In addition to a discount on The Chocolatier’s Wife, you can also celebrate Celebrate Chocolate Day with some free prose from me!

Back before Sarah was born, I went and banked some blog posts, figuring that for a couple of weeks when I was too frazzled to write, I would be able to just click “Publish,” and the posts would go out into the world.  Well, it turned out I was too frazzled to just click “Publish,” so I’ve had these things languishing in a file, some of them long past the time when they were relevant.  This one seems to have become relevant again, so:

If you haven’t seen it already, I donated a vignette last year for use in promoting WickedFaire.  To publicize this year’s theme, Jeff Mach set up the virtual Wicked Chocolate Factory, which includes individual rooms written by different authors.  Each room contains a vignette or piece of flash fiction, an illustration, and a link to the author’s Web site.  At present, the factory consists of two stories by Jeff, one by me, and another by the lovely and talented Sara Harvey–who, I might add, recognized “Garden of Dreams” as mine even early on when a glitch had the vignettes up without the authors’ names.

Enjoy!

And they’re giving an incentive to spread the word: If you pass word along about The Chocolatier’s Wife and let Deena know by posting a link here, then you’re entered to win a gift certificate from Fannie May Chocolates. As a Drollerie author, I’m not eligible to win, but I want to see Cindy’s book do well, and if one of my friends can get a treat in the process, so much the better. So please spread the word, and you may get something sweet for your efforts.

Subterranean Song (poem) by David Sklar

“Ghosts and Music intertwined: to dance their way out of hell, or fall from the gates of heaven.”

A story set to poetry, literally, and utterly enthralling. I loved the imagery Sklar speckles through his verses. I cackled delightfully over his version of -er-hell. Artists, Musicians and Writers, of course, should get a kick out of this.

To whet your appetite, I give you my favorite lines:

“‘Cause death’s not so bad; I know people who’ve done it/and hunger and cold you get used to in time/but wondering what has become of someone/fills the twilight with shadows and wind.’”

His bio mentions he’s written more poems, I do believe I will have to go find them.

You can read the review in its entirety here.

One remarkable thing, it seems like a lot of people go through 3 or more trunk novels (according to the linked post and the responses) before they come up with anything saleable.  So, unless you count the trunk novel I wrote when I was 14, it looks like, late start or no, I did pretty well on producing a first opus that at least a respectable small press editor thought was worth showing the public.

[cross-posted from my LiveJournal page]

 Enjoy!

Hello, David Sklar’s readers! This is E. G. Diehl (a DP stealth author more commonly known as DokodemoElisa), and I jumped on the blog-tour bandwagon just in time to catch the topic on fathers. I must say, this is a topic close to my heart, and it also happens to be a topic close to my budding authorial career. So, without further ado, it’s story time!

I started working for the family business (a ServiceMaster franchise) as soon as it was legal for me to do so. I was very enthusiastic about the idea of making my own money, but I was also far too young to be spotted doing janitorial work or cleaning carpets and floors alone. Thus, from the get-go, I spent all of my time in my first job either working with my dad or my uncle.

It’s no small wonder I didn’t drive those poor men mad. To keep my mind busy while I dusted and emptied trash cans, I whistled, sang snippets of songs I didn’t know very well (usually Disney), and talked incessantly. I had a grand time, really, and some of my fondest teen memories are of the times I spent in the car between jobs with my dad. We often talked about fantasy novels I’d borrowed from him, or barring that we entertained one another by bickering (most often in a good-natured best friends sort of way. Dad and I can be a bit like siblings, and we’re remarkably similar, stubborn people). Our two primary modes of conversation merged about a decade ago when I started writing novel-length fantasy fiction. When I was too young to know better, I wrote a winding, cliffhanger-riddled, melodrama-prone thirteen novel series that Dad couldn’t have gotten me to not-talk-about if he’d taped my mouth shut.

