NaNo 2014 Week 4 - Black Friday

Today's fiction is brought to you by Black Friday last year, as I'm NaNoing full rush to the end. For some reason this story gives me a dark pleasure with its cynicism (even though I took advantage and got my first ever pre-lit tree this year, for the bay window at the front of the house). But if you are a Black Friday lover, I grant you permission to hate me. Happy shopping! --Elm

Two dark cloaks stood above a milling throng, on a rather traditional cliff over dark, sticky fog.

None of the individuals saw our cloaks, or their true surroundings. In their minds, they huddled in coats, noses barely discernible beneath hats and scarves, puffs of shivering air escaping their lips as they waited for the alarm that signaled the start of the shopping melee.

"They've forgotten what they were thankful for just two hours ago," I chuckled, without mirth.

He raised a pale finger. The same pale finger that used to stroke my cheek. "Hush. It's not much longer."

I inclined my chin. "It's almost worth the cold."

His lips pulled back without a sound--I couldn't tell if he was laughing or snarling. The enigma characterized his profession perfectly. He'd walked the trail of the dead more fervently than I, allowed necromancy to shape his very bones. "What are you, alive?" he mocked.

I pulled back into my cloak. "Like you, I chose death long ago. But I'm getting distracted, like there's a glimmer I can't quite pick out from among them."

"Where?" he asked sharply, and I pointed downward to a particularly dark area at the edge of our cliff.

"Nothing glimmers there."

"Perhaps it's my excitement," I shrugged.

"Sometimes I don't believe you ever died."

"I don't believe it matters," I said mildly, as the alarm rang. The crush of holiday greed began. Like explosions of dandelion puffs, white wisps erupted from the surging darkness as the crowd stumbled forward.

I held out my hand and the wisps rose, blinked, shook, and responded to my gesture.

"Ah," I said softly, as a particularly bright one lit my palm. I gazed into its eyes, as though comparing myself beside it, as though it held something I wanted. With a sigh, I closed my fingers and tucked the soul into my breast pocket, close to my heart. Where there was no heart.

"Wistful, are you?" My companion's fingers pinched the tail of a wisp and stretched it thin between his hands, like taffy. A mosquito-like whine etched down my spine. I shook my head as it disappeared between his lips.

"This one was innocent. A child."

The grimace-that-might-be-a-smile spread again. "More power to you."

That might have been a joke. "I'm saving it for dessert."

A raspy noise came from his throat. Maybe even a laugh. "There is much to be thankful for... they began early this year. True love shows its black face."

"Like you know what love is," I said.

"I did once."

I measured him. Too many souls over the years? Were the last drops of honesty leeching out of him like blood?

"It's a thirst," he said.

I frowned. "Thirst signals a deficit of something necessary." In death, nothing was necessary.

"Things are necessary," he waved his hand at the crowd, catching another handful of tails. "Obviously."

"What things did you thirst for?" I kept my voice level.

This time I knew it was a grin. The grin I'd loved once upon a time. The grin I'd followed him into death for. It was not beautiful now.

"These," he held up his fist and crammed the souls to his mouth. "Freely discarded, freshly harvested power from the dead." 

A pang shuddered deep inside me. I'd known that. It's why I'd given up my heart when I died, so he could no longer have power over me.

What I hadn't seen, was that he'd never given up his.

I shrank back into my cloak and whispered silently to the bright soul in my pocket. "Let's you and I have a feast."

NaNo 2014 Week 3 - Alien Dragons

A random, alien dragon scene out of my sketchbook.

I discovered this site that's really helped me to structure my story this week, you should totally check it out: How-to-Write-a-Book-Now. You can never know enough about writing books and they have some GREAT helps.

Speaking of novel-writing:

Wordcount 23419

This week will be a wild ride to 50K :). Cheer me on. I, of course, am cheering you on whether you're NaNoing or not. All creativity is good creativity.

(You know, as long as it's used for good ends. But even if you're a villain or super-villain, you'll probably agree.)

