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(a deleted file from Adrian Corbin’s laptop)

So it’s true. After a day of walking around, a step here and there to look at different people, I know without a doubt. The four ivory dice that I—I suppose I have to say enchanted—have the power to sense any kind of emotion, not only fear.

In spite of where it all… came from…

Let’s start again.

Confirmed: the magic the four “Bones” can carry seems to “pulse” with the various emotions around me, or it does when I focus my thoughts on it. The power they hold is limited, but it can be restored again with… well, the same method as before.

Just knowing that method, I can never look at ivory the same way again. Or unsee where I learned it from, or the rest of it.

Or look at people the same way.

Faces aren’t faces anymore, when I have this magic. They’re like doors, the kind on a holiday that someone hangs up with wreaths or messages or kitschy plastic figures or leaves to be all scratched paint and dirt… except the door is always half open. So easy to step through and see what’s really inside, behind all the show of what someone wants me to see.

Well, I catch a glimpse of what’s there in that moment, anyway. To go from feeling someone thrashing with frustration to their sheer floating joy when their call’s answered, it teaches you something about judging too soon.

But, off track again. What I’m trying to work out is what it means, that I can make these, use these—after what I survived, and Ray didn’t.

So the thing down there isn’t coming for me. It’s just me, and this weapon, and everyone else that’s wide open to me.

I could… I could be something different from just Adrian Corbin, the way this pulse can read what people want—or even make them feel what I want them to, just enough to fool them. I confess, I tried doing that too.

After everything I saw, caused, down in the tunnels, I was still enough of a bastard to try that. Even when the pulse itself is always echoing warnings with all the traces of that one coldest emotion that it always picks out, fear.

—Why is it fear that overshadows everything else it feels, that makes that Scarecrow’s killing power possible? Even the ivory itself is fiercely cold to the touch, too cold to carry around all day without some kind of help. I’d like to think that’s all something he did to the magic, but it feels like there’s something more to it. I don’t even know if there’s any other power like this, anywhere.

And I’m the one who has a piece of it now. I can’t take back what happened, and I.. can’t pretend I’m strong enough to go back and take on the Scarecrow, nobody is. I could use what I have to make myself a new life, but I can’t forget.

No, I can’t. I can’t hide from that any more.

So… it won’t be my life I try to rebuild. It’ll be the people around me—and not by recklessly shoving into their emotions, or trying to make them something they aren’t. It’ll take practice, learning, everything I can to learn to see what someone feels just by matching those outward signs to what I can see, what I mostly shouldn’t need to see in them. To find people whose lives are being held back by secrets they need someone to say, or threatened by lies. Or they need someone who knows about this magic, if there’s more of it out there.

Sounds like being some kind of detective, when I write it here. But maybe I can learn enough and make enough of my own rules with this to make up for what I’ve done. I have to.

Sounds like I’ve got a plan.

On Google

I love finding a Spider Climb spell.

What does that mean? Spider Climb is a spell that’s been in Dungeons & Dragons since some of the game’s earliest editions, and it does just what it sounds like—lets someone climb walls or “whatever a spider can.”

—Yes, I was a Spider-Man comics fan even before that. But this is different.

What gets my juices flowing here as a gamer, reader, and writer is that in D&D you can find a spell like this in some treasure chest. Not just develop it out of the abilities the character’s been using, but simply discover something brand new. One minute that castle wall was too high and smooth to scale, or those gems back in that unstable ruin were out of reach. The next minute, every surface is potentially a highway that gives a new angle on the world.

Think, what would you do if you came across a power like that? What rooftops would you climb to watch a sunset from? What places would you go, or just how would you look at those feet of “empty space” between your head and the ceiling?

It’s one of my favorite things to write: how having some magic or ability, or really any gain, it changes how characters see things. Remember the first time you drove a car, or the first time you went out with friends and realized they had your back no matter what happened? I think it’s fair to say, our world shifts.

And when someone in my kind of story is searching for answers, or trying to trust a new ally, or fighting for their lives, those world shifts mean even more.

Starting in 2022, you’re going to see a few walls climbed.

Notes of Mateo Vargas, Rayo Hill, 1977

Substance has been referred to as “skein” (pronounced skayn)  — reasons unconfirmed.

Color: deep green, with a silvery sheen to it.

Consistency…

There’s the question, isn’t it? The skein can appear as a thick liquid or putty, and then harden to something stronger than steel.

And its strength and its very shape can change, driven by the thoughts of the person touching it. Based on this, and the hints that it’s been part of Rayo Hill history for decades, I’m inclined to call it something other than some unknown technology. It might as well be called “magic.”

