Little Chicken

    If you ever intend to come to the Daemonayre, there are three rules you have to keep in mind.

One: Always do as you’re told.

Two: If someone gives you an order, at least try to rebel before you carry out their instructions. It helps discourage them from bossing you around in the future.

Three: Don’t bother trying to rule. The rest of us won’t let you.

There is no order to the Daemonayre, no ruler, no true hierarchy. The Daemonayre is balanced. If another daemon has a size advantage on me, then I could best him with speed, strength, or some other way. If I tried to bully another daemon, I would gain a good thrashing for my efforts. But at least you can be promised obedience if you give an order or make a demand of one of the others in the ayre. Just be prepared to be punished for it later. Revenge is a constant here. That’s why a lot of us just go about existence doing nothing. Stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.

The ayre has been called by many names: the Underworld, the Other Realm, and Demonhome, to name a few. There are some accounts of the realm that claim there is no substance to the place itself or its denizens. That is a lie. The ayre exists as we would have it exist. Around each daemon is a sort of bubble, personal space if you will, that conforms to the tastes of the daemon. Things can get interesting when bubbles overlap. Of course, my own personal bubble is the best place in the whole of the Daemonayre.

A loud stream bubbles its way through a forest of birches. The ground is covered with red moss and fallen leaves. Not a single one remains on the trees. The ground is the sea of color: sienna, bronze, gold, orange-red. The occasional beam of sunlight filters through the bare branches, illuminating the leaves until they sparkle like precious gems. The waters of the stream reflect the light, sending wavering rivers onto the bark of the trees, bark that shimmers brighter than polished jewelry. Color bends, blends, and flows into itself on the tree trunks, metallic and without pattern. There is peace in my bubble, my bit of the Daemonayre, and there is noise and life that waits to live again.

There is little sense of time in my realm or in any realm. Even so, I could pinpoint the exact moment that light became solid, fell subject to gravity, and dropped a shining star on top of my head. I searched for it for a time interminable, but eventually I decided the fallen star had reverted to non-matter or been incorporated into the being of my bubble, into the flow of the Daemonayre as a whole. Still, the entire event was like nothing I’d ever heard of. I decided to tell another of the daemons about the star.

I was fortunate enough to come across Pensas first. Our bubbles melded into a tree-covered mountainside, autumn leaves on the ground and spring leaves on the trees. His horned form greeted me with crooked grin. “And to what do I owe this pleasure, Pocayam?”

“A star fell from the sky and hit my head. I fear the Daemonayre is coming apart.” To be honest, I don’t know exactly when I decided that the falling star meant that the whole of the ayre was collapsing, but what other conclusion could be made? Nothing like this had ever happened before.

Pensas didn’t need any convincing. He agreed with me at that moment that this was a situation that required immediate attention. Surely another daemon somewhere had heard of or experienced the same thing, or at least knew how to keep the ayre from collapsing around us. Bubbles combined, we searched.

When Bahati’s personal space sank into ours, the mountainside, with all its trees and leaves, sweltered. Sweat broke out all over me, and I could see it glistening on Pensas, as well. Droplets fell from his horns. Bahati was more than at home in the heat, but he tiptoed onto the blanket of damp leaves as we approached one another. What was most comfortable for one of us was foreign to another. There was so much wondrous variety in the ayre, you couldn’t see it all in a hundred years. Even knowing that there was so much to experience, even with the curiosity of what else there was out there, I rarely left the comfort of my bubble. Everyone else’s was just too strange.

“What is the meaning of this intrusion,” Bahati demanded. Several pairs of glittering eyes inspected Pensas and me, moving back and forth like a beetle scurrying between troves of food, trying to decide which to devour first. Bahati was a little terrifying, to be honest, all scales and dry skin, spikes and long pink tongue. He was rumored to be full of poison.

“The Daemonayre is collapsing,” Pensas burst. I immediately followed by telling Bahati about the star slamming into my head. All his eyes went wide, and he led the way to tell another daemon.

Solvihani’s presence changed the sky of our collective bubble to black. Clouds roiled and churned upon themselves, painting the air above us in a thousand shades of pitch, each different from the last, each the same as the next. Tail flicking, Solvihani sniffed at us, taking in our scents of sweat and fear. She said nothing, her expression speaking the question.

“We must find someone to help,” Bahati began.

Pensas interrupted with, “The Daemonayre is collapsing!”

I explained about the inexplicably descended star and its abrupt impact with my scalp. Solvihani’s tail whipped around and caught me and my companions up into a bundle. We were pulled forward toward her gaping maw. Foul breath washed over me. “I always feared the ayre would one day fall into itself. I would see how you intend to stop it.”

I didn’t want to have anything to do with the next daemon we came upon, but I was no longer the only one to have a say. The others pulled and pushed me forward until our space changed again. Xabburtska had such a strong personality that she completely overtook the combined personal space of myself, Pensas, Bahati, and Solvihani. Bare images of my gurgling stream, leafy trees, and the mountainside were all that remained of my perfect bubble. I was still scorched by the heat spilling from the cloudy black sky, but now the blackness overtook everything. Xabburtska existed in nothingness, or near enough to make others believe she did. An invisible source of light illuminated us all, as if we were spotlight on a dim stage, but there were no pools of light around our feet. I could see the others, shining as if at noon, but everything else was clad in midnight. A fiery glare took in each of us in turn, those flaming eyes the only bit of her we could make out.

Wanting to get this over with, I let the words tumble out of me so I could finish and get out of her presence as soon as daemonically possible. She would most likely dismiss us all as fools. I wouldn’t have minded the label of fool at this point.

“I know one who must hear of this,” her voice snarled quietly from within the darkness. “Follow.” It was s direct order, a command with no hint of “please” or “if you will”. It was imperative and addressed to us all. The others and I were compelled to trail after her, taking steps in bleak surroundings that consumed us all. I couldn’t even feel ground passing by under my feet. I walked, and it seemed I covered no ground at all.

