F is for FLASH FICTION_THE DREAMER'S PUNISHMENT

For a great review of my novel, THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS, go to Donna Hole's blog :

http://donnahole.blogspot.com/2011/04/drawing-on-mythology.html

SAM IN A FLASH (fiction)_ THE DREAMER'S PUNISHMENT

{From the journal of Captain Samuel McCord} :

What did Oscar Wilde write me that time?

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,

and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

The house is dark, its empty windows more like vacant eyes than dirty glass.

They give the building the look of some huge, discarded skull of a lost god.

I don't like this. Lt. Trifle (yes, that's her name,

and the main reason she got a black belt in Karate)

called me out here in the middle of nowhere.

Nowhere being on the outskirts of Metairie --

which is on the outskirts of New Orleans --

which, itself, is on the outskirts of Hell if you listen to some preachers.

She said I was needed out here and then hung up.

Or got the phone snatched out of her hand.

I came as soon as I could.

Was I in time? Time. I could stop it for awhile --

if I was willing to pay the price.

I was. It hurt like hell. I deserved worse.

Ask a thousand widows what the undead Captain Samuel McCord deserved, and they'd tell you the same thing.

The time-snared air felt like heavy invisible water pressing in against me. I endured.

It's what I do.

I made my way to the back of the house. I tried to cat-foot in out of instinct.

Reality trumped instinct.

The weight of frozen time made each step feel as if I were lifting the weight of the world. Cat-footing was out.

Lumbering like a dinosaur with arthritis was all I could manage. I smiled like the wolf I felt.

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

And time was mine. For as long as I could endure the pain.

The house of shadows was deserted. No furniture. Lots of needles. Lots of spoons. Discarded rubber tubing.

A crack house.

I made it to the front room.

It wasn't empty. A young punk had Trifle dead to rights.

Mostly dead if I didn't act fast.

How he got the drop on her was obvious. She was cradling an unconscious, feverish girl. Trifle's heart had blind-sided her.

I released time.

The addict yelped in surprise. He jerked his gun towards me.

I smiled and spoke low, hearing the thunder sent by the Turquoise Woman above me.

"How young can you die of old age?"

"What the fuck?," he frowned.

Sad last words.

I answered my own question.

I sped up time all around him. He squealed, squirmed, shouted, then wheezed into raspy coughing. He aged into an old man in seconds.

As he fell, he crumbled into dust right in front of Trifle. The moon caressed the hot sunset of her hair as she looked down, the beauty of her pale face twisted into ugliness by horror.

The mound of dust started to disappear in the faint breath of the stale breeze. She turned hollow eyes to me.

"You're a monster," she husked.

What had Oliver Goldsmith written to me?

I remembered : Silence gives consent.

I left without saying a word. *********************************

E is for EXISTENCE sighs THE TURQUOISE WOMAN

You two-leggeds ...

Always you need some challenge.

Today's for some of you it is what E evokes in you.

It evokes in me the word EXISTENCE.

Nothing makes you more aware of the fragility

of existence than a song unfinished.

Here is a secret :

We are all songs unfinished.

We start with names. But what illusions are names.

Some call me Turquoise Woman.

Others call me Gaia. I call all of you temporary ...

Some I call cherished.

Others of you are but a fleeting rash upon my surface.

Irritating, viral, and in the end, self-destructive.

Sadly, your race is like a tick that will gorge itself until it bursts.

Bemused, I watch you scurry along my skin, moaning you are bringing an end to me.

I would laugh if it were not so pathetic.

You are merely bringing an end to yourselves.

I count the moments. You make my scalp itch.

You think you know what life is. Sad. Do you know what life is?

A firefly's flicker in the night,

the breath of a buffalo in winter,

a cloud shadow that races across the green grass to lose itself in the blood-red of the sunset.

Do not try to understand me.

I look, not only down upon you,

but out across the vast glittering sea of eternal night.

The colors of my thoughts are the Northern Lights

and the reach of them is from horizon to horizon and unto the vastness of the stars.

The electro-magnetic field of my body gave birth to my consciousness

long before there were human hands to chisel stone into mute, blind idols

or to brush your world in paint on cave walls.

Your only true contribution to me was your language.

Before you crafted words into being, my consciousness was unfocused.

I listened with wonder as you spoke to one another,

slowly piecing the concept of language together in my thoughts.

Through the prism of your languages, my awareness crystalized.

I became aware.

Now, I know a haunted melancholy. Like a windmill's blades, my thoughts dip into my memories.

In misty after-images, I see your fleeting lives walking soft like prayers across my green fields only to fade into the inflamed oblivion of the sunset.

My son, Elu, will survive.

Hibbs, the bear with two shadows, I have spirited safely away into a sister dimension.

But Samuel, my sad-eyed, adopted son, will soon die I think.

Not at the hands of his life-long enemy, DayStar. But by the two-edged sword of his love for his wife, Meilori.

