Ed Calkins: The Question of Cah

Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, wrote a literary nonsense trilogy for the BryonySeries (and he's currently working on his fifth book) called Ruthless.

Ed, as an Irish vampire, is also a primary - and very unreliable - character in the Ruthless trilogy and also in the BryonySeries original "drop of blood" young adult vampire trilogy.

To give you a "taste" of Ed's writings, here is chapter one of his third Ruthless book, "Recovering Ruthless," where he's talking to a "mind worm."

All chapters do not read like this, of course. The character development is stunning and the plot is intricate with delightful threads running through the story.

You may also enjoy chapter 3 from "Recovering Ruthless" and chapter 14 from "Recovering Ruthless" to give you a better idea of the reading adventure that awaits you.

Finally, here is a poem from "Recovering Ruthless" that Ed attributes to one of his characters.

Happy Saturday!

RECOVERING RUTHLESS, BY ED CALKINS, STEWARD OF TARA

CHAPTER 1: THE QUESTION OF CAH

 

 

I probably should think of something else if I’m going to hold your attention. I don’t think you’re interested in the problems with the scientific theory of time travel. Maybe you feel that a story riddled with brownies, vampires, leprechauns, and other fairies shouldn't contain scientific theory at all.

 

              You're hurting my feelings, not to mention the feelings of Eircheard, the leprechaun who tried to explain the universe in all its four dimensions. I'll retaliate later. Better to explain how the four-dimensional universe is really two sides of a coin so only one side is perceivable to anything with consciousness. On the one side, electromagnetics is stronger than gravity thus pulling the universe wider, expanding as it does, creating time, and pulling the pieces apart. On the other side, gravity is stronger than electromagnetics. It pulls the scattered energy and matter towards its center, creating time as it does, and contracting the entire universe into a humongous black hole. On each side, the dominant energy gets spent, the other recharges, each side ends as the other starts, and the coin flips all over again.

 

              Is that easy enough to understand?

 

              Wrong.

 

I didn’t ask if you could dismiss it, I asked if you could understand it, because there is more. While time is merely cosmic motion, the experience of time is completely subjective. Perhaps, if you've studied philosophy, you've heard the nonsensical question: “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it does it make a sound?” The question pretends to be philosophical when it's actually a vocabulary question. Are we defining “sound” as audible by vibrations or this experience of perceiving them? And that's just one part of what sends a leprechaun into fits of rageful rants about the shortsightedness of the larger folks’ feeble brains.

 

There’s a letter on the desk? Don’t distract me.

 

I’m on my way to explaining one theory of time travel and the best ways to do it. One is easy enough. Wait. No, not you. I mean “waiting” is the easiest way to get to any time you want. Don’t you see? Its all circular. The universe expands then contracts, destroying and creating like it did the last time and you'll find yourself in your own past or future, doing the same thing you did the last time for the same reasons.

 

You don’t like that, do you? Do you find it disappointing? Trust me, disappointment is the defining experience of time travel and waiting is the safest way to that disappointment. True other ways are quicker, but you risk contracting Deep Time Psychosis. How do I know that? Not important. The other part of what time is takes priority. How many times has the universal coin flipped? How is the universe on the first flip different from the second or third? I’m sure you’re now ready to explore this new question with an open mind and heart.

 

No? What’s about the letter on the desk?

           

Who are you to interrupt me? Better yet, who are you at all? Somehow, this feels familiar. You are some kind of consciousness in my brain but you're not me, which begs the question of, “Who am I?” I'll tell you what I'm not. I'm not some old man experiencing dementia. While it's true that – for the moment – I’ve forgotten who I am, forgetfulness is understandable when you realize how many more things I have to remember. Think of my brain as a powerful early 1980’s micro-computer with 256 ram and a hard drive it's near an MB. As impossible as it might be to imagine, my hard drive is running out of space. I have to back it up regularly, putting all pertinent information 5 1/4 floppy disk. Then I format the hard drive only to fill it again with other stuff. What is a 5 ¼ floppy disk? Well, it's a disk about five and a fourth inches in diameter and it’s so floppy that they had to put cardboard around it.

 

Forget that.

 

The point is I have so many things to remember, having traveled time as much as I have, sometimes I have to reload my hard drive to answer questions that you consider basic. Who I am will come back to me as soon as I boot up this metaphorical floppy disk. I'm confident I'll remember the five things that are essential. Then I'll deal with you.

