Masks opening

After receiving a rejection from the wonderful Nelson Literary Agency, I've decided that it would be a good idea to solicit some opinions about my opening.  Anyone dropping by is of course very welcome to comment.  I'm especially hoping to see some opinions from folks who haven't read further into the novel, although comments from INKers and anyone else who's read Masks would be great as always, because I have no perspective left.  Readers who haven't read anything prior of Masks are particularly valuable to me right now because they're in the same emotional space (or pretty close) as agents and editors who are looking at my partials.  

The contest had us submit the first 500 words, but I think I have less time than that to capture someone's imagination.  I decided to go with the cleanest break near 250 words and ended up with about 280.

Here it is:

Mark stared at the robin egg blue ceiling while lying in Lord Argenwain's bed.  He checked the ancient clock that tocked at the far wall in the golden master bedroom.  Almost three in the afternoon.  He had to be at his history lesson soon.  His tongue felt furry and an unpleasant pressure thickened around his mouth and eyes.  Thirst tightened his throat.  He didn’t want to be here, but he didn’t want to leave either.  Bainswell might be bored, or in a mood, or waiting.

The old man stopped snoring.  His fish-like mouth with its stained, long teeth gaped open.  Mark caressed Argenwain's papery skin, concerned.  Still warm.  He held his hand near the old man’s mouth.  Warm, moist breath.  Relief eased through him and he sat up.  Mark worked his hands through his hair.

If the old man died he’d grieve, but it would be a complicated sort of grief.  He didn’t want to think about that, or anything complicated at the moment.

Mark forced himself out from under the covers and padded across the fur carpet into the cobalt tile bathroom, his feet curling from the chill.  Wheat-colored lengths of hair curtained his face as he bent to wash his face in tepid, jasmine-scented water in a marble sink.  He settled his bare bottom on a mahogany chair, grabbed a comb from the vanity, and combed his hair out with his head bowed.  Tension burned in his belly while resignation bowed his spine.  Maybe it just seemed like he’d had one bad day after another because he was exhausted, but a superstitious part of him wondered if a morbai watched from the spirit world, waiting to satisfy its malice.  

As an aside, I hopped over to LitLotRS and found that my good friend had posted a great poem.  Check it out.

Lots Ahead

I've done a lot of critiquing over the past few days.  First pages, Lucky Lab manuscripts, cowriting.  I've also done some polishing on Masks, but not nearly as much as I'd like to.  It's wild, but the dreary kind of wild like when you've been camping for ages with no one else around and all you really want is a home-cooked meal, a hot shower and your own bed.  I'm slowly crawling out from under my backlog, keeping up on the new stuff coming in, and I hope by the time Wednesday rolls around (my guesstimate for when I'll be done with all this) I can sit down and write uninterrupted.

I missed a critique meeting on Saturday.  It started to snow, and snow, and snow.  It was one of those snow storms that dumps several inches in a few hours.  If it had snowed steadily all day and night at that rate we might have seen accumulation that could be measured in feet rather than inches.  As it stood it was very off and on and had mostly stopped by 8pm.  Just a few minutes ago it started raining, which will take our three inches of slush and melt it all away in short order.  I'm surprised that we still have snow--it's about 40 degrees F out there.  The ground is really cold, though.  

Anyway, I'd already missed one Lucky Labs meeting because of work and I was really looking forward to making a meeting for once.  I find critiques so valuable, not just for the feedback but the inspiration.  I try to change locations when I write periodically.  When I write in my office I tend to write writing-in-my-office prose.  The prose freshens immensely when I hand write at work, or tap away on a laptop somewhere, etc.  I haven't had a chance to jostle myself out of this physical comfort zone for quite a while, so it makes critique groups even more valuable.  When I come back from one I feel as if I've been run through a wash and dry cycle.  My mind has had all the dingy grime washed away and the tangles have been brushed out.

Coming up, Radcon.  I've had a chance to pitch informally to coworkers (though I doubt they knew that was what I was doing) and although I'm still not very good at it, I'm starting to find my feet.  I don't think I'll be pitching Masks at Radcon, but you never know.  If an opportunity presents itself I think I'll go for it.  Chances are high that Masks will come back with a 'thanks for your sub but this doesn't fit our needs' note.  It's out of the slush pile, which is really fabulous, but now it's competing with nothing but promising novel concepts.  It feels wonderful to have gotten this far.  I have to be careful, though, not to let my subconscious settle me into a 'far enough' mode.  I'm outside my comfort zone and I'm sure all kinds of little status-quo demons will be busy at work trying to either stuff the worms back into the can or at least building a new, bigger can to keep the worms in.  Heh.  Out of the can and into the compost bin?  

There's lots ahead of me right now.  My life has turned into a page-turner.  I can't wait to see what's going to happen in the next chapter.

Gah!  Weather update.  It looks like this right now (4:36pm):

I was just getting ready to head out to the Olive Garden for a birthday party, too.  Denied!!  The temp was 40 degrees only a half hour ago, and it was raining, like I mentioned earlier in this post.  Now it's at 36 degrees and dropping.  I shouldn't have said anything about the snow melting away.  I have only myself to blame.

The Return

Well, it looks like it's official. The Nanopubye blog is dead, toast, gone, entirely inaccessible, even possibly deleted. I've emailed the webmaster for the site and maybe, just maybe, it got archived, but she said on the front page that she archived the *forums*, saying nothing of the dozen or so blogs that were reasonably active there.

Too bad, I guess.

Which means I'll have to employ brand new skills and increasing levels of craftiness in order to do what I love the most--create illustrated and entertaining full color posts on a very outdated computer--on this blog. It'll be a challenge. Sometimes I can access some of the pic-sites, sometimes I can't. We're talking one day I can access site X and do whatever and the next I can't, which brings to mind an image of a MIB-style operative smiling as he sees that I've logged online and holding his finger over two keys, one saying grant access, the other saying deny access, and the finger waggles between the two like a weird caterpiller. Hey, I might even be able to post movies, or links to them, eventually, as I get this all figured out. If so, y'all definitely got to see the puppies playing in the snow when they were tiny.

Tiny no more. The puppies have grown into seven month olds, aka white horses.

But I digress.

So this is the officially semi-new full time Kami blog, which may be a yay or a boo depending on your POV. Catch ya later!