A Year in Pictures – Krakow Town Hall Tower

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The rest of the building this used to be attached to is gone now, but the old Town Hall Tower still stands in the central square of Kraków. The patchwork effect of the repairs on its sides is inadvertent, I think, but it lends the place a certain aged charm.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Meet the Rewards: Tuckerization and T-shirts

Combining these two into one because there’s less of a story behind them than the other two.

Tuckerization is the process of either naming a character after a real person or putting that person into the story as a character (those being not quite the same thing). It is, as you might expect, named after a real person.

In my case, what I’m offering is the use of someone’s name for a character. I’m actually not the sort of writer who bases characters on specific people — at least not mostly. There may end up being a cat in Chains and Memory who is both named and modeled after a friend’s cat, for no better reason than because I was thinking a lot about the book when I knew that friend in grad school, and Hitomi wandered randomly into Kim’s life in my imagination. (Cats, man. Not only do they go where they aren’t supposed you, you can’t even confine them to a single world.) I can’t be specific about which characters yet because I need to see what people end up playing a role in Chains and Memory, but there are a lot of Washington, D.C. types as well as wilders who will be passing through the story, so those are the most likely groups. I’ll be working with anybody who chooses Tuckerization to see what role they prefer out of the available options.

As for t-shirts, there are two options, basically one for each book. The Welton University t-shirt is for Lies and Prophecy, and features a six-pointed star, which is one of the frequent shapes given to the Seal of Solomon in Western occultism. The other is the seal of the Bureau for Special Psychic Affairs, a federal organization that features more heavily in Chains and Memory. The three-pointed star indicates the traditional division of the “psychic sciences” into the telepathic disciplines, telekinetic disciplines, and ceremonial magic. The laurel branches indicate the BSPA copying the look of the FBI seal to give themselves an aura of legitimacy, what with being a relatively new bureau and all. And the motto . . . ordinarily it would be in Latin or English, but I’d established that Irish Gaelic was (for reasons of folklore and history) adopted as kind of the banner language of magic after First Manifestation, and so I decided to go with that here, too. It says “power, wisdom, restraint” — and yes, I know srian means “restraint” in the sense of a bridle, but that’s deliberate. These are the people who control wilders. And the book is, after all, called Chains and Memory. If the last word of the motto strikes you as a little ominous, you aren’t wrong.

That’s it for the “special” rewards, i.e. the things that aren’t books or progress reports or what have you. Plus there’s the stuff from the stretch goals, of course. Just a few days to go, and then the rewards can start rolling out!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Moving the goalposts

Physical therapists cheat. They set the rules of the game, but just when you get to the point where you feel like you’ve got the upper hand, they change the rules out from under you.

Given that my ankle surgery won’t be happening until the end of July, I’m in PT right now to strengthen the joint and make sure the problem doesn’t get worse between now and then. Which means a whole lot of exercises, one of which has escalated in the following manner:

Balance on one foot? Okay, I can do that.

Balance on one foot on a squishy foam pad? . . . okay.

Balance on one foot on a squishy foam pad with your leg behind you to screw with your balance!

Balance on one foot on a squishy foam pad with your leg behind you and a heavy rubber ball in your hands!

Balance on one foot on a squishy foam pad with your leg behind you while waving the heavy rubber ball in various directions!

My PT seriously threatened to make me play catch while balancing on one foot on the squishy foam pad. >_<

I mean, okay, yes. I have gotten stronger. And my balance is vastly better than it was, say, six months ago. But there’s a point at which you think, can’t I just enjoy my accomplishments for a little bit? Do you have to pull the rug out from under me every time I start to get my footing on it?

Yes, they do.

Doesn’t mean I don’t want to give them the stink-eye for it, though.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.