Category Archives: fanfic

Fee Fie Faux

So I stumbled across this thing recently…

Even if you’re not a fan of Neil Gaiman, it’s worth watching. If you are a fan, it’s hugely funny. And if you’ve listened to Neil’s Audiobooks as much as I have (Which is to say obsessively) the above video is AMAZING.

My third time watching it, I started wondering, “Could we do something like this, but for my writing?”

At first I dismissed the thought as silly. For one thing, I don’t have Gaiman’s gorgeous voice and accent. I don’t think my writing style is as distinctive as his, either.

But the idea kept tickling at me. And the truth is, when I go to conventions, or events, or signings, I’m always looking for fun, bite-sized things I can read in front of a crowd.

So I’m finally saying “What the hell” and giving it a try. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t. But if it does work, this could be a lot of fun. I could read a couple on the JocoCruise next week, or when I’m out at Gencon. If nothing else, I’ll read the best of them on my twitch channel so everyone can see them, then upload them to youtube later for archival purposes.

So… yeah. If this is something that appeals to you, give me your best Bad Rothfuss style piece of writing in the form below. It should be NO MORE THAN 1800 characters (which is around 300 words).

I know. I know. How can you satirize my effluvient verbosity in only 300 words? Well… I don’t know. Maybe you’ll just have to pick some other element of my style to lovingly satirize. All I know is that if I don’t put a cap on these, we’ll end up with several hundred thousand words submitted and this will go from a fun little activity to a horrifying millstone around my neck. (And by my neck, I mean Amanda’s neck. Because she’s one of the folks who will be helping to winnow these down.)

Anyway. Be aware that the form is set to cut you off before you start to bloviate. What’s more, I let Amanda write her own sassy response that will pop up as an error if you go over the character count.

We’ve included a place in there for your name and e-mail, too. That way, I can give you credit if I read yours….

So… yeah. Here you go. I’m curious to see what comes in, and read some of them in my best audio narrator voice….

Take care of each other,

pat

Also posted in Consistent Verb Tense Is For Bitches, cool things, dicking around, talking shit, the craft of writing, The difference between 'slim' and 'slender' | By Pat58 Responses

Suvudu Cage Match: Felurian vs Death

Last month I made a blog post about Felurian being in the Suvudu cage match this year. Since then, she’s defeated Johana Mason and Sabriel.

Last week’s match up was against Susan Sto-Helit from Discworld. The voting was pretty insane, and for the vast majority of the time it was closer than a percentage point.

Cage Match2

(A lot of times the gap was was less than two-tenths of a percent.)

In my first blog, I mentioned that I wanted to write the scene where Felurian went up against Death. But honestly, the more I thought of it, the more I appreciated the thought of Felurian going up against Susan, Death’s granddaughter.

I knew I could probably win the match by posting about it on social media, but I wanted to see who would win the vote without my interference. If I won, I wanted to it to be an honest victory.

Days passed, the voting went back and forth. Then I had an idea. Several ideas. Several ideas that fit together in an interesting way.

The technical term for this series of interlocking ideas is called “Story.”

But to write that story, I had to be in control of things, so I made a Facebook post letting people know we only had a few hours, and that I knew what I wanted to write. Suddenly, things changed.  And by the next morning…

CageMatchFinal

So I won by brute force. But I got to have my way. I now had the right to write the final match.

But to do that, I needed to write the Felurian Vs. Susan match so that it turned out the way I wanted it. It’s a prolouge to the final match.

And here it is:

*     *     *

Imagine, if you will, nothing. An endless expanse of void. A swath of blackness that cannot help but boggle the mind with how huge and cold and empty it is.

Now, in this vasty nothing, imagine a turtle. It moves through the emptiness with slow grace. A lonely swimmer in an endless star-flecked sea.

Atop that turtle’s ancient, comet-pocked shell stand four elephants. They are huge as moons. On their broad and patient backs they carry an entire world.

These things exist. They are as real as you and I. In many ways, they are more real.

Atop the elephants’ backs rests a world that is flat and round as a disc. All round its edge oceans pour endlessly out into the empty dark of space.

It is magic that renews the endlessly falling oceans. But it is science that catches the tumbling water, fans it out. It forms droplets. It evaporates. Sublimates.

