My Writing
I’m a storyteller. I’ve spent my life immersed in language; I’m fascinated by its details and its workings and the wondrous things that it can create. Here are a few samples of my recent work.
The Peregrine
The first chapter of my first novel, a story about superheroes behind the masks.
Not to ham it up too much, but my editor thought this chapter warranted a WOW, two exclamation points, and a confetti emoji.
There’s a photograph of the Peregrine that I guarantee you’ve seen. She’s in midair, partway through transforming back from some bird, the imprints of feathers still on her skin and her face lit up with that incandescent grin.
Jean Song won a Pulitzer for that photo, I think. It’s been in paper and books and on walls, copied, altered and parodied for years.
An hour before that photo was taken, its subject was standing in my kitchen, staring devastated at her favourite mug broken on the floor.
Tolkien
A blog post about J.R.R. Tolkien, his storytelling mastery, and the world of Middle Earth.
Recently, I've been procrastinating by playing Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. If you can't guess by the title, that's a Lord of the Rings game. It's a few years old now and has a sequel out as of last year, but it's made me want to ramble about the Lord of the Rings for a little while.
I've written a fair number of stories, and I'm pretty familiar with world building. I've even unexpectedly become Dungeon Master for my D&D group. (I know, there's really no more obvious way to say I'm a massive nerd. Geek? Both? Who knows.) But anyway, all this to say that J.R.R. Tolkien was a FREAKING GENIUS.
Morwenidril
An analysis of the development of Morwenidril, a character created and run in a collaborative storytelling experience by a good friend of mine.
Morwen's story feels very real. She did some really really terrible things in her past, learned she couldn't trust anyone and could only depend on herself, but maybe she didn't have the power she needed to be emotionally invincible. She joined the valkyries. Suddenly she was in a group that was way more honest than anything she'd had to deal with, and she withdrew, understandably. You can only depend on yourself. Slowly, over time, she started to trust them, but she still needed more power, so she couldn't be blinded or even touched again, so she took the crones' curse. After all, who would she ever love who would love her back?
The Mythology of Ozara
An original creation story, the origins of the world of Ozara
Long, long ago, there were only the stars. And one of these stars was named Strae, and Strae was lonely.
She reached out into the darkness and pressed the void into form, and gave it the name Korvuruul. And so Korvuruul was the first of dragons, and the greatest of them, and he twined himself around Strae, and he was her closest companion.
Together, Strae and Korvuruul stirred the darkness around them and it became a world. But this world was empty and featureless, and so Strae gave this new world water, and Korvuruul breathed air out across its surface, and from this air and water sprang life, and it spread across their world and made it lush and beautiful.
I post things I’ve written in the past or fragments of what I’m currently writing over on my Excerpts and Random Snippets blog sometimes. Occasionally. When I remember it exists. Still, if you’re hungry for more, go check it out!