The Space Between the Stars - Short Story

The Space Between The Stars

by 

Mario A. Mezquita

In the beginning, there was only the Deep, Deep Dark.

Until the Spark.

Until the Flash.

Then, there came a sound.

A scream.

A moan.

It was Liss, the Great Mother, only just born from within the Deep, Deep Dark, and already heavy with child.

She was giving birth.

From her womb emerged her first three children, and she knew she loved them ever since she knew they existed.

This was the First Gift: Love; the unconditionality of love: to love because there is love to give.

The children were named Orii, Nordos, and Sothos. They were giants, and walked and lived in the Deep, Deep Dark.

They loved each other as brother and sister, as friends, as lovers, as equals.

And Liss loved them all as such.

But love was not enough.

Sothos and Orii grew close to one another.

Nordos resented the closeness between Sothos and Orii.

He resented his exclusion.

In a rage, he took a spear and thrust it into Sothos’ heart.

Sothos was distraught at the betrayal by his brother.

He summoned his strength and pulled the spear from his heart. A great sword appeared in his free hand. With a swing, Sothos shattered the spear still held in Nordos’ hands. He swung it once more and cut off his brother’s head.

Those were the young days of creation, when that which did not yet exist could be created with but a thought and become at once both new and ancient.

The two first things imagined were tools of death.

Orii stood silent in shock; her brothers, her friends, her lovers, lay slain before her by each other’s hand.

She abandoned her brothers and mother to wander the vastness of the Deep, Deep Dark. Why she did so was not known. Perhaps it was the pain of losing Nordos and Sothos and blaming herself for their deaths. Perhaps it was a belief that she had somehow failed to love Liss, Nordos and Sothos enough. Perhaps it was simply madness.

Liss was inconsolable. Her grief lasted an instant. It lasted an age.

She grieved the loss of her children. She cried long and painfully, her salted tears washing down upon the bodies of Nordos and Sothos, moulding them and changing them; carving out mountains and valleys.

No longer giants, yet giants still.

Continents.

The tears pooled around them, and in shedding those tears of sorrow, Liss created oceans and seas, lakes and rivers.

There was another Spark

Another Flash.

Liss was once again overcome by the pain of childbirth. This time, like the last, there were three.

The first was bright and radiant. Everywhere he stepped as he walked the land that had once been Nordos and Sothos life grew that had never before been seen. And Liss named him Sól, and was pleased with him.

The second too, was radiant. But her light was cool and enveloping. Everywhere she stepped life changed, matured, and ceased. And Liss named her Swela, and was also pleased with her.

Liss gave Sól domain over the Sun, and called him the Sower and the Husband. She gave Swela domain over the Moon, and called her the Harvester and the Hunter.

The third one, however, was no child.

It was a great mass of mud.

Special mud.

The Mud of Life.

Liss asked Sól to take the mud, and make for her new children to rule over the world created by her fallen first.

Sól  took the cleanest, smoothest of the clay first, and using his hands made a beautiful tall figure with smooth porcelain skin, large blue green eyes, fine features and long, golden hair.

Sól called this creation Caella, and said that it was fit to illuminate the heavens.

And Liss thought Caella was beautiful, and made him/her the First Star of the night sky, Master and Mistress of Beauty and Love; and the Guiding Light.

Sól then took another lump of mud; this one was rough to the touch and dense like granite. From it he shaped a figure shorter than Caella and of great girth, with thick arms and legs, round nose and ears, small, intense eyes, a flowing beard and a broad smile.

Sól named him before Liss as Ivaldi, the Hearth.

And Liss thought Ivaldi was strong and noble and named him Master of Stone and Steel; Artificer and the Eternal Forge.

Sól took two small lumps, one a solid light brown and the other mottled in all the tones of earth and fire.
With the first he sculpted a figure slim and elegant, like Caella but smaller and swarthier; with emerald eyes, auburn hair and a playful smile.

Before Sól could present him to Liss he let out a joyous laugh, which pleased Liss.

And she named him Cihlihan, Master of Youth; Merriment and the Forests.

The other figure, made with the mottled mud was also small and delicate, but broader of shoulder and hip, rounder of face and with deep, ponderous eyes.

And Liss stared profoundly into her eyes and named her Wisgnó, and made her Mistress of Knowledge and Laws, and Keeper of Secrets.

Lastly, Sól took a smooth, deep, dark lump from the mud, and fashioned a tall, handsome figure of sinewy musculature, strong features, prominent jaw and sharp teeth.

Liss touched his arm and felt great tension and readiness.

She named him Mana, and made him Master of Strength and Beasts.

With Sól and Swela by her side, Liss gathered her new children together: Caella, Ivaldi, Cihlihan, Wisgnó and Mana, and named them her Clǣgcynn, her Clay Kin.

Liss asked the Clǣgcynn to go to the mud and make children of their own, to populate the land which once was their brothers. And so they did, each creating races in their image and in their likeness both physically and spiritually.

Caella created five races; all as beautiful as new stars in the firmament to honour those that had come before the Clǣgcynn. Ivaldi created four, two each to wield the secrets of Stone and the secrets of Steel. Cihlihan created two; Wisgnó three. When Mana approached the mud, his hands delved deep into it, and he took out a clump of mud large and dark like him. He fashioned out of the mud nine races which he called the Races of Dread, beings both magnificent and terrifying, and he turned to his brothers and sisters and said with a growl:

These Nine of Dread I create to test your children; to best your children, and expunge them from creation. As evidence that after beauty, after stone and steel, after youth and merriment, after knowledge and laws, strength alone is all that remains.  

