Short Story - The Cage in the Castle

 She stood on the end of the bridge, facing the castle in the distance, the fur on her snout rustling in the wind as the ever-present moon shone down on her semi-naked form, competing against the waning sun in the west. In her hand, the sword felt heavy from the blood of her recently-dispatched enemies. No point sheathing it now, it would rust her sheath. She took the bridge at a run, sensing the magicks supporting it begin to crumble as unwanted feet touched it. The grapple in her arm twitched and launched towards the battlements. The head caught, and she was lifted up and away as the stones fell away beneath her towards the crashing sea.

What idiot in their right minds would build an enchanted castle on an outcrop. The thought made the hairs on her back bristle. Given another few decades, the sea would wear away at its base and cause it to fall. Either that, or whoever controlled the castle would have to expend even more power to keep it floating. Even the High Ones dared not do that, though the moon's grace granted them so many boons. Clambering up onto the balustrade and dropping down, grinding stone and metal shifted near her. The stones statues were awakening, as she had been warned. A duck and run forward as a sword swung down. These were the granite guards, animated by the castle's occupant.

She ran along the top of a wall, launched her grapple once more, pulled herself out of range of swings. Glancing down into the courtyard, she saw more of the statues come to life, one great among them. It looked like a human male, several times larger than any male should have been, and it wielded a great mace which dragged along the ground and scarred the cobblestones. This must have been their captain, animated to command as they were to destroy.

"T'nod pots gnihcraes!" The guard captain's tone was harsh, horrible like the stone from which it was carved. "Llik no thgis! Rof rou redeal!"

What odd words they had in this place. Familiar, yet odd. A few more words, and she could speak if it she so chose. Maybe she would have to. They were shouting to each other in strange grunts and growls, almost howling like animals. Maybe they had been animals once. She reached the first of many towers that formed the core of the castle, looking up from where she hung from the guttering towards the central tower. At the top, hovering in the field of magickal energy, was the owner of the castle. There was little to be seen inside the cone of light, but it was a human shape. A form that was mortal, kept alive only by the stasis of the magic which preserved this castle.

She was about to leap to the next tower when something tugged at her. No physical force, no simple compulsion, but a sudden rush of attention. The need to be seen. Her head turned, eyes focusing on one of the smaller towers on the other side of the castle's structure. It looked positively dark compared to the other towers, shrinking and inconspicuous in their shadow. Why was there such a potent energy there, and why was it not tied into the rest of what was happening here? The figure above was always known as the one that kept the castle's inhabitants asleep and timeless, locking it away from the moon's gaze.

Leave nothing unexplored which catches your scent. That was what the Elder Fang had told her. She would investigate this, regardless of its seemingly inconsequential nature. She took to the walls and ran along their edges, unseen by the soldiers lumbering below. Pale imitations of their creators in form and function. Two walls, another tower to skirt round, yet another wall that this time she had to scale with grapple and claw. Finally she was at that strange little tower. None had spotted her, nothing had halted her. The tower looked so...dead. There were windows, but all were tightly barred. The only door was...at its base. Of course.

She slid down using the grapple, listening for any sign of attack. There was none. The door was not even locked. Strange indeed. She passed inside, saw the stairway leading round towards the top of the tower. It was pitch black, no light shining down this far from the top of the tower, itself in the shadow of the other towers and walls. The sea was audible through the walls, which were damp under her pads. it was the work of minutes to scale the tower.  When she reached the top, she stepped onto a cold platform leading towards a cage suspended above the tower floor far below. Someone was in the cage.

She approached with a slow step, and the figure in the cage looked up. It was a human. Which was impossible. Aside from those who resisted in unnatural sleep in this castle, humans had gone extinct long ago in the Great Hunt, when the Moon That Never Sets had emerged from its slumber. He looked pathetic enough to be one of those survivors, a thin ragged, pathetic excuse for a man dressed in a white robe and with a deep-set face half-hidden under a long mop of shaggy blonde hair. His lips moved slowly.

"Ohw...era uoy?"

