Should Your Sequel Include Fanservice?

I believe that the greatest service you can render your fans is to write the best story possible.  That means not including any excess and purposeless material that bloats and stagnates your story for no good reason and to no benefit.

There is, of course, a place for such self-indulgence.  It's called fanfiction.  And you should definitely not be writing fanfiction of your own book in your book.  Leave that for the fans.  Please.

The Land of the Purple Ring - Chapter 1

This is the first chapter of my new book, The Land of the Purple Ring.  It will be published May 5, 2020.

The Land of the Purple Ring

by Deborah J. Natelson

Chapter 1: Perpetua

Imagine a land steeped in time.

Not time as we know it, with the swing of pendulums, the ring of alarms, the tick of clocks, the passage of then to now and back to then again and again and again and again. Nor time as a relative factor to be stretched and masticated, organized and sculpted, for time is not chewing gum and ought not be treated as such. Or so the inhabitants of Perpetua would tell you.

Time! You lose time, gain time, look for time, make time, kill time (a violent and wasteful act punishable by up to 10 years of clock tower maintenance work), save time, measure time, and otherwise treat time as your most precious commodity. Citizens of Perpetua know this, and they hoard time. They don’t have time to be generous or attentive or gracious, but nor do they have time for greed or selfishness or lazi­ness. They don’t even have time for time, most of the time.

The Clockmaker, as not only a citizen of Perpetua but a distant relative of Time herself (being the only child of Where Has the Time Gone?) naturally bought into this mentality at quite a reasonable monthly rate. He invested his time into the molding of cogs, the carving of hands and face and fob, the movement and dial. His shop smelled of bronze and oil and glass, and he never had a thought out­side of clocks until the Idea came.

IDEA: A member of the family Imagination (genus Inspira­tion), the Idea is a small but niggling notion that worms its way unnoticed into a brain. Once there, it hooks itself in and sends out tendrils for nourishment.

An Idea settled is nearly impossible to treat with­out professional help. In extreme cases, it may resist even the ministrations of Oblivitors, Bleachers, System Restorers, and Brainwashers.

Having no access to professional help, the Clockmaker immedi­ately succumbed to the Idea and got to work. Utilizing his decades of skill, he built a gyroscopic tourbillon of pure diamond. Inside a watch, it would have kept balance no matter which way the watch was turned and maintained a true tick for hundreds of years, but the Clockmaker did not put it inside a watch; he put it on display and called it a heart of crystal: beautiful in the glimmering, glinting, glis­tening way it inhaled and exhaled light as it spun.

Perpetuans caught the heart’s shimmer out of the corners of their eyes and in the warmth of their ticking hearts. Tears gathered and trickled down their cheeks. From the thirteen corners they came—in hordes!—to ooh and ah and admire and offer hours and years of time in exchange for it.

When word of the wondrous heart whispered in Time’s ear, she gathered her troops and marched out to see the source of the fuss.

The people of Perpetua felt the wear and tear of Time’s approach and fled from it. They crossed to neighboring cities and hid in cellars full of honey and amaranth and immortelle. They covered their faces and plugged their ears and tried not to breathe, lest she hear them. Time knew they hid and where, and amusement flickered across her bone-white eyes and hard mouth, for none can really hide from the effects of time.

On she marched, the breeze from her passing wearing down the features of stone façades and carving grooves into the abused earth. Stone cracked as she neared, and water evaporated. Flowers sprang up, withered, and died. Every sixty seconds, one of the moles clinging to her jowls sloughed off and fell to the ground. As it landed, it grew—an inch a second until a full-grown minuteman joined the retinue, marching behind his leader in perfect time.

Each minuteman carried a bayonet and wore boots and a blood-red suit, but Time herself wore only the gray of ash on her General’s uniform. Even her great leather belt had long faded to gray; and her feet were bare.

So Time crossed Perpetua, her tremendous pace devouring dis­tance until she stood in the threshold of the Clockmaker’s humble shop. Day and night, youth and age flashed across her fleshy face, and the wood of the shop rotted, and the clocks within rusted.

The Clockmaker exclaimed as his life’s work crumbled before his eyes. “Oh, great Time!” he cried, throwing himself at her flat, bare feet. “I cry you mercy!”

Minutemen stomped their boots and raised their bayonets, but Time only smiled, her face folding in deep, unpleasant creases. She leaned her hand on the doorframe, and it crumbled away. “I have no mercy,” she said. “Show me the diamond heart.”

The Clockmaker shriveled before her. He was not aging prema­turely despite Time’s proximity—which itself could bode nothing good. “The heart of crystal is my magnum opus,” he said. “It is dearer to me than anything else in the shop, anything else I’ve ever made. What a waste it would be to destroy it! And yet,” he added to himself, “it is so phenomenal that surely even Time could not bear to destroy it. Maybe if I show it to her, it will melt her ruthless heart, and she will leave me alive.”

