Side Project: Feedback Appreciated

Last night I wrote the final sentence of my manuscript for the third book in my Hawkridge Chronicles, Outlaws of the Golden Plains. Hopefully I'll have it up for preorder in the next few days while I enter revisions and editing. To celebrate--apart from eating an inordinate amount of ice cream--I allowed myself to work on a side project. I've been toying with the idea of starting some shorter serial work in the realm of 10-15 thousand word installments. Several ideas have been flitting through my mind and I poured out the first two thousand words of inspiration this morning on my laptop, essentially the opening chapter. This is raw, unedited first draft in need of  a good polish, but I would love some feedback. I'm looking to have three specific questions answered, though feel free to provide me with other comments or constructive criticism.

1) Does the opening grab you?

2) Does the work keep your interest?

3) Does the conclusion leave you wanting more?

Thank you very much! Please enjoy!

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Welcome to Ravenridge...

                Hex grabbed Bright’s hand and ran from the fire, heat licking at her back as screams of the dying joined the smoke rising into the air. She tripped over the poorly cobbled street but kept running. If she stopped, both of them would be killed. Or worse. Her acid scarred fingers squeezed tight on Bright’s and on the velvet pouch clutched to her chest.

                The tension in the Rathbone House had been a palpable force for months, pulling tighter and tighter like a lone rope struggling to hold back a wagon lost to the edge of the Ravenridge Chasm. It had snapped, and the backlash had destroyed what little security they’d had as thieves, cutthroats, and sellswords fell upon each other. Hex didn’t know how the fire started, didn’t care either—it was their way out. Neither she nor Bright had been important enough to for either of the sides to recruit and thus were fair game to any and all who drew near with poison or blade. Hex had no intention of letting either of them be raped or murdered that evening.

                Wings beat overhead, enormous wings that sent a downdraft of wind and smoke crashing into the poorly cobbled street, and a shadow fell over them, only to disappear back in the direction of the fire. Furor Blackquake had arrived. They had to be gone.  If the Lords of Ravenridge had sent their pet monster to deal with the fire, the city guard and even the Mercury Blades would soon swarm the streets.

                She pulled Bright down a side alley and dropped down into the sewers, wincing at the stench. Viscous liquid seeped through the holes in her boots to squish between her toes. Bright gave a muffled protest was caught off as Hex tucked the bag into her belt and began running again. The sewers were always dangerous, but had become even more so lately since the kappa infestation. Still, it was better than up above.

                “Hex,” Bright gasped. “Hex, we can’t go down this way.”

                “Shut up, we can,” she snapped, and pivoted down a side passage, splashing fouled water over her pants as she went with the downward stream.  It was dark in the tunnels but Hex had never needed much light to see by.  She navigated the tunnels with an instinctive clarity few other thieves possessed, something she had carefully kept secret from all but Bright.

                “We’re heading toward the ridge,” Bright said recognizing the direction they were headed from the flow of sewage. “We can’t go there! The guards—”

                “Will be distracted by the fire! Be quiet and run!”

The wealthiest of Ravenridge’s elite lived on the upper edge of the ridge, where they could see out over the great canyon and watch the river below run into the ocean. It was no place for the dregs of the city’s criminals. They would stick out there like an inkblot on white parchment with their tattered garments and stinking of the city’s refuse. But they didn’t need to be there long, just enough to make it to one of the canyon stairs. The Ravenridge canyon was treacherous and the Daggertooth River was more dangerous still, but there they could make their way to the ports and find passage on a boat out of town, where neither of them would be recognized. They could start over somewhere. Put all of this behind them.

She’d been an apprentice to her father, a tanner, before the loansharks had burned down his business. A smaller town would be glad to have her skills. And Bright knew how to improvise poultices and remedies from just about anything. They’d do well out from under the Rathbone’s heel. Staying simply wasn’t an option. No matter who came out on top of the crime family’s war, they would look kindly upon any who had not fought on their side. Those at the lowest levels would suffer the most, and Hex had no misunderstanding about her place in the hierarchy.

             “Hex, there’s something behind us,” Bright panted.

