Good With People

It's been way too long since I put any fiction up, so I thought I'd share this little bit I wrote back in May.  It was a story seed that arose from a discussion about the sorts of people you'd want on your Team in case of Zombie Apocalypse (my Special Forces brother is 100% my Team Leader, so I'll be just fine), and after listing a variety of specializations (hunter, gardener, spinner, carpenter, etc), I was feeling like I'd more or less be dead weight.  The only thing I might have going for me is, in the immortal words of Martin Blank, "a certain... moral flexibility".  Which immediately got my writer's brain a'spinnin' about how White Collar Peeps might survive the Apocalypse, and I sat down and pounded out the following.  And then left it there, because I didn't actually have an idea for a narrative, just the characters for what would essentially be a glorified fanfiction of myself (in which my stand-in is way more bad ass than me, and those inspired by others in my life are slightly less so, so as to make more room for my stand-in's bad-assery).  I recently had a conversation that kicked off a tentative idea for what the point of the story might be (hence this was back on my mind again) so we'll see.  I'd like to do NaNo again this year, all 50k words since I'm on Parental Leave, so maybe I'll use that time to dive deep on this one...

Anyway, enjoy this unearthed noodling, and hopefully there will be more fiction in the near future!

***

The Apocalypse happened about fifteen years ago, while my mother was pregnant with me.  I don’t remember life Before, and my brother- four years older than me- doesn’t really, although occasionally he’ll surprise me by having a personal familiarity with something like “milkshake”.

We don’t live “near” anyone.  No one does, these days. Well, some people do, people trying to rebuild the Cities, but Daddy says they’re short-memoried idiots.  But there’s about a handful of us families that look in on one another, none closer than about five miles, and we all get together about once a month for trading and courting and that kind of thing.  Mama says they’ve all been carefully vetted, they’re all the “right” kind of people, by which she means sensible folk. My brother says dryly that the Apocalypse did a pretty good job vetting our species in general, but talk like that always makes Mama angry.

“There were a lot of good people who died, a lot of smart people who just got unlucky,” she’ll say.  “Not to mention the smart people who got lucky enough to survive, but were a hell of a lot worse for us than the dumb ones who died.”

Daddy says we were smart, and that’s why we made it through the Bad Years.  Mama says we were smart, but also lucky.  “Being smart just lets you take advantage of good luck when it comes along,” she says.  “And good luck comes more often to those who don’t count on it.”

“Smart, and lucky, and ruthless,” Daddy will say, and kiss Mama.  Mama says nothing. I know she considers being ruthless part of being smart.  And I know she considers the biggest piece of luck having been married to Daddy.  Daddy is the one who knew how to survive in a world suddenly stripped of modern technology.  Sure, it was theoretical knowledge, knowledge he’d gleaned from a passionate interest in history, but between the two of them they turned theory into practice, and even refined it in places.  And Daddy’s the surer shot when it comes to hunting anything on the move. Mama has said multiple times that we might have survived without him, but we never would have been so comfortable.  Daddy always says we’d have done just fine.

“There’s no stopping your mother, boys,” he’ll say.  “Once she puts her mind to a thing, it gets done.”

Daddy used to work with computers, before the Apocalypse.  People would have problems with their computers, and he’d use his to fix them.  He’s explained it to us a couple of times, but it’s sort of hard to understand. And Daddy says there’s really not much point in trying to understand, because we’re not likely to get computers back on any sort of a widespread scale anytime soon, and even if we did, they’ll be different.

Mama was something called a financial planner, which she says was even more worthless than what Daddy did.  “I made a lot of money helping people prepare for retirement,” she says. “But when the Apocalypse made money obsolete, it became apparent that all I really did was tell stories.”

Mama is good at telling stories, tho’, and she’s a super-good planner, so I’m sure she was good at her job, even if there’s no such thing as “retirement” anymore.

Mama had a passing interest in history, but not like Daddy.  She always liked art and literature and philosophy best, which she says are all very important things to individuals and societies, but not very good for building shelter or putting food in our bellies.  She’s much better with people than Daddy is, tho’. Better at charming them, better at bargaining with them.

Better at killing them, when it needs to be done.

TranscribEditing

I recently realized that, even tho my True Vision for my Winterhaven story is in graphic novel form, it's going to be a long, long time before I have the, er, time, to make that vision a reality.  And thus I made the decision to go ahead and write it out as a (short) novel first, so that at least I'm working on something.  I also figured that this way I can work out all the bugs in the medium I'm most comfortable with (ie the written word) so that by the time I do have time to do the art, I can focus 100% on that.  As such, I've spent the past couple of weeks writing, writing, writing on Winterhaven.

