MCM's Blog, page 24

It's Web Serial Writers Month…

… And we have a special guest post by Kira from Epiguide.com, who is also in charge of WeSeWriMo. Never heard of it? Kira is about to fill you in on all the details.

Take it away, love.

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Thanks very much to Terra, MCM and everyone at 1889 Labs for letting me chat away about a project very near and dear to my heart:  Web Series Writing Month, aka WeSeWriMo. (link: http://www.wesewrimo.org)

Just the facts:

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's heaven for?"

- Robert Browning

From August 1 – 31, writers of web-based serialized fiction (anything from text-based narratives or scripts to webcomics to video webseries to hyperfiction and beyond) will spend the month churning out material with a set goal of … well, whatever measurement that suits you. It's your creative project: you choose the goal!  Sign up before August 1 over at http://bit.ly/wese2011 to get started.

How it all began:

The idea is, of course, inspired by NaNoWriMo (link: http://www.nanowrimo.org), the famous annual challenge to write 50,000 words throughout the month of November.

WeSeWriMo first came to life in 2007 over at the EpiGuide (link: http://www.epiguide.com), a community devoted to web-original fiction and entertainment serials.  The proposal to offer web-based authors their own writing marathon came from EpiGuide member Michael, the creator of Footprints (link: http://www.footprintsmedia.com) – a websoap published continuously since 1997.

When Michael brought up the concept over at the EpiGuide, we all agreed that the unique nature of online writing demanded its own version of a monthly challenge.  As the admin and dogsbody-in-chief of the community, I agreed to help bring this project to life and host it via the Eppy.

At the time, many wondered why webfiction writers couldn't just participate in NaNoWriMo. Why the need for something different? How is WeSeWriMo different?

Well, we differ significantly from NaNoWriMo, and the way we do this—and why—is due to the EpiGuide's philosophy itself.

To us, the whole raison d'etre behind web-based creative efforts is individuality, freedom, and innovation.  We embrace the vast variety of online writing genres and publishing formats. Sure, many serial writers are producing straightforward novels of a pre-determined length and serializing them by posting a chapter/scene a week.  But others have open-ended serials, and use formats such as branching hyperfiction, webcomics/graphic novels, audio, video, or screenplays.

While NaNoWriMo's 50,000-word challenge may work for someone who's hoping to complete a novella (or make a start on a larger novel), it doesn't do much for webcomic or virtual series scriptwriters.  Further, our personal benchmarks vary widely: some online writers may find churning out high word-counts easy, yet actually posting the finished product to be the real challenge.  Sometimes it's the scheduling that's the sticking point; how often should one post an installment? Once a week? Daily?  For those whose works are not confined to a linear narrative, would a word-count challenge include 'extras' such as character profiles or journal entries?

So rather than a single goal for all writers, WeSeWriMo offers individuality:  the writers themselves decide what they wish to accomplish during the month—and usually the choices are as different as the works themselves.  50,000 words?  Possibly.  Or ten installments. Or fifty scenes. Or a hundred comic panels.  Or… you get the point.

Wondering what goal to pick?  The idea is to make it ambitious enough to be a challenge, but realistic enough so that you're not dooming yourself to failure before you even start.  You can even try for more than one achievement. For example, in 2010, the goal I chose for my own webserial, About Schuyler Falls (link: http://www.skyfalls.com), was 30,000 words and two episodes completed and posted.  By looking at the list of 2010's winners (link: http://www.wesewrimo.org/2010.php), you can get a feel for the variety of goals.

To sign up, register your free EpiGuide account (link: http://www.epiguide.com/forums/register.php) and then join us over at the official sign-up thread (link: http://bit.ly/wese2011) to declare your goal. Goals can be changed at any time up till the start of WeSeWriMo, but after that, you're stuck with it! The goals and links to your website are published over on http://www.wesewrimo.org; those who successfully complete their goals will have their sites linked throughout the year. Not to mention the thrill of victory and a sweet little banner award and certificate.

Once you sign up, you'll receive an EpiGuide blog (usually a feature offered only to members with 25+ posts) and some basic gadgets where you can chart your progress in public. Folks can discuss their challenges/obstacles, tips, and successes in the official WeSeWriMo forum at the Eppy. And one can post/tweet about it anywhere else one fancies, of course.

You'll find posts with ideas and links to inspire any flagging, weary writers to keep their eyes on the prize, where everyone chimes in with suggestions and encouragement. Sometimes we offer fun/silly ways to challenge ourselves (such as including the name of our serial hidden within dialogue, or writing acronyms throughout several paragraphs, that sort of thing). Last year was our biggest group of participants yet, with seventy-five writers taking on the challenge.

To sum up:

Where NaNoWriMo is all about writing a novel (really, a novella), and ScriptFrenzy a script for TV, film or theater, WeSeWriMo celebrates the diversity of formats and methods for creating a regularly produced entertainment serial for a web-only audience. The EpiGuide is all about this fast-growing genre, and we want to encourage, challenge and inspire the community of web-based creators.

Remember, all writers of online serialized fiction are welcome, no matter what the genre or format. So if your webserial is a gritty realistic podcast about vampire astronauts solving medical mysteries in the Wild West, welcome aboard! The more the merrier.

Even if this project isn't something you personally wish to join, I hope writers will spread the word about WeSeWriMo so our participation can keep growing. If you have a blog, or are a member of any writing communities/groups, we'd love it if you'd consider posting about WeSeWriMo where appropriate (please don't spam!). If you're on Twitter, chat it up often and use the hashtag #WeSeWriMo (along with other useful tags such as #weblit, #webfiction, #webseries, #amwriting and #writegoal).

When posting, link to http://bit.ly/webserial or just http://wesewrimo.org. Or if you want to link directly to the sign-up thread, use http://bit.ly/wese2011.

Thanks!  And best of luck to everyone participating.

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Headline image by rahego

Crash

A dusty road is unforgiving. It steals your comfort, the heat beating down from above, a relentless sunshine that scorches all sense of time and reason, reducing the mind to one solitary thought. Thirst. To quench thirst, to stop being thirsty, to drown oneself rather than feel this unbearable dehydration ever again. Inside of his host, he could feel the rubbery texture of his suffering body, the freckles now darkened to black blotches on the surface of his host's skin.

"You are one heck of a mess," Clara said, taking her eyes off the road to glance back at him over her shoulder. "It's been a real quiet stretch of road along here, I don't know where we're going to find you a proper house to live in." She fanned herself with the map, the gentle breeze it provided a teasing comfort. "I sure could use a tall glass of lemonade right now. That's the only thing that beats this kind of heat. That tart sweetness, it lingers on the tongue, gets all that saliva jumping. That's why it quenches your thirst, see. It's a whole chemical process, one that works better than water."

He groaned and closed his eyes, his head heavy on the old pillow. "Water. It would do me good."

"Never mind water, you need a whole new hotel complete with swimming pool and basement bar." She shook her head, her hands tight on the steering wheel. "You look like you've been dragged through hellfire. Maybe a good dose of the holy water would cure you of what ails you." She bit her bottom lip, her fingers tapping along the rim of the steering wheel in haphazard, jazz jittering. "I know what it is you need me to do, but you should have gone and told me back in Foss, where there was plenty of human sacks that you could fill. I had that mayor all lined up, but oh no, he wasn't good enough for the likes of you. You're real stupid, you know that? That was a winning ticket of flesh you threw away."

He kept his eyes closed, the heaviness in his head a swirling mass of black motor oil that refused to metabolize. There was comfort in the numbness it provided, but there was also the danger of his host collapsing, the skin rendering and leaving him free to seep out of the large wounds to lay in a jellied, immovable mess on the floor of the Chevrolet. He ran his hand over his dry mouth, flakes of skin peeling off onto his palm. "I need water."

"What we need is a good party." Clara tapped her fingers along the steering wheel, the rhythm now steady, formulaic. "My feet have been itching for a fox-trot since Kansas. This little dust bowl has to have something. It's been slim pickings the further west we go, and I'm starting to wonder if the whole of California's going to be nothing but some big, depressing shoreline instead of the blast of life I know it has to be." She grinned, red lips peeled back over her even, large ivory teeth. "But that's just me being pessimistic. Really, how crazy is that? Hollywood not being a place built on a girl's dreams, did you ever…?"

His groaning annoyed her and she let out an impatient sigh. "The point is, we can't go moaning over what we don't know. You should have let me kill that mayor and you should have got yourself a brand new leather sack, a real tailored fit. But oh no, Mr. I'm Taking The High Road — you had to go and demand we hit the road before the Sherriff hunted us down. What Sherriff? If you meant Borden, we were way out of his jurisdiction and out of his concern. We could have slaughtered the whole town in front of him and without him able to cross the state line he couldn't do a thing to stop us."

"Stop you, you mean," he corrected her. "I have no interest in killing off a whole town."

She shrugged, the issue unimportant. "You wouldn't be able to do that any easier than he could have." She turned her head to face him, her arm reaching down to shove his shoulder. "You've been sleeping like the dead lately. There's something real wrong with you. I don't get it, that body should have lasted you longer."

"It didn't."

"I get that, you lunkhead, but I can't figure as to why. The last one did you good for well over a week, and that one had plenty of wear and tear before you got to it, believe me." She glanced back at the road, her hand carelessly steering, the wheels of the Chevrolet kicking up thick clouds of dust that partially obscured their view. "It's that damned motor oil, that's what it is. You're soaked in it. Light a match and your flame would never go out."

He opened his eyes at this. He lifted his head painfully up from the mouldy pillow, a palm under his chin holding it up. "You wouldn't."

She narrowed her black rimmed eyes at him, her arm draped over the back of her driver's seat as she leaned over, making sure he heard her. "Like a hurricane lamp. That's what you'd be. And I'd dance naked around your corpse and carve x's and o's into ashes when the flames were done with you."

"You're an evil creature."

"You don't know what evil means."

"I'm getting a good education."

"Lunkhead. I'm no different than anyone else. There's no hellfire waiting for me."

"I don't know what hellfire is."

She threw her head back and let out a loud laugh. "It's the big bang, all over again!"

