepler’s Three Laws

I danced in the city’s neon lights, forever too soon. The man in black caught my eye. He tapped his watch and smirked.

*
She slid her resignation under the Dr.’s door and half-dragged R12U-8 from the lab to her SUV. The man did not stir.

*

The sky was unusually bright–a stark white. That could only mean one thing: the Alliance had arrived. Time to split.

***

[Recent microfic]

Shoutout to Elisa Michelle! This fellow writer decided to join in on the #microfic challenge. Yeah-yuh! *confetti and fireworks* Recent shorts are posted on her fiction blog, ElisaMichelleStories, and she posts updates on Tastes Like Spaghetti, her Tumblr account. Go check them out!

**

*

By the way–Happy Autumnal Equinox for you Northern Hemis and a Great Vernal Equinox for you Southern Hemis! (Someone’s having fun in Stellar Astronomy class. ;))

200+ tweets in so far on my new Twitter account, rowannhai. It’s been an interesting endeavor so far, but I really hope I’m not spamming followers with my thoughts … Let’s say that for a few minutes a day, I may go into a musing-lapse. Like today.

Post-Spoiler: I completely forgot that summers and winters on Westeros vary in length (so no, summers are not “shorter” than winters), but I’ll just clarify what I had thought (since I only had 140 characters for each post to explain):

[Read from bottom to top]

(Read from bottom to top)

Johannes Kepler’s Three Laws of Planetary Motion, if you’d like to know more.

In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, summers and winters can last for years at a time. Why is that?

I jumped ahead and assumed that Westeros is on a planet (it has day and night) and it is part of a solar system like our own so that Kep’s Laws could apply (as far as we know, Kep’s may only apply to our system and no other).

Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion States that p^2 = a^3.  In simpler terms, that means that the longer the orbital period (time it takes for a planet to orbit its sun-star, the longer its distance from its sun-star. For example, Jupiter’s distance from the sun is greater than Earth’s distance, which means that it has a longer orbital period than Earth’s orbital period of one year (this law seems sorta obvious to us, today).

Seasons are caused by the planet’s tilt (such as Earth’s 23.5 degree tilt). As the tilted planet orbits its sun-star its hemispheres receive least/most amounts of sunlight, like below:

Courtesy of HowStuffWorks.Com

But alas. One thing I absolutely forgot to put into account–which shatters my ideas, anyway–is that the length of summers and winters vary in Westeros. Sorta hit me when I took a break from this post and returned. Argh. For the length of seasons to abnormally change, I guess the orbit would have to be unstable … I dunno!

Perhaps it’s fantasy, hahaha! Le gasp, Batman!

I’m only a newbie to Astronomy. *shrug* Yeah, yeah, everybody’s splurging out on A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones) these days, but I was tempted to add some thoughts as to why summer and winter are so friggin’ long in Westeros. How do they measure time outside of days, anyway, if winters and summers vary? I believe that I read that age is measured in winters (or summers?), if I remember correctly …

Ok, ok, it’s fantasy. But sometimes I want to wrap my head around things, you know? I guess all this astronomical analysis puts things into perspective as I work on my WIPs. Verdigar of SoM has a few “scientific” things to iron out.

Microfic: Bite-Sized Stories with No Calories

Around 1 am, my great-great grandpa showed up on my doorstep, wielding an automatic crossbow and a grimace.

I want a normal life.

*

“I was human, once.”

“Well, then, what are you now?”

“Invincible.”

*

“Spell ‘anomaly’.”

“Anomaly. M-a-d-e-l-e-i-n-e. Anomaly.”

***

For the past three days, I’ve posted these lines on Twitter under #amwriting #microfic, partially inspired by a post on Wired (do check it out–famous authors’ six-word stories! So many good ones … ) and previous experiences with micro-fiction. I would’ve posted with the hashtag #sixwords, but alas, my word-counts were out of control. I wanted the flexibility!

I wanted a cool way to get quick literary exercise while waiting for class to start, taking a quick break from studying, waiting for the academic adviser, etc. Twitter’s 140-character limit was a nice challenge to undertake, too.

Perhaps this will be a daily thing. I may post each week’s progress on this blog on Mondays.

(The last two lines remind me of dialogue snippets from movie trailers, teehee!)