I’ve been researching this service lately – any of you guys have any personal experience? I’ve seen a few horror stories and a few glowing recommendations, so I’m more than a little curious.
I’m still a long way from publishing anything — but—-
TELL ME THE SECRETS.
The lip of the crystal vial was cracked, blue fluid seeped quietly down the side. A clean trail of blue falling from the stained cork, ending in a perfect droplet — racing towards the bottom of the vial.
Meredith placed her finger just below the drop, and watched it pool — filling the whorls of her skin like canals on a forgotten planet. She slid her finger upwards, carefully gathering the falling liquid into a blob.
The liquid was blue, almost dark but not quite. A hint of spring on a cold hillside.
She held her finger up to the lamp, carefully observing the blue smear.
Meredith tucked the vial into her belt, keeping the world on her finger undisturbed. She leaned in close, and took a slow breath. The liquid had no true odor, only the barest chill in her nose – a quiet taste on the back of her tongue.
What would it taste like? Her mouth parted, and then closed.
There was a dagger on the desk. The edges of it shone in the lamplight, slick and blue.
The liquid had a purpose. The dagger had a purpose. She had a purpose.
The tiny world on her finger shimmered, a larger world waited outside. A quiet moment here, before. Considering.
A quick taste, and worlds spun – changed by this quiet moment. But which?
Which world would end?
The blue drop sat on Meredith’s finger, a blue death sat on Meredith’s dagger, a blue world waited — hushed, and listening for her answer.
The blue liquid was blue.
It was unconcerned.
[Story on Demand for Belle of Mountains. ]
I’ve had a great time doing these every weekend — you guys are nefarious idea-mancers, flinging white-hot bolts of creative inspiration at me, which I’ve done a yeoman’s job lobbing back over the net.
[TENNIS METAPHOR. BAM.]
This week, could I humbly request — well, something a little more vague? The past few weeks people have
given me extremely specific prompts, and I’ve had to sort of push it around my plate with a fork for a while.
One of the best prompts I’ve received was “music as weapon” and I had a freaking blast with that one, and am quite proud of the results. [Thanks again, HTBS!]
Glass Dogs. [ Go ahead — read it again!]
So, I think what I’m asking for is for you to give me an idea — not a plot. Make with the vague!
Forgive the presumption! FORGIVE IT, OR THE WEASELS.
[The weasels are bad.]
Drop your lovely ideas in the comments, and I’ll churn out a story for the shiniest.
The third week was when Gorton really started to stink.
The other Ghosts tried to put as much space as possible between them and the wizard, but the cramped cavern gave few options. The thin illumination provided by the blue crystalline moss on the ceiling showed dejected, tired faces and not much else.
After being seized by the Tyr-Elf Rangers they had been dumped in this small pocket of a cavern, and ignored. No threats were made, no trial was held – not a word had been spoken. Food and water were dropped in by a strange black cage that came down from a narrow hole in the ceiling. The adventurers had attempted a few times to break the chain, or gum up the mechanism in some way — with no success. Whatever material the metal was made of, it was fiendishly strong.
Their weapons confiscated, magic rendered inert by the stone walls of Iax — the Ghosts settled into despair and boredom. The spirit, Tetch, had spent several long days attempting to spook the Shadow Elves into opening the cell, or revealing some other helpful information — with no success. The phantom had finally given up, and departed the caverns in search of aid and rescue.
Gorton really smelled terrible.
Suddenly, the stone wall opened into a smooth hole. There was no mechanism, the wall simply opened. The Ghosts leapt to make an attempt at escape, catching a glimpse of dark-eyed rangers with glittering spears — before a dark figure was flung into the cell, colliding with the adventurers. They all fell down in a heap, watching as the stone wall closed — becoming as featureless as before.
The new prisoner dusted himself off, threw a hand through his gray hair and grinned.
“So.. I’m here to rescue you.” Simon said.
Battle-mage? No. War Wizard? No. Combat Caster? No. Spellblaster? No. Magus Melee? No.
Slaughter-wizard? Yes. Most definitely, yes.
