Untitled Work

 I say that this is untitled, but the truth is that it is quite the opposite--in fact, it boasts two titles, neither of which I feel particularly strongly about at present. 

What to say about the piece itself? It started out as something for my Narration and Description course, but I ended up abandoning it and submitting something else. I found it a few weeks after the fact as an untitled document sitting in my Scrap Heap file on my thumb drive, and decided to dust it off and re-dream it. 

In short, it was a study in turning the familiar into the strange. I may develop the idea and turn it into something else entirely later, but for now, here it stands: 

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            The neighbors were at it again. Three in the morning…every morning…he could hear them through the walls. He rolled over, pulled his pillow over his head to block out the sound, but it was no use. He could still hear them, just on the other side of the wall. 

            A hazard of apartment living: nothing that you do is actually private.

            “What are they doing?” Clara grumbled, clambering clumsily to the edge of the bed and pressing her ear against the wall. He could see her expression by the steady blink of his alarm clock; curiosity and annoyance were both muted by her grogginess.

            He yawned and reached for her. “Eating, I guess. They’re big eaters over there. Eat anything that crosses their path and doesn’t have a Resident’s Permit.”

            “Is that allowed?” She scooted away from the wall and pulled the sheet over her shoulders. “I mean, don’t they have rules against that sort of thing?”

            “They do,”  he tried again to cajole her into laying down, but she sat firm, and the longer he was awake the more he realized that he needed to pee.

            So he swung his legs over the side of the bed and dragged himself up. “They try to keep strict rules about a lot of things, but when you’re royalty—“

            “Royalty!” 

            He continued as though she had not spoken, “you’re allowed to do whatever you like—or eat it.”

            Clara’s eyes turned upward. Curiosity outweighed by contempt, “Animals.”

            By the time he had returned from the bathroom, Clara was out of bed, too, buttoning one of his shirts to cover her bare body.

            The noise from the other side of the wall did not even falter when the community lights buzzed on in the hall outside of his unit. The white lights refracted through the glass panes of the front of the unit, blinding him momentarily. He’d meant to cover the entire wall with a curtain when he first moved in, but shortly after, a law had been passed saying that you mustn’t cover the front of your unit. It impeded bed checks.

            “The guards are coming, Clare,” he said over his shoulder, pulling open a dresser drawer and  retrieving two pairs of soft pajama bottoms. He threw one at Clara. “You will want to cover up.”

            “Ah, she-it,” Clara stuffed her legs into the pants and muttered to herself. “I knew I shouldn’ta stayed the night with you. Now I’ll be dragged back to my own quarter like some…common whore.”

            “Will you cut it out?” He had no use for dramatics so early in the morning. “They’re probably just coming to check on the noise.”

            Clara sniffed. “As if they won’t be able to smell that I don’t belong.”

            She had a point, but he didn’t tell her that.

            The soldiers tromped down the hall, two-by-two, six in all, plus the General himself who headed the march.

            Feeling that, with the General involved, it would be best for him to make an appearance, he pulled his robe off of the back of a chair, and opened his door.

            The procession paused at the door before his, as he expected they might.

            “Routine inspection, General?” he asked, the cool quality of his tone conveying his displeasure more efficiently than annoyance, he felt.

            The General shook his head. “Afraid not, Prime Minister,” he jabbed a thumb at the door. “Unfortunately.”

            The General was a bull of a man with a barrel for a chest and a red face that hid behind a traditional moustache, but when he knocked on the thick oak door of the only unit that did not have a glass front, his enormous hands produced a sound that was awkwardly timid.

            The noise from inside continued.

            This time, when the general knocked, he knocked like he meant it.

            The Prime Minister looked down the hall from one end to the other. Curious eyes peeked through the cracks of their doors. He didn’t know why they peeked. The glass walls hid nothing.

            When he looked back, he realized that the sound had stopped. The oak door was opening. 

            “General.” If the Prime Minister thought that his cool tone conveyed displeasure, then the Queen must be seething.

            The royals were picture perfect. The Queen stood in front, one daughter perched on her hip, the other clung to the opposite leg, and the Consort standing behind them, solemn, and waiting.

