What Happens After...
A happy day today.
No sooner had my fourth novel Song of the Beast been published than readers started asking me if I was ever going to write a sequel.Song. my only standalone novel, told the story of Aidan MacAllister - musician, singer, visionary, cousin to the king of Elyria, a man imprisoned just as his fame was approaching its height. The story actually begins on the day of Aidan's release from that seventeen year imprisonment and tells of his slow recovery and his search for the reasons behind it. No one had ever bothered to tell him. I'm certainly not going to tell here what he discovered or what he had to do about it. I told inquirers that I liked where Song ended, and that I would not write a follow-on unless I had something important to add to Aidan's story - a new idea. I wasn't just going to say how he was doing.
Then, a few years ago, I was asked to do a story for an anthology of romantic fantasy - romantic in the larger sense - called Lace and Blade, and somehow Aidan came to mind. I had to search that fantasy world inside my head to find out what he was doing...and in that search for the story that could take me back into his world, I realized that the search for a hero long after his story was over Was the Story.
So I wrote a short story called "The Heart's Coda." It was all set to be published in the third edition of the Lace and Blade anthology. But Things happened, the publisher postponed the book three years in a row, and the story came back to me and sat in my trunk. And sat. Nagging at me. Every once in a while I pulled it out and as I learned more about writing in general, totally rewrote it, stretched it into a novelette, rewrote the ending.
And then last year I hear from the lovely editor Deborah Ross, who says that Lace and Blade is now a part of the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Trust and did I have a story for the newest edition? Aidan waved his hand at me and said, "What about me? It's about time." And so it is.
Fifteen years have passed since Song of the Beast was published (and it is still in print), but only three years have passed in storytime. A young Elhim named Glyn has been sent to find Aidan after he vanished into the west with some very dangerous companions.
Here is the opening of this very special story....
After a lonely month's slogging through that chilly, rainy, miserable wilderness, one might expect the excitement of my first royal mission entirely exhausted. But as I approached the summit of yet another steep rise, anticipation still shivered my skin. Would the legend be waiting beyond this crest? The Dragon Singer, Aidan MacAllister, beloved of the gods? Would he dwell in a temple or palace or a fortress of dragon bones? Or would I top this verdant, boulder-strewn slope and walk straight into one of his visions?
Tales said that at the height of his fame, before he was thrown into prison and broken, Aidan MacAllister's music could transport your soul right out of your body. No matter how terrible your circumstances, for that one moment you would exist in a place of beauty and harmony. What a wonder that must have been.
I scanned the clouds lowering over the crags and stretched my hearing into the unsettling quiet.
Then again, I might only find the Singer's beasts beyond the rise. The dragons. Perhaps I'd find naught but the Singer's scorched bones. A belching, world-ripping bellow rumbled the misty upland, as if to illustrate my worst imaginings. My boots tried to reverse course on their own and take me directly back the long way I'd just come. So newly emerged from the Elhim Covert, I had been spared the horrors of dragon warfare—or any warfare, to be honest. I'd never so much as laid an eye on one of the beasts, save those sketched in my books and carved or painted on every wall, column, and lintel in Elyria. Images were terrible enough. Despite seventeen years in the barbarous prison called Mazadine, MacAllister had found his voice again and sung the dragons free of their own cruel enslavement, ending five centuries of dragon wars. Then he had followed the beasts into these wild lands west of Elyria, vowing to return them to sentience if it took another five hundred years. Another braying screech near melted my liver. I backed into a standing boulder twice my height and held still until my heart unclenched. Good Davyn, my worthy progenitor, who had dispatched me on this mission, had tried to make his assurances of dragon intelligence and MacAllister's intimacy with the beasts so solid that I would not falter when I heard their bawling. If these are the cries of free and cheerful dragons, please, O One Who Guides, honor those who survived our past with hearts, souls, and livers intact! Sucking in my courage, I hunched my cloak around my shoulders, striving to appear small and uninteresting. Then I commanded my reluctant feet to climb a little farther. I could not, must not fail...
Happy Valentine's Day, dear readers!
No sooner had my fourth novel Song of the Beast been published than readers started asking me if I was ever going to write a sequel.Song. my only standalone novel, told the story of Aidan MacAllister - musician, singer, visionary, cousin to the king of Elyria, a man imprisoned just as his fame was approaching its height. The story actually begins on the day of Aidan's release from that seventeen year imprisonment and tells of his slow recovery and his search for the reasons behind it. No one had ever bothered to tell him. I'm certainly not going to tell here what he discovered or what he had to do about it. I told inquirers that I liked where Song ended, and that I would not write a follow-on unless I had something important to add to Aidan's story - a new idea. I wasn't just going to say how he was doing.
Then, a few years ago, I was asked to do a story for an anthology of romantic fantasy - romantic in the larger sense - called Lace and Blade, and somehow Aidan came to mind. I had to search that fantasy world inside my head to find out what he was doing...and in that search for the story that could take me back into his world, I realized that the search for a hero long after his story was over Was the Story.