Clutching this hope to his chest, the Clockmaker extracted the heart of crystal from its display cabinet and brought it before Time. Its glimmer and shimmer and shine captivated him, as they always did. “Is it not beautiful?” he breathed.

“It’s grotesque,” Time said. “A heart paraded about without a body? For shame!” She spoke harshly, but the glint of the heart reflected in her milky eyes and sparked desire within her. “Your life is forfeit, Clockmaker, for you have laid eyes upon Time. Yet I can be generous. Build me a mechanical man with this heart of crystal, and I will extend your life a year and a day to complete it.”

“A year and a day!” exclaimed the Clockmaker. “But that is not nearly enough time! Even polishing a watch can take me two weeks. Why, a mechanical man would take a lifetime!”

A smirk twisted Time’s wide lips. “Then a lifetime you shall have,” she said. “You shall live long enough to build me my slave, and not a moment longer. And don’t think I won’t know if you dither and dally and waste precious seconds!”

This last threat fell upon uncaring ears. The Clockmaker had not before considered making a body for the heart, but Time’s words had hooked a new Idea into his brain, and he fell before it.

-

The Clockmaker’s boy came to life at a very young age. Thousands of minuscule cogs whirred and wheeled and ticked away in his clock­work brain. The two independent balance wheels—which had bridges across the hemispheres of his brain and synchronized themselves automatically—were as long as the Clockmaker’s thumb; the smallest cogs were so petite that he could see their teeth only under a micro­scope. Each and every part shone, flawless, under the shop lights.

In those days, the boy had only a heart, a brain, and one ear, so he spent his time feeling and thinking and listening. The Clockmaker spoke to him continually, and so the boy learned what words meant.

“Time may have commissioned you,” the Clockmaker told him one day as he labored over a pair of eyes, “and I may build you, but you’ll need to be able to repair yourself. I wouldn’t trust another clockmaker, if you can avoid it. You never know for whom they might ultimately be working.”

-

“Why don’t you trust Time?” asked the boy, much later. His teeth were visible only on the left-hand side, where his jaw had been skele­tonized, and he was still getting used to having a tongue. “I wouldn’t exist without her commission—and you would be dead.”

“Yes, but neither is any credit to her; she merely wants a slave—one who can withstand her presence. Time has no real appreciation for living beings or art, and you are both.”

“But if I am to be a slave,” the boy pointed out, “wouldn’t it be better if I had neither life nor art? That way, I couldn’t be wasted.”

The Clockmaker did not answer immediately. Something by way of revelation was exploding in his brain, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He had never had time for family or personal attach­ments or anything aside from his work.

Only months later, when he had completed four fingers and a thumb and attached digits to hand and hand to arm and arm to torso frame, did he touch upon the topic again.

“It’s time for you to learn the craft, my boy,” he said. “I’ve been telling you about it these past three years. How much have you retained?”

“Everything,” said the boy.

“Good,” said the Clockmaker, and brought over a palm-sized alarm clock. “What would you do with this?”

The boy turned it over in his new hand and examined it with his rather near-sighted eyes. “It looks old,” he said. “A family heirloom, maybe. I would remove the rust and polish it up like you polish me.”

“That would be beautiful,” said the Clockmaker, “but this is where art comes in. The clock is old, and people like old things. We ought to honor its age. So by all means clean up the rust inside and replace any broken teeth, but treat the exterior with respect. Clean it, but do not make it look new.”

The boy tilted his head. “But it is tarnished.”

“Yes.”

“I do not understand,” said the boy, “but it does not matter. I do not need to be able to repair clocks, only myself. I am to be a slave, not a clockmaker.”

“You are my son,” the Clockmaker said firmly, “and I will teach you my profession.”

The boy paused, his clockwork brain grappling with this. “I did not know you considered me your son,” he said. “I have always con­sidered you my father, of course. Stop! Why are you crying? You will rust.”

From that day forth, the Clockmaker taught the boy everything he knew, which was mostly about clocks. In the mornings and after­noons, they worked together on the boy’s body, or the Clockmaker worked on the boy while the boy repaired clocks that had been wait­ing their turn patiently for years. In the evenings, the Clockmaker told the boy stories from his childhood and sang to him in a scratchy voice as they scrubbed the shop free of dust.

The boy’s clockwork brain remembered everything it was told, but this knowledge did not automatically transform into practical skill. The Clockmaker had to train him how to hold a broom, scrub brush, and sponge. At first, the boy’s fingers were thick and clumsy, but together, he and his father redesigned them until they could eradi­cate every grain of dirt from the deep corners of the workshop.

Clockmaking required four more revisions of the boy’s fingers, considerable brain extensions and fine tuning, and built-in magnify­ing glasses he could snap over his eyes. His brain itself had to be completely disassembled, cleaned, polished, oiled, and reassembled multiple times during this process, which the boy found vastly dis­concerting and which his father found even worse.

