Olga Godim's Blog, page 12

IWSG & WEP Dec 2020 – Unmasked

[image error]It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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This month, I’m going to combine my IWSG post with my WEP post. Usually, the blog hop WEP participants post their themed stories on the 3rd Wednesday of the month, but this December, the WEP admin team decided to forgo a formal challenge (because of all the political and social upheavals of this year and all the health issues so many of us battled) and just post our stories on the theme Unmasked. Sort-of an unstructured and undemanding challenge.

Like all my other WEP stories this year, this story is about the paper mage Monette and her magic agency, Small Magics, in Vancouver, Canada. Monette’s previous magic adventures are here:

Feb challenge – Café Terrace

Apr challenge – Antique Vase

Jun challenge – Urban Nightmare

Aug challenge – Long Shadow

Oct challenge – Grave Mistake

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Monette gazed at Zack, her new client. He asked her on the phone to come to his place. Now she knew why. He wore old jeans and a black sweatshirt, but his face was covered by a beautiful old mask. It left only his mouth, eyes, and nostrils bare. Feathers, crystal beads, and golden filigree intertwined in a gorgeous pattern all over his face, from his hairline to his chin, and the magical runes glittered malevolently between the innocent ornaments. Even from across the coffee table, she could feel the magical effluvia and the ill intent of the mask towards its wearer.

“What happened?” she asked quietly.

“It wouldn’t come off,” Zack said. “I found it last year on a trip to Europe. In an antique shop. I put it on for our office Christmas party yesterday, for a lark, and now the f#@$ing thing wouldn’t come off. I couldn’t sleep all night, and now my face is tingling, probably from some … f#@$ing glue.”

“No. From magic,” Monette said. “You did right to call in a magician. This mask is magical, and it means you harm.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It feels like a curse, but I doubt it was directed at you personally.”

He swore. “Could you get it off?” He sounded angry and helpless, which sat oddly with his broad shoulders, muscled forearms, and a general air of self-assurance surrounding him. This man wasn’t used to being helpless.

“I’ll try,” Monette said. Ideas swirled in her head. The magic of the mask felt very powerful, much stronger than hers. She wouldn’t be able to negate its hateful spell, but she might be able to trick it. “Do you have a good quality head shot? As recent as possible.”

“Yes, on my phone.”

“No.” Monette shook her head. “I need a paper copy. I’m a paper mage. Send me several of your best photos by email. I’ll make a paper copy and come back in a couple hours. I need some supplies to make it work.”

Zack nodded, his strong fingers already flying over his phone’s keypad. “I’m not going anywhere. Not in this f#@$ing abomination.”

Deep in thought, Monette left Zack’s luxurious apartment in one of the downtown high-rises and drove to her home in a much less affluent neighborhood. She didn’t pay attention to the city, decked out in all its holiday finery. She was contemplating the malicious spell attached to the mask and what she could do to erase it.

Spellingra, her talking grimoire, wasn’t sanguine either, when Monette outlined her problem, but the book obediently opened up at the section of removal spells. “Erasing that mask might not help,” Spellingra warned, its pages susurrating in distress. “He wears a mask on the inside. That’s why the feathered one stuck on the outside.”

“I know. I’ll have to tell him,” Monette said glumly. She wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. She rather liked the guy, mask and all.

At a neighborhood self-serve photo place, she made a large portrait of Zack on the most expensive glossy paper they had, collected her crayons and a copy of the erasure spell, and drove back to Zack’s three hours later.

“Before I try to remove the mask, I need to draw it on your portrait,” she explained. “Please, sit down, Zack.”

His lips twitched, but he didn’t contradict her. He sat in an easy chair, facing the wall of windows for the best light. Monette placed his portrait on a table in front of her. She used her colored crayons to draw the mask on the portrait in all its elaborate details. The crayons were a special variety, imported from Italy, and super expensive. She didn’t use them often, but she needed them now: they were erasable.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he remarked.

“Magic is never one hundred percent certain,” Monette replied absently, trying to match the color nuances and lines of the mask exactly. “But so far, I haven’t failed a client.”

“Good to know.”

