Insanity Comes Naturally: Story Scribblage

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“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”

Over the last several days, Jenny and Abigail and I have at intervals treated with a lively contempt various cliches of modern literature. One of the many mentioned was that of the hero or heroine discovering that he or she possesses the capacity to tame and ride a mythical monster, usually a dragon. I am not saying that in every case this cannot be done originally or sensibly; merely that it has become such a common occurrence that, at least since Eragon, few readers anymore will find themselves taken aback by this "twist" in the story.

What has brought us to this point, where the taming of a fascinating and awe-inspiring beast of fantasy and mythicality tempts us only to yawn? Has mere overuse of a concept stolen all thrill from us? Is such a thrill to be attributed only to the novelty of a thing?

I postulate - nay, I would assert the ways of God to men, and justify eternal Providence, but Milton has done so already; so I shall in my smallish turn assert that the extraordinary fails to be interesting because we have ceased to be interested. What is humorous and entertaining, original and earth-shattering about the interaction between a man and a dragon are not scales nor tails nor claws nor the number of Kelvins contained within the breath of the latter. If the beast is able to converse, then the conversation catches our fancies by telling the tale of Persons everywhere conversing, their foibles and follies and faults. If the beast is dumb and raging, it throws sparks very like a fulfillment of the dominion mandate, telling the tale of reason with love exerted over bestial force. But whatever the size or anthropomorphisms of the dragon, it is not the dragon - never the dragon - that fascinates. The dragon draws the edge of the shadow of truth the tale tells, but it is the man who is most fantastical.

Writers and readers alike, I venture, have lost sight of this, and this is why dragon-riders and all similarly fantastical things wind up so tediously written and tiresome to read. Throw a dragon in merely as a fail-safe to make a story fantastical ("add one dragon and a pinch of villainye"), and the story will be only as fantastical as a dragon. This is why our tales of dragons (along with our sappy romantic novels) reek of tediousness and sawdust when they should ring like bells. And if the writer cannot see beyond the mere trappings of fantasy to the fantastical nature of man, rendered twice-fantastical by virtue of both its fantasticality and its reality, then the reader will not. Some books, as one author put it, tell the truth about its characters, whereas others convey a picture of its author; if the author is bored, the story holds true. A thousand ridden dragons will only multiply the dullness factor a thousandfold.

“It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin,

a creature who does not exist.

It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist

and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.”

Read More 0 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

"I think it was the shape of his coat-tails," he said.

Ms. Rachel, over at The Inkpen Authoress, was kind enough to think of me and ask me a series of questions, a sort of interview-a-la-bloggue. There's nothing like a quiet little chat over tea, and this time I did most of the talking - which was perhaps a little over-stimulating for my dialoguical brain, but terribly fun nevertheless. I hope to return the favor and have her muse a little on my space here. She has a knack for asking questions, I'll say; I was quite tickled by the mental fare she gave!

Here's a smidge of the interview:

What do you look for first as the mark of a good writer?

We could get into a lot of boring discussion on what makes a good this or that, but I have one initial step, a sort of litmus test, that I often find myself taking. That is, to turn to the back cover and read the brief biography of the author. If they're British and deceased, that's generally a good sign.

Thank you once again to Rachel! Take a look at her blog here (or above, for those observant ones), with the interview specifically here.

And so, having laboured all Labour Day, I shall tuck myself to bed and leave all airy, weighty matters for another day. "After all," said Scarlett, "after all - "

But that would be cliche.

Read More 0 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast!

courtesy of deviantart.com

This piece features two of my favourite characters to play with from The Brew; because every misadventuring hero ought to have the acerbic wit of a spinster aunt to keep him steady.

I wrote this quite a while ago, which is funny because between the visit to the seaside and the aunt being named 'Jasmine' - well, there's a lot of facts from present happenings that seem to have insinuated themselves into my past. I thought it fitting. This is part of the backstory, which may or may not affix itself to the beginning of the actual plot...

In England, people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them!

-Oscar Wilde-

Archie’s maternal grandparents had belonged to that incredible class of people who possessed so much practicality that they were able to conjure deeper impracticalities in a moment than any sheerly impractical person might have managed in a lifetime. They named their first daughter Charlotte, a name equipped with a sturdy sort of sweetness very like its owner, and in that they could hardly have been anything but sensible. She grew up to be a very pretty girl, with dark eyes that housed the depths of the universe and a mass of dark hair that might have easily overrun a few lesser galaxies. As soon as all was deemed judiciously proper, she fell as decorously into love as anyone of her sex can be expected to, with a wealthy, titled, landed man of few remarkable looks and many remarkable stories. Of course, she really married him more for the stories and less for the titles and land, but her parents never suspected such an impropriety. She settled at his estate in Steeple, and they did not name their first and only son “Archie,” but he soon acquired the nickname after he went to university.

The younger sister (the very aunt towards whom Archie was now bound for a visit) had a very different story. Her parents in their great quantities of practicality had somehow decided that the name “Jasmine” was altogether right and fitting, and so she had grown up with nicknames like “Jazz” and “Rasberries.” (The latter might have been her own fault more than her name’s.) It was not that Jasmine was a bad name; it simply did not suit her. Somehow, the large eyes and flowing hair escaped her, and the flat, pale-brown tones of hair and eyes never blossomed into anything beyond a passing stranger’s thought, “Well, she’s not bad to look at…” She was as different from her limpid name in personality as in looks. Pigment was not entirely culpable for a perpetually shrewish look in her eyes, and she had a way of hissing “men!” like a curse word under her breath which eligibles of said sex found quite off-putting.

Jasmine Upton’s fate was therefore sealed: a spinster and the favourite aunt. It did not matter to Archie or to her that she was the only aunt; both lived in full assurance that, had the former twenty aunts, it would not have been otherwise. She lived in her family’s comfortable estate in the wooded hills of North Chelsea, only a few hours’ ride from the northwest seashores.

