writing

Cloak of Many Colors

/ D.A. Scott / Leave a comment

Below is the prompt challenge I posted to the writer’s discord I am part of. We were to pick a Dolly Parton song and, in 1500 words or less, write a piece of fiction around it. I chose Coat of Many Colors for mine and wrote this fantasy piece around it. I hope you enjoy!

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Wind roared and snow whipped around Dolly as she headed up the high mountain pass. She pulled her patchwork cloak of many colors around her tightly and pulled the hood up over her flowing golden curls. The bitter cold bit at her face and made her eyes water but she took one struggling step after another and made her way down the path. The Pirate King was on the other side of the pass and with him was a new life that waited for her.

The cloak was a patchwork, with all the colors that make up a person’s life, each in a shape as unique as the shade it brought. To the casual observer, it had a quality as poor as the hands that had fashioned it together, but Dolly knew she could want no greater protection on this journey. Her mother had placed enchantments on it, little magics worked into each stitch that added up to wards more powerful than even the greatest of court wizards could conjure. Upon completion her mother sealed the ritual with a kiss that guaranteed no cold or rain could touch her, no blade could pierce her skin, and no passage of time would fade her light.

Dolly knew when she started this journey would be perilous. A thousand dangers lay on this mountain. Wolves would stalk her, avalanches could try to crush her, the ground itself could fall out from beneath her feet and swallow her and at the end of it all she would need to face the guardian of the mountain. Though she was the only one on the path to the Pirate King’s port she wasn’t alone. She carried her mother’s love, the kindness of everyone she had ever known, and faith in her heart. The determination deepened in her bright blue eyes.

She gripped her guitar tightly. It was the only weapon she possessed. With her voice, it was all she had ever needed. Violence was never her way, only song and kindness. It is what she could offer to the king, and the only one she would use to face the dangers of this mountain. She prayed it would get her through.

A deep chorus of howls joined together in the air sending a chill through her body. She saw nearly a dozen black dots rushing towards her through the snow. As they drew closer she could hear their heavy panting mixed with yips and growls as they circled her. She would not run, that would only cause them to chase. She flared out her cloak and readied her guitar. They lunged out, hoping to goad her, hoping to stop her response. Her cloak flowed between each bite and nip, bringing their mouths closed on naught but air each time.

Her fingers worked over the strings and she felt the smooth wood slide against her palm as she moved her hands expertly from note to note. Her golden voice rang out through the air and the wolves stumbled back. She didn’t sing a song of heroes or hunters slaying them, or of more terrible beasts coming to tear them asunder. Those were not her songs. She sang of the warmth of their dens, the softness of their companions’ fur and the playful nips of their pups who waited for them. She sang of the spring that was promised and the warmth that would come. One by one each wolf halted its attack and sat transfixed on Dolly’s beautiful melodic voice. When her song ended the largest of the wolves stood up and bowed its head between its black paws, then walked off into the storm.

Dolly curled her toes in her white boots. The frigid air worked to slow her but she pressed forward up the mountain. She was nearly to the top now and she prepared herself to face the guardian. The creature was said to inspire the deepest fear at the very sight of it. It was said the guardian’s voice could stop a man’s heart with even the smallest of utterance. People said a lot of things. She would face the guardian with a heart full of love and a voice warmer than a hearthfire.

She felt a dull roar that started at her feet and worked its way to her chest. Her heart jumped. Was it the guardian? It couldn’t be, not yet. She wasn’t at the mountain’s peak to meet it. Soon the path itself began to quake and small stones and pebbles along the mountain road shook as the roar deepened. Dolly’s eyes grew wide as a wall of ice and snow rushed towards her and she threw her cloak of many colors around her.

Snow, ice, trees, boulders and dislodged earth whipped past her, the frozen onslaught threatening to crush her beneath its mighty force. Her cloak lit up; the warmth and love it had been infused with flowed through her and radiated out into the deluge and pushed the destructive force around her harmlessly. A lifetime of tender kindness, worked into the fabric and bolstered by her own heart, shielded her as rage and destruction rained down from all sides. Then the tempest quieted and Dolly peeked up from her cloak and saw the pristine field of snow that now lay in front of her path. She moved forward towards the mountain’s summit.

