Writing Different Worlds

So,  today I took advantage of the wonderful local arts festival and its wonderful Readers and Writers Alive! programme, and went to a workshop based around speculative fiction. I'm pretty sure I've said before that I don't really know what genre my writing properly falls into, but considering my tendencies towards the weird and the wacky, spec fic is definitely a place where my mind is at home. So, I was quite excited about this one (although to be honest, I've been excited about all the workshops I've ever been to through Dan Davin; the ones with Owen Marshall and Gavin Bishop particularly stand out as wonderful in my memory, and I still kick myself for not going to Helen Lowe's).

Anyway, today's workshop was with Tim Jones, who was a Southland local for a while there but now lives in Wellington; I can hardly hold it against him, mind you, considering the fact that I myself am a bit of a Wellingtonian at heart. (Although how anyone could hold anything against a place that produces things like this, I don't know. I myself have a vague dream of living one day in Paekakariki, at least partly because saying it is hilarious...whether it's proper or Paekok. Ha!) We spent the workshop chatting about speculative fiction, did a couple of little exercises, and then ended with a discussion about publishing. That's definitely something I need to start focusing on, although then again I need to start finishing things first! Although with that said, Tim said that Young Adult is the genre most likely to be published by New Zealand houses, so I suppose I should really look again at the draft of The Neverboy. It's been sitting around long enough now that I can look at it semi-sensibly, so...

In the meantime, there's always Hibernaculum and The Juniper Bones to finish, and then consider trying for an agent either in Australia, the States or the UK. And I suppose there's always For What We Drown, too, but that manuscript has a gaping hole in it at the moment. The first half of the book, I think, is fine; it just needs a futher round of edits to make it tighter. The second half is a mess. I basically chopped the first three chapters to pieces and started putting it back together, and then gave up. It also requires major editing throughout because I confused myself so much in terms of the world-building of Julia's home, and...yeah. It lost momentum and cohesion fairly early on. I still think it's an interesting story and in theory it ought to be salvagable, but...yeah. It depends on my mood, somewhat. I suppose, too, it's more likely to be picked up in New Zealand than anywhere else being that its first half is set primarily in Te Anau, but we'll see.

I really enjoyed the workshop, though. It had probably the best turnout I've seen for any workshop here in good ol' Invervegas, and the people were fun. I really hope a couple of them will come to the Chapter I meeting tomorrow night. I need to make some cupcakes for that, actually. Ah, cupcakes, my old foe...

But back to the workshop -- the two writing exercises were interesting, both in the writing and then in hearing what other people did. The first was just a warm-up from a prompt, and I rather liked what I came up with in the fifteen minutes or so. Strangely, for me, it was basically a finished piece. I have no idea how many words it was, but anything less than five thousand words is a miracle on my part. I think I will have to type it out and play with it, keep it for some future submission or endeavour or whatever. The second was a bit less successful; we were just writing to show how the world was different in the story. I ended up writing something from the point of view of one of the handmaidens of the Queen of Nylurea, but I actually started, info-dumped, and then started again. That do-over, though, was quite useful for me in that it did help me examine what I was doing and how it didn't work that first time around. I would like to finish it at some point, mostly because it gives me an insight into the Nylurean culture. I'm far more familiar with Sarinian culture, as it's primarily Sarinese characters that I write, but of course there are Nylureans present in most of the stories. And I'm still fascinated by Jeramie and his love for the once-queen Kiriana, so understanding more about how she grew up...is always useful.

I never did finish those short stories for submission this month, though. I was inspired during one of my walks today, however; I think I'll try for next month's Wily Writers submission, which is to do with post-apocalyptic worlds. I've got the song Pretend The World Has Ended stuck in my head, and there's definitely a story there. I'm just not sure which world it's set in. I think it's an entirely new one, to be honest; that's a little terrifying. Maybe it's the crimson moon? Certainly thanks to Henryk Górecki and Lamb the once-opal moon has a terrible and tragic history. It seems maybe the crimson does, too.