The prospect of visiting the seaside was enough to delight the heart of any young man between the ages of ten and thirty, much less one living in the middle of Chelsea’s flatlands, but there existed a kinship between aunt and nephew deeper than a boy’s love for running out of doors. Such a bond sprang not wholly out of the lofty estimation of the aunt in the nephew’s eyes. Archie had somehow borrowed her unremarkable looks in spite of being the son of her more striking sister, and out of this came a maternal instinct towards her nephew on the spinster’s part. What was more, she discovered early on that the lad was clever.

Their first breakfast of this particular holiday together contained such familial conversationalisms as characterized all their dealings.

“Darjeeling—”

“Please, Aunt, my friends call me Archie.”

“Your friends—whom I have yet to meet, I might point out, though I have run into one or two stupid collegiate babes-in-arms who blithered on as if they might have some claim to acquaintance with you—may call you what they will. I, as your aunt, have not the capacity to be so disagreeable, and may call you ‘High Supreme Lord Darjeeling Falcon’ if I so please.”

Archie tried very hard to look displeased and failed. He settled for stuffing his face with marmalade and toast.

“Now, Darjeeling, what will you do with yourself after you finish this six-year spell of trying your wits in the company of dolts?”

Aunt Jasmine did not think much of the current academic system, but if that had ever bothered Archie he had come to see things her way long since. He set his teacup down carefully and fixed his aunt with a grave stare. “Thank you,” he said at last, before returning to his breakfast.

She did not blink. “You are welcome, of course, though I’ll thank you not to use my honest questions as excuses for you to play the enigma.”

Archie hastened to explain. “Thank you for asking me what I meant to do with myself. Most people ask what I mean to do with my degree, and I feel as though it ought to be some great, malleable substance, which I may turn into a grand sculpture or a set of new drains. But the depths of my organs (especially during breakfast) instinctively inform me that my degree will be little more than a piece of paper for service, and while I’m a dab hand at paper hats and boats neither of those will do very well for keeping my head or my toes dry – let alone my belly full!”

“Really, Archie, if one didn’t know you were so clever one would think you fearfully stupid. Not that I’m certain there’s a vast difference, mind,” she added, giving him an ironic look over her slanted spectacles. She gave him those looks every now and then, the sort that made him wonder if she were not fully capable of turning him into a toad on a whim. The speculation struck him as delightful rather than frightful. “My sister is not clever enough to be less clever, and her late husband—God rest his soul!—had the same problem, and consequentially you felt bound to outclever them both. Now, if I had had the raising of you—”

“My dear aunt, if you had raised me, you would find me insufferable. I count it one of the better parts of my life that you did not have a hand in my upbringing; it has made us so much the better friends.”

His aunt contemplated the notion at the bottom of her teacup. “True,” she conceded at last. “I shan’t pry into your future. I leave it to you to rush in where angels fear to tread. Only tell me you don’t mean to go on dwelling in a state of academia indefinitely. Academics are like narcotics, or perhaps the plague. If you didn’t mean to get out sooner rather than later, I should have to disown you, which wouldn’t put you off terribly, but it would inconvenience me tremendously. A fate worse than death, really,” her face grew as grave as Archie had ever seen it before: “I would have to rewrite my will. I can’t stand the sight of my lawyer, much less the sound; he grows more portly and dead-eyed and monologue-bound by the century – not that Tetley & Sons isn’t a good firm, or the most lucrative in the country. All the same, I’m glad you did not study law.”

Archie absorbed the statement and then selected the least irrelevant of all its contents as the subject of his next statement: “I believe I’m graduating with a Tetley. He studies law and complains perpetually about working for his father’s firm.”

For perhaps the first time in his acquaintance with his aunt, she looked extremely anxious. “I hope you’re not particularly acquainted with the boy!”

“Acquainted, but there is little soul-sharing between us.”

“That’s a mercy, then, for he’s certain to be a bore after a year at his father’s firm. That is why you must never tempt me to disown you, for I don’t care to summon my lawyer to my side ‘til after my flesh really begins to decay. And then, Darjeeling, I fear you will have to suffer his presence, though I warn you to spend no more time with him beyond the reading of the will. I’ve tried to make it a sprightly document, but Tetley Sr. could make anything a frightful bore, and those things are catching!”

“Do you mean, Aunt Upton, that after ten minutes’ conversation I might find myself portly and over-fond of the sound of my own voice?”

“I am quite certain the latter is already true,” his aunt gave him a glare, the same glare she had found effective in her youth at withering the hopes and self-confidence of at least fifteen careless young men at once. Her nephew, she noted with not a little pride, seemed to find the strength of such ire supremely amusing. Still, she rallied her disgruntlement enough to add, “I don’t think there’s ever much a chance of your being portly; the proportions of your paternal line saw to that. Still, life is full of uncertainties.”

The conversation was laid to rest after that, most likely due to the fact that Archie made a point of eating two or three times his usual amount of morning feed. This did not escape the notice of the aunt, who decided that persistent valor in the face of an impending danger was one of his better qualities. She braced herself for an entertaining fortnight.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Dusting of the Pen: A Few Pale Threads of Varying Ambiguity

(these paragraphs are not chronologically or necessarily connected in any way)

He looked at the little weapon, shining with all the marks of carefully crafted deadliness. It had been gifted him when he took his oath as an inspector, and he had sworn to use it in the service of bringing criminals to justice. “I have taken vows to my King, Inspector," he said a little hoarsely, and the words (though certainly true) seemed to smell a little like a long-dead thing coming from his mouth. “I am bound by duty to carry it in the pursuit of justice, for a little longer at least.”