We scarcely moved, trailing behind Xabburtska as she led us to someone or something unknown. I’ve traipsed all over the Daemonayre, but I got the sense of being somehow out of place, as if we’d crossed a border of time and being-ness. My other companions plainly shared my unease. But deep within, in the very essence of my self, I knew I was still within my home. I could change my bubble at will if I were not overwhelmed by my proximity to Xabburtska. Most unnerving was my inability to hear my stream, to hear life. The nothing chewed at me, and I longed for me-ness again. Let this terrifying question find its answer, let me return to solitude and my forest. I regretted making a fuss of this falling star to Pensas now. Why had I not just left it all alone? Why hadn’t I forgotten everything when I couldn’t find the star?

Our journey came to an end so abrupt that I slammed into the back of Solvihani. Our bubble had transformed once again, even Xabburtska’s contribution paling in the presence of whomever she’d brought us to. Flames leapt up from all around, consuming the shaded remains of the trees, turning my washed-out stream to steam, melting the rock of the mountain. Tongues of fire licked the roiling clouds, burning them away. Sulfur assaulted my nostrils, making me gag. Somewhere in this, I knew another frighteningly powerful daemon resided. In this presence, it was all too easy to forget that in some way, I had an advantage over it. Somewhere in me, I had the power to at least match whoever invaded my forest. But I felt like little more than prey, a barnyard fowl meant to be kept alive and used at best, slaughtered at worst.

From deep within the darkness, I could hear low, raspy breathing. Breathing? Daemons do not breathe. Air is not part of the being-ness of the ayre. Even if we were to move to the Mortalayre, breathing would be optional only. Why did this newcomer choose to breathe here?

A pinpoint of light blossomed in front of my eyes. It grew slowly, and in it I recognized the exact star that had fallen upon me, sparkled through my vision, and disappeared through my bubble.

The voice of the star invaded my head as if injected by a needle. There were no words; a creature of this power needed no words. This was not a daemon. The creature that lived within this star, born of this star, would be master of the Daemonayre, whether he had my support or not. It was the natural order of things to follow this creature. He sent an image of a more wondrous world than the Daemonayre, even more lush and living than the Mortalayre. He’d come from the Divinayre, and been cast out, sent to where his reach could not extend back to his origins. But he would return and take over again. But first, the Mortalayre. The creatures that lived in the Mortalayre had a power unlike anything in the Daemonayre or the Divinayre, and by tapping into that power, he could ascend. And he would take us with him.

I felt the tensile border of my bubble snap and whoosh out around me. I knew the others’ personal space had been invaded and shattered by this newcomer, our new king, the rightful conqueror and ruler of the Daemonayre and those who lived within. I would gladly help him overtake the Mortalayre and take a place beside him as conqueror of the Divinayre. I knelt and awaited my king to name himself. The others knelt in worship beside me, but Xabburtska stood, receiving an approving pat from the new king.

I would call my king by many names as unticking time moved on. The immortal one approved of all names I thought of for him. All and none were his. But it was one that I first devised that would stay with him, one that I chose that earned me a special place beneath his right hand.

The Fallen Star. Lucifer.

Writing What You Don't Know Yet

It happens to all of us: we get to a point in a story where we don't know what comes next. A new character comes in, and you have no idea what her name is or what she looks like. Or your epic fantasy hero finally reaches the city he's been trying to get to, but you can't descibe the palace yet because it's not clear in your head. Or your ancient scribe is ready to go off on a dissertation about some subject, but you haven't researched that subject yet to write that dissertation monologue. Or your prince is being crowned king, and he's inheriting a list of titles but you don't know the titles. There are all kinds of little details that can hang you up while you're writing, and it'll take an hour of thinking, or two hours of research, or longer to get past that hiccup.

I hate it when that happens.

This is my way of handling when I come across one of those snags.

In writing the first book of The Blood of Princes trilogy (I'm still working on the trilogy, by the way, so don't go looking for it yet) the High Prince did indeed get crowned King. During the oppulent ceremony, he was announced to the kingdom with a list of titles. Those royals do love their titles, and he needed some doozies. But I'm not a royal. I had a little bit of a problem.

I had no idea what titles he'd gained. It had never been part of my world-building. By the time I got to that part, I was on a roll with the writing. I was in the middle of NaNoWriMo (yet again, yes- this was NaNo 2012) and that kind of snag can really get in the way when you're trying to hit that word count. But I wasn't about to let that snag get me. So what did I do? I wrote as much of the announcement as I could, and when it came time for the titles to be listed, I wrote this:

[TITLES].

That's all. Hours of delay solved in one word and a couple brackets. New character that I can't think of a name for? No problem. You'll see a bunch of [NAME- male 1] and [NAME 1]. Why the 1? Because if I have another character without a name, it'll be easier to tell which one needs to fill that bracket when the time comes.

Some other ones I have used in the past include [MAKE UP SOME FAMILY HISTORY], [DESCRIPTION], and [YOU SERIOUSLY STILL HAVEN'T NAMED THIS GUY YET?].

Hey, sometimes you just have to yell at yourself.

Yes, I tend to leave them in all caps. There's a reason. It helps set it apart from the prose around it. It draws attention. There have been times when, in reviewing what I already wrote, my eye will be drawn to those caps, and BOOM! the answer pops in my head. Or maybe I'll be in the mood to pop in that city or palace description or whatever. But normally, once a bracket is on the page, I let it go. Sure, sometimes later I'll be in the shower and that new character's name will come to me. Then, it's easy to do a find, set it to match case, and boom, I can change [NAME] into Brody, or whatever the character's name is. I usually don't do a replace all. To prevent typos, I'll go and change them all myself so I can be sure I'm changing the right ones.

I finished the first draft of the first Blood of Princes book, and it's pretty much ready to go to beta readers for its first edit. Except there are brackets. Don't want the readers seeing those. So when I get my editing cap on, what do I do?

