Dinosaurs In Hats

(Title)

Chapter One: Of Dinosaurs and Hats

Will spotted the dinosaur wearing a hat first. Initially thinking he was hallucinating, he rubbed his eyes in disbelief but the creature didn’t disappear. It remained, a slender-necked creature balancing on two legs with three claws on each foot, and a back and arms covered and feathers. It stood roughly about as tall as the car, studying it with alert eyes from the shadows of the trees. It sported an old-fashioned top hat - the kind that he’d seen pictures of Abraham Lincoln wearing in his history textbook. It was so surprising, in fact, that he nudged his brother, Tony, next to him.

“This had better be good,” he said, pulling out one of his earbuds.

“There’s a dinosaur in a hat out there,” Tony said.

“Yeah, whatever, dweeb.”

“I’m serious.”

But his brother ignored him, plugged his earbuds back in and closed his eyes Will pressed his face to the glass, craning his head until the dinosaur disappeared behind a bend. The car rolled on down the road. Looking ahead didn’t look all that promising - more forested hills and a seemingly never-ending ribbon of asphalt. That was when Will spotted the next unusual thing - even more so than the dinosaur wearing a hat, if that was even possible. The road was somehow shifting, subtly changing direction and taking someplace entirely unexpected. Up above, the slate-colored sky looked like rain.

“Dad,” Will said. “The road’s moving.”

His dad, who had been listening to classic eighties rock music that had been blaring out of the car stereos for the past four hours, glanced back at him.

“What?”

“The road. It’s…moving.”

“I think you need a nap,” he laughed. “Just relax. We’ll be in Grantsville before you know it.” Will shook his head and leaned back against the seat, mutinous. He knew what he had seen - could still see in fact. It was hard to notice but it was there. The road was gradually shifting a little further to the right, a a bend slowly bending further, even as they traversed it. How was nobody noticing this?
He looked out the window again whenever the car jolted, as if it had somehow hit something heavy, the engine spluttering in protest. The music blasting through the car speakers cut out, replaced by static and a grainy announcer’s voice speaking in a language he didn’t recognize and could barely hear. Tony sat up, pulling one earbud out.

“What happened?”

“I don’t actually know,” their dad said with a frown, pulling the car off to the side of the road. “It felt like we hit something but…I think I’m going to take a look. Make sure there’s no damage.” The radio continued to flicker with its static and alien language until their dad killed the power.

“That’s enough of…whatever that is. This shouldn’t take long.”

He climbed out of the car and popped open the hood to the engine. Now at a standstill, Will felt once again a prickle of unease. He peered through the woods whenever he saw the dinosaur again - though now there were two of them, both in the same ridiculous stovepipe hats and both studying the car with bright disaffected eyes.

“Look,” Will said in a hushed voice. “Tony, seriously.”

“This isn’t your stupid dinosaur wearing a hat again, is it?”

“They’re right there! There’s two of them now!”

“Look, I don’t want to be here in the first place on this dumbass camping trip. I don’t want you bothering me about…whatever. Dinosaurs in hats. That sounds stupid.” He mumbled to himself, thumbing through the music playlist on his phone, paying him no more attention. Will, however, was beginning to feel serious anxiety. The road shifting, taking them somewhere else entirely. The dinosaurs. The radio. Something was very wrong.

As if on cue, the two dinosaurs turned and disappeared back into the forest. His dad stepped back into the driver’s seat.

“I can’t find anything wrong,” he said. “No sign that we hit anything either. So I’m not sure what all that was about. Oh, well. That’s road trips for ya!” he started the car, blasting Billy Joel through the stereo speakers as they pulled back onto the road, which almost immediately began redirecting them yet again. Will didn’t say anything for a long time but he felt ill. He eventually stopped trying to follow the contours of the ever-shifting road. It gave him a headache to watch and it just brought to mind more anxieties about what, exactly, they were walking into.

“Dad,” he said. “Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “And if I don’t, the GPS knows where we’re going.” Will turned his attention to the dashboard.

“Uh - Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“The GPS says we’re driving through the middle of town.”

“What? No, that can’t be.”

His dad glanced at the GPS on the dashboard and frowned.