It’s here, where science and magic rub shoulders with each other that something ordinary and wonderful happens. The slow, heavy sunlight of this unlikely world touches the falling water. And this world, these elephants, this turtle, (whose name is A’Tuin) are all gilded with a crown of rainbows.

This is just as it should be. It has always been this way. It will always be this way.

*     *     *

It was night on the surface of the Discworld. Under the stars there was a hill, on the hill, a clearing, and in the clearing, a single standing stone.

The hill wasn’t particularly remarkable, neither was the clearing. The standing stone was remarkable, but only so long as the remark was something along the lines of, “Why can’t I count that stone when it’s obviously the only stone there?”

Aside from this, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about this time or place. The crescent moon provided a thin, silvery light. It hung slender in the sky, just above the horizon. That, at least, lent a bit of drama to the scene. It was a nice effect, if you went in for that sort of thing.

Susan Sto Helit stood at the edge of the clearing. She did not go in for this sort of thing. She had been standing there for the better part of an hour, half-hidden in the shadows. Her feet hurt, and the moon was increasingly irritating to her.

It was, she had decided, a little too slender, a little too foreboding. It hung the perfect distance off the horizon. Nice enough at first glance, but when you spent some time looking at it, you couldn’t help but feel like it was trying a little too hard.

It was a portentous moon. It was perilously close to being mythic. You couldn’t trust a moon like that….

*     *     *

Felurian stepped out from behind the standing stone and walked into the clearing. She was pale and slender. Her hair was long and dark, and it fell as sharply as a shadow or a knife.

You could say she was skyclad. That is the sort of thing that people tend to say. But perhaps it would be better to say that she was as naked as the moon, and just as bashful, which is to say she seemed perfectly comfortable where she was, as she was. She stood in the clearing as if she owned it, as if it were her home.

Susan stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the trees and walked to meet her. She wore a long dress and sensible boots. Her hair was pulled back tight against her head. The white of it shone silver in the moonlight, save for a single stripe of black. She carried a fireplace poker loosely in one hand, the dark iron of it almost invisible against the dark of the night.

Felurian nodded to Susan politely. “you received My message,” she said. Her voice oddly muted, oddly soft, but clear, as if spoken close to Susan’s ear. “and you have come. My thanks.”

“I have,” Susan said. “Though why you would pick this place is beyond me. It’s the end of nowhere.”

Felurian gave an odd smile, her head tilting to one side, “what are time and space to creatures such as you and I?”

Susan pursed her lips at this, as if she wanted to take issue with the word creature, then let it pass. She sighed instead. “Very well. If we’re going to fight, let’s get it over with. It’s chilly out, and I have a class to teach tomorrow morning.”

Felurian gently shook her head, her long hair spilling over one shoulder as she did so. “that is not what I came for,” she said. “that is not what I desire.”

Susan gave an indelicate sniff at that. “I am not here for your desire,” she said with a bit of an edge to her voice.

It was quiet for a moment in the clearing. Felurian’s dark eyes narrowed briefly before she spoke again. “I have heard tell of you,” she said, her tone slow and measured.  “it is said you have a knack for seeing truth beneath the surface of a thing.”

Susan’s head lifted a little at that. Her expression wasn’t proud, exactly. But there was something close to pride there. A self-certainty as hard and practical as… well, as a fireplace poker. “I do,” she said.

“and thus I come to you.” Felurian said, “I leave the safety of my forest glade. I come before you all unarmed and unafraid.”

“And naked.”

Felurian looked down at herself, then up again, her expression blithe. “even so,” she said politely, as if Susan had made a particularly dull observation about the weather. “is that all that you can see? is what I heard so wrong?”

Susan felt her face go hot at the reproach.

“if you have skill at seeing, look at Me,” Felurian said, spreading her arms wide to her sides. “am I some tawdry thing? am I a beast consumed with nothing more than lust? am I mere brightness with no spark beneath?”

Susan’s expression grew serious, and she went still. No… it wasn’t that she was motionless. It’s more that she seemed to be more present than before. As if she were more there. As if, compared to her, nothing else was quite real.

