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Showing posts with label Time capsule. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time capsule. Show all posts

Saturday, April 2, 2022

Descriptions & Time Capsules

It's been a quiet bit of time on this blog, nearly a year, but for good reasons. I've been busier than usual and reflections and expansions of the written sort have taken a back seat.

So let's catch up on some news, eh? I have two new stories out! One is my typical fantasy fare, good stuff and I'm proud of it. The other is a piece of realistic fiction. Also good, and also proud of it. You can find both stories in the Time Capsule anthology released by Wolfsinger Publications.

The first recent story is called How the Wish was Won. It was based on a selection of time capsule contents. While there is no one single protagonist, there is a brave and gallant knight, a possessed soldier, an unpossessed soldier, a mysterious underground creature, and a woman of the woods, along with some elvish lore and an ancient outpost in the deep forest.
Here is an excerpt:

Five seekers quested for their Heart’s Desire. One from the east, one from the west, and two from the south.
The fifth seeker, you ask? No cardinal direction guided its way. Its dark path twisted and turned in the unlit underground. And yet it too quested, the same as the others.

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The whole idea of hiding something away fascinates me, especially with the recent find of not one but two time capsules beneath a civil war statue scheduled for movement elsewhere. Time changes, changes more than anyone can predict. The stories hidden inside this anthology were written with this idea in mind, that things change over time. Authors were given lists of time capsule contents to choose from, with no clues as to why the items were originally sequestered. With a list and nothing else, they came up with fantastic stories that bear a tangential tie with the original depositors, as discovered by the notes from the capsule content authors at the end of the story.
For those who wish a peek behind the writing curtain, my two stories evolved in very different ways. For How the Wish was Won, I ran the story by a few readers, including my youngest daughter. An interesting note is that all readers so far have come away with a different idea of the ending! What will you find when you buy it?

Here is another sneak peak at How the Wish was Won:

Sanders and Palmer dug into the black earth, occasionally stopping to vomit. The ground came away in shovelfuls. The men looked at each other with insane glee. They would find the treasure!
With a wounded retch of rotted roots, the earth caved in, throwing them into a hollow nestled among the roots of the trunk.
“What in God’s name?”
They coughed and hacked as the air cleared. By the sunlight they noticed a small tunnel leading away.
“Drag marks. Look. Someone got here first.”



My second story in the anthology is The Importance of Things, a piece of realistic fiction. Unlike the first story, this one came fast and furious. Deadlines are great at inspiring lazy writers and Carol Hightshoe is a wonderful motivator! Although not fully noted in the story, it is located in a particular place within the continental United States, and I hope readers from the area will recognize it. The people at the heart of the story are not real though. They are, like most literary inventions, fictitious blends of various characters I've been or have had the misfortune and/or good grace to stumble across. I hope I did them justice.
Here is a sneak peak at The Importance of Things:

“Daddy found it in the backyard.”
“Yes, well. That’s where I buried it. Forgot about it back there.”
They both stared at it.
“What is it?”
“It is a time capsule.”
“Time? Like a clock?”
“Don’t they teach you nothing in schools these days?”
“I’m only in second grade,” Tommy said with a pout.
“No excuse.” His voice held an edge. Tommy cringed, but Grandpa Tom only ruffled his red hair.


What did Grandpa Tom bury in the backyard? Buy the e-book and find out! You can find both stories in the Time Capsule anthology released by Wolfsinger Publications. Other authors in the anthology include Deby Fredericks, John Lance, Dana Bell, and Ryan Kinkor.





****
Never have I read a more accurate description:

"One woman makes a din, two women a lot of trouble, three an annual market, four a quarrel, five an army, and against six the Devil himself has no weapon."

Mad Griet, from the Flemish. Must use this somewhere in my writing.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

New Time Capsule Story Went Awry!

13 June 2018

I started working on a new story today. It was supposed to be an adaptation of a time capsule 'story' I wrote and sent in to an editor. The original assignment was for a list of items in a time capsule, with the backstory behind each item. Who put them in there, why did they pick those items, etc...The inspiration was a MASH episode with a time capsule in it. The way the piece was supposed to work was that another writer would take my time capsule items and write a story set around the time capsule being found and what happens as a result. 

The second part of the assignment was never done, so I pulled back my submission and decided I would try and write the story of the time capsule being found and what it meant to those who found it. But my brain...uh, my brain did not cooperate. 

So, my latest story released has a main character called Black Char. I thought it would be great to have him in this piece as well. He's an explorer, so maybe he finds the time capsule somewhere as he is exploring. Sounds doable, right? 

I sat down to write, and the first item in the time capsule threw me off a bit. I don't want to share what that item is, but it is a little extreme. I thought it would be a good thing to exaggerate the intensity and have the time capsule be found by someone young. Not Black Char then. Maybe his child? I could set the story a bit farther in the timeline. And then I thought it could be at the same time as the other story, which means having something to do Black Char or the other characters in the last story. And something clicked...

I started to write a story about Tarver the Magus and Murg. It flowed out, not fast, but well. Then I started to switch the tense and rewrite again. And then I deleted some of what I wrote and switched it to more showing than telling. The writing got better. 

I'm still working on it, but I feel good about how it is going so far. I don't know where this story will end up, in fact it hasn't even touched upon anything in the time capsule piece. But I can see the way forward for it to be incorporated smoothly. 

We'll see what happens over the next few weeks. Summer is my time to be productive when it comes to writing. Wish me luck.

Picture for today: 
Has nothing to do with my story I'm working on. I like it though.