Soon Dolly reached the summit of the mountain on the road to the Pirate King. The storm had stopped and  she could now see far off into the distance. The rolling emerald hills of her homeland filled her sight and she sat for a moment and began to pluck a simple melody that filled the air and thawed the ground around her.

“Who crosses my mountain?” a deep voice rumbled behind her, “Who disturbs my peace? Who would dare to look upon me?”

Dolly spun and faced the beast. It was as tall as a boulder with pocked marked grey skin and gnashing yellowed teeth. Its large clawed hands could likely snap trees in two, hurl boulders a leagues and crush a person as easily as a fallen leaf. It stared down at her maliciously.

“I do,” she answered confidently, “I am Dolly of the Southern Hills and I wish to bard for the Pirate King.”

“I know of no great warriors from the Southern Hills, no great wizards or powerful kings who could stop me.” the beast rumbled.

“I am none of those things,” she said proudly.

“I see no sword, bow, or axe to strike me with,” the guardian laughed. 

“I have only my guitar and my cloak,” she replied in defiance.

“If that is all you have brought,” it bellowed, “then I invite you to strike the first blow before I destroy you, foolish one.”

Dolly held her guitar tight to her chest and her hands tightened around the smooth, aged ash neck, and began to play. She did not cut down the guardian with words, or sing to diminish it. Those were not her songs. She sang of the beauty of the guardian’s home, the low rumbling warm tones of its voice, the safety felt by those under the guardian’s care, and the undeniable beauty it saw in its face and the kindness she saw in its eyes.

As she sang bright light filled the guardian and it began to shift and change and glow with an inner light none, even the beast could know existed. When her song ended, the terrible monster no longer sat in front of her, but a young boy, with rumpled brown hair and dirtstained cheeks. He reached up and touched his face; tears rolled down his cheeks.

“It—It has been so long since I have seen this face,” he remarked in wonder, “Since anyone has seen this face.”

“Well shoot hun, I could always see you,” Dolly replied, “and you were always beautiful.”

“I don’t know if I can let you pass,” the child lamented, “That form was all that protected me from the cold of the mountain and the cruelty of the wolves. What will I do when you leave?”

Dolly kneeled down and unclasped her cloak of many colors. She held it to her face and took in the rich smell of the old scraps of cloth that comprised it, then she kissed it gently, imparting all the love and warmth that had seen her through this journey. She draped the cloak around the boy’s shoulders and kissed him gently on his forehead.

The boy looked up at her in wonder. “I can’t accept this, what will protect you on your journey?”

“My journey is almost done,” Dolly replied, “and it was never mine to keep anyway, only hold until someone needed it more. It’s under your care now.”

Dolly picked up her guitar and started down the mountain to the port where she knew the Pirate King waited for her.

Adventures in Seattle!

/ D.A. Scott / 1 Comment

We took a little trip out to Seattle this weekend to attend the second ZOECon.  ZOECon is, as the name would imply, a convention put on by the production company Zombie Orpheus Entertainment.  We’ve been out to Seattle to see these wonderful people 3 times now and they never cease to amaze me with how available and friendly they can be, even though their well-deserved success keeps them rather busy.  If you haven’t seen their work (especially if you are a geek like me) I would strongly encourage you to check out their various movies and web series here as well as their YouTube channel. Their original content is refreshing and you can tell that the creators love the content which their stories are base around. ZOE’s productions are geared by a love of geek culture, unlike shows such as The Big Bang Theory, which only condescends to geeks in a way the producers think is flattering.  To my mind TBBT has the same approach as the class clown at school who thinks you didn’t mind all the public mockery because deep down you love the attention.

