Backwards

Wow. It really has been a while, hasn't it?

Anyway, here's a little poem I wrote a while ago; I've done the roughest editing (translation: I cut out about half of it already) and I'm still not satisfied with it, but heck, I could use a few more eyes on it. It's rather disjointed, I know, but that is a bit intentional. I know it needs smoothing. I'll find time for it, because I think this little guy has some potential.

If anyone can tell me where I got the inspiration for it *hint hint- the first and second-to-last lines* I will do something for you. You can make a suggestion, and if you live nearby or I see you often, that something could be food.

Here you go!

Goodbye!

I saw the sun set this morning;

It painted the sky orange and red

In its pajamas, making its bed.

I saw a man walk across a rolling blue valley,

While another man sailed across a sea of green.

I kept flying to see what I'd find,

Alas! I should have left expectation behind.

I saw a man leap with glee when he found some dung,

Crying, “Look at this, friends! Have you ever seen such beauty?”

Another ran past a building of books,

A few hours later came the same way,

A match in one hand and gas in the other.

“I am right! You're wrong!” He crowed, and set it a-burn.

I saw a coward hiding in the shadow,

A brave man standing over him, sword in hand,

And when his hero died, and the danger was gone,

The Coward stood and said “Now who's won?”

I saw a woman kill her child,

I saw a husband eat his wife.

I saw too many awful things

And now I wish to say

Hello!

But not to man.  

The Red Pill, or the Blue Pill?

So. Christmas Break. A rather lovely thing, I must admit, when one isn't sick or working on play lines. Anyway, I've started my official project for 2012. I don't know its' title yet- for the longest time I've called it The Loyal Traitor, but that name doesn't quite suit it (or me) anymore- but I intend for it to be awesome. Anyway, I have three introductions for it, as of now.

So, you tell me which is better: the red pill, or the blue pill?

Well, you'll be choosing between two of them, because I've already discarded one. I'm not going to tell you anything about anything, so you can read without any baggage dragging you down. I'm not particularly pleased with either one, and they are rough drafts, but... you get the picture. I want to know which one is more... salvageable.

The RED PILL:

The letter, in every way, shape, and form, was both beautiful and hideous to him. Ignoring the handwriting, which spoke volumes by itself, Thoramir examined the paper, a thick, leathery sheet that was unusually smooth. Furthermore, it was had an unmistakable silver sheen, like the pulp had been dyed or painted before use.

And what a use! Written in a rich, green ink, the jerky scrawl promised to fulfill Thoramir's dreams, if for a price... a price he could handle, in time.

Murder, in the end, was a small, even miniscule, price. A price Thoramir would very willingly make, considering the victim.

“Tor!”

Thoramir slipped the letter into his boot, being careful to fold it exactly as it had been; he had to focus, for now. He would have to put the glory of his triumph away, if only for a few more hours.

Or, he could quit.

“Tor! If your forge gets any colder-!”

The threat hung in the air, unfinished; to Thoramir, it was nothing more than a fly buzzing around his head, insignificant and easily ignored. The same threat, made a few hours earlier, would have cut Thoramir more painfully than a double-edged sword through the chest.

A few hours earlier, he had been a refugee, a nameless face, an escapee.

But now- but now! He had the opportunity he had longed for, the chance to make a name for himself, to become his own person...

To kill his father, even...

He could just image it-

“Tor!”

Thoramir shook himself from his daydreams and re-entered the forgery; the pulsing of the hammers threatened to drive his new found freedom from his mind, but he couldn't allow it.

“Tor!”

Thoramir was strongly tempted to ignore the head blacksmith, Markus, but common sense convinced him otherwise.

“Sir?”

Markus gave him the eye. “How long does it take to read a letter?”

“Not long.”

“Then act like it! We have eight more orders to fill before the days end, and distractions don't help! Get busy, before I'm busy with you!”

Tor rolled his eyes and picked up his hammer.

Perhaps the letter could free him.

Or the BLUE PILL?

The letter was both beautiful and hideous to Thoramir.

