Musings of a SilverRose

From the depths: O'Charleys, and a young and naive me

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:55:00 +0000

In the midst of doing The Paying Job, someone near me either starting eating something or using something that brought memories swimming up from wherever memories hide when you don't need them. It smells like an orange, only not. Maybe like fake orange. Cleaning supplies, or hand lotion, or orange candies that leave your hands sticky.

And I suddenly remembered when I was working at O'Charleys. It would end badly, when the fact that I was screwing around with the kitchen manager would get us both fired. But it was a good job. My first bar and grill - the money was good, and they didn't notice that I wasn't legally old enough to work there. (In my defense - I put my actual birthdate on the application. And in theirs - it's not like I didn't know I wasn't old enough, and I applied anyway.)

The smell reminded me of cleaning off tables. Don't ask me why this smell triggered memories of that particular restaurant, because all cleaning products used in restaurants more or less smell the same, but there it is. There's a special silence in a closed restaurant, that's not really silence at all. There's clinking and swishing and weird mechanical sounds coming from the dishwasher. There's scraping and cursing and clanging from the kitchen. There are vacuums and mobs and swishing cloth and rustling silverware. And the bar has its own tinks and rattles and clanking glass. But there are no voices. Sometimes the servers sang to themselves, or the cooks swore or kidded with each other, and sometimes you could hear the liquid deluge of syllables in Spanish as the dishwasher and bussers talked. But those aren't voices, not really. Not the way that a restaurant is loud during the day. No conversations all heard at once, no "miss!" floating up out of the din to catch your ear. In fact, your ears are totally at rest. You're not listening for your name, or for that ubiquitous "miss" or "sir" or "hon", or for someone to say "I'll ask her for napkins when I see her again," or the dreaded "where is she?" You don't actually have to listen at all. All the sounds going on around you are quiet sounds that you can, for once, completely ignore.

And I would wander around the restaurant, counting sugars and inspecting the level of salt and pepper; sometimes cleaning gum off the bottoms of chairs. And it was peaceful. Sometimes the cooks would bring a six-pack in and we'd all have a beer while cleaning. (Yes, I know. But there you have it.) Sometimes we'd all gather at the bar and Jim would give us his latest concoction to try.

(I once asked my father if I could date Jim - ten years my senior. He said no, and I replied with something snarky considering his age and that of his wife. Yes, I remember what I said. No, I'm not going to repeat it. It was terribly clever to the 18-year old me, though.)

And then I'd go home, or, toward the end, I'd run off with Jordan, playing games that I wasn't nearly old enough to understand the rules of. And we'd fall into bed and get up in the morning and go back to work, taking separate cars and leaving ten minutes apart. He was a manager and I was not. That was enough to get us both fired, and it did, when someone found out.

And sometimes I would take a coworker home with me, though I cannot for the life of me recall her name now. And she'd stay at my place. And that 18-year old me? Vehemently denied that anything was going on between us. Which it wasn't. I remember taunting Jordan once when he twitted me about there being something between that other server and I.

And I would go on to lose that job, get a tattoo, find out that there really should have been something going on between that girl and myself, and retain fond memories of the smell of Jordan's car. And orange scented cleaning supplies.

Overheard in the Office

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:50:00 +0000

I used to follow a blog that was called "Overheard in the Office," or some such. (Oh, hey, here it is.) I found it mostly funny - sometimes a bit crude - but I always found myself thinking "I must work with the most boring people in the world." Well, I work in the finance division of Megabank - that probably makes sense.

Then today, coming back from lunch, I heard "it's only sodomy if - "

Figuring I must have misheard, I inserted myself into the conversation, to have it repeated to me. It was "it's only sodomy if you have to say 'hey, doc, how are you doing that with both hands on my shoulder.' "

Oooookay. Apparently, they're having all the interesting conversations when I'm not listening.

Why I Love my Girlfriend

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:38:00 +0000

Last night, we stayed up past 11:00 discussing Mozart, Trent Reznor, David Bowie, Billy Joel, Metallica, the Cure, Alanis Morriset, and Tori Amos, all in the same conversation. Likely more, but I'm probably forgetting some.

Highlights:

Me: "See, it's when Trent Reznor stopped being pissed off that his music stopped being so good."

