VLC Photo: From Production to Promotion

An iconic location in Margaret Stohl’s (@mstohl) upcoming Icons. It’s even on the cover! Pick up the book tomorrow, May 7th and check out Margaret on tour to find out why this place is important! 

Writing prompt #2!

SO I did this writing prompt thing a few weeks a go and thought I’d do it again. It was so much fun and I wanted to do it again. 

So here’s the rules:

• Reblog it
• Give it  a title
• Tell us what you think the story would be about…

The writing prompt from my fave 3am Epiphany: 

Russian Doll in Reverse:

Start your story with a specific detail or image and move out  gradually toward a set of generalizations. In other words, move from the specific to the general. 

I’m starting a new thing….

I used to do this on my review blog ages ago so my dear friend Laurel decided to remind me of this cool idea. 

So, (if I can manage) every week I’ll post a photo (probably mine because why not?) and the object of this game is to 

• Reblog it
• Give it  a title
• Tell us what you think the story would be about…

For example, Laurel had this to offer for this one:

I think it’s a paranormal shipwreck story, and she’s a siren. Maybe the boy has a way off the island, but doesn’t want to leave, because of this ethereal creature he’s fallen for. And she knows she should let him go, but doesn’t want to be lonely again. ANd/or she’s a sort of Ariadne character, and it’s called Lure.

or

It’s a mashup of the Tempest, and she’s Ariel, and the book is called These Yellow Sands.”

In fact, I might make this into a writing prompt, so with it, here’s an exercise to get you writing your own story…

I love using “3am Epiphany” by Brian Kitely for writing prompts. Here’s one fun one:

Write a short scene -200-300 words. Leave a gap and skip ahead to another short scene with the same characters you were studying before the gap.  Make this gap a mystery or an emptiness —you yourself should not necessarily know what has happened?

HAVE FUN! Can’t wait to see what you come up with! 

From WIP #2: First Line

“Orly was not to be touched under any circumstance. Her aunt, the Queen, had explicit instruction on the matter of her being. Men had been beheaded for disobeying that one rule. Though that didn’t stop them from trying.” 

From WIP #2: Ch 5

Little could warm Orly up in the morning. It wasn’t just the cold and the fog that were pressing up against her as they rode out of town. It wasn’t the wind that whipped at their heels. It wasn’t even the knowledge that they were being followed. It was the nightmares that still bled through Orly’s skin. The nightmares that would chase her wherever she went. 

I started WIP#2. And sadly, I like it. So while I wait for notes on WIP #1, I’ll try to get some of this one done because it’s been haunting me and I’ve been obsessing over it. 

Here’s the first line: 

“I was not to be awoken under any circumstance.”

Mini Excerpt from WIP: Unseen

Something had gotten her parents wound tight and itching with impatience and anxiety. And worst of all, it wasn’t helping Sia’ own anxiety over the boy who might have seen her. And the rules she would be breaking if he had. A human boy who’d seen an Unseen

Have I told you I finished my first draft? So didn’t think I could do it when I started it.  Now at least I know I can sit down and do it again, because lord knows, this one is probably god awful and should not see the light of day.

My writing darkroom

Not many people will look at a school assignment and get excited. I usually didn’t with papers or reports but I always seemed to get excited with most of photography assignments. 

Naturally there are those “take your camera and photograph the same thing every hour to see how light effects it” assignments that just made me bleed out of eyes in boredom but the one where I got to learn something new, tr something different and explore something fun always seemed. 

I have been doing photography since sophomore year in High School. I remember the first time we holed ourselves in the darkroom to play with exposed paper from our pinhole cameras. Sometimes it felt like you were alone with your work, in a quiet space that reflected much on how your mind was at that moment —deep in creativity and imagination. A place I learned to love and seek. A place that was quiet, a tad dark, and very much my own where I could let it run free with the shittiest ideas and sometimes ones that surprisingly panned out OK. 

I found those moments frequently in college when I began exploring photography in other mediums, even video. Even with book trailers, when I get to stretch my creative muscles and do something fun. But for the past almost 9 years I’ve been doing photography and sometimes you need to stretch your creative muscles in a different direction. 

