I’ve been away, though I’m not sure anyone has noticed.  (poor me : (. . . )  My writing time is pretty limited and I’ve spent it on Writing.com instead of here on my own blog.  We shall see if it was profitable.

Here is a link to my WDC Portfolio which contains some stuff from this site.  What I have spent most of my time doing, so far, is reviewing other writers.  I am chagrined at how my own work has suffered, or perhaps languished is a better word.  Hopefully I can rectify that.

By the way, another milestone is fast approaching and I will not complete my first draft online novel, the Abbot and the Djinn in time for my birthday.  This is a fact, cold and hard and depressing.  I wouldn’t have finished it if I hadn’t spent time on WDC but I am depressed at . . .

. . . growing old and having grown old.  There is no undoing it.  I have felt that I am writing to the wind here and though people seem to appreciate my reviews on WDC it has not translated as I’d hoped.  The wind still blows, yes, the wind blows.

I guess that’s enough.  I’ve taken to exhorting in my reviews “Keep writing.  Don’t stop writing.”  And so, having stopped in my quest to create Tir na Nua, I will begin again.  I will not stop, though it blows.  The wind, I mean.

LSO

Smoke came to himself again to the sound of chanted prayers.  He drifted as he listened to the sing-song praises, and in bits and pieces he remembered. 

It was supposed to be just another death at sea like many others before.  There is nothing quite like being lost at sea for drawing another chapter, grown uncomfortable and confining, to a definitive end thought Smoke.  This time the end had almost been too definitive.

Having the bottom of his skiff torn out on rocks and being beaten, nearly to death, on the stony shore hadn’t been according to plan, nor the storm that had driven him to it.  Come to think of it, he wasn’t quite sure that he hadn’t taken a mortal hurt with the way his body ached, and he was thirsty.  He was hungry too, but mostly he was parched.

Still, there were worse things than being bruised and thirsty.  Smoke, for his part, had felt worse.  His youth had been an extended association with want closer than any partnership, or marriage.

He wondered what his wife’s reaction to his reported death would be.  She wasn’t a bad woman, really, but then she wasn’t a very good one either.  Likely she would be delighted to have the freedom of her lovers, her children, his estates, and the full control of the portions of his business he hadn’t hidden and left in the care of his lieutenants.

It would be a relief for her not to have to worry about him discovering her infidelities, as if the children hadn’t told him, as if his spies were all blind, as if he hadn’t seen it all before.  Soon enough she would be dust, her brood would have squandered all his wealth, and all would be forgotten. 

Well, not everyone would forget, he remembered them all.  He was due a vacation, a forgetting time, renewal.  But first he must learn where he was, and get something to drink, yes, he was so thirsty.

His eyes fluttered open, there was dim light coming in the door of what appeared to be a stacked drystone room.  There was no ornament or furnishing save a ledge around the perimeter of the room that he assumed was where he lay.  It looked as if he was saved from death into poverty. 

He could hear the wind against his room, the sea not far away, and the voice that he had heard in the night, the voice of White Hands.  A curious fellow, White Hands, a prayer, a holy man it would seem.

Greetings!

This page is where I’m assembling links to posts and any other item that goes into the writing of the first draft of my online novel, “The Abbott and the Djinn.”  I was planning to get it done before my birthday, but I am failing to do so. It occurs to me that I have a birthday in 2011 as well. Hmmmmm.  (And also 2012.)

This is a true rough draft.  I have only 15 or 30 minutes to write at a time.  I glance at the previous section and then just write.  You can argue about my process, please do, but for now and to get words on the page I think it is the best. (advise solicited and desired) 

Too long I’ve wanted things to be perfect before proceeding and so I hardly begin.  Well, the Abbott and the Djinn is begun.

Below you will find dated notes on my progress and afterward a partial outline linked to what I’ve roughed out so far.  At the bottom you can look at older notes.

August 15, 2011, Today is a long time from when last I posted an update to this page.  I have added a few posts, but not many and I think what I’ve done is not so good.  I need for Iamerge to speak to Rhaury about the stake he hopes to get from him, the investment he left with Rhaury’s father Roderick UiBirlinn.  I need to give Rhaury time to send everything out of Bellton so that Iamerge will feel he has to remain with the the monks and Gospels.  I don’t like what I’ve written, but this is supposed to be rough.  I fear my frustrated perfectionism has driven me away from this work.  I need to get back to it and hurry.

14 Dec 2010 – Beginning Chapter 8.  This is what I had anticipated doing awhile ago, but the trouble with the Gobli (oops, don’t tell anyone) intervened.  Here then is yet another character, Conal McKendrik, who will continue with Iamerge for awhile.