That's right: find [. And one by one, I tackle the brackets when I'm not trying to just get words on the page. When I have the time to sit and think about the content of the bracket, there it is. I don't use brackets for anything else in my writing, so I know that what I find are edits I couldn't make on the fly.

Once the processor can't find anymore brackets, I know I'm done.

Have another method for this sort of thing? I'd love to hear it.

Aureus Manu

She stole the magic because fire dancing had lost all its draw. It simply wasn’t bringing in enough food to make it worth doing anymore. The food trade was falling off, the result of the drought everyone blamed on the creatures outside the walls. Everything was blamed on them, despite the fact that none had been seen in the streets since the walls had been raised another ten feet. The belief of their guilt bothered her. How could they be affecting the crops when all the farmland was out of their reach? Could the fauns control the weather? It wasn’t likely, but it did feel good to have something to point at and blame.

Renelle marveled at how being familiar with fire, knowing how to manipulate it, made stealing simple. It might have been because her victim didn’t care much about his possessions when his bedroom was ablaze and smoke threatened to choke the life from him. It wasn’t easy, though, keeping the dancing flames from tickling her skin, burning patches of her body when she didn’t want it to. There was a fine balance between controlled and wild fire that was difficult to maintain. Five minutes after she’d started the blaze under the wizard’s home, she had located and stolen the spell. Ten minutes after the onset of her arson, the flames had been whipped out of control by the wind, fed until every timber of the place was crackling, perfect fuel thanks to the drought. Thirty minutes after it all began, both house and Renelle were long gone.

Having at least a rudimentary understanding of magic made casting the spell easy. The spell was encased in a clay orb, the instructions printed neatly on the side in bright yellow ink. She read them four times before cracking the clay and letting the fluid inside spill over her left hand, careful to keep any of the liquid from splashing onto her clothes or legs as she knelt on the ground of her hideaway.

The change took place at once. Where the liquid touched her skin, it began to bubble. Clearing her throat, she intoned the words the instructions had spelled out, keeping her eyes on her tingling hand. She tilted her arm upward and her wrist down so the excess fluid could trickle to the ground. The last few words of the incantation left her lips, and the moisture that remained sank into her skin, leaving it clammy and jaundiced. It left her hand cold, the blood warm in her forearm turning to ice once it crossed the visible change in her skin tone at her wrist. She decided she would get used to it in time.

She scoured the little hideaway with her eyes, looking for something to test her hand on. All she could find was the clay orb, now useless, that sat empty in front of her. Trembling, she prodded it with the tip of a finger. Instantly, the sphere shuddered and turned bright burnished yellow. She lifted it with her other hand, testing its weight. It was solid. Solid gold. She tossed it aside. It had been worth more when it was made of clay. But she’d confirmed the spell worked, and that was step one. Step two was gathering the courage to go to the gate and leave the safety of the city walls. She would face the fauns.

There was nothing left for her in the city. In truth, there was nothing left for anyone; most people just hadn’t admitted it to themselves yet. The drought had sentenced them all to a slow, hungry death. All the walls ensured was that the inhabitants could starve in safety. The only thing left worth trading was food, and people had become reluctant to give it up for anything else. Entertainment like fire dancing or light juggling were no longer in demand. The performers were going to starve first.

Renelle lingered at the gates for a few days, watching as people grew desperate enough to chance the outside, chance facing the fauns that roamed free in hope of finding something else beyond their territory. On occasion, someone venturing out carried a golden chain or some other trinket of metal to tempt the creatures away. There were two things fauns relished eating. One was gold. The other was human flesh. It was a toss-up as to which one they preferred over the other.

She wiggled the fingers of her magicked left hand and wished she had some idea of what things were like on the other side of the wall. There was no way to climb to the top— none that was available to her, anyway— so she wasn’t able to see anything that happened after the gates closed behind an escapee. She realized she was stalling and stepped toward the gate. The gatekeeper’s eyes traveled to her, and he arched an interrogative eyebrow. Suppressing her fear, she nodded. With a shrug, the gatekeeper pulled a lever, and the gate swung open. Twenty steps later, she was past the gate, beyond the wall, and outside the city for the first time in her life. There was no time to reconsider her actions; the gate crashed shut once she was clear.

The world outside the walls was lightly forested; Renelle had never seen so many trees in her life. The fire in her that she’d spent her life cultivating called to the wood, desiring no more than to set it ablaze, to watch it burn to ash like the wizard’s house. It took willpower to tamp that desire down; she might need some of these trees soon.

Renelle realized she hadn’t thought much beyond passing through the gate. Where did she go from here? Was there even anything in the outside world worth seeing, worth risking her life for? There had to be; the world couldn’t be limited to what sad existence there was encased in those high walls. She chose a direction and began walking, her ears straining for sign of the fauns. Picking her way between the trees, she held her magicked hand further away from her body than was normal or comfortable. She wasn’t sure if its new properties would work on the rest of her, but she didn’t want to risk turning herself into a golden statue to answer that question. Would becoming gold kill her, or would she retain her sensibilities? Could she still move? She never intended to find out; being a life-size golden Renelle was not how she wanted to live out her days, mobile or immobile. It would probably hurt anyway.

More time passed, and the walls of the city disappeared behind her. Still, she saw no sign of the hunters that ruled this untamed, unwalled wilderness. Her stomach growled. Something in the trees snapped, making her stomach quieten, and she turned toward the other sound.

A faun stood a handful of paces away. If the light had been different, if she had been ignorant of the nature of this creature, she might have been able to call it cute. Pointed ears tipped with tufts of hair stood up from a human-like head. A pair of stumpy horns topped the head as well, poking out from a short cap of curly chestnut hair. Its chest was hairless, lean muscles visible under the skin. More chestnut hair began at the waist, thickening to a dense coat that covered the goats’ legs the creature stood on. But Renelle did know the nature of this unassuming predator, and she noticed the sharp points of its feet, the fingernails so much longer than they should be that they could be described as claws. Its big blue eyes were bloodshot and void of emotion. Small spots on its face and chest that could have been mistaken for freckles were actually dried drops of blood, maybe the remains of its last meal. The faun shifted its weight, eying her without expression. It didn’t lick its lips, but she could feel it wanted to as it inspected her from a short distance away.

