Tag Archives: Tymon the Black

LeVar Burton Reads

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I’ve told this story before, but in the current circumstance it bears repeating:

In an earlier version of the Writer’s Group With No Name we had a member who was working hard on a romance novel. We’d read excerpts and thought it promising, but the story wasn’t coming quickly or easily for her. In the meantime, most of the other members of the group were working on short fiction, getting stuff finished, and a few of us were selling. At times the meetings would turn into gripe sessions about slow markets, slower payments, incomprehensible editorial decisions, the usual. All true and the bane of working writers for practically ever, but our romance writer, working but still with nothing in shape to show an editor, was not impressed with the bitching. Continue reading →

Power’s Shadow: Chapter 13, Part 5 — Conclusion

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Powers-Shadow-Rough-3Reunited.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 13, Part 5 – Conclusion

“Be Careful,” Marta said.

“Always.”

Bonetapper launched himself off the rock and flew up toward the entrance to the cave. Once he was there he did a quick swoop past the opening, then again. On the third pass the landed on the lip of the entrance and looked into the darkness. After a few moments he called down to them. “No one in sight, but it does go back some distance. There’s a rope ladder anchored here.”

“Throw it down, if you can,” Marta said.

There was some rustling and squawks of complaint which drifted down, but not the ladder.

“Bonetapper?”

“Give me a minute. I’m only a raven and this thing is heavy.”

“Stand clear of the edge,” Marta said. “Man.”

“Got it,” said a less harsh and croaky voice from above. “Coming down now.”

The rope ladder rolled off the edge of the cave. It didn’t quite reach the top of the rockfall, but close enough to grasp. “I’d really like to be a raven again,” said the voice. “This feels very strange and uncomfortable.”

“Done,” Marta said. In another moment Bonetapper flew out of the cave.

“I know he’s really a man,” Sela said. “And yet….”

Marta shrugged. “A raven was the form my mother chose for him, and in that form he’s been the most useful to me. He’s had the chance to rid himself of it before, and yet here he is. Sometimes I think he’s simply a better raven than he ever was a man. Sometimes I think he knows it, too.”

Kian spoke to Loken who then shed his helmet and hauberk. He belted his sword back in place before he took hold of the rope ladder and started to climb up.

“Bonetapper, watch the cave. Warn us if anyone shows themselves,” Marta said.

The raven flew back to the lip of the cave and perched there. “Still clear,” he said.

Kian sighed. “I can see the advantages of having such a one for a scout.”

“I can see the advantages of having a bodyguard who is not easily flummoxed by such things as witches and talking ravens,” Prince Dolan said. Marta thought he was trying not to smile.

“I’m from Lythos, originally,” Kian said. “Such—forgive me—unusual things were not so unusual there, at least by reputation. Though I have to admit that I don’t think I believed even half of what I heard until now.”

“Once you accept the notion of a talking raven, the walls do tend to come down,” Prince Dolan said. Continue reading →

Life Could Be a Dream

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No, this isn’t a dream diary. Most people’s dreams aren’t as interesting as they think they are, including mine, for the simple reason of perspective. A dream is VR in a way that current VR tech can only envy: Fully immersive. Sight. Sound. Taste. Touch. All that is vivd to the dreamer in a way it’s never going to be to the one hearing about it. “I went flying last night! It was wonderful!” and we all go, “Umm, yeah, that’s nice.” Unless we were the ones doing the flying. Quite often without a plane. Exciting? Sure, to the one doing it. Fun? Likewise. Interesting to others? Not so much. Rather like vacation photos. (Disclaimer: There are exceptions. I did say “most.” No, I’m not going to name them. You can assume I’m talking about you.)

Rather, I’m thinking about dreaming as it relates to the writing process. I’ve dreamed complete, wonderful stories that–see above–turned to complete dross in the morning, rather like fairy gold. Even when I remember one in every detail, by morning I realize they make no sense at all. None. And they don’t work. The unusual thing is when they DO work, and I’ve found that the ONLY time a dream suggests a real, workable story to me is not when it tries to hand me a plot. My dream plots are complete nonsense, and those never work. Sometimes I’ll get a workable image, but only now and then. What does work is when the dream hands me a character. And even that doesn’t happen very often. But I can think of three very — to me — notable exceptions.

1) Treedle. This character appeared in “What Power Holds,” an early story published in Dragon Magazine back in 1994. He only appeared in the first one written, but the series he sparked is still going on. The last short story in the series was “The First Law of Power” in RoF in 2001, but it was also the genesis of The Long Look and Black Kath’s Daughter, and whatever more books may come.

