Tag Archives: Fiction

Starting fresh

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I hate being a writer sometimes. It’s not that I hate writing, but the discipline required can be a total drag. I think that’s why most people fail at writing, or really at life for that matter. The ones that are successful have to be tenacious. Pursuing a dream doesn’t guarantee success, but giving up certainly guarantees failure. How many of us stop without realizing they’ve given up? How many times have I done that?

I’ve fallen into that trap as of late. It’s discouraging when you feel that you’re not making progress. Part of my problem is that I’m unwilling to let go of my work. Letting go means allowing myself to fail and that’s a problem sometimes. It’s scary to put myself out there for others to judge and criticize. Let’s face it, some people are assholes just to be assholes. Maybe they’re unhappy with themselves and deal with it by tearing others down. Who knows?

Looking at my blog stats, I’ve noticed a downward trend in page views stemming from my own lack of posting. I felt I didn’t have anything new to say, that I was repeating the same empty promises, sounding like a broken record about what I wanted to do and where I was going. Even my book reviews flatlined, breaking promises to read and review a few. I’m rectifying that now, but getting started is going to be troublesome. I’ve lost my mojo.

We’re already twenty days into 2016, and though the time of resolutions has come and gone, maybe it isn’t to late to set some goals for the year. My first is I’m going to post twice a week at the very least. Second, I’m going to write at least an hour a day. I need to reestablish my habit. Third, I’m going to publish a short story twice a month. I’m also going to push myself out of my comfort zone and dabble with other genres. That’ll be an interesting writing exercise!

Lastly, I’m going to write and finish Giada’s novel and start begin reworking Son of the Father. I want to tell Bishop Mendoza’s story, and I have for years. He isn’t a one off story but rather a series, beginning with Giada. I want to discover the road he took and see the reason why he isn’t some one-dimensional religious leader. He’s a real person with real issues and a history that wouldn’t recommend him for anything other than a life in prison.

But he grew up, changed his life, and found a calling out of a depraved life. He dedicated himself and has been a model priest, but the ghosts of his past begin to haunt him, giving ammunition to those who don’t like him. It’s the kind of story I like to read. I find church intrigue to be intriguing.

My writing, I’m discovering, is a journey of my own choosing. Were I to be honest, I would have to say I want my writing to be the engine that propels me out into the world. I’m not an adventurer, but I would like to be able to travel the world, see new places, especially those of historical value. I want to live in Rome, visit England and Germany, hell even see the other states of this great country. I want to have that freedom to explore which in turn will give weight to what I write.

Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but it’s not one that I’m willing to give up on. If anything, writing allows me a way out of the tedium of everyday living. I can explore without  having to leave the comfort of my home. I can do that with reading, but as the writer, I can dictate the flow of events. I like that. I just have to make myself do that.

Some of my favorite reads

Morris West

Shoes of the Fisherman
Clowns of God
Lazurus
Emienince

Greg Tobin

Conclave
Council

David Osborn

The Last Pope

Short Story: Assassin

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“What the hell?” A large, barrel-chested man shouted as he barged into the chambers, his sword drawn. “How did he get past the guards?”

“I should be asking you the very same question, Officer of the Guard,” another man – this one in robes of embroidered silk, bearing the insignia the Court Advisors – said scathingly, his eyes focused at the dead man on the floor. His blood pooled beside his head, the result of two arrows that pierced his eyes.

“Are you suggesting that my men allowed him access to the King’s chambers, Roma?” The officer asked heatedly, suppressing the urge the attack the advisor. “There is no way that my men were responsible for this.”

“Then how do you explain this, Garrem? Are you suggesting he just materialized into the room?”

“That’s enough out of you two.” Another man – this one arrayed in in armor, bearing the Royal Seal of the King – spoke up. He still had a bow in his hand, but he place the arrow back in his quiver. Beside him, on the throne, sat King Darrian, his face an unreadable mask. “Someone sent an assassin to kill His Majesty and you two want to quibble about how he managed to make it into the chambers? This is not the time.”

“With all due respect,” Roma bowed at the Chief Guard, “but I dare say it is. There was a serious breach of our defenses and we need to know how and why. Who was responsible? How did he get in? What do we need to do to shore up our protection of His Royal Highness? This isn’t something we can ignore.”

