Demon and Fairy WeWriWar 4

Hello every one and thank you so much for all the comment on last Sunday's post they are really helping me too keep my motivation and to finish editing this novel on time.

Last week, I have to admit that I played a little trick on you with the demon flying through the window and I am very happy that you all thought the same about him which is that he must be trouble for Seti. Actually this is quite the opposite. Let's solve the mystery of the other demon after today's snippet.

In the previous episodes, Seti was in pain and flying to see Kallisto who is the only person who can help him get ride of it. He remembered how he had met her the first time but unfortunately this time it was late at night and she was nowhere to be seen. Seti couldn't spend the night on the Beach and decided to fly home not noticing that another demon entered her house. Today's excerpt Seti arrived in his bedroom and it's not your average demon's room.

Here are my 8 sentences

He opened the door to his bedroom and breathed a little better.

Inside was the Chaos, not really enough to satisfy the voice in his head but still sufficient to lower the pain. 
He pushed the shoes hanging in front to the door on what seemed to be a guitar cord.

Books were opened on the ground, clothes were thrown everywhere, they were all clean and smelling good but he couldn’t bear to have them fowled in the closet.

The book shelved had been removed long ago.

He kept on making them fall on the ground.

It was at the time when his mother was still trying to tidy his room.

Each time he came back from school to take refuge in his Chaos she had tidy everything and the first thing he did was to throw things on the ground, to dissemble things to calm the voice in his head asking for Chaos. 

If you are interested, you can read more about Demon and Fairy here. 

Discover the excerpts of other participants through the Week-end Writing Warriors's blog here.  Facebook Snippet Sunday group for more posts here.  

So now for our mysterious demon 

If you remembered the second snippet, Seti couldn't pass the barrier protecting Kallisto.

"Probably a magical barrier to protect her”, he had thought, “from people like me, from nasty and vile demons only attached to darkness.”

Seti has a little confidence problem. Kallisto is protected by a magical barrier but it's not quite was Seti has in mind and for the demon who flew through the window, he just lives there and you'll meet him a little later. 

The scene with him flying through the window is the ending of my other novel Demon Soul. I'm very glad that you all had the reaction of thinking he was trouble because that's the state in which I want to keep my readers for a bit. So this is working. 

The second point of having this scene in the book is to show that demons can cross that barrier and that Seti will have to get over it, just a little clue for attentive readers.

I hope you enjoy today's post, see you next week-end for more of WeWriWar and Demon and Fairy or every other day for Mes Crazy Expériences.

June Challenges

Today is the first of June and also the start of many challenges for me. In one hand it feels like "WHAT first of June already? I'm not ready for that!" and the other hand it feels like I had been waiting for it for a long long time.

So yesterday I wrote a list of everything I'm supposed to do during this month and my boyfriend ended up telling me that I can do it all only if I'm not human. As one of my friend has been calling me a monster I think I might have a chance. So I'm going to try anyway. You have to remember, I hate to lose (Oh god! I lost the game!) so I'll do whatever it takes... including not sleeping, not eat, not breathing... you got the idea ;)

So now lets stop the joke and write down the to do list:

To Do List for June 2013:

1) Finish the 6 Week Challenge

I have until the 12th to get 61 hours of Japanese study which means my usual 5 hours a day routine, so it's really doable.With update on the blog every Wednesday.

2) Read more or die (please join here)

My goal is to read 1200 pages of Japanese novel before the end of the month 30th midnight which means 40 pages a day. I think that's the most challenging thing for me this month. I used to read in the bus but I'm not taking the bus anymore so I need to find a different time to read. The good point, it should increase my hour count for the 6 Week Challenge. The update will follow the update of the 6 Week Challenge.

You can follow my stats as I go here.


 

 
3) JuNoWriMo (please join here)

I decided to participate in JuNoWriMo to finally finish the first draft of Vampire Heart. Seeing that my demon characters won't leave me alone that is going to be a lot of fun. I need to cover 600 years of European and Asian history too. I stopped working on it because I was stuck about the history part and I haven't figured out the way out yet. It might as well be written as a trilogy as 600 years is a very very long time... so we'll see what happens. I'm aiming at 50000 words and decided to start with my usual 2500 words a day routine as explained in the tips post to win NaNoWriMo. You can start reading Vampire Heart here, a new part of the story will be added every week.

