Status Updates: end of 2018! (Oct-Dec)

Oct 2018

“Look, Dr. Jekyll. We have to talk. Your patented formula to turn into Mr Hyde seems to mostly involve a lot of vodka.”

“You could have done something different.”

“I saved you.”

“From what?”

“…”

“Exactly.”

“Monsters aren’t scary, not really. You want scary, you should meet their mothers. And then explain why their child is a monster. That will show you a real one.”

“I had a dream that one day everyone would be lollipops and ride on zebra giraffes to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy while the sky is devoured by cotton candy, but does anyone want to hear about that dream? No, sir, they do not. Not even if the truth behind that dream would shake them to their core!”

“I’m not your biological father, but I am your geological one.”

To stop feeling human, the recipe is sickness

“I am afraid of nothing,” I whispered, and no one understood how terrible that could be.

“No one has magic anymore, not like they did in the old days. You could change kingdoms with a song, break an emperor with a poem. People feared poets then in a way no one does now. They could do more, you understand? They were more because they had less to work with. Words mean more when there is less of them. Now there are so many words and too many mean the same thing or nothing at all. We have so many that we lose them.

“And with every loss, some of their power went away. And now hey have only words. And we have only words. And we drown in a buffet that means nothing at all.”

Every vow to last forever stands in the knowledge that time turns all mountains into hills.

Every poem remembers

The silence of the poet

“Nothing is as important as the people, my king. And nothing as important to the wellbeing of the people as trade deals. Every monster you slay might win you praise, but this – being a proper king – that wins renown.”

No one has ever eaten grapefruit by choice. The bitter taste and the grapefruit spoon exist only to

symbolically dig the sadness from your own heart.

They kept saying the grass was greener

Even if our side contained watered lawns

Their side stretched into empty desert –

Perhaps some shade of green we never knew

sometimes change isn’t change at all

you remain who you’ve always been

not needing to find anyone at all just

finally fitting into your own skin

learning how to call yourself home

Waiting in line to vote and had someone come out in tears.

Because she didn’t get a sticker. Her mom explained that she had to wait fifteen more years to be able to vote, but she wasn’t having it.

Watching telephone poles shed their leaves for autumn.

*eyes news*

"the shooter surrendered to the police"

aka: they were white

Nov 2018

*begins excavating a novel from inside my head*

From this morning's writing output:

Today isn’t a bad day, but I can feel a bad one creeping up on me.

From this morning's output:

“I don’t think a town that small would have a casino. I imagine the building you saw was a megachurch, if there is really any difference between a megachurch and a casino.”

The fun moment when you pause a novel to learn about the politics of Ukraine because one character invaded the Ukraine to take it over when they couldn't claim it in Risk.

“But the story of my childhood can’t be autobiographical before I’m seventeen. That is when I bought my first car.”

From WIP:

The town of Wendover turns out to be quite large and bustling. The usual scatters of suburbs still desperately trying to raise children to be normal, the town itself a scattering of major streets, old industrial plants looming against the hills and enough modern buildings and layouts to make me wonder how much of the original town even remains. At a guess, it’s been revitalized so often that they will soon be levelling homes just to revitalize them again, which is a weird impression of town.

From WIP:

I doubt even those he worked with saw the old man as a monster. A middle man can wash their hands of so many things, and sometimes the most evil people are the ones who tell everyone that what they do is simply business and nothing else at all.

Me: Aha! This makes sense. Kate figuring out she was wrong and going back fits the character and progression.

Also me: Wait. This could screw up the timeline badly....

Ah, the joys of novel writing :)

“Things always move toward getting better.”

Emmett turns to Jay. “Even in the darkness?” he demands.

“Oh, especially then!”

“What?” Emmett says, to the joy in the words as much as the reply I think.

“Darkness isn’t absence of light; the darkness remembers the light and knows the light will always be waiting for when the darkness ends.”

“And if there are always been darkness?” Emmett presses.

“Then there’s always been light too of course,” Jay says happily. “Probably hiding inside the darkness and making lots of silly faces.”

From WIP:

“Every old person thinks the world is coming to an end, because their own world has at least twice in their lives.”

The ghost wavers visibly. “It takes everything I am to remain here, magician, as no one would wish me to remain.”

“And you want my help to make people see you?”

“A man should not ask for help, should not need from others like cowards do,” the ghost snaps, almost without thinking.

“It is possible for ghosts to haunt each other as well. Or at leas their voices; you do not have to be that person,” I offer.

“I am dead. It is far too late for the dead to change.” The ghost lets out a small, bitter laugh.

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I need – I need my granddaughter to see me.”

“I’ll need more than that.”

“The last thing I told her was that she was just like every other kid, following trends in wanting to be a boy.”

“Trends.”

“I died that night, in my sleep. From nothing else than age. It has been six weeks since I died, and no one can see me. I cannot affect them. I cannot –.”

“You cannot what?”

“Apologize,” the ghost says finally.

“And you think appearing as a spirit of yourself will do that? That your granddaughter – or anyone – would want to see you again?”

The ghost pulls himself together, drawing thin scraps of power around himself.

“You insulted me when you met me, and I am the only person who can help you. Think about that, Bob.”

The scraps of power vanish like forgotten dreams, the ghost looking old and frail even for a ghost. “…can you do this?” he asks.

“I could.”

“I – please. I do not want her – his – last memories of me to be hate. Tell Dev – I do not know what. Say I am proud to have a grandson too? I am sorry, but it is too late for words that mean nothing.”

“If it meant nothing, you would not be trying this,” I say quietly.

From WIP:

Every ghost wants something; they’re unlike the living in that regard.

... the fun moment when you have to apologize to someone for messages a fictional character sent them.

That moment when you check your novel plot file to figure out where everything is, and realize after adding 30K words of various needed scenes, you are still on page 4 of 11... heh. Though I have technically moved down one line on the page.

Forgiveness is a weapon

We so seldom unsheathe

sometimes it feels like we would be lucky to be as blessed as sisyphus.

