Category Archives: Stories

Further Troubleshooting: Last Days of Loneliness

Posted on by Henry

Turkey Day approaches.  I’ll be spending a bunch of time with family around then, and for the week after.  This means that I’m unlikely to post much in the next two weeks, though I’ll see if I can scare up a few more interesting posts for you.  This Wednesday will be largely occupied with travel.

Today’s post is going to be a lot like last Wednesday’s, so spoilers abound.  This time I’ll be working through how exactly Amanda ends up deciding to break the town’s covenant with its deity-figure.  Oglaf illustrates the concept quite admirably here (surprisingly SFW, though the rest of the site isn’t).  Enjoy!

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Last Days of Loneliness: Writing the Middle is Terrible

Posted on by Henry

My apologies for the much delayed post, I’ve had a moderately busy day: my visit to the optometrist took a bit longer than I’d anticipated, and I’ve started writing this far later than I’d originally planned.  Today’s topic is all about how frustrating I find writing the middle of Last Days of Loneliness.

If you followed that link (or remember the other earlier posts), you should have a pretty good idea of the shape of the story that I’m writing.  Like those posts, this one is going to be full of spoilers… so if you really want to shield yourself you should probably just stop reading.  If you want to read my thoughts as I try to solve the trouble that I’ve run into while trying to make the middle of the book live up to the promise of the premise, you know what to do.

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Last Days of Loneliness, a YA horror story pt. 3

Posted on by Henry

This is yet another post about the YA horror novel I’ve been working on, which I roughly outlined here.  Last time I gave you the very beginning of the story (which I’ve already altered again); this time I’m going to give you the very end of the story.  This ending will undergo further changes: I already know that I need to decide whether it makes sense to have italicized thoughts-of-the-moment within the narrative, and if I like them, decide how to alter other story sections to incorporate them holistically rather than as a last minute deal.

Here’s the action climax:

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Last Days of Loneliness, a YA horror story pt. 2

Posted on by Henry

Like I promised, I’ve got some actual text for you today.  I’m a bit late because I’ve just finished pounding through Marcus Sakey’s Brilliance, which I rather liked, but hopefully this material will make up for it.

Keep in mind that this is all still rough.  I’m not even sure that the narrator’s voice is appropriate, so whatever ends up being final may look wildly different.  With that said… I do hope you enjoy it.  Also, please do comment if you think something works particularly well, or really needs to be changed.  The beginning of the story lies after the break…

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Last Days of Loneliness, a YA horror story

Posted on by Henry

A number of years ago, one of my writer friends mentioned a story concept that she wanted to share with me.  She wondered what would come of a Lovecraft-inspired horror story in which the protagonist was a high school girl who had just recently moved to a new town.  I immediately latched onto the idea.  We spent a few hours bouncing ideas back and forth, and at the end of our brainstorm session I asked whether she would like to collaborate with me on the project.  She said yes.

I started writing material for the story, occasionally ignoring school work that I really should have been doing at the time.  I soon had a great deal of (questionably valuable) material to share with her, but she’d fallen into a work-hole and been unable to claw her way out.  She ceded the project to me, though we continued to share our thoughts on it.

Fast forward a few years: after finishing my thesis, graduating, and getting back into the swing of writing for a while, I dust off my old drafts of this nascent YA horror novel and get some other people to take a look.  The drafts are, to put it figuratively, mostly made of poo.  I’m now aware of the fact that I have little idea of how to write a teenaged female narrator, which makes looking at my past struggles all the more painful.  But there are some pieces that seem like they still hold some value.  The concept and the basic story beats still seem basically solid, and the story clearly has an excellent ramp up to the climax.  Now the time has come to strip the piece down to its bare bones and tinker with it for a while.  Oh, and write a variety of new attempts at a teenaged female narrator, while reading as many pieces with teenaged female narrators as I can (preferably from the right genres).

In case you’re wondering where this is going, yes, I’ve got some material to share with you today.

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Historical Context Matters: Now With More Context

Posted on by Henry

On the 11th I posted the first of my background pieces on the Elven Progenitors setting.  Now I’ve got more material for you.

Last time I covered city names, the names of bodies of water, the basics of city-states, mother-daughter city relations, Elf-home, the Northmen, and the return of slavery.  I still need to talk about the divisions amongst the elves, the cold war, where people get their slaves, why orcs aren’t fighting everyone all the time (and whom they are fighting), the alternative flora and fauna, and maybe something about the Elven Republic.  But there’s no way I’m going to cover all that, so I’ll settle for telling you a bit more about elves.  But to whet your appetite, first, the original conceit of the setting; then a brief background on how much of the world has been explored and settled.