In the meantime, I think I shall try and stop eating this evening -- I'm in the midst of a food binge, unfortunately -- and write instead. I think The Juniper Bones might be calling my name; Morgan seems to be having a temper tantrum about something. Or maybe I am just thinking ahead to the poetry workshop tomorrow. The section of TJB that I am working on now is named the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew, and opens with a nice little extract from Ash Wednesday. It's the bit with the juniper tree and its bones, even! But even then, maybe that's not it; I was thinking at the workshop today that I need to go back to the CompuServe forum and spend more time there, and I was reminded of how I had shared some little bits of this novel with them and received such support. There's little bits of poetry scattered throughout my prose, given the way I write, and especially when Eliot is thinking of Lavinia...oh, yes. So I suppose we'll end with a little of that, shall we?

The warmth of her had become as familiar as the sound of the sea, as the rhythm of the waves against the stone waterways of the city from whence he had come. Though he had never been a creature of the water, in that place it had become the touchstone of this life. Yet, in the city of marble and light, he found his rest and his sanctuary instead in the nearness of her flesh, the openness of her heart, the touch of her spirit against his. It did not matter, that he had not been born here, that this was her city. By his very nature, he should never have a home – and then the sacrifice of the widow had rendered her as homeless as he, save for the asylum of one another.

It was enough.

With the careful hand of a musician, he traced a line from the curve of her jaw down to the hollow at the base of her throat, coming to rest upon the delicate collarbone above the beat of her heart. No, this place had never been his home, and now it would never be hers again. Yet she never showed him that she mourned the loss of her human life, and for all she sometimes worried aloud about when this life was done how they should meet again in the next, he knew that she did not regret it any more than he ever could. Of course she missed the widow, worried for her peace and her soul – but Vincenzio had leaned over the other woman’s body and seen at last the peace on her face as she died for the final time. In a strange way, for a moment he had almost envied her. Then he had turned to find Lavinia standing there, his bride and his wife, and he had felt no more regrets.

Still, he thought of the place he had rested for so long, in that world now denied him. Despite being aligned with the watchtowers of the south, with the element of fire, he had been most easily summoned in an unremarkable grove of trees deep in the northern mountains. Even in his new life, he could not explain why.  There had been other ways, other places where his spirit could be invoked. But he had liked those trees. He mourned still the loss of the star-lake, the heavy scent of the silver leaves, and the silent watchfulness of the Menhir to the distant centre of the world.

“What are you thinking of?”

Startled, he looked upward to meet the sleepy gaze of her blue eyes. He had not noticed her awakening. “The place from whence I came,” he murmured, and leaned forward to press a kiss to the skin where his fingers had lingered. Already her eyes flared, dark with desire, though she had barely escaped from her dreams.

“Do you miss it?” she asked, gentle as the memory of the sea. He sighed.

“In a way.”

“Will you ever see it again, do you think?”

“Perhaps.” He did not think so, for he remembered well the dark day of the Ending, when he and all of his kin had either been sent from the world, or enslaved to those it had been given to. Though those gods had by rumour lost that influence long since, he still did not think his own kind would ever have what had been theirs once more. He could not bring himself to say her name, to bring her into their marriage bed, but he suspected that had been the reason why the widow had no longer wished to live. Their purpose had been taken from them, and filled with so little in return. But he had found a new purpose, and he leaned close to again press his lips against the rhythmic centre of her eternal life.

“It was a strange world,” he said finally, and then looked up at her with gentle trust. “But that world is gone. And here I am.”

“And I am glad for it.” Her voice was suffused with rich pleasure as she tilted her head upward, brushed her lips over the brief stubble upon his chin. “But…could we go there?”

“I do not know.” His brow creased; he had not expected her to ever want such a thing. “Do you wish it?”

“Only if you do.”

The memory of trees was like a brand upon his mind. It was true – he did want it. Though the world had changed, had gone on without him, he could not help but wonder if those trees still reached for the sky in the shadow of the great Kaverlen mountains that had sulked upon the horizon since time immemorial. It would have been years since their Ending, but the trees had been touched by his own immortality. And even should they have at last curled in upon themselves, helpless before the grinding mill of time itself, their children would have sprung from their gravewood and reached for the same stars that had once been the jewels in their parents’ silver crowns.

“Shall I take you?” he asked, and touched a chaste kiss upon her forehead. But when he rose above her again, her grin had become wicked, a promise of a world in which no sin existed, save for the denial of love and the beauty it wrought deep in the fabric of their very beings.

“Take me, husband,” she whispered, and reached for him.

He started – but a smile swiftly followed on its heels. As he leaned forward into her touch, he thought ruefully upon her capacity to surprise him still. But then, it was only ever in all the best ways.

