P.S. Picking out five from the amazing assortment of entries was nearly impossible. I know Becky spent ages getting her five. I went through the entries a dozen times before I had mine.

Thank you again, each entrant, for putting your time, effort, thought, and passion into your portrait of yourself. Only one person can win. But each of you is amazing. And it has been a pleasure getting to know you.

So I’m working on extra Fendle Warrior Hearts, getting them done so that I can ship them to my mother for a signature, then have her ship them back so when they’re ordered they’re on a next day trip towards the rightful owners.  However, what I wanted to say is that each piece you are getting isn’t only unique because of the beads attached.

If you click on that link it shows you the first Fendle Warrior Heart made, it shows you the model.  I keep all the models.  That one is now, honestly, my least favorite asthetically.  Making each piece is intoxicating.  I’m lucky that I’m not working on some assembly line, or the owner of one just pumping out designs for people to make and ship.

“And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.”

Not here.  Yes, it’s slower.  Yes, designs come out slower because I am still working on other things, other shops, other shipments, customer service.  It’s slower because it’s ALL done by ME (and that is REALLY hard, by the way. It’s hard because I can’t read the books I want to read, or veg because there really isn’t an ‘after work time’ right now.  It’s all the time and I can’t just stop everything because Ghost Hunters is on or The Royal Tennebaums is on with no advertisements, lol).

Now, I am not perfect and I refer you back to my guarantee: If it Fails Because of Me, I Will Fix it for FREE (just minus the shipping TO me).  But I can tell you that I have fallen in love with each piece.  Literally every piece that I have made so far, every single one of them I love.  I imagine the stories behind them.  Some have scars!  Some have dents and chips and chunks missing.  Some have odd coloring; maybe this is moss, maybe that was blood.  Every single piece is something that I am devastatingly proud of and each one is completely unique.

And I just wanted to share that with you.  I wanted to let you know that when you get your Fendle Warrior Heart you are getting a piece of me.  You’re getting some of my soul’s input and my magic and my hard work.

Now, before I sign off here for the night I have had some requests for more “normal” TalysMana related jewelry; not so artifact-y.  I’ve got you covered.  I am working on several things right now.  The most common requests have been earrings and (weird) cell phone charms.  I can’t believe it but I’ve had three separate requests for those.

I want your input too.  You can leave it as a comment here or email me at becky@talysmana.com.

Keep things shiny and have a great rest of the week!

Rebecca

I got words on TalysMana today. Well, they aren’t words IN the story. But I redid my index (plot) cards to reflect the change in direction the story took, and to make sure that I stay on track with the sense of wonder in having imagination create your own living alternate universe.

So, in spite of vertigo and feeling rough, I’m getting back on track.

How about you?

I received Becky’s first batch of Fendle Warrior Hearts in the mail Saturday, and got them signed today (yesterday was Search For The 0.5 Waterproof Brown Pen Day. )

For those of you who are getting the signed, numbered limited editions, Number 1-6 will be in the mail later today.

Holly

If you missed the email that went out let me fill you in. The LIMITED EDITION Fendle Warrior Heart is in its final stages. In fact (and I didn’t mention this in the email) I should have a finished model today, so my mother should get some pictures.

It’s much smaller than originally imagined, oval and less intricately carved. I remember updating you all when I changed the look of the piece but there have been so many issues and versions… Argh, this one has been insanity.

The PRE-release date (some TalysMana folks get a chance to buy the piece before everyone else and secure themselves lower numbers) is Tuesday June 29th. The Official release date is Thursday July 1st.

As far as getting on the pre-release email list: it’s easy. You just have to have purchased an item from the TalysMana Shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/talysmana). If you have you will be eligible to buy the Fendle Warrior Heart before others and secure a lower number.

An email will go out on Tuesday to the people who’ve purchased something from my shop.

I remember who has discounts (including that big half off discount ;D) and will be emailing those people on how to get that for whenever they want to use it.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

I was supposed to be back to work by now. My brother-in-law made it through his surgery with flying colors, my daughter has moved, I’ve moved, all the chaos is supposed to be done with.

Instead, I’m seeing specialists. I have no energy, the constant headaches and vertigo make it impossible to work for more than a few minutes (not even long enough to do a decent job at customer service), and I’m frustrated and furious with myself for not being able to just shake this off.

I have not forgotten TalysMana, or Write A Book With Me. At least I can think, and while I haven’t been working, I have been thinking. I’ve come up with some fun stuff for the TalysMana story, two new big courses I want to create (HTFYD and HTTWM…yes, I’m being enigmatic), and a really cool bonus thing to do with the Create A World Clinic.