She turned to look at Felurian, her eyes like distant stars. “NO,” she said thoughtfully. “YOU ARE MUCH MORE THAN THAT.””indeed,” Felurian said. If she were at all discomfited by the change that had come over Susan she did not show it. “if it were mere advantage that I sought, there are many things I could have brought. I could pull the very sky around me like a mantle and grasp the crescent moon as if it were a sickle blade.”

Susan watched as Felurian spoke in her gentle, edgeless voice. She said the words without any particular emphasis. Without any threat or menace. Honestly, Susan would have preferred if the faerie woman had put a little thunder in her voice. She knew what to do when mythic creatures started grandstanding. Nine times out of ten a ding round the ear with a poker set everything to rights, and most of the rest you could safely ignore.

“so.” Felurian’s tone was infuriating, and it took Susan a moment to realize why. It was the same tone Susan herself used with her students when they were being particularly slow. “what do you see? why would I come thus to your lands? all unadorned with nothing in my hands?”

Susan drew a breath and let it out again. Pushing her irritation aside, the answer was blindingly clear. “Because you are not here to fight,” she said. She did not say the rest of what she thought: Because you are not afraid of me.

“just so,” Felurian said, smiling.

Susan looked down at the iron poker in her hand, feeling oddly embarrassed for bringing it along. She almost tossed it aside, then stopped herself. There was a big difference between feeling foolish and being a fool. “What are you here for then, if not to fight?” she asked.

“discourse,” Felurian said with a playful smile. “if we two fight, there will be a victor, and the victor will move on to fight the lady Death.”

“I know a few things about death,” Susan said dryly.

“Then you know it will not be an easy fight for either of us to win,” Felurian said.

Susan looked for a moment as if she might protest, then she seemed to think better of it and nodded instead.

“there is a different way,” Felurian said. “it is my area of expertise.”

Susan bit back her first response to this. “And what expertise is that?” she asked, doing her best to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

Felurian smiled then for the first time. A wide, delighted smile. It was white and sharp and slender as the moon.

“partnership,” Felurian said.

*     *     *

First off, can I just mention how absolutely terrifying it was to write something like this?

I’ve been sweating blood over these two scenes for almost a week now. When I first thought of the idea for this story, I thought it would be fun. And honestly, it was fun. But it was also amazingly nerve-wracking. Writing something that even lightly touches Pratchett and Gaiman’s work and worlds… I feel like a little kid putting on his daddy’s shoes and clomping around the house.

But it was fun. It’s something I probably never would have dared if the timing had turned out differently and Terry Pratchett hadn’t passed away recently. I hope people realize I don’t write this lightly, or with anything resembling mockery. Writing these was an act of love, and therefore terrifying and embarassing in various degrees.

To see the second, somewhat longer piece, you can head over to the Suvudu website. And after you read it, you can vote on who you think should be the final winner.

Later everyone,

pat

Also posted in appearances | By Pat107 Responses

My First Fanfiction, With Apologies to Terry Pratchett

Back in the long ago. Back in the beforetimes. Back when I didn’t even know there was such a thing as fanfiction, I wrote fanfiction.

It was in 1992. I was 19, and while it was my third semester in college, I think I was still technically a freshman because I kinda sucked at being a student. I was in an Introduction to Creative Writing class.

(Interesting fact: Brett was also in this class. That’s how long I’ve known him.)

Half of the class was prose, which suited me to a T. Because I was still working on the dreaded High School Novel, which I was convinced was awesome, even though it was actually pure shit.

The other half of the class was poetry. Which I’d dabbled with, but never really taken a serious stab at.

At this point, I’d already read a fair number of Terry Pratchett’s books. I know this because when forced to write a poem for this class, I wrote one called “A Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob on The End.”

For those of you familiar with Pratchett, you’ll recognize this as a song that is frequently sung by Nanny Ogg. Usually when she is drunk.

At this point, I would like to formally and profusely apologize to Terry Pratchett.

So I wrote this poem for class. And I turned it in to the teacher. And I got it back with comments.

And when the time came for us to read our work aloud to the class, I read it.

That was more than twenty years ago. And I haven’t read it aloud since then.

But I will read it to you now:

When I read it to the class, it was rather gratifying. Everyone laughed. Everyone laughed and laughed and laughed.

