I have just found the perfect soundtrack for this year's NaNovel.

And it is epic.

I stumbled across The Clockwork Dolls while browsing last.fm, and immediately went and bought their first album, Dramatis Personae. Their steampunk-y aesthetic, combined with the epic nature of their orchestrations, makes them the perfect soundtrack for the tentatively-titled Pediophobia (which mean "fear of dolls" and would be perfect if it weren't for some unfortunate connotations).

I am now so excited for November.

ATHENA! READ THIS PLEASE!

Google still hates me, so I can't comment on any Blogger page unless it has pop-up comment boxes. Could you pretty, pretty please include them in the renovations? *flutters eyelashes, grins hopefully*

When It All Comes Together

Athena, I was going to comment on your post, but Google hates me. So instead, I'm just going to mention here that I blame reality TV. Especially American Idol and its variants.

But that's not all that I want to talk about here. No, I'm here to brag a little bit and also, hopefully, share a little bit of infectious glee and get some stories. What I'm talking about is that glorious, shining moment when you first see the shape of your story.

Hopefully it's happened to all of us - a sudden revelation that explains to us how characters or objects are important, how the middle's going to hold up or how the ending is going to play out, what a certain character's motivations are, or just what the theme is (which can help you make decisions about everything else). Whatever it is, it's that corner piece in the puzzle that makes all the others seem to just slot into place with ease. After this realisation, your plot begins to make sense, and your story becomes a coherent whole. You finally know where you're taking it, or rather where it's taking you, and now you have a road map. And all that's left to do is write it.

Or maybe that's just me. Since I'm a bit of a pantser, I tend to start at the beginning with a clear idea of how it should end - but no idea of why the ending seems to work so well or is so important - and a few major events for the middle. Then I write until I get stuck. Then I go looking for inspiration and waste hours and hours and hours on the internets. I'm getting better, though - I used to waste years on the internets when I got stuck. My daily writing quota is helping.

When I get really, truly stuck, though, when my enthusiasm for a project is scraping mud off of the bottom of the ocean and I want to give all of my characters a ding alongside the ear, when I'm seriously considering moving on to the next project but for all the time and effort I've invested in the current one, that's when I go out and mow the lawn. Or shovel snow. Or sweep and mop all of the floors. Something mindless and menial, that will occupy my body and leave my mind free to wander, to connect the dots on its own without me sticking more information into it or tweaking everything it offers up. Usually, I find I know what I'm doing from the very start on projects with any amount of staying power. I just usually don't tell myself.

This happened to me recently. My apocalyptic urban epic fantasy with the elves and stuff has had two major revisions recently, and I was quite pleased with where it was going, until just a little while ago. Then I got mired in apathy and couldn't quite seem to dislodge myself. Finally, I gave up and read a quite excellent book on plot instead. (It was "Plot", by Ansen Dibell, if anyone's wondering, and while it would likely have confused someone just starting out, I think I knew what she was talking about when she wandered off into the vaguely mystical aspects of writing.) The book was very inspiring, actually, and helped me realise that I was trying to write it from the viewpoint of the wrong character.

But it wasn't Ansen Dibell (and yes, that's a pen name) who made the whole thing cohere for me. No, that was going out to mow the lawn and giving my subconscious time to throw up that brilliant flash of light that made the whole thing make sense. I realised that a revelation that I thought was going to be quite important and part of the endgame was actually necessary for the middle, and not as important as I thought it was. Suddenly, the whole story made a lot more sense, and I realised what I was really trying to say.

So what I'm wondering is, do you guys get those flashes of light too? Or do you actually outline? If so, how do you figure out what's going to happen in your middle, and how do you decide what's going to be important beforehand? Does the story ever change shape while you're writing it? What is your favourite part of the writing process? Share, please!

Slightly in shock...

The Novel is complete.

This is A Big Deal. I'm under no illusions that it's perfect, or even ready to be read over by another human being, what with its gaping plot holes, loose threads, and wild inconsistencies in characterization, but it is now words on a page instead of words in my head. It's actually kind of weird, not having this project in the back of my mind. When I finish edits it's going to be even weirder.