Common use: armor.

I have seen a man coat himself in the skein and shrug off bullets. More than that, it can partially absorb the actual force of an impact itself, where simple armor should not have protected its wearer. Since its shape can also change, a wearer can draw out sharp talons or blades from it to increase its deadliness, and those blades are also hard enough to score metal.

More dangerously, the act of reshaping the skein is a weapon in itself. With enough skein and a strong mental control, its own motion can be  made more powerful and faster than the muscles of the person inside it. A man encased in skein is vulnerable only at his unprotected points, or perhaps to more powerful weapons — but, difficult to use a rifle (or any firearm) against a threat moving in ten-foot-long steps.

Its greatest weakness may be to other skein. The hardness of its blade and the strength of its attack seem like the best chance to penetrate this protection. Have begun training with what supplies are available.

Most ominous: in addition to this direct power, the substance can somehow bend light to render its user effectively invisible. A faint shimmering effect remains, difficult to notice even for someone aware that such a thing is possible.

Threat potential to this town… obvious.

More peaceful uses…

Shifting, metal-hard shapes must have a range of uses as tools. (Including tools for burglary and theft, from the signs I’ve found.) This precision seems more difficult than forming protections and weapons, and the artist in me thinks the skein itself prefers fighting to building. An impression to test, some day.

Medical advantages: skein has been of great help with injuries I’ve sustained in the search. It can bandage wounds, and even take the strain from injuries by bracing or moving them instead of my own muscles. Prosthetic uses: clear, if a supply existed.

And what a Pandora’s Box that would be. Have begun to understand the appeal in keeping its existence hidden.

If I get the choice. Immediate threat must be stopped, for the good of this whole town. Then can decide on legacy.

What makes a good fight?

—In a story, of course, since in real life the best fights are the ones that don’t happen. But what makes a fictional clash worth reading?

And we do find them worth reading, watching, playing. Of course they’re a staple of storytelling since they’ve been all too real a force in real history. But, in a story they take on an extra kind of appeal.

Since I’m writing books like Running the Gauntlet, that starts with punching a hole in a wall, the question has me thinking.

 

Fighting Right

My Kindle is crammed with fantasy and science fiction. I have long boxes of some of the best superhero comic books ever written, and my movie picks keep an eye out for a really interesting monster.

Let’s face it, stories of the fantastic can be… fantastic.

And that’s one of the first things I look for in a story: the sense of what powers, weapons, and forces its people are dealing with. Give me a dragon-rider, a mindreader, a set of silver arrows and knowing they’re the only defense when the werewolf lunges out of the trees.

Except… anyone can make the action more flashy. Certainly anyone can write the same old fight and just say each super-punch leaves a bigger crater.

No, a really fantastic clash makes us believe a man can fly.

Give me a sense of what it means to sit on that dragon, soaring over canyons and racing to cut off an enemy who’s winging toward our unprotected town. How a telepath tries to read his opponent’s punches, but struggles to focus that power while keeping his physical guard up and his emotions steeled against his opponent’s rage. Or the razor-edged challenge of gathering every werewolf-slaying weapon and scrap of knowledge we can find and trying to herd a much faster, stronger creature into the one spot in the forest where we can get a clean shot at it.

I mean Chris Claremont, the revolutionary comic book writer whose X-Men were (among many other things) the first superheroes to feel like they understood how their powers really worked. Or Brandon Sanderson, creator of Sanderson’s Laws of Magic—and scenes like one in his latest book Rhythm of War, that’s a master-class in the long-standing question “How can one swordsman fight a dozen men?” (Short answer: very carefully.)

In this sense, it’s not the fighting at all that makes a scene work. It’s the imagination.

How does someone with flying or shapeshifting see the world? There’s nothing like a story that lets us walk in those shoes… or not walk, and why. And then the tale puts that whole expanded worldview to the test in strategic chess matches and split-second choices.

That’s the joy of gaming too: choosing our plans and watching whole new tactics or parts of the map get unlocked because of our choices, not just knocking down the next enemy in the line. Just this week I had a video game villain confront my character with all the killing he’d had to do to get by… and I took the chance to start investing in knockout blow and stealth abilities, because it seemed like the time for him to look for a gentler path when he could. A game’s story lets us explore those dimensions ourselves.

But that freedom comes at the price of a different experience: being led through the moments by a master storyteller.

