Really pleased with the current project, a continuation and expansion of A Seed on the Wind:
He took a landing towards Neryon neighborhood, a narrow outjut of stone augmented with board and rope buildings dragging at the stone, which was carved with a sinewy overlay of snakes and bees. In midday, it seemed to be drowsing. In a few hours it would begin to stretch and yawn itself awake. The caffeine vendors, selling chai and kaf and a dozen teas would range about filling cups and mugs or doling out thick cups that could later be chewed to mushy fiber for a quick thirdmeal as the evening began in earnest.
He made his way to a sleepy tavern, and slouched in a rear table, nursing leedink, mind thumbing through the possibilities as he fingered the wicker and wood puzzle centered on the table.
He could always go back to Poit. Or Ellsfall. Either of those choices itched him wrong, though.
A being sliding onto the bench across him in the wall niche. The stone shelf under its elbow as it leaned forward. “Pleasance, chum.”
Expensive clothes. Rasp-skinned, narrow-headed, not-human. Flat dark eyes, cold as shadowed caverns. Smile tied on with insincerity.
“Fuck off,” Bill said.
The smile widened, deepened, showed pointed teeth, filed sharper. Gold inlay in the closest one, a design of fish and flowers, a spray of rubies in a line down the front. “An asking for you, Mr. Bill.”
Panicked question stabbed through his stomach. Why did this stranger know his name? He sat back. “What’s that?”
“You know a guy, cook at Fleur, name’s John.”
Chef John. One of the possibilities that had been flickering through his minds. He shrugged. “Don’t ring no chime.”
“All I want is you to takespeak a word or two.”
Bill waited. In the room, the clackclask of pool balls, two youths playing, dressed in leather and thorns. The electric light flickflickered on arcs of white and jasper plastic, stacattoing light.
“Tell him the big companies don’t mind freelancers trading bittybit on the side. But he’s getting bittybig. Needs to step back.”
He hunched his shoulders in a shrug. “Happen to run into him, may say. What’s the what if I do?”
The stranger’s fingerscales were pointed, each tipped with a flower of gold, a stinger of steel, as it spread them as though to smooth the shrug away from the air.
“Bittybit money for you, friend. Just come here an asking.”
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
This is a piece of flash fiction written last year – I just got around to going through the notebook it was in lately and transcribing the fictional bits. This didn’t take too much cleaning up. For context, think of the hills of southern California, and a writing retreat with no other human beings around, and thinking a great deal about fantasy and epic fantasy at the time.
Is this a Tabat story? Naw. Just a little flash piece.
On the Nature of Gods and Magicians
The magician gestured. Out of the pool came musicians, the very first thing the tip of a flute, sounding, so it was as though the music pulled the musician forth, accompanied by others: grave-faced singers and merry drummers; guitarists and mandolinists with great dark eyes in which all the secrets of the moon were written; and one great brassy instrument made of others interlocked, so it took six to play it, all puffing away at their appointed mouthpiece. All of them bowed down to the priestess who stood watching, her sand-colored eyes impersonal and face stone-smooth.
“Very pretty,” she said, and yawned with a feline grace, perhaps even accentuating the similarity in a knowing way with a head tilt.
The magician smiled, just as catlike, just as calm. “You can do better, I am sure,” he said.
She shrugged, her manner diffident, but rather than reply, she pursed her lips and whistled. Birds formed, swooping down, and wherever they flew, they erased a swathe of the musicians, left great arcs of nothingness hanging as the seemingly oblivious players continued, their music slowly diminishing as they vanished, the instruments going one by one. The last thing to hang, trembling in the air, was an unaccompanied hand, holding up a triangle that emitted not a sound.
Landing, the birds began to sing. Though the music was not particularly sweet, there was a naturalness about it that somehow rebuked the mechanical precision of the song theirs succeeded. As they sang, more and more birds appeared, and the music swelled, washing like a river over the pair where they stood.
The priestess patted the air with the flat of her hand and the birds winked out of existence, leaving the two of them in a great white room, the antechamber of her temple.
“Will you go further in, then?” she said, her voice still casual.
The magician’s eyes were green as new grass and the black beard on his chin, which grew to a double point, was oiled and smelled of attar-of-roses. He considered her as though this was the smallest of debates, and finally stepped forward.
“We are still evenly matched,” he said.
She inclined her head and replied, “But my strength will only swell as we go deeper, and we have far to go before we reach the center of My Lady’s temple.”
