As some of you may or may not know, in addition to getting the final volume of the Laws of Power to press, I’ve been attending a local writer’s group specializing in flash fiction. Never being content to leave well enough alone, I’ve been experimenting with using those stories as scripts for short YouTube videos. Some probably work better than others, but it’s all been fun. I’ll put a few links below in case you want to check them out:
The first one can’t be embedded here, so you’ll have to go to YT to watch it. The other two, no problem.
This is more overflow from the Yamada Monogatari series. Tons of research, only a fraction of which I used in the series. So not to waste it, here’s another YouTube Video. There will likely be more, so sign up over there if you don’t want to miss any.
And for those curious about the final book in the Laws of Power series, it’s actually coming down to the wire. Marta is very close to finding the Seventh Law. She’s going to feel very silly when she realizes just how close she’s been and for how long.
I was working on an essay about a character from Irish/Scottish/Manx myth, the “Leanan-sidhe,” translated as “Fairy Mistress,” “Fairy Lover,” and sometimes “Fairy Wife.” It wasn’t just academic to me because I’ve written stories from both sides of the issue, which was: “Did she really exist (in folklore) or did William Butler Yeats” make her up? I think I know the correct answer now, though research is ongoing. Regardless, I thought the script would make a decent YouTube video, so that’s where I went with it.
Here’s the opening.
“There’s a line between folklore and simply making things up. William Butler Yates likely crossed it.”
For anyone interested the title is, as above, “The Deadliest Muse,” the link is here.
I’ve been pretty scarce here, so an update is in order. As I mentioned before, I started a YouTube channel. Totally new thing for me. And one of the reasons I did this was I’d been working in a (for me) completely new storytelling form.
Soon after I moved to New York State I joined a local writer’s group that specialized in flash fiction. To be honest, I had never played much with flash before then. I think the shortest story I’d ever written previously came in at about 1200 words. Here, the max was 500 words. It was a new discipline, almost like attempting poetry. Get in, get out, and no word retained that isn’t pulling its weight. Shifting gears between my usual mode and this form was a stretch, but a good one.
Anyway, this left me with a bunch of flash stories and no good idea what to do with them. I did publish a few in a couple of small collections, but the form seemed suitable for something else. Thus, the YouTube channel. It lets me play with video and animation, something I’d never touched before. Flash stories play out to about three minutes of video, and I’m learning to adapt my own work. No idea how its going to play out, but right now I’m making all the mistakes and having fun. Every now and then we all need to try something new.
Which brings me to the title above, “Ugly Puppies.” It’s a meditation on the nature of secrets. If you want to try it out, here’s the link.
It has belatedly occurred to me that I should mention this here. I have a YouTube channel now. Mostly I’ve been creating short videos of some of my flash fiction which, except for a collection or two, don’t appear anywhere else. The videos are fairly primitive, both for animation and editing, but I’m working on it. If anyone wants to amuse themselves at my expense, the link is: Richard Parks-YouTube.
And before anyone asks, no, this hasn’t been at the expense of The Seventh Law of Power. I’m in the final third of the book and pushing toward the end. I don’t write as fast as I once did, but I’m getting there.
Richard Parks 