It was her blood red hair that defined her as royalty. The man at her shoulder had gained his status by virtue of being her mate and the father of her children—children who had unfortunately inherited their father’s darker locks. Rumour had it that the Queen would eat him, soon, due to his failure to implant a fair haired offspring in her womb.

But that was neither here, nor there. At the moment, they stood in their doorway in the most picturesque of fashions, dressed in white, waiting for an explanation from the General.

“Majesty,” the General bowed. So too did everyone else, from the Prime Minister to the end of the hall. “We’ve been called here to handle a disturbance coming from this quarter.”

The Queen looked from one end of the hall to the other. The daughter on her hip looked as well, but got sidetracked by her mother’s curls, which she took in fistfuls and cooed into.

“I see no disturbance here,” she said at length. “You were misinformed.”

Many a General would falter now, stumble over his words in an apologetic bumble. But this General, with his mustache and barrel chest, stood firm. He had seen the Queen as a young girl, had brought her as a babe to the former Majesty, and had placed the crown on her head when she had come of age. He had sat at the table and watched her eat the heart of her predecessor to gain the compassion that she had lacked. He had given her the news that neither of her twin daughters had been born with the royal blessing, and he had not faltered in the wake of that storm. He did not falter now.

“Majesty, the disturbance is you.”

The Queen drew her lips back, but said nothing.

“Lady, we respect that this is your time to be with your family, but if you could manage to keep it down, we would appreciate it.”

There was an art in the General’s speech that the Prime Minister admired. One never demanded that a Monarch do anything that she did not want to do. One merely suggested she do it if it pleased her to do so. It pleased this particular Majesty to do nothing at all, and so naturally another line of communication had to be carefully forged. By suggesting that she would do something if she could manage, the General had issued a challenge carefully decorated with suggestion. One never questioned whether Her Majesty was capable of doing something unless one wanted it proven that Her Majesty could do anything.

For a moment, the Queen analyzed his words. Then she nodded and made a gesture to her Consort to take their daughters inside, and followed. She had said not a word to dismiss the General and his men, but the bolt sliding into place from the other side of the door was all the command that anyone needed to return to their daily lives.

Prying eyes retreated. The soldiers and their General continued down the hall (poor Clara was espied on the other side of the glass wall and given a ‘friendly armed escort’ back to her original quarter), and the lights flickered out with a tired pphht.

The Prime Minister returned to bed, paused long enough to pull a pair of underwear too skimpy to be his out of the sheets, and settled against the mattress with a sigh.

It was quiet. For the first time in months, it was quiet. And he had worried about making the call! Perhaps tonight, despite the disturbance, he could get a decent night’s rest.

There was a knock on his door.

Cursing his luck, he pulled himself from bed, again, and moved to the door.

It was dark, so even through the glass door, he couldn’t see who stood on the other side.

It wasn’t until she spoke that he realized who she was.

“So,” the Queen purred, reaching out and gripping his throat with a strong hand. She crushed his windpipe before he had a chance to bring his own hands up to defend himself. “I hear that you have a problem with your living conditions.”

Fairy Tales

We rode the giant eagles all the way to the Great Mountain, and we jumped from their backs as we passed over the Black Lake that lay at the mountain’s roots.

Then we swam with the Sea Beast that lived there, taking the time to polish its scales—beautiful and black like the surface of a wizard’s spying orb. We escorted the Beast to the Ball that its step-mother would not let it attend, and cheered when it married the Handsome Prince and turned into a beautiful mermaid.

The Prince escorted us to the dark cake which lead to the mountain’s belly, as a thank you for helping him find his bride, and we left the Prince and the Mermaid to live out their happily ever after.

 The tower was so large and great it acted as a single pillar of support that curved like a spine from the mountain’s base to its peak. We climbed it fearlessly and clambered into the beds we found in the chamber at the top.

The Evil Queen came in then, tucking us in and filling our heads with tales of a Grey World where men and women dressed the same, and people worked after the sun went down, and ate food from bags and boxes.