Poetry In Motion

Like a lot of other people, I suppose tonight I'm sitting here with the royal wedding on in the background. I'm not terribly interested in it, as such, but I used it as an excuse to make and eat date scones (this is not a good thing). It also serves to remind me that when I write royalty I never get it right -- I tend to make them too isolated, in terms of how they live their day to day lives -- but oh, well, I like pretty things. And London. I really should pick up and move to London...

All that aside, though, I spent some time earlier today at something a little bit unusual for me: a poetry reading. I always claim to have never been a fan of poetry, but when I consider it...I must have always have had something of a soft spot for it. Which is just because I'll say "I hated studying poetry in high school!" but then I will admit to loving Sassoon and Owen, and there will always be a part of me that cries to hear Sara Teasdale's There Will Come Soft Rains, thanks to Ray Bradbury. I think my attitude actually changed, though, when I took a Modernism paper my first year at university. It's entirely the fault of that paper that the first time I saw the second Spider-Man movie I burst out laughing at Alfred Molina's deadpan delivery of the line: I finally got lucky in love when I met Rosie here. She was discussing T.S. Eliot, and I was discussing... I still don't know what she was talking about!

But yes, the myseries of Eliot are still strongly influencing my own work; I also developed a fondness for Browning and Yeats, which was fairly unexpected. But even though I didn't much care to read poetry, I did attempt to write it. Naturally, being that I was an emo kid, it was angsty teenaged drivel best never considered again. But I suppose I ought to dig some out for posterity?

Change In Shadows

Where do you lie,

Oh fallen Angel?

You have walked in darkness

And now you lie in shadow

Swiftly fallen, angel,

Where do you lie?

You lie to me,

Oh fallen Angel?

With a raven life in shades

Of grey and charcoal burnt black?

Swiftly fallen, angel,

To whom do you lie?

Still do you lie,

Oh fallen Angel?

An honest sun shone on you

Yet you cast no true shadow

Swiftly fallen, angel,

Why did you lie?

I'm fairly certain that was written about Zurin, one of the characters I've been writing about in Hibernaculum the last week or so. Although he's changed a bit recently; my talking heads thing from the other day has led me to believe that Zurin also needs to sort his shit out and do something useful in order to justify his existence, as well as his behaviour. Poor thing, it's not like I haven't screwed him up completely to begin with...

But yes, that is evidence of the reasons why I stopped writing poetry. But the thing is, listening to the four poets tonight reading their work? Reminded me of how I love imagery in my own writing. I have been told by numerous people I have a poetic sense in my prose. Certainly I am mildly infamous for my mental metaphors (I love metaphors -- the more unusual, the better). Which is why I am glad that this weekend, I signed up for both workshops. I was just going to do the speculative writing one tomorrow, but I decided to do the poetry one too.

...I suppose it helps, that listening to Joanna Preston gave me chills. And a girl-crush. Ha. Seriously, the way she read her work? Was magical. I should lay my hands on a copy of The Summer King. In the meantime, I should do some Zumba to undo a little of the damage of these scones, have a shower, and get to bed. And also I need to stop giggling at the Archbishop of London, because a) he looks like Santa and b) any time anyone says "marriage" at this ceremony all I can think of is The Impressive Clergyman.

I am a Bad Person.

Heads Will Talk

I think we all end up writing somewhat to the beat of our actual lives, but I've noticed something the last couple of days. I've been struggling with Hibernaculum still, mostly because the more I try to untangle the ending the more frustrated I become, and the less effort I want to expend on doing so. Which is somewhat ridiculous, considering how much I love these characters and there's already one hundred and seventy five thousand words here. Quitting now is rather...self-defeating.

But then, taking control of things is not something that comes naturally to me. And ever since this year began, I've been called again and again to take control of things and in general? I've failed miserably. At the moment work has put me in the position of "control" again, which I absolutely loathe, and I am completely out of control in terms of what I am eating; tonight I exercised to the point of throwing up just to take back some of what I ate. And what does that have to do with my writing, considering between work, eating and exercising myself to exhaustion (and laughing myself sick over the Beastie Boys' new video), I haven't written anything? Well...