Those scenes are some of the most compelling moments I’ve ever felt. When every step in a struggle, every choice, every twist, all builds the tension higher. Watch Indy force the snakes back from the Well of Souls, only to find the Nazis at the top grabbing the Ark anyway… or there’s a werewolf scene in Peter Morwood’s The Demon Lord that is so tense that…

There’s nothing like those times.

And no matter how much of that is a fight itself, it comes from using every tool the scene allows. Making the absolute most of that moment.

 

Right Makes Fight

Still, there’s another side to the best clashes: the fact that they are conflicts. That the “problem” each side is trying to solve is that the other guy needs him dead, beaten, thwarted, to win.

A good fight starts by making those stakes clear. A simple sparring contest still might be a merry rivalry, or a chance to show off. A good rescue is life and death, while catching up with a long-standing, well deserved enemy…

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die.”

Stories are appreciating the choices people make. One side of that is getting into those decisions and how they shape the struggle now – but the other is that they’re made by people, by the sense of what they’ve already chosen and been shaped by.

Revenge isn’t the only emotion that’s “best served cold.” And even that one dish can go into so many flavors – one story could be a tragedy of an anti-hero’s obsession with vengeance for its own sake, another could use it as one of many markers about why the enemy continues to need stopping.

Better yet, what made those people enemies at all? How much of that conflict have we seen forming before our eyes? One enemy could share a mutual hatred with the hero, but another could be a former ally who’s watched our hero break more and more rules and feels forced to shut him down.

Maybe the most popular manga and anime in Japan’s whole vast, rich storytelling history is Naruto, and it’s hard to picture that tale without recalling how ninjas Naruto and Sasuke go from classmates to team rivals to a much deeper conflict. This is called not pulling punches, and having over a thousand chapters to tell it all.

If a fight embraces that… anything’s possible.

Let someone tremble with fear, and use every moment between punches wishing he was somewhere else. Capture how one fighter’s struggling not to win but to hold off her enemy, protecting something she truly puts above her own life.

Or the hope that if one can push the other into the right corner, he can prove that they don’t need to fight after all. Even though the story’s shown how many times they missed the chance for something better.

There’s always another chance, even in something as inescapable as a fight that’s already broken out. Because a good story uses everything.

 

 

How does someone write in a year like this?

A year that provides a steady supply of “2020” jokes, a lot of them along the lines of the “apocalypse of the month office pool.” A year that keeps me reminding myself it’s really just one event—that one historian called the biggest world-changer since World War II—triggering and interacting with other forces that were in the works before the outbreak.

What does a storyteller do in a time like this?

Plenty of authors are simply scaling up the challenge they were already meeting. They’ll target what it means to be separated from family, or watch hope waver and shift into new forms. They’ll teach about how people struggle and learn what they need to keep each other safe.

And other writers try to simply give hope, with stories that stay clear of viruses and give us a different world. Of course that’s easier for fantasy and science fiction writers that really do write in a different world or time, but tracking a mind-twisting assassin can be a thrill in any setting. Any setting that isn’t the life we’re in now.

I’ve always been in the second camp. Paul and Lorraine, Mark and Angie and Henry and the rest, are there to share the pure excitement I’ve found in the stories I love. If I can make a harried reader or two stop to smile, and sweat, then I’ve given them the best gift I have.

And yet, viruses are hard things to keep out.

Shadow Sight is the completion of Shadowed and Tracks In Shadow, books that were designed before the world had heard of COVID-19. Watching Paul Schuman search through one city for answers, and another town for some of the people behind them, are very much the appeal of a simpler world. Shadow Sight is the next step after that, and there’s no coronavirus in this book either.

Except there’s a prison. And house arrest, and long hours for Paul to reflect on the choices he’s made and the people he’s helped and hurt, and whether he can endure all the watching and strategizing it may take to get control of his life again.

—It’s also got escapes, chases, alliances and betrayals, and Paul showing just how many ways there are to get control of a secret. Even his own.

Hmm. So after my months behind closed doors digging through my imagination to create a worthy escape, I have… a story with closed doors. And family, and hard questions about what’s ahead for him.

Will parts of Shadow Sight seem close to home? They might. I know each reader is going to take it differently, and the story is always Paul’s own.

Still, the next thing I write… I may try some stronger armor.

On Google+

 

It’s the absolute favorite word in storytelling. And the one least understood.

Ask writers or fans “Which is more important, characters or—” and you don’t even have to finish the sentence. People will answer “characters!”, eagerly, fiercely, and they’ll reference everyone from Samwise Gamgee to Hamlet.

But, what makes a good character?

