Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Where Do I Go From Here?

I feel it poking at the back of my brain, trying to wheedle its way into my skull. To bury itself where it feels most familiar, most comfortable. I am surrounded by what-ifs and why. Can’t you just let me breathe?

I wish I had answers and timeframes, and understanding of the deeper parts of fear. I just have a promise to keep trying. Keep doing. Keep rising out of bed, keep putting my shoes on and still be a person where it’s expected of me.

I want to hollow myself out and climb inside. Wrap the cavity around me and tighten it with screws. Let me get to know the woman I’ve become. Without being asked why I changed. Why I became.

It’s okay not to be okay, of course, but how long do you let that be your maxim? Your guide through life? When does it stop being a thing you tell yourself for grace and becomes a thing you tell yourself to hide?

Hide with me, I beg the moon. Hide away with me from all the sunrises coming for me, so I can stay with the part of me I don’t know yet, the part I’ve been running from this whole time.

Is it right, I ask my back patio, to leave the tired parts of my mind behind, to stand guard against the darkness seeping in through their fingers, while the rest of me pushes forward a brightness I know is false? Is it right of me to do that?

I wish I could tell you, I say to the pillow I tossed onto my mattress last night. I wish I could tell you why I can’t find the pieces. I just can’t.

I’ll keep looking, though, don’t worry.

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #4

I’ve been working rather steadily on the first draft of the third book. Lazarus Rising. Not the religious connotations it might seem to have, but kind of? Based purely on Tobias (the creator of Telaroth) liking the story of Lazarus so much he used the name as a way to distance himself from the problems he caused. It goes so much deeper than that, of course, but this book is one of the first we see into Lazarus. Characters go into the sister-world and it is truly one of the coolest places to spend an afternoon in my head.

I am currently doing some typing so I don’t have an entire book to type in a few months when I have the first draft done. But I’m writing chapter sixteen now. Just scootin’ right along.

I’ve been thinking more and more about submitting a few short pieces for magazines/journals/etc, but I know next to nothing about that process. I have a few friends who are regular submitters and they’ve offered advice, so when I get the confidence to start collecting rejections, I’ll implement what I learn from them.

Sometimes I beta read as well, and one of the things that surprises the people I read for is how fast I get it done. So, I’ve considered maybe turning that into a side hustle. Get some dollars for a hobby? I don’t know. I truly enjoy reading through people’s work and seeing how I can help them tell the story they want to. I don’t really do line-edits, but I do broader content and some typo assist. I keep waffling back and forth on asking for money for it, though, because it is something I really do enjoy.

But my father told me once never give my work away for free.

And the part of me that breathes words says the delight I get from doing this kind of thing is the payment I need or even want.

Things to think about, of course.

Aside from that, I have a secret-not-so-secret project looming for the summer months, and I’m excited about that in the sense that it’s a piece I never really thought I’d publish. It’s a romance novel of sorts, and one I’ve worked on for yeeeeears and years. Never putting it anywhere more than a now defunct forum.

I will get the first draft of Lazarus Rising finished, and then work on Daisy while Lazarus steeps. When I get to the fourth book in the Maker series, that’ll be a challenge because I’ve never written a draft–first person or third. Everything else has at least been through a first person POV version. Uncharted territory ahead, and it’s exciting but intimidating all at once.

Thanks for reading this ramble of writing thoughts. Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life

Just Do Your Best

I’m not sure how to start this one, so I’m just going to dive right on in there.

When I was a kid, I danced for about nine years. Ballet. I did the whole competition stuff, but I also did a private studio that didn’t participate in competitions. We would dance in local events, though, and there was this Christmas festival every year where members of groups and communities could decorate a Christmas tree and people would “buy” the tree. Proceeds went to charities or something. I might not have the full details on that because I was little and didn’t understand why I danced at this thing, I just knew I did.

