Observer

Saturday Short – The Two Brothers Contract

I have a couple of shorts posted here from the fantasy noir world of The Observer Tales, including a mystery (“The Dun Cat of Mill Bridge“) and a tale about a man whose home is slowly falling apart (“The Empty House“).  Those are both excerpts from the first novel in the series, The Lemaigne Casebook.

Today’s vignette, “The Two Brothers Contract,” is part of the second book: The Ligan of the Disomus.

Having apprehended accused murderer Marcus Reider, the Security Corps Observer assigned to the port city of Lemaigne decides to take him inland for trial and sentencing.  But first, he has to deal with a pair of quarreling monks who stand between him and the horses he needs to draw his prison coach.

Saturday Short – The Empty House (Observer Tales)

This week’s story is a “modular” short, a semi-independent piece of a novel in progress: The Lemaigne Casebook.

“The Empty House” is a vignette about a location that plays a key role in one of the cases of Casebook, and helps explain how the city of Lemaigne became “the grungiest port on the entire stinking seaboard.”

I hope you enjoy “The Empty House” and are intrigued to read more about Lemaigne and the Observer who narrates her tales.

Solving a writing problem by listening to the story

I have to say that the past week has been a carnival of utter social clumsiness, punctuated by repeated assurances to co-workers and distant friends that I was fine spending Thanksgiving alone — seriously!

I lost my cell phone (missing important texts from my family), stumbled my way through conversations, and spent most of my non-writing free time on a Netflix-enabled Blackadder marathon.

But, in the midst of all this clutzitude, I did accomplish one thing every writer fantasizes about.

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Observer Tales Excerpt – The Amberton Crisis and Compromise

What better to post late on a Saturday night in November but an expository excerpt from one’s novel-in-progress?

The story below about Commander General Ava Ashcraft and the origins of the Commonwealth’s Grand Caucus was once part of The Observer’s Gloss, intended to be an appendix to one of the Observer novels. (An early, truncated version of the Gloss is available in the menu above.)

But then, after realizing that one of the core themes of The Lemaigne Casebook would be the relationship between the Observer, Diana Ashcraft, and Commander Lea Ashcraft, I decided to incorporate details about the history of the Ashcraft family into the story.  The following account of the “Amberton Crisis” or “Amberton Compromise” is a part of that history.

Key to understanding this anecdote is the organization of the various republics of the Commonwealth into political Coalitions: the Redlands, the Midlands, and Newmark.

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The Dun Cat is Back

A while back, I wrote a series of short stories taking place before the events in my novel The Ligan of the Disomus.  I had bits of them up here on the blog, before deciding to take them down to pitch them for publication.

The first story written was actually the last to happen, right before the events in Ligan.  Then came three more, which were all out of order.  While revising the novel, however, I decided to organize the short stories in chronological order to see what the time-line looked like.

Then, I noticed something.  Woven through their individual storylines was a deeper plot thread connecting all of them, and leading naturally to Ligan.  There were themes being developed, relationships being worked out, attitudes shifting from story to story. These former short stories are now being reworked into a single episodic novel.

And, this means the former short stories making up this episodic novel aren’t short stories at all any more, but excerpts!  So, here returns “The Dun Cat of Mill Bridge” as Chapter IV of The Lemaigne Casebook.

What do Action and Problem Mean for Writers?

Les Edgerton recently explained the difference between what “action” and “problem” mean in lay language and in literature, to show how the confusion about terminology creates problems in writing education.

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Story Behind the Story 4 : The Reverse of Writer’s Block

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While working out the larger story arc behind the novel I’m pitching, I thought it might be fun to blog a little about writing itself, as I experience it. Sort of telling the story behind telling the story.

I have written a lot of stuff over the years: tons of (mostly bad) poetry, a handful of short stories, and hundreds of thousands of words of non-fiction prose.

But, for this little series on writing I want to focus on The Ligan of the Disomus, and the larger world that is still growing from its seed. It is now a novel, with three sequel novels outlined for the long-term story arc.

When it began, however, it was just a short story assignment in a college writers’ group.  It grew into a novel later because neither the fictional narrator nor his fictional setting would stop talking after the assignment was complete…

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Story Behind the Story 3 : Setting As Personality

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While working out the larger story arc behind the novel I’m pitching, I thought it might be fun to blog a little about writing itself, as I experience it. Sort of telling the story behind telling the story.

I have written a lot of stuff over the years: tons of (mostly bad) poetry, a handful of short stories, and hundreds of thousands of words of non-fiction prose.

But, for this little series on writing I want to focus on The Ligan of the Disomus, and the larger world that is still growing from its seed. It is now a novel, with three sequel novels outlined for the long-term story arc.

When it began, however, it was just a short story assignment in a college writers’ group, an assignment the narrator — a fictional character — ran off with in directions I had not anticipated. But, he was not alone in commandeering what I considered to be “my” story…

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Story Behind the Story 2 : Crazy Writing

While working out the larger story arc behind the novel I’m pitching, I thought it might be fun to blog a little about writing itself, as I experience it. Sort of telling the story behind telling the story.

I have written a lot of stuff over the years:  tons of (mostly unreadable) poetry, a handful of short stories, and hundreds of thousands of words of non-fiction prose.

But, for this little series on writing I want to focus on The Ligan of the Disomus, and the larger world that is still growing from its seed. It is now a novel, with several short story prequels in the making and three sequel novels outlined for the long-term story arc.

When it began, however, it was just a short story assignment in a college writers’ group, a deadline dumped into my lap when I was at my most uninspired and lacking in artistic direction …

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Story Behind The Story 1 : Phenograph vs. Genograph

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While working out the larger story arc behind the novel I’m pitching, I thought it might be fun to blog a little about writing itself, as I experience it.  Sort of telling the story behind telling the story.

I have written a lot of stuff over the years, including tons of poetry (mostly bad), a few short stories, hundreds of thousands of words of non-fiction prose, and one really terrifyingly nawesome* fantasy novel which I will discuss later.

But, for this little series on writing, I want to focus on the hopefully not-nawesome novel for which this blog is named, and the larger world that is still growing from its seed.

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