Sometimes when I'm hot on a project, I'll get time to write without having access to a computer.  When that happens I'll write it out longhand, but then of course I'll need to transcribe it.  And when that happens, there's a certain amount of editing that occurs (normally I try not to go back and edit too much, because that way lies never-moving-forward).  I transcribed the very start of Chapter 2 tonight ("From the Flames"), and I actually did a huge amount of re-writing.  It went from 196 words to 551 words, and in my opinion it's a lot stronger (although I'd still place it firmly in "rough draft" status).  Here are the two versions for comparision, if you're curious about that sort of process-y-thing:


TAKE ONE

All of Winterhaven was in mourning.

It had been four days since the giant earth-shaking that killed three of the four pfeni.  Avalyn, the sole survivor of the pfenix house’s destruction, lay in bed, too weak and traumatized to move.  She knew that she was now the spiritual leader of the Haveners, that she must say or do something, anything, to comfort her people, but she did not know what to say, or what to do.  She was only eleven years old.  She was nowhere near to completing her training.  And now there was no one left to train her, just as the world itself was turning against her people.

A tear made its way down her cheek, and she didn’t bother to wipe it away.  Why did Hukka have to go back in after rescuing her?  Now she had no one.

As if sensing her thoughts, Violet let out a wheedling whine and nudged her soft, blue-white head under Avalyn’s arm.

“You don’t know anything about leading, either,” Avalyn said softly, and stroked the fox’s fluffy back.  “But at least you won’t leave me.”  Violet snrked an affirmatibe, then turned to burrow beneath the covers.

TAKE TWO

Avalyn woke to the sound of muffled voices, and a weight on her chest.

For a moment she panicked, thinking she was still in the burning building, and tried to leap to her feet- but a wave of nausea stopped her before she was even halfway up, and she realized that she was laying in her own bed, safe in her own room.  The weight was Violet, who let out an indignant squeal at the sudden shift in her nest, but quickly resettled when it became apparent that there would be no further movement.  Avalyn squeezed her eyes against the light coming in through her window, and tried to slow her racing heart.

One of the voices grew loud enough to make out words.  It sounded like... her mother yelling at someone?

“...only eleven years old, and she’s my daughter!  It can wait!”

Another voice, which sounded masculine, wasn’t loud enough for Avalyn to understand everything, but a few phrases made it through.

“...two days, Elota…  only surviving pfenix… people need…”

“Damn her past lives!”  Elota’s voice, if anything, was now louder.  “I’m worried about this one-”

A third voice interjected sharply- Avalyn suspected her father- and then the voices retreated.  Avalyn felt numb.

Two days.  She’d been asleep two days.  And all of the others had died?  Avalyn probed her fragmented memories- the body broken beneath the beam, she realized now it had been Argen.  The weight of the wood must have killed him immediately, and would have killed Avalyn if she hadn’t been thrown clear of the table by the first large tremor.  The long braid soaking in tea- that was Karsivahl.  She had been next to Argen- close enough to be pinned by the beam, without immediate death.  She had been the one yelling for someone- for Hukka, Avalyn now realized- to “protect her”.  “Her,” being Avalyn.

But Hukka had left her- he must have gone back, tried to rescue Karsivahl, too.  And instead they both died.

The knowledge suddenly blossomed in Avalyn’s mind that she was now the spiritual leader of the Haveners.  It was up to her to say or do something- anything- to comfort her people during this terrible time- that must be what the other voice was demanding, for her to fulfill her role as the pfenix of Winterhaven.  But Avalyn did not know what to say, or what to do.  Her mother was right: she was only eleven years old.  And with three other living pfeni, no one had ever seriously considered that she might one day have to lead alone- and even if she had, she was nowhere near to completing her training.  And now… now there was no one left to train her,  The world itself was turning against her people, and all they had for guidance was an untrained little girl.

A tear made its way down her cheek, and she didn’t bother to wipe it away.  Why had Hukka abandoned her?  Now she had no one.

As if sensing her thoughts, Violet let out a wheedling whine and nudged her pointed nose beneath Avalyn’s arm.

“You don’t know anything about leading, either,” Avalyn said softly, and stroked the fox’s fluffy back.  “But at least you won’t leave me.”  Violet snrked an affirmative, then turned to burrow beneath the covers.

 

Running Away With Story Seeds (/Peas/Beans)

I would like to write a story that combines The Princess and the Pea with Jack and the Beanstalk.  Now, I've done takes on both of those tales before (here and here) but I was sitting around today, failing to make any progress on my nebulous plans for Donkeyskin/Allerleirauh, and so I did what I usually do when I run into difficulties with one story, and turned my thoughts to another.

Specifically I turned my thoughts to The Little Mermaid, because I have an old story seed for that, as well (definitely hinting at more of a continuation than a retelling), which in turn led me down the rabbit hole of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, which in turn led me back around to The Princess and the Pea, and different twists I could put on it, which made me think, "But what if the pea was magic, and that's what she was sensing?" and of course magic peas made me think magic beans, and I thought to myself, "Surely there's something in that combination," especially since I'd just been bitching to Nathan about the lack of representation in American media of intimate, non-sexual friendships among (hetero) men and women.

