M.A. Ray's Blog, page 14

My Brain Is Full of Idea Kittens (Or, Why I Haven’t Written a Post Lately)

So, apparently I have a lot more stories in my head than I thought. I’m passing down Byzantine corridors chasing them, and maybe I’m getting a little lost. I can’t wait to show things to you. The more I write, the more ideas I have. I’m having a lot of fun, and I hope you will, too, when the stuff’s all ready. I will have the first short story collection ready before the end of 2014, and this I vow.

I will return to blogging regularly, too.

I turned thirty. Two days ago. So that was a thing. More exciting, Oath Bound came out — you can get it, if you haven’t already, by clicking the link on the Books page. I had edits and the launch to do, and I wrote the first story for the first collection.

To celebrate, I’m running the one that started it all, Saga of Menyoral: Hard Luck, for free. I would love for you to download a copy from Amazon today, 9/7. It won’t cost you a penny. Please let me share it with you.

Off I go. All this fiction won’t write itself.

Adventure Time

I said to myself, “I’m going to write a novella.”

It was going to be sword-and-sorcery set in my own (at least to me!) highly entertaining world, and there was going to be a quest for a magical piece of jewelry. It’d be fast and fun and violent, I said to myself, and I’d fill it with dirty jokes and sex and—since I’m a dirty birdy and I have a real fondness for well-done yaoi—pretty elf boys kissing.

Thirty thousand words, I said, and I’ll slam it out in a month and send it to my beta-readers. Well, it’s been a month. I have about thirty thousand words. What I don’t have is a complete manuscript, and I’ll tell you why.

I sat down to write it, and it turned out to have people in it. Messy, broken, miserable, healing people. It got away from me. And now it’s a big pile of story and I’m digging deeper and deeper. They haven’t even left to go after the Clear Descrier yet. But you know what? I think it’s going to be a great book.

This is a big step away from my comfort zone in a lot of ways. One is that this fantasy is a lot “higher” than I usually write, filled with royals and nobles, and bar a few characters, most of the people I write aren’t high-class. Another is that there are love scenes—some of the most difficult fiction I’ve ever worked on. Yet another is the single narrator: I haven’t, and don’t intend to, deviate from Eagle Eye’s point of view. The world is different; it’s set Before the fairies died. The players are different. It’s just different.

I think every writer, at some point, should let a story run away with him or her. There’s a lot to be said for plotting, planning minutiae, controlling your words—but this experience is stretching me in so many ways that I can’t begin to list or explain them. And even if you’re a dedicated outliner, sometimes you need a new outline—or to throw it away entirely.

Let it run. Run with it. Run away, quest for magic, have an adventure.

The space in which you have adventures is not, cannot be, your comfort zone. Adventure and comfort are mutually exclusive. Don’t get so entrenched that you can’t have those adventures. Walk out of your mind’s front door. Go.

Fly.

Excerpt from Oath Bound

Being Good

Fort Rule

Little ribbons of steam still drifted up from the grilled beef on Krakus’s plate: a beautiful piece of meat, with the fat all curled up around the edges and charred lines woven across its juicy surface. It was cooked rare, just the way he liked it, and blood leaked over the white porcelain and under the hot mashed potatoes, staining them deliciously reddish-brown. The meaty, buttery scent wafted into his nose. Already, a snow-white napkin covered the front of his pure-white jerkin. His stomach growled.

He reached out and picked up his knife. When he pressed his fingers into the meat to hold it in place, it gave like a woman’s breast: warm, soft in the center. Not that he had tits on the brain, oh no, he wasn’t thinking about that anymore. He’d managed five minutes running.

He sliced into the steak with a forlorn sigh, and the juices flooded out of it. It was perfect inside, rosy pink deepening to bright red, and he cut off a bite, anticipating its texture, its taste. He wanted it so much he had to swallow a mouthful of saliva.

The bite of steak made it halfway to his mouth before his conscience jabbed at him. “Eat no flesh.” Since he’d started studying it again, the Rule popped into his mind at the worst possible times. “Eat no flesh, lest you become corrupted; a beast cares nothing for its own dirt.” Krakus had given up everything but the food. He’d sent Tatiana away. He’d stripped his apartments of everything rich, replacing his comfortable bed with a straw pallet, his silken sheets with linsey-woolsey, and his finely-milled soap with the stinking ash-and-fat stuff that got a man clean, but stripped his skin raw. His end of the desk was bare of toys. He’d relinquished anything more potent to drink than mint tea, without even any honey. Absolutely everything. Shouldn’t he be allowed this one indulgence?

Krakus pushed back his stool and rose. He picked up the plate and carried the wonderful, wicked steak, the creamy mashed potatoes, out of the room and down the stairs. When he walked out of the building that housed the Commissars’ apartments, he turned toward the midden heap—but then he saw a sergeant on the way back to the barracks from Section One. “You there!” he called. “Sergeant!”

The man hustled over and snapped to attention, giving him a sharp salute. “Father!”

“Take this,” Krakus said, thrusting out the plate.

“Father?”

“Eat it.” He wanted to weep for the loss. “Take it back to your bunk and enjoy every last bite. Do you think you can follow an order like that?”

“Yes, Father Krakus, I sure can!” The sergeant took the plate in his left hand and saluted again with his right. “I’ll follow that one to the letter!”

“Good man. Go on now.”

He tore off one last salute and hurried away with Krakus’s meal. Heavy in heart, Krakus turned to the kitchen. Inside, on the great hearth, the pots were boiling and the kettles were steaming. It took a few moments to search out Ekaterina, his personal chef, where she sat at the opposite end of the kitchen, mopping her brow and drinking from a jack of ale. He dodged the black-clad Aurelian cooks who ran to and fro in the workspace until he stood before Ekaterina. She looked like a buxom barge and she cooked like a goddess incarnate.

“Was there a problem with the steak?” she demanded, before he could open his mouth.

“No, of course not. It was beautiful.” He wrung his hands. “It’s just that I—Ekaterina, I think I’ve got to let you go. I can’t eat steaks anymore. Or mashed potatoes. Or pot roast. Or—”

She gasped and lurched to her feet, clapping a hand to his forehead as if to check for fever.

“I’ve got to get right with the Bright Lady,” he mumbled.

Ekaterina scowled up at him. “And you think I can’t cook to the Rule, is that it?”

“Well…”

“Don’t you dare say ‘yes,’ Father, because then you won’t be able to sack me. I’ll be insulted and quit on the spot.”

He tried not to fidget. Ekaterina always made him feel about seven years old, and never mind that he was the older by far. He’d better mind how he stepped. The one who controlled the food controlled the world. “Will you, please? Cook to it, I mean.”

She beamed. “Of course I will. All you ever had to do was ask. I take requests—I am a cook.”

“Then will you make lentils and rice taste good?” he asked, half joking, all hopeful.

“I’ll make everything taste good. You’ll see.” Ekaterina patted his arm with a soft but callused hand. “You won’t even feel like you’re being deprived. It’s a good thing you’re doing, Father, getting right with the Queen. I saw you give your things to little Tatiana when she left. She won’t go hungry, not with all that. Neither should you.”

Krakus couldn’t help himself. He kissed her soundly. It was the last time, he vowed, his lips would touch any part of a woman. She blushed and swatted him afterward.