Renelle’s heart thundered in her chest. Not wanting to take her eyes from the beast but knowing she had to, she scanned the ground for something she could use. The ground was surprisingly clear of debris; only grass and dirt were beneath her feet. She wished she and the faun had been in opposite places; there was a perfect stone the size of an apple a few inches from the faun’s foot. As it was, all that was nearby was a tree, but no branches were within easy reach.

Swallowing her terror, she backed up a step. The faun matched her movement, keeping the distance between itself and her constant. She backed again, but the faun followed, innocent bloodshot eyes locked on hers. Step after step, she attempted to back away, to find a tree to slip behind, cutting off the eye contact so she could sprint off in another direction, but the opportunity never came. She realized then that the faun’s stride was longer than hers; with every step she took back, the beast took a larger step forward, gradually shortening the gap between them.

Her foot came down on a stone, but she stopped her ankle from turning, catching herself on a tree. Now there’s a stone nearby. She reached down to grope blindly for the stone, never taking her eyes from the faun’s face. The faun broke contact first, eyes darting to her left. Her heart skipped a beat. Another faun?

She glanced aside. The tree beside her had turned to solid gold. She’d caught herself with her magicked hand. She glanced from the tree to the entranced faun. Her throat was dry, her voice croaking when she first tried to speak. She willed her mouth to produce some saliva, swallowed, and tried again. “You like this, don’t you?” The beast’s eyes flew back to her as she tossed the stone from her right hand to her left. It was a solid gold chunk a second later, an uncomfortable weight in her hand. “Here…” She lobbed the nugget toward her predator, who didn’t even attempt to catch it. Her heart skipped a few beats then began pounding in her throat.

It took the bait. A snuffling sound reached her ears as the faun squatted and took the nugget in a gnarled hand. The creature lifted it as though it weighed nothing. It turned the nugget this way and that, sniffing at it but flicking its eyes up to Renelle every few seconds. Just as she thought it was about to throw the nugget away, it lifted the gold to its mouth. The lips parted, revealing a mouth full of flat-bottomed teeth, and it bit the gold nugget like an apple. There was an uncomfortable metallic screeching sound, and now the faun was chewing, its eyes still on Renelle, but now it seemed more interested in her hand than her throat. It kept glancing at the tree then back to her as it took another bite from the nugget, then another. It didn’t take it long to finish the chunk; she was surprised the beast didn’t lick its fingers once it was finished. Was that gratitude in its red-streaked eyes? She backed away a step, and this time, the monster remained still. She took another step back. And another. The faun studied her as she backed away but made no move to follow.

Fear kept her from turning her head to see where she was going but also kept her break her eye contact with the faun she’d just obliged with a snack. It seemed disinclined to follow her now, but did she dare turn and walk or run away?

The sound that came from the creature’s throat when it opened its mouth was an ear-splitting combination of a human scream, a goat’s bleat, and the screech of a very displeased cat. The call was answered from further in the trees. Renelle spun and dashed from the spot as quickly as she could before the faun’s friends showed up. She’d gone only a few dozen steps before she heard the cries growing louder behind her, the thuds of their hooves covering ground as they sped to catch her. From the sounds, there was a whole herd of the beasts pursuing her. Trees flew past, branches whipping at her face, sweat streaming into her eyes, stinging and disorienting her. She stumbled and tripped, running into trees and underbrush as the foliage grew thicker. She bounced away from the obstacles, unintentionally leaving a bright golden trail behind for the fauns to follow.

It seemed like hours had passed since the chase began. Exhaustion made her stagger, but she regained her balance, blinked her eyes clear, and wiped at her sweaty brow with her right hand, gasping. The hoofbeats had faded from her hearing, leaving her encased in unsettling silence. The sun was far on its way down to the horizon. Night’s arrival would be a death sentence if she could not find a place to hide from the fauns. And sleep… she wished for sleep, but how could she dare get it? Exhaustion would take her if she didn’t find safety soon.

Her solution came in the form of the largest tree she’d ever seen, a massive thing with branches thicker than her neck. She had no idea what sort of tree it was, nor did she care. Climbing was difficult one-handed, but she didn’t dare allow even a finger of her left hand to touch the rough bark. A golden tree this size would attract the fauns again, give them a beacon pinpointing her.

She nested one a wide branch, lying on her stomach with her left arm dangling. Despite her fright, weariness took her. Sound woke an interminable amount of time later. The sky was pitch, save for a spattering of bright stars and a waxing moon. Renelle widened her eyes to take in as much light as she could and sat up. Far beneath her, the faces of a dozen or more fauns peered up through the branches, eyes shining in the moonlight.

The fauns looked different in the dark. Their hair was stringy and limp, their skin gaunt and shadowed. Furry legs looked matted, claws stained and discolored. Even their teeth were different, sharp and pointed, not at all like the flat-bottomed of the faun she’d seen eating the rock. They hissed up at her, gazing up through the dense branches. There was no hiding; they knew she was there. Renelle’s head was heavy; whatever sleep she had gotten had been neither restful or plentiful. It was hard to think. She struggled even to sit up, needing to steady herself on the branch with both hands.

Unlike the clay orb and the stone, the giant tree did not turn to gold all at once. The metallic yellow color spread across the bark, claiming every inch as water claimed the shore, rushing over the surface of the branch until it reached the trunk, then spreading from there. It was not a slow process, but it was not instantaneous. In the back of her thoughts, she wondered if the other tree she’d touched had been instantly changed or if it had been slower like this one. She hadn’t watched it.