The original conceit of the setting, when I was first developing it with my brother for a series of quick adventures that we wanted to play (yes, it started as an RPG setting), was that we were playing in an alternate version of our own world.  While we didn’t want there to be any magic as most people would recognize it, we did decide to switch things up when it came to evolution, and I’ve used “artistic license” (i.e. unrealistic lies) to hand wave past a few of the problems which follow.  Specifically, the first sapients to evolve were what we would call elves, and they bred all of the other races of sapients in addition to making some awkward accidents along the way.  I know that this doesn’t make much sense when it comes to an evolutionary time-scale (except for the part where elves are actually long-lived enough to breed other species meaningfully), but if you’ll ignore that problem and accept that elves can effectively do magical things with breeding then I suspect you’ll enjoy what follows.

At the time of the great war, elves and their various subject races had cities in Elf-home (Africa), Europe, and western, central, and southern Asia.  A select few elves had performed extensive studies of ocean currents and hypothesized the existence of a land mass to the west of Europe, though with the outbreak of civil war they kept this knowledge secret.  They worried that access to the resources of an entirely new continent would represent a dangerously unbalancing factor in the war, and could only lead to further suffering.  They were also concerned that, if a peace settlement were achieved, the struggle to settle in the New World would re-ignite the civil war.  Therefore, unbeknownst to those fighting the great war, they repurposed a breeding project which had been sidelined by the war and used it to develop a self-replicating massive area denial bioweapon; as more of their fears about the conflict came to pass, and it seemed clear that allowing either side to spread to the New World would only exacerbate the civil war, they deployed their weapon in the New World to prevent exactly that.

Now, with that teaser out of the way, how about a little more detail…

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Coming Soon: Another Huge Background Post

Posted on by Henry

Not today, but tomorrow with a little bit of luck.  I’ve got a lot more for you, mostly dealing with elves despite the fact that they’re quite rare in my stories of the setting thus far.  It turns out that the setting is called Elven Progenitors for a good reason, and nearly all of the background politics has its basis in the conflicts of the elves.

So, look here tomorrow for more information on the setting background, and if you haven’t read my short stories you should go do that while you wait.  Here’s a link to the first background post, and here are links to Paying the Tab, Jerome Goes North, Jerome’s Tropical Vacation, A Simple Misunderstanding, and Rum Luck.  My apologies for prolonging the wait, I’ll have more for you soon.

Historical Context Matters: Strange Bedfellows

Posted on by Henry

I’ve been reading quite a bit about Ukraine recently, and marveling at how important historical context is to understanding the present.  Given that our experience of the present is interpreted through the lens of our past, if we lack the appropriate local context for a situation any outsider is likely to be confused.  Here’s a concrete example: in addition to all of the other (traumatic, disgusting, screwed-up) baggage that comes along with Nazi ideology and symbolism, for some in Ukraine those things also represent independence from the Soviet state.  Knowing that, I’m less surprised to see that those particularly toxic things are experiencing a resurgence among some subsections of the population of Ukraine.  Given the local historical context I find it frightening (but not, on reflection, surprising) to see these things coming to the fore once more.  What will come of having the bigotry, fascist tendencies, and virulent hatreds espoused by neo-nazis and their sympathizers in some way legitimated by their connection with the forces that helped to organize the Maidan, and the forces that now do Kiev’s fighting in the east?  I don’t know, but all I can say is “Ick.”

Reading up on all of that has left me thinking about the conflicts and strange bedfellows of my own fictional settings, and particularly the one that I’ve been calling Elven Progenitors (EP).  It’s not a very catchy title for a setting, I know, but it’s the only name I’ve got at the moment.  At least it’s distinct?  I don’t want to explain all of the background of the setting in one go, but I thought I should talk about some of the ways in which it differs from our own history, and some of the background politics that I may have vaguely hinted at without ever explaining.  If you’ve read any of these various stories (Paying the Tab, Jerome Goes North, Jerome’s Tropical Vacation, A Simple Misunderstanding, Rum Luck), you’ve already read something in this setting.  Exposition follows below.

