A Reprise

Impulsively I dove into the glacial lake and swum vigorously. "What are you doing?" Raven shouted. I shook water droplets from my hair and laughed. I felt free and wildly alive in a way I never had imagined I would in this place. Everything was beautiful. Raven was beautiful. His hair was long and black, his skin ivory-pale, hard, and stretched scarce across the bones of his face. Funny I had never really thought of him this way before. I had held him in awe as our leader: his beauty was cold and harsh. Now a light crept into his eyes. Dared I believe my antics amused him? I rose from the chilly water. It streamed around me in dozens of rivulets, thrilling me with the icy touch of wet and wind. He stared as I waded toward him.

If anyone ever wants to know what are my two greatest influences as a writer, they are: The King of the Castle , by Victoria Holt, and Morwenna , by Anne Goring. They are the two first gothic romance novels I ever read, at an age when I knew nothing about the genre. I may have read books since those that are "better," but being the first, they touched my heart with wonder and inspiration so that I absorbed ever detail. I read Morwenna when I was in the fourth grade . That seems like an age ago, but I remember distinctly the afternoons recesses I spent on the playground reading. As a book it was too advanced for me, but my mind recorded strong impressions from it, high emotions that I have since imparted into my writing. Both books found me in mysterious ways. I would never, ever think of getting rid of either of them. They are like spiritual objects for me. If I realize I've forgotten the plot of one, I read it again-- and I've read each of them several times. I real...

"I used to wish that I could see pictures with my hands as I do statues, but now I do not often think about it because my dear Father has filled my mind with beautiful pictures, even of things I cannot see. If the light were not in your eyes, dear Mr. Brooks, you would understand better how happy your little Helen was when her teacher explained to her that the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart." Helen Keller to Rev. Phillip Brooks, June 8, 1891

We met this way for a while. I did not give Gauvain the slightest indication of how I spent my afternoons. I had long been accustomed to my freedom, and he did not think to question it now. Oskar took care to avoid me on any other occasion than our meeting at the summerhouse. Our friendship was innocent; yet I feared Gauvain would disapprove and take him from me, as our mother once had. When I was not with Oskar, I kept my daily piano-practice and occasional meetings with tutors and the doctor. He noted my improvement, told Gauvain I was getting exercise, and that I ought to keep my present routine. Gauvain was gratified, and I was elated—I knew he would not keep me from wandering wherever I would. I felt deeply that I deceived my brother, and should he learn the true nature of my wanderings in the wood, he would be smote, and the bond between us disengaged forever. One morning tucked beneath my breakfast plate was a letter from Oskar, which changed the nature of feelings between us fo...

I have been feeling anxiety about flying, and this site has helped. I am quitting at Lesson 2 tonight because I'm too tired to pay any more attention, but I plan on taking this up again tomorrow. I already feel calmer and more confident. I also got bored from it and started making a new Livejournal icon and coming up with a new name, so I know I can't be feeling that bad.

Due to our leader’s ambition we traveled too far. We must be long past the Northwest Passage, past Quebec, past all known civilization in a world of snow and ice whose power lie not in resource, but in intimidation. Stark fear overwhelmed me as I beheld for the first time the black rocks streaked with white. Our ship skimmed slowly and relentlessly toward a perilously rocky shore. I wanted to beg a halt to the proceedings, but I was a mere particle in the complicated network of our society. The barren taiga gradually emerging in the mist promised no sustaining nourishment, nor relief from the pervading cold. We were to be sacrificed to our leader’s ambition. I kept my mutinous thoughts to myself as I watched men preparing to anchor the ship.

I posed a question to Yahoo! Answers here . So far Tina's answer is best. Those others don't sound correct. I believe my use described falls under Fair Use. It's not plaigarism to display someone else's work as their own; and depending on the publisher or author's response, one might not have to pay a royalty, especially for old work in a non-profit situation. I finally finished typing up A Strange Land today. I had no idea I wrote so much of the novel out. I have no memory of doing this. I dimly remember sitting at my desk and writing, but it seems like it couldn't have been for the several hours it took to laboriously hand-write this draft. I started a second draft of it-- typing it that time, but never got past the first chapter. I'm impressed by how much I knew back then, and aghast by how much I didn't know. My understanding of Islamic culture was book-based only; whatever wasn't mentioned in my books I didn't know. I appreciate that a Wor...

