Eavesdropping

I’m standing at the counter when a young girl comes into the store, blonde and purple hair bouncing about as she skip-walks up the main aisle to the counter.

“I see some purple,” says the lady behind the counter.

“I’d heard someone had gone purple for summer,” says her husband.

“I did,” the girl says. “Mom said I could pick any color I wanted. I just hav’ta change it back to blonde or a dark color ‘fore school starts.”

“You’ll notice, neither she or her ma asked me,” said the girl’s father. “Which is probably best, because I’d have just ruined her fun.”

“Nuh-uh, dad!” says the girl. “You would have let me do it, because it’s summer and I got all As and Bs and you said I could do my hair however I wanted if I got all As and Bs.”

“I suppose I did,” he says. “What was the book you wanted to come in for?”

“Oh, yeah. Do you have Players Handbooks for D and D?”

“Let me check. I think we might be sold out, but I’m not sure,” says the woman.

“Sorry, sweetie,” says her husband. “We sold the last copy this morning.”

“Oh. Okay.” Says the girl.

“Can we order it in like we did those dice last week? Kiddo’s been asking for one since our game last Sunday.”

“Sure.” Says the lady at the counter. “Takes about two days usually, but our truck’s due in tomorrow, so we can call and see if they can get it shipped in with that. We’ll just need your number and payment in advance to place the order.”

“Great.” Says the girl’s father. “See, kiddo. We’re all set.”

“Awesome! This means I get to come to the store TWICE,” says the girl.

Ouroboros

Ouroboros

© R. Hans Miller

Darra looked at the small group of coins in the palm of her hand and counted them carefully in her mind. Four silver stars, two copper bits, and one half of a gold tip. Not much, but sufficient to get her on a ship to the port of Delsoy. The only problem was that it wouldn’t cover the cost of food on the trip. Three weeks at sea with no food wasn’t an overly appealing proposition, but it wasn’t like she could stay in Port Acnoy.

Bracing herself for an unpleasant conversation, she walked downstairs from her small room above the tanner’s shop. She’d already paid off the rent she owed him, but she knew he was unhappy to be losing the income he’d gotten during her two year stay.  She felt bad. After all, he’d been kind to her and it wasn’t his fault that she had to leave. True, she wouldn’t miss the smell of tanning chemicals that permeated almost everything she owned, but she would miss his smile and breakfasts she often shared with him and his apprentice, Kalen. It would take a while for someone to agree to rent the room above the smelly tannery, and the tanner would skimp on his own meals in order to make sure Kalen ate well.

“Oh, well,” she thought. “Nothing for it, but to go ahead and get it over with.”

The steps to Darra’s room ran down the outside of the building to the front of the shop, which had no walkway in front of it. A small courtyard filled with stretched hides stood in front of the place instead. Most of the pelts were rabbit this time of year, though one bright red fox stood out from among the rest.

She paused for a moment when her feet hit the cobbled surface of the courtyard, and did the usual morning checks most do when leaving the house. She’d tucked her purse into her blouse after counting the coins within. Then she reached into her travelling bundle to make sure her spare clothes and her mother’s shell necklace were where they ought to be. Finally, she checked to make sure the dagger Kalen had given her as a going away gift was on her hip. She’d need it. It was dangerous to travel between continents. Especially for a woman.

The sun hit Darra in the eye as she looked up. It was just cresting over the top of the eastern wall of the courtyard. She needed to move it, if she was going to get on a ship to Delsoy this morning, especially if she was going to find a ship that not only had space for her, but work she could do to earn something to eat along the way.

She knocked on the shop door. Nobody answered.

“Come on Tekker. I need to get going. Open the door.”

Still nobody answered. Tekker was either more upset than she thought, or he’d overslept, which he sometimes did. He wasn’t as young as he used to be.

Darra banged on the door again, much harder this time. So hard that it almost hurt her hand.

Still no answer.

Concerned, she tried the handle to the door and quickly yanked her hand away. Something wet and sticky was on the handle. “Gross,” she thought. “Why do tanners always have to be so gross?”

She wiped her hand on her dress and used a scrap of cloth from the nearby wash bin to try the handle again. The door opened with a slight creek on its brass hinges.

Now, Darra was really concerned. It wasn’t like Tekker to leave his door unlocked at night. Both she and Kalen had keys if they needed in for any reason, and he lived alone, his wife having passed away thirteen years ago from Consumption.

Afraid for her friend, Darra pushed the door fully open and stepped into the dark interior of his workshop.

Something crunched under Darra’s shoe as she stepped in, and she looked down. An awl was under her foot, and she was lucky she hadn’t run its curved point into her foot. It poked out from the sole of her shoe at an odd angle, having just barely missed the arch of her foot. She bent down, and pulled the tool from her shoe, and took another step into the building.

At once, she knew something was horribly wrong. Several other tools lay on the floor, akimbo. The leather bits Tekker used to make necklaces were strewn about on the floor amongst them. The trade counter that took up the majority of the front of the building was completely empty, most of the leather goods that were usually displayed there lay in a heap at the far end. Most importantly, the cash box lay on the floor, its lid pried open with some crude implement and only a few small coins on the floor.

“Tekker,” she called.

No response. “Tekker, are you home? Are you ok?”

Still no answer. Darra picked up the few coins she could see, and walked towards the door at the back of the shop.

Her hand was almost on the doorknob when two wiry men burst through the door and grabbed at her. One of them covered her mouth with a foul smelling cloth while the other pinned her arms to her sides. She struggled for a moment, then the world began to slowly fade away. Her eyes fluttered and the last thing she saw was a scraggly black beard and green eyes with a diamond tattooed between them.

Eventually, she came to. She was surprised to find herself alive, and more pleasantly surprised to see Kalen’s form seated at the table next to her bed. She was back in her room, lying on her bed. She moved to sit up, but dizziness overcame her, and she lay back down.

She must have made a sound, because Kalen quickly moved to the side of the bed. “Here, drink this,” he said, and put a cup to her lips. Something hot and bitter ran down her throat as she drank. At first, it was repulsive and she nearly gagged on it, trying to spit it out. Kalen was stronger though, and made her keep drinking. Soon, the horrible residue in her mouth was rinsed away and she could taste the hot chocolate with mint. A few minutes later, her head settled down, and she was able to sit up.

Kalen had sat back down, still holding the cup and looking at her.

“They’re gone,” he said, finally. “Not sure how long it’ll be before they come back, but they’re gone. I chased them off before they could…um…”

“You know.” He looked away, embarrassed.

“I know,” she said. “Thank you.”

Silence for a moment while she let her head clear.

“Who were they?” she finally asked.

“I’m not sure. They been by the tannery a few times last couple of days. Not sure what they wanted. Tek would send me out to scrape hides whenever they was around, but he was always nervous after they went. I guess I know why now.”

It finally occurred to Darra to ask, “Wait. Where’s Tekker? Is he…”

She didn’t need to finish the question. The look on Kalen’s face answered it before she was finished saying the old tanner’s name.

