Untitled Dark Staircase Sequel

Even though it's ripping my guts out to continue with this character, I really think I have something with The Dark Staircase. And since it's short even for a novella (about thirteen thousand words) I figure it's going to need a companion story to get publishers to look at it. Of course this doesn't have to be a sequel but I've realized that I can change the character's name to whatever I want, it'd still be Annie I would be writing about.

So here's the beginning:

          Annie closed her eyes.

Riveting, huh? I'll keep you posted.

Poetic Archaelogy

In the process of packing for my latest move I was able to excavate one of the better poems I've written, something I figured had been lost long ago (ok, not that long but it sure feels it).

In the summer of 2003, following my second year of university I went back to Cape Breton as I'd done the summer before. That summer I'd worked for the Cape Breton Post and this time I wanted to do something different. So I enrolled for two courses at UCCB - one on children's lit and another devoted to play writing. They were both totally up my alley and this was back in the days when I was actually still a good student. I aced them both.

Play writing was great and helped reignite my passion for creative writing and really was one of the major events to set me back on that path. We did lots of cool things and maybe some day I'll talk about more of them but for the purposes of this post I will just mention one. We walked through UCCB's art gallery and were each told to select one painting to write a poem on (it may not have just been poems, there could have been other options but as a poem is what I did it's what I remember).

I picked one by an artist named Noah Schwartz simply called "Untitled". I can't remember for sure but I think it was painted in 1979. Anyway, like many paintings out there this wasn't really a straightforward picture of something. I guess it was what you might called "semi-abstract". I can't really see it in my mind now but there were harsh lines and faint colours, lots of white, brown and maybe some pale blue and black. I just can't remember. Anyway, here's how I saw it that day.

Noah Schwartz's 'Untitled'

Modern meets ancient here
it's windswept, sun-bleached, now stripped and
sand-blasted
There's something so much older...underneath

Scaffolding against the cliff-face
archaeology uncovers secrets in the canyon
slowly but surely they scrape to meet them
Noon. The sun is high and there are
shadows cast against the rock
Men in boots and dusty fedoras come in the day with their
tools; their instruments of history
They swig their water, unroll their canvas
and chip away

They come in the day and shade their eyes
wipe their brows
what is ancient is not easily given up
The men leave at night
many secrets remain, elder gods are the most protective
This place is old

e e cummings would not approve

Stubborn fool that I am, this really happened.


february 2008

huddled in the glow of a coke machine
i pretend that it gives warmth
close in two hours
minimal passers by, no security appearance since arrival

no security anywhere besides the type that tells me to move along
eyes stinging, memory stinging
this city is no longer home
and still i refuse to leave it

this happened here, that happened there
it should not linger this way
and yet it does
and so i linger also, it's become my only purpose

these streets taste like bile even in sunlight
i hate the sunny days most of all
few as they are
were there more when she walked with me?

she's around every corner
so i move in straight lines
everything has changed and nothing still has for me
my load is heavy and i am unclean
i chose this

she chose the same

Talking

Early on in my writing I discovered that I have a pretty good ear for dialogue and I think I'm good at producing both snappy and clever as well as realistic sounding conversations. That's probably at least partially why I'm such a fan of someone like Kevin Smith, who as a writer really specializes in dialogue. It's also why I like plays so much. So writing a play should be easy for me, right? It's 95% dialogue after all. Plus it's always been a dream of mine to write a play and then see it performed on stage, to see something I wrote come to life.

A few years ago on a date with Kristine I went to the Pit at King's (my old university) to see my friend Jesse play the lead in the play, Equus. I'd never read the play before or seen the movie version but I knew a little about it. And I enjoyed it a whole lot. Jesse was especially great and I'm not just saying that cause he's my friend - I doubt he'll ever read my praise here - but also throughout the whole course of the play I found myself imagining my own play being put on in that space. Even though I didn't have a play written yet, the very beginnings of one was forming in my head.

Which brings us to now and this little excerpt. This is just a small piece of an early scene in my play "Away". Just two people talking. But I hope it's a good example of well-done dialogue.


SCENE TWO

Same location. It is the next day after school. Alex and Robyn walk up the street with their book bags and stop under the streetlight.

