Genre Collision--This Seriously Just Happened to Me!

(pictures are from Google Images, for your pleasure only)

I talk about the genre collision at the end. In the meantime, NOVEL UPDATE!

Repairs for the Blue Swan are well underway.

Brittany got to watch the crew at work while they repaired most of the ship with magic. That was fairly exciting for her and for me because I never considered including that scene in previous development of the story.
 

“All right, magicians! Begin!” came a shout from the beach.

Jack began muttering a slow stream of strange words. The low chant reminded Brittany of a Native American medicine man that had once visited her school and sang to them. Jack lifted his short arms slowly, and then began moving his hands, up and down and back and forth and in circles. Gold flames appeared in the air wherever his short fingers traced. Then more of the flames—pale gold, shimmering, not radiating heat, making zinging and zapping sounds—began to appear on the cliff against which the ship was leaning against, and they acted as a wedge which tipped the Blue Swan away from the rocks. On the sand, Eylon was making arm motions similar to Jack's, except much more dramatic. Brittany could see red flames the color of laffy taffy encircling the port side of the vessel, clamping onto the deck and the hull like a vise and then moving it away from the cliff. Small blue flames appeared, flickering at the prow and the stern of the ship, lifting the ends slightly. Circling

above, Minta gave a loud chirp.

“NOW BOYS, PULL!” came a shout from the beach. The animals began to pull on the ropes, guiding the ship as the conjured magic did the heavy work. The ship groaned loudly, and then slowly the masts began to tip over sideways and the hull, with much shattering and splitting, broke away from the rock.

Brittany gave a huge gasp. Then she ran inside to the living room. Jessie and Mickey were on the floor playing a game. Danny was on the armchair with his gameboy.

“Jessie! Mickey! Danny! Get outside! This is amazing!” Brittany shouted all at once. “They're moving the ship with magic!” The children looked at each other, then out the window at the moving ship, then jumped up and ran outside to watch. Mickey screamed.

“Whoa!” gasped Jessie.

“Unbelievable,” said Danny quietly.

Jack had stopped chanting. He smirked at the four Stevenes. “Hah, I bet you think you've seen everything now, eh?” He laughed. After being dragged twenty yards by magic across the beach, the magic flames vanished and the Blue Swan came to rest. The crew dropped their ropes at once and gave out a huge cheer.

 and that's just the part where the ship gets taken off the rocks! cool, eh?
She also got to put on a mini trumpet recital for Captain Eric and his brother Evan. Those two cats were fairly impressed. Eric applauded, even.

 So now the crew has come back into the babysitter's house and Brittany has gone outside, leaving us to the last scene of chapter 5, which I am looking forward to writing tomorrow. :)

But in the meantime, I am preparing for a poetry recital within the next week or two. I need to get my calendar for next month organized first, but sometime in early June I am going to read some of my poetry to my friends here in Provo. I'll publish more details as they develop.

I have been looking through my poetry files from over the years--dating back to high school--and finding lots of amazing stuff that I could share.

One weird thing I am finding is that some of the poems from the blue notebook, written within the last year, sound like they were written just a few weeks or months ago. They invoke a lot of situations I have been in. Although I decline to go into detail, sometimes I wonder, and I have good evidence to suspect, that maybe through writing poetry last year I was sort of predicting the future, or even writing them against future need (frankly I wish I'd known that).

Now this is the genre collision I was hinting at earlier: One small example of the poetry I have been considering is the poem Northern Lights, which I wrote down last year in my blue notebook.

The northern lights suddenly came

streaking over the mountain,

flashes of multicolored light

washed the hillside

in gold and pink, purple and green.

They were broken, dancing beams

that stretched and shrank

like slow, liquid lightning.

They cast bright-colored shadows

on the colorless lawn.

I ran to greet them there. 

(btw: the above picture is from APOD, which I highly recommend)

the whole point of writing down this poem in the first place was to capture a daydream moment I had been having for the past few weeks. But now that I have found it and re-typed it, it sort of reminds me of my novel (in a less freakish than some of my other poetry reminds me of my life ;) ).

 Since Revunia is so far to the north, it seems only appropriate that the northern lights would appear, perhaps while Brittany Stevens is sailing there or during the festival nights after its liberation from the goblins.

 Revunia is a little island way to the north, you see, between the very end of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska and the coast of Siberia (eastern Russia). This is an interesting development because I have never considered throwing the auroras into Northern Warriors before. I will definitely think on it! :D

On Joining an Extraordinary Journey

I have been working on this novel since I was in middle school. I had nothing to do during study hall one day, so I got out a sheet of paper and started jotting down ideas for an adventure story. In the original story, Brittany joins the quest for Revunia after randomly meeting the crew of the Blue Swan on the beach. As the story has evolved, however, Brittany's first meeting with the crew has become much more dramatic.On a dark and stormy night at her babysitter Ellie's house, with her younger siblings...