BUT IT'S DONE ASDADKLJF;; :DDDD

Really, I just wanted to squee. We now return to your regularly scheduled intelligent discussion.


Hmmm, now it needs a proper title...

OH MY GOD

It's finally happened. They showed signs of rebellion, but nothing like this has ever occured. Yet. And now it has, and I can't stop grinning. I blame the fact that I created a character who was meant to be a bit mysterious and inscrutable.

Okay. I'm getting ahead of myself. Basically, the story goes like this: Today I sat down and wrote like a madwoman. I'm nearing the grand finale, I'm worrying about how I'm going to work certain elements into my story, I'm not sure I'll have enough plot left to fill 50k, and I haven't explained a lot of what seems like filler.

Then I come to the scene where my Mysterious Wise Woman character has to explain Peter's Very Important Backstory to Wendy. This is an important scene, even pivotal, and I've been looking forward to it for forever. I hit this scene with about two hundred words to go before I hit 20k, and I'm thinking, "I'll just start this, maybe with a bit of foreshadowing, get those two hundred words down without getting into the Very Important Backstory so I'm not tempted to stay up all night writing, and then I'll go to bed." Seemed like a sound and solid plan, right?

WRONG.

My Mysterious Wise Woman proceeded to dash off onto an eloquent and excellent tangent about my magical world, and, in doing so, managed to fill in a few of my plot holes, add some of my neglected elements, introduce a possibility for a WHOLE 'NOTHER GRAND FINALE past the one I already have planned out, provide reasons for the actions of pretty much everyone throughout the book, tie in the Very Important Backstory and Wendy's identity as a writer, add a darker, stranger, more Gaimanesque twist to the magical world and pretty much the whole book, and cast a sense of foreboding over what is shaping up to be the Final Battle (unless I run out of plot before I run out of words, in which case it will be the Penultimate Battle). And not one word of this did I plan. I don't think I even knew it was percolating in my subconscious until Erzebet laid it all out in black and white. I know where some elements of it came from (Coraline and Solemn Coyote's reviews on FP, to name two), but I had no idea that it would all tie together so nicely, and turn into such a lovely little piece of spine-tingling silliness.

So thanks, characters, for indulging in your rebellious urges. :D I'll be right back, though: busy sleeping. LIKE YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN AT FOUR IN THE MORNING, GUYS.

This Is Going Better Than I'd Hoped

I'm actually surprised I managed 5000 words today. (Well, 5098, to be exact.) And two scenes just popped out of nowhere. Funny thing is, they work, and they advance the plot and characters where I didn't know they needed advancing, and WOW is this ever fun.

I didn't even write all of my free time today. I'm gonna try to get more writing done tomorrow.

And I even managed to finish my essay, too! This is going much better than I'd hoped.

Guess who's crazy?

Obviously me, as I have taken the plunge and officially signed up for this year's NaNoWriMo.

eek

My page is here and I'd love to be writing buddies with you awesome people! I will be looking you up too, so...whoever gets there first, I guess.

eek

OH MY GOD IT'S DONE

Sooo...maybe this isn't as great an accomplishment as Athena's publication of AG (and congratulations to her! I promise I'll order it. One of these days). But it means rather a lot to me personally, and I know you guys'll party with me about it, so here goes.

I have finally finished a short story I began over a year ago.

Yeah, I know, I know. But that's the thing about the way I write. I get the "bug" and dash off a page of self-contained brilliance, or the beginning of a novel that I dream about and plan out and hang out with the characters of, and then for whatever reason, I slowly stop writing about until it's left half-finished and languishing in bottom-drawer hell. So actually getting to write the ending that I've had planned out for over a year (because that's how I plan my stories: I set up the premise and the characters and the backstory, and then I decide how I'd like it to end, and then I start writing and wait and see how everything else falls into place. So far it's worked.) is a really big deal for me. In fact, this might be the first piece of original fiction that I've worked on for longer than one day and that wasn't a school assignment, that I've actually finished.