One year, I’d asked my dad to be there. I don’t remember why, but it was really, really important for him to be there. He had dental surgery that day, and the pain meds he was given ended up making him sleep through my performance.

My dad arrived at the venue and knelt on the floor and just hugged me so tight and said he was sorry he missed my dance. He even showed me the inside of his lip as proof that there was a reason he wasn’t there. The regret in his eyes and the way he hugged me for what felt like an hour while kneeling on that hard floor, all because he thought he had failed me.

But he was there. He did show up.

I still feel that hug to this day.

I have more dances for him to see. They’re just not ballet. People won’t remember everything about you, but they’ll remember you trying. They’ll remember you being there in whatever way you can. I hope you continue to be here. And I hope you are a little gentler on yourself because you are doing your best.

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #3

I’ve finished chapter eight of Lazarus Rising’s first draft. I’m writing from Fogg’s perspective in the beginning of this book, giving him some space to be seen. Not that he deserves such a grace given who he is. Some of the feedback I’ve gotten on Keeper is how dark it is, how violent Frankie ends up being in some instances. I guess I never really saw it as violence if she’s just using what she learns in defense of herself. Because that’s what it all ends up being, self-defense. I suppose I could probably leave some of the finer details out, but what I’ve enjoyed about my writing growth while working on the whole Maker series is seeing how I can use the darker sides of myself to propel a story. How I can give voice to the parts of me that otherwise wouldn’t be expressed. I’m not a murderous psychopath. But someone in my stories is, so I can take them as far as I want to, knowing I am safe from their evilness.

That then begs the question: how much of it is author-insertion? Do I have thoughts of violence? Do I run through the scenes that appear in my books like I want them to be realities? I don’t want them to be real. That’s the beauty of living in fiction, I can put people who don’t exist through extraordinary ordeals to show just how much they can handle–or not handle–and come out on the other side of it. It’s a wonderful thing, the power of creation. I don’t want the world to burn in reality, but I can sure write it doing that very thing in a book.

I’m going to keep going for tonight, and get as much done in chapter nine as I can. I’m almost done writing Fogg’s bit, and then I’ll have a chapter interlude for the Unbound, and then it’s back to Frankie. The page number formatting for this is going to be a nightmare, but I will get it done.

And that’s all I have for you today. Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake writing

Timmy In the Well – a poem

I wish I could be seen with eyes
that know the reason why
I hide my smiles behind
questions I leave unanswered.
So you think you have
the knowledge of my spheres,
when I have buried so deeply
the things I love about myself
to keep them safe, to keep them mine.

I think I remain alone
so no one finds the pathway
through the labyrinth, the hedges
of superficial vulnerability
I install so no one sees just how
far my aching runs, how dark
it is in the permafrost I brick
around my heart; so no one
ever sees how hard I try
to be happy.

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #2 – Description

Back when I was a wee writer lass, I used to spend a lot of time on what I now consider “unnecessary description.” We’ll get into that here shortly, I just want to put a disclaimer of sorts here that I am not saying the writers who do this are bad. There are audiences for pretty much any kind of story written. I will also say when I was a younger reader, I did sometimes prefer the description I’m about to go into. As I’ve gotten older, however, I find it is less satisfying to have such direct references and specifics in a story. I like to wander a bit and imagine with some of the vaguer choices.

What I mean by direct references is the name-dropping of brands of clothing, specific types of furniture, exact songs playing during a moment, the color of the paint on the walls, the down-to-the-very-last-detail of the kitchen.

Telling me the main character is wearing Converse is only important if that plays a massive part in their characterization for the whole story. “Black and white shoes worn to the point of needing tape to be held together” indicates the importance of the shoes far more than the brand name does. The fraying, dingy shoelaces, old sharpie drawings of stars and smiley faces. These shoes are beloved, and it is far easier to see that through the description than being told what it is.

