Writing

From Cin­der, still very much in ear­ly 1^st draft (this is from the sec­ond scene, and it was only writ­ten about an hour ago):

Out­side, vast ener­gies swirled, send­ing translu­cent stream­ers of pale light shiv­er­ing over the crys­tal of the great win­dow. Through them, she could see stars, shiv­er­ing and sparkling through the bow-wake of the shield­ing. One red star, at the win­dow’s cen­ter, showed a broad disc, even at this dis­tance. Sol, then. She watched it, bring­ing up fil­ters in the crys­tal win­dow to exam­ine it with­out squint­ing or leak­ing more brine from her eyes.

After a dozen min­utes or so she saw a tiny shad­ow right at Sol’s center.

“Is that Earth?” she said, touch­ing the shadow.

»Yes, the ship sent on her pri­vate chan­nel. »Please, I must concentrate.

She nod­ded. The ship was far too polite to ignore her, or to out­right tell her to shut up.

The shad­ow swelled: a dot, a disc, a plan­et. A rocky black sphere, large enough to blot out the sun, and still they approached. She almost asked the ship why they approached in shad­ow, but real­ized that would tax the envi­ron­ment sys­tems less.

“She” is Lady Schrone, who is new to a human body (hence the bit about brine).

I real­ly want this sto­ry to work; I find the idea inter­est­ing, and I’m try­ing to devel­op enough points of view and sto­ry­lines to go the dis­tance. Let me know what you think.

I’m try­ing to work on a cou­ple of projects, with some suc­cess. I’ve got a new site set up for a project I’m call­ing Cin­der, and some­day, maybe I’ll fill it up with con­tent. Right now I’ve got a cloud of ideas, but I want­ed to get the design right. Ok, I want­ed to play in Pho­to­shop and/or the GIMP.

I’m also work­ing on a longish short sto­ry (9000 words, right now, but it may expand or con­tract; first drafts, you know) set in Ukraine, titled “Between Heav­en and Earth”. It may be one of the dark­est things I’ve ever writ­ten, and I think it may get dark­er before it’s done.

And I’ve still got my zom­bies vs. pirates sto­ry on the go, and I also want to work on my nano win­ner from a cou­ple years ago.

Well, back at ‘er.

Writ­ten today, the 29^th of February:

She plant­ed the seed and wait­ed. After a while rain came down from the sky, pelt­ing her skin, chill­ing her. She shiv­ered but did­n’t leave, not yet.

The Sun came out, warm­ing the soil, dri­ving the cold from her bones. She wait­ed. Clouds scud­ded by over­head, in a hur­ry for some rea­son. The moon rose, stars wheeled, and then the Sun rose again.

She did­n’t just wait, of course. She prayed, she sang, she read the old sto­ries, the myths and the leg­ends. On the sev­enth day she snoozed under a cloud­less sky, wak­ing only briefly when a drag­on­fly hap­pened to touch down on her nose. She observed its cathe­dral-win­dow wings, irrides­cent with refract­ed sun­light, and drowsed once more after it left her.

Rain, Sun, moon, stars: she endured them all. The seedling broke the soil with a quest­ing green curlicue, look­ing for all the world like a ques­tion mark in the Old Tongue. She sat on it and wait­ed more: days, months, decades.

A boy came along and asked her why she’d climbed to the top of the tree.

“I did­n’t,” she said. 

One of my recent ficlets, one that I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of:

The Trick

“You want to see a trick?”

Her eyes nar­rowed. “What kind?”

“Like noth­ing you’ve ever seen,” he said, and took a swig straight from the bot­tle. Red wine stained his teeth. “Promise.”

“All right.” She leaned back in the chair as he stood up, crossed to the cen­tre of the room, and did some kind of odd shoul­der-shrug­ging warmup dance. He’d left the bot­tle on the table, and she took it, wrapped her lips around it, and chugged what remained of the wine. She had a buzz going and wasn’t about to lose it.

With­out pre­lude, with­out scream­ing, with­out any warn­ing what­so­ev­er, he burst into flames. In per­fect silence he burned, star­ing into her soul with those intense grey eyes he had.

She dropped the bot­tle. It shat­tered, green shards every­where. She want­ed to scream but could­n’t. She stared as he was consumed.

There was a pile of ash and a black spot on the hard­wood, and no oth­er evi­dence he’d ever existed.

#

The door opened and he walked in. She leapt from the reclin­er, embraced him, and said, “How’d you do it?”

It’s not always easy, fit­ting a com­plete sto­ry into 1024 char­ac­ters, but this time it just sort of happened.

So I cre­at­ed a new ficlet this morn­ing, called “Jen­ny, who is a dog”. For those of you that haven’t run across Ficlets, here’s the idea: You go to the Ficlets web­site, sign up or sign in, and then you can cre­ate a “ficlet”. A ficlet is a short-short sto­ry, or more accu­rate­ly a part of a sto­ry. You have an upper bound of 1024 char­ac­ters* to tell your sto­ry. Any­one can add onto it by cre­at­ing sequels or pre­quels. Every sto­ry on the site is licensed using a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Share­alike license.