So, not long after I started weaving the worlds that were growing in my school notebooks to my dad in the car between floor jobs in grocery store bank branches, my dad started telling me I should publish. The argument, which repeated itself until I was in my mid-twenties, ran something along the following lines: Dad would say that I should publish. Worse stories had been published and sold reasonably well, and there was no reason that I shouldn’t be making the money they were making. I, in turn, would fervently object to the very idea on the grounds that the series was a work in progress, needed more editing work than I could imagine devoting to it in a single lifetime, and had been written by an inexperienced kid with delusions of grandeur (that last bit sprung up in varying degrees, and far more often in the later phases of this conversation series). I was, perhaps, excessively worried about finding myself humiliated by my own work in the unlikely event that somebody actually did find it worth publishing.

Dad, through sheer persistence, ultimately won the argument, but in my defense, by the time he won, he had managed to get Mom on his side. I was outnumbered. Also in my defense, the two books that are scheduled for Drollerie Press e-book release this summer have nothing at all to do with the series I wrote in high school. Nor do they have anything to do with the five other books I wrote between that series and this. Still, I’ll admit I never would have taken the time to submit anything to anyone if it weren’t for my parents’ unwavering drive to convince me it should be done. Incidentally, Mom and Dad also kindly loaned me a room in their house for eight months between my three-year sojourn in Gunma, Japan and the start of my grad-school studies at the University of Hawaii, during which time I finished the last 60,000 words of the second book and put forth an uncomfortably fervent effort to find a publishing home for the first.

Now, instead of presenting my dad with the hundred and ten reasons I don’t want to publish, the conversations we have on the phone often go as follows: “Hey, Elisa, did they release your book yet?” “No, Dad. Believe me, I would have called you if that had happened.” “I thought you said that was going to happen this summer. I checked that website. I don’t see any news about your book.” “It’s not there, Dad. Believe me, I’d have called you if that had happened.” “Are you sure they’re working on it?” “Yes, I’m sure. Everyone’s very busy. It’s a really small company, and everyone has a lot on their plates. It’ll happen. I’ll call you as soon as I know” and so forth. I would swear he’s more eager and impatient about this than I’ll ever be. Conceivably he’s earned the right. He’s been the wind blowing in my (reluctant) publish-these-things sails since years before I’d conceived of the hero character who shares his middle name.

No, the middle name they share isn’t “Stubborn” or “Unrelenting.” It’s a little more mundane than that, but you’ll have to wait until the silly things have actually been published to find out what it is. Until then, I’m not telling!

Vivian’s Story

Drollerie Authors Blog Tour Post, May 21^{st, 2009Vivian Belgrave is the mother of Clara in my story “Dead Woman Walking.” She’s a handful. You can read more about her in the “Bump in the Night” anthology that just came out from Drollerie Press.There are no mothers of any worth in the old tales.}

I am a woman of strength, of stature – the Belgrave estate has been in my name for the last ten years and I have managed it, without the aid of a man. I have managed my life. I am present. I am powerful.

Yet even as I feel this child growing in my womb, I see it in their stares when I wander through the market, hear it in their concerned words while on my way to handle the trading of the grain. You need a man, their stares seem to say. You are weakened by your burden, their subtext whispers.

Lessened. Diminished.

I am far from diminished. Do they not know the skill I possess with the Craft? Have they not seen how my property outgrows even the wretched Fowlers’ every year? Have they not seen the abundance of my estate? Even as my pregnancy quickens, I feel the Craft growing ever nimble in my hands. One day, I will be more than a match for Fowler with his handy spells and tidy potions. One day, he will not cast his shadow over me, with false proposals of marriage and degrading propositions.One day, I will have everything he took from me.

Because I am powerful.

I haven’t had a chance to read a lot of the other stories in that book (with work and parenting duties, I manage to finish maybe a page a night of the new novel in progress, and then I’m wiped out), but there’s one right after my poem, called “Sleepwalker” by Darin Bradley, that I’ve started and find really intriguing.

 The Web chat is tomorrow (Thurs 5/21) starting at 10:00.  If I’m not mistaken, the Drollerie Press blog tour also takes place that day.  More info tomorrow on who’s posting what where.

Tam: Did she send you?

(The question hits Christopher out of nowhere–and it instantly raises his hackles. The suspicion that he needs to move again, to lose himself in the anonymity of a new city, has been nagging at him for weeks. Someone’s been watching him; he’s seen the same ragged old woman on Seattle’s streets five times now in as many weeks, studying him with knowing eyes, but he hasn’t been brave enough to confront her. And now? Here’s another stranger, one he’s sure has also been watching him, at least today. And this stranger seems much more hostile.)
Christopher: You got a problem there then? Do I know you?

