Category Archives: Uncategorized

September 15, 2013

The Mystery of the Abandoned Farmhouse

This is a true story. It happened yesterday. I feel I should put that out there right away, since this is a fiction blog. But even in real life, interesting things can happen.

This weekend, I went up to the Seoul area with my wife. We went up to find an abandoned mental hospital that’s been closed for about 20 years, which is apparently one of the creepiest places in Korea. We were planning on exploring it at night. However, when we got there, we found the road leading to it blocked with a pretty imposing gate and barbed wire.

I think I can jump that.

However, we had traveled many hours to get there and we decided to try a more lateral approach. A little ways up the road was another road that branched off into a small valley parallel to the one the hospital was in. It had rained heavily and the road was more or less a rushing stream. Our shoes were quickly damp.

We soon came to a farm, which we realized pretty quickly was abandoned. After an abortive attempt at climbing over the ridge to the hospital, we went back and looked around the house.

It was odd, to say the least. It was clearly abandoned–the front door was smashed in–and there was a lot of weather damage inside. Still, it looked as if the people had literally just gotten up and left. There were family photos hanging on the walls, clothes in the closet, dishes still sitting in the drying rack by the sink.

The house was totally furnished, but totally abandoned at the same time.

I didn’t try on any of the clothes.

It would have felt like we had just broken into someone’s house, except that it was clear it had not been used in a long time. The calendar on the wall said January, 2011.

I took a picture of the mirror to see if a ghost would appear in the photograph. But alas.

We speculated about why the house had been left like this, although most of my theories were too mundane for my wife’s liking. It seemed to have belonged a retired couple, the husband of which had been a lawyer, based on all the law books around. Of course, why they came out to a farm, I don’t know, especially one with a huge warehouse of old mattresses, couches and chairs in it. And why didn’t they take things that would have had sentimental value, like this huge family photo over the fireplace? Even if they had both died, you would think that their children would have taken care of things.

It showed a lot of moisture damage. Then there was this long-dead houseplant.

In the end, we didn’t touch anything or take anything, just looked around and left. As much as I would like to know what had happened there, that would take a lot more poking into the piles of documents and other things that had been left and that would have seemed strange. The juxtaposition of the almost completely furnished house and the totally abandonment of the place made it seem both like we were in a ruin and in an occupied house. But who knows? If I ever find out the story, I’ll let you know.

(I also made a video, which I will share tomorrow, if I can get a chance to post it.)

14 Comments | tags: abandoned house, creepy, exploration, farmhouse, ghosts, Gonjiam, Korea, mystery, night, outside the tower, photograph | posted in Dark, Uncategorized

September 10, 2013

What shape is the alphabet?

By David Stewart

I am a very visual person. I think in pictures and metaphors and I don’t really grasp complex concepts until I have a picture of them in my head, even if it’s a picture I made up myself. When I was growing up, I thought this was just the way the world was, just like I thought that everyone knew that “C” was female and yellow. Honestly, I’m not sure how common this is, but here is how I visualize various number and cyclical systems:

The Alphabet

This is how I picture the alphabet and I’m not sure why. It doesn’t make much sense why it would necessary bend at around “I” and “V” but it does and it always has ever since I was small. Whenever I picture the alphabet, this is what I see in my head.

Numbers

This is generally how I picture most numbers. There is a bend at ten and a big one at twenty and then at 100. The problem with this one is that it is also 3-dimensional, but you get the idea.

It gets more complicated with age, since there are more bends in the line (90-100, for instance, is almost at right angles with the ones before it) but that is more 3-dimensional and I notice it tends to change as I get older (not surprisingly, I guess.)

Months of the YearThis is probably the most intuitive, since it’s a circle, although the exact placement of things is a bit odd. For instance, New Year’s is in the upper left. July, August, and December take up much more space than some others, although I think this is because those were times of holidays (summer holidays and the Christmas season) so they seemed to take up more time in my mind. Or maybe just because they had to connect a big area between the spring and fall semesters. In any case, this is what I see in my mind when I think of the calendar or the months of the year.

Hangul

This is the Korean alphabet and won’t have much significance to most people, but I thought I’d put it in as a point of interest. This is much simpler, maybe because there are 14 letters (these are only the consonants) and maybe because I only learned them 10 years ago. In any case, there is a definite bend in the line, possibly because the later ones are the aspirated versions of earlier consonants. Who knows.