Monette, absorbed in her work, didn’t reply. Zack fell silent too. After she was done, she drew the erasure spell in black ink all around the mask. The spell’s diagram burst into a glow as soon as the last line connected, and Monette realized that the winter dusk already settled over the city. She had to turn on the lights for the next, the trickiest part of her manipulation.

“Tell me if it hurts,” she said. “I’ll try to be as careful as I can.”

“That’s not reassuring,” he said dryly but he didn’t move from his chair.

Monette picked up her eraser, poured her magic into it, and gently rubbed at the mask on her portrait, starting at Zack’s hairline.

He sucked in his breath. “It doesn’t hurt, but it is unpleasant,” he said.

“I know. Sorry.” She continued erasing, not looking at him at all, her full attention on her masterpiece. His forehead emerged first, as the eraser removed a portion of her drawing. His temples cleared up next. His cheeks and a strong line of his jaw. His nose. And finally, the sensitive area around his eyes. He was breathing deeply by now, but he didn’t complain.

“Done,” she said finally and blew the erased crumbs off the photo. She swiped her hand over the photograph to remove every tiny bit. When the last one fell off, her spell diagram winked out, even though the eraser didn’t touch it. The photo under her fingertips didn’t feel as smooth as before – the eraser had done its job – but it didn’t feel too bad. She lifted her eyes.

His face was puffy and pink, but even so, he looked gorgeous, better than on the photo.

“Sorry,” she said again and winced. “I couldn’t help it. You’ll need to apply some lotion for a day or two to deal with the irritation from my eraser.”

Without speaking, he jumped up and disappeared into his washroom. He came out a few moments later.

“Thank you,” he said. His smile blazed. “I never thought I would ever need a magician, thought they were all charlatans, but obviously not.”

Monette sighed. “A bit of a damper, Zack. This mask is an old and powerful spell. I removed its outer manifestation, but I can’t remove the spell itself. I doubt any magician can. It’s attached itself to you, put its hook into you, because you already wear a mask, pretend to be what you are not. I don’t know what you’re or what you do. It’s not my business, but I have to warn you: if you don’t stop wearing your inner mask, this outer one will come back. Not right away, maybe, but in a month, or a year. You have to … unmask yourself to be free of this spell.” She shrugged apologetically. “Sorry.”

He stared at her, his grin dimming. “F#@$,” he said.

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Could you speculate what kind of a mask Zack is wearing in real life? Is he a sensitive artist pretending to be a ruthless businessman? Is he a cold-blooded killer masquerading as a friendly neighbor? Is he an industrial spy? A robot? A magician denying his magic? Tell me in the comments.

Writing to entertain

[image error]It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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NOVEMBER QUESTION: Albert Camus once said, “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” Flannery O’Connor said, “I write to discover what I know.” Authors across time and distance have had many reasons to write. Why do you write what you write?

MY ANSWER: Obviously, I’m not as profound as either of the writers quoted in the question. I write speculative fiction, usually light-hearted, sometimes infused with dry humor. Ask my readers from the WEP community, and they might tell you more about my stories and my characters. Some of them laugh at my stories, which makes me happy.

As to why I write this type of fiction: because that’s what I want to read, and this kind of stories are hard to find in speculative fiction. Lots of speculative fiction writers these days write dark, psychological tales of wars and conflict, of fighting and struggling and hopelessness. They write about deeply flawed heroes and lightless corners of the human psyche. I don’t like such stories. I don’t read them and I don’t write them. Instead, I read simply to entertain myself, and I write for the same purpose: to entertain myself and my readers. I want my readers to smile and relax and forget their troubles for as long as it takes them to read my stories.

WEP Oct 2020 – Grave Mistake

Here is one more story about Monette, the paper mage and owner of the magic agency Small Magics. She operates in the alternative Vancouver, Canada. You can find Monette’s previous magic adventures here:

Feb challenge – Café Terrace

Apr challenge – Antique Vase

Jun challenge – Urban Nightmare

Aug challenge – Long Shadow

This story is my entry for the WEP October 2020 challenge.

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“What can Small Magics do for you, Mr. Galanis?” Monette asked her visitor.