It’s the same as giving me a specific song playing in a moment. Unless that song becomes pivotal to the story later on, don’t tell me what song it is. I think book playlists are marvelous because it gives a vibe, but it doesn’t force me to think of a specific song. Giving me the opportunity to see a scene and feel it through the more purposeful description, such as “vibrant violin music played softly in the corner on an old record player” allows me to sink further into the moment far more than “Vivaldi’s Winter was playing.”

One of my favorite books of all time, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith has this magnificent moment where the main character is dancing with her sister’s betrothed, and she loves the piece playing, but she doesn’t find out what it is until after the dance has completed and a major moment happens for her. Debussy’s Clair De Lune is also mentioned, but again it’s after being described by the main character within the context of the moment it’s happening.

To reiterate, I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with using direct descriptions. There are audiences for such a thing, but I find it’s so limiting while writing, and relying on those specifics kind of takes away the wonder of a really good description.

This is a ramble. If you made it this far, thank you. I’ll see you next week.

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #1

One of the things I plan on using this blog for now is a kind of writing journal, where I drop all the stuff I’ve worked on during the week/day/lifetime/etc. For this inaugural entry, I give you:

  1. Finished chapter three of the third book in the Maker series (first draft)
  2. Wrote a personal essay that may or may not be a future blog post
  3. Doodled little scenes between two of my main characters.
  4. Outlined in my head a few ideas for a romance novel I’m looking to get printed this year. It won’t be offered for sale, but I want a few people to have it, so I’m going to do that one for myself.
  5. Considered once again putting together a compendium for the language I made up

And that’s all the tales I have for you from this week. I did start chapter four of the third book (Lazarus Rising), and I’ve started with the perspective of a different character for this one. Usually it’s Frankie being front-and-center, but this time we’re starting with Fogg, baby. The first section of the book will be his perspective, and we’ll see some of his backstory and some of the current events being unleashed now that certain things have happened.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you are doing well, and if you are not, I hope it stops being a beshmapasen for you soon.

Salisbury.Fake book review

Logos by Nicholas Nikita

Image taken from Amazon.com e-Book

First read of the year and it’s a dang doozy. I found this while browsing the genres in Kindle Unlimited and the premise intrigued me enough to pop it in my library. It was a quick read in that I was able to read it in a few hours. The time it took me to read it should not detract from the quality of the story being told.

Logos follows an unnamed boy for the majority of the book as he survives a primal land. He loses his parents to the night-beasts, and saves his newborn brother. The first part of the book covers the brothers purely surviving the harsh landscape as they travel to the mountains, where the eldest believes their parents are waiting with the sun god, Aeos. It shows the desperation of people simply trying to live, where water and food are dangerously scarce. The boys are attacked by men and beasts over the course of their journey, and when they finally reach the mountains, the boys are old enough to be considered young adults (or that’s how I read them to be). Lightning strikes a tree and starts a fire. This fascinates the boys and they cultivate the fire, feeding it so it stays alive. The youngest convinces his brother to keep it large enough to be a signal to others in the vicinity, hoping their curiosity about the light and smoke will bring people to them.

The rise of this community is such a fascinating look at how socialization works. The boys are considered gods because they can hold the fire (on a stick, without burning their hands), and they can carry the fire. This sets up a dichotomy between them where the eldest becomes the more determined to build solidarity, to have sameness. Make sure people can speak the same language, ignoring the fact he’s bulldozing over other languages and practices in favor of his own creation. The boys are given names, Leos (the younger) who wears the skull and fur of a lion he killed, and Ra who wears the skull of an eagle (or some other large bird) he battled.

There is an inevitability toward the end I won’t spoil, but what I liked so much about this was how clear the progression of understanding and coherent thought became as the story went on. The boys grew into men and their minds became their own, and that strong characterization showed how even when the world is full of unknown dangers and death, the more their minds worked, the more the world made sense.

