Writing/Storytelling Tips Segments

Soon, I'll be uploading something new to my blog: posts concerning issues and mistakes often made by writers and storytellers and tips on how to fix them or better yet avoid them (especially if they're not really easy to come back from...) I'll try to keep them as short as possible, though some subjects do require some explanations at length.

I'll also be uploading stuff about things to help out with originality, depth, and things like that, things would I strongly consider doing for stories. Those may end up being longer as I'll have more to say about them than the negative things.

Now, obviously, I'm only human, and I'm only one human, so not everything I say will work for everyone with everything. Not to mention the fact that most of this stuff is speculation and opinion purely based on my unique experiences that won't always pair up with your unique experiences.

Well, I hope you'll enjoy what I have planned. I'm looking forward to it.

Later.

Ankh Lounging

Probably my best picture to date, here's Ankh, one of my Sanitize and Eli characters. As you can see by the numerous other books lying untouched around him, he's ignoring his work and reading a comic. Manga to be exact.

If there were going to be words that would describe our 18-19 year-old Ankh, they would be words like arrogant, persistent, irritable, and self-important. He's perfectly aware of (and has been for some time) of his father, Osiris's, way of living, and given the simmering resentment he cultured for his father over the years, nothing his father says goes with him without a chance of being completely ignored. More so than your average child. While Ankh's not a bad person, he does have some terrible traits. Laziness tends to be one, although sometimes, he's more has a more of an avoidance attitude; he ignores his work while doing something just as, similarly, or even more time-consuming that he wants to do. Bottom line: if he doesn't want to do it, he might just not do it. What makes it worse for his father is that little thing with Ankh now being a legal adult...

Like I said, Ankh has some terrible traits, and another one happens to be my favorite. Going behind authorities' back and doing exactly what they told him not to. He's done that with his father many times, despite attempts to discipline him (oh, stop worrying, his father's humane; it's not like he beats him or anything...) There've been time when Osiris tells him not to do something. If it pleases him, Ankh waits for the perfect opportunity to do it and then does it and then lies about it. Which now that I think about it isn't very smart of him 'cause Osiris is normally too smart to believe his lies. On an interesting note, this is very similar to what my character Sheldon Lamar does, except Sheldon's version is based more on curiosity and has a far more innocent streak than Ankh's. Also, Sheldon and Ankh don't get along. Ankh sees Sheldon as a raving, hideous lunatic. Sheldon sees Ankh as stuck-up and self-important. Another thing they share in common is their tendency for morbidity.

Now the topic of his adoption is something he was always very sensitive to. But as he got older, the topic went from being just a hard one to bring up to being nearly impossible to elude to without irritating him. He was present when his parents died and has had problems with that ever since. When he was young, he began having nightmares on an almost consistent basis. In time, naturally, Osiris told him he was adopted, and eventually, from there, Ankh had such a fear of loss when he was still young that he would panic when he was left alone for extended periods of time. He learned to cope with this as he aged, but he still deals with the fear of losing friends and what little family he has. Which carries us over to our next point.

Ankh has some nastiness to him, okay, yes, but he's a far cry from being thoroughly evil. Whle he does project himself as being aloof, he is very capable of making friends and keeping friendships. Bravery and loyalty (mostly to whatever friends he has) define a number of aspects of his character. Not to mention those two virtues tie into another of his good traits: cooperation. Yes, despite his antagonistic, sometimes downright insulting persona, Ankh is quite good at working with others when the situation calls for it. There have been instances in which Ankh is clearly excited to tell his co-workers about ways his abilities can play off of theirs.

For someone whose forte is not creativity, he can be very imaginative. He always had an active imagination, and Osiris fed it gladly, making the Ankh of today an intelligent and wise innovator. Speaking of intelligence and wisdom, those two attributes of Ankh are strong. Having been taught by a super genius and having a good head on his shoulders anyway, Ankh never really showed any trouble with problem-solving. This is where he has Sheldon beat. He also scores high on his actual niche: planning and positioning. Ankh has shown how easily setting up situations is for him and how to use what he get for what he needs.

