Saturday 28 January 2017

Get inspired: Week 4

First seen on the Space Trash blog.
I'll take Death over the Tower any day (Get Inspired, week 4)


My living room windows blew in, less than a second after I hit the deck under my table.
Sadly, this kind of thing happens often enough that my reaction is reflexive. The howling and the light show, those were new.

I should stop reading the Tarot. I tell myself this often - almost as often as I read the damn things. The problem is, I have to wonder, if I didn't read the cards...who's to say the same crap wouldn't still happen, but without any warning?

I'm Maurice Ferland. I read the Tarot. I also listen to the dead (try and get a word in edgeways and you'll see why I put it that way), know enough about herbs to sound convincing, and can draw really cool shit with coloured chalk. Because I'm...who I am, these things are a little more effective for me than the other gris-gris totin', rum-drinkin', chicken-frightenin' types you can find taking easy money off tourists.

They say my grandmother sold her soul to the Devil, but frankly, I doubt it. A devil, maybe. The Devil has nearly as many layers of flunkies between him and the public as the President, and I doubt grand-mère would have had the patience. Still. I wish the old bastard a good morning every time I turn over his card...just in case.
So where did this come from?

Spending my formative years in a well-run boarding school ensured that I made the acquaintance of the Tarot, ouija boards, and almost anything else that was forbidden by the school rules on a regular basis, and the Tarot have always struck me as a goldmine for an author looking for trouble to get into. Pick a card, and you have the germ of a story right there.

Saturday 21 January 2017

Get Inspired: Week 3


First seen on the Space Trash blog.

Immortality doesn't mean you'll live forever...(Get Inspired, week 3)

The peaches of immortality ripen only once in every three thousand years. If you find and eat one, you're guaranteed near-immortality. Not unnaturally, the business interests whom I represent would like the opportunity to acquire some. Imagine Hollywood able to buy everlasting good looks? Hell, we could buy some more property. Mars, maybe.

I took another look through my scope, and sighed. Why do people always imagine that immortality means that they're invulnerable as well? Of course, I would never threaten to shoot the Jade Emperor, but this guy wasn't him. Not the Heavenly Grandfather, and most definitely not one of the Three Pure Ones. If he were, the apparent age of the scantily-dressed schoolgirl in his lap would've disqualified him on the spot. This guy, I wouldn't have any qualms about threatening, although not actually carrying through might be tough.

I spent a moment meditating. Fine. I spent a moment remembering how much I stood to make by not shooting the old pervert. Ancient pervert, if the rumours I'd spent the last few years chasing were slightly more accurate than the last ten or twenty times. About 2,983 years old, to be precise. My little pep talk motivated me to fold up my shooting perch and drop down to street-level like a good girl, rather than leaving brain particles ingrained in the wall behind him that someone would have to clean up.

After all, if the guy temporarily still in possession of his brain matter wanted another 3,000 years of fondling teenagers, he was going to have to pick up some supplies soon. When he did, perhaps I could persuade him to take me along. Persuasion is my business. Being part-siren helps. Carrying enough metal on my person to never be able to fly commercial often helps more.

Where did this one come from? 

Actually, the initial line came from Pawn In Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett. I'd been meaning to research that particular reference for a couple of decades, and finally got around to doing it. The underlying story of the peaches of immortality was so adaptable to a modern urban fantasy setting that I couldn't help myself.

Saturday 14 January 2017

Get inspired: week 2

First seen on the Space Trash blog.

Shakespeare's Bargain (Get Inspired, week 2)


What if Shakespeare had written the most definitive guides to demonology in existence, in iambic pentameter?

In our timeline, Shakespeare was one of the most prolific and arguably one of the most known playwrights on the planet, chronicling kings and jesters, merchants and witches. If he suffered from writer's block, it's admirably hidden, perhaps in the slower stanzas of King Richard III.