             “Kappa?” The sewage surged around her ankles, as if being pushed ahead by something.

             “I think—I think it’s Maw.”

“Shit.” She ran faster.

The giant serpent was the reason nobody had been sent into the sewers to deal with the kappas. Nobody cared about a few less street urchins and homeless, especially when the problem would eventually be devoured by Maw. Rumors about the snake’s origins were numerous, but all agreed that he was perpetually hungry.

She yanked Bright off their original path. There was no way they could outrun the serpent if they moved in a straight line. Plans of making it down to the docks were abandoned in favor of simply finding the nearest exit from the sewers.

Red sunlight and shouting filtered from a hole ahead. Hex made to climb for it but the shadow of a man in armor fell over it.

“Guards,” she hissed. The city watch had moved fast. Faster than she would have thought they’d been capable of. The sewers were a favored passageway for desperate thieves, but to be stationed there so soon after the fire didn’t make sense. Not unless they’d known it was going to happen.

“Shit,” she cursed again raced past the opening.

                “Hex, what are you doing?” Bright demanded. “Better a guard than Maw.”

                “Nobody’s catching us today.” But Bright began dragging on her, slowing down. Hex had been a runner for the Rathbones after they’d taken her and often took for granted the speed and endurance she’d built up over time.

“Just a bit further,” she urged. “We just have to get ahead of the next guard.”

                The flow of sewage rose higher as Maw drew closer. A hiss echoed up the tunnels.

                Bright whimpered.

                “Don’t look back,” Hex demanded. “Whatever you do, don’t look back!”

                “Who’s down there?” A voice from ahead. A guard positioned at another opening to the sewer.

                “Dammit,” she swore, and with a final burst of speed raced to the entrance. “Help!”

                The guard, a middle aged man with a salt and pepper mustache regarded them with only mild surprise and reached down to help them up. Hex shoved Bright ahead of her and leapt to pull herself up after. The guard leaned down to help her next.

The sewage beneath her exploded. Something wet and wide as a tree trunk grazed against her back, lifting up her shirt so that sewage dragged along her skin and she could feel the press of scales. The guard’s scream was cut off as Hex caught a glimpse of jaws large enough to swallow a dog whole latch onto his torso, crushing his chest through his broiled leather armor. And then he was pulled back down into the tunnels.

                Bright screamed. Hex screamed. Together they ran, no longer with a destination in mind or with concern to their surroundings. All they wanted was to be away.

                They passed between the walled in manors of the wealthy, spurred forward by commotion behind them. The marching of feet sounded ahead; behind, the gasps and cries of a gathering crowd and the calls of new watchmen for order.

                Hex pressed herself against one of the walls surrounding a manor. “Come here, I’ll boost you over.”

                “Hex—” 

                “Will you quit protesting and get over here.”

                Hex bent over and helped Bright onto her shoulders. With a grunt, she rose up and waited for the weight to vanish. An instant later Bright was laying atop the wall and offering Hex a hand up. With far more deftness than her companion, Hex scurried over the wall and the pair dropped down into a garden on the other side.

                 At least, Hex thought it was a garden. That’s what it was called when people put a bunch of plants together, but they usually had some sort of purpose. What these bushes with their awkward limbs and billowing leaves were for was anyone’s guess. A musky smell emanated from them that when combined with the stench of the sewer wafting from their skin and clothes was enough to churn Hex’ stomach.

 Whatever their purpose, they were good for hiding, and she pulled Bright down with her beneath the foliage and out of sight. Neither could see past the curtain of green, but sounds trickled over the wall like coins tossed into a well—clear but still indistinct. The sun set and the two of them waited, leaning against one another and breathing in tandem. Neither spoke except with their eyes, which said “keep quiet” and “I’m afraid.”

                When darkness had settled and the faint light of lamps trickled through the leaves and the sound of people beyond the wall had long since vanished, only then did Hex allow herself to stand and motioned for Bright to follow her. She pushed her way out of the garden and froze.

