Doll Wars: The Prologue

Some years ago I began my most ambitious work, a braided novel that told a story of an ancient blood line that could bring life to golems. Instead of crude wooden puppets, the most recent generation was able to bring ball-jointed dolls to life, but conflict split the group into two factions and their dolls and their masters now battle unseen across our world.

The first part, In the Father's Image, first appeared in a special issue of Ethereal Tales magazine in 2014 and appears in my collection, Come Into My Cellar, Darker Tales From A Cerebral Vaunt. 

The second chapter, Rowan Dreaming, has never been published anywhere except in my collection bearing the same name.

The fourth and final segment, Dollmaker, was first published in the March 2009 issue of Aiofe's Kiss and has never appeared anywhere else.

What follows is the prologue to Doll Wars, the third and largest segment of the work where the characters in the first two stories all come together to learn about their strange power to bring life to inanimate dolls and find themselves embroiled against their will in a conflict that is centuries old.

Doll Wars

by Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Prologue

Florence, Italy 1833

“Ci sentiamo, Carlo!”

“Ciao!” Carlo called as his friend ran off. Carlo turned to run back down the street toward his home. With the setting sun at his back, Carlo laughed with delight as he raced his lengthening shadow on the cobblestones. He deftly avoided the lamplighters as they began their evening duties and dodged the horse-drawn carts and carriages that clattered through the streets.

Leaping onto the porch at his house, he opened the front door and paused to catch his breath. “Mama! Papa! I’m home!”

Only the echo of an empty house greeted him. “Mama? Papa?” Carlo closed the door behind him.

A sudden loud noise from the basement made him jump.

His father, Domenico Lorenzini, had forbidden his family to ever enter the basement and dutifully, Carlo and his mother acceded to his wishes.

Once a week, Aldo De Luca, his father’s cousin, would pay the family a visit and after tousling Carlo’s hair, would join Domenico in the basement and stay until well after Carlo’s bedtime. Carlo thought the world of Aldo De Luca and called him Zio Aldo, Uncle Aldo.

But now, Carlo paused in front of the basement door listening to the sounds of scuffling and cursing, muffled by distance.

“Aldo!” he heard his father shout. “It’s heading toward you! No! No! The stairs! The stairs!”

Frozen in surprise, Carlo heard feet ascend the stairs behind the door. The doorknob rattled, turned, and the door flung open.

Carlo could only stare at what stood before him. A tiny figure, no taller than his waist stood framed in the doorway, the garish light of a lamp below making the creature stand out in silhouette.

It bore the shape of a human, a clumsy caricature of a small boy but one made out of wood, a crude face chiseled onto a rough, splintered ball of pine with stiff limbs ending in mismatched digits. Behind it, Carlo’s father and Aldo De Luca raced up the stairs in hot pursuit.

Carlo screamed.

With a hiss, the creature lunged at Carlo, knocking him onto his back. Splintery fingers clawed at his chest and face.

“Carlo!” he heard his father cry, “My son!” Carlo’s father tripped over the top step and went sprawling, hands reaching for his only child.

But it was Zio Aldo who reached Carlo first. Grabbing the misshapen creature by the back of its neck, he pulled the hissing thing off of the screaming child and hurled it back down the basement stairs followed by the sound of something shattering. 

Aldo then scooped Carlo up in his arms, hugging him to his chest. “What have we done?” Aldo groaned in his ear. Aldo suddenly spun about and put Carlo into the outstretched arms of his father. “Carlo! Stay with your Papa! Take him, Domenico. Let me deal with what we have done.”

Carlo clung to his father. Together they watched Aldo shut the basement door behind him and heard his footsteps descend the stairs.

“Papa?” Carlo said through his tears. “What was that?”

“Silence, my son,” his father said. “Let me see if you are injured.”

His father’s inspection of the small scratches on Carlo’s face was interrupted by a short squeal from downstairs making them both jump. Minutes later, the tread of heavy footsteps slowly came up the stairs. Uncle Aldo opened the basement door, his face pale.

“I threw it into the fireplace,” Aldo said. He ran his fingers through his curly, black hair. “I threw it into the fireplace and held it there with a poker until it stopped struggling.” He fell back against the wall as if all his strength had left him. “Wine. I need wine.” He stumbled off toward the pantry.

“Papa?” Carlo said as he continued to shake from the encounter. “Papa, what was that?”

Domenico smoothed his son’s hair. “Son, listen to me,” he said quietly. “You must not tell anyone what you saw tonight. We could get into trouble, very serious trouble. You must forget what you saw and you must never tell a soul.”

