My new book is out!

[tllith]

Sythyry's Journal, a diary of a RPG character -- well, a character in a RPG world anyways. Going to school, dealing with roommates and college romance, getting beaten up by exceedingly dangerous monsters, and all like that.

www.createspace.com/3441605

Or it'll be on Amazon in a few days.

[mathus]

Nice I will have to check it out.

[Niemz]

Can you post an excerpt?

[tllith]

Woe and Whimpering Anguish [14 Chirreb 4260]

Havune and Thery were right about not having time to spare once classes have started. Not that classes are so terrible, nor yet studying for them -- in the simple truth I haven't studied a bit yet.

No. For the custom here is that, on the first day of classes, all students go to the buttery. We have a round of drinks; we summarize our class schedules in woe-bestruck terms; we have a round of drinks; we rip a page from each textbook and throw it in the fire; we have a round of drinks. (This is why all the textbooks had a blank page at the back.) Then, of course, the first-term students are educated with terrible stories about all their classes. Professor Urastra, for example, is a fierce giant scyanturge luring us into a trap; any resemblance with a pleasant Rassimel woman is simply a delusion brought about by a lack of liquor! Which is to be remedied by all her students buying a round for everyone... Three tots of consimmon brandy, a quarter-pint of hosh beer, a quarter-pint of celery beer, and a pot of hallucinogenic tea, over the evening, and I was ready to believe that Professor Urastra was a scyanturge -- or that I was.

Certain other points are worthy of mention by morning's flickering sunlight. Point the first: one's willingness to drink strong drink really ought to be tempered by one's awareness of one's own small body size. Point the second: Even if one is distinctly tipsy, it is advisable to get out of the fireplace before emptying one's stomach. Codicil to point the second: should one ignore Point the Second, one should clean the fireplace in short order rather than taking a brief nap. Point the third: Rassimel recover from all poisons quickly, and, as a consequence, the entire species deserves to be used as a shuttlecock in a game between Accanax and "Here". Point the fourth: spontaneous magic is made not one bit easier by the headache that comes from the remnants of strong drink. Point the fifth: botching a spontaneous Clean-Smelling Air can return the air to its state as of the middle of the night, with a less well-mellowed pungency. Point the sixth: if the thrice-accursed and hideously-healthy Rassimel chooses to complain or laugh, any form of vengeance is appropriate. Including looking pitiful enough so that she does the spell herself.

Dustweed, it may be noted, is just as healthy as Thery. Zie removed all the alcohol from zir beer before zie drank it. As least zie had the grace to slip out quietly before I woke up this morning, for which I will rhapsodize zir ten thousand years hence. Or at least talk zir into giving me that spell.

No rhapsodies now, though. Even the scratching of quill on smooth paper trickles through my head like daggersome icicles.

The Long Way Around [15 Chirreb 4260]

The first mystery of academic life is how to find your classes. For your convenience and safety, there is not the least trace of organization or structure to the naming of classrooms: they are named after their decoration, or the artist who designed them, or some notable event that happened there, or the whim of the first professor that taught there, or any other way by which things get names. Neither is there any catalog of where classrooms are. One must simply know -- or, if knowing does not suffice, find someone who does.

When one is readily recognizable as a first-year student in the first week of classes -- be it by means of brilliant azure plumage that has never been seen before on campus, or by means of a woefully hung-over face and drooping tail -- one may perhaps be given very creative directions to ones' classes. I got to my morning's class a third of an hour late. So early? The three grinning Orren upperclassfolk had no special tricks to give a youngster who could fly; they had me circle the steeple on the administrative building seven times, and then sneak in through the dean's window. I consider myself fortunate here. Twillie, the Orren girl who came in right after me, had been sent through the messier parts of the plumbing.
Nestrune Kreslink is Crown Prince of Daukrhame, and a proud proud Rassimel is he. He refused to follow the senior students' directions: he strode, clothed, around the buttery, rather than going in the fur through it. Thery and some of her friends are plotting a suitable punishment for Crown Prince Nestrune Kreslink. By custom it must be delivered by the end of the week.

In all truth and clarity, the end of the week will not come too soon for me. I am taking all these pranks in good humor, more to avoid Nestrune's looming doom than because it comes naturally to me. Some other first-term students have been heard vowing that they will never do such pranks themselves: a vow that I will not take, though the academy would be a better place if everyone did.

[mathus]

Here is a review I found while Googling for Sythyry's Journal.

strangehorizons.org/2004/20040614/diaries.shtml

[tllith]

Apr 23, 2010 10:30:51 GMT -6 mathus said:

Here is a review I found while Googling for Sythyry's Journal.

strangehorizons.org/2004/20040614/diaries.shtml

Thanks for turning that up! I'd nearly forgotten about it... despite snagging a sentence from it for my back cover.

[Niemz]

Sounds great!

[tllith]

I'm pretty happy with it. (I've been rereading it, and I'm still basically happy with it.... except the half-dozen typos and errors I've found so far.)

It just showed up on Amazon, with free super-saver shipping:
www.amazon.com/Sythyrys-Journal-Chronicle-Transaffection-Adventure/dp/1451562934/ref=sr_1_1/186-4584220-2116428?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272350144&sr=8-1

And I'll try to shut up about it now!