I was looking for something else in my notes, when I stumbled across the piece I put up this morning – The Umbra.
Apparently, I wrote this.
Do you ever have that happen? You read something in your notebook, or Google Docs — and it’s clear that your brain and hands produced it — but you have no memory of actually writing it. It’s like reading something that your doppelganger from another dimension wrote.
It’s a neat feeling, honestly — approaching your work as a reader only, without any context of the process.
I’m sure this is the goal, when sages suggest you let your first draft sit for a month or two before giving it the first read — it helps with objectivity — and wouldn’t it be amazing to read your novel as a stranger? That Thing occupies a sizable portion of my psyche — how cool would it be to read it that way?
So get on it, doppelganger!
Any of you guys have stuff like that on your blog? I’d love to read it — hear your anecdotes!
This line is bold for no reason.
You know what’s nice?
Realizing that I haven’t mentioned minotaurs even once in That Thing — and abruptly putting in a minotaur.
YEAH.
Best job in the world.
I want there to be more minotaurs. BAM. Minotaur.
No discussions, no forms to fill out, no concerns about tone or ‘realism’.
“You know what this tea party needs? A FRICKIN’ minotaur.”
Suck it, other genres. Fantasy and swordpunk win the day.
Talitha ran through the cargo bay singing. A simple tune, she skipped to the beat and spun around a rail and danced around the engine’s console. She passed right by a narrow alcove, in between two bays. She didn’t notice anything hanging in the shadows — only crinkled her nose absently at the foul, acidic scent.
A lump of bone and dissolving flesh hung there, that had once been … many things. A squire, a traveler, a 
hero, a monster, a murderer, an uncle, a terror, a friend. A knot at the center of him was all that remained — holding out against the decay, the rot. The knot heard the song, and finally began to unwind.
But, he did not die. The shadow poison fell away, washed clean by a little girl’s song.
With the poison gone, his flesh remembered and returned. Green sparks sizzled and popped.
Izus rose from the tatters of fabric and twine.He patted his chest experimentally, and looked around for a moment. He snapped his fingers, and a brown cloak jumped to attention. It wriggled down the hallway, the steps and across the cargo bay, and into the little alcove where the villain had lay dying. It folded itself neatly over his arm, and Izus tossed it over his shoulders, fastening the clasp without a thought.
He could still hear the girl’s song.
“Goodbye.” he said, and stepped through the world and was gone.
Here’s one of the ways I feel like a fraud.
I follow a lot of writers — here on WordPress, and across several platforms and internet spaces — and I have a handful of friends and relations that are writers as well. All of them have one unifying statement, when asked “How do you know you’re a writer?”.
They say, “I have to write.”
Then they crush brick with their bare hands, and it turns into a glimmering red jewel. They place it on their brow, and a diadem of pure light and awesomeness appears.
[Okay, that only happened once.]
You know what I mean — the type of artist that knows in their bones, that they will continue to make their art regardless of any discouragement, regardless of outside factors. Steven King is a good example — that man has retired, what – eight times now? Then a few months pass, and another 1200 page tome appears on bookshelves across the globe. The man literally can’t stop.
Since starting the blog — and for better or worse, publicly defining myself as a writer – it’s something that I’ve grappled with a little bit.
Because I can stop. Because I don’t have to write.
I’m a slacker by nature — I just turned 32 recently, and this blog, Lodestar, and THAT THING are the longest sustained creative projects of my life. I’ve always been more comfortable with art that had a clear expiration date. You finish the painting, you close the show, you crack the joke.
I think that’s why I’m so focused on my weekly deadlines for page counts on That Thing — I have a deep sinking sensation that if I miss a deadline — It’ll be that much easier to miss the last one, then I won’t be even a faux-writer anymore. The endless minutiae of life — plus abundant other creative projects would pull me away, and I’d never come back — never finish.
So if you have a compulsion in your bones to write — I envy you. But if you’re like me — if you have to continually crack the whip, and keep yourself on task — if you’re more than a little scared that you’re not going to make it to the end — I know your pain.
spell-sword.com 