My thought is: everything in the story, including parts that aren’t character at all.

 

Pieces of People

Are characters made by depth, by the sheer number of layers they have? Sometimes.

There’s a marvelous moment in Better Call Saul, where shifty lawyer Jimmy McGill confronts the mentor he’s always admired and resented for judging him so harshly. He offers to give up being a lawyer in exchange for one favor, and when his mentor warns that that would be coercion, he says “So coerce me! We both get what we want!” And we realize Jimmy really would be satisfied—besides getting his wish he’d finally make his mentor happy, and he’d prove to himself that that one unbending person actually will get down in the mud like himself when there’s enough at stake. (It’s inevitable, but a bit disappointing, that said mentor doesn’t budge from his high horse.) It’s a beautiful mix of different motivations all tangling together, and it’s only one moment.

Or it might be less the number of changes and layers a character has than facing the right changes for the story. Frodo is an appealing hero in Lord of the Rings, but he might come off as a bit ordinary if he’d shuffled all the way through his quest instead of proving at the last moment that he had only so much strength. Or if he’d gone home happy without doing justice to all the wounds from his ordeal. That side of the War of the Ring does so much to make it more than an epic for epic’s sake, and makes Frodo a deserving center for it. Even though it’s only a few uncompromising choices in the course of the story.

Sometimes it’s just how well characterization is shown. We all know a few stories where someone goes through a fairly simple journey, but their pain or love or rage comes off so fiercely we’re left shaking. Execution matters too.

Or it could be a tiny point, anything that just clicks with a reader. I’ve seen a smart, lonely orphan boy written as doing coin tricks on his knuckles and yelled “Yes! Of course that’s how he’s spent those years!” It could be a passing reference to what school someone went to that just seems right, or (this is one of my own that stuck with me) watching a man with a flying belt flinch as he’s being led underground. Of course that can be a reward for making everything about the character authentic, so nothing breaks the spell and every touch has more chances to catch the reader with how it fits.

Or sometimes a character shines from just being connected to quality storytelling, even more than the character himself provides. Nobody says Raiders of the Lost Ark was “saved” by Harrison Ford’s swagger; the movie’s real strength is outstanding action and adventure, and Ford’s performance simply added (plenty) to that. Indiana Jones is remembered as a superb action character, but in the end it would be more accurate to say he’s the hero in the ultimate adventure.

What makes a good character? Anything good.

 

For the Writer, for the Reader

So what does that mean for understanding a story?

A tale is what it is. It’s its own balance of character history, buildup, number of plot twists, and number of characters to play off each other.

Sometimes taking the space for a change that really goes to the heart of a character comes at the expense of being around other people that can explore aspects of what he’s going through. It might be the only way to make a point is how someone doesn’t say what would be obvious, because they simply never would. Or a story needs time to bring a fight or some tinkering to life, enough that we can appreciate the challenges he’s caught between.

All of it helps.

To me, “character” is a running count of how the whole story and backstory have worked to reshape each person, based on how each was different to begin with. “Plot” might be an abstract sense of one event at a time and its momentum, but “character” is the total effect of all the layers they’ve given someone, including that driving sense of what they might do next to break out of the box or crumble inside it. And it’s also how we feel we’d know how they’d live when the story ends, or if we met them in real life.

In the end, that may be the biggest distinction between the two. A story’s plot may leave implications – a claim that the more something like that happened again, the more history might repeat itself. Ambitions, lies, friendships, conspiracies and dreams might all line up the same way, yes.

But since we’re people, we remember the people who walked us through that lesson. Even the times when it wasn’t the characters who brought it to life.

On Google+

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Photo by wayseeker2000

Live in the shadows. Hide the fact that you can track people and secrets from across the street, and that you use that power to uncover lies and corruption. Let nobody know you’re searching for answers.

That was how Paul Schuman lived in Shadowed. But what happens when he starts to find those answers?

How far would Paul go to find the people his power came from? What would he risk, if after his years in hiding the authorities began to notice his face and his name?

What would he need, to step out of the shadows and think about what else he could be?

Writing Tracks In Shadow was a whole different kind of thrill from Shadowed. The first book was Paul surrounded by questions, while this second one is the beginning of how the answers change him.

Paul has always wanted the truth about his power. Here he finally has the talk he needs with someone who’s been down this journey first—and sees it from a very different view than he does.

What can this ability mean to the people it touches? Paul gets a look at people who’ve used it before, and some of the people around them too. When you can look into someone’s mind, what do you see looking back?