It was one of those mornings where, upon waking up, things were plainly Not Quite Right. Nothing so innocuous as everything being Totally Wrong - just the slight off-set to the way things Ought To Be, like a sentence that presents an otherwise grammatically correct front amidst a blur of Moderately Unsettling Misapplication of Otherwise Acceptable Standards of Grammar. Even when Nurse poured the milk into Lady Jane’s tea, though she poured exactly the proper amount and neither a drop more nor less, she seemed to be pouring it backwards. The perplexing indefiniteness of the Not Quite Right state of things only contributed to the state of things, and by the time half-ten had come Jane was beside herself with that worst sort of anxiety that knows neither cause nor effect, but does quite well at being there nonetheless.

She gave him a look in her good-natured manner of disapproval. “I’m glad you didn’t rush to my rescue,” the reply conveyed not a little relief. “Such a scheme, if it didn’t get all the wrong people killed, would at least have certainly gone straight to your head—which would have been an unhappy ending enough for any night.” And then, quite unexpectedly, she buried her face into the lapels of his coat (which she was somehow now wearing) and began to cry.

"A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit;

how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!"

-Twelfth Night-

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

I think, after such an undeniably long absence from my own shabby art of blogging, that a bit of rambling and ranting on the miseries of the Dread Writer's Block'd'arts would be justifiable. But I'm not going to talk about that; instead, I'm going to talk about why I'm not talking about that, and thus probably spend more time talking about it than I would if I weren't not talking about it.

Clever, clever. I know.

There is a part of me that is inclined to dispute that such a thing as writer's block exists at all - or at least, that it is a phrase tossed around too often without any clear meaning. It seems doubtful whether or not that part of a person which makes them a writer (if such a part exists, and one is not merely writer) can be somehow temporarily cut off from functioning. If I may tediously make an analogy, the mark of the mother is her deeply-rooted share in the affairs of her household and its members, and though the household would surely fall apart if the functional acts of caring for the house and its occupants did not take place, she does not cease to be a mother when she sits down for five minutes' rest.

Similarly, I suspect that what makes one person a writer has more to do with his share in the literary and less to do with the actual, functional part of setting words onto paper. The latter is important, of course, but it is not complete. Back to the tedious analogy, one does not say a woman has "mother's block" in those moments when she is too disorganized and weary to decide what needs to be done next. One may say that she is being lazy, or that she does not possess the skills to maintain her home, but those are very different things than saying that she is "blocked." Put in those terms, the idea of a "block" seems a very passive sort of excuse.

(Here one gets a little too close to treading on one's own toes for comfort... )

Taking the role of writer to mean something closer to one who has an appetite for words literarily set to paper than one who has an appetite for literally setting words to paper, I then suspect that nine times out of ten when the word "blocked" leaves my mouth, it is not only a passive excuse but something unduly blamed. If a writer has merely ceased to produce words, it does not necessarily follow that a full block has set in. Now, if a writer ceases to write and read, and simply mucks about in a stew of mediocre thoughts and reality television, then I suppose he may fairly refer to his whole writing self as effectively blocked. But, once again, a little change in habits will quickly fix that, without trusting to the return of fickle inspiration. He may turn off the television and begin to read again, trusting that his appetite will return shortly.

I fear I have set my thoughts toward a conclusion on my Unwritingness that is more to my own shame than anyone else's. I have read, but I have little more to show in writing from the last three months than a few scraps of sentences far-flung among my many battered notebooks. And yet I have not simply been too busy to look at my sundry Word documents of ill-promise; I can recall several instances over the last few weeks, at least, where I spent quantities time scrolling through them and ... for what?

Pecking without promise - that is how I would describe ventures into my stories of late. Opening a document with the intentions of scrolling to the end and moving forward, and somehow always finding myself lost in a sentence somewhere in the already-written portion, chipping away towards some ideal of perfection as if that sentence were the only sentence in the story. I have not written very much, and still I could spend hours in editing. I write, but I do not move forward; surely this is classifiably blockage.

But I have gone too far in the paragraphs beforehand to leave it at that, and I begin to think (uncomfortably) that "writer's block" is simply another name for a far less excusable condition. If I look at my so-called block, I find that lack of inspiration cannot be blamed. Too often I am unable to write because the story might not be good enough for me to have written it, and unable to read because I do not wish to be still and contemplate the fact that someone else might be God. There - behind every tale of my writer's-block woe - there it is. When I am blocked, it is merely that same unbelieving pride that felled humanity, now speaking in me: "I am only a writer when I put something forth, not when I receive." This same pride must make something of itself now, must write the story now, must not be called upon to wait and to listen. Not having something to say cannot be a divinely-granted privilege to be still and know that He is God. I must be allowed to write; I must be allowed to produce; I must be allowed to follow my Christian calling and construct something worthy of my own approval...

And I wonder if, buried in all this dissection of distasteful negativity, one might find the true calling of a Christian writer: beyond simply not writing smutty books (though this is important), and beyond even the production of excellent writing with beautiful themes of truth. I do not deny the value of clean, excellent, meaningful writing; I think I must deny its wholeness as a calling. They are but a handful of words from one sentence in a story of which I am not the author. To treat them as the most important sentence, and to spend a multitude of hours editing and re-editing my presentation of symbols and themes as though it were the summary of my calling as a Christian writer - as if I, who have been given everything that is anything, must somehow forge my own worth when it comes to my craft....

What is the job of the Christian writer? Is it not to spy the roots of unbelief and pride which (though dead) still linger in the fiber of who I am as a writer and not wall myself off from the reality of them with red herrings of a supposed "block?" Can I call myself a 'Christian' writer if in the act writing I persist in seeing falsely, forgetting that in all things literary or otherwise I am called first and foremost not to do something for God, but to revel in the works of another on my behalf, and so kill sin and love Jesus? Is this not the true calling of a Christian (writer): more than sacrifices and burnt offerings, more than dedications in the front of books naming the name of Jesus, and far more even than stories that depict Christian values and redemptive themes in an excellent manner?