The man sat in the client chair on the other side of her desk, his dark eyes watchful. “My problem is … unusual,” he said. “I seem to have misplaced my grandfather’s … corpse.” He grimaced apologetically.

Monette’s eyebrows shot up. “Corpse?” she said faintly.

“Yes, well. My ancestors came to Canada from Greece a hundred years ago, when the Turks started killing Greeks there.”

Monette nodded in encouragement.

“My great-grandfather was a jeweler, but he couldn’t take much with him during their escape. He buried most of his gold and gems and made a map of the location. He took that map with him, together with the ownership documents. He hoped to return to Greece later to retrieve his property, but it never happened. The documents passed on to his son, my grandfather. They should’ve come to my father afterwards. My father and I decided that I should go to Greece next summer and try to find the family treasure. Meanwhile, two weeks ago, my grandfather died. He was almost ninety. My grandma is the same age and …” He signed. “She dressed her husband for the burial in his best suit and put the documents in his inner breast pocket. We didn’t know. We went on with the funeral.”

“Oh, dear,” Monette murmured. “I’m sorry. Couldn’t you, I don’t know … ask some authorities to exhume the body?”

He snorted. “We have, as soon as we found out. But the problem is – it wasn’t his body inside the coffin. Something went wrong at the funeral house. There were eight funerals that day, all of them in similar coffins, but buried at three different cemeteries. Someone made a mistake. We don’t know where my grandfather is. And we can’t ask to exhume all seven other bodies. Maybe one, if we know for sure, but not all.”

“Of course, not,” Monette said. “But I don’t know what I can do. I’m a paper mage. Maybe someone from a bigger agency would be of more help.”

“I contacted two of the largest magic agencies in Vancouver before I called you,” Galanis said. “They both asked for thirty percent of the cost of recovered jewels on top of their hourly fees. Your website promises flat fees. We are willing to pay a bonus, if we are able to find the jewelry, but thirty percent is too much. Besides, as you say, you’re a paper mage. The documents and the map are paper.”

Monette stared at him. “I need to think,” she said at last.

“Of course. Phone me.” Galanis shook her hand, and the office door closed behind him.

Monette rushed upstairs to her apartment and went straight to her talking grimoire Spellingra, a huge book of spells she had inherited from her witch great aunt. The book lay open on its stand, absorbing the moist, diffused sunlight from the window.

“Hello, Spellingra.” Monette tapped a finger on the book in greeting and outlined her problem.

“Searching for a Greek corpse.” Spellingra chortled. A bunch of its pages rose up defiantly and flopped against each other, as if applauding.

“Searching for a map and a document,” Monette shot back. “And he is willing to pay a bonus. I need a search spell.”

“Thirsty,” said Spellingra. One of its empty pages snapped up suddenly, its sharp edge slicing a shallow cut on Monette’s palm before she could react.

“You sneak!” Monette squeaked and snatched her injured hand away. “You should’ve asked.” Grumbling about the impudence of bloodthirsty spell books, she smeared the blood from the cut on the waiting page.

The page made a slurping sound, and the blood disappeared. “More fun this way,” said Spellingra. Its pages riffed rapidly, as if a strong wind browsed them, until everything stilled.

Monette read the spells on the open pages. When she came to the last one, she grinned.

“Yes! Thank you, Spellingra. Just what I needed.”

She called the client the next morning to meet in the afternoon. Then she went to the nearest dollar store and bought a paper kite and a set of colored paper ribbons. After slavishly copying the complex diagram of the search spell from Spellingra onto the kite, she glued on two ribbons, blue and red, as the kite’s double tails.

When Galanis came through the door, even before they signed the contract, she grilled him on the most important issue.

“You saw the documents and the map, I assume?”

“Of course. Many times.”

“I need words included in either. As many exact words as you can remember. I have to write them down in my search spell.”

“It’s all in Greek.”

“Doesn’t matter. As long as the spelling is correct. Write them down in random order.” She pushed a sheet of paper towards him and copied over twenty words he had written onto the ribbons attached to the kite.

“Let’s go,” she said as soon as they signed the contract. “We’ll take my car.”

Outside, she blew her magic at the kite to activate the spell and sent it into the sky. “Search,” she ordered.