In another timeline, he ran dry after Henry VI, part III, and instead of Titus Andronicus, he vanished without traceable publication for a year and a day. During that time, he made a bargain, and today the Most Unholy Church holds a copy of it, written in blood on human parchment: Shakespeare was to complete a cycle of plays documenting the fall of Lucifer and every demon in Hell. In exchange, words would never fail him and his name would live eternally.

His first work after his absence, Res Infernalis, spawned fame, riots, and calls for his head, as word of mouth spread and crowds overwhelmed the theatres. When guards and an escort of churchmen came to take him for trial, a flash mob exploded in London, and no traces of those men were ever found to bury.

When Filius Abramalech gained Europe-wide renown, the Vatican issued a letter announcing that the English playwright had sold his soul to Satan, and called upon the faithful to send him to his master in Hell. The Pope died within hours of signing it, but crowds thronged nonetheless to see Shakespeare's next work, The Struggle of Beleth, in such numbers that thousands died in the crowds and the crows feasted for days.

Appropriately, Lucifer claimed his due after the publication of Zepar's Tryst, and Shakespeare died aged 102, in the year 1666.

This one came to mind sometime late one night in a fit of green-eyed jealousy over people who never seem to spend time staring at words on a screen that just won't settle down on the page the way they sounded in my head. What if it afflicted even the best of us, and what if writer's block changed history?

Sunday 8 January 2017

Get Inspired: week 1

First seen on the Space Trash blog.

I'm going to bite off more than I can chew, but I'm going to try and add a blog post each week in 2017. (Yeah, yeah...thanks for the cynicism, folks...).

I figured I would sit down each week and try to write a post about a story idea. Am I going to write 52 new books? Hell no. What I'm hoping is that it'll be fun, other people may get a spark from some of them, and that it'll get me thinking of something other than my usual rut.

And hey, if my attempts to get book four in the Cortii series edited and beautiful and inspiring continues to hit the skids, I may take one of my ideas and run with it to give myself a break. My brain feels like a sponge that's been left out in the Sahara at midday right now.


When the stone breaks, a flower will rise (Get Inspired, week 1)


Amaranthe's been dreaming. When you're a French teenager living in a village so small they turn the streetlights out at midnight and the nearest cinema is ten kilometres away, there isn't much else to do, but these dreams are odd. They feel too real, and they're all set in her tiny village, at a time when the time-worn stones of the old church are sharp and pale and new.

Amaranthe dreams as Pierre, at a time when Petromantalum, the place where the roads meet, was the largest settlement in the area. The small church built by holy men twenty years ago has attracted the attention of one of the old gods, woken by the Christian bells and the smell of blasphemy, and from the mountains and the forest, the rivers and the standing stones, the ancient magic is rising.

Old and young, healthy and sick are dying between one breath and the next, and the echoes of their passing murmur in men's minds, driving those left to the ragged edge of sanity. The men of the Eastern cult do nothing but pray to their singular god and call the deaths His punishment for sin.

The son of a legionary and local woman, Pierre is a misfit, caught between two worlds. A generation ago, he would have joined the Legions. Now, with the might of Rome fading back into the East, there is only one way he can fight; with his mother's weapons, and the magic bequeathed to him as her son. No man is a match for the power of a god, but Pierre's sacrifice buys sanctuary for the village at the crossroads for nearly two thousand years.

When the first death strikes, a week into the autumn term, Amaranthe surrounds herself with her friends, goes shopping in the city, and convinces herself that it's poor timing. At the second, she tells herself that it's coincidence. By the third, she realises that she's the only one who knows Pierre's secret - and the only one who can stop the dying.

So...where did this idea come from?

I had a dream about, more or less, this story a few months back, and it's been bugging me ever since. I'm unlikely to ever write it; it's long step diagonally from the type of story I usually write, but the dream was so vivid I could see the carving on the roof beams and feel the rough linen of the clothes. I figured it would make a good opening for the 'Get inspired' posts.