Author: Jim Peacock

Author of the Ages of the Seed adventure book series.

And the tension mounts

Isn’t technology grand? I can track the progress of the cable I ordered right to my door. This is the cable that (fingers crossed) will allow me to recover my Scrivener file and all of the juicy metadata for my books and get back to NaNoWriMo-ing.

Back in the old day I would have been content to patiently wait for it’s delivery. Instead I’m obsessively refreshing web pages as if the driver could feel me poking her.

Doesn’t technology suck?

In other news, I received a new cover proof from the incomparable Mareta Pettigrew showing the title text enhancement. It’s perfect – no more text fade with the dark background and it looks floaty the way I wanted. Once she paints that in I will have completed cover art.

w00t!

crappy paint shop option 3

 

Writer’s block remediation – POV shift

I’m fairly lucky in that I don’t run into writer’s block very often. Generally I have the opposite problem – I can’t get things down fast enough and I lose them. That said, I do still get it from time to time. I’ll know where the story is going but have no idea how to get there, or I’ll have written myself into a corner and can’t see a handy window to crawl out of.

Like every other writer I have my arsenal of weapons ready to launch hale and hearty combat against the WB monster. One of the most effective for me is a POV shift.

Take the last scene, or the next one, and write it from an unexpected perspective. If your narrative is a 1st person adventure, let the hero sit for a bit and examine the story through the eyes of the villain’s henchman. Take the least defined character in a group and see what things look like to them.

For me this will not only spear the WB right through its black heart, it also opens up entirely new parts of the story. Even if the exercise never gets into the manuscript it adds depth and flavor to the story in my head, and that works its way onto the paper through richness and negative space storytelling.

What weapons do you wield when the WB comes haunting?

Trapped (Unseen, Insertion)

This will be an insertion for Unseen, Ages of the Seed Vol 3. The main characters in Unseen experience the same circumstances from very different perspectives. This is how Darkness lived through Ch.1.

Trapped

Cold.

I am cold. So very cold.

Has there ever been a cold like this? So all consuming. My world is frozen. I would shiver but I cannot remember how.

Why can’t I see? Could I ever see? Yes, I remember a time far from now when I saw… Continue reading “Trapped (Unseen, Insertion)” →

Darkness – Unseen, Ch.1

Unseen (Ages of the Seed, Vol 3)

Chapter 1 – Darkness

Daeven wasn’t mad, but he was pretty sure one of the people living in his head was. Most of them were okay folks; some were even friends. Faena helped him find food that didn’t make him sick. Taran remembered things, sometimes things from long before Daeven was born. Adiv and Vida, the deadly twins, kept him alive in the dangerous dark confines of the Burrow. Even little Pastich did her part, lifting dark spirits with her infectious laughter. They all worked together and tried to make their communal life as pleasant as possible.

But then there was Darkness. Darkness never spoke to Daeven or the others. Darkness just lay in the back of Daeven’s mind, brooding and watching. Always watching.

Until now.

Daeven felt Darkness push forward again and held his breath as he concentrated on pushing back. “Help me” he whispered. “Please. Somebody help me.”

Darkness surged forward and Daeven’s head exploded in pain. Tears rolled down his face leaving tracks through the grit and soot as they fell across his cheeks. “Oh, please no. Please no. Please no” he cried over and over.

He had some experience resisting his passengers. When they first fell out of their shadows and became real people they were panicky and frightened. Most reflexively tried to assert control and he would gently but firmly stop them. It didn’t take much effort as they were very weak when they first arrived.

But not Darkness. Darkness had never so much as moved before and Daeven had had no idea of its power. This was no freshly delivered passenger, weak from its birthing. This was a mind with strength and purpose, easily on par with Taran and possibly even stronger. Possibly stronger than Daeven himself.

The pressure in his mind was unbearable. His vision faded to darkness and exploding lights. A rising roar assaulted his ears. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed back desperately. “Taran. Vida. Anybody. Help me. Please!” he begged. Where were his passengers? Why wasn’t anybody helping?

“Stop it! You’re hurting him!” Pastich’s tiny little girl voice yelled at Darkness. It receded somewhat, perhaps out of surprise. Daevan gulped in a breath of air and PUSHED, taking advantage of the small respite she had given him. Darkness pushed back and Daevan felt its anger, hot and musky, a palpable thing. He clenched his hands into fists and concentrated with all of his will. Slowly, ever so slowly, Daevan pushed Darkness back into its corner at the back of his mind.

Abruptly, Darkness stopped resisting him and retreated to its normal home. Daevan still felt its anger as it sat brooding and watching, but the pain in his head began to recede. He pulled in several clearing breaths and felt the pain vanish. He opened his eyes and was again able to see.

He leaned back against the cold granite wall and slid down to the floor. “What do you want!?” he screamed. Darkness, as always, did not answer.

The good, the bad, the ugly, the other bad, the irritating, etc…

The bad news: Desktop is dead.
The other bad news: I didn’t back up my Scrivener file for Ages of the Seed (that’s all of the books I’m working on)*.
The irritating news: Best Buy does not actually carry anything any longer to actually work on a PC.
The good news: Finally got my new desk set up.
The other good news: Got Scrivener to work on Alana’s laptop.
The happy news: Found what I need to recover the desktop hard-drive for under $10 on Amazon.