The most complicated watches contain over a thousand compo­nents, most of them tiny; the boy contained millions, and he learned how to make, assemble, and repair all of them. He could mount anchor crutches between scotch pins, twist springs (whether main­spring, fine-tuning, or spiral torsion), file screw heads, and carve screw threads. Escape wheels did not escape his attention, and his balance wheels spun with the precision of tightrope walkers. He adjusted adjusting pins, slipped tiny weight discs on balance pins to slow fast watches, and shaved weight from balance wheels to quicken slow watches. He mounted, polished, and oiled chatons, and knew the uses and misuses of twelve types of oil. Given a pattern, he could engrave any design.

Yet the Clockmaker remained unsatisfied. “It is not enough that you can follow instructions,” he said. “You must be able to give your­self instructions, invent new designs, and think independently. I will make you a box, but you will have to travel to Imaginarium to fill it.”

So the Clockmaker designed a case of pure iron and stored it in the boy’s gut. “Inspirations navigate by magnetic fields,” he explained, “and are confused by iron. When you escape Time’s pal­ace and get to Imaginarium, you’ll see for yourself.”

In those latter days, the Clockmaker was constantly plotting the boy’s escape from Time’s palace. He talked about freedom and slav­ery as he encased visible cogs in metal or glass; he explained about locks and keys as he inscribed his maker’s symbol on the boy’s collar­bone and checked that no screw was too loose or too tight; he empha­sized the importance of escaping before Time’s presence wore down cogs as he smoothed the boy’s kneecaps. “Time,” he said, “is of the essence.”

-

After nearly thirteen years of work, the Clockmaker knew he was finally coming to the end. He’d left engraving the boy’s nose until last, for this was the one feature he had modeled after his own face. The nose protruded sharply downward and ended in a razor point. The boy could neither smell nor taste, for these things are beyond clock­work, but he would have the most elegantly scroll-engraved nose and tongue imaginable.

“When I finish your left nostril,” the Clockmaker said, “you will be complete, my son—and then Time will come for you.”

“No, no!” cried the boy. “You cannot be done. I still need—you could polish—” But he was honest, and could think of nothing remaining. “But I do not want to leave you, Father!”

“I have had a good life,” said the Clockmaker; “I have gotten to build you. Remember how proud I am of you and all I have told you. And never forget to wind yourself up when you’re feeling languid.”

“But Father—please!”

“There, there,” said the Clockmaker, and three things happened at once: he smoothed the last stroke; he crumpled, dead, to the floor; and Time arrived to collect her property.

-

The boy had never before traveled past his own front door, and every new sight heralded a new miracle. From his window, he had been able to see the clock tower with its smiling triangle face, and he had supposed that every clock tower had a similar face. Not so. He saw oval faces and round, square and rectangular, heart-shaped and liver-shaped. The clock towers, like every clock they passed, heralded Time’s presence by chiming, tolling, booming, singing, or screeching every hour at once.

The boy saw neither people nor animals as they marched , but he saw evidence of far more human creativity than he could have guessed: sundials, vine-and-ivy clocks, lamp post clocks, hedge clocks, and a great many other things that were not clocks and that, therefore, the boy had not yet learned were to be appreciated.

Not that the boy was in any position to appreciate anything. Quite apart from being surrounded by minutemen, whose stylish caps blocked his view of everything below chin level, he was in a great deal of pain. He thought Time might have damaged something when she’d wrapped her massive mitts around his middle and carried him out of the disintegrating shop, away from the corrugated clocks, crumbling countertops, and most especially away from the figure on the floor sighing into dust. Something certainly felt broken. Perhaps she’d cracked the casing of his gyrotourbillon—his diamond heart that kept him ticking away in good balance whether he stood on his hands or on his head or spun at crazy angles.

The boy had never felt anything like this before, and wasn’t sure he could diagnose it himself. But he could not ask his father, and who else was there? The minutemen’s hands were so thick and clumsy inside their starched white gloves, and Time—

Time had commissioned his existence. It was by her will as it was by the Clockmaker’s craft that he had been born, and she should therefore be his mother, as the Clockmaker was his father. And surely she would be able to fix him. But when he looked at her marching on, uncaring, he learned what it was to be intimidated, and he stayed silent.

The boy made no attempt to escape. It never occurred to him to try: the Clockmaker had spoken only of escaping Time’s palace, not of escaping on the trip there. In any case, such utter wretchedness overwhelmed the boy that he could not have done anything if it had occurred to him.

As he sank into this morass of misery, the landscape changed. Gone were the dusty towns, the musty clock towers, and the trusty roads. Present were twenty-six gardens in a great loop, one garden for each hour of the day. They were sunlit or dark, netted with blooms or blooming with nettles, filled with fluttering butterflies or bumping with bats, seasoned with mist or snow or blazing heat.

