Teaser #1, unnamed fantasy novel

In the cave mouth, six Laborers stood by the carts of broken stone as three uniformed Plainsmen sifted through the contents. Three uniformed Laborers stood, halbards with their butts resting lightly on the ground, in close proximity to the Plainsmen, clearly bodyguards.

The Laborer mineworkers were uniformly pale-skinned, dark-haired males, all at least seven feet tall, with long, heavily muscled limbs, streaked orange with freckles in a tiger-striped pattern. Two carried enormous pickaxes, another a large sledgehammer weighing some 40 pounds.

The Laborer bodyguards were more varied, but were of a slimmer, shorter stock of Laborer, tho they all still stood towering over the Plainsmen in stature. All three were female, and two wore carved emerald cabochons on her cuffs, each denoting the Plainsman for whom she worked. The larger of them, pale and red-haired, also carried a bone knife around her neck on a braided orange strand, indicating that she was a Freeman. The device on the emerald cabochon she wore was of a knight, rampant dexter, the sigil of Magister John Grange.

The bearer of the second emerald cabochon was deeply tanned, also with red hair, and her cabachon was of a lion's head, roaring sinister, the mark of Masterminer Jemsen Rialdonado.

The third uniformed Laborer was the smallest, barely 6 feet in height. Her skin was black, as was her hair, and her eyes were wide-set and almond shaped. She wore a black cabochon carved with the head of a bull over two crossed wands. The black stone was diamond, and it was the sign of Technical Oracle Amar Arrad.From her position between the Plainsman and the Laborers, facing the Laborers, and her body language, holding her halberd close to her, it's butt against her boot, proclaimed her the senior Laborer present.

The three Plainsmen stood over the cart of broken stone, two of them stooping, rummaging through the cart, examining bits of stone. The third stood, eyes closed, concentrating.

In thickly accented True Speech, he muttered "There is only one of value, toward the bottom. It is shaped rather like an - yes, Grange, that is it". He had not opened his eyes as he directed the men to the flake of stone.

Grange looked closely at the wide, thin flake of stone. He turned it in his hands, and held it up to the sunlight. "I see nothing of interest. Are you serious in your offer?"

"Certainly" replied Arrad, reaching for the stone. Grange handed it to him, frowning. "Nothing but rock" he muttered, looking at Rialdonado, who shrugged.

Arrad gave the stone to his bodyguard without examining it.

"Give me some room" he commanded, and the other Plainsman and all the Laborers moved back from him. The bodyguard with the stone walked to the group of hulking Laborers, while the other two uniformed Laborers moved into the mouth of the mine, slightly worried expressions on their faces.

Arrad began to mumble incoherent sounds and pivot very slowly on his left foot. It took him almost a minute to make a complete circle and start a second.

None of the Laborers present had seen a Technical Oracle work, and all watched. The tall, muscular mineworkers tried to watch surrupticiously, and the bodyguards stared intently, except Arrad's, who looked bored.

Arrad finally spoke. "You have a tunnel stretching due south at a depth of about 35 feet, yes?"

Rialdonado muttered "yes, but"

"Drain it, and continue at a thirty degree angle down. In 19 feet, you will break into a cavern. Drain that and simply chip the gems off the walls. It is nearly identical to the cavern above it and to the west, but richer."

"What is it, Arrad?" Grange asked.

"The rock? It contains the remains of a large Zintora shell"

Grange and Rialdonado first frowned, then guffawed loudly. "You must be drunk, man! We are three hundred miles away from the nearest salt water. And how would a zintora get 120 feet down my mine and buried in layer rock?"

"Rheeanza" Arrad said, holding his hand out to his bodyguard. Rheeanza handed it over. Arrad passed his hand over the surface of the stone, and handed it to Grange.

One side of it was now polished. Clearly, light against a dark background, was a spiral shell, about two inches long.

Rialdonado examined it without touching it. "It's a sculpture, it is made of rock, not shell" he said.

Grange closed his eyes and muttered a single sylable. He grinned. "Youv'e been had, Arrad. That was never alive. Now, why somebody would sculpt a shell into a piece of layer rock and hide it down my mine, I cannot fathom, but it is the only answer. But thanks for the scry, that would have cost me 100 ducats." He clearly meant it as scorn, and it was only politeness and a touch of fear that kept him from ending his statement with "Sucker!"

"You have what you wanted, I have what I wanted." Arrad said, and took back the stone. He motioned to his bodyguard, and they walked back up the access road toward their horses. Rheeanza walked two steps behind him, her halberd across one shoulder.

Grange looked at Rialdonado and said "get me more of those stones. I hate mysteries."

The Masterminer growled at his laborers "Start draining the Southmine. But two of you go to where you found that rock and fine me more just like it."

After walking around a bend in the access road, Rheeanza quickened her pace, and drew from beneath her uniform a wood-hilted bone-bladed dagger and lodged it in her belt sash.

"Interesting dilemma" she said in her native language Mitger. "Do we believe that a mad wizard created a sculpture of a shell in the middle of a bed of layer rock and then buried it, leaving no traces of excavation?"

Arrad laughed. "We let the facts guide us to a conclusion without resort to speculation. This is clearly a stone depiction of a shell, exact in every detail except that it is made of the wrong material.

I have attempted to lay a dwimmer on it, but failed, which means according to our current understanding, it can never have lived. Yet, I know it's age to be perhaps a million years, the same age as the rock matrix in which we found it. We have a thing that cannot be, yet is."

