All is Well

Day 14 and a contribution from my storytelling blog. That particular blog On The Broken Road has been rather quiet over the last year as most of my story rather than poetry efforts have been focused on a larger fiction project. This is in addition to battling to complete my poetry collection Wreckage and my academic endeavours. This is why I really admire all of you attempting NaPoWriMo (and succeeding I hope) for not only having the belief in your ability to write that number of words but also sticking to the one project. Because while I am getting much better at completing drafts of stories and poems, I can never guarantee I’ll be working on the same thing two days in a row. To prove it here is a poem based on a character and location from a story.

On the Broken Road

photo credit: Michelle Hebert | Art & Fashion 2008. Menacing Garden via photopin(license)

I’m a coffee addict and a guilty pleasure for me is to sit in a coffee shop relaxing. I usually try to justify this downtime by doing some work while I’m there.

Today I was actually meant to be revising for an exam though (which is another story). I could not settle though, perhaps I was too much on tenterhooks waiting for an expected phone call to concentrate but the study juices were not flowing. So I put down my text book and picked up the story that began here as Watchers. I have written before about the combination of caffeine and creativity (Misbehaving) but today for some reason I could not seem to get up and running.

When Watchers first started it came over to me at least that the writing was direct and…

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Fortune Hunter

Day 30 and to round off my review with another tale from On the Broken Road…

On the Broken Road

photo credit: vk-red good night princess via photopin(license)

She had silver in her hair and when I first saw her they had tied her to a tree and were mining their fortune from her as the metal, the equal of anything you would have found buried in the Mountains of Ahl, grew in shimmering waterfalls that flowed down her back.

I bartered with them for her eventually securing the bargain with aid of cold steel and leaving the five goblins dead, I fled the glade with my hard won prize.

I felt that I had traded the last halfpenny of my humanity in order to possess her.

© 2016 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

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Leaving No One Alive To Light Them Again

Day 3 of my review of the year and another tale from On the Broken Road

On the Broken Road

photo credit: The Abbey via photopin(license)

Once we were a dynasty that ruled an empire that stretched from the Crescent Bay to the foothills of the diamond encrusted Mountains of Ahl. We were feted; we were emulated; we were feared.
Whole populations committed unspeakable crimes on their neighbours to amuse us and armies marched on hopeless quests just for the opportunity to die in our service. We prospered, setting ourselves up as rivals to the gods, building palaces in the sky upon the skulls of the vanquished.
Then came the plague, the lower classes died first, the poor and enslaved. We thought they died for our amusement as we continued our laughter and feasting, peering down from out of our high towers at the circling vultures and bloated bodies that were carried away by a river that flowed red with the peoples blood.
But as we slept on in…

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How to Satisfy a Dragon

Day 2 of my review of the year and a tale about Dragons from my other blog – On the Broken Road

On the Broken Road

photo credit: Look into my eye via photopin(license)

Thomas stared directly into the eye of the dragon and the dragon stared back, unblinkingly at him.
Thomas knew he was responsible for his own predicament, as a long reptilian tongue snaked in through the open bedroom window – Thomas imagined the dragon’s tongue could taste his fear, the dragon salivating at the thought of eating Thomas down whole.
Because that was what the dragon had said “I like to taste their fear, it makes them so much juicier.” when Thomas had first summoned it and asked it to eat his stepmother.
Now as Thomas lay in bed his eiderdown pulled tight around him as the dragon’s tongue gently brushed his cheek. He realised that he should have made sure before he began whether one stepmother alone was enough to satisfy a dragon.

© 2015 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

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Embers

Let us kick off the Review 30 for November with the opening chapter of something I’ve been working on; other than world domination.

Made of sticks and stones

As I said at the beginning of the week I have been working hard on a new project. This has developed out of the final exam project for the University module I completed in the last academic year; a small idea that has grown and grown, this is its beginning.

photo credit: Phoenix rising, with babies via photopin(license)

Chapter 1

A shout from one of her clan sisters brought her back to the moment. All the clans were coming together, flying south. She had never seen so many of her own kind before, eighty at least and more shapes appeared on the horizon all the time and slowly coalesced into the distinctive shape of more lizard birds.