In a job that is often centered on mystery and imagination and the ability to produce catchy, exciting things, it is all too easy to fall back on the folly of Digory's Uncle Andrew and proclaim that "ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny." Pagan writers and movie-makers, believing this, have produced plotlines exalting people with similar destinies, and these are the tales of our generation: thousands upon thousands, tributes to the bent nature of twisted selfishness and blind anarchy that seem to ever only ape greatness and never reach the mark. The self-made writer with his glorious 'Christian' calling may evade such follies in writing, but in being he joins Uncle Andrew and the pagans. What if he gains a whole book, and loses his soul?

Let us be as kind as we can. Let us take this Christian writer with his brash ideals and aspirations of Christian writing, and set him alongside the sons of Thunder, asking it be given him to sit beside Christ in glory. And then the trouble with a self-made destiny becomes clear. The flaw is not that it is too high or too lonely; rather, that our self-conceived destinies are bound too close to the earth by the weight of sin, and so too crowded by sins and miseries. We cannot be high or lonely enough. It is not within the powers of our imagination or creativity to transcend such a weight as the pride of unbelief - not when the desire to do so originates in that same pride. The Christian writer has only to bind Micah 6:8 across his forehead and about the doorposts to his heart, and then be still and know that Christ is God. Because then Jesus will certainly turn and ask if this bold scribe is ready to drink of His cup, as indeed it will be given to His own to drink: a far higher and far lonelier destiny than anything dreamed of by Uncle Andrew or the pagan storytellers or the sons of Thunder, telling the tale of foolishness that shames wisdom and weakness that shames strength.

"But indeed, words are very rascals

since bonds disgraced them."

-Shakespeare-

Read More 1 Comment | scribbled by Unknown

Scribbled Snippets: Mad as a March Harrowing

“Preparing to sacrifice myself to the imbecilic causes of society,” replied Archie, his face like that of the man who discovered hope’s sepulchre. -Beginnings

Their eyes met, and he found no sympathy in the other’s gaze, only a singular earnestness and clarity of understanding. The look was like the statement that followed: “A providential stalemate, I call that. Not that there is nothing to be done about it; rather, you have no excuse for sulking.” -The Brew

“That is a novel idea—if by novel you mean no less than a hundred of them, all written by over-imaginative females and no longer selling well.” -Beginnings

“Peace in small things and small steps - not just patience, girl, but peace. You must seek it not only in the calm in a squall, but also in the soaring wings of the symphony that's meant to light up your ears when all the songs of your life clang like water torture. Not a maelstrom of emotions, nor even refuge from the same in tedium: peace. He gave it to you - entrusted it to you. If you are unhappy, it is because you have buried it when you should be spending it. That bed of dirt beneath which you have hidden it, all your sensations of normalcy and control - that is not peace. Yet peace is yours; you cannot live without it, and you cannot get it without breaking the sod of a well-ordered facade. Are you unhappy? Small wonder! You might as well bury your kidneys and then wonder why you feel wretched." -Unknown

To the solitary man trudging along the dim road, the figures of farmers and herdsmen could be seen slowly plodding from their doors, bringing their wearily blinking lanterns and offspring in tow. -Beginnings

“I do not deny that,” Falcon ran a hand across his face and flung it up in a gesture of surrender. “In my defense, I have always intended strictly—strictly—to avoid taking advantage of the situation, but what of such a defense? Can I deny that by such intentions I have very effectively gone about paving a road to the very hell of hells? I cannot, nor would I. A fool I may be; better a fool than a coward ingrown on a diet of lies.” -The Brew

His schedule he kept meticulous; his living quarters could not have looked more untidy if the four walls were removed and their contents deposited haphazardly in an alley. The person who rented him the room regularly wondered if the latter event might not constitute an improvement. -Beginnings

“How does one know one’s mind in these things?” The words, finding no suitable exit point through ink, burst from his mouth as he flung the pen across the dismal blank page of half-an-hour’s struggle. “I do not mean that I do not know what I want; I know that perfectly well, with maddening specificity. But to know my wants; that is, to know not only what objects they turn towards but also the comparative rightness or wrongness of the same, whether in them I am deceived or perverse – to weigh them in such a balance with accuracy before action – that is another thing.” -The Brew

“You speak very surely of divine whatevers.” -The Brew

And so Archie walked and let the lad ramble on about his girl and his girl’s frightful father and the rigmarole of their courtship. The perpetually plaintive edge to the other’s voice rubbed Archie quite the wrong way, and he began to progress beyond mild irritation to genuine dislike. ‘I shall wring his neck presently if he does not stop for air soon,’ he thought after a desperate quarter of an hour, but his own courtesy and the gradually accumulating lack of breath on Teddy’s part interceded for a peaceful ending, and Archie found himself clapping his unsullied hands together and saying to a thoroughly living Teddy, with a carelessness that betrayed nothing of the relief he felt, “Look, there’s the college church ahead of us. Good old Belleek, I say!” -Beginnings

“It's your damned pride. No, don't flinch; I'm swearing truly, not vainly. You can ignore what I say in a fussy mock-up of scruples over my language, or you can be instructed by it. Your pride is damned - either it was crucified two thousand years ago and you will keep on killing it, or it lives with you and is waiting to be damned with you. Either way, it's your damned pride, and it's got to go. Take it off, with all your frugal morals and petty expectations. They don't suit you now, and they certainly won't wear well in eternity. You must learn to dress for that, you know, and of course it can't be with your own things - that's why the damned Pride has to go.” -Unknown

The only stop where he did not get off was Derby, and that from principle. Derby housed Belleek’s rival college, and while Archie did not care much about the rivalry he was fond of his few irrational scruples, as some men are fond of cigars. So he spent the time on the train with his upturned nose in a third-rate paper, amusing himself with the state of politics among the ignorant. -Beginnings

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Beautiful People: February Edition!

It's been a while since I pulled one of these out of my hat, and it's February. (Reason to blog #346: It allows one to state the obvious and feel like one has Said Something. And there aren't nearly that many reasons to blog.)

darjeeling falcon

(see: pretentious rhubarb)

photo courtesy of imdb.com

1. If your character could be played by any actor, who would it be? Stephen Campbell Moore, of Amazing Grace (2006) unfame. Either that or Jamie Bell, only he would have to lighten his hair a bit.

