Today I went to the library as you sugested, Onions. It was a pretty successful trip. I didn't find the book Jeff sugested, but I found something that might help, for now. Also, I found a book on vampires and an "Occult Encyclopedia" that might be a little useful. Also, the library now has an extensive graphic novel section, so I found some more things to occupy my time as well, including "Batman Year One." A friend of mine is giving a short lecture on Tarot at his college next week, so I'm also going to go to that. Hopefully, I'll be able to write more pages tomorow, sence I have a good portion of hte day off.

Batman, Year One? Lol.
That's the problem with libraries, you get sidetracked. Glad you found new stuff to fire your imagination.

I've written up to a point where I got stuck with the story line. I know how I want people to develop but I don't know how to get there. It seems like I'm heaping problems on problems on my hero and I don't want this to become to elegiac. It's supposed to be exciting!

I've got a paper coming up, and one of the topic options is to write a new pilgrim for the Canterbury Tales, in middle English. So I'm thinking about that. Mostly. I think I may go with "the Californian." I even have the first two lines sifting around in my head, something about him being handsome and having a screenplay on someone's desk at MGM.

quote:

I think I may go with "the Californian." I even have the first two lines sifting around in my head, something about him being handsome and having a screenplay on someone's desk at MGM.

That would be a bloody long pilgrimage till Canterbury. Actually, I think the idea is excellent and very funny.

Hello all. I've started working on a sci-fi short story that deals with dreams. I was hoping someone might be able to suggest a reference about the science/theory of dreams (what part of the brain they take place in, why we have them, where they come from and what influences them, etc.) I really hope someone can help point me in the write direction.

Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by Lone Phoenix:
Today I went to the library as you sugested, Onions. It was a pretty successful trip. I didn't find the book Jeff sugested, but I found something that might help, for now. Also, I found a book on vampires and an "Occult Encyclopedia" that might be a little useful. Also, the library now has an extensive graphic novel section, so I found some more things to occupy my time as well, including "Batman Year One." A friend of mine is giving a short lecture on Tarot at his college next week, so I'm also going to go to that. Hopefully, I'll be able to write more pages tomorow, sence I have a good portion of hte day off.

Hi - a good idea is to give a look to OSWALD WIRTH and E.A.WAITE books on Tarots.

And to buy a packet of Tarots and look at them yourself...

Try to avoid wiccan and silly new age stuff... unfortunately if you are interested in an esoteric subject the "new age trap" is always ready...

I would suggest to look at W.B.Yeats poetry: he was drawn completely into the esoteric and... he was a wonderful poet. (if you like Yeats a lot the book by KATHLEEN RAINE Yeats, the Initiate: essays on certain themes in the work of W.B.Yeats, is wonderful for an analysis of his poems and tarots).

Sorry I cannot see the link between vampires and tarots... (Anyway I like both!)

I honestly just saw the Vampire book and thought it looked interesting. I'll look into Yeats, I probably should anyway because I haven't read him yet. I went to a little presentation that a friend of mine made on Tarot for his Pagan S.A. club, and that was informative and useful, so I might have enough information for now.

...this Yeats' poem deals with vampires.
The opposition between the miracolous bodies of the saints (such as St. Teresa d'Avila, there is this legend that her corpse remained uncorrupted after death) and the vampires, is that of eternity and human decay... Yeats preferred the human, imperfect aspect of it.

OIL AND BLOOD. W.B.Yeats

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.

But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.


p.s. A book on Vampires! PAUL BARBER. Vampires, Burial and Death.

The book is a wonderful reading although quite gruesome... the author tries to show the reality behind the alleged corpses of vampires, explaining a lot of things that happen to the body after death.

Good luck for your tale!

... just wandering: do you have access to jstor?

If yes, look for the article by Juliette Du Boulay: The greek Vampire...

If no, look for Alan Dundes'book: The vampire. A casebook.
The article is included there.

What's jstor?
I know a small bit about the greek vampires, but not much, I'm afraid.

jstor's an academic journal database. are you at university? you should have access if so

quote:

Originally posted by Lone Phoenix:
What's jstor?
I know a small bit about the greek vampires, but not much, I'm afraid.

Jstor is a ...how can I say that?, is a tool for research. http://www.jstor.org. You have free access to a lot of academic articles, reviews - if you are attending a college, your university could be offering it as a service.

Vampires: the ethnic vampire, I mean not the one that we are used to know through literature, but the one of the real beliefs of the past, had a great diffusion in south-eastern Europe, especially Hungary, Romania and Greece (Montenegro was one of the most haunted zone). So you have a lot of folklore from there regarding the vampire... and you can discover that the "dandy" vampire of the gothic imagination has almost nothing to do with the bloody revenant of "reality". The article is good and imaginative. Dundes' book is not so difficult to find.

quote:

Originally posted by The Lord of YARRR!:
jstor's an academic journal database. are you at university? you should have access if so

sorry I didn't see the message! Lord of YARRR! said it better than me... sometimes when you have to talk or write in a language different from your original one the result can be weird...

i'm writing this novel that's about truth and beauty, love and death, spiders and smoke and all kinds of things. i'm 100ish pages in.

i'm also writing this article about Jews in the goth scene for this newspaper...i'm overdue on it.

i'm planning to write a D&D adventure, and a script that my friend and i hope to get funding to film in Israel perhaps next year.

and eventually i'll get to my essay on the existence of God (hint: i'm in favour of it).

the most interesting threads always seem to die without hesitation...

A lot of people on the board are focusing on the nano this month, so I don't think this thread is dead, just diverted to the nano thread for the time being.
8,000 WORDS! WOOT!

OK, I'm bumping this thread with an idea I had that I cannot use due to my lack of talents in some specific regions.
A comic or online writing, possibly in the form of a fake livejournal, about a person who works for a game company, and his great idea for a game, and the challanges and trials he faces in the industry. Alternating with these story sections, a game is created representing the game that he is trying to create. The idea is to have the two projects mirror each other in interesting and surprising ways. It is much too complicated an idea for me to pull off right now, and I do not have the tallent to draw a comic or the skill to create a videogame, so I'm posting it here for anyone who wants it. Go, go complex project idea, and be free!
Hugh O'Donnell.

quote:

Originally posted by The Lord of YARRR!:
jstor's an academic journal database. are you at university? you should have access if so

As as sidenote, Jstor utterly and totally ROCKS! I've lost track of how many sources that thing has provided me with when I just can't find anything anywhere else...

My next short story idea, which I cannot begin until december at the earliest:
"The farm boy next door." Essentially, a first person narative inspired by the "annoying litterary devices" thread, about the one farmboy in a village that DOESN'T have mysterious parentage which makes him the savior of humanity and weilder of the magical feiry greatsword of the gods, and his angst at feeling left out.

I've started writing a bunch of stories in a world called Requiem, which is earth after the third Great War. It's got magic and vampires, and mutated things in the darker parts of the world, and some places have been relatively unaffected (I figure inland places, and maybe a few islands would stay fairly out of it all). So, the latest story there is about a magic stone that gets broken and realeses its power causing some people to grow wings... They're called Angelus...