“Were you always this full of yourself, or did the vaccine make it worse?”
He laughed and dropped his arms. “I decided I didn’t like smelling your fear. It was making me edgy.”
“What?”
“I like you better angry.”
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And by “composing” I mean making up songs and writing down the lyrics. I can’t even read music, let alone write it. I’ve been writing songs for Don Juan Triumphant which is the opera Erik is writing throughout Erik’s Tale. Most of this probably won’t end up in the book, but I feel compelled to write it anyway. Once Erik’s Tale is published (and it will be, one way or another) I’ll probably put up the songs as a bonus on my site.
When Erik starts writing Don Juan, he follows the traditional stories of Don Juan/Don Giovanni with Don Juan being an anti-hero and dying and unrepentant sinner. (a few versions tack on a happy ending.) This is a fantasy for Erik, to run around seducing beautiful women, dueling, and generally doing whatever the hell he wants. As Erik grows and changes, so does his vision of the story, so the opera becomes a tale of redemption through love instead. The other day I figured out how the opera ends, so now I’m writing part of a song to go with that. Do I know how to write an opera? Hell no. Will that stop me? Hell no. So I’m occasionally in danger of walking into walls as I hum a melody and try to figure out the next line of lyrics. It’s almost exactly the same as plotting. I wander around in a daze when I’m doing that too.
Even though I’m done with the first draft of Erik’s Tale, it’s still running around in my head. And I still love it.
This week, I’m sharing a brand new story Taming the Darkness, which is a sequel of sorts to Darkness at Dawn. (Same world, different characters)
“They think you won’t survive?” That wasn’t very encouraging for her own odds of survival.
“They think I might eat you, Little Red.” He smiled again and she fought the urge to scream for the scientist to let her out.
In a shaky voice she said, “If you do I hope I give you heartburn.”
Victor threw back his head and laughed.
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So it’s June, which means the year is about half over. So far I’ve:
The sad truth is that I look at all that and think I haven’t done enough. I might be just a little hard on myself.
Since there’s no official Six Sentence Sunday this week (they’re moving the site) I thought I’d take the opportunity to totally break the rules and post way more than six sentences. So here’s a much longer excerpt of Erik’s Tale:
With a steadying breath, Christine crossed the drawing room. She stopped again in the doorway to the parlor. The disarray made it clear that he was not merely practicing. Erik was in a rage. She brought a hand to her mouth as a chill went through her. What if he had seen her with Raoul? What might he do to her? It would be safer to leave, to accept Raoul’s offer to take her away from here. To leave the Opera and never come back. To leave Erik.
Alone.
She thought of the look in his eyes tonight, the way they shone with tears under Red Death’s mask. He’s a murderer. If he had seen her with Raoul, her life was in danger. She could not make herself believe it, though. Erik would not hurt her. She stepped around the overturned table and over the bits of costume strewn across the floor. Even trusting that he would not hurt her, she still had to battle fear when she reached the door of the music room. She opened the door wide.
Erik startled, his fingers slipping on the keys. He wasn’t wearing a mask. She only got a glimpse of his face before he brought his hands up to cover it. He did not turn to look at her but stayed hunched over the organ. She took a few slow steps into the room, her heart squeezed tight as she looked at him. “Erik,” she told him softly. “Take your hands away.”
“Why? So you can pity me?”
She gasped. Pity. She’d told Raoul on the roof that she pitied Erik, but how had he … He must have been watching them. Guilt flooded her as she imagined him watching them talk, watching them kiss. “I don’t pity you.”
“That’s what you told your lover,” he spat the word like a curse.
“You were there on the roof.” The sound she’d heard had not been her imagination.
“Yes, I was there. I saw … everything.”
She couldn’t recall ever feeling such shame. “I told him I pitied you, but I didn’t mean it.”
“Out of compassion, out of pity, you tell me you did not mean it. I can not stand any more of your pity. Take your pity and your compassion and get out of here.”
“Erik—”
“Get out!” He whirled his hands still covering his face. “Get out!”
She backed away a few steps, then turned and ran.
Through the chaos in the parlor to the neat drawing room. She made it to the back door, her hand reaching for the hidden panel, but she stopped. She would not do this. She would not run away from him as so many others had. Christine took deep breaths to calm her racing heart. She had told Raoul she pitied Erik so that he would not be jealous. She told Erik she wasn’t seeing Raoul so he wouldn’t hurt him. How had she gotten herself into such a position? She cared for Raoul, and it had been so nice to kiss him on the roof and again when they said goodnight. She felt she might be falling in love with the handsome Viscomte. But it had also been nice to dance with Erik. For him she felt … she wasn’t sure.
Christine turned away from the door and went back to the music room. Erik knelt on the floor beside the organ, sobbing. He was half turned away from her and when she entered he made a choked sound and covered his face again. “I told you to get out.”
“I am not your servant to be ordered around.”
“Leave me alone.” His voice was raw. “Please.”
“No.” She walked over and knelt beside him.
