Dear US press,

your president receives the Nobel Peace Prize and you have nothing better to do than to whinge about it?

Please die.

Chapter 3 of Hope is the Thing with Feathers is up at FFN. It's a miracle I finished another chapter considering my schedule of the last few weeks, but I'm happy. I really like this story and now I finally get to work on the interesting chapters. Several more to go until I get to the smut, though. Alas.

I am nearly done with the third chapter of Hope. I wrote around 2500 words today. It's amazing how easily things flow when you treat writing as work instead of waiting for a muse or expecting to produce great art.

I will let the chapter sit for a day or two, then I'll have another look and polish it some. At the moment it clocks in at 4967 words, but it will grow to over 5000 before I'm satisfied. It's a bit of a transitional chapter but it's still important, and I have to be careful that I don't rush scenes just because I want to get them over with.

The word count for August has reached 14544/16000 words. Today I wrote around 900 words, yesterday around 1000 (I think), with the progress evenly divided between chapters four and five of Hope. 

Also, now I know exactly what the jewel did to Kagome, and Sesshoumaru finds out for sure in chapter five -- most of which Kagome spends in an abject state of embarrassment, poor girl. And I sort of know what Sesshoumaru was up to in Greece, and what happened the time he thought he had an appointment with a houri, only to be captured by a witch princess instead. Good times.

Worked some more on Hope today. I wrote 1146 words of chapter four (which is not the one I should be working on right now). My progress on chapter three, meanwhile, looks something like this:

~

Sesshoumaru: "I heard you were dying. Of consumption. Had I known my absence would affect you so, I would have thrown you over my shoulder and carried you off to my lair insisted you accompany me right away."

Kagome (embarrassed): "Oh god. Who told you…" (turns to friends) "You planned this! Traitors!"

Miroku (placatingly): "Now, now, Kagome-sama…"

Kagome: "I'm not consumptive! I'm just a little depressed!" (to Sesshoumaru:) "And it's definitely not because of your absence, you insufferable egomaniac!"

Miroku: "Come, Kagome-sama, a youkai of Sesshoumaru-sama's great power is entitled to a big… ego. Aaanyway, now that Sesshoumaru-sama's here, you can go back with him to his beautiful fortress. I'm sure you'll perk right up in his esteemed company."

Kagome: "Did everybody know he was coming?"

Sango (sheepish): "Not everybody…"

Inuyasha: "Stop making such a fuss. The asshole came down all the way here. He even brought the brat. The least you can do is go back with him so I can bone Kikyo properly again. She's a lot kinkier when you're not around."

Kagome: "I want my mama."

~

As you can see, this chapter will be a while. Although I just might keep some of the dialogue.

P.S. I made an icon. That's how serious I am about this story.

Wrote 1700 words today. Go me.

That's 12370 / 16000 words for August.

Progress on Hope is the Thing with Feathers

Chapter 1: The Wish	word count: 2047 / 2047 (complete)
Chapter 2: The Long Goodbye	word count: 5783 / 5500 (complete)
Chapter 3: Accustomed to the Dark	word count: 5369/ 5000 (complete)
Chapter 4: Language Lessons	word count: 1146/?
Chapter 5: The Snowy Gleam of Plenty	word count: 878/?
Chapter 6: World Enough, and Time	word count: 95/?
Chapter 7: Lascivious Velvet	word count: 3398 / ?
Chapter 8: Double, Double Toil and Trouble	word count: ? / ?
Chapter 9: Before, Behind, Between, Above, Below	word count: 619 / ? (as of September 22nd 2009)
Chapter 10: Two Halves of a Miracle	word count: ? / ?

Here, you can monitor the progress of my newest Inuyasha fanfic. This way, even if I don't get to update the story very often, people know what's going on. :)

Completed chapters are marked in italics, the one that's currently in the works is marked blue, and I might write some more out of continuity now and then -- those chapters will also be marked in color.

I've started a new Inuyasha story -- yes, I know -- at FFN:

Title: Hope is the Thing with Feathers
Summary: Even in her darkest moments, Kagome never lost hope. Even in his darkest moments, Sesshoumaru never had it. But convictions falter and certainties are shattered when the jewel forces them into an unexpected moment of intimacy. AU. SK.

It's the altered and extended fanfiction version of Etchings. I enjoy writing it. In fact, I enjoy it so much that I already have 10.000 words under my belt (not totally in sequence, alas) and have even unearthed my revisions of Serendipity alongside it. Now that's enthusiasm.

It's not really a proper short story, more an extended snippet relating the events in page four and five of Etchings (see previous posts) in more detail.

A note  for those on my flist who are not familiar with Inuyasha: Jaken is Sesshoumaru's servant. He is a small, irascible, wrinkled toad demon.

Anyway, on with the story. It's unbetaed and possibly a little rushed. I can't really tell at the moment.


( In truth, Sesshoumaru was doubtful whether stomping down the halls with a lit lantern and an accelerated heartbeat could be rightfully called sneaking, but the intent was plain, even though the execution was abysmal. )

The pic at DeviantArt.

