Very, Very Short Story: The Last Survivors of Avalesse

It is time…for more stream of conscious rambling about how my writing is going! Just what I know you wanted! Last night went pretty well, though I ended up leaving it only at thirty minutes instead of the proper sixty. Oh well. Last week (it’s been a full week already since I started? Time flies) was successful – I wrote for approximately nine hours and wrote about 15k-16k words. I mentioned I was thinking about it earlier (or might have outright said I did it – I don’t recall and am too lazy to check) but I’m now keeping track of the projects I’m working on every day – so that should be interesting. 

Aside from that, there’s not much else to say. Still fighting procrastination, but I’m sure you readers (if there are any of you at the moment) are tired of hearing about and I’m tired of rambling on and on about it – there’s only so much you can say. I need to force myself to tackle my main writing session earlier in the day.

I’m also thinking that I need to re-label my ‘warm-up’ writing time. 

That’s now pretty much evolved into these daily blogs and occasional short stories as the mood strikes. More of a side project type deal as of now. Okay, now I’m out of things to say about the writing. I have a short story idea in mind – I mentioned it, I think, last post as a piece of the backstory I’ve cooked up and am going to write that and post it here for you guys to read. So, sit back, read and enjoy. (feedback and constructive criticism is, of course, welcome.). Thanks for reading. 

Kiau entered the courtyard, hood thrown over his face. The stars glittered in the sky above, like someone had strewn gemstones all over the sky. In fact, that was the human’s current belief about the stars – well, they were a young civilization still. Prone to odd ideas. Braziers glowed with dull light. 

If the city still stood, if the Travelers hadn’t been betrayed, if the magic wasn’t slowly fading, they would be bright, shining with golden warmth that would have pushed aside the shadows and the fell monsters that still roamed the world. A million ifs. Everything had gone wrong and now, Kiau stood with only a handful of others, the last of his kind on this lonely, primitive planet. He stared at the stars, wondering how the rest of the race fared. Not well, he imagined. They would have sent someone by now, surely.

“You miss the stars, Kiau?” a woman stood next to him. Like him, she wore a simple robe of gray and blue, hood pulled over her face. 

“Riah,” he relaxed. “Yes. You have no ideas. I miss our home-world. I miss seeing planets, the old technology, the mysteries. I miss going to the Second-Realm…I miss my friends, my family.” 

“As do we all,” she said. “We are the last of our people. When we pass on, then that will be the end.” 

“We are the last, then?” Kiau asked anxiously.

“But for the traitors, yes. I can feel it in my bones,” she said quietly. “This place, this vault, will be one of the only traces that we lived.”  

“Have you had any more…” he hesitated. “Visions? You have the powers of a seer, Riah.” She stared at the sky for a moment.

“No,” she said. “But there will be one final vision that I must give, a last prophecy... a last declaration for how the universe can survive. Then we are finished, and we must give ourselves to the Box, our minds and essences preserved until the time is right.”

They heard something, a low growling out of the darkness. Kiau raised his hands and they began glowing with light. An enormous wolf leapt into his field of vision, cloaked with deep shadow, its teeth ivory white.

“A spirit wolf,” Kiau said softly. “Our defenses are weak.” 

He pointed at the creature and a bolt of bright energy burst from his fingertips, the creature shook off the attack and then lunged. He dodged the attack, but Riah stepped up and gripped the creature by the back of the neck and twisted. There was a definite snap, the creature yelped in pain and fell backwards, its head now at a bizarre angle.

It growled, but a third figure rushed in, another bolt of light burst from his fingertips. The creature’s flesh sizzled like acid. It howled.

“Together,” Kiau called. They attacked as one, and the courtyard blazed with light, lit up like a firework. The creature screamed, and then dissolved into a puddle of shadow. 

“Orith,” Kiau said, wiping his forehead. “You came just in time.” 

“There will be more,” Orith said. He stood old and weary, his skin gray from his extreme age and his hair white.

“We must do what we came to do tonight,” Riah said. “The defenses are weak enough that something that creature could get through.” Orith nodded. Kiau looked at him anxiously.