                Stretching before the garden was a yard backing up to a manor house of carved marble. A stone bench was positioned in the middle of the yard, positioned so as to look upon the plants against the wall. To either side of the bench lay a brindle mastiff the size of a colt with their heads up and forepaws crossed before them, as if waiting for Hex and Bright to emerge. If the noblewoman sitting on the bench with a glass of wine was any indication, they were.

                The woman was older and sat with rigid bearing. She was beautiful, as, Hex had noted, most noblewomen were, despite her advancing years. Her simple but elegantly coifed blonde hair was shot through with veins of silver starting at the temples and her dark eyes were ringed with crinkled crow’s feet. Her eyes and mouth put Hex in mind of the ornate dinner knives rich merchants liked to eat their dinner with to display their wealth. While her clothes were ornate the woman was not clothed in gowns or skirts, but practical men’s clothes in the form of a navy coat with gold buttons and trousers tucked into shiny black boots.

            Beside her the dogs shifted, as if readying to charge. The woman set her wine glass down on the bench and held up a hand, stilling the dogs. Slowly, she rose to her feet, picking up a straight cane as she did so. Her shapely form somehow made the men’s clothing feminine and Hex couldn’t help but wonder at what a beauty this woman must have been in her prime. She walked forward with a slight limp and aided by her cane. Hex only recognized it for the concealed sword that it was because it was the preferred weapon of the Rathbone heads. She towered over Hex and Bright like an icy spire, the very air around her seeming more crisp and chill by her presence as her dark eyes bore down on them, though she could not have been more than a few inches taller.

At some unspoken signal the mastiffs got to their feet and moved like tigers to flank her. They kept a respectable distance between their mistress and the vagabonds in her garden but made their presence felt, if only barely. The woman was overwhelming and her nearness made it difficult for Hex to focus on anything else.

Hex wanted to shrink beneath this woman’s gaze where others made her want to swell up and rise to challenge them. Her appearance was rarely a source of pride, but less often was it a source of shame. Covered in ash, blood, and the shit of untold number of citizens was enough to make her feel like a worm beneath this strange noblewoman. She hid her acid scarred hands behind her back, as much to conceal their ugliness from the woman’s eyes as to grab the small knife sheathed at the back of her belt. It wasn’t there. It must have come free when Maw grabbed the guardsmen.

                The woman’s expression never changed as she spoke. “It is about time you two decided to come out.”

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Thank you for reading.

Please leave your comments below. 

New Year's Eve Writer's Roulette! Red Riding Hood, OH MY!

You all know the drill by now! Raw and unedited, the results from today's drawing or published below. Would love to hear your thoughts, what this particular combination inspires in you and whether or not you had fun reading today's edition because I had an absolute BLAST writing it.

Genres

Dark Fantasy

Parody

Tropes, Elements and Themes

Man Vs Environment

Butterfly Effect (or Domino Effect)

Trapped/Stranded

  

“Mathew?” Red exclaimed, dropping the basket of food she’d brought for her grandmother.

“Um, no,” came a falsely high pitched reply. “No, no Mathew here, just your dear sick grandmother. Come here and let me pinch your cheeks.”

“Mathew,” Red said, stamping her foot. Her red hoodie made her eyes seem to flash. “What are you doing here? No, forget that, what the hell are you doing in my Granny’s clothes?”

Mathew stood at least six and half feet tall, but was stuck looking up piteously at the five foot four Red from the comfort of her grandmother’s flannel sheeted bed.

“It’s not what it looks like,” he said, yanking the covers up over his chin.

“And what the hell is it supposed to look like? Huh?” Red demanded, hands on her hips. Her shoe slid on something wet as she repositioned it and she looked down. The bright green kale shake she’d mixed earlier that morning and packed away in a thermos had spilled when the basket dropped and was leaking all over her new shoes.

She swore and stepped out of the mess, bending over to yank the basket off the floor. “Look what you made me do. Get out of Granny’s bed and help me clean already.”

Mathew pulled the covers higher up over his snout.

“Don’t make me come over there and yank you out of bed Mathew Conaway,” Red snapped.