Maybe this isn't such a great track record, but it pleases me. Why? Because I'm working my way up. Last summer, I completed a twenty-chapter fanfic that I started and posted to ff.net on a whim, and then had to finish. That was an accomplishment for me. Today, I've posted the end of Paper and Ink, and that's a bigger accomplishment. But the reason both of these matter to me is not what they are, but what they could be.

These two small successes mean that I have brought myself to the point where I can finish things, rather than find some small fault with them and let it grow until I can't move forward anymore, or get bored and flutter off to another project. And that means that I can finish a full-length novel.

And that means it's party time.

E's Ten Rules

Just in case anyone was interested...

1. Love your characters. Ignore the Mary-Sue litmus tests that say that if you think of your characters as anything more than pawns, you are a bad writer and deserve to be shot. If you don't care (and care deeply) about what happens to your characters, your story won't have any life to it. Readers will pick up on this, and it will make your books less appealing.

2. But just because you love your characters, don't cut them too many breaks. (This is probably what the 'Sue tests are talking about.) Treat your character as you would your child. If you stepped in to solve every one of your child's problems, that child would grow up spoilt and bratty. The same holds true for characters.

3. Don't flog a dead horse. If you aren't interested, readers won't be interested. If a story just isn't coming together, take a break. Do something else. Give up if you must.

4. Get to know your characters really, really well. It will help you keep them in character as you write, and help make them more real to the readers (who might then start fancults shipping two of your male mains. You never know). Finding out that Pat likes anchovies on her pizza, or that Sam has an obsessive need to correct punctuation on signs, might even further the plot. You never know.

5. Don't try to write immediately after reading a favourite book. Give it a couple hours to digest. Otherwise, the author's style turns up in chunks in your prose, and though it may be excellent writing in and of itself, it looks very out-of-place next to your style, whatever that is. (This one had to be learned through trial and error. Apparently, I actually don't write anything like J. M. Barrie, and trying to do it cold, without reading Peter Pan immediately beforehand, was impossible.)

6. Do the research. Any book, no matter the genre or intended audience, is always that much more engaging when it has the grounding in reality that proper details provide, and where are you going to find those details if you don't look for them? Also, glaring (or even minor) errors in the background world of your story will drag a reader out of that world faster than you can say "fourth wall". There are no excuses, especially not since the advent of Google. Do the research.

7. Make rules for your world and stick to them (unless you have a really good plot-driving reason to break them). It doesn't matter if you're on the ice moons of Appsodj:afkjwer in the Beta Centauri region, or in the court of Faerie, or on the streets of Toronto. Your world has to have rules that apply to everyone. And I do mean everyone, or you may end up with a 'Sue on your hands. (Unless you're Lewis Carroll, in which case, feel free to do whatever you like. The rest of us mere mortals, however, have to create believeable worlds, and the best way to do that it to establish rules.)

8. Learn grammar. And punctuation. And spelling. The best story, with the most memorable, lifelike characters, will go unread, unheard, and unnoticed if it's illegible. Readers won't do the work necessary to wade through a badly-punctuated, misspelled minefield no matter how good it is, and publishers will take one look at a manuscript riddled with typos and send a form rejection.

9. Write down everything that interests you. And I don't mean TV shows and bands and suchlike. That interesting headline in the newspaper, the way that guy you saw this morning in the coffee shop talked, the mysterious flash of light off the roof of the apartment building across from you, that thought you came up with at two in the morning...write it all down. You never know which spark will catch into a blaze.

10. Don't talk to your characters out loud when other people are present. (However, this is fine and even healthy when you're alone.)

Blood & Hot Sauce

Y’know, it’s surprising what you end up missing the most.

Take me, for example. When I was first infected, I steeled myself for endless nights of angst. Never seeing another sunrise, never seeing my old friends and my family again, becoming a monster who had to kill to sustain my own existence, possibly being damned to an eternity in hell...I got over it. None of the old clichés really gave me that much trouble, to tell the truth. No, what got me was the hot sauce.