Tears streamed down her face. She kept picturing the last conversation she’d had with Tekker, and wishing it had gone differently. He had been upset that she was leaving, and hadn’t thought a spoiled affair with a rich man’s son was reason enough to leave a city as large as Port Acnoy. There were plenty of people here. She was a pretty one, he’d said, and surely she could find a good man to settle down with here. He’d meant Kalen, but Kalen was too young. She’d lost her temper and told him that if he thought Kalen was so damned wonderful, maybe he ought to marry him.

Kalen opened his mouth to say something, but a loud knock at the door interrupted him. Startled, Darra shrieked and jumped up, running to the other side of the room.

Kalen motioned for her to be quiet and drew a dagger from his belt. “Who’s there?”

“It’s the constable. Open up,” a voice from outside commanded.

Looking relieved, Kalen opened the door, peeking out first to make sure it really was the constable.

Two large men in red and green uniforms walked into the room. Both wore bronze badges on their left breast and carried cudgels and long knives on their hips. They stopped when they saw Darra, back to the wall, holding an awl in her hand that she’d apparently never dropped, blood on her right hand and her skirt.

—–

Eight weeks later, Darra and Kalen disembarked from a ship in Port Delsoy. The left side of Darra’s face bore a skull brand, barely healed and glossy in the afternoon sun. A guard stopped to question them. Kalen did all the talking. After seeing the papers with the Port Acnoy barrister’s seal on them, he’d let them go, advising them to stay at an inn on the edge of town.

Soon, they were in a small room with one bed.

Kalen offered to sleep on the floor. Darra took a breath, looked as if she was about to protest, then simply nodded and laid down with her scar against the cold pillow.

Kalen looked at her, lying there. For the millionth time he wished he could say something that would make a difference. There was nothing he could say though. She’d been accused of murder, and the evidence had been damning enough. She’d had blood all over her hands from opening the door, a bloody awl in her hand that was just the right size and shape to make the puncture wound that had killed Tekker.

The worst part though, was Kalen’s own testimony. He had been as honest as possible. He’d told them that he came into the workshop and seen three figures in a struggle at the entrance to Tekker’s private quarters. One of the figures had fallen while the other two scrambled to get around him and out the door. He’d been surprised to find Darra there, and had taken her up to her room. Shortly thereafter, she’d woken up and he was just telling her what had happened when two guardsman came in. The physical evidence pointed in her direction, and he hadn’t seen enough to verify that she’d just gone into the shop.

The two gem dealers that she’d struggled with both claimed that they had shown up to find her over Tekker’s body. They said they’d come to pick up some cargo the tanner had asked them to take to relatives he had inland, near the capital.

Darra had been convicted and branded. It didn’t help matters that her former lover was the judge’s nephew. A nephew that was close to his uncle and was not the type to let an insult go unpunished.

Darra had been put in jail and was awaiting the quarterly slave auction when luck struck.

One of the constables hadn’t believed any of what was said in the trial, and had kept a close eye on the gem dealers. Two days after the trial ended, long enough not to arouse suspicion and soon enough to be a pragmatic escape, the two had booked passage on a ship headed southeast. During their testimony, they had both said they were leaving for the capital in the near future to finish a large transaction, so the constable had thought their change of plans odd.

A quick search of the traders’ personal belongings later, and the truth came out in the form of six leather masks and a pile of coins. The leather masks were worn by a cult on the southern continent that was banned in Port Acnoy. The coins contained the one that Tekker used to stamp all of his work.

Darra was released the next day, and Kalen had brought her back to her room. He owned the shop now. Tekker and his wife hadn’t been able to have children, so he had left the shop to his apprentice.

Darra refused to speak for the first two weeks. After that, she mostly spoke just loud and long enough to get her point across. Otherwise, she was silent, and kept her face hidden, ashamed of the mark on it.

The city had paid her two gold tips for her trouble. That was all. That was the standard. Branded a murderer and a few coins and a bit of salve to reduce scarring was all she got.

Kalen had done well in the shop for the first few weeks. The novelty of a new tanner soon wore out and the lack of opportunities to see the murderer of tanner’s row soon put a stop to that though. Darra wouldn’t come out of her room and Kalen wasn’t as skilled as some of his neighbors. Once Tekker’s work was mostly sold out, there was little business to be had.

Soon after, she’d talked him into leaving town with her. He sold the shop to the neighbor’s senior apprentice, and they’d brokered passage on a ship to Port Delsoy. He needed to find a new master to finish his apprenticeship with. She needed to leave town to find some way to move on with her life. None of the tanners in town needed an apprentice, and the pain of the place was more than she could overcome.

So here he stood, looking at the back of her head, wishing he could tell her everything would be alright, but knowing nothing would ever be alright again.

—–

Darra walked towards the cottage that she and Kalen called home. They had been in the town about a week before Kalen found employment. He wasn’t apprenticed to a tanner, but he’d been hired on by a local tanner to haul in pelts from the nearby village of Brownhaven. In exchange, the tanner allowed them to stay in the cottage that had belonged to his deceased brother.

Upon entering the cottage, Darra set down the pile of clothes she had brought home to wash and set the bucket of leather scraps down by the small loom she used to make them into pot holders. These and other odd jobs allowed her to contribute to the household finances. It had taken her quite some time to get clientele, but after she had taken extra care in trying to save the blacksmith’s wife’s favorite dress, folks had begun bringing her work, and spreading word of her story of false conviction.

They had been here just over seven weeks, and the place had really begun to feel like home. She had even begun to see Kalen in a different light. He wasn’t the fifteen year old kid she’d met three years ago. He was kind, thoughtful and intelligent. He took care of her, and let her enjoy the quiet that she needed to heal from the events of the past few months.

She sat down and began to cut onions at the small table in the middle of the cottage, and was thinking about how she might feel toward Kalen when she remembered that she needed to get Matron Gavay’s dress hemmed before she started dinner. She reached into the bundle of clothes to feel for the silk cloth, but instead found something firm and rough in shape. Curious, she pulled the unexpected object out of the bundle.

—–

Kalen arrived home late that evening. He was pleasantly surprised to see that the door to the cottage was still open. Darra left it open during the day, but often shut it at night because the cold air made the scar on her face hurt. He’d usually worked outside, or in a shop with one side that opened completely during the day, so a cloistered cottage made him slightly claustrophobic.

“Darra? You here?” he called, as he approached the entry. “I’ve brought fresh venison for dinner.”

He stopped solid when he entered the cottage. Darra sat on the floor in the corner, hugging her knees to her and hiding her face in her skirt. A black cultist mask with a green gem in it lay on the floor by the table. Bits of onion were strewn about the floor. A Port Acnoy constable’s badge, stained with dried blood, lay on the floor next to Darra.

—–

Darra apologized to Matron Gavay the next day for the delay in hemming her silk skirt. The old lady clucked at her and told her not to worry about it.

“After all, m’dear. It is quite a scare to get that sort of thing dropped in your lap. It isn’t every day one gets a threat from the cult of the god of woe delivered with the linens.”

Of course, everyone knew what had happened. Port Delsoy was a large town, but it was also a very quiet town. The men all worked on the docks or in the market square and the women all worked in the market square or in the house of the local lord. As a result, gossip travelled faster than a catamaran in a hurricane.