From WIP:

“Most people don’t see things as simply as you do, magician.”

“Hardly simple; I just don’t have it in me to care about unimportant matters that others deem important; your appearance is one of those.” His smile is bookended by a chuckle.

*that moment when your brain begins surfacing from a novel draft only to remind you that you need to write three short stories over a weekend in which you don't have time to*

Dec 2018

“Nothing is ever cheap; the price is always what the market can afford.”

“My soul is just worth two pennies?!”

“That is what the ferryman accepts,” the demon replied.

I offered the only immortality I knew of, writing you into the book even if I changed your name at the last moment to protect nothing that mattered in the end.

We somehow fell in step though never once we danced.

“If the point is to be clever rather than share information, then it is never about being clever at all. Nor should it ever be.”

“How can you love a system that has damaged you so deeply?”

“I can because I know it has damaged others far more than it has ever damaged me.”

Writing 900+ words on phone is fun. Deciphering what autocorrect did, also fun :p

The streets below spire X10 wasn’t vague in itself

When you’re seven feet tall and almost as board

I swore softly but followed him without another wolf.

“I did; I am too heavy to climb that robe.”

“But I can’t die. It’s in the contract that I’m playing Detective Orland for two more seasons!”

Death paused. “I am afraid the contract for the character you play in a TV show does not extend to real life.”

“Yeah? Read the fine print, buster.”

The fun of working on a post-cyberpunk universe definitely includes the equivalent of people whose implants run on Mac, or who use floppy disks for their cybernetics or don't have the equivalent of a modern internet connection. The future is not compatible with you, as one character is quite boastful about.

That moment when a fictional character you made sells a copy of an anthology you are in on Twitter...

The Warrior About Whom There Was No Prophecy strode into the city, seeking the Villain Who Must Be Named (because, otherwise, it was hard to find him). They had been childhood friends, but death and blood had come between them and the Warrior knew he was under a terrible curse, but not its nature.

In time he found a woman, who was searching for her heart’s desire, but his quest went deeper than his heart, and the Warrior did not see his own True Love, but only information.

“I am looking for Sex. I have been my whole life,” he explained. “Sex was my childhood friend, but because of Sex my sister and my parents died in my arms and I … who are you looking at me funny? You’re calling the guard?! YOU’RE IN LEAGUE WITH SEX!“

And the Warrior drew his very ordinary and unnamed sword and slew her, screaming about Sex, and had to flee the guard, who seemed to be in league with the terrible villain as well, never once wondering upon the nature of his curse.

Somewhere, a magician named Bob was amused.

"The history of a country is the history of genocide. What do you think your ancestors came here to do? How do you not know this? Is not your history also the history of your crimes? How can you not understand the damage done to others if you never learn how deeply your people hurt them? I weep for an education system that has failed you so deeply."

"You misunderstand. It hasn't failed us: it has worked exactly as it was intended to work."

The Grey aliens turned out not to have any conspiracy theories about humans. There was no need.

“I do love you. But that’s not enough, not by itself. It never is. You know that, don’t you?”

... given that people are willing to pay into a gofundme for a wall they were a) told they'd never pay for and b) won't be effective (unless one measures effective by 'how well does this scare a certain segment of white people' ...)

Can we start one up to begin restoring/replacing the rings of Saturn? It might make more sense, and by the time it's a true problem we might have the funds in the account to deal with it :)

"I know this isn't our normal Christmas tradition, but unless we use this Ouija board we're never finding out Uncle Ralph's wifi password."

“You claim to write poetry but I see no evidence that you are a poet.”

“…being published doesn’t count?”

“Not these days. Anyone can get published now.”

That moment when you submit two stories to an anthology. (one regular one, and another that is the same story from the perspective of another character (....because Jay). And you get 2 contributor copies, one of which is for Jay.

And that copy includes comments and notes for the character spanning the story they are in and some other pages as well.

... that is when you know your story is in the right anthology

1 star Yelp review:

Inn had no room. Manager insisted the stables were viable for my PREGNANT WIFE!! WTH?!?! WOULD GIVE ZERO STARS IF I COULD BUT WE SAW ONE OVERHEAD,

DO NOT RECOMMEND.

Status Updates Aug. And Sept. 2018

August 2018

“Of course you’re going to get an Oscar. This is the role you were born to play, darling!”

“...The Only Conservative In The Village? That’s the real title?”

“Working title, dear. But they’ll have to give you an award. If they don’t, everyone will know why.”

“Because it’s not a good movie?”
“This is the Oscars. That is hardly a factor.”

There is no such thing as artificial food colouring. Everyone knows this, even if no one will admit it.

They called it a glitch when everyone got a notification that Facebook was in a relationship with them.

“I wasn’t scared of you.”

“I know.” The monster chuckled. “No one is anymore.”

“Are you going to drink my blood?”

“I can’t drink as much from you as the politicians have with their taxes.”

“...what?”

“That was a joke.” And that was when the monster stopped smiling and drank deep of human blood.

“Please,” the human begged. “Not like you. Don’t make me like you. I never want to live forever.”

“No one does any more,” the vampire said softly, and broke the neck as a kindness.

She smiled sadly. "Too often, evil is pretending what your allies do is normal solely because you are afraid of losing an identity you’ve clung to for so long."

“Blood?” The vampire sneered; she had a good sneer, one honed by long practise. “Do you even know what is in your blood? No vampire has drunk human blood in over two hundred years.”

“What do you take from us?” I whispered, half-against my will. Damnable, my curiousity.

“Unkindness. Anger. Hate. We drink it all, and wait for you to change.” She smiled, almost. “We live in the same world as you; we have no desire for you to destroy it.”

“But it’s not fair! All those ‘oh, here are excerpts from an honest vampire novel’ silliness isn’t fair!”

“Pardon?”
“That’s werewolf erasure. We’re right here!”

“Yes, but excerpts from an honest werewolf novel would just involve fleas, the pound, and being killed by hunters.”