“Tonight? But –”

“Our magic is failing. Even our own powers are not up to scratch. If we wait, we will be unable to give ourselves to the Box and its powers will eventually fail, along with the rest of the Traveler’s. Riah is right.” Kiau nodded, and took one last look at the stars.

“Let’s go.” 

They headed into the vault, descending lower and lower until they came to the central room. Five statues already stood there, all of them had lived in the temple. All of them had given themselves, and helped gather the remaining souls from Avalesse, preserving them before they could disperse. 

They stepped into the chamber, where a simple cube of stone stood on a pedestal. A rune was carved on each side, glowing with faint light. Riah closed her eyes for a moment, murmuring words in a tongue older than the Travelers: the Language of Creation, spoken by the spirits, the first words uttered by the Creator.

Light expelled from her lips, forming into strange letters. It struck stone, and became what was clearly a piece of a larger whole. Then it vanished, absorbed into the Box. 

“The last prophecy,” she murmured. “Now, let us do what we can.” 

She placed her hand on the Box, and immediately light spiraled up her arms, her chest, her face. She closed her eyes, becoming more and more translucent. Her body vanished after a moment. Orith was next, and he too disappeared into the Box. Kiau was next. 

He squared his shoulders and closed his eyes. Though he couldn’t see it, he could feel the light swarming up his arm. His mind slowly opened, expanding. It was as though it had been condensed, but was now spreading itself out – his memories, his magic, his personality –everything that made him unique. And he touched…something, a greater whole. All of the powers of the Travelers, the sum of the experiences, their magic, their lives, their secrets, history, origin. All there, all in the Box. 

He gave himself up, joining them and he ceased to be an individual, merging with the larger whole to preserve a race already dead, a race already past saving.

Outside, the vault and its courtyard shimmered like a mirage, becoming less and less substantial until it had disappeared, leaving behind bare ground with so much as an imprint where it had been. 

Hmm. That was rather shorter than I was expecting. Looking over it and thinking about, there’s definitely some room for improvement and some definite ways to take Kiau’s character. The most natural, I think, would have been him overcoming fear of dying, fear of being the last of his kind etc. It also needed more detail about stuff in the past and the things these people are facing now.

I may rewrite this little thing later, expand upon it some and adjust it as the canon changes and I figure more details out, but for now, this was a pretty okay first effort. 

I hope it was good, or showed promise. I have a hard time gauging my work, because I think I’m too close to it. Anyway – that’s all I have to say. Until tomorrow.

Delayed Entry

Today's blog will be a little later than normal as I have some things to do this morning. Stay tuned!

Upgrades and More Plans

Two things: I’ve bumped up my usual warm-up sessions (though I don’t know if I would call these warm ups anymore, they’re long rambles as of now basically) up from ten minutes to fifteen minutes per session and my writing yesterday went well – I finished off a draft of the first chapter and I’m now moving onto the second. I had some ideas kicking around in the back of my mind for a story relating some of the stuff emerging in the chapter – a small piece of the backstory I wrote – something that will start fleshing parts of it out.

It’s very broad strokes currently at the moment which, of course, it has to be given it covers literally trillions of years of history, starting with the beginning of that Universe and ends about sixteen-seventeen years prior to the events of the main story.  No – now that I think of it, it’s more like twelve. I covered all of the backstory relevant to the story I’m trying to tell. 

One of the good things about a giant project like this is that I can keep shifting gears with the current project and still be working on it – it covers literally anything and everything I can think of. I’m looking forward to seeing where it wants to go. The scope is certainly far bigger than anything I’ve written before.

My only quibble yesterday was the old procrastination problem – I did get my full hour in yesterday, but it wasn’t consecutive and the third part took place really close to midnight and the next day – need to work on putting aside distractions and just concentrate on writing for the time being. The trick is to find a balance between writing and other stuff that I work on for fun. I also really could use a cooling board (or whatever they’re called) for my computer, or maybe I just need to use some canned air on the vents, ‘cause I’ve noticed this thing gets really hot as of late, even when I’m doing something simple, like running Microsoft word. It feels like I’m burning my fingers – definitely not very comfortable to type on. 