4) Daily blogging

The updates on the different challenges should cover some ground here.

I also have my participation to the Week-end Writing Warriors every Sunday, the entries can all be found here. 

I'm intended to write some character stories like I did for the A-to-Z challenge back in April this time using characters of Vampire Heart. The character stories for the A-to-Z challenge can be found here.

I will also finish the travel series about France.

Then for the day with nothing I'll probably find something interesting so no worries.

5) Mich's summer mystery

Mich's summer mystery contest will be starting on June 21 and I need to prepare the story to be able to have regular posts about it on the blog leaving my clues. You can join the contest here, let's have fun together. But be prepare for the craziest thing I ever wrote in my entire life: crazy grammar, crazy plot, crazy character, crazy places. 

6) Demon and Fairy editing 

I need prizes for the Mich's summer mystery and I intend to have paperbacks of my new novel "Demon and Fairy" for the winner, so I need to have it edited by the end of the month to be able to use my NaNoWriMo winner coupon with CreateSpace. Wish me luck. You can find the excerpt for Demon and Fairy every Sunday as part of the Week-end Writing Warriors challenge.

7) Illustrations

I am still a bit short in Illustrations for Demon and Fairy and I want to illustrate the blog post of Mich's summer mystery as well so I'll be also drawing during the first part of the month. To be able to make it on time I will need to find a more efficient way to work on my art.

Now, as no-human can do it, let me become a monster... transformation...

Old fashioned writer 2: On Illustrations

The first old fashioned writer post can be found here.
As a child and teen, I remember that I used to pick up illustrated novels for adults, recently however if novels for young readers are illustrated, the illustrations seem rare. So today I'm going to play Alice complaining about her sister's book. 

 “And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversation?”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

I like old books and classics. And I can't help to remember the pictures in Stevenson's Treasure Island, in Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in Jules Vernes' Voyages Extraordinaires which contain no less than more than 60 illustrations by novels which give in average one illustration every 7 pages in the original edition or in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. 

Even in a well written novel, illustrations can still play a very important role. One of the main advice between writers is "Show, don't tell." This is a very good advice and rewriting the story by adding description and details is a good exercise to show the story. Including illustration to the novel bring on another dimension. It helps people visualize the action more easily. I like to illustrate my novels and to provide images of my characters for everyone to see, even though sometimes my drawing skills might not exactly reflect the picture I had in mind.

Here is a list of few purposes of illustrations. 

The first is the portrait: It feature the protagonist or secondary characters and help the reader visualizing with the narrator. In case of an omniscient narrator, it can also help visualizing who is talking and in direct communication with the reader. When I read a story I always tend to imagine the characters a bit differently than they are describe, maybe that's a personal flaw. I used to look at the pictures and wonder what I had missed in the text. It's a funny game at least for me to go back and check. I think a lot of people have their own vision of the different creatures in my books as well for example reading the title "Demon Soul" gives a lot of thoughts about nasty ugly demons... maybe an illustration more than the front cover only helps a bit to overcome that kind of prejudices.

Seti, main character of Demon and Fairy, draft.

The second is the landscape: It shows the place where the protagonist arrives and visits, it gives another dimension to the narrative as it helps the reader following heavy description or filling the blanks for lighter, incomplete descriptions. There are always part of the landscape that can't be described, either because they are hard to turn into words or are considered uninteresting or useless. If you are having an action scene with a lot of characters, you might want to focus the reader on what is happening more than on the decoration. Providing a picture help the reader make their own opinion about the place. This is probably my weakest point in drawing but I consider I might work a bit more to get better pictures for Demon and Fairy. Actually writing this I realized that I don't have any landscape picture to show.

The third is the document: Travel adventures can always use a good map the reader can refer themselves to, to know where they are at. When your character is traveling across land it is very nice to have a map. I remember how much I liked the map in Simonay's Phénix because the world was ours but somehow different with all the time that had passed or in Clement's Le voyage de Théo because I could try to guess where he would go next.

