Today’s Story Time is “The Man Who Carved Skulls,” originally published in Weird Tales #344, April/May 2007. It’s set in the same universe as A Warrior of Dreams.
Monday’s blog post went completely missing because it was my anniversary with First Reader and we took a day to ourselves. I promise to be back on schedule for next Monday.
Standard Note: “The Man Who Carved Skulls” will be online until next Wednesday, May 30th. Then it won’t be.
Today’s Story Time, “A Place to Begin,” was originally published in Weird Tales, back in 2001 when George H. Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer were editing. I published three stories with them and I remember that period in the magazine’s history fondly (even if they were a bit slow in response times).
Edited to Add: Story Time updates and the story listed here likely won’t be there if you’re reading an older post.
This is late because yesterday we took a day off to see some of the area we hadn’t seen yet. One such was the covered bridge at Salisbury Center, NY. It was built in 1875 to span Spruce Creek and is still in use to this day, though as the warning sign indicates, with caveats.
Today’s Story Time is a retelling of Beowulf, specifically an account of his final battle with the Great Wurm. The old king, long past his prime, taking up his weapons one last time because it is his duty and he’s the only one who can, except for one other with more courage than sense. For some reason this part of the legend always fascinated me more than the more famous part about Grendel and his mom. Maybe when I’m old enough I’ll figure out why, but this story was me trying to sort it out. I think I got somewhat close to the heart of it.
“The Right Sort of Flea” was my second appearance in Realms of Fantasy, back in April 1997. It’s never been collected, and now I’m wondering why. My bad.
I finished a new story about five minutes ago, a story I’d begun several months earlier and put aside, mostly because I had no clue what it was about or where it was going. This time I understood it a little better, I think. This happens a fair bit; the only unusual thing about the whole thing was that the story had only stewed for a few months. I’ve had fragments that eventually morphed into workable stories after several years. Many, decades later, are still waiting.
If there’s a working writer who doesn’t produce a significant percentage of fragments (pieces of scenes, opening pages, an image or two, even partial novels) I’ve never met them. Most of us are smart enough to hang onto and cherish those fragments. Not everything turns into a finished piece, from opening page to –the End-, in a linear fashion. In fact, a great many do not. Stories die on the page. Stories do not reveal themselves, or make you think they’re about one thing or other until you realize that you simply cannot get there from where you are. This tends to happen more to those of us who do not plot everything out before we start. I sometimes envy those who can, since the way I and others I know work is not efficient by any means. Most of the time we get the job done anyway, but at other times we just leave the wreckage of stories.
That is not to say that any of it is abandoned, at least not permanently. None of it is wasted material even when, by all appearances, you’ve crashed your vehicle into a rock all you’ve left is a hot mess. Maybe that scene or character fits into something else you’re working on. Maybe there’s a theme you can salvage. Or maybe, sometimes, the wreckage can be repaired completely, transformed into something you never knew it was meant to be, which is why you wrecked it in the first place, you goofball. We’re impatient creatures; it is our nature. Fortunately for us, story is very patient. If it was in there when we started, it will wait until we’re smart enough to find it.
However long that takes.