30 Nov 2010 – Iamerge and Conal on their way back.

26 Oct 2010 Decided to wrap up this installment and get it out. 

15 Oct 2010 – I’m well into a chapter seven that I hadn’t planned on writing at all.  In it I have introduced a character and I’ve also imagined where he might be employed in later chapters.  I fear that I’ve engaged in some sloppy writing.  I have one portion (7.2)where I switch point of view back and forth between Iamerge and Conal, the new character.  You may recall that I did that at the very beginning.

Well, as promised, this is rough first draft work that you get to see before it is cleaned up.  Lucky you.

Anyway, I believe there are links to everything I’ve done on A&D to this point.

LSO

Here is an outline of the story: (linked for easy navigation to what is available so far.)

The Abbott and the Djinn (Outline)

I.  Intro (I have an intro posted)

II.  The Skellig

     A. The Storm (I think Chptr. 1.1 fits in here)

          1.  The Storm from Gospel’s perspective. (by the way, Smoke refers to a monk he thinks of as “White Hands” until the men make a personal connection and he, the monk, reveals that his name is Gospels.)

          2.  Waking from Smoke’s perspective (Chptr. 1.2.)

     B.  Recovery

           1.  Smoke wakes Chp. 2.1

           2.  Conversation with White Hands Chp. 2.2 and Chp 2.3 AND Chp 2.4

           3.  White Hand’s wealth Chp. 2.5  (Sad to say this important connective tissue has not been written. Conversation’s three volumes  above need to be reworked I think and THEN we reveal the wealth.  It is a book or books, the very one mentioned in the introduction of course.

     C.  The Meeting of Different Worlds

            1.  Two friends (after the exciting and insightful chp. 2 that doesn’t yet exist, Smoke and Gospels) sit and talk setting the scene for the arrival of the contingent from the abbey.  Chp. 3.1

            2.  The monk goes to offices as Smoke thinks.  Chp. 3.2

            3.  Gospels discovers that he doesn’t know very much about Smoke.  Smoke tries to reassure, but raises more questions with his selection of “Iamerge” for a name.  Chptr. 3.3

             4.  Introductions.  Chp. 3.4 I jumped over this, skipping ahead to:

             5.  Boat ride to the Abbey

                   a)  Chp. 4.1 (Notably absent and I think essential are the monks chanting offices as they travel and Smoke’s glimpses of the nearby town, his anticipated destination before being wrecked on the Skellig. I think these items are important enough to add if not as narrative at least as notes here and likely in a revised 4.1.  Yes, I know what I said, give me a break.)

                   b) Arriving at the Monastery Chp. 4.2

                   c) Gospels remembers Smoke Chp. 4.3

                   d) Discussion in the guesthouse (not yet written)

              6. Smoke (Imerge) in the town

                    a) Initial impressions  (Chp. 5.1) as Smoke (Imerge) enters the port town seeking to find the agent holding his hold stake.  Iamerge Meets Ol’ Jim Cooper, the mayor of Rat Town.(Chp. 5.2)   Iamerge nearly gets run down by armed guards of the man he is looking for, but Roderick Ua Birlinn being dead, his son Ruaridh Ua Birlinn will have to do.  All this he discovers from Cooper.(Chp. 5.3)

                    b) The talk of the Tavern begins with Cooper tending bar and talk of the situation. Gospels is brought up. Conversation in the basement. (Chp. 5.4) The rest of that conversation, (Chp. 5.5). . .           . . .that does not include this part (Chp. 5.6)

                    c) Iamerge walks the streets (Chp. 5.7)

                    d) Speaking to the force of nature (Chp. 5.8)

              7.  Iamerge returns to the monastery and then leaves.

                     a) Iamerge falls asleep beneath a tree (Chp. 6.1)

                     b) Gospels talks to Iamerge (Chp. 6.2)

                     c) Hebrews and the walk to the ambush (Chp. 6.3)

                     d) Iamerge and Gospels meet Rhauri Ui Birlinn (Chp. 6.4)

               8.  The ministry of the Monastery’s Brethern

                      a)  Iamerge and Gospels reach the disaster.  Conal McKendrick (7.1)

                      b)  Iamerge and Conal in the night (7.2)

                      c) Iamerge in the blue morning (7.3)

                      d) Iamerge and Conal on their way back to the Monastery (7.4)