The convention itself doesn’t feel the same as others, that’s of course, not comparing it to something like ComicCon or PAX, this is a relatively new convention and these things take time to grow.  No, I am saying that compared even to similarly sized conventions this one has an entirely different feel to it.  Imagine having the stars everyone came to see walking into a crowd to hang out with their fans, going out for drinks, or playing at the same game table with them.  Hell, one of the stars of The Gamers: Hands Of Fate, Conner Marx, was running an R9E table (Romance of the Nine Empires, a card game that was created for Gamers 3).  Then after that, imagine the attendee’s seeking out each other’s signatures as much as they do the special guests, because they’ve all developed great friendships and a sense of community through a shared fandom.  That’s what it’s like at ZOECon, and to me that also perfectly embodies what it is to be a nerd.

Every time I visit I get the strong urge to “just move my ass to Seattle already!” Between, being the home of PAX and ZOE, I see it as something of a geek mecca, as well it has a growing film industry as well it is close to Vancouver which is the Hollywood of Canada or as I like to put it, “Hollywood for people who don’t want to live in California.”  I have a lot of close friends here in South Dakota, as well as a great job that I find interesting, but I do feel the allure of the creative opportunities that would be available to me in a larger city.  It wouldn’t be anytime too soon but I could easily see myself answering that call.  Additionally Seattle is nearby some of the most beautiful mountainous areas I have ever seen and I could just as easily be a crazy mountain man there, while at the same time affording my wife the opportunity to be the city girl she wants to be at heart.

As far as upcoming projects, my “experimental” horror story is almost complete and I will post that here as well as when I post it on Reddit.  I will however, only be taking story feedback on Reddit to keep all my plot bunnies in one place, so you would need to post to the comments there if you would like to participate in steering the protagonist’s actions.  I am also still actively working on “Dog Fights” and also have to have that posted here soon.  It is entirely possible however, that we will be into December when that happens, what with the upcoming holiday and all.  The fantasy story I have been working on is also coming along, albeit not as quickly as the other two as that story is more involved and I keep getting excited about other little projects.  This is a habit I am trying to work on but I find that it helps keep me from getting too bored with a concept, though it has led to many an abandoned project in the past.  I’m confident that won’t happen to My fantasy story however as that is a persistent little bug that has been digging further into my brain for almost 14 years.

I’ll keep you all posted as I move forward on my projects and will share a few with you as I can.  Thank you all for reading, and take care until next time!

~DA

Something Is Always Broken

/ D.A. Scott / 4 Comments

It has been a while since I have written something down on this blog.  It is certainly more derelict than I would have otherwise liked it to be, but I do suppose that is one purpose of goals, to set something to strive for.  I do need to get back to this however and I am fortunate to have people with similar passions around to keep me honest.  One of whom is an author himself and is someone that I admire a great deal and consider a good friend.  We meet regularly to discuss what we have going on in terms of writing or other creative projects and he has already been a lot of places I would love to be in terms of writing professionally so I value his input. So rest assured if I do go too long without writing on this blog or without working any number of projects I have going on, I will hear about it.

I have been struggling with the burden of home ownership as of late and that only seems to exacerbate the issue.  With everything going on in my life, when something  breaks I usually only get around to fixing it in time fore something else to go.  There is certainly something of a case to be made for renting rather than owning.  When I lived in an apartment, theses things had simply never occurred to me.  Every broken dishwasher, hole in the drywall, or leaky pipe was simply a call to the property manager and the issue would usually be fixed within a week.  Most people would tell me that home ownership is an investment.  While it certainly doesn’t always feel that way there certainly is a noticeable amount of pride that does come with it.  I think the same thing very much applies to my writing.  Whatever I do personally, no matter how much more work was involved in it’s creation, always leaves me with a greater sense of pride, and I get more eager to write that than any assignment or set of technical instructions I’ve been set to work on, and much in the same way, I never seem to run out of things to fix.  As soon as I get the spelling and grammar squared away, I’ll find a problem with the structure of the paragraphs, while doing that I’ll find something in the story that I hate and need to change.  After that is done I will need to go back an redo spelling and grammar, and so on.  It is a nasty cycle that used to stall projects entirely for me but I have gotten much better about finishing a story and being able to stop myself from “fixing” it to death.

