Cool Cat of the Month: Edition 6

Hey everybody. This is our 6th edition of our Cool Cat of the Month It took awhile to really pick someone due to the changes within the group, and a lot of things happening. However, I think we have a great deviant chosen for our 6th edition!

Congratulations to Jallarial

Here was our stellar interview

Tell us something about yourself. What makes you YOU?

I am defined by my determination to overcome my laziness, and my love for books. Even my name means "read".

Do you generally have a writing process? If not, can you share how your literature pieces come about?

Usually, I the pieces I finish are written in one sitting. I get the idea, I sit down immediately, and bang it out, editing as I go. Only now have I tackled longer projects that take more time. Let's see how it goes.

What inspires you and your literature?

Good writing and good stories inspire me to write my own. Some stories have such well crafted sentences that I am actually discouraged, but then I pick myself back up and turn that into inspiration instead.

Have you ever participated in Writing Challenges such as National Poetry Writing Month, Haiku Writing Month, NaNo, or Flash Fiction Month? Or any others? If not, how do you challenge yourself as a writer?

I have toyed with the idea of doing NaNo, but exams and stuff stopped me. Now that I am done with college, I may attempt such things. I don't really try to challenge myself as every thing I write is a challenge for my creativity in itself.

What brought you to dA and/or this group?

I signed up for dA years ago and came back to it recently. Joined The Writers Meow because of its cool title and otherwise cool aura.

Please share 3 pieces of your own gallery (doesn't have to be all lit) you are most proud of. Feel free to share why you love these pieces so much.

1. Life Management

Life ManagementDear Human,
This is to inform you that life as you know it has been binned. There were a lot of complaints regarding life as it had been, so it was decided that a new system be adopted, which will hopefully be pleasing to everyone. As of now, life is an RPG. There is no need to worry; this letter outlines everything you need to know.
First things first. You will not age! That does away with the whole search for everlasting youth thing. No need to bother scientists with genetic research and the like. Convenient, huh? Instead, you will gain experience points as you defeat monsters on the field, which will allow you to move up from level to level and become stronger. This will allow you to be able to kill stronger beasties and become even stronger, until you hit the roof, level 99, at which nothing will pose a challenge to you anymore. At this level, you can either choose to revisit old areas and watch adversaries shrivel up at your mere presence, or you can head towards one of the crazy-

I love this because I managed to write what I think is a unique piece and I have never tried to recreate it or build upon it. It is a standalone success.

2. Unsuccessful shopping

Unsuccessful shoppingI do not know how they talked me into it. Let me think. Oh, yeah. It was dear old mom, proclaiming her wish to visit the mall before being put to eternal slumber. It was Zoha, too, claiming proof of my undying love. Does filial duty and holy matrimony depend on becoming the family driver? That’s what it seems nowadays. Life is not fair.
I’d regret it, I knew. But I did it. If driving four miles in the rush hour to the nearest shopping centre with incessant female chatter boring into one’s ears is not proof of filial and marital loyalty, I don’t know what is.
To begin with, they wanted shoes. I steered them to the nearest outlet and spent half an hour watching them pull every footwear within reach off the shelves. It was Cinderella redone, minus the prince. The prince was off-duty, observing from a safe distance. After thirty minutes’ worth of bargain-hunting, they decided that that store was not for them. Enough to satisfy the common populace, but not for

I love this because when it got published in a youth magazine, some guys wrote in saying how it perfectly depicted what they felt. When a guy says that a girl managed to get into his head and show what's in there, that's an achievement for me!

3. The Artist's Meow

The Artist's MeowThe moment was frozen in suspended animation. The inkpot hovered in the air above the map, spread out below it in all its handmade glory. Then Myu's tail snapped forwards and the illusion dissipated; the inkpot smashed onto the table and the ink spilled all over.
Myu disappeared as quickly as the details of the map did underneath the indelible ink.
Now it was Lielle's turn to be frozen. She was frozen with horror as she took in the damage to her beloved map. Drawn in painstaking detail over the course of half a year, under the instruction of her tutor, it was her masterpiece and her joy. She had dedicated the main table of her study to it; pinning the paper carefully to the edges of the table and making sure nobody and nothing remotely harmful came close to it.
Until now.
Now Myu, her cat, had infiltrated the study and flung a pot of black ink over it with a swish of his tail. What made it worse was that the event unfolded right in front of Lielle's eyes. Had she come upon the disaster

I love this because it was the first story I wrote from pure inspiration after a long while, all thanks to The Writers Meow!