History

This is pretty much how I visualize the timeline of history. Some of these are obvious, like a bend at the divide between BC and AD. Also, there is more room for the 20th century, since we learned a lot more about that time and it has more significance for me. I’m not sure about some of the other dips and bends, but this is just how I see things. This one is also quite 3-dimensional, but that was hard to draw.

Does this seem normal to you? Totally weird? Let me know in the comments. I’m curious how other people view the world.

9 Comments | tags: alphabet, calendar, Hangul, history, numbers, outside the tower, visual | posted in Uncategorized

September 9, 2013

Minecrack – The Confessions of a Recent Addict

By David Stewart

When my good friend Mike finally got me into Minecraft, I went into it like someone who decides to take up recreational heroin. Of course, that was also the reason why I resisted buying it for so long: I knew it was insanely addictive. And now that I have it, it is exactly as addictive as I had expected, although in a good way (unlike heroin, in case someone thought this was a convoluted endorsement of hard drugs). Now, I find that anytime I have trouble writing or am just feeling too tired, the lure of the game beckons me. However, despite the slight loss in productivity, I still don’t feel that lingering feeling of regret when I finish playing, like that sour feeling you get when you eat an entire bag of gummy bears in one sitting (hypothetically). Here’s why:

Here is how I imagine the real Green-Walled Tower.

1. It’s Totally Creative: drool… This is the kind of program I have been looking for for a long time. This is the reason that I want to have a room full of Legos someday. A very long time ago, I had a Lego computer program that was similar, except nowhere near as powerful. After one house, the landscape started disappearing as the computer ran out of memory. But now, I can create almost anything that comes into my mind. And believe me, I can come up with some pretty freaky stuff. The only sticking point is time, since I like things big and you still have to place every block individually. Currently I’m working on a setting from the first novel I ever wrote. It’s a pool, surrounded by five temples, on top of a fortified hill, in a huge city in a deep cleft of a valley. After about an hour or so, I’m almost finished the pool.

2. It’s Open-Ended: I’m using both the creative mode to make the aforementioned pool/city, but also playing in survival mode, where you have to find food and not get killed by monsters. It is way better than most games because you can manipulate everything . Currently, I’m at the bottom of an abandoned mineshaft with monsters all around. In a normal game, I’d have to fight my way out to get back to my house and recharge. Not in Minecraft. There, I can block off a shelter, dig it out bigger, make a crafting table and make more weapons and armor, even smelt ore into metals, all while I’m stuck at the bottom of a mine. I can make my own staircases or ladders, dig straight in any directions or basically do anything I want.

The upper room, where the creative magic happens.

I realize I’m late in the game (as usual with technology; I just got a smart phone a few months ago) and that over half the world has already played Minecraft. But to those few out there who haven’t played it, I would just say that it’s awesomely creative and awesomely addictive. I’m still exploring what I can do, but I would like to make stories and set them in a Minecraft world that I create, recording the whole thing on video. So we’ll see. You never know what will come out of the Green-Walled Tower.

11 Comments | tags: addiction, blogging, creativity, games, gaming, Minecraft, outside the tower, The Green-Walled Tower, world-building, writing | posted in Uncategorized

August 16, 2013

“Giselle” is almost here

By David Stewart

Riddle: what does belly dancing have to do with time travel?

You will find out when my new short story, “Giselle”, comes out, hopefully next week.

I first started working on this story in February. It all started as an Invitational Prompts story. I have only done three of these, but they are where I ask one person to give me some prompts and I write a story around them. The first was “The Circle of Unbeing” which I did for Sharmishtha Basu. “Giselle” is actually the second one, which I did for Amy at The Bumble Files. The original prompts were: a sci-fi/time travel genre, a professor, a belly dancer, a message in a bottle, and an empty warehouse.

I quickly had an idea for the story, but it was slow going and I restarted it several times. Time travel stories are also quite complicated and necessarily non-linear, so it also took a while to root out all the pesky plot holes. As well, the story kept growing until I knew that I could not do it justice by simply breaking it up into installment like I did with The Circle of Unbeing. So, I will be releasing it on Smashwords as an e-book.

Incidentally, do you know Sorina M? If you are a blogger, do you follow her blog at Chosen Voice? If not, go check it out right now. I’ll wait. I have been a blogging friend of hers for a long time now and her work is absolutely amazing. Here is one of my favorites of her recent work, called Wearing a Nebula.

You can understand how honored I felt when she agreed to make the cover for my story. Here it is:

I’m currently putting the last touches on the story and getting ready to upload to Smashwords. I’ll post again when it is available.