Action and conspiracies take on a different tone for Paul now. People are in danger, but Paul’s own face might make him a target if he shows it. Or, he might not need to show it, if someone else who’s just gained the same gift is as dangerous as Paul fears.

And then there are the two women in Paul’s life…

Every book is its own experience. I like to think Tracks In Shadow takes every question Shadowed asked and spins it around a different turn.

I hope you’ll take a look.

It’s here! Today, the complete Spellkeeper Flight trilogy (The High Road, Freefall, and Grounded) is out as a single ebook boxset.

If you haven’t seen how this story begins with street gangs and a hint of something else above the street… and escalates with different magic, darker threats, and the shifting bonds between newly-fledged heroes (or those not so heroic) and longtime masters in what’s often a four-way or five-way battle…

What would it feel like, to leap past the rooftops, knowing every moment that the wrong move could expose the secret of magic to the world? What would that mean to Mark, only nineteen and already struggling to start a life of his own? Every twist reminds him how quickly he has to learn.

And always, Angie. Angie has never met a challenge she couldn’t face… but the truth about her family and the world ahead will shatter all that. If anything can.

Most of all, what will those two be for each other, when there’s more than anti-gravity magic turning their lives upside down?

From the first chase to the final landing, the whole journey is here.

Buckle up!

 

On Google+

If you look through my stories, you’ll see there are certain things I try to provide. Here are seven of them.

 

“What do you want?”

–That’s such a marvelous question. It can be the seed to a beautiful memory, or the offer that calms a terrorist. It can delight, seduce, or reassure… and of course it can map out which of thousands of genres and styles each of us want to spend our nights curled up reading.

It’s also the defining question for a story itself. A quest, a mystery, or even a slice of life are all brought together by the struggle for some goal the characters want. (When someone writes a slice of life story, or just anything with a slow start, that’s the time to check Kurt Vonnegut’s blessed rule “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.”) So saving a kingdom is not the same as unmasking one killer, or trying to make the person in the next cubicle laugh before the workday begins.

And when I start defining one of my character’s goals, I like to cut the ground a bit further out from under him:

When my heroes want something, I try not to make it simple.

 

Struggling on All Sides

The one piece of writing advice that’s stuck with me more than anything is: a strong story leaves the character no choice except what he has to do.

(And that last choice is still the hardest he has to make.)

After all, the basic question of how we all get through our days is “What do I do next?” It unfolds into the step-by-step journey that makes a character unique, AND builds a plot that’s specific and convincing. What are the options, the allies, the limitations that someone’s world is made up of? How do they see its shortcuts, and what blind spots do they miss?

If my hero doesn’t try bargaining with the opposition, or avoiding them, or asking for help… then I want to think I’ve shown solid reasons why they wouldn’t. Which ways are closed off really can be what defines a strong story concept: the increasingly implacable enemy, the inescapable problem, or the isolation that forces a hero to struggle alone. And those blind spots of the answers that another person could have used, and this one took too long to see.

Or just in a single scene, how many arguments, ideas, or maneuvers can there really be, and how does the chess match play out? Including, how many moves does the other side have planned? A battle like the ones the Spellkeepers have (“this city’s not big enough for the four of them”) ought to be worth losing ourselves in the whirl of action, that always leads to the conclusion it needs to.

 

For Joy

Mark can fly. He only needs a moment to fling himself up past the rooftops, and every time he looks at his city from above, he sees something new. Even if it’s another pattern about where his enemies might be hiding.

Paul’s story is more earthbound, and Shadowed was mostly about looking into the darker corners of his world. But the core idea of that world is that power and hope can make a difference in people’s lives—even when there isn’t a conspiracy to fight. “A nice place to visit, and maybe I would want to live there.”

Paul has a long way to go before he understands that. (Though my followup short story for him “Passengers” is one moment of him getting closer.)

But whatever stage one of my stories is at, I try to look for moments of peace or pleasure. If I can’t immerse myself and the reader in how those moments keep a character going, the road ahead would look pretty dark.

 

Suspense

It’s in my motto: “Whispered spells for breathless suspense.” My favorite scenes are usually the ones where every twist and every image pull me deeper into the moment, until I’m screaming inside to know what comes next. I want that when I write, every time.

Some scenes are playful or restful, but I still want them to find something to tease the reader with, and make each moment flow into the next. The further I look into what makes suspense work, the more I see that the same twists work for any moment and any style.

And sometimes I have a man with a flying belt being forced down into sewers and grabbing one last desperate look at what ought to be familiar surroundings above ground. By the time Mark erupts back into the open air, we should all be soaring with him—and his night’s still just getting started.