2) Golden Bell. I don’t even remember much of the dream she came from. What I do remember was her standing before me, saying, “I have a malady of music, a fever of poetry that consumes me.” That line made it into the story almost unchanged, which was “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng.” Published in the first issue of Black Gate, and also the first piece of mine to ever make it into a Year’s Best compilation.

3) The Lady Scythe. Dreamed her exactly as she was in the story, down to the no-nonsense work clothes she wore underneath her ceremonial attire. She was the Emperor’s executioner, set in the same universe as A Warrior of Dreams. She looked a lot like a cheerful high-rent tavern wench. In actuality she was a psychopath with a heart of ice. Came with the job.  “Courting the Lady Scythe,” in Paper Cities, said book being the winner of a World Fantasy Award that year in the anthology category.

Only three times so far. And in each case, the character with the dream origin is NOT the main character, even though they are responsible for the story coming into existence. This may mean something. Or not. But it’s fun to think about, at least to me. If not for the rest of you, well, dreams are a tricky subject. 🙂

Apropos of Not Much

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This is the jacket copy from my first novel, The Long Look. Why? Because I always liked it. And just because.

“Everything you know about evil magicians is wrong.

Tymon the Black is the latest in a long succession of magicians to suffer under a curse called “The Long Look.” He gets glimpses of future horrors, horrors that will almost certainly come to pass unless he acts. When one such glimpse prods him to arrange for the murder of a headstrong young prince, he sets a cascading chain of events in motion that could lead to a future even more terrible than the one he tried to prevent.

Now all he has to do is hang on to a friend, train an apprentice, prevent a prince obsessed with revenge from destroying himself and his entire kingdom, help a princess come to terms with guilt and grief, make sure a wedding happens, make sure a war doesn’t, and send a creature of ultimate darkness back to the void from whence it came.

All in a day’s work for the world’s most evil wizard? Not quite. There’s also a goddess to contend with, and there’s nothing like attracting the interest of a goddess to upset the balance of any evil scheme. No matter. No one ever said that the life of a fiend was an easy one.

THE LONG LOOK is a fantasy novel with a unique blend of action, introspection, speculation and humor that should keep any reader both involved and confused, but don’t worry. It all makes sense. Eventually.”

Janiform – When Looking in One Direction Just Isn’t Enough

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 It’s a new year, and it’s time to look ahead. Which I will now do by looking backwards. It’s not as much of a contradiction as it seems at first glance. How do we know where we want to go if we don’t look at where we’ve been? So now I look backward. Just a bit.

When I think about my first novel, The Long Look, it still scares me a little to think of how much I put into the book without being consciously aware of what I was doing. Now, I do have to make a slight distinction here. I was conscious of the story elements in a procedural sort of way, but if you’d asked me what this or that bit was about, why it was there, I probably couldn’t have told you, I only knew it had to be there. It wasn’t until I’d read the manuscript for possibly the fifth or sixth time, cold, during the line-edit phase that I finally realized what I had done, and was able to express it with any kind of coherence.

The Long Look bears some resemblance to Rashomon in that it has more than one character viewpoint on a series of events, but at heart it is two separate but intertwined narratives about those same events. The first narrative is a (relatively speaking) conventional fantasy adventure story with a quest, battles, magic, and a love match with just a tad of a complication. Ok, so it’s a pretty big complication. Yet this is the story that will become part of the history of the Twelve Kingdoms. Within the context of this universe, this will be the story that “everyone knows.”

The second narrative is something else again. It’s the story of what really happened. And how much work, danger, and adventure went on behind the scenes in order to make the first narrative unfold the way it should. I can’t say any more about it without getting into spoiler territory, but that’s not really the point. Those who read it will see what I mean. Or not.

What might happen is that those who read it for the first narrative are going to wonder what all the rest is about and why it’s intruding into their adventure story. Those readers who (am I kidding myself here?) are expecting something more along the lines of the second narrative from me are going to wonder what all that rubbish about alarums and excursions is doing taking up space and distracting from the real story. Thing is, both narratives together are the “real” story. The way the story appears, and the aspects of the story that must remain hidden below the surface narrative for all time.

The funny part is, that’s the book I meant to write. And yes, I feel a bit like the cat slamming into a plate glass window, then casually grooming its fur with an attitude of “I meant to do that.”  But I did. In the three years since its initial publication the book’s done all right. It sold out its hardcover run and moved on to ebook form. It hasn’t been to everyone’s taste, but what book is? I’m happy with the way it turned out, and enough reviewers and readers have reported in to let me know that most of them feel the same way. I did ok.

Maybe next time I can even do it on purpose.