 

Oh yes of course, I am Ed Calkins the one and only. If you doubt my fame, may I remind you that you knew who I was before I knew who I was, and we haven't even cared about who you are. Did I make you feel small just now? That's because of the second thing: I am very ruthless. I'll hurt your feelings without a second thought. Try not to be afraid. The third thing seems ridiculously obvious. Newspaper delivery is important. Who doesn't know that? Either I exist because I deliver, or delivery exists because of me…something circular like that. I’m sure I’ll have a better handle on it when the rest of the floppy loads.

 

Cah, I’m having trouble with the next two things. Wait. Did I just call you ‘Cah’? YOU! You’re the mind worm that wanted a story. I was going to tell you the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Either you wanted a different story, or I couldn’t remember how that story started. Something tells me I haven’t always been nice to you and that we have unfinished business.

 

Where are we? Seems like we’re in the same place we were when we first met. If I’m getting this right, I named you Cah – the anachronism for “courageous and honest” – because I didn’t want to call you an idiot when you admitted you never heard of Ed Calkins. That could only mean you’ve never read this book that’s right next to the letter you’re so keen on. It’s called “Staked!” Cah, this is the first book in a series written by Denise M. Baran-Unland that’s all about me.

 

You think the book wasn’t here the last time? So what?

 

What? I can’t hear your thoughts over the leprechauns and merrows shouting at me to do something about the other. Do you need me to tell you that merrows are the Irish version of mermaids, expect they have legs…quite shapely legs I might add.

 

Oh. The fourth thing I always remember is that I have many wives all over the place. Yes, you might even be a wife of mine. What’s that? You don’t think so. Maybe you are and I never told you…that or you’re male. Either way, don’t get your panties in a bunch. Except for one, there’s no ceremony or sex in my marriages and that’s an unbreakable rule set by Wife Number One: Nala.

 

The letter? Don’t you want to know about the book? I stole it from some future…or the past. I can’t remember now. The important thing is the timeline in the book. You see, everyone thinks the book is a work of fiction except the people in the book. There’s a Sheriff Matt, who is not in the book but in the timeline. He needs to know what happens so he can be ready to handle the things that are. If I travel to the right place/time/year, I’ll give him the drop on a very difficult Christmas.

 

Now I know the fifth thing. I’m a time-traveling, dyslexic, psychotic, Irish vampire, but you might have guessed that already.

 

What?

 

We never found out why the leprechauns and merrows are yelling?

 

The letter was going to be the key to it all, but I never followed through. I just went on to other things without reading it. I remember now, Cah. It was for your benefit. I have a hard time not thinking thing out loud to a mind worm, and I didn’t want to spoil the ending of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” I was afraid that I would start thinking how Mama Bear put Goldilocks in a pot with carrots and peas, Papa Bear put a sign above the home reading “free room and board to slow running children,” and Baby Bear never had porridge again.

 

Yes, Yes, the letter. Cah, I promise this time, I’ll get to it. But first, I have to deliver this book. It will only take a second…or several lifetimes depending on the time-travel traffic. It’s all the same to a dyslexic, psychotic, time traveling Irish vampire when he tries to answer the question of Cah.

    

"She Was The Lake"

Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, sent me this lovely piece of "fan fiction" earlier this week, and I finally had time to read it on my birthday because I had the day off.

Ed has set this piece as after BeforeThe Blood. But as with all BryonySeries fiction, it's isn't necessary to read the other books to to follow and enjoy a particular story.

His idea is based on Bryony's bonding with Lake Munson in the fictional northern Michigan fishing vilage of Munsonville. Bryony bonds with the lake because the lake is central to the village, because her father is cold and distant, because her mother is dead.

She was the lake, and the lake was she.

From deep beyond deep, it called to her from depths, and her chest rose and fell its answer. Sometimes its waves were gentle and easy; sometimes they were short and choppy; sometimes they were rapid, harsh, and heaving with spume.

So - enjoy!

Dear MOMI,

Once again, I find myself stealing from you. Would it be OK to continue along is line with not only Susan, but Bryony as I can't seem to leave any of your characters in the graves you dig for them.

There were too many empty graves in Munsonville. Susan Betts had clawed her way through the dirt and grass, but she was not buried in the cemetery. The good Reverend would not allow the bodies of known damned planted in the same plot of earth as those just might have been saved.

“For all the good it did,” Susan thought bitterly.

If anyone wasn’t damned, it would be someone that didn’t live, someone that hadn’t died, or someone that never heard of Munsonville. You see, in that village, just like Hell itself, everyone was welcome. All the fires of Munsonville Hell lived below the streets, shops, shacks, boats, barns, and stables that proclaimed the village folk as too plain to be dangerous, too unremarkable to be monsters, too unimportant to be the hosts of Hell.

