Moving Day

I've been having a few minor issues with this site and it has prompted me to move it to Wordpress. Every new post I will make will now be on Wordpress and I'll slowly be moving all my content over there as well. Thanks for reading. Oh, and here is the link to the new site.

https://withinendlessskies.wordpress.com/

Priorities

I wish I could say that I don't care about how many views I get each day on my blog. Unfortunately for me, facebook is my only means of sharing to a mass audience and facebook makes sure that view counts matter. Unless you follow my posts specifically, facebook will not post my shares to the top of newsfeeds unless I get a consistent number of likes and shares for each post. This has put me in a bind of sorts and I'm beginning to have to sort out my priorities. I love posting to the blog and I don't plan on stopping, but I think I'm going to have to rework how much time I put into it. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to start posting every other day instead of every day. I'll still post stories, but I'll also try to focus more on the regular blog posts. If you like what I write, please, leave a comment or a like and share it with a friend. It's the only way I'll be able to keep this up.

Writing a Novel

It's that time of year again... no not turkey day time... the month thousands of people across the US decide to do the impossible. Write a novel in a month. November first marks the start of National Write a Novel in a Month Month or National Novel Writing Month, whichever you happen to prefer. The goal is fifty thousand written words within the 30 days of November. I've tried this before, usually only to fail miserably as work and home take up the time that I should be, supposedly, writing.  Add on to this that I've written two complete novels and several unfinished novels and I finished none of these projects in any length of time that even resembled a month. Or even a year for that matter. Well, the second one was close to a year... sort of. Melody and Barnabus might come closer to making it, discounting the small hiatus to give you a short story dealing with Melody's back ground. Who knows, maybe I'll have fifty thousand words of their story written by the end of the month. Unfortunately, blogging doesn't add to my official word count, so I had better get back to work.

Meet Melody: Part 5

I'm too tired to think of an intro, so here you go.

She pulled Melody back into the room, away from the crowded common room. “What are you doing here like this? I thought…” she hesitated. “Melody, what happened to you? Your eyes!”

“It’s a long story,” Melody said. She looked around as one of the cooks slipped and pricked her finger on a knife. The scent of blood filled her nostrils and she swallowed uncomfortably as the thirst began to return. “Mary, I need help. Do you have my room open?”

Mary hesitated again and nodded, leading her up the back stair to a small but cozy room on the inn’s third floor. The woman bustled about, lighting candles and oil lamps.

“I’ll have my girls bring up coal for the brazier,” she said as she worked. She looked at Melody in concern. “Are you sure you’re okay? Is there anything I can get for you?”

Melody shook her head, struggling to ignore the sound of her friend’s heartbeat. “No… no, I’m fine. I just need a place to rest.”

Mary stared at her carefully for a long moment and left with a nod.

Sounds of the inn and town outside filled her sensitive ears as she stripped off her coat and crossed to the frosted window. Her eyes pierced the darkness outside, cutting through the dark and the smoke. Clouds obscured the sky and it had started to snow. She glanced up, momentarily forgetting the burning of the thirst as she saw past the cloud cover and into the endless stars.

“It almost makes up for the thirst,” whispered the voice. It look Melody a long moment to realize that the thought was her own.

“I guess I’m getting used to this,” she mumbled, groaning as she dropped into the soft bed.

There were footsteps in the hall outside and she sighed, realizing that she could recognize Mary by the smell of her blood.

“Thanks for doing this Mary,” she said, closing her eyes as the door opened. “Something happened, I….”

There was a clicking noise and her eyes snapped open.

“What are you?” demanded Mary, leveling her husband’s flintlock pistol at Melody’s head. The weapon wavered slightly, matching her trembling voice. “I’ve heard the stories! You’re not my friend!”

Melody froze. “Mary, no, it’s me….”

The woman shook her head, frightened tears filling her eyes as she edged closer. “No! You’re a vampire, a demon! What did you do to Melody?”

Melody started to move, started to reassure her friend but Mary panicked, her finger tightening on the trigger. The gun went off with the sound of thunder and something hard hit her in the head, knocking her back into the soft pillows. The bullet, glancing off of her iron hard skin, slammed into the oil lamp on the stand by the bed. Shouts and screams filled the air as flames spread through the room, biting hungrily into the bedding and wooden walls. Mary dropped the gun and clapped her hands to her mouth in horror, screaming hysterically as Melody jumped to her feet and dove headlong through the window.

She landed easily on her feet in the street below, the voice screaming at her to run.

“No,” she growled, forcing the voice away as she looked up at the smoke pouring from the shattered window. “Mary!”

Guests inside, already unnerved by the gunshots and screams, turned in shock as Melody burst through the door.

“Fire!” she screamed. “The inn’s on fire! Everyone out! Get the buckets!”

Blessed are the Peacemakers

We live in a culture saturated by anger and indignation, wholly without mercy and true compassion for those around us. We preach tolerance, yet readily attack any whose beliefs threaten our own. Even God's own people seem to have lost sight of goodness and mercy. We have forsaken the role of peacemaker in favor of that of a warrior. May God make us peacemakers once again.

Meet Melody: Part 4

Melody wasn't actually supposed to be a blood dragon, or even a dragon at all. When I first created the character, she was a photographer, struggling to survive in the city. I had intended for her to meet a dragon, but as I began to write her main story, set some 250 years after this timeline, she became the dragon and Barnabus the human. Blood dragons were also an accident, created as I simplified an overly complicated system for dragon society and magic.

“When I talk to you, you know you’re talking to yourself right?” asked the voice after a moment. “I’m magic and the memories your maker passed on, nothing more.”

“Well your company’s still better than nothing,” Melody growled, coming to a stop on the hill overlooking the settlement. Her eyes focused on the people moving through the growing evening. She cocked her head, suddenly hearing a complaining lamplighter as if she were standing at his side.

“What am I looking for?” she asked, more to herself than to the voice. “How do I know if there are more supernaturals down there?”

A sound in the distant forest behind her brought her around with a start. To her new eyes, the evening was still as clear and bright as it had been at mid-day. Movement on the trail to her cabin caught her eye and her breath quickened.

“I think you had better worry about what’s out here!” warned the voice. “Quick! Hide in the town!”

With barely a thought, she was in town, moving almost more quickly than the eye could see. One of the night watchmen swore in shock as she went, the wind from her passing lifting the tricorn hat from his head. She stopped in the darkness not far away, resisting a sudden and overwhelming urge to laugh.

“This isn’t funny,” grumped the voice. “We should get inside before the hunters get here.”

Melody nodded, slipping through the streets unseen, her new powers making it easy to hide from watchmen and townsfolk alike. She stopped beside a small tavern by the waterfront, owned by the husband of a woman she had known in the orphanage. The woman, a pleasant girl named Mary, and her husband, were the only people in the colony that knew her secret.

The common room was crowded and Melody kept her head down, ignoring the raucous noise and curious glances as she crossed to the kitchen. Mary looked up as she opened the door.

“Melody?” she hissed, her eyes widening in surprise. “Is that you?”

What is it about Dragons?

Dragons have been my favorite mythological creature for as long as I can remember. They come in all shapes and sizes, limited only by imagination. Dragons are evil, they are good, they are beautiful, they are terrible. At best they are majestic creatures looking benevolently down on humanity as they soar above us. At worst they are the terror and the fire in the night, destroying everything before them. They are the ultimate test for the noble knight and the guiding voice for wayward heroes. Dragons are forces of nature and the ultimate abomination... they are everything and anything we need them to be. To me, dragons are magic incarnate, given the power to bring life to stories.