He started with the paper: a thick, leather-like sheet. And rather than sporting the typical white or yellow tinge of paper, the letter glinted with a silver hue, like it had been dyed or painted before use. Not cheap paper, by any standard, but that was part of the letter's glory.

The handwriting, next. It was rather jagged, jerky, like the author had been in a rush. Legible, yes, but narrow and tall, with calligraphic curls and loops on the capital letters. A man's scrawl, undoubtedly. The ink also told a tale; Thoramir had never heard of someone using green ink in a mere letter before. A painting, obviously, but a letter? To someone of his lowly stature?

And the seal, perhaps the second-most important part of the letter. The seal was made of green wax, matching the ink; however, it conveyed a very different personality than the handwriting. There was a triangle imbued in a square, and inside the triangle... he was not sure. It was too small, but something was there, and he knew that it was, by definition, important.

He would have to find out later.

That left the most important aspect of the letter: the content. It was so right it could have been wrong; someone less suspicious than Thoramir would have doubted its truth.

The author made it right: the King had the power to fulfill what he promised, that is, Thoramir's dreams.

But the nature of the promise made it wrong: how could someone fulfill Thoramir's dreams, in all seriousness? Yes, it was the King, but... the last time they met, he had been four and a half. The King didn't know him, and he didn't know the King- he didn't even remember him!

But it was the King! The King had personally asked to meet him, the King had personally requested his services-

“Tor!”

Thoramir folded up the letter and slid it into his boot; he'd have to save the thought for later.

“Tor! We need you!”

Running a hand down his face, Thoramir heaved a sigh; he wasn't sure if this letter was going to make his day better or worse.

“Tor! Tor! Please! Come back! Hurry!”

Thoramir turned from the empty stall and strode into the courtyard of the stables.

Yes, they did need him.

Three men, holding ropes and a halter, failed to calm Braedor, the stables' prize stallion and most tempermental charge. The horse bucked and kicked as the shouting increased; during his last rage, Braedor had ruined three doors and nearly created a stampede- if Markus was nearby, and anything was damaged...

Well, it was too late for that. Blood dripped from the ropes as blisters popped in the men's attempt to hold Braedor down.

“Tor!” One of them cried, relief washing across his face.

“I should leave it to you.”

“Please!” His co-worker pleaded, nearly getting yanked off of his feet by the dancing stallion. “Please, Tor, I know I already owe you-”

“Yes, you do.”

Sighing, Tor took four steps into the courtyard, making his presence known but easily ignored. Braedor stumbled but did not otherwise react; and from the snap and the cry, someone's shoulder had become dislocated from the yanking. -The yanking dislocated someone's shoulder-

“A little speed would be nice-!”

Four more steps, and Tor was immediately beside one of the stablehands- in the way, in other words. He silently took the rope from the hand's bleeding grasp and held tight as the bucking horse tried throwing him, to no avail.

The others holding down the tempermental horse looked towards Tor, waiting for his move. Some people, Tor was convinced, would never learn. With Braedor, you had two options: wait out the storm, or fight the tornado.

They obviously didn't know how to fight.

Tor waited until Braedor needed a breath, sides heaving, mouth foaming-

And Tor pounced.

Leaping from the ground, he mounted the wild horse in one swift move, locking his knees around the barrel of the horse, wrapping his arms around the sweaty neck.

“If you get a broken back-!”

Tor wouldn't, and everyone knew it. He had never lost a horse, as people said; it was that reputation that convinced the stablemaster, Markus, to buy Braedor in the first place. Tor was supposed to break an unbreakable horse.

Now was a good time to start.  

Red or Blue? Neither? Tell me! 

NaNoWriMo!

So, Tuesday starts NaNoWriMo- ahhh!!!!!!

Oh, yeah. It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and as you can deduce, that's November. The goal: write 50,000 words. Translation: a lot.

I'm not doing it this year because I already have too much on my plate. Too much school, to many books. Actually, I came up with another idea yesterday. No, no, the day before that. I don't like it quite yet because I haven't gotten things sorted out, but that's normal.

