Lunch

This is some pretty experimental rhyming horror that I wrote a while back.

     The hallway goes ever on. You wish you were gone. The lights flicker off. You scoff. A door opens far into the void. The being is humanoid. It has a vicious form. Like a solid storm. It dashes forward. You thrust backward. Your back is turned. If only you had learned. Never turn your back on darkness. The gap between you becomes quite less. It reaches out with one jagged claw. It pulls you to its maw. Razor fangs embed. They crush into your head. Crimson oozes. Skin bruises. Bones crunch. You're lunch.

Writing Is Like Preparing Potatoes

I had a shocking revelation in Honors Geometry a few days ago.  Writing is a lot like preparing potatoes.  Sounds weird?  Allow me to explain.



1.   You pick up a sack of potatoes at the grocery store and bring them home.  Comparitively, you think up snatches of plot, intriguing concepts, cool character names, etc. throughout everyday life, then write the best of the ideas down or keep them within the recesses of your subconcious.

2.   When the time comes for dinner, you choose how to prepare your potatoes and pluck out the cream of the crop.  In your "writing persona", you need to start a new project, so you choose some ideas that could go well together, pick a genre, and mix everything together, perhaps in an outline, or otherwise a loose swarm in your mind.

3.   You plunge your knife into the first potato and realize that its not as perfect inside as you thought.  Some of your ideas crash and burn.  It's a looming evil for all.

4.   You have your potato wedges and decide to carve off the skin.  Your first draft is kind of depressing you.  Revisions can help you immensely.

5.   The skinned potato chunks look less than professional.  Even after a round of revisions, problems are sure to linger.

6.   You pull out a paring knife and fix up your potatoes.  Proofreading and a few more slight revisions take you from depressed to indifferent, or even happy.

7.   The oil is ready.  You plunk in those potatoes for thick-cut fries.  Bon appetit!  The market isn't getting any easier.  There goes your queries (or manuscripts).  Good luck!



 



Uncanny, isn't it.

Over There

Over There is a pretty crazy novelette.  Published in Asimov's the tale begins in a lab where a team of three conducts an experiment involving the wave function.  From there, reality splits.  And so does the story.

Never before have I read anything that changed from one column to two independent columns.  It was incredibly disorienting at first.  Several pages passed by before I realized that there wasn't a formatting error, one reality took place in one column, while the other resided in the second.  Better yet, columns ended mid-sentence sometimes!  Crazy.  I'm not quite sure if it's crazy genius or just...crazy.

The writing was overall high quality.  There were a few bits that could have been edited more, but it gets an 8/10 or so in that respect.  I would have preferred it without the swearing, there wasn't too much point to it, yet that wasn't a deal-breaker.  I'd give the writer's other work a go if I had the time.

I haven't read a whole lot of sci-fi, but Asimov's has opened up the genre a bit to me.  What I've read of it so far, including Over There, has been satisfying.

Troll Hunter (Part 2)

     Lady Edlewine glared at the knight beside her.  Sir Henry is such a dunce, she thought.  Yes, I’m a troll hunter and a lady. 

     Henry stole a glance toward her again and frowned.  Edlewine raised an eyebrow, then ducked her head, concealing a smirk.  She set her eyes on the neck of her new steed.  Her palms rolled gently across its stiff tendons.  The stallion let out a low neigh even as it galloped.

     From the front of the party, Prince Luther announced, “Gretmot lies near.  A mile separates us from a pack of blood-thirsty hill trolls.  Ready yourselves.  They have an ogre amongst them.”

     The greying man behind him, Baron Raymond of Timberbridge, chuckled.  “An ogre?” he said.  “I haven’t fought one of those half-wits in years.”

     Edlewine spit off to her side.  “He’s not one to laugh over, Baron.  He’s a fully-grown, northern brute with more war-marks than the Archtroll.”

     The Baron twisted to display a deep scowl.  “So I cannot handle him, you reason?”

     “Not without the full of Aramel’s grace,” she replied.  Her eyes were cold.  “And I doubt the Luck God cares much for an old, cocky tracker.”

     “Your grace,” the Baron said to his prince.  “Do you teach nothing to your sellswords of respect?”

     Prince Luther shrugged.  “All is lost on her, I fear.  But the Lady Edlewine is the most adept hunter in my court.  You must forgive her crude speech.  Talent is far more valuable than tact, in her profession.  She’ll prove an asset soon enough.  The fortress lies just beyond this ridge.”

My Writing Demographics

Quick post, complements of a headache:

I am a fifteen-year-old white male.  However, (as far as I can remember) I've never written from the point of view of a fifteen-year-old white male.  Most of my characters are adults, and the handful of younglings are either older males or female.  Amelia, the protagonist of my serial Fifteen that I still haven't finished (one day I'll write that final battle...), turned fifteen on my fifteenth birthday, so she's the closest demographically to myself.  I don't specify race generally, so I can't really speak for that, although I see my characters as white, just because I'm more used to seeing caucasians.  The main characters of my epic fantasy W.I.P. are males around there 30s (20s-40s I think, although I haven't pinned much down).  My failed NaNo project has a female protagonist around 13, and her counterpart in my novelette is a tad older.