Anthology of Speculative Scribblings: The Old has Passed Away, and the New has Come to Stay

"The wind raced down the dusty road, tearing at the lonely traveler’s clothes and throwing dust in his face. It seemed to be trying to knock him over in its haste to get wherever it was going. The traveler leaned into the wind so as to get his balance, and surveyed the road and the darkening sky ahead. He was so frail that it appeared as if the wind might get the better of him and really blow him away. Wrinkles lined the aged face gazing out from under a ragged hood. Bony, veined hands clutched a ragged cloak even tighter. His clothes, which had once been rich, were now dust covered and well worn with long use, dark reds and blues faded with the years. The old man leaned upon his knobby and crooked staff, dragging his feet as he slowly made his way off the road to the shelter of a nearby grove of trees. Sliding off his pack, he sat down out of the wind. He took out a lute and cradled it in his frail arms, protecting it from the savage wind-driven dirt with his body."

The world certainly has gone topsy turvy since I last uploaded a chapter. Wow...I've been out of work most of March but that helped more than it hindered because...I moved into a new apartment! So not a lot of extra time for writing or anything else recently. I hope all of you are staying safe! I'm going to keep holing up at home to work, write, and edit at least until the end of the month so I should be perfectly ok.

But all this extra time for you readers should mean that you can catch up on all your favorite novels online and offline. What have you been reading lately?

Photo by Daoud Abismail on Unsplash

Click on the links below to continue reading the chapter on your favorite reading platform:

Read on my website: https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower/anthology-of-speculative-scribbles

Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/858420798-anthology-of-speculative-scribblings-the-old-has

Webnovel: https://www.webnovel.com/book/15781132206046605/44473526366828147/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings/The-Old-has-Passed-Away%2C-and-the-New-has-Come-to-Stay

Again, if you like my novel, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

Become a Patron!

If you want to discuss my works with other readers, head on over to my discord server. https://discord.gg/mK3GENd

Anthology of Speculative Scribblings: Of Field Mice and Rabbits

"Where is my wand?” Esmera said, exasperated. “I just had it…” She rummaged in the piles of objects on the floor. Her floor was an extremely convenient place to dump her possessions, but it was almost impossible to find anything once it had been relegated to a pile for storage. Haphazardly stacked books waiting to be organized, worn-out clothes, bags of herbs, and utensils in varying degrees of usage comprised only a portion of the conglomeration of objects on the floor. The fairy was currently on her knees, arms buried nearly up to her shoulders in the pile of herbs in front of her. Dust and crushed dried herbs clung to her dress, turning it from a light blue into a nondescript grey. She sneezed violently, causing more dust to fly into the air, and she kept sneezing until she held up the object she had been looking for—her wand. “Got it!” she cried. 

It's a return to fantasy this month with a dash of comedy! Just what the doctor ordered to counter the dark stories the past two months. It's pulled out from my archives from when my sister was young. I'm 11 years older than my sister so I listened to all her children song CDs along with her and many of them became so ingrained into my head that I had to turn them into stories. I can still picture the CD covers even now. My birthday is this month so I had to pick one of my favorite stories I wrote to publish~ 

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Click on the links below to continue reading the chapter on your favorite reading platform:

Read on my website: https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower/anthology-of-speculative-scribbles

Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/844046335-anthology-of-speculative-scribblings-of-field-mice

Webnovel: https://www.webnovel.com/book/15781132206046605/43730145642597763/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings/Of-Field-Mice-and-Rabbits

Again, if you like my novel, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

Become a Patron!

If you want to discuss my works with other readers, head on over to my discord server. https://discord.gg/mK3GENd

Anthology of Speculative Scribblings: The Lily's Facade

A man in coveralls decorated with smears of green grease paused to view the neon sign blinking its message for passersby. Jeron, attracted by the word ‘exotic’, moved closer to the window glass to peer at the neon sign. In fine print, the brews were listed on the menu according to maker. Auritan, Ladea, Quantra, Trinz… Wait. Trinz? Their brews were rare and illegal in this system. His eyes found the name once again. Only one brew was printed beside it. Firelily...

The second story of Anthology of Speculative Scribblings takes you on a ride to the realm of science fiction. I told you I'd be jumping around to various genres! This particular story is one that I wrote down ages ago in one of my notebooks and never got around to actually finishing. So I dug it out for this month and polished it up in a story I'm quite happy with!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Click on the links below to continue reading the chapter on your favorite reading platform:

Read on my website: https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower/anthology-of-speculative-scribbles

Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/833612868-anthology-of-speculative-scribblings-the-lily%27s

Webnovel: https://www.webnovel.com/book/15781132206046605/43057445869769286/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings/The-Lily's-Facade

Again, if you like my novel, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

Become a Patron!