Bright lights. Sun glinting off steel.

Arms.

A face.

A mouth… No, two mouths. Opened wide. Terror.

That's exactly how it happened.

The universe rolled over three times before it finally settled in for its nap. Destruction lay in pieces of mangled steel all around them, heavy bales of smoke issuing forth from both mangled motor cars. She was already on her feet, staggering towards the other automobile, a farmer's truck to be precise. There was a deep gash on the back of her leg that bled out in a thin stream into the belly of her heel. The inside of the farmer's truck was engulfed in flames. Hellfire, he thought. It was burning the last remnants of the poor farmer's jaw to cinders. A gold tooth sizzled and popped as it melted.

She wiped at her chin with the back of her hand, drawing away blood from a tiny cut. The farmer remained in the driver's seat, his mouth in a silent, charred scream as the flames licked over his body with hungry fury. She turned back to where he was waiting at the side of the road, the Chevrolet crumpled into pieces beside and in front of him. She placed her hands on her hips, surveying the scene.

"Well, that beats all."

He glanced up at her from the side of the road where he was sitting, her body strangely unaffected by the horrible scene. "You have hardly a scratch on you."

"I do," she said, and pointed at the tiny cut on her chin.

He gestured to the ragged chunk of flesh that was all that was left of his right arm. "Of course. How unobservant of me. You missed that gash on your leg."

"This is all your fault." She checked her heel and tutted over the injury. With great effort, she helped him to standing, an action that caused a considerable amount of discomfort, especially when he nearly slipped out of the torn apart limb. "All I really wanted was a party, and you had to go and tempt fate."

"How so?"

"You can't talk of the devil without him coming around." She snatched her purse up from where it had fallen near the rolling steering wheel, now beheaded from its usual spot at the motor car's dashboard. She rummaged inside of it, pulling out her cigarette tin and a match. Her hands were rock steady as she lit herself some smouldering comfort. "We'll have to walk for a while. It's getting to be dusk, and we have to find some place to hole up until morning. You're not leaking too much, not now anyway. We'll tie that up and pretend you're just another soldier home with a war wound."

She shook out a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at the ragged stump of his arm before tying it on tightly. "If it's an old war wound, it shouldn't be bleeding," he reminded her.

Her concern was minimal. "We'll be walking in the dark soon, no one will notice. Damn, but it's a hot night, a girl could use a cold drink, a tall lemonade, or even a special iced tea, the kind without a lick of iced tea in it. Don't be looking so glum, we have to get away from this scene, there's no need for having coppers around over a silly little car wreck." She marched ahead of him, heedless of his injury and discomfort. She stomped her foot, furious at his lethargy. "Come on, we have to get away from here, quick and quicker!"

He limped towards her as fast as he could, the sloshing of himself inside his sorely injured host putting him off balance. "I don't know why you are berating me, I wasn't the one who crashed the stupid motor car. And just how are we going to get to California now? I have a real fear my legs will fall off well before then, probably somewhere along Texola."

"Shamrock," she reminded him. "That's where the Reynold's Hotel is. You're going to make it there, because I want to be there. The manager owes me a favour and he's going to deliver." She stopped short, waiting for him and his dragging feet to catch up. "Oh come on, I've seen corpses move faster than you!"

She paused, her head cocked to one side. A puzzled expression overtook her otherwise stone cold face, her sharp features softening as they recognized the tune dancing along the sparks that still lit the air around them. "That there's a party," she whispered to herself, her dark eyes lit up with inward glee. She ran back to him and grabbed his one good arm and dragged him forward. "You hear that? It's singing. There's a party going on all right, and we're inviting ourselves!"

"I can't go in there like this."

"Don't be stupid. You came home from the war with a few things lost, is all."

She pulled him onto a wooded path, the darkness sliding over them in an opaque thickness that was not unlike his favourite drink. She pulled him onward, heedless of the way the twigs and debris of the path dug into his exposed areas of flesh, cutting lines of seeping black. "Langley played this on his trumpet. Oh, does that ever take me back! Listen, you can hear Langley's heart breaking in those higher notes, a fool and his heart, both exploded. He's really good, whoever is on that stage. Listen to the way that horn weeps and wails!"

It was true. He paused to rest against the thick trunk of an old oak, its branches teeming above him in black fingers, ready to clutch at him and pluck what limbs he had left apart. Langley's trumpet, or rather the ghost of it, echoed across the forest floor, a creeping sadness that sank everything it touched into a moonlit blue hue. "I've missed that sound," he admitted, surprised at himself. "It's the only thing of this world I can say I truly understand."

"I don't want to be hearing your gums flap-flapping right now, not when my toes are tap-tapping." She skipped ahead of him, feet deftly avoiding tangled roots and wayward rocks. "I'm betting that little hellhole is well watered. Full of spirits and darkies, I'd say. That's the way it is down here, down south. People segregate, only to come back together in strange ways. The booze hound sorority."

The further they walked in, the more the area became swampy and murky, the muck giving off a vile stench not unlike the innards of his unfortunate host. "I'm not so certain we should be going here." There was something in Langley's ghost, the lament of the trumpet, that was off its usual rhythm. There was a discord in the notes. A wayward anarchy that hadn't resided there before.

"They would have come running if they heard that crash." She pulled her lipstick out of her handbag, but it was too dark for her to properly apply it. She shoved her tools back into the handbag with a loud curse. "I'd say it's kind of strange, having a party in the middle of the week, in the middle of a swamp, but these southern types do things differently, I guess." She was careful to keep the hem of her stolen dress well out of the muck, her white knees shining like beacons in the forest darkness.

"I don't know why it's so important for you to go to a party. There's no gangsters there. Only lonely farmers and xenophobic locals."

"Goes to show what you know," she said, her hips swinging, her handbag in a pendulum arc behind her as she walked. "I know lots of folks down this way. Where there's a good amount of drink, there's a good amount of music, dancing and all round good fellas. I'm going to nab me one and get him to buy me a drink. Some good old boy who wants to make sure America doesn't die of thirst."

"The road is cut off. There's debris everywhere." He hobbled up close to her, anger welling within him at her blatant disregard for the precarious nature of their situation. "We are going to be hung from the nearest tree all because you heard a familiar song. That man in the truck, he had to have been a local. Smashing into him and leaving like that, without saying anything… These people won't easily forgive this."

"And how would you know that?" she snapped back. "I thought you've never been in the south."

"I haven't. But I met your terrible friend, Robert Coen. He was a Texan, as I recall. He didn't live long, thank goodness, you took care of that, but he was around long enough to get his meaty hand around my throat. He crushed the larynx. He told me, flat out, 'This is what Southern boys do when you piss them off'. I've done my best not to do so again."

She had nothing to say, mesmerized as she was by the horn and its happy lamentation. He followed her with that self same feeling of impending doom, one which would result in a new host and a slew of other wasted human bodies, each with neatly carved x's and o's on their eyes. One open. One closed.

He shifted in his host and caught himself before he slid out of the poorly bandaged arm socket, his essence sloshing back into his host with phlegm solidity. He wouldn't be able to take many more steps, and she was heedless of his injuries and his decrepit state, which was by now rendering him fully helpless. She would gladly watch him wither away, he thought. She would poke his jelly consistency with a stick and move on without another thought about him.

How easy it would be, to remain so cold and unthinking of others. Perhaps the stress of reaching his target would not tug at his soul the way it did on a minute by minute basis, every linear measure of time full to bursting with worry. He could be wrong about California, and this whole journey was a mistake. It was a thought that curled black around his inner heart and guts, squeezing them into painful shapes.

Now, here they were, on her usual mission. Her handbag swung in time to her happy steps, her pearls glinting against the thin streams of moonlight that made it to the forest floor. He held back, not wanting to be too close to her, to show any kind of association. There was a good chance she would find someone in that party not worthy of life, and he was in no mood to watch her work.

Music swelled with life as they made their way closer to the small, ramshackle structure at the end of the overgrown path. He could hear clapping and shouting, a joyful gathering that was in stark contrast to the shadow of poverty that was deeply embedded upon the shack. As they approached, he could discern the shape of a formerly workable life's debris propped up as though still retaining value. A broken wheel from an ancient horse cart lay abandoned on its side. Broken bottles and pieces of worn furniture lay gathered in a pile near the woodshed, an axe buried deep into the side of the shed's wall. These meagre possessions, now discarded, were nothing more than fuel for when lean times came, and from the meagre offerings it was clear that times were barren indeed. He had been in alleys before, in areas ripe with speakeasy basements and coppers on the payroll. But this was a different setting, even if it did possess the same kind of music that had drifted into his parish hideaway in Chicago. Here, the music had a separate meaning, one that was clearly polarized from the big city's decadence and wealth.

He oozed into his host's throat. "I don't think we should go here," he tried to warn her.

They were on the front steps of the shed. She ignored him and tore open the front door. It dangled on one hinge, flapping like a fan in the humid, unforgiving stillness.

The congregation turned as one, fixing their eyes on her.

"The DEVIL," the white-suited man at the pulpit proclaimed, "has MANY GUISES!"

Truth

From where he sat, Paske could pick the darker darkness of her sleeping form. The man who'd joined them had wandered into the night. How far? He couldn't be sure. Pulling the cape in closer around his shoulders, he held a hand up before his eyes. The shake said more about his weakness than the cold itself. Cold ate into the heart of him. Cold rode his teeth until they no longer chattered, they just clamped together, burning into aching misery. But the shake that ran in irregular bursts up his spine, or settled in his hip joints so his legs seemed somehow detached, that came from weakness more profound than anything he had ever imagined possible.

If he had just one moment. Just one. And the strength to stand and cross the distance to where she lay, he would have clubbed her there with any rock, or stick, or with bare fists…. He watched his fingers tremble. He didn't have the strength of a newborn foal. Even if he could pretend his limbs were his own to control, they would not carry him past the fire.

The anger that came with the realization burned as deep as the cold. His lip twisted into a sneer and he would have cried for the shame of it, but a step from behind shocked him from his vicious reverie.

"You can tell me what's not written there." Dragan dropped a fleece saddle cloth to the stones and sat down on it, close enough to speak in hushed tones. "Or what's been washed away."