Shoryl: "Then David hit the 'I'm an artist, but I have a coke habit and need to write hits' years..."
Me: "That's the section of his music I like, right?"
Shoryl: "yeah."

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:57:00 +0000

I’ve finally picked up a book that’s been in my TBR pile for … well, I can’t quite remember when I bought it. And I can’t quite remember what actually made me want to start reading it.

I’ve started reading Neal Stephenson. This is fairly far away from my normal reading habits, and I don’t think the story would keep me entertained for long if it weren’t for the absolutely amazing grasp of language and nuance. Stephenson is a master of language. And even if I don’t understand the mathematical and scientific principles he’s espousing (I don’t), and even if I don’t know my English history well enough to get all the of the events (I don’t), I could never fail to thoroughly enjoy a book that has pearls such as this strewn carelessly over every page.

Many words are said, but they make no more impact on Daniel than Mrs. Goose’s incoherent narratives about cutlery leaping over coelestial bodies and sluttish hags living in discarded footwear.

There’s a vivid joy in Stephenson’s writing that transcends every aspect of his work. The narrative, the characters, the history, and the science – it’s all there, but all the elements act like mirrors to reflect that luminescent prose.

Oh, yes. The book is Quicksilver. There’s no doubt in my mind, a mere 80 pages into the book, that I’ll be buying the other Baroque Cycle books, and likely Cryptonomicon and Anathem as well.

I’m also amused that – 80 pages in – I’ve finally put together that one of the characters is a Waterhouse, come to Massachusets from England. I am,distantly and oddly, related to this man.

Suns keep marching

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:47:00 +0000

Another 700 words on Suns last night, and I'm very pleased with them. The sculptor still wants to be a crotchety old man, but I'm resisting. I've just introduced his partner, found out that said partner is also a sculptor, and broke off right where Maatrya is trying to find some way to let them know she's family.

I worry sometimes about the subtext of the novel. I'm not out to write about the challenges of being queer in a world where fertility is the highest blessing, but it feels like that's where it's going. On the other hand, with so many forces tugging Maatrya every which way, I think I can turn this into a suitable theme. Love, real love, brings you home. And it doesn't really matter who you love, or how much of an outsider you feel like before it happens. Sounds mushy? Yeah. I dunno; blame Shoryl.

I'm having a lot of fun writing this scene, even though I'm more than a little convinced that it's meandering and probably not going to survive the revision intact. But I'm having fun, and that's the point. I expect to finish this scene tonight, giving me a satisfactory close to the first 3 chapters. This weekend, I'm sitting down with printouts and trying to make those chapters a little more coherent, then handing them off to Shoryl to read.

Out of the morass, and into the city

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:15:00 +0000

I finished the no-good scene that was giving me trouble, and I was off and running last night with about 600 words of some pretty good description and dialog. My sculptor seems to be having a personality crisis, however, as half the time he's written as a crotchety old man, and the other he's much younger. I think I want him to be younger, else I risk running into a trope I don't plan on using.

'Sides, a young gay couple ... I could run with that. And it would make the sculptor the one person who really doesn't want anything from Maatrya - which is exactly what I need him to be.

Mostly Good

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:01:00 +0000

So, I've got Suns plotted, mostly. I have the first 3/4 plotted thoroughly, at any rate. And the weekend yielded about 1200 words (200 more than I was shooting for). All of this is good.

The words themselves, however, are crap. I cringed when I wrote them, cringed when I reread them, and cringed when I couldn't figure out how to make them better. The information in the scene is critical - the delivery is quite a bit less than stellar. But I'm moving on. I hate to leave such a big chunk for the rewrite, but hopefully by that time I'll figure out an entertaining way to present the information. Right now, it's all talking heads. And subtext? There isn't any.

But, hey, I finished the scene, so I get to go to the next one. Good, yes?

Tori Amos last night

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:31:00 +0000

First, my official review:

Tori Amos is an excellent songstress and musician - you can learn that by listening to her albums. But only in person do you really get to hear the power and majesty of her voice and emotion. Old favorites like "Silent All These Years" and "Pretty Good Year" were even more breathtaking as Tori went solo with her piano. And those bound to become new favorites from her latest release, such as "Give" and "Strong Black Vine" had the audience on their feet and roaring with approval.

