Tag Archives: Loki

Almost There

Posted on by

I’m about to start what I believe is the final chapter of The Seventh Law of Power. There are three threads to tie up and I believe I can do them all there, with a short epilogue. Mostly because I like epilogues, and it’s my book so I can do one if I want. If I’m wrong about the threads, that’s only one extra chapter at most. Everything that came before has led to this point in the story. I know, took me long enough, but I’m getting there.

Almost as if I knew what I was doing. Almost, that is.

On a related subject, trying something a little different on YooToob. I took one of my favorite stories, “The Trickster’s Wife,” created illustrations for it, did the narration and put it up on my channel. If anyone wants to hear me reading one of my own, it’s there. That’s not my face at the end, though. That’s a character I call “The Presenter.” My alter ego.

Story Time: The Trickster’s Wife

Posted on by

This week’s Story Time is “The Trickster’s Wife,” originally published in Realms of Fantasy Magazine back in 2001 and later included in The Ogre’s Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups, my first ever story collection and finalist for the World Fantasy Award. In a way this piece is a meditation on the nature and limits of fate. Mostly, however, it is a simple revenge story, using inevitable fate as the weapon.

Almost everyone knows the Norse myth of Sigyn, Loki’s wife. For his many crimes  Loki is bound to a rock in a cave where a venomous serpent drips poison on him, causing him to writhe in agony. His faithful and devoted wife catches the venom in a bowl to spare him the pain, but every now and then the bowl has to be emptied, and in that time the venom hits him and his thrashing causes earthquakes. But Sigyn is always there to catch the poison again, even though, one day, she will spill the bowl and Loki will thrash until he is free of his chains, signalling Ragnarok, the end of the world.

I always thought fate handed Sigyn a very raw deal. It occurred to me that perhaps Sigyn thought so too. Which puts her activities in an entirely different light, and so the story.

 

Standard Reminder: Next Wednesday, October 11th, the Story Time will change.  Until then, I hope you enjoy “The Trickster’s Wife.”

It Ain’t Official Yet, But It’s Real

Posted on by

“When a man carelessly steps in front of a speeding garbage truck, that’s usually the end of his story. For Jake Hallman, that’s just the beginning. He awakens on a metaphorical stretch of the Afterlife called the Golden Road, where the angel Brendan comes to escort him to Heaven. But Jake isn’t having any:

“Heaven sounds like a good thing in theory, but what is it really? What will I do there? Can I leave if I don’t like it? Under what circumstances? Can you force me to go?”

Brendan scratched his head. “I don’t think this has come up before.”

Continue reading →