The kite soared and headed east. She followed in the car, her magical strings tying her to the kite stronger than any physical string could be.

The kite’s first stop was the Vancouver Public Library. “Of course,” Monette said with chuckle and sent a new pulse of magic to the kite. “Search again, darling.”  

The kite’s second stop was a cemetery. It came down to rest on a temporary wooden marker atop a fresh grave.

“Your documents are here,” Monette said happily. As always, a well-executed spell filled her with elation. “I’ll write you a report when I get home. You could take it to the judge as proof.”

“A kite,” said Galanis, eyeing the kite with interest.

“Paper magic,” Monette corrected primly. “Like a magic Google. I’ll have to fix my website to include a percentage in cases like yours. For the next time.”    

I’m a journalist

[image error]It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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For the first time ever since I joined the IWSG blog hop, I forgot the posting day. My excuse: I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. I hope it is not too late to post now, even though I live in Vancouver, on the West Coast of Canada. It’s only 12pm here, but most of the other people in the blog hop have already passed their midday, and maybe entered the night.

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OCTOBER QUESTION: When you think of the term working writer, what does that look like to you? What do you think it is supposed to look like? Do you see yourself as a working writer or aspiring or hobbyist, and if latter two, what does that look like?

MY ANSWER: I’m a freelance writer, a journalist. I suppose, it qualifies me as a working writer, although part-time only.

I recently saw this quote about freelance writers and can’t refrain from sharing it.

The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

~ Robert Benchley

Benchley’s definition fits, even though he only mentions men. But then he died in 1945, so perhaps equality in journalism was an unfamiliar concept to him. I won’t hold it against the guy.

I write for a small local newspaper, have been writing for them since 2007. They pay me per piece (Yay, Benchley!) And despite the COVID and my personal struggles with breast cancer this summer, I’m still writing for them. I just finished an article about an art show in our Jewish Community Centre. That is my beat: art and artists in Vancouver. I know the topic and I love the artists.

I also write fiction, but that doesn’t pay nearly as well as my journalistic endeavors. Sometimes not at all. Alas. I would prefer the opposite ratio, but as a realist, I take what I can get.

She conquered a reluctant reader

[image error]It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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SEPTEMBER QUESTION: If you could choose one author, living or dead, to be your beta partner, who would it be and why?

MY ANSWER: Of all the writers I love, I think I would choose Anne Bishop as a beta partner. The reason for that: I have a lot to learn from her, even though I’m not sure she has anything to learn from me.

I entered Bishop’s fandom late, only a couple years ago. By then, she has written a couple different series of traditional fantasy and one series of urban fantasy. I tried one of her traditional fantasy books years ago, didn’t like it, and didn’t read anything of hers for a long time. I read favorable reviews of her latest urban fantasy series, set in the world of The Others, but they didn’t tempt me. The reviews and descriptions mentioned that the heroine was addicted to self-cutting, and I never wanted to read about that kind of addiction.

When her book Lake Silence came out in 2018, I finally caved in and decided to try it. No self-cutting in that book, right? And I fell in love. That one novel overcame my resistance to read this author. Afterwards, I went back to the beginning of this series and devoured all 7 books of The Others cycle. Her other series still don’t work for me, but this one was amazing. It overturned my preconceived ideas of this writer and made me a fan – a feat only a Master could accomplish. I want to learn from her to write such compelling worlds and populate it with fascinating, 3D characters. I want to learn from her how to win over a reluctant reader.

Truth to tell, I loved The Others series and its characters so much, I re-read it a couple of times since. I even wrote a fan fiction novelette set in the world of The Others. If you’re a Bishop’s fan, like I’m, you might like my story too. I hope it does credit to Anne Bishop and her fertile imagination.

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My story Acting for Shapeshifters takes place in Sparkletown a year after the Great Predation. All the characters are original, but the world belongs to Anne Bishop.

Summary

Tansy Margolis is a comic TV actress, not a hero. But when she discovers a wounded Panthergard girl on her patio, she has to act before her beloved Sparkletown is destroyed by the Others.

The story is available on two sites: Wattpad or Archive of Our Own.

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What about you? Have you ever encountered a writer you disliked at first, and then read something else of hers, and your dislike melted into admiration?