2. Does your character have a specific theme song? If you mean something like 'dunnadunnadunnadunnaFALCON!' - no, not as such. I seem to remember ascribing Coldplay's How You See The World to him at one point in time, though, and that still works.

3. What’s their worst childhood memory? I don't know. One doesn't wish to simply invent these things for the sake of questionnaires. I'm not sure Falcon ever had a proper childhood - or perhaps he did, but forgot it. It would be like him.

4. If your character had a superpower, what would it be? Mind-reading. He would sit and bore people through with his stare. Either that or the ability to set anyone's pocket-watch awry at a whim; he does have a mildly vicious sense of humour.

5. If your character crashed on an island with a bunch of other people, how would your character help the group survive? If Falcon were stranded with a random group of people (and, I assume, no kettle), he would probably be surreptitiously left behind, by everyone's design and no one's intention more so than his own. But all would be better and probably survive because of it; he's in no fit state for company without his tea. Things Happen.

6. Are they married? If not, do they someday wish to be? No. I think he intends to be, but he's not really the fervently-wishing sort. Pining wouldn't suit him; he prefers oak or cedar.

7. What is a cause they would die for? Falcon does not die for causes. For people, perhaps - but not causes.

8. Would they rather die fighting valiantly, or quietly at home? Well, it has to be home. Why else would he fight valiantly?

9. If someone walked up to them and told them they were the child of the prophecy, would they believe them? Seeing as Chelsea is a fairly Christian nation with no standing, unfulfilled prophecies, probably not. Genuine seers are neither necessary nor regular; drunks and liars are the more frequent happenstance.

10. Do they prefer the country or the city? He prefers to be left alone, wherever he is, which happens more readily in the country.

Had the sun burst suddenly from its hiding place, it would have revealed a lanky frame in a long flapping coat, more the comic than the villain. No hat covered his head, only a limp pile of pale brown that failed to strike even the most fervent female heart as anything more romantic than mere hair. Just below the hair, a slight expanse of forehead slid lazily toward a nose that was decidedly not grotesque. His mouth had too much modesty to give him any distinction (except when he smiled, and then it seemed so frail and broad at once that it made people uncomfortable), and his ears hid beneath the unimaginative hair. In short, there was nothing interesting about his appearance except his eyes; those peered from his boyishly bland face with an air of more years than the rest of him could possibly claim, giving him the look of a walking anachronism.

-Beginnings, A.F.

Read More 3 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

"The aim of a mystery story, as of every other story and every other mystery, is not darkness but light."

Another excerpt, because I haven't much brains for anything else and I feel badly for leaving the dust to collect so long as I have already.

This is further along in the story than even I have gotten, so you may ask your 'why?' and your 'wherefore?' but I may not be able to answer, whether I have a will to or no. I hate giving things away this early, but Chesterton stabbed me with a little conviction, so I'm trying forthcomingness for a change.

And this one is especially for Abigail H., because it's her birthday - though if it delights her at all it may equally vex.

[the tea story: an awkward excerpt]

“What are you doing here, madame?” His voice fell somewhere in the dull region between accusation and injury. I determined that such dullness would not quench the liveliness of my response.

“What are you doing here, sir? Or, more to the point, what are you doing in these?” I flung the jumble of letters at his feet, the accusation in the gesture belying the quietness of my tone.

If this startled him, he did not betray it. “Neither of you needed to be privy to that information.” The dull chill that settled over his tone was far worse than before. It had an edge that struck me as contemptuous. “And whatever I might have known or done in the past, it does not excuse your behavior in the present—the deceit you have willfully practiced before the whole nation, not the least of whom being the Lord Regent, and the way you have turned this sham to cloud the very eyes of justice.”

“I rather wonder if the eyes of justice would hold rather less concern for you, if clouding them did not mean clouding yours.”

“I have distanced myself from this situation. I am fully prepared to do my duty.”

“Duty! Will duty contradict these? Ink and paper!” I cried, flinging my hand towards the pile of letters. “Sheets and sheets of them—and the thicker the stack the thinner the distance, don't you think, Inspector Falcon?”

“I suppose you have read them, in keeping with your infamous masquerade.”

“Of course I haven’t read them! I came here to give you the benefit of the doubt—I came here because he said I might, and he’s the only reason I’ve done any of this at all—and he seemed to know you. But I suppose such things will be flung back in my face; the eyes of justice, after all, have been clouded—but not by me—oh, no, not by me!”

“You can only accuse me of so much as you have caused.”

“I can only accuse you of being less of a brother than I supposed, and more an irksome acquaintance; and even for that I can blame you very little. The true traitors were my feelings, my misperceptions of what I thought to be your undeniable affection for my father and myself, as a gentleman and a friend.”

That must have wounded him, but his face told me nothing. He drew up his chest in a manner very like one of my uncles. “Your honor being called into question as it is—”

“A true brother would die for his sister’s honor before he believed it disgraced, if he spoke truly when he claimed to believe it worth anything in the first place.”

“Then I am sorry I cannot live up to your expectations,” he said, planting that idiotic hat firmly on his head and getting up as if to leave. “Your character has not lived up to my expectations, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t think too much of your disappointments just now.”

His voice held that infernal quality of carelessness that he seemed able to summon with the snap of his fingers. Such aloofness I found impossible in moments like these, and I sprang to my feet and dealt him a mortal blow—not with my fists, though I might have, if my fists were capable of such things! “Your mother knew.”

He reeled visibly at that. His mouth opened and snapped shut three or four times. Finding him at such a satisfyingly complete loss for words, I continued.

