Read The Fine Print (if You Can)

writing!

Chapter 2 part 6 of my WIP novel with the work-in-progress title "The Crossing" is up. See @bennuma-crossing for the blog.

If anyone prefers reading long posts in blogger/blogspot format, see the following:

Was wishing there was a positivity post for original fiction writers since I see so many about how fanfic writers are doing so much for their communities even when they're not actively writing, and then I thought:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

So this is a positivity post for the writers out here who are working very hard on stories with no established community. Who can't talk about their blorbos and plot lines and brainstorming to anyone and expect them to know what any of it means. Who don't have much to share publicly, but are hoping they will one day.

You're doing a lot of hard work, and I recognize and appreciate what you're putting into the world, even when you're resting.

To everyone: please do not use my "asks" or any other way of messaging or mentioning me, in order to ask me to donate to you, or to help promote your donation requests.

1. If you genuinely need help and are not involved in a scam, I wish you all the best and pray that you can find real help, even if it isn't what you expect. HOWEVER...

2. I cannot reblog or otherwise promote any fundraising requests without first researching each and every single one, to determine not only whether the request is legitimate, but also whether or not a person requesting aid is using a legitimate site and not one that may be scamming them. I currently am mentally and emotionally unable to put in the time and effort required for such research, so therefore I can neither validate nor recommend any fundraising efforts from anyone.

3. I personally am unable to donate to anybody, because I simply do not have money. I myself am destitute and in need of funds. I cannot in good conscience attempt to compete with all the people who are simply asking for donations, but one day maybe if people wish to help support my writing, I hope to earn enough with it to get by.

Please don't anyone hold this against me; it doesn't mean that I don't care, and it does not mean that I think everyone is scamming, and it does not mean I am against people trying to raise funds for their families or other causes. I'm just stating what my limits currently are, and why it is wasted effort for anyone to ask me to donate or to help them promote their fundraising.

Because @haleywhaley2797 's response was amusing, and so are cosmic rainbow cats. :D

In response to @haleywhaley2797 's comment on the "Read the Fine Print (if you can) writing prompt posted in @voice-of-bennuma wherein it was suggested that when an artist drank an unknown potion and was about to be possessed.... it was a cat that was summoned who desired tuna, tuna art.

"The looming cosmic psychedelic hyperdimensional galactic space kitty has caught you spying. What will you do?"

...maybe someday I might draw a better looming space kitty... this quick doodle doesn't do justice to how it looks in my head, ha.

(mixed media; was pencil sketched and then drawn over with size S pitt artist pen and colored with metallic color permanent marker pens, colored sharpies, and colored pencils (crayola). Slight digital adjustments in color and contrast and cropped photo)

A Couple of Notes

In The Crossing (current WIP novel) I hesitate to refer to the camp of travelers as refugees or exiles, since although they left their home in order to escape war and being threatened (also raided, plundered, etc) by local armed forces and mercenary types... they weren't specifically evicted or told to leave, nor forced out because of their culture, race, beliefs, or any other such sort of thing. Not... directly.

It was more like, they wanted to remain peacefully neutral and not join the fighting, and being in small unfortified villages and hamlets in the countryside, they simply were easy targets for people who wanted to pick up supplies in quick raids... because of where they lived, and not because of who they were (except for their choice to be neutral). The survivors of the raids found these conditions intolerable, and decided to pack up and leave instead of moving to join any of the (sort of) neighboring fortified burgs that were at war with each other. This doesn't quite fit with a lot of what I read about current common definitions of 'refugees' and I don't wish to confuse people nor in any way minimize the plight of people in the real world on planet Earth who have become refugees or exiles because of their religion/beliefs, culture, ethnicity, or other sorts of differences. I also hesitate to refer to them as 'nomads' because although they have taken up a nomadic sort of existence, it is more of a temporary thing (they hope) like pilgrims or pioneers traveling out of necessity while they seek out a new home to settle in, and not an inherited, cultural way of life like I think the word 'nomad' usually denotes. Likewise, I don't want to refer to them as 'travelers' because it seems in some parts of Europe, that word (in English) specifically is used (perhaps as slang) to refer to the Romani people and their cultural way of life, which is also not what is going on in The Crossing. Sometimes in hash tags I am putting 'traveling people' because I am not sure what else to refer to their current nomadic sort of way of life as, since although they might accurately be referred to as a type of pioneers (in Bennuma) that term could also be confused with a specific time period and the geographic area of North America... and similar issues with the term 'pilgrims' exist, in addition to that term typically also designating having religious reasons for traveling, or 'making a pilgrimage'.