It was almost morning, and the full sun should melt her like candlewax. She didn’t care, but the heat was like the fire she had earned.

Susan.

Something called. It wasn’t him, but she ran down Blue Gill Road anyway. Anyway or anywhere, it made no difference, but she was scared and so she ran and kept running till anywhere became any road and anywhere was the mansion. She ran too fast for a lady. But now, she stood and stared at the hell that had come to her.

The Simons Mansion was not what it was. Instead it was everything it ever was. A plot of uncut trees; the scaffolds of its construction like a hundred little gallows; the palace where she labored as a servant of her friend, the old hulk of disrepair, decay, and death; The infernal scream of monstrous ruin on fire, the smoldering remains; and the empty plot of nothing; all transposed on the same spot. The greatest part of it was the empty plot, the least was its time as a palace.

This is where the bride got lost and found a locked door that she had no key for. This is where her friend left her in shame. This is where that terrible man…

Susan.

That call again! It was farther than it was at first.

“What!”

She heard her voice snap back impatiently as if she had a right to ever raise her voice.

Susan, run away. Away is lake.

Was it the trees that whispered now?

“I want to go back. I want to go to Fisher Farm. I want to be a summer sister again.”

No one lives there. Dead horses. No blood. Susan, come lake.

“Cowboy?”

Mr. Munson doesn’t ride. No one does. Come lake, Susan. Come me.

“But the Simons Mansion, why is it…”

No good, anymore. Vampires have parties there. Pain, lies, and death. Lake, Susan. Now.

“It was a palace. You were its queen.”

Someone else now. No good. Not her or him. What I am is where I am. Always is everywhere. Come now. Lake.

Knowledge pierced her undead mind.

“Bryony,” And she was there on her sandy shores. Now she could hear the voice of her former friend in full sentences as she spoke when she lived.

“Why did you leave me, Susan? Why, did you go and why did you kill yourself?”

“I never left.”

“You left before you went somewhere else. You never talked with me, not really. If you had, the whole thing would have been different. I lost you to shame and you were dead before you died. We should have stayed summer sisters. Failing that, I should have had you comb my hair instead of Trudi. Then, I would have also combed yours.”

“I am a dirty tramp, ma’am. Somebody tells me to do something, and I do it. That’s the way it is with a girl who lives and dies in bloody filth. Even you. You married a king, became a queen and I had to do what you say.”

“Don’t ma’am me!” Lake Munsonville darkens, threatening to storm.

But Susan was so far beyond caring.

“Ma’am because I worked for you. Ma’am because if you were my friend, you would have taken my baby instead of letting her go to the lowest bidder who was so desperate for a baby that she even could coup with the daughter of a filthy rag. If you’d have taken her, you wouldn’t have insisted on one of your own. You’d still be alive, Ma’am.”

“Fancy talk for Susan Betts,” the lake quipped. Then the waves calmed but the water darkened again. “He taught you.”

“He COMPELS me! I tried to stop him. I killed myself so he wouldn’t turn me, but somehow he did anyway. He said he couldn’t tolerate his blood whore sounding like an urban slut for the work he wants of me.”

“You don’t mean the twins, do you?”

“No. I was depressed. I was ashamed. But I would have lived despite the back and forth with the twins just to have my baby grow. But when he came to me, he made me evil. Do you know evil, Bryony? It’s not the twins’ they’re just hungry. Evil is when the only time it feels is when it hurts someone. Nothing else matters. That’s him. That’s what he’s going to make me when he finds where I’ve gone but I’ve nowhere to go. Kellen Wechsler is a powerful vampire and maybe the Devil himself, but now he’s my master. I can’t be friends with you Ma’am because I am to torment the son of his playthings. He wants your baby to punish John Simons for his disobedience and I have to obey.”

“To be fair, it was the King that refused your baby.”

“Because his husband master made him,” Susan mocked trying to hate the only friend she ever had.

“Perhaps, if you mean, John Simons but Henry Mathews is the father who is also his husband master. None of that worries me. The child was saved by all my many friends who fear nothing and are indifferent to the plans of vampires, ghosts, or devils. It was the trees that saved him, and you shall not harm him even if you must. You could forget all of that. You can forgive me for what I did as Bryony, and I shall forgive all you’ve done as Susan. But will you forgive what I do as Lake Munsonville?”