Rewritten in 2004 from my original manuscript, A Strange Land . Chapter One Fatimah schooled herself from tears and pulled herself up to the dignity befitting her station. She stared at the oppressing crowd with a sense of triumph glowing in her eyes. Her fisted hand trembled as though it held a lightning bolt. In truth Fatimah was conquered and humiliated, but inward pride kept her from resigning her spirit to the auction block. She glanced sideways at the other slaves. Some of their faces were angry, some tear-marked and resigned. It made Fatimah tremble with rage. She was bought. Marcus Vernaducci, a purchaser who often came to auctions, assessed her briefly, liked her, and bought her for substantial gold from her slaver, who was well-pleased by the patronage of one of the wealthiest plantation owners in the New World. Some of the other slaves shouted at Fatimah in Arabic as her owner led her down the auction block on a rope. ...

I have been experiencing enormous wildlife problems since my lifestyle change. So far, we've found a scorpion in the house; a band of raccoons stole all the bread I left on the porch for the birds last night, and had the nerve to come to the glass to look at us in the living room. This morning tops it off though. Just now some squirrels were fighting on the porch and crashed into our screen, nearly toppling it. This threw Henry into a frenzy, from which he has still not recovered-- and I closed the door immediately. These animals treat our porch just like it's their tree or den. What's up with that? And they are not nearly as afraid of us as they ought to be. I thought I missed the country, but right now I don't think I'd be much closer to nature in a log cabin, or even a tent.

For the most part I feel very embarrassed going through my old writing, especially the writing I did by hand. My huge, round handwriting in mostly purple ink looks so gauche, and some of the things I wrote are mortifying. I feel a stubbornness, however, about maintaining my old work. It's almost an affirmation to myself. I know the things I write now will seem stupid and inexperienced twenty years from now. How will I feel knowing forty-seven year old Amanda may carelessly toss out these journals and files on which I have poured my heart's blood? (Forty-seven year old Amanda...) I can't write with true faith in that case. Rather than keep the embarrassing papers around, however, I am typing it all up. I type fast, so it goes quickly and gives me a chance to re-read these old notes as I go. I find once it's all typed up, it doesn't look nearly as dumb. Some of it is even clever. Like my Turkey Encyclopedia. I was enamored with the Ottoman Empire in my adolescence and...

My planned tasks got taken over today by my passion to build a Zebra gothic database. A few years ago I started a list which today I converted to Excel and expanded-- and I am still adding titles. I developed a passion for these books when they first came out. I remember seeing them in Murder by the Book, a book store I frequented with my aunt in the early 1990's. She was only too willing to buy me any mystery novel I liked-- but I had never succeeded in replicating her taste for mysteries, and my fancy strayed instead to these florid, dramatic covers. My aunt refused to buy me any-- little did she know she was fanning the flames of my deep passion for gothic romance, which has far eclipsed my interest in any other genre fiction. When the Zebra gothics appeared on the secondhand market years later, I collected and read through them rapidly. I did not appreciate the fact that as years advanced, they would grow scarce. Unlike the 1970's gothics, these books have no collectible va...

...is far more erotic than mine. I bow to a master.

Everything favoured my journey. The balloon rose about half a mile from the earth, and with a favourable wind it hurried through the air, its feathered vans cleaving the unopposing atmosphere. Notwithstanding the melancholy object of my journey, my spirits were exhilarated by reviving hope, by the swift motion of the airy pinnace, and the balmy visitation of the sunny air. The pilot hardly moved the plumed steerage, and the slender mechanism of the wings, wide unfurled, gave forth a murmuring noise, soothing to the sense. Plain and hill, stream and corn-field, were discernible below, while we unimpeded sped on swift and secure, as a wild swan in his spring-tide flight. The machine obeyed the slightest motion of the helm; and, the wind blowing steadily, there was no let or obstacle to our course. Such was the power of man over the elements; a power long sought, and lately won; yet foretold in by-gone time by the prince of poets, whose verses I quoted much to the astonishment of my pilot...

I traveled exhaustively to Dunkeld, all the while Lord Raymond’s words ringing in my ears. Mad… It couldn’t be true. Adrian’s mind was a temple of virtues, strength not the least. How could he have shaped me from the roaming beast I was once, if not with intractable strength? His logic was impenetrable, his philosophies sublime. Destitute, heartbroken… perhaps, but mad, never. The lady Evadne had left his heart a wasteland with her evasion and preference for one so ill-formed as Lord Raymond. Yet I reminded myself this wreck was now the mate of my beloved Perdita. A brother of mine, in fact. If I were true to myself I would admit that Lord Raymond completed Perdita, whom I had long despaired of finding perfect happiness in another. Adrian had once tamed my wildness; but no one had tamed Perdita, nor had she found solace in the company of another till she met Lord Raymond. Perhaps his half-wildness would content her. My once-fervor for the Lady Idris now fell away as I felt myself close...

