Stormgard

Confession: I don't know anything about local politics. I should care, but I just don't.

Reading:

• "Balto" by T.C. Boyle
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• Untitled Dark Fantasy Project

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

Future Projects:

• Dairhenien's Library - Development
  
• Floorcraft - First rewrite of 1-5, first draft of 6-8
• Ferian Fetlock - Next chapter, "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," followed by "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife."
  
• "Motley" - Expansion
• "Fireworks and Earthworks" - 5% into first draft
  
• Untitled School Mistress Story

Unpublished Stories/Status (in chronological order of completion of first draft)

• "Pictures of the Old Port" - 5th Draft, Unsubmitted
• "What Price Stamps" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "The Frost Fugling" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Black Pudding" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Cora and the Sea" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Motley" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Leaves and Sunsets" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "A Happy Ending" - 1st Draft, Unsubmitted
• "The Revenant" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Illuminated" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "A Cup of Coffee" / "Morning Tea" - 2nd Draft, Submitted to Tea: A Magazine, July 29th, 2008
• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Hattie Donnelly's Favorite Doll" - 2nd Draft, Submitted to 24 Hour Short Story Contest, July 27th, 2008
  

First off, I've submitted yet another story. It's the one that used to be about coffee until I found a magazine about tea so I made it about tea. It's a short short, only 167 words, and I'm unlikely to get paid in more than copies. But hell, if they take it, it's a publication credit, right?

Moreover, I did more research today on magazines and found four or five good new prospects. I need to get off my ass and finish the "Cora and the Sea" rewrite so I can start revising some of the others.

I keep running up against the blank wall in my Untitled Dark Fantasy Project. Let me explain. About five years ago now, I was on a message board with a group of other would-be writers, and we started a collaborative fiction project. Essentially, we would each start writing in a shared universe, and as time went on, those characters would meet, interact, and we could turn the whole thing into a novel, sell it, and go on to make shitpiles of money.

Obviously, that did not happen. After the first few entries, only two of us were still submitting material, and it became readily apparent that we were heading in opposite directions, stylistically if not in terms of plot. So we decided to take our stories in separate directions.

The setting was a place called Stormgard. It was an island in the southern ocean of some world, somewhere. Centuries before, it had been cut off from the rest of the world by a magical storm that surrounded it at all times. No one could come in, no one could leave. The conceit of the story would be that the barrier had begun to weaken, and someone made it through. How the populace reacted, who the invaders or visitors were, and why the barrier had been erected in the first place.... those would be the questions that drove the story.

But, as I said, we never got that far. I had written a little over 2,400 words, the length of a decent short story, and had just reached a good chapter break, when the project died. A few months ago, I rediscovered the piece, and wondered if it could be resurrected into a stand-alone story.

It's about a girl named Bryony, who has just lost everything dear to her. She had a golden childhood, but one by one, her relatives have disappeared, to be found horribly murdered. The townsfolk started off supportive, but gradually came to think of her family as cursed, and rejected her. So did her fiancé, who left her at her own father's funeral. Her favorite sister was left until last, but she too has vanished. Bryony is now alone, and wants to give up.

But she is visited by a velvet-voiced stranger, one who has appeared to her before. He claims to have been the one to have done these things to her for a purpose of his own. He takes her, unresisting, to his lair, where about a dozen other individuals are waiting in a chamber. The walls of this chamber are covered in mirrors of all types. She is drugged and beaten, and because of the drugs she does not pass out from the pain. She is beaten so severely that she is on the brink of death.

Her senses are dulled, but at the same time oddly heightened. She senses a presence, moves toward it. In some way that she does not understand and cannot fully control, she consumes that presence, then falls unconscious.

When she awakens, it is to discover that the other presence was her sister, and that she has now taken on the body of her sister. Apparently she was born with a rare magical gift to assume the bodies of others by consuming them in some way, but only extreme trauma can bring it out. This society has been manipulating her life, both to make her a pliable and willing member, and to bring her to the edge necessary to commit the first act.

And... that's where I abandoned it. You see, the original plan was for her to set out to destroy this group from the inside. She would reject their beliefs, and just go along with them until she was in a position to get her revenge. But as time went on, the need for revenge would begin to dominate and her reasons for wanting to destroy the group would fail. By the time she did kill the man who did this to her and her family, she no longer wanted to destroy the group. She now wanted to rule it, and ta da! The villain of the story, someone the reader thought was a hero, and hopefully had empathized with throughout most of the story.

Here's the thing. I no longer really want to write this story. Seeing it written out like that... it's just too dark. I mean, I'm willing to do some crappy things to my characters, but holy shit, that's cold.

And you know, if the story were just her and no one else, it would be too dark. That type of story needs to be balanced out with a true hero, one who makes the right choices, who can serve as a counterpoint to that darkness.

So what I'm going to do is abandon this project for now. There are elements in it that I think are very evocative, like the mirror filled chamber, and the horror at seeing a beloved face staring from out of one of those mirrors. But I think those are details I'm going to scavenge for other pieces, and leave this story as a footnote.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 4
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 2