Issue 146

Howdy readers! This is actually Whitney, my mom got called away on some unexpected business that couldn't be ignored tonight, so she asked me to post the blog. I hope you like what you see! :)

LTUE by Whitney

This weekend I got to go to a three day long writers conference at BYU. IT WAS AMAZING!!! It is called LTUE (Life the Universe and Everything) and is an annual sci-fi and fantasy writers conference. My Aunt Bree was speaking at some of the workshops and it was fun to be able to see her speak at diffrent author panels. All the classes are on different subjects from "Do I need an agent?" to "Writing fractured fairy tales," and they are all taught by published authors. I was able to attend all three days and was with my writer friends for all of it. It was an amazing experience that has been an epic learning opprotunity for me, and I cant wait to start applying it in my life. My writing friend Julie and I both made a mutual goal to be two of the published authors on the panels next year. No, I'm not crazy, we are both fully aware of the actual reasonable amount of time it will take for us to get published (several years) but it's going to be a nice, spurring, "shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars" kind of goal. I'm excited to keep writing and I'm nearly finished with my first manuscript. I can't wait to start writing my second one and apply everything I've learned in my first one to my second.

NaNoWriMo Queen

Whitney participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) again this year. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Here she is typing word number 50,000 on the last day. Way to go Whitney! Can't wait to see you published!

NaNoWriMo by Whitney

I MADE IT! I finished NaNoWriMo! (National Novel Writing Month.) I wrote a 50,000 word novel in 30 days! This totals to 175 pages! My book isn't finished yet, but wow, talk about a sense of accomplishment!

I am still writing, and one of the prizes I got for winning is a free paperback copy of my book, professionally printed with the cover of my choice. Cool or what? I am totally converted to NaNo, and I will be doing it next year too. It was many sleepless nights and calories consumed, and my laptop does not appreciate the daily workout it received, but by Jove, I did it!


Typing the 50,000th word in front of us at family night. (Mom asked her to wait an hour and a half so we could see her and celebrate together, but I'm sure it almost killed her to do it!)

Here is a teaser for Whitney's novel:

Mitchell is thirteen and he hasn't seen his mother since he was five and his dad ran off with him. Since then, he has moved around the country dozens of times. His father is usually gone on "business trips" and pretty much leaves Mitch to fend for himself. When he is home he is mean and perhaps slightly insane. Now Mitch is living in an apartment complex in Minnesota and meets up with an old family friend, who seems to keep popping up throughout his childhood. Odd things start to occur and he discovers that he is part of something bigger than he thought. Both sides are fighting to have him and during his adventure he ultimately has to decide which side to take, because apparently he has the ability to tip the scales in either direction.

Teen Writer's Conference

Whitney with a favorite author, James Dashner, at the teen writing conference. All of the authors donated their time for the day long conference that taught teens how to become life long writers. Whitney loved the conference and came home on fire about the novel she has been writing. Here is an essay that she wrote for the conference:

ALPACA

They say you are in trouble when the alpaca puts its ears back. I’m inclined to agree. At least I was, when I was holding onto the back of a baby alpaca and an adult put her ears back at me. At the time I was living in New Zealand. I was volunteering at an alpaca farm with one hundred plus animals. It was feeding time and we where trying to catch and separate all the babies from the herd so we could halter train them. We did this every Tuesday, but this time I did something wrong.
When you are catching an alpaca you want to get your arms around the base of its long neck. If you get that you have control of the animal. Then you can get a halter over its head and clip on a lead. Bet you didn’t know you can halter lead an alpaca did you? Well any way, you usually approach it from the front, but I approached it from the back. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was grabbing two hand holds of fleece in my desperation. I had been trying to catch this one for fifteen minutes. And then I let out a triumphal yell to let everyone know I had finally caught her.
The end result was me being dragged across the corral, holding onto the back of a panicked alpaca. Ouch. To make matters worse when it finally slowed down, as to not crash in to the fence, an adult alpaca named Perfection came up. No doubt I looked like some fearsome predator that had attacked her grandbaby, holding onto its back, making it squeal in terror. I got a barrage of alfalfa cud spat in my face. Twice. Then she started kicking me! I had to high-tail it to the fence before she could get me again. Of course everyone was laughing their heads off as I vaulted over the rail. Perfection paced by the fence with a smug expression. Yes, alpacas can look very smug when they want to.