So now I'm rolling it around in my head to see if anything can, in fact, be found in "that".  I do like the idea of the prince needing a "true princess" in the sense that he needs someone truly attuned to the earth, an earth witch, if you will.  And what if her sleeping above the pea, unconsciously pouring her earth-witch magic into it, caused it to grow up and up and up... say, perhaps, that normally young earth witches, until they are trained to control their magics, never sleep near growing things, to avoid just such predicaments.  Maybe Jack was an earth witch, too...

Anyway, that's how these things grow in my brain.  I'll leave it there for a while, in the compost, and see if anything sprouts from it.

Stumbling Upon a Secret Place

Neeps and I went for a hike this morning, in spite of the rain.  I've always loved hiking in the rain (so long as I have appropriate gear) because you generally get the trail to yourself.  Also let's face it: there's just something magical about the forest soaked in liquid silver.

A gateway to another world, PROBABLY.

I decided to do a short hike- less than 1.5 miles- because now that Neeps is a Master Toddler, I wanted him to do some of the trail under his own power.  So I figured a quick out-and-back, ending with him doing the last 30 yards or so.

Now, I'm not sure what exactly happened, but somehow we ended up Not On the Trail.  I mean, we were on a trail, but not the trail, and moreover the trail that we were on definitely wasn't an official trail.  But it was a trail, so I figured what the heck- might as well see where it led.

Turns out it led to something pretty freaking awesome:

That's right, a damn Fairy Pavilion.

It was a beautiful, magical, secret sort of place, and I was beside myself with delight for having discovered it in the company of my son.  We wandered all around it, noting the fire pit and the decaying rope swing and the places where someone had attempted to shore up the roof, which had rotted through in the center for perfect star-gazing.  It looked like it had been abandoned for years and years, but this being the PNW (where all things bow down to Mistress Creeping Green), it's more likely only been one or two.

Eventually we headed back, and I hauled Neeps down to do some toddling.  He stumped around in the woods for a bit, and then retraced everything he'd done at top speed after a dog passed (he wanted to pet that dog so badly).  I carried him back to where he'd turned around, and then he walked some more.  Finally he was tired enough that he was falling down more than walking, so I carried him the final piece back to the car.

It was a good day.

A Matter of Taste

One of the fun side effects of my little food-allergy-adventure is that I don't have much in the way of a sense of taste anymore.  I can still smell, and I can sort of taste things as I swallow, sort of, but anything that involves the tip or top or sides of my tongue?  Nothing.  Which has led to a sort of interesting exercise in "What's worth eating when you can't taste it?"

As you might imagine, most of it comes down to texture and temperature.  Warmth is still very nice (especially as I have a raspy throat at the moment) so I'm drinking a lot of aromatic tisanes (if you can't taste 'em you may as well smell 'em).  But spicy sort of sucks, because there's none of the flavor, just a very unpleasant burning sensation.  Apples are no good, and much to my chagrin I discovered that my beloved Mighty Bowl is pretty non-appetizing without flavor (apparently I really don't like the texture of rice).  Yogurt is unpleasant, cheese is neutral, scrambled eggs are tolerable, saurkraut is actually pretty good because I can get more of a sense of the taste.  But winter squash is fantastic, because even if I can't fully appreciate the taste, I can fully appreciate the silky, mouth-filling texture.  Crushing things like fresh herbs between my teeth (cilantro and fennel, to name the two I've noticed) seems to work moderately well- I think because a lot of that comes down to scent.

I do hope my sense of taste comes back soon.  I feel like it will be difficult to eat a well-balanced diet without it, because I take four bites of whatever and am done- just enough to shut my stomach up.  I could probably just switch over to nutrient-drinks and call it good, if this keeps up.  Which really sounds like a terribly unpleasant way to live, given how much of our culture, socializing, and bonding is tied up in food and its preparation (especially amongst my nearest and dearest).  Still, I can't wholly regret this episode (going on for about a week now) as it's given me some insight into a different way of life, and that's all any writer could hope for (because when you're a writer, literally anything and everything can count as research).

The Rewrites Begin

I have not, in the past, been a super big fan of rewrites.  Generally by the time I get around to them, I'm already starting to weary of the world I'm playing in.  I remember, back before I'd written my first long-format story (oh alright, novel, although I feel like a fraud saying that) wondering how an author could possibly make such basic mistakes as giving a character's birthday at one point in the series and then contradicting it later.  And then I wrote something longer than a short story, and came to realize that eventually it all just starts to overwhelm you, and you have trouble remembering what's on the page and what's only in your head.  And, moreover, eventually after all the re-reading and re-writing and editing-in-general, you begin to get very, very sick of the story, and just done with the damn thing, already.

Of course, in the past I've had a bad habit of editing-while-I-go, which means that by the time I get around to "re-writing", I've already read the thing more times than I can remember.  And I really shouldn't call it a bad habit, because for some people that works quite well.  For me, apparently, it leads to burning out on stories.