III.  The Monastery, Among the Merciful Brothers

     A.  The Brotherhood (specifically a brotherhood of the wounded.)

           1.  Iamerge’s discontent (8.1)

           2.  Meeting Ui Birlinn

                        a. Iamerge meets a rider, Rhaury Ui Birlinn (8.2)

                        b. The question of Niamh and Rhaury misses his chance (8.3)

                        c.  Council and consolation for Conal (8.5)

                        d.  Leading to recovery (8.6)

           3.  What Iamerge overheard at the refectory (Chp. 9.1)

     B.  The Twelve

     C.  A Thirteenth Brother

IV.  The Journey Begins

Well folks.  Until I get a little farther down the road I think that’s all the outline I’m ready to put out.  Meager, I know, but there is more rattling around in my head, not to mention the odd plot twist that keeps cropping up.

Hopefully the progress page will progress better than it has resently, but even more I hope to put more electrons to page and really get this whole thing underway.

Wish me good luck,

LSO

 past posts:

28 Sep 2010 – My last update was in April.  Yikes!!!  I HAVE added more to the novel, slowly but surely, but this progress page has languished.

The story has made a turn I did not previously outline, so it seems that Iamerge and Gospels have surprised me again.  It seems there was a Goblin attack.

19 Apr 2010 – And a little bit more.

8 Apr 2010 – A little bit more and I introduced the name of Smoke (Iamerge) ‘s Factor, Ruaridh Ua Birlinn.  We also learn that Jim Cooper is the town nose, if we didn’t know that already. 

5 Mar. 2010 – Oiye, a whole week and so very little to show for it.  I’m interested in the Jim Cooper character and where he will lead.  I don’t particularily like them talking so much again, but I threw some action in at the end.  I think I should stop criticizing it now and just let you read the little that there is.  Read it.

25 Feb. 2010 – I’m finally back at it.  I made a little change to account for Chapter 5, Iamerge goes to town, and started writing that part.  I haven’t yet wrapped up the meal and conversation that Gospels and Iamerge have, but there has already been too much talking so I skipped ahead this little bit.  No guaranties I won’t do that more.  Let me know what you think of that.

8 Feb. 2010 -  Decided to post this beginning of  Chp 5.  Also added a little to the “Child of Moss” saga. Read part 2.

2 Feb. 2010 – Had opportunity to get to the second half of Chp. 4.  I’m still planning to rewrite 4.1 to add some elements.

1 Feb. 2010 – I have to say that hope of finishing the first draft of this novel by my birthday are dimming.  I did do a little bit of writing today, but sad to say it wasn’t focused on The Abbott and the Djinn. Instead I started a new story, I only meant for it to be a brief little vignette, but again things got away from me.  If you want to see what I did, read THIS (Child of Moss).

28 Jan. 2010 – I’ve been chiselingaway at this for too long.  I had to get it out and begun.  Having escaped the Skellig, Smoke, now naming himself Iamerge, comes to the Abbey.  I jumped over the introductions as those monks will be in seclusion, perhaps for longer than Smoke and Gospels will remain near the Abbey.  The three other monks who returned with the boat are of immediate interest. 

I am leaving the 21 Jan. post because it contains my apologies for this format.  I am roughing out a story and would be very appreciative of your help.  I fully realize that I am putting it out raw in part so that you can make comments and I won’t feel invested in work delivered with much blood and sweat.  I also want to offer a glimpse of my process.  Most of all I just want to write something down.  Names may change, place, time, order of events, facts, geography, all are malleable

21 Jan 2010 -  Sadly it has taken so long for so little.  What I have of chapters two and three might be edited down to the first half of a better 2, but that is for rewrites.  I think the momentum is stalling and so I have trouble getting things written.  In the end I have them chat. (hardly riveting)

Dear reader, please forgive me. sequentially there is an even wordier section as the group of monks meet their abbott and this new stranger.  It may not make the editing, but as I imagine it, these conversations must take place.  Once imagined they may be discarded to be remembered as needed, flashed back upon, or if they are simply insipid, left on the bone pile of events never reported.

Again, I apologize.  I am both inexperienced in writing novels AND intentionally putting things out as they come to me largely unedited.  This I do because of time, firstly, but also as a sort of writer’s seminar.  Feel free to comment, telling me what you think is of value, reveals character, effectively foreshadows (or you think might, if you guess I’ll tell you), should be kept or moved or retold.  I also value criticism up to and including matters of spelling and grammar, but also let me know what doesn’t work for you as narrative.  You are the reader who I seek to entertain, your opinion matters.