“What will you do as a lake that’s so terrible?”

“Drown all of the men.”

“You were Bryony then. You were as sad as I was.”

“Susan Betts, put your back to me and tell me what Munsonville looks like.”

Susan tried to comply but once her back was to the water, all she could see was the changing; the same thing she saw when she looked to the mansion.

“It’s always changing. It’s the same, but it’s always different. I don’t know.”

“And now look at me. Am I not always changing too.”

Of course she was, but always there was a limit and regularity to the change. The lake swelled and retreated, froze over and melted, grow choppy and calmed.

“I was once not Bryony, then I was but I was still the lake. One day, I shall wash the sins of the village and drowned everything that is not forest. I do not feel sad when I drown people. I bring them to where they live in my belly. Come inside me, Susan. Your master will never find you and I will never give you up.”

“What about the men that live in your belly, do they have to do what you say?”

“They don’t do anything at all, nor do the fish or the weeds. They just are, Susan. In my belly you will not call me Ma’am and of the men that still fish on top of me, you can whisper to me who I should take and who I should spare. We can be friends again. We shall be indifferent to the place that didn’t love you enough.”

“But you’re cold and I’ll drown.”

“You don’t have to breath anymore. You’ll like the cold once you get used to it. Vampires hide in deep water all the time. Come, Susan. I can’t comb your hair, but I can wash you clean. You’ll never feel ashamed in my belly. Just swim to my center and I’ll pull you in. Stay with me, Susan.”

And for the first hundred years as a vampire, that’s what Susan Betts did.

A Quick Note About "Fan Fiction"

I woke up early this morning and enjoyed the latest chapter of Ruthless by Ed Calkins over a cup of coffee.

I've not read much fan fiction, hardly at all, and never had any real reason to do so. Furthermore, I have no idea if Ed has ever read or written fan fiction. Nor did I ever consider what other authors think of it (I paused here to do some online searching on the topic). 

When Ed and I had our virtual meeting on July 11 (which was supposed to be a real lunch), Ed shared details of his progress, asked some questions, told me how he continuously refers to the "drop or blood" trilogy during his writings, and then spent a couple hours sending me updated writings, which, if we had met in person, he could have handed off to me in less than three seconds.

And then on my birthday, he sent one more chapter to me, the latest, which I had not yet read and which I I enjoyed to the point of laughing out loud.

This chapter, Much to do about nothing or What to do about Glorna ....the complete chap, so swiftly placed me right into Staked! I didn't immediately realize it. I was just "there."

Now if Ruthless is in the category of "fan fiction," it's controlled fan fiction at its best. Ed isn't wantonly writing this novel; he's writing it because a fan requested I write it, and I refused, saying only Ed could write this story.

Ed doesn't want to write anything I won't approve, even though I'v assured him the fictitious Ed Calkins is an unreliable narrator and can't be trusted. 

But it does show that, once an author breathes life into a realm and its inhabitants and then shares it with at least one other person, it ceases to be solely the author's realm.

Yes, the author owns the copyright (unless the author foolishly gives it away), and the author has a certain amount of legal protection against other writers making a profit from that realm.

However, when an author invites a reader into the story, the story takes on its own life in that reader for no reader can engage with a story without engaging with story's world and the story's people in a very personal way. 

Fan fiction, no matter where the fan writer takes the story, is a connection so strong to the initial story that the fan writer is compelled to write the parts the fan writer wishes the author had written.

Even if the author cringes at the result, fan fiction is really one of the highest compliments a reader can pay to an author.

And when the fan writer expounds on a story that's reads SO RIGHT to the author, the enjoyment is immense.

On a practical level, it's free marketing. Wherever fan writers share their works are readers waiting to read them. They, too, might want more - and find the original books.

OK, this note has turned into more than "quick." 

Maybe words simply aren't adequate to explain the feeling this author feels when she reads an expanded version of her story  by another writer, a story with characterizations and settings so true, it pulls me right back into my story.

A decade ago when Sarah first started the BryonySeries website, she wanted a separate author page, and I pushed back (and won).

I felt (and still do) that the BryonySeries is more than just a single book by a single writer. I envisioned other writers contributing to the series.

That model has begun with The Adventures of Cornell Dyer chapter book series.

It's expanding with Ruthless.

From there, who knows where this can lead?

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

A "Ruthless" Update

This is the "telegram" I received earlier this week that promoted this blog post: The Great Compliment of Fan Fiction.