If you want to discuss my works with other readers, head on over to my discord server. https://discord.gg/mK3GENd

Anthology of Speculative Scribblings: Faded Memories Part 1

Edana struggled to draw water from the well, her young arms too feeble to lift the heavy bucket smoothly. Only the thought of having a small sip of the cold water to moisten her parched throat made her persist in her effort. She lifted the bucket out, set it on the lip of the well, and, after stealing a look about her, dipped a gourd into it. It had just touched her lips when she heard footsteps. The gourd splashed back into the bucket as she stood up straight, just in time. Her mistress, Drysi, came around the corner into sight...

And so it begins! The "Anthology of Speculative Scribblings" has released it's first chapter. Click on the links below to continue reading the chapter on your favorite reading platform:

Read on my website: https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower/anthology-of-speculative-scribbles

Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/822484654-anthology-of-speculative-scribblings-faded

Webnovel: https://www.webnovel.com/book/15781132206046605/42362275616583988/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings/Faded-Memories-(Part-1-of-2)

Again, if you like my novel, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

Become a Patron!

A New Year and a New Start

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years!

Thank you for following me into 2020 on my new adventure of writing web novels and other published works. If you would like to find out more about me and read my stories you can check out https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower.

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

I’m launching my new serial web novel adventure with “Anthology of Speculative Scribblings”, a collection of free short stories ranging from fantasy to sci-fi and young adult to adult. There will be one story released every month so check in on the 1^st to see what new story is being served up for your amusement.

My novels will be available to read on Tapas, Wattpad and Webnovel as well as on my website. Paid novels are only available through Patreon, though. I will keep a selection of both free and paid novels releasing, however, so don't worry about having no new free content to read! If you like my work, please consider becoming a patron to encourage my effort (and you get a few bonuses outside of paid content access!).

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/annamittower?

Tapas: https://tapas.io/annamittower

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/user/AnnaMittower

Webnovel: https://www.webnovel.com/profile/4301076183

You can find me on social media at:

Facebook: fb.me/annamittowerauthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annamittower/

If you want to discuss my works with other readers, head on over to my discord server.  https://discord.gg/mK3GENd

The Joys of a Laptop Meltdown

Literal meltdown. My fan went out on my old laptop and melted something on the motherboard inside which caused multiple glitches. In addition I had to set it on an ice pack or point a fan at it to keep the thing from turning itself off. I'm still in the process of tweaking this new laptop to meet my standards for operating (which involves installing a lot of programs or "apps" as Windows 8 terms them). But, now I'm back in the business of writing and just in time for Camp NaNoWriMo in April. Yay!

For camp, my focus will be to add at least four more decent length chapters to Shadowrunning (published and hosted on wattpad). Right now there are five chapters up which marks the completion of the first plot arc. Read and comment please!

Also, I've switched over to hosting and publishing Kagerou (my blog serial story) on wattpad as well. You can find it here: http://www.wattpad.com/story/9481004-kagerou-a-pathfinder-journal-updating-weekly Parts 15 and 16 are up now! (Only up to part 14 is hosted on the blog.) Again, read and comment, please!

Kagerou might take a break during April as I focus on hitting Shadowrunning as hard as possible while juggling an increasingly insane work schedule. This month our teaching hours have gone up and it's not doing me any good stress-wise.

As for the NaNoWriMo interviews, they will resume on Monday as usual with a repeat from a previous guest. Why don't you poke around in the old interviews while you wait and have a guess?

NaNoWriMo Spotlight 2014: Elijah David

Today's featured interviewee is a throwback to the first ever NaNoWriMo interviews on this blog when I chose from a selection of people who were both a part of NaNoWriMo and the site NarniaWeb. Elijah David is known by shastastwin on both sites and his NaNo novel this year was titled "Albion Apparent". It is good to finally be able to feature him in this series!



Who are you?

I am a copywriter and aspiring novelist from the American South. I am involved in my local church with my wife of nearly three years, where I have lately been writing the dramatic scripts for our cantatas and special services. I am coming up on a year out of my graduate program in Creative Writing. In addition to my job as a copywriter, I am part of the editing and writing staff for the Tolkien-based journal Silver Leaves.


Why did you pick NaNoWriMo to consume your November?