Which is why it's so interesting for me to begin the rewrites on Oathbreaker- I haven't read it over and over again: I just spewed it out onto the screen and moved on.  Occasionally I'd have to review a bit of what I'd written the night before, to remind myself where I was at in the story, but for the most part everything is still pleasantly fresh.  "Oh, I'd forgotten I wrote that!  That was clever."  (or, more often, "Oh shit that totally contradicts something I know I wrote later: better fix it.")

All this to say, I'm about 2500 words in to the re-writes, and am still feeling pretty excited about it.  Which is good, since I still have another 29 days of blogging left in this year's 366 project, and I might be able to utilize the one for the other.  Wheee!

Nothing New Under the Sun

Traffic was particularly heavy this morning (thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to all of us normally-bike-commuters driving our SUVs so as not to be Washed Away by the promised Typhoon Thunder Storms) which meant that I spent a long span sitting still on Main Street, staring out my window as I waited for the lights to cycle through yet again.

The view that caught my eye was one of the (now many) construction projects going on in the Uptown area.  I watched with interest as a dull-orange excavator extended it's shovel and, with surprising delicacy, moved a layer of earth.  The massive machine repeated its movement, apparently at the behest of an individual holding a long pole (measuring depth, perhaps?) and I was taken by the way it both resembled and yet did not at all resemble the anatomy of human limbs.

That's who they should get to pilot mecha, I thought absently.  Construction workers.  Aircraft pilots are good with their fighting machines, of course, but there is nothing human about the way they move.  It wouldn't translate to piloting a giant humanoid.  And then I got very excited thinking about a bunch of blue-collar heroes who are tagged for the new Special Project because they already have the skills needed.  I'll need to talk to some people who have actually driven those things, I thought, and also my four-year-old nephew, who actually knows the names of all 'those things'.

And that's when it hit me- Blue Collar Mecha Pilots has already been done (more or less):  in fact it is my two-year-old nephew Elk's favorite show, and I watched several episodes with him while we were in Alabama.  It's called Rescuebots, and it's pretty good.  I mean sure, the mecha in question are actual sentient aliens, and don't require any piloting from their human partners, but still.  Close enough.

...or not.  I could always turn it into a short story.

NaNo Approacheth

And I have no idea how I'm going to do it this year.

Let me clarify: I know that I cannot traditionally "win" NaNo this year, just like there was no way for me to "win" last year. Last year I had a baby on day four, and abandoned the tradition without a backwards glance.  This year I have had over ten months to come to terms with the fact that writing 1700 words a day is just no realistic for me right now.

But that doesn't mean I can't modify the rules in such a way that I can participate.

Maybe my new goal will be "write every day". Maybe my new goal will be, "rewrite X amount of fairy tales by the end of the month".  Maybe my new goal will be, "edit/add to/completely redo an old NaNo project".  Something.  Anything to keep one toe in the game.

I'll figure it out.

The Oathbreaker (The Second Draft)

 I had an idea for a story.  I started to write it.  Then I started to re-write it.  What follows is from that second pass.  I've since started re-writing it yet again, so you'll see the result of that in a few days (or more).

***

My mother was a wise woman, who taught me many things before she died.  First and foremost, she taught me those skills necessary to the running of a household, including the all-important art of spinning.  It was her favorite chore: not even a chore, to her mind, and after she was gone I spent many hours with the spindle that had once been hers, finding comfort in the familiar twist and drop.  It was these skills that ensured her daughter would grow to be a respectable woman of the village.

But because she was a wise woman, my mother also taught me the names of things.  The plants in the fields and woods, the stars in the sky, the secret emotions that ruled the men and women around us.  "To know the name of a thing, my daughter, is to have some measure of control over it," she would tell me.  "Never have truck with a thing who will not reveal its name, for surely only suffering will follow."

My father was a miller, and knew nothing of the secrets of the natural world, but his own set of skills ensured that we lived better than many of the families in our little corner of the kingdom.  Certainly we always had enough to pay the tax collector, and even have enough left over to let me keep and care for my own tiny flock of goats.  Their names, for I have just told you the important of names, were Hazel, Rowan, and Yew, and I loved them dearly.

Although I prized them more for their companionship than their wool, their wool was in fact quite lovely, and it was their wool that saved us when the mill-stone cracked.  Saved us, and cursed me.

With no millstone, my father was reduced to milling small amounts by hand until a new millstone could be delivered.  Milling by hand was a job anyone could do, however, and so few people felt the need to pay my father to do it.  And my father, while a very good miller, had no other wage-earning skills.  Purchasing our new stone took all of our silver reserves and more; the stone itself could not be delivered before the spring, but we were in danger of starving before that time.

Except.