Yesterday, when I was still on the long weekend and therefore had time to write, I had the characters start to do something odd on me. Luchandra did it first, on Sunday, but Aleksandr followed suit -- they took control. And it's truly odd in that this story? Is a lot of talking heads. I'm not an action writer by nature -- The Juniper Bones is as close as I get, although that "action" is usually Eliot getting his ass kicked; in his and my defense, it's not always involuntary on his part -- so words are the weapons of choice, so to speak (CURSE YOU, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN). But it made me realise that a lot of my deeper issues with this story's ending came from the fact that neither Luchandra nor Aleksandr were doing anything. Which, given their situation, was not unusual. But for the story to have a point...they had to stand up. They had to take control. They had to fight! For the right! To paaaaaaaar--

...yes, we can see where this is going. Goddamn rappers!

But my point, as I said, was about taking control. And the fact that both Aleksandr and Luchandra are doing that gives me some hope, even as I get ever more frustrated by the tangled web I've woven here. I just want to finish this damn thing. And I suspect a large part of that is to do with the fact that if they can take control, maybe it'll teach me something about control in my own life.

We can but hope, I suppose.

"If you give this man a ride sweet memory will die."

I thought I had best come back and make an update on my long weekend writathon. I didn't get done yesterday what I had intended, but I'm still very happy with what I managed. I wrote out the scene in Hibernaculum that had been in my mind for so long, but I didn't touch the one from The Juniper Bones much beyond the first couple of paragraphs while wailing along with Jim on Riders on the Storm. But it was all okay, because I ended up working on Hibernaculum quite a bit instead.

I'm not sure what the wordcount of the .docx was before I really got going, but I'm sure it was about 167k or thereabouts; currently it's sitting at nearer 175k. Still not finished, of course, but the good thing is? I'm beginning to understand a couple of the characters a lot better, and that's been one of my primary issues with finishing the manuscript. Which is quite ridiculous for a self-confessed "character" writer, I know, but there's a reason for it.

Hibernaculum is a slightly odd story -- then again, what do I write that isn't? -- and switches back and forth between the third-person POV of two characters who are variations on the theme of "those the gods love, they sorely try." Not that we can be sure it's love we're on about, here. But these two lead characters -- Luchandra and Aleksandr -- have been in my mind in one guise or another since I was thirteen, and naturally they've changed a lot since those days. Luchandra, for instance, likely as not changed her name by deed poll from "Mary-Sue" in the earliest days of her conception, and Aleksandr...well, to begin with, he was Five Man Band fodder. Although it was actually a Twelve Man Band, hence the abudance of cardboard cutouts towards the end of the novel (which was called The Pool of Reflection, by the by; yes, you may laugh; I was thirteen years old, and had I the manuscript to hand I'd type out some of the more florid prose for your personal amusement, too). So, given Luchandra was the original protagonist and Aleksandr was just scenery, it's quite ironic that this far into Hibernaculum? It's Aleksandr who's the real person, and Luchandra who's a shadow.

Much as I love Luchandra -- and I do; the only character I still write whom I've known longer is Julia de la Mare -- I ended up developing an obsession with Aleksandr and his relationship with Araben Ceynamaan. This really messed with the balance of the story, because it meant I didn't pay enough attention to Luchandra's grief or her slow descent into her avatar state; it left her portrayal very hollow, not to mention it completely dicked with Zurin's character development as well because his glittering image is totally dependant on her reflecting it truly. The only character who didn't suffer for this, it seems, was Kavaan -- in fact he kind of got to shine, because he's turned from a trope-laden angsty arrogant warrior elf thing into a wryly self-depracating son of a diplomat with a mouth like a tightly-wound corkscrew. And I adore him.

So, even though I did work a little on Araben and Aleksandr's side of the story, it was really Luchandra and Zurin who spoke to me yesterday. And it was a conversation we needed to have. So, the first draft of the ghost philharmonic exists now, and it was a beautiful and peculiar scene to write. It deals quite strongly in one of my own personal issues, in that Luchandra loves music, but realises she will never be able to give voice to it herself with any true talent. Zurin has that talent, but that's not the only reason she comes to love him. It's not only that, though; in essence it's a love scene, but while it's not true non-con the issues of consent in it? Are hazy at best. Neither character actually wants what is happening at that moment, though they will make the choice for themselves later. But I love the interaction between the two, anyway; it's probably irony in play there, given the mortals are communing on an entirely spiritual level while the immortals are reveling in the base, bestial needs of flesh and bone.