Later that evening, Carlo crept from his bedroom to the top of the second-story stairs to listen to his father and Uncle Aldo as they talked in the kitchen below. His mother, his father had told him, had been gone all day tending to an ill friend.

“Surely you are going to give up this madness, Domenico,” Carlo heard Aldo say.

A pause followed. “No,” Carlo’s father said. “I got the procedure wrong. Rabbi Loew had it perfected. If he did it, then we can do it as well. The next one …”

“That thing could have killed your son! Your only son! ” Aldo hissed. “We’re fortunate that he only had scratches. And what if that thing had escaped into the streets?”

Another pause. “Aldo,” Domenico said, “I cannot give up now. You and I are blood descendants of the great rabbi of Prague and we have inherited this power as a gift. It’s in our blood. I cannot stop my research. I will continue. I just failed in the process. A flaw. I confess I don’t understand the ancient Hebrew. The manuscript is in such poor condition! I will be more careful next time. The next golem will be ...”

“Domenico,” Aldo interrupted. “We and our forebears have followed Mother Church for the last six generations. What we are doing is wrong. It is black magic.”

“And, Aldo,” Domenico continued, ignoring the interruption, “I need your help. And I know you. You are just as curious as I.”

“We are doing the Devil’s work,” Aldo muttered.

“Was the Golem of Prague the Devil’s work?” Domenico asked. “You know the legend. It protected God’s People.”

There was a longer pause. Uncle Aldo finally spoke, his voice so low, Carlo could barely hear him. “How do we make sure that we do not create something we cannot control? What if we cannot fully discover the secret?”

“We will try until we succeed.” Carlo heard the finality in his father’s voice. His father had a stubborn will. “I will make the name Lorenzini famous.” A pause. “And the name De Luca as well.”

With a shudder, Carlo crept back to his bed as the voices of his father and Uncle Aldo droned on into the night.

The Rough Draft of Patterns is Completed

Eighteen days to complete a rough draft is, I think, some kind of record for me, but the first draft of Patterns is complete at 5,690 words.

Now comes the very hard work of revision and correction and, though the basic plot will remain the same, I am free to add, subtract and revise until my heart is content with the finished product.

When will I know it's done? When I'm sick of the story and revision consists of nothing but shoving a few odd words around.

Then I start sending it out for its rejection slips. Here's an excerpt, but do remember this is a rough draft:


Ryan parked his car along the side of the street. North Second street in Harrisburg had, many years ago, been to domain of the upper middle class, but the years had made the brownstones appear to be a little more unkempt, a little more seedy in appearance.

The underlying pattern here was so wrong. It was unhealthy.

He checked his eyes in the rear view mirror, but this time, his eyes remained a crystal amethyst blue. He put his sunglasses back on.

An elderly woman came to the door at the sound of the doorbell, her eyes filled with suspicion.

“Ryan Williams, Mrs. McLain. I called you this morning?”

She sighed. “Come in.”

The interior of the home was the home of an old person, gravid with memories, the very air smelling of age.

Ryan turned down the offer of a glass of water.

“Thanks for letting me see you,” Ryan said. “As I said on the phone, I just have some questions about your late husband. When he passed, you sold some of his items at auction and now I own one of them.” He turned on his tablet and held it out to her so she could see the picture on the screen. “Do you remember seeing this? Remember anything about it?”

Arthritic fingers trembling with age, Mrs. McLain reached for the glasses she had hanging from her neck and placed them on her face. She studied the picture for a bit.

“Yes,” she said after a moment of silence, “I remember this piece. He picked it up on one of his travels to the Far East. I think he mentioned it in one of his books.”

She stood and toddled over to a bookshelf, taking down a small, dusty book. “It’s in here somewhere.”

Ryan took the book from her. “Legends of Lost Lemuria,” he said. “One of your husband’s books.”

He found the section with a few minutes of scanning the thin volume.

The ancients would train their wizards using various instruments and contests. I believe that one of these ancient tools was the predecessor of the Go board, one of the popular games of Japan throughout its history. This leads to the conclusion that either ancient Japan had open trade with Lemuria in its prehistory or that survivors of the Lemuria earthquake and resulting deluge somehow made it to the Japanese islands where they were absorbed into its peoples and culture.

Ryan handed the book back to his hostess. “Mrs. McLain, thank you so much for letting me see this. This answers my question.”

Minutes later, he held a pile of the late professor’s books as well as forty dollars poorer. Andrew McLain had self-published his books, leaving his widow with numerous boxes of books that would only sell to the fanatics who had long forgotten McLain’s work into prehistory in search of greater titillation. Understanding his hostess’ plea to rid herself of a few of the works, Ryan felt the money well spent, a donation to a widow in her dotage.