His grin spread, as though encouraged by her lack of smile. As though he had some secret hidden about himself and was unafraid to admit it. She forced an expression to match it, and they stood there smiling at each other in hostility for some moments before she stepped aside and gestured him on.
The tunnels were made of adamant and alabaster, concentric rings that shrank then grew larger, then shrank and grew again and again until it was as though they walked inside an immense, undulating worm.
As they walked, they cast spells at each other, dueling lightly, a magical clash and flicker of blades with a deadly energy at its heart. This was a long quarrel between them, the strength of his magic and the might of her goddess, from whom all her power was borrowed. He maintained that while they might be well-matched, the fact was that she, a conduit, could never resonate to the degree of cosmic energy that he, a producer of such energy, could.
She had at one point asked him why it mattered. They’d been drinking in a tavern, an ordinary tavern where adventurers came. They both liked to come and watch those parties, scarred by magic and monsters, assemble and spin stories a thousand times more dangerous than any foe they had to face.
“It matters because there must always be an answer to such questions,” he said with decisiveness, not pausing a moment to think. “If there are no answers, then all in life is random.”
“Could not some of it be random?” she asked, wistfully.
He shook his head. “Randomness is the refuge of the feebleminded who cannot handle answers.” He paused when he saw her flinch. “Not you of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed.
Now they paced along and she put that conversation from her mind.
In the end they came out in a vast courtyard, in a cavern that stretched so far overhead that it would have swallowed a cathedral. The image of the goddess was carved into that ceiling, her arms outstretched, seeming to encompass everything, her serene face beaming down.
The priestess stepped aside, looking to the magician, for he had defeated her every effort along the way. Now they had come to the confrontation he desired.
He stared upward, and for a moment his face seemed daunted. Then he sneered and tugged at the necklace around his throat.
“Face me in direct challenge, you sham,” he said. “The gods are nothing but those with more power than ourselves, and this artefact will amplify mine till I can throw you down unhindered.”
“Indeed you can,” the stone lips said, in a voice sweet and merry and powerful. “For I am less than my handmaiden, much less indeed.”
He frowned. “She is your channel.”
“Ah, no,” said the Goddess. One great hand stretched itself from the ceiling and began to descend towards him. “You have misunderstood the nature of gods entirely.”
Sparks danced from his fingers, formed shining columns all around him, but the massive fingers disregarded them.
“They are not our channels,” she said as the hand closed around him. “Rather, we are theirs.”
And across the world, every worshipper lifted their head, and every priestess stopped, as the Goddess swallowed the magician whole, and then gave him to them, disassembled into fuel for their own magic, and then smiled, and began the climb back towards the ceiling and her accustomed position there.
But the priestess sighed, looking at the spot where the magician had been, and only his shadow remained. He had been good company, now and again, and now he was only embers in her heart.
Watermelon cake: cake or watermelon? I don't think we'll have this recipe, but among what's been promised is tobacco-infused tequila hot chocolate (Kevin Hearne), Muddle-in-the-Middle Mojito (Kay Kenyon) and Elf BBQ (Jim Hines).Beside all the convulsions of moving and prep for travel, I’m doing the usual writing (working on a YA novel and have a slew of stories I’ve been asked for), but I’m also working on a nonfiction project of a type I never thought I’d work on: a cookbook, which I’m co-editing with Fran Wilde.
It’s a SFWA project, and I’m excited about it for a number of reasons.
Next year is SFWA’s 50th anniversary, so this will be part of the celebration. Accordingly, it’s a party-themed cookbook with sections on savory snacks, sweet snacks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and dishes to take to potlucks.
It’s a (hopefully) noncontentious effort that celebrates SFWA’s community, a community which is for me one of the benefits of being a member.
It’s a great chance for me to touch base with a lot of fellow members. I’m fairly certain I’m SFWA’s next vice-president (barring the event of a successful write-in campaign for Randall Garrett) and it’s wonderful to have a reason to interact with them other than problem-solving. I’ve been contacting a few members in advance (there will be a general solicitation to the members next month) and it’s been a lot of fun seeing some illustrious names in my inbox. I’ve talked to a few who I didn’t know had left, and I hope that maybe it’ll persuade some to give the organization another chance.
We get to test a lot of very interesting recipes.
As with so many SFWA projects, I’m learning a lot in the process.
Who doesn’t like a party?
It’s a chance to share my Welsh rarebit recipe with the world. 😉
We’ve got a lot of cool plans that will be revealed over the coming months, so stay tuned.
Really pleased with the current project, a continuation and expansion of A Seed on the Wind:
