CAIN’T YOU EVER JUST LET ME GO SOMEWHERE ALONG…

“Where ya going Word?”

“What’s it to ya Well?” Wordy eyed his friend spiciously over his shovel plate of cold beans.

Well smiled.

“Might wanna come along,” Well said right neighborly.

“Gol dangit Well,” Wordy said slapping his sides so that dust swirled up offin his breeches like sawdust in a grist mill. Some of the dust settled back in his beans but Wordy didn’t notice.

“Cain’t you ever just let me go somewhere along?!”

Well was patiently quiet a moment after Wordy’s antipenchant display. As he usually was when Word went off on one of his ineffectual tangential tirades. Then Well threw his head back and finished his drink before leaning forward and spitting out the swill-mash that had settled at the bottom of his glass. After that he straightened.

“So does that mean I’m coming witcha, or not?” he finally asked.

Wordy looked at Well as sasperated as a flied walleyed rout, and then shook his head slowly as if he had just watched a hell-bent bull pull loose from his plow.

“Oh git your damn saddle Well… I ain’t totin you on my back.”

from my Western novel, The Letter Men

SON OF ROME, SON OF MAN

Marsippius stood forth.

“I would speak,” he said clearly.

Many in the chamber murmured uncertainly but Jhönarlk stood suddenly upon the base of his throne and then stepped down from it and approached. Not far from the Commander he paused and spoke softly, but also clearly.

“Then I would hear you,” he said.

Marsippius turned abruptly and faced the chamber. His voice was tired and hoarse with war, and with his recent agonies, but clear and cold with resolution.

“Though I am not of your number, and a Man, I come to you with a warning.”

“What!?” shouted a voice among the Eldevens, after barely a pause, but it was not clear who had spoken or his real intent in speaking. For some among the Eldevens hated the men, and the Basilegate in particular. But some perhaps respected them, or were even secret allies. It was difficult to know, so cryptic and veiled were the motives of most Eldevens to most men.

Marsippius scanned the crowd curiously, hoping to spot the one that that had addressed him, but could not fix upon who had spoken, so he addressed them all.

FF8CA1 PRESTER JOHN. /nLegendary medieval priest and monarch of Asia or Africa. Enthroned on a map of East Africa. Detail from 16th century atlas.

“You know well that I am not one of you,” Marsippius said, and though he spoke with the stoicism of the soldier and his hands remained at his side and did not move, still the earnestness of his words was the only flourish he seemed to need. “Yet I still come from a Free People’s with a High Christian Duty,” and again many among them murmured, deeply suspicious of the man’s god, religion, and ideas about Magic and Miracle. “Thus I say this to you, as long as you all wait for someone else to begin, no one of you will dare. And even if one among you may dare,” and his eyes seemed to shift over his shoulder momentarily back towards the Samarl, “then all his efforts will also be in vain as long as no other join him. To all peoples who have ever lived, on this world, or any other, comes danger, comes hardship, comes risk, and comes war. The time between these things may be long, so that one generation forgets even the nature of what it means to be threatened, or short, so that every new generation rightfully wearies of what must be done, and sacrificed, but eventually all woes and risks return to all peoples. It is only a matter of time; great, or brief. Do not ask me why this is so, I am merely a soldier, not a priest, prophet, or philosopher, yet that is the nature of things. Whether any of you like it, or not. And even those who are not soldiers know this truth, though they are loathe to admit it aloud for lack of public courage. Which we Romans do not lack, and never have, though we lack many other things you have apparently well-mastered.”

The chamber fell silent and yet the hall was constructed in such a way that the echoes of Marsippius’ words ran thrice more around the room so that even those to the very rear of the hall heard them all clearly.

“Yet your mastery is not in dispute. Your courage and your Manhood, if such a term applies to you, and in one great sense I think it does and may even unite your people with mine, however, are indeed presently in dispute. You lack deeds of courage consummate with your mastery of other matters.”

Marsippius paused and openly surveyed the hall and those assembled before him with some obvious and unstated admiration. Even the hostile Eldevens noted it.

“Though what will it matter if all you have achieved is squandered now by shameful passivity? Brought low and ruined by your own inaction; in a day, a week, a month, a year? Disaster is upon you, you know this, and likely war, and you well know this too, and all of your almost countless achievements; your art, your music, your culture, your cities, your farms, your families, your very happiness and future are now to be wasted not by your lack of ability, but by your lack of purpose, will, and public courage? You are still a very formidable people, all with honest eyes can see this plainly, and I would gladly call you ally, and even friend, and I would gladly do whatever I can to defend and strengthen you, yet I cannot save you, and Fate cannot save you, and prophecy cannot save you, and even God will not save you if you make no real effort of any kind to save yourselves.”

The hall was still, as well as quiet, though it was obvious to all that many in attendance were angry, and many others uncertain, though some seem swayed. Or at least swayable.

It seemed also to most that Marsippius had more to say, perhaps far more, but, being the soldier he was, and disdaining much talk he simply returned to his place and turned back in the direction of the Samarl and stood lightly at attention.

Many among the Eldevens, who often by both custom and habit talked at length, found this abrupt ending confusing, even bizarre, uncanny, and unnatural. But Marsippius’ efforts were at an end. He was a simple man, used to action and planning, he looked scornfully on much debate and indecision. As eventually all real men must.

Jhönarlk however instantly understood the hopeful gap the Commander of the Basilegate had opened among his own indecisive countrymen and the various races of the Eldevens assembled there. He did not speak immediately but let the man’s words turn themselves thoroughly throughout the chamber before he acted. And then the Samarl of Samarkand spread his hands before him and looked directly at Marsippius. He spoke not to the hall, but as one old friend might to another, though neither knew the other well.

“Son of Rome, and son of man, then, let us begin…”

from, The Basilegate/The Kithariune

ELK AND MOOSE HUNT

Elk looked at Moose who looked at Steinthal coldly.

Elk looked at Steinthal again and said, “Steinthal you are one of the most smart-mouthed son of a bitches I ever met. You know that?”

Steinthal half-smiled out of the left side of his mouth.

“Really?” he replied enthusiastically. “Thanks for saying. I feel like I never can really hear that enough so it’s always a lotta fun to know how that works when it does.”

Both hired men were quiet a moment. Too long for it to be just catch-up.

“You know it’s dangerous when it works like that too,” Moose said quietly.

“You don’t say,” Steinthal replied, also lowering his voice, but in a different way. “You guys are like Google without the built-in AI. A treasure house of old links running to nowhere. Maybe you should have come here with earpieces and implants instead of pre-programming.”

Elk and Moose’s eyes shifted subtly to Maugham who was watching Moose carefully. Very carefully.”

“You might also wanna know this smartass,” Elk said. “We’re both nearly as big as your man. But you’re not. Not even close.”

Then they both looked at Steinthal.

Steinthal half-smiled again but spoke directly at Elk.

“Well, since you’re obviously the smart one then there’s probably something you should know too.”

“Oh yeah?” asked Elk, shifting his weight heavily from one foot to another. “What’s that?”

Steinthal smiled again, but fully this time.

“He’s not ‘my man,’ so don’t fucking expect me to try and control him when you finally work up the manballs to start this thing.”

Suddenly a set of headlights went on up the street and a car engine turned over. The headlights were pointed in the direction of the four men. The engine was quiet and dropped immediately into an almost silent idle. But the headlights stayed bright.

Elk and Moose looked at each other frowning.

“You did bring the manballs to start this thing, right ladies?” Steinthal smiled pleasantly and it was easy to see his teeth in the backglow from the headlights. Then he thumbed back in the direction of the car. “If not I got some guys in the car with extra sets you can borrow. If you promise we can cut em back out again afterwards.”

Elk looked at Steinthal. Steinthal could see Elk’s breath streaming and steaming out of his nostrils, but he remained calm enough to not move. Muscle, sure, but professional enough to be something else too.

The four men stared at each other without speaking and without motion. Until Elk’s shoulders dropped a little.

“They’ll be another day Steinthal,” Elk replied. Then he looked at Moose and nodded almost imperceptibly. Both men started to turn but before they could Steinthal spoke.

“There always is boys. The question you gotta ask yourselves, though, is this; do you wanna risk it ending any other way than it did just now?”

Elk turned and looked at Steinthal again, then at Maugham. But neither man reacted. Moose just stared at Elk. Finally Elk turned away and started walking. Moose followed after a moment’s pause. Both their footfalls were heavy, massive even. But both sounded clumsy and loud to Steinthal. He could use that. He would use that.

When they disappeared into the dark and couldn’t be heard anymore Maugham stepped up beside Steinthal and spoke quietly.

“What now?” he asked.

Steinthal looked over at him.

“Now Maugham, it’s an Elk and Moose hunt. Wanna bag a coupla big ones?”

Maugham shrugged nonchalantly.

“I got nothing pressing at the moment,” Maugham replied.

“Good,” Steinthal replied nodding. “It’s always good to take em before they ever get back to the herd.”

Then Steinthal raised his hand and signaled for the car.

from The Detective Steinthal

I TRULY ENJOYED WRITING THIS SCENE. IT’S A FIRST DRAFT AND BEGINS IN MEDIA RES…

STUMP

Wordy jumped like he’d been bit by a cottonmouth.

“Hell Well! Whadidcha do that for?”

Well Peden stopped in his tracks, and looked at Wordy.

“Do what Word?”

Wordy stood up and brushed off some of the beer that he had tipped over when Well startled him. But most of it had flooded the top of the small table or had already sunk into his breeches.

“Come stump around that corner like that?” Wordy said loudly, still annoyed, and though he had righted his glass much of the beer had soaked his pants. “Looks like I pissed my britches.”

Well smiled genuinely a moment and then laughed out loud.

“It does at that. But what ya mean ‘stump?’ You mean ‘stomp?’”

“I mean exactly what I said I mean ya mull-berry dumb-lump. You was stompin. But you also come a sneakin. You stump up on me. What are ya, deaf? Stompin and sneaking at the same time. Stump. And when ya did that you also stumped me and then I spilled my drink! Dang it!”

Well thought for a second, then laughed again.

“Don’t ya mean ‘Jomp’ then?”

“What?” Wordy said confused.

“Well, if I come a sneakin and a stompin and that made you jump, then don’tcha mean ya ‘jomped?’Ain’t ya keepin up with yerself? Stomp and jump – jomped. Ya jomped Wordy. Ya got stumped, and then you jomped. Simple as that.”

Wordy was speechless a moment and seemed annoyed again, momentarily anyway. But then a broad, toothy yellowed grin spread across his face and he said with real satisfaction,

“‘Jomp,’ as if sounding it out for the first time. “Say, I’m gonna write that down!”

Well looked at Wordy, then around the room. As if peering about for something. Wordy followed Well’s gaze ‘til it lit on him again.

“Whatcha gonna write it down with Wordy?”

Suddenly Wordy threw his hands up in the air exasperated.

“Hell Well!” he exclaimed. “Why do I have to think of everthang?”

Well laughed again.

“Beats me Wordy, but you’re fair to midlin at it.”

Wordy shook his head at Well. Well was his best friend but in Wordy’s opinion he sure was a lotta hard living.

“Whadda you want anyhow Well?” Wordy asked him suspiciously.

“’Bout what?” Well asked him sincerely.

Wordy threw his hands up in the air again and shook both fists at Well.

“’Bout why you stump me in the first place?!” Wordy shouted.

“Oh that,” Well said off-handedly. “I just wanted to see if maybe you wanted to get a beer.”

Wordy fumed and frowned at Well a second, then reached in his wet pants pocket and got two half dollars. He walked over to Well and pushed em both into his right hand.

“Yes, I wanna get a damn beer, and I had one til you come along and stump me!”

Then he kept walking. As he was leaving Well said,

“Whur ya goin Word?”

“Out in the sun ‘til my britches dry.” Wordy replied, as if the answer had been self-evident.

“Well, what do you want me to do with the coins?” Well asked.

Wordy stopped and looked at Well.

“Hell Well get us two new beers, and this time you tell that no count barkeep I want some decent headins on my tap. If I’m buying his swell he’s gonna give us decent headins this time!”

Then Wordy turned and kept walking.

Well looked at the coins. He thought that maybe Wordy had meant to say swill, then decided that maybe he had meant the beer was made with local well water. Beer-swill made of stagnant well water. Swell. Tasted like it anyway Well thought. But after briefly musing about that Well said,

“Yeah, I’ll jomp right on that Wordy.”

But Wordy had already hit the saloon doors and was stump-out by then, moving for mid-daylight to cool-off and dry out for a spell…

From The Letter(ed) Men (my Western novel)

(Post script: I keep a little notebook and a file for my wife’s “Wordisms.” For Wordy is based on my wife. And to be honest Wordy is one of my favorite characters to write. And write about, but especially his dialogue and “Wordisms.” He appears as a seemingly secondary or even minor character in my Western, the Lettered Men. But he’s not really a minor character as will be seen in the book.

 He’s seemingly a background character who actually ties together all the other major characters. In time anyway.

But as I said Wordy is in many ways, including the way he behaves and talks, based upon my wife.

Tonight I came walking around a corner to the bathroom after we got back from Anderson and my wife jumped when she saw me. I asked her why she jumped and in reply she said,

“Because you stump around that corner!”

I immediately knew it was a new Wordism and asked if she meant to say “stomp(ed)?”

She said, “No, you stumped. And I don’t mean a tree stump.” Then she explained what she meant by saying stump.

I laughed and said, “If my Westerns become as popular as I think they will then I’m gonna make you famous baby became people are gonna be reading your ‘Wordisms’ five hundred years from now!”

So, being immediately inspired I went and wrote this little scene with Wordy and Well Peden. In this particular scene I’m Well Peden, of course. Kind of out of step for me, to be the minor character in my own scene/story/novel but it fit so perfectly with this scene that I’m well pleased I wrote it that way.

Hope you enjoyed it, and found it funny [I had a ball writing it], and Good Night… and thanks for reading and your support of my writings and Work.)

SOME KIND OF EXCUSE

“That’s precisely the way the Real World works Maugham. What ain’t criminal is corrupt, and what ain’t immoral is amoral.”

Maugham stared at Steinthal thoughtfully for a moment. Then said,

“What about everyone else?”

Steinthal shrugged.

“What ‘everyone else?'” he asked.

“All the good and decent people?” Maugham replied.

One corner of Steinthal’s mouth turned up slowly but Maugham couldn’t tell if it was a smile, or a grimace.

“What?” Steinthal said. “You think they don’t know?”

Maugham looked at Steinthal again. Then he shrugged.

“Maybe…” he finally admitted. Then he brightened a little. “But then again, maybe they’re just scared.”

Steinthal looked up into the sky and sighed deeply, but Maugham didn’t feel like it was aimed at him. Then Steinthal looked at his friend again.

“Maybe, Maugham… Maybe. But what is that supposed to be, some kind of excuse?”


from The Detective Steinthal

HUNTING IS DIFFERENT

THE ONE-MAN JOB

Maugham passed a uniform and a plainclothesman exiting as he entered Steinthal’s office. The officers and Maugham were equally surprised to see each other. Recovering from his initial shock Maugham nodded politely and the two other men, glancing up at Maugham’s enormous height returned the favor, but warily.

The plainclothesman stepped out of the way and held the door open for Maugham to pass before looking back into the room.

“This him?” the suit asked.

Steinthal, sitting at his desk raised his right hand and finger in acknowledgement. The man nodded in reply and shut the door behind him.

Maugham walked over to stand in front of Steinthal’s desk and asked, “What did they want?”

Steinthal glanced at Maugham and said, “Calling in a favor.”

“But I thought you didn’t have good relations with the cops?” Maugham continued.

“Big place, lotta cops.” Steinthal replied. “Besides, what others don’t know can’t hurt me.”

Maugham grunted and suddenly realized there was an open file laid out in front of Steinthal. He glanced at it, and seeing this Steinthal’s eyes also dropped to the file.

It looked like a rather hastily photocopied hardcopy of a case file. Or perhaps parts of it. Maugham didn’t ask but both he and Steinthal knew he knew what had happened, and why.

“No electronic or data trace,” Steinthal said flatly. “Maybe they got something on camera but I really doubt it. Knowing them. Probably copied unrelated material just to cover. I would have.”

Maugham nodded and grunted again.

“So what is it?”

“About a vic,” Steinthal replied. “But that’s not important right now.”

Maugham looked at Steinthal quizzically.

“What’s important is the killer,” Steinthal replied to Maugham’s look.

Steinthal tended to piss off professionals when he talked that way, purposely avoiding terms like UNSUB, or subject, or even suspect when it came to violence. Just “killer” or murderer” was all he would say. Drove the feds bonkers but he didn’t care. And as he liked to say, “Screw the feds.”

“Do they know who it is,” Maugham asked, thumbing back towards the door.

Steinthal shrugged.

“Maybe, you just never know with the cops,” Steinthal said cagily.

Maugham tilted his head sideways.

“Well, what about the Dick?” he asked becoming even more curious.

“Yeah,” Steinthal said. “What I don’t know about what he don’t know can’t hurt either of us either. And that’s true vice-versa too.”

Maugham was becoming agitated at Steinthal’s evasiveness so he kept at him. Maybe out of nothing more than aggravation.

“Well, if you’re not gonna tell me anything about the vic, then what about the killer. Do you think you know who he is?”

Steinthal looked hard at Maugham, as if weighing something in his mind. Whatever it was he was weighing, it seemed to tilt this way, and that, before settling out even.

“Maugham, I’m almost certain I know who he is.”

Surprised Maugham paused a moment.

“Well, what are you gonna do about it?” Maugham asked seriously, thinking he might be finally making some headway.

Steinthal glanced down at the manila file, straightened it, and then folded the cover over to close it.

“I’m going to hunt the mutha-fucker down, and kill him,” Steinthal said without bothering to look back up.

Maugham grunted and it sounded like he had just lifted a heavy weight successfully.

“So you definitely know who he is?”

Steinthal shook his head.

“Is anything in life really definite Maugham? But if I had to lay odds at table I’d say 100 percent. Probably more. Give or take a few points.”

Maugham nodded.

“Alright, who is it then?” he asked.

Again Steinthal stared at Maugham, almost uncomfortably, as if weighing something private in his mind. And again he weighed it awhile before he replied.

“Marcus Octavio Sodworth.”

Maugham heard the name clearly enough but just couldn’t place it. It seemed familiar, and he worked at it for awhile, but then he shook his head. Steinthal waited to see if Maugham could make him but then realized he wouldn’t.

“You may know him as Sod-Spot, or Spotty,” Steinthal said finally.

A look of surprise, and probably real concern passed across Maugham’s face.

“But Spotty is an enforcer for Sinaloa. And maybe Gulf.”

“Maybe,” Steinthal said.

“And he’s a killer,” Maugham said, as if discussing a very dangerous and proficient athlete.

Steinthal stood up in a very fluid motion and leaned across his desk as if about to pounce.

“He is,” Steinthal said. “But then again so am I Maugham. The difference being I’m not just a killer, I’m also a fucking Hunter. And killers don’t live forever around a fucking hunter.”

And as he said it Steinthal seemed to change in nature, and the look in his eyes became so sharp and so clear and so cold that even Maugham froze momentarily.

So Maugham was quiet a moment, and then said, “Let me swing by the house and get a few things.”

“No,” said Steinthal flatly and without any doubt in his reply. “No, you won’t.”

Steinthal glanced up and down at his gargantuan friend as if judging him impassively from a distance. As if choosing teams, and finding no one worth choosing. But then he softened a little.

“Maugham, you’re big, and you’re strong, and you’re good. No doubt of that. But you lumber, and you’re slow. And you’re sometimes loud. And most of all you’re big, and you bore easy. And I’m going to hunt. Hunting is different. You’re not the man for this job. As a matter of fact this is purely a one-man job. And I’m that man.”

Then Steinthal picked up the file, and turned, and walked to his pack and unzipped it and put the file deep inside.

While he did so Maugham thought about what he had just said. He was offended, and a little hurt, but he knew Steinthal had called it true. Maugham was indispensable in a stand up fight, and as muscle he shook even old oaks, but an on your belly snake hunt and a knife to the side of the throat in the dark, he’d be little help at that. And likely an open liability. You had to read people for what they were, not for what you wished they were. Steinthal was right, much as Maugham hated it.

“Dammit John,” Maugham finally said in frustration. “Well then, what do you want me to do?”

Steinthal picked up his pack and threw it across one shoulder. He walked by Maugham and as he did so he said,

“Go home Maugham. If I need you I’ll call you. But I won’t need you.”

When he got to the door he opened it and left it open. Wide.

“That’s it?” Maugham asked.

“No,” Steinthal said glancing back over his shoulder. “Lock up when you leave.”

Then Steinthal continued on down the hall towards the streets.

Maugham shook his head in disgust.

Before Steinthal hit the door to exit the building Maugham called out to him.

“At least tell me where you’re going?!” he asked.

Steinthal might have said something in reply, or perhaps not. It was hard to tell at that distance. But either way he was already gone…

(Tuesday’s Tale: I wrote this scene after watching a pair of “hunters” kill a male lion and then watching them attacked by another lion while taking “trophy pics” of their kill. Was it all real? I mean it is the internet after all… but if it was real then they were killers but certainly not hunters. Like most modern people they didn’t understand the difference at all, and if it was real, they’re probably dead because they didn’t understand the difference. Which disgusts me but also tends to infuriate me. And because he/they didn’t understand the difference the man probably got his wife killed, or at least mauled. But life is what it is and modern people are what they are. Anyway it reminded me of some events in my past and while lying in a hot bath to recover from an injury this scene for Steinthal and Maugham occurred to me and I got out and wrote it. Took about an hour and a half, lot slower than normal for me, but my wife walked in in the middle of it, so I couldn’t write smooth or clean until our conversation ended. Still, don’t think our conversation scattered my thoughts or hurt the scene any but that’s up to you. Hope you enjoy it, it’s a first draft, and if you wanna comment, do so.)

Coda: I subtitled this scene, the One-Man Job. Since I wrote a scene for Denn the other day also about a One Man Job (for a Woman) I just couldn’t resist…

THE ONE MAN JOB

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Or you.”

He looked at her but didn’t respond.

“I mean, look at you Denn. There’s literally nothing you won’t do. Seems to be nothing you fear,” she said almost desperately. She momentarily put both hands to her face and then dropped them again and looked down at the ground. “Most of the time I’m just so afraid. So lonely. So tired. There’s no one you need, but I need everyone.” Then her shoulder’s collapsed and she seemed to sag all over.

But Denn stepped forward and caught her and stood her erect again.

“Carole,” he said softly but firmly. “Everyone needs who they need, and I’m no exception. But you’ll never get over fear and loneliness through other people. Some things in life are just one man jobs.”

She sighed deeply and looked up into his eyes.

“I’m not a man,” she said softly, less desperate now, but still unsure of herself.

Denn smiled at her warmly, “That you aren’t my dear. That you aren’t. And yet that still doesn’t change any of the facts. Eventually you’re going to have to stand alone, if you ever want to stop being alone. And stop being so damned afraid all of the time.”

As he held her she seemed to want to move towards him, but he held her at a slight distance for a moment and then he finally released her. Almost as if to see what she would do. She didn’t move towards him, but she didn’t move away either. Instead she stared at his set face for a long time, studying it. He was tall, and his face was cut and hard, but there was also something very relaxed and open and human about him that maybe she had never noticed before. Fearless, but not without obvious sympathy. Height without arrogance, strength without cruelty. Demand without condemnation. Manhood without malice and calculation. She thought about this as a sort of flash of insight, and suddenly he seemed very alien to her, and to most other men she had ever known. And yet he also seemed very familiar. As if he had arisen from a long forgotten memory. But then she came to herself again, and she shook her head and said,

“Well then, will you stand with me?” The question was entirely sincere.

Denn nodded ever so slightly.

“With you Carole,” he replied flatly, though not coldly. “But not for you. With you is my job as a man, and as your friend, but for… well, it’s time you finally learned to do yours. And woman is no excuse in life for failing at a one man job.”

She watched him again, silently and reflectively for a moment, and then she sighed deeply once more and said, “Okay, Denn. I’ll do it your way.”

Denn nodded silently again.

“But what do I do?” she asked searchingly after a quiet moment wrestling with the obvious. “I mean, this is all so new to me. Where do I start?”

Denn smiled and pointed at her chest.

She mistook his intent.

“My blouse?” she asked puzzled.

Denn laughed freely at her question.

“Your heart my dear,” he replied when he finally finished laughing. “That’s as good a place as any to start, and the one place it might just stick this time.”  

(This scene was inspired by something an old friend said to me this morning, about most people in life being lonely and afraid, and seeking companionship and safety above all else (and why this makes them naturally unhappy) and my reply about it.

The story/scene involves my Pulp and Action/Adventure hero Denn Templemann and a girl he knows, and has known for a very long time, Carole Vange.

It is perfect subject matter for Denn and his Pulp stories as Denn fears almost nothing, and needs almost nobody (though he is by nature very sociable and gregarious, just not dependent upon anyone) and Carole, who fears almost everything and thinks she needs everyone, even those who are terrible for her. (She flits form man to man hoping to find one who will “save her.” I’m sure you’ve met females like that before at some time in your life.) And it also, as I envisioned the scene, touches briefly upon their on-again/off-again Romantic attraction and why it isn’t and can’t work with Carole as she is.

Denn is not typically Romantic in nature, as some of my other male characters are [Marsippius, Alternaeus, the Boy, etc.], for he more represents my more entirely pragmatic-romantic side. But like me he is also extremely Chivalrous, in a very antique or Medieval way. He represents, in me, Action-Oriented Romance and Problem-Solving Romance and Manhood-Romance, not necessarily erotic or devotional romance. This is how he handles Carole and how he handles females/women in general. Which tends to confuse most women, but Denn, like me, doesn’t actually care.

[I do have other Romantic and Chivalrous aspects in myself, as my wife can tell you, but if Action-Oriented Romance is what is most needed then again, as my wife and many other females can tell you, that is certainly what comes out first. Problem-Solving first, tra-lah-lah later. For I also, like Denn, have an antique sense of Manhood.]

So, with that in mind, and having wanted to write this scene for awhile but not knowing exactly how to proceed, when my buddy said what he said about other people it gave me an excellent opening. I hope you enjoy the scene and feel free comment if you so wish.

The “One Man Job” is, of course, an obvious play on words and meaning in the scene.)

THE LIGHT CHANGED

THEN THE LIGHT CHANGED

Both men walked on in thoughtful silence for awhile, each lost in his own thoughts.

Finally Maugham glanced over at Steinthal and said, “That was truly rough.”

“It was,” Steinthal said in flat response.

They walked a bit further, the quiet a soundless hum between them.

“And,” Maugham continued eventually, “pointlessly tragic.”

Steinthal nodded his agreement.

“Obviously.”

They continued on until the intersection and then paused to cross the street.

“You know,” Maugham said wearily. “For a second there I almost thought you were gonna have an actual emotion. I mean, aside from fury.”

Steinthal seemed to ponder that for a moment, as if from a great distance. Then he finally said,

“Well, Maugham, you know me and deep emotions…”

And Maugham nodded at Steinthal, and Steinthal nodded back. Each without ever bothering to look at the other, or even being sure that either understood why. It was just like that between them.

But, before the traffic cleared or the light waved them on Steinthal added,

“You know Maugham, on occasion, I do have a few.”

Maugham looked at Steinthal.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“An emotion other than fury,” Steinthal said glancing at Maugham, again without turning. “I just tend to keep em all stored with my soul in my Lich-box.”

And suddenly Maugham realized that, in his own way, Steinthal was probably weeping. Not out loud, but where it actually mattered.

Maugham thought back to the little girl’s body. He shuddered, and then was suddenly very tired again.