“That’s definitely not right. I wondered why I hadn’t heard it give out any directions for a while.” Will didn’t say anything. Outside the forest rolled by. More and more, he caught quick glimpses of more of the hatted dinosaurs running alongside the road, keeping pace with the car. The road had stopped twisting and shifting around.

Something’s wrong…

“We’ll figure it out. We’ll see if there’s a rest stop or something and we’ll get it figured out.” A silence fell over the car.

“No Internet,” Tony grumbled. “Great…”

Will didn’t say anything. That there was apparently no Internet - way out in the middle of nowhere - came as no surprise to him. He’d barely touched his own phone in his pocket for most of the trip. The radio flickered again, going back to the eerie static and the grainy announcer’s voice in the foreign language.

“What’s up with that?” he asked. “Dad…”

His dad reached out and turned the radio off. Silence fell.

“Trying to drive, kiddo We’ll have to do without music for now.”

Will slouched back in the seat again, arms folded across his chest. Nobody wanted to listen to him. And he hated being called ‘kiddo’. He’d just turned fourteen last week. They hadn’t driven much longer than that whenever the radio turned back on, the eerie static and the announcer’s voice permeating the car.

“I thought we were done with the radio,” Tony complained. “Bad enough I can’t get on the Internet, now I have to listen to this…!”

His dad didn’t answer, merely reaching over to flip it off. It didn’t work. It stayed on, the hissing static filling the interior of the car.

“This is like something out of a horror movie,” Will said, his anxiety continuing to build.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” his dad replied, though he sounded worried. “But we can’t really stop in the middle of nowhere.”

And then Will spotted the stranger. He was standing off to the side of the road, dressed in fraying brown robes, head bowed and hidden behind a hood. His dad had seen him too, doing a double take. The static in the car increased in volume, until Will could barely hear himself think. The announcer’s voice in the eldritch tongue began to come through clearer. His head hurt and he had a strange idea - an impossible idea. This man, whatever or whoever he was, was using the radio to communicate.

And then he noticed the dinosaurs again. More and more of them lining the woods, their eyes bright and intense - so bright that they were virtually glowing with blue and red light. All of them sported the same identical stovepipe hat and they were all following the car.

Will shrank back in his seat. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so terrified, so incredibly alone. Neither his brother nor his dad appeared to have seen the creatures, his brother busy with his phone, his dad with his eyes on the road.

“Dad - that guy on the side of the road,” Will said.

“What guy?”

“You didn’t see him?”

“Will, what’s gotten into you? It’s not like you to be so twitchy.”

“There’s just…something wrong,” Will said. “I don’t know what.”

“Oh, I know,” Tony called from next to him. “Maybe it’s the stupid radio. God, it’s like something out of a horror movie.”

“We’re okay,” he said. “Maybe a little lost because the GPS is malfunctioning, but it’s alright. You’ll see.”

The car whined and began to stall again.

“Again?!” his dad said. “I hope we don’t have to wait for a tow truck.” He pulled over to the side of the road, just as the mysterious ragged cloaked figure appeared once more. 

The Witch in the Woods

I'm thinking about doing like a serialized story or something on here, just kind of kicking around ideas and seeing what sticks. I was rummaging through my extensive list of projects and found this and thought it might fun to re-do and then extend out into a serialized story? Hmm.

I do kind of like the notion of the setting, though. I get a Spirited Away sort of vibe from it. And the Witch is actually a character I remember...

Chapter One

Jeron stood in the large courtyard, sitting before the stone fountain, as he waited for his father to emerge from the merchant’s shop. It was one of the myriad old villages, one that had no doubt stood for generations – going from the old, mossy stone well, the ancient temple with its statues, so weathered that their facial features were barely recognizable or the age of the population: most were elderly, with gray or white hair, talking to each other in slow ways about methods that sounded especially dull.

His father emerged moments later, heavy sacks of grain on his back. “Right. There’s more inside. Go get them.”

Jeron leaped up, just happy for something to do and stepped inside the dim coolness of the store, where the innkeeper stood polishing the counter. He looked up.

“Ah. Blessings to you. Your items are there.”

He pointed to the heavy pile of sacks of grain and supplies. “And, lad. I would be wary if I were you. Beyond the ancient gates lays grave danger.”