Except that I went around the village, collecting straw, which people could not eat but my goats could and did.  And I kept them fat, and sang to them, and coaxed them by their names, and all that winter I brushed and brushed their gleaming coats, and the yarn I got from that wool was the finest I'd ever produced.  I sold it, for far more than my father would have earned milling, and we did not starve.

When the new millstone was delivered, my father, so proud and relieved that he could not bear it, made the mistake of taking one drink too many at the tavern.  And he said to a group of his friends, men whose wives had given me straw in our time of need, but not meat, "Yes, indeed, my daughter spun that straw right into gold!"

A stranger down the bar cocked his head at this.  "Excuse me dear man, did I hear you correctly?  Your daughter spun gold... from straw?"

The tavern erupted into laughter.

"That she did!" bellowed my father, those around him cheering in support.  "How else do you suppose a humble miller like myself could afford buy a drink for every one of his friends?"  Said friends cheered even more loudly at this, and the stranger was forgotten in the revelry.

But he did not forget my father.  And he did not forget me.

The Auxillary Livingroom

Wherein I did a lot of longhand writing this evening

Another Day, Another Letter

Have the main character in your novel (or short story) write a letter to you. What would they say? Have them write whatever you want.

"Dear Jenny O,

What the actual hell.  I have been in your brain for what, twenty years now?  And you started the most recent iteration of my story almost a year and a half ago.  Sure, I don't expect you to have finished the entire multi-arced thing by now, but you should at least have a rough draft of the first book!

Maybe you should just scrap what you've got, and start over.  Just rewrite everything, but without looking at your notes.  Then maybe you wouldn't feel so paralyzed about 'making it all work'.  And once you have that rough draft, you can compare it to the unfinished one, and bring in any elements you've forgotten about.

Just... let's not take another twenty years, okay?  I want to know how my story unfolds.

With affection and annoyance and anticipation,

Gwen."

Thoughts in Passing

I had my first moment of, "Oh gods it's going by too fast!" today.

I was browsing the internet for photo references on one of my current projects, and I came across an image that made my heart squeeze- it was a picture of a woman with a sleeping newborn on her chest.  And I was suddenly overcome by the memory of Neeps's newborn weight on me, the perfect floppy surrender of his slumbering limbs- and I missed it.  He's all of three months old, and already I miss a stage in his life: nowadays whenever I try to get him to sleep on my chest, he's all sturdy thrashing about, taking up almost the entirety of my torso while he's at it.  He's solid, now, in a way he just wasn't, in the beginning. He is an infant, not a newborn.

Stars preserve me.

In totally unrelated news, Nathan has rolled his eyes several times when I announced that Neeps had violet eyes- but today I made him come in and actually look, and he was forced to agree with me that yes, our son appeared to have straight-up purple eyes in that moment (as opposed to this morning, when they appeared blue-green).  Which made me think about what a funny little bit it would be in a book, to have a boy have purple eyes when that's the sort of thing that magical girls are expected to have.

(And Liz Taylor, obviously.)

And then I said he has wizard eyes, because we gave him a wizard name.  This may or may not have caused additional eye-rolling.

Background Noise

So after I wrote that little snippet the other day, I realized that the Empire is not, in fact, ruled by an Emperor: it's ruled by an Empress.  And today I sketched out a few background details that play into why there are constant wars going on, and why Certain Potential-Heir-Like People are Extra Interested in Ketsia.

This is very rough, but I like where it's going:

***

The Barsinian Empire dates back about 350 years, and is comprised of the core kingdoms of Barsin, Eria, and Kihronia- but the Holy Barsinian Empire is only about sixty years old, and emerged when the current Empress, Eurissa, began to rapidly expand the Empire’s borders after coming to power in her early twenties.  There are currently about twenty kingdoms on two continents that are part of the Empire, and there are at least three wars on various fronts to add more.

Eurissa was born from the previous Emperor’s fourth wife, and claims she is the Goddess Incarnate (the second person in history to make that claim, the first being the progenitor of her bloodline on both sides), and as such is pledged to remain a virgin, with the whole world as her children.  More pragmatically, she killed all her father’s offspring from any woman not her own mother.  These siblings were allowed to live with the expectation that one of them would breed an heir for her.

The state religion of the Holy Barsinian Empire is monotheistic, following a mother goddess called Mahle, whose symbol is a green bear, and who speaks only to children.  As such, all the oracles are pre-menstrual girls, and boys whose voices have not changed.  The priests and priestesses are men and women who have spent years studying how to interpret the oracles’ visions, and generally come from the noble families of Barsin.  After Eurissa assumed leadership of the church, she decreed that males could be kept holy via pre-pubescent castration, which has created a new class of priest.  She herself does not and never has menstruated, which is part of her claim to divinity.