"Why would I tell you anything?" The damage done to his throat when he was gagged had worsened with the appalling dryness of his ride. His voice crackled like twigs on gravel, the taste of blood rose on each breath, and the effort of speaking sent his foggy brain into a spin.

Dragan held up the flask of water. The temptation to lunge for it was more than Paske could bear, and the ability to reach beyond him. All he managed was a groan and a mistimed snatch.

"Yes, you can have it. I want to know how much of what you told her is true."

His captor didn't risk the water; he held it steady while Paske drank, his own feeble hands no more than guides on its way to his mouth. There was nothing to say that would save him. And no way to know what might damn him on the spot. He shook his head; "What do you want? I'll tell you whatever you'd like to hear."

"Just the truth. I'll judge whether I like it or not."

Paske knew how little of the text on the scrolls was readable, and making sense of it out of order and context would be near-on to impossible, but Dragan must have read enough to have raised real doubts. Paske nodded. The faint heat of the fire was pressing his heavy eyelids. They wanted to close. His mind was a fog of pain and dissociation. He wished for the strength to fight. He wished for the strength to slash and punish. He wished for the strength to turn his wit and charm into a weapon. But all he had was a thick tongue, a parched throat and the will to stay alive.

"It's all true," he said at last. With that said, the weight of consequence seemed to burst like a bubble. He had no more say in his life or death and a laugh stuttered from his chest. He motioned again for the flask, his eyes barely open, slurring like a drunk. "It's all true." He swallowed, tipped his head back and gargled away the dryness. "And more. Are you going to kill me now?"

"Tell me the 'more'."

"More. How long have you been on the front? Why wouldn't you know anything I can tell you? Are you all as stupid as you look?"

"Maybe."

"I don't want to go over that mountain. Is anything I say going to stop that from happening?"

Dragan was silent. He held the flask again, generous with the water, anxious to make the sharing of this information smooth.

Paske could see no love in the expression of the big soldier, but there was a complex confusion that might have suggested reluctance. Or was it the moving firelight? Paske dropped his forehead onto his wrist and rubbed, smearing away a recent scab. "There's more. For the last twenty years, numbers on the front have been falling. You'd have seen that. Weapons are better; each year there are fewer men with experience on the line; young men die faster." He shrugged, indifferent to the facts. "We could scale back the campaigns; battle strategy could have been better." He raised his face and smiled, "But we've gotten so good at ridding ourselves of you all, it seemed a shame to stop."

Hatred moved on Dragan's face now, but his hands stayed steady, holding the flask in easy reach.

"The middle classes love a story of war glory. They love to hear how our brave men suffer for the love of them and their empire. The nobles love to hear they're safe; secure behind a wall of flesh and blood." Again he laughed. "And every decent man wants to know that the slums and the ghettoes are being drained of life. Every decent man alive wishes fire and destruction on the nests of them, huddled in their filth around our cities. Leeching and fornicating and breeding"

His vehemence drew a hoarse cough, and Dragan pulled the flask away, letting the paroxysm pass before he offered the drink again.

"You're not like them, are you?" There was something clean about the big man. He didn't cower like the ranks of veterans usually did. He didn't limp or twist when he moved. There was almost a nobility in his flesh, albeit earned more than born by nature, and the idea came that maybe this man, like Paske himself, was the victim of cruel fates. "Where were you born?"

There was no answer. Maybe shame; such things were not easy to discuss. Paske's eyes were heavy, dry and thick with scum that blurred his sight. The water, for all it soothed his raw throat, did little to ease the thick inarticulateness of his tongue. "I've fallen too," he said softly, speaking to the echoing depths as much as to Dragan.

"There's more," Dragan prompted.

"Yes." He nodded, and the movement sent his head spinning wildly. He caught his brow in a weak hand and sighed. "The husbandmen," he mumbled. "The cities are getting hungry. The population of good citizens is growing and we are running out of room to live comfortably. The craftsmen build more cities but we can't find the food we need. The farms, you see. Pressures are building. Unrest." He shook his head and tried to look clearly at Dragan. He needed to assess the impact his words were having. In the firelight it seemed that this man understood. He seemed to grasp the implications; the stresses.

"Too many of the poor men from the farms have been drawn in to the military."

Dragan nodded, and the acknowledgment drove him on;

"You understand? You know what must come, now?"

There was silence still, his captor staring coldly at the fire, chewing hard on his own thoughts. "Second sons are being sent out into the wilderness." Again he laughed; the irony of high-born men being shaken down the line just to keep the top in place struck him as poetic justice. Those who had judged him and sent him down would themselves end up lower on the caste than he was. For the last time he drank deeply.

"We need the surplus, you see. If we haven't enough to feed ourselves, what can we trade with Verdan? We have no mines."

* * * * *

The words were slurred and mumbled, and probably would not have made much sense if Dragan hadn't felt the echo of each syllable deep inside. What little he'd read in the scrolls he had no desire to trust; a smattering of words he knew in a rash of those he didn't, and that in parts and pieces. He had read some of it aloud to Freya, and she'd seen no more proof in it than he had.

But Paske was full to brimming with the love of his own wisdom. What wasn't written was far more important than the fantasies of a few deranged liars, telling tales to suit themselves about battles they had never seen. What mattered was his hatred of generations of men whose crime was to be born among lesser mortals. There were no lies in his loathing. It was a simple truth and one he felt needed no explanation or excuse. He and his like were ridding the empire of its lowest life, and he was proud of the work of his hands.

And Dragan had known it. For years, with the healing peace of the pastures easing the horrors of the battlefield from his mind, he had reasoned through the way the world worked. He himself had chosen the best and strongest bull calves and castrated the rest, knowing he would keep the best herd while only the strongest and finest bred. He himself had selected the weakest, the oldest, and the lame when he chose the next beast for the table. He understood the rationale.

And with the faces of men he'd known suddenly so clearly there before him in the firelight, he was sickened to his stomach.

He knew too, the truth about the need for men on the land. The call for fleece, for stock and crops was growing all the time and the pressure to provide the demands of the tariff meant many good farms were losing their breeding stock and seed crops to the taxman. The land needed men to work it, and the cities were going to send them.

Because they needed to trade.

Paske had droned into silence and Dragan ground his teeth over the obscene cost of it all. Everything was as it had always been, longer than anyone could remember. The strong governed; the weak went to war.

Not just the weakest, now, but a generation of husbandmen had been sacrificed to maintain this precarious balance. His breath was coming harder as he thought, his stomach churning over realizations that made him want to puke.

He shook the flask they both held, shocking the officer back from the fugue into which he'd slipped. "What do they want?"

Paske stirred, but it was getting harder for him to hold his head up. Freya had stopped his wound bleeding, but he needed a physician. In a field hospital, with all the herbs and instruments on hand, his injuries might not have been fatal. Here and now, they were. He shook; constant spasms of shivering ran through him and despite the cold in the air, his skin was hot to touch. He would be lucky to see the sunrise.

"Who?" he managed, but it was a hoarse whisper.

"The Verdan. Why do we have to defend against them? What are we protecting?"

Dragan did not expect the shock of laughter. Paske looked as if he might have thrown his head back for the simple joy of what he had to say, but weakness and fever had crippled his responses. His mirth was a choked and bubbling thing, an ugly sound. "Nothing!" He reached for the flask, struggling to direct it to his lips and coughing when he breathed liquid in with his chuckles. "Nothing. We trade our excess crops for their steel. They have no need to take anything."

Steel. The steel of weapons? They traded weapons to use in the war.

Dragan stood.

Looking down on the man at his feet, he briefly debated the means of a quick death. He had no heart in himself for outright cruelty, but no kindness pleaded on Paske's behalf. He opted instead to pull the officer to his feet. The way they had climbed was steep, barely more than a cliff-face formed of rubble. Dotted with rocky outcrops and rain-scoured washouts, it was a wide expanse of death. Cold. Exposed. And contemptuous of weakness. He'd lived on mountainsides like this for fifteen years.

Holding Paske by the shoulder of his borrowed tunic, Dragan moved him to the edge of the small flat on which they stood, grabbed the seat of his breeches, lifted him easily, and pitched him down the mountain.

Squatting by the fire, he stared at the flames and past them to where Freya slept.

He checked the progress of the stars. He should be waking her for her watch, but he had no need for sleep. Let her rest.

From the document cylinder he drew the scrolls, and one by one he fed them into the flames.

Freya could sleep. At sun-up they would move, but he had yet to decide in which direction. He had thrown away their hostage and he was burning what little evidence they had. Morning would be soon enough to tell her that.

He rubbed at his chin. It was not just a question of proof, even if Freya had imagined she would need Paske or his scrolls. Together they were well enough known to give any message to the troops credibility. If they were to go. No, it wasn't proof, and if Paske had died in his bedroll and the scrolls lay safe in their cylinder it would make no difference to anyone. But it felt better. Somehow destroying the evidence made the horror less stark. Their lives had been no more than surviving an atrocity; their skills, far from being a valued commodity, were just annoying techniques that had kept them alive.

On the front lines tonight and tomorrow men would fight and die. And for nothing.

But he was finished with it. He had served his term and survived. He had earned his small piece of safety and by all the festering demons he wanted to take what he had earned and enjoy it. If he went ahead with Freya and they spread the word along the line, that every man there was the victim of a cruel system that played their lives for chips, the war might end. It would.

And thousands of angry men would be looking for blood and revenge.

Hunger

She fretted over her handbag, her switchblade wrapped delicately in a clean handkerchief she had taken from George's house. "What a mess," she complained. "I don't want this ruining my make up. A girl has to have an ample supply these days, she can't leave her house with a naked face, that just won't do." In response to her own panic, she reapplied her lipstick, her pocket mirror balanced precariously against the steering wheel as she tried to manoeuvre her paint and the car at the same time. She veered dangerously to the left, only to make a shocking turn to the right that left him sprawled in the back seat.

"I don't know why you always have to sit back there," she complained. She smeared her lips and tossed her lipstick and compact mirror onto the seat beside her. "I had a shower, after all, I smell rather pretty now."