Everyone except for the teacher. She just sat there, confused, and obviously slightly offended. When I was finished, and everyone was still chuckling, she spoke up, raising her voice so the whole class could hear. “Well, you don’t have to take it like that!”

And I remember thinking, “Good lord. If you don’t take it like that, there’s no fucking point to the whole poem. How could can you *not* take it like that?”

True story.

Anyway, there you go folks. One of the many secret shames I posses is secret no longer.

At this point, I would like to repeat, reinforce, and reiterate my apology to Terry Pratchett.

I had to go digging through my old papers to find a copy of this poem. It took a lot of doing, but I found it. It’s truly a document from a different era, a faded dot matrix printout. (For those of you who even remember what a dot matrix is.)

At the urging of the rest of the Worldbuilders team, I’m putting this item up for auction. I don’t know who among you might want evidence of my shameful past. But if you want to give money to charity for it, I won’t stand in your way.

Wizards Staff - shame photo

You can bid here.

Shamefully yours

pat

P.S. If you don’t care to bid on an auction, but would still like to support Worldbuilders, you can donate to our fundraiser here, and get the chance to win some cool books while you’re at it.

P.P.S. Mr. Pratchett. (Sir Pratchett) I know you’ll never see this. But if for some reason this ends up on your radar, I really hope you aren’t offended.

The truth is, you’re my favorite author. Your work amazes me, and I know I will never equal it.

When the world gets to be too much for me, I read your books. And afterwards I can move on with my life again. They remind me that underneath it all, people are fundamentally good. They remind me, that the world, while not perfect, is a pretty great place to live.

Or at the very least, it’s a convenient place for me to keep my stuff.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

pat

Also posted in Worldbuilders 2013 | By Pat56 Responses

My Terrible Surprise – The Dreaded High School Novel

A couple days ago, Mary Robinette Kowal asked if I’d care to donate an act of whimsy to a fundraiser she was planning to Sequence Jay Lake’s Cancer.

I said I’d be happy to, and she put me in as their $17,500 goal, tucked between Scalzi and Gaiman like the ham in a coolness sandwich.

I had a couple ideas for what I could do, but wasn’t sure what would sound best, so I told Mary to put me down for “A terrible surprise.”

I figured I’d have at least a week or two before I had to come up with anything. Plenty of time for me to wrap up my own fundraiser, finish a story I have due, and do my amazingly good Kermit the Frog impression singing Rainbow Connection.

Or maybe I’d dig out my Dr Horrible lab coat and engage in a little mad science on my webcam…

Then Mary launched her fundraiser raised more than 20,000 in a single day.

Which was cool. Don’t get me wrong. But it meant I owed them something whimsical NOW.

Unfortunately, I have a bit of a cold right now, so singing is out. And all my glassware is boxed up in the basement. So I decided I’d post up a poem I wrote twenty years ago when I’d first started reading Terry Pratchett. It was called “A Wizard’s Staff has a Knob on the End.”

Despite the fact that I wrote it ages ago, and I can still remember the first few lines:

Oh wizard’s staffs are long and hard and known throughout the land.
A sight to heed, and fear indeed, is a wizard, staff in hand.
 

It’s everything you’d expect, a long, metrical double entendre. Fanfic I wrote before I knew what fanfic was….

Here’s the problem. I can’t find it. Not in my computer files, and not in the hoarder-esque boxes of old writing I keep squirreled away. Not anywhere.

But I did find something else. A piece of the novel I wrote in high-school.

While it isn’t terribly whimsical in and of itself, I’ll post it up here in a whimsical way, laying open my secret shame for everyone to see.

For you youngsters out there, this is what a dot matrix printout looks like. It’s the closest thing to a cuneiform tablet you’ll ever see.

I started this novel when I was 15-16. It’s the characters are D&D characters created by me and my friends.

This is the start of chapter 4. Don’t worry about being brought into the middle of things. So far the novel has consisted of two flashbacks and a dream sequence. The only action has been our three intrepid adventurers (A barbarian, a dwarf, and a Cat-Man samurai) have moved from one bar to another and  been given a quest by a monk named Dron.

Brace yourselves….

*     *     *

     Lambernath, the all seeing, stood wiping his clean oak bar with his clean, white, linen cloth. As his hand continued it’s unceasing movement it’s owner watched the four figures at the bar and silently gave thanks that there was more to be seeing lately.

