Sky Crossing: The Dreaming Land

Current chapters: 26
Current draft word count: 91,000

Fuck yes.

Chapters to go? Not sure.

Fire is the Monster's Enemy

Lucy Alraune Greeble, Ten-Ghost
Finishes the Test Satisfactorily
Breaks the Rules by Obeying

I said she looks weird in the novel... kinda. There are parts of her anatomy that just aren't relevant or that she pays attention to, and since the whole thing is third-limited, they don't come up.

She doesn't have nipples or primary sexual characteristics. Her bones are all wrong. If she puts clothes on it all looks normal. If she bleeds, it stops being blood once it hits the air away from her body, turning into dirt/rocks/sticks/acorns/junk you find if you dig in the dirt under a hangin' tree. She's covered in stitches from both herself and others. She has an autopsy Y scar. Her left arm is noticeably a little bigger than her right.

ALSO FIRE IS THE MONSTER'S ENEMY

I Write on Sleeping Pills Sometimes

I am on sleep aids. Sometimes I will take them while still doing some writing, then go to sleep when they kick in. Sometimes I just keep writing, then come back the next day, knowing full well what I thought I was writing.

I am usually wrong. Here is an example.

What I wrote:

“Your haven't scene this creed for my pokes, bow!” it spite, and look for the lair to try around the dray basic, snooping up morbid for the alligators. “I am your drought ton, again? You have cowed me, so do not complain about bringing your mighty fate!”

What I meant:

“You haven't seen the speed of my strikes, boy!” it spat, and took to the air to fly around the dry basin, scooping up mouthfuls of alligators. “I am your dragon, then! You have called me, so do not complain about what you think you might face!”

Sky People Like Fritos

The race of Air who is said to have evolved solely from spirits, the Sky People resemble grayish white humanoid figures, having ankles but no feet, thick forearms with seemingly unfinished fingers, and a series of muscular folds for a neck. Their head is a round ball, dotted with symbols, with a single hole, inside which a blue light can be seen. They have a single eye, which is either human or reptilian; the muscular folds of their neck allow them to roll their head to angle the eye in any direction.

They have no mouth, and whisper through the blue light inside their hollow heads. They also feed through this "orifice," pressing food items into the light, where it's consumed as if by great heat. Much of the jewelry they wear appears to hang about them rather than on them. They are said to be Thunder's people, and live in his kingdom in the sky, which can be accessed through clouds; they can also pull metal from the clouds and shape it into tools and materials through processes that seem like human smelting.

Various ethnicities exist. They vary in height, weight, build, and over all color, from grey to white or soft blue. It's said that sky people can disguise themselves as human beings, and when they do, their voices buzz like speakers or bug lights. Three together can form a "foo fighter," a swiftly flying ball of light that allows them to quickly escape or travel from the ground to the sky.

Current Projects

I got like five e-mails asking about what exactly it is I'm doing right now that's mentally hurtful. Here we go!

Folk Devil (Ten-Ghost part 2)
Lucy Alraune Greeble, Ten-Ghost Who Finished the Test Satisfactorily and Defies by Obeying has not only inherited a ridiculously long name, but also garnered a bit of a reputation for her ability to work quickly and cheaply. As a mandrake root taking on a mockery of human life, she can also survive situations that might kill real human beings. She wanders the roads, suffering the presence of her adopted son, until she gets a letter involving a contagion infecting the town of Hawiya. Upon arrival, she must pinpoint the source of the infection while dealing with three vicious cults that have sprung up: one worships a woman who claims to be able to heal with nothing but her touch, an impossibility, another group is devoted to a man who makes snake oil from tap water, and the children in town are wrapping themselves in cloaks and animal masks, painting their devotion to a mysterious woman in pink on the walls with the blood of those who stay out too late. Ten-Ghost herself is blamed for the inability of the established system to cure those who are infected, and if she remains in town to long, her own stolen life energy will cause more harm than good. She's on a time limit to find and remove the source of the illness.

This project is psychologically difficult, most notably because a vast majority of the Ten-Ghost books happen to be symbology for the psychological problems I face. Working on them is literally facing my own perceived inadequacies, fears, wants, and personal demons. This is what takes so long. Also it's why I expect them to never sell.

