House of Forgotten Thoughts

I just got an open-ended request on Postcrossing for a homemade card. I have blank cards (very heavy stock) that I helped arjache make, and I have a fountain pen loaded with Kung Te Cheng (Imperial purple bullet-proof ink).

Freehand, single draft, no penciling, me and my loves:



It's a lousy picture of the cat, but she's looking longingly at the allergic person's lap, which is the important point.And J's favorite spot is actually on the other end of the couch, so the humans' positions should be reversed. I've otherwise perfectly captured a typical Sunday afternoon at my house.

Thanks to memegarden's kind gift, I went to 826 Seattle's Write Like I Do last night, this month being a two hour workshop on historical writing. (The series is aimed at adults, with proceeds used as a fundraiser for the youth programs.)

The guest author was Elizabeth Kostova, described in the ad as the author of the new book, The Swan Thieves. Whatever. I hadn't heard of either. When I arrived for the workshop, there were two heaps of books. The larger was for The Swan Thieves. The smaller was for...

The Historian, a book that's been OMGOMGOMG at the top of my unread reading list for two years. The exhaustively researched doorstop that's a vampire mystery ranging across three historical eras and heavy into Romania. Oh, that Elizabeth Kostova. Oh my.

So I blew my play money for the month getting signed copies of her work, and had an awesome workshop, in which I got to stand up and say, "I'm M_____ and I write 18th century vampire stuff, so I really need to be here." When she singled me out later as the only person who confessed to already writing historicals and asked me what drew me to the setting, I said, "Bluntly? The clothes." Which gave more people permission to talk about liking the glamor of an era instead of all serious social issues.

She was a great workshop leader. Everything was well timed, she kept us on-schedule and made sure people got fair chances to talk, and was unilaterally supportive of whatever we said we were interested in writing. She stayed a half hour after the official closing time answering questions about the writing and publishing process, as did her agent. I had a spectacular night.

I also made a buddy, the other person there half an hour early who also prefers LJ as a primary form of social communication! Yay! Hi, mimerki! (Edit: Oh, you call me lovely in your journal! Yes, you're lovely too.)

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New prompt generator: "Crushed aardvark falls regarding a biscuit."

Using less than standard U.S. definitions of "biscuit", "regarding", and "fall". And wishing I'd thought longer about how to draw a chocolate chip cookie with the same perspective as the rest of the picture. For the record, anvils are surprisingly hard to draw. But I'm proud of the contract, and of the aardvark paws.

The new generator isn't filtered for drawable concepts, so I have to refresh more often, but it includes phrase, sentence, and paragraph options for more randomtastic flexibility.

I said I was going to start sketching and it has now been a couple weeks that I have consistently forgotten to grab one of my many blank sketchbooks from my bookshelf.

beaq nudged me today, so screw the sketchbook. I did this on a piece of 8.5x11 scrap paper with a world map printed on the back. Prompt: "Wrathful doctor floating around a zoo."



There we go. I'll just keep drawing on scrap until I remember a book. Oh, media: fountain pen loaded with Noodler's Heart of Darkness, blue highlighter.

In other news, I got to see Firesign Theater last night. So awesome. They are clearly having so much fun. The audience was packed with, as they said, ancient hippies. I could tell the new material from the old by the low mutter of people quoting along with every line. They started playing with it, pausing to let people do the singalong thing. It was hysterical.

Work is good, postcards are good, the mathom party will probably be Saturday the 6th, with a pre-party Friday night for people who can't make Saturday but want to participate. Official announcement coming soon.