T.S. Bazelli ~ Ink Stained

Friday Serial - Two Sisters Part 2

Friday Sep 3 2010

Part 2 of the serial is up on Serial Central!

This serial began as an unsettling dream. In that dream I saw a big old house, falling apart in the middle of a field, and there was a strange girl that lived there all by herself with a secret...

Two Sisters
Part 2 - Circles

Alice Young – August 6, 2010

Her old room was jammed full of dusty boxes; a graveyard of faded memories. Some of the boxes had split like overripe melons, their heavy innards exposed raw to the sunlight. The arm of an old teddy bear poked out of one flap, as if grasping desperately for air, while old photo albums lay upturned, pages strewn on the floor like autumn leaves.

Alice flipped through an old photo album, curled up on the floor. Names and dates were scrawled in her mother’s perfect script, but most of the photos were missing and some pages had been torn out completely. It made sense, in a strange sort of way.

Click here to keep reading.

Filed Under: Serial Fiction

4 Comments

A Few Lies (or Truths)

Thursday Sep 2 2010

I've been slacking with my thank you's. I'm sorry, I've got a bit of catching up to do!

spotlight award

First off thank you to BrownEyedMystic for the Spotlight Award! Her blog is a treasure trove of writing tips and heartfelt anecdotes.

Creepy Writer Award

Then there's two John's!

Thank's to John Smith, for the bold Faced Liar Award. He's an aspiring writer that blogs about anything and everything.

And to John Wiswell for awarding it with a creepy twist. Wiswell posts flash fiction daily. I don't know if he really composes it all in his bathroom, but his stories are ever amusing, odd, and mind boggling.

The rules of the game are to provide seven outrageous facts about yourself. Six are to be lies and one is to be true, or alternatively six are true and one is a lie. Is only one true, or is only one false? It's up to you to decide. Without further ado, the creepy version follows:

I once had a one eyed hamster as a pet. It had two eyes when I first got it, but one day the hamster got so frightened that he jumped straight up into the air, and an eyeball popped out. Over the next few days it shriveled up like a little pepper corn, and fell off by itself. We called him Herbie One-Eye. He ended up living a long hamster life.
One summer I worked in an old police station that had been converted into a museum. It had a working morgue that was complete with preserved body parts. Because it was so old, there was no central light switch and at closing time, I had to take a certain route to shut down all the lights. I worked my way from the morgue, past bloody crime scene reconstructions, and confiscated weapons, until I reached the front entrance of the building. I was usually running by then.
Some of the confiscated weapons included diamond studded 'brass knuckles' made of gold. The museum was located in a rough neighborhood. The manager, a tough old Vietnam war vet, warned me to watch out because people would come in and 'case the joint'. They wanted to see if they could get to the gold and firearms. I worked there alone on the weekends.
My grandparents have a family mausoleum. It's gated with steel bars. I've only seen it once in my life. I climbed up on the roof that day. There's a tiny unnamed grave there, where they laid to rest a baby that was stillborn.
My parents banned me from reading when I was 11. I would sneak into the bathroom, run the shower, and pretend to take a bath. I would sit on the toilet seat with a book in hand while the water was running. Sometimes the books came into the bath with me. Many pages were ruined this way.
I once lived in a haunted house. Sometimes when I was in the living room watching TV, I'd hear footsteps running up and down the stairs, even if I was home alone. It was an old house and the basement was unfinished. There were piles of dirt down in the basement. I didn't have the courage to dig in it and find out if anything was buried there. I kept that door closed as much as possible. We moved out when I was 7.
My bedroom in our next house had a secret passageway. My brother was too scared to sleep in the basement, so I got the big room with the passage way. There were two closets. One closet was full of my clothes. The other was full of boxes, and my mom's old coats. It was like going to Narnia. If you crawled inside the coat closet, and pushed your way through all that old wool, there was a door that opened on the other side.

And I shall pass this on to three new bloggers whom I've only recently met through Serial Central:
JannaT
Leigh
Melissa Wright

I look forward to reading more from you lovely ladies!

And also sending this to Harry Markov, because I want to see his answers :D

Now, is only one true? or is only one false?

Filed Under: Random Fun

8 Comments

What is Heroic Fantasy?

