list 101

After I wrote the original 134,000 words of what later became Goddess Perfume at 87,000 words, I swore off writing fiction. I had a hard rule not to even write one sentence of fiction. For YEARS.

The 134,00 words were written in 14-hour days, 7 days a week, for what I remember being 6 weeks. I can type upwards of 100 wpm at times, yet I was barely keeping up with the antics of the Cast in the storytelling. I was exhausted!

Then, I parked what became my first novel while I moved from a 40-acre farm to a 1-bedroom condo, imagining I would be able to focus my time. Which took a few months.

The editing was even more exhausting. I remember worrying about everything a first-time novelist worries about. I finally parked the book in a vanity edition. Then, I swore off writing even a sentence of fiction.

Reel ahead many years, I found myself collaborating remotely with another musician. One day an email arrived with a subject line something like, "Roo, Pooh, and Tigger walked into a bar."

Tickled by the idea, I wrote somewhere around 580 words of fiction. Yikes!

The Cast clambered back into what became the Creative Studio and away we went again.

I thought, what if three adult friends found themselves involved in storytelling with an Author who was playing? And the three friends had nicknames similar to a favorite children's story? And it was all deadly serious?

Then there was magick. Not 'magic,' which is the performance of illusions, the actual practical magick with consequences. Because it wasn't just any old author; here was the Author of Certain Books.

Maurllan.

resources 101

"Never mind. That's specialized magic. Take my word: that thing in the moat is all one monster — and it can't bite because it won't let go of its tail. So if you're good at balancing, you can walk along it to the castle."

-p.73

Anthony Jacob, Piers. The Source of Magic : A Xanth Novel, A Del Ray Book, Published by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, 1979. ISBN 0-345-35058-8.

"Several centuries (or so) ago, in a country whose name doesn't matter, there was a tall, skinny, straggly-bearded old wizard named Prospero, and not the one you are thinking of, either. He lived in a huge, ridiculous, doodad-covered, trash-filled two-story horror of a house that stumbled, staggered, and dribbled right up to the edge of a great shadowy forest of elms and oaks and maples. It was a house whose gutter spouts were worked into the shape of whistling sphinxes and screaming bearded faces; a house whose white wooden porch was decorated with carved bears, monkeys, toads, and fat women in togas holding sheaves of grain; a house whose steep gray-slate roof was capped with a glass-enclosed, twisty-copper-columned observatory. On the artichoke dome of the observatory was a weather vane shaped like a dancing hippopotamus; as the wind changed, it blew through the nostrils of the hippo's hollow head, making a whiny snarfling sound that fortunately could not be heard unless you were up on the roof fixing slates."

-p.1

Bellairs, John. The Face in the Frost, An ACE Book, by arrangement with Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc, 1978. ACE 22528-4.

"But people talk about you as if you were as high as the abbot!"

"Oh, dear me, no," said Lu-Tze. "I'm nothing like as holy. Never really got a grip on the cosmic harmony."

"But you've done all those incredible—"

"Oh, I didn't say I'm not good at what I do," said Lu-Tze, ambling away with his broom over his shoulder. "Just not holy. Shall we go?"

-p.59

Pratchett, Terry. Thief of Time : A Discworld Novel, Doubleday, TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS, part of the Penguin Random House group of companies, London, 2017. Copyright ©2001 Dunmanifestin Ltd. ISBN 978-0-857-52503-1.