So here’s my lat­est snip­pet of fiction:

Jen­ny, who is a dog, came into the liv­ing room, sat down on the floor, and spoke. “What sup­per?” she said, tail thump­ing on the hardwood.

I stared at her. “Beg par­don?” I was shocked enough that I actu­al­ly respond­ed. To a dog. You see the state of mind I was in?

“Sup­per. Food. What?”

“Uh–” I’d been mak­ing my own dog food, these days. Jen­ny was old, and store-brand food was­n’t doing her any favours. “Liv­er and rice, for you,” I said. “I think piz­za for me.”

“Good. Liv­er good,” she said, and trot­ted off to the din­ing room.

I went into the kitchen and got a beer out of the fridge. As I twist­ed the cap off, my phone rang.

“Y’el­lo?”

“Doug?” It was Lisa, my girl­friend. “Uh, Doug, I did­n’t know who to call–”

“Calm down,” I said. “Deep breaths. What’s up?”

“Mr. Kit,” she said. “He’s–” She could­n’t go on.

“He’s talk­ing?” I said, and there was silence on the line. I knew I was right. Mr. Kit, who is a cat, was talk­ing too.

Jen­ny came into the kitchen and sat on the floor. “Jen­ny good dog,” she said.

And all day it kind of fes­tered in my head. I kept think­ing, what’s next? Where do we go from talk­ing pets?

So I’ve decid­ed to expand it into a short sto­ry (some­thing more like 2,000 or 3,000 words, I’m think­ing). Inter­est­ed? Let me know in the com­ments, and when it’s com­plete, I’ll email you a link to read the whole thing.

____________
* Which works out to about 200 words.

I try to make my ficlets com­plete sto­ries, but not ones that can’t have a sequel or a pre­quel added to them. It’s not easy to make a com­plete sto­ry in 1024 char­ac­ters or less.

Here’s tonight’s effort:

Right on the edge of the world

“Well that’s a fine how do you do,” mut­tered Rubin.

“What you mean, Rubin?” Arnie’s voice always annoyed Rubin, but since the plane crash it had acquired a grat­ing qual­i­ty. It set Rubin’s teeth on edge, it real­ly did.

“We’ve come to the edge,” said Rubin. “See? The crick just flows on over…”

Arnie came up beside him. “So it do, so it do.” He stared down into the dark­ness for a long moment, then looked up at Rubin. His eyes were round and vacant like the moon. A lit­tle thread of drool had escaped his lip and glis­tened on his chin. “What’s that mean?”

Rubin sighed. “It means we turn around. Head upstream, hope we can find help…”

“We’s been walkin’ for days, though,” Arnie whined.

“Dammit, Arnie, don’t you think I know that?” Arnie recoiled from his broth­er’s fury, and Rubin sighed inward­ly. He relent­ed. “Sor­ry, Arnie. There’s no choice.” He smiled. “Know any good songs?”

“Do I!” They turned away from the void, and Arnie began to sing some idiot song. After a cou­ple moments, Rubin joined in.

Not me, but the char­ac­ters in a short piece I’m work­ing on.

The cab dropped them off at Hol­la’s, the night­club’s name writ­ten in white and blue neon on the build­ing’s side. Before they even got in the door they could hear the thump-thump-thump heart­beat of the music pound­ing through the walls and win­dows. Inside the drinks were two-for-one, and the DJ–a woman with a pate shaved down to downy stub­ble, huge black sun­glass­es, and the red­dest lips Peter had ever seen–played tech­no jams that thud­ded like jun­gle drums, call­ing every­one to the dance floor. The club smelled of per­fume and sweat, pheromones and spilled beer.

The beat got to him, got into him, and he let him­self be dragged by the hand to the black-and-white chess­board dance­floor. Ellen was a lit­tle awk­ward at the start–he won­dered how long it’d been since she’d been out dancing–but as the night wore on she found her groove. She pulled her hair free of her pony­tail and shook her head, hard, in time with the pulse of bass and drums. Her hair became a mane, and she was a wild ani­mal, hips shak­ing, hands in the air like she just did­n’t care.

At one point, Peter remem­bered sit­ting at a table with Ellen and a cou­ple they’d just met, a blond col­lege kid with an unlit smoke hang­ing out of the cor­ner of his mouth and a dark-haired girl with a low-cut top and enor­mous breasts held in check by some com­bi­na­tion of good for­tune, mag­ic, and an archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel of a brassiere. He could feel sweat trick­ling down his ribcage, down the back of his neck. He picked up his bot­tle of Bud­weis­er and pressed it to his fore­head, and sighed at the chill. His mus­cles ached and he could­n’t seem to stop smiling. 

So does it paint a pic­ture? I sure hope so…

On the MP3 play­er: RV by Faith No More…

Would any­body tell me if I was get­tin’ stupider?