From that moment, all of the races of Liss lived, loved and fought in the land that was once Nordos and Sothos and within the oceans which were Liss’s tears. And they called this world Niwent, the Land of New Giants, for they saw themselves as such.

But with the passage of time, the Clǣgcynn began to quarrel over territory, over beliefs, and over power. Their children, the races who now populated all of Niwent engaged in fierce, bloody conflict, devastating the land in their parents’ names.

A great sorrow filled Liss.

With Sól and Swela ever-present by her side, she summoned the Clǣgcynn before her. She kissed and embraced each of them, and she felt a great love for each of them. When she kissed the last of them, a great darkness enveloped all of Niwent.

Swela’s mantle covered the heavens. Her hand was swift, precise and merciless. She moved through the land and the oceans, mountains and rivers, cities and fields; culling one race from each of the children of the Clǣgcynn.

Magnificent cities crumbled, left to ruin.

The countryside turned to ash.

Battles which had raged for untold time ceased.

The Clǣgcynn mourned their dead children.

Some wept.

Some raged.

Some were relieved.

Then, there was silence.

Liss, who until then had never spoken a word, said:

This is the Second Gift: Loss. A gift I have known well. A gift which gave you the world you live in: a world you neglected. You took love for granted: my love for you, your love for each other. Now you have lost, so that you may appreciate what it was to have something you love taken from you. Your remaining children too shall experience loss, so that they may forever remember this moment. 

And Liss made all the remaining children of the Clǣgcynn sleep a Great Sleep which lasted an age.

This was to be the First Great Sleep.

Caella’s kin were granted near immortal life, so they alone could see the world around them grow, bloom, wither and die, to contemplate deeply the meaning of love and loss. To them would fall the burden of eternal mourning.

Ivaldi’s kin were made to toil away beneath the ground, deep in the heart of mountain and hill, to forever remind them that mastery of any craft is only achieved and maintained through constant hard work and dedication.

Cihlihan’s kin were made small, so as to feel what it is like to go unnoticed and dismissed; and also to learn to be closer to the ground and tend to the needs of even the smallest of forest dwellers.

Wisgnó’s kin were also made small and near blind, to remind them that even the least thought-of things can hide immense knowledge, and that in order to pass judgement one must look beyond the surface.

Mana’s kin were denied the light of day, made to lurk in the shadows and the shallow darkness, so they would know what it is like to be expunged from creation.

And Mana resented this.

The children awoke to mourn their lost brothers and sisters.

An age passed. Life in Niwent was not the same as it had been. The children of the Clǣgcynn dwelled in the mire of loss. They stagnated, rotted, began to forsake the Clǣgcynn, blaming them for their punishment.

Liss saw this and took pity upon the Clǣgcynn and their children.

She made them all sleep once more.

This was the Second Great Sleep.

She returned to the Mud of Life. Little of it remained save for rocks and grit.

There was a Spark.

Then a Flash.

Liss’s womb swelled. From within it there came a radiant light which bathed all of Niwent, and settled on the mud. Tears of pain and joy flowed from her many eyes, and washed over the sleeping children of the Clǣgcynn. The tears, heavy with the virtues and vices of the children of the Clǣgcynn pooled around the radiant Mud of Life, and were absorbed by it.

A blinding flash illuminated the mud.

When the light subsided, in place of the mud there were many small, naked and defenceless babes, with hair and skin of all colours of the earth. Next to them was a clutch of eggs as large as the babes, shining with all the colours of a rainbow.

Where most of the Clǣgcynn saw with wonder the new children of Liss, Mana saw them as weak and feeble; as not strong enough to belong in creation.

A great sword appeared in his hand. It was Khæos, the Kinslayer, the Absence of Being.

It was the sword Sothos had summoned into being from the Deep, Deep Dark to slay his brother.

He took the great sword and swung to kill the babes.

A hand with claws as large as swords appeared and held Mana’s arm, Khæos a hair’s breadth away from striking down the babes. Mana was angered, and swung around with his free arm, which held a morning star, in an attempt to crush the eggs.

From the darkness a great forked, spiked tail emerged, and wrapped itself around Mana’s arm, stopping the morning star from reaching the eggs. Mana flew into a rage, struggling to no avail against his unseen captor.

A mighty head appeared from the mist as large as Mana’s body. It was covered in rainbow coloured scales. It was long and followed by a slender, serpentine neck. The head was covered in horns rough and smooth, long and short. Its eyes were intense, like embers from deep within the ever-burning fires of stars. Its mouth was filled with rows of teeth long and sharp.

It opened its gaping maw.

Its roar was a thunderclap.

Fire spewed forth from its mouth and lit up the sky.

Niwent shook.

Mana, arms forcibly spread and facing all of his brothers and sisters, was raised to the heavens.

From the darkness appeared a second head, like the first, except with a pair of mighty branching antlers on its top and three eyes rather than two. It struck with blinding speed, ripping off the arm which held Khæos with one bite; the mighty great sword falling into darkness.

Mana screamed and reeled back, as the body of the gigantic, two-headed beast emerged, and settled before the babes and eggs. Like the heads, it was covered in thick, gleaming, rainbow coloured scales. Its wings flapped once, and hurricane winds crumbled mountains and levelled great forests.

One wing was crimson and leathery. When it flapped its wind was hot and dry, like a desert storm. It rested carefully over the eggs.

The other wing was black and feathered like a crow’s. Each feather had a great eye. Each eye was a different colour. It settled gently atop the babes, great eyes all fixed upon them.

The beast released Mana, who fell to the ground on his knees.

Mana turned and gazed upon the beast for the first time. His eyes filled with tears, and he wept. He had never seen such a magnificent and terrible beast.

