Tag Archives: adventure fantasy

By the Light of the Moon (Lost Isle Launch T-38 Days)

12 Friday Feb 2021

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BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON
Emmi Lawrence

“He tells the same bloody story every night to whoever listens. ‘Bout crows in the crow’s nest. Birds normally found in forests taking over the sea, says he. Wouldn’t listen ta a word that comes out of his mouth.”

I thanked the bartender, but ignored the advice and moved to sit next to the young sailor.

“What crows are these?” I asked. “Out in the Serene? In the middle of the ocean?”

The young man snorted into his pint. “Fuck off with ya. I’ve had enough raggin’ for the day.”

But I persisted, opening my satchel and pulling free a crinkled paper with a crude drawing. “Can you tell me how many there were? Did they appear during the night? Did they come down close enough for you to see exactly what they looked like? Anything like this?” I tapped the sketch.

The sailor pulled the mug from his lips. “Ya draw that?”

“Not me. Another who’d been on board a ship that had to skirt a spring storm and saw a few of these birds.”

He dragged the sketch closer, wetting the edges as it landed in a puddle of spilled beer. “Aye, it’s a right likeness, it is. Close enough. There’s that ridge right there along its spine that I’ve never seen on a crow before or since. And it’s got that bright beak and fuzzy gullet. He pushed the paper back and took a large swallow from his mug before continuing. “It’s real, right enough, but what is it?” Continue reading →

Avian Manifest (Lost Isle Launch T-45 Days)

05 Friday Feb 2021

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AVIAN MANIFEST
Emmi Lawrence

Small notes from an expedition hire of the lord and lady of The Flightless. Incomplete, missing information and lacking clarity, the notes remained stuffed in an outdated book on nautical charts in a faded dowry chest in the upstairs corner of his descendants’ house.

Caladrius – A pale blue with stark orange legs, the crane that feasts on pain looks no stranger than the fauna it lives among. A simple beast, little in the way of brains, yet elegant and useful and kept in high regard in a large cage on deck.

Chrono Owl – We followed them by their broken, midnight song. Every beat of their wings a distortion in time and space. Each attempt we’d get close, close enough to see their eyes, the patterns in their feathers, but never fast enough to combat time itself. The lady had hired a sorcerer, a vortex mage, and it took all his strength to slow the owls enough for us to get a hold. Though, even now, I wonder at their age, for some days they seem like ancients and others hatchlings just from the shell.

Cockatrice – What do they look like? We wore blindfolds into the dark caves and moved by feel through their domain. No one ever got a clear look. Not even after we dragged a few back with us, their leathery bodies squirming in the rucksacks, their claws scraping at the inside though they could not scrape clear through the spelled hide. Even after they’d been put on display, lizard-like snouts wiggling in disdain and tiny wings fluttering in useless expressions of aggression, we could not see them clearly through the colored, distorted glass. And when we placed our fallen comrade, the blindfold slipped off his nose when his tie had loosened, next to the display, most tourists ceased their complaints about the lack of view.

Flame-tail – Damn these tiny hellions! Damn them to the planes of hell and beyond. Let them burn up the damned rather than live on a decent plane of existence. If only. Instead, they trail ash and steam wherever they might go. Continue reading →

Wings of the Flightless (Lost Isle Launch T-50 Days)

31 Sunday Jan 2021

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WINGS OF THE FLIGHTLESS
(A Lost Isle Teaser—short story)
(Lost Isle is available for pre-order here)
Emmi Lawrence

I frequented bars and historical sites along the coast line. Went through Port Awadar, then south of the city within the smaller coastal towns, from Evastaur to Nowuldan. Traveling all the way down to Sasu Ilma, though I never took the ferry to Highmore.

Sailors spoke of their travels quickly enough, especially when I bought a round to loosen their tongues. Yet in all those tales, all those high-sea adventures, or doldrums as the case may be, I struggled to find a single man who could give credence to the story that the birds of The Flightless, that doomed menagerie vessel lost at sea, had ever escaped the storm to settle on the mythical Giant’s Whip Isles.

The first indication I had of the possibility of the Giant’s Whip truly existing came from a long retired sailor who had repurposed a fishmonger’s stall into an ale slanthouse. He had a rippling scar along his arm where a fire had caught within his prime years. A tattoo covered the scarring, but not well, the artist a hack and the ink long faded over the years after the man had ceased bothering to touch it up.

