Mightier than the Sword - A Part of the Aidan Moher Network

This is a watershed chapter, plain and simple. A lot of the story gets laid out before Rowan (though she understands little of it) and as the reader continues on with the novel they will (hopefully) see many of the story threads leading back to Chapter Eight.

With so much information needing to be crammed into this chapter, it was a challenge for me to avoid long, heavy blocks of exposition and info-dumps (the bane of any Fantasy novel, it seems). The most obvious and effective way to relay information like this is dialogue and I took that concept and ran with it. In fact, the majority of this chapter simply consists of Rowan, Fitheal and another character sitting huddled in a room, deep in the bowels of a Cathedral, shooting the shit.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the chapter than that. Rowan’s now fully immersed in the Faerie world and her life is looking anything but stable. She’s also told, in no uncertain terms, that if she value’s her life she’ll drop the search for her son. But, as any self-respecting, spunky heroine would attest to, those just aren’t very compelling terms. Rowan doesn’t exactly put her Fey host in his place, but I was surprised by how well she was able to hold her own in the argument.

I expect that when I sit down to edit (a process I’ve started, actually) that this chapter will require quite a bit of revision. There’s a definite balancing act between revealing enough to hook the reader into the main story and not giving too much away, and that’s going to require a very close look when I go back to reread the chapter in the future. I’m confident that I’ve got a good solid skeleton for the chapter, all the pieces are there, I’ll just have to spend some time moving things around, add in some fat and try to get it looking more like a living, breathing thing than a stumbling zombie.

Through Bended Grass is split up into three parts - First, Second and Third Act, you know the deal - and Chapter Eight marks the end of the first part. The story’s been set up, the ball’s rolling and things start getting messy. From this point onward the Fey world, and it’s relationship to our own, opens wide and Rowan doesn’t look back as she’s shoved in head first. Her story flits back and forth between the Feylands and our world and each has its own sights to see for the reader.

On another note, the excerpt that I’ve constantly promised is done. It’s all edited, but still I dilly-dally about putting it up here for everyone to see. I suppose part of it is fear that I’ll get torn apart, but I need to be confident in the story I’m telling.

I’ve also put aside editing the first 8 chapters in lieu of getting on to Chapter Nine. The desire to tell the story is burning much too brightly for me to put it aside for editing. On top of this, my brother is currently travelling through Ireland and just visited a major Irish monument that plays an important role in Chapter Nine, so that has me all kinds of motivated!

Well, I’m happier than a pig in shit at the moment.

Last night I opened up my RSS reader, ready to catch up on all the news for the day… and proceeded to fall out of my chair. You see, I stumbled, completely out of the blue, on the first review of one of my stories!

Aaron, the muse over at The Soulless Machine Review, a web site dedicated to reviewing the lost art of short fiction, stumbled across one of the pieces of short fiction, Ferry Traffic, I have posted as a free download on my main web site and seemed to have liked what he found!

I have to admit that I’m rather humbled at the thought that he enjoyed the piece enough to feel the urge to let others know about it. It gives me that little kick in the ass of confidence that’s so important to aspiring writers.

So, I just wanted to give a big shout out and a public thanks to Aaron (check out his blog!) for helping this aspiring writer out. God knows I need it!

For those interested, you can find Aaron’s review HERE and the free downloadable copy of Ferry Traffic HERE.

I suppose a compelling and important reason some of you may continue to read this blog is less because of any potential story I may write (I’m essentially no different than any other wannabe-writer, in that sense) but rather who I am and what I bring to the table that other bloggers/writers don’t.

As such, I should probably spell out, at least a little bit, who I believe myself to be.

An important aspect in who I’ve become and where I yet have to go, perhaps the most important aspect, is that I grew up on a small, quiet island on the west coast of Canada and, as such, led a very free childhood, safe from many of the dangers of living in a city.

This freedom was integral in letting my imagination grow and flourish as a young child. I spent countless afternoons lost in the wild ravages of the forest that borders my backyard (much smaller now than I remember it, and occupied by several houses) – slaying monsters, being a cop… being a robber, piloting a spaceship (and let me tell you, it takes one heck on an imagination to turn a living forest into the cockpit of an interstellar cruiser!) and anything else that popped up in the novels I was reading.

And there it is, reading, the driving force behind much of my childhood. Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a book in my hand. Usually fiction, sometimes not. Through the early years of my schooling I would often get in trouble for, get this… reading above my age level. I had one teacher in particular who contacted my parents with concerns that I wasn’t developing properly because I was reading “chapter books” instead of picture books like the rest of my classmates.

I’m still trying to figure out how this is a bad thing, but apparently it was. It didn’t stop me from reading, though.

Tom Swift. Jurassic Park. Congo. The Hardy Brothers. Encyclopedia Brown. Goosebumps.

Whatever I could get my hands on, I would read. Hell, in Grade 4, during class discussion on whatever novel we were supposed to be reading, I’d have one eye on Jurassic Park and the other on the class. My teachers didn’t like it, but I suppose there are worse sins in school than reading too much.

You’ll notice that the list of novels up there might seem a little odd for an aspiring fantasy novelist. There’s no fantasy. In fact, as a little kid I had a irrational dislike for the fantasy genre. I had made up my little mind that Fantasy was prissy. Nothing but Unicorns, princesses and Faeries. Not nearly as interesting as laser guns, dinosaurs and murders.

I was happily ignorant until about the age of 11 when I finally discovered The Hobbit and realized how much I was missing. I dove into Tolkien’s world and haven’t looked back since. I still feel like I haven’t explored even a smidgen of what the Fantasy (and really the speculative fiction genre as a whole) has to offer. But I’m damn determined to remedy that.

High School came and went and I could generally be found with my nose buried in a novel (in and out of class), but somehow still managed to avoid being typecast as a nerd. Writing had always been important to me throughout elementary school – I still remember writing my first story, it was about a caterpillar. Another one that sticks out in my mind is the story of a hedgehog who lived on Mt. Olympus… ahh, the mind and imagination child never fails to impress! – but it was in high school, and one teacher in particular, that really helped me discover that writing was what I wanted to do with my life.

Unlike many teachers in the school system, Mrs. Miller wanted me to succeed. She pushed me and encouraged me and helped me believe I really could be a writer. I learned a couple of years later that she often mentions me to her new classes, saying I was one of the best writers she’s ever taught.

Haughty words, and I’m not sure whether I believe them or not, but it shows that she believed in me and that, in my mind, is the most important thing in the world.

Belief in yourself as a writer and belief in the story your writing are, to my mind, the only essential tools a writer needs. The words will come, you just have to be confident enough to listen for them.

This lust for writing has continued to grow and that is where you find me now, writing and conceptualizing, meeting characters and dreaming, scratching out any piece of spare time in which to write. Is it time well spent? I dunno and probably won’t know until I’m a feeble old man, sitting at a desk, pen in hand, scribbling a story for the enjoyment of myself and, hopefully, a cadre of others.