LOVE'S LIGHT IS A PYRE_Sparkles Friday Romantic Post

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The icy mists flow like lost love's seeking echoes across the bayou bordering my apartment.

SPARKLES is the prompt for this Friday Romantic Challenge.

Sometimes the magic seems to slip away in the rush of plucking fingers of Christmas obligations and demands.

Fallen, the last fae,

she of the woodfire heart and storm lightning thoughts,

whispers,

"Souls move slowly to their journey's end;

destinations are where we begin again.

Like ships sailing far across endless seas,

trust in starlight to lead the way."

So here is my SPARKLES post from BLACK ROSES IN AVALON

http://www.amazon.com/BLACK-ROSES-IN-AVALON-ebook/dp/B005GQN03C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1323803244&sr=1-1

where Blake Adamson and Fallen, the last fae, find themselves deep in a dangerous, mystic forest deep within fabled Avalon :

Fallen reached out and grabbed my hand. "Somehow, I feel as if not all the powers of Darkness can separate us now."

I caught Epona, Queen of Unicorns, sharing a haunted look with her mate. Fallen hadn't noticed. And I was glad. She looked so happy that I wanted it to last as long for her as possible.

Something like a premonition, but more certain, swept over me.

And deep down, I knew that this was our first, our last, night. Something terrible was about to happen. So terrible that it would shake the Sidhe nation to its core.

So terrible that it would permanently scar Fallen ... and be the end of me. The Darkness was falling, and I would never see the light again.

I looked up into the twinkling stars peering down on us from between the branches of the ancient oaks above us. 'Oh, Father, may you light the way for Fallen when I can't be there for her, please.'

I waited for an answer of some kind but only got aching silence. I sighed. Maybe that was a kind of answer in itself.

I jerked as Fallen, caught up in her happiness, started to sing. It was ethereal, haunting, yet filled with love and passion and hope. I looked back up into the endless depths of the stars.

Maybe this was the only real answer, to cling to love while it was ours and let the future stay in the wings until it came shambling out onto the stage to reach out for us.

"All time and space are one to hearts in love," sang Fallen, her eyes locked on me.

"Death, pain, darkness but phantoms to be overcome," she trilled, reaching out and squeezing my hand gently as if reading my mind.

Her voice rose, twirled, and caressed me. As her words went from Sidhe to Angelus to some tongue so old that even Solomon's gift didn't translate it.

Then, I realized the tune had changed to the melody Fallen had identified as the lullaby sung to her by her unknown mother.

And the breath caught in my throat as I saw long, delicate wings of ethereal energy fluttering from between her shoulder blades.

Epona's eyes widened as she spotted them at the same time that I did. Azure shivered between my legs as he, too, saw Fallen's sparkling wings of fae magic tremble and beat to the rhythm of her song.

And for a moment, the unicorns slowed their movement to stare at my love just as bewitched as I was by the haunting beauty of her singing. It seemed that the four of us had walked into a medieval tapestry or painting :

A faerie princess, her mortal lover, riding the King and Queen of all unicorns ensnared by the cascading notes sung by Love which cannot truly die.
***

WHERE THE MAGIC LIVES

There is a land not too far from where you sit right now.

Its velvet grasses miss the press of your feet. The billowing clouds strain to see your body walk slowly up the rising hill.

The fragrant winds blow through the lonely tree branches, whispering your name as they seek some trace of you.

It is where the magic lives.

That realm is lonely, wondering where you have been.

And where have you and I been?


We have been caught up in the drudgery that writing has become. Burdened by life's duties and our own doubts, we have lost our way.

We have lost the magic.

Did we lose it straining for that first perfect sentence in our new novel?

Looking at the blank, impatient computer monitor did we forget the simple wonder of just writing the first simple sentence that occurred to us?

That creative power which bubbles so tingly at the beginning of our book quiets down after a time. The journey becomes slower and slower, the inertia of doubt steadily dragging our steps.

Do we continue doggedly on or do we stop to refresh ourselves?

The answer to that question determines whether we find our way back to the magic or not.

How do we refresh ourselves?

How do we refresh ourselves on a long wilderness walk? We stop by a stream and drink.

Drink of those poets and writers who sparked that love of the written word spoken in the lonely heart of the reader.

As a hiker takes shade under the canopy of a huge oak, listen to the music of those artists who stirred you to imagine images that you just had to write and make live in your own way.

Then, you shall write as a child writes ... not thinking of a result but thinking in terms of discovery as if you were hiking once again where the magic lives.

It is the Zen of writing : the creation takes place between your fingers and the keyboard, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting.

The magic is there waiting for you. It will come if you but get out of its way and let it in.

