Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The enemy starship’s forward battery fired.

Crewmen aboard the Casey Jones saw the flash and the inbound beams on their monitors, and their minds added the thunderous roar that the vacuum of space took away. The emissions found their mark and a portion of the Jones‘ hull dissolved into molten metal fragments and crystallized atmosphere.

“Tube two ready.” Jiang cried over the roar of alarms. The computerized command and control systems that normally directed return fire had been knocked out in the first volley.

Wu, fingers flying as he computed the last few lines of a solution, gave the order: “Fire!”

The torpedo shot out of its tube and into the vacuum. Its tiny drive engaged and sent it streaking toward its target. At the last moment, the target fired its thrusters—the crew had just seen what was heading toward them. With a few feet to spare, the torpedo sailed past the enemy ship.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Brief History
Elvish oral histories speak of a time when all elves lived together in a distant land, in harmony with nature and themselves. Discord supposedly arose when the ancient elves began splitting into factions: one believed that elvenkind was inherently evil, and strove to contain this evil nature with laws and a structured society, while the other held that elves were inherently good and trusted them to act on their instincts without recourse to law and organization.

There may be a germ of truth in this, as it does explain the difference between the two major groups of elves, the light and the dark. The names arose because of minor differences in skin tone, though the genetic differences between the two groups are nil. Both existed in the oral histories of the other, despite immense geographical isolation: the first recorded meeting between light and dark elves took place only in recent times.

“Light” elves
As early as the third century of the recorded era, advanced elvish civilizations had begun to arise on the western seaboard of the major continent. Beginning as a series of petty kingdoms, over the course of centuries the various elvish principalities were united under a single king. While the dynasties in power changed relatively frequently, a light elvish king remained on the throne until the very recent era of revolutions.

However, increasing dogmatism and a rigid hierarchy eventually led this sophisticated civilization to stagnate. While the light elvish kingdom was the most technologically advanced in the world at one point, by the dawn of the modern era it was weak and suffered invasion and strife on an unprecedented scale. Only recently has progress been made in forging the light elves into a modern nation state.

“Dark” elves
While a number of powerful dark elven kingdoms rose and fell on the minor continent, they never approached the size or complexity of the light elves’. By and large, most of the dark elves lived in small groups, widely scattered, living as hunters, gatherers, or farmers.

This lack of centralized states left the dark elves vulnerable to conquest from abroad, and following the reestablishment of contact between the major and minor continents, they were largely subjugated by human and dwarvish conquerors. The elves were decimated in battle, and their numbers have remained low ever since, largely supplanted by settlers from the major continent.

Biological Sketch
Elves, like humans, range considerably in height, though they are generally of slender build. While strong, they lack the constitution of humans, dwarves, and orcs and must make up for their disadvantage in strength through their lithe nature and rigorous training. Skin tone ranges are similar to those of humans, with light elves tending toward lighter colors and dark elves toward a tanner complexion.

Elves have slow and difficult pregnancies; gestation lasts fourteen to eighteen months on average, and there is a refraction period of 2-4 years before another pregnancy is possible. Elvish children also mature very slowly, typically reaching adulthood at thirty to thirty-five years. Their slow metabolism gives elves significant resistance to poison and environmental toxins, however, and also greatly increases their lifespan, which is two hundred years on average. No upper limit is known; exceptionally hardy elves have been known to live over a thousand years, though documentation is difficult to come by.

Cultural Notes
Elvish cultures are often collectivist, focusing on the good of the group over that of the individual. Many dark elves lack personal names, substituting some earned deed or distinction instead. Both “light” and “dark” elvish cultures tend toward xenophobia and isolation, and while they have never been known to enslave or conquer other races (preferring suzerainty), many elvish cultures still hold them in low esteem.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The Royal Opera House! A name that, all on its own, evoked visions of Second Empire furniture, dazzling chandeliers, the cream of a potpourri of baronetcies and earldoms.

And Annie was there in a t-shirt and shorts.

Even the man in the ticket booth was wearing the usher equivalent of top hat and tails, and he gave Annie an odd look as she paid.

“I didn’t have time to change,” she said, trying for a sheepish grin.

“The performance is beginning in fifteen minutes,” the usher said. “They’re no longer seating people in the main gallery. You’ll have to be seated in one of the side galleries and take your seat during the intermission.”

Annie blanched. “A-are you sure? There’s still fifteen minutes left!”

“Sorry, house rules,” the usher said with a shrug.