I think today, though, I will work on The Juniper Bones. We'll see what happens there, as there are a series of scenes I could fill in the gaps of, in order to inspire myself to really take the entire manuscript in hand. It probably helps that right now iTunes is reading my mind and playing me Lavinia. I think, sometimes, that I'm just as obsessed with her as Eliot is.

"Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree..."

It's Easter Sunday, and well after ten o'clock. I've managed to be somewhat productive, although perhaps not in a way that's relevant to this blog. I baked banana bread for breakfast, and while doing so cleaned the kitchen (which actually involved scraping and polishing the ceramic cooktop, which is not one of my most treasured of pasttimes). I then got to eat said banana bread with ricotta, cinnamon and a swirl of maple syrup. Victory? Oh, yes, I think so. It reminds me, actually, that some day soon I am going to experiment with bizarre foods and make things that would seem suitable to various parts of the alien world I write in. Because giving myself an eating disorder has made me rather mad like that. (Yes, this is...a long story.)

But to get back into stories in a more general sense, I haven't managed to achieve as much as I'd have liked thus far this long weekend, although I have been doing a little. In the end I wrote only a smidgeon yesterday, but after chatting to a long-time writer friend about exchanging stories again (a prospect that makes me very happy, I don't mind saying!), I was reminded of my penchant for never finishing anything. I've also been flicking through my commission folder a bit recently, and have been reminded as a consequence of my last two projects for NaNoWriMo. Though both novels existed long before those Novembers of 2009 and 2010, I used the time to force myself to write huge chunks of both. And yet, both still languish, unfinished, on my harddrive.

Partially it's because I am a character writer, as noted the other day, and by the time I get towards the end of a piece I tend to discover the actual plot needing to be resolved? Makes zero sense whatsoever. And making sense of all the threads tends to send me screaming in a panic. Last night, though, writing to Ico reminded me of a picture of Aleks and Araben I had commissioned last year (it still distresses me to no end that the artist disappeared off the face of the planet not long after, as she was tremendously talented and I'd have loved to have commissioned her again), and I started poking at Hibernaculum a little. And Ico wants to see more of The Juniper Bones, so...

Reading through the latter, fragmentary bits of Hibernaculum brought me to a scene that's been in my mind for years. And even though bits of it are there, in a sort of vague sketchy outline, it's no-where near complete. Yet it's so strong and vivid and real in my mind. There's a similar scene in The Juniper Bones, which first came to me while I lay half-dozing in a hotel room in Mexico City, listening to the Doors with The End. I've wanted to write both of these scenes for a long time, quite badly. And yet they are so tied in with the ending of the stories, which I can't seem to bear to work out, and...it's ridiculous, isn't it? This fear of finishing things.

So, I think today...I will try and write both scenes. One I affectionately refer to as "the ghost philharmonic;" the other is a ride on the storm to the bitter end. I think I'll have to turn up Jim Morrison on that one, yes. Wish me luck.

Love As Thou Wilt

I've been contemplating love the last few days, mostly because what I've been writing? Deals in the tangled relationships of various characters. I was actually thinking the other day I should renew my lapsed membership to Romance Writers of New Zealand; I joined it sort of on a lark about three and a half years ago, and I say "lark" because I never considered myself to be a "romance" author. I tend to dabble in something like urban fantasy, although I obviously sidestep into outright fantasy as well.

With that said, I wouldn't consider myself a fantasy author either; I have no interest in the political maelstroms that most hard fantasy novels seem to deal in. For instance, the only reason I finished The Lord of the Rings the summer I was fourteen? I simply had nothing better to do. My family was camping in our habitual spot at Fraser's Domain and it was extremely pleasant to lie in the sun beside the river and read while listening to CDs, even though I had long since lost interest in the story itself. Finishing it became more a matter of honour than anything else, come to think of it. I had begun the book at the behest of my brother, older than me by two years; he wasn't really known to be much of a reader while I'd had a voracious appetite for books ever since I learned to read (curiously enough, I don't even remember learning how; I can remember learning to write, but my hazy memories of childhood always hold a memory of how to read the letters I couldn't write; I suspect this explains to some extent my peculiar pronounciation of some words and my bizarre default settings when it comes to phoenetically sounding out unfamiliar words). So, the fact that my brother, not the family reader, had read and loved this monster tome? Totally meant I had to do it, too. Although I almost gave up when, a few hundred pages from the end, my extended whānau and I sat down for a lengthy game of Trivial Pursuit that resulted in my receiving the entirely ironic question of: what else did Frodo lose, when he lost the One Ring? The question itself was bad enough, but I clapped my hands over my ears and said: "DON'T TELL ME, DON'T TELL ME!"