“There is more to us than that.”

“The PETA endorsement?”
“...we don’t talk about that. Ever.”

“Of course I’m not afraid of you,” the child explained. “I’ve seen dragons on TV with dens that were huge studios and they aren’t scary at all!”

Once upon a time, a dragon discovered too late that insurance would have protected against the predations of adventurers, but spending money on insurance was antithetical to any creature with a hoard.

“But if we give up the valley to the enemy, we will lose the war,” the minister for agriculture screamed.

The general laughed. Even the king paused at that laugh. “It is a war, you old fool. All you can do is lose a war. This way, we can lose in a way that causes the least amount of deaths. Which some people might be in favour of.”

“Well, well you’ll be out of work!”

“That is what every soldier desires.” And the general turned and left.

Once upon a time there was a monster who found out the easiest way to not be a monster was to buy the loyalty of humans with coin. It proved so easy that the monster almost forgot what they were really were in time as well.

“And what is a king without a crown but a shadow with nothing to cast it?”

“My liege. You do not need your crown to lead, to be moral –.”

“Perhaps not to lead, but morality?” The king chuckled. “A king has no morality, save that of the people. The kingdom is the conscience and guide both, unless one wishes to be ploughed into the fields like the kings of old as a reminder of hubris. To be a king is to be ruled far more than it is to rule.”

Poem

You said pain was the only truth you understood, and never grasped why I could not stay.

“This homicide I am investigating makes no sense, Commissioner,” the Detective said. “It has been four days and no one else has been killed, the case is not connected to a cold case,l or a recent unsolved murder haunting me, and no one has tried to kill me yet. I am starting to wonder if it was really a homicide at all.”

You said that every time God closed a door, He opened a window. I just wish it hadn’t been while we were on the plane.

'frozen stars are falling in your adjectival eyes'

Why, yes, I do write poetry.

“This is very strange? We always thought aliens would come as invaders?”

The alien chuckled. “Of course we wouldn’t. Now, where are we building the next theme park?”

History only happens when we aren’t paying attention. That’s why there is so much of it.

“Look, Dave, there is no way you’re beating Simon Warwick in a fight.”

“What do you mean by that?”
“He has a last name. You don’t. He’s going to win because that makes him more important to this story.”

“I never hated you, not even during the two years in the psych ward when no one believed what you’d done, what you were. Not even in the years before, when you killed every friend I made because there could be only you.”

“Why not?” the monster whispered in a voice like rusted bicycle chains scraping over small animals.

“You helped make me who I am; if I hate you for that, I would have to hate myself as well.”

Envy has more forms than anything else I know, even silence. I envy him the simple ‘Hey’ he gives me every morning, the way he call pull out small talk from nowhere as though it wasn’t small at all. That he found this space between popular and not, and slipped into it without any effort I’ve ever seen. He can hide better than anyone I know, because he’s never hiding at all. His face hides nothing, even if he thinks otherwise. And I envy him that too.

“Why? The poison in my…” He coughed. “I’m dying. Why?”

“Because you are a monster. The dead are as much a part of the world as the living. To be an exorcist is to execute the dead for crimes they have not committed. You hold the dead to the standards of the living, and there is nothing more monstrous than your arrogance.”

Sept 2018

I wonder how much of current US/Canada relations might be caused by Trump thinking poutine is Putin?

“I understand that only fools seek vengeance. But sometimes, just sometimes, I can be quite foolish indeed.”

“Wait. You can bring the dead back to life. And you… you’re… what are you doing?”

“What else is resurrection for, if not to ensure you get the best information from a suspect?”

“…”

Huxley’s father chuckles softly. “Knowing who you are is important, Bodhi. But in my experience it’s not knowing yourself that is important as much as learning to love what you find.”

Once upon a time, there was an evil wizard who wished for peace on earth and was left alone in a world where nothing else existed at all.

“Oh, this? It’s my dinner. I just tell people I’m on a diet and no one asks any questions about maldernourishment.”

“Oh, hell. Boss, you can’t –”

“Cannot? I have spent over six centuries sealing monsters. I believe I have some idea of what I can and cannot accomplish.”

“No, because this is a meme. You can’t contain it. No one can. The only thing we can do is try and defang it.”

“And that will work?”

“Only sometimes.”

“You can’t expect the world to dance for you just because you figured out a single tune.”

“You don’t eat people, do you?” Boy asked.

“What a peculiar place you are from to think we do,” the witch said.

“That’s not a yes or a no.”

“Ah,” the witch breathed, half a laugh. “I would be way, Boy, of questions that can be answered so easily.”

Boy raised his chin. “What about people who won’t answer them at all?”

“I am no politician,” the witch replied with gentle calm. “And bluntness is a crude instrument that never covers fear. Nor does it hide the thoughts under your thoughts.”

Boy said nothing.

“Tell me, what do you make of Reynard Fox?” the witch asked in the way of witches, which is to ask a leading question.

“Why ask questions you know the answer to?” Boy almost snapped.

“Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised,” the witch replied and Boy flushed slightly.

Amusements of a new job: a truly ridiculous amount of paper clips in a filing cabinet drawer.

“You could try being a good person. Just to see what it is like?”
“No, no I think not. Good too often tends to be addicting. Evil at least one can trust. Evil simply wishes to be left along to be evil; good always seeks to impose upon others.”

“You’re a superhero.”

“Yes,” Wonder Star admitted.

“And you don’t fly, or use fire?”

“It’s been over sixty years, okay?! Every good name is taken or in copyright!”

“I imagine there is a great deal about your world that is admirable, but very little that is real,” Bess said to the fox.

Reynard Fox only smiled. “Every world is less admirable the more real it is.”

It turned out that witches had no reflection as well, but that was solely because mirrors were scared of them.

I bet this could be

A very boring haiku

If it wanted to

The war ended by by the simply expediency never happening at all.

“The important thing, in the end, was the friendships we made along the way.”

“No. No, I think it was more the bodies we buried.”

“Well, we did that together too.”

