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