"I don't care what you smell like."

"Ah, so now you're being a real pain. A lunkhead, that's you." She glanced back at him, her icy gaze now replaced with a sneering playfulness. "I think we need to get some lunch."

A cold feeling washed over him at this. He could boil himself to death beneath that relentless summer sun and it would never make him warm, not when she was in his presence. "You can't go back there."

"Why not? It's a diner, and we got a long way ahead of us on that road." She grinned, her fingers tapping to a silent tune that only she knew. "I'll get a big piece of pie, I will. And you can have another cup of coffee, seeing as how you didn't have any trouble drinking that swill down."

"It'll look strange, us going back to eat again. It's only been a couple of hours."

"Business is business. They're so desperate for hungry people with money it wouldn't matter if we left on the half hour and kept marching back in to drink soda floats all day long, Stella would oblige without question. If we wanted a meal for free, well, then we'd be noticed. Stella ain't the kind to give something for free, I've already figured that out."

He rested his head on the stale crocheted pillow, his hand smoothing against the pain brewing inside of his skull. The motor oil he'd had sat ill in this host, its black sludge creeping through the partially full veins in throbbing pulses. "Doesn't it bother you?"

"What?"

"That you are getting food from a woman whose husband you just killed. I should think there is some kind of social wrongness to such an act."

"Why should my hunger factor into it? Dead is dead and I need a sandwich."

She rummaged in her beaded purse for change, the nickels and dimes ratting against her stained switchblade. "Besides, it wasn't like he was a good husband. When he travelled to Chicago, I know he had a bunch of girls draped on his arm wherever he went, and they weren't his cousins, and he's had no children to speak of, so they weren't his snappily dressed daughters. While hard working Stella here kept slaving away holding onto her one little dream, that rat bastard was fox-trotting his way into every copper's pocket and every Chicago whore's bed. Lord knows how many diseases he's brought home to her. I hope she really is as sour and bitter as they say, that might stave off the syphilis."

"I'm glad you find this amusing." He crossed his arms and stubbornly remained in the back seat after she parked the car in the exact spot they had occupied earlier, the rattling engine groaning loudly into a full stop. "This is madness."

"I don't know what you think I'm going to do." She batted her eyelashes innocently and he fought the urge to gag.

"You know damn well."

Her lips pursed in coquettish mischief. "Do tell."

"You're going to do something terrible. Some unspeakable act of evil, and I will feel sick, and whoever finds it will feign surprise." He rolled his eyes at her continued curtsying. "You can't be trusted."

"I do love this dress," she said, ignoring his observation. She parked the car in the lot, slamming the driver's door behind her as she skipped off to the entrance of the diner. "I'll snag you a sandwich too," she shouted to him.

"Don't bother," he shouted back, but she was already in the diner, her entrance a loud chorus of jangling bells that hung across the swinging door. He tried to get a good view inside, but the windows were above car level, and all he could discern with any clarity were the rounded tops of a few heads, faces obscured by cloche hats. The polished chrome of Stella's decor gleamed in welcome to the appreciative customer who would visit.

He got out of the motor car and stretched his host's body, his back creaking from the effort. He'd been sure this host would have lasted longer, but it was already starting to show signs of wear and tear, the custom fit comfortable, but the chemistry within the body was clearly incompatible with his own. The freckles dotting the epidermis had turned a darker grey, the reddish complexion that had been the youth's sign of good health was now a sallow, pasty mauve. Perhaps the other host had been more accustomed to daily abuses and thus hadn't reacted quite as strongly as this one to his imbibing of motor oil.

A fly buzzed near his ear, and landed on the top of his head. It crawled into the dull reddish forest of his hair, searching for an open space to lay her eggs. He scratched at his scalp, tearing a small hole with his nail. The fly buzzed around his fingers in excited agony as he pulled an entire chunk of scalp away, the red hair trapping the fly within it in a thin, strong cage.

Perhaps he was judging her too harshly. Georgio, or George as he was known here, was hardly a kind soul. As a rum-runner he had plenty of bodies strewn behind his success, and it was unlikely that his wife Stella was ignorant of this. It shouldn't bother him that the two female customers he saw in the diner were now leaving, their cloche hats hiding all but their delicate lips which spoke in nasal Maine accents, teeth chewing on words as if they were tobacco. But these weren't loose women, not molls. They talked of family and children and the annoying habits of their husbands. They were on safari here in the south, visiting relatives they had no connection to.

"Hey, you there," one of them shouted to him. A blast of sunlight hid her face as tried to discern the features beneath the low brim of her hat. "You don't look well. Are you all right?"

Her friend pinched her on the shoulder. "Shirley," she harshly whispered. "Let's just go."

"But he doesn't look right…."

"That's what I mean, let's just go."

They piled into a covered automobile, the worried friend Shirley looking over her shoulder at him, her bottom lip bit in concern.

He wasn't sure what to make of these flashes of insight that occasionally drifted his way. He'd seen it in Clara's father as well, that same look of sickened concern. It was as though these humans had some hidden knowledge over how to avert an inevitable disaster, but they were helpless to implement it. Such a cruel omission, he thought. They had rendered compassion useless. Not that this should have surprised him, for after all, it was so easy for them to kill in so many ways, not just the physical. A stab through the heart came in many guises. Sometimes, it was the slow torment of bitter words that cut into the soul and ruined what was otherwise another person's happy existence. At other times, it was a complete lack of acknowledgement, a pervasive, ongoing neglect that withered the soul away.

If Clara used a more direct approach to killing someone, who was he to object to that honest exchange?

He rested his chin on the roof of the Chevrolet, keeping a keen eye on the diner. There was no discernible movement from his vantage point, the diner having suddenly taken on an abandoned, neglected aura since the exit of the two women from Maine. He narrowed his eyes and tried to look past the polished chrome interior, the clocks that told perfect time hanging in triangular perfection on the wall behind the counter. There was no movement within, no suggestion that humanity coursed through here on a daily basis. Time had arrested at this exact moment, a frozen capsule of ennui and hope.

She had been wearing Stella's dress, he remembered. A pink flowered affair that complemented her appearance. Blood purified by white. A bleached hue of the living.

She'd been in there a good twenty minutes now. She was taking too long.

Dust rose and fell around the Chevrolet, the green tinted surface stained in dull, sepia tones. The front windshield had a crack in the corner near the passenger side, an injury from a speeding pebble. He traced the crack with his fingertip, wondering how much further it would spider out as they made their way to California. At some point it would become a hazard, shattering out if they hit a large enough bump in the road. But he didn't know much about these things, so maybe it would stay the same and would hold together. He couldn't be sure.

The diner was eerily quiet, and it was with concentrated effort that he refused to inspect if his suspicions were correct. In the back seat, under the mouldy crocheted pillow, a square can of motor oil lay in waiting. The host he now resided in released the oil too quickly and cleanly from its system, and though he was well sated earlier his mind was now painfully clear. With it, the fluidity of his ethics pinched him inwardly, little hematoma that blistered blue and black along his soul. The truth was, with this body he inhabited, he had stolen, there was no real difference between himself and Clara. He was going to need a new host by the time they reached Texola and he doubted very much it would be acquired by strictly natural means.

He had no room to judge.

She was right, it wasn't his business what she believed, she had her own mission to accomplish. He was allowing his feelings to get in the way of his reason. which was always a danger in these situations. Where he came from, murder was wrong, but there was no oral law concerning what to do in the event of one's imminent demise. The will to live was the same everywhere, one had an existence and one wanted to continue on with it. A freckle faced simpleton knocked dead with a wrench was simply a survival tool that skirted the periphery of natural law. He had a specific mission to accomplish and some collateral damage along the way was inevitable. His survival was important for the mission, and yes, it was a bloody business, but there was no other choice offered. His superiors would understand.

He hoped they would. They had to.

She was swinging her purse against her swaying hip as the diner entrance slammed shut behind her, the jingling bell nearly toppling from its fixed place at the top of the door. She was eating one half of a sandwich loosely wrapped in a napkin, her mouth dotted with crumbs as she spoke to him. "We should drive straight through, right into Texas. I say we don't stop until we hit Armarillo. Or, we could make a quick pit stop in Shamrock and stay at the Reynold's Hotel." She took another bite of her sandwich, contemplating this. She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her thumb, brushing off crumbs indelicately. "I know that place well, actually. The owner owes me a few favours, I could get us a good deal." She gave him a warm, friendly smile, of the kind that sent chills through his liquid self. "Sound like a good idea to you? The place really is top drawer, you know. All marble and fancy tiles, not too cheap, but not too expensive, neither. You and me, we can hole up in a room and no one would ask any questions. That's how it is there, see."

She placed her half eaten sandwich on the hood of the Chevrolet and rummaged in her purse. She took out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, the end of it partially squished flat. "Here," she said, handing it to him. "Since you like the food there so much you can have one for the road."

He weighed the sandwich in his hand, studying the folds of the wax paper that covered it. Ham and rye, by the look of it through the murky white paper. Clara paced and finished her own sandwich, her eyes constantly darting to the busy road beside them, her manner fidgety, as though she were ready to take off in a run at first opportunity.

He unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite. It was dry, not a hint of mustard. "Is there a problem?" he asked.

She still had on Stella's wide brimmed hat, which was doing little to prevent the continued onslaught of the afternoon sun on her already tanned arms. "No problems at all."

"You look nervous."

"I'm wondering about that mayor."

"What are you thinking?"

"That he's a loose end that needs tying." She wiped imaginary crumbs from her skirt. "I think we should swing by his swanky house, have a little peep into his windows and see if he's alone."

A dried tumbleweed drifted past the abandoned diner, all hope of life within it effectively vanquished. He took another bite of his sandwich, its dry texture alien on his slimy tongue. Granules of bread stuck in his throat, and he longed for a quick drab of motor oil to help it ease down. "We can't do it."

A sudden breeze tried to lift her hat away, to steal it along its current. She snatched the brim, holding it firmly in place, her face obscured in much the way the cloche ladies of Maine had been hidden from view. "I do what I want, and I want to tie up a loose end."

