Samples
Below are a few examples of my writing to give you an idea of the sort of responses I will give.
#1
His throat’s parched, lips dry and cracking for want of gasoline. Down the hatch the Diesel goes. When the bottle clicks against the table’s metal finish, there’s still some left.
The counter offered is no good; no one likes what he has to say. Dread’s language is one composed of abrasive phonemes that makes words into sandpaper. A sentence or two and he flushes plump cheeks to a madder red.
His hooded eyes slim to narrow slits as he settles deep into his seat.
“Your seeing me is my choosing,” he says to the thorn’s reflection. Not once has he lifted his eyes from the mirror. “You think you’ll be seeing me again?”
He runs his tongue over the back of his teeth, feels a gritty film. There’s a terminal horizon over which only blood serves to quench need. He’s marching to its edge-- he can sense its proximity (it warns him to go back) and delights in knowing, but there’s only a slight bow to his lips to suggest his amusement in their game.
It isn’t a fair one and he knows it. They’re playing on his turf and he holds the beauty that the beholder covets -- words, he reckons, as hired muscle is aplenty and Dread has no special holdings to steal. If the thorn had clout to throw, he would’ve already. He’s just a man playing at being something big; the lot of those get tossed into the alley dumpsters by the time Naxos calls last lights. Scraping before he takes himself home would be nothing to him; he’ll clean out a pretender for giving him a headache.
“The drink,” he says, “or nothing.” There’s a sarcastic bite to his addendum, “Your choice.”
The counter offered is no good; no one likes what he has to say. Dread’s language is one composed of abrasive phonemes that makes words into sandpaper. A sentence or two and he flushes plump cheeks to a madder red.
His hooded eyes slim to narrow slits as he settles deep into his seat.
“Your seeing me is my choosing,” he says to the thorn’s reflection. Not once has he lifted his eyes from the mirror. “You think you’ll be seeing me again?”
He runs his tongue over the back of his teeth, feels a gritty film. There’s a terminal horizon over which only blood serves to quench need. He’s marching to its edge-- he can sense its proximity (it warns him to go back) and delights in knowing, but there’s only a slight bow to his lips to suggest his amusement in their game.
It isn’t a fair one and he knows it. They’re playing on his turf and he holds the beauty that the beholder covets -- words, he reckons, as hired muscle is aplenty and Dread has no special holdings to steal. If the thorn had clout to throw, he would’ve already. He’s just a man playing at being something big; the lot of those get tossed into the alley dumpsters by the time Naxos calls last lights. Scraping before he takes himself home would be nothing to him; he’ll clean out a pretender for giving him a headache.
“The drink,” he says, “or nothing.” There’s a sarcastic bite to his addendum, “Your choice.”
#2
The title of Lunar Knight was an honor Artemis had been proud to bear, but Vance saw nothing but sadness in the disjointed vignettes. He’d spent all his power to relieve his sisters’ pain and nothing came of it. The Princess only had him and what kind of company was he? He employed so many against the threat against his home and still outlived every faithful soldier beneath him. If his wrist was tied, it was to tragedy.
“I missed you too. Upstate, there wasn’t much to do but drink.” The whole of the Hudson Valley was within the city’s shadow. It could not conceive of a purpose of its own and he’d felt its wasted potential in those two long years until Westpoint. Vance wanted to ask about California. And the job. But he caught Dan looking at something and his gaze moved to match.
He gave a soft, “hah,” and said, “Yeah, well, when somebody tells you they're gonna fix you up, make you good as new, you don't ask too many questions." He shrugged. “I must’ve been so out of it. I never thought twice, I just signed the papers.”
One hand reached to rub at the back of his neck. He ran his fingers over the exposed skin that his hair stopped short of. Somehow, they felt cool while pressing into it.
“I never left,” he said. “I’m in the Reserves. Have been since…last year?” His arm fell back to his side. He sighed, preparing to recite his rather dry resume.
“I went to the Academy and straight out the gates, deployed to Afghanistan as an Army medic. I transferred to the Marines, saw some heavy action and got bumped up to Spec Ops. My unit got chewed up by a RPG, but I was lucky. I was mostly intact —” the smile he gave at this abrupt turn in his career edged towards amusement. Being the last man standing and with one limb less to show for it was about as much luck as he’d ever wrung out of life. “— and scored high enough compatibility for the new branch. So, they patched me up and sent me off to do more of the same.” Before Dan bothered to ask for specifics he added with a lopsided smile, “My assignments are classified.
