inkPageant

I'm going to take today's post to advertise for inkPageant "a parade of blog posts for writers."  All you need to do is register, then submit a link to a blog post involving writing that you think is suitable for a wider audience.  I kind of wish I had started submitting earlier, although I know that my most recent posts are a lot better than my first few months' worth.  In any case, inkPageant linked to my semi-recent post "Magic's Impact on the Economy" earlier today.  I plan on submitting some of my best posts sporadically in the near future.  Please go check out this excellent service for writers.

Woods Runner

I'm reviewing a MG novella for a change.  I read the last 140 pages of Gary Paulsen's Woods Runner yesterday.  (I had read the first 20 pages two or three days earlier.)  It's a good book for it's age group.  Truthfully, it may be considered a chapter book due to it's 5th grade reading level.  I believe I bought it a few years ago at a book fair on the merit of its cover.

As far as characters go, I've seen better.  I've also seen a lot worse.  The protagonist is a good character for sure.  He had the potential to be a great character, but something held it back.  I think the problem may be the lack of body movement from him.  His heart never flutters, he never breaks into a cold sweat, his stomach never pulses with pain.  Those sorts of things really go over well with me.  One of the supporting characters was a minor star.  Everyone else served their purpose well enough.

The setting felt pretty strong to me.  It shares some qualities with fantasy: a world with rough roads, lots of trees, and scattered villages.  The sense of wonder wasn't as high, but it was great for historical fiction.

For a novella, the plot was solid.  It held short fiction focus with novel diversity (for example, having secondary characters appearing in a few scenes then being replaced by other secondary characters).  It's a good role-model for 5th grade English class for sure.

Gary Paulsen is one of the greats in the 11-year-old market.  This book does not disappoint.

Inklyman

(This week's flash fic is one of my better pieces.  I was going to keep submitting it to markets until I found one that would publish it, but I figure I haven't posted a really good piece in a while, so this is my commiseration to you, fair readers.  It's a good bit longer than my usual flash, yet still safely under 1,000 words.)

            The inklyman’s mustachios danced as he shouted.  His blackish blue eyes threatened to leap off of his reddening face.  How colorful, those inklymen.  Their coats never matched their trousers, so far as I could tell.

            “Yes, sir,” I said.  On the way back to my desk I patted him on the shoulder, draped today with garish yellow fabric.

            My business partner, Marco, leaned toward me from his adjoining desk.  “Are you going to let him yell at you like that?  He may be one of them, but he’s only a stable hand.”

            “The client is always right,” I said, feigning resignation.  “He asked for a statuette all the colors of the rainbow.  Apparently the inklymen’s rainbow has more than seven colors.”

            Marco’s eyes widened.  “Don’t call them that.  They might be unforgivably rude, but they’ll have you in the stocks without a second thought.”

            “Without a first thought,” I muttered.

            The shop bell pealed, playing a single crisp note.  Marco set down his brush and strode into our storefront.

            “Good afternoon, fair wizard,” Marco’s voice boomed from the other room.  “How can I aid you?”

            I knocked the unsold statuette to the floor in my haste to get up.  A young man stood beneath the doorframe.  If it weren’t for his long, midnight purple robe, he could have been a simple farmboy.  His long beard, too white to be natural, cemented the notion.

            “I hear the foreigners are not happy with your traditional palette, kind artisans.”  The wizard took a step into the shop and closed the door.

            “You hear the truth,” Marco replied.  His hand moved to his own short-cropped beard.  He frowned.

            The wizard pulled a small burlap sack from one of his inner pockets and tossed it into my hand.  I untied the drawstring to reveal several dozen tiny vials of paint.  They ranged from the shade of deepest blood to the ocean’s hue at noontime.  Holding one up to the light, it almost seemed to sparkle.  No, it did indeed sparkle.  “These paints are magicked, wizard?”

            “They are heavily magicked, artisan.  My time entertaining in the foreigners’ courts proved very inspirational, one might say.”  He twisted his head slightly, pulling up one end of his grin in a sneer.

            “Not fond of them either?” I guessed aloud.  I stuffed the sack into the pocket of my plain brown trousers.