Most were brown like her family. Some were grey, the winter sun glinting silver off of gleaming plumage, while others still appeared to sparkle an iridescent blue, light dripping on to their feathers…

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The sun got lost

photo credit: Inner corona and prominences via photopin (license)

The goblins got the blame when the sun failed to rise. Alderman Pickering, said that they had leaned a really long ladder up against the mountain during the night and plucked the sun straight out of the sky as it was rising.

Mr Hobson the village butcher said that was nonsense and it was more likely that one of the fisherman out on the far ocean had caught the sun’s reflection in their net, dragging the reflection down under the water where it was sunk and lost forever. Without a reflection, so Mr Hobson said, the sun would just not be able to shine anymore.

Then there were others who reckoned the sun was tired, shining looked such hard work after all and it would be back in a day or two after it had had a little rest.

But I knew it would never be back. For how could the sun shine down ever again, for last night you said that you did not love me but loved someone else.

© 2015 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

Leaving no one alive to light them again

Day 18 of the 30 Reblogs of November and a story that I look at in a new light now that the scourge of Ebola has reared its head.

Made of sticks and stones

Once we were a dynasty that ruled an empire that stretched from the Crescent Bay to the foothills of the diamond encrusted Mountains of Ahl. We were feted; we were emulated; we were feared.

Whole populations committed unspeakable crimes on their neighbours to amuse us and armies marched on hopeless quests just for the opportunity to die in our service. We prospered, setting ourselves up as rivals to the gods, building palaces in the sky upon the skulls of the vanquished.

Then came the plague, the lower classes died first, the poor and enslaved. We thought they died for our amusement as we continued our laughter and feasting, peering down from out of our high towers at the circling vultures and bloated bodies that were carried away by a river that flowed red with the peoples blood.

But as we slept on in drunken stupor the pestilence crept up the…

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Going cheap – Sunday morning somewhere in England

Day 8 of the 30 Reblogs of November and a piece written with the blog specifically in mind.

Made of sticks and stones

I found North America for sale at a car boot sale. In a box together with some old CDs and a one armed tiny-tears doll. The old man selling it said he would chuck in a pair of cowboy boots (size seven and a half) and a moth-eaten kiss-me-quick hat, all for a fiver. But I was not sure, what did I need with a continent. I was tempted though, as the boots were my size, and I told him I would think about it.

‘Don’t be long,’ he shouted after me, ‘I’ve already sold Africa this morning and I’ve got this Russian interested in Antarctica!’

I mulled over my potential purchase as I walked about that field in the spring sunshine, the tinny sound of Showaddywaddy blasted out from a car stereo “Under the moon of love,” they sang, to the accompaniment of an approaching ice-cream van playing Greensleeves.

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Embers

As I said at the beginning of the week I have been working hard on a new project. This has developed out of the final exam project for the University module I completed in the last academic year; a small idea that has grown and grown, this is its beginning.

photo credit: Phoenix rising, with babies via photopin (license)

Chapter 1

A shout from one of her clan sisters brought her back to the moment. All the clans were coming together, flying south. She had never seen so many of her own kind before, eighty at least and more shapes appeared on the horizon all the time and slowly coalesced into the distinctive shape of more lizard birds.

Most were brown like her family. Some were grey, the winter sun glinting silver off of gleaming plumage, while others still appeared to sparkle an iridescent blue, light dripping on to their feathers like raindrops. While out front, leading them all, a white queen bird flew.

The Usurper

We’ll call this Day 5.5 of the 30 Reblogs of November shall we…

Made of sticks and stones

I opened the door to a stranger. I could tell he was not local due to the bluish tinge to his face which obscured his features and the severed head that he held up by the hair in his left hand. I recognised the severed head immediately for it was my brother.

I had not seen my brother for over thirty years and time had not been kind to him. There were maggots where his eyes once had been and bluebottles crawled leisurely in and out of his mouth.

“Darius,” the stranger spoke, though the voice was that of my brother “it is time for you to come join me beneath the green valleys where the River Styx flows.”

“You are mistaken.” I replied shaking my head “The deal was signed with blood; yours, your children, our Mother and Father. My victory in battle and life assured for your blood…

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