Kalen had fetched the local authorities. They went by sheriff here, rather than constable. The uniforms were yellow and red, and the badges a simple black iron circle on their left breast, but that was the only real difference. They asked Darra several questions, demanded to see her letters from the barrister in Port Acnoy again and questioned the townsfolk that had given Darra work that day. All of them had been properly astounded that the cult was active in their peaceful town, and shocked that such a sweet young girl as Darra would be involved in something so adventurous.

The sheriffs had chalked it up to a practical joke, and told Darra to contact them if she noticed anything else that seemed threatening. Kalen had stayed home from work the next day to help her weave leather, or so he claimed. She knew he was there to make sure she felt safe.

She was fine with that.

—–

Two months later, Darra had begun to feel safe once again. No further tokens of animosity had shown up and she had begun to think that maybe the guards were right. Maybe it had just been a bad joke. The gem in the mask wasn’t even real. Just a piece of green glass that Kalen had easily crushed under the heel of his boot.

Today, she had spent the majority of the day with Matron Gavay, helping her with her fall cleaning. Darra was walking home with a lighter step than she’d had in a long time. Matron Gavay was a bit eccentric, insisting on worshipping nature spirits, no matter how many times the local priests knocked on her door to extoll the new gods. Frankly, Darra thought that was half the reason Matron Gavay kept at it. She was a bit on the lecherous side and the priests were easy on the eyes.

Today they’d been cleaning the cobwebs from around the chimney on the second floor when three of the priests had stopped by to drop off scriptures and medicinal tea for Matron Gavay’s arthritis. They’d left an hour later with scowls on their faces and the scriptures still clutched in their arms. Matron Gavay had smacked the last one on the rump as he walked out the door and said, “Try again next week honey.” Darra hoped the priests hadn’t heard the belly laugh she and the Matron had shared before finishing up the day’s chores.

She was a few blocks away from the cottage when she thought she heard something behind her. She turned to look, but the street was empty except for a dirty white dog gnawing on a stick. She turned around and began walking again, stepping up the pace, if only to work off the nervousness that had begun to creep into her bones.

Suddenly, she was lying on her back with cobblestones pressing painfully into her back and a heavy weight on her chest. She struggled to rise as she felt something warm and wet begin to work its way through the cloth of her blouse, soaking her stomach in slimy warmth. Some sort of thick canvas covered her head, and she began to smell something familiar when she lost consciousness.

—–

She awoke in her own bed with Kalen again sitting by her bedside, hot chocolate at the ready. Matron Gavay was there as well, and the two of them were speaking quietly. Darra heard something about cult masks before they both realized she was awake and stopped their conversation.

After her head cleared, she began to piece together what had happened. Kalen had gotten worried when she hadn’t returned home by sunset and had gone looking for her. He had found her near the cottage with a green and black canvas bag tied over her head. The body of a white dog had been tied to her with leather cords and a pungent smell hung about the bag on her head. According to the sheriff that had come to help him when he called, if Kalen hadn’t found her, Darra would have eventually died from the chloroform and other inhalants the bag had been dipped in.

Darra didn’t leave the house for nearly a month. For almost three months, Kalen had to accompany her whenever she couldn’t see the front door of the cottage. Eventually, she began going to Matron Gavay’s home on her own, but she always changed her route, and she never went without her knife.

—–

It was quiet for a time. The sheriffs kept looking for Darra’s assailant for quite a while after the attack. After all, in a town as quiet as Port Dorsey they didn’t have much else to concern themselves with. Then Darra was attacked twice.

The first time, two shadowy figures stepped out from behind a building wearing the masks Darra had come to fear. She screamed and pulled her knife. The two men just stood there, looking at her for a few minutes. Then they dropped an object on the ground that hissed and smelled of rot. Darra ran back to the cottage and Kalen and sheriff Mullay had begun taking turns walking her to Matron Gavay’s home, where she was now working on an almost daily basis.

The final attack was much more blatant and much more painful for Darra. It was nearly two years after she and Kalen had moved to Port Dorsey and it was time again for Matron Gavay’s fall cleaning. Kalen was away getting a particularly large order of pelts from a trader a few days travel from the port and Darra had been invited to stay with the Matron while he was gone.

“No need being alone when your husband is gone, dearie,” the Matron had said. “Not when there’s an old woman who would enjoy your company and share her cookie recipes with you.”

Darra had just set the last batch of cookies to cool, and had turned down the flu on the oven when she heard a screeching sound and a heavy thunk from Matron Gavay’s private room. Concerned that the Matron might have fallen and hurt herself, she’d rushed upstairs to help her friend.

As she approached entered the room, she saw Matron Gavay sprawled on the floor, red fluid leaking from a large knot on the side of her head. Before she could get to her friend though, something heavy hit her on the back of her head, and all she knew was blackness and pain for several seconds.

When she awoke, the candles had burned themselves out and the room smelled of iron and death. Bits of sunlight streamed in from a cracked shutter, and Darra watched dust motes do battle with beams of light for a few seconds before she realized where she was.

She was lying on Matron Gavay’s bed, something cold lay in her right hand, and her hair crunched with dried blood when she looked to see what the cold object was. It was Matron Gavay’s hand, cold and stiff with rigor mortis.

Darra lept up off the bed and realized her mistake too late, her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she fell to the floor.

When she regained consciousness, she stood up slowly. The house had warmed up and the smell of death hung heavy in the air. Matron Gavay lay in her bed with a black dress on. Her head was wrapped in bandages with a green and black leather mask strapped on over the top. Her throat had been slit, but not side to side. Whoever had killed her had cut just the left side jugular vein, lengthwise from chin to sternum. Strangely, there was no blood.

Darra sank to her knees on the edge of the bed and cried. Who would believe that the girl with the murder brand on her face hadn’t killed the old woman? More importantly, how could she bear the loss of her one confidant besides Kalen?

Eventually, she went to fetch sheriff Mullay. She figured that he would listen to her story before jumping to conclusions.

Darra was right. Mullay and his superior both listened to her. After some discussion, she was surprised to learn that she wasn’t considered a suspect in the crime. The knot on the back of her head was proof she’d been attacked, and the absence of blood in the Matron’s body and in the room, except for a small stain where her head injury had bled onto the floor showed that Darra couldn’t have done it. Besides, Matron Gavay was a large woman and there was no way that Darra could have lifted her onto the bed on her own, and her only possible accomplice was away on business.

Darra went home, and didn’t go further than the outhouse for the next two days. When Kalen got home, she simply said, “We’re moving. I can’t stay here.”

—–

Two days later, they had packed up their belongings on an old mule they’d bought. Darra finished cleaning out the cottage, making sure it was ready for the new tenant, a young man that Kalen had helped find to replace him. Soon, they were on the road, heading inland to a village that Kalen thought might be remote enough for whoever was harassing Darra to have a hard time tracking down. He had made a few acquaintances there, and thought he might be able to get on as the local tanner’s apprentice and that Darra might be able to find work in the local inn.

The village was named Morana, and it was far to the west of Port Dorsey, in the foothills of the nearby mountain range. There were more goats and oxen than people, and Darra thought that might be exactly what she was looking for.