Liss called the beast Drakan, Father and Mother of Dragons and Guardian of Men. The head with two eyes she called Vadrag the Father, master of Fire and Ice. The one with three eyes she called Dramutt the Mother, Mistress of Wisdom.

And Liss said unto the Clǣgcynn and their children:

Behold this final gift I give to you: Hope.  In Men, may you find the best of you, and the worst; Woman and Man are without mother or father, and yet brother and sister to you all. They shall lead a short life compared to that of the other races of Niwent, but in this short lifespan men shall be gifted with something to inspire you: Hope to achieve, to love, and to accomplish as much as their older siblings; perhaps even more.  Should you, my Clǣgcynn, accept them, some Men may choose to follow your path in seeking answers to life; and some may choose to make their own path. Drakan and his kin shall be Guardians of Men, until such a time as Man is ready to venture out into the world.    

Upon hearing this, all the Clǣgcynn and their children rejoiced, save for Mana.

Liss then said unto the Clǣgcynn:

Your place, my children, shall be among the stars, and not in Niwent. From the Deep, Deep Dark you shall watch over your children and over Men. If they call to you, respond. If they bring before you their infirm, heal them. If they fear the space between the stars, stand vigil, comfort them with your light and guide them. Above all else, love them. As I love all of you.

And with those words, Liss smiled at her children.

She was filled; first with a Spark, then with a Flash.

And she shone so bright that her light turned to stardust and fell over all of Niwent, bringing new life wherever it landed.

And the Clǣgcynn knew she would forever be with them.        

Playing the Tuba in the Bathtub

I have been otherwise occupied over the past few weeks. It seems the universe conspires to keep me busy and away from writing. There have been regrettable but unfortunate family tragedies and several trips across the not-that-small island that is the basis of George Arrrr! Arrrr! Martin’s Westeros (I even got to take a photo of the only place I could think of that would be the perfect Casterly Rock!). Heck, I even had a chance to be present and bear witness to Spider Man receiving a medical award for his research on mutations!

At work, a new line manager has meant now there is loads of work to do, and this past week I have been transported to the magical world of Agresso financial software, as I have been engaging in non-stop invoice registration and posting! The excitement is akin to taking flight on a griffin for the first time.

Yup.

A Griffin.

You don’t catch the sarcasm?

Then I am either a rubbish writer or you love financial transactions.

Which is worse?

;-P  

Thing is, though, that maybe I should just shut my yap and get on with it.

It is all well and good to talk a good novel, but what matters is that the blasted thing is written, and at some 60 odd pages, it hardly classifies as anything more than a disjointed novella.

In that respect, I have been trying very hard to at least release The Space Between the Stars here on the blog sooner rather than later. It has been a short story in the making this summer which essentially gives the very beginning of the Fantasy World of Niwent. I have passed it on to my editor (yup, K), for a final draft read, but she has been a little busy at the moment, which means as soon as she gives me the feedback I can go ahead and post it here!

Speaking of feedback (uh-oh!), if you have already read The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark feel free to let me know what your thoughts on it are.

It has received three reviews on Amazon (one is on the US site, two on the UK site), but the more the merrier, as they say.

I Need to Clean my Keyboard

I tend to eat at my desk a lot. It’s convenient; it’s where my computer is.

Not that I dislike the outdoors in any way. Take today for example. While slightly hazy, it is quite a pleasant, dry, warm day to sit outside and take some much needed vitamin D, and just sit and vegetate.

But no, not I. I prefer to sit in front of the PC trawling through ridiculous amounts of completely useless information on Wikipedia, while listening to the likes of Iggy Azalea’s ‘Fancy’ and Enrique Iglesias’s (ssss) 'Bailando'. Who would have thought that voice would come out of a skinny, white Australian lass? (No, not Enrique’s. Iggy).

The world is truly full of surprises.

As to why someone who used to work cleaning rooms for a living would want to ‘trash the hotel’ is beyond me. But to each his own, I guess.

 Right, back to the issue of the desk meals. (MS Word, you are getting on my nerves with all these ‘Reflexive. Consider Changing’ notifications. Stick to simple spelling mistakes, please!) Eating at the desk means inevitably I will find bread crumbs on my keyboard, which is quite a vexing thing. Yes, they are MY crumbs, but nonetheless it is annoying because my keyboard soon resembles my toaster.

But in the moments of quiet, contemplating solitude in front of the screen that I am not finding out about the City of Batman, Turkey (Yes, there is a City called BATMAN! How incredibly awesome is that? I do hope you are not lying, Wikipedia.), I am trying to write something. Be it a blog, a rant, or a short story, or trying to work up the energy to get into the groove to get the novel back on course.

Small steps and small victories, I tell myself.

To that end, I am close to finishing (I hope), a short story, which I hope to publish here on the Niwent blog soon. I have possibly mentioned it on previous blog posts. It is the Genesis story of the Niwent, which is something which I was quite keen to put down in writing early on. So I hope when it does come out it will be read by more than myself and Kirsty.

Guess that’s all for the moment…

I shall either clean this keyboard, or get back to writing something.

I love slow days at the office. ;-) 

Aflutter…a-flutter…a flutter?!

I had someone tell me yesterday that there was another mistake in CDDD. 

The first one was discovered last weekend by my father-in-law, who found a tiny but nonetheless unacceptable error in one line, where the word ‘as’ had been accidentally written as ‘at’. It was more than likely the product of my brain reading ahead of itself and filling in the letters of words before my eyes scanned the word for spelling issues. It is a common problem for people who go over the same piece of writing twenty or thirty times.

