Ghosts

The first frost etched the glass doors as I looked out on the river. The moonlight dappled the water, and I saw in it the footprints of ghosts. The spirits of the First People were there, a throng moving steadily north. One ghost, a young woman, was lost and confused, casting around, now walking on the water, now stumbling insubstantial through the dying marsh grass. I stepped back aside quickly, lest she look up and see me.

Prep for NaNoWriMo

• What does the character want?
• How is he doing to get it?
• What happens in the story?
• What are pivot points?
• What is the climax?

Why Crazy People Make Better Bloggers

From Susannah Breslin:

Crazy people are constantly in conflict: with themselves, with the world, with the voices in their heads. Want to know why no one reads your blog? You’re boring. You’re not in conflict, or you have no ability to articulate your conflict, or, more likely, you’re unwilling to share your conflict. That makes you boring and cowardly. A blog isn’t something you write when you feel like it. It’s the digital representation of who you really are. No one wants to read a blog by a boring coward. Because no one wants to be a boring coward.

Creating characters

From Randy Singer (and I think he said he got it from Don Maas):

Here's how to create tension in your character:

• Write down the last thing your hero would ever do.
• Now make him do it.

Arizona

There was a roadblock ahead. Pickles stopped the truck, got out and opened the hood. A voice boomed from the darkness, too distorted by amplification for me to distinguish what he was saying. Pickles ignored it; she  produced a frying pan and started cooking tomatoes, onions, peppers and mushrooms on the engine. There was a burst of gunfire from halfway up the hill to our right. Frans dragged a pair of assault rifles from behind the seat, and handed one to one of the little girls, Lulu. She pointed it out the driver's window, while Frans, grinning, aimed his at the hillside where the shots had come from. The other little girl, Lila, stayed in the floorboard, fiddling with her doll and singing to herself. Frans and Lulu suddenly started firing, and muzzle flashes lit up half a dozen spots across the hillsides as the ambushers returned fire. I concentrated on being small as bullets sparked off the hood, cab, and truck bed. I saw a guy in a black jumpsuit, hood, and goggles rush up to try to seize Pickles. She didn't bother to look around, just flipped the frying pan, backhanded the attacker with it, and caught  the food in the pan again. The firing died down. Pickles hoisted herself back into the truck, put it into Drive, and picked a way around the barricade. Once on the other side, she hit the gas and we accelerated down the open road and into the clean night.

Arizona

The plane landed at 1:56am. The monster-hunting accountant got off before I did, and was gone by the time I got down the ramp. When I got out to the curbside, I found that the taxis were also gone, and the hotel shuttles had stopped running. ; the night was dark and quiet. I shouldered my backpack and started walking. The night was quiet, the desert air clear. A little while later pickup pulled onto the shoulder in front of me. It was a Chevy, almost as old as I am, in a two-tone color scheme, white and primer. The driver is a cute Mexican lady named Pickles, maybe early forties. There's also her nephew, a pale blonde Finn named Frans, in his early twenties, and two little girls, Lulu and Lila, maybe eight and six. Names, ages and relationships are conjectural--Pickles rattled off Spanish at machinegun speed, and I don't speak Spanish anyway. Frans spoke a language I didn't recognize, and the girls burbled nonsense talk quite happily.

Our fleet made for the harbor mouth, where the dhowery of the queen awaited. The goblin ships were quick and their sailors skilled enough, but their ships were for coasts and calm seas.  Their foes were pirates, fierce enough but undisciplined. Our men had learned their skills in a harder school, in the long blockade of the City of Tombs. We knew iced rigging and freezing green water over the bow, and the guns of the black-sailed ships, and iron discipline.
Their ships were in no formation, a loose mob. We formed line ahead, and Azcelon Tower led us into the midst of them. Our broadsides hammered them, and they broke. Half their ships sank or burned, and the survivors scattered to the three winds. In the Outer Harbor we anchored, and lowered boats to land the regiments and to bring back fresh water and fruit, and gold.

Trip to Arizona

   I don't notice anything strange when we land in DFW--but then again, it's DFW. With 150,000 travelers per day running to meet people, avoid meeting people, pick up luggage, or catch another plane, strange things are normal. When we get on the plane, though, it's hard not to notice the monster-sized guy in urban camo. He's so broad he has to turn sideways and shuffle back to our row, so tall that if he had hair, it would be brushing the ceiling. Over his shoulder is a duffel bag that's big enough to hold a couple of teenage girls, but when he stuffs it into the overhead compartment, I see gun muzzles. I don't recognize then at first, because this gun is not some dinky little pistol; we're talking about a weapon that would be suitable for knocking over a rabid tyrannosaurus,  and then polishing off a horde of zombies as an afterthought. The main barrel has a bore suitable for firing hypervelocity golf balls, with a 40mm grenade barrel above and a dinky twelve-gauge barrel slung below, where it can nurse an inferiority complex.
  Once he gets settled in across the aisle, I catch his eye. "Mind if I ask what you do?"
  "I'm an accountant."

