Blood and Wreath-Bearer

Forgot to post here that there are a couple more stories up on Darkness & Good. Wreath-Bearer is set in a world that I one-day plan to write a novel in, when I’m a much, much better writer, because the idea is… complex. But this short story introduces the key idea of the world: the spirits of the dead collect in the Tower, and every year, someone is thrown in to lead the dead to the top and thus to their eternal rest. Only for the last couple of decades, the leader, the Wreath-Bearer, has failed, and the Tower is getting uncomfortably full… Read it here.

Blood you can blame on Jim Butcher. I finally resigned myself to the fact that the Dresden Files covers I’d been collecting are no more, and bought Changes, Side Jobs, Ghost Story, and Cold Days. I read Changes last night and was sucker-punched between the eyeballs with a couple of Important Life Concepts, which was pretty cool (one of the things I eternally adore about Dresden Files is that although Dresden himself is completely agnostic, I always seem to come away from the books with a better sense of what I’m supposed to be striving for in my own religion), and came away with a couple of story set-ups that needed exploring. I’m not sure I’m 100% happy with this rendition of the idea; it lacks subtlety and sophistication in a pretty major way, a fact made all the more clear to me by the fact that I’ve just been reading Jim Butcher, and he is a freaking story-telling genius, but anyway. Be warned: it’s pretty gory, more so than usual for me (I mean hi, the title should give you the hint there). I can see myself trying this idea again some time, and aiming for something more sophisticated, but anyway. Darkness & Good is an exercise in public drafting, right? This is only a recital. So for now, Blood.

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