So I wrote a short story called "The Heart's Coda." It was all set to be published in the third edition of the Lace and Blade anthology. But Things happened, the publisher postponed the book three years in a row, and the story came back to me and sat in my trunk. And sat. Nagging at me. Every once in a while I pulled it out and as I learned more about writing in general, totally rewrote it, stretched it into a novelette, rewrote the ending.
And then last year I hear from the lovely editor Deborah Ross, who says that Lace and Blade is now a part of the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Trust and did I have a story for the newest edition? Aidan waved his hand at me and said, "What about me? It's about time." And so it is.
Fifteen years have passed since Song of the Beast was published (and it is still in print), but only three years have passed in storytime. A young Elhim named Glyn has been sent to find Aidan after he vanished into the west with some very dangerous companions.
Here is the opening of this very special story....
After a lonely month's slogging through that chilly, rainy, miserable wilderness, one might expect the excitement of my first royal mission entirely exhausted. But as I approached the summit of yet another steep rise, anticipation still shivered my skin. Would the legend be waiting beyond this crest? The Dragon Singer, Aidan MacAllister, beloved of the gods? Would he dwell in a temple or palace or a fortress of dragon bones? Or would I top this verdant, boulder-strewn slope and walk straight into one of his visions?
Tales said that at the height of his fame, before he was thrown into prison and broken, Aidan MacAllister's music could transport your soul right out of your body. No matter how terrible your circumstances, for that one moment you would exist in a place of beauty and harmony. What a wonder that must have been.
I scanned the clouds lowering over the crags and stretched my hearing into the unsettling quiet.
Then again, I might only find the Singer's beasts beyond the rise. The dragons. Perhaps I'd find naught but the Singer's scorched bones. A belching, world-ripping bellow rumbled the misty upland, as if to illustrate my worst imaginings. My boots tried to reverse course on their own and take me directly back the long way I'd just come. So newly emerged from the Elhim Covert, I had been spared the horrors of dragon warfare—or any warfare, to be honest. I'd never so much as laid an eye on one of the beasts, save those sketched in my books and carved or painted on every wall, column, and lintel in Elyria. Images were terrible enough. Despite seventeen years in the barbarous prison called Mazadine, MacAllister had found his voice again and sung the dragons free of their own cruel enslavement, ending five centuries of dragon wars. Then he had followed the beasts into these wild lands west of Elyria, vowing to return them to sentience if it took another five hundred years. Another braying screech near melted my liver. I backed into a standing boulder twice my height and held still until my heart unclenched. Good Davyn, my worthy progenitor, who had dispatched me on this mission, had tried to make his assurances of dragon intelligence and MacAllister's intimacy with the beasts so solid that I would not falter when I heard their bawling. If these are the cries of free and cheerful dragons, please, O One Who Guides, honor those who survived our past with hearts, souls, and livers intact! Sucking in my courage, I hunched my cloak around my shoulders, striving to appear small and uninteresting. Then I commanded my reluctant feet to climb a little farther. I could not, must not fail...
Happy Valentine's Day, dear readers!
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Ellen
(new)
Feb 18, 2018 09:28AM
I read the story last night. It was worth the wait. Thank you.
reply
|
flag
I would love to read this story as I have greatly enjoyed all of your stories. However because you have allowed the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Trust to publish it, I will not read it. Marion Zimmer Bradley and her partner were vile pedophiles who sexually preyed upon children, even their own children, in brutal and monstrous ways. Their daughter, Moira Greyland, recently wrote a book (The Last Closet) about the evil her and her brother endured at the hands of these two rapists. Her father eventually went to prison but her mother Marion Zimmer Bradley is still revered for her books even though it is known what a monster she was. I admire Moira Greyland for her courage, for her faith, and most of all, for her ability to survive an unthinkably brutal upbringing with both her sanity and her sense of humor intact. Moira does not wallow in her victimhood. Her recent book about her growing up with a monster, Marion Zimmer Bradley, who preyed upon her own daughter from age 6 on and her father who also abused her sexually is more than a triumph of the human spirit, more than a tale of survival, and more than a devastating indictment of a seriously depraved community. It is an inspiration to everyone, particularly for anyone who has ever been subjected to abuse or ill-treatment as a child. Moira’s message is clear: they can hurt you, they can harm you, and they can leave you with scars that last a lifetime, but they cannot touch your soul. Their sins are not your sins and their shame is not your shame. And there is a light that is always waiting to heal those who summon the strength to walk out of the last closet and turn their back on the darkness inside it. Carol, if you ever allow another publisher to publish your story, I will definitely read it as you are a very fine story teller.
Rbette1299 wrote: "I would love to read this story as I have greatly enjoyed all of your stories. However because you have allowed the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Trust to publish it, I will not read it. Marion Zi..."Did it ever occur to you that MZB is dead, so the MZB Literary Trust can not benefit her in any way? I don't know their financial arrangements, but it's even possible that current sales of MZB books might financially benefit her **family** -- which, of course, includes Greyland.
MZB evidently did horrible things -- but she is beyond punishment now. So who are you actually punishing by refusing to buy works from the Trust? You might want to check that out before voting with your wallet.