As they walked along, Forney the mule trailing slightly behind them, Kalen talked about their new home.

“The best part is, the only people that visit there are the trappers that come down from the mountains and the traders who want their furs. Nobody will mess with us, and we can just live in peace.” He smiled.

“Maybe we can even start a family?”

Darra blushed. She hadn’t thought about having children in years. Not since she’d called it off with Lord What’s-His-Name back in Port Acnoy. She had been too worried for her own safety, and then the safety of those she cared about. She was grateful that Kalen had never been attacked. Travelling for work had always kept him safe, and she always counted it a blessing that he hadn’t found truly local work in Port Dorsey.

The young couple travelled in peace for three days, making plans for the future. They had talked more about children, and decided to begin a family once they had been in Morana for a year with no intrusions from what they were walking away from.

At noon on the third day, the road forked and they took the path to the right, heading toward the mountains. The road started to slope upwards, noticeably but not so steeply as to challenge them as they walked. By the time the sun was setting, Darra was having to slow her pace as the air had become slightly thinner than she was used to and the scar on her face had begun to burn a little. Fortunately, after using different salves for the last couple of years, the scarring was mostly faded, but the skin was still very sensitive to temperature changes.

They rounded a bend in the road, Kalen promising that a good campsite was just a few more minutes up the trail, and stopped short.

Three men in gray uniforms stood in front of them. Black leather masks covered their faces. None of them spoke. They simply stood, blocking the path.

Darra and Kalen both drew the knives from their belts while Forney stopped between them.

“Finally decided to quit hiding, I see,” said Kalen.

The figure in the middle nodded slightly.

“Good. Maybe we can just finish this tonight?” Kalen continued. “I think we’ve all had enough of this game.”

Darra stood, staring at the three men. Each of them seemed familiar somehow, though she couldn’t place them. If they’d just take off their damned masks, she knew she would know each of them.

The two men on either side drew their blades. Short swords. The moon shone off the blades as they each took a few steps to their respective sides to give themselves more space to fight.

The man in the middle stood still.

Darra couldn’t take any more.

“Who are you,” she said. Her voice was calm, and that surprised her. She had expected a scream of rage, but after a second, she realized that she was just too resigned to the situation to muster up that kind of energy.

The man in the middle cocked his head off to the side, his mask showing a bit of beard underneath.

“You mean you don’t know?” said a familiar voice.

The man reached up and casually took his mask off. Tekker’s face lit up in the moonlight, especially where he’d applied white makeup around his eyes to make them stand out under the mask. “I’ve been following you for two years. I would have thought you’d have at least guessed at my identity by now.”

Darra stood in place, stunned.

“I mean, my girl, it only makes sense. I introduced you to my second cousin, and you rejected him. I offer you my apprentice, so that I could keep you around. I did everything I could to have you living well as we brought you into the fold, but no. You decided to leave. To leave me and my friends here…”

“Oh. You don’t remember them either, do you?”

“Gentlemen, please illuminate the poor girl.”

The sword wielding man on the left pulled off his mask and Darra felt sick to her stomach. Her former lover from Port Acnoy looked at her, a smug grin on his face. He was always smug though. That was one of the reasons she’d left him. Well, that and his loyalty to his wife, but she supposed that last one was as much a redeeming quality as he would ever grasp.

The man on the right removed his mask as well, and his face took a moment longer to recognize.

“Hello miss. What can a constable do for you today?”

It was the constable that initially arrested her. A contemptuous sneer on his face told her exactly what his interest in her was. He wanted revenge. She’d had the dumb luck to look guilty on his shift, and he’d looked like a fool when she was pardoned.

So many feelings rushed through Darra’s chest that she didn’t know which one to focus on. Finally, she found one.

Its name was Rage.

Darra leapt forward, her knife slashing back and forth wildly. She heard screaming which might have been her own, but she couldn’t be certain. The only thing that mattered was killing the man who had tortured her these last two years.

The three men were stunned. None of them had expected the tiny woman to fly into a murderous rage. Until now, she’d always broken down and clung to Kalen in fear.

The element of surprise was just what she needed. The dandy and the constable both dodged to the side, staying clear of her blade. Tekker wasn’t so lucky. Before he could even pull out the blade he hadn’t drawn, she was on top of him.

Her first slash went across his right shoulder, cutting through the fabric there and allowing blood to squirt out, splashing her white blouse with red splatters. Her second caught him just under the left eye, from cheekbone to lip. The killing blow was a stabbing thrust just below the sternum, up into his left lung. He fell to the ground, a gurgling sound escaping coming from his throat as he struggled to breathe but drowned in his own blood.

A moment later, a blade pierced her heart. It came from behind her. A long dagger, its sharp edge severing tissue as a deft hand peels the hide off a rabbit. The last thing she saw was a satisfied smile on Tekker’s blood-flecked lips.

Kalen stood over Darra’s corpse, blood dripping from his blade. Finally, he saw the peace on her face that he had thought lost forever after the events at Port Acnoy. These last two years had been filled with despair, loss and pain for the two of them. But no more for her. She was home now. He had done his priestly duty.

Forney brayed and wandered to the side of the trail to begin nibbling grass.

We Reap What we Sough

We Reap What we Sough

Such a strange thing – that which makes the downfall of Baldr.

A purple vine, nettled and creeping up a wall of stone

and mortar – lifting up, but made to falter.

 

Like the whetstone – which caused the war, and in so doing,

murdered the farmers it was meant to help.

Leaving Odin to finish the mountainous chore.

 

The aftermath of that first sacrifice – no matter the effort,

the furrowed earth does not lend its strength to the one

who wields the sickle – that cuts himself short.

 

*Image courtesy: Pexels.com 

He Lived Long and Prospered: RIP Leonard Nimoy

The weather is gray today here in Texas. But, something tells me that it’s gray for all geeks and nerds everywhere. The light of logic and wisdom has dimmed down a bit, because we lost our most beloved Vulcan today. Leonard Nimoy passed away from COPD at his home, and all of the geeks and nerds around the world are heartbroken.

I feel like I’ve lost a second father. Star Trek was so inspiring and amazing to me during my formative years. It helped me grow up and opened my mind to diversity and allowed me to feel like less of a freak because of my wildly overactive imagination. Spock in particular taught me the value of logic and humanity. When I was hurt by bullies or life in general, I often pretended I was Spock until I could get myself to a private place where I could be angry or sad or just feel horrible in peace while I processed whatever had happened to me. I could relate to him as the outsider in the group of cool kids. He made me realize that, even though I was a nerd and and outsider, I could make friends that were amazing and true and worthwhile.

As an adult, I’ve come to respect Mr. Nimoy for more than his role as Spock. He was a writer, a photographer, a voice actor, and so many other things. Talent overflowed from him and inspired hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

I’ll miss him. I never had the opportunity to meet him, but I’ll miss him terribly. He added so much to my life, and the lives of those around me. I can only imagine how much his passing impacts his family, friends, and fellow cast members.

Rest in peace Spock. We love you.

I love seeing success!

