Saturday, July 27, 2013

Clear Cage

I'm working on some large projects right now, and I'm not putting out as many brand new short stories right now. And by "brand new" I mean "never before seen or heard". For July, I'm giving you my short story "Clear Cage". This story has already been released in audio version on the writing prompt podcast Every Photo Tells. Find the site here http://everyphototells.com/. The podcast can also be accessed through iTunes (that's how I get it) and other sources. Check out their site for more info, and while you're there, make sure to listen to episode 121, which is the podcast version of the story I'm about to give you. Here's the link to their entry for my story: http://everyphototells.com/2013/07/episode-121-clear-cage/. Or you can just go to iTunes and get it. It is free, after all! The audio version is pretty spectacular, thoroughly bonechilling. Trust me, if you like short fiction, it's a podcast worth listening to!

----------------------------

Not many people came to the old park on the edge of town. Within the town proper, a new park had been sectioned off, and it drew all the attention to it. Brand new slides and swings, monkey bars, seesaws and merry-go-rounds were built, and that was more than all the children in town could ask for. Families flocked to the new park, and in a matter of months, the old park was forgotten and allowed to fall into disrepair and eventually ruin. A generation passed, and the old park became just another part of the town’s history, failing to enter the present with the new businesses and the new playground.

The twins, Sandy and Landry, were nine when they discovered the old park. It enthralled them: the wildness of it, the sparseness. It wasn’t dominated by bright, plastic playground equipment, young married couples with their dogs, new parents with babies in strollers or elderly people going for their daily stroll. The plant life in the old park had grown wild from neglect, flowers spilling onto the carefully marked walkways and lawns that were once carefully manicured. The playground equipment was made of metal, plain grey steel, and that made it eye-catching. The new park was all bright colors that overwhelmed the senses. But this place was made to be played with and on, not to be looked at first. The merry-go-round here didn’t have safety bars like the one in the new park. The steps to climb to the top of the slide weren’t carefully enclosed and backed so a child’s foot wouldn’t slip through. The equipment whispered the stories of childhood dares, stunts, and activities that would make mothers in this modern age faint with terror and the government cringe at the thought of lawsuits for injuries.

The twins explored the old park all morning, enjoying the feel of the old equipment. They picked at the rust, inspected the flaking paint that used to embellish the slide and the bars of the swings. Sandy tested her weight on the first few steps of the slide, but they had rusted through and wouldn’t support her. She got a running start and climbed up the slide itself instead and zipped down, crashing to the dirt in front of it rather than slowing to a stop and stepping down from the slope. Landry settled onto an old swing and went as high as he could, trying to swing over the bar. He could never seem to make it over though, but he was still pleased to get that high. Adults at the new park always seemed to begin screaming if he swung too high, and Heaven forbid he jump off. He did so today, at the peak of his forward swing. He let go with his hands, extended his legs, and soared through the air for a handful of seconds. He crash-landed and rolled a few feet. His arms and legs were a mass of scrapes when he finally stood, but he had never been allowed to have so much fun in his life, and he let out a whoop of pleasure. His shout was cut short, though, when he saw the lamp he had landed by.

There was only the one lamp in the entire old park, and it still burned. Being nine, Landry didn’t stop to wonder why the gas company saw fit to continue supplying the lone lamp with fuel. Landry only saw the eerie yellowish-white glow and stared up at it. Eventually, Sandy noticed and joined him. It was just after noon, but the light was brighter than the midday sun. It must be brilliant at night. They both stood and stared, ignoring the playground equipment that still seemed to be whispering their names.

Their mother’s voice calling for them served to draw them away from the lamp when it was nearly dinnertime. They both backed away, eyes locked on the light until they were forced to turn a corner that removed it from their sight. Without a word to one another, they agreed to return the next day.