If the boy had had a sense of smell, he would have swooned; if he had had allergies, he would have sneezed. As it was, his head cleared, and he looked with calm resignation over the coruscating scarlet morning flowers, the toxic midnight toadstools, and the mildly incon­veniencing nightshade—to Time’s palace.

War of the Engineers

Apparently I was wrong.  Apparently I'm going to keep making playlists until the end of time.  But while I'm doing it anyway, I might as well share the stories.  Here is:

War of the Engineers

Part 1:
Jop is a performer (Horoloro) who thinks he’s really hot stuff (MIC Drop).  The wider world is being invaded by ancient mutated beings (The Closer), but Jop does his best to ignore that unpleasantness (Tempo).

At Jop’s biggest performance so far (Paparazzi), he is performing his self-named hit (Jopping) when the mutants arrive with their supporters (Hands Up).  As the mutants are espousing their philosophy (ON and ON), Jop is considering how he is helpless despite his fame (Famous).  For once, he is forced to think deeply.  He is determined to become so powerful that he will never be helpless again (Wannabe).

Meanwhile, a paparazza falls for him (Heart Shaker).  In a rather distracted way, he welcomes her attention (Say My Name), but that’s only out of habit (Playboy).  It doesn’t take long for her to realize he’s not really interested, and she pretends she just wanted to help him (Beautiful Liar).  He’s scheming to become too rich and powerful to touch (Ka-CHING!).  She learns about his goal, and decides to simultaneously help him and get her revenge (Run Devil Run).

Part 2:
The world is swiftly falling to the mutants (Burn It Up).  The government gathers all available fighters (Warrior), but it’s not enough.  Desperate (Desperate), the government turns to scientists to genetically enhance on the warriors (DNA). 

Thanks to the paparazza, Jop is one of the willing test subjects.  The procedure transforms him into a powerful but monstrous hybrid (Hyde). Each night, Jop and those like him fight hard against the mutants (Moonlight), and they eventually win (War of Hormone).

Now the war is over, the government realizes what dangerous creatures they’ve created (Kontrol).  They try, unsuccessfully, to execute them (Unbreakable) and imprison them (Chained Up). 

No longer the vapid star, Jop voluntarily isolates himself.  He is desperately lonely (I Can’t Stand the Rain).  Finally, he can’t stand it (WANT) and ventures out in the depths of night to walk alone under the moon (Moonwalk). 

Jop encounters the paparazza and prepares to run, sure she’ll be horrified by him.  But she greets him (Hello), and it’s clear she still loves him (Standing Facing Each Other).  Jop has a chance at happiness after all (WONDERLAND).

---

Note: I have two songs by Taemin on this playlist, but future playlists I won't have many by him . . . because I apparently love his music so much I had to go and purchase nearly everything he's put out.  So that has its own playlist, and one without a story.  If you're interested in hearing my favorites, here is a link.

Sayonara, 2019 (In Books)

It’s been an interesting year, media-wise.  Late in 2018, I saw the live action Bleach movie on Netflix, and loved it so well that in January, I began watching the anime—the first anime I ever watched.  At 366 episodes and 4 movies, it came to well over 100 hours (not counting credits), and I finished in late March.  That gave me sufficient interest to later read the manga Descendants of Darkness—the first manga I ever read more than one volume of.  I followed this up by first watching and then reading Death Note, which I love the first half of (and the musical).  While we’re at it, I also read and watched a bit of Rurouri Kenshin (and the live action adaptations) and a sprinkling of others.  To round out the Japanese media, I read All You Need Is Kill, the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel on which the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow is based.

I will never be much of a manga and anime person, but I feel more trained to read them now.  366 episodes of Bleach taught me a lot.

(Subbed.  I grew up on opera; subtitles are very comfortable for me, and I loathe dubbing.)

I read a lot of old favorites, and some firsts.  I listened to the audiobook of Psycho, which felt culturally important since I haven’t seen the movie.  It was fine.  Going through my list of books read, however, I’m realizing I didn’t read very many excellent books I’d never read before.  In fact, aside from Death Note, the only one that really stands out is First Bite—alas, not a vampire book, although I also read Prisoner of Vampires, which was flawed but worth keeping.

So not a lot of new discoveries on the novel or author front (although adding Death Note to my fandoms did lead me to discover several spectacularly good novel-length fanfics, so . . . ) 

Here are a few other stats:

Most nostalgic books: In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories  and The Farthest-Away Mountain

Longest book: Gone with the Wind

Non-fiction books: 2

Manga: 33

Books I ended up ranking under 3 stars on Goodreads: 10

Total published books: 111
Total unpublished books: hard to number, since I read several of the same book multiple times and didn't keep track.  30?
Words of fanfiction: at a broad guess (give or take 25%), probably around four million words.  Assuming average novel length is 100,000, that puts me at 40 novels' worth.

I also have read, over and over and over again, a number of tiny board books that answer deep philosophical questions such as "What's hiding behind the stump?" and "Are you my mother?"  But I'm not putting those on Goodreads.  The line must be drawn somewhere . . .