NaNoWriMo is once again upon us.  I have been following this event for only two years now and have yet to work on something specifically for that.  This year isn’t different in that I wont be working on any specifically for NaNoWriMo but I will be pushing myself to get more work done on some writing projects I have had sitting out there.  The first thing on my docket is to work on my short story “Dog Fights”.  I submitted this to Write Club Fight Club (which you can check out here) where I went up against another author here on word press Tracy Cembor, while it was a close vote Tracy wrote an excellent story and beat me fair and square.  She is a great author and I would encourage anyone to click on that link I just posted.  Additionally I was excited and pleasantly surprised to find the same mythological figure make in appearance in both our stories, albeit in entirely different contexts.  You can find our original stories up on the Write Club Fight Club page, and I will also be posting my story here.  Though if you want to see it in it’s original form you will need to visit the Fight Club Page, as I will be editing the story I post here to better reflect what I wanted it to be before I ran out of time writing it.

I am working on another Horror Short story that I will be posting here in parts.  This is a little experiment that I will be conducting and am excited to see how it turns out.  Basically, I will be posting the story to a forum where the main rule is that you need to suspend disbelief and respond to the writers as if the story actually took place.  I am almost done with the first part, but will base the direction I take, at least in part, as if the protagonist is reacting to the comments and suggestions of the commentators.  I have an ending in mind but I am definitely excited to see where this goes.  I have also started work again on my pet fantasy project I have had rolling around in my head for years now.  It’s a story I have started telling several times in different mediums, but have never really completely finished.  I will keep you all updated as I make headway on that as well.

Please check out the blogs I have linked above and as always thank you for reading!

Until the next post,

~DA

Storytelling and a Case for Being a Bit Nerdy

/ D.A. Scott / 4 Comments

As long as I can remember I have always been enamored with storytelling.  I can still remember the first “book” I ever wrote.  It was nothing more than a collection of pages I had stapled together, detailing the adventures of Alf the detective (yes, like the T.V. alien) in a story that could only have been pieced together with 1st grade logic (equal parts magic lasers and I’m pretty sure Santa was thrown in there somewhere).  It was only ten or so pages, extra wide ruled, but I was still immensely proud when I finished it.  I think it was that sense of pride that I felt, paired with a deep sense of connection I often felt by participating in something truly universal, that pushed my love of stories into a full blown addiction.  It permeated everything I came to love. I would take writing, speech and debate classes wherever I could fit in the extra electives, I grew to have a healthy love of theater, and the cinema, and I could not stop consuming books. I blame this on my persistently terrible sleep habits; even as early as 4th grade I would often find myself up until the early hours of the morning, nose deep in whatever adventure I could dig out of the many bookshelves my parents kept in the basement.  It was this love of stories that lead me to one of my favorite and yet most misunderstood hobbies, gaming.

For those wondering what various casino and pool-hall games has to do with a love of storytelling, there is something I would like to get out in the open before you continue reading anything else I write, ever.  I am a huge nerd.  I mean colossal.  When I talk about gaming I don’t mean it in the classic sense as in gambling, nor do I mean it in the more mainstream sense as with video games (though I do love me some video games).  No I mean the most nefarious of nerdy hobbies, table-top role playing games.  This is one of my favorite things in the world and it is something that, even as accepted as geek culture has become, will likely never be cool and has earned me my fair share of raised eyebrows and ridicule from muggles (that’s non-magic folk).  If you who don’t already know what this is, imagine a group of you and your friends all gathered together to play any number of varying board games, now take away the board, add math, and write in the characters yourself.  Are you chomping at the bit yet?  No?  Complex algorithms and statistics governing what is essentially an adult game of make-believe, doesn’t get your blood pumping?  Well it should, especially if, like myself, you are an aspiring writer.  When it boils down to it RPGs are nothing more than interactive story telling.  Forget the dragons, the math, the hit points, and the hours of character creation.  I’ve played games where no one so much as lifted a pencil or threw a single die, and these were some of my favorite sessions. Because it was all about the story, and I was helping to write it.