“You know I’m happily married,” she scolded, but she smiled, too. Krakus went out grinning, and didn’t realize until later that he’d forgotten to have any dinner.

For once, he found himself looking forward to supper, which had become a dreadful, awkward affair, eaten with all possible dispatch. He’d been avoiding Lech so thoroughly that they only came into contact at services—which Krakus performed with the same zeal he’d exercised in removing everything prohibited from his life—and at the evening meal. Once, Lech had expressed approval for Krakus’s new habits, and Krakus had answered him with a snarl so fervent he’d dropped a bite of lentils all over his vestments. Now, they ate in stony silence, each refusing to look at the other, each feeling the other’s presence nag like a bad tooth.

Tonight, though, Krakus’s stomach rumbled, and he was eager to see what Ekaterina had cooked for him in accordance with the Rule. He came to the round table just as Fillip and Feodor brought in the supper trays, and with no more than a glance at Lech’s sour face, sat down on the stool he’d had brought in to replace his cushioned armchair. When Fillip laid his tray on the table and took the cover away, Krakus wanted to run back down to the kitchens and kiss his cook again and again. Four huge, fat mushroom caps lay on his plate, grilled like he had his steaks and smothered in mushroom gravy, with roast potatoes and a piping-hot crock of soup on the side. The scents of garlic, vinegar, and oil drifted from the green salad.

Krakus lifted his eyes to the rafters. Oh, Bright Lady, You bless me far more than I deserve! Forgive my doubts and my weaknesses, and sanctify this wonderful food, so I can turn my energies even more to Your service. Then he turned to the young Militant awaiting his word, and grinned. “Thank you, Brother Fillip.”

Fillip’s farm-boy face grinned back. “Of course, Father.” He seemed to enjoy his duties for Krakus far more these days, but that might be because Krakus had dropped more lard and gone into an even smaller breastplate.

“Tomorrow morning, after service? Like usual?”

“Yes, Father Krakus!”

“See you then,” Krakus said, cutting into one of his mushrooms as Fillip left. The morning training he’d been doing with Fillip made Krakus feel, somehow, younger and older at the same time. Getting himself moving again, even beyond what he’d done in Section One, had him feeling physically excellent—and he could feel his experience again, too. He had something to teach after all, and watching Fillip improve was the best part of it.

Ekaterina, you are a queen among women, he thought, chewing the spicy mushroom. Lech sat poker-stiff across the table, masticating his supper as if his jaw were being raised and lowered on a pulley. Krakus couldn’t imagine he was enjoying the lentils and rice—why did he always eat lentils and rice when the Rule permitted the sort of supper Krakus was having? It was like he wanted to suffer.

Lech emptied his dish as quickly as always, but tonight, Krakus reveled in every bite. It was wonderful; he almost didn’t miss the meat. He’d finished his main course and turned his attention to the salad and flatbread when he realized Lech hadn’t risen from the table.

When he raised his eyes, he met his Brother’s most neutral stare, which still looked something like an alligator eyeing a juicy pig. He made sure to stuff his mouth before he asked, “Did you want something?” Lech must. They hadn’t had a conversation in a month.

“I want nothing from you,” Lech bit off, “but it may interest you to know that the Conclave has been called.”

“Conclave isn’t for another two years.”

Lech sneered. “Disa Haakonsdottir,” he said, as if the name tasted bad, “has requested a special session, to be held this winter in Oasis. As if my duties can bear such an interruption.”

Oasis was a long voyage away. Lech’s duties be damned; Krakus didn’t know if he could bear Lech that long. He swiped his flatbread through the last, delicious remnants of his bean soup. “Who’s Disa again? Doesn’t she have the long hair?”

“Akeere’s high witch.”

Before he spoke, Krakus looked up again, into Lech’s washed-out blue eyes. “If you didn’t know that was coming, you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought. If she didn’t call the Conclave, that new fellow they’ve got in Dreamport would have. Hendrick.”

“Yes, well, I’ve a mind to deny them our presence.”

“We’re going.” Krakus took his last bite of salad and wiped his mouth.

“For what?” Lech let out his horrible laugh. “To be shamed for doing as the Bright Lady Herself would command? Don’t forget, whatever happens to me happens also to you.”

“Then so be it. I’ll take whatever they dish out, because it was my duty to hold you back from your sin, and I didn’t. Besides, what can they do to us, really? Kick us out of the Conclave, maybe, but you don’t want to be in their little club anyway.”

The vulture’s face flushed livid. “It was no sin to—”

“Wickedness.” Krakus pushed back his stool. “It was wickedness. We’re going to face what we’ve done, Lechie.”

“I will not—”

“When the time comes, you will pack your things, or I’ll strap you to the top of the carriage without them, and if you think I won’t, you just go on and test me.”

“How dare you?” Lech screamed, but Krakus was already leaving the dining room to make a final check of Section One before bed. He didn’t trust that damned doctor an inch.

 

 

Once Upon a Time

the Sign of the Jackalope, an inn at the edge of the Wastes

It took the best part of a fortnight to get out of the North Wing. Kessa moped and sighed the entire time, but Dingus was plain delighted to be back on the road. He’d enjoyed the Moot way more than he’d expected to, but now it was just the three of them again, and he felt easier the farther they got from Knightsvalley. Out in the wild he didn’t have to worry so much about the mysterious someone trying to bump off his teacher, or about saying something stupid in front of all those people.

Best of all, Vandis had time again, and even if he spent a lot of it on Kessa’s woodcraft, well… Dingus spent plenty, too. But Vandis had time to tell stories again, and to hear them. The third night out, after Kessa had given them Margaret Dragonslayer—it was still her favorite—Dingus remembered to tell the one about Wolf’s Eye, whose hand had been on the string that carried an arrow through the Nuz chief Great Brog’s throat so far that it stuck by the fletching alone. With Great Brog dead, the Nuz had broken, too, and so the war had ended. Vandis came back with a human story, one Dingus had read about, but hadn’t heard, of the messenger in the Armies of the Little States who’d lost General Haver’s orders and lost the battle for the Little States. They’d signed a treaty with Muscoda afterward, and that was the treaty that let Muscoda take over last year: the Treaty of Vicksdale.

“That damned treaty’s a good part of the reason we’re going this way,” Vandis explained. “Otherwise, we’d have gone south of the Back and made a straight shot across to Windish. It’s easier country, and more populated. As it is, we’re going to have to eat off supplies for a while.”

Dingus frowned from his spot across the fire, where he was busy scraping the pelts of the tough hares they’d had for supper. “We can’t eat off the land?”

“Some things, maybe, we’ll be able to forage. But it’s not like you guys are used to. To the south, it’s fertile, but where we’re going… not so much. It’s cold most of the year, and the coast is rough. Seal Rock’s the only good harbor for hundreds of miles.”

“So what’ll we do?” Kessa asked. Dingus had the same question.

Vandis stretched his short legs, then pulled them back again to sit tailor-fashion. “Before we go out on the plain, we’ll load up on supplies. If we can, we’ll join with a merchant caravan headed up there. They’ll be happy to have us. Knights are good company.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Dingus blurted.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“We should go it alone. We can’t trust anybody, not after—”

“That won’t be an issue.”

“Wouldn’t have thought it’d be one at the Moot, but it was.”