“She approved the plan. It stands to reason.” I flapped a weary hand. “I cannot do anything without some Falcon’s approval. But perhaps your mother’s honor is not good enough for you either—perhaps we have not enough honor, or sense, or integrity, or fashion between the two of us to merit your affection.” The sheen of carelessness was broken now, a streak of red darkening without heed to symmetry across one side of his face. Whether it came from anger or grief, I could not tell, but neither could I stop. “You are the wise inspector, after all. You are the one of such high ideals and noble presentiments. Perhaps you love your mother for the sake of shared blood; lacking any such claim, I suppose I am doomed perpetually to inspire disgust.”

“Ingrid!” Falcon sprang at me. I thought for a moment that he might strike me after all—perhaps justifiably so—but he only flailed his hands about the region of my shoulders, as if to shake me without physically doing so. “Ingrid, Ingrid—don’t you see? I don’t care what mother thinks; you’re on the wrong side of this, and I’ve got to turn you in. You fool! You and mother both! Why can’t women be sensible? Why must they always be creating an everlasting conundrum between duty and affection?”

“The conundrum was always there,” I shrugged my shoulders well beyond his flailing hands. “You created it when you gave me that stupid job, and I when I let you. The investigative department never approved secretaries—and that’s what I was. Of course you were honorable about it, but the rules are meant to apply to everyone, regardless of motives. So we’d always have been here, with our best of motives and worst means of following them, and one of us pinned to the proverbial wall. Only I think you always expected to be the one pinned, and that’s why you’re angry, isn’t it? It’s me instead of you. I’ve a feeling you wouldn’t be screaming at me about honor if it were otherwise, and I appreciate that—I do, truly—but we can’t change things now. So—so—” I choked, and a few tears splashed down my face before I realized they had gathered in my eyes. “So before you shake your fist and bellow about the clouded eyes of justice at me again, remember: we started the pattern long ago—and it was your idea. Don’t pretend I’m doing something original. That’s unjust and untrue. Take your share of the blame and the consequences as a man, at least, if you will not as a gentleman.”

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

The Perilous Prosperity of Writing Ahead

[lighthearted nonsense]

Yorkshire’s loom lost a little of its pleasantry. “I am not a horse.” His words fell as stiffly as the lines of his neck and back prickled. “I am a stallion – meaning a great deal more pride, skill, patriotic spirit, and mostly (and mind you pay very close attention to this one) the complete and total lack of any ability on anybody else’s part to refer to me as a ‘horsie.’”

[homely horrors]

Just over Falcon’s shoulder, I caught sight of the fallen figure of a woman, limp as the white apron flung over her face. A white cap peeped out above the overturned apron hem, and under the sash her dress was homely and simple—a faded blue, except for a splash of scarlet-brown…

A heavy silence fell over the little group in the dingy greenhouse, broken at last by Falcon clapping a hand on Ceylon’s shoulder. “Well, my friend, you have got your murder at last.” He gave a caustic laugh.

The Hound said nothing, but sighed through his teeth with a hiss that spoke more than three or four pithy curses.

[fleeting introspection]

There it was, at the bottom of the tangle of his motives: the unswerving intent to do the right thing, whatever the cost, whatever the means. Only now it seemed to him that the rightness of any thing remained inextricably twined with the cost and means and motive; it was all of them and none of them at once. He longed desperately for his father to come back and slap him and tell him what he ought to do. Yet, in truth, he was terrified of what that might be. He was terrified of his inability to accomplish it.

All that blurred through his mind in an instant. For a half-a-moment, he shook with an indecision that struck him as feminine – but it was only half a moment. Then the feeling vanished, replaced by the familiar sense of knowing that if he did not set out to do the job – whatever it was – it would never be done. He stuck the much-disparaged green hat onto his head; perhaps it ought to have given him a pang, but he did not notice. The loaded pistol in Falcon’s coat pocket received a reassuring pat as he collected his feet and slipped down the stairs.

Is any of this certifiably usable? I don't know. That's the fun of it.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Writers and taggers and blogs, oh my!

[lawfully plundered at www.deviantart.com]

Jenny tagged me. I have beaten this dead horse long enough, I am sure, but here it goes again: another glimpse of The Brew. I mean to do a post very like this on my latest blight of a story, but I have not had enough time to spend on it and so this will have to suffice. If you are very tired of Falcon and company, I am sorry.

1. Who are the main characters?

Ingrid Brewster: writer and typist. Darjeeling Falcon: Government Investigator, and Ingrid's employer and oldest friend. Lady Jane Grey: The Woman Who Has Disappeared, thus creating a Case and a Plot and all sorts of conundrumish things.

2. How did you get the idea for this story?

It started with a whimsical idea of a falcon named Darjeeling, a hound named Ceylon, and a stallion named Yorkshire Gold. Then it turned into a series of silly tales involving animals who talked (all named after tea) and a girl named Jane. That story supplied a vignette or two and then stalled for many moons. But! On a day full of fate (and many other things which would be much more interesting to mention but entirely irrelevant), I was watching a hawk and trying to glean inspiration when the animals turned into people, and something entirely Other was born. That something entirely Other is... this.

3. What genre is this story?

It's how I write, that's what it is.

4. Describe your book in three thoughts:

Who knows more of mystery - the detective or the writer? No, what I mean to say is, forget the cigar ash, Holmes, and pay attention to the story. And keep an eye out for the barber; he'll be back.

5. The bit that describes an obscure piece of real life best:

Approaching (the house) at dusk on foot might have seemed gloomy and imposing to most, but I had done so many times before and the sight inspired fondness.On an impulse, I left the yawning drive and trotted across the lawn. The indefinite blue-black of the sky filled the very air and I, breathing it in, felt myself as much a part of this hour as an errant bat or the rattling frogs down by the lake.

6. The funniest line said by a side-character thus far:

I don't know about the funniest, but I find Darjeeling's mother rather amusing. I have good fun with her heavily-italicized lectures.

“I know you’re comfortable on the doorstep, Darjeeling, but some people can’t always be leaning on some wall or other. They’ve invented chairs for that!”

