I have just finished reading all "The Song of Ice and Fire" books published to date. They were excellent. George RR Martin does an incredible job of building a world, peopling it with characters both fair and foul, and telling a big story using scenes that build on each other over time. Hints are dropped, plots are planted, story seeds that bloom in blossoms both beautiful and terrible. These are adult-level fantasy stories; there is corruption, the morality is typically gray, and a character you hate may turn out to be someone you like, then someone you hate again.

That is no surprise: I read a lot. The surprise is this:

If I had not had the opportunity to read these books in a digital format, I very much doubt I would have ever finished them.

There's a lot of people who swear they'd never read a digital book of any kind, in any format. I read the Song of Ice and Fire series on a ipod Touch, which is a device roughly the size of an iPhone. The screen was not very large, but due to the awesome work done by the people who put together the Amazon Kindle iPhone app, I could easily read the words. Each screen was a tiny amount of an entire "page" but I could page through the little screens very, very easily.

The best thing about the reading, though, was this: my book was always with me. In line at the supermarket, the bank, on the train, for my lunch break at work, laying down at the end of the day, whenever I had a few minutes I could quickly and easily pick up exactly where I left off and read.

I heartily recommend the Kindle app, because it takes an already useful item (the ipod Touch in this case) and makes it even more useful and entertaining. Don't knock it before you try it!

Good thing the goblins were fed before I arrived!

I got to Leon's studio and was impressed at his set-up: professional ring-lights and the like with a neutral background.

Leon gets into this creative fugue when he works, and as he set up the shoot, Janean interviewed me. She asked a lot of interesting questions that had me thinking before I answered.

He did a lot of "product shots" using old books I've written, to warm up.

Basically the whole experience was awesome and made me feel like a rockstar for a short time - a great time, and a great result.

If you're interested in more of his work, check out his photography here.

This week has left me feeling contemplative. Nothing specific doing it, just taking a moment. You know, writing is frickin' hard. I've been sitting and staring at a cursor a lot on the train.

I know the words will come. Just takes some time and focus.

I find that, as I grow older, the stuff that I used to get up in arms about still ticks me off, but I don't get as upset. I would prefer to wait and see what happens, and learn from the outcome.

Anyway, that's pretty generic. And it is Friday. I try not to fall into the trap of worshiping Friday, but I gotta say this is a very welcome one.

I'm looking forward to the weekend; spending time with Cyn, playing some great Ravensong with her, and some City of Heroes with my old and new friends.

BTW, if you play City of Heroes, you should listen to the City of Heroes Podcast. Just sayin'. It rocks.

(And I have a total platonic voice crush on Viv! *blush*)

Obscuring fog drifts in for me. I really like this Creative Commons-Attribution photo of a Canadian foggy day, and it reflects some of my current feelings. A new novel like my Eulalie project, requires a huge amount of creation. World creation, character creation.

My last book, Heart of the Hunter, was easier in many ways in that I was already familiar with the characters from a previous novel attempt (a NaNoWriMo novel that got to about 40,000 words and then collapsed) and I was certainly well versed already in Cora-Ni, the fantasy world I've been creating and discovering since I was 8 years old.

Eulalie means that I have to get to know these people, these characters who have started to speak to me. It also means that I have the real world to draw from. Now, you may think that makes it easier for me, but it doesn't. I frequently have a hard time thinking of the real world as being full of the narrative juice that makes writing fun for me.

So I can linger in text over the complex machinations of a sorcerer preparing a spell, but the day-to-day life of a social worker trying to make ends meet leaves me with a certain kind of ennui. If I am not intrigued and interested, my readers surely won't be.

My own advice to someone in my situation is "write what you love." And the thing of it is, I love Eulalie House and all who live in her. I'm just trying to pick up on the literary grammar and syntax of how one creates a story in this toolset.

I think that's what I should stick to: why do I love these people? Why do I care about them? What happens to them and how can I explain it in a way that will get the reader to care about them? Good questions to keep coming back to.