     His eyes slowly passed over them all in turn, first the self proclaimed monk, Dron, who had sat waiting at his bar for nearly a week for a band of adventurers to respond to the leaflets that he had posted all over the town. Lambernath knew how anxious he was for help after the many long hours slowly sipping wine in the Cask. Lambernath had known when the trio of adventurers came in that the monk would do everything he could to sign them up.

     Still polishing, Lambernath looked over the dwarf sitting next to Dron. He seemed to be the stereotypical dwarf, his beard was more jet than silver and bristled out from his face and hung down to his waist. His commonplace chain mail hauberk hung to his knees and hooded his head, nothing surprising, as a matter of fact he had seldom seen an adventuring dwarf clad in anything else. His weapons though smaller than the battle axes that so many dwarves preferred were axes nonetheless. His ruddy complexion, fondness of ale, long pointed nose, the swagger and boisterous manner all perfectly dwarven. ‘If I saw him in a room full of mercenaries I wouldn’t notice him at all.’ All of these things viewed together make what a dwarf is expected to be, but it was too perfect and thus suspect.

     Lambernath shook his head as if to clear it, and chastised himself for thinking too much. “Just a dwarf,” he though, “they’ve never been much for originality anyway.”

     Following in dwarven tradition, instead of hammering out the details of the deal Deverax preceded to get hammered.

     Dismissing the dwarf from his mind, the magic user turned his attention to the two oddly matched friends that sat, huddled together. One was dressed in simple leathers, unremarkable except for their size. Occasionally they creaked as Kahn’s muscles bulged when he gestured to emphasize something he was saying. Lambernath strained to hear what they were talking about, but their speech was nonsense, unlike any of the half dozen languages he was fluent in, or another dozen that he could recognize.

     The other’s garb was foreign, and though the eyes of Lambernath the all seeing had beheld many things, they had never seen anything like what the black cloth mask and half cloak hid. His curiosity piqued, he brought to memory every reference to human/animal crossbreeding he could. But nothing matched up. The magic required to make a mating between two different species would be enormous. And the result would probably be much more animal than human. Lycanthropy seemed out too, the change from human to animal was quick and at both human and animal stages the lycanthrope was virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

     After a long moment of deep thought on the subject Lambernath gave it up as another one of the many things that he would probably never know.
The three seemed to be well prepared on the physical side of the adventure, But it was always a good plan to have a cleric or a mage along on an adventure. Or, if you could manage it, both. This group had neither, and aside from the obvious magical benefits that come with a wizardly companion, it was good to have someone along to do the heavy thinking. Fighters never were much good at that.

     “Admit it.” Lambernath said to himself, “You want to go with them, you’ve tried the life of an innkeeper and it bores you!” But another part of him wanted to stay where he was, where it was safe. This part had been stung by the dwarf’s remarks about mages. Meant to goad Dron, the bars had hit home with Lambernath instead. Finally he decided on a course of action, he would make his availability known and wait to see what happened. But they would have to ask him, his wounded pride demanded that much.

     Lambernath turned to the dwarf, obviously the leader of the group. His mind working out the perfect thing to say to him. Something that would suggest his availability without making it seem as if they couldn’t handle the adventure themselves (even though they couldn’t) , something that wouldn’t make it seem as if he really wanted to go (even though he did), and most importantly something to appear to the dwarf’s rough nature. In the second that this took, Lambernath turned to Deverax to find that the dwarf was staring intently at him. Cool and calculating, the dwarf’s icy blue eyes showed no hint of the ale that Lambernath had seen him consume.

     Lambernath started to wonder how long the dwarf had been watching him while he had been watching the dwarf’s friends. The carefully thought out words lay forgotten and unused, indeed useless under that gaze.

     They’ll do just fine without me, Lambernath though. He dropped his eyes to the hand that still polished the bar. He stopped the hand and turned his back on the bar. When he spoke his voice was oddly subdued.

     “More ale, anyone?”

*     *     *

Ahhh…. The terrible commas. The recurrent it’s ~ its mistakes. The obsessive internal monologue. The over-description. The cloying reek of cliche….