 

Trip to Arizona

    I board the plane and get row 24 seat B. The girl next to the window is wearing a black tee shirt, black camisole, black jacket, black culottes, and pink high top tennis shoes. She has piercings in eyebrow, nose, lip, and four in her ear. Her hair is probably genuine ash blonde, with stripes dyed black. I'd say she looks like a goth, except her attitude is more of a particularly fearful mouse. When I say "Hello," she bobs her head but doesn't look up, doesn't make eye contact, doesn't say anything in reply. She spends the entire flight staring at the lower edge of the seatback tray.
    The man to my right has a cafe au lait complexion, dreads halfway down his back, sunglasses, pinstriped suit pants and a tangerine business shirt with French cuffs. He looks interesting, but he's asleep before the stewardess gets up for the safety briefing. It's the standard briefing, no humor, no razzle dazzle, which is understandable because it's 5:42am. I ignore it.
    The plane lumbers to the runway, thinks longingly about coffee or whatever planes think about, and then rolls forward and lifts off. We--including my irradiated and ionized self--go up into the four dimensional curved space matrix maze of interlocking flight paths. When we come down, it may be that I'm not on quite the same world line that I started on.

Trip to Arizona

  I'm the first one to go through the line this morning, and the Irradiator hasn't warmed up yet. I step through the gate, and my eyes flash violet, my teeth buzz, the hairs on my left forearm stand up, my prostate tingles, and my toenails flex. Aside from that, everything appears normal.
   The TSA supervisor mutters something to his minion about adjusting the machine. The minion sighs heavily, in a dramatic manner intended to convey, without quite crossing into insubordination, that he is the most underpaid, over-supervised, under-appreciated minion of all time. Given that the supervisor has not said "And this is the price of failure", nor cackled evilly, nor torn the minion's heart out, I'm not believing it. Although it is, admittedly, early in the morning; perhaps the evil supervisor just needs to get warmed up. The minion jabs at the control panel and beckons at the next person in the queue. I sit down where I'll have a view of the gate, as I put my shoes, belt, wallet, keys, pen, phone, laptop, coins, and other artifacts back into place.
   The next one is a weightlifter with an artificially blond mullet and Fu Manchu mustache, yellow muscle shirt and purple-and-black leopard spotted pants. He glowers sullenly at the minion, and steps into the gate. He doesn't step out; rather, after a brief indigo flash and a crackle of static electricity he, or his remaining soot, drift gently to the floor. I envision the dozen people coming through and getting soot on the soles of their pantyhose, socks, and feet, leaving trails of sooty footprints which lead to the jetway gates before fading out.

Trip to Arizona

    I get up at 4:14am and, by automatic pilot, stumble into the bathroom where I shower and shave. Pushing a sharp blade around my face at 4:23am is not the brightest possible idea but I won't be awake enough to realize that; as it happens, nothing happens. Volumes of hot water get me semi-functional; I dress, eat something, and drag my carry-on and backpack to the car. I consider getting a little more shut-eye on the ride to the airport, but decide it would be ill-advised, since I'm the one driving. I get to the airport at 4:57am, wave to all my adoring fans here to see me off, then turn stride through glass wall right next to the door. Oh, well, it'll be a little more business for the glaziers.
   I've already gone through the online check-in, so all that remains is to march in, remove my shoes, belt, wallet, phone, pen, backpack, laptop, coins, keys, and all other metal except that actually implanted in my body. And then, fatefully, I go through the security gate. At this hour of the morning, I don't consider all the consequences of me passing through a radioactive search-o-tron....

Restaurant 1

He got to the restaurant early, and waved five people ahead of him as he looked over the menu. Stasia hadn't answered the last text he'd sent, and he didn't know how quick the service was here. He decided to go ahead and order, rather than wait for her. The girl at the counter was less than half his age, chubby, with three green stars tattooed on the inside of her left wrist. He ordered a turkey panini with sharp cheddar and bacon, and sweet tea. The girl handed him a pager and asked his name; he told her "Kyril" as smoothly as if it were his real name.

He spotted an open table in the far back corner, and took it. It put his back to one man, a scholarly looking type who was engrossed in his laptop; of course, an agent would have behaved the same way. At the other table was a black girl, with a miniskirt than exposed too much of her legs, with a nursing textbook a notebook. A grandmotherly type between him and the door, not the type the opposition usually used, but you never knew. Couldn't be helped, and the other open tables were more exposed.

The pager buzzed in his hand, and he retrieved his plate from the counter and sat down facing the entrance. There were screens dividing the restaurant into sections, but there were enough openings in the screens that he could watch the door.

And there she was. In his eyes, her presence lit the room immediately, unmistakably. She wore grey slacks, a grey vest that demurely emphasized her narrow waist and small breasts, and white blouse. Her hair was a long straight splash of pale gold now, although in his mental image it had been curls. Her eyes looked tired, until she saw him and she smiled.