            “That’s one way of saying it.”

            Marco looked over at me nervously.  “How much for the paints?” he asked, turning back around.

            The wizard opened the door and paused, drawing in a deep breath of cool air.  “I ask only that you use them on all your projects for the foreigners.  That is a fair enough price, I think.”  With that he walked out into the street.  There appeared to be a slight spring in his step.

#

            “Magic paints?” Marco asked.  “Are you certain of this?”

            “They’re menaces, Marco.  Even that wise wizard saw it.”  I sucked on the bristles of my finest brush, then dipped it into shining amber pigment.  The statuette in the center of my desk gleamed so bright my eyes burned.  Those inklymen wouldn’t be able to stop staring at it by the time I finished it.

            “But you don’t even know what the paints do.  What if they end up hurting someone of our race by mistake?”

            “I don’t.  I’m willing to take that chance.  Look, I’ve been painting this for hours and besides my throbbing eyes I feel fine.  Chipper even.  Hand me that tealish, greenish, blue.  That one.”

            Marco swapped me vials with a shake of his head.  “I’m going home to my family.  I want nothing more to do with this plot of yours.  Good night.”

            “Night, Marco.  By morning that inklyman will have his statuette.  Or will the statuette have him…”

#

            “It is about time,” said the inklyman from the day before.  “You finally found some reasonable colors, I see.”  He turned the statuette over in his palm.  His eyes bulged, larger and larger as he leered.

            I kept my eyes on his, not daring to glance at the statuette.  My eyes still pulsed with pain from finishing the paint work that dawn.

            The inklyman huffed.  Or was it a groan?  Both, I decided.  He blinked furiously, screaming, throwing the statuette to the mahogany floor planks.  When he finally looked up at me, I took a rapid step back.  My body shook.

            The inklyman’s eyes were solid white, still living, but eternally blind.  He fell to his knees and began to cry.

    I gently removed him from my shop.

Magic: An Analysis of My Favorite Novel Quotes (Part 4)

To find the first three parts of this series, check out my "quotes" tag.  Today I'm switching gears, moving to the adult age group.  This one is rather brief, taken from a seemingly-random spot toward the middle of the third Enderverse book.

"For a long time, several minutes, the three faces in the display gazed in silence at Qing-jao, at Wang-mu." - Xenocide

The magic this time around is subtle, very subtle.  The quote may confuse you if you don't know what's going on.  That's where the magic comes in.  It's all about POV here.

This sentence is from the POV of Jane, one of the major characters in Xenocide.  To make things simple and keep back spoilers, let's say that Jane lives in a computer network.  She processes information many times faster than humans.  A minute to her is like months to us.  Applying that tidbit to the quote, Jane simply stared at Qing-jao and Wang-mu for the equivalent of about a year from her standpoint.  Could that get any more mind-boggling, amazing, and outright magical?

Orson Scott Card is great with characters, and he hit a home-run here.  His description of several minutes as "a long time" in Jane's POV is easy to overlook, but shouldn't be.  Just when Jane seemed so human, bam!  You get this line.  Few sentences can hold similar amounts of magic on their own.

"The Machine" by Sean R Robinson

This week I decided to do my crit on "The Machine" by Sean R Robinson because it shares its title with the very first flash fic I posted on this blog.  This story is better than mine, I must admit, but it fell a little short like a lot of stories I've reviewed lately.

The protagonist of "The Machine" is formidable.  She could have been written "smoother," I think, yet enough was done to keep her from being a major flaw of the story.  The other characters don't matter much, so I can let things slide with them.

Setting is a minor feature of this story.  I think a little bit more could have been done to give this story more "flair," but I enjoy the minimalist approach typically.

This story has a really strange plot.  There's plot there, at least, which is a bonus compared to some flash.  Minor spoiler: the tense changes halfway through.  I think the switch made sense, although I would have appreciated a little more grace in the execution.  The ending is solid.

Overall, this story clocks in at "above average."  I'll give it an 83%, give or take.  It's worth a read, I suppose.  It'll only take five minutes.