Along with this email, I also received the first seven chapters and the epilogue, which I read in fits and starts this week. (I still have chapter seven and the epilogue to go).

Writers: take note of the lowercase letters. The explanation is at the bottom, hilarious.

Dear Momi,

   

With so few word between us since I've started the rough draft of Ruthless, the back story of Ed Calkins, I feel the need to send some of what I'm working on. 

I don't want to damage the Bryony franchise, but I've taken liberties with the some of the characters and their author. I am completely willing to retreat on any storyline I've introduced if you find it prudent. 

This is a good point to send what I have, but new chapters are likely to emerge as the plots unfold. Just as sure, chapters will need to be cut as the subplots gain complications.

Table of content (outline)

Forward or Backward w

Chapter 1 Pigs don’t Plow w

Chapter 2 Mirror w

Chapter 3 Road trip bar w

Chapter 4 The Why chromosome w

Chapter 5 Suspect w

Chapter 6 Happy Hunting w

Chapter 7 A Government of, by, and for Ed Calkins w

Chapter 8 The divine refrigerator w

Chapter 9 Shoot out at the Not OK Coral c

Chapter 10 Somebody else’s dirty secret w

Chapter 11 So a girl, a guy, and a brownie walk into a bar… u

Chapter 12 The Council of scantily clothed merrows u

Chapter 13 The road trip continues. u

                             A The trial

                             B The execution

Chapter 14 Turning State’s evidence u

Chapter 15 Kiss, kill, or marry u

Chapter 16 Where’s your bathrobe u

Chapter 17 the folly of a gun at a limerick fight u

Chapter 18 Won the lottery, died the next day u

Chapter 19 A full confession u

Epilogue w

c- complete but needs revision

w- writing done be content needs adding and revision

u- created but not one word on paper

The Great Compliment of Fan Fiction

Almost every aspect of writing involves struggle.

Writers struggle with ideas, writer's block, making time for writing, discipline.

When we finally have a jumble of fairly cohesive words, we only to tear it apart through the revision process.

Then writers struggle to find beta readers, agents, and publishers.

Oh and writers struggle against rejection, LOTS of it.

If writers finally see their words in print, they struggle to find readers and reviews.

And then writers struggle against their emotions when reading negative reviews.

So when a reader starts writing fan fiction based on your words, it's a surreal experience like no other. And it's an experience I'm experiencing right now.

A few months ago, at the request of my lone BryonySeries super fan, Ed Calkins began writing his backstory.

If you don't know Ed's connection to my books, you can find it here.

Now, Ed's novel is not the first time he's "played" with my characters, including the fictionalized version of himself.

But as I'm reading through the chapters he sent me on Sunday night, enjoying those chapters as a reader (doubled-over laughing in spots) and mentally marking areas for tightening as an editor, I began to realize someone else was creating new works out of my old ones and encouraging my mind to go beyond the stories I've written.

I can't adequately describe how that feels.

First, Ed has read (at least), the "drop of blood" trilogy, since he is featured in those books. So he's already spent time in the fruits of my imagination. Keep the term "fruits" in mind, for comparison's sake.

Second, the sheer length of these chapters shows he's spent even greater amount of time there than, say, an average reader of my stories.

Now, I don't want to minimize the joy a writer feels when a reader revels in one's works (and even re-reads them) and takes the time to write lengthy reviews championing those works. It's exhilaration on the humbling scale, and I hope every writer gets to experience it.

Let's call that grapes: red grapes and green grapes. If you've read Before The Blood, you'll get it.

I'm also enjoying collaborating with Timothy on creating The Adventures of Cornell Dyer series, based on a character in Visage, which ranks high for me on the fun scale.

Let's call that an orange, even though no actual oranges were ever used in Cornell's favorite orange drink.

But Ed's fictionalized backstory is a new honor altogether. Let's call that an apple, since Ed's spending so much time with the character John-Peter.

When I was writing Bryony, Ed was the supervisor for one of my routes. I felt the story needed a new character.

Ed, who is very creative, had created a fictionalized version of himself. I approached him with teh request to take his idea  few steps beyond that.

So he allowed me to create a pretend version of himself and gave me complete freedom to develop the character in any way I wished. And he did it legally. As through an attorney. The amount of trust there is huge.

But now he is taking my pretend version of his pretend self, along with some of my characters and storylines already established, to create an entire new work.

Now I have always said the creation of BryonySeries is a team effort. But Ed has take that to, pardon the cliche, a whole new level.

It's an emotional whirlwind to read his words.

And it's beyond humbling.