WEP Aug 2020 – Long Shadow

Below is the next story in my paranormal flash fiction series about Monette, the magic mistress of paper. She can do a lot with paintings or drawings, origami or printed words. You can find Monette’s previous magic adventures here:

Feb challenge – Café Terrace

Apr challenge – Antique Vase

Jun challenge – Urban Nightmare

This story is my entry for the WEP August 2020 challenge.

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Through the small rectangular window in the closed door, Monette stared at the floor of the entry hall of her clients’ house. Worms wreathed inside, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Small worms, but their sheer number was staggering. When she put her palm flat on the door, she could feel the heat of malevolent magic seeping out. She snatched her hand away.

“What happened, Jane?” she asked as she backed down the porch steps.

“I don’t know,” the young woman replied, her eyes huge and red from weeping. “We celebrated my husband’s birthday last night, had a few guests. Then we went to bed. And this morning … this. We grabbed out clothing and ran out like hell. I threw up until my stomach hurt. Then I called you, and John went to work.”

Monette grunted. She might hurl too, she thought, if she didn’t have to fix this wormy abomination. Worms, yew!

“Could you do anything?” Jane asked.

“I’ll try. First, I have to get rid of the worms. Come back to my car.”

They settled inside Monette’s car, and she pulled out a hundred-sheets pack of colored printer paper, ten sheets of each color, from her supply satchel. The sheaf was held together by a white ribbon, with a price tag still attached.

Monette folded the paper, turning each sheet into an origami bird, while Jane watched with a frown. “Birds eat worms, right?” Monette muttered, blowing a little bit of her magic into each bird. They fluttered, animated and expectant.

“Paper birds?” Jane asked faintly.

“I’m a paper mage,” Monette said absently, her concentration on the birds. With the first ten yellow birds, she walked back to the house. Jane trailed in silence.

“Open the door, Jane,” Monette instructed.

Jane unlocked the door and jumped out of the way. Monette pulled the door open and launched her yellow birds inside. “Have a feast, darlings.” She slammed the door shut.

“I don’t think ten birds will suffice. Too many worms.” She trudged back to the car. “Let’s make more.”

She went through thirty more birds – ten of each blue, red, and orange – before she decided it was safe to enter the house. She made ten more birds, lilac ones, and stomped in. Jane tiptoed at her heels.

Monette’s fingers ached from folding so many birds, and her head throbbed from expending too much of her magic too quickly, but she didn’t think she was done, and she was right.

Her colored birds littered the floor of the small house, the useless wads of crumpled paper now that their magic had expired. Too much eating, not good for anyone, Monette thought wryly. Fortunately, the floor was clear. In the living room, she released her lilac birds to deal with the leftover worms and stopped in front of a coffee table.

A black plastic skull gaped at her. As she watched, a worm wriggled out of one of the eye sockets, dropped to the table, and one of her birds swooped at it.

“What is it?” she asked quietly.

“Oh, boy,” said Jane. “A birthday gift. John’s old girlfriend brought it. I thought it was a joke. I thought … There were no worms last night.”

“What did you think?” Monette studied the skull. It radiated evil intent.

“I thought she didn’t hate me anymore. John and she broke up a year ago, after he and I met, but maybe she still holds a grudge.”

“Some grudge,” Monette said. “A year, huh?”

“We love each other. She made his life difficult the first few months, but then she seemed to have calmed down. I thought … she accepted. It’s been longer than a year. You couldn’t force who you love.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Monette agreed, remembering her own disastrous relationship. “But some emotions, like bitterness, cast a very long shadow.”

[image error]“Yeah,” said Jane. Her eyes followed the lilac birds, as they hopped about, enthusiastically pecking the occasional worms still crawling out of the skull.

“There is a curse on this skull,” Monette said.

“I should throw it away.” Jane started for the table.

“No. Don’t touch it. It won’t help. I’ll deal with it.”

Monette pulled a large, pre-spelled cardboard sheet out of her satchel. The spell of flattening was inscribed around the edges. She always had several such pre-packaged paraphernalia with her. She donned her plastic insulated gloves – she couldn’t touch a curse with her bare hands – and gently put the skull into the middle of the sheet. Then she activated the spell with a touch of her finger and winced, as the pounding in her head increased two-fold. After she finished here, she would need at least a week to recharge her magic.