6 Comments | tags: cover art, ebook, Giselle, Invitational Prompts, publishing, short story, Sorina, time travel, writing | posted in Uncategorized

August 2, 2013

Demons vs. Witches: The most ridiculously awesome book you will probably never read

By David Stewart

Considering this is a fiction blog, I have not written all that much fiction lately; at least not as much as I used to produce. I will come back, but I’ve been pretty busy and I’m still recovering and catching up on things. I’m sorry if I haven’t read your blog in a while, but I’ll try to soon (it helps if you comment 😉 )

Okay, so the book I’m talking about isn’t called “Demons vs. Witches” but it might as well be. It’s called “The Worm Ouroboros” by E.R. Eddison and it is ridiculous, insane, and awesome.

Synopsis:

The Demons and Witches are enemies. The Witch king creates a spell which spirits away one of the Demons and so they have to mount a huge, epic quest to recover him resulting in a lot of adventure. Plus, while they are away, the Witches invade Demonland and run amok there.

The Ridiculous:

1. This story apparently takes place on Mercury. In the prologue, a talking bird comes to the house of a man named Lessingham, in England and takes him to Mercury to see what’s going on there. The thing is, though, that except for one or two times in the first few chapters, Lessingham and the bird are never mentioned again. It’s like the author forgot about them totally.

2. The four main races in this world are the Demons, the Witches, the Goblins, and the Imps. In case you were wondering, the Demons are the good guys. They have horns and one of them named Spitfire apparently breathes fire every now and then. Other than that, they’re pretty much all act human.

3. I actually like the name Spitfire, but naming is an area where Eddison has some issues. The reason is that he came up with the story and characters when he was a teenager and kept them all when he finally wrote the book as an adult. The main characters are Juss, Spitfire, Goldry Bluszco and Brandoch Daha. Actually, the Witches have some cool names, like Corund, Corsus, and Corinius, but there are also characters named Fay Fax Faz, Cargo, and Volle.

The Insane:

1. It is written in what can only be described as “middle English, at best”. It was published in 1922, but Eddison uses language that would have made Shakespeare reach for his dictionary. Here is an example:

“I like not the dirty face of the Ambassador,” said Lord Zigg. “His nose sitteth flat on the face of him as if it were a dab of clay, and I can see pat up his nostrils a summer day’s journey into his head. If’s upper lip bespeak him not a rare spouter of rank fustian, perdition catch me.”

“Ere we leave it,” said Brandoch Daha, “hear what he speaketh concerning Koshtra Belorn. This he beheld from Morna Moruna, whereof he saith: ‘The contery is hylly, sandy, and baren of wood and corne, as forest ful of lynge, mores, and mosses, with stony hilles. Her is a mighty stronge and usid borow for flying serpens in sum baren, hethy, and sandy grownd, and therby the litle round castel of Morna Moruna stondith on Omprenne Edge, as on the limit of the worlde, sore wether beten and yn ruine.”

To be fair, that second quote is mostly from an old book they are reading out of, but you get the idea.

2. The description, the description. Eddison does not leave a thing to the imagination. He describes everything. In the first chapter alone, he spends at least 7 pages describing the throne room and all the main characters, including everything they are wearing. It is quite exhausting.

The Awesome:

You may have gotten the impression that I don’t like this book, but I actually love it. Here’s why:

1. The characters in this story are about the toughest, manliest men there are. I don’t mean that in a sexist way, but this story is written in the mode of a Norse saga and holy cow, do they live up to it. It is literally epic. This book has some of the most awesome battle scenes I’ve ever read. The characters launch huge invasion fleets, get them wrecked to bits, struggle across deserts and wastelands, climb Mt. Everest-sized mountains with no equipment (while fighting off monsters), and generally act like demi-gods as a matter of course.

2. Despite all the blood and action, there is a nuanced side to it. Surprisingly, it’s mostly from the Witches, the bad guys. The Demons are great guys, but relatively uncomplicated. However, the story follows the Witches almost as much as the Demons and you really start to relate to them. Sure, a lot of them are bad, but some are just on the wrong side. There is all kinds of deep, heart-rending conflict and pathos that is really quite well done.

3. It is hilarious in parts. For one thing, the Witches are insanely heavy drinkers and hold massive banquets that go on for pages where they get totally hammered and act like idiots. It’s pretty funny, really. Also (spoiler alert on this 91-year-old story), at the end, once the Demons have vanquished all their foes, they are all sad and depressed. They’ve won and they hate it. But then an enchantress or fairy or resurrects all the Witches and gives the Demons eternal life so they can fight forever. Then they’re happy again. It’s very Valhalla-ish, but the way it’s written in this book is very funny.