“Hell,” Maugham said out loud to no one in particular.

“Yeah,” Steinthal breathed out heavily. “Just more fucking hell…”

Then the light changed, and they both walked on, and neither spoke again for a long, long time.

(First draft of a scene inspired by something my oldest daughter said to me with part of a remembered case I worked.)

WOULD THAT IN CONSUMING

“Drink this!” she said gaily, and perhaps a little too loudly. She handed him a fine-wrought yet small cup of some unknown metal. It seemed to flow into his hand as if it too were made of liquid, yet it also felt smooth, hard, and warm.

“He took the cup not unenthusiastically, for he had previously partaken of Eldeven wines on other occasions and knew them to be excellent and comforting. Even to the disheartened. Perhaps more potion than mere drink.

He sipped, and then drank more vigorously.

Then he help the cup in the palm of his hand, still feeling the peculiar warmth it seemed to radiate through the cup, or because of it, and stared at the remaining draught. It was almost weightless in his hand.

“Would that in consuming I would always far better account for that which most oft consumes me…”

She laughed. “Is that verse?” she asked good-naturedly.

He frowned quickly. “If you wish.”

Then he added somewhat moodily, “However do not mistake the report of a thing for the thing itself.”

He paused a short while before speaking again, still puzzling at the fine and almost arcane work upon the Eldeven cup from which he drank.

“I think rather it the philosopher, mystic, and metaphysician in me,” he finally admitted. “Or perhaps I am but a frustrated soldier. Or priest.”

The latter remark may have been the more truthful he thought to himself, or perhaps they all were.

She smiled pleasantly, but also somewhat craftily and perhaps even knowingly.

“Is it not enough then to be a Master Poet among men?” she teased him.

Larmaegeon placed his cup upon the heavy, large feasting table with its unspun cloth of gold and dark silver filigree for needleless embroidery. He smiled in his own turn but it seemed more an inner musing than a pleasantry.

“Poetry is Mastery of Nothing. Except mere words. And words are absolutely nothing without a Mastery of Life to birth them. Otherwise words and verse both are but whispers upon the winds. Perhaps they go here, perhaps there, seen to bend this limb, displace that grain of sand, but other wise no one knows from whence they came or where they go. If they go. Otherwise they catch the ear of this wandering man, or that pleased lady, or travel out in time to light upon the fancy of some child yet unborn. But poetry is not mastery, so much as its echo. Art, without Manhood, is neither master of anything, nor does it master anything. And clever words are not achievements or Life, they are at best, and most often, the mere reflection of both.”

This seemed to both disturb and yet curiously satisfy the Russian Witch. Larmaegeon watched her eyes momentarily as they adjudged him, and then noticed that her reddish-blonde hair, though it shifted in colour and aspect often in the day, appeared as smooth and flowing and shimmering gold in the strangely steady glow of the surreal fires of the Eldeven hall.

Klura picked up her own cup and drank lightly from it, her eyes and quizzical brows peeking above the lip of her drink as if they looked at the Bard from a great distance, or from another time. She finished, lowered her drink, and spoke again.

“Do you then think so little of what you do, while so many others think so well of it?” she asked, but not teasingly this time.

“I do,” Larmaegeon replied instantly and without any hesitation. “I do think little of it.” Then he raised his cup again, saluted her and hers, and said without any irony at all, “And yet, my dear, I excel at it…”

Then he made a small bow and rose fluidly from his chair and having stood looked down at her.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I will indeed be poor company tonight. And that is entirely my own fault.”

Then he turned and walked away and towards the hall’s great doors and swung them open unaided by the guards, who watched him warily but without movement, as he silently departed the room.

Klura watched him go, his simple green wardrobe seeming to darken almost into a glistening black as he left. And then he was gone, and not even his restless shadow seemed a lingering memory at that moment to her. And yet, somehow, his words remained…

(This is a first-draft bare-sketch I wrote of a scene between the Welsh Bard Larmaegeon and the Russian Witch Klura as they were being entertained at the hall of the Samarl of Samarkand by the Sidh and Prester John [Jhönarlk]. It came to me this morning as I have been writing and working on several of my novels much of late. Even been composing a fair amount of poetry. I guess to be occupied of mind is to be occupied, if you’ll act on it that is. Anyway I have edited it once, for spelling so far but no farther. It concerns what Larmaegeon thinks of Poetry and his profession as a Bard, especially given recent events in the novel, and what Klura thinks of him [to a degree]. In one way you could call it a scene of Romance and in another a criticism and critique of both Verse and Romance sans Action. Or, yet another of my criticisms of the State of the modern World in the West. Which effeminately thinks that mere thoughts and words and wishes [filigrees and embroideries and pedigrees, or in modern terms information/journalism and memes and talk] fix or resolve the world. Or that those things alone ever amplify the true Good, or protect anyone or anything from actual evil…)

From the second novel in my High/Mythological Fantasy Trilogy The Kithariad (The Doom of Kitharia)

#novel #fiction #writing #literature #HighFantasy #poetry

THE REAL ILLUSION

THE REAL ILLUSION

The World is both Illusion and Real my boy. Yet more the Illusory Reality, I think, than the Real Illusion…

Alternaeus the Wizard to the Boy

from Alternaeus the Wizard

BETA READERS AND COMPOSING PARTNER(s) WANTED

BETA READERS AND COMPOSING PARTNER(s) WANTED

I am in immediate need of Beta Readers for both my fictional and non-fictional writings. These writings will include everything from my fictional science fiction, fantasy, detective, mystery, espionage, military, historical fiction, thriller, regional (Southern Western, and frontier writings), and literary writings to my middle grade and young adult and children’s stories and books. Non fictional writings will include my essays, articles, scientific papers, religious writings, writings on Theurgy, detective work, some of my business plans, and books on a variety of subjects. Other materials might include song lyrics or entire song cycles (such as for an album) and poems or games or other such matters I have created.

Rewards for giving me useful feedback will include things like autographed copies of my books, advance copies of works, discounts on published works, free copies of works, advice on how to get published, information on how to secure investors, adding you to my networks, etc. And, of course, if I can repay the favor in other ways I will endeavor to do so.

If interested then contact me or leave me a message here.

To see copies of my works visit this site:

https://wyrdwend.wordpress.com/category/my-writings-and-work/

____________________________________

Also I am looking for a composing partner who can take my song lyrics and help develop fully realized songs out of them. As an historical example think of Bernie Taupin and Elton John. My job would be that of Taupin (the lyricist), your job would be that of Elton John, though I could really care less what instrument you play. Although I am also open to writing song lyrics for bands. I write a variety of song lyrics in different styles and genres (rock, country, bluegrass, R&B, popular, jazz, sacred, etc.) and you could take your pick. I can also provide you with themes and motifs for various songs but at this time I do not have time to compose full music for these various song lyrics. So your job would be that of composing the music for these songs. Our relationship would be that of a standard split for song writing credits.

To see copies of my songs and lyrics visit these sites:

https://wyrdwend.wordpress.com/category/lyrics-2/

https://wyrdwend.wordpress.com/category/song-2/

THE VIPER

THE VIPER (first draft of scene)

Maugham walked back over to Steinthal.

Steinthal asked him, “Who is that?”

Maugham was uncharacteristically blunt, and voluble.

“That is the toughest son of a bitch I’ve ever met in my life,” he told him.

Steinthal almost flinched. He had never met anyone tougher than Maugham and wasn’t much sure he liked the idea.

“Also,” Maugham went on almost to the point of being prolix (for him anyway), “he is meaner than hell and he may even be your equal in cunning and craft.”

Steinthal whistled appreciatively, just barely above the whisp of a dog-whistle. He looked hard at the man Maugham had just been conversing with when suddenly the guy looked over at him. Had he heard Steinthal’s whistle? Steinthal wondered if that was even possible.

The guy rose up from his table and just stood there, unmoving. Was he waiting, just watching, or coiling? He was short, shorter than Steinthal, and wiry, with cords of muscles that stood out up and down his neck. He had a couple of facial scars, one a long straight slice and the other maybe a burn, and sported a multiply broken nose and the look of a man who had been stabbed a few times to the point of aggravation.

He was dressed so that you couldn’t tell if he was a day laborer or an informant. Or both. His clothes looked washed out, as if they could fade smoothly into the backgorund, and like they didn’t quite fit. Or he did. Or both. He carried himself as if he could have been concealing no weapons, or any number of them.

He looked directly at Steinthal and he smiled, only it wasn’t really a smile. It was more like when a snake’s jaw unhinges and its flat lips curl back to swallow something. Steinthal wasn’t really sure if that was for his benefit alone, or just directed at the world in general, but whatever the intent it was threatening, and patiently sibilant – all at once. And about as creepy and surreal a disposition to strike as possible for anything shaped like a man.

Steinthal looked at Maugham and Maugham looked at him.

“Do you know this guy?” Steitnhal asked.

“Yeah,” Maugham said, in his typically taciturn manner.

“Know him well?” Steinthal asked again.

“Well enough,” Maugham replied.

“How?” Steinthal said seriously, more in the way of an interrogation than a friendly question.

Maugham shook his head like a bull being called in from the field. Steinthal knew that that meant and just nodded.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah,” said Maugham. “When we first met I thought you might be related.”

Steinthal furrowed his brow. Steinthal raised his hand horizontally so that his forefinger pointed at Maugham and his thumb pointed back at himself.

“You thought we might be related?”

“No,” Maugham said flatly. “I thought that you two might be related. Why I didn’t kill you immediately.”

“You didn’t kill me because you happen to like this guy?” Steinthal asked, fishing for the reason.

“No,” Maugham said shaking his head as if the question were silly and somehow self-negating. “I didn’t kill you because if you two were related then I wasn’t absolutely sure I could.”

Steinthal nodded, accepting the comment, but was doubtful that was the whole story. It was Maugham though, so what could ya really do?

Then Steinthal looked back over at the stranger. For all he knew the guy was still breathing, but if he was then he showed no signs.
Inside his own mind Steinthal shook his head while watching the guy, but as far as anyone else knew he just stared silently at the stranger.

“Why’d you set this up Maugham?” Steinthal asked. “Couldn’t have been easy to get him to play along.”

“He’s not playing,” Maugham replied. “And no, it wasn’t. But I thought that maybe, just this once, we could use him.”

Inside his own mind Steinthal nodded, but to Maugham he shook his head so that no one else would notice.

“So,” Steinthal asked. “What do I call it?”

“You don’t,” Maugham answered. And it didn’t seem contrived at all.

“Well then, should I approach it, or let it approach me?”

“Yes,” Maugham said. “That should work.”

Steinthal nodded still intently studying the other man.

“Well then,” Steinthal finally said. “Best clear the room. If we’re gonna see what happens.”

But when Maugham made no reply, and Steinthal glanced over to check on him, Maugham was already gone. And when he turned back to look for the other guy the other guy was already in his face.

NOT THE REASON I SHOULD CARE

NOT THE REASON I SHOULD CARE

Steinthal looked at the picture. Then he handed it back to Williams.

“What do you want me to do?” Steinthal asked.

“Shadow him,” Williams replied. Steinthal almost laughed at the term then caught himself. Curiosity got the better of humor.

“Maybe I can do it, but who is he, and why would I track him?” Steinthal said.

Williams blinked.

“You don’t recognize him?” Williams seemed truly dumbfounded.

“Why would I recognize him?” Steinthal said flatly. “I’ve never met him or seen him before.”

“But that’s Dale J. Soggs,” Williams responded.

Williams waited to see if the name would have an effect but when it didn’t he tried again.

“He’s the football player! First draft two years ago. Very first first draft,” Williams said.

Steinthal looked at Maugham and Maugham looked at Steinthal and then Maugham casually shrugged his shoulders.

Steinthal looked back at Williams and then, unable to contain HIMSELF anymore, laughed out loud. When he stopped laughing he scratched his neck and shook his head.

“Williams, what do I give a shit if he plays football?” Steinthal replied. “Is that supposed to be your pitch to me? You think I have nothing better to do with my time than watch fucking football? I’m a grown man Williams, not a little school girl. Look at Maugham Williams. You think he’s got nothing more important to do with his time than watch fucking football? You think he’s never done anything more dangerous than fucking football?”

Williams looked up at Maugham. He towered over them both.

“You don’t watch football either?” he asked Maugham. “Guy like you? Big as you are?”

Maugham looked down at Williams, smiled thinly, and shook his head dismissively. Then he went back to chewing his gum.

Williams looked back at Steinthal who was still waiting for a reply to his question. Williams still seemed confused so Steinthal backtracked.

“I didn’t ask you what he did Williams, if you can call that doing something. I asked you who he was and why you want him surveilled. Now who is he that you need him watched? And don’t give me any bullshit about him being a football player because I don’t give a shit. In case you missed it I don’t watch fucking football. And if this is about football then you’re killing your time and my interest. Now who is the man that you want him followed, and why?”

Williams looked stunned, then shook his head and exhaled loudly. He seemed to deflate as he did so.

“They said you’d be just like this,” he finally said.

“Like what?” Steinthal asked almost disinterestedly.

“Straight to the point,” Williams answered.

Steinthal ran his hand through his beard.

“Look, you want a play-runner or a ballet dancer then get another football player to chaperone him around. They can take notes on him, carry his little athletic bag, scrub his cleats, and type up his itinerary. Maybe take him to his pedicure or his oil bath where he can meet his side-chick. Assuming that’s what you’re after. But if I’m going to follow the man then I’m going to know exactly who and what he is and why he actually needs to be followed. Get me?” Steinthal said.

Williams blinked, then nodded. It was completely silent for a moment, except for someone vacuuming up at the far end of the hall.

“Now Williams, now,” Steinthal said. “I’m not here for the psychoanalysis and the ambiance.”

Williams blinked again and cleared his throat.

“We think he,” the team rep began. “Well, we’re not sure, you see, but we think he could be, maybe, a foreign agent,” Williams finally admitted.

This time Steinthal blinked.

“A football player?” Steinthal asked incredulously.