But it was that K missed it which was more kerfuffling (spellchecker does not accept the gerund of kerfuffle. Go figure). I can understand that she would be personally a tad miffed at this, because she takes great pride in her title as Guarantor of the Goodness of Grammar. She is a sharp cookie (where does that phrase come from? Did someone bake a cookie with glass or razor blades to give it an edge?) who takes great pride in knowing her prefixes from suffixes.

So to be told that there was a SECOND mistake was, well, a whole miffing kerfuffle of hubbubing proportions.

I may be embellishing this a tad.

The proportions were not ‘hubbubing.’

But the kerfuffle was definitely miffing.

In any case, it all had boiled down to the proper usage of the word ‘aflutter.’

Those of you expecting me to put the pages of text in question better go accidentally defrost a Baked Alaska.

Or better yet, purchase a copy of The Cicada and the Deep,Deep Dark written by yours truly and illustrated by the lovely Colette Lilley from your favourite Amazon website. Or if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you can borrow a copy.

See, always looking to enthusiastically promote my book to the three people who read this blog (and one of them is K, so that makes it two readers…possibly).

Back to the flutter.

The reader in question, Alisha*

‘Who is Alisha?!’ asked K with a hint of indignation only slightly less noticeable than lavender essence on meringue. (How many Great British Bake-off references can I cram into one blog entry?)

She is a gaming cognoscenti-in-training and friend who attends board game sessions at the Scythe and Teacup on some evenings.

A girl?!

In a geeky gaming café?!

Was she blind?!

I am again, perhaps going a bit over the top.

While they are not as prominent as the delightful teenage lads who yell YU-GI-OOOOOOH! From the top of their lungs, there is a small but fiercely dedicated cadre of gaming ladies at the Scythe.

And thank goodness for that.

But I digress.

I seem to have gone somewhat off tangent there.

It may have had something to do with the fact that one of my co-workers is wearing what I can only describe as a ‘see through chain mail styled shirt’. I don’t know why, for the sake of me, a grown adult would wear something like that in the northern latitudes (or to work in a library, as opposed to, say, clubbing). If he thinks it looks macho, um, well, it kind of looks like he is trying very hard to imitate Vernon Wells in Commando or Weird Science

…but not quiet cutting the 1980's bad guy grade. Lets just say I am thankful there are two large computer screens separating my view from his desk.

And that is why I do not wear see through shirts. ;-P

At least my co-worker is thankfully not wearing Vernon's 'Arse-less Chaps' from Mad Max 2:

Goodness me!

Anyways, back to the issue of the flutter…for the second time.

The Online Dictionary defines Aflutter as such:

Clearly there is room for interpretation, but the first definition is the one I am holding firmly by. So I shall stick to my literary guns and say it is not a misuse of the word. ;-)

It is ridiculously warm in the office right now. I so dislike the fact that the English do not believe in Air Conditioning.

Perhaps Global Warming may provide the incentive to install these beauties in offices so they do not feel like saunas…

Right, off to edit the work K and I talked about early in the week while listening to the Billboard Top 30 for last month!         

Jam Sessions

So I had a Jam Session with my editor yesterday afternoon.

For those of you who have not read this blog, do so.

There are only half a dozen small entries. It’s not exactly War and Peace or something written by George R.R. Martin.

My editor is, now that you have caught up and read the rest of the blog (you have, haven’t you?) mi wife, K. I call her that because she is a firm believer in proper grammar, syntax and punctuation. She is paragon of orthography; the Praetorian guard of Lords and Ladies of Spelling.

You sort of get the idea.

More than that, though, she is the first person I sought to talk to in depth about Niwent (which wasn’t called that at the time) the first story arc, and the history and mythology of it.

K was notoriously difficult to convince about the whole thing.

She is a voracious, cultured reader.

But fantasy fiction is not her Baked Alaska (see how I incorporate topical social media trending issues?).

She has read pretty much all of the works of Terry Pratchett and is an avid Neil Gaiman fan. But high fantasy is not really something she is highly familiar with.

For that matter, neither am I.

But I shall talk about my writing origins story at a later date.

K took a great amount of convincing from the day I first started the story arcs and the development of the themes within Niwent.

A great amount of convincing.

But it all clicked one night over a dinner about a year and a bit ago. We got into a discussion (alright, I pretty much started it and pressed on) over a large glass of wine about the story in my head and it just seemed to turn into a marvelous exchange of ideas to and fro where she questioned some of the things I was proposing, forcing me to elucidate on vague notions to flesh them out and see what worked and what didn't.

I loved her enthusiasm. It was intoxicating to have someone want to engage at that level, to challenge you and push you to not merely defend a notion, but to develop it.

And I loved having to present the story to someone and getting them to become interested and invested in it.

I know writers don’t write for anyone but themselves. There is a story buried deep within your head and you do everything you can to dig it out, dust it, clean it and commit it to vellum…or eVellum as the case might be nowadays.

It is a personal accomplishment more than scripting something for the acceptance of others.

I like the ideas in my head.

I love them.

I think they are fantastic and fabulous.

Fantabolous.

And K gives me something which any and all writers would be immeasurably grateful to have: a focal point.

No. Better still.

K reigns me in when she sees that in my hyperactivity I may be writing myself into a corner, or worse yet, writing some awful cliché about ‘no one writes baby into a corner.’

So having Jam Sessions with her is a wonderful thing.

She isn’t afraid of bringing the proverbial hammer down.

She absolutely will not pull punches.

If it’s rubbish, then she will say so.

