Blog Necromancy, Spirit Song and the Hundred Theme Challenge

It's alive! Or at least temporarily revived.

Yes, I'm posting again. Someone introduced me to the Hundred Themes Challenge and I've decided that writing one a day should be a good way to get myself into the habit of writing something everyday. I've randomised the order so that I don't use up the tempting themes first.

In the long gap since my previous attempt at starting this blog, I admitted to myself that Covenant (my Australian High Fantasy) had a terminal case of first novelitis, and have shelved it for now.

So I have a new project, current working title Spirit Song. A quest to end an eternal spring in a renaissance Italy ripoff, in a world with music based spirit magic.

I will be doing my best to writing and post something each day, either a response to the Hundred Theme Challenge, or world building musings. I doubt that all these challenges will make into even the first draft, but they should provide useful character studies at least.

Today I have the prologue and first challenge for your entertainment (see posts below).

Dr Luthengrad,

or: How I Learned to Stop Dallying and Love the Blog,
or: The Original Sin,
or: The Yelekreb Abstract,
or: maybe-I-should-stop-coming-up-with-stupid-post-titles-and-get-on-with-it (I may need them later).

Welcome to Luthengrad, my little egopolis on the blagosphere. My name’ s Chris, I’ m a writer and this is my little sandbox for exploring reality and fantasy. Well this isn’ t strictly true, I’ m not sure I even make the grade of “ part-time” writer. I’ m still just an ordinary, everyday, casual plotter. I have a draw full of little notebooks, scrap paper and scribbles, of various plots and worlds. So rather than kill another smale forest, and to force me to work a little bit more consistantly, I now have a blog.

This blog’ s mostly for me to post work I’ ve done on characters, worlds, plots and my writing in general. Both for your amusement and critique. Feel free to suggest ways I can improve, what does and doesn’ t work for you, and exercises you’ ve found helpful.

Some of you are probably wondering what The Yelekreb Abstract is. Well, other than being a great title for a story, it most likely will be a post later this week. I suggest you read Miner’ s essay on the Nacirema for some background.

However, first I think I’ ll post a little short story I wrote for a creative writing class last year.

I may run out of commas before this blog ends.

Policies

Okay I’m not sure a disclaimer is required but better safe than sorry. If there's anything you feel is missing, wrong, ambiguous, could be made more humorous, please comment!

Disclaimer:

This is my personal blog; it is my work, my opinions, my responsibility. It is not my intent to offend, malign, defame, purge, libel, or humiliate anyone in anyway. It is also not my intent to provide any counsel, advice or service. What you do with what I say is your responsibility.

Please remember, this is a blog. It is changing, un-edited and liable to have mistakes. Similarly my opinions and policies change as well. Also the subjects of external links are beyond my control.

Consider as well, this blog is mostly concerned with fiction. Thus don’t consider what I write and what my characters say to necessarily reflect own my views on people, the world and issues. Far too many people have missed this point reading people’s work in the past (Voldemort makes Harry Potter Satan worship? Right...).

Copyright

Unless stated otherwise, all contents of this blog are my intellectual property. I retain copyright but publish these under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence (or CCANCSA25AL for short). You may share and use my work for non-commercial purposes, but you must attribute it to me. I retain the right to change this licence in the future.

This work by Chris Luthen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

Comments on this blog are the sole responsibility of the comment authors. I reserve the right to moderate, edit, delete and ban comments and commenter. All this should be able to be avoided by abiding with a civil comments policy:

Be relevant:

You don’t have to be strictly on-topic. A post will generate many topics. Each topic starts off in a sense off-topic anyway. But not everything is relevant to a short story about puppies. A comment about the price of coconut oil on Pluto is likely to be irrelevant nonsense (for most of the universe in fact).

Be well written:

This is a writer’s blog, so we should all try to write well. Avoid simple mistakes, try to be succinct and not just type the first thing that comes into your head. Also use quote (‹q›) and ‹blockquote› tags.

Be useful:

A critique of “it sucks” well... sucks. It’s not a critique, just a reaction. Similarly comments of “hate it”, “cool” and the like are useless. Expand on both what works and doesn’t. They are both important areas for us to consider and learn from. If all you want to do is comment that you liked a post, use the “reactions” buttons under the post.

Be careful:

This blog is public. Don’t say anything you don’t want the world to know. Keep names, emails, personal details private.

Be considerate:

Some things offend people. Some of these things don’t make sense. Most do. Avoid swearing and general poor form. Not that swearing is banned, it’s just unimaginative. If you are offended email me and I'll make a decision. Don't respond, it'll just descend into a flame war.

Be thoughtful:

Is the comment readable? Polite? Useful?

Contact

If you wish to contact me for any reason related to the contents of this blog, please email me.