He had a garrulous nature, talking over his patrons and teasing his bar girl who laughed to cover her discomfort. The canvas-edged rooftop snapped in the wind above my head and my stool rocked against the stony ground. But the ale was decent and the mugs at least had the look of cleanliness, which was more than could be said for some such places.

On the other side of the repurposed stall stood a plethora of young dockworkers obviously taking a short break from their duties to mill about the slanthouse just out of the summer sun. Flies buzzed near the street gutter and a few mutts hovered behind me where the ale stall just about butted up against a fish-on-a-stick vendor.

“They come and run,” said the retired sailor. A man who’d professed himself to be Steppan Fares, once a rigging climber with a sharp weather eye and a cruel left hook. He’d rattled that intro off in a practiced manner, with a wink and a rippling of his arm as he flipped a mug and pushed up the spigot with one hand. “Ya hears all the news that way. Don’t have ta see the sails ta know which ship has put in or which captain is lookin’ to flesh out their crew. Ya see ‘em all. Stop by for a quick drain ta quench the thirst that salty air gives and ta uncork the news that’s been bursting for release.”

“Do you prefer it then, seeing the brunt of the crews ever passing rather than taking the risk of the high seas yourself?” Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Have you ever written fan fiction?

18 Monday Jan 2021

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When I was a child I absolutely loved Brian Jacques’ Redwall books. For those of you who don’t know what those are, his books detail action adventure stories featuring small European animals, many of whom live in a large abbey called, you guessed it, Redwall.

So there are animals such as mice and badgers and squirrels on the good side and others such as rats and weasels and snakes on the bad side. (Some people talk about how awful it is that there isn’t more distinction, that how dare Jacques divide creatures into “good” and “bad” [even though there are many exceptions to this rule] but I find that obnoxious because it’s a CHILDREN’S SERIES—you want adult-level discussion and nuance, then READ ADULT FICTION. [I would also like to point out that many adult books, including ones touted as being transcendent in some fashion, are incredibly simplistic in their definitions of good and evil as well.]

With that tangent out of the way, my very first forays into writing were fan fiction based on Jacque’s books. Particularly poetry. I would craft snippets about the bits of story that didn’t get full accounting in the books. I would wonder about what happened after the adventure or war ended. I would draw pictures of my favorite characters and sob over the ones who died.

One particular couple in the stories I fell in love with was a mouse pair who, after their story, go out adventuring and exploring rather than settle into a quiet life at Redwall. I LOVED this. I wanted to be like them, specifically the female mouse who used a rope like a whip and took down creatures twice her size.

But we never got a story about them on their adventures after they left, so their future was left ambiguous. So I wrote a poem about them :) Talked about how they were out there, fighting and having adventures together. And, of course, had fallen even more completely in love with one another, because even when I was in elementary school that was part of my happily ever after.

I feel as if we all have those things that we grasped at during our youngest years, even if we didn’t know or understand them then. Things that come back and show us who we were meant to be, what we were meant to do. For me, those old, yellowing pages of mice and their poems are one of mine.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What are your 2021 Resolutions?

28 Monday Dec 2020

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This past year has been intense and shocking for most of the world. 2020 is one for the history books, to be sure. Yet, despite the awfulness, the insanities, the exhaustion, the economic downturns, and the snowball effect all these things have had on most people’s lives, I think I managed to get more done than in the two years prior.

In my own writing, this past year I have: Finished Lost Isle and most of the promo work involved; began serializing Canvas Blues on my blog; wrote and published Rise of the Snowmen; wrote a few other short stories that I can publish on my site at a later point; and put a bunch of words into other projects.

For 2021, I have a few certainties and a few hopes:

CERTAINTIES

1) Lost Isle published in March

2) Canvas Blues continued to be serialized

HOPES

1) Republish Shatter by Glass

2) Work on Scorched Isle for a projected 2022 release

3) Christmas is Cancelled published in the autumn

For the first time since I started writing, I’ve sat down and created (with help) a project manager outline for all my goals and projected out when I must have certain pieces of each project completed to meet each final deadline. When I started this blog years ago, it was just meant to be fun, a place to play and publish stories when I had them finished without much thought to long-term viability. It started as a safe-zone and it still is to some extent. However, I would like to see what I can accomplish if I push myself.

This week is ground zero. Wish me luck!

~Emmi

 

New Release: Rise of the Snowmen!

15 Tuesday Dec 2020

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RISE OF THE SNOWMEN
A Deadly Holidays Novel

Dec 15th 2020
(gay romance/fantasy adventure)
55k words
Amazon Link

As is my tradition, here are a few interesting tidbits about working on this novel!