Something else I've realized is that the more I write and read and just imagine, the more original my ideas get. My first book just makes me want to vomit, because, no joke, it's basically the Fellowship of the Ring, minus the awesomeness.

But this one has potential. I haven't decided a title or anything, but I have a few ideas. Things like The Order of the Griffin, but that sounds to Harry Potter-ish. The story really doesn't have anything to do with Harry Potter, except that both are fantasy and involve magic. Perhaps the Order of the Dragon Claw. But that sounds like Dungeons and Dragons, which I've never played and know nothing about. So... I've got to keep thinking.

But it has potential! This story could actually amount to something!

The Invincibles, for now, is dead. The Act is still near and dear to my heart, but I don't think I'll continue it anytime soon. And the Silver Knight... Ithrean... I may love the kid (haha, that's an inside joke with the book- you might understand later, if I ever post more of it), but he's really driving me crazy. I just can't get any momentum on it.

So here's my plan, since I can't do NaNoWriMo.

1) Write a very detailed outline for one of my potential novels. Scene by scene, page by page, the whole nine yards.
2) Read.

Sounds easy, right? Wait wait wait, I can fit in a quote that I wrote earlier today in here!

“So, what is your plan?” Dyke asked, glancing between me and the saddlebags.

“We find the Order. Simple as that.”

“Nothing about the Order is simple.”

“No, but that doesn't mean that the return journey will be difficult either.”

She gave me a condescending look, like she didn't believe me. “It'll only be difficult if you're wanted in three provinces or attract the attention of every man within twenty megaspans.”

“I might.” She shrugged. “You never know.”  

Wish me luck, and good luck to all the lucky ducks doing NaNoWriMo! 

My First Book... from 2nd Grade

My mom found this the other day... oh, let me tell you, it brings back memories! I wrote this at the very end of 2nd grade- I was seven- and this is the unedited version.

It's proof that my destiny is to become a writer! Anyway, it's short, and for a second grader, it's not bad. It made me smile, and I hope you'll enjoy it too. :)

She started like this;… it was a vary hard time for orfens, vary hard time. Chrismas was coming, and the food was going, and the wood was going too, orfans shelter. Thay called her Emma, even thow she did not know how to even spell it. She did make friends with the anamils and the other orfins. One day in fall, a plasent day the ofenins wer waking and then…. BOOM! Thay new what that ment, men were in the forest! Thay all scrambled to hide… Emma could not find a hideing spout, thay wher all taken. Then she saw that two eyes wer wascking her,; She ran as fast as she could but the feet got closer and closer until two hand-s grabed her! Thay pushed her down and rold her over then one gentle fase looked at her, then a dog barked, it was Wildwood! (Wildwood is Emma dog)

I think I've come a long way. :) 

Help!!! There's a Monster!

Wow. I haven't blogged in a while.

Well, here's a little something I started late June. I don't know what to make of it- can you help? I mean, I know *kindof* what goes on, plot-wise, but I don't think this is a strong enough beginning. Tell me what you think!

THE HALF-TAMED MONSTER

 

For the last of a thousand times, Darren wished he had kept his stupid mouth shut.

He stood outside The Cave, trying to muster the courage to walk into the blackness. It wasn’t the unknown that made him reluctant to move any closer; it was the known. The Beast lurked in there- Darren shuddered at the thought- and he had promised to fetch it.

As he stood there, looking up at the gray stone- black in the moonlight, he couldn’t remember why he had made such a promise; had it been for honor? No one had offered him money- he knew that all too well, and there weren’t any girls in town that were good enough for him.

“Hello?” He cried into the darkness; perhaps he wouldn’t have to actually go in there. His voice echoed on and on into the nothing; he craned his ears for a reply. “Monstress? Come out!”

But of course, she didn’t come out. Darren considered drawing his sword- perhaps he could force her out- but decided against it; who knew what arsenal of weapons the Monstress had.

