I’ll start with an update on Nosehair. I spoke to Nemesis today! He was standing in the street, looking back and forth between Nosehair and another tree right across the street. I bucked up all my courage and asked Nemesis, “Are you going to cut down another one?”
“Thinking about it,” he replied with an evil twinkle in his eye.
“Who’s cutting them down?” I asked.
“The City,” he replied, and with that he leapt into his truck and sped away, no doubt to tell “The City” that someone is on to them.
Stay tuned for further updates.
OH, my title – Is it Ironic? Or Are They Just Drumming Up Business?
You tell me: I came close to being run over by a hearse today. *raises one eyebrow*
Just a quick update today for those of you who are following my sad little story. I was standing with my back to Nosehair when I took these pictures today so he wouldn’t see the final moments of his neighbour standing tall (though I think he could still see over my head).
You can see the large parts of the trunk falling. While compared to the news of the world this is really nothing, I find it sad when these old trees come down. We’ve lost a few in the last year. Hopefully Nosehair won’t be next.
Kira suggested yesterday that Charles might send over some of his Windemere characters to help out with Nosehair’s cause, to avoid becoming one of my newspapers. Charles?
I figured out why my friend the Ent is crying. It’s tragic. Ent (otherwise known as Nosehair) must have known already.
If you click on the picture you’ll see that I’ve drawn a diagram. At the left is my friend Nosehair. (He’s a long lost relative of Treebeard.) At the top right hand corner of the picture is our nemesis.
They’re cutting down Nosehair’s neighbour!!!
I plan to give Nosehair a hug tomorrow when I go on my paper route.
I feel like Snow White around here sometimes, minus the seven little miners.
Spring cleaning, for me, is not a companionless task. See the debris all over my deck? The blue jays sat on the edge of my roof yesterday and flung it from my eavestroughs, scrounging for insects in amongst the leftover leaves from the fall.
This morning I caught this mangy little guy nibbling on the scraps.
Found in a battered field notebook, these poems are the remnants of an expedition to the legendary Blatherhorn Vale. Cut off from human contact, the creatures of this mysterious land are nothing more than rumors. At this time, we cannot determine if these are true notes about unknown creatures or the ramblings of a madman. You be the judge.–Description from Goodreads Bestiary of Blatherhorn Vale by Charles E. Yallowitz
If you are a fan of fantasy and unique original creatures all told in poetic form, this book will be one you do not want to miss. Charles Yallowitz is known for his limitless imagination, and this is yet more proof that he is very good at his chosen craft.
The poems contained in this volume are well written and captivate the reader’s imagination completely. I spent my time while reading through this poetry imagining what these creatures looked like…
According to a blog post I read here at Brainsnorts the most important part about opening a novel is the first four sentences. So I decided to go to my bookshelf and pick up four novels at random and check it out, to see if there’s anything the first few sentences have in common in each book. These were my selections:
Standing Stones – The Best stories of John Metcalf
“Single Gents Only” (a short story)
After David had again wrested the heavy suitcase from his father’s obstinately polite grip and after he’d bought the ticket and assured his mother he wouldn’t lose it, the three of them stood in the echoing booking hall of the railway station. His mother was wearing a hat that looked like a pink felt Christmas pudding.
David knew that they appeared to others as obvious characters from a church-basement play. His father was trying to project affability or benevolence by moving his head in an almost imperceptible nodding motion while gazing with seeming approval at a Bovril advertisement.
This seems to me like a promising story. There is movement in it in the form of the fact that these people are going somewhere. The fact that the son takes the suitcase from his father tells me that he’s an adult. I want to know where they’re going. The description is good enough that I can imagine the scene easily.
The Marks of Cain by Tom Knox
Simon Quinn was listening to a young man describe how he’d sliced off his own thumb.
“And that,” said the man, “was the beginning of the end. I mean, cutting off your thumb, with a knife, that’s not nothing, is it? That’s serious shit. Cutting your own thumb off. Fucked my bowling.”
Okay, that was more than four sentences, but they were short ones. Shoot me. This opening is interesting. It doesn’t have much in the area of description, but how much description do we need? We can easily imagine the blood involved. Who is the man to Simon and why is he listening to such a horrific story? I want to know more.
It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Baird’s was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory. Mrs. Baird herself was squat and easygoing, and made no objection to Frank lining her tiny rose-sprigged parlor with the dozens of books and paper with which he always traveled.
I met Mrs. Baird in the front hall on my way out.
This opens very nicely indeed. The description is lush and from it we gather that Mrs. Baird is not going to be a central character, as we don’t get her first name from the narrator. Best of all, the very first sentence tells us that something mysterious will happen! Again, I want to read more!
I stare up through gaps in the sea-grass parasol at the bluest of skies, summer blue, Mediterranean blue, with a contented sigh. Christian is beside me, stretched out on a sun lounge. My husband – my hot, beautiful husband, shirtless and in cut-off jeans – is reading a book predicting the collapse of the Western banking system. By all accounts, it’s a page-turner.
Here we have two shades of blue and a good-looking man reading a boring book.
So. What do three of these openings have in common? Amazing descriptiveness, movement, action and/or gore and some element which makes us want to know more. What’s going to happen? Who are these people? Why are they; 1. in a train station; 2. cutting off their own thumbs; 3. staying in a place where someone is going to disappear?
And number 4? It tells us what not to do. By all accounts, it’s a page-turner. 😉
Thank you again to Brainsnorts for the idea for this post!
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