tagged by @oh-no-another-idea (thank you cass!!!) grabbed a selection from midway through BIRCHLORN for this one ^.^
The intrepid Song Yanze and Jing Gangde, it seems, are equally as affected, because after a few hours of walking, Jing Gangde says, "There's a town a dozen li or so away that we can stay for the night."
"The wind isn't that bad," Song Yanze says, mildly, though it sounds like a token protest. Jing Gangde gives her a glare. Bai Hua wonders if this is a common occurrence between them—they certainly seem very practised. She thinks of Jing Gangde saying ascetic with a lilt to it.
Jing Gangde raises a brow. "And you're a great oak," she says. "Spare some mercy for the rest of us humble wheat stalks."
Song Yanze's lips twitch. "I wasn't aware that the Jing sect cultivated grasses," she says.
Bai Hua, without meaning to, laughs.
— chapter six: in which our intrepid protagonist begins her journey
tagging: @onirique-writes @acertainmoshke @elkieselkiewrites @tryingtimi @theroseempress @mrbexwrites @daisywords @seastarblue @kiki-is-writing and an open tag! (no pressure to anyone on this list of course!)
tagged by @wrose-writes (thanks for the tag!). i............haven't written anything in like a week, but here's a little excerpt from one of the birchlorn extras ^.^
Before long, Jing Ya's own eyes flutter open as she wakes. When her gaze focuses on Bai Hua's face, she says, muzzily, reaching out with clumsy fingers to stroke Bai Hua's cheek, "A Hua, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," Bai Hua murmurs, and presses her face into Jing Ya's shoulder. "Just a dream."
"Not a nightmare?"
"No," Bai Hua says, quietly. "A lovely, lovely dream."
tagging....... @livums @mrbexwrites @indoorghost and open tag! (no pressure though!)
tagged by @onirique-writes (here) and @sunmerry-writes (here). thank you both for the tags!
here’s the very last thing i wrote for birchlorn—from the final extra, “sight”:
Between one blink and the next, they're gone. But as she turns around and heads for the station, she can still feel the weight of the fingers that had smoothed against the fabric, and the warmth of another body, and for a moment, the bitter afternoon isn't quite as cold anymore as it had been.
open tag because i haven’t been active on here in a hot minute, but feel free to tag me if you decide to participate, and i’ll reblog your excerpt ^.^
tagged by @sunmerry-writes to post the first three paragraphs of my wip! you can find his post here: x
the only currently active wip i have is BIRCHLORN, so have the very start of the first chapter (only two paragraphs because i don’t want to spoil a major plot point):
To say that she didn't expect to wake up would have been an understatement, because she had, to the best of her knowledge, just moments before, been about to be absolutely mangled by an unfortunate rogue lawnmower—one of those industrial types, that require you to sit in a chair that looks a little uncomfortably like a throne, yellow-painted and growling as it cuts up grass. Well, unfortunately, it'll also cut you up, and her last memory is of screaming agony as her leg had been pulverised under its blades.
Now, opening her eyes, she wonders for a moment if, maybe, it had been a lawnmower hit and run, or something of that sort—there's blood all over, and a good portion of it is on her; she can feel the places where it's drying and tugging at her skin as it tightens.
tagging……..oh, let’s see, @elkieselkiewrites @alllthebadpartss @theroseempress and open tag! (no pressure though ^.^)
5, 7, 10, and 15 for the writeblr ask? if it's not too much. (from you-are-my-neverland <3)
@you-are-my-neverland thanks for the ask star!!! putting this under the cut because it got long
5. what is your favourite book/story/poem you read this year?
oh, hands down she who became the sun by shelly parker-chan! it reinvigorated my passion for original writing, and it's just a banger all around (admittedly, i'm weak for the yuan/ming era and chinese historical fiction, but that's neither here nor there). the prose is dense and gorgeous and the themes that run throughout the novel are so well-executed. it's a heavy novel in some ways, but i would fully recommend it as long as you read a content warnings list so you know what you're getting in for.
