Trivia from Raven: Mirabelle

Sometimes when you make the expedient choice, it turns out pretty good. For example, in Doctor Who, the psychic paper was created because they wanted to advance the action quicker. In the old series, the Doctor was particularly persuasive but this resulted in a long section of dialogue that was frequently boring.

My example: In Raven: Mirabelle, the team visits a local museum where Chaoschick gets incensed that the spaceship that delivered the original colonists is not on display. In the scene, the brunette-with-big-mouth starts yelling at the director in Galact and suddenly Bellan begins to come out of her mouth without her even noticing. This added a bit of strangeness to the scene and added to the mystery of Chaoschick’s origins.

However, it hadn’t been planned that way. When writing the dialogue, I ran out of ideas of what she could say in her rant. So I had her revert to her childhood language.

If you look back in older posts, you’ll find the whole chapter posted.

Teasers!

The writing for Raven: Necris is proceeding and here are a few hints as to what will happen.

  1. You find out Grabby’s real name.
  2. You find out the origin of Grabby’s handle.
  3. Raven takes a surprise guest home with her to Necris.
  4. The plot thread of Vysse at Bestmartin begins.
  5. The series arc is revealed.

The Emerald Coast

I was on the road for my day job this past week and spent four days on the Florida panhandle in the area, which I just found out, is called the Emerald Coast. We went down by the beach one evening and got a good view of why it was called that. The water at the end of very white sand, is an emerald green until it gets deep at which point it faded into a dark blue. My phone’s battery decided to give out after the long day, so I couldn’t get a picture!

You can get a little of the idea from this picture of me that one of my travel companions took, but the green in the background does not give justice to the actual emerald green.

As you notice, we got there about sunset. It had to be the whitest and finest beach sand I’d ever seen.

This does go along with the writing for book 4 of Raven of Iskandar. A minor spoiler but Necris will be getting emerald green seas.

Sources of Inspiration

I think writers are more adept about taking various things and combining them into a new and strange configuration. Of course, writer’s experiences generally come out all over the place in their writing.

I was thinking about this because I remembered an incident from the first Raven of Iskandar book: Raven: The Call from Central. Not really a spoiler, but at one point, Raven describes the harpsichord that Grabby buys. In it, she describes how the two lowest keys are split horizontally, so that you can play two different notes in the same location. This description is what I actually saw way back in college (at the dawn of the Cretaceous) when my music teacher brought in her personal harpsichord to show the class.

The rest of the description of the harpsichord was due to research. Even when creating a society from scratch, you still have to do some research.

Identifying Demons?

The following cartoon is from the strip ‘Pibgorn’ by Brooke McEldowney. This is a fantasy comic that features an odd alliance between a formerly dewdrop-carrying fairy (Pibgorn or Pib) and a succubus (Drusilla or Dru) who unite to save the world from demons.

This cartoon is really for a friend of mine down in Florida who is a lawyer.

You can read Pibgorn here:

https://www.gocomics.com/pibgorn/

Just a disclaimer: I don’t know Brooke McEldowney or have any associated with him or gocomics, I just think the guy has a great sense of humor.