I’ve had a bottle of hot sauce in my fridge since forever. Hot sauce goes with everything. Everything. And that’s exactly what I ate it with. You ever had cold Chinese from last night – no, Chinese takeout from a fast food place – look, no one thinks that’s funny, so give it a rest, will you? Have any of you ever had cold Chinese food from last night with pickles and hot sauce for breakfast? Let me tell you, it is a feast fit for...well, okay, for a twentysomething male college student. But anyway. If it was possible to survive on nothing but hot sauce, that’s what I would have done.

And then I was infected.

And I discovered that there is, in fact, something that hot sauce does not go great with. And that would be a stomach that’s adapted to handle human blood and...that’s it.

Yeah. It’s fucking boring. Ignore all that romantigothic bullshit about ‘the sweetest bitter nectar ever to cross his lips’ blah blah blah. Blood tastes like blood. That’s kind of the point.

Sure, the first few nights I didn’t notice. It’s kind of a kick for the first little while, as I’m sure all of you know. But then one night I went to the fridge without thinking. And there was that one lonely bottle of hot sauce staring accusingly back at me.

That was the first time my condition actually made me cry. That’s right, I curled up in a ball in the corner and bawled and angsted until the sun came up and knocked me out. Not over my soul, or the family I could never see again, or the people lying dead in dumpsters because of me. No. Not me. I cried over hot sauce.

Oh, now you’re all laughing. Like you haven’t done it too. Every last one of you had a favourite food, I can almost guarantee it. And then one night, when you’d successfully got the big questions out of the way, when you were feeling pretty good about yourself, you realised, “Oh. My. God. I will never eat crackers and cheese again.”

No? Okay, maybe it was realising you can’t go on day-long shopping sprees anymore. Or how in summer, you can’t go shopping at all, because your favourite stores close before the sun sets. Or maybe...I dunno, you can’t go to waterparks anymore. Look, all I was trying to say is that those old clichés aren’t the big deal here. We all thought about them, all the time, even back when we were human. Especially you – you were a vegetarian, right? When it comes to stuff like, like, metaphysical or moral issues, they’re just too big. It’s easy to pick a side, or decide to stay undecided, and then forget about them. No, it’s the little things that get under your skin.

Like hot sauce.

I’m rambling? Oh, I’m so sorry. Take the floor. Angst about how you tried to survive on rats but nearly died again, we all love to listen to that story.

I’m never coming to one of these meetings again.

IT HURTS MY BRAAAAAAAIN

Make it go away, please.

Valentine's Day may be imminent, and I may be female, lonely, single and bitter, but even in my vulnerable state this crock of shit does not look appealing.

I bet they hired TaEnoby to write it. She definitely knows how to put together a self-insert.

I found this interesting.

How to Write a Novel by BarbecuedIguana

It's always interesting to see how somebody else goes about this very, very individualized process. I, for example, cut the number of steps that this person uses in half, usually writing without an outline and hoping for some burst of inspiration to tie it all together. (Oddly enough, it usually works. Sometimes brilliantly. Go figure.) Then I know some people who will start over and over and over again, trying to get it perfect from page 1, and some people who write shitty draft after shitty draft, each one becoming progressively better.

So how do (or did) you guys go about plunging into that novel you're working on, whatever it is? Do you fine-tune every chapter as it comes? Do you start from the end and write backwards? Do you write like a runaway train (like me)? What's in your box of writing tricks? Spill, so I can create the perfect novel-writing robot.

*ahem* I mean, we'd all like to know. Yes.

Large image steals your bandwidth!

Soooo, because Athena requested it, teasery thingummies for my comic, the cleverly-named (at least I think so) Night Club. If you want to know what's going on here, you can find the comic in its entirety on my deviantART page, here. It starts out kind of...to put it nicely, rocky. But (in my opinion at least) it gets better. Please bear with the horrible spectre of the gigantic manga eyes - they go away after a few pages.

Updates, eh?

I just want to spout about what I've been doing, because something somewhere has lit a fire under me.