7. Your favourite piece of description:

“Yorkshire Gold, that’s my name a’right,” said the four-legged figure, looming above the little girl as cordially as any large creature in a dark forest can be expected to loom.

8. Your biggest fear in the writing of this story:

Paper cuts and carpal tunnel. Writing is a desperate, dangerous business.

9. Last full sentence you wrote:

The loaded pistol in Falcon’s coat pocket received a reassuring pat as he got to his feet and slipped down the stairs.

(Dum dum DUM...!)

10. Favourite character thus far:

York, bless his literary hooves! I can't tell you exactly why; that would spoil it. Suffice it to say he's one of those chaps who doesn't get the best lines but manages to burst in and do all the right things anyway.

11. What books have been written or have you read that are similar in style and flavour to your novel?

I'm afraid it's probably a shameless mixture of Sayers' Wimsey, Chesterton's Syme, and A.A. Milne's Winnie-ther-Pooh.

12. If it was destined to become a book on tape, who would you wish to read it?

Oh, bother! If I thought it was destined to become a book on tape, I would not write it. Seriously; I have a general apathy bordering on aversion to most audiobooks, but in this particular instance a man's voice reading Ingrid's perspective would be rubbish, and the idea of a woman reading any of the lads' lines is ridiculous.

Lady Jane thought this a rather silly reason

to insist on the one term over the other,

but four hooves seemed quite a large number to argue with

over trifles.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

New Endeavors: A Dark and Hatless Night

A thick, wet wind beat against the pane of the front window of The Crown & Scepter, its fury matching the scowl on the face of the tavern’s only other patron. Mr. Nathaniel Haywood sat at the table in the window brooding over his mug of cocoa. He said nothing to me as I entered; he did not appear to notice me at all.

“Never had a gentleman ask for a cup of chocolate before.” The red-haired waitress lingering near Haywood’s table gestured to the mug before him. She laughed a little self-consciously, resting an empty tray against one hip and a slim hand on the other. “Not that that means much! I’ve just started this job three days ago. I didn’t know we had cocoa. ‘Twas Mr. Crown, the proprietor, who took it as an impertinence regarding the establishment’s cellars. I knew no better.”

“A man ought to keep a clear mind.” Nathaniel held fast to his terseness, obviously hoping the lady would take a hint.

“If by that you mean you ought to do so, why come to an establishment that serves alcohol in the first place?” she persisted. “Anyway, you don’t look respectable enough to worry about a few drinks.”

“Don’t I?” queried Nathaniel. “No, don’t apologize. I understand. I suppose I do look like a scoundrel. Believe me when I tell you, a year ago today, you would not have found me thus. I don’t wonder you find me quite the ruffian, seeing that I lack the indispensable mark of every respectable gentleman.”

She cast a doubtful eye over the dilapidated state of his coat and trousers and frowned. “That indispensable mark being…?”

“How can you ask such a question?” The man stared incredulously. “My head, woman! I lack a hat! Do not say you did not notice my hatless state! So!” He gestured from his empty head to the bare hat-peg beside the door behind him. “Why have I no hat?”

The girl laughed and threw up her hands good-naturedly. “I don’t know! Why have you no hat?”

“Stolen!” thundered Nathaniel, and the sky outside echoed with a resounding peal. He seized his mug and swallowed half its contents in apparent fury. The heat of it took him by surprise, and he choked desperately for several minutes. The lack of oxygen had its quieting effect on him, and, when he could breathe again, he continued more calmly. “Yes, someone stole my hat, in this very room. Truly, it made a beautiful hat; you could hardly not know it if you saw it. The body of it consisted of a green felt, softened by years of my silly habit of playing with it. It had a brown band with gold-brown feathers tucked in on one side. The brim gave just the right amount of shade, without falling too far over my eyes. And – the color suited me, or so some said.”

Here his voice faded wistfully into silence, and he stared out the window. Though he kept his back to me, I fancied I saw the bittersweet fondness in his eyes, reflected in the rain-soaked pane. Then he seemed to collect himself, cleared his throat gruffly, and finished. “In short, it seemed to me perfection embodied in a hat. It made me feel quite the gentleman. To even consider replacing it feels like betrayal.”

“Who stole it?”

“Some ill-favored idiot who frequented here at least once,” growled Nathaniel, suddenly glaring at his apron-wearing companion as if she had perpetrated the crime. “Once was enough. I know not who; I drank overmuch, and it happened as I slept in my chair. Your Mr. Crown said he did not know who had taken it. Some day, I tell myself, the thief will think I have forgotten and wear it. But I do not forget, and I watch and wait. I come every Tuesday, as I cannot come every night; ‘twas taken on a Tuesday, and so I have kept watch here the last fifty-two Tuesdays together.”

The barmaid thumped the table with her tray and snorted. “Fifty-two? Do you mean to tell me that you have spent a year waiting for a hat?” She winked at me sharply, and I felt myself ignorant of some enormous joke, as if I had put on my suspenders backwards and forgotten to laugh about it.

“I do not mean anything; I tell you plainly. A crazy idea, I suppose—fitting for a crazy man, as you must think me.” As the man spoke, I remembered the wet coat on my back and turned to remove and place it on the stand, but I kept stealing a glance or two at the pair, for they had taken my interest.

“Aye, I think you a crazy man,” laughed she, “but not for the hat. I will tell you why I think you mad. Here you sit, having waited for a year and perhaps preparing to wait another five for a hat to walk in here on the head of some bloke. Who knows? It might come tonight, and you would prepare for such a meeting tonight by filling your belly with cocoa!” The waitress tossed her head, and I wondered if the man had yet noticed how her red hair fell past her shoulders and her eyes held sparks of amber. “I would say that no drink on earth could muddy your mind any more than you have already muddied it. Stop your sulking, and have you a drink.” She seized her tray and spun back around toward the kitchen. “The house will afford you the first; after that, I cannot promise.”