As she left us, we lay down our heads and watched the sun rise into a peachy sky, and before we turned back into swans, we knew to be thankful for the promise of our Happily Ever Afters.

Bartleby Snipes

Another Narration and Description piece specifically for character development. I quite like Bartleby, and I hope he'll be able to find a place in Dreamwalker's Path, or another of the books in the Archives. 

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            Every morning, before he went down stairs to man his corner-store book shop, Bartleby Snipes made himself a ham and mayonnaise sandwich. He did not particularly like mayonnaise, nor was he fond of ham, as a general rule, but Bartleby was, above all, a creature of habit. He’d eaten ham and mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch every day since his first day of primary school, when his mother had packed him a sandwich and a note, and a thermos of orange juice. Bartleby was now years passed primary school age, but the ham sandwich had been a constant in his life for so long that it was almost unthinkable that he should change now.

            So it was that when Bartleby reached for the place where the ham should have sat waiting for him, and grasped nothing but air, a sense of dread crept over him.

            “Oh dear…” he scratched an ear and frowned, deep lines outlining his muzzle and creasing his forehead.

Briefly Bartleby entertained the notion that he should go down to the store and buy more ham for his sandwich, but he dismissed it almost immediately. The shop had to be open in twenty minutes, and he would never get to the other side of town, beat the rush at the butchers, come home, make his sandwich, and still be able to open the shop on time. Likewise, the idea that he should not have a ham sandwich for lunch was so distressing that he was certain he could feel his heart propelling itself from one side of his ribcage to the other with little palpitations.

“Well…well, well, well,” he lifted his glasses off the bridge of his nose, the world teeter-tottering out of focus on the other side of the very thick glass. “I just don’t know what to do with myself. This has never happened before…” And it hadn’t. Bartleby kept strict inventory of everything that was in his refrigerator, and the one thing that he made sure he always had—other than mayonnaise—was ham. How did he run out? What had he been occupied with that had been so important that he’d forgotten to go to the butchers?

And then he remembered. It was the new project that Mr. Jaeger had him working on. Very important, very fascinating stuff that sucked him right in and caused him to forget that he’d run out of ham and needed to go get more.

Shakespeare couldn’t have written a better tragedy!

The old clock above the stairs co-cooed its way to the half hour. He had only a short time to decide what to do before he had to go downstairs and open the shop.

He had one option, as he saw it, and he dreaded it with all his being.

Carrying the weight of a routine he’d followed for over three decades, Bartleby picked up his phone and dialed.

“Mr. Jaeger? Y-yes, hello, it’s Bartleby. About the work you’ve given me…yes, I’ve decided a method of payment...” 

And then I built a harp...

Yesterday I spent the entire day reading while sitting by my front door glaring suspiciously at the road any time a UPS-like truck sounded like it was trundling down the road. I wasn't exactly sure that the UPS truck was going to get to the house at all, yesterday because of the rain, but arrive it did with a very large box with my name on it.

Despite my initial excitement, I very quickly realized that I still didn't know how I wanted to go about decorating my harp. I'd specifically looked for a harp kit so that I could personalize my harp before I started playing it, and since the harp kit that I chose had a cardboard soundbox (which made the kit substantially less expensive), decorating the harp wasn't so much an option as it was the difference between having a decent looking instrument and feeling like a toddler with a shoe box and some rubber bands. Originally I was going to paint some really intricate Celtic leaves and vines on the side, but I realized that most harps have Celtic leaves and knots along the side of the soundboard--which was fine for other harps, but this is my harp, and I wanted it to be special.

Having nixed the Celtic vines and/or knots idea, I came to the conclusion that I had NO IDEA what to paint. I did know that I wanted green paint, which I didn't have, so I dragged my sister and our friend out into the rain, to Michael's Arts and Crafts, to stare at a big shelf of paints where I worried for twenty minutes over what colour green I liked best. Except that all of the greens that they had either looked like it belonged on an army uniform, in a jar of Gerber's baby food, or, well, in the toilet. So green didn't happen. Instead, my friend found a great "berry wine" red, so I grabbed a couple of tubes of that and we headed back home.

