I’m chuffed. In the Palace of the Jade Lion has broken into the top #100 for 1 Hour Literature and Fiction Short Reads. Thanks, everyone!
Author Archives: ogresan
In the Palace of the Jade Lion
While we’re all waiting on larger matters, I decided to do a solo issue of a novelette of mine, In the Palace of the Jade Lion , which originally appeared in BCS some years ago.
This one isn’t part of any series or ever will be. The story was complete in itself. Even now as I reread it for the formatting and final edit, I realize it is a very hopeful, optimistic story. While that’s usually my attitude, any particular work is going to go the way it needs to go, and things don’t always work out. This one needed to go exactly as it did, and considering how everything else is going at the moment, it’s more than a little refreshing.
Regardless, it’s on pre-order as we speak, going live on June 15th. This is the online description:
“It’s normal to fear a ghost. What’s not normal is marrying one.
Xu Jian is just a poor scholar. An official post in the north of the country is a great opportunity. It is also a great danger. The road north is infested with bandits, and worse, it winds through a land of spirits.
Ghosts crave a human’s life force like the thirsty are drawn to water. When he inadvertently trespasses on the tomb of the beautiful Lady Green Willow and her servants, he is doomed.
Or, perhaps not.
Lady Green Willow is a gentle spirit who does not want to harm Xu Jian, yet her nature as a ghost doesn’t leave any option.
Until he offers her one: marry him. Take his life force only in small doses which he can replenish, until the balance of her yin and yang energy is restored.
In short, make her human again.
A wild plan, but will it work?
Even if it does, how will they survive the attention of a greedy king who wants the only possession Lady Green Willow retains from her past life, the one and only thing she cannot give up without being utterly destroyed?
Perhaps a smart ghost and a smart human, together, might find a way. Maybe.”
Tired of Winning Yet?
I can’t say I’m feeling all that confident. Now, I’ll grant you Trump didn’t actually cause most of this. Systemic racism, the ridiculous militarization of the police, a dysfunctional and insanely expensive healthcare system, vast economic inequality, and a polarized society were all in place before he showed up. And yet he has managed, in somewhat less than four years, to make every single one of these problems far worse. I mean, seriously. Did this guy ever see a bad decision he didn’t like? Get rid of our pandemic response team? Cut funding for the WHO in the middle of a global pandemic? Go to court with the DOJ behind him to throw millions of people off health insurance? Confiscate and hoard desperately needed PPE when he wasn’t sending it to China and North Korea? Stoking fear and encouraging violence? Around the world people aren’t looking to the US for leadership now. They’re looking at us with disgust, or worse, pity.
As for Putin, he’s laughing his ass off.
I don’t know. Maybe it had to happen. Across the world, people have been asking why Americans weren’t marching in the streets already. Well, we are now. Late, but better late than never. Most of it is righteous and very justified anger. Some is the usual suspects trying to co-opt and aggravate the situation for their own delusional fantasies of a “white” world, encouraged and abetted by the Enabler-in-Chief. I hope the righteous anger and focus prevails and we come out of this with a clear vision and positive way forward. As I said, I’m not feeling confident. But I can hope. At least I can still do that. Not to mention whatever else is in my power to do.
Just like everyone else.
MS Word is a Tool
In the Realm of Legend
Oh, the joys. After moaning and complaining ever since MS Word announced my version was no longer supported, I’ve been dreading this day. I know I could go with what I had for the foreseeable future, but not forever, and sometimes you just want to get something you know is going to be unpleasant over and done with.
So today I upgraded to MS 365.
Short version? Not as bad as I’d feared. Some new features might even be useful. Still miffed about it, though. Why? Because—and I don’t think I’m unique about this among writers and even otherwise normal folk—I am a creature of habit. When I sit down to (attempt) to write something, the last thing I want to have to think about is the tool I’m using to do it. And new software forces you, at least for a while, to do exactly that. Can I format a paragraph like I always do? Underlining, italics, bold? How about shifting the margins? Headers? Widows and orphans? Of course I care about widows and orphans…oh, that’s the spacing issue. No. I don’t care about that at all, and I especially don’t care in a rough draft. And yes, I know you don’t know what a rough draft is. And for pity’s sake stop lecturing me about standard usage. Standard usage is the last thing I want. When I use a word or phrase it’s my word or phrase, and it’ll do what I darn well tell it to.
Ahem. Where was I?
Yeah, complaining. Hell, I’m still pissed about having to drop WordPerfect years ago, knowing there are still a few folk around still mad about WordStar. Yes, I know George R.R. Martin supposedly still uses it. Which sorta makes my point. Creatures of habit. I liked WP. It did what I wanted and otherwise got out of the way. But file exports to Word weren’t so great, and the editors by then had all switched to MS Word, mostly because of corporate dictates. So here we are. I’ve learned not to hate MS Word, and most of my best stuff was written on it. Once I get used to the new version, I’m sure it’ll be fine.
That is, until the next version.
I know it’s a tool. But does it have to be such a tool?
The Changeling, Part 2
As promised/threatened last week, here’s the second part of The Changeling flash narrative. Not the second part of the story, necessarily, since part 1 stood on its own. But rather “what happened next.”
There’s always something next, regardless of the story, unless of course everybody dies, then it’s simply someone else’s story. Nothing complicated about it.
The Changeling, Part 2
When I finally got up the courage and the means to leave, I was an old woman.
My sister was waiting for me, sitting on a park bench, looking the way I thought I looked, until she handed me a mirror.
That is, my changeling sister. She’s the one they left in my place when the fae took me. I was angry, at first. She was still young, and what had she lost, compared to me? I yelled. I screamed at her. She just waited until I wore myself out.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“No.”
That was all either of us said for a while. I thought of leaving, but I was tired and had nowhere to go. “When did you find out?” I asked finally.
“Probably about the same time you did. Our lives are parallels in so many ways.”
“And how do you figure that? Look at me!”
“I’m just as old as you are,” she said. “And I can’t go back either.”
“What do you mean? Of course you can go back, and I am back.”
She sighed. “Are you? You don’t know how to live in the human world any more than I know how to live under the hill. You don’t know what it means to be human. And me? My family threw me away like old clothes! Now tell me what ferry crosses either of those rivers.”
“You were waiting for me. All this time you knew where I was!”
She nodded. “True, but I couldn’t reach you. I just hoped you’d find a way out.”
That stopped me. “You’re one of the fae. What do you mean, you couldn’t reach me?”
“I was raised human, remember? The way under the hill is secret, and hardly anyone comes out now. I would have seen them. How did you find it?”
“An old fae took pity….”
She shook her head. “We both know the fae don’t feel pity. If they told you, there was another reason.”
Time to face the truth. “He was the one I thought was my father. He was just tired of me.”
She looked thoughtful. “Why did they do it? I’ve always wondered.”
“Because, among the fae, having children is a rare privilege which brings great honor. I think they were afraid of losing it.”
“So instead they robbed us both,” she said.
“Both?! My life was a lie, and my true life ends before it even begins! You’ll go on—“
She nodded again. “Yes. And on and on. Not belonging anywhere, with anyone. Tell me again who got the worst of that deal.”
I didn’t have an answer for her, only a question. “What happens now?”
“If you want, we can belong together for a little while.”
“And then?”
She smiled a sad smile. “And then I’ll remember you.”
I’d just met my sister, but in that moment I knew I both loved and pitied her.
Which was as close to human as I was going to get.
-The End-
©2020 by Richard Parks. All Rights Reserved.
Richard Parks 