“You will find him at Dunkeld; gentle and tractable he wanders up the hills, and through the wood, or sits listening beside the waterfall. You may see him--his hair stuck with wild flowers--his eyes full of untraceable meaning--his voice broken--his person wasted to a shadow. He plucks flowers and weeds, and weaves chaplets of them, or sails yellow leaves and bits of bark on the stream, rejoicing in their safety, or weeping at their wreck.” From The Last Man “…the poet would take a fleet of paper boats, prepared for him by Mary, to sail in the pond, or he would twist paper up to serve the purpose--it must have been a relaxation from his projects of Reform.” From Mrs. Shelley I have not read past this portion of The Last Man , but the description of the exiled Earl in his madness reminded me poignantly of Ophelia. The narrator, Lionel, is about to embark on a quest to restore the Earl, who is rumored to be held captive. Lionel was formerly a ruffian restored to goodness by Adrian’s bene...

If I ever become an English professor, one of my first tasks will be to refocus literature, especially fantasy literature, to the great early novels. I don't understand why The Last Man lies in obscurity. It's a compelling novel I can't stop reading. It invents science fiction fantasy. It's so cinematic I could write the screenplay myself. To say I like it better than Frankenstein is an understatement. I find myself thinking of Adrian and Lionel, Perdita, Idris, like fragments of Mary Shelley's life in a mixed-up dream world. It's what I always wanted a futuristic novel to be.

Yesterday we set Arthur free. We opened the cage: it took a while for him to come out. Once he did so, he flew directly into the trees till we couldn't see him anymore-- no hesitation. I'm glad he's gone. He hasn't become more discontent: only that he has never settled into his cage. Wherever he is and whatever happens to him, I know he's far happier than when caged.

I was only beginning to understand the attributes on which I, imperfect and unworthy creature, had been bestowed. All who saw me swore I was perfect loveliness. Gauvain, now my champion, claimed my beauty to be remarkable and I, bewildered as I was mute and disabled, could only accept the compliments and fealty with bewilderment. It was not till I saw Oskar once more that I loved. Then I looked into the mirror with changed eyes, anxious to please his gaze. He came to the castle looking for work. My brother assigned him to the winery. The old winemaster needed replacement and was anxious to confer his trade while he still retained strength. Oskar worked intently. There was a hard, near cruel determination in his face that affected me keenly. I little knew the same determination was writ on my features time to time, and derived from the same paternal source. Days passed, and he never came near the house. Could it be that he had forgotten me? I contrived to make myself known to him....

I was faced with a mask of death, and I did not cower from it. I did not shun it: instead death became a companion for me, an instigator, for with each breath I took I was compelled to grasp more and more of life. My former perspective fell away. Others thought I was changed, but I felt for the first time as though I commanded myself. I discarded all conventions and rules. I would do what I wanted to do. I have always had a secret love for wickedness, which perhaps lends credibility to the wrongful acts I have knowingly committed. Yet in the face of death I cannot say any repentance for them. My outcome would be the same; I would still lay slowly dying whether or no I had ventured to these lonely but alluring precipices. When I was very young, there was a boy who was called upon to push my chair. Any reluctance a boy would feel to be at the disposal of one of the sex who, at his age, must have seemed alien and repulsive, was concealed in a face full of Christian love and duty. He ...

I dreamed of snakes last night. One, and two, all around Nathan and I. We held hands and tried to move between them. Several of them were coral snakes and king snakes. We tried desperately to tell the difference between them. Then we realized we were barefoot. Red and black, friend to Jack, I recited, then realized most of the snakes in question were coral snakes.

I bought some things from Vermont Trading Co. last night: popcorn plisse bedspread and shams with satin champagne ruffle, a Betty Crocker meals for two cookbook and a cobblerette apron. I realized yesterday that I have a lot of aprons: two made by me, one made by mother and one made by great-grandmother, one from Cafe de France (belongs to Nathan) and the cobblerette coming in. I have plans to display all of them. I also realized that I know more about aprons, and refect on aprons, probably more than the average human. Country Style advocates one "finding" oneself collecting things. Can it be that I am an apron connoisseur? I have been forming what I call my transitory schedule. I am entering a bridge of time to reflect and reconnect with my true desires. However, I intend most of this time to be spent organizing our home to its optimum, ridding our closets of all that is unnecessary to our existence, selling many things, and creating new systems to filter incoming items. Eve...

I finished Mrs. Shelley at lunch today, excellent. I feel like I am more intimate with the Shelleys than just about any living person on earth, thanks to my extensive reading. I have not been able to define the source of my fascination, and so it seems to continue as I complete Shelley's correspondence, and begin Mary's novel, The Last Man.