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Short Story: Rum Luck

Posted on by Henry

Rum-Barrels-at-Fousquare-Distillery-Barbados-SITE

Rum Luck: Bad luck, esp. in a certain circumstance or series of events

This one came about through an odd (actually, pretty typical) series of circumstances: I was starting another story and realized partway through that I really needed to know what came before it.  Like its predecessors, this takes place in a fantastical alternate history setting, with geography (and some place-names) much like our world’s.  And again, this is a fairly rough draft.  Other stories in the same setting can be found here, here, here, and here.  Enjoy responsibly.

*     *     *

The night air was fresh and clean, carrying the scents of salt and the sweet tropical grasses that grew along the beaches here.  It wafted up from the shore, dancing across the slopes of the hills and tickling the back of Jerome’s neck as he and Andre drove their wagon along the well-traveled path.  Stars dotted the sky above them, and a rising moon left a glimmering trail on the water to their right.  Andre’s lantern cast enough light on the trail ahead for the horses, both of whom had traversed this path many times before.  The hefty dwarf smiled up at Jerome, his teeth gleaming as they caught the moonlight.

“You know, Jerome, sometimes,” Andre gave a happy sigh, “sometimes this really isn’t so bad at all.”  His free hand swept to encompass the hillsides around them, the trail, the sea, and the rising moon.  He glanced behind them at the bed of the wagon, eyeing the casks which he’d so carefully secured.  They sloshed as the wagon creaked and rattled.  From where Andre sat, Jerome’s answering grin was silhouetted against the rising moon.

“I told you this would be a good job.”  Jerome risked a glance at Andre, looking away from the team for a moment.  Andre snorted in response, and Jerome chuckled.  Trying to keep a straight face, he continued, “And have I ever led you astray before?”  The two of them burst out laughing.  They laughed so long and so hard that Andre was soon wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

“Never!”  Andre lied with a guffaw.  The two of them burst into a new round of laughter.

Jerome took the reins in one hand for long enough to wipe his now wet cheeks.  “Well!  I’m glad we’re in agreement then!”  He chuckled some more for the next few minutes, watching the bends in the path as it took them down the shoreside route.  It was several miles from the sugar mill and distillery where they’d picked up their load to the town where they’d been hired to deliver it, and in weather such as they had tonight it was a true pleasure to travel.

“I still don’t see why that man wanted you to do the delivery instead of whatever drivers he normally uses.”  Andre returned to their earlier debate, though he sounded far more goodnatured than he had while they were arguing over it in the bar.

“He said his usual drivers were sick or something.”  Jerome peered ahead at the dimly lit path.  He slowed the horses a little further, glancing to either side.  “Play that light across those rocks, will you?  I don’t like the looks of them.”  Jerome nodded as Andre complied, then added with a grin, “And besides, he said it was a pleasure to be doing business with me again!”

“Pffffft.”  Andre made his opinion of that idea clear.  He shook his head, running his free hand through his beard as the wagon rattled slowly towards the rocks that he’d illuminated.  “He just said that so he could screw us with lower pay than he’d usually give, and all of it at the end of the job too.”

Jerome winced a little.  He allowed as to how that might be true, though he wasn’t likely to agree with Andre out loud.  Certainly not just now.  He looked over the rocks again, largish things that lay to either side of the trail, and had a sudden flash of memory that helped him place why he felt so uncomfortable.  “You know,” he began, “I’ve been ambushed near stones like these before—,” and then he saw the figures rising from either side of the road, guns in hand, while a small log was heaved into place across the path from the lower slope to his right.  Jerome gently brought the wagon to a stop.

“Have you now,” Andre muttered darkly as he raised his hands.  “I never would have guessed.”

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Short Story: A Simple Misunderstanding

Posted on by Henry

Here’s the return of Andre and Jerome, the pair of accidentally-adventurous miscreants.  If you want to read other stories about them, try Paying the Tab, Jerome Goes North, or Jerome’s Tropical Vacation.  There should be another short story coming along soon!

*     *     *

“Does everyone understand their part?”  The man’s voice was nagging and whiny.

Belly down on the hay-strewn dirt, Andre felt a sneeze coming on.  There was the unmistakable sensation of rising, building pressure, and that odd tingling feeling that came along with it.  He knew it would feel so good to sneeze that the anticipation was almost pleasant in and of itself.  Despite this, he thrust his hand up underneath his nose, trying to press against the bone just above his teeth in an effort to stop the sneeze before it could come out.  Through his desperately squinted eyes he could make out the feet of five people standing less than a yard from where he hid underneath a small wagon, and he knew that sneezing would be a very bad life choice at this moment.  None of the people whose conversation he’d been eavesdropping on would appreciate unexpected company.

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