Sky Crossing (The Dreaming Land book 1)
Five teenagers are drawn from their normal lives on Earth to a place that seems at first an alien landscape, but familiarity creeps in to most bizarre places. Matt is left alone in the jungle where he must learn to work the world's magic just to survive both the predations of a trickster spirit and the tasks of an old storyteller who takes him on a journey across the countryside in a rusted-out shell of a car. Erika and Brad must learn to work together despite their differences in ideology, especially since Erika appears to have turned into some sort of ancestor spirit. Frank must come to terms with the fact that he now appears to be a local woman, and Hannah must learn that her place in the events that are about to unfold probably isn't the place she originally wanted. Through all this, the five must eventually face a black magician who wants to use their presence to destroy everything he feels is unfair with the world. Their journey will take the five of them across jungles, through post-apocalyptic googie wastelands, dinosaur-speckled fields, moderne subdivisions promising everything but delivering little, art deco cities swarming with airships, and perhaps even to Death's country itself.

I plan to do 3-5 of these. It's basically an American version of the old "kids go to and save a wacky fantasy world" tripe. And yes, I meant "tripe" not "trope." It's actually fun to write and I get to have atomic roboshaman3000 say cool things.

This Patchwork Everywhen
A collection of myths and short stories that I will probably never finish but am moving forward on, anyway.

Ow My Sanity
Doing layouts and the worst sketches in the world. Right now it is on low burner because I am trying to get the above projects done, since they are potentially paying. If someone like Toren Atkinson tells me to get off my ass about it, I'll drop one or more of the above projects and get back to serious on it work immediately.

Ow My Sanity Part the 2
The erstwhile narrator joins Delta Green and helps deal with (spoiler removed). Doing abstract scripts.

State of the Everything

I have two novels in the works. One is psychologically harmful to work on, but will help me in the long run. It will never sell. The other is tripe, fun to work on, and not very good at all. I think it has a great opportunity to sell.

I am still doing plotting, scripting, and layouts for OMS. I just don't have the time to actually try to draw them, which I am shitty at, anyway.

I've gone back to therapy in order to work out the issues I'm having with life in general, and am on sleep aids now. A lot of this has to do with finally confronting a wide variety of problems I've had re growing up, going outside, and so on.

Sandwiches

Perhaps no type of food is loved more than the sandwich. Often overshadowed by its siblings “soup” (its big brother) and “salad” (its little sister, and which is one of my more favorites dishes, but I won't get into that here, but it goes to show you how much personal taste goes into something like this) the sandwich was still one of the favorites of many people, most of whom nervously agreed that it was an excellent all-around kind of food. Sandwiches, as you most likely know, are made from pressing foodstuffs between two pieces of “bread,” which is counter-intuitive to the way most non-sandwich food items are created (such as just throwing everything into a bowl without regard for its nutritional value or taste). However, I will endeavor to review the aspects of the sandwich as best as possible.

The sandwich as a food item appears to be much cleaner than most other varieties thereof on this Earth. I believe this is because it is counter-intuitive in its nature. The “bread” shell, which can be made of flat pieces of bread, flimsy pieces of bread curled up, or long pieces of bread with a hole cut down the middle, soaks up a majority of the more liquid bits of internal consistency common to the sandwich. It is my belief that primitive humans on this Earth, bereft of food which came to them and squealed happily as it was being devoured, or of fruit trees that literally threw their edibility at them, required a method to construct a food item that contained all their daily nutritional values in one place. I can't vouch for the reasoning behind setting meat on fire and calling that “food,” but I've been told since that meat is not necessary for a good sandwich (I beg to differ, but I also don't believe it should be set on fire to have a place in our food).

Sushi, our friend from the Orient, is practically a sandwich in its own right; wrapped in nori, a friendly and well-mannered algae common in the Pacific Ocean, rather than bread, it might be scarcely possible to call it a sandwich, but it is as clean and contains as much nutritional power as any sandwich, and is an excellent example of why burning meat to simply add it to a sandwich is not necessary.

Returning to the cleanliness issue, sandwiches are also handy when you don't wish to be forced to use both hands to eat. One can, for example, write an article though hunt-and-pecking while greedily stuffing your face with the latest creation of Jim at the City of Gyros without getting liquid on your keyboard (which I'm told is bad). They also appear to be designed with some nod towards flavor and succulence, with a high degree of texture and taste mixtures that work well together. Even so, not all components prefer to remain trapped. The bread, for example, separates easily into smaller, more difficult to handle granules that only tease at their flavor, and not all liquid or semi-liquid components are content to rest within the cage they have been given, and have a tendency to be unkind to one's clothing. All in all, while there are still some obvious bugs to work out with the sandwich, I prefer it to most varieties of other foods, and eagerly await sandwich 2.0! Get to work, engineers!

Cleanliness: 43/50
Breadiness: 50/50
Setting Meat on Fire: -10/50
Tastiness: Varies
Note: Makes your throat dry if you don't have water nearby.