Best of all, you should know that Lambernath wasn’t a main character in the book. He wasn’t even a secondary character. He was just the innkeeper. The next day everyone left the inn and you never saw him again. He had no business being a POV character.

Simply said, it’s a train wreck.

Here’s the thing. Am I glad I wrote this book? Were the hundreds of hours I spent slaving away at it worthwhile?

Absolutely.

The whole purpose of your early writing is to make mistakes so you can get them out of your system. That’s what first novels are for.

You can see a few good ideas in there, desperately struggling to raise their heads out of the morass of mistake. I was trying to build mystery. (The cat man was actually a Kensai with a magical curse in his past.) I was trying (and failing) to figure out what a plot was.

And I was trying to show that while the dwarf *looked* cliche, there was something more to him that just a stereotype. It was my first fumbling attempt to twist a genre trope into something fresh and new. Not that I knew what the word “trope” meant back then….

And of course, you can see that Lambernath contains the seeds of a very, very early proto-Kvothe.

 (Photo Courtesy of Deviantart.)

If I hadn’t written that terrible book. If I hadn’t made the pointless decision to have the characters move from one bar to another. If I hadn’t foolishly switched POV to focus on a character that was utterly useless to the story, I might never have written Kvothe. Which pretty much means The Name of the Wind wouldn’t exist.

Anyway, I hope y’all have found this at least slightly amusing. Thanks so much for helping out Jay.

*     *     *

And if any of y’all are still feeling altruistic, you could always check out my fundraiser: Worldbuilders. We’re giving away thousands of books to encourage people to donate to charity.

You can click here if you’re interested in the details.

Also posted in Dr. Horrible, Fuck Cancer, My checkered past, Stories about stories., the craft of writing | By Pat25 Responses

And the Winner is….

Many of you already know that my editor, Betsy Wollheim, was nominated for the Hugo Award  this year. If for no other reason than I talked about it on the blog a couple times.

Guess what happened this Sunday night?

She won.

Thanks to everyone who voted for her, spread the word, or even quietly rooted for her from the sidelines.

The only downside? I wasn’t at the award ceremony. Because I’m an idiot.

You see, I *was* at Worldcon, and I assumed the Hugo Awards were going to be on Saturday night. So when Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub invited me out to Seattle to be on Kris and Scott’s Scott and Kris show on Sunday night, I said, “Sure.”

So while my editor was winning her Hugo. I was in Seattle, catching the tail end of PAX and doing…. well… this:

More details about the show, and a transcript of the Kris’s fanfic are here.

And I’m not saying the show wasn’t fun. Because obviously it was.

And I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy getting to meet Johnathan Coulton out at PAX, because I did. I super did. And I found out he’s read my books, which gives me a happy.

And I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy being in Seattle, visiting the Geek Chic headquarters, having a great signing at the University Bookstore, and having some amazing Thai food.

I’m just saying I wish I could have been there to see the look on Betsy’s face.

More blogs are coming. Big announcements. Cool news.

Stay tuned.

pat

 

Also posted in awards, cool news, videos | By Pat28 Responses

(Fantasy) Avengers Assemble!

I’m busy writing stuff and otherwise being awesome.

So instead of a great wordy blog you get a link to an article on Tor.com where they talk about assembling an avengers-style team out of fantasy characters. I was flattered to see that Kvothe got a spot on the team. That’s some rarified air he’s breathing up there with LOTR, Song of Ice and Fire, and the Princess Bride.

Quite aside from the obvious observation that Kvothe would have to be played by Robert Downy Jr. This list raises some interesting questions.

More to the point, a list like that is fanfic waiting to happen. And I personally wonder who Kvothe would:

1. Buddy up with.

2. End up Fighting in a Dark Knight Returns style grudge match.

(Yeah. Yeah. I know. That’s DC. Shut up.)

3. Rub the wrong way.

4. Rub the right way. (If you know what I mean.)

Feel free to speculate away in the comments below. I know I’m going to….

pat

Also posted in Fantasy, Fucking With You, geeking out | By Pat74 Responses

Suvudu Cage Match….

Two years ago, Suvudu hosted a sci-fi fantasy cage match, where they pitted fictional characters against each other in a tournament style series of one-on-one fights.

