Sabine Rossbach Reading Excerpts from Cymodoce

I am blessed to have friends who perform kindnesses for me.

Case in point, Sabine Rossbach.

Sabine is a gifted and well-known stage, movie, and television actress in the EU (she’s quite tolerant of me butchering French, German, Italian, and even English in our exchanges). She’s also a reader of my writings.

The first work she read was Cymodoce and she wrote “Storytelling at its best: A feast for someone who loves the written word…” Next she read Empty Sky and wrote “Dreams make the world go round: If you like inspiring, fantastic, elaborate stories, this is your novel…

Obviously, Sabine is an intelligent, articulate person.

So when she offered to do a dramatic reading of Cymodoce (and after I got back up off the floor) I of course said “YES YES YES!”

So watch, enjoy, and let us know what you think.

And also know Sabine is interested in doing similar dramatic readings for other authors. You can contact her via her website (and please do. She knows what she’s doing).

 

Why It Works for Me – Loren Eiseley’s “The Dance of the Frogs”

This is the first in a series I’m doing wherein I discuss why a particular piece of writing works for me, aka, this author’s work taught me something about writing, encouraged me to be a better writer, engaged me, captivated me, educated me, et cetera.

As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s one thing to know something is good, it’s a better thing (in my opinion) to know why it’s good and then be able to copy what’s good about it, to learn from it so you can be as good and (hopefully) better.

This time out, Loren Eiseley’s “The Dance of the Frogs” (in his anthology, The Star Thrower.

 

 

The Inheritors Chapter 11 – Lucifer

Read The Inheritors Chapter 10 – Resa ValJean, 211 Cavalos Era

Creator and above level members can download a PDF of this chapter to read offline


The Inheritors Chapter 11 – Lucifer

 
Thomas woke under a rising full moon. Resa made a fire on the sand from branches up on the hill. He gazed at her naked body, how the flickering flames made small shadows of her nose, lips, and breasts. Gulls caught the offshore breezes and coasted, their silhouettes playing hide and seek on the craters and crevices of the moon’s bright surface.

He pointed to the gulls. “Are those real?”

“I think so. They seem a lot like the ones I remember from home. But they started wildlife roundups and euthanizing domestic animals in my time because they were disease vectors, so maybe yes, maybe no? The gulls seem natural. Most everything the Cavalos make isn’t quite the same and it’s obvious how it isn’t so. ” She reached for her blouse. “We should be getting back, Tom.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea for me.”

“Suit yourself. There’s somebody I want to meet. I’m going to ask one of the Librarians to introduce me.”

He reached for her. “You’re going to leave? Just like that?”

She stroked his face. He held her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. She smiled and pulled her hand back. “Tommy. My world’s not like that. We did what we did. That’s all there is to it.”

“You don’t love me?”

“Love you? Of course I do, Tommy. But there are different kinds of love. I’m not committed to you or anything like that.”

“I can’t…I won’t believe you.”

“Tom, I care about you. But I don’t love you. Not that way. You’ve got to get out more, Tom. All the cultures here are different. Haven’t you met any of the other Thinkers?”

“A few.”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry, Tom. You think you’ve been here six years and never talked with anyone other than some Cavalos, some Librarians, a few Thinkers and the Travelers who brought you here?”

“I hear some Thinkers once in a while while when I’m in the Neuroscaphe. I hear them crying. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to cry. And here, in this time and place, this is the first time anybody has ever let me just think.”

She nodded. “You too?”

“Huh?”

“You said this was the first time anybody ever let you think. Your family thought you were a freak, too? Is that what happened? Did your family sell you to anybody who could score something they could use?”

“No, never. My family loved me. They still do, somewhere in time. My family did everything they could to help me. It was everybody else. The teachers, the schools, other kids. My brother, Roland, he’s my twin, he use to come home with black eyes and bloody noses and split lips because he’d go fight for me and tell everybody he was me when people picked on me. He thought I didn’t know.

“But I did. He never told me. Mom and Pop would always watch out for me. Ro and Ceilly, my sister, they were always protecting me so I’d have the time to think.

“No, my family loved me. It was everyone else who hated and feared me.”

The fire popped into human form. “That, dear Thomas, is the one thing all you Thinkers have in common.”

Resa pulled back. “Who’re you?”

“Lucifer, dear lady.”


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Asis on the Hunt

The head of our driveway is ringed by a stone wall crowned with shrubbery.

From a distance it can be mistaken for a sleeping stone giant with a green crewcut.

If it is a sleeping stone giant with a crewcut, Asis does it a favor now and then by grooming it.

The giant’s hair is a haven for chipmunks, mice, voles, all sorts of little fur bellies.

The giant doesn’t seem to mind.

I mean, I’ve never seen it scratch it’s head.

Must be because Asis keeps a steady watch.

Moving quickly, silently, from follicle to follicle, from dandrite to dandrite, hunting hunting hunting.

The Wild takes care of its own.

Two-Legs just need eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to understand.

Magic is all around, waiting, patient.

And if our kind pass?

The magic will be there for others more willing to see, to listen, to understand.

I’ve heard people crying out, “Save the Earth!” and some such.

Save the Earth from what?

The Earth was here some five billion-plus years before we showed up. It’ll be here some five billion-plus years after we’re gone.

Don’t bother to save the Earth. It doesn’t need us to do that.

Time is better spent saving ourselves.

 

But what’s the fun in that?

 

Great Opening Lines – and Why! (Mar 2020’s Great Opening Lines)

I wrote in Great Opening Lines – and Why! (Part 3 – Some Great Opening Lines) that I’d share more great opening lines as I found them.

“Arterial blood has sprayed onto the walls; the tannoy is breaking into a staccato and the student nurse, Linda, recalls a childhood wish for invisibility” – Terry Melia’s Tales from the Greenhills

“…has sprayed…”, “…is breaking…”, and “…recalls…” – I’ve written elsewhere that I need to know Melia sweated every word choice. If the word choice above was automatic and obvious, I’m giving up writing. The first sentence of Tales from the Greenhills is present tense, direct address, and action. You are there in the center of it and the action is intense. You see the arterial blood dripping down the walls. The tannoy (British for “loudspeaker”) is making terse, abrupt statements – probably operational rather than informative based on the “arterial blood” line – and we’re given a point-of-view character who is 1) a student – she’s young, 2) a nurse – she should know what she’s doing but from (1) we know she’s in over her head, 3) recalling a childhood – she’s looking for peace, comfort, refuge, safety, 4) invisibility – she wants to get away, hide, be free of what’s happening.

And in twenty-five words.

And it keeps getting better.

Tales from the Greenhills is a must read for authors and writer-wannabes. It is a textbook of style, voice, language, dialogue, setting, …

Sorry, if I’m gushing. It’s that good.

Do you have any great opening lines you’d like to share?
I’d love to know them. There’s a catch, though. You have to explain in context why a line is great. Saying a line is great because it comes from some great literature doesn’t cut it. Quoting from archaic and/or little known works doesn’t cut it.

Feel free to quote from archaic and/or little known works, just make sure you give reasons why something is great. I stated the Great Opening Lines criteria back in Great Opening Lines – and Why! (Part 2 -What Makes a Great Opening Line?).

So by all means, make the claim. Just make sure you provide the proof according to the guidelines given. If not, your comment won’t get published.