(Tam steps back from Christopher, who stands at least a head taller than him, and raises one hand as if to protect himself.)
Tam: Did she send you?

(Wait. Confusion briefly strikes the young Newfoundlander before he realizes that this stranger looks as nervous as he himself feels. Hard on the heels of that a second realization strikes him: this one, whoever he is, isn’t human. Not entirely, anyway. Questions flood him then, but he forces them down; it’s none of his business, not if he’s leaving Seattle soon. That nervousness, though… it gives him pause. He backs up a step. The strap of his bouzouki’s gig bag slips a bit on his right shoulder, and he grabs at it to keep it in place, but keeps his other hand out, palm up.)
Christopher: Swear t’ Jesus, man, nobody sent me. Just lookin’ for somewhere to busk tonight, is all.

Tam (relaxing a bit): So you’re a musician?

(Christopher grins crookedly, his hand clutching the strap on his shoulder a bit more tightly; the bouzouki’s weight at his back is a comfort. His guard’s not down, not yet. But of all the words that could describe him, ‘musician’ is perhaps the truest… and the safest. At least until he learns the measure of this stranger.)
Christopher: Yeah… well, I knock around on the zouk a bit, anyway. When I can. (He nods ahead towards the nearest bus stop on the block, and then casts a glance behind him.) And there’s an old lady wit’ a whistle two blocks back. I… ah… thought I’d jump the 43 and try downtown.

(Tam looks puzzled at the instrument case.)
Tam: “Zook?”

(This begins to bring down the Newfoundlander’s guard; maybe he read this stranger wrong? All at once he’s weary, tired of scanning every face around him for any signs of a threat. Maybe this other man is simply nothing more than what he is–a wanderer, ill-fitting his current surroundings, though truth be told he knows he stands out more himself, with a brogue that flags him as Not From Around Here with the first word out of his mouth. Jesus, he could be Warder-blood for all I know, he thought. Not that he can ask, not right out here on the street in earshot of who knows how many passing grungy college kids passing them along the sidewalk of the Ave. And so he opts for the safe topic at hand, swinging the instrument bag forward just enough to reach its zipper so he can undo it and show just enough of the neck of the instrument inside to give the stranger a look.)
Christopher: Bouzouki. The Irish kind. Kind o’ a big mandolin.

(The dark-haired stranger smiles, surprised, and quietly reads the engraving on the instrument’s neck
Tam: Airson mo mhac Crìsdean.
(His accent on the Gaelic words is peculiar and slightly off, about as different as Spanish from Portuguese, but his voice is softly resonant, and the sunlight drifts across the inscription as he reads it, as though reflected off the window of a passing car.)

(Christopher goes still, staring, stunned that the other man gets the pronunciation almost correct. For a moment, memory flares: another voice murmuring those same words. For my son Christopher. His reluctant grin fades, skewing, though his face is no less earnest as he zips the instrument bag closed to protect its cargo from the drizzle in the air. Turning his th’s to d’s, his accent thickens, while he casts one more glance back over his shoulder.)
Christopher: That’s my zouk. (He pauses, then, in a sudden burst of sympathy, he adds…) Listen, man, you want t’ come along, there’s a pub in Ballard lets me play, sometimes. Nothin’ else, we could get a pint.

Tam: Sounds good to me. (Holds out hand) I’m Tam, by the way. Sorry to pick up your name by stealth, Crisdean–it was not my intent.