“Well, it’s just that, you see…” Williams answered, but Steinthal set his jaw and shook his head for silence. Then he ran his hand through his beard again, scratched his chin, nodded, and motioned to Maugham. Both men turned and walked towards the door.

Surprised Williams watched them reach the door before he thought to respond.

“Wait a second?” he blurted out. “Are you gonna do it? Will you follow him for us?”
Steinthal stopped at the door and turned to Williams.

“We will,” Steinthal replied.

“Well,” Williams continued confused. “Don’t you want any details on the man? Like where he lives, what he drives, that kind of thing…”

“No, I don’t,” Steinthal replied. “I’ll gather my own intel, and details. Call you in three days.” Then he and Maugham left, walked to the end of the hall, and punched the button for an elevator.

When they were inside and descending Maugham looked at Steinthal.

“Think this is what it appears to be?” he asked his friend.

“Hell no!” replied Steinthal. “No one would.” Maugham smiled.

“Think this Soggs guy might actually be dangerous then?” Maugham asked.

“If he is,” replied Steinthal, “we’ll find out soon enough. But in any case it won’t be because he’s a football player.”

And Maugham nodded and they both laughed.

from The Detective Steinthal

#football #case #foreignagent #writing
_______________________________________________________

I was working on a sci-fi story last night called, The Seas the Skies, when this scene popped into my head about a new case for Steinthal and Maugham. Something I’ve been thinking of doing anyway given all of the crap hysteria about foreign agents and all of the crap about professional football in our modern society. So I wrote this scene instead. First draft. If you’ll excuse the pun.

I’ll punch out the sci-fi story today after my hike with Sam.

Have a good day folks.

WE’LL WORK ON THAT

WE’LL WORK ON THAT

The place was dark. Very dark, all things considered. The whole house seemed closed off into small compartments. However there was still light streaming in from a full moon by a window to the right of the room.

Precisely why Steinthal had chosen this night. He knew that because of the full moon his night vision equipment could make good use of the available ambient and residual light and he could operate “in the dark” without giving himself away.

Time to put on my googles he thought.

He heard a small creak.

Instinctively he ducked low but something still hit him from behind and from his left. It had struck the top of his shoulder, the backside of his neck and the base of his skull. It was wide whatever it was. And it had only been a glancing blow but Steinthal saw a flash from the impact, heard a ring in his ear, and stumbled forward a few feet. Then as he caught his balance he ran forward another five or six feet and swirled as fast as he could recover.

Someone stood there. A big someone. Big and dark. If it had growled Steinthal might have taken it for a bear. As it was Steinthal thought it might be even more dangerous.

The thing seemed to just pause there as if considering what to do next. Steinthal’s head cleared completely and he started to make for his gun when the shape charged. It came in close almost instantly and surprised Steinthal, not with a jab or a horizontal swing, but with a ferocious right uppercut. Steinthal barely had time to react but twisted some and got his left arm stiffened and intercepted the shot down low. That took most of the punch out but the guy was still so strong that he lifted Steinthal onto the balls of his feet just from the sheer momentum.

Steinthal counterpunched furiously with his right. Hit the guy solidly on the left side of the front of his neck. It should have rocked the guy on his heels, caused him to splutter and choke. He hadn’t hit the trachea but it still would have stunned most men.

As it was the only two things that seemed to happen as far as Steinthal could tell was that it made a sound like the guy had been hit with a wet fish, and the man stepped back one step. He hadn’t even bent over.

Realizing fully what he was now facing, Steinthal swiftly backtracked three or four feet and grabbed his revolver with his right and his combat knife with his left. He had only glanced down for an instance to retrieve his weapons but when he looked up the guy already had a semiautomatic in one hand and a shiny machete in the other. Where the machete had come from Steinthal had no idea but it did impress him.

The guy was now closer to the moonlight. You could partially make him out. Steinthal decided he wasn’t big after all. He was monstrous. But he didn’t look stupid. No, there was a kind of set to his face and a sort of light in his eyes that Steinthal took for real and raw intelligence. Even more dangerous.

There were several moments of tense silence while they pointed their weapons at each other.

“That kind of hurt for such a little fella,” the big guy suddenly said and spit. There might have been some blood mixed in but it was too dark to tell. “What’s your name?”

“Huh?” Steinthal said.

“I said, ‘what’s your name.’ I don’t like having to repeat myself.”

Steinthal cleared his throat.

“John,” he replied. “But most everyone calls me Steinthal.”

The guy seemed to mull over the answer.

“Yeah, you’re the one,” he said as if mentally verifying a fact-sheet.

“What one?” Steinthal asked.

“The one I’m meant to kill tonight,” the big guy said.

“Well then,” Steinthal said. “You’re one up on me. I usually know nothing about most of the people I kill until it is all over.
“Why is that?” the big guy asked.

“Because they tend to ambush me,” replied Steinthal.

The big guy chuckled quietly.

“Well then, are you going to shoot me?” he asked.

“I’d rather not,” Steinthal said warily. “But at this point anything seems possible.”

Seemingly to spite himself the big guy chuckled again.

“I like you.” The big guy said. “You’re funny.”

“Trust me,” Steinthal said. “I’m not trying to be, but if helps any then let’s just go with that.”

The big guy seemed blithe. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to snap your neck, but now I sort of like you.”

Steinthal noticed that despite the relaxed and easy going tone of the man’s voice his aim had remained absolutely fixed and his breathing so steady that he seemed motionless. Even while he spoke.

“Yeah, well,” said Steinthal “We all do what we can.”

The guy laughed again. If not for the circumstances then to Steinthal this would have seemed ridiculous.

When the guy finished laughing he said, “Seems kind of a shame now though.”

“Don’t it,” said Steinthal. “But, you know, the guns and all…”

The big guy looked at Steinthal’s revolver.

“I’ve been shot before you know,” he said. “By a lot bigger and more powerful weapons than that. Never killed me.”

“I’ll bet,” said Steinthal. “But there’s always that first time. And I’m pretty damned determined.”

“Also I’m armored,” said the big guy, as if he hadn’t noticed Steinthal’s reply.

“Thanks for the heads up,” said Steinthal. “Now I know where not to aim.”

There was silence again. But no movement.

“Say,” Steinthal finally said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the distinct feeling you’re not just playing for time here. Do you get the idea that there might be something else going on with this whole affair that neither of us are quite square on? And that maybe we should skip the strangulations and compare notes about in private?”

More silence. But then the big guy shrugged nonchalantly and holstered his gun. It kind of disappeared entirely into the huge black mound that was his chest. But the machete remained. And the guy had never even shifted his gaze.

“Maybe… Probably… Yes. I’ve had that idea for some time now,” he said. “But I didn’t want to make any snap judgements.”

“Yeah,” Steinthal said. “It’s one of the things I appreciate most about you.”

“People think I’m stupid, you know. Because I’m so big,” the big guy said. With a kind of sad resignation that seemed almost fatalistic.

“Well fella,” said Steinthal. “I’m not most people. And whereas you are stupefyingly big, you are most definitely not stupid.”

The guy chuckled again. Then sighed softly.

“You going to lower your gun now?” the big guy asked.

“I’m thinking about it, but, you know, I’m not exactly stupid either.”

The machete clattered to the floor.

“Very nice. Now can you do that with your hands, arms, and most of the rest of you as well?”

The guy smiled in the dark. And it seemed completely friendly.

“Probably not. I come this way,” he said.

“Alright then. I’ll just take your word for it.” And Steinthal holstered his gun and knife.

“Say,” Steinthal said relaxing a little. “Since you know so much about me what say you tell me your name?”

“You’ll laugh,” the big guy replied.

“Well, if I do, then don’t take it personally. I have an excellent sense of humor.”

“Okay then. It’s Maugham,” said the big guy. “William Somerset Maugham. But my friends call me Angus.”

Steinthal whistled. “Well I’ll be damned. I’ve read all your books!”

“Yeah,” the big guy looked sheepishly at the ground. “My mother was real big on literature.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Steinthal said. “But say, you’re a lot bigger in person than you look in the papers. Or the history books.”

“Yeah, I hear that a lot. Well, not a lot. Not recently anyway. Most people don’t read anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s a real shame, ain’t it? But that being what it is I’m not calling you Angus or Bill either,” Steinthal said.

“Well then, what are you going to call me?”

“I’m gonna call you Maugham,” said Steinthal. “Because you remind me of W. Somerset Maugham. If, you know, he had been as big as a damned Angus.”

Maugham nodded.

“What say though we get outta here now Maugham?” Steinthal asked. “Before they send in a troll?”

Maugham shrugged. “Okay. I’m game if you are.”

As they were sneaking out Steinthal said, “Say, what you said back there. Is that true?”

“Is what true?” asked Maugham.

“Do you really have friends?”

Maugham stopped in his tracks and seemed to mull over the question quietly in his mind before replying.

“You know, I’m not really sure.”

“Well,” said Steinthal. “The night is still young. We’ll work at it awhile. Then see what we can come up with. One thing’s for sure though.”

“What’s that?” asked Maugham.

“After tonight I owe you one. If you’ll take friendship as payment then I’ll sure call it square.”

(This is the first meeting between Steinthal and Maugham.)

From The Detective Steinthal.

AND THEN THEY ATE

“You know what I’ve always loved most about you?” she said reaching for his hand across the table. “You never judged me. You always just accepted me as I am.”

He accepted her hand, and held it gently but shook his head dubiously.

“No, my dear,” he said flatly. “You are entirely wrong on both accounts, and could not be further from the actual truth.”

She withdrew her hand in surprise, a deepening frown creasing her puzzled brow.

“What do you mean?” she said nervously.

“I mean I judged you constantly,” Steinthal said. “I still do. That is what I do. I watch people. I study people. I come to understand a person, and then I judge them. In a brutally honest fashion. I judge everyone this way, including myself. You are certainly no exception to the rule. As a matter of fact there are no exceptions to the rule.”

“Oh,” she said hollowly.

He looked at her intently, staring relentlessly into her face for a moment, and then continued.

“I am no modern man,” he said, as if reading the barometric pressure on a gauge before a storm. “I do not believe in the ‘man without judgment.’ The man without judgment is simply another term for an absolute fool. I am no fool my dear, and when it comes to judgment I attempt to do something far braver and much more vital than avoid judging people, I seek to judge them accurately and in truth.”

She looked down at her plate as if suddenly uncomfortable, or in shame. There was a long pause while she tried to think of what to say. Not knowing how to respond she whispered out loud and to herself,

“What must you think of me then?”

He nodded slightly, though she did not see it. He waited a moment to see if she would say anything else or look up but she did not.

“Since you asked I will tell you precisely what I think of you and how I have judged you,” Steinthal replied, accepting her unintended cue. “I adjudged you in this way. I never accepted you as ‘you were,’ and I will not in the future. Furthermore I judged you not for what you were, but for what I fully suspected you could be. I did not take you for how you appeared, but for how it appeared to me that you could be, if you ever decided you would. And as far as I can see, you did. And did rather well at it. Does that really surprise you?”

She looked up again and stared at Steinthal, but whether more in shock or gratitude neither was certain.

This time he offered his hand across the table.

“I like to think of myself as a very good judge of character,” he told her. “And of potential. I would not waste my time or effort with or upon anyone who did not demonstrate an aptitude for both. So, do not prove me wrong and I shall not have to judge you otherwise. And that will be more than enough for me, assuming it is enough for you.”

She looked into his eyes and could find no hint of guile, or of misdirection. He seemed perfectly sincere. And it occurred to her, maybe for the very first time, just how perfectly sincere he usually was.

She reached back across the table, took his hand, smiled, and said softly, “I think I love you.”

He gently squeezed her hand in reply.

“I am aware of that,” he said.

She kept smiling but sighed with a deep resignation.

“Though you truly can be something of a real bastard.”

“I am aware of that as well,” he said, smiling in return.

Then he dropped her hand and took up his fork. He pointed it at her.

“But how bout we eat now and save the romance for later? After all we have the entire evening, and this meal is hardly the limit of my current ambitions.”

She laughed and took up her own fork.

And then they ate.

from The Detective Steinthal

________________________________

Note: this was not the scene I had intended to write tonight, but my router blew out and that delayed me working on the other scene and since this one seemed to flow kinda nicely I just worked it instead.

WHY WOULD HE?

WHY WOULD HE?

“I should think the answer would be self-evident, even to you. Why would I wish to have adventures only in my mind when I should have them with my body and soul as well? In his own mind a man is always but an unchallenged and untested king upon an imaginary golden throne of plenty. But to thrive in the world about him he must be something far greater, far more cunning, more dangerous, and far more wise – a Wizard of Many Things.”

Alternaeus the Wizard

(from The Wizard and the Wyrdpack)

ONLY GREAT NEED – THE KITHARIUNE

IN ANSWER TO MARSIPPIUS NICEA, COMMANDER OF THE BASILEGATE

“Oh, I understand you well enough. Lord and commander of the Basilegate. For you see I once was you. You believe that man must be ruled by other men. Strong men. Kings, emperors, imperators. Commanders given rank and title, tithe and sway. Men who give commands so that others may meekly acknowledge, bend the knee, and thus obey. This kind of life is well known to the world. It is the ancient and unquestioned way.

But it is not my way. Not, at least, any longer. For I know well enough now of men who will not bend to summons, who will not submit to commands, who seek no orders, obey no demands to speak and live as others will, no matter how strong the strong man be. For I have learned in countless, hidden toils that man should be strong enough, with God’s help, to rule himself. That all men should be strong enough to rule themselves, even when they do not wish to do so, even when they are too cowardly to try. And trust me, many are those too cowardly to try. Orders given and taken are easy to discover and trade like treasured coins in the many markets of the open world. But courage is earned in private, and a labor of many great losses. Failure to be afraid is its only profit, yet still, that profit is rare enough and high enough for me.