“I put it around we were booking passage in Dreamport.” Vandis smirked.

Dingus shook his head and set down the pelt he was working on. “More than enough people headed that way to figure out you lied. By now they’re gonna be wondering why you haven’t showed up yet. You’re in danger.”

“I’m always in danger. All of us are. Life is risk.”

“So we gotta go looking for more?”

“It’s safer in company. Do you want to come across a whole tribe of barbarians, just you, Kessa, and me?”

Dingus scowled off into the darkness to his right. “You gotta be careful. If you—if something was to happen to you, Kessa—”

“If something happens to me, turn around and head for HQ.”

He didn’t say it, but he couldn’t see a life for himself if Vandis died. Just the thought of anyone doing him harm prickled warmth down Dingus’s spine and filled his belly with cold, slimy fear that Vandis would be gone forever, and that his own mind would snap like a twig.

“We’re traveling somewhere new,” Vandis said. “We’re going to meet interesting people and see things we’ve never seen. It’s an adventure, and you won’t appreciate it even a little bit if you fucking torture yourself the whole way.”

They traded looks. Dingus’s read: I can’t help it. Vandis’s replied: Try.

It wasn’t like he set out to torture himself, but some things he couldn’t let go. His flesh imprisoned a restless, relentless fire. He felt pent-up and frustrated in a way no amount of sneaking away to jerk off could fix—and he’d tried that plenty.

As they went, the mountains gentled down into hills. Far away, everything looked empty, and the emptiness seemed wider the closer they came to it. At last, they stopped at a wayside inn called the Sign of the Jackalope. “Last Lodging and Supplies before the Wastes,” or so the weathered sign out on the road said. It was a big place, too, with stable room for at least fifty animals, and rows of wagons tied up in the broad yard.

“Remember, don’t eat anything,” Dingus said to Vandis as they approached the gate. “I’ll fix—”

Vandis turned such a perch-eye over his shoulder that Dingus’s words died in his throat. “Who’s the Master here?”

When he didn’t answer, Vandis pressed on. “Tell me.”

“You are,” Dingus said, “but—”

“There’s no ‘but’ in that sentence.”

Dingus grimaced and pulled his hood up to cover his ears as they passed through the yard. Most of the wagons had locked lids covering their contents. Just outside the entrance, a few horses stood tied to a long hitching post, feedbags over their faces.

“What’s that?” Kessa gasped, pointing at a battered jackrabbit’s head with antlers mounted over the double doors.

“That’s a jackalope,” Vandis said.

“Do they live in the Wastes? Could we catch one?”

Vandis laughed. “No, it’s just a silly thing—Ethelred’s little joke. There aren’t any and never were, even before the fairies died.”

“But it looks real,” she protested.

“Taxidermists can do some interesting things with carcasses.” Vandis pushed open the doors. Smoke smell oozed from inside the tavern, swamping Dingus when it reached him: woodsmoke, tobacco smoke, tallow dips, and underneath, the faintest hint of burnt food. He caught the thick stink of spilled beer, old piss, and men’s bodies. It was full day outside, but when the doors swung shut behind him, might as well have been midnight—noisy midnight. The ceiling soared, with a balcony running around the whole outside of the room and filled with tables like the floor. The taproom felt close; the air settled on his skin. A barmaid whisked by between him and Kessa, trailing too much rosewater and making his head swirl.

Vandis looked back at them. “I guess this place is a little rougher than I’d remembered,” he said, his face wry.

“Maybe,” Kessa said, staring around.

Dingus didn’t reply; he stood rooted to the spot, just inside the doors, clutching the straps of his pack and trying to handle everything his senses shouted at him. The minstrel on the stage at the far left plucked doggedly away at a lute, even though nobody paid him the least mind. Probably better that way. He wasn’t very good, and the lute sounded a shade out of tune. The barman shouted at a barmaid; on the right, Dingus could almost smell a fight brewing: two men on their feet, staring each other down.

Vandis said, “Dingus. Are you under control?”

“I got this,” he said, closing his eyes briefly. Then he followed Vandis and Kessa across to the bar.

“Vandis!” the barman bellowed when they got close, turning away from the blushing barmaid, who escaped the moment his attention went somewhere else.

“Eth,” Vandis said. “Long time, no see.” He reached over the gouged bar-top to clasp wrists. “Got room for a couple of Knights and a Squire?”

“Well, now, that depends.” Eth the barman grinned all over his shiny, jiggling face. “Got stories? New ones?”

“What do you think?” Vandis asked Dingus and Kessa.

Kessa nodded; Dingus took in a deep breath. It didn’t steady him much, but enough. Besides, after telling his stories to the fishy eyes of the Masters at Moot, after going on with Francine and the guys, this ought to be cake. “How many you want?” he asked, and saw, out of the corner of his eye, Vandis beaming at him.

“How many you got?” the barman shot right back.

“I bet I got a hundred you never heard your whole life long.”

“Don’t undersell yourself,” Vandis said, without a trace of irony. His chest puffed up. “This is Sir Dingus, my Junior, and he has a hundred I’ve never heard, but he’ll give you—what do you think is fair, Dingus? Six? That’s two new ones apiece.”

“Sure.” Dingus wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t go wrong agreeing with Vandis.

“Ten new ones,” Eth said. “Three apiece, and an extra for you, lad, because you look like you can eat.”

“Seven,” Dingus returned. “Two apiece, and an extra for me, ’cause I can eat. I’ll do three now, then four for your supper crowd.”

He glanced at Vandis, who nodded. “I’ll give you some preaching in between if Kessa here can do one for practice.”

Eth sucked at his teeth. “I guess that’ll do.” He clasped wrists with Vandis again before bawling across to the minstrel. “Get off the stage, Colman, you can’t play a note! We’ve got Knights, Knights in the house!” To Dingus, he added, “Wet your whistle, lad, and get up there.”

Dingus slipped his pack, took the mug Eth slid across to him, and crossed to the far right of the bar to touch the carved medallion of the white oak leaf, brushing one hand over the stains of so many oily fingers before his. “Lady, bless my voice,” he said, like every time he’d told in a tavern, and walked to the stage, where the minstrel stowed his lute in its case with a mother’s tenderness.

“You’re tuned a little high,” Dingus said to him, real quiet, and he slammed the case shut and took himself off in a huff. After a long swallow of the beer—kind of sour, but wet, at least—Dingus set the mug on the boards, cleared his throat, and projected his voice. “If you wanna hear a story, listen up! Once upon a time…” and he gave them Lone Crow and the Witch, then Rose Daughter’s Shark, and finally the Periapt of True Seeing, which was a good long one about Brother Fox and Eagle Eye’s quest for a necklace that stripped away the veils of Glamor and gave its wearer the Sight, and how they’d used it to save Brother Fox’s betrothed from a hidden, magical prison. Grandpa had shown it to him once, the Periapt itself, a fat opal on a whisper of gold chain, and told him how the rainbows inside would stand out from the surface and dance when someone used it—back when.

He thought that one went over pretty well. He got some good silence out of it, a decent haul in tips, and some delighted murmuring from the barmaids when he described the Periapt. Nobody tried anything on Vandis. No matter what his Master had said, he’d kept a weather eye out the whole time he was up there. When he came down from the stage, promising to be back at suppertime, he crossed to Vandis and Kessa where they sat at a table surrounded by the remains of their dinner.