This is like saying that a trust set up by Hitler to benefit fascism studies should be viewed as a good thing despite the blood of millions staining his hands. Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband were monsters who raped a lot of children and nothing that has their name on it should be lauded. This is a trust set up by Marion Zimmer Bradley after her husband went to prison for child torture and the whispers had started about her dark sexual proclivities with children. It does not benefit her family. She set it up to try to benefit her reputation as a Science Fiction writer. There are many in the Science Fiction community who still hold her up as something to aspire to. A child rapist deserves no glory. I will never spend my money to benefit a child rapist memory.
Rbette1299 wrote: "This is like saying that a trust set up by Hitler to benefit fascism studies should be viewed as a good thing despite the blood of millions staining his hands."That's complete nonsense.
First, the books being published by the site have nothing whatsoever to do with child abuse, nor do their proceeds go to child abusers (so far as I know).
Second, the trust actually benefits living fantasy writers who get paid for the works published through the trust, charities like the Save the Children Fund -- and Elisabeth Waters, who we should probably think of as essentially MZB's widow (since same-sex marriage wasn't legal at the time). Do you not consider a widow to be family?
Third, since you brought up Hitler: should we refuse to read Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto just because of their authors? I would never buy such books while their authors were alive, because I wouldn't want to support them financially, but when those authors are dead the books can be a very important part of learning from history -- and since they are dead, obviously the authors won't be profiting from the sales. In related fields, would you refuse to listen to Wagner just because the Nazis loved his music and he was a racist?
I will never spend my money to benefit a child rapist memory.
And that is, of course, your prerogative. But while you rest on your comfy laurels, keep in mind that the people you're actually punishing are living fantasy authors and needy charities, not Bradley.
Also keep in mind that, while MZB may very well have done horrible things, her accuser is deeply homophobic and transphobic (believing amongst other things that pedophilia is an essential component of homosexuality), and so perhaps her accusations against her mother should be taken with a few grains of salt.
Clearly you are a pedophile apologist. By calling Moira Greyland homophobic and transphobic, you reveal yourself as someone who advocates for child rape. After the hell Moira went through as a child as well as all of the other child victims, they have earned the right to whatever opinions they have toward their child torturers. You don't want the facts. For instance while not all homosexuals are pedophiles they definitely have been arrested in a much higher rate for being child rapists and for producing child rapist pornography. All of this is easily verified in the US Crime statistics. Stating these facts does not make me homophobic. All you are doing by trying to demean people who have survived rape is showing yourself to be a rape apologizer and perhaps even enabler.
Rbette1299 wrote: "Clearly you are a pedophile apologist."Yeah, no.
By calling Moira Greyland homophobic and transphobic, you reveal yourself as someone who advocates for child rape.
Again -- yeah, no. I reveal myself only as someone who can read Greyland's own words, in which she very clearly claims that all homosexuals are pedophiles and that homosexuals as a group have a mission of converting children to homosexuality through child rape.
For instance while not all homosexuals are pedophiles they definitely have been arrested in a much higher rate for being child rapists and for producing child rapist pornography.
Wow.
No, actually, they haven't. In fact, homosexuals have a LOWER rate of child sexual abuse than heterosexuals do.
Here are a few facts for you -- from Nicholas Groth, who wrote whole textbooks on the subject of child sex abusers and is widely considered to be one of the most important experts in the field:
Groth specifically states:
-- "in over 12 years of clinical experience working with child molesters, we have yet to see any example of a regression from an adult homosexual orientation";
-- "Homosexual males pose LESS risk of sexual harm to children (both male and female)--from both an absolute and a percentage incidence rate--than heterosexual males...".
-- In one study of 175 men who had been convicted of sexual assaults against (male) children, he found that NONE of the offenders showed any preference for adult homosexual relationships.
Likewise, multiple studies have shown for decades -- since at least the 70s -- that children being raised by same-sex couple have no higher risk of abuse than children being raised by opposite-sex couples, and in some cases show a LOWER risk of abuse.
Just a few examples spread across those decades:
David Newton. 1978. Adolescence. Homosexual Behavior and Child Molestation: A Review of the Evidence
-- "A review of the available research on pedophilia provides no basis for associating child molestation with homosexual behavior."
Carole Jenny, Thomas A. Roesler, Kimberly L. Poyer. 1994. Pediatrics. Are Children at Risk for Sexual Abuse by Homosexuals?
-- found no increased risk
Nanette K. Gartrell, Henny M. W. Bos, Naomi G. Goldberg. 2010. Archives of Sexual Behavior. Adolescents of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Behavior, and Sexual Risk
Exposure.
-- "A key finding in the current study was that none of the NLLFS
adolescents reported physical or sexual abuse by a parent or
other caregiver."
Columbia Law School -- the Public Policy Research Portal. "What does the scholarly research say about the wellbeing of children with gay or lesbian parents? "
-- "We identified 79 scholarly studies that met our criteria for adding to knowledge about the wellbeing of children with gay or lesbian parents. Of those studies, 75 concluded that children of gay or lesbian parents fare no worse than other children.[....]Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children."
Please stop spreading false propaganda. Lies don't help the public discourse, and they certainly don't help children.