He took a deep breath and stepped into the threshold; he keenly noticed how the floor was scratched and ripped apart, like a mason had repeatedly drawn his tools against it. But no one ever came to The Cave; it was madness. The Beast did it, then; Darren shuddered- the full moon must have helped.

“Come out, by order of King Horun!” Darren cried, fisting his hands to steady his nerves. “He bids you slay Tehor the Troll!”

And still, nothing.

Hope suddenly filled Darren’s heart- perhaps the Monstress was not there. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed; no one had replied, and he hadn’t been killed, and those two factors alone contradicted with everything he had heard about the Monstress.

And that left him with a once in a lifetime opportunity: to scope out The Cave. He’d take something as proof that he had went, gain infinite respect, and all would be well.

There was always the possibility that the Monstress would realize something was missing, smell his scent and hunt him down, but the probability of that was miniscule. Darren decided to entirely ignore that option; he felt around in the underbrush for a torch, lit it, and plunged into The Cave.

The first ten spans or so was a tight tunnel; in the first two spans, Darren learned to not look down. The floor was covered in bones, feathers, rotting hides, and an assortment of unrecognizable, half-decomposed things. And if that wasn’t unnerving enough, pictures appeared on the walls; he could make out tall blobs and fat blobs and buff blobs, all painted black, which were vaguely humanoid- they carried weapons, at least- and all were dying or dead.

He didn’t look for specifics of their bloody end, but he couldn’t ignore the constant presence of the red-colored wolf in every picture.

And as if that wasn’t enough, trophies of the Monstress’ victories hung on the tunnel walls; swords, bows and arrows, a lance, a few spears, a dagger or two, a handful of shields. Darren slowed just to look at them, and stopped entirely at another bend.

A human skeleton was pinned to the wall, save for the right hand- it had fallen to the floor. Tattered, bloodstained clothes hung over the man’s frame, and an arrow was still lodged in his rib cage. Darren leaned closer, just to be sure it was real; the bones were scratched and pecked and splintering in places from where animals had gnawed, scraped, and ripped the rotting flesh away.

Yes, it was most definitely authentic.

The smell, though, was stifled by the cool air and a constant breeze- he didn’t know from where, but he was thankful for it all the same.

“Hello?” Darren asked, calling into the darkness once more- just to check that his suspicion was correct. The skeleton didn’t answer him, nor did anything else.

The hope that had fueled him to go into The Cave morphed into morbid interest; Darren ignored the pangs of worry, of survival, and continued past the bones and trophies. He scrambled up a steep slope- towards the top were two stairs, like the Monstress was carving them herself. On second thought, she probably was.

At the very top, he had to crawl on his hands and knees, and reached the top of the slope gasping for air, and his hands stinging from the many rocks and uneven patches of the stone.

He lifted his torch into the black expanse around him and gasped.

The tunnel had been half-expected; it’s not like the Monstress would have wanted intruders. But this was the very opposite- never in his wildest dreams would Darren have suspected the Beast to live in a place like the the one he had just stepped- crawled- into.

The room- cavern, really- could have swallowed Darren’s entire house, and probably the stables, too. The torch in his hand cast dancing shadows on the rough cavern walls; was that a bookshelf, carved out of the cave’s side?

He eased himself to his feet, slowly, because every noise he made echoed a hundred-fold. The more he looked the more amazed he became-

This was not a monster’s lair.

It mirrored a scholar’s most private study; tables and papers scattered the floor, interrupted by the occasional pillow or chair. In one corner was a fire pit, with a spit and a metal grill. Pots, pans, and rather large knives covered another table shoved into a corner, and herbs were strapped to the wall, drying.

The bookshelf had a skimpy collection, but Darren supposed that was because most of the volumes and scrolls were everywhere they weren’t supposed to be. But other things were displayed on its shelves; a root so twisted and gnarled that Darren couldn’t tell one end from another, an assortment of arrowheads, some feathers, a massive, dead beetle, and a necklace of bear teeth.