Yes, those were the words she needed. She understood this language now. Like her own, like that of her people, but slightly altered. She could speak to him.

"T'nod eb diarfa. M'i t'now truh uoy."

The man frowned. "Lliw uoy...teg em tuo fo ereh?"

She nodded. Yes, this seemed the right thing to do. This man was radiating such energy, more than any produced by that thing at the top of the castle. The cage wasn't that sturdy, but the man was so weak even these feeble locks seemed able to hold him. She reached over and yanked the door open. Reaching out, she encouraged him forward. He took a few tentative movements, tried to rise, but then slumped again.

"Os...derit..."

He was exhausted, though from what seemed uncertain. She stepped inside, picked up the slight human form, and carried him out like a tired child. Now she was impaired. She could at least get the man outside the castle, outside this gigantic cage that was in the form of a castle. The cage may have been old and fragile, but the barred windows were strong. She had to go out the way she came. She trotted down the stairs, the slight figure held in one arm. She reached the door, sensed the stone fists raised to bear down on her. She launched the grapple, shot through them and braced herself against a wall. The stone fists crashed down on where she had been a second ago. She fired the grapple again, shooting up the wall as the creatures of the castle shouted.

"Redurtni! Llik! Llik!"

The young man sighed. "Esaelp od ton evael em."

She smiled. She wouldn't abandon him now. The walls were her playground, the castle would not stop her. The final rush across the moat would be interesting with the extra weight. The man seemed to be staring at her, but not with fear or disgust or even wonder. She managed to look at his face as she rested for a moment, and saw the emotion. It was gratitude. Finally they reached the outer wall, where she had entered. The soldiers were scaling the walls, approaching them. But her grapple couldn't reach all the way across. The young man slowly held up a hand, pointed down towards where the bridge had been.

"Tel em pleh."

There was a shuddering, then the bridge began to reassemble. Or perhaps...restore? Rewind? As if time had been turned back. Her grapple carried them down and she ran across the bridge, which collapsed behind her. She was back on the mainland before she realised. The young man was holding her with his weak arms, closely as if he really were a child. Then there was a mighty shuddering behind her. She turned, still holding the man, and watched as the castle began to crumble away into nothing. What had happened? Even the light was gone...

Her answer came unexpected. She felt a sudden shift in her arms, and looked down at the man. No longer was he young and frail, he was now aged to the point of appearing like a dessicated corpse. He slowly looked up even as his skin pulled back from age and dryness. His life was fading even as he spoke his final words.

"Knaht uoy."

She smiled sadly at the dead face. "No. Thank you."

The body was already crumbling in her arms. The castle was completely gone too, right down to its foundations. So it seemed she had fulfilled her mission. To lay low this last stronghold of their ancient enemy, to destroy the remnant of humanity which resisted the moon's grace. That young man, locked away from the process of time, had preserved the final humans. Now time had caught up with them all, and taken them all down. She shook her head slowly, checking and shutting off her grapple.

"So ends the age of humans. And our age is finally able to begin under the endless moon. And, young man, I'll at least remember you. You wanted to leave that tower, didn't you? You wanted this to end. Glad I could fulfil your wish." She sighed, shrugged her shoulders. "And now, home."

Introducing Author Talks: Season 2

Hi. Well, this is written in a bit of a rush, but it's an update for everyone. In my attempt to have something other than text to help show that I and my work exist, I've been creating a to-date solo podcast called 'Author Talks'. What became the first season happened over last year, and I've started the second this year. All it consists of so far is an introductory thing, and the first episode dedicated to a short story by H.G. Wells, 'In The Abyss'. I think this is a very good if rather wordy story with a fascinating twists. I'll include the YouTube link below. If you enjoy it, maybe check out the previous episodes, and the reading I did from my novel Starborn Vendetta, which is also available on my YouTube channel among other things. Enjoy!

Outside looking in - Reflection from the Cait Corraine scandal

This post is dedicated to the authors and books impacted by this scandal, listed here in no particular order.