I didn’t realize that’s what I’ve been doing when I started this little writing venture. I didn’t know I was seeking my new darkroom where I can develop new kinds of images. I’ve noticed that I look forward to it. That I enjoy it. And it’s hard as hell, much like my first photo class was, but I relish in the moment of learning.

I’ve gotten some notes. I’ve read some blogs. I’ve soldier on. And  love it. It’s shitty. It’s wrong in so many places. But printing a photo in the darkroom sometimes took hours. Days even. And those were some of m favorite moments. 

When pure exhaustion consumes your, your mind is dwindling, and you leave completely happy. Even if you didn’t get it right.

Thankfully,  my photography ‘darkroom’ isn’t too far away. 

I finally hit 20K!!!

I’ve had a few days this week that I just haven’t been able to write but after tonight, after hitting that 20K, and finding a surprise revelation…I finally feel thrilled with this WIP again! 

So… here’s my last line:

“She was unsure why that name rolled off her tongue so easily and with such familiarity but she held onto it—tucking it away.”

No Kiss Blogfest - A scene from my WIP

So, I had this idea a while ago for a story. And I really didn’t know I could do it, in fact I rebelled against it. But by the time I knew it, it was haunting me.  A month later and 13K+ words this idea isn’t letting me go.

So when my author buddy Frankie Diane Mills told me about her 3rd annual No Kiss Blogfest, I thought, “hey why, not?”

So, I am going to share with you an almost smoochie scene.  Be gentle with me, readers.

The branches parted for her, leading her way through the thick walls of forestry. The woods held her hand and guided her in, and through and to him  The wind carried her. The beaten paths un-curved and roots retreated back into the ground easing her way.  Sia found herself by the bend in the river. The water licking her way up the shore and up Alden’s legs that were dipped into the edges of the water.

The sun was retreating behind the hills —wrapping itself in its own personal blanket. Reading the land for sleep as well as it darkened. Alden would have only a few more moments left to draw and she hated to interrupt him. He looked so beautiful with a sketchpad in hand, his teeth biting his lower lip in concentration.

She knew he wouldn’t hear her, even without her invisibility. He wouldn’t hear her feet shuffle on the ground. He wouldn’t hear her heavy breathing from the hike over the hills to the river. He was too far gone into his masterpiece to notice.

She walked behind him and took off the spell. She leaned over him and whispered, knowing this he would hear.

“Draw me.” She whispered, her breath hot on his ear. He hadn’t heard her approach so he stiffened but didn’t move to turn.  He just tilted his head back to look at her  bending over him.

So close that he could have touched her.

 So close that he could have felt her breath on his face.

So close that they could have kissed.

But instead Sia heard his pencil move as it scratched its way up and down the paper. The pencil moved circles and lines across the page.  But his eyes never strayed from her. They just raked over her face, memorizing her features. Sia didn’t dare move her body from the close proximity to his. She just placed her hand on his shoulder to brace herself and closed her eyes. She could almost feel his eyes on her. This close she could feel his body’s pull to hers.

He licked his lips, “Don’t move,” was all he said as the  sun fell and the night cloaked them further into darkness. Unable to touch her –yet  –only being able to draw her on his page. A page he could touch.

Sia resisted the urge to touch him. Though it would futile. She wouldn’t feel him for a few more days. She wanted to put her hands in his hair. To pull him into her. To have his mouth hot on hers.

It was such a painful ache  that she tried to quench it —ignore it, hide it —as Alden drew in the dark, his eyes never leaving her. Eyes that sought out her secrets. Her thoughts. Her whole being. He wanted to find her.

But Sia wasn’t ready for that. “Alden, we must stop. It’s too dark for you to even see the page.”

“Nonesense.” He wouldn’t be deterred so easily.

So Sia flopped in his lap, encircling his neck in her arms. Finally getting close to him.

“You are such a distraction,” he laughed.

“A good distraction, I hope.”

“Definitely good.” He nuzzled her neck. Wishing he could feel her. They had this gravitational pull two bodies had when skin was next to skin but the feeling of the touch was lost. A fathom of a caress. 

Sia hummed in his ear. Content to just be there with him. In his arms.

“Alden…” He looked up at her with eyes that shone for her. Even in the dark.

She kissed him.

But like the empty way one falls in a dream so was her kiss. Seen. Heard. But not felt.

Only emptiness.

Unfeeling.

(Source: vlcphoto.net)