7. what are three songs you put on your WIP-playlist this year?
i don't actually have wip playlists (i've been so so busy!!!!) but i definitely have songs that i listen to a lot while writing my wips! for birchlorn i've been listening to a lot of AlicebanD and a too sweet (hozier) fem cover by rainaeiry.
10. which character(s) turned out differently from what you had planned? how so?
oh god okay i don't want to spoil things but the pov character of birchlorn has changed SO MUCH. not in terms of goals, mind you, but there's a secret thing that her entire character is predicated on now that she absolutely was not before. it's the same story, but it's also a radically different story now, you feel me? (if you want full spoilers you can dm me and i'll tell you but i don't want to talk about it on my blog just yet)
15. time for shameless self-promotion! answer with a piece of writing you want others to see/read! (if you have nothing posted/published this year, any other year is fine too ^^)
hmmmmm i'll give an excerpt for all three of my wips!
from r&r:
When she arrives at the Peng manor, though, as the servant girl had predicted, no one is willing to let her enter. "I really only want to ask about the goat," Yu Xiyan promises, trying to ignore the heavy scent of goat stew she can smell wafting in from the kitchens. "I'm afraid that it might somehow have been taken from a friend—"
The housekeeper glares at her. "How could our manor have your friend's goat?" he says. "No, no, you can't come in. The family is in mourning for Master Peng's death, the last thing they need to think about is a goat." With that, he closes the doors in her face, and Yu Xiyan is left, demoralised, standing outside.
-- the goat is important i promise :)
from birchlorn:
Then someone's rushing forward to reach out to her, calling out, "Guniang, are you alright?" and the horse's hooves are rising and it's stepping away, ears pinned back and nostrils flaring, and Bai Hua finds herself being helped up by a man in a richly-embroidered blue outfit and a fur-collared cloak.
"Mm," Bai Hua murmurs, still somewhat dazed by the events of mere moments before. She blinks a couple times.
"What's an immortal like guniang doing in this city?" the man asks, and reaches into his breast to pull out a handkerchief and offers it to her. It takes Bai Hua a moment to realise that he's offering it to her so she can brush away the dirt and snow in her hair and on her chest. "Perhaps this humble young master can offer his help?"
-- this has a secret meaning to it but you won't find that out until later :) or maybe never, who knows! but i know :)
from orioles:
Tally, who's moved to stand over her shoulder, says, "What sort of weird was this interference, exactly? You didn't mention."
"You'll see," Bismah says, distractedly, and finally pulls the relevant frequency up. Suddenly, the terminal whirs, and the communications array's screen lights up, showing the searching symbol. Then, the readout information pops up, and, at the same moment, a breathy voice cries out, Orioles fluttering, cicada leaps!
For a moment, Tally stares unblinkingly as her mind tries to parse the language—the accent is unfamiliar, and the wording is archaic, and she only recognises it because one of her mothers had had an amateur interest in the remaining scraps of the Old Texts. "Huh," she says. "I…have no idea what that means."
@mxxnlightwriting sorry for the delay, here’s some info about my wips! thank you for your interest!
• [REDACTED] wip/r&r: time travel, scifi/historical, semi-casefic semi-mystery; wip intro here; first draft complete at 46k and currently gathering feedback
• BIRCHLORN: recently got a semi-major rejigging that kind of changed everything but also nothing at all; mystery, casefic, tang dynasty/wuxia; (old) intro here (still more or less entirely accurate if you don’t consider the new precipitating grounding of the entire plot which is kind of a spoiler), aesthetic/vibes posts under #BIRCHLORN aesthetic; barebones plotting done, chapter one drafted
• orioles: chosen one gone wrong, scifi; no intro post (my least-plotted wip), but snippets and vibes in my #orioles tag; not plotted, first chapter in progress
• eight for a wish: scifi, living weapons, dystopia, tomb-raiding; no intro, but you can read a post-canon shot ficlet here and find posts in my #eight for a wish and #efaw aesthetic tags; plotted, hiatus