And I wanted to set up a new post for you (the last one was getting pretty crowded), and to offer encouragement.

I haven’t answered–no energy. I have read.

Keep going. I’m cheering for you.

The TalynMana project hit a snag a couple weeks ago, when Becky’s day job got slammed with, well, the economy. Not just her job, you see, but the company she worked for, too.

So she’s in the middle of changing everything, and the jewelry part of the TalysMana project is on hiatus until she gets through this particular disaster.

And the contest is on hold until Becky can participate in judging the entries along with me. We’re looking at–realistically–a couple of months for this to happen.

On my end, there’s still a bunch of craziness going on, but it’s winding down. So I should be able to get back to writing TalysMana in another week or two.

We’ve had a couple of weeks of sheer zoo here, in which ALL I’ve been able to do is squeeze in time most nights to write the lessons for HTRYN—leaving TalysMana languishing.

We’ve had (and have ongoing) a couple of family crises, both medical and economy-related, we’re fixing up our next place to live to save hundreds of dollars a month on the rent we’re currently paying, I’ve had to squeeze income tax stuff in there, and that has taken two or three hours a day for the past few weeks. There’s also been a stack of other stuff that has come blasting through the doors at almost-regular, suspiciously intentional intervals that would make a less optimistic person than me suspect…well…let’s not go there.

ALL of March and the first few days of April have been “when it rains, it pours, and when it pours, it floods, and when it floods, your house floats down the street.”

Okay. Not that bad. And not as bad for us as for the folks we love. But…

There has been no fiction writing. None.

I’m going to get the lesson done this week, and next week, start back with my regular life, I hope.

Hope things have been going well for you.

Talk about your writing. I need to hear the beauty of how it’s going.

It’s in PDF format.  Go check it out:

http://www.hannatetens.com/documents/HTetens_connect_the_dots.pdf

The Road to Writing, Paved with Good Intentions

I’ve always been told that I’m not good enough. I often felt that there are parts of me missing that I can never recover; parts of my early life, bits of myself that should have been, but never were. They were forgotten long before they were created, and I often found myself searching for them in the lives of others.

“This,” I would think, “is who or what I would have been if things had gone differently.”

“This horrible place is where I should have been, except for dumb luck.” I had always considered it lucky that I was alive—not because I was loved or cherished or saved for any purpose. But because whoever it was that wrote my story didn’t care enough to kill me. It would’ve wasted precious ink. Depression took over my entire life. I was a miserable person to be around. I wanted nothing, hoped for nothing, dreamed of nothing.

And then one day, I took up a notebook and a pencil and started to write.

I still can’t remember why I did it, but I did—I took up that pencil and from it sprang an entirely new world, one in which I was valued. Cherished. Loved. And bit by bit the darkness receded and was replaced with handsome princes, dragons, castles, empires and their formidable armies at my bidding.

I created images of myself as I would’ve liked to be: complete, with no parts missing. I was at the center of every intriguing plot. Story after story they came, new nations, new eras, new characters—new people to mingle with. I could see them in my mind’s eye, so clearly in fact, that I saw them in the people I encountered in out in the real world…and so real that they began to take on lives of their own.

I lived in their world for nearly a decade, and I loved it there. But the longer I stayed, the more my real life began to suffer. I failed my classes. I missed events. I didn’t socialize. And you’d smell me coming a mile away because I didn’t take very good care of myself either. There would always come a time at the end of each day when I had to put the pencil down. And when I did, I was faced with the same issues I’d had before I started, if not worse. I had to do something about it.

So I sought help. Psychiatrists, drugs, hospitalizations. I was diagnosed as “Bipolar” and took a vested interest in correcting that and the real life I had neglected. I brought up my average and graduated college with honors. I interacted with the people around me; real people. For the first time in a long time, I was happy.

But with each passing day, it became a little more difficult to pick up that pencil again. That mighty river of thought and creation has dried up and one by one, my worlds are fading away into the old abyss of forgetfulness. Immortalized in print, but rarely read and scarcely thought of. I’ve begun a quest to reclaim these worlds and forge new ones. The old stories fade, but my thoughts are ever-filled with new tales of my old friends. I miss them. They are who I am, and they are the pieces of myself that I was missing before. I will not rest until their voices are heard, and I will never allow the darkness to take them, because to do so would be to lose myself as well. And that will never happen again. I swear it.

http://kimbaxterwhyiwrite.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-know-why-caged-lion-roars.html