 

What’s love got to do with it?

Many writers treat “paranormal” as one half of “paranormal romance.” But a writer I know once asked who preferred their love stories hot and who wanted a slow burn, and my answer was that I best remember the ones that take their time. Better yet, the stories that genuinely play their relationships against everything else at stake, and make us wonder which should be more important.

A mystery fan could “cherchez la femme” in my books, and find women and men at the root of some of the most powerful drives each other has. I hope you’ll like who the story ends up putting with who. But that doesn’t mean you’ll know how it’ll get there.

Mark would be the first to admit that knowing Angie has shaped half of his life. Paul and Sarah and Lorraine and Greg… it’s been complicated.

 

Nothing will be the same

More and more, I like a story to put some weight into the steps it goes through. True, I’ve written searches, chases, and confrontations that only reinforced what the story had already shown was going to be the challenge… but more and more, I like the moments that change that up.

Truths are turned upside down. Loyalties break. New strengths unlock. People die, sometimes.

So often, those are the moments we remember in a story. Again and again, I find writing comes down to building a tale around pieces that could truly tear something loose if they changed, plus the journey that makes them important. Then, being willing to push the detonator.

Is this the scene where things just got real? How many more of those can a story take?

I always want to find out.

 

To the Truth

Purposes and possibilities, joy and fierceness and heart and heartbreak… But like the philosopher cowboy on City Slickers said, all that really matters is “one thing,” meaning it’s all a journey to find what that thing is.

All my stories come down to some final truth, that I’ve been working toward from the beginning. It might be who can be trusted and why, or it might be what a character can trust in themselves. Everything else is exploring why that has to be the answer.

I like to think that makes the twists along the way more than tools for suspense. That the glimpses into the reasons why someone can’t take an offer, or how they look at someone they’ve never understood, might stick with a reader after the last page is turned.

 

If those are the stories you want to read, I hope you’ll click here and take a look.

On Google+

For all of you who’ve been following the adventures of Mark and Angie and that peculiar belt, here it is:

September 30th. That’s the day that the final book of the Spellkeeper Flight series will be out: Grounded.

What can I say about the end of a series that’s been keeping me up for so many years? I could show you the cover—it is gorgeous, and it includes someone I’ve wanted to have on the front for two books now—and that will certainly be in another post soon. Or I could write about just how tangled and exciting the story becomes with its final race to the finish line.

Or I could show you a different kind of scene. In the middle of secrets, arguments, battles, and heartbreaks, this is actually one of my favorite chase scenes.

The lighter side of antigravity. #Grounded Click To Tweet

It’s also from relatively late in the book, so it can’t avoid a few SPOILERS ahead. As to whether anything leading up to these spoilers is what it seems, you’ll have to decide for yourself.


A small door stood in the middle of the back wall. Mark felt his father’s talisman moving closer behind him, and grabbed the door. Dodging him is only putting this off, but do I have to deal with everything at once?

He stepped out into the morning sun. A wide, half-full parking lot spread around him, and he felt Angie launching from the roof as he moved. Her magic did feel thinner, the price of all the messages she’d given him. The silver in his hand was the answer to that.

His father neared the door behind him. Mark lunged across the lot with a magic-light stride over the slush, and Angie swept down the air ahead of him.

Faces turned toward him, up and down the lot. He held his pace down to a gliding sprint as his father moved to follow.

Angie twisted ahead, a shape of brown and gray veering toward the back corner of the next building. Mark realized his feet had already fallen into a path behind her.

Around the corner lay a small pocket between buildings, only half-open to the street, where not a single person stood to see them. Angie beat at the air and flew almost straight up along the wall. Mark flung himself to the rooftop after her.

Below he glimpsed his father stopping at the corner. Running from that man was only temporary as long as they could sense each other’s talismans… but just for now, there was so much more satisfaction in staying out of his reach.

Angie perched on the roof’s rim, just a few steps away.

“I brought some power for you,” and he held up the mind talisman. “We can finally keep you as strong as you need. Oh, and your mother wanted to apologize, for… everything.”

At least Kate was doing more to back that up than the man down below was. His father was already turning away.

He reached the talisman toward Angie. “We’re all working on this, on how to get you a real body. I swear, we can do it. And we really can make Winton pay—”

Kee-yak!

The owl twisted from his hand with a quick flap. She sailed just above the rooftop’s open space, an easy speed for her. Mark raced after her. Her cry had sounded, what, eager?

