bunn

Brief visit to Devon to see my mother.

( Read more... )Oh, and I completed my founding of the Shire story: There and Back Again (to Norbury of the Kings)

I'm not sure why I felt like writing such a long story about the daughter of a one-line hobbit from the LOTR appendices, but so it goes. Here's the first chapter. I'm not quite sure about the second chapter so I'm keeping it to ferment for a couple days. Hopefully it won't grow too much more worldbuilding because it's got more than it needs of that already.

There and Back Again to Norbury of the Kings.
Three hundred years after Angmar first arose in the North-kingdom, the successor kingdom of Arthedain still stands against the Witch-king of Angmar, though Rhudaur and Cardolan have fallen.

Not that the war bothers Marcho’s daughter Bagmē Blōma, half-Fallowhide, half-Harfoot, fifteen years old and all opinions. She’s got other things on her mind.

I wrote two short fics set during the Angmar Wars.

World Ending? Pub. - about Firiel, wife of Arvedui

One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters - about Arvedui and Aranarth, to support my idea that hanging onto the palantiri for dear life was the reason that Arvedui ended up in the North needing rescuing by Cirdan.

Someone told me that a series about the Angmar Wars was bound to be very depressing, so of course I am now trying to write a jolly story about the Founding of the Shire.

Plus, finally completed one slightly longer story (well, only 5000ish words but longer than the other two, anyway) about Elrond, Earendil and Gil-galad in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth:

Two Peredhil and an Elf in a Boat

I finished writing my Tolkien RSB story, Angmar Rising. It's a story about Glorfindel arriving in Rivendell in the Third Age and having an adventure in Rhudaur.

The art I wrote for was a picture of Glorfindel in armour looking back at himself in the years of peace by Sempermoi, and it's very well done.

I had terrible trouble getting to the end of the story and eventually wrote the end in a great rush close to the deadline. Next year I really am going to give TRSB a miss: I think I prefer to do writing in the winter and doing sunny day things when the sun is here.

Rosie Roo is wobbly on her long legs and has a bit of a head tilt. The vet thinks she's had a vestibular incident (a bit like a stroke for dogs, only not really because apparently it doesn't have the same brain symptoms as strokes in humans). The vet prescribed antibiotics, an anti-nausea jab, and careful supervision to prevent her falling over. It's lucky that I bought some more floor rugs recently to offer the ancient dog improved grip.

Rather to my astonishment, she did eat the first dose of antibiotics, wrapped in tuna, but she's eaten very little else today. It's tricky, as she's not really supposed to have anything high in fat (for her iffy pancreas) or in phosphorus (for her failing liver). This cuts down on tasty things to tempt her appetite, but perhaps tuna is acceptable?

I hope she will be hungrier tomorrow. She is at least 15, probably 16 or older, and she's been doing pretty well up to now.

I finished writing Dáin's Saga, which took me over the million words on Ao3! Then I wrote another short thing about an elderly Gimli meeting Celebrimbor. I couldn't think of a good title for it so plumped for Gifts and Guilts, which does the job, more or less.

Am still struggling slightly with the flu aftermath. I was hoping to be able to go for a swim in the sea this week. Maybe it will happen, if the last of the sore throat and coughing finally packs itself off. The sky was so blue this evening, and the sea so green.

Pp went to Garycon in Wisconsin which he enjoyed a great deal. I managed to keep up with all the orders enquiries and packing while he was away, more or less.

Then he got back, and almost immediately went down with (we think) the flu swept through the con-attenders immediately after the event. Two days later so did I.

So it was a pretty blurred and vague Easter and I'm still working on regaining the ability to walk upstairs in one go without a series of long thoughtful achy pauses.

What do I remember doing? We watched the movies 'Nyad' and 'Glass Onion'. I re-read a couple of Diana Wynne Jones books and finally finished reading the Witcher books. Felt the ending was very Polish somehow.

