Joseph Carrabis, Author Blog – Page 103 – Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)

Tag…Again… (chapter 1)

Remember The Witch [[Tag/The Apple/The Seed??]] and Tag?

Remember my mentioning it was working itself into a novella or novel?

Remember my asking for title suggestions?

I’m working on turning it into a novella. Perhaps even a novellette. Maybe a novelina. It could still end up a novel and I doubt it at present. So far it’s a mystery of some kind (not the length, the story).

The anticeding event (discussed in The Witch [[Tag/The Apple/The Seed??]]) is now told in backstory. I’m much happier with the story’s doing this time around and also recognize it’s not finished yet. One thing throwing me is how short each chapter is (at least in this writing), basically a single scene and nothing more.

We’ll see…

And, as always, happy to have your input.

Tag – Chapter 1

Father Patreo looked up from his small cottage’s workbench. Well-soled boots crunched dry earth as someone came up the lane to his cottage. Male. Heavy. Healthy heavy, not sickly heavy. Most visitors to his cottage came sickly. A horse clomped coming from the opposite direction closely followed by squeaking cart wheels.

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The Rablet

A long standing question here at Chez Carrabis is “What do we call the young ones?”

Consider: Our dog, Boo, is always called “Pup.” Okay, he’s also called “Boomeister,” “Mr. Boo,” “Bootosky,” and you get the idea.

And often, just Pup. So what did we call him when he was still a young thing?

Doglet, of course.

I’ve written of our Turklets.

And, of course, there are Rablets.

I last wrote of Rablets on Christmas Day 2020, so obviously they’ve been around for a while whether seen or not.

I wonder where they go when they’re not seen?

Do their numbers diminish such that there’s less competition for food so they have no need to forage in our yard? We’ve known for many years the local wildlife prefers our yard to our neighbors’ and suspect it’s because our yard is all natural, no artificial anything, no fertilizers, no pesticides, just life as life would have it.

Wonderful, that.

Try it. See who shows up.

You might be surprised at what they have to teach you.

Them Doore Girls – Narration

Tim Curry invited me to take part in a Hallowe’en podcast with several other authors, each of us reading something we felt fit the season.

Hallowe’en is celebratory to me and mine, and I didn’t think that’s what Tim had in mind.

I have written horror, though.

No, not written horribly (okay, maybe, and I’m getting better (I hope)), and not quite of horrible things (although some of my work is dark, I’ll grant you), so that set me off on a search.

I came up with two things. The first, shared last week, is a concatenation of two chapters in The Shaman, each of which deals with a succubatic kind of creature, Ellewomen. That post is, strangely enough, entitled “The Ellewomen.”

This one, Them Doore Girls, is from a horror story first published in Haunts 1992 and again in my self-published Tales Told Round Celestial Campfires 2016.

FYI, the sound quality is wanting. I find it best through headphones.

Enjoy!

Sema (A Tale of the Northern Clan) now on Penumbra

Few things make me happier than knowing my work is appreciated.

By editors and publishers.

Readers, definitely. Other authors, oh yeah.

And editors and publishers? Yeah, you betcha.

Such is the case with Sema (A Tale of the Northern Clan).

The Northern Clan stories started out quite differently. The first one, written in the early 1970s, dealt with someone becoming aware of their magical powers and realizing the responsibility their use entailed.

What is it based on? Well, first, myself and my experiences (I’ve often stated I write autobiography).

Do I think I have magical powers?

Of course I have magical powers. I write stories, don’t I? What can be more magical than that?

And specifically, the story is a metaphor of growing up, becoming aware of one’s needs, abilities, and responsibilities in the world. More than growing hair in funny places, the original Tale of the Northern Clan was written before the concept of a Northern Clan existed and simply dealt with dealing with new feelings, new wants and desires, and deciding whether they would rule your life or you’d rule them in your life.

What teenager hasn’t experienced that?

For that matter, what late sixties-year-old hasn’t experienced that?

That original story received praise from early readers (we didn’t have the concept of “first readers” in the early 1970s) and I was never satisfied with it. The first version of Sema came out in 1988, went through several revisions, and now appears in Penumbra (it’s also in my Tales Told ‘Round Celestial Campfires anthology), and somewhere in the middle of Sema‘s revisions I realized it and several other stories-in-progress were all part of a single mythology and thus The Tales of the Northern Clan was born.

That original story is still in progress and should be done early Spring 2022.

Meanwhile, enjoy Sema (A Tale of the Northern Clan).