If she really likes it, she will say so (and usually I react like an overactive fat Italian cook going ‘SHE LIKE-A DA SAUCE, LUIGI! SHE LIKE-A DA SAUCE!’

And before you get your knickers in a twist, I am half Italian.

I can get away with making fun of my own people’s stereotypes.

:-P

So, on to yesterday’s Jam Session:

It was incredibly short for a jam session, lasting a train journey of about 20 minutes. But it was fun. She was re-reading the equivalent of the Genesis of the Niwent: my world’s story of creation. It has become the one story I dare say she has invested in, given the amount of criticism she gives me about it. We perused through some of the old printouts of the story (yes, I still print my stuff out), looking at some of the previous formats. She liked the earlier drafts where I made the story straight prose as opposed to my more favoured series of spaced out sentences. And I have to agree it reads better as prose. I tend to use single sentences as a means of providing emphasis on a particular statement, but if I do it for EVERY sentence, then all I am doing is being annoying.

She was only able to read the first tree pages of the story before we had to alight, but still, it was three pages of sheer enjoyment where a childish grin just could not leave my face.

I later spent the night going and re-drawing the group of Islands where the Children of the Star Forest are from, and I was much more pleased with the result. I won’t give much more away until I am completely happy with the results, but at the moment I can say I am about 95% happy. What I will say is that when you do see it, the main island of the chain will be more or less some (having only JUST now worked out the scales) some 750 miles by 536 miles.

Plenty of space to develop a fantasy story or two.

;-)

Meh!

I guess that sums up my mood at the moment. Not because there has been a lack of activity, mind you. Work (that humdrum 9-5 desk jockey routine thing 90% of people in the developed world put up with as a means of giving an economic meaning to their lives) has picked up considerably in the last two weeks, thanks largely to the tail end of the ‘settling in’ period of my new line manager (well, my line manager’s manager), a woman concerned first and foremost with the bottom line for our department. What can our department do to save time and money (besides replacing all of us by nice automated units, though that has not gone undiscussed)?

You would think it was the high stakes world of corporate finance, but it is just a library.

You know, books, old ladies shushing people, studious little nerds and geeks seeking sanctuary in the hallowed grounds of the bibliotheke amidst dusty old tomes of forgotten knowledge.

And oak wood paneling everywhere.

Except libraries nowadays are not supposed to be that anymore.

Nope.

No Sir!

Libraries are all singing, all dancing, all prancing spectacles of social media interaction and multi-layer mobility.

The new age librarian is all about the constant tweeting of short, banal, often overused phrases or quips they saw on someone else’s twitter account without cross checking; or about face booking with people who ‘like’ the library page because the FB page is so much more interesting than the actual process of LEARNING; or  ‘instagraming’ photos and selfies of themselves at the library, attempting to convert it into a hip, happening place where trendy bearded hipsters with sleeve tats, early 20^th century hairstyles (NOT haircuts, NEVER haircuts!) and tight jeans can sit whilst sipping a decaf soya latte in a 100% made from recycled cardboard cup  and using their iPads to look at the latest trending issues.

You can guess by the writing I’m a bit of an old fashioned, bitter gentleman who likes his libraries happy yet quiet and filled with heavy yet surprisingly non-flammable books (yes, traditional libraries are notoriously difficult to set fire to. The paper is stacked up so tightly in the books and shelves that oxygen, one of the three ingredients for a fire, cannot get in between to promote combustion. Yay for science!)

But I digress.

My new boss’s boss has had us doing assignments to gauge the effectiveness of the electronic service delivery platform (fancy and elitist way of saying: electronic catalogue). Said service, it should be said, is rubbish.

We knew it before the tests.

But we need to collate, quantify and analyse copious amounts of data from various different groups in order to present an accurate representation of the bugs inherent in the system.

Basically we are testing it until it breaks.

Not a difficult thing.

The side effect of this and having another line manager (parallel to my team but not directly ours) suddenly start handing us his overspill to complete has meant that my writing has ground to a standstill.

And it is annoying the granola out of me.

While I was working on The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark, and while I was working on the overarching storyline that CDDD originates from I was happy.

Yes, I do not say that word often when I refer to work.

I was happy.

Not just content.

There was a feeling of progression. A sense of purpose and action coursing through me that fueled me and built a gentle yet constant momentum.

A very happy feeling.

I appreciated me.

Sounds vain and egotistical, I know.

But it is an immensely invigorating and rejuvenating feeling to have, self-appreciation.

Not to mention quite humbling.

Anyways, I am once again ranting.

I drew a map about two weeks ago, just as the whole circus of the free promotion was about to start.

It was a lovely little map of the island where the Children of the Star Forest come from.

I even coloured it and tried to make it look like one of those fancy fantasy maps.

Only it looked like a 5 year old drew it.

But I did not mind.

The map made something magical happen.

It gave the story a sense of location. Maps are special in that way. They give us something concrete to envision.

Mind you within an hour or so of drawing it, inking it and colouring it I had changed my mind with regards to about half a dozen things regarding topography, elevations and locations.

Ah, well. Such is life.

It’s still a very nice little map.

I think I shall go have another look at it and start drawing those changes. 

I might even share it here later.

:-)

Post Weekend Promotion Extravaganza!

This morning, while walking to drop off my little one at Nursery, I found a £1 coin on the floor. While part of me was happy at the luck, the more sarcastic bit of my brain (one which has grown in recent years) said ‘charity for a weekend of mixed results.’

Now, to clarify and expand on that remark.

