A glimpse into Moonlake's creative endeavours
This is the last post for this particular series.
Lin
Physical Description:
A hound-like beast with tiger-like claws, scaled.
Special Properties:
It is good at jumping and pouncing. Consuming its meat can cure some health condition
Gui
Physical Description:
A turtle-like creature with a red head and a white body.
Special Properties:
It has fire resistance.
Zhi Tu
Physical Description:
A crow-like bird with red feet.
Special Properties:
It has fire resistance.
To be honest, I am running out of things to say about reading on this blog other than my Book Discoveries. Also, I’m feeling like changing things a bit with reading other than just relying on my whims. To this end, I’ve set myself a mini reading challenge which is this: I would read 4 books this year that have elements that belong together in a theme irrespective of genre. Not 4 seasons because it’s too obvious and personally speaking, I don’t feel anything special for that theme.
My current thought on theme is running the lines of getting outside the box of the number 4. For example, I could pick a random 4 of star signs or constellations or Tarot cards and Google books that have those elements. I am currently really liking Constellations and this is what caught my eyes through a Google search:
The other aspect that I am changing is that I am going to seek a bit of input with this mini reading challenge. So feel free to leave me comments on theme and book suggestions.
The photo is not actually my writing space. Mine consists of only a single monitor and a keyboard and none of the other stuff but it is much too cluttered and I don’t want you to see how messy it is. But I chose the pic above because it is pretty much the standard setup and I’m using AI so I’m just taking the first picture that’s more or less what I want. Anyway, going back to the topic, I’m not a very ritualistic person, rather I tend towards practical and utilitarian so I don’t have a dedicated writing space per se (and besides Wild Writing, I don’t really write by hand anymore). Instead, this is basically a space where I write, work and play games with my PC.
Now, while I don’t have any writing rituals, I do have a writing routine. It has been evolving but the basic principle is that I pick 5 or 6 days a week to work on my WIP and a set number of hours to devote to writing&related each day. By writing & related, I mean everything that feeds into my writing. Half of it is reading which is split between English/Kindle books nowadays which is purely leisure and what I call emotional reading- re-reading a specific old or new online novel in Chinese and recording down bits where I remember an emotional reaction to. The other half is not all directly related to the WIP but rather more exercises to hone my writer’s craft overall. RIght now, I only have one WIP writing session per writing day (I did have a spell of two writing sessions per writing day but that’s a few years ago now) and I’ve tweaked things from meeting a given word count to achievement based. Part of it is summer lethargy and procrastination and part of it is that there are just a lot of scenes where I feel ‘stuck’ constantly that I encounter everywhere for this project.
That’s the state of things right now with me. Feel free to leave me comments to let me know what you think.
We caught the Flix bus from Annecy to Lyon and though the seats were a bit cramped, we no longer had to worry about porting luggages etc. I felt like I would do more Flix bus intercity trips in the future if I could.
Our 3 star hotel at Lyon was really cramped but it had a good location. We mainly visited Place Bellecour and Vieux Lyon. Originally we planned to have lunch at Place Bellecour and almost had it at a Chinese wanton shop but the French waitress was adamant that we had to either sit at the table that Mum felt would make everyone gawp at us because we were right in front of the menu or basically share a ‘table’ with the other 3 Chinese customers (it was a row of 3 tables that was jammed together into a big table of 6) when there was an entire row of free tables on the other side. Mum did not like that treatment so we eventually walked off after sitting down at the free table and had food from the supermarket as lunch. We went to Vieux Lyon after lunch but it felt like a waste of time to be honest. We had the Palme d’Or pizza for dinner and I ate most of it because Mum had no appetite. Overall, it was too salty.
Day 2 at Lyon was spent at Vienne. I think the highlight of this day was the quay and Cathédrale Saint-Maurice and then the rain cut the trip short such that even though I had already bought a return ticket at 5pm Mum decided we would buy new tickets on the spot to get out of the rain. And this is when I found out that I don’t need to prebook the Lyon to Vienne tickets at all because the return tickets bought on the day were exactly the same price as the tickets I bought online. Ah well. We bought something from the supermarket for dinner that day. I think by this point Mum was already down with the cold for many days and I caught mine on the first day in Annecy.
Who is She?
Notable Life Events:
Why is she Remarkable?
Moonlake’s Thoughts on her:
I only knew of her as a writer/poet before I looked into her and she actually reminds me of Li Qing Zhao who is also from a family of high societal standings, highly educated, patriotic and a female poet.
Dai Bird
Physical Description:
An owl-like bird with three eyes and ears.
Special Properties:
Its call sounds like that of deers. Consuming its meat cures diseases to do with too much moisture.
Yao
Physical Description:
A pheasant-like bird with a long tail, a red body and an indigo beak.
Special Properties:
The sound its makes sounds like its name. Consuming its meat prevents nightmares.
Qie Zhi
Physical Description:
An owl-like bird with a white head and red body.
Special Properties:
It has fire resistance.
Qing Geng
Physical Description:
A magpie-like bird with whites eyes, a white beak, an indigo body and a white tail.
Special Properties:
The sound it makes sounds like its name. It is resistant to diseases.
I am yet to read the Doom of Odin and the new Black Jewel trilogy that I mentioned last year. I know I will definitely want to finish the Griminir trilogy but to be honest I am a bit iffy about the new Black Jewel trilogy given the new relationship developments (don’t want to give spoilers so that’s all I can say).