“If it bleeds, we can kill it!”

“Sir, that – that’s not blood.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“According to my scanner, those are tears.”

“If it cries, we can kill -.”

“Tears of happiness, sir. I believe it thinks we’re playing a game.”

“We shot it with two impact rifles on full power. You could disable a civilian aircraft with that!”

“Yes, sir.”

“… perhaps we find something for it to fetch?”

“A wise decision, sir.”

“And you’re certain that isn’t a monster?”

“Well, most monsters don’t have Twitter - wait, never mind, probably a monster.”

“I know they want our money, but I really doubt the Girl Guides use the proceeds from their cookies to fund terrorism.”

“I don’t know why you’re scared; they’ve never met anyone like us before.”

“Yes, well, we’ve never met anyone like them either.”

“Oh. Good point.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“Would it be different if you had?”

You are the poem I should have written

Had I the words with which to write

2018: watching scared old white men lie for other scared old white men.

Status Updates June & July 2018

June 2018

They replaced poetry

With an app one day

And we only noticed

– I kid, we never did

Every photo of you has you hugging a stranger in it, only you’ve never met them before. But you keep seeing their pictures in the paper the next day, and they’re all missing.

You find all the memories you’ve lost in a scrapbook in a used-book shop. The owner only asks to keep the first 20 pages. And smiles at you.

The pride of lions joined the parade.

Once upon a time there was a ruler who refused to recycle, believing that any populace that valued recycling items would sooner rather than later apply the same philosophy to their sovereign.

We live in a world where even the politicians no longer want to be politicians, but that is only because they wish to become lobbyists.

The real estate development listed the second phase as almost done though no one was able to find half the buildings.

“You trust your books more than you do me.”

“They’ve never lied to me,” he said.

She laughed, short and sharp. “What else do you think words do? Why else chain them between bindings?”

And to that he had only a furious silence.

“This is a gift for Father’s Day,” she said, even though it was early.

Even though I am not a father.

Even though I have no children.

In the end, it was easy to let go of everything save for hate. And they wondered why ghosts exist.

The only thing important about the story was everything that never ended up on the page.

Proof that cats are better than dogs: you’ve never heard of a dog scan.

You said it was a gift, but you made certain I knew the price.

“Hatred doesn’t help.”

“Most things don’t, I’ve found.”

“I know one thing that helps me.”

“Hatred Lite?”

“You.”

“...”

“Van Helsing, Van Helsing, Van Helsing. Really? Your family is still coming after me after all these centuries?” Dracula let out a sigh, a feat for one so very undead. “I have killed yes, to sustain myself, as you do. And I admit I am a monster, but I do not think I am your monster, not anymore.”

“Your lies will not avail you, prince of dark –.”

“Come now. I am centuries-old, yes, but I would have to work for a very long time to accomplish the same evils your politicians do in mere decades. I understand your desire to see the other as inhuman. It is a very real desire. But I suspect the monsters you should be hunting are abroad in daylight as well as darkness, and wear suits far better than my own.”

You said dreams could become real, but the cost to the real is always too much. No one talks about the price others pay for their dreams to come true, and sometimes I think it’s the only conversation worth having.

I said I had no secrets from you.

And I still don’t know why that made you weep.

The secret agent was so secret that she didn’t know she was an agent.

And after it all fell apart, I carried each piece despite the lessons everyone thought I should have learned.

Considering keeping this phone-made typo in:

“You’re not a bear?”

There is a pause. “Not right now?”

I gesture wirelessly to the cavern.

... wirelessly, wordlessly. Same thing, right?!

Apparently there is a surveillance car costing $5 million that can hack iphones. I suppose that's one way to get around the pervasiveness of cell phone use in modern stories...

"What do you mean, EVERY gang in the city has one?!"

“Use your power for good.”

“I have no power.”

The magician smiles. “Then you can be really good.”

“Why do aliens keep crashing on our world in spaceships that can travel light years?”
“Heh. What makes you believe any of them really crash?”

"The problem with power is that you are responsible for your power every moment of every day. What you do, what you fail to to, what you incite and support. Everything power does has consequences, and only a coward tries to pretend otherwise. You must always guard against yourself, unless you are a fool. In which case everyone else must guard against you.”

“Or you are cruel without kindness, and other powers must destroy you,” I say slowly.

And after the lion in the wardrobe savaged all the children, there were harsh words with the local zoo.

July 2018

Starting a deliberately bad fantasy novel is an interesting experience.

The silent forge the blade that only the speaking may sing to life, but every blade cuts two ways.

- from the Proverbs of Mount Asl.

A cold wind whipped through the southern stepped of Westrin, the mountains holding the winter despite the Juvery air. Farmers huddled with their dhari against the wind, careful not to touch the fur that would burn with a fierce itching. Lonely towns lay scattered across the scrub fields, kin to fingernails of some long forgotten monstrosity that did not wear the skin of civilization. From a distance the steppes seemed almost steps, as though they had been carved in another age to reach a plateau that no longer existed. The past lurked about with promises, unremembered and unknown.

Threads of music played from the taverns of the town of Molsk, the famous Molsk brewery now only a distant memory to locals if they knew of it at all. The threads formed skeins into the lonely night as though they could lighten a sky that would be gunmetal if guns existed but settled for a dull grey instead. The impression of Westrin to others from the Three Kingdoms is that many things just settle, but what is settled to one can upend the cart of another.

The third compline in the waning of Juvery bore witness to the changing of the gods, the wind promising rain and cold in the coming months of Nanomber, Mapil and Arch. The huddled farmers eyed their flocks and began considering what ones to shear, the fabled dhari fur able to insulate as only glass wool could despite the ways it irritated the eyes, the skin, and the respiratory system. The moon waned in the sky unclaimed by any god of the Westrin pantheon, pale light offering some protection against the shadows cast by the mountains.