Perhaps eventually I might figure out what would be a term to use that I'd consider ideal, or at least acceptable. For now, it's something of a muddle to me.

Also note: regretfully, I cannot currently be sure to post updates to the Crossing WIP novel @bennuma-crossing according to a regular schedule (as also, the informational, sometimes-containing-short-stories, worldbuilding sort of background blog @legends-of-bennuma) but I am trying to do so without huge gaps in time between posts. After section 1.7 of The Crossing, I plan to get into what I currently consider to be chapter 2... the novel being more or less a first draft, someday after the thing is completed perhaps the novel will be divided differently chapter-wise, I don't know yet... admittedly I sometimes get in a muddle over where to make chapter divisions.

I know I have OCD issues...

...when I edit a tiny part of a larger section of writing for something small, but have to re-read over the entire thing several times in a row in order to check for typos; and the nagging feeling that I've missed one remains. This after having already done so many times back when the section was originally posted, and... also when it was originally written out prior to making a blog post for it.

best cupcake ever

Squishies!

BTW

...I have noticed the results of the poll I did before, asking about what Legends-of-Bennuma -related things people might like to see... I have put it next on my list for the Legends ( @legends-of-bennuma ), to write a bit (more?) about the geography of the world. Also, when I locate where I may have hidden my digital copies of Bennuma art somewhere down in my backup files, I will share some... and when I get more art, which I will eventually.

In the meantime, if anyone is interested, there's a short... episode(?) of my (original) fairy tales blog @onceuponasoup featuring further adventures of Duck.

Will do more writing when I can focus on it, have been having an extended difficult time with it, but absolutely not giving up.

This is how I always want to be.

(oops, so... I accidentally re-blogged this to my other blog, when I meant to send it here... so apologies for me being clumsy but I will try to delete it from the other one so I can keep my wip book blog uncluttered)

Warm torso, cold head.

Hi there!

Just a note by way of explanation...

I am going to be putting some stories and things on tumblr. I had originally started out using blogger, but decided to use tumblr also now for reasons too tedious to elaborate at the moment. When I have short stories to put online, there will be short stories to be found; however, most of the time when I plan to write a short story, it turns into a novel... when I plan a novel, it turns into a trilogy... when I plan a trilogy, it becomes a series... and series have a habit of turning into extended universes on me with alarming predictability.

The story I am mostly working on currently is The Crossing, and it takes place in one of the lives of my fantasy world Bennuma, beginning with a group of refugees in a part of the world without magic, in one of the earlier-ish ages of that life of the world, though not of the earliest ages. Eh, that would make more sense if you saw a chronology of the history of the world, ha. (as for that, my little blog on Legends of Bennuma is for historical notes, background, short stories, fables, tales, etc. regarding the world of Bennuma, written from the point of view of someone from that world)

The Crossing is a story that I decided to post online as I write it, and aside from having made some relatively minor edits recently to what had previously been on blogger (and has been updated there) is basically intended to be shared as what I consider to be a first draft...ish. It is one of my stories that originally was going to be a short story, but turned into a more complicated plot than the simple tale I planned at first, because it just grew that way. Although I have done a lot of work so far on the outline for the whole story, the actual writing out of it is pretty much still in the first chapter. I think it might turn out to be as long as a full novel or perhaps a multi-part thing... not sure yet.

I write slow, unfortunately, and cannot always post as much as entire chapters at a time; more like... scenes, or bits and pieces. Updates to be added roughly when I can; ideally I would like to do so once a week but it is difficult for many reasons. The first several bits I will likely post closer together until I get the blog caught up to how much has been posted to blogger previously. I am going to maintain the same length of posts as had been posted before instead of combining them, so any potential readers can get used to the idea of how long of sections of story bits may be normal, rather than anticipating that updates would be as long as all of what has been written so far together. Same also for the Legends of Bennuma.

Also, eventually, when I work on other stories/books, each novel-length (or longer) will likely have its own blog, and any short stories that are NOT from the world of Bennuma, I’ll put in another blog (ie, not with the shorts in the Legends of Bennuma) ...whether fantasy or sci-fi or whatever.

I think that’s all from me for now by way of introduction, so I say again, hello!

P.S. ~the “D.L.” in “D.L. Lane” may be optionally pronounced as “del”