The spell flared. The skull resisted for a moment, and then sank into the cardboard, becoming a photographic image of itself. A worm trying to squiggle out of one eye socket froze, as it too turned into a flat image. As soon as the flattening was complete, the spell winked out.

“Excellent! Now the next step.” Monette rummaged in her satchel for a tube of glue and a brush and covered the sheet with a thick layer of glue, fixing the image.

Then she exhaled in satisfaction and sank onto the sofa beside the table. She felt drained, exhausted, and sad.

“Now what?” Jane asked.

“Now it should dry. Jane, please collect all the dead birds of mine and burn them in the yard. Don’t touch them with your hands. Use a mop.”

“Okay. What’re you going to do with that … painting?”

Monette sighed and rubbed her aching temples. “When it dries, I’m going to take it to the Vancouver Magic Guild and make a report. I’ll need the girlfriend’s name. What she did was illegal. Using magic to hurt or harass anyone is a crime. Whatever magician she used to make this skull should’ve known better. Gosh, I hate such cases. I hate ratting on my fellow magician, but I have no choice. They broke the law; they must’ve known it was a curse, not a prank. If I don’t report it, I’d be breaking the law too.”

“What will happen to the girlfriend?”

“That’s for the Magic Guild court to decide, not me, thank god,” Monette said. “But I don’t think she’ll trouble you again. Your worm infestation is over.”

Novelette is my preference

[image error]It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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AUGUST QUESTION: Have you ever written a piece that became a form, or even a genre, you hadn’t planned on writing in? Or do you choose a form/genre in advance?

MY ANSWER: I started out by writing novels. It was before the self-publishing phenomenon exploded, before Amazon even. Like many beginner writers, I had trouble finding a publisher for my novels. One of the advices I got at that time – from several writing textbooks and teachers – was that to improve my chances of publication, I needed to write short stories and submit them to magazines and anthologies.

I followed that advice and even got some of my short stories published. But most short story markets have a word limit, and it is not generous: usually 3 to 5 thousand words. I wanted more words to explore my stories and my characters.

At about that time, I discovered wattpad – a popular self-publishing platform. So I started writing a longer story specifically for wattpad. Not a novel, I knew that, but I didn’t want to restrict myself to the 5K word limit either. I just had a story in mind and wrote it without putting a tight ceiling on my word count. The story sort-of morphed itself into a novella. By now, my novella Fibs in the Family on wattpad has over 59 thousand readers and is ranked #69 in the Regency category (out of more than a thousand other regency romances).

Since then, novellas or novelettes (between 10K and 25K words) have become a story length I’m most comfortable with. I don’t want to write novels anymore, and a short story (up to 6K words) seems too confining.

What about you? What story length is in your zone?

Chasing a MacGuffin

[image error]It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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You probably all know what a MacGuffin is. In case some of you don’t, this is a quick intro into one of the oldest medicines for the writer’s block – a MacGuffin, a band-aid for a stumbling story. Since ancient Babylon, writers and playwrights used MacGuffins to infuse their narratives with danger and excitement.

A MacGuffin is a fictional plot device, usually an object, or sometimes a person, everyone in the story is searching for. MacGufffins drive the plots, as both the protagonist and the antagonist compete to find them first. For that reason, MacGuffin stories are easy to write. The motivations of the protagonist as well as the conflict are already embedded in the trope.

Most often, MacGuffins are featured in action adventure stories: thrillers, mysteries, speculative fiction. Examples include a treasure map or a cake recipe, a priceless jewel or a top-secret spy file, a weapon’s prototype or a rare statue. The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings is a MacGuffin. So is the Aladdin’s magic lamp. Indiana Jones in the eponymous movie enterprise usually pursues his MacGuffins with great resourcefulness and determination.

The etymology of the term is uncertain, but most attribute it to Alfred Hitchcock. He used MacGuffins inventively in some of his movies. He illustrated the term by an anecdote about two men on a train:

One man says, “What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?”

