Category: Trook Hunters

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Time to type every word I know: Coffee, Writing, Iron Man, Duck

As you may know, I enjoy participating in the various gift exchanges through Reddit Gifts.  It’s like doing a secret santa, only with thousands of other people, and for specific categories of things.

I was so pleased to open my Coffee Exchange parcel yesterday!  My package came from Macedonia– and contained Turkish coffee!  I tried making a cup this morning, and it was delicious (Without cream?!  Amazing.).  Very flavourful, and unusual.

In writing news, my short story “The First Gentlemen’s Galactic Scavenger Hunt” has been shortlisted for the World Weaver Press anthology, “Far Orbit- Speculative Space Adventures”.  I’d be super happy to see this one in print; I feel like it’s actually a project I’d like to expound upon a bit.  A scavenger hunt in space: what’s not to love?

I have also entered my screenplay in a contest to win tickets to PitchFest, where I would get a chance to hook a studio.  That would be totally mathematical.

Currently, I’m continuing a read-through of my Spell Carriers series, and I’m into the second book.  The first book took me three days, though it would have taken less if I weren’t making edits here and there.  It was a pretty easy read.  Trook Hunters starts off more complex, having had book one to set it up.

Anyway!  Enough ramblings.  What’s important here is seeing how they did the Arc Reactor makeup for Iron Man.

Painting on the latex.

A lot of latex.

A good sport.

Different colours for the different layers.

Airbrushed to make it look real!

They can peel the latex back and make it look like skin.

Final effect: amazing.

And, seeing as I have duck brining in the fridge, this:


:O

Well, I’ll keep you posted.  I hope one of these days to have some truly excellent news for you.  For now, I’ll keep at it.  I know that one day all this work I’m doing will pay off.  I hope it’s soon, but I’m in it for the long haul.  🙂

Cheers guys.

Heidi out.

PS: Leaked Jurassic Park 4 logo!

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Remove Head from Sand

I get so focused on writing that I forget to see what else is going on.  There’s a ton of great blogs out there, and I don’t read them as much as I should (if you’re reading mine, you have my deepest thanks).

So I was doing some catching up, and found the following:

Robert J. Sawyer is doing a book tour.

Query Letter FAQs!

Patrick Rothfuss had a good video to post about Ira Glass on art (get well soon Mr. Rothfuss!).

And as for me, well, I’ve spent the last three days reading over my first novel, book one in the Spell Carriers series, a fantasy epic.  I am so pleased that it is not terrible!  My writing has evolved, for sure, but it still flows, and holds me in a way that surprises me- to not be able to put down a book that I wrote?  What is this fresh narcissism?  I genuinely enjoy it, and am really relieved to see that it holds up against my newer works.

And it’s the first time I’ve read it in my new program, Scrivener.  I had to teach it all the new words, all the new names.  And that first time I right click a name and say “learn spelling” is rather magical; for I can see into the future of the characters, and know what a journey they have to come, and it’s wonderful.

Characters I introduce in book one go on to have major parts in book two, and to see their conception, when I didn’t even know how great they would become, leaves me glowing.

So yes, reviewing, and removing one’s head from the sand.  I will try and do this more; there’s a lot of great stuff being posted about this great and mad endeavour of writing.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.

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Dreaming of my characters again…

Reading through the completed manuscripts of my Spell Carriers series has had an unintended side effect: I’m dreaming about them. This is way cool. Even the one where I was stalking a Trook through a house was way cool.

Last night it was Banhaks. He was coming home from being in prison for ten years.

So, basically, the beginning of book III. My gosh.

And I got to hug him, and it was awesome.

Good job brain.

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Pleased but also terrified

That moment when you wake up from a nightmare you were having and realize you were dreaming about something you wrote- oh gosh.

I was hunting a Trook, the Big Bad from my two-books-completed young adult fantasy series.  Holy smokes it was scary.  I was Bazzil, hunting it through a house, with people, who may or may not have been Bazzil’s entourage from me second book, backing me up as I stalked through dark hallways.

Around a corner: a Trook!  Only it was more like a Ring Wraith.  It wielded a sword I recognized- Bilbo’s Sting, and stabbed me quite deeply.  I fought back, though my own sword, Rending, was strangely long and bendy.  I stabbed a few times to fight off my attacker, but my sword was too bendy and wonky.  Sting was hard and exacting as it thrust towards me…

Wow, I don’t read much into dreams, but it’s very rare I dream of weapons and violence.  And the collision of Tolkien’s work and my own in the dream world was quite interesting to experience.

I quite enjoyed my read through of my first book.  It stood up well to the test of time.  Now onto my second, and we’ll see how it flows from one to the next.

But for now, I must finished my “Werewolves be bad, yo” short story.  Deadline looms.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.

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Yes, Updated Tuesdays and Fridays…

A strange thing happens to me when I devote nearly the entirety of my brain to writing.

I cease to function normally.

Last week I didn’t know I worked on Friday…  Came home in the evening to several phone calls about this.  😦

Then, this Thursday, I went to work.  …I didn’t work that day.  😦

On the plus side, I saw both “The Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “Tree of Life”.

Apes was good, hard sci-fi.  Some flaws for sure, but all in all, a good, tight film.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tree of Life, on the other hand…  I went in prepared to see a slow, methodical, sloooow film, and even with that preparation I was still bored to tears.  I will say that it was good, just not something for most people.

Also, any time a filmmaker thinks that, to tell their story effectively, they must start from the beginning of time, there’s a problem.  Don’t get me wrong; Parasaurolophus is my very favourite dinosaur, but that was just completely unneeded.  Also, that theropod that was going to eat the baby Parasaurolophus, but didn’t, was completely unbelievable.  Wouldn’t have happened.  Was this another metaphor?  Another symbol?

Anyway, Tree of Life…  gets a pass because it was beautiful, and there are not enough slow films in wide release these days.  But I don’t think I’d recommend it.

Onwards!  Writing life: this weekend I have a final pass over “Trook Hunters” to format it, in preparation for sending it to a publisher…  at their request.  I am pretty stoked about that.  This came about after a rejection of the two “Tinker” short stories.  But they liked my style and asked if I had any longer work.

Escape Publishing Collective is new; they go live in the fall.  Maybe I’m getting in on the ground floor of something awesome here, eh?  I hope so.

But for now, I send off Trook Hunters, with the hopes that it can find a home, and start building a fan base for the fantasy world of the Spell Carriers.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.