*ETA ...And of course I forgot that because of mature content, this won't be visible to non-DA members. Here's the LJ image (under the cut):


( In which there is snogging, and Kagome's jammies die a swift and honorable death. )

Etchings page 3, page 4 and a preview of page 5 respectively:


      

... And here's page 2:
Had a lot of fun doing this one. ♥

PIcked up drawing again yesterday. Don't ask me why -- it just came over me. I found an old Sesshoumaru/Kagome story I'd started but never posted and decided to color it. Here's the result:




The first page is as always boring. It gets better though. I haven't been so excited about anything in ages. Knowing me, I'm not sure how long it'll last, but at least I took the time to do something fun again, just for myself. I haven't done that in too long.

Home sick today. I'm having to run to the bathroom every hour or so. Ugh. I particularly dislike the dry heaving.

And yet, I am still hoping to get some work done later today. We'll see how that goes.

I'm totally in love with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

That's all.

I've been away from this journal for a long time, partly because I wanted to reduce my internet time, and partly because real life didn't stop being busy. It's been busy in a good way though, so who am I to complain?

Over the last few months, L. and I have been busy looking for a new place since the barely 50 qm of our old flat were getting a little cramped. It's been okay while we were still students, but we both work now, and we wanted something a bit more spacious. In October we got lucky and found an apartment close to the university at a bargain price. The negotiations (and talks with the bank plus getting the paperwork ready and making sure the flat wasn't being inhabited by goblins after all) went on for ages, but I am happy to report that since March 1st, we can call ourselves home-owners. Well, once we've paid off the mortgage that is.


With all this and work and dancing I haven't had a lot of time for other stuff. I haven't done any drawing in months (except for a bit of involuntary doodling here and there) and it's already two months ago that I've written anything. I've been too tired to miss it, but I expect I will eventually. And I also expect I'll do something about it once we've moved and settled in.

Been ill for a while -- the monthly blessing of all non-pregnant females decided that a week of torture was not enough, so it stuck around for two months.  In the end it took me ages to get my circulation up and running enough so I could leave the bed in the morning. Not fun. The doctor had no idea where it came from, so I'm glad it decided to get back to normal on its own.

It's okay now though. I'm taking everything a little slower, including work. I've also started exercising again -- really carefully. I tend to get lightheaded pretty quick. I should probably be outside in the fresh air more often, but it's very cold outside. Right now I prefer sitting with a cup of tea in front of the computer to freezing my ass off.

A recap of my work week in terms of fitness/exercise:

Mo	1 hour of non-stop dancing, 20 mins strength training
Tue	3 hours dance training
Wed	-- break --
Thu	40 mins dancing (with a lot of boxing and lunges mixed in), 20 mins strength training
Fr	50 mins dancing, jumping and boxing, 20 mins strength training -- mainly abs, butt and back

Today I'm taking a break again. I'm still pretty sore from yesterday's exercise session, which was my most intense yet. Tomorrow I'm planning to do at least another hour of dancing. If everything goes well I'll be able to extend the exercise to six days a week.  It would have been too much to start with, though. I'm pretty exhausted as it is.

As far as weight/body shape goes I lost two pounds this week and 1.6 waistline inches over the last two weeks.

As you might know from my previous rant, I have decided to get back in shape. This includes daily workouts of at least thirty minutes, plus another twenty minutes or more of strength training. Sadly, I'm one of those people who, once they've formed a resolution, spend so much time preparing for it that when the time comes to actually keep it they're totally exhausted. Which is why I made another resolution to keep the preparations to a minimum this time.



The DVDs arrived two days ago. I haven't yet tested all of them out, but the yoga/bellydance one is very good (Contemporary Bellydance and Yoga Conditioning with Ariellah). Her isolations are extremely precise, and she's excellent at explaining which muscle groups are employed at any given moment and describing the feel of the movement. Just the isolation part is 75 minutes and hellishly exhausting. It definitely works as a cardio workout because there are virtually no breaks in the flow: it's 75 minutes of near-constant motion.

Yesterday, I've mixed it up with the one good hip hop DVD I got (Jamie King - Rock Your Body). King is an excellent dancer, so I might actually learn proper hip hop from watching him. He goes through the choreography very quickly though and I've never done hip hop before, so it's an adjustment. Yesterday I was able to stumble through the choreography but I wasn't yet able to dance it, which pissed me off. I expect to be reasonably proficient by the end of the week though. Also, hip hop isolations are just like bellydance isolations, only harder and more accented as a rule, so I'm killing two birds with one stone.

  *ETA: Got in a proper workout today: 1 hour and 15 minutes: around 50 mins of cardio and the rest strength training. Britney Spears music videos are amazingly good for the cardio bit. Same goes for the Black Eyed Peas. 

Well, sort of.

If I haven't posted here in a while it's because my interests and my life are undergoing a shift, and have been for a while. Two weeks away from the computer helped cement my realization that a change is necessary if I don't want to end up like some of my older colleagues.

The rest is under a cut in order to protect the uninterested or easily bored on my flist. :)


Right. So this is why I've been inactive for so long. :)

I'm keeping track of my progress in a special diary. I might post some of it here so you can all point and laugh. Only the boring PG-rated bits, though.