“Uh – thanks,” Jeron said. “I think I can take care of myself, though.”

“Do not stray from the path,” the storekeeper said. “The old spirits will strip you of your flesh, devour your bones and you will become one of them, haunting the woods.”

“Okay? I’ll keep it mind,” Jeron said, not really listening. “Pretty sure that there won’t be anything – we didn’t see anything on the way over and we passed through the gates without being decapitated.”

“But the Days of Shadows began while you were in the village. Go now, tread carefully.”

Shaking his head, Jeron picked up a sack full of grain and headed outside, loading it into the village. He continued this for some time, his father, no doubt, was patronizing the local tavern, enjoying a cup of ale before they headed on home.

“You are the traveler’s son, boy?” an ancient woman now stepped in front of him and Jeron stopped, staring.

“Yeah…who are you?”

“The priestess of the Shrine,” she said. “You should wait to return.”

“You may want to take that up with my dad…” Jeron said. “He’s kind of the one in charge of when we leave…”

“I tried. He would not listen.”

“Well, he definitely won’t listen to me,” Jeron said, aware that he was probably being rude. “So if you don’t mind…”

“Take this for the journey home. You will need it and all of your wits.” She handed him a slender flower, a pale orange and red in color, with a slender yellow stalk.

Her grip tightened around his arm, showing surprising strength for an elderly woman. “Promise that you will not let the flower leave your person. It is your only hope.”

“Okay, okay,” Jeron said, now somewhat alarmed. “I promise.” Her grip relaxed and she nodded, accepting his assurance.

“Good.”

She turned and left. He examined the flower carefully, before he shrugged and put it in his pocket. An hour later, they were ready to leave, his father climbing on top of the wagon, slightly tipsy from one too many ales.

“Why do all the villagers think that we shouldn’t leave?” he asked suddenly.

“One too many superstitions is all.” His father grunted in reply. He flicked the reins and passed beyond the gates. As the darkness fell, mist began to creep in. It grew thicker and thicker, weaving among the dead or dying trees.

“I don’t like this…” Jeron said. Water dripped from the trees.

“Bah. Calm down. It’s just a bit of fog.”

“There’s no sound either,” Jeron said. “I think we should turn back.” He looked longingly back towards the village. But it was gone, lost in the trees and mist. The path was gradually swallowed the further in they went, until at last they could no longer see anything.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move, rustling through the thick underbrush and he found that he clutched the flower in his pocket. His father, however, took no notice and kept driving.

The fog grew denser, coiling steadily around the pair of them. Things rustled and moved in the forest. Twice more, he saw the thing out of the corner of his eye.

“Home is right ahead. See? Nothing to worry about,” his father said. Jeron looked ahead. There was nothing but the trees. A vile looking raven landed on a branch, and let out a harsh caw. Jeron bit his lip.

“Dad, there’s nothing there. Just more forest.”

“Don’t be stupid, Jeron. We’re here now.” And he stopped the wagon, in the middle of the road and climbed off. “Just take the grain to the granary. I’m going to check in with your mother.” He walked right towards a tree and disappeared suddenly, into it.

“Dad…!” but there was nothing. He was gone. Jeron was left alone with the cart.

“So, dear boy. You’ve lost your way and now have nowhere left to turn. Well, well, well…” a hissing, clicking noise filled his ears as a giant spider appeared in his vision, a hump-backed witch, her eyes pointing in opposite directions appeared.

“I…uh…” he said. “Who are you?”

“I am the Witch Who Lives In the Woods, of course. What is your name?”

“J-Jeron.”

“Hmm. A human name. The Days of Significance must be upon us.”

“The what?”

“Oh, never mind. You’re just a silly human. I forgot. In any case, you’d best climb on.” She tapped the spider and it obligingly lowered itself to the ground. As little as he wanted to, Jeron slowly, reluctantly climbed on the back of the creature.

“And off we go!” the king-sized spider climbed and scuttled through the trees rapidly, the Witch Who Lives in the Woods appeared to be enjoying herself immensely.

“Do you have an actual name?” Jaron asked.