Apocalypse of the Un-People

I won’t be doing this regularly, but . . . I had so much fun creating a story out of a playlist that I did it a third time (the first time being the playlist for Bargaining Power and the second time being Descent Into Monster from my November 30 post). 

This one is also k-pop.  I call it Apocalypse of the Un-People.

Part 1

Scientists invent a new machine called the Eye (“The Eye”) meant to watch over people, but something goes terribly wrong (“Error”) and it instead begins to control them.  A woman rises above all others and seizes the device (“Room Shaker”).  She is determined, no matter what the cost ("Blood Sweat & Tears") to create a paradise of happy, obedient people ("UN Village").

As she seizes more and more control, a rebellion begins to defeat her (“Power”).  Men proclaim that she is an evil overlord (“Bad”) and rush to take her down.  But whenever they encounter her, she seduces them with her great charm and beauty (“Hip”) and they succumb (“Be Mine”), whereupon she turns the Eye on them and they become happy, mindless slaves (“Why So Serious?”)

The world has begun to fall apart, now that so many who were against her are now for her.  Everything is upside down and twisted (“Trouble”).  Finally, one man rises up, determined to face her and save everyone from the Eye (“Hero”).  He goes and, instead of her charming him, he charms her (“Love words”).  She is immediately smitten with him (“Electric Shock”). 

For a little while, everything seems great (“Paradise”), but that’s just an illusion; it won’t last (“Fantasy”)

Part 2

The evil overlady soon begins flirting and suborning more men (“The Boys”), making the hero horribly jealous (“Jealousy”).  But the more hurt he becomes (“Damage”), the more she exults in playing both sides (“Bad Girl Good Girl”). 

The hero finally accuses her of being two-faced (“Jekyll”), then immediately apologizes in the face of her anger (“Sorry, Sorry”) and begs for her to forgive him (“Back”).  But she replies that clearly, he doesn’t love her like he swore he did (“You Don’t Love Me”) and turns The Eye on him (“Voodoo Doll”).

Trapped inside his own mind as he’s forced to obey her commands, the hero contemplates that it might be better to die (“Might Just Die”) and makes peace with himself—true peace, not the false peace the Eye mimics (“Beautiful Goodbye”).  He dies soon after in one of her schemes (“Kill Bill”).

There is now no one left to stop her from taking over (“History”) to create her paradise of faux-peace (“Oasis”).  Indeed, she has come to believe that it’s always been her destiny to rule over the world (“Destiny”).  Forever (“Eternity”).

=====

One of the things I really enjoy about both Descent Into Monster and Apocalypse of the Un-People is that they’re very different from the stories I normally write.  It’s like being given 31 or 32 writing prompts all at once and having to incorporate them and turn them into something not just coherent but, if possible, actually good.  And, of course, it helps that these are all songs I chose because I like listening to them. . . .

Bargaining Power - First Chapter

My new book, Bargaining Power is now available in paperback and ebook (Kindle, but the DRM is unlocked, so you can easily, legally, and for free convert it to any other format using zamzar.com or Calibre). In celebration, here is the prelude and first chapter!

Buy now on Amazon!



Bargaining Power by Deborah J. Natelson, © 2019. Book 1 of the Power Trips trilogy.

No king can maintain his power long without the consent of his people and the support of his lords. And by “lords,” I’m including—you know, just to take a random example—Gil Winter, Prefect of Avior, whose car had been circling the Carinan Security Service building for the past eighteen minutes.

“Would you look at that,” I said. “He’s parking.”

“At last,” my boss said, putting his pencil down atop the cipher he’d been unraveling. “Stay sharp, Mercedes. If you are gone more than twenty minutes—”

“I won’t be,” I promised.

“I will call,” he said steadily, almost ponderously, and I smiled. There wasn’t much even a high-ranking member of the Security Service could do against a prefect; but then, there wasn’t much Sr. Nordfeld couldn’t do, once he’d aimed his marvelous brain at the task. I let that comfort me as I passed through security and stepped out into the chilly autumnal smog.

On the sidewalk by the sleek sapphire-blue limo of Avior Prefecture, a man waited. He was massive: nearly two feet taller than I and three times as broad, with hands like shovels and a chin to match. His ivory-and-sapphire uniform and the stars decorating his collar labeled him head knight: Avior’s second-in-command, answerable to no one except his prefect.

“Miss Cartier?” he demanded.

It doesn’t do to mess with head knights any more than to mess with their prefects. Besides, I had an image to maintain. I clutched my handbag timidly and bowed, not making eye contact. “I am she.”

The head knight nodded politely and opened the limo door.

I rocked back as perfume and alcohol gusted out. Red leather seats glistened under dim LEDs, which fit exactly what I’d heard about Gil Winter. But the smells were old and stale, and no rave music thundered at me, and that didn’t fit in the least.

