Meanwhile…

(but not the wasting kind…wait, they’re both sort of the wasting kind aren’t they?)

Watched Inception over the weekend. Amazing!

Also watched the first couple episodes of “Louie.” Greatness. And thus Louis CK gets added to the pile of people to whom my wife compares me (a distinguished list that also includes Ricky Gervais and Larry David). I just have more hair.

I’m like Serpentor, if his DNA had been culled from and hilariously awkward comedians.

Reading-wise, I just finished up Michael Moorcock’s A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy. It was a quick read, and a lot of fun. The stories get increasingly darker as you progress through the three books, which are essentially Moorcock’s deconstruction of Imperialism. I highly recommend them.

I’m chugging through China Miéville’s The Scar now, and it is as usual incredible. I picked up another fantasy book, a new book by a new writer (I think) at the same time, purely on impulse, but didn’t make it far. I will itemize the following rules for prospective fantasy writers:

• I should be able to tell the difference between the name of a person and the name of a city, artifact, or creature.
• There should not be a made-up word in every single paragraph.
• I no longer care about royalty (did I ever, I wonder?) or who/whatever else rules the kingdom.

I finished a story over the weekend, worked at it to get it to an easily sell-able flash length, then realized it is only the end of a story, and probably needs a good thousand words prior to where I start. Such is the life of a fiction writer.

I’ve historically been reticent to write much fantasy. I was raised on fantasy, reading lots of bad (but fun) Dragonlance novels and playing D&D and watching Willow gods’ know how many times and what not. The Hobbit was the book that inspired my love of reading to begin with. But every time my mind wanders to writing fantasy I tend to shy away from it, primarily because I have a hard time coming up with ideas that don’t feel like they’ve been done a billion times before by writers both better and worse. How many times does a reluctant hero need to be yanked into the world to find some magical whoosit and rescue what’s-her-name so they can become the new king of wherever? The world doesn’t need it.

(To be fair, I could certainly say the same of any other genre, so…Also the likes of China Miéville and Gene Wolfe have considerably expanded my idea of what fantasy can be, so maybe I’ll start foraging in this direction more.)

But I had a fun image in mind and thought I’d play with it a bit. So here’s the beginning draft. It’s kind of stalled out a paragraph or so after the clip here, because it started to veer in the direction of another Allanah story, but then I realized it would be virtually the exact same story, but with some fisticuffs. So maybe this will go nowhere. But it’s kind of a nifty beginning, I thought. I think adding a technological element makes it easier for me to identify with the characters, and juxtaposing that with an old-world aesthetic is interesting and offers possibilities that don’t exist in other genres. Then again, maybe I’m just a fan of guys in armored suits. Continue reading

Didn’t really get a chance to work on much yesterday, so I’ve already missed a day!

Occasionally I dip my toes into the pool of fantasy, though I’ve yet to finish anything of the sort that I’d consider submitting somewhere. There’s a certain built-in formality to the language of fantasy, a by-product of the epic nature of the genre I guess, that I’m not sure I’m any good at. Plus there’s a lot of world-building to do, which has a lot of different pros and cons involved. And don’t get me started on attempting to cull something new from the genre that doesn’t get mixed up with some half-remembered Tolkein myth or D&D rulebook.

For years I’ve tinkered with a story involving an elf and human teaming up for some quest. It always starts off with the two of them tracking some villainy in a forest, and the elf crafting a weapon from a dead tree to exact vengeance. The names and genders (and even the species – the human was originally some half-breed goblin or something) have shifted and there’s several different versions on various notebooks in my bookshelves.

Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to finishing it. Here’s yet another version of the opening, about 600 words.

Continue reading