Reimagining Dragons

I’ve been writing poetry since I was ten or twelve. That’s nearly twenty years of writing poetry. I like to think time has sharpened my words, chiseled rough stone into smooth sculptures. I’ve progressed so far in my craft that I actually felt I had some good ones to submit to journals recently. They were all rejected, but the fact that I haven’t really submitted poems to any place since I was like 16 or 17 sending in awful poetry to prestigious literary journals and contests has got to mean something, right?

It’s also been a very long time since I’ve posted on Silent Soliloquy. I could name a dozen excuses, but one reason I’d like to highlight is the strange juxtaposition of writing as hobby and hoping to be published someday. This creates tension: If I post my best work here, then it’s automatically excluded from nearly everything that could result in getting published. So if I save my best work for submissions and post the rest here, then I’m sharing only dribble. That’s not what I want for my readers or for myself.

In the past, this site has almost been run like my own e-zine, periodically delivering short stories, series, and poems for readers to peruse without subscription fees.

Now, though, I feel I need to take this site in a different direction.

Consider the name: Silent Soliloquy. A soliloquy is an “act of speaking one’s thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers,” and the description of it being silent adds in just a hint of contradiction (you can’t silently say anything) and a touch of wordplay (since I’m writing, not speaking aloud, it is actually silent).

Just having a blog to be a depositing place of old writing may not be objectively bad, but that’s no longer what I need. I want to grow my craft. I want a place where people (maybe future fans of books I’ll get published) can come to see that I wasn’t always as great a writer and possibly learn about the craft through my journey as an author.

So here’s the new direction I’m considering: I’m going to begin taking snippets of poetry or short stories I’ve written and either analyze it in order to do a rewrite, or I’ll ask some targeted questions with the hope that readers can provide feedback.

I think a realistic schedule for this is maybe twice a month. That’s a slow drip of content, but if it’s more meaningful content, then it’ll still quench our combined thirst.

To start us off, I’ve dredged up literally the earliest dated poem I ever wrote: Dragons.

NaNo 2014: Story 5

This story was inspired by a pair of names, a setting of dragons, and the challenge of making the main character genderqueer. In theory, most Transgender characters can be written as their preferred genders, but a non-binary character demands to break free–from prior conceptions as well as conventional pronouns. In a contemporary story, using “they” to refer to a single person may pass, but this story (thanks to the dragons) begged to belong to my mythology–and in this world, plural pronouns don’t make sense as gender neutral alternatives to “he and “she.”

So I got creative and invented my own pronouns. They’re haphazard, but they work.

The most important thing was remembering a Trans character is not solely defined by being Trans–just like characters of color are more than their skin tone and gay characters are more than their sexuality. Torn between two cultures I’ve always been fascinated by but have written of very little, this story blossomed into a fantasy-rich social commentary that questions order, truth, and objectivity in a single tale.

Ellerin had long red hair that twisted through the air as the wind blew. The knight was dressed in finely sewn leathers that cupped around soft breasts, were belted with an iron chain, and ended in cut-off leggings that revealed sturdy muscles and a dagger tethered to the left thigh.

Kadjarti met El’s eyes, and for the first time, his gaze burned not in contempt, but in fear–he felt Ellerin’s control tightening around his heart, the world straining around them, fighting to maintain its natural state, but caving in one piece at a time. Ellerin knew they felt the world in unison, tethered in that one moment to each other, but El had seized control and Kadjarti now lay powerless. His eyes widened as El bared teeth, and with a pained howl, Ellerin’s fist dropped to his chest.

Inspire my next story by clicking here.

Ocean Tales

Sirensong

You stand at the shoreline, watching as the water rides the sand in and out. The sky is bright and blue overhead and all around you, people bustle up and down the beach, throwing beach balls or laughing in groups or lounging around under broad umbrellas. You try to ignore all of them and soon the only thing you can hear is the crash of the waves, each the song of a siren calling you toward the deep.

A Sword-Torn Hand

or, SHARDS of the SHATTERED

Cody shuddered when the wind blew a few drops of rain onto the page: They splattered there like little drops of blood, the yellowing paper instantly discolored like Rorschach blots waiting to be analyzed. He wiped the tips of his fingers over the spots, judging their wetness and if they needed any special treatment, and then decided it was safest to close his book: The spots might leave small scars, but nothing else could be done. Sometimes the Wyrd went that way.

Cody stuffed the book into his pocket and stood up. The grey clouds, thick in places but breath-thin in others, tumbled over the skies in every direction he looked. Over the trees and bulging boulders before him he gazed at the dance of dragons in the sky promising winds beat from leathery wings and electric breath that would incinerate all it touched. Cody’s lips curled into a smile.

THE QUEST BEGINS

EXT. CASTLE COURTYARD – DAY (MEDIEVAL ERA)

YOASH, a knight in well-worn armor, carries a bloodstained URN beneath one arm and drags three large, white curving BONES behind him. A crowd has gathered in his wake and now everyone in the courtyard stares at him as well.

Yoash drops the ropes tied to the bones, sets down the urn, and raises his arms to the suddenly silent crowd.

YOASH

The great dragon is dead!