Vandis stood and clapped him on the arm. “They’re good and softened up,” he said, and made his way up to take Dingus’s place. His gritty voice rolled out a moment later: “Now hear this…”

Dingus grinned. This was familiar as home. So far he enjoyed being a Junior. He didn’t have to cook every single night or set up and break camp—even though he did help Kessa most every night, seeing as he was supposed to be helping to teach her the basics—and Vandis expected him to bullshit and handle jobs that weren’t quite as routine, like paying for their room and board with new stories.

Soon a barmaid came ’round with Dingus’s dinner. “If you need anything more, just shout,” she said, giving him a pretty smile. She brushed his arm with hers when she set the trencher of goat stew in front of him. “You have a really good voice, you know. I could almost believe in that necklace.” She busied herself clearing up the dirty dishes.

“You should,” Dingus said, taking out his spoon and knife. “It’s a real necklace. I’ve held it in my own two hands.”

“Oh, come on.” She propped a hand on one hip, the other on the table. He tried not to look at the way it made her breasts shift under her bodice.

“You calling me a liar?” He smiled, trying to let her know it wasn’t meant to be fighting words.

She laughed. “No, I’m calling you a flimflamming, tale-spinning Knight with nothing better to do than twist stories around until nobody recognizes them, and then spit them out as your own.”

“Yeah, I am.” That pleased him no end to say. “Anyways, it doesn’t have to be exactly true to be truth.”

“So I guess what your Master’s spouting up there is true, too.” She nodded at Vandis, who held forth onstage with Why the Moon Bleeds.

“True? Who knows. Maybe that’s not how or why it happened, but it’s truth. Jealousy. Revenge. Punishment.” He opened his hands. “Fear. That’s truth, don’t you think?”

“Now you’re philosophizing. I’m no scholar, Sir Knight.” The barmaid laid a hand over her heart. “I’m just here to wait on people.”

“Where you’re from, what you do, that stuff doesn’t matter. Look at me. I’m just a sheep-shit hillbilly far from home, but I know truth when I hear it.”

She tossed her hair, laughing again, so the silver hoops in her ears caught the low tallow-dip light. “You’re not just a flimflamming, tale-spinning Knight. You’re a preacher, with your trust-me face and your voice like sin. Finally, a preacher I could stand to listen to all night… if he talks that long.”

“Well,” Dingus said, “I don’t know about all night, but I got more stories for suppertime if you wanna hear—ow!” He glared at Kessa, who’d chosen that moment to kick him in the shin. She tilted her head toward the barmaid, waggling her eyebrows like it was supposed to mean something.

“All right, Longshanks, I’ll hear you later.” The barmaid sashayed away shaking her head.

When she’d gone, he demanded, “The hell was that for?”

“She likes you, dumbass!”

“What?”

“She said ‘all night’!” Kessa hissed, leaning close.

“People say that,” he explained patiently. “Those are words. People say them.”

“Yeah, but she meant all night!” At his blank look, she let out a disgusted huff. “As in, you could do it to her all night! You are so oblivious.”

“I’m not. She wasn’t—”

“Yes, you are, and yes, she was coming on to you.”

“C’mon! Why’d she wanna do a thing like that?”

“That, right there, that’s why you’re oblivious.”

Dingus shook his head, picking up his cutlery, and tucked into the stew. Kessa huffed again and settled back in her chair, arms folded, until Vandis finished preaching and came to fetch her to take her turn on the stage. Like Dingus had figured she would, she did Margaret Dragonslayer, and it went down real well even if she used her hands in some of the wrong places and almost lost her spot when the place started to fill up with her story only partway through.

Vandis ordered a whiskey from the same pretty barmaid. Dingus, looking at his palms, asked for one, too.

“Anything for you, Preacher,” she said, and he flinched and flushed when she trailed her fingers across his shoulders. Her footfalls receded, and he stole a glance at Vandis, whose eyebrows looked about to disappear into his hair.

“It’s for Eagle Eye and the Worm,” Dingus mumbled.

Vandis’s mouth curved up. “You can have whiskey if you want it, Preacher.”

With a groan, Dingus dropped his burning face into his hands. Vandis laughed—not too hard, but he laughed.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy. I know Point A, which is flirting,” Vandis said, putting a fingertip on the table, “and I know something about Point B, which would be… you know.” He put another fingertip a little ways away. “But in between? You’re on your own, kid.”

“Aw, hell!” Dingus knew Point B, all right, but he’d never even been to Point A, not as far as he knew.

“Guys a lot dumber than you have figured it out. You can, too.”

“Thought you were the Master here. Aren’t you supposed to know everything?”

Vandis was still laughing when the barmaid came back with the drinks. “You were pretty good,” she said to him. “I like how you tell those old stories. You had some truth.” She darted a smile at Dingus, who pretended interest in a knot on the tabletop.

“I can preach, or I wouldn’t be where I am,” Vandis said.

“True enough, but you don’t have—”

“Oh, look, here’s Kessa,” Dingus said, popping up from his chair. Kessa was just coming down the steps, but he grabbed his drink and headed for the stage, passing her on his way there. He shut his eyes, breathed, and imagined the Masters’ stares. She won’t be a problem, he told himself, and refused to look the barmaid’s way.

He gave them Grandpa’s absolute, bang-up, best stories, saving Eagle Eye and the Worm for last. His fire-breathing dragon trick went down in a storm of gasps and applause, which for sure he’d like to get used to, and he had to do it again twice before he could go have his supper. Thank the Lady for Vandis, who’d ordered it for him so the food already sat steaming in front of his chair. He didn’t see her anywhere.

She caught him coming back from the privy after he’d eaten. Her arms locked around his neck and she pulled him down. Instead of cool and smooth, like Moira’s, her mouth was hot, and so soft, so slick his knees about buckled; instead of sweet, she tasted of beer.

Dingus went up in sudden flame. Sensation rushed down his spine and settled, glowing, in his groin—like when the red came on—and like when the red came on, he wanted, just wanted. His hands gripped at her flesh and she yielded, swayed against him. His pulse beat in his ears: take, take, take, and he felt as if his skin bound and trapped him. He straightened, shaking.

Her fingers stole under his hood and wound in his hair. She yanked him back down. “You don’t kiss,” she said, “like a preacher.”

His breath rasped. He forced his hands into fists at his sides, tight, even though they twitched to open and touch. “Don’t, please don’t. You don’t know what—”

“I know you want to fuck,” she whispered, shifting her hips to press against his hard-on.

“I’ll hurt you.” He tried to pull back, but she had a fierce, one-handed grip on his hair, and she laughed at him.

“You’re hung, Preacher, but not that hung.” She rubbed up between his thighs—right where it counted. Fire and wanting slashed through him. If he didn’t get away, he’d do something terrible.

He lurched back so hard he landed on his ass and left her with what felt like half his hair.

“You have got to be shitting me.” She stood there, fingers curled over one out-thrust hip, looking down on him while he drew in choking gasps, and then crouched. “I’m offering you free cunt, and around here, nobody gets it for free.” She reached for his crotch and he scooted away. “What about it? Are you stupid, or are you going to act like a man?”