ALEX - I was right here, taking out the garbage. There were four flashes, two really close together. You didn't see it at all?

ROBYN - Nope. I trust you to catch all these things. You're the one with the telescope.

ALEX - Well, I only really caught it by accident. I looked out my window for another hour but - nothing.

ROBYN - Meteor shower's tomorrow night, right? This couldn't have anything to do with that?

ALEX - What? How could it?

ROBYN - Well, I dunno.

ALEX - You really don't pay attention when I talk about this stuff, do you?

ROBYN - Sure I do, Alex. It's just that it's pretty much ALL you talk about, you know?

ALEX - Well, let's talk about something else then.

ROBYN - Yeah, well I've gotta get my homework done if I'm gonna make it tonight.

ALEX - Homework be damned! You are coming tonight whether you're finished or not. It sucks with just three. Not to mention it's getting harder and harder to get Ryan to play anymore and I need you there to counterbalance Jono.

ROBYN - What do you mean 'counterbalance'?

ALEX - If you're not there then Ryan will just try to get out of it by saying he doesn't remember how to play, Jono will try to help him and there won't be any real conversation. It'll just be "D&D is lame", "No, it's not" and "What's Robyn doing?" all night and I'll lose my mind. I wouldn't even want to play but then Jono would just whine and Ryan would suggest we just quit playing it altogether. So-

ROBYN - So the very survival of our D&D sessions hangs in the balance if I don't make it tonight. I get it. I'll come. Because I WILL get my homework done. You should try my method of doing it before the day it's actually due.

ALEX - My system works fine.

ROBYN - Whatever.

Here they pause for a moment. Robyn is looking at her shoes.

ALEX - Um...Robyn?

ROBYN - Nothing. Just thinking.

ALEX - Ok.

ROBYN - Do Ryan and Jono know about the meteor shower?

ALEX - Huh? Of course they do. Although I'll probably have to remind Ryan.

ROBYN - You...don't have to.

ALEX - What do you mean?

ROBYN - Just that if Ryan doesn't feel like going it's not like he has to or anything. I mean, it's not like D&D, right? We don't NEED him.

ALEX - I...guess not. It's not, like, a tragedy if it's just you me and Jono.

ROBYN - You said that Jono always talks at the wrong time and ruins the moment.

ALEX - He does. But I'm weaning him off it, I think. He's getting better.

ROBYN - But if Ryan doesn't want to go then maybe Jono could hang out with him. You know...so Ryan wouldn't be left out?

ALEX - If he's left out it'll be because he left himself out. Jono shouldn't have to miss it to babysit Ryan.

ROBYN - Maybe he'd want to.

ALEX - I'm really not following you. What's this about?

ROBYN - Uh...I just thought maybe...that...it could be just you and me at this one.

ALEX - Why?

ROBYN - If I'm going to make it tonight, I've gotta get going.

ALEX - But-

Robyn turns and starts down the street. She briefly turns back around to call back to Alex.

ROBYN - D&D at seven! I'll be there.

She continues out of sight. Alex stands at the end of his driveway staring after her.

The Dark Staircase

This is just a little excerpt from a recent short story of mine. I realized I haven't posted any kind of excerpt on here in forever and the last few offerings I gave were actually poetry which is really strange for me.

For personal reasons, this story was very difficult to write despite the fact that I'd actually had nearly the entire thing plotted before even starting it (a rare thing for me). The main idea is similar to that of an old English folktale I read god knows where god knows how long ago. I guess if you did a search for The Dark Staircase, you would most likely find at least a couple things but I really did think of the title on my own. Titles have never been a forte of mine (my editors even would often change the working titles I used for newspaper articles) but I am somewhat proud of this one. So sorry if it's not actually original.

Let's go to a hilltop in Ireland:

She shook her head and silently admonished herself. She'd been so desperate to discover something fantastic out here that she was letting her imagination run wild, that was all. Looking closer at the stones, Annie couldn't see how they could ever have looked like gravestones anyway. But then again, depending on how old they were, there was no reason to assume these gravestones had ever looked like the kind she was used to. Not really. If this had been a graveyard and it was really old, then the markers might have been more simple and not as angular as the ones she was accustomed to. If they were that old, then maybe this was no Christian graveyard but a pagan one. Like, for druids or something. Annie didn't really know anything about druids or paganism except that they were old things from Europe. Maybe she could ask Janet about it. It was possible she even knew about this place and had just forgotten about it.