Face burning beneath his fur, Mathew eased himself out of the bed, painted toe claws sinking into the rug around the bed before clicking on the wooden floor as he stepped closer. The flannel night gown was much too small for him and the hem swirled around his thighs. Painted clawed hands tried to tug it lower as he daintily made his way across the cabin’s only bedroom, ears tucked low in shame.

Red sighed and shook her head as they crouched down together to clean up the spilled basket. “I swear you have got to be the most messed up werewolf I have ever met.”

“Look, Red,” Mathew said, dabbing up the spilled shake with the blanket from the picnic basket. “It really isn’t what it looks like?”

Red picked up a squished sandwich and baggie of broken cookies and threw them into the basket. “Really? ‘Cause it looks like you dressed up in Granny’s nightgown to get your rocks off.”

If looks could kill Mathew would have already been in the icy grip of rigor mortis. “No!” he said quickly. Too quickly. “I’m not…I’m not…I’m the alpha’s son. It doesn’t…I don’t…”

Red yanked the soggy blanket out of his hands and hurled it into the basket with the ruined lunch. “Oh give it a freaking rest, Mathew! I caught you trying on my skirts years ago when you thought I wasn’t home.”

His ears perked up in surprise. “You did?”

“Why’d you think my door was always unlocked when you came by?” Red rose to her feet, taking up the basket and all its contents.

“I…just thought I was lucky.”

She snorted, letting her freckled face wrinkle in derision. “Yeah, you were. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. I thought you liked…” her face burned crimson for a moment before her eyes narrowed to dagger sharp slits. “And then I find you here! Wearing my sick grandmother’s clothes!”

Mathew hung his head in shame. His ears wilted and his tail curled between his legs. “You thought I liked you.”

Red’s hand was halfway to slapping him when she caught herself. Mathew might be the gentlest werewolf she knew but slapping a werewolf was just plain stupid no matter how freaking mad he made her or how badly he deserved it.

“I. Did. Not.” She bit off each word like a stale cracker.

Mathew stayed crouched on the floor. Some of his fur was pushing through the cloth where the pajamas were too tight for his barrel chest. “Red, it’s not that I don’t like you. I think you’re great. It’s just…”

“Just what?” Red shouted. “Just what? What can you possibly say that will make this whole situation any better?”

“You’re gorgeous,” Mathew said.

Red dropped the basket again. Kale shake spilled anew over her shoes.

“You always have the most stylish clothes,” he went on, raising up to his full height to tower over her. 

“Always know what best to wear to compliment your figure and even make that hoodie look like Prada.”

Red’s lower lip quivered.

“But your grandmother…she is SO FINE.” 

Writers Roulette! New Bag and New Story Sample

Naturally now that I'm putting by Roulette baggies to more work, my genre bag went missing and I had to toss together a new one. I actually think I like this one better. Unfortunately it was made in a pell-mell rush in between morning errands and day plans. I'll be sitting down to edit my latest novel as soon as I finish this post up and was actually supposed to be on that an hour ago. Today's getting away from me! I'll see if I can't list out all the genres I've got collected in my bag to draw from so that you can copy it for your own usage tomorrow. Call it my Christmas gift to you!

Today's combination...

Genres

Heroic Fantasy

Slasher

Story Elements/Themes/Tropes

Unseen Forces

Temptation of Power

Transformation

Tell me that combination doesn't almost write itself! My first thought went to vampires, but don't know for sure that that's the direction I want to take this. Unfortunately it looks like this particular piece demands a lot of buildup, but I challenge anyone who reads it to write for themselves what happens next...

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Miggins stabbed the pitchfork into the hay and hurled it over his shoulder. The visiting nobles horses wouldn’t feed themselves. Stab. Toss. Stab. Toss. Same as any other day. Only it really wasn’t.

The barn was filled with strange horses, clearly thoroughbreds but not any he’d ever heard of. Striped horses. Who’d ever heard of such a thing? He couldn’t tell one way or the other whether they were white with black stripes or white with black. And they bit. His forearm was wrapped with bandages beneath his heavy winter tunic where one had taken great delight in ripping away a chunk of his flesh. At least warhorses understood who it was that fed them.