"We've overstayed our welcome here. We're leaving." He opened the passenger door, tossing the uneaten portion of his sandwich onto the ground. "That's not fit even for me to eat. I've only just started eating your food and I know that one was made wrong." He sat sideways in the passenger seat, the door ajar, his feet braced on the dusty earth at his feet. The sun shone behind her, casting her in a cameo shadow. "Were you trying to poison me?"

"What? Don't be ridiculous."

But he had to wonder. There was a strange, dry sensation on the edges of his tongue, a gritty texture that had nothing to do with dry bread. "There's a funny taste to it, similar to magnesium. Is that a sulphur chaser? Could it be belladonna, or the dreaded strychnine?"

"I'm not poisoning you."

He eyed her with profound suspicion. "Was I a test run for that mayor? You think it's so easy to get rid of me, and yet here I remain, thwarting your one act of murder that comes with concentrated effort." He swung his legs back into the Chevrolet and let out a long sigh as he settled comfortably into the back seat. "Leave the mayor alone. He's a politician. You said so yourself, he lives on insincerity. No one will believe a word he says."

She kicked at the dirt, thinking on what he'd said. "But he's been here, he's seen us. He'll run off to the papers and tell them what he knows, and I can't have that."

"He saw nothing," he reminded her. "He was too busy needling Stella over the diner and George's involvement. His real dealings are with George, and chances are he won't mind having his partner snuffed out. He can be the one to clutter up his house full of expensive garbage."

She raised a brow, its perfectly pencilled arch pushing into her bangs. "So you think he'll be happy to be the new head honcho connection in Chicago?" She bit her bottom lip, hips swaying softly in the breeze, her fingers tapping a strand of pearls on the hood of the car. "Maybe you're right," she said, giving him an uncommitted shrug. "He was kind of a throwaway nobody. We can always accuse him of being drunk, we can use the empty rum bottles we find in his garbage as proof of his lush behaviour."

"There won't be any need to discredit because he won't say a word," he reminded her sagely. "He's a rum-runner, just like George was, and last I checked such practises were highly illegal all over the country, not just by state. So, I'm guessing, even if he is the one who finds George's body, he'll be the one to turn tail and run, with all the town's savings in his pocket." He rested his head on the mouldy pillow as Clara finally got into the driver's seat, her stolen white gloves gripped hard on the wheel. "Chances are, he's long gone with George's money already. Soon enough we'll be hearing of him in Chicago, an unfortunate corpse with his feet sunk in concrete. Tell me, can't anyone in this world of yours simply enjoy their riches? Why is it so important to acquire these things, especially when so many others in the community need his help? It's not like they were useful. There's so much waste."

"So, they're all bolsheviks where you come from, then." She pulled a slender cigarette out of her case and lit it before turning the key in the ignition, the motor rattling away into half-hearted life. "We'll have to find another car soon," she said. She gave him a sidelong glance filled to bursting with disgust. "You need a new host. This last one just plain looks weird on you, not to mention you smell bad, and you look like you should be fertilizing grass, not hanging with the likes of me."

She sped off, away from the diner, the force of the wind from the motor car forcing a tumbleweed off the road and into a ditch. He tried to close his eyes and get a small amount of rest. He hated closing his eyes these days. All he could see was red.

Bone Fragments is now available for Kindle!

That's right.

It's now July 26th, and Gabriel Gadfly's BONE FRAGMENTS is now available for purchase on Amazon Kindle for only $0.99. Click HERE to get your copy!

Print will be available in about a week, so if you're wanting to buy that, stay tuned. Also stay tuned for a giveaway contest, hosted by yours truly!

Set in Iraq, China, and many other places, Bone Fragments reflects the kaleidoscope of life at war, evoking the colors, sounds and sorrows of those in battle, and those left behind.

Sharply poignant and touched with sadness, Gabriel Gadfly's poetry encompasses 150 years of conflict and serves as a moving testament to human resilience in the face of tragedy. From the American Civil War to the recent upheavals in the Middle East, this anthology seizes the atmosphere of battle in the smallest of moments — a soldier pining for a love left behind, the first kill of a new recruit, the loud chattering of teeth in the cold….

What Went Wrong

Greetings, humans!

I bet you're wondering what's gone wrong. I need to explain, because it has screwed up many a-person. And not just the various segments of my personality.

I just finished a massive cross-country move (and "finished" is a broad concept, because we're not done yet). Before that, I spent the month of June in a state of anaphylactic shock for reasons that have not yet been pinned down. Suffice to say, not much gone done.

The only things that got finished were things that were already mostly done. Terra and Gabriel's books, both long in development, snuck out in one piece (well, technically Gabriel's comes out tomorrow). But other titles are badly off-kilter. Kit's new book is on the top of my list, and then Terra's second book, and then… then…

Okay, let's put it on the table. I haven't got RollBots: Endgame done yet. It's close, but writing was hard when on Benadryl, and I want it to kick ass. Similarly, the revised Polarity is late, and probably won't be done until closer to Dustrunners 3 is written in November. And I still have to edit The Archivists. And the site is in utter disarray (which Terra is doing a fantastic job of covering up).

So here's my priority list for the next few weeks:

Launch Bone Fragments
Launch Slash and Burn
Write RollBots: Endgame
Launch Antithesis: Book 2 Alpha
Edit The Archivists

And fix the site.

If I seem t be falling behind anywhere, please feel free to beat me in the head with a stick. This time last year, I was ramping up to write Arkady and Kain (which also needs editing), but this year I'm trying to survive one day at a time. Quite a change. But with a little energon and a lot of luck, I'll get things back on track.

And/or Anna will kill me.

In the meantime, check out the Endgame cover:

Tell him

Freya leapt over the man at her feet, trusting the arms she had always trusted to catch her. A tremor ran up through her chest, a rapid tattoo of sobs or laughter that caught at the back of her throat. Whether they were tears or giggles, she couldn't be sure.

"You came back!" Just what that meant she couldn't begin to consider, but he was here, right where the fates had dumped her; somehow, he had come to the middle of nowhere and found her on this wide mountain side. How much more proof could anyone need that this was where they were meant to be? She threw her head back and laughed; the perfect joy she had imagined could be hers after all.

"I heard you had some trouble." Dragan set her down and crouched to the side of his fallen foe. Jan lay twisted between rocks on the cold ground, paralyzed by the agony of a mortal wound. His eyes were fever bright, his breath a hard pant over lips pink with blood. Dragan asked, "You want an end?"

Jan grappled weakly with the hilt of Freya's sword where it stuck out from his side. It would be rank cruelty to move it, despite his feeble efforts to do so, and Dragan rested a hand lightly on the silver cap of the pommel. "Why were you following her?"

The man's breath hiccoughed, fighting internal demons in an effort to force air into words. "Paske," he managed.

Freya dusted Dragan's hand away from her sword, reefed it free, and forced it down between the heaving ribs to still his heart. Jan's painful struggle ceased and she stepped onto his chest as she pulled the blade free.

"I want to know why they were sent after you." Dragan stood, raising his hands in exasperation.

"So ask him." She pointed into the shadows of the rock face where her companion still huddled.

"Who's he?"

"That is Paske."

Already, Freya was moving to conceal what she could of the bloodshed. If the other riders returned, they would see the signs of ascent and follow. Maybe if she fled upward now, with the sun only good for another hour or so, they would make it to the cover of another gully or knoll or at least put good distance between them and their pursuers. Best then if those pursuers rode on past this spot and its dead, believing their comrades continued ahead of them.

"We need to move," she called. "Get him up and steal him some clothes. I want to get as close to the crest as possible, and soon. There are four more where these came from and they will be back."

Dragan was kneeling with Paske, his back to her as she gathered loose weapons into a pile and readied herself to drag the lowest body up to the shelter of a coppice. When he stood, she could see a clash coming in the set of his shoulders and the deep furrow of his brow. He slouched there above her, his face grey and casting its own shadows. "This one's not going anywhere if you want him to survive for very long. And why go up when down is quicker?"

"We can't go down," she laughed. "I told you, there were other riders with these boys. They rode on along the road, but they won't go far. They'll be back sooner or later." She strode up the incline stepping from rock to rock until she was on the level ground where he stood. He turned so the sun lit his features. "He has to make it to the front. Well, if he doesn't I don't really care, but he has news for the men there. He has theories about our war." She kicked Paske lightly, and he pulled the capes tighter around himself, sitting huddled like a miserable child. "Tell him," she said.

"Tell him yourself."

She grinned again. "Tetchy isn't he? I'll tell you while we ride. Dragan, come on. You're here now, just as you should be. I'm not stuck in the middle of a dark rock like some long dead snail; I'm out here, not five leagues from the front lines, with nowhere else to go. And we have to go now."

He shook his head slowly, taking moments they should not waste to consider things he knew nothing about, and the frustration that rose up her back pushed her close to bursting point.

"No," he said quietly. "I'm not here to go to war. I'm here because I heard you had a squad riding hard after you. I don't know why, and I'm not sure I care. But if he's the officer who ordered the pursuit, I've got problems with taking him to another squad of armed men. He might be administration, Freya, but he's an officer. We're taking him to tell his men what, exactly?"

"Why are you so stubborn? Let's get moving and talk on the way." This was too much like last time they'd talked and the time before that, and the slope that she stood on was too likely to slide. His views on the fighting were too close to the stories Paske told. Why did he suddenly want so much with words; they'd never been his strong point before.

"Tell me," he demanded without raising his voice. "If it's a fight here or a fight over there, I'll take here and now, unless you can give me a good reason to go further."

It was not his choice to make, and he could not take this freedom from her. Not again. Not when her life was so close she could taste it on the breeze. Not when he'd come from nowhere to her side, just as he should have. "No! Trust me, you said. Trust me, stay here. It'll be fine. You'll be okay." She wanted to tear at the frustration that was hardening around her limbs and stopping her from moving forward, and she gripped shreds of air in her fists, holding them up like a challenge. "It's not okay. I'm not fine.

"I can't go back; he's made sure of that anyway. I can't run away. I won't. I am going up that mountain and I'm taking that rancid goat turd with me." She was yelling and she had not heard her voice rising. It had climbed higher as cold fears rose inside; fears and furies she had held in careful check for two months or more. "If you're not coming, then don't, but you won't make me turn away from my life and my journey again. You won't make me!"