I would definitely recommend this book, but there is a good chance you won’t read it, mostly because of the language. I don’t blame you: I never would have read it either, normally. I first found it when I was commissioned by a publisher to write a modernized version of it. I was forced to read it and fell in love with it (my version has not made it to print yet, and may never, for various reasons outside my control. But at least I got paid and discovered a good book out of it.) Still, if you’re willing to put up with the language, I guarantee it’s worth it.

5 Comments | tags: awesome, Demon, Eddison, literature, review, synopsis, Witches, Worm Ouroboros | posted in Uncategorized

July 23, 2013

Is 5 a Boy or a Girl? – The Wonders of Synesthesia

By David Stewart

When I found out about the concept of synesthesia—linking colors to letters, for example—I thought it sounded like the coolest thing in the world, almost like a superpower. I wanted to be able to see colors when I heard music. Unfortunately, it’s not something you can get just by willing it.

You can imagine my surprise when several later, my younger sister found out that we did have a form of synesthesia. Ever since we were little, both of us have thought of numbers and letters as being either male or female. To me it was just natural and I was rather surprised that everyone didn’t do that. I think of some of them as having colors too, although that is not as clear-cut.

Numbers

In my mind, the numbers 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, and 0 are male. 2, 4, 6, and 7 are female. The male numbers are mostly a blue or purple color , since I think of those as male colors, while the female numbers are all yellow or red.

It’s interesting when I think about numbers above single digits. 1 and 0 are male, but not strongly so, so 12, 14, 16, 17 are clearly female. However, something like 25 is not as clear in my mind. I would still say it’s male though, which seems to indicate that the gender is determined mostly by the last digit.

Letters

For letters of the alphabet, B, D, E, G, J, K, L, O, P, R, T, U, V, W, X, and Z are strongly male. A, C, M, N, S, Y are strongly female. The others, F, H, and I are a bit fuzzier in my mind; sometimes they seem male, other times they seem female. Are there such things as androgynous letters? Possibly.

The funny thing is, that my sister’s breakdown of the genders of the numbers and letters is totally different from mine. Actually, it’s almost exactly opposite. I’m not sure what that means, but I find it very interesting.

The ones without colors don’t have a particular color strongly attached to them.

Other types of categorization

Of course, there are many ways to visual or categorize the world. Some people think of different sounds as having colors. My anthropology professor in university grew up Africa where there is a rainy season and a dry season and so he naturally categorized all colors into “wet” and “dry” colors.

One strange thing I do is to categorize things by two micro machine trucks that I had when I was younger. One was blue and the other was yellow and red. My best friend used to play mostly with one and I would mostly play with the other one. I began to associate them with aspects of our individual personalities and then began to expand them to other things. It’s hard to pin down exactly what each represents, but in general, the blue one is more conservative and introverted and the red and yellow one represents more innovative, out-going things.

These are the closest I could find online.

These are the closest I could find pictures of. The bottom ones looks spot-on.

Is there any distinct way that you perceive life? Have you had similar experiences to me? I’m curious.

12 Comments | tags: childhood, gender, letters, micro machines, numbers, perceptions, synesthesia | posted in Uncategorized

July 12, 2013

Alone on a boat Part II

By David Stewart

Here is Part 2 of the story that I began on Monday, “Alone on a Boat”. This is written by my friend, Sharmishtha Basu. She posted my part as well, so scroll down if you’ve read my first part already.

Thoughts

The tangy sea-spray smelled like freedom to Angelique as she stepped out onto the deck. Dawn was close and the lightening sky promised a beautiful day to come.

She was only twenty and sailing around the world on her own. Her yachting father who had taught her to sail had tried halfheartedly to talk her out of the idea. Her superstitious mother would not let herself give voice to all the terrible scenarios in her mind, but she finally said, “Won’t you be lonely all by yourself?”

Ha! There was plenty of excitement, fatigue, terror, even boredom, but never loneliness. How could she feel lonely sailing her own craft across an ocean of white-flecked sapphire, with seabirds crying above her and fish flashing silver as they leaped around her bow?