The other replies, “Oh, that’s a MacGuffin.”

The first one asks, “What’s a MacGuffin?”

“Well,” the second man says, “it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.”

The first man says, “But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.”

The other one answers, “Well then, that’s no MacGuffin.”

The actual nature of a MacGuffin is unimportant to the story. What matters is the hunt and the struggles. Adding an expiration date to the MacGuffin’s properties is another tool writers use to crank up the tension. Find the dragon egg before it hatches. Find the bomb before it explodes – how many thrillers come to mind with this one?

What are your favorite MacGuffins? Did you use any in your stories?

WEP June 2020 – Urban Nightmare

Another story about Monette, a magic worker of modest powers, in Vancouver, Canada, in the 21st century. Monette is a paper mage. You can read about her previous adventures here:

Feb 2020 challenge – Café Terrace

April 2020 challenge – Antique Vase

This story is my entry for the WEP June 2020 challenge.

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Monette gazed at the cheap four-storey apartment building. She doubted anyone living in this dump had enough money to pay her fee, but that was the address her client gave her. A bad address.

She eyed the plastic bags bulging with garbage along the sidewalk. Disgusting content spilled out of many torn bags. Fat black flies buzzed happily. She couldn’t see the dumpster in the alley behind the house, but she knew it was overflowing, like all the other dumpsters in the city. The stink was even worse here than where she lived, in a much more decent district. This poor eastern side of Vancouver stunk the worst.

The city garbage collectors had been on strike for almost a month; started as soon as the heat wave hit. Neither the muggy heat nor the garbage collectors showed any signs of relenting, and meanwhile, the city choked on garbage.

Labor negotiations, my ass, she though angrily, as she trudged the stairs to the third floor. Even the stairwell reeked. Why couldn’t the garbage companies go on strike in winter? Why couldn’t the Magic Guild deal with the garbage while the strike lasted, for that matter? They did, for select rich people, but what about the rest of the population?

“Hi,” Monette told the pale young woman who opened the door. “Are you Tara? I’m Monette from Small Magics. You called me.”

“Yes, please, come in. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

Monette stepped inside. The apartment was small, hot, and stuffy. A boy around two years old, as thin and pale as his mother, wore nothing but diapers. He played with colorful plastic blocks in the middle of the living room. Although the large window was  firmly closed, the odor of the rotting garbage penetrated through.

Monette wrinkled her nose. “This strike is horrible,” she said. “The worst nightmare.”

“Yes,” Tara agreed. “My window looks on the alley, at the dumpster. I can’t open it because of the smell. But Tony has asthma. He needs fresh air, and I don’t know what to do. He’s been getting worse and worse. He needs his inhaler a few times a day. That’s why I called you. Could you do anything about this stench?” She lifted her hopeful eyes from her son to Monette’s face. “I can pay your fee.”

“I’m sorry,” Monette said helplessly. “I don’t think I can help you. It’s a city-wide problem, and my magic is small, confined to paper. It says so on my website.”

“I thought … maybe … if you could do it for one apartment only …” Tara winced. She started saying something else when the boy on the floor began coughing and wheezing. Tara hurried to her son.

Monette crossed the room with its second-hand furniture and looked out the closed window. The wall of another building loomed close. In the dim alley between them, the dumpster had its lid flung open, and the garbage bags piled up like a mountain, almost reaching the second floor. What didn’t fit inside formed another, equally large pile around the dumpster, its metal sides invisible beneath the heaps of bags. Small gray creatures nosed around, industrious and unafraid. The rats having a field day. A field month.

Darn it! Monette should be able to help this poor family somehow. But with her weak paper magic, she could do squat against the city-wide garbage strike. Maybe she could deal with the stink in one little apartment, as Tara suggested. She felt so sorry for the kid.

“Tara, I’ll think about it. I’ll be back in a day or two. I promise,” she said.

“Of course. Thank you,” Tara said dully. She sounded resigned. She didn’t believe Monette’s promise. “How much do I owe you for your visit?”

“Nothing,” Monette said. “We’ll talk about my fee when I come back. Bye.” She fled the depressing little apartment.

What could she do? Maybe the strike would end tomorrow, she mused without much hope.