The venue itself was perfect for her delivery, surrounded by lushness of another age in the State Theater in Minneapolis. The set designers and techs were spot on with some breathtaking lighting displays that did nothing to distract, but everything to shine the spotlight perfectly on Tori herself. The only complaint was the footlights that flashed directly at the audience at times, nearly blinding those of us on the main floor.

The whole experience was orchestrated to bring you along with Tori as she stepped through the frequently ersatz landscape that drives her music.

Opening act(s): I would be remiss if I did not include a footnote regarding One EskimO. Not merely "just" an opening act, One EskimO set the stage magnificently for Tori's set, with soaring instrumentals and Kristian Leontiou's amazing vocals.

Warning! Nostalgia ahead:

On the way to the theater, Shoryl and I followed a group of young women. The layered clothing and slouching, rolling walk were the same as I remembered. I could have been going to a concert for any alternative band from high school. I smiled at the smell of clove cigarettes. The audience seemed comprised of these disenfranchised teens - and those of us (and I do include myself) who were the disenfranchised teens of the 90s.

Tori Amos came into my life the same way most of the music of that time period did - lying on a mattress on the other side of town next to the boy I was wholly infatuated with, listening to Tori Amos, The Cure, Alice in Chains, Primus … It was all new. We were doing deliciously adult things (we thought). Listening to the music, thinking about how the world worked, what we would do with it, what it was doing to us. And yes, some of those other “adult things,” too.

Those demigods
With their nine-inch nails
And little fascist panties
Tucked inside the heart
Of every nice girl

And there was Tori singing, about, as one reviewer put it, “sexual and spiritual angst.”

And when they say "take of his body"
I think I'll take from mine instead

I didn’t have any spiritual angst, and sexual angst was just over the horizon, but it still spoke to that free floating, existential angst that you pick up from the atmosphere as a 16 year old girl. I look at my sister who’s now at that stage, and while we don’t have much in common personality-wise … yeah, I see it again.

They say you get stuck in the fashions of your high school years. Each song from Little Earthquakes or Under the Pink made me think fondly of where I was when that music was still a little daring, hinting at things I hadn’t really figured out yet.

When she began the opening notes to “Silent All These Years,” it all came back. Walking to his house in the middle of the night and climbing through the window, running off to a park in the middle of an afternoon, sneaking into the ballroom of the convention center to make out in a storage closet. It was all there, waiting for me, with her music.

But after that one intoxicating summer, other things and other people caught my attention. I drifted away from the angst of the alternative crowd to country music. Where I could still have melodic angst, but sometimes got to have rousing, foot-stomping happy moments too. I lost track of Tori Amos and the other artists of that time and place.

Her music came back to me, as many of those bands have, with Shoryl. My beloved audiophile, with whom I’ve revisited, reassessed, relearned what I love about music, and that time in music in particular.

And then, when she played some of the songs from her latest album, it came to me how far I’d traveled from the person that had first heard her music. Tori’s early albums had said something new to me, something that, as a teenager, I was just stepping into. She’s still pushing out the angst, and when sex and religion collide, it still produces her best music. “Strong Black Vine” hearkens neatly back to “Icicle.”

tie you down cause boy I can
save you from that evil faith

Leaving, I was reminded that I am not, in fact, seventeen anymore. And while I would not give up the wondrous and ever surprising nature of my relationship with Shoryl for those tumultuous months with Brad, I could wish that I was still young enough to come out of a concert without yawning and noting with some unpleasantness that it was 10:30, and already half an hour past my bedtime.

They say you were something in those formative years
Hold onto nothing
As fast as you can
Well still pretty good year

May flights of literary muses wing my to my rest

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:58:00 +0000

Taken by way of Kait, go take a look at this article, referred to on Kait's blog as "Hell Yes, I wrote that book."

I'm Rosie the Riveter! That's so much cooler than being some languid writer with a faraway look in my eye and not enough food.

That truly is an awesome article. Yes, I may talk about my “muse”, but that is to be read as "subconscious". Yes, I may talke about my “characters,” ditto.

Really, it’s all compartmentalization, but I certainly do not hold with the idea that my Self wanders off and does something else while various other entities take over the hands. Sometimes I’m surprised by what I write, but I’m also surprised about what I happen to think about, what emotions I feel, and what I dream. It doesn’t mean that any of it isn’t inside my head.

So, for any of you that doubted my sanity, rest assured: I am insane about many, many things ... but not about my Muse coming to life and possessing me.