What made this different from the stone and the clay? Was it due to the size? Or was it perhaps because the tree was alive while stones and clay weren’t? The fauns’ eyes glittered, their hissing turning to snarls as they observed the tree’s transformation into a banquet food. By the time the gold had reached the roots and disappeared underground, the fauns had, one by one, opened their mouths and begun feeding on the trunk of the tree, mouthfuls of gold disappearing down their throats. The fauns seemed to have lost all interest in her. Renelle hoped that their feast would sate them enough that she could climb down and escape. Wary of her left hand, lest she make another mistake, she clutched at her skirt with her right fingers, watching the disturbing meal below.

The beasts’ appetites were unending, and the trunk was rapidly shrinking in girth. Panic seized Renelle. Would gold break? She didn’t know. Beneath her, the fauns began looking upward as they chewed the bites they took from the tree. She could almost hear them taunting around their meal, urging her to fall. Was the tree no more than an appetizer for them, with her the entree? Or was the tree the entree and she the sweet to finish the meal? Despite her own hunger, bile rose in her throat at the thought of becoming a meal. Somehow, she knew they wouldn’t bother to kill her before they began feeding. She would rather die before that. She considered jumping from the tree, but so much of her courage had been spent walking through the gate in the wall that she hadn’t managed to gather anymore yet, at least not enough to leap to her death. Besides, that sort of fall was no guarantee for a swift demise.

The tree began to sway, and she clutched her branch. Below, some of the fauns had stopped their gorging and were pushing at the tree above the massive chunks they’d taken out of it. They were trying to tip the tree now as some others kept taking bites out, weakening it further. No matter what, she was going to be at the mercy of the fauns soon. She kept clinging to the limb she was on, waiting until the ground came rushing towards her so she could throw herself off the branch at the last minute and run.

Her perch swayed, a sapling in a gale rather than a waist-thick tree. She was jostled by the erratic movement. Her blouse bumped against her magicked hand and abruptly transformed to gold, not as rigid as worked metal but no longer comfortable fabric. There was a clang and a crack, and the ground rose to meet her. She’d been unprepared and could do no more than brace herself for the impact. Her eyes clamped shut of their own accord.

The fauns didn’t attack her right away. She opened her eyes, lost in a tangle of golden twigs and branches. Carefully, she stood, the golden leaves and limbs scratching at her hair, face, and clothes. Dead grass fell from her skin and clothes. Her head was pounding from the impact, and she felt the sticky warmth of blood on the corner of her mouth and on her scalp. The fauns were staring at her, ravenous eyes locked, dark tongues licking their chops. One let out a soft bleat and stepped forward. Renelle was too tired to run, too worn and battered to do much of anything. Her arms began to shake, her right one stiffening.

Her right wrist had already turned to gold. During her fall, or maybe when she landed, she’d accidentally touched her own arm. It felt cold and heavy as the change seeped down into her hand and up toward her elbow. She staggered her way out of the branches, her solidifying arm growing cumbersome and awkward. She couldn’t twist it to escape branches and tangles of golden foliage. Eventually she reached open air and was face-to-face with a half-circle of slavering fauns. Each one gazed at her as if noting which cuts of her flesh they wanted to have first.

The gold had covered her arm and was seeping downward from her shoulder, across her torso and down towards her belly. Even if she couldn’t move her metallic arm, she could still feel it. Every mouthful of flesh or gold the beasts tore from her would be agony, she knew. She would feel every ounce of her they ate as it was ripped from her, even if they waited until she was a solid gold statue before they began their meal. The image repulsed her, and the thought didn’t much appeal to her even without the visual her racing mind flashed before her eyes.

As if there had been a signal, all the beasts took a step toward her. She had nowhere to fly and no chance of fighting back. Even if she did, her transforming body would make escape futile. She was going to die anyway.

She would do it on her own terms.

A thousand fire dances flowed out of her memories, a thousand tongues of flame kissing her skin. She moved in her memories, flowing like the water that was absent. Fire dancing was dangerous; there was no protection from the destructive force she molded around her like clothes. The gold had traveled all the way down to her hip and into her leg; she couldn’t move from the spot. Still, she began the fire dance, calling to the flames. This was an awkward dance, clumsy and childish in its simplicity. Her movements were ungainly. Would the fire answer her?

There was a spark. With every inch of her, she willed the flames to the tips of her fingers, her left hand’s fingers, the very end of her magicked hand. The sparks caught, fire igniting, flames brought to life through the magic deep inside her, cultivated for years into an art form. For the first time since she’d begun calling the flames to her, Renelle gave them free rein. Like a curtain being drawn across her skin, heat washed over her, making its slow way over her body even as the gold washed across from the other side. Cold metal flowed over her right, the heat of fire her left. As unchanged flesh began to melt from her side, her chest and belly, it also began to morph into gold that melted in turn, dripping into a shining puddle at her unchanged feet.

Fire and gold consumed her, her vision full of orange and yellow so that she couldn’t see the fauns that must surely still be lingering, waiting for their feast to begin. Gold and flames crept up her neck toward her chin. She no longer felt cold or hot; the twin sensations had melded into one feeling that formed her whole world. Nothing beyond her vision had any meaning, and even her consciousness of her body was beginning to fade. The flames rose higher than her head, or perhaps she was lowering; she wasn’t certain. All that was her faded into a bubbling puddle in the grass beneath a fallen tree made of gold. The last thing that went through her mind before thought disappeared was that perhaps fire dancing hadn’t lost all its draw, after all.

Escaping the "I Can't Finish" Trap

I have a problem. It's a problem lots of people have, lots of writers have, and it's not one that has been easy for me to address:

I don't finish things.

Since this is my writing blog, and since I do like to consider myself of the literary persuasion, this post is going to focus on my inability to finish writing projects. My problem has extended into other life facets, but they don't matter here. I'm going to go a little into the history of my problem and some techniques I've discovered to get me out of it.

I've been writing since at least 7th grade, which put me at about 11 or 12 years old. I don't remember tons of the stuff I did back then, but I remember the titles of some of the stuff I wrote then, and they were completed. The Kung-Fu Cockroaches (yes, a Ninja Turtles spoof), My Best Friend Exploded Last Week (which is exactly what it sounds like), and The Krakenobo (which is posted here September 2011) are some of those early projects of mine. Like I said, they were all finished, even if they were shoddy beginner's work and I don't have all the files anymore. We all have to start somewhere.