Now, share 3 pieces of literature from OTHER deviants.

Gladly!

1. Ephemera by AElfrics-Cat

EphemeraI wrap myself in your pages.
Thumbing your edges,
tracing your spine;
feeling the leaves of you
with every fragile turn
Your ink is on my skin.
You mark me. With
Words and rhetoric.
And I'm not sure where
the pages end and I begin
(Canvas est corpus -
I can feel you writing into me.)
And though I'm never sure
if I am lovesong or
parable; dreamscape or
memoir - I love
the ways you write on me.
I am simply afraid
to one day see your
Masterpiece.
And all I have been
is a gloss in your margins.

This is so beautifully sensual!

2. crumblings by Lissomer

:thumb500774530:

I have this as my desktop wallpaper. It's my mantra.

3. Stories of feelings with no names

Stories of feelings with no names - Revision   i.
   The feeling you get the day after sending a letter, and you know there is no possible way that the recipient has received your message, let alone formulated time to write a reply. You still get just a little hopeful when you hear the mailman drive by. You rush out to the postbox a little too quickly and are disappointed by the pile of free coupons, bills, charity flyers, and a late Christmas card from your late Grandma Moses.
    ii.
    You lost your voice one day. You woke up to a hollow echo in the base your throat and knew you’d lost something special before you’d ever had a chance to say anything worthwhile. You checked under the bed and tried the lost and found, but couldn’t even ask if anyone had heard it lately.
   iii.
   A sudden awareness that occurs during funerals that you are going to die. You are dying right now – your cells are shedding like snakeskin and your hair is turning silver and every moment is one less than

This is just so much awesomeness rolled into one piece!

Thank you for choosing me, I am honoured Looking forward to having more fun with The Writers Meow.