If we just step back towards the subject creativity, Ankh can be a pretty surprising person when it comes to style. You'd think an arrogant person's clothing would reflect their demeanor, but Ankh prefers relatively plain clothes. His favorite color, orange, is also in high contrast to his personality. Sometimes, when Ankh wears different shades of orange, he always calls them orange while ever-specific Osiris always calls them by their actual shade. Sunset, pumpkin, red-orange, burnt orange, etc., and Ankh points out how fashion designer-ish and sometimes effeminate it makes them look. Another more noticeable trait of Ankh's is his application of eyeliner. It's never really specified whether or not he's doing that to resemble his father, to be rebellious somehow, or just 'cause he wants to. However, it's probably not to look like his father. Osiris has black lines trailing down alongside his nose. Ankh didn't mimic that look at all.

But his best trait of all, as corny as this sounds, is his honest love for his father. Yes, he's a total jerk to him usually, yes, he openly acts rudely in ways that disrespect and humiliate him, but when his father is in trouble or missing without a reason, all that falls away, and a person can see that Ankh does honestly care about his father. Sometimes, very rarely but sometimes, his affection for his father can be seen in little snippets, especially when Ankh needs comfort.

I hope you guys found that interesting enough. Stay tuned for more stuff.

This picture is also on deviantART.
Ankh Lounging
GenreChowderStudios' deviantART homepage

Later.

GCSketch

Sometime during the beginning of April, I'll be setting up a second deviantART account: GCSketch. It'll be a place where I upload practice sketches and traditional pics. I don't wanna put them in my main gallery because GenreChowderStudios is for my professional works, and my traditional works are a little less than professional. Besides, I want it to be easier to see my sketching progress.

I'll still be active on my main account, and any sketches uploaded to GenreChowderStudios will remain there, but I won't be uploading traditional art, sketches, or linearts to my GenreChowderStudios account unless they're much better quality than the stuff I normally submit. With GCSketch, I'll try to upload a few pictures every week. If I get busy or something, naturally that'll disrupt my process. But hopefully, I can have a steady improvement that might even be seen in my other art.

First, I need time to finish up the other things that I'm doing. Or get further along with them as the case may be. That's why I'm opening my new account later rather than sooner. No time. But hopefully, with GCSketch, I can seize learning opportunities that I haven't reached yet. I hope this thing pays off. Wish me luck.

Later.

Exclusive Picture - At the Window

Here is a 9 year-old Sheldon in his painfully messy room, hanging out the window, looking miserable again. If you're wondering where his bed is, he's kneeling on it. And the inside light source is coming from that a bedside light he has.

At this time in Sheldon's life, he was supposed to be on medication for his psychosis, but he thinks it's poison, so he'll have nothing to do with meds of any kind.

You'll notice that in the background, there are what appear to be pictures of flowers on the wall and on his closet doors. There are flowers, so yay for you being right. Sheldon has a thing for daisies in particular because of this obsession he has with his little sister, Daisy, and he draws them obsessively. On a related note, when he's not drawing with a pencil, he's drawing with his favorite green marker, which is on his bed next to him, out of sight from this angle; when he talks about his marker, he heavily exaggerates its worth by using positive adjectives. E.g. "My wonderful, beautiful, amazing, extraordinary green marker." His mother is always telling him to stop drawing on the walls, but clearly, he hasn't listened yet.

This pic was a murder to color; the details were tedious to finish and there are a number of effects I had to spend time on in a single layer. But I'd be lying if I said Adobe Photoshop Elements was a waste of my time. And on a triumphant note, I finally figured out how to use a one-way perspective vanishing point! I personally think the picture is so much better for it. Plus, I used to not be able to pose characters that convincingly in positions like that. Now I am, and I'm happy I can improve.

By the way, you probably can't see it without getting that close, but he also wrote Daisy's name on the wall a number of times.

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading a little bit about Sheldon Lamar.

This picture is not on deviantART, 'cause it's an exclusive picture on my blog for my blog only. However, here's my homepage anyway. If you look hard enough (calm down, it's not that hard), you can actually find more stuff on Sheldon and other Sanitize Trilogy characters there.

GenreChowderStudios' deviantART homepage

Later.

A Young Eli

As a child, Eli was always tiny. Even when he grew up in Prince Edward Island, Canada, it wasn't really that much for a very long while. You can tell his smallness by comparing his size to the pillows. But he's watching at all times with his large, dark and knowing eyes.

From birth, he'd been learning at an accelerated rate. There were a lot of milestones he reached before his first birthday that most children reach at one and a half years of age. Most of his early achievements were thanks to the equally early maturation of his muscles, bones, and nervous system. But his mental abilities benefited the most from this premature growth. By the time he was in kindergarten, he was intelligent enough to perform well at a 6th grade level.