First, there's this lovely essay that I'm trying to write for a scholarship, on the topic of my passion for one of the arts. Naturally, I chose literature. Unfortunately, the first draft read like a snarky pretentious thirteen-year-old with an ever-present black beret and book of bad goth poetry had written it, and had to be abandoned. I'm now on the second attempt, which sounds much, much more Disney-like, but hey, Disney knows how to tug the old heartstrings, so I can live with this.
Then, there's the actual writing side of things. I dredged up an old manuscript a little while ago and decided to give it a facelift. The ever-so-cleverly named Judgement features the apocalypse, all-too-human elves, moralistic angst, pseudo-science, nanobots, werewolves, and a saviour. It started as a little bit of fluff about nano-immortality, and quickly developed out of control into an attempt to fix everything I don't like about epic fantasy. Why do I keep doing this?
At any rate, this new version looks rather promising. At least it's better than the original, which read like it was written by a fourteen-year-old (which it was. Maybe that explains it).
And finally, in doing some research for a comic (goddamnit it's hard to draw someone leaping tall buildings in a single bound), I discovered parkour looks a hell of a lot cooler than I knew. This comic is going to go from pretty-yet-blah to OMG ACTIONSEQUENCE! just so I can use some of the photoref I found.

So! Shameless self-plug completed, I have that darn essay to work on. What've you lot been up to?

Query Shark

I know I'm not the only one who's written query letters upon query letters, finally giving up, crumpling the offending paper into a tiny ball and screaming, "AIGH! THIS IS ALL A BUNCH OF DRIVEL! WHY CAN'T I DO IT? WHYYYYYYYY??????"

*ahem* Or maybe that is only me.

At any rate, Query Shark is designed to help you out with that. The guy behind it will review query letters for free and post them complete with critique on his blog, queryshark.blogspot.com. If you can handle scathing reviews of your letter being posted on the Internets for all to see, then he's got some really excellent advice that will help ya cut through the crap and find something that might impress a literary agent or publisher. Hope this helps somebody out, because I know it's decreased the number of ex-query-letter paper balls in my wastebasket by nearly fifty percent. And I've just been reading the letters that were posted.

In completely unrelated news, my family and I went to a fireworks festival this weekend, and in the hotel where we were staying, someone was having a theme wedding, with all the guests in costume. That's not the crazy part, though. The crazy part is that the theme was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

That's right.

Because no one has posted for a while...

...here is a short story, quite honestly inspired by the Rick Springfield song "Jessie's Girl".