Lots of writing, nothing to report

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:52:00 +0000

I've been writing ... Gods, how I've been writing. Unfortunately, it's all been for The Paying Job, which leaves me absolutely no motivation to write fiction.

The last week has consisted of management asking "When?" And me replying "You know that each of these procedures is between 10-15 pages of documentation, and that there are over 80 of them, right? And that I have to sit with the reconcilers and learn each process before I can write about it, right? And that the lower-than-management-but-higher-than-me Powers That Be have been handing me stylistic changes to make on 26 procedures already written? I'm working on it."

So. I've written 6 procedures this week, roughly totalling 65 single-spaced document pages. Sadly, all of it has been at *mumble* an hour, and none of it on Dawning Sun.

Perhaps while Shoryl works on the Great Lego Sort this evening, I'll dig back down into my sources and notes and come up with some scenes. Or perhaps I'll just hug some yarn. Only time will tell.

What I've been doing when not writing

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:11:00 +0000

The Great Lego Sorting:

Trying to separate three people's legoes (legos?) into sets.

Past the first hurdle

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:07:00 +0000

Dawning Suns has passed 5000 words. Now, during Nanowrimo, I would do that during one day's sprint, but the difference is that I'm actually thinking about what I'm writing this time. Sadly, I'm not liking it any better. Too forced, too bland, too boring ... you know how it is.

Next hurdle is, of course, having three chapters complete. Three chapters are what you sell your book with (to some publishers), and so they have to pretty much stand up and dance. Like the frog. With the tophat. You know.

So once I get to the end of chapter three, and hopefully around 9000 words or so, I'm actually going to stop and edit. I know that They tell you to just get the rough draft out first, then edit, but there it is. Have to be contrary.

I've gotten some more notes about the short story affectionately named "Steampunk Ireland." I think I'll be using that one as my "busman's holiday" When the sands of Egypt get to be too much, I'll slip over to the stilted language of Victoriana and the cool depths of Irish bogs. Something like that, anyway.

Am I boring anyone yet?

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:43:00 +0000

Seriously, is this just riveting or what? Short posts with word counts, mmm, tasty.

I could go back to talk about knitting. I have this lace shawl I'm working on...

(Don't know what my word count is for today, as I haven't written them yet.)

So very close...

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:17:00 +0000

I was going to skip writing tonight. Then, I was going to sit down and get a few words while Shoryl ran downstairs to do laundry.

About 600 words later, and I'm stunned and delighted at the plot twist that just cropped up from my ever helpful (when not obnoxious) subconscious. It's a beautiful thing, and I never could have plotted it.

I'm now within spittin' distance of 4000 words, and about half done with Chapter 2. Things are looking up. Someone remind me of this post when I'm in the middle and stuck? Kthx.

Once a project manager...

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:28:00 +0000

Dawning Sun is coming along, now at nearly 3400 words. I took a break to let life happen, and to let my brain sit on it, because I was writing as I figured things out, and it wasn't working. I'd write everything I'd worked out, then stop, trying to work out the next bit.

I'm going back to plotting; this seat-of-your-pants writing is too damn hard.

I have this ... possibly neat idea of how to do this. It may end disastrously, or it may be just what I needed to combine other people's happy visual plotting with my rather straight-laced outline and timeline plotting.

Clustering has never really worked for me. Not linear enough. But I had this idea to combine the Snowflake Method with a Work Breakdown Structure. My smallest discrete tasks will be scenes. I will take with me one lesson I learned from "pantsing" it: even outlines can be changed. Nay, outlines must change as the characters change the demands of the story.

And I had a thought about The Priestess that might just give me some real insight to her. Necessary, as I'll be introducing her in the next scene.

(Edited, because apparently, I don't know my "discrete" from my "discreet." Ahem.)

Why doesn't anybody tell me these things?

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:19:00 +0000

Actual excerpt from a conversation regarding suns, made by me:

"Wait a minute - there's a lost dynasty? Why doesn't annybody tell me these things? It's not like I'm writing it or anything."

Sometimes my subconscious just does all the work on its own. I only strive to be fast enough to write it all down.

(No real words today, but significant plotting.)