With much cajoling and threats of taking his wine away if he didn’t get off his bum and publish his wonderful young adult novel, my friend Kevin Lawhon has FINALLY published is wonderful book.  It is well worth the download and can be found at:

The Second Apprentice

Open up the sample to read it and get started.  It sucks you in and you’ll be buying it before you know it.  It’s available in e-book now and he’ll have print on demand set up soon for those, like myself, who want to pick up a hard copy.  Also, click the link and look at the gorgeous cover.  Phenomenal!

Culture Shock – Life into Lit.

Was I really that young?

I boarded a plane May 5, 1996 and left a rural life in Northwestern Montana for Basic Training at Fort Leonard-Wood, Missouri.  Up to that point in my life, I had lived very much in the dark about the world as a whole and really didn’t comprehend much beyond the small town values I had been raised with.  After landing at the airport in St. Louis, I walked out into what seemed at the time to be another world.

To back up a bit though.  Let’s explore that rural community a bit more.  I grew up in a tiny town called Trout Creek.  It’s a good place for a kid to grow up.  Forestry and tourism are the two most prominent industries; though there are a few ranches around, this isn’t the cattle-breeding mecca of the state.  At the time I left, there were three bars, two convenience stores, two restaurants, and not much else in town.  There was an elementary school for kindergarten through eighth grade, and upon graduation students had to ride a bus to the neighboring towns of Noxon or Thompson falls to go to high school.  Junior high was an odd concept.  There just wasn’t sufficient population to make a separate school.  My graduating class from 8^th grade was perhaps a dozen kids, if that.  Diversity wasn’t really there, as far as I knew.  There were two Pilipino girls in my class whose parents had adopted them as missionaries when they were little.  Otherwise, everyone in the school was white.  I don’t recall ever seeing a black person before I left for Basic Training.  Hispanics were generally only seen when migrant workers came through in the fall to help with the harvest, and then not many.  Most of the population is comprised of conservative Christians who listen to classic rock or country by choice and drive trucks or SUVs out of necessity.  It’s a good place to live; even if I did get a lot of shit for being a long-haired metalhead.

So, now that we’ve set the backdrop, let’s take our young and naïve bumpkin – AKA “me” – to St. Louis.  There were two very distinct impressions that hit me while I was walking to baggage claim.  The first was that St. Louis smelled.  It was this odd mix of sulfur and carbon with a touch of B.O. that was fairly reprehensible.  The second was, “OMG where did all of the color come from?”  There were white people, black people, Asian people, Arabic people, and people whose origins I could only guess at.  There were people wearing crosses, burkhas, turbans, robes, jeans, and crazy goth stuff the likes of which I had never imagined.  I think my jaw drug along the floor for most of the next few hours while I waited for the bus to arrive from Ft. Leonard-Wood to take me away to get Lost-in-the-woods.

That was my very first experience with true diversity.  The type of diversity that you hear about in trainings hosted by your HR department at work.  The type of diversity that I think Roddenberry hoped for when he dreamt up Star Trek.  And, I freely admit, I was terrified.  All of the impressions I had of these people I was experiencing for the first time were from pop culture.  Keep in mind that this was a time when middle-eastern cultures were in the news for hijacking airplanes and blacks were represented in pop culture by the (oh so shocking) beginnings of gangsta rap, gang violence, and such theatrical classics as “Boyz ‘n the Hood.”  My ignorance took me by the throat and choked me.

Fortunately; the military forced me to get over that culture shock pretty quickly, by simply smacking me upside the head with a culture shock of its own.  The transition from civilian college drop-out – who did whatever, whenever – to a private in the U.S. Army is a pretty black and white thing.  You can’t wear, eat, or do anything of your choosing.  Your entire day and way of life is issued to you along with your BDUs (uniform).  You get up, you exercise, train, exercise, train, exercise, train, and collapse hoping you’ll be yelled at less the next day.  There is little to no free time, and even your free time becomes a regimented selection of activities.  Sundays, you could choose to go to church, read your “smart book” (the Basic Training instruction book, basically), clean the barracks, or exercise in the quad between the barracks.  Even then, I was subject to random ass-chewings.

I pretty much had no opportunity to even address the initial culture shock from my arrival in St. Louis.  I had no time to even acknowledge it.  There was a point where I went from being ignorant of my ignorance to being aware that I had stepped into a larger world.  There was a black man in my company that was really intimidating to me.  He never really spoke much, but he was physically the hugest man I had ever met.  Not quite Michael Clark Duncan, but he was big.  Plus, he always looked Really Serious.  One day, we ran into a problem.  We arrived at a firing range – sans ammunition.  Apparently the supply folks hadn’t gotten the shipment of ammo in until late that morning, and we were stuck waiting on them.  Eventually, the drill sergeants got tired of making us do pointless exercises, and went to go relax while we all ate and visited.  I was sitting down, enjoying my Chicken a la King in a pouch, when the picnic table creaked and I looked up to see Really Serious sitting down in front of me.  He scarfed down his meal in a few bites, and took out his smart book, and began reading.  It wasn’t hard to notice that he was flying through pages and was ENJOYING whatever it was he was reading.  Also, from the lack of diagrams depicting how to do such things as deploy a Claymore M14 antipersonnel mine, I could tell it was NOT his smart book he was reading.  He’d used the cover of the book to disguise a novel.  I discreetly asked him what he was reading, and he responds with, “Dragons of Summer Flame.”  My entire worldview shifted in that one moment.  The other races changed from something I was nervous about to something I was intrigued by.  Dragons of Summer Flame is one of my favorite novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.  I realized that, if a black guy could like the same books as I did, then I was being an ignorant jackass and needed to forget the stupid preconceived notions that I had.  We spoke for quite a while about Raist and Caramon and how Tika was just awesome.  He couldn’t stand Tas, while I think he’s a tie with Raist and Caramon for Best Dragonlance Character EVAR.  We both played Dungeons and Dragons and were set up to be assigned to Europe after our training was done.  People were all the same and all different at the same time, and I needed to find out exactly how.

I didn’t really keep in touch with that Army specialist as I’d intended.  We graduated from Basic and went to our respective AIT (Advanced Individual Training) assignments.  I only saw him once a few years later.  He had worked hard, been promoted to sergeant and he and his wife had a new baby.  He was at Ft. Hood for training, and we didn’t have much time to catch up with one another.  I can’t remember his name, but I remember his face and I’ll always remember the impact he had on my worldview.  Since meeting him, I’ve faced a lot more diversity and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, because he opened my mind to the reality of diversity.  I’ve lived in Germany for two years, moved to Texas, been exposed to everything from polyamory and Bhudist monks to strict atheists and Satanists.  In each and every one of those experiences, that first experience with culture shock (and more importantly, getting over it) has helped me meet those cultures with an open mind and curiosity rather than fear and skepticism.  And that’s a good thing.

Now, since I try to always come back to writing somehow…

How does culture shock affect our characters in our stories?  I think there are several examples that stand out to me as well-done examples of culture shock.