“By the bye,” she said, “as she walked him to the front door. “It’s rather odd that you should show me a picture of that thing he had.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“The day he died? Poor dear. I found him in his office, slumped dead across it.”

Patterns: The Opening Paragraphs

Patterns is my new work in progress, a tale about Ryan Williams who wins what he thinks is a Go board at a prize drawing, but it turns out to be something far more insidious and as he uncovers its secrets, it begins to change him. Here are the opening paragraphs (still to be considered a rough draft)



“Our next drawing is for a traditional Go board.”

The crowd went silent waiting as the owner of Walt’s Cards and Games rummaged through the bowl that held slips with names of those who came to celebrate the store’s tenth anniversary. He plucked out a yellow piece of paper and Walt squinted as he made out the spidery handwriting. “Ryan Williams!”

There was sporadic applause as Ryan raised his hand. “Here!”

Walt held up his hands for silence. “I want to thank all of you for coming and celebrating our anniversary. I want to congratulate the ten people who won our drawing and when you come up to claim your prize, please bring some picture ID.”

Ryan made his way through the crowd that now focused on the table offering free snacks and treats Walt had made available for the celebration. Waiting patiently in line, he tried to suppress his jealousy as winners before him walked away with rare and expensive board games. A young kid walked by holding a copy of The Campaign For North Africa and Ryan doubted the boy actually had the ability to even understand the most basic rules. Maybe he’ll trade with me.

When he got to the front, Walt waved his ID away. “Know you well enough, Ryan. Enjoy.” With that, he handed a large, plain cardboard box to Ryan who whistled at the feel of weight and substance.

“Looks like I’m going to be learning something new,” Ryan said.

Walt smiled. “They’ve been playing Go for almost six millennia and I think I’ve had this game for that long. Never could find anybody interested in it, but if you can get some enjoyment out of it, I’m just glad to let it go.”

Ryan smiled. “So what you’re saying is that I’m getting your unsold junk?”

Walt pointed his finger at Ryan’s face in mock anger. “Walt’s Cards and Games never sells junk. But I’m willing to let you trade this for a pack of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.”

Ryan laughed at the offer. “No thanks. I like myself. I’ll learn to play Go.”

Slender Man: An Excerpt From An Old Work

One of my favorite activities is participating in a tuckerization of my fiction, using real people as characters in my work. I want to thank Juan for allowing me to make him a character in one of the few actual horror stories I've ever written.

What follows is the prologue of a work that I have yet to complete, but I did enjoy writing it. The delightful challenge of writing about Slender Man was dampened when mentally ill children started committing crimes to appease this made up character. Also, the character of Slender Man, originally in the public domain, is now held in copyright by an unknown third party. I'm not going to invest time in a story I cannot publish for profit.

I shall probably rewrite the story, cleansing it of all Slender Man references and making up my own little beastie. Here is the opening prologue. Enjoy.

Slender Man
by Alan Loewen
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ROUGH DRAFT

PROLOGUE

“Subject: Juan Claude Simeoñ. Madison College isolation tank research, number 22. Mark time. Juan, how are you doing?”

Juan floated gently in the heavy, warm Epsom salt solution, his ear plugs making Gerald’s voice sound far away instead of coming from a tiny speaker just three inches above his head. “Doing okay,” he replied. He opened his eyes for a moment to the pitch blackness inside the chamber and then closed them again.

“Everything is working fine out here," Juan heard Gerald say. "Are you feeling the effects of the compound yet?”

Juan let out a breath. “No, not yet. I only took it twenty-five minutes ago. Let’s give it another five to kick in.”

“It’s your experiment. I’m switching my mike off. I’ve got a good level on yours.”

“Good.” Juan concentrated on his relaxation technique, deliberately relaxing the muscles in his feet and working up his body. Floating in the solution that had been warmed to body temperature, Juan enjoyed the sensation of floating. Though the tank was just big enough to hold him, in the blackness he felt like more like a mote floating in the center of an infinite universe.

“Mark time,” he said. “My skin is itching again.” He allowed himself to flow with the unpleasant sensation, a side-effect of his mind freeing itself from the world of the senses. “I suspect I’m a good ten to fifteen minutes away from theta brainwave conversion.”

He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, willing himself into a greater degree of relaxation. “I feel the new compound kicking in. A great calm. Itchiness is gone. Mark time. Here’s a new sensation. I’m gently falling.” Juan allowed the sensation to take him. “I’m seeing phosphenes now. Brilliant. More brilliant than I’ve ever experienced before, the most common being a shade of purple with flashes of red and green.”