And the riders were just as strange as their mounts. Tall and fair skinned, with red hair that sprung from their scalps like the flames of torches. In the whole village, he was the only one with hair like theirs. If it weren’t for all the freckles that had colored his face, it would be easy to confuse them for his kin. At least so long as one didn’t look too closely at how they carried themselves.

Nobles always walked like the ground was privileged for their footstep. Stab. Toss. Stab. Toss. One had even stopped to look at him with reptilian eyes as they entered the inn. Some inns had names, he understood, in other towns where there might be call for more than one. But not here, in Elmstock. Here there was only the inn, and the closest thing to nobility was the mayor.

Now there were six nobles inside where it was warm by the fire, away from snow and cold hay and biting black and white horses. Who came riding into town two full hours after the sun went down? And at this time of year, when the snow was almost knee deep? They didn’t even look like the cold bothered them, dressed in flowing silks. They’re clothes had seemed to move and wave like water as they moved, almost as if the cloth was alive. If the cold didn’t bother them, then they should be willing to take care of their own bloody horses out here in the cold. He bet none of them had ever been sent off to perform last minute chores after thinking they were about to settle down to a hot, well-earned dinner.

Stab. Toss. Stab. Toss. The frustration burned like an ember in his chest and he held onto it, deliberately letting his thoughts coax it into something hotter than it should be. Anger could keep a man warm. It certainly beat being numb.  

Stab. Toss. A skull glared out of the hay at him, empty eye sockets blazing with a crimson light. Blood ran over the grinning mouth, painting the teeth yellow teeth orange against the brown-black rotten bone.

Miggins screamed and staggered away, slipped on the droppings one of the striped horses had left on the barn floor, and toppled over into the hay. He came up in a flurry of straw, wide eyed and gasping for breath. There was no sign of the skull. Only the disturbed hay and fallen pitchfork belied that anything at all had happened.

Miggins blinked his eyes and wiped the sweat from his brow. He tried to swallow but found his mouth too dry. That’s what he got for thinking angry thoughts. He was seeing things. Unwholesome things. He signed himself with the mark of the Hearth Master and rose to his feet. Finish working, he thought, feed the horses and get inside.

Not feeding them wasn’t an option. Not if he wanted to keep his job and home, which he very much did. Although if another skull popped out of the hay he might reconsider. He might anyways, but in the morning, after a good night’s rest and breaking his fast. After the nobles left to continue their journey.

He readied the pitchfork for another stab into the stray when a scream rent the air. A woman’s scream, shrill and full of an icy terror that extinguished what little warmth remained inside of him and set the animals to agitation. Blood dripped from the end of his pitchfork.

He screamed and dropped it. One of the striped horses reared and bellowed, lashing his hooves in challenge. Another scream from the inn, and Miggins took off. Everything in him told him he was going the wrong direction, but the inn was his home. Whatever was attacking their guests would have to go through him. He said silent prayer to the Hearth Master as he ran that

….

Ran out of time here. Please keep in mind that this is a RAW and UNEDITED FIRST DRAFT (and as such is bound to be riddled with more flaws than I can shake an over used metaphorical stick at) when you comment. Eager to hear your thoughts and ideas! Please comment below or share your own Roulette Stories :)

Writer’s Roulette

This is an exercise I invented for a retreat I hosted over the summer and I found it incredibly fun and helpful. If nothing else, anyone who needs a writing prompt to kick off the week should find this useful. I’ve printed out two pages, one with a bunch of genres and another with a bunch of thematic elements, tropes and the like. Each page was cut up and tossed into a baggy.

I draw two from the genre baggy and three from the thematic elements baggy, put them together and write for 25 minutes. It’s an incredibly refreshing process, simply cutting back and taking off down a loosely defined path, a great blending of direction and creative freedom. 

Here’s the results from today’s exercise, completely raw and unedited—straight from Microsoft Word to the blog. I’ll be putting something like this up weekly (just the start to something larger) with a new prompt and story results. Give this exercise a shot for yourself, either do your own random process or use the results below. Just write!