“Eh? I told you my name. Though if you feel like giving me one of your silly human nicknames, you may. I’ve picked up quite a few of them from various villages, who worshipped me as a goddess for some reason! Here we are…”

They had arrived at a rather pleasant looking cottage. The forest looked slightly more alive here, with buds on the bare branches, and bits of green beneath the yellowing grass.

“Um – what’s going on exactly? I mean, no offense but you just kind of took me for a ride on the back of your giant spider and, um…”

“You haven’t guessed? You’re in the spirit world now! Right when you passed through the gates.” She studied him.

“Everyone, of course, already knows you’re here. I must have passed a good dozen debates on whether or not we should eat you and your father or if you would be edible at all.”

“Uh – do I want to know the verdict?”

“Well, you certainly aren’t on the menu. They know better to eat a Witch’s assistant, after all!” Jeron choked.

“What – but, I can’t stay here and be your apprentice!”

“Certainly you can! And you must! After all, I didn’t eat you, argued for you in fact. And I need a human. It gets rather dull among the forest creatures, you see.”

“Er…” she smiled at him and he realized uncomfortably there wasn’t much of a choice here. She was clearly a witch. With a giant spider at her command.

“Okay. Okay. Not saying I like but I obviously don’t have a lot of choice at the moment. Do you know what happened to my dad?”

“Hmm? I do not.”

“He – he thought we were home, but we clearly weren’t. And he walked into a tree and disappeared.” The Witch thought for a moment.

“He’s probably in the hands of some spirit or another. Bewitched, more than likely. He’s likely safe, but I’ll find out for sure.” She patted him on the head.

“Why don’t you tie up Violet for me, then meet me inside. I’ll go brew up some potions.” She walked inside the hut and Jeron stared up at the huge spider, his heart in his throat.

“Tie up the giant spider,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “Right. I can do that. Uh, come here girl?”

The spider approached him, its eye lidless eyes staring at him, sending his reflection back at him.

NaNoWriMo Subject?!

We're about a month out from the beginning of NaNoWriMo. I want to participate this year and (hopefully) actually win this time around - though we'll see. I'm going to try laying some groundwork this year and I have two distinct ideas for the projects I'm going to tackle this time around. I'm torn between them.

The first is sort of this adventure, but set in a fantasy setting that sort of looks like like the 21st century - skyscrapers, smart phones and social media and so on, but it also has all these standard fantasy stuff co-existing with it - elves, dwarves, wizards and the like. The idea is essentially 'what happens if a stereotypical fantasy world actually modernizes' and the plotting sort of addresses it. I have some fun ideas for it - like you go to a zoo to see dragons or gryphons or unicorns. Arthurian castles and ancient wizard's towers and so forth have been converted into historical landmarks and museums.

(This whole notion, incidentally, is loosely inspired from a weird-ass dream I had a while back where Walmart had, of all things, a flippin' Magic department.)

The other idea is sci-fi in flavor and is inspired more from my childhood TV watching (or book reading)- drawing from stuff like Voltron, Power Rangers, Animorphs etc - you know, a group of kids/teenagers get their hands on advanced alien technology and end up drawn into some sort of large-scale, high-stakes war against alien foes.

The premise is basically this: the Earth is invaded by alternate reality humans allied with eldritch creatures from another dimension. A mysterious being gives the protagonists strange futuristic devices that scans animals and creates robotic templates based on those animals that they can then summon to help them fight back. The Earth, quickly conquered, sends them on the run from all that they have known and they find themselves drawn into an epic conflicts, while having character growth, large-scale battles, solving the mysteries of the setting and all that good stuff.

I really like both of these ideas - the sci-fi one has more of a plot going for it but the fantasy already has more of the world-building going on. So help me choose!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: A Review

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it is now the time you've been waiting for! That's right...some nobody's opinion of the latest Harry Potter book! Let's have a round of applause! Woohoo!

Okay, silliness finished. So, let's firstly get into our TL;DR version of this review. It's good. You should read it. The end.


...I should say before you continue reading here, there are spoilers of the play ahead. So if you don't like spoilers, leave now! I'm not going to spoil everything or major stuff but still.

You have been warned.

Okay.

Spoiler-Phobhic readers gone?

Anyone left either doesn't care about spoilers or has already finished the play?
...

...

...


Right. Here we go. 