His shoulders hunched tight and he leaned away from her. Tears dripped from the bottom of his chin. “Go back to your handsome Raoul.”
“Take your hands away.”
He did not move.
She wrapped her hand around one of his wrists and pulled gently. “Please.”
Slowly, very slowly, Erik lowered his hands. He kept them close to his face, ready to cover it again. Then just as slowly he turned toward her. He was tense, almost cringing, like a dog that expected a blow. Christine studied his skull like face, the face that had made her scream the first time she saw it. Her memory of his face was true, but it did not make her want to scream this time. The shock of it was dulled from that first experience and she could look at him with a kind of detachment. He stared back at her, the fear in his eyes becoming confusion. Tears still leaked from his eyes, leaving tracks down his too-pale skin. Looking at him didn’t make her afraid, or disgusted. It made her heart ache. She reached up with her thumb and brushed a tear from his face.
Erik gave a great shuddering sigh that shook his whole body. “Christine …”
She pulled him against her and he clung to her, sobbing like a child. She did feel compassion for him, and pity. But there was something more.
“Pity!” He overturned a table. “And she kisses him,” he yelled as he threw a porcelain swan at the wall. Erik flung off his hat and peeled the mask from his face. He stared at the mask for a moment, the leering death’s head. If only he could take his own face off so easily.
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This is a bit later. After dancing with Erik, Christine meets up with Raoul. They go up to the roof of the Opera House to be alone, but Erik is watching:
“And what are you thinking of now?”
“How very nice it would be if you kissed me, Raoul.”
And he did. Like a nightmare come true, Erik watched them kiss. Watched the boy take everything he ever wanted. Handsome Raoul, rich Raoul, who got to walk in the world without shame, who got to kiss Christine in the starlight.
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Moira Rogers and Vivian Arend have a fantastic contest going on. Not only are there tons of great books for prizes (including mine!) but you could win an iPad! Check out the contest by clicking the banner.
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Back in March I posted a bit of the masked ball scene. I love that part so I’m going back to it for this week.
As they danced there at the ball, she had to look away from his eyes. She was afraid she might fall into them. “Everyone is watching,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered.
His fingers tightened just a bit on her waist. “I never dreamed I would dance with a beautiful woman.”
Erik’s Tale is now 54,000 words, so a very healthy category length. I have two more chapters and an epilogue to write, and then it’s done.
Edits are going well on Through the Fire. I’m reading through the whole thing to catch inconsistencies and make a few changes.
I’ve been thinking a lot about … well, a lot of things, but one of them is where I’m at in my apprenticeship, so to speak. In reading things from unpublished or self-published friends and acquaintances of mine, I find that for the most part I’m a more skilled writer. Sometimes by a lot. What I see in their work is where I was at before, even as recently as a year ago. I’ve improved a great deal in the last two years and I’m ready for the next phase. I think for the most part, my apprenticeship is over. Or at least the junior apprenticeship, where you learn the basics of writing, figure out how to write a story, and find your style/voice. I didn’t get here by wishing or wanting to be a writer, I made it this far through hard work. I’m working on my tenth novel. Yes, TENTH. It boggles my mind when people finally finish a first draft of a novel and then keep flogging that novel for years and years without writing another one. Don’t they have any other ideas? Don’t they know that their first novel probably sucks? Probably A LOT? Editing it five hundred times won’t teach you as much as writing another novel or two (or nine *cough*).
I learned far more by writing new novels than I did re-writing one of my chapters 12 times (in my defense I worked on that book for 11 years, so it was one re-write per year. Wait, that’s a terrible defense. Why did it take me so long?) I now have a large collection of what most writers call trunk novels, the books that get put away somewhere dark. They’re practice. Apprentice novels, if you will.
My apprentice novels:
Mythriders (1995-1998)
Crossbreed (1994-2006)
Rising Storm (2006-2007)
Shattered (NaNoWriMo 2007)
Marked (2008)
Of Shadow and Flame (NaNoWriMo 2008)
Flight (NaNoWriMo 2009)
Flight feels like my last apprentice novel. It didn’t teach me about writing so much as it taught me about passion — or the lack there of. I didn’t love that book. I tried to write an average guy type main character to challenge myself and it just didn’t work. I had neat ideas. I have a great villain, which I might salvage for something else. I worked hard, I enjoyed parts of it, I won NaNo, but looking back that book was SO DULL. Not like Of Shadow and Flame where I had loads of fun with Tenai burning things. I like demons. They’re fun. So in 2010 I wrote Through the Fire and I had a much better time. Then there was Air Pirates, which I had so much fun with that some NaNo people said they were jealous. Every day that novel was fun to write.
And now I’m getting close to the end of Erik’s Tale. Oh, that book. I love it so much sometimes it’s embarrassing. If I hadn’t gained the confidence and learned the lessons from writing all the books that came before it, I don’t think I would have had the courage to try writing Erik’s Tale. I know now that the best thing to do is follow my passion and not let fear stop me.
Maybe that, more than the actual writing skill, is why I think I’ve reached the next level.