I would recommend tabletop RPGs to any author who would like to hone their story telling skills.  “Any authors?”  You almost certainly asked in a way that was not at all forced by my narrative. Yes, any authors.  There are certain things in terms of story and character development that you won’t find in another environment.  From the perspective of the storyteller (often referred to as the game master) It gets you into the habit of setting up a flexible framework for a story, while at the same time having to adapt quickly to changing circumstances that are caused by the player characters running around in your world.  This can lend some new perspective in developing story lines, consider options you may not have otherwise, and help you to keep your plots more fluid and unpredictable.  It can also teach a valuable lesson about being too rigid, and what can happen when you force a player, or reader, along too narrow a path.  From the perspective of a player character, you have an opportunity to really test out a character concept by placing them in varying situations with causes and consequences that might  have never come up or been explored had the character stayed in a vacuum.  Additionally, you have the opportunity to see how a character interacts with others, and vice versa, with the only character influenced by your own personality being the one you created. I have found this to be invaluable when trying to create more realistic supporting characters from another point of view, rather than just having a bunch of facets of my own personality roaming about and interacting with an Idealized and stereotyped version of a protagonist.

“But D.A.” you have almost certainly interjected at this point, “I’m not a fantasy writer.  Perhaps these situations and plot devices won’t affect my characters.  Perhaps I wouldn’t find the stories interesting or engaging, or perhaps the existence of magic would take me too far out of the story because I bludgeoned my inner child to death with the rock of skepticism long ago.”  To that I would say “Damn, that was some dark imagery you laid out.  Is there something you would like to talk about?” after which I would also say fair point.  Certainly the most common image when talking about role playing games is a bunch of nerds all dressed up as knights and wizards gathered around a table playing Dungeons and Dragons.  I’m not going to say that isn’t the case. Partly because every time I try to explain that “We don’t actually dress up,” my wife will come out of the wood work wearing her wizard costume, and partly because I refuse to keep being ashamed of my totally bitchin’ chain mail shirt I have hanging in the closet.  Mostly though, it’s because D&D has been and remains one of the most popular role playing games out there. However, like any other book, RPGs don’t exist in only one genre.  Sci-fi more your speed? Try out a character in any popular universe, from Star Trek to Doctor Who.  Prefer a little cyber punk or steam punk dystopia with your futuristic or alt history setting?  Try some Deadlands or Shadowrun. Prefer your stories dark and gritty, perhaps with malevolent forces, politics, and varying factions vying for power?  World of Darkness might be a nice fit for you.  If you don’t know where you want to take a game, or would like to try different settings in the same system (for reasons of cost and sanity) GURPS is the Swiss Army Knife of role playing systems.  “But, what if I prefer to write romance novels?” you ask.  Well I know for a fact that you already know how to make anything dirty, and that’s why I love you.

Thanks for reading,

-D.A. Scott

How the Hell Are You Getting That Down?

/ D.A. Scott / 6 Comments

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog!  There are many questions you may have in regards to this blog.   Who are you?  What is this blog about?  Why should I care? Why are you leading my questions, and (I assume) how did you get to be so devilishly good looking?  Those are all excellent questions which I would be glad to answer, you cheeky and perceptive bastard.  I am an aspiring writer, adding my drop to this massive creative ocean that is the internet. This blog exists simply to get me writing habitually and to share my writing and various ramblings with a wider audience than just my cats (who don’t find my antics particularly amusing), my wife (should I be able to corner her unexpectedly) or my child who’s last critique consisted mainly of chattering followed by trying to eat the rails on his crib (I think it was a positive review over all). It is my hope through comments and criticisms, that I will be able to develop as a writer and that I will be, at the very least, entertaining.  It is my goal to post something, anything, here at least once a week with the hope that the content will improve with each post.  I invite you all to stay and watch as I attempt to grow from that writer that I am into the writer I want to be.

 

Thank you all for coming by,

 

D.A. Scott