And that trickster scamp, Victor Standish, he, too, will die. I will miss him, for he, also, will be "consumed" by his love for the unnatural creature called Alice.

You are wondering why I am talking to you?

You are close to my heart as well, for all of you craft with words.

So I have come to say seven words to you :

"Live well. Soon I will miss you." ***

D is for DRAWING says THE TURQUOISE WOMAN

Greetings, Humans :

I am the Turquoise Woman.

For some of you the challenge of the day is D.

I chose the word DRAWING :

From your heart you may DRAW love.

So few of you do that.

I understand.

To love at all is to be vulnerable.

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,

you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;

avoid all entanglements;

lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--

it will change.

It will not be broken;

it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.


There is another meaning for DRAWING, of course.

As with Roland's DRAWING :

From now to May 21st

(the day some addled two-leggeds believe Judgement Day will come --

as if each day were not Judgement Day for each of you in so many ways)

From now to then,

if you write on Amazon a review of his book, THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS,

you will receive 5 entries for a drawing for three autographed books (one of them to be left a mystery)

{those who have already written a review now have five entries in this new drawing}



Another sense of DRAWING is ,of course a representation in ink,

an etching if you would.

But each of you etch your soul by the choices you make

and by the life journey born of those choices.

I am Day.

I am Night.

I am the World.

I am the Turquoise Woman.

And a traveler like all of you.

You walk miles.

I spin through the vastness of space,

listening to the ghost songs of the solar winds.

I awakened already spinning through space,

hugged to the sun's warmth by his invisible arms of gravity.

But the sun is a distant lover,

following his own path through the stars, drawn by bonds of his own.

He is caught like a glistening bead of dew in the web of the solar system.

Together, he and my sisters journey in a cluster

which is itself part of a moving community of stars you call the Milky Way.

Travelers all,

we can neither turn to the left nor to the right of our own volition.

We are children of gravity and explosion,

cast into the darkness by forces we little understand or know.

I used to envy you your freedom of movement, of choice.

But the longer I watched your scurrying over my surface,

the more a dark truth spoke to me :

You, too, are children of the gravity of your species

and the explosion of the times around you -

which you little understand or know.

You bristle with denial?

If you cannot understand your own heart,

how can you understand another's?

Which choices are yours totally?

As gravity and momentum send me on my path,

so do your DNA, location, and experience

spread the pattern of the paths before you.

You are no more free than I am or the goldfish wandering the narrow confines of its bowl.

From within its bowl, the world seems so large to the goldfish.

Yet, it is trapped within invisible walls.

As are you.

Freedom is an illusion to the goldfish, to me, and to you.

Do we choose or do the choices choose us? ***

<>
>

2011Epic Follower Blogfest Contest with Agent Judge Suzie Townsend - Post your final entries now!

Shelly Watters is hosting the Epic Follower Blogfest/Contest.

Suzie Townsend from Fine Print Management will be the judge.

Hibbs, the cub with no clue, is dancing in place!

The winner will receive A FULL manuscript request! All you have to do is post your twitter pitch... only 140 characters maximum, today.

http://shelleywatters.blogspot.com/

I tried to post my pitch at Shelly Watters excellent contest, but it seems to slip through the cyber-ether into the void.

Hibbs promises me he will hold onto my pitch here with both paws so it won't get lost in the ghostly cyber-breezes.

Here it is. Hibbs, hold on tight!

Title : THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH
Genre : YA Urban Fantasy
Length : 64,000 words
TWITTER PITCH :

In the French Quarter, a modern Artful Dodger is taken in by an undead jazz club owner and finds love with a ghoul Jane Erye.

I follow you both on your blog and on your twitter account.

My twitter name is rxena77.

I spread the word about your contest on this post of my blog :

http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2011/04/hibbs-b-is-for-be.html

I can be contacted at rxena77@yahoo.com

***
Here is what Victor Standish saw as he watched Diana Krall rehearsing in Meilori's :

C is for C.A.R.

C is for C.A.R.

If ...

If you need a good story for your novel. Do you need a good story?

Of course you do. All authors do.

Well, get a car ...

C ..... conflict

A ..... action

R ..... resolution.

Duh! Right. All novels need those three ingredients.

1.) But sometimes the simple principles are the most profound. And C.A.R. is one of those.

You see, it's just not your novel as a whole that needs Conflict, Action, and Resolution. Each of your chapters needs them as well.

And to carry the locomotion analogy a bit further, each chapter must end with a hook, leading the reader anxiously to the next.

Think of the teeth in the sprocket wheel of a bicycle : each tooth must seamlessly fit into the next link in the bicycle chain to propel the bike forward. So, too, must each chapter in your novel do the same.

Example :

In the chapter, BLACK MIRROR, SURE DEATH,

in my WIP of the next Victor Standish novel :

Victor, his ghoul friend, Alice, and the ghost of President John Adams have escaped the ice palace of the revenant Theodora. They did so by entering her cursed Black Mirror which led them to an endless, lifeless cemetery world ...

one with seemingly no exit.