In fact, he was developing so fast, a great number of people thought he had a vast array developmental or genetic issues. Eli has a tendency to smile and has a naturally smiling mouth. He was incredibly fidgety as a child, and, combined with his early smiling, doctors thought he had Angelman's Syndrome. But as it turned out, his muscles were maturing quickly, and he was merely trying to sit up and move around.

Eli, becoming fully aware of all these gifts at a very young age, became extremely arrogant. One of, if not his greatest, flaw was that he figured that he was so smart, the time to stop doing something would naturally coincide with his desire to stop. Seeing as that rarely happened exactly that way, he would overdo things fairly often and cause himself and others trouble. Eli also learned to be manipulative. Never for small or worthless things. As a child, a number of important questions involving his life and origins were left unanswered or lied about. He could tell he wasn't getting the whole truth, and from there and other worse places, he developed the desire to have what he wanted the way he wanted it. With that came strategies to get it. If he can help it, he avoids people, however. An introvert, Eli sees himself as performing best when he's alone or with as few people as possible. Sometimes he would go out of his way to drive people away. As well as his bad sides listed above, Eli also has an affinity for nosiness.

For all his shortcomings, Eli was still a child in some good places in his heart. He was willing to believe that people were good in the end, and he let himself trust people, especially adults he approved of. Despite how he felt, he really did always try to be polite. Eli inherited a colossal fortune from his surrogate mother, who left almost everything to him, and he isn't miserly in the least, often saying plainly that he doesn't know what to do with all his wealth or giving huge amounts away to total strangers. The latter of which is not the best thing to do. His caretaker, Professor Roy, is his constant source of comfort and information. Eli loves spending time with him and learning from what he has to tell him. He usually keeps a cool head in stressful situations and is rarely too shy to ask anyone to teach him something.

I hope you enjoyed that breakdown of Eli's persona as a child.

This picture is also on deviantART.
Baby Eli
GenreChowderStudios' deviantART homepage

Later.

Raven and Sheldon

I'll make sure not to bore you guys. *rye laugh* These are two important characters from my Sanitize Trilogy novel series.

The relationship between Ravenna Greenwich (lavender) and Sheldon Lamar (grassy green) is one of close friendship. When they first met, they didn't fight but they didn't hang out for a very long time. As they grew closer, they turned into very good friends, and Ravenna started hanging out with Sheldon and his closest male friend, Ethan. Soon they became closer than this and got to the point where if one of them had a fallout with one of their other close friends or family members, they went to one another for company and comfort.

Raven, as Sheldon calls her, is Irish by birth, intelligent, law-observant yet not rigidly rule-abiding. Her smarts are geared towards figuring out how to do-or-die in spades, or trying to see her whatever to the end and doing it to the best of her abilities. Raven doesn't exactly fit into the category of "fun-loving," but she's perfectly capable of having a good time. And instigating a few here and there. Though, she has the (unhealthy) tendency to bury her emotions and personal desires when in stressful situations and not uncovering them afterwords. It is easy for her to keep a level head, and she has bravery enough for several people. Not many things scare Raven, and she has said that one of the few things that do is when Sheldon is having an episode. We can see a caring side to her in this sense. But the defining characteristic of Raven is honesty and earnestness, something that Sheldon, who suffers from paranoia, is grateful for and drawn to. Originally, I had her very reserved, but now she's more open to explaining her ideas, how and what she thinks, and other things. She uses adverbs like "incredibly," "truly," and other words of that nature a lot to emphasize her point. Not to mention she brings attention to things when she notices them. For better or for worse. In fact, she's not afraid of using brutal honesty if need be.

Raven, like many of my characters, has the propensity to stare at things and people. Sometimes for no reason, but mostly for various reasons. Raven doesn't always smile when she's happy. It's regularly when she's amused, like in her picture above, or interesting in something. Confidence is a fair part of Raven's persona, but her appearance, especially her blank eyes and tiny eyebrows, is a touchy subject with her, though she doesn't show it outwardly. But slights on appearances don't bother Raven nearly as much as they bother Sheldon.

By now, you lot have heard about Sheldon, so I'll spare you the total personality dissection.