“That’s right,” his tone and posture seemed to say. “Unlike you Yanks, we Britons know how to run a proper opera house.”

A second usher, more opulently dressed than the first, led Annie through a side door onto a small balcony with a double bench seat. To her relief, there were several others already there—mostly matronly old ladies and middle-aged men. They were all dressed better than her high school prom king, save one.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

My friend Miller Corvus is a stern and unforgiving man at first sight, but this exterior conceals a warm and caring individual.

Early in life, Miller renounced his title as a noble and became a templar’s squire, but he maintained good relations with his family regardless. For many years, Miller traveled with the Most Noble Order of the Glorious Sunrise, championing the causes of good and order throughout the kingdoms. We became good friends, he and I, the templar and the magister, even though the Order would have preferred otherwise. Eventually, he retired and set out for Westhope, where I settled after leaving the Order.

Miller’s watched his niece Nyla’s career with barely concealed disapproval, but when she came to his door unexpectedly, she and her companion Jinx were welcomed with open arms, though Miller has insisted that the two eventually repay their noble ‘benefactors.’ Or, rather, the people they’d been fleecing to make a dishonest living after the money ran out. They even wound up with a bounty on their head; when the hunter tracked Nyla and Jinx down, Miller nobly intervened, disarming the assassin and convincing her of the wrongness of her cause. Not many people would even attempt that, much less succeed, but that’s the force of my friend’s personality.

Humbled, the assassin–Sigma–requested to stay the night in Miller’s cabin, which he had built a short distance from my home. The old templar responded by opening his home to her and taking her on as a squire. He may be old–in fact, being two years his senior, I’m fairly certain he is–but Miller maintains his martial training and combat skills. And, lest you worry about the impropriety of a male master and female squire, his vow of chastity.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

For the NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain.

“And what about you?” I finally had to say. “Reaming me out like this? If you feel so strongly, why aren’t you writing a column? If you think I’m such a cynic, why’d you even come? I think you and I both knew Bose wasn’t going to show up and that he never is.”

Karen’s eyes smoldered under her bangs. “I came because talking with you is one of the few times I have to organize a cogent defense of what I believe,” she said. “Even when you’re playing the cynic, as I said before, you make for a good verbal sparring partner. I tend to use ideology and politics as razors to determine who I associate with, and I’ve recently come to realize that demanding ideological purity of everyone means that I risk isolating myself in a liberal echo chamber where I only hear people that agree with me.”

“Isolating yourself in a university, in other words?”

“The very same. And I have a feeling that if you were ever honest about yourself, willing to stand up for whatever you believe in, we’d have a lot to argue about. A lot more to argue about. I’m coming to think that politics are nothing unless they’re held to the flame and tempered, which I don’t see happening a lot. Dr. Bose, Dr. Ross, the Nothing, the College Republicrats and Democricans…despite what they say, they see these kids as vessels to be filled with whatever they think should go in there, not what the kids truly come to believe themselves.”

“So you agree with me, then, about kids being spoiled.” It wasn’t much, but I had to try and spring the same sort of rhetorical trap on Karen that she’d just about sprung on me.

“I agree that everyone wants to raise a generation of parrots,” Karen said. “I think the Nothing is right about the inequity of society, of the exploitation of students for profit and the use of grad students like us as disposable rags. But if I just tell that to someone, what am I accomplishing other than to ask them to uncritically accept my views over uncritically accepting someone else’s?”

I nodded thoughtfully. “Could be. So that’s why you want to make me out to be like my friend Jim, a raging right-winger with more guns than teeth who never met a social program he didn’t want to string up and gut like a winter buck?”

This time Karen looked a little disconcerted. “I…no. Well, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that even when you’re being evasive it makes me think in a way that my little echo chamber doesn’t. If you’d take positions and defend them instead of just lashing out at whatever annoys you…”

“So you could feel better about yourself by seeing how wrong I am?” The words were out before I’d had a chance to filter them.

“No, I…”

“Look, Karen. I hate politics. I hate everything about them, from how they drive apart people who should be friends to the way people act like they define you like some kind of standardized test. I cross to the other side of the street when I see people with signs and fliers even if they’re for something I agree with. I oppose all protests and counterprotests even if they’re for the Society for Distribution of Internet Cat Pictures.” Again the words had spun out before I even had a chance to think on them.

Karen sighed. “I’m sorry. Look, I tend to get excited about things and talk a lot without thinking.”

I wanted to say something reassuring, something that indicated that I felt exactly the same way. “It’s okay,” was all that came out, as stark a proof as ever there was one that my tongue has a sense of humor bordering on the perverse.

