You can find “The Subtler Art,” featuring The Dark and Tericatus, in Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Rogues, and Mercenaries.I’ve got a new Patreon story brewing, that I hope to finish up today and let sit for a few days before posting. I recently finished up a bespoke story, title still TBD, and that’s sitting in the mental fridge drawer chillaxing before I go back to its rewrite and polish.
So for Patreon, another Serendib story, and a return to The Dark and Tericatus. Here’s some from yesterday:
After she’d hopped the wall, it had been easy enough to defeat the bloodsucking ivy and the centipede hounds contained in the first set of walls. After that, it got more interesting.
The Dark rarely stooped to thievery nowadays but, the truth be told, it was how she had started her professional life, long ago in a city whose name she had deliberately forgotten. She had been a child born to both privilege and indifference. At fifteen, she had left the school where her parents had stored her in order to make a living from burglarizing the friends of those parents, at least those whose estates and townhouses she’d had occasion to reconnoiter in her adolescent years.
She had done quite well by this, well enough that she spread the largesse to those less comfortable, and in doing so, became known as “The Dark Angel.” When, sixteen months later, the unnamed order of assassins that had noted her exploits came to recruit her, they demanded she remained herself, which she did by truncating the former name to the form she had gone by several decades now.
She had kept that knowledge to herself as, over the course of those decades, she’d met any number of unusual characters, including her spouse for two of those decades, Tericatus the alchemist-mage, Chig the Rat God, and quite a few fellow assassins who failed to live up to the high standards she held when it came to both of her professions.
She had retired from assassinations ““ aside from the occasional hobbyist or wager-related killing ““ some time ago, but now to thievery not so much for entertainment but also because she was impelled by the yearly conundrum of a suitable anniversary present for a man who could, literally, conjure almost anything his heart could imagine.
The next wall was made of fricklebrick, which sounds amusing but involves a number of razor-sharp edges shifting frequently and somewhat randomly in their orientation.
As she paused, letting the gloves covering her hands sense the vibrations of the bricks and adjust themselves to countershift accordingly in a gentle grinding born of magic and machinery, she thought about his imagination and ““ not the for the first time ““ contemalted her luck in a mate who had long ago grown blasé with such things and preferred inner qualities of fierceness and determined loyalty.
She wriggled upwards, her features smeared with coalblack to match the midnight shadows around her. This year, she planned to snare something lovely that could not be bought ““ her philosophy of presents was that such things were better assembled by than by coin.
This garden, located on one of the great terraces built along the mountain slope bordering the city to the north, belonged to a recent arrival to the city, a merchant/scientist whose name the Dark kept having tremendous difficulty remembering. This spoke of certain magics laid upon the name to avoid notice, and that was intriguing, and more intriguing yet were the rumors of the contents of the innermost garden, center of three sets of walls, which held a worthy gift.
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First Editing Class: Notes and Observations
The cats remain fascinated by the classes. They can't figure out who I'm talking to.The Editing class is split into three sections. In this first session, we focused on developmental, or “big picture,” editing.
Some people are taking the class in order to edit their own stuff, others to edit for other folks, a couple for a combination of that. We talked about what a developmental edit is intended to do, and how it’s different from a copy-edit. In fact, you want to avoid copy-editing (other than a couple of cases which I’ll get to in a minute) because often that sentence you’re tinkering with will end up discarded or substantially revised in the final version.
Honing your editing ability to where you can trust it is one way to free yourself up when writing. Instead of listening to the internal editor telling you that sentence isn’t perfect or that you need to check that name on Wikipedia before using it, you can assure that editor it will get its chance during the revision process and go on writing.
Developing a process also helps you know when to stop rewriting. I work from the big picture stuff in, moving to small sentence level details in a second or third draft. Usually my process goes like this:
Bang out a first draft. It may have parenthetical directions like (expand on this) or (transition here) or (describe), but it is a complete story.
(Optional but encouraged) Let it sit for a week or two. This is where procrastination can really bite you in the ass.
Print out the draft and write all over it. This is my developmental edit, in which structures may get changes, sections moved (or eliminated), point of view or tense changed, etc. It’s also where all those parenthetical directions get fulfilled.
Entering these changes onto the computer may involve some more tinkering as I do so, but generally I’m working towards another draft that I can print out.
That draft gets printed out and edited again. This stage is where I read aloud and tinker at the sentence and paragraph level. I may changes names at this point, and I’ll do things like look for adverbs (as discussed in The 10% Solution).
I will probably do another read aloud pass after that’s entered into the computer, depending on how hard a deadline is pressing.
More on developmental editing, what it is, how I do it, and how one needs to adapt editing to genres such as hard SF, dark fantasy, horror, etc, in another post.
Ups and downs, characters enduring vicissitudes and working to do their best in spite of them
Book One begins as Shyra, a Dryad, is brought to the city of Tabat in chains, aboard a steamboat. She doesn’t know why she and a handful of her sisters have been brought to the seaport, but she senses that it’s to no good. They’re already enslaved by a social system where humans rule, asserting their Gods-given right over animals and Beasts, the category into which all intelligent magical creatures like Dryads are relegated.
At the same time far to the north on what the Tabatians consider the rough frontier, young Teo is having similar forebodings ““ his sister is very ill and no one will meet his eyes when speaking of the cure. Teo’s already been rejected by the village because he’s failed to exhibit the shapeshifting powers most of them possess. Finally he discovers that he’s been promised to the Temples of the Moon in Tabat as an acolyte/indentured servant if his sister recovers.