The Rift

They lived against the northern wall of the Rift, the Bright Face that the sun shone on. To the west the floor of the  Rift rose in great broken terraces to become a white salt desert. To the east it stretched on, following the River, to lakes and kingdoms and past them, march after march, to the end of the world. To the north was the striated red rock of the Bright Face; to the south, at a day's march, was the Dark Face.

Knife

He couldn't recall exactly when it had started. He'd had a steak knife by the bed for some reason, probably peeling an orange or something, and he'd thrown it at the wall opposite the foot of the bed. It had stuck in the drywall, the hilt quivering for a moment; then, feeling foolish, he'd gotten it out, wiped the knife clean, and put it away. There was a mark in the wall, and every time he noticed it he meant to patch it, but it wasn't urgent. A couple of months went by.
He noticed there was a second knife mark. He couldn't remember, back in...August? September?...whether he'd thrown the knife once or twice. He could only remember the one time, and he'd remember that kind of thing, wouldn't he? There had only been the one cut in the wall, right? He could only remember one. But there were two now. The second one was smaller than the first, only about a quarter inch long, about four inches from the first one. Maybe he just hadn't noticed. He shrugged.
Two weeks later he saw a third mark. This one was horizontal, nine inches below the first one and a little to the left. It had definitely not been there before, and it was deeper than the others. Three days later, there were two more. New ones started appearing every day. They were all in a rectangle twenty six inches wide by twenty nine inches high, as if there was a picture frame on the wall and all had to be inside. They were opposite the foot of the left side of the bed, just where they'd be if someone were sitting up in bed and threw a knife.

He started waking up to find drywall dust on his hands, and in his mouth.
He bought a piece of sheet steel, thirty inches square. He drilled holes in two corners and nailed the steel sheet to the wall over the marks.

The next morning, the nails were on the floor, there were more marks on the wall, there was sand in the bed. The sand looked like ordinary beach sand, except the nearest beach was over 150 miles away. The steel was gone; he never found it. He started sleeping on the couch downstairs; the marks still appeared on the bedroom wall.

Aftermath (427 words)

The evening sky to the north was a grey pink, the low-hanging overcast lit by the fires that were consuming Copper Forge Town. The color reminded him of spilled brains, of which Copper Forge no doubt had an abundance tonight. There hadn't been enough men on the walls after the disastrous battle at Chisel Well, and the Orgok warriors had gotten inside the town. The Orgok were running through the streets right now, raping and pillaging, killing and burning. Of course he'd seen Imperial and Pretender troops do that as well, although their general tried, usually, to control them; but the Orgok also ate the dead when they could, and they regarded brains as a delicacy. He'd seen them do it.
But the Orgok and their screaming victims were in Copper Forge and he was in some tiny village he didn't know the name of, halfway up into the hills. He hoped he was beyond the range of the Usurper's patrols. Sleeping in the woods would be safer, but he was as tired as he could remember ever being. From Starcleft to Chiseled Well was a three day march but the Starcleft Regiment had done it in one. Twelves hours march, two hours sleep, twelve hours march, and then a handful of bread and a mouthful of wine as they'd maneuvered into line. And then they'd stood, exhausted but still steady enough to stand firm when the Usurper horse charged, and to throw back the barbarian archers who'd tried to skirmish against them. But then something had happened off to the right of their line--some said magic, some said treachery, but no one was in a position to really know--and then the lowland regiments had fallen back, and they'd been unsupported, and then suddenly the Usurper horse were back and it was every man for himself and devil take the hindmost. He'd cut down his pike to spear length, something that might be good enough to fend off a horseman but that he could still run with, which you couldn't do with a pike. He had his sword and a pair of pistols. But he'd eaten all his food during the night's march and the day's battle; and a bullet had punctured his wine bag. He'd never noticed that until someone had asked him about the blood; and it had been quite a shock when he'd looked down to see his whole thigh and boot drenched red, and quite a relief when he'd realized what had happened. It was a pity about the wine, though.

At the gates (216 words)

   In the dim light before dawn, a tall man trudged through the paths of the village outside the town gate. He had dark hair and a gray beard, and he wore the green leather of an Yrumgrau scout. Over his shoulder he carried two swords, and five heads hung from his belt..
   Dances Brightly saw him from her window where she waited. The country girls who came to market accepted the woodcutters and farmers and shepherds, but Dances Brightly's favors were for soldiers and merchants.  When she saw Two Swords Man, she cast the seven stones into a bowl of clear water. When she had read them, she arose and stripped naked except for her jewelry and a small blue-bladed knife, easily concealed ; then she put on a cloak and went out to see this stranger before the gate.
   Inside the gate it was darker and colder, from the loom of the walls, than it was outside, and the guards would wait a while before they unbarred.  Meanwhile the folks from the countryside, coming to market, gathered here, gossiping and joking, hawking their wares and flirting, waiting for the first glimpse of gold above the horizon and the opening of the gate. They pressed together, but they gave space and silence to Two Swords Man.