“Get in, please,” the head knight said, looming close behind me.

I bobbed another timid bow and in no way pointed out that this was Silvertip Prefecture, not Avior, and that he had no business ordering me around. Instead, I got in the limo like a good little personal assistant. And when the door shut behind me, it was no harder than necessary. And when the lock clicked, it was only because we’d begun moving.

“Miss Cartier,” said the man in the shadowy, lime-and-raspberry-lit depths of the limo. “Thank you for joining me.”

The voice was . . . almost familiar. Strange. I’d have thought I’d have known Lord Winter’s voice from television. I’d have thought, in person, that it would sound charming and confident.

Keeping my expression neutrally polite, I peered down the throat of the limo, trying to see past the distortion of the neon lights. But try though I might, I couldn’t make out my host’s face until he leaned for­ward. Then I inhaled sharply.

He was five-foot-seven, forty-six years old, and had the un­healthy, prematurely aged skin of a man who lived off mayonnaise and potato chips and didn’t believe in fresh air or sunshine. Unlike his brother, who had a certain rough charm, this was the sort of man most women instinctively avoided—unless, like this man’s wife, they were so desperate for elevation that they would sell themselves to the devil if he came knocking.

I dug my fingers into red leather. The temperature had jumped about twenty degrees. “I don’t un­derstand,” I said distantly. It was an automatic response, a placeholder while I struggled to wrench my rational mind back into place. “What is this? I thought Prefect Avior wanted to talk to me. Are you bringing me to him?”

My host watched with detached interest. Dim lights carved out the hollows around his eyes and stained his teeth. He had no reason to hurt me. No reason to think I knew anything. He said, “I am Prefect Avior.”

“What?” I shot back. “No you aren’t. I know what Gil Winter looks like—I used to live in Avior Prefecture. What’s really going on? Who are you?”

My host laughed, genuinely amused. “Gil,” he said, “was my brother. I’m Lord Lucio Winter, the new Prefect Avior.” He displayed his heavy signet ring, and I scooted close enough to see. He smelled of incense, sulfur, and body odor. And upon his finger, sure enough, was the engraved Avior bat.

Softly, I asked, “Gil Winter is—dead?”

“He was bound to die eventually,” said the new Prefect Avior. “It’s no secret that he drank like a storm drain. The wonder is that he didn’t totter off a balcony years ago.”

He spoke casually, as if his brother had meant no more to him than a drop of rain to the ocean. My eyes flew up to his, and behind his words I saw the glee of violence, the thirsty self-satisfaction of triumph. And in that moment, I knew as clearly as if he had confessed it in court that this man had killed his brother—and that my life de­pended on him not realizing that I knew it.

Sweat prickled my eyes like tears. I clutched my hands before my sternum. “You poor thing!” I cried, three parts nice and seven parts stupid. “You don’t have to be brave for me; I can see how deeply you’re hurting. I’m so, so sorry.”

“A thousand thanks,” he said, “but I didn’t actually drive a hundred miles to Silvertip to talk about my brother.”

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think—I’m sorry.”

Avior cleared his throat. When he spoke again, he’d infused his tone with false jollity. “You’re not in trouble, Miss Cartier—I promise. I came because I wanted to talk to you.”

He’s putting me at my ease, I thought absurdly, and let the nervous giggle escape unchecked.

“I believe—correct me if I’m wrong—but I believe you went to university in my prefecture. You studied—what?”

“History, my lord.”

“Ah, yes! I remember now. I saw one of your papers on warfare. Hardly an appropriate topic for a girl!”

The title of my 80,000-word dissertation had been, “The Applica­bility of Ancient Tactics in Modern Warfare.” It had taken me two years of concerted research to write.

I shrugged and tittered again.

“How did you end up as a cryptanalyst’s personal assistant?” Av­ior asked. “If you didn’t want to marry straight out of school, you could always have become a teacher. Or were you planning to join the military?”

He was joking, but enlisting was exactly what I’d planned. I’d have done it, too, only I’d failed the vision requirement and didn’t have the cash for eye surgery. That’s why I’d gotten my current job: to save for it. I had put away enough money nine months ago, but some­how, I’d never gotten around to taking the next step.

 “Oh, no!” I exclaimed, channeling one of my brother Francis’s girlfriends—#14, I thought: the one who’d thrown up from watching us play Zombie SlashHouse III. “I could never join the military. Wait . . .” I placed one delicate hand to my lips. “Oh, that’s not why you came, is it? But, you see, it’s different on paper. You don’t have to see the—the—the blood and—and all the rest of it.”

He patted my hand kindly. “No, no. I only wanted to understand you—to understand what could have drawn you to your current posi­tion. I thought it might have to do with your employer. Jon Nordfeld sounds like quite an extraordinary man.”

“Oh, yes!” I cried, cycling to Francis’s Girlfriend #29, the enthusiastic one. “He’s brilliant, truly. Amazing. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

Avior nodded encouragingly. “I can see you’re a perspicacious young lady. Go on.”