Dawning Suns: The Price of Fame

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:34:00 +0000

450 words today, which brings me to 2595. It's about time to figure out how to wrap up this particular scene. Maatrya has inadvertantly made herself famous, and is now having to deal with the perennial rock star issue of having too many people want to bed her for the prestige. Oh, the quandry.

“Pleasant evening?” Nekhari’s words held a barb deep within them, but Maatrya was now too tired to unveil it.

“An evening of foolish women brought on by my own foolish actions.” Maatrya dropped to the pallet next to where her sister crouched, wincing a little as the thin reeds failed to save her fully from the unyielding nature of the tiled floor.

“I thought you might have enjoyed such a run of women all trying to warm your back for you,” Nekhari tilted her head to the side in inquiry, and again Maatrya heard the sting in her seemingly pleasant words. She narrowed her eyes to glare at her sister.

“You can't really think I've bedded all of them!” She faltered. “Do you?”

Suns, and Ireland

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:13:00 +0000

Um. Hello. I've been writing over ... there, somewhere. I've got 2145 words on Dawning Sun so far, and some fun worldbuilding bits on the steampunk short story I seem to want to pursue.

From today's work on Dawning Suns:

They stood, and the light shifted so that she could no longer see their expressions. For a moment, she gazed at the long, finely boned calves even with her head, and entertained that she might have made a mistake. But her mind shifted into reverie as she remembered the sound of wings and the movement of hair loose in the breeze, and she did not see the women leave her and return to their own pallets.

(I know; it's just description, but that's all I really wrote today. The dialog I wrote was ... not some of my best. How do you hit on someone you're not interested in? And how do you reject the person who's hitting on you when you know they're not interested in you?)

And from the Steampunk Fae:

His workshop, when she dared broach the door, had yielded little in the way of specific clues, though she did find a schematic pinned down by two errant clock hands. The enigmatic words “newgrange, 11pm, not ours” scrawled across the bottom were not in Charles' customarily neat hand, but Anna was forced to conclude they were his.

Which is how Anna came to be booking passage to the back end of the English empire, armed with various watchpieces and one slightly battered prototype dichromaton to find her errant husband.

Why, hello there

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:28:00 +0000

Someone is talking in my head. (I'm a writer; this isn't all that uncommon).

What do you get when you mix steampunk, Irish pishogues, the daoine sidhe, a quirky sense of time, and a wayward groom? I'm not particularly sure either, but I'm getting there.

Dawning Sun, unexpected encounter

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:14:00 +0000

361 words on Dawning Sun today, giving me a net of 834 after some light edits.

It's odd writing one scene in pieces like this. I'm used to writing a scene all in one go (which means I need to write for as many days as I have scenes, at a minimum). These low word counts, though, are easy to squeeze in during my day at work, and I'm finding that I'm actually enjoying it. Of the five goals I set myself for this scene, I've woven in three of them. I'm not sure how my description is holding up, but, hey, that's for rewrites.

And I've now completely lost track of my word counts overall, so I'll just be tracking by using the progress meter on the right. Maybe if I make a blog post and do nothing else, I'll count the words then.

They didn’t pace so much as glide, each step a testament to the lightness they
felt so close to the source of the Middle River.

Consecutive days of writing: 002
Longest previous streak: 007
Word count since 4/30/09: 7494 (accurate as of 6/17/09)

The Sun Rises

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:58:00 +0000

You can't see it on my progress meter because it's under 1000 words, but I started Sun today. (Working title: Dawning Sun) I'm 475 words in. I have no idea what I think of it yet, but there are words on the page. I'll make them better later, right?

The second time Maatrya saw the man she was married to was the day she was married to his son. Technically, of course, she’d been married to Ara’shari for seventy days, ever since the high, keening aula had gone up in the city of Tharam to signal Ara’menhi’s descent to the Lower River. For seventy days, she had woken to the dawning sun and the keening of the women around her. She knelt with the others, throwing herself on the turquoise and gold relief of the Great River that graced the quarters of the Most Royal Wives when she was required to, tearing at her hair and smearing the mud made from her tears and the ever blowing sand on the torn linen that fluttered around her. Those had been torn the first day of the aula, of course, and she’d been kneeling on the tiles for most of her waking moments since then.

Pride Weekend!

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:04:00 +0000

My camera and I got a workout. Here's a short sampling. The whole glorious full color weekend can be found here.