This weekend (rather from Friday until Monday) was the free giveaway event for The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark. I had planned the event from some time now, and had proceeded to promote the event quite enthusiastically via word of mouth, Twitter and a Facebook events page. The FB events page had over 500 people invited by the end of it, between those I originally sent invitations to (about 380 people on my friends list) and those invited by other friends who shared the promotional poster I made for the event (actual attendees was about 10-12%. Roughly what I expected.) I tweeted about the upcoming event regularly, and by that I mean once every couple of days in the week prior.

I was feeling pretty good about it and looking forward to spending a positive frantic 4 days on FB and Twitter rallying the troops and trying to get to that magical number I conservatively set to try to beat (NOT David McGowan’s 19,122, but rather just the 122).

But life, as we all know, has a way of resetting the goalposts mere seconds after the ball leaves your foot.

Midweek, my grandfather-in-law passed away. It was tragic news for my wife and her family. I had known him for close to a decade and considered him pretty much family. His health had not been the best the past few months, and although it was in the horizon, his passing was still something difficult to take in.

I offered my wife to drive over to her home town in Nottinghamshire for the weekend, departing on Friday, and knowing full well that this would pretty much mean I would either do very little promoting or none whatsoever.

In hindsight, perhaps I should have opted for that last one.

But I had already established a rudimentary rapport with some potential readers, and it would have been seen are rude if I simply disappeared from Social Media altogether during this event.

I also didn't think it appropriate to make mention of the passing of my grandfather-in-law at the time as a reason for backing away from the event.

I was therefore between the proverbial Sharp Rock and Abrasive Hard Place.

And inevitably it led to a tense weekend where I struggled to be in any one frame of mind.

Friday was the trip to Notts, which took about three hours. I was able to tweet at the rest stop, and then some time during the evening, but the mood was understandably heavy at my in-laws.

The following day I spent the early afternoon at the Hucknall High Street Bonanza with the family,

Followed by a trip to my grandmother-in-law to help build a new shed for her. 

While my mind selfishly drifted back and forth about just asking my wife to let me go back home to work on the promotion of CDDD I soon found myself entertained by the hopelessness of the antics of trying to build the shed between my mother, father and brother-in-law and myself.

In the pouring rain.

With rubbish instructions.

And parts that did not fit or resemble anything on the instructions.

I must admit I’ve never quite heard my in-laws use the word ‘screw’ so many times as Saturday.

I felt bad because looking back on it in my mind, I often found myself stuck to my mobile phone tweeting while in the middle of what was essentially family time.

Sunday, there was again no respite from activity, as we decided (a bit of a Royal ‘we’ there) to take our son to White Post Farm (in all fairness, though, WPF is a fun place to go to). Amidst being harassed by chickens while eating our sandwiches, I once again turned to Twitter.

This became a theme for the weekend, if you could sort of imagine.

Lots of family activity.

And Oh, Look! Mario on his phone burning the battery while trying to convince someone in Jakarta or Singapore to download a free copy of CDDD before the promotion finished.

This was probably best encapsulated when I was watching some of the photos my father-in-law took of the WPF trip yesterday before we left back for home. In a sequence of three or four photos, there was my wife, happily chasing after our son, while at the edge of the photo, sat on a small poof on his mobile phone tweeting to the people of China to download CDDD without paying attention to anyone was daddy.

It made me feel horrible as a father and a husband.

I was a miserable git the whole weekend.

I pretty much gave it all up after seeing that photo and said to myself 'I'll take it up tomorrow and see what the results were.'

The download numbers didn't particularly fill me with the sort of ‘oomph!’ that would make me think of making the cover for my first novel look like the covers done by all the great modern writers:

Strangely enough, I rather like this cover, and would probably buy the book if I saw it at a bookstore... 

It started promisingly, with 38 downloads on Friday, but I couldn't quite capitalize on the momentum of the first day, and while there were still downloads the other three days, the never did reach the lofty heights of 38 again.

Total tally for the weekend: 82 downloads, which if you add to the previous promotion ran a month ago makes it 115 free copies downloaded.

Still short of the 122.

If anything, this should be a learning experience for me. Social media as a promotional took requires an amazing amount of preparation and organisation. It was staggering to see the amount of tweets I had to send for what were probably minimal returns.

Did I send the right tweets?

Did I target the right people to tweet to?

Did the right people retweet it?

Did those who retweeted my tweet ACTUALLY go to the link and download CDDD?

Did I tweet enough times during the event?

Did I tweet too much? (I was told by someone I did not tweet nearly enough.  I am fairly sure I sent out 

close to 100 tweets this weekend)

Did I use the right links?

Was the poster effective?

Should I have been on Facebook more often?

Should I have joined more Facebook groups?

It all amounted to a massive headache. I genuinely just want to get back to writing the rest of the story line for the novel which is where CDDD comes from.

And I wish I had a Literary Agent. :-(

To those of you who downloaded the book this weekend and who participated with such vim and vigour during the event posting on Facebook and Twitter, my most sincere and humble thanks. While I may whinge that downloads were not as plentiful as I wished, the fact that you good folk were willing to download CDDD and give it a read means the world to me and I’m pretty sure to Colette as well. You are the reason why this weekend is in many ways a success (no matter what the previous rant said).

Now, if you liked the story, spread the word to your friends.

And if you didn't like the story, tell me why you didn't.

:-)

Oh, and in the end, I decided a pound was a pound, be it luck or charity and it means I can get a cup of coffee at work (which I did).

Oprah, if you are reading this, I hope you read the book and I hope you liked it. ;-)

Freebie Friday has Arrived!

Yes, the date of this entry is Thursday, August 20 2014.

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, Tonga, Samoa, and parts of New Zealand millions are currently fast asleep.

And it has just turned Friday, August 22nd, 2014 there.