I don’t feel as though I’m properly explaining myself because it felt like recognizing something from before, like there’s an inherent desire to be. The brothers went in different directions with their curiosities and understandings of the same world they were presented. The eldest had far more experience in the danger than the younger, and so his was caution until it became maniacal. The youngest had the innocence of curiosity unfiltered by those experiences.

I think this was a solid book to start the year off with, and I recommend it. It is rather dark and depraved in places, but I found that added to the primitive nature of the world in which the brothers lived. When one exhibits too radical a deviation from the comfort of routine, the other offers a balance and a command to return to familiarity. By the end, it’s a book about a boy trying to do the best he can for his little brother. It’s a deeply thought provoking book. I give this 8/10 stars.

Salisbury.Fake Life

Morning Thoughts

I’ve been awake since about 5:30a. That’s normal wakin’ hours for some folk, but for me, that’s not the standard. I think I had a dream where I was deep in my thoughts and that kind of made me wake up and now I’m thinking entirely too hard about loss. Of a sort.

When my friend Henry died, I still knew where to focus the love I had and have for him. It belongs to him, and I know he’d be annoyed I’m still missing him, but the fact of it all is, it is his to have.

When you lose someone because they became a part of your life and destroyed you, and letting go was the only way to keep yourself safe, the love has nowhere to go. I could internalize it, make it a learning opportunity for myself, but the reality of it all is, I don’t know how to do that.

I have spent most of my life making sure everyone else is okay. Not that my needs come second, they’re just flat-out unimportant. As a grown woman, I am starting to rewrite that thinking, but do you know how hard that is?

Sure, change is hard, but when my home isn’t being blown to bits and I’m able to afford heat during the winter, why should my self-image matter? I heard a refugee from North Korea say that people who are able to use words like depression and trauma say them from a place of privilege. She didn’t mean that it’s a privilege to experience these things, but when you come from a place those are probably illegal to name, what do you call it? I am free to tell someone “I’m not okay” and I won’t be thrown in jail for not being happy.

Change is hard. It’s even harder without some of the people I had to let go of, because I thought they were people I could turn to in my hard times. Being told someone is there for you only for them to weaponize your demons against you when you do something they don’t like is incredibly confusing. It’s debasing. It makes me feel shame for ever trying to be vulnerable to a person, and it closes me up.

I joke about how I learned a lot about myself this last year (accidentally the spicy kind of learning, haha, sorry, parents if you read this), but I really did. I learned how to say goodbye when it hurt every part of my kindness to do so. There is a piercing affect that has on a heart. I’m not new in this phenomenon. Millions of people have let go of those who hurt them. But I am new to the idea that it’s okay to go.

It’s okay to fall away, and it’s okay to cry months after you’ve done so. The love doesn’t have anywhere to go, so it has to settle in the back of my heart for now. One day, I’ll put it out into the world again, hopefully keeping some for myself this time. But for now, it’s okay to just hold onto it a bit longer.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized

End of the Year/Update

Well.

I disappeared.

I didn’t intend to. I kind of forgot this blog existed. I’m sorry. I don’t know how many people are still with me, but if you’re still hanging out with me, I appreciate it.

If you are willing to continue stickin’ it out with me, I’ll be posting a lot more next year. This year I kind of spent more time writing my second book (The Keeper of Time in the Maker Series), and I ignored pretty much everything else. Aside from reading.

I think I’ll be rounding out the year with almost 100 books read this year, and I’ll be honest and say over half of those are probably romance novels. Sometimes you just need to shut the brain off and hope for the best. I plan on doing a “Books of 2024” post in January, and that will only be the beginning of what all I do.

I plan on using this as a writing journal, as that has become the most important thing in my life (outside my niece and my nephews). There will be other things I’ll probably toss in here, too.

I hope you’ve been doing well, and I hope you are entering 2025 with a spark of inspiration and hope. Sometimes the world is gross, but that’s all right as long as we don’t make it worse.

Until next time, friends.