*Voyage of the Damned -- Frances White

*So Let Them Burn -- Kamilah Cole

*The Poisons We Drink -- Bethany Baptise

*To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods -- Molly X Chang

*Mistress of Lies -- KM Enright

*The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon

*The Empire Wars -- Akana Phenix

*Knives, Seasoning, and a Dash of Love -- Katrina Kwan

*Iron Widow/Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor -- Xiran Jay Zhao

*Gods of Hunger series -- R. M. Virtues

This isn't my usual kind of post, but I feel moved to do it. For some little time, I've been half-following a recent scandal involving author Cait Corraine. Put briefly, Corriane created multiple fake Goodreads accounts, simultaneously posting positive reviews of their own work while review bombing the work of multiple BIPOC authors including Xiran Jay Zhao, Alana Phenix, Frances White, and many others. After attempts to resolve the matter privately failed, Zhao took the step of publicising the matter, which brought it wider attention and a groundswell against Corraine ultimately leading to them losing their book deal. A recent follow-up has seen Corraine blaming their behaviour on their medication, which is its own unpleasant can of worms and slap in the face of those who cop with mental illness, of which I'm one (that part made me feel almost personally insulted). Even this is a heavily simplified version of this fiasco.

On the one hand, I'm not in the best position to talk about this in a concrete way. I'm male and white, and while I'm neurodivergent and bisexual, I've likely had nowhere near the troubles these other authors had getting published. I likely had unconscious ethnic and biological biases working with me rather than against me (which shouldn't be the norm, but unfortunately still is), so my talking about this particular scandal can come off as the height of hypocrisy. But something about this struck me hard.

Looking at this play out and seeing recent developments, particularly hearing some further updates on the situation via this compilation video on Zhao's YouTube channel, it got me to thinking. Zhao makes valid points about racism not being just shouting slurs and showing outright hatred. It's the unconscious biases, the unthinking belittlement, the little things that are done through ignorance or rather than active malice. Ours is a world that for several hundred years saw a culture of colonisation and oppression, and while great strides have been made away from that, there is still that ingrained legacy.

And, perhaps the most difficult to admit, I had those feelings inside me. I'd had resentments and suspicions that were unpleasant to remember while I was trying to get myself a publisher. I'm hopefully beyond that now, but I have to remember them. And admit them to myself. They are part of the ugly side of me. The side that can be petty and spiteful, the side that contemplates hitting something so hard that it breaks, that might fly off the handle and become something horrific to myself. As stated above, racism isn't just overt actions. It's not realising that there is something like that in myself as well.

Of course, another recent scandal can't be completely ignored, that of the Hugo nomination snubs which appear to have been done purely to avoid political backlash from the host country. Done in such a clumsy and condescending way that it's a slap in the face of the world of fiction writing, where unfair situations in the real world should be challenged, and those challenges celebrated. It makes one depressed at the industry, especially as an author just starting out. But there is a silver lining to be taken from this. It was exposed, Cait Corraine lost their book deal, and while there has unfortunately been bile flung at those who decided to break this scandal when private resolution failed, there's also been support for those who were victimised by this. If you can, and I plan to when I'm financially able, please support the authors and their work.

Writers aren't a competition any more. We're a community. And people like Corraine undermine everything.

Updates, February 2024 edition

It appears to be the vogue at the moment to offer updates on work, life, the universe, and mostly everything else. I've been a little slow with the blog recently, due to factors that will be discussed below. But hopefully things will start to change around slowly.

First, personal stuff. I'm within a few weeks/months of moving into new accommodation, which will mean disruptions to my life and work patterns. I'll be mitigating as much as possible, but there'll still be an awkward phase of making do, which I've never been good at. The current accommodation has served me well, but it's really not holding up well. This new one will be newer, and more suited to my current needs and wants as a creator and human. Also, I've been beginning what is the first module of an Open University degree, which will help me in my future career both with my writing and with other jobs.