2 Genres

Post Apocalypse

Contemporary Fantasy

3 Themes/Tropes/Whatever

Man vs God

Urban Setting

Love Triangle

Add in 25 minutes and...enjoy!

Juniper Joy ran weeping across the parking lot, dodging the overripe blackberry bushes growing up from the skeletons of Volkswagen beetles. Glossy silvers, blues and greens peeked through foliage and rust, winking at her as she ran, tattered skirt whipping behind her like a banner, mirroring her tangled mane of chestnut. Not that she’d ever seen a chestnut. They were long extinct. Like cellphones and cellophane.

                “Juney!” Maverick called from behind her.

               

His dad had owned the lot before, back when the beetles did more than just sat like colorful rocks. They didn’t look extinct but she supposed they were, too.

               

“Juney!”

                The world blurred, colors blurring behind the tears to blend into a solid myriad. She kept running. Rings weren’t supposed to go extinct. That’s why they were circles, ‘cause they went on forever. But nothing lasted forever.

                The hem of her skirt caught on a blackberry bush and she left behind another patch of fabric, fluttering like a broken bird.

                Rings and forever weren’t for her. They couldn’t be.

                She fled the parking lot, running into a building that had once been called a bank. Maverick wouldn’t follow her onto unholy ground. Paper had brought about the end of the golden era he liked to say, but she didn’t see how. She didn’t need to; she wasn’t lined up to be the next holy man.

                Broken glass littered the tile floor, crunching under her boot like gravel as she flew past. She couldn’t stay here. Being alone was good, but the empty vault in the back wasn’t good to be around when anyone was like this. Whatever this was. Was she still crying?

                She wiped her eyes, leaping through the brass frame of a door that was meant to be full of glass and spin in place like a top so people could go through. Why the folks that used this place for their foul rituals needed such a fancy door instead of a normal one was just as mysterious as the empty vault. It cried sometimes at night. Nobody but Maverick believed her, but she’d heard it.

                Juniper took to alleys and kept running until her sides hurt. Breathing hurt. And her reflection in the remaining grimy windows of the dead buildings was red-faced and sweaty. Definitely not someone for rings. What would she do if her face turned red for eternity?

                “You look lost,” said a voice behind her.

                She jumped, then caught sight of the speaker’s reflection in the dirty window.

“Avarice McCoy,” she snarled as she spun around. “I am not in the mood for your foolishness.”

His lips found hers, capturing them in a dance of flesh on flesh. Calloused hands cupped her cheeks, fingertips brushing the edges of the tangled mess she called her hair. They were cool against her flushed face and she found herself leaning into them for a moment, for that reason alone. It had nothing to do with the way the kiss poured into her like liquid fire, filling her belly with a yearning for more.

She jerked away and cut loose with a slap that left her palm and fingers stinging. Avarice’s face was just as dirty as the windows, blonde hair turned bronze from too long in the downtown ruins. A red handprint glowed beneath the grime, distorted by his cheeks lifting as he grinned.

“You keep coming back here, makes me wonder which of us is really foolish.”

“Maverick proposed.”

Blue eyes froze, hardening like the top of pond in winter. “Oh.”

“I can’t get married,” she said. “The garden’s not ready.”

“And that’s all you care about, isn’t it?” Avarice said. “Those mushrooms aren’t as magic as you think they are.”

 

She ignored his words and pushed past his hard body. Whatever intelligent creator had seen fit to make Avarice McCoy’s arms harder than stone had to have it out for her, there weren’t another explanation. Maverick was trouble. Avarice was more trouble.

“Just a little bit more and I can leave on a caravan,” Juniper said, stomping down another alley. “Trade them along the coast. Those I don’t use for the caravan anyhow.”

“Future’s not something that should be looked into, Juniper,” Avarice said and his footfalls sounded on the artificially hard ground, following her.

                “You sound like Maverick.” She made a face at him over her shoulder. “Thought scroungers were less superstitious than holy men.”

                “He’s not a holy man, yet,” Avarice said. “And it’s not superstition. It’s good old common sense. You know anyone who ever ate them mushrooms and didn’t go mad?”