Welcome to my world and beyond...

A collection of snippets of the books I write and, occasionally, my life and the things that inspire my writing...

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Weekend Writing Warriors March 1, 2015

"Welcome Warriors.  In light of yet another snowstorm in my part of the world," <--- I wrote that LAST week. I'm getting that weird déja vu sort of feeling.

 The first of MARCH!  We're getting there!!

  The Weekend Writing Warriors teeshirt drive is over. For anyone who ordered, you should recieve email notification if we hit the sweet-spot with enough teeshirt orders to make it finacially viable for Teespring to print them.
        Onward...Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly bloghop. Each week, participants sign up HERE at wewriwa.com, then post 8 sentences of their work, published or unpublished, to go live between noon, Saturday, and 9:00 AM Sunday EST. Then we visit each other and read, comment, critique, encourage--all those things that do a solitary writer's heart good. 

          Snippet Sunday group from facebook--not us, but many of our participants do both, can be found HERE   

This is Chapter 2 from my WIP, ATNS, called "The Hunter"  where we're introduced to the male main character, Kuylrh (trying out this spelling for reaction--I changed it after suggestions made last week). They're preparing for a hunt on a remote world. Abraxum is Kuylrh's "first guard", a royal designation. He is a teacher, mentor, and bodyguard to Kuylrh.

Last week's 8 ended with this,  the final line spoken  by Kuylrh's old guard, Abraxum:
A perfectly-timed, soft whistle off to his left interrupted them. While two bird-like trills sounded, Abraxum nodded at him and said, “They approach.”
We pick up from there:


His old guard moved to the rear, close enough to assist if needed, but far enough to serve notice this was to be the young King's kill.       

Kuylrh tucked in next to a boulder taller than him and three times as wide. Behind him, from positions among various outcroppings and enormous gray-blue rocks, the rest of the guard looked on. The concentration on their faces belied their true task: not to take down an abzion, but--at all costs, to protect the young King.

Above Kuylrh, scrabble hills covered with jingyweeds blurred in the distance, framing a bluestone monolith.  Below, paths twisted and turned among stones and willowy shrubs. 
And high above it all, the Giver's sky hung in all of its azure boundlessness, mute witness to the goings on. Its seeming indifference was of no matter; like all Rialtans, the Divine plan of his life had been set at birth. 
  
           That's it. What works. What doesn't? I'm grateful for every comment you leave. :-) And thanks bunches and bunches for visiting!

Have a great week, all!

54 comments:

  1. Excellent description! You've painted the scene well and I'm right there in it, waiting...

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  2. In this scenery, protecting the king doesn't sound like an easy task!

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    1. It's not, as we're about to find out. Thanks, Linda!

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  3. Really nice description, Kuylrh sounds like a true warrior, or a handful for the guard. I like that spelling by the way, interesting name. Very suiting from the description.

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    1. Thanks, Neva! And thanks for weighing in on his name. :-)

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  4. Waiting tensely. Good setup since we learned previously that something happened on the last hunt making the old guard fear/reject/disapprove this one.

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  5. Excellent descriptions and great build up of tension, wow, wonderful writing.

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    1. Thanks, Gemma! Much appreciated encouragement. :-)

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  6. Beautifully written as always, Teresa.

    This is such an insight into Kuylrh's culture; the Divinely Righteous rarely play well with others. And now I'm wondering what--or who--they're hunting . . .

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  7. Oh, I love this! So much excellent worldbuilding woven in and yet none of it slows the story down:)

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  8. I have a suggestion (I'm never satisfied, LOL!) but first let me say this a really good scene. As usual, your writing is clear yet emotional, in a good way. I can picture everything and I get the sense that the guards are really focused on protecting their king, maybe more than usual because of whatever happened last time.

    My suggestion is to think about dropping that detailed description of the boulder in the beginning here. To me, "boulder" automatically means a rock much taller and wider than a single person, so those might be unnecessary words.

    I'm anxious to see what happens here! :-)

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    1. Yep. I agree. Thanks so much, Marcia, for lending your eyes to see what I couldn't. :-)

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  9. Oh wow, I love the combination here. There's tension before the coming action and enough description to make the world very vivid. Love it!

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    1. Woot! Your comment made my day! Thanks, Christina!

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  10. great set up. I feel like something big is about to happen

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    1. Yes! The biggest thing in his life thus far! Thanks, Michelle. :-)

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  11. You've painted the scene so well. I felt like i was there. Great snippet.

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  12. Lovely scene setting. I'm especially intrigued by the blue monolith. It seemed to me Kuylrh's name rolled easier off the tongue this way than the old way, which I stumbled over. Another great snippet. Can't wait to see what happens.

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  13. Great setup and fantastic imagery. I'm intrigued to know more.

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  14. Good eight! I like the K for the hero's name. Makes it seem more masculine somehow. I'd take the Y out of jingyweeds. It sort of stuck out to me as at odds with the rest of the scene. Could just be me though.

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  15. The Giver's Sky. Three words powerful enough to knock me out. You are writing poetry with a hint of kill .

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    1. Your comment makes me feel so good, Charmaine! :-) Thank you, my friend. :-)

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  16. You have some nice descriptions, Teresa, giving us a feel for a difficult concept: a sense of the divine. About your hero's name, I have to say I dislike difficult spellings. If his name rhymes with Tyler, I personally would spell it Kyler.

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    1. There is an inherent flaw with changing his name to a very commonplace, human spelling. He actually is an alien, and the female protagonist has been abducted to a foreign world. :-) But I appreciate your crit! It (the spelling) may change, yet again. :-) Thanks, Ed. :-)

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  17. Fantastic descriptions, and I'm intrigued to know what an abzion is. Just one thing, though, I keep stumbling over Kuylrh's name every time it comes up.

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    1. Hmm... I wonder if you'd still stumble after reading part of a chapter that's not been posted... I might have to make it ahead of this chapter, rather than immediately following. Thanks, Ian. :-)

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  18. I think the spelling is better this time. I had an easier task sounding it out and then keeping it in mind when the name came up again. But then, I'm comparing it to last time, so I'm not looking at it with fresh eyes. I like the way you've set this scene. I want to know more.

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  19. Nice description--like your word choices. Don't remember how the name was spelled last week, but it does seem easier to to pronounce. In my head, I'm pronouncing it "Curl."

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    1. Thanks for the pronunciation insight, Cara! :-)

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  20. I like the new spelling of the hero's name. I never could make it rhyme with Tyler in my head before LOL. The scene was beautifully described...point to consider: "old guard" has another meaning, more of a plural for a group of veterans, and here you're really just talking about one man, Abraxum. When you say "old guard" along with the name Abraxum, it worked ok for me but when I saw "old guard" by itself....threw me out for a second. Enjoying the story very much and the worldbuilding is terrific as always.

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    1. Thanks, Veronica. Food for thought. I'll be considering that. Lots of mentions to the "old guard" in the book...

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  21. I love how he describes the sky and surroundings and how they are indifferent to his path in life which makes me think he's not so happy with it either. Great 8!

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    1. Very intuitive! I'm glad you got that! Thanks, Dani! :-)

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  22. Smooth, Teresa. Really liked how you set the scene. Great snippet. :)

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  23. Beautiful description. Great build up. :)

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  24. You've created a very interesting world here. It reads well and has caught my interest. Nicely done.

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  25. Terrific world building, and the new spelling of his name is better.

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    1. Thanks, Elaine :-) Especially for weighing in on the spelling.

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  26. I love how you use the rocky terrain to model the harshness of the kind of life these characters lead. Nicely done.

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  27. I love your descriptions. The air is pregnant with tension and anticipation.

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