Behind the Scenes of “Returning Home”

Last week, Splickety published my most recent flash fiction story “Returning Home” in their Heirs and Spares issue. If you haven’t read it yet, you can get a print or digital copy or check it out on Kindle. And as is my new tradition, this week I wanted to write a little behind-the-scenes post about writing it.

The moment I learned about this month’s theme (royal intrigue), I knew I wanted to put a unique spin on it. Also, based on feedback to my Splickety submission from a few months ago, I wanted to make sure I highlighted the main characters as teenagers (which seems to be a driving force of this year’s themes).

One thing that tripped me up early in the process was wondering whether I was supposed to invent royalty or take inspiration from historical figures. I thought it might be easy to see through something totally made up, so I opted to base it on real royalty. Since I expected many submissions would take place in white European settings (or at least be inspired by them), I wanted to set my story apart from the majority by staying away from that setting.

I’ve held a mild interest in Maya history/culture since visiting Guatemala with my family in high school. We lived with a host family on two separate occasions, and visited Tikal during both trips. And since I received good feedback on a story set in Maya culture last year, I thought it would be a good fit for this prompt. But that meant research.

In that vein, one of the first tidbits I learned while researching is the fact that “Maya”—rather than “Mayan”—is the right adjective to use. “Maya” is used when describing elements of their culture (Maya people, Maya history, etc.), while “Mayan” specifically refers to the language family. The more you know!

I started researching by trolling through Wikipedia for names of Maya rulers. (Don’t worry—real research does come into play later.) I figured I could get a feel for the royal dynamic in different Maya city-states and develop a short story about brothers conniving for the throne, or perhaps a forbidden love between members of rival kingdoms. This is where serendipity comes in.

While reading through articles, I learned about Dos Pilas and its relationship with Tikal. It was … complicated. Dos Pilas was a smaller settlement than Tikal, which was one of the powerhouses of its time. Its king claimed to be part of Tikal’s royal line, but its allegiance bounced between them and Calakmul (another major power) over the years.

If that doesn’t set the stage for royal drama, I don’t know what does.

The relevant information was scattered through a few different articles, but I pieced together the gist of Dos Pilas and Tikal’s relationship, the main players, and an inkling of what a short story could look like. At this point, I used Wikipedia’s references to track down Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens by Simon Martin. It helped flesh out a few more details, gave more credibility to certain name translations, and generally bolstered my confidence that this story could work.

Not that “Returning Home” is 100% historically accurate. I definitely took liberties with Bajlaj Chan’s and Nuun Ujol’s ages to better fit with the teenage element, and there aren’t many details about why the two were at odds. Nevertheless, the broad strokes about the two of them being brothers and the contentious relationship between the sites do have a basis in history.

Speaking of the kingdoms, you’ll notice that neither Tikal, Dos Pilas, nor Calakmul get name-dropped in “Returning Home.” That’s because those are our modern names for the settlements. In the Mayan language, Tikal was likely called “Mutal” … at least until Dos Pilas was founded and began using the same name/emblem glyph. At this point, Tikal started being known as “Yax Mutal”—the first Mutal. Dos Pilas is a Spanish name meaning “Two Wells,” though it was probably known as Mutal in its heyday. To avoid the confusion of two locations named “Yax Mutal” and “Mutal,” I used this Maya Hieroglyph Dictionary website to create a name based on the Mayan words for two wells (“Kach’en”). Similarly, Ox Te’Tuun was the Mayan name for Calakmul. It was unfortunate that all these place names took twice the word count, so I tried to limit using them as much as possible! (That’s also why Nuun Ujol only calls his younger brother “Bajlaj” instead of his full name, Bajlaj Chan.)

The only other name in the story is Coyopa, which is taken from the Maya god of thunder. It seemed like an appropriate name for a loyal war general. Yajaw, which is mentioned a couple of times in the story, is the Mayan word for “vassal lord,” which I thought gave the story the right amount of additional flavor.