He felt himself floating, falling between the cascading colors. “Pretty. They’re starting to take shape. Mark time. I suspect the compound is doing this. We might have finally reached the perfect mix.”

The colors swirled and congealed into a madman’s color palette. “Interesting. Mark time. I think I’m hallucinating. Maybe we increased the compound too much? These colors look solid. Weird angles. Reminds me of some of Lovecraft’s stories. What did he say? ‘Complex angles leading through invisible walls to other regions of Time-Space.’ I have to stop reading nonsense like that.”

Juan floated among the odd geometric shapes. “Wow. I never knew my mind could come up with what I’m seeing. Gerald, I hope you’re getting all this. I really don’t know if I’m talking out loud so my mike can pick it up.”

Gerald rolled his eyes as Juan continued his observations. As long as he got his weekly check, Gerald didn’t care what the psychology majors did with his time. He made a quick scan of the controls. The solution in which Juan floated kept its temperature constant and the chronometer marked off the minutes as they passed.

Stifling a yawn, he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Listening to some psych major ramble on about his hallucinations did not improve his already unpleasant mood.

“Mark time,” he heard through the speaker. Gerald leaned forward and pushed a button that would independently time stamp the recording.

Clean the tank. Punch buttons. Listen to some guy hallucinate. This is what a college degree did for him.

“Gerald? I really hope you can hear me. I … I can’t help but feel I’m not alone in here. Something out of the corner of my eye. I guess I should more accurately say ‘my field of vision.’”

The speaker stayed silent for a minute. “Mark time!” the speaker squawked, more urgently this time. “I saw something. The experience feels real. Something behind the weird angles.”

Gerald punched the time button again.

“Maybe if I look before my peripheral vision detects it. Hold on a minute.”

Suddenly, a scream burst out of the speaker, distorted by the volume of Juan’s terror. “No! Gerald! Get me out of here! No! Stay back! Get away from me!”

With an oath, Gerald jumped to his feet and reached for the hatch to the small isolation chamber.

It did not respond to his pull.

Juan’s screams continued as Gerald struggled with the door. Lacking any type of latch, it should have opened with little difficulty, but now Gerald felt as if he fought against all the weight of the world.

With a sudden pop, the hatch slammed open on its hinges and Gerald screamed.

Expecting to see Juan floating in a solution of brine, the interior of the small chamber opened up unexpectedly into a vast infinity of insane angles and odd geometries. His eyes and mind ached as he tried to take it in. He stumbled back, whimpering.

A shape emerged from the hatch. Impossibly thin and composed of a darkness that spoke more of a void than lack of color. Thin lines of darkness that hinted of obscenely long and thin arms reached for him.

Frozen in shock and terror, Gerald looked up at the ceiling where the head of the figure should have been.The last thing he ever saw as tendrils wrapped themselves around his neck was a featureless face that radiated a palpable evil.

Shrine War Update and Excerpt

After the sudden passing of my mother on Saturday, July 23rd, I took a break from writing to deal with her personal affairs as well as my own grief, but she would have wanted life to go on. So today for the first time in weeks, I traveled once again to Japan and at 8,770 words have finally come to the final part of my story, the final big conflict between the Inugami and the kitsune shrine maidens trying to defend their shrine against them.

Writing a series of complex scenes is a lot like playing chess. Before your big attack, everybody needs to be where they are supposed to be and finally all my characters are in their proper places.

There has been some attrition as you can expect in any conflict. Of the original ten Inugami, three are down for the count, but the shrine maidens are in a serious sticky wicket. Only Sen and Chiyo are left in the oratory in a doomed effort to save their souls and Inari's Mirror from the desecration of the spirit dogs. They assume Hoso to be dead and the twins probably sharing the same fate. Or worse. Inugami use kitsune souls to power their soul crystals to power their magic.

My sole human character is outside hiding in the bushes and freaking out, but his part of the story is not yet done. Not to worry. He's not going to save the day. Sen and Chiyo are going to have to solve this one all by their lonesome.

Here's a rough draft of an excerpt that follows Kiku and Kuwa who tried to defend the shrine entrance from the Inugami. Currently they are hiding in the canopy of the trees that stand on the shrine property

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ROUGH DRAFT

Kiku carefully made sure her feet were solidly placed on the tree branch and tried not to think of the hard ground so far below. Kuwa held onto her twin sister’s back trying her best not to hinder Kiku’s progress across the canopy of leaves and branches as they tried to put distance between them and the attacking Inugami. Kuwa’s left leg dangled uselessly, her thigh heavily bandaged using material torn from her haori. Fortunately the Inugami iron dart had not punctured an artery nor did it appear to have been poisoned.