“There will time for that later, Roma.” King Darrian replied for his Chief Guard. “Right now I’m more interested in who this assassin was, and who sent him.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Roma looked at everyone in disbelief. “It must have been the Yelians. Look at what he’s wearing! He’s one of their guards!”

The king glanced at his advisor with a look of pity before addressing his Guard. “We need to search him.”

“I’ll do it, Majesty.” Garrem started towards the assassin but was stilled with a gesture from the Chief Guard.

“Not yet. He may be warded.”

“Warded? But he’s dead. Surely any wards that protected him would have broken the moment he breathed his last.”

“Perhaps, but we don’t have the luxury of making that assumption,” the Chief Guard informed the Officer of the Guard. “Our allies made that same mistake and when they investigated the dead body of the assassin to be, there was an explosion and arcane fire rained on everyone assembled in the room, killing everyone in the room, including their king. Fortunately, the prince happened to have left the room moments before the attack and survived. I’d rather not take that chance.”

With a nod, he signaled to a couple of spellcasters who stood behind out of sight behind the tapestry of Founding of the Realm. The couple, a man and his wife, began to chant incantations, searching the deceased for any wards or curses. After several tense minutes, the woman turned and addressed the Chief in an unusually low voice, “He is clean. There are no wards, talismans, or other magical items on his person. He is as he appears, unprotected and undeniably dead.”

“Thank you,” King Darrian sighed with relief. “You may go back to your station, but don’t wander off. We may have need of your services again.” The couple bowed low, and without a word left the chamber. “Now you may search him, Garrem.”

Garrem made swift work of searching he deceased. He turned out his pockets, pulling out Yelian coins, maps, and orders to assassinate the Chanalian court, stating with Darrian. “It appears to be a Yelian guard, Your Majesty. His manner of dress, his meager possessions, everything points to an act of betrayal.”

“There you have it,” Roma said silkily. “Yelia has engaged in an unprovoked, and may I add, cowardly attack on our sovereign. We must respond in kind!”

“Our closest allies?” Darrian spat angrily at his advisor. “Are you so witless that you are blinded by what you see and fail to see the truth?”

“The truth is plain enough for even the most dimwitted to see, Your Highness. King Lain has betrayed you, as I always warned you he would.”

“And your hatred of the Yelian’s has betrayed you, Roma. It wasn’t the Yelians.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“If I may,” Garrem stood up, wiping the blood from his hands with the dead man’s cloak. “He is as he appears to be, a Yelian, or so we are made to believe.”

“What are you going on about, Officer of the Guard?”

“We have employed assassins before, Roma. Maybe not often, and never towards an ally, but against an enemy we have. It’s a dirty game, but not one we are above employing at need. No assassin is stupid enough to go in dressed in a manner that’ll betray the one responsible for the assassination. He must go in dressed to be unnoticed. He will carry nothing other than his weapon. No one goes in with orders in his hands, coins of his home realm. Whoever is responsible wanted to implicate our closest ally, that much is obvious.”

“If not Yelia, then who?”

“Answer me this, how did he get in?” the Chief Guard asked the advisor.

“How should I know? Ask your Officer. It was he and his men that failed to stop this would be assassin from storming the chamber.”

“This was no failure of either my men or our defenses. There are no unguarded points of entry, and to get here, he would have had to force his way through several layers of protection.”

“There is one way,” Darrian said.

“What?” Garrem exclaimed, his face draining of all color.

“At peace. There is a secret way in and out, known only to myself and a few key personel.”

“And am I not to be trusted?” Roma asked indignantly.

“In a word? No.” The Chief Guard replied. “Other than the King, only myself and the Royal Attachment knows of it. The spellcasters erase all knowledge of the passage should one of the Attachment leave the King’s service. There is no one who could possibly know the secret way in.”

“There is one,” Garrem sighed. “Amian”

“What?” Roma scoffed. Do you suspect the Prince might have tried to kill his father? What could possibly make you even consider that a possibility?”

“The fact that he defected to Morta,” the Officer replied. “It’s not a big secret that he blames the King for the Queen’s death. It’s not unheard of for the son to kill the father to ascend to the throne, and in this he has cause, though his cause in an unjust one.”

“Yes, I fear you’re right, Garrem. “The Chief Guard nodded. “I’m also disposed to believe Amian’s the one behind the attack.”