Although Eurissa remains both mentally and physically sound, her advancing age (she’s now in her mid 80s) is increasing the court’s desperation for her to choose an heir.  She prefers to keep her various nieces and nephews at one another’s throats, demanding greater and greater feats of martial prowess to impress her.  Her goal is to bring literally the entire world under her emerald bear pennant, preferably in her lifetime, so that all can enjoy the protection of Mahle.  Conversion is required to become a full citizen of the Empire, but a ruler may convert on behalf of their people.  Eurissa herself isn’t overly concerned about the common people following Barsinian protocol to worship Mahle- She is the Goddess whether they truly believe or not- but some of her governor-priests can be a little more zealous.  What Eurissa does concern herself with are taxes and warm bodies to fuel her armies, and great minds to develop more and better war machines.

AB Scene Take One

I don't follow many podcasts.  In fact, I don't really even "follow" the one that I do listen to; I just put it on during those rare occasions that I'm doing something that doesn't require any sort of verbal concentration on my part- that is to say, generally when I'm doing something crafty, like embroidery.

Of course, the irony is that the one and only podcast that I listen to (and only while crafting) is all about writing, and it includes writing assignments, and sometimes they are so damned intriguing that I have to stop crafting, and go write.  Like I said, ironic- but not unwelcome.  After all, it's far more likely that I'll someday make money from my word-smithing than my laborious-ornament-assembling.

The assignment that got me derailed today was something called an "AB Scene", and the jist of it is that you're provided dialogue, and you write a scene around it.  And then you write an entirely different scene around the exact same dialogue.  Here's the dialogue they provided, and here's the first scene I wrote:

***

People have all sorts of theories about the magic of twins: some of it correct, but much of it wrong.  One of the most prevalent myths is that twins always know what the other is thinking.  That one, in Jack Branch’s experience, had no founding in reality whatsoever.

His sister Jill was staring with such ferocity at the map of their father’s estate that sweat was beginning to bead on her forehead.  There was a time, before they’d been sent to foster in separate estates, that Jack might have guessed if she was angry, or merely concentrating.  But that was eight years ago, and his sister had gone from a girl to a woman, and while Jack had learned many secrets of the natural world during his time with the Graylins, the ways of women were not among them.

“Jill,” he hesitated in her doorway, reluctant to invade her private domain.  It made his stomach twist to think on it- as little children they’d shared everything, even a bed.  But now?  Now she spent her evenings in a room stripped bare of any decoration but the Godstar on the wall, and a shelf containing a few meticulously clean magical tools.  Her work-table was large, but eerily spotless.  Jack’s own room was scorched, scratched, and stained: very evidently the site of many a failed experiment.  But Jill’s space might have been a corner of the royal hospital.  An unused corner.

“Are you alright?”

Jill blinked, shook her head, and refocused her eyes on him.  Her expression had gone carefully blank.  “I'm fine,” she said, smoothing the crisp linen parchment with both hands.  Her fingers shook as they passed over the snaking river in the southernmost part of the estate.  Jack realized, then, what she’d been trying to do:

“Let me help,” he tried to keep his voice casual, as though she’d be doing him a favor rather than the reverse.  Jill scowled.

“No. I have to learn to do this.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to blink.  He hadn’t expected her to admit so freely that she was having difficulties with a simple dowsing spell.  She’d been so prim and reserved ever since they’d returned home a month ago; he had gone immediately to embrace her, but she’d been stiff, and given no indication that she wished to resume their former closeness.

“Alright,” Jack said, trying to keep his voice casual.  He sauntered in, careful not to get too close.  Jill’s body turned subtly, keeping her shoulders squared to his.  When had she become so wary?  Everything about her vibrated like a too-tight bowstring.

“So.”  Her voice was anything but casual: it held challenge, humiliation, and a plea all wrapped up in a single, brittle syllable.  Jack longed to grab her hand as he’d once done, but he settled for tapping the middle of the map.  Tiny pinpricks of cerulean began to blossom on the ivory surface, spreading like blood in snow until they represented the size and shape of every hidden well within a five-mile radius.  Jill’s face flamed, but she said nothing further.

Jack rubbed his tingling fingers together and avoided his twin’s eyes.  “So. What if you didn't have to learn to do... that.”

Jill’s head snapped up, her nostrils flaring.  “What?”

Jack shrugged.  This was a problem he could solve.  “What would you give to have it flow through you as easily as it does me?  Without meditation, without purification rituals, without perfect silence?”

“Anything.”  Jill’s laugh was bitter, hopeless.  Without strong magic of her own, she’d be forever dependent upon Jack, tied to the estate.  The people would not respect her as they should, and she’d never find a good husband.

“Is that hyperbole, or would you really give... anything?”

Jill glared at him.  “If the Silent One sat down with us and offered to trade effortless spellcraft for my soul, I'd do it. I'd throw yours in with the bargain.”

“Good,” Jack laughed and tapped the map again.  The blue marks raced towards his fingertips, and he gathered them up into a shimmering gem the size of a robin’s egg.  Jill’s breath caught as he proffered it.    “Except he's already got mine.”