On a work front, things have been bouncing between being stuck in a rut, and going great guns. The damage to my external hard drive where my work was stored--after forgetting to do backups in six months--has resolved into a situation where I've got everything back, plus a new external hard drive thrown in. OnTrack managed to get that all sorted out for a reasonable price given that I sent them a small and delicate device. In better news, the first round of edits for the second part of my Cluster Cycle (sample of the first one out now right here) have come in, been seen to, and sent back to my publisher. And looking through that book again gave me an odd feeling of maturity. I was able to see where my plotting and explanation had faltered, where my grammar hadn't been up to snuff, and put those to rights where sensible and possible. One project that looked promising has sadly folded for the moment as it wasn't panning out, while another is looking more promising and more...me.

The most difficult thing has been trying to works and keep my self-balance during a period where the world is going through another phase of turbulence that isn't just a localized issue, but spreading into national and international environments. We are also entering a time of new technological advances which are bringing new challenges and threats which haven't been addressed legally as yet. The world is uncertain, more than occasionally shitty, worse than Heinlein or Kojima could have envisioned it in a way. But there are still reasons to say 'this won't turn grimdark'. I just need to remember them.

Here's to a new home, a new book, a new year, a new period of education, and hopefully peace somewhere in this crazy world so we can take a breath and reflect. Stay hopeful.

Shada, or potentially SHady recycling of deAD And old projects

 What a contrived title. But hear me out.

Any fan of Doctor Who has at least heard of Douglas Adams's six-party Season 17 finale Shada. Due to industrial action at the BBC, the serial never finished production, and attempts have been made in the 1990s (narrated stringing together), 2003 (radio remake) and 2018 (part-animated remake) to bring the story back in non-text form. But Adams, who disliked the story anyway, found ways of recycling elements of his Doctor Who tenure in his own work. His original finale was reworked into Life, The Universe, and Everything, while a character from Shada was put into his first Dirk Gently novel with enough separation that he wasn't infringing copyright.

Hearing the saga of Shada, and how Adams recycled elements of his unrealized work in later projects, made me think about something of how I approach writing. While it's hard to 'take the L' as the phrase goes, sometimes you have to admit a project can't be realised. It won't work narratively, it's not what you want to do, you hit an insurmountable story issue that can't be fixed without breaking the in-game world beyond repair or rewriting from the top down. It may just be an idea that didn't get beyond the concept stage.

I realise that, in writing, some things inevitably get left at the wayside. It's just part of the process. Recycling other writing isn't just the domain of AI generation, but part of the creative process so long as you're recycling your own. There have been times when I've just had to drop an entire series because it wasn't working for whatever reason, however much that hurts the ego. If it's not working, or you no longer feel for it, why go on banging your head against a brick wall?

There are graduations of abandoned or not-working ideas. It can be something that only gets as far as jotting down a rough premise or a plan, which you leave aside and end up forgetting about. It can be the first paragraphs, or even the first chapters if it's long form, of a story that peters out for whatever reasons. In the worst case, it can be a series you wanted to carry through and complete, but it ended up just not going further than one and a little bit books. I'm not counting the author's death into this example, but a living author just not having the will to finish this work for whatever reason. Quality reasons, market trends, it just not sitting right, anything can trip up even what someone may think will be the defining magnum opus of their existence.

My Cluster Cycle series was, in part, a rapid scrabbling together of multiple abandoned story ideas with the overall concept of sci-fi tales based on old stories. How's that working? Don't know yet, the first one's only just released from a smallish American publisher. And it's early days. Another series I'm writing for them, an adventure series, had a big hiccup where I needed to just abandon a book completely as it was straying outside my own and my accessible knowledge base. I recycled some chapters of it in the penultimate book, so the research and some of the writing came in useful after all, but otherwise that story's lost to time. And I never really liked it anyway.

I'm sure there's plenty of other stories of authors who had to drop projects, or never really liked them and recycled any salvageable bits into their other projects. It's likely a more common story than many might want to admit. Authors, and I know this for a fact, have ten times more story ideas than they can normally put to electronic or physical paper in one lifetime. And sometimes they try putting those ideas to paper, and think 'This wouldn't work in a million years' and leave it in their notebooks to pick up later.