A week after they had first discovered the old park, a week that saw them spending every free moment at the old park, Sandy and Landry brought a small group of friends with them. The light hypnotized their friends as wholly and instantly as it had the twins, and as summer went on, nearly every child in their social circle came to stand and stare at the lamp each day. A group of just under thirty lingered there, usually forming a circle so no one would have to crane their necks looking over or around the others.

It was in the middle of summer, on the first day of August, that they all saw the first flicker of movement inside the lamp. It came like a shadow, a black dot inside the glass shield of the lamp. It circled the flame once and disappeared, but that sight was enough to make every one of the children jump where they stood. A second passed, and they all gazed harder at the lamp, waiting for it to happen again. The old park was silent; there wasn’t even the sound of breathing. Landry, Sandy, and their friends were all holding their breath.

The shadow passed again. The children began chattering immediately, whispering and pointing to one another and then at the lamp. All the children asked if the others had seen what happened, except one. Sandy said nothing. Instead, she took a tentative step forward, then another. A third. A fourth and fifth. She was eight tiny steps closer to the post when Landry started after her. He reached the base of the lamp post a few seconds after her and tilted his head up to stare at it, mirroring his twin. The shadow made a third appearance, this time longer. It whirled round the gas flame, over and over, causing a gentle strobe affect and sending strange patches of darkness across the faces of the children. One of the younger girls squealed and ran toward the lamp, and then the entire group of kids rushed forward to stand closer and lock their eyes on the rapidly flitting shadow.

It stopped abruptly, halting its revolutions right above Sandy’s upturned face. She squinted up at the light, trying to focus on the darker shape, to make out some sort of form or figure in the black patch.

“Look!” shouted Landry, pointing.

None of them had noticed before how much soot had caked itself on the glass of the lamp. They all noticed now as some invisible force began writing thin, spindly letters on the inside of the glass, in the soot itself. But the writing was too small and the children too close to the ground to read them. Sandy beckoned to her twin and wordlessly began to climb his back and onto his shoulders. He took this in stride, holding her ankles as she stood on him with one hand against the post for balance. This added height gave her a much better view of the tiny letters marring the layer of soot.

I WANT OUT

“It says it wants out!” she cried, nearly falling from her brother’s shoulders in her excitement. The clamor that followed her words brought life into the park that had not been seen for a generation. The words faded long before they reached the busy part of town, unheard by anyone but the children and the creature in the lamp.

“Let’s help it!” someone cried, and a chorus of agreement followed.

Sandy shouted at the lamp. “We want to get you out! How do we help?”

On another of the glass panels, adjacent to the first message, new letters appeared. Landry and Sandy had to do an awkward shuffle to face the new words without toppling head over heels on one another.

RUB RUB RUB

“Rub?” the word was repeated as a question over and over again among the children.

It was one of the younger children, a boy named Abe, who made the connection. “Rub the lamp! Like Aladdin! Maybe it’s a genie in there!”

“Are you a genie?” Sandy shouted at the shadow.

YES

That pane of glass was taken up by letters now, so she nudged at Landry to do their awkward shuffle to the next one. Once they’d settled, she asked, “What’s your name, genie?”

BAPDAP

“Okay, that’s just an awesome name!” someone shouted. “Rub the lamp! Let him out!” A new chant began then, resounding voices calling for Bapdap’s release from his smoky glass prison. They cried for freedom. Sandy raised a hand to the glass. With a thumb, she rubbed one of the glass panes.

Nothing happened. The black shape inside the lamp whirled around again, but no new letters appeared, and the dark figure was still inside. Rubbing hadn’t worked. “Maybe I didn’t do it right?” she asked, confused, but the other children looked as baffled as she did.

A voice emerged from the group. “Try again!”