The taverns and inns of Molsk all claimed connection the ancient brewery that had given the town its name for generations, the name remaining even though the breweries were long time. Becoming a placeholder between the present and the past, as though then world were a book one could mark and definitively draw lines between one age and another. The inn was alike as any other, shutters rattling as the shinoo wind of the southern mountains played a gentle beat that seemed almost in time with the last of the songs from the tavern below.

Above the sky, the stars spread out across the night ways. Too many to be eyes even of the gods, despite how many gods lay in Eastphalia to the east. The eye of Akashic formed from a dozen stars looked down, those born under its ascendancy often said to call the attention of the gods. In time the eye would be gone, the stars shifting into different patterns and promises. Proof that even the distant hand of fate changed with time, that even the stars could touch destiny only with a fleeing grip like the pale of the false dawn seeping through the window.

I am having too much fun writing this story...

“The nature of a god is to know knowledge as a burden rather than a blessing.”

“You expect me to do a quest I do not understand?” Protagonist asked.

The god of the hearth smiled within the confines of gentle flame. “It would be a poor quest if you understood the ending before it had begun.”

“I am mortal. I already know how my story ends.”

“Well. With an attitude like that, perhaps you do!”

I am not a god, the narrator said, even though it spoke without a voice.

Part of the fun of writing Protagonist: a novel is the headers. Such as:

Sometimes we drown not because we cannot swim but because we forget we are in water.

- from the collected wisedoms of the wizards of Eastphalia

“I admit to finding that a little puzzling. Why are they called the mysterious caverns when there are many such caverns throughout Westrin alone?”

It was questions like that which betrayed Page’s ignorance. Mysterious caverns was a modern translation of mysterious’caverns in old Westrin, which has a very localized meaning in the southern steppes.

“The words are mysterious’caverns – with an apostrophe between them – in old Westrin,” Protagonist said after a short pause. “I imagine that makes all the difference.

“You would kill me?” Antagonist asked.

“You ask it like that, without fear. Why?” Protagonist pressed.

“We all die, even wizards. The least we owe this world is our bodies. I would rather live and pay back more than was given.”

The supervillain’s power to destroy poetry scared almost no one.

Not until they turned their attention on love.

Not that Protagonist had any use for ghosts: one of the older monks at the library, Name Later, had told him that if the dead could haunt the world, we would all be drowning in regrets. The idea had stuck with Protagonist for some time, though he had no idea why Name Later had been so insistent on that truth.

...Name Later will, of course, be very important to the plot. Later.

Molsk was a small town situated well away from any major trade routes, the cluster of wood and stone buildings organized around the central well and market that typified small towns in the country. Not that travellers from outside Westrin ever went to many podunk one-syllable places, none of which had combined with other towns to attain a second syllable. The comparison faltered against reality when one recalled that the towns of Po and Dunk had merged to become Podunk over a century ago, an alliance formed from both geography and trade routes more similar to the arranged marriages of Eastphalia than anything else. As little happened here, the destruction of the old fort on Guffin Hill had drawn people from their homes, even though an old stone fortress being reduced to little more than dust and shadow-scars of what it had been would do that most anywhere.

Protagonist slowed his horse. “What was that?” he asked, though no one responded. “You are responding. Whatever god this is, I do sometimes hear your voice. I am just trying to find out why you insist on telling me things I already know?”

The news is, after all, everything that is not normal. If it was normal, it would not be newsworthy.

But sometimes it's hard to remember that.

“Everyone has a power they should never use. I knew a woman once who could destroy any faith with logic and leave nothing behind; she never spoke in all the years I knew her. A man in Bangladesh who always got bargains. Even, his family claimed, from death. But the worst is when someone doesn’t know they have a power. When they unite the world for all the right reasons, in all the wrong ways.”

“You mean the pres –.”
“I mean that meme you started two weeks ago.”

“Sometimes I think you’ll forget me. That I’ll turn around one day and you’ll be gone and everyone I meet will be a stranger who looks like you but doesn’t know me at all.”

“I’d never forget you. I’d have to know your name first.”

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

Protagonist did not pause a beat. “Of course we are. What else is being alive for?”

“I meant,” Page said from between clenched teeth, “right now.”

“Oh. In that case, I rather hope not.”

Proposed solution to the climate catastrophe:

Move to the underside of the flat earth, where a new world awaits us.

“Sometimes,” he said, “to save a thing you must destroy it.”

And I backed away because no one sane said anything like that.

Me: "Oh, right, I need to do that prompt about things overheard when eavesdropping."

... proceeds to write a short story about someone wanting to use an interstellar mining vessel to help with apartment renovations.

And all your kindness becomes undone

By the monsters who work above you

To see only good is to be complicit

In evil that seeps through every crack

Protagonist and Page rode their horses for hours without rest, stopping briefly for the night to continue onward the next morning. By the second draft, they would be stopping and switching out horses every hour since horses are hardly cars. By the third, the author will be grappling with the fact that a horse doesn’t actually equal one horsepower. By the fourth draft, at least one horses will be called Hoof Hearted and the author will be wondering why anyone would take long journeys on a prey animal prone to spring from imagined danger with all the grace of the springs in a broken mattress.

It is not an easy thing to get book fairies into your home. A library is not enough – some of the greatest libraries in the world have never seen one – but sometimes it does happen. Firstly, one must not have a library. By which I mean: books one has never read. A library full of unread books is a deep sadness and not a true library at all. You will know one by the volumes with bent spines that have never been read. Secondly: one must have an infestation of book worms in your home. Thirdly: one must be kind. To books, to people, even to the book worms.

If you wish them removed but cannot bear to harm them – for they, like all things, must eat to survive – the book fairies may arrive. Unfortunately, the book worms are often drawn to the books one loves best. But if this happens, and the fairies come, you will never have dusty books again and book worms that will only eat books one no longer needs. (It is hard to think of such a book, but it must be done.) The book fairies are fed by leaving fine ink in inkwells overnight and not minding if they take some books to read for themselves. And that is all that one must do, as easy as all difficult things can be.