I have managed to take Theo out for at least one walk a day, but it's mostly been a slow short one. Yesterday was the exception, because I foolishly let him off the lead on the beach, where he has been very good for over a year, and, just too bored to cope, he took off like a bullet up into the gorse, where he spent about an hour running in frantic circles after... whatever lives up there. Rabbits. Foxes, maybe. Oh well, at least it tired him out. I and Rosie and Pp sat on the beach and waited for him to come back. At least the sun was shining.

And I posted a couple more chapters of Dain's Saga. The last chapter isn't quite polished but I hope it will be by Thursday. When I post it, I will have hit the round million of words posted on Ao3, which is something.

The tale of Dáin Ironfoot, told loosely in the style of a saga of Iceland (in English translation).

Jarakrisafis posted a prompt to LOTR Secret Santa 2023 that said "I remember as a teenager reading the Silmarillion for the first time and wishing there was more about Dàin Ironfoot than was in the book and the appendices" specifying book rather than movie canon.

I read that and thought, ah, what an absolutely fascinating idea! I'm sure I could write that in a few hours! Also, what if I wrote it roughly in the style of an english translation of a saga from thirteenth century Iceland?

Several months later... it's 12,000+ words. Whoops. It will be posted in chapters rather than the whole thing at once.

Dáin's Saga

I DID manage to get my first FTH story written by the deadline. It's here :

Fear Fire Foes

The War of Wrath has been raging for thirty-five years. Now the Enemy has found a new strategy. He’s set a trap.

The request was for a hurt/comfort story with Elrond and Elros offering comfort to Maedhros and Maglor. It seemed to work out well enough in the end though I got stuck for ages. I may have maxed out on writing First Age Tolkien stories, at least for a while.

Then I wrote a surprisingly quick thing about a ghostly Boromir:

A Leaf of the White Tree
Boromir falls. The fate of everything he loves rides on Frodo's doomed quest: how can he leave, with so much left unfinished? Boromir's ghost watches as the War of the Ring blossoms into a peace that he had never really believed was possible.

It's been ages since I wrote more than 2000 words in a day!

Then I painted a couple of things. One was Fishguard Harbour, which I seem to have failed to photograph (yet). I should photograph that and make another post for it

And the other was this, which I call
The Opening of the West-gate of Khazad-dûm

Two young holly-bushes were planted either side of the new Doors. There was singing and dancing and drinking all night long, and lights like stars were strung along the valley to light the revels, until the Morning Sun came up and began to peer out of the East over the tops of the Misty Mountains.

I was trying to finish the story that I was writing for Fandom Trumps Hate, which is a Silmarillion First Age story with Maglor, Elrond, Maedhros and Elros, but I seem to have stalled on that.

Then there was a Tolkien Original Character week on Tumblr, and somehow I ended up writing several thousand words about Berengar, who is a part-Numenorean OC that I made for Elrond to meet during the fall of Eregion. That isn't finished either, but I do seem to have found things to say about that anyway, rather than just being stuck. I have another Second Age story I should be writing for FTH as well, and I had intended to get it done before the new Rings of Power show began airing, but I'm not sure I shall manage that now. Oh well.

I've put in an offer of making a painting for

sunflower_auction , which is a fanworks auction raising money for various Ukraine charities. I hope it is a great success.

Now trying to decide whether to offer writing as well. I did get some nice bids in Fandom Trumps Hate, and am now working on my first story for that. They wanted a Silmarillion hurt/comfort story involving Maedhros, Maglor, Elrond and Elros, and I came up with a few ideas for that: we have discussed, and gone for First Age War of Wrath, which allows all four to be present and is an interesting setting to explore that doesn't have quite so many stories already written for it.

I am still waiting to hear exactly what my second chance bidder would like me to write. He got in touch, and said he would get back to me, but so far no word has come. If it's something with a lot of scope, I might not want to commit to another written-to-prompt story this year since I seem to have reverted to Write Very Slowly Mode (alas!).

Actually, maybe the thing to do is ask him about that. It's been a month, a gentle chasing-up email is probably due.

I've also offered to pinch-hit for

tolkienrsb but I'm not submitting art this year, and might not write unless an art that really speaks to me finds itself unexpectedly writerless.