1) This novel was supposed to be a novella. (Angry writer face!) It was supposed to be only around 37k in order to match up with Those Bloody Christmas Elves. But, as you can see, this novel decided it was not satisfied with 37k words. Which, honestly, I’m still not sure why. WHY?!

So there I am, telling everyone I’m working on a novella and they kept saying: “Still?? How long is this novella??”

Me: *mumble, mumble* “almost 55k” *mumble*

2) The character of Mandy was originally modeled after the children collectively in my daughter’s kindergarten class because that’s how old she was when I was writing Those Bloody Christmas Elves. My intention was to age her one year each year so I had a clear research path to knowing exactly how children that age would act.

Whelp, that didn’t work, because here we are nearly three years later and Mandy has only grown one year in that time. If I keep this up, by the time I publish Christmas is Cancelled, my daughter will be in college or something.

3) Like Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, I wrote this novel in two parts, broken up by a few years. If you can guess exactly where I stopped and then restarted, I’ll give you fake internet points as a reward :) (Hint: I don’t write linearly XD)

4) Perie Wolford, who did the cover for Those Bloody Christmas Elves, has also done the cover for Rise of the Snowmen. He’s absolutely amazing! And I adore how he managed to capture all the different tonal elements of the stories–the actual danger/adventure; the ridiculous Christmas elements that are still portrayed in a serious manner throughout; the characters themselves.

5) I always choose a different notebook for each project. With certain connected stories, that notebook carries through to each of the stories. For my Christmas series with Greg and Taylor I have this floppy, teal notebook that has gold balls across it. I originally chose it because it was greenish and reminded me of ornaments.

It now has the completed outline for Christmas is Cancelled in it, which may or may not be longer than Rise of the Snowmen, given it’s got a planned 17 sections/chapters.

Also, it’s really, really hard to write about snow when it’s summer.

I hope you give Rise of the Snowmen a chance this holiday season! It’s a bit dark; it’s a bit dangerous; but there’s still holiday spirit and Christmas presents and a lovely romance that just keeps figuring itself out!

~Emmi

Rise of the Snowmen Deleted Scene

12 Saturday Dec 2020

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As a fun extra for the upcoming publication of Rise of the Snowmen, I’ve decided to post a deleted scene from the novel, a piece that takes place early on from Greg’s perspective.

But first, a bit of background!

Why does the scene switch tenses?

Because I cut this scene, this piece is still in first draft form. What this means is that the words here show the thought process that goes from outline drafting within present tense to dropping into past tense as I picked up the narrative during that writing session.

Had this scene been within the final draft, I would have edited the first half into past tense, removed the repetition, and smoothed out the barrage of telling words, leaning the story to a more limited POV vs. the omniscient narrator (me!) who was talking.

What’s wrong with the scene? Why cut it?

This scene ended up being cut for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I wrote the other side of this scene from Taylor’s perspective and I decided that his side was more powerful and necessary to show because of their character arcs. He’s the one who gets to make a choice during this sequence.

And secondly, I was able to show the emotion Greg feels here in other sequences, so this bit felt too repetitive in a general sense.

Tension loses intensity when it’s too repetitive. Tension also loses intensity when the character isn’t an active participant. In this case, Taylor’s side allows you, my dear reader, to see someone actively struggling against a choice, where Greg’s side…well, you’ll see.

Why haven’t we seen many other deleted scenes from your novels? Continue reading →

Rise of the Snowmen: Chapter One Excerpt

27 Friday Nov 2020

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RISE OF THE SNOWMEN

Enjoy this excerpt from my upcoming novel!

This is a sequel to Those Bloody Christmas Elves, which you can read about here. The excerpt below will give spoilers to Those Bloody Christmas Elves, however, it is not a requirement to read the first story in order to understand or enjoy Rise of the Snowmen :)

CHAPTER ONE

Where the angels creep and the snowmen feed…none survive.

Twas the season, once again, of blissful ignorance and peppermint. Of flashing rainbow lights and warm apple cider. Of spruce and spiders inside homes and sugary delights that ended most often with stomachaches. Not to mention too many presents, off-key carols, and trash. Oh, so much trash.

Too cynical by half.

Taylor frowned into his burnt coffee and shoved his other hand deeper into his jeans pocket. That’s what Greg had said at the start of the drawn-out holiday season, long before turkey had been carved or costumes put to good use. Too cynical by half.