Jill almost dropped the bauble.  “How…” she breathed, holding it up to the late afternoon sun beams that streamed in through the diamond-paned window beside them.  The light danced in the gems’ depths, as though it was being filtered through leagues of water.  This was not land-magic; this was something far less common, and far more dangerous.  This was conjuring.

***

I found it quite frustrating to try and work with dialogue that wasn't written as I would write it- in fact I tweaked it in a few places to make it better suit the sort of world I'd decided to set things in.  And of course the whole endeavor sent my brain spinning off in new world-building directions.  Which, I suppose, is part of the point.

Immortal Mind

Nathan came up with a clever little story seed the other night; I'm letting it percolate itself an actual plot, but in the meantime, I started playing...

***

All in all, it is better not to attract the attention of gods.

Gods like to be entertained- they can have very different standards of entertainment than we do- and when they feel they have been entertained enough, they like to reward the mortal who provided it.

Of course, they also can have very different standards of “reward”.  Standards that are tied up in their desire for more entertainment.

Acacius had not meant to attract the attention of the gods, but when he did, and when the god in question refused to accept his demuring of reward, insisting that immortality would be an excellent reward, Acacius had the presence of mind to interject that he did rather hope eternal youth would be part of said reward.  The god chuckled knowingly, said, “Too clever by half!”, and disappeared in the same shrieking gust of wind he’d arrived in.

Acacius did not age beyond that moment, suspended forever at the somewhat advanced age of thirty-seven.  Of course, as the centuries passed, his relative agedness became less and less, until at last he was considered “young”- not even in the prime of life yet!

This might have amused Acacius, could he remember those early days.

The Return of LittleWing

Look, it's been entirely too much Real Life around here lately, and not nearly enough Fiction.  So I aim to remedy that, by revisiting a story seed from a couple years back.  I've been poking and prodding at it, trying to draw a plot out from the concept, and in the meantime I wrote about the Aftermath to that other scene- and this time around I actually gave out some names!

***

At last LittleWing was sated.  She let out a final triumphant shriek as she wheeled above the smoking ruins of the village, then came at last to settle on the charred remains of the temple.  Ketsia could not help but notice that her heartbeast's orange-edged scales blended perfectly with the glowing embers.  The dragon gave one satisfied glance around at the wreckage, then curled herself into a ball and closed her golden eyes.

There was no one left to scream.

Grandmother Ona worked silently on Eolyn’s wounds, face white and strained, but jaw set in a way that Ketsia recognized.  If the old woman had been born with a heartbeast, Ketsia thought numbly, it would have been a creature made of stone.  Eolyn herself had long since fainted, from pain or shock or both, and part of Ketsia envied her sister the escape.

Ketsia looked down at her hands, streaked with soot and covered in burn marks from the tiny sparks that continued to dance in the air like sadistic fairies.  Her hands were so... small, compared to LittleWing’s talons.  So powerless.  She looked back up at her dragon, who had draped her spiked tail across her long snout in her sleep, much as Grandmother Ona’s cats did.

Does she do that because I watched the cats all those years, or does she just… do that?  Ketsia was no longer sure how much LittleWing was an extension of her Self, and how much LittleWing was simply her own creature.  Would she return now, if Ketsia tried to call her?  She was afraid to try.

Instead Ketsia  turned her eyes to the devastation that spread out from her dragon, trying to feel remorse- but she couldn’t.  She was glad they were dead.  She only wished she could bring them back to life so they could die again.

The corner of her lip began to twitch up into a smile, and LittleWing let out a noise like a purr.

Ketsia’s head snapped back as Grandmother Ona grabbed her by the arm and jerked her around to face her.

“You,” the old woman hissed, and slapped her across the face with more force than Ketsia had ever had applied to her person.  “Don’t you dare take joy in this.  Don’t you dare!  Don’t you give that dragon any more evil to feed on!”

“Evil?” Ketsia cried, too stunned to do more than hold her burning face in shock.  LittleWing’s head came up in confusion.  “They were the evil ones!  They-”

“They?  Which they?”  Spat Grandmother Ona.  “Them men that did this to Eolyn, I won’t deny that maybe they had evil in ‘em.  But the others?”

Ketsia’s anger flared, and LittleWing snarled from her smoldering nest.  “Well they should have protected her!  Da always said evil flourishes when men stand aside and do nothing-”

“Even the children?  The babies?”  Grandmother Ona grabbed Ketsia by the arms and shook her.  “Them that couldn’t even roll over to run away?  And what about the animals, eh?  All those cats and geese and horses.  What did they do to Eolyn?”

This brought Ketsia to a halt, the seething lump of rage in her chest turning suddenly to ice.  “I… the… the babies…” she felt sick as she remembered little Aylin’s bright blue eyes and laughing, gummy grin.  “I… I…”

Grandmother Ona’s gray eyes were cold as the winter sky.  “Is this the part where you tell me that they’d have grown up to be just as evil, that you had to destroy them before they had the chance?  Is that what you believe, child?”