Once I had the setting and premise of the story, it came together quickly. Like “The Journal of Wonders,” I wanted dialogue to drive most of the story. I thought focusing on a time before the kingdoms officially turned on one another would allow the brothers to have the type of conversation that could reliably drive a story. Nuun Ujol needed to already be convinced that Bajlaj Chan wanted to usurp him, so I wanted this scene to focus on the younger brother’s realization that he was no longer welcome in Yax Mutal. I was pleasantly surprised with the way it came together allowing me to contrast Bajlaj’s definitions of “home” at the beginning and end of the story, giving the title a nice double-meaning.

There you have it! You can see from this post that a big chunk of this story was research and prep work, and it came together … comparatively quickly after those. You probably know more about Maya history now than you ever expected to learn, but I hope you still enjoyed reading about the process and maybe even had a few questions answered. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask them below!

“Returning Home” Published!

Woohoo! My latest flash fiction story, “Returning Home,” was just published in Splickety’s June issue. Check it out here!

This month’s theme is “Heirs and Spares.” In other words, royal teenage drama. But in case you think you’ve read it all, perhaps you’d be interested to hear that this story is set in the classic Maya period—inspired by the story of the mysterious site of Dos Pilas breaking its alliance with the powerhouse of Tikal. It’s my most heavily-researched story to date, and I’m really happy with how it turned out!

If that intrigues you, you can read “Returning Home” along with ten other royal flash fiction stories in Splickety’s June issue! I’d love to hear what you think about it 🙂

Hard copy & digital: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1472873

Amazon Kindle: http://a.co/2XiMEQj

Writing Sword of the Stones

In case you missed the news last week, my most recent story “Sword of the Stones” was published in Havok’s latest issue. Get a print copy here or check it out on Kindle. Today, I wanted to share a little background info on its creation.

First off, since I knew I wanted to submit a story to Havok’s Extraordinary Exploits issue, I started with the prompt. I latched onto the examples of Indiana Jones and The Librarian. But, as is usually the case, my first few ideas looked very different from the final story.

One idea was to submit a story that read like an artifact retrieval form. It would include stats like where a certain relic was recovered and what properties it possessed, as well as a brief report of how it had been retrieved. Another idea began with a teenage boy cleaning out his grandmother’s attic, then finding a hatching dragon egg. But when I got into writing both of them, I realized that it was taking way too long to get to the action.

So I started brainstorming ideas of how to get straight to the action—as well as what kind of relic would lend itself to the pseudo-supernatural element of the prompt. I decided the best place to start would be literally seconds before retrieving the artifact, which would in turn activate some sort of (again, supernatural) defense system that would try to prevent the adventurer from escaping. (It should also be noted that, in my head, the main character is known only as “The Adventurer,” and doesn’t have a real name.)

That was when I had a mental image of an angel statue perched on top of a building, holding a sword while lighting flashed around. Those first few paragraphs went through quite a few revisions as I tried to balance scene-setting with action (and a little humor/sarcasm).

Funnily enough, the sword originally was the main relic—and would’ve been a lot more effective against the gargoyles. But the more I thought about it, “able to defeat animated stone” felt like a really random power, and wouldn’t be very useful in other scenarios. That got me thinking about what would be a cool supernatural ability bestowed by an artifact. Wings and flight seemed like a natural answer given the angel statue, and so the medallion worked its way into the story.

It wasn’t until after I started writing the animated gargoyles that I realized they are an unintentional callback to a short story I wrote in college. Something about those monstrous faces and the notion of living rock just strikes me as sinister. Technically, these ones are probably grotesques or chimeras because “gargoyle” specifically refers to carved spouts that carry water away from buildings, but I elected to keep the term “gargoyle” because it’s the one that most people are familiar with for what I was trying to get across.

Half by virtue of the sword losing its abilities, and half due to rapidly shrinking available wordcount, the fight on the roof ended up being shorter than I had first envisioned. I would’ve liked an epic battle on the monastery roof between Adventurer and gargoyle as lightning flashed and thunder roared, but by the time he picked himself up from the fall, I realized that the story needed to start wrapping up. I was happy to get that epic leap from the roof timed perfectly with a lightning strike. In the movie version, that scene is in slow-mo.