In truth, my friend, you know only of the smallness of man. The smallness of ‘go here, and do that,’ regardless of virtue, and heedless of vice. But I do not speak of the smallness of man. I speak of man as he could be, as he was always meant to be, even as he should be when he will not be. I speak of man as a thing far greater than citizen, or subject, or soldier. I speak of man as Man. And I speak as a Man. A man who needs no king, who obeys no emperor, who short of God has no master and desires no master, for God is no master of man but Lord only of his True Nature, of what Man is at his best. Of what man should be. I can live with that Lord, and gladly so, and he can order me as He will, for that Lord obligates me to my highest self. He demands of me not obedience, but that rarest of all ranks – Real Manhood. Perhaps my refusal is to you but insurrection, perhaps my reply cryptic, and perhaps you know nothing now of what I truly mean but I hope and pray one day you shall. As for me I no longer have a country in this world, though I would not see it undefended. Either country, or the world. But I can give no service to you short of Truth. For I have but one Lord now, and he sits no throne in any city of man. Thus all other lords, all other kings, all other commanders, all other basils can go bray and bid and howl as they wish, but I will not serve them, and they are not my lords.”

Then Rhorric, despite the moonless and unnatural blackness, stood and strode to his horse at the edge of the firelight and mounted it smoothly like one long experienced and free of all doubt.

“If you have need of me commander,” he said placing his spear across his right leg so that the point pierced the gathered dark beyond him, “then I will come. Because I am your friend. Because it is my duty. Because I am unafraid. But I will not come because I am ordered to do so. And you will never speak to me in that manner again.”

Turning his horse northwards Rhorric rode out into the troubled night and disappeared from human sight.

Then the entire party murmured at his words and some found them hot and overwrought, and some questionable and rebellious, and some, like Suegenius and Vlachus nodded surreptitiously to each other and smiled secretly to themselves.

     Marsippius, though, was at first very angry at Rhorric’s insurgent answer and he stood slowly and carrying his sword with him walked to the edge of the camp where no one else could see him. Then the Roman looked up into the dark sky and saw glimmering there a strange and distant light such as he had never seen before. A bright light, yet fast moving, varying in color but shaped like a small egg. He wondered at it as he watched – what it could mean? Was it an omen of the moment, favored or ill, or merely some unknown celestial light he had never earlier noticed? For although it was easily visible to him and seemed to move across the sky more like a meteor than a star it did not dim or burn away as it moved. He observed it closely as it crossed the heavens, bright, and cold, and lonely, until it was lost behind the horizon or perhaps shielded by some distant range of mountains not visible to his sight. And suddenly it seemed to him as if this wandering star in the darkness was alone like Rhorric, and reminded him somehow of the man. And like the Cappadocian Vigilant it too was unafraid to be a light unto itself. Seeming to pass well beneath the height of the other stars in its peculiar path it was nevertheless not bound by a fixed and otherworldly orbit, not set to move slowly and forever upon the same sure course. Rather it was a thing unbound. Not really a thing of the distant Heavens, but still a thing far above the Earth. A fire of its own will, free to go where it wished, to do as it found best, to live as it would. Then the anger of Marsippius was gone as well, out like the fleeting star beyond his sight, and he found he was no longer upset by Rhorric’s words, but rather all the more curious, and even envious, for he realized that he had never heard a man speak like that in his entire life. And now he wished to hear more. But Rhorric was already gone and only great need could entice him back again.

Rhorric of Cappadocia (the Vigilant) in answer to the commands and summons of Marsippius Nicea, Field Commander of the Basilegate

from my novel The Basilegate (first book of the Kithariune)

YEAH, SO EXACTLY HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

YEAH, SO EXACTLY HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

“It’s a question of precisely what is the most ethical possible practice,” Termkin said, apparently annoyed by Steinthal’s relentless and unswerving line of inquiry.

Steinthal stared at him intently, but unreadably.

“Is it?” asked Steinthal.

Termkin seemed puzzled by the question.

“What do you mean?” Termkin said.

“See,” said Steinthal twirling the brim of his hat in his hand, “that’s where I think we both know you’re wrong.”

Termkin furrowed his brow, his expression a mixture of ongoing annoyance and a genuine struggle to understand.

“I still don’t perceive your exact meaning?”

“No, I don’t think you do,” said Steinthal. “And I really didn’t expect that you could. But let me simplify the matter for you. You see I have this theory that everything is always really about morality. And that ethics is just something that lawyers and other no count types like you employ as a cheap legal substitute.”

Termkin seemed to follow Steinthal’s explanation at a slightly slower pace than it had been enunciated. But when he finally caught up he suddenly flushed red and showed his ire.

“Why you smart mouthed son of a bitch!”

Steinthal laughed good humoredly.

“Probably,” he said. “But I noticed you didn’t bother to refute me.”

Termkin mulled on that for a moment before his snappy comeback finally came to him.

“Oh yeah, well exactly how is one supposed to refute you smartass types?” Termkin demanded. “You think you’re always right.”

Steinthal stood up and put his hat on his head. He smiled to himself as if Termkin wasn’t even in the room though he was still staring right at him.

“See, that’s the part about this whole thing that’s easiest to resolve,” said Steinthal. “We are always right. Even when no one else knows it yet. Like you. As for the thinking part, well now, if you ever really bothered with that then I presume you could figure it out for yourself.”

Steinthal tipped his hat at Termkin in a peculiar gesture. “But I’m not gonna lay real money on it.”

Steinthal walked across the room, opened the door and then looked back at Termkin.

“I’d like to say it was nice to meet you Termkin. But, we met anyway. So at least we’ll always have that.”

The he left.

Still full of questions, but certain he finally crossed the right man.

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A bit of dialogue involving my Detective Character Steinthal. I didn’t really get a chance to do a Tuesday’s Tale this week. Too busy. So I’m posting this today instead.

My youngest daughter read it and I asked her what she thought of it and she said, “Dad, Steinthal talks pretty much just like you.”

Which made me laugh.

“Yeah, funny how that works, ain’t it?” I told her…

HIGH AND LOW FORTUNE – HAMMER, TONG, AND TOOLS

HIGH AND LOW FORTUNE

“You ask me how I know this and I can only tell you what I’ve seen.

High Fortune came upon me like a silent serpent, slithering from behind in such a stealthy manner as to conceal his true intent and to scarcely warrant my attention.

Low Fortune approached me like a titled lord, resplendent all in showy pomp and decorative circumstance, attired in the lofty regalia of finely whispered shadows spun from venomous spider silks.

Low Fortune is, you see my friend, the King of Seeming and the Prince of Cunning Craft yet I advise you eschew his long seducing and ever seductive company. For his court is all fantastic façade and fraudulent fashion and his manner and his manor are both estates of ruin.

High Fortune, on the other hand, wears no glittered crown of kingship nor rankish robes of high office nor encrusted jewels of state, he is as plain of face, as rough-built by effort, and as quiet in nature as if stable bred. Yet if on turning round by chance or calculation you find him standing nearby then reach out your hand quickly and grasp him in so firm a hold that he cannot escape, and never let him go until he promises to bless you as his friend.

Leave Low Fortune, brother, where he dwells, even if he home in temple renown or palace grand, for he is the sure slum-lord of soon-to-be sad misdeeds and the master of all unenviable fools.

Instead set your watch and wait patiently for High Fortune, for one day he will approach you in sly disguise, silent and unannounced, to see what can be made of you if you will ever dare. For he is your steadfast, stalwart, and subtle Friend and the Maker of that Fortune you truly seek.

Low Fortune churns like stormy waves, he ebbs and flows and never settles ought. High Fortune stands alone and trembles not, he shelters and secures all Men of Enterprise.”

from the Kithariune  (link)

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Since the beginning of this year I have been in one of the most productive periods/phases of my entire life as far as the creation of poems, songs, short stories, novels, scripts, and other literary works are concerned. I have recently produced hundreds of pages of new works.

 

Above is a section of my novel series the Kithariune. In this passage the Welsh Bard Larmaegeon is trying to explain the difference(s) between High and Low Fortune to his friend and companion, the Spanish Paladin Edimios. And why he should wait upon the one and avoid the other.

 

Anyone is welcome to comment upon it, of course.

CROSSING OVER – HIGHMOOT

CROSS OVER WORK

Lately I have been doing a lot of what I call Cross-Over Work.

In this case I mean by saying that I have been doing a lot of work that cross-fertilizes itself in other works I am simultaneously creating. For instance I might be writing one novel and a particular scene or bit of dialogue I create will inspire another scene or piece of dialogue in another book or novel I am working on.

Though such things are not necessarily related to or limited to my various fiction writings. I might be drawing a map or making a sketch, designing something, working on a start-up project, developing an invention, writing a poem or song lyrics, or writing a novel or a non-fiction book and all of these things, or others, might give me an idea for another work I’m currently pursuing.

So today, and below (and in allusion to my previous post on actors), I am posting some of my latest Cross-Over Work. Little vignettes, or to be more accurate, often just little snippets (bits of dialogue, sections of scenes, sketch notes, etc.) of various Works I am creating and pursuing at this time.

Does your Work cross over in this way, from one work to another?

If so then feel free to comment below.

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NOT A FAIR FIGHT

“Again I don’t get it. Take one shot at your actual target and three at yourself… don’t seem like much of a fair fight to me.”

From my Western The Lettered Men

 

A CLUE

“Not every possibility is true, that’s certainly true, but every possibility is always a clue – to something other than itself. If you keep forgetting that then it’s very possible the Truth will entirely escape you. And if it does then what other possibilities really matter?”

From The Detective Steinthal

 

TRUE DARKNESS

“True darkness obscures. Few things can thrive in perpetual shade but those things that can definitely always wish to remain hidden. That is, until they are ready to be discovered. For reasons of their own.”

From The Detective Steinthal

 

ALWAYS BEST

“It is always best to hunt in silence.”

The Detective Steinthal

 

YOUR TRAINING IS OVER

“What are you training for kid? To train forever? Now who wants that kinda shit anyway? Only officers and politicians, that’s who. No, you get your ass in the fight. You’ve trained long enough. Time to be somebody.”

From Snyder’s Spiders

 

IT BLEEDS

“And how now is your wound?”

“It itches fiercely, it hurts mightily, it swells darkly, but it bleeds freely and cleanly. It is good that it bleeds so and thus I will not complain of the other things. But if you have any more of that strange brew you drink then I will not complain of a skin full of that either.”

“I have not a skin, but I can manage a cup.”

“Then so can I…”

Suegenius describing to Fhe Fhissegrim the condition of his wound

From my fantasy The Kithariune (The Basilegate)

 

A RARE AND WONDROUS FEAT

“If you cannot stand up to your own old man then you will never stand up to anyone. If you can stand up to your own old man then you can stand up to anyone else, and everyone else.

If your old man ever forces you to rebel against him then do not hate him for it, respect him for it. He has done more for you in that regard, as regards the development of your actual manhood, than any other thing anyone else could ever do for you in the world. That man who forces his son into rebellion has bred a man. You owe such a father an enormous and generous debt.

That father who always insists his son obey him, right or wrong, has bred a mere and helpless and fearful slave. You owe that father your utter disdain and yourself nothing but shame for your own endless submission.

Drink to your father Edomios. Drink long and deep. He has bred a man in you. A man who can stand upright and unafraid. A rare and wondrous feat in our age.

Maybe in any age.”

Marsippius Nicea the Byzantine Commander of the Basilegate explaining to Edomios the Spanish Paladin why he owes his father a debt of manhood

From The Kithariune

 

THAT WAY YOU SPEAK

When Michael first lands in Thaumaturgis he is met by Harmonius Hippostatic
who makes fun of the way he speaks and tries to explain to Michael where he is, and what life is like in the Lands. Michael does not at first speak in verse, but speaks in prose, but as he stays longer and longer in the land of Thaumaturgis he also comes to speak in metered, rhyming verse.

Harmonius: That way you speak, it’s quite a feat
But it will never do,
No meter, rhyme or rhythm,
It’s really quite obtuse.

Michael: Where am I?

Harmonius: Why this is Thaumaturgis,
Don’t you know your lands?
It’s one of the three countries,
Not earth, not stone, not sand.
No one’s ever figured
How it got this way
Tomorrow is the same as now
It’s always been that way.
If want you life miraculous
Or supernatural,
It’s really quite so marvelous
And never, ever dull.
But one thing in this country
You really must avoid
Speaking words in plain old prose
Is what will most annoy,
So put on your best rhyming
Your metered rhythm too
Don’t dally up a worthwhile speech
Without so much ado,
Be mannered in your speaking
Poetic when you talk
Or everyone will soon declare
Your words taste just like chalk

From my children’s book, Three Lands

NOTHING EVER CHANGES – TUESDAY’S TALE

NOTHING EVER CHANGES

“Yeah,” he said. “So I’ve heard tell.”

Maugham sighed, then leaned over with a groan and put his head in his in hands for awhile. He rubbed the top of his head slowly as if to somehow comfort his own mind. But it didn’t seem to work.

When he lifted his head back up he looked at Steinthal.

“Do you think it will ever change?”

Steinthal looked at him and then shrugged wearily.

“I suppose that’s entirely up to the people involved. I only know one thing for sure… and even that’s not much…” and then he fell silent.

Maugham waited but when Steinthal said nothing else he just stood back up. It was obvious he was hurt though, so Stenithal moved over and put his arm under his friend’s and around his back and helped him start to walk again.

“What’s the one thing by the way?” Maugham asked as the men made their way torturously out of the ruined building.

“Oh that,” said Stenthal, as if he had just assumed his friend already knew. “Nothing ever changes much when no one ever much changes.”

So they made their way back to the river, dripping sweat, shedding blood, grunting in pain, and limping as they went.

from The Detective Steinthal

THE TROUBLE WITH YOU – TUESDAY’S TALE

“Personally I have never understood the idea that the herd is so all pervasive that you dare not leave it or the pack so all powerful that you dare not defy it. You don’t like the herd, then go your own way. Plenty of places the herd won’t dare go that you can. The pack turns on you then you turn on it. They’ll even be plenty of times you should turn on the pack when it doesn’t turn on you. That’s life.