The shadow that was Bapdap the genie spun even faster, around and around in the lamp so quickly it made Sandy dizzy as she reached her hand upward again. The writing on the glass caught her eye, and she strained to see the other panels the captive genie had written on. RUB RUB RUB one said. Was she supposed to rub three times? Maybe she had done it wrong, just rubbing once. Emboldened by this new thought, she reached her thumb up again and rubbed, rubbed, rubbed. Three passes she made with the pad of her thumb, slow and deliberate, over the glass pane of the lamp. The oils from her finger left streaky smudges on the glass that slightly distorted the light and the dark splotch inside.

The lamp post shuddered, shook, and stopped. The flame didn’t so much as flicker, but the shadow disappeared. Sandy leaned closer, peering inside the glass. The other children craned their necks, squinted their eyes, and tried their best to find where their genie had gone. Abe was the one who gathered the courage to shout, “Hey! We freed you! You’re supposed to grant us wishes now!”

As one, the other children began clamoring for their wishes. One of the children went so far as to promise using one wish to free the genie from his prison forever, trying to bribe the genie into returning. Their voices disappeared into the open air, unheard. Eventually, Sandy climbed down from her twin’s shoulders, upset that after all their work, after all this time, they weren’t getting anything out of this. They hadn’t even gotten to see the genie. The lamp suddenly held much less draw. The entire old park had lost its appeal in one disappointing moment.

It was a great surprise then that Landry saw a strange man, clad all in grey and silver, standing at the back of their group, looking down at them with a wry grin and one eyebrow raised. Landry’s mouth went dry and his voice left him. He couldn’t speak to bring his comrades’ attention to the stranger. All he could do was point until one by one, the other children noticed the man in their midst and stared.

Abe recovered his voice first, though it cracked when he spoke. “Bapdap?”

The man nodded. The twisted grin stayed plastered on his face as he looked at each of the children in turn. His clothes didn’t look like he was from the story of Aladdin. His charcoal grey shirt was buttoned up the front, the collar starched and stiff. He wore a vest and tie, both silver, and his pants were pale grey and creased expertly. He looked like a businessman in an old black-and-white show. But his hair was out of place. It was spiked and black as a moonless night. And under the cuffs of his trousers, his feet were bare.

The children gathered around him, delighted that they had not, in fact, been abandoned by the genie they’d just rescued. Bapdap placed a hand on each head in turn, one corner of his mouth raised in a half-smirk. Sandy and Landry were the last two he touched, and he did so at the same time, one hand on each of them. As he removed his palms from their hair, the world distorted and dimmed.

Landry put his hands out before him, and they came to a stop not far in front of his chest. It was like the mimes he saw on television, pretending there was a wall stopping them from reaching their hands out any further. The difference between him and the mimes was that there really was something in front of him stopping his palms. He brought his hands back, and they were covered with soot. Two hand prints were on the glass before him, interrupting the sheen of soot. His eyes went upward, and he saw the soot had other marks in it. Written backwards, he saw the words RUB RUB RUB. On this side of the glass, the letters were huge.

“We’re in the lamp!” Abe shrieked. He began pounding his fists on the glass before he’d even finished the sentence. The other children followed suit, pounding on the panes of the lamp, shouting at the genie who was still standing outside. Bapdap had lifted his chin and was peering at the lamp and its new, unwilling inhabitants. They were all so small now that they weren’t even crowded in the small space. There was plenty of room.

A hand that looked enormous raised up and tapped on one of the panes. The sound of it thundered, shaking the lamp and knocking many of the children off their feet. More than one of them screamed, begging to be released. Others shouted wishes for freedom. Sandy only looked at the genie, pleading silently.

“Your mistake,” Bapdap said, his voice booming even though he was probably only talking at a normal volume, “was thinking that all genies are good. I’m not bound to those ‘three wishes’ rules.” His smile widened, and bright white teeth appeared between his lips. Still smiling at the captive children, he raised a hand, snapped his fingers, and was gone in a flash of shadow.