But almost as soon as this thought came to her, Annie got the very distinct feeling that it would be best not to mention it to Janet at all. There had been something in her expression and voice when Annie had first told her of her plans to go for a walk. She'd looked uncomfortable. Maybe even worried. Annie couldn't figure out why. As much as she wanted to believe in things like haunted graveyards, even she couldn't really imagine this place having ghosts and restless spirits milling about it. And surely Janet didn't believe in such things. She couldn't. In addition to being an adult, she'd always struck Annie as the level-headed type. Not a dreamer like her.

Annie bent down next to one of the stones that was more above ground than the others, reached out with one hand and slowly ran her fingers over its rough surface. It felt like a rock. Annie was no geologist or...rock enthusiast. And she was obviously no archaeologist. She knew that for such people, things like stones could sort of speak to them. Tell them about the past. But not her. She was just a bored girl hoping to find wonders within the ordinary. She tried to bring her thoughts back to the realm of rationality. Ok, she allowed, maybe her guesses had all been right. Maybe this had been some ancient, pagan graveyard. And that was definitely interesting. More interesting than anything else she'd found during her time here. It was a little creepy too. But the answers she wanted to the questions this place had raised weren't coming. The spot wasn't that isolated. If there were some, like, artifacts lying around the area, then someone would have found them long before her. Now there were only strange (but maybe not that strange) stones sitting in two rows (that may not be deliberate rows). They couldn't speak to her.

She was about to stand up again but then without even consciously meaning to, she brought her other hand to feel the surface of the stone. Now she could feel something. An impression of...depth. The idea that there was more underneath. Well, sure, she thought. If this is a graveyard then there are bones underneath. No. Something was telling her no. She gazed at the stone, running her hands over it intently. Speak to me, she willed to it. What is underneath?

A long space of time seemed to pass. Annie was starting to believe she'd only imagined that...whatever it was. It hadn't been a voice. Just a feeling. But a powerful feeling. And then the word, no, as distinct as it had been, that wasn't in a voice either. But it had come through as clearly as any voice.

Frustrated, she stood up. Her boredom was getting to her, that was all. She was letting her imagination take over. It was time to go back anyway. All that stuff may have been in her head but either way, it was freaking her out. She looked back to the house. She'd felt so far away for awhile but she could still see it over the rolling hills. Then suddenly, the not-voice imparted another word to her.

Come.

She had no doubts this time. There was some force calling to her, possibly through the stones or up through the ground. She didn't like it. She backed away and nearly stumbled.

Annie did not run back to the house but she walked very quickly. She didn't look back once.

***************
I'm also really terrible at picking out parts that make for good excerpts from longer works but hopefully that part reads somewhat well on its own. See you next time.

Fun with Rhymes

I first started writing poetry as a kid when I discovered I had a knack for putting together snappy verses that rhymed. It was more or less the foundation of every poem I wrote from about Grade 2 into junior high. But in junior high I grew up a little and was more exposed to pretentiousness and suddenly felt like all my poems were childish. Now I was reading poems by famous writers and a lot of them didn't rhyme at all. Some girls I knew were also writing the odd poem and none of them rhymed either. They were just a bunch of words about pain and isolation strung together. No rhythm, no iambic pentameter. Just words.

Impressionable youth that I was, it was time for me to get in on this. So I started writing dark poems with no rhymes. My writing was maturing and I'd venture to say that perhaps 2 percent of them weren't complete crap. Anyway, even when I came out of this phase and almost stopped writing poetry altogether for awhile, those few poems that I did write still didn't rhyme. I had just gotten used to expressing myself that way. If rhyming no longer seemed childish to me it still seemed...tacky. So for another few years I ignored my gift some more. In that time, I think I did manage to write a handful of not too bad non-rhyming poems. The best of which being one called "Afternoon" that I wrote about three weeks into my first year of university, looking out at the "quad" of King's College.