...there was a loud gust of wind on the outside, a gust so strong that Brittany feared the wall of the house would blow off. She immediately thought of scenes from disaster movies where houses blew apart. And suddenly there was a loud, roaring crunching noise—but it was not from the house. It sounded like it was coming from the beach. And almost as suddenly as the noise began, it stopped.

“That wasn't thunder,” said Danny.

“No, it wasn't,” Ellie affirmed, glancing nervously at her front door.

There was only the howling of the wind for a few moments, but suddenly it was joined by other

noises. There was panicked shouting and yelling and groaning at first. And then there were animal-like noises, barks and squeals and moans.

“What was that?” asked Jessie.

Ellie walked toward the front door, slowly and with trepidation.

“No idea,” said Brittany.

“No kidding,” added Danny.

And suddenly, there was a very loud, deep bark, and it sounded closer to the house. Ellie's eyes widened with amazement.

“I'd know that bark anywhere,” she said, her tense voice almost a whisper. She flew to the front door and slipped on her jacket and rain boots. 

The bark that Ellie recognizes is that of a dog that once lived with her. She goes outside to bring him in and invite his friends to enter her house. Brittany follows her outside and sees the crew of the Blue Swan, mostly talking animals, abandoning ship for the safety of their house. When she returns, she finds this scene in the living room:

Across the living room were scattered various animals, all muddy and wet from the storm, and—strangely enough—all talking and laughing like humans. A fire had been lit in the fireplace, but to Brittany's amazement it burned without wood. Brittany saw two cats, both black and white, seated in front of the fire, along with a short yellow creature she thought could be a gopher, a duck, a small golden mouse, and a large bobcat with tough-looking scars and two belts crossed across its back. On the couch on the far living-room wall sat two large penguins, chattering away in their strange accents. A large rodent of some type, perhaps a ferret, was slumped on the seat of the armchair, dozing in the middle of the noisy crowd. Two dogs, a golden retriever and a basset hound, sat in the middle of the living room, receiving tickle treatments from Jessie and Mickey, who both screamed with delight as they were licked and coddled in return. Ellie sat on the couch to the right beside a raccoon, wiping down a third dog with a towel, this one a large hound dog that looked old and wrinkly.

“How is it you got on that ship, anyhow?” Ellie was asking the dog as she rubbed the towel across its shoulders.

“I'm a member of the crew, Mrs. Dingle,” the dog answered in a slow, deep voice. “I have been a-working for Cap'n Eric since two year ago last August. I took to the sea to have a job, ma'am.”

Later, the ship's officers hold a meeting to explain their situation to the confused mortals. Eric and Evan, brothers and both tabby cats, discuss their quest to the kingdom of Revunia.

Eric took the cue. “We are en route to the wizard nation of Revunia, an island kingdom in the northern Pacific that has been taken over by goblins from the Aleutian islands.”

“You don't say,” said Ellie. 

Brittany raised an eyebrow. “But I've never heard of that place,” she asked. “Is it even real?”

 ... 

“Revunia's capital is one of my ports of call. Or was, before the goblins took over. I have not gone back there for three years. The goblin invasion took place because of corrupt leaders in the government who were disagreeing on trade regulations and security measures with the Grand Prince, Orlando III. They invited the goblins to attack, and once they took over they ruined Revunia utterly.”

“The new government has used the goblins to suppress rebellion by force,” Evan commented. “And he goblins have pillaged everything since the invasion. Farmers couldn't plant crops because of the raiding, and the growing season that far north is so short anyway that there wasn't enough food to feed people. The goblin ships patrolling the seas near Revunia have burned every ship flying Revunian colors in truce, and since we carry that flag, well, we're not welcome there anymore.” 

...

“We are on our way with the fleet to Anchorage for a council of war,” said Eric. “And once we have come up with a strategy, we will launch an assault on the goblins and drive them out of Revunia.

And that is as far as I have gotten this week. Literally! 

And not to mention novel-writing is an exhausting process, one that delightfully entertains the mind but also drains the energy of muses deprived of their sleep...zzzzzzz...I have to say, Northern Warriors is one of my few novel ideas that has not been fueled by visions in the night. One can only hope that once the sun sets and the covers are over the head, the crew of the Blue Swan will find me and take me on the adventure.