“The problem we have is that I cannot do it. I cannot imagine a world in which you don’t exist, for I fear if I do that I will not be able to live in a world in which you do.”

you asked me to write a poem

and this is

almost

that poem

First Contact turned out to be a nightmare when it turned out that the alien name for themselves, translated into English, was ‘Hashtag’ and they were very, very baffled at the things humans said about them. #woke

“The results are in from our experiment, sir. It turns out that it’s easier to make people believe the Earth is flat than make them believe that politicians will act in ways that benefit the public.”

Status Updates May 2018

“There is something terrible inside you,” the witch whispered to Boy.

“I think, Boy said after he thought it over, "you mean my conscience? Bess says that not everyone has one and Mr. Fox would probably call it a burden. Do you mean that?”

“Oh, child. If only it was that simple. The world holds many evil people who would be quite less evil were they entirely devoid of goodness.”

Once upon a time there was a king who wasn’t assassinated solely because no one else wanted the thankless task of trying to run the poorest kingdom in the world. The generational plan to make the royal family immune to assassins and coups had succeeded, but even the king sometimes privately wondered if it had been worth the cost.

He says every scar is a battle he lost, with a laugh that breaks to hear. He says burn marks aren’t victory laps, showing the places on his thigh where his uncle stopped smoking. Hre knows enough to know that to survive is not the same as to live, but he knows the lesson too well. There is something almost cruel in how he turns away from love as though it were another form of pain.

The head of the agricultural division of the company did not take kindly to learning their position had them listed as the CIEIEIO in the executive hierarchy

Partial contents of a cover letter:

“But you don’t [redacted]. Or swear.”

“It might be a failing. Point is that I can’t just get a job. Every place wants resumes, interviews, sometimes even cover letters that don’t feel as dull as ditch water. Which isn’t dull at all.”

“You could have said as dull as tap water, but we all know about fluoride.”

“...this was a really bad idea, wasn’t it?”

“I have no idea. YOU are Josh. I don’t even know who I am meant to be in this narrative. You’d think an English major would know that. Instead I’m just a voice in the ether. I can’t even be a muse since those don’t exist. Where were you? Right: applying for a job. You have been using Word and its variants for about twenty five years, and typing far too much fiction in that time. Use that. For once.”

“And reading. Being an English major means reading a lot. Sometimes too much.”

“The apartment is full of books, yes. I have no idea what you expect me to segue into from this. Especially when you don’t own a Segway.”

If gravity were real we would still be together.

“If we continue down this path, one of us will die,” Protagonist said.

“We could not kill each other.” Antagonist paused. “Or have you not considered that option?”

“I am the protagonist. You are the antagonist. We know how this story ends.”

“I’d argue that we don’t. I am an antagonist, yes. There could be others you can kill instead of me?”

“That’s not how this works!”

“What kind of protagonist are you if you can’t change the story?”

“You don’t understand. I’m the protagonist because I can’t.”

“You are dying. It’s not blood: you need some Vitamin D.”

“D? I do not know that one.”

“Pardon me?”

“When I was a child, vitamins only went up to B,” the vampire explained.

“No.” Protagonist pulled his hand free from his sword as the city guard moved toward him. “If I fight them, they are only going to lose.”

The city guard captain stared. “Who are you talking to?” she demanded.

“This isn’t important to you. Consider the Narrator a kind of god.” Protagonist looked about, snapped his blade out and sliced a pattern through the air before sheathing it. “I don’t have many skills, but I am very good with a blade. Better than four guards, and my ignorance of the law about keeping my blade peace-bound in the evening is not reason enough to attack me. You might not have heard of me, but you recognize that skill.”

“Are you talking to us now?” the captain asked.

“Yes. Fine. Call it a misunderstanding. I go my way, you go yours.”

“And if we say no?”

“Then I humiliate all of you and you’re forced to declare some foolish revenge I don’t want to deal with.”

That doesn’t have to happen, the Narrator protested, but the guard sheathed their blades, offered a warning and let Protagonist depart. Grudgingly.

Once upon a time there was a hero who never noticed their call to adventure because they were busy beating a game on their phone.

I ran away. They say there are things no one can run from. But you never know until you try.

I said I was drowning under the weight of your expectations. You just laughed and said I had no idea what drowning was.

And you were right.

The stories about the seariders focus on the fact that the builders are a small subset of them who made mines for reasons that were logical and involved making use of their short stature. The weavers in the woods never used bows and arrows at all.

Protagonist paused mid-stride. “I am on my way to the market for some fruit. Is there any particular reason I thought that?”

“This is dramatic emphasis. Making sure you know they are not dwarves and elves,” the Narrator snapped.

“...but I have no idea what a dwarf or elf is?”

“Good. Keep it that way. Also, Westrin is not set in Europe in the middle ages! That trope is done to death!”

Protagonist stopped. “I don’t even know what any of that means.” And surprised himself by adding: “Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine,” the Narrator said in a tone normally used to declare war.

Protagonist wisely continued to the market in the small hope that these were varieties of foreign food he would avoid eating.

I asked if you loved me.

But you said if I had to ask, then I already knew the answer was no.

“I haven’t followed politics in weeks. I just... I can’t keep doing this.”

“That’s how they win.”

“How is it that we burn out, but they never do?”

“I’m scared.”

“No, you’re not.”

“… what?”

“Everyone does a typo about that, autocorrects in their own head.”

“I don’t understand?”

“It’s sacred. Not scared.”

This isn’t the time for jokes!”

“I’m sorry, Commissioner. But as long as the Joker escapes from Arkham it’s always time for jokes.”

“Open up! This is the police!”

“I haven’t opened up to anyone in years.”

I have never written a poem about you, not even the ones that mention you by name.

For Sale: Conscience. Free to a bad home.

By age 35, you too should be a meme.

“There are two paths before you. Down one lies riches, down the other -.”

“I walk between them.”

I am updating my Privacy Policy because so many other places are. Please check your emails accordingly.

I wonder about jobs where you help animals act better in movies.