Wednesday Sep 1 2010

This is a continuation of the Science Fiction / Fantasy Genre Glossary Project posts. For the complete genre index click here.

Tavern by jjnaas

What is Heroic Fantasy?

Heroic fantasy centers around the tales of heroes and their conquests. Like sword and sorcery, heroic fantasy is often driven by action and violence. The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, though heroic fiction has fewer negative connotations.

Literary Examples:

Legend by David Gemmell
The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson

Further Reading:

Enjoying Heroic Fantasy by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Heroic Fantasy @ TV Tropes

I've seen every sort of book listed as heroic fantasy. It seems to be a term used more loosely than some of the other subgenres we've looked at here. Perhaps the issue is that in modern terminology 'hero' is sometimes used to mean 'protagonist'. If that's the case, most stories are therefore 'heroic'? What kinds of books come to your mind when you hear the term heroic fantasy?

Filed Under: SF/F Genre Glossary

3 Comments

The Challenge of Writing Serial Fiction

Monday Aug 30 2010

It seems my brain is still in Author Aerobic's mode even though the exercises are on hiatus. I've been thinking about what I can learn from writing serial fiction.

Every form of fiction presents unique challenges. With 'flash fiction', you're forced to condense a story into the minimum of words. This often means stripping out extra characters, crafting sentences that work on multiple levels, and focusing on only a single scene.

I'm finding that serial flash presents a different set of challenges:

Building suspense. There must be something that brings you back to read the next installment, some kind of mystery and tension, that makes you wonder what's coming next.
Adding in foreshadowing. I have to keep my eye on the larger story arc, and make sure to reveal information little by little so that the ending follows naturally, but remains a surprise.
Figuring out where to begin and end each part. Some people will not come to the story at the beginning. Not everyone will read each installment. I have to find some way to ensure that every part of the story has a sense of completeness.

I'm finding that the process so far has been wonderful exercise in editing. I've been forced to break down a larger story (already written) scene by scene, with my mind on upping the conflict, foreshadowing, and suspense. I think that if I treat each scene like flash, the writing will also be tighter and more focused. I don't know if I will be successful in all this, but I hope so.

When I was a kid, I remember the local newspaper used to run a weekly serial story. I'd clip each story out, and paste it into a notebook. It was a murder mystery and I couldn't wait until the next installment. I wonder what happened to my collection? The paper got rid of the fiction a long time ago...

Do you enjoy serial fiction? Do you have any fond memories of it? If you write serial fiction, what's the biggest challenge you face while writing?

Filed Under: Writing

17 Comments

Friday Serial: Two Sisters Part 1

Friday Aug 27 2010

Part one of the story is up on Serial Central! It feels good to have some writing up, and working on something very different from #fridayflash for a while. I was playing with the format with this one. I've always wanted to try weaving two simultaneous timeliness. However, it was a bit of a challenge to translate this to serial form.

The story has a bit of horror, but it's not scary enough to give you more than the occasional goosebump. There's a bit of the paranormal romance, obscure mythology, mystery, and rural fantasy in here. I hope that's enticing enough to make you want to read on, my friends. If not, here's an excerpt:

Part 1 – Arrival

Alice Young, August 3, 2010

When she thought of home, Alice imagined this house and no other. Sometimes in her dreams, the doors were locked, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not pry them open. Other times, Alice dreamed that only one door denied her passage, and when she pressed her ear against it, she could hear Jane screaming.

Everything remained precisely as she remembered. The second step still squeaked as she tread over it. The kitchen doorway was still marred with crude pencil lines where Jane had marked Alice’s height as she’d grown. It was the same house, but the silence pooled like dark water, speaking the language of absence with more eloquence than the lack of furniture could ever achieve.

“Why do you want to go back to Cape Breton, Alice?” Aunt Jemma had been too surprised to hide the pity in her eyes. “Didn’t McGill offer a scholarship? You can still change your mind, it’s not too late, and you know you can stay here as long as you like, honey. This is your home too.”

But it wasn’t. It did not haunt her the way this place did.

Continue to Serial Central for the rest of the story.

Filed Under: Serial Fiction

4 Comments

Journal: Recalibration

Tuesday Aug 24 2010

Watchmaker by Dasha Gaian

Breathe, I've had to remind myself. Summer is coming to an end and my batteries are running low. It has been a very busy first half of the year, and I can feel the urge to hibernate, to recharge. Vacation has been pushed off, and pushed off. Plans have been blown off.