The strike didn’t end tomorrow or the next day, but Monette found an amazing photograph of the alpine blue sky on the internet. She printed it and made a larger copy to fit Tara’s window screen. Then she spent an entire afternoon paging through her talking grimoire, Spellingra, searching for the right spell.

Finally, Spellingra deigned to make a suggestion. “Filter. Make a filter, stupid magician.” The heavy pages flipped so quickly Monette just managed to snatch her fingers away. The book stopped on the page describing the filter spell.

“Genius book!” Monette exclaimed.

“Yes!” said Spellingra. The sparkling emanating from her binding intensified.

Monette painted the complex spell on the blank side of the large sky picture. Three days later, she was back, ringing Tara’s doorbell.

“You came back?” Tara gasped.

“Yes, I’m back.” Monette marched towards the window. She removed the screen from the window and affixed the picture, the spell facing outside. Then she concentrated and touched one corner of the elaborate spell with her finger. And poured her magic into the spell, as much as she had. Even when her headache started, she didn’t stop. The more power the spell absorbed, the longer it would last.

[image error]The spell lines flashed, pulsing with magic, and the paper turned transparent, transforming whatever foul stink would come from the outside into the luminous clean air of the Alps in the picture. Monette only stopped when she was drained completely. She sagged onto the sofa.

“You’ll have to put the screen back yourself,” she said to Tara and closed her eyes. “I need a few minutes to recharge.” Of course, the complete magical recharge would probably take a whole week, but she didn’t have any new cases waiting.

“Thank you,” Tara whispered. “Are you going to be okay?”

Monette inhaled deeply and smiled. The air inside the apartment was already improving. Instead of rot, it now smelled faintly of rain and grass. “It won’t last forever, Tara,” she cautioned. “But I hope it’ll outlast this nightmarish strike. I’m going to make a similar one for my own windows. When my magic comes back.”

She opened her eyes and saw Tara fiddling with her wallet. “No,” Monette said. “Clean air shouldn’t cost money. That’s a pro bono spell. A fine name for a spell, isn’t it?”

One culture or all of humanity

[image error]It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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Sometimes, people assume that what is traditional for one cultural group is traditional for humanity. Or should be. It is a wide-spread misapprehension and is forgivable in most private cases, unless it is put in fiction by a writer. Then, it becomes an erroneous assumption on a scale corresponding to that writer’s popularity. It might even lead to racism or other drastic conflicts between cultures. I was thinking of it when I read a book by Anne Bishop, one of her The Others series (*).

In the book, a couple of human women discuss the drizzling of honey on a scone, and how the others (not human) don’t do it because they had never been taught the right (=human) way to eat honey. The conclusion: not enough humanity in those who don’t know. The women in question are good persons, set to bridge the gap between humans and the others, so they decided to help out the non-humans by teaching them to ‘drizzle honey,’ among other things.

I grew up in Russia. I had never heard about drizzling honey on a scone. I had never seen a scone either, much less tasted one. We didn’t have scones in Russia. We ate honey in a different way: ladled some into a small bowl and ate it with a teaspoon like a liquid jam, or spread it on a piece of bread like marmalade, if the honey was viscous enough not to run off. Or added it into our tea to sweeten it. I had never even seen a honey dipper until I immigrated to Canada and started watching English-language movies. I’m sure there are many other cultures in the world that don’t ‘drizzle honey.’

Does it mean we’re not humans? No. But it means that people born someplace else might have a different tradition of consuming honey than the English-speaking people do. That is just one tiny example, but it is symptomatic enough to demonstrate the global point.

Writers have a great responsibility not to disseminate the wrong ‘facts.’ We have to do lots of research to accomplish that, but sometimes, even an excellent writer stumbles on that task, when the tradition in question is trivial, seemingly not worthy of research. Like Anne Bishop did with her ‘drizzling honey.’

What do you think? Do you research exhaustively? Do the traditions you mention in your fiction belong to a specific culture or to all of humanity? Are you sure? How do you treat this issue in your writing?

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(*) Note: I love Anne Bishop’s The Others series and its characters, so the musing in this post is in no way a condemnation of the books or the author.