(I've been plotting, but no actual writing. And between Pride last weekend and CONvergence next weekend ... I'll get back on the wagon next week.)

Interesting bits for today

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:51:00 +0000

Nefertiti and Ankhenaten formed a divine triad with the Aten, who was genderless. This resolved the problem of an unreachable, unknowable god for the masses who generally revered fertility. As the Aten was genderless, it was sole creator - something difficult to accept. Ankhenaten and Nefertiti, then, were seen as completing the traditional triad. Where, in the previous state faith, this was usually a god, his consort, and his son (see Isis, Osiris, Horus), now it was the creater god and the royal couple. The royal couple was the agent of this fertility, represented by the preponderance of images showing the royal couple with their daughters. Temples to the Aten now, instead of having a figure of the god (who, as literally the *light* of the sun could not have a human/humanoid body) had images of the royal couple. In effect, the state religion became one of worshipping Ankhenaten and Nefertiti as the divine inheritors of the Aten.

All other state deities were outlawed and no offerings were to be made to them (making their temples and clergy poor very quickly, and the throne very wealthy). However, the "minor religion" relating to Bes, Taweret, et al appears to have continued to flourish. Since these were regional deities that were primarily associated with superstition and magic, they posed no threat to the Aten's role of sole creator, and were therefore regarded - by the king, at least, as unimportant.

Tombs, rather than having images of the gods or the inhabitants, began to feature the royal family instead, and they were prayed to even while alive (thus transfiguring the "divine ancestor" narrative of pharoahs to "divine in the flesh.")

I have two story arcs in my head (soon to be written down). When I get the third, I'll be ready to start actually plotting this thing and really writing. I hope to have it all ironed out by the completion of my first read through of Nefertiti. So excited!

Oh, and "Step 2" of the process started as soon as I narrowed down my research to Nefertiti, which was sometime around ... last Friday, I think. My research gathering is now focussed, which is why I've started these (probably boring) posts with research information that I want to not forget. I need to spend some serious time in front of my computer with Liquid Story Binder and a soda or five.

Consecutive days of writing: 008
Longest previous streak: 007
Word count since 4/30/09: 7494

Digging in to Nefertiti

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:38:00 +0000

Ew. That was not the most inspired post title ever. Here's what grabbed my attention today:

The temple-city of Amarna, which was built, then abandoned and destroyed
Nefertiti comes from obscurity - basically wedded from nowhere - and begins taking on a more substantive role after only a year of Ankhenaten's reign.
Nefertiti's "sister" - who arises out of similar obscurity, then disappears from the narrative. She is shown in the paintings, but takes no part in the Aten worship.
Ankhenaten's remarkable "conversion" in his third year - and the enthusiasm with which Nefertiti embraces it.
The temple at Hwr-benen, where no males - human or animal - are depicted on any of the walls, but Nefertiti and her eldest daughter always are.

Gah! I'm going to have to go through this carefully after I've read it the first time. There's just so many little gems that instantly become plot points, I'll never remember them all.

Consecutive days of writing: 007
Longest previous streak: 007
Word count since 4/30/09: 6508

Today's Daughter of Isis Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Colleen) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:15:00 +0000

Professional mourners ... king's "harem" (difficulty in translation) ... honorary priestesses ... assasination orignating in harems ...

Queen Tiy -> Nefertiti (married to Ankenaten) -> Tutankhamen -> Queen Ankhesanamen (see p207) History in (The Royal Harem)

(Female Kings) - good stuff on some of the lesser ones, most interested in Nefertiti's connection to the heretical pharoah and Hatchepsut, of course. Next books should give me something definite, but 18th Dynasty seems the way to go.Queen Tiy being Amenhotep IV mother. He marries Nefertiti, who gradually leaves the picture after her daughter's death, replaced by the "young prince" Sen...something. Author made brief allusion to questions regarding Ankenaten's sexuality, when discussing that there were none with Hatchepsut. Where did Nefertiti come from?

My Muse is working with this, and some of it is becoming clear. Nothing definite, just yet, and I don't want to conscribe it by limiting it on paper. But there's enough ambiguity in that royal line to keep me busy for awhile.

Hatchepsut -> Tiy -> Nefertiti -> Ankhesanamen? Quartet of ruling women, yes, but what's my love story?

Consecutive days of writing: 003
Longest previous streak: 007
Word count since 4/30/09: 6187