Sheldon Quincy Lamar is American, but his grandparents were Swiss-German, and he enjoys recognizing his heritage in his clothing and other things. Despite his looks, he is more or less gentle in nature. As someone with rather untreated undifferentiated schizophrenia, Sheldon has numerous paranoid and bizarre delusions and emotional and cognitive issues; he also experiences a number of hallucinations that support the delusions, and naturally, what he experiences makes him act strange and often extreme ways. But his personality can be seen as clever, creative, sensitive, and pure-hearted. Yet, as Sheldon very often shows, he has a sarcastic streak coated with stubborn cockiness. With quite low self-esteem, most, if not all, attacks on his mental illness and unpleasant appearance are taken personally. Spending time with a calm, patient person like Raven is nice for him when he wants to get away from insults.

Sheldon feels miserable much of the time, and it shows on his face. The look on his face above is pretty much the face he normally has. He also has the tendency to stare, but it's more of a suspicious stare than Raven's you're-there-so-I'm-looking-at-you stare. Also, as honesty is Raven's most notable trait, creativity often interpreted as eccentricity is Sheldon's. This can be seen in the way he talks, how he approaches art, but especially how he solves problems. Because of his mental deficits, he's used to trying to find ways out of doing things he's not good at or able to do.

At times, Sheldon takes his frustrations or his suspicions out on Raven, and she sometimes reacts badly. But mostly, they have a trustful, innocent relationship. Both Raven and Sheldon are quite creative; they enjoy bouncing ideas off each other and expounding on things they hear. There are instances when they do great things together because of what they come up with. When Sheldon is having a "bad day," Raven is content to being a listening box. And Sheldon often shows her some of his artwork or something interesting for her valued input. In terms of leading their duo, it's usually Raven, but often, she's following Sheldon while he wanders. Sheldon does possess leadership qualities (they're latent and buried and stuff, 'kay?), so Raven does tend to push him to take charge. He doesn't usually give way, 'cause he prefers to follow her...

Well, I hope you enjoyed this analysis of Sheldon and Raven's relationship. Thanks for reading!

These pictures are also on deviantART.
Raven's picture
Sheldon's picture
GenreChowderStudios deviantART homepage

Later.

Sheldon and Daisy's New Year

So, for the new year's here, and I did a pic for it. It's kind of funny' cause I've never drawn Sheldon and his little sister, Daisy, together before; I never realized how big Sheldon is. Hah hah...

Sheldon and Daisy have a very strong connection emotionally, mentally, and often physically, as one comforts and protects the other and vice versa. Now concerning the weather, Sheldon actually prefers the heat to the cold, but he'll literally try to do anything for his sister, so he went out to see the new year's first weather. In this case, snow. Quite frankly, the fact that his sister likes the cold would make him like going out even if he got frostbite and lost his hands or something. It's snowing pretty hard as you can see.

They're brother and sister, but clearly, and I mean clearly, they look almost nothing alike. While Sheldon is pallid with a wide, large mouth and bland blond hair, Daisy is ruddy with platinum blond hair. Daisy doesn't really look like any of her parents, though maybe a smidgen of her mom in the nose and eyes and touch of her father in her easygoing manner. Sheldon takes a lot more after his parents. He looks very much like his mother, and he shares his father's presence. They have an older sister, Ophelia, and she looks like her father. Not to mention they have extremely different faces. Both Sheldon and Daisy work out a lot, but 'cause of Daisy's puffy coat hides her musculature.

Sheldon's wearing only green because Daisy's eyes are are green. He believes that protects him from the "Brown Police," policemen and women in blue after anyone (meaning him in Sheldon's mind) wearing brown. After a while, that just became part of his lifestyle. If you're not aware of it, Sheldon has undifferentiated schizophrenia which explains his delusion.

As I mention on deviantART, I really like this picture. I deliberately made Sheldon look unpleasant to the point of looking threatening to throw people in the story (and possibly readers) a loop. But Sheldon is really a very kind person, and his tenderness shows in this pic with the way he's with his little sister.

This pic's obviously also on deviantART.

Later.

Exclusive Excerpts for the Next Few Days - From Chapter 15

Today's excerpt is gonna be from Chapter 15: Base 026.

When Bay Unit is replacing devastated Russet Unit in New Guinea, Sheldon is not as close to the transport as he should have been when a bomb raid hits and... It's better if you read it. You know the drill, first draft out of context.

There's no strong language in this excerpt, but clearly being bombed, you know, I'm pretty sure that counts as violence. So maybe E10+ would be suitable for this.

