Meme time!

(what a stupid use of such a deep concept, but it's kinda standard, anyway...)

So, what's been of me? Not much, sadly, lots of reading (wonderful reading) but not much writing... Gotta take the thing by the horns, as they say, but I'm too emotionally tired as of late to get my hands on the keyboard... I will probably skip an entire chapter on the novel and simply keep pushing, the missing parts will come later...

I'll let you know when I'm back again...

In the mean time, Scott Oden made this thing (but was so kind of tagging no one), and Gabrielle did it as well, but she was not so kind. However, she didn't tag me, and so I'm doing it (convoluted? Hehe, ever watched House? I'm dead simple... :-P )

Hope you enjoy it, I will try to enjoy it (at least I'll try not to scream and cry in my misery and, ... ahem... I will stop. Now.)

Straight Historical, Historical Mystery, Historical Fantasy, Historical Romance, or Time Travel?
Straight, undoubtedly (ironical, uh?) I enjoy the occasional Mistery or Fantasy if it's well constructed, but I get tired of them pretty soon, even if I'm the writer...

Historical Figures as Main Characters or Purely Fictional Characters in Historical Settings as Main Characters?
I don't mind... Sometimes I really enjoy the real ones, but others I feel them encased, contrived, and prefer the freedom of a fictional PC... In my historical settings, anyway, most of the guys are hypothetical (specially if your only source is Ktesias!) and I'm sure most of my favourite authors are in the same ship...

Hardback, Trade Paperback, or Mass Market Paperback?
Any, although the lighter the better, I commute with my whole writing office with me, enough weight with my own stuff!

Philippa Gregory or Margaret George?
Uh?

Amazon or Brick and Mortar?
Amazon, because Spanish libraries suck... Really.

Bernard Cornwell or Sharon Penman?
Uh?

(Not repeated, it's a different kind of 'uh?' but I got off font faces... Cornwell promises, but after reading Patrick O'Brian, it will be some five-years before I probably read him... no offense intended... as for Penman... mmm... uh?)

Barnes & Noble or Borders?
Mmmm... Neither, but I think I would enjoy Borders if I could go to one... Been in B&N in Sheffield, UK, some 10 years ago, it was okay...

First Historical Novel You Ever Remember Reading?
Not really sure, actually... Probably The Three Musketeers, by Alexander Dumas, but who can remember these things (besides Gabrielle, I mean)?

Alphabetize by Author, Alphabetize by Title, or Random?
First time, by author and subject/historical period (title is irrelevant, I order by size, so the bigger ones are in the bottom of the stack, or in the sides of the shelf), then Entropy takes its reign... I guess the right answer, time averaged, would be "organically evolved"...

Keep, Throw Away, or Sell?
Keep, keep, and keep... If I lend you a book, you can wear a badge showing your proud to the world...

Jean Plaidy or Norah Lofts?
Uh? (third kind of "uh?", yeah... lots of blissful ignorance in here, but I reject most books by time period or guts, that's why I gotta write them, nobody else does!)

Read with Dust Jacket or Remove It?
Either, even without covers and even without pages (at least until my Palm battery died horribly last year...) If they come with 'em (dust covers, I mean), I don't usually tear 'em off (but they are usually left in a very pityful state)...

Stop Reading When Tired or at Chapter Breaks?
Stop reading when I am forced (i.e. whe the train stops and I gotta get off, for example). Good contextual memory here... :-)

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
It's still a dark and stormy night, in which hemisphere do you actually live?

Buy or Borrow?
Buy or not read at all... Who has time to visit the Public Library? Lucky you!

Buying Choice: Book Reviews, Recommendations, or Browsing?
Browsing, Guts, and some (very few) recommendations... Remember, I'm the one writing the books I want to read and nobody actually writes for me!

Dorothy Dunnett or Anya Seton?
Uh?

(repetitive, I know... Let's sort this out once and for all: Patrick O'Brian, Gisbert Haefs are my heroes... Stephen Pressfield is very enjoyable, same with David A. Durkheim (at least his "Hannibal" was), and a certain Scott Oden's never failed my hopes, let's see with his Simba of el-Qahira (sorry, couldn't help it... hehe ;-)

I forgot a closing parens, here it is ----> )

Tidy Ending or Cliffhanger?
If I didn't love Stanislaw Lem... This is History, it's never tidy, not ended... But tiying some knots for the reader is nice, after all...

Sticking Close to Known Historical Fact, or Using Historical Fact as Wallpaper?
As close as sources, time, knowledge and hurry allow: you can't get swamped in research, you want to read the damned novel, after all! (this is, you have been forced to write it, at least finish one off, damn me!)

Morning Reading, Afternoon Reading or Nighttime Reading?
Commute time, mostly... W.C. is my second reading place, and the most intimate one, as you can imagine...

Series or Standalone?
I don't mind some series (just a few, and not too close between them), but I guess I prefer standalones... However some series are too good to resist (O'Brian, for example)

Favorite Book of Which Nobody Else Has Heard?
Revolt! Hehe, OK, I was joking... None at the moment, but let me think harder, I'll let you know...