“I had that dream again, computer.”

“Are you referring to the recurring dream of which you have complained for some months now?”

“That’s right. Me, walking…surrounded by color and fragrance, flowers of every shape and variety. It’s…it’s impossible, but I think I may be starting to believe it may be real, computer.”

“Come now, sir. There is no such thing as flowers.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“I am…a leaf collector. Of sorts.” Ingram straightened a bit to encompass the room with a sweeping gesture before returning with a grunt to his usual stooped-over posture.

Ross was nearly speechless. “They…they’re beautiful.” Leaves of every shape and size danced on the walls and froms strings in the air. Most were pressed flat, with a slight acrylic sheen, and all had either a letter or a simple picture cut out of them.

“Wherever I go, I cannot help but collect a handful of leaves here and there,” Ingram said, a note of pride detectable in his voice. “Then I return home to my flower press, and once they are flattened I craft the leaves into art or a message that most associates itself with where they were collected.”

“May I take a look?”

“Please.”

Faded by age and lit into translucency by the late afternoon sun, the most conspicuously displayed leaves each bore one letter of the word LOVE.

“I proposed to my wife on a fall day, in a park,” said Ingram, following Ross’s gaze. “I took two handfuls that day; the second is with her, in the Alzheimer’s home.”

“What about that one?” Ross pointed at a phrase arced across the wall: WEALTH.

“From my first business trip to Japan. The businessmen over there thought it terribly unlucky and inauspicious.”

Suspended in the far corner of the room, the shadow hiding the monofilament wire: LOSS.

Ross examined it, brow knitted.”Your wife?”

“No, she’ll get her own when I finally…lose…her,” Ingram sighed. “That’s something else entirely. Something much darker. Perhaps when I know you a little better you can hear the story.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

By my calculations, this blog has just notched its 1000th daily post since I began it on February 19, 2010. It’s possible I’m a little off, since I’m writing this well in advance so I’ll have no distractions during NaNoWriMo (I was also an English major for whom even basic math typically required counting off on fingers). In honor of this arbitrary milestone, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on being able to keep to such a punishing blog schedule so long.

I Bank Posts in Advance
Stephen King and any number of other writers say you can’t do this, that you need to set a regular schedule with a regular time and never depart from it ever. I think it’s fairer to say that every writer is different and some feel they have to work that way. Not me. If I know that I’m going to be out of town or indisposed, I bank up posts and schedule them to automatically drop while I’m away.

It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but the dividends include no ugly interruptions and an increased sense of planning with regards to the blog. I’ll usually start out a month or so before the coming gap and “double up,” making two posts (one for today, one for later) when I’d otherwise have a singleton.

I Fill in Missing Posts When I Can
Even though I’m pretty good about keeping my schedule, there are times when internet outages, life’s unexpected vagaries, or good old-fashioned all-American depression keep me from posting. One of the great things about the internet, though, is the ability to manipulate date and time stamps. If I fill in the post I “missed” at a later date, it will for all intents and purposes be as if I made it to begin with. My relatively few subscribers still get a notification when the make-up is actually published so they can read the new content, and I get the satisfaction of patching up a “hole” in my schedule.

I usually don’t try to do this immediately. Nothing kills the urge to post more than a long line of old posts to fill in before I can write anything new. Instead, I keep the date in the back of my mind and fill it in when I have extra time or inspiration. If it’s a long enough gap it may take months to fill. But filling those gaps–heck, even just thinking about filling them–reinforces my commitment to my schedule. But I think that even if your schedule is once a month or once a week the same rules apply.

I Find Things in My Daily Life to Write About
Writing a fiction blog as I do, inspiration is a constant need. I’m constantly looking for little things to spin into stories, from an off-the-cuff remark to a news story to (this really happened once) a bumper sticker. Truth is stranger than fiction, and the best fiction has a grain of truth to it even if you take it to a place where elves pilot stealth bombers.

Most bloggers are nonfiction bloggers, though. But the same applies! Looking for things to write about (issues, events, peeves, joys) in what you’re up to everyday not only helps you invest yourself in your blog, but it makes what you have to say more unique. Most of my “fiction” posts are real life salted with disinformation and rendered in my own ever-evolving style. And really, how different is that from nonfiction these days?

Failing That, I Try Prompt Generators
Not every day is the most inspiring, and as often as not I have to dig elsewhere to look for something to write. Writing prompt generators are great and there’s tons of ’em (I detail some favorites here). There are hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs and forums that post daily prompts to help fellow inspiration-challenged writers.