She spun away, glancing over the bodies around her for anything suitable for her prisoner to wear when her foot slipped in the scree, skidding her to one knee in a graceless stagger. Her supporting hand fell on a small rock and she turned and threw it hard at where he stood.

Dragan ducked the stone easily, grinning. "Okay, I won't," he answered, and turned to pull Paske to his feet.

* * * * *

Freya rode ahead, dragging the spare horses behind her as if they represented everything in this world that wanted to hold her back. She wanted to run; Dragan could see it in the tension of her shoulders and her grim insistence on taking the lead. He rode behind in silence, watching their injured companion.

He was content for the moment to give her the space she needed. The time at the citadel had been hard on her. She was pale and the strength he'd known in her grip had gone. Her spirit would never suit the dark rooms of bureaucracy, but he had hoped she would stay. Vain hope.

She could not return to the front. Not if she had any thought of surviving. It was suicide as surely as throwing herself down from these heights. So, he could follow and let her have some room to breathe, and when she was ready, she would tell him what he needed to know.

The mountain rose under them as the sun set at their backs, and for as long as he could see, there had been no sign of riders on the road far below. As shadows closed in around them, there was at least a sense of reprieve. "Freya! Your man here needs to stop or he's going to fall. The horses could use a spell, too." He would have added, 'So do I', but that would have been giving ground in the argument yet to come, so he kept the sentiment to himself.

"Let him fall," she called back and showed no sign of turning off. The ground was steep and rising; it was not a good place to pause anyway, so he chose to bide in silence. When she did pull up, it was because the darkness had become a threat in itself. The fine slip of a moon offered no guidance, and the horses spooked at rough ground, nervous for their own safe footing. It was past time, and she had pushed his patience and his resolution to their limit.

Their companion had endured in silence and it didn't bode well for him. Dragan doubted he had chosen stoicism, which left weakness, and there was no doubting what damage blood loss, fatigue, dehydration, and hunger had already done. Again, Freya alone had the answers to his tribulations.

"Will you take the first watch?" She stood before him like an angry child, hands on her hips, with a look of defiance or the anticipation of a coming storm. "I didn't sleep last night."

He nodded and handed the pack rations from the soldiers' saddlebags to her. "And you can tell me now how you plan on surviving when you get over these peaks. If you do. We've got time."

"I told you," she said, kneeling at the small fire to set a pannikin of water to warm. "I can't go back to the citadel. This worthless excuse for a man has planned something for me; I'll have to ask him what. He told me before I left that he would make sure I didn't come back, and then sent me out with a roll of papers…."

She leapt up quickly and ran to her saddle and pack, dragging a satchel free and rushing it back to where he sat. "Here! It's all about this. What's on these? What do they say?"

Dragan began to unbuckle the pack. "Keep talking," he said.

"There isn't much more to tell. His ambush didn't go as he'd planned, and he is as you see him." She smiled as she tore strips of salted beef from the store and began to chew.

"You didn't kill him." For some reason, it seemed, she had decided he was going over the mountains with her. The leather cylinder was free and he twisted the top from it, pulling the ragged sheets out from where they had bunched and jammed.

"He said some things. They can't be true, or I hope they're not, but they make an awful kind of sense. The same things you said, before you left me there."

Dragan grunted and nodded. He wasn't sure what she meant, but waiting long enough usually answered questions like that. For many years he'd recognized silence as a valuable tool in conversation. The scrolls were crumpled, the damaged areas separating where they had bent and twisted. They had all been soaked with dark liquid and dried, so the integrity of the parchment itself was compromised. If they had ever been arranged in order, that had been completely disrupted and the staining had erased most of the text, anyway.

"He said the war is not important. He said it serves no purpose but to rid the empire of filth. Us." She tapped her chest in emphasis and moved closer, as if peering over his shoulder would make the words on the parchments he held make more sense to her. "He said it was working. Too well. He said our numbers were down because they'd done a good job of killing us off."

Across the fire, lying on his side, possibly asleep, Paske began to look like someone Dragan had no cause to save. His words, as Freya spoke them, turned a cold hard knife of anger deep in his stomach. Too often his life had seemed a pointless struggle against men who had no more cause to hate him, than he had them. And yet, for all the sense it made, there was a heart, a core of reason, that would not let such thoughts be true.

To believe it was to make the lives and deaths of generations nothing. To accept it made all the things he had ever believed about his home and the empire and the place of everyone in it a lie.

It made the empire a lie.

"What's on the scrolls?" She reached for two loose sheets and spread them flat in the poor light of their fire. "I brought them with me because I knew there would be men there who could read. I want him to tell them all what he told me, Dragan. I want him to stand in front of the men they send to die and tell them what they've done."

In the firelight, there was an air of fanaticism in her face. She'd looked at an impossible situation and found a way to hold onto the life she loved. She could return to the troops, not lame or flawed, but as the bearer of the greatest shock the empire had ever known.

In a single flashing moment, he looked along the narrow shaft of possibility at the future and what it would hold. All the hopes he had nurtured, all the work, all his plans, gone in a rush of blood that would spread away from the border and run over the mountains, the forest, and farms. All the way to his one safe haven.

Selecting a scroll that had large sections of text still clear, he began the slow and laborious process of reading. He had to be sure, at least, that what this monster said was true. If Freya carried this information to the men who were armed and trained in death, sooner or later revolution would sweep through the empire, and no one would be safe from war.

Editing, with thanks to Essie Holton.

Come and chat about Touchstone and the ideas behind it here.

Fiction-phile: Down in Death Valley by Nora Weston

Down in Death Valley

"Let it go… now," said Aja.

"Seriously? Are you for real?" asked Tyul, yanking on the human's arm so hard muscle tore away from the earthling's shoulder.

"Reject! Now look what you've done," yelled Aja, "you're ruining its flesh."

Smiling like the devil he was, Tyul took one step closer to Aja, daring him to interfere. "He won't need his flesh much longer, so back off." Growling with ferocious intent, Tyul pounced upon Drake Mirren to bite the left side of his neck. Warm blood, tainted with human sins as vile as any Tyul had ever known, dripped off his grotesque chin leaving him slightly intoxicated. "Immorality…um," he stuttered while his long, jagged tongue licked up more. "It's delightfully depraved juice."

"So we'll do this the hard way, huh?" asked Aja aware Tyul's brains had been fried thousands of years ago.

Blazing red corneas blackened as Tyul leaped up, violating Aja's space. "Come on, want a slurp or two? Deviate for once, and feel a rush. Savor pure insanity… Let this pathetic insect burn."

Not at all intimidated by this beast's arrogance, a half-smile appeared on Aja's beautifully carved, pale face as he shoved Tyul.

Tyul's eyes widened as he stumbled while skidding backwards about twenty feet. "Damn angel! You'll pay for this," he said tripping over a boulder to then meet Mother Earth.

"Drake cannot perish. You know that!" said Aja, standing his ground, aware he must succeed. Enraged, his wings spread wide. Dust flew into the air surrounding Aja, further adding to the angel's mystical presence.

"Oh, cry me a river of pestilence," said Tyul standing to confront this formidable warrior.

"My kind will not kneel upon hallowed ground, nor shall we acknowledge what's been declared, written, or whatever. Mirren has tasted, no—he's indulged in darkness, swallowed salvation too many times. He's due to be bathed in blood, barbecued in the pits, you know… hell-bound."

Equally determined, Aja and Tyul rushed to claim the human. Supernatural whispers, some divinely melodic, and others dipped in decadence, bit them like a whirlwind along Badwater Basin, a geological masterpiece in Death Valley, CA. For miles, all creatures great and small became frenzied, attacking each other; a dark storm consumed the golden horizon.

Lucky for Drake, Aja reached him first. Effortlessly slinging the carcass over his right shoulder, he laughed with superiority, since the devil was sluggish compared to him. Drake's blood, utterly corrupt and toxic, trickled down Aja's back. The blood burned the angel's skin; yet Aja held on to his prize.

The smell of human demise, wicked wine of the human kind, lingered in the air, driving Tyul nuts. Like a crazed hyena, Tyul attacked Aja, causing them all to smash onto the ground. Tyul's claws pierced angelic skin, while his fangs devoured human meat.

Aja was incensed; feeling the weight of Tyul's foul smelling and muscular, dragon-like body.

"Enough, beast!" Clutching onto Drake's gnashed torso, Aja stood, causing Tyul to drop into a salt pool. A spilt second later, Aja's mighty fist pounded Tyul's hideous face.

Devil's blood, black and rancid, splattered Aja's face, blinding him for a few seconds. "Son of Satan!" he exclaimed, backing away from Tyul.

Taking advantage of the situation, Tyul snickered while grasping onto Drake. Stealing him away from Aja, Tyul spread his dark wings to fly north toward Hell's Gate. While soaring toward the portal, Tyul whispered an archaic chant summoning the ancient gatekeepers.

Clearing the devil's blood from his eyes, Aja stomped the ground so hard the hexagonal, honeycomb salt shapes shattered. "Filthy, stinking fiend; he must be stopped," said Aja now heading toward the magnificent, but menacing serpent-twisted gates.

However, Tyul's magical chant had already worked, cutting through the earth's crust to open the blood-drenched caverns leading into Hell's Gate. He landed safe and sound with Drake and quickly hurried into the caverns. "Almost there… yes." Tyul's soulless eyes rolled to the back of his ugly head as the smell of scorched souls lit a fire in his belly.

That split-second of indulgence was all the time Aja had needed. Within the blink of an angel's eye, Aja hovered above Tyul. His almighty hands wrapped around that devil's head and tore it off. This time, though, he escaped the poisonous, black blood. Reclaiming the human, Aja took flight with him.

Miraculously, Drake awakened in High Desert State Prison's medical ward. Sitting up, he moved his straggly, brown bangs from his eyes, and then ripped out the IV.

"Where am I?"

Looking around, he felt the bandages around his neck and abdomen.