“Fuck off my brother before I wreck your face,” Kessa said, sweet as you please. Dingus almost groaned with relief—and a healthy dose of humiliation—to see her looming tall behind the barmaid.

“Your brother’s a mess,” the barmaid said, straightening. To Dingus, she added, “What a waste of a big dick,” before she strutted back into the tavern.

“Whore,” Kessa said. He took the hand she offered. “You know you couldn’t hurt her with a rafter, right?”

Dingus sat down hard again. “What?”

“I heard you. I went to pee. At first I thought you’d, you know… but on my way back, I heard you.” She shrugged. “You wouldn’t hurt her, that’s all.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” He stood.

“Then what did you mean?”

He paused in the middle of brushing down his pants to look her in the eye. Since they’d met, he’d grown taller, so they weren’t quite eye-to-eye anymore. “It felt like I was going to berserk.”

“Aw, Dingus…”

“Please don’t tell Vandis.”

She snorted. “Are you kidding?” Then she stuck her fingers in her ears and sang, “‘La la la, if I don’t hear about it, it doesn’t exist, I can’t hear you!’ Let’s not squish his illusions.”

Dingus couldn’t help snickering at that. He stuck his hands in his pockets, relaxing a little. How’d he forget how great she could be?

On the way back up to the inn, she bumped his shoulder with hers. “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” he said, bumping back.

In spite of Kessa’s kindness, Dingus tossed and turned for hours in his bedroll, monstrously horny and unsatisfied. It’d been so long since he’d thought he might find someone willing to have him, and when the opportunity presented itself, what did he do? He choked, that was what, like a little boy getting a first glimpse of tit. He could promise himself not to do that again, but even if another one came along, he doubted he’d make any better showing. He sighed, and the next time he thought anything at all, Vandis was shaking him awake.

 

Look out for Oath Bound next month.

Don’t Turn Away

I don’t have much to say today, just this:

The things that make you uncomfortable cause discomfort for a reason. They engender very deep feelings, and fiction written from that standpoint is often my—and I’d argue your—best. It’s fueled by honest emotion.

Now, I’m not advocating you compromise your personal morals. If you feel it’s important for you to write books without cursing or sex, if you’re writing for children—there are a variety of reasons—that’s not really what I’m talking about, and those ideas are part of your personal artistic integrity. I’m not necessarily talking about strong content or telling you to include it, but saying rather that you find the things in your particular story that make you squirm.

These things, if you’re doing it right, will be specific to your story. And when you sit down to write, you’ll find them. What I’m suggesting is that you don’t turn your face from them, because that discomfort drives. Stepping outside your comfort zone will, if you let it, push you into your truth zone. And the thing about really great fiction (whether it’s to your or my or anyone’s taste) is that it tells the truth, that it needs to tell the truth. The truth about what happened, even if it’s only in hints and whispers. The truth about people and their relationships.

In your first draft you (or at least I) will flinch and pull back, and that’s fine. Being brave is not about never flinching. It’s about flinching, being afraid, and doing that thing anyway.

Be brave. Write the living hell out of it. I believe in you. You can do this thing.

Jumping the Snark: 9 Tips for One-Liners That Slice

This post originally appeared at Owl Eyes Scriptorium, a group blog I’ve been contributing to. Check us out.

Ever have that moment when somebody says something to you and you just have that perfect comeback on the fly?

Yeah. Neither have I. That’s why I’m here to give you my tips for writing snappy one-liners.

1.       Read them out loud.

I’m a big proponent of doing this with all your fiction, but if you read nothing else out loud, read these. To get the sound of the wisecrack, crack wise, my friend.

2.       The setup.

Remember, the burn is only as sick as its victim. Maybe your setup is a lesser burn, or maybe it’s a straight line, but a one-liner is at its most satisfying when it hits a deserving target. Take aim at the right one.

3.       Try them different ways.

Write it a dozen times. Sometimes your first shot is perfect, but sometimes it falls short. Write it two dozen times. Read them aloud and pick the one that makes you giggle the most. Preferably the one that makes you snort, and your child/significant other/patrons in the coffee shop/whoever give you a strange look.

4.       Test them out.

What’s humor when it doesn’t make other people laugh? Test them on a writing partner or six. Lucky me, I have the Scriptorium, but if you don’t have something like it (which you should make if you can’t find!), get some friends, make sure they know what you’re doing, and let it fly.

5.       Read great snark.

Books that make you laugh. I recommend Dave Barry (say what you want, he turns a phrase), Ogden Nash, Chuck Wendig, Terry Pratchett—but if none of these hits your funny bone, find something that does and strip it for parts.

6.       Remember your character’s voice.

If some incisive Jon Stewart-style line is coming out of your hillbilly himbo, you’d better think again. That character type can be hilarious to a high degree, but it isn’t going to come out the same way, so put some thought into it. If you have to think dumber than you are, have a few drinks and get back to me. If you have to think smarter, do it sober.

7.       Words that sound dirty, but aren’t.

Oh, baby. Where do I start? Mukluk. Moist. Pulchritude. Mastication. Squelch. Blast. They add rhythm and flavor. Find some favorites. Red-breasted warbling cuckoos or something. It’s fun.

8.       Rudeness.

You don’t get the good stuff by holding back. You can be subtle, imply a world of rude and nasty things, if that’s appropriate for the character, but go for the throat.

9.       Fucking swear [optional].

A personal favorite of mine. Look, words like ass and cock and shit and fuck just sound funny. Every other word? No. But spice it up a little. Call the guy a ten-pound bag of assholes. That’s funny right there.

Now you’ve heard my advice. Let’s hear some of your wicked burns. Comment below, you red-breasted warbling cuckoos, you.

Eagle Eye and the Worm of Shirith

Dingus told the end of this story in Hard Luck, but I thought it was time to tell the whole story, Eagle Eye’s way. Also, I love dragons and wanted to write about one again. Hope you enjoy this trip into Rothganar Before, when there were still fairies.

~*~

Eagle Eye could scramble a squirrel’s brain with a flung stone before he was out of nappies. His mother—her ashes feeding Yriah’s children and her soul flown to Iunder, bless her—when he was born, Mother had pleaded with Falcon Eye his father. “Don’t name him Eagle Eye,” she begged. “He won’t be able to hit the broad side of a house.” But it was Father’s-Father’s name, and Eagle Eye it had to be, and Eagle Eye he grew into like nobody before or since would ever be Eagle Eye, and he passed into legend even while he lived.

Before all that, though, there was the Worm. Eagle—Father called him Vo, which is Eagle in the Traders’ tongue—met the old monster when he had no more than a few hairs down his breeches to prove he’d one day be a man, and fourscore and two years exactly. Father had gone out with some of the Court, being that he was the High King’s huntsman, and that left Eagle to himself, which he liked. That morning he’d gotten his bow and quiver in order, making the wood was sound and packing extra strings in his pockets. You never knew. He whetted his hunting knife, stashed a currycomb in another pocket, and set off opposite the way Father had taken the High King and all the tall perfect nobles of the Court, into the wild country southwest of Shirith Valley.