But it doesn’t have to be an official generator to do the trick. Simply browsing Wikipedia can lead to some strange and wonderful places, each a great kernel for a story or essay. The daily news is the same, especially international or odd news that isn’t as well covered. You can always ask your friends and family too; some of the best prompts I’ve ever gotten have come about that way.

My Blog is a Means to an End
And no, that end isn’t selling things through the purchase link, which has netted like $20 in the 6 months it’s been active. In my case, the end is to improve my writing by doing a lot of it and by doing it every day. To a lesser extent, it’s also a way to trap the ideas that I have in amber so I can go back to them later and build a short story or a novel (something that happens quite a bit). So if I skip a post, I’m actively holding myself back from my goal.

Other goals may vary. Maybe your goal is to create and accurate record of how you feel about certain issues. Maybe your goal is to be funnier and more outrageous! In either case, linking your blogging to a greater goal can have the effect of a little extra motivation.

My Blog is an End in Itself
I know that’s a contradiction. But identifying myself as a blogger and the blog as a thing that I really care about maintaining is something I care very deeply about, even if in the end the only audience is myself. If you see your blog as a means to some nonconstructive end (like fame or fortune or book contracts bursting with lucre) it’s easy to get disappointed and discouraged.

Keeping a more constructive goal in mind helps, but also consider this question. Would you still keep the blog even if no one was reading? Are the posts there because they contain things that you want to be said, that you need to be said? It’s that kind of thing that’s led me to say that even the most wretched prose (or what seems to me like it) has value. Our writing defines us, and adds to the mark we leave on the world.

In Conclusion
I never thought I’d be able to maintain this schedule as long as I have, but I’m grateful for the opportunity. Hopefully some of the things that have sustained me in this pursuit can be useful to you, or at least make for a pleasant read.

The Jack-of-Cards will, if you win a game of high-draw against it, grant a simple request. Many, to their peril, have asked for something as they would a genie, only to have themselves dealt a two of spades for their insolence. Wiser folks have used the boon to ask the Jack-of-Cards something about itself, and their reports form all that is know about the figure’s nature. Asked where it came from, the Jack-of-Cards will answer that it has always been.

Asked whether it is God, the Jack-of-Cards will laugh and allow that there are powers greater than it to which it owes no fealty. Asked why it uses a deck of cards, or what it used before cards were invented, the Jack-of-Cards will only say that it is the latest in a long line of ‘tricks.’

Those who do not wish to be bothered will have their wishes respected. But should someone, of their own free will, approach or accost the Jack-of-Cards, they will be dealt a card that has irrevocable effects on the fabric of the universe. The Jack-of-Cards will often play a simple card game with those that are willing, with a card as the penalty for losing and a request as the prize. But just as often it will fling a card at the interloper without so much as a sound.

Witnesses and researchers have attempted to catalog the effect that the various cards have, but have reached few conclusions. One report holds that the suicide king, the King of Hearts, bestows imbecility. Another holds that it besots the bearer with an impossible love, while a third has it giving immidiate and most painful heartbreak. Cardholders have vanished, had their personalities or forms subtly or grossly altered, and more.

The one thing all agree on is that the two of clubs, when dealt, brings instant and total annihilation.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“In the frenzy over Nazi submarines laden with gold and uranium oxide, the fate of Germany’s cargo submarines from the first world war is often overlooked. Yet German merchant submersibles were calling at American ports as late as November 1916, just four months before the United States entered the war.”

“Desperate to break or at leas circumvent the British blockade, the merchant submarines, seven in all, were built by the private Lloyd shipping company. Filled with advanced German chemical dyes and synthetic medicines, they returned laden with rubber, nickel, and tin. Each voyage paid for the cost of the boats many times over.”

“The historical record tells us that of the Imperial German cargo subs, only one was successful in making two voyages before America entered the war. It and the five subs that never made a voyage were armed and sent to war. The seventh sub left for America but mysteriously disappeared, and no trace of it–nor any record of its cargo manifest–were ever found.”

“But I have uncovered evidence of a visit by the post sub, the Bremen, to Portland, Maine in late December 1916, months after its scheduled arrival in Newport, Virginia. The documents not only point to the ship’s condition and ultimate destination, but offer a glimpse of its heretofore unknown cargo.”

“And that, gentlemen, is where we need to put on our English tea dresses, for we’re all going down the rabbit hole a bit on this one.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!