"Oh, no… it can't be. I didn't make it," Drake said rubbing his shoulder. Closing his eyes, he relived the disastrous escape attempt that included a Houdini stint into Death Valley for over ten hours. I was shot, and my flesh torn off. I saw my eternal destination, but I deserve even worse and know it.

Opening his dark blue eyes, Drake swallowed hard and got out of bed to then hobble over by the barred window. Gazing up, feeling a profound sense of remorse, sunlight blinded him as he whispered, "But I didn't stay dead, did I…Aja?"

Drake's mistrial soon followed, ticking off everyone who'd heard about it. However, no one was more peeved than Jeremy Macomb, the stoic prosecuting attorney who never believed in second chances, let alone divine intervention. Somehow, his team of so-called experts lost all credible evidence against Drake Mirren.

After Drake was released, attempts were made on his life, and twice his apartment became a victim of arson, but he avoided injury every time. Funny, though, shortly after diseased demons unleashed horrific plagues that annihilated millions of people, it was Drake Mirren or Saint Drake as he became known who was called to duty.

A powerful weapon… This saint held nothing back as he slaughtered evil.

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Nora Weston's fiction and poetry slips in-between and all around science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her publishing credits include the anthologies: Mind Mutations, Cyber Pulp's Halloween 3.0, and Dark Pleasures.

Melange Books has published her science fiction adventure, Guardian 2632, and The Twelfth Paladin was released in June 2011. Other venues in print and online include: Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine, The Hacker's Source, The Harrow, The Dream People, Hoboeye, Abandoned Towers, Lost in the Dark, among many others.

Nora Weston's work can be found at http://www.2noraweston.com

Georgio

He downed another large gulp of motor oil, its slick, black promise sliding through his host's innards, globules slipping through the injured arteries of the heart. His hands were shaking as he held the tin can, furtive glances stolen over his shoulder to ensure there were no witnesses to his gorging. He placed it back on the shelf where he'd found it, bending low to peep through the knot in the wood walls of the shack. Clara was on the front porch of George and Stella's house, her smile sickly sweet, her hands outstretched in flirting glee at her sides. She giggled at something George said, and then clasped her hands together as though excited over a happy prospect. George touched her hair and she shook her head, but still remained close, teasing him with the blatant hint that she was open to his suggestions, no matter how lewd they may be.

He hated the way she pretended to be happy. He knew the danger of this kind of mirth.

George and Stella's house was as ramshackle as the storage shed he hid in, a portion of the roof caved in, with a dilapidated porch rotting away at Clara's feet. As he wiped the last remnants of motor oil from his cheek, he stepped back from his vantage point, unwilling to see the carnage he knew Clara was about to inflict. She'd been searching for release since the fire, the switchblade heavy and willing in her tiny beaded purse, her fingers dancing along the blade as it sliced through the air, through unwilling, stiff flesh. Her victims had little time to scream, let alone protest their own murder. With stunned expressions they fell quickly, blood seeping out of them in a steady stream, a low, sickening gurgling signifying the last breath of life. That's how it had been in Chicago, and one didn't mess with a system that worked.

He pushed the shed door open with a low creak, and peeked out across the expanse of dried grass and sandy mud, not a drop of moisture anywhere to quench the thirsty earth. He heard Clara giggle, and to his surprise there was a low, answering chuckle.

George was still alive.

"I got that diner for a song, I did. I won't sell it for one, Stella's right as rain about that."

"I can't argue with a sound minded woman like her."

"No, you're right on that. You can't."

Their conversation drifted over him as he approached, Clara's innocent facade slipping just a little as he sidled up close to her, his palms smoothing down the wrinkles in his suit jacket. "I see you've made a friend," he said.

"This here's George," Clara began.

"I gathered."

Clara gave George a shy smile and another one of her trademark falsly innocent giggles. "Don't mind my brother, Frankie, here. He's always looking out for me, even when there ain't no worry at all."

George smiled back at him. He was a fairly stocky man, though well proportioned, his head slightly balding and his nose too wide to be properly called handsome. He had fingers that were fat sausages, and they wiped the few beads of sweat from his brow, smearing the dust that had settled on his skin into a smooth grey paste. He held his sweaty palm out in greeting and flashed a grin comprised of wide, yellow stained, even teeth. "Mighty fine to meet your acquaintance."

His grip felt hot and clammy, and he flinched instinctively at George's ugly touch.

"Frankie, hunh?" George said. "I knew a guy named Frankie from out Chicago way. I know a lot of those boys. Clara and I here, we were just catching up on some of the old gang. She was saying Mikey ain't been seen around." He cocked his head to one side. "You know anything about that?"

His host's heart didn't beat. It only filtered the motor oil as it slid into his system, muddying up his sense of time and thought processes. George seemed shrink and grown in his vision, a watery man whose rivulets ran long into Chicago, deep into damp basements and silenced speakeasies. He closed his eyes, feeling dizzy, and when he opened them again it was as if they had never left Chicago, that Clara was still dancing her fox-trot with her man Mikey. His body was intact, and from the look of him he had never been a priest. Just another shady employee on Georgio's payroll.

Georgio.

George.

He coughed into his fist, an ugly ball of black staining his hand and spilling over it in a thick black fossil stream. Chicago played through his mind in a series of flickers and shadows against the dark.

Fox-trot. Mikey. Priests. Murder. Georgey-porgy, Georgian, Georgio.

The dance sped up as Langley trumpet screamed out its epithet, his lamentations frantic as they poured out of his soul, black as the oil that lay thick at his feet, dribbling in thick consciousness from his chin. Fires burned and Sheriff Borden grinned, and before he could utter one word of protest, he was out of Kansas and was trapped in Foss, on a worn out porch, with a murdering moll.

"I'd have thought you would have lived in a nicer house," he said to George, genuinely puzzled. "There's certainly enough money coming in. Your basements are always full."

But the rum runner known as Georgio in their usual circles stared at him, aghast. He imagined this was a difficult expression for a seasoned criminal like Georgio, who was so used to keeping everything hidden. If he had doubts about Clara's truthfulness in how humanity worked, it was cured in this instance. Life really was this expendable. George, who himself had ordered the end of many a handsome, ambitious upstart, was not immune.

"You are Frankie… I had my doubts at first, but…" he began. Then, angry, "I told you never to show your face to me, you bastard, never to come near…" George shook his head, staring at him. He backed away, as though terrified. "Jesus, what's going on with you? You got to be some kind of sick. That black shit. My God, Frankie… What's wrong with you?"

He was puzzled by this recognition, his liquid heart beating slightly faster as he grasped the fact that this human, this George also known as Georgio, also known as the vicious rum runner familiar with the carrion field in Kansas–he knew this face he was wearing, and he had given it a disturbing, familiar name.

"How do you know me?" he had to ask. George frowned, not understanding. "I've never met you before."

"The hell, Frankie… I thought you were in California. I don't get it, you said you were on a job, that it was tricky business. All that dough at stake… Jesus, why are you here?"

The black oil oozed out of his stomach, seeping out of the corners of his mouth. He dabbed at a damp spot leaking from his nose. A slimy, partially solid chunk of black oil dribbled out. He smeared it across his cheek with the back of his hand. "Frankie," he repeated, ignoring the look of stark horror planted firm on George's face. This mystery had to be solved. He didn't like these puzzles, these little snippets of information this world liked to throw at him, pushing his mission off balance. If he had been home, it would have been another possibility, another seeping wave of the future that would pass over him, unnoticed.

"Who do you think I am?"

He didn't get a chance to find out. She had a cat's stealth.

Clara was expert, her blade quick. George clutched at this throat, the wound gushing clots of blood that were not dissimilar to his own black oiled leavings. George gurgled for a few moments as he slumped to the ground, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and terror. These were intense emotions for a simple, business minded man like George. Mortality crept into his pockets, his profits overshadowed by the blatant confusion felt by the powerful as death strips their importance away. He would be nothing soon, a lump of rotting meat that time would discard. George's wide eyes rolled back in his head while his life blood spilled out of the massive gash she'd cut through his neck. He made a small squealing sound, one common on a farmstead like this.

She watched, impassive, as George morphed from a grimacing, vibrant being into an inanimate object.

When George stopped twitching, he turned on her, annoyed. "That was not necessary."

"Like hell it wasn't." She spat on the ground, and used George's stained sleeve to wipe her knife clean before putting it away neatly in her beaded purse. She twirled a tendril of her hair, and let out a long, deliberate sigh. "I'm going in. I don't know about you, but I could use a good shower. Hot water and rose scented soap. A girl has to have some luxuries. I'm getting real tired of all this dust and dirt."

George still lay on his front porch, a gory mess visible to anyone who passed by on the main road. "I'm not sure about that being a good idea. There could have been witnesses." He glanced over his shoulder, every breeze tugging a branch into creaking motion making his liquid heart pump. "We can't just leave him here, like this. What about his wife, Stella?"

Clara was already deep inside the house. Her steps bounded up the stairs, heading for the relief of a warm shower that would cleanse her of all her sins. It was always that easy for her. Terrible acts were only surface deep, easy to scour off with a thin layer of rose scented soap and a rough drying with a clean towel.

On the porch, the remains of George glistened in the early afternoon sun, his eyes clouded over into the cataract opacity of the dead. The open gash on his neck was a feast for flies. They crawled along its thick periphery, inside of his opened throat and out of it, a warm nursery for their white, wiggling infants. He scanned the horizon, searching for another soul who would shout in righteous indignation at what had happened here. There was a sturdy tree near the roadside, two of its lower branches thick enough to hold two swaying slabs of strange fruit. He would wither out here, in the heat, the liquid essence that was his form drying up under the scorching judgement. He would never find another host in time. His mission would be a failure.

He could hear the water running through the ancient pipes in the house, and he pushed the creaking screen door in as he went inside. Unlike the outward appearance, George and Stella's home was decked out in expensive furniture, every surface cluttered with pricey finery and rare bric-a-brac. There was not an antique to be seen in this modern home, with works of deco art displayed prominently above the fireplace, the wooden drawers and cupboards plainly designed with stark geometric shapes. It was impossible to know who had the keener eye for art, Stella or George, but what was evident was the lurking sense that these were people used to getting things and keeping them. No surface dared to remain bare, not when a teacup or an ornate hairbrush or a delicate piece of carved ivory could cover it.