“Sister, dear,” Kiku muttered through gritted teeth, “perhaps you might consider not eating so many rice balls in the future.”

“We are high enough in the tree the Inugami cannot see us through the branches and leaves. Unfortunately, we cannot see them either,” Kuwa replied. “Still, we are well out of the range of their darts while they are still in range of our soul arrows. Please, sister, put me down on this branch. We can make a stand here.”

Kiku made her way closer to the trunk and allowed Kuwa to stand on her one good leg. She took a moment to massage her throat where Kuwa had wrapped her arms for support. “Do you see them?”

Kuwa carefully looked over the branch toward the ground below. “No. Nothing. I think they may have gone up to the haiden.”

Kiku clenched her fist in useless frustration. “Sen and Chiyo will need our help. How many Inugami did you see, sister?”

”Nine,” Kuwa said. “I saw nine when they charged the human. I know we struck two of them down.”

“But they are not dead. Their soul stones were fractured so they have lost the source of their magic. Our soul arrows went through them, but they will shake off the paralysis quickly enough.”

The two kitsune looked at each other.

“Kuwa, you must stay. I cannot carry you, but I must help defend Inari’s Mirror.”

Kuwa clutched the trunk and eased herself into position where she could straddle the large branch, one leg and two tails dangling on one side and her wounded leg and her two other tails on the other. “Yes, sister, you must go. And with Inari’s help, I will try to see if I can find a vantage point that will allow me to deal with any spirit dogs I see. They will not leave the shrine with the Mirror if I can help it.” With that, she worked her bow out of her torn haori and, with prayer beads in her one hand, she closely inspected her bow so Kiku would not see her tears. Within moments, Kiku was swallowed up by the branches and leaves as she made her way across the treetops toward the hoiden.

Progress Report on The Shrine War

Presently up to 7,235 words.

I started off with five Kitsune defending their Shinto shrine against an invading force of 10 Inugami. At this point, I have three Kitsune left taking on about six spirit dogs and one human being freaking out over what is essentially a yōkai war.

Writing action scenes is not a strength of mine, but here in its unedited form is one of the latest. An Inugami has rendered Hoso, the youngest of the Kitsune shrine maidens, unconscious in a surprise attack, stolen her clothes, and used magic to create an illusion to look like her. Sneaking into the shrine's oratory, the Inugami has been able to get close enough to Sen, the head of the shrine maidens, to attack her.

Sen shifted to her right and the katana blade slid harmlessly across her chest, creating a slit across her kimono jacket as testimony to its keen edge. She continued in a spin and thrust Hoso away before she could twist the blade and use it in a circular cut.

“Hoso!” Sen cried. “Cease!” But then Sen stopped in surprise.

Hoso’s eyes were brown. Whatever stood before her had eyes of amethyst.

“Die, fox!” the creature spat and the voice was not Hoso’s but that of an Inugami. It shifted the katana in her hand, brought it above her head, and charged.

Again, Sen moved aside in the nick of time, a ribbon fluttering to the ground from her hair to show how close she had come to being cloven in two. Spinning in place, she brought up her paws, her prayer beads entwined amongst her fingers and glowing azure.

Before the Inugami could bring her sword up for a counterstrike, Sen’s fingers wove a complex mudra, her fingers entwining in the beads. A blast of blue energy struck her enemy, flinging what appeared to be Hoso into a screen. The delicate screen shattered into splinters destroying the priceless painting it framed.

Immediately, Sen’s attacker stood and shook off the effects of the blast. The attack had removed the illusion and Sen felt an overwhelming mixture of grief and fury to see an Inugami wearing Hoso’s shrine maiden attire.

Again, Sen’s fingers twisted the prayer chain within a complex dance of her fingers and suddenly an oni, a Japanese yōkai composed of pale, blue fire, stood before her. Sen pointed at the Inugami who assumed a fighting stance.

“I forbid you to shed blood in the hoiden,” she said to the oni between gritted teeth. “Humble it and remove its reason.” With a scream from the Inugami and a roar from the oni, they charged each other.

Reading The Shrine War For Critique

Last night I did a dramatic reading of the first 4,200 words of The Shrine War for two editors.