"Clearly our current understanding is flawed"

"Clearly"

They walked in silence, and upon reaching their horses tethering bar, mounted and rode silently.

"Well?" Arrad asked, eventually.

Rheeanza said "Clearly there was life before magic, and that life was made of stone. When Magic first came into the world, the stone creatures must have died off, for some reason. We all know that dwimmers can be laid on anything that was once alive, but we must amend that idea to exclude stone life."

"I don't like it" Arrad said. "I think something turned this shell to stone. I think it was alive, it lived and died in a world where their was no magic. I think that is much more likely that a living being made of stone."

"I disagree. I think a world without magic a far more unlikely answer than a living thing made of stone."

My Muse

My muse, or rather, one of them (the one that lives in the aether, not the one that lives in Chicago (see Lady Dusk)) kicked me in the nuts last night.

I was innocently lying there moaning from the exertion of chasing goats, dogs and a VERY reluctant cow. It seems I and my family have been declared the neighborhood go-to guys for dealing with animals that have escaped their pens and gone running off. I have a talent with dogs, so I can understand that part of it, but goats????? COWS?????

I did learn one very important lesson - Martial Arts do NOT work against cows.

Anyway, back to my muse. She told me that I can't just write a science-fiction novel, mostly because it is too much work and not enough creativity. I must also write the fantasy novel that has been banging around in my head for two years. At the same time!

the main characters of both ganged up on me in a dream about something to do with getting on a bus and driving to london. The details are unimportant (and, in fact, inexplicable) but I am committed to writing two novels at the same time, something I have never done. Both to be posted as they go, online. Yay.

Morphine dreams

Heavy eyes closed on a dark room
pungent fragrance, pine and ceder,
smokey sultry woman there.

slow, deep caress,
warm soft skin slides warm soft skin
not doing, just being.
undulating, watching black dragon smoke

under black silk
constant slight movement
subtle teasing,
slow, smooth passion
building slowly
always just an inch
away

black cat sleeping
stretch to reach,
arch of pleasure,
yawns, sighs, sleeps.

smoke twirls and flows
waves and swirls of gray
attention wanders
slides away

heavy eyes open shyly
and closing, and again
black cat whispers silence
dragon smoke swirls

bodies join softly
under black silk
smoke entwines
black cat sighs.

Bad Ferret Nightmares, and an answer for Spiritwrack

Back in mists of prehistory, (call it 1986 or thereabout)my second novel was eaten by a ferret. A drunk ferret. Owned by one Vince, about whom the less said, the better.

This particularly obnoxious creature had a habit of dangling himself into large beer mugs and drinking. A lot. And then, probably because the little bastard was overfed and overloved, he would find the most inappropriate place possible to relieve himself.

He crapped on a videocassette of Fire and Ice, which was a perfectly appropriate editorial comment on the movie, but cost us about $20.

He ate a hole in a leather chair and used it as a toilet until the smell became too much even for him.

He thought my friend Jamie's air mattress was a chew-toy.

And he LOVED computer disks. I had been writing this epic for almost 8 months (this is back when I still suffered from the delusion that somebody would one day READ the stuff I write) and the fucking vermin ATE the thing. 8 months of work. chewed to death by a ferret.

If I had had backups, it wouldn't have mattered. But this was 198fucking6, and backups were things 'the man' did, we freewheeling longhair counterculture types would NEVER do something so lawful......

I had a dream last night. The Ferret had eaten the Declaration of Independence and I was eating scones.

Because of this meaningful, if somewhat obvious, prompt from my usually-more-subtle subconscious, I will indeed be posting my novel online, somehow, as I am writing it.
I am, at the moment, trying to figure out how to organize this. Expect more within a few days.

Accident

I pull into traffic
and glance into the mirror
my entire life is following me
in a little blue car

As if coordinated
planned
the SUV strikes the little blue car
just as I look in the mirror to check on them
and my entire life shudders, groans,
and stands still for a moment
in the rearview mirror

Freeze-frame
time stops
and I spend an eternity
with my terror
and my first thought is
this is backwards. I was supposed to be following her

But she was following me
it made sense,
I knew the road and I needed gas
so I led.
It should have been me
that took the hit.

Thirty feet separate me from my family
and I run it after haphazardly parking
I am looking down
because I don't want to see
until I am there

step
faster, run faster, fat pig
step
my pants are falling off
and I slow down to hike them up
and and I hate myself for it.
step
please let them be alive
step
my fault, my fault, should have waited
step
I look up and see her, she is alive
step
can't see him, shit!
my son!
step
if I hadn't been frustrated,
step
and just wanting to get home
step
I would have waited, looked
step
but no, arrogant jackass has to do it HIS way
step
where is my son?
step
I see him in the back seat
step
he looks fine
step

I reach the little blue car
my hands on the twisted, bent metal
look into her eyes
and then down
her entire body
no blood.
In the back seat
seatbelt fastened
my son, stunned but unhurt.

I breathe

I have to either post on this damned blog or give it up.

I am writing about 5000 words of fiction (hard science fiction) per day, and about 350 of them are worth saving. Which is slow going. Not to mention that I have rewritten the entire concept 4 times so far.

My netfriend Spiritwrack (yes, somebody hasnt had a life since first edition D&D) wants me to post, perhaps here, perhaps on it's own blog, my progress on the new novel. Anybody else want to see the unseemly and unimaginably ugly process of a novel getting written?