I twirled my hair, deciding where to begin. “Well . . . he’s brilliant, like I said. You can’t be in the same room with him for ten seconds without seeing that. It’s in his eyes, you know? And . . .” I stole a quick, shy look at him. “And I’ve never had any problems with him. He’s never—never come on to me, if you know what I mean.”

“You’re a very pretty woman, Miss Cartier.”

His approval meant so much.

“He sounds,” Avior coaxed, “like the sort of man who likes to talk about himself.”

I shook my head in chagrin. “Hardly ever. He’s incredibly private. I’ve worked for him for three years, driven him to and from his apart­ment building every day—and I’ve never even seen inside the front door!”

This part was true, unfortunately. My boss had made it extremely clear from the start that we were to have no contact outside of work, and that I had no right to any of his personal information. I didn’t know how he spent his free time, although I suspected he read a great deal. Nor did I know if he had any family, whether he lived alone, or where he’d grown up. Flattering attentiveness could get him to ex­pound upon any other subject, but his personal life remained a void.

“Sometimes,” I sighed, as vapid as the hated Girlfriend #42, “I think I’ll never understand him. He’s too smart. It’s like he’s beyond normal people. But you don’t mind, do you?” I added earnestly. “You won’t be disappointed in him, I promise. He always delivers.”

The change might’ve been funny, if it weren’t so terrifying. In an instant, Avior went from friendly to draconic: tension stretching his torso taut and contorting his fingers into claws. His voice rattled harsh and low, and I shrank from him as he demanded, “What has he told you?”

“I—I thought—” I stumbled, fighting to keep my real alarm sepa­rate from the pretense. “I thought that’s why you wanted to talk to me! Because you want to hire him to—to break codes and ciphers for you and—I’m sorry! I won’t say a word. I promise. Please don’t be angry with me.”

Avior’s expression cleared as I spoke, and he resumed his avun­cular guise by patting my hand again. “Quite all right, Miss Cartier. I’m not angry. I should have known you’d guess. I said you were perspica­cious!”

I went weak at that, as much in real relief as in false, but he pinned me back down with a frown. “There is one other matter,” he said, and steadied his nerves with more patting. “It’s awkward and embarrass­ing, but during your time in Avior, you must have heard the slander my ene­mies spread about me. The nonsense about demonology.”

I had, as it happened. Frequently. One of my classmates had grown up in the neighborhood of Avior Manor, and had told us about the time her beloved dog had disappeared, along with every other pet in a half-mile radius. I also had it on good authority that Lucio’s obses­sion was the reason Gil had originally been the one chosen as prefect, although Lucio was the older brother.

There hadn’t been any recent scandals, so Lucio must have learned caution—but since my boss had contacted him by posing as an expert on a demonology forum, I suspected caution was the only thing he’d learned.

“It’s fine,” Avior assured me. “I’m used to it. Their lies have even proven somewhat useful, because I end up hearing about the crazies who really are interested in such superstitious nonsense. You’d be shocked at how respectable some of them seem, before you know the truth about them. I even heard that Jon Nordfeld—”

I snatched my hand back. “How dare you!”

“I didn’t finish.”

“You didn’t have to!” I cried, too enraged to respect the rules of rank. “And if you think for one moment that I will sit here and listen to you slander the most respectable, gracious, gentlemanly man on the planet, then you can think again!”

“He never mentioned—”

“Certainly not. And I’ll thank you to keep your nasty implications to yourself. For shame!”

Avior studied me, taking in the heaving chest, the brimming indig­nation and righteous offense, the way I didn’t shy from eye contact.

“My apologies,” he said at last, “but as prefect, I must ask these things.” He leaned back and tapped three times on the driver’s barri­cade.

I slashed my furious glare over to the seat opposite, squeezing my handbag hard as the limo slowed.

“I hope,” Prefect Avior said as the limo settled to a stop, “that you’ll keep this conversation privileged.”

“I know my duty!” I flashed at him and then relented from anger to mere stiffness. “I didn’t mean to offend you, my lord. I mean, I realize that you did need to ask.”

“I did,” he agreed, “and I thank you for taking a weight off my mind. Have a nice day, Miss Cartier.”

“You too, prefect. And . . . and I am sorry about your brother.”

The limo door opened, and golden-white light rushed its rhombus upon the seats. I scooted down and let the head knight hand me out of the neon-lit stale smoke and onto the sun-warmed sidewalk. After nodding politely, I walked directly back to the Carinan Security Service building, not look­ing around until I reached the door. Then I paused and watched the limo drive away, a glittering sapphire worm among black beetles. I wasn’t feeling wistful; I just wanted to make sure it really left.

It did, and I went in.

*

There is something wonderfully calming about the ritual of making tea, although I slopped boiling water onto the tray and rattled cups in their saucers. That’s adrenaline for you: terribly inconvenient when it’s not busy saving your life.