The sitting room was an overbearing space crammed so full of functional design the pieces no longer had any purpose. There was nowhere to sit, not with the piles of magazines laying on embroidered chairs and stacks of framed artwork blocking access into the open room. There were no old remnants of a past life here, only the constant, obsessive deluge of a new one that had taken over their house in a relentless flood of things. A warehouse jammed full of empty accomplishment.

Clara sang as she took her shower, and he carefully made his way up the stairs, every step a hazard as he avoided bits of pottery, mink stoles, purses, suits, shoes, typewriters, stacks of paper. By the time he'd reached the upper floor, he had to squeeze against the wall to gain access to the bathing room, where Clara was busy washing off the last of George. "I don't understand this," he shouted to her through the closed door. "How can they live like this? It's like being crammed into a tightly bound maze."

The water stopped, and Clara continued to hum. "I had to shove a bunch of stuff out the door, but it's all top drawer quality, every last bit of it. I guess Georgie was doing well this year. I know those dresses of Stella's are all the newest fashions, not a thing older than two seasons." She opened the bathing room door, her hair hidden beneath a tightly wound towel turban, her body immodestly poured into a short, silken dressing gown sporting large orange poppies. "She's got good taste, though, I'll give her that. Plus, she's almost my size. I can take a few of these and they'll fit me just fine."

"So now you are a thief as well as a murderer."

"Can't see how that matters, considering the kind of person George was. You think every little thing here doesn't have a big glob of blood all over it? I know you aren't that stupid." She darted back into the bathing room, and fussed over her hair, fingers deftly puffing up several stray tresses and putting them carefully into place. "I'm going to have to do something about this mop before we get to California. Maybe I should ask Stella if there's a good place to go here in town." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "You could use a trim up yourself. Maybe they could do something about that ginger hair you're sporting. It's so wrong for your skin, you look all kinds of sick, even with a healthier fit, like you said."

A pile of expensive junk had been shoved into the corner of the bathing room, near the washing up sink she was now draped over. She balanced herself on its edge with her hip, her knee bending to give her leverage as she reapplied her lipstick and viciously smeared her lips together. "I think I'm getting a tan," she complained. She picked up Stella's stick of kohl and began applying it expertly to her large, selfish gaze. "Remind me to rummage around for a big brimmed hat. I can't be showing up in Hollywood looking like I'm some know-nothing farm girl. They want a bit more sophistication than that."

He backed away from the bathing room, the hallway window catching his eye. "You think so, do you? If actresses are as loose with the knife as you are, I doubt very much that it matters if you are from the city or the country. Unless you are referring to your murdering experience, which has rendered you an expert at this point." He inched his way down the hall, back pressed against the wainscoting as glanced out the cluttered window, the shutters broken with a tattered lace curtain littering the windowsill. He watched as a truck trundled past on the road, a pair of squealing pigs pacing in its open trunk.

"This is a lovely dress, I have to say. My, my, Stella, you know how to pick the threads."

"We need to leave," he said to her, a feeling a panic welling inside of him. "A truck just went by, the driver–he could have seen something."

She paused, the silken pink flowered summer dress held up to her shoulders as she tested its length, her chin holding it in place. She draped the skirt across her thigh, approximating its fit. "Perfect, really. Won't even need a hem." She caught his eye and groaned at his continued worry, the dress draped across her arm. Orange poppies clashed with cheerful pink. "He didn't stop, so he saw nothing. If people aren't looking for carnage, they don't find it easily." She held the dress back up to her chin. "I'm not so sure about that lacy bit at the cleavage, though. A bit of old Victoria, I think."

He glared at her, a familiar feeling of anger replacing his original panic. Outside, the branches creaked angrily against the hot, violent breeze. A storm was brewing, a pushing, stabbing finger that would rip across this farm and most of the houses in Foss, flattening them. He'd heard of such things, the newspapers in this region were full of them. Pictures of whirling fingers of storms that plucked life from the earth in godlike fury. Even the very atmosphere of this planet was prone to murder. Still, he couldn't feel too much sympathy for people standing in the way of carnage. Foss had already suffered a flood that had destroyed it. He couldn't understand why they would have bothered to rebuild.

He stared out the window, reflective. On the porch, dried tumbleweeds rolled over George's corpse. Seeds planted themselves in the crowded avenue of his gashed neck. A carrion crow let out a victorious cry as it circled and dived onto the deck. A black beak pecked deep inside of George's shocked, open mouth.

"He called me Frankie."

The bathing room door gently closed behind her. There was the sound of rustling silk as she pieced herself together in a stolen dress, the dressing gown bunched tight into a ball to bring with her.

"Did you hear me? He called me Frankie. He knew me. He looked at me like he recognized me."

The bathing room door opened, and Clara walked out into the cluttered hallway, a woman transformed. The pink dress played upon the now chestnut hue of her skin, making her appear healthy and innocent, a ruse if ever he had seen one. She was still affixing a pearl earring as she approached him, no doubt one of Stella's, along with the matching set of pearls that hung in various lengths from her neck. "Don't you just love them?" she said, holding up a strand and giggling. "Look at that pretty pink hue. Have you ever seen such a thing?"

"You didn't answer my question."

A familiar wave of ice washed over her at his insistence, and she turned away, the pearls dropping to the hollow at the base of her neck. "You look like a lot of people. It's nothing."

"But he called me by name."

"It doesn't matter."

"I think it does."

She glanced out the window he had been looking out of earlier, her head raised high to get a good vantage point. "We need to leave." She fixed her gaze from the window and onto him, her icy demeanour giving him shivers. "You're right. That road is too close."

A Behind the Scenes Look into The Antithesis: From Web Serial to Print Book

A majority of you have never heard of The Antithesis until I became the E-zine manager, and that means a majority of you don't really know the history behind it. Today, I'm going to use the 'progression' of my story as an example of the pros and cons of print book vs. website fiction.

Before I begin on that, though, let's point out the obvious differences between web fiction and print books (and in this case e-books as well):

Standard print books and e-books use only a textual medium. There may be a cover image, but that is (usually) all you are really given in terms of visual, pictographic media. However, this can change when you place a story online, on a site that can be navigated.
Reading print books and e-books is very personal. There is no way of really interacting with the author or with any other readers. Granted, this is only taking into account reader-book interactions; this does not include book-reading community sites such as Goodreads. However, a typical web fiction site allows readers to comment on individual chapters and converse with each other about the story. They can also speak to the author via email or through comments.

Those are the two major differences. There are a few more, but for this article the others are arbitrary.

The Antithesis began in February of 2010 as a serialized web-fiction with only three chapters. Now a year and a half later, there are currently two books, and the story has on average about 700 readers.

The story's appeal comes from two separate entities: the media in which I try to get my story across, and the story itself.

I'm a very visual person. I enjoy seeing art and things that go along with stories that help me visualize how the author is intending to relay the story. This is also how I created my site.

The actual story is relayed in a textual medium, typical to that of a book. However, the site is lavish with images and things that are visually stimulating; far more stimulating than block text. I can say with a fair amount of certainty that a significant chunk of my readers would have never read the story had they not come across the other forms of media accompanying it. I can also say with a fair amount of certainty that most web fiction authors understand this concept, and that is why they strive to have an 'attractive' site.

So, exactly what kinds of media does The Antithesis have aside from textual?

Artwork – From the moment I began publishing The Antithesis online, I knew I needed to eventually have artwork accompanying it. However, there was a problem to this notion: I couldn't draw. For the next year I began teaching myself how to draw, and also how to use photoshop to color my art. The beginning art was laughable; I took most of them down just because I'm horribly embarrassed by them now. Back then I thought they were amazing.  Artwork is something that many other webfiction authors provide their readers as well.

Here is just a sample of some of the artwork for The Antithesis:

 

Now, what else do I use?

Music – This is more the reader community's thing than mine. It started out as mine, though. Since two of my main characters play string instruments (violin and cello), the story itself has a musical basis. There is a musical concept to it that fortifies their relationship. I'd added a meager 'unofficial' soundtrack of songs that I found inspiring for the story, but as the reader community grew, they began recommending songs that made them think of TA as well. Pretty soon, I developed my own youtube channel that dedicated itself to reader-song recommendations, and now there is a new song up every week per reader request. This falls in line with the interactive difference between books and websites. Music can be shared by readers, and can also set the mood for certain scenes in the story.

Here are two of the more latest reader song recommendations, accompanied by artwork from The Antithesis:

I can honestly say that I am very grateful I was published by 1889 Labs. The Antithesis website was what generated my fan-base, and although readers are buying the print books, they appreciate being able to continue discussing and communicating with one another, and I am granted the freedom to continue with my site.

I faced a certain dilemma when thinking about those who may come across The Antithesis through e-book and print books alone, as they may miss out on the art and the extras I include on my site. I've devised a method to where my books actually advertise my website, and I've included the URL to the website in the book itself. After all, the web fiction is what brought in readers to begin with. It's probably my biggest promotional piece that I have going for me right now.

Other bonuses that are offered on the site that, albeit are not in any different forms of media that I've already mentioned, help boost prospective reader interest. There is a glossary of terms, a Planetarium (which outlines the major universes visited in The Antithesis, along with their respective worlds), and also articles that look more closely at certain 'species' characteristics (there are four major races that are focused upon throughout the series: the Archaeans (angels), the Fallen (demons), the Nehel, and the Vel'Haru).

However, there is an upside to purchasing the books vs. reading the story free on the site. For buying incentives, the story has been revised and the plot tightened (certain character dialogue is different, with an extra chapter and a lengthy afterward by me that goes in-depth on some of more mysterious concepts in TA). However, there are many readers who read through the entire story on the site, and like it so much that they buy the books.

The Antithesis is just one of the many examples of how webfiction and print books differ, though it is very, very possible for them to be combined and utilized successfully, both for promotional purposes and reader expansion.

Until next time.

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"Death is, for many of us, the gates of Hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in."

- George Bernard Shaw