But a few years after that a friend of mine who is also a writer wrote a poem about a hurricane that we'd recently experienced and he showed it to me. I don't remember it now but I remember it was good. I also remember that it rhymed. And it wasn't childish. It wasn't tacky. It was good. This caused me to do some thinking. Could I write a rhyming poem that wouldn't suck? I didn't know. For a couple days I bounced some ideas around in my head, trying to come up with just a few lines to start with. It wasn't working. But then about a week later, I was staring at the page and a simple rhyming verse came to me. I barely had to think - I just wrote and it came. It wasn't until I was nearly finished that I read it over and realized the subject matter - it was about my breakup with my first ever girlfriend. Not a recent event in my life at the time, in fact, I'd already been through a few other disasters since then. But that's what it was.

I don't really like posting a complete work here no matter how worthless it may be but I figured it couldn't hurt. It's called Drive and here it is.

Drive

i sometimes drive alone at night and listen to my songs
my focus drifts away and i think of what went wrong
it wasn't all that long ago i made this drive with you
sighing, laughing, dreaming
now all of that is through

every signpost sparks a memory
every corner prompts a thought
i think of you in your new place while i stay here and rot

i need to get away from this
before in these thoughts i drown
so i turn the volume up and i press the pedal down

not too far past your bridge we used to go sometimes
how fitting now to use it to pay you for your crimes
the sights aren't so familiar now because now they are a blur
i think of what they might say
"he died because of her"

i give the wheel a good jerk
and now i'm in the air
soon to be another victim of a life that isn't fair

the water's cold, the water's dark
and that suits me just fine
it seems a proper punishment for believing you were mine

eventually i slip below
where everything is black
it's quiet and it's calm here
but still i want them back
the days we had, the nights we shared
i still can't let them go

i forgive you now
i'm sorry
but you will never know

Digging into the archives

It's occurred to me I haven't included anything old here yet. And a couple days ago, digging through some of my old notes from university, i stumbled upon something even OLDER. It's the lyrics to a song I wrote about ten years ago. The song never got completed or performed but I never got rid of the lyrics. The song is, of course, about Mega Man.

Although you'll never hear it, I can tell you the into is simply a direct rip-off of the music in the first Sigma stage of Mega Man X (not ten). It's just several chords repeated on synthesizer over a slap-tastic bassline. The music does pick up quite a bit eventually and turn into something quite original (although I don't know how good). Anyway, while the intro is poached from a game in the X series, the lyrics are just about "classic" Mega Man. Enjoy.

Mega Man

in the year 200X lived brilliant Doctor Light
who laboured night and day
to better serve mankind
the doctor liked the blues
he liked rock and roll
into a metal being
he infused a noble soul

Rock was a great friend who only wanted peace
but Wily stole those dreams
(and he stole some robots too)
and there was only one thing left
for Light and Rock to do

Mega Man, crashing through the sky
diminutive blue hero
he's not afraid to die
Megabuster blaster
it can't fail him now
evil robots beware
he will take you down

Wily's army grew
and the Blue Bomber fought on
fire, ice, bombs and blades
all fell and now are gone
wielding his foes' own weapons
Mega Man wins the day

Mega Man, crashing through the sky
diminutive blue hero
he's not afraid to die
Megabuster blaster
it can't fail him now
evil robots beware
he will take you down

Proto's got his shied,
his scarf and badass shades
but Mega Man's the one
whose legend never fades

Mega Man, crashing through the sky
diminutive blue hero
he's not afraid to die
Megabuster blaster
it can't fail him now
evil doers everywhere
he will take you down



.....right. How about that? I said it was genuinely old. Not genuinely good. Whatever, i can sort of recall the tune and it was pretty rockin', so there.
See you next time.

Sebastion Cole - a different kind of master

I'd originally intended to write something else in here before posting the next excerpt but I've been kind of lagging in that area lately. I promise to pick it up in the near future. May has unfortunately become a month full of as much uncertainty as April was and I suppose I've been using that as an excuse to stem the creative flow as it were. But I'll soon set things right.
In the meantime, here's Cole in New York.