“Where’s the proof?” Roma asked, his arms outstretched to those assembled in the room. He paced in front of the body, almost like a counselor pleading his client’s innocence. “Where’s the proof that the prince had anything to do with it? I defy you to show me.”

“Proof?” The Chief Guard sneered contemptuously. “We have no proof, only suspicions at the moment, but bear with me. The assassin managed to sneak in undetected. The only way he could have made it into the chambers undetected would have been through the King’s passage. Also, the attack lacked subtlety. It was unrefined, poorly planned, and even worse in its execution. This bears Amian’s hallmark.”

“Without proof that the the prince did it in exile, how can you be so swift in judgement? There’s no way he could have done it from Morta.”

“You’re absolutely correct,” King Darrian agreed, “at least not without assistance, Roma. Pella! Ostian! We need your assistance once more!”

The spellcasters appeared immediately from behind the tapestry. “Your Majesty!” Pella replied as she and her husband bowed.

“We suspect that there’s a traitor amongst us. What do you see?”

“Often the sight is cloudy,” Pella replied, “but this is not the case. The traitor is here, in plain sight, paying deference to the one-time prince, the traitor Amian. He lacks subtlety and wisdom and betrays himself with his defiance of the obvious and his defence of the guilty. Look no further, Majesty. There is no need to employ the ancient magicks. His own words brands him a traitor.”

“How dare you?” Roma spat. “I would never betray the kingdom!”

“But you would betray the King, Roma?” The Chief Guard pulled his sword from the scabbard as he stepped down from the dias and reached out to grab the advisor.

“Darrian betrayed us first, leaving us vulnerable to attack. He’s guilty of the Queen’s death, and countless other subjects, all for a fool’s errand. No, his kingship is over. The Prince Amain is the rightful King.”

Roma pulled an orb from beneath his breast pocket. “Death to the treasonous king!” He threw the orb towards the king but the orb hovered for a moment and then a burst into blue flame, showering Roma with arcane fire. Pella and Ostian muttered furiously as they directed the orbs power towards the traitor, his screams echoing from beyond a chasm, fire consuming him until nothing remained but a charred heap. The magic dissipated and Pella and Ostian lifted their wards.

“What luck!” Garrem exclaimed.

“Luck?” Pella raised an eyebrow. “It was obvious he was the traitor from the start, such as it was obvious that there were no wards protecting the assassin. Ostian scanned the room from artifacts of magical properties as I searched the deceased. We set up a barrier around Roma once we were certain.”

“Why then didn’t you tell us?” The Chief Guard yelled angrily.

“What has happened had to play out,” Ostian replied hoarsely, speaking for the first time. “He had to reveal his guilt before we could intervene. We are not murders, nor are we employed as such. Neither are we soothsayers. Our duty is to protect the king and not dictate the flow of events to our will.”

“You did well,” the King thanked the spellcasters. “Now we must respond in kind. Amain’s actions has earned him the title of traitor to the realm. Son or no, he must answer with his blood. Garrem, you know what need be done.”

“And so it will be done,” Garrem said with a sigh before bowing to his leige and turning away, his heart heavy. The one-time prince’s life was forfeit, and it would fall to him to carry out the sentence.

 

Short Stories

Next story – Sacrificed Death
Previous story – Los Altos

Post NaNo: I’m ready to start on my real novel

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NaNo-2015-Winner-Badge-Large-SquareHere it is, the day after, and I took a day off from work. It wasn’t the result of NaNoWriMo but rather pushing myself at work the past couple of weeks. I had hoped to last until my scheduled days off, which would have been Thursday and Friday, but when I woke up, I knew I had to rest or else I really would go down for the count.

So I slept in until about noon. When I did manage to get out of bed, I didn’t do much but shower and get dressed. Feeling hungry, I headed into town to buy myself a salad. Another consequence of working to much lately has been eating poorly, and I just needed some vegetables. I’m not sure if a salad really counts, but it was still better than the fast food crap I’ve been shoving into my mouth.

I relaxed and didn’t think about writing. For the past month, I wrote a story that never really gelled. My characters were uncooperative, and the story never took off. The suspense I hoped to create between my two main characters never really formed, and there was never any action between the antagonist and the protagonists. I quickly fell out of love for the story, but I pushed through to the end, happy that it’s finally over.