What happened to my inability to finish things? I got older, and I started thinking. I'm an overthinker, and my brain gets in my way a lot. I mean a lot.

I first noticed my lack of finishing things in college. Early college. I really can't go into a lot of high school; I was in band, and it consumed my life. In college, I was studying music theory and composition, but reading and writing were what I did in my off time. In the year between high school and college, I started writing a book that would eventually lead to a series. The first book was called T.A.C.U.S. and was a sci-fi book about a boy who accidentally was turned into a cyborg-like creature. I eventually planned for 4 other books.

In my first year of college, when I was nearly done writing my first draft of T.A.C.U.S., I started over writing it. It was not going the way I wanted, especially for the sequels to work out the way they should. I hadn't even touched the sequels yet. I never got past the first book. By the time I was in my third or fourth year of college, I had scrapped the project completely and moved on to another: The Grass Diamond series.

The Grass Diamond was again undertaken with lofty expectations. I planned 5 books again, and this one I was working on with my best friend. I was the one doing the writing, but we planned things together. I even finished the first draft of the first two books and was working on book three when I got stuck and the best friend refused to work on it with me anymore. She stopped working with me because I got too far ahead of her, and she didn't know what was going on in the series. I was stuck in a rut, and in the long run, it too was scrapped completely. I actually still have all the files from this project. I don't know if I/we will ever start it up again. Who knows.

If you look in my saved files, there are tons of novels and short fiction that has been started and not finished. I'm good at starting things, like so many are. I had fallen into the trap of "starting is fun, but executing is boring". Finishing things is hard, so why not do what's fun and start something new? That's a terrible mindset, and I couldn't figure out how to get out of it.

The first tiny mind-switch came near the end of my undergrad career. On a whim, I attended a lecture about handwriting analysis. It was entertaining, and at the end of the seminar, the guest host offered to do a little one-on-one with anyone to look at their handwriting. Just a little 2-minute at-a-glance analysis.

She had two things to say about my handwriting. I was obviously very intelligent (how she could tell that by the fact that I cross my 7's and Z's I don't know) and I don't finish what I start. She could tell that by how I crossed my T's, particularly the lower-case ones. The cross started strong but barely made it all the way through the letter itself. I didn't want to spend my life being a starter, not a finisher, so I decided to take her analysis at face value. I started making a point of really crossing my T's when I wrote by hand, even when I was in a hurry.

It was shortly after that when I finished writing the first draft of Sunset's Dawn, the first book of The Grass Diamond. It was a small thing, but it was a start in the right direction. This is about 2006, just to give some time frame.

The second thing that helped me on my path to finishing things was NaNoWriMo. I know there are a lot of people on both sides of the fence about NaNo. While NaNoWriMo is a great event, a great tool, it wasn't the driving force of my finishing anything. It sparked my use of another tool I had always avoided: outlining. I discovered NaNoWriMo mid-September 2009. I had six weeks to prepare, and I wanted to do it right. I wanted to win. I'd never really paid attention to word count before, but this focused on it. I wanted to do it, and knowing the nature of NaNo, my normal writing habits would make me fail. Miserably.

I don't like failing.

For the first time, I outlined my novel. By the time NaNo started in November, I knew exactly how many chapters my story would be. I knew my characters, I knew the big events of each chapter. It was weird, since I'd never had all this information at my fingertips before. Writing this book was easy. I crossed the 50,000-word mark on November 15th. Yes, my first NaNo was completed in 15 days. And I didn't write anything for 6 of them. The result was my first self-published novel, Empeddigo. Of course, now I realize it's more of a novella, but I'll take it.

I outline all my longer works now. And I'm a detailed outliner. But that'll be another blog post. Maybe next month.

So now we've reached this year, 2013. I'm serious as a heart attack, this most recent breakthrough happened maybe a month ago. A little bit of history, though. I've been an outliner for three years or so now, and I've put out Empeddigo, epic poem The Trials of Hallac, and Mere Acquaintances (posted here in its completion starting in January 2010). I've got a trilogy the best friend and I have been working on for 5 years that is nearing completion of its first draft (thank God). I've got several other projects in various stages of completion. I recently got promoted to a job that doesn't require me to be on the phones all the time, and I can listen to my iPod while I work. As a result, I've been thrust into the world of podcasting. What a blessing. But that's yet another blog post.

Outlining functions as a first draft for me. It's not quite prose, but it's detailed. And so often, I start a project with the big climax in mind, and I get to that climax point, and...

Fizzle.

To use a biking analogy, I get all the way up that big hill at the end of the neighborhood, and then I can't make myself take the trip down. I can't figure out the ending, much less how to get there. And eventually, a new idea comes along, and I find myself in the "starting is fun, but executing is boring" trap again. I have so many two-thirds-finished outlines it isn't funny. But I just had so much trouble getting started down that hill.

Anyway, because of my new appreciation for the podosphere, I have finally joined Twitter. And thanks to Twitter, I saw a link to Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling. Find it here: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/07/pixars-22-rules-of-stor.html

Right now, I'm preparing to pitch a story idea on The Roundtable Podcast (http://www.roundtablepodcast.com/). It's a story I've been working on since 2011. It was actually my NaNo project for that year. I had more than enough outline finished to get me to 50,000 words, and I made it. I haven't written any since. Heck, that 50k is about Act I. My outline ended at the end of Act II... the climax.

So how did Pixar help me? #9. Write down what doesn't happen next. It seems so simple. Why hadn't I thought of that? I had my doubts on whether it would work, but I was so stuck, I decided to give it a try on my story. And it worked. I kid you not, in 5 minutes, I had my answer. It wasn't an end-all-be-all solution that would take me all the way to the end of the story, but it got me out of my rut, out of the dead-end I'd been in for over a year. Yes, I had to scrap some outline and back up a few chapters, but I am so much closer to finishing now that I'm afraid there won't be anything left to go over on the podcast! Kidding. There's tons.