It was a cool concept, and it led to interesting match ups like Cthulhu vs Lyra. Cthulhu being an omnipotent elder god from the outer darkness, and Lyra being a plucky 13 year-old girl from Oxford.

Simply said, good times were had.

Kvothe was one of the characters they chose that first year, which was flattering, as back then I only had the one book out, and I was very new to the scene.

Even more surprising was the fact that Kvothe won his first match. Then his second. He made it all the way to the semi-finals after beating  Dumbledore, Garret Jax, and Aslan.

Y’know. Now that I’m thinking of it, I’m going to retroactively award myself an achievement for that. Because it was awesome.

In my opinion, the best part of the cage matches was the fact that Suvudu posted write-ups describing how they thought the fights would settle out.

Even better, they invited the authors to submit their own write-ups, so WE could describe how we thought the fights would go.

I did a write up for Kvothe vs. Aslan, then later did another for Kvothe vs. Jamie. It was the most fun I’d had writing in a long time. At that point in my life, trapped under the crushing weight of book two, it reminded me that writing could actually be fun….

*     *     *

Fast forward to today. Suvudu is running another tournament, and this time Bast is one of the players….

The Suvudu Cage Matches have been going for a couple weeks. I’ve been meaning to mention them here on the blog for a while, but I’ve been busier than usual lately, so I’m only now getting around to it.

Bast’s first opponent was Seregil, from Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series.

I read the first two books of Lynn’s series and liked them. But in addition to being busy, I really wasn’t able to come up with a good idea for a scene between the two of them. I briefly entertained the thought of writing it up as a kissing contest between Bast and Seregil, but that seemed kind of… inappropriate.

Lynn, of course, is a better person than me, and did a delightfully playful write-up of the bout between them that you can see over on Suvudu’s site. It was a good scene, and I expected her to win because of it. But Bast squeaked by….

Bast’s second fight was against Richard Rahl. And again, I found myself at a loss for an idea for a scene. My only idea there was something involving bondage. And since I’m still fuzzy on the parody-as-fair-use laws, I decided to focus on a few interviews I was late on and the questions in my translator questions instead. Luckily, Bast won through that one without my help, too.

Now it’s the third week, and Bast is going head to head with Anomander Rake from Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

I feel like a bit of a slacker by this point, like I should really do a write up for this one.

So here goes….

“So, Rake,” Bast said. “At last we meet again for the first time.”

“Indeed,” said Anomander Rake, tossing his flowing white hair over his shoulder.

Bast looked over his opponent calmly. “I’ve heard tell that you are old as ages.”

Rake nodded, his face giving nothing away.

“I’ve also heard that you are well versed in the arcane arts, you have a floating fortress, and that you..” Bast snuck a quick look at a piece of paper he held cupped in the palm of his hand, “…can turn into a dragon.” Bast looked up, his expression a little disgusted. “Seriously? You can turn into a dragon, too?”

Rake had the decency to look slightly abashed, if only very slightly. “Yeah,” he said. “All that and a bag of chips, too.”

“And you’re also nigh-invulnerable,” Bast said.

“That’s The Tick, actually,” Rake said grudgingly. “But yeah. I’m pretty much nigh.”

Bast nodded at this, seemingly unsurprised. “I see,” he said gravely. Taking a deep breath, he looked up, meeting the tall man’s eyes. “All that aside, do you seriously think you can eat more pie than me?”

Okay. I’ll admit it. I haven’t read Erikson’s series. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and it’s on my list. It’s even a complete series, which is a huge selling point in my opinion. (*ahem*) But it’s also ten books long. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Given that I don’t know anything about Rake (And I don’t care to, thank you very much. So no spoilers, please.) I’m going to have pass on writing a full scene for this match too.

Right now, Bast is taking a bit of a drubbing, and perhaps rightly so. If he loses this round, I’ll still be proud he made it this far.

But I’ll also be a little sad. Because if Bast wins this round against Rake, and Zaphod Beeblebrox wins his match against Saphira…

…then the next round would be Bast vs. Zaphod.

So I’m not saying anyone *should* go and vote. I’m just saying that if the Bast vs. Zaphod match ends up happening, I would write the hell out of that scene.

That’s all I’m saying.

pat

Also posted in Achievement Unlocked!, I mock because I love, Nathan Taylor Art | By Pat66 Responses
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