Bella Kanto, premier Gladiator of Tabat, finds herself confronted by a disturbing omen in the form of a lobotomized young Centaur that’s been sold to the Brides of Steel, Tabat’s all-female gladiatorial academy. She goes to see her cousin, Leonoa, a prominent Tabatian artist, only to find Leonoa embroiled in a scandalous love affair. Leonoa shrugs aside conversation, struggling to finish up a few last canvases for a show opening in a few days.
Imprisoned in the Duke’s menagerie, Shyra learns that she and the other Dryads are meant to root and become trees, which will be harvested and fed to the great engine that fuels many of Tabat’s technologies, such as the great Waterfall below the Duke’s castle, the mechanized gondola system that moves the inhabitants from one city terrace to another, and the street lights that show any sign of sorcery or shapeshifter activity on the main streets.
Meanwhile, Teo contemplates fleeing the village. He starts out to do so, only to encounter the Moon priest, Nero, to whom he’s been promised on the road. He and Nero embark on the journey and the stern but sympathetic priest tries to instruct him on the matters he’ll need to know to survive life in the Temple. When Nero breaks his leg, progress is slowed, and even more so when he falls prey to a parasitic fairy in the wilderness. When they arrive at a river town, Nero puts Teo aboard a trade boat, the Eloquent Swan, and entrusts the pilot Archis with getting Teo to the city.
Shyra’s escape is more successful. She manages to slip out of the menagerie and make her way outside Tabat, although she is pursued by the Duke’s Huntress, a relentless and skilled tracker. Nonetheless, Shyra makes her way to the mountains to the northeast of Tabat, where she finds a camp of other escaped Beasts.
When a student of hers from the Brides of Steel is killed in a riot, guilt wracks Bella, particularly since she helped instigate the riot. Political unrest haunts the city, caused by upcoming events: the first election of the Mayor of Tabat, at which point the Duke will reluctantly step down and relinquish his hereditary rule. Bella and the head of the Brides of Steel, Myrila, have a severe falling out. Bella feels she’s been let down by Myrila at a time when she’s facing the pressure of the annual Spring Games. If she assumes the role of Winter and wins, as she has for the past fifteen years, spring will not come to Tabat for another six weeks, impacting trade in a way none of Tabat’s merchants appreciate.
The fireworks of Bella’s victory light the sky the night Teo arrives in Tabat, where he’s entrusted by Archis to Skilto, a merchant-mage handling the Swan’s cargo, more Dryad logs bound for the College of Mages. Skilto lets the boy escape during an accident with one of the logs. Skilto gives the boy’s fate little mind. He’s got his own set of problems, with his father threatening to stop paying his tuition to the College unless Skilto agrees to marry. He’s about to investigate the three candidates presented to him: socialite Lilia Delarose, merchant Marta Lavender, and merchant-historian Ariadne Nittlescent.
Shyra adjusts to life among the escaped Beasts. She’s heartened to hear that they have a plan to free Tabat’s Beasts. They will first infiltrate the city, disguised as the members of the Circus of the Autumn Moon, one of many entertainment troupes drawn to Tabat by the political campaigns and the amount of money being spent on courting political favor. She meets the man who will oversee the Moon, sinister and secretive Murga, whose origins are unknown.
Resolute to avoid the semi-enslavement of Temple life and make his own fate in Tabat, Teo wanders the streets and narrowly escapes being press-ganged. He adapts to life on the streets, begging and scavenging food where he can. He is befriended by a young artist, but disaster follows when his shapeshifting powers unexpectedly manifest. Teo finds himself emperiled by agents of the Duke intent on finding sorcerers and shapeshifters in the city and takes refuge in the Autumn Moon.
A troubled Bella tries to divert herself by taking her friend and sometimes lover Ariadne Nittlescent to the opening of Leonoa’s art show. Skilto and Marta arrive as well, only to find the place the site of a riot incited by the political nature of Leonoa’s paintings, which depict Beasts assuming human roles. Aided by two other gladiators, Bella holds the crowd back long enough to let Leonoa and the other attendees escape.
Skilto’s tried two candidates and found them lacking, although he’s drawn into friendship with Marta Lavender’s father Milosh. When he meets Ariadne at a party, he realizes that she’s the one he’s interested in. Ariadne pays him little mind. She’s too busy thinking about the decision her mother Emilee has made to push Ariadne into political office. Ariadne’s occupied enough with the history of Tabat she’s writing and, unbeknownst to her mother, running a lucrative publishing house specializing in lurid accounts of Bella’s adventures. She’s working on a new book as well, Archis’ account of life on a frontier boat.
Bella agrees to a favor for a lover she picked up at the gallery, only to find herself faced with charges of smuggling deadly sorcerous ingredients. The Duke informs her that he’s sending her with an expedition to the frontier at the end of Book One. Bella’s disgrace leads to a rift between Skilto and Ariadne, deepened when Skilto discovers Archis is courting her as well. Murga hints that he knows Teo’s secret, but Teo avoids any direct discussion of it as he fights to fit in with daily circus life.
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RT @Catrambo: WIP: The Mage’s Gift: https://t.co/PZmiUvLyiH