Inside the lamp, the light flickering behind them, the children of town pressed their hands against the glass panes, marring the blanket of soot. They screamed until they were hoarse, but not many people came to the old park anymore.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

New feature: Book Reviews- The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker

Okay, readers. I'm adding something new to the blog. I'm shooting to post a monthly book review. Most of what you see will probably be podiobooks I've listened to, since I have more time to listen to my iPod than to sit and read a dead-tree book. I'm hoping to post a review every month going forward. Formats may change as time goes on and I get more comfortable doing reviews, and I'm sure I'll eventually come up with some sort of rating system, but for now, I'm staying with the basics. 

My first review is of the book The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker.

Summary
Amaranthe Lokdon is an enforcer, a sort of policeman for the empire. When her heroicism gets her noticed by the young emperor Sespian, she gets trusted with the task of killing an assassin and eventually put on a path that leads her to try to bring down the entire economy of the empire, betraying the very laws she's always trusted and enforced.

That was my summary. Here's the summary I got from the author's website

 

Imperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon is good at her job: she can deter thieves and pacify thugs, if not with a blade, then by toppling an eight-foot pile of coffee canisters onto their heads. But when ravaged bodies show up on the waterfront, an arson covers up human sacrifices, and a powerful business coalition plots to kill the emperor, she feels a tad overwhelmed.
Worse, Sicarius, the empire’s most notorious assassin is in town. He’s tied in with the chaos somehow, but Amaranthe would be a fool to cross his path. Unfortunately, her superiors order her to hunt him down. Either they have an unprecedented belief in her skills… or someone wants her dead.


Context
The Emperor's Edge is a classic story of wrestling with morality, where right does not always equal good. It could be argued that it demonstrates how everyone has a price, but I don't believe that's really what Buroker was trying to convey. I see Amaranthe's journey as one showing the lengths a person can and will go to to protect something she believes in. This is a story about the power of dedication.

Style
This was most definitely a book driven by its characters. The cast is very solid and well-developed. Even though the cast is male-dominated, the fact that the main protagonist is female helps balance a supporting cast filled with Y chromosomes. And it really is balanced. Amaranthe does not sink among the strong men she finds herself surrounded with: Sicarius, Books, Maldynado, Akstyr, and Hollowcrest, to name a few. She's neither overpowered by them nor does she overpower them (except when she bosses them around, but that's something you have to experience through the book itself). Her antagonist(s) are wonderful foils for her, and her supporters mesh with her without losing themselves.

I did not read The Emperor's Edge. I listened to it via podiobooks.com. I don't feel like I missed anything by listening to it. It was not a fullcast production, but the story didn't need it. The vocal performance was simple but the reader did an amazing job giving the male characters their own lilts to help tell them apart. True to his lot in life, Maldynado had a certain smarmy quality to his voice. Akstyr sounded young and sulky. I could, for the most part, tell the characters apart without needing the "he said, she said" dialogue tags. The narrator, Starla Huchton, was spectacular. I listened to the book primarily at work, and she was easy to listen to and understand without taking too much of my brainpower away from my job. 

My thoughts
When I realized The Emperor's Edge was the first book of a series, I immediately went in search of the next two books. There are a few more out than that, but as my predominant form of reading right now is podcasts, I'm glad to see that the next two books are available on podcast, as well. I can't wait to get further into the story, to hang out with the team again, and to hear it all performed by the wonderful Starla Hutchton. Whether you read this on Kindle, listen to it, or get an old-fashioned printed book, you're not going to miss out on some amazing adventure, some phenomenal characters, or just an all-around great reading experience by checking out The Emperor's Edge.

Would I recommend it? Definitely.


I would like to point out to all of you that, as of right now, this book is FREE at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Smashwords, and Kobo. You can't beat free!