Huzzah!

It means someone in those parts of the world can now (in theory) download a copy of The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark for FREE!

Yay! Let four days of promotion begin!

I am equal parts excited and terrified. Excited because I can now offer the book for free to anyone and I am eager to see how many people will actually take up the offer to have a read of it. I ran a similar promotion about a month ago, though it was only for one day (Kindle only allows you 5 days during a limited time period to run promotions or giveaways) and it was relatively low key, being mostly family and friends who took advantage of the deal. Terrified because of the same reason, to be honest. I have now placed some sense of expectation on myself and on the book.

What if no one downloads it?

What if no one reads it?

What if they hate it?

I imagine these are the sort of usual questions that tend to keep self published writers and authors awake at night with a stomach churning sense of dread.

This time around I've been routinely tweeting about it for the past two weeks, trying to build some form of momentum. I also created a public Facebook Page for the event, inviting everyone in my friends list to it. I suspect for my efforts I may have lost one or two friends on Facebook who upon receiving the invitation probably wondered 'Why am I still friends with this weirdo?' The public event page has thus far proved of some success, with quite a few friends sharing the promotional poster on their walls (and I really cannot thank you enough for that!). 

Tomorrow morning begins the frenetic, frantic and frenzied promotion in earnest, with lots of contacting of people and groups on Twitter and Facebook.

A friend and coworker, David McGowan, who was one of the reasons I made the choice to self publish, jokingly challenged me to get 19,121 downloads over the promotion (the number he achieved on his first promotion). I don't expect to reach those lofty heights. Truth be told if I reach 120 downloads for the weekend I will be happy. David writes fiction novels, which, while a niche readership, is still considerably larger than the readership fan base for fables.

Granted, it is a fable that forms a part of a larger world and mythology and is an element of a wondrous Fantasy Fiction adventure.

But it is still a fable. 

Now, I chose to run the giveaway this weekend for two reasons:

1- It is a Bank Holiday weekend in the United Kingdom, which means people have Monday off and may want to download something for the long weekend (though it is not a terribly long read, but I think it is interesting and well worth the free download).

2- It is the tail end of the 'Feria Internacional del Libro de Panama.'

Yes, you heard the last one right.

You may ask, why would I bother? particularly given that CDDD has been written in English (and is therefore not called La Cigarra y la Profuna, Profunda Oscuridad).

I guess it comes down to a sense of perhaps silly patriotism. 

I just like being both Panamanian and a writer. 

Who knows, maybe someone in Panama reads it and likes it so much they recommend it to friends who then recommend it to friends who then recommend it to friends and it snowballs into a wonderful thing.

And just in case you thought I wasn't going to take this time to yet again insert the poster for the Free Download, think again!

The downside to all of this promoting and tweeting and hooting and hollering about the giveaway is that for the past fortnight I have had virtually no chance to do anything else writing related (I sit here writing this during my lunch break at work. An...extended lunch break). 

Plenty of ideas are swirling around in my head, which is a good thing.

But none are being put down on paper.

This promises to be an interesting weekend.

 

How this all came about

Right, explanation time, I guess.

The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark (CDDD) started in a non-conventional manner.

I mean that because it was not a purposely written story from the start.

I was in the middle of writing a chapter for a fantasy fiction work I’m trying to develop (which direct publishing is kind of sabotaging, but I shall expand on this later) in which a series of events lead to two characters discussing a children’s story due to an obscure line one of them overhears. And yes, this is kind of spoilers for that fantasy story, but I’m not revealing much. At the end of one scene, one character asks the other ‘What was the name of the story?’ I then put myself in the spot. I had to think of a name to a story. Simple, you would think. Except I wasn't happy with just coming up with a name for the story. I needed to actually sit down and create a story which would then make some sort of plot sense, at least to the characters in the story. So I wrote the first draft and passed it on to my editor. Well, by editor I mean Kirsty (my wife), who in all honesty is a very good editor and Master of Arms of the Grammar Police.

It was during the creation of the draft that I started considering making this an independent work. It means not only did it have to make sense to the characters in the story, but the story itself needed to be read as a stand-alone if need be (in case the main FF novel is never written). So more drafts were written and more editing was done by Kirsty. CDDD is a fairly short story and I based it on most of the fables I read as a child.

I also decided at this time that it would be a good story to publish as a self-published body of work, and looked at Kindle Direct Publishing because a colleague at work (David McGowan) has been using KDP for his work. I skimmed over all of the how-to bits on the KDP website and decided to give them a go.

I then thought about illustrating it. I know Colette from work and I was aware of her abilities as an illustrator. I approached her mid-late May about the book and she seemed interested, though this was a first for both of us. I had never had anything published before and she had never done children’s literature before.

If anyone wants to get a cup of tea or coffee, feel free. Still lots more to go.

PART II: I set myself a hard deadline of mid-July to have the book ready, story, artwork, and formatting. I know myself as a person, and committing to doing something in a particular time frame was the best way for me to work (also the most stressful way, but I can be a glutton for punishment sometimes). Colette and I would meet roughly once a week and discuss progress. First it was settling for a particular style of illustrations, and then it was a particular look for the characters and so on. She would do some preliminary sketches and e-mail them to me for comment. Two-three weeks before deadline illustrated pages started to come together with text and the whole book began to take on a different life. It now moved on from an idea or concept to something much more concrete.