But as I rested today, an itch to revisit another NaNo came to me. Last year I started writing the story of Giada, a minor character in my first NaNo, The Son of the Father. That too didn’t go the way I planned, and in fact it’s the second attempt to write the story, but I never gave up on it. I simply put it on hold, until now.

I opened both attempts to write the story, and though they are vastly different stories, I think I can use the best of them to create a third, and final version. Or at least that’s my hope. Giada, as I originally envisioned her, was an escort for the rich and powerful, a high-priced prostitute and a former porn starlet. I created her as an act of revenge towards a former flame who I felt betrayed me.

But now, years after the fact, I think that’s been my main problem with Giada. She isn’t some immoral, promiscuous slut. She’s a woman who’s been hurt by the men in her life, namely an emotionally unavailable father, and lovers who saw her as a prize to be coveted rather than a person deserving of respect. Though she lives a very free existence, she’s not some shallow bimbo. Giada is an earnest and sincere woman.

I fell in love with the character in spite of myself. Out of all of the characters I have created, she’s the one I like the most. She’s exuberant and just has a joy for life that I find endearing and contagious. She refuses to be kept down despite all the crap that’s gone her way.

That’s why I’ve had so much trouble writing her story. She deserves a good tale. I know she’s a fictional person, but she is real in my mind’s eye. She lives and breaths as a figment of my imagination, far more than some of the others I have created. She’s a complete woman, with both good and bad in her.

Giada will be the next project I write. I wonder how I’ll do it, to reconcile my the different versions of her, but I suspect most of what I have will be thrown out. Well actually, I’ll probably recycle most of it. It may not fit into her narrative, but it’s too good to let go.

While I may not have found any pleasure in this year’s NaNoWriMo, it may have rekindled my desire to write. Only time will tell if I go through with publishing anything, but for now at least I had fun with the exercise.

NaNoWriMo 2015: Is it day 19 already?

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NaNo-2015-Participant-Badge-Large-SquareIt’s the 19th day of NaNoWriMo, and I’m slightly behind, but not by much. I just now started writing for the day, and I have almost 2K words to write just to catch up, but over all, I think I’ve done a remarkable job staying on track, but I never was able to build the lead as I would have liked.

My problem right now is that my characters are flip flopping. One was my killer, a male who became a female-to-male crossdresser, but then the female character blossomed and is now a person in her own right. I’m going to have a lot of revising to do to fix this.

Then my two main characters, ex-lovers who are forced to work together in order to survive, are simply getting along too well. The tension between the two isn’t developing as it should. I need their history to make their close proximity to each other a difficult, almost impossible proposition. They need to become more hostile towards each other. I need Shelby’s animosity to grow to the point where her feelings of rejection and abandonment consume her, and it spills over.

This is the story I want to tell, of two people who once loved each other figuring out how to coexist. It needs to be about the pain of a broken heart, and learning to live when someone leaves when you need them the most. It’s the journey from the bitter edge, where one can lose all hope and direction, and learn that there’s more to life than one failure.

Right now, everything is too convoluted to make sense of it. You’d think I would learn by now, that writing doesn’t always go in the direction you hoped it would. No matter. Onward, ho!

 

NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 8

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NaNo-2015-Participant-Badge-Large-SquareI’m still chugging along, somehow managing to keep myself on par. This is probably one of my better writing experiences I’ve ever had. Today I squeezed out 3584 words, bringing my November total to 14226, or almost a thousand over par. No need to pat me on my back. I’ve already done so.

I don’t know if this novel will be worth a damn. The premise as imagined is a good one, or so I think, but I’m having trouble moving it along. I’m writing chapter 5, and I’m just getting to the part where the action begins. This is moving glacially slow, or so I fear. I want the story to start. I want some action. Nay, I demand it.

I’m setting up the trigger, and by the end of this chapter I’ll have my main character on the run, fearing for her life. At the same time, she’s going to have to deal with her feeling towards her ex, her feelings of betrayal and abandonment, and her own fears. She’s spent years going from one abusive relationship to another, until fearing for her life, she shut out all hope of a romantic attachment.

I hope I get it right soon. This is harder than I had expected, but I suppose it always is. Writing is less a sprint than a long distance run. You don’t always see where your going, and there are a ton of obstacles waiting to trip you up, but everyday it gets a little closer, and the story may take unexpected turns, but you have some notion of what the finish line will look like, and you direct your story accordingly.