Her head twisted once to glance back, then she shot toward the roof’s edge.

If it’s a race— Mark hurled himself at the edge and the next roof across, magic’s power blasting him past beating wings. In midair he stole a moment to look down to the ground and around the streets; only a few people stood in view, and none of them looked up. But I just took that leap in broad daylight before I thought of being seen.

He didn’t feel the lightheaded madness of magic getting in his head. Only…

Angie chirruped and darted across the roof’s left. He leaped after her, with soft skips and minimal weight to keep from skidding on piled-up snow. She dived down between two huge air-conditioner blocks, but he sensed her twisting left behind them and he leaped across ahead of her.

“Bring it on!” He held up the mind talisman. “I can keep up, like I can save you—”

She rushed straight by him. Her claws plucked the silver from his hand.

He lost a moment in shock before he thought to follow. But this wasn’t like when she grabbed that talisman he almost gave Nolan… it felt nothing like it, not with her playful calls buoying him up. He dashed after her.

Roof after roof shot by. In scattered moments he thought of the faces that might look out through those windows, or the people on the street—but of course each building she picked was only a short distance from the last, a leap that a human could have cleared.

Angie’s dodges used every scrap of cover, every foot of space a roof gave her to double back on a wingtip. Mark leaped and skittered and caught at gravity to lock himself in place for instants before rushing on. Anything to keep his human bulk keeping up with the owl that moved like a part of the air.

Danger and regrets fell away. He was simply nineteen… or somewhere younger.

Then—

“I said I can!” He saw her start to spin and read the angle she’d have to take, and dove across ahead of her. “I know I—” She flipped away behind his back, still easy to sense and move ahead of. “I can save you—”

She swung out over the open street. After so many moves staying out of sight on the roofs, she changed the rules and ventured where he couldn’t go.

A flash of silver, arching high up and away from her. She’d thrown the talisman away?

Mark stared. He couldn’t see it now, couldn’t sense it from here, couldn’t leap out over the street even if he did, why would she…

Angie swooped down. He saw, felt, the streak of gray rush across the sky to scoop down and spin away, in a move that could only be catching the talisman as it began to fall.

He couldn’t move. He stood frozen on the edge of the roof, breath gasping, for the endless instant it took her to arch around and reach the roof. At the last moment she braked, and dropped lightly onto his arm.

The talisman slid back into his palm. And he finally had the words to share its power, because she’d found those too.

With his softest breath, he whispered “Tomishua zazda tomi zazda shua.”

Magic wakened. The energy roused at the words, loosened, and his thought sent it flowing—not gathering power from the air or draining another talisman, but this time streaming from his into the bit of silver on Angie’s foot. That magic swelled, pooled…

The thought-space opened between them.

Their breath and pounding pulses should have faded away—but instead they surged through the void like a message, her message. Soaring, twisting, the thrill she’d led him through, that had to mean flying.

Words flickered too. Unclear sounds, but he caught glimpses around them of daylight streets, windows by night, spreading from early autumn to biting winter air. Too much too fast to follow the language, but the tones were uneasy, worried, angry—all the shades of trouble and discontent around the city, plucked and gathered out of the months by her restless mind. She saw so much, followed it all.

The voices changed. A new flood of memories poured out from her—a smiling face, a woman running with smooth steps, a family looking up wistfully at the sky they’d never touch. Faces of joy.

Like our chase.

The world of the mind fell away. An owl’s pale face hung just before him.

“We can…. we can fly for real, once you have a real body…” he said, from a hollow throat.

She dropped off to soar away.

Mark shivered, slumped, sat clumsily down in the snow.

They’d been fighting to set Angie free. But what if…

 

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Photo by Narshada

It’s been a long, wild ride bringing the Spellkeeper Flight books to life, ever since the opening High Road scene that I knew I couldn’t use. And one thing it’s made me think of is… music.

So here are my thoughts on the songs that I think connect to different sides of the series. A few things to keep in mind:

None of these songs are approved or licensed by the artists, or within my budget. Dangit.

No “angel” songs allowed. I realized a while ago that much of the Buffy storyline could be captured with different variations on that theme, and there are just too many of them. (No matter how fitting “How Do You Talk To An Angel?” starts to get.)

I’m no expert in indie music, so there may be any number of songs that fit better than my picks. If there are, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

And, this all started with with the obvious Tom Petty observation:

 

for The High Road: “Learning to Fly” (Tom Petty)

Simple as that, the obvious choice for Book One and for Mark’s position in it. But wait, there’s more.