All this is what had attracted the Red Band Society to Sebastian. They came to know almost everything about him because that was the kind of thing they’d been doing since the formation of the club. The thirteen members had always made everything that went on in New York their business. Every vampire drone in the city was there because the Red Band Society wanted him or her to be there. They all served a purpose. The club’s vast wealth didn’t come directly from drones. Like the Masters, drones didn’t usually have jobs so the money mostly came from humans in their service. It was decided that Sebastian however, would not work out as human slave because of his arrogant and aggressive nature. The Red Bands deduced that if they tried to threaten him as they did many other wealthy people, he would try to resist them which would force them to kill him. And they did not want him dead. He controlled some very tempting assets in the city. But drones immediately inherited the programming that it was best to serve the Masters. So it was agreed (after being put to a vote, as they always did for important matters) that one of the members would bite him and turn him into a drone. Then, he would be brought before the rest of the club and told how things would work from then on. Bernard was chosen to perform the task of turning Cole.

But Bernard never came back. Instead, the evening following Bernard’s task, the Red Band Society found Sebastian Cole waiting for them in their board room, sitting in Bernard’s chair. He was a vampire, as they’d wanted, but he was no drone. He calmly explained to the shocked members that after being bitten by Bernard, but before being fully turned, he had killed the Master Vampire. He’d still been human when he managed to snuff Bernard out. Later, when the change was complete, Sebastian found that he now possessed all of Bernard’s knowledge. Naturally, included in this knowledge was the knowledge of the differences between Master vampires and drones. And Sebastian knew he was definitely a Master.

The Red Bands immediately put him to the test to prove his claims and he passed every one. Sebastian calmly and patiently (and with visible amusement) waited in the boardroom while several of the members rushed to the second floor to the archives, where all their vampire literature, material written by both vampires and humans over several centuries, was stored. Hours were spent trying to find any mention of the phenomenon that had occurred. None was found.

And so a new entry was made. It appeared that if a human bitten by a Master somehow managed to kill the Master before turning into a drone, said human would turn instead into a full Master vampire, apparently inheriting the abilities of the slain Master. None of the Red Bands were particularly pleased by this discovery but in the end they reasoned they simply had to accept Sebastian as a member. They’d respected him when he was a human and knew he would be an extremely dangerous foe as a Master vampire. Fortunately, Sebastian was completely satisfied with becoming a vampire as it gave him even more power than he’d enjoyed as a human and since he was a Master, none of the Red Bands would have any power over him as they’d originally planned.

But this did not mean the other members didn’t resent him. They all did. They often enjoyed reminding him that, while he possessed all of the abilities of a Master and all of Bernard’s prior knowledge, he was still not a true Master. They were all born vampires who had been around for centuries and he had been a man born in 1964.

Sebastian never let on that this bothered him. He accepted their glares and snide remarks with good humour and often ignored them altogether. He’d been ambitious as a man and he was doubly ambitious as a vampire and he didn’t want to waste time squabbling with the other members over things that couldn’t be changed. Plus he knew that they knew he was a valuable asset to the club. As a drone they would have simply controlled him but as their equal, he could offer his own ideas and insights and these were more often than not quite useful. As the only former human, he had an understanding of the human psyche that none of them had, despite all their centuries of life. Three of them had been around since the late fifteen hundreds but Sebastian was always teaching them things. Truth be told, the entire situation amused him to no end.

Meet Adam Fairbanks

It was pretty difficult to align this properly so that it would fit. But anyway, here is the beginning of Chapter Two. That's right, no Chapter One or Prologue for you. I don't know the rules of posting excerpts from a novel - it's a tricky thing. Hopefully, I'll get better at it or learn the rules in time. Enjoy.

Trenton, New Jersey

Adam Fairbanks was doing his best to think fast. Why do there have to be three of them? was his first thought. He couldn’t have handled even one assailant on his own, but three? He recalled that his mother once said that bad things always came in threes. That appeared to be true of bullies, for sure. They were after all, very bad things. This trio consisted of the tall bully, the fat bully and their leader, the ugly bully.

It was the ugly bully who stood with the other two flanking his either side. He delivered another quick jab of a shove into Adam’s chest, knocking the smaller boy backwards a few steps.

“So you think you’re better than us, you little puke?” demanded Ugly. “Think you’re better than regular people?”