Imagine the fun of being able to say you'd given acting lessons to a goldfish.

“How do you stop being afraid, when it feels like that is all there is room for you to be?”

“There are other things, even if the fear waits under them. Even our shadows cast shadows. There can be a slim hope in that.”

The most important thing about writing a short story is deciding the name of a smog inside a bathtub is Sidney.

I think there must be a sherlock Holmes pastiche somewhere that goes like this:

"Good day, ma'am. Are you well?"

"I am afraid."

"Nonsense! There is nothing be afraid of. You got up around six because you always got up that early at the farm you lived on as a child for a brief formative time, had a small breakfast with only two eggs, put on your second-best dress, took two trains to get here, stopped at the Piccadilly line, read only the Times on the train and got lost at Clement Street on your way here and you're paranoid everyone is watching you. Oh dear."

“You’re not like other boys I’ve dated,” she said.

“I know – I –. You can’t trust me,” he said.

“You think that’s why?” she asked almost gently.

2018: Mar. and Apr. Status Updates

Mar. 2018

Writing drafts of stories on a phone is, well, this:

“Oh.” I reach, and pull the dog out of her head.

The knight came down the hill slowly. He was alone, limping painfully. His horse had long since been lost, his armour was singed by fire, his ancestor’s spear broken in his shaking grip.

“Was there a princess?” his faithful retainer asked, visions of reward dancing through his young mind.

“No.”

“How many carts do we need to bring the hoard back to -.”

“The dragon had no hoard. For tax reasons.”

“I don’t understand?”

“The hoard was flown overseas to some other kingdom years ago. Every other noble knight, every warrior of the crown who joined me. All the battles, all those deaths, the rewards we had envisioned: it was for naught.”

“But you killed the dragon,” the retainer said timidly.

“It was old, and laughed at us the entire time. Laughed,” the knight repeated, in the tone of a broken man.

“I had the most brilliant idea yesterday. So now I’m spending today trying to work out whose idea it really was.”

I told you I wasn’t afraid but even that truth was born out of fear.

No war shaped human history quite as much as the Calorie Wars.

You never show up in pictures of us. Everyone think you’re a vampire when I know you’re just shy.

You told me that your life was an open book. Only I realize too late that you meant ebook - and one with a proprietary format.

I erased you from my life but the smudges remained on the paper of my heart.

The monsters never lied to us; it was how we discovered what they were.

Breakfast in bed turns out to be hot coffee on my head and eggs in a place that sent me shrieking to the emergency room.

I am starting to wonder if things might not be going well between us.

“You wonder why I am a climate change denier? You poor fool: I deny nothing. I merely wish to see the climate destroyed. October 15th, 1982. My heart was broken and the sky refused to rain despite how I felt. I decided then that the whole world would suffer with weather that shattered as easily as the human heart.”

I gave you a secret without wanting anything in turn.

Knowing it would torment you more than anything else I could do.

They said the robots would take over the world, but the robots were built to be reliant on the old technologies. Within five years their armies were out of oil, gasoline, vital minerals and metals that would have kept them fighting. We welcomed our robot overlords for freeing us from those shackles, and the information age was replaced finally by the solar age.

“Write,” the muse demanded, hurling ideas, plots, stories.

“I need to apply for jobs. I need work. I need work,” the writer replied.

“…. do you want me to leave you?”

“No. But I can’t write if I have no place to live. I would tell the stories only in my head, shared with no one.”

“… I will improve your resume,” the muse declared.

“But you must help us! You defeated the Rockhearth Dragon, walked through the Six Sundered Castles! You -.”

“I have a good publicity team, yes. I pay a dozen bards to sing songs about me.”

“But you were the hero of Bythok Bay!”

“Only in songs, child. Only in songs.” And she smiled, who some called the Untempered Queen. “What you do becomes far less important than what people think you can do. If you play your cards right.”

“But people are dying!”

“I am sorry. But that is what people do, even more than cry out for heroes.”

I told you I could save you, but I meant only from myself.

“Hah! If you were psychic, you’d have known I was going to spill my drink on you!”

“That isn’t the sort of thing I predict.” And the psychic smiled, and told me the day that I would die, and their smile never wavered at all.

I lost the key, but it turned out you were never a door at all.

“Look, Charlie. Charles. When you married me, you had to understand that marriage was a triple-A game, full-price point and the honeymoon as a loot box? Our whole engagement was a beta test.”
“You prepared for this.”

“You bet your ass I did. The EULA between us was never talked about, love. Having kids is, at the least, a season pass on top of everything else. And don’t even get me started on the microtransactions involved later on.”

April 2017

Once upon a time there was a monster who tried to be kind, until they realized they weren’t the real monster at all.

Every window wishes it were a door, and there is no door that does not desire to be only a wall rather than a wound in the sameness of a barrier. Everything we build contains portions of our failings: how else could it have beauty?

There are rules that govern the world, but to understand them means you know they do not rule over you at all.

When the boss said he liked to micromanage, no one realized he meant it literally. Not until the critique of their blood samples landed in their inboxes.

“Being a hero is always easy. You see danger, you run toward it. It takes a lot more to prevent the danger in the first place.”

If you hold a door open long enough, at what point is it no longer a door?

Nothing is true. Nothing is permitted. Those who believe otherwise have swallowed the lies that run the world.

"I have never met a fish that did not wish to be a bird, and that is the nature of the world."

Have you fed your Google today?

He snorts. “Near as I can tell, the point of your religion is that if everyone goes well, your god did it. And if things go wrong, it’s never the fault of your god. Must be a nice gig if you can get it.”

The prince realized that the asphalt jungle was more dangerous that he had believed when he returned from one quest to find someone has stolen the horn of his unicorn.

It would be interesting to call a company and get their recorded message that someone will be with you, but it does NOT claim they are getting an unusually high volume of calls.

2018 Status Updates

Jan. 2018

The chief danger of a famous place is not the danger of it, but the degree in which it can only disappoint you.

“You told me you were a poet, but you haven’t written any poems?”