Well, the night was pretty much ruined now.
I caught Jessie giving me dirty looks as I walked her home. Like it was my fault that Ollie’d shown up and glommed onto us? I love my best friend dearly in that weird way guys have, I really do, I just sometimes don’t like him that much.
The walk up to Jessie’s front door was much too short. We stood there, under her porch light, an awkward moment made worse for Ollie’s presence, not so much seen as felt.
“So, uh, thanks,” Jessie muttered, ducking behind her short, straight hair. ‘I had...fun. Yeah. I had fun.”
“Yeah. Uh, me too.” I felt the need to clarify.
“Yeah. So we should go out again, hey?” Jessie mumbled through the curtain of her hair.
“Yeah. Sure. Sometime soon.” And then, partly because I wanted to and partly to spite Ollie, I leaned down and kissed her.
Her lips were surprisingly cool, probably due to the night air, but really soft, and she tasted faintly of strawberry-flavoured chemical jelly. It was kind of nice.
She looked about as surprised as I felt. I hadn’t known I was going to do that, either, until I’d done it. But now it was done. No going back.
“So I’d like to, uh, see you again,” Jessie stuttered, and pushed open the door, scurried inside, and shut the door, only to poke her head back around it. To say, “I'll call you!” She ducked back inside, only to reappear around the door. “Um, what’s your number?”
I gave her my cell number, and she flashed me one of her brief, rare smiles that was like finding gold in the sock drawer. “Thanks, Jared,” she said, and there was no uncertainty in it. Then she shut the door.
‘Oh man, she likes me,” I whispered to the porch light. I felt like skipping down the path back to the sidewalk, but managed to restrain myself. I mean, Ollie’s seen me being a doofus before, but Jessie hadn’t, and might have got the wrong idea.
‘Man, she likes me,” I repeated for Ollie’s benefit. He sort of scowled at me. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye – he didn’t seem too happy. Well, tough luck. He was the one who’d shown up and ruined my date. Let him sulk. I wasn’t going to waste time or emotion on him.
Still, my dad’s always said I have curiosity enough to kill five cats in one go and maybe a few parakeets in the bargain. Once something gets me going, I just can’t leave it alone. And I’d noticed something had been eating at Ollie for a while now. So I ploughed into it headlong. “What’s the deal, dude? Did I do something that pissed you off more than usual?”
Ollie sort of grunted. Not terribly helpful.
“Okay, so what did I do?” I tried to think of every dick move I’d made in the past week. Nope, nothing came to mind. What had even happened this past week? Nothing at all, unless you count Jessie and me having our first pseudo-date. “You showed up in the middle of our date, so I’m gonna guess it has to do with Jessie.”
Ollie grunted again, and kicked at a rock in the street. He’d kind of hunched his shoulders up, and that made the collar of his jacket stand up. Since his head was down, I couldn’t really see his face for collar and shoulders. So it was pretty hard to read his expression. That might be part of why I continued to operate so obliviously. “Look, I’ve been out with girls before, and it didn’t cause any problems. I mean, you know I’m not one of those losers who gets all caught up in a girl and forgets about everyone else. We’re still friends, so I don’t really get what -”
Ollie drew back a foot and kicked the rock across the street, where it bounced off someone’s tire. “God, Jared, you really don’t get it.”
And then, and only then, did it hit me in a blinding flash of the obvious. ‘Oh my God. I’m so stupid! Ollie, why didn’t you tell me you liked Jessie?”
Oddly enough, this did not provoke the reaction I’d expected. I don’t even know what I’d expected, maybe for Ollie to lighten up and go, “You got me,” like just knowing what was wrong would solve it. Or whatever. But instead, Ollie burrowed deeper into his coat. It looked like he was a tortoise, hunching up in his shell.
Then he took a deep breath, let out a long sigh, and dropped his shoulders, bringing his head back up and turned and looked me in the eye. “God, Jared,” he said, and then he grabbed me and kissed me.
It was nothing like kissing Jessie. First, Ollie’s as tall as I am, so I wasn’t leaning down. Second, he kissed harder than she did. I mean, he was kissing me, so there was more pressure, but his lips weren’t as soft as hers. They seemed stronger, somehow. And third, Ollie was my best friend since forever. That added weirdness.
And there was no strawberry lipgloss involved.
After what mustn’t have been that much time but felt like too damn long, he pulled away. I guess it must have shown how stunned I was. I don’t know. Ollie looked me in the eye again, and said, deadpan, “Do you get it now?”
Then he turned around and walked away.
Seconds later, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was a text from Jessie. The whole message was you could have just told me no.
Well, the night’s pretty much ruined now.

To kick off the short stories...

This could be considered a shameless self-plug. Hope you enjoy anyway!
___________________________________________________

Her hand flashed out. “What’s behind that, anyway?”

“No – don’t -”

Too late. Her fingers, those slim white fingers he’d admired as they wove the balls back and forth, had gripped the edges of his mask, and, in one swift motion, she’d pulled it away. Almost like sleight-of-hand. She’d make an excellent conjuror.

He flung up his hands to try to hide his face, in vain, in vain. Her brilliant eyes, almost the same light turquoise of a depthlessly clear alkali lake, widened in shock, and her conjuror’s hand dropped weakly to her side, his white mask slithering from between her fingers. “What – why on earth do you wear that silly thing? There’s nothing wrong with you, nothing at all!” She sounded breathless, her voice becoming shrill on the last three words. He couldn’t quite see, but he thought a blush had risen to her cheeks.

“Did I say there was anything wrong with my face?” He dropped to his knees, trying to find and lift the mask without dropping his hands. “I don’t wear that mask out of vanity!”

