Princess Taralia of Nephtar

     What shall be done with a beautiful princess of a poor country? Send her to marry a prince from a rich country! With this in mind, Princess Taralia is sent along with Nephtar's ambassador to visit the powerful country of Leramay. Using as many arts as she can muster, it is her job to woo him into a marriage. Her country depends on it.
      Things seem to be going well. To her secret delight, the prince she is sent to win is a handsome, charming, young man. And, while there are numerous other women seeking the same goal, Taralia has the advantage, since she came with her ambassador, of living in the prince's castle in the guest rooms reserved for foreign ambassadors. With such hope in front of her, Taralia and her ambassador find extra business to detain them in Leramay for as long as necessary.
      But the prince disappears as soon as his father arrives home. How can a woman woo a prince who is nowhere to be found? Growing desperate, Taralia begins her own search for the missing prince. Can she find him before he falls in love with someone else?

     Greetings, all! There is a foreign princess who plays one of the side characters in one of my stories. Princess Taralia only appears a few times in the tale, but I thought if I rewrote the story entirely from her perspective this back cover blurb (see italics above) would fit.

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Goodbye and God Be With You

It's rather fitting that some things come to a close on this day -- the last day of the year. I submitted my last entry into the Rooglewood contest this morning. I can hardly believe it took me until the day of the deadline to send it in because I'm usually earlier than that. And, even with the extra time I took, I still felt a little bit like maybe I could have done better if I had more time. But there was no feeling of regret when I hit "send." Mostly it was just a prayer that Rooglewood would hear the heart of the message when they read it and that maybe, if I win, they could help me bring the full potential out of my little story. And there was also a feeling, after working on these stories for more than six months, that it felt good to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I did it. I wrote them. And I'm really proud of them. Last year, the act of hitting "send" on my contest entry catapulted me into an anticipatory state....

The Countdown: Eight Days

Eight days. Do you know what that means? Barely over a week. Tomorrow will be one week from the announcement date. Are you excited? I am. So, today, I want to talk to those who wrote something for the contest, whether or not you entered it in the end. What made you start writing your story? What was the first inkling of an idea that tickled your brain? What was it that you liked about your premise? As you wrote, did you have a favorite character or a favorite scene? And are you glad you wrote it down? Do you feel like you learned and grew in your ability as a writer as you tried out things for this contest? And, if your story isn't included in this year's Rooglewood anthology (either because you didn't submit it or because it didn't fit with the other four stories selected), what will you do with it? Will you market it elsewhere? Or will you lock it away in a drawer?

Wherein I Still Have My Nose and Ears

I decided to take the plunge. I was going to chop a plot thread out of AAM so the story would fit in the contest word length restrictions. I saved my old version and set up a copy for me to modify. Stories are like woven cloth. Each plot thread is woven into the entire story. So if I decide to cut a character or a side-theme, I have to go through the whole book, chopping out the references to it. This leaves gaping holes and sometimes it looks like the whole story is going to unravel. Everywhere I chop, I have to readjust the whole scene to keep the flow. It's a rather ticklish procedure. Over the dinner table, I mentioned that I was chopping a sub-plot. My younger sister protested loudly (she hasn't read it, but I previously told her the general idea). Then my mom (who also hasn't read it) offered to read it and tell me what she thought could and couldn't be chopped. ...

The Pen of a Ready Writer

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