It worked again on a short story I was writing a few weeks ago. I had a great opening, and then what the heck happened? Again, five minutes, and boom. I finished the story the next day. What an amazing tool! Just writing down what won't happen, seeing those possibilities that are out of the question, clears the clouds in my head and lets the light shine through.

So up until now, that's my journey against the "I Can't Finish" Trap in writing. I'm sure it's a journey that isn't finished, but so far, I think I'm winning.

I'll let you know when The Roundtable Podcast with me in it happens. Until then, go listen to what's up already. It's an amazing podcast, fun for writers and non-writers alike!

The New Writing Blog

Okay, I think I've gotten my new plan.

This blog was started as a place for me to post the things I write. Doing it every week got to be too intense, and as you can see, I fell off the wagon for quite some time. It started because I was getting into grad school, and I just couldn't write as much as I wanted.

Well, I'm not finished with grad school. In fact, I only got about halfway done before I ran out of my tuition assistance for the year. I haven't restarted again, because my creative writing has thrust itself to the forefront of my life in the last few months. That's a whole story I might put in a later post, but here's how I plan to attack this blog going forward.

Every month, I will put out two posts. One will be a creative endeavor, be it a short story, poem, or other work. This isn't that different from how the blog was before, except that it will be once a month instead of once a week. And as I said in my last post, I don't plan to have any particular date scheduled for when it'll be up every month. Whenever I get it done, I expect.

The second post every month will be something different. something about my writing process, my inspiration, or some informative post about my journey and experiences as a writer. In the future, I may expand into book reviews. Whether that would count as my second post or would become a third monthly post remains to be seen. I'm pretty inexperienced at doing full-on reviews, but what better way to get experience than to do it. Look for that in the future, too. Also, look for my first non-work post very soon. This week, or maybe later today, if I get it finished.

The last thing you may notice is that I've removed The Trials of Hallac posts from the blog. This is because that epic poem is out in paperback and ebook form, so I can't justify having as much of it on the blog anymore. I left the Invocation up as a teaser, because the invocation of an epic poem does serve in a way as a brief overview of the story, or as a cover-blurb.

All this said, look for more activity here. I plan to be much more active again.

Coming Back

As you may have noticed, it has been quite some time since I've posted any new material, and for that, I am sorry.  However, there are some great developments happening, and some bigger projects are in the works.

Due to the nature of the bigger projects I am working on, I won't be able to return to my blog and post a short story a week. It simply isn't in the cards for me right now. However, I am attempting to do more short fiction in between outlining, writing, and editing sessions on my larger works. I am setting a new goal for myself.

I'm going to try and post a short story here every month. I don't know that I can commit to a certain day each month, but perhaps in a few months, a new habit will form and I will be able to pick a certain date every month.

In the meantime, know that I am putting material out. I recently had the privilege of being podcast. Please check out Every Photo Tells (http://everyphototells.com/) for writing prompts and a mass of great short stories. It's free to download and listen, and there's wonderful material there. You can find my episode (hopefully the first of many) at http://everyphototells.com/2013/03/episode-114-the-last-one-to-leave/.

I have thrown myself headfirst into the podosphere, and I am appalled that I did not do it sooner. Better late than never.

I can now also be found on Twitter @afgrappin, and as always, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-F-Grappin/144017935658521.

Keep in touch, and check out the blog in April. I'll let you know when a new story is up!

Time and the Being

    It was a perfect place, where the Being decided to place the first man. The decision was a long time coming and yet quick as a pulse, made in the blink of an eye over the span of a thousand thousand years, but this was before Time began, and there was no one to keep track except the Being. The Place flourished, untouched, untainted, and a pleasure to behold, the result of centuries and mere seconds of the Being's creativity and effort, just like the first man himself was, and they were perfect for each other.

    The Being gave no name to the first man, as he did not need one. The Being, of course, needed no name to reference that one creation: the man simply Was. It was enough for them both, but for the purposes of the storytelling, we will call the man by the closest thing to a name he had. He is Was.

    Was delighted in the Place, and as is only right, the Being delighted in Was. For moments and aeons, there was no less and no more than absolute happiness and joy in the Place, shared and enjoyed by both Was and the Being. Was felt no hunger although he tasted the leaves, stems, roots, seeds, and fruits of the plants of the Place; he felt no thirst but drank the water of the streams and the rain that the Being poured down to nourish the plants. Neither realized that another Great One had seen the Place, the perfect harmony, and was jealous.

    Time had arrived. For mere seconds, Time watched Was and the Being, and in those seconds, Time decided he could take no more. He saw the Place and wanted it. Reaching out his hand, he cupped the Place in his massive palm, and seconds passed, then minutes, then hours.

    At first, Was didn't realize what was happening. His stomach made noise, he felt weak, and he could think of nothing else but to reach for a nearby fruit and shove the entire thing in his mouth. Looking up questioningly at the Being-- for there was no language-- he received no answer. For the first time, the Being's attention was elsewhere.

    The Being saw the Place cupped in the hand of Time, and they stared one another down. Without wordsor even more than that staring, the challenge was made. Time would design his own creature, to compete with Was over who would rule the Place.

    Time, being a tricky character, made not a man, but a woman, and he named her Moment.

    Was had discovered the regularity of hunger and thirst and sleep, day and night-- though of course he had no words for those-- since it took nearly two weeks for Time and the Being to agree to their challenge. In that time, Was had grown accustomed to keeping food with him and to staying near the stream; hunger and thirst were unpleasant, and he preferred to prevent them rather than suffer them. It was near the stream where he first saw Moment, and he was curious. Crossing the stream, he approached her, reached out a hand, and felt her skin. So like his. He fingered her hair, brushed the tipof his thumb on her cheek. Now, even more curious, he looked up to the Being, questioning. Had he sent this creature? Why?

