On a personal note I live in the South of the United States. It's a bit backwards in some regards, but their devotion to faith easily outshines any other part of the nation; I've lived in several parts of it.

I make donuts for a living and the process is hard enough to challenge me, always trying to improve, and at times slow enough so I can relax. It is a nice blend of physical labor and mental acuity. In the past I've worked as a dishwasher and fast-food manager, nothing special about that last one trust me. And for a year or so helped my grandfather build houses. I was young and he was in his mid-seventies. Yeah, he's a pretty healthy man.

Every funeral I've attended I have been a paul-bearer. It has nothing to do with my closeness to the person being buried, but more to the fact that I'm a guy. Men have muscles and can thus lift the casket. I say make the damn thing lighter.

The Lies that Bind: This was initially supposed to be around seven chapters and stopping around 30,000 words. I was writing on Revolution's Eve when I started the plot-bunny, and at the time RE was suffering from a large amount of plot; it kept going and going. I was considering a rewrite, with a more contained plot, but I had no practice. So I looked to this idea for a break and wanted to contain the plot as much as possible. That explains the quick-plot chapters in the first five chapters, and how the pacing improves beyond. I realized then that to tell the story better I had to expand it.

Also, while writing it, I wanted to practice a few things, stretch my writing skills, so to say. One was the drastic change of a main character, from good to evil to something in between. A stark contrast to the slow character change I normally do. I also wanted to experiment with a few of the darker aspects of human nature I had touched on initially in The Eternal Legend. Thus, the torture and subsequent creative ways I killed the various Death Eaters. Needless to say, I was successful on that side and glad of the experience; though I sill need work on the effects torture leaves on people.

The last two things I wanted to work-on was something beyond the stereotypical romance I normally write, something wholly unique. A semi Master/Slave dynamic with less emphasis on the slave part. I got some practice in, but I'm still not sure of its success in my mind; though, it had its moments. The last thing I wanted to do was be able to edit a completed work as a whole and not chapter by chapter as I have done in my prior works. Since I finished this beast last spring, in the span of two and half months I might brag, I was able to go back and write in connecting scenes. (Snape's going to the lab then to bed in both of his scenes. Voldemort torturing in the opening and Harry mirroring it with the Carrows. Daphne and his conversation while he showed her broom in the first chapters connecting with the last scene. Etc.)

All in all, for it's flaws and successes, I am proud of how it turned out. I learned a shitload while writing it and will probably use the methods I refined doing it on other projects.

EDIT: I wrote an original horror story and posted it over on fictionpress for those interested.

http://www.fictionpress.info/~zephros

--byl, out.