***

The night came, and the next day took it over. We assessed their situation, and after the engineers had gotten the radio to work for a minute, Captain Rowery contacted HQ. I wasn’t there when it happened. But I do know they were pulling Ivory away from here. They were moving them to Ethan and Sosa’s vehicles. The ones in the worst conditions were brought in on makeshift stretchers. Raven was next to me, below but not directly under the overhanging ledge of rock. Heimer and the girl I subbed for were moving the last of Ivory’s stuff damaged but reparable. Ethan’s ship was too full with Ivory soldiers and Ivory-owned property, so a number of the stuff was left here. They moved in single file, stepping in as perfect unison as they injuries would allow.

I will never forget how I tackled Raven a full two seconds before the first bomb hit. The noise blew out whatever hearing I had in both ears. Debris skyrocketed into the air and upset the whole Earth. Rocks came crashing into our space just when another went off. The ledge caved and buried shrieking bodies, Raven’s and mine. More screams from above. Ground cracked and sucked in dirt. Another roaring crash wrung my guts and stomach and my heart was about to choke me if it stayed in my throat too long. Raven’s arms bent painfully on my chest, and I knew my over two hundred pounds including the wreckage on top of me was crushing her. So much broken boulder masked us, we could barely see the sunlight. The fourth explosion shoved the stones closer in on us. Fifth and closer. I started feeling sickeningly claustrophobic. The air was hot and close, and I was begging myself not to throw up on Raven’s head. The screams were gone, but the collapsed rock on me was so heavy, I could hardly think about anything else but for the humans not to drop a bomb right on our mound. We couldn’t move if we wanted to; my concentration was in too many different things for me to teleport, and we were better off not moving. I didn’t know how many other bombs there were. I couldn’t hear a thing, and I was terrified I was permanently deaf. But I got my answer soon enough. Tremors. Tremors I couldn’t count shocked the earth into sudden jolts that shifted the rocks into tighter, more painful positions for us. They came too fast, and they went on and on. They would not ever stop. We were going to die if we weren’t dying already. Less light now. Just the top of Raven’s head was visible. I started flickering Daisy, Ophelia, Mom, Father, Da, Jason, everyone I cared about, remembering things we did, fun times, happy times. I shouted when a rock dug into my side and cracked a rib. I clutched onto the last thing I had from my life. A ruthless shot of pain went into my head and shoulder. A stream of hot something flowed down from where the rocks stabbed. Over my right eye, cheek, and down my chin. I tried to tell Raven I was hurt, but all that came out was a whimper. And darkness took over.

***

Well, that's it. That's also it for the excerpts. If you haven't read them all, why not go back and read the three? Some of them have mature content, so if you're a minor living with your parent(s) or legal guardian(s), you might wanna check with them first before reading them.

Later.

Trapped in Your Lie

I actually drew this in the beginning of the fall, but I had so much other stuff to work with, I kind of pushed this aside until 12/3 morning. Then I waited until I was finished posting excerpts to upload this particular pic.

Originally, this was part of an experiment I did in the summer to see which worked better as of that moment: my Sakura ink pens that I regularly use or the new crow quill I got. Whichever was the best, I would color. I prepared the experiment by drawing the picture in pencil then scanning it into my CPU. Uploading it to Adobe Photoshop Elements, I turned the grayscale image blue, copied the image, and pasted it to the side of the first image. Then after printing it (much later), I inked it with my usual tools and then the newer ones. In the end, the Sakura pens won out. I'd only ever used a broken in crow quill pen before, so my performance with my new tool will improve with time. But for now, the Sakura pens are the way to go for me.

I realized I would have to give Sheldon's face, seven years-old in this picture, a slightly healthier tint than teenager Sheldon. You'll notice how the youngster flush kinda uneven, but I like it that way. Makes it look more natural and has the vague effect of balancing the red of the baseball lining. But red in his cheeks would make him look too similar to his baby/toddler age, so around his face works better.

The eyes are always a treat for me, and they were fun and quick to do. Because he's fibbing, I wanted to make his eyes stand out with extra shine. To indicate his "Please believe me" face. I did his upper lip in the same layer as his eyes. Overall, this part took me 5-10 minutes.

His hair took a lot of time not only 'cause I had to tailor it down to size, but I couldn't figure out what shade of goldish-yellow to make Sheldon's hair. The light source is coming from in front, clearly, so the main highlights would be in front and the shadows would, as few as there are is Sheldon's hair here, be behind objects in front of the light. His youngest sister, Daisy, has platinum blonde hair while Sheldon has darkish blond hair, so since he compares them a few times in the book, I wanted to be sure there was some distinction here. His hair was more "lively" and less limp than Sheldon's teen hair. I allowed myself more color saturation than I normally add. I must have been at it for about 30-45 minutes.