As if the man couldn’t remember how he’d almost lost his little girl last year to an elvish kidnapping and thought the world seemed greener now that days had dulled the terror. As if she had never been in danger of being dragged off to the North Pole in the clutches of the cruelest lie parents told their children.

In fact, that was her laugh now, Mandy Westmill tugging her mother along in her wake as she filled a bag of reindeer food, spilling oatmeal and glitter across the gymnasium floor.

Even with her black hair braided over the crown of her head, Mandy held a hint of her father in her manner. That stubborn set of her jaw. Those dark eyebrows. The way her lips twisted slightly when she grinned. And, of course, that single dimple that popped inward and seemed stuck there in her contagious happiness.

Truly her father’s daughter in so many ways.

Taylor caught her winking at him from across the gymnasium, her finger to her lips in a hush sign and her shoulders hunched forward in a cute attempt at subterfuge. Taylor smiled at her from behind his coffee and returned the wink before casually turning in case Mandy’s mother, Katie, might send a glance his way.

She might not recognize him. After all, they’d only met the few times when Taylor had lingered at Greg’s house during a drop-off or pickup between the two, but Greg wanted to avoid a confrontation. Reason enough why Greg sat safely out in the parking lot of Reynald Elementary school while Taylor cased the place, searching for signs of elvish infiltration.

In years before, elves had nabbed kids right out of the parking lot or snatched them during solo bathroom breaks. Once, during a warmer December, they’d even joined a game of hide and seek out on the playground. Yet Taylor had been there each year, thwarting their efforts and rescuing children from elvish clutches, normally all without parental involvement, or even knowledge.

But last year the elves had struck early and strong, using laced sugar sprinkled on top of the cookies. Mandy hadn’t been the only child nabbed, but she’d been the one Taylor had noticed. And with Mandy had come her father and Greg Westmill wasn’t like any of the other parents Taylor had ever stumbled into dealing with. That man’s stubbornness, his absolute refusal to leave Taylor’s side, not even to go to the police, had spawned a whirlwind of emotions, some of which Taylor still wasn’t sure he understood. Continue reading →

Canvas Blues – XXII: Yesteryears

24 Wednesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Contemporary, Fantasy, M/M, Serial

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CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XXII: Yesteryears

Robbie took to girls the way Casey took to cars.

His first girlfriend came at the end of seventh grade. His first real girlfriend at least. Before that there’d been giggles and kissed cheeks and hugs near the swings. But Tori Kel Anderson transcended elementary innocence. Robbie called her weekly and texted her daily. Would shrug off chances to go shoot paintballs or arosoft bullets in the forest in favor of a date at the park that might end in a chaste kiss from glossy lips.

Casey took Tori Kel badly.

At school he’d taunt her, though never where Robbie could hear. Sour words and bitterness cut into every interaction Casey had, his insults starting sexist, turning racist and ending only when Robbie took a fist and landed a hit directly on Casey’s jaw.

The fight afterwards might have been cathartic for some, but stood as the snapping of what had once been their friendship. They’d been like rubber bands before, pinging on one another, stretching away, bouncing back. Always with Brendon in the middle, relegated towards the sides when the goings were good.

Tori Kel, for the sin of doing nothing but having a pretty smile and a sweet disposition, became the inadvertent cause of three things. Continue reading →

Canvas Blues – XXI: Yesteryears

17 Wednesday Jun 2020

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CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XXI: Yesteryears

With Aunt Laurel’s voice always a mainstay in Brendon’s mind, he drew in an obsession. Found light and shadow. Discovered distance. Foreground. Curvature and stark angles. Perspective. Always perspective.

Cartoon characters found their way into teacher hands. Anime figures into book bags. Superheroes on chalkboards and whiteboards and in the margins of his tests. Car engines on the backs of his homework.

He sold doodles for a quarter, enough of them to buy a soda most days during lunch. Boys from different grades found him at his locker to ask for their favorite actress or anime girl drawn nude. He was called to a meeting with his guidance counselor once when one of the boys accidently lost theirs in the hallway. Brendon was careful to keep at least a bikini on the figures after that.

The art teacher in middle school—a man named Mr. Wexlar—latched onto Brendon like a barnacle on a piling. Demanding, critical, stern. His face had a paunchy look, round, ruddy cheeks controlling a deep baritone, dangerous voice. His eyebrows were speckled with white, his shoulders slightly stooped from bending over children’s projects for the last four decades instead of his own. Continue reading →