The narrator, Starla Huchton, can be found here http://www.starlahuchton.com/ I have yet to read anything of hers, but believe me, she is on the list. The frighteningly extensive list. But I've heard her read, and I've listened to her on several podcasts, and she's a name I'm keeping an eye on.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Inspiration Is Not So Hard to Find

I’ve found that inspiration doesn’t seem to be a problem for a lot of writers, but I still wanted to talk about it. I’ve been cursed with an overabundance of inspiration. So many would ask how that's a curse? It’s a double-edged sword, both blessing and curse, and here’s why.

Blessing
I have so many ideas that I doubt I will ever EVER run out of writing fodder. I would venture to say that if I never got another burst of inspiration, another idea, I could probably go the rest of the natural life on the backlogged ideas I already have. Not that I’d want to. Theoretically, you could write forever on one idea, just thinking about it different ways. But that’s a different topic.

Curse
New scenarios come so quickly and so often that I can easily fall into the “I Can’t Finish” trap (see http://afgrappin.blogspot.com/2013/04/escaping-i-cant-finish-trap.html for that post). If I want to actually be productive and get things done, I can’t immediately act on my newest idea and start developing it or writing it. I can only be working on so many outlines, projects, or short stories at a time. And when I finally have some open space in my workload to start a new project, I have a lot to choose from. But picking one is so hard! I want all these ideas to live!

Before I go on, I want to clearly define what I consider inspiration, or more importantly, an idea. I'm not talking about inspiration as being the desire to sit and write. So many people think writers spend hours in dimmed rooms waiting for inspiration to strike. Writing isn't really like that, and I'm not really referencing the act of writing or "waiting for the muse to strike." I'm talking about inspiration as getting ideas of what to write.
Any element that can be written or folded into a story, I consider an idea worth writing down. This could be as simple as an idea for a title, a really cool line for a character to say, a setting, or even a full plot complete with conflict and resolution. I don’t discriminate. Everything is worth writing down and saving for another time. It’s the same as saving pennies. They may not look like much, but I always pick up stray pennies when I find them on the ground. Just saying.It adds up.
So yes, I am one of those people that always has a notepad and pen with me. Or sticky notes. Or a scrap of paper that, once the idea is scribbled onto it, I cram into my wallet and transfer to my notebook later. And I still end up losing ideas forever because I can’t get them down in time. But I still manage to save tons of ideas in my little notebook. Those pages are filled with little entries like

Culture: The working class and upper class of a society are separated by a language barrier. Only the upper class are bilingual. So what happens when an intelligent commoner begins to understand the language the nobles use?

And

Think About It: What must it be like to know that you were bred to die, that your birth was specifically engineered and planned? How could you deal with knowing that you were born for one task, trained your whole life to carry it out, and that task will kill you?

Basically, what I’m saying is if something tickles your writing senses, hang onto it. Get a notebook or a stack of index cards, a file in your word processor or a pad of post-its. Whatever. You never know when you might want an idea, even just a tiny tidbit to pull you out of a plot slump. Nothing is too small to make a difference. Imagine needing a nickel to buy your hamburger. A small amount can make a big difference in enjoying a delicious bacon cheeseburger or going hungry. And where do you usually find that nickel? Stuck in between the carseats. In a forgotten place. Consider this idea stockpiling like hiding nickels for yourself.

So where the heck is all this wondrous inspiration coming from? I wish I could say just one place, that there was a magical switch in my brain that I flipped when I wanted an idea. That’s just not the case. It’s both simpler and more complex than that. To date, I’ve gotten inspiration from dreams to TV and movies to books to casual conversations with friends.And everywhere in between
For those of you who do have problems finding ideas, who get that itch and just can’t find that long stick with the fingers to scratch it (yes, I know it’s called a backscratcher), I’m going to break down my sources into two categories: Passive and Active Inspiration.