10 Jan 2010 – I’ve left Chp. 2 a mess and pressed on.  In order to get something started beyond the disaster I began Chp. 3

22 Dec 2009 – Currently there is not much of it on the site, nor much on this page.  I’m planning on getting it done before my birthday so I better get busy.  Beware the Ides of March.

4 Jan 2010 – I am unhappy with my last post, Chp 2.4.  I’m not exactly sure how I need to proceed. 

I’m sure that I will run into many such pauses.  Initially I feel like I want to resolve it right now, but I suspect a better idea would be to press on to Chapters 3 and 4, which I have in mind, instead of going back over the old material.

So, let me argue it out here before you and hopefully come to a decision that both resolves my delema and offers you insight into my process (AND has me writing if only on the progress page instead of real progress.)

This is intended to be a first draft.  In addition to being a novel it is, or will be, a bit of a foundational document that touches much of the world of Tir na Nua by speaking to the Biblious Monastics and the idea of long lived people and their impact as well as the impact being different has on them personally.  These are very important issues not only to this story, but to many or likely most of the rest of the stories.

Clearly, I want it to be right, and yet in this format I’m throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks.  And then perhaps finding what stinks. 

In other work on Tir na Nua I have focused on characterization and have jumped from scene to scene in a story, ignoring the intervening narrative, and leaving it to the future to tie the scenes together.  I think that is a good approach. 

My plan is to rely on this progress page when editing becomes necessary.  If I leave 2 as it is, look for explanations and revision notices on this page.  Going forward, I may leap ahead and actually post chapters ahead, but I will try to at least tie such leaps together with outlines of the intervening plot.

The world was a wet, full-throated, howl.  The hermit was at prayer in a stacked stone oratory that did well to stand against nature’s onslaught.  The hermit failed utterly to maintain his concentration on the offices.  Not that he could have heard his own voice above the wind and the rain, but his mind was roiling with more existential concerns than even mere existence.

Gospels was doubting himself.  Self examination is the stock and trade of a hermit, but he had felt the anchorite call so sure and strong only to be cast up not just once, but innumerable times on the same rock, this rock. Far be it from him to question his Lord, but on a clear day his new anchor-hold was within site of his old abbey.  Worse yet, in a few weeks, his brothers from that very abbey would come for spiritual retreat to this place and he would have to explain his presence.

Surely this was a lesson in pride, its dangers, its pitfalls, and its inevitable destination, shame.  Though he should be in prayer.  Though his duty was to praise the creator.  Though his life had been rigidly laid out ever since he joined the brethren, tonight he could not give himself to ritual.  He felt compelled, as he had felt compelled to enter the coracle, to leave his shelter and go down to the sea.

But heeding that call had cast him here. How could he trust it?  The doubt was strong, but the compulsion was stronger.  Gospels rose from his knees and walked into the storm.  The ferocious blast caught at his clothes, ripping the hood from his head, it lifted him completely from the ground, and then smashing him down hard with his head and shoulders up against the stacked stone of a beehive cell. 

In moments he was drenched.  The howling wind made a chorus of shrieking across the uneven stacked stone buildings around him.  The hard rain was in his eyes, but worst of all, with the wind so strong, he could barely draw breath in it.

He was no stranger to discomfort, but the storm seemed capable of drowning him where he lay.  He struggled to gather himself using the support of the wall behind him and managed to get feet below and head toward the gale.  He balanced with his body against the wall and with both hands pulled his hood back over his head.

Gospels moved carefully along the rounded beehive cell into the lee of the oratory then crawled to the shelter of that downwind cover.  Panting, he paused only a moment, then clinging to the ground and the stacked stone of its wall he made his way around and back into the full force of the wind and rain. “Lord God preserve. . .”

The hermit, bit by tortuous bit, worked his way through a cut and onto the windward face of his stone island seeking the small leather covered boat that had carried him to his solitude.  The ocean waves were enormous, they battered the island with concussion that Gospels felt through his whole body as he lay buffeted by the wind.  The heaving swells looked tall enough to top the whole island and then they were dashed to foam upon the rock.

“Lord!” cried the monk, “I can’t find it!” He scanned where he thought the little boat should be, but there was nothing familiar there.  The wind continued to roar, mixed with that of the sea, but the rain subsided.  There was wreckage in the waves, but not the ash frame and hide of his coracle. 

“Oh God no,” Gospels saw among the tangled remains of a larger craft than his, a body.  The huge wave lifted and lifted, he saw that it was a man, and then the wave struck the island with a boom, sending spray up and obscuring all else.