It was humbling, embarrassing, and exciting and informative at the same time. This morning, I went over the manuscript and made some excellent changes. Here's one paragraph they had me rewrite, but the result creates a much better mental visual of an Inugami (loosely translated as dog spirit), a legendary Japanese yōkai:

She was an anthropomorphic dog that stood on two legs, a Kishu Inu transformed into an Inugami by a black and evil magic. The long, ebony-colored, unkempt hair on her head spilled over her muzzled face and shoulders, in sharp contrast to the dirty white fur and bright, amethyst-colored eyes. She wore a sarashi, a long strip of cotton cloth tightly binding her breasts. A fundoshi, a traditional loincloth, served as a token to modesty. Over her undergarments, she wore a short, open kimono, stained and travel-worn; a  brown sash tied around her waist held a sheathed katana. Around her neck on a heavy chain lay a jet black polished stone, a contrast against her white-furred chest.

“It comes dressed as a man,” Chiyo muttered.

“She comes dressed as a warrior,” Sen quietly replied.

I think you can easily visualize her now and, needless to say, everything is still in rough form. Compared to revision, writing is the easy part and for me revision never stops until I come to the point where I'm just pushing words around.

The Shrine War: A Progress Report

Currently only up to 2,570 words because of the amount of research needed to portray life realistically in a Japanese Shinto shrine. I find myself doing copious amounts of reading on shrine architecture, shrine maiden clothing, and other odds and ends to add a realistic dimension to the work.

On a Facebook group I run for writers of genre literature, I wrote:

To add historical credence to a present work in progress, I just spent over an hour trying to find the name of the brassier women wore in feudal Japan. Does that make me a writer or simply barking insane? It's called a sarashi by the way.

Fortunately, I have been a huge fan of eastern cinema and watched enough Japanese samurai films to add some interesting scenes, but this segment that takes place after the Inugami envoy leaves after making some brutal and impossible demands to the shrine kitsune still took me a good hour to craft:

Chiyo nodded, her jaw tight and her eyes grim. “They will not obtain the mirror, sister. Not tonight. Not ever.” She reached into the left sleeve of her haori and pulled out a folded fan. With a flick of her wrist, it sprang open with a metallic whisper to reveal itself as a Japanese war fan, it’s edge honed to razor sharpness. “I have not used my tessen in years past counting, but should the dogs attempt to enter the honden…” Chiyo spun the fan in her furred fingers, its deadly edge splitting the air with a fearsome hiss and blurring from the speed of its movement as she expertly guided it through a simple exercise. In her left hand, her prayer beads began to glow with a dull azure light, Then with a sudden movement she flicked the fan closed with a sharp click and the prayer beads immediately once again took on the appearance of simple tiny ceramic and wooden balls strung on a hempen cord. Chiyo slid her tessen back up her sleeve. 

With dignity, the sisters bowed to each other and Chiyo left Sen standing alone in the hoiden.

 I'm glad the deadline for the work is October. It may actually take me that long.

The Shrine War: Opening Scene

What follows is a rough draft of the opening scene of a story I am currently writing for an anthology for editor Fred Patten. I have never been to Japan and I have never been to a Shinto shrine. I regret I have never met a kitsune and I am rather certain I will go to my grave never having had the pleasure.

But this is the enjoyment of writing fantasy: to communicate exotic pictures to the reader's imagination using only the power of the written word. I do hope I dance close to succeeding. Please remember that this is a rough draft and everything is subject to change.

The Shrine War

by Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

“Sen-sama? The sisters have gathered in the oratory as you have ordered.” In the dim light before dawn, an observer would have seen the forms of two young women. Each wore the traditional garb of a Shinto shrine maiden: long, red skirts bound with an obi, a white kimono jacket, and white hair ribbons and ivory combs tying back long, waxed hair.

“Well done, Hoso-san. Arigato.” For a moment, they watched the sun rise above the horizon beyond Mount Tomuraushi. As the growing light illuminated the mountain’s summit, what little mid-summer snow remained glowed with a brilliant radiance. On the lower slopes, the small hardy bushes and wildflowers turned the slopes a verdant green.

As the gloom dissipated in the growing warmth of morning, sunlight reflected from the eyes of the two watchers, eyes that were brown and a fitting shade and shape to match the white-furred, fox-like faces of the pair.

“You enjoy watching the sunrise, do you not?” Hoso asked.

Sen remained silent for a moment and Hoso wondered if her superior had heard her, but after a pause, Sen slowly nodded her head. “If the weather allows, I have not missed a sunrise in the five centuries I have been here at the shrine.”

Hoso stared with envy at Sen’s nine tails, one for each century of her life and the greatest number a Kitsune could acquire. For a moment, and not for the first time, Hoso regretted her youth. Only two tails emerged from a cleverly designed slit in the back of her skirt and Hoso had seven more centuries to go before she could enjoy Sen’s status and glory.