Made a cover for my story Rexque Futurus and having had more than one glass of wine, posted it on Facebook. What could possibly go wrong.

I started writing Rexque Futurus, my vaguely BBC Merlin Arthurian story inspired by sally-maria's LJ post,  in 2015, and now at last it is DONE.

Chapter 15 : Beyond Destiny is the last chapter, in which we discover the world is changed forever, learn what the Future King does once the Darkest Hour is done, inform the bees of our progress, and return the Volvo to its garage.

No beta for this last chapter, I have spent far too long agonising over how to get here and couldn't bear to bother someone to beta read it having finally got there.  

I think if I ever write anything novel-length again, I'm just going to write the ending first and then go back and write the rest of it.  This business of starting at the beginning and proceeding onward is far too hard. 

But I am pleased, I think, with what I wrote, even if I did learn some things about not making an adversary so ridiculously hard that any form of defeat for him feels a bit anticlimactic.  

I've recovered from the vaccination (ow! ow! and also BLURGH), and got on with writing. Have finally got to the main confrontation in my King Arthur, Merlin and the Volvo story (AT LAST). I was rather hoping this would be the last chapter, but not quite. The last chapter is really more of an afterword, but the story would end very abruptly without it.

Rexque Futurus: Ch 14, the Hunting of the Snake.

I looked back over my old entries and found the bit where I started writing Rexque Futurus, the story about Arthur, Merlin, the ancient Volvo. Apparently in December 2015 I had already written 32,000 words, which is really odd because the last few chapters that I have been writing have come VERY slowly. But that time was when I was working on a bunch of other things at the same time, and also endings always seem to be harder than beginnings. My optimism about being able to summon up a chapter a week for the last 5 chapters was ludicrous in retrospect, but hey, it's a learning experience.

Anyway, I wrote a chapter, with no Volvo but there is a dragon and a bunch of ravens, and it's here.

Oh, also my car (ironically, an ancient Volvo, though when I started writing the story my car was a Saab) went in for its MOT and failed, but the garage seems optimistic that it can be tweaked and fettled sufficiently to pass, which would be good since second-hand cars seem to be thin on the ground at the moment (presumably because people are trying to avoid public transport).

We shall see. It currently has 160,000+ miles on the clock, one of the rear doors is very bashed, the driver door is a different colour and the window doesn't work, and nor does the sun roof, so it is at least aging. But it's still surprisingly nice to drive, and also there is an excellent feeling of invincibility to it. Anything short of a lorry that drives into it is is probably going to come off worse and leave little sign of impact. And you can get a lot of stuff in it.

and my two stories were:

Swan-feather Song

Tuor and Idril sailed away into the West, and were lost. But how did that happen, and what came next?

I really can't decide if I like this story or not. It somehow feels like it's not as entertaining as it should be for the amount of effort I put into it.

Whereas the other one came much more easily, and I think is probably a better story even if it was quicker and shorter.

When Summer Warms the Hanging Fruit and Burns the Berry Brown

Rúnar of the Vanyar and Minyen of the Avari were born in Middle-earth, long before the rising of the Sun. One went to Valinor and followed Yavanna, but the other wandered far from the lake of Cuivienen into the great forests of the south of Middle-earth. Neither ever came into any tale of Beleriand, but both of them in different ways felt the power of Yavanna.

And the art I submitted was this one: the Shiremoot Zoom Meeting.

I'm not sure I'm wild about the execution, but I am still very delighted by Gaffer Gamgee having a potato avatar.

The story for this was You Have No Authority Here, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and it made me laugh out loud at several points.

The Tuor and Idril story is done, and after much prodding and poking, seems a decent shape.

The Tropical Yavanna story came together really quickly in the end. It's a story that is half Vanyar and half Avari and *mostly* worldbuilding.

They will be live... when is it? A week? Two? Something like that anyway.

I really want to finish Rexque Futurus next. I've been writing it for seven years, this MUST surely be the year when I get chapters 13 and 14 polished off and can finally say to myself 'IT IS DONE!'

I have rough drafts for both chapters, so it really should be possible.