Naturally, they told me.

Still, despite the fact I only got to the end of the book in a blaze of grim fatality, it still amuses me to think that I had combined Tolkien, Enya and Central Otago in 1996, long before one Peter Jackson. Me: 1. World: 0.

So, yes, fantasy? Isn't really my thing, any more than romance is. Which isn't to say I can't read and enjoy them; for instance, I found Dune fascinating, though I won't read much beyond it, and I have a long-standing weakness for Nora Roberts, old-school Danielle Steel and those terrible, terrible Mills and Boon books you can chomp through in less than an afternoon. When I was younger I was arrogant enough to assume myself a literary writer, but these days? I think I've accepted what others have recognised in me for years: I'm a writer of character. Plots are a useful sideline in my work, but it's the characters that I write for.

So, this is where we come to the idea of love. It amuses me to no end that my first presumed publishing credit is going to be in an anthology of erotica, paranormal or no; I've never even had a boyfriend (long story, but in the end I'm going to claim conceit and say I'm like the immortal Sherlock Holmes; I simply am not interested in romance in relation to myself). I mean, I entered the story on a whim, not knowing a lot about Mitzi Szereto or her previous works, though I suspected my story would be far too vanilla for her requirements. In the end I did flesh out the two sex scenes to some extent at her request, but the process of editing left me with the understanding that she chose the story on the strength of its atmosphere more than anything else. We have H.P. Lovecraft to blame for this, I think -- I'm sure the man would turn in his grave, to think that a young female author of paranormal erotica is holding him up as her primary influence -- but we'll also blame Amnesia: The Dark Descent for that one. Oh god, that game. It makes grown men cry like little girls. I do love it so.

...this does remind me, actually, that I have to try and write some blatant horror for the Wily Writers' Halloween issue. Because I was exposed to Stephen King at far too young an age -- read side-by-side with Christopher Pike and R.L. Stein, no less -- when I was in my pre-teens and early teens? I wrote ridiculous amounts of gory horror. I have a lingering affection for the genre, to the point I still have a mostly-unwritten novel in my mind that involves pirates, lesbians and MOTHERFUCKING ZOMBIES, so...yeah. It'll happen. (And I'm sure Lovecraft would love me to do something with the courtly love of women while invoking his name, too. Ha!)

But yes, there is a bit of an oddity in that I personally have no interest in romance in my own life, but I do focus a lot on it in my writing. Partly it's because the interactions of people are a keystone of their lives, but sometimes I wonder if fanfiction didn't play a part in it. I mean, I've been writing original fiction since I could write -- the first story I remember writing, I was five or so, and it was about worlds of lava with rainbow bridges and children who lived inside a sun -- but I dabbled in fanfiction from when I was about twelve until I was twenty-one or so. I didn't really understand what it was until I was sixteen or thereabouts, which is when the internet first struck my house asunder, but anyone who's read a could deal of fanfic will know that while gen is a valid and common category, it's all about the ship-sailing in the end. And although I'd learned quite a bit from reading far above my age level for all of my young life, I think my first real introduction to smut? Happened through the wonderful world of fanfiction.

Still, though...I've never mastered the art of smut. And I say that as someone about to be published in an erotica anthology. Ah, irony, my old friend...I have one of Mitzi's other anthologies around here somewhere, and though I haven't read all of it yet (I was distracted first by my Charlaine Harris marathon, and right now I'm on a Jacqueline Carey mission) I've read enough to think: "What on earth did she see in my work?" Not that I'm going to rock the boat by asking! ^_~ But, as I said, I read enough ship-fic for various OTPs I'd developed fixations on, and in the end I had to give it a whirl myself. But I discovered rather quickly that original or fanfic? I can't write PWP. Every time I tell a pair of characters to go and get it on, they...tell me a goddamned story.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in the greater scheme of story-telling. Every scene should be relevant to a story's development, and the fact that I often set out to write two thousand words of smut and end up with a ten thousand word short story that explains to me in detail a significant event in someone's past or a cultural idosyncracity or spawns an entire novel...I suppose it's useful? Although it can be irritating with it, ha. I believe The Simple Story, which I sampled a bit in the last entry, started out that way; I think I just wanted Araben and Aleksandr to have a tender moment, considering the rather ballsed-up state of their relationship at the time. And I'm fairly certain the next story I'm going to share a snippet from, Together We Will Live Forever, was the same -- I wanted to find out something about Otho and Círa, and considering he was sent to "seduce" her in the beginning, I figured the bedroom was a relevant place to explore their dealings with one another. Currently the story is unfinished at fifteen thousand words and deals strongly in the histories not only of Círa and Otho, but of Ryennkar Vassidenel and Arosek Asfiye, and in the complicated machination of the personal and political relationship of Cydrac Agrane and his Second, Andorin Osideros.