That's not a bad thing. Just because you can't realise one idea doesn't mean you can't realise them all. It just means that idea didn't gel. Sometimes, you need a few years, or a new premise, and something from that other project can be brought back into being.

Oh, and yes I've experienced Shada. I do like classic Doctor Who, and I was curious. Want my opinion? It's okay, I guess. I like the audio version best.

My favourite YouTube channels

This is an odd post, I suppose. Shouldn't I be promoting my new book left, right and centre? Well, yes technically, but I'm determined not to be that really pushy author. Plus I've been properly busy with other things. Instead, I've decided to give my readers a taste of the YouTube channels I've come to really enjoy. YouTube is both a source of entertainment, maybe something I'll use in the future, and a fascinating place to find new stuff. Here in begins a selected list of channels that I enjoy for one reason or another.

NOTE: For information videos, there is a strong temptation to take them with pinches of salt and cross-check. The channels I've mentioned below check out as very sound when I've done source cross-referencing. Also, I have stuff being uploaded on my own YouTube channel, so enjoy.

Proper Bird/Jinzee: A woman who got her start summarizing lore from The Witcher franchise, but has branched out into other areas. A channel with a criminally-low level of views and subscriptions, she's created really entertaining retrospective and analysis videos. Her side channel "Jinzee" covers her game twitch compilations, which are entertaining to say the least.

J Draper: A newer find, a London-based historian who covers...a lot of stuff. The two videos that caught my attention was her look at Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and how they influenced modern language through their preservation, and two videos on Shakespeare, one discussing his potential sexuality and one about how his plays were produced in their day. It is definitely something to enjoy.

Bernadette Banner: A dress historian who specialises in original practise reconstruction, Bernadette Banner has been going for some little time, and I found her in 2021 through her early analysis of costumes in period movies. Some of my favourites from her include her hair and beauty product experiments, her creation of a Worth-style 1890s gown, her illustrated corrections of terrible Halloween costumes and book covers, and some other random stuff.

Caitlin Doughty: Formerly known under the title "Ask a Mortician", Caitlin Doughty is a real-life mortician, green death advocate, and co-founder of the Order of the Good Death, and organization promoting green burial options and death awareness. Her video format has shifted over the years from answering direct death questions, to long-form videos on death-related subjects from disastrous events to personal stories. This isn't clickbait sensationalism, this is a real and personal look into death. Also has some truly incredible stories for authors such as myself to use with due care and respect for their origins. (Also fun fact, the WordPress encyclopedia doesn't have 'mortician' in its lexicon.)

Overly Sarcastic Productions: A find from 2018/2019, this channel is run by two friends, 'Red' and 'Blue', who respectively do mythology/folklore/story-based videos, and history videos. Their work is relatively sound, though sometimes they fall into common traps (JEEZ, WHY CAN'T ANYONE GET ANNE BOLEYN RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!! *deep breath*). Recommended if you want stuff like Norse sagas, common story tropes, history, influential figures, and some general shenanigans.

Lindsay Ellis: Someone I found by accident, who was sadly forced off YouTube by a despicable harassment campaign due to speaking her mind. She uploads her content primarily on Nebula, but her YouTube channel is still up and still has great stuff. From analysis videos of specific characters/films to general history, it's a great time. She's also now a published science fiction author.

There are other channels I might mention, but these are the biggies. These are the ones I really enjoy, and can imbue knowledge. Here's to the future, my own and everyone else pursuing creative and/or educational endeavours, and a year that is perhaps slightly...less...stressful.

Reading - Starborn Vendetta

Apologies for the lateness on this blog, life was happening.

Hi. This week, not a very big post. That will probably come later. Instead, a little self-promo with a video of me reading the first half (roughly) of the first chapter of Starborn Vendetta. This is totally free for anyone to try, a sample of the world and characters. There's lots more after when the reading ends, but this gives you the opportunity to sample this world. Also, to hear how I am when reading something like this.

The novel is available in hardback and ebook formats, with the paperback edition releasing on April 14, 2024. Shopping links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Bookshop

Barnes & Noble