Trying to work on AOS without my Scrivener metadata is maddening. I’ll be doing some fairy tale conversions for insertion purposes until I get my meta back (probably Tuesday).

* Totally know how stupid this was. Already heard all of the comments, mostly from myself.

Call for action – Early Reader Feedback (ERF) needed for Weavers draft

I will be ready to distribute the 1st draft of Weavers (Ages of the Seed, Vol 1) for early reader feedback by Friday 11/27.

The purpose of early reader feedback is to give basic impressions on story, plotlines, characters and environments before I begin the extensive second draft of the work. Continue reading “Call for action – Early Reader Feedback (ERF) needed for Weavers draft” →

How to write a Fairy Tale

First, recognize that there is nothing fairy about a Fairy Tale. Our forbears came up with this term because before Disney, fairies were terrifying. They were the bump in the night, the terrors of the unknown, the font of darkness. Fairy tales are meant as cautions; to guide and control. They are a social construct and if done well they are the truly timeless tales – told and told again, maturing and altering over time. Fairy tale archetypes form the base of every character we write and the classic versions of them are modified for every generation.

You will be hard pressed to find any modern book, movie, tv show or broadcast where you cannot find a comparable fairy tale that is their progenitor. These stories form a cultural base that transcends generations.

“And the moral of the story is” is a common thing because yeah, these were most often tales told to teach or impress moral values.

Second, write a fairy tale.

It’s not hard. These are some of the very most basic elements of storytelling. About all you need are:
1) What is the moral lesson?
2a) How horrifically can I show somebody failing to learn that lesson? /or
2b) How cleverly can my protagonist outwit the test?

Note that those are the only real options available. Learn the lesson through failure (and usually a grisly end), or figure out the lesson and use it to outwit the antagonist. Somebody has to lose. The lesson/moral always wins.

I’m particularly fond of taking modern tales and converting them into fairy tales. The Monster Under the Bed. Bloody Mary. The bloodier the tale, the easier it is to convert. Fairy tales are brutal. Hmmm… This should probably have been a number. Okay: Third. Fairy tales are brutal because they were socially imperative messages meant to stick. Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. Don’t kill. See a pattern here? Fairy tales teach things critical to the function and wellbeing of social groupings.

Look Fourth on modern fairy tales. Take any modern horror and you will probably see one. For example, last night (this morning? forgot to go to bed, sorry) I converted the Bloody Mary myth. All I had to do was change the POV to Mary. Suddenly it’s a cautionary tale against adultery instead of an unsourced horror in the mirror.

Modern horror movies are our fairy tales. So do the above with any horror movie. Most of them were intended for it. Some examples:

Slender Man: Stranger danger
Jason Vorhees: Adultery (initially)
Alien: Rape
Final Destination: Fate v choice
Jigsaw: Purgatory
Freddy Kruger: Masturbation (initially)
The Others: Adultery. Again. There are a lot about adultery. Sex sells.

Fourth, get religious. Okay, that’s not actually necessary. But look at religions. In Western culture almost all of our fairy tales tie to bibilical or primary European pagan beliefs, because that’s what we have carried from generation to generation. It’s the same in the East, North and South. The Christian Bible is a massive field of ready to convert fairy tales. So are the works of every other religion, and for the very same reasons.

Hit wikipedia. Look up an obscure religion and migrate a myth to New York City’s Central Park. Voila. Modern fairy tale. And possibly a Hollywood blockbuster. Hollywood loves Central Park.

Magnum Opus Idea: Convert King James to fairy tales. Win all the money.

Fifth, stop with the happy endings! Unless it is ironic or promotes a DIFFERENT moral lesson than the expected one a happy ending destroys the intent of the tale. Fairy tales are supposed to be scary so they stick with you and are memorable. Fairy tales are the rod we use to literaturally* beat morals into the next generation. Happy endings don’t stick. Or rod. We were using rod before, right? I’m losing my metaphor here.

Anywho, stop with Disney** endings is what I’m saying. That only works for the princess crowd, which is an entirely different audience from the fairy tale crowd.

So go write one. They are short and exceptionally fulfilling. And everybody lives happily ever after, right?

NO THEY DON’T!

But that’s okay because it is what makes them work.

* Literaturally – (wordified) Accomplished using the written word.
** Disney puts out great stories, the last fairy tale they made was Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

[Post cleaned up 11/14]

Old problem just remembered

I’ve been out of blogging for years and this site is just starting my return. I have quickly been reminded of one of the most awesome and dangerous things about the blogosphere. As I am meeting people here and being introduced to their works, I WANT TO READ EVERYTHING.

Y’all are awesome and I’m in a happy place. 😀

Also, I’m super glad I’m ahead of target for NaNoWriMo because y’all are just slaying my productivity now.

Mirrors

This is my take on the Bloody Mary curse. As fairy tale’d.

______________________________

Maire sat in her abject emptiness, waiting, waiting, waiting, for her hero. Somebody would free her, it had been promised. So many had come to challenge the curse, all had failed. But Maire knew that some day there would be one who would rescue her. It was fated. It was foretold. Some day there would be one strong enough to release her. Strong enough to face the unquenchable fears of their own selves, strong enough to face the horror of their own being, strong enough to set her free.

“I curse you, Maire of the Vale. I curse you once, twice, thrice. I curse you and all that look upon you. Naught shall you see but yourself and never shall you see the Laird of life nor death.” Continue reading “Mirrors” →