I couldn't log onto my blog for the past two days. I was starting to get a little panicky there for a bit. It's a weird feeling, not being able to reach the usual seat behind the curtain.
Keith and I are going riding today. We're going to try out a riding park that we have to pay to get in. It makes me long for Colorado, and its miles and miles of free trail that ran along the Rockies.
It rained and the pool turned the most vivid shade of green I've ever seen. The pool company told us it was because of the sulphur in the rain. They dropped some powerful chemicals in there and within hours it was clearing up, but too deadly to swim in.
We were out there til eight thirty last night, which is when the sun finally set behind the tall, stately pines that shield the pool toward the west and north. We sat out there in damp bathing suits, eating brats with forks and our fingers.
I have finished all the re writing that was necessary on Torii and now must take up where I'd left off, start pushing the story forward in its new direction.
Keith's head keeps popping up from behind the couch, revealing his beguiling grin and beckoning finger, so my blogging keeps getting interrupted.
I have three pictures of myself as a little girl propped up on my desk, to help me remember what it's like to be so young. I think that she will be about five when he first comes, and about eight when he returns. Maybe one day I'll write a story which doesn't draw so directly from my own personal experiences, but who knows? When Flannery O'Connor said that anyone who had survived their childhood had enough material to write for the rest of his or her life, he was not kidding.
When I was looking that quote up, I came across this one, which is awesome:
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
-- E.L. Doctorow
So very true.
My ideas on world construction keep evolving. I think the spirit realm will be flat and ringed by mountains beyond the seas. At the four compass points are the four mouths of the wind. Then, I think the shadow form of the Himalayas, or Mt. Everest to be exact, will be where the Ishi no Torii is, and the gate into the underworld will be in the Mariana trench.
I think maybe using the shadow form of actual geography on the Mirror plains is more interesting and will make for a more varied sort of journey. I can actually chart their journey out and then transform what it truly there into what it would be in the spirit realm. Also, all the daemons can live on the mountain ring.
This is useful to me because I have pretty much decided that Gilly will not be returning to the mortal world. Tenshio will send her to school at a nunnery, a plan Gilly will buck like hell, but that will be to no avail, when the time comes. The Abbess will be a daemon of Tenshio's acquaintance. She'll run a peaceful nunnery in some pastoral mountain valley, where other young daemon girls go to be educated, as well as human ghosts who need to recover from emotional wounds. So it will be a very interesting class composition, and Gilly will like it, after a while.
Keith is up and about. I'd better get ready for our trip. I have a cooler to pack.