But I digress. My plans today: maybe do something with the short backstory idea I had (I may write it as one of these warm-up sessions and post it on the blog, I haven’t really decided yet), and finish off chapter two – though I am thinking that the stuff from the short is going to come up again at some point in the novel.

I basically have a vague plan in mind for where the story is going but I’m kind of winging it. Details are still shifting around, while I get to know these characters. I’ll probably rewrite the first few chapters eventually, with more characterization but I’m getting the basic chronology down first.

Thanks for reading.

A Small Victory

I don’t have very much to say yesterday about the writing – it went very, very smoothly. I wrapped up the cosmology at around sixteen-seventeen years before the beginning of the main story I want to tell which is pretty much nothing, after having covered literally a trillion years or so of history. The chapter went well, too, I’m about three pages in so far and I’m really liking how it’s turning out.

A small triumph this morning: I’m writing this blog entry almost immediately after I woke up. I got on the Internet, checked my E-Mail and then…started to wander around and check the same things over and over again (as I unfortunately do). But I stopped early on and reminded myself that it’s not necessary – it’ll update later, there’s no need. So I closed out the Internet, took out the dogs and then sat down and started writing today’s blog entry. 

I guess – Me: 1, Procrastination: 20,000. I’ll win in the end, though. I’ll beat it and I’ll quit getting distracted so much. Anyhow, nothing left to say about that, so I suppose I’ll just write something for the remainder of the time. 

“No, no,” Bill muttered, running his finger down a long list of calculations. “These aren’t going to work.” He sat at the dining room table, cluttered with old pizza boxes, thick piles of papers with writing and calculations all over it, bits of wiring, a collection of tools and odd looking inventions, only half assembled. Someone knocked at the door, he got up and opened it.

“Oh, hi, Rachel. Come on in. Just trying to handle some calculations for the portal generator.”

“You’ll get it.” 

“I figure so, but I keep running into a dead end.” 

She stepped into the living room, at least as cluttered as the dining room. 

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “I was wondering – what if the flux we’re expecting is too small?”

“There shouldn’t be any flux,” Bill said, his brows arched. “We added those stabilizers, remember? Those are supposed to eliminate the flux.”

“I’m just saying. Nobody’s ever done this before – we’re working literally off pages of equations, what if the stabilizers reduce the flux, but don’t entirely eliminate it?”

“I guess it’s worth a look,” he said doubtfully, putting aside the papers and walking over to a computer and typing something in and stopped.

“I think you might be on to something,” he whispered, in awe. “If the flux isn’t eliminated, then the portal opens without a problem. Which means…” he rushed out to the garage, Rachel followed. 

What appeared to be an old-fashioned silver cigar-shaped rocket laid on its side, with a enormous laser positioned on top. A hatch led into a handsome interior, with leather seats and a mahogany dashboard.

Bill opened a panel, and began making adjustments here and there, before pressing a button. A burst of light splashed against the garage door. A hole slowly opened, revealing a shimmering curtain of light. 

“We did it,” he muttered and looked over at Rachel. “We actually get to go to another world.” He grinned, eyes bright. 

“Get the rest of the gang together.” 

Alright, I’ll call that random little snippet finished – it’s kind of a revised something I’ve had knocking around for a while now – it didn’t lead anywhere. I’m inordinately fond of using mad scientists doing things that by all rights should be impossible and regularly trampling over scientific laws in their quest. Yet most of them are nice people, they’re just crazy: more like Doc Brown, I guess. 

Thanks for reading.

The Beginning of Something

This entry is coming much later than normal – I got sidetracked by various things and am only now sitting down to do some actual writing. Yesterday’s session went extraordinarily well – I started literally from the beginning of the universe and of time, and then marched forward through the history, establishing the beginnings of a very large, sprawling cosmology and metaphysics. 

As I said in my last entry, this is something I’ve had in mind for a while, but this is the first time I’ve sat down to articulate the cosmology in full, and I rather liked where it headed and how it turned out (though I’m not quite done with it as of yet, but I have established a lot of stuff, taking it in some very interesting places.). This universe turned out to be a very messed up place, it seems to be held together with the cosmic equivalent of duct tape. 

