Previews #1 – Character Building

I’ve not publicly shared any of my unpublished works. There’s a lot of legal grey area that bothers me, but it’s occurred to me recently that if I’m going to be trying to sell anyone on my ability to tell stories, full, coherent, interesting stories, then… I probably ought to give them more to go on than my Worldbuilding efforts, strong as I think those are.

So in the interest of storytelling and the ever-grinding Hype Machine, I give you three examples from stories of mine – small samples of narrative Character Building, if you will.

From my ongoing novel (maybe 25% complete):

Up the stairs, Len found herself in utter darkness, stepping into water up to her ankles with a steady sprinkling of rain dripping from the ceiling. Perhaps a pipe for plumbing had broken overhead? They’d had such artifice in Gerabaldir and Som seemed even more advanced than Len’s hometown. She placed a hand along the wall and continued to slosh carefully through water, unable to see where she was going, she hoped to find an opening. After a moment her foot pushed into something soft, covered in cloth. She recoiled, splashing the water everywhere, as the body moaned quietly and slumped over. Len’s eyes began to adjust even as her mind raced, her brows furrowed, and her mouth lay agape. Someone… alive?! She wondered in silent horror. She inched forward, toward the huddled thing, covered in tattered rags, arms and legs hugged tight against its body. It looked shriveled, dead, motionless. Oh, Len chuckled darkly to herself, it’s me. And yet it had reacted when Len touched it. Hadn’t it?

“Hello?” Len breathed, the utterance scarcely even a whisper, and in turn she received no response. “I’m sorry I kicked you,” she said, the tiniest bit louder. As Len inched closer, the thing on the ground remained motionless. She couldn’t even hear or see it breathing. It certainly didn’t look alive.

“Sorry…” the thing rattled, its voice rough and dry as if choked by years of smoke and decay.

Startled, Len made an embarrassingly loud and ungraceful sound of panic before she clamped her hands over her mouth.

“You’re…” the thing started again, it seemed pained, as if speaking were difficult, “sorry…”

“Are you hurt?” Len regained her composure, kneeling down next to it, placing her hand on the crumpled thing’s shoulder.

A rueful laugh seemed to escape the thing’s throat, but Len wasn’t quite sure. “Hurt…” it managed to utter.

“I’m getting out of here,” Len told it, “Maybe, I… well, do you think you could…”

It struggled a moment, pulling its arms and legs from around itself to push up off from the wet ground it had been stuck to. For the first time, the thing looked Len in the eyes, its skin was a greenish grey, desiccated despite being soaked in water, almost scaly, almost burned. Its face was harrowed and gaunt, marred by dozens of wrinkles, obscured by a long locks of matted black hair, its eyes two dark pits swallowed by age.

“Help…?” it choked out the word, and then collapsed in a pile, back to the soggy stones, pullings its arms and legs back tight against itself, “S… sorry…”

* * *

From an unpublished short story I’m tinkering with:

Yamato House became the premier Song Nese style restaurant, not just in Arstova, but anywhere on the continent. Its combination of market savvy, cultural agility, and innovative adaptation transformed Chef Yarma’s dishes into something uniquely traditional yet modern and must-have. But with an elevation in status, quickly spreading word of mouth, and a growing customer base, Yamato’s stores of secret ingredients were dwindling fast. It had only been six months since they’d hired a man to travel far and wide gathering all sorts of things for them, and they were still paying that debt. Now they had only a single bottle of their rice vinegar left, made with Popor Sugars, they were down to half a jar of their secret dashi, made from Dancing Bonita roe, and were fresh out of both oysters and Blood Boar meat. Within the week they’d need more Snow Pearl pepper and Songnese Ginger, and there were plenty of other things Hiyahashi might as well gather if he were going to visit Song Ni Ya anyway such as Yamato Daikon, the wasabi from the Fragrant Springs, and the Hacklo Leaves that made his wife’s favorite tea.