“Why? Why not let the world see your face?” She knelt too, her long, dishwater-blond hair falling down and obscuring her eyes. Impatiently, she pushed it back behind her ear, and turned those bright eyes on him. “You’re…you’re really handsome.”

He laughed, a laugh which seemed to sear his throat like bile. “Exactly.”

She regarded him for a long moment, eyes boring into him like augurs. Finally, she said, “I don’t understand.” She sounded frustrated, pushed beyond the limits of her experience. “Why would you want to hide yourself, if there’s nothing wrong with you?”

He gave in at last, letting his right hand drop to the sawdust on the floor below, groping for the mask even as he stole a glance at the huge, mottled purple-red birthmark disgracing the right side of her lovely face. She cringed back, whether from his careless stare or the glimpse of his face, he couldn’t tell. Immediately, he averted his eyes, turning all his attention to the finding of his mask. “I want to hide from the world, want to hide this face, because…”

There weren’t words. How could he explain the long years, the young women (and men) falling at his feet, only to find their hopes dashed and their hearts crushed the very next day, discovering he was not the same person they thought he was, or worse, thinking that he’d moved on and forgotten them? How could he explain the betrayal he – or, rather, his traitor face - had dealt to so many naïve faces in the crowd, so many bundles of hopes and dreams and fears and wishes who made up the Audience, the great faceless, seething, demanding mass that had stolen his hopes and dreams and still ate a little more of him every night? “Despair.” The word was an apt description of what he’d finally succumbed to, what he’d found living on the coattails of that thing that had driven him to the circus in the first place. “And desire.” He had no other explanation. “It’s just easier this way.”

She stared at him, not angrily, not accusingly, not longingly like so many girls before her, just blankly and for so long that he became uncomfortable sitting there and busied himself looking for his mask again. And just when he thought he couldn’t bear it any more, she spoke.

“Easier?” Her voice sounded flat, dead. “It’s easier for you? You don’t have to bear the burden of having a beautiful face?” And now a touch of venom leaked into her words, a deadly poison mixed of tears and bitterness, with just a shred of hardy hope. “You don’t know what a burden is. It’s easier for you to hide? So it is for the rest of us. But some of us have more guts than that.”

She stood, her hair falling back over her face. He stood too, fixing his mask back in place as he did. It settled into place like a welcoming embrace. They stood looking at each other for another long moment, a sort of silent battle boiling the air between them. Finally, he turned away. “You would make an excellent conjuror.”

Her voice was soft, but there was a shade of reproach in it. “Some of us are brave enough not to hide.”

Bring back the short story!

Basically, I want to do just that.
The short story has, in recent years, been much maligned and/or ignored by the literary community. But since I think short stories are both fun to write and read, and since writing short stories is an great exercise in character-building and plotting that I never look down my nose on, I challenge you all: write short stories!
Share them if you feel like it. Or don't. Start them with "Once upon a time..." and end them with "The End." Or start in the middle and leave the ending ambiguous and unresolved. Just write them!
*ahem* I sound like my grade three teacher. Oh well. I think it'd be fun. Who's with me?

What do you think of...

...vampires and cat-people and werespiders, oh my?
I've been trying to be original with my characters in my less hammy, angsty vampire story, but I'm worried I've either taken it too far or not far enough. I mean, a werespider is rather original, but a cat-boy is just asking for trouble. Especially when the way he got to be part cat sounds like the setup for a bad joke. What do you all think?

E

E Got myself in over my head; won’t try too hard to escape in case I do, and discover I wanted to be there all along.

Hello, I'm the not-so-mysterious E, and I eat muffins for breakfast. At the moment I'm considering how bad I am at writing things about myself and not rambling self-centredly. I love to write, but I have a tendency to ramble. If you notice I'm getting very badly off-topic, just poke me and I'll try to stop. I'm also wondering if this blog is anything like a French salon. And wondering how long I can get away with not writing this intro piece.

In case you can't tell, I'm also rather good at procrastinating.