I am not quite sure whether I am continuing with my Oriental fantasy because to be honest, except for Guy Gavriel Kay and the Dandelion Dynasty series, nothing from my Oriental reads so far is actually to my taste. I did have my sights on The Initiate Brother by Sean Russell and some other books but there is no copy that I can borrow from my local library and I’m just not sure that it’s worth actually buying a book just to read it without me knowing beforehand if I would even like it (plus I don’t actually have any spare space in my book shelf right now). On the other hand, I can read the Ascendant trilogy which is inspired or based on Japanese culture. I guess I will see what comes up with my whims.
I am continuing with the Banned and Banished series for my Craft Read. Curiosity Read will be determined by random browsing. Technically, I did have several books on my list including the Book Thief, Gone Girl, the Girl on the Train etc. But I don’t really feel in the mood for them or my library doesn’t have an electronic copy of it available and I don’t feel that keen for any single one enough to break the rule on physical books.
My Broadening Horizon read this year has circled back to horror for the genre I don’t usually read and the caper mystery sub-genre has captured my immediate attention when I come across it. My pick for this year’s caper mystery is…. (drumroll) Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter (I’m actually equally keen on Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby but nowadays I prefer ebooks so the other book won out) And for horror, I’m really keen on the Little Stranger by Sarah Waters so I’m going to break the rule on physical books.
The broad goal is to get to draft 0.84 which I didn’t get to last year. To be honest, it’s gotten to the point where the delineation between my decimal drafts is pretty arbitrary. I’m incrementing a draft whenever I see significant progress. As to what constitutes as significant, even I don’t have an answer for that. It’s whatever I feel as counting as significant at a given moment when it comes down to it.
In 2025, I’m planning to embark on a brand new career path of being a translator as an income supplement by doing a one-semester course in the second half of the year. So this potentially cuts into my writing time. Then again, perhaps not, given that I’m already down to one session per day, 5 days a week. I’ve also taken off any word count limits and given it’s summer here, I’m especially lethargic.
I’m not setting any fine goals this year. I will just see what falls when it falls.
The first leg of our French journey was spent at Annecy. I felt a little anxious about this because I had bought the Geneve to Annecy train tickets online (and stupidly bought a specific connection rather than a normal point to point) but when I remembered about the Lausanne-Geneve tickets the day before, it was already too late- I never learnt to use the ticket machines and just queued up for physical tickets everyday in the SBB ticket office. So we got up really early on the day and had to wait for 7am for the office to open. Luckily, at the ticketing office, I found out that we still had plenty of time. To be honest, I could not remember much of the attractions at Annecy because it was so small a place and nothing stood out in my memory. Even going through the photos, I did not think Annecy was that different from what we had seen at Switzerland. I think we snapped exactly one photo of Château d’Annecy (or what I assumed was the Chateau) and then bridges and colourful houses and a big mountain range at a lakeside park (forgot the name). For dinner, I ordered roasted bone marrow for Mum (Mum eats beef bone marrows which is a Chinese dish) and BBQ pork breast for myself. Unfortunately, the bone marrow happened to be coming from a big mutton bone and was too fatty for Mum’s taste whereas my BBQ sauce had a tomato base and tomatoes are not part of my usual diet because I’m born with an aversion to sourness. Epic food failure contrasting with my initial high hope for French cuisine.
The second day at Annecy was given to visiting Menthon-Saint-Bernard and Tallories. We got to the bus stop without mishaps but I was trying to find bus line 60 to no avail. Luckily, there was a Sibra (the bus company) office right nearby and there I found out that the line 60 no longer exists and has been replaced by line 20 which does not come until 11am (we had already missed the 9ish one; this bus runs for about 2 hours and then there’s a break of about 2 hours until it starts running again). We boarded without mishap but there was really nothing at Menthon-Saint-Bernard except the Chateau and we could not find a way to access it on foot (we kept coming to a sign that pointed to a car-only path towards it) so we did what we did with all the castles we came across: snap a photo of it from below and zoom in with the photo. It started raining in the afternoon so we gave up going on further to Tallories and just returned to Annecy by bus. We ordered half a dozen snails in croquilles (pastry) and meuniere perch fillet for dinner. The snails were okay but out of the four that I ate (Mum was already down with the cold and had a smaller than usual appetite), I only tasted one with a definite meat texture (which I felt was a bit chewy and akin to calamari meat) while the rest just tasted like the whole dish was just creamy garlic sauce. As for my meuniere perch fillet, I guess I had too much expectation for it but being used to steamed fish, a slowly cooked pan-fried fish was not that special. Sure, the fish meat was soft but not a style of cooking that I would be falling in love with.
This is from Write New Headlines by Andy Stanley.
Sometimes I lose my way. Usually in the small things but then that’s usually how it goes.
Sometimes I lose my way. More often I stick to known paths. That’s what you do if you’re direction blind. And prudent.
Sometimes I lose my way, in time.
Sometimes I lose my way. I snap free of the reins.
Sometimes I lose my way, like I’ve wandered into a dark tunnel.
Sometimes I lose my way, more often I find myself a way out, somehow.
Sometimes I lose my way. I’m a great believer in self sufficiency, perhaps too much.
Sometimes I lose my way. But I will find my way out, somehow.
Sometimes I lose my way. That doesn’t make me special. We might all be partly lost, in different places.
Sometimes I lose my way.
Sometimes I lose my way and come to somewhere unexpected. But I can’t safely do that except maybe in a shopping centre.
Sometimes I lose my way, not down a rabbit hole, or not a literal one anyway. I only recently realised the saying came from Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps.
Sometimes I lose my way. I cannot read the compass at all. But I’ve got a compass app on my phone now. Not really put it to use yet.
Moonlake's Fiction Space 