(The sound of the Gaelic form of his name is enough to ease Christopher considerably, all by itself. It’s not wise, perhaps. But memory still lurks behind the tall Newfoundlander’s eyes, and now the sound of a pint sounds appealing indeed, along with the idea of company, for once. He takes the offered hand and shakes it; his own’s sturdy, a working man’s hand, though with enough calluses on his fingertips to suggest he plays that instrument of his sometimes without a pick. At the bus stop ten feet away, a Metro bus pulls up.)
Christopher: It’s okay. C’mon with you then–that’s the bus that’ll get us to that pint.
(The bus isn’t terribly crowded, not at this hour. But there are enough riders on it to keep Christopher on the alert, and he can’t quite hide his relief that the old woman he’d seen, the woman in the fedora with a whistle in her hands, is nowhere in sight. He doesn’t say much, not while the bus wends its way from the U-district to Ballard, nor once he and his companion are off again and heading on foot towards Molly Maguires. There’s music already there; it’s open mic night and the stage is occupied by a black-haired girl with a bodhran and a grizzled old fellow pulling away on a squeezebox. But Christopher, after tossing off a wave to the tender at the bar, aims for a booth towards the back–where he, and his companion for that matter, can keep an eye on the door. Somehow, for reasons he’s not quite ready to put a finger on, it seems apt.)

Tam: So the writing on your, um, Zook–was that… (He trails off, does not complete the question.)

(One of the young waitstaff of the pub comes over to take both men’s orders; absently, Christopher asks for a Pyramid ale. He waits politely until his companion’s placed his own order, and waits again until the server’s gone on his way, safely out of earshot, before he replies.)
Christopher: Gaelic. Scots Gaelic. My… (A beat.) My mum spoke it. (Another beat.) You say it differently.

Tam: She cares a lot about keeping you safe.

(Present tense. Not past, which is the truth of it. Christopher hasn’t missed that, but he doesn’t bother to correct it, not even with a bottle of local beer to blunt the reminder of memories he’d rather not consider. He’s changed the subject, and Christopher knows it; his hazel gaze swings back to Tam, shadowed now, more than a trifle wary. But he’s promised an amiable pint, and that’s what he’s going to give–even though he’s sure once again that he’s dealing with someone not entirely human. The server comes back again with his bottle of Pyramid, and he thanks the youth by rote, barely aware of his passing. Except to mark when he’s gone… and when, therefore, it’s safe for him to speak beneath the music from the stage.)
Christopher: Y’get that then, from one glimpse of my instrument?

Tam: And from your being so far from home.

(One corner of his mouth quirks up in a grin, though, as he takes a pull off that beer. ‘Far from home’–oh, yeah, quite an easier guess when a man has but to open his mouth and talk. How much he can guess off this Tam, though, is another question entirely. There’s nothing so blatant a clue as an accent, or anything the other man is carrying marked in an obvious other tongue… but still, Christopher has his suspicions.)

Christopher: That I’d be, yeah. I’m thinkin’ you’d know somethin’ o’ that yourself, too.

(Tam smiles and raises his bottle.)
Tam: I hope it’s far enough.

(Habit makes Christopher cast a glance around the place, but most everyone in the pub is focused on the duo of musicians on stage. In the booth he’s claimed with Tam, there’s the relative safety of anonymity. Now there’s the acknowledgement, given and received, that he’s got at least something in common with this other man. He’s dying to know now what more there is–and if this Tam is shirking from crossing paths with the old woman, just as he. Christopher MacSimidh has no talent for dissembling, and so he opts for as direct an approach as he can take without risking sounding daft. He leans forward where he sits, the better to keep his voice pitched low.)
Christopher: I hear that, yeah. Look now… I don’t know who your she is, but if it’s the old woman I saw, the one wit’ the whistle… I’m duckin’ her too.

(Tam cocks an eyebrow.)
Tam: Old woman with a whistle?

(Christopher blows out a breath, ill at ease all over again for having to muster words to come close to what’s been gnawing away at him for weeks in this rain-washed northern city, and never mind saying it outright. The beer helps, but only so much, and only because it gives him something to do with his hands when breaking out the bouzouki isn’t yet an option.)
Christopher: Yeah. I’ve seen ‘er, downtown sometimes, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne… (He frowns and waves a hand towards the door by way of punctuation.) Here, sometimes, but not tonight. If she’s what I think she is, she’s… (How in God’s name can he put this?) She’s someone I’m better off avoidin’.

(Tam stops drinking and sets his bottle down. He examines Christopher carefully for a moment, with a serious look on his face.)

Christopher: Does the word ‘Warder’ mean anythin’ to you?

(A pause. Tam shakes his head.)

