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Flash: Following Orders

Erin Penn

http://budireve.deviantart.com/art/Keris-Fire-Sword-312072387
Copyright unknown, but a button on the website was provided to facilitate the download.
I am providing the link above to give credit as best as I am able.

Strewn with blood and bone, the celestial battlefield had no dead bodies for only the immortal angels fought. Feathers and skin burned as fiery swords melted through exhausted defenses. The raqia below formed and turned for untold eons only noticed by the opposing armies as a down direction. A few angels had fallen towards the new planet when wings had been clipped, but mended long before hitting ground and the beings immediately returned to the ranging maelstrom.

In the conflict’s center stood proud Lucifer, an angel who questioned his purpose and demanded free will. His army formed a protective sphere around their assigned general. Michael, Uriah, Gabriel and Raphael were unable to drive their undying legions through the blockade to the heavenly traitor.

The swirl of battle broke combatants apart and reunited others. Beyond the immediate strife, Kamella protected a pathway. The Supreme Being had plucked her out of Michael’s soldiers. She was pleased to stand guard while the Supreme Being crafted a new plane of existence. Firstly, being chosen was an honor. Secondly, defending the way removed her from the possibility of crossing blades with Herne. For untold eternities they had delighted each other. Assigned to different archangels, no restriction was placed on their relationship. Now that blessing turned into a curse.

Only a few of Lucifer’s rebels escaped the four armies surrounding them. Kamella dispatched the depleted minions quickly. Skilled in war as few angels were before Lucifer’s ego selfishly consumed him, her great stature allowed her to stand easily against two or three angels by herself. The midnight winged creature wielded two fire swords and two shields, leaving two of her six hands free for grappling.

Outside the primary engagement, she watched and worried. Somehow Lucifer was slowly gaining and the outer defense sphere leaked. More and more opposition tried to investigate the road she defended. None passed over the threshold.

A spike attack broke combatants free from the center. Dozens of multi-hued beings were funneled to her post and the broad paved avenue beyond. Several had form-changed into ferocious visages. At their front was a golden haired angel who remained in the form he had been shaped to hold. His black eyes flashed in his perfect face. In his left hand was a blue-flamed sword. His right hand curled in a half-formed charm. Herne, the love of her existence and one of Lucifer’s best scout captains, closed on her position.

Not wanting to see what her clever male was about to release, Kamella completed the three-in-one spell she kept at ready for an organized mass attack. Two clones flew out to meet the new arrivals; black avenging angels plunging into the fray against the servants of the Angel of Light. Flame and steel clashed with renewed fury. Herne’s charm failed when one of his companions severed wing fell on him.

Without hesitation Kamella attacked Herne when he came to rest relative to her. His scouting group’s armor and battle skills wavered under her other selves’ fury. Blinking back tears, she effortlessly blocked his attack with one uplifted shield and drove her right sword into his hip. She whispered, “I’m sorry,” as he fell to his knees.

Her regret did not keep her from using her left side shield to throw Chase’s attack out of line. Grabbing Herne’s closest friend and second-in-command with her two free limbs, she lifted him with a grunt and threw him at an incoming monstrosity. Her own huge size made dodging difficult but the collusion displaced the flyer enough to miss her and sail past the nexus she guarded.

Herne tried to use the diversion to roll past her. She kicked his burning side with her booted foot.

“Please don’t make me do this.” She begged.

Grabbing her boot to topple her, Herne replied. “We must serve as we were created, my heart.”

Her red tipped wings caressed his face as they pushed him closer to her legs. She used his recentered mass to increase her personal balance. Her black and his white feathers mingled in a parody of embrace.

She needed to concentrate on eliminating his squad. With regret, she drove a sword through his leg to prevent him from sneaking past. His scream pierced her.

Turning her face to where her last duplicate fought, Kamella’s blue eyes widened as she watched the sphere surrounding Lucifer explode out with the force of a nova. Angels boiled towards her in the hundreds.

Bracing herself forward against the wind of beating wings, she fell at the sudden pressure change on her back. She burned her hand grabbing the sword she pinned Herne with to prevent him further injury. She used the fiery steel to pivot and landed hard on her side beside him, pulling the sword lose. Her large wings protected them both as the Supreme Being’s presence passed over them, returning to the celestial arena.

