The Tea Tree

Taking a much-needed week-long vacation and I can feel my muse stirring after what feels like years of writer's block. I think playing the Wekesa family in The Sims 3 helped. And thus I bring you: Bakari and Batuuli having a cameo in Abandoned Gardens:

( 1800s photography and my attempts at traditional Swahili clothing, oh my! )

If anyone out there actually knows about East African traditional clothing and can let me know if what I gave Batuuli and Bakari makes sense, that would be great. Unfortunately yet unsurprisingly, the internet did not yield a lot of information, what with its European-centric views and all.

And as a fun bonus, one of Alden and Bakari's adopted children married a man who then used Joy for a magician trick:



She made exactly the face I'd expect. Also grr, my spreadsheet says Bakari has brown-red hair but in the Sims he still has the blonde-red hair he started with! Which one is it, me?!

Tschuess.

I've been having "oh god, have I lost the desire to write, will I abandon all of my writings after losing faith in them?!" crazy pants thoughts, so I loaded up AG again.

( This is crap writing but shouldn't have any triggers at least )

I really need to go through this again and add helpful things like introspection and complex sentences, but I thought I'd share what I was working on.

Also, just an odd side note that relates. I've tried very hard to have other languages be at an absolute minimum in my work. After all, this isn't Earth, so things like English, German, Arabic, etc. don't truly exist. However, you may have noticed that some singular words -- such as vampire terms, or Batuuli's poor Ubiquitous -- are sprinkled with Earth words, like simba (Swahili for "lion"). Some Arebian countries have silly German names like Baumland ("Tree Land"), and the translator's name is EXTREMELY German.

So, just this once, I decided to use my own German so I had something for Duff to be saying, rather than saying "Rose May heard a foreign language" over and over. But I really want my work to be easily translatable, which is why I keep stuff like this to a minimum. Once I feel more comfortable in this story again, I'll likely edit it out so I don't have full phrases in Earth languages.

And as you can see, Duff has a low tolerance for bullshit, haha.

Tschuess.

Title: Abandoned Gardens
Genre: Fantasy
The Troops: The Gang
Status: In the making
Rating: PG-13, just in case
Summary: These are snippets from the novel, individual scenes sorted into individual cuts. They are what I consider exemplary of the novel and its style.

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( Chapter One: Nur's Debut )

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( Duff Mother Hens, and Awkward Hilarity )

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( Farmlife )

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( In Which BAR BRAWL!! )

Yep. I write a strange novel.