And, for the Grand Finale, I tag everybody: I tag googlebot, Pierre, Queen Megumi, my little brother, Gisbert Haefs (I know you must be reading!), Gabrielle and Scott (again, hehe), and basically all of my 7 readers... Feel free to reply in here if you lack your own blog (liar... tsk, tsk, tsk...) or if you'd prefer it to be kept off my pawns... which sounds like a pretty intelligent thing to do, anyway...

KALLISTI!

From Lisboa with...

Well, I promised to tell you what other books I got in Lisboa, and here I go:

• As naves de Calígula, by Maria Grazia Siliato, an italian writer who I've also seen published in Spanish, sporting the original book title, Caligula. It looks pretty interesting and, well, I guess I felt appealed...
  
  
• Os Guerrilheiros da Morte ("The Guerrilla of Death") by Manuel Pinheiro Chagas, a Portuguese writer, professor, Navy minister, historian, ... in the XIX Century. This book was written in 1873, and it seemed a great way to know about Portuguese HF authors (a classical, no doubt!). The story starts in 1807, in Ajuda, Portugal, just before the French invasion (by Imperator Napoleaon Bonaparte). I couldn't find many other HF Portuguese writers, to say the truth (no doubt they are out there, but maybe they aren't being sold these days of bestsellers and high noise-to-signal ratio), and as a huge fan of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey and Maturin's saga (that's Master and Commander and the other 20+ wonderful novels, for those of you who may not know) I can't but give it a fair try...
  

That's all (I also got a Portuguese grammar, and a dictionary), althoug these holidays I also got some Star Trek books, and some other books of History and all that... Lots to read, no doubt! Happy, happy, joy, joy 2007! :-)

Laters and kallisti!

PS- what's the proper English rendition of Portuguese guerrilheiro, Spanish guerrilleros? Guerrilla fighters? Merriam-Webster online apparently defines 'guerrilla' as the men themselves, instead of the activity...

O Regresso de Tróia

Where have I been?

I have been in Lisbon! :-)

And I loved it! I have declared myself lisboeta at heart.

Really.

I took a ton of pictures, including a lot of St. Jorge Castle, with its impressive views over the Tejo (in Latin, Tagus) river; Belem's Tower, which is really beautiful! (and we had a misty day, it was pretty magical watching the ships and the huge bridges slowly appear through the mist over the river...), I'll try to post some of them for your enjoyment...

I also enjoyed the Lisbon life (despite my relatively bad portuguese, I talked and chatted and... hehehe :-) and went shopping! FNAC, more exactly (in Spain we have celebrate a Christian festivity, I forgot which, in which Three Sage Mages went to Bethlem and gave little Jesus gifts, so we get gifts in this day (Jan. 5 through 6)--- I got some books in Portuguese as self-gifts :-) (actually, I managed my S.O. to gift them to me! hehehe... I gifted her a Portuguese Grammar Intro and Dictionary in exchange, which looked really fair to me, and it is)...

And I am currently reading (alongside several children tales in Irish and the Esperanto edition of La Ŝtona Urbo), O Regresso de Tróia, by Lindsay Clarke, which apparently is the second book about Troy by this author.

I didn't know this but as I already have several 'Illiad'-based HF novels, I thought I could enjoy an 'Odissey'-based one... :)

I also got other HF books, but I forgot, I'll let you know when I'm there...

And that's all, not a lot of time on Internet, actually... My novel (Revolt!, remember?) and a more intense and socially more travelling, real life isn't giving me a lot of time to follow blogs or anything else...

I'll keep you updated...

KALLISTI!

Daedalus

Happy New Year everybody!

This I found on Gab's livejournal, and I thought: "hey, why not give it a try?"

Thus, as this year first post, here you are, my magnificent score (ahem! :-)

Daedalus 66% Extroversion, 66% Intuition, 27% Emotiveness, 71% Perceptiveness

You are most like Daedalus. You are extremely clever and inventive, but your methods can be very unorthodox. When faced with a setback, you're more likely to try to defeat it with sheer determination, rather than finesse. You're argumentative, but don't tend to take debate personally (actually, it's fun for you, and most people don't understand that). Regardless, you are a wellspring of mechanical ingenuity, and would make a fantastic engineer or inventor. You can be extremely loyal in relationships and freindships, and you're extremely professional. You're also pretty grumpy. Famous people like you: Thomas Edison, James A. Garfield, Walt Disney, Benjamin Franklin Steer Clear of: Hermes, Apollo, Icarus, Aphrodite Seek out: Atlas, The Oracle, Prometheus

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Extroversion You scored higher than 99% on Intuition You scored higher than 99% on Emotiveness You scored higher than 99% on Perceptiveness

Link: The Greek Mythology Personality Test written by Aleph_Nine on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

KALLISTI!