*ENOUGH! THOU WILT HOLD*

Even Lucifer’s minions froze at the command. For too long the Being they been created to worship had been absent. Everywhere swords lowered and the choir started offering adoration.

Herne’s limited two arms devoted themselves entirely to encircling her waist, hugging her closer during the moment’s peace. Without thinking Kamella’s chin rubbed the blond’s hair in affection.

Muffled by their wings, the coupled barely heard Lucifer resonant voice rallying against his Liege.

Kamella grasped the white angel’s face with two hands. Just before she captured her favorite lips, Herne whispered, “I will love you forever.” Covered by angel wings, the two kissed.

*A PLACE HAS BEEN PREPARED FOR YOUR RULE. MAY YOU LEARN HOW TO DO SO.  NOW GET THEE AND YOUR LEGIONS HENCE.*

Rolling onto her back before her greater weight crushed him, Kamella howled as Herne was torn from her arms with one final Word from the Supreme Being to Lucifer.

*BEGONE*

Grabbing with her half dozen hands, she tried to capture him before he was exiled from her plane of existence. Her enormous strength allowed her to succeed. Tapping the ability to change shape, she transformed her feet into claws to anchor herself to the firmament. Blue eyes met black in fear and desperation. Created as mirrors to each other, they had only tolerated the rebellion knowing when it was over they would be reunited. His legs were being tugged into the whirlwind siphoning Lucifer and his followers. Her arms bulged as she tried to save him.

“No!” she cried.

In the end, the Word of the Supreme Being determined the outcome. Even their immortal flesh could not deny the instruction. Herne twisted and turned as the whirlwind worked to free him from her grasp. Both wrists holding him back shattered as she tried to absorb the worst of the torque to save him pain. Bones burst through skin, covering her arms and hands with slippery blood. Before her other hands could grasp his forearms, Herne was snatched away.

Kamella collapsed in anguish as Herne’s face disappeared screaming down the path she had guarded for so long.

Others returned to their appropriate levels in heaven. Locking her agony away, Kamella picked up her swords with her quickly healing hands and returned to her post. The Supreme Being had not changed her orders.

None shall pass over the threshold without permission.

Facing towards Lucifer’s realm, Kamella’s long watch started. The black she searched for scouts foreshadowing the Fallen’s next attack only reminded her of eyes she would never see again.

(words 1,239 – originally published 4/3/2013 – published in new blog format 5/6/2018) 

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words May 27, 2008

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of freebieshutterb at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Dry Season

Tax season ended, recovery (mostly) completed. The feast of money and famine of time has ended; now I have time to edit and write, but no money. I have entered my dry season, financially. 

For the last four months I have been making mortgage, student loans, and all kinds of other payments, trying to get as far ahead on them as I can. Four months does not make a year’s worth of payments, even in the insanity of the tax industry. Hopefully editing will continue to grow and I can sell a couple things to anthologies. Even better would be finishing a book and getting a steady (if minor and only quarterly) income stream.

C.E. Murphy, an author who actually is making a living writing, gives a glimpse behind the curtain in the Magical Words post “Royalties“.

Biggest take away:

“By this time you’re thinking, “Yeah, but ALL THAT MONEY! ALL AT ONCE! I CAN GO NUTS!” and believe you me, that’s what a person starts to think when she gets a several-thousand-dollar-check deposited in the bank.

And then she thinks, “I have no freaking clue when I’m going to get paid again,” and all of a sudden that big lump of money doesn’t look tempting, it looks cruel.”

You can read the whole blog post here: http://www.magicalwords.net/really-i-mean-it/royalties/

THOUGHT EXERCISE: Imagine being a published writer and deciding to go full-time (quit the day job). What changes will you have to make in your budget? How would health insurance be covered? Mortgage, car, food. Travel required for writing like cons, plus family obligations like Christmas. Could you manage the windfall to be trickled out for six months of bills? What life changes would you need to make? How much do you love your day job? Comment below on what will be the hardest thing to adjust financial-spending-wise for you.