Xoch by Whitney

(Note by Mom: Whitney has been home from school sick for a full week now. Sore throat, fever, cough - the works. It's the first school she has missed all year, and I can't remember the last time she was really sick. The Dr. ruled out strep and the flu, but whatever it is, it had her flat in bed for days. She reread the entire Fable Haven series and finished the third book again, just as the fourth book that she had pre-ordered arrived on the doorstep. She can't stand being sick, but hopefully she enjoyed a little down time. Today she felt much better and started tackling some school work, including building an impressive looking DNA model.

I have included another short story from her history project from last semester. This one covers the Mayan culture. She struggled for a long while with how to portray a religion that was based on human sacrifice. I think she did it very well.)

Xoch
(Say z-ock, rhymes with “sock”)

Xoch scraped at the ground with her digging stick. She was tending to her family’s garden, and was making the irrigation trenches around the corn deeper. She paused to wipe her forehead and glanced around, breathing in the thin mountain air. She saw her mother weaving on a loom by the side of the house, combining the colorful dyed threads of alpaca fleece together to make a blanket for the baby. She could see her five year-old brother jumping around the rocks by their home. He was trying to catch one of the fattened guinea pigs that wandered in and around their house, so they could have it for dinner.

Suddenly she heard a voice calling,

“Clear the way, for the imperial warriors!”

She turned to see a fore-runner jogging past, his leather sandals flapping against the hard packed dirt of the road. As he passed out of sight among the rest of the houses of the village, she saw an advancing group tramping down the road. As they got closer, Xoch could see, without a doubt, that these where obviously the imperial warriors. They where dressed in fierce costumes of jaguar-skin and feathers with elaborate headdresses. They carried formidable obsidian-edged blades and clubs.

Behind them, roped together, where a group of bedraggled men. They were all slaves. These Xoch observed with interest. From their dress she could see these where prisoners of battle. As Xoch watched them pass she thought about the future they had ahead of them. For a few more days they would travel to the capital where they would be handed over to the priests. They would then be taken up one of the huge stone pyramid-shaped temples. There they would be sacrificed by the priests to the gods. At this time of year it would most likely be to the god of good harvest, so all the farmers would have a plentiful crop this year. There were quite a few slaves. Xoch turned back to her work, more enthusiastically, now that she knew they would have an abundant corn harvest this year.

Shen by Whitney

(Note by Mom: One of Whitney's extra credit school projects was a 32 page paper she wrote compairing and contrasting 6 different ancient religions. As a portion of each section she wrote a short story from the point of view of someone practicing that religion. This story is from the Egyptian section of her paper.)


Shen walked a measured step across the hot earth towards the temple of Bast. It had been his coming of age day last week, and now that he was fourteen it was time for him to be fully immersed in what would be his future profession. He looked over to his left, where Umara, both his mentor and father, walked. Umara was dressed in a white plaited kilt, and carried a satchel of rare and expensive spices at his side. His head had been shaved, and he wore a white cloth on his head. Umara was a priest, an embalmer to be precise, and one of the best. An embalmer’s job is to mummify the bodies of the deceased so they would last as long as possible in the after-life.

Shen shivered with excitement, today would be the first time he would be able to help in the mummifying process. Moreover, it was not just anyone, he would have the supreme honor of helping preserve the body of a god! The Pharaoh had died two days earlier, and his family had finished mourning. Only the most skillful were being employed to help prepare the king’s body for the after-life, and his father was one of them.

Shen and his father had reached a large stone wall that surrounded the mummifying workshop. It was close to the temple of the gods for holiness, but not so close that it would contaminate the holy shrine. Umara walked up to the hefty wooden gate and called up to the sentry. As the heavy door swung inwards, father and son walked into the large-many roomed building ahead of them. They passed different rooms where other bodies where being mummified, priests where chanting prayers, the coffin maker’s room, storage rooms with huge vats of natron where the bodies where covered to dry for a month. Rooms with scribes who kept track of which bodies where at what stages, and more.