Bone MMVII

Dear all,

I wish you all the best for the year MMVII!

Let us work harder to recreate lost worlds and to help this one to be found, and make it so Humanity is, then, and now, our priority (though the rest of living beings will certainly appreciate some efforts, right?)

Blessed be all in 2007! KALLISTI!

La Ŝtona Urbo

While I keep on writing Revolt! I am doing two Historical Fiction projects in parallel:

• (re)searching for information about aboriginal African cultures


• reading La Ŝtona Urbo
  

The first one comes from my desire to project current Africa abhominable situation in all economical, medical and cultural fronts, I'm absolutely horrified and I wish to make my bit from my poor, dried ingenuity to help raise awareness in the "First World". Thus, I'd like to write a HF novel set in an ancient, African culture (not Egyptian and not Phoenician), preferrably before Christianism and Islam, but I am open --at least at the moment-- for later times (pre-colonial times, though). I'll thank help from my readers!

The second one is a HF novel written by English-born, Belgian writer Anna Löwenstein, The City of Stone. Why the funny title, then? Simple: it's written in Esperanto. She wrote the original manuscript in English, and translated the novel to E-o herself. Last Friday, December 15th was the Zamenhofa Tago, the Day of Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto, and good excuse to get together, have a great meal with friends and new friends and have a wonderful time, which we did this Saturday... After the meal in Madrid, we moved to a bookstore with is a kind of de facto Esperanto broadcast center (it's where a friend of mine regularly gives Esperanto courses) and over there, besides watching Gerda malaperis, a Brazilian movie adapting Claude Piron's book of the same title, we could peruse and buy book about and in Esperanto from the friends at the different E-o organizations that attended (we were over 30 people, which is about twice last year's meal, and who knows next year? :-)

Thus, I got the book, in Esperanto. Great novel (so I'm told) and a great way to practice the language. The book tells the story of a Celtic woman (from Britannia) who gets enslaved and goes to Rome in Nero's time, dealing with Celtic, Roman and early Christianism... I'm moving ahead pretty slowly at the moment, but I expect to get a good pace soon; I'll let you know.

And that's the state of things in this last weeks of this year... Let's see how things end and may 2007 bring us all closer to our dreams!

KALLISTI!

PS- Esperanto resources: Lernu! and World Esperanto Association

:-)

I did it :-)

It was really hard, work kicked in really hard the last 2 weeks, and I am literally exhausted.

But I did it.

:-)

Revolt! has finished Part Two (the Antithesis) and it's right in the start of Part Three (Synthesis). The last (long, over 11,000 words!) chapter of Part Two, with the clymax of the Battle of Lade was particularly cool to write, I tried to follow my own advice and instinct and wrote the whole battle from a single point of view: it's less descriptive but way more intense and vivid, I really like it.

I'll keep writing this novel down to the end, I am enjoying the characters and the overall story too much to stop now!

Keep tuned for more news about it, in the mean time, please bear with me when I add this icon for History... ;-)


KALLISTI!

Problematic End of Nano

I'm still here, yep

Been working around the clock all the weekend and I'm some thousand words behind my wordcount. I'll try to recover, if my headaches allow my writing...

So far, I'm writing the Yaunâ track again (2 of 3) where Aristagoras runs away, Histiaeus arrives to bribe the Persians into a 'civil war', so to say, and the remaining Yaunâ cities join forces to stop the Persian advance on Miletos, which will conduct to the Battle of Leda, and the end of the Antithesis (the second part of the novel, the first part was the Hypothesis), which will nicely lead to the Synthesis until we arrive, yet again, to Marathon.

Will I get the mark for Nanowrimo? I dunno. I will surely do my best, despite de heavy workload I am currently having (to be true, I'm exhausted, but that won't stop me, only time will). And what next? Well, I will finish the novel draft, that's for sure, I'm enjoying it too much to stop now!

And that's all! Back to writing...

For those of you, my few, precious readers, that celebrate Thanksgiving in USA, a big goodwilling, and to the rest of the world, celebrate life as well, even if you are nanowriting!

KALLISTI!

So far... (so good! :-)

I'm a bit behind on the wordcout, I mean, yesterday I was okay, today I'll have to write my share, but I'm happily going pretty fine, although I'd like to have a little bit more of a wordcount buffer to spare, but anyway...

At 27 Kwords, I'm about to write the Battle of Ephessus, where the Persians manage to deal a defeat to the Yaunâ that attacked Sardes (Athenian, Eretrian and Ionian hoplites). That will be the big event of ION E. With each ION about 8-9 Kwords (except ION D, which is only 3,500 words at the moment, as I got fed up with writing Greek politics :-P) I'd say I'm aiming at some 80-90 Kwords, not really a lot, but enough for a first draft. There are lots of things that I know I'll need to address, and considering how I'm enjoying the characters so far, I'll have to work on their 'normal' lives a bit more to help adjust the chapters' rythm and give this story the depth it deserves as well as its width...

I'll let you know how I'm going... KALLISTI!