And we are honored to have YOU here with us. As promised, here is your feature

Write about a memory (writing prompt)In you and I there's a new land
I'm a daydreamer. Even people who don't daydream have a world of concrete thoughts inside them. The worlds made of not-so-concrete, more intangible thoughts (aren't all thoughts intangible? What about the ones you can nearly taste? Or smell, or hear?) are more enjoyable, I think. Easier to get lost in.
Angels in flight
Faith keeps you going. Sometimes, instead of putting your best foot forward, you have to take a leap in the dark. Even though you won't fall, feline-like, on your feet.
wonk uoy naht noitceffa erom deen I
Somethings things appear topsy-turvy. Upside down, backwards-front, whatever way you slice it, you end up with a pile of scraps. Then when you take an unusual approach, things become clearer.
My sanctuary, my sanctuary, yeah
Where fears and lies melt away
Call me escapist. Yeah, go ahead. Isn't that how we all survive?
I watch you fast asleep
All I fear means nothing
A crystal clear memory. A face smooth Family mends where friends endI have always wanted a friend whose mind works the way mine does. It does not have anything to do with comparison; I do not mean to say that I am an intellectual Everest surrounded by molehills, that nobody “measures up to me”. It is just that the way different radio stations are on different frequencies, I wanted someone on my frequency.
My frequency matched others’ in the manner of a Venn diagram (in which each component is represented by a circle, and the places where the circles overlap stand for the qualities shared by the overlapping elements). I “fit in” with many different people, but nobody fitted me.
In school, I used to keep raising my hand until the teacher told me to let somebody else answer. I still remember the time in eighth grade when the teacher asked what whales were hunted for, and I answered “blubber”. A classmate blasted me with a wide-eyed look of incredulity that I have not forgotten to this day. I was the only one in th On a brownie highI have a sweet tooth, a chocolate tooth and a filled tooth. The latter is a result of the former. In order to keep the filling in its proper place and not yank it out mid-chew, I avoid chewing sticky foods on that side. That means taking a bite of the chocolate, transferring it all to the side which is yet unmolested by the siege of sweetness, and chomping it one-sidedly to slush. My jaw does not like this arrangement. It protests. I insist that I’ve received the “overload” memo. It puts up banners and waves flags. It sends a whole “too much strain on this end” message through flag-waving signals. Finally, I give in. I cut back on the chocolate input through chocolate bars and look for substitutes instead. Chocolate mousse. Chocolate cake. Chocolate ice cream. Chocolate choco latte. You get the idea.
It is every chocoholic’s dream to find something that is rich but not overwhelmingly so. I discovered my something the day I started experimenting with
Flip that shoe before I flip my shoe at youAn upturned shoe invites a medley of reactions.
"Turn it over!"
"Be quick about it!"
"The shoe!"
Or just plain calling you over and pointing towards the offending object.
That's because in desi-land--that's Pakistan and India to you folks--an upside down shoe is supposed to be disrespectful to God. I don't know how this superstition originated--but each and every Pakistani elder has this thinking firmly inscribed in stone in their minds: flip the shoe before I flip my shoe at you.
I usually comply when elders tell me to turn upside down shoes. Not because I think it makes much difference to God, but because I think it shows respect to my elders.
Will I tell my children to put their shoes upright, that is the question. The truth is, upside down shoes look untidy. While I might not have the same ingrained response to an overturned shoe as my elders, I will probably still ask others to turn them over. And turn them over myself. I suppose it's plain old cultural programming.
While two shoe ConquestIt was a sheer drop, fifty feet at least. He did not go easily; he had to be
dragged by the shirt collar, kicking and squealing, with a cuff and a curse
added for good measure. The bottom of the gorge was deep and dark, with
no way out save to scale the vertical walls.
He didn’t like the dark.
“I want some light around here!” he called. His voice was needle-thin. It
barely penetrated the thick, stifling air. The echoes laughed, and there was
no light.
“Light!” he repeated, beginning to grow a trifle annoyed, “I asked for light!”
“Asked?” said a voice.
“Yes, asked,” he repeated angrily.
“Asked?”
“You heard the first time! I asked!”
“You didn’t ask.”
This was an unforeseen obstacle. He tried to peer through the darkness, as
though to cleave it with his very gaze.
“I asked,” he ventured eventually; in what he thought was a winning tone.
“You didn’t ask, Call it autumn or fall, you should have a ballMy father's Skype status is "fall season has finally arrived". It was something he put up more than a year ago--all year round, it was irrelevant, until autumn came back again and lo and behold, the status had meaning again.
I found other meaning in that status, too. My father is in his fifties, my mother is in her forties. I can safely say that they count as "middle aged"; they are in the autumn of their lives. They are the last generation to grow up without a cell phone. They can no longer party as hard as they used to. Naptime is sacred and inviolable. The quirks of a settled and routine life characterise their existence.
They are also in the autumn of their marriage: in the spring they wed, in the summer they planted and raised, and now in the autumn it is time to reap what they sowed all those years ago. I am talking, of course, about raising children. My brother and me. Both of us are adults in our early twenties now.
They say sixty (or is it fifty?) is the youth of old age. The
Unsuccessful shoppingI do not know how they talked me into it. Let me think. Oh, yeah. It was dear old mom, proclaiming her wish to visit the mall before being put to eternal slumber. It was Zoha, too, claiming proof of my undying love. Does filial duty and holy matrimony depend on becoming the family driver? That’s what it seems nowadays. Life is not fair.
I’d regret it, I knew. But I did it. If driving four miles in the rush hour to the nearest shopping centre with incessant female chatter boring into one’s ears is not proof of filial and marital loyalty, I don’t know what is.
To begin with, they wanted shoes. I steered them to the nearest outlet and spent half an hour watching them pull every footwear within reach off the shelves. It was Cinderella redone, minus the prince. The prince was off-duty, observing from a safe distance. After thirty minutes’ worth of bargain-hunting, they decided that that store was not for them. Enough to satisfy the common populace, but not for Life ManagementDear Human,
This is to inform you that life as you know it has been binned. There were a lot of complaints regarding life as it had been, so it was decided that a new system be adopted, which will hopefully be pleasing to everyone. As of now, life is an RPG. There is no need to worry; this letter outlines everything you need to know.
First things first. You will not age! That does away with the whole search for everlasting youth thing. No need to bother scientists with genetic research and the like. Convenient, huh? Instead, you will gain experience points as you defeat monsters on the field, which will allow you to move up from level to level and become stronger. This will allow you to be able to kill stronger beasties and become even stronger, until you hit the roof, level 99, at which nothing will pose a challenge to you anymore. At this level, you can either choose to revisit old areas and watch adversaries shrivel up at your mere presence, or you can head towards one of the crazy-

Everyone give a big congrats to Jallarial and remember, you can always suggest yourself OR someone else for any future editions. So feel free to take advantage of that. See you guys next month.