Passive Inspiration
I would guess passive inspiration gives me about 60-70% of my ideas. I’m just going about life, and BOOM! Hello, idea. These passive ideas are the ones I get from media, conversations, or just idle thoughts. For example, I was reading a fantasy series that included spellcasters. While still in the mindset of that series, I heard or saw something about mentioning Christopher Columbus’s journey to the Americas. The thoughts melded. What if Columbus came to the Americas and took the natives back to Europe with him… but didn’t know they could do magic?! Idea! I hadn’t been looking for it, but there it was.
Don’t be afraid to look at something and ask: what could I do with this? This starts to get into active inspiration, but don’t make yourself go digging into everything you’re watching or reading for ideas. Relax, and let them come to you. Believe me, they’ll strike your brain and resonate so that you can’t ignore them. We’ve all had that idea flash, even if it’s just for the name of an actor you couldn’t remember a few hours ago. That spark will come with an idea. HURRY AND WRITE IT DOWN! They tend to disappear as quickly as they strike.
So that book you’re reading has a brotherhood of monks that have some magical powers. While or after reading, don’t be afraid to let your thoughts wander about that brotherhood and put those monks into your own scenarios. While reading that book, did you maybe suspect that the reclusive brother is actually a woman in disguise? So that's not how things go in the book, but YOU could write that story.
Or you might see a sort of character you want to see more of. The small-town kid gets called off on an adventure, leaving her family behind. What the heck does her mother do after she leaves? Everyone has a story. Feel free to tell the stories of the side or supporting characters in works you've already written.
Be open to questions. Let your mind ask them, and then write them down. The answer could end up being a whole new novel.

Active Inspiration
Active Inspiration, as I do it, is easier to do, but it’s a little less personal, in that it doesn’t really spawn from your brain like passive ideas do. You can start pointedly looking for the kinds of ideas you get from passive sources, scouring TV shows, books, and movies for ideas, or thinking through conversations with friends and digging through every sentence for inspiration. I don’t really do that, but there is value in looking deeper.
Mostly, I use active inspiration to get an idea fast, usually if I need to do a short story but don’t have any short fiction ideas. Most of the ideas in my notebook would better lend themselves to novels. I think big, and it can cause problems when I want to keep things small.
For active inspiration, I often look to prompts. There are tons of sites that have plot, theme, title, character, or first line generators (and then some). There are sites for short story competitions based on prompts. Keep in mind that YOU DON’T HAVE TO ENTER THE CONTEST! You’re free to just use the prompt if you want to. Of these sorts of sites, I like http://everyphototells.com/ and http://www.thefirstline.com/index.htm. Check them out! I haven’t really looked into a lot of others yet.
Then there are the generators. My favorite place to go is http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. This site has a humongous variety of generators, everything from tavern names to alien race descriptions to writing challenges. Out of one of these generators I got the prompt “The legend of King Midas as a horror story”. The result was my short story “Aureus Manu”, found here: http://afgrappin.blogspot.com/2013/04/aureus-manu.html. Be as free as you want. Take what you need from the prompts, what you can use, and shove the rest away.
The other active inspiration I use is exploring. There is a world of literature out there. I tend to write fantasy, mostly because it’s what I’ve been reading most of my life, and I don’t have to do research into science or location. I get to make all that up on my own. But if you’re into genre fiction, there are tons of genres to explore. So why not spread your wings and and play around outside of your comfort zone? I’ve recently started tinkering with steampunk and urban fantasy. But I either have touched or have barely explored superhero fiction, westerns, sci-fi, crime drama, mystery, and tons of other stuff. What rocks is that you can tailor any idea to any genre. Let me repeat that. YOU CAN TAILOR ANY IDEA TO ANY GENRE! You just need to be creative. And, even more fun, you can mess around with genres. Who says that steampunk has to be set in a Victorian era? Imagine prehistoric steampunk. There’s already arcanepunk and dieselpunk. Have fun!

So go out and find your ideas, or just let your brain bring them to you. Inspiration is not elusive. The muses may play hide-and-seek, but they suck at it. You just have to allow yourself to notice them. Write things down, and if you never use them, no one has to know. But what will matter is you’ll always have something to write.