Sometimes we all question our sanity, but remember, it's the actions that matter.

XO - Elm

NaNo 2014 Week 2 - On Things That Are Warm

See my new writing jewelry? A pretty 16 GB memory stick to keep my novel with me always. This baby is so little, it slides right into the usb port and warms up as my novel transfers onto it. Voila! Safe. I feel warm, too.

Wordcount 16599

Not quite 23K. But okay, I have to share my oh-so-warming news.

I have done five rewrites for this book. Rewrites, as in started from scratch with a year's worth of world-building every single time. Plus I took a NaNo to write part of the second book so I could clarify my main character. So I will tell you, the idea of starting over again was more than I could fathom. I really struggled with it.

But what are wonderful writing tools for? I'm using this year's NaNo to end this thing. And this week, I realized something that was pure sunlight to my soul.

This is not a rewrite, this is a revision.

I graduated! #singingdancinghallelujahs

This is 16599 words of a new beginning, new material through chapter eight, and some world-building that five years hasn't brought about. Do you know how much I love writing? (Yes, even with the love-hate thing.) It's the most heart-warming, satisfying thing on the planet. Worth putting in all that time and love and thought... or it will be.

Thanks for being warm with me :). Keep writing!

NaNo 2014 Week One

Week One down. Guess how many words?

7561.

Not to 10K yet. But since I can only count the fresh material on my rewrite, it's okay... I'm zoomin' through Chapter 5. Yes, that was a lot of new writing through the first four chapters. But I knew for forever that I'd have to redo the beginning... I swear the beginning is cursed, it's always the last thing done.

How is your beginning? I know, it's awesome. :D

On to Week Two! Remember: be fearless.

I Write for Fun

I have a bonus post for you, because tomorrow is the start of NaNoWriMo, which is just very exciting because it means RUSH!

The message? A reminder to love what you do... for you.

Do you ever get in a funk? The kind where the world presses in on your head and it aches, and you forget how you liked making things? Totally not recommended.

This happened with my almost-there novel and I had this epiphany… that the raw matter behind creating is NOT about everyone else. As awful as that sounds, it’s about you reaching deep into your muse for you—it’s your special, personal relationship and it's grounding and you love to connect with it.

And THEN, because you feel ownership of what you have created, you can happily, gladly share.

It’s easy to get it backwards because lighting up people’s worlds makes you tick. But you have to remember that without the you in it, there’s nothing to give. The muse swallows your (good) intentions into a black hole.

You’re the bridge.

So I made this reminder in the happiest colors, to help as we go about NaNoWriMo this month. Are you joining me for the 50K race? Please use the image and remember to love your writing!

Apocalypse

     For Halloween, I’m giving you a scene to spark your imagination. The painting is called Apocalypse. Have a great night! —Elm

Matters of Death, Life, and Kisses

We're on a roll with curses this month. Since it's creepy pumpkin month, it works, right? Here's a story about wishes that make you do bad things, and all the while, you hope someone might come along and save you from yourself. Warning: contains some graphic elements. --Elm

Mom called me Viva because she said no amount of life would slip me by, since my personality was forceful enough to get everything I wanted.

You can hear my eyes rolling--I wasn't that loud a baby, but what do you do when you have six older sisters who organize your most precious possessions and chatter nonstop?

Then an evil magician came and cursed me into the depths of slumber for a hundred years. (He stole it right out of the fairy tale.) I didn’t deserve it, and occasionally I wonder if my family put him up to it. It occurs to me, though, that maybe Mom’s naming worked—he couldn’t actually curse me to death.

While I slept, I dreamed of this totally hot guy in a black suit and cloak who loved me passionately. So when I was kissed awake by this totally hot guy in a black suit and cloak, I fell for him big-time.

It was not lost on me that this was the same magician who cursed me, so much as my heart called to him, I wasn't surprised when he ditched me for another woman at my ball. Evil, yah? I cried my eyes out.

Of course, that’s when I realized he was under a curse, himself.

I drew on my shiniest, blackest gloves, and set out to find him.