Darren made his way towards a table; where had the Monstress gotten her own books? He’d never know, of course, but he bet she’d stolen them. If he could just find one with a name in it, to use as proof that he had entered The Cave and sought out the Beast…

He rifled through the pages spread across the tables lined up in a straight row. Was that arithmatic? He poked through one volume- she must have stolen it from some poor student in Theirshire, since Ravenden didn’t have a school or any great learned people.

Darren froze. Theirshire? But the Monstress was only allowed within a day’s ride of Ravenden, and Theirshire was a solid three days away.

He snatched the book from the piles, stuffing a few pages of notes into the binding. King Horun would be quite interested to hear this news; the Monstress wasn’t a force to be ignored. What other damage had she done?

He’d be sure to get a few Threshes for this tidbit of information.

But what did the Monstress even want from a book of shapes and numbers? She couldn’t benefit from it- she’d probably never handled money in her life. She was scum of the earth, the Beast of the Terren Mountains, the Scourge of Ravenden- why would she even bother to try to advance herself over the rest of them?

Darren shoved the thought away; The Cave seemed more eerie, now that he knew that the Monstress wasn’t totally a mindless beast. She could read, he was sure, and that knowledge alone was a threat to every man, woman, and child in Ravenden.

But at least she couldn’t disguise herself; she was too… unnatural to ever be assumed human.

Darren turned, book in one hand, torch in the other, and started towards the partial stairway, ready to return. He had his proof and honor in hand, and that would be sufficient to calm the other’s anger when he reappeared without the Monstress.

The blow came from nowhere. 

Is there too much description? Not enough action? Please tell me!  

"Bad Christian Art" by Tony Woodlief

This is one of the best articles I have ever read- Mr. Woodlief perfectly describes all my frustrations with Christian books/movies/entertainment. Washed out, over-simplified plots with Sunday School morals and cheesy sentimentality are not what I call good reading/watching/etc. He, however, explains the plague much better than I do- enjoy! 