Rand al’Thor’s encounter with the Aiel, a culture of desert people, in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series stands out particularly well in my mind.  Rand was raised in a culture typical of medieval Europe.  Men worked and went to war while women tended the home and children.  There were few exceptions to this mindset in his life; however, as he eventually meets the Aiel and their elite Maidens of the Spear.  They eventually become his personal guard, and this causes several plot enhancements.  The two most prominent of those are that he continually offends them by finding ways to avoid putting them in harm’s way, an affront to their honor; and by giving gifts to one of them, which is subsequently mistaken as him showing interest in her hand in marriage.  The cultures throughout the series grow and mature and the culture shock has multiple effects on nearly all of the characters.

C.S. Lewis has a rather unique bit of culture shock in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.  The main characters are all humans from this world who find themselves in a land populated entirely by creatures of myth, including talking animals, dwarves, fauns, dryads and centaurs.  The cultural divide is seen from both sides of the coin, and we see where some people experience culture shock with less contrast than the rest of us might.  The youngest of the main characters, Lucy, meets Mr. Tumnus, a faun, in Narnia and accepts him almost immediately as a friend, with little reservation regardless of his differences to herself.  Her youth and innocent worldview allow her to forego the cultural divide and skip right to wonder and acceptance.  The Narnians view Lucy and her three older siblings the way that most of us in the real world would if we were to come across a fairy having a latte at our local Starbucks.  Lucy’s trust for Tumnus sets the plot in motion, and the culture-bred distrust of the older characters regularly bumps the plotline along as well.  Culture shock breeds the story from start to finish.

Another, perhaps more traditional literary example is Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies.  In this short story, an Indian tour guide, Mr. Kapasi, ponders the idea of having an affair with his married American client, Mrs. Das.  Mr. Kapasi takes the flirtations of Mrs. Das quite a bit more seriously than she intends them.  They spend time alone in the car while Mr. Das takes the kids around the various sites they visit during their tour.  Mrs. Das is somewhat unhappy in her marriage, and looks to Mr. Kapasi to bolster her ego a bit.  This is something most married women in Indian culture would not do today, let alone consider having an affair outside of her marriage, given the extreme consequences such an action would have in that culture.  Thus, when presented with such a notion, Mr. Kapasi is unable to interpret the situation correctly, and experiences a subtle form of culture shock, only realizing in the last paragraph of the story that such a thing is only a temporary distraction.

I think it is important for us to remember to let the cultures in our writing be characters.  Without the interactions between cultures, why create those cultures in the first place?  Let the cultures talk to one another.  Culture adds to theme, conflict, characterization, setting, and language directly, while indirectly nudging style, tone, and symbolism.  Keep it in the writing and let it expand your readers’ minds.

The origin of poetry… According to the Norse mythos…Or, Something Smells Funny

A Norse eagle icon.

I’m continuing to read “The Prose Edda” by Snorri Sturleson. As I read through, I’m still finding a lot of good information, but there’s quite a bit that really floors me, and makes me realize that people have always had holes in their creative myths and religions. Holes, humor, and plenty of silliness abound.

The myth of how poetry came to the Aesir (Norse gods) and Mankind.

When the Aesir and the Vanir (another tribe of gods basically) were warring with one another, they called a peace council to try to resolve their differences. As a symbol of cooperation, they all came together in a group and spat into a large vat. Their problems were worked out, and the two tribes were merged (somewhat). To celebrate, the Aesir took the spittle from the vat and made it into a man. The man was so wise and intelligent that there was no question he could not answer. His name was Kvasir, and he traveled the world, teaching men knowledge.

As he traveled, Kvasir came to stay in the home of two dwarves, Fjalar and Galar. These two dwarves murdered Kvasir. (The Edda gives no real motive.) They then blended his blood with honey, and the resulting mead made any man who drank of it into a poet(1). The two dwarves then invited the giant, Gilling, and his wife to their home and murdered them. Gilling’s son, Suttung, heard of this and went to their home to avenge his father. He took the two dwarves and abandoned them on two rocks which would be covered by the high tide causing them to drown. They begged him for mercy and bribed him with the wine. He relented and took the mead for himself, setting his daughter to guard it.

Odin heard that Suttung had the mead, and traveled to Suttung’s brother’s land to see what he could do about obtaining the mead for the Aesir. Baugi, Suttung’s brother, had servants in the field at the time that Odin arrived. Their sickles were dull, and Odin offered to sharpen them with his whetstone. They noted how much easier their work was, and asked Odin to sell them the whetstone. He asked them to pay what they thought it was worth and threw it up in the air. In their greed to own the whetstone, they scrambled and accidentally killed one another on their newly sharpened blades. (The story implies that Odin had counted on this.) Odin then continued on to Baugi’s hall. Baugi was distraught when Odin arrived, because he had no workers for his field.

Odin told Baugi that he could do the work of all of Baugi’s field hands in a summer, but that his price was that Baugi must help him get the mead from his brother, Suttung. Baugi assured Odin that he would do so, and Odin worked the fields, doing the work of all nine of Baugi’s slaves. Baugi, agreed to then follow through with payment. He betrayed Odin though, and Odin barely escaped through the hole they had dug together to get into Suttung’s cellar.

Suttung’s daughter was in the cellar, guarding the mead as her father had directed her. Odin lay with her for three days and nights, and finally convinced her to let him take as much mead as he could in three sips. It was then that Odin transformed into the form of an eagle and flew quickly towards Asgard. The rest of the Aesir saw him coming, and knowing what he was about, prepared a large vat for him to deposit the wine. However; Suttung had discovered the use of his daughter and the theft of his mead, and had transformed into an eagle as well and flown after Odin. Odin, having an angry eagle-shaped giant after him, spit the mead into the awaiting vat. However; because of the urgency of his situation, he didn’t pay attention to this as he should have, and ended up letting some of the mead escape out his rear.

And that’s where bad poetry comes from. It’s comprised of eagle farts. Now you know.

(1)It should probably be noted that a poet in those times wasn’t just someone who wrote poetry, but rather was a man of learning in general.

Setting the Scene:

A cold breeze blows in from off the rock-strewn coast.  Across a small field with cattle bunched together against the onslaught of the cold northern wind, a forest stands darkly against the icy landscape.  Seven long structures, family homes, stand in a semi-circle around a small marketplace.  Smoke puffs lazily from most of the homes, except one, the roof of which is bowed with age under the weight of its poorly maintained thatch.  In front of each home, a wooden carving sits next to the door, swirling symbols of faith and prayer carved into their bases.  A bear’s torso, shoulders, and head topped the log in front of the long hut closest to the smithy; a doe, her shale black eyes dull in the evening light sat in front of the second; a rabbit sat in front of the third house with its head pointing to the left.  The totem of the fourth house was notably larger than the rest, and stood out as the only carving that was not a beast.  Three triangles were woven together into a third, larger triangle, vine-like etchings wrap about the log below the symbol.  This house was also the smallest.  It was followed by a much larger long hut with an owl totem; a wolf totem stood in front of the decayed house; and closest to the docks which moored six small fishing boats stood the long hut with the predictable fish totem.