***

I am a very miserly person by nature. I buy used cars at the three-year mark when they have lost the big depreciation but have the most years left. I then keep them until around their tenth year, when the maintenance and reliability becomes an “expense”. Non-reliable means lost jobs, break-downs requiring towing, etc – huge expenses. My house is small – to save time cleaning, to save money heating and cooling, to have a mortgage less than renting. I know how to stretch funds over time and make advance payments. I keep an emergency fund.

Even with all these skills and life choices, the months outside of tax season always are stressful. When will the next editing check come in? Will the car inspection reveal a major expense? Will my health hold out until I am old enough to get medicare, since health insurance is not a viable financial option? Can I convince my sushi craving that ramen noodles count as Asian?

The hardest day-to-day is not being able to help friends as much as I want. The internal debates of the gas costs even for visiting cut deep. I’ve decided to walk this path, but I know the choice means I will never be “living large”. In the real-world at least, my head-space is nicely decorated.

Book Review: Thieftaker (Thieftaker Chronicles, #1)

Erin Penn

Book Cover from Amazon

Thieftaker by D.B. Jackson

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

Boston, 1765: In D.B. Jackson’s Thieftaker, revolution is brewing as the British Crown imposes increasingly onerous taxes on the colonies, and intrigue swirls around firebrands like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. But for Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker who makes his living by conjuring spells that help him solve crimes, politics is for others…until he is asked to recover a necklace worn by the murdered daughter of a prominent family.

Suddenly, he faces another conjurer of enormous power, someone unknown, who is part of a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of power in the turbulent colony. His adversary has already killed—and not for his own gain, but in the service of his powerful masters, people for whom others are mere pawns in a game of politics and power. Ethan is in way over his head, and he knows it. Already a man with a dark past, he can ill afford to fail, lest his livelihood be forfeit. But he can’t stop now, for his magic has marked him, so he must fight the odds, even though he seems hopelessly overmatched, his doom seeming certain at the spectral hands of one he cannot even see.

 

MY REVIEW

Harry Dresden meets Revolutionary War Boston

I have a new author to add to my faves – D.B. Jackson. The worldbuilding in Thieftaker is superb. Normally I avoid “alternate histories” – the tweaks never follow out to logical conclusions.

Example: The American Revolution inspired the French Revolution. Keep America loyal to British Rule so no American Revolution and jump forward 200 years … what happened in France and does the emperor still rule there and how does that affect France during WWII … do they accept occupation or fight? All of history feeds off itself; you can’t change just one thing.

But this book is not an alternate history, Thieftaker is an urban fantasy set in historical time. Ethan Kaille could be Harry Dresden, if the Chicago wizard lived in Boston just before the revolutionary war.

The characters are real, from the flawed hero to the merchants rivals on the warf. The arguments are urgent from the dreamers driving the country to the brink of revolution to the honest (and not-so-honest) people who just want to make a living and fear changes to the status quo. The scenes are authentic from the riots in the cobblestone street to the country manors of the Crown government. D.B. Jackson does an outstanding job blending his academic background as a historian with his occupation of fantasy author. A reader can immerse in fictional history.

Is the main character likeable? Not always, but I always rooted for him – even when he was being unlikeable. Can’t buy a good tea without paying England her tax, can’t have a good detective without him also being a Dick when interrogating suspects. And that is also part of the excellent worldbuilding.

If you like urban fantasy via detectives, pick up this book.

Flash: The Sleeper

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Panic. Can’t move. I try to control, to calm myself. This has happened before. Too many times before. Each time I wonder if this time my body isn’t going to wake up.

I have sleep paralysis. There’s a fancier term, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is my body is asleep when my mind wakes up. Unable to move, unable to open my eyes, unable to talk. First time it happened I was thirteen, Happy Birthday to me. Six hours, an eternity.

Second time I had stayed up late studying. Mom tried to wake me. Shook me, yelled at me to stop faking it. She was so scared. I could hear it in her voice. If I had been able to open my eyes, I would have seen the tears streaming down her face. Tears I got splashed with but didn’t feel. Got to ride in an ambulance. Late in the afternoon, my body woke up after I lived through a battery of tests. The MRI hum makes my teeth rattle every time I remember. Locked in my body, locked in that metal coffin.

Doctors explained it. A sleep disorder like sleep walking, only the opposite. Instead of the body walking around with a sleeping mind, I got a sleeping body and a waking mind.