He didn’t know the name of the mountain he rambled on that day, but he knew it in the bare soles of his feet, in his nose, in his eyes, every last inch. There was a great cave mouth in the side, but Father had told him not to go spelunking alone, and most times he did what Father said, especially out in the wild. You never knew, and besides, enough dangerous things lurked in the wood itself that Eagle didn’t particularly want to be screwing around down in the dark. He had plenty of friends aboveground anyways, even if most of them didn’t talk back to him.

That morning when Eagle splashed through the easternmost stream snaking near the bottom of the mountain, the fairies that clustered around it brushed him with glittery fingers as he passed. He skirted the place where the winged serpents gathered; for all they talked, what they said dripped poison in your ear. And he avoided going directly upstream to the falls where the naiads clustered to comb their hair and giggle. Young as he was, Eagle’d been man enough for them some little while now, and he had no desire to be pulled underwater and screwed ’til he drowned. Instead, after he laid a couple of snares for dinner, he climbed a ways to Vercingetorix’s meadow. Since he was untouched, Vercingetorix didn’t mind him. The big unicorn even let Eagle come close and stroke his silver-white sides, though his pearly wicked-sharp horn was off-limits to curious hands.

Eagle paid his respects. The currycomb was for Vercingetorix. He liked it sometimes, and when Eagle asked this morning whether he wanted currying, he said yes. Eagle worked on him ’til his coat almost blinded at a glance. He talked about all kinds of nothing. For all his great dignity he was still a frivolous fairy creature, and real vain. When Eagle got through he always had the feeling he’d been talked at by six of the Court boys at once, but he liked Vercingetorix better ’cause the chatter was more about what was going on in the forest than it was outrageous lies about sex.

After he’d finished, he said good-bye to the unicorn and took his empty belly off to check the snares. One of them had caught him a nice fat squirrel, which he killed quick and roasted slow on a spit, stuffed with young wild onion. He collected some little strawberries while he waited, and ate them after as a dessert, lounging on the flat rock in his favorite sunny clearing. The fairies came to the sweet and to Eagle, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have told anyone, but he sang to them, a made-up story about a slight, dark, suspiciously Eagle-like hero slaying wicked trolls. They loved it, and sang along in their tiny voices with the sounds of instruments, fife and fiddle both, and they touched his skin wherever it lay to the air. They frosted between his collarbones and all over his face, hands, and forearms, even his feet, with glittery fairy dust. It tickled, and the story got lost in his laughter. They kissed his long pointed ears and flittered away, as quick as they’d come, and then Eagle heard other voices speaking hituleti, the People’s Tongue, which he’d grown up speaking.

He rolled off the rock into a crouch and straightened, frantically swiping at the glitter. The voices were young men’s voices, and he didn’t want to be seen like this. It was a rare man who got loved on by pretty little fairies. Mostly it was kids and women.

Eagle hadn’t needed to worry. The three speakers passed by in the trees below. They didn’t notice Eagle in the clearing up above, but he saw them, the Duke of Madoc’s twin sons and the Crown Prince.

He heard them talking a little. “We won’t wake him up!” said Prince Brother Fox, laughing. “We’ll just go in and strike at his heart. Think of it! Wormsbane, we’ll be.”

At first Eagle thought it was just a brag, but Swift Snake and Swift Cat went on about it, and he saw the direction they headed, and suddenly it felt terribly real. How stupid were they? He went cold all the way out to his fingertips. “Never go in there, Eagle, you mustn’t,” he remembered Father saying when they passed the cave mouth together, time and time again. “The Worm would eat Shirith whole if you wakened him.” And Eagle had believed it, believed every word of Father’s stories about the great red fire-breathing Worm that slept below the mountain. “The last time he woke, Eleazar burned down half the royal palace and swallowed the flocks,” Father had said. “He carried off Crown Princess Liria and sucked the marrow from her bones in his lair. Just ask that unicorn if you don’t believe me.”

Vercingetorix hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Eleazar, the Worm of Shirith, with his teeth like daggers and his claws like swords, and his wings that blotted the sun! What would Father do?

 What would Father say if Eagle didn’t try to stop them? He shuddered to think; and so he snatched up his gear and dashed up, around the side of the mountain, concealed in the trees and silent on his bare feet, still shedding fairy dust. And in the end he slid down the sharp drop in front of the cavern mouth and fell through brush and trees to land lightly right there, blocking the entrance as best it could be blocked, though that was hopeless. It gaped in the side of the mountain, and even though it was overgrown in spots, still plenty of space remained for the men to pass. “Don’t,” he panted, straightening.

“What have we here?” sneered Swift Cat, at the same time Brother Fox cocked his head and smiled a little with his hair spilling all to one side.

“Eagle Eye?” he asked, smiling that smile, which put a tightness in Eagle’s belly that Eagle didn’t quite understand. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Eagle said, and then, rushing, “you can’t go down there, Your Highness, the Worm—”

“Who is this, Fox?” demanded Swift Snake, the other twin.

“Faralt the huntsman’s son,” Brother Fox explained.

“So—not even nobody. Nobody’s little boy.” Swift Snake laughed and shoved Eagle onto the rocks just inside the cavern.

“Snake,” Brother Fox said, reproving, and he was maybe about to say more, but Eagle picked himself up lickety-split, before they could get past him.

“My father’d tell you the same!” He blocked as best he could, squaring his shoulders and feeling small. “He always tells me to stay away from here. Don’t wake the Worm, he says. It could kill us all!”

When Brother Fox grinned that way, Eagle for one moment almost believed him. “It’ll be dead before it can rise. You wait. I’ll bring you a scale, Little Eagle.”

Eagle’s nostrils flared. “You’re being stupid!” he blurted, and Swift Cat and Swift Snake narrowed their eyes at him, same time, same gesture, same face. “It’s not a brave deed like you were saying! It’s just stupid!”

“Little nothing boy with fairy dust in his hair,” said Swift Cat. “Maybe he should go first. Sparkly Worm bait.” And he and Swift Snake both laughed, nasty and rough.

“Cat,” said Brother Fox, sharper. “Cut it out. He’s a good kid. Let’s go in and slay the Worm, and then—”

“Don’t do it!” Eagle cried, his voice cracking, now, when he least wanted it to. His accidental squeak echoed in the chamber behind him, and he flushed.

Brother Fox laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly, moving him aside while the twins walked right past. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring you that scale at home.” And then the dark covered him up, his left boot heel the last thing to disappear into the cave. In a moment one of the twins lifted a red blob of mage-light; that disappeared too, and Eagle turned back toward the valley, thinking he should run and fetch Father. But Father was clear on the opposite side. He’d gone the other way, and the High King too, and the God only knew how long it’d take to fetch either one of them back, if they even believed him anyways.

He looked out over waves of green, highlighted in golden summer sun, and the seams of little creeks and falls, the dangerous sweep of the wash directly below. Eagle bit his lip, and then he turned and padded into the swallowing dark of the Worm’s cave. It didn’t take him long to catch up with the little, bobbing red light; but he stayed a ways off, down and down through the twisting corridors, so they wouldn’t catch him following.

Even here the Worm’s chemical reptile stink reached his nose. They were in a chamber with a ceiling so high not even the mage-light could illuminate it, and the dark seemed to press on what light there was, so the three walked close together, whispering a susurrus of regret. Behind came Eagle with his heart jacking inside his chest so hard he thought it might explode.