The sea water cascaded off the island leaving  bits of what may have been a boat and there also feebly clutching the rocks, trying to hold to them, was a man.  Gospels scrambled down the wet rocks toward the struggling figure only to watch in horror as the sea tore him from the rocks and swallowed him again. 

Again the sea rose in a wall and there among the foam was a terrified face for a moment and then all was white. Gospels cried, “Lord Jesus save him. I can not!”

The rushing water receded leaving the man, caught between two rocks by his foot wedged there.  Gospels moved closer, but was nearly pulled off the rocks when the next wave turned everything to foam and the wave sucked hungrily at him as it returned.  “Jesus, save us!” Gospels took hold of the man’s leg, but couldn’t imagine what he could do to lift him free.

The wave broke over him, lifting him, The only thing that wasn’t water was the man’s leg and he clung to it like it was life, like it was salvation.  He was slammed against hardness.  Sickeningly he felt the strong pull of the sea dragging him across the roughness of the stone. He spread himself, desperately, seeking some purchase and found here a hand hold and there his foot caught and held, the dead weight of the man struck him but he was not dislodged, with his other hand he clutched at the body.

The Abbott and the Djinn chp 1.2 available HERE

The letter came to me as head copyist and librarian with a note in the abbot’s hand, “please look to this yourself. We are bequethed books from a rich trader’s library. You will find the details in this letter.”

The letter itself was beautifully written on fine parchment with embellishments and even illuminations, extravagant even in a gospel book or psalter, but ridiculously austintatious in a letter that was so utilitarian and mundane.

We were directed to a manse in the center of the city, right on the trade square, to get “books” from the “library.”  I thought it mad wishfulness, but I brought brother Timothy and a hand cart.

A thin young man, dressed in black silken robes, answered the door at my knock.  “I am the Djinn’s seneschal,” he looked over my shoulder. “I’ll show you. Come.”  With nary a word more he led off into the maze that was the mansion. Up stair and down hall after hall I followed the dark figure.

“These are the master’s private apartments,”  the Seneschal intoned.

“Aren’t they all his?” I asked, overwhelmed into a comment I would otherwise have restrained myself from making.

The man in black stopped and turned to eye me, chimera like.  I have no idea what he might have thought of my impertinence.  “Here,” he said and flung open double doors.

I was dazzled by the brightness of the light pouring into the room from the tall glazed windows opposite the doors.  My guide strode into the room and I followed blinking.  The room was spare apart from the opulence of so much glass, a couple of tables with stiff backed chairs in front of the windows and a more comfortable couch just inside the door.  There was a rich dusty scent in the air.

I gasped, stunned, there were books, scrolls and codexes, filling the shelves on both walls of the room, to a man of letters, wealth unimaginable.  “My master knows your order.  The books will have the care they deserve.”  said the Seneschal.

“Which books am I to take sir?”

“Why, all of them of course.”  The dark clad man stepped to the sideboard next to the couch.  He pulled a satin cord and a bell tolled somewhere in the bowels of the mansion.  “I take it that you are unprepared for so many.”

“It will more than double our own library.”

“Will there be a problem?” asked the tall young man.

“No no, of course not.  It is just that there are…,” I could not find words.

“Yes?” I could only shake my head in wonder. The man glanced around the room, pondering, “You are welcome to the shelves as well, if you like.  There are several cases of writing material as well as a supply of bees wax candles,” He tapped a box that dominated the  surface of one table, “everything in this room is for the order of San Gospellis. I will send servants to aid you and you may wish to bring another cart the next trip.” Without another word he was gone while I wrestled with words with which to thank him.

It was well past vespers when all was safely stowed.  I would be months surveying, cataloging, and organizing so many documents.  I was never more thrilled, more energized, and at the same time more tired than as the librarian for the abbey of San Gospellis at that wonderful time.

Two weeks later a cart rolled into our abbey. It contained precious glass panes.  That was a remarkable month. 

The only other item was a small psalter.  Oh, but it was so much more.  Knowing the collection as I do, I might actually trade the whole for that one little book. 

Singled out like it was, coming alone with the glazing, I immediately took it into the library and began to look through the little book.  It began as many personal psalters do, favorite passages copied in haste, I was stunned that I recognized the hand.  It was that of our founder, who’s writing filled many of the pages in our library.

That would have been a great treasure, to find this personal book of our founder, but fairly deep in that book began a journal of a fantastic odyssey. Perhaps you would not want to take the word of a copyist and librarian who was born near the abbey where he has lived almost all the days of his life. So you judge against your experience this tale and tell me if it does not rate the name odyssey and whether or not fantastical is a fitting description.

Malachi