This story was about Tuor & Idril. I hadn't written them before, and I'm really not convinced I've done a good job. The story seems over-long and rather unwieldy, and it has a kind of wobbly saggy bit which I am really not sure how to fix.

But it has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Perhaps I can revise and trim it a bit later. The second story for TRSB is well underway and I hope that will be shorter and not so flabby.

I am trying to finish off my first Tolkien reverse summer bang story, which is about a slight AU Idril and Tuor. I hadn't written Idril before (have written Tuor before, but he was a sealion skinchanger then, so arguably not very canon either!)

I like the idea, and I'm over the minimum word-count, but somehow the story hasn't quite taken wing.

I think what I'm struggling with is that Tuor and Idril have neither of them done a thing wrong in their entire lives, so far as I can tell, and are also enormously competent. I do like a competent character, but a character with weaknesses is perhaps easier to relate to. Or maybe it's just a 3/4 done stall and I just need to get the end of it finished.

New dishwasher arrived and was installed and they took away the old one very efficiently, all masked and with the windows wide open for a healthy draught. This year has been all about the healthy draughts so far, the whole thing of 'keeping the heat in' has rather blown away...

It seems they don't make the kind of dishwasher with a sort of 2/3's door and the controls on the outside any more : modern dishwashers have the controls on the top of the door. So the old door panel didn't fit. Of course it didn't. I bought a new one: it was cheap, and I didn't attempt to match colours, it's a dark shiny grey, whereas the rest of the kitchen is cherry wood. But the dishwasher works and I fitted the new panel and handle yesterday. I don't think it looks too weird.

Had a house viewing on Friday: I assume if they had wanted to buy they would have sent us a message by now. Hey ho. We air the house out and clean it, then go out for the morning so the estate agent can let the viewers in, so we never actually see them.

Theo is enjoying Virtual Dog School and is getting quite good at walking to heel. He and Fankil the Grey Cat are good friends at the moment: they both like to come upstairs together in the mornings to wake us up at breakfast time. They don't tend to arrive too early, so I don't object.

Made squash soup, walnut bread and apple crumble today. Mum was supposed to be coming to bubble for lunch, but the roads were icy so she decided not.

Need to decide whether to sign up for Worldbuilding Exchange. I sort of want to finish some of my long WIPs, really, but they all feel a bit draggy at the moment, so it's tempting to sign up to do something new instead. On the other hand, that sort of attitude isn't going to get the WIPs finished!

I keep thinking that at last I am being Efficient and Getting Stuff Done, and then I find something I have utterly forgotten that seems like the kind of thing I'd normally remember. Today, it was the live session of Dog School, which I forgot was at 11. And I am astonishingly behind on comment replies, which usually don't seem like anything at all. Still, at least the laundry is clean.

I don't seem to be achieving much on the art or writing front at the moment. I'm trying my best to finish off The Siege of Khazad-dûm, my Celebrimbor Lives AU, but although I know pretty well how it's going to end, actually getting words down in pixels is just awful. Write three words, hate them, delete them awful. No flow at all. I know that if I can just get back into practice, it will come, but getting back there is hard work!

I'm fairly sure that the endless scroll and constant new shinies of social media contributes to this somehow, but I am not turning it off. I may try to read more books though, I think reading books and writing is linked and I'm not doing much of either at the mo.

I tried to paint a picture as the Shop on the Borderlands Christmas card, but... the results were awful, and in the end I decided rather than messing with it any further, I would draw a veil over the entire attempt, and paint something else. But I haven't started that yet. Art stuff has been mostly in abeyance until the Great Move though, so less worried about that.

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bunn

January 2026

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Entries tagged with writing

To Devon & back

Wrote a story about the founding of the Shire

Things Written

Wrote a thing.

Old wobbly dog, written things, me

Urg

I wrote a thing!

Dáin's Saga

Wrote a thing.Or 2.

Writing

Writing and stuff

Rexque Futurus (one last time)

IT IS DONE

Rexque Futurus

I wrote a chapter!

TRSB reveals happened...

TRSB completed!

TRSB #1 ... sort of finished

writing rambles

A dull update

Writing brain turned off