Just as they discover that, Alice's stomach starts to growl badly and her voice becomes the gravel it does only when she is ravenous.

And Victor's is the only human flesh in that entire dimension.

Alice turns towards Victor, a growl deep in her throat and her fingers outstretched.

End of chapter.

Makes you want to jump to the next one, doesn't it?


2.) Your novel is much like a onion, too.

Each layer of your novel must bring tears and spice to your reader's mind.

Conflict. Action. Resolution. All three must be contained, as much as you can arrange it, on each page. Impossible?

It better not be ... because one page is sometimes all you are going to have to entice your prospective reader in a bookstore.

3.) You must think of your novel as a microscope :

The throbbing life of conflict, action, and resolution must resonate in each sentence as much as you can craft it to be ... especially the first sentence of your novel and each following chapter.

{Hurricane Katrina lashed the French Quarter as the sobbing mother sat on the curb, cradling her dying baby.

In that one sentence, you have painted locale, time, conflict, action, and a hope within the reader for a rescuing resolution.}

All in the first sentence.

{General Eisenhower walked angrily to the prison cell of Adolp Hitler.

In that one short sentence, you have painted locale, time, genre (alternate history obviously) with conflict, action, and a question of what kind of resolution could there possibly be to this scenario.}

4.) Your first sentence is all the introduction to your agent you're probably going to get.

Conflict, action, and resolution must resonate like a tuning fork in that one important paragraph. In the thirty seconds it takes to read the first sentence, first paragraph is the length of time most agents take to make up their mind.

5.) C.A.R. not only lets you know what to include but ...

what to exclude :

everything that does not pertain to the conflict, the action, and the resolution in each paragraph, page, chapter, and final whole of the novel.

No matter how beautiful the prose or how insightful the character study, if it does not propel the story forward using C.A.R. --

then it has to go. Ouch.

Suffering not only builds character, but it builds a good story, too.
***

HIBBS : B is for BE and ROLAND : entry for Epic Follower Contest

Hibbs, the bear with two shadows, here :

So today is the B challenge for you two-leggeds?

So I will challenge you

to simply BE.

Not was. Not will be. Just to simply be ... in the moment.

Not to be mired in the bog of yesterday, snared by the clinging embrace of past words, past wounds, past stumbles.

How many ghosts of two-leggeds do you pass everyday who are but wisps of personality ...

their eyes glazed as they are fixed upon the wraiths of yesterday's shames, hurts, and triumphs?

No flower of last week will ever smell as sweet

as the blossom you walk past unseen, focused on the echoes of yesterday.

Does the horizon beckon you with the promise of that agent saying yes,

that publisher's check in the mailbox,

or your name in a great paper's bestseller list?

Is your child holding up a rough drawing of a flower that would smell sweeter than any rose ...

if you but BE.

Be aware of the love reaching out to you in THIS moment.

Did I hear one of you say there is no love in this moment?

BE.

Be aware. Aware of ...

the caress of the Great Mystery's hand of warm breeze stroking your cheek ...

of the promise of life in each beat of the heart within your chest ...

of GrandMother's concert of bird song, grasshopper chirping, and squirrels barking in the trees.

No such concert in your concrete canyons called cities?

Yes, there are. Just BE.

Be aware of ...

The wail of sirens, murmuring the light and shadow of both pain and protection in the same sound.

The mumblings of those who walk past you, muttering to the winds in their strange cellphones to waiting ears across the miles.

The laughter of young children, holding onto the hands of their mothers as they walk fast across the busy street.

Magic is all about you.

BE.

Be and see it bursting all around you.

Just BE.

***
Shelly Watters is holding a unique Epic Follower Contest. Come join in the fun. The odds are you won't win. But think of the fun you will have :

http://shelleywatters.blogspot.com/2011/03/epic-follower-blogfestcontest.html

Title: THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Word Count: 64,000

In the French Quarter, a modern Artful Dodger is taken in by an undead jazz club owner and finds love with a ghoul Jane Erye.
***

HIBBS : A is for APPLAUSE!! THE LUCKY WINNERS ARE ...

Hibbs, the cub with no clue and all dancing feet, here!

Mr. Roland let me pick the names for the four autographed books.

Ah, my paws might've mangled up the entries a bit. But we could still make out the names :

MARGO BENSON wins the autographed Laurrel K. Hamiltion



HEATHER McCORKLE wins the DEAN KOONTZ autographed copy of ODD THOMAS



DONNA HOLE wins the NEIL GAIMAN authographed HANGING OUT WITH THE DREAM KING



and T. D. McFROST wins the JIM BUTCHER autographed WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE graphic novel



Mr. Roland says I win ...

an autographed copy of

THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS?

That is so NOT funny, Mr. Roland. Not even on April's Fool's Day!!

All you winners, email Mr. Roland your address so that he can mail you those autographed books! ***