I’ve only just dropped off. After two years, I know my mind never falls asleep again once it wakes up. Going to be a long night. Fighting the panic. Am I going to sleep forever, trapped?

I wish I could use breathing to control the panic, but my sleeping body is reacting to my nightmare. Adrenaline pushing the heart rate higher, breathing in short, but regular bursts. All I can do is imagine breathing slower, rolling the shoulders back to relax, opening my hands and stretching out the fingers.

Mom has put a baby monitor in my room, for all the good it does. It is not like I am going to cry out in my sleep. But it allows her to sleep so I put up with it. Upside, she allows me to hang with Nat in my room behind a closed door because she can listen in. If we are quiet too long, she shoots a question through the monitor. Kept me from reaching second base so far.

I try to go to sleep on time every night. Yep, I am a fifteen-year-old who obeys a nine pm bedtime religiously. Only way to make certain my body will wake in time for school. Even so about once a month, I “sleep” in and miss the first couple of classes.

I hear my breathing return to normal, my fists unfurl, the lub-dub regularly pushes against my oversized Adam’s apple. Dad’s is buried under his triple chin; he showed me photos when I visited this summer. He grew into it before he got fat, so I have some hope. Nat is threatening to leave hickies on it come turtleneck season; she loves kissing my neck and the deep voice that finally steadied the end of freshman year.

The grief I got last year. Bad enough being a freshman. Braces didn’t help. Orchestra geek too good for marching band. Too uncoordinated for sports, tripping over my feet hence the no marching band. Teacher’s pet in Spanish, English and Math, and transferring to the AP science track the second week should have sealed my fate as wedgie and swirly central. Only having Natalie around, going from pal to girlfriend kept me from being a total loser.

Nat, my savior, my heart, and my torment. We met when mom moved after the divorce. She push me into a mud puddle during recess my first day. I returned by punching her. None of the other boys had tried that, even in elementary school where she ruled the playground. We became best buds after my two days in-school suspension was served. The only black mark on my record.

I decide to visit her. Yeah, I know it will only be in my head, but right now that is all I got. For nearly eight lonely hours of pushing back panic, it is all I got.

I pretend I can feel my hands respond to pushing down on the bed and I sit up. I open my eyes and look around the darken room. Color blooms from my superhero posters, painted by memory. This year’s biology book is open to the genetics section for Friday’s test. My backpack leans against the desk filled with everything else, ready to grab and run tomorrow morning.

I’ve memorized my room so I can do this let’s-pretend game that I can wake and walk around even though I am actually locked in my sleeping body. I look in the mirror and annoyingly my reflection does not look back. For some reason I can’t put myself in it when I do these pretend walks. I look down to make sure I am decent. My favorite jeans and sneakers, but missing a shirt. I pretend grab the T-shirt I discarded before laying down and pull the illusion over my head. The shirt never moved from the back of the chair, but I am now dressed.

Walking through the door, I really wish I could figure out a way to feel like I opened it properly because walking through it is weird and feels like someone pushed soggy corn chips through my chest. I shake once I am through, then turn left and take the stairs two at a time. Mom is watching the news while folding clothes. I stop to watch when the weather comes up to see what will be happening for the weekend game.

I started watching the news with her this year. I figure I am hearing it upstairs since my room is directly over the television. Mom had started the laundry during dinner. Amazing how the mind fills in details. Karen, my younger sister, is studying at the dining room table for some middle school test. Douglas, our older brother, stayed with Dad since he was from Dad’s first marriage. Summer is nice because we can all get together again, though this year was a little tough since Doug had his first job flipping burgers. Be interesting to see how college is treating him. Maybe I will visit him next time.

And there will be a next time. Initially the episodes, as the docs like to call them, were about once a month, but they kept getting closer together. Now they are like every other night. After three nights in a row at Dad’s this summer, I decided to start the pretend walking for my own sanity. Books on tape only go so far.

I go through the front door. This time the soggy corn chips had some crunchy bits. Those hurt, like dry swallowing. Weird. I rest against the front porch pole. Turning around, I try to press through the wall beside the door and that is solid. I press on the door and my hand starts going through. WTF?

Mind games. Things your brain does to you. I’ve been thinking of getting a book or two on lucid dreaming.

