Sold a story!

My alter-ego Christie Maurer just signed a contract for a short story, "Heritage," to appear in the October issue of White Cat Magazine.

"Heritage" is about two nasty people and a ghost in a crumbling Victorian. It came out of a writing exercise at a Monterey Bay Romance Writers meeting several years ago. The assignment was to write a brief scene of two people outside a house. There is something inside that one doesn't want the other to see. One tries to get in, the other tries to keep him/her out. Other members of the group came up with a dead body, a hidden treasure, drugs, or stolen loot. In "Heritage" it's none of the above.

Where to go?

I'm stuck in a scene, or rather an episode, and what to do? My hero and heroine blundered into a raid on a village. Knowing they couldn't win over the bandits, they started to leave--and the bad guys took off after them, wanting their horses. My hero turned to fight them, so the heroine could get away. And . . . a) manages to hold them off; b) gets captured; c) wounds/kills 1 or 2; d) tricks them and escapes; e) heroine doubles back and steals the pack horse and loot; f) hero escapes, can't find heroine . . .

I'll just leave it for a bit and go on to the next part for now while the inner juices churn.

Entered a poetry contest

I saw a post about the Science Fiction Poetry Association contest on the BroadUniverse listserve  http://www.sfpoetry.com/contests.html For kicks I checked it out and it looked feasible. So, what the heck, I went over "Loriano's" two poems with a fine-toothed delete key and entered the one about Sacerdote Danestor and the Dark Lady Death. I won't hear the results until November, but oooo it's exciting to put something out into the world!

Loriano's troubadour poetry

Everyone insisted I had to include Loriano's poems--and I am no poet. After one poetry class in college I read a few and got bored. What to do? I got a bunch of CD's of troubadour music and listened, probably hundreds of times, following along in the booklet both the Occitan and the English. The originals are in the public domain--the poets have been dead for 900 years--but the translations are not. In studying them I appreciated just how subtle and complex the poems really are. Finally I used metaphors and themes from Bertran de Ventadorn, troubadour to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and put together verses appropriate to Loriano's situation and character. He sometimes excuses their clumsiness by saying he's still working on it. 

I did "receive" a couple of epics. One changed my original 6,000 word short story into a novel. A major turning point in The Dark Lady's Stone comes when the old shaman Edroc recites an epic about the Sea Kings and Lake Illia. To get in the mood I listened to a CD of songs from the Icelandic Edda. The epic started to unfold and I got the basics out over a couple of days. It was much longer than I'd intended and it needed a lot of editing, particularly when I was struggling with the scenes at Lake Illia. A while later I took an on-line course on The Vikings. To my surprise many elements in Edroc's tale were right-on. Of course many others pertained only to my world. 

I read at J.R.R. Tolkien's Sigurd and Gudrun a couple of summers ago. It must've sunk in because Loriano's final epic came to me while I was washing dishes. I was finishing up the last chapter and Count Reynal asked Loriano to tell the court about their long journey. What the heck would he say??? I presumed it would be straight narrative, maybe a few summary sentences. To give myself time to think I got up from my computer to make dinner and discovered all the dishes were dirty. I put my hands in hot, soapy water and Loriano started declaiming in my head. I heard his voice, his tone, his rhythm. I rushed back to my computer and took dictation. When I surfaced and looked it over, I only had to change a few lines. 

To my surprise, folks seem to like it. 

Elakand Map Revised

While I was at it, I also revised the map of Elakand. Besides adding color, I've clarified the provincial borders, fixed some vague boundary lines, put provincial names in a larger type, and (re)moved a few mountain ranges. Also I realized that the Sidrak River had no purpose and an illogical direction (all other rivers flowed from the eastern mountains toward the west), so I put it between the Sidrak Hills and the Maracol Mountains.

Gosh, it is fun to play god(dess)!

New Map of Sarsia

I've updated the map of ancient Sarsia with more colors, fewer mountains, and clearer features. Hope you enjoy it.