Even my sleep has been unsettled lately. My dreams have not been frightening, but pleasant for the most part, full of adventure, and old faces I haven't thought about for years. It's funny the way the mind works. It's been keeping awake, not letting me sleep deeply.

I need to recalibrate, reassess. To figure out what I need to do, and weed out what is not important. That's the rub though isn't it? Figuring out what's a need, and what's a want is not always a simple thing.

What I do know: I need to get some decent sleep, or I'll never be able to function coherently. I need to pick up a new book to read, or I'll lose that creative energy. I need to get away from the computer or I'll slowly atrophy. I need to shut off the news for a while, or all the awfulness and anger in the world will destroy my faith in humanity.

I need to start writing again, but first, before everything, I need rest.

How do you recharge your batteries? How do you recalibrate when you've gone off the right track ever so slightly?

Filed Under: Journal

25 Comments

15 Weeks of Author Aerobics Recap!

Friday Aug 20 2010

15 weeks! Wow that's a lot of writing! A huge thank you, and round of applause to all the participants. Here's the roundup of all the stories. There are some gems in here!

And a note: The Author Aerobics challenges will be on a hiatus while I work on the "Two Sisters" serial for Serial Central. Don't you worry, there will be a lot more fiction to come.

Week 15 - Something Old Challenge

Wordless by Harry Markov - Two strangers on a bus, playing the same game day after day.
Excerpt: Midnight's Child by T.S. Bazelli - There are many kinds of death.

Week 14 - Make it Fresh Challenge

Robin Bonnett by Aidan Fritz - Foiling the Sheriff of Nottingham with well aimed lazerbolts and deft hovercar maneuvers.
Once and Future by Stephen Watkins - Not Sir Galahad, but Rob the accountant is destined to revive the once and future king Arthur.
Thirst by T.S. Bazelli - In the desert there are so few chances for survival.
The Maiden's Resolve by Harry Markov - Every blow cost 100 lives. The princess wept.

Week 13 - Layered Conflict Challenge

Nipping at Mani's Heels by Aidan Fritz - Lothar will do anything to vanquish the shadows for his daughters. He makes a bargain he may regret.
The Shadow Pilgrim by Stephen Watkins - Do you know why night flees the day, and why day flees the night?
Quick Draw by T.S. Bazelli - The sun was shining and the air smelled of rain. It was a good day to die.

Week 12 - Action Challenge

Just Like Me by T.S. Bazelli - Things get heated in the Demetriou household.
Bright Hands by Stephen Watkins - In Taruth's hands, the light becomes a spear, a shield, a wire trap.
Grian Cloch: Stone of the Sun by Aidan Fritz - Caen's wings burned as he descended too quickly. They called them Gods, but he knew the truth.

Week 11 - Internal Dialogue Challenge

Fireworks Mods by Aidan Fritz - He aimed for the bell, and they came after him. It wouldn't be so easy.
Kathryn's Child by Stephen Watkins - It's name was Shiva and it was her creation.
Fire Shooting by J.P. Cabit - You don't want to be on the wrong end of this barrel.
The Old Woman and the Dragon by T.S. Bazelli - It's never wise to keep a dragon as a pet.

Week 10 - Setting Challenge

Peka's Showdown by J.P. Cabit - A story that will make you shiver. Peka's alone in the wilderness and there are wolves about.
The Immigrant and the Gatekeeper by Aidan Fritz - Coon is being tested, but the new world will not listen to his plea's.
Where it all Began by Stephen A. Watkins, Jr. - Aran returns home to face the puppet master of his fate.
Adrift by T.S. Bazelli - No one wants Kate. The only place she feels at home is adrift on the sea.

Week 9 - Emotion Challenge

My Mother by J.P. Cabit - Natasha works at an airport and she's having a bad day. What could go wrong?
Edmund's Flight by Aidan Fritz - A story about a teleporter and a boy with a flying bee carpet.
The Guardian by T.S. Bazelli - Saving lives is thankless work.
The Steed and the Page Boy by Stephen A. Watkins Jr. - Two survivors remain on the bloody field: a dragon, who has lost his fire, and a page boy who has lost his master.
The Secret Last Thoughts Of... by Harry Markov - "They pull the metal plate I lay on and lead me through the kitchen. It is a slow procession as if I am a Sunday ritual."