Map of Viorel's travel in Europe (Vampire Heart) to be updated has he progresses (the character will be redrawn)

The fourth is the action: It pictures specific, important moment in the action. Sometimes your characters can do something out of the ordinary and it might be difficult to accurately describe it. Sometimes it's just something plain and boring and a picture just brings some light to it. There are a lot of reason to show actions, it captures a particular moment of your character's live a bit like a photograph of yourself having fun with your friends. They show the things the reader will later remember.

Hitomi and Demian meeting at the mirror. (Attic Mirror)

I really enjoy illustrating my novels, I think illustration bring something more to the story and if they are not always necessary they correspond to my style of novels and writing.

The first old fashioned writer post can be found here.

What do you think about illustration? Do you like to read illustrated novels or do you prefer plain text? As a writer, do you like to illustrate or have someone illustrate your stories for you?

 

France: Rennes, Brittany's Parliament

En français

As Rennes is the main city of Brittany when Brittany was not yet part of France, it used to have be one of the center of power with Nantes. The castle of the Duke of Brittany is in Nantes and the Parliament is in Rennes. The Parliament has been burned down few years ago during a strike by the farmer. It has now been rebuild. It contains a court of justice with several chambers and people have been beheaded in the central court. In the main room there was an exposition explaining how justice worked so long ago and I can tell you it was pretty terrible with a lot of torture and chopped limbs. There is also an explanation of the treaty linking Brittany to France and telling of the agreement which are still in place today, like the salt not being taxed in Brittany and the road also being free which were some of the point important for Duchess of Brittany the last independent Brittany ruler who became queen of two French kings. As a kid and even now, I really liked the Duchess, she was a strong woman.

Travel table of content

Main room

Symbol of the crown of Brittany

Execution square

6 week Challenge update: Learning with music

I'm only 6 hours behind on my schedule, I have two more weeks to catch up and I can feel that it's totally possible. I'm really happy with all the catch up I have been doing. 

Except for watching anime Bleach and drama ヘブンズ・フラワー The legend of Arcana. I have been mainly learning with music. I'm listening only to aqua timez and I play my playlist about 4 times a day.

I'm starting to pick up a lot more sentences in the music I'm listening. I mean some of the songs I still have no clue what they are about but for others I have those "Ah!" moments when I have a complete set of words starting to make sense. This is something that I find myself only able to have with a very large amount of repetitions. I tried to break that pattern and accelerate the rate of learning by looking at the lyrics with meanings to them but the problem with that is that I can't reproduce and remember sentences well enough to use them. If I listen to it many times and it comes naturally to be remembered, I can sing the song. Of course I might repeat the song many times with the lyrics next to me as well. It might accelerate the learning efficiency a bit but it's a lot more troublesome than to just let the music play with only partial attention to it and it would take a longer time than just playing the song while working. So all in all I'm happy with my learning which doesn't require much efforts but only to have something in my ears playing all day and not to forget to charge my ipod. 

I didn't have much conversation in Japanese this week. But as I'm singing all those songs all the time, my boyfriend started to correct me and to help me with the lyrics so it also help a lot with my progresses and we ended up watching "Brave story" because it has a song from aqua timez. 

I'm making progresses daily. I can't wait to add the Read More or Die contest to this in 3 days. I set my page goal to 1500 that's rather a lot and I might set it down a little later. I'll be happy with anything above 1200 pages as my best was a bit lower than that. I wonder how this will fit with JuNoWriMo starting at the same time and Mich's summer mystery at the end of the month.

France : Rennes' streets

En français

After Paris we took the train for Rennes and arrived there on a rainy day but that didn't stop us to move around and visit the old city center. Rennes is the main city of Brittany and a lot of very old wooden house remain from second renaissance. The wood city was once burned down then reconstructed. Those wooden housed are a particularity of the city. The city center also contains a lot of long and large street for pedestrian only.
Travel table of content 

France : Louvre Museum part 2

En français

Here is more about the Louvre. Last time we had been visiting the inside. I have to say that the Louvre is so huge that it is impossible to visit it in one day, leave alone in few hours. I have been there twice and there is always something to discover. But another good thing about the Louvre is the architecture from outside. So if you don't have money to pay for the entry ticket (it's free every first Sunday of the month, btw) you can still have a nice walk outside. Here is an example of what can be seen outside and some picture of the Roman statues section.
Travel table of content

Meduse