 

for Freefall: “Free Falling” (Tom Petty)

Hmm…

 

for Grounded: “I Won’t Back Down” (Tom Petty)

Definitely. Tom (may he rest in peace) deserves his place as the lead artist for this series. Note also, it’s a complete coincidence that its male lead is Mark Petrie–I gave him that name mainly because his enemies’ surveillance has him living life almost in a lab’s petrie dish. (And alright, because he thinks he’s a small “petty” person.)

Trouble is, this means I can’t name Mark’s father Tom Petrie, and the name would have been just about tough enough for him… oops. Pretend I didn’t say that.

 

for Angie: “Whatever It Takes” (Imagine Dragons)

An easy choice–Angie’s never been good at being ordinary. “Danger Zone” would be the more obvious pick, but I think Dragons gave us a better song. And it’s good to have Avengers Endgame featuring her theme.

(Oddly, Angie’s actual motto is “There’s always a way.” “Whatever it takes” is becoming more of Mark’s motto.)

 

for Mark and Angie: “She’s So High” (Tal Bachman)

One more nod to the obvious. But that really is how Mark’s always seen her, even though Angie’s never been any more “high society” than he is. (Maybe if Kate had stuck around.) Actually, Patrick Swayze’s “She’s Like The Wind” is a lot closer to his feelings, but using that song would mean rewriting Olivia Nolan’s form of magic to keep things straight.

–And Angie’s response? In The High Road she told Mark “Do you really want to know?” and it’s probably best to let her actions speak for her.

 

for Rafe: “Bad To The Bone” (George Thorogood & the Destroyers)

A bit one-dimensional, but Rafe likes presenting himself as Just That Tough even though his persona is only another tool in his life. (See Freefall for more about what he’s really after.)

 

for Kate: “Don’t Cry Out Loud” (Melissa Manchester)

This pick looks better and better the more I think about it, at least compared to different moments in Kate’s life. She’s had her time “flying high and proud,” but she’s also seen them “pull the big top down” and seen her “Baby” had “took up with some clown” (that would be Mark, at first sight anyway). She doesn’t fly these days, but she’s every bit as unflappable–um, so to speak.

 

for possession magic: “Who Are You” (the Who)

Of course. Another option would be Genesis’s “Invisible Touch,” but that’s clearly about a “she”–would that be Sasha’s song some day? Or someone else?

 

Characters I don’t have yet are Joe Dennard (always so hard to read), Olivia Nolan (I suggested “Let It Go,” but she’s more than just a cold shoulder), Henry and Christa, Sasha, and various others.

(And if James gets his hands on any more of the family’s antigravity, he’d use “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.”)

One thing I know: none of them, even Sasha, stays very long with “Holding Out For a Hero.”

 

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Photo by Talita A.

Fans.

They’re the second great joy in writing. I can spend months or years exploring a story and falling in love with every twist of the road my characters are on… and even after that, I also get to hear from other people who like it too.

A couple of weeks ago, The High Road got the kind of response that can keep a writer awake at night. It’s a review from a long-time Bookbub reviewer. Five stars, compliments for the characters and the excitement and the storyline, all the things I’d blush to put straight into a blog. And then this line in the middle of it:

But for the fact that I’m literally dictating this review to my husband from my hospital bed I could go on and on with praises.

Wow.

It’s the first time I’ve received something like that. One of those moments when a tale intersects with someone else’s real life story, and I hope does some good. I know—and I profoundly hope—that “hospital bed” doesn’t mean this reader is coping with anything serious. But the thought of connecting to a reader in any moment like that at all, it’s downright humbling.

I’m used to writing for myself first. I see possibilities, characters, techniques, and I want to dig myself in deep and bring them to life around me. The feel of a scene’s mood building up to drive it along is home to me, more than any “real” place and many people I’ve ever known. That’s the level of passion it takes to lay out fifty or a hundred thousand words that feel like they’re worth writing.

But it’s bigger than that. It needs to be.

That’s the hope that every writer has when we first put show our parents how put we crayons to paper—that someone else can share in the joy of it. It’s what we tell ourselves, every now and then, when houses catch fire or disease spreads and we wonder if the world still needs a storyteller. That a good story for the right reader can bring hours of honest happiness, when all our lives hang balanced between hope and pain.

Humbling.

Thank you, to that reader out there. I wish you a world of health and good fortune to keep that hospital stay short. And I’ve got some hard questions to ask myself, about how I can dig deeper and write faster to bring you books worthy of that compliment.

Thank you.

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