It wasn’t hard for a person like me to trace the carnage. The woman he ditched me for? I found her choked by a vine in a pumpkin patch. The lady he left her for? Poisoned in the middle of a forest. The sweetheart she was poisoned for? I found her eaten by wolves.

You see the pattern. Now you’re asking, what about the basket of food for Granny?

There wasn’t a basket, but there was a tower, with a woman choked by her own—very long—hair.

One bad dude, I tell you.

But I was badder. See, there’s another reason my mom named me Viva. I raised the first girl and made her croak out the man’s name. Ivan. Such a romantic name.

I stole the second chick from the dwarves and compelled her to spill the memories he’d confided. I bribed the third with an axe and a new red cloak to show me the path through the woods to her competitor’s house. And the fourth…

… I pulled the fourth out of the window and set the tower on fire. I understood what it was like to be locked up with no way out but your dreams.

I laid them all to rest in that thorny valley. I didn’t want them haunting my man when he couldn’t help himself in the first place.

I guess I’m not sure if I believe that. Everyone makes their choices, like I had with my spinning wheel. Somewhere in his past, he’d made one that led him to this.

But I forged ahead with my plan, if only to save a few more ladies. Since life has a way of taking you back to the beginning, I ditched Ivan’s trail for a short cut to the earliest memory he’d given girl number two. An island in the middle of a lake, with an old well set at the top.

I never understand why wells get built on islands when there’s all that water already around you. Maybe it’s purer. Or symbolic. But I didn’t find any inscriptions on the stones or on the bucket to give me a clue. Finally, I lowered the vessel for a drink of water and cranked the handle until it came back up. A coppery gleam at the bottom caught my eye.

I scooped out the penny and the world went hazy. Then clear. Like a dream.

A boy’s face glimmered in the well water, framed by moonlight.

“What is your wish?” a voice rippled up the stone walls.

The boy’s face half-disappeared, then drew forward again. His quivering lip hardened. “I’m tired of my brothers getting more attention than me,” he said. “Nothing I say or do matters.”

“You wish to matter?” the voice asked.

The boy gave one sharp nod and dropped his penny into the well.

I stared at it in my hand.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” A deep, familiar voice asked. I stared up at the man of my dreams. He seemed wary, and worn at the edges. Tired. No wonder he was recycling curses, truly evil deeds took a lot of time and energy to think up.

I held up the penny. “I think you dropped this, Ivan, a long time ago.”

He didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. His eyes just watched me, and I felt a heat rise through me. “No one ever listened to me, either,” I said.

Finally, he nodded. “You realize I’m going to have to kill you, Viva.”

I laughed. “I don’t die very easily. And I understand a thing or two about curses. For instance, I know that they’re broken by true love’s kiss.”

Ivan walked forward, his hand on the knife at his belt. “I have no true love,” he said. “None of them were the one. Not for over a hundred years.”

“I didn’t say it was your kiss that mattered, Mr. Ego. Try, the kiss of the one who loves you.”

His eyes widened, and I saw the moon glint on his Adam’s apple. “No one in their right mind would love me.” His voice sounded rough.

“If you had actually waited at the ball…” I looked back down at the penny, and swallowed my sudden nerves.

You’re wondering how a girl who raises dead people could be nervous of a boy. But, you know, he was a guy. A hot guy in a black suit and cloak… with a knife.

“So, one bad girl speaking to one bad guy… maybe we could just try it.”

“You would do that?” he asked softly. He was now very near. So near, I could see his knuckles tighten on the knife’s pommel.

I’d had a hundred years to think about it. Before I could lose those last threads of nerve, I raised up on my toes and kissed him.

It was sweet. Our first real kiss, since I was sleeping the first time around and he was only thinking about himself.

“My Viva,” he breathed.

Curses might be broken by true love, but true love itself isn’t magic. It’s clear eyes, determination, and a lot of forgiveness.

And when I looked into his eyes, I saw gratitude.

Evil men don’t feel gratitude.

I decided he was worth a second kiss.