Saturday, October 19, 2013

Meet Delilah

She remembered it all

Every time she looked in the mirror she remembered it.

The acrid smell of smoke assaulting her nostrils.  The painful screams assaulting her ears.
The dying all around her. People and animals. The flames leaping higher with banal hooting of the raiders. The ripping of fabric, the pleading voices.

They came out of nowhere waving their torches on massive steeds lust in their eyes and revenge in their hearts.
Striking a blow for the fallen Cause they did not care who was on the receiving end.
What mattered was the blood of everyone the felt was responsible.
And her town was what they saw first.

One minute she was sitting next to him: Jeremiah with soft eyes and his strong voice at the dinner table talking about their future, their plans and the house that they were building and his blacksmith business. About having children sending them to school.  Then next she lying next to him cold and still a bullet lodged into his head  She didnt even have time to mourn him as the weaken beams fell hitting her leg and her arm.
Whether she was carried out or dragged herself out she didnt remember. The night sky blocked by huge man shadow reaching his hands toward her clothes. She jabbed her good leg in his direction her foot meeting his nose hearing the blow land seeing him stumble backwards cursing her.
The long staff coming toward her and the sharp pain traveling all the way to the back of her head.
Then blackness.
Every time she looked in the mirror touching the scar tissue ruin where eye used to be the scars on her legs and arms. She sometimes wished they would of left her there to die.
"Delilah." that familiar drawl
"Delilah where are you my dear?"
Somehow managing to slip into the room without her noticing,  Rennigton Leflure one of her saviors
The man that wrapped a blanket around her and carried her out of the smoldering ruin of what used to be her home.  Smoothing the panels of his broadcoat and starched collars with the gold of his pocketwatch shining through.
He put his rough hands on her shoulders "The guests have arrived. Time to get dressed my dear. Can't have them seeing you like this now can we?"
************************************************************************8
Yes that's the end or thats all you'll get for now.
I'm sorry...
This was born out of a costume that created and still am working on.
It started with an eyepiece I created and like the rest of the costume just took on a life of itself till it became my steampunked lady assassin Delilah. After enough people raving about the eyepiece asking whether or not I still had my eye this side story was born out of it.   Wrote down plenty of notes but this one is still up in the air. I get enough of a response it will become a story.

Friday, June 14, 2013

What if fairy tales were real?

Fairy tales we've all heard them right?

Cinderella
Snow White
Sleeping Beauty

They've been read to us we've read them to others, pretended, acted out, dressed up as, in bad times imagined ourselves as the players.

Well what if just what if......
What if they were real
What if that changeling was a replacement
What that person had died and come back to life?
What if those denizens of otherworld werent as invisible as we thought they were but in plain sight.

Myth, folklore history says that it is always based in some truth.
It was man's way of explaining disease, mysterious deaths, appearances and disappearances.
A person who fell into to a coma mistakenly pronounced dead and buried only wake up became the undead.
A weakly or sick being born into a world before incubators, IVs could be explained as a changeling, a replacement by otherworldly denizens for their real child.

Before the knowledge of diseases and how they're spread, a seemingly healthy who for no reason started to become sick was considered bewitched whether by fairies, witches, or you fill in the blank  

Even with modern technology there are some aspects of the human body and mind that man is still trying to explain. Spontaneous combustion, unexplained disappearances and near brushes with death.
Even with advances in science and technology we can pinpoint possible causes move toward avoiding possibly but we havent managed to cure....it makes one wonder doesnt it?


Well the heroines in the Darastar Chronicles dont spontaneously combust but they do have some interesting experiences as they come into contact with several mysteries involving their respective occupations. Throw in a centuries old organization possibly the worlds first police force and you have a modern folk tale on your hands. The inspiration for the series came from my love of myth and folklore. Ive lost count of the different encyclopedias on world folklore that I have acquired. Another inspiration was my fascination with not just the secret organizations of history such as the Templars but with the world wealthy families and history itself. And after watching Lord of the Rings...voila!

Thus came Darastar Chronicles and the first book of the series Hidden City
Stay tuned!


Saturday, October 20, 2012

Who are you...REALLY

In going to Marquette University, part of the required cirriculum for graduation was philosphy. And in those courses we studied a variety of philosophical opinions from Socrates to Decartes even a episode on Star Trek and Millenium. In the best of classes, debates raged on way after class was done on what makes a human and the basic identity of a person.


Identity.
Not whats listed on your birth certificate, credit report or social security card...but you
to quote the
catepillar on Alice in Wonderland "WHO ARE YOU?"

And how do know you are you?

Well lets start with the basics. I know who I am where I was born and who my parents are. But how do I know these things? Well...duh I can look at my birth certificate and because my parents told me they were my parents.
Pretty cut and dry...right?

Well......
If you watch movies like Total Recall(the original with Arnold Schwartzenegger) you'll know that nothing is truly cut and dry.

If you are normal person at one point in time youve had dreams that you were someone else. And if youre a bit outside of normal like me, those dreams are so real they made you question your identity, your whole being. You shelve it to the back of your mind as a dream a product of an over excited imagination, a byproduct of too much thought.

But what happens when that feeling doesn't go away?



Then comes the catalyst, the event


That woman in that particular dress you ran into while walking

That man in the distance who stays in your line of site

That song in your head that you cant remember where you heard it from

That event.

The crossroads/revelation/ realization that everything that you believed, lived for worked for was not truly you.

We spend lifetimes trying to find ourselves and our place in the world. The answer to the meaning of life has still not been solved. Religion and science no closer to that ultimate answer than they were a century ago. Step into the journey of a young woman who gets more than she bargined for when she travels back to her fathers country to attend his funeral.

The inspiration for this story came well first of all from my best muse...my mother
And the other part from my upbringing attending a Jesuit Catholic college and four years of religion. Through these two sources I was introduced the world of philosophy and Gnosticim and it whetted my appetite for more soon beyond school I was studying and decided to write Just a Trip.