To elaborate on that, Cursed Child is a script - its not a proper novel. It picks up with the Epilogue of Deathly Hallows and takes us forward four years over the course of the first act. Admittedly, this is an odd choice of medium to continue the story of a series of novels, but is eminently readable and I was still thrown back into the Harry Potter universe - the hidden magical corners of London, the sprawling grounds and floor of Hogwarts Castle and so forth. My only major regret with this choice of format is that the chances of me ever getting to see this performed are basically non-existent. But I digress - we're getting off topic.

At its core, it's a story about the strained relationship between Harry Potter and his youngest son, Albus Severus. Initially, I didn't care for Albus. He came across like an emo brat. You know - the ones that actually have it really good but keep crying about how nobody understands their pain and you just want to punch them? However, he did get better as the story went on, mostly because he was too busy being occupied with the plot to whine. And, to the story's immense credit, it did have a character call him out on his behavior about halfway through. Intriguingly, Albus is very clearly not a copy of Harry. He's a Slytherin for one thing, and his best friend is the Scorpius, the son of Harry's old rival Draco Malfoy.

On Harry's end, he is now an overworked government employee dealing with a very thorny problem: a former Death Eater was caught with a Time Turner - a more advanced version than we saw in Prisoner of Azkaban. This one can go back years into the past, instead of just hours. Which means that it could be used to restore Voldemort back to full strength. Add that to constant whispers of Voldermort's child (!), Amos Diggory demanding that the Time Turner to be used to restore Cedric Diggory, Triwizard Champion and first victim of Voldemort's return in Goblet of Fire. 

Naturally, Harry declines - as he should. Because messing with the flow of time never under any circumstances ends well. But, of course, the Time-Turner ends up in irresponsible (though well-meaning) hands. Attempts are made to save Cedric Diggory from his death at Voldemort's hand, by disqualifying him from the Triwizard Tournament. This results in some various bad futures, including one where Hermione is the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and acts like Snape (!) and another one where Voldermort rules the roost with over-the-top evil things like the Blood Ball. And Voldermort Day. (seriously.). And Dolores Umbridge is Head of Hogwarts.

Of course, if we're really going this Time Travel business, this does beg the question of why nobody just went back and provided a list of the Horcruxes and their locations to someone in the past to destroy. Or killed Voldemort before he made the Horcruxes and was all powerful. Which, honestly, is why I think JK wrote the Time Turners out of continuity in the original seven novels.

Cedric Diggory, too, bothered me. I won't say too much about it but he's very, VERY out of character. The titular Cursed Child (no, I'm not telling you who it is) also came out of left field.

However, on the plus side of the Time Turner business, we got to see some old friends who were dead in the main timeline, revisit some iconic scenes from a new perspective (seriously, the closing scene of the climax was heartbreaking. No, again, not spoiling. Read it yourself if you haven't yet.).

All in all, it was a good trip back to the Wizarding World once again. And, as I said above, my biggest regret is that I will likely never see it performed.  8/10

Stray observation:
-Hermione is Minister of Magic and Ron now runs Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. The leading politican of magic in Great Britian is married to a man who runs a joke shop. Ron/Hermione shipping forever!

Another Snippet

So, writing is going well. I'm still building up my stamina and today have managed to pull of twenty minutes or so - hopefully will manage thirty or forty before I go to bed. Reading, too, is carrying on as well. I am looking forward to reading the new Harry Potter book here in a couple of day's time.

In any case, I've a new snippet for you to read! Yay! This is from early on in Chapter Two. Enjoy!

But none of it really started to sink it until the sun began to set. He had found a place to camp - by a wide, shallow stream that wound lazily through the grasslands, out of sight. The grass was shorter here and he could see better. He laid out the bedroll and stared up at the stars. The moons rose and the stars emerged. He flinched. Moons. Two of them - a larger blue one, deep blue but striated with bands of paler hue and a smaller burnt-orange crescent, hanging below and somewhere off to the right. He stared up at the sky, suddenly feeling very, very small; very, very lost; and very, very frightened.