“But Hiyahashi, you can’t go,” Liu Mei begged, “Who will cook? Who will command the kitchen?”

The chef could only close his eyes and smile, “My beautiful wife,” Hiyahashi began, “We both know… the chefs are all afraid of you,” Liu Mei looked angrily wounded even as her husband took her face into his hands and continued, “and you are the better cook by far.”

Liu Mei smiled in spite of herself before lowering her eyes to the floor and frowning. There were so many dangerous places her husband would have to go to, so many dangerous creatures to avoid… or to hunt… She hadn’t been young for several years now, and Hiyahashi not for a dozen more. She was afraid for him.

“I must venture south, precious one,” Chef Yarma breathed as he pressed his forehead into hers.

“You must come back to me you stupid idiot,” she grabbed his wrists and squeezed as she closed her eyes against the tears that began to prick them. “And don’t you dare go after the Blood Boar! We can switch to pig shoulders!”

Hiyahashi stepped back, taking his wife’s hands gently, “My wife, you know the gyoza are Lord Arstof’s favorite…”

“No, Hiyahashi!” tears streamed down Liu Mei’s defiant face, “I forbid you!”

Chef Yarma sighed, closing his eyes hard while he thought on it, bobbing his head up and down. “Alright, precious one,” he relented, raising his head to look his wife in the eyes, “I promise.”

“We can buy some of them from the market,” Liu Mei sighed, wiping her tears.
“Yes, get anything you can from town,” Hiyahashi squeezed her hands once and then let them go, “I will prepare for the journey.”

* * *

And, finally, from something interesting and secret:

“Ta da! The Stupdendous Spider Queen saves another soul!”

She stands tall and her black hair descends from her porcelain brow in waves, falling half-wild to her hips. Wearing a red domino mask accenting her sapphire eyes and matching her short, red skirt she strikes a vogue pose and sports a cocky look. Her cloak is swept over her shoulders, falling behind her, clasped over a low-necked blue blouse with an opal brooch. She is quite beautiful.

“Sphammem?!” Xaphnos mumbles, his voice muffled by webs.

“Oh!” The Spider Queen jumps and quickly sets herself to removing her unwitting captive from her web. Soon she finds a familiar face, “Xaphnos Wundervayn!” She does not bother to contain her shock, “What are you doing here?!”

“Shannon, you’re alive,” Xaphnos embraces her like an old friend, though stilted, as if out of practice, “I missed you for so long.”

She screws up her face and returns the hug only half-heartedly, “I missed you too. I called you. I haven’t heard from you, I haven’t even gotten a letter, Xaphnos, in years. What happened to you? And what’s that in your hand?”

“Oh, I…” he releases her and takes a step back, “It’s uh,” looking at, he realizes it’s not a head at all, maybe it never was, it’s just a rock, “it’s nothing,” he says at last, tossing it into the muck beneath them. “I was cut off from the Mindscape,” he continues, “When I went after Cobweb that night, he trapped me within a single enfeebled mind, a young man named Tom Callahan.”

“I told you to to wait until morning when you could tell the Senior officers!”

“Yes, I remember. Cobweb got the upper hand on me and flung me into Tom’s head. I was stuck there for several years, but eventually Tom and I worked out a way for me to roam Tom’s world while he slept. I couldn’t get back here, so I just… I did my best. I made many friends there. Saved lives. Shannon, I was so stupid to go after Cobweb that night!”

“Yeah,” she said, tears teasing her eyes, “So… how’d you get back?”

“Tom died.”

“Oh,” Shannon’s eyes fall to the ground, as do two tears she’d meant to hold back, “It’s gotten really bad here, Xaph.”

Xaphnos takes Shannon’s hand and looks at it for a long time as if contemplating what exactly to do with it. After a moment he simply caresses it between his fingers and thumb, “I know… I ran into your sister, in fact. The Dreamqueen, is it now? She’s taken Amaranth. Burned it to the ground.”