(He’s in it now. Christopher braces himself, and it plays out on his face, for a tightening of his jaw betrays his tension. Tam’s not of the line, then, not hiding like he is. Which means he’s something else. There’s a tang of Sidhe about him–but not enough for the Newfoundlander to be certain. Not with his own Warder blood no more than latent, able only to whisper guesses, and sometimes warnings. That he feels no warning now is all that makes him brave enough to answer.)
Christopher: She’s one. The old woman. Means she’ll have a way o’ knowin’ things about this city, who’s in it… and who shouldn’t be.

Tam (Concerned, thinking this through): And she’s after you. Is warder a. . . a euphemism, like “fair folk” or “kindly ones”?

(Christopher almost laughs. Tam’s answer is enough to tell him his instincts were sound–this man does know at least something of the very world he’s avoiding. The relief of that knowledge is strong; at least he won’t be written off as a madman. He glances to the door again by reflex, smiling without any particular humor, eyes distant.)
Christopher: Nah. (His gaze comes back.) But a Warder knows the meanin’ behind those words.

Tam: That’s good to know. The energy coming off you is. . . out of place. I mean, it’s yours, but there’s something about it, like it needs to come to rest. If that’s what she’s after, then you have to get it tucked away, or it’ll be way too easy to peel it off of you.

(All color drains out of Christopher’s face and he slumps back in the booth, tilting his head back a moment, clamping his eyes shut. He does laugh, now, and it’d be a good laugh if it had any pleasure in it; as it stands, it sounds more like fear. )
Christopher: You… you can tell?

(Tam utters a mild profanity in a language similar to, but not the same as Gaelic, the same language he seemed to speak when he read the words on the bouzouki. He slowly, carefully, looks around the room before speaking again.)
Tam: Yeah. I can tell. I shouldn’t have said.

(And now, with a pause in the music as the duo on the little stage gives way to an older woman with a guitar, those not-Gaelic words are clearer to Christopher’s ear. He looks again at his companion, then waves off those last words and plucks up the bottle before him again to drain it dry.)
Christopher: I thought you would. It’s okay. (He sighs.) Well then, Tam, I can say this. If she’s good at the Wardin’ she’ll know you’re here. If you’re after keepin’ your head down, and if you’re passin’ through, she’ll not care. (When his bottle is empty, he sets it back down before him and stares at it, his voice gone very low.) If trouble finds you on Seattle ground, though… that she’ll care for.

Tam: I see. (Pause.) If that’s the case, then why is she after you?

Once you’ve read Cindy’s post, be sure to check out my entry on Fraser Sherman’s blog, and to read the posts of other authors in the tour.  Thanks to Angela Korra’ti for organizing the tour.  And now, without further ado, Heeeeeeeeere’s Cindy!

_____

I’ve been writing since I was in my early teens, but I never felt like a real author until I took a class in college called “Publishing the Magazine.” It was exactly that – a class that took its staff of students (a mix of volunteers and people taking the class…) through every aspect of publishing a magazine. We had to get ads, write a story, sit without twitching while someone edited the story, everything. It was even listed in the Writer’s Market, and there was an actual slush pile.

I remember sitting at the round table, presenting my ideas to the gathered…mostly the professor, Dr. Alan Natali, and the student editor. I kept presenting ideas, and Alan kept rejecting them. “There has to be something interesting…something that only you can write about.”

At which point, shyly, I put forward the fact that my father was a blacksmith and that we used to go to craft shows. This was the first time in my life that a) I felt like maybe I was an interesting individual, and b) that yes, people would think the fact that my father was a blacksmith was really COOL.

It was an amazing experience. I learned that editors are your friends. That I have a voice, and it’s a good one. That non-fiction can actually be a lot of fun to write. And I got to experience that feeling, that pride one can feel, the relief and joy and “OMG ieeee flail!” at seeing one’s words in print.

And I stayed part of the magazine (called Flipside) for the rest of my college years. All my really good memories start from that story. It also taught me a ton of things that I use in my everyday life – how to do design and layout, how to copyedit, and how to get rid of passive voice. So, while it’s not the first real publishing experience, or a story about finishing my first work, I think that it’s the first, honest step I took to where I am now.