Whether it be some scrap of memory remaining, or some base instinct somewhere buried in his soul, he knew. The sky was wrong. There wasn’t supposed to be two moons - just one, silvery, small and distant. Staring up at the sky, his whole situation well and truly began to sink in. He was on another world. Some other planet, some other dimension -

Does it really matter? I can’t even remember where I’m from. But - its wrong. Wherever it is, its so far, I can’t even really get my head around how far away home actually is. 

And he was utterly alone, cut off so completely off from his friends and family that he couldn’t even remember their names and faces. It was a uniquely horrible feeling as he sat underneath the vast, uncaring alien sky.

Reading?!

So, I am slowly but surely re-establishing my old writing habits. It's an ongoing process - learning once again how to silence my doubts and internal editor, trying to maintain momentum by writing every day, focusing on one big story and seeing it through all the way to the end and, most importantly, actually concentrating on writing instead of getting sidetracked by the internet..

All these things take time. Right now, I've started small. I'm writing for ten minutes here, ten minutes there - the plan being to gradually increase the time I spend writing as I continue to build up my focus for projects. It seems to be working so far. I managed nearly twenty minutes today (not counting the time I spent writing this blog - and some time I will probably spend afterwards on the project). One step at a time, I say. It's rather like exercise. You have to do it consistently and, over time, you'll gradually get faster - stronger or, in my case, able to actually concentrate instead of run off to the Internet after ten seconds.

But that's not what I wanted to ramble about today. I wanted to talk about...reading. You see, when I was a teenager I read constantly. All the time. Whatever looked interesting - primarily fantasy and science fiction. I was drawn to book jackets and interesting covers, drawn to new stories, new frontiers, new ideas, characters and settings to process.

And then I sort of...stopped and I suspect that my lack of reading has at least something to do with the decline in my writing habits. Oh, sure, I still read. But it was always old favorites, very rarely anything new. Well, I arbitrarily decided a couple of days ago to charge up my tablet, buy an e-book and sit down and read it. I then followed that up with a couple of graphic novels (also purchased digitally, by the way.). I felt that, afterwards, the writing I did was of better quality than usual: the words came easier and the quality was a lot better - something I was actually fairly happy with.

But what's more? I enjoyed the stuff I was reading. Sure, it wasn't deep masterpieces or anything. But it doesn't need to be. I just have to like it. It just has to appeal to me. So I'm going to start reading again - consistently. It could be old stuff I've read before - but I mostly want to expand my horizons with new books. Fantasy, sci-fi and perhaps a smattering of non-fiction. No quotas on genre or anything like that.

Whatever appeals to me.

I will, of course, have to rely a lot on my local library and Overdrive (the e-book library app for those uninitiated) because books cost money which, unfortunately, I don't have a lot of. I will likely allow myself a purchase or two every payday. And ebooks, unfortunately. I'm generally okay with e-books but I much prefer physical copies. And with the local bookstore in my area going under...

Sad day.

But anyway! That's no way to end this blog entry. Things are looking up. I'm getting back into the swing of things, the new novel is shaping up well and I am enjoying my life.

Till next time!

The Beginning

 I wrote this today. Trying to ease myself back into writing on a regular basis. Enjoy the mindscrew! =D (It's the opening part of Chapter 1.)

Daniel Stevenson stood alone, surrounded by thick coils of undulating fog that swirled around him like a vast white serpent. He could, at least, see - a sourceless white light illuminated his surroundings, such as they were. Occasionally, the coils of mist parted and he saw beyond. And then wished that he hadn’t. For beyond the white misty tendrils spanned an infinite void. It wasn’t merely empty space, he thought, but Emptiness itself - a blank pale gray stretching on and on to forever. There was no land or sky, no up or down nor left or right.

It felt simultaneously an infinitesimal distance away and, at the same time, so close that he might as well have had his nose squashed up against it. But then, thankfully, the mist covered it and he didn’t have to look at it anymore. He didn’t want to see anymore.

But he was still here, stranded in…wherever this was. He had a dim recollection that he should know - but that memory was getting fainter. Noises drifted to his ears. He had felt certain that he was alone but - now, he wasn’t sure. The sharp sound of a slamming door. Wild raucous laughter mingled with the sound of a flute. An angry conversation in an alien tongue - one he somehow recognized as speech, despite sounding like a three way blend between revving lawnmowers, whistling teapots and guttural dinosaur snarls.