Ashamed of her jealousy, Hoso bowed to Sen, her furred hands with their dainty claws sliding down the front of her thighs as she bowed. “We will await you, Sen-sama, but I humbly ask that you not tarry. The Inugami emissary will be here soon.” With that, she turned and left.

Sen watched as the risen sun turned Mount Tomuraushi into a brilliant and shining beacon, and wondered if today would be her last opportunity to revel in the gift of a new day. She turned to see the sun gleaming off the red-tiled roof of the hodon. Surrounded by its protective bamboo wall, the hoden served as the most sacred part of the shrine where Inari's mirror stood in glory and splendor, primal and serene. In front of the hodon, stood the haiden, the public oratory where her sisters waited. All around her, the peace of the shrine lay inviolate, but Sen feared it would not be so for long. An invading force of the Inugami was coming. The emissary only served as a pretense of peace. With a shake of her head, she turned to walk up the tiled sandō to join her sisters.

Anthology Editor Fred Patten Accepts My Story "To the Reader ..."

Anthology editor, Fred Patten emailed me Monday, May 2nd with the following good news:

Congratulations! (The anthology) Gods With Fur has closed (to submissions), and your "To the Reader ..." has been chosen for publication. The anthology will go on sale at Anthrocon in Pittsburgh on June 30.

I'm always delighted and honored to have any of my work appear in a Patten anthology. He has a fine literary ear and his ability to assemble a good anthology has been honed from years of practical experience.

"To the Reader ..." is a 200-word piece of flash fiction and will be the opening story of the anthology.

Here are the opening three paragraphs. Purchase the anthology after June 30th for more:

And so you have found me.
 
What? After all this searching, you hesitate? You draw back? You searched for a god and now you have found one and yet you clutch your electric torch in fear.

Is it that I wear the mundane form of a fox? Or maybe you searched for a god of greater power, one who does more than sit in some great underground labyrinth surrounded by books and scrolls and clay tablets?

Faydra: A Tale From the Fractured World

I can write anything I want, but I can't write everything I want. At the age of 61 where a short story can take as much as three months, my time is limited. Here is part of a story I am shelving and thought you might enjoy the opening paragraphs.

Faydra: A Tale From the Fractured World,

by Alan Loewen

ROUGH DRAFT

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

I’m going to tell you how I met Faydra, but I really should start at the beginning. I’ll follow the advice the King of Hearts gave the White Rabbit: 'Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: Then stop.'

Those of us born on what we arrogantly call Earth Prime all remember where we were when the Fracture occurred a good decade ago. Those of us who survived it of course.

I sat in the kitchen of the home I had been born twenty two years previously, freshly graduated from Penn State, and waiting for the job offers to just come rolling in. I had just hung up the phone after speaking to my parents who called me with last minute house sitting instructions before they boarded their cruise ship and I had just made myself the perfect sandwich for my lunch: minced bologna, real mayonnaise, a layer of sweet bread and butter pickles, and a few leaves of lettuce. And then the lights went out literally and figuratively.

I miss that sandwich so much.

When I came to, I lay on the kitchen floor looking over at Hypatia, my Sheltie, licking her lips, her breath smelling of minced bologna, real mayonnaise...well, you get the picture.

I had no idea why I blacked out and still feeling a little queasy in the stomach, I felt no hurry in getting up. I thought that I would just lay still for awhile and then see about maybe getting to a phone, crawling if I had to, and getting an ambulance to come take a look at me. The Biglerville Fire Department only had to travel one mile to get to my house, close enough that on days when the wind didn’t blow I could easily hear the siren calling volunteer firefighters and EMTs to some fire or medical emergency.

I’m convinced the shock of passing out is why I didn’t hear the screaming right away. I lay on the floor considering it, confusing it at first for the Biglerville fire siren, but the siren never paused for breath.

Somebody somewhere was having a hard time and after a few moments I thought I better look into it because the screaming just went on and on.

Carefully, I got up on my hands and knees and when my gut stopped flip-flopping, I crawled to the dining room picture window and took a peek outside.

The human mind has some very elaborate mechanisms for protection, so I could not take in all that I saw right away.

My mind first registered my next door neighbor, Miss Pitzer standing on her lawn with a push mower beside her. Facing away from me, I could not see the reason for her pointing in the direction of her house and screaming until my mind decided to do the great reveal.

Miss Pitzer’s house wasn’t there. In it’s place, stretching as far as I could see stood a forest with trees that would have made the California Redwoods look like twigs.