And all I wanted was some smut. Dammit.


Still, with that said? I suppose I can take some comfort -- and evil glee, yes -- in knowing that I did once write a "short" story about Círa and Otho that is mostly an extended sex scene...although it also goes a long way towards explaining their estrangement at the time Kit Eryntalla meets them both. Of course, Kit's story? Is a young adult novel and therefore will never have this scene included. It still amuses me to know that it exists, mind you...


However, let us move on to this little bitlet from Together We Will Live Forever. Like most of my short stories, the title is a placeholder and merely borrowed from a song I happened to associate with its writing. You can hear it here; Clint Mansell's score is the real reason I finally watched Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and this song? Will always make me cry. It's about life, it's about death, but mostly? It's about love. And in the end, no matter what turns of the worlds join and split them asunder, that is really what matters most in the relationship between Otho Calenta, Major in the Crimson Ruby Division Northern Armies, and Círa DeCameiron, Ice Maiden of Aran Nomese and Lady of Greywater.

Otho Calenta and Círa DeCameiron, as drawn by the lovely Neme-chan.

(extract from "Together We Will Live Forever," copyright  2011)

This time, he knew he did sleep. When he awoke some hours later, it was to find himself both cold and alone. In his haste to find her he cared nothing for his state of undress, thrusting the bedcurtains open to reveal the room beyond. A gasp escaped his lips, accompanied by a cool puff of air; whatever he had expected, it had not been what lay before him now.

Snow covered the room like a forgetful shroud. He knew what she was. He had never been able to forget it, had never even wanted to. But he had never seen her do this.

“Círa?”

There was no answer to his croaked question. Yet even as he spoke, he realised he could see her. Dawn had broken while he slept, filling the bedchamber with a dull grey light. It seemed that despite the silence, the wind having dropped, clouds still obscured the sky with glum serenity of purpose. The heavy draperies had been pulled back from the great windows, and there she stood: silhouetted against the glass, the plains, and the sea beyond them both.

“Círa?”

Still she did not answer. Struck with the uncomfortable feeling that she was not entirely ignoring him, Otho shifted uneasily upon the bed. He could remember all too well the way her eyes had looked only yesterday when she had been the Ice Maiden, that inhuman creature who rang the iron bells of Greywater to herald only death and darkness. It seemed that perhaps she had slipped behind the mask again, though a quiet corner of his mind did wonder if the woman who was his wife was not perhaps the true mask.

Either way, he would not leave her. He was not a man of broken promises.

Pushing back the heavy blankets he swore at the chill of the air upon his naked skin. Casting about for what remained of his clothes left him in rueful despair; aside from a few likely-looking lumps beneath the snow, there was no sign of his discarded uniform. With a sigh, he accepted that he was already looking at it.

Though he kept civilian clothes stored here in one of the great wardrobes, it was over the far side of the room, and the distance between bed and door was roughly the same as the distance separating him from his wife. With a shake of his head, he made his choice. Besides, he thought with some wry amusement, for all he knew it had snowed in there too. It seemed she was in the mood for such impossibilities.

After pulling one of the fleece blankets free of the oval bed, he draped it around his shoulders like he thought himself a Legate. With a gritting of his teeth he steeled himself for the thought of snow between his toes and pushed out of the bed. Though he’d sworn he wouldn’t, he cursed aloud – yet when he looked up, he saw that there had been no discernible movement from the silhouette at the window. Wriggling the complaining digits, he shrugged, struck out on his path. He figured he would forget about it soon enough. As soon as they went numb, at any rate.