Anyway, a little hand-trembling didn’t matter, not now that Avior couldn’t see me. So I let the cups clatter as I carried the tray back to the office and set it on the desk.

My boss took one look at me and said, “Something is wrong.”

I’d eat glass before looking foolish in front of him. I sat on my hands so I didn’t jiggle, and I gave a full report. My memory’s not perfect, but I wouldn’t be forgetting that conversation for a long, long time.

“Did he suspect you?” my boss asked, when I was done.

“No.”

“You’re certain?”

“I’m certain.”

He relaxed back into his chair. “Good. Then we can proceed as planned.”

Read More . . .

How K-Pop Boy Bands Saved the Day - Descent Into Monster

My dog has had anxiety issues this past week.  First, there was a drastic shift in weather (it dropped near zero Fahrenheit with up to 50mph wind gusts and with very low pressure), then there were a number of other little things—a possible low battery fire alarm in the apartment below ours that kept beeping; me moving around my furniture to fit in an inversion table; possible even her digestive supplements. 

Her anxiety worsened until, night before last, she couldn’t sleep.  It was like the Fourth of July all over again, and I had no idea what caused it.  I ended up having to leave my bedroom to sit in the main room after less than four hours of sleep.

I’ve noticed before that I can decrease Flora’s alarm over thunderstorms by watching a film with her.  So last night, when she had sudden high anxiety again as we were going to bed, I considered watching a movie.  But I was very tired, and didn’t want to start one.

Now, I’ve been having trouble editing lately—trouble staying focused.  I’ve always edited in silence; I’ve always had to.  But three days ago, I was desperate enough to try listening to music again.  I started with Dark Sarah’s trilogy (beginning with “Behind the Black Veil”), but partway through—

Actually, I’m not sure what happened.  I wasn’t particularly familiar with k-pop and definitely not boy bands.  My only real exposure was the “Growl” music video by EXO that deservedly went viral a few years back.  But while editing, I went down a rabbit maze of k-pop boy bands, and especially EXO.  Over the course of one evening and two full days, I spent 15+ hours listening to k-pop boy bands and compiling (read: buying with iTunes credit) a playlist.  I then rearranged it so that it told a story.

Here is the YouTube version of the playlist.  I used official music videos when available.  The exceptions are the B.A.P. songs, because their MV are three times longer than the actual songs and mini-movies.  Very good mini movies, (“One Shot” and “Skydive”), and I do recommend watching them (and also the “BTD” (“Before the Dawn”) music video; I used the dance version for the playlist).  But this playlist is for the music.

The story goes like this:

Part 1

Our main character (MC) spends his time doing drugs (“Dope”) until he overdoses and seeks medical attention (“Overdose”).  Now clean, he finds that he’s a loser (“Loner”) with mommy issues (“Mama”). 

Then MC spots a woman and falls in love (“Beautiful”).  Though he knows he’s not good enough for her (“Mr. Simple”) he asks her out (“CALL ME BABY”, “Love Shot”) and to his astonishment, she accepts (“Take You Home”).  For the first time in his life, he’s happy and in a relationship (“Ring Ding Dong”, “EL DORADO”, “Ko Ko Bop”). 

But things start to go wrong (“Dramarama”) and she breaks up with him (“HURT”).  He can’t handle this (“Black Pearl") and begins going crazy (“Psycho”).

Part 2

MC increasingly views women in a predatory way (“Growl”, “Wolf”) and engage in stalking behavior (“Obsession”).  This escalates until he becomes a monster (“Let Out the Beast”, “Monster”).

We meet another character, a former soldier who starts to recognize what is going on (“Skydive”).  They go back and forth, with MC stalking soldier (“Alligator”) and soldier deciding what he must do (“Like Rain Like Music”).  Finally, soldier takes it upon himself to solve the situation.  He ambushes MC (“BOOM”).  They fight (“Shoot Out”), and MC retreats (“Run Away”).  Soldier gives chase (“Follow”) and the two contemplate their situation (“EXODUS”). 

Soldier sees he has one shot at victory, but it'll cost him his life (“One Shot”).  He decides to sacrifice himself to end MC's evil (“Before the Dawn”).

It occurred to me that instead of starting a movie, I could play my new playlist for Flora.  So I set the computer in front of her and hit play.  Immediately, she stopped struggling and freaking out.  She relaxed and soon fell asleep.

I fell asleep too, and woke just before the last song.  I figured that, since it had been nearly two hours, she’d be fine now.  Nope.  The moment I stopped the music, she began freaking out again.  So I got my computer cord, set the playlist on repeat, and hit play.  At once, she calmed back down and went to sleep. 

We listened to the album on repeat all night.  I slept extremely well also—ah, the benefits of <4 hours of sleep the night before—and got in a full eight hours.

So there you have it: how k-pop boy bands saved the day.