I know doors can be gone through and walls can’t. Guess that is what is happening now. Never tried to leave the house before.

I remember in lucid dreaming sometime people can fly. Nat’s house is nearly a mile away. Wonder if I can fly there. I was going to try to pretend bike. I jump in the air like The Impressive, and fall flat on my face. Biking it is.

The nighttime ride went quick, faster than normal. I was able to pick up speed going down Hilltop, but didn’t loose it going up the other side of the ravine. Gravity may rule, but my brain seems willing to break some of the rules. Maybe I can learn how to fly after all.

I lean my pretend bike against the garage and it fades away. Frowning, I go around to the back door which is typically open to allow the night air in, saving on air conditioning. How am I going to get home? Popping through the screen door is easy even though I feel the corn chips on my shoulder where the latch is.

Nat’s parents are watching the late-night news, different channel from Mom. I watch a few seconds as Revenger dukes it out with a new supervillian before The Impressive comes to help. Then the typical public announcement reminding people with superpowers to register with the government. Whatever.

I head down the hall where music is throbbing. Nat will listen to anything that requires head-banging, whether the Black Sabbath’s Iron Man or Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. If she can crank it to 12 on the 10 scale, she is a happy metalhead. I’ve tried to introduce her to quieter music and discovered that even classic can be headbanging if you crank it enough. She loved the 1812 Overture.

Her door is closed, but only a few soggy corn chips push through me as I walk in. The music takes on physical impact on the other side. She is bopping around in a crop top and boy’s shorts and I slid to the ground.

Yay imagination! No bra, the crop top was one she wore during the summers when I am not around and should no longer be worn in public since the boob fairy, as she put it, visited her this year. Her legs sprouted out of the pink lacy underwear I had only seen in my mom’s catalogs and reached the ground after a very long trip. Her stomach, which I used to give raspberries to in fifth grade was perfect caramel from the bikini I had only got to see her wear once before going to my dad’s. She bounced over to the pile of paper on her bed; I recognized the English assignment. Working last minute again, my Nat. I had that assignment done two days ago.

She turns to go back to the pile on the floor, near the door, and shrieks.

(words 1688; first published 6/8/2015; republished new blog format 4/29/2018)

Other Cool Blogs: Literary Hub July 6, 2017

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Do better.

Reading book reviews about your babies is hard. Real hard. Not just because some of the bad reviews  are spiteful, but because some of them are right. They shine a light on an error which got through your work and ask you to “Do Better”.

The  first review I received for Honestly was entitled “missing an ending”. I hadn’t intended the book to be a happily ever after (HEA), just a happily for now. I got the couple to setting up their first date, showing the slow path they would follow because one had a child and the other romantic lead was still physically recovering from an injury. Everything following, I figured, would be boring and predictable. But the abrupt cut off didn’t tie things together for an emotional ending.

The reviewer correctly one-starred me.

Two additional chapters later, with a jump in time, I uploaded the emotional payoff to the couple getting together for future readers. I received no further one-star reviews. The plus side of self-published work is you can do tweaks like that.

Daniel Price similarly faced reviews for his book The Flight of Silvers. The few negative reviews had the vague ” I didn’t like” but focused on two of the point of view (POV) characters. Frustrated but not knowing how to fix whatever might be wrong, Mr. Price continued pounding out the second book of the series until one reader contacted him directly. Erin (not me) indicated her vague feelings and he asked her for details. She provided it in detail; boiling down the barely noticeable issues (at least overtly) of lack of agency and excessive trope replication without a twist on two of the female POVs. Publishing through a house, Penguin in this case, prevented a direct fix but he applied her words to his final edits on his work-in-progress and sent it to her to beta read. After a 2000-word commentary about her problems with Flight, her second letter to the book he had fixed had only four words. Interested in knowing what those words were?  Read “How a Reader’s Feminist Critique Changed My Sci-Fi Novel.”

Writers do read their reviews. Going with the ambiguous “It stunk.” doesn’t help much. You want better things to read, better reviews can help.

Writers, want better feedback, have someone read your reviews and let you know which one you need to see. Be sure to show them this post to let them know bad reviews are okay when useful. (Unless you got real thick skin, then you can try it direct. Mine is in development and that one-star review still stings.)