Number count #1.
The current story I am working on is called "Hush, Baby". It's the second in my Haven... many. Many, many, many stories. The last novella--"Dark Wings", the first one--reached something around 32K. Hence it is a novella.
Hush, Baby, is definatley a more exitable story. Dark Wings was meant mainly for me; the foundation that is the ugliest part of the building of my story. I go back to it when I need to consult facts/figures in my later stories. Hence the not-so-enthusiastic search for a publisher/agent.
Hush, Baby, is gorgeous, though. Even though it is still under 2K words, you can see it simply blossoming.
1616 by the way.
I'm finding that Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" is really shaping the way that I am writing this story. Not the story itself--mine is much less epic then The Dark Tower--but the way in which the story is TOLD. Written. The way it is written.
And I'm liking it, a lot. It's really working out.
Here's your first exert:
She was wrapped in shadows, pulling them around her like a living cloak and walking through a room that was a scattering with tables and chairs of all sizes, from the coffee table to the bar stool. A man sat at a booth and stared at her serenely over a glass of viciously red liquid, regarding her carelessly. Next to him a woman sat twitching, her long dark hair falling over her face and obscuring the view of her lips as she mumbled. Annie caught mere snatches of her words, but didn’t look at her. She looked at the man who surveyed her with cold gray eyes.
“Johnny… go away… Spain…” the woman mumbled.
“Who are you?” Annie asked. She always asked this.
The man smiled, and the woman tossed her head back, revealing wild eyes and a terrified face. She may have been pretty once, maybe even been beautiful; the kind of woman that would stop men in the street with a well-placed glance, but the madness… god, the madness had contorted her, changed her. She screamed at Annie, eyes rolling like a frightened horses, hands twitching and convulsing over the table, her voice shrill and frightening. “RAIN RAIN GO AWAY COME AGAIN ANOTHER DAY LITTLE JOHNNY WANTS TO PLAY RAIN RAIN GO TO SPAIN NE’ER SHOW YOUR FACE AGAIN!”
She kept screaming it as Annie backed away, shaking her head. The man sipped out of his glass as though the raving woman beside him didn’t even exist. Annie realized suddenly that the woman was naked, and that she covered with deep red gashes, some of them new and some of them old, that her body was criss-crossed with scars and lashes like she had been repeatedly whipped through her entire life. And Annie knew then in a terrible flash of knowledge that this woman was ancient, and that no man nor woman nor creature had inflicted these wounds upon the woman, that the woman had done them to herself. That they reached all off her, even the places on a body that a human could normally not reach. She knew the woman had broken her bones to reach those places, to gash that perfect pale skin of hers, to keep the pain.
Annie screamed.
Hush, Baby, is definatley a more exitable story. Dark Wings was meant mainly for me; the foundation that is the ugliest part of the building of my story. I go back to it when I need to consult facts/figures in my later stories. Hence the not-so-enthusiastic search for a publisher/agent.
Hush, Baby, is gorgeous, though. Even though it is still under 2K words, you can see it simply blossoming.
1616 by the way.
I'm finding that Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" is really shaping the way that I am writing this story. Not the story itself--mine is much less epic then The Dark Tower--but the way in which the story is TOLD. Written. The way it is written.
And I'm liking it, a lot. It's really working out.
Here's your first exert:
She was wrapped in shadows, pulling them around her like a living cloak and walking through a room that was a scattering with tables and chairs of all sizes, from the coffee table to the bar stool. A man sat at a booth and stared at her serenely over a glass of viciously red liquid, regarding her carelessly. Next to him a woman sat twitching, her long dark hair falling over her face and obscuring the view of her lips as she mumbled. Annie caught mere snatches of her words, but didn’t look at her. She looked at the man who surveyed her with cold gray eyes.
“Johnny… go away… Spain…” the woman mumbled.
“Who are you?” Annie asked. She always asked this.
The man smiled, and the woman tossed her head back, revealing wild eyes and a terrified face. She may have been pretty once, maybe even been beautiful; the kind of woman that would stop men in the street with a well-placed glance, but the madness… god, the madness had contorted her, changed her. She screamed at Annie, eyes rolling like a frightened horses, hands twitching and convulsing over the table, her voice shrill and frightening. “RAIN RAIN GO AWAY COME AGAIN ANOTHER DAY LITTLE JOHNNY WANTS TO PLAY RAIN RAIN GO TO SPAIN NE’ER SHOW YOUR FACE AGAIN!”
She kept screaming it as Annie backed away, shaking her head. The man sipped out of his glass as though the raving woman beside him didn’t even exist. Annie realized suddenly that the woman was naked, and that she covered with deep red gashes, some of them new and some of them old, that her body was criss-crossed with scars and lashes like she had been repeatedly whipped through her entire life. And Annie knew then in a terrible flash of knowledge that this woman was ancient, and that no man nor woman nor creature had inflicted these wounds upon the woman, that the woman had done them to herself. That they reached all off her, even the places on a body that a human could normally not reach. She knew the woman had broken her bones to reach those places, to gash that perfect pale skin of hers, to keep the pain.
Annie screamed.
posted by Teigra at 10:31 PM
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