See, it’s just a herd son, it’s just a pack. Simple as that.

This ain’t rocket science kid it’s just plain old fashioned manhood. And whenever necessary a man stands absolutely alone and entirely unafraid. But don’t pretend with me what I’m saying is so unbelievable you can’t even imagine it.

You’ve imagined it plenty. You’ve just never had the balls to act like a man about it.

So the trouble ain’t them boy, the trouble has never been them. The trouble is you. I know it, they know it, and you know it. Because the trouble will always be you until it ain’t anymore. And then the real trouble starts.

But at least by then you’ll finally be a man about it.”

From The Detective Steinthal

Steinthal talking to a low level informant and petty criminal. From one of the cases of my Detective Steinthal.

 

KAL-KITHARIUNE – THOUGHTS ON THE END

KAL-KITHARIUNE

I finally have the ultimate titles for my set of mythic/high-fantasy novels. They shall be called Kal-Kithariune (Or, The Fall of Kitharia). Originally the series was to be called The Other World but I was never really pleased with that. It was only a preliminary and place-holder title anyway.

The Kal-Kithariune shall link back to another myth/history or time epoch called the Kol-Kithariad (or the Rebirth or the Establishment of Kitharia). I have not really decided if the Kithariad will refer to a period of time 300 years prior to the Kithariune (when Kitharia undergoes a Rebirth or Renaissance) or to a period 3000 years prior when Kitharia is first established and founded.

Ideally I’d like to work it out so that the Kithariad refers to the Rebirth of Kitharia, 300 years before its Fall, but realistically I’m having real trouble making that fit and so it may have to refer to the Founding. It may be better to use the Founding as the other reference point anyway, to contrast the Genesis with the Armageddon and End. But I’d prefer the Rebirth. Though that might be impossible.

Kitharia is a both an analogy and a metaphor for America. And all of the Eldeven lands for the West even though the events take place in what would in our world be The Orient (near our Real World Samarkand).

The individual novels in the series will be entitled:

The Basilegate (The Emperor’s Legate)
The Caerkara (The Expeditionary Force)
The Wyrding Road
The Other World (or perhaps Lurial and Iÿarlðma)

The novels will be a tetralogy. Now that I finally have all of the titles, know the plots and endings of all four books, have the languages developed, many of the poems and songs written, some of the maps and illustrations drawn, have hundreds of entries in my Plot Machine and thousands of notes, and about 200 pages of the each of the first two books written I suspect I can complete the entire tetralogy in under 2 years.

This is by far the very most complicated thing I have ever constructed (to date), at least as far as writing goes and that includes a couple of epic poems I’ve written. I first conceived it in 2007 as a single book and I’m sure I have thousands and thousands of hours sunk into it since then. Despite my other workloads.

Eventually I plan to write a set of children’s short stories connected to it and to at least plan out or begin the Kithariad though that will likely have to be passed on to others.

Before I start either of those though I just want to complete the Kithariune and then move on to my other novels, such as my sci-fi series The Curae (which will be every bit as big as the Kithariune), my detective novels, and my Frontiers novels, such as The Regulator and the Lettermen. And I want to complete my literary novels such as Modern Man and The Cache of Saint Andrew. Plus I want to finish my epic poem America. And I want to write some scripts. Not just TV scripts but movie scripts. So once I finish the Kithariune it may be a long while before I return to myth and fantasy, such as after my “retirement” (though I don’t plan to ever really retire).

I have however learned much by writing the Kithariune. I now know exactly how to plot out both long, complex novels and series, and much simpler single books. So the learning and research and study period was worth it alone in that respect. And it should both add to the richness of the Kithariune and to all of the other novels I write thereafter.

THE WORDY WAY – TUESDAY’S TALE

Last night while in bed I decided to write up some new lines for my Western, the Lettered Men.

I’ll do that sometimes right before I go to bed. Got some good stuff done but had to rework some of em this morning. Many of these lines are spoken by Jerimiah Jereds, also known as “Wordy” (the only name his friends call him) because he will either invent words (neologisms) or will twist around old phrases and common sayings in new ways. Wordy sometimes acts as the comic-relief of the novel, which is pretty rough in parts, and sometimes acts as the de-facto Bard of the novel, being a sort of frontier’s poet and cowboy wordsmith.

Now not all of these snippets are by Wordy. But many are.

Anywho I gave my notes to my wife and daughter this morning (before the final rewrites) so that they could look over em and give me their opinion. I heard a lot of loud laughing coming from the kitchen table downstairs as I worked from my office so I reckon I did something right. They both seemed to like what they read.

Also I should not neglect that my mother came down to the house yesterday after lunch and she also reminded me of many of the old sayings and euphemisms of my grandparents and great-grandparents, which were in many ways the inspiration for Wordy.

So here are the final write ups for the Wordy Way. All from my novel The Lettered Men.

_______________________________________________________

“He’d howl like an old hound dog if ya hung him with a new rope.”

_______________________________________________________

“Ain’t really worth mentioning Word.”

“Oh yeah?” said Wordy. “Well half of not really worth mentioning still beats ever bit a nothing all day long. Specially in the middle a nowhere. So let’s just work around with what we got awhile and see where it leads us. Maybe tomorrow it still won’t be worth mentioning, but maybe in a week or two it will be. When we’re sitting our asses by the fire back home.”

________________________________________________________

“You can’t get there from here boys. But if we can just get over to there I bet we can.”

________________________________________________________

“He smells like he smothered a buzzard and kept it in his pants for a keepsake.”

_________________________________________________________

All the boys laughed when they saw him come out of the barbers. All except Wordy. He just stared at Beau for awhile and then he stood up and circled him like a corvus round a scarecrow. “Hmmm-mmm,” he kept humming to himself as he circled.

“Well now, that’s a two bit shave and a haircut iffin I ever seen one,” he finally said. “Way I see it though she still owes ya a dollar in change just to make it even.”

“Dammit!” Beau said testily slapping his hat against his thigh. Dust and hair swirled everywhere. “I told her it didn’t look right to me.”

“Be alright Beau,” Wordy said. “You’re both new at this. She ain’t much of a judge a jug-heads and you ain’t much of a judge a women.”

“Oh, and you is you Wordy sumbitch!” Beau practically yelled.

“I didn’t say that,” said Wordy. “I just seen enough scalpings in my day to know the difference between a brave and a squaw cut.”

The boys all laughed again.

_________________________________________________________

“That whore’s dumber than a plow mule, sure nuff, but she’s still twice as easy to ride. So if you’re gonna plow with her then just cut the reins and let her wander. Save ya both a lotta trouble.”

_________________________________________________________

“He drunk up the sea and spit out Achilles.” (Wordy describing a cowboy that rode into town, got drunk, and started shooting and fighting.)

_________________________________________________________

“He’s a one mare man. True enough. But he’ll go for any stallion what ain’t tied down.”

_________________________________________________________

“Book learning ruined him for anything worth knowin. I wouldn’t trust him none.”

_________________________________________________________

“The mare’s the better horse. He ain’t worth bad oats and barn rats.”

_________________________________________________________

“There ain’t another man like him in the whole lot. Thank God. Can you imagine a whole herd a dem sumbitches?”

_________________________________________________________

“She’s got a face like a sty-sow. But he’s a pot-bellied pig so who cares who slops who?”

_________________________________________________________

“Ride her at your own peril kid. But don’t dismount till ya broke her.”

_________________________________________________________

“Why, do you think she’ll foal on me?” he asked.

“Probably not,” said Wordy, “but she’s so rough you might.”

__________________________________________________________

“Boy’s so slow that he’d hav’ta ride as hard as he could for a month just ta reach the county line.”

__________________________________________________________

“Man knifed three Comanches and a Texas Ranger,” Sole said, “and lived to tell it. So you might just wanna shoot him. In the head. From behind. While he’s sleepin.”

__________________________________________________________

“Maybe he’s just shot so many men by now that he’s plum forgot how to miss. Ever think a that?”

__________________________________________________________

“Man smells like a Mississippi pole-cat, but he tracks like an Arkansas wild dog. Just make sure to keep him downwind and you’ll run em all to ground.”

__________________________________________________________

“He’s slicker than a cold-creek water snake, but not near as warm-blooded. So keep him ahead of ya, but always in sight. Safe plays are always the safest.”

__________________________________________________________

“Sir, your coffee tastes like chickpeas and boll-weevils. Without the chickpeas.”

__________________________________________________________

“Damn Word! It smells like you shit a dead possum and then lit it on fire with pine tar!”

“Yeah,” Wordy said. “I ain’t feeling too well right now.”

“Fine,” Mason said. “But did ya have to spread it around to everybody else like that? You made the local skunks puke.”

Hart Thomas snorted, spit out his chaw, and then laughed out loud.

“Hell Hart,” Mason said, “you was the skunk I was referring to!”

__________________________________________________________

“He’s cotton-brained and toe-headed. You walk a mile in his moccasins and you’ll end up Boot-hilled.”

__________________________________________________________

“Oh, he went to war alright. He just never met a battle worth sitting through or a man his equal at a foot chase.”

__________________________________________________________

“Ah hell Bill, iffin you gave him a new bull and three pregnant cows then in five years time he’d still be a sheep farmer.”

 

Hope you enjoyed em…

 

YESTERDAY – TUESDAY’S TALE

SOME OF WHAT I WROTE YESTERDAY (based either on memory of conversations or events of years past or new experience)

I slapped him on the shoulder in a friendly manner and smiled, but I was deadly serious.

“For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t do that. Don’t be a modern man. Be an actual man. Yeah, it’s always hard, and it don’t pay much most of the time. But at least you’ll be alive. Really alive. And in the end what in the hell else matters?”

from my novel The Modern Man
_______________________________

It was as quiet and peaceful and warm and sunny a day as I had ever seen in my entire life. And that was fine by me. I had sure seen enough of all the other kinds of days.

from The Modern Man
________________________________

He topped the small hills that ringed the border to the north and the west and looked out before him. The blue and the green covered the land so thick that he couldn’t see the ground. Not anywhere.

It was an ocean of grass that stretched out forever, with no shore to be seen.

from my novel The Basilegate (Larmageon describing in his own mind wandering the “Blue-Green Sea” just beyond the borders of Kitharia – inspired by my hike in the forests and across the fields today; everything is in bloom and as thick as blood, especially the grass)
_______________________

“My son, as the Lord taught us, you cannot save the world alone. But if you at least set out to try then neither shall you ever fail it…”

from the Basilegate (The Abbot of Studios writing to the Viking Christian convert Drakgarm of Gotar)
________________________

Nothing Works if you won’t.

from the Business, Career, and Work of Man
_________________________

There is no sin in seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The sin lies in either avoiding pain merely to seek pleasure, or in seeking pleasure by inflicting pain.

from Human Effort

THE OLD STANDING STONES – FIRST VERSE

THE OLD STANDING STONES (Both Versions)

Last week I sat down and wrote a song that I had originally intended for my Bard (his name is Larmageon and he is Welsh) to sing in one of my novels, the Basilegate. As a sort of a lament, and a dirge. It was supposed to be a rather dark song about a myth of a submerged city off the coast of Ireland that rises every so often at midnight on Samhain and the city is populated by ancient dead warriors. It was a symbolic dirge of a supposedly lost song that the Bard then used to analogously lament what had happened to his friends. That is the first version of the song/poem you see below.

Thereafter I looked at the song and said to myself, “This really is close to an Irish/Welsh real myth and I should rewrite this song as a real world song or poem.” So I did using real Irish/Celt/Welsh place and symbolic names. That version, the second version, came out to be much brighter and more upbeat, but the tempo is changed slightly. By the way after the less well known Gaelic names or terms I included, in parentheses, the more original pronunciations, and their meanings.
I like both versions but the first is a far more generalized version written for an English audience and specifically for my book. The second version is really more of a throwback Irish mythological song.

So that being said, which do you like best?

Or do you think I should keep and use, perhaps for different purposes, both versions? Or does one version strike you as good and the other bad? Let me know what you think and anyone is welcome to comment.
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THE OLD STANDING STONES (version 1)

The old standing stones
Where the ghosts all still roam
Below the Seas of Sarsa
Submerged neath the Mere
They all still come here
To haunt the tides of Current
The walls in the waves
The moon long enslaved
Both shine so like the Danaan
The People long passed
The present now past
Upon the Road of Waters
Formorian chants
Who sings of the chance
That tombs are remade Towers?
The barrows below
The streams that bestowed
The last Great Ship of Showern
To the old standing stones
Still guarding the road
Beneath the flood of Faran

Oh can you still hear
The chants and the cheers
When Chulainn took the Island?
And do you still dance
Or sing the Romance
Of the last men still left standing?

Submerged neath the waves
Deep waters their graves
The Green-men go a’feasting
The blue in their blood
The tides and the flood
Their numbers all decreasing
The stars brightly gleam
The moon often seen
To kiss the Ring of Rona
Yet still can you hear
If the night is all clear
The Lost Hope of Ilona
So tell me of old
Of the place far below
Of the dark halls deeply downing
Where the old standing stones
Still guard the last road
To the Hall of Sorrow’s Drowning…

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THE OLD STANDING STONES (version 2)

The old standing stones
Where the ghosts all still roam
Below the Seas of Saorla (Say-la – the noble queen)
Submerged neath the Mere
They all still come here
To haunt the tides of Cara (meaning, the friend)
The walls in the waves
The moon long enslaved
Both shine so like the Danaan

The People long past
The present now passed
Upon the Road of Una (Oo-nah, or Wony, meaning unity, or lamb)
Formorian chants
Who sings of the chance
That the tombs are to be Towers?

The barrows below
The streams that bestowed
The last Great Ship of Tara (tower, or crag)
To the old standing stones
Still guarding the road
Beneath the flood of Fallan (grandchild, or grandchild of the chieftain)

Oh can you still hear
The chants and the cheers
When Chulainn took the Island?
And do you still dance
Or sing the Romance
Of the last men still left standing?