Set close to the shore, its stone walls gray with salt splatters, sits a smithy.  The forge is cold this evening.  Three large dogs lie in a pile near the rear of the open-faced rectangular building, catching what warmth they can from the banked hearth.  Chains rattle together occasionally as they shift positions.  Two of them jump up occasionally just as they are trained to do as sounds drift in from the dock or across the field.  The other dog sleeps on, her hearing long since having faded away.

A young boy bursts abruptly from the bear’s house and runs down the village’s one muddy lane, arms windmilling as he splashes through muck; laughing so hard that he can barely breathe.  Behind him, a large man, face red with embarrassment and exertion exploded out of the house after him.   The two dogs jump up and begin barking at the sudden commotion.

A cycle of fine society…

Twice now, I’ve stopped here to stare at this damned lizard.  It never seems to move.  Just sits there with its tongue sticking out like it’s waiting for snow.  I’ll grant you, it IS metal; made from tin in some shitty tinkerer’s shop and sold at a county fair or farmer’s market.  But still, the owner ought to move the thing away from where her poor taste and shame are on display for the world to see.

I look up.

Left.

Right.

Fuck it!  I kick the ugly little bastard out of the grotto and into his owner’s yard.

Not two seconds later and I’m laughing my ass off.  Apparently, I forgot to check for observers in the screen door.  The owner is trotting down the steps at me, cussing like the trucker I used to be.

My laughter pisses her off even more, and I’m thinking it’ll be a wonder if she doesn’t have an embolism right there on her sidewalk in her Winnie the Pooh PJs.  Not like I care, but still.

I turn and walk away.  Dumb old bat follows me past three driveways.

Sigh.

I hate morons.  Her bad taste in decor isn’t my fault.  maybe I ought to turn and show her a thing of real beauty.  Something to set her straight forever.  It doesn’t come to that though.  The bitch stops before I reach the Red Rider in the fifth drive.  It seems like that happens a lot.  Folks stop right before shit gets serious.  Too bad for them.  Imagine the peace when I’m done with them.  Like nothing no-one’s never seen.

Boom!

Bop!

Bap!

P-E-A-C-E.

And I aint fuckin’ jokin’ neither.

But, just like the Pooh Bear lady, they’re all chicken-shits.

Huh.

Oh.  Look!  THIS idiot drives a Fiero, Douche!  He’s even jacked it up and given it chrome wheels.

Damn I need to pee.

And

Here

We

Go

Again…

A practical discussion with Piers Anthony.

NOTE:  This interview occurred last fall via telephone.  It is the best experience I’ve had to date as a student/writer.  I had originally written the paper for a Human Communications course that I took; however, after thinking about it, I realized that if the professor was the only one that read it, then it wouldn’t be serving the purpose that Mr. Anthony and I both hold dear.  We both want to make life easier for beginning writers/authors, so if I hold the advice that he gave me to myself, I’m not doing that audience much good.  So, here is my paper in its entirety with a few verbiage changes and two corrections he provided me with after I had sent him a copy to review.  (I’d done the math wrong on his years of marriage, and misheard him when he said “Tatham Mound”.  My ears had heard “Tape and Mount” and my brain didn’t bother to tell me that my ears were inept.)

Also, Mr. Anthony’s site is a wonderful resource for writers, especially those looking to self-publish.  His blog/newsletter that he maintains on the site is also fun to read, so I strongly encourage you to give it a click.  www.hipiers.com

You can also follow him on Twitter:  @PiersAnthony

The majority of his books are available through Amazon, including his recently e-published works:  Piers’ Amazon Page

May the Force be with you.  Enjoy:

My Interview with Piers Anthony

When I was eleven, I went to the school library looking for something I hadn’t read before.  I had sucked in most of the books that looked interesting to me.  Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, (located handily on the “literature” shelf) several versions of Arthurian legends, and what I’m sure was the entirety of the sparse Young Adult section.  I had avoided the Fantasy shelf for fear that it would be quite girly, filled with frog kissing princesses and a million Sleeping Beauty knock-offs.  However; after running out of everything else, I figured it couldn’t hurt to dig through it.  After all, nobody else was in the library to see me looking at the “girl books.”  Eventually, I chose to check out a book entitled A Spell for Chameleon, by Piers Anthony.  I read it over the weekend, and checked it back in that next Monday – so that I could check out the sequel, The Source of Magic.  The books were part of what is now a 38 book series, with publishing dates spanning from 1976 to future release dates in 2014.  And, perhaps most importantly, they were the equivalent of a gateway drug.  I was soon as addicted to fantasy and science fiction as any drug user is to their chemical of choice.  I began taking in books written by Terry Brooks, Robin McKinnley, Robert A. Heinlein, and C.S. Lewis.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since that weekend in 1988, when I first read Piers Anthony’s novel.  I had a few brief moments daydreaming about being a computer programmer who helped develop androids or a superhero, because, you know, I’m practical like that.  I always come back to writing though, and I think that’s for a reason.  I just don’t think I would be happy doing anything else.  What other job allows you to daydream all day long and get paid for it?  It’s perfect, and my interview succeeded in confirming my dream.  This wasn’t the first time I’ve experienced such a thing, Mr. Anthony has always reaffirmed that goal.  When I was fifteen, I wrote my first short story.  It was wonderful(ly horrible), and I just HAD to have someone’s feedback that I respected.  So, I dug through book after book in the library, and found an address to submit correspondence to Mr. Anthony.  I printed the whole thing out on our high school’s dot matrix printer, stole all of the stamps in my dad’s desk, and popped it in the mailbox.  Several weeks later, I had given up on ever seeing my precious story again, when my mom handed me a packet as I walked in the door from school.  It was my story, reviewed in detail by Mr. Anthony with red pen marks skittering across the page and comments throughout the margins.  I probably should have been devastated that my masterpiece had been so thoroughly criticized, but all I can seem to remember is bragging, “The dude that writes Xanth wrote me back!”  Every time I’ve written him since then, I’ve always gotten an answer and been encouraged.  Even if it were only a short note, every letter has gotten a respectful and dignified answer.

So, when I was assigned this interview project, I decided to ask one of the three professional fantasy and science fiction authors I’ve had correspondence with to do it.  I decided to ask Mr. Anthony because his books were where my obsession began, and so it seemed appropriate.  I sent an email to him on Friday, September 14 at 12:56pm, asking for an hour of his time.  Three hours later, he checked his email and called me.  I picked up the phone wondering who would be calling me from a Florida area code.  As soon as he began speaking, my heart skipped a beat, and I was knocked into a dreamlike state one might expect would happen when a youngling meets Yoda for the first time.  I stammered through the conversation, and we had an appointment set up for that following Saturday at 4:00 PM.

I waited anxiously through that long week, and eventually the day finally came for my conversation with a man who has been a mentor and positive influence in my life for 25 years.  He snuck into basic training with me in the form of For Love of Evil, and even did a few brief guard shifts in Germany in the guise of Demons Don’t Dream.  And now, I was going to talk to him on the phone, ask him for career advice, and request his opinions regarding the future of the novelist in the digital age.  Mr. Anthony was glad to talk, and warned me that I might have to ask him to end a statement, if he were to go on too much.