For the ending, it’s worth noting that my first draft was a couple sentences longer. I wanted to bring a sense of completion into the story, and I did that through a brief exchange of the duo talking about their next course of action (and the Adventurer thanking Veronica for saving his life). But when my brilliant wife/first editor read it for the first time, she pointed out that the story ended just fine with the “You got the short straw of artifacts this time” comment. Realizing that she was right (as usual), I removed the dialogue for an even shorter word count! Plus, I think the way it draws attention back to the relics gives the story a better sense of completion.

And those are the main points I remember from writing the story. I hope you enjoyed this look behind the scenes of “Sword of the Stones”! Just in case it didn’t come across, I had a blast writing the story—and I hope you enjoy(ed) reading it! Have any other questions about how it came together? Or about my writing process in general? Feel free to ask in the comments 🙂

Sword of the Stones Published!

Exciting news! Havok has published my latest flash fiction piece “Sword of the Stones” in their latest issue! You can check it out here!

This month’s theme/prompt was “Extraordinary Exploits.” Think Indiana Jones, Warehouse 13, The Librarian, or other adventure stories with some supernatural elements thrown in.

I’m really excited to be part of this issue. This genre is right up my alley, so I was super pumped when I got the news that my story was accepted. I think you’ll like it if you’re a fellow fan of action/adventure stories with a dash of magic and/or sci-fi—plus, you’ll get nine other stories also in the same genre (all of which are a blast, but I must give a special shout out to the cleverness of “First Contact”). If you do check it out, I’d love to hear what you think!

Once more for SEO: Read “Sword of the Stones” today!

Hard copy & digital: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1441511

Amazon Kindle: http://a.co/6DuPj1D

Goals for 2018

As we’re heading into a new year, I’ve started thinking about what I’d like to accomplish in terms of writing in 2018. I’ve never big been on resolutions, but I think these are good goals to pursue to help strengthen my writing. They’re loosely arranged in order of priority, but not necessarily in the order that I’ll tackle them.

  • Set aside a consistent weekly time to write. This is the basis for all the other goals. Right now, I don’t have a time of the week dedicated to (personal, creative) writing. Life gets — and will always be — busy, but if I want to take my writing more seriously, I feel like I need to give it the time and space it deserves.
  • Submit a flash fiction piece for every Splickety prompt. Already ⅙ of the way done! I didn’t quite achieve this over the past year, but it definitely got me writing on a much more regular basis. You can see the full list (getting a sneak peek at some potential stories!) here.
  • Publish a blog post every week. Depending on how things go, this could be the toughest goal. It won’t be enough to just write something every week — I’ll need to come up with some form of content that’ll work as a blog post. On my secret blog I would just do weekly status updates, but for this one, I want to write more posts of actual substance.
  • Submit one short story to another publication. Flash fiction is great, but this year I want to expand into slightly longer stories. I’ve done a little research into short fiction markets, but not nearly enough to say exactly which one I’m most interested in. I’m also not sure whether the better course of action is to pick a publication and write a story targeted to them or to write a story based on a preexisting idea, and then shop it around.
  • Complete a narrative-driven game. This one may be a stretch, but I really want to try my hand at writing a game! There’s actually a decent number of systems out there that make word-driven game writing quite accessible. The one I’m mostly to attempt is Twine (essentially a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure creator), but there’s also StoryNexus, InkleWriter, ChoiceScript, and probably plenty of others that I haven’t heard of yet.

There you go — my goals for 2018. One thing that I’ve intentionally chosen with these is to not pick a goal that’s beyond my control, such as being published in a publication. After all, why create a goal that ultimately depends on other people? (The thought of setting a goal to grow my following/brand crossed my mind — and I’m sure there are steps I can take to do that — but it still feels beyond something that I can do on my own power.)

It feels really good to have these written down, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they drive the theme of future blog posts. But for now, they’re just here as a reminder to help me focus on a select few things and keep writing!

The Imp and the Elf

As you know from last week’s post, I was published in the most recent issue of Havok! If you haven’t read it yet, check it out before reading the rest of this post.

Moving on. As I mentioned last week, the prompt for this issue was “Holiday cauldron.” But I didn’t mention that “Lunar Eclipse” was actually the second story I wrote for this prompt. Originally, I wrote a different flash fiction piece about an imp and an elf struggling with some issues in their workplaces. I finished this story, then re-read the prompt and realized that Havok wanted something with a darker tone than what I had written. Thus, “Lunar Eclipse” was conceived.