Submerged neath the seas
Their limbs now at ease
The Gweneth men go feasting (Gweneth – fair or river men)
The blue in their blood
The tides and the flood
Their hall a loudly singing
The stars brightly gleam
The moon often seen
To kiss the Ring of Roise (roh-suh – a rose)
Yet still can you hear
If the night is all clear
The Last Hope of Isleena (Ish-leena – vision, the foretelling)
So tell me of old
Of the place far below
Of the dark halls deeply moaning
Where the old standing stones
Still abide all alone
In the Hall of Sorrow’s Gloaming…

20 NOVEL STORYBOARDS TO FOLLOW

20 NOVEL STORYBOARDS YOU SHOULD BE FOLLOWING

August 22, 2015 by athenamarie 9 Comments

Ah, Pinterest, you are both the bane and joy of writers the world over. On one hand we can use Pinterest to create stunning visual representations of the world we are creating with our words. On the other hand, we can distract ourselves for hours at a time in the endless sea of images.

But to me the price is worth it. There’s nothing I love more than creating storyboards for my novels. It’s in integral part of my creative process.

I also love following other writer’s on Pinterest, and glimpsing into the worlds they have created. Not only do other author’s boards inspire me and spark ideas, but I often find the perfect image on another writer’s board. (After hours of using the Pinterest search option to no avail.) We writer’s think in the same dramatic way. We’re drawn to the same types of photographs.

So I decided to compile a list of some of my favorite Pinterest storyboards. All of these are beautiful and inspiring. I’m mostly drawn to the historical, romantic, and dramatic, so that’s what most of these boards represent.

While you’re here please leave a link to your book’s storyboard in the comments!

Don’t have a novel storyboard?

No worries, these boards will be all the inspiration you need.

https://www.pinterest.com/bonaventier/the-good-adventurers-storyboard/

https://www.pinterest.com/justlaina/faith-storyboard/

https://www.pinterest.com/highlyblissed/novel-the-mists-of-bellicent-bay/

https://www.pinterest.com/liathaven/storyboard-revenant/

https://www.pinterest.com/rhpottery/storyboard-raven-hill/

https://www.pinterest.com/jasmoon/storyboard-calageata-ii/

https://www.pinterest.com/liathaven/storyboard-the-ones-who-leave/

 https://www.pinterest.com/greywintersong/storyboard-last-summer/

http://www.pinterest.com/highlyblissed/dharma-and-desire-my-novel/

https://www.pinterest.com/rhpottery/storyboard-emily-rose/

http://www.pinterest.com/brennach/storyboard-chief-king/

http://www.pinterest.com/nessacakes52/novel-storyboard-untitled/

https://www.pinterest.com/Lilyjenness/storyboard-noxumbra-manor/

https://www.pinterest.com/moraduial/storyboard-last-ones-standing/

https://www.pinterest.com/jasmoon/storyboard-the-butterfly-bridge-inspiring-imagery/

https://www.pinterest.com/bethgadar/novel-noir/

https://www.pinterest.com/ninthmoriarty/storyboard-kingmaker-ap/

https://www.pinterest.com/sarahallstein/storyboard-the-wanderers/

https://www.pinterest.com/fullnessofjoy16/the-crown-of-life-storyboard/

 

ACCIDENTS AND HAPPENSTANCE

“So, you think I lived this long purely by accident and happenstance, do ya?” Steinthal said, more statement than question.

He thought about that a moment.

“Well then, since you’re the Detective and have already figured it all out, enlighten me. How did you live this long?” he asked.

“I’ve lived this long because I give only one warning and take only one warning. I suppose this qualifies as your one warning,” Steinthal replied.

“Maybe,” he said looking up at Steinthal and smiling, “but just out of curiosity, what comes after your warning?” he asked.

“Who says I’m giving you a warning? I almost never give warnings. The next time you see me, trust me, you won’t.” And Steinthal didn’t smile.

The Detective Steinthal

 

 

HIGH ILLUSION from THE BASILEGATE

Alatha moved towards Marsippius as he rose. He was naked in the firelight.

When she reached him she examined him closely. Then she took her finger and began to lightly trace some of the many imperfections in his flesh.

“You have been often wounded?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?” she questioned.

“Duty,” he replied wearily. “Duty and manhood.”

“It is manhood to be often wounded?”

“In part,” he said flatly. “Any man without scars is no man at all.”

She stared into his eyes. They were dark like hers. Deep Greek eyes, full of inquiry. Proud Roman eyes, full of purpose. But to him her eyes were inscrutable.

“Perhaps,” she said quietly, “a man should be more than his scars.”

He reached up and took her hand, the finger of which still lingered upon the long jagged white line of an old wound on his chest. The wound of a much younger man.

“Perhaps,” Marsippius replied, “you are very wise among your kind.”

He glanced at the fire. To him the flames in the hearth seemed to burn immensely hot, yet almost entirely silent. He wondered if the fuel of this world burned differently.

When he looked back at Alatha she was once again staring deeply into his eyes. But once again he could not read her mind. He started to move forward to kiss her and then thought better of it.

She did not. Seeing his intent she moved forward and kissed him warmly upon the lips.

Then she leaned back slightly and traced her finger gently across the lips she had just kissed.

“There seem to be no scars here,” she said.

“Illusion,” he said. “There are too many to count. They are nothing but scars. So they seem untouched. Yet…” he added, seemingly almost as an afterthought, “there is room still for a few more, if you so wish.”

She laughed quietly.

“What is wish but High Illusion?” she whispered. So she pressed against him and kissed him again.

 

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A scene from my novel The Basilegate.

STILL NO JOY – TUESDAY’S TALE

STILL NO JOY… BUT GETTING CLOSER

I know it’s very little to complain about, relatively speaking, but as a writer I just had the most frustrating night/morning of my life.

I went to bed about 11 to 11:30 last night, totally exhausted, and then rose again sometime not long after midnight. Ideas for my novel were running through my head, a lot of them, too many to just note on my bedside table notebook and so I went downstairs to my office and fired up my computer.

I then worked from shortly after midnight until 4 AM on nothing but the title of the novel series I am currently writing. I know exactly what each of the four books in the series will be called separately but I’ve gone through several incarnations of the title for the entire series and have never settled on anything that seems to really fit. My latest, or the Working Title for the series is The Other World or The Other Worlds, which fits to a degree, but isn’t entirely accurate or encompassing of what the books are truly about.

I ran through terms and titles after terms and title with still no joy and nothing availed. I felt like I had been awakened with a purpose but everything I thought of remained frustratingly just of reach and meaning.

At almost four o’clock I sat back in my office chair, cold, tired, and defeated. It was kinda like working a scientific experiment and everything I tried got close to a solution, but eventually all iterations failed.

Finally I looked to my left and saw my new copy of the Poetic Edda and thought to myself, of course, “I’ll use a title something like the Eddas,” suggestive, but not all encompassing or limited. Because for a very, very long time I’ve wanted to use a title like the Aeneid, or the Odyssey, which would be perfect if not for the fact that the books are not really only about one character, even Prester John. So I thought, maybe something like the Eddas?

So I began reading one of the Eddas (about Odin testing himself against the wisest giant) and a later one about Thor dressing as a Freya to recover his hammer by deception. But still nothing specific came to me.

 

At last I put the book away because I was too tired to continue, my brain simply wouldn’t function, but I was still too frustrated to give up. So I began asking God to help me title the series with the perfect title, something I’ve done before many times, but everything he seems to show me in language seems just beyond my perception. As if it is something beyond my own language.

At that point I fell into a kind of trance which was almost a blank mind, but not quite. It was like I was sleeping in darkness but all around me, in the background, I could hear voices whispering and saying things but I couldn’t quite make out the words or exactly what was being said. It was more like images trying to take on the form of words than words forming images. And they were all in the background and still hazy or shadowy. When I came out of that finally it was about 5:00 and I still had nothing specific except the suggestion that maybe I should invent the terms and title I wanted in another language, perhaps in Sidhelic or one of the other Eldeven languages.

Then I was struck by the idea that maybe there should be multiple titles for the series, each expressing a different aspect of what the books are about and each from a different viewpoint, but settle upon a single version for publication.

 

So I began developing this idea, one title each, each title being in a different language. Each title expressing a different aspect or focal point for the series. Such as a title concerning:

1. The Main Character or Person – Jhonarlk, or Prester John

2. The two (or 3 actually, though you never get to see the Third World, only hear of it) worlds involved, something along the line of the Other Worlds

3. The Weirding Roads (central to the story and implying much, much bigger things than simply a Road between worlds)

4. (The Fall of) the Vanished Eldevens – the penultimate event of the series and the seeming point of the entire tale, but not really the point of the tale

and 5. The War of…

 

Only one of these terms will be attached to the books but all of the terms will be spoken of in the books as being different histories covering the same events. And I’ll include little excerpts from these “parallel histories, “ (and I may speak briefly about their authors) each implying a different aspect or idea-set about what really happened and what the tale was really about but I’ll settle on one title for the series. Most of the histories will be in prose or in narrative form, as mine will be, but at least one will be in poetic form (probably the Lay of the Fall of the Vanished Eldevens – English translation, not the Eldeven term) and most of the poems in my series will reference that history as poetic extracts.

But I’ll not write full versions of those histories, only hint at them and include extracts from them and those versions will also have some alternate versions of the events in my book.

 

I’ve therefore, because of last night/this morning written a little author’s introduction to the series.

(The claimed author will not be me, but will be a man by the name of Wyrdlaef, a seemingly very minor character in the books who follows Larmaegeon to Constantinople and then to the Isle of Avalona and after the destruction of the Other World returns to our world and secretly writes his account of these events and hides his books in an Irish monetary which then eventually makes its way back to the Other World. )

The introduction is very rough so far but goes something like this:

“These books recount the history of the Great but Invisible Wars that took place on our world and upon the lost world of Iÿarlðma in the years of our Lord 797 to 835. At that time an ancient and noble but since vanished people fought alongside Man for the fate of the Earth and Heavens and the preservation of their own kingdoms. Great these people were but of what their true nature, like that of man, a created being, or like the very angels in flesh, or like some entirely other thing I still cannot tell, though I lived among them for a long time. Five accounts there were of these events, that I know of, but to my knowledge only my brief and poor and incomplete account remains. But if all were told as it truly happened then, as was said of our Lord, not all of the libraries of the world could contain those accounts for the splendour and wonder of the tale. These books then, my account of these fantastic and horrid events, I call the Fall of the Vanished Eldevens and they speak as well as I am able of the final encounter and friendship between Man and the Eldevens against many ancient evils and monstrosities I still do not understand. For it has been said, with good reason and as I witnessed with my own eyes, that the Eldevens were entirely destroyed by their enemies, wiped from the face of their world, with those small numbers of survivors who did escape driven into the wilds to be hunted to extinction by their remorseless enemies. But I have also heard, from both the seers of that strange people and from the prescient prophets of our own devout holy men that one day, far into an uncounted future, Man and the Sidhs of the Eldevens would once again meet as friends on the shores of yet other distant and undiscovered worlds, and that God would have mightily blessed and enlarged us both. Of that time, if it ever comes, if it is ever true, I shall see nothing, for I shall be long dead and buried. But I hope and pray that my account survives, and that perhaps this prophecy is real. For everyone would be the better for it…”

Wyrdlaef (the Wanderer)

THE NECESSARY TRUTH – HIGHMOOT

“The necessary Truth about them is that, in the end, all modern men will do exactly as they are told, but not a one of them will ever do what is truly necessary.”

From: The Curae

ARE YOU NECESSITY? – TUESDAY’S TALE

ARE YOU NECESSITY?

 

He stood up all wrong to be neighborly.

I looked up at him with a pacific expression to give him a chance to reconsider but he didn’t seem particular to my gentlemanly solicitations. So I followed suit by rising to my feet and placing my hand on the handle of my longknife.

“You know, maybe its age, or maybe its wisdom,” I explained. “Hell, I don’t know, could be a little bit of both at this point I reckon. But I’ve learned over time boy not to push myself any harder than I can stand at any given time, or to act more recklessly than I can endure at any given moment. Unless, of course, necessity dictates elsewise.

So the question I got for you son is this right here: ‘Are you necessity? Do you think of yourself as truly necessary?’

‘Cause iffin you do then I’m certainly prepared to listen to ya proposition, if you’re prepared for my considered reply.”

When he suddenly seemed uncertain and wavering in his deliberations I swung the table out from between us and took to hitting him as hard in the mouth as either one of us could stand. Until he wasn’t no more.

Then I stepped on his face turning it sideways and put the cold, clean, sharp tip of my longknife into his earhole.

“Can you make out precisely what I’m saying to ya now kid, or do I gotta keep pushing my point?”

 

From my Western: the Lettermen

THE MONSTER IS – THE HIGHMOOT

“The monster is and always will be exactly as big as you allow it to become before you kill it.”

Rhorric of Cappadocia (the Vigilante) to Marsippius Nicea (the Byzantine Commander of the Basilegate) on what is to come.

Or, put another way, the Old Man tells the Young Man how it always really is…

NOT A CONCERN – BOOKENDS

“You know, you’re not the first to react this way. A great many people seem very frightened by the fact that I am not frightened. However I am not in the least frightened by the fact that they are frightened by that. As a matter of fact it greatly encourages me when I meet people like you.

You’d be really frightened if you knew just how much.”

Steinthal (The Detective)

GOOD LORD, I DID IT

I’ve been having to spend a lot of time on the internet this past weekend, yesterday, and today (time I would have rather spent doing other things, but this was necessary) rearranging the work on my literary blog so as to make it easier for agents, publishers, business partners, investors, etc. to locate my work in a single locale.

I did have my stuff scattered about on various “categories” on my blog(s) but that was apparently making it hard for agents and others to review my stuff. So on each blog I created a new category entitled: MY WRITINGS AND WORK

Now anyone can find anything I have created, written, or posted on my blogsites with a single click. This should be much, much more efficient and useful.

But it has been hard work to go back through all of my old posts, locate my work, and collate it into a single on-line collection.