Standing behind the picture window I craned my head up to see if I could see the treetops, but no go on that plan. Just one of those trees would have met the world’s demand for toothpicks for millennia.

I rubbed my eyes a couple of times, and then made the decision to stand. After a while, with the help of the window ledge, I made it to my feet and after a few moments started feeling better. Tentative steps seemed to work so I went to the back door and with Hypatia at my heels, opened the back door into madness.

Miss Pitzer ignored me as I went to stand next to her. Not knowing what to say to her, I just stared at what must have been a primal wood that would have made Paul Bunyan drool.

The sharpness of the division between her lawn and the wood looked like it had been made with a cookie cutter. Not knowing what had happened to Miss Pitzer’s house or how a wood with giant trees had taken its place, I thought a phone call to 911 would be in order.

And my cell phone would not connect.

Of course it took seven years of suffering and fighting and trying to keep one’s sanity before we ever learned what had happened. When life reached some form of stability, that’s when we discovered the huge crater eighteen miles in circumference beneath the France-Switzerland border near Geneva where the Large Hadron Collider once lay.

The eggheads think a power surge made the universe go flip flop and about twenty three parallel earths became fractured and got all messed up like a jigsaw puzzle.

Now I know you know all this, but I’m telling the story and I’ll get to Faydra eventually. Just let me tell the story my own way.

All I know now is that a forest from some parallel earth ended up as my neighbor and on some other planet in some other universe, Miss Pitzer’s house and her yappy Pekingese sits without Miss Pizer in residence.

I miss my parents.

I miss my minced bologna sandwiches.

The shame that I did not help my next door neighbor is sometimes overwhelming, but does it help if I say I had a bad case of shock? Especially after the sun set and that big spiral galaxy filled up half the night sky and the truth hit hard that we weren’t in the world that we knew anymore. I never saw Miss Pitzer ever again. I never even knew when she stopped screaming. I just hope she’s okay.

Of course, we were lucky. Biglerville found itself surrounded by three other chunks of real estate from three other parallel earths: the primal wood, New Rome (that’s what we call it) where Romans discovered the New World but never grew beyond the Iron Age, and finally, Faydra’s world that we still call Disneyland to this day. Of course, I wasn’t going to meet Faydra for another eight years, but like I said, this is my story to tell. I’ll tell it the way I want.

Anyway, after my fellow small town residents and I endured the initial shock of being plunged back to the 19th century and its lack of electricity and Internet and video games and television and all the other toys that kept us busy, the only joy we had was to discover a world where basically peaceful red pandas lived and walked like human beings.

So New Rome gave us goverment and leadership, Biglerville still had working farmlands and orchards, and once we learned the red pandas weren’t murderous, they kept us sane with their inquisitive friendship.

Unfortunately, some of the parallel Earths that bordered New Rome and Disneyland weren’t very friendly, but unlike the Iron Age Romans and the peaceful red pandas, we of Earth Prime were fortunate. We had guns.

New Rome had to deal with a bordering Earth that would have made H.P. Lovecraft giddy with joy, but the monsters there were not like their literary or cinema cousins. When you shot them, they obediently lay down and assumed room temperature.

Connecting to Disneyland was another world of humans that bore some philosophical crossbreeding between Ayn Rand and Kim Jong-un, but as they had not fought a war in their world for centuries, they could not put up to much of a fight. The pandas just stood aside and let us play target practice. Once we removed the old guard, New Rome stepped in to teach them their version of a Roman Republic and that world seems to be doing better.

It took the better part of seven years for the Fractured World to reach a form of stability, seven years of a lot of wars and a lot of death. The number of suicides from Internet deprivation alone almost wiped out an entire generation.

Ecologically, it will be hundreds of millennia before our new Fractured Earth reaches some form of natural homoeostasis, but until then, we do the best we can. So far, a decade after the Fracture, we’ve catalogued about twenty-three different versions of Earth.

So here we are, a decade after the Fracture and I’m working for Knouse Foods on a plan to expand the orchards into Disneyland when there’s a knock on the door.

And here is where I finally get around to telling you about Faydra.

Rejoice With Me!

The first draft of Strange Streets is completed, all 4,900+ words of it.

Now I shall let it sit and age like a mellow wine and in a week or so I will revisit it and begin the harder work of revision and editing.

I have published some excerpts from the work and you can read them here, here, and here in that order.

And stay tuned. On Thursday, January 7th I am going to be doing a public reading of Strange Streets  for some fellow authors and if you live in south-central Pennsylvania, I would like to invite you to the event.

So stay tuned. It's going to be fun.