What was he going to do about a big old worm anyways? A little nothing boy with fairy dust in his hair. What could any of them do? He wished they’d listened to him. Maybe they didn’t see how the mage-light played crimson over hanging rock formations, staining them bloody, but Eagle did. He crept along, bare feet whispering on the stone, and kept his distance, no matter how much he felt like running up and budging himself next to Brother Fox.

The caverns opened vaster now, and Eagle could feel the wide emptiness on either side of him, almost as if it pressed on his skin. Rather than growing cooler as they went farther underground, like every cave in Eagle’s memory, this one grew warmer and then baking hot, sending sweat rolling down his back. He was terribly thirsty, and he drank from the small waterskin on his belt, but not much. He didn’t want to risk being heard. Up ahead, the men glistened ruby, and more than one wiped a sleeve across his brow. The stench of the Worm overpowered Eagle’s sense of smell, and then Brother Fox and the Swifts disappeared around a bend. Eagle scuttled after.

They had come into the chamber where the Worm lay sleeping. A draft of fiery air blew at intervals: Eleazar’s thunder snores. Eagle felt it, even though the mage-light had only just begun to unveil the massive evil head, big enough to climb. He could’ve fit in one of those nostrils up until a few years ago, and the black horns that curled back from its forehead gleamed like obsidian. The Worm’s breath was ancient meat and brimstone and one of his forefeet could have flattened six of Eagle at once. He slept on a mound of gold and jewels and bones.

And Brother Fox and his friends walked right by like it was nothing. Eagle could hardly breathe for fear. He kept along behind, but he hunched in small. The closer he got, the more he wanted to turn and run; by the time he walked past the terrible mouth he wasn’t breathing at all.

Up ahead there was a sharp crack and a jingle of coin, so loud in the chamber Eagle jumped out of his skin and barely managed to swallow a childish scream. And he froze in place, trembling and hugging himself, ’til he could recover a little.

A strange slithering sound made him look to his right, and what he saw—he so near shat himself—he let out a toot of wind and a little whimper, gazing into the glowing yellow eye taller than he was. The slither came again, and Eagle’s breath snagged watching the thinnest membrane flick across that slit-pupil snake eye, and back again. Eleazar lifted his head slightly. “I smell Vercingetorix on you, little rodent.”

“He’s …he’s my friend,” Eagle stammered.

“Eagle Eye!” That was Brother Fox, horror in his voice, but the Worm ignored him, snuffling right at Eagle’s tunic with a snout at least as big as a cow.

“Unicorns and fairies. Child, they won’t help you here.” Eleazar ran out a tongue black in the red mage-light and tasted Eagle soles to scalp in one sloppy lick, closing his massive eyes in pleasure. “Too bad there isn’t more of you. You’re delicious.” He smacked his chops together, and Eagle didn’t think. He bolted, feet slewing on the treasure as he skidded for one of the rock formations nearby. Eleazar’s great head rose on his neck, up, up, when Eagle glanced back.

“Leave him alone!” Brother Fox yelled. “I came for you, Eleazar, you disgusting old earthworm!” And the Worm of Shirith cocked his head to look at the Crown Prince. Eagle’s blood ran chilly. The Swifts were behind Brother Fox, like stone, unmoving, and Eagle tried to wave them over behind the pile he’d found, but they didn’t even look his way; fascinated, they were, by the wicked magnificence of Eleazar, the sheer size of him. The red mage-light flickered out. Eagle clutched at the rocks in front of him. It was so dark. Blacker than night, and the Worm’s laughter shook the mountain.

A sound like a drawing bellows on a terrific scale—and fire, blinding, blue at the heart, a blaze no Longnight bonfire could equal, belched from Eleazar’s mouth. The Swifts’ skin blackened under it. Their screams echoed around the roar of the flames. Brother Fox fell to his knees, head down, arms crossed in front of him, and the flames bowed around his shield of magic, a shimmery half-sphere.

Blackness again. Eagle trembled, and then came a whisper and golden mage-light shone out from Brother Fox’s hand. In the other hand he held his long slim blade, and smoke curled up from the bodies of Swift Snake and Swift Cat behind him. The Worm lunged, and Brother Fox dashed aside, but the serpent tongue slithered out for one of the twins. Fast as a lash, the body was in the Worm’s jaws, and the huge scaly throat worked, swallowing.

Eagle touched his bow, and he still wasn’t thinking, at least at the top of his mind. He started to climb the high tower of rocks he’d been hiding behind. The other twin disappeared down the Worm’s pale-red throat.

“Come on, you filthy beast!” Brother Fox screamed. Eagle didn’t dare look at anything but his climbing. He reached up to the next hold, set his foot, went to the next and the next. His bare feet carried him up soft. His leather bracer hugged around his arm, reassuring. One shot. He knew what he had to do. He couldn’t listen to what was going on below, the snapping jaws, the roaring, the insults Brother Fox shouted at Eleazar, the Worm of Shirith.

At last, he reached the end of his climb. Eagle’s balance didn’t fail him. He stood easily at the very top of the rock tower, higher than all the rest, as high as the Worm’s head when he reared back to lunge at Brother Fox again. It wasn’t quite a man’s bow Eagle had, since he didn’t have his man’s height, but it was stout and flexible, and made just to his size, with as much pull as he could possibly manage. He needed both hands to string it.

He nocked his arrow while Brother Fox flung his glob of golden light straight into Eleazar’s face and conjured another. Eleazar slashed out with a claw, snagging Brother Fox’s shirt and tearing cloth, but not his flesh.

Eagle couldn’t watch. He let the world collapse to his eye and the eye of the Worm. If he could sink an arrow into that great glowing eye, they might have a chance. He drew full. His foot shifted and the Worm, enraged now, whirled on him. But Eagle had already loosed.

Eleazar batted the arrow away, or so Eagle thought, but his heart didn’t have time to sink before the claw hit the ground and the fletching of the arrow disappeared into the black slice of a pupil. The Worm let out a shattering roar: “You dare?” And he came after Eagle on top of the rock tower. There was no other choice. Eagle flung himself down, tucking and rolling, as loose as he could. His bones shook and he felt himself cracking every time he bounced. At last he lay curled on the floor, silence but for his own hammering heartbeat.

“Hey-la-hey!” Brother Fox shouted, unflattering surprise in his voice. “Eagle, brave Eagle, you’ve done it!”

Eagle tried to stand, but his leg erupted in pain, and he cried out and fell again. He lay back on the cavern floor, staring up at the Worm of Shirith with his mouth cracked wide over the rock tower, gold-red in Brother Fox’s mage-light. Eagle floated into oblivion.

When he woke, it was in a white bed and morning streamed in the window. Brother Fox slept in a chair on one side of the bed and Father snored in one on the other side. On the nightstand there was a perfect ruby scale, as large as his hand. He sat up; his leg was all healed, only a little sore.

From the door, the High King said, “Well done, Eagle Eye Wormsbane.”

The Muse Is a Lie

Inspiration is an amazing feeling. A magic state of mind in which the words flow and they’re incredible and the heavens open and you go and go and forget to eat and don’t think about anything but your story. It’s nothing less than the best.

But the Muse is a lie.