So it has taken days (literally) of search, edit, and reorganize. But I’m halfway done with Wyrdwend, my literary blog, and as of now my new category/collection contains 88 pieces of my work. Including such things as my short stories, poetry, children’s stories, children’s books, songs, invention sketches, business articles, criticisms, scripts, graphic novels, essays, novel extracts, game designs, etc.

Whatever I have so far put up.

I figure when I finally finish with my archives by the end of the week the category/collection/link will contain about 160 or so pieces of original work.

Once that is done I’ll do the same for all of my other blogs, including Launch Port, Tome and Tomb, and the Missal.

By the way here is the collection link: MY WRITINGS AND WORK

THE IRON GATE: PART ONE – BOOKENDS

This is part of a draft chapter from my book The Basilegate (from The Other World novels). Rather than explain or detail the background I’ll just let you read the story for yourself.

This chapter begins at the Iron Gate, winds through what today would be modern Russia and ends along the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire.

But this is only the first part of the chapter.

I will be serializing parts of this novel here, on Wyrdwend. For Bookends.

THE IRON GATE: PART ONE

He passed through the Iron Gate and none bothered to oppose him. Why should they? Death would come soon enough.

He had seen men watching him as he stumbled past them, had noticed them as they studied him, pointing, or whispering to themselves. He had seen the guards; skins burned dark by long life lived outdoors among the frontiers, their flesh the color of fine but sanded clay. He had seen them take notice of him, and realizing that he was alone, and doomed, had seen them finally turn away or gaze on at him in curiosity, but not in fear.

He staggered forward, impelled more by main force and force of will than by any desire to make any kind of camp, or achieve any end, other than the one he suspected lay not long before him. He was a mass of Northern muscle, and in a more carefree age, a mass of unconcern. But not this day. Not this hour.

He was a mass no more, except of wasted flesh, blood-clotted black and clinging to limbs still driven hard, but all a’quiver. His clothes were ragged, and perhaps more threadbare than he. His boots were tattered, consumed with holes by hard wear and patches from long poverty. His cloak was gone, it covered him no more. His helm was likewise long ago departed. His armor, what was left upon him, did creak and hung loose and much abused. His single weapon, his langsax, was chipped and knotted, bent at places, it’s sharpest tip now broken blunt. His skeg axe was missing, already lost a’field from many days before. His sword was shattered, having given its last service long before he himself had been likewise cleaved from himself, run to ground by desperation and long flight at night. His spear had been splintered along the banks of a river he had long traveled, but never heard named. And with it went his last hope of war when he found himself numbered among the doomed of his watch.

His shield had long lasted, but round at the edges it had been burst sharp through the center, till like the timbers of a battered prow it had been smashed to pieces, along with the spine of his arm. At that blow he had staggered, a man drunk with too much of the wine of close combat, and toppling like one of the frigid giants of old he had crashed from the cliff into the gelid waters below. And this, this fall from manly grace and the unnatural fire of a ferocious battle he could not have won, into the cold of the waters from the earth underneath, this had stilled his heart with shock and preserved his life with a flood of harsh ice. But only for a moment.

The cold had slowed his wounds, made blood freeze in his veins, made him sluggish, numbed the bright agony of his broken arm and shattered knee, had helped to staunch the long gash torn through his calf, had wearied his mind so that death approached slow and as bedraggled as he. The river had turned him, tossed him, oriented him away from his companions, and his brothers at arms. Yet deep in the recesses of his darkest thoughts he knew they were no more. Colder even than he. Once men, and large, and well made, trophies now to despoil.

He pulled himself from the waters, a mist of stinking furs and wounded flesh, injury the common lot that ran the entire life-course of his body. He was insensible of the pain of his catastrophe, or perhaps it is better to say that he was nothing but hurt. So much harm inflicted that he could no longer mark any particular pain, but rather pain seemed all he was, and all he wished to end. He tried to stand, collapsed, breathed hard and harshly, his mouth steam rising like that of a newborn calf, his stance no straighter or better. But he grimaced, and would not relent. He stood, and staggered, and felt something rend inside his leg each time his knee did make to support his weight. He shed his cloak as a serpent would his elder skin, in long and frustrating effort, it peeled away from him as if in regret and with the anchored weight of besoaked hide. He grunted. He stuttered. He could not speak, groans his only tongue. He rested, sought to scan the horizon with his eyes, the land having been made flat again by the time the river had disgorged him like a misspent meal. But his vision was blurred, dim, closed in and frozen. It extended no farther than his imagination, and his imaginings were all of darkness, and dread.

The sun made to collapse in the West, behind mountains he could sense in the distance, but not see with his eyes. The warmth of the day, what small comfort it had given, was already fading, his own heat wasted and stolen by the drench of his baptism by water and trial by ice. He made to the tall grass, then fell to the dry ground, rolling and coating himself in the dirt as he could, hoping it would absorb the wet and help dry his shaken frame. A frog scampered by and he caught it with his unruined arm, and tore off its head in his mouth. The cold blood was warmer than his and the skull of the frog he did gnash in his teeth as he chewed. The sound comforted him. He could still eat, and he could still kill. Therefore he could still live if the long night would let him. He found he was hungry, and that the gnaw in his guts did wear hard, and began to grow and inflame, and as it did so, so did his limbs. And the ache of his body was far worse than the hunger he felt. But as he ate he regained some lost measure of hope, and there settled into his mind a new will to press forward. He tore off one of the back legs of his catch, and then the other, eating slowly, watching the night fall. Then he pulled out his langsax from his battered belt, and used the blade to slice open the belly of the frog and he did, as he could stand it, smear the blood and the entrails of the thing onto the deep gash in his calf, and along the break in his arm, where the bone did protrude from the mottled blue skin. For he had been told in times past by the Rus that if he smeared the blood of a beast upon an open wound then the clot of gore would help seal his own cut, and help knit it together and scab it clean. He did not know if this were true or not, but he was full for the moment and it seemed foolish to him to waste the entrails by tossing them aside.

He slept uneasily for awhile within sound of the river, crackling sounds sometimes startling him, as if the ice sheets from further upstream were still washing down and clashing against each other to shatter like frosted glass. The dew came down and reminded him again of the damp that still covered him, causing him to shiver while shards of sweat and frozen drops did run along his back from time to time.
He was cold beyond reckoning, but with the rise of the moon he took once more to stand, and after several tries he regained his feet. He moved West, into the darkness, towards the mountains he had felt in the distance. Towards the land that the Rusmen had told him could not be conquered. Towards the land of the Roman, and the place they called, the City of God…

THE BRAIDS OF STRANGULATION AND THE DEAD ROADS – HIGHMOOT

THE BRAIDS OF STRANGULATION AND THE DEAD ROADS

I meant to post this yesterday, for Highmoot, but I was out of the office.

Had an odd dream night before last about a set of murders that woke me up at about 4:00 this morning. In the dream there was a living, malevolent force which, and I kid you not, had twisted the hair of three girls into a weird, almost supernatural looking set of complex braids which I could tell from looking at had been “encoded” in some way. I only saw the partially disentangled braids after the murders had occurred at the various scenes though, so they were altered from their initial appearance. Apparently all three had visited the same salon where the braids had been twisted. Somehow, as the girls slept (all young, in their mid-twenties, and all lookers with no apparent other connections between them) their “braids” had become animated and strangled them in their sleep. All of them however had apparently awakened during the strangulation process. Except for one girl, the braids had slithered down her throat and slowly suffocated her.

Well, upon waking and thinking on it awhile (it was a very weird case and left me with an uncanny and disturbing feeling – you know, like when you’ve witnessed some evil at work and it takes awhile to dissipate) I realized I could use the same idea in one of my Other World novels. So I sketched out the possible scene and here is what I got:

The Samarl of Samarkand (who we would call Prester John) invites emissaries from all of the surrounding people and races to try and get them to ally together (for the first time in thousands of years) against a common enemy and threat he has foreseen. He even openly invites human representatives from the Byzantine empire who have accidentally ended up in his world.

While staying in the capital city and in the palace of the Samarl the ladies of the dignitaries are “attended to” out of courtesy – entertained, feted, etc. including being provided with free clothing for the upcoming counsel (which they are also invited to attend) and having their hair decorated and perfumed. Seven women are invited to be so attended, but one demurs, just out of a sort of uneasy instinct and because her people do not want to be beholding to, and are suspicious of, the Sidh, the Samarl’s folk. On the third night after their arrival all six women are murdered and dead, five by strangulation and the sixth by having been suffocated, all by their own magically woven braids (called Balial – which before this time are considered highly decorative, enchanting, and a sign of great prosperity and Good Fortune). I’ll save the how for both a political and Ilturgical (sorcerous) mystery later in the book.

The woman who refused to be attended survives, of course, but one of the women, the one who had been suffocated by swallowing her own braids, her husband was first killed by his wife’s braid. The murder incident causes a huge uproar in the capital, and a near Civil War breaks out, with some of the represented peoples either fleeing the city out of fear or outright and immediately refusing alliance, suspecting the Samarl or his supporters. A riot breaks out in part of the capital that takes another three days to put down.

This of course has almost exactly the effect that the conspirators behind the episode had envisioned.

But it gets worse. As those ambassadors who have either fled the city or decided against alliance return home they are misled by still more sorcery (Ilturgy) to take “Dead Roads or Dead Ways” (called Iaklits) as their pathways. The Iaklits are actually old and ancient roadways, long abandoned which no one but criminals now use, and even then rarely (because they are considered both useless and haunted), but to the emissaries they seem to be the normal and proper roadways, because of the sorcery and illusions lain upon them.

Upon coming to the still elaborately decorated but partially ruined Chavoeth (a series of ancient bridges that had once crossed mighty rivers) the parties momentarily hesitate and there is a debate. Confused because they don’t recognize the old bridges, but misled by the enchantments and not wanting to turn back they decide to cross. But as they reach the centers of the bridges the illusions fade and the bridges collapse killing many under the rubble but also drowning quite a few in the stinking morasses and fens and pits which the Chavoeth now span. A few survive from each party to tell the tale of both the strangulation murders at Samarkand and of the Iaklits and the traps at the bridges.

None of which has a happy effect upon the efforts of the Samarl (Prester John) to form a Grand Alliance against the approaching enemy.

But all of this happens due to the naiveté of the Samarl and the Sidh, and the other Eldevens (the related Peoples), to understand both what they truly face (they have bred war out of themselves through a long period of unchallenged peace and have become incredibly soft and unsuspecting) and the conspiracy within their own midst. Then rather than recognizing these potential dangers they begin fall to Civil War among themselves completely ignoring the real enemy, both the external one, and the one worming it’s infectious way through their own culture and government.

The Strangulation Braids and the collapsing Bridges and the “Dead Roads” therefore are not just events, they are also underlying metaphors for these facts and weaknesses.

I’m gonna write up a couple of drafts and samples containing basic work-outs of these scenes, maybe starting tonight, but for now I have a nest of wasps to kill and then I’m spending the day with the family.

Have a great day folks.

THE ALLUSIONS OF THE OTHER WORLD

Lately I have been compiling the literary allusions that will appear in my Other World novels and inserting those allusions at the appropriate places in the plot structure of MY books.

My novels will have allusions to many previous works of literature but rarely will I quote or mention by name or source the allusion. Rather I will take the allusionary reference from the original source of literature and rewrite it to fit the events of my own novels, yet, nevertheless, the allusions will be there encoded within the works if you know what to look for or if you are familiar with the passages from the original works.

I will include allusions to the following works, among others:

A Song of Ice and Fire, GRR Martin
Acts of the Apostles
Aeschylus (various plays)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Beowulf
Book of the Fallen
Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis
Elric of Melnibone, Michael Moorcock
Harry Potter, JK Rowling
Icelandic Sagas
Jonathan Strnage and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Kalevala
Le Morte De Arthur, Tennyson
Lyonesse, Jack Vance
Oz Books, Frank Baum
Siegfried
Shakespeare: Henry the IVth, and MacBeth
The Gospels
The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
The Song of Roland
The Torah
The White Stag
Thomas Covenant Books, Stephen R Donaldson

 

As an example of how I intend to insert such allusions into my own novels here are two illustrations of my process of my process:

The Aenied, Virgil

Original Line: “Sleep! Sweet gift of the gods… It was the time when the first sleep invades languid mortals, and steals upon them, by the gift of the gods, most sweet.”

My Line: “And where will you go now?”

“I would lay down upon the ground and go to my death if I could, but failing that I would go to my dreams.”

“To your dreams? And who will you meet there?”

“I do not know, but this is too much and I must sleep. For I am weary and if God himself finds me in my dreams may he finally gift me with forgetfulness of all I have seen and done. That alone would be sweet and meet to me now.”

The Worm Ouroboros, Eddison

Original Line: “There’s musk and amber in thy speech,” said Juss. “I must have more of it. What mean they to do?”

My Line: “Musk scents your voice with something strong and dank, but amber seals and occludes your real meaning. Speak clearly to me now or I will slice open the rank resin of your speech with my keenest hunting knife and peer into your throat to smell for myself your true intent.”

THE HARD STUFF from THE LETTERMEN

“Sometimes kid the well really does run dry. And when that happens there ain’t no sense in pumpin the handle til your palm bleeds or in dipping in a different bucket.

You just let the well fill fast as the well will fill.

The Truth of it is that everything else is purty much beyond your powers of persuasion anyhow. That’s just the way it works in this world. Learn that and even the hard stuff will likely soften after awhile. Even if it don’t, you will.”

From my Western, the Lettermen

A MAN OF COURAGE from THE LETTERMEN

“Monk, I don’t expect there’s a man of honor among us. That ain’t even the question the way I sees it.

The question is, ‘Is there a man of courage among us?’

Cause if we got that much we at least got a chance. Otherwise all this whining and moaning and bitching and complaining don’t mean shit to me. And it won’t mean shit to the rest of the world neither.

Eventually every man has gotta decide for himself, “Am I talking my manhood up, or am I just talking it away?'”

An argument among the Lettermen concerning what really makes a difference in this world.