But I still have the imp/elf story, and one of my friends recently said he’d be interested in reading my original holiday mashup. And this blog seemed like just the place to share it. So click through to read “The Imp and the Elf” and let me know what you think!

Continue reading “The Imp and the Elf”

Lunar Eclipse

Today’s a big week! This month, Havok Magazine (Splickety’s genre fiction imprint) published my flash fiction piece “Lunar Eclipse”! Check it out now!

The prompt for this month’s theme was “Holiday cauldron” — basically mashing up several holidays (like A Nightmare Before Christmas or Rise of the Guardians), and throwing in a little Halloween spookiness.

Which holidays did I pick, you might ask? St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, and … Lunar New Year. I’m stoked with how it turned out and super honored that it was chosen for publication. Plus, when you purchase the issue, you’ll get ten other stories based on the same theme! (I particularly liked “Diary of a Colonist” and “The New World.”)

So what are you waiting for? Read “Lunar Eclipse” now!

Hard copy & digital: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1354309

Amazon kindle: http://a.co/iTOa3ne

Short Story Ruminations

Even though I’d like to write longer fiction somewhere down the road, these days most of my creative writing is flash fiction. And since not all of them will be published (see “The Bard’s Blessing” from last week), I’m wondering if there’s any value to recording them here for posterity.

If I do, there are a few ways to go. At <1,000 words, flash fiction lends itself very nicely to blog post content. And that means a potentially deeper well to draw from every week (instead of scraping the metaphorical barrel for topics). One disadvantage of this is them likely getting lost among other posts, though this could be addressed with the Flash Fiction tag.

On the other hand, this particular WordPress theme has a full-width page template. It offers a nice, uncluttered layout — ideal for reading stories. But if I go this route, there’d need to be some directory or other way to access them. And if I listed them all on the Stories page, it could start to fill up really quickly. Maybe a dedicated Flash Fiction page would be the way to go…

At any rate, I don’t need to make that decision for a few weeks yet. This site, like my creative writing career as a whole, is still in its early stages. There’s plenty of time to prototype, get feedback, and refine. What say you?

The Bard’s Blessing

As a college student, I took a few fiction writing courses as an ETS (English and Textual Studies) minor. A couple of those have been lost to the ravages of time and/or computer migrations. But some still remain … including “The Bard’s Blessing.”

I wrote “The Bard’s Blessing” at a time when I wrote most of my stories as gifts for people, who in turn had heavily influenced those stories. So when my fiction writing professor tasked my class with writing a flash fiction piece, it was only natural for mine to be based (extremely) loosely on the class.

This means that “The Bard’s Blessing” is the first story I wrote as a piece of flash fiction (rather than one I just thought of as an assignment). I don’t think I’ll ever submit it anywhere, but I still think it should be made available for historicity’s sake if nothing else. It’s extremely short and kinda funny, so you should go read it now!

The Journal of Wonders

Let me start off this post about a short story . . . with a short story. A few months ago, I submitted a flash fiction* piece to Splickety’s “Medieval Mayhem” issue that I was really proud of. The prompt was to write a story set in medieval times that incorporated real historical figures or public domain characters from that period (King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.). I brainstormed ideas and eventually came up with an angle that I thought might set it apart from other submissions. So I wrote it, sent it off, and waited.

They responded a few weeks later. They didn’t accept it for publication, but they did provide super encouraging feedback. So I moved on to the next prompt.

A few months after that, I received an email practically out of the blue from Splickety asking if they could feature the story on their blog! Of course I said yes. So I incorporated their feedback and sent it off once again. A few weeks later . . . they posted it! And thus “The Journal of Wonders” became my first published story. As for how it incorporates the medieval theme, you’ll have to read it to find out. To whet your appetite, here’s the first line:

I do not, as a rule, take kindly to shoppers who only look, never buy. But in this case, I studied this customer as much as he studied my wares. Fair skin is no common sight in Hormuz, and I wanted an opening to engage him.

Intrigued? Keep reading on Splickety’s Lightning blog! Enjoy!

*Flash fiction: Very short stories, in this case <700 words