I don’t think anyone actually believes in this thing, except maybe followers of Ancient Greek-flavored paganism. This is a snuggly faux-fur lie writers tell themselves to feel better about not writing. If you have any sparkly delusions, like mine, about being pro, inspiration needs to be replaced with discipline. Of course, if you’re riding the wave, you’re riding it, and I’m so freaking jealous of you right now, as I fight for every word. Ride it to the end.

Then get up the next day and start swimming out again. Sometimes you catch it, sometimes you don’t, but you’re more likely to catch that wave if you’re out there. Don’t wait for it to break over your head and sweep you along. Go get it, and if you don’t catch it, you’ve still gotten work done, made progress, learned.

I know the Muse is a lie, because the more I write and read, the more ideas I have rattling around in my skull. The well doesn’t go dry if you’re consistent. Sometimes I, you, will need a break, but even if it’s only one hundred words, sit down and write something. Even if you only write one word. Even if you wind up cutting more than you write, or write something you’re going to cut the next day. I don’t bother with a daily goal because it depresses me when I don’t hit it, but that works for some people. Just do as much as you can.

Start turning it out. Make it a habit. Choose one thing, one word processor file, and leave it open. Now when I look at that file I find it hard not to put words into it, because I write every day—even if it’s just a short thing like this.

I’m not saying the Muse is a lie to be unkind to you or because I’m denigrating your process. Hey, everyone’s different, whatever floats your boat. No, I don’t believe in writer’s block either. I don’t believe in any of that, at least not for me. I can’t allow that in my life. And I’m trying to tell you how to get more words. The solution is to sit down and do it more often. I want you to succeed, because the world always needs more good books and stories and articles. Write a lot of them.

Why Originality Doesn’t Matter

Your work is not original.

The good news is, that doesn’t matter. It’s not about being original.

I hear this kind of question all the time: has it been done? Of course it has. Listen and listen well. You are not a special snowflake. You cannot originate anything, in the strictest sense of the word. Your ideas do not spring from the void, no matter how little media you consume. You are human and your brain is infected with stories. Why do you think the TV Tropes wiki is such a lumbering monster? You cannot avoid any and every element of trope and still tell a coherent story, because you are human and humans have been doing this thing for thousands of years. Before we could even write, we were telling stories.

It’s not about originality. It’s about conversation, by which I mean responding with your own art to the art that’s come before yours.

That’s why writers will tell you to read, read, and read some more. I’m going to go even farther and tell you to read in your genre. Don’t only read your genre, but you’d better be reading it. How can you write state-of-the-art fantasy if you’re still responding only to Tolkien or Brooks (who was responding directly to Tolkien) or Weis and Hickman (who were responding to Tolkien)? I mean, I love Tolkien, and I still respond to him because that’s what shaped me in a lot of ways, but there’s been so much between him and now that, come on, pick something else, too. Respond to the canon, ask it questions, challenge and twist it.

It’s not going to “corrupt your voice.” I don’t think that’s even possible, but that’s a post for another day. Read and respond, read and respond. How do you think philosophers, painters, musicians do it, anyway? Listen, not even the screeching of demented monkeys as they fling their shit at the walls is original. Monkeys have been doing that for a long time.

Don’t be a monkey. Read and respond. Get into the conversation. Who wants to be a special snowflake, really, anyway? It’s more fun to talk to people.

Five Things I’ve Learned about Writing Dialogue

Without great dialogue, no piece of fiction can truly sing. Here are five things I’ve learned so far about writing dialogue.

1. Read it out loud.

I keep saying this, I know. I feel like a broken record. You should read all your pieces aloud, but even if you don’t think it’s necessary to read your narrative (it is!), please read your dialogue. It should feel and sound natural.

Don’t infodump.

For the most part, characters aren’t going to be telling each other things they already both know. Keep that sort of thing for narration if it’s important.

Don’t overdo funky spellings.

Unless you’re Brian Jacques. If you want to write a character with a strong accent, my method is generally to use a couple-three instances of funny spelling, maybe a word that’s always spelled strangely for that particular character, and instead rely on word choice and syntax, the rhythm of the character’s speech. You don’t have to spell strangely to make the reader hear.

Don’t over-specify speech tics.

If your character uses a particular phrasing or a catchphrase, it’s not necessary to work it in more than once or twice per book. However, there’s something to be said for a particular speech pattern. Say, cursing often. Not cursing at all. A formal manner, or a casual one. Highly educated or not. This is why I think what I call filtering (by which I mean pulling the writing through the character’s thoughts and perceptions; you can read more about that here) is so important. Learning to put a particular character’s spin on things is vital to living dialogue, even if you don’t write the way I do. Build a voice for each character. Don’t just slap some mannerisms on them and call it a day.

Subtext, subtext, subtext.

Great dialogue is as much about what the characters don’t say as what they do—maybe even more so. Think about something you’d say every day: “I’m fine.” Are you really? You probably say that whether or not you are fine. Maybe the subtext is that you’re having a fine day, but maybe it’s that your life is falling apart beneath your feet and it would take too long to explain, or you aren’t close enough to feel comfortable with the person who’s asking, or, or, or … You see what I mean. Sometimes they exaggerate, understate, even outright lie. They’re people, after all. Let’s hear them talking.

Throwback Thursday

Hey, listen. I wouldn’t blame you if you turned back now. This is some stark terror I’m about to show you.

It’s a piece of my old writing. I was fifteen, and I’m nearly thirty now—a long time back. Fifteen years ago, this is what I was doing. I considered it a finished piece, but this is what I’m saying. Go on and laugh. It’s really bad, but these are my roots, and I thought I’d show them to you a little bit, just to say: you will get better. This was where I started. And after many years I could finally, finally write Menyoral. I would love to edit the typos and grammar here, but I think that would spoil the effect.

I want to encourage you with this. Keep going, okay? Just keep going. Bleed all over the place like I did. Open an artery and spray it everywhere, and then nourish yourself with the great stuff that feeds your soul. Do it all over again. And again.

It took me years. But I got from this (which is fan-fiction, I will warn you) to “It was a fair night… “

And you can, too, if you work hard and want it and obsess over it.

*ahem*

Felicia Hardy’s coice cut through the air and sliced into Spider-Man’s ears like a knife. “How could you?!?!???!! How could you leave me?”

“Felicia, I’m not leaving you. As you recall, we never really had any relationship!”

“No! We did, you BUG! And now you’re dissolving it for who, some blonde bimbo?”

“No, she’s not blonde. Remember, Felicia, YOU’RE the blonde. She’s Mary Jane Watson. Excuse me, Mary Jane Watson-PARKER!”

“You…you hideous INSECT! I’ll KILL you! Kill you, hear?” The Cat leatp at his throat.

“Whoa, Cat. I’m techinically not an insect.” Spider-Man deflected her easily. She whirled on him pushing her claws up under his rib cage, ripping through his diaphragm, tearing his lungs to ribbons as she went for his heart. She seized it and pulled it out quickly, snapping off his aorta and vena cava. She watched his heart beat its last, listening to the background noise of his death gurgles.

She spat in his face, grinning as he slipped away. “That’ll teach you to hurt the Black Cat.”

(If you made it this far, good on you.)

The one thing I want to add is: I’d never have made it this far without all the amazing people in the fan-fiction community who encouraged and pumped and loved me even when I was doing that. So love your young writers.

Sincerely,

Me Today