As we got on the phone, I started with the usual pleasantries.  The wife and family are good, and so on, until I got to my questions.  The first thing I asked him was, “What first got you into writing?”  Mr. Anthony responded that he initially wasn’t interested in being a writer.  He was on his second year of school, having taken 8 years of art classes.  At one point, he realized that he didn’t have the talent to make it as an artist, so he thought for a night and a day, and decided he’d be a writer.  From there on, that’s what he did.  His wife (They’ve been together since 1956 and will soon celebrate 56 years of marriage together.) followed him through a stint in the U.S. Army where he got his U.S. citizenship, and he taught English for a short time after he got out of the military.  Eventually though, his wife worked out a deal for him to take a year off of all the other jobs to work on his writing career.  He sold his first story during that time, and his career has grown exponentially since then.  Mr. Anthony will soon have over 160 novels in print.

As I have tried to write more, I’ve found that a lot of things tend to interrupt the writing process.  Kids need patched up; my wife needs help around the house; a friend is throwing a party; class work needs done; or my job needs a little more of my time.  So, I asked Mr. Anthony how he dealt with that.  He told me stories about the interruptions and distractions he had as he first began to write for a living.  He had a young daughter that needed a lot of attention; his wife was working and he needed to be the homemaker as well as the writer; and various other issues came up.  His solution was that a writer can’t let interruptions ruin his day, and that a writer had to develop the “mental muscle” to be able to take care of those interruptions and sit back down and write from the point where he left off.  Over the last few weeks since the interview, I’ve tried to apply that idea to my life.  It works! I’ve gotten more done at work, more class work accomplished, and – most importantly – more writing.  He suggested approaching boundary setting positively.  He suggested that a writer should have a space apart from the family to do his work.  In the end though, it’s about the compromise.  Life is more important than writing and finding a balance between real life and writing is important.

Mr. Anthony and I also discussed the difficulties of getting published initially, and what he would recommend a new-coming author do as he first sets out to get an agent, get published, and make a living in the publishing industry.  He told me the story of how he first tried to become published.  He had gotten together with some friends and together they had written query letters to every agent available in the market at the time.  He didn’t receive a single response, and it wasn’t until after he sold his first novel that he got an agent.  While he does recommend getting an agent, who can generally negotiate twice the money that an independent author can, he said that an agent is not the first step in today’s publishing world.  He recommends that a writer begin by publishing electronically now, to develop a readership base.  Once that is established, and you can show some success in digital publishing, then look for an agent, indicating the successes you’ve already had.  He also advised that it isn’t too late to get an agent after you’ve received an offer for a book.  He cited the example of a newcomer to publishing who had been offered $25,000 by the publisher for a trilogy that he would be writing.  Upon receiving the offer, he contacted an agent who then took him on as a client and negotiated a six figure book deal for the trilogy.

Since the emergence of e-publishing, the publishing industry as a whole has changed dramatically.  Corner bookstores are fading away for the most part, while online outlets like Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com are growing quickly.  Anyone who types up a written work can publish it digitally with no screening process from an editor.  I discussed the emergence of e-publishing with Mr. Anthony, and asked him how he thought the industry had responded to the changes.  He said that he felt the publishers hadn’t done anything to establish quality in the e-publishing process.  There is no editor to review a book before the author puts it up for sale on a website.  It is incumbent upon the writer to develop quality material, and that quality will come with time and practice.  The most important things an author can do are to practice his craft and listen to criticism with an open mind.  They can’t depend on choosy publishers to edit their work until such time as they get a contract to have a book published.  To help authors, Mr. Anthony has an online survey of vanity publishers and e-publishers with reviews from people who have used the services those publishers offer.  He regularly receives feedback from authors, counterpoints from the publishers whose services have been questioned, and posts the notices online for authors to review.

As an established author, Mr. Anthony has embraced e-publishing because it allows him freedom of expression.  Generally, he writes humorous fantasy novels, and that is what publishers that he works with have come to expect from him.  However; that isn’t all that he writes and he has historically had a hard time selling works such as his recently published To be a Woman, which explores civil rights from the point of view of a self-aware android seeking legal recognition.  Having been effectively “typecast” as a humorous fantasy author, publishers aren’t always open to him providing them with material outside of their expectations.  E-publishing allows him to publish what he wants to write as an author, rather than what the publishing industry expects of him.

As a college student, I see comments in every syllabus passed to me at the beginning of each semester warning of zero tolerance for plagiarism.  Also, I regularly read articles related to digital rights management (the software that prevents digital works from being copied excessively), and the legal pitfalls of publishing digitally.  As a professional purchaser, I also see that contract negotiation is an essential skill for anyone entering into a business relationship, whether they’re buying plastic-ware for a state hospital or establishing the means of determining how much an author is paid.  I asked Mr. Anthony what he thought the most common legal pitfalls were for an author, and how they might deal with them.  He replied that legal issues weren’t really the pitfalls, but rather the ignorance of the author was.  Any author should learn to understand contracts, and be able to point out contractual concerns when negotiating with a publisher.  However; new authors who have yet to establish a reputation in the industry may need to “shut up and take it”, using polite manners to fix any missteps in the negotiating process.  He suggested that the key thing for authors to look for at first is an audit clause.  This is a clause in the contract which allows the author to have the records of the publisher audited to ensure that the author has been paid correctly.  A good audit clause will not only allow the author to audit the records, but will also make the publisher responsible for any associated costs if the audit reveals payments that are excessively in error (more than 5%).  This advice was probably the simplest I’ve heard anyone give, and probably the most useful.

In recent years, I’ve had the great pleasure of seeing many of my favorite books made into amazing movies.  Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and several others have all made debuts in movie theatres, with mixed results.  I’ve loved every single one of them, even if they didn’t meet my expectations or match my mental picture of what I’d read.  They’ve always brought me back to the books, and added imagery to my reading that I had either missed or hadn’t considered before.  I asked Mr. Anthony which of his movies he had options for, and which he would most like to see made into a film.  Most of his books have movie options, and he has actually done the reverse, taking a movie script and making it into a novel for the film Total Recall.  He said that he would like to see all of his work on-screen, and that his novel, Split Infinity, has a movie in production scheduled for 2013.  He would greatly enjoy seeing his novel, Tatham Mound (a historical novel about De Soto exploring America) on film.  Currently, his most popular work, the Xanth series isn’t set to be made into a film, with Warner communications having dropped the movie option when it was last up for renewal.

After speaking with Piers Anthony, do I still want to be a writer?  Yes!  Emphatically yes.  More in fact than before speaking with him, but that desire is also checked with a good bit of practical advice.  I know that I need to be prepared to work hard.  I know that my success is up to me.  I know that 99 writers out of 100 won’t be published by a major publishing house, and of those that do, 99 out of 100 won’t become rich from writing.  That’s ok.  I’m fine with that.  I have my day job.  I have my family, and I enjoy writing for its own sake.  I’m still aware that there are many other opportunities to work in publishing.  News companies still need reporters.  Publishers still have operations staff.  Someone has to get all of the other jobs done that are involved in getting a book from the writer’s desk to the retail outlet (be it digital or ink on the page).  I just want to be a part of it, and in the meantime, I have the joy of writing for its own sake.  I’m fine with that.