For a moment- one dark, horrible moment, something deep inside Ketsia nodded, whispering, It’s only logical... and LittleWing began to unfurl, hissing.  But then-

“No!” she said, tearing herself away from her grandmother.  “No, I… I never meant to hurt the babies!  Or the animals!  Or, or...  I didn’t…  I didn’t mean...”  Ketsia’s chest felt ripped open with grief, and the pain of it caused her to stumble.  “I am evil, I am,” she started sobbing, clutching helplessly at her own arms.  More than anything she wanted to turn to her grandmother for comfort, as she always had before.  But she knew she didn’t deserve comfort, didn’t deserve anything but to die like Aylin had died: helpless, suffering.  LittleWing let out a long, heart-rending shriek of anguish, and in that moment Ketsia thought the only answer was for her to let the dragon consume her, and end both of their agony...

But then Grandmother Ona was kneeling next to Ketsia, strong hands gathering her close and pressing Ketsia tightly to her breast.  “No, child.  No,” she  murmured, stroking Ketsia’s hair and rocking back and forth.  “You’re not evil.  You… you’ve helped an evil thing to happen, it’s true, but maybe that’s as much my fault as yours.  When I knew what you were… when I knew how powerful your heartbeast was… I should have sent you away, long ago.  It was selfishness that made me keep you close, and we’re all paying for that selfishness now.  All of us."  Ketsia felt her grandmother glance at Eolyn.

Black and White and Blue All Over

Today I walked on what can only be described as a fairy tale beach.

now imagine a silvery selkie dancing in the surf

Dragon Scale Gold

We went and got pedicures today... so nice.  All climbers should get pedicures, for real.  You don't have to get color (although how could anyone resist such sparkle?!) but you should definitely let them pamper your much-abused feet.

Behold the calluses left by my climbing shoes! (I need new climbing shoes!)

We renamed the color I chose, because it was something more boring than "Dragon Scale Gold", and it got me to thinking about dragons and nesting on gold hordes and how wouldn't it be interesting if dragons weren't born with scales but had to go out and get them like a hermit crab does his shell?  And they nest in gold because it's the softest metal, so their babies get a sort of "down" before they begin adding stronger scales of iron or steel... yup, it could totally be an element of a short story.

Emotions Bled

words words words

Autumn at Last! (and Vampires, Apparently)

And a very happy Autumnal Equinox to you, Gentle Readers.

I love autumn.  Love it.  It's my very favorite time of year, if for no other reason than it just feels comfortable to me.  Plus, as the (spiritually) native PNWer that I am, by the end of summer I'm all,

"Yeah, okay, beautiful weather, butwhereismyrain?!"

and not just because I love grey.  See, I love summer and all the lovely outdoor things that come along with it, but when I'm busy doing lovely outdoor things that means I'm not busy writing, lovely things or otherwise.  Autumn and winter are a writer's natural habitat, which I suppose is why Wisconsin turns out so many winners (artists too, for that matter).  It also happens to be Tattoo Season, but more on that in a later post...

This is what a writer's keyboard looks like.  It horrifies Nathan and frightens people who never learned touch-typing.

Aaaaanyway, today I sat down and cracked open my The Consequence of Treachery Best files, and damned if I wasn't pleased with what I found.  So I spent several contented hours noodling around on that, and giving some thought to what this year's NaNo project will be.  I have three well-germinated story-seeds that I can choose from for sprouting (oh, wait- just remembered a fourth!), but I'm really not sure which way I want to go.  Here, I'll lay them out for you, and you tell me what you think:

By Blood- sort of a vampire/faerie YA thing, but really a story about what it means to be a mixed race.  No romance, but an emphasis on familial bonds.  And revenge.

LFLF (placeholder title)- vampires again, and romance.  It started out as a sarcastic thing between Nathan and myself, and turned into an actually intriguing concept involving a male vampire who's managed to mature past the Brooding stage, and his constantly-reincarnated (but not always as a female) soul mate. 

Bloodborn- holy shit, do I think about anything other than vampires? (Apparently not...) This one is more about the toppling of empires, and it turns the vampire trope on its head a bit by making the vampires the oppressed class, upon which the powerful humans feed in order to gain super powers.  There might be a romance in this one, but if I go that direction it won't be a driving force.

The Pfenix of Winterhaven- no vampires!  Hah!  The story of a young girl who is one of the reincarnated Spiritual Leaders of her people.  She must journey into the ice-locked Outside to find salvation for them all.  No romance (because the protagonist is, like, eleven).  Of course, I very specifically see this one as a graphic novel, so probably it won't get tapped for NaNo...  ::sigh::

So what do you think, Gentle Readers?  What would you rather read first: a half-breed female vampire vengeance story; a post-broody male vampire reincarnated love story; or female uber-vampire revolution story?  VAMPIRES!