“I was gonna take a year off and then do another tour — wouldn’tve cared where they sent me — but when I got back I had, uh…family trouble. Decided there were some things I had to take care of. So, now I’m workin’ on an ambulance out of Bellevue.”
“I missed you too. Upstate, there wasn’t much to do but drink.” The whole of the Hudson Valley was within the city’s shadow. It could not conceive of a purpose of its own and he’d felt its wasted potential in those two long years until Westpoint. Vance wanted to ask about California. And the job. But he caught Dan looking at something and his gaze moved to match.
He gave a soft, “hah,” and said, “Yeah, well, when somebody tells you they're gonna fix you up, make you good as new, you don't ask too many questions." He shrugged. “I must’ve been so out of it. I never thought twice, I just signed the papers.”
One hand reached to rub at the back of his neck. He ran his fingers over the exposed skin that his hair stopped short of. Somehow, they felt cool while pressing into it.
“I never left,” he said. “I’m in the Reserves. Have been since…last year?” His arm fell back to his side. He sighed, preparing to recite his rather dry resume.
“I went to the Academy and straight out the gates, deployed to Afghanistan as an Army medic. I transferred to the Marines, saw some heavy action and got bumped up to Spec Ops. My unit got chewed up by a RPG, but I was lucky. I was mostly intact —” the smile he gave at this abrupt turn in his career edged towards amusement. Being the last man standing and with one limb less to show for it was about as much luck as he’d ever wrung out of life. “— and scored high enough compatibility for the new branch. So, they patched me up and sent me off to do more of the same.” Before Dan bothered to ask for specifics he added with a lopsided smile, “My assignments are classified.
“I was gonna take a year off and then do another tour — wouldn’tve cared where they sent me — but when I got back I had, uh…family trouble. Decided there were some things I had to take care of. So, now I’m workin’ on an ambulance out of Bellevue.”
#3
Behind dusk trailed the heavy cloak of night, replete with the sort of pests he’d tired of in the week’s worth of travel. An eagerness to beat it before its descent was in his quick step and a dwindling tolerance for the chittering that crowded the narrow path was in the slits of his eyes. Over half-rotted plank bridges and through briny muck, he was unyielding; his tiredness didn’t show.
Peeking through a curtain of crushed leaves was Kerry’s little house, a cottage separate from the village it served. A wise woman, for all her uses, unnerved the folk as much as the appearance of two hunters. They’d assured him that Kerry liked the privacy offered in Wodica’s veil anyways, like he was supposed to care for the customs that isolated her to the woods. “She comes near every morning to sell her wares — elixirs, balms — nothing tricky, mind, but the kinda stuff to cure ills,” said concerned folk, this one dressed in white and blue — all radiant light a’shining around her with a voice that suffocated. It’d taken a while to get the shine out of his eyes, to see the blue of her plain dress and cap. He took her word as it was, though. The reported fiend prowling on the town’s borders likely found a victim and they, by luck or contrivance, would have easy pickings to identify it by.
It was the last in a string of killings too heinous to be a man’s. Hearsay gathered that their perpetrator growled and had horrible eyes — which whittled the list down by none. The village reported the beast prowling still, even after one of their own was found as scraps on their porch. Being so close to Howl, they’d implored its Lord to aid them.
An initiate’s rite of passage satisfied contracts drawn since the dawn of their order; to keep the local Lord’s support, fiendish dilemmas brought to his stoop were passed onto Dorwode to be completed as charitable acts, a show of their gratitude for the Lord’s immeasurable kindness — or, for two crate’s worth of munitions every year if he’d counted right.
It’d been some time since the Lord asked a favor of them and however happy Den had been to hear his name called as the answer to it, the one that followed squashed whatever joy he’d managed for himself. Truthfully, he couldn’t think of a name that wouldn’tve upset him, but still he’d argue that Medea contrived for his suffering in her last rasping breath.