It had been a month after she had set out from Lisbon, and she was now anchored in a deserted…

View original post 5,966 more words

3 Comments | posted in Uncategorized

July 2, 2013

7 things you may not know about Lord of the Rings

By David Stewart

My favorite novel in the world is Lord of the Rings. I’ve read it at least 20 times, in three languages. To anyone who has seen the movie or read the book, the basic plot is pretty well known. However, with multiple readings I started to notice little cool details which either aren’t emphasized or are easy to overlook. Here’s my list of such things. (By the way, this is about the book, not the movie.)

The One Ring was the only Ring of Power without a gem. [*]

1. Even though the movies show the four hobbits as about the same age, this is not the case in the books. At the time of the quest to destroy the ring, Frodo was 50, Sam was 38, Merry was 36 and Pippin was 29. Of course, considering hobbits come of age at 33, Pippin would have been about 16 if he were human.

[*]

2. Hobbits aren’t the only ones who look younger than they are: Aragorn was 87 at the time of the Lord of the Rings and Gandalf was over 2000 years old.

[*]

3. List of words that appear in Lord of the Rings that sound bad, but really aren’t:

– faggot (Book 2, Chapter 3: “a bundle of sticks”)

– niggard (Book 6, Chapter 6 : “a selfish person”)

– boner (Book 1, Chapter 12: a nonsensical word in a song, rhyming with ‘owner’)

– bastards (Book 4, Chapter 9: “illegitimate children, used in the context of Shelob’s offspring)

Rivendell, by Ted Nasmith

4. Sam actually has five siblings but only mentions one of them in the Lord of the Rings: his younger sister Marigold. He mentions her in the chapter “Mount Doom” as someone he would have liked to see again, after he realizes they don’t have enough food to get back home.

5. The high elves are telepathic and can have conversations with each other without speaking out loud (Book 6, Chapter 6)

[*]

6. Gandalf has a telepathic link with Shadowfax and can call him mentally whenever he wants.

[*]

7. Nine women have speaking roles in Lord of the Rings. They are very ethnically diverse, although they usually don’t have many lines of dialogue. Here is the list, in order of appearance:

– Lobelia Sackville-Baggins – hobbit (2 lines)

– Mrs. Maggot – hobbit (1 line)

– Goldberry – Maiar (wife of Tom Bombadil) (10 lines)

– Galadriel – elf (many lines)

– Eowyn – human/Rohirrim (many lines)

– Ioreth – human/Gondorian (8 lines)

– Arwen – half-elf (2 lines)

– Rosie – hobbit (3 lines)

– Mrs. Cotton – hobbit (1 line)

There tend to be large gaps between them, however, and at one point, 17 chapters go by between women speaking.

[*]

26 Comments | tags: hobbits, literature, Lord of the Rings, trivia | posted in Uncategorized

June 30, 2013

12 Hours to Live

By David Stewart

This is a story for Alastair’s Photo Fiction.

12 Hours to Live

“How old are you?” Erin asked the mayfly perched on her arm.

“About two hours,” the mayfly said. “Sorry if I seem distracted; I really need to find a mate.”

“Don’t we all,” Erin muttered. “I’m 38 years old and haven’t found one.”

“What’s a year? I live for 12 hours.”

“Ah, in your time scale, I’m about 6 hours old,” Erin said.

“Six hours? Holy aphids, you’re old.”

“So, what are you going to do with the next 10 hours, until you die?”

“I’m going to fly around, find a mate, have children, maybe go sightseeing—I’m hearing good things about the yard across the street. I don’t even need to stop to eat.”

“Sounds like a busy day.”

“Busy life, you mean. When you’re a mayfly, you gotta go like there’s no tomorrow. Because there isn’t one. So, what are you going to do?”

“Uh, well you see, there’s this CSI marathon on TV today . . .”

16 Comments | tags: Alastair's Photo Fiction, carpe diem, fiction, flash fiction, life, mayfly | posted in Light, Uncategorized

June 22, 2013

Baker’s Dozen preview

By David Stewart

A man named Forrest goes to work one day, worried about his small problems in his insulated world. Then a mysterious message appears on his computer screen, telling him to get out of the building. He does, just as it explodes. He is quickly thrust into a maelstrom of chaos, warring factions and uncertain allegiances. Everything seems to be centered around a medallion that his father gave him before he died. They say it has hidden power and powerful, shadowy forces will stop at nothing to get it.

This is the premise of a collaborative story with 13 chapters that has been ongoing for a couple months, run by my friend Joe Owens. Next week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, my installment of the story will be posted, which will be the 12th and second last chapter.

If you are interested in reading the ones that come before, here is the link to them. It starts with the most current chapter, Chapter 11, but the links to the earlier ones are there too.