we sit
crossbones and
bloodcheek
flintfaced and
sharpbeaked
our heart of hearts
breathesync
i know these
twine times
only slipstream
of otherhymes
careful so careful
we seek at
crossbones and
bloodcheek
crossbones and bloodcheek
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crossbones and bloodcheek
Tweaks and Geeks
Something I learned today. The old (ancient) method of letting people subscribe to your blog on WordPress Reader has been killed entirely by the Jetpack team. It was unsupported, but still worked as recently as a year ago. I tried to make it a simple process of subscribing to my RSS feed at ravensweald.art (which is attempting to remove the social elements from that blog), but that workaround no longer works around.
So, I modified the site to include instructions on how you can add the story feeds to Reader manually. I wish they would not make it a multistep process, but alas, I’m not sure they really want you to follow a site operating outside of the WordPress.com/Jetpack ecosystem — which is a little silly when you think about it, if my suspicions are true.
If you have been enjoying Vengeance, My Heart, please consider following the steps outlined on this page to add it to your feed.
Failing that, consider bookmarking the site in your browser and swinging by a couple times a week: currently M/W/F — I may take a break this Friday to polish Episode 6.1 over the weekend. The episode is mostly ready, but I think I want to make another pass at edits before publishing.
Hope y’all are doing swell. Let me know if you encounter any issues with my instructions.
tagged:
how to subscribe to a feed in WordPress Reader, Jetpack-free sites, no love, ravensweald.art, Reader tweaks, site design, vengeance my heartfiled under:
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Tweaks and Geeks
casting runes — 04may26
eihwaz head to mud
feet to sky
hanging for hanging
save for the pierce
and an eyeA rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.
Today’s rune is eihwaz, it’s name meaning “yew”, is a rune of change and transformation. It represents the cycle of life/death/rebirth and is symbolic of the axis mundi (the world tree). The yew is envisioned as a path towards both the underworld and the heavenly realms. Eihwaz is frequently associated both with poison and protection as part of its perceived dual nature.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
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casting runes — 04may26
Ep 5.3 of VMH has gone live
start readingVengeance, My Heart The Argument:
Pointed questions asked.
Answers delivered in lead.
Another spent returned to the deck.Episode 5.3 of Vengeance, My Heart (episode link), my serialized Sepulchral-Gothic Western novel, has now gone live at ravensweald.art.
❧
The site is designed with reader-modifiable typographic elements so that you can adjust the experience to suit your needs. Click the sliders to the right of the content to adjust.
If the sliders do not appear, be sure to “share” with a native browser or click the compass icon in WordPress Reader’s browser (which does not support the required JavaScript).
tagged:
ash & thorn, episodic fiction, gothic western, ravensweald.art, sepulchral western, serialized fiction, vengeance my heart, web novel, weird westfiled under:
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Ep 5.3 of VMH has gone live
One of those writing about writing posts
As the story in Vengeance, My Heart shifts from setting tone and atmosphere to character evolution and development — and quite possibly as a result of changing focus from short, snappy bite sized pieces of the story and shifting over to giving the story more room to breathe — I’ve discovered more tolerance as the writer for longer episode fragments.
My goal up through the end of Episode 5, was to make sure there was a targeted max word count for each fragment/part/sub-episode to finding in Episode 6 that character development doesn’t work so well with those kinds of metrics. I don’t think it is a significant spoiler to say it is about time to move to that tone/color-setting of the early episodes to dig down into the motivations and explain, in drip-feed fashion, the previously unexplained.
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One of those writing about writing posts
casting runes — 02may26
tiwaz it is for
the lost & the freaks
the crippled & the weak
we stand stone strong
sending flames to the sky
we, too, rise tall and trueA poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.
Today’s rune is tiwaz, which is named after the Norse god Týr, and the second weekday (Tuesday) is named for the god. According to Norse myth, Týr offers his right hand to the wolf Fenrir, who bites it off when he realizes the gods have used the offering to distract the wolf while they bind him. The rune is typically considered symbolic of honor, loyalty and justice, as well as of sacrifice. It may be representative of discipline and faith. Some interpretations have associated the rune with the North Star.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
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casting runes — 02may26
gaol
performing empty theatre
with my ghost mask on
waiting for the cruelty
to settle in, absurdity
to set electric every fibre
to awake every vibration
shudder, we shake & fall
curtain call to rise revenant
again
an ice to psyche &
given to axe
given to steel
rising from stone to
gaol the without, shadows
playing in the dank
while linger languishes
absorbed & unknownTo like, click comments or:
gaol
casting runes — 01may26
uruz stubborn enough to
school the stones
standing still
on a drizzled morn
shaggy & alone
waiting waitingA rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.
Today’s rune is uruz. The rune is named after the now-extinct aurochs, a wild ox and has become associated with standing up to challenges, having both confidence and courage, stubborn tenacity, and boundless strength and health. Uruz is alternately associated with the more raw elements which include rain, primordial potential, and the slag/dross cast away during the making of iron.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
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casting runes — 01may26
Episode 5.2 of VMH is live
In case you missed the fanfare, I have created a heavily modified installation of WordPress to host my longer, serialized fiction instead of posting it here.
Vengeance, My Heart Episode 5.2 is now live at ravensweald.art — Please check it out over there if you were following my foray into Gothic-Sepulchral Western.
The site is part proof of concept, part hypothesis test, and mostly designed around giving the reader a better experience than normally available via standard themes and via community plug-ins.
I really encourage you to give it a spin, even if you don’t care for my brand of fiction. It is designed to give the reader some element of control over the reading experience itself (typography, paragraph spacing and layout, font size, line width, night/day appearances), and to test just how important it is (for me, at least) to receive immediate, conversational feedback via “likes” and interactive comments — or are those things a distraction from the reading/writing experience. On the backend, I have also focused on privacy-forward elements: removing stats and tracking cookies (that I can control), not maintaining a database of email addresses and comments (the guestbook should be one-and-done, no database entries other than, maybe, an IP address to put a cooldown on guestbook spam attacks; Cloudflare is part of the security and content delivery, but should not pose too many privacy issues). And it is zippy (rating >90 for mobile on speed tests, ~100 for desktop).
Anyway, I’ve done rambled enough. Come on by and let me know how it went for you.
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Episode 5.2 of VMH is live
Ice cream man
Here’s another quick little bit of flash fiction in support of my friend, Jolene’s writing prompts. This one has the following four elements that should be included:
- driver of an ice cream truck
- competitive eater
- wrong side of the tracks
- stairs
Enjoy.
Dennis Marley sat on the stairs with their steep climb to the top of the hill, his destination within sight up where that hill crested. It was only a little more than a city’s block worth of climbing and he would finally arrive.
There was only one problem. The truck.
The damned truck.
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Ice cream man