Then they came to the room where they would be working in. There was a low wooden table in the middle of the room. By the table where large bowls, an array of sharp obsidian knifes and other tools, and a set of canopic jars. Each of the four clay jars had the head of a different god on the top. These where the guardians for the important organs that would be placed in the jars for preservation purposes. Also in the room where two priests with leopard skins draped down their backs and prayer scrolls in hand. There was also another embalmer who was lighting many dishes of incense, whose heavily fragrant smoke encompassed the room. And, in the corner, stood a scribe, ready to record the proceedings.

Everyone hushed as two men walked into the room with a large bundle of blankets on their shoulders. They reverently laid it on the table and backed out of the room. Then another man walked in. Everyone present instinctively pressed against the walls, but not in respect, as Shen realized. He could tell from the newcomer’s clothes that he was a cutter. The man who actually removed the organs from the body. His job was considered unclean and everyone, for fear of being “contaminated,” avoided him. The cutter walked up to the bundle of blankets, and unwrapped them to reveal the body of the Pharaoh. As the corpse was uncovered, Shen was thankful that the incense blocked most of the smell that permeated the room. The cutter reached for a stout, copper, hook shaped tool, and unceremoniously shoved it up the body’s nose, and well into the brain cavity. This done, the tool was successively jerked around until the brain was liquid enough to pour out of the nasal passages and into a bowl, which was then discarded.

Shen kept a forced strait face through this, but his countenance tinged a definite green when the cutter reached for an obsidian blade and sliced open the side of the body, catching the gush of organs that flowed out of the abominable cavity in a large wooden bowl. Shen hurriedly excused himself and staggered over to a bush were he promptly emptied his breakfast of figs and honey cakes into the dense shrubbery.

By the time he unsteadily walked into the room again, the cutter had separated the “important” organs that would be saved, and discarded the rest. He had washed out the cavities, now empty, and had also removed the most important organ, (the heart) through a cavity in the chest.
“It is time.” Said Shen’s father, as he put on a wooden mask that resembled the god Anubis’s face.

Shen walked to the body, holding a large bowl full of the rare spices. He and his father proceeded to fill the body with spices, using tongs to stuff the herbs in the body, and then stitched it up. For poorer people, sawdust was used as stuffing, but only the best for the Pharaoh! When the incisions where sewn up, the body was carried into the drying room and packed in a vat of natron salt. It would remain there for about forty days. The entire mummification process took about seventy days, but thirty of them where used for religious purposes.

On the day of the funeral, the body had sufficiently dried. It was taken out and covered with pine resin. Then Shen and his father, all the while murmuring prayers to the gods, took long strips of fine linen, and wrapped the body. As they wrapped, they tucked in costly and valuable amulets and charms for luck between the folds of cloth, all designed to protect the king in the after life. Then a gold mask, designed to resemble the king’s face, was placed on the head. The mummy was then placed in a coffin, that to Shen’s astonishment, was made of pure gold, and weighed about 200 pounds! Then with many grunts and groans, this was then loaded into a second coffin that was carved of wood, and covered with gold foil. This in turn was loaded into the last coffin, and was then loaded onto an awaiting stretcher. Eight priests hoisted it onto their shoulders and walked out of doors.

As they walked through the heavy doors in the stone wall, they were greeted by a crowd of people, all dressed in their best and smeared in mud as a sign of mourning. The heavy-laden priests walked in the direction of the near by Nile river, and the entire procession fell into place. Behind leopard-robed priests chanting prayers to the gods, came the lower priests, leading bulls that where to be sacrificed, then the coffin bearers followed by the crowd. When they reached the banks of the Nile, the coffin bearers walked onto the awaiting funeral boat and began the voyage to the tomb. As Shen stood on the side of the ship, he watched the mourners following the ship along the bank, some helping to pull it along with ropes. He drew in a deep breath and faced south. The red light of the sunset reflected on the water, illuminating the sides of the ship with an almost unearthly red glow. How appropriate, thought Shen, this voyage does represent the sun’s journey across the heavens, does it not?