***
Give yourself a treat. Watch and listen :

CAN YOU HEAR THE CITY'S LAMENT?

Several readers have emailed me asking how to make the locale a character in their novels. I am hardly an authority, having published no novels. I did teach a class in creative writing when I was a high school teacher.

Still, if I were wise, why am I still not published, right? But what I do know I am more than willing to share. And what I know might just be so.

Just take what seems reasonable to you and leave the rest to the winds.

As for FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, I worked on the streets of New Orleans for a time so the images, smells, and despair were fresh in my mind. Which was a help and a hindrance. What one written detail brought into focus for me would not be in the memories of most of my readers.

I had to enter the blank slate of the reader's mind. Evoke in him/her an archetypal detail of touch, taste, and sight that would paint a landscape of the mind. Every reading experience is a collaboration between reader and author in that way. No two readers will take away the same mental images from the same author's words because each reader has his own distinct treasure-trove of memories and beliefs.

Still every author must bring his readers into the "now" of the novel's locale. Not just by sight but by smell and by touch -- and even more important by the emotions evoked by each of those details. Go from the universal to the specific with words. Meld detail with the characters' emotions.

As I wrote yesterday, in FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE I used actual quotes of politicians at the time of Katrina to ground the reader in the reality of the hurricane's aftermath, slowly melding the fantasy aspects so that the fantastic became more acceptable. And at the same time, I used specific sensory details, blending them in with the main character's emotions to give the locale a personality of its own. I showed you a bit of chapter four yesterday. Today, I will highlight how I tried to make New Orleans come alive by showing you a bit of chapter five :


CHAPTER FIVE

THEY MOVE IN THE SHADOWS

“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans.
We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
- Rep. Richard Baker to lobbyists.
{as quoted in The Wall Street Journal
September 9, 2005.}

An odd feeling came over me as I looked at the crowd in front of the Convention Center. For a fleeting moment, I saw the overgrown square of trees and brush it once had been. I remembered when I had been young, when every moment had been crisp and fresh, where happiness and heartache had quickly changed positions, and life was full of hope and promise. Now, things were crowded, ugly, and the only hope was for a good death.

What had Elu once told me? "When you were born, you cried and those around you rejoiced. Live your life, Dyami, so that when you die, those around you will cry, and you will rejoice."

I put my Ranger face on. The one that told onlookers that their deaths would make my life easier. And judging from some of the sullen, angry faces in front of me, sadly, that was probably true. It was a harsh look, but if it saved me from killing then it was a pretense I was willing to fake.

Most of those sitting, standing, and laying in front of the center were just scared and filled with uncertainty and dread. But those things quickly turned crowds into mobs. The water was only ankle-deep by the time I got to the front walk. But the shit I was about to walk into was much deeper.

I looked into their hollow eyes. Like most folks in this day and age, they had gone about their lives, quietly trying to swallow the fear that their lives had somehow gotten out of control and things were falling apart. Now, their worst nightmare had come to life before their eyes. Their predictable world had crumbled before their eyes. Their next meal was no longer certain, much less their safety. What did Al Einstein tell me during that last chess game?

"The true tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he still lives."

Then, I heard the squalling.

I made a face. As I have stated before, I am not a nice man. For one thing, I hate screaming babies. The more of them I hear, the more I want to lash out and hit something. Maybe it was because I never had one of my own. Maybe it was my sensitive hearing. Or maybe it came from me being a man. Men just naturally want to fix whatever they see that is broken. And I couldn’t do that with a squalling baby. Most folks get downright cranky when you snatch their howling baby to see what is broken with the damn thing.

And there were a lot of babies crying as I stepped onto the water-covered sidewalk. I frowned, and those closest to me cringed. I have that effect on a lot of folks. Go figure.

My better self urged compassion. I found it odd that there was a me that I couldn't see, that walked beside me and commented on my thoughts, urging kindness when I would be cruel. I snorted. I was too old to go crazy. Hell, at my age I should already be there.

***

Hope I helped a bit. Writing is an adventure. How do you make a mystery new when people have read so many whodunit's? How do you make the heart of the reader quicken at your romance when she has read so many of them? The same for fantasy. How do you conjure up that childlike sense of wonder and awe the reader had when he/she read their first fantasy?

As with locale, you make the tale your own. No one else has your take on life and wonder and death and darkness. Only you. Don't play it safe. Dare to be different, to be non-marketable. Vampire tales were old hat before Stephanie Myers tilted the vampire story on its ear with TWILIGHT. Believe in your story. Believe in your heart that murmured that this was a tale to haunt the night.

And talking about haunting the night, here is the music video I promised Donna from NIGHTWISH with scenes from LORD OF THE RINGS. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I first heard and saw it, Roland