Smooth stones worked into the dirt path, drawing plodding thunks from his boots. The cottage was an idyllic home, its white exterior painted pink in the setting sun and its gable roof a bright blue, chipped along its edges and gapped where shingles fell loose. Beneath its broken windows were tattered gardenias and in two-deep rows were trampled carrots, squash, tomatoes, and the like growing along the path. Twittering birds sat plump on the clearing’s perimeter as they commentated on Deniaud’s slow trespass onto the plot of land. The door to the cottage was ripped partially from its hinges, the wood shredded into thick splinters and strewn across the threshold.
Besides avian gossip, there was no sign of trouble. Still, he had his pistol out and his other hand hovered over his sword’s handle. Both weapons were scratched up and sun-scorched to ward off evil. He didn’t think it did anything but change the metal’s hue, but he’d yet to see the ritual’s purported effect for himself.
Every detail of what he saw was thoroughly interrogated, his cool, cutting eyes narrowing until he deemed appearances sufficient. He spared his partner a glance, already anticipating the bubble of cool-handed spite that rose up in his throat only to lose his edge to a moment of surprise, one in which his grip tightened, but the moment was fleeting. He snapped his gaze back to the cottage. “Seems we’re looking for a body now,” which was more a confirmation of what they’d come there for than a revelation.
Peeking through a curtain of crushed leaves was Kerry’s little house, a cottage separate from the village it served. A wise woman, for all her uses, unnerved the folk as much as the appearance of two hunters. They’d assured him that Kerry liked the privacy offered in Wodica’s veil anyways, like he was supposed to care for the customs that isolated her to the woods. “She comes near every morning to sell her wares — elixirs, balms — nothing tricky, mind, but the kinda stuff to cure ills,” said concerned folk, this one dressed in white and blue — all radiant light a’shining around her with a voice that suffocated. It’d taken a while to get the shine out of his eyes, to see the blue of her plain dress and cap. He took her word as it was, though. The reported fiend prowling on the town’s borders likely found a victim and they, by luck or contrivance, would have easy pickings to identify it by.
It was the last in a string of killings too heinous to be a man’s. Hearsay gathered that their perpetrator growled and had horrible eyes — which whittled the list down by none. The village reported the beast prowling still, even after one of their own was found as scraps on their porch. Being so close to Howl, they’d implored its Lord to aid them.
An initiate’s rite of passage satisfied contracts drawn since the dawn of their order; to keep the local Lord’s support, fiendish dilemmas brought to his stoop were passed onto Dorwode to be completed as charitable acts, a show of their gratitude for the Lord’s immeasurable kindness — or, for two crate’s worth of munitions every year if he’d counted right.
It’d been some time since the Lord asked a favor of them and however happy Den had been to hear his name called as the answer to it, the one that followed squashed whatever joy he’d managed for himself. Truthfully, he couldn’t think of a name that wouldn’tve upset him, but still he’d argue that Medea contrived for his suffering in her last rasping breath.
Smooth stones worked into the dirt path, drawing plodding thunks from his boots. The cottage was an idyllic home, its white exterior painted pink in the setting sun and its gable roof a bright blue, chipped along its edges and gapped where shingles fell loose. Beneath its broken windows were tattered gardenias and in two-deep rows were trampled carrots, squash, tomatoes, and the like growing along the path. Twittering birds sat plump on the clearing’s perimeter as they commentated on Deniaud’s slow trespass onto the plot of land. The door to the cottage was ripped partially from its hinges, the wood shredded into thick splinters and strewn across the threshold.
Besides avian gossip, there was no sign of trouble. Still, he had his pistol out and his other hand hovered over his sword’s handle. Both weapons were scratched up and sun-scorched to ward off evil. He didn’t think it did anything but change the metal’s hue, but he’d yet to see the ritual’s purported effect for himself.
Every detail of what he saw was thoroughly interrogated, his cool, cutting eyes narrowing until he deemed appearances sufficient. He spared his partner a glance, already anticipating the bubble of cool-handed spite that rose up in his throat only to lose his edge to a moment of surprise, one in which his grip tightened, but the moment was fleeting. He snapped his gaze back to the cottage. “Seems we’re looking for a body now,” which was more a confirmation of what they’d come there for than a revelation.