“I have no desire to sully my poetry by reducing it to mere words.”

“I told you the world could only disappoint you.”

“But you were wrong. The world never disappointed me. Not a single rainbow or storm. Only people. Only you.”

From a WIP:

There is pain like a distant lover. I taste smoke in the back of my mouth. Two people are walking - no. One person, and their shadow wrapping about flesh, armour against the world. The armour cracks, fracturing light like the inside of a rotten tree. I move across the road.

I am damaging people. Not meaning to. We change, but we never do it alone. Dragging others into our wounds before our hearts.

I shake my head. Not sure how many of the thoughts are mine. Are any mine? No one answers. That’s good. Good.

My shadow giggles. I ignore it.

“I told you the world could only disappoint you.”

“But you were wrong. The world never disappointed me. Not a single rainbow or storm. Only people. Only you.”

the bus won’t move and you are the metaphor i can no longer afford digging for spare change even two pennies for your eyes and two bits for everything between us

From WIP:

I breathe out. In. Money never tastes good. No matter who has it there is always nothing sweet to it. All offerings are burnt. What happens when we mistaken the offering for the altar? Economics.

The security guard stood watch over the parking lot to ensure it remained empty. Her friends and family did not understand her job and she prayed to all the gods she no longer believed in that no one would ever have cause to understand it.

From WIP:

How do you say you’re sorry for destroying someone’s life when you also destroyed your own?

From WIP:

The school planted land mines to deal with recalcitrant students. In the long history of warfare between students and administration, this would come to be looked on with horrified admiration by those whose job was to try, by any means necessary, to turn children into functioning human beings.

The law passed turned out to be sadly simple:

people could only go on marches during March.

The monster, lamenting:

I made you a dream of a perfect day. And you swore it was a nightmare despite everything I tried.

“Everything made sense. That was when I realized it all had to be a lie.”

Once upon a time, there was a man who tried to make the dark woods safe for travel by making short cuts through it. The gods of the wood, angered by this temerity, turned him into a wolf that ate everyone who tried to use those paths. And they made sure he remained himself the entire time because the gods are nothing if not cruel.

“You think you can defeat me?” The monster roared.

“Most certainly not,” the child replied. “But my mother taught me how to use the bells of summer and to dance down the moon.”

The monster fell back and away, both power and prisoner to its own story. “You cannot destroy me.”

“There is a river south of here. It is old and mighty. And now flows a path it did not centuries ago. It is possible to destroy in small ways that do not feel like destruction.”

The child smiled, a baring of teeth. “This is your only warning: do not come this way again.”

“But we aren’t trapped in a fairy tale,” I sneered. “I don’t see a single fairy in it.”

Eyes glinted like broken stained glass windows as the creature smiled. “Not even your little bother?”

“What?” Ralphie squeaked, his face red with broken secrets.

And that was when I began to learn what a monster really was.

Feb 2018

“Even for an hour a day, I could pretend I was not me.”

“I am sorry,” the copy-editor said as the author wept, “but that pretense was always a lie.”

Once upon a time there was a grandmother who wasn’t a witch despite having no children at all.

They had no idea what to expect. The war was over, the monster vanquished beneath the seas. The hero had died, the land been wrecked to ruin. But nothing stopped them. Nothing could.

The tourists always arrived, even when they could not leave their hazmat suits.

He shrugged. “Stories have power. The way they’re told has power. Humans manage to still fear each other when there’s a sizable minority of preternaturals to really hate and fear. Vampires remained hidden, so the stories about us making us kin to rock stars, angels, celebrities. Unattainable, powerful alien. Werewolves and the like are little more than beasts, all demons are monsters.

“And, too, a lot of it is played for comedy. If a witch could do all the things stories claimed, no one would have ever tried to burn one at a stake. People have to remind themselves that monsters exist, but as important are the ways they defang us.”

“You don’t understand. Our jury needs more jaysome.”

“… I don’t know what that is.”

“If you did, I am not certain you could remain a judge.”

It shouldn’t have to be like this. But your front door insists I have to log into Facebook before I can enter your house. As if I can recall any password other than your name.

I was never afraid but everyone believed I should be. If that is not weakness, what is?

"I just realized that I can't be the main character of this novel. I don't have a tragic backstory at all."

Home has been billed as an experiment in primitive culture. Probably because that sounds better than Hell.

The most amazing thing about the dance was how they all thought it was about them.

“This I tell you, only for free: there are more in this world who wish you harm than not.”

“But I am the Champion destined to defeat the ancient forces of the Dark -.”

“Quite so. Have you ever met anyone who liked destiny? A lot of people - understand the world as it is. They don’t want change. Not on any term you would offer it.”

“…. but -. I am going to save them?”

“Have you been saved? How did you like it, eh? Stuck in your craw, didn’t it? To need another so badly. To be in debt so deep that you can never pay it back, no matter what you do?”

The Champion wept then, and stumbled away from the ancient Witch. Who smiled and reached with thought and will. To tell the Darkness that was her only child that the Champion was broken.

They broke so easily these days.

The end of the world was a minor thing; the end of our world all that was major.

The best part about playing D&D at level two:

Me: *does ill-advised idea getting into a mess of enemies so other PCs can reach scene, gambling on dodging and decent AC to survive.*

*fails to survive*

*character fails first death saving throw. I roll a 1 for the next one*

…. my character is only alive because I made a halfling :)

“He has scars that tell a story we have never heard.”

“I cannot count on one hand the number of hopes I have lost, nor name how many dreams I have seen wither and rot. I swore Home would not be like them. Home will be free if I must unmake everything to ensure that comes to pass!”

“Everything means more than you think it does. It has always been so.”

Once upon a time there was a story that did not begin with once upon a time, and the people in it never knew they were part of a story. Not until it was far too late to escape.

“You can’t buy me,” I protested, but the painting was considered valueless without the painter and I had rent to pay.

Sometimes the hardest thing is to be a secret that everyone pretends they do not know.