Nathaniel sat a moment in silence. “Maybe she speaks rightly,” he said aloud to himself at last. “Better a little bravado than a dull mind; mine will not clear, anyway.” Then, as if with sudden resolution, he seized his mug and rose, tossing its contents over his back toward the open doorway—that is, towards me. Before I had time to recover, the tepid liquid hit the threshold floor at my feet, splashing cocoa all over my shoes and trousers. My hat, newly removed from my head, flew from my startled fingers and fell at the feet of the pretty red-haired barmaid, where it lay in a heap of worn green felt and golden-brown feathers.

An apology dead on his lips, Nathaniel Haywood replaced the cocoa mug on the table with a gentle click and turned from the doorway and the girl to the storm-filled window. A strange look of satisfaction came over his face. Only the eyes in his reflection remained bright with the great clarity of irony.

“Aha,” I heard him say.

Then he turned again to face me.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Lighthearted Scribbles and Metaphysical Whatsits

“Typewriter idle, Miss Brewster?”

I jumped, but it was only Falcon. For half a second, I considered being infuriated. He invariably stepped heavily up those stairs on the day when I needed peace, and then stole in behind me whenever I found myself in the midst of something foolish. Then I noted the worn aspect of his eyes, and I felt a twinge of compassion. I doubted whether he paid much attention to my silliness. I felt the vanity of my own ire, and softened still more towards him.

“Only waiting for you. Do you have something for me to draft immediately, sir?”

“You needn’t feel sorry for me, Miss Brewster. The Inspector Hound and I kept late hours the last night; my poor mother struggled to rise at her usual wee hours this morning, because she would stay up to put the fires in their proper state after we were through jawing. There is something about this business I cannot shake…” He placed one hand on the desk. I watched as he moved the other in a sleepy gesture to his pocket and withdrew a paper. This went into the top right drawer with a sudden, fluid movement that belied his previous laziness. Perhaps it was simply one of Falcon’s mood quirks. He had been very particular about my not opening that drawer the previous day. But he never liked having his messes fussed with; it disrupted his organized chaos, he said, for someone else to impose their inferior idea of order onto it.

“Miss Brewster?”

I blinked stupidly. Apparently, I had missed something. “Sir?”

“I only asked whether you slept well last night. Shall I take that as a no?”

“I find myself easily lost in thought this morning, sir, though I fear I cannot attribute it to such cheerful causes of late entertainment as you and the Inspector Hound.”

“The discussion of a stupid case in a stupid town are hardly cheerful,” he said, and then frowned. “Are you often alone in the evenings?”

“Except when the suitors call, but they are always gone by nightfall,” I scoffed. “Gooseberry! Who would come to see me?”

“Mother and I have been remiss.”

“Rot. I do not have any means of entertaining you. I like being alone.”

“How utterly proper and obliging of you. You know, Ingrid, we talk but you never seem to tell me anything.” He drummed his fingers a few times on the desk, and then buried them into a stack of papers. “I need you to stop by Briarmoor.”

“Briarmoor, sir?”

The hand sent a few papers flying. “Yes, madame, Briarmoor! Why must you always call me sir? Why does no one in this infernal place know Lady Jane? One cannot speak to a sir! Most people cannot describe her face. Does no one talk to a titled Lady, just as no one seems to talk to their employers? Beard on my face, I wish the address sir had never been crafted! You infuse it with all the mockery of an enemy and still use it to turn on me the reproach of a friend. You would kill me with that word, I believe. Yes, Briarmoor! Madame! But I cannot call you Madame; it does not work. Marm! M’lady! I have no such dagger to use against you as the one you turn on me. I suppose the best I can do is – Miss Brewster.”

I pondered this barrage of tangled thought a moment. His mother must have continued her haranguing from the other evening. I chose a tactically evasive maneuver. “But you have no beard, sir.”

That touched a nerve. The silence that followed was decidedly injured. Finally, with a visible effort to speak in a manner lofty and detached, he retorted: “Speaking metaphysically, every man has a beard, rooted deep within his soul…”

He seemed to flounder, so I took pity on him and interrupted. “Did you have an errand for me, or are you not quite finished?”

“Yes! I am. Quite. Finished. Miss Brewster, will you go to Briarmoor for me, this afternoon, forsaking your typewriter and all the fascinating reports of the nothings this office accomplishes?”

“I would count the walk a pleasure. And—” I hesitated.

“And?”

“May I ask, sir – what exactly am I to do there?”

“Deliver a letter.” He reached for a piece of paper and scribbled absently for a moment. “For Twinings the butler. One of my devilishly clever ruses, Miss Brewster, but if anyone asks I’m trying to set the poor fellow at ease.”

“By which I gather you to mean, ‘wrangle a confession of his long-held and undying passion for the absent lady, the declaration of which has prompted her to abandon the household forthwith’?”

The pen ceased its scribbling for an appalled silence. Then—“Miss Brewster, do you think it wise to take what was surely a privileged opportunity to observe two of the greatest investigative agents at work and use it to taunt the one on whom (if I may be allowed to point out in all modesty) your whole career depends?”

I reached out a respectful hand and obtained the letter, which was by now dribbling its address all over itself. “If I were in the habit of using such a course of wisdom, sir, I should scarcely follow any of your advice, much less work for you in the first place.”

Disclaimer: Metaphysically speaking, Falcon really does have a beard.

Read More 7 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”

"I think it was the shape of his coat-tails," he said.

Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast!

Dusting of the Pen: A Few Pale Threads of Varying Ambiguity

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

Scribbled Snippets: Mad as a March Harrowing

Beautiful People: February Edition!

"The aim of a mystery story, as of every other story and every other mystery, is not darkness but light."

The Perilous Prosperity of Writing Ahead

Writers and taggers and blogs, oh my!

New Endeavors: A Dark and Hatless Night

Lighthearted Scribbles and Metaphysical Whatsits

The Blind Leads:

The Authoress

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