His clothes were easy, though I used multiple layers for it. He wore this top in another picture, so I didn't have to think about its color scheme. I put orange, did random burning and dodging and then used the Impressionist brush to give it that blotchy look. It's hard to see from here, but it creates a slight texture you wouldn't get if it were a solid color. Then I shaded it with grey in another layer and used the same layer with the jeans. There's actually a texture fill (denim) on the jeans that gives it a better look. His shoes were simple, but it took me a little time to realize I had to factor in the shape of the shoes...

The ball and vase were simple. Just a few minutes coloring and shading. In my Hard Light layer, I made them shiny.

The background I did in another file altogether. I made most of it, pasted it behind Sheldon, and completed our light source effect. There's a faint glow around Sheldon's outline that makes the shadow seem sharper. With the final touches in place, "Trapped in Your Lie" is finished.

Maybe you found that interesting, maybe you didn't, but if you're still reading this, you probably found it at least worth your time, and for that, I'm grateful. Stay tuned for more another time!

Later.

Exclusive Excerpts for the Next Few Days - From Chapter 21

Today's excerpt is from Chapter 21: The Fate of the Army.

It's basically about the General of the Army sitting at his desk, musing over his army, one of his officers, and human teeth. The General's waiting for said officer to come to his office, but he's hasn't arrived yet. Again, this is a piece of my first draft taken out of context, so bear with any weirdness, please.

Unlike last excerpt, this passage is "rated E10+" and can be viewed by everyone over ten, in my opinion. The only somewhat dodgy thing about it is the fact that he's thinking about death and war, but there's nothing gory or explicit about it. So read away, tweenagers!

How many children was he killing? The youngest paranormal offspring here could not have less than seven years. He had made sure of this. But it seemed the majority of the casualty list he posted every Saturday was comprised of prepubescent children. When he had gone to find said children, many of them had loose or missing teeth. And what of the others he was sending to die for him? The grown men, women, teenagers. How many of them was he killing? Who would return to their families and who would he have to watch buried?

Osiris sat solemnly at his desk, his head turned to the rain-washed window. Ankh should have been here by now. He would never strike the boy, but what would it take to get his Logistics Officer to appreciate the need for haste in wartime? It aggravated him, aggravating being such the appropriate word here because Osiris was always facing one form of irritation or another nowadays. Ankh’s apparent intrinsic need to linger did not help. For a boy with the ability to move at speeds above 250 miles per hour, Ankh did not move very quickly when asked. Ordered, rather. Deciding it would not do to dwell on something that made him angry, Osiris put the thought to the back of his mind and returned to the subject of missing teeth.

What was it like for human-based beings to have molars, canines, and bicuspids detach themselves from one’s gums? Of course, he had had teeth fall out in his early years, but human teeth fell out only once if they weren’t knocked out, and then once adult teeth were gone, they did not grow back. Having had many dental mishaps in his youth yet still equipped with a full set of flush, white teeth, Osiris could only imagine the inefficiency of human teeth. A clap of thunder rumbled quite loudly, and the five pencils, fussily placed exactly half an inch from each other, rolled out of position. He readjusted them without looking and did the same with the other items the sound wave had disturbed.

So few. They had so few paranormals to work with. Paranormals are rare compared to the humans. With over eight billion humans roaming the Earth, less than a million paranormals occupied the world’s overall head count. Osiris always had his qualms about humans, but he did not want to see the population of Earth drop to numbers low, the human creature became endangered and then irretrievable. Paranormality would surely perish as a human derivative if humans could not breed in a vast gene pool. That was why every loss burned like fire. Particularly any dear child who departed from this life before it was their time. And every loss was one less attack inflicted on the Morri. There were many species with special and supernatural abilities, as Osiris very well knew, but the one that mattered was the paranormal aspect. This was the one species that could produce attacks that could affect the Morri unbeknownst to most humans except his special Communications Officer. Ms. Dexter, at least, had a sense of promptness that Ankh somehow lacked in leaps and bounds. Another rumble of thunder caused the pencils to roll, and Osiris positioned them once more.

That's it. I hope you enjoyed this excerpt. There's more stuff to come later on, so keep yours heads up.

Later.