As he began to shuffle through the snow on the floor, finding it came almost halfway up his calves at some points, he noted it was growing ever lighter. Day had chosen to make its mark upon the world, for all the grim prophecies of the previous morning, though the sky remained that dun grey; it hung motionless over the world, an unpainted and abandoned canvas.

Against that greyness, she shone, a blaze and white; the snow had settled about her in the fashion of a cloak, granting her its stark purity of colour. It rose from the ground like a cradling hand, wrapped around her entire. As he ventured to stand between her and the window, between snow and sea, he saw that actual stalactites dripped down from her hairline, framing her face like a drawn veil of shimmering diamond. Her eyes, though they did not blink, did not focus upon him, staring only outward; they had taken on the strange colour he had seen for the first time only yesterday. Again, he thought them to be so much like the furious northern seas, that place of the heaving white-tipped waves where the covetous northern god had claimed her for his own. But he Dreamed now, as did her true god-father of the West, and now Círa DeCameiron belonged only to herself.

“Círa?”

Her unmoving beauty, stark and pale, reminded him of the army of statues in her Chamber of Mirrors. Housed deep below the crooked pillars of the broken palace above, they were there as lovely and distant and uncanny as she was here. Yet though her sculptures were only ice, beneath her ice she was real. Otho had no idea how Círa awakened her golems. He had a good inkling of how to bring her back to life.

Still, he shifted, uncertain. His feet had begun to protest the frozen passage early on, but even now they hadn’t quite slipped out of the realm of sensation. He looked down to see their redness, and then sighed. He was not a man to shy from his duty, but in that moment, he paused. Though she was not frightening in this guise, not as she had been when he had stood before her when she had dressed in the pearls and damask of the Ice Maiden of the North Sea, it was unnerving to look into those eyes and feel them staring straight through him.

He’d never liked to think long on the fact that while his life was the fleeting moment of mere mortality, hers was an endless stretch of immortal time-keeping. As he looked to her then, he wondered if she was ever able to forget.

Turning slightly, he shared her view, raising an eyebrow to see what he found there. Strange, indeed to see the gardens of Greywater in this fashion: they had become a white plain, an alien landscape of drifts and mountains of snow despite the fact spring had come long ago with the awakening of the sun-bear in the Kaverlen Mountains. Though dawn had long since broken, no footsteps marred the pristine pathless world below. The smoke of early fires drifted from chimneys, both within the precincts of the palace and from the judicial city beyond, and he shivered. No fire had been lit at the heart of her chamber, and his feet were now almost numb through. Círa had never cared much for fire, and he had not held it against her; as a child of the earth-god, sworn opposite of the fire-lady of the South, his own nature demanded much the same. Still, he thought he knew enough to understand the soul-deep fire inside her actual heart.

And even when a traitorous voice inside whispered she has no heart he whispered back: so why can I hear it beating?

It was no childish fancy. When he placed his hand over the ice-box of her chest, for all her prenatural nature he felt its long, slow beat as he did his own. Yet even under his calm, strong touch, still she stared, and did not move. Dropping his hand, he let his eyes skip again to the curtain of snow over Aran Nomese. Strangely, he thought again of Kit Eryntalla, of the boy she had followed like he could save her from this. She’d never believed it of him, had never thought that Otho could save her from this enslavement as he’d promised, but she’d believed it of that boy. Perhaps, he mused, that was the reason why he had the odd feeling that Kit would have known how to wake her from this strange sleep.

In the end thinking of the young man was likely was gave him the notion. He’d never been curious of fairytales as a child, and his father certainly hadn’t chosen to read any to him. His mother had not either, but she had still told him of the power of legends and myth through the beauty and strength of her dance. Otho had learned the stories the same way, in the careful matching of step to beat, of emotion to note. In so many of those stories, one lover had awakened the other with a kiss.

“Well, what the hell?” he murmured. Draping the blanket carefully over his shoulders so it would not fall, he raised his hands to cradle her head and touched his lips to hers. It was hardly the most peculiar thing he had ever done in the name of love, and even before he drew back he had to think with wry amusement that it was unlikely to be the last.

*****

I apologise for any roughness in the work -- I only pieced it together earlier this evening, so it's very much a draft. I just adore Otho when he's struggling with recognising what his wife really is. I also apologise for the fact that aside from the fact they're both naked, apart from his blanket and her snow-cloak? There's not an iota of smut to be seen. Then again...that's just how I roll. Apparently. ^_~