“Why,” asks the title of a recent movie review by Salon writer Andrew O’Hehir, “are Christian movies so awful?” He asks this after watching Soul Surfer, a film targeted at American evangelicals, about a one-armed surfer girl. It’s supposed to be a true story, insofar as anything can be true once it has been plucked from the web of human interdependence and stretched across a fifty-foot screen.
Apparently this is a bad movie, though the only question when such movies hit the screen is not whether they are bad, but whether they are better than Left Behind, or better than Facing the Giants, or better than whatever else has been served up to good Christian people who judge art by criteria like message and wholesomeness and theological purity.
I’m convinced that bad art derives, like bad literary theory, from bad theology. To know God falsely is to write and paint and sculpt and cook and dance Him falsely. Perhaps it’s not poor artistic skill that yields bad Christian art, in other words, but poor Christianity.
Consider, for example, some common sins of the Christian writer:
Neat resolution: You can find it on the shelves of your local Christian bookstore: the wayward son comes to Christ, the villain is shamed, love (which deftly avoids pre-marital sex) blossoms, and the right people praise God in the end. Perhaps best of all, we learn Why This All Happened.
Many of us are familiar, likewise, with that tendency among some Christians to view life as a sitcom, with God steadily revealing how the troubles in our lives yield more good than ill. It’s sad that he died so young, but look at how his brother has turned to Christ. The earthquake killed thousands, but see how God’s people are coming together in response.
What good God works from a three year-old who is raped, however, or a teenager who succumbs to schizophrenia, is His domain entirely, and to speculate on how these horrors fit into the Great Plan borders on obscenity.
Sometimes we suffer and often we fail, and there is no clear answer why, no cosmic math that redeems, in our broken hearts, this sadness. The worst Christian novels seem to forget Oswald Chambers’s insightful observation, which is that God promises deliverance in suffering, not deliverance from suffering. And so they lie about the world and about God and about the quiet, enduring faith of our brethren in anguish.
One-dimensional characters: In many Christian novels there are only three kinds of characters: the good, the evil, and the not-so-evil ones who are about to get themselves saved. And perhaps this saved/not saved dichotomy—more a product of American evangelicalism than Christian orthodoxy—accounts for the problem.
I think we might craft better characters if we accept that every one of us is journeying the path between heaven and hell, and losing his way, and rushing headlong one direction before abruptly changing course to dash in the other, and hearing rumors about what lies ahead, and hoping and dreading in his heart what lies each way, and grabbing hold of someone by the arm or by the hair and dragging, sometimes from love and sometimes from hate and sometimes from both.
Sentimentality: Like pornography, sentimentality corrupts the sight and the soul, because it is passion unearned. Whether it is Xerxes weeping at the morality of his unknown minions assembled at the Hellespont, or me being tempted to well up as the protagonist in Facing the Giants grips his Bible and whimpers in a glen, the rightful rejoinder is the same: you didn’t earn this emotion.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s warning against cheap grace comes to mind, a recognition that our redemption was bought with a price, as redemption always is. The writer who gives us sentimentality is akin to the painter Thomas Kinkade, who explicitly aims to paint the world without the Fall, which is not really the world at all, but a cheap, maudlin, knock-off of the world, a world without suffering and desperate faith and Christ Himself, which is not really a world worth painting, or writing about, or redeeming.
Cleanliness: I confess that the best way to deter me from watching a movie is to tell me it’s “wholesome.” This is because that word applied to art is a lie on its face, because insofar as art is stripped of the world’s sin and suffering it is not really whole at all.
This seems to be a failing—on the part of artist and consumer alike—in what my Orthodox friends call theosis, or walk, as my evangelical friends say. In short, if Christian novels and movies and blogs and speeches must be stripped of profanity and sensuality and critical questions, all for the sake of sparing us scandal, then we have to wonder what has happened that such a wide swath of Christendom has failed to graduate from milk to meat.
And if we remember that theology is the knowing of God, we have to ask in turn why so many Christians know God so weakly that they need such wholesomeness in order for their faith to be preserved.
This, finally, is what especially worries me, that bad Christian art is a problem of demand rather than supply. What if a reinvigorated Church were to embed genuine faith in the artist’s psyche and soul, such that he need no longer wear it on his sleeve, such that he bear to see and tell the world in its brokenness and beauty? Would Christian audiences embrace or despise the result?

He Says It Best

Okay people, so Lucius has been abandoned for the time being. I'm too busy; well, the deadline is, um, tomorrow, and that doesn't give me time to edit.

Anyway, L.B. Grahm is one of my favorite authors, and here's an exerpt from one of his blog posts. It is so true... so true... and he says it best. Enjoy! (My favorite part is in bold, in case you're wondering.)

Hitting a pivotal birthday like 40 tends to produce some reflective moments. Looking back ten years, I think about the fact that when I turned 30, I was an unpublished school teacher developing a fantasy idea that I'd had in college. If you'd told me I'd get someone to buy, not just the first book, but all five, and that ten years later the books would be on many different shelves in many different countries, I would have wondered what you were smoking. As I look ahead, I wonder what the next ten years hold. My brain is an idea factory, and I'm not quite sure where the shut-off valve is. Stories cram into my skull, and I have to write them down to relieve the pressure. Unfortunately, it's easier to conceive an idea than to write a novel, so I'm fighting a losing war.
I wonder what the next ten years hold for the publishing world. Will ebooks and digital publishing revolutionize the industry? Perhaps the better question is how much? Will I look back one day and think, "How quaint that my first series was in paper." Kind of like some classic rock band who made it big with vinyl but now sells most of their music via iTunes.
In the end, I don't know that I care a whole lot. I mean, I like writing and care about the world of writing, but the business side of things is something that I do, only because I have to. What really matters are the stories. They're part of me, and I can't not write them.
Don't get me wrong, there are way more important things in life than writing and being published. I know that. Still it's also true that a big part of my heart and life lives in the space between my fingertips and my keyboard, and that's just how it is.

Isn't he awesome? And his books are just as good! Beyond the Summerland is my favorite. Here's the link to his blog: 
   http://blog.lbgraham.com/

Have a good week!