I first participated in NaNo in my senior year of high school. I wrote a sequel to my first novel and ended up writing into the beginning of January despite meeting the 50k goal in November. I tried NaNo a couple of times in undergraduate, but was never able to get very far due to time constraints with school. I tried again one year in graduate school, but the work load was still too much. This year, I was determined to finally accomplish another NaNo, so I signed up. I had finished a read-through of my first draft of the first novel in a series I'd been trying to get written since halfway through my undergraduate courses, and NaNo gave me the opportunity to get a first draft written of the second novel, which had been clamoring for the past year to be written.


What was your novel about? And why did you pick that?

Albion Apparent is about a young wizard named Merlin, a descendant of the Merlin of King Arthur's time. In this book, Merlin is dealing with the aftermath of his first year at the local school of magic, which ended with him facing down a dragon and a mortal classmate who'd been ensorcelled. Among the issues Merlin and his friends have to deal with this year are an army of golems hunting down the descendants of the Round Table knights and a sorcerer who cuts the school and its occupants off from the rest of the world, trapping mortals and wizards alike in close quarters where disagreements and danger are sure to run high.


What is your typical writing process like?

For novels, I typically pre-write as much as possible. I work out the basics of the plot from beginning to end, sometimes with details down to conversations. I also try to have the characters established in my head before writing too far. When I can, I pass what I've written on to an alpha reader before doing a read through to make my own notes for changes. Then I go back for a re-write and repeat the process.


How did your month go?

I finished despite being sick for the first week of the month. I had to really push some days to make up for the lost time, but in the end I was able to meet 50k.


What was the hardest part? What was the easiest part?

The hardest part was catching up from my illness and learning how to skip around in the narrative. The easiest part was writing the interludes that fit between the chapters.


What did you learn from NaNoWriMo this year?

That it's perfectly okay to skip around chronologically when writing a first draft, and that writing too much all at once can be a draining experience that sets me back farther down the road.


Where else can we find you online?

You can find my blog at elijahdavidauthor.blogspot.com and the website for Silver Leaves is
http://olorispublishing.com/products/silver-leaves-journal. Check out both for updates about me and my writing and about what's happening at Silver Leaves.

NaNoWriMo Spotlight 2014: Doddie Householder

 Today's spotlight features Doddie Householder. She goes by Doddie on the NaNoWriMo site and wrote a Horror and Supernatural inspired story for NaNo 2013. She currently lives here in South Korea along with her husband and family.

Who are you?

Ok, I m a former PR Manager who relocated to South Korea to be with my hubby who works as a professor here. We met on Discovery Online and got married in about 3 months after that. We have two sons and now I have transformed from a career girl to a Kitchen Goddess. I still write but no longer press briefs and marketing materials. I now indulge in my passion - horror/ghost stories




Why did you pick NaNoWriMo to consume your November? 

I am a NaNoWriMo newbie. Last year, I counseled a friend who took part but couldn't finish it (stress, crazy schedule, etc.) That's the first time I hear about NaNoWriMo. Said friend promised herself to participate this year and encouraged me to do it as well. With the two of us working as writing buddies, we slaved, toiled, encouraged each other and eventually finished our novels within the deadline.


What was your novel about? And why did you pick that?

My novel is about a girl who was born with the 3rd sight. It chronicles the supernatural things that she sees that no else can and eventually find out that there was a destiny laid out for her. It's a horror novel.


What is your typical writing process like?

Well, as a full-time mom of two Bottomless Pits (aka our teenage sons) and a foodie hubby, it's a full day of cooking, baking, cleaning and organizing for me. So I write at night. Being a night owl myself (or a closeted vampire as my hubby refers to me), I write better at night. I have been known to wake up in the middle of the night and fumble for the night light, glasses, pen and notepad or whatever I can grab my hands to write on and start scribbling a line or two. Those lines eventually get fleshed out as short stories or novellas. I listed to hard rock or simply rock music while I write. It helps with my thought process.


How did your month go?

I finished! Now if I could only finish editing it.


What was the hardest part? What was the easiest part? 

The hardest part was convincing myself to sit down and write. There was a couple of days there that I didn't really want to. So, I didn't and I goofed off. But I made sure to write enough the next days to make up for it. The easiest part? It was the last couple of chapters. I finally saw where my novel was leading to.


What did you learn from NaNoWriMo this year?

I learned that I can write that novel. I am so used to writing short stories (my idols are Poe and Zelasny with their short story anthologies).


Where else can we find you online?

I have two blogs (same name, got hacked and made another blog and got control again and kept both blogs)

http://boxofjalapenos.blogspot.kr/ (living the expat life in Korea)

http://doddie-aboxofjalapenospart2.blogspot.kr/ (food recipes - basically Filipino, Korean, American recipes)