Ah, my tendency to give things titles with the world "Seventh" in them. (Seventh Hour, Seventh Sword...)
One of our guest speakers at WFC had won some awards at some film festival for her short move, Seven Hours to Burn; she was a half European, half Indian woman coming to terms with her heritage after watching her grandfather's funeral pyre. The title comes from the fact that it takes seven hours for the average human body to burn completely to ash.
I don't have any shorts for 7H on this blog; there are a few on the NaNoblog, maybe...this was my story for NaNoWriMo 2002, after I attempted to use Song of Shadows instead and failed miserably. My other weakness, after inflicting all sorts of duality concepts on my character designs, is reincarnation stories. This one's a doozy.
Thousands of years ago, the world is run by super-powerful alien beings. Humans are slaves; their souls are kept on a string in the hands of their slavers. Innana is the head of the house of Uruk, and she's fallen in love with one of her slaves. He's a rebellious one, though, and she eventually curses him with the task of freeing humanity- from themselves.
Shennanigans ensue, and I realize now that Marcus and Asphodel bear a striking resemblance to Tiger and Delilah from Jennifer Roberson's Sword Dancer series. He's kind of clueless but ultimately a nice guy (which, I guess, Tiger isn't), and she's cold, sarcastic, and very angry at the world.
I know it'll take quite a bit of digging to find my Nanoblog at this point, but that's the only place you'll find any in depth information on the story. I wrote the first ten thousand words of it in one sitting; the next eighteen thousand were sheer agony to write, and the story doesn't really have an end. It can't, unless I blow up the planet, and I don't really want to do that, as tempting as it may seem.
I wrote it before going to the Shapatu of Ishtar last summer, unfortunately, so some of my Babylonian myths got crossed; Marcus' original name really should have been Tamuz...though you can imagine my delight when I found that the goddess Innana actually did have a human lover, and their love caused all sorts of trouble for the both of him- most notably, both of their deaths. >_<
I do love me my Sumerian mythos, though. Mmm, giant fish.
06/05 (Marcus, lifetimes later)
12/05 (an ending, perhaps)
12/05 (he doesn't deserve this)
Song of Shadows
The other crazy reincarnation story! Yu-Gi-Oh! with vampires, this one is. 500 years ago, the city of White Hawk was a swamp with a boarding school in it. Four of the students manage to get tangled up in a conspiracy of the undead and become vessels for four ancient spirits who exist solely to destroy undead. (Okay, only two of them do that; the other two are just the ghosts of previous students.)
After graduation, though, the kids all went their own separate ways; Aleksandyr Vassa inherited his father's land and title, and he married Giselle Byelesaid; problem was, Sable Arcturus was in love with him, but she wasn't half as pretty as Giselle, and anyway, Aleks didn't really have a choice in the matter. Gavin Creliss became very rich, but he was also in love with Aleks. The spirits that posessed them went back to sleep under the swamp, Sable was hired to kill Aleks, but then dies herself in the process (and takes out Giselle (her best friend at school) too), and Gavin, always an outcast but now completely alone, shoots himself in the head.
Cut back to the present. People keep dying, and they seem to all have these strange bite marks on their neck...those that haven't been drowned without the aid of water, that is. Von Paralda is a successful, if emotionally dysfunctional, lawyer; Ari'i Vahine was named after a Gougain painting and is generally accepted as being the most beautiful woman in the world- she's also Von's assistant. Cata Falk is a college student with an eating disorder and self esteem issues, and Zyn Margols doesn't know who the hell he is- but that's not his fault.
The good news? There's no hard feelings towards Sable for killing them all. The bad news is that not only are most of them convinced they've gone off the deep end, but one of the original spirits has gone rogue and there are still vampires running around all over the place. And even after they get things sort of under control with the rogue spirit, they all just get even more dysfunctional. All of them but Ari'i, of course; being perfect means you don't have to deal with messy things like nervous breakdowns, unless they're someone else's.
Character flow charts!
Aleks--->Zyn (only not really)/Moero (Shadow Master)
Gavin--->Von/Umbra (supplemental spirit)
Giselle--->Ari'i/Imbrium (supplemental spirit gone rogue)
Sable--->Cata/Nocturne (Shadow Master)
Each of the spirits has a background and a personality, but the Shadow Masters keep mostly to themselves unless called upon to help. The supplementals are more vocal and can manifest themselves outside of their hosts' bodies, but they're weaker. Von hates Umbra, and Imbrium resents Ari'i. It's fun. (Cata was originally Umbra's host because Nocturne needed to use Umbra as a conduit to Cata's consciousness. Zyn became Imbrium's host for the same reason, but Imbrium just took over his weak little mind instead.)
These all happen in the aftermath of the main plotline with Imbrium going rogue and all of them discovering who they are, and they mostly involve Von and Ari'i because I enjoy their dysfunctional relationship.
08/02 (cata umbra dr pepper)
02/03 (zyn explode)
03/03 (von kiss)
04/03 (grilled cheese aftermath)
05/03 (poison)
01/04 (von umbra alone)
03/04 (ari'i mothers)
05/05 (the four, rooftops)
Stories from the Sunny Hill Cafe
Vaguely incestuous lesbians! ...only not. Sunny Hill doesn't have a plot; I think its supposed to be a series of short stories and vignettes that take place at the Cafe. It's what I'll write when I'm actually a writer, you see. Sunny Hill is in the middle of nowhere, and people tend to not find it unless their lost- and the people who run the place are just as lost as the customers.
They were married to three brothers (their names will all change, but for the time being they are Alethea, Alma, and Athena), but the brothers all died in a car crash and now they're stuck with each other. They have no other family, and no other place to go...
03/02 (Athena)
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