While this was going on I was also getting to grips with KDP. I had to register with them, which anyone can do. Before publishing, though, you do need to do a tax check with US authorities. I have been told by others the process was a lot more convoluted than it is now, and involved you having to call the IRS directly to receive exemption if you are a non-US citizen publishing and living outside the US. I just had to fill the form online, thankfully. You spend an awful lot of time filling out forms on KDP before you publish, to be honest, though they are all the forms you need to deal with royalties, form of payment, markets being covered for distribution, download fees you may have to pay to KDP if you chose plan A over plan B, so the whole administrative process takes about a week to sort out. KDP will publish anyone so long as their material is ready, in the correct format (see below) and contains no objectionable material (I leave it to you to read what they define by that).

Deadline weekend came and Colette duly delivered the formatted work. And that’s when it all went pear shaped. And it was my entire fault. The beauty of KDP is the simplicity if offers for the conventional author who wants to write a 5-600 page novel with a simple cover. You write everything up on MS Word, slap the cover on and upload. Kindle re-formats it and allows the reader to change font size (hence why Kindle tells you not to put page numbers on the document being uploaded), brightness, contrast, pixel resolution and other highly technical sounding words. Some of the more tech savvy authors know how to format their work so that it can still contain page numbers. Kindle does allow you to submit in other formats, but it prefers by and large MS Word (at least in my experience with one book, so this might be highly biased). PDF files are a hangman’s noose, as a lot of the formatting is lost or reformatted during the upload process. Mercifully, KDP lets you preview your creation before publishing. 

(Coffee Break!)

PART III: As you may have guessed, my first file was PDF. It looked like it had been chewed by a grammatical cow and it had come out the other end after passing through its five stomachs. I panicked, and contacted Colette, who was en route to going on a mini break, which I almost ruined.

Thankfully, she sent me all the files, and after much prodding, reformatting, screaming at the laptop at home and one or two co-workers in the office, I was happy (or rather I gave up and accepted this was as good as it could get) with the end result and opted to publish.

It was then that my editor decided to tell me that quite a few of the lines were a bit off. This is what happens when you try to do a partial rhyme scheme on a children’s book. This led to another few nights of frantic re-editing, screaming at the laptop some more, ambling like some mad lunatic in the office thinking to myself what rhymes with wing?! WHAT RYHMES WITH WING?! After a long day, new samples were presented to the editor (I have to admit, I like calling Kirsty that) and she was please and dare I say impressed by a line or two. So, it was all uploaded. KDP tells you once you finish it will take about 12-24 hours for your book to appear on the Amazon websites while it does copyright and other related checks on it. CDDD was up about 2-3 hours after upload.

In that respect, I am immensely happy with the achievement.

In another, though, self-publishing CDDD was only the tip of a very, VERY LARGE submerged iceberg. This is the bit of the romanticized, be your own publisher that I am now learning is not as idyllic as it seems. The fantastic thing about having a publisher or a literary agent (and if anyone is interested, I am available to be represented) is that they do an awful lot of the dirty work for you in terms of editing the material (something which now more than ever due to the volume of self-publishing taking place is crucial) promoting your work and getting it to the right audience. Self-publishers have to do that all by their lonesome selves and it can at times feel like a full time job. Since publishing CDDD a little over a month ago I now spend an awful lot more time on Twitter and Facebook promoting the book. You then run into the minefield of issues that I am now discovering plague all self-pub authors:

Who should I promote my eBook through?

How do I approach people?

Will I come across as too pushy?

All in all it becomes a daunting task that requires a high degree of attention and organization skills (I don't really think I have that particular unique set of skills).

I think a good story will always shine through and gain readers, but sometimes it helps to have the word spread out, and I think conventional publishers and literary agents still have a big sway in this regard.

Mind you, I am ultimately happy that the book was written; that the story was told and that it was illustrated to such a magnificent standard. Because it means a story that started as a little spark inside my head attempting to make a larger story flow gained a life of its own and is now out there to be read. 

Time to Promote a bit of Free Reading!

One of the complexities of self publishing is having to wear as many hats as is allowed before you compact several vertebrae in your neck from the burden. You are not only writer, you are also marketer, blogger, editor, printer, tea lady, and hair-cuttings sweeper. These are the sort of things (well, perhaps minus the hair-cuttings sweeper, lest you have a truly outstanding literary agent) that more conventional writers have tended to to a much greater degree by their publishers or literary agents.

So kudos to those who practice those dark arts. You, kind ladies and gentlemen, do an awful lot for your clients!

However, in the absence of said agents of help, I am tasked with rather happily (well, 50/50 elated and absolutely terrified beyond belief) announcing that this weekend, The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark will be available as a free download, free download, free download (yes, say things 3 times for better memory retention) via all amazon websites. The hyperlink on the title will take you to the amazon.co.uk site only, but feel free to look for it in your local amazon.

And for further reminding, here's a handy dandy poster! :-)

We begin in the beginning...sort of.

Welcome!

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Mario, and for lack of a better description of what I do, I like to write. I wouldn't call myself an author yet, mind you. I hold a strange traditionalist view that until something I write (not counting letters to magazines) is actually printed on paper, I haven't earned my spurs. This is, of course, a completely personal view of the matter, and it takes nothing away from being a self published eAuthor.

But I still like the feel of paper in my hands. I'm just old fashioned that way.

Anyways, I am rambling a little, so my apologies. I am not new to blogging as a form of communication, and it seems to be a defining characteristic of my blogging, this meandering at times.

If you are here, then you are, of course interested to some degree in what I have written, which at the moment is only The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark (beautifully illustrated by Colette Lilley) or possibly what I will write sometime in the future.

I hope that you will enjoy my musings (and probably an awful lot of ranting).

Mario.

P.S. No se sorprendan si en este blog encuentren partes escritas en Español. ;-)