Flash Fiction: We’ll Be Free

This flash piece was also written for the 10 April Flash!Friday competition. For once this is a more upbeat piece! 

The world in which it takes place is Airtha – with a bit of the Ruon and Nithin thrown in. 

We’ll Be Free

I know the Nithin can see me where I’m sitting on the corner of the street. It was foolishly stupid of me to sneak so close when I know they can spot me - even though the shadow cloak worked with charms of invisibility hides me from other eyes. But it was my ticket to learn the truth. Now I know how they make their poison. Now I know that my best friend has been helping them. I’d recognise the Dragon’s Bane plant anywhere. Her family’s safety bought with a bunch of thorny leaves, berries, and roots at the expense of ours. I want to throw myself at her. Claw at her. Curse her for being a traitor and murderer.  

The Nithin steps closer in order to see my face, but a mask of white clay hides my features. A ball of paper wrapped around a dragon tear buys me time as I throw it on the cobbles and let it pour forth a veil of acrid smoke. Panic grips the closest people and I run with the knowledge of how to save my people. No longer will people accept the Nithin and their magical hold on life and death here in Agraver.  

We’ll be free. 

The Beggar. CC2.0 photo by Foto_Michel.

Flash Fiction: We’ll Be Free

This flash piece was also written for the 10 April Flash!Friday competition. For once this is a more upbeat piece! 

The world in which it takes place is Airtha – with a bit of the Ruon and Nithin thrown in. 

We’ll Be Free

I know the Nithin can see me where I’m sitting on the corner of the street. It was foolishly stupid of me to sneak so close when I know they can spot me - even though the shadow cloak worked with charms of invisibility hides me from other eyes. But it was my ticket to learn the truth. Now I know how they make their poison. Now I know that my best friend has been helping them. I’d recognise the Dragon’s Bane plant anywhere. Her family’s safety bought with a bunch of thorny leaves, berries, and roots at the expense of ours. I want to throw myself at her. Claw at her. Curse her for being a traitor and murderer.  

The Nithin steps closer in order to see my face, but a mask of white clay hides my features. A ball of paper wrapped around a dragon tear buys me time as I throw it on the cobbles and let it pour forth a veil of acrid smoke. Panic grips the closest people and I run with the knowledge of how to save my people. No longer will people accept the Nithin and their magical hold on life and death here in Agraver.  

We’ll be free. 

The Beggar. CC2.0 photo by Foto_Michel.

It’s April and I’m Going Camping… Sort Of

Camp Nanowrimo is here!

View image | gettyimages.com

So, while I’ll be sharing a cabin with some other fantasy writers from around the world (how cool is that, and just one reason to love the internet), I’ll still have all my amenities, Sir T walking over my keyboard to remind me to take a break, and my usual writing coffee shop close by. I wrote a large part of my thesis there as well, so the waiters are used to me spacing out after a while between piles of papers or notebooks!

I’ve set my word count at 10 000 words for April and I’m planning on doing some serious outlining with regard to the specific stories I’m planning to write. And filling in the blank name spaces with names. You can’t very well have queen *** and her brother *** who led the golden age of the kingdom of Ezankhall, now can you?

Besides the major worldbuilding overhaul, I’ve also finished a map of Airtha with which I’m happy for the most part. (I’ll post this next week.)

I won’t be spending all my time on preparing for novel(s) though, as I also have a writing competition I want to enter (and I still need to write the story) and I want to do some shorter pieces in Afrikaans as well – along with my normal article writing and day job.

So, without any further ado, I will plunge into April!

So… what happened with Nanowrimo 2014?

The short answer is that I finished Nanowrimo, but the story is not yet finished (not to mention rewrites and editing). As I was writing, I saw where the flaws were in the worldbuilding and parts of the magic system that needed clarification. So, at the moment, I’ve gone back to worldbuilding.

Not really worldbuilder’s disease

Over time I have posted some worldbuilding and snippets of fiction set in Airtha. “A Dragon’s Freedom” also takes place in the same world as my Nanowrimo novel (for now titled Tower of Threads). While working on the worldbuilding, I have had to kill some of my darlings to make the world a coherent whole. But I am very wary of falling into the trap of worldbuilding and not getting around to writing the book. Fortunately for me, the people who know of these darlings are very few, so it is not that I am suddenly changing a whole world which readers have come to know. The part of the world shown in “A Dragon’s Freedom” was at that time already much larger in my mind, but the first stories I wrote in this world will never see the light of day. 

Because they’re that bad.

I am not, however, erasing everything and starting from scratch. The problem with spending so much time on my studies was that the worldbuilding was stretched out over a long time. So parts must be rewritten to bring it up to date with things I wrote later and which – in my mind – have become canon. I have, however, changed some of the maps quite drastically. I also want to explore the way in which the history I have at the moment influenced another part of the world which I realized I need to include in the Nanowrimo novel. I’ll be using what’s left of January to do this and then I’ll move back to actually writing the story.

How I worldbuild

When I refer to writing or rewriting the worldbuilding, I am referring to the way in which I worldbuild – I write short “articles” to explain what happened during a specific era, how the magic works or to describe the peoples, cultures, and fauna and flora. I find this much easier than simply making a list. While most of the later stuff is on a wiki I made, the earlier stuff is mostly still only in handwritten form. I do a lot of pantsing in my writing, so this is also why I need to review some parts to make sure that they really do fit in with the overall mythology. I do have a detailed wiki with all the names though.

I can highly recommend using WikidPad for doing worldbuilding. And it’s free!

But… you’re still planning on finishing it (and getting it published)?

Definitely. And I will post some more worldbuilding posts in the future.

View image | gettyimages.com

Flash Fiction: Memento Mori

This is definitely a world I’m going to explore further in some longer fiction. “Memento Mori” was written for the 31 October Flash Friday competition and received third runner up. The prompt was the photo and you have to include a monk.

Memento Mori

The monk-like caretaker of the captured souls met Gerhardt at the door.

“The procedure worked. We got to her deathbed just in time,” he grinned.

Gerhardt didn’t dare look at the photos they passed in the corridors. Whispers cluttered the air.

“She’s not in pain?”

“Not at all. Souls are extremely resilient,” the monk said. The whispers became louder until individual voices could be heard. “They wake up when people walk past. It takes a while for the eyes to adjust, you might say. Your… doctor gave you only a few months?”

Gerhardt felt a ghost walk over his grave as dozens of eyes turned to watch him. “Indeed. And then I will no longer require your services.”

“Here we go.”

Gerhardt stared at the photo of his wife. Her face moved slightly. “Gerhardt?” she whispered.

“When you die, we destroy the photo and the soul is freed immediately.”

Gerhardt smiled. “And then we will go to heaven together.”

Caution: Radiation Controlled Area. Creative Commons 2.0 photo by Oleg.

And this is why “Victorian corpse photos” are now part of my browser history. For more book reviews, mythology, and information about what writing stuff I’m busy with, click here to go to Hersenskim.