I have a few ideas I’m kicking around in my head for the story and such. I could probably take whole paragraphs of the cosmology and just expand upon them for pages and pages – I probably will, once I start figuring out what I currently need for the main story. Good backstory, good fun. I felt very satisfied in what I accomplished in my writing – there wasn’t any overthinking, worrying about small errors in grammar or logic, just letting it flow like it should have out of me. 

Tonight’s plan is to A) write this blog entry, B) finish off the cosmology for the setting and C) write a few pages of the first chapter and see where it takes me. I’m not really sure how long B will take me; I’m up to the emergence of the first major human civilization – it shouldn’t be too much longer to finish it. 

I’m pretty interested in tackling a few of the early chapters and start familiarizing myself with the major protagonists.On another note, I am thinking that I need to work on overcoming the procrastination. My idea involves adding another thirty minutes to my writing, but this session has to be in the morning – which would pad out my writing to a full 90 minutes a day, and would guarantee that I’d have something accomplished before the usual evening hour. (Since that’s when I tackle my writing anyway). 

I am also thinking about bumping up the time on these little blogs, from ten to fifteen minute sessions (though at the moment I’ve been doing two in a row – so you’re reading the results of twenty minutes of rambling about me rambling about my writing projects and so on and so forth.).

In any case, I’ve noticed that its hard getting into the swing of things after your schedule’s been thrown like it has. But I will beat it, I will get something of substance written.

Thanks for reading.

Laying Some Plans

Alright, so confession time. I only wrote for thirty minutes last night. It was late, I was tired and I suppose it’s still better than nothing. The project I mentioned I may switch or fold into something else (after a lot of revisions) because it’s so inconsistent with its tone – it just kind of floats from one thing to another. It’s functioning like a horror story one chapter and the next, like an epic fantasy. The foray to another planet (by use of magic, by the way) in the middle of the story certainly doesn’t really help matters.

Interestingly, I actually did develop a universe that would allow just about anything – but was definitely pure urban/epic fantasy, incorporated with just about everything I thought was cool or interesting. But there were cosmological reasons that accounted for everything – why there were dinosaurs running around in American-style urban metropolis, why 18^th century pirates were attack modern day tourists, and why ancient Persia (with magic, mind you) was fighting cowboys from the Old West. In-universe, it made sense, and there was a definite consistency of tone – the genres may blur together, but I knew at least what it was.

But this just goes happily from place to place. And then there’s the characters – there’s quite a few of them, most of them stick around which makes things difficult to balance on top of everything else. It’s kind of like the Frankenstein of novels – a bit taken from this, a bit taken from that without any rhyme or reason. I may return to my other project and do something else with the current one – there’s a lot of things I like about it, to be honest but none of it really gelling together, so to speak. 

Also – it has been a couple of days now and I’m still kind of debating the other project (which I was taking a break from, see blog entries from earlier) – and I think that the characters and the general premise – which involved dropping some poor guy from our world into an exotic fantasy land that had lots of parallels with Ancient Egypt – doesn’t work with the setting. The characters need to come from entirely within the universe. 

My reasoning for this is the heavy focus on the gods of the setting and, really, the idea of these inter-dimensional travelers kind of undermine them. I have a few ideas for tackling it, but we’ll see.

I think I may work on that urban fantasy I mentioned earlier – that had a lot of interesting ideas in it. I was thinking for a while about making it a comic, because owing to how the plot worked would have worked well in that particular medium, but I ultimately decided against it, largely because I don’t have the drawing chops necessary to make that happen and I don’t know anyone who has the time or inclination to draw a comic and keep it going on a regular basis. 

So, novel it is. It’ll still work, though. I need to review my notes (I have a lot of notes for this story, but not very much in the way of actual drafts.). It is a multi-book epic, in fact – most of my projects are.  So…yeah, we’ll see where it goes and I’ll report more about it tomorrow. There’s so many ideas and projects I want to work on.

That’s all for now, I’ve said everything that I think needs to be said and if I keep going, I’m going to repeat myself. Thanks for reading.