    The Being was looking down, but not at him. Moment was the object of the attention of the Great Ones. Time looked down on her with pride and a smirk, the Being with displeasure. No time and decades passed for the Being as that displeasure was communcated to Time, and eventually it was agreed: Time would create a man, and the Being a woman, and their pairs would be the ones to compete for dominion over the Place. The Being created a woman and called her Does, and only then turned to see what had happened in the Place while the agreement was being made.

    Time still held the Place, and during the seconds and millenia it took Time and the Being to make their agreement, much time had passed for Was and Moment. In the absence of communcation with the Great Ones, language had developed. They spoke and understood one another, knowing their own names and the other's name. They had terms for water, leaf, tree, ground, food. And their sons had names: First and Second.

    Time, of course, knew that years were passing for the humans in the Place, since he cupped it in the palm of his hand. Seeing the other Great One's creature affected by his own presence was most satisfying. The Being's displeasure only grew at seeing Was with faint wrinkles on his face from Time's ravages, seeing him close to Moment, and seeing even more creatures in the Place that were not supposed to be. In a bout of temper, the Being threw Does down to the Place, and she landed in between Was and Moment.

    Was looked upon this new woman with surprise, Moment with curiosity. Not knowing any better, as morals had not been given to the Place, Was looked at Does the same way he did Moment, and he acted on her presence the same way he did Moment.

    Behind his back, hiding the Place from the Being, Time gave the Place a gentle squeeze, and time sped up. When he revealed it again, there were more children-- two more sons-- born of Was and Does. Their names were Can and Will. The Being was still unhappy with their presence, but less so since they came from the woman not made by Time. Even so, Was's hair was beginning to grey with Time's influence. In anger, the Being attempted to wrench the Place away from Time, causing Time to drop it. In falling, the Place cracked, opening a fissure in the earth, into which the unfortunate Was fell. The Being and Time fought each other for half an eternity and half a breath, and Time managed to again recover the Place, holding it where the Being could see it but too far away to touch.

    Was was dead. The very second Time had gathered up the Place again, time began, his blood flowed from injuries sustained in his fall into the fissure, and he died. The Being howled in anguish. The cry echoed across all of the Place, and the six remaining people gathered on the edges of the fissure, looking down at Was's remains. On one side of the fissure were Moment and her sons First and Second; on the other were Does and her sons Can and Will.

   Along with the cry of anguish, other forces were released into the Place. Jealousy, sorrow, pain, anger, and hatred settled on the Place, into the very leaves of plants and the bubbles in the stream's water. Moment was struck with jealousy and blamed the death of Was on Does's presence. If she had not come, there would never have been a fissure, and then Was would have lived. Retreating from their side of the fissure, Moment and her sons made a shelter beneath some wide-leaved trees, and there she began to teach her sons the reasons that this was the fault of Does.

     Does did not feel the jealousy, only the despair and sorrow of Was's death, and confusion at Moment's reaction. She too retreated with her sons and found shelter in a new cave that was also made from the fall when the Place was dropped. She taught her sons to trust in the Being, that one day he would show his face as he had to their father before even she was made, and all would again be well.

    If the Great Ones breatheed, it would have only taken a breath for a decade to pass for the humans in the Place. During that decade, Moment and Does never saw one another, nor did Moment's sons see Does's sons. None of them forgot the others existed, however.

    One morning, Does's elder son, Can, ever the explorer, wandered off from the cave in a direction he had never gone before. For a long time, he walked, eating what food he found along the way. Eventually, his feet took him to an area where the trees were tall and broad-leafed, trees unlike he had seen for a very long time. Movement caught his eye, and he saw a figure dart away. Curious, he moved toward where the figure had been, and once he was beneath the broad leaves of the trees, he felt something strike him. Recognizing the brown, coarse-haired round fruit as one from the trees, he ignored it, though the pain from where it his his head did not go away. Soon, another hit him, and another. Blood trickled from his face, his chest, his arms and legs as the barrage continued. He was driven to his knees, covering his head. Only when he could see nothing except the sand beneath his feet did his attackers show themselves, but he could only hear their laughter.

    Does and Will knew sorrow again when Can did not return to the cave. Ever looking upward, Does gazed into the sky but saw nothing from the Being. It was during this period that the Being and Time were again staring one another down for ownership of the Place. This was no more than the blink of an eye or the passing of a dozen cosmoses for the Being, but much time passed for the humans, cupped in the hand of Time.

    Knowing that Can was dead, anger began to rise in Will and Does, and they departed from their cave for the fissure. Upon arriving, they called out for a long time until Moment, First, and Second appeared on the other side. For a time, they stared at one another across the fissure, until Second disappeared, followed soon after by First. Curious, Will turned and walked the other way as well, and the three men met on the other side of the Place, far out of sight of their mothers. Second threw himself at Will and began to grapple him, while First continued on toward the side of the fissure Does was on.

    When he reached the fissure and saw Does, still staring across the gap at Moment, First was filled with rage. As his brother had done, he threw himself at Does, his momentum carrying both of them down into the fissure. Upon landing, neither moved again.

    Will and Second grappled for many minutes, gouging each other's flesh with their fingers and pulling hair. Will's hands at one time closed around the throat of Second and squeezed, and all air left Second's body. Rising, Will staggered away toward the fissure-- to the side where Moment was.

    Finally, the Being wrested the Place away from Time and banished him. Looking back down onto the Place, the Being was appalled at what was left of that great creation. A tear fell from the Being's eye, and the torrent of that tear filled the fissure, creating a salt river.

    With the Being's presence in control over the Place again, jealousy, anger, sorrow, and hatred were banished from the Place, and Will and Moment remained as the only humans left.

    Despair was not banished from the Being, though, and it was not to be assuaged. The Place had failed, and the Being gently set the Place down to hang in the heavens. Turning away, the Being left the Place and the humans behind forever. The humans were left alone and multiply without the peace and watchfulness of the Being.

    Shortly after the Being left and forever later, Time lifted up the Place and renamed it-- the World.