Week 8 - Telling Challenge

Bite by Harry Markov - (author aerobics debut!) The princess awakens to her prince with a scream.
From That Eternal Summer Isle by Stephen Watkins - Sometimes you forget you're not human.
The Tree of Souls by Aidan Fritz - Growing a soul tree is difficult work.
Through the Pearly Gates by T.S. Bazelli - The afterlife for writers.

Week 7 - Genre Bender Challenge

Don't Look For Too Long by J. P. Cabit - A peek at a skewed reality, where looking into mirrors could have some dire consequences.
The Last Gunfighter by Aidan Fritz - A genre-blender! How many genres can you identify?
Glass Half-Empty part 1 by T.S. Bazelli - Hardboiled / Noir / Steampunk - To be continued on Monday.

Week 6 - Details Challenge

Reflections of Niccolo by Aidan Fritz - Images glimpsed in a mirror. Are they real?
The Natural Disaster: A Just-In-Time Story by J. P. Cabit - A race against time and a natural disaster.
Mirror Mirror by T.S. Bazelli - Who's the fairest of them all?

Here's a list of the stories from weeks 1 - 5.

Filed Under: Writing Exercises

9 Comments

Excerpt: Midnight's Child

Wednesday Aug 18 2010

So I did a little digging, and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. I believe I wrote this back in 2007. It started pretty well, but after this point the story jumps from 1st person to 3rd person, the tone switches, and I think it gets a bit heavy on the cliches. I think the short story might be salvageable with some revision. Would you want to read more? Here's my Author Aerobics: Something Old Challenge piece for a taste of the story.

Midnight's Child
by T.S. Bazelli

We were banished to the north.

The trouble began the day I was born. My father walked out the door, never to return, the moment he saw the markings of my curse: a crown of raven hair and two blinking dark eyes. I can only imagine the horror my golden haired mother felt, holding me there, still drenched in the fluids of birth, knowing that her life and my own would never be an easy one. Yet, she never blamed me once. It was not my fault, she would tell me, all those nights I curled up crying beside her, but even now I remember the fear in her eyes when she began to realize that the old stories night be true.

It was an insular land that we lived in; one that worshiped the sun above all else. Its sons and daughters were all fair of hair and skin. They shut out the night: locked their doors, lit their lamps, and closed their shutters - only to emerge with the dawn. They shut me out like they did the night. I had no friends save my mother.

We moved from town to town begging for work. I would devour any book I came across, stealing precious moments to myself, learning the old histories, and stories of the outside world. It was a hunger that grew in me.

There was something else growing in me too. My nights were filled with restless dreams as I lay there in shuttered lamp lit safety with my mother. I never remembered them when I woke, but I know that in my dreams I was never alone.

When I was 16, I began to sneak outside to look at the moon. I grew up with the same stories of spirits that would steal away children in the dark and eat away a grown man’s soul. I heard whispers of demons that frolicked under the guise of darkness. The first time I was terrified, but when no sounds could be heard but the wind, and no cold hands reached out to steal me away, I discovered the blessed freedom of the night. I owned the light of the moon. No judging eyes were there to stare at me. It was MY time…until the day I was caught.

One window had remained open, one horrified pair of eyes had marked my dance in the twilight and in the morning my mother and I were accosted by a mob of angry villagers. They called me a witch, a heretic and a demon. There were some calling for a burning in the square. Others closed their doors, worried that my glance would bring them disease. With tear filled eyes, I told them I had only been walking, nothing more, but they would not listen to me. Not to the monster they thought I was. It was my mother, calm and proud, who saved us in the end.

We were to be banished. It was not my fate to die at 17, but there are many kinds of death, and it was not long after that I found myself face to face with another.

Filed Under: Random Fun

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« Older Entries

T.S. Bazelli ~ Ink Stained

Friday Serial - Two Sisters Part 2

A Few Lies (or Truths)

What is Heroic Fantasy?

The Challenge of Writing Serial Fiction

Friday Serial: Two Sisters Part 1

Journal: Recalibration

15 Weeks of Author Aerobics Recap!

Excerpt: Midnight's Child

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