Adam took a quick glance over his shoulder. He was dangerously close to the fence. His only escape could be around his antagonists. He doubted very much he would even make it out of the playground if he tried that. He was undersized even for a thirteen year old and his legs were considerably shorter than those of the bullies. Not to mention his backpack was heavy. He silently cursed himself for taking this route home. But cutting through the playground, which was simply a fenced in asphalt area with basketball courts at each end, cut seven minutes off his walk from the bus stop. On most days, he was in no hurry to get home and he would be content to doddle, taking whichever route he pleased. But today he’d decided to chance taking the shortcut so that he could get home to grab extra batteries for his camera. He wanted to shoot for as long as he could before it got dark out.

As he faced his tormenters, Adam realized his gamble hadn’t paid off. His school uniform attracted too much attention in places like playgrounds. He couldn’t run so all he could do was try to talk his way out.

“I don’t even know you,” he stammered. “Why would you think I think I’m better than you?”

The ugly bully sneered. “Of course you don’t know me. You wouldn’t even bother to know me. Since you think you’re somehow above other people.”

“I…it seems to me that you’re the one judging me without knowing anything about me,” said Adam, regretting the words as soon as they escaped his mouth. But he went on anyway. “I mean, we’ve never met as far as I know and then you come up to me and tell me what you think I am.”

If the ugly bully was at a loss following Adam’s rebuttal, he was bailed out by the fat bully. “We know all we need to know about you. The way you walk around in that uniform. I guess you’re too good for a public school. Your parents are probably rich and send you to a private school so you won’t have to mix with non rich kids.”

Adam slowly edged to his left, trying to make his movements appear casual. He had to buy himself some more time.

“I don’t know why my parents send me to private school but it’s not like it was my idea. And wearing the uniform definitely wasn’t my idea but it’s what I have to wear. I’ve gone to public school before and I liked it fine. But when my family moved here and I was enrolled at my school, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

The ugly bully found his voice again. “So your parents are rich, huh? Maybe it isn’t your fault what you wear or what school you go to – it’s just the way they raised you.”

Here he paused and looked down at his shoes. Adam stopped his furtive movements. This couldn’t be it. Bullies couldn’t actually be reasoned with. And if they could, he couldn’t have been the one to pull it off. Something was coming.

“You’re not to blame for your situation, kid,” said the ugly bully. “I see now you don’t think you’re better than people who aren’t rich like you. So I figure you’d like to do something to even things out a little. Make things more square. I mean, you said you don’t think you’re just better than us. You don’t think you deserve things better than we do, right?”

Adam recognized the trap, but he could do nothing.

“Right.”

“So I think you’ve probably got a few things with you that you could part with. Stuff you could share with others less fortunate than yourself.”

“I really don’t have-”

“Let’s just take a look in your backpack.”

Adam darted to his left and tried to break past them. But the tall bully, while silent during the whole exchange, had evidently been paying attention and he stepped in front of Adam and caught him. Adam was roughly shoved against the fence. The fat bully stepped right in front of him to block Adam’s way, spacing out his feet to make himself even wider.

“You’re rich enough to replace whatever we take,” laughed the fat bully. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He made a grab for Adam but Adam ducked under his arm and dove through the opening between his legs. Getting to his feet quickly was difficult because of the weight of his book bag but he still managed to break into a run before any of the three had turned around. His sneakers pounding on the pavement (thank God the dress code permitted sneakers), Adam ran flat out across the playground, headed for the gap in the fence at the far end. He ran right through a basketball game being played by some high school kids, just barely managing not to collide with any of the players. He didn’t even bother to look behind him to see how close his pursuers were. He could hear well enough that they were giving chase and already catching up. But then, just before reaching the playground’s edge, he did turn as he heard a commotion behind him. The bullies hadn’t fared as well in running through the game. The ugly bully had run into the ball carrier and the other two had stopped dead as the players shouted their objections. Even though his legs hurt and his lungs were already burning, Adam didn’t stick around to see what would happen next. There was a wooded area just ahead of him. It was a place full of walking paths and the trees were too far apart from each other to provide much cover but it was only option he had.

He kept running until he was confident he was in far enough to be hidden from the view of the playground. He collapsed with his back against one of the larger trees. It took him another minute to fully catch his breath. Then he removed the damning dark blue jacket of his school uniform, suddenly realizing that he was hot and sweaty. For a moment he pondered how such a short run could have made him perspire so much until he remembered that he’d been perspiring before he’d even started his escape.