Halfway into The Hobbit, I had the outside of my soundbox painted. I think that eventually I'll design a sort of floral stencil and paint that in white on the side. Maybe. Right now I'm pretty fond of it as it stands.

I let the box dry overnight, and today I finished constructing the rest of the harp. Originally, I was going to stain the wood, but it was quite a few shades darker than I thought it would be, and frankly, I was way too excited about putting it together to take the time to stain the wood properly, so I decided to skip that step. I did take a few minutes to burn a bardic symbol on the head of the harp. Then I use some of the lacquer that was left over from when my dad made the mantle over the fireplace. It was just my luck that the lacquer actually darkened the wood a fair bit, so it ended up exactly the colour I wanted as well as giving the wood a nice glossy look.

While the lacquer dried, my dad and I folded and glued the cardboard soundboard together, and once that dried I was able to go over it with another coat of paint. I realized this morning when handling the soundbox that because the instructions said to use a water-based paint, there was no way that the paint would survive if water got on it, and when the paint dried it was kind of chalky and dull. I ended up painting the soundbox with lacquer as well just to protect the paint.

Once everything was dry, it was time to put together the three-piece wooden frame, add the bridge pins and tuning pins, and then glue the frame to the soundbox (the majority of which my dad did, because he's the one with the power tools).

I am now in the process of waiting for the box and frame to dry, and tomorrow I'll be able to string the harp and start the VERY scary process of tuning this bad boy (oh gosh x_X).

I do have pictures below, and when I string it, I'll take another picture and put it up. :)

Word cout and Harp updates

In the last two days I have written a little over 5,000 words, bringing my total word count for my manuscript up to 35,540 words. I'm very pleased that I seem to have found a decent work stride again. With luck it will continue, though I will be able to hit the 50 thousand mark by the end of the month.

Also: I did cave and buy a harp--or rather, I bought a harp building kit and I'm going to put my own harp together and learn to play it. I've been practicing reading music in between writing. It's loads of fun--except, if I'm not paying attention, I get confused easily.

I should get the harp in the next week or so. I'll have to decide how I want to decorate it (the soundbox is cardboard, so I get to paint it up so that it looks less strange). I'll post updates on its progress occasionally, I'm sure.

Until next time!

I've noticed that one of the things that sucks most about having an idle summer is that it's hard to find a good time for me to write. Between learning how to make wire wrap jewelry and reading Joanne Bertin's Bard's Oath (and subsequently flipping longingly through Amazon and eBay looking at harps because the book really makes me want to play the harp), there just doesn't seem to be a lot of time in the day to sit around getting sucked into imaginary worlds.

Nevertheless I plug on, wishing that it were November, of all times, because Nanowrimo.org has that fantastic little bar visual where you can watch your word count grow. I think I need a visual. One off the things that I love about the program that I use to write is that it keeps me from being distracted by other sections of what I've already written. One of the things that I dislike is that it doesn't give me page numbers. It's hard to see your book fill out if you don't have page numbers to gage it. Maybe that's why I keep looking for some sort of little bar to fill up.

Good news is that my current word count is over 30,000 Words. If I were actually doing NaNoWriMo, I would be golden, as I think I've written well over 5,000 words in the last two days. I may finish the book before the end of the summer yet.

ONLY TIME SHALL TELL!

After a bit of a hiatus

I'm happy to announce that with summer comes the end of most of my time-sucks. I've officially graduated with my BA, and as I'm lucky enough to be a teacher, I have a nice long break for the summer. I expect to be able to work on some writing. My goal is to get a large portion of the next installment of The Historian's Archives, The Dreamwalker's Path, finished so that it can be ready for publication sometime next year.

I am also working on a collection of short stories which may center around Harold Knightly and his friends at Portly Middle, so stay tuned for more information about that as well. In between Harold and The Historian's Archives, I will continue working on the Hundred Themes exercises which I will continue posting as I finish them.

Dismally short update for such a long absence, but I'm hoping that blogging will be a good way to warm up for creative writing, so I expect that I'll be updating soon.