Now Available: The Water-Irises

And here’s the last short story of this collection, finally available. :) “The Water-Irises” is a French fairy tale, which I wrote about five or so years ago. Hugh LaCaille is also the prototype of Garrick Mortimer from the Desmond and Garrick series.

Hugh LaCaille’s quiet, scholarly life is interrupted one day by a wealthy but obnoxious businessman who hires Hugh as a tutor to his young son. Ignace Fournier is incensed Aubin’s passion for nature and poetry is a threat to his dream of seeing the boy grow up to be just as successful as his father in commerce. When Hugh finally meets Aubin, he realizes there’s a great deal more than what meets the eye as far as the boy’s concerned … particularly his curious and outlandish stories involving a strange kingdom found at the bottom of a pond filled with water-irises.

The most alarming claim Aubin makes touches on a special friendship he’s nurtured with the young ruler of that mysterious kingdom. Forced under time pressure to instill discipline into the boy, Hugh grapples with questions he’s never before faced, and he finds himself looking deeper into his heart for difficult answers … and even more difficult choices.

You can purchase the story and read an excerpt over here.

And here’s a bonus for you – while Queerteen Press usually offers a 20% for all new releases, they’re offering a site-wide special for the Memorial Day weekend, and all books purchased from the site are offered at a 30% discount through Monday. :)

Why Movie Soundtracks Rock

Because some pieces make for fantastic muse fuel for future stories. Like this one:

Or this one (okay, so it’s not a movie soundtrack, but a TV series theme):

And especially this:

Yeah, I get far more musically inspired for historical fantasy fiction than contemporary fiction. Go me. :D This blog post, by the way, is really more of a note to myself. I need to save and file away these videos for future use.

Genre Envy!

As I slowly pick my way through the entire Midsomer Murders on Netflix, my love for mysteries is enjoying a resurgence. Or more like a rediscovery. Back in its heyday, which is the 1990s, A&E offered a fantastic collection of literary adaptations, which included mysteries. Their focus was heavily on British programming where those were concerned, and I didn’t care one bit. It was great watching Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, John Thaw as Inspector Morse, etc.

Once the classic literary adaptations stopped coming in, it was mostly British mysteries that filled their program schedule, and I ate everything up. Twenty years – give or take a few years – later, I’m depending on Netflix for my non-TV fix; I no longer watch TV, so whatever interests me via streaming is what my primary viewing pleasure is all about.

I’m seriously loving these mysteries. I used to watch them purely for entertainment value, and while I still do, now it’s like I keep half of my attention to “logistics” for lack of a better term. I love puzzles, firstly, and it’s always a treat following clues here and there and coming up with my own theories as to whodunnit and then comparing my conclusions to what’s slowly revealed.

But lately I’ve been experiencing what I call “genre envy”. Now I watch these shows as a writer, observing the way the plot unfolds and what clues and red herrings are all laid out throughout the episode as well as the events leading up to the resolution.

Midsomer Murders, for instance, is really crafty in the way each episode flows and yet there’s always that breadcrumb that you need to latch on to that’ll play a part in the mystery’s solution. Those breadcrumbs, though, are always so trivial and inconsequential – at least in the way they’re initially treated. Once the mystery’s solved, Barnaby picks those breadcrumbs out of the muddle of information he has and shows us how each turns out to be an important part of the overall puzzle.

I’ve never written a mystery before, and while I’d love to try my hand at it, it’s a genre that requires a special kind of skill – multi-tasking, pretty much – in which the writer has to have several important things happening simultaneously that are both significant and yet not. It’s like having strands of important details woven into the rest of the trivial stuff, and they’re so cleverly hidden that the audience wouldn’t know how it all worked till someone points it out in the end.

I seriously wish I could do that. It’s like a chess game that the author has to plan out in advance, sweat blood over the details, and make sure to weave all those things together seamlessly. Unfortunately it’s a skill that I don’t have, but I appreciate it in others, and I’m constantly in awe of writers who can pull off a great mystery.

And as a final sparkly-eyed word on writing mysteries, I thought I’d share a gratuitously fangirly image of Sean Pertwee as Hugh Beringar, who gave Cadfael a certain kind of Medieval hottitude. Rawr.

Now Available: The Bridge

Short story number eight is now available! “The Bridge” is the only non-fantasy story that I’m releasing in this group, though it does have a very, very slight hint of the supernatural toward the end, and I wrote that in for a bit of humor. Anyway, here’s the blurb:

Remy Pépin’s been dealt too many harsh blows in his young life. Orphaned, miserably poor, and subjected to occasional bullying from his employer, Remy’s only source of joy and hope is in a superstition shared by a dear friend, Mathilde Jolicoeur. It’s a superstition involving a lit candle sitting by a window, which Mathilde claims attracts luck.

Day after day, Remy lights his candle and waits, convincing himself not to hope for good fortune to come his way — until one snowy evening, when another boy appears at his doorstep, seeking shelter.

The book page at the publisher contains an excerpt, and you can check it out here. As is the usual deal, you’re also entitled to a 20% new release discount if you purchase the story directly from Queerteen Press, and that discount will be good for a week from the release date.

End-of-the-Month Thingamabobs

I survived April, woohoo! :D Actually, I was supposed to post a Wobbly Noob Diaries entry regarding an epic bike ride I did yesterday with Andy, but I’m really too worn out to do anything remotely thoughtful. Forget it. I’ll post it whenever, I guess.

I just got the cover art for the upcoming single author anthology that’ll be released by Queerteen Press at the end of May. It’s pretty much all of the short stories that’ve been published since the beginning of the year (a total of nine) compiled into one volume.

In somewhat related news, I received some pretty nice reviews of a couple of short stories, which I’ll be adding to my Fantasy Fiction Page. The Novel Approach just posted one for “Clouds’ Illusions”, and QMO Books tackled “Erl-King”. As for future historical fantasy stories and how I should best publish them, I’m trying to sit on that for now as I’m waiting for some important publisher info that’ll help me make my final decision. Once I have it, I’ll definitely post my thoughts here.

Though some doubts remain, I am getting my writing mojo back, and I was able to set aside Rose and Spindle and go back to focusing on Helleville. The story still feels like I’m fumbling my way through the dark, i.e., I still feel like I’m outside my element, writing something contemporary that’s not about Eric and the superhero gang, but the story is progressing nicely. Since I’m still feeling my way forward, I can’t provide a more accurate description of the story’s quirks and so on, but on the whole, it’s like taking all the gothic elements in Desmond and Garrick and modernizing them. No torture chambers, though, but each household does have its “pet” ghost.

I don’t see my confidence growing till after I pass the 20,000-word mark, I suppose, and that’s being generous. :D Maybe 25K to 30K.