The wind was born of a Twilight Lord, playing a seashell flute. Webbed fingers strong and sure danced across the smooth shell as they had once danced across the skin of a human girl, delicate and sweet and all things good. That girl was gone, just as the meat was gone from this shell, leaving only the memory of beauty and faint notes in the wind. But the sea was still the same, and the song was still the same, curling round his heart thick and slow as the fog that shrouded the Sorrowful Isles.
Born of sea and sand and the cries of a wounded heart, the wind danced in rage and longing across the Sundered Sea, rousing the waves of Nar Kabdaan to wrath and ruin as they cast themselves, again and again, to die unmourned upon the heartless shores of Bizhan. The waves were born, they struggled, they died, one after another like soldiers caught in a dream of war.
The wind was heavy with salt, and the dreams of sea-witches, and the tears of lost souls. It struck at the jagged rocks, tore at the sharp grasses like a madman tearing at his own hair, it howled at the gates like the voices of a thousand ice wolves buried in fear, forgotten to legend, lost, lost, lost.
The howling woke the Halfkin Child, because the song of wolves round a campfire can never truly be forgotten by the children of Man. The Child rose, he slipped from his bed and from his mother’s hearth and stumbled down the rocky path to the sea; and because he, too, could hear the howling of the wolves, could feel them singing in the shadows of his heart, the Twilight Lord put down his flute and swam to the shores of Man. The moons were faded, half-empty and without power, but he had broken so many laws already that one more could hardly matter.
And besides, he told himself as he slipped through the water, I wrote those laws. The Things that Dwell Beneath fled from his shadow, and the Two Sisters veiled their faces as he reared his sleek head above the waves. The Child had nearly reached the water; so close was he that the fat little foot-prints filled with water as he passed, and glittered like abalone shells in the thin light.
The wind tore at the Veil, at weft and warp of land and magic. It tore and howled and raged just as the storm in his heart, but the moons were thin and weak, and laws older than his held it in place.
He could not pass. He could not…
But the Child could.
Deborah A. Wolf is a weaver of tales, a lifelong student of pretty much everything, and sworn to slay the dreaded Grammarwocky.
Gold Standard
As a new writer, still in my original packaging and waiting to be put out on the shelves for people to buy (or not), I am at a weird and enviable stage in my career. Weird, because while I’ve sold a book (or three) my work has yet to be made public, so I’m still Nobody. Enviable, because I’ve successfully leapt the hurdles FINISH THE BOOK, GET AN AGENT and SELL THE BOOK, so I’m kinda Somebody, as well. Enough of a Somebody that I find myself fielding the “how-did-you” questions, enough of a Nobody that I’m easily approachable and still have a few minutes’ free time to spare for giving advice of dubious merit.
One question that is often asked but difficult to articulate, even for writers–perhaps especially for writers, and I imagine other artists as well–is: “How did you DO it?”
Q: “What is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?”
A: (That one’s easy): 42.
Q: “How did you DO it?”
A: That one’s a bit more difficult…
“How did you DO it?” You ask. Do you mean ‘How did you get an agent’, or ‘How did you choose a point of view’, or ‘How did you get past editing Chapter One till you’d worn the letters off your keyboard and gave up to go play mini golf’?
All of those and more, of course.
“What writing tools do you use? What is your revision process? How did you decide on POV characters?” The aspiring author sees that first impossible hurdle–FINISH THE BOOK–and asks, “How did you DO it?” When she is really asking, “Can I do it?”
The answer she fears, echoing deep in the dank and slimy pit of her soul, is “No, you can’t.”
That was the answer I always got, anyway. And then my demon would laugh as I shut down Word and logged onto Facebook instead. Because that bitch wants nothing more than for you to give up, so that she may remain in the shadows and nibble at the edges of your soul without interruption.
So, what changed? How did I go from someone who desperately longed to be an author to someone who has written THE BOOK and shepherded it all the way to a sale? How did I elude the ubiquitous lack of self-confidence that hunts artists and eats them for breakfast?
How did I do it? Was it Scrivener? A workshop? A critique group?
Did I sacrifice a goat???
Nope. No goats were harmed in the creation of this book.
I found a superhero, someone who believed in me and my work, someone who cheered me on and freaked out in a good way with every new chapter and wheedled and cajoled and kicked my ass every step of the journey. Someone who believed in me even though I never did. I found my #1 fan.
The Author and her #1 Fan
If you are an artist of any color, the world is going to judge you and find you unworthy. It is likely you will judge yourself unworthy; I know I did. But if you have one person lighting a candle in the darkness for you, one person who hangs your painting on the wall or taps her foot in time to your singing or stays up till two in the morning reading your latest chapter and then threatens to break your arm if their favorite character stays dead…
That’s the good stuff, man. That’s the gold standard.
This one’s for you, Kristine. I couldn’t have done it without you.
I’m writing as fast as I can!
At a recent visit to the insane asylum. We fit right in.
Follow on Twitter
Connect on Facebook
Visit website